mMMm 
 
 
 ''■■4vrv'<..;i:-;v» 
 
 ■','■ --■•■': , ,;_. ■,'/, 
 
 
 
 
 
 •'•'•-■ y.'.' —f,'-"':^^''! 
 
 ■ :-:i-^-. 
 
 ■■,,'■ J; ',»5^ff 
 
 ,' - - ,-■ \. ■-'--■ ■ ■•'■■. -*► 1 "^ .>.-.■ .>.i 
 
 w^ 
 
 Vt-%" 
 
 •-♦ 
 
 .,^l:;-: 
 
 ^+;--^:>:tv;;;.-^:, :.:■:.. Jfci^ 
 
 •- i.^'A' 
 
 
 
 ■; %'U I : •'».^YWXr«'':^'>!% 
 
 
 
 1.-^ » ;' < ■ . ' »• rcv I. V. -, "JO 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 924031 1 96888 
 
arV1004 
 
 Hard sayings : 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 
 3 1924 031 196 888 
 olln.anx 
 
HARD SAYINGS 
 
 A SELECTION OF MEDITATIONS AND STUDIES 
 
 GEORGE TYRRELL, S.J. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "nova ET VETERA." 
 
 ' Durus est hie sermo, et quis potest eum audire?" — Joan. vi. 6i. 
 
 FIFTH IMPRESSION. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
 
 1903 
 
mfbU ©bstat: 
 
 GuLiELMus Roche, S.J., 
 
 Censor Deputatns. 
 
 Jmprimatuc : 
 
 HERBERTUS CARD. VAUGHAN, 
 
 Archief. Westmonasl. 
 
The Author wishes to thank those who have 
 in various ways helped him in the task of 
 producing the present volume; and more especially 
 Mr. C. Kegan Paul, who kindly read through the 
 proofs. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Although the following conferences and medita- 
 tions were in no way originally designed to be parts 
 of a whole, written, as they were, at sundry times 
 and in divers manners, yet there has been some 
 imperfect attempt at method in their selection and 
 arrangement which, though not very apparent on 
 the surface, may make itself felt in the unity of 
 their effect upon the reader's mind. Their purport 
 is to illustrate and, so to say, turn over in various 
 ways a very few of the deepest and most wide- 
 reaching principles of Catholic Christianity, by 
 which they are pervaded and upon which they have 
 been built up with a ■ somewhat dialectical severity 
 which can hardly escape unfavourable criticism, as 
 seeming to encourage an excessive rationalizing in 
 matters too delicate for the coarse hands of the 
 logician. The writer has had this danger con- 
 tinually before his mind as something to guard 
 against, but since his aim has been confessedly to 
 simplify, explain, and co-ordinate, it would be too 
 
viii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 much to hope that he has avoided all the errors and 
 extremes which usually beset such an undertaking. 
 
 For indeed there is a most unpardonable narrow- 
 ness as well as impertinence in the desire to repre- 
 sent the intercourse between the created spirit and 
 its indwelling Creator in terms as sharp and exact 
 as those which describe the dealings of father and 
 son, master and servant, ruler and subject, husband 
 and spouse. These familiar relationships bear a 
 distant analogy to those subsisting between God 
 and the soul, but fall immeasurably short of the 
 reality. They are as a few rough, suggestive strokes- 
 drawn by a skilful hand, which will serve to bring 
 to our mind all the meaning and expression of a 
 face if only it be already familiar to us by experi- 
 ence. But an inordinate love of clearness, an over- 
 pressing of analogies and similitudes is a form of 
 rationalism very fruitful in fallacies, and not very 
 uncommon in ascetical writings. If, however, we 
 use these metaphors with a full reflex conscious- 
 ness of their imperfection, then indeed we may do- 
 so fearlessly and abundantly, trusting that where 
 one is weak another may be strong, and that from- 
 many faultv adumbrations some vague image of the- 
 whole truth may shape itself in the mind. 
 
 What we have to guard against is the narrow 
 pride of that rationalism which inclines some to be 
 impatient of all ideas that are in any way obscure 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and imperfectly defined ; to cast out of the mind as 
 worthless those that are not clear and distinct ; to 
 apply the methods and criteria of the "exact 
 sciences" to matters of a wholly different order; 
 to be abhorrent of all that savours of mysticism. 
 For this is to forget that every new idea that enters 
 our soul, so far as it is new and incomparable, and 
 unlike what we have previously known, is fringed 
 with mystery, and is only very gradually defined and 
 analyzed as to its full contents; it is to ignore the 
 simple fact that our mind comprehends fully only 
 what it has itself created — forms and numbers, and 
 figures and relations ; and that of the least atom of 
 God's creations it can at best grasp a side or a surface 
 or a corner, but can penetrate nothing. Still more 
 evident is it that most of the truths relating to the 
 commerce of God with the soul are necessarily 
 veiledy and obscure to us in our present embodied 
 condition, since they can never be properly ex- 
 pressed in terms of anything that falls under our 
 senses — in terms of the only language we are 
 skilled in. Ultimate truths, those which are con- 
 cerned with the Alpha and Omega of our existence, 
 are from their very nature set at the extreme hmit 
 of our intellectual horizon, so that we never see all 
 round them or beyond them. Our mind is made 
 for what lies between : for movements and processes 
 and the laws by which they are governed ; but 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 before the " Ultimates," the unchanging realities of 
 the timeless, spaceless world, whose existence is- 
 postulated in our every thought, our progress is 
 abruptly arrested as by a dead wall, behind which 
 all is impenetrable mystery : " Hitherto shalt thou 
 come and no further, and here shalt thou break thy 
 swelling waves." 
 
 Yet these are the truths most essential to our 
 spiritual life, and ignorance of which is chiefly to 
 be deplored. They are, moreover, truths for which 
 man has by nature a most insatiable intellectual 
 curiosity that breaks out everywhere, even in the 
 most barbaric and uncultivated minds ; and yet with 
 regard to which he is as helpless,- as much in need 
 of God, as the babe is of its mother's breast ; and 
 if his craving for the mysterious, the wonderful, the 
 supernatural, be not fed by true religion, it will feed 
 itself on the garbage of any superstition that is 
 offered to it. 
 
 Indeed, the soul will never be raised higher or 
 further strengthened by any truth which it has once 
 thoroughly penetrated or comprehended, and which 
 therefore retains for it no element of mystery or 
 wonder, for it is only by straining to comprehend 
 what exceeds its present grasp that it grows great. 
 
 Mysticism deals with such half-veiled, half- 
 revealed truths as we speak of. There is no doubt 
 a false mysticism which values obscurity for its 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 own sake, and wraps up the simplest truisms of 
 morality in clouds of confusion till they loom great 
 and mysterious ; and which on this score lays claim 
 to special gnosis and prophetic insight. But this 
 child of affectation, or self-delusion, or ignorance, no 
 more discredits the true mysticism of i Kempis or 
 of St. Teresa, than spiritualism discredits spirits, 
 or jugglery discredits the miracles of Christ. 
 
 Having thus insisted on the reasonableness and 
 necessity of mysticism, as opposed to crude rational- 
 ism and to the non-sense of soi-disant "common 
 sense " in spiritual things, we must equally insist on 
 the importance of using all the light and help that 
 reason rightly used affords us in these matters ; of 
 recognizing here, as elsewhere, progress and develop- 
 ment in our understanding of Divine truth (itself 
 unchanging) — a progress in distinctness and coher- 
 ence of idea and statement ; a continual and faithful 
 retranslation of the words and forms of one age or 
 country into those of another; an adaptation of 
 immutable principles, to the ever mutable circum- 
 stances of human life. For where this work is 
 neglected, the language and conceptions of a former 
 generation become, first, tasteless and common- 
 place ; and then distasteful and repugnant to the 
 changing fashions of thought and speech in 
 succeeding generations — except in the case of those 
 rare works of genius and inspiration which, like 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the Scriptures or the Imitation, are catholic and 
 eternal. 
 
 Thus much, then, in justification of what might 
 seem to be a too dialectical treatment of subjects 
 to a great extent beyond the reach of so rude a 
 method. 
 
 Again, the writer may be reproached with 
 a certain indecency and irreverence in attempting 
 to make bare to the public gaze many of those 
 deeper mysteries of our holy religion which the 
 instinct of more delicate minds has ever hidden in 
 a language " not understanded of the people." This 
 disciplina arcani the Church has learnt from her 
 Divine Master, whose parables were "words to the 
 wise," mercifully veiling from the many the light 
 which they could not bear, and which would have 
 been only to their ruin and not to their resurrection. 
 Also there is a sacred duty of guarding the higher 
 truths of the Eternal Kingdom from the profana- 
 tion of being discussed, perhaps ridiculed and 
 blasphemed by those whose minds and hearts are 
 void of the first principles whence a sympathetic 
 understanding of them might be evolved. As it is, 
 there is scarce a hireling journalist who is not as 
 ready with his flippant criticisms on the mysteries 
 of the Kingdom of God as he is with those on 
 political or scientific or literary topics. Nothing is 
 sacred from his omniscient pen. Is it then season- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 able thus to cast pearls before those who will but 
 trample them under foot and turn again and 
 Tend us ? 
 
 If after some hesitation the writer has deter- 
 mined to face the possibihty of such ill-conse- 
 quences, it has been from a conviction that it is 
 rather through an insight into the high and all- 
 satisfying ethical conceptions of the Catholic religion 
 that men are drawn to embrace it than through any 
 more speculative considerations. Loquere ad cor 
 populi hujus — Speak unto the heart of this people, 
 was the Prophet's commission ; nor can it be denied 
 that it was because He knew what was in man that 
 Christ had such irresistible power over the hearts of 
 men ; for here if anywhere knowledge is power. So 
 there is nothing that establishes and confirms our 
 implicit faith in the CathoHc religion of Christ more 
 than the clear conviction that she alone knows what 
 is in man, and holds the secrets of life's problems ; 
 that she alone has balm for the healing of the 
 nations; that she alone can answer firmly and 
 infallibly what all are asking, with an answer harsh 
 at first sounding, and austere, but on reflection kind 
 and consolatory, and, like the "hard sayings" of 
 her Master, " full of grace and truth." 
 
 It is not till men's hearts are deeply drawn 
 towards the Church for one reason or another, 
 that their minds are sufficiently freed from the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 natural bias against a creed so exacting and 
 imperious in many ways, to make them desirous 
 or capable of listening to her claims. 
 
 For this . reason, therefore, it is to the heart we 
 must make our first appeal, by bringing together as 
 far as we can those various truths which embody 
 the Church's explanation of life as we find it ; by 
 showing their mutual bearings, their harmony with 
 one another, and with the stern facts they deal with 
 and explain. If the Church has an answer which 
 will give a meaning to pain and temptation and sin 
 and sorrow, which will point to law and order where 
 otherwise there is nothing apparent but painful 
 darkness and confusion, which will verify and 
 connect what is to all seeming manifold and dis- 
 connected, even though that answer be hard and 
 repulsive in its very simplicity, surely it should 
 make every honest truth-seeking mind pause to see 
 if indeed these things be so, if indeed darkness can 
 be so touched with light, and sorrow so turned into 
 joy. If the solution fits the problem it may indeed 
 be the result of chance, but it is a chance that 
 becomes ever more incredible as the conditions of 
 the problem are seen to be multiple and intricate : 
 and the more we know of life's complications on the 
 one hand and of the Church's simplification on the 
 other, the less possible is it for us to doubt that she 
 is from on high, the work of those hands which 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 fashioned the human soul, and which provide for 
 the needs of every creature they have fashioned. 
 
 We do not mean that our needs demand and 
 explain every point of Catholic teaching, as though 
 that religion were merely the complement of our 
 nature's exigencies, and were not also supernatural, 
 giving more than our heart as yet knows how tO' 
 desire. But the whole idea of personal trust and 
 faith is that those whom we have found loving and 
 true to us in matters we can test, should ever be 
 accredited with the same love and truth in matters 
 beyond our criticism. So it is with faith in God, 
 with faith in Christ, with faith in the Catholic 
 Church ; we understand enough to warrant full trust 
 in what we cannot understand, or cannot even 
 expect to understand. 
 
 It is, then, the belief that a deeper and more 
 comprehensive view of the Church's ethical and 
 spiritual ideals; of her conception as to the 
 capacities, the dignity and destiny of the human 
 soul, of the hope that she inspires in the midst of 
 so much that is otherwise disheartening, of the light 
 which she sheds over the dark abyss of sin and 
 temptation and sorrow — it is the belief that such a 
 comprehensive view may in some cases serve far 
 more effectually than any direct apologetic to win,, 
 to establish, or to confirm an abiding faith in her 
 divine origin and operation, that must partly excuse 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 or justify an otherwise reprehensible popularizing of 
 the " secrets of the King." 
 
 Not indeed that any one mind however broad 
 and deep can ever hope to grasp the Catholic idea 
 in its entirety, or can ever count itself to have com- 
 prehended perfectly what by reason of its magni- 
 tude must elude all but an infinite thought. If every 
 -advance in the knowledge of Nature advances us in 
 knowledge of our ignorance of Nature, the same 
 holds good of our study of the Christian revelation, 
 of the idea of Christ and the Church. Man's brain 
 grows-to and outgrows religions that are its own 
 creation, the provisional expression and images of 
 that Reality which touches him in conscience, and 
 cries out to him in Nature. But it does not, and 
 cannot, outgrow that revelation in which God has 
 expressed for him, albeit in faltering human 
 language, realities which are beyond all reason and 
 experience. Our conception of one whom we meet 
 and observe daily will grow in depth, in volume, in 
 accuracy; but our conception of one whom we 
 know only by hearsay cannot go beyond what is 
 contained in that hearsay. Yet this content may 
 be infinite in potentiality, like some mathematical 
 expression from which a process of endless building- 
 up can be started. And so it is with that conception 
 of Himself and of His Christ and of His Church 
 which God has given us in the Christian revelation. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xvii 
 
 It is an idea which admits of infinite evolution, 
 which the Church keeps and broods over and 
 ponders in her heart ; in which the best thought of 
 every age finds its highest ideals satisfied and 
 surpassed. Superficial critics who shrink from the 
 labour of a wide induction, are perpetually treating 
 this idea as it is found in some particular mind or 
 nationality or period, and by consequence con- 
 founding what is accidental with what is essential, 
 and faiHng to distinguish its morbid from its legiti- 
 mate developments. 
 
 And indeed it is to the Church, who watches 
 over this process, that we must look for our 
 guidance as to results already obtained. But starting 
 where she leaves off and following in the direction 
 of the lines she has laid down, the minds of her 
 children will ever press on towards a fuller intelli- 
 gence of the mysteries of faith, turning back at 
 times to gain her approval or to receive her rebuke 
 or to listen to her counsel; and thus, under her 
 supervision, they will purify the Catholic idea more 
 and more from all foreign admixture and build it 
 up member by member, nearing, yet never reaching, 
 a perfect disclosure of its organic unity, its simpli- 
 city in complexity, its transcendent beauty. 
 
 Finally, in choosing Hard Sayings for a title, 
 allusion is made to the occasion when many of the 
 disciples of Jesus turned back and walked with Him 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 no more, because of His doctrine concerning the 
 great Mystery of Divine Love, in which all the other 
 mysteries of the Catholic faith are gathered up. 
 That this Man should give us His Flesh to eat, that 
 bread should be His Body, is indeed a "hard 
 saying" for the many who are the slaves of their 
 imagination, and who fancy that they know some- 
 thing of the constitution of matter and the Hmits of 
 Divine omnipotence. But for the more thoughtful it 
 is a far harder saying that God should so care for 
 man's love as to come down from Heaven, and take 
 flesh that He might wbo man in man's own 
 language — the language of suffering. And if these 
 things are hard to the understanding, it is still 
 harder for the weak will to hear that God must be 
 loved back as He has loved us, with a love that 
 yields pain for pain, sacrifice for sacrifice, death for 
 death. 
 
 Here the Church has ever been faithful to her 
 Master. Others have, with false kindness, mitigated 
 the " hard sayings," and prophesied smooth things, 
 and drawn away the weak from her side. But 
 with all her human frailty, ever shrinking from the 
 stern ideal of the Cross, from the bitterness of the 
 Chalice of her Passion, when asked she has but one 
 ruthless answer, namely, that it is only through 
 many tribulations that we can enter the Kingdom 
 of God ; that Christ's yoke is easy, not because 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 it is painless, but because love makes the pain 
 welcome. 
 
 To whom then shall we go but to her who has 
 the words of eternal life, who for two thousand 
 years has kept all these sayings and pondered them 
 in her heart ? 
 
 G. T. 
 
 Wimbledon. 
 
 SS. Peter and Paul, i8g3. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction . 
 The Soul and her Spouse . 
 The Hidden Life . 
 The Presence of God 
 God in Conscience , 
 
 Sin judged by Faith 
 Sin judged by Reason 
 ^ Sin and Suffering . . 
 
 The Gospel of Pain 
 " Quid erit nobis ? " . 
 
 The Life Everlasting . 
 The Angelic Virtue . 
 
 A Great Mystery , 
 The Way of the Counsels 
 The Divine Precept . 
 
 The Mystery of Faith 
 IdeaUsm, its Use and Abuse 
 Discouragement . . 
 
 The Mystical Body 
 Appendix. — Note to " The Gospel of Pain " 
 
 PAGB 
 
 vii 
 I 
 
 29 
 
 45 
 
 69- 
 
 93- 
 
 III 
 
 131 
 
 152: 
 
 169- 
 
 194 
 
 220 
 
 261 
 
 295 
 
 314 
 
 345 
 
 37& 
 
 397 
 
 449 
 
CORRIGENDA. 
 
 Page 6, line w, for "out" veai "out of." 
 
 Page 68, line ii, for "its" read "in its." 
 
 Page 80, line 15, for "severence" read "severance." 
 
THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE. 
 
 Veni, Electa Mea, ef ponam in Tt thronum meum. 
 " Come, My Chosen One, and I will stablish My throne in 
 thee." 
 
 The end of man is, to save his soul — Salus animx. 
 But what this health and well-being consists in is 
 specified when St. Ignatius^ tells us that it is in 
 praising, reverencing, and serving God, in these 
 three manifestations of Divine love, that salvation 
 is realized. Health hes in the right balance of 
 nutrition, in regularity of function, in the orderliness 
 of our bodily conditions ; and our spiritual health, 
 in like manner, means ordination; the due propor- 
 tion and subjection of all our faculties to God their 
 Creator and Lord ; the submission of our mind to 
 the rule of Divine truth ; of our affections to the 
 rule of Divine love. Hence the whole aim of the 
 Spiritual Exercises is to secure ordination ; to 
 induce that all-mastering love of God in which the 
 soul is saved, perfected, and brought to its highest 
 state and noblest activity. 
 
 As the natural life of the soul depends on God's 
 dwelling in its substance, so the supernatural life or 
 Eternal Life of the soul is God, who dwells as light 
 
 ' This discourse has reference to the opening words of the 
 Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. 
 
 B 
 
THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE. 
 
 in the mind and as love in the heart, and who is 
 the object of that light and love. 
 
 Here, as hereafter, the life of the soul is to see 
 God and to love Him, though the mode of seeing is 
 different ; here, it is through a glass darkly, in a 
 riddle, there, face to face ; here, in part, there, 
 wholly and perfectly ; here, as a child, there, as 
 one who has put away the things of a child. A 
 little girl thinks herself absolutely happy when she 
 nurses her first doll. As a woman, with a living 
 babe at her breast, she looks back on that former 
 bliss and laughs. In Heaven she greets her child 
 once more ; and once more she wonders that she 
 could ever have rejoiced before. 
 
 Eternal life is God in the soul. God is the soul's 
 soul. As the body corrupts when abandoned by 
 the soul, so too, the soul corrupts, morally and 
 intellectually, it becomes foetid, loathsome, disin- 
 tegrated, deformed, apart from God. God is the 
 beauty, the health, the salvation of the soul. We 
 speak too exclusively of entering into Heaven, into 
 life, into God ; forgetting that the relation is truly — 
 perhaps more truly — expressed by saying that God, 
 and Heaven, and life, enter into us. We dwell in 
 God, just because God dwells in us. The branch 
 abides in the vine and the vine in the branch ; but 
 principally the vine in the branch. We feed upon 
 Christ, He does not feed upon us. " The Kingdom 
 of God is within you ; " it is in your midst ; there- 
 fore we pray: Adveniat regnum tuum. We speak 
 of that Kingdom coming to us, not of our going 
 to it. 
 
THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE. 
 
 Vegna v6r noi la pace del tuo regno 
 Che noi ad essa non potem da noi, 
 S'ella non vien, con tutto nostro ingegno.* 
 
 Heaven, in its substance and apart from mere 
 accessories, is simply the love of God perfected in the 
 soul ; the entire cleaving of the soul to God, whom 
 she embraces with mind and heart — Invent quern 
 diligit anima mea ; tenui nee dimittam? And again : 
 Mihi adhcerere Deo bonum est — My sovereign good, 
 my heaven, consists in cleaving to God. And as 
 eternal life is the love of God elevated and carried 
 to its extreme perfection, so eternal death is the 
 disease of sin worked out to its last consequences. 
 Hell, in its substance and apart from all accessories, 
 is in the soul, as truly as the soul is in Hell — perhaps 
 more truly. 
 
 This answer alone explains man, and proves its 
 own verity by its fitness. Were the soul a simple 
 problem, chance might stumble on many an apparent 
 solution ; but so complicated a riddle is past guess- 
 work. A lock with a hundred intricate wards is the 
 only possible explanation of the key which alone 
 fits it, and which fits it alone. The soul, apart from 
 God, is as meaningless, as useless as a stray key. 
 Its whole structure and movement cries out for 
 God. Who could understand the eye, with its lenses 
 and mirrors and inexplicable mechanism, who knew 
 nothing of light ? Everything in the eye has reference 
 
 ' Thy Kingdom come, that peace with us may reign ; 
 For if it come not of itself, in vain 
 
 Our wit would toil that Kingdom to attain. (Dante, Purg. xi.) 
 ' "I have found Ilim whom my soul loveth: I have laid hold 
 on Him, and I will not let Him go." 
 
THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE. 
 
 to light, and everything in the soul has reference to 
 God. Everything in the ear is unintelligible to one 
 born deaf, and everything in the soul is incoherent 
 and senseless for one who is dead to God. When 
 we see the vine straggling over the ground, its 
 tendrils are unexplained ; but when it climbs and 
 clings to the prop we know what they were made 
 for. God is the soul's prop. The soul is simply 
 and wholly a capacity for God, and nothing else ; 
 just as the monstrance with all its golden rays and 
 gleaming jewels is simply and wholly a receptacle 
 for His Sacramental Presence — a crystal shrine 
 through which the faithful may see and adore the 
 Bread of Angels. Our soul is such a monstrance ; 
 and its highest beauty and glory is from Him who 
 dwells in it, and shines through it. He is the light, 
 she is the lamp. On Protestant altars we some- 
 time see (or used to see) candles which are never to 
 be lighted. "How unmeaning!" is our first thought. 
 The soul is God's candle, on which He descends like 
 a flame and transforms her substance into His own 
 likeness. The candle was evidently made for the 
 flame which crowns it, beautifies it, quickens it. 
 God is not the soul, nor is the soul God ; but 
 as the candle is for the flame, so is the soul for 
 God. 
 
 When Adam slumbered, God drew from his side 
 a help meet for him ; a being altogether made for 
 him, soul and body, inexplicable without him. God 
 drew the soul of man from His own side, and she is 
 restless till she returns thither again. The soul is 
 God's spouse; made for His embrace, made to 
 
THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE. 
 
 bring forth in herself His Word, His Image, His 
 Beloved Son. And the passion of the purest and 
 noblest heart of man is but the far-removed symbol 
 of the ardent love of God for His spouse. To Him 
 her whole being cries out : Thou hast made me for 
 Thyself, as the casket for the jewel, as the mirror 
 for the sun, as the eye for light, as the ear for 
 sound, as the harp for music. My mind craves for 
 truth, and Thou art the Truth ; my will for good, 
 and Thou art the Good ; my heart for love, and 
 Thou art Love ; mine eye for beauty, and Thou art 
 the Beautiful; my ear for music, and Thou art Song; 
 my soul for eternity, life, and salvation, and Thou 
 art Eternity, Life, and Salvation. 
 
 We may say of the soul what is said of 
 Divine Wisdom : Thesaunts est infinitus quo qui usi 
 sunt facti sunt amid Dei ; she is an unending treasure 
 which few are aware they possess; a secret and 
 unsuspected fount of perennial joy ; a well of living 
 water springing up unto life everlasting ; a deep and 
 difficult well for those who have not wherewith to 
 draw. With most of us our soul is as a musical instru- 
 ment in unskilled or half-skilled hands; but from 
 which trained lingers can draw forth melody and 
 sweetness. We are too slothful to go through the 
 preliminary drudgery of practice. Impatient for 
 some little present gratification, we pick out little 
 tunes by ear, and never become masters in the 
 art of spiritual music. Or it is like a great 
 poem which to a child or a rude-minded person 
 seems tiresome and overrated, because a certain 
 amount of education is needed before the mind can 
 
THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE. 
 
 answer to its appeal, and enter into its joy ; or it is 
 as one of the old masters whom the crowd hurries 
 by in our picture-galleries in order to pause en- 
 raptured before some flaring vulgarity, while the 
 true artist lingers over every line and shadow with 
 a pleasure which is accentuated and not blunted by 
 use. Qui edunt me adhuc esurient — " They that eat 
 me shall hunger for more," is true of God and of 
 every good that is Divine. 
 
 Plainly our chief care must be to learn to use 
 this treasure aright, to extract as much value out 
 each moment as we possibly can, to bring the 
 highest faculties of our soul into perfect play. For 
 "they who use it aright are made the friends of 
 God," — not as though friendship were an added 
 reward, but because friendship with God is itself 
 that very use for which the soul was created, and in 
 which its best faculties reach their highest develop- 
 ment. We know how wonderfully mere human 
 friendship opens up the soul and betrays to it depths 
 of which before it was all unconscious, how all that 
 is best in it slumbers and sleeps till it is wakened 
 to energy by the touch of love, by the cry in the 
 midnight of its darkness: "Behold, the Bridegroom 
 Cometh.'.' And herein every other love but shadows 
 forth some aspect of that one all-satisfying, all- 
 transforming love which is the soul's eternal life, 
 which alone immortalizes her — the love of the 
 Heavenly King and Bridegroom, to whom she is 
 drawn by every need of her spiritual nature ; from 
 whose side she was taken that she might be a 
 spouse meet for Him, as it is written : 
 
THE SOUL AND HER SPOVSE. 
 
 Virgins siiall be drawn to the King in her train, 
 Her neighbours shall be brought unto thee, 
 They shall be brought in joy and exultation, 
 They shall be led into the temple of the King.* 
 
 These words are usually, and not unreasonably 
 applied by Holy Church to our Blessed Lady as to 
 the Queen of souls, through whom the souls of the 
 elect are brought to Christ in one living mass, as it 
 were, of swarming bees clustered round their queen. 
 She is the very centre and heart of that great soul- 
 world which God created and redeemed to be a 
 Kingdom for Himself; to be subject to Him as the 
 bride is subject in love to the bridegroom. Virgins 
 shall be drawn in her train to the King ; virgins of 
 whom St. Paul writes, " I am jealous of you with 
 the jealousy of God Himself, for I have espoused 
 you to one Husband, to present you as a chaste 
 virgin unto Christ." He speaks, indeed, of the 
 entire Church, the whole congregation of elect 
 souls ; but what is true of all is true of each ; each 
 is a kingdom, each a chaste virgin to be presented 
 spotless and undefiled to Christ, her Spouse and her 
 King. " Glorious things are spoken of thee, O thou 
 city of God, O thou soul of man, thou city of peace, 
 thou city of the great King." Mary is indeed the 
 Virgin of virgins, whose whole heart was His with 
 a wholeness unsurpassable; but every soul, however 
 soiled and sin-stained, recovers its virginity when it 
 has been purified for God's embrace and taught 
 through many tribulations to love God not only 
 above all things, but alone. Therefore we are told 
 
 > Psalm xliv. 15, 16. 
 
THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE. 
 
 that the King proves His elect bride as gold is 
 proved in fire seven times. And St. Paul, who like 
 the holy Baptist, is the paranymph, the friend of 
 the Bridegroom, who has His interests at heart and 
 prefers them to his own, is jealous with the jealousy 
 of God for those souls he is preparing for the King ; 
 jealous lest the purity of their affection should be 
 tarnished by the least spot of any love not for God, 
 or from God, or in God. And God Himself is 
 jealous and says : " I, the Lord thy God, am a 
 jealous God ; thou shalt have none other gods but 
 me ; " thou shalt give Me all thy love, for I will have 
 nothing less. He is jealous for that He knows that 
 He alone is our Peace, our Life, our all-satisfying 
 eternal Good. 
 
 And now see how souls are brought to God: 
 "Virgins shall be drawn to the King in her wake;" 
 drawn and not driven, drawn through their affections 
 with the silken cords of love, willing captives to that 
 most blessed tyranny. Drawn by the spell of the 
 King's beauty, whom at first they behold, not face to 
 face, but mirrored in His created reflex, yet nowhere 
 so fully, so faultlessly as in the Queen of souls who 
 stands at His right hand in her vesture of pure 
 gold, fringed round with many-coloured broiderings. 
 For if He is Speciosus prce filiis hominum — " fair 
 before all the sons of men," she too is all-fair, and 
 "grace is poured forth upon her lips." And as we 
 turn from a sudden light to see the source whence it 
 proceeds, so our eye travelling instinctively from 
 the glory which flashes upon Mary's gold mantle, 
 climbs to Heaven. It is as when we see one whose 
 
THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE. 
 
 eyes are fixed in rapture on something we cannot 
 see, and whose face is lit with a joy we cannot 
 understand ; yet we fain would know that secret, 
 and are drawn to wonder, and seek, and knock till 
 it be opened to us. 
 
 Thus it is that God draws souls to Himself, one 
 through another. Thus it is that we are each to 
 draw souls to Him in the wake of our own, Donee 
 occurramus omnes in unitatem fidei et agnitionis filii 
 Dei — until we are all run together in oneness of faith 
 and knowledge of the Son of God, until we are all 
 made into one vast body centred round Mary and 
 wedded to Christ, our Head and Spouse. 
 
 ProximcB ejus afferentur tibi — " Her nearest shall 
 be brought unto Thee." It is those nearest to Mary 
 who are most quickly, most potently drawn ; those 
 in whose souls there is the least alloy, whose mind 
 and affection has been purged in the fire from all 
 dross and impurity. As the soul nears Mary, it 
 also nears its own birth-place in the heart of its 
 Creator, and is drawn with an ever-quickening speed 
 to its final repose. It is drawn in Icetitia et exiilta- 
 tione — " in joy and exultation," which grows every 
 moment of its nearing. " In joy," for "though the 
 strife be sore, yet in His parting breath, Love 
 masters agony." Like all coming to birth, this 
 throwing off the bands of our narrower self, is 
 not without pain and anguish and cracking of 
 the heart-strings. If the soul is to come to the 
 King, she must forget her own people and her 
 father's house ; yet, labor ipse ainatur, the pain 
 itself is loved as the expression and the relief of 
 
THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE. 
 
 love. " In exultation," " leaping;, and walking, and 
 praising God," as the once-lame, glorying in his 
 new-found, God-given strength, or as Mary herself 
 who when carried to the Temple of the King, and 
 being set down on the sacred steps from her mother's 
 arms, " danced with her feet," as the old legend says. 
 " I was glad when they said to me. Let us go into 
 the house of the Lord ; our feet shall stand within 
 thy courts, O City of Peace." And the thronging 
 souls who are drawn after her to be presented to 
 the King, they too have tasted the sweet bitterness 
 of sacrifice and offering, and in joy and exultation 
 have cried : " Lord, in the singleness of my heart, 
 gladsome I oifer Thee this day all, without reserve " 
 — Domine in simplicitate cordis mei Icettis obtuli universa 
 hodie. 
 
 But what manner of King is this that the 
 home to which His spouse is brought should be 
 called a temple rather than a palace ; that He 
 should be loved with a love of adoration and 
 worship; with sacrifice and offering and absolute 
 self-surrender ? Ipse enim est Dominus Deus tuus, 
 says our Psalm, et adorabunt eum — " For He is the 
 Lord thy God whom all shall adore." "Thy Maker 
 is thy husband," says Isaias. His love and His 
 absolute right of kingship is founded on His creator- 
 ship, on the entire dependence of the soul upon His 
 abiding thought and care, a dependence whereof 
 that of the child upon the mother in whose womb 
 it lives, is but a feeble hint, even as that mother's 
 love is but a faint reflex of the love of the Creator 
 for the soul ever new-born in His bosom. 
 
THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE. n 
 
 And He rules as King in the soul when all 
 her affections are so given to Him that she 
 loves Him, not only above all things, in such sort 
 that she would leave all else for Him, but alone, 
 loving nothing else but in relation to Him, in 
 the way that He loves it, and desires that she 
 should love it ; and for this consummation He 
 moves her to long, and pray, and labour, and suffer, 
 and cries out within her : A dveniat regnum tuum. 
 " Oh, when will there be an end to these miseries ; 
 when shall I be delivered from the wretched bondage 
 of these vices ; when shall I be mindful of Thee, 
 O Lord, alone; when shall I rejoice in Thee to the 
 full ; when shall I be without all let of true liberty, 
 without burdening from mind or from body ; when 
 shall I contemplate the glory of Thy Kingdom ; 
 when wilt Thou be to me all in all ; when shall I be 
 with Thee in Thy Kingdom, which from eternity 
 Thou hast been getting ready for Thy dear ones? "^ 
 
 Of Mary, "the world's sad aspiration's one 
 success," the one soul in which God has had His 
 own way unimpeded, in which He has fully asserted 
 His presence and shone forth as through a faultless 
 crystal, of Mary it is said, " The Queen hath stood 
 at Thy right hand in vesture of gold with many- 
 coloured broiderings. Hearken, My daughter, behold, 
 and incline thine ear. Forget thy own people and 
 the house of thy father; and the King shall long 
 after thy beauty; for He is the Lord thy God, 
 whom all shall adore." For the soul is indeed a 
 queen, when she is all glorious within, and when 
 ' Imitation, iii. 48. 
 
12 THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE. 
 
 Christ rules over her with absolute unimpeded 
 dominion. Subject to any other rule but His, she 
 is so far a slave, nor has she yet perfect liberty, 
 perfect self-mastery. But subject to Christ, she is 
 by the very fact raised to a throne at His side and 
 shares His rule over her every faculty and move- 
 ment ; thus dying to live, and losing to gain, and 
 forsaking all to find a hundred-fold now, and ever- 
 lasting liberty in the life to come. For what is 
 liberty but the perfect development and exercise of 
 all our powers in due order. Thus, King and Queen, 
 they reign side by side ; God and His little creature. 
 And she is His consort, con-sors, one who shares the 
 same lot or portion. She is ever with Him at His 
 right hand ; whether by His Cross on Calvary or by 
 His throne in Heaven. " If we suffer with Him," 
 says St. Paul, " we shall also reign with Him." If 
 His kingship over her was purchased with sorrow, 
 her queenship is bought no cheaper; there is no 
 way to His side but through thorns and brambles. 
 
 How is the queen clad ? Like Mary, in her 
 broidered vesture of gold ; in her mantle of world- 
 wide universal charity, big enough to shelter a 
 thousand worlds-full of sinners who fly thither for 
 refuge as chickens to their mother's wings ; that 
 mantle which enfolds the redeemed world as a 
 sunlit sky thinly curtaining off the place Christ is 
 preparing for us in secret, woven of gold purified 
 seven times by her seven sorrows, for what love 
 is so pure as the love we bear those for whom, 
 and even from whom, we have suffered? And the 
 many-coloured fringes with which this mantle is 
 
THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE. 13 
 
 decked around, what are they but the virtues midst 
 which charity rules as mother and mistress, which 
 spring from her bosom, and draw their Hfe from 
 her ; for love is the fulfilling of the law, the sum and 
 substance of all its precepts. 
 
 Finally, the vocation of Mary is in some 
 measure the vocation of every soul : " Hearken, 
 My daughter, and forget thy own people and thy 
 father's house," forget thyself and every other 
 affection so far as it is debased by any undue 
 infusion of self; lose thy Hfe that thou mayest save 
 it, give and it shall be given to thee, full measure, 
 pressed down, shaken together, and running over; 
 " leave all, and thou shall find all ; quit thy desires, 
 and thou shalt find rest." We Cathohcs need not 
 to be told that the call to closer union with God, to 
 love Him alone, far from deadening or quenching 
 any right and healthy nature affection, or warping 
 or maiming the soul ; perfects, purifies, deepens, and 
 exalts all that it regulates and restrains. None love 
 father or mother or brother or friend so tenderly, 
 truly, eternally, as they who love God more than all, 
 and all for God's sake, as Jesus loved Mary or John 
 or Lazarus, or the Magdalen, for Divine love is the 
 myrrh which embalms all other love and saves it 
 from taint and corruption. Ungoverned by that 
 over-ruHng affection, our other affections are a dis- 
 orderly riotous mob, weak individually and col- 
 lectively, and dangerous by reason of their very 
 weakness and waywardness; but under that sway 
 they are disciplined, strengthened, and welded 
 together into the unity of an army with one mover, 
 
14 THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE. 
 
 one action, one end, and licence and confusion give 
 place to order and true liberty. This is that life 
 bought at the cost of death and mortification, in 
 which the self, forgotten in the remembrance and 
 thought of God, is found again in Him, recognized 
 almost as part of Him, and loved rightly for His 
 sake and in sympathy writh Him. Precious in the 
 eyes of God is this death of the soul in which she 
 is buried in Him and from which she rises to a new 
 life — the death which Mary embraced when she 
 elected to be the sorrowful Mother of the Man of 
 Sorrows, and said, Ecce ancilla Domini. 
 
 Into the soul thus purified God looks as into a 
 burnished mirror and sees there the reflex of His 
 own beauty, "without spot or wrinkle," and longs 
 for that soul and draws it to Himself with the 
 impetuous ardour of the love He of necessity bears 
 towards the very least shadow of His own Divine 
 goodness; even as the earth draws back to her 
 bosom whatever would vainly fly from her thrall. 
 " The King shall then long for thy beauty, for He 
 is the Lord thy God ; " it is from His bosom thou 
 wert taken ; it is from Him thou wouldst vainly 
 flee ; it is to Him thou must return of necessity, in 
 the measure that the mirror of thy soul is purged of 
 selfishness and His nature and image shines out in 
 thee. " Glorious things are spoken of thee," O thou 
 soul of man, thou city of the great King. 
 
THE HIDDEN LIFE. 
 
 " II faut se bieu persuader qu'il n'y-a absolument d'utile, 
 de r6el, d'interessant que ce qui se passe entre notre dme et 
 Lui qui tout est Ik." — Mrs. Craven, Meditations. 
 
 As children our thoughts about God are childish of 
 necessity, and are no more suited to our later years 
 than the clothes and toys of our infancy. As men 
 we must put away the thoughts of childhood unless 
 our soul is to perish through nakedness and starvation. 
 We must recognize that God is not one who made 
 the world once for all and then retired from His 
 labours to rest in the distant heavens and to survey 
 His work from afar, but that whatever excellence is 
 found in any creature is due to the image of God 
 reflected there ; and that as the image in a mirror is 
 caused by the presence of him who stands in front 
 of it, and stays while he stays and goes when he 
 goes, so it is because God is most intimately present 
 to all things, is permeating and penetrating their 
 inmost substance, that they are what they are. For 
 they depend for every instant of their being and 
 every vibration of their activity on the continual, 
 sustained exercise of God's conscious love. He 
 radiates them into being as the flame radiates its 
 light and heat. As the thoughts and images which 
 we conjure up in our mind depend upon our will, so 
 
i6 THE HIDDEN LIFE. 
 
 creation (whose reality compared with God's is but 
 as a dream) hangs on the Divine will. Creatures are 
 nothing more nor less than mirrors or cr3'stals 
 designed to show forth, to reflect and analyze the 
 multiform beauty of the Divine Light, to split it up 
 into its infinitely various components. Their beauty, 
 their brightness, their colouring, is not their own, not 
 from themselves, but from the Light that permeates 
 them, from God who dwells in them. Yet while each 
 is in some measure a temple of His presence, accord- 
 ing to the degree in which it mirrors His goodness, 
 it is in the soul of man, with its spiritual powers 
 and activities, that His image is most perfectly and 
 nobly displayed. Here, however. His indwelling is 
 two-fold. In the indestructible nature of the soul 
 and in those activities and perfections which are 
 common to good and evil alike, nay, which are 
 possessed in the most excellent degree even by the 
 fallen spirits, in these He dwells in the measure that 
 He wills, nor does His indwelling depend upon the 
 consent of the creature. But if He would reflect 
 and show forth those attributes which are essentially 
 perfections, not of the mind alone, but also of the 
 power of choice or of free-will, if He would dwell 
 in us as sanctity, as truthfulness, as justice, as 
 purity, as patience, as meekness, as love, still more, 
 if He would crown these natural virtues and raise 
 them to a Divine order by grace, and by His 
 indwelling Spirit, if He would work Faith, Hope, 
 and Charity in our hearts, then indeed He must 
 wait upon our will ; He must stand at the door and 
 knock until we open and receive Him. 
 
THE HIDDEN LIFE. 17 
 
 It is of this indwelling that St. Paul writes : " I 
 live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." For all 
 Christian sanctity is simply the presence of Christ, 
 of God Incarnate dwelling in the soul, uttering 
 Himself, asserting Himself there ; nor can we boast 
 of anything, save that we have not shut the door in 
 His face. All the glory of the temple is from Him 
 who dwells in it. Whatever sanctity or spiritual 
 beauty is found in the members of Christ's Mystical 
 Body, flows into them from the Head. It is the 
 life of Christ, extended and manifested in His 
 Church on earth, which continues the sacrifice of 
 praise and holiness inaugurated by Him in His own 
 person upon earth. The Church is the tree which 
 has grown out of that seed. Hence St. Paul writes : 
 " To Him {i.e., to the Father) be glory in the Church 
 and in Christ for ever and ever ; " for Christ and the 
 Church are one thing. 
 
 We are sanctified, therefore, in proportion as 
 Christ lives and dwells in us. But our spiritual life 
 is a life of thoughts, words, and actions ; it has 
 its outward and its inward side. And if we ask 
 ourselves which is the more important, the more 
 fundamental, there can be but one answer. For 
 as the soul is to the body, so is the interior 
 to the exterior man ; and so is the inner hfe 
 of our thoughts and affections to the outer 
 life of our words and actions. Soul and body 
 alike are essential parts of humanity; yet the 
 body is for the soul, not the soul for the 
 body. Christ must dwell in our outward and in 
 our inward hfe, but principally in the latter; for 
 
i8 THE HIDDEN LIFE. 
 
 the outward is for the sake of the inward, and not 
 conversely. 
 
 It is what we think about and what we love that 
 matters most, and that makes us what we really are in 
 God's eyes, as opposed to what v/e seem in the eyes 
 of others. It is the secret life of our heart which 
 is our highest, noblest life. It is in the theatre of 
 our inmost soul that the great drama of our life is 
 played. Men see but the shadows that flit across 
 the curtain now and then, and overhear an odd 
 word at times. God and our conscience are the 
 sole spectators. 
 
 Our life for all eternity will be a life, not of 
 speaking and doing, but of contemplating and 
 loving — an interior life. "This is life eternal, that 
 they should know Thee." Heaven is but the 
 triumphant advent, the unimpeded reign of God in 
 the soul. And so far as we here begin to enter into 
 eternal life we must live principally at home in our 
 own hearts, and regard that as the chief scene 
 of our existence, — Regnum Dei intra vos est. In 
 brief, eternal life is friendship with God — with a 
 friend whom we find in our heart, whom we listen 
 to in our conscience. 
 
 This is not the truism it sounds. For though 
 we all admit as axiomatic that our inner life is of 
 the highest importance, and that without it the 
 outer life is only pretence and hypocrisy, yet in this 
 pseudo-practical age we are likely to invert the 
 right order of things, and to regard the importance 
 of the heart's life as subordinate and relative to the 
 life of our outward conduct ; to consider it as a 
 
THE HIDDEN LIFE. 19 
 
 means to that end, and not as a co-ordinate and far 
 nobler end in itself. We recognize that good actions 
 and fair words, if they are not merely hypocritical, 
 are the children of good thoughts and desires, and 
 that if we want to enjoy the fruit, we must cultivate 
 the seed. Yet it is this very analogy of seed and 
 fruit which is so fallacious, which leads us to regard 
 the inner life as valuable simply for the sake of its 
 outward effects, and to forget that the hidden acti- 
 vities of the soul are absolutely the highest. Truly 
 the greater includes the less, and if the heart is 
 right, it will not fail to overflow and betray itself in 
 our speech and conduct; for "from the fulness of 
 the heart the mouth speaketh." But it is the 
 fulness of the heart that God looks to and values, 
 and not the utterances of the mouth. The Catholic 
 religion has always been very plain on this point, 
 setting the contemplative life above the active in 
 dignity, as more conformable to that of the angels, 
 who for ever behold the face of God. And as it is 
 necessary for the Church's corporate perfection that 
 there should be always some members set apart for 
 such a life, as many, namely, as is compatible with 
 the Church's active ministrations, so it is needful in 
 the hfe of the individual that there should be times 
 set apart for the cultivation of those inner activities 
 in which our highest and best life consists. 
 
 Here the childhood of the race presents a 
 parallel to that of the individual. The Law was 
 before the Gospel. It was written on tables of stone ; 
 it enjoined observances in word and deed. Excellent 
 and Divine, so far as it went, yet it brought nothing 
 
THE HIDDEN LIFE. 
 
 to perfection till Christ came, not to destroy but 
 fulfil, not to make light of outward sanctity, but to 
 carry sanctification into the heart as well. For in 
 order of genesis the imperfect is before the perfect, 
 the animal before the spiritual, the earthly before 
 the heavenly, although in the order of Divine 
 intention that which is last to be realized is what is 
 first and chiefest to be desired, and is the parent of 
 all other desires. The Law forbade murder, but 
 Christ forbade the angry and revengeful thought ; 
 the Law restrained deeds of selfish arrogance and 
 violence, Christ taught men to be meek and humble 
 in their hearts, to think gently, humbly, forgivingly 
 of the weakness and sins of others. The Law said, 
 "Thou shalt not commit adultery," Christ demanded 
 purity of heart, cleanness of the imagination, and 
 chastity of desire. It is out of the heart of man, 
 according to Christ, that all lawlessness and wicked- 
 ness proceed, and the external disorder caused by 
 such violence and licence, is but an insignificant 
 evil compared with the ruin of God's sanctuary 
 within the heart itself, the profanation of His image 
 in the soul of man, the darkening of the intellect, the 
 enslaving of the will, the chaos of the affections and 
 passions. 
 
 So it is with each of us individually. When we 
 first turn to the service of God we are legalists, 
 imbued with the spirit of the Law, and if not 
 actually superstitious in our estimate of the import- 
 ance of observances, yet incredulous of the extreme 
 necessity and all-importance of the secret life and 
 converse of the heart. We are careful, indeed, to 
 
THE HIDDEN LIFE. 
 
 check evil desires, because we soon learn that, as 
 the smouldering spark gives birth to the flame, so 
 desire kindles up into action. But it is long before 
 we realize the simple fact that as our evil propen- 
 sities — pride, anger, vanity, avarice, lust, and the 
 rest — are strengthened every time we yield to them 
 in outward act, so they can be fostered steadily, 
 persistently, unnoticeably, by the mere unheeded 
 dreamings of our imagination and wanderings of 
 our fancy — apart from all desire or purpose of 
 putting these fancies into effect. Nay, it is chiefly 
 from this perennial source that our vices are fed 
 and nurtured as by an insensible dew, so fine and 
 subtle as to be imperceptible. And thus it comes 
 to pass that our heart is overgrown with noxious 
 weeds and tangling briars which we cannot account 
 for, so silent and slow has been the growth, and yet 
 so steady and constant. 
 
 What is true of our evil propensities is equally 
 true of those that are pure and holy. It is by the 
 continual stream of our thoughts and imaginings 
 that they are insensibly nourished and strengthened, 
 rather than by our outward actions, which are 
 comparatively occasional and intermittent. We 
 live more by the air we breathe, sleeping and 
 waking, than by the food we take only from time to 
 time. 
 
 Therefore St. Paul says:^ " Whatsoever things 
 are true, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever 
 
 ' " Quascunque sunt vera quaecunque pudica, qusecunque justa, 
 qusecunque sancta, quaecunque amabilia, quaecunque bonas famae, 
 si qua virtus, si qua laus disciplinae, haec cogitate." (Philipp. iv. 8.) 
 
THE HIDDEN LIFE. 
 
 things are just, whatsoever things are holy, what- 
 soever things are lovable, whatsoever things are of 
 good report, if there be any virtue, if any praise- 
 worthy discipline, hcBc cogitate; think about these 
 things ; " feed your heart on such food ; meditate 
 on the things of God, on anything that is good and 
 beautiful or true in the works of God's hands, or in 
 the laws of His world, or in the thoughts and 
 doings and lives of men ; on whatsoever is noblest 
 and best in human conduct. And though God 
 Himself, the source of all such goodness, should be 
 the chief food of our reflection, yet St. Paul knows 
 well that here we do not see God face to face, but 
 only in His works. Nor is it possible for our minds 
 always to be occupied directly and consciously about 
 the things of God, but it suffices that its theme be 
 something worthy and profitable, or in some way 
 referable to the service and glory of God, such as 
 our business or daily concerns, our lawful and 
 reasonable recreations, our converse with our 
 fellow-men. Still better it is for us to accustom our 
 mind to the higher thoughts that secular literature 
 and art furnish us with in such abundance ; to 
 cultivate a certain orderliness, purity, and elevation 
 in our imaginings; not to disdain the grace that 
 God offers us in a good education, and in the 
 opportunities of refining our taste. All this helps 
 to bring order into the tangled wilderness of our 
 fancies, to strengthen the faculties of the soul, and 
 to give us a more perfect control over their workings ; 
 so that when occasions offer we may use them more 
 effectually and faithfully in the direct service of God. 
 
THE HIDDEN LIFE. 23 
 
 Speaking of the perfection of our outward 
 conduct, St. James says, that he who offends not 
 in tongue the same is a perfect man, for he is able 
 to govern himself as with a bridle. For although in 
 some sense the tongue has no movement of itself, 
 but only that which it receives from our thought 
 and will, yet it is so closely yoked with the imagina- 
 tion, so ready for instant use at all times, that it 
 seems almost to share the automatic and semi- 
 independent nature of that faculty, and to drag us 
 along in its course, committing us to much that in 
 no sense represents our matured and deliberate 
 sentiments. In proportion as its movements are 
 minute, rapid, multitudinous, they more easily 
 evade our attention and self-control. Hence, since 
 self-government is the precise point in which man 
 differs from animals, he who can govern every 
 movement of his tongue is indeed a perfect man 
 and master of himself. Manifestly, he is perfect in 
 his outward conduct ; but more than this, he is also 
 to some extent perfect in the control of his thoughts 
 and affections ; for without this, by reason of the 
 close connection of word and thought, faultlessness 
 in speech is not possible in any positive sense. 
 For to master one's tongue is not to keep perpetual 
 silence, but to say the right thing in the right 
 place. 
 
 Yet there are hours when even the most restless 
 energy must be still, and the busiest tongue must 
 be silent, when there is no room for any other 
 activity but that of the soul ; and then he is indeed 
 a perfect nian who offends not; whose thoughts and 
 
24 THE HIDDEN LIFE. 
 
 approved feelings are faultless before God ; in whose 
 inner life Christ's image and indwelling is manifest ; 
 whose soul is united to the Divine Soul of our 
 Saviour in all its imaginings, reasonings, aspirations, 
 sentiments, through the indwelling of that same 
 Spirit which sanctified His Soul and the soul of His 
 Mother and of all His saints. 
 
 This is, indeed, the highest point of perfection ; 
 the most difficult, and therefore the last to be 
 attained in its fulness. The Law was our pedagogue 
 which led us to Christ ; the exterior life is the 
 scaffolding preparatory to the never-finished task of 
 building up the inner sanctuary of God's presence. 
 
 If our tongue seems to run away with us, far 
 truer is this of our thought, which may be compared 
 to an endless stream, springing from the hidden 
 depths of our memory, which rolls past us, bearing 
 on its bosom all manner of odds and ends, the litter 
 and debris of our past experiences and reflections ; 
 nor is it in our power to do much more than to 
 stand on the bank and watch, and with our attention 
 fix and arrest what is profitable for our spiritual 
 food, suffering all else to float by, or even hastening 
 it on its way. True, it depends largely (not 
 altogether) upon our previous choice what this 
 stream of subjective time shall find in the storehouse 
 of our memory to carry past us in its current. We 
 are not immediately answerable for all the fancies 
 that flit across our brain, except so far as by 
 deliberate approval we make them virtually our own 
 act. But the general character and tone of our 
 involuntary memories and fancies is to a great 
 
THE HIDDEN LIFE. 25 
 
 extent chargeable to our past conduct, exterior and 
 interior. Moreover, those who watch over their 
 hearts, gradually acquire a knowledge of the laws 
 which bind together our fancies into chains and 
 groups ; they know what leads to what ; and there- 
 fore they can in some measure determine the 
 particular channel in which the stream shall flow ; 
 and so they can advance indefinitely nearer to that 
 perfect inner self-mastery which is never absolutely 
 attainable by mortal man in this life. 
 
 Perhaps this interior life was never more difficult, 
 never more apt to be underrated, neglected, forgotten 
 than in these days, when knowledge is multiplied to 
 the hurt of wisdom, and the means of mental 
 subsistence is exalted into an end. There is so 
 much to be known now-a-days if we would pass 
 muster as people of even ordinary education, so 
 much of the experiences and thoughts of other men 
 to be stored away in our memories, that life in most 
 cases is not long enough for the process and no 
 margin of leisure remains for digesting and assimi- 
 lating the food with which we have been surfeited. 
 We deal it out to others as we ourselves received it, 
 crude and unchanged ; as it were, so much coin that 
 passes from hand to hand and bears no other stamp 
 than that of the nation. 
 
 And with the multiplication of knowledge and 
 information the evil increases daily, and thought 
 and reflection becomes the province of a dwindling 
 number of specialists, to whom the minds of the 
 millions are enslaved, for it is the tyranny of 
 capitalism in another sphere. We no longer have 
 
26 THE HIDDEN LIFE. 
 
 time to think for ourselves, but our thinking is done 
 for us wholesale, and distributed to us through the 
 press, and the very faculty of meditation has grown 
 paralyzed from disuse. 
 
 This fault of modern education cannot but make 
 itself felt in the spiritual hfe of the faithful at large 
 in a decay of the ability and habit of reflection. 
 Not to speak of a narrow and exaggerated idea of 
 practical piety which would (if it dared, in the face 
 of Catholic tradition) make the service of God 
 chiefly consist in everlasting fussiness and external 
 activity, in " Church-work," and parish-work, and 
 controversy, in the corporal works of mercy, which 
 is secretly impatient of contemplative orders, con- 
 templative saints, and contemplation in general, 
 which is puzzled how to defend the eremitical life or 
 the life of mere suffering and solitude that certain 
 saints have chosen ; — not to speak of all this, it is to 
 be feared that in regard even to our spiritual needs, 
 information and knowledge are apt to be mistaken 
 for that vital thought, that meditative wisdom which 
 is the true life of the soul, the quickening flame, of 
 which knowledge and information and experience is 
 but the fuel. We store our mind with the recorded 
 experiences and reflections of others, but we do not 
 compare these things and ponder them in our heart ; 
 we do not assimilate and digest. We gather manna 
 ourselves and we distribute it to others ; but we 
 forget that it is given to us for food ; to be eaten, 
 not to be gazed on — and all because the leisure, 
 the practice, the habit, and therefore the ability of 
 tranquil reflection tends to become the privilege 
 
THE HIDDEN LIFE. 27 
 
 of the few, and because there is so much to be 
 devoured that there is no time to ruminate. 
 
 However difficult the interior life may be, yet it 
 is all-important. " Except you eat the Flesh of the 
 Son of Man and drink His Blood ye have no life in 
 you." If the first sense of these words refers to 
 sacramental communion, it cannot be doubted but 
 they are also verified of the spiritual communion in 
 which Christ dwells in our hearts through faith. 
 Spiritual communion is not merely a substitute for 
 that which is sacramental, but it is the usual con- 
 dition for the fruitfulness of the sacrament ; nay, in 
 some sort, it is the end to which the sacramental 
 eating of Christ is directed, the grace it is designed 
 to produce. In the Eucharist we receive the seed 
 of that supernatural life which ordinarily manifests 
 itself in our heart and in our conduct, but without 
 meditation the seed lies idle and uncultivated — the 
 force may be there, but it is latent. Christ, and 
 Christ Crucified, is the food of our soul, the daily 
 bread of our eternal life, the fuel of Divine love in 
 our heart. He is the Word Incarnate, the Divine 
 " Saying," which we must keep and ponder in our 
 heart ; in whom whatsoever things are true, pure, 
 lovely, of good report, and praiseworthy, are 
 summed up and gathered together as in their source 
 and end. 
 
 In all this matter Mary must be our model of 
 the interior life; Mary, in whom Christ dwelt as 
 He dwelt in no other, in whose heart alone He had 
 His own way from the very first ; in whose life He 
 asserted Himself unimpeded. Her words and 
 
28 THE HIDDEN LIFE. 
 
 actions, however full of sublime significance, were 
 few. But the whole record of her Hfe of stupendous 
 fruitfulness and activity is epitomized for us in one 
 brief sentence : Mary kept all these sayings and 
 pondered them in her heart. " Blessed is the womb 
 that bore Thee," cries a voice in the crowd, "and 
 blessed the paps which Thou hast sucked." " Yea, 
 rather," says our Lord, " blessed are they that hear 
 the Word of God and keep it." Blessed was Mary 
 above all women in that she was Mother of God ; 
 yet more blessed in that she was full of grace and 
 had found favour with God ; blessed, in that Christ 
 dwelt in her womb, yet rather blessed, in that Christ 
 " dwelt in her heart by faith." 
 
THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 
 
 Quo ibo a spiritu tuo et quo a facie tua fugiam. 
 " Whither shall I fly from Thy Spirit, whither escape from 
 Thy presence ? " — Psalm cxxxviii. 
 
 We are always told before entering on prayer to 
 " put ourselves in the presence of God ; " and at all 
 times to endeavour "to live in the presence of God." 
 Indeed, it may be said that sanctification lies in a 
 practical realizing of the presence of God. For 
 Heaven is the state in which we see God face to 
 face and stand in His presence continually ; and 
 sanctity is but Heaven begun upon earth. In pro- 
 portion, therefore, as we live in God's presence, do 
 we enter into the lot of the saints in light. Plainly, 
 if God is omnipresent, if all things are naked and 
 open to His sight, whether we like it or not we are 
 always equally in His presence ; that is, we are 
 equally present to Him. But local or physical 
 presence is one thing, and conscious presence is 
 another. Two trees are physically present one to 
 another in the same garden, and this relation is 
 necessarily mutual. But while a tree is present to 
 the touch or sight or consciousness of an observer, 
 the observer is not present to the consciousness of 
 the tree, for it has none. So too, one person may 
 be present to the consciousness of another who is 
 
30 THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 
 
 thinking of him, or looking at him, or listening to 
 him, and yet that other may not be present to him. 
 
 To live in God's presence, or to put ourselves in 
 His presence, means to become actually conscious 
 of God as present ; or at least so to live as though 
 we were thus actually conscious. For at times the 
 presence of others will act as a check upon us even 
 when we are not positively thinking about them at 
 all ; because we have a sort of latent sense, or sub- 
 consciousness of being watched and observed. I 
 suppose it may be explained by saying that there is 
 a certain line of conduct and converse, a certain 
 pitch or tone, which we take according as we are 
 alone or in company, and, again, according to the 
 nature of our company ; and that when once the 
 consciousness of our surroundings has started us on 
 one of these lines, we persevere in it after we have 
 ceased to attend to the reason, unless something 
 diverts us altogether. 
 
 As children we must of necessity think of God 
 under the somewhat magnified figure of our earthly 
 parents and rulers. He lives, we know not how, 
 above the clouds, beyond the stars — ^wherever that 
 may be ; He surveys the earth and its dwellers from 
 afar, with an eagle-vision of surpassing keenness; 
 He rules it by some mysterious actio in distans, 
 except when He sends angels to execute His will, 
 as it were, in His absence. Religious art and 
 symbohsm, nay, the enacted symbolism by which 
 Christ ascended, and was lifted up with the clouds, 
 or by which the clouds were parted for the descent 
 of the Dove, all tends to press this picture of 
 
THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 31 
 
 the absent God still deeper into our imagination, so 
 that even when reason rises to the truth of God's 
 omnipresence, fancy ever gives it the lie and hinders 
 the practical realization of the fact. We lift up our 
 eyes and hands in prayer as to a God outside us 
 and above us ; and herein we follow the practice, 
 not merely of the rude and simple, but of all the 
 saints and of Christ Himself. The appearances 
 under which God has revealed Himself; the terms 
 and figures in which the inspired writings speak 
 of Him, all alike tend to set our imagination at 
 variance with our reason, nay, with our faith, which 
 tells us distinctly that God is a Spirit to be wor- 
 shipped neither on Sion nor on Garizim, but in 
 spirit and in truth ; that He dwells not in temples 
 made with hands ; that the Heaven of heavens 
 cannot contain Him ; that if we go up into Heaven, 
 He is there ; if we descend into Hell, He is there ; 
 that His eyes are everywhere beholding the evil and 
 the good. 
 
 Herein our quarrel is with the necessary limita- 
 tions of our finite nature, which require that 
 spiritual truths should be presented to our childish 
 mind, not in their naked purity, but in the swaddhng- 
 bands of sensuous imagery, — God permitting or not 
 hindering the admixture of error, for the sake of the 
 golden grains of truth which cannot be otherwise 
 conveyed. But it is for us as we grow, to put away 
 the thoughts of childhood, as we put away its 
 clothes or its toys to adopt those more suitable to 
 our years. Unfortunately, while we educate and 
 develop our mind in every other direction, we are 
 
32 THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 
 
 content to remain babes all our lives in the things 
 of God and our soul— "the things that belong to 
 our peace." But as the clothes of our infancy are 
 too strait for comfort and decency in our maturity, 
 so our first conceptions of God and spiritual things 
 are too crude and grotesque to be taken seriously 
 by our formed intelligence, or to exercise any 
 influence over our heart and will. Custom and 
 reverence may prevent our casting them aside 
 altogether ; but they have ceased to be a reality to 
 us. We are as those who having done a little Latin 
 and Greek in their boyhood before going into 
 business, wonder secretly what pleasure, still more 
 what use, some can profess to find in classical 
 literature ; and regard such enthusiasm as a craze 
 or affectation. Perhaps they remember a line or 
 two from Horace, or an aphorism from the Delectus 
 which they quote on occasion, to show a certain 
 respect for conventional ideas of education. So 
 we find many whose religion consists of a few 
 platitudes remembered from childhood, seeds still 
 lying by the wayside, which have never struck 
 root so as to become a living growth developing 
 pari passu with the growth of the soul. Human 
 respect may seal their lips, but in their hearts they 
 wonder what others can find in rehgion, and why 
 they speak of it as a necessity of Hfe. Such minds 
 are an easy prey to the shallow sophist who has no 
 difficulty in persuading them of the untenableness 
 of their religious notions ; nor it is with much of a 
 wrench that they part from the faith which they 
 have never understood and never loved. 
 
THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 33 
 
 " Why does God hide Himself? Why can I not 
 see Him or hear Him ? Why does He let things 
 run their course, and do so little to show His power 
 over Nature ? " These are some of the first diffi- 
 culties which rise in our minds as we emerge from 
 childhood, suggesting to us that there are some 
 common features to be found in theology and in 
 fairy tales, and inclining us to put them into one 
 category. Figuring God as corporeal and human, 
 we unconsciously suppose that He makes Himself 
 invisible by some miraculous power ; that He for- 
 bears to make Himself heard for some capricious 
 reason ; that whereas we make our power over 
 Nature felt every moment. He chooses to be inert, 
 lest His presence should be detected. Perhaps our 
 ill-informed teachers tell us that God affects this 
 secrecy in order to try our faith ; and if we ask why 
 God should try us by faith, we are told that we may 
 not ask, but must take things as we find them — a 
 sort of answer which can silence but cannot satisfy. 
 
 Plainly, what we have failed to recognize is, that 
 God does not by some magic make Himself invisible, 
 but that He is naturally invisible to bodily eyes, 
 and that if He makes Himself seen or heard, it is 
 by a miracle ; that in such cases the form we see 
 is not God, nor are the words we hear His words, 
 as though He had voice and lips and tongue as we 
 have. Nor does God enter into conflict with Nature 
 and overcome it as we do, or turn aside the 
 orderly course of events as by some foreign external 
 agency ; for it is He who moves in all Nature, and 
 the orderly course of events is but the expression of 
 D 
 
34 THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 
 
 His mind and will. It is in the language of His 
 creatures, in the workings of His providence, in the 
 voice of our conscience, that God is heard and seen. 
 He is not secret or hidden, if we search for Him 
 with the right faculty, namely, our intelligence. 
 Sound is not the object of sight, nor colour of 
 hearing; nor is God the object of my sense, but 
 only of reason and intelligence. We are not 
 aggrieved because we cannot see electricity, since 
 it is naturally not visible. God is as naturally 
 invisible; nor is it caprice but necessity which 
 makes faith — in the wide sense of holding to in- 
 visible realities — a condition for salvation. Indeed, 
 that which marks the progress of man from savagery 
 to perfect humanity, is the practical apprehension 
 and realization of invisible realities, shown in a 
 tendency to look beneath appearances to the under- 
 lying substance of things, to pass from effects to 
 their hidden causes, to live more in the past and 
 the future by memory and foresight, and not as 
 mere animals on the apex of the present instant : in 
 a word, to be governed by reasons, ideas, principles, 
 rather than by sensations, impressions, impulses. 
 So that, even in the natural order, there is no 
 salvation without faith, which in this wide sense is 
 the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
 things not seen. 
 
 Let us now determine a little more closely and 
 clearly what it is to live in the presence of God. 
 We are told that the angels and blessed always 
 behold the face of our Father who is in Heaven ; that 
 they see the very substance of God with the eye of 
 
THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 35 
 
 their intelligence ; conceiving Him not merely as the 
 caase of some special effect which manifests His 
 presence , but conceiving Him directly in Himself. 
 If I hear a great crash, I form a distinct conception 
 of it, by which I should recognize a similar crash as 
 belonging to the same class, and should say : " There's 
 another ! " I also know at once that it has a cause ; 
 but what the cause is, an explosion, or a train, or 
 an earthquake, I have no idea ; or rather, I know 
 the cause simply as the cause of this noise, and 
 nothing more ; and I want to know something more 
 about it as well. I want to know it as directly as 
 I know the noise which it has caused. So in this 
 life we know a great deal about God as the cause 
 of creation, but we want to know Him as directly as 
 we know creation ; to know not merely what He is 
 in relation to His creatures, but also what He is in 
 Himself. For God is not merely a creator; just 
 as a poet is not merely a poet, but a man with a 
 personality of his own, of which his poesy is but a 
 fragmentary manifestation. 
 
 But God is no more the proper object of 
 any created intelligence, than the blinding bright- 
 ness of the sun intensified a thousand-fold is 
 of the vision of some dark-loving animal, an 
 owl or a bat. Raised by grace to powers above 
 all their natural exigencies, the saints and angels 
 face that brightness boldly, without the medium 
 of any darkened glass; they see God and yet 
 live. And that vision fascinates their gaze and 
 holds them spell-bound, so that they can never for 
 an instant cease to behold the face of the Father. 
 
36 THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 
 
 And whatever else they do or think is the result of 
 that vision ; is consciously caused by it, and no 
 more interrupts it than an object seen in the light 
 interrupts my consciousness of the light. It is in 
 God as in a mirror, it is in the mind of God and in 
 the heart of God, that our angels always behold us. 
 They do not turn away from God to look at us ; but 
 rather they see us with the Divine eyes in con- 
 sequence of their union with God. It is through 
 God, moreover, that they act upon us and minister 
 to us; their will being altogether merged in His; 
 even as love makes us one thing, having one thought, 
 one operation with those we love. 
 
 The blessed are thus continually conscious of 
 God's face ; and that, with a full and direct con- 
 sciousness ; not as we are conscious of the light or 
 of the air, in an indirect manner, as of one ot 
 numerous elements in our present experience ; but 
 as of the principal and central object of their atten- 
 tion to which everything else is secondary and 
 subordinate. 
 
 As we cannot enjoy this face to face vision, so 
 neither is it possible for us during our mortal life to 
 be continually conscious even of God's veiled 
 presence. For, in the first place, whereas the 
 brightness of His face draws the eyes of the blessed 
 so irresistibly that they are absolutely unable to 
 avert their gaze, the contemplation of His hidden 
 presence needs an exertion of the attention. 
 
 In the former case, as far as attention is con- 
 cerned, the mind is passive; it is difficult, nay, 
 impossible not to attend ; but in the latter, the 
 
THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 37 
 
 mind is active, and not to attend is easier. It is 
 well to observe this difference between passive and 
 active attention. Abstraction may be either a 
 power or a weakness, a matter of self-control, or 
 of want of self-control. In the latter case, when 
 it diverts the attention from something else, wholly 
 or in part, it should rather be called distraction. 
 Albeit the blessed are passive in their enrapt 
 abstraction, yet the rapture is not of defective 
 weakness, since no finite will can resist the draw 
 of infinite beauty. 
 
 But in this life we have to seek God if we would 
 find Him ; we have, to some little degree, to exert 
 ourselves, to open our eyes and keep them open ; 
 to watch and to listen; to school ourselves to a 
 greater delicacy and readiness of perception. 
 
 There have been indeed men of hohness and deep 
 thought, who have maintained that God is always 
 confusedly present to our consciousness, that He is 
 mingled in our every momentary experience as the 
 central strand round which the rest are woven ; that 
 as we are always conscious of our own weight, though 
 normally it makes no separate impression on our 
 memory but only in states of weakness and weariness, 
 or as we are always conscious of the air we breathe 
 or of the light in which we walk, or of the health 
 which we enjoy, although no disturbance of these 
 conditions concentrates our attention upon them 
 as upon a principal object, so God is the most 
 universal, constant, and essential condition of all 
 our experiences, the spiritual light without which 
 we can see nothing; and yet just because of this 
 
38 THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 
 
 unbroken regularity, evenness, matter-of-courseness, 
 it is impossible for us to separate this light from 
 the objects which it reveals to us, or to attend to 
 it as to a distinct and principal object. As all the 
 colours which we see with our bodily eyes are but 
 various hmitations of the colourless light under 
 which we behold them ; so (they conceive) all finite 
 being is but a limitation of one infinite Being, in 
 which it lives, moves, and exists ; and is intelligible 
 just so far and no further. God is, as it were, the 
 intellectual light, by sharing which all these finite 
 things become visible to the eye of the mind. We 
 do not see that light apart, in its purity ; but only 
 in combination with the object which it illumines, 
 and which shows off, so to say, some one or other 
 of its infinite potentialities. As open to misunder- 
 standing, through want of sufficient accuracy oi 
 expression, this teaching has been authoritatively 
 condemned. For indeed it would seem to imply 
 that God, or the Divine substance, in some way 
 actually entered into the constitution of creatures 
 or received into Himself those limitations whereby 
 they differ from one another in kind ; whereas this 
 can only be said of a certain abstraction of all finite 
 being which we call " Being-in-general," which is in 
 a wholly different and infinitely lower plane than the 
 Divine being. This "Being-in-general" is a mere 
 chimera of the mind whereby we give consistency 
 to God's creative activity after it has issued from 
 the Divine will and before it has been determined 
 to any specified effect ; as though God said Fiat, 
 leaving the object undetermined. It is of this 
 
THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 39 
 
 "being" only that every creature is rightly con- 
 ceived as partaking, or as limiting it to some one 
 phase of its infinitely various potentiality, even as 
 everything we see with our bodily eyes singles out 
 and reflects some one ray of those splendours of 
 which the seven-stranded sunlight is woven. Now, 
 in truth, God is the Sun from which the light of 
 finite being proceeds ; but He is the cause of that 
 light, not the light itself. It is through His presence 
 and His influence that all creatures have existence 
 and intelligibility ; but what they partake is not 
 divinity, but an effect of divinity. 
 
 Close as He is to all things, intimately as He 
 permeates all finite existences; yet He is a Light 
 infinitely different in kind from the light which He 
 imparts to them ; to us, unthinkable, ineffable. We 
 can at most touch the hem of His garment, but we 
 dare not face Him in our infirmity and littleness, 
 until He call us and bid us come : " Thou shalt call 
 me and I will answer Thee." 
 
 Still it must be our chief aim and study to live 
 as much as possible in His veiled presence. If we 
 cannot see His form, we can see His shadow ; if we 
 cannot hear His voice, we can hear His footfall ; if 
 we cannot touch His hands and side, we can touch 
 His vesture. We are surrounded by the signs of 
 His presence ; and we must learn to read them 
 quickly, to pass swiftly from the sign to that which 
 it signifies, so as at last to forget the sign and dwell 
 wholly on God. For a sign is first something 
 absolute in itself and afterwards something relative, 
 carrying the mind on to that which it points to; 
 
40 THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 
 
 and therefore it is possible for the mind to rest in 
 the sign finally without passing on at all. And this 
 is more true of those signs which are not entirely 
 designed and intended to lead our thought else- 
 where. Smoke betrays the presence of fire ; and 
 a red light betrays the presence of danger on the 
 line ; but in the latter case the betrayal is designed, 
 which it is not in the former. God's works are in 
 some true sense designed and intended to reveal His 
 presence to us ; but still it is not their only end ; 
 and therefore it is most possible and easy for us to 
 think of them without thinking of Him, to rest in 
 the sign without passing on to the thing signified. 
 
 As children we read books without taking any 
 interest in the personality of the author ; but the 
 cultured and matured mind cares for literature 
 chiefly as a revelation of the soul from which it 
 sprang. Similarly with regard to music or painting, 
 which are loved best when they are loved as forms 
 of expression, as utterances of a spirit like our own. 
 How absolutely uninteresting, because soulless, is 
 all manner of machine-music and mock art, just 
 for the reason that the connection with the originat- 
 ing mind is so remote, so much more than second- 
 hand. It is not a sign of the presence of the artist. 
 We applaud the violinist or the pianist himself, and 
 not the instrument nor even the music regarded in 
 its own perfection. We pass straight from the 
 excellence of the product to the greater excellence 
 of the producer. But who would ever dream of 
 applauding the most finished performance on a 
 musical-box or a piano-organ ? The distance from 
 
THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 
 
 effect to cause is too great ; and we rest simply in 
 the effect. Now, if we cleave to our childish pictures 
 of Godj if we take what might irreverently be 
 called a " clock-maker " view of the Deity, accord- 
 ing to which He is conceived to have made the 
 world once for all, and wound it up, and set it 
 a-going, and to have retired to rest in an infinitely 
 distant Heaven ; then indeed we shall never be 
 able to cultivate a sense of the Divine presence. 
 But if we hold firmly to the truth of reason and 
 faith, and reflect on it, time after time, until it 
 becomes not only a truism of the mind, but also 
 well worked into our imagination ; if we remind 
 ourselves repeatedly that all the play of nature and 
 the play of our own being, body and soul, is the 
 effect of God's most intimate presence ; who, if He 
 is not the Soul of Nature, nor part of Nature, yet is 
 more intimate to all nature and more necessary to 
 its being and movement than our soul is to our 
 body ; then we shall gradually find ourselves passing 
 easily from the creature to God, with ever lessening 
 effort, and at last spontaneously with no effort at 
 all. And certainly love will accelerate the growth 
 of this habit. For where the treasure is, there will 
 the heart be also. We dwell most easily on that 
 which is most interesting. As has just been said, 
 our childish interest, unlike that of our riper 
 thought, is in the performance rather than the 
 performer; but when we have realized that there 
 is nothing really interesting on earth but the human 
 soul, then we are carried from the lesser to the 
 stronger attraction. Who cares, of all on board, 
 
42 THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 
 
 what hand has kindled the lighthouse-lamp, save 
 one perchance who knows that it has been kindled 
 by the loving hand of wife or mother, and who 
 while others cry, "There it is!" whispers in his 
 heart, " She is there ! " Such is the different mind 
 with which men view the world according as they 
 have not or have learnt to read God's presence 
 everywhere. Dominus est — " It is the Lord," says 
 the keen-sighted love of St. John. For as the 
 sensual by a selective sympathy iind sensuality in a 
 thousand places where the pure-minded pass by 
 untainted ; or as the suspicious and resentful are 
 quick, too quick, to detect an affront ; so those 
 whose eyes are sharpened by love find God lurking 
 everywhere. 
 
 Let us not look on this exercise of the presence 
 of God as an affair of the imagination, as though it 
 consisted in a certain fictitious picturing of God 
 ever beside us, or before us, or behind us. Such 
 efforts tire the head and give a sense of unreality 
 to religion. It is really a question of opening the 
 sealed eyes of our reason and seeing what is every- 
 where to be seen, within us and without us, above 
 and below, on the right hand and on the left ; 
 in all being, and life, and movement ; in Heaven 
 and earth ; on sea and on land, and in everything 
 they contain ; in all beauty and grace and strength ; 
 in all loveHness of form and colour ; in all sweetness 
 of melody and harmony, in all delicacy of fragrance 
 and flavour ; in all sensation, and reason, and 
 intelligence ; in all love, and tenderness, and affec- 
 tion ; in the fruit of man's mind and hand ; in the 
 
THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 43 
 
 utilities of industrial art ; in the elegancies of 
 culture and refinement ; in the spirituality of liberal 
 arts ; in the discoveries of science ; in the high 
 dreamings of philosophy. Still more is God to be 
 seen in the moral attributes of the soul, in what- 
 soever things are pure, true, lovely, virtuous, 
 praiseworthy. Above all, is He to be seen and 
 heard in that highest point of our soul, where our 
 being runs into His as the stalk which buries itself 
 in the earth that begets, supports, and nourishes it, 
 namely, in conscience, which cries to us, " Cleave 
 to the right," with a voice that is in us, but not of 
 as ; the voice of one who is with us yet over us. 
 
 For we walk not alone, but ever side by side 
 with God, whose arm is round us, whose lips are at 
 our ear, even when we are deaf to His whisper : 
 Lceva ejus sub capita meo et dextra illius amplexabitur 
 me—" His left hand is under my head and His right 
 hand embraceth me." So it is the soul walks through 
 the desert of life leaning on her Beloved. Etsi 
 ambulavero in medio umbrce mortis, non timebit cor 
 meum quia tu mecum es ; virga tua et baculus tuus 
 ipsa me consolata sunt — "Though I walk in the 
 midst of death's shadow my heart will not fear, 
 for Thou art with me, Thy rod and the staff have 
 consoled me." Conscience is the rod and staff 
 of our gentle Shepherd, who thereby checks and 
 stimulates us alternately that we may not run 
 forward or lag behind, or in any way be parted 
 from His side ; and if we have not grown callous 
 to this salutary sting and disciphne, what greater 
 consolation can we have than such evidence of the 
 
44 THE PRESENCE OP GOD. 
 
 presence and care of the Shepherd and Lover of our 
 souls ? " Thy crook and Thy staff are my conso- 
 lation." 
 
 " Enoch walked with God ; and was not ; 
 for God took him." Such is the history of those 
 souls who listen to the voice of the Shepherd, 
 who are conscious continually of a sort of double 
 personality, of being God's yoke-fellows, one of a 
 twain, of suffering and acting with God, thus 
 splitting up the simple " I " of their unreflecting 
 thought into "we," and finding another personality 
 intertwined with their own. 
 
 Finally, God is to be seen by those whose eyes 
 are open, in all the workings and dispositions ol 
 His providence, from the least to the greatest ; and 
 when the unenlightened cry out : " It is fate ; it is 
 fortune ; it is necessity of nature," faith and reason 
 say, "It is the Lord ; let Him do what seemeth 
 good unto Him ; " and : " Into Thy hand I com- 
 mend my spirit," and, " My lots are in Thy hand." 
 
 Let us not then look on this practice of the 
 presence of God as one of many devotions which 
 we are at liberty to take or leave ; for it is the 
 great work we have come into this world to do. 
 To see God is eternal life, both here and hereafter ; 
 here, through a glass darkly; there, face to face. 
 We are here for a while that our weak eyes may be 
 gradually accustomed to that dim but growing light 
 which heralds the sunrise of eternity ; that we may 
 not be blinded by the brightness of His coming. 
 
GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 " Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet 
 in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest 
 in its blessings and ariathemas, and even though the eternal 
 priesthood throughout the Church should cease to be, in it 
 the sacerdotal principle would remain and have a sway." 
 —Newman. 
 
 It is much to be regretted that the word " conscience " 
 or "dictate of conscience" has come to be used 
 indiscriminately for two very distinct acts or utter- 
 ances of the mind — for the moral judgment which 
 indicates to us what is right or wrong in human 
 conduct ; and for the command which bids us follow 
 that indication. In either sense conscience may be 
 called the "voice of God," though more properly in 
 the latter. 
 
 In our moral judgments God speaks to us no 
 otherwise than in any ordinary utterance of our 
 understanding or our reason. Inasmuch as He 
 has created our mind to be in some finite way 
 a mirror of His own, and co-operates with all its 
 vitality and movement, and tries, so far as we will 
 permit Him, to flood and permeate it with His 
 light, it follows that whatever truth it tells us. 
 He may be said to tell us indirectly, and through 
 the instrumentality of the mind : indirectly — for 
 in every judgment the mind truly speaks, and is 
 not a mere passive instrument of conveyance. It 
 
46 GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 originates in itself, not indeed without Divine assist- 
 ance, the word of truth which falls upon our inward 
 ear. But except with regard to a few first principles, 
 which are in a certain qualified sense inborn anij 
 irresistibly evident, the mind is subject to much 
 contingency in its inferences and deductions about 
 right and wrong ; in which there is room for endless 
 deviation and error. So far as the mirror of our 
 reason is flawed or flaws itself, and thereby distorts 
 and perverts the Divine Reason which it is made to 
 reflect, it can in no sense be said to speak to us with 
 the voice of God. It is igdeed, in virtue of its office, 
 God's appointed messenger, delivering to us the 
 determinations of His will respecting our conduct 
 and happiness, but it is a fallible messenger, whose 
 ear, whose memory, whose tongue may be often at 
 fault ; and who thus may convey to us a very garbled 
 version of the Divine message or command. Yet 
 conscience, in the sense of our moral judgment, is 
 not so absolutely untrustworthy as might seem. 
 There are tests and rules to be applied here, as well 
 as in the case of human witnesses, whose testimony, 
 under due conditions and restrictions, is a source of 
 certainty. There are occasions without number 
 where it is intellectually possible to doubt the 
 verdict of our conscience, yet where it would be 
 culpably imprudent to pay any practical heed to 
 such doubt ; and there are other cases in which the 
 message is so palpably ambiguous and obscure as 
 to leave our liberty of action intact. 
 
 It is not our purpose here to examine the notion 
 of moral Tightness in conduct, which all know by 
 
GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 47 
 
 intuition to be so distinct from any other kind of 
 Tightness. Men wrangle over the analysis and state- 
 ment of the idea, but as to its existence and separate 
 character all are agreed. Like every other rightness, 
 it implies an end to be reached, and an order to be 
 observed in reaching it. A right action is one which 
 preserves or promotes a certain desirable order in 
 our conduct, that is, in our words and outward 
 behaviour, or in the inner working of our mind and 
 heart, so far as they are under our free government. 
 And a vvrong action, contrariwise, is one which 
 induces a disorder in our conduct. 
 
 The end with reference to which our conduct is 
 said to be morally right or wrong, is that chief and 
 supreme end which God has created us to attain, 
 namely, the salvation of our soul here and hereafter 
 in the exercise of the highest and most ideal love. 
 This end is in a strict sense obligatory and morally 
 necessary, and therefore such conduct as is required 
 to secure it has a corresponding and dependent 
 necessity. But this necessity and obligation is made 
 up of two very distinct factors ; of two forces which 
 exert a sort of compulsion upon our will. Of these 
 one is our irresistible attraction towards our ulti- 
 mate and complete happiness, and all that we 
 conceive to be inseparably connected therewith ; the 
 other is the urgency of the Divine will brought to 
 bear upon us in the dictate of conscience. 
 
 First then there is this implanted desire for our 
 own fulness of joy, our true well-being, our ideal of 
 rest and happiness — a desire which we cannot resist 
 or put aside in any moment of our conscious activity. 
 
48 GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 When once we recognize any action as inseparably 
 bound up with the reahzation of that desire, the 
 thought of that action begins to exercise a sort of 
 dominion over us, nor can we resist its power until 
 by some reversion or perversion of judgment we 
 divest it of that connection with our happiness 
 which was the secret of its sway. 
 
 " If you will enter into life," says Reason, 
 " keep the commandments." It is not possible 
 for us to deny our wish to enter into eternal 
 life, and to attain the solid joy that attends that 
 life; but we can shut our eyes to the necessity 
 of keeping the commandments, and in this way 
 we can resist the pressure and obligation which 
 rightness exerts upon our will. Nature obhges us 
 to desire happiness, but does not oblige us to desire 
 any one method of life, except so far and so long as 
 we judge it to be requisite to our happiness. What 
 ever necessity and obligation there is, is from Nature ; 
 that is, from God as the author of the soul's essence. 
 To eat and drink is a necessity of our nature, but to 
 eat or drink this rather than that is left largely to 
 our choice. 
 
 Yet all this necessity and pressure is from our- 
 selves, from that implanted appetite which is part of 
 our being. So far, wrong-doing is only shown to be 
 high treason against our own truest interest, an 
 offence against self. But we cannot subvert any 
 designed and established order without offending 
 him who has established and willed it. If while 
 I am waiting in the library for a friend whom I am 
 visiting I amuse myself by deliberately disarranging 
 
GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 49 
 
 and mixing up the books which I see he has care- 
 fully set in order, I cannot but be aware that besides 
 the material disorder and mischief I am producing, 
 there is another evil of a totally different and more 
 serious kind for which I am responsible, namely, 
 the ruffling of my friend's temper. There is nothing 
 we should value so much as the reasonable esteem 
 and affection of others ; and therefore the thing we 
 should dread most is the just censure and anger of 
 those whom we love and reverence. Whatever 
 servility there may sometimes be in the dread of the 
 consequences of their anger, yet there is nothing 
 servile in the dread of the anger itself. Children 
 playing at keeping school will patiently accept 
 punishments, which inflicted in anger by their 
 parents or teachers would be received with passionate 
 tears; showing that it is the implied censure and 
 displeasure which gives the punishment its worst 
 sting. Hence, the annoyance of my friend is the 
 worst consequence of my wanton mischief; com- 
 pared with which the disarrangement of the books 
 is small and remediable. I can put the books in 
 order again, or can make some equivalent restitu- 
 tion ; but I cannot force my friend to be towards 
 me as before. 
 
 Every thinking creature is sensible, at least dimly 
 and confusedly, of being dependent on some personal 
 power which has put him into this world among his 
 fellow-men, and has given him a definite nature 
 with a definite work and a definite end, however 
 imperfectly recognized ; and therefore that the 
 ascertaining and carrying out of that purpose is 
 
50 GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 not merely his own concern, but a duty which he 
 owes to another to whom he belongs ineffably and 
 absolutely. He finds, moreover, in his awakened 
 reason an instinctive love and desire for the objective 
 interests of reason and right order, quite irrespective 
 of his private and personal interests, which have at 
 times to give way to the more universal and impera- 
 tive good. He finds himself angry against injustices, 
 which touch neither him nor his belongings, and 
 aglow for the cause of right and truth and order, 
 where no egoistic bias is assignable. And the growth 
 of this objective, disinterested love of rightness is 
 checked or accelerated in the measure in which the 
 God-given instinct is yielded to or resisted. All this 
 points to the fact that his reason and will are given 
 him only to be instruments of the will of the 
 personal, subsistent Reason of God Himself, who 
 presses continually on the created spirit, guiding it 
 to an end of which it can have at most a partial and 
 instinctive perception, such as a horse may have of 
 the purpose of his rider. 
 
 Recognizing, therefore, that the order which 
 reason demands in our conduct with respect to 
 ourselves and to others is something dependent on 
 the nature of things established and willed by the 
 Supreme Reason, it is impossible for us to disturb 
 that order without being aware, at least in some 
 dim way, that we are incurring the anger and dis- 
 pleasure of that personal Reason whose creatures 
 and instruments we are. And if the just censure 
 and anger of our parents and rulers is something we 
 should dread as a great evil, how far greater an evil 
 
GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 51 
 
 is it to incur the anger of our Father who is in 
 Heaven, in whom we live and move and have our 
 being, on the breath of whose love our soul hangs 
 for every instant of its existence and movement, 
 who should be the supreme object of our love and 
 reverence and praise, in friendship with whom our 
 final happiness consists. To have made God angry, 
 this is the greatest evil of sin. The disorder we 
 have caused in God's work, in our own soul, in 
 human society, however evil in itself, however 
 hateful to God, is a finite evil, for which a repara- 
 tion is conceivable. But by what means shall we 
 force God to turn to us again with favour, and to 
 restore to us the priceless treasure of His love ? 
 
