CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Nixon Griff is 
 
arV1014 *^°™" ""'"•"'•y Ubiary 
 T'lg-.tSi!!'. of Jhe millions, 
 
 olln.anx 
 
 3 1924 031 210 226 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031210226 
 
THE FAITH OF THE MILLIONS. 
 
KOEHAMPTON '. 
 I'HINTED BY JOHN GRIFFIN. 
 
THE 
 
 FAITH OF THE MILLIONS 
 
 A SELECTION OF- PAST ESSAYS 
 
 GEORGE TYRRELL, S.J. 
 
 FIRST SERIES 
 
 Tlind Edition 
 
 ■"AND SEEING THE MULTITUDES HE WAS MOVED WITH 
 •COMPASSION ON THEM, FOR THEY WERE HARASSED AND 
 SCATTERED AS SHEEP HAVING NO SHEPHERD." 
 
 (_MaUhe7v ix. 36.) 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER RO.W, LONDON 
 NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
 1904 
 
mil ©bstat : 
 
 J. GERARD, S.J. 
 
 CENS. THEOL. DEPUTATUS. 
 
 jmprimatur: 
 
 HERBERTUS CARD. VAUGHAN, 
 
 ARCHIEP. WESTMON. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 This Introduction may be regarded as in 
 some sort the long-deferred continuation of 
 the essay, entitled Tracts for the Million, 
 in which it is maintained that the con- 
 ditions wherein we are placed in these 
 modernized countries, justify some effort to 
 meet the religious questionings of the semi- 
 educated in a way adapted rather to their 
 incapacity than to the demands of better- 
 informed and more cultivated minds. We 
 hold, however, that this can be at most a 
 temporary palliative, but never a radical 
 remedy against the spreading epidemic of 
 unbelief Sand-barriers may retard the ad- 
 vancing tide here and there, but eventually 
 it creeps round and over. History shows us 
 that the beliefs of the masses (we are not 
 dealing with units in this discussion) follow, 
 
. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 at a certain distance of time, the beliefs of 
 those who lead or form public opinion — that 
 eventually the many depend upon the few, 
 and the glaciers formed on the hills slip down 
 to the valleys. Hence, the constant and wise 
 endeavour of the Church in the interests of 
 the dependent crowds, to secure a Christianize d 
 public opinion, if not necessarily a Christianized 
 government. At first, she drew the multitudes 
 by her miracles, by the death of her martyrs ; 
 by the glow of her primitive purity and fervour ; 
 nay, even by the very freshness and novelty 
 of her ideas and methods : but as soon as 
 she had captured the leaders of the people — 
 as soon as the Empire was Christianized, the 
 need of these extraordinary credentials ceased 
 with the establishment of the normal and 
 ordinary conditions. Now that the difificulties 
 of the primitive period bid fair to recur, and 
 the power of public opinion is passing over 
 from the side of faith to that of doubt, dragging 
 the fluent multitude after it as the sea is 
 dragged by the moon, it would seem natural 
 to look for remedy either in a renewal of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 those preternatural energies whence the Church 
 derived that initial impetus on which she has 
 lived ever since ; or else in an endeavour to 
 reverse the present current of public opinion 
 by acting upon those who determine it, and 
 not merely on those who are determined by- 
 it. But besides the enormous practical diffi- 
 culty of giving effect to the latter method, 
 there are some other objections to be con- 
 sidered. 
 
 First of all, the appeal of faith to 
 reason and intelligence must be put in its 
 proper place, which is secondary and con- 
 ditional, not primary and causal. The " wish 
 to believe," the pius credulitatis affectus, is 
 the impulsive and effectual cause of faith ; the 
 intellectual justification is but a liberating 
 condition. The mere reasonableness of be- 
 lieving cannot stir the will ; yet without it, 
 the will cannot act reasonably or truthfully. 
 Plainly then, whether we address ourselves 
 to the man in the street or to the man in 
 the study, our first appeal must be to the 
 will and affections ; our first endeavour must 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 be to create and strengthen the wish to 
 believe ; for this is the force which is liberated 
 by reason, and it must exist before it can 
 be set free. And the wish to believe — the 
 interest in religion, like every other interest, 
 implies that the facts proposed for belief are 
 felt to bear intimately upon the life and sub- 
 stantial happiness of the would-be believer, 
 that they constitute the kind of world or 
 system in which he would wish to live. Just 
 therefore, in the measure that a religion is 
 clearly shown to be closely bound up with 
 life as actually lived, to be, literally, of vital 
 importance, will men be stirred to inquire 
 about it, and to wish that it may be true. So 
 long as this connection between faith and 
 life is obscure or wholly invisible, the religious 
 problem will concern none but the intellectual 
 dilettante. In politics we are but parrots 
 repeating catch-words by rote, until such time 
 as the life of our country begins to live in us 
 and its interests to be felt as our own — until 
 our private and separate life is in some way 
 touched to the quick by the public or political 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 life. So with religion, "To whom shall we 
 go ? " says Peter. " Thou hast the words of 
 eternal /ife." Not that the felt needs, moral 
 and spiritual, of any soul are to be the measure 
 and exclusive criterion of faith ; for religion 
 must not only satisfy and equal, but must 
 transcend and promise to expand indefinitely 
 man's higher spiritual capacities. But it must 
 also, inclusively, satisfy and equal them. Else 
 it is merely a system imposed from outside — 
 seed cast on the hard surface, without root or 
 vital connection with the actual life of the 
 mind and heart. Religion may be held in 
 this external way, but it is held insecurely, 
 without interest, without love. Thus, it is 
 not enough to teach our children their cate- 
 chism, or to drill them in religious observances, 
 unless we try to connect their religion with 
 the fibres of their incipient life, to make them 
 really interested about it and spontaneously 
 attached to it. This spontaneous wish to 
 believe will do more to make them impervious 
 to the miasma of doubt, than could any 
 elementary apologetic whose necessary insuffi- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ciency, once realized, might otherwise destroy 
 all their trust in their early training. And 
 the same obviously applies to the faithful 
 generally, whose intellectual grasp of their 
 religion, were it never so firm, will not protect 
 them in the absence of a deep-rooted and 
 intelligent attachment to it. 
 
 To bring home the vital interest of religion, 
 whether to believers or to unbelievers, whether 
 to the simple many or to the cultured few, is 
 partly a work of exposition, and has been for 
 this reason erroneously confounded with apolo- 
 getic. To show, with Chateaubriand and 
 others, that religion is good and beautiful, is 
 to appeal to the will and affections — to excite 
 the • " wish to believe ; " but to show that 
 it is also true, or credible, is to appeal to the 
 intellect — to justify and liberate the pent-up will. 
 And this latter is more properly called apolo- 
 getic. 
 
 Yet the exposition of what religion ozt^Ai 
 to do for the individual and for society is of 
 little effect unless re-enforced by experimental 
 proof of what it actually does* Nothino- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Stimulates the wish to believe so much as the 
 visible fruits and advantages of belief shown 
 in the lives of the faithful. It is to this kind 
 of controversy that Christ chiefly recommends 
 His cause, when He says : " Let your light so 
 shine before men " — not that they may see 
 your good arguments, but " that they may see 
 your good works." Nor would all His miracles 
 have proved His claim to be a "teacher sent 
 from God," had He not first shown Himself 
 to be the Way and the Life, no less than the 
 Truth. For so far as it is ever an effectual 
 proof, a miracle is but an appeal to the intellect, 
 liberating the previously excited "wish to 
 believe;" it is a brief and practical "apolo- 
 getic " suited to the rudest mind. 
 
 Nowhere more than in business-like Eng- 
 land, where the distrust of dialectic is so pro- 
 found and the appeal to palpable results so 
 decisive, have we need to strengthen this all- 
 important argument ex fructibus, if we are to 
 draw others- or keep those we have. If 
 believers are, in the gross, notoriously more 
 iust, truthful, charitable, beneficent, and tem- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 perate than unbelievers ; if invisible, super- 
 natural virtue is thus proved to include, pre- 
 suppose, strengthen, and refine that which is 
 natural and visible, to be a light shining before 
 men, and not merely before God ; then the 
 apologist may enter hopefully upon his labours ; 
 he has only to raise the sluice and free the 
 gathered waters. 
 
 We insist on these important platitudes lest 
 we should be suspected of even the faintest 
 bias towards that kind of false " intellec- 
 tualism " which hangs the cause of religion 
 upon a slender string of syllogisms. Still, 
 there is a no less false quietism to be com- 
 bated, which tells us, in effect, to read 
 a Kempis and to say our prayers and leave 
 the rest to God. That after we have done 
 all in our power, after we have sown and 
 watered, we must wait upon God for the 
 weather and the increase, is plain enough; 
 but it is the limiting of our co-operation to 
 personal piety that must be disputed. After 
 the wish to believe has been created and 
 strengthened, there are purely mental obstacles 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to belief, such as, ignorance and misappre- 
 hension which, so far as we can, we are 
 certainly bound to remove, just as we should 
 be morally bound to remove a stumbling-block 
 from the path of the blind. The birth and 
 growth of the Church's technical theology 
 proves her practical recognition of this duty. 
 Certain Christian rationalists look upon the 
 moulding of primitive Christianity into the 
 forms of Greek thought as, of course, an. 
 inevitable corruption of its original simplicity;, 
 and yet as the needful condition of its pre- 
 servation and subsequent triumph as a. 
 world-conquering religion. Like some soft 
 molluscous creature, it had to creep into the 
 nearest convenient shell to save itself from, 
 being 'devoured or dashed to pieces. We read 
 the facts differently, in the light of the parables- 
 of the mustard-seed and of the hidden leaven, 
 and see "intention" guiding the process from» 
 first to last. For the leaven is not designed 
 to remain apart in its strength, but to be- 
 hidden, buried, and weakened in the unleavened' 
 mass, and by a slow struggle, to pass from. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 seeming defeat and annihilation to triumphant 
 victory and self-assertion. 
 
 Montanism was the denial of this principle 
 in the moral order. But as Christians had 
 to go forth into the world, like sheep in the 
 midst of wolves, in order to apply the morality 
 of the Sermon on the Mount to the problems 
 of all places and ages, and thereby to develop 
 and reveal the content — the inexhaustible 
 vitality and flexibility of Christ's Way and 
 Life; so, for the same end, His Truth needed 
 translation into the lip-language and thought- 
 language of every nation and time and level 
 ■of culture. 
 
 From the sub-Apostolic age onwards, the 
 Christian Church has both implicitly and ex- 
 plicitly repudiated that sort of intellectual 
 ■quietism or agnosticism which is the counter- 
 fallacy to gnosticism or intellectualism. Hers 
 is always a sane Via Media. She endeavours 
 ■steadily to bring every kind and type of 
 intellect into captivity to Christ ; to understand 
 the mental forms and presuppositions of every 
 •dominant school of thought, and to utilize them 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 for the expression and illustration of her f^ach- 
 ing. Scholasticism — the translation of theology 
 into the fashionable mind-language of those 
 days — is in some ways the most monumental 
 instance in point — being a more unexpected, 
 -deliberate, and reflex accommodation of sacred 
 matter to secular form than that effected, almost 
 unconsciously, in the second and third cen- 
 turies. 
 
 Against all this the quietist will protest 
 that God has not willed to save His elect by 
 logic ; that the Gospel is preached to the poor 
 and simple, and hidden from the wise and 
 prudent. Nor can it well be denied that 
 Christ's attitude towards those who sat in the 
 chair of Moses — towards the theologians and 
 casuists of the Jewish religion, was one of 
 almost uncompromising hostility ; that this 
 very antagonism of spirit and principle was the 
 proximate cause of His murder at their hands. 
 His denunciations of their formalism, their 
 unreality, their trivial pedantry and hair- 
 splitting, their lack of all sympathy with the 
 quickening spirit of pure religion, their slavish 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 letter-worship, their lust of domination, were, 
 persistent and almost fierce. He beheld with 
 compassion the multitudes wandering and 
 harassed, as sheep having no shepherd, because 
 their leaders were blind leaders, keeping the 
 key of the kingdom of knowledge ; not entering 
 themselves, nor suffering others to enter. 
 
 But in all this the quietist can find no 
 solid basis for his contention, arguing as he 
 does from the morbid and corrupt, as though it 
 were the sound and normal. It was not with 
 the dogmatic and ecclesiastical system in its 
 natural vigour that Christ was at war, but in 
 its state of inevitable decay, when it had grown 
 old and stiff and had lost that flexibility and 
 power of accommodation to changing surround- 
 ings, which is the most distinctive evidence of 
 life. He came not to destroy, nor even to 
 disembody the imperishable spirit of the divine 
 law, but to expand it and re-embody it in a 
 more liberal and adequate utterance ; for 
 though the letter without the spirit kills ; yet 
 the spirit cannot quicken without the letter. 
 His quarrel was with Rabbinism, not with 
 
INTRODUCTION, 
 
 theology ; with rationalism, hot with reason- 
 Nor, if He found apter pupils of the Gospel 
 among the rude and unlettered was it because 
 ignorance and unintelligence were appropriate 
 or necessary conditions of faith ar»d spiritual 
 insight, but because ignorance was less of an 
 obstacle to light than false learning ; and 
 mental deficiencies, than moral. If He chose 
 the foolish it was not to leave them foolish, but 
 to make them wiser than their official teachers. 
 
 It is then only a most superficial reading of 
 the Gospel that could find in it a plea for 
 obscurantism, or a condemnation of that faith 
 that strives after intelligence. 
 
 If therefore it is justifiable, expedient, and 
 imperative for us, here and now, to strive to do 
 what the Church has done so wonderfully and 
 fruitfully in the past ; to acquire the knowledge, 
 to understand the thought, of our own day, and 
 to appropriate them to the illustration and 
 expression of the faith ; to address the intel- 
 ligence of these times in its own language and 
 on its own presuppositions ; if we may appeal 
 to reason at all, we should surely appeal to the 
 b 
 
'INTRODUCTION. 
 
 highest and best "as well as, or in preference to, 
 the lowest ; we should go to the root of the 
 ■evil instead of endlessly nipping- off buds ; we 
 should care chiefly to influence those who 
 influence others — who lead the fashions in 
 •opinion and taste ; who determine and modify 
 that mass of public beliefs which is the rule of 
 faith for the millions. Strangely enough, those 
 who are most distressed about the falling away 
 of the multitudes, who are most clamorous 
 for popular lectures and tracts on Christian 
 Defence, are often disposed to regard more 
 profound and wide-reaching efforts in precisely 
 the same genus as symptomatic of a diseased 
 intellectualism ; and while they are urgent that 
 the unbelief of the ill-educated should be dealt 
 with controversially, they are scandalized at any 
 attempt to meet the more cultivated intelligence 
 on its own ground ; as though the Gospel 
 blessed reason so long only as it was popular 
 and more or less sophistical, but banned it the 
 moment it became searching and critical. Such 
 a view is plainly the result of mere hesitancy 
 and confusion of mind, and possibly of that 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 general reluctance to accept a conclusion that 
 entails new and burdensome duties to which we 
 feel ourselves unequal. 
 
 If, then, we address ourselves at all to the 
 intelligence of the world, our first care in the 
 interest of the millions must be to address 
 ourselves to the best intelligence, that is, to the 
 few ; we must make it evident that Christ is 
 the only Way to the Father, just because He is 
 at once the Truth and the Life — the highest 
 perfection of the human mind and the human 
 will ; we must show that, as a Kempis says 
 without that Way there is no going ; without 
 that Truth there is no knowing ; without that 
 Life there is no living ; for as long as Christi- 
 anity is viewed as something complete in itself, 
 which is put beside, or on top of, natural 
 humanity — something equally complete in 
 itself — it cannot appeal to men's interest as 
 bearing on the only life they know or care 
 about. In the abstract, the natural and the 
 supernatural are even more distinct than the 
 rational and animal elements in man ; but 
 historically and in the concrete one might as 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 well try to work out what the history of Europe 
 would have been apart from Christianity, as try 
 to define or imagine the state of m,ere nature 
 apart from the supernatural order. The domi- 
 nant note of that Thomistic and Augustinian 
 theology to which the reigning Pontiff has 
 recalled us, is the immanence of the super- 
 natural in the natural — the inextricable perme- 
 ation of the latter by the former. This means 
 that as things are in fact, it is as chimerical to 
 explain man apart from Christ, as to explain 
 modern history apart from Christianity ; it 
 means that the Christian religion belongs to 
 the integrity of human knowledge as part of the 
 same organic whole ; that it bears upon it as 
 much as mathematics does on physical science. 
 The merely "natural" man is one who ex 
 hypothesi is complete and explicable without 
 Christ ; but then what do we know about him, 
 save as a theological plaything ? Whether as 
 fallen, or as redeemed, the only man we know 
 of experimentally is related to the order of 
 grace and cannot be understood apart from 
 Christ ; his mind is a tangle and his work a 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 vanity until they are set free and directed by 
 ;^e Truth and the Life. If in the theoretical 
 "man-as-he-might-have-been" there is no strict 
 exigency of the supernatural ; in the historical 
 " man-as-he-is" there are inborn seeds of a 
 longing after Him who is the desire of the 
 nations. And on this fact of our faith we can 
 more firmly rest our argument from the adapt- 
 ability of Christianity to man's spiritual needs, 
 than on the merely abstract and unhistorical 
 conception of humanity in its bare essence. 
 Hence Chj'ist's word : " The truth shall make 
 you free;" for His doctrine is not an abrupt 
 and unsolicited assertion, but an answer to the 
 questionings of fallen man seeking redemption : 
 "To whom shall we go? Who has the words 
 of Eternal Life ? " Only so far as it finds 
 error in possession can the Truth of Christ be 
 said to coerce the mind or seemingly to violate 
 its liberty ; its proper ultimate function is to 
 set free and expand ; it raises no barriers to its 
 progress save those that are raised already by 
 the laws of sound reason. 
 
 This more than harmony of nature ana 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 grace, this identification in the concrete of two 
 orders abstractly separable and opposite, is a 
 point of much value in apologetic. That 
 Christ, His Truth and His Grace, transcend all 
 possible needs and exigencies of humanity is 
 true ; but it is none the less true that in the 
 actual order of things we experience needs 
 which point to Him and to Him alone as their 
 satisfaction ; and so far as by setting forth in 
 detail this need on our side, and this response 
 on the other, we allow their perfect corres- 
 pondence to stand out in ever clearer evidence, 
 we shall pursue a method of persuasion that is 
 more effectual in the measure that it is more 
 concrete, inductive, and congenial to prevalent 
 modes of thought. 
 
 But thus to establish the relation of organic 
 unity subsisting between the truth of Christ 
 and all other truth ; to abolish that wall of 
 partition which would divide the human mind 
 into two several spheres of independent move- 
 ment, the one simply natural, the other simply 
 supernatural ; to show that, as man is, histori- 
 cally, Christianity is the only "natural" 
 
INTRODUCTIOtJ. 
 
 philosophy of life in the sense in which 
 Augustine and Aquinas use the word " natural" 
 — all this requires a mediatorial two-sidedness 
 most difficult to realize ; a delicate understand- 
 ing of the modes of thought and speech on 
 either side ; a rare skill of translation from one 
 language to the other ; and, not merely an 
 understanding of another's position but, a 
 sympathy with the elements of truth in virtue 
 of which it is maintained. 
 
 But besides the intrinsic difficulty of such 
 a method, this same quiet and reverential 
 handling of the modern mind will seem sheer 
 disloyalty to Catholic truth in the eyes of the 
 sledge-hammer controversialist whose gifts are 
 usefully employed on the popular platform or 
 in Tracts for the Million. What we need is 
 a toleration of each method in its proper 
 sphere. In Catholic countries it is roughly 
 accurate to class all non-Catholics together as 
 " enemies of the Church ; " for there, no raan 
 who is in sympathy with religion, however he 
 be harassed with doubt or lost to faith, will 
 abandon the outward profession of Catholicism, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 there being no other rehgious communion, 
 socially or intellectually respectable, in which 
 he may enjoy more liberty of opinion. To 
 leave the Church is the act of those only who 
 are against her ; and not of those who are 
 merely quiescent or indifferent. But here, it is 
 otherwise, and only a small minority of those 
 outside the Church can be called its " enemies " 
 in any proper sense. Their dislike, when it 
 exists, is usually due to misunderstanding, and is 
 nearly always moral or even Christian in its 
 basis — resting on some principle of the Gospel 
 or of the moral law which they suppose to be 
 violated by our religion. To deal with such, 
 as with "enemies" of the Church, is a violation 
 of policy, no less than of charity and good 
 taste. 
 
 So far as the following essays have any 
 unity it is as constituting a most imperfect 
 effort to give effect to the principles here 
 advocated. They are, as every patient and 
 intelligent reader will see, entirely conservative 
 in their aim and spirit ; for " liberal " and " con- 
 servative" are terms that have reference to 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 the end by which, as the scholastics say, a 
 movement is specified or characterized. The 
 merchant who throws his goods overboard 
 to save his vessel and his life is certainly a 
 conservative ; he does not part with them 
 willingly, but because go they must. Similarly, 
 he who honestly and firmly makes every con- 
 cession needed for the preservation of essentials, 
 is most iniquitously classed with those, if such 
 indeed there be, whose very aim is destruction ; 
 whose desire is to believe, not as much as is 
 truthfully possible, but, as little. 
 
 In conclusion, the writer wishes it to be 
 understood that this selection of articles pub- 
 lished up to date is to be taken as a repudia- 
 tion, for one reason or another, of those not 
 selected — whether it be for faults in style or 
 for inaccuracies or obscurities in statement. 
 
 March 17. 1901 
 
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 In deference to some apparently independent 
 criticisms, I have, in this second edition, modified 
 a sentence on p. 152 of the Second Series, which 
 has been taken in a sense perfectly different from 
 that of the writer, and opposed, not merely as these 
 critics somewhat obviously point out, to the text 
 on the title-page ; but, as a more comprehensive 
 criticism would have seen, to the motive and spirit 
 of the whole undertaking. 
 
 G. T. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction .... 
 
 I. — A more Excellent Way . 
 
 II.— Wiseman: His Aims and Methods 
 
 III. — The Prospects of Reunion 
 
 IV. — "Liberal " Catholicism . 
 
 V. — " Rationalism in Religion " 
 
 VI. — Sabatier on the Vitality of Dogmas 
 
 VII. — Authority and Evolution, the Life of Catholic 
 Dogma 
 
 VIII.—' ' The Mind of the Church ■ ' . 
 
 IX. — The Use of Scholasticism 
 
 X. — The Relation of Theology to Devotion 
 
 XI. — What is Mysticism ? . 
 
 XII.— The True and the False Mysticism 
 
 PAGE 
 V 
 
 I' 
 
 22 
 40 
 
 68 
 
 85 
 
 115 
 136 
 
 158 
 
 203 
 228 
 253 
 273 
 
Note. — All these' essays have appeared as 
 articles in The Month; except those on The Use 
 of Scholasticism and on The True and the False 
 Mysticism, of which the former appeared, as The 
 Church and Scholasticism, in the American Catholic 
 Quarterly, the latter in the American Ecclesiastical 
 Record. Both are here reprinted by kind per- 
 mission of the editors, and have been slightly 
 modified. 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 According to the oft-quoted apocryphal prophecies 
 of St.Malachy, Lumen C(eli is to be succeeded on the 
 throne of Peter by Ignis Ardens. Perhaps the latter 
 forecast may at first sight suggest a Boanerges 
 invoking fire from heaven on the Church's enemies, 
 fulminating anathemas and excommunications. Yet, 
 if the development of the spirit which has been 
 fostered by Leo XIH. is .to continue uninterrupted, 
 we may rather augur that the fire to come upon 
 earth is that which Christ came to kindle, the fire of 
 an all-embracing charity, whose flames, according to 
 a quaint exegesis, are as sharp arrows in the hearts 
 of the King's enemies.^ It certainly cannot be 
 denied that, at least in English-speaking countries. 
 Catholics are waking to a consciousness of the need 
 of other weapons and methods of warfare than those 
 which were suited to times of oppression and 
 persecution. They cannot but feel that, while they 
 
 1 Psalm xliv. 6. 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 themselves remain to a great extent unchanged, 
 their environments have altered considerably — that 
 they defend what is not attacked, and attack what 
 is not defended. Under pressure of assault, as 
 Mr. W. Ward implies in the Nineteenth Century for 
 November, 1895, the Church's attitude since the 
 Reformation has been somewhat that of a hedgehog, 
 which rolls itself into a ball and presents to outsiders 
 an uncomfortable surface of spikes. This attitude, 
 moreover, is prudently preserved for some time after 
 the danger has seemingly passed away, and till it is 
 perfectly safe to unroll, expand, and move about 
 once more. Hibernation is not death, though it is 
 a period of comparatively low vitality ; and similarly, 
 during the time referred to, the Church's concern 
 Aas been to a large extent rather to live than to 
 grow. 
 
 When we say that Catholics are beginning to 
 notice and adapt themselves to a change of surround- 
 ings, we do not mean that there is an end to the 
 conflict which must always and everywhere be the 
 Church's Ipt ; but that the character of the conflict 
 has changed, and that her present enemies must be 
 approached with different temper and tactics. 
 
 And, in fine, what is this change ? It is the fall 
 of anything that can properly be called Protest- 
 antism, as a dogmatic religious system opposed to 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 Catholicism. The leaven has leavened the whole 
 mass : the process of disintegration has, practically 
 speaking, worked itself out, and left not one stone 
 of that system standing on another; nothing but 
 isolated units and fragments of units. Catholics 
 stand out among other Christians as alone having a 
 definite, position, knowing exactly what they mean 
 and what they want : while others grope in the 
 dark. And further, while Protestantism has been 
 vanishing into indefiniteness, the Church has been 
 deepening her lines of demarcation, and, by opposi- 
 tion, becoming more and more definite. In both 
 camps the conflict has been the occasion of the 
 development of the idea or principle in dispute : in 
 the one case, the principle of authority ; in the 
 other, that of freedom. Prior to such development 
 it was not perhaps so clear to either side that there 
 might not be a via media, a compromise between a 
 teaching Church and self-teaching. Such medial 
 positions one after another have been tried and have 
 given way, and have thereby demonstrated the 
 necessity of a living, infallible guide, if unity of faith 
 is to be preserved among Christians. Hence it is 
 essential to the Protestant position to deny the 
 necessity of oneness in faith, and to regard 
 Christianity as addressed rather to man's ethical 
 than to his intellectual requirements ; whereas 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 Catholicism provides a revealed First Philosophy or 
 theory of the universe, and makes man's highest 
 perfection depend on a knowledge of Truth, to 
 which his ethical perfection is in some sort conse- 
 quent. It is clear that the Catholic- Protestant 
 controversy has not been directly about particular 
 points of faith, but about the rule of faith, and the 
 nature and function of the Church. All other 
 controversies about the Eucharist, saint-worship, 
 indulgences, and the like, have been merely 
 accidental to the great point at issue. If, then, this 
 one point has been cleared up, and well defined in 
 consequence, it has been to some extent at the 
 expense of the development of the faith in other 
 particulars. No doubt this was true of all the great 
 controversies in the past ; nor can it be expected 
 that every member and article of the body of faith 
 should grow and unfold pari passu. This would be 
 pushing the metaphor of growth too far. Still a 
 controversy touching the rule of faith is in a certain 
 way extrinsic, and bears far less directly on other 
 points of belief than a dispute touching some 
 particular matter of faith. To study any one period 
 of English history profoundly is a direct aid to a 
 general, comprehensive view of the whole ; whereas 
 a contest as to the veracity of a given historian 
 bears very indirectly on one's historical knowledge. 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAV. 
 
 In fact, for the time being, the student is not 
 advancing, but only wondering how he is to advance. 
 So, simply speaking, the Catholic-Protestant con- 
 troversy brought the normal process of doctrinal 
 development to a standstill. This, of course, is true 
 only in the rough. For, besides the main question 
 of authority, there have been side issues already 
 referred to : whence has resulted a certain fortifica- 
 tion of particular doctrines against Protestant 
 negations. Yet the growth of a doctrine which 
 results from its defence against attacks from without, 
 is as unsymmetrical, as irregular, as spasmodic as 
 is the course of error. We find, for example, the 
 Eucharistic doctrine, with its huge wealth of 
 meaning, its promises of light, its complicated 
 connections with the body of revealed truth, to a 
 great extent unexplored, a mine of treasures hardly 
 touched ; while the single and purely philosophical 
 point of " transubstantiation" has filled folios. 
 Again, the Protestant controversy was, as long as 
 it lasted, internal to Christianity. The Church's 
 intellectual energies were expended against those 
 who allowed the inspired writings as a common basis 
 of argument ; and so far they were withdrawn from 
 the needs of that wider non-Christian world which 
 has to be met on the common ground of reason. 
 The great work of harmonizing the whole body of 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 Christian doctrine with reason, of showing Catholic- 
 ism in its entirety as the Heaven-sent answer to the 
 problem of human life, as the complement of man's 
 nature, individual and social — had to remain to a 
 certain extent in abeyance. It is not on the whole 
 very wonderful if the habits of three centuries are 
 not shaken off in three days, especially when we are 
 dealing with a society of the dimensions of the 
 Catholic Church, where traditional methods, as 
 such, are held in veneration and reluctantly changed ; 
 nor need it surprise us to find here and there 
 Catholic controversialists in full armour sawing the 
 air with their heavy broadswords, disproving justi- 
 fication by faith alone, and the all-sufficiency of 
 Scripture as a guide to truth. 
 
 In the main, however, it is well recognized now 
 that the Church must return once more to her old task 
 of evangelizing the Gentiles, that is, those who are 
 altogether outside the pale of Christianity. With 
 the Vatican Council the Protestant controversy was 
 brought to a close, as far as the Church was 
 concerned. There she spoke her last word on the 
 subject, and turned aside to resume her proper 
 work, her function as "light of the world." Were 
 one to judge her methods solely in the light of the 
 Protestant controversy, one might easily infer that 
 her office in regard to the Truth was simply 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 aggressive and defensive — bellicose in every sense. 
 Nothing could be more unlike the conduct of her 
 Divine Master, whose work she continues. He 
 came to state, to proclaim, to reveal ; not to argue, 
 controvert, or defend : and such is her mode of 
 procedure so far as the world at large is concerned. 
 She reveals herself in her intellectual and ethical 
 beauty, as God's good gift to man. She invites men 
 to come to her ; but does not desire to force herself 
 on their acceptance. It is only when she is herself 
 attacked, or her children are attacked, that she is 
 controversial or aggressive or defensive. Hence it 
 is a matter of common observation that gentleness 
 usually characterizes her dealing with the pagan or 
 infidel, while the formal heretic or apostate excites 
 her bitter indignation. 
 
 In English-speaking countries her environment is 
 to a growing extent that of a cultured paganism, and 
 to such an environment she must now adapt her con- 
 duct. She must learn to " speak to the heart of this 
 people," and to do this she must study its language 
 and its heart; she must have faith in its radical 
 good-sense and good-will, however overlaid and 
 obscured to superficial consideration. If English 
 non-Catholics misunderstand and parody the religion 
 of Catholics, even when most desirous to do them 
 justice ; it may well be, and must be, that Catholics 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 fail largely to understand the workings of non- 
 Catholic minds and the impulses faf non-Catholic 
 hearts. Social and educational isolation has to a 
 large extent created an estrangement in language and 
 modes of thought which renders exchange of ideas 
 difficult at the best, and impossible when the dis- 
 cussion is governed by the controversial spirit. 
 
 Much as one might desire a possible return of the 
 Church of England, or of any considerable section 
 of it, to Catholic unity, our ultimate hopes and 
 prayers are more ambitious, namely, for a return of 
 the English-speaking people or the English-speaking 
 races. It would be a great mistake to identify these 
 two causes, although the latter and greater includes 
 the former. Were our only concern with Anglicanism, 
 the old controversial method might still be in place 
 for many a day, though even there sacerdotal 
 Anglicanism is an idea that can be left largely to 
 develop itself into its only logical issue. It would 
 certainly be a pity were the Church in these countries 
 to address herself so exclusively to the Anglican 
 question as to withdraw her intellectual energies 
 from .the wider and more pressing spiritual needs of 
 the people at large. 
 
 For this work the controversial and polemical 
 method is altogether unsuited. What is needed 
 before all things is a clear manifestation- of the 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 Catholic religion in its ethical and intellectual beauty ; 
 not as a religion, but as eminently the religion of 
 mankind ; as the complement of human nature, the 
 " desire of the nations ; " as the one God-given 
 answer to the problem of life and the social problem. 
 For this we need interpreters or go-betweens : men, 
 that is, who know and sympathize with both sides, 
 who have at once a comprehensive grasp of the 
 " idea " of Catholicism and are possessed with its 
 spirit, and who are no less in touch with the spirit 
 of their own country and age, its strength and its 
 weakness ; who can understand and speak both 
 languages, and, recognizing unity of thought under 
 diversity of expression, can translate from one into 
 the other, interpreting the age to the Church and the 
 Church to the age. 
 
 This is a very obvious requirement to suggest, 
 but a very difficult one to satisfy: for this two- 
 sidedness is rare, or, at least, rarely well-balanced. 
 However, the clear recognition of the requirement 
 is the first step towards its fulfilment ; and that it is 
 receiving increased recognition is evident to all 
 observers. 
 
 Amongst the ideas which must be put forward 
 prominently in order to present Catholicism in its true 
 light before the eyes of the world, one of the most 
 important is that of the end for which the Church 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 exists. It will take a long time to undo the 
 prejudices begotten by three centuries of misrepre- 
 sentation, and to convince men that the Church, like 
 her Founder, comes not to be ministered to, but to 
 minister. The Church is for man, and not man for 
 the Church. 
 
 Protestantism has fixed in men's minds the idea 
 that the Roman Church is a huge speculation run in 
 the interests of the Bishop of Rome ; that there is 
 some scarcely definable temporal gain which is quite 
 sufficient to maintain the fraud in existence century 
 after century, and to enlist in the cause the sacrifices 
 and best energies of thousands of devoted men and 
 women, who are in no way sharers in the plunder. 
 It must, then, be made clear that the Church rules 
 as a parent in the interests of her children, not as a 
 despot who rules in his own interest : that the main- 
 tenance of her power and authority are not ends in 
 themselves, but means to a further end, namely, to 
 the ultimate perfection of human nature, individual 
 and social. Eternal life, here inchoatively, hereafter 
 perfectly— this is her end. And "this is life eternal, 
 that they should know Thee, the only true God, and 
 Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." In other 
 words, she aims at the highest possible intellectual 
 and ethical perfection of the soul, which of course 
 culminates in the knowledge and love of the infinite 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 Truth and Goodness, And here again we have 
 to guard against current misapprehensions. The 
 pseudo- Christianity of Calvin is based on a behef 
 in the irredeemable badness of human nature, and 
 accordingly divorces the natural and supernatural 
 orders altogether. It can do nothing for nature 
 except to fly from it and leave it to its rottenness. 
 It professes to be wholly unconcerned with the 
 present world and its history and progress : mental 
 and moral culture in the natural order is labour 
 wasted on faculties which are intrinsically corrupted 
 by sin, and as such, is in no way subservient to grace 
 or the interests of the next life. Such a parody of 
 Christianity gives a justification to the charge made 
 by the worldling against the righteous: Quoniam 
 inutilis est nobis — " He is of no use whatever to us." 
 The divorce of religion from secular life, this sunder- 
 ing by man of what God has joined together, is the 
 necessary result of the Calvinist conception. And 
 as among English-speaking races no other conception 
 of Christianity is more widely accepted, it will be no 
 easy matter to bring home to men the ancient and 
 Catholic view of the matter. 
 
 The Church holds firmly to the fundamental and 
 essential goodness of human nature which underlies 
 the foulest corruption, the deepest degradation; 
 which is related to grace, as reason is to faith. Both 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 are from the same God; both conspire to one har- 
 monious result. The natural and the supernatural are 
 not sundered, nor are they violently yoked together; 
 but the lower ministers to the higher, and the higher 
 perfects, crowns, and elevates the lower. Such is 
 the CathoHc conception of the Incarnation — God 
 brought down to earth, and earth lifted up to God. 
 Christianity is not, cannot be, indifferent to the full 
 perfection of man's natural faculties. Culture and 
 civilization is not sanctification ; and a certain height 
 of sanctity is compatible with low culture. But far 
 from any opposition between the two, both are 
 requisite for the full development of man's capa- 
 bilities; each in due proportion safeguards the 
 other. 
 
 And as the man without religion is as much a 
 monstrosity as the man without the use of reason, so 
 an irreligious state or irreligious education is as 
 violently opposed to the Catholic conception as it is 
 accordant to the Calvinist conception of Christianity. 
 
 That the Church exists, not for her own sake, but 
 for the perfection of human nature, present no less 
 than future, natural no less than supernatural, social 
 no less than individual — this is one of the ideas which 
 it will take time and patient skill to bring home 
 clearly to minds biassed by a false presentment of 
 Christianity, and unsuspicious of any other. 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 13 
 
 Another of these ideas is the true conception of 
 ecclesiastical authority in matters of faith and 
 discipline. As misconceived by the great bulk of 
 intelligent non-Catholics, nothing could be more 
 repugnant to the genius of a race which has a 
 passionate love of just liberty and freedom, however 
 ill it may be able to define it. To sacrifice one's 
 freedom of judgment or one's freedom of action is, in 
 English ears, almost equivalent to sacrificing one's 
 manhood, and this for the simple reason that freedom 
 in this connection means rightful freedom, which no 
 man may sacrifice with a good conscience. Plainly 
 where there is no freedom, none can be sacrificed. 
 As a man does not sacrifice his freedom of thought 
 in yielding to evidence, so neither in yielding to God's 
 word. It is not intellectual slavery to bow to the 
 truth — " the truth shall make you free " — but to be 
 entangled in error. It is not moral slavery to obey 
 conscience, but to violate it. Given the Church's 
 Divine authority in faith and morals, there can be 
 nothing servile in submission. Yet the chief mis- 
 conception concerns the manner in which that 
 authority is exercised. The general impression left 
 by the Catholic-Protestant controversy is of two 
 opposing systems, in one of which private judgment 
 and self-guidance prevail absolutely and in every 
 thing : in the other authority and discipline no less 
 
14 A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 universally. Both conceptions are caricatures, 
 resulting from the intense emphasis given to the chief 
 point at issue. For the outsider, Romanism is 
 authority and nothing else but authority ; authority 
 created for its own sake, as an end in itself, whose 
 sole function is to cramp the intellect and to enslave 
 the soul — a cross, if you like, invented for the torture 
 and death of man's natural reason and will. The 
 devout Romanist is popularly pourtrayed as being 
 in a state of mental paralysis, hemmed in on all 
 sides with dogmatic definitions, prohibitions, and 
 restraints. His reason and will are atrophied from 
 mere disuse, and their place is usurped by authority 
 to which he turns for the solution of every doubt, 
 speculative or practical. This preposterous delusion 
 must be dispelled by a continual insistance on the 
 truth, that both in theory and in fact authority in 
 every society, ecclesiastical or civil, is but a means 
 to securing the end of the society in question. It 
 implies primarily a directive power ; and only 
 secondarily, in case of default, a coercive power. It 
 is only as coercive that authority is odious at all ; 
 and only when unjustly coercive is it justly odious 
 and inimical to true liberty. As directive, it is purely 
 helpful and beneficial. In a well-ordered society, 
 where the rule is just and the subjects are just, the 
 coercive restramt is never felt, and liberty is perfect. 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 15 
 
 The law (as coercive) is not for the just, but for 
 transgressors. But if the rein and bit is continually 
 felt, it argues either a bad rider or a bad horse. 
 
 As has been observed, the Protestant controversy 
 has occasioned the mistake of regarding authority 
 as the very essence of Catholicism ; and indeed it is 
 the essential difference between it and Protestantism 
 as such. But Protestantism is not the only or 
 adequate antithesis to the Catholic religion. In fact, 
 it is not opposed directly to the faith itself so much 
 as to the preamble and rule of faith. It is only in its 
 aspect as anti-Protestantism that authority could be 
 regarded as the essence of Catholicism. It will be 
 necessary therefore to bring out clearly the truth 
 that, theoretically, coercive authority holds an 
 entirely subsidiary and secondary place in the 
 Catholic religion ; and that the desire and practice 
 of the Church is by all means to minimize the 
 occasions for its use ; and finally, that normally it is 
 no more hurtful to spiritual liberty than civil 
 authority is to civil liberty. 
 
 Another point of misunderstanding which hides 
 the true face of the Church from intelligent out- 
 siders, concerns her Catholicity and independence 
 of national or racial limitations. It is from this 
 that she derives her name of Catholic, i.e., the 
 Church of humanity, as opposed to the Church of 
 
i6 A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 the Jews. As the grace of Christian sanctity is 
 received differently into different souls, and modified 
 by the natural character so as to encounter certain 
 resistances and certain yieldings, and-to issue in all 
 cases in some peculiar and imperfect reproduction 
 of the Chnstian type ; so the Catholic religion is 
 received variously by various races and ages, but 
 perfectly by none. Points of doctrine or discipline 
 which have a special attraction for one national 
 type, are jtist those which encounter resistance in 
 other quarters. For example, an independent self- 
 governing race will be morbidly suspicious lest 
 authority should degenerate into tyranny, and will 
 be too ready to scent oppression everywhere. 
 To a rationalistic and unimaginative people the 
 mysticism of Christianity will present special 
 difficulty. Races of an opposite character will 
 find no difficulty in these matters, and may by 
 their own supine passivity and formalism discredit 
 their religion. They will be ready not only to 
 defend, but to exaggerate and distort those tenets 
 and principles which are in accord with their 
 natural character ; and identifying themselves with 
 the Catholic cause, will add new barriers against 
 the return of other nations to the faith. It is not 
 surprising, then, that heresies are so often racial. 
 As circumstances give special prominence to this 
 
A More excellent way. if 
 
 or that aspect of Catholicism, it will probably come 
 into conflict with the peculiar tastes or suscepti- 
 bilities of one nationality or another. The Refor- 
 mation controversy alienated the Teutons and left 
 the Latins. Some future problem may reverse the 
 story. It would be narrow to conclude that 
 Catholicism is peculiarly congenial to the Latin 
 races or to the Celts, and uncongenial to the 
 Teutons. We may say that authority offers a 
 greater difficulty to the latter race. But authority 
 is not the whole of Catholicism, and in other matters 
 the reverse may be true. 
 
 There is no more fruitful source of misrepresen- 
 tation than the attribution to Catholicism of effects 
 and phenomena which are racial. Such (delusions 
 can be dispelled only by solid historical induction 
 on a sufficiently wide basis. It is not unnatural 
 that as Catholicism has for three centuries been 
 largely associated with races who have many un- 
 English characteristics in common, these charac- 
 teristics should be set down to their religion w^ithout 
 stopping to consider whether there be anything 
 else in common to ascribe them to. Hence an 
 inference that Catholicism is essentially un-English 
 or even Italian. The remedy is to be found in 
 extending one's view beyond the limits of the last 
 three centuries and of the Latin races. 
 C 
 
A MoliE EXCELLENT WAY, 
 
 A similar difficulty in the past was the attempt 
 to identify the essential interests of Catholicism 
 with the cause of monarchy or feudalism ; but as 
 it does not belong to the present we need not 
 discuss it, but pass it by with a glance. 
 
 But above all it is important that the Catholic 
 faith should be interpreted and brought home to 
 the intellect of our times. As a whole, as an 
 articulated body of truth, it is as little known to 
 men of education as the British Constitution is to 
 a New Zealander. They have heard of this or 
 the other monstrous doctrine — monstrous enough 
 perhaps when viewed out of its proper connections — 
 they are acquainted with odd passages of its history, 
 but the "idea," even in its least developed form, 
 they have never laid hold of. True, the authority- 
 question is the first thing to face ; and the Catholic 
 controversialist naturally insists on this and post- 
 pones all other explanations and discussions for 
 afterwards. It is the most logical method, but is 
 it the most practical ? Do not the dispositions with 
 which one approaches the authority-question depend 
 largely on what that authority wants to impose upon 
 one? And is it not often the intrinsic beauty, 
 completeness and soul-stayingness of that body of 
 doctrine which clusters round the Incarnation, that 
 first draws the restless intellect towards the Church, 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. ig 
 
 and lays ever firmer hold upon it, as light after light 
 flashes upon it, revealing subtle and unsuspected 
 links, pointing to a unity in variety beyond man's 
 devising, and so stamping the whole conception 
 with the seal of divinity as to supersede all apolo- 
 getics and appeals to miracle and prophecy? To 
 present such a conception of the faith to the modern 
 world is only possible for those who possess it them- 
 selves, and can translate it into the language and 
 imagery of their hearers. To some extent, no doubt, 
 in the case of certain individual theologians, the 
 exigencies of these three centuries of Protestant 
 controversy, diverting theology from its normal 
 course and giving it a polemical character, have 
 interfered with the noble work of perfecting the 
 synthesis of faith and reason, begun by certain of 
 the Fathers and furthered by the scholastics. As 
 has been already observed, Catholicism repudiates 
 the divorce between nature and grace, reason and 
 faith ; and as soon as the Church had established 
 her title as light of the world and teacher of nations, 
 she at once proceeded to her task of marshalling all 
 truth, natural and revealed, into one harmonious 
 whole. It was in the hands of the schoolmen, and 
 notably of Aquinas, that this work advanced most 
 rapidly. No discovery of physical science such as 
 it then was, no fact of history, no speculation of the 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAV. 
 
 human intellect, whether of Greek, Jew, or Arabian, 
 was despised or neglected. All were carefully con- 
 sidered in their bearings on the whole body of . 
 known truth natural and revealed ; each was fitted 
 into its proper place in the mosaic, leaving us in the 
 Summa of Aquinas a monument of that compre- 
 hensive sympathy which hails every truth from 
 whatever source as the gift of God. It is to this 
 labour and method that His Holiness bids us devote 
 ourselves, rather than perpetuate in an uncongenial 
 age the controversies which apfjealed to the taste 
 of what may be called the polemical centuries. We 
 have to take up that unfinished work and carry it 
 out on the same plan up to the present day; and 
 this, in the broad sympathetic calm spirit of Aquinas, 
 so different from that of controversial theology. For 
 without the sympathy of comprehension we may 
 silence or exasperate an adversary, but we can never 
 solve a difficulty or banish a doubt. Here then is 
 a task that lies before the theologians and thinkers 
 in this age and country ; and it is those who, in 
 obedience to His Holiness, imbue themselves with 
 the spirit and method of Aquinas, that will be found 
 equal to it. 
 
 In fine, all our efforts must be directed to the 
 clearing away of every mist which hides the true 
 aspect of the Church from outsiders. Let her shine 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 forth truly as she is, and she will be her own proof, 
 carrying conviction to all men of good-will, con- 
 straining them to confess : " Surely God is in this 
 place, and I knew it not. This is none other than 
 the house of God, this is the gate of Heaven." In 
 proportion as conscience is obeyed and refined, it 
 will be ready to recognize in Catholicity, rightly 
 understood, its divinely established complement, its 
 long-sought guide and support. 
 
 As the Church becomes better known men will 
 see in her the true answer to the present problem 
 concerning the necessity of a revealed religion for 
 the preservation of society, and for other social 
 problems as well. She will stand out, not as one 
 of many versions of Christianity, but as the one 
 great human-hearted Church of humanity, who is 
 "the mother of us all." 
 
 Feb. i8g6 
 
II. 
 
 WISEMAN : HIS AIMS AND METHODS. 
 
 Some of the critics, and notably the Times, have 
 found fault with the structure and bulk of Mr. Ward's 
 Life of Cardinal Wiseman, and are therefore inclined 
 to regard the work as in some way detracting from 
 his so far well-deserved repute as a biographer. 
 For ourselves, we are inclined, upon reflection 
 and closer examination, to regard this criticism 
 as rather short-sighted. As to the charge of 
 bulkiness, we do not say that here and there the 
 illustration of particular points by correspondence, 
 reminiscence, and anecdote, may not have been 
 needlessly elaborate, and that possibly a hundred 
 pages might have been saved with improvement ; 
 but that any one chapter, and least of all that 
 which to some has seemed the most dispensable, 
 namely, the Epilogue, could have been omitted 
 consistently with the author's scope we are inclined 
 to deny. For it must not be assumed that the 
 whole end in view was to write an ideal biography 
 
WISEMAN: HIS AIMS AND METHODS. 43 
 
 of equal interest to all classes and sections of the 
 community. The Life of Wiseman is the life of 
 the first Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, of 
 one under whose auspices it may be said that the 
 candle hidden for three centuries behind the altar 
 was brought out into public recognition once more 
 and replaced in its candlestick. 
 
 Wiseman, whatever his claim to be a man of 
 letters, was before all else a churchman, one who 
 had dedicated himself consciously and deliberately 
 to the revival of Roman Catholicism in England. 
 It is as the advocate of certain methods and 
 objects, as the upholder of certain principles, that 
 he interests Mr. Ward, who is a philosopher and 
 a churchman first, and a biographer afterwards. 
 In saying this, we do not lose sight of the high 
 biographical merit of his two volumes on Dr. 
 William G. Ward ; but there again he was dealing 
 with one who was pre-eminently a thinker, and 
 considering him precisely in relation to two move- 
 ments of thought of which he was a magna 
 pars — the Oxford Movement and the Catholic 
 Revival. 
 
 • To understand Wiseman and his methods, after 
 learning something of his personal character, his 
 early and his later education, it was most needful 
 to appreciate the matter he had to deal with, no 
 
24 WISEMAN: HIS AIMS AMD METHODS. 
 
 less than the form to which he hoped to some 
 extent to begin to reduce it. It was essential to 
 understand the different classifications of the 
 community in relation to the Catholic religion, 
 together with the antecedents and tendencies of 
 each class— the " Old Catholics " as they are 
 curiously called, and the converts ; the Established 
 Church with its upward and downward movement 
 — and also to understand those events which were 
 in some sort critical in the religious history of the 
 period, such as the Tractarian crisis of 1845 ; the 
 Restoration of the Hierarchy; the Austrian Con- 
 cordat ; and the Roman Question of i860. It was 
 finally by no means out of place, that having 
 exhibited the working of Wiseman's methods in 
 [he concrete, Mr. Ward should, in his Epilogue, 
 consider them apart in their general form, and 
 explain and defend them. 
 
 No doubt had the task fallen into other and 
 perhaps less sympathetic hands, the work might 
 have taken a different and more popular shape ; but 
 it may be questioned whether, even as a biography, 
 it would not have failed in not giving the first 
 place to the really leading feature of Wiseman's 
 life and character. 
 
 For ourselves, our interest chiefly centres in 
 the Epilogue, which deals so ably with some of 
 
WISEMAN: HIS AIMS AND METHODS. 25 
 
 the points we have endeavoured to emphasize 
 elsewhere in these pages.^ 
 
 Differing as they did in temperament and 
 mental calibre, it is remarkable how closely both 
 Newman and Wiseman were agreed as to the 
 main line to be followed in pushing the cause of 
 Catholicism, namely, by a vigorous insistence on 
 the exclusive character of that religion, together 
 with an equal, perhaps greater, insistence on the 
 all-embracing width of its sympathies with every 
 human interest ; and, indeed, each of them in his 
 own way was a .living embodiment of the two 
 principles so earnestly advocated. Exclusiveness 
 they could not but feel was altogether distasteful 
 to the indiscriminating temper of the time and 
 country, and so far an obstacle to the accept- 
 ance of the faith of Rome ; even though it was 
 in some measure due to the spread of Latitu- 
 dinarian notions that the Church in England was 
 enabled to show herself in the light of day, after 
 being buried in the catacombs. 
 
 It was therefore a matter of primary moment 
 to vindicate the principle of an exclusive or 
 dogmatic religion ; to show that it was really 
 inseparable from the notion of faith in a strict 
 sense, and of a Divine revelation, that it was a 
 ' Cf. " A More Excellent Way " and " Prospects of Reunion." 
 
26 WISEMAN: HIS AIMS AND METHODS. 
 
 characteristic not only of the post-Tridentine 
 Church of Rome, but of the Christian Church 
 from the very earhest days — nay, perhaps never 
 more conspicuously than in the very earliest. If 
 Christianity was to be in some sort the religion 
 of the millions, and not a mere philosophy for 
 the cultured few, it could be so only in as far as 
 it reHed upon faith for its hold on the multitude, 
 and not upon analytical reasoning, whereof the 
 millions are incapable. For, the capacity of reason 
 as an all-sufficient guide in matters of morality 
 and religion has been tried in balance of history 
 and found wanting. 
 
 Although the duty of obeying God in the 
 matter of our intellectual assents, no less than in 
 any other matter within our control, must be 
 apparent to reason before the act of faith is 
 possible, yet the assent itself from a motive of 
 obedience may be called truly, not indeed an 
 irrational, but a non-rational assent, as opposed 
 to those assents to which reason, or even the canons 
 of credibility, force the mind. It is not, however, 
 only in the matter of Divine faith, but in a thousand 
 other matters, religious and secular, that our assents 
 are in a way non-rational. Yet in another way 
 they are most reasonable ; and to reject all that 
 have not been subjected to the test of analytical 
 
WISEMAN: HIS AIMS AND METHODS. 27 
 
 reason, or that seem to fail under it, would be the 
 very height of unreason. For, not to speak of that 
 host of assents which are given us by what Newman 
 calls the "illative sense," and which are strictly, 
 though inexpressibly, reasonable, the main bulk of 
 what most men believe is derived from tradition, 
 imitation, blind repetition, and other non-rational 
 sources, which are nevertheless reliable on the 
 whole; and if a certain percentage of error and 
 superstition is thus inevitably imbibed, yet he who 
 would on this account reject all, would be as one 
 who prefers to die of thirst rather than drink 
 anything but the best champagne. 
 
 It is thus that Nature has provided for the 
 feeding and formation of our minds in most 
 ordinary matters. Tradition is not the only, nor 
 the ultimate, medium, but it is the commonest 
 and most extensively useful. It warrants a good, 
 solid presumption in favour of most that it vouches 
 for ; and it has a direct and unimpeachable value 
 as testifying to what is commonly said or believed. 
 Common belief, though an imperfect mirror, is 
 nevertheless a mirror of objective reahty, whose 
 error we can determine and allow for. To apply 
 analytical reason to all such data is to risk rooting 
 up the wheat with the tares. "A secouer trop 
 vivement I'arbre," says a recent writer, " pour faire 
 
a8 WISEMAN: HIS AIMS AND METHODS. 
 
 tomber les feuilles mortes, on risque aussi de 
 sacrifier plus d'un rameau encore vert." The 
 more we look into the matter, the more we are 
 forced to acknowledge not only the existence, not 
 only the expedience, but also the reasonableness 
 and legitimacy of numberless beliefs which have 
 been imposed on our judgment from without, and 
 in no wise drawn from premises or from direct 
 experience. 
 
