Much has been done toward reforming this unfortunate class. Much more may yet be done. Their souls are not dead but sleeping! Let the Prison Association of New York see that the influences of their own religion are brought to bear upon them. Wherever there is a considerable number of Catholics confined in any prison, penitentiary, reform-school, or school-ship, let a Catholic priest be invited to administer to their spiritual wants and to perform the religious service of their church. Let the association see that in the selection of books for prison libraries, a fair share are Catholic books; not dry theological treatises, nor dull books of piety, but books such as are calculated to divert, to instruct, to elevate; to make better men, better citizens, and better members of society; to strengthen conscience and loyalty to the great principles of divine religion and eternal right.
We entirely agree with the association as to the end to be attained, and we have endeavored, in a few words, to point out the means best calculated for the attainment of that end with a very large part of our criminals. We trust that our ideas will receive a trial, and that narrow-minded and bigoted intolerance will not be allowed to put obstacles in the way.
Catholic criminals can be permanently reformed only by Catholic religious influences.
[27] _Twenty-Fourth Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the Prison Association of New York, and accompanying Documents, for 1868._ Transmitted to the Legislature Jan. 13th, 1869. Albany: The Argus Company, Printers. 1869.
UNION BETWEEN THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE, OR FIRST MOMENT OF GOD'S EXTERNAL ACTION
The result of our preceding article was a supreme duality--the infinite and the finite. The one absolutely distinct in nature from the other. The first self-existing, necessary, eternal, immutable, infinitely perfect, and absolutely complete and blessed in his interior life; the other, created, contingent, mutable, imperfect, and on the way to development. How can this duality, so marked and so distinct, the terms of which are so infinitely apart, be harmonized and brought together into unity?
Such is the fifth problem which pantheism raises, and which it undertakes to solve.
