LAMARTINE'S PEN-PICTURE OF A PRIEST.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 343, 14 November 1879, Page 16

LAMARTINE'S PEN-PICTURE OF A PRIEST.

There is in every parish a man who has no family, but who belongs to tvery family, a man who is called upon to act in the capacity of witness, counsel, or aeent in all the most important acts of civil life ; a man without whom none can enter the world or go out of it, who takes the child from the bosom of its mother and leaves it only at the tomb, who blesses or consecrates the crib, the bed of death, and the bier , a man that little children love and fear and venerate, whom unknown persons address as ' Father," at the f ce t of whom, and in whose keeping, all classes of people come to deposit their most secret thoughts, their most hidden sins ; a man wwoh o is by profession the consoler and the healer of all the miseries of soul and body, through whom the rich and poor are united ;at who se door they knock by turns, the one to deposit his secret alms, the other to receive it without being made to blush because of his need ; the man vho, being himself of no social rank, belongs to all indiscrimately— to the inferior ranks of society by the unoatentaiious lift he leads, and often by humble birth and parentage ; to the upper classes by education, often by superior talents and by the sn blinie sentiments hi? religion inspires and commands ; a man, in finei wn ° knowg everything, from whose hallowed lips words of divine wisdom are received by all with the authority of an oracle and w * tn entire submission of faith and judgment— this man is the priest-