 This is the solid core of truth which Tradition- 
 alism has perverted by its extravagant endeavour 
 to exclude every other and higher criterion. Up 
 to this point the Christian religion is traditionalist, 
 not only in demanding the unconditional obedience 
 of faith as to her revealed dogmas, but also in 
 requiring a certain reasonable trust in her uninspired 
 public beliefs and traditions taken in globo, without 
 exacting an assent to any given detail or denying 
 flie possibility of particular error. Thus, for 
 example, she gives us the legend of a saint in her 
 public office, not as gospel truth, but as showing 
 the picture, more or less subjective, which he 
 created upon the mind of his own generation ; as 
 being indeed substantially true, but precisely how 
 far, she does not go out of her way to determine. 
 Hagiography is not the Church's direct mission, 
 though she may use its results as she uses those 
 
tVISEMAM: tttS AIMS ANb MilTHObS. 2§ 
 
 of current history or science — for what they may 
 be worth. 
 
 Besides this humbler but more practical and 
 universal source of knowledge, the Church has, 
 however, always acknowledged the supreme claims 
 of analytical reason as a negative test, while 
 steadily denying its supposed right to be a positive 
 guide to truth, and its pretence to be able to give 
 full, and adequate expression to inferences un- 
 doubtedly valid, yet too complex for statement. 
 Indeed, it is not so much the insufficiency of reason 
 she distrusts, as the insufficiency of expression ; 
 for the fallacy of rationalism lies, not merely in 
 denying all worth to faith, inspiration, tradition, 
 and other non-rational sources of knowledge, human 
 and Divine, but also in confounding reason with 
 logic — as one might confound speech with grammar. 
 Above all, she is profoundly convinced of the feeble- 
 ness and unsteadiness of the grasp of reason on 
 those fundamental religious truths touching the 
 ultimate end and use of hfe, on which we have 
 to take our stand in those very crises when 
 reason is most obscured and biassed by passion 
 and temptation. Even calm reason itself suggests 
 that we are bound to hold fast to these truths 
 by an act of will — to refuse to discuss them 
 in the time of clouds and darkness ; in other 
 
36 tVtSEMAM: HtS AIMS AND METHODS. 
 
 words, we are bound to a sort of natural 
 faith of which Divine faith is but an elevation 
 and extension. It is only by the sovereign will- 
 firmness of Divine faith that religious truth can 
 be made an effectual governing principle in the 
 individual or in society, so as to stand fast against 
 the downward drag of human weakness, mental 
 and moral. 
 
 If, therefore, the Church has not only permitted, 
 but encouraged the use of analytical reason in the 
 orderly presentment of her dogma, and for the 
 continual sifting and refining of the great mass of 
 her popular traditions ; yet she is steadfastly opposed 
 to its exclusive, or even excessive use. She knows 
 too well that Protestantism and its offspring, religious 
 indifferentism, are both the fruit of an extreme and 
 narrow scholasticism, unwilling to recognize the 
 due claims of authority and tradition, impatient of 
 twilight and suspense ; impetuous with the childish 
 self-confidence of inexperience. For if the neces- 
 sary laws of logic are the only road to truth, then, 
 indeed, no man is responsible for his opinions and 
 beliefs, religious or otherwise, and they are a matter 
 of pure indifference ; and again, if nothing is to be 
 affirmed but what is forced upon us by those laws, 
 then even the first principles of reason and morality, 
 private and public, are imperilled. 
 
WtSGMAU : htS AtRlS ANb MkTHObS. 3i 
 
 It was his clear comprehension of this truth that 
 convinced Wiseman that Rome alone had preserved 
 the principles necessary for the healing of the 
 nations. It was no anti-Anglican or sectarian 
 animus, that inspired him to do battle for the 
 Catholicizing of his country, but a profound insight 
 into the essentially and inevitably Protestant char- 
 acter of the established religion, and its consequent 
 inability to deal with the religious needs of the age. 
 Much as he sympathized with those of its members 
 who sought to prove its claim to be a dogmatic 
 Church, teaching with Divine authority, he believed 
 that such a claim was absolutely unfounded and 
 insupportable, and that whatever deference its voice 
 might win from its children at large, it could never 
 be the deference of faith, but at most that which is 
 due to any corpus doctum of cultivated men in their 
 own subject — a deference weakened, and almost 
 nullified, by the existence of so many competing 
 bodies, as well as by their own lamentable but 
 necessary internal disagreements. In a word, the 
 very notions of ecclesiastical'faith and authority are 
 excluded by the latitudinarianism which gave birth to 
 and holds together the Church of England ; and 
 the latent antagonism has in our days made itself 
 fully apparent. " Anglo-Catholicism " is a palliation 
 at most, a remedy it cannot be. A past Council, or 
 
ii WlSEMAlSt : tits AIMS AND METHODS. 
 
 a primitive Church, is eventually as feeble a sub- 
 stitute for a living teacher as is the Bible. For all 
 alike, a living and authoritative interpretation is 
 needed. 
 
 Seeing in the Catholic Church the true and only 
 remedy, and feeling at the same time how distasteful 
 the notion of a dogmatic and exclusive religion must 
 be to a public fed for three centuries on the fallacies 
 of individualism, and to whom the merely negative 
 broadness of Anglicanism seemed to savour of a 
 deeper insight and more sympathetic charity, 
 Wiseman desired in every way to mitigate and 
 soften this apparently harsher and more forbidding 
 aspect of the Church of Rome. The chapter on 
 the " English Papists " may serve to give us some 
 faint idea of the extent of that ingrained fanaticism 
 and profound stupidity of the Protestant populace, 
 with which he had to contend, not only in this, but 
 in almost every other point connected with the just 
 conception of the Catholic religion. Indeed, nothing 
 could better illustrate what we have been insisting 
 on above, as to the small part played by deliberate 
 reasoning in the formation of the general mind, than 
 the fanatical attitude of pubhc opinion in this 
 country towai^ds Catholicism, in defiance of every 
 claim of justice and charity; and in default not 
 merely of rational evidence for its support, but even 
 
WISEMAN : HIS AIMS AND METHODS. 33 
 
 of moderate probability. A vague, blinding senti- 
 ment of deep-seated antagonism and hostility, 
 seems to have paralyzed every better judgment and 
 feeling of a nation commonly credited beyond their 
 neighbours with a certain temperateness and fairness. 
 The first essential was to try to convince such a 
 people that Catholics were at least hunian, that 
 they were not secret emissaries of the powers of 
 darkness, hostile to every rational and social interest, 
 conspiring to strangle the intellect with the chains 
 and fetters of a gratuitously complicated dogmatic 
 system — a gens lucifuga in the intellectual sense, 
 fearful of science and history, and of every new 
 light which might conflict with the superstitions 
 to which they were enslaved. Wiseman, with his 
 genial, intelligent interest in everything human, did 
 not hesitate to come before the public on every 
 occasion as a speaker and lecturer in history, science, 
 art, and philological research ; as one interested 
 not only in matters ecclesiastical, but in every other 
 department of life. He knew the difference between 
 an unanswerable difficulty and a doubt, and that 
 faith worth the name could never even wish to 
 shrink from the light, but could wait patiently, nay, 
 wait for ever, for the reconciliation of differences 
 which it knew to be but apparent ; that the faith 
 which blenched was convicted of being tinged by 
 D 
 
34 WISEMAN: HIS AIMS AND METHODS. 
 
 some secret rationalism. He knew that if iii 
 certain crises the Church had to draw into herself, 
 and separate herself in a spirit of protest from the 
 culture of the day, yet such a divorce was abnormal 
 and hurtful to both parties, and therefore was to be 
 terminated as speedily as possible. He felt that 
 until Catholics entered into the intellectual life of 
 their country, and spoke the language of its schools, 
 they could have no Sjtrong influence over it for good; 
 that it was on the neutral ground of secular learning 
 and common national interests, that the hostile parties 
 must first meet and get to understand one another. 
 For this reason especially it was that he welcomed 
 the little body of Oxford converts as a sort of 
 interpreter between the two camps, so long estranged 
 as to have forgotten one another's language in 
 matters religious ; he hoped that the neophytes 
 would both give and receive; leaven and be leavened. 
 And this hope surely implied no lack of reverence 
 for that lingering remnant of the ancient Catholic 
 Church, those who had indeed borne the burden and 
 heat of the day, and to whom we owe the fact that 
 our continuity with the pre- Reformation Church is 
 not merely through derivation from a common root, 
 but through a stubborn survival of a vein of life in 
 the old stock, charred and riven by a thousand 
 thunderbolts of persecution, dead to all seeming, 
 
WISEMAN: HIS AIMS AND METHODS. 35 
 
 yet not watered for nothing with the blood of so 
 many martyrs. Indeed, the chapter on " Converts 
 and Old Catholics," shows us plainly how invaluable 
 a check was exercised by the influence of the 
 disciples of Challoner upon the Italianizing enthusi- 
 asm of some ardent neophytes, who, had there been 
 no Old Catholics to amalgamate with, no English 
 stock to be grafted into, would have constituted an 
 " Italian Mission," not only in the legitimate sense, 
 but also in a sense very undesirable and disastrous 
 to the popularizing of Catholicism in England. 
 Still, though there were to be found among them 
 men of great ability, high special culture, and 
 learning, it could not but be that those who had 
 been ostracized and cut off from their heritage by 
 three centuries of iniquitous oppression, should 
 exhibit that one-sidedness and lack of general 
 culture which marks men who are either self-taught, 
 or taught at home — that is, within the limits of 
 some isolated clan. " The intellectual activity of a 
 great nation," writes Mr. Ward, " has its natural 
 channels. Nothing but a miracle could prevent any 
 small body from suffering intellectually if it is cut 
 off from communication with those channels. The 
 very best intellectual endowment, when thus isolated 
 will spend itself on efforts which appear to the 
 general public to be sectarian and purely con- 
 
36 WISEMAN: HIS AIMS AND METHODS. 
 
 troversial^whose tone and form make the ablest 
 arguments unpersuasive." 
 
 Wiseman was anxious that what was the effect 
 of oppression and persecution, sc, the aUenation of 
 Catholics from the intellectual life of the country, 
 should not be ascribed to any narrowing influence 
 of the Catholic religion as such, and for this reason 
 he used all his tact and persuasion to overcome the 
 almost natural reluctance to amalgamate which at 
 first separated the neophytes and Old Catholics 
 almost into two factions, to their mutual hurt. In 
 this and in every other way he strove to free the 
 true conception of the Church's dogmatic office and 
 exclusiveness from the cobwebs of misapprehension 
 and misrepresentation with which it was covered 
 and obscured ; and to exhibit it as simply the 
 necessary, rational, and Divine safeguard of those 
 religious truths which are at the root of all social 
 and intellectual development. No doubt it needs a 
 certain "wish to believe " before prejudiced minds 
 can be disposed to take the trouble needed to dis- 
 tinguish between what is per se and per accidens; 
 what is to be ascribed to Catholics as such, and 
 what to their local, national, or individual circum- 
 stances and peculiarities ; what is due to the use, 
 what to the abuse, of principles and laws. And 
 therefore the first endeavour must be to create this 
 
rviSEMAN: HIS AIMS AND METHODS. 37 
 
 " wish to believe " by drawing attention to the 
 human and attractive side of Catholicity, its social 
 utility, its universal sympathy with every effort in 
 the cause of truth, justice, and charity ; or at least 
 by removing all false impressions to the contrary. 
 Only then will minds be disposed to believe that the 
 Church is always more willing to loose than to bind ; 
 and that she binds only so far as she is absolutely 
 urged by necessity; that definitions are simply 
 forced from her by the cavillings of the rationalistic 
 or heretical mind ; that though final, so far as they 
 exclude some definite error, her dogmas are never 
 final in the sense of stating exhaustively truths that, 
 being supernatural, are inexhaustible; that if she 
 arrests the inopportune discussion or proclamation 
 of some new discovery in history or science, it is 
 really in the essential interest of truth, lest the wheat 
 should be uprooted with the tares, and the minds of 
 millions perplexed in matters of supreme practical 
 consequence for the sake of a detail of little or no 
 practical consequence ; or it is because the truth is 
 urged in an heretical spirit, not as creating an 
 interesting difficulty, but as founding a right to 
 doubt. When once we recognize that there is in all 
 men, so far as unregenerate, a spirit of unauthorized 
 dogmatism essentially heretical, against whose 
 tyranny the authorized dogma of the Church is the 
 
35 WISEMAN: HIS AIMS AND METHODS. 
 
 troversial — whose tone and form make the ablest 
 arguments unpersuasive." 
 
 Wiseman was anxious that what was the effect 
 of oppression and persecution, sc, the alienation of 
 Catholics from the intellectual life of the country, 
 should not be ascribed to any narrowing influence 
 of the Catholic religion as such, and for this reason 
 he used all his tact and persuasion to overcome the 
 almost natural reluctance to amalgamate which at 
 first separated the neophytes and Old Catholics 
 almost into two factions, to their mutual hurt. In 
 this and in every other way he strove to free the 
 true conception of the Church's dogmatic ofiice and 
 exclusiveness from the cobwebs of misapprehension 
 and misrepresentation with which it was covered 
 and obscured; and to exhibit it as simply the 
 necessary, rational, and Divine safeguard of those 
 religious truths which are at the root of all social 
 and intellectual development. No doubt it needs a 
 certain " wish to believe " before prejudiced minds 
 can be disposed to take the trouble needed to dis- 
 tinguish between what is per se and per accidens; 
 what is to be ascribed to Catholics as such, and 
 what to their local, national, or individual circum- 
 stances and peculiarities ; what is due to the use 
 what to the a;buse, of principles and laws. And 
 therefore the first endeavour must be to create this 
 
WISEMAN: HIS AIMS AND METHODS. 37 
 
 " wish to believe " by drawing attention to the 
 human and attractive side of Catholicity, its social 
 utility, its universal sympathy with every effort in 
 the cause of truth, justice, and charity ; or at least 
 by removing all false impressions to the contrary. 
 Only then will minds be disposed to believe that the 
 Church is always more willing to loose than to bind ; 
 and that she binds only so far as she is absolutely 
 urged by necessity ; that definitions are simply 
 forced from her by the cavillings of the rationalistic 
 or heretical mind ; that though final, so far as they 
 exclude some definite error, her dogmas are never 
 final in the sense of stating exhaustively truths that, 
 being supernatural, are inexhaustible; that if she 
 arrests the inopportune discussion or proclamation 
 of some new discovery in history or science, it is 
 really in the essential interest of truth, lest the wheat 
 should be uprooted with the tares, and the minds of 
 millions perplexed in matters of supreme practical 
 consequence for the sake of a detail of little or no 
 practical consequence ; or it is because the truth is 
 urged in an heretical spirit, not as creating an 
 interesting difficulty, but as founding a right to 
 doubt. When once we recognize that there is in all 
 men, so far as unregenerate, a spirit of unauthorized 
 dogmatism essentially heretical, against whose 
 tyranny the authorized dogma of the Church is the 
 
38 WISEMAN : HIS AIMS AND METHODS. 
 
 Divine safeguard of liberty, we sliall not be surprised 
 to find that many who belong to the Church are 
 prone at times, all unconsciously, to gratify this 
 dogmatizing instinct by urging orthodox beliefs 
 upon others in an intolerant and narrow spirit, 
 really because they are their own, ostensibly because 
 they are divinely authorized ; and even to try to 
 bring their purely private opinions under the aegis 
 of ecclesiastical infallibility, and to impose them 
 upon others under pain of anathema. That a dog- 
 matic religion should lend itself to this abuse is 
 inevitable ; but it would be a mistake to ascribe the 
 dogmatizing temper of particular Catholics to the 
 Catholic Church. 
 
 These and a thousand others are the misappre- 
 hensions Wiseman had to contend with, and which 
 we have still to contend with. His singular insight 
 and foresight gave him a comprehensive grasp of 
 the situation and its prospects that few of his con- 
 temporaries could fully share, and which the progress 
 of events has largely justified. If, perhaps, his 
 sanguine hopefulness made him expect a more 
 immediate and abundant inflow from the Establish- 
 ment than actually took place, yet on the whole his 
 anticipation of the course of events has been 
 verified. There may be no reason to expect a 
 conversion of England in the sense we should all 
 
WISEMAN: HIS AIMS AND METHODS. 39 
 
 most desire, but there is every reason to believe 
 that the Catholic Church alone will survive as the 
 representative of dogmatic Christianity in this 
 country. As such there is a great mission before 
 her, even if not a great triumph. She will have to 
 stand alone as the exponent of Christian truth to 
 the non-Christian world. She would therefore 
 prepare herself ill for such an office were she to 
 narrow her present energies to a hostile strife with 
 particular Christian sects or denominations, and not 
 rather to address herself to the sympathetic con- 
 sideration of the mental and moral needs of that 
 growing multitude to whom the very meaning of 
 hfe is a problem and faith an idle word. 
 
 Feb. 1898 
 
III. 
 THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 
 
 Before being able to form even a probable con- 
 jecture as to the prospects of a reunion of the 
 Anglican Church with Catholic Christendom, it will 
 be necessary to come to a clear understanding of 
 the Catholic movement within the Establishment, 
 so that knowing what it is, and whence it comes, we 
 may more hopefully prognosticate its future develop- 
 ments. We speak of it advisedly as the " Catholic" 
 movement, since it is in many ways an undoing of 
 the work of the sixteenth century, and a departure 
 from the Protestantism of those who inherit and 
 faithfully follow the principles of the first Reformers. 
 It is, moreover, avowedly a return to the Christianity 
 of the period prior to the schism between East and 
 West, which was certainly Catholic Christianity, 
 however its Catholicity may be' misinterpreted. 
 
 There are probably as many different versions 
 and analyses of this movement as there are of the 
 French Revolution or of the Renaissance; each 
 
THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 41 
 
 presenting some single phase as if it were a com- 
 plete all-round view, to the neglect of other aspects 
 equally important, each coloured to a great extent 
 according to the subjective peculiarities of the 
 beholder's vision. All such movements are far too 
 complex for any single mind to take in and master, 
 however keen-sighted and well-informed ; and it is 
 only after they have ceased to be of any present 
 practical interest, that the historian can draw his 
 somewhat uncertain verdict from a laborious exami- 
 nation and comparison of the babel of conflicting 
 opinions. From this it by no means follows that 
 contemporary criticisms are worthless, provided due 
 allowance be made for inevitable bias and limitation 
 of view. The whole truth about a man is neither 
 what he thinks about himself nor what his neighbour 
 thinks about him, yet both are worth hearing on the 
 subject ; and so we may listen with profit to what 
 Anglicans say about themselves, and also to what 
 their assailants, Protestant and Catholic, say about 
 them, and from all gather materials for a more 
 adequate view. 
 
 It is not too much to say, that a movement, like 
 many a man, often fails to understand itself — what 
 it means, and what it would be at — until the idea 
 from which it springs works itself clear. Still less 
 do the individuals who take part in the movement. 
 
44 THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 
 
 purely Protestant denominations, with which Evan- 
 gelical Churchmen of the old type may be numbered, 
 is almost too wide even for hostility ; and the social 
 and educational isolation in which Catholics have 
 been forced to live, owing to long-continued perse- 
 cution, has made it very hard for them to under- 
 stand Protestantism or to speak to it in its own 
 language — which is, after all, the first requisite for 
 persuasion. 
 
 Had there been no Tractarian movement, and 
 were there now no " Anglo-Catholic " movement, to 
 bridge over the gulf, it is very difficult to imagine 
 that the Church would ever have made as much 
 headway in this country as she has done. We do 
 not as a rule care to consider a position which 
 is immeasurably different from our own. Few 
 Christians feel drawn to sit down to a candid con- 
 sideration of the claims of Islam, But a Low 
 Church Protestant will not look on the position of a 
 moderate. High Churchman as impossible or not 
 worth considering, though he would not waste a 
 thought on Romanism ; and similarly the moderate 
 High Churchman will be ready to look a little higher, 
 though he protests against the " Romanizing " 
 extreme. It is perhaps only this same extreme that 
 comes very directly under the influence of the 
 Catholic Church, for which it has been prepared by 
 
tHE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 45 
 
 other agencies ; and it is only through the mediation 
 and instrumentality of the whole movement that 
 we indirectly come in contact with Protestantism 
 pure and simple. Thus both the Anglican and the 
 Catholic see God's finger in the same movement; 
 but the one regards it as a via media, and the other 
 as a bridge, with respect to Rome. 
 
 We are not, of course, speaking merely of the 
 Tractarian movement, but also, and perhaps more 
 particularly, of " Anglo-Catholicism," which, although 
 in some sense its offspring, involves other principles 
 which give it a distinct character and spirit. It is 
 not a more unexpected outgrowth from Tractarian- 
 ism than Tractarianism was from Protestantism. 
 Newman was as bewildered by its lawlessness as a 
 hen when the ducklings she has hatched take to the 
 water. 
 
 But here, too, it is hardly possible for the 
 Catholic not to see the working of Providence. 
 Tractarianism was altogether academic, an affair of 
 the Universities. It might bring over a scholar here 
 and there ; but it could never really touch the masses 
 nor even the otherwise educated laity, who were 
 incapable of entering into a system of Patristic 
 interpretation, and of arriving at the Church by so 
 circuitous a route. But this more recent develop- 
 ment is essentially popular, and, abandoning the 
 
4S THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 
 
 narrower criterion of primitive Christianity, embraces 
 frankly everything that can be called Catholic, 
 without caring to define very exactly what it means 
 by Catholicism. So far as it attempts any intel- 
 ligible account of itself, it is rather concerned with 
 insisting on the supposed non-Catholicity of a few 
 points which, if allowed, would mean submission to 
 the Church of Rome. It is, therefore, by reason of 
 its very looseness and incoherence, adapted to the 
 apprehension of the multitude and calculated to 
 land them indefinitely near, though never actually 
 into the Church. For at the threshold they are met 
 by an entirely new principle, the principle of a living 
 teaching-authority, demanding obedience of the 
 intellect; and to enter the Church without perceiving 
 that this last step of the Romeward journey is 
 absolutely different in character from every preceding 
 step, is to be the victim of a profound but not 
 unheard-of illusion. For to become a Catholic is 
 not to add on one or two more items by which one's 
 catena of Catholic opinions and practices is com- 
 pleted ; but it is to accept on a totally different basis, 
 namely, on the living authority of the Roman Church, 
 all, and more than all, that one had already learnt 
 to accept. 
 
 Provided this be clearly understood, it can be 
 nothing less than a great grace to have been so 
 
THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 47 
 
 gradually trained out of one's Protestant repugnance 
 to these various dogmas and practices, that the 
 burden laid upon the convert by authority is light 
 and easy, and almost insensible. It is, no doubt, 
 very logical in the Catholic instructor first to prove 
 the authority of the Church, and then to show that 
 the acceptance of all she teaches follows as a matter 
 of course. But the more extensively her teachings 
 are already accepted on other grounds the more 
 readily will the proofs of her authority be admitted. 
 For if I know that a certain man makes what are to 
 me very extraordinary and incredible statements, I 
 shall be most reluctant indeed to admit the proofs 
 of his credibility without the keenest and most 
 suspicious scrutiny. Similarly, if we put precisely 
 the same demonstration of the Church's teaching- 
 authority before two equally educated and intelligent 
 non-Catholics, of whom one repudiates and the other 
 accepts all the principal distinctives of Catholic 
 teaching, it cannot be doubted that the former not 
 only will, but ought to be far more slow to admit 
 the proofs of her infallibility, which at the best are 
 never such as can compel an unwilling assent. 
 
 It is hardly possible, then, for us not to see the 
 hand of God working this happy effect, or at least 
 permitting it to be worked and overruling it to the 
 good of His Church. And this view is somewhat 
 
THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 
 
 confirmed by the hypothesis of the extreme Evan- 
 gehcals, who see in the movement so much evidence 
 of design, that they are fain to attribute it to the 
 machinations of the Jesuits, who are supposed to 
 have organized the whole scheme, and, in the dis- 
 guise of blameless Anglican ministers, to take active 
 part in its prosecution.^ This theory, were not the 
 Jesuit of Protestant imagination as mythical as 
 Diana Vaughan, would have much to say for itself; 
 although the antagonism between the Anglican 
 crypto- Jesuits and their overtly Roman con- 
 freres is acted with a perfection almost beyond 
 the resources even of those trained experts in 
 duplicity. For, indeed, if Protestants cannot ascribe 
 the movement to God, it must be put down to the 
 Jesuits, and to him whose agents they are presumed 
 to be, or else to mere chance. But the last suppo- 
 sition is really very difficult. In the first place 
 
 > e.g. "We hope we have an average stock of charity, though 
 not sufficient to make us believe that all the sacerdotal propa- 
 gandists in our Church are perfectly free from Jesuit casuistry, 
 or indeed are anything but literal Jesuits working with that con- 
 summate skill, patience, tact, and energy, which are the dis- 
 tinguishing features of this most remarkable Order." (The Rock, June 
 II, 1897.) It has been maintained elsewhere with as much founda- 
 tion and more plausibility that the Roch is a Jesuitical organ, 
 designed to bring ridicule and contempt on Evangelical Protes- 
 tantism, and to drive all intelligent professors of the same to seek 
 refuge with the sacerdotalists. 
 
THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 49 
 
 because, in general, the results of time are never 
 really unravelled, and a position once universally 
 abandoned by a people is rarely sought again. It 
 is different if it has never been wholly rooted out 
 of their heart and affections ; but when once they 
 have turned against it, and been taught to hate it, 
 the chances of their turning back to it are very 
 slight. More especially is this true where the 
 position abandoned is the more difficult one, as in 
 the case in point. It is far easier to disbelieve in 
 the dogmas of Catholicism than to believe in them. 
 The lapse from faith to unfaith, or from more faith 
 to less faith, is easy, and in nme sense natural ; 
 but the acceptance of faith, still more a return to 
 the faith once abandoned, is against the ordinary 
 tendencies of the mind and heart, and needs to be 
 accounted for. The same holds even more forcibly 
 of the return to the abandoned practices of the 
 Catholic rehgion ; to the frequentation of the 
 Church's rites and sacraments, to confession, 
 fasting, austerity, religious vows, none of which 
 commend themselves to the natural man. So it 
 is that apologists for Christianity always insist 
 wisely on the hardness of many of its sayings, in 
 order to enhance the miracle of its speedy propa- 
 gation in a sensual and degraded world. 
 
 Nor is the present argument weakened by 
 
 E 
 
THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 
 
 dwelling on the seductive and popular character 
 of Catholic ritual, which appeals to the senses and 
 imagination. For to begin with, the English of 
 to-day are not naturally very sensitive to the spell 
 of pageantry and ceremony ; and, then, the assthetic 
 appetite could have asserted itself in religion in a 
 thousand ways more naturally than by a return to 
 the rites and ceremonies of Rome. 
 
 Finally, one may ask: Is it natural, is it 
 not rather altogether in defiance of the laws of 
 nature, that a people beyond all others proud and 
 insular, who make a cardinal virtue of independence, 
 who are deficient in so many of the characteristics 
 which cause a religion of mysteries and sacraments 
 to be congenial to the Latinized and Celtic races — 
 that such a people, having thrown off the yoke and 
 the name of Catholicism, having blasphemed its 
 most sacred dogmas, anathematized its practices, 
 hanged and persecuted its priests, should after three 
 hundred years of unqualified and bigoted Protes- 
 tantism come to stoop down and pick up quietly 
 one by one the dogmas and practices they had 
 thrown away in scorn : belief in the need of a 
 teaching Church, of Apostolic succession, of sacra- 
 ments ; belief in some kind of Eucharistic pre- 
 sence, and sacrifice ; in prayers for the dead, and 
 some kind of Purgatory : in the veneration and 
 
THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 51 
 
 invocation of the saints; more especially of the 
 Virgin Mother; in the practice of fasting Com- 
 munion ; of auricular confession ; in the institution 
 of Religious Orders ; belief, moreover, in many of 
 the more modern practices, forms, methods of 
 Rome which have no pretence to universality or 
 even to pre-Reformation antiquity — and so on step 
 by step till they have come to feel ashamed of the 
 very name of Protestant, and to desire to be recog- 
 nized as Catholics by their old enemy the Pope of 
 Rome ? 
 
 It is, I say, little wonder that Evangelicals see in 
 all this the work of the Jesuits or of the devil. For 
 though it were nothing surprising to them that men 
 should fall away from the pure truth of Bible 
 Christianity, yet that they should fall back into 
 Romanism is as strange as that a stone shot into the 
 air at random should return precisely to its point of 
 departure. Truth is one ; but error is infinitely 
 various. That after three hundred years of modern 
 light, men should depart from the Bible by precisely 
 the same route as they took in the early Church, can 
 only be explained by the machinations of those in 
 whom the old error has steadily lived on. 
 
 But Catholics, who believe their own religion to 
 be divine, and who know nothing of the Jesuit of 
 Protestant fiction, may well be pardoned if they see 
 
52 THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 
 
 the finger of God in a phenomenon which cannot 
 reasonably be attributed to chance or to any known 
 law of the development of religious thought. 
 
 It still remains to inquire whether they should 
 regard the movement as being positively the work 
 of God, or as being in itself the work of delusion and 
 error, permitted by God and overruled to the good 
 of souls and the increase of His Church. And this 
 is a more delicate and difficult inquiry. 
 
 The latter supposition is not so impossible as it 
 sounds at first. It is as a rule through many errors 
 that we blunder into the truth ; and it is after doing 
 things wrongly at first, that we come at last to do 
 them rightly. Now we find in Anglicanism a 
 graduated variety of qnasi-Catholic positions, each 
 defective and untenable in some respect, yet con- 
 taining some element of truth in advance of the 
 preceding stage. If then it is repugnant to our 
 notion of Divine sanctity to maintain that God 
 directly leads the mind into error, and, through error 
 and delusion, into truth and reality, in other words 
 that He uses evil means to a good end ; yet 
 it is conceivable that He should permit the 
 mind of the sincere Anglican to deceive itself 
 frequently in its quest of truth, as a good teacher 
 will often do, thus conducting it from hypothesis 
 to hypothesis, till it is driven into a corner from 
 
THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 5J 
 
 which there is ho exit but through the door of the 
 Church. 
 
 It is then possible to hold that the progress of the 
 mind from pure Protestantism to certain imperfect 
 Catholic beliefs mingled with error, is not due to the 
 direct and special working of God's Spirit within the 
 soul, but to Qther natural causes overruled by God in 
 certain cases to the conversion of that soul and to its 
 complete deliverance from all the teachings of 
 heresy. 
 
 And the same explanation might be applied to the 
 whole Anglo-Catholic movement, by which we under- 
 stand the progress of a large party in the English 
 Church from pure Protestantism in the direction of 
 Catholicism. It is possible to suppose that this 
 movement is not the result of any direct impulse or 
 instinct of the Holy Ghost, and yet that it is per- 
 ttiitted by God and overruled to the conversion of 
 many to the Catholic Faith. 
 
 What might incline some Catholics to this view 
 is the fact that, many of the beliefs in question, 
 though involving a denial of Protestant error, and an 
 approximatioii toCatholictruth,arenotwithstanding, 
 simply un-Catholic or anti-Catholic and as such 
 cannot have God for their author. That God 
 should guide men to believe in a Church teaching 
 with Divine authority and ministering supernatural 
 
54 THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 
 
 means of grace is credible enough ; but that He 
 should guide them to recognize the Church of 
 England as satisfying these requirements is to them 
 incredible ; and yet these are not two separate beliefs 
 in the mind of the Anglican, but one. Again, the 
 ever varying and ever incoherent account which 
 Anglicanism gives of itself ; its seemingly disingenuous 
 subterfuges to escape the ruthless pressure brought 
 to bear upon it by Roman logic on the one side, and 
 by Protestant logic on the other ; its manifest feeble- 
 ness and confusion as an intellectual position, make 
 it hard to believe that it can be in any direct sense 
 the work of the God of reason and order. Add to 
 this, the strong anti-Catholic virus displayed by some 
 of its leaders, the methods of their warfare, the 
 seemingly wilful blindness, prejudice, unfairness of 
 their controversy, and we can easily understand 
 why so many Catholics are reluctant to see the direct 
 working of the Holy Ghost in a party which not only 
 aims at rivalling the Church; but which would 
 gladly see her driven out of the country aUogether, 
 as a schismatical body. 
 
 Still, it must be confessed that such a view seems 
 quite inadequate to account for the phenomenon 
 we are considering. It fails to explain why this 
 deviation from evangelical Protestantism should 
 follow a road which is, a priori, so difficult, so 
 
THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 55 
 
 improbable, so uncongenial to the present national 
 temper and bias as that which leads towards Rome. 
 It opens the way to religious scepticism for many 
 converts, who, should they feel constrained to deny 
 the guidance of God in the past, might not unreason- 
 ably question the security of their trust in His 
 present guidance, not only as to their beliefs but as 
 to what might be called their spiritual experiences. 
 It ignores the universal principle that, as all truth 
 and goodness is from God alone, so even that element 
 of truth on which every lie is founded and of which 
 every error is a perversion, and also that element of 
 right of which every wrong is the distortion, is from 
 God. It forgets that although it may be untrue that 
 the English Church inherits the promises made to 
 the Apostles, yet it is better to believe that she does 
 so, than not to believe in those promises at all ; and 
 that even though it may be a mistake to hold that 
 Christ is really present in the Eucharists of the 
 English Church, yet this error involves a belief in the 
 words of Christ concerning the Eucharist in general 
 which most certainly is a true, implicit act of faith. 
 For the premises are implicitly affirnied in the 
 conclusion ; and even if the conclusion be false, yet 
 the implied premises may be true. Thus if a 
 Catholic makes an act of faith in some absurdity 
 which he sincerely but erroneously believes to be 
 
56 JHE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 
 
 revealed by God, the explicit and false belief is not 
 from God ; but the implicit and true belief in revela- 
 tion, which he exercises at the same time, is 
 undoubtedly from God. As regards the implicit 
 .error God holds Himself permissively, not hindering 
 it, but for wise reasons allowing things to run their 
 natural course, perhaps even overruling evil in the 
 interests of good. But as regards the implied truth 
 God is active and directly causative. 
 
 And such, it seems to us, is His intervention in 
 this Catholic revival which we are studying. The one 
 idea in which all Anglicans, of whatever degree, are 
 united, and by which they are divided sharply from 
 those whom they call " Protestants," is the concep- 
 tion of the Church as a supernatural society, which 
 idea finds its full development in Roman Cathohcism.^ 
 Frorn first to last this idea is a seed of Divine truth 
 struggling, in spite of the most unfavourable environ- 
 ments, to reach its legitimate expansion. If in its 
 
 1 Dr. Hunt [Religious Thought in England in the Nineteenth Century) 
 ■writes of the beginnings of Tractarianism; "Evangelicalism was 
 the only really great religious power ; but its principles were not 
 essentially different from those of the Nonconformists. A distinct 
 ground was wanted for the defence of the Church as a Divine 
 institution. . . . The inspiration came from Keble, and the impulse 
 from .Froude; then the work was taken up by Newman, who found 
 that he must force on the public mind that great article of the 
 Creed. ' I believe in one Catholic and Apostolic Church.' " 
 
THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 57 
 
 growth it is often aborted, stunted, twisted; if in but 
 one of a thousand instances it bears its full fruit, 
 all this may be put down, sometimes to inevitable 
 circumstances, sometimes to human perversity and 
 stupidity. But all the vital energy which is thus 
 defeated or perverted is from God ; and whatever 
 fruit of goodness and truth it does yield, such as, the 
 revival of faith in the stricter sense ; the revolt 
 against crude rationalism ; the respect for historical 
 and primitive Christianity ; the readiness to accept 
 mysteries as an integral part of Christian revelation ; 
 the clearer and firmer grasp of the Incarnation in all 
 its bearings on the Church and on humanity; and 
 together with this, the elevation of spiritual tone and 
 character produced by these beliefs in individuals and 
 masses; the devotion and charity which has been 
 enkindled and diffused ; the abundant graces con- 
 veyed to those, who in all good faith and sincerity, 
 make devout use of what they believe to be valid 
 sacraments ; above all the continual uneasiness and 
 dissatisfaction of the movement with itself; its 
 aspirations after unity and communion with the rest 
 ^f Christendom — all this is undoubtedly to be 
 ascribed to Him. Nor is there any warrant in 
 current theology for supposing that after sufficient 
 faith for Christian salvation is secured, God's wisdom 
 demands that the seed sown should in each single 
 
58 THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 
 
 case be brought to that maturity to which of its own 
 nature and structure it tends to arrive. He is well 
 content with partial results and distributes truth in 
 diverse measure to diverse men. Else we should 
 have to maintain that all, even the savages on some 
 undiscovered isle, who die without the fulness of 
 Catholic belief, die in bad faith — a monstrous and 
 unheard-of proposition. Nor does the fact of local 
 nearness to the Church alter the case, where inculp- 
 able prejudices and confusions place her at an 
 intellectual distance scarcely measurable in a lifetime, 
 at the ordinary rate of mental progress. Therefore, 
 that God gives a certain measure of Catholic truth 
 to an individual Protestant does not mean that He 
 is necessarily going to carry the work to perfection ; 
 and similarly if the Anglican mpvement never pro- 
 duced a single convert, it would none the less be the 
 work of God, as far as it goes in the right direction. 
 The perversities, the inconsistencies, and the 
 occasionally un-Christian and indefensible tactics of 
 Anglicans, ought not to furnish any argument to 
 Catholics against the Divine authorship of the move- 
 ment. God's Spirit has always to strive with man, 
 and to be aggrieved and dishonoured in a thousand 
 ways before it can give effect to its designs. It is the 
 law of the natural, as well as of the supernatural 
 order. The whole history of the Catholic Church 
 
THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 59 
 
 exemplifies it on every page. As for controversial 
 unfairness and bitterness, it may be questioned 
 whether controversy can be anything but unfair and 
 bitter. But as we should be loth to identify 
 Catholicism with Cathohc controversy, so neither 
 may we confound Anglicanism with Anglican con- 
 troversy. To credit the Holy Spirit with the latter 
 might indeed be an approach to the unforgivable 
 sin. 
 
 Yet, even as regards their controversy, there is 
 a danger of our being unreasonably impatient and 
 narrow in our censures. To him who has caught 
 the one true light in which a question should be 
 viewed, and who can thenceforth never view it in 
 any other, the conjectures and criticisms of others 
 less favourably stationed seem necessarily absurd. 
 Even converts soon grow so accustomed to the 
 Catholic conception of the Church, that the Anglican 
 controversy becomes as uninteresting to them as a 
 well-worn riddle whose answer has been familiar 
 to them for years. They come to forget how 
 extremely perplexing the said riddle may be for 
 those whom some lurking fallacy throws off the right 
 scent. As for those brought up in the Catholic 
 faith, it would indeed be wonderful if they could 
 throw themselves with complete success into the 
 real frame of mind of a sincere Anglican, or do more 
 
6o THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION 
 
 than deal with that very abstract and imperfect 
 presentment of it which can be expressed in words ; 
 and if at times they fail egregiously in their efforts 
 to do so, surely they are hardly to be blamed, when 
 one considers the Protean, albeit unavoidable, 
 shiftiness of Anglican theory. We say " unavoid- 
 able," for that a growing idea should vary in its 
 expression and explanation ; that after sundry 
 patchings, mendings, and economies, it should from 
 time to time wholly discard the language in which it 
 has clothed itself, casting off the garments it has 
 outgrown in favour of larger and more suitable 
 garments, is inevitable and necessary, and does not 
 mean that the idea formerly expressed was different, 
 but merely that it has grown. The great variety 
 of expression which Anglicanism exhibits in its 
 representatives, according to the particular stage of 
 development which its idea has attained in each 
 case, is perfectly natural and consistent with real 
 substantial unity of principle. Among Catholics, 
 the notion of the Church is full-formed, and therefore 
 the same in all; but in respect to other matters, 
 where the mind of the Church is as yet undetermined, 
 a like variety and inconsistency often obtains. 
 
 The truth is, that when men are driven on by 
 some instinct, or by the force of some idea, as 
 deeply buried from clear apprehension as an instinct, 
 
THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 6i 
 
 their attempts to explain themselves and their 
 conduct must always be ludicrously inadequate ; 
 especially when the issue to which they are being 
 carried is altogether repugnant to their present 
 conscious principles and beliefs, as Romanism is, to 
 the avowed and self-acknowledged tenets of a loyal 
 Anglican. The idea of a Church in any Catholic 
 sense of the term is as much out of place in a strictly 
 Protestant mind, as a cuckoo's egg in a hedge- 
 sparrow's nest. Wheat and tares are different and 
 hostile growths, and will never amalgamate or live 
 peaceably together. They may be mixed up and 
 intertwined, but never united. The attempt to trace 
 them to one root is bound to fail. Therefore the 
 confusion and tangle of Anglican theology, if it is 
 considered as co-existing with a steady advance 
 towards Catholicism, far from being a presumption 
 against the supernatural origin of the movement, is 
 precisely and only what we should expect to find in 
 such a contingency. It is the confusion of a man 
 drawn in opposite directions by his affection and 
 his judgment, and who tries to conceal the antagon- 
 ism from himself, and find a modus vivendi by which 
 both interests can be reconciled. If then it is not 
 possible to deny that this movement is to be ascribed 
 to the immediate and direct working of the Spirit of 
 Truth, not indeed in the English Church, but in 
 
62 THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 
 
 those whom it desires to lead out of that Church, 
 what ought to be our attitude towards it ? how 
 should we co-operate with God's designs ? 
 
 Obviously it will be our duty to desire and 
 procure that the movement may spread and 
 strengthen in every direction. As far as it appears 
 at present there is no other conceivable hope for any 
 extensive Catholicizing of England save through the 
 instrumentality of this party. Our conversions from 
 the Nonconformist bodies and from Low Church 
 Anglicanism are too occasional and exceptional in 
 character to give reason for believing that there is 
 any steady Catholic influence at work in those 
 quarters. As has been said, our language is too 
 different from theirs to permit us to reach them save 
 through an intermediary, such as we find in the 
 High Church party. Nor yet is there any thinkable 
 possibihty of " corporate reunion." For such 
 reunion is necessarily a corporate action involving 
 one will and one mind in the whole body. Unless 
 then we can suppose that High Anglicanism will be 
 some day completely victorious over the Latitudi- 
 narian and Evangelical schools, no corporate move in 
 the direction of Rome is conceivable. But this is 
 very unlikely ; for although being a new movement 
 under the influence of a growing idea, High Angli- 
 canism has a vigour and vitality which more than 
 
THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 63 
 
 outweighs the numerical preponderance of the Low 
 party ; yet in the Latitudinarian school a counter- 
 idea is at work which will dispute every inch of the 
 ground with it. 
 
 What we might hope for, not unreasonably, is 
 the accession to Catholicism of large numbers of 
 individuals at some future date ; and to the realiza- 
 tion of this hope we may briefly turn our considera- 
 tion. 
 
 Let us suppose that the recent Papal Bull on 
 Anglican Orders had possessed, instead of mere 
 theological cogency, the clearness and inevitability 
 of an easy mathematical demonstration, so as to 
 leave no loophole of escape for even the most 
 confused and untheological mind ; and let us 
 suppose, moreover, that it had made all Anglican 
 claims to continuity and quasi-Catholicism evidently 
 ridiculous and unthinkable for any sane mind, what 
 would the result have been as regards Catholicism ? 
 
 No one who was justified before in his resistance 
 to the Papal claims would be now justified in sub- 
 mitting to them simply on account of the collapse 
 of Anglicanism. His principles might compel him 
 to seek union with the Greeks or with the Old 
 Catholics ; but to submit to Rome for the sake 
 of her sacraments and her continuity, and at the 
 same time secretly to deny her claim to infallibility, 
 
64 THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 
 
 would be an act of fraud. Yet no doubt many of 
 the more advanced school would have been driven 
 to a closer consideration and to a less reluctant 
 acceptance of Roman claims. There would have 
 been a little rush of such conversions followed by 
 a dwindling stream from the lower levels of 
 Anglicanism. But the majority of the party, in 
 no way ripe for such a step, would have lapsed 
 to latitudinarianism or scepticism ; and the move- 
 ment would have soon died out altogether. Had 
 such a demonstration of the truth been possible 
 in the nature of things, the Holy Father, as 
 guardian of the truth, would scarcely have been 
 free to withhold it ; though worldly wisdom would 
 certainly have condemned the economy which slays 
 the goose for the sake of the golden eggs. As a 
 matter of fact, the result has been such as we 
 Catholics could not in conscience have aimed at, 
 yet, since it is brought about, independently of any 
 deliberate designs on our part, we cannot but rejoice 
 in it. For it has drawn the members of the High 
 party together in the interests of common self- 
 defence ; it has called forth from them a notable 
 display of anti-Roman virus which will tend to 
 exonerate them in the eyes of other Protestants 
 from the charge of Jesuitical treachery; it has 
 stimulated their leaders to find a new modus vivendi 
 
THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 65 
 
 for English Orders and Anglo-Catholicism, it has 
 elicited from the Archbishops a document sufficiently 
 ambiguous to be accepted by the lowest and the 
 highest, and which, by bringing the former to 
 speak the same language as the latter, will bring 
 many of them eventually to attach the same sense 
 to it. In fine, the spectre which beckoned so 
 many to Rome has been cloaked once more ; and 
 Anglo-Catholicism has received another lease of 
 life, and with a little judicious repair may hold out 
 yet for many a voyage, and may weather many a 
 worse gale. 
 
 Some day, no doubt, as evidence accumulates, 
 the spectre will refuse to be laid, and the impossi- 
 bility of Anglicanism as a stable position will stand 
 out in glaring nakedness before the eyes of all ; but 
 the longer that day is delayed, the greater will be 
 the number, not only of those who year by year are 
 draughted into the Church, but of those who at 
 that moment will be found proximately disposed to 
 receive the full faith. 
 
 Everything, therefore, that tends to weaken the 
 Anglican movement, or bring it to a head pre- 
 maturely, is a calamity from a Catholic point of 
 view. Even individual conversions of any note 
 have their regrettable side. For by such an event 
 perhaps a hundred incipient Anglicans are scared 
 
 F 
 
66 THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 
 
 back or at least checked in their advance, who, 
 if they would never have arrived at Rome them- 
 selves, would, by forwarding and extending the 
 movement, have been eventually the parents of 
 innumerable conversions at some future date. 
 Fortunately such disastrous results are much 
 neutralized by the practice of explaining such 
 " apostasies " from Anglicanism as the result of 
 madness, or weak-mindedness, or of a total failure 
 to grasp either the Anglican or the Roman position. 
 
 Were Catholics as crafty and unprincipled as 
 they are supposed to be, they would never, as 
 they do, sacrifice eventual gain to. some petty 
 present triumph ; they would be more anxious for 
 the roots of a future harvest to spread underground 
 than to secure an immediate but feeble crop of 
 conversions day by day; they would defer the 
 reception of a convert as long as it was possible 
 to suppose him in good faith, and would never 
 disturb the good faith of those who were satisfied 
 with Anglicanism ; they would wait and would allow 
 the " idea " of Anglicanism to work itself out as 
 slowly as it liked — the slower the better — but would 
 never hurry it in any way. 
 
 Yet largely through the exigencies of duty, partly 
 through that ovine artlessness which has ever dis- 
 tinguished the faithful, they follow a precisely 
 
THE PROSPECTS OF REUNION. 67 
 
 contrary method, which, were it not for the over- 
 ruling of Providence, might do much to retard and 
 weaken the progress of Anglicanism. But what 
 ^vith the heat of controversy generated on both 
 sides, and what with partly inevitable misunder- 
 standings and misrepresentations, a spirit of mutual 
 antagonism has recently been developed which, 
 however regrettable from many points of view, will 
 have the happy effect of consolidating the Anglican 
 party in itself for a time, and of strengthening and 
 spreading its roots, and so preparing the way for 
 a much larger eventual ingathering of souls into 
 the Church than would be possible to hope for from 
 the only tactics which we are free in conscience to 
 avail ourselves of. 
 
 This is how the question presents itself from 
 a purely Roman Catholic standpoint to one who 
 •cannot fail to see in the Anglican movement the 
 ■direct action of God in the interest of His Church 
 and of the spiritual welfare of this country. 
 Nothing here said should disturb the serenity of 
 Anglicans in good faith, nor can these remarks have 
 the faintest controversial value, begging, as they do, 
 the whole question at issue between us and them. 
 
 jfuly, 1897. 
 
IV. 
 
 "LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 
 
 A RECENT writer of repute, himself a Catholic, 
 speaks incidentally in the preface to a work which 
 he is introducing to the public, of " the more modern 
 Catholicism which is ready to make part with the 
 world." The expression is one calculated to give us 
 pause and to make us ask if such a tendency is in 
 any degree characteristic of modern Catholicism ; 
 and, if it be, whether it is a tendency to trust or 
 to distrust. We do not, of course, speak of that 
 tendency to worldliness on the part of the faithful 
 individually which always must prevail while the 
 Church is still militant ; but of a conscious and 
 outspoken disposition on the part of Catholic 
 thinkers to come to terms with the civilization in 
 which we are placed ; to justify many of its hitherto 
 repudiated judgments; to bridge over as far as 
 possible the gulf which so far has been treated as 
 impassable. 
 
 There is no more pressing problem just now than 
 the precise relation of Catholic Christianity to the 
 cause of civilization and progress. Our adversaries 
 
"LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 69 
 
 accuse us, not unnaturally, of teaching men to 
 neglect the temporal interests of this world for the 
 sake of the eternal interests of the next ; of being 
 the enemies of modern advancement in every form, 
 if not by aggressive opposition, at least by a studied 
 silence and indifference. Doubtless the charge 
 would not have been ungrounded in the days when 
 men were so possessed with a conviction of Christ's 
 immediate advent as to esteem all labour bestowed 
 on this world as lost ; and in so far as a like appre- 
 hension may have prevailed from time to time in 
 the later history of the Church, the accusation may 
 have received some further justification. On the 
 other hand, it is not uncommon to find many 
 advocates of Christianity — not only outside, but 
 also inside the Catholic Church — somewhat over- 
 anxious to repudiate what seems to them an exces- 
 sively " other- world " view of the Gospel and its aims, 
 and to demonstrate as far as possible that the 
 interests of Christianity truly understood and those 
 of modern industrial progress are in every respect 
 identical. For example, the clerical author of a 
 tract called Christian Socialism,^ writes : 
 
 Very often when we go into church we find the 
 congregation singing some hymn which expresses the 
 utmost weariness of life, and the keenest desire to die 
 1 Clarion Pamphlet, No. 19. 
 
70 "LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 
 
 and to pass to the " better land." Stout old gentlemen 
 and smart young women sing it lustily ; and we know 
 that they are singing a lie ; for if they were told that 
 they were to die to-morrow, they would not find it at 
 all " weary waiting here." This is an instance of the 
 heresy of modern popular religion. Christ taught 
 exactly the opposite. The vast majority of His miracles 
 restored men to health and life, and enabled them to 
 go back to their work, and to enjoy the measure of life 
 that God allots to mankind. Death in old age, when 
 a man's work is done, is not a sad thing ; but death in 
 youth or in the prime of life is piteous, horrible, 
 abnormal ; and so are sickness and deformity. Christ, 
 then, devoted a large portion of His time to fighting 
 against disease and premature death ; and He wept 
 when a friend had been carried off' in his prime. . . , 
 But further we learn from the "signs" of Christ, not 
 only to save life and health, but to increase its comfort, 
 as He did at the feeding of the multitudes — and its 
 merriment, as He did at the Cana marriage. 
 
 However this writer may keep verbally within 
 the pale of orthodoxy, it is hard to resist the 
 impression that, to his mind the main purpose of 
 Christ's mission was the temporal happiness of 
 humanity, secured and in some way complemented 
 by the promise of everlasting reward, for good 
 citizens. It is "heresy," he thinks, to feel weary 
 waiting here, to long to " be dissolved and to be 
 with Christ " in a " better land." Christ, he says, 
 taught " exactly the opposite," namely, that health 
 
"LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 71 
 
 and life and productive industry were the great 
 ends ; that to die young, or to be sick or deformed, 
 was " piteous, horrible, abnormal ; " that this was 
 the real significance of His miracles or signs — 
 sanitation, comfort, merriment, immunity from 
 disease and premature death. His sorrow for 
 Lazarus was that His friend had missed the best 
 pleasures of life by being cut off in his prime. The 
 "good news" was not that poverty, sickness, sorrow, 
 persecution, temptation, death, though for the most 
 part inevitable, had a bright side and might be 
 turned to gold when touched with the Cross ; but 
 that they were to be no more, that the former things 
 were to pass away; that earth was to be turned 
 into a "better land" by the force of industrial 
 progress, the fairest flower of the Gospel. 
 
 This writer is in substantial agreement with 
 numbers of well-meaning persons, both lay and 
 clerical, who are anxious by all means to pare 
 Christianity down to something that will fit in with 
 the popular notions of progress, and to gain it a new 
 lease of life by proving its serviceableness to social 
 and political ends. Nor herein do they deviate in 
 any respect from that Erastian view of Christianity 
 according to which the Church exists only for the 
 moralizing of the State and for enforcing obedience 
 to social law by means of supernatural sanctions 
 
72 "LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 
 
 which control those details of personal conduct that 
 are beyond the reach of State-sanctions. 
 
 Visitors to St. Margaret's, Westminster, or to 
 St. Saviour's, Southwark, cannot fail to be struck, 
 in examining the windows, by the substitution of 
 the inventor, the discoverer, the dramatist, for the 
 saints, martyrs, virgins, and confessors whom the 
 Catholic Church "delighted to honour" and to 
 propose for the emulation of the faithful. Social 
 utility, in the narrow sense of ministration to public 
 prosperity, comfort, and amusement, is naturally the 
 title to canonization in an Erastian establishment. 
 
 It is habitual with the upholders of this style of 
 neo-Christianity (who, even if they be opponents of 
 an established Church, accept its principle in subor- 
 dinating religion to sociology, and making utility 
 the criterion of doctrine and discipline) to lay 
 emphasis on the temporal ministrations of Christ 
 and His Apostles ; on the rewards assigned in the 
 Parable of the Last Judgment to the corporal works 
 of mercy; on all other indications (and they are 
 many) that Christ came for the redemption of the 
 body. They also insist truly that, however first- 
 hand almsgiving may in certain ways react bene- 
 ficially on the giver, yet a wide-seeing, collective, 
 organized charity, which looks to removing the 
 causes and conditions of suffering, is imperatively 
 
"LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 73 
 
 demanded by Christian principles. Christians 
 should be to the fore in all such public undertakings, 
 in the founding of hospitals and like institutions, in 
 the opening of parks and pleasure-grounds, in the 
 extension of useful knowledge, in the sanitation of 
 dwellings for the poor, in the providing of work for 
 all, in the prevention of cruelty, injustice, oppression; 
 all ministering to all, as well as each to each. 
 Christianity, they say, is the only religion that can 
 supply and keep alive that altruism of which it is 
 the creator, and by which alone the fatal con- 
 sequences of a selfish socialism or a selfish indi- 
 vidualism can be averted. 
 
