The great error in connection with this matter is to expect immediate results from such work.  Truth and Divine Grace work slowly.  To measure the success of a lecture or a mission to non-Catholics by the number of immediate converts is completely unfair and against reason.  The main and direct object of these lectures is to combat the three obstacles in the way of conversion, indifference, ignorance, and prejudice, and to prepare the soil for the Great Sower.  The important point we should not forget is that, as in all propaganda, the “systematic follow-up work” counts.  The persistency and recurrence of the message give it its strength and influence.

In all we have said and suggested it must not be supposed that we forget Faith to be a gift of God . . . Donum Dei.  The salvation and sanctification of a soul are essentially a supernatural process.  We can no more trace the ways of God than we can forecast the ways of the wind.  Therefore the greater our activities are, the greater should be the supernatural force behind them.  Prayer, constant and fervent prayer, for the conversion of our separated brethren should be ever on our lips and in our hearts.  Yet, strange thing!  We hardly ever hear of public prayers and masses said for this great work.  If our desires were more real, should they not find expression here and there in some public form of prayer.

We should close this chapter with the instructive and inviting example that comes to us from our Catholic brethren in Protestant England.  A wonderful Catholic campaign is now on through Scotland and England.  Various societies have grouped the active Catholic laity into various units, with the one great object in view, to give back to England the faith she has been robbed of centuries ago.

The “Catholic Truth Society” stands in the background as the heavy artillery that has been firing at long range at positions the enemies are gradually leaving.  For the last thirty years it has been breaking the way to victory.  “The Catholic Evidence Guild” and “Social Guild,” like the light cavalry are reconnoitering the lines and positions.  The “Motor Chapel” and “The Bexhill Library”—­that Catholic Post-Library, with its 16,000 volumes—­are what we call the flying corps of this great Catholic army.  And while the various militant units are pushing forward their lines, the members of “Our Lady of Ransom’s League” are praying on the mountain with up-lifted hands for the conversion of their Country.

The Catholics of the United States are following suit.  The Paulist Fathers with their missions to non-Catholics, their press and “Catholic Missionary Union,” devoted to the conversion of America, have undoubtedly done splendid work.  The Catholic laity have also been most active under the auspices of the Knights of Columbus.  MM.  Goldstein and Peter Collins, Dr. Walsh and Mrs. Avery are lecturing through the country and have met with great success.  This awakening of the missionary spirit is one of the most healthy signs of the Catholicity of the Church across the border.  It is with reason that the Holy See looks to America for the future wants of the Mission Field.