 Here then is a new pressure brought to bear 
 upon us of quite a distinct order ; an appeal to our 
 need of being loved by God, to our dread of being 
 hated by God ; or, if we are still servile and selfish, 
 to our desire of the consequences of being loved ; 
 to our dread of the consequences of being hated. 
 It is the pressure of will against will, and person 
 against person. It is no longer a question of treason 
 against self, but of treason against God. No man 
 can really sin against himself, except in a meta- 
 phorical sense, which splits his personality in two ; 
 or which treats his lower and higher will as two 
 distinct persons. But conscience puts him en rapport 
 with a personality other than his own, and thus 
 deprives him of his falsely imagined liberty and 
 independence. It tells him he is chained fast to 
 another who is in a certain sense affected for good 
 or evil by his every movement, and that that other 
 
52 GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 is no less than his God and Lord ; that he must no 
 longer think of himself as I, but rather as we; since 
 no act of his soul bears upon self alone, but upon 
 self and God. 
 
 It is in this sense of the pressure of God's will 
 upon ours that the obligation of conscience chiefly 
 consists. Whatever imperfect pressure may be put 
 upon us by our innate self-regard, it is as nothing 
 compared with that which is exerted upon us by our 
 equally natural regard for the Divine favour. 
 
 Let us then carefully distinguish conscience as the 
 sense of what is right, from conscience as the sense 
 of obligation or of a pressure exerted upon our-will. 
 In the former case God speaks to us indirectly and 
 often fallibly through our reason, and tells us " This 
 is right, that is wrong." In the latter God reveals 
 to us infallibly His own will, and says, " Do what 
 you believe to be right ; do not, what you behave to 
 be wrong; " and by this revelation our will is brought 
 into immediate contact with His, whether to yield 
 to its pressure or to resist it. Who does not know 
 from human intercourse, the difference between a 
 mere communication and exchange of ideas in con- 
 versation, and the far closer shock of soul with soul 
 when anger or love is excited, and will meets with 
 will in conflict or in embrace? It is as bringing 
 us into will-relations with God that conscience 
 differs so generically from any other act of our 
 mind. 
 
 But why, it may be asked, should we treat the 
 impulse of conscience as the voice of God, rather 
 than the impulse of passion or of any lower instinct 
 
GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 53 
 
 which is as certainly indicative of the will of Nature, 
 whose will is no other than the will of God ? The 
 fallacy of this objection lies in taking some one part 
 of our nature, some single spring of action, and 
 treating it as though it were the whole. Human 
 excellence is not the perfection of this faculty or of 
 that, but of all united under the rule of conscience. 
 Virtue for man means the subjection of the lower to 
 the higher, their harmonious blending. Meekness, 
 for example, or chastity, could not exist were there 
 not strong passions to curb, a self-centred attraction 
 to combat. All indeed is from God — the force that 
 is curbed, and the force that curbs ; but it is for 
 man to see that the thought of God's mind and 
 love, the Divine intention or ideal is fully, not 
 partially, uttered in his own conduct. The speech 
 may be marred and broken in the utterance, and 
 convey a distorted sense. No natural desire is 
 wrong or evil so long as it is shaped and modified 
 according to the pattern present to conscience ; but 
 when suffered to run riot, though the wasted force 
 is God's gift, yet its lawlessness is the fault of man. 
 We have different duties with regard to our 
 conscience, according as we mean by " conscience " 
 the sum total of our moral judgments, or the pressure 
 of God's will upon ours urging us to follow those 
 moral judgments. The very same imperative obli- 
 gation which forces us to do what we believe to be 
 right, forces us no less, and as it were inclusively, 
 to find out what is right, to correct, perfect, and 
 develop our moral judgment by all means in our 
 power. It will not hear of that moral "indiffer- 
 
54 GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 entism " which considers it but little matter what 
 we do, so long as we do it bond fide, believing it to 
 be right. He is no sincere friend of Right and 
 Truth, no sincere friend of God, who cares little 
 what offence he commits, what pain he gives, so 
 long as it is unintentional, who is indifferent to 
 "material" sin. True, the chief guilt, which 
 consists in the conflict of will with will, is absent, 
 if the fault be committed in blameless ignorance ; 
 but the lesser harm is not inconsiderable ; nor can 
 it be a matter of indifference to one whose soul is 
 in sympathy with God and His ways. Such a soul 
 will make it its first duty and most earnest desire 
 to learn the will of God in the minutest detail. Its 
 whole aspiration will be that of the ii8th Psalm: 
 " Oh, let my ways be directed to the observance ot 
 Thy justifications; then shall I not be ashamed 
 when I shall have looked into all Thy command- 
 ments. In my heart have I hid Thy Word that 
 I might not sin against Thee. Blessed art Thou, 
 O Lord, teach me Thy justifications ; unveil 
 my eyes that I may behold the wonders of Thy 
 law." 
 
 In all other matters we are to some extent 
 bound to secure that our mind and reason shall 
 be, in its measure, a faithful mirror of the mind ot 
 God, without flaw or tarnish ; but we are bound, 
 without any qualification, to a like care, where the 
 truth to be attained concerns the imperative will ot 
 God touching the hourly conduct of our lives. It 
 is therefore our first duty to educate and instruct 
 our moral judgment continually ; to observe, to 
 
GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 55 
 
 listen, to read, to ponder, to examine, to compare, 
 that by all means we enjoy the fullest attainable 
 light in a matter so paramount. Our sources of 
 information are the first principles of morality and 
 their legitimate consequences, applied to our own 
 experience and the experience of others ; the tradi- 
 tions of society, the examples of the good and 
 great ; the advice of those whose wisdom and 
 experience give weight to their words ; and then 
 for us Christians there is the revealed law of God, 
 the teaching and example of Christ and His saints, 
 the guidance of the Catholic Church in the con- 
 sensus of her approved writers, and in the private 
 direction whereby her priests apply and modify 
 general principles to individual cases. 
 
 Obviously, as long as life lasts, our mind will be 
 capable of further perfection and exactitude in this 
 as in other matters. Never shall we be so skilled 
 as not at times to experience perplexities and to 
 need the counsel of others. Yet our progress should 
 ever be towards a greater self-helpfulness and inde- 
 pendence of judgment in the affairs of our own 
 conscience. There is no doubt a false independence 
 which despises the ordinary means of hght and 
 information, and strives to weave a priori cobwebs 
 for its own use. But there is also a false depend- 
 ence which springs from a certain mental laziness 
 and timidity, and which seeks to throw the whole 
 burden of one's decisions on other shoulders. As 
 in the practical affairs of every-day life, so in the 
 problems of conscience and self-government our aim 
 should be to profit in every way by the experience 
 
56 GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 and wisdom of others in order to advance beyond 
 it, and to form a power of judging for ourselves. 
 While we are yet without experience, and while our 
 reasoning faculty is as yet rudimentary, we must 
 submit to the direction of others who know better. 
 But if the child's hand is always held and guided by 
 the teacher, if he is never told that the end of such 
 help is to enable him eventually to dispense with it, 
 he will never learn how to write. Similarly those 
 who make the voice of their spiritual director a 
 substitute for their own conscience, who never use 
 the light that God has given them in their own 
 reason and in the information they already possess, 
 become crippled and paralyzed as far as the faculty 
 of moral judgment is concerned. For the difference 
 between death and life is the difference between 
 that which is moved passively by another from 
 outside, and that which moves itself in virtue of 
 some inward principle which is part of itself. 
 Doubtless, as has been said, there are crises and 
 problems where the wisest and most experienced 
 are at a loss, and then it becomes a duty to have 
 recourse to those who are in a position to help us 
 to see for ourselves — which is the best kind of 
 direction — or else to command our faith and confi- 
 dence in their claim to see what we cannot see. 
 But short of such extremes, it is the part of the 
 good educator and adviser not to help those who 
 can help themselves, and who in so doing advance 
 themselves towards a more perfect self-helpfulness. 
 
 Perhaps there is no more essential condition to 
 our growth in clearness of moral discernment, than 
 
GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 57 
 
 that of practical fidelity to the hght that is in us. 
 Nor is the reason far to seek. It is repugnant to 
 our natural and almost laudable pride, to sin in the 
 full face of our better knowledge; whence comes 
 the inevitable tendency to justify our faults both 
 before and after we commit them — a process which 
 involves a certain violent twisting or at least an 
 obscuring of our moral judgments about right and 
 wrong. Let these perversions be sufficiently frequent 
 and grievous and we soon fall under the natural 
 penalty of "judicial bhndness," a state in which we 
 are culpably but really incapable of seeing the truth, 
 and rush blindfold to our own spiritual ruin. Nay, 
 even in smaller matters of counsel and higher per- 
 fection, we are all continually tarnishing the clear 
 surface of that mirror wherein the pure of heart see 
 God and the will of God, as the sky is seen in 
 smooth water. The edge of our spiritual discern- 
 ment is ever being blunted by rough usage, and 
 needing to be refined by self-examination and 
 correction. 
 
 Moreover, if mere intellectualism sometimes 
 makes us skilful casuists and gives us a sort of 
 delicacy of touch in dealing with the niceties of 
 conscience, yet practical fidelity to the right, and 
 an earnest desire to live up to our ideals, will give 
 us a far surer guide in that instinct wherewith love 
 feels and apprehends what will be most pleasing to 
 the Beloved. Not that the act is purely blind and 
 instinctive, but so swift is the inference, so minute 
 and complex the data from which it is drawn, so 
 prompt the following up of the will, that memory 
 
58 GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 has no time to record the process, and leaves us 
 with the impression that we have been inspired or 
 impelled from without. This " taste " or " tact," 
 which love begets in us, is certainly a far safer 
 and more useful guide than any power of reflex 
 reasoning, however highly cultivated. The latter 
 is not only more fallible in its process, but also is 
 confined to problems where the data can be fully 
 and distinctly grouped as the premises of a formal 
 argument — a condition hardly ever realized in the 
 concrete. The way in which we recognize the 
 character of our own actions as right or wrong, is 
 something like the way a child discerns its mother's 
 pleasure or displeasure. It is done at a glance, and 
 with infallible certitude, but who shall give a satis- 
 factory statement of the process, or answer all the 
 difficulties another might bring against the inadequate 
 reasons given for the decision ? For our mind appre- 
 hends an action not under some one or more of its 
 formal aspects, but in its concrete entirety, in the 
 full clothing of its circumstances, amongst which 
 are our own character, personality, and antecedents, 
 the sum total of our innumerable and complex 
 motives, the clearness or unclearness of our vision 
 at the instant of action, the fulness or the imper- 
 fection of our deliberation, the precise degree of 
 attraction or repugnance we experienced. This is 
 what we can never convey to another, what we 
 can never fully express to ourselves, so as to make 
 any formal and logical inference available against 
 the certainty of our intuitive judgment. 
 
 It is then by fidelity to the light which is in us. 
 
GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 39 
 
 and by availing ourselves of the means of instruction 
 provided for us, that we may hope ever to progress 
 towards a greater refinement in our power of moral 
 iudgment. And upon this refinement our religious 
 faith largely depends. For the more we see in God, 
 and the more sensitive we are to His beauty, the 
 stronger is the bond which enslaves us to Him. 
 But it is in proportion as we ourselves are just and 
 merciful and patient and pure, that the purity, 
 justice, and meekness of God and of His Church is 
 appreciated and loved by us. Without that, no 
 dialectic founded on prophecy and miracle, no 
 "natural theology," will be of any service to us, 
 either to win us, or to preserve us, or to recover 
 us. On the other hand, fidelity to conscience must 
 infallibly bring with it sufficient faith for salvation, 
 and moreover will change the dry stick of barren 
 orthodoxy into an ever-growing intelligence of the 
 things of God. " If thy heart were right, then 
 would every creature be unto thee a mirror of life 
 and a book of sacred lore ; for there is no creature 
 how small and mean soever, but reflects some ray 
 of God's goodness. Wert thou but inwardly good 
 and pure, thou wouldst see everything easily and 
 understand it clearly. A pure heart pierces Heaven 
 and Hell with its gaze. According to what we 
 ourselves are inside, so do we judge of that which 
 is outside."^ 
 
 Moreover, faith rests on and springs from an 
 abiding sense of the duty of belief, from a permanent 
 recognition of God's will and command that we 
 
 ' A Kempis, ii. 4. 
 
6o GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 should hold on blindly in the hour of darkness and 
 obscurity to the truths we were convinced of in the 
 hour of light and of clear intuition. For faith is a 
 hearing and an obeying. But the conscience which 
 has grown deaf to God's voice in other matters, is 
 in danger of this last degree of deafness, when' 
 the soul no longer recognizes the voice of the 
 Shepherd ; nor hears, nor follows, but wanders into 
 the darkness. 
 
 Up to this we have been deahng with our duty to 
 " conscience " regarded as the faculty of moral judg- 
 ment ; and we have seen how this department of 
 our reason demands special care and cultivation, 
 that it may become to its utmost capacity a reflex 
 of the mind of God, of that ideal which God desires 
 to realize in us if we will but suffer Him to show 
 us His will and to help us to follow it. 
 
 But conscience stands even more properly for 
 the pressure and inclination exerted upon our will 
 by the will of God, which is brought to bear upon 
 it as soon as the mind recognizes " right " to be the 
 term and expression of a Will. This pressure is a 
 reverential fear of God's anger as in itself the worst 
 of evils and a self-regarding fear of the consequences 
 of that anger; and also a love of God's good-will 
 and favour as in itself our chief good, besides a 
 desire for the resulting advantages of His favour. 
 Here, again, we owe a duty to our conscience, 
 regarded now, not as a judgment of the under- 
 standing, but as an inclination or bent of the will. 
 Every time we yield to this Divine stimulus, we 
 not only maintain, but increase our sensitiveness to 
 
GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 6i 
 
 its influence. We become more and more filled with 
 a reverential fear of God's expressed will. Contrari- 
 wise, if we resist we grow callous and unimpression- 
 able. Every time we brave God's anger we fear it 
 less, till at last we lose all fear, and become stone 
 deaf to that still small voice whose whisper is 
 caught by those only who are on the alert. 
 
 Let us notice how distinct these two forms of 
 " conscientiousness " are one from another. For 
 we may find a great delicacy of moral judgment 
 combined with a certain callousness of the will; 
 and, on the other hand, a remarkable sensitiveness 
 of will where the judgment is very ignorant and 
 erroneous. So, too, the words, lax, rigorous, 
 scrupulous, wide, and the like, are open to the same 
 ambiguity. Given the same moral judgment as to 
 the malice of a lie, one man will shrink from it far 
 less than another; and given equal reverence for 
 the Divine will, one will judge that to be grievous, 
 or at least sinful, which another thinks little or 
 nothing of. 
 
 It is precisely in conscience viewed as an incli- 
 nation of the will, that the soul comes in contact 
 with God as the author of its moral life. In our 
 physical and psychical life, and to a large extent in 
 our intellectual life, God enters into us and displays 
 His attributes in us in spite of ourselves. His 
 power. His wisdom, His spiritual attributes, are 
 declared in the existence and operations of our 
 nature, in which He utters Himself in a finite 
 manner. But if He would display His moral attri- 
 butes — those, namely, which are essentially perfec- 
 
62 GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 tions of the free-will, perfect ways of choosing, He 
 must stand at the door and knock until by consent 
 we draw the bolt and let Him in. Then indeed He 
 enters in to sup with us, to permeate our soul with 
 His light and love, to fill her with a beauty not hei 
 own save so far as she has not hindered the entrance 
 of Him whose presence is her sole beauty. Nigra 
 sum sedformosa — she is of herself dark, but in virtue 
 of her Spouse she is full of beauty and brightness. 
 
 Conscience is then, as it were, the little stalk by 
 which the soul is united to God as to the parent 
 of its moral life ; hanging upon Him as the fruit 
 hangs on the tree. Through that narrow channel 
 the Divine life is poured into our spiritual veins, and 
 gives us our vigour and expansion, and full develop- 
 ment ; and all that hinders that quickening inflow 
 impoverishes and weakens our soul. Through con- 
 science God's ideal of our individual destiny, of that 
 final state which each one of us is capable of rising 
 to, is gradually transferred to our moral judgment, 
 wherein His thought is more or less imperfectly 
 reflected ; through conscience again, our will is 
 urged to realize the ideal thus set before us, and to 
 suffer God to assert Himself within us. 
 
 It is in recognizing God's will and presence in 
 the urgency of conscience that interior life consists. 
 Union and peace with God is but union and peace 
 with conscience viewed in a higher and truer light. 
 Here it is that God speaks to us ; not indeed as man 
 to man, but with a far closer and more intimate 
 communing, whereby without words or symbols we 
 are directly made conscious of His will. To the 
 
GOD IN CONSCIENCE 63 
 
 unreflecting, conscience seems part of themselves ; 
 its voice seems their own — so closely are God's 
 workings intertwined with those of their will and 
 reason. But reflection tells us that we cannot in 
 any true sense command ourselves, or disobey 
 ourselves, or fear our own anger, no more than we 
 can run after ourselves, or tell lies to ourselves, or 
 steal from ourselves. 
 
 The " otherness " of God from ourselves, and of 
 the voice of conscience from the voice of our own 
 free resolves, needs but be clearly stated in order to 
 be clearly recognized ; and when once recognized, 
 our solitude is gone. " It is not good for man to be 
 alone," is only so far true that, short of some 
 exempting condition or higher vocation, man is 
 fashioned and designed for the married state. But 
 of man's spiritual being it is absolutely and essen- 
 tially true that he is not made to be alone, or to 
 live alone for one moment of his conscious life. He 
 is by his whole nature and destiny an instrument in 
 the hand of God, even as the pen I write with is 
 wholly and altogether an instrument in my hand 
 designed to express my thought. Conscience is the 
 point of contact where God lays hold of this instru- 
 ment, and inclines it to His own purpose. " Inclines " 
 it, for it is free ; and herein is not like the pen, 
 which has no self-perverting, self-destroying power. 
 And He inclines it not by a blind instinct, but by an 
 intelligent whisper, gentle in expression, but-strong 
 and terrible in authority. And the resulting action 
 is of us twain, whether in agreement or in disagree- 
 ment ; we are tied together — God and myself, the 
 
64 GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Creator and the created instrument which He 
 chooses to wield; we are joint principles of one and 
 the same act by which He seeks to express Himself 
 in my conduct and Hfe. While God is to us " He," 
 or even "Thou," we have not yet realized that 
 intimacy which excludes all sense of distance and 
 separateness other than personal, and which dares 
 to couple together in thought as " we " and " us," 
 God and the soul which He has wedded. 
 
 The sense of God's nearness and inseparable 
 intimacy to the hidden roots of our spiritual life has 
 been prominent in good men of all times, places, 
 and religions, who in one form or another have 
 re-echoed David's sentiments where he likens himself 
 to a sheep whom God leads forth to green pastures 
 and beside still waters, checking him with His crook, 
 or urging him with His staff, so as to keep him ever 
 close to His side. "Though I walk through the 
 valley of death's shadow I will fear no evil, for 
 Thou art with me, Thy crook and Thy staff are my 
 consolation." It is precisely in conscience that we 
 feel these alternative checks and urgings, and find 
 therein an assurance of the presence and careful 
 watchfulness of " the Great Shepherd and Bishop of 
 our souls." It is in the obedient following of con- 
 science that we arrive at the green pastures, and lie 
 down in peace by the waters of rest, and lack for 
 nothing. It is the sense that God is with him that 
 enables the conscientious man to bear calmly all 
 manner of temptations and persecutions and in- 
 justices. " A good man prides himself only in the 
 witness of a good conscience. Have a good conscience 
 
GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 65 
 
 and you will have an abiding joy. A good con- 
 science can stand a great deal, and be very cheerful 
 in spite of troubles. A bad conscience is always 
 timid and fidgetty. You will rest very sweetly if your 
 heart reproach you not. Never be glad except when 
 you have done the right thing." 
 
 If there is a false independence savouring of 
 selfish arrogance, there is also a certain true inde- 
 pendence and " scorn of consequence," which has 
 characterized the really great and good of all ages ; 
 and this is due mainly to the sense of yielding 
 obedience to no creature but to conscience alone, or 
 else for conscience's sake. The Christian (expHcit or 
 implicit) can never yield to wealth or position, or 
 force or numbers ; he is no respecter of persons ; to 
 God alone will he bend ; and thus he is fearless 
 when conscience justifies him, and he bears himself 
 towards all unjust usurpation with the pride of a 
 free son of God : Gloria justorum in conscientia sua et 
 non in ore hominum — " The pride of the just is in 
 their own conscience, not in the prate of men." 
 
 We have compared conscience to a little stalk 
 which ties us to God, the source of our spiritual 
 life, as the fruit is tied to the parent tree. To push 
 this illustration, we may notice that this bond may 
 be wholly severed, so that the fruit falls to earth 
 and loses vital connection with the branch ; or else 
 it may be merely weakened ; or, finally, it may be 
 strengthened indefinitely. Here we have a picture 
 of the bearing of our actions upon our vital union 
 with God through conscience. There is a fatal 
 disobedience which separates us wholly from Him ; 
 
65 GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 and a lesser disobedience which disposes us for a 
 fall ; and then there is a close following of the mere 
 wishes and suggestions of conscience, whereby we 
 are knit ever more firmly to God, and the channel 
 of communication between the soul and her Spouse 
 grows ever wider and freer. But whether in 
 matters of command or of counsel and suggestion, 
 the voice of conscience Unheeded grows fainter and 
 fainter, and sounds as from a great distance, until 
 at last it dies away altogether. The change is in 
 us and not in God. He has not gone far from us, 
 but we have gone far from Him, " into a far 
 country," where we seek freedom from the restraint 
 of His presence, and find slavery among the swine. 
 And if there He finds us out and pities and calls us, 
 and puts it into our heart to arise and return to 
 Him, still we have a long and painful journey 
 before us. We came downhill in the fulness of our 
 strength, we return uphill in the extremity of our 
 exhaustion. What hope is there for us, unless He 
 see us yet a long way off and run to meet us and 
 to cut short our weary labour ? In other words, to 
 recover the lost sensitiveness to conscience is a slow 
 and difficult task, impossible without God's grace. 
 The restoration of our perverted moral judgment is 
 comparatively easy. It is not hard to recognize 
 the fact that God was right and that we were 
 wrong; that the result of our "private judgment" 
 is that we are perishing with hunger, while the 
 mere hirelings of Heaven abound with bread. This 
 Peccavi, which is but the sentence of our own reason 
 upon our own folly, is the very first da-yvn of a con- 
 
GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 67 
 
 version (be it in small matters or in great), which 
 is perfected in that Peccavi uttered in the bosom of 
 God. 
 
 But it is hard to quicken a sentiment that has 
 once been killed by resistance. It is hard to feel at 
 will a fear of what we have schooled ourselves to 
 brave. We seem to need some new and far 
 stronger stimulus, if our heart is to be stirred. If 
 God should break the silence around us, and speak 
 to us with human voice and human words, we 
 should doubtless fall down terror-stricken and cry : 
 " What wouldst Thou have me to do ? " Yet the 
 same God, heard in the far closer voice of con- 
 science, has no terrors for us, — so dependent are we 
 on habit and wont. 
 
 , It is therefore to preserve us from this callous- 
 ness, and in some measure perhaps to restore or 
 increase our reverential fear of conscience, that the 
 practice of examining our conscience is of such 
 vital importance. Plainly this does not mean com- 
 paring our moral judgments (as manifested in our 
 conduct) with received standards, such as the 
 Decalogue or the teaching of morahsts. This is a 
 duty and an important one, as we have already 
 insisted ; but is quite distinct in its object and end 
 from that of examining our relation of obedience or 
 disobedience to that voice which says : " Do what 
 you believe to be right, here and now." It is one 
 thing to inquire : Did I do what was objectively 
 right ? another : Did I do what I sincerely believed 
 to be right ? The first inquiry concerns the truth of 
 our moral judgments ; the second, the reverential 
 
68 GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 submission of our will to God's. This latter is the 
 all-important inquiry which should be made, not 
 merely at stated times, which is well, but at all 
 times. Am I strictly conscientious? Am I afraid 
 of my conscience ; afraid of God ? Or am I 
 growing callous and indifferent, and to what extent ? 
 
 Often, indeed, when the substance of the trans- 
 gression is comparatively light, yet the harm done 
 to ourselves by violating conscience is considerable 
 and not easily undone; just as in the matter of 
 perseverance, an offence which its isolation is trivial, 
 is most serious when viewed as a breach in that 
 chain of virtuous acts by which a good habit is 
 generated. 
 
 To notice an infidelity will not undo the harm 
 inflicted upon the will, — there, indeed, it seems that 
 God's medicinal skill is needed, — but it will stimulate 
 us to turn to God for forgiveness ; to beg restitution 
 to our former state or to a better ; to make repara- 
 tion to His Divine Majesty ; and, above all, to arrest 
 further downward progress. The wholesale and 
 persistent neglect of this natural duty is to induce 
 eventually that blindness and hardness of heart 
 through which a man comes at last to crucify his God 
 without knowing what he is doing. This is the 
 natural result, but it is no less, en that account, a 
 divinely inflicted punishment, since all natural 
 laws are but the expression of the necessary will 
 of God. 
 
SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 
 
 " He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood 
 not in the truth ; because truth is not in him. When he 
 speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the 
 father thereof. But if I say the truth you believe Me not." 
 — St. John viii. 44. 
 
 " Cut it down, why doth it cumber the ground ? " 
 says the master of the vineyard to his husbandman ; 
 speaking of the fig-elm which had disappointed him 
 year after year. " Nay," says the other, " let me 
 dig about the roots and nourish them ; and if then 
 it is still fruitless, let it fall." It is the work of 
 meditation to dig about the roots of our spiritual 
 life and to nourish them, to go deep into first 
 principles and strengthen our grasp of them, — not 
 very attractive or easy work, nor productive of any 
 very sudden or sensibly violent moral revolution ; 
 yet in the long run, slowly and surely bearing 
 abundant and lasting fruit. Nor is it enough to 
 review, examine, and deepen our principles. We 
 must also judge ourselves by them ; contrasting with 
 them our practice ; clearing the mirror of conscience 
 and setting it before our face ; convincing ourselves 
 of sinfulness and of sin. But especially will it 
 conduce to that penitential spirit which is the very 
 root of self-reform, to clear and deepen our notion 
 
70 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 
 
 of the nature and malice of sin, whether regarded 
 in itself and its effects, or as an offence against the 
 fear and reverence and worship we owe to God ; 
 still more, against that absolute love and devotion 
 which is His due. 
 
 And here revelation comes in largely to aid the 
 insufficiency of reason and to secure that, what 
 otherwise would be known only with difficulty and 
 hesitation by a few, may be known easily, certainly, 
 and universally ; and though we may never say that 
 revelation is a strict exigency of human nature, yet 
 in this matter it is almost evident that if revelation 
 were denied to us, some substitute would need to 
 have been provided if our race was to rise from 
 barbarism to any sort of higher moral development. 
 
 Children, having no experience and only the 
 rudiments of reason, are not expected to know what 
 is good and expedient for them in conduct, or what 
 is hurtful and dangerous. They must therefore 
 believe and obey those who do know. We assign 
 sanctions to their conduct, we threaten them with 
 penalties and hold out rewards which will appeal 
 to them, and will supply the place of intrinsic 
 reasons until such time as they shall be able to see 
 for themselves, and to justify the judgments which 
 now seem to them arbitrary and severe. But are 
 we not all far less than children in respect to God ? 
 Surely the babe just born knows as much of the 
 world and its ways as the wisest of us can know 
 of the ways of God, whose sway stretches over 
 heaven and earth, time and eternity. How can 
 one whose eye rests but on the surface of things, 
 
SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 71 
 
 and ranges within the narrowest of circles for the 
 briefest of moments, pretend to join issue with Him 
 whose thought penetrates all things, and estimates 
 the bearing of the first instant of created time upon 
 the last ? What definite notion can we possibly 
 have of that final result to which we and all other 
 creatures are being moved as instruments in His 
 hand, guided by a thought which is in His mind 
 and not in ours ? What likelihood is there of our 
 clearly divining the meaning and scope of the 
 primary instincts of our conscience, of those in- 
 explicable yet irresistible impulses in the interests 
 of right and truth and order, even at the expense 
 of our private and separate gain ; of those unselfish 
 sympathies with objective goodness dimly recognized 
 as the will of Him who creates us, whose we are, 
 and whom we serve ? Nor are we more Hkely to 
 grasp adequately the end and purpose of those 
 Divine commands and prohibitions which only reve- 
 lation makes known to us. If nowhere else, at 
 least in the direction of our life to that end for 
 which God has given it to us, we need faith, the 
 simple obedient faith of little children. Our first 
 parents failed in this very point. They would be 
 as God, knowing good and evil, judging right and 
 wrong for themselves ; they, from the level of earth, 
 would equal their view to His who is enthroned 
 above the highest Heaven. They would know the 
 why and wherefore of this arbitrary and irksome 
 prohibition and of this threat of death ; or else they 
 would take no notice of it, as being a violation of 
 their dignity as intelligent and self-governing agents, 
 
72 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 
 
 That this spirit of private judgment and unbelief 
 enters into every formal sin is what we shall see 
 a httle later, when we come to consider sin in 
 the light of reason, as a disorder in itself and as 
 a personal offence against God. But reason is 
 useful in this matter rather as testing and verifying 
 the teaching of revelation, than as a guide or 
 exponent of the full truth. After it has told us all 
 it can tell, there still remains a large residue of 
 mystery which we must accept on faith ; nor is the 
 grasp of reason sufficiently firm and unfaltering to 
 oifer a purchase for the will when under the pressure 
 of acute temptation and blinding passion. In such 
 crises our reason is soon dazed and bewildered, and 
 if we cannot hold fast to God's Word we are lost. 
 Even could we reason correctly, from the fullest 
 data, on the subject of sin, yet we cannot always 
 be reasoning, least of all in the hour of temptation. 
 Besides this, our data are hopelessly inadequate, 
 while few care to face the trouble of thought and 
 reflection, and fewer still can think successfully and 
 fruitfully. Obviously, therefore, faith is God's 
 appointed means for our guidance; we must receive 
 the Kingdom of God into our soul as little children, 
 or not at all. 
 
 It is certainly the weak point of modern Christi- 
 anity that there is so little of this faith in us, filled 
 as we are with the narrow rationalizing spirit of 
 protestant self-sufficiency. It is in the air, and we 
 inhale the poison at every breath. We are disposed 
 to make, each of us, a god for himself, accommo- 
 dated to the subjective peculiarities of his under- 
 
SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 73 
 
 standing, who shall be entirely comprehensible and 
 free from mystery, whose commands and prohi- 
 bitions shall be perfectly explicable by the principles 
 of human conduct and government ; but the notion 
 of receiving God as He has revealed Himself 
 objectively, of taking difficulties as an indication, 
 not of error in that revelation, but of error in 
 our own mind, is far from us. In this spirit we 
 argue, as Eve did, not from the revealed punish- 
 ment of sin to its internal and natural malice ; but 
 conversely we examine sin itself, weighing it in our 
 faulty balance, and then rise up in rebellion and 
 declare we will not believe that it can ever merit 
 eternal punishment. We do not see what harm 
 can come of our transgression ; and hence we 
 boldly pass to unbelief: "Hath God said ye shall 
 surely die ? Ye shall not surely die." 
 
 Now it is the nature of our finite intellect to 
 judge the seed by its fruits, and not by an intui- 
 tion of its hidden capacities. We argue from 
 effects to causes ; from appearances to their parent 
 realities ; from shadows and consequences to sub- 
 stances and antecedents. We cannot see directly 
 into the heart of a thing as God can, but we have 
 to wait until it unfolds itself. And therefore, that 
 we might not have to learn the nature of sin by 
 bitter experience, and when perhaps it was too late, 
 God gave us a revelation of the ultimate fruits and 
 consequences of sin. He showed us how, of its own 
 nature, it led to eternal death, so that believing His 
 word we might be assured that sin is a far greater 
 evil than we can ever expect to understand for 
 
74 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 
 
 ourselves. So it is that a good Catholic should 
 view the question, and in the same day that we 
 cease to be guided herein as little children, and 
 insist on judging for ourselves, "we shall surely 
 die" — Morte moriemini. 
 
 It is, then, by meditating on these revealed con- 
 sequences of sin that we shall most solidly establish 
 in ourselves that spirit of holy fear in which we are 
 so wanting in these days. 
 
 Yet fear, like hope, has a double object, one 
 direct and impersonal, the other mdirect and 
 personal. I hope for eternal happiness ; and it is 
 to God I look for the realization of this hope. 
 Again, I fear eternal death, and it is before God I 
 tremble as the Just Judge who will inflict this 
 punishment on the unrepentant sinner. Here, for 
 the moment, it is our aim to cultivate a fear of the 
 person rather than of the thing ; of the anger of 
 God rather than of the consequences of that anger. 
 For as it is essential to our happiness to be loved 
 of God, so it is destructive of the same to be the 
 object of God's hatred and anger. In other words, 
 God's anger is a greater evil to us than any of its 
 consequences ; though when we are utterly hardened 
 and indifferent as to how God regards us, the fear 
 of the consequences of His wrath will sometimes 
 prevent us from falling, or will recall us to repent- 
 ance. The fear of God is therefore a higher motive 
 than the fear of Hell. 
 
 Either fear, however, is rightly said to be the 
 "beginning of wisdom," or of that perfect love 
 which casts out fear. St. Augustine likens it to the 
 
SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 75 
 
 needle which passes through the texture, but leaves 
 the thread behind it. For when fear is wakened in 
 the sinner, he begins forthwith to cast about for a 
 road of escape from the consequences of his sin, 
 whereby he may "flee from the wrath to come." 
 And there is but one road open. " If thou wilt 
 enter into life, keep the Commandments ; " and 
 these Commandments can be reduced to one — the 
 sovereign law of love : " Thou shalt love the Lord 
 thy God with thy whole heart and soul and strength." 
 Hence by recourse to prayer and to the sacraments 
 he seeks to kindle in his heart once more the flame 
 of Divine love. 
 
 And while this love is yet feeble and imperfect, 
 it needs often to be backed up and supplemented 
 by fear ; not being of itself strong enough to with- 
 stand the more violent assaults of temptation. 
 
 But when love is mature and perfect, then fear 
 is said to be cast out ; " for," says St. John, " fear 
 hath torment," i.e., he who needs the spur of fear 
 always acts with repugnance and unwillingly, as 
 one who chooses the less of two evils and finds no 
 joy in his choice. Whereas he who endures out of 
 love alone, counts the suffering as nothing. 
 
 Yet, as Aquinas explains, it is not strictly fear, 
 but the servility of fear, which is cast out by perfect 
 love. It is called servile, because it is the motive 
 of a slave who obeys because he must, and not ot 
 a son who obeys with love and has one common 
 interest with his father, or of a free soldier who 
 obeys his captain for love of their common country. 
 When we obey and serve God for love of His glory, 
 
76 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 
 
 and out of sympathy with Him and His cause — the 
 cause of Truth and Love and Justice and Holiness 
 and Order — then our obedience is filial and not 
 servile. But as long and as far as we need the lash 
 of fear, we are slaves. Yet even when love is 
 perfect and fear can afford to be idle and rest from 
 active co-operation in our life, we must not suppose 
 that the motives of fear have been in any way 
 weakened, or that, like a disused organ, it becomes 
 atrophied and withers away. It is there all the 
 time, as an inner barrier, ready to come into use, 
 should the outworks give way through any mis- 
 fortune. Thus St. Ignatius, in his Book of the 
 Exercises, bids me pray that if at any time, through 
 my fault, the love of God should grow cold in my 
 heart, at least the fear of Hell may check me in 
 my downward path, and turn my steps upward once 
 more. 
 
 In truth, the fear and the love of God must 
 grow step by step together, because fear is the very 
 back-bone and strength of that love. It is not 
 something to which love is added and superimposed, 
 but is a constitutive element of love. For love is 
 not excited by some of the Divine attributes, as fear 
 is by others, but by the whole complexus, by the 
 Divine character in its entirety. Servile fear, indeed, 
 is begotten of a partial and imperfect view of God's 
 face ; it sees only the severer attributes — ^justice, 
 might, majesty, wrath ; it hears only the lower 
 notes of the chord, but is deaf to the higher and 
 sweeter tones which combine with them into a 
 perfect harmony. Those who do not know the 
 
SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 77 
 
 greatness of God do not know His condescension ; 
 those who have no conception of His justice have 
 no conception of His mercy. We must tremble at 
 His wrath, before we can marvel at His patience 
 and gentleness ; we must be deafened by the thunders 
 of Sinai, before we can be subdued by the still small 
 voice of conscience. And all that nourishes love, 
 nourishes fear also; for indeed, who were more 
 alive to the severity of God's judgments, and the 
 heinousness of sin, than those who were furthest 
 removed from the servility of fear — the saints and 
 the Blessed Mother of God herself? Let us be 
 assured that no tenderness of emotion, no thrills 
 of ecstatic ardour, are any proof of Divine love if 
 the spirit of fear is absent. The Seraphim, who 
 are on fire with love, veil their faces before God ; 
 and when St. John saw Him he fell at His feet as 
 one dead. Now-a-days men have made themselves 
 a god who is all indulgence, softness, weakness, 
 fashioned in their own image and likeness ; a god 
 who is as agnostic, as indifferent to truth and right 
 as they are themselves ; whose love is as unrestrained 
 by self-denial as their own. But we worship a 
 Father who chastens those whom He loves and 
 scourges every son whom He receives ; ^ who is 
 a fierce fire, consuming utterly whatever it cannot 
 convert into its own nature ; who is an invincible 
 force, crushing to powder whatever it cannot carry 
 along with it. It is either a blessed thing or a 
 fearful thing "to fall into the hands of the living 
 God " — a blessed thing to fall into the hands of His 
 ' Hebrews xii. 
 
78 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 
 
 love ; a fearful thing to fall into the hands of His 
 anger. For anger and hatred of all evil is but 
 another dimension of the love and desire of all 
 good ; and where this latter is absolute, irresistible, 
 infinite, the former must be no less so. 
 
 In his Exercise on Sin, St. Ignatius^ would have 
 us dwell first of all upon the fall of the apostate 
 angels, of which we have no obscure statement in 
 revelation, albeit the details are not given to us. 
 It is commonly and very reasonably believed that 
 whereas man, the lowest spiritual creature, comes 
 to his fulness of knowledge gradually, and through 
 a process of alternate blunders and rectifications, 
 the unembodied spirits receive the full measure of 
 their natural light in the first instant of their 
 creation. Existing out of time, free from the slow 
 successions of natural change, they have no infancy 
 or adolescence, but are produced in their perfect 
 maturity. Thus, the good and the true is presented 
 to their choice fully and clearly in the first instant 
 of their being, to accept or to reject ; nor does there 
 await them any new aspect of the question which 
 might alter their judgment. Whereas to every 
 man, the good and the true is offered under a 
 thousand inadequate aspects, time after time, until 
 the appointed measure of light by which he is to 
 be judged has been accorded to him — a measure 
 manifestly differing for different individuals. 
 
 Hence it is accepted usually that the fall of the 
 angels was the work of one sin, accomplished in 
 
 * This and the following discourse are developments of the first 
 two exercises of the " First Week." 
 
SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 79 
 
 one instant. The precise nature of that sin, or 
 how temptation could originate in a purely spiritual 
 being where bodily concupiscence and mental in- 
 firmity found no place, does not directly concern us 
 here. They are rightly said to have fallen through 
 pride. For pride is nothing else than the rebellion 
 of the member against the head ; the desire to be 
 absolute and independent instead of subject; the 
 preference of one's separate and solitary advantage 
 to the good of the whole whereof one is but a part. 
 It is the self-centralizing, self-exalting tendency let 
 loose from the yoke of reason to run its course, and 
 not restrained to the service of God, and by the 
 higher law of universal good. 
 
 Nor must we confound the conflict between 
 nature and grace, between the higher and the 
 lower will, between truth and error, between 
 reason and disorder, with the struggle of mind 
 against matter, of spirit against sense, which goes 
 on in our human nature, compounded as it is ot 
 soul and body. In the worst of men we may at 
 times, not often perhaps, find the flesh subdued to 
 the spirit, or at least not rebelUous. There may 
 be a complete control of the passions and feelings 
 induced by pride, ambition, or even diabolic malice. 
 There is such a thing as a victoria vitiosa, when one 
 vice dominates over all the rest and subdues them 
 in its own interest. But where passion is absent or 
 subdued, there may still be sin in the spirit ; for its 
 tendency is not simple but complex. And so in the 
 disembodied spirit, merely because it is a creature and 
 finite, there is not a simple, but a double appetite or 
 
8o SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 
 
 tendency — a resultant of two forces, one making for 
 self-preservation, self-preference, self-development; 
 the other, using this force, checking it and directing 
 it to the universal and objective good, that is, to 
 the glory of God, whereof every creature is before 
 all else an instrument. I do not say two appetites, 
 but one complex appetite, which sin can resolve 
 into discordant elements. For the good or " end " 
 of every being corresponds exactly to its nature. 
 Every finite being is primarily for God, secondarily 
 for itself in order to God. Were these two ends 
 wholly disconnected, there would be two appetites. 
 But since one is subordinate to the other, they 
 harmonize into one complex appetite. If there is 
 discord through sin, then as death is the severence 
 of body and soul, neither being complete without 
 the other, so here also severance is moral death. 
 And it is in approving or in disturbing the due 
 balance of these component forces that free-choice 
 is exercised. Pride consents to the claims of self 
 and turns a deaf ear to the claims of God and 
 Truth. 
 
 It is our love that is free. It is not enough to 
 see the truth and to see it clearly; we must also 
 love it. The angels saw with perfect clearness their 
 true position as creatures of God. They saw that 
 their own good should be subordinate to the universal 
 good ; that they were intended and designed primarily 
 for God and secondarily for themselves. They 
 recognized clearly in themselves fundamental in- 
 stinctive tendencies in harmony with this double 
 nature and destiny of theirs. And yet being free 
 
SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 8i 
 
 to know and love this plan, and throw themselves 
 into it, they chose otherwise. 
 
 And now we have to pause and see the terrible 
 ruin wrought by one sin in these the most glorious 
 of God's creatures, and then learn what a deadly 
 poison sin must be. As was the excellence of their 
 nature, the height to which they were called, such 
 was the depth to which they fell, and the vileness 
 of their corruption. Human nature, falling from a 
 lesser height, was not so irreparably shattered to 
 pieces, nor can any lost soul of man know the full 
 anguish of that " fire prepared for the devil and his 
 angels." For the capacity of suffering, like the 
 capacity of joy, is in proportion to the fineness and 
 delicacy of the spiritual nature. What are the pains 
 and pleasures of some sluggish reptile compared 
 with those of the highly organized frame of man ? 
 Similarly the angelic intellect suffers a perversion in 
 such sort that they who are by nature full of intelli- 
 gence and understanding, and ministers of light, are 
 now changed into powers of darkness — " the rulers 
 of the darkness of this world." This is notoriously 
 the eifect of sin, to induce a judicial blindness, so 
 that they who will not see when they can, cannot 
 see when they will. Once bring a false principle 
 into, any mind, and in proportion as that mind is 
 more active and vigorous it will be reduced to a 
 completer and more utter confusion. A torpid mind 
 will hold the poison of a lie unassimilated long 
 enough ; but where reason works actively, either 
 the false principle must be thrown out, or else the 
 whole mind brought into conformity with it. Now 
 G 
 
82 Sm JUDGED BY FAllU. 
 
 what is effected in the human mind by a gradual 
 process of leavening, is effected instantaneously in 
 minds unfettered by time and cerebral limitation, 
 such as those of the angels. Hence we can imagine 
 the total and radical revolution caused by sin in the 
 angelic intellect, inducing a confusion like that of a 
 panic-stricken army in retreat. Nor does this mean 
 a change in their essential nature ; but only a state 
 induced by their irrevocable free choice of a lie, to 
 which they must cleave for ever, having passed into 
 their eternal and unchanging condition. 
 
 What tastes sweet to a healthy palate tastes 
 bitter to one which is disordered. God, who is the 
 final perfection, the supreme desire and the joy of 
 the sound and healthy will, is the torment and horror 
 and death of the will perverted by sin. For it is at 
 once violently drawn towards Him by the funda- 
 mental and ineradicable instinct of its nature, and 
 yet driven back in consequence of its self-induced 
 antagonism to truth and goodness; and thus it is 
 racked and straitened unceasingly. It is as when 
 one whose eyes are weak with disease is compelled 
 to endure a glare of light tolerable to none but the 
 strongest vision. Thus the whole force of the angelic 
 will is turned from love to hatred ; and there is no 
 hatred so bitter as that of what we once loved most 
 ardently. To the fallen angels, God, and man (the 
 image of God), and love, truth, justice, holiness, 
 order, beauty, harmony (the cause and interest of 
 God), are all as hateful as they are dear to the saints 
 and unfallen angels. And all this ruin is in a true 
 sense the natural effect of sin ; of trying to stand in 
 
SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 83 
 
 stiff opposition against the irresistible onrush of 
 God's will and God's love. And when we say it is 
 the natural effect, we do not deny that such penalties 
 of sin are inflicted by the will of God. For all 
 natural effects result from the will or inclination of 
 nature, which is in truth the will of Him on whose 
 nature all natural laws depend. For it is indeed 
 the personal will of God which moves in all nature, 
 physical and spiritual, and is expressed in the laws 
 of nature. There are certain unessential determina- 
 tions of the law of sin's penal consequences which 
 may depend on God's free-will, but the substance of 
 the law is from His necessary will, from the very 
 nature of things in themselves, that is, of God in 
 Himself. If a man leaps over a precipice, he cannot 
 blame the rocks below for dashing him to pieces ; 
 nor can we blame God if, when we wilfully fling 
 ourselves against the immoveable rock of His truth 
 and love, we are shattered to atoms and eternally 
 destroyed. We can only blame ourselves, our own 
 free choice. 
 
 But how can a God of love entrust His creatures 
 with such a power of self-destruction ? Here again 
 we are complaining of the necessary will of God, as 
 though it were His free-will. The power of choice, 
 like every other grace, is given in resurrectionem ; for 
 our help, not for our hurt — it is intended for use, not 
 for abuse. If it is used for our hurt, in ruinani, that 
 is no part of God's will or design. Yet from the 
 very nature of the gift it must be capable of abuse in 
 those who are yet in a state of imperfection and 
 probation 
 
84 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 
 
 Self-formation, self-movement is the very idea of 
 life. An animal is not a machine moved by God as 
 by an outside force ; but it forms and moves itself 
 in virtue of internal principles which obey God's 
 will, and God's will is no physical or mechanical 
 force. 
 
 It is also the dignity and privilege of the created 
 spirit and of intelligent life, to be self-forming. We 
 become what we love ; we are true and good and 
 great by freely loving and choosing goodness and 
 truth and greatness ; we become divine by choosing 
 God. He puts before our eyes as an end to be 
 reached, as an ideal to be realized, a true self as 
 opposed to a false self. He offers us life and death, 
 sweet and bitter, and leaves us free to enter into 
 one heritage or the other. 
 
 The human spirit determines and forms itself to 
 some degree in its every free choice. Each act is of 
 its own nature a step taken in the right direction or 
 the wrong. It is implicitly a choice of an ideal 
 happiness in which God holds, either the sole 
 place, or at least the first place, or else in which 
 something takes precedence of God. But the angels 
 formed or misformed themselves finally and irre- 
 vocably in their first choice made in the full light 
 of all the knowledge of which they were capable. 
 
 The contemplation of this ruin which the fallen 
 spirits wrought in themselves by their sin ought to 
 breed in us that double fear of which we spoke 
 above ; first, a fear of those evil consequences them- 
 selves, which is altogether prudential and self- 
 regarding; secondly, a great personal fear of God, 
 
SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 
 
 from whose necessary will and law all these terrors 
 proceed, and of whose past anger they are the effect 
 and expression. For indeed that anger itself is 
 more to be dreaded than any of its consequences, 
 since our greatest good is to be loved by God ; and 
 our greatest evil to be hated by Him. 
 
 We must therefore look back over our life of 
 continual rebellion against the voice of our conscience 
 and of our better self, against the voice of God 
 within us, and think how great a weight of indig- 
 nation we have been storing up against ourselves, 
 albeit God's mercy has so far restrained the storm 
 from bursting upon us. No man ever violates the 
 laws of nature with impunity. The vengeance may 
 be slow, but it is sure. And the law of conscience 
 is just as inexorable, being no less an expression of 
 the same invincible will and love. 
 
 Yet in both orders there is room for miracle; 
 for the intervention of God's free-will, which can 
 supplement and determine, without contradicting 
 the natural and necessary course of things. He 
 who can heal the sick and raise the dead with His 
 word, can call the soul back from corruption ; He 
 who made a way through the Red Sea, can hold 
 back the billows of wrath already curving over the 
 sinner, ere they break and overwhelm him. 
 
 If we now turn to the story of the fall of our 
 first parents, the same lesson of sin's deadly character 
 is brought home to us again. We must dwell upon 
 the world as it would have been had Adam never 
 sinned nor forfeited all those preternatural pre- 
 rogatives and conditions of nature by which God 
 
86 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 
 
 designed to raise this earth to a paradise, to make 
 it the vestibule of Heaven itself. We must eliminate 
 sin, and concupiscence, and ignorance, and sickness, 
 and death from this world, and people it with 
 inhabitants who in happiness and holiness would be 
 more akin to angels than to men such as we are. 
 And with all this we have to contrast, not the 
 present world, whose corruption is mitigated with 
 the leaven of Christianity, whose despair is quelled 
 by the hope of redemption, but rather with such a 
 world as this would have been without the Gospel 
 and without all that light and grace by which it was 
 and is educated and prepared, so to say, for the 
 Gospel. 
 
 And this contrast presents us with a measure of 
 the evil of sin and of the vehemence of God's 
 abhorrence of sin, of His natural and necessary 
 antagonism to wickedness and pride. He had in 
 Adam raised man from the dust of his unassisted 
 frail humanity, to set him with the princes of his 
 people, almost on a level with the angels in respect 
 of light, and self-control, and immortaUty; their 
 equal in point of supernatural grace ; their superior 
 in virtue of the prospective Incarnation of God and 
 His alliance with our family. He had made him 
 little less than a god, crowning him with glory and 
 honour. But being in honour man had no under- 
 standing. He would not be less than a god, but 
 equal to God in the discernment of good and 
 evil ; and thus in the pride of knowledge he became 
 as the beasts that perish. He would clamber to a 
 yet higher eminence than God had allowed to him. 
 
SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 87 
 
 and in the very act fell headlong to earth again, 
 maimed and crippled. 
 
 Finally, we may consider the revealed conse- 
 quences of one single unrepented deadly sin. And 
 by a deadly sin we mean an act whereby the will 
 aims at an ideal of ultimate happiness in which the 
 possession of God and submission to Him does not 
 hold the first place, but is sacrificed to something 
 else. For in every free act, as has already been 
 said, we implicitly make for some such ideal. If 
 the act of its own nature and tendency is incom- 
 patible with God's supremacy among the objects of 
 our final bliss, it is a mortal or deadly sin. If it is 
 compatible with that supremacy and yet is directed 
 to some final object which is not itself referred and 
 subordinated to God, but loved besides and together 
 with God, in such sort that it makes for an ultimate 
 state of bliss whereof God is the chief, but not the 
 only factor — then the sin is venial. 
 
 " He who loves father or mother more than Me 
 is not worthy of Me," says God. It may be that 
 such a man loves God very tenderly and sincerely. 
 But he does not love Him with the love due to God 
 if God holds the second place to any creature or to 
 all creatures put together. If, however, God does 
 hold the first and supreme place in his scheme of 
 happiness, then the welfare of his parents or children 
 may be an object of desire in two ways. First, in 
 such sort that he loves his child just in the way 
 God wishes him to love it, in sympathy with God's 
 mind and will in the matter ; recognizing his own 
 affection as God-given and as indicating God's will ; 
 
88 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 
 
 seeing God in the creature and the creature in God. 
 And such love is only an extension of the love of 
 God ; and its object is in a way united with God 
 into one complex object, and loved in harmony with 
 God. When all creatures are so loved, then a man 
 loves God not only supremely, but solely, with his 
 whole heart. And this is the perfection of sanctity ; 
 a state which we have to strive to attain. Secondly, 
 loving God supremely, and being willing if necessary 
 to make the sacrifice of Abraham, a man may love 
 his child or his reputation or some other creature 
 ultimately and for its own sake, and in some way 
 co-ordinately with God, albeit in no sense supremely. 
 He may be willing for the sake of that creature, not 
 indeed to break with God, but to sacrifice God's 
 lesser interests in certain matters, just as a man who 
 would die for his corntry may shirk paying taxes and 
 other small duties of a good citizen. And such sins 
 are venial ; incompatible with perfect love, but not 
 incompatible with sufficient and substantial love. 
 God preponderates in the affections, but He does 
 not satisfy and absorb them entirely.^ 
 
 1 As the difference between venial sin and imperfection is a 
 source of difficulty to many, it may be well to note that "imper- 
 fection " is used positively and negatively. Positively, for a 
 deficiency of some perfection that is due and obligatory ; as e.g., we 
 speak of an imperfectly formed letter, meaning a misformed letter. 
 It implies, however, that the defect is slight and not substantial. So 
 used, an imperfection in our moral conduct is the same as a venial sin. 
 Negatively, the term is used to denote the absence of some perfec- 
 tion which is in no way due or obligatory, but which would add a 
 certain fulness and richness to the good action in question, and is a 
 matter perhaps of counsel. God is pleased if I am generous to the 
 poor : more pleased if I am more generous ; but not displeased if I 
 
SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 89 
 
 Our Saviour reveals to us the natural conse- 
 quences of deadly sin when He says, " I say unto 
 you, My friends : Fear not them that can kill the 
 body, and after that have nothing more that they 
 can do. But I will tell you whom you shall fear : 
 fear Him who, after He hath killed, hath power to 
 cast both soul and body into Hell, yea, I say unto 
 you, fear Him." And here notice that He speaks 
 to His friends ; to those whose hearts are now full 
 of loyal love for their Master. Yet neither they, nor 
 any of us, however fervent and devoted, can afford 
 to dispense with this safeguard of holy fear. And 
 who is it that speaks? Jesus Christ, the very 
 
 am not more generous. If in some sense the more perfect act is 
 also the more reasonable, it does not mean that the less perfect is 
 positively unreasonable, but merely less reasonable, provided it be 
 entirely good, so far as it goes, and contain no positive disorder. 
 To make the better course always obligatory, to deny that an 
 action is good because it might be better, to exclude all possibility 
 of exercising free generosity by works of counsel and supererogation, 
 is also to open the door to interminable scrupulosity and to make 
 our every action sinful — as Luther would have it. 
 
 Thus when we speak of " perfect love " as a matter of precept, 
 and when we imply that in some sense it is necessary and obligatory 
 that God should entirely satisfy and absorb our affections, we mean 
 that to love ourselves or any creature with a love which is not 
 referable and at least implicitly referred to the love of God, is, 
 however venial, a positive imperfection. Such love is "perfect" 
 because it lacks nothing due to it. But that we should love God 
 with an heroic intensity of fervour, that we should explicitly and 
 frequently refer all our affections and interests to Him, that we 
 should be devoted and enthusiastic in His service, that we should 
 embrace the counsels as well as fulfil the precepts — all this adds a 
 perfection and fulness to our love which, however reasonable, is in 
 no way due or obligatory, and the withholding of which, though 
 less reasonable, is in no positive way unreasonable, imperfect, or 
 inordinate ; but only in a negative way. 
 
go SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 
 
 Truth ; so calm and moderate and faithful in all 
 His utterances ; the same God who made man and 
 who made Hell; who became Man and died that 
 He might save man from Hell. He does not think 
 it a sordid thing to stand in awe of Him who is a 
 " consuming fire." He knows that such fear is the 
 very foundation and fibre of the tenderest and only 
 enduring filial love and self-forgetful devotion. 
 " Fear Him ; yea, I say to you, fear Him." How 
 He insists upon it ! Nor are we to forget that the 
 body is to bear its shaire in the soul's destiny for 
 evil as well as for good ; and that the fire prepared 
 for fallen spirits will contain all the virtuality of 
 bodily fire. 
 
 And again He says, " If thy right hand or right 
 foot cause thee to stumble, cut it off and cast it 
 from thee ; " that is, if your chief means of helpful- 
 ness or of livelihood should be to you an occasion 
 of deadly sin; or if that on which your pre-eminence 
 and success in the race of life depends should 
 separate you from your allegiance to God, " cut it 
 off" — a sharp, decisive, painful sacrifice — "and cast 
 it from you ; " put it as far from you as you can ; 
 shake it off like a poisonous viper; no regrets, no 
 looking back to the city of sin ! " And if thy right 
 eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee ; " 
 if father, mother, child, spouse, or friend, if one who 
 is dear to you as the apple of your eye, dearer far 
 than life itself, even if such a one should stand 
 between you and salvation, " pluck it out and cast 
 it from you ; " no compromise, no quarter. Surely 
 " this is a hard saying : who can bear it ? " Yet it is 
 
SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. g> 
 
 only what is said elsewhere: "He that loveth father, 
 or mother, or child more than Me is not worthy of 
 Me." It is only what the conscience of great and 
 good men, pagan or Christian, in all ages have told 
 them, that the claims of truth and justice are 
 paramount ; that he who refuses if need be to 
 sacrifice his only son rather than he, is not worthy 
 of the truth ; that death is a less evil than merited 
 dishonour. 
 
 And why am I to nerve myself to such anguish ? 
 " It is better for thee," says our Lord. He does not 
 appeal to His own goodness, which claims my entire 
 love and service, but simply to my prudential self- 
 regard. And He assures me, as one who knows 
 and sees the Hell He is speaking of, that all I can 
 suffer in this life through loss of livelihood, through 
 failure, through poverty and contempt, through 
 loneliness and separation and the rending of my 
 heart-strings, is not worth a thought compared with 
 the misery and anguish of that eternal, unchanging 
 state of destruction and spiritual death, that 
 "gehenna of fire where the worm dieth not and 
 the fire is not quenched." And if that is what 
 mortal sin means; if that is the measure of its 
 hidden malice and of its vehement antagonism to 
 God's goodness, and, therefore, the measure of the 
 Divine anger and indignation which it necessarily 
 excites, have I not great reason to feel shame and 
 confusion at the thought of myself as I must appear 
 in the eyes of God, seeing what my past life has 
 been, and how persistently I have opposed God's 
 almighty will and love, constraining me through my 
 
92 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 
 
 conscience, urging me ever onward and upward, 
 yet ever repulsed or at best unheeded. 
 
 And so I betake myself to the Cross whereon 
 God is dying in torments to save me from Hell ; and 
 I marvel and wonder why it is He has singled me 
 out for so much mercy, and patience, and forgiveness. 
 I think what He might have done to me a thousand 
 times over, in all justice, leaving me to the natural 
 consequences of my madness and folly; and I look up 
 to His bleeding brow and wounded hands and feet and 
 pierced Heart, and see what He has done instead. 
 mira circa nos tuce pietatis dignatio ! O inestimabilis 
 dilectio caritatis, ut servum redimeres Filium tradidisti ! 
 — " O wondrous condescension of Thy pity in our 
 regard 1 O unspeakable tenderness of charity ! to 
 ransom Thy slave Thou didst deliver up Thy 
 Son ! " And if the thought of His merited wrath 
 and indignation filled me with shame and confusion, 
 my shame is multiplied a hundred-fold when I 
 contemplate His patience and love. And then at 
 His feet with Mary Magdalene and in the presence 
 of His Blessed Mother weeping for my sins, I ask 
 myself what have I done for Christ in the past ; or 
 rather what have I not done against Him ? What 
 am I doing for Christ now? What am I going to 
 do for Christ in the future? And then I offer 
 myself to be His for ever. Domine, quid me vis 
 facer e ? — " Lord, what wouldst Thou have me to 
 do?" 
 
SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 
 
 "We have never been slaves to any man: how sayest 
 thou : You shall be free ? Jesus answered them : Amen, 
 amen, I say unto you, that whosoever committeth sin is the 
 servant of sin." — St. John viii. 33. 
 
 We have now to ask ourselves what mere reason 
 can tell us about the nature of sin. Not that reason 
 unassisted could ever have got as far as it can now 
 get since faith has gone before and pointed out the 
 way. Faith tells us many things that are well 
 within the compass of reason; but reason would 
 never have thought of them if faith had not suggested 
 them. 
 
 There are times and moods for all of us — all who 
 are human, and not wanting in that frailty which, 
 mingling with the higher and nobler elements of our 
 nature, gives it its characteristic pathos — there are 
 times when we think that if there were no God, no 
 future life, no restrictions and prohibitions, life 
 would be aimless indeed, inexplicable, unmeaning, 
 yet for its brief span so much easier, more painless, 
 more enjoyable, thfit we almost regret our high 
 destiny as sons of God, and envy those whose 
 consciences have grown callous to scruples and 
 remorse. The constant peace and blessedness of 
 God's service makes but a slight dint in our memory, 
 
9 4 SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 
 
 compared with the occasional crosses and restraints 
 which are the small price we pay for it. To our 
 ingratitude it seems that all that is right is hard, 
 all that is wrong is easy, that God's ways are 
 perversely uphill and narrow, and the ways of sin 
 broad and downhill ; and we never look to the fruit 
 and issue of one and the other. 
 
 It is the policy of Satan to represent our loving 
 Father as an arbitrary tyrant, ruling us as slaves in 
 His own interest, or as an austere Master, reaping 
 where He has not sown and gleaning where He has 
 not scattered ; as one delighting in restrictions and 
 prohibitions for their own sake, and, as it were, in 
 order to find new occasions for the exercise and 
 display of authority. So it was that the tempter 
 argued with our first parents in Paradise, and so it 
 is that he tempts us all daily by whispered insinua- 
 tions to that same effect. Well does St. Ignatius 
 speak of him as the "enemy of human nature." 
 Hating God, he necessarily hates God's image and 
 likeness and all that God loves ; and his one aim is 
 to obliterate and defile the likeness, since his malice 
 is impotent against the original. Still more, ever 
 since God in Christ has wed to Himself the human 
 family, and thus raised man above the highest 
 angels, does the " enemy of human nature " long to 
 degrade and profane what God has so exalted and 
 sanctified. 
 
 No, God is not arbitrary ; and if His command- 
 ment and discipline is grievous to us in our present 
 state, it is only because all growth and development 
 is necessarily attended with pain — moral growth no 
 
SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 95 
 
 less than physical. It involves the death of the old, 
 and the birth of the new, a continual process ot 
 ceasing and becoming. It must be so in finite 
 creatures drawn forth from nothing and reaching 
 their last perfection in process of time. It is the 
 nature of time itself, which is but the dying and 
 passing away of the present to give place to the 
 future. " Except a grain of wheat fall into the 
 ground and die, it remaineth alone ; but if it die it 
 beareth much fruit." Wherefore if God afflicts and 
 chastens us, it is not willingly (that is, with pleasure), 
 but reluctantly ; it is not merely because He chooses, 
 but because He must. It is not because He forbids 
 sin that it is evil ; but because it is hurtful to us, 
 therefore He forbids it. As necessarily and as 
 vehemently as He loves His own nature, so neces- 
 sarily, does He love man, the image of His nature, 
 and hate all that profanes and defiles that image ; 
 so that God's absolute detestation and abhorrence 
 of sin is only another aspect and dimension of that 
 infinite love, wherewith He necessarily loves His 
 own Divine goodness. Nor even are the sanctions 
 with which He enforces His necessary laws alto- 
 gether arbitrary. Hell itself is as much the fruit 
 and outcome of sin as death is of starvation or of 
 mortal disease ; it is as much a natural law as the 
 sequence of poverty upon prodigality ; it is dependent 
 indeed upon the will of God, but not upon His free- 
 will. Men are not sent to Hell, but they go there. 
 That he who walks over a precipice should fall to 
 the bottom, or that he who plucks out his eyes 
 should be blind, is necessarily the will of God — as 
 
96 SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 
 
 are all natural sequences — but it is not a result of 
 His free choice and arbitrary decree. " Concupis- 
 cence when it is conceived bringeth forth sin, and 
 sin when it is finished generates death," — by a 
 natural and necessary process. 
 
 However, it is not merely because it leads to the 
 everlasting torments of Hell that the path of sin is 
 thorny and perilous. Hell is the natural issue of 
 sin, just because sin is so bad in itself; it is the evil 
 fruit of an evil tree ; it is sin worked out to its full 
 and unimpeded consequences, and given unrestrained 
 dominion over us. And, in like manner, it is not 
 simply because the steep and narrow way leads to 
 Eternal Life that it is to be preferred and followed, 
 but because it is the right way, the best way, and 
 really the happiest way ; because, notwithstanding a 
 certain amount of surface suffering, the yoke of 
 Christ is easy, and the burden of His Cross is light 
 compared with the yoke and burden of sin ; because 
 Wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness, and all 
 her paths are peace. 
 
 Limited as our point of view must be, and feeble 
 as are our powers of intuition and reasoning, yet we 
 can, to some little extent, see for ourselves that what 
 God forbids is really bad for us in the long run, 
 however pleasant it may seem at first. If we cannot 
 always understand the evil of one solitary sinful act 
 itself, and apart from all its consequences, yet we can 
 form such an estimate of those consequences, both to 
 the individual and to human society at large, as to 
 understand why God, who loves us so vehemently 
 and irresistibly, must be so inexorably opposed to 
 
SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 97 
 
 the first beginnings of such harm ; so keen to stamp 
 out the first spark of so destructive a conflagration. 
 "Behold," says St. James, "how great a matter a 
 little fire kindleth." We ourselves hate the very 
 name or even the suggestion of those things which 
 we have cause to know to be evil and hurtful ; and 
 similarly God's love for us leads Him to a pro- 
 portional hate of all that is even remotely connected 
 with our spiritual misery and destruction. 
 
 If we want to know what sin is and what it leads 
 to, we must not judge it merely by those effects 
 which fall under our eyes every day. For no one is 
 so thoroughly depraved as to give way to any sin 
 without the least attempt at restraint ; much less to 
 give way to all sins. Far less likely is it that society 
 at large or any great part of society should throw off 
 every yoke and abandon itself freely to evil inclina- 
 tions of every description. Yet it is only by making 
 some such supposition that we can form any adequate 
 idea of the hurtfulness of sin. Let a man give way 
 to laziness and sloth without any restraint, and at 
 once we see life becomes inipossible for him. One 
 such example of inertness is enough at times to 
 destroy a whole family and bring it to poverty and 
 misery. What if the whole family were made up of 
 such members ? What if all society were so consti- 
 tuted? Plainly this vice alone — whose seed is in 
 every one of us — would involve the speedy extinction 
 of the human race were it let have its own way. 
 
 How soon and how utterly the habit of telling 
 lies ruins the moral character of its victims ! how 
 quickly it extends, and how deeply its roots reach 
 
 H 
 
98 SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 
 
 down into the soul ! How incurable it is ! How it 
 paralyzes the gift of speech, whose purpose is to 
 mirror the soul. And when the disease becomes 
 epidemic, how ruinous it is to mutual trust and 
 charity and reverence ! Yet perhaps we have seldom 
 met an wholly unmitigated liar who made no pre- 
 tence whatever of veracity; and even the most 
 degraded populations have offered some kind of 
 resistance to the spread of the practice. ' Perhaps 
 one lie in itself may at times seem utterly harmless ; 
 not only free from all hurtful consequences, but 
 fruitful in good consequences, conducive to peace, 
 and charity, and justice. But there is an infinite 
 distance between the man who has never lied, whose 
 veracity is still " virgin," and him who has crossed 
 the line, and who has given proof that his allegiance 
 to truth is not absolute, but qualified. It may be a 
 little thing, but like so many other little things, it 
 involves a great principle. A lie, as such, is an 
 apostasy from the cause of God; a concession to 
 the cause of darkness and deception. " It is only a 
 venial sin," one may say. Yes, but God would 
 rather see you blind, halt, and maimed than that 
 you should commit a venial sin ; so differently does 
 He judge of what is hurtful to you. A lie, how 
 harmless soever, how helpful soever, is in His eyes 
 like to the first plague-spot of a disease which has 
 swept nations off the face of the earth ; it is a little 
 germ full of the most virulent poison, and with 
 unlimited powers of self-dissemination. 
 
 We may consider anger in the same way ; the 
 suffering it causes to its victims and to all those 
 
SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 99 
 
 around them ; what crimes it leads to — blasphemy, 
 cruelty, violence, injury; yet rarely is it wholly 
 unrestrained. What then if it had full play ; if it 
 were indulged in universally? Who could live in 
 such a hell upon earth ? And so of resentment, 
 peevishness, discontent, sarcasm, ill-nature, pride, 
 arrogance, boasting, meanness, avarice, selfishness, 
 fraud, dishonesty ; not to speak of coarser vices like 
 drunkenness and impurity. Let any one of them 
 run its course unimpeded, and it stands to reason 
 that it will destroy the happiness of mankind, and 
 make life, individual and social, altogether unbear- 
 able and impossible. 
 
 It is, then, with the nature of things that our 
 quarrel is, and not with God. We want to be free 
 from the necessary consequences of our own actions; 
 to keep what we have thrown away ; we barter our 
 birthright for a mess of potage, and account our- 
 selves wronged because we are held to our bargain. 
 
 We see clearly that it is by the repetition ot 
 single acts that habits are formed and customs 
 become general ; and that though no one act can 
 produce the effect, yet unless single acts are forbidden 
 absolutely, each man will dispense himself on every 
 occasion. And notwithstanding we act as the 
 improvident spendthrift who, regarding each indi- 
 vidual economy as insignificant, saves nothing, and 
 ends in beggary. 
 
 Again, our reason and intuition tell us that our 
 whole nature is so designed and intended, that the 
 spirit should have dominion over the flesh ; that we 
 should never be swayed by mere feelings, passions 
 
SIN JUDGED BV REASON. 
 
 and emotions, except so far as they have first been 
 summoned before the tribunal of conscience and 
 there approved. This is what we call self-control, 
 or being master of oneself; and every virtue or 
 moral strength is some particular form of self-mastery, 
 while every vice is some particular form of self-slavery. 
 Now, though we feel a sort of shame about merely 
 physical infirmities, to which we are necessarily 
 subjected, yet it is quite distinct in character from 
 that shame we experience in being convicted ol 
 moral weakness, of want of self-control where such 
 control is both possible and due, e.g., in being 
 detected in greediness, or meanness, or untruthful- 
 ness, or dishonesty. We recognize that our nature is 
 thereby perverted and distorted, nay, rather inverted, 
 since what should be under is uppermost ; the flesh 
 leads and the spirit follows : Servi dominati sunt 
 nostri — " Those who should be our slaves, are our 
 masters." We feel the unmanliness of sin and vice. 
 Indeed, we are wont to characterize this lack of self- 
 mastery as effeminate, brutal, savage — words which 
 all confess that developed humanity implies perfect 
 self-control. Hence even when we sin we invariably 
 try to deceive ourselves and others by finding reasons 
 to justify our conduct, as though we scorned to acl 
 on mere inclination or otherwise than on principle, 
 thereby tacitly confessing that we are thoroughly 
 ashamed of ourselves for having acted otherwise. 
 
 And together with this natural shame at our 
 moral nakedness, there is a more or less explicit sense 
 of guilt or of offence committed against that neces- 
 sary will of God made known to us in the ordinations 
 
SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 
 
 of nature and in the design of our own spiritual 
 constitution ; a sense that we have not only marred 
 ourselves, but angered Him whose work and image 
 we are. All this, be it noted, is something quite dis- 
 tinct from the sense of having merited the censure 
 of our fellow-men, or the censure that our own 
 mind tells us we should pass upon another who acted 
 similarly. It is distinct, moreover, from the appre- 
 hension of any pains or punishments our sin may 
 bring upon us, of any pleasures and rewards it may 
 deprive us of. These apprehensions may co-exist 
 with the sense of guilt and moral shame, and even 
 predominate in our thought where conscience has 
 grown enfeebled, but they are merely prudential and 
 self-regarding motives, born of a love, right in itself, 
 but no way akin to that unselfish love of objective 
 rightness and of the Divine will which finds utter- 
 ance in the dictates of conscience. 
 
 But besides all the positive harm which sin 
 works in us, we must remember that it excludes 
 and deprives us of that Divine goodness and 
 happiness for which we were created, namely, the 
 unselfish love of our God and Maker and of our 
 fellow-men in God and for God. It ties us down 
 to what is sordid and transitory; it founds our 
 happiness on the shifting sand, and not on the 
 eternal rock. Pride is incompatible with the praise 
 of God ; self-sufficiency with reverence ; self-seeking 
 with service. In every sense, therefore, sin is our 
 ruin and destruction ; it is the death and corruption 
 of our soul ; and it is only because at present we 
 can drug ourselves with the narcotic of pleasure, or 
 
SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 
 
 of distracting excitement, and because the spirit is 
 not alone with itself but can pour itself out on 
 creatures, that we do not already somewhat experi- 
 ence the torments of the damned by a faint fore- 
 taste. 
 
 Yet all this objective harm and disorder, this 
 hurt to ourselves and to others, is the least evil of 
 sin, even as reason considers the matter. For our 
 conscience testifies not only to a violation of order, 
 but to a defiance of the will of the ordainer ; it tells 
 us that sin is an opposition of person to person, 
 and of will to will; an unjust opposition of the 
 creature to its God and Creator ; of the feeble and 
 finite will to the omnipotent and irresistible will of 
 the Divine Goodness and Love. We feel that we 
 have made ourselves hateful to the All-holy and All- 
 mighty. To be loved, no less than to love, is our 
 last end or beatitude — for all personal love is im- 
 perfect and restless till it is mutual. We seek, not 
 God's gifts, but Himself, just as nothing we give 
 Him and do for Him will suffice if we withhold our 
 very self. Sicut non sufficeret tibi, omnibus habitis, 
 prater me ; ita nee mihi placere poterit quidquid dederis, 
 te non oblato — " As the whole creation could not 
 satisfy thee without Me, so neither can all thy gifts 
 satisfy Me if thou give not thyself." ^ As it is by 
 loving Him that we give ourselves to God and He 
 possesses us, so it is by loving us that He gives 
 Himself to us and we possess Him. To be hated 
 by God, to be the object of His anger and dislike, is 
 in itself, apart from all other evil consequences in 
 Imitation, iv. 8. 
 
SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 103 
 
 the way of punishment, the greatest evil that can 
 befall us. 
 
 And it is precisely as involving a resistance of 
 will to will that sin generates anger, like the steel 
 which strikes fire from the flint. We know this 
 from ourselves. However grieved we may be for 
 the hurt done to us, or the opposition offered to our 
 wishes by some inanimate or irresponsible cause, 
 we are not angry as with a person. But voluntary 
 opposition, especially if we conceive it to be unjust, 
 excites first annoyance, then indignation, which 
 grows and gathers like an angry storm-cloud, and 
 bursts at last in a fury of vengeance and reprisal. So 
 it is that by opposing the will and determination of 
 omnipotent Love, sin stores up Divine indignation 
 against the sinner, which when let loose from the 
 restraining hand of mercy, will drive him from the 
 presence and favour of God as chaff is driven before 
 the face of the tempest. 
 
 And here St. Ignatius would have me contrast 
 myself with God, person with person ; and to this 
 end first to dwell upon the absolute insignificance 
 of my own personality, as but one of the almost 
 intinite multitudes of men which have peopled the 
 earth. A man may be somebody in his own house- 
 hold and family; though even there he is soon 
 forgotten — but what is he in a great crowd or 
 assembly ? what as one of a nation ? what as one 
 of a race? — and yet what is that race compared 
 with the numberless orders of spiritual personalities 
 which belong to the other world ? My moral and 
 personal insignificance therefore is hardly less than 
 
104 SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 
 
 my physical insignificance as an atom of this 
 material universe, or as a solitary ripple on the 
 endless sea of time. And' then I am to contrast 
 my frailty and weakness with the Divine strength 
 and endurance, my fleeting life with God's 
 eternity ; what am I but an autumn leaf that 
 trembles on the bough and is caught away by 
 the first breeze — -Folium quod vento rapitur, as Job 
 says ; on what a slender thread I hang ! What is 
 my physical force compared with the forces of 
 nature ; what stand could I make against the rage 
 of the ocean, or against the earthquake, or the 
 thunderbolt ; what resistance could I offer to the 
 impetus of a planet ; wha*: to all the forces ol 
 the universe leagued against me ? And yet God 
 moves them with His finger, nay, with the least 
 breath of His Love, of His Holy Spirit — the Digitus 
 Dei. And it is against the infinite impetus of that 
 Love, against the omnipotence of that subsistent 
 Will, that I set myself when I sin. I defy the laws 
 not only of the universe, but of the Builder of the 
 universe ; I endeavour not only to turn aside the 
 course of Nature, but to change that Divine Nature 
 whence created Nature derives all her force and 
 necessity. Is it wonderful if sin issues sooner or 
 later in the destruction of the sinner ? 
 
 Further, in every sin I set up my judgment 
 against God's judgment ; my wisdom against His ; 
 I pretend to know better than He what is good for 
 me, what I ought to do. Or I refuse to obey 
 because I do not see the why and the wherefore. 
 I, from my little corner of this darkened cave of a 
 
SIN JUDGED BY REASON. S05 
 
 universe, guessing from passing shadows and gleams 
 as to what is going on above and beyond, pretend 
 to an equality with Him whose eyes are over all 
 the earth, and see from end to end of time. Yet 
 what do I know compared with so many around 
 me ? What, compared with the collective know- 
 ledge of the race ? And what is this, compared 
 with what is knowable to man and may yet be 
 known ? And this again is to God's wisdom and 
 knowledge as the light of a glow-worm to the light 
 of the sun. How sickening and irritating is the 
 scepticism or the dogmatism of the half-educated 
 mind inflated with its modicum of late-acquired, 
 ill-digested knowledge ! Yet is it anything like as 
 disgusting as must be the self-sufficiency and vain 
 intellectual conceit involved in every sin ? 
 
 And then I am to contrast the Divine good- 
 ness with my own vileness and poverty of body 
 and soul ; dwelling on this corpus humilitatis — " this 
 body of humiliation," this burden of corruptible 
 flesh, with all its infirmities normal and morbid, 
 designed to be a perpetual Memento of our deri- 
 vation from the slime of the earth. Memento homo, 
 says the Church to us year by year, quia pulvis es 
 et in pulverem reverteris — "Remember, O man, that 
 dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return." 
 Yet how little do men seem to remember it when 
 they strut about with their heads in the air, as 
 though they were not at best whited sepulchres ; as 
 though they did not need continual tending and 
 cleansing in order not to be altogether loathsome and 
 horrible ; as though they were not at every turn liable 
 
io6 SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 
 
 to be seized upon by one of those legion diseases 
 which He in ambush round our path in the service 
 of inevitable death and decay. In making man, in 
 yoking the lowest grade of spiritual substance to an 
 animal carcase, God's wisdom seemed to have devised 
 a being to whom pride should be impossible and 
 ridiculous, in wiiom it should find no food to feed 
 on, no cleft or cranny to lurk in. Even under the 
 most favourable conditions, if God has endowed me 
 with perfect health, vigour, strength, and beauty, 
 how perishable and transitory it is ; how slight and 
 common an excellence it is ; above all, how entirely 
 a gift of God through natural and necessary causes ! 
 When I think of all the beauty and grace and 
 wisdom displayed in physical nature which has 
 inspired so much joy and worship in hearts of 
 kindred beauty, and when I remember that all 
 this, together with that of countless worlds as fair 
 and wonderful, is but a hint at that undreamt-of 
 Beauty which is God, surely I must be in straits 
 for something to pride myself on if I can find aught 
 in my body. Yet it cannot be denied that perfect 
 bodily health and beauty often breed a spirit of 
 independence, an insolence of pride, which leads to 
 sin. 
 
 If I turn from my body to my soul, there I find 
 still less to boast of. Doubtless as it leaves God's 
 hands, the soul of man, however lowly its rank in 
 the spiritual order, is immeasurably greater and 
 nobler than anything in the world of matter. Yet 
 as there is no animal born so feeble and unprotected 
 as man, so urgently in need of assistance and nurture 
 
SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 107 
 
 and education, depending as he does on the family 
 and on society for his proper development, in like 
 manner his soul's greatness is all potential and in 
 capacity, and depends for . its development on union 
 and association with God. It is by nature a re- 
 ceptacle or dwelling-place of God's light and love, 
 and derives all its goodness and beauty from His 
 indwelling. For as the body when the soul is 
 withdrawn becomes so much carrion and rotten- 
 ness, so the soul when it* ceases to "lean on her 
 beloved," to cling to Him as the vine to the elm, 
 becomes corrupt and abominable beyond all measure. 
 What brightness has the mirror apart from the sun, 
 and what greatness or goodness has the soul which 
 casts off God ? If this is true of all created spirits, 
 it is truest of man's soul, the least and feeblest, 
 albeit the dearest of all God's dear children. And 
 when the corruption of spiritual death once sets in, 
 then indeed, as St. Ignatius says, the soul becomes 
 no better than a centre of pestilential infection 
 streaming out on all sides. 
 
 We can perhaps never sufficiently realize how 
 sin ramifies in its harmful consequences as long as 
 the world lasts ; how it is a httle spore which of its 
 own nature tends to multiply with fearful rapidity 
 long after the act has been forgiven by God and 
 forgotten by us. And this gives another point of 
 sharp contrast between the vileness of my own soul 
 and the goodness of God, whom I offend so easily. 
 From Him as from its source flows out all that is 
 good in this world, whether in Nature or the sc-:l 
 of man ; all the light and glory of creation radiates 
 
io8 SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 
 
 from this Sun, all darkness and death is only a name 
 for His absence ; while the only absolute and un- 
 qualified evil which mars His work is sin, and sin 
 flows from the perverse .will of man to " increase 
 and multiply and replenish the earth," and to change 
 it from Paradise into Hell. 
 
 Vile as I am, however, soul and body, by sin I 
 put myself on an equality with God ; as though 
 I were as good as He. I refuse to accept a position 
 of subjection and inferiority. It is so with every 
 rebel and his liege-lord ; he is always a leveller and 
 an upstart. We smile now superciliously at the 
 old Ptolemaic astronomy, which represented the sun 
 as whirled round the earth once a day. We show 
 how absurd it would be to suppose a body so vast 
 should sweep through a circle with a radius ot 
 ninety million miles in twenty-four hours ; how 
 much easier it is to suppose the daily revolution oi 
 the earth on its axis ; especially when the fixed 
 stars, whose mass and distance we now can con- 
 jecture less inadequately, offer each of them a similar 
 and greater difficulty. And yet, when we sin we are 
 guilty of an immeasurably greater absurdity. We 
 make self the centre round which God and every- 
 thing else is to revolve ; our will is to rule, and 
 God's is to be ruled. This is surely the worst part 
 of sin, the personal opposition of the creature to its 
 Creator, of will to will ; of our self-love to the love 
 of God ; the objective harm, which is the matter oi 
 prohibition, is a little evil compared with this; 
 though viewed in another aspect this too is an 
 objective disorder beyond all other. For obedience 
 
SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 109 
 
 is itself a virtue, as much as any other virtue which 
 we practise under obedience ; and if reason is 
 violated by a disturbance of the due relation between 
 men, or by faults against temperance or self-control, 
 so most of all when man sets his will against the 
 will of God. 
 
 Here St. Ignatius would have me pause and 
 gather up the results of my recent reflections ; 
 look back on that long indictment I brought 
 home to myself in the review of my past life; weigh- 
 ing well the severity of the Divine justice revealed 
 to me in Holy Writ ; seeing iinally how all this 
 harmonizes with the dictates of my natural reason, 
 which is forced to cry out : "Justus es, Domine, et 
 rectum judicium tuum — "Just art Thou, O God, and 
 right in Thy judgments." And if God has opened 
 my eyes and touched my heart, I shall surely break 
 out into a cry of astonishment at God's goodness 
 and mercy, which has borne with me so long and so 
 patiently. For when He might most justly over 
 and over again have cut me off in the midst of my 
 sins, or withdrawn all His richer graces, and suffered 
 me to run my own perverse course from bad to 
 worse. He has instead pursued me, and overwhelmed 
 me with forgiveness and generosity ; He has served 
 me in all His creatures, has fed and supported me; 
 He has given me all my life, movement, thought, 
 and will — nay, the very acts and energies I turned 
 against Him were the gifts and evidences of His 
 present love. He might well have sent His angels 
 to destroy me, but instead, He gave them special 
 charge over me to keep me in all my ways. Instead 
 
SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 
 
 of turning a deaf ear to the prayers of His Blessed 
 Mother and of His saints, and forbidding them so 
 much as to mention my name, He not only harkened, 
 but longed to be entreated in my behalf. In a word, 
 when every claim to His forbearance was forfeited, 
 when He might have loathed me in my degradation. 
 He pitied me instead, and secretly drew me to a 
 better mind, to a desire for His service ; and when 
 I was yet afar off He could bear the separation no 
 longer, but ran out to meet me, and silenced my 
 confession with a kiss of peace. 
 
 And so I betake myself once more to the foot of 
 His Cross, and marvel what there can be in my 
 miserable soul that "God can so love ; what has 
 enslaved Him to this degree of self-abasement. And 
 from marvelling I pass to love and adoration, and 
 thence to the sorrow of a broken and contrite heart. 
 
SIN AND SUFFERING. 
 
 " Amen I say to thee, thou shalt not go out from thence 
 till thou repay the last farthing." — St. Matt. v. 26. 
 
 In the preceding considerations we have spoken of 
 sin chiefly as of a personal offence and estrangement 
 from God. But how does this offence re-act upon 
 our own soul ? We know that God is the life of the 
 soul here and hereafter. The mind is made for 
 truth, as the eye is for colour or the ear for sound. 
 Knowledge is the life of the mind ; colour is the 
 life of the eye ; music is the life of the ear ; God is 
 the life of the whole soul, mind and heart. As the 
 ear is dead till music strikes it into life ; so the soul, 
 till God breaks upon its vision. Without God, it is 
 dead. 
 
 Yet there is the negative death of inaction, 
 and the positive death of destruction. To hate 
 is more than not to love. When the soul hates 
 what is lovable; when it loves what is hateful, 
 then it is dead with the death of conscious destruc- 
 tion. This is the " eternal death " which the Gospel 
 opposes to " eternal life." As the exercise of any 
 faculty concerning its fitting and proper object is 
 attended with joy, so pain results from its applica- 
 tion to a wrong object. It is like forcing a lock with 
 a wrong key. By sin we do not merely cease to be 
 
SIN AMD SUFFERING. 
 
 God's friends, but we become His enemies; and this 
 with a mutual enmity. If it is the greatest ot 
 spiritual consolations to be at one with God ; it is 
 the greatest of miseries to be driven from His face. 
 A stone is not drawn more necessarily to the centre 
 of the earth than is the created spirit to the bosom 
 of God. Were the stone conscious of being held 
 back from its goal, still more of being driven from 
 it by some contrary violence, this consciousness 
 would mean misery. To continue the metaphor : the 
 nearer it approaches the centre, the more forcibly 
 and impetuously is it borne on. So when the soul 
 shakes off the fetters of matter, space, and time, and 
 enters its proper spiritual ether, its flight towards 
 God is as that of a bird, no longer wearying itself 
 with futile flutterings upwards, but freed from the 
 snare of the fowler, and steered to its home by an 
 unerring, God-given instinct. What then, if opposed 
 to this fundamental attraction of our whole spiritual 
 being, this blind restless craving for God, there be 
 found an overmastering repulsion, so that we are at 
 once driven and drawn ; drawn, by the deep-down, 
 ineradicable instinct of our spiritual nature and 
 constitution ; driven, in virtue of the self-induced 
 distortion of that nature ; driven, by those same 
 forces and energies which we were left free either 
 to bring into harmony with our primary impulse or 
 else into conflict and discord with it. The pain of 
 conscious loss^ is no mere negation, but a sharp 
 
 1 There is conscious and unconscious loss ; and there is the con- 
 sciousness of a loss apprehended distinctly (as when one has lost his 
 sight) and that of a loss vaguely guessed at (as in one born blind). 
 