 The practical outcome of this view of the Church's 
 aim and destiny is a vigorous effort on the part of 
 such thinkers to throw themselves heart and soul 
 into what they call the cause of progress and 
 advance ; to show by every exhibition of sympathy 
 and co-operation that they regard the interests of 
 Christianity and of the present European civilization 
 as identical; that they will by no means admit an 
 inevitable and hopeless antagonism between the two 
 movements. There is, they must admit, an anti- 
 thesis between Christianity and worldliness or the 
 world ; yet the world is not the State or secular 
 society, but a certain tendency prevalent to all men, 
 which it is the effect of true Christian civilization 
 
74 -LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 
 
 to counteract, transforming the kingdoms of this 
 world into the kingdoms of God and of His Christ. 
 Whence, they ask, are these cries against social 
 injustices, inequalities, uncharities, whence the 
 response they awaken in the public mind, if not 
 from the Christian spirit with which modern 
 civilization is impregnated ? Brotherhood, society, 
 collectivism, the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number, altruism, humanitarianism, the emancipa- 
 tion of women, the dignity of labour, are not all 
 these potent, energetic ideas drawn from the Gospel? 
 Or if collectivism be a fallacy, yet does not indi- 
 vidualism need to be tempered by a certain charity 
 and mercy which can be kept alive only by the 
 religion of Christ ? In a word, progressive civiliza- 
 tion {i.e., European as opposed to Asiatic) owes its 
 origin and its vital principles to Christianity : there- 
 fore let it look to itself lest, in rejecting Christianity, 
 it unwittingly open its own veins. Social and political 
 measures which tend to lessen sin and suffering, to 
 liberate and elevate the down-trodden masses, are 
 not merely expedient and just, as they would be 
 even in a pagan State, but are imperative duties on 
 the part of a Christian people. It is because Christian 
 principles are ignored in economics and politics that 
 such evils exist. 
 
 Now, it would be as dangerous as untrue to 
 
'LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 75 
 
 reject this view. indiscriminately ; to assert that the 
 causes of Christ and of civilization are hostile or 
 even unconnected ; or to acquiesce, without a certain 
 protest, in the proposition that the business of this 
 country could not be transacted on Gospel principles 
 for one day without irreparable disaster. It was the 
 heresy of Luther to assert such a hopeless distortion 
 of our nature through the Fall as to render every 
 output of that nature necessarily corrupt and hostile 
 to the interests of grace ; to look on the Church and 
 the world, on the eternal and the temporal, on the 
 spirit and the flesh as antagonistic, not merely 
 de facto, but of necessity. But Catholic Christianity, 
 while acknowledging a de facto antagonism, denies 
 its right of existence altogether, and strives by every 
 possible means to destroy it. Its quarrel is not 
 with civilization in general, nor with the ideal 
 civilization, but with the counterfeit, with that 
 which claims to be civilization and is not; nor 
 indeed does it war indiscriminately with the world 
 in this matter, but only with those principles which 
 are embodied in the abstract idea of " worldliness " 
 and are really hostile to the world's best interests. 
 
 We must maintain stoutly with regard to society 
 and the State, what we hold with regard to the 
 individual, namely, that faith perfects science, that 
 grace complements nature ; that its office is, not to 
 
76 "LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 
 
 destroy, but to fulfil. By this, it is not maintained 
 that even the fullest practical and speculative 
 mastery of the Christian faith will satisfy all the 
 intellectual and bodily needs of the individual, 
 so as to secure the perfect development of all that 
 is best in him. No one can pretend that heroic 
 sanctity involves the highest mental culture, still 
 less does it demand pre-eminence in business 
 qualities, or in the usual conditions of what is called 
 a successful or pleasurable career. Where these or 
 similar temporal gifts are present, there religion 
 crowns them, by controlling them and directing them 
 to a high end ; by giving them a definite and worthy 
 scope. Also it must be allowed that all these things 
 which are " added " to the one thing needful, are 
 secondary and, absolutely speaking, dispensable; 
 that the "religious faculty" being that which is 
 highest among our rational faculties, its perfection 
 should be secured, if necessary, at the cost of every- 
 thing else. For, after all, the most brilliant gifts 
 and graces directed to no definite end cannot save 
 life from being frivolous, mean, and contemptible ; 
 whereas the most insignificant lot directed to a 
 spiritual end or an eternal cause, wins a dignity 
 worthy of all that is best in us. 
 
 Still religion, or sanctity, though independent in 
 the abstract, is by no means indifferent to these 
 
••LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 77 
 
 " additions." Its influence over our temporal 
 interests is often directive and positive, insomuch 
 as it sees " we have need of these things," and bids 
 us secure them as conditions sometimes favourable 
 to higher interests ; often it is permissive or negative 
 in so far as it allows much which it does not enjoin, 
 exercising as it were a mere veto where a point is 
 reached beyond which higher good is perilled. It 
 will encourage and foster the fullest and healthiest 
 development of the intellect, the raising and purifying 
 of the higher aesthetic tastes, the strengthening 
 restraint of all the natural and social affections, the 
 taming and utilizing of the passions ; it will make a 
 man hardy, simple, courageous, industrious, tem- 
 perate, chaste, in every way virtuous — for all these 
 conditions not only favour and promote his highest 
 spiritual well-being, but belong to the integrity and 
 fulness of human life which is, so to say, a many- 
 membered organism whose every part profits by the 
 well-being of its fellow-parts. Religion is the chief 
 and governing function, but it is not the only 
 function. The members do not exist solely for the 
 head ; but head and members for one another and 
 for the whole. It will forbid and exclude all that is 
 directly contrary to these advantageous conditions ;. 
 all irregular concentration on lower good to the 
 prejudice of higher ; all that intense pre-occupation 
 
78 "LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM 
 
 about food and clothing, enjoyment and excitement, 
 wliich so characterizes the animal-minded civilization 
 of our day, and which is the root of the lowest and 
 most aggressive form of selfishness, as well the 
 enemy of that orderly and proportionate unfolding 
 of our capacities which makes the lower serve and 
 wait on the higher. In other words, though civiliza- 
 tion is not the direct aim of Christianity, yet it is its 
 indirect effect, given due conditions ; it is the natural 
 environment which Christianity desiderates for itself 
 and strives to secure. 
 
 But not every or any form of culture can be 
 regarded as such ; for there is false and true, 
 apparent and real. Non-Christian civilization can 
 produce a type, in many features admirable and 
 akin to the Christian ideal of culture, but not in all ; 
 and in some wholly opposite. If, however, we speak 
 of true culture in the individual, we must affirm that 
 its interests and those of religion are largely cor- 
 relative, in no way antagonistic. Both alike require 
 that a sense of duty, a reverence for truth and right, 
 should be the governing principle of life; and that 
 death should be preferred to merited dishonour. 
 They agree in their conception of perfect manhood, 
 of man at his best. But if we speak of some pseudo- 
 culture, there must necessarily be a conflict with 
 religion. One who thinks that life is given to him 
 
••LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 79 
 
 chiefly for rude animal enjoyment, or for business, 
 or for social pleasures, or even for literary and 
 artistic self-indulgence, may well regard the claims 
 of religion as hostile, unless he can fabricate a sort 
 of " muscular Christianity " for himself, or take a 
 page from Christian Socialism. 
 
 Now there seems no reason why we should not 
 treat the relation of the Church to modern progress 
 and civilization as in nearly every way parallel to 
 that which obtains between grace and nature in the 
 individual. 
 
 The Church has her own ideal of civilization, 
 which she holds to be the true one, and which she 
 tends indirectly to realize. The world also has its 
 own ideal, which in every age and country is to 
 some greater or lesser extent incompatible with the 
 former. Hence, unless the Church is passive and 
 allows herself to be carried away captive, a conflict 
 there always has been and always must be, not 
 between the Church and civilization, but between 
 the true and the false civilization. To require, on 
 the one hand, that the Church should throw herself 
 heartily and indiscriminately, with blind trust and 
 confidence, into the stream of modern progressive 
 ideas, is the extravagance towards which a soi- 
 disant " Liberal " school gravitates in virtue of its 
 principles, or the haziness of its principles. On 
 
8o "LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 
 
 the other hand, there is the no less reprehensible 
 extravagance of an indiscriminate condemnation 
 of the modern movement, which fails to recognize 
 it as a mixed product, as the resultant of a 
 conflict between hostile principles, of which some 
 are altogether Christian, whether deriving through 
 the light of conscience or the teaching of the 
 Catholic Church. The Church may neither identify 
 herself with " progress " nor isolate herself from it. 
 Her attitude must always be the difficult and 
 uncomfortable one of partial agreement and partial 
 dissent. Indeed, it is altogether similar to that 
 which faith must maintain with regard to the 
 advance of science and knowledge. The soi-disant 
 " Liberal " is all agog for embracing the very latest 
 results of science and history, and would see the 
 Church decked out in the newest fashions of the day 
 and chattering the shibboleths of the passing hour. 
 He would have her " smart " and " up to date," and 
 thus wipe away for ever her eternal reproach of 
 lagging behind the times. But in truth we must 
 not shrink from the paradox that contemporary 
 science and history is always wrong ; not wholly 
 wrong, nor void of ample grounds for priding itself 
 on advance ; but mingling so much extravagance and 
 excess with its reason, so much dross with its gold, 
 as to make it invariably safe to hold back and wait. 
 
••LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 8i 
 
 It is truth " in solution," but not attainable apart 
 and in its purity till it has long ceased to be a theme 
 of discussion and excitement. Then it is that the 
 Church will quietly adopt and assimilate what no 
 longer admits of controversy. There is an antagon- 
 ism between faith and false science or the extrava- 
 gances of true science ; and in like manner, between 
 the Church and false progress or the excesses and 
 errors of a progress which mingles good and evil. 
 Hence, an antagonism nearly always between the 
 Church and the fashion of the day. Her very offices 
 of moulding, leavening, checking, correcting, all 
 imply a certain resistance to be overcome, not 
 without conflict. 
 
 This, however, is what the " Liberal " will not 
 abide for a moment. It is not that his faith in the 
 Church is necessarily weak, but that his faith in the 
 world and in modern progress is crude and strong. 
 He knows well that the Church must eventually give 
 her full sympathy to all that is true and good, and 
 being convinced that most of what seems so must be 
 so, he is impatient with the suicidal over-caution, 
 the apathy, the lethargy of the Catholic body. 
 
 Rightly understood, there is a "Liberalism" 
 which, combined in due proportion with " Con- 
 servatism," is a necessary ingredient in the life of 
 every society, and therefore in that of the Church. 
 G 
 
S2 "LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 
 
 But the true Liberalism is really for the very few 
 who have the leisure, capacity, and education for 
 thinking widely, deeply, and temperately ; whereas, 
 for the great majority, who form the receptive and 
 conservative element of society, and who have none 
 of these advantages, they must take their thought 
 ready-made from others. It is when Liberalism 
 becomes " popular," when it is affected by the half- 
 educated, and is made the catch-word for a party, 
 that it becomes ridiculous, shallow, and irritating 
 to any one who knows the patience and labour 
 which must be expended — how often vainly! — in 
 the formation of a correct all-round judgment 
 touching most questions which the Church has to 
 deal with. 
 
 Conservatism can well be the badge of a party 
 without any contradiction in terms, but Liberahsm 
 never, since it is a principle of variety and not of 
 uniformity. Indeed, nothing hinders the sane and 
 healthy progressive movements of the Church more 
 than the crude extravagances of the self-constituted 
 coryphcei of advance, who contrive to disgust all 
 men of judgment, and to drive their sympathies 
 over to the opposite side. No doubt every party 
 is frequently brought into disgrace by its camp- 
 followers, who are always its loudest, most popular, 
 and most incompetent exponents ; but anything hke 
 
•LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 83 
 
 a " Liberal " movement is tenfold more liable to such 
 a doom. 
 
 What man of taste, not to say, of Catholic 
 instinct, would care to associate himself, even in his 
 own mind, with those who are willing to whittle 
 away everything that is distinctive of Catholicism, 
 for the sake of making an unconditional peace with 
 a civilization such as that which now prevails 
 in " progressive " nations, which, whatever good 
 elements it may contain, and they are not few, is 
 overtly unbelieving, gross, and animal-minded ; 
 which understands " progress " only in the sense of 
 the multiplication of comforts and the extension of 
 commerce ; which assumes, as a first practical 
 principle, a view of life which it is a first principle 
 of the Church to deny ? 
 
 If to be " Liberal " is to be a utilitarian of the 
 vulgarest t)'pe ; if it is to have a secret contempt for 
 anything that savours of mysticism, or that cannot 
 be rationalized or made " common-sense ; " if it is to 
 declaim against the religious state ; to censure the 
 hidden service of contemplative orders as wasted, as 
 something better " given to the poor ; " if it is to be 
 dead to the "liturgical sense," and to have lost all 
 love and reverence for what has come down to us 
 through the ages ; if it means playing fast and loose 
 with dogmas which martyrs have died for ; in a 
 
84 "LIBERAL" CATHOLICISM. 
 
 word, if it means obliging the world to the extent of 
 sawing through the very bough that we are sitting 
 on ; if this is to be Liberal and broad, then be our 
 soul with the narrow-minded and let our last end be 
 like his ! 
 
 Taking the words in their literal sense, there is 
 no sane man who would not claim to be at once 
 liberal and conservative ; but, so far as they are 
 party names, he is a wise man who declines to label 
 or brand himself even in his own thought, and 
 thereby really to sacrifice his liberty of mind by 
 introducing into it an unnecessary bias. 
 
 We are of necessity members of the human 
 family, of the Christian and Catholic Church, and 
 as such must in some sense wear a party badge and 
 bear our share of the discredit brought upon the 
 body by the sentiments and conduct of those with 
 whom we are associated. But beyond what duty or 
 greater good exacts of us, surely it is wisdom to- 
 swear neither by Paul nor by Apollos nor by Cephas,, 
 but to be a Catholic, unqualified even by the glorious 
 but hopelessly perverted title of " Liberal " — 
 
 Defamed by every charlatan 
 And soil'd with all ignoble use. 
 
 May, 1898. 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 
 
 The popular preacher, teacher, or writer is, as 
 Carlyle says in an essay on Goethe, one who 
 " stands on our own level or a hair's-breadth higher ; 
 he shows us a truth which we can see without 
 shifting our present intellectual position. . . . No 
 sooner does he speak than all and sundry of us feel 
 as if we had been wishing to speak that very thing, 
 as if we ourselves might have spoken it. . . . What 
 clearness, brilliancy, justice, penetration ! Who 
 can doubt that this man is right when so many 
 thousand votes are ready to back him ? " He is not 
 always intentionally popular, not always one who 
 designedly finds out and says what the public 
 wishes to hear, or who studiously avoids reminding 
 it of unwelcome truths ; but more often he is 
 in general sympathy with popular opinion and 
 sentiment, being in a certain sense the man of his 
 day and time — formed by it, rather than forming 
 it. It is as the utterance of a popular preacher 
 that the following document may be considered 
 
86 "RATIONALISM IN RELIGION.' 
 
 representative of the sentiments of a large and 
 growing section of English Churchmen. 
 
 A PLEA FOR THE OPTIONAL USE OF THE 
 ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
 It is generally assumed by controversialists that 
 those who desire that the use of the Athanasian Creed 
 should be made (at least) optional, and that its recita- 
 tion should not be forced on unwilling congregations, 
 are unbelievers in the doctrines of the Trinity and 
 the Incarnation which it unfolds and defines. Our 
 position, on the other hand, is that those who really 
 believe in these great truths and realize their deep 
 mystery, are much troubled by the vain attempt to 
 describe the Divine relations by the terms of an 
 obsolete philosophy. They object, not because they 
 do not believe, but because they believe so entirely ; 
 because their faith is insight they resent a form of 
 expression which must do injustice to the sublime 
 truths which it aims at unfolding. 
 
 There has been too much worship of high-sounding 
 phrases, as though they must carry us upwards on 
 wings of aspiration. 
 
 Such phrases are very satisfactory to the man who 
 does not care to be at the trouble of thinking what 
 they mean. But to the devout soul dwelling on the 
 exceeding mystery of the Trinity, these endeavours to 
 explain it and to fix it exactly seem intensely irreverent, 
 the outcome of an anthropomorphic age, which thought 
 that the Nature and Image of God could be described 
 in the same sort of way as a picture or a bit of scenery. 
 The Holy Spirit has taught the Church a deepened 
 reverence since the days when this hymn was composed. 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 87 
 
 and to recite it is to do violence to His most illumin- 
 ating inspirations. Because we believe so intensely 
 in the Trinity of Persons and Unity of God, because 
 we see in the one the inspiration of our social life 
 and in the other the fountain of all real adoration, 
 we resent the attempt of an ever defining age to 
 obscure the eternal truth by describing it in the 
 language of the philosophy of a single period. 
 
 As to the so-called damnatory clauses, we are quite 
 aware that they may be rightly interpreted. The man 
 (if such an one there can be imagined) who wilfully 
 rejects the revelation of God does his best to destroy 
 the highest possibilities of life within himself. But 
 the statement of his loss is made twice over in an 
 almost savage fashion, utterly misleading to ordinary 
 minds, recalling the spirit of the days that had better 
 be forgotten, when torture was used as an instrument 
 of propagating the religion that was founded on love. 
 " Without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. He 
 cannot be saved." No one who realized the Spirit 
 of Christ would really wish to stand up and use such 
 language. They would wish to explain or qualify it, 
 and they would resent the inferences that could easily 
 be drawn from it. That good men do think that they 
 desire to use it is only a proof of the blinding and 
 hardening effect of taking up a controversial position 
 on the deepest subjects merely because it has been 
 inherited. 
 
 We have to contend earnestly for the faith once 
 delivered to the saints, not as a mere form of words, but 
 as the inspiration of life. We have come to see this 
 increasingly in the present age. The mere assertion 
 of doctrine, apart from an effort to live on it and by it. 
 
88 "RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 
 
 is the most deadening thing in the world ; it leaves 
 a man with a name to live but really and truly "dead." 
 It is difficult to see how a controversial document like 
 the Athanasian Creed, could ever serve to teach the 
 truths of the Trinity and the Incarnation as inspirations 
 of life. It is much more likely to set men's wits at 
 work disputing about them and contradicting them. 
 
 The recitation of this Creed is in most churches 
 a hindrance and a stumbling-block to the most 
 thoughtful worshippers, and it is unintelligible to the 
 less thoughtful. It is only a joy to the controversialist 
 and the precisionist. The one sort had better practise 
 the mortification of their desires while they are in 
 church, and the other had better go and seek God in 
 the ineffable mysteries of nature in order to correct 
 those attempts to define the indefinable which only 
 obscure the light and hinder their own growth.' 
 
 All this is put forward, not as a private and 
 personal opinion, but as the sentiment of those 
 numerous congregations w^hich desire the abolition 
 of the compulsory use of the Athanasian Creed. 
 
 There is nothing new in latitudinarianism with 
 its hostility to definite dogmatic statement; but 
 what is somewhat new and surprising is the growing 
 tendency to dress out latitudinarianism in the 
 clothes of Catholic orthodoxy — a tendency of which 
 the above citation is a rather startling example. 
 
 It is, we are told, not because^they do not believe 
 ^ Westminster Gazette, Nov. 29, 1898. 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 89 
 
 the Athanasian Creed, but because they believe it so 
 much more intensely than Catholics do that Church- 
 men of a certain school object to it ; not because 
 its teaching is too mysterious, but because it is 
 not half mysterious enough. Dwelling upon the 
 exceeding mystery of the Trinity with a faith, 
 strangely identified with "insight," seeing the 
 Eternal Reality in itself by some gift of spiritual 
 discernment, and comparing that Reality, that 
 Trinity and Unity, with "these endeavours to 
 explain it and to fix it exactly," they are pained 
 by and resent the utter inadequacy of "a form of 
 expression which must do injustice to the sublime 
 truths which it aims at unfolding." The description 
 of a picture or of a bit of scenery, however in- 
 adequate, may bear comparison with the original ; 
 certain aspects and poiats of what we see with 
 bodily eyes may be expressed in words; but no 
 one who knows by " insight " what the Trinity is, 
 will allow any value to the " intensely irreverent " 
 description attempted in the Athanasian Creed. 
 
 All this seems to imply that these Churchmen 
 possess a knowledge of the Trinity not conveyed 
 to them through human language, or symbols, or 
 creeds, but derived from direct intuition or insight 
 into that mystery— an intuition strangely con- 
 founded with faith, which is usually regarded as 
 
go "RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 
 
 the "evidence of things not seen." Beholding- 
 the Trinity face to face and then turning to the 
 laboured descriptions of "an anthropomorphic age," 
 they find these latter simply shocking in their 
 irreverence. 
 
 This is not one bit what the writer really means; 
 yet it is nevertheless what he says ; and this con- 
 fusion in expression is precisely due to the impossible 
 attempt to cover rationalism with the cloak of 
 orthodoxy, and to represent " believing less " and 
 " believing more " as being the same thing. 
 
 There is, indeed, in his statement, if we may 
 borrow its own expression, " too much worship 
 of high-sounding phrases ; satisfactory to the man. 
 who does not care to be at the trouble of thinking 
 what they mean." Subjected to ruthless logic they 
 mean exactly nothing, but it is not fair criticism 
 so to deal with faults and limitations of utterance 
 when the underlying meaning is so plain to discern ; 
 truth is often put best in the form of a " bull ; " and 
 therefore we will trouble ourselves to inquire as to 
 the precise position implied in the utterance, and 
 to offer some criticisms upon it. 
 
 For it is not by confusing and muddling the 
 issues at stake, nor by violating ordinary language 
 in the endeavour to cover opposite meanings under 
 similar sounds, that unity and agreement can ever 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." gi 
 
 be reached ; but rather by striving to understand 
 ever more exactly, and to express ever more faith- 
 fully our own position and that of our opponents. 
 Diagnosis is the first step towards healing, even 
 when it does not show the ailment to be merely 
 imaginary. It is not so much because of what they 
 hold, as because they do not know what they hold, 
 that warring sects fail to come to an agreement ; 
 as is often the way in a quarrel. 
 
 The true meaning of the statement is contained 
 in the assertions that the " faith once delivered to 
 the saints " is not to be regarded as a mere form 
 of words (here indeed we are all agreed), but " as 
 the inspiration of Hfe;" and that it is "difficult to 
 see how a controversial document hke the Athan- 
 asian Creed could ever serve to teach the truths 
 of the Trinity and the Incarnation as inspirations 
 of life." This last phrase is explained where it 
 is said : " Because we believe so intensely in the 
 Trinity of Persons and Unity of God ; because we 
 see in the one the inspiration of social Hfe, and 
 in the other the fountain of all real adoration, we 
 resent the attempt ... to obscure the eternal 
 truth." 
 
 In a word, so far as revealed truth is practical, 
 so far as a belief is a means to make men morally 
 better, so far, and no further, it is a matter of faith 
 
92 "RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 
 
 worth contending for. The mere perfecting of the 
 mind — man's best part, by truth— decapia, knowledge 
 for the sake of knowledge, is of no consequence in 
 God's eyes. It is not so much, Blessed are the 
 pure, for they shall see God ; as. Blessed are they 
 that see God, for they shall be pure. God in Three 
 Persons, with one identical Mind, Work and Will, 
 shows us that society and fraternal union has its 
 archetype in Heaven ; it inspires us with a zeal 
 for peace and charity ; it bids us see the divine 
 cause and will in all that makes for oneness among 
 men. The Trinity thus embodies a great social 
 principle ; and in the measure that we have faith 
 in that practical principle, and an insight into 
 its eternal value, our belief in the Trinity is an 
 "inspiring" influence, something on which we can 
 live. Apart from this, and as "mere assertion of 
 doctrine," a mere enlightening of the mind, it is 
 " the most deadening thing in the world." 
 
 He who wilfully rejects this practical truth " does 
 his best to destroy the highest possibilities of life 
 within himself," and in this sense will "perish ever- 
 lastingly," by standing in the way of his own moral 
 progress ; not because he has refused the obedience 
 of his mind to a Divine revelation from without. 
 So far the " damnatory clauses " may be " rightly 
 interpreted," however much the rough insistence on 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 93 
 
 these disagreeable consequences of obstinacy be 
 deprecated. 
 
 No one who has read Newman's three essays on 
 Rationalism in Religion, will have much difficulty in 
 recognizing this teaching as emanating from the 
 school of Erskine or Abbot, whose opinions are there 
 canvassed. 
 
 The supposition of religious rationalism is that, 
 doctrines should justify themselves to us, and fit into 
 our thoughts harmoniously; that until they do so, 
 and as long as they lie loose in the mind, three-cor- 
 nered and uncomfortable, refusing to be knit up into 
 the unity of our mental system, we cannot really be 
 said to believe them or take them home, or to have 
 an "insight " into them. 
 
 Faith would not lie, therefore, in the submission 
 of the reason to belief in external realities only 
 partially disclosed and imperfectly apprehended, but 
 in the readiness of the mind to enter into intelligent 
 agreement with what is revealed, to behold therein not 
 merely a speculative truth, but a practical " inspiration 
 of life." As another of the same school has put it : 
 "The faith which yields a blind assent to mys- 
 terious dogma because propounded by ecclesiastical 
 authority, is not the faith of Scripture at all ; it is, 
 in fact, fanaticism, and there is an unbelief which 
 is preferable to it." Faith is therefore "not a 
 
<)4 "RATIONALISM IN RELIGION.' 
 
 submission to tiiat which is outside our compre- 
 hension." 
 
 But, according to the old-fashioned orthodoxy of 
 Newman and Bishop Butler, this was just what faith 
 meant. The same truth which under one aspect 
 might be called a revelation, or manifestation, under 
 another was necessarily a mystery. Belonging to a 
 supernatural and Divine order of things, it refused to 
 be adequately and properly expressed in human ideas 
 and human language. Such scant clothing could 
 never fit it, or cover more than one side of it at a 
 time ; could never get round it and comprehend it. 
 It was seen in twilight, unclearly, confusedly, yet 
 nevertheless seen to some extent. And this all- 
 imperfect knowledge of things Divine was considered 
 valuable even for its own sake, as perfecting the 
 understanding, quite apart from all moral improve- 
 ment which might result from it. It was assumed 
 that as God cares how we live, how we use our 
 senses, our passions, our members, our will, and 
 other faculties, so He also cares about the perfection 
 of our intelligence, and about the life of thought for 
 its own sake ; and that as men should like to know 
 about physical nature for the sake of knowing, and 
 not merely in the interests of commerce, so they 
 should like to know about God, so far as God might 
 allow them, however imperfect that knowledge might 
 
••RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 95 
 
 be. Although the truths of faith were believed to be 
 objectively one, and linked together, yet to our gaze 
 they were but as the projecting mountains of a sub- 
 merged continent. It was a legitimate exercise of 
 reverent reason to mark any indications of their 
 hidden unity, to observe their angles of inclination, 
 and to conjecture the point at which some of them 
 might meet below, and run into one another. But 
 to claim a right to see all, to refuse any truths that 
 could not be brought into system with one another 
 and with the body of our thought, to insist on com- 
 pleteness, was regarded as rationalism pure and 
 simple. The Gospel was partly intelligible, partly 
 unintelligible; on one side revelation and light, on 
 the other mystery and darkness. Faith took it all ; 
 rationalism took the intelligible part alone. 
 
 The words and ordinances in which those Divine 
 truths were couched might not be tampered with, 
 just for the very reason that they did not, and could 
 not, correspond exactly to the reality which they 
 half hid and half disclosed. When we know the 
 object presented under a metaphor, and the exact 
 point of parity, we can safely change that metaphor 
 for another ; but when that object is known only 
 through and in the metaphor, we do not know where 
 the correspondence begins or ends, and so cannot 
 afford to meddle. Thus revelation, being on the 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 
 
 whole an inadequate and analogous presentment of 
 other-world truth, no man might trust himself to 
 depart from the " form of words and the ordinances 
 under which it comes to us, through which it is 
 revealed to us, and apart fr.om which revelation does 
 not exist, there being nothing else given to us by which to 
 ascertain or enter into it." ' 
 
 It is this last point which is so strangely ignored 
 by the rationalizing Christian who sits in judgment 
 on the adequacy of the ideas and expressions in which 
 Divine truth has been wrapt, as though he had some 
 direct insight into supernatural realities apart from 
 revelation, and could compare the two forms of 
 knowledge one with another. 
 
 Although Erskine in his Internal Evidence does 
 not draw precisely the same practical lesson and 
 inspiration from the Trinity as our writer, yet he is 
 just as insistent on the general principle that it is 
 only as an " inspiration of life " that it can have any 
 claim on our credence. " What is the history of 
 another world to me," he says, "unless it have some 
 intelligible relation to my duties and happiness ? " 
 
 One cannot but marvel at the frank philistinism 
 
 of the supposition that knowledge, apart from its 
 
 useful consequences, is nothing worth. Surely most 
 
 of our astronomers and men of science would fall 
 
 ' Newman, Rationalism in Religion, Essay I. 
 
••RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 97 
 
 under the lash of this rebuke ! But it is of other 
 star-gazers that Mr. Erskine is thinking. " The 
 abstract fact that there is a plurality in the unity of 
 the Godhead really makes no address either to our 
 understandings, or our feelings, or our consciences. 
 But the obscurity of the doctrine, as far as moral 
 purposes are concerned, is dispelled when it comes 
 in such a form as this, God so loved the world," &c. ; 
 and again, "it is evident that this fact, taken by 
 itself, cannot in the smallest degree tend to develop 
 the Divine character ; and therefore cannot make 
 any moral impression on our minds," but " in the 
 Bible it assumes quite a different shape ; it is there 
 subservient to the manifestation of the moral 
 character of God." Again, he complains that in the 
 creed doctrines " are not stated with any reference 
 to their great object in the Bible — the regeneration 
 of the human heart by the knowledge of the Divine 
 character. They appear as detailed propositions 
 indicating no moral cause and pointing to no moral 
 effect. . . . They appear like links severed from the 
 chain to which they belonged, and thus they lose all 
 that evidence which arises from their consistency, 
 and all that dignity which is connected with their 
 high design." In the creeds "the doctrine stands 
 as an isolated fact of a strange and unintelligible 
 nature ; " in the Bible, it " radiates to the heart, an 
 H 
 
•RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 
 
 appeal of tenderness most intelligible in its nature and 
 object, and most constraining in its influence." And 
 still more frankly does he sweep aside creeds as 
 the " systems of men who have engrafted the 
 metaphysical subtleties of the schools upon the 
 unperplexed statement of the word of God. In order 
 to understand the facts of revelation, we must form 
 a system to ourselves ; but if any subiilty of which the 
 application is unintelligible to common-sense, or unin- 
 fluential on conduct, enters into our system, we may bt 
 sure that it is a wrong one." 
 
 In brief : God cannot possibly have had any end 
 in revelation that we do not understand. The only 
 end we can understand is man's use and service, to 
 which we assume that all God's action must be sub- 
 servient. Knowledge has no value in itself, but only 
 so far as it leads to practical results in the way of 
 virtuous conduct and comfortable living. Therefore, 
 any pretended revelation, whose practical bearings 
 are not manifest, may be rejected as spurious. God, 
 by reason of His virtuous qualities, is a useful and 
 improving acquaintance for man, but otherwise quite 
 uninteresting. This disclosure of God's moral 
 character is the central idea of revelation. All that 
 fits in with this assumption is to be accepted : all 
 else, rejected. 
 
 I do not think that those who hold with these 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 99 
 
 views could reasonably object to be classified with 
 Mr. Erskine, as avowedly "rationalizers" of 
 Christianity in the above sense; nor do I here 
 contest their liberty thus to find a modus vivendi for 
 themselves in these days of doubt and darkness ; but 
 what I do protest against is the tendency to muddle 
 up issues so distinct as those which divide Butler 
 and Newman from Erskine and Abbott, and, under 
 the cloak of a more reverent faith and a deeper 
 sense of mystery, to rebuke the rationalism of the 
 compilers of the Athanasian Creed. It is in the 
 attempt to make every doctrine intelligible, not 
 merely to the human mind, but to the British 
 Philistine of the nineteenth century, and in the 
 crude endeavour to weave all doctrines into a 
 coherent system by rejecting everything repugnant 
 to some central assumption, that this school stands 
 convicted of rationalism. The Church, says 
 Newman, " has taught the existence of mysteries in 
 religion, for such emphatically must truths ever 
 be which are external to this world, and existing in 
 eternity : whereas, this narrow-minded, jejune, 
 officious and presumptuous human system teaches 
 nothing but a manifestation, i.e., a series of historical 
 works conveying a representation of the moral 
 character of God ; and it dishonours our holy faith 
 by the unmeaning reproach of its being metaphysical. 
 
••RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 
 
 abstract, and the like — a reproach unmeaning and 
 irreverent just as much as it would be on the 
 other hand to call historical facts earthly or carnal." 
 
 This brings us to consider in detail some of 
 these popular reproaches against the Athanasian 
 Creed which are here adopted and reproduced. 
 
 The writer does not inveigh so vehemently as is 
 usual against the " damnatory " clauses ; for he has 
 found, as we have noted, that they bear a rational 
 sense, since he who denies the lesson in social 
 charity taught by the perfect unison of the Three 
 Divine Persons " does his best to destroy the 
 highest possibilities of life within himself," and so 
 far may be said " without doubt to perish everlast- 
 ingly." Truly, this ethical platitude is expressed 
 " in an almost savage manner, utterly misleading 
 to ordinary minds ; " and if the whole may be 
 judged from a part, the suggestion of the Lambeth 
 Conference that this creed should be re-translated 
 was, at least, timely. 
 
 But if these clauses are taken in the natural 
 sense they bear to " ordinary " minds, they are, and 
 ought to be, absolutely intolerable to those who 
 identify faith with "insight," and who regard a 
 creed, not as the expression of an obedient resolve 
 blindly to hold fast to the Word of God, but as 
 the utterance of one's own subjective views of 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 
 
 Christianity so far as one finds them intelligible 
 and inspiring. If when I recite the Athanasian 
 Creed I am rehearsing my own private, self-formed, 
 religious opinions ; if I mean to say : This is the 
 view of the matter which commends itself to my 
 reason as coherent and perfectly intelligible, and 
 which I find full of practical lessons and ' inspiration 
 of life,' " and if I go on to add : "Whoever cannot 
 see it as I see it, and feel about it as I feel about it, 
 will most certainly go to Hell for ever," then I am 
 indeed guilty at once of the most portentous untruth- 
 fulness and savage intolerance. 
 
 It is, however, the insensible extinction of the 
 old orthodox conception of faith which makes these 
 clauses unbearable to so many non-Catholics. The 
 other creeds — the Nicene and the Apostles' — suppose 
 them, but do not insert them, and therefore, 
 although their contents are identical with those of 
 the Athanasian Creed, they are more easily toler- 
 ated. Many can still recite the Nicene Creed as a 
 catena of their private religious opinions, but no 
 liberal and charitable mind will care to anathema- 
 tize those whose opinions are different. For a man 
 can no more determine what he shall understand 
 and what he shall not understand, than he can 
 determine his complexion or stature. 
 
 According to the Catholic view, faith is under- 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 
 
 stood to be a voluntary act by which the soul, 
 conscious of the dimness and insufficiency of its 
 own vision in the all-important affairs of eternity, 
 resolves to cleave blindly to the word of God; just 
 as in the " theological " virtues of hope and charity, 
 it supplements its own defect and solitariness by 
 appropriating the strength of God and the friendship 
 of God. On this view it is necessary to say that 
 the soul which separates itself from God, by rejecting 
 the proffered aid of revelation, must "without 
 doubt perish everlastingly ; " seeing that God is the 
 soul's life — its light, its strength, its love, — the two 
 last, dependently on the first. " Without faith it is 
 impossible to please God ; " and " He that believeth 
 not shall be condemned." 
 
 If beyond the natural life of man's soul, there 
 is a supernatural, undreamt-of life, end, and happi- 
 ness, there must also be a supernatural light, over 
 and above the natural light of reason. And as he 
 who holds not to the natural light of reason cannot 
 possibly live the proper life of man, but becomes as 
 the brutes that perish, so he who holds not by faith 
 to the supernatural light of revelation, without 
 doubt will walk in darkness and miss the super- 
 natural life of grace and glory. 
 
 In the case of faith and hope alike a difficulty 
 beyond all human wit and power is met by blind 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." loj 
 
 reliance on God ; a difficulty in the one case specu- 
 lative, in the other practical. As by hope we believe 
 that God will help, but we know not whence or 
 how ; so in faith we believe that God's word, 
 however unintelligible and strange, will hereafter 
 prove true in some way we cannot now imagine. 
 
 A mystery is comparable to a riddle in so far as 
 in both cases we know that the words can be verified, 
 yet we know not how. But in the riddle our 
 obscurity is as to the precise idea intended by 
 ambiguous language; in the mystery, as to the 
 precise nature of the eternal and infinite reality 
 imperfectly represented by a finite human idea.. 
 Again, the riddle is designed to hide the intended 
 idea as carefully as verbal truth will permit ; whereas 
 the mystery is the result of an attempt to reveal as 
 fully as possible in human ideas realities that are 
 too big to fit into such narrow frames, except 
 piecemeal. Finally, whereas in both cases, the 
 solution gives rest and ease to the mind, in the case 
 of the riddle it does so by showing the seeming 
 wonderful fact to , have been non-existent and 
 delusive ; in the case of the mystery it leaves the 
 fact existing, but by supplementary knowledge 
 destroys its wonderfulness. In the one case, what 
 we thought true proves not true; in the other, it 
 proves true, but less than the truth. Certain current 
 
104 -RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 
 
 rationalizing explanations of ancient Christian 
 dogmas proceeding from the school of Sabatier, by 
 which the old words are retained, but a moral and 
 platitudinous sense is slipt under them, really treat 
 dogmas as riddles. We thought there was a mystery 
 and we find a truism. God wants to impress upon 
 us the importance of social unity, of oneness of 
 mind and will reigning in a multitude of persons, 
 and so He tells us that it is Divine, that it is found 
 virtually in God Himself, that in God there are 
 equivalently several persons and one nature. Thus 
 the Trinity is merely a riddle which means that 
 social unity is something very good and divine. 
 
 But let us be clear as to what a mystery means ; 
 and where the obscurity comes in. Our writer sends 
 us to Nature to learn reverence ; to Nature let us 
 go. There we find facts, such as the law of attrac- 
 tion, that are perfectly clear and admit of the most 
 precise statement and measurement, but the why 
 and how of such facts is lost in absolute and impene- 
 trable darkness. We do not consider it a necessary 
 part of reverence to be hazy about the facts because 
 the reasons are inscrutable. In revelation certain 
 human ideas are conveyed to us in human language; 
 which ideas very imperfectly represent eternal, 
 superhuman realities. These ideas therefore cannot 
 be treated like algebraic symbols whose value is 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 105 
 
 exactly determinable. Each is faulty in a way, but 
 
 where the fault precisely lies we are not capable of 
 
 seeing. That "there is one nature in God " would of 
 
 itself convey to us that there was but one person in 
 
 God. Hence we need to be told that there are 
 
 three Persons in God which, alone, would imply 
 
 that there were three natures. The two propositions 
 
 contain a.nd yet hide the truth, while their seeming 
 
 incompatibility warns us that we are viewing the 
 
 Eternal Reality through a cloud ; that manifestation 
 
 and mystery are here blended. 
 
 Or, again, we are told that there are souls which 
 
 shall be eternally lost, and also, that God is infinitely 
 
 more merciful than any creature whom He has made 
 
 and endowed with mercy ; infinitely juster than the 
 
 fairest-minded man He has ever created and inspired 
 
 with a sense of justice. Rationalism being unable 
 
 to blend the two statements harmoniously, rejects 
 
 one or the other; whereas Faith can well believe 
 
 that God will save His word in all things, and yet 
 
 all shall be well.^ Similarly, we have a seeming 
 
 1 " All these shall be damned to Hell without end, as Holy 
 Church teacheth me to believe ; and standing all this, methought 
 it was impossible that all manner of thing should be well, as our 
 Lord showed me in this time. And as to this I had no other 
 answer, in showing of our Lord but this : ' That which is impossible 
 to thee is not impossible to Me ; I shall save My word in all things, 
 and I shall make all things well.' And in this I was taught by the 
 grace of God that I should steadfastly hold me fast in the faith as 
 
106 "RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 
 
 discord in the existence of evil, the goodness of 
 God, and the omnipotence of God. Rationalism 
 connects what can be connected, and casts the rest; 
 faith holds severally the disconnected truths, 
 knowing that severed peaks may join at their 
 hidden bases. When we translate form and colour 
 into the language of music, or music into that of 
 form and colour, we may expect many a seeming 
 conflict of statement, and yet the truth is indistinctly 
 touched and seen through a glass, darkly. 
 
 But of what use is such indistinct knowledge ? 
 
 For those who believe that man's final bliss is 
 to see God face to face, it is not strange that to see 
 Him even dimly by faith should be regarded as a 
 privilege for an intelligent creature. There are 
 some things worth knowing even imperfectly, for 
 the sake of knowledge : perhaps God is one of 
 them ? But if we must have serviceable results in 
 the form of virtue, " does not the notion of a 
 mystery," asks Newman, " lead to awe and wonder ? 
 and are not these moral impressions?" Is it no 
 moral gain to be delivered from the pettiness and 
 
 / had before understood. And therewith that I should stand and firmly 
 believe that all manner of things shall be well as our Lord showed 
 me in the same time. P'or this is the great deed that our Lord God 
 shall do ; in which deed He shall save His word in all things, and 
 He shall make well all that is not well." (Revelations of Mother 
 Julian of Norwich, chap. 32.) 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 107 
 
 " intellectual provincialism " of the rationalist ; to 
 gain were it but the briefest glimpse of a world 
 wider than ours; of interests to which even the 
 interests of this very important planet of ours may 
 be secondary ; may be possibly subordinate ? 
 
 Now, seeing that these human ideas underlying 
 the original words of revelation, and hiding, no less 
 than revealing eternal and ineffable truths, are the 
 only image or reflection we as yet possess of the 
 supernatural world ; and that we are not in a 
 position to compare them with the original realities 
 so as to readjust them or substitute others more 
 aptly expressive ; seeing also that God has given us 
 these human ideas clothed in human language, and 
 that language is mutable and uncertain, it is plainly 
 a matter of sovereign importance that the original 
 sense underlying the words of revelation should be 
 secured in every possible way. It is in the fulfilment 
 of this duty of reverence to the precious deposit of 
 the Divine word that the Church has incurred the 
 charge of irreverence and rationalism at the hands 
 of hasty and ill-advised thinkers. It is no irrever- 
 ence to be as exact as possible in determining the 
 human ideas, the human sense, intended in the 
 original words of revelation. It would be irreverence 
 to attempt crudely to reconcile those ideas one with 
 another, to treat them as precise algebraic symbols 
 
io8 ••RATIONALISM IN RELIGION.' 
 
 and to work with them accordingly. It would be 
 irreverence to reject them because irreconcilable. 
 
 Now, to confine ourselves, for brevity's sake, to 
 the Trinity, the Athanasian Creed says not one word 
 beyond what is contained in our writer's confession 
 of Trinity of Persons and Unity of God. It simply 
 determines as exactly as possible what are the 
 precise human ideas intended by the human words 
 in which the doctrine was conveyed ; and this, 
 against those heretics who either failed to interpret 
 those words aright, or else, rationalizing upon the 
 true ideas, derived conclusions which were invalid 
 and unwarranted as proceeding from necessarily 
 ambiguous and inexact premises, whose terms 
 stand, not for mental abstractions, mathematical 
 or metaphysical, but for concrete eternal realities. 
 Were there, in this creed, any attempt to explain 
 away the difficulty of these seemingly conflicting 
 ideas, to show how three persons existed or must 
 exist in one nature, to make the mystery " intel- 
 ligible " and " inspiring; " to fit it harmoniously into 
 the philosophic system of the modern latitudinarian, 
 then indeed it would be an intolerable piece of 
 rationalism. But having asserted, " One God in 
 Trinity and Trinity in Unity; " the creed goes on to 
 reiterate that statement in about a dozen different 
 forms with the tiresome insistence of a legal 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 109 
 
 document anxious to guard against any merely 
 verbal ambiguity. There is no advance in idea until 
 we come to an assertion of the personal relations. 
 Father, Son, and Spirit, where again we have 
 nothing that is not a mere precision of language. 
 What the hazy, half-agnostic mind really shrinks 
 from is this very reiteration and repetition which 
 gives the impression of committing oneself deeper 
 and deeper to one knows not what, while all the 
 time one has not advanced a single step. By the use 
 of brackets the first sixteen or twenty verses might 
 be put into five lines ; while a more detailed 
 enumeration of the attributes of Deity might extend 
 the document indefinitely in mere bulk without 
 introducing any more dogma than is contained in 
 one verse. 
 
 One would have thought, however, that " anthro- 
 pomorphic " would be about the last charge to 
 bring against a deliberate and reiterated assertion of 
 the unlikeness of God to man ; of threeness in person 
 with oneness in nature ; of a Being uncreated, 
 eternal, incomprehensible, omnipotent ; of Father- 
 hood without priority, of Sonship without depend- 
 ence. But by anthropomorphism our writer seems 
 rather to mean that the compiler of the creed 
 professes to have seen God face to face and to have 
 attempted to describe his vision " in the same sort 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 
 
 of way as a picture or a bit of scenery." But this 
 charge of anthropomorphism really falls upon God, 
 who has translated Eternal Truths into imperfect 
 human ideas ; not upon the Church, whose defi- 
 nitions but safeguard those ideas from being lost 
 through the ambiguity and changeableness of human 
 language. Does the objector's own confession of 
 " Trinity of Persons and Unity of God " escape the 
 charge any more than the Creed of Athanasius, 
 which says not one word more ? Consistently, 
 his exceeding reverence for the mystery ought to 
 make him refrain altogether from saying what the 
 " sublime truths " which he believes really are. 
 
 Again, it is an eminently " popular " remark to 
 speak of this creed as embodied in " the terms of an 
 obsolete philosophy." We feel it was only a sense of 
 chronology that saved us from a diatribe on "the 
 metaphysical subtilties of the scholastics." As the 
 creed must be expressed in some language or other, 
 so also in the terms of some philosophy or other ; for 
 we cannot speak without implying some philosophy, 
 even as we must imply some grammar, though we 
 may never have heard of philosophy or grammar. 
 What philosophy then should we wish the Church 
 to use if not that in which those men to whom the 
 oracles were first delivered thought — the crude, 
 simple realism of the unsophisticated ? Would he 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 
 
 translate the Trinity into the ideas of Kant or Hume 
 or Hegel ? What is this philosophy, so congenial, 
 so perspicuous to the subtle-minded British public ? 
 Is it utilitarianism ? Is it rationalism ? 
 
 When, however, we repudiate " rationalism " in 
 religion, we do not mean that reasoning has no 
 legitimate play in regard to truths of faith and 
 morals, and may not in some rare cases start from 
 revealed premises to draw conclusions of theological 
 certainty. But it is precisely on account of the 
 dangers incident to such " rationalizing" that we 
 need a teaching Church. If the ideas in which 
 eternal realities have been expressed to us were 
 " proper " ideas, in no way analogous or defective, 
 or if we could know exactly where their limitation 
 began and ended, we then might deal with them as 
 with mere logical symbols and regard our conclusions 
 as demonstrated certainties. We then should not 
 need a Church to guide the evolution of doctrine 
 any more than we do to guide the advance of 
 mathematical science. God does not gratuitously 
 intervene with natural causes when they suffice. But 
 it is just because the language of Scripture and 
 traditional dogma is not scientific and abstract, but 
 natural and concrete ; and because the underlying 
 ideas are not adequate to what they image, but 
 defective and ill-fitting, that we need a providential 
 
•RATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 
 
 determination of points of development which reason 
 alone cannot determine. 
 
 There is a good deal to be got out of a metaphor 
 like Tu es Petrus, but it needs the sense of the 
 Church to determine how much or how little. If a 
 rock typifies firmness and strength, it also stands 
 for hardness and inelasticity ; it is a source of 
 danger as well as of safety. We cannot reason from 
 a metaphor till its precise point of similarity is 
 otherwise determined. Every finite idea as repre- 
 sentative of God, if not metaphorical, is too short- 
 fitting for mere reason to get safe results out of, and 
 such results are often felt to be at variance with the 
 sense of the Church, prior to any dogmatic decision. 
 
 Obviously the same caution is needed when logic 
 is applied to moral and ascetical principles, though 
 for a slightly different reason. For here the conclu- 
 sions, being practical and not speculative, have to be 
 applied to concrete instances of whose innumerable 
 conditions only a very few can be considered in the 
 abstract ; just as a physician can prescribe a priori 
 for one or other ailment of a patient known to him 
 only by hearsay, but when he comes to know the 
 other complications and the whole constitution and 
 circumstances of the said patient, he has to abandon 
 his reasoning and trust to a certain sagacity of 
 instinct or " illative sense," to which no doubt the 
 
"RATIONALISM IN RELIGION. 113 
 
 reasoning habit is both subservient and supple- 
 mentary, but for which it is no substitute. 
 
 Reasoning in the abstract, for conditions never 
 found separate and pure in the concrete, must, when 
 the merely hypothetical nature of these scientific 
 conclusions is overlooked, inevitably lead to laxity in 
 moral theology where the aim is rightly to minimize 
 in the interest of freedom ; and to rigorism in 
 asceticism, where the aim to " maximize " in the 
 interest of greater perfection. But under the super- 
 vision and guidance of the Church, and checked by 
 the Christian and healthy instincts of the general 
 and of the individual conscience, and held in abey- 
 ance to a certain intuitive sagacity that no abstract 
 inference should stand against, this mild and 
 cautious application of logic to moral matters acts 
 as a valuable corrective to personal idiosyncrasy and 
 fanaticism, and keeps imagination from usurping the 
 place of reason and faith. Similarly, a conclusion 
 drawn even with perfect logical accuracy from the 
 ideas under which God has presented eternal truths 
 to us, needs to be confirmed by the sense of the 
 Church in so far as those ideas are analogous and 
 not " proper." 
 
 But this is a very different kind of r^tionahsm 
 from that advocated, unconsciously it may be, by the 
 school for which our writer acts as spokesman. It 
 I 
 
114 •■liATIONALISM IN RELIGION." 
 
 is supplemental and not fundamental ; whereas to 
 assume that truth is of no value except for its 
 practical and moral consequences; that God is 
 indifferent to the perfection of our intelligence and 
 higher life, save so far as it bears upon the perfection 
 of our other faculties ; that revelation can have no 
 end biit to exhibit God to us as the pattern and 
 reward of morality ; that whatever has no bearing 
 on this obvious and unmysterious end, or no intel- 
 ligible bearing, may be rejected as no part of 
 revelation, — this is not merely rationalism, pure and 
 simple, which were compatible with a belief in the 
 value of truth for its own sake, but rationalism com- 
 plicated with an utilitarianism that savours of Gath 
 and Askelon, 
 
 Jan. 1899. 
 
VI. 
 SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 
 
 Professor Sabatier's short study on the Vitality 
 of Christian Dogmas opens up many questions of 
 interest which it would be impossible to discuss 
 within the narrow hmits at our disposal. We must 
 content ourselves, therefore, with a brief exposition 
 of his teaching, followed by a few strictures chiefly 
 by way of dissent. With Dean Freemantle's Preface 
 to the English translation we need not concern 
 ourselves, beyond observing that he finds himself 
 in fullest sympathy with M, Sabatier's theology, and 
 invokes three Anglican Bishops in support of the 
 view that faith is " not a submission to that which 
 is outside our apprehension," or as the Bishop of 
 Ballarat puts it: "The faith which yields a blind 
 assent to mysterious dogmas because propounded 
 by ecclesiastical authority, is not the faith of Scripture 
 at all ; it is, in fact, fanaticism, and there is an 
 unbehef which is preferable to it." What is most 
 noteworthy and admirable in M. Sabatier's study is 
 the consistency of his Protestantism and the clear- 
 
ti6 SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 
 
 ness with which he deduces it from the principles of 
 the Reformation — principles necessarily felt rather 
 than understood at the time, and needing the reflec- 
 tion and analysis of three centuries to sever them 
 from the Catholic soil that was dragged away with 
 their roots and to present them clean and pure 
 as they appear in the pages of this perfect little 
 exposition. 
 
 It would perhaps have been well had he given 
 us a definition of some of the principal terms in 
 use, especially of " dogma " and " religion " and 
 " Christianity." We fancy that the second has been 
 defined some hundreds of different ways within the 
 range of English literature, and with such variety 
 as to defy any sanguine attempt to find a common 
 element or substratum. But no doubt those pupils 
 whom M. Sabatier addresses primarily are familiar 
 with his terminology, nor is it difficult for nous 
 autres to gather it from his pages by a process of 
 comparison. 
 
 Dogmas are not dead, unchangeable things, but 
 living and changeable ; they not only can change, 
 but they must of necessity change ; by recognizing 
 and aiding this necessity, not by ignoring or opposing 
 it, will the theologian save dogmatic Christianity. 
 Such is the argument. The whole book is a defence 
 of dogmatic religion against "a kind of Christian 
 
SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 
 
 positivism which asks for a religion without dogmas, 
 and consequently without worship." 
 
 By a dogma M.Sabatier understands the form of 
 words in which some point of religious behef is 
 embodied, as distinct from the belief itself or the 
 meaning of those words. Thus^ he says : " We 
 have kept, and still repeat, the dogmas of early 
 times ; but we pour into them unconsciously a new 
 meaning. The terms do not change, but the ideas 
 and their interpretation are renewed ; " and he 
 instances the Trinity, the Divinity of Christ, inspira- 
 tion, miracles, which (he says) we understand 
 "differently from our fathers." Dogma, though it 
 safeguards religion, does not effectively produce 
 religion, but is produced by religion ; just as language 
 fixes and preserves thought, makes it communicable, 
 and is the condition of its development, and yet 
 does not produce thought, but rather is produced by 
 thought. You cannot have thought without language; 
 you cannot have religion without dogma. Experience 
 proves both statements alike. We can criticize 
 the language without destroying the thought ; we can 
 criticize dogma without hurting religion in any way. 
 
