The building of churches, their decoration, the furnishing of sacred vessels and ornaments for the sanctuary, and other works directly connected with the service and worship of the divine Majesty, are objects demanding a truly immense outlay of money. So far as concerns that which is necessary for the ministering of the word and sacraments of Christ, these spiritual wants of the people take precedence of their bodily necessities. So far as the decoration, splendor, and dignity of religion only are concerned, they come next after the more essential works of charity. Add to the buildings which are immediately devoted to divine worship, all those which belong to colleges, schools, orphanages, etc., and the work demanded of the Catholics of the United States appears colossal, and would seem impossible, did we not see before our eyes so much of it already accomplished. Then, there are the most just and imperative claims of the Holy Father, and the pathetic appeals of the foreign missions, never so pressing as at the present moment, when the downfall of the power of France has left them so denuded of the succor which they formerly received from that most generous nation. The naïve response which a most estimable French lady once gave to a priest who asked her for a donation to a good work in this city, very well expresses the true state of the case in hand: “Very much call, very little fund.” Nowhere is this more literally true than in New York. The most extreme liberality of all the Catholics of this city who have anything to spare, whether rich or poor, would not yield the means of furnishing a sufficient number of churches, schools, and other means for supplying the spiritual and corporal wants of our swarming and increasing population. Millions might be used at the present moment, if they could be had, in works of the most practical utility and even necessity. When a city or a nation is in straits through the calamities of war, pestilence, or famine, all its citizens are expected to strain every nerve and to make heroic sacrifices for its relief. No city or nation has a thousandth part of the claim to devotion from its citizens which the church possesses. And the church, always militant, is always in straits, at least in some part of her great empire, always suffering from the effects of the perpetual warfare waged against her, from pestilential vices and sins among her children, from a famine of the word and sacraments of Christ among the most neglected and abandoned of her people. God alone can help her efficiently. But men must struggle to help themselves, if they expect God to help them. Our Lord demanded of his disciples to feed the hungry multitude, and ordered them to set before them the whole of their own scanty provisions. “He himself knew what he would do,” and he did it by multiplying miraculously the loaves and fishes of his disciples. God alone can rescue the famishing and perishing multitudes of Christendom and heathendom from the abyss of temporal and spiritual ruin and death which yawns under their feet. Society must be reconstructed on a Christian basis, and by mighty, organic movements, in which the church and the state, the hierarchy, both ecclesiastical and civil, and all the powers contained in the bosom of society, in harmonious concert of action, labor together for a common end, it must work out its own regeneration and the Christian civilization of the human race; or the work will remain for ever incomplete. Christendom is full of deadly disorders and wounds, inflicted on it by the fell power of schism, heresy, and infidelity. Only Catholic unity can heal it, and combine its members in the work assigned to it by divine Providence, and only a miracle of grace can restore to that unity the severed and disorganized parts, close up the deadly gashes in the living body, and reanimate it with complete health. The zeal, activity, and wealth of the whole community, collected in the communion of the Catholic Church, would be sufficient for as thorough a regeneration of New York, and of the whole United States, as the most sanguine optimist could ever expect to see brought about in any country in the world. Christendom, united in itself, and governed on Christian principles, would absorb into itself on a century the entire world. But meanwhile, the faithful and loyal children of the church must do what they can, and await the time for God to do what he has determined, and to a great extent made conditional in the efforts of men. The most of our Catholic people in the United States have, on the whole, fulfilled the duty of contributing the funds required for carrying on the works of the church remarkably well.