SIN AND SUFFERING. 113 
 
 agony, whose poignancy, no doubt, is proportioned 
 to the clearness and deliberateness of the soul's 
 aversion from God. The same impetus of Divine 
 love wfhich hurries along to their bliss those souls 
 that yield themselves to its sway, crushes to 
 powder those who dare to oppose it, or stand stiff 
 against it ; the same light which fills the eyes of the 
 saints with glory, dazzles and darkens and withers 
 the eyes unanointed by grace ; the same fire which 
 warms and gladdens and comforts God's friends, 
 scorches, torments, and consumes His enemies. 
 God is the life of the soul, and God is the death of 
 the soul, "for our God is a consuming fire."' No 
 one, save those to whom it is given, can see Him 
 and live. When the unpardoned soul passes " from 
 out the bourne of time and space " into the change- 
 less instant of eternity, where longer and shorter 
 have no meaning, and joy and sorrow no divisible 
 dimension of duration, it finds itself for ever fixed 
 in a state of destruction; "for ever shattered, and 
 the same for ever." In that first eternal pang its 
 punishment is complete, for it is not more shattered 
 because it is longer shattered. " As the tree falls 
 there shall it lie." 
 
 And now we turn to the other element of sin — 
 the material element, as it used to be called. We 
 must view it as a disarrangement of God's plans ; a 
 spoiling of His designs ; a disturbance of the order 
 
 1 We do not mean, of course, that God is to be identified with 
 the "fire which is not quenched," but that the thought of God's 
 goodness torments the soul of the wicked as much as it gladdens 
 the soul of the saint. 
 
114 SIN AND SUFFERING. 
 
 of creation ; an interference with God's created 
 glory. For God in His goodness has willed to 
 surround Himself with creation as with a halo of 
 glory which in no way indeed can add to His own 
 uncreated brightness and beauty, but of which glory 
 He is truly the subject, even as a king receives an 
 extrinsic glory from his retinue and the pageantry 
 of his royal Court. Here it is that God can in a 
 true sense be said to be dependent upon us; we 
 can further or hinder His designs; we can make 
 reparation for our own transgressions and the 
 transgressions of others. 
 
 When we examine most of God's precepts 
 and prohibitions we find, as far as our poor 
 reason carries us, that they are all directed by 
 His loving wisdom to the good of creation in 
 general and of man in particular ; and we can often 
 see how sin is naturally fraught with mischievous 
 consequences for the individual and for society. 
 Yet until we can mount up to God's throne and 
 view things with the eyes of Him " whose wisdom 
 reaches from end to end, and disposes of all things 
 sweetly," we can never hope to see more than an 
 infinitesimal fraction of the consequences of any 
 single human act. For example, a man tells a lewd 
 story — a little sin perhaps for him. He may mention 
 it in confession or he may forget it. It is passed 
 from mouth to mouth as time goes on, and gives 
 birth to a foul thought here and there; and this 
 springs up in the fancy unbidden a thousand times, 
 and draws others in its train ; and perchance the 
 thought fructifies in deeds and actions, themselves 
 
SIN AND SUFFERING. 115 
 
 fruitful of others. Who can compute the harm or 
 tell where it will stop, if ever ? And so of many a 
 lie; many a harsh and unkind word; many a slander 
 and calumny; many a theft or injustice; many a 
 negligence and omission. How terrible it would be 
 were God to disclose to us the sum total of that 
 harm in the world which shall eventually be traceable 
 to our faults ! I think we should be driven to despair 
 at once. Still more when we consider that a blemish 
 is more hateful according as the beauty which it mars 
 is greater. Could we but enter into the grandeur 
 and glory of God's design, we should be utterly 
 confounded to see how stupendous a work we had 
 spoilt and profaned. Of course, when we sin we do 
 not know all this; nor do we always think very 
 explicitly of what we do know. Yet we are justly 
 blamed and held accountable, like little children 
 who are told not to meddle with the clock or with 
 some other piece of machinery which they don't 
 understand. We know very well that sin is 
 forbidden for good reasons, by God, whose provi- 
 dence is ' over all ; and that we ourselves are not 
 likely to form any adequate notion of those reasons, 
 since they are as wide-reaching as creation. But 
 in our littleness we want to be as God, knowing 
 good and evil for ourselves and measuring it by oui 
 own ken. 
 
 This disorder which sin produces in creation, 
 great as it may be, is yet a finite evil. It is 
 an injury done to God's garment, but not touch- 
 ing His Person. As forbidden by Him, it cannot 
 be committed without an accompanying personal 
 
ii6 StN AND SUFFERING. 
 
 offence. But the two elements must not be 
 confounded. If I annoy my friend by upset- 
 ting his house and furniture, I cannot undo his 
 annoyance. That is for him to do in his free 
 forgiveness. But if after I am forgiven I neglect to 
 re-arrange his affairs so far as I can, I tacitly 
 reiterate my offence. Similarly, after God has 
 forgiven us, if we neglect to set right, as far as we 
 can, what we have set wrong ; if we fail to restore 
 the order which we have destroyed, or to make any 
 compensation that is in our power, we thereby 
 relapse into our former offence. And by harm done 
 we must not understand the mere social effects of 
 sin, but the disturbance of that moral order which 
 requires the subjection of our own passions to the 
 rational will, and of the rational will to God. For 
 this too is a finite disorder, to be compensated by a 
 corresponding repression of the same rebellious 
 faculties ; in a word, by their punishment — for we 
 all feel at once that indulgence is balanced by 
 restriction, and over-feeding by a fast. 
 
 And this is what we mean by the temporal punish- 
 ment due to sin. We say " temporal," because it is 
 finite, and we express finitude in terms of time. For 
 those who die in deadly sin, the temporal punishment 
 is said to become eternal. Not that it lasts time 
 without end, nor yet does it cease after a time — for 
 time is no more; but because, as Aquinas points 
 out, the state of the departed is unchangeable, 
 unprogressive. They are stayed, and, as it were, 
 petrified in their first conscious instant of other- 
 world existence. And over and above the pain of 
 
SIN AND SUFFERING. 117 
 
 personal antagonism and opposition to God — their 
 lost treasure — there recoils upon them all the evil 
 that they have caused in God's creation, in them- 
 selves and in others, so that the balance of the 
 moral order is restored, and truth and right are 
 triumphant — Deposuit potentes de sede, et exaltavit 
 humiles — The lofty are brought low, and the lowly 
 uplifted. Yet compared with the anguish of 
 antagonism to God, which is the very death of the 
 soul, this penalty for the disorder of sin is finite. 
 As to the precise nature of that timeless torment it 
 is vain for us to speculate. In a modified sense we 
 may say of it : " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
 nor heart conceived." For although it is not a 
 supernatural mystery like the Beatific Vision, yet it 
 belongs to that spirit world outside time and space, 
 whereof we have at best remotely analogical con- 
 ceptions. Our Saviour speaks of a " fire unquench- 
 able ; " and Holy Church forbids us to confine 
 the torments simply to remorse, or to deny that it 
 will penetrate to every corner of our conscious 
 being, so that the senses shall expiate their unlawful 
 indulgence by a consciousness of sense suffering. 
 
 The more we learn to look upon the whole 
 physical and visible world as the self-expression 
 and symbol of that world which is spiritual and 
 invisible, and to regard this frail body of our 
 humiliation as not merely the earthly tenement 
 of our immortal part, but as in some sense its 
 creation and its sacrament — even as the whole 
 world is God's creation and sacrament — the easier 
 does it become to conceive that the element whose 
 
ii8 SIN AND SUFFERING. 
 
 infusion transforms and spiritualizes the risen bodies 
 of the saints, releasing them from the fetters of 
 time and space, is no other than the sanctified soul 
 transfused with the fulness of the Divine indwelling; 
 and that as the natural soul fashions to itself a 
 fitting garment of flesh and blood, and commu- 
 nicates its own nature and idea for the time being 
 to the matter which it stealthily draws from its 
 environment, so the same soul transfigured and 
 glorified, glorifies and transfigures that which it 
 assumes and subdues to itself. If this be so, it is 
 not incongruous to believe that when eternal death 
 is perfected in the soul, its sting should send its 
 poison into every fibre of our double nature. But 
 in all this we are simply groping after some less 
 inadequate statement of truths belonging to a world 
 wholly unimaginable, and are safe only in holding 
 to the words of the Gospel and of the Church, to 
 those divinely authorized expressions of a mystery 
 which is above and beyond our adequate appre- 
 hension, which can never be exactly translated into 
 the language of the senses. " It belongeth to the 
 royal lordship of God," says Mother Julian of 
 Norwich, "to have His privy counsels in peace, 
 and it belongeth to His servants for obedience and 
 reverence not to will to know His counsels. Our 
 Lord hath pity and compassion on us for that some 
 creatures make themselves so busy therein ; and 
 I am sure if we wist how greatly we should please 
 Him and ease ourselves to leave it, we would. The 
 saints in Heaven they will nothing wit but what 
 our Lord will show them." 
 
SIN AND SUFFERING. iig 
 
 There is yet another consequence of sin, that is, 
 of repeated sin, which we must take notice of; 
 namely, vice. Vice is a propension or inclination 
 towards sinful actions ; begotten chiefly by our own 
 sins, though perhaps to some extent inherited from 
 our sinful ancestors. There are also propensions to 
 sin which in no way owe their origin to personal 
 fault, but are merely constitutional. Now, as 
 virtue is an adornment of the soul — for we all 
 feel that a good disposition is a spiritual charm 
 distinct from that of good conduct, and that 
 good conduct is better if it proceeds from good 
 inclination and does not need to be forced — so 
 vice is undoubtedly a blemish which unfits the 
 soul for the presence of God ; not, indeed, a blemish 
 comparable to the stain of actual sin, but still 
 a deformity and disfigurement in point of dis- 
 position. It was the error of Pelagianism to rate 
 men by their disposition rather than by their actual 
 conduct, to fix their eternal destiny by the considera- 
 tion of what they would have done in hypothetical 
 circumstances, and not by what they did in their 
 actual circumstances. It is by our works that we 
 have to be judged, by our deliberate thoughts, and 
 resolves, and words, and actions; not by our habits, 
 inclinations, and dispositions. These latter are indeed 
 important, but wholly for the sake of the actions 
 to which they give birth. But so far as morality 
 stands for virtues, good habits, and inchnations, it 
 may be said that our whole moral evolution consists 
 in the gradual elimination of all evil inclinations, and 
 in the cultivation of contrary dispositions. Sin not 
 
SIN AND SUFFERING. 
 
 only retards but undoes our progress in this respect 
 However rich the repentant soul may be in grace, 
 yet until it is purged of all vicious tendencies it is 
 not fit for God's presence. For flesh and blood 
 shall not inherit that Kingdom ; nor corruption 
 incorruption. Our mortality and frailty must put 
 on strength and immortality. And as all birth and 
 growth and refinement is, for us earth-bound 
 limited creatures, at the cost of much suffering and 
 tribulation — ^er multas tribulationes — so the purifica- 
 tion of our soul from vice and infirmity is a bitter 
 and laborious task. 
 
 It has been disputed^ whether the purgatorial 
 fire is merely expiatory of the pains due to forgiven 
 sins, or is also perfective of the heart and mind of 
 the sufferer. But in truth the difference of view is 
 more apparent than real. It is certain that nothing 
 
 ' sc, Between Bellarmine and Suarez. The former thinks that 
 even the guilt of venial sin is renuitted in Purgatory : the latter 
 holds that such guilt, together with all vicious tendencies, is burnt 
 out of the soul at the Particular Judgment by an act of sovereign 
 love, leaving nothing but temporal debts for the purgatorial 
 fire. Plainly it is largely a matter of words. Both agree that 
 these three things — venial guilt, vicious inclination, and temporal 
 debt — need to be purged away, the two former by some intense act 
 of love (whose natural language is suffering or contrition), the third 
 by pain, Bellarmine views the three processes as simultaneous, 
 and calls it all Purgatory ; Suarez regards the third as subsequent 
 to the two first, and reserves to it the name of Purgatory. We know 
 too little about duration in the spirit world to make the controversy 
 very profitable. St. Catherine of Genoa seems to take a middle 
 position and to apply the term "Purgatory" to the second and 
 third processes. Needless to say, this discourse of ours is founded 
 on her classical treatise : In Us qwe it Purgatorio determinata non 
 sunt ab Bcdesia, standum est Us qua sunt magis conformia, dictis et revela- 
 tionibus sanctorum. (Aquinas, in 4. Sent. d. 21. q. i. a. i.) 
 
SIN AND SUFFERING. 
 
 defiled can enter Heaven, and that this refers not 
 only to the defilement of sin or to the debt of 
 temporal pain, but also to those vicious habits and 
 tendencies of the soul which remain after the fullest 
 absolution and indulgence, and are called the 
 reliquicB peccati. These spiritual diseases and indis- 
 positions must be cured before the soul can see 
 God ; and they are cured as soon as the medicine 
 of grace, already received, works its full effect ; that 
 is, when by strong, painful acts of love the soul has 
 corresponded to and utilized the secret forces 
 conveyed to it through the sacraments, and has thus 
 been perfected through suffering. Now, when we 
 say that temporal pain is due to forgiven sin — 
 that justice requires it, it is not to be thought that 
 pain as such can satisfy justice ; but rather pain as 
 atoning for that lack of reverence and love involved 
 in sin ; pain, as an expression and embodiment of 
 love and reverence. It is because there is no love 
 or reverence in the lost, because all they suffer is 
 against their will, that their pains cannot in the 
 strict sense satisfy justice, even as in this world the 
 wicked who rebel against God's lash rather increase 
 than remedy their guilt. 
 
 It is only love that can expiate the unjust with- 
 holding of love ; and therefore the temporal punish- 
 ment due to forgiven sin is really in the long run 
 medicinal, or at all events nutritive in respect to 
 the soul of the sufferer, whether on earth or in 
 Purgatory. 
 
 As it is but a superficial and utilitarian view of 
 Christianity which regards it principally as a system 
 
SIN AND SUFFERING. 
 
 of morality whose end is social and political peace 
 and prosperity, and which therefore looks on the 
 life to come as a mere sanction subordinated to the 
 securing of those temporal effects; (whereas, in truth, 
 Christianity wholly subordinates this life to the 
 next, making it little better than a pre-natal 
 existence, a time of secret moulding and fashioning) 
 so it is a mistake to regard Purgatory as a sort of 
 accidental stage, a mere finishing process by which 
 the last touches are put upon a work which has 
 been substantially completed on earth. Truly in 
 some sense it is in this life that the foundation of 
 our salvation is laid, that its lines and dimensions 
 are determined and fixed, that our free-will accepts, 
 or rejects, or modifies the plans and ideals of the 
 Divine mind in our regard. But if the seed is sown 
 here, it is only in the glow of suffering that it 
 germinates and sends up its stalk ; and if in some 
 few exceptional cases that work of development is 
 to a great extent completed in the furnace of 
 earthly tribulation, yet for the most, and as a 
 general law, it is in Purgatory that the causes here 
 freely set in motion, find due conditions in which to 
 work out their necessary effects in the soul. Doubt- 
 less the love of the martyrs, which, like that of their 
 Master, finds expression in absolute self-sacrifice 
 and in the bearing of unspeakable torments, perfects 
 the labour of many years in a little space ; but 
 though such extreme suffering is not for all men the 
 price of grace and salvation, yet it does not seem 
 likely that grace can yield its full fruit or that the 
 soul, already saved, can be fitted for the King's 
 
SIN AND SUFFERING. 123 
 
 embrace short of an equal purification by pain. 
 The martyrs and confessors are those who to some 
 extent received here that purgatory which we all 
 must receive sooner or later. But the many are too 
 weak to purchase grace at such a cost, and God 
 condescends to their frailty by veiling from them 
 the full burden they have taken upon themselves 
 till such times as they shall be able to bear it 
 willingly. 
 
 We are now in a better position to appreciate 
 the sufferings of the blessed souls in Purgatory. 
 When the pardoned soul passes out of this life it is 
 ushered into the presence of our Saviour, 
 
 And with the intemperate energy of love 
 Flies to the dear feet of Emmanuel : 
 But ere it reach them, the keen sanctity 
 Which with its effluence, like a glory, clothes 
 And circles round the Crucified, has seized 
 And scorched and shrivelled it ; and now it lies 
 Passive, and still, before the awful throne. 
 O happy, suffering soul ! for it is safe ; 
 Consumed, yet quickened by the glance of God.^ 
 
 For it is thrust through with the sharp and fier). 
 sword of contrite love. Who has not at times been 
 filled with self-hatred, with a passion for self- 
 inflicted suffering, on the sudden conviction of 
 baseness and ingratitude towards some noble and 
 loving soul ! What then must be the anguish, the 
 thirst for self-vengeance, when the whole lovableness 
 of God and the whole extent and depth of its own 
 sinfulness is first flashed upon the soul — a pain that 
 is saved from being remorse, and yet is increased 
 1 Newman's Dream of Gerontius. 
 
124 SIN AND SUFFERING. 
 
 by the knowledge that in spite of all God loves it 
 still, loves it infinitely. And proportioned to the 
 awful force with which the disembodied and 
 pardoned soul is drawn towards the bosom of God, 
 is the strain and agony of that violent separation 
 which must last till it is perfected and purified. 
 
 This then is the first and chiefest pain of 
 Purgatory, the pain of bitter, though love-born 
 sorrow for past unlovingness ; the agony of violent 
 present separation from an embrace just missed. I 
 do not know if in the nature of things this suffering 
 can be alleviated by our prayers ; or that the Holy 
 Souls would willingly be spared a pang of that sweet 
 saving sorrow whereby every vice is burnt out by 
 the roots and every virtue burnt in.^ We do not 
 know if this process be measurable in terms of time, 
 or if it be, as Suarez seems to have thought, the 
 work of an instant. It is, indeed, a fiery trial, 
 whereby the gold is freed from its dross in the 
 scorching flame of Divine love, and as long as 
 there is dross and impurity there will be sharp 
 agonizing suffering. 
 
 But the same light which discloses to us our sin 
 as a treason against our Eternal Lover, also shows 
 it to us as to its intrinsic malice. There for the first 
 time we are set face to face with God's fair plan of 
 creation ; and we see what it is we have helped to 
 spoil, and to what extent. We trace the ramifica- 
 tions of our guilty acts like ugly black lines spreading 
 
 ' Not that this involves any increase of sanctifying grace ; but 
 only that the grace and love already there should work its effect and 
 spread itself to every corner of the spiritual frame. 
 
SIN AND SUFFERING. 125 
 
 out on all sides, and stretching forward to the last 
 syllable of recorded time. And if now our memory 
 leaves us conscious of only a big blot here and there, 
 then the whole story will stand out clear as to its 
 minutest detail ; and half-smothered motives that 
 we refused to admit to ourselves will be dragged 
 forth into clear light ; and we shall see ourselves 
 contrasted not only with what our inmost conscience 
 told us, but with what it might have told us if we 
 had used our opportunities of knowing better. And 
 our rectified will, in full sympathy with God's, will 
 be shocked and horrified at the hideous moral ruin 
 we have worked ; and it will be ardent and restless 
 in its desire to compensate and atone by its own 
 suffering and submission, for the disorder caused by 
 its past indulgence and rebellion. But how measure- 
 less and all but infinite a task will this appear ! And 
 will it not be the earnest desire of such a soul thai 
 all should by love and patient suffering make repara- 
 tion to God in every possible way for this great 
 dishonour He has received ; and especially that for 
 the harm whereof it has itself been the author, it 
 may, by its own sufferings, or by those of others 
 near and dear to it, make due restitution. If I see 
 my friend's house on fire, I will get all I have any 
 claim on, to help me to put it out — still more, if it 
 is on fire through my carelessness ; or through some 
 past fault that I am now sorry for. In this it is 
 that the souls in Purgatory so earnestly desire our 
 help, that we may hasten the day when God's 
 honour shall be satisfied ; and when they will no 
 longer feel the intolerable pain of responsibility for 
 
126 SIN AND SUFFERING. 
 
 a disorder not remedied, for a debt still unpaid; 
 and when they will at last be able to enter into the 
 joy of God's presence purified, not only from the 
 relics of sin, from evil or imperfect inclinations, but 
 also from that debt of personal penalty whereof they 
 shall then have paid the last farthing. 
 
 Against the practice of assisting the souls in 
 Purgatory our laziness suggests, with some ingenuity, 
 that after all they are happy and blessed : Beaii 
 mortui — " Happy are the dead." They are safe in 
 port ; out of all risk and danger. Would God we 
 were as well off ! Let us therefore pray and work 
 for those who are still storm-tossed and uncertain of 
 salvation. What comparison can there be between 
 the two needs ? 
 
 First of all, this objection is not usually urged by 
 those who are very earnest in their intercession for 
 the living ; or who have, in consequence, no moment 
 of time left for the needs of the dead. On the 
 contrary, the charity which urges to the one form of 
 intercession, usually urges to the other. Then, it is 
 true that the souls in Purgatory are happy sub- 
 stantially, fundamentally. But, as these words 
 suggest, our happiness lies in layers and is divisible. 
 Fundamental happiness is compatible with super- 
 ficial or less fundamental misery. The saints on 
 earth had this fundamental happiness of being right 
 with God ; but they also had great sufferings and 
 tribulations of soul and body to endure. And these 
 sufferings were very real ; and very worthy of pity. 
 I know there is a spirituality which despises — in the 
 case of others — any trouble that is not spiritual; 
 
SIN AND SUFFERING. 127 
 
 which is so impressed with the advantages of trials 
 and pains for other people, that it can see nothing 
 in them to pity. " If a man has the grace of God, he 
 has a treasure of infinite worth. Why should we 
 pity him because he has got all the sorrows of Job 
 on his head ; because he has lost his home, and 
 children, and influence, and health ? These are but 
 temporal sorrows ; these but the thorns of a 
 heavenly crown. Why pluck them out ? " This is not 
 God's way, who made body and soul, and redeemed 
 both alike ; who desires not our fundamental happi- 
 ness alone, but our entire happiness ; who afflicts 
 always with regret, and only " for greater gain of 
 after-bliss ; " who feels the least of our pains far 
 more than we feel it ourselves, being " afflicted in 
 all our afflictions ; " who pities the pitiful, and 
 blesses the man who has consideration for the poor 
 and needy, and smoothes his pillow for him in his 
 sickness ; who calls a man a liar if he pretends to 
 bewail invisible and supernatural evils, and yet has 
 no pity for those that are visible and natural.^ The 
 same reasons which forbid us to neglect the temporal 
 and bodily needs of the living under pain of reproba- 
 tion, forbid us to neglect the sufferings of the blessed 
 dead. Nay, because they are blessed and dearer to 
 God, we owe them a special care and service. 
 St. Paul tells us that our charity, which is due to all, 
 is first due to those that are of the household of the 
 faith. And are not the blessed dead more truly in 
 God's household than the living ? If God wants us 
 to visit Him in the prisons of earthly justice, much 
 
 1 I St. John iv. 
 
128 SIN AND SUFFERING. 
 
 more does He wait for our consolation in the 
 debtor's prison of heavenly justice. " Remember 
 the poor debtors," for they cry out to us day and 
 night with their endless Miseremini mei! Let us 
 make friends with them now, that when our time 
 comes they may help us, and at last welcome us into 
 everlasting habitations. For they will not be like 
 Pharao's butler, who, when released from prison, 
 no longer remembered Joseph his helper, but forgot 
 him. 
 
 This, indeed, is the least of all motives, though 
 a good one. Still better, is the thought that alms- 
 giving, if it be the child of real charity and pitying 
 love of others, cleanses our soul from all sin and 
 wins us a heritage of mercy. Also, whatever unselfs 
 us, and takes us out of our narrowness, and makes 
 us live for others and in others, and dwell, not upon 
 our own wounds, but on those of Christ's Mystic 
 Body, is an incalculable good. 
 
 Again, charity to the dead is in some way more 
 beneficial to our faith than charity to the living. 
 For faith means a realization of the invisible world ; 
 and one reason why this devotion flags is because 
 we are more alive to pains we can see and imagine, 
 than to those of the mysterious spirit-world. Humani- 
 tarian charity, important as it is, involves no great 
 exercise of faith in the invisible. 
 
 But beyond all these reasons and motives there 
 is one which appeals to our love of God, and of 
 His Blessed Mother, and of the saints. His friends 
 and courtiers. We have often heard of miners 
 being buried alive in the bowels of the earth, 
 
SrN AND SUFFERING. lig 
 
 while their parents and friends were standing above 
 their living grave, broken-hearted and terrified, 
 listening anxiously for some sound or sign from 
 the depths, to sustain and quicken their languish- 
 ing hopes. So may we figure to ourselves, God 
 and His Blessed Mother and the saints, standing 
 on high above the abyss of Purgatory, where the 
 Holy Souls are buried under a vast depth of incum- 
 brances and debts of punishment to be worked out, 
 through which their faint cries for assistance scarce 
 penetrate : " From the depths have I cried to Thee, 
 O Lord. Let Thy ears be attentive to the voice of 
 my supplication." 
 
 God is in some sense powerless, and dependent 
 on our co-operation for the deliverance of His dear 
 children, whom He afflicts not willingly but of 
 necessity; His wisdom and justice tie His hands, 
 and bid Him wait for the payment of the last 
 farthing. And Mary longs to welcome them home 
 to her Mother's heart, with all their sufferings and 
 sorrows past, their tears wiped away, and their cup 
 of joy filled to the brim — even as she is said to have 
 waited with restless longing by the tomb through 
 the vigil of Easter to clasp to her breast the first- 
 fruits of the dead, the first-born of her many children. 
 And the saints are also athirst for the deliverance 
 of the blessed dead ; for every new-comer to their 
 festival increases the joy of all the rest — a joy that 
 grows and feeds on sympathy, a fire that burns 
 more fierce and bright for every new faggot that is 
 cast upon it. 
 
 And so, as usual, the instinct of the Catholic 
 
 J 
 
130 SIN AND SUFFERING. 
 
 religion is found to be true and right and faithful as 
 soon as we look into it carefully and devoutly. Our 
 faith is everywhere seen to be an exquisite harmony, 
 so delicate, so exact in composition, that no element 
 can be removed or disturbed without destruction to 
 the whole. The devotion to the Holy Souls might, 
 to a superficial thinker, seem an arbitrary accretion 
 to the body of Catholic teaching, something stuck 
 on from without, that could be removed without 
 hurt. But closer examination proves it a true vital 
 outgrowth whose veins and fibres reach down 
 through the whole plant to the very earth itself, 
 whence it draws its life. You cannot touch it or 
 tear it without injury to every other article of belief, 
 to the doctrine of sin and its consequences — which 
 again involves the doctrine of God as Creator and 
 Redeemer^ — to the doctrines of vicarious suffering, of 
 the communion of saints, of charity, of mercy, and 
 of all the doctrines which they depend upon and 
 involve. 
 
THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 
 
 Aut pati, aut mori — " Let me either suffer or die.'' 
 
 We are told in the Breviary lesson for the feast of 
 St. Teresa^ that, not content with the passive, 
 patient, and loving endurance of the many crosses 
 and afflictions whereby in the ordinary course of 
 His providence God purified and chastened her 
 affections, and prepared her soul for an eternal 
 union with Himself, for the everlasting embrace of 
 the Heavenly Spouse, she was wont, in obedience 
 to the inspiration of Divine love, to go out of her 
 way in search of further sufferings, to regard them 
 as pearls of great price to be earnestly sought for, 
 and carefully hoarded when found ; that she was 
 restless, uneasy, fretful, if ever she were wholly free 
 from pain or sorrow or humiliation, from the Cross 
 in one form or another. For her, life without suffer- 
 ing was not worth living ; it was death, worse than 
 death: Aut pati, aut mori — "Let me either suffer 
 or die." 
 
 Her earliest manifestation of this strange passion 
 was when as a mere child she fled from home, hand 
 in hand with her little brother, to seek martyrdom 
 among the Moors. That indeed was the greedy 
 
 ^ This is the dwelopment of a sermon preached on her feast ia 
 1896 in the Carivilite Church, Kensington, London. 
 
132 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 
 
 improvidence of childhood, which would have sacri- 
 ficed the unknown treasures of suffering, hidden in 
 the womb of futurity, for one short, sharp ecstasy 
 of present pain ; which would have driven the pierc- 
 ing sword home at a blow, rather than inch by 
 inch, with protracted lingerings and loving delays. 
 
 But God saved her from herself and from her 
 folly, as He always does those who love Him ;. 
 thwarting her present good desire that He might 
 fulfil it a hundred-fold in due season. He had in 
 reserve for her a baptism, not of blood, but of sorrow, 
 a far deeper chalice of suffering than that which her 
 infant greed had thirsted for, a glorious chalice full 
 to the brim, overflowing, inebriating with heavenly 
 joy and ecstasy. Autpati, aut mori : she was not to 
 die, but to suffer. Non mortar sed vivam — " You 
 shall not die, Teresa, but you shall live and suffer 
 and declare the wonderful works of God." 
 
 A strange answer, indeed, to the problem of life's 
 value, in these days when it is so generally assumed 
 as a first and self-evident principle that suffering is 
 the one unmitigated evil, and that to escape it 
 ourselves, or to lessen it for others, is the only 
 reasonable and worthy end we can put before us. 
 
 Here both egoist and altruist, he who lives for 
 himself and he who lives for others, are at one in their 
 estimate of good and evil. The former, indeed, by 
 cutting the cords which would bind him by affection 
 to his fellow-men and make him a sharer of their 
 sufferings, narrows the area in which Sorrow can 
 lodge the arrows she directs against him ; the latter 
 going out of himself by sympathy, makes, together 
 
THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 133 
 
 with the many with whom he is bound up, an easy 
 mark for her most casual dart. Yet what they fly 
 from, and what they fight against in both cases, is 
 one and the same thing — pain, suffering, sorrow. 
 
 None, however, are so short-sighted as not to see 
 that, however undesirable pain may be in itself, it is, 
 nevertheless, in the established order of things very 
 ■often a necessary condition of life and enjoyment ; 
 that it must be faced firmly and frequently by those 
 who wish to extract the full value from a finite and 
 limited existence ; so that their very horror of pain 
 should lead them to bear it, nay, even to seek it, in 
 their own interest or in that of others for whose happi- 
 ness they live. They recognize that all creation is 
 groaning and travailing, expecting its deliverance ; 
 that pain is the inevitable condition of growth and 
 expansion ; that life feeds upon death ; that the 
 present must die in giving birth to the future. Aut 
 pati, aut mori ; no life but at the cost of suffering, 
 seems the universal law of evolution. To survive is 
 to struggle ; to struggle is to suffer, and to cause 
 suffering. And this law they extend from the 
 physical into the moral and social world, and they 
 tell us that those who, shrinking from its seeming 
 cruelty, would by some vain Utopian scheme end 
 this struggle between man and man, with its 
 attendant suffering, would in reality be courting 
 social death and decay, would be multiplying for 
 posterity those very evils they seek to avoid for 
 themselves. 
 
 Thus those who hold most firmly that a pleasure- 
 able life, free from pain, sorrow, and affliction, is 
 
134 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 
 
 the one thing to aim at, are willing to allow that 
 only through many tribulations can we enter into 
 such a kingdom of enjoyment. Autpati, autmori; 
 those who flee the Cross cannot grasp even the 
 perishable crown of pleasure. 
 
 The most selfish and shameless of pleasure- 
 seekers, if he be not led blindly by his feelings from 
 moment to moment, if he exercise any foresight or 
 human prudence in the conduct of life, sees clearly 
 that he must suffer for pleasure's sake ; that he 
 must deny himself and practise judicious self- 
 restraint ; that he must be a miser in economizing 
 the enjoyments of life in the present, for the sake 
 of greater eventual gain of enjoyment. Reflection 
 and experience alike tell him that the pleasures 
 of life stand out more brightly against a dark 
 background of pain. The most acute pleasure, 
 if continuously sustained at the same pitch, soon 
 ceases to affect our consciousness in any way ; 
 i.e., ceases to be pleasure ; for pleasure springs from 
 the consciousness of an agreeable state, and con- 
 sciousness is like a drugged sleeper kept awake only 
 by incessant rousings and changes of position, 
 "Without going so far as those who say (with 
 Schopenhauer), that pleasure is only the conscious- 
 ness of a cessation or mitigation of pain, every 
 pleasure-seeker must allow that pain is the very 
 tonic of the sensitive faculty, whereby the dulled 
 appetite for pleasure is sharpened anew. Without 
 suffering, life, even for such a one, were not 
 worth living, but would quickly exhaust itself 
 and become flat, stale, and unprofitable. Aut pati, 
 
THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 135 
 
 aut mori; if pleasure be life, one must either suffer 
 or die. 
 
 If we turn to the philanthropist, i.e., to him 
 who, in obedience to a God-given instinct for which 
 most modern philosophy vainly seeks any coherent 
 justification, strives to communicate to others what 
 he himself esteems the truest happiness — we find 
 the same inevitable condition accepted. Positivism, 
 which includes in its scheme of benevolence all 
 sentient creation from man down to the meanest 
 insect, decks itself out in the blood-stained garment 
 of Christian asceticism. It breathes everywhere the 
 spirit of self-sacrifice, it speaks the language of 
 charity, it vaunts the Cross upon its brow. Nay, it 
 has rediscovered Christ ; it has raised from the dead 
 Him whom the Churches have slain. Aut pati, aut 
 mori, it says ; the greatest amount of enjoyment 
 for the many can only be secured by the self-sacri- 
 fice of the few who devote their lives to a crusade 
 against pain, the arch-enemy, who suffer more, that 
 others may suffer less, and yet by sympathy with 
 the joy of others, find their own unselfish sorrow 
 turned into joy. In all this there is something so 
 analogous to Christian fraternal charity, that the 
 very elect themselves are often deceived. For here 
 too — so far as there is any definite positivist 
 morality or law — love to our neighbour is the 
 fulfiUing of that law. 
 
 Christian and positivist alike live and suffer for 
 the common happiness. It is, however, in their 
 estimate, not only of what true happiness consists 
 in, but of the relation between pain and happiness, 
 
136 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 
 
 that they are as antagonistic one to another, as light 
 to darkness. Too often, indeed, the kind-hearted, 
 good-natured philanthropist makes little profession 
 of any definite theory of life and happiness, but 
 busies himself incessantly "going about and doing 
 good " as his momentary instinct or feeling prompts 
 him. He does not delay to go minutely into the 
 remote or possible consequences of his benevolent 
 activity, or to search, keenly into his motives, but 
 wherever he is pained by the sufferings of others 
 in any form, he at once seeks to relieve his own 
 pain by relieving theirs. And by yielding to this 
 kindly impulse and indulging it, it becomes more 
 and more tyrannical in its demand for gratifi- 
 cation, so that eventually he is simply dominated 
 altogether and indiscriminately by his abhorrence 
 of every form of suffering. Were suffering really 
 the ultimate evil, and were enjoyment the ulti- 
 mate good, such a tyranny of benevolence would 
 be simply the fulness and perfection of Divine 
 charity. 
 
 Yet let such a one be reduced by poverty, sick- 
 ness, or other causes to long years of helpless 
 suffering in which he can no longer minister to the 
 happiness of others, and let him be set face to face 
 with the problem as to what that happiness is which 
 he sought for them and which they should now 
 minister to him, and he will be forced to see that 
 he has hitherto been as a physician going about 
 dispensing drugs and remedies of which he knows 
 nothing, for the cure of diseases of which he knows 
 as little ; that he was healing others while he knew 
 
THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 137 
 
 not how to heal himself; that he was a blind 
 leader of the blind ; plucking motes from his neigh- 
 bour's eye, all unconscious of the beam in his own. 
 An indiscriminate pain-shirker himself, he dealt with 
 others as he himself would have wished to be dealt 
 with. 
 
 Nay, in bearing the burdens of others he far 
 surpassed any Christian saint. For the Christian 
 may never, for the love of others, himself forego 
 one particle of that final happiness which he desires 
 to secure for them, nor incur the slightest taint of 
 that ultimate evil from which it is his supreme 
 endeavour to preserve them. He may never sin, 
 even a little, that others may sin less, or stand for 
 an instant in his own light that others may enjoy 
 a fuller view of God's face. Whereas the philan- 
 thropist, viewing pain as the last and unqualified 
 evil, will endure it himself that others may escape 
 it ; thus sacrificing what he deems his own highest 
 good as a means to the highest good of others. 
 
 This self-care is sometimes objected to Christians 
 as indicating a lower altruism, a less absolute un- 
 selfishness than obtains, at all events in theory, 
 among the disciples of Comte. Yet unjustly. For 
 though the Christian must love himself before his 
 neighbour, and though "charity begins at home," 
 yet his self-care and self-love is subordinated as a 
 means to the care and love of others for God's sake, 
 that " he may have wherewith to give to him that is 
 in need." It is only in the measure that he has 
 found and tasted happiness himself that he will feel 
 the desire to impart it to others. 
 
138 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 
 
 Flammescat igne caritas, 
 Accendat ardor proximos,' 
 
 is the Catholic principle. If, then, a man must love 
 his own soul before his neighbour's, it is a " before- 
 ness " of time rather than of affection. The Christian 
 conception of humanity as an organism, as a many- 
 branched tree rooted in God and drawing life from 
 Him, demands that each part be animated and 
 moved towards the general good of the whole 
 organism as its all-dominating aim ; and yet it is in 
 perfecting and strengthening itself that it contributes 
 most effectively towards this universal and unselfish 
 end. It never could possibly be for the happiness, 
 that is, for the true well-being, of others that 
 a man should neglect his own highest life ; but 
 rather, the stronger, the higher he is, the more 
 effectively can he raise and strengthen others. 
 The mother must feed herself for the sake of the 
 child at her breast. It is, therefore, the motive from 
 which it springs, the end to which it is directed,, 
 that turns what would otherwise be spiritual selfish- 
 ness into that truest altruism which regards God 
 and self and neighbour as one thing — vine and 
 branches — with one life, one movement, one interest. 
 Most of the kindness of modern humanitarians, 
 however well meant, is really as spurious as that of 
 the father who weakly yields to every wish and 
 whim of his children, who will never inflict the least 
 pain upon them that can by any possibility be 
 avoided, who takes it for granted that suffering is 
 
 ' Kindle the flame of good desire 
 Till all around be set on fire. 
 
THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 139 
 
 never a good, is never to be endured save by way 
 of economy as a condition of less eventual suffer- 
 ing. Yet even this end should make the develop- 
 ment of the pain-bearing faculty a far more important 
 feature of education than it is at the present day. 
 
 The whole aim of humanitarians is to lessen the 
 amount of pain in the world, but in no wise to 
 teach men to bear pain, much less to value it, to 
 court it, to be in love with it, as St. Teresa was. 
 They seek to raise the standard, not of happiness 
 (which, indeed, they lower), but of comfort; thus 
 implicitly making comfort, or freedom from hard- 
 ships and bodily sufferings, if not the essence, at 
 least an essential condition of happiness. They 
 strive to make men less accustomed to privations 
 and inconvenience, and therefore more impatient 
 and intolerant of such as are inevitable, to make the 
 conditions of contentment ever more manifold and 
 complex, and therefore more rarely realized, more 
 easily disturbed. 
 
 Nay, the very sympathy extended to suffering, 
 the tone, so to say, in which it is pitied, makes it 
 much harder to endure. How often do we not bear 
 up against trouble until we find ourselves pitied; 
 how often is it not pity which iirst suggests to us 
 the misery of our plight ? Suffering would be 
 bearable enough were it not for reflection, which 
 magnifies it and joins its several pangs into one 
 chain of woe, and brings those that are past and 
 even those that are future to bear upon the present, 
 and crushes us with pain of which nine-tenths 
 belong to the world of ideas. But this phantom 
 
I40 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 
 
 grows to a Brocken-spectre when we see it reflected 
 in the eyes of all around us. Our estimate of good 
 and evil is largely taken from those with whom we 
 dwell, and our enjoyment and suffering depend on 
 that estimate. Thus we marvel at what our fore- 
 fathers put up with in the way of discomfort ; we 
 admire their patient endurance of various incon- 
 veniences, injustices, oppressions, which to us would 
 be quite unbearable ; and forgetting that the con- 
 ditions of contentment are far more subjective than 
 objective, we fancy that our ancestors must have 
 been as miserable as we should now be in the same 
 circumstances. Instead of inuring men to the 
 rough climate of this mortal life, humanitarianism 
 has accustomed them to wraps and muffles, and 
 rendered them susceptible to every little change of 
 temperature — poor, frail, pain-fearing creatures. 
 
 Indeed, there are no greater enemies of human 
 happiness than those who substitute pleasure and 
 pain for good and evil. Pleasure is coy and will 
 not be sought directly. She is found by those who 
 seek her not, and flies, as does their shadow, from 
 those who hotly pursue her. And pain is terrible 
 chiefly to those who have learnt to view it as the 
 ultimate evil. So that in pursuing the one phantom 
 and flying from the other, they are not only diverted 
 from the quest of true and solid happiness, but 
 inevitably fail to secure even that which they 
 seek. 
 
 As far as this modern philanthropy understands 
 itself, it is simply " positivist ; " it is indifferent to 
 belief in God or in the life to come. It finds its 
 
THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 141 
 
 motive largely in a sense of pity springing from the 
 very decay of faith, pity for human life so short, so full 
 of misery, so void of hope, and thence it conceives 
 a desire to sweeten the bitterness of that lot, to 
 crowd all possible enjoyment into life's brief span, 
 to exclude all avoidable suffering and sorrow, and in 
 every other way to minister anodynes and narcotics 
 which will mitigate the sadness of existence, and 
 foster the illusion that life, without God, without 
 immortality, is still a prize worth having. And this 
 same pity for temporal pain and suffering, as the 
 evil of evils, is naturally extended to the whole of 
 sentient creation, to all our fellow-mortals, from 
 whom we are thought to be divided by no very 
 certain line ; whence the extravagances of zoophilist 
 fanaticism, and the growing tenderness for animal 
 suffering which, though beautiful in itself when 
 resting on a rational foundation, is altogether 
 reprehensible when raised to the rank of a supreme 
 rule of action to the prejudice of higher principles. 
 The Buddhist has at least an apparent religious 
 justification for his attitude in the matter, but the 
 modern positivist (unlike the Catholic Christian) 
 can offer no basis for his zoophilism save the 
 tyranny of a sentiment, good in itself, but pampered 
 into a mania by indiscriminate indulgence, and which 
 by its very extravagances hurts the cause he would 
 help. For there is no affection, passion, or instinct, 
 however natural, or useful, or admirable in due 
 season and measure, that may be always and every- 
 where indulged without reference and subjection to 
 the higher rule of reason whose minister it is. 
 
142 IHE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 
 
 It is not surprising that those who estimate the 
 evil of the world in terms of pain and sorrow 
 should descant in no measured language on the 
 cruelty of Nature, and should refuse to believe 
 that behind all there is a personal God who 
 could prevent all this misery and yet will not. 
 If He could not, say they, how is He almighty? 
 If He will not, how is He all-loving? In either 
 case how is He infinite ; how is He God ? Nor 
 would the objection be without weight, were 
 temporal enjoyment the final good of man ; were 
 there no higher good with which the lower has no 
 common measure, being, so to say, in a different 
 plane or category. " If in this life only we have 
 hope," says St. Paul, " then are we of all men the 
 most miserable " — a pessimism no less applicable to 
 life viewed merely in the light of reason ; if the 
 present enjoyment of sentient creation be indeed 
 the ultimate good, then it is hard to see the 
 finger of the All-Mighty, the All- Loving God in such 
 a result as is evident to our limited view. And 
 therefore we find many pure, unselfish souls, 
 bewildered with this disheartening philosophy, 
 devoting all their energies to a fruitless contest 
 with the inexorable laws of this seemingly cruel 
 world, if perchance they may even by a single drop 
 lessen the vast ocean of misery and pain, seeking no 
 other happiness than that of procuring the happiness 
 of others, though scarce knowing what happiness 
 means. Their instinct of benevolence, ill-instructed 
 though it be, is from God, the Author of all charity 
 and unselfish love. In living for the good of others 
 
THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 
 
 143 
 
 they are at one with the Christian, but in their 
 estimate of what that good consists in, they are 
 diametrically opposed to a religion which regards 
 pain or sorrow, not merely as an inevitable and 
 regrettable condition of good, to be minimized as 
 far as possible, but as a positive means to good, 
 something to be sought out and willingly embraced 
 in due season and measure ; not merely as a, 
 bitterness incidental to the medicine of life, but as 
 itself a medicinal bitterness; — a religion- which says: 
 Blessed are the poor, blessed are the mourners, 
 blessed are the persecuted, blessed are the dead ; 
 which commends to us the example, not of one 
 who was merely a martyr to inevitable violence, 
 but of one who could have descended from the 
 •Cross, yet would not. 
 
 Still, with all its short-sighted horror of suffering, 
 modern philanthropy is well aware that it is only 
 through much suffering that its aspirations can be 
 realized, that it is only at the cost of endless labour 
 and self-sacrifice that the sum of human misery can 
 be in any way lessened, or the sum of enjoyment 
 increased, that if such social and collective felicity 
 be life, then the law holds good : Aut pati, autmori — 
 " Either suffer or perish." Still more evident is it 
 that if one's individual happiness is found only in 
 self-forgetful devotion to the vaguely conceived 
 welfare of others, such devotion involves continual 
 suffering, and that the life of altruism is a life of 
 pain. Aut pati, autmori; if selfishness be death, if 
 unselfishness be life, we must either suffer or die. 
 
 If now we turn from these who lay such 
 
144 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 
 
 exaggerated stress on material comfort, and on free- 
 dom from bodily pain and from pain of the merely 
 sensitive affections and instincts, who reduce all 
 moral duties to the one universal duty of an unselfish 
 regard for the almost animal happiness of others; 
 and if we turn to those who in all ages, guided 
 by the mere light of reason, have taken a higher 
 and nobler view of man's nature and capacities for 
 happiness, who find the value of life, in whatsoever 
 things are true, whatsoever things are pure, what- 
 soever things are just, whatsoever things are holy, 
 whatsoever things are lovable, who scorn to make 
 pleasure an object of direct pursuit, whose single 
 aim is objective truth and right, whether it bring 
 pleasure or pain in its wake, who define good as 
 that which ought to be and which they desire should 
 be; not as that which they would like to feel; 
 who (at least confusedly) recognize the interests of 
 reason and conscience as the universal interests ot 
 God, to which they but minister as servants and 
 instruments in His hands ; if we turn to these 
 and question them, we receive again the same 
 merciless sentence: Aut pati, aut mori — "Either 
 suffer or die." 
 
 They know well that restraint and suffering is 
 essential to the formation, the growth, the main- 
 tenance of every virtue — suffering in the mind, in 
 the will, in the heart, in the affections, in the 
 senses. 
 
 For does not the mind rebel against the yoke 
 not only of faith but of reason ? Does it not play 
 into the hands of the imagination and of the senti- 
 
THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 145 
 
 ments, and betray us at all points? And is not 
 the natural will a rebel to all obedience and law ? 
 And are not the affections prone to selfishness and 
 narrowness, and hostile to the wide spirit of charity 
 and brotherly love ? And are not the senses and 
 passions stubborn against the control of temperance 
 and fortitude, and of all the other virtues included 
 under these ? Are they not all so many infidels 
 who have gained possession of God's holy land, that 
 is, of the sacred territory of the human soul — 
 infidels, in their blindness to the principles of faith 
 and reason, in their spirit of boundless self- 
 assertion at the expense of God's glory and man's 
 happiness, infidels who are to be, not slain, but 
 chastised and subdued and pressed into servitude 
 in the interests of Divine Wisdom, their conqueror ? 
 Can all this disorder be checked, all these wild 
 forces be kept in hand, can the sweet yoke and 
 light burden of Heavenly Wisdom be imposed and 
 borne without suffering and pain ? Aut pati, aut 
 mori. Life without suffering is impossible ; if truth, 
 if holiness, if virtue, if friendship, if purity be life, 
 we must make up our mind either to suffer or to 
 perish. 
 
 And this, all the more, when we remember 
 that there are hours of special combat and fierce 
 temptation to be prepared for, when the rain 
 descends and the rushing flood rises and the storm 
 beats upon the citadel of our soul. For, against 
 these contingencies we are obliged to strengthen 
 ourselves in time of peace by frequent exercise, or 
 ascesis as it is called, by the practice not merely 
 
 K 
 
146 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 
 
 of restraint but of mortification, by cutting off not 
 only all that is excessive or unlawful, but also much 
 that is lawful and permissible. These are the peace- 
 manoeuvres and sham-fights of the spiritual life, 
 or rather, of the moral life — for we are still in the 
 realm of natural religion ; Nonne et ethnici hocfaciunt ? 
 Did not the Pagan stoics teach us to do these 
 things ? Were they not truly ascetics, passing the 
 same verdict upon life as St. Teresa : Aut pati, aut 
 mori — life without suffering is impossible. If we 
 are to be victorious in the conflict with self, if we 
 are not to be castaways, we must suffer ; we must 
 chastise the body and bring it into subjection. If 
 to stand is to live, if to fall is to perish — Aut pati, aut 
 mori — we must either suffer or die. 
 
 Again, if we turn to the mystics, to the prophets, 
 poets, and seers of all ages, to those who being 
 lifted up from the earth have drawn all men unto 
 themselves, whose eyes have been fixed beyond 
 human wont on the intolerable brightness of the face 
 of Truth, who have been caught up to the heavens 
 and have heard words which it is not lawful for 
 man to utter, save wrapped close in the shroud ot 
 symbolism ; when we turn to these and ask them 
 for the law of life, we get only the same sad answer : 
 Aut pati, aut mori — you must either suffer or die. 
 " If any man will come after Me," says the Truth, 
 " let him take up his cross and follow Me ; " 
 " unless a man forsake all that he hath, he cannot 
 be My disciple." If hght and vision be life, if 
 blindness and darkness be death — Aut pati, aut mori 
 ^-we must either suffer or die. 
 
THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 147 
 
 For even the very body itself must be exalted, 
 purified, and spiritualized by suffering, by fast 
 and vigil and penance ; it must be subdued, 
 tranquillized, and, as it were, put to sleep before 
 it is an apt medium for communication between 
 this world and the other, before it is attuned to 
 be a fit instrument of God's Holy Spirit. The 
 spiritual man understands the deep things of the 
 spirit because they are spiritually apprehended, 
 but the animal man never rises beyond the 
 laboured methods of reason ; he knows nothing 
 of the instincts of love, of that quick intuition 
 which leaps to the truth, from crag to crag, and 
 pinnacle to pinnacle, where others crawl and 
 •clamber and stumble. Dilectus mens, says Truth, 
 vmit mihi saliens super monies — " My beloved comes to 
 Me leaping across the mountains." " What man can 
 know the counsels of God, or who can divine His 
 will ? For the thoughts of men are timid, and their 
 foresight is uncertain, because the corruptible body 
 weighs upon the soul, and its earthen tenement 
 drags down the mind with its many thoughts." 
 As far as she can by suffering shake herself free 
 from the embrace of this body of death, so far can 
 the soul fly to the embrace of Truth, her Spouse, 
 her Life : A ut pati, aut mori. 
 
 And if we inquire of religion in its various forms, 
 with its doctrine of sin and expiation, we universally 
 ^et the same response as from hedonism or stoicism 
 or mysticism : Aut pati, aut mori — " Either suffer or 
 ■die." Without the shedding of blood, without 
 penance and sackcloth and ashes, there is no re- 
 
148 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 
 
 mission of guilt ; the soul that sinneth it shall 
 either suffer or die. For sin is more than the folly 
 of self-hurt and self-destruction, more than a 
 transgression of order. It is an offence against 
 God the Ordainer ; it is a rebellion of will against 
 will, of person against person, of the creature 
 against the Creator ; it is the uprising of a wave 
 that flings itself in vain pride against the solid rock, 
 to be thrown back and dashed to pieces for its 
 pains. Reason can ill-fathom the mystery, but the 
 instinct of all races has taught them that sin is in 
 some sense balanced and set right by suffering, and 
 that without suffering the disease is irremediable 
 and mortal. Aut pati, aut mori; if sin be death, if 
 absolution be life, we must either suffer or die. 
 
 But in all this we have not yet touched the 
 secret of St. Teresa's passion for suffering; for it 
 is no other than the secret of the lover. Love must 
 either suffer or die — Aut pati, aut mori; suffering is 
 its very life and energy. As the ungrateful flame 
 burns and destroys what it feeds and lives upon, 
 so love seizes upon the heart and gnaws at it night 
 and day, and wears and wastes the frail body, and 
 consumes its strength with labours and sorrows. 
 And this we see to the full in the Divine Lover, 
 the Archetype of all lovers, the Man of Sorrows, 
 acquainted with grief, poor and in labours from His 
 youth, crushed and crucified and tormented by the 
 tyranny of love, and brought down to the very dust 
 of death. The Passion of Christ ! Why Passion ? 
 The all-devouring passion of God's love for the soul ! 
 Was not suffering the very fuel and sustenance of 
 
THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 145 
 
 that fire — a fire to be fed on the wood of thrs Cross, 
 or else to die down and perish — Aut pati, aut 
 mori. St. Paul knew well what love meant when 
 he said to his little ones : " We would have plucked 
 out our very eyes and given them to you." He had 
 learnt in the school of the Good Shepherd, who 
 gave His Body to be torn in pieces for His sheep, 
 His Blood to be drained out to the last drop : 
 *' Take ye and eat, this is My Body ; take ye and 
 drink, this is My Blood ; take all that I have, all 
 that I am — Aut pati, aut mori — I must suffer for you 
 or else die." Nonne opportuit Christum pati ? If 
 love must suffer, did it not behove Christ to suffer? 
 
 Can we clearly or fully explain this or justify it 
 in the cold light of reason ? Can chill philosophy 
 tell us why love thirsts for suffering, why it is 
 straitened till its baptism of blood be accomplished ? 
 Even if it cannot, what need we care ? Far more 
 things are true than can be explained, else, there 
 were little truth to be had. The experience of 
 mankind cannot only vouch for the fact, but can, so 
 to say, feel the reasonableness of it, better than it 
 can say it. Expertus potest credere ! Which of the 
 saints and lovers of Christ has not felt a craving 
 that suffering alone can appease, or has not felt 
 that he must simply die if he cannot suffer ? And 
 does not the history of every pure and noble human 
 love tell us the same tale ? 
 
 Love, then, was the secret of St. Teresa's 
 passion for suffering ; love ever seeking to express 
 itself to the full ; making difficulties, where it found 
 none made to hand, that it might have occasion to 
 
150 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 
 
 embody itself in strenuous effort, and so relieve the 
 pressure and tension of its unused energy and 
 strengthen itself by strong acts oft-repeated. Suffer- 
 ing was the food and fuel for which it hungered r 
 Aut pati, aut mori, without suffering it must have 
 died down and perished. 
 
 And what was the secret of her love ? For love 
 is our life, the eternal life of our soul ; and the secret 
 of loving God is the one thing worth knowing. 
 Alas ! man can but speak the words of that secret, 
 God alone can open the understanding; man can 
 transmit the dead letter, God only can breathe into 
 it the quickening spirit ; man can plough and sow 
 and water, God alone can give the increase. It 
 cometh up we know not how. Let St. John, the 
 Doctor of Divine Love, the guardian of the mysteries 
 of the Sacred Heart, be our teacher. " We love 
 Him," he says, "because He first loved us." It is 
 when God first reveals Himself to the soul as her 
 Lover, that she falls at His feet as one dead, pierced 
 through, as St. Teresa saw herself in vision, with a 
 fiery dart. Vulnerasti cor meum uno oculorum tuorum 
 — " Thou hast wounded my heart with one glance 
 of Thine eyes." One clear gaze upon that mystery, 
 and the soul is for ever the slave of love. As long 
 as our mind is filled with some distorted abstract, 
 half-true notion of the complete self-sufficingness of 
 God, as long as our puerile imaginings picture Him 
 as merely benevolent and patronizing in our regard, 
 as offering us the alms of His benefits, but caring 
 little whether we accept or decline them ; until we 
 receive and beheve without understanding or recon- 
 
THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 151 
 
 ciling it with His self-sufficingness, the mystery of 
 God's dependence and indigence, love will but 
 slumber in our heart, as fire in the cold, hard flint 
 till struck from it by the steel. 
 
 But let us once look upon the love-worn face 
 of the Man of Sorrows, and read in its lines, 
 its tear-stains and blood-stains, the record of 
 the ravages of Divine love, pent up and com- 
 pressed within the narrow walls of a finite heart j 
 let us but see in Him the Spouse of man's thought- 
 less, thankless soul, coming to us in beggary, poor, 
 naked, hungry, and thirsty, to be enriched, and 
 clothed, and fed, and refreshed by our love ; let us 
 but hear Him as He knocks at our heart's portal 
 and cries : " Open to Me, My sister. My spouse, for 
 My hair is drenched with the dew, and My locks 
 with the night rain ; " let us but realize that in 
 very deed our God wants us, pines for us, hungers 
 and thirsts for us, and lo ! we have passed from 
 death unto life, from twilight to noonday, we have 
 found a key to the seeming extravagances, the 
 follies, the delirium, the reckless prodigalities of the 
 saints and of the King of saints, to whom not to 
 suffer was to die. Were that light to break upon us 
 only for a moment we could understand, as now we 
 cannot, the love that burned so fiercely in the heart 
 of Teresa, a love stronger than death ; bearing all 
 things, believing all things, hoping all things, endur- 
 ing all things ; a love which swept aside every 
 obstruction in its impetuous course ; a love which 
 for twenty dark years endured the searching sword 
 of separation from the Beloved, the privation of all 
 
152 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 
 
 consciousness of His presence, of all sensible conso- 
 lation and spiritual joy ; a love whose insupportable 
 strength at last shattered the too straitened vessel 
 of her heart, and lending wings to her emancipated 
 soul, bore it up to its nest in the embrace. of God ; 
 towards the life of painless love matured and made 
 perfect by suffering.^ 
 
 • A further elucidation of the doctrine of pain will be found in 
 the Appendix 
 
"QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 
 
 Ah ! Christ, if there were no hereafter 
 It still were best to follow Thee ; 
 
 Tears are a nobler gift than laughter ; 
 Who wears Thy yoke, alone is free. — C.K.P. 
 
 It may not be altogether useless and unprofitable 
 for us to see in what sense, if in any, we can accept 
 the sentiment embodied in these lines, and recon- 
 cile it with the teaching of St. Paul, where he tells 
 us^ that if our hope in Christ be only for this life, 
 then are we of all men most to be pitied, and 
 where he asks, what will it profit him (humanly 
 speaking) to have fought with wild beasts at 
 Ephesus if the dead rise not? "Let us eat and 
 drink, for to-morrow we die." Let us snatch the 
 fleeting day as it slips by, let us seize on each 
 precious " now " and make the most of it, let us 
 crown ourselves with the perishable roses of life 
 before they fade, let us, not work, but rejoice and 
 make merry "while it is yet day," ere the sombre 
 night of death wrap us in everlasting darkness and 
 forgetfulness. 
 
 St. Peter says to our Saviour : " Lo ! we have 
 left all and followed Thee ; we have forsaken all 
 that makes life valuable to the majority of man- 
 ' I Cor. XV. 
 
154 "QVID ERIT NOBIS?" 
 
 kind, and we have embraced the hfe of the Cross ; 
 what therefore shall be our reward ; what shall we 
 get by it ? " And Jesus answers : " Amen, I say to 
 you that you who have followed Me, in the Resurrec- 
 tion, when the Son of Man shall sit upon the throne 
 of His majesty, shall sit on twelve thrones judging 
 the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one who 
 shall have left home, or brethren, or sisters, or 
 father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for 
 My Name shall receive a hundred-fold in the present 
 life, with persecutions, and shall possess everlasting 
 life." 
 
 At first hearing, this question of St. Peter's seems 
 to spring from a sentiment altogether opposite to 
 that which is expressed in the words : 
 
 Ah ! Christ, if there were no hereafter, 
 It still were best to follow Thee ; 
 
 and to that which taught Aquinas to answer the 
 question: "What reward wilt thou have?" with, 
 "None other than Thyself, Lord;" and which made 
 k Kempis cry out: "I had rather be a stranger 
 upon earth with Thee, than possess Heaven without 
 Thee. Where Thou art, there is Heaven ; " and taught 
 St. Francis Xavier to sing: "My God, I love Thee, 
 not because I hope for Heaven thereby ; " and even 
 which broke from the lips of Peter himself when he 
 cried, " Lord, though all men should forsake Thee, 
 yet not L I will lay down my life for Thee ; I am 
 ready to go with Thee to prison and to death "—as 
 though he would say: "Better to fail with Thee, 
 than to triumph without Thee; Truth is none the 
 
"QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 155 
 
 less great even should it never prevail, and the 
 gloom of Calvary no less glorious than the brightness 
 ofThabor." 
 
 And so if we look closely into the matter we 
 shall iind that the very form in which he puts his 
 seemingly ignoble question, exculpates him from all 
 ignoble intent. " Lo, we have left all and followed 
 Thee ; what therefore shall be unto us ? " Evidently 
 then, when they left all and followed Him, they 
 were moved by no definite prospect of other gain, 
 and it is only some considerable time after the event 
 that human prudence wakes for a moment from its 
 dream, to seek reason for what has been done 
 unreasoningly, in defiance of worldly wisdom, in a 
 sudden burst of Divine enthusiasm. There was no 
 reasoning or calculating, no quid erit nobis ? when, 
 at a word, or a glance, they left all and rose up and 
 followed Him, lured away from home and kindred 
 and possessions by the spell of His wondrous per- 
 sonality, by the irresistible magnetism which draws 
 the soul back to the bosom of God, whence it 
 came. He Himself was that hundred-fold beside 
 whom all gain seemed but loss, whose possession 
 secured an immutable peace in the midst of the 
 bitterest persecution and temptation ; He was that 
 pearl of great price, cheaply purchased at the sacri- 
 fice of home and brethren and sisters and father and 
 mother and wife and children and lands. Nor did 
 they pause to think, as they let go everything to 
 grasp at that treasure, whether it was to be the 
 possession of a moment or of eternity. Love does 
 not reason or reckon, but leaps up to follow 
 
156 "QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 
 
 the Beloved blindfold " whithersoever He goeth," 
 whether to prison and to death, or to victory and 
 hfe. "Where Thou goest," it seems to say, " I will 
 go ; where Thou lodgest, I will lodge ; where Thou 
 diest, I will die, and there also will I be buried." 
 Who has ever heard of any true human love which 
 tempered its sacrifices according to length of golden 
 days presumably in store for it ; or which regulated 
 its fervour on the principles which govern life- 
 insurance; or who can believe that St. Peter's 
 enthusiasm would have been damped in any degree 
 had the cause of Christ been doomed to failure, 
 rather than to eternal victory ? Eamus et nos, he 
 would have said, et moriamur cum illo — " Let us 
 also go and die with Him." Have not thousands 
 of heroes counted it gain to face death and defeat 
 beside a loved leader ; and has any leader ever been 
 loved as Christ was ? 
 
 It was for His own sake that they left all and 
 followed Him, and not for the sake of aught He 
 might give them. He Himself was the gift. But later, 
 when they heard our Saviour saying, " Go, sell what 
 thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have 
 treasure in Heaven, and then come and follow Me," 
 they wondered what this treasure in Heaven might 
 be which was promised to those who should do 
 what they had already done. And what, in effect, 
 was it, but to be with Christ in His triumph as they 
 were to be with Him in His defeat; what, but the 
 eternal prolongation of the bliss which they had 
 already entered upon ? It was because they sought 
 nothing that they were to gain everything ; because 
 
"QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 157 
 
 in blind obedience to the call of love they left all, 
 that they were to find all— a hundred-fold in this 
 life, in spite of persecutions, and in the world to 
 come hfe everlasting; for in choosing Christ they 
 chose a treasure infinite and eternal, albeit they 
 knew it but indistinctly. 
 
 " One day in Thy courts," says David, " is better 
 than a thousand ;" one instant of eternal life better 
 than a century of time ; one kiss from the lips of 
 God better than unending ages of the tenderest 
 human affection. And this were true even were it 
 not equally true that the embrace of the Creator 
 locks the soul to God's bosom for ever and for ever. 
 
 If it is better to have been a man for a few brief 
 years, than a toad slumbering through a century or 
 more in the heart of a tree, it is also better to have 
 lived the highest life of the soul, to have breathed 
 the atmosphere of Heaven for even one day, than to 
 have passed a whole lifetime on a base or even on a 
 lower level, — 
 
 One crowded hour of glorious life 
 Is worth an age without a name. 
 
 How many lives have been ennobled, redeemed from 
 insignificance by the heroism or the inspiration of a 
 moment, or of a few moments, which has made 
 them immortal. How often have the stains of a 
 worldly or wicked career been wiped out by some 
 single purgatorial act of sacrificial unselfishness? 
 Have we not all moments of clear insight or high 
 aspiration which are more precious to us than 
 weeks and months of our normal mediocrity? Is 
 
158 "QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 
 
 it not by the recognition of this that the Church is 
 rightly excused from the charge of prodigahty and 
 extravagance when she crowns a momentary act of 
 pure love or Divine sorrow with the plenitude of 
 her absolution and indulgence ? 
 
 Can we then doubt that if friendship with Christ, 
 the God-Man, be the highest life of which the soul 
 of man is capable, it must then be a good beyond 
 every other good, and one for which every other 
 should be sacrificed, since we should not attempt to 
 measure quantitatively, one against another, things 
 of a wholly different order. As a moment's thought 
 exceeds a life-time of sensation, so the briefest 
 experience of Divine friendship outweighs in solid 
 value all other possible experiences in a lower plane. 
 Senectus enim vemrabilis est non diuturna, nee annorum 
 numero computata. Cani enim sunt sensus hominis et 
 (Etas senectutis vita immaculata — " Life is measured 
 by experience, and not by years." One instant of 
 that immaculate life which the soul lives as it flits 
 like a moth through the bright, all-consuming, 
 all-purifying flame of the Divine presence, one 
 moment of close union with the Eternal, the 
 " Ancient of Days," and it has lived with a fulness 
 of life all but Divine, — " made perfect in a Httle 
 space, it has accomplished the labour of many 
 years." 
 
 We have spoken so far of conscious personal 
 friendship with Christ, as being the essence of this 
 higher life whose value were no less supreme, even 
 were it but of briefest duration ; and of which it 
 mE^y most truly be said, 
 
••QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 159 
 
 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at alL 
 
 But our concern here is rather with what we might 
 call the unconscious friendship with Christ of those 
 who walk with Him by the way, their hearts burning 
 within them, though their eyes are holden so that 
 they know Him not ; those namely, who, not knowing 
 Christ, yet to some greater or less extent live the 
 life of Christ ; who, not having the Gospel, are 
 imbued with the principles and sentiments of the 
 Gospel, being a Gospel unto themselves ; who 
 perhaps obscurely hear Him and feel Him guiding 
 them through the voice of conscience — as the unseen 
 Shepherd and Bishop of their souls, ever walking 
 with them in the wa}' ; in a word, those animce 
 naturaliter Christiance which the spirit of Christ 
 fashions to His likeness in all ages and climes. 
 
 Can it then be said, speaking of the life and way 
 of Christ, rather than of Christ Himself, 
 
 Ah ! Christ, if there were no hereafter, 
 It still were best to follow Thee, 
 
 it still were best, apart from all distinct recognition 
 of that Heavenly Friend who is the Way, the Truth, 
 and the Life, to walk in the narrow way of the Cross, 
 to hold that truth, to live that life, for its own sake ? 
 Needless to say, there have been many stoics 
 and even professed Christians who have maintained 
 that virtue is its own reward, apart from all its profit- 
 able consequences here or hereafter ; so that if we 
 assume, as well we may, that Christ gives us the 
 very highest pattern of virtue, we can compel 
 
l6o "QUID ERir NOBIS?" 
 
 such thinkers at least to admit that to follow Christ 
 were best even if there were no hereafter. Neverthe- 
 less, there are certain latent fallacies in their funda- 
 mental tenet which make us a little chary of such 
 allies, — fallacies, however, rather in the analysis and 
 expression of their sentiment, than in the sentiment 
 itself, which, rightly apprehended, is the noblest we 
 are capable of. 
 
 There is a certain proud, pharisaic self-sufficiency 
 that may lead a man to seek virtue, not for virtue's 
 sake, but for his own sake, in a spirit of acquisitive- 
 ness and self-culture. Virtue may be sought merely 
 as an adornment of an idolized self, being sub- 
 ordinated to self as a means to an end ; even as the 
 same type of character seeks learning and artistic 
 skill, not for love of their inherent excellence, nor 
 even for their advantageous results, but simply 
 because self must have the best of everything. 
 As the pagan cultivated his body by gymnastics 
 and made it obedient to his will, so by virtue he 
 sought to secure a mastery over his spiritual faculties, 
 enabling him to conduct himself skilfully and success- 
 fully through the warfare of life. If he was ashamed 
 of a shambling gait, he was still more, but in much 
 the same way, ashamed of intemperance or any 
 other want of self-control. This was, in one sense, 
 seeking virtue for its own sake, for its inherent 
 excellence. Yet in that it made self the best- 
 loved and ultimate end for whose sake virtue was 
 loved, it was not really a pure love of virtue as of 
 something greater than self, to which self should be 
 submitted as a servant or slave. True, it was no 
 
-QUID ERIT NOBIS? 161 
 
 small wisdom to reckon virtue as the best of acquisi- 
 tions, the highest subjective perfection, to seek it, 
 not. as a means to any other less worthy acquisition, 
 such as wealth or honour, and, so far, for its own 
 sake; but it is only when truth and virtue are 
 recognized in a more or less obscure way as having 
 some strange, absolute claim over us, some objective 
 right altogether irrespective of our private interest 
 or subjective well-being, that they are strictly sought 
 for their own sake, as ultimate ends to which self is 
 wholly subordinated. 
 
 To the superficial this would seem to be a fallacy 
 of the imagination, decreeing divine honours to 
 personified abstractions writ large, leading the poet 
 to an idolatrous worship of Beauty, the philosopher 
 and moralist to the worship of Truth and Virtue. 
 But on closer thinking, we have here but a con- 
 fused recognition of the imperative authority of 
 Conscience, which tells us that we are by nature 
 but instruments for the working out of an end 
 communicated to us in detail in our own reason, 
 but conceived in its entirety only in the mind of 
 that subsistent personal Reason whose creatures 
 we are, and who guides and moves us through 
 Conscience for the execution of His will — the will, 
 namely, of the living and subsistent Truth and 
 Goodness. Hence every good man, however dark 
 or confused his theology may be, feels a conviction 
 that the cause of Truth and Right has a claim upon 
 him to which every private gain and pleasure must 
 be sacrificed ; that they are universal ends which he 
 must prefer to all particular ends. He cannot resist 
 
 L 
 
i62 "QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 
 
 the indistinct impression that in trespassing against 
 Truth and Right, he is violating not merely a 
 possible harmony and order, but a harmony and 
 order actually willed by a will other than his own, 
 a will with which he therefore comes into a relation 
 of hostility and conflict. 
 
 Wheresoever conscience is awakened even to this 
 extent, it is universally confessed that Truth and 
 Right are to be followed for their own sakes, and 
 apart from all other considerations of advantage ; 
 although when once we recognize that they are 
 personal and not msre personifications, then " Truth 
 for its own sake," means " God for His own sake." 
 
 It is sometimes contended that the joy which 
 springs from the sense of having done right (that is, 
 interpretatively, from a sense of union with God), and 
 which is after all a subjective pleasure, however 
 spiritual and f;xquisite, is the true and only motive 
 of such conduct ; and that it is because this pleasure 
 outbalances all the pleasures of wrong-doing that 
 some refined natures find virtue the best investment 
 for yielding good interest in the way of enjoyment. 
 
 But, in the first place, it is those who act conscien- 
 tiously as a matter of course and habitually, who 
 are least sensitive to any particular glow of self- 
 tiatisfaction when they do well; as, on the other 
 hand, it is the oldest and hardest sinners who are 
 most utterly dead to all sense of uneasiness and 
 remorse. An act of virtue is one by which we 
 chose to do what is right because it is right, and 
 not because it is pleasant; virtue sought for the 
 sake of the afterglow is not virtue at all, but the 
 
-QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 163 
 
 subtlest self-love. That same sweetness may be 
 foreseen as a side issue, and may even be desired 
 secondarily; but as soon as it diverts the soul's 
 eye from its direct intuition of right for right's sake, 
 and becomes itself the direct end to which virtue 
 is but a means, then virtue is dishonoured and its 
 supreme claims are disallowed. 
 
 Besides, human nature is, after all, calumniated 
 by this quasi-hedomist view of the matter ; and every 
 really good and virtuous man, and every man in 
 his really good and virtuous acts, implicitly con- 
 fesses the truth : 
 
 Ah ! Christ, if there were no hereafter, 
 It still were best to follow Thee. 
 
 It may even be said that in this, the verdict of 
 the purer and nobler refinements on Epicureanism 
 is not different from that of the higher stoicism. 
 It is possible to take the grosser sense of the maxim, 
 " Let us eat and drink, fcr to-morrow we die," as 
 a summary of historical Epicureanism ; but in the 
 abstract this grossness is no essential part or 
 product of the theory, and is indignantly repudiated 
 by its most authoritative exponents. " Carpe diem, 
 live each moment in the best way possible, get all 
 you can out of it, as though it were your first and 
 last, make the very most of every atom of time, so 
 as to live as fully as possible, to taste and experience 
 all that is really best while it is within your reach." 
 This is the cardinal principle, rather than any final 
 view as to the precise nature of the "best" in 
 question. To regard sensual pleasure, or any lower 
 
i64 "QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 
 
 sort of enjoyment, as the best and ideal form of 
 experience, is, theoretically at least, no necessary 
 part of this philosophy. So far, at all events, there 
 is an accord between Epicurean and Christian 
 teachers as to the supreme and in some sense 
 independent value of each present moment of expe- 
 rience viewed in its isolation. If there be a duty of 
 looking back to the past and forward to the future, 
 in order that we may make the very most of the 
 present, there is also a dreamy, profitless retro- 
 spection, full of vain regrets over what is sealed up 
 and irremediable, and an impossible or excessive 
 straining into the future with anxious eyes and 
 doubting heart, which is altogether contrary to the 
 virtue of Christian hope. Each little act of the 
 saint is idealized, at least by the end to which it 
 is directed ; at every point of his conscious existence 
 he can, if he will, touch the highest, living the 
 soul's fullest life, an eternal life, each instant as it 
 passes. This is the lesson of three lives lived at 
 Nazareth, and of thousands fashioned to the same 
 type. 
 
 The very sorrows and crosses of life, borne rightly, 
 have a sweetness of their own known to the elect few; 
 even as what is biting and severe to ordinary taste, 
 pleases the discriminating palate, or as seeming 
 discords are harmonious to the trained ear. Surely 
 none ever tasted life so deeply, so fully, as the 
 Man of sorrow and tears ; and if there never was 
 sorrow hke unto His sorrow, neither was there 
 ever a secret joy like unto His joy — the joy of a soul 
 that loves widely, deeply, and utters its love in 
 
"QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 165 
 
 suffering. Take the world as it is, with its sorrow- 
 ing and afflicted milUons — what life were so full, so 
 glorious, so joyful in the midst of sorrow, as the 
 life of one who should love all with a passionate 
 devotion, who should seek and find relief in suffering 
 for all. 
 
 Thus, following in His wake whose meat was 
 to do the Father's will and to perfect His work 
 while it was yet day ere the night came on, the 
 saints have made the maxim of carnal prudence 
 their own in a mystic and spiritual sense: "Let us 
 eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Christ is 
 that food and Christ is that drink. In expressing 
 Christ, or the Christian ideal, in every moment of 
 its activity, the soul lives its highest and most 
 blessed life; it snatches the passing "now," that 
 acceptable time, that day of salvation, doing with 
 its might, in the highest and noblest way, all that 
 its hand finds to do, working while it is yet day, ' 
 ere the night cometh wherein no man can work.^ 
 
 The real fault of even the most refined form of 
 Epicureanism seems to be the tendency to luxuriate 
 in the sensation of satisfaction which accompanies 
 the highest life, and to pervert this side issue into 
 an end ; to practise self-sacrifice, not for its own 
 sake, but for the exquisite pleasure consequent on 
 the thought that we have acted nobly or beautifully. 
 
 ' Cf. " ' Live while you live,' the Epicure would say, 
 And taste the pleasures of the passing day ; 
 
 'Live while you live,' the sacred preacher cries. 
 And give to God each moment as it flies ; 
 
 Lord, in my life let both united be, 
 
 I live to pleasure if I live to Thee." 
 
166 "QUID ERIT NOBIS f 
 
 As for the modern school of positivism, which 
 claims Comte as its founder and exponent, it is 
 avowedly in agreement with the principle for which 
 we are contending. For all to whom kindness is 
 the noblest and sweetest use of life, to whom it is 
 its own reward, are agreed that even if there were 
 no hereafter, yet of all lives the life of altruism is the 
 best. Mill and others have hopelessly failed in 
 their attempt to show that altruism and real 
 unselfishness are mere refinements of self-seeking; 
 for in truth the " other-regarding " instinct of our 
 soul is as irreducible and as primitive as the "self- 
 regarding," nay, more so. Nature's first care 
 and deepest implanted impulse is for the specific 
 and common good, to which the good of the indi- 
 vidual but ministers. That apart from Divine 
 sanctions, but few would embrace the life of 
 altruistic self-sacrifice, does not make it less true 
 that it were the best life to embrace. Few know 
 where true happiness is to be found. In philosophy, 
 as in faith, strait is the gate and narrow the way 
 that leads to life, and few there be that find it for 
 themselves, if they are not taught and guided. Our 
 chief quarrel with positivism is that, while rightly 
 insisting on the promotion of human happiness, it 
 evades the difiiculty of defining that happiness ; or 
 still worse, it places it in conditions that can never 
 possibly be realized on earth for the great majority 
 of mankind. It deludes us with the hopes of some 
 distant terrestrial paradise as unsubstantial as fairy- 
 land. Christ, on the other hand, tells us with 
 terrible frankness that there is no escape from the 
 
-QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 167 
 
 Cross, and that all we can do is to learn to love it, 
 and to utilize its hidden healing power. He does 
 uot beguile us with the fond fancy that this earth 
 will one day cease to bring forth thorns and briers, 
 but teaches us to plait them into garlands. Ecce 
 Homo ! Behold the perfect man, the perfect human 
 life, the life of mighty love uttering itself in the 
 endurance of pain and sorrow and humiliation ! 
 
 For we cannot, as Catholics, agree with those 
 who would commend the Way of the Cross as the 
 best, simply because it leads to Heaven in a life 
 after this; or even because, being the way chosen 
 by Christ, it derives an extrinsic honourableness 
 from Him. We hold rather that, taking this finite 
 world as it is, the Way of the Cross is, in the nature 
 of things, the most perfect way, the best way, the 
 way most befitting the highest capacities of the 
 human mind and heart. It is not the best because 
 it leads to Heaven, or because Christ chose it ; but 
 contrariwise, Christ chose it, and God rewards it, 
 because it is the best. It is par excellence the way 
 and the truth and the life, by which alone man 
 comes to the Father and puts on divinity and 
 immortality. So far as the rewards attached to 
 the following of Christ are in any sense additional 
 to its natural consequences, it is because, that life 
 being the best, God wills to crown it and make it 
 still better — Habenti dabitur. 
 
 To return, then, to St. Paul. Truth, however 
 seemingly many-membered, as apprehended piece- 
 meal by us, in itself is one and simple. Let a single 
 article of the Catholic creed be tampered with, and 
 
i68 "QUID ERIT NOBIS r' 
 
 the whole fabric crumbles to ruin. The glorious 
 Resurrection of Christ and His saints from the 
 dead, is the seal of Divine approval set on the 
 eternal worthfulness of the Way which He walked, 
 the Truth which He taught, the Life which He 
 lived. It is the sign, not the cause, of that worth- 
 fulness, which, moreover, needs this Divine affirma- 
 tion and sanction for the sake of the many whose 
 eyes are too weak to discern the secret beauty 
 revealed to the chosen disciples of the Cross. Nay, 
 even the faith of these is ever apt to fail, is ever 
 failing, in a world to which Christ is a fool and 
 His Cross folly; and in hours of darkness and 
 weakness — 
 
 When our light is low, 
 
 When the blood creeps and the nerves prick 
 
 And tingle ; and the heart is sick 
 And all the whfeels of being slow — 
 
 in such hours we need a Divine assurance that our 
 faith is not vain ; that we are not mere dreamers, 
 in love with the fictions of our own fancy, as we 
 might be tempted to think were it not that our 
 trembling soul is steadied by the solid fact of the 
 resurrection, which assures us that God judges as 
 we judge, and that our reason is true to the Divine 
 Reason when we say : 
 
 Ah ! Christ, if there were no hereafter, 
 
 It still were best to follow Thee. 
 Tears are a nobler gift than laughter ; 
 
 Who wears Thy yoke alone were free. 
 
THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 
 
 Locum refrigerii, lucis, et pads. 
 
 "A place of refreshment, of light, and of peace." 
 
 Canon of the Mass. 
 
 I. 
 
 Amongst the other outworks and safeguards of 
 Divine charity, we must number a longing and 
 desire for Heaven. Heaven is counted among 
 those four " last things " which are to be the theme 
 of deep and continual meditation. As we should 
 pray for an abiding fear of Hell, so also should we 
 pray for an ardent desire of Heaven, lest at any time 
 our love of God having grown cold and feeble, we 
 should need the assistance of a motive appealing 
 directly to our rational self-regard. For though 
 Heaven consists substantially and principally in the 
 love of God, wherein our soul reaches its highest 
 perfection and happiness, yet this desire for our 
 own happiness remains strong and intact even when 
 we have ceased to identify our happiness with the 
 possession of God. Charity is a purely unselfish, 
 "unselfing" virtue, whose object is God and God's 
 glory, whose motive is God's inherent goodness 
 and beauty ; but holy hope is self-regarding — wisely, 
 rightly, supernaturally — it looks to our own perfec- 
 tion and happiness, which, as wc have said, is rightly 
 
I70 THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 
 
 to be found in Divine charity. Charity then is the 
 object of Christian hope ; or, as we say, " grace 
 here and glory hereafter" — grace being the seed, 
 and glory the full-blown flower of Divine love. Our 
 happiness lies in unselfish love, in forgetting our- 
 selves and hving in God, and in our fellow-man. 
 Hence, true, wise self-regard bids us cease to regard 
 ourselves, or rather to take a truer and wiser view 
 of ourselves, to recognize that we are made, not 
 for ourselves, but to be members of God and of one 
 another ; for a collective life, love, praise, and joy. 
 
 Thus when our love of God is growing cold, it is 
 well for us to appeal to our rational self-love; to 
 remind ourselves that His ways are ways of pleasant- 
 ness and all His paths are peace ; that, eventually, 
 the yoke of the Cross is easy and the burden 
 light compared with the galling yoke of sin ; that 
 the steep and narrow way of unselfishness leads to 
 fuller life and joy; while the broad, easy, down-hill, 
 selfish road ends in destruction, death, and misery. 
 For when we have ceased to love, we can still 
 remember the joy that we found in loving, and long 
 to be able to love once more. 
 
 And if even on earth we find our substantial 
 peace and joy in the love and friendship of God, in 
 unselfish service and devotion to His mystical 
 members, we may well find a strong motive for 
 perseverance in the prospect of the marvellous 
 amplification which that charity will receive when it 
 breaks through the sod into the light and sunshine 
 of eternity and unfolds its latent treasure of leaf 
 and flower, of colour, form, and fragrance. 
 
THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 171 
 
 We assume as a first principle that man was 
 made to praise God, and that this life of praise is 
 here but rudimentary or germinal ; that our present 
 mortal state is essentially embryonic, — a time of 
 development and growth ; a time of trial and 
 combat. Man's life on earth is a warfare. Warfare 
 is essentially a transitional state, being eventually a 
 means to secure a fuller peace. All evolution and 
 growth is attended with great pain and suffering. 
 Nature herself is said to be groaning and travailing, 
 expecting her deliverance. This is the Christian 
 view of the present life — a view abundantly denied 
 by the world and by the worldly. Man was created, 
 not for this world, but for the next ; just as the 
 grub does not exist for its present larval con- 
 dition of life, but for its final life of winged 
 liberty. 
 
 This in no way countenances the heresy which 
 denies all value to our natural and temporal 
 existence, as though it had no reference to the next 
 world or were not altogether subordinated and 
 directed to it. At the other extreme, we have the 
 base view of utilitarian Christianity, which believes, 
 indeed, in the life to come, yet subordinates it 
 to the present life, as though it were merely a 
 sanction, a bribe, or a threat to secure such 
 conduct as conduces to social and individual welfart 
 and prosperity in the present world ; thus making, 
 so to say, eternity a useful appendix to time, instead 
 of the condition in which the soul dwells even 
 already. This is a view well according with the 
 Erastian form of Christianity fairly prevalent in this 
 
172 THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 
 
 Protestant country, where the Church is regarded as 
 a function of the State, subservient to social and 
 poHtical ends, its work being to secure those public 
 virtues indispensable to commercial success and to 
 civic tranquillity and health. This it is to effect by 
 godly doctrine, and by an insistence on that almost 
 pagan aspect of the Deity which views Him as a 
 " State-God," as a God concerned, not principally 
 with the sanctification of individuals, but with the 
 national greatness and prosperity. Such is, of 
 course, the teaching of Hobbes and the British 
 philosophers of the Protestant era, who subordinate 
 the individual to the State, as though the State 
 could have any other raison d'etre but the perfection 
 of its members distributively and individually. It 
 is altogether in harmony with such a thought to 
 regard Heaven and Hell and the life to come, as 
 mere sanctions to secure good conduct in the 
 present life, as means to that end ; in a word, to 
 invert the true order of things. 
 
 It is because we live in such an atmosphere of 
 unbelief and misbelief that we ourselves come to be 
 so listless about Heaven ; or even to think it some- 
 thing spiritually imperfect to dwell much upon the 
 theme, lest we should be reproached with holding a 
 "reward-and-punishment" Christianity; a reproach 
 which Erastianism has, not unreasonably, earned, 
 and which unfortunately is extended to Catholic 
 Christianity by those who are as ignorant of that 
 religion as South Sea islanders. 
 
 We are also to some extent affected by the 
 purist or quietist fallacies of certain Catholic 
 
THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 173 
 
 writers, or by our false understanding of the senti- 
 ments of others who have written and spoken truly 
 enough of the self-forgetful nature of perfect love. 
 We think that, because hope and fear are in some 
 sense cast out by perfect love, that we should not 
 concern ourselves much about them, but should 
 regard them as transient phases of our spiritual 
 evolution, as "the things of a child," to be put 
 away by those who have reached manhood's 
 maturity. 
 
 Yet, in very truth, both hope and fear are so 
 indissolubly connected with love that they all grow 
 pari passu. Fear, as we have elsewhere said, is the 
 very fibre and backbone of reverential love, being 
 begotten of a sense of God's greatness, justice, 
 power, indignation, and other " masculine " attri- 
 butes, which very attributes are components of His 
 iovableness, since what wins our love is the thought 
 that one so great should love one so little, that 
 one so high should stoop so low, that one so 
 great should be so merciful, that so strong and 
 invincible an indignation should be chained down in 
 the bonds of a love yet stronger and more invincible. 
 And thus in the saints the measure of love has 
 always been the measure of fear, — albeit their fear is 
 no longer servile when it has given birth to love and 
 when love is matured so as no longer to need the 
 aid of servile fear, but to be itself an all-suf&cient 
 spring of action. It is not fear but, as Aquinas 
 says, the servility of fear which is cast out by 
 perfect love. 
 
 And so with holy hope, as far as it too is in 
 
174 THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 
 
 some sense servile and self-regarding; bound and 
 not free ; narrow and not universal. This servility 
 of hope is cast out by perfect love; though hope 
 itself grows pace for pace with love. It is the 
 rational desire of our own highest happiness and 
 of our spiritual development that makes us seek 
 to become unselfish and full of self-forgetting charity. 
 We come to recognize that our own happiness 
 must never be the direct object of our quest ; 
 that it is by resigning it, by ceasing to seek for 
 it, nay, by sacrificing it, that we best secure it. 
 " He that seeketh his life shall lose it ; he that 
 loseth his life shall save it." Happiness conies to 
 us as a side issue of a nobler end, and surprises us 
 by its presence just when we have at last succeeded 
 in putting it out of our heads as an object of con- 
 sideration. Even then, if we dwell on it, caress it, 
 foster it, and try to retain it, it eludes us like our 
 own shadow ; so coy is happiness, the child of self- 
 forgetting love. 
 
 Their hope is undoubtedly the keenest and 
 strongest who have tasted the peace of God which 
 passes all understanding, who have known the 
 happiness of unselfish love, — if by hope we mean 
 placing our whole happiness, our heart's supreme 
 treasure, in God. Hope and fear alike are strongest 
 when love is strongest. The more we realize the 
 loveliness of God the more must we long for Him, 
 that is, long to love Him more. 
 