 What, then, is religion ? Not " a metaphysical 
 theory, a branch of erudition." " In life the awaken- 
 ing of feeling always precedes that of thought. An^ 
 ' P. 43- 
 
Ii8 SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 
 
 SO religion exists as emotion or sentiment, or vital 
 instinct, before it is transformed either into intel- 
 lectual notions or into rites." Religion, however, 
 is not exactly this " primary and inner emotion," 
 which is rather its soul or quickening principle ; but 
 the emotion, together with the ideas and rites into 
 which it translates itself. These latter are its mutable 
 and corruptible body ; always taking in new matter 
 and casting off old : while body and soul together 
 (that is, dogma and emotion) constitute religion. 
 Although feeling or emotion precedes the theory or 
 idea in which it endeavours to formulate its object ; 
 yet it is itself preceded and excited by some vague 
 kind of apprehension of that same object ; whether 
 the emotion be desire of an object not yet attained, 
 or satisfaction excited by the presence of an object. 
 Thus M. Sabatier speaks of " the objects of religious 
 consciousness," that is, we may suppose, the realities 
 whose vague and indistinct apprehension stirs the 
 religious emotion in our soul. When man in the 
 presence of the great spectacles of nature realizes 
 his dependence on some close mysterious power, 
 he trembles with fear and hope. "This tremor is 
 the primary religious emotion," and " implies a 
 certain relation between the subjectwhich is conscious 
 of it and the object which caused it." We may 
 presume, though it is not explicitly stated, that the 
 
SASATlER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 119 
 
 object of these satisfactions, hopes, longings, and 
 fears which constitute religious emotion, is what is 
 expressed commonly under the dogmatic conception 
 called " God." When a man begins to reflect on 
 his religious emotion and to formulate and analyze 
 the object which gave birth to it, this attempted 
 intellectual statement is a dogma. Thus, "when 
 once the man's thought is awalsened," and he tries 
 to explain and express to himself the vague object 
 of his " tremor," " he will necessarily translate this 
 relation into an intellectual statement," he "will 
 cry out, ' God is great,' marking, in so doing, the 
 infinite disproportion which exists between his own 
 being and the universal Being which causes him to 
 tremble." 
 
 Between religious emotion on the one hand, and 
 dogmatic formulas on the other, there are the intel- 
 lectual and imaginative forms in which the mind 
 attempts to present the object of religious emotion 
 to itself. These attempts are always and necessarily 
 inadequate, provisional, and variable with the vari- 
 ations of the believer's culture and mental develop- 
 ment : " God, while revealing Himself to our hearts, 
 yet remains infinitely superior to all the conceptions 
 of our mind ; " " our religious life is independent of 
 every image and theory." In other words, just as 
 the spirit of chivalry took form and embodied itself 
 
120 SABATtER ON THE VITALITY OP DOGMAS. 
 
 in the legends of Arthur and his knights; or as 
 human love, itself essentially the same, has expressed 
 itself in a thousand different dreams and romances 
 characterized by the temper and education of the 
 dreamer ; so the religious sentiment, substantially 
 alike in all men, ever weaves for itself some tale 
 which shall all too feebly express the nature of that 
 unknown visitant of the human heart whose knockings 
 stir us with such strange fears and hopes, joys and 
 regrets. 
 
 Still, we must not look on such a theory of God, 
 on such a history of God's dealings as we possess in 
 the Creed, as a pure romance or fairy-tale. It has 
 the value of an allegory falling immeasurably short 
 of the truth it would utter. Nay, it is in some sense 
 a divinely inspired allegory, or a revelation ; for 
 God, " in entering into contact with the soul, has 
 made it go through a certain religious experience 
 out of which, by means of reflection, dogmas have 
 issued." In the soul of Christ and the prophets and 
 apostles, God causes some strong and unusual 
 spiritual commotion which they of their own 
 ingenuity, consciously or unconsciously, seek to 
 utter and embody in allegories, but "since these 
 doctrines and formulas could be, and were in fact, 
 conceived by man's intellect, He left to man the care 
 of elaborating them." 
 
SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 121 
 
 Dogma being then but the language of faith or 
 religion (for faith is but atiother name for this 
 spiritual sentiment), it lives, develops, and dies just 
 as language does. To determine the meaning of a 
 word fully, we must not consult the dictionary, but 
 usage ; we must observe it in life and action, not as 
 fixed or petrified by definition. 
 
 Like language, dogma is modified by desuetude, 
 by intussusception, by neology. By desuetude, according 
 as certain images and theories cease to explain or 
 symbolize the object of religious sentiment, and 
 so the terms and propositions answering to them 
 drop out of use. Thus we [Protestants] have ceased 
 to believe in personal demons and in possession ; 
 and therefore all the terminology connected with 
 that (at one time serviceable) mode of conceiving 
 things has vanished. We no more believe our 
 spiritual adversary to be a personal being, a fallen 
 angel, than we believe him to be a roaring lion. 
 The former belief is now accepted as a picture, as 
 the latter always was. By intussusception, according 
 as the meaning of a term is gradually altered till 
 perhaps not an element of its original significance 
 remains ; e.g., the word " clerk " now means a writer : 
 it first meant one chosen by lot. So in dogma, 
 " Christ is God " once meant that all things were 
 created by the son of a Nazarene virgin ; now Dean 
 
122 SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OP DOGMAS. 
 
 Freemantle uses the words " as implying our Lord's 
 supremacy, as one with a God who is essentially a 
 God of righteousness and of love, over our con- 
 sciences, and over the whole range of the moral 
 world ; " in other words, in the sense that as right- 
 eousness is supreme over our conscience, so the great 
 pattern of righteousness, Christ, exercises a certain 
 supremacy over our conscience, and may so far be 
 called God. Finally, dogma is modified by a sort 
 of neology, as when new theories and images are 
 conjured up and new terms fabricated, such as 
 "justification by faith," or "universal priesthood." 
 The vitality of a dogmatic creed is therefore the 
 vitality of a language, some words dying, others 
 being born, others slowly changing their sense till 
 change ends in death. 
 
 To discard dogma in the interests of religion 
 would be like discarding language in the interests of 
 thought. The true theologian will aid and guide the 
 natural process of evolution, and will not deny 
 or oppose it. His task lies in "applying criticism 
 to the old dogmas; in disengaging their vital 
 principle; in preparing for this principle a new 
 expression." He has " to set free their living prin- 
 ciple from the decaying form in which it is enclosed, 
 and to prepare for it new forms in harmony with 
 modern culture:" not "to formulate new dogmas," 
 
SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 123 
 
 but "to render easy and free from danger the 
 passage, which is always critical, between old and 
 new ideas ; " in fact, he has especially to co-operate 
 with the process of "intussusception," to keep to 
 " the form of sound words," while quietly slipping 
 new meanings under them, and explaining them 
 away as long as they will possibly admit of it, and 
 when this gets too difficult he may noiselessly intro- 
 duce new terminology and suffer the old to retire 
 into its well-earned rest. He will recognize that 
 when the Reformers cast aside scholasticism, which 
 the Roman Church had worked into the essential 
 tissue of her form of Christianity, they in principle 
 rejected the authoritative claims of every other 
 human clothing of the religious sentiment of Christ ; 
 not merely what it received from Greek philosophy 
 and from Roman jurisprudence in the early Church, 
 but even that Hebraic garb in which Christ pre- 
 sented it to us, Himself a Hebrew, heir to the 
 language, tradition, and religion of that race, with 
 " its notion of justice, its metaphysical notion of God, 
 its Messianic ideas, its apocalyptical hopes." All 
 this fecula of Hebraism, of Greco-Romanism, of 
 Scholasticism, must be sundered from the vital germ, 
 from the religious emotions and inward experiences 
 of Christ of which they are but the contingent 
 language and expression. 
 
124 SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 
 
 Such is M. Sabatier's position — clear, precise, 
 altogether understandable. It is Protestantism 
 worked out ruthlessly to its logical conclusion, and 
 severed from all admixture of alloy ; and so far it 
 is worthy of respect, and worthy of careful study by 
 those who often fail in their controversy with 
 Protestants from sheer inability to conceive a 
 position so unlike their own. As soon as faith is 
 asserted to be an internal sentiment, and not to be 
 an assent to Divine mysteries revealed, in some way, 
 from without ; as soon as revelation is declared to be 
 merely a stirring up of feeling, and not an instruc- 
 tion of the mind, this is the conclusion we must 
 come to — Christianity is a certain sensation or 
 emotion, which tends to awake conceptions, theories, 
 and images in the mind which have no absolute 
 objective value whatever. 
 
 Against all this. Catholic Christianity regards 
 revelation as a supernatural instruction of the mind, 
 in which the forms and images which constitute 
 what might be called the "language" of the mind in 
 question, are used by God (either directly or through 
 some created agency) to express truths not known 
 before, or not known in the same way. It is in all 
 respects similar to the informing of one mind by 
 another. However the speaker may understand the 
 matter, whatever be his own language (mental or 
 
SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 125 
 
 oral), he must use the language of the hearer and 
 make the best of it as a vehicle for his information. 
 
 Faith, as Catholics conceive it, is not religious 
 emotion nor a sentiment of spiritual security and 
 comfort, but a voluntary assent of the mind to the 
 information conveyed to it by revelation from 
 another. Dogma, moreover, is the spoken or 
 written equivalent of that mental language in which 
 Christ and His Church (divinely assisted) have 
 embodied the truths of revelation. Finally, religion 
 is not a divinely originated blind emotion clothing 
 itself spontaneously in theories and images of 
 merely human creation, but inversely it is the body 
 of divinely taught truths slowly, but never adequately, 
 penetrating and shaping the mind which holds to it, 
 fructifying in the will, and clothing itself with good 
 desires and good actions. 
 
 li. is in the clearness of its opposition to Catholic 
 conceptions that M. Sabatier's sketch of the Protes- 
 tant standpoint is so helpful and satisfactory. 
 
 Had man been left alone, without the aid of 
 supernatural revelation, things would have been very 
 much as M. Sabatier describes them. Conscience, 
 with its sense of right and wrong, and the attendant 
 emotions of peace and remorse, hope and fear, 
 would necessarily have involved some vague appre- 
 hension of the object of the religious sentiment, 
 
126 SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 
 
 namely, of the Living Will that seems to press on 
 ours as if it would dominate it ; and the awakening 
 mind would have essayed to present that object to 
 itself, to theorize about it, and to speak of it under 
 symbols, parables, and metaphors which, in the 
 childhood of races, when fact and fancy are so easily 
 interchanged, would soon have hardened into history 
 and dogma. At all times reason and imagination 
 would have worked to produce some theory or story 
 whereby to satisfy and explain the religious emotion ; 
 but in every stage of culture and mental progress, 
 theory would have mingled false with true, and 
 symbolism would have quickly degenerated into 
 mythology. Nor is this mere hypothesis ; since the 
 history of natural religions and their evolution 
 abundantly confirms it. It was to obviate this 
 double infirmity of our mind that God gave iis an 
 external revelation, and was made Man. Instead of 
 leaving our reason slowly and uncertainly to elabor- 
 ate its own theory of the Divinity, He supplied the 
 need from without. He taught us, all at once, as far 
 as our language would then allow, all and more than 
 reason could have ever known. Instead of leaving 
 us to satisfy our imagination by a self-devised 
 symbolism of Divine mysteries, and by parables ever 
 prone to become myths, He devised for us the 
 economy of the Incarnation, and in the life of the 
 
SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 127 
 
 God-Man and of His precursors and followers, 
 uttered Eternal Truth and Love as far as it could be 
 uttered in the enacted language of human life ; thus 
 supplying by the sacred history of the Old and New 
 Dispensation the need which mythology supplied in 
 the man-begotten religions of the pagan world. 
 
 That which is revealed to us in these doctrines 
 and facts may perhaps be called the " object of the 
 religious sentiment," sc, that Mind and Will whose 
 presence is indistinctly felt in every movement of 
 conscience. But supernatural revelation does not 
 merely explain and satisfy our natural spiritual aspi- 
 rations, but goes far beyond them and leaves them 
 ever lagging behind. All our dogmas and mysteries 
 are directly or indirectly manifestations of God's 
 nature and will ; but in substance, as in origin, they 
 are widely different from the self-formed conceptions 
 and symbols of the unassisted mind. 
 
 So far as the Christian revelation is embedded in 
 facts, in the language of Divine deeds, in the sacred 
 history of the life of Christ and His Church, there is 
 no room for modification or re-utterance. That is 
 God's language ; and, like the language of creation, 
 it is the same for all men in all ages, however they 
 interpret or misinterpret it. Of course this very 
 history is known mostly, not by experiment, but by 
 record ; and the record itself, even when inspired, is 
 
128 SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 
 
 in human language, which needs interpretation 
 before we are put en rapport with facts. It is on the 
 authority of sacred records that we believe that 
 Christ "ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the 
 right hand of God the Father," But we interpret 
 the first part of the statement as recording a literal 
 fact ; and the second as a metaphorical expression 
 of supernatural truth : ^ the first, as a really enacted 
 symbolism of Christ's exaltation; the second, as a 
 merely verbal symbolism of the same. M. Sabatier 
 thinks that because in both cases the truth symbolized 
 is the important point, it is quite unnecessary to 
 believe that in the former case the symbolism was 
 real and objective ; and similarly he would treat the 
 record of the miraculous Birth of Christ and of His 
 Resurrection. We, however, believe not merely in 
 the truths signified by sacred history, but in the cor- 
 respondence between record and fact; in real as 
 well as verbal symbolism. 
 
 But when we come to what is more strictly 
 dogma or doctrine, to the revelation of what are 
 called mysteries because they defy adequate ex- 
 pression in any form of human thought and language, 
 
 ' " By the words, ' Sitteth at the right hand of God the Father 
 Almighty,' I do not mean that God the Father has hands, for He is 
 a Spirit ; but I mean that Christ as God Is equal to the Father, 
 and as Man is in the highest place in Heaven." {Penny Catechism, 
 q. 70.) 
 
SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 129 
 
 it is important to observe the close parallel there is 
 between philosophy and language. As it is natural 
 to all men to speak, and as there are certain general 
 laws common to all languages, especially in their 
 earlier stages; so all men incline to put their 
 thoughts in order, to group their conceptions into 
 categories, to unify and simplify their knowledge ; 
 and the broad lines of procedure are always much 
 the same, especially in elementary stages of philo- 
 sophy. As we can say nothing without language, 
 so neither can we think the simplest thought without 
 implying some philosophy, some particular variety 
 of mind-language by which the primitive and 
 necessary laws of thinking are supplemented and 
 determined by our own industry. So far as there is 
 a contingent and changeable element superadded to 
 what is fixed by nature, there may be many philoso- 
 phies, as there are many languages, all more or less 
 apt to express the same facts and truths in their 
 own way. There are, no doubt, many possible 
 unifications and groupings of ideas of which one is 
 on the whole as good as another ; and even were we 
 to deny this, who would dare say of any known 
 philosophy that it was absolute and final ? De facto 
 this variety exists, nor does it seem to be either 
 a pre-requisite or a result of revelation to provide the 
 race with what perhaps is not possible or necessary 
 J 
 
130 SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 
 
 in this respect, namely, an absolute and perfect 
 philosophy. 
 
 But according to M. Sabatier, the Catholic reli- 
 gion has committed herself irretrievably to scholas- 
 ticism, to Alexandrine platonism, to the pandects of 
 Justinian, and even to the theosophic conceptions 
 of the Hebraic mind and language in which Christ 
 clothed His religious sentiments. She has taken 
 fundamental ideas and principles from these philo- 
 sophies, and has exalted them into dogmas, failing 
 to distinguish the emotional substance of religion 
 from its intellectual involucre, which is as the husk 
 to the kernel. 
 
 That the Church has expressed her dogmas in 
 the tetms of Plato or Aristotle, in no way implies 
 that she regards theirs as the only philosophies or 
 as the best ; no more than her use of the Latin 
 tongue means that she holds it to be the only or the 
 best language. When the Divine Spirit instructs 
 the mind of prophet or apostle by revelation, It 
 does not begin by teaching him a new language or 
 a new philosophy, but taking what It finds to hand. 
 It gives utterance thereby to the truth or mystery 
 as adequately as that medium of expression will 
 permit. So it was with the deposit of faith 
 bequeathed to us by the Apostles ; the language, 
 philosophy, science, and imagery was their own, but 
 
SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 131 
 
 the truth and its translation into that language and 
 philosophy was from God. So, with the subsequent 
 expression of the Church's mind, in days when all 
 men spoke and thought with Aristotle, she refuted 
 heresy in the same language in which it was 
 formulated. If, using the philosophy of the schools, 
 heterodoxy denied that the soul was the substantial 
 form of the human body, the Church, answering in 
 the same language, asserted that it was. And 
 indeed if we would understand her mind, or the 
 mind of the apostles and prophets, even of Christ 
 Himself, we must know how to speak and to think 
 with them. We must study the language they spoke 
 and the philosophy it involved. 
 
 Nor is this to ask an impossibility, as Dean 
 Freemantle supposes when he approvingly echoes 
 M. Sabatier's axiomatic epigram : " We can no 
 more think in Greek than we can speak Greek." 
 No more indeed, but just as much. We can speak 
 Greek and we can think in Greek. Men still study 
 the philosophy of Greece, nor do we question their 
 ability to understand it. The Church treasures the 
 original mind-forms and language in which Divine 
 truth has been committed to her, as it were the 
 perishable earthen vessel in which a priceless gift is 
 contained. She does not deny that, were the 
 revelation given to-day, the language and form 
 
132 SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 
 
 might be different, nor that, clothed in Chinese 
 language and conceptions, the very same Divine 
 truths would seem strangely unlike themselves ; but 
 she holds to that form which alone has been divinely 
 guaranteed, the " form of sound words " which she 
 pores over and ponders from century to century. 
 
 And when she embodies the results of her 
 ponderings in the forms and phrases of the School, 
 she wisely adopts a philosophy little removed from 
 the first spontaneous efforts of the mind towards 
 unity, and which, like the dead Latin tongue, has 
 a certain catholicity, eternity, and immutability that 
 make it a suitable medium of utterance for an 
 international religion. And as she requires her 
 ecclesiastics to understand the language of her 
 liturgy, so she demands that they shall be proficient 
 in the philosophy of her definitions. 
 
 In all this she in no way asserts that her adopted 
 language is the best or only language. When she 
 approves the Vulgate Bible, she does not deny that 
 other translations may be better, but she does 
 not guarantee them as free from error. When she 
 utters her dogmas in the phrases of the School, she 
 does not forbid us to translate them into other 
 forms, but she will not guarantee the translation. 
 Those who venture upon such translations, do so at 
 their own peril. 
 
SAB ATI ER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 133 
 
 Seeing, therefore, that the Church looks on the 
 Christian revelation as a body of truths delivered 
 once and for all to the Apostles, and that she care- 
 fully treasures the ail-but dead philosophy and 
 language in which it was clothed, and keeps them 
 living for no other end, it is plain that we can 
 acknowledge no such " vitality of dogma " as 
 M. Sabatier insists on. What we have received 
 as of faith that we hold to for ever, and as far 
 as possible in the same form. Yet, unlike those 
 Christians who appeal from the living Church to the 
 dead, or who fix some arbitrary date at which all 
 dogmatic evolution was arrested, we believe that, in 
 the mind of the Church collectively, the conception 
 of the whole body of revealed truth grows in fulness 
 and distinctness as she ponders it in her heart ; that 
 the relations of part with part stand out more 
 clearly ; ihat new consequences and applications are 
 observed; while the denials of heretics ever call for 
 modifications of expression by which an increasing 
 exactitude is secured. This is exactly the kind of 
 vitality of dogma which Vincent of Lerins contends 
 for in his Commonitorium when he distinguishes 
 profectus fidei from permutatio, and illustrates by the 
 growth of a boy to manhood ;^ but it is absolutely 
 different from the vitality of which M. Sabatier 
 ' C. xxiii. al. xxviii. 
 
134 SABATlEk O.V THE VlTALltV OF DOGMAS. 
 
 speaks. Indeed, how could it be otherwise, if, 
 according to the latter, Christian dogma is but the 
 hypothetical theory and imagery in which the 
 religious emotion of Christ clothed itself; while, 
 according to the former, it is the divinely-chosen 
 expression of those truths and eternal realities on 
 which the eye of Christ rested. In the one supposi- 
 tion He came solely to move the feelings, careless of 
 how the intellect might explain the emotion to itself; 
 in the other. He came to enlighten the intellect by 
 truth, no less than to sanctify the will by charity. 
 Protestantism holds fast ta its maxim that God does 
 not care about the perfection of our highest faculty ; 
 He does not care what we think or believe, so long 
 as we mean well. To us, Christ is also the Truth 
 and the Light. He who was with God from the 
 beginning, who was in the bosom of the Father, 
 declared the Father to man ; He declared Him in 
 the forms of human thought, in the words of human 
 language, but with a Divine skill of expression which 
 He has bequeathed to His Church to the end of 
 time. 
 
 To those who might tender to him the reproach, 
 " They have taken away my Lord and I know not 
 where they have laid Him," M. Sabatier replies with 
 a confident Resurrexit, " He is not here, He is risen ; 
 why seek the living among the dead ? " He is not to 
 
SABATIER ON THE VITALITY OF DOGMAS. 135 
 
 be found wrapped in the cerements and grave-clothes 
 of dogmatic statement, not in any image or theory 
 whatever. These are but mutable trappings, which 
 the conception of Christ outgrows and flings aside 
 from time to time, to clothe itself in freer and ampler 
 garments. Stripped even of the last shred of historic 
 or dogmatic belief, Christianity survives intact in its 
 essence, which consists in that supreme access of 
 religious sentiment which was the originating 
 impulse of all that is best in the religion of Christ. 
 For our own part, if this be all, we should feel 
 constrained to be more frank with the mourner and 
 to say, " His disciples have come and stolen Him 
 away" — well-intentioned, no doubt, in their zeal 
 for His reputation ; but surely mistaken in their 
 judgment and weak in their faith. 
 
 June, 189S 
 
VII. 
 
 AUTHORITY AND EVOLUTION, 
 THE LIFE OF CATHOLIC DOGMA. 
 
 This work of P. de la Barre's ^ is valuable as crystal- 
 lizing and bringing into system most of the tentative 
 ideas on the subject of evolution in dogma which 
 have been put forward of late by Catholic theologians 
 in the wake of Newman. The author rightly 
 protests against the common innuendo of adverse 
 critics, that this doctrine of development has sprung 
 suddenly into existence to meet the awkward revela- 
 tions of history touching the contrast between the 
 dogmatic teaching of early and modern Catholicism. 
 Vincent of Lerins is well quoted amongst others, 
 as the most explicit exponent in ancient times 
 of the doctrine of development ; for he too is 
 perhaps more generally notorious for his vehement 
 assertion of the conservative principle — seemingly 
 contrary, but really complementary — quod semper, 
 
 • La Vie du Dogme, Authorite — Evolution. Par le R. P. de la 
 Barre, S.T. Paris; Lethielleux, 1898. 
 
AUTHORITY AND EVOLUTION. 137 
 
 quod ubique, quod ah omnibus. It is only the popu- 
 larity of evolutionism in our day that makes it more 
 important to insist upon this ancient aspect of 
 theology, and ensures it a better chance of being 
 understood. At other times the principle of immo- 
 bility and conservation needed emphasis against 
 the unrestrained 'progressivism ' of heresy refusing 
 the guidance of those "directive ideas" which make 
 a development legitimate, and which secure identity 
 amid diversity, unity of plan together with expansion 
 of parts. But now that the heterodox historians 
 of dogma are casting the "quod semper" principle 
 in her teeth, the Church turns the pages of the 
 Commonitortum, and lays an emphatic finger on 
 c. xiii. " Let the religion of souls follow the 
 method of bodies, which, though in the course of 
 years they evolve and unfold their several parts, yet 
 withal abide what they were; " and she claims that, 
 while in substance her doctrine remains unchanged, 
 yet in the lapse of centuries its parts and members 
 have been brought out into clearer recognition, and 
 have been more accurately defined. 
 
 P. de la Barre's aim is to show how these 
 principles of authority and evolution are mutually 
 complementary in the determination of Catholic 
 dogma. 
 
 Speaking widely, the Protestant conception of 
 
ij8 AUTHORITY AND EVOLUTION, 
 
 religion is individualist ; while the Catholic, which 
 is social and collective, finds itself in sympathy 
 rather with Comte than with Rosseau. Comte, 
 J. de Maistre, de Bonald, and Lamennais are here 
 adduced as in one way or another upholding the 
 Catholic notion of a " society entrusted with the 
 transmission of a doctrine, with the safe-guarding 
 and promulgation of a certain deposit." They all 
 recognize that the power, therefore the duty, of 
 independent thought is far rarer than individualist 
 philosophy imagines, and that the vast majority of 
 men do, and ought to, rule their minds by a certain 
 floating body of public doctrine in which they have 
 a natural faith. This body of doctrine is slowly 
 formed, shaped, modified, corrected, and increased 
 by the accumulated labours of the few independent 
 thinkers; and thus there is provided for the 
 multitude a norm of belief which, if fallible, is 
 practically sufficient for each age and country. 
 The idea that each man can and ought to think 
 independently on all subjects, has no basis in fact, 
 and leads in practice to intellectual and every other 
 kind of anarchy. Man is a social being in respect 
 to the formation of his mind, no less than in 
 regard to his general development. His mind as 
 well as his body is sterilized by solitude. 
 
 Holding society to be altogether natural, and 
 
THE LIFE Of CATHOLIC DOGMA. 139 
 
 by no means artificial, Comte rightly seeks in its 
 growth for the two principles which are involved 
 in every kind of vitality — a principle of permanence 
 and sameness, and a principle of movement and 
 diversity. It is in authority that this principle 
 of stability is found, whereby the movements of the 
 organism are controlled into agreement with the 
 fundamental idea or plan which its growth develops ; 
 and thug, sameness of end and design prevails, 
 together with extension and diversity of parts. 
 
 So far as we confine our attention to society 
 considered as a school for the mind, this governing 
 authority, this body of publicly approved belief, 
 may find voice in many ways. With de Maistre, 
 it is the Pope of Rome who gathers up and gives 
 utterance to the collective sentiment of the faithful 
 in matters of religious doctrine. Comte seemed 
 inclined later in life to arrogate to himself a 
 quasi-papal function in regard to positivism. 
 De Bonald is so convinced of the incompetence 
 of individual reason that he does not allow that 
 even its accumulated observations and reflections 
 could ever slowly create a public deposit of religious 
 doctrine, but attributes this latter to primitive 
 teaching handed down from father to son, and 
 somewhat damaged in the process. Lamennais, 
 however, credits humanity, taken collectively, with 
 
U6 AUTHORITY AND EVOLUTIOM, 
 
 a certain infallibility in guarding the deposit of 
 primitive religion. What all religions agree in, he 
 holds to be true. Christianity supplements and 
 develops this original and universal creed, but in 
 no way sets it aside. It, like every other religion, 
 springs from the common trunk; and is but the 
 most fully developed branch of that tree. 
 
 Integrating these scattered truths, these troken 
 lights, which are emphasized, if at times carica- 
 tured, in recent philosophies, P. de la Barre finds 
 the transmission of moral, religious, and philo- 
 sophical ideas determined, first by authority, or the 
 influen-ce of the social body, however vested ; and 
 then, by the inherent expansiveness of the idea 
 itself. 
 
 The members of society being locally and 
 externally separate, some authority is needed to 
 unite them and to bring their minds into concord. 
 On this need Comte and de Maistre insist. De ■ 
 Bonald supplements their theory by insisting on 
 the need of tradition, whereby the collective mind 
 of the past is brought to bear upon that of the 
 present. Obviously enough, both these require- 
 ments are met by the Papacy, which gives voice to the 
 collective mind of the present Church built upon the 
 past, and so brings the social influence of the whole 
 Christian body, from the beginning, to bear upon 
 
THE LIFE OF CATHOLIC DOGMA. 141 
 
 the mind of the individual and to shape its rehgious 
 beliefs. 
 
 But the Church being a supernatural religious 
 society, an element enters in, of which philosophy 
 takes no account. It has acquired its deposit of 
 divine truth by revelation, not by human investiga- 
 tion and reflection ; it preserves that deposit and 
 interprets it, through human means indeed, but 
 supplemented by divine assistance ensuring ultimate 
 infallibility. Even apart from such intervention, 
 the security of guidance offered by such an ancient, 
 world-wide, close-knit organism would be consider- 
 able — though it may be fairly held that it is in the 
 very creation and continuance of this religious 
 republic that the hand of God is most felt and the 
 promise of assistance fulfilled. Comte had the idea 
 — or rather borrowed it — but Christ alone effected it. 
 
 To the Protestant or rationalist — who denies the 
 Church's divine authority, who regards it with 
 horror as a force extrinsic to the faithful, crushing 
 their minds, and not simply as their own collective 
 mind uttered for them — a dogma is but a human 
 product. To the orthodox or Bible Protestant, 
 Scripture alone is God's word, while the creeds that 
 are drawn from it are man's devices— useful it may 
 be, but not infallible. To the rationalist Protestant, 
 even Scripture is but a provisional attempt to give 
 
142 AUTHORITY AND EVOLUTION, 
 
 symbolic utterance to the felt but unknown object 
 of our religious instinct. No utterance of divine 
 truth, in or out of the Bible, is permanent or final. 
 Each age needs quietly to modify the symbolism of 
 the preceding, to the better expression of its own 
 religious emotions and aspirations. But to the 
 Catholic, the language and symbolism in which 
 Christ clothed His revelation was divinely chosen 
 and approved, not as equating our mind to what 
 necessarily transcends its exact apprehension and 
 expression, but as conveying as much of the truths 
 of eternity as we are capable of receiving in our 
 present embryonic state of intellectual development. 
 Every letter of that deposit is therefore treasured. 
 But since the value of words changes and the 
 symbolism of one nation differs from that of 
 another, it is needful to know precisely what were 
 the mental ideas conveyed by the words of revela- 
 tion to its first hearers. However much those 
 mental ideas fall short of the ineffable realities 
 they represent ; yet the faltering words in which 
 they are conveyed to us are still more defective, ill- 
 fitting, ambiguous. The Church's labour is not 
 only to preserve these words, but to explain them, 
 to keep their original sense, to save them from being 
 twisted and perverted. 
 
 Most of her dogma is directed to this task of 
 
THE LIFE OF CATHOLIC DOGMA. 143 
 
 fencing round revealed truths from the innumerable 
 misunderstandings to which they are exposed. The 
 whole of the Athanasian Creed is occupied with 
 safeguarding the single idea conveyed in the formula 
 of Baptism. Her doctrine of transubstantiation 
 explains the precise sense of: "This is My body." 
 Heretics, by their negations, have built up a large 
 part of our dogma, which, when they are forgotten, 
 may be forgotten too — that part namely which 
 Cionsists of verbal rather than real definitions, which 
 reasserts ancient conceptions to the exclusion of 
 false developments and interpretations, rather than 
 asserts any new aspect or extension of a revealed 
 truth ; which consists of conservative rather than 
 of progressive utterances. 
 
 Thus the Catholic regards the Church's final 
 expression of truth, which we call dogma, as being 
 of divine authority — differing from the Scriptural 
 expression only in this, that in revelation the 
 language, though human, is divinely chosen and 
 inspired ; in dogma it is chosen by human labour 
 and only guaranteed from error through the inter- 
 vention of Providence acting, not miraculously, but 
 according to established laws. 
 
 The first part of the present work vindicates for 
 the Church this divine doctrinal authority. It insists 
 on the conception of the Church as a living social 
 
M4 AUTHORITY AND EVOLUTION, 
 
 organism, in union with which the individual is put 
 en rapport with the animating Spirit, and made 
 partaker of the common mind of Christianity, past 
 and present. Then, having settled the question of 
 the Church's right to teach and to preserve the 
 original deposit, the author goes on to the more 
 difficult point touching the nature of this conservative 
 function and how it is reconcilable with evolution in 
 dogma. 
 
 M. Auguste Sabatier, pointing to the fragments 
 of various philosophies and of other older religious 
 systems, which the Church seems to have incor- 
 porated into her dogmatic teaching ; and also to the 
 changes which the dogmas themselves seem to have 
 undergone in course of time, would have us conclude 
 that her doctrinal system has been not merely 
 modified, but wholly created by evolution; that 
 there is no abiding germ or deposit which is the 
 subject of development ; no fixed or natural order 
 of progress in our expression of divine truth, but only 
 an aimless succession of variations, such as that by 
 which dialects (unfixed by literature) pass into one 
 another through their inherent instability and not in 
 obedience to any purpose-directed law. One may 
 be better or worse than another, according to the 
 intellectual condition of the people; but not 
 in virtue of any essential plan of stricture which 
 
THE LIFE OF CATHOLIC DOGMA. 145 
 
 demands and controls development. He implies 
 that no idea or concept of the divinity can be more 
 than an almost arbitrary symbol ; that as we picture 
 the magnet's influence as an ' attraction,' a voluntary 
 reaching out, grasping and drawing in of an invisible 
 arm ; so do we picture the object of our religious 
 and moral emotions as a person like ourselves in all 
 things, but infinitely magnified. In each case our 
 concept is said to be only a convenient summary 
 of experienced phenomena, but with no further 
 objective value. By developing our idea of a person, 
 we should get no nearer to the nature of this object 
 called God, than by studying the form of the letters 
 of which the word * person ' is composed. For in 
 this a symbol differs from an analogue or metaphor. 
 The latter results from a comparison between the 
 object and something else that in part resembles it ; 
 within limits, we may increase our knowledge of the 
 original by studying its imperfect representation. 
 But a symbol, as we here use the term, is simply 
 a fanciful or poetical cause for a known unaccount- 
 able effect. It does pretend to resemble the cause. 
 Given certain devout feelings, they might have 
 a thousand hypothetical explanations ; and of these, 
 a personal God is one. The Ptolemaic system of 
 radius-vectors, the electric fluid or current, the 
 corpuscular, and even the undulatory theory of light, 
 
 K 
 
146 AUTHORITY AND EVOLUTION, 
 
 are all symbolic so far as they stand for, but in no 
 way profess to resemble the unknown causes of the 
 phenomena whose sequence and nature they sum- 
 marize. 
 
 But the ordinary notions of theistic religion are 
 not, as Sabatier implies, merely symbolic ; they are, 
 albeit inadequate and ill-fitting, true representative 
 analogies. It is not that things are as though there 
 were a First Cause, personal, intelligent, benevolent ; 
 but there is a Reality which, addressing itself to our 
 finite mind through the broken language of creation, 
 necessarily begets in us the notions answering to 
 these terms. They are no more arbitrary or of our 
 own poetic making than the impressions we receive 
 through our sane senses, which are determined from 
 without as well as from within, and cannot be altered 
 at will. In a word, they are natural analogies, and 
 not mere symbols, or explanatory figures. 
 
 And the same must be said of those notions under 
 which supernatural truths have been revealed to us. 
 They are not as symbols which can be altered and 
 substituted at will, but are true analogies whose 
 representative value is real, though not exactly 
 definable. Likeness and unlikeness are mixed therein 
 in varying proportions, nor is it possible accurately 
 to define their limits ; yet this does not deprive them 
 of true representative value or reduce them to mere 
 
THE LIFE OF CATHOLIC DOGMA. 147 
 
 arbitrary symbols. Thus we apprehend eternal 
 truths, not in their separate distinctness, but as it 
 -were in solution, in as far as they can be fused into 
 finite and human ideas, forms of thought and 
 expression. 
 
 This utterance which Christ has given them in 
 the conceptions and language of His time and race 
 constitutes the original and divine involucre of the 
 ■deposit of Catholic faith, the stable element which 
 gives unity and coherence to the progress of theology. 
 It is the function of authority to hold fast this form 
 of sound words, to guard its original meaning against 
 perversions arising from the imperfection of language, 
 to supervise and control the evolution and develop- 
 ment of its content. But this function supposes 
 a process to be controlled — not merely an instability, 
 an aimless flux, a forgetfulness in the human mind, 
 but a movement of steady advance. Usually in these 
 ■days the " idea " is personified and credited with an 
 inherent expansiveness ; nor is this point of view 
 void of advantages ; but in truth it is rather the 
 human mind which is the subject of growth. As 
 ■our mental eye opens wider and wider, we see more 
 and more. Plainly it is thus with regard to physical 
 science. Nature is just what she was a thousand 
 years ago. But by associated work, by men heaping 
 their experiences and reflections together, the col- 
 
148 AUTHORITY AND EVOLUTION, 
 
 lective scientific mind has multiplied its percipience 
 indefinitely. We do not deny all casuality to the 
 object, as though Nature herself were not effectively 
 co-operant in this advance. Though the sun could 
 not create the eye out of nothing — could not develop 
 sight in a stone ; yet where there is latent power of 
 vision, light will force its way in, — will wake and 
 expand it. So, too, the order and uniformity of 
 sequence and co-existence which prevails in Nature 
 must beat upon the human mind until it elicits from 
 it all the response it is capable of. In like manner, 
 the Divine truth that is embodied in the deposit 
 of Christian revelation, gradually shapes the Church's 
 collective mind into a more perfect conformity with 
 itself, and exercises the office of idee directrice in 
 regard to its growth. 
 
 In respect to matters of divine faith there can 
 be no accretion, no development in the strict sense, 
 but only an evolution. To all intents and purposes 
 the deposit of faith is as a document delivered once 
 and for all into the Church's hands to which she 
 can add, and from which she can take, not an iota 
 or tittle. Her only mental progress in its regard 
 is that of a clearer, deeper, and fuller penetration 
 of its meaning. But in the illustration and expres- 
 sion of its meaning there is room for something 
 more akin to development. The original language 
 
THE LIFE OF CATHOLIC DOGMA. 149 
 
 and analogy in which its ideas were divinely 
 expressed admit of translation into other languages, 
 permeated perhaps by other philosophies. Over 
 all these essays at interpreting the Word to diverse 
 intelligences and in diverse tongues, the Church sits 
 as judge, and declares what is true and false, in sensu 
 auctoris. Herein she seems to incorporate much 
 extraneous matter into her dogma — symbolic images, 
 philosophical modes of conception, scientific and 
 historical opinions. But all these she uses solely 
 as instruments of expression, not as sources of truth. 
 We are sometimes told that the Church has added 
 Aristotle to the Gospel ; that to be a Catholic is to 
 be a hylomorphist ; that transubstantiation involves 
 the ten categories of the peripatetics. In truth there 
 is no man, however ignorant, without a philosophy ; 
 and though in all systems there is an element of 
 agreement answering to the common structure of 
 the human mind, none of them is perfect or final. 
 No one can speak ten words, nor can the Church 
 utter a single dogma without assuming some 
 philosophy or other. When she speaks, she takes 
 that which prevails with her hearers, and uses it 
 to express her mind as nearly as may be ; just as 
 a missionary dealing with primitive savages has to 
 avail himself of their modes of thought and expres- 
 sion and to translate the Gospel as closely as so 
 
150 AUTHORITY AND EVOLUTION, 
 
 rude a medium, so coarse an instrument, may- 
 permit. If a man ask a question in Chinese, 
 it is no use answering him in English; if the middle 
 ages asked the Church questions in the language 
 of Aristotle, it had been no use for her to answer 
 in the language of Kant. She cares nothing for the 
 theory of substance and accident in itself, but only 
 so far as by that theory she can best insist on the true 
 sense of Hoc est corpus meum — can best secure those 
 words meaning to us what they meant to the 
 Apostles. 
 
 But development as distinct from evolution, finds- 
 its place in those applications of revealed truth which 
 are matter of Catholic doctrine rather than of divine 
 faith. The faith is.not like a foreign germ intruded 
 into the mind, developing independently within 
 itself, irrespective of the rest of our beliefs and 
 experiences. Contrariwise it works itself into the 
 whole texture of our thought, determining it and 
 being in return determined by it. Thus, revealed 
 truths entering into combination with unrevealed, 
 give birth to practical and speculative conclusions, 
 which are part of Catholic, or at least theological, 
 teaching, but not of divine faith. 
 
 " Obviously in moral matters, as we have said 
 elsewhere in these pages, the changing conditions 
 of each age and country call for ever new applications 
 
THE LIFE OF CATHOLIC DOGMA. isr 
 
 of the unchanging principles of revealed religion ; 
 and no less frequently are new truths of science and 
 history brought into comparison and combination 
 with the articles of faith, to give birth to theological 
 conclusions, unknown and unknowable to former 
 generations. To contrast unfavourably the vast 
 complex body of present Catholic teaching with the 
 original simplicity of the Gospel and the Apostles' 
 Creed, is to forget that the Christian religion is 
 a leaven, leavening the whole mass of secular 
 knowledge, moral and speculative, feeding upon 
 it and transforming it into its own substance; even 
 as Christian practice mingles itself with every 
 department of human life, social or solitary." It 
 were as reasonable to refuse to recognize the 
 gnarled oak to be the legitimate successor of the 
 slender sapling of centiiries ago. 
 
 We do not mean to make P. de la Barre answer- 
 able for all these reflections which have been 
 suggested by the perusal of his stimulating book ; 
 but we hope we have been substantially faithful 
 to his mind. His chapters on the use of symbolic 
 images, theological analogues, and theological 
 systematizations, as instruments of development, 
 are as original as they are sound and useful. 
 
 His appended essay on the evolution of sciences 
 as compared with that of theology would merit 
 
152 AUTHORITY AND EVOLUTION, 
 
 separate treatment, did space permit, raising, as 
 it does, the whole question as to the doctrinal value 
 of physics, and the objectivity of its laws and 
 classifications. But we may notice in conclusion 
 that if we confine ourselves to theology proper, 
 as opposed to apologetic, the parallel between its 
 evolution and that of science is as close as the 
 difference of subject-matter will allow. This differ- 
 ence lies in the fact that whereas the subject-matter 
 upon which the physicist speculates, is augmented 
 every day by new experiences which increase the 
 ' deposit,' as it were, of Nature's revelation, the 
 Christian revelation does not admit of objective 
 addition. However perfectly we may know the 
 internal arrangement and connection of parts in any 
 whole, we know it and them still better, when that 
 whole itself is known as a subordinate part of some 
 still greater organism or system. As the sphere 
 submitted to the observation of the physicist is 
 widened every day, newer and higher generalizations 
 become possible than could ever have been drawn 
 from his former field of experience. But the deposit 
 of revealed truth can never receive the light that 
 a wider experience of the same order sheds on 
 a narrower ; but only such as comes through a 
 closer examination of its own content, and a com- 
 parison thereof with the natural truths and facts 
 
THE LIFE OF CATHOLIC DOGMA. 153 
 
 of which the human mind is in possession, or else 
 by an increased percipience due to the general 
 growth of the human mind. Roughly, the difference 
 is like that which prevails between astronomy or 
 any other physical science studied solely from a 
 book, and studied from nature. In one case 
 the evidence at our disposal is limited, in the 
 other, indefinite. We might study the text-book 
 with continual advance in the mastery of its 
 contents; we might apply the resulting know- 
 ledge in many ways and combine it with the rest 
 of our ideas and experiences ; but had we no 
 other source of astronomical information, it is 
 evident that our condition would be very different 
 to what it is. 
 
 Another point of dissimilarity between science 
 and theology is found in the fact that science deals 
 with external phenomena which can be pointed out 
 and named exactly; whereas theology, like philo- 
 sophy, deals largely with abstract notions which can 
 be only symbolized by signs that appeal to eye 
 and ear. Hence it is difficult to be sure that in the 
 case of any two persons the same word stands for 
 precisely the same interior idea. Moreover, the 
 realities that revelation deals with are, if not below 
 the horizon of human apprehension, at least on its 
 extreme verge — to be touched from afar but never 
 
154 AUTHORITY AND EVOLUTION, 
 
 to be compassed ; whereas phenomenal nature is 
 comfortably within our grasp. 
 
 For these reasons, even when the work of 
 apologetic is accomplished and the Christian 
 revelation accepted as a basis of operation, the 
 evolution of theology can never exhibit anything 
 like the clearness, the exactitude, the unanimity 
 of physical science. In the scholasticism of the 
 middle ages we have perhaps the best, though of 
 course an unfinished, attempt at a mere dialectical 
 unfolding of the content of revelation ; and, on the 
 whole, the agreement between theologians in those 
 days was nearly as close as that between scientists 
 of our own. But when the assumptions upon which 
 this orderly fabric was raised began to be assailed 
 under the disintegrating influence of renaissance 
 principles, when, in due logical process, the 
 authority, first of the Church, afterwards of 
 Scripture and of Christ, and lastly of conscience 
 and reason itself, was called in question, this 
 peaceful work of internal evolution was to some 
 extent broken off in favour of the more urgent duty 
 of strengthening the foundations. Apologetic, which 
 had practically no place in the Summa of Aquinas, 
 has since then steadily grown in importance, in such 
 sort that, in non-CathoHc usage, it is now almost 
 identified with theology ; nor> relatively to the needs 
 
THE LIFE OF CATHOLIC DCGMA. 155 
 
 of the modern mind, is any point disputed in the 
 Summa of much consequence compared with the 
 assumptions upon which the whole system rests. 
 
 To speak of apologetic as a science is not, 
 as P. de la Barre points out, strictly correct. It 
 is a method more or less ' opportunist ' for securing 
 one way or another — according to diversities of age, 
 civilization, culture, character, and the like — that 
 certitude which is the condition of faith. It is 
 a scientific art rather than a science like theology 
 proper, to which it is related somewhat as induction 
 to deduction. Dealing as they do with the deepest 
 problems of life and thought, it is not wonder- 
 ful if apologists contrast very unfavourably with 
 scientists ; and if, in their vagueness and disagree- 
 ments, they are rather like philosophers, with 
 whom they have many problems in common. 
 The philosopher is one who deals with the assump- 
 tions which the scientist accepts without hesita- 
 tion — not on scientific grounds, but because they 
 have to be made at every moment of practical life, 
 and have therefore become irresistible psychological 
 habits, though, rationally, they are as obscure and 
 difficult to defend as the assumptions of theological 
 science. As children think light of parental 
 anxieties in their regard, so the physicist as a rule 
 is untroubled by the philosopher's fear lest the 
 
156 AUTHORITY AND EVOLUTION, 
 
 world-supporting elephant of science be standing 
 on an unsupported tortoise. He is usually confident 
 that, did he but care to try, his methods would 
 carry him backwards to the sources of certitude, 
 as easily as they carry him forward towards its 
 limitless extensions. At all events he feels the 
 practical man's contempt for the sceptical ques- 
 tioning and quixotic defending of beliefs which every 
 one holds, and must hold, under psychological, if 
 not under rational compulsion. 
 
 Similarly, those who, thanks to their Catholic 
 education and surroundings, have lived in the 
 Church as in a little world where the principles 
 of revealed religion are assumed in thought and 
 practice — somewhat as the principles of vulgar 
 science are assumed in all human life — whose minds 
 have been subjected to the nfluence of the public 
 mind of that ecclesiastical society whose members 
 they are, and have been insensibly dominated by 
 its authority ; whose acceptance of the said prin- 
 ciples owes its firmness more to psychological 
 habit than to any rational argument or conception — 
 these will be apt to underrate the difficulties of 
 apologetic, and to fancy that the methods of 
 scientific theology can be carried backwards behind 
 its first principles as easily as forwards in front 
 of them. 
 
THE LIFE OF CATHOLIC DOGMA. 157 
 
 Theology and science have it in common, that 
 it is only by repeated practical assumption, by 
 being lived and acted upon continually, that their 
 principles can gain the psychological firmness 
 without which mere rational justification is of little 
 avail. Still, this rational justification has a negative 
 and conditional value ; if it cannot produce faith or 
 conviction, it can remove obstacles and prepare the 
 way for the action of those practical causes of 
 certitude which God and Nature have provided as 
 sufficient to satisfy minds that were constructed 
 as little for speculation as our bodies were for 
 swimming. We can swim in a poor way, but not 
 as a fish ; and we can paddle in the shallows of 
 speculation, or traverse its surface, but we are too 
 short-breathed to explore its depths ; nor are we 
 really at home except on the terra firma of action. 
 
 May, 1899. 
 
VIII. 
 
 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 A RECENT and not too lenient critic of the Catholic 
 religion finds fault with the expression, " the Mind 
 of the Church," as involving what might be called 
 a fallacy of personification ; a fallacy, that is, by 
 which a collective or universal notion is treated as 
 a concrete reality. The Church, he maintains, is 
 but an abstraction ; and the Church's Mind but an 
 abstraction from an abstraction ; and therefore 
 doubly abstract. Now, since the only bond that 
 unites the sundered and dissentient fragments of 
 Christendom — East and West, North and South 
 — is the bond of a certain similarity of faith and 
 practice, outstanding all differences ; and perhaps also 
 the bond of some sort of descent from a common 
 and once undivided stock, it is plain that if "the 
 Church" stands for this group of similars, it can 
 have no objective reality, that it is something 
 notional and abstract like other class-ideas. But 
 from a Catholic and Roman standpoint, "the 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH. 159 
 
 Church " means something as concrete as the 
 British Government, or the Army or the Navy — 
 and no one I presume would call these abstractions. 
 Abstractions do not think and speak and act and 
 fight, and get money and spend it. But the notion 
 of the Church's mind seems to present a certain 
 amount of difficulty even to Catholic thinkers, as 
 though it stood for the average opinion of the 
 faithful, or for that residue of agreement in belief 
 obtained by an inspection and comparison of their 
 several minds, and an elimination of all differences. 
 Again, in his recent and somewhat ingenious 
 apology for the Catholic position, Mr. W. H. 
 Mallock seems to some of his critics to have fallen 
 into this fallacy of personification, in applying to 
 the memory of the collective Church conclusions 
 drawn from the nature and operation of the 
 memory of conscious individuals. For recognizing 
 truly that the Church, unlike the sects, rests her 
 belief in the historical fact of Christ's Resurrection, 
 not per prius on the Gospel record (which is an 
 accidental, not an essential, possession, dependent 
 on her recognition for its authorization, and not she 
 upon it), but per prius on what may be called her 
 own memory of the event, he concludes that she 
 alone of Christian communities can afford to let 
 criticism do its worst with documents which she 
 
i6o "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 accepts, not as the ultimate, sources of her informa- 
 tion, but as in agreement witli wiiat she knows in 
 other ways. 
 
 This view of the matter is so closely bound up 
 with the main lines of Mr. Mallock's general thesis 
 that we cannot deal with it clearly, unless we place, 
 ourselves at his standpoint, which is that of an 
 impartial rationalist who regards the Roman system 
 as a phenomenon whose form and growth is to be 
 explained by natural and known laws, and who 
 abstracts from, without necessarily denying, all 
 supernatural intervention and assistance. Such a 
 view of the matter is, for us Catholics, not without 
 its interest and value. If current science and 
 philosophy fail to furnish an adequate account and 
 justification of our position, we are not greatly 
 disturbed ; but so far as in part they justify it, it is 
 doubly justified, and we are glad to see any traces 
 of a harmony of whose existence, even when not 
 seen, we do not doubt. 
 
 Indeed, that divine " assistance " by which the 
 Church is conserved (as distinguished from inspira- 
 tion and other strictly supernatural or miraculous 
 interventions by which she was brought into being), 
 far from setting aside, acts upon and presupposes 
 the working of those natural laws which govern 
 the growth of the human mind and of society. If 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." i6i 
 
 then these very laws have come to be better, though 
 not adequately, understood in our own days, it were 
 no small gain to apologetics could it be shown that 
 what might seem to the superficial to be an aimless 
 and lawless departure from the original type of 
 Christianity, were in truth nothing more than the 
 necessary and legitimate resultant of those natural 
 laws of growth which are practically to be identified 
 with the Divine Will. The very unconsciousness 
 with which in past centuries men worked out the 
 design of which they are only now becoming 
 explicitly conscious, is itself an indication of an 
 overruling mind and hand, of which they in their 
 imagined liberty were but passive instruments. It 
 is especially in its anticipation of, and preparation 
 for, future developments unforeseen by us, that all 
 organic growth is felt to be the work of God ; and 
 a better and more scientific comprehension of the 
 Church's history — the story of her growth — may 
 prove her to be as evidently a work of God as any 
 flower of the field or tree of the forest, or as man 
 himself, the image and likeness of God. We are 
 yet far from such a comprehensive view ; and 
 Mr. Mallock rather suggests that it may lead to 
 the desired demonstration, than affirms that it 
 actually does so. The ground has only been 
 broken by Harnack and the school he represents ; 
 
 L 
 
i62 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 but however much we may dissent from their 
 results, we cannot repudiate or undervalue their 
 methods. At present, they have it largely their 
 own way, for lack of Catholic labourers in the 
 same field. Newman's keen instinct anticipated 
 the need there would be later of meeting such 
 antagonists fairly on their own ground, when he 
 attempted to lay down the criteria of true and false 
 developments; and although he did so in the 
 interests of a much narrower and now almost 
 obsolete controversy, yet his principles are available 
 largely for that far wider one into which it has 
 resolved itself. In their light only can we read in 
 what else were a record of blind gropings and 
 aimless fluctuations, the history of an idea gradually 
 unfolding itself in the " mind of the Church," 
 proving every spirit, whether it be of God ; building 
 up or destroying; choosing and rejecting; subduing 
 all things unto itself. 
 
 Looked at, therefore, from such a rationalistic 
 standpoint as that assumed by Mr. Mallock or 
 Dr. Harnack or the other critic to whom we referred 
 at the beginning, how far does the Catholic system 
 present the appearance of a natural and legitimate 
 resultant of the laws of growth, as at present 
 formulated ? To answer this question more 
 adequately will cost many long years of labour 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 163 
 
 and controversy, historical and philosophical, nor 
 need we ever expect an answer that will be final 
 and incontrovertible. Still, as far as present results 
 go, an outsider's view of the matter will be some- 
 what as follows.^ 
 
 Primitive as is the explicit belief in an infallible 
 and divinely assisted Church ; yet the conception 
 must at first have been obscured by the conscious- 
 ness of a still better dispensation proper to the 
 
 1 To avoid cumbering the text with explanatory clauses and 
 indirect tenses, let it suffice to state here that in what follows we 
 are trying to see how the matter presents itself to those who have 
 .as yet no belief in those legitimate assumptions which determine 
 the Catholic view of the matter. Those assumptions from which 
 an outsider abstracts are, first, that the same Spirit from which 
 •the revelation came through the lips of Christ and His Apostles is 
 ■with the Church at all times, not revealing, but interpreting what 
 has already been revealed. All understanding on the part of a 
 listener depends on his spiritual kinship to the speaker — on their 
 language, their modes of thought and life being the same. For it is 
 thus only that hints and imperfect forms of expression can convey 
 the speaker's full meaning to the hearer — a meaning always in 
 excess of the bare abstract and dictionary meaning of the words 
 used. Now the Spirit that speaks to the Church in revelation, 
 and the Spirit of the listening Church are not merely like, but are 
 one and the same. Secondly, it is assumed, as a corollary, that 
 not only does the Church proclaim the same truth which Christ 
 proclaimed, but also that Christ by His continual living co-opera- 
 -tion, lives in and speaks through His Church, so that both the 
 :sayer and what is said are always the same. Apart from this 
 supernatural co-operation, Christ speaks to us only from the past, 
 as any other teacher of long ago whose words are handed down 
 through the ages more or less faithfully. 
 
i64 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 creative period of Christianity. The lesser light 
 will have scarcely been thought of in presence of 
 the greater. Only under pressure of events and 
 consequent on the withdrawal of the greater light 
 of inspiration, will the belief in a divinely guided 
 tradition have gradually cleared itself in the 
 collective consciousness of the Christian people, 
 where it had previously lain entangled with a 
 general faith in the Church, innocent of distinctions 
 that were not then needed. 
 
