39. So, too, the priest who is the salt of the earth must in his necessary contact with the society by which he is surrounded, preserve modesty, gravity and holiness in manner, action and speech, and not allow himself to become infected with the levity, dissipation and vanity of the worldly. He must, on the contrary, in the midst of the men, keep his soul so united with God that he lose nothing of the spirit of his holy state, and be not constrained to make before God and his conscience the sad and humiliating avowal: "I never go among laymen that I do not return less a priest."