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"But is it not that duty which distinguishes the priest from the layman? and how far extends that duty? Whereever there needs a voice to speak the word, not in the pulpit only, but at the hearth, by the sick-bed, there should be the Pastor! No: I cannot, I ought not, I dare not! Incompetent as the labourer, how can I be worthy of the hire?"
No layman shall go to the Sacrament without confession and absolution; and no one shall receive it under two forms. No chancre shall be made in the ceremonies, which, derived from the Word of God, have come down to us from the Holy Fathers and our worthy ancestors.
"Urge me no further, I must return to-night; yet if thou hast a mind to do me a kindness thou canst give me some food to eat and a flask of your golden Michaelsburg; beyond these, I ask no further favor of any man, be he priest or layman."
But, of course, if he considered it evidence, I had to give it up, and the fact of doing so, partly salved my conscience of its guilty feeling at concealing the fact of Vicky's presence in her own house just then. And, too, I said to myself, Mr. Stone is out to find her. Surely a detective of his calibre can accomplish that without help of an humble layman!
The wizened little Legate bowed to the ground as the noisy procession started, for though he wore a clerical dress he was only a layman, and the Nuncio was Archbishop of Kerasund, 'in partibus infidelium, and returned the Governor's salutations with a magnificent benediction from the window of his coach.
One feels a layman like myself feels that it should be enough to have a strawberry-bed, a peach-tree, a fig-tree. If these are not enough, then the addition of a gardener should make the thing a certainty. Yet how often will not a gardener refer one back to February as the real culprit.
That would be consistent with the prerogative, and would be perfectly legal; but everybody must feel, and everybody must know, that such an exercise of the undoubted prerogative of the crown would be a flagrant violation of the principles of the constitution. In the same manner the sovereign might place the Great Seal in the hands of a layman wholly unacquainted with the laws of the country.
The trouble is more serious than it would seem to the layman, as when the compass is out of action, and no other guides are available, one tends to drift round in a large circle, like a man lost in the jungle.
He writes to us: "Dear father and mother, be not wroth with me, permit me to be a layman; my heart does not incline to the ecclesiastical profession, I dread the responsibility, I am afraid I shall sin doubts have taken hold upon me!
And I tell you, let none but a great clerk dispute; the business of a layman when he hears the Christian religion defamed is to defend it with his sharp sword and thrust his weapon into the miscreant's body as far as it will go." St. Louis, however, did not apply the moral in practice.
Word Of The Day