 The first Christians had experience only of an 
 inspired Church, to whose apostles, prophets, and 
 teachers the Holy Ghost made new revelations 
 daily; whose controversies and problems were 
 solved by an appeal to living oracles ; whose laity 
 were often no less gifted with the Spirit in such 
 matters than its as yet ill-defined hierarchy. This, 
 perhaps, was not so much belief in an inspired 
 Church, as in inspired individuals constituting the 
 Church. Not till prophetic inspiration had died 
 out would council and conference come into general 
 vogue as an organ of doctrinal decision ; or the 
 universal council assume the character of a court 
 of final appeal. Previous to that stage of develop- 
 ment, the collective totality and unity of Christen- 
 dom was a conception of less importance and was. 
 therefore less attended to. 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 165 
 
 The sharp distinction between "inspiration" 
 and " assistance," so familiar to the modern 
 theologian, is but the outcome of much reflection 
 on past controversies, questionings, and obscurities ; 
 and he needs to be on his guard against supposing 
 an equal distinctness of conception in earlier times. 
 We have a dull subconsciousness of principles, and 
 we act upon them consistently and regularly, long 
 before we come to define them. Action naturally 
 precedes the theory and criticism of action in every 
 department. Thus, though we seek in vain in 
 early times for the terms of the distinction between 
 inspiration and assistance, we are not wrong in 
 trying to find a practical recognition of it. There 
 must have been a time when belief in an inspired 
 Church gave place to belief in a divinely assisted 
 or infallible Church, albeit the transition may have 
 been more or less unconscious. 
 
 Modern theologians are agreed that the sources 
 of Christian revelation dried up abruptly at the 
 death of St. John — the last of the Apostles ; that 
 thenceforward ecclesiastical decisions were confined 
 to determining the content of what had already been 
 delivered ; that the organ of such decisions was the 
 collective Church in union with the successors of 
 St. Peter. As the result of reflection on history this 
 is no doubt a correct analysis ; but as representing 
 
t66 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 the explicit consciousness of the sub-apostohc 
 Church, it will seem to the rationalist a somewhat 
 naive supposition ; facts will not so easily fall into 
 line with theories as all that. 
 
 That prophets claiming to be taught by the Holy 
 Ghost coexisted with, and survived the Apostolic 
 College, will be disputed by no one. To affirm that 
 their revelations in no way contributed to the 
 deposit of faith, either during or after the life of the 
 Twelve, but are to be classified with the unauthorized 
 revelations of mediaeval and modern saints, is theo- 
 logically true; but for the rationalist it needs proof; 
 and still more does he need proof that this view 
 of the matter obtained in the early Church, 
 Undoubtedly, the apostolic dignity was regarded as- 
 sui generis in many ways, and the disappearance of 
 the last of the elected eye-witnesses of Christ's 
 ministry must have been felt as marking an epoch — 
 an abrupt transition to a different order of things — 
 a transition analogous to that created by the passing 
 of Christ to His Father. Still, it was rather as 
 first-hand witnesses of the teaching of Christ than 
 as fountains of further revelations, that their -teach- 
 ing office was so widely distinguished from that of 
 the other Christian prophets and inspired writers. 
 
 It must yet be shown historically that imme- 
 diately after the death of St. John doctrinal problems 
 
••THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 167 
 
 were ultimately decided by recourse to ecumenical 
 councils, and not, as previously, by recourse to the 
 inspired utterances of prophets; and till this is 
 established, the rationalist takes it for granted that 
 until the supply of prophetic utterances began to 
 fail, together with kindred preternatural manifesta- 
 tions of the Spirit, the Christian people did not 
 realize that they had passed into new conditions 
 requiring another system of doctrinal guidance. 
 Uncertainty as to the exact point of time which 
 terminated the dispensation of the prophets, as well 
 as the mixed and dubious character of much that 
 claimed to be prophecy, would make it necessary 
 eventually to draw a hard and fast line between 
 what was admitted on all hands as divinely revealed 
 and what might or might not be so ; and this 
 casuistry would result in fixing the present canon of 
 inspired Scriptures, and in limiting the deposit of 
 faith to the teaching of Christ and His twelve 
 Apostles — a limit which at first may not have been 
 exclusive, but which became so in time. 
 
 As long as the fountains of inspiration were still 
 flowing, , the principle of tradition would be in 
 abeyance as more or less unnecessary ; but when 
 these sources were manifestly dried up, the Church's 
 whole care would . be to conserve what she had 
 gained, to lose no drop of that supply of living water 
 
168 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 which was to last her through her journey to the 
 end of time. Henceforth it would be on her 
 memory and understanding of truths once delivered 
 to her, rather than on the intuition of other truths 
 that she would have to depend for guidance. The 
 notion of a depositum fidei and of its limitation would 
 gradually take shape in the general consciousness. 
 Authorities would now be consulted, not as inspired 
 oracles, but as witnesses to and interpreters of the 
 primitive tradition ; and if for ordinary or less 
 important contingencies the decision of a Bishop or 
 a local council would be considered of sufficient 
 weight to command obedience and submission, for 
 graver matters threatening the unity of Christendom 
 the verdict of the whole Church represented by its 
 Bishops in council would be felt to be a court of 
 final appeal. If the claim to doctrinal inerrancy 
 was ever put forward by these lower courts, it could 
 not have been very long sustained in the face of the 
 frequent and flagrant heresy of Bishops and local 
 churches and synods. In whatever sense these 
 might be regarded as guided by the Holy Ghost in 
 their official utterances, it was under such conditions 
 that their verdict could not be taken as final and 
 irreversible. But in the very nature of things, and 
 quite apart from any idea of. "assistance," the 
 conclusions of a general council were more likely to 
 
•'THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 169 
 
 be right, and less likely to be disputed ; the errancy 
 of the ultimate court of appeal would be felt to be 
 incompatible with all Christ's promises to His 
 Church of protection and assistance, and equivalent 
 to His complete abandonment of her. If the Holy 
 Ghost would no longer teach her all truth by 
 continued revelation and prophetic ministry, at least 
 He would bring all things to her memory that 
 Christ had said unto her, and would guarantee her 
 correct understanding of those sayings which she 
 was to keep and ponder in her heart. Thus, long 
 before the distinction between inspiration and 
 assistance was clearly thought out, it would have 
 been obscurely felt ; though there is nothing in the 
 history of the earlier general councils to show that 
 they explicitly distinguished between the sense in 
 which they, and that in which the inspired Apostles 
 spoke in the name of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 The need of this appeal to ecumenical tradition 
 did much to emphasize the previously obscured 
 solidarity of the various Christian communities, and, 
 together with other factors which do not here 
 concern us, gave rise to the more explicit conception 
 of the Universal Church as a supreme and infallible 
 authority — the final court of appeal against parti- 
 cular churches in all matters of ecumenical moment. 
 While the several churches had each its own 
 
I70 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 prophets and oracles, and, even later, while primi- 
 tive traditions were still fresh, there was less 
 need of conference with other churches ; but 
 as these conditions gradually failed, such con- 
 ference became the essential safeguard of healthy 
 development, the corrective of undesirable varia- 
 tions of the general type due to local and particular 
 causes. 
 
 After this rough outline of what would seem 
 from a rationalist standpoint the more probable 
 genesis of the notion of ecumenical and final 
 authority, we may now look a little more closely 
 into some of the ideas which the conception involves, 
 and especially that in which we are interested at 
 present, namely, the " Mind of the Church." The 
 term, " deposit of faith," is by no means a simple 
 one to explain. As has been said, with the decline 
 of inspired and oracular guidance, the need of 
 securing "the faith once delivered to the saints" 
 became more urgent. What actually had occurred 
 was explained on reflection by the doctrine accord- 
 ing to which the authorized Christian revelation 
 was confined to the teaching of Christ and the 
 Twelve ; and the subsequent function of the 
 promised Paraclete was merely to keep this teach- 
 ing ever fresh in the Church's memory and to guide 
 her to an ever deeper and fuller understanding of it : 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 171 
 
 " He shall teach you all things, and bring to your 
 remembrance whatsoever I have said to you." 
 Although these words were addressed directly to 
 the twelve first-hand witnesses of Christ's ministry, 
 they were soon applied to the Church collectively. 
 At no time was it ever contended that Christ or the 
 Apostles had committed this body of teaching to so 
 casual and uncertain a medium as the chance letters 
 of St. Paul and one or two others, or the narratives 
 of the Evangelists, of whom two were not even 
 Apostles. As the living voice of the Apostolic 
 College was admittedly the means that Christ had 
 chosen and guaranteed for the dissemination of His 
 doctrine, so it was to be expected that they would 
 entrust their teaching, not to paper, but to the 
 living voice of some corporation that should succeed 
 them. Even if it be questioned whether any greater 
 doctrinal authority was consciously allowed to the 
 Twelve collectively than to each singly, and whether, 
 consequently, the conception of an infallible teaching 
 corporation was so familiar and natural after all ; 
 still the dissensions of bishops and individual 
 teachers, and the appeals from their decisions to 
 higher and more representative tribunals, must in 
 the course of a short time have led to the explicit 
 recognition of an ultimate and universal court of 
 appeal, whose decisions were of necessity treated as 
 
172 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 irreversible and infallible under pain of ecclesiastical 
 anarchy. 
 
 Thus the full and adequate receptacle of the 
 entire deposit of faith was not the mind of each 
 individual bishop ; or of any local synod of bishops ; 
 but the mind of the Universal Church, which was 
 discerned, formulated, and declared in ecumenical 
 council. This universal collective " mind " was pre- 
 eminently the organ of the Holy Spirit. The 
 several parts of which it was composed were fallible 
 in their isolation, though guided into truth by the 
 ordinary methods of God's providence in answer to 
 prayer and inquiry. But joined together they 
 constituted the infallible Church. Hence, this 
 expression : " the mind of the Church," as implying 
 something distinct from the mind of this or that 
 individual member of the Church, cannot be hastily 
 condemned as a mere logical abstraction, nor can it 
 be assumed that when we speak of the "mind of 
 the Church " as the receptacle of the original deposit 
 of Christ's revelation, we mean that the faith in its 
 potential entirety was entrusted to the members of 
 the Chiirch severally (as opposed to collectively). 
 But, as a crowd of witnesses to the same event will 
 be able to put together a more complete and 
 accurate account of it than one or two, each seeing 
 something missed by all the others; so, not only 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 173 
 
 the historic but the dogmatic truths of Christianity 
 are seen by no single mind as completely as by the 
 collective mind of the Church. Plainly, individuals 
 may at times overlook or ignore even the most vital 
 parts of the body of dogmatic truth ; but short of 
 this, no one mind is wide, deep, or clear enough to 
 take in the totality of ecclesiastical teaching in all 
 its aspects. Holding it completely in substance and 
 outHne, one will have a more detailed knowledge of 
 this part ; another, of that. There is a custom in 
 the schools by which the auditors meet in conference 
 after a lecture for repetition, so that what one has 
 failed to hear or notice may be supplied by the 
 others. What does this mean but that the lecture 
 in its entirety has been committed to and is latent 
 in the collective mind of the audience, but not in 
 each singly — or at least not so fully and infallibly ? 
 And the effect of conference is to bring this latent 
 knowledge into act; to piece together the various 
 fragmentary aspects of the truth ; to eliminate 
 personal errors of accretion, diminution, and dis- 
 tortion ; and finally to reproduce, more or less 
 imperfectly, this general mind in each several mind. 
 At the end of this process there is no more informa- 
 tion possessed by the assembly than was possessed 
 by it potentially at the beginning ; but, from being 
 potential, much of it has become actual in regard 
 
174 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 to the assembly that was not so before ; while 
 the several individuals for the most part receive 
 an absolute increment of knowledge which before 
 was not even potentially in their possession. 
 Half a dozen witnesses have the entire facts of 
 a certain case between them ; yet no one of 
 them apart holds all the facts even potentially. 
 Let them meet and talk it over, and all know 
 at the end what none knew wholly at the begin- 
 ning. 
 
 Thus, as a great cloud of witnesses differs from 
 a single witness to the same event, and ensures an 
 almost infallible testimony ; so the " mind of the 
 Church " differs from the mind of any individual 
 Churchman, or even from that of any party or 
 section in the Church. Further, as has been- 
 implied, we must distinguish between the mind of 
 the Cliurch dispersed and the mind of the Church 
 in council. It is only by speech and intercommuni- 
 cation that each can borrow the results of the 
 experience and reflection of others, and lend those 
 of his own, or that the light scattered in many 
 minds can be focussed to a point and brought to 
 the explicit consciousness of each and all. Prior 
 to such conference (howsoever effected) the collective 
 mind of the Church is but potential, as the 
 individual mind is with regard to a truth for which 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 175 
 
 it possesses all the data, before it has put these 
 data together. 
 
 But though it is especially by means of confer- 
 ence that the general mind of any community is 
 advanced and brought from potentiality to act; 
 and that, by consequence, the minds of its several 
 members are regulated, enlightened, and brought 
 into harmony with one another; still this harvest 
 is first prepared secretly underground ; and it is 
 during the intervals between such seasons of 
 conference that the ■ individual members gather 
 together, and give shape to, their contributions to 
 the common fund, whence the truth is to be 
 built up. After each re- union they disperse, holding 
 a common creed, with all substantial differences 
 eliminated, with the mind of the Church reproduced 
 in their several minds ; and they go each his own 
 way bearing this seed, which will yield diverse fruit 
 according to the soil in which it is set. For no 
 truth can remain unaltered in a living mind. In the 
 spontaneous endeavour to bring it into harmony 
 with the rest of our knowledge, and the rest of 
 our knowledge into harmony with it, questions and 
 difficulties will arise and will be answered according 
 to each one's ability and information, and eventually 
 the truth in question will receive a further develop- 
 ment and interpretation, differing in different 
 
175 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 minds, so that a new conference, disputation, and 
 comparison of ideas will be needed if unanimity 
 is to be restored again. It is somewhat as with 
 a living and growing language. Let any section 
 of the community be severed from the rest, and 
 it will develop eccentricities which can only be 
 corrected by the restoration of intercourse. 
 
 Whatever is part of the mind must grow with 
 its growth; and he who should deny subjective 
 development in articles of faith would either be 
 ignorant of the necessary laws of thought, or else 
 would confound the mere bundle of words in which 
 the belief is cased with the belief itself. A man 
 who finds no trace of development in his own 
 religious beliefs since childhood, is convicted of 
 never having thought about those beliefs at all; 
 or even of never having attached any sense to the 
 sounds which he re-echoes. His creed is abra- 
 cadabra to him and nothing more. So far therefore 
 as there is growth and development in the collective 
 mind of the Church, it is because there is a 
 previous growth and development going on in the 
 mind of its individual members, the results of 
 which are gathered up, sorted, and harmonized 
 by conference and intercourse. It is not only in 
 the deliberations of councils, but also in the secret 
 meditations of each believing soul that we are to 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 177 
 
 trace the operation of that Spirit whose mission 
 is to guide the Church into all truth. 
 
 The guidance offered to individuals on the 
 condition of prayer and inquiry is fallible in matters 
 not already determined by the Universal Church. 
 But from the nature of the case, and apart from all 
 Divine promises, the decisions of the ultimate 
 court of appeal must be treated as infallible if 
 schism and anarchy are to be avoided. Conceivably, 
 the feeling that it ought to be so, first led to the 
 inquiry if it were so, and thence to the recognition 
 that it was so. Until we come to the court of 
 final appeal, no such necessity can be pleaded ; 
 and then, only in matters of the extremest moment, 
 where the unity of Christendom is threatened. 
 Miracles and supernatural interventions are not 
 to be needlessly invoked. It is a fundamental 
 principle of God's economy in our regard, not to 
 help men where they can easily help themselves, 
 lest in releasing them from profitable exertion, He 
 should hinder the fuller development of their 
 faculties, gifts, and graces, by a sort of cruel 
 kindness and weakly indulgence. While, then, it 
 was to be expected that He should make sufficient 
 provision in His Church for the settling of con- 
 troversies inimical to unity ; more than sufficient 
 was not to be looked for. For He uses our 
 
 M 
 
178 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 several insufficiencies to bind us close together 
 into one social body whose members are dependent 
 each on all the rest ; and so in His Church, the 
 individual is dependent on his communion with 
 the whole body for light as well as for grace. It 
 is to no section or part or separate person that 
 He promises infallible guidance, but to all collec- 
 tively when gathered together in His name, with 
 Him in their midst; and to each severally only 
 through union with and in dependence on the 
 whole. God, like Nature, non deficit in necessariis. 
 The individual has the collective Church to fall 
 back upon ; but the collective Church has only God. 
 Be it remembered that in all this we are con- 
 sidering what ought to be expected in the nature of 
 things; we are not allowing for the influence that 
 definite texts and promises may have had in 
 shaping the conception of ecclesiastical authority; 
 we are going on the lines of the dictum that "if 
 God had not given us the Pope we should have had 
 to invent one ; " we are showing that had there been 
 no such recorded texts or promises, the same results 
 would have been arrived at sooner or later. If then 
 it be contended, as it has been, that these texts 
 cannot fully support the weighty structure that 
 has been built upon them by modern exegesis; 
 that certain Fathers of the early Church saw no 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 179 
 
 ■such meaning in them as some of us now see, 
 such a contention only creates a new line of 
 argument in place of the one it would destroy. 
 For it gives to the same texts a certain confirmatory 
 value, inasmuch as after-events have revealed an 
 ■evident meaning in them that could not have been 
 divined in earlier times, and thus proving them 
 to be prophetic and anticipatory of future develop- 
 ments, have shown the course of the Church's 
 history to be the fulfilment of a divinely fore- 
 ordained scheme, analogous with the natural process 
 of organic growth. 
 
 On the supposition that there was no further 
 addition to be looked for to the body of truth 
 already revealed by Christ, the Church's work 
 •with regard to this would be one simply of memory 
 and understanding or reflection ; just as the 
 individual who is removed from any source of 
 additional information in a given matter can do 
 no more than "keep these sayings and ponder 
 them in his heart." Nor can we say that this 
 rumination is sterile. To call back the sum total 
 of our impressions and piece them together ; to 
 ■deepen those that were faint ; to secure them as 
 a permanent possession ; to analyze and interpret 
 their significance — all this is a real mental gain; 
 and in some sense an advance or development ; 
 
i8o "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 but not in the full sense. For there are two further 
 stages. First, at the given moment in which 
 we receive some new truth into our mind, we 
 possess a certain body of knowledge and informa- 
 tion into which the new truth has to be harmoniously 
 fitted. If it throws light on all the rest of our 
 mind, the rest also throws light upon it. We do 
 not at the first instant accomplish this act of 
 adjustment and comparison ; the new leaven works 
 its way slowly; as it modifies the rest of our 
 mind by its action, so by reaction it is itself 
 gradually modified — and this is a development 
 distinct from that which takes place through the 
 rumination on a truth or fact viewed apart by itself, 
 and not in relation to other truths and facts. But 
 secondly, and in addition to this, our mind is hourly 
 taking in new experience of all kinds ; and experi- 
 ence is to the mind what light is to the eye. As 
 the same identical object reveals itself more fully 
 under a stronger light, so to the more richly-stored 
 and cultivated mind the same truth is fraught with 
 a greater depth of significance, which no mere 
 analysis, however acute on the part of a less 
 informed intelligence, could have drawn from it.^ 
 
 1 e.g.. The different significance the same story of the Magnet 
 Carta will have for a matured politician and for an intelligent 
 sixth-form boy. 
 
••THE MIND OF THE CHURCH:' i8i 
 
 From what has been said about the collective 
 mind of a community, it will be evident that this 
 law of the development of ideas avails there 
 without any qualification. Not only is the Church's 
 mind exercised in the faithful remembrance of the 
 truth committed to her by Christ and in an ever 
 exacter analysis and formulation of its context, 
 considered absolutely and apart from its relation 
 to other knowledge; but also she is continually 
 harmonizing it with other departments of human 
 thought, translating it into the categories of current 
 philosophy and science. Else the department of 
 revelation would be a walled-off Chinese empire, 
 holding no intercourse with the outside world of 
 experience ; whereas its mission is to draw all 
 things to itself, to be a light on a candlestick 
 lighting the whole house ; not to be protected 
 under a bushel. Indeed, it is only so far as articles 
 of faith do harmonize with the rest of our thought, 
 that they are more to us than bundles of words; 
 sounds without any sense. Only so far as " person,'' 
 "nature," "substance," "God," "man,"&c., are 
 already famihar ideas to me, will the dogma of the 
 Incarnation have any meaning for me whatever — 
 any sense that I can lay hold of and believe. 
 
 But we must take account not only of this 
 harmonizing of the Church's creed with the general 
 
i82 ''THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 knowledge of any given period, and of the con- 
 sequent interpretation and development it receives 
 in the process ; but we must also reckon with the 
 progress of general knowledge, experience, and 
 reflection from period to period. Granting that 
 there is no new revelation of doctrine, no addition 
 to that deposit delivered once and for all; yet 
 owing to the continual alteration and growth of 
 the collective mind of the race, its power of under- 
 standing and comprehension is ever progressing in 
 regard even to comparatively simple objects, much 
 more in regard to those — such as the natural world, 
 or the personality of Christ — which must for ever 
 exceed its grasp indefinitely. The more the collec- 
 tive mind becomes capable of seeing, in virtue of 
 accumulated knowledge and wisdom of all kinds, 
 the more it sees in Christ and His religion. This 
 point is sufficiently important to justify a somewhat 
 elaborate illustration to 'which we may recur more 
 than once in our subsequent difficulties. 
 
 Let us suppose, first, the case of some really 
 great and good man who has had a singularly wide 
 and varied experience of human life, and who 
 finding himself suddenly at the point of death calls 
 to his side his little son of eight or nine years, on 
 whom his hopes and affections are set, and 
 endeavours in the few moments that are left to 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 183 
 
 him to impart to this child the fruit of all his 
 experience and reflection, so as to give him the 
 means of guiding himself aright in the midst of an 
 evil and perverse generation. Plainly he cannot 
 by any possibility in so , short a time embody the 
 sum total of his experience in all its detail, but at 
 best a pregnant summary of its most important 
 results. He must select those more vital and 
 governing principles from which a complete and 
 elaborate philosophy of life may be reconstructed 
 by after-reflection. But a far greater difficulty will 
 arise from the difference of language between father 
 and child — language being the outward expression 
 of the inward mind and varying with all its 
 variations. Even were it possible to put a novel of 
 Meredith's into words of one syllable, each singly 
 understandable by a child, yet the resulting com- 
 binations so built up would be simply unmeaning 
 to a mind destitute of similar experiences where- 
 with to compare, recognize, and classify those 
 presented in the fiction. Our understanding of 
 what is retailed to us by others is eventually 
 measured by the extent of our own first-hand 
 experience, internal and external. Just so far as 
 there is something common (at least analogously) to 
 the childish and the mature view of life, will it be 
 possible to translate the latter imperfectly into the 
 
i84 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 language of the former, to express the greater in 
 terms of the less. Maxims of honour, justice, 
 benevolence, unselfishness, prudence, self-restraint, 
 courage, so far as they are of universal application, 
 can be illustrated from the narrowest and simplest 
 form of social life, and can be made to regulate the 
 conduct of a child in relation to himself and 
 others. But the remoter conclusions deducible 
 from these principles, and their application to more 
 - complicated circumstances, will seem unintelligible, 
 and even contradictory, to those who have never 
 had to face such problems. They may understand 
 the sense of what is said, but its truth and wisdom 
 cannot be fully realized without further experience. 
 So as the child grows up and mixes with men and 
 gathers experience, he will come to realize the 
 meaning of many sayings which at first were little 
 more to him than mere bundles of words. And 
 the advantage of such a body of precepts is two- 
 fold : first, to confirm the results of his own 
 experience by the testimony of another who has 
 trod the same path before him ; secondly, to sup- 
 plement his own lack of experience by lighting the 
 way for him one step ahead. For each step he 
 takes reveals to him the next to be taken, by raising 
 those doubts and problems whose solution has been 
 revealed to him — no answer having any real signi- 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 185 
 
 •- 
 
 ficance for us till the question has been raised in 
 our own mind. It will be clear from all this that 
 the child's intelligence of this imparted "deposit" 
 of knowledge may develop in the three ways 
 already explained. First, by the piecing together 
 and sifting of the information considered apart and 
 by itself. Secondly, by its assimilation with the 
 rest of the child's knowledge and experience as 
 then existing, whereby these maxims being applied 
 to many detailed matters, will grow into a much 
 more bulky system of life, including many fragments 
 and beliefs not contained in the precepts originally 
 delivered, but produced by their combination with 
 other beliefs and experiences. Thirdly and chiefly, 
 by the deeper and more comprehensive intelligence 
 of those maxims, owing to the increased capacity 
 of the mind due to the accumulated results of 
 experience and reflection ; in other words, owing to 
 the gradual approximation of the mind of the 
 learner to the mind of the teacher. This fuller 
 sense is derived not through any mere analysis or 
 dissection of the words uttered, but from an 
 appreciation of the fact that they were necessarily 
 inadequate to the truth, which they but hinted at, 
 and figured in the rough ; that they were far too 
 narrow for their pregnant sense, which sense is to 
 be determined not by grammar or by logic, but by 
 
i86 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 that growing sympathy with another mind which 
 makes a touch or a glance more eloquent than 
 chapters and tomes of explanation. The true sense 
 of a word in the concrete is or may be quite 
 different from its abstract or dictionary sense. It 
 is just what the speaker intended to convey by it ; 
 and his Yea may mean Nay, or his Nay, Yea 
 Reflecting in later years on the words of his father, 
 this child will see that they really meant far more 
 than any grammatical or logical analysis could have 
 got out of them ; that their concrete sense was 
 far in excess of their abstract or dictionary sense. 
 
 This illustration, taken from the development of 
 the individual mind, may prepare the way for one 
 more apposite to our purpose, drawn from the 
 growth of the collective mind of a community. 
 
 Let us imagine someone thoroughly versed in all 
 the intricacies of our modern English civilization, 
 and with such a comprehensive and detailed grasp 
 of the full content of that idea as is really possessed 
 by no single mind. And let us suppose that from a 
 philanthropic motive he desires to convey this idea 
 to the mind of some remote savage tribe with whom 
 his lot is cast for a brief period, and with whose 
 language and modes of thought he has become 
 perfectly familiar. What he desires to convey to 
 them is in some sense one idea, i.e., one organically. 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 187 
 
 For, as the individual man, body and soul, with all 
 his faculties is one organism, and as by consequence 
 his life and proper operation ought to be a cottspi- 
 ratio of many actions to one end, apart from which 
 and from one another, no one action is fully intelli- 
 gible ; so a society or civilization is a true and 
 infinitely complex organism, and its corporate life is 
 the resultant of a multitude of functions directed to 
 one end, by which alone each, in connection with 
 all the rest, is interpreted and explained. Where 
 the division of labour and function has been carried 
 out to great perfection, no one craft, profession, 
 office, or institution can be really explained without 
 reference to all the rest on which it depends, and to 
 which it is directed. Hence the difference between 
 a rudimentary and a highly developed civilization is 
 not merely one of quantity or of more and less, but 
 such as obtains between an embryonic form and the 
 fully-evolved animal. The latter has actual parts 
 and functions which the former possesses only in 
 remote potentiality. The problem, therefore, is to 
 express the oak in terms of the acorn. 
 
 The first difficulty, as before, will be to select the 
 most salient features of our British civilization, 
 since it would be impossible, even were there an 
 adequate medium of expression, to deliver an 
 exhaustive and detailed description of its nature. 
 
'THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 What is needed is something like the scholastic 
 idea of a definition, giving the proximate genus 
 and difference — the root principles, from which 
 the whole idea is developed dialectically. 
 
 This selection being made, there arises the far 
 greater difficulty of "translation." A language is 
 the exactest possible reflex or counterpart of the 
 civilization that gave birth to it, and which can 
 find accurate expression in no other medium. As, 
 in our former illustration, it was necessary to 
 translate the experience of a man of the world 
 into the language proper to the experience of a 
 little child, so here the institutions, customs, laws, 
 religion, science, art, beliefs, traditions, and legends 
 of stone-age savages have to be manipulated into 
 some kind of illustration and expression of their 
 transcendent counterparts in our own country. 
 The effect created on the simpler mind will be 
 not only mysterious and unintelligible to a great 
 extent, but even incoherent and contradictory. 
 Still, there will be some points of contact between 
 our civilization and their own, else the idea 
 would remain for ever sterile and undeveloped 
 in their minds. The point of culture, however 
 low, to which they have already climbed will enable 
 them to appreciate something a little better, but not 
 so much better as to be unintelligible. This " little 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 189 
 
 better " will be suggested to them in the revelation 
 communicated to them, and, when followed up 
 practically, will raise them to a point of further 
 vantage, and will give them a still deeper insight 
 into the matter. Thus, in the measure that their 
 institutions come nearer to our own, will they be 
 enabled to see what was really meant by the ideas 
 once suggested to them, and how the concrete sense 
 of the words intended by the speaker was far in 
 excess of their literal and grammatical sense. 
 Here, as before, we have a three-fold development ; 
 first, that resulting from the careful analysis of the 
 literal and grammatical sense of the words originally 
 delivered ; secondly, that obtained by the harmon- 
 izing of this sense with the rest of their knowledge 
 at the time being; thirdly, that resulting from 
 the growth of their faculty of intelligence in virtue 
 of the advance of civilization and the accumulation 
 of the fruits of experience and reflection. 
 
 Applying all this to the Church, we see how 
 Christ was constrained to translate the fundamental 
 ideas of the Ctvitas Dei — of that Eternal Kingdom 
 of Heaven far more remote from our minds than 
 is the highest from the lowest grade of social 
 culture — into the language and ideas of the Galilean 
 peasantry of two thousand years ago, and how, 
 by consequence, this deposit ot revelation is 
 
igo "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 susceptible of a three-fold development — first, by 
 the analysis of the literal and abstract sense of 
 the words delivered or of the ideas created in the 
 minds of the first hearers ; secondly, by the inter- 
 marriage of the truths revealed with the truths 
 and experiences naturally possessed by the minds 
 of the hearers at any given period ; thirdly, by 
 the growth of the collective intelligence of the 
 Church, whereby the concrete meaning of the 
 original utterances, the truth they hinted at but 
 could not contain, is better divined. 
 
 We have been dealing with the " Mind of the 
 Church " so far as it means her collective under- 
 standing of the deposit of truth — of those divine 
 sayings which through the centuries she keeps and 
 ponders in her heart ; and, in so doing, we have 
 tried to meet the criticism we referred to in our 
 ^opening words, and to show that the expression 
 stands for no idle abstraction, but for something 
 as concrete as the Church herself. It remains 
 to enlarge on one or two points in this connection, 
 and then to show that the Church's claim to an 
 infallible understanding and interpretation of the 
 deposit of revelation, pre-supposes a claim to an 
 infallible memory of the same, and to see how far 
 in the nature of things, and apart from any 
 supernatural guarantee, she is likely to possess 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 191 
 
 such a memory, and how far, by consequence, 
 Mr. Mallock's argument, already referred to, may 
 be redeemed from the charge of fallacy. . 
 
 II. 
 
 In the previous section we endeavoured to arrive 
 at a more precise notion of what is meant by the 
 " Mind of the Church," and to show that the 
 expression stands for no mere abstraction, but for 
 the result produced by the co-operation of a 
 multitude of minds. We noticed how by occa- 
 sional conferences, whether formal or informal, 
 the varying fruits of individual reflection upon the 
 faith, gathered during the interval since the last 
 such conference, are compared, sorted, and brought 
 into agreement, and the result added to the treasury 
 of the Church's wisdom. We found a three-fold 
 development which a truth or idea may receive 
 in the mind, without substantial alteration : (i) by 
 more subtle analysis and distinction of the terms 
 of its expression ; (2) by fuller co-ordination with 
 the other contents of the mind ; (3) by the increase 
 of the power of mental insight due to accumulation 
 of further experience and reflection. Sometimes, 
 however, an idea or a science receives a develop- 
 ment by way of addition. If I depend upon a 
 
192 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 given text-book for my entire knowledge of natural 
 history, however carefully I may study and analyse 
 the text, or compare what I thus learn with other 
 departments of my knowledge, or through the 
 growth of my mental power, penetrate more deeply 
 to the reality of the matter, yet the matter subjected 
 to my investigation is one and the same thing, 
 namely, the recorded experience of the author. 
 But if I have direct access to the limitless book of 
 Nature, I can go on indefinitely acquiring new 
 food for reflective digestion. 
 
 This latter kind of development can have no 
 place in regard to those truths of faith that are 
 known and knowable solely by revelation. But 
 " natural theology " and " natural ethics " are sus- 
 ceptible of some kind of extension and growth, 
 though not to the same extent as are physical 
 sciences; and the stage of a people's mental 
 development in these philosophies will seriously 
 affect their intelligence of the religion of Christ, for 
 better or for worse — as is the notorious experience 
 of Christian missionaries in dealing with races 
 whose mental categories are altogether different 
 from our own. That God is a spirit, a person; 
 that He is a Father, a King ; that He is just, wise, 
 merciful, loving, will mean more or less, according 
 to our particular conceptions of spirit, person. 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 193 
 
 fatherhood, kingship, justice, wisdom, and mercy. 
 Hence the wider our eyes are opened the more 
 shall we see in that religion which, as divine, will 
 always transcend immeasurably the vision of the 
 highest and most cultivated human intelligence. 
 If every really great and good man is before his 
 age, Christ is necessarily before every conceivable 
 age, and the full conception of His religion will 
 be too great for the collective or individual mind 
 of any period ; and must always be received and 
 limited per modum recipientis. Other ideas our mind 
 can outgrow, though at first they loom great ; we 
 may find them less significant than we first thought 
 them — dressed-up truisms that need only to be 
 stripped in order to be revealed in their barren 
 nakedness. Christianity as interpreted by Renan 
 or Matthew Arnold is not a development, but a 
 re-solution or refining away. The latter, as 
 R. H. Hutton well says, uses Bible language "to 
 express the dwarfed convictions and withered 
 hopes of modern rationalists who love to repeat 
 the great words of the Bible after they have 
 given up the strong meaning of them as fanatical 
 and superstitious." And again, he says that, 
 to talk of "developing" Christianity into Unitarian- 
 ism or Absolute Morality, " is to talk of develop- 
 ing a tree into a lichen or the language of 
 N 
 
194 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 Shakespere in the starved speech of a tribe of 
 Esquimeaux." 
 
 Those extremely abstract and general principles 
 which run through all our thought and govern our 
 whole life, are the very last to be sifted out by 
 analysis and to be recognized in their purity. 
 This recognition results only from comparison of 
 seemingly various maxims which reflection shows 
 to be but different disguises, applications, or cases 
 of the same general truth. Hence, as the first 
 attempt at some important invention (like the 
 steam locomotive) is enormously complex compared 
 with later simplifications ; so the first setting forth 
 of an hypothesis, theory, or doctrinal system is 
 often full of elaborations, epicycles, and other con- 
 trivances, which after-thought proves to be needless. 
 In such cases development means simplification — 
 the rejection of what is superfluous in the 
 mode of expression. According to Matthew Arnold, 
 who in this is a type of the extreme latitudinarian, 
 the kernel of Christianity freed from the husk, 
 consists in a few platitudes of the higher ethics 
 which have been involved in a vast complexus of 
 historical and dogmatic propositions, partly through 
 the unclearness of those minds which created 
 the system, partly in order to- bring home to 
 the emotional and imaginative faculties of the 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 195 
 
 multitudes those living truths which in their 
 abstract baldness would appeal only to the 
 philosophical elite. The longer the latitudinarian 
 reflects on Christianity, the less it means for him ; 
 the longer the Church reflects on it, the more 
 it- means for her. The analogies in which its truths 
 are expressed are conceived by the former as too 
 roomy, as failing through excess ; by the latter 
 as too narrow, and failing by defect. In the one 
 case it is like the attempt to describe the institu- 
 tions of savages in terms of modern European 
 civilization ; in the other,- it is an endeavour to 
 translate high civilization into the language of 
 savagery. There, too much is conveyed; here, 
 too little. 
 
 If Christ came to reveal Heaven to earth, God 
 to man, the eternal and infinite to the finite and 
 temporal, it is obvious that into whatever categories 
 of ours He might have endeavoured to squeeze 
 such transcendent realities, they must always 
 be marvellously narrow and inadequate; nor 
 is the absolute difference between the Galilean 
 fisherman of 2,000 years ago and the modern 
 literary savant, in this respect of any appreciable 
 value, however much it may mean for us. As 
 a fact, it was not to the theologians of that day, 
 but to those whom we consider the rude and 
 
196 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 simple that He revealed these things, and it was 
 into their notions, beliefs, traditions, and language 
 that He had to translate the mysteries of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. To say that they could have 
 been more fully and freely translated into the 
 language of better cultivated minds, were to con- 
 cede a seeming advantage to these latter, which 
 is infinitesimal and quite negligible when we 
 remember the immeasurable distance between 
 God's mind and ours. It is not that the modern 
 Church absolutely understands the faith better in 
 any appreciable way, but that she understands 
 it in a way better suited to the modern mind. 
 Had she used our language to a former age, she 
 would have failed in wisdom as much as were she 
 now to use notions and expressions that for us 
 are meaningless and obsolete. The questions that 
 are put in different ages are different ; but in all 
 diversities of age and country the Church follows 
 the example of her Founder, who always used the 
 categories of those to whom He spoke ; to shepherds- 
 He is a shepherd ; to fishermen He is the great 
 fisher of souls ; to lawyers He is the universal 
 judge ; to traders He is a merchant ; to the rabbis 
 He is the one Master; and so, with all. He is 
 Father and King or whatever will best bring 
 home supernatural realities to their imagination. 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 197 
 
 and customary forms of reasoning. And in like 
 manner the Church has used the categories of 
 Platonism, of Roman Jurisprudence, of Aristo- 
 tehanism, or of whatever other thought-system she 
 has found in vogue, for the moulding and setting 
 forth of her message. As already remarked, the 
 distinction between the dictionary meaning of such 
 language and the meaning which the speaker 
 intends to convey is of great importance. I can 
 speak of being in the " seventh heaven " of bliss 
 without implying that I believe in seven heavens. 
 Had Christ spoken in the terms of the absolute 
 and final philosophy and science (if such be con- 
 ceivable). He would have been unintelligible not 
 only to that age, but to our own and every other. 
 Tn using such as He found current, as a medium 
 of expression for quite other truths, He did not 
 commit Himself to matters in which He has left 
 us to the guidance of our senses, our reason, and 
 the accumulating wisdom of the race. 
 
 With a view to defining more precisely what 
 we mean by the " deposit of faith," we must here 
 ask ourselves how far the ipsissima verba of Christ — 
 the actual symbols and expressions by which He 
 conveyed His revelation to the mind of the 
 Apostles — are essentially part of our tradition and 
 heritage. 
 
igS THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 From a Catholic standpoint the preservation of 
 the New Testament documents is merely con- 
 tingent ; and apart from such records no authen- 
 ticated words of Christ and His Apostles are 
 preserved to us by oral tradition. Had these 
 writings perished, we should possess the whole 
 substance, but none of the form of Christ's doctrine. 
 But what is that substance as distinct from words 
 and form ; since the Church has no intuition of 
 the Eternal Realities — no revealing power ? If 
 she need not remember the exact presentment — 
 verbal and mental — of those realities conveyed to 
 the first hearers, what is it that remains the 
 same ? Here Vincent of Lerins comes to our aid. 
 I can be sure that the babe of so many years ago 
 is preserved identically in my own person, though 
 I cannot exactly remember that earliest self or its 
 states of consciousness; and so the mind of the 
 nascent Church lives identically in the maturer 
 mind of the present Church, though the remem- 
 brance of those earlier stages may be obscure and 
 faulty. To revert to a former illustration : let the 
 text-book of Natural History be lost and its 
 remembered contents be passed from mind to 
 mind ; and though the words and form might all 
 be changed, the substance of its meaning might 
 conceivably be retained and even better expressed. 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." igi) 
 
 Still, ex hypothesi, the substance is not added to 
 or increased. Similarly, no new expression of the 
 Christian idea can reveal more truth and fact than 
 Christ intended to reveal to the Apostles, but it 
 may give far clearer expression and illustration 
 to the same facts and truths. What grows and 
 develops and yet retains its identity is, the expres- 
 sion of the Christian idea. One illustration of the 
 same matter may be quite different from another, 
 verbally and pictorially, and yet may contain and 
 exceed all its illustrative value ; and in it the former, 
 though lost and forgotten, is yet preserved sub- 
 stantially. 
 
 Thus by the " deposit of faith " we do not mean 
 any primitive document, nor yet that expression 
 which the faith received in the mind of its first 
 hearers : nor yet the present-day expression of the 
 faith, in which that former expression is at once 
 lost and preserved as the child is in the man; 
 but rather, those truths and realities which were 
 expressed and seen less perfectly in earlier forms, 
 more perfectly in later — as though viewed through 
 an ever clearer and more transparent medium. 
 Let a boy study a certain historical event in the 
 work of some first-class historian ; and let us 
 imagine that while in every other department his 
 education advances he has no further access to 
 
"THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 the period in question but depends on his early 
 impression. The book is probably lost, the very 
 words are forgotten, but the substance is retained. 
 If every ten years or so he were to write an essay 
 on that event and period, the facts and substance 
 would undoubtedly be the same, but the intelligence 
 of them far deeper; nothing would be added to 
 what was seen from the first ; but the faculty of vision 
 would be intensified and educated. That which 
 Christ showed us in the beginning, that, and that 
 aloncj is the deposit of faith. And the recipient 
 of this deposit is the collective Mind of the Church, 
 as above explained. To seek for it in documents 
 or in the past is to seek the living among the dead. 
 For the words of the Scriptures, or the words of 
 the Fathers upon the Scriptures, are dead words, 
 except in so far as the Church takes them on her 
 lips. It is her living breath that gives them their 
 inspiration. 
 
 In this point, as in many others, the Catholic 
 system, unlike other systems which seek their rule 
 of faith in the past, follows on and deepens the lines 
 of nature. In all matters save those very few in 
 which we ourselves are competent to judge inde- 
 pendently from the root, our beliefs, like those of 
 children, are "caused," rather than reasoned. 
 That is to say, we necessarily and rationally 
 
••THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 accept those that are generally current in the 
 society into which we are born, until for some 
 reason or another we are bound to call them in 
 question. Without such natural faith, intellectual 
 no less than practical life would be impossible. 
 Our religious beliefs as a rule are thus inherited. 
 That some should inherit the truth while others 
 inherit untruth, only means that in every sense right 
 faith is a free gift of God. For the vast majority 
 of mankind an independently reasoned religious 
 position is, of all notions, the most chimerical. 
 But if on any point public opinion is notably 
 divided, the majority who are not independent- 
 minded in the matter, are either without opinion 
 or else are determined by some other non-intellectual 
 cause, whether reasonable or unreasonable. Hence 
 we see how the Catholic ideal of an international 
 divinely-guided consensus exactly responds to the 
 most imperative need of the world in providing 
 a " cause " of right belief in religious and ethical 
 matters for the multitudes at present scattered by 
 the spectacle of doctors differing. When men were 
 less travelled and knowledge less diffused, it was 
 possible for the unthinking to believe that their 
 own religion was universal or all others patently 
 preposterous. But now the " indifferentism " of 
 the masses, consequent on a wider view, can only 
 
•THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 be healed in the measure that the Catholic ideal 
 absorbs all the other religions in the world by appro- 
 priating what is best and truest in them, as she 
 has done in the past. 
 
 We have now to consider most briefly how far 
 the "mind of the Church" regarded as memory, 
 offers a natural guarantee for the truth of such 
 facts as the virginal conception of Christ, His 
 Resurrection, and Ascension. Mr. Mallock speaks 
 of her " unbroken personal consciousness," and 
 compares her to a "traveller speaking of a past 
 or distant event at which he was present ; she 
 heard the salutation of Gabriel and stood by the 
 Sepulchre on Easter morning. The dangers of 
 every individual memory are accretion, oblivion, 
 and distortion, i.e., the addition or the omission 
 of elements ; or else the wrong arrangement of 
 those faithfully preserved. Against these dangers 
 we are protected partly by nature, partly by artificial 
 contrivances, or the reasoned use of the observed 
 laws of memory. Things are better remembered 
 according as they are felt to be more interesting 
 and important. Also the frequent repetition or 
 re-impression of a fact secures it against oblivion. 
 In the criticism of our memory, we have eventually 
 to depend on memory itself; so that if we cannot 
 assume reliability in the main headings of our 
 
••THE MIND OF THE CHURCH:' 203 
 
 experience we are reduced to impotent scepticism. 
 Looking back over our past, a certain chain of 
 leading memories stands out as of unquestionable 
 authenticity; and by their coherence or disagree- 
 ment with such elements of our experience we 
 judge the value of our weaker and more dubious 
 remembrances. Applying all this to the corporate 
 memory of a community, it seems that if the 
 dangers of accretion, oblivion, and distortion are 
 multiplied, the safeguards and corrections are 
 multiplied in proportion. Individual eccentricities 
 and variants are likely to be eliminated by confer- 
 ence and comparison, and in the multitude of 
 witnesses, as in the multitude of counsellors, there 
 is safety. In regard, therefore, to those central 
 facts on which Christianity rests; in which its 
 supreme interest is vested ; which have been steadily 
 re-asserted and re-impressed on the Church's 
 memory day by day through century after century ; 
 which, moreover, she has used every artifice to fix 
 and record; which are the rule and corrective 
 whereby the great tangled mass of legend and 
 tradition necessarily gathered by a world-wide 
 society in the course of ages is sorted and tested 
 — in regard to such central facts there is a strong 
 presumption in favour of the Church's tradition, 
 quite apart from any promise of supernatural 
 
204 "THE MIND OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 assistance or special providence. Given such 
 assistance, the Catholic appeal to the living 
 testimony of the Church for the truth of such 
 facts, is altogether reasonable and consistent. 
 
 As with the Church's understanding, so with her 
 memory; there may be error in abundance, but 
 there is an infallible criterion to fall back upon; 
 there are first principles, so to say, of memory by 
 which deviations can be corrected. Else not only 
 the mind of the Church, but the mind of every 
 human society would be paralyzed by that same 
 scepticism which results in the individual from 
 the denial of those implications without which 
 experience would be impossible. 
 
 Aug. Sept. 1900. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 Rationalism and Traditionalism may conveniently 
 be used as terms to denote two philosophical 
 extremes or excesses, towards one or other of which 
 every mind, and the mind of every people and 
 age, is unduly bent. Rationalism, in this sense, 
 repudiates wholly, or suspects and distrusts, any 
 assent which is not based on self-evidence or 
 logical demonstration. Traditionalism, seeing the 
 sceptical and unpractical issue of Rationalism, not 
 only accepts the consent of mankind as an excel- 
 lent working criterion, but would make it the 
 universal, final, and infallible guide. Each of these 
 erroneous extremes is founded on a truth too much 
 neglected and overlooked by the other ; and, 
 according to the recognized law of its growth, it 
 is only after a series of diminishing oscillations 
 from one to the other that the human mind can 
 hope to find rest and equilibrium in the golden 
 mean. If Rationalism stands for an abuse' of 
 
2o6 THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 reason, Traditionalism stands for an abuse of the 
 principle of faith. To establish the right use of 
 faith and reason, and their exact relation one to 
 another, is a problem which is ever gradually 
 approaching a final solution, but which still 
 presents many obscure points. 
 
 We may assume, what has so often been 
 abundantly demonstrated, that the great bulk of 
 our beliefs rest on motives which are not strictly 
 rational, although in a broader sense they may be 
 justified as prudent, and as so far rational. On a 
 former occasion, when criticizing Mr. Balfour's 
 work on " The Foundations of Belief," we wrote 
 as follows : ^ 
 
 A moment's reflection will show that if, under pain 
 of unreasonableness, we were bound to discredit every 
 assertion until personally satisfied, from intrinsic 
 reasons, mental growth would be impossible and 
 society would perish. It would be like forbidding one 
 to eat any morsel of food that he had not drawn out 
 of the ground and prepared by his own unaided labour. 
 Nor, to go much further with Mr. Balfour, would the 
 effects be much less disastrous were one to refuse 
 credence to any testimony that did not evidently 
 conform to the logician's criterion of testimony. 
 
 Authority, as Mr. Balfour takes it, is a strictly 
 non-rational cause of belief; and its results, though 
 reasonably accepted, have not per se a justification in 
 
 » The Month, May, 1895. 
 
THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 207 
 
 philosophy, but must seek it elsewhere. That he 
 means something more than such an instinctively 
 rational acquiescence in authority as might be justified 
 by the " Illative Sense" seems to us plain, though he 
 does not explicitly advert to the possible confusion. 
 That children and simple folk believe what they are 
 told is often to a great extent a rational act, so far 
 as they confusedly believe, rightly or wrongly, that 
 their informant is a competent and truthful witness, 
 although to analyze or state their reason is beyond 
 them. But, according to Mr. Balfour, reason here but 
 supervenes, and mingles its force with that of a strong 
 mental instinct analogous to the gregarious or imitative 
 instincts of animals, which inclines us to believe an 
 assertion as such, rather than discredit it. 
 
 That this tendency to be influenced by assertion, 
 to assent rather than to doubt in the absence of all 
 evidence, does exist, can hardly be denied. Proofs 
 abound to show that men's beliefs and conclusions do, 
 as a fact, rest to a great extent on anything but reason. 
 The existence of prejudice is not so much an abuse 
 of reason as of this instinctive tendency to believe ; it 
 is but a hurtful issue of a principle which is, on the 
 whole, useful and beneficial, though, like all instincts, 
 fallible through want of adaptability to particular 
 cases. Hence it is for reason not to despise, but to 
 safeguard and supplement this instinct of docility. 
 
 That the same political views should be held by all 
 the members of the same family for generations, plainly 
 points to a non-rational influence at work ; that on the 
 whole all the members of one religious order should 
 agree as to the issue of an open question against all the 
 members of another order, — and that, for generations, 
 
2o8 THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 — is manifestly another instance in point. That in 
 deference to the " time-spirit " nearly all philosophers 
 should agree in certain leading ethical and scientific 
 conclusions, while hopelessly at variance about their 
 derivation and worth, may serve as another example. 
 It is needless to prove the existence of what is so 
 notorious ; but Mr. Balfour's concern is to show that 
 this influence, and the instinct it appeals to, are an 
 absolutely necessary and, in the rough, a legitimate 
 source of beliefs. Far from clogging the growth of 
 the mind, it supplies it with its daily bread. To refuse 
 these supplies is to perish. It is for reason to sift and 
 compare, to eliminate what is incompatible, to verify 
 and prove ; but as an inventive faculty reason is feeble, 
 almost useless in comparison. What reason disproves 
 is reasonably rejected ; but what reason cannot prove, 
 remains by the same title that it entered. 
 
 Even most of the beliefs that we seem to owe 
 to reason, depend more fully on influence which 
 furnishes so many of the premises. By reasoning we 
 but condition and determine their action upon our 
 mind ; and to credit ourselves with the whole result 
 would be to be proud of growing on the score that 
 we had eaten our meals regularly. No doubt one of 
 the causes why reason is in such superior repute is that 
 we look on its conclusions as actively self-produced, 
 forgetting how largely we are passively influenced by 
 the premises which we use, and of which we can often 
 give no rational account. 
 
 There are very few who can give reasons at all 
 for much that they believe ; still less, reasons that are 
 truly the cause of those beliefs, and not a mere after- 
 justification of an instinctive acquiescence in authority. 
 
THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 209 
 
 Like free-choice in the determination of our actions, 
 reason in the determination of our opinions is 
 everything in respect to its rights, but comparatively 
 nothing in its actual results — a supreme court of 
 appeal, but rarely appealed to. It criticises when 
 needful, but originates little. It supplements where 
 the ordinary means is deficient, i.e., where our 
 instinct of docility and our acquired mental habits 
 fail us. 
 
 Mr. Balfour insists that this instinct is not only 
 beneficial but necessary to all mental growth and 
 progress. He defends it against the contempt with 
 which it is fashionable to treat it, especially on the 
 part of "Naturalists" whose system really rests on 
 beliefs which are non-rational, and accepted merely on 
 psychological compulsion, and whose only reasonable 
 justification is trust in Nature's selected methods for 
 man's well-being. Our relation to this mental instinct 
 is much the same as that in which we stand to other 
 instincts. Previous to the full use of reason we are 
 governed by them wholly. They are for the most part 
 efficacious means to the securing of necessary and 
 natural ends, but, being of the nature of physical laws, 
 they are not self-adaptive to exceptional cases. When 
 reason supervenes, it may at times resist these instincts 
 for motives of its own kind ; or it may freely and 
 deliberately approve and follow them ; or it may 
 direct, modify, and adapt them ; or, finally, it may 
 trust the reins to Nature, and simply stand by to 
 check or veto whatever is seemingly against right 
 order. In all these cases, even in the last, the result 
 is in some sense reasonable, though not the direct 
 efiect of reason. Even the policeman who stands by 
 
THE USB OF SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 unseen to prevent a disturbance, may be credited with 
 the order preserved by the crowd. 
 
 So, too, many of our beliefs may be called reason- 
 able in so far as reason would veto any patent 
 absurdity. Still there will always be a large residuum 
 with which reason has had nothing to do ; mere 
 unsorted material, by no means to be bundled out 
 indiscriminately. 
 
 As is implied in the passages just cited, the 
 formation of the mind is dependent both on reason 
 and on what Mr. Balfour calls " authority," but 
 what we prefer to call " tradition." To exalt one 
 of these agencies at the expense of the other, or, 
 still worse, to its exclusion, is to fall into the error 
 of " Rationalism " or of "Traditionalism," as the 
 case may be. 
 
