A GOOD PRIEST.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2357, 17 May 1892, Page 3

A GOOD PRIEST.

In Broadbrim’s New York letter in the Waimate Witness appears the following:— A faithful servant of Christ died a few weeks ago in the City of Brooklyn. His name was John Loughlin ; he was the Catholic Bishop of that diocese, and during an active service of fifty years, he succeeded in accumulating a fortune of millions. Of dollars ? Oh no ! he died not worth one penny ; all he had or ever made he gave to the poor; but at his death no millionaire so rich as he. Not Rockfeller, nor Vanderbilt, nor Jay Gould, nor Russell Sage, with all of their financial successes, had as many millions laid away as he ; but he had not piled his millions away in strong boxes and safe deposits; he owned no bank stocks, nor State or City bonds, no Railroad securities, nor Government nor houses nor land, nor silver nor gold; but he had laid it away for his hour of need, “ where the rust doth not consume, nor thieves break in and steal.” He hid it away in the homes of the poor and forsaken ; he was a Levite who passed no poor one by, and yet so secret and unostentatious was he in his charity that he literally never let his left hand know what his right hand did. Only a few months before his death, on the occasion of his golden jubilee, Catholic Brookly presented him with a purse of thirty thousand dollars; w'hen he died an accouut of this was expected to be found among his effects, and it was, but the poor got it all; not a penny of that great sura did he lay out upon himself, he loaned it all to Christ. During his administration of the bishopric of the diocese of Brooklyn for over a quarter of a century, he had absolute and entire control of many millions of money; had he been so inclined he could quietly have laid away a million to be divided among his relatives, or to use for any purpose he desired ; but of himself he never thought, except as to administer his great trusts, as to deserve and receive such reward as his Master might give when he finally summoned him away. His only bequest was his watch, which he left to his sister. I know another minister whose church, loaded with mortgages, is only a block away from where the good bishop died, who in fifteen years of service has accumulated a fortune of over a quarter of a million dollars, and who holds a mortgage of twenty-five thousand dollars on the church in which he preaches. It is a contrast to ponder on, but to my thinkingthe good Bishop bore the nearer resemblance to the Man of Sorrows.