 The quietist view falsely supposes that all self- 
 regard is selfishness in the bad sense. But, in truth, 
 these two fundamental, self-regarding impulses of 
 
THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 175 
 
 hope and fear, even in their imperfect or servile 
 form, are not only blameless but laudable. The 
 tendency towards self-good, self-evolution, and 
 private interest is a force which, unlimited and 
 unrestrained, would tend to lawlessness and evil; 
 but governed by a higher law and love to which it 
 subserves, it is altogether right and helpful. Nature 
 never intended it to be a free force ; but one essenti- 
 ally destined to subjection and bondage to a higher 
 force. Under the guidance of God the self-seeking 
 instinct of the individual brute-animal is subservient 
 and conducive to a wider interest, namely, the good 
 of the species, which is God's more principal care. 
 And this is no less true of man's spiritual self-seeking 
 instinct. Thus, for example, there is no positive 
 selfishness in the conduct of one who is occupied 
 wholly with fitting himself and his family to fill 
 creditably their due station in society, albeit he does 
 not explicitly think of or intend the general social 
 good thence resulting. But if, in the pursuit ot 
 wealth and culture he implicitly or explicitly excludes 
 the desire to benefit society, if he injures others by 
 injustice or cruelty, or if he otherwise impedes their 
 due prosperity, he is positively selfish and formally 
 hurtful to the common welfare. If, on the other 
 hand, he explicitly adverts to the bearing of his own 
 on the public advantage, if he intends the latter so 
 principally that he would freely forego his private 
 gain for the sake of the general welfare, then he 
 is positively unselfish, and uses his natural self- 
 regarding impulse for that very end for which it was 
 given him, and in the way in which it was intended 
 
176 THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 
 
 to be used, that is, to facilitate the fulfilment of his 
 first and highest duty — his duty to God and to 
 God's interest in human society. Thus, too, we 
 say that all the virtues subordinate to charity, such 
 as mercifulness, temperance, purity, and the rest, 
 are not useless because charity includes the aim of 
 all others ; but their work is to facilitate the designs 
 of charity, who governs them all as her ministers. 
 
 Hope and fear, therefore, are the ministers of 
 Divine love, governing us in its absence or during 
 its minority ; serving it when it is present. 
 
 There is another form of self-regard which, far 
 from being selfish, is pure unselfishness, namely, the 
 self-regard of him who has died to himself, who has 
 put on a wider self, who has merged his being and 
 life, his sorrow and joy, his interests, his hopes, his 
 fears in those of Christ and of the children of Christ, 
 his fellow-members in Christ's Mystical Body. For 
 it is the self-regard of one who really and adequately 
 knows himself — what he is by nature and by God's 
 intention ; who knows that he is not for himself but 
 for others ; that he is God's instrument before all 
 else — intended primarily for God and God's Kingdom, 
 and that he is to secure his own happiness in the 
 universal happiness which he shares. But plainly it 
 is only by a violent non-natural use of language 
 that we can call this, "self-regard," while to call it 
 selfishness were absurd. This deepest appetite of 
 our spirit which demands a Divine and universal 
 happiness for its food, is indeed within us. It is 
 ours, and yet it is ours precisely in virtue of our 
 essential subordination to God as instruments of 
 
THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 177- 
 
 His universal purpose, and as moved by His will, 
 even as the members are guided by the head to an 
 end of vi^hich they have no consciousness. Man, 
 indeed, being intelligent, comes gradually to under- 
 stand the whence and whither of his extra-regarding 
 instincts ; he comes to recognize them as the will of 
 God working in him, and to throw himself freely 
 into sympathy with them and to obey them as 
 Divine behests conveyed to him by the voice of 
 conscience. It is then only that man knows himself, 
 recognizes his true self, and no longer lives for that 
 false, separate self, but for the self which is merged 
 into God. 
 
 II. 
 
 St. Paul tells us that the saints of God when on 
 earth were as strangers and pilgrims, having here 
 no abiding city, looking for "the City, that hath 
 foundations," no mere encampment in the desert, 
 but Jerusalem, the city of peace, founded on the 
 everlasting hills, immovable as the Eternal Rock, 
 "whose builder and maker is God." They were as- 
 one in a foreign country on some brief business,, 
 where the faces, the language, the ways are strange, 
 uncongenial, repugnant ; whose heart is elsewhere,, 
 who impatiently counts the days and hours- 
 which must pass before he can gather his effects 
 together and hurry to that goal of his desires called 
 home. " Strangers and pilgrims ; " strangers to all 
 around them, awkward and out of place, as one 
 of noble and refined nature whose lot has cast 
 him with the vulgar and semi-barbarous, who, 
 
 M 
 
178 THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 
 
 notwithstanding, have their own curious code of 
 honour and etiquette, or what corresponds to such. 
 " Pilgrims," moreover, for they never stay their 
 homeward march for a moment, seeing in this life 
 the ladder that leads them upward step by step to 
 the face of God, to their Patria — the dwelling of 
 their Father who is in Heaven. 
 
 And if we speak of this Patria in terms of place, 
 as a pilgrimage from earth to Heaven ; or in terms 
 of time, as a passing from the present to the future 
 life, we but figure forth the process by which the 
 soul is transformed from the death of nothingness 
 whence it was drawn, into the fulness of life in the 
 bosom of the Father whither it is drawn. For il 
 our Father is in Heaven, our Heaven is also in the 
 Father ; nay, our Father is Heaven. We speak 
 indifferently of our entry into God's Kingdom,^ or oi 
 the advent of God's Kingdom into us ; for in sub- 
 stance Heaven is the absolute domination of Divine 
 love over the soul whose eyes, first opened in this 
 dim cavern of time, have been taught to bear the 
 growing brightness until at last they have dared to 
 fix their steadfast gaze upon the very source of all 
 light — the True Light which enlighteneth every man 
 that Cometh into the world. 
 
 In each of its free acts the soul tries, then and 
 there, to realize itself, to enter into that beatitude 
 
 • Cf. " Licet gaudium aeternas beatitudinis in cor hominis intret, 
 raaluit tamen Dominus ei dicere : Intra in gaudium ; ut mystice 
 innuatur, quod gaudium illud non solum in eo sit intra, sed undique 
 ilium circumdans et absorbens et ipsum velut abyssus infinita 
 submergens." (St. Bernardine of Siena, Serm. de St. Joseph.) 
 
THE LIFE EVERLASTING. .79 
 
 which it dimly conceives, anf' by the desire of which 
 it is moved and governed continually. It is as a 
 caged bird whose every fruitless struggle and effort 
 aims at perfect liberty, and cries out : " Who will 
 give me the wings of a dove ? then would I fly away 
 and be at rest ; " for it is this dream of rest 
 which is the motive of all our action, and labour, 
 and strife. No two conceive quite the same notion 
 of rest for their souls. Many conceive it altogether 
 amiss ; others, with Augustine, look only to God, 
 and cry : " Our heart is restless, Lord, till it rest in 
 Thee ; " but all alike are dominated in every free act 
 by some such End or Ideal or Final Rest struggling 
 to be born in them — be it true rest or false : be it 
 Heaven or Hell. All are striving to pass from time 
 to eternity; from restlessness to repose; from a state 
 of change to an unchanging state ; from their 
 pilgrimage to their home ; from the tent-city of 
 nomads to the " city that hath foundations." Our 
 free actions may be likened to the blows of some 
 engine of war which beat and beat against a fortress 
 gate till one of them at last realizes what all the 
 rest, of their very nature and purpose, tended to 
 realize, or which any of them might have realized. 
 So each free act by itself is governed and informed 
 or at least checked by the latent presence in the soul 
 of an ideal of rest, of happiness, of home, which it 
 abortively tries to realize, but which some last act 
 will alone succeed in realizing. On the direction 
 of that last act after which we pass into our time- 
 less, changeless state, all depends. 
 
 The saints, then, on earth have ever echoed the 
 
l8o THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 
 
 aspiration of St. Paul : Cupio dissolvi — " I long to be 
 dissolved and to be with Christ," to be uncaged and 
 fly away arid be at rest. The first instinct of love 
 is to seek the closer company of the Beloved, to 
 enjoy His sweet converse, to lean on His breast at 
 supper, to sit at His feet and hear His words. 
 And as love grows, this instinct becomes more 
 urgent and imperious, more painful and galling 
 when thwarted ; and yet the very strength of 
 unselfish love nerves the soul to endure the bitter- 
 ness of separation in the interests of the Beloved. 
 If for his own sake Paul longed to be released and to 
 be with Christ, yet for the sake of Christ and Christ's 
 little ones he was content to remain, and to remain 
 for ever, were it needful for their confirmation and 
 consolation.^ And this was the love of the glorious 
 St. Martin when he prayed, " Lord, if I am needed 
 for Thy people, I do not begrudge the labour ; " and 
 of the Blessed Mother herself, who willingly lingered 
 in exile after her Son's ascension that she might be 
 to the infant Church all that she had been to Flim. 
 Coarctor e duobus — St. Paul is on the rack between 
 these two desires which are born and grow and 
 strengthen together; between the claims of the 
 individual member and those of the whole body ; 
 between supernatural self- regarding tendencies, and 
 the demands of charity and unselfish love which in 
 certain adjuncts require the repression and morti- 
 fication of the former. Thus in our time of 
 pilgrimage — dum peregrinamur a Domino — the tension 
 and the pain is, or should be, ever on the increase, 
 
 ^ Philipp. i. 23 — 25. 
 
THE LIFE EVERLASTING. i8i 
 
 according as the conflicting desires — the desire to 
 stay and the desire to go — grow stronger- " But 
 when that which is perfect is come, then that which 
 is in part shall be done away," the interests of both 
 tendencies shall coincide, " and there shall be no 
 more sorrow," no more coarctatio e duohus. 
 
 Further, this very " longing to depart and be with 
 Christ " is of itself blind and self-defeating, and 
 a more clear-sighted self-regard will be prudent to 
 see that the interests of hope and charity are in truth 
 identical, and that the self-restraint and self-denial 
 involved in the submission of the single member to 
 the whole Body, is really for its eventual and more 
 lasting well-being. He whose love leads him to 
 mortify the present " longing to depart " strengthens 
 and deepens that longing with every new exercise of 
 love, and strains more tightly the tension of that 
 bond which at the instant of release will draw him 
 to the bosom of God, to the embrace of Christ : 
 
 O days and hours your work is this, 
 To hold me from my proper place, 
 A little while from his embrace, 
 
 For fuller gain of after-bliss. 
 
 No will or appetite, however high or holy, can be 
 obeyed blindly and without limit, save only the will 
 and love of God. Every other wish and interest 
 must be stayed, and questioned, and examined by 
 that sovereign rule and law in subjection to which 
 it eventually finds its most solid gain. Else its 
 rebellious impetuosity is self-defeating, and a series 
 of ever-weakening present ecstasies ends in a total 
 enfeeblement and degradation of the impulse. 
 
i82 THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 
 
 Never, therefore, may the desire to be with Christ, 
 viewed as our own personal rest and separate gain, 
 be supreme and unqualified. It must always be 
 subordinate to love, whose minister and child it is : 
 " Father, if it be possible — yet not my will but Thy 
 will be done." But as an accelerating and secondary 
 motive it can never be too strong. Thus it is in all 
 true, pure, reverential human love, which is ever 
 willing to bear pain, even the pain of separation — 
 the greatest of all pains, the last and hardest 
 sacrifice. It is no pure or unselfish love which 
 basks in the presence of a spouse or child, in the 
 warm glow of domestic affection, when their true 
 mterest, as well as the will of God, demands that 
 heart-strings should be rent on both sides and the 
 keen sword of separation endured unflinchingly. It 
 is the stronger and nobler love which both nerves to 
 the sacrifice, and sacrifices most ; which suffers most 
 acutely, and yet most readily. 
 
 It is in conformity with all that has been said 
 that we read how our Divine Saviour, "for the joy 
 that was set before Him, endured the Cross and 
 despised the shame." Not as though this personal, 
 and in some sense private joy and glory, were the 
 leading or principal motive of His endurance. That 
 motive was the love of the Father, of the Father's 
 will and the Father's Kingdom. Yet so far as the 
 Cross and the shame were grievous to the weakness 
 of the flesh, their burden was lightened or counter- 
 poised by the prospect of a more than compensating 
 joy and glory. So it is St. Paul balances the light 
 and momentary afflictions of this life against the 
 
THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 183 
 
 great weight of eternal glory in the future, and finds 
 the former in comparison not worthy of considera- 
 tion. It is the " What doth it profit ? " motive in 
 another form — not the highest motive, but subsidiary 
 to the highest ; not love, but the prop and fence of 
 love. And he tells us how this saint and that 
 suffered various torments and privations " looking to 
 the reward" — Adspiciebat enim in remunerationeni ; i.e., 
 not disdaining to enlist the services of prudent and 
 supernatural self-regard in the cause of love — thus 
 counteracting the weakness of the shrinking flesh. 
 
 And, after all, what is this reward that Christ 
 and His saints looked forward to ? Surely no selfish 
 or isolated joy ; but the joy of one who lives for 
 others, and in others, and makes their happiness his 
 own ; who finds — though he does not seek — his own 
 reward in the attainment of his unselfish ends. It 
 is not his own paltry share in the booty, but the 
 glory and triumph of his country that animates the 
 loyal soldier to bravery. That is the joy that he 
 sets before him. He knows that even his own 
 personal share in the general triumph, the mere 
 gratification of his passionate patriotism, will more 
 than repay the toils and wounds and perils of the 
 present moment. Similarly, he who is wise enough 
 to see that in unselfishness and self-forgetfulness lies 
 the shortest road to private happiness, knows well 
 that in losing his life he is saving it ; and though 
 private happiness is not his direct aim, yet with the 
 assured expectation of it he can quiet the rebellious 
 clamours of short-sighted self-love. 
 
 Such was the joy that Christ set before Himself; 
 
i84 THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 
 
 the joy of the Father, the joy of the whole body of 
 the redeemed, of His Blessed Mother, of all the 
 angels and saints ; that common joy whereof He 
 was the cause, and wherein, as Head of the Mystic 
 Body, He was to be chief participant ; that Gaudium 
 Domini into which the saints enter, as members 
 enter into the life of the head. 
 
 How impossible, then, for them not to long and 
 cry out for that consummation of all their desires ; 
 for that full and perfect possession of God, or rather 
 possession by God, which is the very substance of 
 Heaven — all accessory and accidental joy being but 
 the setting of that " Pearl of great price," the 
 Kingdom of God in the heart. " Oh, how lovable 
 are Thy dwellings, Thou Lord of hosts," cries 
 David ; " my soul hath a desire and longing to enter 
 into the courts of the Lord ; my heart and my flesh 
 rejoice in the living God. . . . Blessed are they that 
 dwell. in Thy house." And why blessed? "They 
 will be always praising Thee," always entering into 
 the life and joy and praise of their Lord; always 
 fulfilling the end for which their soul was created 
 and designed by Love. And again : " One day in 
 Thy courts is better than a thousand ; " the now of 
 eternal "being," better than ages of imperfection 
 and " becoming ; " the joy of a single instant of that 
 rest, than the accumulated joys of an endless 
 pilgrimage. And, " As the hart longs for the water- 
 springs, so longs my soul after Thee, O God. My 
 soul is athirst for God the strong, the mighty ; when 
 shall I come and appear before the face of my 
 God?" 
 
THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 185 
 
 We, on' the other hand, know Httle of these 
 longings. Far from feehng ourselves strangers and 
 pilgrims on earth, we find ourselves only too much 
 at home in this world ; our surroundings are by no 
 means very uncongenial ; and if at times death 
 seems welcome, it is rather in its negative aspect 
 as an end of ills we know, than as an entrance into 
 a life which has but feeble attraction for us, 
 
 This may be partly due to the dimness of our 
 faith, which must almost necessarily languish in an 
 age and country where it has lost the support of 
 public acknowledgment and profession, where we 
 feel that perhaps the majority of the cultured and 
 educated question the very existence of a future life, 
 or at most regard it as a tenable hypothesis, but in 
 no way to be used as the governing principle of 
 individual and social conduct. Partly it is to be 
 ascribed to our own spiritual state and to the neglect 
 ■of meditation on the mysteries of our holy religion. 
 While in every other department of knowledge our 
 interest leads us from stage to stage, from the pueri- 
 lities of our first conceptions to a greater maturity 
 of comprehension ; here we remain content with 
 the notions gathered in our childhood, which are 
 no more suitable for our adult mind than is milk 
 diet for strong men. We go through life with some 
 child's dream of Heaven, as of a cloud-built city 
 radiant with gold and colour and gleaming jewels, 
 peopled with bright-winged beings, and with those 
 whom we have loved here on earth ; where God, 
 too, has His throne of state and receives a service 
 of sweet song, of fragrant incense, of ceremonious 
 
i86 THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 
 
 adoration. Nor do I say that our sensile imagi- 
 nation can ever rise beyond such gaudy symbolism 
 when it endeavours to picture the unpicturable, and 
 to make visible the invisible. Nor yet are we free 
 to deny that with the risen and glorified body, there 
 will be also a "new heaven and a new earth," in 
 which this sensible and physical order of existence 
 will endure in some spiritualized and transfigured 
 condition as an instrument of Divine praise. But 
 riper thought should teach us to see in these things 
 only the outward symbols and accessories of the 
 substantial joy of Heaven, which consists in the 
 possession of God, in the Communion of the Saints; 
 a joy which we begin to taste even here when the 
 charity of God is diffused in our hearts by the Holy 
 Ghost. Our reason working on our gathering self- 
 experience should convince us that it is only in 
 personal love, self-annihilating, adoring, unchanging, 
 eternal, that our heart can find rest and happiness ; 
 and that Heaven is Heaven just because it offers us 
 this. For what is Heaven but Eternal Life, an 
 entering into the Life of the Eternal, through the 
 unitive virtue of love. It is to see face to face that 
 Beauty, the very hint of which, known as we here 
 know it, by the rumour of faith or by the fringes of 
 its garment, can kindle a love which devours the 
 heart of the saints. If to hear of it can so dominate 
 and subdue the soul, what must it be to behold it ? 
 Nor let us forget what our faith teaches us as to 
 our supernatural elevation to a destiny such as no 
 introspection would ever remotely suggest. Reason 
 ilone might possibly verify the assertion that we were 
 
.THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 187 
 
 made to find happinbss in some very close know- 
 ledge and love of God, shared in common with all 
 the souls of the just made perfect. But faith tells 
 us that by grace we are re-created for a more intimate 
 union with the Divinity; not merely to know and 
 love and rejoice in the same Divine Good wherein 
 God rejoices, but in some sort to apprehend it with 
 the same kind of act wherewith He apprehends it — 
 an act which we call knowledge for want of a better 
 name, just as at times we speak of understanding as 
 seeing. It is principally by reason of this conformity 
 to God in the mode of our knowledge and love and 
 joy that we are said to enter into that life of the 
 Eternal, " which eye hath not seen nor ear heard 
 nor heart conceived." 
 
 And though in itself the Godhead is the same, 
 whether it be viewed with the eye of the natural 
 intellect or with the grace-anointed vision of the 
 saints, yet the aspect it presents to the beholder, the 
 impress it creates in him, the love it enkindles, is 
 all other. Indeed, even in the order of natural 
 vision, no two see quite the same beauty or are 
 incited by it to a precisely similar affection. Still 
 less can we compare the supernatural love and joy 
 of the blessed with that of nature " unelevated." 
 
 And if we turn to the object of this vision and 
 love, it is that same object of Divine self-praise 
 wherein God rejoices and wherein all His saints 
 rejoice, their joy and praise being, so to say, a 
 created and finite reverberation of the uncreated and 
 Infinite. It is found principally in the intrinsic 
 glory and beauty of the Divinity Itself, and second- 
 
THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 
 
 arily in such communications of His glory as He 
 has imparted to His saints, whom He has gathered 
 round Him as a not unworthy crown of love's 
 triumph — even as the Sun rays itself round with a 
 halo of brightness. In all this He rejoices as the 
 Sun in its own splendour. And each of the blessed 
 rejoices with Him in this collective glory — self- 
 forgetful, save so far as the glory of each is an 
 «lement in the glory of all And if to none of those 
 blessed souls that glory is manifest as it can be only 
 to the mind of the Infinite, and if to no two of 
 them under the same aspect, yet there is a certain 
 harmony in their knowledge and love and praise, 
 each filling and complementing what is wanting to 
 the other; each an essential part in a perfect mosaic j 
 each necessary to the effect of the whole ; all collec- 
 tively making one mirror wherein God sees and 
 loves Himself anew, one complex chord of ever- 
 lasting praise ; many eyes, yet but one vision ; many 
 hearts, yet but one love ; many voices and tongues, 
 yet but one song. 
 
 III. 
 If, however, our feeble mind soon wearies of the 
 strain, when it would try to form some conception 
 of that Eternal joy, that joy of the Eternal, which 
 eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor heart conceived ; 
 if we can never form any real image to ourselves of 
 what Heaven is, we can at least find rest and repose 
 in the thought of what it is not. " God shall 
 wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there 
 shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying 
 
THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 189. 
 
 nor any more pain, ... for the former things are 
 passed away." And again : "They shall not hunger 
 nor thirst any more ; nor shall the sun nor the heat 
 beat upon them ; for the Lamb in their midst shall 
 be their Shepherd, and shall lead them to the living 
 water- springs." And once more: "Blessed are the 
 dead who die in the Lord, for they shall rest from 
 their labours." 
 
 When we look upon this ruin of a world, such 
 as sin and its consequences have left it, we are still 
 able to figure some image to ourselves of that 
 Paradise which God intended to be the vestibule- 
 of Heaven, the place of man's light exile and easy 
 probation. We can in some way conjecture what 
 this earthly life would be were there no sin or selfish- 
 ness, " no more death, nor crymg, nor grief, nor 
 pain," no fruitless spiritual longings, no darkness 
 of ignorance and error, no wearisome toiling with 
 sweat of the brow for the bare necessities of life. 
 Even the poor relics of this ruin, how fair they are ! 
 how we treasure them up as the art-lover does the 
 stray fragments of some noble sculpture whose lines 
 tell the tale of the beauty that belonged to the whole ! 
 How lovely still is the face of nature; how sweet 
 her myriad voices ! And man, with all his vileness 
 and weakness, how lovable in spite of it, nay, 
 because of it ! If God Himself delights to be with 
 the children of men, if " our Maker is our husband " 
 and lover, is it wonderful that we should be tempted* 
 to cling to one another — 
 
 As if our heaven and home were here. 
 
igo THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 
 
 And chief among the factors of our earthly happi- 
 ness, that which binds together, preserves, purifies, 
 strengthens the rest, is God Himself dwelling in us 
 and in all around us, revealed to us in His works, 
 communing with us in our inmost heart and con- 
 science, imparting His light to our mind. His 
 warmth to our heart, filling with peace and glad- 
 ness those souls who willingly seek for Him with 
 open ear and eye, and who most surely find Him 
 far nearer than they ever dreamt. Take sin and its 
 consequences away, and earth were indeed such a 
 Paradise as might make us to cry out : " It is good 
 for us to be here ! " Yet it would be but the vestibule 
 of Heaven ; the shadow of the substance. 
 
 At times it may seem to us that we desire nothing 
 but rest, the mere cessation of toil and pain, of 
 sorrow and temptation, the mere " not-being " of 
 annihilation. Millions profess with their lips that 
 to desire is to suffer ; that to be, is to desire ; that 
 it is alone by not-being that we can escape from 
 suffering ; that our wisest desire is to cease to desire 
 and to cease to be ; to be merged once more into 
 the calm bosom of that nothingness whose surface 
 is by some malign cause rippled for a moment and 
 disturbed by our individuality and existence. 
 
 They do not discern that desire is woven of a 
 double strand, namely, the love of an absent object, 
 together with a sense of need, — the former pleasur- 
 able, the latter painful; or that desire makes not 
 ■only -for the cessation of the sense of pain, but 
 principally for the fulfilment of love in the joy of 
 .possession and attainment. 
 
THE LIFE EVERLASTING. igi 
 
 If we desire the absence of pain, it is not this 
 mere negation which attracts us. We cannot be 
 attracted by nothing. The full object of our hope 
 is our conscious, existing self in a state of freedom 
 from pain. Even the unbelieving suicide is deluded 
 by the imagination that he will be consciom of his 
 deliverance from suffering, though his intellect may 
 reject the doctrine of immortality. We cannot then 
 arouse in ourselves a longing for Heaven by the mere 
 prospect of negative rest, of no more death nor sorrow 
 nor pain, but only by the prospect of a life immeasur- 
 ably fuller and more lovable than this life would be 
 were it once more transfigured into Paradise, and 
 every weed and bramble of sin plucked up and 
 destroyed. Even our present narrow, humble mode 
 of existence is at times very sweet to us, when the 
 removal of some passing bitterness has made us 
 realize the blessing which before we unconsciously 
 enjoyed. If, then, in its lower phases, a painless 
 life can be so longed for, how much more the highest 
 plenitude of being of which we are capable ? 
 
 Lastly, Heaven is described in our liturgy as " a 
 place of refreshment and of light and of peace ; " 
 which again must be understood as telling us both 
 what it is not, and what it is. In this world God tries 
 His saints in the fire of tribulation, temptation, per- 
 secution, even as gold is tried in the furnace. The 
 noon-day sun scorches them, and the heat stifles 
 and oppresses them. They are athirst with their 
 battles and labours, with loss of blood. But there 
 "the Lamb that is in their midst shall shepherd 
 them, and lead them by the living water-springs," 
 
».32 THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 
 
 by that " pure river of the water of life, clear as 
 crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of 
 the Lamb." 
 
 Here they are led blindfold by the hand of faith, 
 or if they see aught, it is by the flickering, uncertain 
 light of reason ; their eyes are wearied and dim, 
 straining through the gloom, and watching for the 
 morning which seems so long in coming. God's 
 ways are so puzzling, so mysterious, so incalculable, 
 fooling our presumption the moment we pretend to 
 have discovered their law. Here we can but cry out 
 in our humility : " How incomprehensible are His 
 judgments and His ways past finding out." But 
 there the weary mind will at last repose in the full 
 clear light of truth, and the doubts and difficulties 
 will be forgotten, as the cloudlets that flecked the 
 sky of a day long past. And if there is laughter in 
 Heaven, it will be at the guesses and conjectures 
 and vain theorizings of our child-life on earth, as now 
 we laugh at the fancies of our early years. There 
 " the city shall need no sun nor moon to enlighten 
 it," no created or reflected light; "for the bright- 
 ness of God hath illumined it and the Lamb is the 
 Light thereof." 
 
 Here there is unending war: war with oneself, 
 with the world, with the powers of darkness : Militia 
 vita hominis super terram. " Never art thou secure 
 in this life," says a Kempis, " but while thou livest 
 thou wilt need thy spiritual armour; for thou art 
 in the midst of enemies, and art assailed on the right 
 hand and on the left." But there, there shall be 
 peace at last : Pax solida ; pax imperturbahilis ei 
 
THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 193 
 
 secura; pax intus et foris; pax ex omnis parti firma — 
 " Solid peace, unshaken and unshakable, firm on 
 every side, within and without." 
 
 " A place of refreshment, of light, and of peace " 
 — and why ? Because it is the place of God, who is 
 at once our Rest and Refreshment, our Light, our 
 Peace ; because it is the home of our Father who is 
 m Heaven, and who is Himself our Heaven : Ubi tu, 
 ibi cesium, atque ibi mors et infernus ubi tu non es — 
 "Where God is, there is Heaven. Where God is 
 not, there is Death and Hell." 
 
 And so we return to the starting-point, to 
 the First Principle and Foundation, to the truth 
 that man is created, not for earth, but for Heaven ; 
 not for time, but for Eternity ; not for himself, but 
 for Another; not for the creature, but for the Creator. 
 " Thou hast made us for Thyself," says Augustine. 
 "Thou hast made us" — God, our first Beginning. 
 " For Thyself "—God, our last End, 
 
 "And our heart can find no rest till it rest in 
 Thee." 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE 
 
 Erunt sicut angeli Dei in coelo. 
 
 " They shall be as the angels of God in Heaven." — 
 St. Matt. xxii. 30. 
 
 It may be safely asserted that Catholic Christianity 
 has developed the idea of the virtue of purity and 
 emphasized its importance, to a degree previously 
 unknown to the world, and hardly now known 
 outside the limit of the Church's influence. Within 
 those limits, no doubt, are included many non- 
 Catholic Christians, and perhaps many whose 
 Christianity has been puzzled out of them, but 
 who still retain a practical veneration for its 
 moral ideas and are unconsciously imbued with 
 its instincts. 
 
 No doubt the intensity of the stress which the 
 Church lays upon this virtue finds its justification 
 in some of the deepest mysteries of faith. For 
 granted that impurity is a violation of the natural 
 dignity of man, it follows that every addition to 
 man's spiritual elevation increases the malice of 
 any act of defilement or profanation. Thus when 
 St. Paul says : " Lie not one to another, for ye are 
 members one of another," he does not mean to 
 give the ethical reason against lying, but he supposes 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 193 
 
 the malice of falsehood to be admitted on all hands, 
 and adds a supernatural reason which makes it 
 more odious among those who are united by special 
 ties of fidelity as members of one mystical body. 
 In like manner, Christian doctrine takes for granted 
 that the law of reason condemns all impurity, and 
 then adds to the prohibition of reason other motives 
 and sanctions drawn from revelation alone. 
 
 Still it must be confessed that, as in other 
 matters of natural religion and morals, so more 
 especially in this, revelation has helped reason by 
 way of suggestion. A passage in some foreign 
 language may be utterly beyond our comprehension 
 and seem to us hopelessly tangled and faulty, and 
 yet a glance at a translation puts everything in its 
 right place and proves the confusion to have been 
 purely subjective. So the revelation of natural 
 truths enables us to see them by the light of reason 
 — paradoxical as it may sound ; or, if we saw them 
 at all before, to see them now more clearly, to hold 
 to them more firmly, and to penetrate to their further 
 consequences. Besides, what would with difficulty 
 have been within the grasp of the talented, leisured, 
 industrious few, is now by revelation made " current 
 coin " and the abiding heritage of all. 
 
 If then, remaining within the purely ethical 
 order, we seem in some points to find but a frail 
 support for the bold teaching and instincts of the 
 Catholic Church in this matter of purity, it need not 
 surprise us, since we find a like difficulty in justifying 
 many of our other natural moral instincts and 
 beliefs which we hold to none the less firmly, knowing 
 
ig6 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 
 
 well that more things are reasonable than reason can 
 analyze or set out in form. 
 
 Yet there is hardly any point of the Catholic 
 doctrine of purity, which mere reason does not to 
 some extent bear out, while in no point can it be 
 shown to be contrary to reason. 
 
 Before, however, examining the rational founda- 
 tions upon which this body of teaching rests, we 
 may give a brief glance at the buttresses and supports 
 it receives from faith and revelation. 
 
 If the very inclinations of sensuality, which are 
 natural to man regarded physiologically, are in the 
 present order a fruit of original sin, then whatever 
 natural unseemliness or disorder there may be in 
 them is augmented and aggravated in so far as they 
 are doubly against the Divine will. We suppose, 
 for the present, that man advances from imperfec- 
 tion to perfection, and that since he rightly strives 
 to obtain complete control over his passions, he 
 cannot fail to regard their insubordination as a 
 misfortune, as a moral disorder or disease — some- 
 thing to be eradicated and overcome, something 
 which lowers him to the " ape and tiger " level. 
 
 Remaining merely in the natural order, our 
 lack of perfect self-control in this matter is against 
 our final dignity, i.e., against the ideal which reason 
 bids us strive to realize. But according to Catholic 
 doctrine, Adam was created with perfect and preter- 
 natural self-control in this matter — starting, so ta 
 say, at the goal of nature's utmost endeavour. This 
 was, of course, an altogether preternatural endow- 
 ment, as much so as was the infusion of that know- 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 197 
 
 ledge and culture towards wl ich he would otherwise 
 have climbed laboriously and never so effectually. 
 That the race in its representative and head forfeited 
 this preternatural gift by sin, makes that a penal 
 privation which otherwise had been only a natural 
 negation. Sensuality is, therefore, not only contrary 
 to man's natural " final " perfection, but also to what 
 God intended him to be in the present order. He 
 raised us to better things, above our nature, and our 
 present humiliation is culpable, not indeed through the 
 fault of the individual, but through the fault of the 
 race. This makes all insubordination of the passions 
 irregular by a new title, that is, as a disturbance, not 
 only of the natural, but of the supernatural order. 
 
 The passions being at least indirectly under our 
 free control, their irregularity is not merely a physical, 
 but a moral infirmity. The cardinal virtues of Tem- 
 perance and Fortitude are in some way defective 
 until they have extended from the higher will into 
 the emotional faculties which it is their office to 
 control. However inculpable, the insubordination 
 of the lower to the higher will partakes of the nature 
 of vice, and is a disposition towards evil. As far 
 {and no further) as the behaviour of our passions is 
 not determined by necessary causes, but is deter- 
 minable by our free choice, just so far is their rebel- 
 lion a vice, whether culpable or inculpable, whether 
 resulting from negligence or preceding it. Sensuality 
 is, in the present order, not merely a penalty, like 
 sickness or death, but an ethical blemish which 
 cannot be acquiesced in without fault. 
 
 Again, the Catholic doctrine of grace, which is 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 
 
 declared either to be or to involve a real mystical 
 indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the soul, and 
 thereby in the body of the unfallen Christian, makes 
 every defilement of that temple in some sense sacri- 
 legious. " Know you not," says St. Paul, " that your 
 members are the temple of the Holy Ghost who 
 is in you ? " " Whoso defileth God's temple, him 
 will God destroy." As in the building of Solomon's 
 temple, reverence for the sanctuary that was to be. 
 forbade the noise of axe or hammer, and required 
 the stones to be cut elsewhere, and thence taken 
 and set silently in their destined places, so the 
 tumult of unruly passions, even where blameless, is 
 unfitting in the sanctuary of a far higher indwelling, 
 in the soul which is a consort of the Divine Nature ; 
 which lives and breathes with a Divine Life. It was 
 this sense of fitness which secured for Adam the gift 
 of perfect self-control or " integrity " (as it is called) ; 
 and if it has not been restored to us by redemption, 
 it is only because our redemption is as yet but 
 imperfect, and remains to be perfected at the resur- 
 rection in the glorification of the "body of our 
 humiliation." " Behold, now are we the sons of 
 God," i.e., in some true but inchoative sense, " but it 
 doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we know 
 that when He shall appear we shall be like Him."^ 
 
 If the sanctity of this spiritual temple is in some 
 sense marred by even involuntary irregularity in the 
 passions, much more real is its violation when the 
 will approves and rests in such an unbefitting state 
 of things, or encourages it, or brings it about. 
 ' I St. John iii. a. 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 199 
 
 Another aspect of the sacredness of the Christian's 
 body is presented in the doctrine of Christ's 
 Mystical Body, of which we are members. Our 
 union with Him, and with one another, is not 
 merely the moral union of any body-corporate, but 
 a real though mystical union : " One Body and One 
 Spirit." As the act of the member is ascribed to 
 the whole body, so the sinful actions of Christians 
 bring a sort of extrinsic disgrace upon Christ and 
 His Saints, upon the family to which they belong 
 by a tie far closer than blood. Further, as subject 
 to the Head, the member is not sui juris, is not its 
 own, but Christ's. Hence St. Paul argues, " Shall I 
 take the members of Christ and make them members 
 of an harlot ? God forbid ! " 
 
 Closely allied with the same mystery is the 
 dogma concerning Christ's Eucharistic or Sacra- 
 mental Body, by every participation whereof, the 
 body and soul of the Christian are mystically trans- 
 muted and in some sense made conspecific with the 
 glorified Body and Soul of God Incarnate. So 
 much so that by each sacramental Communion our 
 body acquires, if not a physical, at least a moral 
 exigency of deliverance from perpetual corruption. 
 For it shares in some degree His sanctity of whom 
 it is written : " Thou wilt not leave My Soul in 
 Hell, nor wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see 
 corruption." 
 
 This belief in the future destiny of matter in 
 general, and of the Christian's body in particular, 
 to a share in the final glory of creation to which it 
 has ministered, both in the order of nature and of 
 
THE ANGELIC VJBTUE. 
 
 grace, is at the root of Catholic reverence for the 
 remains of the dead, for the relics of the saints, and 
 for bodily purity and integrity. 
 
 Finally, the union of the Divinity, as it were by 
 intermarriage, to the human family has raised our 
 race, as a whole, above the dignity of the highest 
 angelic orders, — even as the low-born can be lifted 
 above their social superiors by union with a prince 
 of the blood-royal. " He never took to Himself 
 the angels, but He took the seed of Abraham." 
 Although this union is not so close as that which 
 binds together the members of His Mystical Body, 
 still it is a moral tie such as holds one tribe or 
 people together by community of blood. The Son 
 of God is reckoned in the census of humanity, but 
 not in that of the angels, who count it an honour to 
 minister to the fellow-mortals of the Incarnate God. 
 Hence the King of men is a fortiori the King of the 
 angels, and Mary is the angels' queen, and Gabriel 
 her minister and messenger. All this imparts a 
 new dignity to every man as such, and adds a new 
 indignity to every impurity, voluntary or even in- 
 voluntary. 
 
 All these motives, which are at the root of the 
 intense stress which the Church lays upon the virtue 
 of purity, rest on revealed dogma. They are non- 
 existent for those who do not accept these dogmas, 
 i.e., not only for non-Christians, but to a great 
 extent for non-Catholic Christians, amongst whom 
 as much of Catholic feeling as survives is to be 
 ascribed to sentiments which linger on after their 
 reasonable basis is gone. 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 
 
 Yet throughout we have been supposing that, 
 viewed merely in the light of reason, impurity is an 
 indignity, a violation of man's spiritual nature. This 
 given, then whatever adds to man's dignity, aggra- 
 vates the offence. Let us, then, see what sound 
 reason tells us on the point. 
 
 By a certain world-old philosophy which has 
 gone under various names in various times and 
 places, purity has been assailed on ostensibly 
 speculative grounds. The difficulty of the virtue 
 has at all times driven men to invent and to 
 embrace a theory which will square with their 
 inclination and practice ; for no man likes to admit 
 openly to others that he lives in defiance of reason, 
 nor will he care, as a rule, to admit it to himself. 
 
 Sometimes this philosophy strives to show that 
 purity is at most a social virtue, a matter of con- 
 vention and custom ; and this doctrine is more 
 dangerous when with it is held that other which 
 regards society itself as in no sense natural or 
 demanded by reason, but the artificial creation of 
 formal compact or tolerated custom. At other 
 times it proclaims more boldly that purity is a 
 moral impossibility, that it is a violation of nature, 
 against our first instincts, and in no way obligatory. 
 We have a growing school of modern " after- 
 Christians," as they have been called, which raves 
 against all restraint of concupiscence as a supersti- 
 tion of priestcraft. 
 
 " Modesty was only made for those who have 
 no beauty. It is an invention of the modern world ; 
 the child of the Christian contempt for form and 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 
 
 matter. . . . O purity, plant of bitterness, born on a 
 blood-soaked soil, and whose degenerate and sickly 
 blossom expands with difficulty in the dank shade 
 of cloisters, under a chill baptismal rain ; rose 
 without scent, and spiked all round with thorns ! 
 . . . The ancient world knew thee not, O sterile 
 flower ! ... In that vigorous and healthy society 
 they would have spurned thee under foot dis- 
 dainfully ! " 
 
 The writer is modern,^ but his sentiment is as 
 ancient as the Fall. It is but the utterance of that 
 paganism which is latent, like a seed of death, 
 in every human heart, and only awaits favourable 
 climate and environment to germinate and fructify. 
 From the very first the appeal is couched in the 
 same specious form. The fruit is fair to the eye, 
 pleasant to taste, gratifying to curiosity, evidently 
 devised by nature for our enjoyment ; and the doubt 
 arises, " Hath God said ye shall surely die ? " And 
 then comes the conclusion, "Ye shall not surely 
 die." 
 
 " The voice of Nature," we are told, " is the voice 
 of God. In other animals we see how promiscuous 
 obedience to their impulses leads to no disastrous 
 results. Society and the family are violent and 
 artificial institutions, and can bind our conduct 
 only so far as they can force it. Outside that limit 
 there is complete moral liberty. Further, is it not 
 more evident daily that the distance between man 
 and brute is one of degree, not of kind — a tenet 
 which justifies to some extent his claim for equal 
 • Theophile Gautier. 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 203 
 
 liberty." No doubt evolutionary Utilitarianism would 
 prohibit any excesses that might lead to the 
 deterioration of the human type in future ages ; 
 but such a sanction would avail little, under pressure 
 of temptation, with the majority, who care nothing 
 for the state of posterity at so remotely distant a 
 period, especially when the effect of a single excess 
 is so infinitesimally insignificant in the result. 
 
 That all grosser hedonistic reasoning is based 
 on a low and inadequate view of human nature, is 
 abundantly plain. If man differs from the brute 
 only in the higher and more eifectual development 
 of his senses, we must allow that the final happiness 
 to which those senses minister is of a like kind with 
 theirs. If, on the other hand, we hold that evolu- 
 tionist philosophy has not lessened human dignity, 
 but has only raised that of non-human animals, 
 conceding to them a germinal intellect, reason, con- 
 science, then the same reasons which will presently 
 force us to condemn sensuality in man, will equally 
 compel us to condemn it in them, — unless we agree 
 with a speaker at the Anglican Church Congress in 
 1896, who explains that sin in its essence is 
 simply an anachronism, i.e., the abnormal survival 
 of a habit which was laudable in our savage 
 or brutal ancestors, but which is old-fashioned and 
 out of date in modern man. Evolutionists and 
 zoophilists cannot play fast and loose with common 
 sense in these matters. If we credit brutes with 
 moral virtues, we must blame them for their vices, 
 or else frankly come forward as determinists, and 
 deny imputability all round. This latter would be to 
 
204 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 
 
 deny virtue and vice in any sense hitherto accepted 
 by the world ; for who would call strength, health, 
 beauty, or temperament, virtues, or their contraries 
 vices ? 
 
 We can accept only that anthropology according 
 to which man is of two distinct elements; one, 
 higher and spiritual, the other, lower and animal — 
 the lower being obviously ministerial and organic to 
 the higher ; not, however, merely an instrument, but 
 also a secondary partner in a common interest. 
 
 Against the view, favoured by dualist religions, 
 which regards the body as the prison-house of a 
 fallen spirit, or as the creation of some malign 
 power hostile to light and truth, something to be 
 detested and destroyed, the simple philosophy of 
 the Church (which is that of common sense and 
 common language) shows us that the senses feed the 
 intellect and supply it with the raw fabric of its 
 ideas; that through them alone is the soul put en 
 rapport with that revelation of truth which God's 
 finger has traced on the face of nature ; that man's 
 passions and emotions are, as it were, so much rough 
 material to be hewn and shaped into conformity 
 with the pattern of reason, with the ideal that nature 
 hints at and strives with trembling hand to realize. 
 Of themselves, these impulses are blind erratic forces 
 in some ways, but they can be trained to run in 
 harness, and to bear man onward to his self-chosen 
 mark, instead of running off with him. 
 
 But man has his period of unreasoning infancy, 
 and throughout life there are innumerable daily 
 crises and intervals where reason is either in 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 205 
 
 abeyance, or only free to attend to one of a crowd 
 of simultaneous urgencies. Then it is that instincts 
 and habits, natural or acquired, play an important 
 part in his life, even as they play the entire part in 
 the life of unreasoning animals. 
 
 Still instincts and habits, like all general legis- 
 lation, fail in particulars, though their average result 
 is good. These failures man can supplement by the 
 adapting power of reason and by the free modifi- 
 cation of his tastes and habits. And this more 
 especially tvhen such impulses urge him towards 
 his animal and bodily interests, to the disregard of 
 his higher and adequately conceived good. Man, 
 alone of animals, knows himself reflexly, knows 
 his own double nature, his final perfection, his 
 Creator and Owner. He alone can enter into 
 conscious sympathy with the plans of his Maker. 
 Other creatures are evolved; man is self-evolving, 
 free to co-operate or to resist. It is the very nature 
 of his probation to see whether he will choose to 
 act as man, bringing out fully all that specifies him 
 and distances him from the brute. His final per- 
 fection is intellectual and moral before all things. 
 Animal nature is fully evolved on the completion of 
 adolescence, but man's spiritual nature is unde- 
 veloped for years, and at best only partially advanced 
 towards an ever-receding goal of possible perfection. 
 
 In a certain wide sense of the word we might 
 say that the distinctive perfection or virtue of a 
 human being, man or woman, is courage : that it 
 is in a man what physical strength or brute force 
 is in a horse or a lion. Courage is moral strength 
 
2o6 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 
 
 or will-force, a power of resisting the continual 
 btraining of pleasure and pain against the law of 
 the Divine will, and against the claims of conscience. 
 Those who lack this power are quickly dehumanized 
 and degraded, being enslaved to sensuality or to vain- 
 glory, or to some other tyranny. Many counterfeits 
 pass for courage, as, for example, a certain insensi- 
 bility to bodily pains and pleasures on the part of 
 those whose nerves are coarse- fibred and whose 
 imagination is dull and sluggish ; or a natural in- 
 difference to the praise and censure of others on the 
 part of those who are solitary and self-centered and 
 deficient in that desire for the esteem and affection of 
 others which, however hurtful when abused, is one of 
 the noblest and most helpful of the instincts God has 
 planted in our hearts. Again, there are some whose 
 affections are feeble by nature, and still more 
 enfeebled by habitual selfishness, and who are conse- 
 quently free from the temptation of any violent love 
 or hatred or grief or fear. If, through mere insensi- 
 bility of these kinds, men seem to endure great pains 
 or humiliations or sorrows or else to forego great 
 pleasures and honours and joys, this is but a counter- 
 feit courage. Nor again is it courage when one goes 
 out to meet danger full of self-confidence and with 
 a moral certainty of victory and escape, as when 
 Goliath came forth against David; nor when through 
 thoughtlessness or excitement or inexperience, one 
 under-estimates the risk to be encountered. There 
 is but little courage in hot blood, unless we are 
 to credit wild bulls with courage, nor does all 
 that passes for bravery on the battlefield deserve to 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 207 
 
 be confounded with that rare moral force which it 
 would be a miracle to find widely distributed in such 
 a chance assortment of men. " To fear nothing," 
 says a recent writer, "and face danger, is the 
 courage of a noble animal ; to be afraid yet to go 
 through to the end, is the courage of a man."^ 
 
 At times men will face present pain simply in 
 order to escape far greater pain of the same kind ; 
 they will allow a tooth to be drawn or a limb to be 
 cut off, counting it good economy of suffering in the 
 long run. This may be excellent good sense, and 
 akin to courage, but it is not true courage. A poor 
 timid bird will often turn desperate and fight for its 
 life with what might seem to be courage, but is only 
 the very pressure of extreme fright. The miser will 
 go far beyond many a saint in his austerities and 
 self-denials, not because he is master of himself, but 
 because he is the slave of avarice ; and the courtier 
 will brook many an indignity and bitter humiliation, 
 not because he is master of his resentment, but 
 because he is the slave of ambition. And so in a 
 thousand ways men who are by no means insensible 
 to suffering will deliberately endure pain and con- 
 tempt and annoyance in order to avoid what they 
 consider greater evils, or to secure greater advan- 
 tages. Their action in so doing is usually prudent 
 and justifiable, and has certain elements of true 
 courage in it, since it is governed by foresight and 
 reason, and not merely by the pressure of present 
 feeling. But courage in the true sense requires that 
 we should endure or abstain, not for any kind of 
 ' Man. By Lilian Quiller Couch. 
 
2o8 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 
 
 motive whatever, but for the sake of that highest 
 spiritual good to which alone our subjection as 
 reasonable beings is due or permissible ; for the sake, 
 that is, of principle, of truth and right and justice, 
 of God's cause ; or still better, for the sake of God 
 Himself, explicitly known and loved and reverenced. 
 Non passio, says Augustine, sed causa facit martyrem — 
 " It is not suffering, but suffering for a good cause, 
 that makes a martyr." 
 
 It is in such suffering that man fully realizes 
 himself and attains the summit of his glory; as 
 indeed we see in the great Archetype of humanity 
 to whom Pilate, unconsciously prophetic, pointed as 
 He stood before the multitude, scourged, mocked, 
 and rejected for the cause of God, and said Ecce 
 Homo — " Behold the Man ! " He truly was not 
 insensible to pain, contempt, or grief, whose body 
 and soul were framed and devised by Divine Wisdom 
 to be the instruments of that suffering which was to 
 redeem the world, and who went forth to His Passion 
 "knowing all things that were to come upon Him," 
 and yet was silent as a sheep before its shearers — 
 calm with seeming apathy, as if He were deaf, hard, 
 and senseless — " so that the governor wondered 
 exceedingly." 
 
 As it behoved Him to suffer and so to enter into 
 His glory, so it is in the act of suffering for God, 
 or for God's cause, that every man reaches his 
 best and enters into his glory as man. Because 
 Christ was strong to suffer and to die, therefore were 
 all things put under His feet ; and so far as we are 
 filled with a like strength are we invincible against 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 209 
 
 those who shrink from pain as the worst of evils. 
 Hence it is said that the blood of the martyrs is the 
 seed of the Church, and she, who knows the secret 
 of the Crucifix, will ever have among her children 
 those whose faith in the unseen good, will " overcome 
 the world " by suffering. 
 
 The Church, taught by Christ, bids us acquiesce 
 in the truth that this world is not our home, but our 
 school ; that it is designed to school U3 in that 
 which is best among our capacities, namely, in 
 courage, in an heroic endurance of suffering for 
 the sake of God and God's cause. For in this our 
 very highest capability is exerted and strengthened 
 and perfected. 
 
 Hence it follows that manhood is most pro- 
 perly manifested in the mastery of impulse. We 
 stigmatize one who is deficient in self-mastery as 
 weak, or wanting in that moral strength which is 
 to man what bone and sinew are to the mere 
 animal. The vituperatives "effeminate," "childish," 
 "savage," "brutal," all confess the same conception 
 of man's nature, and of God's intention. God is 
 therefore at once the author and moving force of 
 our animal impulses, and of the dictate of reason 
 which bids us control them. He supplies us with 
 the task, and with the instruments by which it is 
 to be accomplished. It would be indeed a difficulty 
 were He the author of two contrary tendencies, 
 unless, as is the case. He willed one to prevail, and 
 made provision for its prevalence. Nor is He 
 strictly the author, but rather the permitter, of the 
 contrariety; nor does He will the useful force of 
 o 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 
 
 passion to be wasted and extinguished, but to be 
 used and applied in due place and season. 
 
 It is, then, precisely as being unworthy of true 
 manhood, and of our nature adequately regarded, 
 that we feel moral shame over any exhibition of 
 imperfect self-control where such control is due and 
 possible. We blush to be detected in cowardice, 
 greediness, meanness, selfishness, curiosity. Pro- 
 fligates who brag most shamelessly of their vices, 
 always represent them as proofs of their bravery, 
 manliness, independence of superstition, of religious 
 fear, of human respect, but never like to allow their 
 sheer weakness and inability to conquer them. 
 
 The shame that we feel at our subjection to 
 purely involuntary animal needs and infirmities, 
 which neither are, nor can be under our control, is 
 in no sense " moral " shame as of something whose 
 deformity is imputable. And the same is to be said 
 of our shame about merely conventional disgraces, 
 like poverty, ill-birth, breaches of etiquette. Unruly 
 passions, on the other hand, even if not a self- 
 chosen or a self-permitted deformity, are a remedi- 
 able defect which may not be complacently tolerated. 
 
 Now, what is true of all controllable impulses is 
 more emphatically true of that which is chief among 
 them, in so far as it concerns that animal function 
 whose results are of the greatest moment both to 
 individual and to social life— namely, the multiplying 
 of human beings, the bringing of new personalities 
 on to the stage of human life. If it is a momentous 
 thing for any man to usurp the authority of God, 
 and by the crime of murder to cut short the allotted 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 
 
 space of a human life, surely the " to be or not to 
 be" of unborn personalities is a question of great 
 consequence, where it behoves man, with whom its 
 decision rests, to be fully master of himself. If it 
 is bestial that he should be so enslaved by greedi- 
 ness as to endanger his own health, what can be 
 said of his slavery to an appetite fraught with so much 
 more consequence to others ? In this matter to be 
 determined, like a brute, by pleasure alone, is surely 
 the most extreme irregularity, and to approve and 
 consent to such irregularity is, in the light of mere 
 reason, the gravest immorality. Proportional, then, 
 to the gravity of the end is man's obligation of 
 holding this instinct well in hand. 
 
 Still, according to the insistence she places on 
 the preservation of the species. Nature {i.e., God in 
 nature) has made this instinct the strongest of all. 
 Hence, while the mastery of it is most necessary, 
 it is also most difficult, and this it is that makes 
 chastity the very crown and seal of perfected man- 
 hood. 
 
 The usual effects, physical and moral, of sensual 
 indulgence on individuals and on society at large, 
 are sufficient indication of the sentence which 
 outraged nature passes on such vice, nor need we 
 amplify so disagreeable a topic. M^hen man once 
 makes carnal pleasure an end in itself, reason enables 
 him to devise and organize a thousand ways of 
 procuring and multiplying it which are inaccessible 
 to unreasoning animals. He sinks not merely to their 
 level, but indefinitely lower. 
 
 The physical and moral degradation which 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 
 
 results, not indeed from any one act, but from single 
 acts multiplied like plague-spots, is enough of itself 
 to warrant a precept of nature against any exception 
 to their universal prohibition ; thus adding a grave 
 extrinsic malice to the already grave intrinsic malice 
 of any single act. 
 
 In fine, the root-malice of impurity, viewed in 
 the mere light of reason, lies in the fact that 
 God has given us a certain very imperative 
 instinct, for a certain clear purpose of the most 
 vitally momentous consequence. He intends to 
 prove and perfect us as reasonable beings in this 
 matter, as in many others, that we may freely choose 
 to resist this impulse where it is contrary to His 
 declared purpose, and use it where He wills us to 
 use it, and in the same way as He wills it. That 
 He wills no use of it outside wedlock is a further 
 question, and does not belong to the present dis- 
 cussion, which is "general. 
 
 Any impulse to do what is irregular is itself 
 irregular, and cannot be approved or encouraged 
 by reason. If murder is wrong, I may not en- 
 courage a tendency to murder. If I may not take 
 my neighbour's property, L may not wilfully long 
 for it. So every impulse towards sensual satisfaction 
 which would be unlawful, is itself naturally un- 
 lawful. Man is under a natural obligation of tending 
 towards the perfect control of every controllable 
 impulse; hence even inculpable rebellions should 
 displease him as being opposed to h.\s final perfection, 
 i.e., to that ideal which he should aim it. They 
 are not matter for blame, but for regret; but to 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 213 
 
 approve them or not to regret them would be 
 blameworthy. My temper may be quite beyond 
 my present control, so that I am free of all self- 
 reproach ; but I may not acquiesce in this state of 
 things as long as there is room for further self- 
 mastery. Thus, reason is in sympathy with the 
 Church's high esteem of what we might call effectual 
 purity, as opposed to that which merely exists in 
 firm will and purpose ; as well as with her more 
 adequate view of human nature and human virtue, — 
 each composed of two elements, internal and external, 
 soul and body, neither perfect without the other, 
 yet the soul absolutely self-standing, self-sufficing, 
 while the body apart from it is wholly valueless. 
 
 Temperance in will and purpose is compatible 
 with dipsomania; fortitude with physical nervous- 
 ness and timidity — although they lack their proper 
 embodiment and expression, since they have not 
 realized that effect which of their own nature they 
 tend to realize in normal circumstances. Again, 
 there is a mere placidity of physical temperament 
 that simulates peacefulness, an insensibilit)' which 
 passes as continence, a general negation of passion 
 which looks like self- conquest ; but these are 
 nothing worth : virtues in no sense of the word. 
 The full and perfect virtue is that which is measured 
 and duly conceived by reason, enforced by the will, 
 and gradually conformed to by the passions. It is 
 normally the result of industry. 
 
 The efforts of the will may be partly or wholly 
 ineffectual, owing to obstinacy of the natural tem- 
 perament ; and in this case the defect is not morally 
 
214 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 
 
 imputable or blamable, but only regrettable; one 
 may not be glad of it, for it is an infirmity dis- 
 honouring our human dignity, a matter of humili- 
 ation, a defacing of God's image. Given, in two 
 cases, equal internal virtue, the addition of the 
 external virtue in one adds a certain moral dignity 
 or ornament v^^hich the other has not. To have it 
 in the one case, to lack it in the other, may not be 
 imputable, either as merit nor as demerit; although 
 to have it may be a means of merit, and to lack it, 
 a safeguard of humility and therefore indirectly a 
 means of greater merit. 
 
 So with regard to that perfect immunity, not 
 merely from voluntary faults against chastity, but 
 even from all natural irregularities which the Church 
 bids us pray for. It is not a matter of merit so 
 much as of spiritual dignity. We should regret 
 (not blame ourselves for) every want of that perfect 
 self-control which is the final dignity after which 
 reason should strive, and the want of which is 
 contrary to God's first intention with respect to 
 the children of Adam and the brethren of Christ 
 We should regret it out of reverence to God's image 
 which it is our duty to educe and perfect in ourselves ; 
 out of reverence to this nature which the Eternal 
 has wedded to Himself in unity of Person ; out of 
 reverence to that Eucharistic Flesh and Blood which 
 we feed on; out of reverence to our own flesh and 
 blood rendered conspecific with it by reiterated 
 Communions and destined to a like glorification ; out 
 of reverence to the indwelling Spirit whose temples 
 we are; out of reverence to the Mystical Body of 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 215 
 
 which we are members, and to Christ its Head, and 
 to Mary and to all the saints our fellow-members, 
 who share our honour or dishonour. 
 
 Hence, cceteris paribus, the Church prefers, not 
 as more meritorious, but as spiritually more exalted, 
 the condition of those who are thus exempt. Not 
 that she prizes physical impotence or defect of 
 passion, as possessing any beauty in the spiritual 
 or moral order, but rather full passions and warm 
 affections controlled and conquered by an over- 
 mastering passion of Divine love. This mastery of 
 the strong man by the stronger is in the case of 
 some saints the result of a suddenly infused strength 
 of charity; in most, it is of slower growth. We 
 should indeed do ill to conceive it as a privation 
 of any strength or fulness of vitality, an emascu- 
 lation of character in any sense. Mere immunity, 
 without a will firm enough to resist all rebellion, 
 would be only material purity; but where the 
 immunity is due to a continual overmastering of 
 the lower impulses by the higher, too firm and 
 strong to be sensible of any difficulty or resistance, 
 we are in the presence of heroic and almost super- 
 human virtue. 
 
 Closely connected with this high estimate of 
 effectual purity is the value the Church sets on 
 celibacy and virginity. It is no mere economical 
 or prudential motive that binds her priesthood to 
 chastity, but a sense of the spiritual dignity befitting 
 those who minister at the altar of the Virgin-born 
 and dispense the Bread of Angels to others. It is 
 strange how any school of Christianity can fail 
 
*i6 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 
 
 to see the high esteem set upon bodily virginity by 
 our Saviour, and how those who were closest to 
 Him were graced by this ornament : His Mother, 
 His precursor. His foster-father. His bosom friend, 
 His heavenly bodyguard. Apart from this mystical 
 reason, there is also a reason which is eminently 
 practical, namely, the unfitness of a married clergy 
 to preach to others a continence and self-restraint 
 which they have little or no occasion to practise 
 themselves. " Keep up ! Don't give in ! " they seem 
 to cry to the many who are struggling m billows, 
 while they themselves are enjoying the comparative 
 security of a life-boat. With her eyes wide open 
 to all the sin and sacrilege that celibacy has 
 occasioned and may yet occasion, the Church insists 
 upon it for the sake of a greater good which im- 
 measurably outbalances all that evil, for the sake 
 of the encouragement of those millions upon whom 
 restraint is for one reason or another incumbent, 
 whether for a time or continually, — and that, often 
 in the very years when it is most difficult. Again, 
 she knows well that the man who fights, even 
 though he fall from time to time, gives more glory 
 to God than he who sits at home. She knows that 
 marriage does not create purity or the power of 
 restraint where it did not exist before, and that to 
 the impure and incontinent its liberty is rarely 
 sufficient, while the transgression of its restraints 
 is a far deadHer sin than a celibate is capable of. 
 
 Reason tells us that if the unruliness of any 
 controllable appetite is a grave disorder, far more 
 is the unruliness of sensual desire, so momentous in 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 217 
 
 its consequences. Even the first impulse to so 
 grave a disorder cannot be regarded as a slight 
 irregularity. This, again, bears out Catholic teach- 
 ing to the effect that, given full advertence and 
 self-control, no fault in this matter is light, although 
 there are various degrees of gravity. Here the 
 severity of the Church's teaching seems at first sight 
 excessive ; for indeed it comes to this, that any 
 deliberate and direct concession to sensual incli- 
 nation, however slight, whether in thought or deed, 
 is grievously sinful. It must, however, be fully 
 deliberate, a condition which supposes perfect 
 advertence both to what is being done or thought 
 about, and to the gravely sinful character of such 
 thoughts or actions ; and also, perfect self-control, 
 so that the thought or act is in no way automatic 
 or involuntary. These conditions are, of course, 
 very frequently absent in the first beginnings of 
 sensual rebellion. Again, the concession must be 
 direct, that is, it must have sensual gratification for 
 its motive, and not some other necessary end which 
 would perhaps justify the toleration under protest of 
 an involuntary gratification. 
 
 But the practical wisdom of the Church's severity 
 in regarding the slightest direct and deliberate con- 
 cession as grievous, is evident when we reflect that 
 here, as in some other matters, a slight concession, 
 far from mitigating irregular desire, increases it; 
 and if the first impulse is not resisted, it is inde- 
 finitely less likely that the second will be. In fact 
 it is hke starting a boulder rolling down a hill, 
 which becomes more hopelessly unmanageable at 
 
2i8 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 
 
 every bound. It is the failure to realize this law, 
 or to accept it in faith from the experience and 
 wisdom of the Church, that lies at the root of so 
 much difficulty in this matter. 
 
 Here indeed the rule is the same for all, for 
 those who walk by the commandments or by the 
 counsels. But when it is a question of justifiable 
 occasions of involuntary gratification, there is a 
 wide range between the maximum and the minimum 
 of liberty, which leaves room for many refinements 
 of purity that are of counsel and not of command. 
 There is on the one side a point after which the 
 pretended justification is quite inadequate to the 
 resulting irregularity of which it is the occasion 
 or indirect cause ; on the other, a point beyond 
 which abstinence from lawful occasions would inter- 
 fere with plain duties or with greater good. As 
 the counsel of evangelical poverty is : "If thou 
 wilt be perfect, sell all ; " that is : Do not ask 
 how much, but how little may you keep ; so the 
 counsel of purity is, that we should inquire rather 
 how far we may reasonably avoid lawful occasions, 
 than how far v/e are free to encounter them. 
 Both these limits, maximum and minimum, are 
 relative and not . absolute ; that is, the tempera- 
 ment, circumstances, antecedents, state of life, of 
 each individual determine for him to what length 
 he can go one way or the other without a violation 
 of conscience or an infringement of duty. In 
 practice there can be httle doubt as to which is 
 the easier, the safer and more generous course to 
 adopt ; or which the Church everywhere encourages 
 
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 219 
 
 and approves, so long as counsel is not confounded 
 with precept to the hurt of conscience and the 
 eventual injury of simple purity. 
 
 Last of all, reason goes further, and tells us 
 that if we have any strong vicious propensity 
 whose satisfaction is unavoidably occasioned in the 
 fulfilment of some imperative duty, we should regard 
 the circumstance with a certain regret, on account of 
 the gratification of a mortal enemy. For example, 
 as a magistrate one may have to condemn his mortal 
 foe, and thus to gratify his natural vindictiveness ; 
 or one prone to drunkenness may be ordered spirits 
 by his doctor. If there is sincere good-will in either 
 case, the purely involuntary gratification of these 
 lower propensities will be a matter of regret to the 
 higher part of our nature. These evil tendencies 
 are our spiritual foes whom we desire to starve out ; 
 and therefore if, in spite of ourselves, we are con- 
 strained to feed them in any way and so put off the 
 date of their extermination, we shall hardly be 
 pleased. 
 
 Thus even in the subtlest points we find reason 
 running parallel with the instincts and intuitions 
 of the Catholic religion touching the angelic virtue, 
 and confessing that God is just, and His judgments 
 are right : Justus es, Domine, et rectum judicium tuum. 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY 
 
 I. 
 
 " A help, meet for him." 
 
 We are told in the Book of Genesis that God 
 created man and fashioned him to His own image 
 and Hkeness, and breathed into his nostrils the 
 breath of life ; that He created him to have dominion 
 over all the other creatures on the face of the earth, 
 to use them in the carrying out of his own work 
 and end ; that in this especially man differed from 
 the brute animals, that by reason of his power of 
 thinking and choosing, he had dominion not only 
 over them, but over himself, over his feelings, his 
 passions, his instincts; he was not to be swayed 
 by them, or carried along helplessly and thrown, 
 as an unskilled rider by a spirited horse, but 
 to make them serve him and carry him wherever 
 and however, as long, and as far as he should judge 
 right. And if in respect to his passions and appetites 
 he is in authority, with respect to God he is 
 under authority, God saying to him, as he to 
 his passions, " ' Go,' and he goeth ; ' come,' and he 
 Cometh ; ' do this,' and he doth it." Man was 
 created to be God's absolute slave and servant, to 
 do God's will and God's work and nothing else, and 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY 
 
 therein to find his perfection ; while every other 
 creature then created, was created to be man's 
 absolute slave and servant, to help him in the per- 
 formance of this work. What, then, was this work? 
 To prepare himself here in order to live hereafter 
 with God for ever, to see Him face to face; to know 
 as God knows, to love as God loves ; to be happy 
 with God's own happiness. 
 
 Fresh from God's moulding hand, man looked 
 round upon creation, upon the innumerable helps 
 that God's bounty had provided for him, sun and 
 moon and stars, earth and ocean, mountains and 
 valleys, springs and streams, glades, meadows and 
 forests, trees and flowers, beasts, birds and fishes, 
 all praising God in chorus, " telling His glory, 
 showing His handiwork," speaking of His goodness, 
 wisdom, and power; helping man to know Him, 
 and, knowing, to love Him with his whole heart, 
 and whole mind, and whole soul, and whole strength. 
 And yet, gazing round upon all these helps, man 
 felt helpless, for there was no help found meet for 
 him ; there were dumb slaves in abundance, but no 
 companion ; servants by necessity, and not by 
 choice. "All things were put under his feet," but 
 he had no partner to share his dominion and 
 sovereignty. He had the power of speech, but none 
 to speak to; the power of thought, but none to think 
 with ; a human heart, but no human object for its 
 affections; helps, therefore, in abundance, but no 
 help meet for him. Surely it was not good for him 
 to be alone, neither for body nor for spirit. As his 
 body, so neither could his soul increase or fructify 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 in his helpless and solitary state. And yet God 
 created him alone that he might, as it were, 
 feel and experience his neediness, that he might 
 value and reverence the crowning gift of creation, 
 the highest and noblest that God had yet in store 
 for him, the only help that was meet for him, that 
 could deliver him from solitude midst the teeming 
 life and endless stir of the natural world. 
 
 Yes, God had withheld the good wine till the last. 
 And whence is He to fashion this help for man ? 
 Not as Adam was fashioned from the rude dust of 
 the earth, but from man himself, "bone of his bone 
 and flesh of his flesh," taken from his very substance, 
 in a sense his child, his offspring; bound to him 
 with all the ties that bind child to parent, and with 
 others not less close and tender. And so, when 
 Adam had sought in vain a help meet for him, God 
 created woman and brought her to him ; and man 
 said, " ' This is now bone of my bone, flesh of my 
 flesh; she shall be called woman, for that she is 
 taken out of man : ' for this cause shall a man leave 
 his father and mother and cleave to his wife, 
 and they shall be two in one." Two in one : one 
 perfect being made of two parts. Neither complete 
 without the other, bodily or spiritually. If, as the 
 religion of Mahomet teaches, woman's end were but 
 to help man in the work of perpetuating the race, 
 then indeed she need not have been spiritually 
 man's equal ; God need not, as the Mahometans 
 suppose He did not, have endowed her with an 
 immortal soul. He might have created her to be 
 man's abject slave, in no sense his human equal. 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 223 
 
 But man's work, man's end, is not merely animal, 
 is not merely to live and multiply. Our mind 
 refuses to rest in the thought that one gene- 
 ration exists principally for the sake of the next ; 
 and not primarily for its own sake. Man's chief 
 and only essential duty, end, and work is to praise, 
 reverence, and serve the Lord his God, and thereby 
 to save his soul ; and it is principally to help him 
 in this spiritual work that woman was created, 
 and matrimony instituted. In this she could not 
 help him, were she not destined with him for a 
 like end ; were she not capable herself of praising, 
 reverencing, and serving God, and had she not a 
 soul to save. 
 
 How, then, does she help him in this work? 
 As a wife principally, and then as a mother. 
 
 It is needless to point out how imperfect a man's 
 spiritual education must be, if he lives a life of 
 complete solitude ; how many possible virtues must 
 lie dormant and inactive, or simply wither away 
 for want of exercise. There are recorded cases of 
 children who have been lost in woods and forests, 
 and have grown up in the company of wild beasts, 
 far removed from all human intercourse. And when 
 they were discovered, they were found to be dumb, 
 savage, and unreasoning, like the animals among 
 which they had lived. Now the marriage-bond is 
 the elementary bond with respect to human society, 
 and community of life. It is the first, the natural, 
 the universal and most absolute of all partnerships, 
 by which two become one. All other bonds and 
 ties shadow some aspect of this, more or less 
 
224 ^ GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 imperfectly. The husband and wife are constant 
 companions, life-long friends. They have not one 
 or two common interests only, but a thousand ; 
 and there is hardly a single virtue which is not 
 needed, which must not be practised and strength- 
 ened, if they are to fulfil their duty by one another 
 — patience, meekness, justice, prudence, fortitude, 
 self-restraint, generosity, in a word, all manner of 
 unselfishness. 
 
 Nor is it only as the closest and most intimate oi 
 his companions and friends of his heart that the 
 wife helps towards the husband's spiritual develop- 
 ment ; but as being in some sense his moral com- 
 plement, even as she is his physical complement — 
 the two dividing the one perfect human character 
 between them, one abounding where the other is 
 deficient ; one strong where the other is weak ; 
 each soul fitting into the other, supplying its defects, 
 filling its emptinesses, making with it one perfect 
 image and likeness of the ideal humanity as conceived 
 in the mind of. God. Only in the one perfect 
 Exemplar, only in the soul of Christ were all 
 virtues, graces, and perfections, fully developed, 
 perfectly balanced and adjusted, justice and mercy, 
 strength and gentleness, truth and caution, courage 
 and discretion, energy and patience, generosity and 
 prudence, liberty and restraint. He alone was 
 "beautiful above the children of men," for all 
 beauty lies in justness of proportion and delicacy 
 of temper. 
 
 But other men, if they are strong, they are often 
 rough ; if they are just, they are harsh ; if they are 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 223 
 
 courageous, they are rash ; if energetic, impatient ; 
 if generous, extravagant. Women, on the other 
 hand, if they are gentle, merciful, prudent, patient, 
 if they abound in tact, delicacy, spiritual-minded- 
 ness ; they fail more easily in the rougher, sterner, 
 and more primitive virtues. It is only in man and 
 woman, taken together, that we have the fulness 
 and perfection of human graces and virtues ; not 
 merely the diamond in the rough, but set and cut 
 and polished till all its brightness gleams out to 
 perfection. We all recognize this when we speak 
 disapprovingly of a man as womanish or effeminate, 
 not because he possesses the special virtues of 
 womanhood — chastity, gentleness, patience, tact, 
 unselfishness, which would be to his greater honour 
 and not to his discredit, but because he lacks the 
 special virtues of manhood. And so a virago or 
 masculine woman is not a muUer fortis, a brave, just, 
 courageous, truth-loving woman, but one who fails 
 in the graces that are the peculiar ornament of 
 womanhood. 
 
 Again, as mother of his children, she helps man, 
 not only in conceiving, bearing, nursing, and tending 
 their bodies ; but in perfecting the image of God in 
 their souls, which is as much part of their natural 
 perfection as the growth and maturing of their 
 bodies. Her child is not fully born until it begins 
 to be born to God, to learn from her hps to love 
 and worship its Maker ; nor is it weaned till it has 
 learned in some way to walk alone and without her 
 assistance in the way of God's commandments. 
 And for this end God has made woman more 
 
226 A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 spiritual-minded, more apt in the things of God, 
 that she might be as naturally adapted for the 
 nursing, rearing, and formation of the young soul 
 as she is for that of the body. 
 
 And so we see that it is precisely because woman 
 has a soul to save, that she is a help fit and worthy 
 of man ; a help in the great work of saving the soul 
 first of her husband and then of his children ; and 
 that marriage, as God intended it, is not merely a 
 carnal union, but principally a joining of souls; 
 that its end is not to replenish and overpopulate 
 the earth with animals more canino} but to fill 
 Heaven with saints ; to multiply bodies for the 
 sake of souls. And so far we have not been 
 speaking of marriage as a sacrament instituted by 
 Christ ; but as ordained by God in the beginning, 
 when he created man and sought out " a help meet 
 for him " in the great work which he had to do, to 
 praise, reverence, and serve God, and so to save his 
 soul. 
 
 II. 
 
 "This is a great sacrament: I speak as to Christ and the 
 Church." — Ephes. v. 
 
 " Every good and perfect gift," says St. James, 
 " is from above and comes down from the Father (pf 
 Lights ; " that is to say, whatever there is good and 
 perfect in God's works, whether in the kingdom of 
 nature or in the kingdom of grace is a shadow, a 
 type, an imperfect semblance, of that infinite good- 
 ' St. Augustine, Dc bon. viduit. 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 227 
 
 ness and perfection, which is God Himself. " From 
 Him," says St. Paul, " all fatherhood in Heaven and 
 earth is named and derived." The Eternal Father- 
 hood, the Eternal Sonship, the Eternal Generation 
 is the only good and perfect Fatherhood, and 
 Sonship, and Generation ; of which the natural 
 and human are but distant, finite, immeasurably 
 feeble and faulty imitations and figures ; like all 
 other creatures — frail steps by which our earthly 
 mind can raise itself up some little way towards the 
 infinite and everlasting archetypes. Similarly, if we 
 wish to contemplate the heavenly type, the per- 
 fection, the ideal of marriage, we must raise up 
 our hearts and gaze upon the great mystery of 
 Christ and the Church. 
 
 A sacrament, as we learn, is made up of the 
 outward sign and the inward grace signified and 
 conveyed. If the grace were signified, but not 
 conveyed, we should have no true and efficacious 
 sacrament of the Gospel ; no real, though mystical, 
 application of one of the manifold fruits of the 
 Precious Blood to our souls. In the beginning, 
 matrimony, as ordained by God, was a sign, as it 
 is now, of the union between Christ and His Church ; 
 of that which was to be the ideal of the relation 
 subsisting between man and wife ; but until it was 
 made a sacrament of the Church, the marriage 
 contract was not a means but only a sign of grace ; 
 it did not convey power to the man and wife to 
 realize and carry out that ideal, to imitate in their 
 conduct towards one another the intercourse between 
 Christ and His Spouse the Church. For as the 
 
228 A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 Holy Eucharist helps us to mature and perfect, 
 detail after detail, the image of Christ which the 
 Holy Ghost prints on our soul in Baptism, by which 
 Christ is born in us ; as it helps us to grow up to 
 the stature of the perfect man in Christ, so the 
 Sacrament of Holy Matrimony produces in the soul 
 of the husband a special likeness to Christ as Head 
 and Husband of the Church ; and in the soul of the 
 wife a special likeness to the Church, as the Bride 
 of the Lamb ; and effects between both a mystical 
 and supernatural union in the order of grace, over 
 and above the moral and physical union of mere 
 natural, non-Christian marriage — a union whose 
 type is given us in the fiat " they shall be two in 
 one flesh," whose archetype is the sameness, the 
 oneness of Christ and His Mystical Body. And 
 therefore, with St. Paul for our guide, let us look to 
 Christ and the Church, that we may know better 
 what the Christian husband and wife ought to be 
 one to another ; what the Sacrament of Matrimony 
 alone can make them — and that, on the condition 
 of its being well and worthily received, and co- 
 operated with, and followed up. 
 
 " Let women be subject to their husbands as to 
 the Lord ; for the husband is the head of the wife, 
 as Christ is the Head of the Church ; for He is the 
 Saviour of the body. But the Church is subjected 
 to Christ ; and women likewise to their husbands in 
 everything. And let husbands love their wives, 
 even as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself 
 up for her, that He might sanctify her, having 
 purified her with the washing of water in the word. 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 229 
 
 that He Himself might present her to Himself a 
 glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any 
 such thing ; but that she might be holy and blame- 
 less. So ought men to love their own wives even 
 as their own bodies ; for he that loveth his wife 
 loveth himself. No man ever yet hated his own 
 flesh, but nourishes it and cares for it, even as 
 Christ does the Church ; for we are members of 
 His body. For this cause shall a man leave his 
 father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and 
 they shall be two in one flesh. This is a great 
 sacrament (but I speak as to Christ and the 
 Church). But let every one of you in particular- 
 love each his own wife even as himself; and the 
 wife, in such sort that she fear her husband." 
 
 First of all, then, Christ is the Head of the 
 Church, which is His Body ; and we ourselves are 
 the various parts and members and organs, of which 
 that Mystical Body is made up. And although the 
 body is subject to the head, and serves the head, 
 and is ruled by the head, yet the head and body 
 are not two distinct beings, but parts of one and 
 the same being — each part necessary for the other ; 
 both necessary for the whole being. So Christ is 
 greater than the Church, which ministers to Him, 
 which is ruled by Him, which is His instrument 
 and servant ; yet He and His Church are not two 
 distinct beings, but parts of one mystical whole, 
 which we sometimes find spoken of indistinctly as 
 Christ and sometimes as the Church. As the head 
 needs the body, and the heart, and the limbs, and 
 as it works and acts through their instrumentality ; 
 
230 A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 SO Christ needs the members of His Body, the 
 Church, and works and acts through them. And 
 again, as the body severed from the head is lifeless, 
 sightless, motionless, and quickly falls to pieces by- 
 decay; so the Church severed from Christ would 
 perish at once ; the light of her infallible teaching 
 would be extinguished ; her sacraments would be 
 empty outward signs, without life-giving power, her 
 discipline and organization would fall to pieces,, 
 and her members would be severed and dis- 
 persed like dust before the wind. The head doe& 
 not regard the body as distinct from itself, but as 
 making with itself one personality. It does not rule 
 the body selfishly, as though the two had diverse 
 interests which might come into conflict, but as 
 having only one common interest ; and, for a like 
 reason, the body does not obey the head grudgingly 
 or of necessity, but gladly and willingly. So with 
 Christ and the Church there is but one nature, one 
 end, one desire, one operation. 
 
 Once more, it is one and the same spirit or 
 soul which quickens the head and the body; it- 
 is the same vital spark which warms them both ;; 
 the same blood which flows continually backward, 
 and forward from the one to the other ; and 
 likewise it is one and the same Holy Ghost,, 
 who dwells in His fulness in the God-Man and 
 who was poured out by Him upon the Church at 
 Pentecost flowing down from the Head to the 
 furthest members of the body. It is the same 
 Blood which courses through the veins and Sacred 
 Heart of our Saviour, and which fills the chalices of 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 231 
 
 the Church's daily Sacrifice, and which washes 
 away the stains of sin in the Sacraments of Baptism 
 and Penance. It is the fire of one and the same 
 Divine charity which burns, with its all-but-infinite 
 intensity and ardour, in Christ our Head, and 
 feebly but truly in us His members; for it is kindled 
 and fanned by the inspiration of one single Spirit. 
 
 " No man ever yet hated his own body," says our 
 teacher, St. Paul, " but nourishes it and cherishes 
 it, even as Christ does the Church." How tenderly 
 Christ cares for this Body of His ; how marvellously 
 He nourishes it with the food of His own Sacred 
 Flesh ; how He refreshes its thirst and washes its 
 soil with His own most Precious Blood. Surely we 
 are bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh ; taken 
 out of His sacred side, when He slept the deep 
 sleep on the Cross of Calvary, and built up, into a 
 "help meet for Him;" surely, as far as was possible. 
 He has left His Eternal Father, He has left His 
 home in Heaven, He has left His Blessed Mother 
 in tears for our sake, " for us men and for our 
 salvation," that He might cleave to His Church, to 
 His Spouse; for He was enamoured of us poor 
 sinners, and His delight was to be with the sons of 
 men. 
 
 It was the custom in the East, as we see in the 
 story of Esther and Assuerus, that the monarch's 
 bride, before she was presented to him for marriage, 
 should undergo a long and tedious course of 
 ceremonial preparation and purification, involving 
 various ritual anointings and washings. It is to 
 this St. Paul makes allusion when he tells us how 
 
232 A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 nobly and unselfishly Christ loved the Church, as 
 though some great and glorious prince, enamoured 
 of a poor, humble village maid, were to disguise 
 himself meanly and to serve her, and to labour and 
 suffer and bleed for her, that he might thus win hei 
 love and raise her up to share his throne, his honour, 
 and his kingdom. So Christ loved the Church. 
 He did not send for her imperiously, but came to 
 her meek and lowly, came veiled in her own human 
 guise, came to seek and to save that which was lost. 
 He "gave Himself up for her," as the Shepherd who 
 gives His life for the perishing sheep, " that He 
 might sanctify her" with His sanctifying Spirit. 
 Nor does He leave it to His ministering angels to 
 prepare and purify her for His embrace ; but He 
 Himself (auro? eavTm), the King of Glory, must wash 
 and purify her with the water and blood that gushed 
 from His love-pierced Heart. And this labour of 
 love is going on day by day, as we, the members of 
 His Body the Church, are being purified and sanc- 
 tified and prepared for the marriage of the Lamb, 
 when He Himself and no other will present to 
 Himself the Bride whom He has sought and 
 purchased, cleansed and purified, and made into 
 a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or 
 other sign of her natural mortality and corruption; 
 but altogether "holy and blameless." 
 
 Was there ever a love-myth or romance that 
 would not read cold and colourless beside this 
 revelation of God's own passionate love and devo- 
 tion towards His chosen Spouse, a cloud-wrapped 
 love shrouded in types and figures, which shoots 
 
A GREAT MYSTEHY. 233 
 
 out a chance ray from the folds of its dark 
 mantle — a hint and no more of the dazzling 
 glory behind. 
 
 "Behold thou art fair, O My lovel^ 
 Behold thou art fair ! 
 Thine eyes are the eyes of a dove ; 
 As a lily among thorns, 
 So is My beloved among the daughters. 
 Arise ! Make haste, My love, My fair one, 
 
 and come. 
 Thou art all fair, O My love, 
 And there is no spot in thee. 
 Thou hast wounded My heart, My sister, My 
 
 spouse, 
 With one glance of thine eyes. 
 One is My love ; My faultless is but one. 
 Who is she that cometh forth as the rising 
 
 morn. 
 Fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible 
 
 as an army set in array ? 
 Who is this that cometh up from the desert, 
 Flowing with delights and leaning on her 
 
 Beloved. 
 Put Me as a seal upon thy heart. 
 As a seal upon thy arm ; 
 For love is strong as death. 
 Many waters cannot quench it. 
 Neither can the floods drown it ; 
 If a man should give all the substance of his 
 
 house for love. 
 He shall despise it as nothing." 
 
 ' Canticles, passim. 
 
234 -A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 And the Bride of the Lamb, the Church, His blessed 
 Spouse, makes answer : 
 
 " I am dark but comely, O ye daughters of 
 
 Jerusalem, 
 As the tents of Kedar, 
 As the hangings of Solomon. 
 Do not consider that I am brown 
 Or that the sun hath altered my colour ; 
 For it is because the sons of my mother 
 
 have fought against me, 
 And have made me keeper in the vineyard. 
 Show me, O Thou whom my soul loveth, 
 Where thou feedest Thy flock, where Thou 
 
 liest in the mid-day. 
 Lest I begin to wander after the flocks of 
 
 Thy companions. 
 As the apple-tree among the trees of the 
 
 wood, 
 So is my Beloved among the sons. 
 I sat down under His shadow whom I 
 
 desired. 
 And His fruit was sweet to my palate. 
 Stay me with flowers, compass me about 
 
 with apples. 
 For I languish with love. 
 His left hand is under my head and His 
 
 right hand* shall embrace me. 
 My Beloved is mine, and I am His 
 Who feedeth His flocks among the anemones. 
 Till the day break and the shadows flee 
 
 away." 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 23<i 
 
 It is, therefore, according to St. Paul, as an 
 adumbration and prefiguring of the oneness of 
 Christ and His Church that marriage was first 
 instituted as a great sacrament or sign ; a " mystery," 
 or inarticulate hint, as the word means. 
 
 But as the sacrifice of the Old Law fell short of 
 that of the New ; so does the marriage of the Old 
 Law fall short of the sacramental marriage of 
 Christians. The Mosaic sacrifices looked forward 
 to Calvary, the Eucharist looks back upon it ; they 
 obscurely, as to an unknown future ; It distinctly, as 
 to a well-defined past. They proclaimed the need 
 of a victim ; It supplies it. They signified ; It fulfils 
 and effects. So of Christian Matrimony ; it figures 
 the espousals of Christ and the Church, not as 
 a thing that has yet to be, but as a thing which 
 is already virtually accomplished ; not as a thing 
 altogether hidden and conjecturable ; but as a 
 thing to some extent revealed and more clearly 
 delineated. It not merely points to Christ and the 
 Church as to the heavenly archetype and ideal of 
 the matrimonial relationship, but effectually confers 
 grace whereby the earthly is conformed to the 
 heavenly, and becomes its created expression and 
 utterance. 
 
 Or, to illustrate the same idea again, God in the 
 beginning gave man corn and grape, bread and 
 wine. And from the beginning bread was a "great 
 sacrament," a sign of God who is the life and 
 support of man's soul and heart ; a sign of the yet 
 undreamt-of mysterious Bread which came down 
 from Heaven to give life to the world, and was laid 
 
236 A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 in the manger, in the Mouse of Bread ; a sign of the 
 gathering together of the corn of God's elect from 
 the four quarters of the earth into one bread and 
 one body ; a sign of the Christian antitype, the 
 Eucharistic Bread of Life, which was given us by 
 the Bread of Life — Himself by Himself, — " He gave 
 Himself with His own hands." Yet who could have 
 read this great mystery, this sacramental meaning 
 in God's good gift ; who but God Himself or His 
 prophets, to whom His secrets were in part revealed ? 
 But to us it was revealed in its fulness when Christ 
 took the bread of our natural life and changed it 
 into the Bread of supernatural life, and said, "Take, 
 eat, this is My Body." Similarly he took the 
 marriage of nature and changed it into the marriage 
 of grace ; and to the contract, which was already 
 an outward sign. He attached the inward grace 
 which it signified ; and to the manifold natural 
 bonds he added a supernatural bond higher and 
 holier and more insoluble, saying, "Whom God 
 hath joined together, let no man put asunder " 
 It is God who ties soul to soul by this mysterious 
 communication of supernatural grace, of which 
 neither alone is the complete recipient, but both 
 together, each having need of the other, each having 
 power over the other ; and even if ever the law of 
 nations could permit the breach of the moral and 
 physical bond, tied by the parties themselves, it can 
 never give a right or power to sever the bond of 
 grace, which they have tied, not in their own 
 person, but only as ministers of the sacrament, as 
 mere instruments in the hands of God, the principal 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 237 
 
 author. Divorce from this perfected marriage bond 
 IS as the sin of schism — a rending asunder of the 
 Mystical Body of Christ. 
 
 Christian sacramental marriage, therefore, confers 
 grace on man and wife to set forth more and more 
 perfectly in their conduct with one another the 
 wedded life of Christ and the Church. The two 
 together are to be one body and one spirit ; not one 
 body only, but one spirit, one life ; and man's life is 
 not mere animation, but intelligence. Still more, 
 he has a supernatural life of grace ; and in this the 
 two are to be one, as in what is highest and best in 
 both. Short of this we have a merely human, 
 natural, unsacramental union ; short of this again, 
 there is a less than human and purely animal 
 marriage, which is not even an empty sign of grace. 
 For if the natural man has a two-fold nature and 
 work, animal and spiritual, the baptized has a third 
 and supernatural life and function, the life of grace, 
 to be developed and perfected and exercised in the 
 practice of supernatural virtues. And it is in this 
 third and highest work that he is to seek a help 
 meet for him in the Christian wife, in the mother of 
 Christian children. 
 
 As one being, man and wife have one and the 
 same supernatural and spiritual interest. The head 
 does not use and rule the body as distinct from 
 itself; nor is the supremacy and authority of the 
 husband over the wife to be compared to that of 
 parents over their offspring, who are subjected to 
 them as totally distinct personalities. He must not 
 sacrifice or postpone his wife's bodily welfare to his 
 
238 A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 own. The head is well when the body is well ; and 
 when the head suffers, the body suffers with it. The 
 head must think for the body and the body must 
 labour for the head, each living for the other as for 
 itself. Husband and wife each must live for the 
 other as for themselves ; for the spirit first, and then 
 for the body; as Christ's first care is for the 
 Church's sanctification, and then for her temporal 
 peace. Still there is a true, natural, and willing 
 subjection of the body to the head; and the Church 
 sits ever at the feet of Christ, to learn His will and 
 to hear His words ; and so too the wife's oneness 
 with her husband does not free her from a willing 
 submission to him — a yoke which is for her liberty 
 and honour and not for her degradation, and which 
 only galls so far as it is unlawfully resisted. 
 