 It would be misleading to press the analogy 
 of bodily nutrition, so as to regard tradition as 
 the feeder of the mind, furnishing it with pabulum 
 which reason sorts, digests, and assimilates; for 
 the great bulk of our assents which are woven into 
 the texture of our mind never are and never can 
 be subjected to the criticism of our reason at all. 
 "We have simply to recognize the coexistence of 
 two distinct orders of assent in our mind; one, 
 of those in regard to which we are largely passive, 
 and another, of those which we have in some 
 sense formed for ourselves. It is evident that in 
 
THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 the latter our intellectual dignity as free self- 
 forming agents is chiefly vindicated, and that it is 
 only the very limited character of that dignity that 
 makes it needful to supplement our vast deficien- 
 cies by the humble and more humbling provision. 
 It is this reflection that inclines our pride to 
 resent this dependence on tradition, and to affect 
 that rationalism which idly professes to believe 
 nothing that cannot be proved. Had we entered 
 upon existence with a mind already stored with 
 innate judgments on every conceivable matter, with 
 unaccountable but irresistible synthetic a priori 
 assents, however we might have been mortified by 
 our dependence on so needful a supplement of 
 our narrow experience and feeble reasoning power, 
 yet we should have been able to put that ail-but 
 divine faith in such knowledge which we put in 
 the wisdom of nature's instincts. Our trust would 
 be such as we place in one who rarely or never 
 deceives, and whose word is as good as a proof of 
 the truth which it asserts. But we have been 
 provided for far more humbly. God does not 
 directly mould our mind Himself, or even through 
 necessary causes which execute His designs infaUibly, 
 but through the common beliefs and opinions of 
 the society into which we are born and in 
 which we live ; through the intellectual atmosphere 
 
THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 which we breathe ; that is, through the instrumen- 
 tahty of frail men who can both deceive and be 
 deceived. Thus it is that the irregularities of 
 individuals are lost in the crowd ; and though the 
 multitude may be deceived, the multitude will 
 not readily agree to deceive, still less will the 
 whole race, and that through successive generations. 
 Without accepting the consent of the millions as 
 an ultimate test of truth, yet in many matters 
 within its competence it is obviously a reliable 
 test, while in others it justifies a practical and 
 prudent assent. Yet, so far as tradition is our 
 only source of knowledge, it is full of many impuri- 
 ties ; and were we dependent on it alone we should 
 pay for the truth with a variable but always a very 
 appreciable percentage of error, though we should 
 have no more cause of just complaint against the 
 goodness of Nature than have the animals whose 
 instincts at times fail them, but are in the main 
 reliable. Not that tradition is necessarily reliable 
 in the greater number of its truths, but that it is 
 so for the greater practical truths on which the life 
 and preservation of the race depends — else the race 
 had perished long since. It is not and does not 
 pretend to be a provision for speculative intelligence. 
 If there is such a thing as pride of intellect — and 
 surely there is, though it is oftenest a stone to fling 
 
THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 213 
 
 at those who do not make way for our own pride — 
 it would seem to lie in a certain impatience at the 
 limited nature of our mental faculties, a resentment 
 that we are not created independent and self- 
 sufficing in regard to the possession of truth, but 
 must hang upon others and gather tares with our 
 wheat, and struggle from darkness to dimness and 
 from dimness to a little light about little things. We 
 would be as gods, knowing all things for ourselves ; 
 and so the vessel complains to the potter : Why 
 hast thou formed me thus ? 
 
 Although faith, in itself, apart from those 
 preambles which are its conditions but not its 
 cause, is a non-rational (not an irrational) assent, 
 yet in so far as it is an obedience of the mind, 
 believing simply because it is right to believe, not 
 from a criticism of the speaker's competence and 
 veracity, but from a recognition of his divine 
 authority to govern and shape the mind at his 
 will, it is a motive of certitude, i.e., of subjective 
 firmness in adhering to a truth. Here, as soon, 
 and as long, as we recognize an authority with 
 a right to govern and command our assents, 
 all disobedience, and therefore all doubt, becomes 
 sinful. There is, however, an immeasurable differ- 
 ence between the firmness of the assent which 
 a parent exacts of his child and that which God 
 
214 THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 exacts of His creature, for each rightly exacts 
 a firmness proportioned to the value of their own 
 competence and no more. No mother would 
 require of her child to receive her word as the 
 word of God, but only at her own estimate 
 of its value. To exact more, were an abuse of 
 authority; to exact as much, without any proof 
 or defence of her intellectual competence and 
 veracity, is lawful, just as she may lawfully physic 
 or feed or otherwise govern her child in body 
 or mind or morals without being called upon first 
 to prove her competence to the said child. That 
 the child's confidence may be occasionally abused, 
 no more interferes with the moral duty of docility 
 than does the possibility, of misguidance in prac- 
 tical matters of conduct excuse from obedience 
 in general. Unless the error be self-evident or 
 clearly evident, the child must submit to authority 
 as to its natural God-appointed guide, pending 
 the growth of the power of self-guidance. 
 
 If we look into the matter more closely we 
 shall find that, as in the case of our other natural 
 sources of knowledge, so here, the occasional error 
 is due to our own inferences from the data we 
 receive, and is not contained in the data them- 
 selves. 
 
 Although the child (in years or culture) can 
 
THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 215 
 
 form no logical estimate of the value of testimony, 
 yet it has a certain instinctive estimate. Its assent 
 does not fall directly upon the objective verity, 
 but upon the verity as mirrored and reflected in 
 the mind of its informant, and as getting its 
 objective value therefrom. To pass from the 
 undoubted, self-evident fact that its mother says 
 that fire burns, to the further fact that fire does 
 actually burn, is a matter of immediate though 
 unconscious inference, which may deceive occa- 
 sionally. Every parental assertion as such has 
 a certain weight of probability which in normal 
 cases may be treated as practical certainty, and 
 makes the unconscious inference from assertion 
 to fact quite legitimate and prudent, though not 
 infallible. Similarly the assent accorded to par- 
 ticular matters of public tradition and general 
 agreement falls directly upon the fact that it is 
 publicly said and generally agreed to ; and if the 
 mind is, in one and the same act, reflected from 
 the mirror to the reality — if, that is, because it is 
 generally said to be so, we infer that it is so — this 
 inference has a value just proportioned to the 
 trustworthiness of pubhc opinion in such matters, 
 and no more. For example, much that we read 
 in the legends of the saints is not professedly 
 a record of facts, but of what have been commonly 
 
ii6 THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 accounted as facts. It gives us the impression 
 made by the saint's personality on the pubHc mind 
 of past times. We are looking into a mirror, and 
 not directly into realities. It is left to our skill 
 and intelligence to interpret the symbolism ; to 
 recognize the man underneath the disguise of halo, 
 and emblem, and jewelled vesture ; to separate 
 what the old schoolmen would call the " second 
 intention " from the " first intention," the idealiza- 
 tion from the reality, the subjective modification 
 from the object modified. It will be strange if 
 false miracles are not mingled with true, or if the 
 true be recorded without some decoration and 
 addition. With practical wisdom the Church gives 
 us the story in the gross and as a whole, without 
 much attempt to sever chaff from wheat, dross 
 from gold, so long as the dross is not hurtful. 
 Were it all given to us as objective truth, and 
 not formally as tradition, then indeed it would 
 be a hurt to deem fact what is not fact, however 
 unimportant ; but the only fact the Church vouches 
 f-ar in the matter is that these things have been 
 generally said and believed by reputable persons, 
 and presumably have some basis in history. 
 
 The Catholic religion, therefore, without being 
 traditionalist, sets no small store by tradition as 
 a method, nay, even as the principal and most 
 
THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 217 
 
 practical method of forming the human mind. 
 She sees clearly that assents which in one way are 
 non-rational — and amongst them the assent of 
 Faith — are from a wider and higher point of view 
 rational and necessary. Still, she has never 
 regarded tradition as an exclusive or ultimate 
 criterion of truth, or allowed its claims to stand 
 in the face of self-evident or demonstrable con- 
 tradiction. She knows well that logic and 
 analytical reasoning can never lead the mind to 
 super-rational truths, nor, even with any facility, 
 security, and universality, to the common truths 
 of theism. Yet, if analytical reason or criticism 
 is not a guide, at least it is a test to be used; 
 not always — else our minds would be starved — but 
 in cases of reasonable doubt. However liable to 
 abuse, the Church does not, on that account, 
 discard or despise what without offence might be 
 called the " rationalizing " of our faith — its defence 
 against the charge of being in conflict with itself 
 or with demonstrable truth of any kind ; its illus- 
 tration ; its ever exacter expression ; its orderly 
 and scientific treatment. Herein we have a great 
 safeguard against that fanaticism and superstition 
 which would be favoured by traditionalism and 
 a total neglect of criticism. If at certain periods 
 she has leant over to the side of traditionalism to 
 
2i8 THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 counteract the rationalistic bias of the age, if to 
 the earliest Church Aristotle was the foe of faith, 
 she has been no less ready to lean over to the 
 other side, and to press Aristotle into her service 
 against an uncritical and short-sighted contempt 
 of reason in the supposed interests of faith. Not 
 that in any age she has been traditionahst or 
 rationalist, or neglected the sound principles per- 
 verted by both extremes. If the matter of her 
 earliest creeds and symbols has been provided by 
 tradition, their very form and setting forth has 
 been the work of reason; nor does the structure 
 of the Siimma of Aquinas merit the reproach of 
 rationalism any more justly than that of the 
 Apostles' Creed, of which it is but an evolution. 
 
 Philosophy has its due function in the collective 
 mind of the Church as in the individual mind. 
 Reason and analysis are not guides only, but cor- 
 rectives. We learn through faith, through tradition, 
 through imitation, through unconscious inference, 
 for the most part ; that is, through sources where 
 truth is to some extent mingled with error; and, 
 so far as we have leisure and culture, our reason 
 sifts and analyses these multitudinous assents; 
 rejects what is spurious and worthless, classifies 
 and orders the remainder, always tending to some 
 comprehensive unification of all our knowledge 
 
THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 219 
 
 into one organic wliole. So far as this last ten- 
 dency is conscious and reflex, we may be said 
 to be in quest of a philosophy ; but even wherever 
 reason in any way begins to work on the gathered 
 materials of thought, there is an unconscious 
 groping after this same unity. Similarly in practical 
 matters we are guided in the main by instincts, 
 passions, habits, customs, fashions, laws ; and 
 it is only to supplement the occassional deficiencies 
 of these humble guides that reason is called in 
 to decide problems of right and wrong. Philosophy, 
 therefore, is very dispensable for most individuals, 
 but not so for society as a whole. There must 
 be those who frame laws, who search out truths, 
 who correct errors and abuses, else the corruptive 
 tendency of tradition would be unchecked. 
 
 So albeit that Divine Faith, and in a large 
 measure human tradition, is the means whereby 
 religious truth is apprehended by the millions of 
 Christendom, and indeed by all in so far as they 
 are Christians ; yet the Church acknowledges the 
 need of some sort of public philosophy whereby 
 the very notion of faith may be vindicated, the data 
 of faith set in order, expressed, and translated into 
 the mind-language and word-language of the day, 
 and not only defended from the charge of conflict 
 with demonstrated truth, but in some measure 
 
THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 synthetised with secular knowledge into one organic 
 whole. Still more needful is such a corrective 
 rationalism when it is a question not of the infallible 
 religious data of Divine Faith, but the very fallible 
 religious data of human tradition. 
 
 For this end the Church has always implicitly 
 or explicitly availed herself of some kind of 
 philosophy in giving expression to her teaching. 
 Those who find fault with her for this forget 
 that there is a philosophy, nay, a metaphysics 
 implied in the common language of the rudest 
 savage or the simplest child. It is not only the 
 Gospel of St. John but the Sermon on the Mount 
 which depends for its intelligibility on a pre- 
 supposed philosophy. 
 
 We may, not unfairly, to some extent regard 
 a philosophy as a mind-language, as a system of 
 inward ideal signs or forms by which the mind 
 actively presents and expresses to itself the whole 
 body of that knowledge of which it is first the 
 passive recipient. " Not unfairly," since every 
 philosophy has also a word-language whose parts 
 and inflections answer roughly to something in the 
 mind. And as we can largely translate from one 
 philosophical word-language into another with 
 substantial fidelity, we may safely infer that there 
 is a corresponding agreement in the mind-language, 
 
THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 although there will always be an extensive residue 
 of irreconcilable difference in detail owing to differ- 
 ences of experience, information, and reflection. 
 In a word, as language itself is natural, and as all 
 languages in spite of the widest differences, observe 
 certain laws in their growth towards an even more 
 flexible system of expression, so the tendency to 
 unify our ideas into a system, and the fundamental 
 lines of that procedure are common to all men, 
 however antagonistic their analysis or expression 
 of the process. The Catholic religion can no more 
 be independent of philosophy than it can be of 
 language. The Gospel is preached in human words, 
 and the words must be translated into human 
 thoughts and ideas ; thoughts and ideas imply 
 categories, and categories bring us into philosophy. 
 
 But then, since Catholicism is the religion of 
 humanity, of all ages and countries, of all levels 
 of culture, it cannot afford to make itself dependent 
 on that which is contingent, local, and mutable, but 
 must in some sense speak a Catholic and universal 
 language, and rise above the differences of philoso- 
 phies and grasp that which is common to all. 
 How, as a matter of fact, has the Church dealt 
 with this problem ? 
 
 She has taken a word-language which when 
 living had a sort of territorial universality, and 
 
THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 which being now dead has the greater universahty 
 of an universal and immutable standard — a 
 language the meaning of whose terms is no longer 
 fluctuating but fixed, and in which her teaching, 
 once stereotyped, can be translated into the living 
 languages of various countries as faithfully as 
 possible. Yet this were not enough, for the realities 
 which she proposes to our faith have first to be 
 conceived, formed, and expressed in the ideal 
 language of the mind before they are formulated 
 upon the lips ; they have to be clothed in philosophy 
 before they are clothed in words. They cannot lie 
 in the mind as disconnected apprehensions in no 
 way entering into the thought-system. To appre- 
 hend is also to classify ; it is to compare and 
 contrast; to observe agreements and differences, 
 likenesses and unlikenesses. And so the Church 
 has taken a classical philosophy which when still 
 living — and who can say that it is yet dead or will 
 ever die, save as to its excesses and follies, as long 
 as man's first philosophical essay is realism ? — 
 which when living attained an universality even 
 wider than that of the Latin or Greek tongue; 
 which was professedly the philosophy of common 
 sense and common language; which by reason of 
 its child-like directness and simplicity departed as 
 little as possible from the fundamental conceptions 
 
THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 223 
 
 common to all philosophies, and in this philosophy 
 she eventually decided to embody her dogmas, 
 leaving it to those who should care to do so at 
 their own risk, to translate them from the mind- 
 forms of Aristotle into the mind-forms of other 
 thinkers, salva substantia. 
 
 To suppose, however, that in using Aristotle for 
 this purpose the Church hereby commits herself to 
 his philosophy as the only possible or the best 
 possible, would be almost as foolish as to suppose 
 that she regarded ecclesiastical Latin as the 
 original or the best possible language. She does 
 not deny that Chinese may admirably express 
 the fact of the Immaculate Conception, but she 
 doee not guarantee the translation in the sense 
 in which she guarantees the Vulgate to be sub- 
 stantially faithful to the originals from which it 
 was translated. Similarly, if the facts which she 
 expresses as " transubstantiation," or "hypostatic 
 union," or " trinity " can be faithfully conveyed in 
 the philosophy of any modern school, well and 
 good ; but she does not guarantee the translation. 
 
 Often when she condemns certain formulae and 
 verbal expressions, she takes them only according 
 to the sense they bear objectively in the philosophy 
 which she has adopted, and takes no account of the 
 sense their author may attach to them, just as, at 
 
224 THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 other times, she condemns what is objectively 
 defensible, as false in sensu auctoris. 
 
 By Scholasticism we understand the application 
 of Aristotle to theology, or the expression of the 
 facts and realities of revelation in the mind- 
 language of the peripatetics. That the gain to 
 theology in clearness, order, stability was immense 
 no one can deny; and, as a flexible and exact 
 medium of expression is one of the chief instru- 
 ments in the evolution of any science, so here the 
 vitality and rapid growth of theological thought 
 in the schools was undoubtedly the result of this 
 gain. Let us grant that it was to some extent 
 a one-sided growth, neglecting as it did the historic 
 and inductive method, then undreamt of; that it 
 simply evolved into explicit recognition what was 
 already contained in received data ; that it brought 
 no new facts to light, but simply analysed the facts 
 to hand which it took for granted. Yet this very 
 analysis, ordering, systematising, was at the time 
 a more urgent need. It is better to digest a little 
 thoroughly than to overload our minds, as is now 
 the fashion, with undigested masses of information. 
 Doubtless, for lack of sufficient matter to work 
 upon, this digestive process was carried in many 
 ways to excess, and the desire to unify and 
 systematise made men apt to press fact into accord 
 
THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 225 
 
 with theory, instead of waiting patiently for fuller 
 light. 
 
 It was the error of the scholastics to put too 
 full a reliance on the secular philosophy, history, 
 physics, and criticism of their own day ; to be 
 over-eager to enter into harmony with it, and then 
 to regard their painfully-wrought synthesis as final 
 and perpetual. Clinging to that synthesis, their 
 successors were often disposed either to ignore the 
 total change of position on the part of secular 
 thought, or else to labour vainly to bring the world 
 back to that philosophy which their synthesis 
 supposed, and for which alone it availed. Hence 
 the vague idea among Catholics as well as among 
 non-Catholics^ that the Church had virtually incor- 
 
 ' Though introducing a hostile conclusion, the following remark 
 rightly insists on the contingent nature of the alliance between the 
 Catholic creed and the philosophy which it uses to express itself : 
 
 " It should be remembered that the Eastern Church knows 
 nothing of scholasticism, and has never passed through this phase 
 of thought. The West has ; and although as a system generally 
 taught and received, scholasticism has passed away, yet it has not 
 done so without leaving many a trace behind it. The reduction of 
 matter and form to certain irreducible minima are again con- 
 ceptions which we owe to scholasticism. The doctrine cf 
 intention as now taught is another scholastic product. Accordingly, 
 the great Roman Church, which in formulating the doctrine of the 
 Immaculate Conception of the Ever- Virgin Mary has carried the 
 application of logic to spiritual matters further than any other 
 Church has dared to do, finds it necessary first to teach its future 
 theologians the scholastic philosophy, that into minds prepared by 
 P 
 
226 THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 porated Aristotle's philosophy into ' her official 
 teaching. That she makes use of it as a fixed 
 standard of expression we have already seen, but 
 that she commits herself to any of its tenets that 
 are not necessarily accepted (however expressed) by 
 the common sense of all mankind we may boldly 
 deny ; for, like every other philosophy worthy the 
 name, it contains certain elements given irresistibly 
 by the very nature of the human mind, combined 
 with many peculiar and questionable features which 
 are the work of human ingenuity. 
 
 That the Church should require her ecclesiastics 
 to be well versed in the thought-language which 
 that teaching may be poured the Western theology built upon 
 scholasticism." (A Complete Manual of Canon Law, by Oswald J. 
 Reichel, vol. ii., Preface. London, 1896. P.T.O.) 
 
 If it be urged that " quisquis deinceps asserere, defendere seu 
 tenere pertinaciter praesumpserit, quod anima rationalis seu 
 intellectiva non sit forma corporis humani per se essentialiter 
 tamquam hasreticus sit censendus" [Concilium Viennense], and 
 that therefore Catholics are tied to the system of hylomorphism, 
 it will be now evident how such an objection should be met. The 
 Council addresses a public which spoke the language and used 
 the forms of the scholastics, and therefore it uses that same 
 language. The contrary doctrine in that same school of thought 
 denied the substantial unity of human nature and so imperilled 
 the right understanding of more than one dogma of faith. If the 
 Greeks had had to deal with similar heresies they could not have 
 formulated the truth without supposing and using some kind of 
 philosophy. Even Anglicans can never hope to say anything 
 intelligent or coherent without committing themselves to theories 
 of thought and reality which form no part of revelation. 
 
THE USE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 227 
 
 she has made her own is no more wonderful than 
 that she should exact from them a knowledge of 
 ecclesiastical Latin. Such action cannot be twisted 
 into an indiscriminate approval of Aristotle and a 
 condemnation of every other philosophy. 
 
 As far as the cultivation of an analytical habit 
 of mind goes, it perhaps matters less that the 
 philosophy should be absolutely unquestionable 
 than that it should be coherent, systematic, well 
 worked out, and as close as possible to the lines 
 of ordinary unsophisticated thought. This, perhaps, 
 will always give Aristotle precedence as an educa- 
 tional instrument, as the innumerable revivals and 
 reactions in his favour indicate. Of course the 
 exclusive cultivation of analytical habits to the 
 neglect of the historical and positive methods can 
 lead to nothing but the narrowest rationahsm, and 
 eventually to scepticism. It would be to provide 
 an elaborate machinery with nothing to work upon. 
 It was through this one-sidedness that the abuse, 
 not the use, of scholasticism led to Protestantism, 
 and thence to the widespread scepticism now 
 prevalent outside the Church. Yet it is no less 
 plain that an indiscriminate traditionahsm would 
 have reacted in the same direction, for it is only in 
 the right adjustment and tempering of all methods 
 that truth is safeguarded. 
 
THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO 
 DEVOTION. 
 
 Theology may be used in a wider or a more 
 restricted sense. Here we employ the term to 
 signify what is known as scholastic theology, that 
 is, the essay to translate the teachings of Catholic 
 revelation into the terms and forms of Aristotelian 
 philosophy ; and thereby to give them a scientific 
 unity. 
 
 Roughly speaking, the difference between the 
 philosophical and the vulgar way of conceiving and 
 speaking about things, is that the former is 
 abstract, orderly, and artificial; the latter, concrete, 
 disorderly, and natural. The exigencies of our 
 feeble and limited memory make it necessary for 
 us to classify our experiences into some sort 
 of unity. A library is no use to us unless we can 
 introduce some kind of system or order into its 
 arrangement, and make an intelligible catalogue 
 of its contents. We can consider the order of 
 size, or of subject, or of authors and titles taken 
 
THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 229 
 
 alphabetically, or of date of publication ; or 
 taking any of these as the first class-note, we 
 can employ the others for subdivision. We do 
 not invent these orders, but we find them ; and so 
 when we map out the world into categories, we 
 do not invent but recognize one or other of these 
 arrangements things admit of. We can, however, 
 classify the books, not only in our mind or in a 
 catalogue, but also in our library ; we can even 
 classify nature in our museums ; but the world 
 at large refuses to be harnessed to our categories, 
 and goes its own rude unscientific way. Now 
 there is no one, perhaps, who will deny that a 
 natural-history museum does truly represent Nature? 
 that under a certain aspect one who has studied 
 Nature there, knows more about her than he who 
 has lived all his life in the woods ? But only 
 under a certain aspect is this true. For such a 
 presentation of Nature is abstract and negatively 
 unreal. Beetles do not march the fields in such 
 logically ordered phalanxes ; nor do they wear 
 pins thrust through their middles ; nor are birds' 
 eyes made of glass, or their viscera of sawdust, or 
 their muscles of wire. A visitor from some other 
 creation who knew no more of our world than 
 that, would think it a very simple affair; very easy 
 to remember and to retail. Still how little would 
 
230 THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 
 
 he know of its reality compared with a denizen 
 of the backwoods ! Yet if our backwoods-man 
 could be educated scientifically in such a museum, 
 he would receive almost a new power of vision, 
 a power of observing and recognizing and remem- 
 bering order where before he had only seen chaos. 
 And in this lies the great advantage of abstract 
 and scientific consideration ; of precisions that 
 are unreal ; of suppositions that are impossible. 
 Only by these devices can we digest our experience 
 piecemeal, which else would remain in confused 
 unsorted masses. But the more abstract, general, 
 and simple our classification is, and the further 
 removed it is from the infinite complexity of concrete 
 reality, the more we need continually to remind 
 ourselves that its truth is merely hypothetical, and 
 holds only in the abstract. This is what the earlier 
 political economists (for example) forgot, when they 
 drew many conclusions that were perfectly irrefut- 
 able, on the purely abstract supposition that 
 man's sole motive is the desire to make money ; 
 but that were altogether false in the concrete real 
 world where thousands of other motives complicate 
 the problem. 
 
 It must further be noticed that on the whole 
 the backwoods-man has a truer knowledge of 
 Nature than a mere acquaintance with a science- 
 
THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 231 
 
 manual could ever impart. Both kinds of knowledge 
 are in their own way lamentably imperfect ; the 
 one through indistinctness and confusion; the 
 other through unreality and poverty of content. 
 Yet it is less misleading to take a confused, general 
 view of an object, than to view one of its parts 
 or elements violently divorced from the rest. The 
 rudest clown knows better what man is, than would 
 some being who should know nothing but the 
 articulation of the human skeleton — true as this 
 latter knowledge would be as far as it went. 
 
 It is clear then that, as far as the natural world 
 is concerned, what is scientifically true in the 
 abstract, may be practically false in the concrete. 
 But when we are dealing with the spiritual and 
 supernatural world, we are under a further dis- 
 advantage ; for we can think and speak of it only 
 in analogous terms borrowed from this world of 
 our sensuous experience, and with no more exacti- 
 tude than when we would express music in terms 
 of colour, or colour in terms of music. So far 
 as the most abstract and ultimate ideas of our 
 philosophy prescind from all sensible determinations 
 of being, and deal with the merest outline and 
 empty framework of thought, they may have some 
 literal value in the supersensible world. We can 
 say: This, that, or the other follows necessarily 
 
232 THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 
 
 from the principles of metaphysics, and is therefore 
 as true as those principles are. But it is not 
 the whole truth ; and indeed the more abstract and 
 general are the terms under which a thing is known, 
 the less do we know about it. A comparatively 
 concrete idea like Man or Politician gives us a 
 mine of information about the subject of which 
 it is predicated ; whereas Being, Substance, Cause, 
 give us the very minimum of information. Now 
 the terms that are in any sense common to the 
 world of our experience and to the world beyond 
 it, are, from the nature of the case, the most 
 barren and shadowy of all. If, e.g., we look at 
 Porphyry's tree where " substance " bifurcates into 
 "material substance" and "spiritual substance," 
 the former branch develops and subdivides down 
 to the real and particular, but the later breaks 
 off abruptly and leaves us in the dark as to 
 all its concrete determinations. For all reason 
 tells us, we know nothing of angels except what 
 can be deduced a priori from the general idea of 
 non-material substance. To our imagination they 
 are utterly characterless and uninteresting beings ; 
 quite different from the saints, of whom we can 
 sometimes feel the individuality in spite of their 
 biographers. 
 
 Granting then all that the most exacting 
 
THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 233 
 
 metaphysician might claim, any non-analogous 
 ideas we can form of the other world are necessarily 
 of the thinnest and most uninstructive description, 
 and it is only by liberal recourse to analogy that 
 we can put any flesh on their bare ribs. Whatever 
 shred of truth they convey to us may, or rather 
 must, like all half-evidence, get an entirely different 
 complexion from the additional mass of truth that 
 is hid from us. When, however, we begin to 
 supplement by use of analogy, and (e.g.) to cover 
 the bare notion of a First Cause by clothing 
 it with all the excellences of creation, multiplied 
 to infinity, purified of their limitations, and fused 
 into one simple perfection, then we must frankly 
 own that we are trying to comprehend the incom- 
 prehensible, to equal a sphere to a plane. In saying 
 this, we do not deny for a moment, that the infinite 
 can to some extent be expressed in terms of the 
 finite; but are only insisting on the purely analogous 
 character of such expression. Nor again are we 
 denying the utility, or even the necessity, of such 
 an endeavour; for we should be forced equally 
 to deny the use of all scientific, as opposed to 
 vulgar, modes of conception ; whereas these two 
 modes check and supplement one another. 
 
 It is a received principle of scholasticism that 
 the "connatural" object of the human mind is 
 
234 T^HE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 
 
 this material world which is presented to our 
 senses ; and that we are forced to think of every- 
 thing else, even of our own mind and soul, in the 
 terms ot that world. Hence all our " explanations " 
 of spiritual activity are, however disguisedly, 
 mechanical at root ; thought is a kind of photo- 
 graphy or portraiture ; free-will a sort of weighing 
 process ; the soul itself, so far as it is not described 
 negatively, is described in terms of body. Having 
 a direct intuitive knowledge of these spiritual 
 operations we can be, and should be, conscious 
 that our explanations of them are inadequate and 
 analogous. Still more when we try to explain that 
 world beyond experience, internal or external, 
 ought we to be on our guard lest we forget the 
 merely analogous character of our thought. The 
 error called "anthropomorphism" does not lie 
 so much in thinking and speaking of God human- 
 wise — for that we are constrained to do by the 
 structure of our minds — as in forgetting that such 
 a mode of conception is analogous. The chief use 
 of metaphysic or natural theology lies in the fact — 
 not that it gives us any more comprehensible idea 
 of God — but that it impresses upon us the necessary 
 inadequacy of our human way of regarding Him. 
 Neither the metaphysical nor the vulgar idea is 
 adequate, though taken together they correct one 
 
THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 235 
 
 another ; but taken apart, it may be said that the 
 vulgar is the less unreal of the two. To illustrate 
 this from nearer and simpler cases : The peasant 
 thinks of his soul as a filmy replica of self interfused 
 with his body — as co-extended with it, part 
 answering to part ; but the philosopher will tell 
 him that the soul is present " wholly to the whole 
 body, and wholly to each several part." But this 
 latter statement has no real value, save so far as 
 it insists that the peasant's view is only equivalent 
 and not literal truth — that is, so far as it is a 
 repudiation of anthropomorphism. What does it 
 tell us as to the real mode of presence ? That the 
 truth lies unassignably between two erroneous 
 extremes ; first, that the soul is, as the peasant 
 conceives it, interfused co-extensively with the 
 body; secondly, that it is concentrated in every 
 point of the body. There are certain advantages 
 attached to either mode of presence ; but these two 
 modes, though incompatible for extended substances, 
 are in some way combined in a spiritual substance, 
 not literally, but as far as the practical advantage 
 of them is concerned. The vulgar notion would 
 deprive the spirit of some of its excellence, and 
 would create many difficulties if not recognized as 
 inadequate and anthropomorphic. Similarly, if the 
 philosopher forgets that he has only determined 
 
236 THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 
 
 the locus of truth, the extremes between which it 
 lies inaccessibly; if he thinks that he has got to 
 more than its practical equivalent, or has got any 
 proper non-analogous notion of spiritual substance 
 and presence, he may wake to find that in com- 
 bining two incompatible ideas, he has got zero for 
 his result. 
 
 The same is to be said of our conception of the 
 Divine omnipresence : 
 
 Out beyond the shining of the furthest star 
 Thou Thyself are stretching infinitely far, 
 Nature cannot hold Thee, earth is all too strait 
 For Thy endless glory and Thy royal state. 
 
 This is the common, human way of viewing the 
 matter; but the philosopher sees at once that it 
 negates a certain perfection or advantage to be 
 found in concentrated, "punctual" presence; and 
 that all such advantages, however incompatible 
 with any mode of being familiar to us, must be 
 realized in God. Hence he insists on this latter 
 as well ; saying, at the same time, that God is not 
 referable to space as an extension or a point might 
 be, but in some way quite inconceivable in itself, 
 though conceivable as to its advantages. The 
 effect of such an explanation on the common mind 
 will often be that God is not everywhere, as 
 hitherto supposed, but nowhere; not far, indeed, 
 
THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 237 
 
 yet not near ; not distant, yet not present. Again, 
 eternity, to the peasant, means time without end, 
 century upon century, per omnia scecula sceculorum : 
 the divine life, Hke our own, drags on, part aftar 
 part, experience upon experience. God is the 
 " Ancient of Days," hned and wrinkled with asonian 
 cares. But to remove the limitations involved in 
 such a conception, the philosopher tells us that 
 God's life is tota simul, all gathered up into an 
 indivisible now, into the imaginary crack that 
 divides one second ot time from another. As before, 
 he tells us to take these two extreme errors together; 
 and without attempting to fuse them, to hold them 
 side by side in the mind, confident that the truth 
 lies indefinably between them. And so far he does 
 well. But if he thinks that these two assertions 
 can be combined into a direct expression of the 
 truth, he will come to the conclusion that God is 
 in no way referable to time ; and so miss that half- 
 truth which the peasant apprehends. 
 
 Thus the use of philosophy lies in its insisting 
 on the inadequacy of the vulgar statement ; its 
 abuse, in forgetting the inadequacy of its own, and 
 thereby falling into a far more grievous error than 
 that which it would correct.^ 
 
 ^ It is curious to find tiie same lesson inculcated in a. very- 
 different school, but in a parallel connection. Speaking of the 
 
238 THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 
 
 It is a fact that the Judseo-Christian revelation 
 has been communicated in vulgar and not in 
 
 attempts of metaphysics to describe the Absolute in negations. 
 Professor Andrew Seth {Man's Place in the Coiwos, p. 218) asks: 
 "What is the inevitable effect upon the mind of this cluster of 
 negations? Surely it will be this: Either the Absolute will be 
 regarded as a mere unknowable with which we have no concern ; 
 or the denial of will, intellect, morality, personality, beauty, and 
 truth" {i.e., the denial of these attributes in their experienced 
 forms and with their finite limitations and distinctness] "will be 
 taken to mean that the Absolute is an unity indifferent to these 
 higher aspects of experience. It will be regarded as non-personial 
 and impersonal in the sense of being below these distinctions ; and 
 our Absolute will then remarkably resemble the soulless substance 
 of the materialist. Nothing is more certain than that extremes 
 meet in this fashion ; and that the attempt to reach the super- 
 human falls back into the infra-human. Now Mr. Bradley, of 
 course, intends his unity to be a higher, not a lower unity. ' The 
 Absolute is not personal, because it is personal and more. It is, 
 in a. word, super-personal.' But he is not blind to the dangers 
 that lurk in his denials. ' It is better,' he even warns us, if there 
 is risk of falling back upon the lower unity, ' to affirm personality 
 than to call the Absolute impersonal.' But there is more than a 
 risk, I maintain ; there is a certainty that this will be the result. 
 . Our statements about the 'Absolute ' . . . are actually nearer 
 the truth when they give up the pretence of literal exactitude, and 
 speak in terms (say) of morality and religion, applying to it the 
 characteristics of our own highest experience. Such language 
 recognizes itself in general (or at least, it certainly should recognize 
 itself) as possessing only symbolical truth — as being, in fact, 
 ♦thrown out,' as Matthew Arnold used to say, at a vast reality. 
 But both religion and the higher poetry — ^just because they give 
 up the pretence of an impossible exactitude — carry us, I cannot 
 doubt, nearer to the meaning of the word, than the formula of an 
 abstract metaphysics." 
 
THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 239 
 
 philosophical terms and modes of thought. The 
 Old Testament seems frankly anthropomorphic 
 from the first ; God lives, thinks, feels, acts under 
 limitations, differing only in degree from our own ; 
 and it would almost seem as if the Incarnation 
 were timed to counteract the weakening of rehgion, 
 incident to the more abstract and philosophic 
 theology of later ages. Men are influenced through 
 their imagination and their emotions ; and in 
 nowise through their abstract ideas. In the 
 measure that God is dehumanized by philosophy, 
 He becomes unreal and ineffectual in regard to 
 our life and conduct. God has revealed Himself, 
 not to the wise and prudent, not to the theologian 
 or the philosopher, but to babes, to fishermen, to 
 peasants, to the profanum vulgus, and therefore He 
 has spoken their language, leaving it to the others 
 to translate it (at their own risk) into forms more 
 acceptable to their taste. The Church's guardian- 
 ship in the matter is to preserve the exact ideas 
 which that simple language conveyed to its first 
 hearers, knowing well that those human ideas and 
 thought-forms are indefinitely inadequate to the 
 eternal realities which they shadow forth. " This 
 is My Body" — what did these words mean for 
 Peter and Andrew and the rest; that is all she 
 enquires about. What does she care about the 
 
240 THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 
 
 metaphysics of transubstantiation, except so far as 
 metaphysicians have to be answered in their own 
 language, and on their own assumptions ? If she 
 says the soul is the " form " of the body, it is not 
 that she has a revelation of philosophy to com- 
 municate, but because the question is asked by a 
 hylomorphist ; and it is the nearest way the truth 
 can be put to him. 
 
 This concrete, coloured, imaginative expression 
 of Divine mysteries, as it lay in the mind of the 
 first recipients, is both the lex orandi and the lex 
 credendi; it is the rule and corrective, both of 
 popular devotion and of rational theology. Devotion 
 tends to become more and more anthropomorphic 
 and forgetful of the inadequacy of revelation, and 
 thus to run into puerilities and superstitions. 
 Philosophical theology tends to the other extreme 
 of excessive abstraction and vague unreality. The 
 Church, by ever recalling them to the original rule 
 of tradition, preserves the balance between them 
 and makes them help one another. Just as experi- 
 ence is the test and check of those scientific 
 hypotheses, by which we try to classify, unite, and 
 explain experience ; so revelation is the test and 
 check of all philosophical attempts to unify and 
 elucidate its contents. We do not, of course, mean 
 that popular devotions are to dictate to theology. 
 
THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 241 
 
 but that theology together with them, must be 
 brought to the test of primitive revelation as inter- 
 preted by the Church. Any rationalist explanation 
 that would make prayer nonsensical, or would 
 encourage laxity, or would make havoc of the 
 ordinary sane and sensible religious notions of the 
 faithful, is eo ipso condemned as not squaring with 
 facts. So far, for example, as the philosophical 
 conception of God's independence tends to create 
 an impression that He is not pleased with our love, 
 or grieved by our sin, it is opposed to revelation, 
 which says : " Grieve not the Holy Spirit ; " or, 
 " My Spirit will not alway strive with man ; " and 
 which everywhere speaks of God, and therefore 
 wants us to think of God, as subject to passions 
 like our own. And in so thinking of God, we 
 think inadequately no doubt, but we are far less 
 inadequate, than were we to think of Him as 
 passionless and indifferent. The one conception 
 paralyzes as the other stimulates devotion. Again, 
 if the philosophical explanation of God's working 
 in our will creates an impression fatal to the sense 
 of liberty and responsibility, it is so far counter to 
 revelation ; and no less so is any explanation of 
 our liberty which would take the reins out of God's 
 hands, or make Divine foreknowledge impossible. 
 Here obviously is a case where philosophy shoots 
 
 
242 THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 
 
 aslant the truth, first on one side and then on the 
 other ; and can never strike it fair, but commends 
 to us the paradox: "Watch, as though all depended 
 on watching ; and pray, as though all depended on 
 praying." Again, predestination and foreknowledge 
 are doctrines destructive of religious energy, as soon 
 as we forget their abstract and merely scientific 
 character; but revelation plainly intends us to go on 
 as though God knew as little of the future as we 
 do, and were waiting for events to develop, before 
 fixing our doom. "Oh, did I but know that I 
 should persevere," cried k Kempis, puzzled with 
 the theology of predestination and trying to look 
 at things as God sees them. " Do now, what thou 
 wouldst do if thou didst know, and thou shalt be 
 very safe," was the answer. Rational theology is 
 in some sense an attempt to look at things back- 
 before, in a non-human, non-natural way; and it 
 is justified in this endeavour only so far as it tends 
 to cure us of our terrestrial " provincialism ; " but 
 it is not wonderful that to us things so viewed 
 should seem distorted and unreal, the moment we 
 forget that its use is mainly corrective — that it is 
 medicine and not food. 
 
 To come to more distinctively Christian beliefs, 
 we have examples in the Trinity and Incarnation, 
 of the inability of the human mind to strike a 
 
THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 243 
 
 truth fair in the centre, and of its need of seemingly 
 contrary and complementary expressions of in- 
 accessible ideas. The simple believer can succes- 
 sively affirm that in God there are three Persons, 
 and that in God there is one Nature. He can even 
 know that what is not simultaneously verifiable of 
 creatures, may be verifiable of the Creator in Dome 
 higher sense as yet unsuspected ; that the truth lies 
 midway between what he means by one person and 
 •what he means by three persons. But let the 
 theologian begin to explain "nature," and "person," 
 and to insist on his mentally putting together in 
 one whole, assertions hitherto held as true but 
 irreconcilable parts ; and the chances are, that one 
 or other of these parts will be sacrificed in the vain 
 effort to secure a forced harmony. 
 
 But more particularly it is in relation to the 
 Incarnation and its attendant mysteries, that it is 
 important to remember the abstract character of 
 certain theological conclusions, and the superiority 
 of the concrete language of revelation as a guide 
 to truth. The whole doctrine of Christ's Kev(oa-i<; 
 or self-emptying, can be explained in a minimizing 
 -way almost fatal to devotion, and calculated to rob 
 the Incarnation of all its helpfulness by leaving the 
 ordinary mind with something perilously near the 
 phantasmal Christ of the Docetans. Christ we are 
 
244 THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 
 
 truly taught to believe, laid aside by a free act, all 
 those prerogatives which were His birthright as 
 the God-Man, that He might not be better off than 
 we who have to win our share in that glory through 
 humiliation and suffering ; that He might be a High 
 Priest touched with a feeling for our infirmities, 
 tempted as we in all points, sin only excepted. 
 Yet when the theologian has finished his treatise: 
 De Scientia Christi ; when he has impressed upon 
 us that Christ was exempt from the two internal 
 sources of all our temptations, sc, the darkness of 
 our mind and the rebellion of our body; that in 
 His case, temptations from without met with no 
 more response from within than when we offer 
 food to a corpse ; we cannot help feeling that under 
 whatever abstraction this may be true, yet it cannot 
 be the whole truth, unless all who have turned to 
 Christ in their temptations and sorrows have been 
 wofully deluded — unless the lex orandi and the lex 
 credendi are strangely at strife. Also when we are 
 told that Christ's Sacramental Body is not referred 
 to space ratione sui, but only ratione accidentis ; that 
 it is not moved when the species are carried in 
 procession; that we are not nearer to it at the- 
 altar than at the North Pole ; we can only say that 
 this "ratione sui" consideration does not concern. 
 us, nor is it any part of God's revelation. It does 
 
THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 245 
 
 well to remind us that our Lord's Body is not to be 
 thought of carnally and grossly ; that our natural 
 imagination of this mystery is necessarily childish 
 and inadequate. But it does not give us a more, 
 but if anything, a less adequate conception of it. 
 " This is My Body " is nearer the mark than 
 metaphysics can ever hope to come ; and of the 
 two superstitions, that of the peasant who is too 
 literally anthropomorphic, is less than that of the 
 philosopher who should imagine his part of the 
 truth to be the whole. 
 
 Again, what is called the Hidden Life of our 
 Lord in the Sacrament, is a thought upon which 
 the faith and devotion of many saints and holy 
 persons has fed itself for centuries ; yet it is one 
 with which a narrow metaphysics plays havoc very 
 disastrously. The notion of the loneliness, the 
 sorrows, and disappointments of the neglected 
 Prisoner of Love in the tabernacle may be crude 
 and simple ; but it is assuredly nearer the truth 
 than the notion of a now passionless and apathetic 
 Christ, who suffered these things by foresight two 
 thousand years ago, and whose irrevocable pains 
 cannot possibly be increased or lessened by any 
 conduct of ours. I have more than once known all 
 the joy and reality taken out of a life that fed on 
 devotion to the Sacramental Presence, by such a 
 
246 THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION 
 
 flash of theological illumination ; and have seen 
 Magdalens left weeping at empty tombs and crying: 
 "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not 
 where they have laid Him." 
 
 There is perhaps a tendency in our miserable 
 nature, to dehght in disconcerting the minds of 
 others by a display of rare and esoteric knowledge, 
 especially of such knowledge as owes its rarity to 
 its abstraction and its remoteness from the whole- 
 some concrete reality of things, and which offers to 
 minds more acute than deep, a quicker road to 
 distinction than the laborious and humbhng path 
 of general education. But after all, destructive 
 work does not demand much genius, nor does it 
 need more than the merest smattering of bad logic 
 and worse metaphysics, to be able to represent the 
 beliefs of simple devotion in a ridiculous light, and 
 to pull down in a moment what the labour of years 
 cannot build up again. Even if vanity be not the 
 motive, yet a well-meant but ill-judged desire to pluck 
 up tares whose root-fibres are tangled with those 
 of the wheat, will often issue in the same disaster. 
 
 This, of course, is not the use, but the abuse 
 of theology; it is the result of a "little learning," 
 which in unskilful hands, is the most dangerous of 
 all weapons. 
 
 The first effect produced upon the believing mind 
 
THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 247 
 
 by departing from the childlike concrete present- 
 ment of Divine truth as put before us in revelation, 
 is undoubtedly disconcerting and uncomfortable, 
 like every other process of transition from one 
 resting-place to another; and those who have not 
 strength to carry the process through, are often 
 injured spiritually by their inability either to go 
 back to the older forms, or to go forward far enough 
 to find anything as satisfying; and these are just 
 the people who, in the spirit of the tailless fox, 
 delight in communicating their unrest to others. 
 
 But a deeper and more comprehensive theology 
 seems in most cases to bring us back to our original 
 point of departure, albeit on a higher plane ; to 
 restore to us the stimulus of our childlike con- 
 ceptions, not only fully, but superabundantly ; and 
 to convince us almost experimentally, that God's 
 way of putting the truth was, after all, the better 
 and the wiser. 
 
 What, for example, is the purport of the Incar- 
 nation, but to reveal to us the Father, so far as 
 the Divine goodness can be expressed in the terms 
 of a human life ? to bring home to our imagination 
 and emotion those truths about God's fatherhood 
 and love, which are so unreal to us in their 
 philosophic or theological garb ? To say that 
 love and sorrow, joy and anger, exist in God 
 
248 THE RELATION OP THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 
 
 eminenter, purified from their imperfections, identified 
 with one another, is for us, and as far as any 
 effectual idea is concerned, the same as telling 
 us that they do not really exist in God at all. 
 There is in Him, we are told, something that 
 equals their perfection ; but then, what that 
 something is we do not and cannot know. But 
 the Incarnation assures us that whatever consoles 
 and helps us in our simpler anthropomorphic 
 conception of God, is not more, but far less than 
 the truth. As soon as the Divine love becomes 
 capable of a human exhibition, as soon as it 
 translates itself into mortal language, it is seen 
 to be, at least, a suffering, grieving, passionate, 
 pitiful love ; we are shown that to practically deny 
 these characteristics to the Eternal is a far greater 
 error than to practically attribute them. 
 
 Even if, in some non-natural metaphysical sense, 
 the Sacred Humanity suffers nothing in the 
 sacramental state, yet what would such suffering 
 avail except to reveal to us the transcendental 
 suffering of the Divinity, and its yearning for 
 men's souls ? If the thirst of Calvary is over 
 and gone, was not its chief end to assure us 
 of the reality of the eternal thirst and passion 
 of God which there found but a finite and halting 
 utterance ? " For the same thirst," says Mother 
 
THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 249 
 
 Julian^ of Norwich, "that He had upon the rood- 
 tree (which desire and longing and thirst, as to 
 my sight, was in Him from without beginning), 
 the same hath He yet, and shall have unto the 
 time that the last soul that shall be saved is come 
 up to His bliss. For as truly as there is a property 
 in God of ruth and pity ; as verily there is in God a 
 property of thirst and longing." What does the 
 revelation of Christ's human heart import except 
 so far as it brings home, as it were, to our very 
 senses, the truth that. Love is the core, the very 
 central attribute of the Divinity round which all 
 the other attributes cluster, from which they spring, 
 
 ' Elsewhere, explaining that all contrition and holy sorrow in 
 our soul is from God, and therefore must be more excellently in 
 God, whose Spirit in us it is which postulat pro nobis gemitibus 
 inenarrabilibus (Romans viii. 26), she writes : " He abideth us 
 moaning and mourning. Which meaneth, that all the true feeling 
 that we have in ourself in contrition and in compassion ; and all 
 moaning and mourning for that we are not united with our Lord, 
 and such as is profitable — it is Christ, in us. And though some of 
 us feel it seldom, it passeth never from Christ till what time He 
 have brought us out of all our woe. For Love suffereth Him never 
 to be without pity. And what time we fall into sin and leave the 
 mind of Him and the keeping of our own soul, then beareth Christ 
 alone all the charge of us. And thus standeth He moaning and 
 mourning. . . . And that time I be strange to Him by sin, despair, 
 or sloth, then I let my Lord stand alone, inasmuch as He is in me." 
 {Rev. xvi.) All this is no mere concession to devout fancy, but a 
 far nearer, though still defective, approach to the truth than the 
 metaphysics of theology can pretend to arrive at. 
 
250 THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 
 
 on which they depend; that blood and water, 
 guilt and remission, death and life, evil and good, 
 darkness and light, both, stream from and return 
 to the same fountain ; both manifest one and the 
 same goodness, and owe their seeming difference 
 and colouring to the narrowness and imperfection 
 of our weak faithless vision ? And even if the 
 Eucharist were no more than the bare remembrance 
 of Calvary, it should speak to us principally not 
 of that past human passion, but of the present 
 Divine passion whereof Calvary was but the symbol. 
 But in truth, a better conception of the unreality 
 of time before the Divine mind, will convince us 
 that the simple devotion which regards Christ's 
 passion as continually present, as augmented by 
 our sins, as alleviated by our love, is less inadequate 
 and more philosophically true than the shallowly 
 rationalistic view. For it is only the merciful 
 fading of our memory that prevents our whole 
 past being co-present to us. To Christ it is 
 (and was from eternity) as though the nails were 
 at this moment being driven through His hands. 
 
 Similarly with regard to all other pseudo- 
 philosophic difficulties we have alluded to, we may 
 say: Lex orandi est lex credendi. The saints have 
 always prayed to a God, conceived human-wise, 
 albeit with the consciousness of the imperfection 
 
THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 251 
 
 of even God's own self-chosen mode of revelation, 
 and it is this consciousness that has saved them 
 from superstition and anthropomorphism. We say 
 "the saints," because purity of heart is the safeguard 
 against superstition. It is the desire to "exploit" 
 religion, to bribe the Almighty, to climb up by some 
 other way, rather than go through the one door 
 of self-denial, that is the source of all corruption. 
 The Christian revelation is not merely a symbol 
 or creed, but it is a concrete religion left by Christ 
 to His Church ; it is perhaps in some sense more 
 directly a lex orandi than a lex credendi; the creed 
 is involved in the prayer, and has to be disentangled 
 from it ; and formularies are ever to be tested and 
 explained by the concrete religion which they 
 formulate. Not every devotion of Catholics is a 
 Cathohc devotion, and the Church needs to exercise 
 her authority continually in checking the tendency 
 to extravagate, and in applying and enforcing the 
 original lex orandi. In this work she is helped 
 by a wise and temperate theology. But theology 
 is not always wise and temperate ; and has itself 
 often to be brought to the lex orandi test. It has 
 to be reminded that, like science, its hypotheses, 
 theories, and explanations, must square with facts 
 — the facts here being the Christian religion as lived 
 by its consistent professors. If certain forms of 
 
252 THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO DEVOTION. 
 
 prayer and devotion are undoubtedly Catholic, 
 no theology that proves them unreal or ridiculous 
 can be sound. If any analysis of the act of faith 
 or of charity or of contrition, would make such 
 acts seem exceedingly difficult to realize, we know 
 at once the analysis must be faulty, since the 
 simplest and most ignorant Catholics make such 
 acts easily and abundantly. If any theology of 
 grace or predestination or of the sacraments 
 would make men pray less, or watch less, or struggle 
 iess ; then we may be perfectly sure that such 
 theology is wrong. Devotion and -religion existed 
 before theology, in the way that art existed before 
 art-criticism ; reasoning, before logic ; speech, before 
 grammar. Art-criticism, as far as it formulates 
 and justifies the best work of the best artists, 
 may dictate to and correct inferior workmen; 
 and theology as far as it formulates and justifies 
 the devotion of the best Catholics, and as 
 far as it is true to the life of faith and 
 charity as actually lived, so far is it a law and 
 •corrective for all. But where it begins to contradict 
 the facts of that spiritual life, it loses its reality and 
 its authority; and needs itself to be corrected by 
 the lex orandi. 
 
 Nov. 1899. 
 
XI. 
 
 WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 
 
 Already some celebrity has been won by a little 
 work of M. Henri Joly, entitled Pyschologie des Saints ^ 
 belonging to a series of Saints' Lives published 
 by Lecoffre of Paris. It may be considered as- 
 a sort of key to the somewhat more critical, and 
 certainly not less helpful, method of interpreting 
 hagiography which seems now to be coming into 
 vogue to meet the peculiar needs of the fin de Steele- 
 Catholic. 
 
 The old time-honoured Saint's Life, with its 
 emphasis on the miraculous and startling features 
 of the portrait, its suppression of what was natural, 
 ordinary, and therefore presumably uninteresting, 
 and consequently its abandonment of all attempt 
 to weave the human and divine into one truthful 
 and harmonious whole, showing the gradual evolu- 
 tion of the perfect from the imperfect, to many 
 minds makes no appeal whatever. 
 
 This is in some part to be ascribed to an 
 advance in the art of biography in general, which 
 
254 WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 
 
 has accustomed those who read to expect, not such 
 an exclusively laudatory treatment of character 
 as is allowable in epitaphs, where the principle, 
 nil nisi honum de mortuis, is universally recognized ; 
 nor yet a series of interesting historical events 
 threaded together by their connection with one 
 and the same personage ; but, as the word implies, 
 the portrayal of a life, of a process; the record 
 of the growth and unfolding of a soul and character. 
 This it is which interests the subjective temper 
 of our days, in which the unrestrained development 
 of unlikeness and individualism makes us ever more 
 curious to know if others think and feel as we do 
 in the presence of so many strange problems. 
 Besides, the older mind of these latter days finds 
 more pleasure and peaceful interest in observing 
 processes and verifying laws than in those abnormal 
 deviations and paradoxes which afforded such keen 
 interest to the younger mind of the past, with its 
 insatiable appetite for the marvellous. Our mind 
 has learnt that its choicest food need not be sought 
 from afar, but hes scattered with the wild flowers 
 by the wayside, and that nothing is so extraordinary 
 as the ordinary. Thus we have come to care less 
 for a full inventory of the events which make up 
 a man's life, or for the striking nature of those 
 events in themselves, than for such a judicious 
 
WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 255 
 
 selection and setting of them as shall best bring 
 out and explain that individuality which is our 
 main interest. We care less for what a man does, 
 and more for what he is ; and it is mainly as a key 
 to what he is that we study the circumstances 
 which act upon him, and the conduct by which 
 he reacts upon them. 
 
 This riper and more distinct view of the scope 
 of biography in general cannot but open our eyes 
 to the need of an alteration in our methods of 
 dealing with the lives of the Saints. And this all 
 the more because a direct aim at moral utility, 
 which would be at least inartistic in the ordinary 
 biographer, is almost recognized as the leading 
 . motive in the work of portraying the Saints. The 
 Church puts them before us, not merely that we 
 may know them, but that knowing, we may 
 follow them ; whereas secular biography, whatever 
 its practical effects, has no such practical purpose. 
 
