either because they bring in themselves no fresh stimulus, or because the energy is already fully employed elsewhere, and the liturgy and sacraments are all that is needed to maintain spiritual strength and vigor.
It were but an unreasonable optimism to deny that there are practices of piety which spring rather from temporal greed than from spiritual earnestness. Not that they are to be condemned simply because they are the expression of material needs.
Our "daily bread" comprises that of the body as well as that of the soul, and Christ had pity on physical suffering as well as spiritual disease. But again it is a case of distinguishing, not between what is bad and what is good, but between what is good and what is better.
It is commonly urged in defense of the countless devotions, directed almost exclusively to the obtaining, of temporal favors, that they both prove and foster a strong, childlike faith, and that, consequently, even if they dip occasionally to the side of superstition, they should not be ruthlessly eradicated, lest we root up the wheat along with the tares. True as all this may be, we are surely urging the proposition to a most false extreme if we go on to assume therefrom that no one can