 Once more the head and body are inseparable, 
 save by death ; Christ and His Church are eternally 
 united ; for He is the King immortal, " of whose 
 Kingdom there shall be no end." He is the mediator 
 of an everlasting covenant or marriage-contract 
 between Himself and His Church, a contract sealed 
 with the Blood of the New and Eternal Testament. 
 So man and wife whom the God of grace joins 
 together by. a supernatural tie in the Christian 
 sacrament, no man may put asunder. It is for God 
 alone, the Author of life and Lord of death, to 
 sever by the sword of death the band which the 
 breath of His Spirit has fastened. There is no 
 power on earth which can undo what is done by 
 Christian marriage ; and all pretence at such power 
 is founded in blindness, ignorance, or blasphemous 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 239 
 
 denial of Christ and His Church. Moreover, one 
 head and one body, and no more. Two heads and 
 one body ; two bodies and one head, were a 
 monstrous violation of nature. Christ has one 
 Church and only one, " One is My dove. My fault- 
 less one ; " and the Church has but one Christ, one 
 Life-giver, one Law-giver. And the Christian sacra- 
 ment forbids and nullifies absolutely, what the law 
 of nature forbids all but absolutely, the simultaneous 
 union of one man with more than one woman ; so 
 that adultery, which was always a sin of deadliest 
 dye, is in a Christian a sacrilege also — a profanation 
 of a great sacrament. 
 
 Again, the Church, the Virgin Spouse of Christ, 
 through the overshadowing power of His Holy 
 Spirit, is the joyful mother of His children, " Who 
 maketh a barren woman to keep house, a joyful 
 mother of children." " Then shalt thou see, and 
 abound," is foresaid of the Church, " and thou shalt 
 say. Who hath begotten me these?" "Thy sons shall 
 come from afar, and thy daughters shall rise up at 
 thy side." And of Christ it is said : " Thy wife as a 
 fruitful vine, on the sides of thy house. Thy children 
 as olive plants, round about thy table." It is of the 
 new birth in the font of Baptism that wondering 
 Nicodemus asks, " Can a man when he is old enter 
 into his mother's womb and be born again ; " and 
 he receives for his" answer : " Amen, I say to you, 
 except a man be born again of water and the Spirit 
 he cannot enter the Kingdom of God." 
 
 The Christian parents are not merely imitators, 
 but in some sense co-operators in this fertility of the 
 
240 A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 Church. They, together with the ministers of baptism, 
 are the means by which the Church increases and 
 multiphes and replenishes the earth and subdues it. 
 They should, therefore, be conscious and intelligent 
 agents of Christ in this matter. The Christian mother 
 should remember that her child is not full-born 
 until it is born to grace; that the fruit of her 
 maternity is not the child of wrath, but the child of 
 grace ; and that the care, nurture, and education ot 
 her offspring has for its principal aim the formation 
 of their early consciousness to the knowledge, love, 
 and grace of God — not merely their natural spiritual 
 perfection, not merely their intellectual and moral 
 development, but their engracement and supernatural 
 sanctification. 
 
 Such being the type, the ideal of Christian 
 marriage, what shall we say of the reality as we see 
 it around us in this de-Christianized country, where 
 Catholics find it so hard, so impossible to keep 
 mind or heart free from the infectious pestilence of 
 unbelief, misbelief, and moral corruption ; a country 
 where the true idea of a sacrament of any sort has 
 been lost to the people at large for three centuries ; 
 where the nature of the Church and of her mystical 
 union with Christ is wholly unknown; where the 
 Catholic teaching concerning purity and chastity is 
 simply ridiculed as Manichean in theory and impos- 
 sible in practice ; where the law of the land sanctions 
 an adulterous remarriage of those who have been 
 divorced, and permits marriages which in the 
 Church's eyes are incestuous, null, and void ; whose 
 religion despises virginity and celibacy, and holds 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 241 
 
 but lightly to the perpetuity or unity of Christian 
 marriage. 
 
 Surely it is only too evident that Protestantism 
 has done its work thoroughly ; that it has first 
 rationalized the notion of marriage and robbed it of 
 all its mystical and spiritual import ; then secularized 
 what was a sacrament of the Gospel, and betrayed 
 it into the hands of Caesar ; and by these means has 
 finally succeeded in degrading and profaning an 
 institution on whose elevation and purity the whole 
 fabric of true civilization depends. Even if those 
 other causes which in some Catholic countries have 
 retarded the Christian idealization of marriage, have 
 co-operated with the principles of Protestantism 
 and hastened their development in this country, 
 still the development is none the less legitimate. 
 
 iii.^ 
 
 It only remains to add a few words on the 
 subject of the intellect and moral equality of man 
 and woman as bearing on the Catholic conception of 
 domestic society. Here, while we have to guard on 
 the one hand against the false principles on which 
 the modern movement in favour of the intellectual 
 and social emancipation of woman is based, and the 
 excesses to which it is carried, yet on the othei 
 there is a danger lest we suppose the Church to 
 be altogether hostile to certain conclusions because 
 
 1 This is condensed from an article which appeared in the 
 American Catholic Quarterly, July, 1897. 
 
 
 
242 A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 she is hostile to the premisses from which they are 
 drawn, or to the spirit in which they are enforced. 
 
 In this, as in other matters, we must distinguish 
 between the practice and sentiments of certain 
 Catholics and the principles and teaching of the 
 Catholic religion ; we may not conclude that the 
 condition of woman in any Catholic country or at any 
 particular epoch is the product of Catholic principles 
 unless we can clearly trace the connection. For the 
 leaven of an idea works its way slowly. The Church 
 will tolerate much, and will connive at many inevit- 
 able evils attendant on imperfect stages of social 
 development, if only she can secure the essentials of 
 religion. She "has many things to say" to the 
 semi-pagan and semi-barbarian, but they "cannot 
 bear them yet." The natural growth of subjective 
 truth cannot be hurried, else it will have no deep 
 root ; and this is as true of the collective, as of the 
 individual mind. 
 
 It need hardly be stated that the two principles 
 of self-sufficient individualism and rationalism are 
 essentially uncatholic and anti-catholic. Although 
 the Church abhors the socialist extreme which 
 enslaves the unit to the multitude, making society 
 an end in itself and not a means to the good of its 
 several members, yet she holds firmly to the truth 
 that it is only in and through society — domestic, 
 civil, or ecclesiastical — that personality can be duly 
 developed. In the mystical body of Christ she 
 finds the archetype of all society, whose unity she 
 accordingly concludes to be rather that of a living 
 organism than that of an artificial aggregate of 
 
A GREAT MYSTESY. 243 
 
 independent units bound to one another by the 
 force of self-interest. Nemo sibi vivit — " None for 
 himself," is the law of the former association; "Each 
 for himself" is the law of the latter. Together with 
 this conception of society as a natural organism 
 goes the doctrine of the right of authority and the 
 duty of obedience. If the subjection of members to 
 the head, of parts to the whole, is demanded by 
 nature, it is therefore commanded by that Personal 
 Power in and above nature. Hence obedience to 
 lawful authority becomes a duty to God, and the 
 right of that authority is, in some sense. Divine. On 
 the other hand, if all society originates in a free 
 contract, whereof the motive is self-interest ; if no 
 unit cares for the universal good except so far as it 
 is a means to his own isolated advantage, then the 
 submission is really to self-imposed restrictions, and 
 eventually one obeys oneself ; which is only a wrong 
 way of saying he follows his own will, and not 
 the will of another. In a word, with the artificial or 
 contract-theory of society, the very notion of obedi- 
 ence must vanish. 
 
 As, in the Catholic view, the family is the 
 simplest social unit, so the conjugal association is 
 the simplest and germinal form of the family. In 
 that society of two, as in all society, the distinction 
 between head and body, ruler and ruled, is essential, 
 because where a conflict of wills in morally indifferent 
 matters is possible, social life requires a power of 
 determining and ending such controversy; a right 
 of decision on the one hand and a duty of acquies- 
 cence on the other. We say " morally indifferent 
 
244 ^ GREAT MVSTBRY. 
 
 matters," for where it is a question of right and 
 wrong and of God's law, the decision of a higher 
 court has already been given. This right of social 
 superiority in the conjugal society the Catholic 
 religion has always attributed to the husband. She 
 has regarded it as the postulate of nature, and there- 
 fore as the command of God. She finds it confirmed 
 by revelation in the account of the primitive and 
 Divine institution of marriage, and further, in the 
 restoration of that institution by Christ to more 
 than its pristine dignity ; in its elevation to the rank 
 of a sacrament signifying and effecting a relation 
 between husband and wife analogous to that which 
 subsists between Christ the Head, and the Church, 
 His body, the archetype of all social organism. 
 " As the Church is subject to Christ, so let women 
 be to their husbands in all things ; " for " the 
 husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the 
 head of the Church." Obedience in all matters 
 pertaining to that little society, and when nothing 
 is ordered contrary to any higher authority, is the 
 wife's duty; and to command in such matters and 
 under such limits is the husband's right. And it is 
 not, as contract-theories conceive it, a right which 
 the unmarried woman possesses over herself and 
 which in marriage she gives over to her husband, 
 as she might give over her fortune ; but one which 
 springs into existence for the first time together 
 with the contract. As I cannot obey myself, so 
 neither can I command or force myself; and, not 
 having that power myself, I cannot give it to 
 another. But I can posit the conditions on which 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 245 
 
 he receives it from the very nature of things ; that 
 is, from God. In every free promise I put myseli 
 in another's power ; yet the power exercised over 
 me is not and was not mine, but it is the binding 
 power of truth, or of that Lawgiver who forbids me 
 to He and commands me to fulfil my words. In 
 this sense, all lawful authority is Divine, even as 
 truth is. 
 
 It is, however, important to notice the distinction 
 between social or official superiority and personal — 
 a distinction ever insisted on by the Church in the 
 interests of liberty. Just as, in her ministers and 
 priests, she bids us discern between the man and 
 his ecclesiastical office, and assures us that the 
 personal unfitness of the minister in no way affects 
 the validity of his ministrations, so, in the question 
 of jurisdiction, ecclesiastical, civil, or domestic, she 
 admonishes those in office not to credit themselves 
 with personal superiority, or to govern, as it were, 
 in right of possessing greater wisdom, or holiness, 
 or ability than their subjects ; nor to imagine that 
 an appointment necessarily carries with it an infal- 
 lible guarantee of aptitude, present, past, or future. 
 Thus Ignatius of Loyola, who expresses the common 
 doctrine of the Church in a form peculiarly distress- 
 ing to the pseudo-liberal mind, says, in his well- 
 known Letter on Obedience : " For indeed it is not 
 as though he were endued and enriched with 
 prudence or benevolence or other divine gifts, of 
 whatever kind, that a superior is to be obeyed, but 
 only on this account that he holds the place of God, 
 and exercises His authority, who says : ' He that 
 
246 A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 heareth you, heareth Me.' " The tyranny of indi- 
 vidualism in government is altogether opposed to 
 Catholic theory ; and we cannot conclude at once 
 that, because the husband has authority over the 
 wife, therefore the man is superior to the woman ; 
 but, at most, that there is in the man, as such, a 
 certain aptitude for that particular office which is 
 not found in the woman. Let it suffice, by way of 
 illustration of our last remark, to refer to the 
 Catholic veneration for the Holy Family of Naza- 
 reth, where St. Joseph, as the husband of Mary, held 
 the office of superior over one who, in the Church's 
 estimation, was almost immeasurably his better in 
 light and wisdom and divine grace. Official superi- 
 ority, therefore, does not involve personal superiority; 
 any more than personal superiority in one point or 
 more, means superiority in all. 
 
 Still less is it in keeping with the Catholic con- 
 ception that the subjection of the wife should be 
 slavish, or the government of the husband despotic. 
 For matrimony is a true " society," and the wife is 
 soda, and not serva; that is to say, she is, as a 
 person, both intellectually and morally her husband's 
 companion and friend, and the end of their associa- 
 tion is not the repression, but the fuller development 
 of her personaHty. And this is the Church's ideal 
 of government everywhere, in home and state, so 
 far as men are sufficiently imbued with unselfish 
 and social instincts to profit by it. The law and 
 the spirit of fear is for the infancy of races ; the 
 Gospel and the spirit of love for their maturity. 
 Where the less ideal state of domestic society 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 447 
 
 prevails, the Church may tolerate it as expedient or 
 necessary under the circumstances, but she is never 
 satisfied with it. 
 
 Now all this is wholly unintelligible if we accept 
 the contract-theory of society in general and extend 
 it to the matrimonial bond. There is, in that view, 
 as little assignable reason why the wife's place in 
 the association should be one of inferiority, as why, 
 in a partnership of any two free individuals for a 
 common advantage, one should preside over the 
 other ; and where there is no authority there is no 
 place for obedience. 
 
 Thus an American advocate of Woman's Rights, 
 in a chapter headed Obey,^ tells us how he protested 
 one day to a clergyman against the "unrighteous 
 pledge to obey," used in the Protestant marriage 
 service : 
 
 " ' I hope,' I said, ' to live to see that word 
 expunged from the Episcopal service, as it has been 
 from that of the Methodists.' 
 
 " ' Why ? ' he asked. ' Is it because you know 
 they will not obey, whatever their promise ? ' 
 
 " ' Because they ought not,' I said. 
 
 •• ' Well,' said he, after a few moments' reflection, 
 and looking up frankly, ' I do not think they ought.' " 
 
 The writer goes on to say : " Whoever is pledged 
 to obey is technically and literally a slave, no matter 
 how many roses surround his chains " — from which 
 we must conclude that soldiers and sailors, civil 
 servants and all subjects are slaves, or else that they 
 are perfectly free, morally and physically, to do as 
 • Common Sfnse About Women, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 
 
248 A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 they like in everything. Finally he says : " Make 
 the marriage-tie as close as Church or State can 
 make it, but let it be equal and impartial. That it 
 may be so, the word obey must be abandoned or 
 made reciprocal." The idea of "reciprocal obedi- 
 ence " is hard to grasp, but, as far as we understand 
 it, it does not augur well for domestic peace. But 
 in truth, all obedience is to a superior; and just so 
 far as there is equality, obedience is impossible. In 
 fact, on equalitarian principles the matrimonial 
 relation is essentially different from what it is con- 
 ceived to be, not only by Christianity, but by the 
 hitherto unsophisticated reason of mankind. There 
 are still, even for the equalitarian, certain prudential 
 motives which make monogamy desirable and divorce 
 undesirable within given limits, but those limits are 
 soon reached. 
 
 It is absurd and futile for would-be orthodox 
 writers to contend against the inevitable weakening 
 of the marriage-bond, which is the necessary result 
 of certain false social principles, unless they are 
 prepared to repudiate those principles altogether. 
 If all authority, civil and ecclesiastical, is only by 
 delegation from the people, with whom it rests 
 inalienably; if they not only designate its holder, 
 but create its binding force; if it represents only 
 their preponderating wishes and appetites, and not 
 their judgment of what is eternally and divinely 
 right and just, — whether they judge for themselves 
 or choose others to judge for the ti; if it is merely 
 self-interest that binds the members of society to 
 one another ; if obedience is only an indirect 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 249 
 
 following of one's own will, subjected to that 
 of another freely and revocably; then the self- 
 interested association of man and woman must 
 be conceived m the same way, and the word 
 " obey " either expunged from the Protestant 
 marriage-service or explamed away. Indeed, we 
 must freely admit that the most advanced and 
 extravagant ideas of woman's position are but the 
 logical outcome, a necessary product of equali- 
 tarianism. That philosophy tends to deny any 
 difference between the sexes that is not strictly 
 physiological. It refuses to admit that, morally and 
 intellectually, they are complementary one of another; 
 that the perfect humanity, the complete mind and 
 character is divided between them ; that human 
 parentage includes the mental and moral forma- 
 tion of the offspring, to which both parents are 
 instrumental and necessary each in their own way. 
 Beyond the limits of physiology it regards all 
 differences and inequalities as artificial and iniqui- 
 tous, and it tends logically to the eventual abolition 
 of matrimony in any recognizable sense of the 
 term. 
 
 And now we may inquire in what, precisely, 
 consists that inequality which, in domestic society, 
 gives the husband headship over the wife. Those 
 who make no distinction between what is and' what 
 must be, between what must be and what ought to 
 be, will freely grant that in the state of rude savagery 
 the wife depends for protection on the superior 
 physical force and liberty of the husband, and that 
 such dependence puts the reins into his hands. But 
 
250 A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 as social evolution relieves her of this dependence 
 more and more, it may be asked, What basis remains 
 for the old relationship ? If woman is not intel- 
 lectually and morally inferior and dependent, why 
 should she be the one to submit ? 
 
 Now it is most necessary to observe that 
 " superior " is here a relative term, implying 
 some end to be secured. The end in question 
 is the government of the domestic society, the 
 government of the members only in matters 
 pertaining to their common good, and in no 
 others. For example, when we agree that in the 
 savage state the man is more fit to govern the 
 house or wigwam than the woman, we mean that he 
 is superior in fighting power, being physically less 
 encumbered. We do not mean that even physio- 
 logically he is a superior being all round, but that, 
 having some attributes which she has not, he can 
 secure an end which she cannot — just as, in many 
 matters, she is superior in virtue of capacities which 
 he has not. 
 
 If, then, woman's subjection in more developed 
 domestic society is founded on a certain intellectual 
 or moral inferiority, it does not mean that she is in 
 all points intellectually or morally inferior to man, but 
 only other than man ; it does not mean that she is 
 less fit for high intellectual or moral attainments, 
 but only less free for government, less often endowed, 
 with all the qualities, positive and negative, required 
 for that trust. Whether those qualities are of all 
 others the most admirable and enviable may be 
 questioned. Widespread intellectualism is not a con- 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 251 
 
 dition favourable to social tranquillity and progress ; 
 far more important are the stolid, practical qualifi- 
 cations to which the Teutonic races owe their steady 
 progressiveness, and the absence of which makes 
 free government almost unworkable in more fervid 
 nations. "Where idealism, imagination, and emotion 
 prevail very widely, they are fatal to that stability 
 which is needed for social order and growth. It was 
 not without a touch of humour that Plato looked 
 forward to the rule of philosophers as an ideal 
 government; nor should we choose a civil pre- 
 sident on account of the fervour of his piety or 
 the sublimity of his political conceptions, although 
 allowing these gifts to be far superior to an insight 
 into the theory of taxation. What, then, is this 
 peculiar characteristic which naturally fits man for 
 the headship in domestic society? Aquinas tells 
 us : " There are two kinds of subjection, servile, 
 and domestic or civil. The latter is the kind of 
 subjection whereby the woman is by nature subject 
 to the man, because of the greater rational discretion 
 which man naturally possesses." 
 
 The whole human character in its adequate 
 perfection is put into commission between the two 
 sexes. Morally and intellectually, no less than 
 physiologically, they are complementary; and that 
 not merely as companions or associates, but as 
 parents and educators of their offspring. It is on 
 this natural and necessary diversity of mental and 
 moral character that matrimonial society is founded. 
 But when we reflect on the qualities needed for 
 direction and government, chief among them seems 
 
252 A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 to be that dtscretio rahonis, or reasoning discern- 
 ment of which Aquinas speaks — a power of taking 
 a cold, impartial, abstract view of thmgs; a gift 
 immensely useful, if not very attractive, Not, of 
 course, that every man possesses this pre-eminently, 
 but that he does so normally in so far as the mascu- 
 line character is duly developed in him. Where, on 
 the other hand, it is the wife who excels in this 
 talent, there usually results a disturbance of due 
 domestic harmony, or else a complete inversion of 
 the matrimonial relationships, which confirms the 
 theory of Aquinas very satisfactorily. It is not, 
 however, the actual possession of this reasoning 
 discernment that constitutes or measures the 
 husband's right to govern, any more than the 
 authority of any other ruler depends on his 
 aptitude. The presumption of such aptitude is the 
 implicit condition of his designation, but the desig- 
 nation is not invalidated by the falseness of the 
 presumption. 
 
 The scope of marital government, as we have 
 already said, is confined to matters concerning the 
 common domestic good, and the subjection of the 
 wife is not servile, but social: "for the servant 
 knoweth not what his master doeth," but the wife 
 is governed in domestic matters, not despotically, 
 without reference to her views and inclinations, 
 but politically, as a person, and with the greatest 
 deference to those views and inclinations which is 
 compatible with the common good. Nemo sibi vivit — 
 " None for himself," is, as we have said, the ideal of 
 all Christian society. The husband is not made for 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 253 
 
 the wife, nor the wife for the husband, but each for 
 the twain. 
 
 It will be already evident that there is nothing 
 in the Catholic view favouring a belief in the general 
 intellectual or moral inferiority of woman ; and how 
 perfectly in accord with the mind of Christianity 
 is her highest development in both respects will 
 presently appear. Of course, we make a distinction 
 between necessary and actual inferiority. The former 
 may be repudiated very plausibly, the latter cannot. 
 As we have said, the division of labour and of 
 domestic cares which was needed in rude social 
 states, and which is now, and perhaps always will 
 be, needed among the unleisured classes, requires 
 for the majority of young girls a training which will 
 fit them for their probable after-work ; a training 
 which concentrates the mind on small, practical 
 details, and which tends, apart from precautionary 
 measures, to produce narrowness, except so far as 
 religion raises the mind to greater and more universal 
 conceptions. Indeed, the very existence of the 
 movement for woman's intellectual emancipation is 
 a confession of an actual and widespread inferiority. 
 Again, it may be taken for granted that the un- 
 natural will never so far prevail, but that the majority 
 of married women will always be involved in the 
 cares of maternity. This, as a heavy tax not only 
 on the time but on the physical energy necessary for 
 severe intellectual work, will put them at a serious 
 disadvantage. In a word, equality of opportunity, 
 which is essential to fair competition, can never be 
 accorded to that same majority, owing to conditions 
 
254 -4 GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 fixed, not by custom, nor by male tyranny, but by 
 nature. 
 
 But those who would contend for an altogether 
 essential inferiority of intellect on the part of women 
 have a very difficult thesis to prove, for the simple 
 reason that all their instances are met either by 
 denying equality of opportunity, or by the contention 
 that diversity of intellectual gifts is not the same as 
 inferiority. In proportion as equal opportunities 
 are given from the first, we see everywhere a 
 practical refutation of their view. 
 
 How much the Catholic religion, which exalts a 
 Woman to the highest place in creation, favours 
 and furthers her intellectual and moral development 
 and ignores any such essential difference, is plain 
 from a retrospect of the past. Let me quote the 
 results of an admirable article in the Catholic World 
 for June, 1875, none the less appropriate because 
 written in reply to Mr. Gladstone's taunt to the 
 effect that the conquests of the Catholic Church in 
 England were " chiefly among women," and there- 
 fore of no account. After noting the homage done 
 to woman's intellectual power by the religions of 
 Greece and Rome in the worship of a woman as 
 the goddess of wisdom, and patroness of just and 
 humane warfare; in the culttis of Vesta, of the 
 Muses, of the Fates, of the Graces, and in the 
 honouring of such names as Rhea, Alcestis, Ariadne, 
 Alcyone, and so forth, the article goes on to notice 
 her place in the Old Testament, as exemplified in 
 the prophetesses and wives of the patriarchs; in 
 Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah, Ruth, 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 255 
 
 Esther, and many others. Then we are reminded 
 how it was among women that Christ found His 
 most numerous, apt, and constant disciples when 
 on earth, thus coming under the lash of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's sarcasm. St. Paul speaks of the women who 
 laboured with him in the Gospel. Timothy learnt 
 the Scriptures from Lois and Eunice. St. Thecla^ 
 was skilled in profane and sacred science and philo- 
 sophy, and excelled in the various branches of 
 polite literature. St. Apollonia preached the faith 
 at Alexandria, and converted many by her eloquence. 
 St. Catharine devoted herself to the study of philo- 
 sophy, especially that of Plato, and confuted the 
 ablest Pagan philosophers of her day. She is 
 honoured as the patroness of learning and eloquence 
 and of scholastic theology, and art represents her as 
 the Christian Urania. After remarking that "the 
 increasing demand which we have on every side for 
 a more substantial and scholarly training of the sex 
 does not look forward to that which they never had, 
 but backward to what they have lost or abandoned," 
 the writer reminds us how it was St. Macrina who 
 taught SS. Basil and Gregory; how SS. Cosmas and 
 Damian were instructed by Theodora. " Even as 
 early as the second century," writes a distinguished 
 scholar, " the zeal of religious women for letters 
 provoked the satire of the enemies of Christianity." 
 St. Fulgentius was educated by his mother, who 
 made him learn Homer and Menander by heart. 
 St. Paula stimulated St. Jerome to some of his 
 greatest writings, and St. Eustochium was a faultless 
 ' St. Paul's disciple. 
 
256 A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 Hebrew scholar. St. Chrysostom dedicated seventeen 
 of his letters to St, Olympias ; and St Marcella's 
 acquirements won her the title of the " glory of the 
 Roman ladies " The convents of England in -the 
 seventh and eighth centuries vied with the monaste- 
 ries in letters. St. Gertrude was skilled in Greek, and 
 it was a woman who introduced the study of Greek 
 into the monastery of St, Gall. St. Hilda was con- 
 sulted on theology by Bishops assembled in council. 
 Queen Editha, wife of St. Edward the Confessor, 
 taught grammar and logic. St. Boniface was the 
 teacher of a brilliant constellation of literary 
 women.^ We are told of women who were familiar 
 with the Greek and Latin Fathers ; of an abbess 
 who wrote an encyclopaedia of all the science of her 
 day ; of a nun whose Latin poems and stanzas were 
 the marvel of the learned , of the injunction of the 
 Council of Cloveshoe (747) that abbesses should 
 diligently provide for the education of their nuns ; 
 of the labours of Lioba in conjunction with St. Boni- 
 face ; of a convent school whose course included 
 Latin and Greek, Aristotle's philosophy, and the 
 liberal arts ; of women in the Papal University of 
 Bologna eminent in canon law, medicine, mathe- 
 matics, art, literature ; of Prospermia de' Rossi, who 
 taught sculpture there ; of Elena Cornaro, a doctor 
 at Milan; of Plautilla Brizio, the architect of the 
 chapel of St. Benedict at Rome. In the eighteenth 
 century we find women taking their degrees in juris- 
 prudence and philosophy at the Papal Universities. 
 In 1758 we have Anna Mazzolina professing anatomy 
 • " Valde eruditae in liberali scientia." 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 257 
 
 at Bologna, and Maria Agnese appointed by the 
 Pope to the chair of mathematics. Novella d'Andrea 
 taught canon law for ten years at Bologna, and a 
 woman succeeded Cardinal Mezzofanti as professor 
 of Greek. Still more abundant and overwhelming 
 is the evidence for woman's moral and spiritual 
 equality with man in the Church's esteem. If forti- 
 tude is in question, we have SS, Thecla, Perpetua, 
 Felicity, Agnes, Lucy, Agatha, Cecilia, Apollonia, 
 Catharine, and innumerable hosts of women who 
 faced the torments of martyrdom. If men have 
 forsaken their homes for the Gospel's sake in their 
 thousands, women have done so in their tens of 
 thousands, though for them the wrench, as a rule, is 
 far more violent and painful. In self-denial, in 
 austerity, in patient endurance, in silence, in un- 
 selfish devotion to Christ's poor, in all that is rightly 
 supposed to demand the highest degree of courageous 
 self-mastery, they have shown themselves, if not 
 superior, at least fully equal to the other sex. 
 
 If the number of men saints exceeds that of 
 women, it must be recollected that the canonized 
 represent but a handful of the saints, and chiefly 
 those whose sanctity was notorious and before the 
 public gaze; a fact which lessens the chances for 
 the official recognition of female sanctity. For the 
 same reason it is observable how far more frequent 
 is the canonization of bishops than of simple priests, 
 although no one would suppose that saintly priests 
 were less numerous than saintly bishops, considering 
 the numerical proportion of one order to the other. 
 Again, it may be plausibly contended that sanctity 
 
 R 
 
258 A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 in men is more evidently miraculous and out of the 
 common than in women, who, in a sense, are 
 naturally devout and spiritual-minded. 
 
 It would be tiresome to enumerate the religious 
 orders and congregations founded and ruled by 
 women. Indeed, the extent to which the Church 
 has entrusted women with jurisdiction and right of 
 government would seem opposed to the doctrine of 
 Aquinas, referred to above, were it not that this juris- 
 diction was very rarely exercised over communities 
 of men, and was usually dependent on higher authority 
 vested in bishops or prelates. 
 
 In the light of all this, it is impossible to deny 
 that where the Church has her way, and is not 
 trammelled by local prejudices, she desires the 
 fullest possible mental and moral development of 
 women compatible with the discharge of the social 
 duties required by nature and God's law. Here, 
 as elsewhere, the natural organization of society 
 forbids, and will always forbid, absolute equality 
 of opportunity. But it is the aim of sane progress 
 to eliminate all unjust and unreasonable inequa- 
 lities, and to secure the least possible waste of 
 those spiritual energies in which the true power 
 and wealth of every society consists. Nor must we 
 suppose that it is only in the leisured and unmarried 
 that the Catholic religion desires culture. The 
 Church knows far too well the power and influence 
 of the wife and mother not to see that their elevation 
 means the elevation of both husband and children, 
 and that eventually it is they who give the moral 
 tone to the whole community. Woman is naturally 
 
A GREAT MYSTERY. 259 
 
 the guardian of the spiritual weahh of the family, 
 and for that trust, especially in these days, mere 
 piety, which is not also educated and intelligent, is 
 of little avail. The first formation of the mind is 
 from the mother, and the impressions which she 
 leaves are indelible. It may truly be said that 
 whatever the Christian religion has done for the 
 elevation of pubhc morals, it has done through the 
 instrumentality of women. A brief study of Mr. 
 Devas's admirable little book on Family Life will 
 confirm what perhaps no one with any knowledge of 
 human history will dispute, and will prove that where 
 woman is debased and basely thought of, there, in 
 proportion, public morality is at a low ebb. 
 
 We must not credit the Catholic religion with 
 the sentiments of certain recluses of the desert who, 
 under the bias of Oriental influence, consider a fierce 
 contempt for women to be a great point of virtue ; 
 who insist much on the priority of Eve's share in 
 our racial disaster, forgetting that theology regards 
 it as quite insignificant compared with that of 
 Adam, and more than abundantly counterbalanced 
 by the part of Mary in our redemption ; who look 
 upon all the immorality in the world as an evil 
 brought upon man by that creature which God made 
 to be a "help meet for him" — a httle touch of 
 Manicheism, such as induces some to regard wine 
 as essentially demoniacal because men choose to 
 drink too much of it. A moment's reflection will 
 show that it is in the reverence for and not in the 
 contempt of woman that purity must look for its 
 only reliable safeguard ; and it is with this in her 
 
26o A GREAT MYSTERY. 
 
 mind that the Church counsels a devotion to the 
 Virgin Mother in the interests of that virtue. 
 
 In conclusion, if we contrast the Catholic ideal 
 of womanhood with that of modern irreligion — one 
 the fair fruit of sound reason enlightened by Catholic 
 faith, the other the base issue of crude equalitari- 
 anism and sense-philosophy — there is little difficulty 
 in seeing that the former conception is strong and 
 full of energies yet to be developed, while the latter 
 contains within itself the principle of its own decay 
 and death. The downfall of the family, the pro- 
 fanation of marriage, means the downfall and 
 profanation of woman. Whether she likes to allow 
 it or not, it is only in virtue of a waning survival 
 of that chivalrous spirit which Christianity created 
 and fostered, that the " new woman," as she is 
 called, is able to elbow her way to the front as she 
 does. If man is ever rebarbarized by the withdrawal 
 of the softening influence of home, if woman becomes 
 nothing more to him than a competitor in the general 
 struggle for wealth, she will eventually be forced 
 down to that degradation which has always been 
 her lot under the reign of pure selfishness and brute 
 force. If it is her greater unselfishness which has 
 caused her so much suffering in the past, it -has also 
 been the cause of her great power for good. Self- 
 ishness is brute force ; unselfishness a spiritual 
 force. She can never compete with man if the 
 contest is to be one of brute force. It is the Catholic 
 Church who has raised her, and, through her, has 
 raised the world, though both processes are still 
 struggling but slowly towards completion. 
 
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 
 
 " If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments ; if 
 thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the 
 poor, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven ; and come, 
 follow Me." — St. Matt. xix. 17, 21. 
 
 As there is a growing disposition on the part of 
 some to speak disparagingly of what is called the 
 " religious state " as though it were something 
 merely adventitious to the Catholic religion ; some- 
 thing useful and perhaps necessary for past ages but 
 rather out of place in our own times ; a desirable 
 ornament when not procured at too extravagant a 
 cost ; it may not be amiss to say a few words on 
 the nature of this institution, its place in the Church 
 and its relation to the Christian religion. As intel- 
 ligent Catholics, such knowledge ought to interest us 
 for its own sake ; but living as we do among non- 
 Catholics who are continually crying down the life 
 of perfection and the practice of the Evangelical 
 Counsels, it is doubly necessary that we should 
 have a firm grasp of the truth both for their sake 
 and for our own, to silence if not to convince them, 
 and to satisfy ourselves. And be it noticed that our 
 present scope is to defend, not religious orders in 
 the concrete, nor monasticism, but the religious 
 state in general, that is, the profession of the three 
 
262 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 
 
 Evangelical Counsels, — whether independently, or 
 in a society with others ; whether in the world, or 
 in the cloister, or in the hermitage. The religious 
 state is a permanent and essential feature of Catholic 
 Christianity ; whereas the particular orders or insti- 
 tutions into which religious have at various times 
 enrolled themselves for corporate action in the 
 Church's service, are contingent and transitory, 
 varying with the necessities of the age and locality : 
 " They have their ,day and cease to be." But the 
 religious state lives with the life of the Church, of 
 which it is an essential manifestation. 
 
 St. Paul boasts — and he is a great boaster — that 
 the world is crucified to him and he to the world ; 
 and " God forbid," says he, "that I should boast in 
 anything save only in the Cross of Christ." The 
 Cross has become so outwardly honoured since 
 those days ; such an object of worship and adora- 
 tion ; so rayed round with secular glory from the 
 labours of poet and painter, that his words do 
 not sound so mad in our ears as they did in 
 the ears of those who looked on crucifixion as we 
 do on hanging or penal servitude, and who felt as 
 little reverence for the Cross as we do for the 
 gallows or the tread-mill. To get the full flavour 
 of his sentiment we should have to put the word 
 gallows instead of cross, and hanged instead of 
 crucified. His meaning is that, as far as we are 
 permeated with the spirit of the Gospel, so far 
 shall we feel an ever-growing contempt for the 
 life and conduct and aims of the spirit of worldli- 
 ness wheresoever manifested ; in Catholics or non- 
 
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 263 
 
 Catholics ; in Christians or non-Christians ; in its 
 professed votaries or in its professed enemies. It is 
 not the world but worldliness which is hateful to 
 God — a subtle leaven of unbelief and selfish egoism 
 lurking in all our hearts ; and breaking out like a 
 plague over the millions of humanity. And as our 
 contempt of worldliness increases, so too will our 
 reverence for the " Evangelical Counsels " and the 
 religious state increase. For just as the Church of 
 Christ took the hated gibbet and lifted it above her 
 altars, and taught men to bow down and worship 
 what the world spat upon and trampled under foot ; 
 so by the existence of her religious she continually 
 sets the world at defiance ; and teaches men to love 
 and honour and — when it is God's will — to embrace 
 what the world hates and despises and ilies from, — 
 namely, poverty, self-restraint, mortification, obedi- 
 ence, submission, humility. 
 
 Our Divine Saviour is rightly said to have 
 sanctified and exalted and imparted a sort of sacra- 
 mental dignity to whatever He touched, or used, or 
 made in any way His own. It is the instinct of 
 love to choose the lot, to imitate the ways of those 
 we love. " Lord," says Peter, " I will go with Thee 
 to prison and to death." It was the purpose of God 
 to govern and reform the world, not by theories and 
 philosophies, but by this imitative power of personal 
 love; to draw men's hearts to Himself so that it 
 should be their chief glory and joy to live as He 
 lived, choosing and loving the lot which He chose 
 and loved; walking in the paths trodden by His 
 blessed feet* 
 
264 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 
 
 But the world into which He came was a world 
 where riches, wealth, possessions were worshipped 
 and idolized to the ruin of souls and the dishonour 
 of God. " Idolized," because they were sought as an 
 end in themselves ; or sought in a spirit of selfish 
 individualism, not for the common good, but for 
 the exclusive good of the unit; where accordingly 
 wealth was acquired by fraud and oppression of the 
 poor; where the labourer was despised by the 
 capitalist as the vanquished by the conqueror. For 
 it was not only the little world of Judea two thou- 
 sand years ago, but the great world of all the nations 
 and ages that He came to heal. It was in answer 
 to the cry which to-day goes up to the ears of God 
 from the oppressed millions of humanity no less 
 than to the cries and groanings of past ages that 
 He has come down as Emmanuel — God, one of 
 ourselves ; Jesus, the Carpenter of Nazareth. 
 
 To poor and rich alike the love of wealth is 
 the most fruitful source of misery, spiritual and 
 temporal. 
 
 Superabundance on the one hand is a snare to 
 the rich, making them feel independent of God in 
 so many ways, like the fool who said, "Soul, 
 take thy ease; thou hast much riches laid up." 
 Furthermore, it is the key to endless pleasures and 
 enjoyments the appetite for which, when unduly 
 indulged, grows insatiable and tyrannical; and 
 ' breeds that sensuality which blinds the understand- 
 ing to every spiritual conception and makes the 
 heart cruel and selfish. It is no less the passport 
 to vain honour and to influence, which also come 
 
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 265 
 
 quickly to be desired as ends in themselves with 
 a spiritual hunger less degrading but really more 
 soul-destroying than the craving for luxuries and 
 enjoyments. The mere possession of superabundant 
 wealth is no sin in itself, no injustice, as socialists 
 pretend it must necessarily be ; but it is a continual 
 occasion, almost a proximate occasion, of such 
 tendencies and temptations as we have just spoken 
 of. For it is all but impossible for ordinary souls 
 to possess wealth and yet not to love it; and "the 
 love of money is the root of all evil." How few 
 are they who not only believe but who realize that 
 their wealth is given them by God only for the 
 common good; and that if they are allowed certain 
 superfluities and enjoyments as the fruit of their 
 own or their parents' industry, it is only because 
 the common good requires that there should be such 
 reasonable differences, and that there should be a 
 stimulus to industry; and because social unity re- 
 quires that we should share often both good and evil, 
 wealth and poverty, reward and penalty for which 
 we are not personally responsible. Hence it is not 
 against the poor but for the poor that the rich hold 
 their wealth ; insomuch as the pooi; are members 
 of the same body. It is in the power of doing good 
 that the true privilege of wealth and position lies.^ 
 "Let him that sitteth at meat be as him that 
 serveth," says our Saviour, who was at once Lord 
 of lords and Slave of slaves. To rule is to be great, 
 because to serve is to be great ; to have is happiness, 
 
 ' " He wished to reign," says Wilhelm Meister, speaking of 
 Hamlet, " only that good men might be good without obstruction." 
 
266 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 
 
 because to give is happiness. " It is more blessed 
 to give than to receive." And besides all this, it 
 is the tendency of superabundant riches to ruin the 
 spiritual independence of man by making him the 
 slave of imaginary necessities. History everywhere 
 testifies to the social and national decay consequent 
 on the selfish accumulation and selfish use of wealth 
 We must not find fault with productive expenditure 
 nor even with such as promotes the moral, intel 
 lectual, and physical development of individuals 
 For society is helped and strengthened by the multi 
 plication of healthy, intelligent, and moral citizens 
 We are not Vandals or Puritans to deny the 
 refining pleasures of fine art to those who can 
 afford them ; nor are we so narrow-minded as not 
 to see that there is such a thing as useful leisure ; 
 and that the existence of a leisured class is not 
 necessarily a source of corruption, but might be and 
 ought to be a helpful factor in the general well- 
 being. It is against the enervating effects of luxury 
 that we protest ; against the indulgence of sensu- 
 ality ; against the squandering of possibilities of 
 happiness and of true utilities, to no purpose or to 
 an evil purpose. 
 
 Again : to the poor, no less than to the rich, the 
 love of wealth is a source of misery. For not all 
 who are poor in fact, are poor in spirit ; and 
 grasping avarice is confined to no class of society. 
 No doubt where there is real insufficiency and desti- 
 tution it is impossible — apart from miracles of grace 
 — but that the heart must be eaten up with cares, 
 or hardened with despair. On such poverty, the 
 
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 267 
 
 fruitful mother of vice, our Saviour has pronounced 
 no blessing; but only a curse on those who are 
 responsible for it. But it is often the comfortable 
 poor who are most enslaved to a desire of accu- 
 mulating ; to a thrift that has become an end 
 itself, instead of reasonable means to a reasonable 
 end. 
 
 It was therefore needful for us that our Saviour 
 by embracing poverty should make that state of life 
 more honourable and more lovable to His followers. 
 He knew that it was as difficult for a rich man to 
 use his riches unselfishly as for a camel to go 
 through the eye of a needle ; He knew that for the 
 majority it was far better, safer, happier to be 
 actually poor, to have less rather than more, and 
 to be content with that less. And that they might 
 be not only content but better pleased with that 
 lot, He made it His own. To the anti-social, 
 selfish spirit of worldliness nothing is more hateful 
 than poverty ; none are more contemptible than the 
 poor ; and so, to condemn and defy the world and 
 to show His contempt for its judgment, our God 
 came among us as a poor man, labouring for His 
 daily bread in the sweat of His brow. He embraced 
 poverty and thereby made it something divine — 
 Holy Poverty, the Bride of Christ : 
 
 With Christ she climbed the cross of woe, 
 When even Mary stayed below.* 
 
 He shared it with His Blessed Mother, with 
 
 St. Joseph, with His Apostles, and with His closest 
 
 * Dante, Paradiso, xi. 
 
268 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 
 
 friends. To them He says, speaking of that per- 
 fection which is counselled though not commanded : 
 " If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast 
 and give to the poor . . . and come and follow 
 Me," the Son of Man who have not where to lay My 
 head. And let us notice in passing that the spirit 
 of poverty is not a spirit of economy or parsimony ; 
 not a spirit of keeping, but of giving. It sells all, 
 in order to give to the poor; after His example, 
 "who, though He was rich, yet for our sake He 
 became poor," and "emptied Himself of His glory." 
 It is the spirit of devotion, self-sacrifice, self-forget- 
 fulness ; the very antithesis and antidote of the love 
 of acquisition. 
 
 Again : it was not well possible for our Saviour 
 to choose any but the harder lot and the lot of the 
 majority. Which of us could bear to go well-clad 
 or to feast sumptuously, or to make merry, if one 
 most near and dear to us were in destitution and 
 pain and poverty? Even though we could in no 
 way by self-privation relieve his misery, yet love 
 and sympathy would make the inequality intolerable 
 to us, and we should be restless and miserable till 
 we were on the same level as he. True, common- 
 sense has no justification of such a sentiment ; but 
 there is something in us, thank God, much diviner 
 than common sense ; something that is a spark 
 from that fire that burns in the Human Heart of 
 God Incarnate. It was not merely to guide us, 
 to encourage us, to feel with us and for us, that our 
 great High Priest was tempted and tried with all 
 our temptations and trials ; but because love is 
 
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. z6g 
 
 miserable until it shares the sorrows of the beloved ; 
 it feels itself false and disloyal if it enjoys any 
 advantage in solitude. Pauperes semper habetis vohis- 
 cum; He knew there would always be poor while the 
 world lasted ; and, furthermore, that the poor would 
 always be in the majority. For, whatever econo- 
 mists dream to the contrary, the rich will be few 
 and the poor will be many. But our Saviour was 
 necessarily with the majority; for the few are for 
 the many and not the many for the few ; the rich 
 are for the poor and not the poor for the rich ; the 
 gifted for the needy and not the needy for the gifted. 
 
 Again : He had come on a mission of repara- 
 tion to make atonement for the sins of the world. 
 He saw, as none other saw, the torrents of iniquity 
 and corruption that streamed from this one source 
 of avarice or the selfish love of wealth ; and there- 
 fore, despising what the world loved and loving 
 what the world despised. He wiUingly and freely 
 chose to be poor rather than to be rich. 
 
 And the Church, His Spouse, has faithfully 
 guarded His doctrine in this matter of poverty ; and 
 she proclaims it not only by word of mouth, but 
 by the continual object-lesson given by the pro- 
 fessors of voluntary poverty. She allows and en- 
 courages her children, if only they are called thereto 
 by God, to make obligatory on themselves by vow 
 what is of counsel and free to all ; to seal a contract 
 with poverty and to make her their bride as she 
 was the bride of Christ. 
 
 Let us pause to notice that the sacredness of the 
 marriage tie and the specific distinctiveness of 
 
270 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 
 
 conjugal love depends on the bond being irrevocable 
 at will and perpetual. So he who gives himself to 
 poverty irrevocably, who locks the fetter and casts 
 away the key, loves her with a devotion far higher in 
 kind and degree than he who embraces her at will or 
 takes her on trial or with the possibility of a divorce 
 in view. And so of religious vows in general. It is 
 excellent to practise continence or obedience; but 
 far more excellent to vow oneself to the practice. 
 
 The very idea of a vow is somewhat discordant 
 with many of the dominant notions and sentiments 
 of modern life. Any voluntary sacrifice of liberty 
 is looked upon with suspicion as savouring of 
 fanaticism. But this suspicion is at root akin to 
 that which looks askance at every form of asceticism 
 or self-imposed mortification on the grounds that 
 what God has given us to enjoy He cannot desire 
 or intend us to forego — a fallacy which destroys not 
 only mortification, but all self-restraint and morality. 
 It is no violation of our liberty to be bound by the 
 law of God to do right instead of wrong ; nor is it 
 a violation of our liberty when by a self-imposed 
 law we bind ourselves to do better instead of well. 
 Nothing curtails our liberty but what restricts our 
 power of doing well or doing better. There is no 
 such prejudice against the notion of a vow where 
 the service of God is not in question. History and 
 romance and poetry abound with instances of heroic 
 self-devotion to noble causes and enterprises sealed 
 by vow, which elicit unqualified admiration from all 
 who do not wish to be thought void of right senti- 
 ment. Who will find fault with the hero of a recent 
 
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 271 
 
 fancy sketch of considerable merit/ who vowed his 
 life and labour to the task of bridging a mountain 
 torrent which had for years exacted its toll of 
 human life ? We are told how " he toiled day after 
 day, and the pains of loneliness and poverty were 
 ever with him ; but the pain which had brought the 
 man's vow to birth spurred him on and helped him 
 to that endurance which is always heroism." And 
 then we read how later he awoke to the existence 
 of life's pleasures and of his own latent capacities 
 for enjoying them which his vow had doomed to 
 death ; how he " had mingled with his fellow-men — 
 with women too ; he had seen their pleasures, their 
 hopes, their loves, their happy lives, and he craved 
 the same ; " . . . how his humanity " revolted against 
 the self-appointed dreariness of his existence" when 
 " in one hour he realized that hope and love were 
 not for him. He had vowed a vow that swallowed 
 up ail gentler obligations ; which demanded all his 
 strength, all his days. ... He had paid out the 
 grandest years of his life for an impulsive whim, 
 and what had he gained ? Was he obliged to yield 
 his own life — the life he could never live again . . . 
 for the sake of a few lives in a far-off corner of the 
 land, a few pangs in hearts which had quite for- 
 gotten him ? " But ever the thought of his vow 
 comes to the assistance of his better self. He lives 
 till the necessary wealth is realized at great sacrifice ; 
 he returns to his country after years ; and on the 
 threshold of home he himself falls a victim to the 
 same cruel torrent whose foe he had sworn himself, 
 » Man. By L. Q. Couch, 
 
272 tHE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 
 
 and ere he sinks overcome, his last gaze rests on 
 the bridge of his dreams, built easily long before by 
 the wealth of others. 
 
 Few perhaps will care to withhold their praise 
 from such an act of heroic self-devotion, even 
 though in the issue it was fruitless of the results 
 it aimed at so nobly and at such cost. But when 
 it is a question of devotion to the service of God, 
 to the salvation not of a few lives, but of many 
 souls, to the maintenance of the cardinal principles 
 of the Gospel and of the Eternal Life here and 
 hereafter, then and then only are men alarmed for 
 the interests of liberty and fearful of the encroach- 
 ments of fanaticism. It has never been suggested 
 that there was aught of servility in the profession 
 of knighthood in the days of chivalry, when men 
 bound themselves 
 
 With such vows as is a shame 
 A man should not be bound by, yet the which 
 No man can keep. 
 
 Even though it be allowed that 
 
 The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself, 
 
 And being snapped, 
 We run more counter to the soul thereof 
 Than had we never sworn, 
 
 yet the fact that a profession is high and difficult, 
 and that therefore a greater percentage of those who 
 make it must fall short, and falling from a greater 
 height make greater havoc, in no way argues against 
 its lawfulness or rightfulness, unless we are prepared 
 to carry the principle of dishonourable safeness to 
 
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 173 
 
 the repudiation of Christianity itself and of the 
 baptismal vows. 
 
 It is then in sympathy with the intentions and 
 motives of Jesus Christ that souls here and there 
 are drawn to the profession of poverty; loving it 
 first of all for His sake, that is, because He loved it 
 and made it His own ; and then, more intelligently 
 entering into His mind, they love it for the sake of 
 mankind because it is the harder lot and the lot 
 of the many, and because they see that the love 
 of riches is the source of all kinds of social misery 
 and injustice ; and therefore they give themselves to 
 the preaching of poverty by their life and example, 
 giving up freely the wealth, or the opportunities of 
 wealth, they might otherwise have lawfully enjoyed. 
 And finally, in a spirit of reparation for all the dis- 
 honour done to God by the worship of money, they 
 do not merely accept the poverty that may be laid 
 upon them in the course of Providence contentedly 
 and cheerfully, but they freely make themselves poor 
 for ever. 
 
 But againsi all this doctrine economists urge 
 that the love of money, the desire to procure 
 comforts and to raise the standard of enjoyments, 
 is the root of all good, that is, of all progress and 
 increase of national wealth which eventually redounds 
 to the relief of destitution and poverty. Christ says : 
 "Sell all and give to the poor." He desires that 
 poverty should be relieved. He regards it therefore 
 as an evil. He insists strongly and frequently on 
 this duty. Plainly, to find the causes of poverty 
 and to remove them is the truest and most universal 
 s 
 
274 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 
 
 kind of charity. May it not be said, they urge, that 
 He is preoccupied rather with the evil of super- 
 abundant riches, that is, of capitalism, than with 
 the excellence of poverty; that it is only freedom 
 from those particular evils which makes poverty 
 preferable, in spite of other evils of its own. 
 
 To this there is but one answer. It is most true 
 that where there is no love of money or of comforts 
 there will be industrial stagnation, much poverty, 
 and widespread destitution, and it would be wrong 
 and mischievous to allow that Christianity is in any 
 way hostile to true and rational progress ; or that 
 the real interests of this world and the next were 
 incompatible. 
 
 The world is one thing and worldliness another. 
 The latter is an enemy of the interests of Christianity; 
 but it is also an enemy of the interests of the world. 
 For though Christianity seeks first the Kingdom of 
 heaven, it seeks ipso facto the advent of that Kingdom 
 upon earth; and that God's will may be done on 
 earth, in the individual, in the family, in the State, 
 in things temporal as it is in things eternal, " as it 
 IS in heaven." Truth, justice, equity, charity, hap- 
 piness, liberty, fraternity — what are these but the 
 will of God ? And what are they but the rational 
 ends of progress, the truest interests of this world 
 which God so loved that He gave His only Son to 
 die for it ? " What God has joined together let no 
 man put asunder." This world and the next are 
 related as body and soul. The body is subordinate 
 to the soul ; but it is not its enerhy, not even its 
 slave, but its ' companion, its helper, its friend. 
 
THE WA\ OF THE COUNSELS. 275 
 
 Both, we believe, are to be glorified together; and 
 we also believe that in some undreamt-of way the 
 kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms 
 of God and of His Christ ; and that a renewed and 
 purified heaven and earth will supervene upon 
 the old. 
 
 It is absurd and narrow-minded to regard 
 modern progress and civilization as being the pure 
 result either of Christian or of anti-Christian prin- 
 ciples and tendencies. It is a mixed product con- 
 taining much good and much evil inextricably 
 intertwined, as are the roots of wheat and tares in 
 the Master's field. All that is really good in it is 
 the fruit of the eternal and necessary principles of 
 the Gospel ; all that is evil is from the selfish spirit 
 of worldliness. Were it possible to root out the 
 tares, the wheat would grow more freely and fruit- 
 fully. What chokes and retards civilization is the 
 same weed of worldliness which strangles the Gospel 
 and forbids its full development and expansion. 
 What do socialists and individualists revile one 
 another with, except with the disregard of Gospel 
 principles; with avarice, with luxury, with injustice, 
 with tyranny ? 
 
 Many glib talkers are zealous to prove that the 
 Church's influence must be altogether in the interests 
 of progress and civilization; but they never pause 
 to define the nature of true progress and civilization, 
 or to question whether what passes for such really 
 deserves the name. That we live in an age of com- 
 mercial and industrial progress cannot be denied ; 
 btut it must not be assumed that the best and truest 
 
276 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS 
 
 wealth is material, or that the multiplication of 
 comforts and conveniences is the measure of culture. 
 We cannot determine the nature and direction of 
 true progress till we are agreed about the nature of 
 man, the purpose of human life, the character and 
 conditions of true happiness. If this world is the 
 best we have to hope for ; if it is our brief home ; if 
 pain, sorrow, and affliction are unmitigated evils ; 
 if our only wisdom is to gather, multiply, and hoard 
 whatever little enjoyment can be crowded into a few 
 years, then, indeed, it cannot be denied that the 
 current notion of progress and civilization is satis- 
 factory. But if this life is chiefly a school of suffering 
 in which man is taught to master himself and to 
 endure all things for the love of truth and principle 
 and right, for the love, that is, of God and God's 
 cause ; if sorrow, pain, and affliction are evils only 
 under certain conditions, but are as often, or more 
 often, the very food and medicine of our spiritual 
 and moral development; if conscience, and faith, 
 and divine love, if purity, unselfishness, patience, 
 meekness, compassion be the highest exercise of 
 man's highest faculties, then indeed the civilization 
 which the Church could encourage and sympathize 
 with would be very different from the frankly godless 
 and animal civilization of our times. 
 
 We do not deny that amid the prevalence of 
 grosser principles and motives, the " Power that 
 makes for Righteousness " strives unceasingly to 
 assert itself and to mitigate the shameless impetus 
 of the rush for comforts. But in proportion as a 
 tendency is downward rather than upward and ideal, 
 
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 277 
 
 it is strong, and universal and persistent ; so that 
 from the very nature of things an ideal civilization 
 is something indefinitely far away, and, therefore, 
 although the Church is not only the ally but in 
 some sense the mother of true civilization, and 
 of whatever good there is in the present civili- 
 zation, yet historically speaking she has always 
 been, and will always be, at war with that which 
 calls itself civilization and progress, but is not. She 
 can never acquiesce in the view that as selfishness 
 is, so it ought to be the dominant motive of human 
 conduct, upon which alone we can calculate, with 
 scientific certainty. She will not purchase the 
 stability of civilization by contenting herself with 
 aims that are safe and facile because they are low. 
 She prefers to fail for ever rather than lower her 
 standards one inch. For she knows " How far high 
 failure overleaps the bound of low successes." 
 
 Let it be granted then that if the Gospel forbids 
 us to seek more than bare sufficiency of food and 
 raiment ; or to make provision for the future ; or to 
 compete with others in the race of life ; if its ideal 
 is a life in the desert apart from all human interest ; 
 if it inculcates mortification of every sense and every 
 affection as an end in itself in the spirit of Buddhistic 
 pessimism; if it teaches us to despise the great 
 drama of human history as an unmeaning " tale told 
 by an idiot" — as though He who cares for the 
 individual life cared naught for the life of cities and 
 nations — if all this be the essential tendency of 
 Christianity, then indeed it is the enemy of civiliza- 
 tion and progress. But this is an ignorant travesty 
 
278 THE WAY OP THE COUNSELS. 
 
 of the Gospel which has never been accepted by 
 the Catholic Church, however favoured by certain 
 heresies which have arisen within her and broken off 
 from her. We are forbidden to seek temporal things 
 first, that is as the profane and worldly-minded seek 
 them, who regard them as ends and not as means ; 
 we are forbidden — not foresight and prudence — but 
 anxiety and fretfulness m these matters; we are 
 forbidden to advance ourselves at the expense and 
 to the injury of others ; to seek our own good at the 
 sacrifice of the common good; we are forbidden 
 even in temporal matters to seek the lower in pre- 
 ference to higher necessities and enjoyments ; to 
 indulge in senseless display and luxurious, wasteful 
 sensuality ; we are forbidden all that degrades and 
 enervates the individual and thereby weakens society; 
 we are forbidden such aggrandizement as causes 
 atrophy and anemia in the lower members of the 
 body-social, and h3^ertrophy and plethora in the 
 higher — a double cause of social decay and death. 
 But nowhere does the Gospel teach us to despise 
 any good creature of God's which used in due 
 measure and season promotes human happiness and 
 leads us to serve and praise Him better than before. 
 If a corrupt and luxurious civilization deadens and 
 debases the soul; yet it cannot be denied that of 
 itself civilization tends to the development of man's 
 spiritual faculties, and thereby renders him a more 
 fitting instrument of the Divine praise. Even know- 
 ledge has deservedly come into certain disrepute in 
 an age where it is worshipped merely as eventually 
 productive of multiplied comforts. But this perver- 
 
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 279 
 
 sion does not make it less true that knowledge feeds 
 and ministers to wisdom ; and that extended know- 
 ledge is one of the principal fruits of civilization. 
 Civilization is a good thing ; one of God's helps to 
 salvation ; it is therefore a grace to be sought and 
 laboured for. Starvation, destitution, suffering are 
 not ends in themselves, and if, when endured or 
 embraced m obedience to God's will, they are means 
 to the very highest end, yet charity bids us impera- 
 tively relieve them in others, however gladly we 
 might put up with them ourselves. Fight these 
 miseries how we will, yet the very nature of things 
 will always secure their prevalence, for we are but as 
 children building sand walls against the tide. 
 
 But there is, thank God, an unselfish love of 
 riches that can more than supply all that energy 
 which is requisite for progress and civilization. As 
 it is, when a man works for his family he usually 
 works harder than for himself alone. But it is the 
 tendency of Christian charity to throw down the 
 barriers of family and clan, and without lessening 
 the measure of our love for our immediate kin, or 
 destroying its due gradation, to allow our affec- 
 tions to stretch indefinitely to the furthest limit of 
 humanity. Indeed the extent to which the wavelets 
 circle out depends on the force of the central dis- 
 turbance; and it is the deepest love that spreads 
 most widely with least diminution of intensity. Our 
 Blessed Saviour, whose love reached to every son of 
 Adam, past, present, and future, loved His Mother 
 and special friends with an intensity proportioned 
 to the same infinite reach of His world-wide love. 
 
a8o THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 
 
 Is there not enough evidence in the past and present, 
 of the existence of nobler and wider hearts which 
 have preferred the general good to their own ; of 
 men who have, like the Good Shepherd, laid down 
 their life for their flock ; is there not enough heroic 
 unselfishness even now in the world to bid us hope 
 that what family-love can do, a love of humanity 
 fed by Christian faith and hope and charity may 
 effect one day more abundantly ? As the false philo- 
 sophies of pagandom prepared the world to receive 
 the truths after which they were vainly groping; 
 so the pseudo-humanitarianism of our day seems 
 to be making possible a fuller declaration of the 
 Christian doctrine of fraternity and love than would 
 have been listened to last century. 
 
 Therefore as a man who understands that to rule 
 is to serve, may ambition rule simply out of love of the 
 many and a desire to serve them ; so a man may 
 ambition wealth just because it increases his power 
 of doing good, of perfecting himself and those who 
 are connected with him in due gradation from the 
 nearest to the furthest, within a sphere which is 
 increased by every accession to his riches. 
 
 In no sense, therefore, is the love of personal 
 poverty hostile to civilization. It is compatible 
 with the love of riches ; provided this be an unselfish 
 love. Plainly it is compatible with a keen desire to 
 get money in order to give to the poor. " Let him 
 that stole," says St. Paul, "steal no more; but rather 
 let him labour, working with his hands, that he may 
 have wherewith to give to him that is in need ; " * 
 ' Ephes. iv. 
 
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 281 
 
 let him no longer seek wealth selfishly at the expense 
 of others, but let him for the love of others get all 
 he can by honest endeavour in order to make himself 
 useful and not hurtful to society. All wealth that is 
 reasonably and unselfishly used is for the general 
 good and redounds to the relief of the poor. Yet, 
 as has been said, it is easier for a camel to pass 
 through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to 
 use his wealth unselfishly. With God it is possible ; 
 and Christianity has multiplied and will yet multiply 
 these miracles of grace. Still we are far off from 
 the ideal ; and the poor if not the destitute will be 
 with us always. The love of the poor will lead us 
 not only to individual, but to corporate and social 
 efforts for their relief. It will urge us to study the 
 laws of economics, to seek out the causes and 
 remedies of want and suffering. And the love of 
 poverty, what is it after all but the love of the poor — 
 that compassion for the weaker members of the 
 body-social which should counteract the corruptive 
 tendency of competition. 
 
 By embracing the state of the poor, the Religious 
 of the Catholic Church keep before the world His 
 example who was poor Himself and has chosen the 
 poor to be His representatives; and they choose 
 what He chose, they love what He loved — not 
 blindly, for love of being like Him exteriorly; but 
 intelligently, for the same reasons as He; being 
 like Him in their mind and in their heart. 
 
282 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 
 
 II. 
 
 " No man could say the canticle but those hundred and 
 forty-four thousand who were purchased from the earth, for 
 they are virgins. These follow the Lamb whithersoever He 
 goeth." — Apoc xiv- 3, 4. 
 
 The second great vice of the world is sensual 
 licence and impurity. We need scarcely enlarge on 
 so unsavoury a theme. Commenting on the words i 
 " Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the 
 sin of the world," some have thought that this 
 sin of the world is nothing else but impurity- 
 Be that as it may, it is certain that it has at 
 all times been the commonest form of sin ; and 
 that those who pass through life untouched by its 
 contamination are few and far between. We 
 know, moreover, that it is the gravest and most 
 persistent of social evils ; the chiefest hindrance to 
 collective happiness It is not only the conditions 
 of civilization but the exigencies of Nature herself 
 that demand restraint in this most difficult matter, 
 and that, for most men, and at most times. It is 
 not our intention here to explain this apparent 
 anomaly, but simply to take it as we find it. 
 Look at it how we will, we see that restraint is 
 one of the necessities of human life, as much as 
 labour, or sorrow, or death. 
 
 It is the harder lot and the lot of the many ; and 
 He who would have His friends feel for that lot and 
 make it their own, came among us, not as an 
 example of conjugal perfection, but as a virgin, born 
 of a Virgin ; His foster-father, a virgin ; His herald, 
 
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 283 
 
 a virgin ; the friend of His bosom, a virgin ; His 
 heavenly body-guard, virgins — virgins not in mind 
 only, but in body. It was that He might sanctify 
 and exalt virginity that He embraced it and gave it 
 to His choicest friends to embrace ; so that a weak 
 and impure world might be strengthened to honour 
 and reverence virginity ; to see in it the very crown 
 of human dignity, the absolute mastery of the spirit 
 over the most imperious exactions of the flesh ; to 
 emulate it and approach as near to it as possible by 
 perfect chastity and spotlessness according' to each 
 one's state of life ; or even to embrace it, if called 
 thereto, as a higher and holier state than that of 
 matrimony. For it is higher and holier to serve 
 the many than to serve the few; to forsake home 
 and kindred for the Gospel and the Kingdom of God 
 on earth, and thereby to find a hundred-fold even in 
 the present life. 
 
 Here, as in the case of poverty, Christ took what 
 was bitter and sweetened it by making it His own. 
 For the love of being like Christ and His Mother 
 and His friends, thousands in every age have 
 embraced freely and gladly that hardship which is 
 imposed upon so many whether they will it or no. 
 And still more do they resemble Him when they do 
 so for like motives, amongst which, though not 
 principal, is " compassion for the multitude." With 
 what face can the wealthy preach contentment to 
 the poor? and with what face could the Church 
 preach continence to the world, did she not practise 
 it in the persons of her priests and religious ? 
 
 A married clergy may preach chastity by word of 
 
284 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 
 
 mouth, but not by the most effectual method of 
 preaching. By marriage a man does not overcome 
 in the conflict, but simply withdraws from it. 
 Plainly the mere fact of marriage does not infuse 
 the difficult virtue of chastity into one who was 
 previously unchaste. Indeed, there is some fear 
 that even matrimonial chastity will prove too severe 
 a yoke for such a one. One who was a coward 
 while the battle raged does not instantly become 
 brave because peace is proclaimed. He may talk 
 more valiantly, even as a father, forgetful of his own 
 unmarried days, may treat the delinquencies of his 
 son with the austerity of a Stoic. 
 
 Always and everywhere, even in the most 
 corrupted ages the Church has preached an 
 object-lesson to the world by the existence of 
 her voluntary celibates of both sexes, who by vow 
 have wedded themselves to the conflict for life. 
 Were it not for such examples men might well say 
 that the yoke of chastity was impossible, as many do 
 say, who like to think that the abuses of certain 
 times and places prevail everywhere among professed 
 celibates, only better concealed. On the other hand, 
 it is no less falsely said that they who fly to religion 
 or to the altar are as cowards who flee from the 
 danger to safety; rather they stand firm, that 
 learning the tactics of the enemy they may be able 
 to help others; and, having suffered themselves, 
 pity the sufferings of others. God, says St. Paul, 
 " comforts us in all our tribulations, that we may be 
 able to comfort them who are in any trouble with 
 the same comfort wherewith we ourselves are com- 
 
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 285 
 
 forted of God." Nay, more, if we may believe the 
 mystics, they " fulfil the law of Christ " by bearing 
 the burden of others ; even as the Ransomers of old 
 who as free hostages embraced the captivity which 
 would have endangered the faith of their weaker 
 brethren. They do not escape temptation, but they 
 face it and bear it. And, moreover, it is in a spirit 
 of reparation to God's injured honour that they 
 willingly forego what is lawful in order to make 
 atonement, in union with Christ, for the lawless 
 indulgence and sensuality of others, and to turn 
 away God's anger from many a sinful city or state, 
 as the ten just men needed for the salvation of 
 Sodom. 
 
 The more we understand the social and practical 
 importance of an idea, the more shall we be convinced 
 that, apart from all Christian and supernatural con- 
 siderations whatever, the mere existence of voluntary 
 celibates and voluntary mendicants is of incalculable 
 importance ; that as a living object-lesson they drive 
 home truths simply and effectually, in a way which 
 no amount of verbal insistence could succeed in 
 doing. Hence, as we saw before, the spirit of 
 worldliness is socially destructive, while the Catholic 
 and eternal principles of the Gospel are conservative 
 and progressive. 
 
286 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 
 
 III. 
 
 •* He came to Nazareth and was subject to them." 
 St. Luke ii. 51. 
 
 Once more; Christ came into the world where 
 unqualified independence, self-direction, self-govern- 
 ment were worshipped as ends in themselves ; where 
 obedience was viewed as at best a necessary evil — 
 the less of it, the better. He knew that each member 
 of the body was healthier, happier, and more useful in 
 its own place ; m subjection to the superior members 
 and to the head ; m concord and agreement with its 
 fellow-members ; that independence, separation, iso- 
 lation, meant death ; death for the intellect, for the 
 heart and affections; for all that belongs to man 
 as a rational and free agent. Neither in home or in 
 city, in Church or m State could there be progress or 
 happiness without order, harmony, and subjection. 
 He knew also the strength of man's self-assertive 
 instincts, — useful and needful when restrained and 
 pressed into the service of higher instincts and 
 principles, but destructive of social life when suffered 
 to run riot in the form of lawless, self-regarding 
 ambition, grasping at the reins of government for 
 purposes of self-aggrandizement and self-glorifica- 
 tion ; caring for private gain, not for the common 
 good. It is one and the same anti-social spirit 
 which manifests itself as tyranny in the ruler and as 
 insubordination in the subject — omnes queer entes qucB 
 sua sunt et non qucB sunt Jesu Christi — seeking them- 
 selves and not the community; and in seeking 
 
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 287 
 
 themselves, losing themselves; even as they who 
 lose themselves and suppress their egoism find them- 
 selves again. 
 
 For it is m proportion to the perfection of 
 the social organism that the individual can enjoy 
 perfect liberty and full mental and moral develop- 
 ment. " He that seeketh his life shall lose it ; but 
 he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it." It 
 was, then, the spirit of obedience that needed to be 
 cultivated ; obedience inspired by charity, that is, 
 by love of the common good, of the interests of Jesus 
 Christ ; the spirit that obeys no created will, but 
 only the will of Him who has care for the whole. 
 It is in obeying rather than in ruling that the 
 majority of mankind are tempted by the anti-social, 
 self-assertive spirit ; and though the temptation is 
 far stronger in the case of those who rule, yet 
 it was to lighten the lot of the many that our 
 Saviour came, not merely to point out the expe- 
 diency and necessity of obedience by word of 
 mouth, but to teach us to love obeying for His sake ; 
 to prefer, should it be God's will, to obey rather 
 than to rule; to sacrifice more liberty rather 
 than less to the common good; to look on pre- 
 eminence and authority as in some sense the less 
 Divine and sanctified lot. 
 
 In the same spirit and for the same motives the 
 religious of the Catholic Church have by their free 
 and perpetual self-devotion to a life of obedience, 
 maintained in all ages the true social principle so 
 needed for the healing of the nations. They 
 have furnished an object-lesson in the doctrine 
 
a88 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS 
 
 of obedience as ever taught by the Christian 
 Rehgion. 
 
 Doubtless the ideal society would be one in 
 which the common good and greatest interest of all 
 would demand the fullest development of each, 
 securing to the several members all the conditions 
 requisite for the perfect realization of all their latent 
 capacities; one in which charity would entail no 
 suffering or sacrifice. But such a society is to be 
 found only in the Heavenly Jerusalem, never upon 
 the earth, — though it is a standard of approximation. 
 All human society, secular or ecclesiastical, entails 
 sacrifice and self-repression upon its members ; nor 
 has any individual just cause of complaint if in 
 many ways his liberties are restricted, his talent 
 injured and left idle, his capacities squandered, 
 sometimes through force of inevitable circumstances, 
 sometimes through the blunderings or the faults of 
 those in command, sometimes through the selfish- 
 ness and blindness of his fellow-members. All these 
 inconveniences are inseparable from our finite con- 
 ditions ; and by submitting to these, out of deference 
 to the common advantage and public peace, a man 
 realizes what is best and noblest among all his 
 capacities. Not but that he may and should vindicate 
 himself by all constitutional methods, and never 
 submit to any violation of his conscience ; but that, 
 when all things point to the duty of self-repression, 
 he should yield himself courageously. It is this law- 
 loving self-denial, which is the strength of armies 
 and nations, and of the Church of Christ, whereas 
 it is the ^ecay of this principle and the confusion of 
 
THE WAY OP THE COUNSELS. 289 
 
 licence with liberty which is rotting every European 
 state to-day. 
 
 These, then, are the three counsels of the Gospel ; 
 the three nails, as some will have it, whereby Religious 
 are fastened to the Cross of Christ, and held up to 
 the derision of this foolish, near-sighted world. 
 " Near-sighted," for, as we have said, all true 
 progress and enlightenment which the world has so 
 far seen is traceable to the prevalence of these three 
 great principles, to the silent preaching of which 
 Religious devote themselves in life-long sacrifice; 
 while all the failure and defeat which progress has 
 met with is due to their neglect. 
 
 We can hardly expect those outside the Church 
 of the Saints to enter into the secrets of the saints, 
 or to understand how, in the eyes of every true 
 Catholic, poverty, chastity, and obedience are looked 
 upon as the better part, the luckier lot ; as beautiful 
 and lovable for their own sake ; for the sake of 
 Christ and His saints who embraced them ; for the 
 sake of the multitudes of mankind to whom the 
 harder lot has fallen. Still less can we expect 
 them to enter into the more mystical and esoteric 
 principles which, apart from all other reasons, 
 would make the way of the Counsels the better 
 way. Yet even outsiders have recently discovered 
 that religious vows and even religious Orders 
 are exceedingly useful and economical institutions ; 
 that it is desirable to have people banded together 
 and organized for the prosecution of certain philan- 
 thropic and charitable purposes, who should be 
 T 
 
290 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 
 
 content to receive for themselves only strict neces- 
 saries from a common fund, and not look for any 
 salary or remuneration. So far voluntary poverty is 
 an excellent thing. Likewise a married clergy is 
 rather an expensive institution, and one absorbing 
 in family cares a large fraction of the available 
 clerical energy of the country. And as for obedience, 
 of course some must obey, just as some must be 
 poor and weakly and unfortunate. For what would 
 become of the Government, the army, the navy, the 
 family, without obedience ? And who does not 
 see that the masses should be kept in subjection, 
 and that ideas of liberty and equality are fraught 
 with danger to public security ? Use, economy, 
 convenience, — these are the non-Catholic standards 
 and tests. Not poverty for poverty's sake; nor 
 chastity for chastity's sake; nor obedience for 
 obedience' sake ; not out of reverential love of the 
 lot which Christ and His saints have made their 
 own and embraced and sanctified; not for any 
 sympathy with Christ's love of humanity, for whose 
 well-being, here and hereafter, these three counsels 
 are so needful ; not for any scorn and contempt of 
 the spirit of worldliness which nailed Christ to the 
 Cross, and crucifies His little ones daily by the 
 million, — the mortal enemy of God and of humanity ; 
 but for narrow, economical, mercantile reasons such 
 as appeal to souls from which all that is ideal, 
 spiritual, catholic, eternal, has been driven by three 
 centuries of egoism in rehgion, in politics, in philo- 
 sophy, and in morality. 
 
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 291 
 
 IV. 
 " Mary hath chosen the best part." — St. Luke x. 42. 
 
 Whatever toleration the world may have learnt 
 for the religious profession, it is only in so far as 
 it secures conditions favourable to a life of active 
 usefulness and practical charity. For the higher 
 life of contemplation it has rarely a good word to 
 say. St. Simeon on his pillar, the hermits of the 
 Thebaid are its classical examples of perverted 
 piety and of the early defection of Christianity from 
 the philanthropic and utilitarian spirit of its Founder. 
 Ut quid perditio hcec ? Why this waste of energy and 
 time which might be turned to good account and 
 given to the poor ? How is society or how is the 
 Church the better of such an existence ? or how is 
 it compatible with the very conception of charity, 
 which means association, co - operation, mutual 
 service ? 
 
 Here again, though particular orders and insti- 
 tutions are contingent and transitory, yet the 
 greater excellence of the contemplative life, viewed 
 in the abstract, is a constant and unchangeable part 
 of the Church's teaching. For, indeed, the eternal 
 life of Heaven is a life of contemplation and praise ; 
 and man touches his highest here on earth when 
 for some brief moment he anticipates Heaven 
 and dwells in loving wonder on the features of 
 Divine Truth. All the labour of man done under 
 the sun is directed to some few spells of restful 
 contemplation and enjoyment, which make life 
 
292 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 
 
 worth the living; even the pleasures and amuse- 
 ments of the most degraded and perverse are found 
 in the last analysis to consist in gazing upon or 
 witnessing something that interests the mind or the 
 imagination ; but only when our taste is schooled to 
 delight in the beholding of God and of things 
 Divine do we attain the end of our creation. As 
 each single soul must be stiiled to death if from 
 time to time it does not rise to the surface for a 
 breath of the upper atmosphere ; so it is needful for 
 the corporate life of the Church and of the com- 
 munity that there should be those who, being fitted 
 by natural gifts and supernatural grace, are set apart 
 for the direct cultus and service of truth, and for the 
 exercise of Divine praise ; whose office is to keep 
 the sacred lamp burning while others immersed in 
 active charity slumber and sleep for very weariness 
 and heaviness of the eyes. Strange that an acute 
 thinker of our day,^ one keenly alive to the organic 
 conception of society, should not have seen that the 
 division of labour involved in separation of con- 
 templative from active hfe is a consequence of 
 that very conception. St. Simeon Stylites in the 
 desert, was as actively a member of the Christian 
 community as St. Paul. By the perfection of each 
 part the whole is perfected, and he who recognizes 
 himself as part of a whole often serves the whole 
 best by being rather than by doing. If in no other 
 way, at least in proclaiming by his very existence 
 that man's last end, his highest work here and 
 hereafter, is eternal rest, the love of truth, the 
 1 Dr. E. Caird, Master of Balliol. 
 
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 293 
 
 contemplation and praise of God, a work which 
 produces nothing, which is worth doing for its own 
 sake, and for whose sake alone all other work is 
 profitable, — were it only to keep this idea alive in an 
 insane world of aimless rush and unrest, the pro- 
 fessed contemplative in these days would be in one 
 sense the most valuable and useful member of 
 society. 
 
 Obviously the contemplative life, even more than 
 the religious life, is an exceedingly rare vocation, 
 demanding many natural gifts of no common sort 
 as a basis for grace to work upon ; while the needs 
 of the Church in a given locality or age might 
 plainly require the sacrifice of these aptitudes to 
 more urgent calls of duty. There is a common 
 fallacy about equality which has done much harm 
 to the Church by supposing that because all are 
 equally called to be perfect in their own line, there- 
 fore all are called to and capable of equal perfection. 
 It is as untrue to say every one can be a saint or 
 a religious or a contemplative, as to say he can be 
 a hero or poet or a genius. The Church is always 
 warring, by her legislation, with the indiscretion of 
 those whose haste and inexperience would hurry 
 them to profess willingness for prison and death 
 when they are not capable of following even from 
 afar, and still more with the indiscretion of those 
 who, for one foolish reason or another, would play 
 the part of the Holy Ghost to others in the matter 
 of vocation. Yet, while readily admitting the call 
 to be rarer than is supposed in practice, we cannot 
 but justify the judgment of the Catholic Church in 
 
294 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 
 
 her esteem for the profession of the Evangelical 
 Counsels, as well as for the higher life of con- 
 templation. 
 
 It is not then to new social systems that we can 
 trust for the remedy of those evils which weigh upon 
 the public conscience of these times. It is to the 
 character of the people before all else. Doubtless 
 this in its turn is conditioned by environments ; and 
 it may well be questioned if under the existing social 
 organization any universal amelioration through 
 religious influence is possible. Still whenever such 
 favourable conditions are secured it is religion and 
 religion alone — nay, the Catholic religion alone, that 
 will be able to effect and maintain that elevated 
 moral tone which is essential for all veritable 
 progress. It is by her continual insistence on the 
 three Evangelical Counsels, illustrated and brought 
 home to the public mind by the lives and examples 
 of her Religious that she will keep alive that flame 
 of charity kindled by Him who is at once the " Light 
 of the nations and the Glory of His people Israel." 
 
THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 
 
 " Whoso loveth not God how loveth he his neighbour as 
 himself, since neither doth he love himself?" 
 
 " How then doth Christ love us but to the end that we 
 may be able to reign with Christ ? To this same end let us 
 love one another." — St. Augustine, Tract 83, in Joan. 
 
 " My Beloved is as a bundle of myrrh." Our Divine 
 Saviour is that same " Beloved," laid in our bosom 
 to heal the corruption of our affections; to purify 
 the gold of human love from all its dross and defile- 
 ment ; He comes to lay His Heart against ours, and 
 to heal them ; not to freeze them or still them into 
 death, but to calm and regulate their wild wayward 
 pulsations, to teach them a rhythm from Heaven ; 
 from the Heart of God Himself. This was His 
 precept, the summary of His doctrine ; not that we 
 should merely love one another — that was com- 
 manded from the beginning, when the human heart 
 was first moulded — but that our love should be after 
 the pattern of His, Sicut dilexi vos — " As I have 
 loved you." It was a method and manner of loving 
 He came to teach us ; a devoted, a passionate love, 
 yet restrained, severe, and seeming cruel ; a suffering 
 and a dying love, which could find no exercise, no 
 expression, no relief, but in pain ; not merely in 
 serviceable and useful pain, but at times in pain for 
 
296 THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 
 
 the mere sake of expression ; because pain is the 
 very language of love, which even God Himself had 
 to speak before He could persuade our hearts. 
 
 Seeing the oceans of sin that deluge the world 
 through the perversions of human affections, men 
 might well be excused for thinking that the love of 
 God and of creatures were incompatible and antago- 
 nistic, except so far as the latter were loved not 
 spontaneously, or for themselves, but only from a 
 sense of duty to God. Yet our Lord will have no 
 such safe charity, but bids us at His word launch 
 out into the deep, and face the peril inseparable 
 from our lot. Et Verbum caro factum est, — Divine 
 love took flesh and embodied itself in a throbbing 
 human heart, that we might learn what our affec- 
 tions may rise to, by the infusion of the Holy Spirit. 
 The object of His love is man, not the soul, but the 
 whole man, body and soul, the whole nature which 
 He assumed, in which He suffered, in which He was 
 transfigured and glorified. And He loves us, not 
 for any merely extrinsic reason, but for the very 
 lovableness which is inherent in us, which He 
 Himself has given us ; for every participation of His 
 own Divine excellence and beauty. When we think 
 how infinitesimal this is, we might wonder how His 
 love is so great ; but we no longer wonder when we 
 remember that the infinite force with which each 
 particle of created goodness is drawn back to the 
 Creator's bosom as to its origin and end, is the 
 force of God's self-love. Even when we see what 
 God sees, we cannot see it in the way He sees it, 
 nor therefore love it in the way He loves it. Greater 
 
THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 297 
 
 minds and hearts are penetrated and rapt away by 
 what to others seems ordinary, perhaps " common 
 and unclean," and each one feels that his soul's inner 
 growth is shown in a keener appreciation of the un- 
 noticed goodness that lies round him on every side. 
 The vulgar can see no beauty except in perpetual 
 novelties and sensational surprises; they must go 
 abroad ; while the trained eye and delicate affection 
 see delights everywhere without end. Therefore 
 God's love of finite goodness is infinite ; though not 
 in every way, as is His love of His own infinite 
 goodness. He delights infinitely in those beauties 
 of mind and heart and form which stir our feeble 
 affections to their roots ; and, moreover. He who 
 looks into the darkest corners of the soul often sees 
 there a thousand lovablenesses hidden from us. Nor 
 in any two are these beauties combined in the same 
 assortment or proportion, that they should be 
 classed together and loved under some universal 
 kind. He knows His sheep individually, and calls 
 each by its name — that is. He draws it to Himself 
 in its own individual way, and no two in the same 
 way. 
 
 The Father Himself loves us by the very neces- 
 sity of His nature. He was free to create us, to 
 give us more or less lovableness ; but having made 
 us lovable. He is not free to do other than love us ; 
 for He must love His least image as necessarily as 
 He loves Himself. And the Incarnate Son, whose 
 human will and heart is dominated by that same 
 infinite love, and thrills in the most perfect and 
 intelligent sympathy therewith, loves not meuly 
 
298 THE DIVINE PRECEPl. 
 
 what the Father loves, blindly, extrinsically, but 
 loves it for the same reason, looking on us with the 
 same eyes, with an understanding, sympathetic love. 
 Sicut dilexi vos, — This is how He loved us, this is 
 how we are to love one another, according to His 
 precept, and His commandment is not grievous. 
 
 Many speak as though the Divine love of our 
 neighbour differed from the natural, in that the 
 former is wholly extrinsic and relative, the latter 
 intrinsic and absolute. God has bid us (they say) 
 to despise and put aside that love whose motive is 
 inherent lovableness, and to foster that only which 
 has no reference to intrinsic qualities. God might 
 have ordered us to love so many stones, for some 
 mysterious reason or other, connected with His 
 service ; and we should have been bound to love 
 them (or rather, to act as if we loved them, for real 
 love essentially supposes intrinsic attractiveness in 
 its object). And were He capriciously to change His 
 mind, and order us to love stocks instead of stones, 
 we ought to have no difficulty in at once transferring 
 to them whatever exterior courtesies we had pre- 
 viously been bestowing on the stones. "No difficulty," 
 because there was no real personal affection to 
 uproot, whose only possible soil is inherent lovable- 
 ness. This is what they call " spiritual," as opposed 
 to "carnal," or "natural " love. To love our parents 
 " spiritually," means, with them, to disregard the 
 natural instinct of filial affection, and to pay them 
 only such sfervice and duty as we are bound to give 
 to any stock or stone that God has told us to love ; 
 not because it is what " nature " prompts us to do, 
 
THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 299 
 
 but because God has ordered it for some reason of 
 His own. This, they say, is what is meant by loving 
 God alone, and all things else only for His sake. 
 We are to look on them simply as fetiches, as 
 arbitrary tokens, withdrawing from them any love 
 they might absorb into themselves that we may 
 transfer it all to their Creator, and so loving them 
 for His sake that, without any change in them, we 
 should be equally ready to hate them for His sake, 
 should He tell us so to do. "Whatsoever you did to 
 the least of these you did it unto Me," is interpreted 
 to mean that fraternal charity is purely relative, a 
 fiction as far as our brethren are concerned ; that 
 God is its sole object, just as the obeisance made to 
 the Queen's empty throne is accepted as personal to 
 herself. 
 
 The meaning, however, is not so much : Forget 
 them, and think of Me, as : Forget Me, and think 
 of them ; as is plain from the wondering reply of 
 the just: Lord, when saw we Thee hungry, and 
 fed Thee ? It is the same spirit which is embodied 
 in the command, " Weep not for Me, but weep for 
 yourselves and for your children." 
 
 We do not say that this doctrine of extrinsic 
 charity has ever been so explicitly formulated as 
 we have formulated it here. But holy men and 
 even canonized saints have at times unconsciously 
 implied its principles, both in practice and in 
 precept. Nor is this scandalous or wonderful, 
 to any one who understands rightly the tedious 
 process by which the golden grains of truth are 
 sundered and sifted from the chaff of errors 
 
300 THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 
 
 and fallacies. Still less, when we find these 
 same holy men just as often implying in precept, 
 and far more in practice, principles diametrically 
 opposite and inconsistent with those we complain 
 of. For it is only when they are explicitly separated 
 and stated that principles can be judged and com- 
 pared. Not one of the Saints was ever sanctified 
 or sanctified others in consequence of the incorrect 
 principles, but in spite of them. As a matter of 
 fact we find that all the greater Saints were men of 
 large and tender affections, who drew others to 
 them by the cords of Adam ; who, however imper- 
 fectly they may have analyzed and formulated their 
 love, loved truly and directly by the very instinct of 
 the Holy Ghost. For a Saint is not necessarily a 
 philosopher, any more than a philosopher is a Saint. 
 Nor is it wonderful that in so subtle a matter 
 much inaccuracy should creep in ; for the very words 
 in which the erroneous theory is embodied, are the 
 words of Christ and of His Apostles, and of such a 
 master of spiritual things as St. Ignatius of Loyola. 
 Evidently they are ambiguous words ; but heaven 
 and earth are not more distant and opposed than 
 the two meanings of which they are susceptible. 
 One is by implication the doctrine of the dualism of 
 Zoroaster, and of the Gnostics and Manicheans, 
 which in its open form has ever been regarded as 
 the most pestilential error, but which, as the 
 parasitic corruption of a truth, has ever and again 
 subtly interwoven itself with the ascetic teachings 
 of saints and doctors, and has sprung up from time 
 to time to choke the good seed and impede its 
 
THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 301 
 
 fruitfulness and vigour. The other is the Catholic 
 teaching of reason and revelation, the canon by 
 which all other teaching must at length stand or 
 fall. Dualism gives us practically two gods ; a 
 principle of good and a principle of evil. Spirit, it 
 tells us, is the work of God ; matter is the work of 
 the devil. The conflict between these two, ending 
 in the victory of spirit and the subjugation of matter, 
 constitutes the drama of creation. This is only the 
 perversion of a great truth, a perversion slight in itself, 
 but portentous in its consequences. We too hold that 
 the subjugation of matter to spirit and of spirit to 
 God is the consummation towards which all things 
 move. But matter, no less than spirit, is God's 
 dear creature ; and as spirit is not destroyed, but 
 perfected and elevated by its subjection to divinity ; 
 so matter is transfigured, glorified, and exalted by 
 its impregnation with spirit. God's conflict with 
 matter and spirit is not that of an enemy, but of a 
 parent with a wayward child whom he chastens in 
 love — Quern diligit, castigat. Evil spirits and evil 
 men play their part in this work of evolution and 
 purgation, but only under the permission and direc- 
 tion of God's most wise and loving, though 
 mysterious, providence. Seeing how large a part 
 the subjugation of the flesh to the spirit plays in 
 Christian asceticism, and how the great bulk of 
 men's more patent sins are due to the insubordina- 
 tion of the animal passions, it is a natural exaggera- 
 tion of the truth to suppose that the interests of 
 the body are wholly and always hostile to those of 
 the soul ; that spirituality requires the death of the 
 
302 THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 
 
 senses and emotions ; and that because the pre- 
 eminence of mind over matter is good, therefore it 
 may be with advantage carried to infinity. This 
 seems to be Plato's view, who regards the body 
 simply as the prison-house of the soul, a mere 
 impediment to its expansion, a hindrance altogether, 
 a help in no sense ; though it must be confessed 
 that he credits the pure spirit with an emotional 
 fervour and passionateness which an acuter analysis 
 recognizes to be dependent on the senses. How 
 great an influence Plato had with St. Augustine and 
 other Christian writers, and St. Augustine, in his 
 turn, upon the Western Church is notorious. Still 
 Aristotle, as interpreted by Aquinas, supplies a 
 salutary antidote to whatever insidious poison may 
 have been imbibed in regard to this matter. His 
 doctrine is altogether in sympathy with the mysteries 
 of Christian revelation touching the origin, office, 
 redemption, and glorification of the body. It is not 
 in the extinction of the feelings and passions and 
 instincts, but in their culture and restraint that 
 man's spirit reaches its fullest development. As 
 body and soul are complementary principles of our 
 substantial nature, so senses and intelligence, imagi- 
 nation and reason, feeling and volition, are co- 
 principles of our perfect operation ; the one material, 
 the other formal; the one embodying, the other 
 embodied; neither perfect, except so far as duly 
 proportioned to the other. Evil is not matter, or 
 anything absolute, but a discord, a disproportion ; 
 and to secure concord and proportion is the aim of 
 Catholic and Christian asceticism, so far as it is 
 
THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 303 
 
 identified with moral training and perfection. But, 
 as we have said above, it is easy to misunderstand 
 and pervert the true principle of mortification jo as 
 to fall into implicit gnosticism. Christianity insists 
 on chastity, honours celibacy, approves fasting and 
 bodily penance. Gnosticism does the same, but on 
 a different assumption, and does much more besides, 
 dishonouring the body, forbidding marriage and the 
 use of animal food. And in a sense the erroneous 
 principle is simpler and more easily apprehended 
 and embraced than the truth, which is a nice 
 balance between the two extremes of an exaggerated 
 spiritualism on the one hand and of gross sensuality 
 on the other — the latter being the inevitable reaction 
 and final issue of the former. 
 