 It may safely be asserted that the stimulating 
 effect of example depends on two conditions : first, 
 that the conduct in question should excite our 
 admiration, for which end we must in some sort 
 be able to understand and sympathize with it; 
 secondly, that we should conceive it to be within 
 our power to imitate it in some degree. We shall 
 never exert ourselves for ends which we regard 
 
256 WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 
 
 as unintelligible, unattractive, or impossible. Thus 
 ascetical feats which strike us only as marvellous 
 or astounding by reason of their relative impossi- 
 bility to us, excite our emulation as little as miracles 
 do. They are doubtless evidences of the workings 
 of Divine power in a frail nature like our own ; but 
 the whence and whither of the movement is too 
 obscure to be helpful save in the most general 
 way. To hear of prolonged fasts and formidable 
 austerities ; of rigorisms in conduct which, judged 
 by ordinary rules of ethics, seem altogether outre 
 and perhaps even slightly scandalous, can at best 
 appeal to our sense of the marvellous, unless these 
 seeming unknowables can be explained to us by 
 something known ; something which we recognize 
 within ourselves, in however rudimentary a form, 
 and which we can conceive expanding under certain 
 circumstances to a like fulness. 
 
 To our fastidiousness, the bizarre ministrations 
 of many Saints to the loathsome diseases of the sick 
 is a difficulty of the same nature as walking on live 
 coals. We marvel at it shudderingly, but we feel 
 no beginnings within ourselves of so useless an 
 accomplishment, until our attention is called to 
 certain seeming extravagances and humiliations in 
 which our own love of others naturally tends to 
 express itself; and from which we can build up 
 
WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 257 
 
 some conception of the language spoken by a love 
 indefinitely in excess of our own. Also the very 
 same act which apart from its strangeness and 
 difficulty is altogether unattractive as viewed in 
 itself, becomes full of beauty when regarded in the 
 light of the motives which have given birth to it, 
 and whose expression it is. 
 
 It must also be confessed that we are but slightly 
 stirred to grasp at what is only very remotely within 
 our reach. The beginner in any art or science is 
 not roused to emulation by the finished proficiency 
 of the master, so much as by the shght superiority 
 of those of his own standing. It is the "pace 
 ahead " and not the " mile ahead " competitor who 
 provokes the racer to a spurt ; and it is often those 
 who are very like ourselves, and yet in one way 
 or another a little in front of us, who give new 
 strength to our flagging energies, rather than the 
 Saints who seem to be disappearing over the edge 
 of our horizon. Certainly it is a common experience 
 that, one receives at times greater moral stimulus 
 from secular biography or even from fiction than 
 from approved and authorized sources of spiritual 
 edification ; while it is almost universally true that 
 Saints' lives help us only in proportion as their 
 times and circumstances, their national and 
 individual temperament, resemble our own. All 
 R 
 
258 WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 
 
 this points to the need of what we might call 
 a more subjective treatment of Saints' lives than 
 we have been accustomed to ; and it is to this that 
 the Psychologie des Saints addresses itself. We need 
 less than formerly to be dazzled with the wonderful, 
 and more to be drawn to the lovable. We want 
 to be put en rapport with the Saints, to feel their 
 humanity, to interpret it by our own, and thereby 
 to realize that no miracle they ever wrought is 
 comparable to the miracle of what they were. 
 
 A similar modification is needed and found in 
 the presentment of the Gospel to minds at different 
 stages of development. The Jews seek a sign, the 
 Greeks wisdom, but the elect seek Christ Crucified ; 
 there are those who make Christ's miracles the test 
 of His claims, and those who see a like evidence 
 in the wisdom of His doctrine ; and lastly, there 
 are those who find all His miracles lost in insignifi- 
 cance beside the miracle of His love ; all wisdom, 
 folly, compared with the wisdom of the Cross; 
 who value what He said and what He did, merely 
 as throwing light on what He was and is. Written 
 for all times and nations, the Gospels contain 
 what will appeal to every stage of spiritual 
 growth, and every form of culture; and if St. 
 Mark speaks more directly to the sign-seekers, 
 St. John makes his appeal straight to the discerning 
 
WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 259 
 
 heart. In a less reflex and more objective age than 
 our own, apologetic dwelt wisely on the words and 
 works of our Saviour; but now it aims rather 
 at bringing home His entire personality to the 
 mind and imagination, and thereby to the will 
 and affections. It would certainly be a narrowness 
 to distrust or repudiate every characteristic of the 
 temper of our day simply because its formation has 
 coincided with the growth of a non-Christian or 
 even anti-Christian spirit ; or to ignore, amidst all 
 perversions and corruptions, a real and divinely- 
 guided advance to better things in many matters. 
 In the present it is sometimes hard to recognize 
 what is of God's making, and what, of man's 
 marring ; but when that which is ultra and extra- 
 vagant, and which God's hand has not planted, 
 either works its own cure or withers away, those 
 of after-times will look back and see solid gain 
 where we fear loss. Thus a recent work (also from 
 Lecoffre) undertakes, not without success, to show 
 that from the chaos of conflicting philosophies 
 which have sprung from the sixteenth century 
 revolt, there has issued a happy delimitation of the 
 lawful sphere of philosophy altogether helpful to 
 Catholic truth.^ 
 
 It is, therefore, needless to disguise from our- 
 ' Maurice Blondel, Les Exigences de la Pensee Contemporaine. 
 
26o WHAT IS MYSTICISM :> 
 
 selves the fact that in our intelligence of the Gospels 
 and other Sacred Scriptures, as well as in our 
 reading of history, we owe much, not indeed to the 
 opponents of our rehgion as such, but to our age 
 of which we and they alike are the children. And 
 a like debt of frank acknowledgment will be due 
 if our hagiography is made more intelligent, more 
 interesting, more helpful, by being brought into 
 line with the advance already noticed in secular 
 biography. 
 
 One of the commonest misapprehensions by which 
 the Saints are lifted hopelessly out of the reach of 
 our intelligence and sympathy, is, as M. Joly points 
 out, that by which mysticism is attributed to them 
 as a peculiar possession from which other Christians 
 are excluded. Moreover, mysticism itself, if not 
 entirely misunderstood, is at least regarded as some- 
 thing vague and unintelligible, something akin 
 to illusions and visions, things which no healthy 
 and practical mind would care to meddle 
 with. Victor Cousin regards it as the despair 
 of an intellect which despises the fetters of cold 
 reason and dreams of a direct face-to-face com- 
 munion of the soul with God, in which the working 
 of every faculty is stilled into absolute quiet. Others 
 confound it with an Oriental contempt not only for 
 everything material and natural, but even for all 
 
WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 261 
 
 desire and existence ; thus giving a Buddhist inter- 
 pretation to Christian asceticism. Many Christians 
 and Catholics regard it as the rare prerogative of 
 those few who, abandoning all active and social 
 life, and every other form of intellectual culture, 
 devote themselves to an arduous, unbroken con- 
 templation of Divine things. 
 
 Against all these perversions M. Joly ventures to 
 establish the simple definition : " Mysticism is the 
 love of God; "and to draw the corollary: "Every 
 Christian in the state of grace loves God, and is 
 therefore more or less of a mystic ; " but " the 
 Saint is a man whose whole life is wrapped up and 
 permeated with the love of God." In other words, 
 the Saint differs from the ordinary Christian, not 
 in his mysticism, but in the degree of his mysti- 
 cism ; the one loves God above all things, singly 
 or collectively, and yet loves some other things not 
 in reference to God ; the other loves God alone, 
 and nothing else except in reference to God. The 
 difference is that between inceptive love and 
 perfect love; between the seed and the flower. 
 But because there is a real continuity and sameness 
 of kind, the Saint is intelligible to us in that which 
 is the very essence of his sanctity. All that is 
 strange and unusual, all that impresses the imagina- 
 tion with a sense of unlikeness, is but secondary 
 
262 WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 
 
 and unessential — a matter of the language and 
 expression of Divine love, determined largely by- 
 circumstances. 
 
 Certainly this simplification of the notion of 
 mysticism will be distrusted by those who recognize 
 that both by usage and etymology, "mysticism' 
 and " mystery," are something akin ; that if mysti- 
 cism is not against reason, it is in some true sense 
 above or beyond reason. 
 
 Yet, let them reflect for a moment, and see 
 whether there is not much in the known workings 
 of merely human affection and love, which is also 
 in a true sense beyond reason ; whether there are 
 not sympathies and antipathies, nay, even tele- 
 pathies, which are in a sense non-rational ; whether 
 there are not instincts and intuitions as sure and 
 surer than the judgment of reason ; and if this be 
 so, need they wonder if in the commerce between 
 God and the soul which He permeates, there 
 should be much of which reason and common 
 sense can give no very distinct account ? If all 
 love is mysticism ; still more the love of God.^ 
 
 ' "As soon as we can give a reason for a feeling we are no 
 longer under the spell of it ; we appreciate, we weigh, we are free, 
 at least in principle. . . . Once the mystery is gone, the power 
 goes with it. Love must always seem to us indivisible, insoluble, 
 superior to all analysis, if it is to preserve that appearance of 
 Infinity, of something supernatural and miraculous which is its 
 chief beauty." (Amiel's Journal.) 
 
WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 265 
 
 Yet this truth will be coldly welcomed by those 
 who, under pretext of solid piety, are somewhat 
 anxious to keep mysticism at arm's length, and to 
 distrust any movement of the soul which they 
 cannot explain in a way thoroughly satisfactory to 
 common sense. Unfortunately for their laudable 
 aspirations there are psychological facts which 
 stand in the way. If indeed the will and affections 
 had no movement save that which is preceded and 
 exactly measured by a previous apprehension, then 
 we could manage our spiritual life with the 
 mechanical regularity of a clock. But it is far 
 otherwise, and for illustration of this somewhat 
 neglected truth, we may turn to one who was as 
 familiar with the psychology of the schools as with 
 the psychology of the Saints. Dante writes of 
 what he beheld in Paradise to the following effect : 
 
 Things I beheld which to repeat again 
 
 He who returns from thence, lacks power and skill ; 
 
 For as it nears the goal of its desires 
 
 Our intellect engulfs itself so deep 
 
 That halting memory helpless lags behind' 
 
 * E vidi cose che redire 
 
 Ne sa ne puo qual di lassu discende ; 
 Perche appressando se al suo desire 
 Nostro intelletto si profunda tanto 
 Che retro la memoria non puo ire, {Par. i.) 
 
364 WHAT IS MYSTICISM!' 
 
 Again : 
 
 Here, I despair to tell 
 The love that sparkled in those sainted eyes ; 
 Not only for my failing treacherous tongue, 
 But for the mind which cannot so return 
 Back on itself, save guided from on high.* 
 
 Again : 
 
 Upraising strains. 
 Since, from my memory, slipt and fallen away.* 
 
 Again : 
 
 As one who in his slumber dreams a dream 
 And waking feels as in his dream he felt, 
 Yet what he dreamt of, cannot call to mind. 
 So in my heart still lingers the sweet sense 
 Born of the vision which I then beheld, 
 Now wholly blotted out from memory's page.' 
 
 In these and many similar passages the poet 
 insists on a point of psychology sufficiently familiar 
 
 ' E quale io allor vidi 
 
 Negli occhi santi amor, qui I'abbandono ; 
 Non perchi pur del mio parlar difSdi, 
 Ma per la mente, che non puo reddire 
 Sovra se tanto ; s'altri non la guidi. {Par. xviii.) 
 
 " Comminciaron canti 
 
 Da mia memoria labili e caduci. {Par. xx.) 
 
 * Quale e colui chi sognando vede, 
 E dope il sogno la passione impressa 
 Rimane, e Taltro alia mente non riede, 
 Cotal son io, che quasi tutta cessa 
 Mia visione, e ancor mi distilla 
 Nel cor Io dolce che naque da essa. 
 
WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 265 
 
 to the experience of the mystics, and too often 
 overlooked ; namely, the different reach or compass 
 of the three faculties of the soul : memory, will, 
 and understanding. Rusbrock, with many another, 
 constantly speaks as though love were an apprehen- 
 sive faculty, revealing a presence and nearness of 
 God to which the intellect is blind. In truth, this 
 is but an elliptical form of expression; for all 
 perception and affirmation is an act of the mind, 
 not of the will and affections. What we have to 
 notice is that although normally the affections are 
 only excited by preceding knowledge which reveals 
 to us the satisfying nature of the object of love ; 
 yet there is by no means a strict correspondence 
 between the clearness of the foregoing percep- 
 tion and the force of following affection ; and 
 furthermore, there are blind instinctive move- 
 ments of the will, no less than of the animal 
 passions, which are wholly independent of our 
 perceptions. There is at times all the effect of a 
 keen perception, and yet no perception to account 
 for it. 
 
 The permeation of the soul by God is, in our 
 present state, a matter of inference (however imme- 
 diate), and not of intuition. This inference can 
 give birth to many acts of love and consoling 
 confidence. But occasionally God seems to flood 
 
266 WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 
 
 the souls of the Saints with that joy which would 
 properly follow a direct intuition of God within the 
 soul, such as only the Blessed enjoy.^ This is- 
 fairly expressed by saying that they fed, though 
 they do not behold, the Divine presence. So far as 
 from such a consolation they infer a special nearness 
 of God, this inference is a natural act of the 
 intellect, and will give birth to a self-caused, natural 
 act of love. But the first act is properly an act of 
 will alone ; it is in no sense a perception. Here 
 then we see that the reach of the heart is more 
 extended than the reach of the mind ; that it can 
 penetrate to a depth of the soul, where light fails 
 the intellect; that it can touch what the mind 
 cannot see. These sudden glows are impossible to 
 reproduce, for the simple reason that though 
 memory may retain its idea of the resulting 
 impression (for acts of will have their idea, as 
 much as simple sense impressions), yet it has no 
 idea of the excitant cause. Even when the cause 
 of some will-act is remembered, it will not always 
 
 ' " It is of God our Lord alone to give joy to the soul without 
 any cause preceding ; for it is her Creator's prerogative to go in 
 and out and to stir up within her that movement by which she is 
 wholly drawn to the love of His Divine Majesty. I say, without 
 any cause, i.e., without any foregoing emotion or the apprehension 
 of any object from which such joy could arise through her own 
 acts of understanding and will." (St. Ignatius of Loyola.) 
 
WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 267 
 
 be effectual in re-exciting the former affection; 
 or the same degree of affection — so loose is the 
 dependence between these two parts of the 
 soul. 
 
 Again, there is an often unobserved difference of 
 reach between two distinct acts of the mind itself. In 
 the instant before an object is cognized or recognized 
 by simple apprehension, and before thought has 
 come to work upon it, it is the object of a certain 
 mental touch preparatory to the act of intelligence. 
 Or at most it is cognized as something, obscurely and 
 indistinctly. If, as often happens, the object in any 
 way exceeds our faculty, so far the activity of the 
 mind stays at this touch, and does not assimilate 
 itself to the object or penetrate it as a key penetrates 
 the wards of the lock and explores its secret 
 structure. Thus there are two kinds of vision or 
 intuition, that which touches and that which pene- 
 trates. Or rather three, for the penetration may be 
 partial, or perfect. If perfect, then the vision is 
 comprehensive. Plainly the things we perfectly 
 comprehend are few, if any. No created intellect 
 can ever comprehend God, though the Blessed gaze 
 upon Him with varying degrees of intuitive penetra- 
 tion. The mystics seem to think that, without any 
 sort of intuitive penetration, the mind at times is 
 brought into simple contact with God in such a way 
 
268 WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 
 
 that no idea or mark is made upon the mind, for 
 the mind can in no way apprehend God. We touch 
 the smooth sphere of the infinite, but we cannot lay 
 hold of it. Such experiences as these may indeed 
 leave some confused trace in the memory. St. Teresa 
 seems frequently to have thus felt God with the 
 finger-tips of the mind, by an act which was 
 distinctly perceptive and not merely affective. It 
 appears, then, that this "tactual intuition" has a 
 longer reach than apprehensive and penetrating 
 intuition. We can just touch many things not 
 within our grasp. 
 
 Here the mystics seem to come into conflict, not 
 so much with theology, which denies to the Saints 
 on earth all direct intuition of the Divine substance 
 in the sense of mental penetration or grasp, as with 
 the scholastic psychology, which leaves no room for 
 what we have endeavoured to describe as " tactual 
 intuition " — something less than face-to-face vision ; 
 something more than the quickest inference, a sort 
 of coming behind and touching the hem of God's 
 garment. But it must be confessed that the mystics 
 have in many respects a psychology of their own, 
 difficult to disentangle from the necessarily figura- 
 tive language in which it is wrapped. 
 
 That memory fails to follow intelligence in its 
 deeper and quicker plunges is matter of common 
 
WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 269 
 
 experience. We make a thousand subtle and com- 
 plex inferences with the most infallible certainty, of 
 which we can give no satisfactory account, for the 
 simple reason that the movements of the mind are 
 individually too rapid and slight to have time or 
 force to sink into the memory. If we want to 
 remember, we repeat and linger over the experience 
 in question ; but in these concrete and complex 
 inferences the activity of the mind is as multi- 
 tudinous and electric as when movement of transla- 
 tion turns into molecular vibration. As far as the 
 record of memory goes, the mind seems to have 
 been motionless in its moments of most fruitful 
 energizing. The results may be easily mistaken for 
 Heaven-sent inspirations. 
 
 At other times we remember indeed that there 
 has been a flash of inner light revealing some new 
 unity, connection, or relation. Brilliant and rapid 
 as lightning, it has left us in our former darkness 
 before memory could snatch the thought and secure 
 it. Or lastly, as the poet teaches, it may be that 
 our intellectual energy is so taxed and absorbed by 
 the immensity and briUiancy of its object, that 
 memory, with the other faculties, is paralyzed and 
 helpless; and that the Saint descends from the 
 third heaven with his heart still aglow, but his 
 memory all blank. 
 
270 IVHAT IS MYSTICISM f 
 
 In general, it is not an unreasonable speculation 
 to suggest that, as in individual acts the energy 
 exerted by one of these faculties is borrowed from 
 the others, so they who habitually exercise one 
 more than another, induce some kind of dispro- 
 portion in the soul. We have those who are 
 prodigies of memory, but whose understanding is 
 less than mediocre ; those who are brilliantly intel- 
 lectual, but feeble of purpose and cold in affection ; 
 and so on. 
 
 When the disciples spoke with the risen Christ 
 on the road to Emmaus, we are told that their eyes 
 were held so that they did not know Him ; and also 
 that at the same time their hearts burned within 
 them. This "holding of the eyes" suggests a 
 subjective effect in their minds rather than any 
 change or disguise in our Saviour's appearance. 
 Also, we are told " that their eyes were opened and 
 they knew Him with breaking of bread." Plainly 
 their bodily vision was not falsified in any way, but 
 rather their power of re-cognition was bound by 
 some spell. The internal picture of Christ as they 
 had known Him was not evoked by His presence 
 according to the ordinary law of associated images, 
 but lay dormant in memory's recesses; and they 
 looked upon His face as it were for the first time : 
 " Art Thou then a stranger in Jerusalem ? " We 
 
WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 271 
 
 know what it is for a face, at first strange, to " come 
 back to us." For there are gradual recognitions as 
 well as instantaneous. But when He took bread, 
 and blessed, and brake and gave to them, then the 
 whole picture of the Last Supper, and of the face of 
 Christ with uplifted eyes and hands, rushed back 
 into their memory, and ere He could vanish and 
 escape comparison they had recognized Him. Yet 
 even as He spake with them they felt the love that 
 His converse of old had kindled in their hearts; 
 affection had in its own blind way already recognized 
 and embraced the Beloved. " When the Lord 
 turned again the captivity of Sion, then were 
 we as them that dreamed." They were as those 
 who wake filled with the joy of a forgotten 
 dream. 
 
 Thus explained, the mysticism of the Saints does 
 not shut them out into an unknown region, but 
 reduces them at once to the category of the known. 
 If love be mysticism, then we have the key to all 
 mysticism within ourselves. The phenomena of the 
 mind which we have just been examining are after 
 all quite familiar to our own experience ; and they 
 are precisely those which, when clothed in the 
 technical language of St. John of the Cross, seem to 
 belong to another order of spiritual being wholly 
 out of touch with our own. Doubtless a more 
 
272 WHAT IS MYSTICISM? 
 
 accurate study of ourselves, as well as a more 
 accurate study of the Saints, is needed to bridge 
 over this seemingly impassable gulf fixed between 
 their life and ours. 
 
 By the development of this one point we have 
 tried to indicate the general method by which what 
 at first sight is strange in the Saints may be shown 
 to be kindred to something in ourselves; so that 
 the work of the hagiographer is de chercher en quelque 
 sort experimentalement comment se developpe et vit Vdme 
 du Saint dans ce qu'elle a conserve de semblahle a la 
 nStre?- 
 
 Dee. 1897. 
 » P. 43- 
 
XII. 
 
 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 I. 
 The eternal unchanging life of the soul, both 
 here and hereafter, consists in an action which may 
 be described almost indifferently as " contemplative 
 love" or as "loving contemplation." It lies in 
 apprehending and gazing fixedly on God as the 
 Source and Sum of all goodness and excellence. 
 It therefore includes and surpasses the exercise of 
 every special and particular virtue ; for of these, 
 each is a strong love and admiration for some 
 partial phase of the Divine Goodness — for God as 
 manifested in Justice, or in Mercy, or in Purity, or 
 in Meekness. But Eternal Life, or Divine Charity, 
 is the indiscriminate love of universal goodness as 
 realized in God ; it is a delight in the contemplation 
 of God, whether as imaged in an idea which our 
 mind has formed of Him, or as seen in His very 
 Substance, face to face. And as a particular virtue, 
 say Chastity, is not merely a delighting in the bare 
 conception and thought of purity, but a delight in 
 S 
 
274 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 its realization wherever found, a sincere desire for 
 its realization where it is wanting ; so it is not in 
 the mere abstract idea of God that Divine Charity 
 rejoices, but in the belief or the experience of His 
 concrete existence. It wants God to be. All these 
 virtues, or partial loves, loves of things "divine by 
 participation," of mere reflections and glimpses of 
 divinity, are valuable solely as leading up to the 
 full love of the Absolute Goodness in itself, a love 
 which is its own raison d 'eire, since there is nothing 
 higher which it can minister to or grow into. 
 
 " Contemplation," in the more ancient sense of 
 the word, does not, as with St. Ignatius Loyola 
 and later writers, mean gazing upon some concrete 
 incident or example in order to draw some practical 
 fruit therefrom, this fruit being the end, and con- 
 templation only the means ; but it stands for an 
 action which is an end in itself, the highest kind 
 of action whereof the soul is capable, and to the 
 production of which all our other spiritual efforts 
 and prayers are directed. And if we understand 
 what Love is, we shall see that the fruit of this 
 loosely-styled "contemplation" is itself Contem- 
 plation in the stricter mystical sense of the term : 
 that here we are led by " practical contemplation " 
 up to an act of " theoria " or " speculative contem- 
 plation." For Love itself is a contemplative act — 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 275 
 
 complacentia boni — a gazing with delight upon the 
 Fair and True : the mind's embrace of that which 
 is its food and eternal life. 
 
 It is neither necessary nor possible nor desirable 
 that we should in this life be continually exercising 
 conscious acts of the love of God, — whether succes- 
 sive ejaculatory acts or those sustained ecstatic acts 
 proper to mystic contemplation. It suffices that 
 all the internal free movements of our soul be 
 governed and checked by an habitual, deep-down, 
 unconscious love of God, which from time to time 
 is awakened into consciousness by the inspiration 
 ■of some stimulating thought, or by the immediate 
 working of God upon the heart, which He holds 
 in His hands. Still in the measure that the secret 
 root is more widespread and vigorous, will it send 
 up more frequent shoots as evidences of its vitality ; 
 while in return it derives an increase of energy from 
 every expanding frond that breathes in the purifying 
 air. The stronger love will break upward into 
 •consciousness more readily, with slighter provo- 
 cation, through greater resistances and difficulties; 
 and in return, every conscious act of love will, 
 according to its intensity, its endurance, and its 
 intelligence, strengthen the grip of love upon the 
 £oul. 
 
 If then the love of God is the end of man ; if 
 
276 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 man is here on earth but to be schooled in that art 
 which he is to exercise hereafter in one eternal 
 unbroken act, all that disposes and leads the soul 
 to multiplied, sustained, and intelligent acts of love 
 and foretastes of heaven is of supreme importance, 
 not only for the professed contemplative, but for 
 every Christian who has a soul to save. For 
 though the contemplative is one who by natural 
 aptitude and divine vocation is set apart to sit at 
 the feet of Christ and gaze up into His face in 
 adoring silence, while Martha serves Him, solicitous- 
 about many things, yet the specialization is not so- 
 rigorous as that Mary's prayer shall not be at times 
 broken for needful toil, and Martha's labours be- 
 interspersed with moments of rest and spiritual 
 refreshment. And though the Church in Heaven 
 has entered into that better part which shall not 
 be taken from her, yet the Church on earth, amid 
 warfare and toil, has but odd moments of medi- 
 tative repose; and of her multitudinous and varied 
 members only a few can be set apart specially in 
 the interest of the rest, to keep the lamp of contem- 
 plative love ever burning in the sanctuary. 
 
 Thought and labour, idea and energy — by these 
 two, human life is governed. In point of quantity 
 and of time occupied, thought and reflection repre- 
 sent a small fraction of the lives of most men, the 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 277 
 
 rest being devoted to the active prosecution of 
 the programme they have set before themselves. 
 Similarly in that specialization needful in any com- 
 munity or association of men, those who embrace 
 the life of thought, study, and contemplation bear>, 
 and ought to bear, a correspondingly small pro- 
 portion to those engaged in a life of external 
 activity. But as these two lives are properly but 
 factors of the whole life of man, as they depend 
 upon one another and run into one another, they 
 ■cannot be absolutely separated without mutual hurt. 
 Thought is fed, stimulated, and checked by action ; 
 and action is guided, inspired, and spiritualized 
 by thought. Specialization therefore cannot be 
 absolute, but must be limited by the recognition of 
 this fact. 
 
 The active and the contemplative life are both 
 lives of unbroken love ; but the former is made up 
 mainly of actions governed by and springing from 
 love, though not in themselves conscious acts of 
 love ; whereas the latter makes these conscious acts 
 of love its direct and principal aim. If the contem- 
 plative works or studies or rests, it is with a view 
 to the bettering of his prayer ; if the man of action 
 prays and contemplates, it is with a view to the 
 bettering and supernaturalizing of his work. Much 
 harm has come from not recognizing that activity 
 
278 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 and contemplation must mingle in every Christian 
 life : and that it is only as denoting which element 
 is dominant and to the fore that the terms 
 "active" and "contemplative" are used. A life 
 of mere activity in good works soon defeats its 
 original purpose ; the spirit is choked and starved : 
 God fades from consciousness, and self slowly 
 creeps in, unless from time to time the soul rises 
 to the surface to breathe the upper air which 
 purifies and reinvigorates its exhausted system. 
 On the other hand, he who would deny himself 
 every other form of activity, internal or external, 
 save the contemplation of God, would thereby 
 weaken and impoverish those very faculties in the 
 exercise of which prayer consists. For the more 
 material his mind has to work upon, and the more 
 power and skill he brings to the task of piecing 
 together an ever fuller image of God from the 
 fragments of Divinity scattered among creatures, 
 the easier and more fruitful will his prayer become. 
 He must be as the bee, alternating between its cell 
 and the flower-world outside ; now industriously 
 amassing new matter, now building up what it has 
 amassed ; often abroad, yet only that its home 
 hours may be more fruitful. 
 
 Inasmuch then as the contemplative does more 
 continuously, intensely, and perfectly only what all 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 279 
 
 servants of God do from time to time in brief 
 liftings-up of the heart and mind to God, it will 
 be for the profit of all to consider a little more 
 closely the nature of contemplation in the stricter 
 or mystical sense ; to point out some of its con- 
 ditions, and to remove a few popular misappre- 
 hensions on the subject. 
 
 The term " mysticism " has undoubtedly come 
 into bad odour with thinkers of a certain class, 
 owing to its association with the delusions of 
 visionaries and the extravagances not only of 
 gnostics and Neo-Platonists but of many Christian 
 mystics who, misled by a resemblance in termi- 
 nology and statement, as well as in practice and 
 discipline, between the false and the true, have 
 failed to observe a difference of infinite moment 
 in principle and substance, and have striven to 
 mingle into one system elements as uncongenial as 
 oil and water. Against extravagances such as these, 
 common sense has justly risen up in arms, while 
 Philistinism has found in them a pretext for making 
 a clean sweep of everything that would seem to 
 raise religion above the apprehension and criticism 
 of the ordinary man of business. For many, 
 mysticism means simply an abandonment of all 
 attempt to reconcile the " religious sentiment " with 
 
/ / 
 
 28o THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 intelligent thought, a deliberate yielding one's self 
 a prey to any unchecked and unveriiiable fancy 
 or speculation which seems to interpret the vague 
 yearnings of the soul after God. Or it suggests a 
 morbid quietism effected by a complete deadening 
 of the affections and stupefaction of the mind. Or 
 at best it stands for the exalted state of a few 
 souls who have attained to a habit of preternatural 
 union with God, and as such, is in their opinion, 
 a matter of no practical interest to the ordinary 
 Christian. 
 
 Perhaps one of the strangest misapprehensions 
 is that which identifies " mysticism " with that 
 " subjectivism " in religion which is distinctive of 
 the Protestant spirit. It is commonly assumed 
 by Protestants that the mediatorial principle of 
 Catholicism is asserted not only in the definition 
 of dogmatic truths by public authority to which 
 private judgment must submit; not only in the 
 determining of those matters of conduct which 
 fall under the positive discipline of the Church; 
 not only in the communication of certain special 
 and superabundant graces through sacramental 
 channels; not only in making communion with 
 the Church to be a condition of union with God ; 
 not only in encouraging the soul to approach God, 
 as one member of a Body, through the intercession 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 281 
 
 of Christ and the saints ; but also in that mediation 
 is pressed to such an extent as to forbid the soul 
 either to speak to God directly in prayer or to 
 receive from God, and through conscience, any 
 light or direction which it may obey without 
 sanction of the Church. Hence, in every mystic 
 of the Middle Age they at once hail a harbinger 
 of Luther. So superficial a travesty were scarce 
 worth mention, were it not that some Protestants 
 have so persistently claimed mysticism as their 
 own, that they have bred a distrust of it in 
 less well-informed Catholics. Surely a moderate 
 acquaintance with Catholic piety ought to suffice 
 to show that the whole end and aim to which 
 the Church, her dogma, her ordinances, are 
 ostensibly and theoretically directed is divine love 
 and mystic converse between God and the soul. 
 
 Social life rightly organized is not hurtful but 
 helpful to the fuller development of individual life. 
 We are at first educated somewhat passively in 
 those arts and sciences which are the common 
 possession of the society into which we are born, 
 that, profiting by this gathered and tested lore, 
 we may begin for ourselves where others have 
 left off, and thus render interest for the capital 
 put at our service. Had we to begin ah ovo for 
 ourselves, our acquisitions would be gloriously our 
 
282 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 own, but how slight, how unreliable 1 Similarly the 
 Church forms our mind and our conscience in 
 regard to those truths which have been committed 
 to her by revelation, or which have been drawn 
 from revelation by the divinely-guided reflection 
 of her saints and doctors ; but while it would be 
 presumption to expect private and internal guidance 
 from God in matters where He has so liberally 
 provided for our instruction in a public manner, 
 yet it is obvious that the application of all this 
 truth to our own individual needs, the form into 
 which it must be moulded before it can become 
 vital for each particular soul, the fitting of general 
 principles of conduct to particular cases whereof 
 no two are ever quite alike, and whose internal 
 complexity can never be fully submitted to any 
 external mind, — all this has to be settled between 
 the soul and God alone, in the last resort. All that 
 the Church's direction does is to stimulate and 
 facilitate this internal converse, and to safeguard 
 it from the illusions and extravagances to which 
 mysticism invariably leads when it discards the 
 counsel of the Church and despises the gathered 
 wisdom and experience of the people of God. It 
 is not in going straight to God and in learning 
 straight from God that Protestantism offends, 
 but in doing so where God has already abundantly 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 283 
 
 provided for those needs of ours which are common 
 to the whole Christian body, and in respect to 
 which He treats immediately with that body as a 
 whole, dealing individually only with individual 
 needs. 
 
 But though the term " mysticism " has come 
 to be reserved to a degree of divine love which 
 is usually accompanied with ecstasy and other 
 supernormal phenomena, yet the substance of 
 " mysticism " is that love of God without which 
 no soul can put forth the blossom of its highest 
 perfection and salvation. All love is mystical in 
 that it refuses the exact analysis of reason which, 
 without contradicting, it ineffably transcends; still 
 more must the union between the Creator and the 
 created soul be of a nature dimly apprehensible ; 
 something to be felt rather than said ; something 
 infinitely unlike a contract of " give and take," or 
 " do and take," which may be set down in terms 
 sufficiently exact. 
 
 This ineffable union is not the privilege of a few 
 elect souls, but an obhgation binding upon all. 
 Every other form of prayer and spiritual exercise 
 is directed to this as its end, to these brief contem- 
 plative elevations which are commonly called 
 " acts " of divine love. The " mystic " is one with 
 whom such acts are more frequent, sustained, and 
 
284 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 intense, who makes the eliciting of such explicit 
 " acts " the main business of life — which, for others, 
 not specially called, it need not be. For these a 
 life of implicit love suffices. 
 
 Whatever, therefore, conduces to the contem- 
 plative habit of soul is of practical use, not only 
 to the professed contemplative, but to every 
 Christian who has a soul to save ; and undoubtedly 
 some of the obscurities that commonly surround 
 the subject of mysticism make their influence felt 
 as effectually in the spiritual life of the faithful 
 at large as in the cloister. 
 
 In the course of the Church's life the pendulum 
 swings now to one side, now to another, of the 
 golden mean in respect to mysticism, yet at each 
 vibration less wide of the mark. At present we 
 are certainly suffering from a reaction in the 
 direction of rationalism which tends to dry up 
 the springs of tenderer devotion, and through a 
 laudable insistence on the need of solid practical 
 piety to distrust any movement of the soul which 
 cannot be dissected and defended satisfactorily. 
 In protest against Protestantism, with its principle 
 of the self-sufficingness of each soul, and its 
 independence of all mediation in relation to God, 
 the Church's whole emphasis has in these centuries 
 been laid not on the use but on the abuse of 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 285 
 
 mysticism, and the faithful following suit have 
 become timid in respect to any mode of prayer 
 that cannot be formulated and submitted to 
 authority for inspection and approval. Even 
 though mental prayer is much insisted on and 
 preferred, and the "acts" of the will and affections 
 are assigned as its chief fruit, yet we find that these 
 same "acts" of the will are themselves subordinated 
 to what are called " practical " resolutions, as it 
 were, with a latent insinuation that a mere " act " 
 of contemplative love could not be a worthy 
 end in itself, apart from all bearing on external 
 life ; still less could it be the sovereign end of all 
 prayer and all life. 
 
 Yet those who understand our times are not 
 perhaps wrong when they say that if the Church 
 is ever to get hold of the men of good-will outside 
 her pale, it will be through the satisfaction she 
 offers to the ineradicable mystical appetite of the 
 human soul, which rationalism starves but cannot 
 kill. Urgent as it is that she should show her 
 *'practicalism," her public utility, her sympathy 
 with the best and truest civilization, her sense 
 of the continuity between the natural and super- 
 natural; yet it is no less urgent that she should 
 show herself to be the heavenly Rachel, the Mother 
 of Contemplative Love, acknowledging the value 
 
286 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 of Martha's ministrations, yet holding Mary's to 
 be the better part. For even now the stifled soul 
 of our "practical" generation is beginning to cry 
 out : " Who shall deliver me from the body of this 
 death ? " — and to realize that man cannot live by 
 bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth 
 from the mouth of God. 
 
 Eternal Life is a life of knowledge ; it consists 
 in knowing. " This is life eternal, that they should 
 know Thee, the only true God." It is called 
 *' eternal," whether because it is the life or vital 
 exercise of man's eternal part, that highest element 
 of his being whereby he is rooted in the timeless 
 world, stretching into this world of appearances 
 and changes only in virtue of his bodily organism, 
 as it might be an overhanging willow laving its 
 locks in the passing stream ; or else, because it is 
 the life of the Eternal One, to a participation 
 whereof the rational creature is destined by grace, 
 and, in some more analogous way, by nature. 
 
 We might have expected to be told that Eternal 
 Life lay in the love rather than in the knowledge 
 of God ; for here men may know God and yet not 
 love Him or share in the divine life. But this is 
 only because they have not learnt that the best 
 and highest life consists in a full knowledge of 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 287 
 
 the Best, and because their other appetites and 
 desires have not been brought under obedience 
 to the appetite of the mind, which should rule over 
 all. The appetite of the mind is for Truth ; not 
 for abstract truths, principles, propositions ; not 
 for syntheses and analyses; not for investigations, 
 discussions, and arguments ; not for histories and 
 accumulations of experience; not for all or any 
 of these things in themselves, and for their own 
 sakes, but only in so far as they bring the mind 
 €ver nearer to that all-satisfying, restful vision of 
 the Entire Truth, of that Simple Unity and Fulness 
 of concrete Being whereof these are but hints and 
 distant rumours. If every new simplification of 
 knowledge by which the incoherent many is seen 
 to be one and connected, delights the mind and 
 gives it a moment of ecstatic rest ; if every addition 
 to our store of experience at once wakes the con- 
 sciousness of a void and fills it, it is evident that 
 the mind has an ineradicable craving for some 
 vision in which the totality of truth shall be 
 summed up in the most absolute simplicity and 
 unity of being. 
 
 But without for a moment lending countenance 
 to the Platonic doctrine of "reminiscence," which 
 simply evades the question as to the origination of 
 our knowledge by pushing it back into the region of 
 
288 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 antenatal darkness, we need not hesitate to recog- 
 nize the truth that, in some sense, all experience and 
 teaching but wakes us to a consciousness of our 
 spiritual self. The soul can know and love only 
 what fits into it, what " agrees " with it, what it can 
 accommodate itself to. For the soul is, in the sub- 
 jective order, the transcending equivalent of all that 
 meets it as the object of its knowledge and love. 
 In its simple spiritual substance is wrapt up what- 
 ever perfection it can comprehend and appreciate 
 in the things presented to its consideration. In 
 revealing to us, day by day, our latent capacities of 
 knowing and loving, life reveals us to ourselves, so 
 that the knowledge of Self and Not-Self go hand in 
 hand. Yet what delights us without is divided and 
 imperfect; what delights us within is united and 
 perfect. In this way the spirit is the microcosm, 
 a pure white light unaware of its own beauty till it 
 sees it scattered into its components by the prism of 
 creation. Still it is not ultimately to the scattered 
 truth, but to truth in its source, to the simple truth, 
 that mind is drawn. As atom to atom, so spirit is 
 attracted to spirit, and mind to mind. It is only as 
 being the shadowings of mind that truth, and beauty, 
 and goodness, and order attract us with an attraction 
 borrowed from that mind, created or uncreated, of 
 which they are the expression and manifestation. 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 289 
 
 What the mind really, though often unconsciously, 
 craves for is the vision of the Eternal Mind, which 
 alone can evoke and fill to infinite overflowing its 
 utmost capacities of knowing and loving, and thereby 
 fully reveal it to itself: "In lumine tuo videhimus 
 lumen," as the mystics say. 
 
 Divine love is simply the tendency or appetite of 
 the created mind towards the Eternal Mind, seeking 
 union with it by vision so far as it is separated from 
 it ; or else, resting in the fruition of that union so 
 far as it has been realized : " Satiabor cum apparuerit 
 gloria tua — When Thy glory shall shine out I shall 
 be satisfied." 
 
 If, therefore, we speak of that vital exercise of 
 the soul's eternal part in which it reaches its highest 
 and best, then Eternal Life undoubtedly lies in 
 gazing upon God's Face ; but inasmuch as this 
 vision fills the soul with joy because she is at rest 
 and has found Him whom she sought, and has 
 embraced Him never to let Him go, Eternal Life 
 may in virtue of this, its inseparable accompaniment, 
 be said to consist in the Love of God. The healthy 
 energizing of the body gives delight ; yet this delight 
 is not life, but a result of the consciousness of 
 life. Therefore, with Augustine we may pronounce 
 blessedness to be : Gaudium de Veritate, — ^Joy at 
 beholding Him who is the Truth; yet the ener- 
 T 
 
290 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 gizing which gives birth to this delight is not of the 
 will and affections, but of the mind ; it is an act of 
 contemplation ; and the life of God Himself, as 
 necessarily conceived by us, not in its simplicity, 
 but as woven of elements, is a life of contemplation 
 by "essence," and of love by "concomitance." As 
 the good and God-like rejoice disinterestedly when, 
 and wherever they see the realization of justice, and 
 truth, and beauty; and as the Blessed in Heaven 
 rejoice because they see God, so God rejoices (we 
 cannot but think) because He sees Himself; and 
 He has created us to enter into that joy. In all 
 cases, however, the theme of joy is, not that God or 
 Goodness is seen, but that God is, though till we see 
 that He is, our joy is not full. 
 
 The distinction of contemplation in the strict 
 sense, as opposed to meditation, is that it is an 
 unprogressive act of the mind, involving no process 
 or discourse or change. Its duration may be 
 measured by its coexistence with time and move- 
 ment ; but in itself it is a timeless eternal act ; not 
 more because it is longer, nor less because it is 
 shorter. What I see I see ; and if I see it clearly 
 and all at a glance, I do not see it more for 
 seeing it longer. In some sense bodily vision 
 is an unprogressive act ; mental vision is wholly 
 so in itself, though it may depend on material 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 291 
 
 conditions for its expression and embodiment in 
 the imagination. 
 
 That blessedness, that the very fulness of the 
 highest life should be realized in an unprogressive, 
 timeless act, such as we have asserted contemplation 
 to be, is a conception very hostile to that modern 
 philosophy which regards life and action as consist- 
 ing essentially in movement ; which cannot imagine 
 " Eternal Rest " to be anything but the negation of 
 all consciousness and activity ; and which can dream 
 of no more excellent beatitude than that of an ever- 
 lasting " getting on " towards an unreachable goal, 
 a perpetuation of the process of evolution and 
 struggle in the midst of which we are now living. 
 " We are making," says Mr. F. W. H. Myers,^ "as 
 safe a deduction from world-wide analogy as man 
 can ever make regarding things thus unknown, 
 when we assume that spiritual evolution will follow 
 the same laws as physical evolution, that there will 
 be no discontinuity between terrene and post-terrene 
 bliss or virtue, and that the next life, like this, . . . 
 will find its best delight in the possibility of progress, 
 not attainable without effort so strenuous as may 
 well resemble pain." 
 
 It cannot be denied that kindly Nature lends a 
 sweetness to labour itself which comes to be sought 
 ' Science and a Future Life. 
 
292 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 for its own sake irrespective of the end to which it 
 is directed. But closer thought will prove this 
 pleasure to be borrowed from, and dependent upon, 
 that which is anticipated in the attainment of the 
 desired result. For what dehghts us in toil is really 
 the intervals of brief fruitional action which alternate 
 with and relieve periods of strain and effort. Either 
 difficulties which stand between us and our final aim 
 are, one after another, conquered ; or else in the 
 very process we begin partially to enjoy what we 
 hope for in its fulness. In neither case is effort and 
 pain desired for its own sake, but only for the sake 
 of the moments of pleasurable energizing with 
 which it is interspersed, or for the accompanying 
 sense of attainment and of labour already accomp- 
 lished, or for the prospect of being able to look back 
 on ground covered and ambitions realized. The 
 love of home lends joy to every step of our home- 
 ward journey, even in the strangest and unfriendliest 
 solitude, where no part of that final joy exists, save 
 only in hope ; and every sum we lay by towards a 
 fortune yields us pleasure not merely as bringing us 
 nearer to our goal, but as being absolutely in itself 
 a partial entering into our desire. 
 
 Look at it how we will, closely as joy is inter- 
 woven with pain and effort, yet its cause is always 
 and everywhere the consciousness of good realized. 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 293 
 
 of rest attained, of labour ended, of appetite satis- 
 fied, of enquiry answered, either in fact or in hope. 
 Who would ever toil at self-evident impossibilities ? 
 Men sometimes go through labours with the 
 •certainty of final failure ; but then on the way much 
 is accomplished, and each particular effort meets its 
 particular success. But no man for mere love of 
 toil would spend his day trying to push a mountain 
 into the sea. 
 
 What lends plausibility to the notion that there 
 is no ultimate satisfaction or rest is that each parti- 
 cular step towards final attainment tends so com- 
 pletely to occupy our desires and divert our 
 attention from its partial and dependent character, 
 that for the time it seems as though our whole 
 happiness lay in this one thing. Thus a man in 
 pursuit of literary or social honours and degrees 
 «ays and believes time after time : " Could I only 
 arrive at this or that point I should be content ; " 
 ■or if his reason corrects the illusion, still his imagi- 
 nation and emotions are dominated by it. But 
 ■when he has secured his point, he finds after a 
 jnomentary fruition that he is as far as ever from 
 plenary satisfaction ; and often that it has but 
 served to wake him to a consciousness of new wants. 
 
 Our thirst is insatiable, so that we must always 
 be drinking. Yet the pleasure is not in the craving, 
 
Z94 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 but in the cure of that craving ; the two processes 
 running on side by side. In a word, so closely are 
 effort and satisfaction twisted together in our 
 present life that we can with difficulty conceive 
 them separate, even if we distinguish them at all. 
 
 It may perhaps be urged that joy depends 
 always on a certain shock of transition from pain 
 to rest, or from rest to betterment; that it dies 
 away as we grow used to the new state ; and 
 therefore it can only be sustained by a series of 
 alternating wants and reliefs. There is truth in 
 this, though with defect. Joy rises from the 
 consciousness of good possessed, and good is that 
 which fills some void, whether a void of which 
 we were previously aware, as when pain is relieved 
 and appetite stayed, or a void which we knew not 
 till the same act which filled it revealed it to us, 
 as when we experience some new pleasure undreamt 
 of before. Why does joy die away except because 
 our attention, our consciousness, is slowly dissipated 
 and withdrawn from what it was wholly concen- 
 trated upon in the first moment of fruition, from 
 the sense of that particular want which imperiously 
 obtruded itself as of paramount and exclusive 
 importance, and from the sense of its satisfaction 
 which the bias of appetite represented to us as 
 ot altogether exaggerated consequence? Could 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 295 
 
 we maintain and perpetuate the illusion of that 
 moment; could we save that experience in all its 
 vivid reality, and not suffer it to be numbered 
 among the receding shadows of memory; could 
 we by contemplative effort preclude the conscious- 
 ness of those other countless voids whose cry- 
 becomes audible when once that more clamorous 
 voice is hushed, then indeed our joy would not 
 fade. In fine, joy does not essentially depend on 
 transition and novelty; nor is it killed by mere 
 endurance; but it depends on the consciousness 
 of void filled, or, more strictly, on the consciousness 
 that " it is well with us." It is because this con- 
 sciousness fades, for the reasons just given, that 
 our joy also fades. If then there were any power 
 within us or without us which could seize and, 
 as it were, petrify the soul in any such moment 
 of fruition; which could so tie its consciousness 
 down to that one want and its satisfaction as to 
 prevent any other simultaneous want distracting 
 our attention, and to forbid any succession of sub- 
 sequent experiences pushing themselves between the 
 mind and that particular moment, and making 
 a dense cloud for memory to pierce through, such 
 a power could secure us unfading joy without any 
 need of variety, or progress, or novelty — a timeless, 
 an eternal joy. Such is the Joy of God in the 
 
296 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 unfading consciousness of His infinite fulness of 
 Being; such is the joy of the Blessed in their 
 unfading consciousness of the fullest realization 
 of their capacity of knowing and loving ; such, too, 
 is the joy of which contemplation secures brief 
 snatches to the saints on earth when it so fixes 
 the spellbound mind on the thought of God that, 
 while the fascination lasts, time and the things of 
 time go for nothing, being non-existent for con- 
 sciousness. Indeed this will not be incredible to 
 any reflective mind observant of its own states, 
 and remembering many an instance where the 
 intensity of an experience has rapt the soul out 
 of itself, absorbing all consciousness of time and 
 of everything else, interior and exterior. Brief 
 " ecstasies " of this sort are common and normal, 
 nor do they differ from those of the mystic, save 
 as to their object, frequency, and duration. A 
 sudden fright, or joy, will in some sense paralyze 
 the rest of the soul by calling its energies to one 
 point ; but at that point all is energy and activity, 
 though without movement or progress ; there is 
 no "discourse" or passing of the mind from part 
 to part of its object, but simple rest in it. Not 
 indeed that the object contemplated is of necessity 
 simple and partless, but that at least all its parts 
 are taken together as one, in one still gaze. If our 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 297 
 
 eye travels over the details one by one, viewing 
 them singly and in relation one to another, yet this 
 process of analysis must have an end somewhere ; 
 these parts, or else the parts of these parts, must 
 each be simply contemplated in turn without further 
 "discourse; " and then the very end of all this 
 dissection and examination is synthesis, a putting 
 together of the whole in order to gaze on it and 
 so enter into the quiet fruition of one's labour. 
 
 Lastly, it may be objected that the very notions 
 of rest and of action are repugnant one to another. 
 But this is to forget that our senses and outward 
 experience reveal to us not action, but simply the 
 effects of action ; those movements and pheno- 
 menal sequences of whose originating and active 
 ■cause we can form no pictorial image what- 
 ever. We are almost constrained to consider 
 action which is the cause of movement as being 
 itself some mysterious kind of movement, and to 
 give the name of action to any movement which 
 precedes and conditions an effect. The very words 
 "attraction," "repulsion," and the like suggest a 
 picture of one body connected with another, and 
 the two thus welded into one, receiving a common 
 motion of local change. But of real causality 
 ■we can form no picture whatever, though our own 
 acts of volition make it conceivable for us by a sort 
 
298 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 of analogy. Roughly we consider the engine as 
 acting on the train it draws after it ; but strictly 
 and in truth we only see the engine being passively 
 moved, and with it the train to which it is rigidly 
 attached. All the action here is offerees of cohesion 
 and expansion ; that is, of hypothetical agencies 
 of whose nature and operation we can only speak 
 in terms of the effects produced, or in terms of the 
 only action of which we have direct experience, the 
 action of our own mind and will. But it is just 
 here that we see clearly how action differs from the 
 effects or the conditions of action precisely in its 
 stillness and steadfastness. 
 
 II. 
 The object of mystical contemplation of what- 
 ever degree, from the ordinary Christian's simple 
 act of love to the ecstasies of the saints, is God — 
 God as He reveals Himself in His action upon the 
 soul, whether acting immediately as First Cause, or 
 mediately through His creatures. To know God in 
 Himself, that is, in His substance, apart from His 
 effects ; not merely to know Him as the Source and 
 Cause of the affections He produces in our mind 
 and heart, but to know what He is in Himself in the 
 same way that we know His effects, and as though 
 He Himself were an effect, is really a contradictory 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 299 
 
 notion ; yet the expression covers the mystery of 
 that union of the beatified spirit with God in 
 Himself, which we call knowledge or vision simply 
 by analogy and for want of any other term, even as 
 we speak of mind-knowledge in terms of bodily 
 sight. But on earth, God can be contemplated only 
 as the hidden source of His works, even as the soul 
 only knows herself by her manifestations, her actions 
 and reactions, but in no wise in her substance and 
 inner perfection. And the manner in which we 
 advance in the truer knowledge and love of our own 
 soul, and acquire a certain laudable habit of self- 
 contemplation, is not only illustrative of, but very 
 intimately connected with, a like advance in the 
 contemplative love of God. For, indeed, the soul 
 is the mirror wherein, according as its capacities are 
 more and more unfolded and realized, we see the 
 fullest finite revelation of God. We cannot under- 
 stand any personality except so far as by a sort of 
 dramatic power we can take it upon ourselves, 
 clothe ourselves with it, and in our imagination put 
 ourselves into that other's place and mood and con- 
 dition. We may, indeed, conceive a notion of 
 goodness and excellence far beyond our own by, as 
 it were, multiplying and purifying that of which we 
 are conscious in ourselves; but we cannot imagina- 
 tively realize such a notional conception, except so 
 
300 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 far as we are at least remotely capable of attaining 
 to it ourselves. Whatever be the multiplier — finite, 
 or infinite — self. is, after all, our highest unit of 
 perfection. We cannot realize anything better than 
 •what we know ourselves to be in ideal and capacity, 
 and it is on our realization, not upon our abstract 
 notion, of God's perfection that our love of Him 
 depends. 
 
 Day by day we advance from imperfect to more 
 perfect self-consciousness and sense of individuality 
 in proportion as the latent activities of our soul are 
 called into fuller and more varied play and slowly 
 revealed to us. We find out by degrees what we 
 can do, what we can know, what we can love, and 
 what therefore we ourselves must be who can fit and 
 be fitted to, who can comprehend and pass beyond 
 all these objects of thought and love and action. 
 We are in the moral order what we love ; we cleave 
 to our like ; atom to atom, and thought to thought. 
 To love justice is to be just ; to love chastity is to be 
 chaste. Is not the poet's love of Nature an index 
 of a fair soul, even if we do not go so far as to say 
 that he imparts that beauty to Nature from his own 
 soul ? W^hatever delights us, that we are — if not 
 effectually, at least in aspiration ; we find it all 
 within ourselves, or else something which answers 
 to it and surpasses it. 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 301 
 
 Yet though derived from an infinite variety of 
 manifestations, the notion we have of "self" from 
 first to last is pure and simple, albeit ever growing 
 in richness and depth of colour. It is not a jumble 
 or heaping together of all our self-experiences, 
 though every one of them has contributed to its 
 making. It is not the effect of a confused view of 
 all our remembered acts of knowledge and love and 
 effort, such a conglomeration as the sense-school 
 would have us think it. It is rather a simple 
 impression which remains after its innumerable 
 causes have vanished from existence and from 
 memory, and which can be resuscitated in their 
 absence. Our gratitude towards a persistent bene- 
 factor is created by the sum of his favours, but is in 
 itself a simple sentiment which endures when the 
 favours are out of sight and even largely forgotten 
 in detail. So as to our sentiment towards self, and 
 our notion of self. The more we get from ourselves 
 in the way of intelligence and love and goodness, the 
 clearer and deeper is our notion, the fuller and 
 richer is our love of that hidden source, that self 
 from which all this proceeds. What we know and 
 what we love is not any or all of these manifesta- 
 tions, but that simple unit which is manifested. 
 Thus, as the word " mother," standing always for 
 the same simple personaKty, means indefinitely less 
 
302 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 for the wailing infant than for the grown son who 
 crowds into it the sentiment generated by years of 
 affectionate intercourse ; so the " I " of dawning 
 consciousness differs in volume of meaning, from the 
 *' I " of mature years. 
 
 But as he grows, he gathers much, 
 And learns the use of " I " and " me," 
 That " I " am not the things I see 
 
 And other than the things I touch. 
 
 And the more he sees and touches and opposes 
 to himself as " other " and " not-self," the fuller and 
 deeper is his consciousness of both what is included 
 and what is excluded by this same " I." 
 
 Now as from the continual study of the works 
 of an author whom we have never seen, a certain 
 simple idea of his personality shapes itself in our 
 mind, derived but distinct from the ideas of his 
 various productions, so from repeated meditations 
 upon God's works and ways and revelations, a 
 similarly simple and concrete impression of the 
 hidden Divinity is formed within us ; the word 
 " God," whose sense was at first vague and thin, 
 becomes big with full and definite meaning, not by 
 an addition of new parts and "notes" as in the 
 case of complex notions that are pieced together 
 by the mind; nor by analysis and dissection, as 
 when a complexity is first apprehended confusedly 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 303 
 
 and then examined in its several details ; but as a 
 dim light intensifies, or as a pale uncertain colour 
 deepens and defines itself, or as a feeling of gratitude 
 or of loyalty or any other affection attendant on 
 some apprehension grows with it in tone and 
 strength. For our estimate of a personality is as 
 simple and undefinable an impression as colour, or 
 sound, or heat, or cold. However multiple be the 
 experiences which created it, yet they are not its 
 constituent factors, but its causes ; and if there 
 may be much common to the several groups of 
 experiences in two or more cases, yet the resultant 
 impression, being simple, is in each case absolutely 
 distinct and undefinable.^ Scientific theology builds 
 up what is properly a " notion " of God part by 
 part, just as a critic might sit down and describe 
 Shakespeare's character from his works, building 
 up the word-picture, part by part, into a complex 
 whole. And one might in either case follow intel- 
 ligently all that was said, and yet realize nothing, 
 just because the description is an image, not of the 
 simple impression of the personality, but of the 
 many causes which in combination give birth to 
 that impression. 
 
 The great aim of the spiritual life, whether in 
 
 1 A B C and A B D have A B in common ; but if each yields a 
 simple result, these results will be as unclassifiable as C and D. 
 
304 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 the ordinary Christian or in the professed contem- 
 plative, is by observation, meditation, and reflection 
 to enrich the significance of the word " God," to 
 crowd ever more and more meaning into its simpli- 
 city ; so that this very thought alone, apart from 
 all reference to the sources whence it is born and 
 nourished, may evoke a correspondingly simple 
 affection which may be viewed as faith, or hope, 
 according to the circumstances in which it manifests 
 itself. It will be readily admitted by many that 
 man reaches his best in bringing his mind and 
 affections into most perfect harmony with the 
 world of his experience; in slowly building up in 
 his mind an ever fuller, more coherent, and more 
 truthful image of the "AH" so far as revealed to 
 him; in contemplating that resulting image with 
 the worthiest and deepest feelings of humble awe, 
 wonder, praise, and love. But in truth this is but 
 a means to another and better conception, through 
 which the mind brings forth in itself an idea, or 
 image, or word of God, in the contemplative love 
 of which it finds its best and most unselfish 
 happiness. 
 
 But if the bare thought of a thing delights us, 
 much more will the reality. Were God the mere 
 dream of a poet's brain, such dreaming would make 
 life worth living ; yet that worth were but a shadow 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 305 
 
 of the solid, all-satisfying joy which springs from 
 the knowledge that God is, and that the reality 
 transcends all dreams that He has given us the 
 power of dreaming. " Jesu, dulcis memoria," says 
 St. Bernard, — " Dans vera cordi gaudia," 
 
 Jesu, the very thought of Thee 
 Can thrill the heart with ecstasy. 
 
 But he goes on : " Sed super mel et omnia, Ejus dulcis- 
 
 prcesentia" — 
 
 But O what sweetness would it be, 
 To feel that Thou wert close to me ! 
 
 For if the idea, the shadow of absent reality, can at 
 times ravish the soul to itself and absorb all other 
 consciousness, far more potent is the present 
 substance of that reality. Even though I know 
 nothing more of an author when I am brought face 
 to face with him than the impression already 
 derived from his works, yet his presence inspires 
 me with a far stronger and more vivid sentiment 
 than I should derive from the mere thought of him ; 
 and in like manner a keen realization of the intimate 
 nearness and presence of God in one's own soul, as 
 well as in Nature, makes contemplative acts much 
 more possible, frequent, and sustained than they 
 would be were they dependent simply on the idea 
 or memory of God. 
 u 
 
3o6 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 All previous processes, therefore, of asking^ 
 seeking, knocking; all our observings, reasonings, 
 reflections upon God's works and doings are 
 valuable chiefly as disposing and preparing us for 
 those moments in which we simply rest and gaze 
 upon the fruit of our labours, upon the simple 
 thought of God Himself which has , been slowly 
 generated within us. 
 
 In every case the act of love is at least incipiently 
 ecstatic. Were it only a fair landscape, or a sunset, 
 or a dramatic crisis, the mere contemplative joy 
 will in a measure take us out of ourselves and 
 absorb all our consciousness to the annihilation of 
 time. Still more when the sole thought of God 
 has gradually gathered to itself, as to a centre, all 
 the interest and affection attendant upon whatever 
 goodness or lovableness is found in the innumerable 
 creatures in which He manifests Himself, will the- 
 mind at times be fascinated to the oblivion of self 
 and of all beside. 
 
 As to ecstasy, it is to be noticed, in passing, that 
 it was an error of the Neo-Platonists to treat it 
 almost as the act of a distinct faculty of the mind ; 
 distinct from reason or intuition, as reason is from 
 memory; a faculty perhaps latent in all, but un- 
 developed in most, and the development of which 
 was the mystic's chief aim. But this was to 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 307 
 
 mistake an action of a recognized type, varied and 
 in some sense we might say, vitiated, by an 
 accidental circumstance, for a new and super- 
 natural kind of action. For, understanding by 
 ecstasy the entire absorption of consciousness by 
 some vivid object, to the destruction of expHcit 
 •self-consciousness and of all sense of time or of 
 •other things, it certainly implies a great intensity 
 of affection and reality of vision in respect to that 
 particular object ; but it is not a point of perfection 
 but rather of imperfection that it should weaken 
 -consciousness of self and of other things. Darkness 
 is not light. This defect is to be ascribed to the 
 limited nature of our attention, which must be 
 withdrawn from one point if it is to be concentrated 
 •on another. We cannot, therefore, suppose that 
 the Beatific Vision of the Saints is strictly ecstatic ; 
 on the contrary, there will be the fullest and most 
 perfect self-knowledge and self;Consciousness co- 
 •existing with the vision of God. For that joy lies 
 in the consciousness of the perfect harmony between 
 •God and the soul ; of the soul's inmost nature 
 designed to be a receptacle of Divinity, and of God 
 as now filling that receptacle with Himself. It is 
 •not a sense of oneness and confusion, or a mere 
 sense of God, but a sense of harmony, of two in 
 ■one, or rather of many in one, of distinct " other- 
 
3o8 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 ness " in personality and of ineffable " sameness "■ 
 in mind, love, and life. And as this future con- 
 summation of the mystical life is utterly antagonistic 
 to that destruction of personal distinctness and 
 absorption into original nothingness which is the 
 goal of Oriental and even Neo-Platonic aspiration, 
 so the very element of ecstasy which commended 
 it to that school, namely, the element of unself- 
 consciousness, is precisely that which prejudices it 
 in the eyes of the Christian mystic ; while contrari- 
 wise, what commends it to the latter is the intense 
 consciousness of God which occasions the defect 
 in question ; whereas what the others seek is not 
 intense wakefulness of the soul, but the quiet of 
 conscious slumber, the sense of insentience. Thus 
 while the Buddhist allows no ecstasy without 
 sanctity, and no sanctity without ecstasy, the 
 Christian never regards ecstasy as more than a 
 psychical accident, or as even of any particular 
 value as an index of sanctity. For though com- 
 monly and roughly it denotes an abnormal intensity 
 of the interior act and, as such, is of frequent 
 occurrence with saints and contemplatives, yet it 
 may very often be simply the result of psychical 
 weakness ; while in stronger souls the more intense 
 love may well be perfectly self-possessed and 
 unecstatic. In fine, abstraction, no less than dis- 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 309 
 
 traction, is a result not of the strength but of the 
 limitation of the human mind. 
 
 It may also be noticed that, though sometimes 
 the mere thought of a personality, apart from all 
 reference to any or all of the self-manifestations 
 through which . it has become known to us, is a ful 
 and sufficient object of intuition and affection ; yet 
 more commonly it is by some one or more of these 
 self-manifestations that we are wakened to such 
 recognition and love. Dante is for me a distinct 
 flavour unlike any other ; and this perception I can 
 evoke without any conscious reference to any or 
 all of the causes which gave birth to it. Yet un- 
 doubtedly it is far more real and vivid and durable 
 when he is, as it were, seen in action or heard in 
 self-utterance. Similarly, for the most part, we 
 need the aid of creatures not only to generate the 
 idea of God within us, but to resuscitate it vividly 
 in memory ; we need to view Him in and behind 
 this or that particular manifestation of goodness, 
 wisdom, power, mercy, love, or as clothed with the 
 garment of the entire universe. But it is the 
 peculiarity of the Saints and mystics to be at 
 last independent of these images and instances, 
 and to be drawn directly to the simple thought 
 of God and held there spell-bound, like a wasp 
 so absorbed in the sweetness of the honey 
 
3CO THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 as to be unconscious of the severance of its own 
 body. 
 
 Yet it is part of the economy of the Incarnation 
 to minister to the deepest needs of our double 
 nature — of this embodied spirit which embodies its 
 purest thought in images derived from the senses ; 
 which embodies its purest love in the warmth of 
 sensible emotion ; which speaks and is spoken to- 
 through the symbolism of things seen and heard 
 and handled with the hands. If a hatred and 
 contempt of matter and of the body and all 
 connected with it, as proceeding from the principle 
 of evil, characterizes Gnostics, Neo-PIatonists, 
 Manicheans, Catharists, Puritans, and kindred 
 schools, it is distinctive of Christ and Catholic 
 Christianity to recognize body and soul as created 
 by God, each in His image and likeness ; to view 
 the flesh as the sacrament and expression of the 
 spirit, as the veil through which the spirit is to be 
 approached, informed, elevated, sanctified. For 
 this cause the Word was made Flesh, that in Him 
 we might see the Divinity as far as it can possibly 
 be expressed in finite human nature— the highest 
 created Word of God, which we can realize and 
 understand. "He that hath seen Me hath seen 
 the Father." 
 
 Thus the Sacred Humanity of Mary's Son gives 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM^ 311 
 
 our imagination a figure, wherein we can clothe 
 that " sense of God " which has been formed in 
 our heart and intelligence. Perforce we must 
 either picture God to ourselves man-wise, or else 
 we must call into our imagination some manifesta- 
 tion of His Presence — the fire, or the storm, or the 
 sunset, or the ocean, if we are to steady our mind 
 in its operation. In the Man Christ we can really 
 see God with our imagination, and also see what is 
 the fullest finite revelation of the Divine Love, the 
 form of a servant wherewith God clothed Himself 
 and suffered that He might woo and win the human 
 soul in its own language. 
 
 To discard all such imaging of God was a 
 point of perfection with the body-loathing Neo- 
 Platonist; but the Christian mystic uses thankfully 
 and gratefully the help which God's gracious 
 condescension has provided for him in the sacra- 
 mental subjection of matter to mind, instituted in 
 the very first creation of things and perfected by 
 the Incarnation. 
 
 "The School," says Paul Sabatier,i " is always 
 more or less the gateway to mysticism; it is 
 possible only to an elect and subtile mind ; a pious 
 peasant seldom understands the Imitation." This 
 is certainly true to a large extent of Neo-Platonic 
 ^ Life of St. Francis, chap. viii. 
 
312 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 mysticism, and of some Christian mystics who have 
 been entangled in that system ; also, it is perfectly 
 evident that whatever cultivates the mind aids in 
 securing the natural conditions for contemplation. 
 Still some of the most noted Christian contem- 
 platives have been void of all scholasticism and 
 mental training, and all have approached God 
 tJii'ough the veil of the Sacred Humanity. Nay, 
 this is Jacob's ladder making an open causeway 
 between earth and Heaven, bridging over the else 
 impassable gulf, and making accessible to the poor 
 and simple, heights never before ambitioned but by 
 the wise and prudent. 
 
 The sweetness of the Divine Love as revealed 
 in the Crucified Humanity has spoken more in one 
 single word to many a pure, child-like heart than 
 all the gathered experience and reflection of the 
 wisest could utter. A Kempis speaks to God and 
 listens to God, but it is the God-Man, Christ ; for 
 he wrote with a faith far other than Sabatier's, in 
 an a^e when " God " meant Christ, and summoned 
 up at once the face of the Son of Mary. The 
 Imitation may not be the form in which a peasant 
 would express his mystical commerce with God, or 
 under which he would recognize it ; but experience 
 is one thing and the successful expression and 
 analysis of that experience is another. 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 313 
 
 And now we are in a position to deal with some 
 objections to the whole theory and possibility of 
 such contemplation as we have been speaking of. 
 In a chapter on Plato and the Doctrine of Rest, one 
 who fairly represents in this matter a large school 
 of current thought, rightly blaming the excesses of 
 the reaction against the Heraclitean doctrine of 
 universal flux, inclines to a contrary excess where 
 he says: " Motion discredited, motion gone, all was 
 gone that belonged to an outward and concrete 
 experience, thus securing exclusive validity to the 
 sort of knowledge, if knowledge it is to be called 
 which corresponds to the ' Pure Being,' that colour- 
 less, formless, impalpable existence — ovaia a-xpto- 
 jxaTO'i ava^rif — to use the words of Plato." 
 
 Again, speaking of " a very abstract, and as it 
 may seem disinterested, certainly uninteresting 
 notion of deity, which is in truth — well ! one of the 
 dry sticks of mere natural theology, as it is called," 
 he says : " To think of the deity you must think of 
 it as neither here nor there; then, nor now; you 
 must away with all limitations of time and space 
 and matter, nay, with the very conditions and the 
 limitations of thought itself; apparently not obser- 
 ving that to think of it in this way was in reality 
 not to think of it at all : — that, in short, Being so 
 pure as this, is pure Nothing." And again : " That 
 
314 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 most abstract and arid of formulae, Pure Being, 
 closed in indifferently on every side upon itself, and 
 suspended in the midst of nothing, like a hard, 
 transparent, crystal ball." Finally : " The European 
 mind . - . will never be quite sane again. It has 
 been put on a quest (vain quest it may prove to be) 
 after a kind of knowledge perhaps not properly 
 attainable. Hereafter in every age someone wilJ 
 be found to start afresh, quixotically, through what 
 wastes of words ! in search of that true Substance, 
 the One, the Absolute, which to the majority of 
 acute people is after all but zero, and a mere 
 algebraic symbol for nothingness. . . . That strange 
 passion for nonentity, to which the Greek was sa 
 oddly liable, to which the human mind generally 
 might be thought to have been constitutionally 
 predisposed ; for the doctrine of ' The One ' had 
 come to the surface before, in old Indian dreams of 
 self-annihilation, which had been revived in the 
 second century after Christ, in the ecstasies 
 (ecstasies of the pure spirit leaving the body 
 behind it) recommended by the Neo-Platonists ; 
 and again in the Middle Age, as a finer shade of 
 Christian experience, in the mystic doctrines of 
 Eckhart and Tauler, concerning that union which 
 can only be attained by the literal negation of self, 
 by a kind of moral suicide; of which something 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 315 
 
 also may be found under the cowl of the monk, in the 
 clear, cold, inaccessible, impossible heights of the 
 book of the Imitation."^ " It is no vague scholastic 
 abstraction that will satisfy the speculative instinct 
 in our modern minds. Who would change the 
 colour or curve of a rose-leaf for the ovcria axpda- 
 lxaTO% aa-'XT]iJ,dTta-TO<s ava<^rj<; — that colourless, form- 
 less, intangible being — Plato put so high ? For the 
 true illustration of the speculative temper is not 
 the Hindoo mystic, lost to sense, understanding, 
 individuality, but one such as Goethe, to whom 
 every moment of life brought its contribution of 
 experimental individual knowledge, by whom no 
 touch of the world of form, colour, and passion 
 was disregarded."^ 
 
 All this criticism loses sight of a verbally subtle 
 but really vast distinction between two senses of 
 the term Pure Being. For it may stand for the 
 last residue of a process of abstraction by which 
 we eliminate, one by one, the differences of things, 
 retaining only what is common ; until when every 
 positive determination of an idea has been obli- 
 terated nothing remains but the empty frame of a 
 thought. " Pure Being " in this sense is what can 
 be predicated of everything when we want to affirm 
 
 ' Plato and Platonism, Edit. 1896, pp. 25, 27, 28, 32. 
 ' Pater's Appreciations (Coleridge). 
 
3i6 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 as little as possible about it, to assert that it is 
 " not nothing " {nonnihil), " mere being." This, 
 the emptiest of all concepts, is infinitely universal 
 just because of its very blankness. Its " purity " is 
 simply negative. Determination or definition both 
 includes and excludes ; and the more it includes, 
 the less it excludes. When the inclusion is mini- 
 mized to a point or zero, then we have this negative 
 notion of Pure Being; but when the inclusion 
 circles out to infinity and when this boundless 
 content is, as it were, fused into one simple per- 
 fection — the transcending equivalent of all — then we 
 have the positive conception of Pure Being. 
 
 In this positive sense. Pure Being is the most 
 concrete of all conceptions ; the result not of abstrac- 
 tion, but of composition; it means the infinite 
 Fulness of Being, and not the indefinite Emptiness 
 of Being. It is not, however, a confused agglo- 
 meration of all the perfections and excellences that 
 we see in God's works, in the physical, moral, and 
 spiritual orders ; for of these, many are contrary to 
 one another and cannot coexist in one and the same 
 subject; but it is the conception of the simple 
 source whence all these things flow and which must 
 contain and infinitely transcend them all. In that 
 subsistent Perfection all these finite perfections exist 
 in their purity, that is to say, freed from their hmits 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 317 
 
 and determinations so far as these are exclusive of 
 further perfection. There is nothing more strange 
 in our forming within ourselves a notion of God as- 
 the hidden source of all being — a notion growing 
 ever richer and deeper as our experience of being 
 enlarges — than in our forming a similarly simple 
 notion of any unknown worker from his manifold 
 works, or of our own secret self from our multitudi- 
 nous self-manifestations ; nor could any conception 
 be less happily described as " colourless, formless, 
 impalpable," "abstract," "uninteresting," — it being 
 the very contrary of all these. Simple it is, and 
 insoluble into parts ; not, however, with the barren 
 simplicity of a point, but with that of a pure colour 
 or of an intense brightness. For as a pure 'colour is 
 to the eye, so is Pure Being, so is God, to the whole 
 soul. If by " Pure Being " we mean the " emptiness 
 of all definite qualification," then it is "neither here 
 nor there," because it is nowhere ; but if we mean 
 the Fulness of Being, then it is " neither here nor 
 there" because it is everywhere; and it is neither 
 "then or now" because it is "everywhen;" and 
 similarly of all contrary and incompatible perfection, 
 it is neither one nor the other, but equivalently and 
 surpassingly both. How these contraries are united 
 in their source we cannot imagine distinctly; but 
 surely nothing is more conceivable. Even in nature 
 
3i8 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 we see how, for example, man, who is neither mere 
 inorganic matter, nor a plant, nor an animal, 
 gathers all the excellences of these things into a 
 simple unity of a higher order. 
 
 Now, as being at the two extreme poles of 
 thought, these opposite conceptions of " Pure 
 Being " enjoy not only the same name, but have 
 many other attributions in common; always, how- 
 ever, understood positively in one case, negatively 
 in the other. Void and Fulness alike are infinite, 
 pure, indeterminable, incomprehensible, ineffable, 
 but in contrary ways and for contrary reasons. 
 
 This being so, it is not wonderful if unskilful 
 thinkers and speakers frequently slip unconsciously 
 from one sense to the other, and so confound 
 all things ; nor can it be denied that Christian 
 mystics and contemplatives have frequently failed 
 in the analysis of their own mental processes and 
 have laid themselves open to the false charge of 
 nihilism. 
 
 Mr. Pater speaks of " the sort of knowledge — if 
 knowledge it is to be called — which corresponds to 
 the ' Pure Being,' " and opposes it to " an outward 
 and concrete experience," and here we must agree 
 with him in his depreciation of the pseudo-mystic 
 contemplation whose object is this void concept, 
 while dissenting from his supposition that there is 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 319 
 
 no true contemplative knowledge, answering to the 
 positive idea of the Fulness of Being. 
 
 The mental act of vision which has for its term 
 that mere skeleton of a thought, with its zero of 
 depth and its infinite monotonous waste of extent, 
 can indeed scarcely be called knowledge at all, fed 
 as it is by the mere husks that remain after every 
 grain of qualification has been extracted from our 
 ideas. In that act of contemplation the mind most 
 nearly attains to conscious annihilation. To think 
 of " nothing," or to see nothing, is the same as not 
 to think, not to see, except so far as "nothing" is 
 invested with a fictitious entity by the mind itself; 
 for the word " nothing" and the idea of " nothing " 
 is something, and can be thought about. In com- 
 plete unconsciousness there can be no sense of rest 
 and quiet ; just as we do not enjoy being sound 
 asleep, but only being on the hither or further verge 
 •of sound sleep. Could the mind be fixed ecstatically 
 ■on the void thought of mere Being, its activity 
 would be brought to the lowest ebb, to the very 
 verge of unconsciousness, to a sense of negative rest 
 and quiet. Now this is the pseudo-mysticism of the 
 East, and of the quietists of all times and varieties ; 
 •of those " old Indian dreams of self-annihilation " 
 •of which Mr. Pater speaks. The Buddhist, however, 
 •unlike the Christian quietist, starts with a principle 
 
320 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 which justifies all his ideas of asceticism and mysti- 
 cism. If all evil and suffering be from desire, and 
 if desire be the necessary expression of separate 
 existence, then separate existence is an evil to be 
 suppressed, and self-obliteration, physical and mental, 
 the repression of distinct thought and desire by the 
 concentration of the mind on the thought of that 
 void, or mere Being, from which we are differenced 
 as ripples from the infinite ocean-plain, is the nearest 
 way to happiness ; to the restful consciousness that 
 we are obeying our destiny. Existence is evil, 
 matter is evil, desire is evil, thought is evil — this is 
 the principle that justifies Oriental asceticism and 
 mysticism. 
 
 Manifestly it is no easy task to fix the mind's 
 gaze on a thought so void of all interest or attrac- 
 tiveness as is that of mere Being-in-general; as 
 long as there is anything m.ore concrete and full 
 within the field of vision the attention will be 
 spontaneously arrested by the latter, unless the 
 will offers a violent opposition and exerts pressure 
 upon the mind, 
 
 . Hence such mystics strive as far as possible to 
 empty the mind of all that could disturb or distract 
 it in the way of rational interest or affection or 
 external occupation, and to procure the stillness and 
 retirement needed for so difficult a feat of concentra- 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 321 
 
 tion, much as we shut our eyes and ears when we 
 desire to bring all our attention to bear on some 
 faint impression or memory. It is because the 
 interest and attractiveness of this barrenest of con- 
 ceptions is so weak, and cannot in the nature of 
 things be strengthened (since unlike the positive 
 conception of Pure Being, it does not admit of 
 intensification), that a conscious effort is needed to 
 counteract the spontaneous impulse of the mind to 
 fix itself on any more concrete and interesting 
 object. Doubtless the negative hypnotic rest which 
 ensues when all full consciousness is focussed upon 
 this mere point of intelligibility and withdrawn from 
 self and everything else, has the attraction of 
 narcotics and sedatives, which apart from other 
 motives may reward the labour and mortification 
 needed for this voluntary self-extinction ; yet it is 
 not an attraction which, like the fervent love of the 
 saints, prevails over every other, but one which can 
 only prevail in so far as all competitors are carefully 
 excluded. 
 
 But the mental act which has for its term that 
 richest of all thoughts, " the Fulness of Being," with 
 its indefinite depths of meaning combined with 
 supreme concentration and simplicity, is "know- 
 ledge " in the highest and fullest sense of the word ; 
 it is the tranquil resting of the mind in the all- 
 
 V 
 
322 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 satisfying fruit of its labours, in the truth won at 
 the cost of thinking and comparing and putting 
 together. If to gaze into void is the nearest thing 
 to not thinking at all, to contemplate Fulness is the 
 fullest of all thoughts, the most intense action or 
 self-realization of the soul. 
 
 In the measure that the simple thought and 
 name of God grows fuller and more crowded with 
 compressed meaning, it will acquire a greater power 
 of distracting the attention from other things to 
 itself; less and less effort will be needed for these 
 elevations and excesses of the mind, till, as in the 
 case of the greater saints, involuntary ecstasy in 
 which the whole consciousness is gathered into and 
 absorbed by this one thought, realizes a foretaste of 
 the absolute unchanging rest of the face-to-face 
 vision in Heaven. In such an act there is no 
 process, no comparison, no building up or dissecting, 
 but simply the perpetuated wonder and" joy of the 
 first shock of vision ; and as time goes for nothing 
 when we are conscious but of one thing, there can 
 be no sense of weariness or satiety. Of this con- 
 templative rest and joy in the thought of God 
 St. Augustine writes : 
 
 Very sweetly did we speak there alone, and " for- 
 getting things past we stretched forward in thought 
 to the future" and sought between ourselves from that 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 323 
 
 present Truth (which Thou art), of what kind that 
 «ternal life of the saints would be — " which eye hath 
 not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into man's 
 heart to conceive." 
 
 But with our hearts' mouth we were panting for the 
 ■supernal streams from Thy fountain — that " fountain of 
 life which is with Thee," that bedewed thence, accord- 
 ing to the measure of our ability, we might in some 
 way master so great a thought. 
 
 And when our discourse had brought us to the 
 conclusion that no pleasure of the bodily senses, how 
 intense soever, or in whatever brilliancy of natural light 
 •enjoyed, could seem worthy of mention, let alone com- 
 parison, beside the joyousness of that Life; raising 
 •ourselves thereunto with still more ardent desire, we 
 passed in order upwards through all bodily things into 
 the very heaven whence the sun, the moon, and the stars 
 shine down upon the earth. And then we rose still 
 higher by internal thought, speaking of Thee and 
 marvelling at Thy works. And then we came to our 
 •own minds and passed up beyond them that we might 
 arrive at that land of unfailing richness where with the 
 pasture of Truth Thou feedest Israel for ever, and where 
 ■" Life " means that Wisdom by which all these things 
 ■which have been, and shall be, are made ; yet itself is 
 not made, but is, even as it was and ever shall be ; 
 though more properly " was" and " shall be " are not 
 found therein, but only " is " since it is eternal. For 
 the eternal knows not " was " and " shall be." 
 
 And as we were thus speaking and straining after it, 
 for a moment we touched it with the whole force of our 
 heart, and gave a sigh ; and then, leaving there this 
 sheaf of the first-fruits of the spirit, we wandered back 
 
324 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 to the tumult of our lips, to the word which hath begin- 
 ning and end. For what is like unto Thy Word, our 
 Lord, which abideth unchanging in Itself and reneweth 
 all things ? 
 
 We were saying then that if the uproar of one's 
 passions were hushed ; hushed also the dreams of earth, 
 air, and ocean ; hushed the heavens ; and the very 
 soul hushed unto herself, passing out beyond herself 
 and not thinking of herself ; and were all visions and 
 pictorial revelations silenced ; and all language, and 
 every symbol, and were everything whose very existence 
 is a passing away, altogether silenced for one; — for if one 
 listens these are always saying : " We made not our- 
 selves, but He that abideth for ever hath made us " — 
 were they, having said thus much, forthwith to be 
 silent, straining their listening ears unto Him who hath 
 made them ; and were He Himself to speak alone, not 
 through them but by Himself, so that we should hear 
 His word, not uttered with bodily tongue, nor through 
 the voice of an angel, nor through thunder from the 
 clouds, nor through riddle or parable, but were we to 
 hear, apart from these. Himself whom we love in these ; 
 and as now we stretch upward and with lightning 
 thought just touch that Eternal Wisdom that abideth 
 over all, could this touch be prolonged, and could all 
 other visions, as of an infinitely lower kind, be with- 
 drawn, so that this one alone might snatch to itself and 
 swallow up and bury its beholder in its most secret joys, 
 and were the unending life to be of the same kind as 
 that moment of intuition for which we sighed, would 
 not this be " entering into the joy of Thy Lord " ? Et 
 istud quando ? And this, O when.i 
 
 ^ Aug. Conf., 1. ix. c. x. 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 325 
 
 No words could more aptly or beautifully explain 
 the act by which "the soul eternes itself," whether 
 in some brief vision of God as known through 
 creation, or in the unending face-to-face contempla- 
 tion of the Blessed in Heaven. As the mirror is 
 filled with and becomes the image of what it 
 reflects, so the soul that sees God brings forth in 
 itself the likeness of God : " When He shall appear 
 we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He 
 is." Our whole end in life is to bring forth this 
 image or word of God in our thought more and 
 more fully and perfectly ; to see God ; to know 
 God, not with a notional, speculative knowledge 
 such as a man might have of what he has never 
 felt or even imagined, but with a real knowledge 
 that comes of intimate contact, as real as our 
 knowledge of our own personality which we cannot 
 doubt, yet cannot analyze or define. 
 
 And this "real" knowledge of God is inseparably 
 identified with love. For it is to the whole soul what 
 a harmony, or a fragrance, or a rich colour is to 
 the particular sense in question — an object which, 
 by eliciting a full and perfect act of perception, 
 causes rest and satisfaction and joy. And in the 
 love of God, and of things god-like and divine, 
 all virtue and holiness is summed up. 
 
 But for us here on earth this love of things 
 
326 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 god-like and divine, this rest and repose of the 
 mind, as it realizes in itself and contemplates the 
 existence of justice, truth, order, beauty, and all 
 manner of goodness, and of Divine self-manifesta- 
 tion in finite things, is not so much a consequence 
 as a cause of the love of God, that is, of the joyful 
 repose of the mind as it contemplates the existence 
 of God, in whom justice, truth, order, beauty, 
 and all manner of goodness subsists in absolute 
 simplicity, and infinite perfection. 
 
 We are not as those Blessed ones who see God's 
 face directly, and who are therefore reminded of it 
 by every hint and suggestion of that Beauty which 
 is reflected from the meanest creature upon which 
 He has lifted up the light of His countenance. 
 We are not carried back in thought to something 
 already experienced, but forward to something as 
 yet only dimly imagined and hoped for. We begin 
 by loving these scattered rays of Divine Beauty 
 before we can focus them to a point in which their 
 brilliancy is concentrated, or trace them upwards 
 as they converge to their common source above. 
 We have no "real" knowledge of God whatever in. 
 this life except so far as we have tasted and loved 
 His sweetness as shared by creatures, and have 
 referred all to Him as to the first author. 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 327 
 
 III. 
 
 Just in the measure that we have experienced, 
 felt, and loved human intelligence, wisdom, grace, 
 justice, pity, affection, fidelity, and every other 
 moral and spiritual excellence ; and just in the 
 measure that we have studied and entered into 
 sympathy with the Divinity manifested in creatures, 
 shall we be capable of a " real " knowledge or love 
 of God. No doubt the notional concept of God 
 as Infinite First Being is the same for the man 
 of little internal experience, and for the man of 
 great internal experience, provided each clearly 
 apprehend the abstract terms. The outline is the 
 same ; but the colouring, how different ! The 
 statement of a man's death has the same "notional" 
 force for the casual reader of the newspaper 
 obituary, as for his wife, or mother, or child ; but 
 for these latter the "real" meaning is immeasur- 
 ably full, while for the former it is simply zero. 
 Such is the difference in significance of the 
 dogmatic statement : " God exists," to the mere 
 theologian or philosopher, and to one who by 
 actual personal experience has learnt to taste and 
 touch and handle and relish the Divinity as com- 
 municated to creatures and to recognize it as from 
 God. 
 
328 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 A certain purification or refinement of the 
 intelligence and heart is therefore a condition for 
 seeing God ; not a sterile, negative purification 
 advocated by the false mysticism whose God is 
 the very ghost of an abstraction, a mere non-nihil, 
 whose contemplation hypnotizes the mind, but a 
 positive purification which consists in the exclusion 
 of darkness by the introduction of every kind of 
 light, and in the exclusion of selfish, base, and 
 impure love by the cultivation of the highest, 
 widest, purest, and deepest love; which consists, 
 in other words, in the highest development of our 
 highest faculties ; in the consequent growth of our 
 power of appreciation. 
 
 A man who is unjust, ungenerous, untruthful, 
 not through frailty falling short of his ideals, but 
 through lack of appreciation, how will such a one 
 love these things in God? What attraction will 
 God have for him? Look at it how we will, our 
 own heart is the mirror in which we see God. 
 
 And this brings up the practical question of the 
 conditions favourable to contemplative love, and to 
 the formation of an ever truer and worthier image 
 of God in the mind. Owing largely to the almost 
 inevitable likeness of terminology used in the 
 expression of the false mysticism and the true, it 
 must be confessed that according as the mind in 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 329 
 
 its confusion has wavered between conceptions so 
 opposite (albeit analogous and correlative), the 
 practical conclusions and issues have been vitiated 
 by a like hesitancy and inconsistency; and we 
 find the Christian mystic at times, in particular 
 matters, enunciating and acting on principles which 
 belong to Oriental pessimism or nihilism, and are 
 quite incompatible with those by which he is 
 governed in the main — principles proper to that 
 uncatholic puritanism which is disposed to regard 
 all human interests, all secular knowledge and 
 ■science, all experience of the senses, all phantasms 
 of the imagination, all works of art and industry, 
 all natural affections and emotions, anything other 
 than the direct thought of God and the super- 
 natural, which could in any way occupy the soul's 
 attention, with a sort of jealous suspicion, and 
 inclined to obviate the danger, not by temperance 
 but by total abstinence ; not by using these things 
 to lead us to God, but by discarding them alto- 
 gether, and striving to occupy the mind and heart 
 with the thought of God alone. This is, of course, 
 to forget that we can in this life have no " real " 
 thought of God but such as has been created, 
 nourished, and fed from our intelligence and 
 ■experience of ourselves and other creatures ; that 
 the mere " notional " conception of God is, apart 
 
330 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 from such feeding and nourishing, but a barren 
 symbol for a value unknown ; a skeleton thought 
 without ilesh or warmth or vitality ; something 
 whose contemplation can do little more than 
 hypnotize the mind into a state of negative rest 
 nigh to death, but cannot waken, quicken, and 
 thereby rest and satisfy its utmost energies in an 
 act of breathless, eternal, infinite wonder. A 
 regime that would thus stunt the mind and 
 ■ affection, and remove the very soil from which 
 alone the idea of God can spring up and draw 
 nutriment and increase, belongs properly to the 
 mysticism of the Buddhist who is seeking rest in 
 the minimum of spiritual activity through the 
 fixed contemplation of Infinite Void. 
 
 But on the whole, in spite of occasional slips and 
 slidings from one to another of those contrary con- 
 ceptions which lurk under an almost identical 
 language, the Christian mystics have held fast to 
 the truth that the way to God is through creatures, 
 and the perfection of God's image in the soul 
 involves the very fullest development, the positive 
 purification of its highest faculties, and of the entire 
 man, soul and body. 
 
 According to the possibilities of the age and 
 country, we find reading, research, scientific and 
 literary studies, fine arts and useful handicrafts 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 331 
 
 flourishing in those homes of contemplation to 
 whose shelter we owe the preservation, the advance, 
 and even the creation of many of these elements of 
 civilization and rational development. Augustine, 
 Jerome, Basil, Gregory, Bernard, Aquinas, Anselm, — 
 these and a hundred other names are not less asso- 
 ciated with all the learning and life of their day 
 than with contemplative prayer of the highest order. 
 Not that they were all mystics, in so far as that 
 word implies a certain involuntary rapture in which 
 the whole attention is wrested from everything else 
 by the thought of God; for this depends on the 
 sensibility and responsiveness of the affection which 
 sometimes is least where the spiritual light is 
 greatest, and conversely; so that many love the 
 little they know of God far more vehemently than 
 others love the much they know of Him. But those 
 of whom we speak were men who, however they 
 may have been self-possessed and masters of their 
 affection, yet had a singularly real, rich, and massive 
 sense of God. 
 
 If retirement from the world into the desert or 
 the cloister is almost invariably considered a condi- 
 tion of a life of contemplation, yet the motive is not, 
 as with the Buddhist, to starve the soul, but to fill 
 it ; it is to withdraw it from battening on the husks 
 that it may feed upon the bread of angels. It is 
 
332 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 because for the most part the cares of ordinary Hfe 
 behttle the soul and render thought difficult and 
 impossible that retreat is in many cases a sine qua 
 non for the leisured consideration needed for a life 
 of close communion with God. As to the necessity 
 and social utility of such a class of devotees we 
 have spoken elsewhere. Our immediate point is 
 that the retreat of the Christian mystic is not from 
 life to death; from mental and moral activity to 
 inaction ; but from a lower and thinner to a fuller 
 and higher life; from dissipation to concentration 
 of energy. 
 
 Nor in the abandonment of wife and children, in 
 the love and service o£ whom the best affections and 
 virtues in normal cases are elicited and strengthened, 
 is the Christian mystic influenced by a desire of 
 narrowing his affections as though he could love God 
 better for loving man less ; but his aim and hope is 
 to put on an affection which is not diluted but 
 strengthened for being world-wide like that of God's 
 own heart, to which it is attuned : and to find in 
 the Church and in the universal human family 
 what others find in the few members of a single 
 household. 
 
 Since it is by the mind and the heart that God 
 is apprehended and loved, whatever tends to the 
 expansion and purification of these faculties disposes 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 33J 
 
 US for contemplation. The mind is expanded in the 
 measure that it is fed with all manner of knowledge, 
 the fruit of .experience and of reflection upon 
 experience — our own and that of others. And it is 
 purified not only from the negative stain of darkness 
 and ignorance — for this were but another aspect of 
 its expansion — but from all positive error of credulity 
 or doubt, from all bias and prejudice ; from all that 
 would clog the smoothness of its operations, or 
 hinder its upward flight. The heart is expanded by 
 every increase of sympathy with the mind and heart 
 of God in regard to persons or things to which any 
 measure of the Divine Goodness has been com- 
 municated; and it is purified by the orderly 
 harmonizing of all these affections under the 
 dominion of its master-affection for the Divine 
 Goodness, unalloyed and in itself; and by the 
 casting out of all selfishness and weakness and 
 whatever could debase or dissipate its best and 
 highest energies. 
 
 So far as God's attributes are revealed to us^ 
 through creatures by whom they are shared, the 
 more we study the creature the more we shall know 
 of the Creator. If, for example, in the Benedicite 
 and similar acts of divine praise we bless God and 
 love Him for the wisdom, goodness, power, and 
 beauty displayed in His works, the more we know 
 
334 
 
 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 of those works the fuller our praise will be. Thus, 
 the sacred poet is not content to say : "All ye works 
 of the Lord bless ye the Lord," and there to make 
 an end. That were far too vague and notional a 
 concept to move hearts of flesh. But he proceeds 
 to unfold the contents of this notion and to enu- 
 merate God's works in detail. Yet, when all is 
 done, he still leaves us with but classes and species 
 which admit of indefinite unfolding. How much 
 more will " sun, moon, stars " mean for the astrono- 
 mer than for another who has not given his life 
 to communion with those wondrous immensities! 
 Similarly, rain, dew, winds, hoar-frost, ice, snow, 
 light, darkness, cloud, lightning, mountains, hills, 
 flowers, birds, beasts, seas, streams, will each mean 
 for one very little; for another an immeasurable 
 wealth of divine revelation, according to the experi- 
 ence, observation, reflection of the contemplative. 
 What does universa germinantia in terra (everything 
 that sprouts up from the soil) mean for one born 
 and bred in city slum ? and what for one accustomed 
 to make the flowers his calendar ? " Ice and snow" 
 will suggest to some little more than miscomfort ; 
 but to other minds they will summon up the glory 
 of Alpine heights or the terror of Arctic winters. 
 Every river by whose banks we have wandered; 
 •every hour we have mused by the seashore ; every 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 335 
 
 gentle breeze we have inhaled ; every tempestuous 
 wind which has swept over us ; every cloud that our 
 €ye has traced and followed ; every dawn and sunset 
 whose splendour we have marked ; every bird whose 
 song we have listened to, whose plumage we have 
 noted ; every living creature whose form and action 
 and instinct have filled us with wonder — all these 
 observations and experiences combine to expand the 
 mind and to crowd more and more meaning into the 
 words of the Benedicite, and thereby to add depth 
 and richness to our sense of God and to the praise 
 we render Him. Nor is this less but more true 
 when in the same hymn we pass from the non-moral 
 to the rational and moral world and bless God for 
 .a new order of self-manifestations accorded us in 
 the mind and heart of man. The more we know 
 of humanity at large {Filii hominum), of the nature 
 and history of man, the deeper and more detailed 
 our knowledge, the richer will be our praise. So, 
 too, the more we know of Israel, the Church of 
 God, and of the souls of the just on earth, and 
 of the saints in heaven, the more will our words 
 be pregnant with sense, the less will our prayer be 
 meagre and barren. 
 
 This we have said to illustrate what we mean 
 by that general expansion of the mind so helpful to 
 contemplation in the Christian sense of the term. 
 
336 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 It follows, as a matter of course, that whatever 
 cultivates and furnishes the mind is of the highest 
 importance. To starve the mind and then to lock 
 it up in a cell to contemplate God would be to- 
 expect bricks without straw. It was precisely so far 
 as the highest and best culture could not be secured 
 in the hurry and multifariousness of a worldly life 
 that contemplatives have fled from an atmosphere 
 prejudicial in most cases to mental growth; but in 
 no wise did they desire to cut themselves off from 
 the sources of spiritual nourishment. 
 
 Nor is it only as supplying the mind with matter 
 for building up its idea of God that all this 
 experience, information, and study are needed ; but 
 also as contributing to that work of mental purifica- 
 tion, discipline, mortification and restraint, without 
 which the luxuriant fulness of our thought generates 
 confusion rather than truth, and carries us along 
 like drifting straws in its wild currents. For of 
 these two elements, fulness and restraint, all life 
 and perfection, whether of body, heart or mind, 
 is woven. 
 
 There is a discipline in abstract philosophy, in 
 mathematics, in positive and historic investigation, 
 in literary construction and criticism, in the fine 
 arts, in useful handicrafts, which purifies the mind 
 from error, quickens its powers of observation. 
 
 J 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 337 
 
 insight and reason, and makes it pliant, subtle, and 
 strong in dealing with the matter presented to it. 
 And in the measure that mystic contemplation is 
 from its very nature as far as possible removed from 
 the category of what is called "exact thought," 
 dealing as it does with objects necessarily beyond 
 the comfortable grasp of the mind, and belonging in 
 some sort to the world of ideas which we construct 
 for ourselves out of materials derived from the world 
 of experienced realities, this healthy commerce with 
 the concrete and the exactly verifiable is all the 
 more needful if the intellect is to keep its balance. 
 
 But in all this, the means must be measured to 
 the end, and the end not forgotten in the means. 
 We can gather more manna than we shall ever 
 need: we can overload our mind with experience 
 beyond what we can digest and assimilate. Prayer, 
 and not mental culture, is the contemplative's end, 
 and if it is helped by a due measure, it is choked 
 by an excess of the means. 
 
 Nor have these means been ever wholly neglected 
 in the monasteries of contemplatives ; though of 
 course they were not always and everywhere as 
 abundant and readily accessible as in our own days, 
 nor was their direct bearing on contemplation, 
 apart from their indirect value as a recreation and 
 diversion of the mind, always explicitly adverted to. 
 w 
 
338 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 The advantage of some measure of this discipline, 
 this asceticism and mortification of the intellect, 
 is evident when we consider the excesses and 
 delusions that may arise' and have arisen from 
 spiritual excitement and intoxication in the case 
 of certain visionaries and ecstatics. 
 
 It is plain that a life of thought and contem- 
 plation tends to destroy the rightly balanced 
 distribution of the vital powers between mind and 
 body, and to produce that anarchy of the nervous 
 system — the borderland where the two territories 
 blend — which results in hysteria and other kindred 
 disorders. This unbalance may be caused by an 
 habitual diversion of energies to either side, to the 
 impoverishment of the other; so that hysteria or 
 hysterical phenomena mark excesses of animalism 
 and excesses of spiritualism alike. Often, moreover, 
 there is a constitutional predisposition, one way or 
 the other, which can be developed or counteracted 
 by one's pursuits in life. Also, there are at times 
 in the same subject sudden reactions, back-swings 
 of the pendulum, struggles of injured nature to 
 right herself and rest in the mean. All these 
 well-known phenomena point to the necessity of 
 that mastery over the workings of the mind and 
 imagination which can be largely secured by 
 studies that involve method, concentration, criticism, 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 339 
 
 freedom from heat and commotion, such as some 
 branch of positive science or of historical inquiry 
 which brings the mind into sobering contact with 
 fact and reality. 
 
 Still more obvious is the necessity of counter- 
 acting the excessive strain put upon the cerebro- 
 nervous system by a life of contemplation, and of 
 securing that perfect health of body without which 
 the health of the mind is so gravely imperilled. 
 Apart from those austerities which the saints have 
 assumed in a spirit of penance and expiation, there 
 is a certain severity and bodily asceticism which 
 has always been recognized as conducing to mental 
 efforts of the higher sort ; nor is it to be supposed 
 that health means the fullest possible degree of 
 physical development. But any notorious defiance 
 of the conditions of a sound nervous system, opens 
 the door to hysterical ailments and morbid illusions. 
 
 And besides this expansion and enrichment of 
 the mind and its purification from error and 
 illusion, we have to attend assiduously to the 
 expansion and puriiication of the heart and affec- 
 tions. It is only in proportion to our experience 
 of loving and of being ' loved, and that, in the 
 highest, painfuUest, most unselfish way, that we 
 increase our power of loving God and our desire 
 of being loved by Him in return. And here again 
 
340 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 the superficial resemblance between the detachment 
 advocated by Oriental pessimism and that which 
 is approved by Christian mysticism covers an 
 immeasurable antagonism of principle and spirit. 
 Christ says : " He that loves father or mother, son 
 or daughter, husband or wife, brother or sister, 
 more than Me, is not worthy of Me," and demands 
 a readiness to forsake all rather than forsake the 
 interests of God and of our own soul. This is a 
 matter of grave or lesser obligation, or one merely 
 of counsel, according to the matter in regard to 
 which the love of God and the love of our near 
 ones or neighbours come in conflict. Inhuman as 
 it sounds to faithless ears, this doctrine is only 
 what all confess when they say that for no personal 
 affection may we sacrifice principle, truth, justice, 
 or any other eternal interest ; it is the sentiment we 
 applaud in : "I could not love thee half so well, 
 loved I not honour more." Indeed these lines give 
 ■js the true solution of the seeming difficulty. 
 Natural affections are not weakened but strengthened 
 and developed in their purest form by being kept in 
 their right place, namely, subject to the overruling 
 love of God, the Eternal Reason and Truth and 
 Honour. 
 
 Matter and force are spiritualized so far as the 
 work of spirit is put into them — so far as, impregnated 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 341 
 
 ■with idea and thought and form, they are deHvered 
 from the passiveness, grossness, and shapelessness, 
 •which is implied in the expressions: "brute matter" 
 and "brute force." And "carnal" affection similarly 
 is spiritualized, when it is restrained, shaped, and 
 directed by intelligence and light. Obeyed blindly 
 and passively, these affections quickly degenerate 
 and expend themselves unprofitably, dragging the 
 ■whole character down to the gutter. They are but 
 a form of " selfishness " in the bad sense of yielding 
 to the stronger inclination without thinking if it be 
 the better ; that is, without referring it to the law of 
 reason which is the law of Divine love — of the love 
 •of what is Divine. The affection which cannot bear 
 pain or inflict pain in the interest of higher claims ; 
 the affection of weakly self-indulgence which sacri- 
 fices the higher good of the beloved one to present 
 mutual gratification; which cannot enter into the 
 mind of Christ, whose severe love did not spare 
 the Heart of His Mother pierced with the sword 
 •of separation ; such affection is carnal, corruptible, 
 and evanescent ; and it is only by the refining 
 influence of restraint and mortification that it can 
 be shaped and spiritualized and thereby redeemed. 
 When a man in his loving is really dead to all 
 worldly and selfish considerations and awake only 
 to those that are divine ; when he loves friends and 
 
342 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 relatives and neighbours for what is really best and 
 most lovable in them ; when he recognizes the 
 unshaped, natural drawings of his heart as from 
 God, and therefore not to be profaned by misuse 
 but perfected by right use ; when in loving them 
 he is by interpret^ition loving Christ whose they 
 are, and when in loving Christ he is loving them ; 
 when, in a word, his natural affection is lit up with 
 Divinity, then indeed his heart has first learnt what 
 love means. 
 
 Thiis the perfect love of man leads to the perfect 
 love of Christ, and conversely. So intimately do 
 they act and react, that they may be regarded as 
 two phases of one love. If then the Christian 
 solitary leaves his home for the closer service of 
 Christ, it is only in the spirit in which a man may 
 leave his family for years to go and earn for them 
 in a foreign land. They might weakly wish to keep 
 him ; he might weakly wish to stay ; but the 
 higher love demands the mutual sacrifice. 
 
 Undoubtedly the continual close proximity of 
 those to whom we are deeply attached may have 
 a narrowing, exclusive influence upon our affections, 
 and not only hinder our loving others as we ought, 
 but our loving them with a discerning and intel- 
 ligent regard. Emotional intensity gathers up the 
 rays of our attention and centres them on a single 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 343 
 
 point. Moreover, the assimilative force of that 
 emotion makes us disposed to conform ourselves 
 even blindly to the pattern of those we love, and 
 to approve in them what we did not previously 
 approve. Hence it is always a gain to stand away 
 for a time, to calm excited feeling and to see things 
 clearly, that our love may be based on no illusion 
 blinding us to the defects of those we love and to 
 the perfections of others. It is a higher love that 
 does not depend on illusion or fear disillusion in 
 either respect. 
 
 While, therefore, the Buddhist seeks to eradicate 
 every natural affection, the Christian seeks to 
 strengthen and purify it, and to use it as means 
 of developing all that is best in his heart, and so 
 increasing his capacity of loving God. Mortifi- 
 cation here, as elsewhere, is common to both 
 systems ; but in the one it is death for the sake 
 of death ; in the other, death for the sake of fuller 
 and richer Hfe. The Christian withdraws from his 
 family that he may love them more deeply and 
 truly and at the same time extend his love as wide 
 as that of the Heart of Christ. 
 
 The striking superficial resemblance between the 
 retirement of the Buddhist monk or hermit and 
 that of the Christian contemplative or mystic covers 
 a substantial difference of infinite moment. Death- 
 
344 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE MYSTICISM. 
 
 is the keynote of one system, life that of the otlier. 
 The Christian withdraws himself from the petty 
 activities of external life in the interests of a life- 
 of action, whose fruitfulness and utility is indirect, 
 but more abundant and far-reaching, — a thought 
 unintelligible and paradoxical to those who ignore 
 the omnipotence of idea, — who measure utility by 
 material productiveness, or some equally tangible 
 result. He designs to live not less but more fully, 
 to lose his life in a lower sense that he may gain it 
 in a higher. His cell is the grave of his narrower, 
 unworthy self, but it is the cradle of his truer and 
 wider self. 
 
 To say that through Neo-Platonic influence this 
 vital distinction has never been lost sight of, would 
 be to fly in the face of known facts ; to say that 
 it is not clearly contained in the utterances of 
 Catholic saints and teachers, when they are com- 
 bating pseudo-mysticism and quietism in its various 
 forms, and are so forced to a closer consideration 
 of the matter, is no less a deviation from truth. 
 
 Oct. Nov. Dec. 1899. 
 
A SELECT LIST 
 
 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS 
 
 (MAINLY ROMAN CATHOLIC) 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
 
 LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY. 
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS. 
 Apologia pro Vita Sua, Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Popular Edition. 8vo. 6d. net, 
 
 *** The Popular Edition contains a letter, hitherto unpublished, by Cardinal Newman to 
 Canon Flanagan in 1857, which may be said to contain in embryo the " Apologia " itself. 
 
 Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman during his 
 Life in the English Church. With a brief Autobiography. Edited, at 
 Cardinal Newman's request, by Anne Mozley. 2 vols. Cr. 8vo. 7s, 
 
 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 Svo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Contents:— ^fff^ff^; Self-Denial the Test of Religious EarnestnesB— Divine Calls — 
 The Ventures of Faith — Watching. Christmas Day : Religious Joy. New Year's Sunday : 
 The Lapse of Time. Epiphany: Remembrance of Past Mercies — Equanimity— The 
 Immortality of the Soul — Christian Manhood — Sincerity and Hypocns/ — Christian 
 Sympathy. Septuagesima : Present Blessings, Sexagesima: Endurance, the Christian's 
 Portion. Quinguagesima : 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 wiLh 
 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-^Tbo Shepherd of our Souls— Domg Glory 
 to God in Pursuits of the World. 
 
A SEL,i£UT JLlOi Ur VTL/it/iO 
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS. 
 
 Parochial and Plain Sermons. Edited by Rev. W. J. Copeland, B.D., 
 
 late Rector of Farnham, Essex. 8 vols. Sold separately. Crown 
 
 8vo. 3s. 6d. each. 
 
 Contents of Vol. I. :— Holiness necessary for Future Blessedness— The Immortality 
 of the Soul — Knowledge of God's Will without Obedience— Secret Faults — Self-Denial the 
 Test 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 Office — 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. 
 
 Contents of Vol. III. :— 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 witlj God — Christ Hidden from the World — 
 Christ Manifested in Remembrance — The Gainsajing 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 M3'stery of Godliness — The State of Innocence — 
 Christian Sympathy — Righteousness 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 op 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 — Warftire 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, 
 
PUBLISMBD By LONGMANS, GREEN, <&• CO. 
 
 CARDINAL NEWMANS WORKS. 
 Parochial and Plain Sermons.— Continued. 
 
 .. ^""Ul*"!?, °'' ^°'- 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 
 Epipluny— The Duty of Self-Denial— 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— 'The 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 Disappomted— 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. 
 
 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 Nobleness — 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 
 Stead&stness in our Religious Profession — Elijah the Prophet of the Latter Days — Feast- 
 ing in Captivity — The Parting of Friends. 
 
 Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford. 
 between a.d. 1826 and 1843. Ciown 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 Saul — 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. 
 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 Infinitude of Divine Attributes— Mental Sufferings 
 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 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Contents : — Faith considered as the Instrumental Cause of Justification — 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 8vo. 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 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Two Essays on Miracles. i- Of Scripture. 2. Of Ecclesiastical 
 History. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Discussions and Arguments. Crown 8vo. 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 8vo. 7s. 
 
 I. Poetry. :i. 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. 9. Countess of 
 Huntingdon. 10. Catholicity ot 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. 
 
PUBLISHED BY LONGMANS, GREEN, &■ CO. 5 
 
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