are yet four months and then the harvest cometh?  Behold I say to you lift up your eyes and see the countries for they are white already to harvest.”  This human harvest, of which the Master speaks, is but the prelude of that immense harvest of souls ever ripening under the rays of God’s divine grace in the great field of this world.  The Church, like Christ, also invites us to contemplate that waving harvest and to pray the Lord to send labourers into the field.

This divine invitation, the Catholic Church Extension Society makes its own, to plead the cause of our Home Missions.  Pointing to our Western Provinces, to that great Dominion beyond the Lakes, that missionary organization says to every Catholic in the land:  “The harvest is great, but the labourers are few.  Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that he send labourers into the harvest.”

The Catholic Church Extension Society has been founded in Canada, for the conservation and propagation of the Catholic Faith in our mission districts.  Its very name, as we readily see, shows forth its object and explains its existence.  Canada, as we all know, possesses vast areas, in her Western Provinces particularly, where the Church has not yet established the influence of her permanent organization.  There, her children suffer from the prolonged absence of her teaching, of her sacraments, of her authority, and are struggling against the abiding presence of numerous, rich, aggressive, and unscrupulous proselytizers.  Yet, on the vast stretches of prairie, where the lonely homesteader has just broken the virgin soil, amid the snows of the bleak North, by the rushing waters of the Fraser, the Mackenzie, the Peace, and the Saskatchewan Rivers, in the far distant valleys of the Rockies—­the words of the Master are still a living reality. . . .  “The fields are ready for the harvest and the workers are few.”  The Extension Society has been established in Canada to point out to our Catholic laity these fields where the harvest is waiting and to help to send labourers into them.  Its sublime mission is to bridge the chasm which separates the East from the West.  It is the binding and living link between the organized Church and the mission field.  This sublime object of the Society makes it most worthy of our commendation and of your loyal and generous support.

Principle and policy are the basic ideas of organized action.  If the principles upon which an organization rests are true and elevating, if the policy it advocates and which governs its activities is practical, easy, and attractive, the organization itself is bound to meet in time with an unlimited success.  The higher the principles, the more inviting the policy, the more living and telling will be the resultant action.  Therefore, to place before our readers the principles and policy of the Catholic Extension Society will no doubt help them to understand better its claims and respond more generously to its appeal.