 For this reason the Church's watchful guidance 
 is continually needed to keep her children's feet in 
 the narrow track of truth, deviating neither to right 
 or left ; or rather, since the deviations are incessant, 
 it is her office to recall us now from one excess, now 
 from another. Hence she is credited by her enemies 
 with the most opposite vices ; at one time she is the 
 friend of publicans and sinners, eating and drinking, 
 a glutton and a wine-bibber ; at another, she comes 
 before the world fasting, and " behold she has a 
 devil." 
 
 Besides this natural misunderstanding of the 
 relation of body to spirit, a kindred source of the 
 error we are combating is found in the miscon- 
 ception of the relation of nature to grace. This 
 error is a perversion, not of a natural truth, but of a 
 dogma of revelation. No Christian can believe that 
 
304 THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 
 
 the devil created human nature, but many believe 
 wrongly that he has so perverted and corrupted the 
 essence of humanity, that God has practically made 
 him a present of it ; that as a cracked reed can only 
 give forth a harsh and broken note, so every action 
 and operation, every thought and desire and impulse 
 proceeding from our fallen nature jars upon God's 
 ears, is hateful and discordant to Him, as reminding 
 Him of the ruin of His fair handiwork. This is 
 Lutheranism and Jansenism ; and so far as the 
 writings of St. Augustine or even of St. Paul present 
 obscurities " which the unwary and unstable wrest 
 to their own damnation," it happens that at all 
 times there have been unauthorized Catholic teachers 
 who have implicitly, by precept or practice, admitted 
 a similarly false conception of the nature of original 
 sin ; and who have allowed it to tinge their ascetical 
 theories so that "natural" and "wicked" have come 
 to be synonymous in their language. "If we love 
 from natural motives, such love," they say, " must be 
 wicked. God has no pleasure in the moral perfection 
 even of a Socrates, but regards such unbaptized 
 virtue with disgust." 
 
 Here, as the truth is subtler, its perversion 
 is the more easy. Human nature in its essence 
 has suffered no deterioration through original sin. 
 It is still the image and likeness of God, and He, 
 seeing Himself mirrored therein, pronounces it 
 "very good;" and since it is He who works in its 
 every movement, and causes it to think truth and to 
 love goodness, and to do righteousness, that which 
 He works in us and through us as free instruments 
 
THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 305 
 
 is also " very good," and " shall in no wise lose its 
 reward." Yet it does not receive the same reward 
 as when our soul and its faculties are permeated, 
 transfigured, and elevated by supernatural light and 
 grace ; which, without destroying or removing our 
 natural goodness, shines through it like the sunlight 
 through stained glass; giving it a glory and radiance 
 which is in it, but not from it. Grace is not another 
 soul over and above our natural soul; but it is a 
 new radiance given to the soul by a new indwelling 
 of God. We have not one set of actions which are 
 natural and another which are supernatural ; but 
 when the soul is supernaturalized, its faculties and 
 operations, as it were, its leaves and blossoms, are 
 characterized like the root from which they spring. 
 Grace is given us not to destroy but to fulfil, to 
 perfect nature in its own order and to add to it a 
 perfection of the Divine order. Supernatural love 
 presupposes perfect natui^al love as its subject and 
 basis. It breathes into it the breath of divinity and 
 makes it instinct with eternal life. It is not too bold 
 to say that grace is for nature, and not nature for 
 grace ; for every subject or substance is the final cause 
 of its own properties and endowments ; clothes for 
 the body, and not the body for clothes. Grace is given 
 to us for the healing and perfection of our nature, 
 in order that our natural intelligence and our natural 
 affections may be raised to a perceptible preter- 
 natural excellence and infused with an imperceptible 
 supernatural dignity and merit. Natural love is the 
 raw material which grace works upon or is wrought 
 upon. Crush natural love, and grace must remain idles 
 u 
 
3o6 THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 
 
 Here, again, it is evident how fatal a false 
 dualism must be to ascetical doctrine. And yet the 
 fallacy as before is an easy one ; for the natural 
 mind, and will, and heart are perfected by the 
 gentle restraint of grace, and reach their culmina- 
 tion through obedience to law and at the cost of 
 " many tribulations ; " and from this fact we are 
 prone to conclude hastily that what needs to be 
 conquered, needs to be slain. Some confusion 
 moreover is due to the double sense attaching to 
 the word "natural." Besides the ordinary and 
 scientific sense there is a specialized use of the 
 word, in which it signifies, not merely what is not 
 transfigured by grace, but that which, owing to its 
 positive deformity and unreasonableness, is incapable 
 of being so transfigured. " Natural " love in this 
 sense — or "carnal love," as it is sometimes called — 
 is really " unnatural " if we use " natural " in the 
 proper sense of reasonable. It is love which is 
 selfish, disorderly, unrestrained ; bestowed on some 
 unfitting object, or on some fitting object in some 
 unfitting way. 
 
 It is plain, then, that we need not be surprised 
 if many good and holy men have been wanting in 
 clearness of perception and precision of expression 
 in regard to this obscure matter, where so much 
 caution is required to steer straight between the 
 Scylla and Charybdis. " Love me, love my dog," 
 sounds a very straightforward and easy principle, 
 yet it can mean two very different things. It may 
 mean that, however much I may naturally and 
 justifiably detest my friend's pet, I cannot con- 
 
THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 307 
 
 sistently with his friendship ill-treat or abuse it, and 
 may even be bound to bestow upon it the outward 
 signs of an affection which I do not feel. This is 
 mere extrinsic love, whose motive is no excellence I 
 see in the dog ; but only the excellence I see in my 
 friend. Yet a deeper friendship will make me wish 
 to go further; to enter into complete sympathy with 
 my friend's tastes and inclinations ; so that I shall 
 try to love what he loves with him, seeing in it what 
 he sees. I may not be able to do so altogether, 
 and so far my friendship is imperfect (supposing his 
 taste correct) and my soul is out of harmony or not 
 in the fullest harmony with his. Similarly, when 
 we speak of loving others for God's sake, we may 
 mean one of two utterly different things. We may 
 mean loving them with a merely extrinsic love 
 whose sole motive is God's own intrinsic goodness ; 
 or we may mean loving them in sympathy with 
 God, seeing them as far as we can with His eyes 
 and loving them for what we see in them. There 
 can be no doubt whatever as to which is the true 
 conception, that, namely, which means the most 
 perfect, and intelligent, and sympathetic love of 
 God. We can never hope to see in others all that 
 lovableness which He sees ; or that our heart shall 
 be drawn towards the little we do see with a force 
 not infinitely less than that of the Divine Heart ; 
 but the measure of our approach is the exact 
 measure of our growth in the love of God. 
 
 The more we understand and love God, the 
 more shall we enter into sympathy with His love of 
 men ; and the more we get to understand and love 
 
3o8 THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 
 
 men, the sooner shall we be able to enter into the 
 mind of God. For all true and spiritual friendship 
 is founded on and requires community of tastes, the 
 appreciation and love of the same things. God, 
 hungering and thirsting for our affection, knows 
 well how slowly that affection must be won ; how 
 our taste must be gradually formed and raised until 
 it can find delight in the Divine beauty, which is 
 the common object of knowledge and ecstatic love 
 whereby God and His saints are bound together in 
 a single life of joy and praise — even as two friends 
 may, in some common object of loving adoration, 
 be tied together heart to heart. Were there one 
 whose capacity we doubted not, and for whose fuller 
 love we craved, with what care should we not 
 lead him into completer sympathy with ourselves, 
 bridging over the distance between us. So it is 
 that God leads us to Himself through creatures; 
 step by step purifying and raising our love ; giving 
 it an ever-increasing breadth, and depth, and height, 
 till at last we love nothing in creatures but what is 
 truly lovable and Divine; and are, therefore, in 
 proximate readiness to love Divinity itself, not to 
 the exclusion of others, but indefinitely above them 
 all. 
 
 Then, indeed, what we love in them is Him; 
 not His substance, but His image. Nor is our love 
 of the image a merely relative love whose sole 
 motive is the excellence of the thing imaged ; as 
 though the image >vere but an arbitrary sign ; but it 
 is an intrinsic love founded on the real and inherent 
 beauty of the image; it is a love distinct from. 
 
THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 309 
 
 though subordinate to, the love of the archetype tc 
 which it leads us. 
 
 And what we love in Him is them ; for we 
 have no proper concept of God, but only a con- 
 cept built up from creatures, amongst which 
 man is principal, as the microcosm, the epitome 
 of creation. All the Divine perfections that 
 draw our love to God are those that we have 
 gradually learnt to love first in our fellow-men — 
 justice, truth, purity, gentleness, mercy, and the 
 rest. As far as we are blind to these excellences 
 in our neighbour, as far as we steel our hearts 
 against their attraction, so far is the Divine beauty 
 hidden from our eyes and impotent over our 
 affections ; we may hear and we may assent to the 
 truth that God is good, and gracious, and holy, and 
 just, but these words kindle no fire of enthusiasm or 
 devotion within us ; for our affections are dwarfed 
 and stunted for want of food and exercise ; we have 
 no heart to give ; we have crushed our love of man, 
 and have not found the love of God ; we are unloved 
 and unlovable ; unloving and unable to love. Nor 
 can we ever know, or at least realize, God's 
 passionate love for us if we ourselves have never 
 felt the hungering affection of the mother for the 
 child, of friend for friend, or some one of the nobler 
 forms of suppliant, self-denying love and devotion. 
 Else what does it avail to tell me that God's love for 
 me is that of father, mother, friend, and spouse, all 
 in one and carried to infinity ? Or to tell me that I 
 should aspire to love Him back as father, mother, 
 friend, and spouse, if I have never given any one 01 
 
310 THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 
 
 these affections play ; never developed and purified 
 my power of loving? In brief, it is through man 
 alone that we can know or love God as long as we 
 see Him only through a glass darkly, and before we 
 are face to face with Him. 
 
 To love our neighbour as Christ loves us, means, 
 therefore, to love him as far as possible in sympathy 
 with God ; loving him for what is really best and 
 divinest in him ; seeking to bring out more fully the 
 hidden image of God in his soul. It means the 
 perfecting of our instinctive affections ; recognizing 
 in them the impulse of the Divine will drawing men 
 first to one another, and through one another to 
 Itself, as the Supreme Lover and centre of all 
 attraction. It means restraint and sacrifice and the 
 sword of separation, for Sine dolore non vivitur in 
 amore — " the life of love is a life of sorrow." It is 
 the love of Abraham for Isaac ; the love of Christ 
 for His Mother; the love which is ready to stab and 
 thrust and slay; which shrinks from no present 
 pain for the sake of after bliss. It is the love of 
 St. Paul for his children, heedless of present ingra- 
 titude and misunderstanding; spending itself gladly, 
 " though the more I love you the less I be loved." 
 And it will show itself in ceaseless toil and labour 
 for the beloved ; in endless endeavour to communi- 
 cate with him our choicest treasure ; to gel him to 
 see what we see and to love what we love ; to break 
 down every wall of separation or unsympathy that 
 stands between soul and soul ; to find ever richer 
 treasures ourselves that we may have more to share, 
 more costly and precious fuel to feed love's flame ; 
 
THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 311 
 
 to learn new arts and sciences that we may impart 
 them to the beloved ; to wean our hearts from all 
 that is spurious, untrue, lest we hurt so much as a 
 hair of his head, every one of which is numbered 
 and dear to us ; to find in God alone that pearl of 
 great price, that common Friend who is the bond 
 of all friendship, in whom all other pure and noble 
 sympathies are united. 
 
 This is how Christ has loved us ; and His 
 precept is that we should so love one another, or 
 rather labour so to love one another ; for it is the 
 work of our life to educate ourselves out of our 
 selfishness and sensuality and to learn the lovable- 
 ness of God's children. If we can study God only 
 in His works, man is the epitome and summary of 
 His works; and it is there we must seek Him and 
 love Him. Omnes in eo, et eum in omnibus — " All 
 in Him and Him in all." The second great precept 
 is not different from the first, but only another 
 expression of it. 
 
 Whether we consider our Saviour's human love 
 of His Blessed Mother, of the Baptist, of His 
 Apostles, of His own people, of His betrayer, of His 
 murderers and enemies, we see everywhere the 
 characteristics we have described above. It was 
 no mere extrinsic love indifferent to the inherent 
 lovableness of its immediate object, and therefore 
 equal towards all. He loved all equally in the sense 
 that He loved each, so far as each was beloved by 
 His Father and made lovable. But God's gifts are 
 manifold, in no two cases the same. He has no 
 unjust preferences; but He loved His Mother 
 
312 THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 
 
 immeasurably beyond all ; and His Apostles v/ho 
 were *' with Him in His temptations " beyond His 
 other disciples; and Peter, and James, and John 
 more than the other Apostles ; and John of these, 
 with the peculiar love of special friendship. And 
 He loved Lazarus and his sisters, but especially 
 Mary. Plainly His love was not merely extrinsic, 
 but was motived by what He saw in each ; and 
 since His estimate was perfectly true and just, and 
 His affections pure and noble, His human love was 
 in the most perfect sympathy and accord with His 
 Divine love. And how very naturally His love 
 manifested itself is also clear. He wept over the 
 grave of Lazarus ; He wept over His beloved city 
 of Jerusalem ; He sought at times to be apart with 
 His friends; He revealed to them His special 
 secrets ; He sought their sympathy and their 
 prayers; He was grieved by their coldness and 
 slowness to believe in His love ; by their cowardice 
 and treachery. Altogether, if His love for them was 
 Divine and supernatural, it was at the same time 
 thoroughly natural and human, and therefore Quod 
 Deus conjunxit, homo nan separet — " What God hath 
 united let no man put asunder." 
 
 Yet if it was deep and tender " beyond the love 
 of women," it was not soft or selfish, but austere and 
 restrained; a love, that could rebuke, and chasten, 
 and hold aloof with a severity proportioned to its 
 tenderness. How abrupt with His Blessed Mother 
 at times ; how seemingly cold and indifferent ; how 
 ruthless with Peter ; how cruel in the very tender- 
 ness of His reproaches 1 None could sit at His 
 
THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 313 
 
 right hand or lean upon His bosom, who had not 
 drunk deep of His chalice and been baptized with 
 His baptism and pierced through and through with 
 the dividing sword of sorrow. 
 
 And if it is the part of love to give itself, to 
 empty itself out to the last drop of blood ; to 
 humble itself to the dust, who ever loved as He ? 
 "Greater love hath no man than this that a man 
 lay down his life for his friends ; " only a God-Man 
 can go beyond this and say, " Take and eat : this is 
 My Body. Drink ye all of this, for this is My 
 Blood." Yet it is only the same natural longing 
 carried to a greater extreme, — usque in finem ; it is 
 the passionate craving of all true love, divinized and 
 lifted above the clouds. Nay, it is rather God's 
 Love made flesh and dwelling among us ; Divine, 
 yet altogether human. And this is His precept, 
 that as He has loved us so we also should love 
 one another; for if a man love not his brother 
 whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he 
 hath not seen ? 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 ' O sacrum convivium in quo Christus sumitur ; 
 Recolitur memoria passionis ejus ; 
 Mens impletur gratia ; 
 Et futurse glorias nobis pignus datur.' 
 
 St. Thomas Aquinas. 
 
 In these words the Blessed Eucharist is offered to 
 our consideration, first, as a sacrificial banquet ; 
 that is, as being at once a sacrifice and a banquet ; 
 then, as a memorial or commemorative feast ; 
 iinally, in its effects as a means of grace in the 
 present, and a pledge of glory in the future. 
 Let us then first dwell upon it under its sacrificial 
 aspect. 
 
 God is a spirit, and they that adore Him must 
 adore Him in spirit and in truth. Man, on the 
 other hand, is not spirit alone, but spirit and body, 
 and therefore his adoration, internal and external, 
 private and public, is an embodied adoration. He 
 is- bound by the necessity of his double nature to 
 picture God to himself, and to speak of Him after 
 a human fashion; to conceive Him in his own 
 image and likeness. And God who has made man, 
 and knows whereof he is made and remembers 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 315 
 
 that he is but dust, not only permits it and 
 tolerates it, but wills it to be so. Had He wanted 
 us different, He would have made us different. 
 And bO He wills that we should utter our prayers 
 and praises with voice and tongue, as though He 
 heard with mortal ears and could not read the 
 secrets of the heart ; that we should lift up our eyes 
 to Him, as though He were seated in the clouds 
 far above us ; that we should kneel and prostrate 
 ourselves as at the feet of a mortal monarch ; that 
 we should hold up our joined hands, as it were 
 begging release from our fetters — in a word, that we 
 should embody our inward worship in outward 
 signs and symbols, and speak of spirit in the 
 terms of sense, of the infinite in the language 
 of the finite. Nor is there in these practices, 
 as some foolishly think, any real ignorance or 
 superstition, so long as the inadequate and 
 merely symbolic character of such utterances is 
 adverted to. 
 
 Still more needful are such symbolic manifesta- 
 tions where men meet together for the public 
 worship of God, and where their internal concord 
 in thought and desire can be expressed and secured 
 only by means of outward expression. 
 
 Chief among those rites whereby in all times 
 and places men have embodied their worship, is 
 the offering of sacrifice, in which food is brought 
 and laid as a gift on God's table, as a sign of 
 praise and adoration, of gratitude for favours 
 received, of sorrow for sins committed, as the price 
 of protection and assistance and grace As the 
 
3i6 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 word is now understood, sacrifice is said exclusivel]' 
 of an offering made to the one supreme God in 
 attestation of His supremacy and oneness ; so that 
 it can be offered to no other being, however great, 
 without the guilt of idolatry and blasphemy. But 
 if we look back to early times for the derivation of 
 the rite, we find apparently that food-offerings 
 were made by way of tribute and homage to the 
 father or patriarch or monarch, to symbolize 
 such a relation between the offerer and receiver 
 as exists between children and their father, from 
 whom they derive their life and support and food ; 
 who spring from one body, eat of one bread, 
 drink of one cup, dwell in one house, look to one 
 heritage. We see that it was directed to the 
 confirmation of the rights of sonship where they 
 already existed ; or to their renewal, when broken 
 off by trespass ; or to the creation of an adoptive 
 sonship, where no such tie had existed before. It 
 was, therefore, the sign or seal or outward formality 
 of a solemn contract, or covenant, whereby the 
 rights and duties of fatherhood on one side, and of 
 sonship on the other, were created, renewed, or 
 ratified. And accordingly, when men needed to 
 enter into relation with God, the universal Father, 
 to be received as His adopted sons, to be allowed 
 to sit at His household table and eat of His meat, 
 it was in keeping with our necessity of conceiving 
 Divine things humanwise, that we should bring 
 food-offerings to Him, and solemnize our covenant 
 with Him, according to the rites and conventions of 
 similar human contracts. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 317 
 
 That the offerer should partake of the victim 
 after it has been accepted is the natural, though 
 not necessary sequel of sacrifice. It is a com- 
 plementary act to which the act of sacrifice is 
 in some sort directed. To accept the offering, 
 is to admit the offerer to the rights of sonship, 
 whereof the sign and evidence is a seat at the 
 household table, a share in the household meal. 
 Thus, when the prodigal is restored to the forfeited 
 rights of sonship, a banquet is prepared for him by 
 his father, as we read in the parable. The food 
 which one offers as a supplicant and servant or 
 slave, he receives back as a child from the hand 
 of his father. 
 
 That this is the earliest notion of sacrifice and 
 communion, seems fairly evident from a careful 
 study of the sacrifices of the Gentiles and of the 
 pre-Levitical sacrifices, recorded in Holy Scripture. 
 Those of the Mosaic law are too complicated with 
 prophetic symbolism to permit the root-idea to 
 stand out in all its clearness and definition. We find 
 God rebuking the Israelites for offering food liba- 
 tions to false gods instead of to Him ; and St. Paul 
 sums up the whole matter briefly, where he says : 
 " I speak as to the initiated ; judge ye what I say : 
 The Cup of Blessing which we bless, is it not the 
 communion of the Blood of Christ ? the Bread 
 which we break, is it not the communion of the Body 
 of Christ ? Look at Israel after the flesh. Are not 
 they that eat of the sacrifice partakers of the altar ? 
 I would not have you to be partakers with devils. 
 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup 
 
3i8 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 of devils ; you cannot share the table of the Lord 
 and the table of devils."^ 
 
 Whether, then, we speak of Gentile sacrifice, or 
 Jewish sacrifice, or Christian sacrifice ; of the altar 
 of devils, or of Jehovah ; the notion of sacrifice, of 
 food-offering and libation, is one and the same — 
 it is a solemn covenant-feast, an expression of 
 absolute subjection and submission on the one side, 
 and a pledge of protection and fatherhood on the 
 other. The former is symbolized by the offering, 
 the latter by the communion which follows accept- 
 ance, — "They shall be My people and. I will be 
 their God." Thus our Saviour says, expressing the 
 fruit of His own sacrifice : " I ascend to My Father 
 and to your Father ; to My God and to your God." 
 
 But like every outward expression or symbol, a 
 sacrifice may be true or false according as the 
 mward homage it signifies is present or absent. 
 Self-oblation and subjection is the soul and quick- 
 ening principle, without which the sacrifice which 
 symbolizes and embodies it, is worthless or worse 
 than worthless before God — for we insult Him with 
 a spotted and blemished victim instead of honouring 
 Him with an odour of sweetness. Of such lying 
 sacrifices God says : " Shall I eat the flesh of bulls 
 or drink the blood of goats ? " and : " Obedience is 
 
 1 " Ut prudentibus loquor. vos ipsi judicate quod dico. Calix 
 denedictionis cui benedicimus nonne communicatio sanguinis 
 Christi est ? et panem quern frangimus nonne participatio corporis 
 Domini est ? . . . Videte Israel secundum carnem ! nonne qui edunt 
 hostias participes sunt altaris ? . . Nolo autem vos socios fieri 
 baemoniorum ; non potestis mensae Domini participes esse et mensas 
 daemoniorum." (i Cor. xi. 15, seq.) 
 
THE MYSTERY OP FAITH. 319 
 
 better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat 
 of rams ; " and David : " If Thou hadst desired 
 sacrifice I would have given it Thee, but Thou 
 delightest not in burnt offerings." Not that God 
 here rejects the form of worship which He Himself 
 had approved and enjoined ; but He reminds us 
 that the form is not the reality, the sign is not the 
 thing signified, the body of sacrifice is not the spirit 
 of sacrifice. 
 
 Thus, gathering up our results so far, we see 
 that sacrifice is an offering of food made to Almighty 
 God to testify our submission and subjection to 
 Him as to the Author and Giver of all ; to express 
 our desire to be received or retained among the 
 number of His children, to sit at His table, and to 
 share His meat. It expresses our love and reverence 
 for His glory and majesty, our thankfulness for all 
 His goodness towards us, our consequent sorrow if 
 we have offended one so good in Himself and 
 praiseworthy, one so good to us and thankworthy. 
 It is an earnest of our desire to repair the wrong 
 we have done singly and collectively — for as an act 
 of public and social worship, it is an offering for the 
 sins of the people, for the sins of the world. We 
 implore by it all those helps and graces needful for 
 ourselves singly and collectively, for the spread of 
 His Kingdom, for the extension of His glory. And 
 God in accepting it, and in inviting us to partake if 
 we will, thereby signs and ratifies the covenant 
 between us, and engages to be to us a Father, if we 
 will be to .Him true children. 
 
 And all that is contained in this notion of 
 
320 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 sacrifice we find verified in a higher, more excellent, 
 and truer way, in the great sacrifice of the Christian 
 Church, which is the full and adequate expression 
 of that worship which the sacrifices of Jew and 
 pagan strove vainly to utter in lisping, stammering 
 accents, Lex hahens umbram fiiiurorum bonorum — 
 " the law being but the shadow of good things to 
 come : " the substance being Christ. For the 
 praise and gratitude and contrition of every soul 
 that ever lived, the perfect self-oblation of the whole 
 race, could never satisfy what is due to God in the 
 way of love and worship ; much less could such 
 internal dispositions embody themselves in an 
 offering adequate to their expression. Therefore, 
 that the human race might be able to offer Him an 
 acceptable and adequate sacrifice, God gave His 
 only Son to be the second Adam, that all who 
 received Him and were incorporated with Him, 
 might through and with Him offer a supreme and 
 sufficient worship in spirit and in truth. He alone, 
 who in virtue of His Divinity was eternally in the 
 bosom of the Father, could comprehend the infinite 
 lovableness of God ; could measure the depth and 
 height and length and breadth of His mercies 
 towards the children of men ; could fathom the 
 abyss of the malice of sin, knowing each several sin 
 of every son of Adam ; could sorrow for it, as if 
 it were His own by imputation ; and could make 
 amends for it so ample as to blot it out of the 
 Divine memory, as some faint discord is drownpd 
 in a great burst of harmony; He alone could 
 intercede with infallible wisdom and efficacy for the 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 321 
 
 glory of God, for His Kingdom and His will 
 upon earth ; for the needs of mankind — spiritual 
 and temporal ; for the averting of Divine anger ; 
 for help in temptation and deliverance from evil. 
 And being the Son of God by nature, and also the 
 Son of man. He alone was the fitting Mediator of 
 that New and Eternal Covenant between God and 
 man, whereby the human race under Him as their 
 Head was adopted as the son of God and entitled 
 to a place at the banquet of Eternal Life — a 
 Covenant sealed with the sacrifice of His Body and 
 the libation of His Blood — His Blood of the New 
 and Eternal Testament. Moreover, if the inner 
 submission and self-oblation of all men and angels 
 together could never equal the infinite adoration 
 due to God, or atone for the indignity offered to 
 Him by a single wilful insult or rebellion ; not so 
 the self-submission of one who in point of personal 
 dignity was equal to the Father and of the same 
 nature — His beloved Son in whom He was well 
 pleased. Nor was the sacrificial offering, wherein 
 that worship was embodied, something of mere 
 conventional worth, an inadequate symbol of 
 the supersensible reahty, but, Priest and Victim 
 in one. He offered that same priceless self, the Body 
 and the Blood of the Incarnate Son of God as a 
 true food-offering, on Calvary and on the altar. 
 As a true food- offering, for He is the very Bread 
 of Life, not such manna as Israel ate in the 
 desert, but the true Bread from Heaven ; the 
 bread of grace, of the spiritual life, nay, of the 
 Divine life. 
 
321 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 Now, plainly, God, who is the Giver and Pre- 
 server of that Divine vitality, stands as little in 
 need of this spiritual and heavenly food as He does 
 of bodily food. "If I were hungry," He seems to 
 say, " I would not tell thee ; for mine are the cattle 
 on a thousand hills ; " for " the earth is the Lord's 
 and the fulness thereof." Yet though He was rich, 
 for our sakes God has become poor and needy and 
 dependent. He knows well that love is starved 
 where it finds no indigence, nothing to bear, or to 
 give, or to suffer; that it seeks rather to minister 
 than to be ministered to ; to give than to receive. 
 And so He has framed Himself round, as it were, 
 with a halo of created glory in the creatures which 
 He has made and loved ; and His love m.akes their 
 interests and needs His own, so that in the order 
 of nature no less than in that of grace He seems to 
 say : " Inasmuch as ye did it to the least of these 
 My brethren ye did it unto Me." And therefore 
 He who needed nothing in Himself, in the person of 
 poor fallen humanity hungered and fainted for the 
 Bread of Life. " God so loved the world " that its 
 miseries were His own ; " so loved the world that 
 He gave His only-begotten Son " for it. Far be it 
 from us to picture an angry God reluctantly dis- 
 suaded from vengeance through the intervention of 
 a more placable Son. There is but one nature and 
 love and will in the two. " I and My Father are 
 one ; " " He that hath seen Me hath seen the 
 Father ; " " The Father Himself loveth you." Let 
 us rather enter into the eternal council of mercy 
 and hear the Father's compassionate demand, 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 323 
 
 ■" Whence shall we buy bread in the desert that 
 these may eat ? " and the answer of the Son of His 
 Love, Ecce ego, mitte me — " Lo, here am I ; send 
 Me," the true Manna, the Bread that giveth life to 
 the world. Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldst not, 
 then said I : Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God ; to 
 be obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross. 
 And now what was this " will " that He came to 
 do ; of which He says : " My meat is to do the will 
 of Him that sent Me, and to perfect His work " ? 
 What was this work that was perfected when He 
 bowed His head and said : Consummatum est — " It is 
 perfected " ? What was the commandment of the 
 Father which He came to obey and fulfil ? Even 
 that commandment whereof He was the great 
 teacher and example; of which He says, "A new 
 commandment give I unto you ; even that which 
 you had from the beginning." "This is My precept 
 that you love one another in the same manner as I 
 have loved you." And in what manner? Even 
 unto death. Christ was made for us obedient to 
 the new and eternal precept of fraternal love, " unto 
 death, even to the death of the Cross." The Good 
 Shepherd layeth down His life for His sheep. It 
 was, then, in obedience to that precept that having 
 loved His own who were in the world He loved 
 them to the uttermost, and took bread and brake 
 and blessed and gave to them, saying : Take ye and 
 eat, this is My Body which is given for you ; and 
 the cup, saying: Drink, this is My Blood of the 
 New and Eternal Covenant of Love; love between 
 man and God, love between man and man. And 
 
324 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 just as when for God's sake one gives alms to the 
 poor one gives it to God ; so in the same act 
 whereby Christ offers Himself to us for food in 
 obedience to the Father's precept of love, He first 
 offers Himself to the Father, and in so doing offers 
 an infinite sacrifice of praise, thanks, expiation, and 
 prayer. 
 
 And of this act of sovereign worship we are 
 made sharers and fellow-offerers as often as we 
 gather round the altar to hear Mass and, as it were, 
 to lay our hands upon the head of the victim and to 
 make His offering our own. For as the act of the 
 lips or the heart is not the act of those organs alone, 
 but of the whole body to which they belong ; so the 
 praise and worship of Christ our Head ; the words 
 of His lips, the love of His Heart are not His alone, 
 but ours also, as often as by hearing Mass we make 
 ourselves one body with the priest, His vicar and 
 representative. Little as our self-oblation is worth 
 apart from His, yet if in union with it we offer 
 ourselves up at Mass a living sacrifice to obey, if 
 need be, the precept of love even to death, our offer- 
 ing is merged into one with His, and His with ours. 
 And though our knowledge of sin be childish and 
 our grief for God's dishonour feeble, and our efforts 
 at reparation ineffectual, yet if we heap them 
 together with this infinite sacrifice of expiation and 
 satisfaction, they will not be rejected or despised. 
 For it is only in harmony with His praise and 
 thanksgiving that ours have any meaning or value 
 in the ears of God. In His Heart is gathered up 
 all the love and joy of creation, of angels and of 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 323 
 
 men, and thence welling upwards to His lips, finds 
 utterance in one burst of Eucharistic praise, of 
 which the Church sings: "It is truly meet and 
 right, that we should always and everywhere render 
 thanks to Thee, Holy Lord, Almighty Father, 
 Everlasting God." And how? "Through Christ 
 ■our Lord," " through whom the angels praise Thy 
 majesty. Dominations adore, and Powers tremble; 
 . . . with whose voices we supplicate that ours may 
 be mingled in one song: Holy Holy, Holy," and 
 again: "Through Him and with Him and in Him 
 is to Thee, O God the Father, in union with the 
 Holy Ghost, all honour and glory for ever and for 
 €ver. Amen." 
 
 II. 
 
 '' O sacrum convivium in quo Christus sumitur." 
 
 We have already dwelt on the Blessed Eucharist 
 regarded as a sacrifice. We have roughly traced 
 the notion of sacrifice from its first beginnings to 
 its full development and realization in the perfect 
 sacrifice of the Christian Church. We have seen that 
 a food-offering made by way of homage and tribute 
 was a symbol and expression of dependence and 
 subjection such as exists between the children and 
 the father of the household to whom they owe their 
 existence and preservation, to whom they look for 
 their heritage; and that this offering was directed 
 to the strengthening of the family tie where it 
 already existed ; to the renewal of it where it had 
 been sundered by sin ; to the creation of it where it 
 
325 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 had not existed before. We have seen that when 
 offered to God, the Father and Creator of all, it was 
 a confession of our absolute dependence on Him as 
 the Author and Preserver, not only of our natural, 
 but of our supernatural life, the life of grace, 
 " eternal life " — as the Scriptures call it ; that it was 
 a creation, or else a renewal, or else a confirmation 
 of our claim to be called the sons of God by 
 adoption, and to take our seat at His table with His 
 sons and with the Eternal Son of His love ; to eat 
 the bread of angels. Finally, we have seen that as 
 no man could offer any sacrifice adequate to the 
 majesty of God, the Eternal Son, first-born of every 
 creature, came down as Manna from Heaven, the, 
 living Bread of the soul, the Food of Immortality — 
 and in obedience to the Father's eternal precept of 
 love, loved us even unto death, and gave Himself to 
 be our food, saying: " Take and eat. This is My Body," 
 and that in that same act whereby in obedience to 
 the Father He offers Himself to us for food day by 
 day on a thousand altars. He first offers Himself a 
 true food-offering and sacrifice to the Father. And 
 of this great sacrifice of praise and thanks and 
 prayer and expiation, we are fellow-offerers and 
 sharers as often as, by assisting at Mass, we make 
 one body under Christ our head. For the action of 
 the head is not of the head alone, but of the whole 
 body in subjection to it. 
 
 Let us now dwell on the Holy Eucharist viewed 
 more strictly as a sacramental communion, as a 
 conviviunt in quo Christus sumitur. For though sacri- 
 fice and communion are closely connected — the latter 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 327 
 
 being the complement and, in some sense, the end 
 of the former — yet they are separable and often 
 separated ; as we see, for example, in many of the 
 Levitical sacrifices, which were not partaken of by 
 the offerers, for symbolic and prophetic reasons. 
 It is only so far as the sacrifice is accepted, that the 
 offerer has a claim to partake of it ; and the right 
 thus purchased need not be exercised here and now. 
 Those who sit down as convivcB, or guests, at the 
 sacrificial banquet are fed as children at the hands 
 of the same father, who, as he has given them their 
 life, so also fosters and increases it. They derive 
 their life and nourishment from a common source ; 
 they spring from one body, they eat of one bread, 
 they drink of one cup, they dwell in one house, they 
 look forward to share one inheritance. And so of 
 the Eucharistic feast. The chalice which we bless 
 is it not the communion or sharing of the Blood of 
 Christ ? the Bread which we break is it not the 
 sharing of the Body of Christ ? For we, being 
 many, are one bread and one body, as many as are 
 partakers of that Bread. We being many, distinct 
 and separate units, are one bread, for even as the 
 grains of corn are ground up into flour and welded 
 together in the dough and hardened together in the 
 oven ; so in this mystery of love and charity all that 
 separates man from man, tends to be obliterated, 
 all the dividing lines are erased under the amal- 
 gamating force of love, which seeks to give all and to 
 receive all ; to absorb and to be absorbed, staying 
 only at the limit of personal distinctness. 
 
 " We being many in one bread, as many as are 
 
328 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 partakers of that bread." We are one bread, 
 because we live by one bread, deriving our life from 
 the same principle. What bread is this ? " I am 
 the Bread of Life." It is not because He gives 
 Himself under the semblance of bread that He calls 
 Himself the Bread of Life; but conversely, because 
 He is the True, the Spiritual, the Heavenly Bread, 
 the stay of eternal life, therefore He gives Himself 
 under that defective semblance to signify that truth. 
 Yet how imperfect is the symbolism ! Of those 
 who live from one loaf or who drink from one cup, 
 no two receive the same identical part, but similar 
 parts, once united, now divided. Nor are they 
 transformed into the nature of the bread they 
 receive, but rather it is transformed into their 
 nature. And so of the sacramental symbols or 
 outward appearances, no two receive the same part 
 from the hand of Christ ; and it is " one bread " 
 only so far as it is one in kind and received from 
 the same hand. But the underlying reality, the 
 True Bread of Eternal Life, Christ who is received, 
 is not multiplied or divided, but remaining in 
 Himself one and the same, yesterday, to-day, and 
 for ever ; removed from all limiting conditions 
 ■of time and place, is communicated to all ; nay, 
 rather, draws all to Himself, as to a common centre; 
 changes all into Himself — all, that is, all who receive 
 Him worthily at any place or in any time. For our 
 •convivce, or fellow-guests, are not only those who 
 kneel beside us to receive Him here and now ; but 
 all those who in any difference of place or time 
 have received Him or shall receive Him. This 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 329 
 
 Sacred Banquet, though set forth on innumerable 
 altars and prolonged age after age to the end of the 
 world, is morally one single feast in which we 
 " communicate with, as well as commemorate " the 
 Glorious and Ever Blessed Virgin Mary, the Blessed 
 Apostles and Martyrs, and all the Saints. In Christ 
 time and place are gathered up as into their cause — 
 the centre from which they radiate ; at the creative 
 words of blessing, 
 
 Earth breaks up ; Time drops away 
 In flows Heaven with its new day 
 Of endless life. 
 
 The substance of His Sacred Body being present 
 after the manner of a spirit, is present to each 
 receiver, as our soul is present to each part of our 
 body ; not part to part, but wholly to each part ; 
 not multiplied with the parts, but one and the same 
 in all. For the substance of the bread in each host 
 is not transformed into a different Christ, as though 
 His Sacred Body were multiplied in place and time. 
 He is not changed into it ; but it is changed into 
 Him. The appearance is multiplied and divided ; 
 but the reality is one and the self-same. Nor is 
 that Eternal Bread changed into us, but we are 
 changed into Him ; united with Him ; and thereby 
 changed into and united to one another ; being all 
 merged into the same reality. We are all " one 
 bread and one body." 
 
 Of this mysterious union we can speak only in 
 the figures and images of revelation itself. " As the 
 living Father hath sent Me and as I live by the 
 
330 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 Father, so he that eateth Me the same also shall hve 
 by Me." It is from the Father that the Eternal Son 
 originates and, in some sense, derives His Divine 
 being, and nature, and life. One and the same 
 identical life is possessed by both, but with an order 
 of dependence such that one is called Father and 
 Begetter, the other Son and Begotten, and while 
 we may say that the Son lives by the Father, we 
 may not say that the Father lives by the Son. The 
 Son is the Image and Likeness of the Father, 
 but the Father is not the Image and Likeness of 
 the Son. The creatures which proceed from God, 
 need to be preserved and watched over by His 
 providence, to be fed by His fatherly bounty and 
 care ; but that Eternal Life, communicated to the 
 Son is unfailing, unchanging, needing no conserva- 
 tion or feeding. So that one and the same eternal 
 act is both generation, and conservation, and 
 sustenance in a simple and ineffable sense. The 
 Father is at once the Giver and the Bread of that 
 life which is communicated to the Son. " As the 
 Living Father," the Father who is Eternal, " hath 
 sent Me," hath uttered Me His Eternal Word, hath 
 sent Me forth proceeding from Him ; " and as I live 
 by the Father," who is the Giver and Sustainer and 
 Bread of My uncreated life ; " so he that eateth Me 
 the same shall live by Me." " So," i.e., plainly, not 
 in the same way, but in some analogous way of 
 which the mystery of the Trinity is the archetype. 
 Christ lives in us and we live by Him so far as He 
 communicates His nature to us, and assimilates us 
 to Himself, conforming our mind more and more to 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 331 
 
 the pattern of His ; bringing all our sympathies and 
 affections into accordance with those of His own 
 Divine Heart. For this is the way in which spiritual 
 union manifests itself; eliminating all distance and 
 diversity and opposition of thought and sentiment. 
 As the Eternal Father and Son have but one 
 identical nature, operation, thought, and love ; so 
 Christ and the sanctified soul have, not indeed 
 identical, but altogether similar thoughts and 
 affections. 
 
 This is the manner in which our sacramental 
 union with Christ manifests itself; though what it is 
 in itself is veiled in mystery. We can only say that 
 a new life-principle is infused into us ; and that as 
 the life of sense differs from that of mere growth, 
 and the life of reason from that of sense, so 
 Eternal Life — which is a participation of Divine 
 Life, differs from that of reason. We can also 
 assert that, unlike the life of reason, though it is in 
 us it is not of us ; even as the warmth we receive 
 from the fire differs from that which is generated 
 within us and by us. Hence it is ascribed to a 
 principle which is in us yet distinct from us ; which 
 is said to dwell in us ; which, like a guest, can come 
 and go without prejudice to our natural faculties 
 and attributes. Christ, the Bread of Life, is the 
 Fire which warms us and illuminates us with the 
 life of grace ; and is so far said to dwell in us, and 
 to make His abode with us. "He that eateth My 
 Flesh dwelleth in Me and I in him." " I in them 
 [Father] and Thou in Me, that they may be made 
 perfect in one." 
 
332 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 " Perfect in one," for in proportion as we are all 
 drawn into union with the same Divine substance, 
 we are united one to another ; and as the minds of 
 men become more conformed to the pattern of 
 Christ's mind, and their affections and sentiments 
 are corrected by the same standard, the barriers to 
 perfect sympathy and fraternity are broken down, 
 and " we being many are one bread and one body, 
 as many as are partakers of that bread ; " and the 
 four quarters of the earth are knit together — as 
 Peter saw them in his vision of the Catholicity of 
 his Church — into one brotherhood in Christ under 
 our Father in Heaven. Many shall come from the 
 East and from the West and shall sit down to eat 
 bread in the Kingdom of God with Abraham and 
 Isaac and Jacob. 
 
 Hcec est vera paternitas ! This is, indeed, the true 
 brotherhood, whereof the brotherhood of nature, of 
 our common descent from Adam, is but the dim 
 figure and suggestion. What tie of affection is it 
 between men to descend from a common ancestor, 
 five or six generations back ; what, from one 
 distant from us by thousands of years ? But at the 
 altar of the Catholic Church, all nations meet 
 together at the table of the Father of their Eternal 
 and Divine Life, and eat of the same spiritual meat 
 and drink of the same spiritual drink. At that table 
 there is no distinction between Jew or Greek, 
 Barbarian or Scythian, bond or free, male or female ; 
 there is no respect to riches, or talents, or birth, or 
 colour; there is no distinction of classes and masses; 
 but Christ is all and in all. There they alone are 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 333 
 
 great who are great in His eyes and receive most 
 abundantly of His fulness. He fills the hungry 
 with good things and sends the rich empty away 
 A man may be great in talent yet poor in posses- 
 sions ; great in learning but little in birth ; great in 
 influence, little in virtue. But he who is great in 
 the court of God is alone absolutely and truly great. 
 At that table men are ranked as they are in the 
 eyes of God, the mighty are put down from their 
 seat and the lowly are iexalted ; to the former He 
 says: "Give this man room," to the latter, "Friend, 
 come up higher." 
 
 It is the mission of the Catholic Church to 
 direct, and foster, and supernaturalize that pro- 
 gressive evolution, whereby the whole human family 
 tends to knit itself into one brotherhood and society. 
 False philosophies have fought skilfully and per- 
 sistently against her, backed up by the Gates of 
 Hell. They have taken the most sacred ideas of 
 the Gospel, and under specious perversions, have 
 used them in the interests of servitude, tyranny, and 
 oppression. They have associated so much that is 
 odious with their canting use of these sacred words, 
 they have put forward such crafty counterfeits, that 
 there is danger lest the wheat be rooted up with 
 tares, and that in rejecting the perversion and dis- 
 tortion of the truth we reject the truth itself. 
 
 The history of the Christian era has been the 
 history of the development of the dogma of the 
 Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all men 
 in Christ ; of the liberty of the sons of God, of their 
 equality, not merely as men, but as the sons of God 
 
334 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 in destiny or in fact, of the slow vindication of 
 inalienable rights founded on this equality. So far as 
 the movement has been directed by Catholic dogma 
 it has prospered ; so far as sophistical and counter- 
 feit notions of liberty and fraternity have intruded 
 themselves, it has been impeded. But the chief 
 factor in its progress has been this " Sacred Banquet 
 wherein Christ is received " — sacrum convivium in 
 quo Christus sumitur, where high and low, rich and 
 poor, master and servant, emperor and beggar, have 
 knelt, side by side, century after century, in their 
 common nothingness before Him who in obedience 
 to the Father's precept of Fraternal Love gives 
 Himself for all and to all indiscriminately ; and who 
 says : " I have given you an example," that, " as I 
 have loved you, so ye also should love one another;" 
 where, we being many are one bread and one 
 body, as many as partake of that Bread : of the 
 Bread of Life. 
 
 III. 
 
 " Recolitur memoria passionis ejus." 
 
 Having previously dealt with the Blessed 
 Eucharist as a sacrifice, we considered it in the 
 light of a sacramental communion, whereby we 
 being many were made one bread and one body in 
 virtue of a mystic transformation into one and the 
 same Bread of Life. We saw that this incom- 
 prehensible union — this infusion of Eternal Life — 
 tended to bear fruit outwardly and manifest itself in 
 a continual conforming of our hearts and intelli- 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 333 
 
 gences to the human heart and mind of the 
 Incarnate God Himself; that hereby our nature 
 and hfe became so saturated with His, that we 
 could truly say, " Now I live, yet not I, but Christ 
 liveth in me ; " as He Himself has taught us when 
 He tells us, " As I live by the Father, so he that 
 eateth Me shall live by Me." We saw that the 
 great end of this convivium or banquet was to draw 
 the four quarters of the earth into one, to knit them 
 together into one great brotherhood in Christ under 
 God, the universal Father and Food-giver in the 
 order of nature and of grace. 
 
 We must now revert to the sacrificial aspect of 
 the mystery, and consider it, not merely as a true 
 sacrifice, but more particularly as a memorial 
 sacrifice or feast of commemoration. We know 
 that, year by year, the Israelites offered the paschal 
 lamb in thankful remembrance of their deliverance 
 from the destroyer, through the blood of the first 
 paschal lamb. Each annual offering was in itself 
 as truly a sacrifice as the first ; yet it was also a 
 commemoration, which the first was not. It was a 
 relative as well as an absolute sacrifice. It was not, 
 however, merely the commemoration of a sacrifice, 
 as it were a dramatic and fictitious reproduction of 
 it, but a sacrifice of commemoration. So the Holy 
 Eucharist is not merely a symbol or fictitious 
 representation of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary, but 
 is itself at once a sacrifice and a commenioration of 
 a sacrifice. We commemorate the event by repeating 
 it, renewing it — ^just as we sometimes commemorate 
 a first meeting with a friend by meeting again on 
 
336 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 the anniversary ; or as we like to retrace the walks 
 of some happier days, not in memory alone, but in 
 fact. So our Saviour loves to renew Calvary as far 
 as possible; to give Himself again and again; to 
 enjoy as nearly as possible that ecstasy of love and 
 pain once more. 
 
 Were it merely a calling to mind of a past event, 
 and not a real renewing of it, then indeed a 
 Passion play, or a crucifix, or the reading of the 
 Gospel would be a far more effectual provision than 
 the breaking of bread and the pouring out of wine. 
 But, as we have seen, Christ truly and indeed gives 
 Himself to us in every Eucharist to be our food ; 
 and in offering Himself to us, iirst offers Himself as 
 a food-offering or sacrifice to the Eternal Father. 
 It is a commemoration of Calvary because He does 
 here really, though sacramentally, what He did 
 there visibly and sensibly — He gives Himself to be 
 the Bread of Life. In both He gives Himself; and 
 gives Himself as food : as the Bread of God. For 
 there are two means whereby grace or Eternal Life 
 is conveyed to the soul — prayer and the sacraments; 
 two ways in which we apprehend Christ, the Bread 
 of Life. Of this non-sacramental feeding He says, 
 " He that cometh to Me shall never hunger ; he that 
 believeth in Me shall never thirst." To come to 
 Christ, to believe in Him, to submit to Him, to 
 receive Him, is the condition whereby we feed upon 
 Him outside the sacraments. " As many as received 
 Him to them gave He power to become the sons of 
 God ; to them that believe in His name." It is 
 not in asserting this, but in denying the sacramental 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH 337 
 
 reception of Christ, that heretics have gone astray. 
 God has not tied His grace to the sacraments, and 
 as there is a baptism of desire, so there is a spiritual 
 communion. Yet where access to the sacraments is 
 possible, none may with impunity despise such easy 
 and abundant sources of grace, or vaunt a more 
 spiritual religion than that instituted by Christ. 
 
 Christ crucified is indeed the food of the soul, 
 the cause of its growth and of its development in 
 intelligence and in love. As God, He is the life of 
 the soul, Ego sum Veritas el Vita ; as God-Man, He is 
 the Bread of Life, the means of life. For the mind 
 and heart need gradual preparation for the full 
 face-to-face revelation of God. It is the function 
 of the Word made Flesh to show us the Father, 
 step by step, leading us from light to light, and love 
 to love, till we are prepared to attain our spiritual 
 maturity in the possession of the Source of all light 
 and love. Thus the soul is fed and fashioned in the 
 dark womb of time, ere it is born into the day of 
 eternity. As a book feeds the mind and forms it, 
 so the fact of the Incarnation and Death of Christ 
 is an inexhaustible store of spiritual food, whereby 
 we go on from strength to strength, till we appear 
 before God's face in Sion. 
 
 What Christ does in the sacramental sacrifice of 
 the altar, that He did m the visible sacrifice, which 
 began with His Incarnation and ended with the 
 shedding of His Blood on Calvary; and that He 
 will continue to do for all eternity : 
 
 Se nascens dedit socium 
 Convescens in edulium 
 
338 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 Se moriens in pretium 
 
 Se regnans dat in premium. 
 
 Dedit se : He gave Himself for us — usque ad mortem 
 — even unto death. In the same sense, every new 
 gift of Himself in the sacrament is a reminder of 
 that past self-giving, of the life-sacrifice ending on 
 Calvary; it is a pledge of that future self-giving 
 referred to in the words, Se regnans dat in prwmium. 
 And of the absoluteness of this self-giving, of the 
 utterness of this devotion, bread is a more eloquent 
 symbol than any other kind of food. For the 
 animals or fruits that we use for food have, in 
 themselves, and apart from such use, sufficient 
 reason for their independent existence ; but bread is 
 something wholly and entirely consecrated and 
 devoted to the service of man, and destined to no 
 other end. Wherefore God spoke to us better of 
 the love He bore us, and which we should bear 
 one another, when He gave His Body and Blood 
 neath the semblances, not of corn and grape, but of 
 bread and wine. 
 
 But more than this; in the very form and manner 
 in which Christ gives Himself to us in the Eucharist, 
 His Death on Calvary is set forth and expressed 
 and thereby called to mind. St. Paul tells us that 
 in the celebration of these mysteries we show forth 
 the Lord's Death till He come. It is not merely a 
 commemoration of Christ, but more particularly of 
 Christ slain. It was in the severance of His Body 
 and Blood on Calvary that His obedience to the 
 precept of love culminated, and His life-sacrifice 
 was completed in loving us unto death. And it is of 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 339 
 
 this extremity of love that the Mass is a memorial 
 — a reminder to us, and a reminder, if we may so 
 say, to the Eternal Father. Therefore under one 
 species He has given us His Body sacramentally 
 separated from His Blood, the "body of the Pasch " 
 " as it were of a Lamb slain ; " and He has said, 
 " This is My Body which shall be given for you, do 
 this for a commemoration of Me." And then that 
 we might consider His Death under another aspect, 
 as fulfilling another prophetic type, after supper He 
 took the cup and gave us His outpoured Blood, 
 sacramentally separated from His Body, saying, 
 "This is My Blood of the New and Eternal 
 Covenant " — referring to the sealing of the ancient 
 Covenant by the sprinkling of sacrificial blood. For 
 the Old Law which conditioned the contract between 
 Israel and God was now fulfilled and absorbed in 
 the New Law of that Fraternal Love, which is 
 "the fulfilling of the Law." 
 
 Each part of the sacrament then is, according to 
 the Gospel, a commemoration of His Death. But 
 though they seem very independent of one another 
 according to the account there given us, where 
 a considerable interval of time seems to have 
 separated the offering of the Sacred Body from 
 that of the Precious Blood, yet the Church has 
 always joined the two as forming together in one 
 sacrifice a fuller and more perfect memorial of the 
 Death of Christ. For the destruction of any unity 
 is brought home to us more forcibly when we see all 
 its severed fragments together, than when we see 
 any one of them singly. But however essential the 
 
340 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 two-fold presentment of Christ's Death may be for 
 the integrity of the commemorative sacrifice, yet 
 the Church has never insisted on the necessity of 
 two-fold reception for the validity of sacramental 
 communion, and in the West has had reason to 
 insist on its non-necessity. For though bread and 
 wine answer symbolically to the severed Body and 
 Blood of the slain Christ, and therefore perfect the 
 symbolism of the commemorative sacrifice, and 
 though the nutrition of the body symbolizes that of 
 the spirit, yet the distinction between food and 
 drink has no application to spiritual sustenance 
 which may be conceived equally under either meta- 
 phor; and as there is no distinct grace signified, so 
 neither is any distinct grace conferred — the hunger 
 and thirst of the soul being but two aspects of the 
 same thing. Thus Christ says : " He that cometh to 
 Me shall never hunger; he that believeth m Me shall 
 never thirst," where "coming" and "believing" 
 answer to eating and drinking, and yet mean one 
 and the same thing. Also He blesses those who 
 hunger and thirst after justice; where hunger and 
 thirst are but two figures for one and the same 
 spiritual cravmg. So, the grace signified and con- 
 veyed by either sacrament being one and the same, 
 one receives no more from both than from one ; just 
 as one receives no more from two Hosts than from 
 one. 
 
 The Mass is therefore a commemorating of 
 Christ's Death, that is, of the extremity of His love. 
 And the end or object of this commemoration is 
 thanksgiving. It is the essence of gratitude to 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH 341 
 
 remember the love bestowed upon us ; to keep it 
 always m mind, to linger on the thought and draw 
 from it new delight, to stimulate our wavering 
 trust, to feed our flagging love As an absolute and 
 independent sacrifice the Mass may be offered in 
 gratitude for any or every favour ; but as a comme- 
 morative sacrifice it was instituted as an Eucharist 
 or Benediction whereby we bless and thank God, 
 who gave us His only-begotten Son to be the Bread 
 of Life. As at the Pasch it was customary to 
 rehearse the long history of God's ancient mercies 
 to Israel, culminating in the deliverance from Egypt, 
 and in the institution of the feast itself, so in our 
 Eucharist we commemorate our deliverance through 
 the Death of Christ, preceded by the inauguration 
 of the new Pasch ; we lovingly record how " on the 
 day before He suffered He took bread and broke 
 and said : This is My Body which shall be given for 
 you. Do this for a memorial of Me." 
 
 In what sense can we say then that the Blessed 
 Eucharist is the same sacrifice as Calvary ? Plainly 
 He who offers is the same and what He offers is the 
 same — namely, His Body to be the bread of our 
 soul. Yet here it is eaten sacramentally, there by 
 faith ; as the mode of eating, so the mode of offering 
 is different. There He was slain once and for all ; 
 here He becomes sacramentally present again and 
 again, upon our altars. Yet we may not suppose 
 that Christ left this earth with His sacrifice 
 unfinished, and needing to be completed through 
 the centuries of the Church's history. As far as the 
 sacramental giving of Himself was concerned, He 
 
342 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 gave Himself at the Last Supper in virtue of the 
 consecrating words once and for all. It is in virtue 
 of that act and those words that every Eucharist is 
 offered. Every host and chalice was before His 
 mind at that moment. It is the distributing of the 
 effects of that act which stretches to difference of 
 place and time — even as a grant of royal bounty 
 which is given in one word may take months before 
 its effects are realized in every corner of the kingdom. 
 Each hand which receives it, receives it from the 
 King, as though he gave it then and there. And 
 so every Eucharistic self-offering of Christ was 
 included in that total self-offering which began with 
 His conception and ended on Calvary. It is but 
 a part of that gift of Himself which He gave at the 
 Last Supper ; the part that was put aside and 
 reserved for us here and now, for you and for me. 
 And though as a commemoration each Eucharist 
 represents, expresses, and re-enacts Calvary, yet 
 absolutely it is a different self-offering, or at least a 
 different part of the entire giving of Himself from 
 birth to death. It is, then, a renewal of the memory 
 of His Passion — recolitur memoria Passionis ejus — not 
 a renewal of the Passion itself. Being raised from 
 the dead. He dieth no more. 
 
 And what is the Passion of Christ, if not the 
 history of such a passion of love as the heart of 
 man has never mastered — the passion of God for 
 the soul of man. His Spouse, His Beloved ; for her 
 who will not believe in His love, but repels it and 
 sins against it. That God should count man His 
 friend and die for him, were mystery enough ; but 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 343 
 
 that we, being yet enemies, Christ should die for us 
 to make us His friends, that He should not only 
 shed His Blood for us, but for the remission of our 
 sins against Himself, is a measure of love past all 
 measure. 
 
 The word "passion" means suffering; and even 
 when we speak of the passions of the soul we imply 
 that we are to some extent passive and helpless 
 under their influence ; they seize hold of us, if we let 
 them, and trouble us and shake our physical frame 
 to its foundations, even as if we were possessed by 
 an alien spirit for the time being. So it is with 
 anger, or fear, or joy, or love, when they get the 
 mastery over us. When we speak of the Passion of 
 Christ we commonly understand the pains inflicted 
 upon Him by His enemies — the blows and scourg- 
 ings and wounds, the insults and indignities, the 
 vinegar and gall. We forget too readily that all 
 His Passion was self-inflicted. "Thou wouldst not 
 have any power against Me," He says to Pilate, 
 " were it not given thee from on high ; " and : 
 " I have power to lay down My life and to take it 
 up again — no man taketh it from Me." 
 
 What is this Spirit that has niastered Him, and 
 possessed Him, and driven Him on to death ? 
 What is it that has worn Him away, and tortured 
 Him ; and rent Him with scourges and nails and 
 thorns; and parched Him with thirst; and broken 
 His Heart ; and deluged the earth with His Blood, 
 if not the power of that love wherewith He loved us 
 in obedience to the New and Eternal Precept of the 
 New and Eternal Covenant, wherewith the Father 
 
344 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 
 
 Himself hath loved us, and hath willed that we 
 should love one another ? This is the passion, the 
 love which we commemorate; this is the theme of 
 our Eucharistic praise ; this is the love which we 
 pledge ourselves and strengthen ourselves to imitate 
 as often as we, being many, are made one bread 
 and one body by partaking of that one Bread. Let 
 a man prove himself, therefore ; and so, let him eat. 
 
IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 " Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
 " Or what's heaven for ? " 
 
 Browning. 
 
 An idealist, as here understood, is a man of ideals. 
 An ideal is more than an idea, in two ways at least ; 
 for it stands in some sense for the archetype from 
 which things are copied, and to which they ought 
 to be conformed, rather than for a mental image 
 derived from things as they are. The proper locus 
 of ideals is the Divine mind ; if they are in our 
 mind, it is thence we have borrowed them, and not 
 directly from experience. Again, an ideal is an 
 object of love no less than of thought. It is some- 
 thing whose contemplation rests, satisfies, delights 
 the mind ; and which the will longs to realize, and 
 make actual, wherever it should be realized and 
 made actual. For practical purposes of discussion, 
 it will be sufficient to say that " Idealism " is the 
 conception and the love of what ought to be; or 
 better still, it is the love of ideals, the aspiring after 
 perfection. 
 
 There are high ideals and low ideals, according 
 to the cast of various minds, and their greater or 
 less power of transcending experience and of rising 
 towards the spiritual and divine. And there are 
 
346 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 right and wrong ideals, according as the conception 
 is or is not duly founded in the nature of things- 
 A high ideal may be chimerical and impossible. It 
 may involve contradictions and absurdities, not 
 apparent to our limited view. " Not all that is 
 high is holy," says i Kempis, " nor is every desire 
 pure." That a man should live in unbroken, 
 conscious union with God here on earth, may be 
 ideal, but it is not possible or desirable in the 
 concrete. It is the state of angels and disembodied 
 spirits, but not of flesh-clad mortals. A society of 
 free agents in which every member should perform 
 his part faultlessly and perfectly, and in which no 
 energy or talent should be wasted or misapplied, 
 becomes more and more chimerical in proportion to 
 the number of its members, the complexity of its 
 organization, the multitude and difficulty of its aims. 
 Still, the "ideal" in such cases is not without its 
 use, provided it be recognized rather as determining 
 the direction of our efforts than as fixing a possible 
 goal. It is a term to approximate to indefinitely 
 without ever hoping to attain. Whereas were one 
 to aim not merely at the perfect subjection of the 
 flesh to the spirit, of the imagination to the reason, 
 of the emotions to the will, but at the complete 
 elimination of the lower in the interest of the 
 higher, such an ideal would be positively false and 
 wrong, since human perfection lies in an adjustment 
 and harmony of the two. And the same is to be 
 said of the relation of Nature to Grace, and of the 
 State to the Church, and of the members to the 
 head ; where a false idealism is very possible, very 
 
IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 347 
 
 frequent, very pernicious, fruitful in all manner 
 of fanaticism, and followed usually by a reaction 
 towards the opposite extreme. 
 
 A man may have an ideal for himself and for his 
 neighbour; for individuals, and for associations of 
 individuals. 
 
 With the first dawn of reason, conscience sets 
 before us some more or less vague and imperfect 
 notion of what we ourselves ought to be ; and the 
 unspoilt heart stirs itself to desire and realize this 
 ideal. In some ways it is as yet a crude and 
 childish ideal; especially as regards the remote 
 future ; even as the child's view of the world is 
 hazy, imaginative, and even grotesque as to all 
 outside the narrowest field of clear vision. It knows 
 what it is to be a good child to-day ; but it has no 
 idea what it is to be a good youth or a good man. 
 Conscience does not bewilder us with more light 
 than we need for present emergencies ; or terrify us 
 with burdens we cannot bear now. Sufficient to 
 the day is the evil thereof. When we follow its 
 light faithfully it leads us ever nearer to its source, 
 and therefore into clearer light. The ideal of the 
 conscientious man grows each day fuller, higher, 
 and more clearly defined, whereas he who violates 
 conscience, even if, from a desire to justify 
 himself, he does not, as usually happens, wilfully 
 pervert his moral judgment, at least ceases to 
 love, desire, and seek for further light. He knows 
 perhaps what he ought to be, and what he is not ; 
 but he has lost all love of his ideal. The light 
 remains in his mind, but it is powerless to kindle 
 
348 IDEALISM. ITS USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 his will ; and since a man is what he wills, such a 
 one is no longer an idealist. 
 
 As regards others, it is easier to retain one's 
 idealism, even as it is easier to lay burdens on other 
 men's shoulders than to touch them with one's own 
 finger. It is pleasant to prescribe a regime for 
 another, especially if we have power and authority 
 to force it upon him. An id«al is not realized and 
 born into the world without pain and travail; but 
 when the pain is to be borne by another, and not 
 by ourselves, the fear of it does not warp our 
 judgment nor thwart our will. When our neighbour 
 fails of his ideal, or rather of our ideal in his regard, 
 we are not so tempted to justify him at the expense 
 of truth, as we are to justify ourselves. Hence it 
 comes to pass that one who is by no means an 
 idealist in his own regard, may, like many a 
 reformer, be enthusiastically ideal in relation to 
 others, and may exhibit an apparently heroic 
 unselfishness and benevolence in seeking for others 
 those blessings on which he himself does not seem 
 to place very much value. 
 
 It may be, indeed, that retaining a very clear 
 idea of what people and institutions ought to be, a 
 man is simply too selfish, too indolent, too unsocial, 
 to care very much whether this ideal be realized or 
 not; it may be that through sourness, disappoint- 
 ment in self, or like motives, he may envy and 
 grudge to others any excellence that he himself has 
 not attained. But such a man is not an idealist, 
 because, as has been said, his will is not kindled by 
 his ideals. 
 
IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 349 
 
 When under the notion of a man's ideal, we 
 comprehend all that he thinks ought to be, not only 
 in himself, but in the whole moral world (where 
 alone " ought " has its full meaning), it is plain that 
 his ideal must, as long as he lives, be subject to a 
 continual process of modification, either for better 
 or for worse, or even for both under different 
 respects. It is no less plain that, however men's 
 ideals may agree as to certain simpler matters of 
 detail, the chance of their agreement grows smaller 
 as the matters become more numerous and com- 
 plicated ; so that in the comprehensive sense of the 
 word used above, no two men can have the same 
 ideal. They may agree as to the general end of 
 human life, as to the general nature of human 
 perfection, individual and social, but they will differ 
 when the picture is to be filled in m detail. Still 
 more will they differ as to the means through which 
 the end is to be effected, seeing that many divergent 
 paths may converge to the same centre. Wisdom, 
 therefore, no less than charity, demands great 
 hberality and toleration in regard to such differ- 
 ences. 
 
 There cannot be much divergence of opinion as 
 to the requirements of an ideal turnspit, but the 
 necessary qualifications of a perfect cook are matter 
 for endless dispute. And so, as we ascend upwards 
 from the simpler to the more complex, from the 
 shoeblack to the monarch, from the family to the 
 Church or State, our ideals become more disputable 
 as well as harder to realize. 
 
 Whence come our ideals? They are evidently 
 
350 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 not directly derived from those actualities and facts 
 with which they are always contrasted in our 
 thought. Yet they are undoubtedly suggested by 
 facts. It is as when we guess the mind of one 
 who stammers or expresses himself very imperfectly, 
 and put his thought into exact language. God is 
 everywhere striving to express the ideals of His 
 Divine mind through creatures, and if the limita- 
 tions of the physical world necessarily impede their 
 full utterance, still more does the pervertible free- 
 will of man mar the worthy expression of God's 
 moral attributes in human life. Yet there is always 
 some hint of the Divine intention from which we 
 can build up our ideal, as we can complete a curve 
 if we know the law of its formation. There is 
 nothing in nature perfectly straight or perfectly 
 circular, yet I have a clear and true notion of a 
 straight line and of a circle. From the perfection 
 of one feature, or one limb, or one characteristic, I 
 can put together a notion of perfect beauty and 
 grace and character, just as the palaeontologist can 
 ideally reconstruct an animal from the inspection of 
 a single bone or tooth. Were every member in a 
 society or a state to fulfil his office as faultlessly as 
 a certain few do, we should be presented with an 
 ideal society. Indeed, our notion of God Himself 
 is in some sense an ideal built on our experience of 
 limited and finite perfections. In fine, we may 
 say that all our ideals are from God, who strives 
 unceasingly to express Himself in our soul and as it 
 were to reproduce the conceptions of His infinite 
 mind in our finite mind • who, through the defective. 
 
IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 351 
 
 stammering language of creatures and of human 
 conduct, hints and suggests to our understanding 
 that perfection which He has created us to attain. 
 
 And it is because in a measure He depends on 
 our free co-operation for the reahzing of His ideals 
 and intentions with regard to human life, that He 
 makes us thus sharers in His aspirations, treating 
 us not as servants, but as friends. 
 
 Idealism is the motive power of all progress. 
 It is the want of something better just dangling 
 within our reach, which lures us on to exert our- 
 selves, only to find, when we have attained it, that 
 the satisfaction of one want gives birth to another, 
 and that of receding horizons there is no end. In 
 economics this " raising the standard of comfort " is 
 a necessary factor of progress in " comfort-produc- 
 tion," which, in a materialistic and gross-minded 
 age, is the ideal of national felicity. But whatever 
 the true ideal be, it is through dissatisfaction with 
 the present and the conception of a possible better- 
 ment that improvement is inaugurated. Christianity 
 bids men be content with a comparatively low 
 standard of physical comfort and of animal enjoy- 
 ment, with the simple sufficiencies of health and 
 strength, that their energies may be free for worthier 
 ends. It strives to make them dissatisfied with the 
 baser aesthetic, moral, and spiritual ideals, and to 
 raise their aspirations indefinitely towards the best, 
 and towards God. But in all cases alike, it is the 
 idealists who draw the laggard multitude after them 
 onward or upward, even as a man is slowly but surely 
 drawn after his own ideal, so long as he holds to it. 
 
352 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.. 
 
 It IS most important by all possible means to 
 kindle and foster, both in ourselves and in others, 
 this fire of idealism which is the source of all 
 spiritual energy ; and so much the more because 
 the world, the flesh, and the devil conspire m a 
 thousand ways to damp and extinguish it. " Blessed 
 are they that hunger and thirst after justice," is as 
 great a paradox as any of the beatitudes, it is as 
 diametrically opposed to the maxims of the world 
 as the blessing on poverty, or meekness, or purity. 
 The world solemnly warns us against idealism by 
 precept and example, and brings all its forces to the 
 work of lowering our ideals, blightmg our hopeful- 
 ness, perplexmg our faith, till the last spark of 
 enthusiasm has been smothered in the ashes of 
 despair. Fruamur bonis quce sunt, it says. " Enjoy 
 what you have, and while you have it. Don't be 
 ideal ; take life as you find it ; take yourself as you 
 find yourself; believe me, I have had experience,, 
 I too have had my youth with its golden dreams 
 and hopes; I too have chased the rainbow. Now 
 profit by me, and don't make yourself miserable 
 by chafing against the inevitable. Be average, if 
 you like, but don't be ideal." 
 
 What and who is this world whom we thus 
 personify, but the multitude of men which we come 
 in contact with taken collectively, with its average 
 opinions, views, sentiments, dispositions, modes of 
 action ? Everything about it is necessarily average 
 and not ideal. It acts upon us by the force of 
 universal and perpetual example; or if it formulates 
 its principles, its only accredited spokesmen are 
 
IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 333 
 
 those who represent the average mind and morality. 
 It is only by the presence of a few idealists here 
 and there, sprinkled through the multitude, that 
 the average is slightly and slowly raised, or at least 
 saved from sinking continually. They are the salt 
 of the earth, and the leaven of the mass. The ideal 
 and the average are deadly enemies, each trying to 
 destroy the other, though working by different 
 methods. A thousand idealists yield at last to the 
 pressure of example and are dragged down to the 
 level of the average, for one who resists and raises 
 the average by an infinitesimal fraction of a millimetre. 
 And what is true of the big world is true of every 
 little world or society ; the idealists are the few and 
 the unideal are the many, and between the two a 
 certain antagonism is inevitable. 
 
 In our tender years, when we are almost entirely 
 dependent on example and tradition for the forma- 
 tion of our mind and character, it fortunately 
 happens that our ideals are very elementary and 
 imperfect, and our powers of discernment feeble ; so 
 that we are able to look on our seniors with a 
 wondering worship as embodying and surpassing 
 our highest notions of wisdom, goodness, and 
 power; but day by day, as experience and reason 
 assert their sway and we begin to observe and 
 criticize, the support on which we lean fails us 
 inch by inch, until it comes home to us with dis- 
 agreeable clearness that if we are to stand high we 
 must so far be ready to stand with a few or even 
 alone, and that the more we depend on general 
 example the lower we shall have to fix our ideal 
 
 X 
 
354 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 It was a shock to us, and a rude withdrawal of a 
 trusted support, to find that those who were so 
 rigorous in precept, so severe in chastisement, could 
 be themselves so lamentably deficient in practice. 
 One by one our idols fell flat on their faces never to 
 rise again. New ones came to take their places for 
 a time, but only for a time. Layer by layer the 
 weakness and wickedness of the respectable average 
 world was uncovered and exposed to our view ; and 
 what we first regarded as painful exceptions came 
 to be recognized as general rules. 
 
 In the face of this gradual awakening, the con- 
 sequence is frequently an abandonment of our early 
 ideals and an acceptance of the standards of the 
 majority. For this we are prepared in most cases 
 by the failure to realize in ourselves that which 
 conscience set before us as attainable. At first we 
 rushed at the task with all the confidence of ignor- 
 ance and inexperience. We thought that to know 
 was to will ; that to will once was to will for ever : 
 that fervour was always at our command. We 
 knew nothing of the slow growth of laboriously 
 formed habits, of the irregularities of passion, of the 
 obscurations of the moral judgment, of the protean 
 diversities of temptation, of the burdensome mono- 
 tony of perseverance. And so we flung ourselves on 
 the task, to be flung back again and again, baffled, 
 discouraged, puzzled, sceptical, bitter. While we 
 still retained our belief in the majority, and regarded 
 our own case as one of exceptional weakness and 
 depravity, we were humbled in our own esteem by 
 our failures and stimulated to be, and to do, what so 
 
IDEALISM, ITS USB AND ABUSE. 355 
 
 many others seemed to be and to do. But when 
 our eyes were opened to the fact that in our weak- 
 ness we were with the many and not with the few, 
 this wholesome rebuke and encouragement was 
 withdrawn, and we were left to fall back largely on 
 the authority and sanctions of conscience and faith. 
 
 If, however, these highest and most imperish- 
 able motives were absent or undeveloped, if the 
 habits and opinions of others had secretly been our 
 one rule of conduct all along, then we were rather 
 relieved than distressed to find ourselves compassed 
 by so great a cloud of witnesses to the expediency 
 of an average rather than an ideal standard. We 
 stifled our conscience with a Securus judical orbis 
 terrarum, we accepted the world as the best practical 
 commentator on the Gospel, and we agreed that 
 however excellent truth, sincerity, honour, purity, 
 unselfishness, meekness, humility might be in the 
 abstract, yet there were necessary limitations in 
 practical life, and that one should not be extreme, 
 fanatical, or ideal. Thus we were restored to good 
 humour with ourselves and with our neighbour, and 
 found a certain negative peace, not in the satisfac- 
 tion, but in the extinction of our earlier aspirations. 
 
 This is precisely the scandal of which it is said, 
 "Woe to the world because of scandals! It must 
 needs be that scandals come ; but woe to him by 
 whom they come." That the world should be 
 average is in some sort a necessity ; and also that it 
 should by the force of its example exert a downward 
 drag on idealism. Under this aspect it is the enemy 
 of the better, and the enemy of God, and to be at 
 
356 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 peace with it is to be at war with God ; for it is to 
 cease to struggle upwards and onwards ; it is to let 
 go and drift down stream. It is the old story of 
 the conflict between the flesh and the spirit ; 
 between death and life ; between nature and grace. 
 In all cases alike, without resistance and conflict 
 there is no life or growth ; and the same lower 
 forces which rightly managed are serviceable and 
 helpful, become a cause of scandal and destruction 
 when they are yielded to and obeyed. Those who 
 resist the downward drag of the world and stand 
 out against it, are strengthened and raised in the 
 very exercise of resistance. If we can swim, the 
 water will support us ; if not, it will drown us. 
 It is, therefore, no easy or common thing to carry 
 our idealism through so many dangers unimpaired ; 
 so that our judgment shall not falter or recede from 
 its high thoughts or our will relax the firmness of 
 its purpose, for all the temptations that urge us to 
 accommodate ourselves to things as they are, rather 
 than to strive to accommodate things to our notion 
 of what they ought to be. 
 
 But useful and essential as idealism is, it is not 
 without its dangers. Of these we may notice first 
 a tendency to a false optimism with regard to our- 
 selves and to other things. For where we are hah 
 conscious of a distressing want of uniformity between 
 facts and ideals, we may either remedy the evil by 
 mending the facts, or we may get rid of the distress 
 by ignoring or forgetting them. A sanguine, indolent 
 disposition will be apt to believe too readily that its 
 ideals have been realized, and to take a complacent 
 
IDEALISM. ITS USE AND ABUSE. 357 
 
 view of things. It will refuse to face disagreeable 
 truths, or to risk any shock which would rudely 
 wake it from sweet dreams to sour realities. We 
 often find Church history or the lives of saints 
 written in this soothing a priori strain, taking for 
 granted that what ought to have been, must have 
 been. 
 
 But prejudicial as optimism may be to the truth, 
 it is never nearly so prejudicial as pessimism, the 
 child of narrowness and impatience of judgment. 
 
 Our ideals are sometimes absolutely and intrin- 
 sically chimerical ; sometimes chimerical under 
 existing conditions and circumstances. We often 
 want hills without valleys ; shade without sunshine ; 
 or else we want to run before we can walk ; to be 
 strong without exercise ; virtuous without tempta- 
 tion ; to know without learning ; to reap without 
 sowing. Above all, we are impatient and will 
 not wait for the slow processes of growth and 
 development. 
 
 From all this comes a readiness to condemn 
 rashly and freely and universally, in the case of 
 those who hold fast to their ideals and yet are too 
 much in earnest to wish to be deceived as to facts 
 or to live in a fool's paradise. In their anxiety to 
 be sincere they are unjust ; and wishing to be 
 impartial, they fly from one extreme of unfairness to 
 another. It is easier and simpler to pronounce 
 things utterly rotten, than to sift and measure the 
 true proportion of good and evil ; it is easier and 
 simpler to impute the evil to free and deliberate 
 fault, than to discern the fractional part which 
 
358 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 free-will plays from that which is played by neces- 
 sary conditions and inevitable limitations ; it is 
 easier and simpler to say that things are hopeless 
 and to do nothing, than to iind out remedies and to 
 apply them. Hence, also, a crude belief in violent 
 and radical remedies, in wholesale pulhng down and 
 destroying, as a needful preHminary to constructing, 
 and a disbelief in gradual and noiseless reformations 
 effected by observing and co-operating with those 
 forces in nature and man which are ever making for 
 right. When this temper of mind passes into the 
 will, it shows itself in the form of cynicism, bitter- 
 ness, uncharitableness in regard both to ourselves 
 and to others, and in a sour habit of destructive 
 criticism, which is ever blind, one-sided, and 
 untruthful. 
 
 This embitterment is one of the commonest 
 parasites of idealism ; for such as is our love of that 
 which ought to be, such will be our disdainful anger 
 and impatience with that which is, so far as they 
 are opposed one to another; unless, indeed, we 
 are partakers of a higher wisdom and a more 
 excellent way. 
 
 Of this way Christ is our example in His 
 relations to Israel, His chosen people, and to 
 Jerusalem, His chosen city — the people and the 
 city He had set apart to satisfy a Divine ideal. 
 The Sacred Scriptures are one unbroken record of 
 the resistance, active and passive, offered by that stiff- 
 necked nation to God's loving designs for its glory 
 and triumph. " Stiff-necked and uncircumcised of 
 heart and ear," says St. Stephen, "you are always 
 
IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 359 
 
 fighting against the Holy Ghost; as your fathers 
 did, so do you. Which of the prophets have 
 you not persecuted as your fathers did ? " God's 
 spirit and ideal was always striving to realize itself 
 in Israel, and striving in vain. In prophets and 
 saints and men of good-will it found unimpeded 
 utterance, and broke forth in warning, rebuke, and 
 exhortation. But time after time the irritated pride 
 of the mediocre, average multitude rose up in wrath 
 against the idealist and silenced him for ever. Last 
 of all, coming to them in His own Person, Christ 
 was received with distrust and hostility, as an 
 enemy of existing traditions ; and was cast out and 
 crucified. Surely if ever one had a right to be 
 bitter and pessimistic it was He. Yet His love for 
 His chosen people seemed to suffer no diminution 
 from first to last. " O Jerusalem, that killest the 
 prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, 
 how oft would I have gathered thee as a hen gathers 
 her chickens under her wing, but you would not ! " 
 These are the words of sorrow and disappointment, 
 if you will, but not of bitterness ; of grief, indeed, 
 but of a grief born of love. Again, little as our 
 Saviour could sympathize with the spirit and the 
 tactics of the rulers of Israel, fierce as was His 
 indignation against individuals and cliques, yet in 
 no way was His loyal reverence to the law diminished 
 in consequence of the unworthiness of its adminis- 
 trators or the perversity of its interpreters. Nay, it 
 was for His fidelity to the letter and spirit of the 
 law that He died excommunicate. 
 
 As He stood over the city and wept at the tragic 
 
36o IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 contrast between its present glory and its impending 
 ruin, when not one stone should be left upon 
 another, His thought was rather of that spiritual 
 ruin whereof the temporal was but the symbol ; He 
 wept, as so many of His servants and prophets had 
 wept, over a shattered ideal. We may well pause 
 and ask ourselves what there was in Jerusalem as it 
 then was, that the Heart of Christ still clung to. 
 Was it merely the ideal Jerusalem that He loved 
 and longed for; or was the existing perversion of 
 that ideal still dear to Him ? And the question has 
 more interest for us when we reflect that Jerusalem 
 is the type, not only of the Catholic Church, but of 
 every human soul which is by destiny a city of 
 peace, a spouse of Christ, a temple of the Living 
 God. For each soul God has His cherished ideal ; 
 an ideal in all cases (save one or two) more or less 
 disappointed ; in many, shattered beyond redemp- 
 tion; and yet while life endures, and until the instant 
 in which the soul steps by its last choice into its 
 unchanging condition, His love clings to it, follows 
 it, weeps and laments over it, and cries, " Oh, that 
 thou hadst known and hadst barkened," and, " How 
 oft would I have gathered thee, but thou would st 
 not ! " 
 
 In spite, then, of all her errors, sins, perversities, 
 apostasies, it was no abstract Jerusalem, but the 
 concrete assembly of the sons of Israel, which was 
 so dear to God and to His prophets. He loved her 
 as being the offspring and growing embodiment of 
 an ideal, as tending in virtue of her nature and 
 constitution towards the fulfilment of that ideal, 
 
IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 361 
 
 even as the soul which animates the child in the 
 womb strives to assert itself and clothe itself with 
 the matured body of perfect manhood. A thousand 
 circumstances may impede the work of develop- 
 ment ; but while there is life the imprisoned ideal is 
 there, striving to become real. Nay, rather, it is 
 the perfect realization in its infancy and weakness. 
 So it was with Jerusalem, the City of the Great 
 King, the dwelling-place of His Name ; so it is 
 with the Holy Catholic Church ; so it is with 
 the soul of every man. God loves the present 
 reality for what it is and for what it tends to be and 
 is capable of being. And the contrast between its 
 present lowliness and imperfection and that final 
 glory and greatness towards which it is borne by 
 the force of its nature, rouses a tender pity in the 
 Divine Heart, together with a fierce indignation 
 against those rebel wills of ours which thwart so fair 
 a growth. 
 
 Besides this, Jerusalem was (and is) dear to Christ 
 for the sake of the fruits it had already produced, 
 for the sake of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and 
 Joseph ; for the sake of Moses and the saints and 
 the prophets ; for the sake of legions of her children 
 whose names are unrecorded ; for the sake of the 
 continual incense of prayer, praise, and sacrifice 
 which had ascended from her altars through so 
 many centuries. Even had there been no vestige 
 of such fruit, what time our Lord wept over the 
 citj' } had she been then altogether a barren fig-tree, 
 yet it was the same tree which in other seasons had 
 yielded so rich a harvest, and which, in virtue of 
 
362 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 the vital principle within her, might yield a more 
 abundant harvest still. 
 
 It was for these reasons that He loved • and 
 reverenced that fallen Jerusalem as His Mother; 
 that He obeyed her law to the letter; that He 
 clung to her until she consummated her wickedness 
 by casting Him off. And in like manner He clings 
 to the human soul in general, and to each soul in 
 particular, until the treasure is wrenched with 
 violence from His wearied grasp. Long after we 
 have despaired of ourselves, and after the saints and 
 angels, nay, after the Mother of God herself has 
 despaired of us. He, " faithful and true," clings to 
 us still, hoping while a spark of life is left. 
 
 Since, then. He is the sovereign and holiest rule 
 of all right judgment and affection, it is in viewing 
 things with His eyes that we shall find clear insight 
 and peace of mind. From Him we learn to hold 
 unfalteringly to our best and highest ideals of what 
 things ought to be, and yet not to be embittered 
 by the sad contrast often presented by things as 
 they are. 
 
 In the light of His example let us ask ourselves 
 what, for instance, would be the right attitude of 
 mind for one living in the midst of the most extreme 
 ecclesiastical corruption, such as may have prevailed 
 here and there at the time of the sixteenth century 
 revolt, or such as does now and then prevail where 
 the usurpations and interferences of the secular 
 power sever the local Church from free and 
 healthful connection with the main body of Catholic 
 Christendom, and impede the full effects of her 
 
IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 363 
 
 discipline. Let us, for the saice of argument, make 
 things about as bad as they can be — and that is 
 very bad. 
 
 The fact that the tainted and rotten members, 
 who are the principal agents of this corruption, 
 should break away from ecclesiastical unity, and 
 seek an independence favourable to their love of 
 licence, that they should sell themselves to the 
 secular power of Egypt for the sake of the flesh- 
 pots, the leeks and the garlic, is altogether natural 
 and reasonable. But a revolt led by such men 
 could not live long for lack of that species veri and 
 plausibility which can be lent to it only by the 
 accession of seemingly gcod and moral men of strict 
 and regular life, who have turned in disgust from 
 patent wickedness in high places, and have joined 
 themselves to what seems to them a movement of 
 reform. More often, indeed, the reform movement 
 is actually initiated by these men, and from these 
 motives ; and when so initiated, is at once utilized 
 by the baser sort for their own baser ends. On the 
 other hand, the corruption, which to many is a cause 
 of ruin and scandal, is an occasion of strength and 
 resurrection to not a few whose faith is proved and 
 whose love and hope are deepened by holding out 
 against the downv/ard drag of universal example. 
 Hence, as the richest flowers often grow from the 
 foulest refuse, so the greatest saints have shone out 
 in the darkest nights of the Church's history. 
 
 What, then, should be the attitude of mind of a 
 good Catholic Christian under such painful circum- 
 stances as we are imagining ? Is he bound in any 
 
364 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 sense to love, reverence, and obey the concrete 
 Church in which he finds himself? or will it suffice 
 that he retain a love and reverence for the ideal, 
 giving birth and strength to a hatred and detestation 
 of the contrasted reality? There can be but one 
 answer. Terrible as is the evil and perversion, yet 
 that which is thus perverted and degraded is by 
 organic continuity a part of the body founded by 
 Jesus Christ, a branch of that tree which He 
 planted, and watered with His Blood. While it 
 keeps the Catholic faith, and is as yet unsevered 
 from the centre of unity, it retains its vital principle 
 and root of recovery, even as does the most degraded 
 and fallen Catholic who still clings to the faith of 
 his baptism. It has that in its very nature which 
 tends, in due conditions, to the realization of the 
 Divine ideal of the Spouse of Christ. It is part of 
 the same body of which Christ is the Head, and of 
 which Mary, with all the apostles, martyrs, con- 
 fessors, virgins, and holy souls on earth and in 
 Heaven, are members. That wild beasts have 
 preyed upon it and devoured it may fill us with just 
 indignation against those through whose fault such 
 corruption has come about ; but for the body itself 
 our sentiments should only be those of Christ when 
 He wept over Jerusalem — sentiments of sorrow and 
 anguish, born of an unalterable love and affection. 
 Where one has both the power and Divine com- 
 mission to act, and to apply remedies, one is bound 
 to move heaven and earth in the cause of God ; but 
 where one is povverless or unauthorized one can but 
 stand by helpless with Mary at the side of the 
 
IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 363 
 
 Cross and pray. Bonuni est prcestolari cum silentio 
 salutare Dei — " It is good to wait in silence for the 
 salvation of God." Ten thousand are strong enough 
 to draw the sword with Simon Peter, and to rush 
 into the midst of Christ's enemies hacking and 
 hewing right and left, for one who has the strength 
 to wait and be silent. Doubtless there is a silence 
 and an expectation, which only means apathy or 
 indifference, or timidity, where there is nothing to 
 suppress and therefore no self-suppression ; or there 
 is the silence of the fatalist. But apart from such 
 cases it is the weak man who gives way to violence 
 in speech and action ; whose first impulse is revolu- 
 tion, rebellion, secession ; it is the strong man who 
 keeps silence and waits and hopes and obeys. They 
 that take the sword, be it the sword of the tongue 
 or the sword of steel, perish by the sword ; violence 
 defeats itself; but the meek possess the earth 
 because they are the really strong, and because 
 they husband those energies which the passionate 
 squander in fruitless impulsiveness. Theirs is the 
 violence which takes the Kingdom of Heaven by 
 storm. 
 
