Bridge Builders

The word “pontiff,” used to designate the highest religious order of the Roman Catholic Church, namely the Pope, has an interesting history. This was the name which, in the old pagan religion of ancient Rome, was given to the chief priests. The pontiffs were those who were invested with pontifical power. The name as it was first applied meant “the makers of bridges.” Why it was used to designate a religious order we hardly know. Perhaps those old Roman pontiffs were specially employed in consecrating those mighty instruments of earthly peace and civilization, the great roads and bridges by which the old Romans tamed and subdued the world. But in a moral and spiritual sense we ought all to be makers of bridges. Pontiff or no pontiff, minister or no minister, every Christian who walks in his Master’s steps ought to make it his special business to throw bridges across those moral rents and fissures which divide us one from the other. Across these various gulfs and chasms let every one lend a helping hand to build such bridges as best we can. There cannot be a more truly pontifical work.