ble priest preaching as he prays is united with the fountain of the water of life; he has his lips to the spring: and he will often wonder at the thoughts which he never thought, and at the words which were put in his mouth. It is the promise, "He shall receive of Mine and show it unto you." Ille plus dicit qui plus facit—the few words of a holy priest do more than the many voices of human eloquence.
Preaching, then, is a constant and supernatural help to sacerdotal and pastoral perfection.
5. One more, and the last, we may enumerate is the confessional. S. Gregory the Great says that priests are like the laver of brass in the entrance of the Temple, in which the people took the water of purification before they entered. They receive the sins of all the people, but are kept always pure themselves.[1] Jesus stretched out His hand and touched the leper, saying, "Be thou clean." The priest touches the sinner and is kept pure. But he needs to watch and pray, ne lepra possit transire in medicum.
We study moral theology in books, but there is no book so full of teaching as the confessional. The first time a priest sits in the tribunal of Pen-