 Secession, when it is not a work of malice, is the 
 child of crude thought and moral cowardice. It is 
 to fly from a temptation which it is our duty to face 
 and to conquer ; the temptation of scandal, of seeing 
 ourselves deprived of the support of public example 
 and edification, and left in comparative isolation as 
 idealists and dreamers. It is the act of a soldier 
 who deserts, lest he should be involved in the defeat 
 of his regiment which he foresees, or share the 
 
366 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 suspicion of iiaving failed in his duty ; or is it the 
 act of a son who denies and disowns the mother 
 that bore him, lest he should be partaker in her 
 disgrace ? It is, therefore, shirking the conse- 
 quences of our contract of membership, which 
 requires that we should be willing to share evil 
 things no less than good things in common with 
 others; and which holds, hke the marriage-bond, 
 " for richer, for poorer ; for better, for worse ; in 
 sickness, or in health ; till death us do part." 
 
 Little as we may like it, we are of necessity social 
 beings, and our life and lot is bound up with the 
 life and lot of others, whose burdens we have to 
 bear even as they have to bear ours. We may 
 secede from the Church because of scandals, lest we 
 should be rated according to the average of its 
 public, but we cannot secede from our membership 
 with the human family, or disown our ineffably 
 close brotherhood with the erring multitudes of our 
 Father's children. If we isolate ourselves from the 
 multitudes, we isolate ourselves from God. 
 
 But if the weak no less than the wicked fall 
 away in such crises, the strong stand firm and by 
 resistance become stronger ; and the love that holds 
 them back strikes root yet deeper in their hearts ; 
 even as true affection is called forth in its highest 
 form by the afflictions, needs, sorrows, and sins of 
 those we love. However their hands be tied through 
 lack of the ability or the authority to correct others, 
 they know well that the perfection of the multitude 
 depends chiefly on the perfection of its component 
 units, and that no change of regimen, no legislation 
 
WEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 367 
 
 will bring any remedy unless there be virtue and 
 probity in those who administer it and in those 
 who submit to it. Until each member is imbued 
 with the true ideal of the whole, at least in outline, 
 and is zealous for its realization in preference to all 
 isolated and private interests, there will always be 
 the disorders and diseases that spring from selfish- 
 ness and pride. This, therefore, is the first and 
 most essential work — the intellectual and moral 
 betterment of individuals one by one — a work 
 effected often quietly and noiselessly ; at first very 
 slowly, one here and there ; then with geometrically 
 increasing rapidity as each torch becomes a new 
 centre for the dissemination of light and heat ; and 
 the whole face and tone of a community is changed, 
 we know not how. For it is with growth as with 
 decay; more depends on individuals than on 
 systems ; and men are led by their affections rather 
 than by principles ; by example and fashion rather 
 than by theories and views. 
 
 This being so, there is no question as to the 
 immediate task which it is in every true reformer's 
 power to apply himself to vigorously, namely, the 
 task of self-reformation ; and this not in an exclusive, 
 self-regarding spirit, as though, in despair of the 
 republic, one had cynically resolved to live for one's 
 own highest good, and let the world go its way ; but 
 in a spirit of true, universal apostolic charity, clearly 
 recognizing that this is the nearest, the surest, the 
 most imperative way to help others; and subordinat- 
 ing one's own self-care as a means to that nobler 
 and greater end. " First, keep yourself in peace, 
 
368 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 and then you will be able to bring peace to others ; 
 first be zealous about yourself, and then you will 
 have some right to be zealous about your neighbour " 
 — Tene te prima in pace et tunc poteris alios pacificare. 
 Habe prima zelum super teipsum, et tunc juste zelare 
 poteris etiam proximuni tuum. This is indeed no easy 
 task, and the very attempt will teach a man to be 
 more patient with others. " If you cannot make 
 yourself what you fain would be, how can you force 
 others to be as you would have them ? " No man 
 is fit to teach others with any effect who has not 
 learnt what he is teaching by experience. He can 
 give directions learnt from a book, he can deal in 
 phrases, but phrases they are and nothing more. 
 We do not deny the utility of such repeating- 
 machines, which is precisely the utility of a book : 
 but it is nothing comparable to the animating 
 influence of one who has himself first tried and 
 failed ; and then tried and succeeded. This is the 
 secret of a Kempis' Imitation or of Augustine's 
 Confessions, and of the words of saints as contrasted 
 with the words of scribes. 
 
 Speaking now in general of the way in which we 
 should meet such difficulties and seeming scandals, 
 whether universal or local, whether in the Church 
 or in the State, or in particular institutions sub- 
 ordinated to the one or to the other, the first 
 question we are bound to ask ourselves is : Are 
 things really as bad as they seem ? Before we 
 attempt to solve the problem, let us be quite 
 sure that it exists. There is such a thing as 
 subjective colouring; and to the jaundiced eye all 
 
IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 369- 
 
 things are yellow. It cannot be denied that the 
 prophetic regime and mode of life, with its austerity 
 and solitude, its introspection and reflection, its 
 concentration on one only aspect of things, may 
 tend to dehumanize and pervert the judgment ; 
 and prophets, whether of the study or of the cell, 
 would often keep their spiritual vision all the keener 
 and clearer for an occasional day in the country. 
 Like round numbers, or sweeping statements and 
 generalities, extreme views, whether optimist or 
 pessimist, are much simpler ; when we have neither 
 the abihty, nor the justice, nor the patience requisite 
 for exact measurements, it saves a deal of trouble 
 to include all things under a general anathema. 
 Moreover, the appeal to sensation is not without its 
 attraction. Mediocrity is uninteresting to contem- 
 plate, but extremes are thrilling. Again, it is just 
 possible that the particular ideal which we are 
 pleased to regard as the sole measure of what ought 
 to be, may be but one of many alternatives, all 
 equally good. It may be indifferent whether a 
 man carries out his chief end in life as a doctor, 
 or a lawyer, or as a merchant ; and so of a 
 government, or an institution, or an order, there 
 may be paths indifferently converging to the same 
 centre. All is not lost because the end is reached 
 by some path I had not fixed on or dreamt of. 
 Often our pessimistic estimate of facts has no 
 other reason than this, that our own ideas have 
 not been preferred to others equally good or 
 better. A Tory will never allow that the country 
 is prospering under a Radical Government ; nor 
 
 Y 
 
370 IDEALISM, ITS USB AND ABUSE. 
 
 will a Radical Opposition be more generous in its 
 turn. 
 
 If, however, there is still a heavy residue of evils 
 that refuse to be resolved into phantasms of the 
 imagination, the next question is as to what pro- 
 portion of them is due to wilful malice, and what to 
 inevitable circumstances and limitations over which 
 even the Almighty has no control. Without weaken- 
 ing our belief in the existence of free-will, our self- 
 experience and our experience of life tends ever to 
 narrow the sphere in which free-will has action, and 
 to make us see that the ocean of apparent iniquity 
 which deluges the world owes far less to sin, far 
 more to circumstances, than we had ever thought. 
 Our early judgments are as a rule narrow and 
 severe ; and they become gentler and wider in exact 
 proportion to our experience and reflection. 
 
 It would be well, for this reason, to consider that 
 the end which a society or institution proposes to 
 itself is sometimes very high and very complex, 
 depending on a great number of individuals being 
 each ideal in his own department; and on the 
 exact balance of a very dehcate organization, easily 
 disturbed by the defection of even one member. 
 A society for the manufacture of match-boxes or 
 broom-sticks can be very easily organized. The 
 gifts needed for membership are common and well- 
 nigh universal. The stimulus to co-operation and 
 labour is tangible, and one that appeals to the 
 universal instinct of acquisition. Little marvel if 
 such a society prospers ; if it abounds in individuals 
 who arrive at the highest degree of skill in their 
 
IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 371 
 
 profession ; if all the members co-operate cordially 
 each for his own interest ; or if there is little 
 diversity of judgment as to the best mode of 
 production. 
 
 If we turn, for example, to the Army, or the 
 Navy, or the Civil Service, the end in view is much 
 more complex, especially in the last. Still, the 
 killing of men and the battering of ships — the proxi- 
 mate end of the first two — is a fairly simple end, 
 however intricate the machinery brought to bear 
 upon it. The gifts required for such a service are 
 not so very rare. The motives in most cases are 
 simply worldly advancement and a good position ; 
 and were these insufficient to secure faithful service, 
 the sanction of very tangible penalties is at hand to 
 supplement their weakness. Nor has the Govern- 
 ment to go begging for recruits, but has only to pick 
 and choose the best from the eager crowds that are 
 pressing into its service from all quarters of the 
 empire. With these we may contrast the high and 
 difficult end which the Church (to take the extremest 
 example) sets before her, a work to be wrought 
 upon the minds and hearts of men, of her own 
 subjects and of those to whom they minister. Even 
 were she only occupied with the secular education 
 of youth, how difficult and complex are the problems 
 suggested by that task, how far from solution, even 
 in these days of pretended enlightenment ; and how 
 few are the men with the requisite learning, how 
 still fewer those with the more requisite skill to 
 form the minds of the young ! But if in addition to 
 this she aims at the moral and spiritual education 
 
372 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 of all, young and old, and at other ends even more 
 public and universal, the difficulty becomes indefi- 
 nitely greater. What sort of men ought not they to 
 be who would minister to the very highest good and 
 happiness of humanity ; what almost impossible 
 combinations of gifts and graces are needed ! How 
 scarce even the raw material fit to be shaped for 
 such purposes ! how easily spoilt in the shaping ! 
 And then the motives which draw men to work for 
 religion or spiritual ends, if they are higher, yet 
 being invisible, supernatural, distant, they appeal 
 to a smaller number, and to those, comparatively 
 feebly. We must take men as we find them. It is 
 only in our exceptional states of vivid faith and 
 spiritual exaltation that the supernatural tells on us 
 effectively and intensely, whereas temporal self- 
 interest, the love of gain and reputation, act upon 
 all men at all times. Men of the world have at all 
 times found cheap and abundant material for caustic 
 satire in the ludicrous contrast between the profes- 
 sion and practice of those who aim at higher and 
 more spiritual standards. They forget how easy it 
 is to be consistent in sliding downhill ; how hard, in 
 clambering up. When there is no struggle, there is 
 no cause for weariness and failure ; nor need he fear 
 a fall who Hes flat on the earth. As the height 
 aspired to is more exalted, so will the percentage of 
 those who fail in their attempt to reach it be 
 greater; and the failure itself be more lamentable 
 and disastrous. Many a fallen priest would have 
 made a respectable layman, or at least would never 
 have fallen so low ; and the rottenness of a Catholic 
 
IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 373 
 
 country is worse perhaps than that of a Protestant. 
 For in these cases the forces disorganized are 
 stronger, and the Hght sinned against, clearer. 
 
 The success of a rehgious society Hke the Church 
 depends ultimately on the extent to which its several 
 members are imbued with and possessed by the 
 spirit and enthusiasm of its founder, and this spirit 
 is difficult to enkindle, and more difficult to sustain. 
 We have Gospel-warrant for saying that the children 
 of the world are wiser, more watchful, more energetic 
 in their interests than the children of God. In a 
 way it must be so with mortal man ; with this 
 mixture of spiritual and animal, where the lower 
 ■element is so often preponderant. The higher 
 element in us is the feebler, and our whole task in 
 life is to develop it laboriously and slowly. It is 
 easy to be enthusiastic and successful in the things 
 of the body; but hard in things of the soul. Just 
 then as our self-experience convicts us of being 
 subject to this law of sin in our own individual life, 
 so we should expect to find it in the world around 
 us. God's work will be done slothfuUy, meanly, 
 unsuccessfully, while temporal interests will be 
 sharply looked to. Those who enter the active 
 service of the Church are not chosen by competitive 
 examination from a crush of eager candidates ; they 
 have no salary which can be forfeited ; nor can they 
 be coerced to the'r duty by physical force or fear. 
 All depends on spiritual fervour and intelligent 
 spontaneity. Often, moreover, the public from which 
 in particular localities the Church has to draw her 
 recruits, is a very small one, and yet the work to be 
 
374 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 done is extensive and diversified. The harvest is 
 great, b it the labourers are few. It therefore becomes 
 necessar / to accept as labourers many who are very 
 imperfectly qualified for the work, for sheer lack of 
 hands. 
 
 Finally, so far as the Church's work brings her 
 into relation with the world, the rapid changes in 
 her environment may demand continual adaptations 
 and modifications, which are hard to effect con- 
 sistently with the ancient traditions of a vvorld-wide 
 and necessarily centralized institution which moves 
 slowly because of its very bulk. 
 
 These and a thousand similar reasons ought to 
 convince us that much of our dissatisfaction is rather 
 with circumstances than with persons; in a word, 
 our quarrel is with Almighty God, and with the 
 finite nature of things. 
 
 If, after eliminating what is due to these im- 
 personal causes, we still find matter for blame and 
 censure, it remains for us to ask whether there may 
 not be much excuse for such wilful faults as we 
 seem to have detected ; humanmn est errare, and 
 perhaps a little self-knowledge would dispose us not 
 to he altogether surprised, if here and there others 
 misuse the liberty that we ourselves so often misuse. 
 
 If we ever expected, we never had a right ta 
 expect to find an ideal state of things in this world. 
 The Church of the Saints is one in which men 
 profess to tend to sanctity, not to have attained it. 
 We are not scandalized at the inefficiency of a 
 hospital because we find that all the occupants of 
 the beds are more or less sick and disabled. We 
 
IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 375 
 
 only require that they should for the most part be 
 on the road to recovery ; or at least under medical 
 treatment. 
 
 This world is not the place where we are to look 
 for the ideal. Here and there little glimpses of it 
 are given us to whet our appetite for higher things, 
 and to lead us from dissatisfaction to dissatisfaction, 
 and thence to a desire for the great archetype of all 
 ideals, in whom at last and alone the Real and the 
 Ideal are identified 
 
DISCOURAGEMENT. 
 
 " Great is the facile conqueror, 
 Yet haply he who wounded sore, 
 Breathless, unhorsed, all covered o'er 
 
 With blood and sweat. 
 Sinks foiled, but fighting evermore 
 Is greater yet." 
 
 Watson. 
 
 The young and the inebriate, according to 
 Aquinas, have it in common that they abound in 
 hope ; that is, so far as hope is classed among the 
 emotions or passions enumerated by Aristotle. The 
 reason in both cases is to be found in their inability 
 to estimate the difficulties to be encountered, and 
 the limits of their own powers and resources — an 
 ignorance due to inexperience in the one case, to 
 alcoholic influence in the other. Obviously this is 
 to be accounted foolhardiness rather than courage — 
 the body and semblance of hope without its soul 
 and substance. For hope as a virtue of the intelli- 
 gence, and spiritual will is no blind optimism, but a 
 confidence that faces the cruelest facts, unmoved, 
 undismayed. Ultimately it is grounded in an 
 unshaken faith as to the eventual victory of truth 
 over error, of right over wrong, of good (that is, oi 
 God) over evil. Its noblest opportunity is when 
 the manner of that victory is most obscure and the 
 
DISCOURAGEMENT. 377 
 
 odds against it most overwhelming. So far as its 
 object is the triumph of God in our own soul, a 
 triumph which depends upon the grace of God and 
 upon our own co-operation therewith, hope excludes 
 certainty; for though God is faithful, our will is 
 incalculably mutable, as we have learnt by past 
 experience. Yet hope requires that we should 
 consider our salvation, not merely possible, but as 
 most probable — nay, practically, though not intellec- 
 tually, certain ; and that the consciousness that we 
 are " working out our salvation with fear and 
 trembling" should itself allay that deeper fear which 
 drives peace from the heart. We cannot be as 
 certain of salvation as we are of to-morrow's 
 sunrise ; but it is not enough to hope for it only as 
 for to-morrow's sunrise, which may be or may not 
 be — who can tell ? Rather, it should be as we hope 
 for summer and autumn in due season, with a hope 
 which ignores the scarce appreciable possibility of 
 disappointment. 
 
 But on what is such hope grounded, since God's 
 fidelity to His promise of needful grace is abso- 
 lutely certain — a matter of faith rather than hope ; 
 while our own co-operation depends on the freaks 
 of a will whose past history should incline us rather 
 towards despair ? 
 
 It is, however, from a closer study of our past 
 that we draw sustenance for hope, since there 
 we see how in all His dealings with us God is not 
 only just and faithful, but better than His word, 
 giving more and far more than He had promised. 
 Day by day uncovenanted graces have been rained 
 
378 DISCOURAGEMENT. 
 
 upon US, and it is chiefly through them that we are 
 what we are ; " it is the mercy of God that we have 
 not been consumed " and cast away for our sms. 
 And though we know not the measure or the law 
 of these quickening showers, we know that in some 
 sense they are without measure; that it is only 
 those who wilfully presume upon them that forfeit 
 the right to hope in them ; while the very hoping 
 in them, without presumption, almost merits and 
 demands them. 
 
 If hope's counterfeit is easy when we are young, 
 when we still think that to know right is to will 
 right ; and that to will once is to will for ever ; 
 hope's reality is hard when we are older, when we 
 have learnt the wide difference between these things, 
 when time after time we have been beaten back 
 almost to the very starting-point, and when the 
 distant hills of our early ideals look further and 
 more inaccessible than ever; still more, when 
 from knowledge of ourselves and of others this 
 defeat of our hopes is felt to be the result of almost 
 natural causes, whether working in our own nature 
 or in the nature of things around us. " Was not 
 ignorance," we ask, " the ignorance of an untaught 
 mind, stranger to the notion of law, confident in the 
 omnipotence of free-will, the parent of our crude 
 hopes ? Is it not ruthless knowledge, bitter experi- 
 ence, that has strangled them ? " Our first repent- 
 ances and recoveries are easy and hopeful, for we 
 know not how sin has injured us and poisoned our 
 will; our next, more difficult, less hopeful; and so 
 of the successive efforts, until at last the strongest 
 
DISCOURAGEMENT. 379. 
 
 Stimulus can elicit from us no more than some 
 sluggish response like faint stirring of a hfe flicker- 
 ing out. 
 
 Then it is that the lethargy of discouragement 
 supervenes ; and if a process of rapid decay does 
 not follow at once, if the soul remains in static quo, 
 sulky and sullen, it is only because lethargy is not 
 death ; because the discouragement is not absolute ; 
 because there is still, unperceived save by God, a 
 feeble pulse of hope which fights against death and 
 despair. 
 
 This lethargy and state of supine inaction is 
 often falsely confounded with that tepidity or half- 
 heartedness which characterizes those caitiff souls 
 which Heaven cannot stomach and even Hell 
 disgorges. But the lukewarm, from the very little- 
 ness of his heart and paltriness of his ideals, is all 
 self-satisfied; he winks inwardly for that he has 
 made a sharp bargain with Heaven and has skirted 
 the edge of Hell without slipping in. Discourage- 
 ment, on the other hand, is never self-satisfied ; it is 
 the parasite of idealism. " Woman, why weepest 
 thou ? whom seekest thou ? They have taken away 
 my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him." 
 The discouraged soul sits weeping and disconsolate 
 by the empty tomb of its hopes, bearing in its hand 
 the evidence of its good-will in the idle spikenard 
 and aloes ready for service and worship. It weeps 
 for what it loves, for what it deems itself to have 
 lost, and its comforter is never far, though hard to- 
 see through blinding tears. 
 
 But although discouragement or despondency 
 
38o DISCOURAGEMENT. 
 
 has none of malice and offence of tepidity, and 
 although it implies good desires and high aspira- 
 tions, still it is in itself something evil, the base 
 progeny of truth and lie. It is known by its fruit — 
 remissness and heavy listlessness, and perhaps a 
 certain desperation and recklessness from which 
 ruin may quickly result. Like a viper whose bite 
 is death, it cannot be shaken off too soon. 
 
 Largely it is the child of ignorance ; ignorance, 
 that is, of the common psychological laws which 
 govern the formation of the human mind and will. 
 Homo es et non angelus, says k Kempis — " Thou art 
 a man, not an angel;" yet we are ever impatient 
 and wrathful with the limitations of this poor soul 
 of ours, in which the highest of the animal order 
 weds with the very lowest of the spiritual order. 
 There are forms of sense-life so low that we can 
 scarce distinguish them from vegetation ; and so we 
 might fancy God's angels puzzled for clear evidence 
 ■of man's spirituality, yet because we can know very 
 little and that with great labour, our wounded vanity 
 spurns all knowledge with a Quid est Veritas ? and 
 because virtue is slow and difficult of growth we 
 lose patience with it and throw the task aside in 
 anger. We cry out upon God : " Why hast Thou 
 made me thus ? " 
 
 Some conjecture, not unreasonably, that as the 
 angelic inteUigence, unencumbered by bodily con- 
 ditions which would tie its movement down to time 
 and space, is full-formed and enlightened in the 
 first instant of its being ; so, too, and for the same 
 reason, its moral self-formation is effected, once and 
 
DISCOURAGEMENT. 381. 
 
 for all in the first exercise of its free choice. There 
 is not, as with us, room for after-thought and 
 repentance. Light breaks upon us slowly, and God 
 presents Himself to our choice and love under a 
 thousand partial aspects before our trial is ended 
 and death seals our changeless doom. But in the 
 angels, seemingly, virtue is not the fruit of repeated 
 acts and elections and trials, but of one full 
 exhaustive choice, one fearful purgatorial instant, 
 one fiery trial in which self-love is to be wrenched 
 out by the roots and burnt up in the flame of Divine 
 charity. 
 
 But because we would be angels and not men, 
 because we expect more of ourselves than God 
 expects of us, because our pride revolts against the 
 necessary limitations of humanity, we fall into 
 sullen discouragement and since we cannot be all, 
 and do all, and have all, we will be nothing, and do 
 nothing, and have nothing, but will sit with knees 
 relaxed and idly hanging hands. 
 
 Humiliating as it may be, yet we must accept 
 the fact that it is the nature of man to learn through 
 blundering, through making every possible mistake 
 before the right method is discovered. We know 
 it, whether as teachers or learners, in the acquisition 
 of any art, or skill, or science, where we graduate 
 our exercises so as to deal first with one then with 
 another of the innumerable ways of going wrong- 
 Again, we do not think it enough to have over- 
 come the same difficulty once, but we repeat and 
 repeat, till conquest has become a habit, and 
 only then do we turn our attention to some other 
 
382 DISCO URA CEMENT. 
 
 enemy. By practice alone can any sort of skill be 
 created, maintained, and increased ; and so it is 
 with that moral skill we call virtue. It seems to 
 isome that they are deluding themselves, that they 
 cannot be sincere in their resolves, because they 
 are morally certain that they will fall again. In 
 other words, they think a habit can be created by 
 one act. Supernaturally it might be so, were the 
 act one of intense and fervid love melting and 
 moulding the soul in an instant — such a purgatorial 
 act as that by which the angels fix their unchanging 
 state ; but ordinarily and naturally it is not so ; and 
 as one learning to draw, or to write, or to play, 
 desires in all sincerity to succeed and not to blunder, 
 and yet is morally certain that blunder he will and 
 must, and that many and many a time; so it is 
 with regard to the uprooting of any evil habit or 
 the acquisition of any good habit. We are not 
 insincere because we are certain we shall fall again, 
 if only at the present moment we do not want to 
 fall and lament the prospective fall, and are resolved 
 not to cease endeavouring in spite of a thousand 
 falls. For this is what perseverance means for us 
 mortals — not an unbroken record of victories, but a 
 dogged purpose of going on though we should 
 stumble at every step; and of this it is said, 
 that "he that shall persevere to the end shall be 
 saved." 
 
 This very saying contains a thought which on 
 the whole makes for encouragement rather than 
 discouragement, and is well worth developing. For 
 it implies that in His judgment of us God looks not 
 
DISCOURAGEMENT. 383 
 
 to the success, but to the endeavour; not to what we 
 have attained, but what we would attain. The 
 Samaritans would have nothing to do with our Lord 
 because " His face was set as though He would go 
 to Jerusalem ; " not because He was in Jerusalem, 
 but because He was as good as there, for He was 
 there in will and purpose and firm resolve. And 
 the world, in like manner, counts those lost to its 
 own cause, and won to God's, whose face is set to 
 go to Jerusalem, the city of peace. In this, as in 
 many other things, the world's instinct and intuition 
 is right, for God, too, takes the will for the deed. 
 We are what we will. He who sincerely wills (that 
 is, loves) purity and patience, or faith, or any other 
 virtue, already possesses it as to its most essential 
 and inward part ; for all human virtue is primarily 
 of the will. That it should pass beyond the will 
 and embody itself in our outward conduct, in those 
 faculties subject to the will ; that we should be pure 
 and brave and patient, not merely in sincere resolve, 
 but also effectually in our words and actions, belongs 
 to the integrity of the virtue ; it is the body of the 
 virtue, but not its soul. The soul is the principle 
 of life, which slowly draws to itself apt matter from 
 the environment and weaves it gradually and 
 laboriously into a body meet for its own service 
 and self-manifestation. The soul can live without 
 the body, but the body without the soul is dead. 
 And so it is with the soul and body of virtue ; with 
 the purpose and the attainment. 
 
 In this we are not countenancing "indifferentism " 
 in morals, or approving the maxim, that it matters 
 
384 DISCOURAGEMENT. 
 
 not what we do so long as we mean well. Because 
 it matters less, it does not cease to matter very 
 greatly ; nor can any one who thinks it matters 
 little be really said to "mean well." To "mean 
 well" is to be sincerely resolved to procure the 
 entire reformation and perfection of our conduct, so- 
 that the "body" of our spiritual and moral life shall 
 be the exactest possible expression of the " soul." 
 To mean the truth and yet to lie in ignorance is far 
 better than to mean a lie and yet blunder upon the 
 truth. But no one sincerely means the truth who 
 speaks at random on the supposition that a material 
 lie is of no consequence whatever. 
 
 Again, when we say God takes the will for the 
 deed, we are not speaking of mere "velleity," but of 
 what is called " efficacious " will, not because it 
 actually effects its desire, or succeeds in its purpose, 
 but because the failure is through no lack of will. 
 A close prisoner may have a most efficacious will 
 to escape. Stone walls and iron bars prevent his 
 will from taking effect ; but let these be removed, 
 and the impeded force of his resolve at once becomes 
 effectual. A " velleity " is not a resolve that actually 
 exists in the soul, but one which would exist were it 
 not excluded by some incompatible resolve. I want 
 to possess a certain book, but I am not willing to 
 pay the price, though I could do so. In short, I like 
 the book but I prefer the money ; and the resolve to 
 keep my money excludes the resolve to get the 
 book. I do not actually will to have it, but I would 
 will to have it, were it not for this other will. 
 Similarly a man may will patience or purity and 
 
DISCOURAGEMENT. 385 
 
 fail to realize it, either because he could pay the 
 price but is unwilling, or because, being quite ready 
 to pay the price, he has not got it to pay, but must 
 toil and labour and economize, and perhaps die, 
 before he can effect his purpose. The former will 
 is mere "velleity " — a will that might be, but is not — 
 the latter is that "efficacious " will which God accepts 
 for the deed. 
 
 Yet even the "velleity," though insufficient, is 
 good ; it is a spark of heavenly fire which can be 
 fanned into a flame ; or it is the light which God 
 holds to the lamp of our heart that it may catch 
 fire and make that light its own. But it is not 
 enough to sit down with exiled Israel by the waters 
 of Babylon and to remember Jerusalem in the midst 
 of our tears ; it is not enough to sit with the prodigal 
 in rags and misery dreaming of the home we have 
 lost through our folly and madness ; we must arise 
 and go ; we must set our faces firmly towards 
 Jerusalem, resolved to tread the weary way, albeit 
 stumbling at every step, or even perishing on the 
 road with our vow unaccomplished. This is an 
 "efficacious" will, though outwardly it were to effect 
 nothing, but were to fall back dead in the very 
 effort to arise. In that instant watchful Love would 
 be at our side from afar to bear us home in triumph 
 to the "haven of our desire." Thus it was that 
 Christ went forth, " knowing all things that were to 
 come upon Him," to pass through Passion and 
 Death to the bosom of the Father, to the haven of 
 His desire, with His face set towards that Heavenly 
 Jerusalem. Posui faciem meam, He says, quasi petram 
 z 
 
386 DISCOURAGEMENT. 
 
 durissimam — " I have set my face as it were a hard 
 rock, firmly, immutably resolved to go through to 
 the bitter end. 
 
 Man, says the Holy Ghost, looks at the outside 
 of an action, considers the appearance • God looks 
 at the heart, at the substance and soul of the act at 
 the set of the will. Nor is this said to man's blame, 
 since the surface is all his faculties enable him to 
 take cognizance of; but it is to warn him off God's 
 preserves, to remind him that he knows nothing or 
 as good as nothing of the reality of his neighbour's 
 conduct, that is, of the motive and merit. In our 
 judgment of human conduct, of the relative merits 
 and goodness of men, we must be agnostics and 
 positivists ; we must keep ourselves to the obser- 
 vation and record of what appears, and relegate 
 motives and merits to the region of the unknown 
 and unknowable. Much as God cares for the recti- 
 tude of our outward conduct, yet the "goodness" 
 of men as such, that which makes a man good, 
 is simply and only the goodness of his will. 
 As he may be a good statesman or soldier or 
 scholar or citizen without being a good man ; 
 so, too, he may possess natural or acquired moral 
 perfections without being really a good man, or 
 as good as another who lacks all such ethical 
 adornments. The penitent in the first instant of 
 his sorrow when, with all his vices and evil habits 
 still clinging to him like rags, he rises and sets his 
 face towards Jerusalem, may be before God a better 
 man than one whose moral propriety is the fruit of 
 happy temperament, of careful education, of easy 
 
DISCOURAGEMENT. 387 
 
 and graceful surroundings, of immunity from tempta- 
 tion. These facilities and natural graces are of 
 •course compatible with the highest heroism of good- 
 will, but they must not be confounded with it. The 
 cripple may be able to stand without his crutch, but 
 it is hard to tell till it is taken away. Here at least 
 we can say : " Behold we know not anything." We 
 see two men struggling for life in the angry surf, 
 one sure of victory, the other of defeat; yet who 
 shall say that the will to live is stronger in the 
 former than in the latter; or that it may not be 
 precisely the reverse. And so God looks on ship- 
 wrecked humanity struggling for salvation against 
 lust and anger and sloth and weakness and all the 
 powers of evil, and where we see defeat He often 
 sees victory, for the will that is the least effectual is 
 sometimes the most " efficacious " and earnest. 
 We are safe in saying: "This man has fallen ten 
 times, the other a hundred times." But God may 
 know that the former fell at every temptation on 
 every occasion ; while the latter resisted a thousand 
 temptations for the hundred he yielded to. Not 
 till we enter into the secret of a man's will, not till 
 we know all the antecedents of his life, the precise 
 measure of his knowledge and understanding, the 
 exact condition of every nerve and muscle, the lie 
 and correlation of all the cells of his brain, the 
 composition and heat of his blood, in fine, the 
 infinity of conditions under which he acts, can we 
 venture in our criticism of his action beyond a 
 " positivist " statement of what is external and 
 apparent. Human society rightly demands that we 
 
388 DISCOURAGEMENT. 
 
 should compare and treat men as good or evil in 
 the hght of their outward behaviour, and legislates- 
 to secure the outward act while careless about 
 good-will save as a means to that end ; but we must 
 remember that this is after all a " legal " estimate 
 belonging to the forum externum of public opinion,. 
 and is no guide to the ranking of guests at God's 
 table, where good-will is everything. " When thou- 
 art invited," says Christ, " sit down in the lowest 
 place ; " that is, be on the safe side and rank 
 yourself last before God, since you have absolutely 
 no certain grounds for a more flattering supposition. 
 " It will do you no harm," says k Kempis, " to place 
 yourself last of all. It will harm you much ta 
 prefer yourself even to the least." 
 
 By introspection we can in some measure know 
 ourselves absolutely, but not relatively as compared 
 with others. We can be certain of much infidelity 
 to grace, of repeated falls and backslidings, of 
 habitual half-heartedness, of great need of God's 
 indulgent patience and mercy ; but when we would 
 contrast ourselves favourably with Sodom and 
 Gomorrah, or Tyre and Sidon, let us withhold our 
 judgment, on the Divine assurance that it will be 
 more tolerable for them in the Day of Judgment 
 than for Corozain and Bethsaida and Capharnaum ;. 
 and let us forbear to "judge before the time." The 
 only thing that God has told us of the issue of that 
 day should seal our lips: "The last," He says,, 
 "shall be first, and the first last; " all our conjectures- 
 and anticipations shall be confounded and set at 
 naught. 
 
DISCOURAGEMENT. 3S9 
 
 But will not God judge men by their works, and 
 not by their aspirations and wishes ? Is not Hell 
 paved with good intentions? With inefficacious 
 intentions, yes ; with " velleities " never brought to 
 the birth, never shaped into resolutions and deter- 
 minations. The works of man, like his nature, are 
 -compounded of inward and outward ; and the 
 inward is principal. It is by the acts or works of 
 our will we are saved and judged ; nor do outward 
 acts or works count for aught save as quickened by 
 the inward act ; while the latter can subsist alone, 
 where the former are impeded or distorted. 
 
 God, therefore, looks to what a man would be 
 at, to the direction in which his face is set, to the 
 sincerity of his endeavours and struggles ; and not 
 to where he is on the road, or to the extent of his 
 success. 
 
 In all this there is contained both warning and 
 encouragement ; warning against any disposition 
 to usurp God's prerogative of judging men's hearts 
 by comparing them with ourselves or with one 
 another in regard to the internal goodness of their 
 will ; encouragement against a too depressing view 
 of ourselves or of the world at large. Deluged as 
 the world is with every kind of moral disorder and 
 irregularity of conduct, deplorable as such a state 
 of things is to those who have God's Kingdom and 
 glory at heart, yet it may well be that the worst 
 evil of all, the internal evil of the will, is in no way 
 coextensive with that outward material evil which is 
 apparent. 
 
 Again, in estimating the effect of the sacraments 
 
39° DISCOURAGEMENT. 
 
 and means of grace upon ourselves and others,, we 
 are often surprised to see so little fruit just because 
 we do not know what to look for. It is in the 
 maintenance and increase of good desires and 
 purposes that grace is directly perceptible, and not 
 always in the effectual and speedy correction of 
 outward conduct. If we find ourselves as resolved 
 as ever, and more so, to go on fighting and correcting 
 ourselves ; if our faults displease us even more 
 vehemently, then, even though they resist our 
 efforts time after time, we are really progressing, or 
 at least we are not going back. Nay, even though 
 instead of making head against the current we are 
 carried down stream, it may be because the current 
 is stronger, and not because we are struggling less. 
 Had we not gone on struggling where should we be 
 now; how much worse should we be than we 
 actually are ? 
 
 He, then, that shall persevere to the end shall be 
 saved, he whose face is ever set towards the goal,, 
 who if the fixed eye of his intention blink an- 
 instant through frailty or heaviness, recovers himself 
 promptly, without discouragement to begin again. 
 
 Perseverance does not imply one vehement act 
 of resolve followed by an unbroken record of steady 
 progress ; it is not so that habits are formed ; but 
 by alternations and oscillatory movements, as when 
 the tide creeps slowly in with rhythmic ebb and 
 flow till all the sand is covered ; or as when a fire 
 is fed with fuel and blazes up and then burns low 
 and must be fed anew; or as when a little dog 
 follows his master, now lagging behind to be 
 
DISCOURAGEMENT. 391 
 
 whistled to heel, now running ahead to be recalled 
 again, and at last reaches home having travelled the 
 distance many times over. There is a Hke ebb and 
 flow in the tide of our spiritual progress ; there are 
 times of renewal and fervour followed by times of 
 chill and slackness ; now we are lingering behind 
 our Divine Master, now racing ahead ; discouraged 
 one moment, overconfident the next. Yet if we but 
 persevere, we shall in the long run reach home, 
 breathless and weary through our own folly, with 
 graces innumerable wasted and squandered, but 
 through the mercy of God — safe. 
 
 It is this humiliating but natural inconstancy of 
 the human will that we have to recognize calmly 
 and reckon with. " Were man but constant," 
 could he but fix and perpetuate his nobler moods 
 by a single act of will, " he were perfect." It is 
 only by slowly inducing good habits that we can 
 counteract this natural limitation, and cause a sort 
 of artificial constancy, and this can only be effected 
 through perseverance, of which discouragement is the 
 great enemy. Discouragement is always surprised 
 and resentful as the law of our moral growth makes 
 itself felt in repeated failures and blunders. It 
 makes new resolves only as long as it can do so 
 with a belief that there is never to be another 
 relapse ; and when self-experience makes this belief 
 no longer possible, it ceases to resolve. It does not 
 know that perseverance means a dogged purpose ot 
 beginning again and again until a habit is formed. 
 " Forgetting the things that are behind, and 
 hastening to those which are before, I press forward 
 
392 DISCOURAGEMENT. 
 
 to the mark," says St. Paul. A child's first effort 
 to rise and walk is followed instantly by a fall, and 
 this by a few brief tears; and then the fall is 
 forgotten and the effort repeated. Were the child 
 capable of memory and of a false prudence, it would 
 never try again, but taught by Nature's wisdom it 
 learns after many falls to stand, to walk, to run 
 about ; and so if after a brief act of sorrow we profit 
 by our experience and rise at once to begin again, 
 our falls will do us good instead of harm, and we 
 shall learn, not only to walk, but to run in the way 
 of God's commandments. 
 
 Nor does any wise, loving mother stand by and 
 watch the efforts of her little one with such tender- 
 ness and carefulness as God watches us as we 
 struggle and fall again and again — ever at hand to 
 raise us up and console us and encourage us to 
 begin afresh. What folly and mistaken kindness 
 it would be were the mother never to allow her 
 babe to risk the pain of a fall, but to carry it always 
 in her bosom, God knows that there is no other 
 way for us to learn but by experience, that pain and 
 failure instruct and stimulate us. It is not when 
 the pupil's hand is held and guided by the teacher 
 and kept faithful to the headline that he learns and 
 progresses, but when he is left at liberty to struggle 
 alone. Doubtless there is an excess of liberty that 
 tempts us beyond what we are able, and calls for 
 more strength and skill than is yet even latent in 
 us ; but it is the part of the wise educator to 
 graduate his lessons, to see that we get enough 
 liberty to help us and not enough to harm us. So 
 
DISCOURAGEMENT. 393 
 
 it is that God schools us by carefully adjusted trials 
 and temptations and failures, that we may learn to 
 become self-guiding, self-supporting, with that right 
 independence which is the special dignity of free, 
 intelligent creatures, masters of their own destiny — 
 saving always the assistance of Divine grace, which 
 is to us food, light, and air. In the order of grace 
 as of nature, all evolution is the work of difficulty 
 and opposition, — a truth verified by the common 
 observation that the greatest saints have arisen in 
 the corruptest ages. It is by temptation that God 
 draws out all that is best in us, according to a law 
 which may well be as necessary as the Divine 
 Nature itself. 
 
 But in truth we have no business to look for so 
 steady and even a progress as some of the foregoing 
 illustrations might seem to imply. For there are 
 disturbing conditions in ourselves and outside us 
 which make it difficult to judge our advance save 
 by the state of our interior will. It is only in the 
 will-habit that we have a right to look for smooth, 
 steady progress, and even there it is very difficult to 
 gauge it. Were all the objective and subjective 
 conditions precisely the same, we might reasonably 
 expect to see a steady improvement in our outward 
 conduct; but except in the very simplest matters 
 this is never the case. It is not usually more 
 difficult one day than another to say grace at meals 
 or to perform some little exterior devotion ; but it is 
 not at all the same with regard to patience or keeping 
 one's temper ; for here much depends on the state 
 of our nerves, on our weariness or freshness, our 
 
394 DISCOURAGEMENT. 
 
 power of attention and self-control, and still more 
 on the quite incalculable frequency of the occasions 
 of victory or failure that may present themselves, 
 so that often our seeming worst days are really our 
 best, and vice versa; and when, as far as outward 
 conduct goes, we are apparently relapsing, it is often 
 then that the inward acts are most multiplied and 
 the will-habit most strengthened and the advance 
 most real. It is, in fact, almost as rash to judge 
 ourselves by our outward conduct as it is to judge 
 others. We may, indeed, judge ourselves by the 
 attitude and set of our will, but of this we must not 
 too readily take our conduct as an index. " Know 
 thyself" is doubtless a precept of the highest 
 wisdom ; but as there is no folly like fancied self- 
 knowledge, so perhaps he is the wisest of all who 
 knows that he does not know himself, but has learnt 
 to say with St. Peter : " Lord, Thou knowest all 
 things." 
 
 Again, we must remember that habits are formed 
 rapidly or slowly according as they favour or oppose 
 our natural bent. It does not follow that because 
 an evil habit is contracted in a month that it can be 
 cured in a month ; nor because a good habit has 
 been formed after years that it cannot be uprooted 
 in a week. Also, of good habits, some are more 
 opposed to our inclination than others, and therefore 
 take longer to form. 
 
 Once more, if we are really faithfully struggling 
 after better things, it cannot but be that our 
 standard of perfection and holiness will insensibly 
 be raised higher and higher as we come to know 
 
DISCOURAGEMENT. 395 
 
 more of the spirit of Christ and His saints ; while 
 at the same time a growing self-knowledge reveals 
 to us a thousand weaknesses which we were uncon- 
 scious of when we first addressed ourselves to the 
 closer service of God. Hence we necessarily will 
 seem to be much further from our ideals than when 
 we first set out to reach them ; though, in truth, we 
 are far nearer in virtue of a truer conception, a 
 deeper and older love of the Divine will, a profounder 
 knowledge, a dislike of our own shortcomings. The 
 beginner in every art, and the novice in the art of 
 Divine love, flushed with his first successes, is far 
 better pleased with himself than the skilled pro- 
 ficient ; he is far nearer in imagination to the 
 attainment of his ambitions. It should also be 
 remembered that a plant at first shoots up quickly 
 while all its energies are concentrated on the pro- 
 duction of a single stalk, but more slowly when they 
 are dissipated among the many branches which it 
 afterwards puts forth, until a stage is reached when 
 growth is imperceptible; or again, that a stream 
 runs rapidly and forcibly while its waters are 
 confined to one narrow channel, but loiters as it 
 spreads out and shows a wider front. At first our 
 efforts and attention are bestowed on the simpler 
 and more fundamental requirements of the spiritual 
 life, but later on we find new tasks branching out 
 before us on the right hand and the left. We 
 cannot then expect to advance as rapidly in twenty 
 simultaneous undertakings as in one. 
 
 From all these considerations it seems to follow, 
 that the perseverance or constancy which we have 
 
396 DISCOURAGEMENT. 
 
 to aim at is a certain constancy of the will, a 
 purpose of never giving up through discouragement, 
 but of going on with a sort of spider-like persistency, 
 patiently and promptly beginning again as often as 
 the silken thread we have spun is snapped by one 
 mishap or another. God will look less to the length 
 we have accomplished than to the length we have 
 designed to accomplish ; nor will these painful, 
 reiterated beginnings go unrewarded, unless faith 
 and hope and courage and clinging love are without 
 value in His eyes. " C'est qu'en aucune chose, 
 peut-etre," says Guizot, "il n'est donne a I'homme 
 d'arriver au but ; sa gloire est d'y marcher." " He 
 that shall persevere to the end," whom the hour of 
 death shall find still struggling to gain the height, 
 albeit beginning at the base for the thousandth 
 time, he "shall be saved," and God in one purga- 
 torial pang will perfect the unfinished task and 
 will bring the storm-tossed, weary soul " to the 
 haven of its desire." 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 " For as the body is one, and hath many members ; and 
 d.11 the members of the body whereas they are many, yet are 
 one body, so also is Christ. And the eye cannot say to the 
 hand : I need not thy help ; nor again the head to the feet : 
 I have no need of you." — i Cor. xii. 12, 21. 
 
 The prominence given to the notion of the Church 
 is notoriously characteristic of CathoHc and his- 
 torical Christianity, and distinguishes it from those 
 many schools and Christian congregations which 
 are called Churches in a widely different sense, 
 and which professedly repudiate the Catholic's 
 conception of the Church as they do his conception 
 of priesthood and sacrifice, albeit retaining the 
 terms with a modified signification. 
 
 It is not possible to define one idea truly, that 
 is, to draw a line round it, without excluding false 
 definitions ; or to prove one position without 
 disproving the contradictory. Still our present 
 purpose is not to plead a cause, as it were, in 
 the presence of inquirers or of opponents, but for 
 our own pleasure and contemplation to set out in 
 order our thoughts on so vast and complex a 
 theme ; to advance ourselves some little way 
 towards a better apprehension of the "idea" of 
 the Church, an idea which no one mind can hope 
 
398 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 to embrace in its entirety. We comprehend and 
 exhaust nothing that is not simply the creature 
 of our own brain — abstractions, forms, figures, 
 generalizations ; but when we come to concrete 
 reahties, to the works of God's hands,, we know 
 nothmg, not the simple atomic creature, through 
 and through, but at most, from this corner and 
 from that ; now under one aspect, now under 
 another. If it is so of the dust of the earth, still 
 more is it so of man made indeed from the dust, 
 yet a world in himself were he but mere animal, a 
 fathomless universe since he is also spiritual, and 
 "little lower than the angels." Who then shall 
 weigh and measure and sum up in vain words the 
 " idea " of Him who is at once God and man, or the 
 idea of that mystic Body, human and divine, earthly 
 and heavenly. His Bride, the Catholic Church ? 
 
 Were she but a society of man's making, a mere 
 constitution and government imposed upon the 
 Christian people that "all things might be done 
 decently and in order," then indeed man's mind 
 could quickly reach from end to end of its own 
 creation; there would be nothing harder or more 
 mysterious in the idea of the Church, than of any 
 other polity ecclesiastical or civil ; there would be 
 no room for growth or progress in our knowledge 
 of her nature. We might expect our forefathers 
 who had framed that polity to have grasped the 
 conception, not only as clearly, but more clearly 
 than ourselves. But in the study of God's works 
 natural and supernatural, we never near the end ; 
 our knowledge ever puts forth new branches, which 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 399 
 
 in their turn branch out again, and these again, till 
 we are lost and bewildered at the mazes which 
 eternity alone will give us leisure to traverse. In 
 these matters, in the study of realities, we can grow 
 wiser than our elders, taught by the accumulated 
 wisdom and experience of ages, transmitted from 
 generation to generation. 
 
 Every Christian body or society, by the very 
 fact that it is a body, admits the existence and 
 the need of a Church in some sense of the word ; 
 nor is it ever disputed that Christ Himself approved, 
 counselled, and commanded the association of His 
 followers into some sort of external society ; though 
 the nature and meaning of that command is 
 interpreted differently. The point in which the 
 Catholic interpretation differs so markedly from 
 all others, is the mediatorial character which it 
 ascribes to the Church as an institution through 
 which, and through which alone, the soul can be 
 united to God. The good Catholic thinks and 
 speaks of the Church as his spiritual Mother from 
 whom his soul derives its supernatural life, by whom 
 it is fed, nourished, healed, chastened, corrected, 
 whom he is bound to love, reverence, and obey. 
 Her name is ever on his lips and in his heart. 
 We should think it strange to hear a Nonconformist 
 speaking of " Holy Mother Church," for he has no 
 thought which answers to the phrase, though he 
 too believes in a Church otherwise conceived. It 
 is precisely this exaltation of the Church to th^ 
 side of Christ, her identification with Christ, that 
 he quarrels with, the ascription to her of that 
 
40O THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 mediatorial office which is the prerogative of Him 
 alone, of whom it is said : " There is one God and 
 one Mediator between God and man, the man 
 Christ Jesus." 
 
 But what is mediatorship ? For indeed it is 
 very doubtful if even those who vindicate it so 
 earnestly for our Blessed Lord as His exclusive 
 prerogative are altogether clear on the point. 
 Evidently it is some kind of "going between" 
 God and man, a drawing together of those who 
 were sundered and estranged. As God-Man, Christ 
 has the interests of God and of man at heart ; and 
 in Him creation and the Creator are linked in one 
 personality. He is thus by nature fitted as none 
 other for the office of go-between or mediator, and 
 for the effecting of that union or atonement which 
 is its end. 
 
 But it is just here when we try to deter- 
 mine the nature of that union, and the mode 
 of its production, that two totally different con- 
 ceptions of mediation present themselves ; so that 
 while all Christians call Christ their mediator, 
 Catholics alone use the word in a sense which forbids 
 its application to any other than to Him ; whereas 
 others, relying upon the text just quoted, refuse to 
 apply it to creatures in a sense in which it may 
 nevertheless be most rightly applied to them. For 
 indeed every creature that helps us in any way to 
 know or love or serve God better, is to be numbered 
 among the means of salvation, and so far mediates 
 between the soul and God. We do not see God 
 face to face yet, but must climb up to His throne 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 401 
 
 from His footstool, to Heaven from earth, by means 
 of the ladder of creation which bridges the other- 
 wise impassable gulf. Still more, our fel!ow-men 
 here on earth, in so far as they help, us, instruct us, 
 train us, pray for us, and are in a thousand ways 
 instrumental in our salvation, are truly mediators 
 between our souls and God, and not only occasion) 
 but to some extent effect, that union by a ministry 
 of reconciliation. It is not then wonderful that 
 Catholics who believe that " the effectual fervent 
 prayer of a just man availeth much," should ascribe 
 a still greater efficacy to the prayers of the saints in 
 Heaven, and speak of them as " mediators " and 
 " intercessors." 
 
 But such mediation as this is only a form of 
 ministry or service. The thing or person who 
 ministers or serves is thereby, or at least therein, 
 subordinated to the person servedv. " Who is 
 greater, he that sitteth at meat or he that serveth ? " 
 Christ came into our midst as one that served, and 
 abased Himself at our feet in the abject humility 
 of love ; and this manner of mediation he not only 
 allowed to all His disciples, but enjoined upon 
 them : " I have given you an example ... If I, 
 your Lord and Master, wash your feet, much more 
 ought ye to wash one another's feet." So far as 
 Christ came to enlighten us by word and example, 
 to minister help to our souls and bodies, to promote 
 effectively our union with God, He was truly a 
 mediator, and the first of mediators, but not the 
 sole mediator, not the sole means of our salva- 
 tion. 
 
 AA 
 
402 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 But besides this ministerial mediation, there is 
 another which for lack of a better term we might 
 call " magisterial ; " for in the exercise thereof the 
 mediator is not abased, but exalted above him 
 in whose behalf he mediates; he does not simply 
 effect and produce direct union of the soul with God, 
 and then stand aside having finished his service of 
 mercy; but he is himself the link through which 
 the soul is bound to God, standing as it were 
 between the soul and God. He is not as a gardener 
 who grafts the branch into the stock, and thereby 
 gives it life, but He is Himself the stock into which 
 the graft is set and through which it draws life 
 from mother earth, one and the same life quickening 
 both. " I am the vine," says Christ, " and you are 
 the branches." 
 
 When Catholics say that Christ is the one and 
 only mediator between God and man, that through 
 Him alone we have access to the Father, that He 
 alone is the door of the sheepfold, that no man 
 Cometh to the Father but by Him, they are speaking 
 of this "magisterial" mediation, often so dimly 
 understood outside the Church. They mean that 
 no mere creature however holy or exalted can 
 be directly and immediately united to God so as 
 to be a sharer of the divine life and beatitude ; but 
 must first be united to Christ so as to make with 
 Him one thing, one body, one moral personality, 
 which "one thing," is united to God and receives 
 His quickening grace. They mean to deny any 
 separate or independent union with God, apart 
 from Him who is the one channel of eternal life. 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 403 
 
 But where faith in the Divinity of Christ is 
 clouded, and the purport of the Incarnation ill 
 taught and ill apprehended, there is a danger of 
 altogether ignoring this "magisterial" mediation 
 of Christ, of regarding Him as merely the first of 
 prophets, teachers, philanthropists, martyrs; by 
 reason of His Divinity, infinite in dignity, infinite 
 in power and wisdom, but still exercising only the 
 same sort of ministerial mediation as they, though 
 on a vastly extended scale. But salvation through 
 Christ means salvation by incorporation with 
 Christ, the sharing with Him of a gift of which 
 we are incapable in our isolation ; a gift which is 
 indivisible, too great for our single soul to grasp 
 or contain, except so far as, in union with Christ 
 and with hands locked in His, it is strengthened to 
 bear the burden. 
 
 No one will quarrel with us perhaps for con- 
 ceiving the Church as a mediator in the ministerial 
 sense of the term ; for whether she be of human or 
 Divine origin, she is evidently, under God, one of 
 the principal means for the salvation of souls, in 
 that she carries on the ministry of Christ, dis- 
 seminates His teaching, applies the fruits of His 
 Passion to the healing of the nations. When the 
 Nonconformist repudiates sacerdotalism, it is not 
 because it involves such mediation as this ; for he 
 himself is tolerant of such intervention on the part 
 of his own ministers. Indeed he tolerates far more 
 than any Catholic would endure ; for he leaves it 
 to the mood and caprice of his pastor, to determine 
 on each occasion the substance of the public prayers, 
 
404 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 SO that those present are wilhng to be represented 
 before God as sad or joyful, as penitential or 
 triumphant, as needing these graces rather than 
 others, all according to the passing phases of the 
 minister's own soul, and are ready to say Amen to 
 whatever may come into his head. Also they are 
 willing to listen patiently to his private interpreta- 
 tion of the word of God, and to accept it unless it 
 manifestly disagrees with their own ; they to a 
 large extent trust him and allow their minds to be 
 formed by him in doctrinal and religious questions. 
 In a word, he is not merely their delegate before 
 God, but their representative ; his mediation is not 
 passive, as his who repeats by rote the words 
 entrusted to him by another; but rather active as 
 of one to whom we commit our will and judgment.^ 
 The Catholic priest, on the other hand, is but the 
 Church's delegate. Every word that he utters at 
 the altar, nay, every little gesture and intonation 
 is prescribed for him by the Christian republic not 
 merely of to-day, but of the ages past ; and even 
 though the setting be his own, yet the doctrine that 
 he sets forth in the pulpit is not his own but that 
 
 1 Cf. the plea for " Common Prayer " quoted by Walton's 
 " Piscator " : 
 
 But he that unto others leads the way 
 In public prayer, 
 Should do it so 
 As all that hear may know 
 They need not fear 
 To tune their hearts unto his tongue and say, 
 Amen ; not doubt they were betrayed 
 To blaspheme when they meant to have prayed. 
 
 (Compleat Angley.) 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 405 
 
 of the Church who has sent him, whose mouthpiece 
 he is. Were he a reprobate or an unbehever, he 
 might be guilty of sacrilege in preaching and 
 praying, but not of insincerity or hypocrisy, since 
 he is understood to speak not in his own name but 
 in the Church's. The very vestments in which she 
 blots out his personality when he approaches the 
 altar, are an indication of her desire that in his 
 official work he should put off himself and should 
 put on the Church. We do not for a moment deny 
 that the individual will break through and assert 
 himself in spite of all precautions; that he, and 
 still more his followers and admirers, will often put 
 the man before the priest. But wherever this 
 tendency prevails, whether in the popular preacher 
 or the popular confessor; in the ministry of the 
 word or in that of the sacraments; whether by 
 the intrusion of merely personal views and opinions 
 into priestly teaching and direction, or by the sub- 
 stitution of personal tastes and fancies in place of 
 the established liturgical observances of the Church, 
 it is always felt to be uncatholic, an alien element 
 hostile to that liberty from individual tyranny which 
 the Church secures for her children. 
 
 It is not then the notion of instrumental or 
 ministerial mediatorship which the Nonconformist 
 objects to associating with his conception of the 
 Church ; but rather that of a mediatorship such as 
 we have already declared to be the exclusive pre- 
 rogative of Christ. " Exclusive," because for the 
 Catholic, Christ and the Church are not two, but 
 one, as head and body are one, as husband and 
 
4o6 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 wife are one, two in one flesh. The vine is not all 
 stem, nor all branches, but stem and branches 
 together; and the Church is not all Head, nor all 
 members, but the two together are one Christ and 
 one Church, one mediator between God and man^; 
 for she is the fulness, the complement, the extension 
 of Christ, as the branches are the extension of the 
 vine. 
 
 Thus all that we said of Christ's magisterial 
 mediation is to be understood of Christ in His 
 fulness, Christ and His Church ; through the Church 
 alone we have access to the Father ; no man comes 
 to the Father but through her. She is the imme- 
 diate, the only adequate recipient of that grace 
 which flows into each single soul that is united to 
 her ; she, too, is the recipient of that Eternal Life 
 hereafter, which single souls share only because 
 they are built into her fabric. We are not united to 
 God singly and independently as rays which converge 
 to a common centre and yet do not touch one 
 another on the road, but we are first knit together 
 into one living organic body under the Man Christ 
 as our Head, and then with Him and through Him 
 united to the very Godhead, whose life and beati- 
 tude flows down to the least and furthest member 
 of that living thing. 
 
 The happiness which the Christian looks forward 
 to hereafter is not that of his own personal triumph 
 over evil, of his own satisfaction in the realization 
 of his highest and best capacities ; but it is that 
 of the triumph of God's cause for which he has 
 lived and laboured, recognizing himself as but an 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 407 
 
 instrument directed by reason and conscience to 
 ends greater than personal, and but dimly conceived 
 by himself; it is, by consequence, the happiness 
 of the triumph of all those who with himself are 
 sharers in the victory wrought by the right hand of 
 God. The very terminology which speaks of the 
 "Church militant" and the "Church triumphant" 
 tells us of a collective and corporate joy. He is no 
 true knight who fights but for his own skin, who 
 triumphs only because he leaves the conflict scath- 
 less and rich with his own share of the booty ; but 
 rather he, whose solitary joy is all swallowed up and 
 forgotten in the common joy of his prince and his 
 country and his fellow-knights. For as the soul 
 is not received and possessed by any one part or 
 member of the organism but only by the whole; 
 so that to which God gives Himself and unites 
 Himself in glory, is no one soul, but all souls 
 clustered round Christ into one hving body. Nor 
 is it a " common " beatitude, a "common " treasure, 
 in the sense that all enjoy the same, albeit inde- 
 pendently, as they do who gather round the same 
 fire, each feeling its warmth neither more nor less 
 for that many or few feel it together; but it is 
 "common" because it is a rejoicing in the joy of 
 others, and is therefore greater as there are more 
 to participate in it. 
 
 For such a happiness and salvation as this, 
 incorporation is plainly an absolute necessity; 
 " outside the Church or outside Christ there is no 
 salvation," becomes a truism as soon as we under- 
 stand the nature of the salvation in question. 
 
4o8 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 It must be admitted that this mediatorial con- 
 ception of the Church, this notion of corporate 
 sanctification and salvation is not only subtle and 
 strange to modern minds of the prevalent type, 
 but also manifestly uncongenial to some of the 
 governing ideas which gave birth to Protestantism 
 in the sixteenth century, — ideas which had from 
 the very first been lurking here and there in the 
 pages of many a saintly mystic and illuminist more 
 happy in the enjoyment of Divine union than in 
 his analysis and exposition of that state and its 
 conditions. " I and my God," " My Beloved is mine 
 and I am His " — these, as the spontaneous self- 
 utterances of contemplative love, cannot be mis- 
 understood ; but curious speculation may give them 
 an "excluding" sense savouring of a certain pride 
 and independence, of an indifference, nay, even a 
 sort of contempt for others, whom nevertheless God 
 has identified with Himself, and apart from whom 
 He cannot and will not be approached. To go to 
 God alone, to deal with Him immediately, to be 
 taught by Him privately and directly, to link our- 
 selves with no other when we draw near to Him, 
 to stand or fall by ourselves, to account our fellow- 
 Christians in this matter as simply among those 
 creatures which are subordinated to us as helps and 
 ministers, but in no wise as making one body with 
 us ; to view them as co-operators for a gain 
 "common" in a sense, but of which each takes 
 his share, nor gains in the gain of another, this is 
 the leading notion of what we might call a false 
 individualism in religion. 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 409 
 
 False as a fact, not because the idea is intrin- 
 sically absurd in any way. God most certainly 
 might have created each soul to be a sepa- 
 rate little world, a church in itself, to be taught 
 and sanctified and saved independently, and not 
 merely as part of a body ; and there is much prima 
 facie evidence to favour such a supposition. Even 
 the Catholic religion teaches that each soul is the 
 Church in epitome; that the first and absolutely 
 indispensable care of each man must be for his own 
 sanctification, which he may not sacrifice or injure, 
 however slightly, were it for the salvation of the 
 whole race. Nor is the Protestant conception 
 essentially selfish and egoistic, however inadequate 
 and defective. For it regards all souls as destined 
 to be united hereafter in God as rays are united in 
 their common centre, while here on earth they are 
 bound together by the ties of friendship and equality 
 as those engaged in the same profession or pursuit, 
 whose interest and pleasure it is to help one another; 
 or as fellow-travellers on the road making for the 
 same country, where, however, each has his own 
 home and private interest, which will not suffer 
 were all his companions to drop by the way. Yet 
 the Church, in contrast to the Catholic view, is 
 conceived simply as the aggregation of souls, as a 
 multitude of units in no way organized or inter- 
 dependent, nor is a love of the common good to 
 which each member ministers best by its own 
 perfection, the motive which makes self-care and self- 
 culture a supreme duty, but rather an implicit con- 
 viction that it is only the surplus and overflow of 
 
410 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 our rational self-love that is due to our neighbour, 
 since each man is regarded as a world and a church 
 in himself, not in an analogical and defective sense, 
 but in the fullest and most literal. It is the unit, 
 and not, as with Catholics, the body, which is the 
 archetype and exemplar. 
 
 When we say that our salvation not merely 
 depends upon, but even consists formally in our 
 incorporation into the Church, it is plain that we 
 are speaking primarily of the invisible Church, and 
 only in a conditional and qualified manner of the 
 visible Church, which is but the sacrament and out- 
 ward instrument of the former — a distinction which 
 will occupy us later on. Speaking roughly, we might 
 say that the Catholic idea of the Church is social in 
 the good sense, while the Protestant is individualist 
 in the bad sense. In the truest sense these notions 
 are in no way antagonistic, for the ideal society is 
 an organism whose every member works most fruit- 
 fully for the common good by securing its own 
 fullest development ; where there is no conflict 
 between public and private interest; where mutual 
 help and co-operation begets the only true liberty, 
 which consists not in sterile isolation, but in the 
 abundance of the means and opportunities for self- 
 realization and the turning to account of every 
 talent and energy ; where the initiative and move- 
 ment is from below, from the healthy vitality of the 
 members themselves, needing but to be directed and 
 guided by the head. It is no artificial product 
 planned by theorists and imposed by force or fraud 
 on a free people in the name of hberty, aiming at an 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 411 
 
 impossible equality by reducing all to the condition 
 of slavery, but the spontaneous growth of healthy 
 social life freed from all morbid conditions. , 
 
 Doubtless this ideal is at best a term of approxi- 
 mation never to be fully realized except in the 
 Church triumphant ; but it is ever preached, and to 
 some degree realized, in the vi3ible and militant 
 Church, whose constitution is, as St. Paul teaches, 
 that of a living body, not that of social contract. 
 The very idea of the Church is a protest against 
 the false individualism of the Reformation on the 
 one hand, and against the false socialism of its 
 reaction on the other. It is interesting to note how 
 the following piece of otherwise very admirable 
 criticism is vitiated by a failure to recognize the 
 fact that if a certain individualism is un-catholic, a 
 crude collectivism is no less so. 
 
 " Palestrina's music," writes H. E. Krehbiel, 
 " must not be listened to with the notion in mind of 
 dramatic expression such as we almost instinctively 
 feel to-day. Palestrina does not seek to proclaim 
 the varying sentiment which underlies his texts. 
 That leads to individual interpretation, and is 
 foreign to the habits of Churchmen in the old con- 
 ception, when the individual was completely resolved 
 in the organization. He aimed to exalt the mystery 
 of the service, not to bring it down to popular 
 comprehension and make it a personal utterance. 
 For such a design in music we must wait till after 
 the Reformation, when the ancient mysticism began 
 to fall back before the demands of reason, when the 
 idea of the sole and sufficient mediation of the 
 
412 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 Church lost some of its power in the face of 
 the growing conviction of the intimate personal 
 relationship between man and his Creator. Now 
 idealism had to yield some of its dominion to 
 realism, and a more rugged art grew up in place of 
 that which had been so wonderfully sublimated by 
 mysticism. 
 
 " It is in Bach, who came in a century after 
 Palestrina, that we find the most eloquent musical 
 proclamation of the new regime . . . 
 
 " Palestrina's art is Roman ; the spirit of rest- 
 fulness, of celestial calm, of supernatural revelation 
 and supernal beauty broods over it. Bach's is 
 Gothic — rugged, massive, upward-striving, human. 
 In Palestrina's music, the voice that speaks is the 
 voice of angels ; in Bach's, it is the voice of men. 
 
 " Bach is the publisher of the truest, tenderest, 
 deepest, and most individual religious feeling. His 
 music is pecuharly a hymning of the religious 
 sentiment of modern Germany, where salvation is 
 to be wrought out with fear and trembling by each 
 individual through faith and works, rather than 
 the agency of even a divinely-constituted Church. 
 ... As the Church fell into the background, and 
 the individual came to the fore, religious music took 
 on the dramatic character which we find in the 
 Passion music of Bach." 
 
 The critic is acute enough to feel that the idea of 
 Catholicism and that of Protestantism are in some 
 sense mutually exclusive ; that the opposition can be 
 roughly described to be such as exists between 
 socialism and individualism ; also, that this difference 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 413 
 
 and opposition permeates everywhere, not only 
 through doctrine, discipline, and ecclesiastical con- 
 stitution, but even through liturgy, music, painting, 
 and literature. But he is wrong in assuming that 
 because the Reformation cast aside the social and 
 corporate element of the Catholic conception of 
 the Church, retaining only the individualist element 
 by which it was balanced, and which it balanced in 
 return, therefore the individual was, so to say, dis- 
 covered by Protestantism, having been " in the old 
 conception " " completely resolved in the organi- 
 zation." The Church never for a moment in any 
 way accepted Plato's notion of the State (civil or 
 ecclesiastic, matters not) as of a distinct personality 
 or entity for whose sake the component members 
 existed collectively and individually. Nay, it was the 
 Catholic idea which gave slow and difficult birth to 
 belief in the absolute and ineffaceable value of the 
 individual, a belief fed and fostered by the appli- 
 cation of the several sacraments to each several 
 soul, by the extinction of all artificial inequality, 
 and the recognition of perfect spiritual equahty 
 among all those, from the Emperor to the lazar, 
 who feed at God's common board on the Bread of 
 Angels. It is a curious comment also on the 
 observation that Protestantism put man for the first 
 time into " intimate personal relationship with his 
 Creator," that while Protestants mostly speak of "the 
 Saviour," and " the Lord," Catholics invariably say, 
 " our Saviour," and " our Lord," and surely a glance 
 at the devotions and prayers of Catholics in any 
 age or country will show at once how absolutely 
 
4t4 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 unfounded is the notion that the Church's mediation 
 hinders immediate commerce between God and the 
 individual. 
 
 Not such indeed is the mediation of the Church ; 
 she is not a barrier or a bhnd between the soul and 
 her Maker. For though the quickening spirit can 
 touch the parts and members only on condition of 
 their incorporation with the body, separate from 
 which they are dead ; yet the body does not stand 
 between them and the spirit, as though it absorbed 
 without transmitting the vital flame. And so it is 
 only through the Church, as making part of the 
 Church, that the soul can come into direct contact 
 with God our Father ; it is only through the Mystic 
 Vine that the sap of sanctifying grace can flow into 
 our souls. Again, need we say, we speak of the 
 invisible Church, the Communion of Saints, in which 
 none is incorporated save by living faith ; since no 
 one can be so ignorant as to suppose that mere 
 outward communion with the visible Church is 
 sufficient for salvation, however necessary it may 
 be in certain cases. 
 
 In fine, we may maintain fearlessly that Gothic 
 architecture is every bit as Catholic as Roman, and 
 Bach's style of music as Palestrina's. Both schools 
 embody and set forth one aspect of the Catholic 
 conception, each being complementary of the other. 
 The exigencies and tastes of particular localities 
 and times may call for an emphasis, now on this 
 aspect, now on the other. Obviously the public and 
 collective worship of the Church of its own nature 
 demands the repression of individualism in liturgical 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 413 
 
 observance, music, and other vehicles of expression. 
 There is an impertinence which we instinctively 
 resent in any attempt on the part of the individual 
 to obtrude his private interpretations, sentiments, 
 and emotions upon us by unauthorized vagaries and 
 emphases of his own. He is but the mouthpiece of 
 the Universal Church and of the traditions of 
 centuries ; let him deliver the message entrusted to 
 him without comments or embellishments of his 
 own. Originality is well in other spheres, but in 
 the choir or the sanctuary it is the worst form of 
 vulgarity. 
 
 To conclude the present matter, it is in this 
 conception of the Church as mediating between 
 God and the soul, as a mystical body in union with 
 which alone salvation is possible, as the mother in 
 whose womb we are conceived, on whose breasts 
 we hang, that we find the reason of the prominence 
 given to the Church in the mind and on the lips of 
 Catholic Christians. Much even as we venerate 
 Mary, the great Mother of God and man, yet even 
 she is but a type and figure, but a part and member 
 of this still greater Mother of us all — the Jerusalem 
 from on high, our Holy Mother the Church. 
 
 11. 
 
 " The Church of the first-born who are written in the 
 Heavens." — Hebrews xii. 33, 
 
 When we assert that salvation may be said in 
 some sense to consist in being incorporated with 
 the Church, we are not speaking of the visible, but 
 
4i6 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 of the invisible Church. With the former we are 
 incorporated by mere profession of faith and obe- 
 dience, although we be spiritually dead ; with the 
 latter we are incorporated only by divine charity. 
 Let us now consider more closely this distinction 
 between the invisible and the visible Church, and 
 determine more accurately the relation of these two 
 societies one to another. 
 
 We not uncommonly speak of them as the 
 "Body" and the "Soul" of the Church, implying 
 at least some kind of resemblance between their 
 mutual relation and that of the components of our 
 double nature. Of these components the soul is 
 invisible, immortal, incorruptible, self-sustaining, 
 principal ; the body is visible, transitory, corruptible, 
 dependent ; it is the instrument and minister of the 
 soul, its symbol and sacrament. For this reason 
 we may apply the word "body" to the visible 
 Church on earth, which shall end with time, which 
 retains corrupt members in its communion, as tares 
 amid the wheat ; which is the outward symbol and 
 sacrament of the invisible Church whose organ 
 and instrument it is. And by contrast, this in- 
 visible Church of saints and angels may be called 
 the " soul." But every metaphor is imperfect. 
 Soul and body are at once distinct and in a sense 
 co-extensive ; whereas the invisible and visible 
 Church are neither, some members being common 
 to both, others belonging only to one. The saints 
 in Heaven and legions of just men on earth do not 
 belong to the visible Church or come under its 
 external jurisdiction; while thousands of those that 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 417 
 
 do have neither part nor lot with the saints in Hght. 
 Again, speaking strictly, each of these societies 
 has (like every society) a soul and body of its own. 
 The saints in Heaven and all the just on earth, 
 Catholic or non-Catholic, Christian or non-Christian, 
 are invisibly bound together by the indwelling of 
 the same Holy Spirit of Charity " which is the bond 
 of peace," the cement which seals into one the 
 stones of the Heavenly Salem — " one body and 
 one spirit." And on earth the members of the 
 visible Church are visibly united by the bond of 
 obedience to that same Spirit viewed as the source 
 of ecclesiastical authority and sacramental grace — 
 " one body and one spirit." 
 
 However convenient, therefore, it may be to 
 speak of the invisible and visible Churches as the 
 soul and body of the Church, it is not without 
 danger of confusion. 
 
 What, then, is the invisible Church ? 
 
 It is that communion or society of saints and 
 angels in Heaven and of just men on earth, of all 
 nations and of all ages, of which St. Paul says: 
 " But you have come nigh to Mount Sion and to 
 the city of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, 
 and to the company of many thousands of angels, 
 and to the Church of the first-born who are written 
 in the heavens, and to God the Judge of all, and 
 to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus 
 the Mediator." 
 
 While, therefore, the members of the visible 
 Church are upon earth, those of the invisible are 
 both in Heaven and on earth — on earth, a handful ; 
 
 BB 
 
4i8 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 in Heaven, as the sands on the sea-shore. 
 That portion which is in Heaven is formed and 
 perfected — has passed into its changeless condition ; 
 while the portion on earth is in process of formation, 
 not yet accepted, shaped, or perfected. Here the 
 stones of Solomon's temple are hewn and fashioned 
 with many a rough blow and sharp incision ; there 
 they are noiselessly laid each in its peculiar and 
 predestined place in the living structure. 
 
 Scalpri salubris ictibus 
 
 Et tunsione plurima, 
 
 Fabri polita malleo, 
 
 Hanc saxa molem construunt, 
 
 Aptisque juncta nexibus 
 
 Locantur in fastigio.* 
 
 We must not imagine that the visible Church 
 is the same as the Church militant, and the in- 
 visible the same as the Church triumphant. For 
 all upon earth who are engaged in God's cause 
 belong to the militant Church, be they inside or 
 outside the visible Church, while the triumphant 
 Church comprehends only that portion of the 
 invisible Church which is in Heaven. 
 
 In Heaven the invisible Church consists of the 
 spirits of the just made perfect in love, purged 
 seven-fold in the fire of suffering and great tribula- 
 tion, developed into full correspondence with that 
 
 ' By kindly chisel deftly formed, 
 With showers of battering blows bestormed. 
 Squared by the hand which Heaven hath skilled 
 These polished blocks the fabric build 
 And fastly jointed there unite 
 To crown the rising summit's height. 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 419 
 
 Divine plan and pattern thought out and loved by 
 God from all eternity, and then by Him infused 
 slowly and laboriously into the often reluctant mind 
 and conscience, into the heart and affections of each 
 saint ; a light that haunted the soul when it would 
 cower in the darkness ; a fire that leaped up after 
 every futile quenching; a tormenting thought that 
 would not rest unlistened-to and unloved. And 
 though there dwells in the saints but one and the 
 same spirit, yet there is an infinite and most orderly 
 diversity of gifts and manifestations, even as the 
 same vital spark displays itself diversely in the 
 multitudinous members of our body — as sight in 
 the eye, as hearing in the ear, as motion in the 
 limbs, as thought in the mind, as love in the heart, 
 yet " one and the same spirit." In the gathering 
 together of the saints we have not merely an endless 
 chain of repetitions of the same idea or type— as it 
 were so many beads threaded on a string, or a 
 bundle of innumerable fagots each the exact counter- 
 part of its fellows ; but rather a mighty and complex 
 organism, a vast mosaic of souls of every conceivable 
 pattern and complexion of sanctity, no two indeed 
 alike, albeit each indispensable for the perfection 
 of the entire design, each with its own place that 
 no other can fill, each with its own song of praise 
 that no other can sing, and yet which blends in a 
 chord of universal praise that would be thinned 
 and impoverished by its silence. As all creation 
 collectively makes one full utterance of the Divine 
 Goodness of which each several creature is but a 
 word or syllable, so in the communion of saints 
 
420 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 the full idea of sanctity, the flower of human excel- 
 lence wedded with Divine, is unfolded and expanded 
 in all its parts to the glory and praise of God, and 
 gives forth its fragrance in odorem suavitatis. There 
 first shall we understand what God meant when He 
 created man ; not this man nor that, but man ; 
 there shall we see that governing idea which was 
 forcing itself into reality and fact, through all the 
 long, weary centuries of our miserable history ; and 
 seeing it we shall cry out : Justus es, Domine, et 
 rectum judicium tuuni — God was right after all. 
 
 There at last Christ shall be unfolded and 
 made plain in that mystical body which is well 
 called His pleroma, His fulness or extension. His 
 Sacred Humanity while on earth, with its brief span 
 of thirty years, could not within the narrow limits 
 of a single experience reveal to us more than a 
 fraction of the latent potentialities of His deified 
 soul. He was but as the seed whose power and 
 meaning lies hid till it has germinated, flowered, 
 fructified, and multiplied from generation to genera- 
 tion. From Him all sanctity flows as from its 
 source, whether we trace the stream from Calvary 
 backward to the beginning or forward to the end 
 of time. " I live," says the Christian, " yet not I, 
 but Christ liveth in me," for sanctity is simply the 
 prevalence in us of a " power that makes for right- 
 eousness," of a will that is not our own — in us, but 
 not of us — ever pressing against the will of our 
 egoism and self-centred love in the interests of a 
 love which is God-centred and unselfish. It is the 
 constant action upon us of God, who is, moreover. 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 421 
 
 an Incarnate God ; it is to our soul what gravitation 
 is to our body, a force ever drawing us to our true 
 centre and rest ; so ever-abiding and persistent that 
 we have come to confound it with the very constitu- 
 tion of our spiritual being. Yet were the earth 
 suddenly annihilated from under our feet we should 
 have no sense of weight ; and were God to with- 
 draw from us we should have no wish to do good, 
 no love of the truth, no sense of right or wrong. 
 
 The tree is known by its fruits, and Christ is 
 known by His deeds ; not merely by the deeds of His 
 earthly life, but by all that He has done and shall .do 
 in His saints from the beginning to the end. His 
 spirit, in order to display its full content and signifi- 
 cance, needs to be applied to every condition of 
 human life, so that we may see Christ under every 
 aspect ; in every nationahty and language, in every 
 stage of development, social and individual, in Jew 
 and Greek, in Barbarian and Scythian, in bond and 
 free, in wealth and poverty, in prosperity and adver- 
 sity, in health and sickness, in youth and age, 
 in simplicity and culture, in weakness and strength ; 
 that we may see the leaven of the Kingdom of God 
 in all its workings, in its actions and reactions under 
 every possible variety of conditions, favourable and 
 unfavourable, and may enter more fully into the 
 mind and heart of Him whose life is thus manifested 
 in His' mystical body. " I saw a great multitude," 
 says St. John, "which no man could number, of all 
 nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing 
 before the throne and in the sight of the Lamb ; " 
 for so it shall be in that day when the number of 
 
422 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 the elect shall be filled up, and the last stone of the 
 mystical temple shall be laid in its predestined place, 
 and the last piece set to the perfect mosaic ; when 
 the body of Christ shall have reached its fulness, 
 and the idea of Christian sanctity shall have attained 
 its complete expansion ; and the potentialities of the 
 human soul shall have been revealed to the utmost ; 
 when the long-sought chord of created and uncreated 
 praise shall have been struck at last, and time and 
 the things of time shall be needed no more. 
 
 III. 
 
 " In every nation he that feareth Him and worketh justice, 
 is acceptable to Him." — Acts a. 35. 
 
 We have now to ask ourselves : Who are the 
 members on earth of the Invisible Church ? And 
 the first answer is simple enough, namely : All those 
 in whose hearts charity is diffused by the Holy 
 Ghost ; all those who give God and God's cause the 
 first, if not always the only place in their affections ; 
 all those who prefer right and truth and duty to 
 father, mother, spouse, children, brethren, kinsfolk, 
 home, and lands ; all those who accept not only 
 with their mind, but with their heart and will, that 
 it profits a man nothing if he gain the whole world 
 to the hurt of his own soul. They may not yet have 
 learnt to love nothing else but in connection with 
 God and in sympathy with the Divine mind and 
 will; they have undoubtedly yet to be tried and 
 perfected through many tribulations, either here or 
 in Purgatory — for nothing defiled has ever entered 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 423 
 
 Heaven or reached the beatifying stage of love but 
 at the cost of purifying pain. Still, as long as God 
 weighs down all other treasures heaped together in 
 the balance of their affections, so long do they keep 
 their vital connection with the Mystical Body un- 
 severed ; but when singly or collectively creatures 
 are preferred to Him in that same act they become 
 as severed limbs; for nothing corrupt can enter into 
 or remain in the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 But "without faith it is impossible to please 
 God," it is impossible to possess charity, to cling to 
 truth and goodness above all things and at every 
 sacrifice. We cannot therefore suppose that the 
 invisible Church on earth extends beyond the limits 
 of the visible except so far as faith so extends. Faith 
 is commonly and rightly explained to be a firm will 
 or resolution to hold fast to truths taught us by God 
 without discussing them or questioning them by any 
 kind of practical doubt. We hold to them with that 
 firmness which God's word merits ; and we do so in 
 obedience to God's command ; not because we have 
 necessarily sat in judgment either on the truths 
 revealed or on God's claims as a witness; but 
 simply because we recognize God's right to command 
 the mind which He has made. Without such faith 
 we cannot please God ; for even where reason 
 reaches the simple truths of religion and morality, 
 its grasp is too feeble and its gaze too unsteady to 
 prevent our mind being perverted in the hour of 
 temptation and yielding to the fallacies of self-love, 
 pride, and sensuality, or listening to the voice of 
 worldly and carnal wisdom, or ceding to the 
 
424 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 influence of universal example. In that hour we 
 have no strength alone ; Vcz soli : we must lean 
 upon God and hear His voice and not our own; 
 loyal obedience to Him will stand us in good stead 
 when we are perhaps blinded by passion to our 
 truest and highest self-interest. As hope lends us 
 God's strength in the hour of weakness, so faith 
 lends us God's light in the hour of darkness when 
 our own lamp has gone out or flickers to extinction. 
 
 It is for this reason that theologians insist on some 
 kind of divine speaking or revelation as a condition 
 for faith, thus strictly interpreting, Fides ex auditu — 
 " Faith comes by hearing." For faith is essentially 
 trust in another whose wisdom and knowledge supple- 
 ments what is defective in our own. However clearly 
 we may learn the same religious truths from reflection 
 upon the phenomena of conscience or of physical 
 nature, yet we are so far resting only upon ourselves, 
 and our own reason and observation — a support that 
 will prove insufficient in the time of trouble. We 
 are trusting to the arm of flesh, and not to the arm 
 of God ; flesh and blood has revealed it to us, but 
 not our Father who is in Heaven. Faith, hope, 
 and love alike put God for self, and bind us to Him, 
 and deliver us from the weakness of isolation. 
 
 There is nothing arbitrary in making faith a 
 condition for salvation or at least of supernatural 
 salvation. It is altogether natural and even 
 necessary. Every wise moralist knows that we 
 cannot lead a good life unless we resolve to stand 
 firm in the hour of temptation and darkness, by 
 those truths which we saw clearly in the hour of 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 423 
 
 calm and light, but which now we do not see 
 clearly and are disposed to question ; in other 
 words, unless we are resolved not to rationalize 
 or doubt, but to hold on blindly to what we do not 
 now see, substituting a will-certainty for a mind- 
 certainty. This is faith, not in another, but in our 
 own better self; yet in principle it is the same. If 
 indeed we yield to the pressure of temptation and 
 reopen the question, we only offend against our own 
 better judp'Tient — a fallible authority at best, though 
 surely more trustworthy than the judgment of passion. 
 In proportion as the spiritual truths by which we 
 must live are subtle and mysterious, we need still 
 greater support to supplement our wavering reason, 
 while for those that are strictly supernatural and out 
 of reason's ken, God's support is an absolute 
 necessity. Here, to doubt is to offend not against 
 fallible authority, but against the authority of God, 
 and the will-certainty must be measured to that 
 standard; it must be an unqualified adhesion of 
 the whole soul to God's word as such. 
 
 There can be no faith therefore where God is 
 not felt to have spoken and to have commanded 
 our obedient assent to the things that belong to 
 our peace, to the great fundamental truths that 
 there is a God, whose we are, and before whom 
 we continually stand ; who is the Rewarder and the 
 Reward of them that seek Him, to whom we must 
 render an account and pay the last farthing of our 
 debt of reverence and service. There can be no 
 faith, no pleasing of God, where the idle speculative 
 questioning of these truths, implicitly admitted in 
 
426 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 every act of conscience, is not recognized as 
 immoral, as sinful, as a trespass not only against 
 conscience itself, but against the revealed will of 
 God ; or where, with the full consciousness of being 
 unduly excited or depressed, or otherwise biassed 
 and unbalanced, one makes a resolve or chooses an 
 opinion in accordance with such bias. 
 
 Yet if the soul is to Hsten not to itself but to 
 God, if it is to cling to His word when its own 
 word falters, it is needful that God should really 
 speak to the soul, and should be apprehended 
 distinctly as so speaking. For speech, in this 
 stricter sense, it is not enough that the speaker 
 betray his mind in words or signs, or even by 
 direct " thought-transference" with the secret design 
 that the perceiver shall take his meaning, as when 
 one leaves a book open for another to read without 
 bidding him read it, or showing any sign of a 
 will that he should do so. To speak is not only 
 to express one's mind, but also to express one's will 
 that the hearer should listen. God utters His mind 
 in creation and in our conscience, and designs these 
 books for our instruction ; but only so far as He 
 also signifies that this message is expressly directed 
 to us can He be said to speak to us ; He rather 
 soliloquizes in our presence; He speaks in us, or 
 outside us, but not to us. 
 
 And what sort of sign is it that changes the 
 voice of reason and of nature into a supernatural 
 revelation ; and by which God enters into personal 
 relation with the soul and becomes her friend, her 
 teacher, her support ? 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 427 
 
 Were I in dire need of a very precise sum of 
 money, and were I on the same day to find more or 
 less the required amount, I should have no solid 
 reason to think that it had been left in my vi^ay by 
 design ; but were I to find the exact sum to the 
 very farthing, I could hardly resist the inference 
 that it was intended for me by some one who knew 
 my need, or if none knew it, by God who is over all. 
 The exact correspondence of the sum to my need 
 would change a " find " into a gift ; it would equiva- 
 lently address the money to me and mark it with 
 my name. 
 
 It is peculiar to God, whose own the soul is, to 
 call her by her most secret name known to Him 
 alone. This was the reason of Christ's spell over 
 Nathaniel, over the woman of Samaria, over all 
 whom He has called. "Whence knowest thou me?" 
 they say, or, " Sir, I perceive Thou art a prophet." 
 And so it is that God brings a truth home to 
 a man, and changes it from a dead to a hving 
 word, when by its preternatural opportuneness, its 
 altogether providential and otherwise unaccount- 
 able correspondence to his complex spiritual 
 needs, it proves itself to be a message from One 
 who knows him through and through, in all his 
 individuality. 
 
 This waking up to the recognition of God's voice 
 whether in conscience or in nature, or in the inspired 
 word, this sense of its being directed to ourselves is 
 well exemplified in what we so often read in saints' 
 lives, where some text lighted on by chance, some 
 naturally derived thought or suggestion presents 
 
428 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 itself irresistibly as a Divine message and is listened 
 to as such. Who does not remember St. Augustine's 
 Tolle et lege, the words of a child at play; or how 
 St. Anthony, as the Breviary says, took as said to 
 himself {tamquam ea sibi dicta essent), the words heard 
 on entering a church : " Go sell all and follow Me." 
 And besides innumerable instances in hagiography 
 there is perhaps no religious-minded person who 
 has not had some such experience real or fancied. 
 And if those who habitually seek such signs, forcing 
 God's hand, as it were, and not waiting for the time 
 of His free visitation, will be often deluded ; and if 
 even those who do not seek them may often doubt 
 as to what is coincidence and what is design, yet 
 there are many instances where there is no room 
 for prudent or justifiable doubt. 
 
 However simple, frequent, and universal these 
 Divine utterances may be, in obedience to which 
 the soul which " hears from the Father," learns and 
 comes to Christ, yet they can be no more claimed 
 as a strict exigency of our nature, than any other 
 preternatural and personal intervention of Provi- 
 dence ; they, and the faith they generate, are " the 
 gift of God." 
 
 It is not hard to believe that the fundamental 
 religious truths touching God the Rewarder which 
 are written in the secret of conscience and over 
 the face of Nature are brought home, not once in 
 a lifetime, but over and over again to every soul, 
 as a Divine message from without, claiming an 
 obedient voluntary assent, a will-certainty stronger 
 than death. God speaks in divers manners ; but to 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 429 
 
 all who are to be judged as to faith, speak He must 
 in some form or other. 
 
 "No difficulty," says Aquinas, "follows from 
 the position that one brought up in the woods among 
 the wild beasts should be bound to certain explicit 
 beliefs; for it is incumbent on Divine Providence 
 to provide each soul with all necessary conditions 
 for salvation, unless some hindrance is offered on 
 the soul's part. For were one so brought up, to 
 follow the lead of natural reason in the pursuit of 
 good and the avoidance of evil, it is to be held for 
 a perfect certainty {certissimum tenendum est), that 
 God would either reveal all necessary beliefs to him 
 by an internal inspiration, or He would send some 
 one to preach the faith to him, as He sent Peter 
 to Cornelius."^ 
 
 In other words, where the fuller revelation is 
 denied, where the light of the Gospel never 
 penetrates, yet the internal revelation of the funda- 
 mental and germinal truths of all religion will surely 
 never be wanting ; one need not ascend into Heaven 
 to bring it down, nor descend into Hell to bring it 
 up, for the word is ever nigh to each human heart, 
 ever whispering into the soul's ear, ever knocking 
 at the gate of its love. 
 
 Wheresoever then and whensoever there is found 
 a man who listens obediently and humbly to the voice 
 of conscience ; who bows to its sovereign authority as 
 to a power above him and distinct from him, who 
 admits its unqualified claims, not only in theory but 
 in practice, there we may be sure that God, however 
 * De Veritate, xiv. a. ii. ad i. 
 
430 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 dimly recognized, has spoken and has been listened 
 to ; since without faith it is impossible to please 
 God, impossible to live that life of sacrifice and 
 conflict which obedience to conscience entails. 
 This surely is the meaning of Peter's vision of all 
 manner of living creatures brought together in one 
 vessel knit at the four corners ; a figure of all 
 nations, of all sorts and conditions of men, from the 
 four winds of heaven, and from the dawn of our 
 •race till its consummation, all cleansed by God 
 through the Blood of Christ, all subjected to Peter 
 as the Vicar of Christ ; even as was Cornelius whose 
 prayers and alms, ascending for a memorial in the 
 sight of God, were emblensatic of the sacrifice of 
 justice offered daily by that large portion' of the 
 invisible Church on earth, which stretches north, 
 south, east, and west, beyond the limits of the 
 visible. " In very deed," says Peter, interpreting 
 the vision, " I perceive that God is not a respecter 
 of persons ; but in every nation, he that feareth 
 Him and worketh justice, is accepted of Him." 
 
 IV. 
 
 "The House of God, which is the Church of the living 
 God, the pillar and ground of the truth." — i Timothy iii. 15. 
 
 But if all this, which is matter rather of opinion 
 than of authoritative teaching, be admissible, it may 
 seem that we are letting in the heresy of moral and 
 dogmatic indifferentism, unless we also hold fast to 
 the truth that no one who professes indifferentism 
 is in good faith. A man who avowedly does not 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 431 
 
 care whether what he does is right or wrong so long 
 as he believes it right, who professes not to care 
 about breaking God's law so long as he does so 
 unintentionally, is plainly an immoral man, and has 
 no sympathy with justice for justice' sake, no wish 
 to be like-minded with God. Similarly he who 
 protests that it is indifferent what a man thinks or 
 believes so long as he believes it sincerely, is an 
 untruthful man, altogether insincere in his very 
 profession of sincerity. It is preposterous to 
 maintain that because conscious wrong-doing and 
 error is a worse evil, therefore that which is uncon- 
 scious is no evil. Good faith requires us to love 
 truth and right not only where we recognize it, but 
 everywhere and universally; and that we should 
 give no sleep to our eyes till we have found out 
 what is true and right. None, therefore, can be 
 counted a member of the invisible Church who 
 through any fault or negligence of his own remains 
 outside the communion of the visible Church. 
 
 What, then, do we understand by the visible 
 Church ? It is the visible union of the faithful, 
 under one visible head or government ; understand- 
 ing by the faithful those who with their lips and 
 outward conduct subject themselves to the teaching 
 and laws of the Church, in short, those who would 
 be numbered in a census of Catholics. It is as 
 definite an institution as the Roman or the British 
 Empire, notorious in the history of the world for 
 the last two thousand years. What need to define 
 that which we have only to point to ? 
 
 Here, too, we have an articulated organized 
 
432 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 body, calling itself the mystical body of Christ, 
 claiming in some measure His mediatorial office, 
 making incorporation with itself a condition of 
 salvat'.on, and yet differing from the invisible Church 
 in that it is wholly on earth, and nowise in Heaven ; 
 that its perpetuity is to the end of time but not to 
 all eternity; that it numbers sinners as well as 
 saints among its members, as a net containing good 
 fish and worthless, or a 'field of wheat and tares; 
 that it passes like a wave along the river of time, 
 continually renewing its matter, while preserving its 
 form, as succeeding generations creep up noiselessly 
 and pass by. 
 
 Are these, then, two Churches, two mystical 
 Bodies, two spouses of Christ, or are they one ? 
 
 We have already seen to what extent they can 
 be said to be related as soul and body, and where 
 that metaphor falls short. For while neither soul 
 nor body alone is a complete nature, each of these 
 Churches is a complete society with a distinct con- 
 stitution and bond of union. Yet this distinctness 
 does not prevent one being wholly dependent upon 
 and subordinate to the other, just as particular 
 departments of a complex government are subjected 
 to it, though distinctly organized ; or as a religious 
 order which exists only to serve the Church is, as a 
 society, quite distinct from it. Though not pre- 
 cisely related as soul and body, yet we may say that 
 the invisible and visible Church are two parts of 
 one nature; that they are like the inner word of 
 the mind and the outer word of the lips, distinct 
 yet most intimately connected as symbol and reality. 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 433 
 
 as sacrament and grace signified ; that the visible 
 Church is vicarious and the invisible is principal ; 
 that the one is the instrument of the other, as the 
 hand is the instrument of the body, or even as the 
 body is the instrument, the symbol, the sacrament, 
 the expression of the soul. 
 
 The Church is the extension and body of Christ 
 her Head, who is both God and Man, two natures 
 in one person, the human being the organ and finite 
 manifestation and sacrament of the Divine, effecting 
 what it signifies, making us, by its touch, partakers 
 of His Divinity, who vouchsafed to become a sharer 
 of our humanity. And so the invisible Church is 
 the extension of His Divinity, as the visible Church 
 is of His sacred humanity, both being united in the 
 personal unity of their head, and being related ta 
 one another as the two natures are in Him ; the 
 human being entirely organic and subordinate to 
 the service and manifestation and communication of 
 the divine. 
 
 The visible Church is pre-eminently a great 
 sacrament and type, whose organization, whose 
 indissoluble unity, whose perpetuity signifies dimly 
 that of the Heavenly Church and archetype ; even 
 as the semblance of the Eucharistic bread signifies 
 the Body of Christ. Moreover, incorporation and 
 membership with the visible Church not only 
 symbolizes but in due conditions effects that incor- 
 poration with the invisible, in which our salvation 
 consists. Not, however, unconditionally or exclu- 
 sively ; for what is true of all particular sacraments 
 holds here in like manner. God indeed has not tied 
 cc 
 
434 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 His grace to the sacraments, and as there is a 
 baptism and communion of desire for those who for 
 one reason or another are inculpably cut off from 
 the rites of the Church, so there is a membership of 
 desire through which (though not without which) 
 the graces of actual membership can be secured. 
 Again, the sacraments may be not merely fruitless, 
 but spiritually destructive to those who use them 
 profanely ; and similarly outward membership with 
 the Church may be to many a cause of more 
 grievous condemnation than that of Tyre and Sidon, 
 or of Sodom and Gomorrah. 
 
 As of old, before Christ's advent, God worked in 
 the souls of men unsacramentally, yet not without 
 dependence on, and reference to, the coming 
 Mediator and the sacraments, so now more freely 
 does He lavish His saving grace broadcast wherever 
 the Church is locally or intellectually inaccessible, 
 though not without reference to the Church from 
 whose treasury and for whose sake, as it were, every 
 grace is conferred. Not indeed that all rudimentary 
 faith is destined or intended by God to reach on 
 earth its last development in the full light of Catholic 
 belief; but that it is a seed, of its own nature 
 tending to that development when duly environed ; 
 it is the true religion in germ. 
 
 Since God has wedded into the human family 
 and has become one of ourselves, the whole race, 
 whether touched by the waters of baptism or left 
 in the darkness of nature, has been raised to a 
 supernatural dignity and favour quite independent 
 of the internal dignity of sanctifying grace. As one 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 435 
 
 of God's "poor relations" the most degradec" 
 savage, the "least of His brethren," has a dis- 
 tinction denied to the angels. If for ten just men 
 God would have spared Sodom, what mercy will 
 not the presence of the God-Man, of the Catholic 
 Church and her sacraments, win for all humanity, 
 for those even who trample them underfoot and 
 revile them ? For the Church is in the world as a 
 "tree that is rooted in the earth and whose secret 
 fibres spread far and wide. God cannot draw the 
 Church to Himself, but He must, in some sense, 
 ■draw the whole world with her. She will not loose 
 her grip : " If thou wilt not forgive them," she says, 
 "then blot me out of the book of life." 
 
 But if those who do not know the visible Church 
 can be saved without being actually incorporated 
 with her and bound to her laws, it might seem that 
 ■such knowledge profits nothing, except to make 
 salvation more difficult for those to whom the 
 obligation is revealed. This is an objection which 
 might be urged against all the sacraments, against 
 every additional means of light and grace. The 
 instructed catechumen must seek water and a 
 minister in order to be regenerated ; whereas the 
 pagan can be born again of the Holy Ghost in the 
 fountain of his own tears. But' plainly we must 
 ■distinguish between the amply sufficient grace for 
 salvation which God in His fidelity offers to all, 
 and that superabundant grace which in His gene- 
 rosity He offers to millions, though not to all. 
 Contrition in every case forgives our sins in the 
 very moment we propose to seek absolution ; but 
 
436 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 in the sacrament God overwhelms us with the 
 grace of remission, He puts upon us the best robe, 
 and a ring on our finger, and shoes on our feet, 
 and banquets us, and rejoices over us with His 
 angels. To every soul God supplies the daily bread 
 of good thoughts and good desires, but in the 
 Eucharist he satiates the hungry w^ith the Bread 
 of Angels, and causes the chalice of the thirsty to 
 overflow and inebriate. To all in every religion 
 He reveals Himself as God the rewarder of them 
 that seek Him, but in the Catholic revelation these 
 ■■'broken lights" are gathered up and intensified 
 into one steady ray of pure truth ; and the corn that 
 is meted in simple sufficiency to some is given to 
 us in full measure, pressed down, shaken together, 
 and running over. 
 
 Moreover, the sacraments are said to work their 
 effect ex opere operato, i.e., theirs is an effect produced 
 in us by an external agency, not by ourselves ; 
 although as a condition they demand a certain 
 receptivity, a certain disposition of the soil which 
 multiplies the yield thirty, sixty, or a hundred-fold. 
 That their effect is not directly, but only indirectly 
 ex opere operantis and measured by our own industry,, 
 may seem to be but little advantage or gain; yet 
 it is no small gain that instead of our waiting on 
 God, as it were for the troubling of the waters, God 
 should wait upon us, ready to serve us with His 
 graces as often as we choose to approach the 
 sacraments and dispose ourselves to receive them. 
 Herein God has opened for us the fountains of 
 salvation, that we may approach and draw living^ 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 437 
 
 water when we will: "Whosoever will, let him 
 come and drink freely." 
 
 Dare we then, even on these prudential grounds, 
 and putting aside all question of the sovereign and 
 universal authority of the Church over every soul 
 upon earth, and of her commission to compel men 
 to enter into her fold so far as Divine jurisdiction 
 can compel them ; dare we then refuse such a 
 proffer of spiritual wealth, dare we hope even for 
 the bare sufficiencies of salvation if we wilfully 
 neglect this call to higher things ? 
 
 Once more whether we regard ourselves as 
 isolated units, or as members of the body, our 
 union with the visible Church enables us both to 
 get more and to give more than would be otherwise 
 at all possible. For viewing the Church ministerially, 
 as even Nonconformists view her, it is evident that 
 by her ministration and government, and by the 
 co-operation of our fellow-members, we are enlight- 
 ened, guided, helped, prayed for, encouraged, and 
 secure all the advantages which the individual gains 
 in a society and loses in isolation, and are, there- 
 fore, able to serve and praise God with a fuller 
 personal service. We profit by the accumulated 
 •experience of multitudes transmitted and added to 
 from generation to generation ; we are the inheritors 
 of all that is meant by the Catholic tradition so far 
 as we are capable of appropriating it. There is 
 all the difference that exists between genius which 
 has to teach itself everything from the beginning, 
 and that which enters into the labours of others 
 and starts where they have left off. 
 
438 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 Still more as members of a living body do we 
 participate in those special blessings and graces 
 which God bestows on the Church collectively, 
 seeing as He does the image of the Blessed Trinity, 
 the Many in One, set forth in the society as it can 
 never be set forth in the unit ; " How good and 
 pleasing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity 
 ... for there the Lord hath promised His blessing 
 and life for evermore." And as happens analogously 
 in the kingdoms of this world, there are benefits 
 accruing to the faithful collectively in which even the 
 wickedest and most unworthy members partake in 
 such sort that their membership is to them a source 
 of many graces otherwise denied them. Further 
 there is a collective praise and service which we 
 can give to God or participate in giving as parts 
 and factors of a joint result, and which is wholly 
 out of the power of those who praise and serve God 
 singly and in isolation. The very same melody 
 receives a new meaning and richness when sung in 
 concert with others. And there is a collective 
 prayer where many are gathered together as one, 
 in His Name, a prayer which the Holy Ghost offers 
 by the lips of the Universal Church in her liturgy, 
 whose fruit is applied to our soul as often as we 
 join in it or unite our intention with it. 
 
 All these considerations, and others that might 
 be adduced, make it evident that membership with 
 the visible Church is the condition and occasion of 
 innumerable helps and graces otherwise inaccessible; 
 and that to neglect wilfully such an offer of greater 
 salvation would be an act, not only of rebellion 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 439 
 
 against Divine authority, but also of presumption,, 
 meriting the forfeiture of all other but the most 
 ordinary and barely sufficient means. 
 
 V. 
 
 " For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not 
 -of yourselves, for it is the gift of God." — Ephes. ii. 8. 
 
 We may now inquire for our own sakes rather 
 than for theirs, how it comes to pass that so many 
 of our fellow-Christians, who are to all appearances 
 in perfect good faith, feel themselves in no way 
 obliged to submit themselves to the Catholic Church : 
 for we are bound in all justice — not to speak of 
 charity — to find every excuse for them before we 
 dare to condemn in our minds those whom perhaps 
 God acquits as more faithful to their little hght,. 
 than we to our abundance. 
 
 Why we ourselves believe is not a question 
 whose discussion can interest us much more than 
 a discussion of our own identity. We may dispute 
 and deny the proofs usually alleged, but our belief 
 is not shaken because our analysis of its origin is 
 unsuccessful. A dogma is simply the skeleton of 
 a living concrete reality which it but outlines and 
 formulates ; and the same might be said of the 
 array of reasons we put forth for our recognition 
 of the Church's claims. Our faith in her is the 
 effect of an impression produced on our mind and 
 heart by her whole concrete reality. We can never 
 make another see what we see, or feel what we feel, 
 by any verbal description however elaborate and 
 
440 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 detailed. To the Catholic born and bred, the 
 claim of any other body to represent and continue 
 the work of Christ is unthinkable ; to the convert — 
 if he has really grasped the point at issue — it is a 
 dream sincerely accepted for truth, until set side 
 by side with the facts of daylight when one wakens. 
 For this very cause we are often indifferent, 
 unsympathetic and harsh in our controversy; we 
 are careless in our reasons, as the consciousness of 
 certainty always makes men, we are inaccurate and 
 slovenly in our answers, or else we are simply 
 impatient of all discussion, feeling the hopeless 
 inadequacy of language in the matter ; we ourselves 
 see, touch, and taste, but to convey that experience 
 to others seems simply an interminable task. 
 
 First of all let us remember that in the expression 
 of his reasons for not beheving, the non-Catholic 
 is as much embarrassed by this inadequacy of logic 
 and languages as we are. His assigned reasons 
 are at best the merest skeleton of that subjective 
 impression about the Church by which he is really 
 influenced in his heart. Very often they are not even 
 so much ; they have really no connection with it 
 whatever, if they do not actually belie it. We may 
 refute every reason he can put forth without touch- 
 ing the one true reason which he does not know 
 how to disentangle or express. 
 
 It would betray a lamentable ignorance of the 
 principles governing Divine election and favour, not 
 to say of patent and notorious facts, to suppose that 
 our seeing what so many are blind to is due in any 
 degree to superior intellectual acumen or to more 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 44' 
 
 extensive information and erudition on our part ; 
 or even to our superior fidelity to grace and light. 
 Though the Church has always had intellect and 
 learning on her side in greater or less degree, she 
 has never had a monopoly, and there is undoubtedly 
 more arrayed against her than is with her. God 
 has chosen the foolish and weak to confound the 
 wise and strong ; and it is so far as we are content 
 to throw in our lot with that majority that we 
 receive or retain the gift of faith. Nor are there 
 many of us who have not been far more unfaithful 
 to grace and light than some whom God has left 
 outside the fold of Peter. Our faith is obviously 
 matter for thanksgiving but not for boasting ; it is 
 not of works but of the gift of God. 
 
 But if the Church is conspicuous as a city set on 
 a hill, how are they excusable who fail to see it ? 
 
 Truly the Church is conspicuous and the features 
 that distinguish her are broadly marked and recog- 
 nizable by all. Were they subtle, microscopic, 
 elusive, ambiguous; did they depend for their 
 existence on niceties of history and exegesis and 
 criticism ; were it needful to be versed in the 
 theology of valid orders, or to be competent to 
 judge the precise requirements of unity, catholicity, 
 sanctity, apostolicity — conceptions which theologians 
 discuss and elaborate interminably — then indeed the 
 trumpet might be said to give an uncertain sound. 
 But we know it is not so, and that the evidence of 
 the Church is like the evidence of the sun to those 
 that have eyes. But eyes they must have, and here 
 we come to the solution of our problem. For if 
 
442 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 we search for some object, and are not clear as to 
 the nature and appearance of what we are searching 
 for, it may confront us time after time and be 
 passed over; not because its characteristics are 
 obscure, but because we do not know what to look 
 for. And so it is that the distinctive characteristics 
 of the Catholic Church are manifest to all, friends 
 and foes alike, but the latter find in them evidence 
 of her falsehood, while the former find in them 
 evidence of her truth. 
 
 For example, it is natural that every great 
 organization for universal and spiritual ends should 
 be brought to the birth by preaching ; for it is the 
 embodiment and organ of an idea, and this idea 
 must be first preached to the ear, received in the 
 mind, and embraced by the affections of many, 
 before it can take shape in an institution or society. 
 So it was with the Christian Church. It is not, 
 therefore, wonderful that millions who have been 
 educated to believe that the Catholic Church 
 pretends to be the unchanged representative of the 
 Church as seen in the pages of the New Testament, 
 — a Church whose worship consisted of simple 
 eucharistic suppers, of informal, and even disorderly 
 prayings and prophesyings, of continual open-air 
 preaching and exhortation; a Church as yet soft 
 and formless, innocent of all definition in disci- 
 pline or dogma or ritual, altogether in its general 
 exterior aspect far more like Methodism, or the 
 Salvation Army, than anything else ; — it is not 
 wonderful that looking about for such a Church 
 as this they should fail to recognize it in the 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 443. 
 
 Catholic Church, with her elaborate ecclesiastico- 
 political organization, her complex and definite liturgy 
 and canon law and dogma, her world-wide extension 
 and authoritative government. They seek a tender 
 sapling, and they find a gnarled, weather-beaten 
 oak ; they seek a babe in its crib, and they find a 
 man on his cross. 
 
 We, on the other hand, seek a body that 
 claims to carry on the work of Him who came 
 to teach not the few but the millions, not the 
 learned but the rude; to teach them, not the 
 science of earth or the philosophy of man, but 
 the wisdom of God and the mysteries of Heaven ; 
 and who, therefore, of necessity taught, not as the 
 scribes by reasonings and discussion, but with 
 authority as God, claiming the obedience of the 
 mind, not its patronage ; the assent of faith, not the 
 critical approval of reason. 
 
 Looking for such a Church, our own eyes, 
 and friend and foe alike lead us to Rome. Her 
 exclusiveness and dogmatism is at once conspicuous 
 and altogether distinctive. It is to us the mark or 
 characteristic of Christ, to others of anti-Christ. 
 But all alike allow that it is notorious and peculiar 
 to Rome alone. Other bodies claim to have the 
 true interpretation of Christianity ; for such a claim 
 is their raison d'itre. But there is some modesty 
 in their claim ; they do not pretend to be infallibly 
 right ; they are open to conviction ; they allow 
 outsiders a right to their opinion. But Rome alone 
 claims living infallibility, to be not only true, but 
 certainly true, and alone true. 
 
h444 the mystical BODY. 
 
 For this reason all antagonists join hands against 
 'her; whoever else is right she is infallibly wrong. 
 She is the Ishmael of Christendom ; a sign spoken 
 against by all. And while this very concursus of 
 opprobrium is for so many a conclusive proof of her 
 imposture, it is for us the very impress of the 
 stigmata of Christ. 
 
 But perhaps the commonest error is that which 
 leads men to look for such a congregation of saints 
 as we find in existence during the first days of the 
 Church's infancy ; before the tares had yet begun 
 to make themselves noticeable to any great extent ; 
 to seek for the characteristics of the invisible 
 •Church in the visible. They forget, if they ever 
 knew, that though the one Spirit which dwells in, 
 quickens, and unites the members of the visible 
 ■Church, as the source of its doctrinal light and of 
 its sacramental grace, is unfailing and imperishable, 
 yet it is as treasure stored in earthen and corruptible 
 vessels ; it is as leaven buried in an unleavened mass, 
 slowly and with difficulty asserting its influence ; 
 and transforming into its own nature alien matter 
 which cannot be leavened if separated from the 
 mass. Christ surely was explicit enough on 
 this point, to take away all surprise at the 
 weakness or wickedness of the members of the 
 visible Church of whatever degree or dignity. He 
 ■came as the friend of publicans and sinners, to call, 
 not the just, but sinners to repentance. We are 
 not shocked to find the inmates of a hospital ailing 
 .and weakly ; and the Church is little better than a 
 hospital for sick and wounded souls, in whose midst 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 445. 
 
 Christ sits down daily to meat. In this she 
 emulates the patience as she shares the reproach of 
 her Master. Those who come to her she will in no 
 wise cast out ; and if ever she excommunicates, it 
 is only lest the disease spread from one to many, 
 or else for the chastisement and ultimate healing of 
 the sinner himself. While there is life there is 
 hope. However dead and fruitless, yet until it is 
 severed from the vine, the branch may yet be 
 quickened ; " although he hath sinned yet he hath 
 not denied the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost."! 
 
 Much schism has originated in pharisaic scandal- 
 and a perverse application of the argument from 
 fruits ; and many still are kept outside the fold 
 because they are offended that the following of the 
 Church is so like the following which gathered 
 round her Master when the righteous stood apart 
 and drew close their garments from defiling contact. 
 
 Let us then be sure that if men of intelligence, 
 learning, and good faith, hold aloof from us, it is 
 simply because that of the countless aspects under 
 which Christ and His Church can be viewed, they 
 have not yet caught that one in which their resem- 
 blance or rather identity is so unmistakable. It is 
 ever so with the seeing of likeness between face 
 and face, what is missed by one is self-evident to 
 another. Out of thousands there is some one angle 
 to be taken, and the light breaks upon us irre- 
 sistibly. We might call it chance were it not rather 
 the free gift of God — doniim Dei est. 
 
 ' Commendation of the Dying. 
 
446 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 Faith is the work of a massive impression pro- 
 duced by a concrete personality. We recognize, we 
 believe, we trust, we love not in obedience to 
 arguments and reasonings ; but to a perception 
 which wakes a response in every corner of our soul. 
 "We follow the Church for the same kind of reason 
 that Peter of Galilee followed Christ. Had he 
 been asked his reasons he would wisely have said : 
 ^' Come and see ; " and yet many who came, saw 
 not, for their eyes were dim. 
 
 Perceptions whole like that he sought 
 
 To clothe, reject so pure a work of thought 
 
 As language ; thought may take perceptions place 
 
 But hardly coexist in any case, 
 
 Being its mere presentment, — of the whole 
 
 By parts ; the simultaneous and the sole, 
 
 By the successive and the many.^ 
 
 No man has ever yet uttered the whole, the real 
 reason of his belief or of his unbelief. Therein he 
 is alone with God, " to his own Maker he standeth 
 or falleth." " Whatever be the happy arrangement 
 of theses," writes a French Jesuit, a propos of 
 Huysman's En Route, " according to which the 
 theologian studies the preambles of faith, and plans 
 a route for that abstract soul which he syllogizes 
 about, the subject upon whom the touch of Divine 
 grace is working makes little account of these 
 scientific tactics. He is drawn by the cords of 
 Love and by that bait which suits his particular 
 appetite if he will but yield himself to follow ; and 
 the efficacity which the co-operation of his obedient 
 will lends to grace, suffices to sanctify and justify 
 1 R. Browning, Sordello 
 
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 447 
 
 him without inquiring for a moment whether or not 
 he has numbered his steps in strict agreement with 
 the theses or making sure that he has fallen into the 
 Church's motherly arms according to all the pre- 
 scribed rules." ^ And by way of illustration the 
 critic quotes, without approving in every detail, 
 the words in which the hero gives expression to 
 «ome of the features of the Church by which he was 
 most strongly drawn back to her bosom : 
 
 " Is it not then strange this invariable weakness 
 on the part of defunct heresies ? All of them from 
 the very first have had the flesh enlisted in their 
 service. Logically and naturally they should have 
 triumphed for they pretended to allow men and 
 women to follow their passions without condem- 
 nation, and even, in the case of Gnostics, vvith 
 profit to their sanctity, doing honour to God by the 
 vilest excesses. 
 
 " And what has become of them ? They have 
 all gone to the bottom, while the Church, so rigid 
 in this matter, is still to the fore, whole and entire. 
 She commands the body to submit and the soul to 
 suffer, and, contrary to all likelihood, human nature 
 listens to her and sweeps aside as so much filth, the 
 seductive pleasures which present themselves for 
 acceptance." 
 
 And again : 
 
 " Is not this vitality which the Church preserves, 
 
 in spite of the unfathomable stupidity of her 
 
 -children, something quite decisive ? She has 
 
 survived the alarming folly of her clergy {Quoi qu'on 
 
 ' J. Pacheu, S.J., De Dante d, Verlaine. 
 
448 THE MYSTICAL BODY. 
 
 pense, says the critic, de cette assertion incivih et 
 outree, elle a sa valeur), she has not even been slain 
 by the blunder? and witlessness cf her defenders ! 
 That is truly wocderful ! " 
 
 Temper the irony, and this is only what St. Paul 
 confesses and glories in when he says : " See your 
 vocation, brethren, that there are not many wise 
 according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many 
 noble ; but the foolish things of the world hath God 
 chosen that He may confound the wise ; and the 
 weak things of the world hath God chosen that He 
 may confound the strong; and the base things of 
 the world and the things that are contemptible hath 
 God chosen and the things that are not, that He 
 might bring to nought things that are.''^ 
 
 • I Cor. I. 26—28. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 
 
 It may not be amiss to state a little more clearly 
 the Christian doctrine of pain, which holds a position 
 midway between two erroneous views. According 
 to the hedonist and the stoic, pain is never in itself 
 a means or cause of good, be that good pleasure 
 or virtue. In this limited finite existence of ours, 
 however, it is inseparably annexed to the means 
 by which happiness is reached. In other words, 
 bitterness, we are told, is never in itself medicinal, 
 but being attached to other properties which are 
 medicinal, it must be endured by those who desire 
 health for themselves ; it must be inflicted by those 
 who desire health for others. Thus, if these 
 thinkers profess any sort of Christianity, they regard 
 Christ's mission of redemption as a mission pri- 
 marily for the relief of suffering. If He calls on us 
 to take up our cross and follow Him to Calvary 
 and hang beside Him there, it is not because suifer- 
 ing is useful, but because it is inevitable if we would 
 eventually minimize suffering for ourselves and for 
 others. And therefore, though suffering is useless, 
 sufferance is good, i.e., being able to face suffering 
 and fight it with a view to its extinction. Christ, 
 in their view, is the exemplar philanthropist, who 
 DD 
 
450 APPENDIX. 
 
 found joy in suffering, for the end that others 
 might not suffer, who bore their burdens and 
 griefs and sorrows, and imposed a like altruism on 
 His disciples, as the Great Precept of the New 
 Law. He bids the rich give to the poor, and those 
 that have to those that have not. He promises life 
 to those who devote themselves to the relief of pain 
 and suffering, who feed the hungry, and clothe the 
 naked, and minister to the needy. If this, then, 
 be the true spirit of Christ, is it not evident that 
 though it is good for us to be able and willing to 
 suffer when necessary, yet the necessity of suffering 
 is itself something to be deplored, something 
 abnormal, irregular, the fruit of sin and disorder ; 
 that it is Hke the rust of a key which simply makes 
 it difficult to turn it in the lock, and in no possible 
 way helps to that effect ; that suffering makes the 
 food and medicine of life bitter, but is not itself 
 nourishing or medicinal ; that it is the great obstacle 
 to holiness and goodness, and that were it not for 
 the difficulty and pain to be encountered, the whole 
 world would be virtuous and happy? 
 
 There is so much plausibility in this presentment 
 of Christianity as to deceive at times even those 
 whose spiritual instincts are truer than their reason- 
 ing, and who in attempting to formulate their religion 
 do it scant justice. 
 
 Certain, indeed, it is that pain is never an 
 ultimate end ; that God never delights in suffering, 
 even when He Himself inflicts it or wills it to be 
 inflicted; that in some equivalent way, His love 
 for the least of His creatures makes their pains His 
 
NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 451 
 
 •own, even as the father may suffer more than the 
 -child whom he chastises, yet shrinks not from doing 
 what is for the child's greater good. 
 
 True it is also, that Christ went about relieving 
 pain and sorrow, and that He requires like com- 
 passion from all His disciples ; that He is the 
 physician of the body no less than of the soul; 
 that He cares for the temporal as well as for the 
 eternal; for the State as well as for the Church; 
 for the multitudes as well as for individuals. This 
 aspect of Christianity is only too often ignored by 
 those who would divorce grace and nature, Heaven 
 and earth, Christianity and civilization, and set 
 them at enmity one with another. No man need 
 pretend to love God who has no pity for the 
 hungry. 
 
 This is true, but it is not the whole truth. 
 " Seek ye first God's Kingdom and its justice." This 
 justice is the only supreme and unqualified good, by 
 which all else is to be measured and estimated. 
 Other things are to be sought or avoided according 
 as they help or hinder the one thing needful. 
 Nothing is absolute evil for man but what violates 
 his humanity, the higher life of his reason. Were 
 he mere animal, then pain would be an unquali- 
 fied misfortune, and in no possible way a good 
 or cause of good ; though possibly it might be 
 a condition of good. But belonging as he also 
 does to the order of the Eternal and Absolute, 
 and finding his highest perfection and happiness 
 in the love of truth and right, of God and of 
 God's cause — a love which is exerted, and thereby 
 
452 APPENDIX. 
 
 Strengthened, in suffering and self-denial, — temporal 
 and transitory crosses are evil only in a relative and 
 conditional sense, i.e., just so far as they hinder his 
 higher and eternal life. But they may as often, 
 perhaps more often, be not merely the condition 
 but the very cause and direct means of his advance 
 in the Kingdom of God and its justice ; not merely 
 something tolerated as inseparably annexed to the 
 means, but themselves the means, — the very bitter- 
 ness itself, and not merely the bitter thing, being 
 medicinal. In a word, suffering is in itself good 
 and useful, though not an ultimate and final good. 
 The pain of the lance does the patient no good, 
 and so perhaps we employ narcotics. But the pain 
 of the lash does the criminal good, nor has philan- 
 thropy so far insisted on administering chloroform 
 to him. 
 
 It seems, then, that " Humanitarianism " makes 
 what is commonly understood as philanthropy the 
 chief end of Christ's teaching and example ; whereas 
 Catholicity looks upon it as necessary indeed, but 
 as secondary and subordinate. Where pain is an 
 inseparable condition, still more where it is a direct 
 cause find means of greater good, it must be 
 embraced, not under protest, but with the love due 
 to that which in itself is good and useful; which, 
 though repugnant to feeling, is welcome to reason 
 and faith. 
 
 No doubt there is a superstitious pain-worship 
 connected with dualist religions, which, as they 
 acknowledge an ultimate principle of evil, so also 
 do they view pain as pleasing for its own sake to 
 
NOTE TO THE '•GOSPEL OF PAIN." 453 
 
 a cruel deity; or rather, because it tends to the 
 destruction of the animal body, and of separate 
 personal existence, which are regarded as of evil 
 origin. Christian asceticism rests on no such 
 foundation, but maintains that pain itself purifies 
 the heart, as iire purifies gold. 
 
 For the heart is purified by detachment. Its 
 purity is its perfect liberty from all that impedes its 
 complete subjection to the Divine love, and reason, 
 and will. Such subjection requires that it should be 
 able to endure the pain of leaving what it likes, of 
 embracing what it abhors — a power which may be 
 possessed to an indefinite degree. Apart from 
 ■supernatural intervention, the strength of Divine 
 love in the soul, like every other habit, is increased 
 by every act in advance of previous acts in point of 
 intensity ; by lesser acts it is sustained up to a 
 corresponding point of capacity, but no further. It 
 is not by the removal but by the graduated increase 
 of obstacles that Divine love is exercised and 
 •strengthened ; not by the extinction but by the 
 mastery of rebellious feeling. Every new victory 
 of Divine love over such rebellion is a new degree 
 of liberty acquired, a further purification from 
 hampering affections, another tie to earth and the 
 lower life loosened. 
 
 As resistance draws out physical exertion and 
 •strengthens our muscles, so pain increases our 
 .moral strength, which is prized, not because to be 
 •able to endure pain is useful (that were a vicious 
 circle), but because our perfection lies in loving 
 God with our whole heart and strength, and 
 
454 APPENDIX. 
 
 drawing out every inch of our capacity in that 
 respect. Normally, it is only by pain that this can 
 be effected.! A life of pleasure unbroken by pain is 
 in the moral order like a hfe of absolute bodily 
 inactivity. It is the explicit teaching of Christianity 
 that a man is sent into this world for no other end 
 but to perfect himself in the love of God and of 
 every form and aspect of Divine goodness ; and if 
 that love can be perfected and uttered only through' 
 labour and pain and suffering, it is hard to see why 
 this hfe should be very much pleasanter than Purga- 
 tory, where the process which death finds imperfect 
 is taken up and finished according to somewhat the- 
 same method. There is, indeed, true joy and peace 
 mid the purgatorial pangs ; and if there is any 
 solid joy and peace on earth it is that which th& 
 saints have known in the midst of their many 
 tribulations, and which the world could neither 
 give nor take away. To say that life is but an 
 
 1 Needless to say we speak of the natural order of things such 
 as prevails now in consequence of the forfeiture of the preternatural 
 through Adam's fall, and would have prevailed always had man 
 not been created in Paradise. Even there man was not to be- 
 spiritually perfected, he could not make grace his own until it was, 
 so to say, burnt into his soul by that mysterious temptation to 
 which he, with all his advantages and helps, succumbed. We may 
 be sure that the trial on which the destiny of the whole human 
 race depended was one which could be borne only at the cost of 
 great suffering, — since temptation implies suffering whether in 
 the way of abstinence or of endurance. Thus the law of sanctifi- 
 cation through suffering seems to be saved everywhere. As to the- 
 process by which the soul of the baptized infant is developed- 
 intellectually and morally and makes manifest the graces latent in 
 it, we know too little to be certain that even here we have an- 
 exception. 
 
NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 455 
 
 inchoative purgatory may sound pessimistic to the 
 thoughtless, but, in truth, it is very kindest optimism, 
 the one answer that fits the riddle. Not, indeed, 
 that there is any continuance of probation or increase 
 of grace after death, but that the seeds of love here 
 sown are there watered and matured, and spread 
 their shoots and fibres to every corner of our 
 spiritual being ; it is a work, not of development as 
 here on earth, but of simple evolution. 
 
 If once we accept the probation theory of life, it 
 ought no longer to surprise us to find that the soul 
 is so often on the rack, that every circumstance 
 and condition of its existence is devised either to 
 unite it more closely to God or else to separate it 
 from God, — the latter purposes being seemingly 
 contrary but really subordinate to the former, 
 insomuch as the greater the force of the strain that 
 would drag us away from God, i.e., from faith, or 
 hope, or charity, or justice, or purity, or truth, or 
 any form of Divine goodness, the more firmly do we 
 need to chng to Him and the stronger grows our 
 grasp, if we are but faithful in clinging. 
 
 If the practice of Divine love were not painful, it 
 would never take root or grow. No doubt it is the 
 very idea of virtue that good actions should become 
 easy ; yet this is only because the habit of enduring 
 pain has become deep-seated. " Easy" is not "pain- 
 less." The pain is felt as much as ever, but the 
 feeling is disregarded and promptly defied, owing to- 
 the strength of the counter-motive. Just as the 
 strong man delights to exert his strength in order 
 both to give expression to it, and to maintain and 
 
456 APPENDIX. 
 
 increase it, so the love of God, when it is strong, 
 delights to give expression to itself, to exercise and 
 perfect itself. The giant will not be satisfied to 
 beat the air, but looks for something that will resist 
 him, and if he finds no obstacle will make one ; and 
 the lover will not be satisfied with unresisting, easy 
 tasks, but looks for something painful and hard; 
 and if he finds it not to hand will devise it for 
 himself. The Christian ascetic naturally, instinc- 
 tively, reasonably (always supposing it be not to the 
 hurt of greater good) takes to self-sought austerities 
 simply and only to express, and incidentally therein 
 to strengthen, his love of God, his sorrow for sin. 
 In this he but co-operates in the dispensation 
 whereby God Himself uses pain and suffering 
 directly as a means for the spiritual formation of 
 His saints. 
 
 In the mere fact of practising and inculcating 
 fast and vigil, Christ our Saviour has allowed and 
 taught asceticism ; nor is there any difference in 
 kind between His fast in the desert and the 
 severest self-inflicted austerities of Catholic saints. 
 It is quite immaterial whether we afflict ourselves 
 by hunger, or thirst, or wakefulness, or scourge, 
 or haircloth, if once we pass the boundary of mere 
 temperance and uphold the lawfulness and the duty 
 of fasting. 
 
 Christ's primary mission with respect to the 
 sufferings and sorrows of life was, not to relieve 
 them, but to teach men to bear them, to value 
 them, to thank God for them. There are two 
 ways of dealing with difficulties and trials — by 
 
NOTE TO THE -GOSPEL OF PAIN." 457 
 
 changing ourselves or by changing our surround- 
 ings ; by running away from hardships or by 
 adapting ourselves to them and nerving ourselves 
 to bear them. There is no question as to which is 
 the wisest course. If we fly from one cross it is 
 only to fall into the arms of another. Go where 
 we will we carry ourselves with us, the source of 
 most of our trouble. Until we change ourselves, no 
 change of circumstances will avail. Imaginatio locorum 
 et mutatio multos fefellit, says i Kempis — many have 
 been deluded by the imaginary advantages of a 
 change. Men are constantly laying the blame of their 
 own faults on their surroundings; ever fancying that 
 they would be perfectly happy in some other place ; 
 ever keen-eyed to their present grievances and 
 prospective advantages ; ever blind to their present 
 advantages and prospective grievances ; always loth 
 to face the inevitable truth, that life is a warfare 
 upon earth ; that it is essentially a cross which must 
 be borne, whether willingly or unwillingly ; that 
 "there is no other way to life and to true internal 
 peace but the way of the Holy Cross and of daily 
 mortification. Walk where you will, seek what you 
 will ; yet you will find no higher way above, no safer 
 way below than the way of the Holy Cross. Arrange 
 and order everything after your own likings and 
 fancies, and yet you will always find something that 
 you have to suffer, whether willingly or unwillingly, 
 and thus you will always find the Cross. You will 
 have to put up either with bodily pain or with 
 spiritual troubles. At one time you will feel 
 abandoned by God ; at another you will be tried by 
 
458 APPENDIX. 
 
 your neighbour; and, what is worse, you will often be 
 troublesome to yourself. Nor yet can you be released 
 or relieved by any remedy or comfort, but needs 
 must bear it as long as God wills. . . . Run where 
 you will, you cannot escape, for wherever you go you 
 carry yourself along with you, and so everywhere 
 you will always find yourself. Turn where you will, 
 above or below, within or without, yet in every 
 corner you will find the Cross ; and everywhere you 
 will need to exercise patience if you want to possess 
 inward peace and deserve an everlasting crown. If 
 you carry the Cross willingly, it will carry you ; if 
 you carry it unwillingly, you make a burden for 
 yourself and weight yourself still more ; and yet, 
 bear it you must. If you cast off one cross you will 
 surely find another, and perhaps a heavier one. Do 
 you imagine you are going to escape what no man 
 ever yet escaped 1 . , . You are sore mistaken if 
 you expect anything else but to suffer trials, for the 
 whole of this earthly life is full of miseries and hedged 
 round with crosses. Make up your mind that you 
 will have to endure many adversities and all sorts of 
 inconveniences in this wretched life, for so it will 
 be with you wherever you are, and so you will surely 
 find it wherever you lie hid. . . . When you shall 
 have got so far that tribulation is sweet to you and 
 savours of Christ, then indeed it will be well with 
 you, and you will have discovered paradise upon 
 earth. As long as suffering is an evil in your eyes, 
 and you try to run away from it, so long will you 
 be unhappy ; and whithersoever you fly, the need of 
 further flight will still follow you. But if you settle 
 
NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 459 
 
 down to the inevitable, namely, to suffering and 
 dying, things will quickly mend and you will find 
 peace. . . . Had there been anything better or more 
 useful for men's souls than suffering, surely Christ 
 would have taught it by word and example ! . . . 
 And, therefore, let this be the final conclusion of all 
 our study and investigation, that it is of necessity 
 through many tribulations that we are to enter the 
 Kingdom of God." ^ 
 
 In short, the Gospel has no belief in the perfecti- 
 bility of human life here on earth. If suffering be 
 the true, unmitigated evil, then Christianity is 
 frankly pessimistic. Suffer we must on our cross, 
 whether on the right hand of Christ or on the 
 left ; whether with faith, patience, and humility, 
 or with unbelief, blasphemy, and proud indigna- 
 tion. Nor can there be any question as to who 
 suffers more, he who makes the Cross not merely 
 a basis of certain hope, but even an exercise 
 and expression of present love, or he who finds 
 in it not even the medicine, but the very poison 
 ©f life. 
 
 We have already insisted that the good which 
 positivism seeks to realize for humanity is not the 
 ultimate good; nor is the evil it would mitigate 
 a real, final evil. But we may go further with 
 some plausibihty, and urge that its aim is not only 
 mistaken, but impossible ; that it cheers us with 
 hopes which can never be realized, that as every 
 drop which the sun absorbs from the ocean comes 
 back to it again sooner or later, so the efforts of 
 ' Imitation, ii. 12. 
 
460 APPENDIX. 
 
 philanthropy to drain the sea of man's sorrows are 
 futile and unavailing. 
 
 It is vain for us to kick against the goad of 
 suffering, for thereby we only feel it the more. We 
 are comforted by promises of a golden age, or an 
 age of gold, when poverty shall be no more. Yet 
 He perchance knew the nature of human society 
 better who said: "The poor you shall always have 
 with you," and in so saying He may have enounced, 
 not merely a fact of the future, but an iron law of 
 life. If so, then as long as the world lasts 
 the poor will always be in the majority and the 
 destitute will be not a few. , Indeed, it seems that 
 the pursuit of social wealth is like the pursuit of 
 truth — at every step a new and wider horizon opens 
 out on our view. To solve ten problems is to 
 suggest a hundred not dreamt of before; and so, 
 to raise the standard of comfort and enjoyment is 
 to multiply men's needs and make the conditions of 
 their temporal happiness more difficult to realize. 
 Let the wealth of the country increase as it will, 
 yet the amount of discontent and suffering caused 
 by poverty will be relatively much the same in one 
 age as in another. The capacities for pleasure and 
 for pain grow pari passu, and therefore the increase 
 of social wealth does not lessen poverty, but only 
 changes the standard. For poverty is something 
 to a great extent relative. While society lasts there 
 will always be inequality in possessions. As fast as 
 we draw outsiders within the circle of economic 
 comfort, others will be ready to take their place. 
 For the more bread there is, the more mouths will 
 
NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 461 
 
 there be to eat it ; and if competitors multiply, the 
 number of those weaklings is multiplied who are 
 pushed to the wall in the struggle, and whose lot is 
 poverty, if not destitution. 
 
 The stimulus to all progress is discontent with 
 existing conditions, that is, misery of some kind or 
 another; and therefore those who make material 
 progress an end in itself, who fix no final point 
 beyond which comfort may not go and where pro- 
 gress must cease, make discontent the normal lot 
 of mankind. 
 
 Doubtless I shall be told that if we are to seek 
 such "want-begotten rest," if we are to lower our 
 standard of comfort to the minimum, in the first 
 place we shall be relatively no happier, since with 
 the contraction of our needs the means of satisfying 
 them will proportionately dwindle down ; and then, 
 that we shall simply sacrifice the fulness of a life 
 where all our capacities for enjoyment are developed 
 to the utmost, for a lower and feebler vitality which 
 suffers less, only because it lives less and enjoys 
 less ; that if our doctrine were carried to its extreme 
 conclusion, we should (as Buddhism does) aim at 
 the extinction of all desire and being. 
 
 This objection is vaHd if we accept the tenets 
 of that hedonism which consciously or unconsciously 
 pervades the thought of our day. For if indeed 
 enjoyment be our highest good, then the only 
 practical, though perhaps insoluble, question is as 
 to whether plteasure or pain preponderates in this 
 mortal life. If pleasure, then Hfe should be sought 
 in its greatest possible fulness; if pain, then life 
 
462 APPENDIX. 
 
 should be shunned, stifled, extinguished. The ancient 
 East has learnt to take the bitter view ; the sanguine 
 West, with the buoyancy of comparative youth and 
 inexperience, can still find hope in life apart from 
 God. 
 
 If, therefore, pleasure were the last good, and 
 pain the last ill, it might well be questioned whether 
 the joys that culture and civilization bring to the 
 majority are not more than cancelled by the 
 attendant sorrows, and whether stagnation, numb- 
 ness and sensibility were not the better wisdom, 
 and Nirvana our best hope. 
 
 None perhaps ever entered more fully, more 
 purely into the best that the highest culture can 
 offer, than he who spoke not only in his own name, 
 but in the name of that unique civilization he repre- 
 sented when he said : " For I believe that if one 
 had to compare that night in which he slept so 
 soundly as not to be troubled by any dream what- 
 soever, with all the other nights and days of his 
 whole life, and had to confess how many days or 
 nights he had passed more pleasantly and sweetly, 
 I believe that neither the king on his throne, nor 
 the beggar at his gate, could count many such."^ 
 
 If, however, we deny that enjoyment is tfie chief 
 good, or more than a subordinate condition of our 
 highest and truest life, to be used or left as reason 
 shall dictate ; if we perceive that when sought for 
 its own sake it becomes a tyrannical and insatiable 
 greed, a source of chronic discontent and misery ; 
 that it tends to absorb all the interest and energy 
 Apol. Socratis. 
 
NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 463 
 
 which would otherwise go to the quest of God, and 
 of divine good, then it is no longer a concession to 
 pessimism or Buddhism to advocate a simpHfying 
 of the conditions of life in the interests of a truer 
 and nobler culture. Christianity has no quarrel 
 with civilization or culture as such, but only with 
 a false civilization which would usurp the place 
 which belongs to the Kingdom of God and its 
 justice. It not only allows but enjoins the further- 
 ance of all arts that minister to life, so long as 
 due order be observed, and the lower be restrained 
 by the higher, and nothing be sought without 
 measure or restraint, save that which is highest of 
 all. It defers to the claims of the body, of the 
 passions and affections, of the aesthetic faculty and 
 the imagination, yet always with the knowledge 
 that restraint is the only antiseptic, and that when 
 Nature breaks loose from the yoke of Grace, the 
 liberty she seeks proves to be bondage, degradation, 
 corruption. 
 
 But it is in justice, and in the inner Kingdom 
 of God that we are to place our imperishable 
 treasure of happiness, which no suffering in other 
 respects can touch save superficially, leaving the 
 soul's depths in imperturbable calm. This happi- 
 ness, like the air and sunshine, is within the 
 reach of all; and the supply being unlimited, 
 there is no struggle of competition, no necessary 
 poverty or destitution. In the spiritual soul, with 
 its capacities for light and love, men possess 
 an often unsuspected treasure of happiness, 
 an instrument from which skilled fingers can at 
 
464 APPENDIX. 
 
 pleasure draw sweetest music. Christ tells us that 
 our bliss depends more upon what we are, than upon 
 our circumstances; that these latter receive their 
 form and meaning from the soul ; that the eye sees 
 what it brings with it, the power of seeing ; that it 
 is more blessed to play an indifferent part nobly 
 than to play a noble part indifferently; that the 
 Kingdom is within us, and consists in that deep- 
 down, unbroken peace of the heart which the world 
 can neither give nor take' away. 
 
 We are not then enemies to material progress 
 because we refuse to recognize it as an end in itself; 
 or because we forbid men to build all their hopes 
 upon it, and throw all their energies into it ; or 
 because we refuse to believe that on the whole it 
 can ever seriously alter the relative proportions of 
 pain and pleasure in this world. On the contrary, 
 as nature in general is saved and perfected by its 
 subjection to grace and heavenly wisdom, so within 
 the many kingdoms of nature each lower realm is 
 best saved by subjection to that above it ; nor can 
 any civilization escape corruption when the lower 
 life is sought luxuriously and extravagantly at the 
 expense of the higher; when the bulk of social 
 wealth goes, not to the necessities, but to the 
 superfluities of the body, while the soul is left 
 languishing. 
 
 And if the predictions of a future terrestrial 
 paradise consequent on the growth and distribution 
 of wealth are somewhat shortsighted, the same must 
 be said of those which point to the coming extermina- 
 tion of disease and the prolongation of life through 
 
NOTE TO THE ''GOSPEL OF PAIN." 465 
 
 the progressive improvement of medical science. 
 For if the art of healing finds new remedies and 
 methods, it only means that many weaklings are 
 born, and many survive whom Nature with rough 
 kindness would have withheld or eliminated from 
 the number of the living ; and thus the proportion 
 of those who can exist comfortably under improved 
 medical science to those whose life is a burden 
 to them, is about the same as before. 
 
 As for the far greater amount of human grief and 
 sorrow which owes its birth to sin and selfishness, 
 temptation and perverse free-will, it is hard to see 
 how the most sanguine philanthropist can persuade 
 himself that any diminution has been realized or is 
 to be hoped for; and while death remains (as for 
 such faithless thinkers it must remain) " the King of 
 Terrors," the extinction of all they live for, and a 
 sword of sorrow to loving survivors, it is vain to 
 indulge in dreams of an earthly paradise from which 
 all pain and sorrow is to be weeded out, and where 
 comfort, if not luxury, shall be the unbroken lot of 
 all. In flying from the Cross, humanity, with out- 
 stretched arms, is flying from its own shadow. 
 
 Man is born for travail, as the sparks fly upwards. 
 His life upon earth is a warfare ; not a peaceful 
 paradise. Cur quceris quietem, says k Kempis, cum 
 natus sis ad laborem — " What business have you 
 to expect rest, since you were born for labour and 
 conflict ? " Man that is born of woman hath but a 
 short time to live, and is full of misery. This is 
 "the iron law" of our nature, shirk it how we 
 will, — Furca expellas tanien usque recurret. Against this 
 
 EE 
 
465 APPENDIX. 
 
 tide of suffering, Christian, neo-Christian, and non- 
 Christian philanthropy, each in obedience to the 
 deepest and noblest instincts of the soul, casts up 
 barriers of sand, to retard its advance here and 
 there, or to break the force of its waves for a short 
 hour or so. Nor herein is the Christian inconsistent, 
 seeing as he does in these temporal needs and 
 sorrows a true, though by no means unmitigated 
 evil ; one to be resisted, but not absolutely and 
 unconditionally. 
 
 Yet it is not in the efforts and fruits of such 
 philanthropy, not in the increased care for the 
 poor and sick, that we are to look for the meaning 
 of the Gospel proclamation, Pauperes evangelizantur 
 — " Good news for the poor." Blessed are the poor, 
 the mourners, the sick, the oppressed, the persecuted 1 
 Blessed indeed, because their Deliverer has come. 
 But what manner of deliverance is Christ's ? Is it 
 that the poor are to grow rich ; the sick strong ; the 
 mourners gay and light-hearted ; the oppressed 
 victorious ? In that case He should rather have said : 
 Blessed are the rich, the prosperous, the gay. Yet 
 though He bade His follQwers sell all and give to the 
 poor, though He went about healing the sick, raising 
 the dead, consoling the mourners, — as it were, 
 robbing them of their blessing, j'et He says, Blessed 
 are you poor ; and He chose their lot for Himself and 
 for His Mother. Seeing that He had said it was 
 easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle 
 than for a rich man to enter Heaven, He might well 
 have given us an example of that more difficult 
 sanctity, by coming among us as a rich man. But 
 
NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN.- 467 
 
 His Heart was with the majority, to sweeten their 
 lot. The rich, the great, and the learned live, so to 
 say, on the crumbs that fall from the table God has 
 spread for the poor and simple, — on the overflow 
 of the Gospel graces. They get into Heaven by 
 holding on to the skirts of the poor, and by making 
 of them friends at court for themselves. Therefore 
 our Saviour came rather to show the poor how to 
 use their poverty, than to show the rich how to use 
 their riches ; to minister to the many, to sanctify 
 their lot, to consecrate their ragged garments by 
 wearing them Himself. 
 
 Who then is the true philanthropist ? Is it he 
 who, by the very manner in which he sympathizes 
 with sorrow, and labours for its extinction, practi- 
 cally inculcates his own belief that it is an unmiti- 
 gated evil ; who dreams fondly and bids others 
 dream of a future paradise on earth, who believes in 
 the perfectibility, not only of the soul, but of the 
 conditions of a comfortable and enjoyable existence ? 
 Or is it He who " knew what was in man," who 
 knew that poverty, sorrow, suffering, and temptation 
 would always and inevitably be the lot of the 
 majority; who knew that there was wisdom and 
 love veiled under God's seeming harsh dispensation, 
 and who came not to change it, but to explain it ; 
 to touch the dark clouds with golden light ; not to 
 uproot the thorns which sin had sown, but to teach 
 our bleeding fingers to weave them into a crown 
 of glory for our own brow. A human comforter 
 would stay us with false hopes of impossible amelio- 
 ration ; God shows us that povertj' is wealth, and 
 
468 APPENDIX. 
 
 sorrow is joy, and death is life. He comes to us 
 with His Cross on His shoulder and says : " Follow 
 Me, I am the way ; " He has taught us, if not to 
 love, at least to adore the Cross ; to carry it, if not 
 joyfully, at least patiently. 
 
 There is no false kindness, but there is true and 
 tender love in the hard, stern sayings of the Gospel. 
 " Good news for the poor ; " not that poverty is ac 
 an end, but that it can be turned into gold. And so 
 of every sorrow and trial and temptation. 
 
 Pseudo-Christian philanthropy would take Christ 
 down from the Cross. It forgets that He hung 
 there by His own free-will ; not in our stead, but 
 that we might have courage to hang beside 
 Him, for without the Cross there is no life. 
 In cruce vita, says k Kempis, in cruce salus — 
 *' Only in the Cross is life and salvation to be 
 found." Crux, Ave! Spes unica! Can it be doubted 
 but that this was the secret of the conquest of the 
 world by Christianity ? For what is strength but 
 courage ? and what is courage, when all is told, but 
 the power of bearing pain, both moral and physical ? 
 And what force can resist a people whom love 
 teaches, not merely to endure pain, but to seek it 
 and to revel in it ? The blood of the martyrs could 
 not fail to be the seed of the Church ; nor while the 
 true doctrine of the Cross is preserved in the 
 Church — as it must ever be preserved however at 
 times neglected and forgotten, — need we fear for the 
 eventual victory of Christianity over a feeble-minded 
 world which grows daily more terrified at pain and 
 suffering. Doubtless the children of the Church are 
 
NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 469 
 
 at times largely infected with the world's sentiments 
 in the matter, dainty members of a thorn-crowned 
 Head — and so far the Church is feeble ; but never 
 while she cHngs to Christ crucified and His saints ; 
 never while she lifts the Cross for our adoration, 
 and hails it : Spes unica — " our only hope," can the 
 secret of her invincible strength be wholly forgotten : 
 In hoc signo vinces — In this sign she must conquer^ 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE FAITH OF THE MILLIONS. 
 
 FIRST AND SECOND SERIES. 
 
 SECOND EDITION, 
 Crown 8vo. 5s. net, each Volume. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 "All are infused with that breadth of view which has nothing latitu- 
 dinarian about it, but is entirely free from the narrowness and pettiness, as 
 well as from the inability to appreciate the position of those from whom we 
 differ, which unfortunately characterize many well-intentioned writers. . . . 
 It must suffice to commend these studies of The Faith of the Millions 
 (which, it may be noted, has the Cardinal's imprimatur) to the notice of 
 all who value thought and intelligence of a high order, expressed in language 
 worthy of its subjects," — Catholic Book Notes. 
 
 " Father Tyrrell is the very ideal of Roman controversialists. . . His 
 methods of argument are very attractive." — Spectator. 
 
 "Except to sectaries afraid of falling under the spell of Jesuitism, or 
 those cowardly reasoners who dread to see ' the other side ' in its full strength, 
 these volumes may be cordially recommended." — Norfolk Chronicle, 
 
 " For though it is not a work which will be read by millions, it is, never- 
 theless, in a certain sense, a work that has been written for the millions, in 
 so far as it is the needs of mankind at large that are at once its motive and 
 its end. And it is for this reason that the controversial spirit is almost 
 entirely absent, with its tendency to divide men into two camps, and speak 
 from one side to the other. The writer seems, for the most part, to have 
 no desire to prove others wrong or himself right, but simply to represent 
 each side as it actually is, with its strength and its weakness, trusting thus 
 to the final prevalence of truth over error." — IVeekly Register. 
 
 " His style is eminently readable ; he appeals to the cultured intellect ; 
 the pressing problems of the day engage his attention, and his manifest 
 intention throughout every page from cover to cover is to reveal to the 
 prejudiced the soundness of the philosophy inspired by faith, and that the 
 Catholic Faith." — Catholic Times. 
 
 " There is nothing of compromise from beginning to end, no giving 
 away of spiritual essentials to meet temporary difficulties ; and yet there is 
 real sympathy with genuine perplexities, and a frank treatment of undeni- 
 able problems. . . . On the whole the spirit that prevails in these essays, 
 too numei'ous and varied for individual mention, is that of the mediator, 
 who endeavours to bridge over the gulf of separation between the Church 
 and all that is best in the opposite camp. The attitude is firm and free 
 from all faint-hearted compromise, but at the same time open and sympa- 
 thetic. It is such a temper of mind as is fostered by the close study of 
 St. Thomas, whose Summa is, as we read in the first article, 'a monument 
 of that comprehensive sympathy which hails every truth, from whatever 
 source, as the gift of God.'" — Tablet. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 NOVA ET VETERA 
 
 INFORMAL MEDITATIONS. 
 
 NEW EDITION, REVISED. 
 
 FOURTH IMPRESSION. 
 Crown 8vo. 5s. net. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 ' ' These meditations are particularly graceful in form, while they are 
 solid in matter. Suggestiveness is their most striking quality. . . . They 
 will also be excellent for snatches of spiritual reading at odd moments ; and 
 they will put a good thought into the mind which will fructify for the rest 
 of the d.iy. . . We feel certain that this book will meet with the success 
 it deserves." — Dublin Review, 
 
 "The condescension of such a book as Nova et Vetera to our day of 
 business and bustle is something for which we are very grateful." — Tablet. 
 
 "Reflections upon many topics of great interest to men and women who 
 value their Uves. There is nothing tiresome about the book to any 
 moderately serious mind." — American Ecclesiastical Review. 
 
 "It is a book which one can open anywhere, with the certainty of 
 finding something that will afford him consolation and instruction." — 
 American Catholic Quarterly. 
 
 "This book excels most volumes of meditations in literary style and 
 originality of thought-stimulus, and will be profitable both to clergymen, 
 to religious, and to secular lay persons possessing a certain degree of 
 education. It will be particularly valuable to preachers, who will be sure 
 to find on every page many suggestions for fresh and powerful sermons. " — 
 Ckurch Progress. 
 
 " We may turn to its pages and light at random upon some meditation 
 that precisely suits our present state of mind ; and its suitability to our 
 present condition is the very reason why it is spiritually useful to us." — 
 Book Notices. 
 
 "The work is solid and helpful in every page. The scriptural quotations 
 are especially well chosen in reference to the subject under consideration — 
 a fact which adds much to the practical worth of the book as an aid in the 
 spiritual life, making one realize the nearness of Christ to the prayerful 
 soul." — Ave Maria. 
 
 " Father Tyrrell has a very attractive style, and his flow of ideas is 
 always stimulating. We can guarantee that Nova et Vetera is a book 
 calculated to afford pleasure and profit to every educated Catholic." — 
 Irish Catholic. 
 
 " One of the freshest and most original additions to our ascetic 
 literature." — Irish Monthly, Aug. i8g8. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
A SELECT LIST 
 
 OF 
 
 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS 
 
 (MAIKLY ROMAN CATHOLIC) 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 LONGMAiNS, GREEN, & CO. 
 
 LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY. 
 
 MESSRS. LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
 
 Issue the undermentioned Catalogues and Lists of their Publications, any of which 
 may be had post free on application ; — 
 
 1. Monthly List of New Books 
 AND New Editions. 
 
 ». Quarterly List op Announce- 
 ments AND New Books. 
 
 3. Notes on Books: being an Ana- 
 
 lysis OF THE Works published 
 BY Messrs. Longmans, Green, & 
 Co, during each Quarter. 
 
 4. Scientific and Technical Books, 
 
 5. A Select List of Books Suitable 
 
 for Use in Science and Tech- 
 nical Schools. 
 
 6. Medical and Surgical Books. 
 
 7. Educational and School Books. 
 
 8. Books for Elementary Schools 
 
 AND Pupil Teachers. 
 
 g. Theological Books (Mainly 
 Church of England). 
 
 10. Theological Books (Mainly 
 
 Roman Catholic). 
 
 11. Books in General Literature, 
 
 la. A Classified Catalogue (182 pp.) 
 (General Literature, Science, 
 Theology, Education). 
 
 CARDINAL NEWMANS WORKS. 
 
 Letters and Oorrespoudence of John Henry Newman during bis 
 
 Life In the English Churcli. With a brief Autobiography. Edited, at 
 Cardinal Newman's request, by Anne Mozley. 2 vols. Cr. 8vo. 7s. 
 
 Parochial and Plain Sermons. Edited by Rev. w. j. Copeland, b.d., 
 late Rector of Farnham, Essex. 8 vols. Sold separately. Crown 
 Svo. 3s. 6d. each. 
 
 Contents op Vol. L; — Holiness necessary for Future Blessedness — The Immortality 
 of the Soul— Knowledge of God's Will without Obedience— Secret Faults— Self-Denial the 
 Teat of Religious Earnestness — The Spiritual Mind — Sins of Ignorance and Weakness — 
 God's Commandments not Grievous— The Religious Use of Excited Feelings — Profession 
 without Practice — Profession without Hypocrisy — Profession without Ostentation — 
 Promising without Doing — Religious Emotion— Religious Faith Rational — The Christian 
 Mysteries — The Self-Wise Inquirer— Obedience the Remedy for Religious Perplexity— Times 
 of Private Prayer — Forms of Private Prayer— The Resurrection of the Body — Witnesses of 
 the Resurrection — Christian Reverence — The Religion of the Day — Scripture a Record of 
 Human Sorrow— Christian Manhood, 
 
 Contents of Vol. II.: — The World's Benefactors— Faith without Sight— The Incar- 
 nation — Martyrdom — Love of Relations and Friends— The Mind of Little Children — 
 Ceremonies of the Church — The Glory of the Christian Church— St. Paul's Conversion 
 viewed in Reference to his OfBce— Secrecy and Suddenness of Divine Visitations — Divine 
 Decrees— The Reverence Due to the Blessed Virgin Mary — Christ, a Quickening Spirit — 
 Saving Knowledge— Self-Contemplation — Religious Cowardice — The Gospel Witnesses — 
 Mysteries in Religion — The Indwelling Spirit— The Kingdom of the Saints — The Gospel, 
 a Trust Committed to us— Tolerance of Religious Error — Rebuking Sin — The Christian 
 Ministry — Human Responsibility— Guilelessness — The Danger of Riches — The Powers of 
 Nature — The Danger of Accomplishments— Christian Zeal — Use of Saints' Days. 
 
A SELECT LIST OF WORKS 
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS. 
 Parochial and Plain Sermons,— Continued. 
 
 Contents of Vol. HI. :— Abraham and Lot— Wilfulness of Israel in Rejecting Samuel 
 —Saul— Early Years of David— Jeroboam— Faith and Obedience— Christian Repentance- 
 Contracted Views in Religion— A Particular Providence as revealed in the Gospel— Tears 
 of Christ at the Grave of Lazarus— Bodily Suffering— The Humiliation of the Eternal Son 
 —Jewish Zeal a Pattern to Christians— Submission to Church Authority— Contest between 
 Truth and Falsehood in the Church— The Church Visible and Invisible— The Visible 
 Church an Encouragement to Faith— The Gift of the Spirit— Regenerating Baptism— Infant 
 Baptism— The Daily Service— The Good Part of Mary— Religious Worship a Remedy for 
 Excitements— Intercession— The Intermediate State. 
 
 Contents of Vol IV. :— The Strictness of the Law of Christ— Obedience without Love, 
 as instanced in the Character of Balaam— Moral Consequences of Single Sins— Acceptance 
 of Religious Privileges Compulsory- Reliance on Religious Observances— The Individuality 
 of the Soul— Chastisement amid Mercy— Peace and Joy amid Chastisement— The State of 
 Grace— The Visible Church for the Sake of the Elect— The Communion of Saints— The 
 Church a Home for the Lonely— The Invisible World— The Greatness and Littleness of 
 Human Life— Moral Effects of Communion with God— Christ Hidden from the World- 
 Christ Manifested in Remembrance— The Gainsaying of Korah- The Mysteriousness of 
 our Present Being— The Ventures of Faith— Faith and Love— Watching— Keeping Fast 
 and Festival. 
 
 Contents of Vol. V.:— Worship, a Preparation for Christ's Coming— Reverence, a 
 Belief in God's Presence— Unreal Words— Shrinking from Christ's Coming— Equanimity- 
 Remembrance of Past Mercies— The Mystery of Godliness— The State of Innocence — 
 Christian Sympathy— Ri^teousness not of us, but in us — The Law of the Spirit — The New 
 Works of the Gospel— The State of Salvation — Transgressions and Infirmities — Sins of 
 Infirmity — Sincerity and Hypocrisy — The Testimony of Conscience — Many called. Few 
 chosen— Present Blessings— Endurance, the Christian's Portion — Affliction, a School of 
 Comfort— The Thought of God, the Stay of the Soul— Love, the One Thing Needful— The 
 Power of the Will. 
 
 Contents of Vol. VI.: — Fasting, a Source of Trial — Life, the Season of Repentance — 
 Apostolic Abstinence, a Pattern for Christians — Christ's Privations, a Meditation for Chris- 
 tians-Christ the Son of God made Man — The Incarnate Son, a Sufferer and Sacrifice— 
 The Cross of Christ the Measure of the World — Difficulty of realising Sacred Privileges — . 
 The Gospel Sign Addressed to Faith— The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church— 
 The Eucharistic Presence — Faith the Title for Justification— Judaism of the Present Day 
 —The Fellowship of the Apostles — Rising with Christ — War^re the Condition of Victory 
 — Waiting for Christ — Subjection of the Reason and Feelings to the Revealed Word — 
 The Gospel Palaces— The Visible Temple— Offerings for the Sanctuary — The Weapons 
 of Saints — Faith Without Demonstration — The Mystery of the Holy Trinity— Peace in 
 Believing. 
 
 Contents of Vol. VII.: — The Lapse of Time — Religion, a Weariness to the Natural 
 Man — The World our Enemy — The Praise of Men — Temporal Advantages — The Season of 
 Epiphany— The Duty of S elf-Den ial— The Yoke of Christ— Moses the Type of Christ— The. 
 Crucifixion — Attendance on Holy Communion-^The Gospel Feast — Love of Religion, a new 
 Nature— Religion Pleasant to the Religious — Mental Prayer — Infant Baptism— ^he Unity 
 of the Church— Steadfastness in the Old Paths, 
 
 Contents of Vol. VIII. :— Reverence in Worship— Divine Calls— The Trial of Saul— 
 The Call of David— Curiosity, a Temptation to Sin— Miracles no Remedy for Unbelief— 
 Josiah, a Pattern for the Ignorant— Inward Witness to the Truth of the Gospel — Jeremiah, 
 a Lesson for the Disappointed — Endurance of the World's Censure — Doing Glory to God 
 in Pursuits of the World — Vanity of Human Glory— Truth Hidden when not Sought after 
 — Obedience to God the Way to Faith in Christ— Sudden Conversions— The Shepherd of 
 our Souls— Religious Joy— Ignorance of Evil. 
 
 Sermons Preached on Various Occasions. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Contents: — Intellect the Instrument of Religious Training — The Religion of the 
 Pharisee and the Religion of Mankind— Waiting for Christ — The Secret Power of Divine 
 Grace— Dispositions for Faith — Omnipotence in Bonds — St. Paul's Characteristic Gift — 
 St. Paul's Gift of Sympathy— Christ upon the Waters— The Second Spring — Order, the 
 Witness and Instrument of Unity — The Mission of St. Philip Neri — The Tree beside the 
 Waters— In the World but not of the World— The Pope and the Revolution. 
 
PUBLISHED BY LONGMANS, GREEN, &• CO. 
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS. 
 
 Selection, Adapted to the Seasons of the Ecclesiastical Year, 
 from the ' Parochial and Plain Sermons '. Edited by the Rev. W. 
 J. CoPELAND, B.D. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Contents: — Advent: Self-Denial the Test of Religious Earnestness — Divine Calls — 
 The Ventures of Faith — Watching. Christmas Bay : Religious Joy. New Year's Sunday : 
 The Lapse of Time. Epiphany: Remembrance of Past Mercies — Etjuanimity — The 
 Immortality of the Soul — Christian Manhood — Sincerity and Hypocrisy — Christian 
 Sympathy. Septuagesima : Present Blessings. Sexagesima : Endurance, the Christian's 
 Portion. Quinquagesima : Love, the One Thing Needful. Lent : The Individuality of the 
 Soul — Life, the Season of Repentance — Bodily Suffering — Tears of Christ at the Grave of 
 Lazarus — Christ's Privations, a Meditation for Christians — The Cross of Christ the Measure 
 of the World. Good Friday : The Crucifixion. Easter Day : Keeping Fast and Festival. 
 Easter Tide : Witnesses of the Resurrection — A Particular Providence as revealed in the 
 Gospel — Christ Manifested in Remembrance — The Invisible World — Waiting for Christ. 
 Ascension: Warfare the Condition of Victory. Sunday after Ascension: Rising with 
 Christ. Whitsun Day : The Weapons of Saints. Trinity Sunday : The Mysteriousness 
 of our Present Being. Sundays after Trinity : Holiness Necessary for Future Blessedness 
 — The Religious Use of Excited Feelings — The Self-Wise Inquirer — Scripture a Record of 
 Human Sorrow — The! Danger of Riches — Obedience without Love, as instanced in the 
 Character of Balaam — MoralConsequences of Single Sins — The Greatness and Littleness 
 of Human Life— Moral Effects of Communion with God— The Thought of God the Stay of 
 the Soul — The Power of the Will — The Gospel Palaces — Religion a Weariness to the 
 Natural Man — The World our Enemy — The Praise of Men — ^Religion Pleasant to the 
 Religious — Mental Prayer — Curiosity a Temptation to Sin — Miracles no Remedy for Un- 
 belief-Jeremiah, a Lesson for the Disappointed— The Shepherd of our Souls— Domg Glory 
 to God m Pursuits of the World. 
 
 Sermons Bearing upon Subjects of the Day. Edited by the Rev. 
 W. J. CoPELAND, B.D., late Rector of Farnham, Essex. Crown 
 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Contents:— The Work of the Christian— Saintliness not Forfeited by the Penitent— 
 Our Lord's Last Supper and His First — Dangers to the Penitent — The Three Offices of 
 Christ— Faith and Experience— Faith unto the World— The Church and the World— In- 
 dulgence in Religious Privileges— Connection between Personal and Public Improvement 
 —Christian Noljleness- Joshua a Type of Christ and His Followers— Elisha a Type of 
 Christ and His ^Followers — The Christian Church a Continuation of the Jewish— The 
 Principles of Continuity between the Jewish and Christian Churches— The Christian 
 Church an Imperial Power— Sanctity the Token of the Christian Empire— Condition of the 
 Members of the Christian Empire— The Apostolic Christian— Wisdom and Innocence- 
 Invisible Presence of Christ — Outward and Inward Notes of the Church — Grounds for 
 Steadfastness in our Religious Profession— Elijahthe Prophet-of the Latter Days— Feast- 
 ing in Captivity— The Partinglof Friends. 
 
 Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford, 
 between a.d. 1826 and 1843. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Contents :— The Philosophical Temper, first enjoined by the Gospel— The Influence of 
 Natural and Revealed Religion respectively— Evangelical Sanctity the Perfection of 
 Natural Virtue— The Usurpations of Reason— Personal Influence, the Means of Propagating 
 the 'Truth- On Justice as a Principle of Divine Governance— Contest between Faith 
 and Sight— Human Responsibility, as independent of Circumstances— Wilfulness, the Sin 
 of SauP-Faith and Reason, contrasted as Habits of Mind— The Nature of Faith in Relation 
 to Reason— Love, the Safeguard of Faith against Superstition— Implicit and Explicit 
 Reason— Wisdom, as contrasted with Faith and with Bigotry— The Theory of Develop- 
 ments in Religious Doctrine. 
 
A SELECT LIST OF WORKS 
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS. 
 Apologia pro Vita Sua. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 Verses on Various Occasions. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Contents :— The Salvation of the Hearer the Motive of the Preacher— Neglect of Divine 
 Calls and Warnings— Men not Angles— The Priests of the Gospel— Purity and Love— 
 Saintliness the Standard of Christian Principle— God's Will the End of Life— Perseverance 
 in Grace— Nature and Grace— Illuminating Grace— Faith and Private Judgment— Faith 
 and Doubt — Prospects of the Catholic Missioner — Mysteries of Nature and of Grace — The 
 Mystery of Divine Condescension— The Iniinitude of Divine Attributes— Mental SuiTerings 
 of our Lord in His Passion — The Glories of Mary for the Sake of Her Son — On the Fitness 
 of the Glories of Mary. 
 
 Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Contents : — Faith considered as the Instrumental Cause of Tustiiication — Love con- 
 sidered as the Formal Cause of Justification — Primary Sense of the term 'Justification' — 
 Secondary Senses of the term ' Justification ' — Misuse of the term ' Just ' or ' Righteous ' — 
 The Gift of Righteousness — The Characteristics of the Gift of Righteousness — Righteous- 
 ness viewed as a Gift and as a Quality — Righteousness the Fruit of our Lord's Resurrection 
 —The Office of Justifying Faith— The Nature of Justifying Faith— Faith viewed relatively 
 to Rites and Works— On Preaching the Gospel— Appendix. 
 
 On the Development of Christian Doctrine. Crown Svo 3s. 6d. 
 
 The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated. I. In Nine Dis- 
 courses delivered to the Catholics of Dublin ; II.' In Occasional 
 Lectures and Essays addressed to the members of the Catholic 
 University. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Two Essays on Miracles, i. Of Scripture. ^. Of Ecclesiastical 
 History. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Discussions and Arguments. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 I. How to accomplish it. 2. The Antichrist of the Fathers. 3. Scrip- 
 ture and the Creed. 4. Tamworth Reading-room. 5. Who's to Blame ? 
 6. An Argument for Christianity. 
 
 Essays, Critical and Historical. 2 vols. Crown Svo. 7s. 
 
 1. Poetry. 2. Rationalism. 3. Apostolic Tradition. 4. De la Men- 
 nais. 5. Palmer on Faith and Unity. 6. St. Ignatius. 7. Prospects of 
 the Anglican Church. 8. The Anglo-American Church, g. Countess of 
 Huntingdon. lo. Catholicity of the Anglican Church. 11. The Anti- 
 christ of Protestants. 12. Milman's Christianity. 13. Reformation of 
 the XI. Century. 14. Private Judgment. 15. Davison. 16. Keble. 
 
 Historical Sketches. 3 vols. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. each. 
 
 I. The Turks. 2. Cicero. 3. Apollonius. 4. Primitive Christianity. 
 5. Church of the Fathers. 6. St. Chrysostom. 7. Theodoret. 8. St. 
 Benedict. 9. Benedictine Schools. 10. Universities. 11. Northmen and 
 NoriTjans, J2, MgdisvaJ Oxford. 13. Convocation of Canterbury. 
 
PUBLISHED BY LONGMANS, GREEN, &■ CO. 5 
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS. 
 
 The Arians of the Fourth Century. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Select Treatises of St. Athanasius in Controversy with the 
 Arians. Freely translated. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 7s. 
 
 Theological Tracts. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 I. Dissertatiunculs. 2. On the Text of the Seven Epistles of St. 
 Ignatius. 3. Doctrinal Causes of Arianism. 4. Apollinarianism. 5. St. 
 Cyril's Formula. 6. Ordo de Tempore. 7. Douay Version of Scriptures. 
 
 The Via Media of the Anglican Church. 2 Vols. Crown 8vo. 
 3s. 6d. each. 
 Vol. I. Prophetical Office of the Church. 
 Vol. II. Occasional Letters and Tracts. 
 
 Certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching Con- 
 sidered. 2 vols. 
 Vol. I. Twelve Lectures. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Vol. II. Letters to Dr. Pusey concerning the Blessed Virgin, and to 
 the Duke of Norfolk in defence of the Pope and Council 
 Crown 8vo. 3 s. 6d. 
 Present Position of Catholics in England. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 Loss and Gain. The Story of a Convert. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 Callista. A Tale of the Third Century. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 The Dream of Gerontius. i6mo, sewed, 6d. ; cloth, is. net. 
 Meditations and Devotions. Part I. Meditations for the Month of 
 May. Novena of St. Philip. Part II. The Stations of the Cross. 
 Meditations and Intercessions for Good Friday. Litanies, etc. 
 Part III. Meditations on Christian Doctrine. Conclusion. Oblong 
 Crown 8vo. 5s. net. 
 
 BATIFFOL.— History of the Roman Breviary. By Pierre Batif- 
 FOL, Litt.D. Translated by Atwell M. Y. Baylay, M.A., Vicar 
 of Thurgarton, Notts. Crown Svo. 7s. 6d. 
 
 BOSSUET.— Devotion to the Blessed Virgin : being the Substance 
 of all the Sermons for Mary's Feasts throughout the Year. By 
 jACQUES-BiiNiGNE BossuET, Bishop of Meaux. Condensed, Arranged 
 and Translated by F. M. Capes. With an Introduction by the Rev. 
 William T. Gordon, Priest of the London Oratory. Cr. 8vo. 3s. net. 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount. By Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, 
 
 Bishop of Meaux. Translated, with a short Introduction, by F. M. 
 Capes, from the " Meditations on the Gospels". Fcp. Svo. 2s.6i.net. 
 
A SELECT LIST OF WORKS 
 
 Breviarium Bothanum sive Portiforium secundum Usum Ecclesiae 
 
 cujusdam in Scotia. Printed from a MS. of the Fifteenth Century 
 in the Possession of John Marquess of Bute, K.T. 4to. 42s. net. 
 
 BEOWN.— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts. By Abbie 
 Farwell Brown. Illustrated by Fanny Y. Cory. Crown 8vo. 
 4s. 6d. net. 
 
 CARSON.— Works by the Rev. W. R. Carson : 
 
 An Eucharistic Eirenicon. With an Introduction by the Right 
 Honourable the Viscount Halifax. 8vo, sewed, is. 6d. net. 
 
 Reunion Essays. With an Appendix on the non-infallible force of the 
 Bull Apost. Cum in condemnation of the Holy Orders of the Church 
 of England. Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d. net. 
 
 Catholic Church (The) from Within. With a Preface by His Eminence 
 Cardinal Vaughan, Archbishop of Westminster. Crown 8vo. 
 6s. 6d. net. 
 
 DAVIES.— A History of England for Catholic Schools. By E. 
 
 Wyatt Davies, M.A. With 14 Maps. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 DOBBEE, — stories on the Rosary. By Louisa Emily DoBRiiE. Parts 
 I. and II. Crown 8vo. Each is. 6d. 
 
 DRANE— A Memoir of Mother Francis Raphael O.S.D. (Augusta 
 
 Theodosia Drane), some time Prioress Provincial of the Congregation 
 of Dominican Sisters of S. Catherine of Siena, Stone. With some of 
 her Spiritual Notes and Letters. Edited by Rev. Father Bertrand 
 WiLBERFORCE, O.P. With Portrait. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. 
 
 The History of St. Dominic Founder of the Friar Preachers. 
 
 By Augusta Theodosia Drane. With 32 Illustrations. 8vo. 15s. 
 
 The History of St. Catherine of Siena and her Companions. 
 
 With a Translation of her Treatise on Consummate Perfection. By 
 Augusta Theodosia Drane. With 10 Illustrations. 2 vols. 8vo. iss. 
 
 FOUARD.-THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHURCH. A Series of 
 Histories of the First Century. By the AbbS Constant Fouard, 
 Honorary Cathedral Canon, Professor of the Faculty of Theology 
 at Rouen, etc., etc. Translated by George F. X. Griffith. 
 
 The Christ, The Son of God. A Life of Our Lord and Saviour 
 Jesus Christ. With an Introduction by Cardinal Manning. With 
 3 Maps. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 14s. 
 
 Saint Peter and the First Years of Christianity. With 3 Maps. 
 
 Crown 8vo. gs. 
 
 St. Paul and His Missions. With 2 Maps. Crown 8vo. gs. 
 
 The Last Years of St. Paul. With 5 Maps and Plans. Cr. 8vo. 
 gs. 
 
 St. John and His Work. [In preparation. 
 
PUBLISHED BY LONGMANS, GREEN, &■ CO. 
 
 Horae Beatse Marise Virginis ; or, Primers of Sarum and York Uses. 
 With Kindred Books and Primers of the Reformed Roman Use. 
 With an Introduction by Edgar Hoskins, M.A., sometime Rector 
 of St. Martin at Ludgate, in the City of London. 8vo. 21s. net. 
 Large Paper Copies. 30s. net. 
 
 Ordinale ConventUS Vallis Caulium : the Rule of the Monastic Order 
 of Val-des-Choux, in Burgundy. From the Original MSS. preserved 
 in the Biblioth^que Nationale, Paris ; the Archives of Moulins-sur- 
 Allier, etc. With an Introduction by W. De Gray Birch, LL.D., 
 F.S.A. With 4 Photographic Facsimiles. 8vo. 20s. net. 
 
 ST. VINCENT DE PAUL.-History of St. Vincent de Paul, 
 
 Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (Vincentians), and of the 
 Sisters of Charity. By Monseigneur Bougaud, Bishop of Laval. 
 Translated from the Second French Edition by the Rev. Joseph 
 Brady, CM. With an Introduction by His Eminence Cardinal 
 Vauqhan, Archbishop of Westminster. With 2 Portraits. 2 vols. 
 8vo. i6s. net. 
 
 Roads to Borne : being Personal Records of some of the more recent 
 Converts to the CathoKc Faith. With an Introduction by His 
 Eminence Cardinal Vaughan, Archbishop of Westminster. Com- 
 piled and Edited by the Author of " Ten Years in Anglican Orders " 
 Crown Svo. 7s. 6d. net. 
 
 *^* Among the Contributofs are Lord Brampton {Sir Henry Hawkins); Sir Henry 
 BelUngham, Bart. ; Dr. Edward Berdoe ; Monsignor Croke Robinson ; The Bishop 0/ Clifton ; 
 The Rev. Bede Camm, O.S.B.; Miss Adeline Sergeant; The Bisliop of Emmaus; C, Kegan 
 Paul, Esq.; The Rev. W. O. Sutcliffe ; and the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle. 
 
 SANDERS.— F6n61on : His Friends and His Enemies, 1651-1715. By 
 E. K. Sanders. With Portrait. Svo. los. 6d. net. 
 
 SHBEHAN.— Luke Delmege. A Novel. By P. A. Sheehan, d.d.. 
 Parish Priest, Doneraile, Co. Cork, Author of " My New Curate ". 
 Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 TYRRELL.— Works by George Tyrrell, S.J.. 
 
 The Faith of the Millions : Essays. First and Second Series. 
 Crown Svo. 5s. net each. 
 
 First Series ; Introduction — i. A more Excellent Way — 2. Wiseman : his Aims and 
 Methods — 3. The Prospects of Reunion — 4. '* Liberal " Catholicism — 5. " Rationalism in 
 Religion " — 6. Sabatier on the Vitality of Dogmas — 7, Authority and Evolution, the Life 
 of Catholic Dogma — 8. " The Mind of the Church "—9. The Use of Scholasticism— 10. The 
 Relation of Theology to Devotion— 11, What is Mysticism ?— 12. The True and the False 
 Mysticism. 
 
 Second Series: 13. Juliana of Norwich— 14. Poet and Mystic— 15. Two Estimates of 
 Catholic Life— 16. A Life of De Lamennais— 17. Lippo, the Man and the Artist — 18. Through 
 Art to Faith— 19. Tracts for the Million — 20. An Apostle of Naturalism— 21. " The Making 
 of Religion "—23. Adaptibility as a Proof of Religion — 23. Idealism in Straits, 
 
8 A SELECT LIST OF WORKS. 
 
 TYRRELL.— Works by George Tyrrell, S.J. {continued). 
 
 Nova et Vetera : Informal Meditations. Crown 8vo. 5s. net. 
 Hard Sayings : a Selection of Meditations and Studies. Cr. 8vo. 5s. net. 
 
 WARD.— One Poor. Scruple: a Novel. By Mrs. Wilfrid Ward. 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 WARD.— Problems and Persons. By Wilfrid Ward. 
 
 Contents :— The Time-Spirit of the Nineteenth Century— The Rigidity of Rome— Un- 
 changing Dogma and Changeful Man — Balfour's * The Foundations of Belief ' — Candour 
 in Biography— Tennyson— Thomas Henry Huxley— Two Mottoes of Cardinal Newman- 
 Newman and Renan— Some Aspects of the Life-work of Cardinal Wiseman— The Lite of 
 Mrs. Augustus Craven. 
 
 WISEMAN.— The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman. By 
 
 Wilfrid Ward. With 3 Portraits. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. los. net. 
 
 STONYHURST PHILOSOPHICAL SERIES. 
 
 Edited by RICHARD F. CLARKE, S.J. 
 Psychology : Empirical and Rational. By Michael Maher, s.j. 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d. 
 Logic. By Richard F. Clarke, S.J., D.D. Crown 8vo. 5s. 
 First Principles of Knowledge. By John Rickaby, s.j. Third 
 
 Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s. 
 
 Moral Philosophy (Ethics and Natural Law). By Joseph 
 
 Rickaby, S.J. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s. 
 
 General Metaphysics. By John Rickaby, s.j. Crown 8vo. 5s. 
 
 Natural Theology. By Bernard Boedder, s.j. Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 Political Economy. By Charles S. Devas, D.Litt., M.A. Lond. 
 Second Edition, Re-written and Enlarged. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. 
 
 ENGLISH MANUALS OF CATHOLIC THEOLOGY. 
 
 Outlines of Dogmatic Theology. By Sylvester Joseph Hunter, 
 of the Society of Jesus. Crown 8vo. 3 vols., 6s. 6d. each. 
 
 3,080/9/ej, 
 
 LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY: 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
 
■"^ 
 
 -'■> 
 
 
 '■'.■r 
 
 
 
 . . , .V, . . ->-,-'.- ».--.>.;v V . <> f,v-^- c - . ';ja 
 
 >/^?^ 
 
 
 ■■■?■■ -f. -. ■ t: i.,, --ti^^iiS^j^l 
 
 
 , •-■A "" C ' 
 
 --.* •.'If 
 
 
 •)93 
 
 
 -■•.. ..,'V^ 
 
 ...,iK 
 
 
 
 ■■■.- ..•-'■■ .■-■.;--^.-.v;v;-'>i?>:";'jKr-- 
 
 : " -'• "'•:.; tr^- • ,-"»«- • .-:'--^,7, ■•-••! ■ ::;••• .•■1 
 
 -^, C »i: