i | | i | | Matt SS ae | { iNaueidtitiie Se ee } : Hl itt HEALD Sra tee | MUR LE EE TS NS EIS IY IE SE a Sea LSU? SMDACNSDALI a LIT TOR: Se ete SS $$ STEED (SETTER aE aE ——$—_— EC PRA RIS RAL SER ———$——— SS ASL ABE WES GR a Aon a CORSET == += fabheny Hit iL PATH en ert te AE NA Lag ESE VALUES OF CATHOLIC FAITH VALUES OF CATHOLIC FAITH Bh we THE REV. LATTA GRISWOLD, M.A. MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. MILWAUKEE, WIS. COPYRIGHT BY MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. 1926 “Coelestis urbs Jerusalem, Beata pacis visio Quae celsa de revertibus Saxis ad astra tolleris, Sponsaeque ritu cingeris Mille Angelorum millibus.” CONTENTS . INTRODUCTION . . THe Mass . . [THE CREED . . [THE DIVINE OFFICE . THE KINGDOM oF Gop . . THE Way z | Yi ae pie F bs tiyh v bh ant + hee Ts en: i pene ; ; i 4 ‘5 *,. y ¥ Me Tots ? oy as PRE AS | de Ve ote eh ue | y ’ - al ae , a f Das re an ie # yaa pe a ae INTRODUCTION l. IT Is IMPOSSIBLE in this age to take an in- telligent interest in what goes on in the world without being increasingly aware of the forces that are making for disintegration, and with- out becoming discouraged as to the surety of reconstructive influences effectively stabilizing western civilization and perpetuating western culture. In whatever direction the enquiring mind turns itself it is bewildered by chaotic con- ditions or confronted by insoluble difficulties. Politically and economically civilization is threatened with catastrophe. Morals, in theory as well as practice, are characterized by the repudiation of even the nominal standards that were accepted before the war. Philosophy for the time is inarticulate; and if art is not less vocal than of yore, that is matter for reproach rather than gratulation. It is true that science daily extends the domain of the known, but the 2 Values of Catholic Fatth devices which the new knowledge makes possi- ble tend to complicate existence and to increase its stress and strain. The religious world, to speak only of Christendom, presents a confus- ing spectacle of hopeless division. It is char- acterized by almost every possible variety of belief and by general indifference to the prac- tice that any sort of belief might be supposed to imply. But the malady of the age is the subject for diagnosis by innumerable physicians, and it is the theme of almost all who write, unless it be that they prefer to illustrate rather than de- scribe some aspect of the general ill. Lacking as it does both novelty and usefulness, such pro- — cedure is no longer attractive; and yet it is desirable to indicate that the universal sickness may be ignored for the sake of demonstrating that for a few at least there is a way toward serenity of spirit and a method of escape from this too-much-with-us world. Apologetic no longer reaches those whom it would persuade, nor would prove convincing if it did. Authoritative instruction is accepted only by those who do not need it. In conse- quence neither reasoned argument nor dog- matic statement repays the effort to produce it. Yet it may be worth while to express, as clearly Introduction 3 as may be and in quite personal terms, what this way can mean: what marks it through the waste and wilderness; what is the experience of walking in it, at least for one if not for all; how, even when but fitfully followed, it yet may gleam through the twilight of our dark- ened days with supernal beauty; why, in spite of its own difficulty or the pilgrim’s loitering, it continually allures. It must be possible to ex- press suggestively, if not adequately, in spite of intelligent awareness of insoluble problems, _why the Catholic Church may permeate all con- sciousness with its beliefs, implications, hopes, ideals; inform if not compel conscience; illumine imagination; satisfy intellect and feel- ing; and convince the spirit that its communion is in brief, as its first followers were content to call it, the Way. It is one of the most regrettable conse- quences of a divided Christendom that the Catholic Church may connote for different per- sons entirely different conceptions. Almost all Christians confess belief in the Catholic Church when they recite the ancient creeds, but it is common knowledge that they may mean by that confession anything from the vaguest and most indecisive notion of the Church to the strictest and most rigid. The expression may be 4. Values of Catholic Faith used to profess faith in a general church in- visible or to denominate the most highly or- ganized and strictly disciplined of the Christian communions or even to indicate a nebulous dis- belief in any church at all. And yet precise definition of the term must be passed over; for that no ideas concerning the Church, even the most vague, are wholly alien to it, and since the very purpose of what is set down here is to illustrate and enlarge the conception. It must be sufficient for the moment to note that the term Catholic is here used in its historic sense of universal, that is to say, as standing for the absolute and the true religion; in the sense in which it is accepted, so far in common, by several large and well-defined groups of Christians: and to caution that, though no effort will be made to identify the Church with any one of these groups, it is not to be inferred that the Church militant here in earth exists independently of them. There is no escape from Rome, Canterbury, or Constantinople into an ideal Catholicism. It is only possible to pass from one of them into another, or quite out of the Catholic pale into churches which take pride in regarding them- selves as free of all historic boundaries and limitations. Introduction 5 Content for the present with so liberal a conception of the historic Church, it will ob- viate later misunderstanding if some prelimi- nary statement be made as to what was in mind when it was asserted that this exposition would be made largely in personal terms. It is de- signed to avoid systematic exposition and only incidentally to appeal to logical argument for the sake of describing what the Church means to one inconspicuous member of it: to catch and crystallize, so far as possible, the more subtle and fluid causes for its appeal. The point of doing this is simply to give expression to a factor of experience that is rich in satisfaction and suggestive of satisfactions even richer, not yet realized, but promised, and (as it seems) assured. And though the purpose is definitely not apologetic, yet it is not im- probable that the result may prove so,—a con- sequence not to be deplored. Since Christianity is so intensely personal, it may be that the rea- son so much of its intellectual defense proves futile even when it is sound, is because the per- sonal term is so often lacking. A man is oftener won to a movement or drawn to a system of thought by the fact that it is shared in and held by this one and that, than because the move- ment has inherent claims or the system of 6 Values of Catholic Fatth thought is warrantable. Perhaps this is why so many bad causes win such devoted followers and such demonstrably false systems have such enthusiastic adherents. Religion is an experience; the representa- tion of it therefore in terms of experience is always worth the effort. II THE MASS “Tantum ergo Sacramentum V eneremur cernui: Et antiquum documentum _ Novo cedat ritui: Praestet fides supplementum Sensuum defectut.” i THERE Is an old saying that it is the Mass that matters. And in a variety of ways this is true. For Catholics generally, their religion centers in the Mass, and all their religious practice has direct or indirect relation to it. And contrariwise what differentiates Protes- tants is their repudiation of the term and of the greater part of the cycle of ideas connoted by it: indicated by their custom of designating this sacrament almost exclusively as the Lord’s Supper, of relegating the service to the back- 8 Values of Catholic Faith ground of their worship, and of celebrating it infrequently and without the ceremonial ad- juncts otherwise usual with them. In a com- munion like the Anglican where both Catholic and Protestant influences are at work, the con- flict is unfortunately most acute just at this point. And nothing might seem more to wit- ness to the evil of schism than that it should render the sacrament of love and unity the occasion of bitterness and discord. It is the supreme instance of how the principle of evil, once it is permitted to assert itself, takes ad- vantage of our weakness and unworthiness to profane the most holy things. While this must reluctantly be acknowl- edged, it should not and it need not interfere. And it does not interfere, if instead of per- mitting the restless mind to seek to explain away or even penetrate the essential mysteries, the soul submits itself to the influences of that most good thing which the Saviour has given. And whatever the circumstances of the cel- ebration of the service of the altar these influ- ences are really the same. Whether it be with ali the majestic ceremonial of a great cathedral and the use of all those accessories of worship developed by the pious taste and skill of many centuries, or whether it be in a little country The Mass 9 church, stripped bare of everything commonly thought to dignify and beautify the service, if there be but reverent faith and humble devo- tion, it is precisely in both cases an initiation into the divine presence: there comes over the soul that sense of awe that bespeaks the near- ness of God. The splendour and the simplicity alike fade from the consciousness. This is the house of God; this is the gate of heaven. Under the spell of the hour and the place, in response to the cadences of immemorial words in which for centuries aspiration and de- votion have expressed themselves, the sense deepens that what happens here in time is in- deed the representation of an action that has its counterpart in eternity. For a little while time and space fall away: what is done and what is said almost cease to be symbolism, rather become that ineffable mystery into which even the angels scarce dare to look. The spirit is uplifted and unites itself with the whole com- pany of heaven to laud and magnifiy the Holy Name. A gleam from that place where there is no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof, irradiates the inmost consciousness, is an intimation of the beatific vision. IO Values of Catholic Fatth This experience is constituted of many factors. It is a fabric of most complex weave: every thread of which is finest-spun silk or gossamer filaments of sheerest linen, or leaf of thinnest, purest gold. It is intricate and lovely; _but compact, firm, of quality most durable; in- finite in quantity, for it has neither beginning nor end. Tears and prayers, joy and sorrow, hopes and fears, penury and abundance, have all gone to its weaving—the deepest, widest, highest experiences of humanity. And the hand at the loom is God’s. The contemplation of it in this and that light—in Christendom’s early dawn, in its noonday glory, in our time’s dull twilight, must - but enhance the essential beauty of the pattern and reveal its intrinsic strength. There is mar- vel in the very thought that somewhere and under such strangely contrasted circumstances, the Mass has been celebrated every day since Jesus blessed bread and cup at the Last Supper. We read frequently in St. Paul’s letters of salutations from the church in the house of Aquila, of Priscilla, of Nymphas, and of other persons: indicating how necessarily small and secret were the church centers in those Apos- tolic days. It is pleasant to think of the Eu- charist as celebrated in them. It is early morn- The Mass Il ing and the cool sunlight just touches the tops of cypress trees and expels the shadows from the marble colonnade that leads from the low Greek house to the garden below the sloping lawns. There, in a recess formed by box and screened by olive trees, stands a rude stone altar on which sacrifices were once offered to the old, forgotten gods of Roman ancestors. Nearby is entrance to the elaborately constructed cata- comb beneath, burying ground or church in per- ilous times of persécution. Voices, in tones of -exultant gladness, chant, now a Latin hymn, now the Kyrie eleison from the liturgy. The rude, antique stone is gay with fresh flowers and bright with little jets of light that burn in quaint oil-lamps set here and there upon it. The air is pungent with perfumes, cedar and box, meadowsweet and frankincense. Before the al- tar stands an old man, clad in a round white garment of wool—the casula or “little woolen house.” Bending over the altar, he blesses bread and wine. Presently he turns, gives little flakes of the white bread to the people kneeling round about, and offers them the cup. There 1s the noble Roman matron whose house it is, a few of her friends from similar households, the servants of the villa, shepherds who tend her flocks on the Campagna, maidens who 12 Values of Catholic Faith weave the fleece into wool, young men who clip the box and prune the ilex. Every face is radiant with joy, every eye bright with the vision of things unseen and eternal. They will go forth presently, every one of them to difficulty, some to persecution, some to torture, some to death; but none to fear. They know themselves re- deemed from the power of the world. They are Christ’s and Christ is God’s. Upon them the ends of the world are come. Imperial Rome will crumble and paganism decay; they are the hope and the promise of the future. And, even humanly speaking, how right they were! A millennium passed, and in the twelfth century that pristine promise seemed to have achieved fulfilment. The Church was not only obviously catholic, but imperial; wherein per- haps lay the seeming that passed for reality. But to appearance, in the western world all life was touched by the Christian religion; every- where the Gospel was preached and the sacra- ments were administered. Children, as soon after birth as might be, were brought to the parish priest to be made members of Christ’s kingdom. Mothers quickly followed to be churched and offer thanksgiving. Sundays and holy-days, all the able-bodied of the community gathered about the altar to confess their sins, The Mass 13 hear mass, or receive communion. The sick at home were anointed with oil in the name of the Lord and the sacrament was carried to them. If two lovers agreed to marry, their banns were cried from the parish church. At every wedding there was an offering of the Eucharist, at every funeral a requiem. At seed-time and harvest, processions, led by the village clergy, the people following and singing hymns and litanies, marched through the fields, praying for a blessing on the crops or thanking God for the fruits of the earth that were stored up in barns. When war came—and then the dream of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre from the infidel still fired adventurous hearts—captain and soldier on the eve of departure consecrated sword or javelin on the altar and kept before it a vigil of prayer. Literature, music, art were the handmaids of religion. What Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, Bernard did to present the faith to the intellect, Dante, Adam de St. Victor, Giotto di Bordone did to interpret it in terms of rapturous beauty to the imagina- tion. All over Europe, and nowhere more than in England, were religious houses in which men or women, dedicated to the love and service of God, dwelt together in fraternal unity. There is a lovely vale in the East Riding 14 Values of Catholic Faith of Yorkshire, midst the downs that rise above Ripon and Knaresborough and sweep thence to the North Sea. It is watered by the River Skell; and there for long has stood, near the banks of the gentle stream, the Cistercian abbey of Fountains. The pure Gothic church stands at the head of the valley, and about it are clus- tered the white monastic buildings, centering upon the cloister. Long stretches of green sward slope to the bright waters of the Skell, pierced only by pebbled paths that lead through the woods and over the downs to the castle of the lord of the manor hard by and to the neigh- bouring villages. To Fountains, despite their parish churches, many of the people round about bring their children to be christened, send them thither on weekdays for schooling. Here they come for advice in disputes with each other, for medicine if they are ill, for consola- tion if they are in trouble, for absolution if they have fallen into sin. On Sunday and holy- day they love to come to communal mass. Es- pecially do they love to come on festival occa- sions when are gathered here congregations so typical of the universality of the Church; and kneel, though it be far down in the nave a long way from the great, white high altar with its carved figures of our Lord and his saints, while The Mass 15 mass is sung. All now is bright with lights, gay with flowers, and sweet with incense. The rough and ready King Henry the Second is present, but kneeling outside the sanctuary; while his chancellor Becket (who in the age of splendour was yet to achieve martyrdom) is enthroned above him. There are present also the lord of their own manor, peers of the realm, bishops, priests, monks even from far-off Glastonbury, and throngs of countryfolk and villagers: high and low, rich and poor, the rulers and the ruled, are as one family in offering the Eucha- ristic sacrifice. Verily, it seemed an age of faith. As in the day of persecution, suffering and martyrdom consecrated the world to God, so in this age it seemed that the splendour of the Church was consecrating mankind to Christ afresh. But the days were so soon to come when the Church was to know neither persecution nor splendour ! Half a millennium has passed; and, follow- ing upon an era of confusions and disasters, the Church has fallen into a deadening respect- ability : and is regarded, by the majority of men at least, with an indifference that is harder to bear than their scorn and opposition or their credulity and patronage. Our own experience is of this period. Persecution and splendour 16 Values of Catholic Faith are for us almost incredible episodes of improb- able history. And yet, though now there can no longer be the rapture of martyrdom or the inspiration of imperialism, that which is of the Church’s essential function—continuously to. offer the Eucharistic sacrifice—makes its appeal again and again, and now and then stirs even the most unlikely from indifference to faith. It would be difficult to suggest a farther cry from early Rome or medieval Fountains than to a provincial town of modern America. The town, so vividly recalled, is moreover devoid of natural beauty even as to its setting, for it lies in a stretch of flat seaboard country of which the coastline could not be straighter than it is, and which is washed by a sea that can no- where be more monotonous than just here. And if that were not sufficient in itself to discourage human beings from living in it, some of them— those particularly interested in its commercial possibilities—have vulgarized even the straight- ness and monotony by the inept and inartistic conveniences they fancy (and likely with good reason) to be desired by the tourist patrons of the unfortunate vicinity. In the middle of that now extended and absolutely regular parallel- ogram devised to accommodate innumerable The Mass 17 hotels and boarding-houses, distant from sight and sound of the sea stands a small, brownish- yellow wooden church. Into this building, with obscure intention, an impressionable unformed boy wandered in the course of a walk from a country-house not far from the town, one early spring morning many years ago. [he interior of the church, though in less obtrusively bad taste, is a piece with the outside and with the hotels and board- ing-houses that smotheringly surround it. It was - here, however, that for the first time in his life this boy heard, uttered in a voice which de- vout reverence made musical, and intense sin- cerity made magical, the words of the Mass. The words doubtless meant little or nothing to him, if indeed he distinguished them as words. But the experience of kneeling there in the still- ness, broken only by the soft tones of that beautiful voice; of watching the slight move- ments of the white-robed figure before the al- tar, not understood but evidently of deep sig- nificance; of observing the expressions on the faces of the score or more persons at their prayers; the new thoughts that came to him and stirred his interest and curiosity, the inexpe- rienced emotion that subtly pervaded him,— all was an initiation into something that ever 18 Values of Catholic Fatth since has demanded of him all his best for ex- planation, and when that best has been given yet falls far short of adequately describing, does hardly more than faintly suggest, its worth and wonder and beauty. | Ds The point made is this: the appeal, to the household of the noble Roman matron in ear- ly days, to king and prelate, monk and peasant, at the height of the middle age, to the modern boy in the drab and commonplace American town, was made by the same service—the Mass of the Catholic Church, whether it were said in Greek or Latin or English; and that the nature of the appeal was much the same, the sense of awe that bespeaks the nearness of God. But doubtless this appeal is susceptible of more particular analysis, and the effort to measure and appraise may have its own intel- lectual value and as well prove suggestive and stimulating to others. As criticism may directly contribute to the development of art, though obviously the critic is of slight importance as compared with the artist, so a truth may have a better chance to establish itself in imperfect minds when adequately defined, though of course no apologetic can equal the truth it de- The Mass 19 fends. So likewise analysis may help others to it, safeguard it, ward off from it alien and ab- normal ideas. Analysis has its danger, and the history of Christianity illustrates the greatness of that danger and the ease with which men run into it—the danger of reducing the norm to a mere stereotype. But if this is borne in mind the point need be laboured no further. Since, as was carefully affirmed at the out- set, the Mass as celebrated in the Catholic Church is constituted of many factors, so the appeal it makes, the experience of assisting at it with recollection and purposeful intention, is many sided. Only salient characteristics may be noted; and of these perhaps the chief is wor- ship. Ihe Mass richly satisfies this inherent need of men. That worship is an inherent need scarcely requires insistence. All peoples have had a re- ligion of some sort, and religion invariably in- volves worship. Indeed, so inalienable a part of religion is it, that the worship often survives after the religion has perished. Moreover, all individual men have or have had some kind of religion. And if they do not, it is because they have cast it out of their consciousness by em- phatic and continued assertion of unbelief or habitual conduct wholly inconsistent with its 20 Values of Catholic Fatth profession. This religion may be poor, thin, pit- iably inadequate as intellectual theory, moral guide, or spiritual help; it may be crude, un- lovely, barbarous, or it may have been cleverly all but argued away; yet remnants of it and capacities for it remain in every man. And even these remnants and capacities imply worship, the neglect or repudiation of which incurs the sense of guilt, the conviction of duty refused or of obligation unfulfilled; and when such a course is persisted in impels, through sheer self- defense, the assertion of unbelief. The essence of an idea is best got at by ex- cluding from it associated ideas, however ger- mane they may be. By such process complexity © is frequently resolved into the simplicity that is best understood, but which, as a matter of fact, is usually less familiar. Thus the common con- ception of worship is exceedingly complex, and therefore—for all its variety—excessively blurred; whereas in essence worship is the re- verse of complex; and if it is to be understood how the idea has threaded through all religion under such a varied multiplicity of forms, it is necessary to arrive at the simplicity. That may best be done by ruthlessly excluding kindred notions commonly involved in the concept. Worship, then, is not prayer. It does not The Mass 21 necessarily involve prayer, though it is usually accompanied both by formal articulate prayer and by effective prayer of various kinds. The hour of worship is indeed the most suitable time for praying, and so the Church is contin- ually insisting. But it is obvious that prayer can be, and, alas! too often is, divorced from any sort of worship whatsoever. Nor, again, is worship communion with the Deity, though so truly does the Eucharistic worship of the Catholic Church afford the supreme opportunity for such communion. It is easy to over-emphasize this accompaniment of worship, and it is frequently done by Anglicans, as is witnessed by the official title they give the Mass and by their less-defensible common cus- tom of calling it ‘the Communion service.” In truth the desire for communion with God is much less instinctive and general than the need for worship, it presupposes far greater advance in religious culture, it involves a particular mor- al and spiritual preparation, and it demands a more strenuous effort of mind and spirit, to the result that when the idea of communion obscures that of worship the sense and the effect of both are considerably diminished; and such, indeed, has been the case within many Anglican com- munities. 52 Values of Catholic Fatth Nor, once more is worship the offering of sacrifice, in spite of the fact that the Mass is a sacrificial service. The offering of acceptable sacrifices to God requires even deeper apprecia- tion and clearer understanding than does com- munion; it lies well along in the way of perfec- tion, as the author of the Epistle to the He- brews has it, after the principles of the doc- trine of Christ may be safely left behind and the foundation thereof has been securely laid. If then worship be not identified with prayer, communion, or sacrifice, it will not be necessary to differentiate it from preaching, instruction, or the like, with which it is of course generally and rightly accompanied. | Stripped of these associated notions, wor- ship, and particularly the Mass as the great act of worship, still retains all that was claimed for it in noting its effect upon casually-selected typical representatives of Christian experience —an initiation into the divine presence, the sense of awe that bespeaks the nearness of God. That is the inexplicable lure to worship, its moving appeal to the human spirit, and par- ticipation in it involves for man the recognition of God, implies confession of him, and witness to him. Even if such participation be but form- al, and the spiritual benefits unfelt and unreal- The Mass 23 ized, yet there is, for what it is worth (and it is worth something), formal lining up and ranging of self upon the divine side, acceptance (at least acquiescence) in that for which the cult, broadly-speaking, stands. That worship means subjectively the sense of God’s presence, and objectively recognition of his nearness and accessibility, logically finds expression in the utterance of the creed of the cult as a central act and fact. And that utter- ance of the creed becomes for the soul draw- ‘ing nigh unto God a confession of faith, a declaration of loyalty, a proclamation (in words that the whole body of believers has accepted) of his experience; it becomes the symbol of witness that the worshipper means by his worship all that the Catholic Church means in the offering of it. To extract the creed from it would render worship ambiguous, would tend to separate it from the great stream of tradition, from the universal Christian ex- perience, of which it is so inseparable a part. And since for the soul, worship is the sense and recognition of the Divine presence, it is joyous and glad in character, most readily gives voice to song; finds in melody and har- mony fitting media for expression; and instinc- tively clothes itself in outward forms of beauty. 24. Values of Catholic Faith It is this spontaneous expression of worship in terms of beauty, so characteristic of Catholic religion, that has inspired and guided the de- velopment of the art and music, of the cere- monial and ritual of the Church, and has cen- tered it in the Eucharist. For every beautiful thing that Catholic hands have fashioned or minds conceived, traces back to the desire of disciples, to the efforts of pilgrims in the Way, to make beautiful the memorial that Jesus com- manded them to offer. 2 In that worship is the universal expression of religion, and its essence the conviction and confession of God’s nearness, is perceived the divine economy, which devised the great act of Christian worship to be the means of so full a realization of God’s presence as to involve, not only communion with him, but participation in his life. If for the moment the idea of com- munion was sharply differentiated from wor- ship, it was partly at least that the fact that the Mass as occasion for deepest communion with God might be fully felt. It is the very ap- preciation of this fact that has led Catholic theologians so greatly to stress the doctrine of the Real Presence in their Eucharistic teach- The Mass 25 ing. Herein is the justification likewise for An- glicans calling the Mass by the term that so dis- tinctly implies this doctrine. And it does denote a truth that is of the very essence of the sacrament, that expresses the purpose for which it was given as chief means of grace,—the fulfilling of the imperfect soul with the divine life, the effecting of that union of man with God which was the supreme intent of the Saviour’s incarnation. It denotes a truth, moreover, which reveals the immeas- urable depth and breadth of the divine love— that as God identified himself in the person of the Son with needful humanity, so he wills to unite with himself that humanity redeemed in Christ. And since to human glimpse or ob- servation the manifestation of God in Christ was brief, the presence of the Saviour assured in the Eucharist becomes, as has so often been truly said, a veritable extension of the Incarna- tion. Communion is, therefore, for the faithful soul an intimation of its ultimate destiny; and none the less for that it is often not so real- ized; and that it must always be represented under sacramental forms—outward signs of in- ward happenings—in that we are partakers of a sacramental covenant. 26 Values of Catholic Faith God’s choice of sacraments as means for the working out of the redemptive process is, after all, of a piece with the structure of the very universe he made, the reality of which we ‘perceive only under forms, the forms of time and space; and man’s use of sacraments is analogous to all his other experience. The re- ligious interpretation of experience does but infuse it with a deeper purpose and illumine it with a clearer light. And this is true with re- gard to every interpretation of experience, save that strange delusion (now happily being aban- doned by all serious thinkers) that there is no reality except those objective things that can be seen and felt, that there is nothing less real (they strangely seemed to think) than their own reflections upon those things. That this contradiction was vicious and absurd it is no longer necessary to insist, for the objective things in the universe have of late played too many strange tricks and indulged in too fan- tastic antics at the expense of the materialists. It has even been amusing to note that the latest and most popular theory of relativity, devel- oped by a physicist who disdains metaphysics, when it came to be interpreted by a philos- opher, could best be illustrated by likening the relation of the finite and the infinite it involved The Mass 27 to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. The doctrine of the Incarnation to the Catholic mind is a truism: yet it causes no elation, only relief, to have this truism chosen for the ex- ample that will help others understand the com- plexities in which theory, experimentation, and observation are constantly landing the mathe- matician, the physicist, and the astronomer, not to speak of the philosopher and metaphysician. But it does justify—and for this he is grateful —the ancient assertion that belief is not diffi- cult, even when its every aspect cannot satis- factorily be rationalized. All that belief re- quires is credible evidence and trustworthy wit- ness. The untrained mind finds far greater dif- ficulty in understanding the A, B, C’s of mod- ern scientific hypothesis (for all that the ig- noramus is forever noisily appealing to it) than it does in accepting the alleged subtleties of the Catholic theology of the sacraments or even (as there will be occasion later to note) those of the Athanasian Creed. And for this reason: the witness to the sacraments is supremely trustworthy, and the evidence is not only credit- able, but overwhelming; moreover, the doc- trine is pragmatically verifiable. ‘“His the word that spake it,” is to the pilgrim in the Way sim- 28 Values of Catholic Faith ply an undeniable fact. And—to complete the famous rhyme—‘‘What his word doth make it, that I believe and take it,’ becomes an ex- perience that produces a passionate conviction of the truth so tritely expressed. And all this is said with full onbuetlaies that the precise mode of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is not defined, or if defined has not received universal assent. It must be obvious that many truths are accepted, even where there is dispute or uncertainty about some of the implications of those truths. But rather than seeking to define meticu- lously all the implications of ineffable truth, the pilgrim is more concerned to realize its essence, to enter upon the experience of it;— in this specific instance, to taste and see how gracious the Lord is. “O sacrum convivium, in quo Christus sumitur; recoliter memoria passionis ejus: mens implitur gratia: et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur, alleluia.” Perhaps this old antiphon for the second vespers of Corpus Christi is sufficient state- ment of the sense of this communion afforded by the Mass. It is a sacred feast wherein, feed- ing upon the symbols of the divine life, the life itself is given unto us. We recall the suf- The Mass 29 fering and the sacrifice that made possible this gift, and by that memory our minds are puri- fied, for the new life flowing in fills mind as well as spirit; and in this cleansing, refreshing, invigorating, renewing activity within is con- ceived the glory to come, what this foretaste promises. Thought, feeling, will, reacting to this inflowing life, unite to reproduce, and ap- proximately do reproduce, that life’s character. In the multiplication and intensification of such communions will be realized the Kingdom of God. 4. In the conception of the Mass as a sacrifice the highest note is reached. The Eucharistic Sacrifice represents in unique and absolute way the entire redemptive process. Its full and proper understanding involves every essential concept of Christian theology —the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Church, and the Sacraments. And this doubtless ac- counts for the degree to which the Mass has played its part in all Catholic belief and prac- tice. And in view of the fact that nothing is so dificult as for men to keep their intellectual balance, it accounts for the fact that in the mid- dle age the Mass at times obscured other im- 30 Values of Catholic Faith portant aspects of the faith. There were of course other than theological influences at work, indeed quite untheological but powerful influences; and between them there have been periods when the emphasis on the sacrifice of the Mass was so disproportionate as to twist awry the entire Catholic system. The Church, so wise in her toleration up to a certain limit, paid the penalty when she overstepped it. In the terrific reaction half of Christendom was torn from Catholic unity, and even in the por- tion that remained Catholic, for many the sac- rificial nature of the Eucharist was to be ob- scured. Fundamental and far-reaching as is the sac- rifice of the Mass, yet the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews was right in holding that the true apprehension of sacrifice pertains to the mind perfected in Christ. And yet—and fortunately—there is no definition of the doc- trine. None has been attempted by the Univer- sal Church, any more than has been attempted a definition of the Atonement. The fact of both, and they are inextricably united, is pre- éminent; but explanations have not been offered: to the result, that though the neglect of neither can be condoned, yet there will be dif- ferent aspects of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, as The Mass an of the Sacrifice of the Cross, stressed at dif- ferent times by different groups or persons. Since this essay disclaimed any effort at systematic exposition of any Chrisitan doctrine, no apology is needed for suggesting only such elements of the Eucharistic Sacrifice as appeal to one pilgrim in the Way or for the passing over of other, possibly more important, fac- tors. What one pilgrim most deeply apprehends, what seems necessary for any pilgrim to try to understand, is just this: it is the offering and pleading of what Jesus did on the cross, what he does now and now is, and of ourselves by this sacrament united with him. It is the offer- ing of Christ—and more, nor less can be said —of Christ, not as slain, but as slain and living again, and of souls to whom his life is given. “O salutaris hostia Quae coeli pandis ostium: Bella premunt hostilia, Da robur, fer auxilium.” Lex orandi lex credendi is a saying as familiar as it is true; and though it is not as familiar, yet is it also true that belief finds ade- quate expression in the hymns of the Church. To know the hymns most frequently sung in a community would be to know its beliefs, and 32 Values of Catholic Faith what is as important, its emotions about its beliefs. It was a profound sense of the intimate relation between the Incarnation and the Mass that led St. Thomas to compose his hymn Verbum supernum for the office of Corpus Christi; just as it is a realization of the con- nection between the Atonement and the Eu- charistic Sacrifice that has suggested the sing- ing of the last two verses of that hymn, O sal- aturis hostia, both at Mass and at Benediction, when, as it were, the Immortal Victim is ex- posed for adoration. * The appeal of the Sacrifice of the Mass is not the idea that thereby God is being propiti- ated,—that has little if any part in Catholic thought: but that the Saviour, compassionate *Perhaps this is the reason for the appeal of the service of Benediction, as an adjunct of the Liturgy, modern, comparatively, though it be; its appeal as most satisfying and uplifting worship. For as worship is the sense and recognition of the nearness of God, in the exposed Sacrament there is an outward and visible symbol of that nearness, and in the lifting up of the Host for benediction there is the dramatic representation of the divine Victim blessing the followers in his Way. It is often objected by Anglicans that the service of Benediction is inconsistent with the essential purposes of the Sacrament, because the Presence is vouchsafed for communion and there is no promise of it for other purpose. But may it not be that this is a consequence of their frequent somewhat undue emphasis upon the factor of com- munion in the celebration of Mass, and of an under-emphasis upon the Mass just as opportunity for worship and also of its sac- rificial nature? The Real Presence is indubitably vouchsafed for communion, but if the Eucharist be a sacrifice, must the Presence not also be vouchsafed for the purpose of sacrifice? The Mass 33 and merciful, has opened the gates of heaven and illuminates the path that leads to them,— nay, has indeed stepped down along it that he may give support to the weary or fainting pil- grim, that as the fair shepherd he may bear home upon his shoulders the bruised and wan- dering sheep. It is something such as is sug- gested by this imagery that the worshipper feels with regard to the Eucharistic sacrifice and that is voiced by the hymn so often sung at the offering of it. Ki. There can scarcely be doubt that in the multiform appeal of the Mass, worship, com- munion, and sacrifice go deepest. But there are other factors which unite with these to give that appeal its inexhaustible richness and vari- ety. It was said that a comparatively full under- standing of Catholic theology is necessary to a right appreciation of the Mass as sacrifice and communion; and if this is true there might seem a certain rashness on the part of the Church in placing the Eucharist at the heart of its devotional and practical system. And so there might be were not the Mass itself the most effective teacher of the Catholic faith. 34. Values of Catholic Faith There is no very satisfactory definition of Inspiration, as the study of scripture informs; but inadequate as any definition may be, Chris- tians are generally as certain of the fact of it as of any tenet of the Faith. It is a conviction indeed, that even the most radical critics pro- fess to share. Men have not needed the approvy- al of a recent philosopher in order to trust and be guided by their intuition. And the inspira- tion of scripture is an intuition that all Chris- tians feel. Whole books of the Bible and in- definite passages thereof are cavilled at: this ascribed to Moses, to Isaiah, to St. Paul is so obviously by another hand; this Psalm ig- norantly attributed to David by tradition is in- dubitably postexilic; this passage is an inter- polation, that a late addition, another the emendation of an editor, a fourth a mere com- plex of contradictory texts. All this in general may be granted or not, for it is noteworthy that no two objectors ever agree in detail, nevertheless for all Christian people the con- — viction, the intuition, about inspiration re- mains. It is much the same feeling that, the more he studies them, the Catholic has about the liturgies of the Church. This or that one may be faulted or elements of it may be criticized—the canon has been detruncated, the The Mass 35 Gloria in excelsis dislocatéd, extraneous matter introduced, heretical influence at work—never- theless the intuition persists much as it does with regard to scripture. Since the word in- spiration has been technically appropriated by Biblical theology, it is not ordinarily used, though in reality it is the most appropriate to express what the Catholic-minded student feels about the Liturgy. And in no particular is in- spiration, that is to say, the guiding influence of the Holy Spirit, more evident than in the deft- ness, the skill, with which the Mass has been. developed to teach the very faith requisite to a right apprehension of its holy mysteries. To make the point a detailed examination is hardly necessary. It will be sufficient to do no more than suggest salient and characteristic instances. The purpose of the Creed in Euchar- istic worship has already been noted; but the effect of frequent repetition of that traditional summary of the faith, that enumeration of its leading articles, can not be overestimated. Even the most unlettered must gain from it familiar- ity with the essentials of Christian doctrine— the Trinity, the Incarnation, the death, resur- rection, and ascension of the Saviour, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and the notes of the Church. Doubtless in this distracted age the 36 Values of Catholic Faith notes of the Church need further explanation; for the note of unity is particularly obscured by division and that of holiness is dimmed by sin. But, indeed, such explanation is continu- ally afforded by the Ordinary of the Mass, that part which varies from season to season and from day to day. The Collect, the Epistle, the Gospel, the Proper Preface, the Post-commu- nion prayers, the Introit, the Gradual, and the hymns chosen, all contribute to elaborate the central teaching of the service itself. The Christian Year, which the Mass follows faith- fully, is in itself a systematic exposition of Catholic faith and practice. And there is also the Sermon, which (however much the oppor- tunity of preaching has been abused by individ- uals) should be and in the great majority of cases is the setting forth of the Gospel. Obvi- ously as long as fallible men are the only ma- terial for preachers, infallibility will not be found in the pulpit; but by and large and in the long run, for all that heresy and disloyalty are vociferous and attract attention, none can doubt that the Gospel is continuously and con- sistently preached in the Catholic Church. An examination of the teaching efficiency of the Mass, during the course of a single year, would demonstrate that every chief article of The Mass 27 the faith is set forth, not only in the brief form- ula of credal statement but in particular and with illustrative detail; that every leading event in the life of the Saviour and in the lives of his early followers, is rehearsed; that, in short, a fairly complete outline of the Imitation of Christ is afforded the pilgrim in the Way with all the moral practice it involves; and that along with this is put before him, by sugges- tion, direction, and example, all his chief duties as member of the Church—prayer, in a great variety of its aspects, fasting, almsgiving, con- fession of sin, the receiving of Holy Com- munion with its due preparation and thanksgiy- ing, the obligation of worship and of sacrifice, and the fact of fellowship with the brethren, with the faithful departed, and with the saints in heaven. Nothing better in the way of Christian edu- cation could be devised for the pilgrim than precisely that which the Church lays down as his duty—regular attendance on Sundays and holydays of obligation, at the very least, upon the Mass. * 7 If there were no other reasons (and there are many) why the substitution of Matins for Mass as the chief service on most Sundays of the Year is indefensible, it would be sufficient that Matins pro- vides opportunity neither for communion nor sacrifice, and that it emphasizes instruction beyond the capacity of the average worshipper to assimilate. Furthermore, Matins, except occasionally and in con- 38 Values of Catholic Faith 6. The Eucharist, as the breaking of one bread and the drinking of one cup, is often called the sacrament of unity, and the partak- ing of it together is held to be the sign of their mutual recognition by different groups of the Lord’s followers. Alas! there are groups in Christendom who refuse each other acknowl- edgment of being in the Way. And it is little compensation, after these centuries, that such denial often indicates strong convictions as to the nature and obligations of the pilgrimage; for it still remains that the followers of Jesus present to the world the strange spectacle of © being out of communion with each other, for reasons too subtle for its understanding or too unimportant for its consideration. Nor is this reproach turned away by admitting the justice of it, although the admission may absolve the pilgrim from the suspicion of indifference. He may yet follow along the Way in penitent hope- fulness, may still see in the one bread that of which the Saviour willed it to be the symbol; may believe, receiving it in repentant faith and sequence of particular pains on the part of the officiant, lacks unity. Its possibilities can only be realized by daily recitation, It is the Anglican substitute for part of the Divine Office, and should be in practice and in theory treated as such. The Mass 39 charity, that he does his best to fulfil the Lord’s intention. And can more be demanded of him? St. Paul called the Church the body of Christ. In doing so he used a metaphor of which the full force can be appreciated only by understanding it as literally as may be; that is to say, if of that Church we reckon Christ the head and all those united with him its mem- bers, quite actually his eyes, ears, hands, feet. Jesus also, in calling the bread he gave his disciples at the Last Supper his body, used a metaphor, of which likewise we get the real meaning only if it is taken literally as a figure under which he indicates his very life, a truth of spiritual experience of which the Catholic is more passionately convinced than of any other. Therefore, since in the Eucharist Christ’s body is received, it follows that also is received the members of his body; or, since there is a cer- tain harshness in this expression, if in the Eu- charist Christ’s life is received, so also are his followers made partakers of each others’ life; what constitutes them brethren is that they have Christ’s life in them: or, again to vary the figure slightly, by their union with him they are united with each other. It is in respect of this that, despite all the divisions of Christendom, the Eucharist is in 40 Values of Catholic Faith the highest sense the sacrament of fellowship. And if the sense of that fellowship is marred by disagreement or actually invalidated by schism so that the world can not perceive, nor, perceiving, believe in its reality, nevertheless the Eucharist remains the means whereby union may be ultimately effected. And that con- summation can be hastened in no better way than by faithful and loving communions. A true faith and a perfect love would fulfil the divine will, would mean the coming of the kingdom in power and glory. 7 ‘There remains one value of the Mass, uni- versally witnessed to, yet generally underes- timated, which is that indicated by the Saviour’s words at the Last Supper: ‘“This do — in remembrance of me”’ (or, as they may more accurately be translated, ‘“This do for a me- morial of me); and which is brought out even more clearly in the gloss added in St. Paul’s tradition of the Institution: ‘For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show forth the Lord’s death until he come.” * Strangely enough, those who professedly *It will not be necessary to argue anew the bearing these ex- pressions also have in establishing the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The Mass 41 emphasize this aspect of the Eucharist at the expense of almost all other considerations, sel- dom gather its full import. For rightly under- stood, the Mass, as the memorial of Calvary, is a dramatic representation of life redeemed by Jesus on the Cross and in the souls of men. And this conception of the Eucharist is the last to be given up, because it really is so rich in content and involves all and infinitely more than has been set forth here as constituting its appeal; and is not often stripped quite bare by those theologies that endeavour to void the sacraments of all grace and beauty. The Mass as memorial proclaims or shows forth, in Apostolic phrase, the Lord’s death until he come; and not his death only, but his self-sacrificing life that led up to death. It pro- claims too that on the third day he rose, and after that ascended to heaven and thence sent forth his Holy Spirit. The commemoration of Calvary is inevitably obvious and central in the service, but that the other aspects of the re- demptive life are commemorated it is necessary to be reminded only that on most occasions the Ordinary of the Mass sets forth some partic- ular instance of the earlier ministry; and that since Christians from the beginning have felt that Sunday was the day peculiarly appropriate 42 Values of Catholic Faith for the Eucharist, there is always added the note of the Easter Joy; and that moreover in the Gloria in excelsis and in the Sanctus, there is the ever-repeated thought of Christ in heay- en; and in the invocation a perpetual memorial of the Holy Spirit. It would be a meticulous task more than to suggest how the rite itself, here and there and everywhere throughout, re- calls again and again the salient features of the Saviour’s ministry and many minor incidents and occasions of it. There is the prophetic wit- ness of the preparation of the world for Mes- siah’s coming in the reading from the Old Testament, ° and not only the rehearsal of in- | cident or teaching in the Gospel, but the appli- cation of it in Epistle and Sermon. The Introit, the Gradual, the Sequence, and the Glorias furnish added notes, and the whole faith is summed up in the accepted words of the Creed. The Prayer for the Church expresses the cath- olic intention in the offering of the Eucharist, and Sursum corda, Comfortable Words, Pref- ace, Sanctus, and Benedictus qui venit prepare for the solemn rehearsal of the events of the night on which the Lord was betrayed and of Ah. thcnibene replaces in the Anglican liturgy the Old Testa- ment lection. The Gloria in excelsis is, of course, dislocated in this liturgy, and most unhappily so. Its recitation or singing after con- secration is of the nature of anti-climax. The Mass 43 the dread day following. What is done at the altar is a representation of what was done once for all on Calvary: it is the offering to the Eternal Father of the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, of Christ who laid down his life and took it again, who gives that life under the symbols of his body and blood. This climax reached, communions are made, thanksgiving is said, the service is over. Through it all the priest performs a double role: he represents the Church before God, and Christ before his people. He represents Christ as prophet, priest, and king; for he proclaims anew the Gospel, he offers the eternal victim, he blesses with kingly power and authority. And not only does the ritual suggest all this to us by way of remembrance, but the cere- monial expresses the same ideas. By his careful movements and his prescribed manual acts, the celebrant dramatizes his priestly function; the dignity, the music and reverence, denote the ser- vice of the King; the incense, the prayer, the in- vocation of the Spirit, witness to the conscious- ness of the presence of God. Every ceremonial act has not only its own familiar symbolism but is rich with well-nigh infinite suggestion. ° ® And this applies whether the ceremonial be elaborate or simple. It needs must vary with occasion, with temperament, with place. 44. Values of Catholic Fatth Much of this may be felt, and yet when assisting at Mass or contemplating the eternal reality of which it is the outward representa- tion, the mind is conscious that it has but touched the edge of the mystery. want It is not an unfamiliar experience of the lover of nature to stand on a clear night in some open place or upon the deck of a ship at sea and survey the starlit heavens. He is en- tranced by the wonder and the glory of the visible scene, the illimitable canopy of the dark blue sky studded by innumerable stars that shine as jewels, with the splendour of the ruby, the diamond, the sapphire, and the opal; the Milky Way appearing as a great floor bestrewn by a profuse hand with marvelous pearls. With quiet pleasure he notes the familiar constella- tions, and calls by name the evening star that hangs suspended in the west, a perfect crystal reflecting a thousand lights. But as he gazes on and on, anon the admiration deepens into awe, for he begins to apprehend, if most im- perfectly, something of the real nature of the celestial panorama spread before him—the in- finite spaces and immeasurable distances, suns blazing, worlds whirling in _ inconceivable depths of emptiness, comets threading the in- tricate maze of the universe, light piercing The Mass 45 darkness with incredible velocities beyond the limits of thought. Even his dim perception of the reality bewilders and confuses his inmost consciousness; and with painful effort he with- draws his mind from the contemplation as from something too aweful and too sublime. His thought can steady itself but by falling back upon some such figures as those to which the poetic and prophetic voice of the Book of Job once gave expression: “Where wast thou when the foundations of the earth were laid? When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place? Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast thou walked in search of the depth? Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof? That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldest know the paths to the house thereof? Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? Canst thou send lightnings that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are? 46 Values of Catholic Fatth “TI know that thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withholden from thee. I uttered that I understood not; things too wonder- ful for me, which I knew not... I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.” | No other experience suggests what takes place in the soul of the pilgrim wayfarer when, allured by the outward beauty of the Mass, he begins to contemplate the reality of which it is the representation. And truly it but suggests that stirring to its depths of all his conscious- ness. For if there be marvel in the dim appre- hension of the mysteries of time and space of which he is a part and which are the very forms under which he thinks and exists, in terms of which alone he can express himself, what shall there be when he contemplates the mystery of being infinite and eternal? Thought itself is baflled; and if he seeks words to express that for which he vainly struggles but passionately aspires, he can but say, in the simplest of all words, he gazes into love. Though baffled in his thought and almost bereft of speech, yet he turns not away from the cross, for thereon, in time and space he sees Jesus hanging, Jesus known, felt, handled, tasted, loved. He is com- forted, cleansed, strengthened, uplifted. Inex- The Mass 47 pressible though it be, what Jesus does there reénacts itself within him. Deep calleth unto deep: Jesus from the cross to his despair, wretchedness, sinfulness, helplessness; he from the deep of his soul to the deep of the divine love. He knows, though he knows not how, that in Jesus’s dying, God redeems. In offering the Eucharist he pleads that death, in receiv- ing the Eucharist he tastes that redemption. With the priest at the altar, with Christ in heaven, he murmurs, ‘‘Our Father.’ He hears the response, cor ad cor loquitur, ** Son, broth- er, beloved.” Sin will never wholly dim nor reason ever quite deny the conviction that he is in the Way. “T tasted, and I hunger and thirst. Do thou speak the truth in my heart, for thou alone speakest it: and let me enter into my chamber and sing thee hymns of love, . . . remembering Jerusalem, and lifting up my heart to her, to Jerusalem, my home, Jerusalem, my mother, and to thee, her King, her Light, Father, Guide, her ineffable and infinite blessedness: and let me never turn away, until thou gatherest all that I am into the peace of that dearest mother, where are the first fruits of my spirit: and conform me to thyself, and confirm me for ever, my God, my Mercy.” ° *St. Augustine Confessions x, 27. IIT THE CREED As THE Mass is central in the spiritual life of the Catholic Christian, so the Creed is at the heart of his intellectual life. Its value to him is manifold: it expresses in briefest possible terms the essential factors of the Apostolic experience; it continues to represent for him in succinct form what the Catholic Church be- lieves; and this sense of its values is confirmed for him by the direct and indirect witness of other knowledge ascertained independently of revelation. It is by consideration of these func- tions that the Creed may be approximately understood and appreciated. i Several periods in the early history of the Church were largely occupied, or so it seems in such history of them as is available, with doc- trinal controversies. But the controversies had The Creed 49 at least the advantage that they led to the setting forth some fundamental elements of Christian truth in authoritative formulae. And it is these credal statements that are required to be accepted in the Church as de fide.* There have indeed been periods since those relatively early times when controversy has arisen afresh over the meaning of this or that article of the Creed, but it is noteworthy that subsequent dis- cussion has not resulted in modifying the orig- inal phraseology. It is doubtless also true that at times, owing to a variety of causes, certain articles of the Creed have received dif- ferent emphasis, or in popular teaching been *In the following discussion the reference throughout is to the Nicene Creed, as being not only the official creed of the Church but a far more exact statement than the Apostles’ Creed. The oecumenical authority of the Nicene symbol is granted. A_ brief examination of several of the phrases of the two formulae will readily demonstrate the superiority of the Nicene over the Apostles’ Creed in carefulness of statement. Indeed, a reference to the Latin forms of the Creeds would remove at a glance certain of the objec- tions that ignorance frequently alleges against the faith. For example, in the earlier symbol the Father is called creatorem coeli et terrae, suggesting at once philosophical problems incapable of solu- tion, which are eliminated in the later symbol by changing the expression creatorem to factorem coeli et terrae. Likewise the Nicene Creed omits the inexplicable phrase Descendit ad inferos. It replaces the earlier expression Ascendit ad coelos, suggesting a local, spatial heaven, by the more symbolic phrase, Ascendit in coelum. It adds to ‘the statement of belief in the Holy Spirit, the illuminating quali- fications, Dominum et Vivificantem; it replaces the expression credo with regard to belief in resurrection and immortality by the more significant term expecto; and finally it replaces the carnis Resurrec- tionem, so difficult of explanation, by the simpler and more-embracing phrase, Resurrectionem mortuorum. 50 Values of Catholic Faith given really different interpretation; but this always without affecting the fact that the ac- cepted formulae sufficiently express what the Catholic Church believes. Supreme in importance and unchangeable in phraseology though the Church may hold the Creed to be, it is not unnecessary to plead that definitions in finite terms of infinite concepts can be anything but approximate: on the very highest ground that they are more than divine- ly-guaranteed expressions that enshrine trans- cendent truth. At the most it is but possible to gaze through the crystal words ‘into the un- fathomable depths of the infinite and the eter- nal. God can not be “explained.’”’ The most naive could not suppose that, even rightly ap- prehended, the Creed divests the Godhead of mystery. When the pilgrim recalls that his own being, the eternity from which he came, the eternity into which he goes, the inexplicable trinity of body, mind, and spirit that makes up his personality, are all veiled in impenetrable mystery, it is not to be expected that the Di- vine Being may be resolved into a simplicity that can be understood as can such concrete facts as that 2 plus 2 equals 4, or that the sum of the three angles of a triangle equals two right angles. Such facts can be proved by prac- The Creed 51 tical experiment. The mysteries of being are ap- prehended in no such simple fashion. Every pil- grim, every person indeed, is a highly organized individuality, possessed of a body obeying all the laws of physics and chemistry, of a mind with well-nigh infinite complexities of percep- tion and judgment, of reason, relation to mat- ter, of hopes, fears, passions, aspirations; pos- sessed further of an ego that unites all these functions and activities into one, the existence of which it is necessary to postulate in order to conceive of the universe at all. He is never dis- associated from these complexities: they are as familiar as the air, as mysterious as the wind. Reduce them to a formula, submit them to what- ever hypothesis or explanation, and the mystery but deepens. The more, however, that is known, the deeper becomes the intuition that at the heart of mystery is truth, and that the end and aim of being is to make the self at one with it. So the Divine Being must remain veiled in im- penetrable mystery; and yet just as from that mystery there has flashed into conscious life, the beings that we call ourselves, whose desires, needs, feeling, thinking, willing, are importu- nate and continuous; so from the heart of mys- tery there once flashed into our consciousness a personality so gracious, so benign, so serene 52 Values of Catholic Faith and lovely and courageous, so afire with beauty and with truth, that when he says, as he did unmistakably, J came forth from God, with Simon Peter of old, the pilgrim in the Way can but fall to his knees in adoration, and confess, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Thou hast the words of truth and life. And is not this very much what happened in the first age of the Church? There is singu- larly little need of the theological faculty in a first effort to understand the spontaneous pro- cess by which Christian doctrine crystallized from the Apostolic experience and was formu- lated by the Fathers. There is need rather for an ingenuous and lively imagination, that with good will can transport itself back into those translucent days when Jesus walked the shores of Galilee and the hillsides of Judea, that with fresh interest can read the evangelical record of that springtime of eternity when God visited his people and when the fishermen of Genne- sareth knew that in companying with the Master they were in the way of truth and life. At this stage of apprehending what their ex- perience actually was, theological learning is at a discount, is almost undesirable: it were al- together well to dispense with its stereotyped phrases, valuable though they be, though they The Creed 53 be the very crystals themselves which are the result of the process to be observed. Such fresh investigation of the revelation of doctrine must ever be worth the effort. It is illuminating to observe the factors that led to the crystallization of the dogma of the Trinity, to analyse the mind of the Church working on the data of revelation in this fun- damental region. ‘The little band of the disciples of Jesus already had intense faith in the Eter- nal God behind phenomena, the first cause and source of all things, transcendent creator of the creation; they believed that he had already spoken through prophet, priest, and king; that he continually spoke in the course of circum- stance and event, particularly in the marvelous preservation and guidance of their own people, and awesomely in the doom of nations. In Jesus they were passionately convinced that they were witnesses of the love and mercy, the eternal good, the ineffableness, of the Most Holy. They loved him with a love deeper and more satisfying than any they had known, or felt they could ever know. They saw him die what, after their first despair, they realized was a glorious death, suffered for the sake of others, even for. themselves. They beheld him risen from the dead, and watched him disappear 54 Values of Catholic Faith into the invisible. He was all that they conceived as divine, the embodiment of love, goodness, tenderness, strength, beauty; he was all that they meant by human, courageous, devoted, moved by natural passions, who wept and laugh- ed and joyed and sorrowed as they themselves did; and yet, unlike themselves, kept himself unspotted from the world. Thomas expressed their attitude in his breathless exclamation, My Lord and My God! He was their divine friend; and yet, as they knew, he was their brother, born of wo- man. In short they could express their experi- ence of him in no other way than by asserting that he was God and that he was man. They confessed with one mouth that they believed in God, the Father Almighty; and in Jesus Christ, his Son, the Lord, the Word, the Image, the Revelation of God, God the Son. But there was another element in the situ- ation, germane to the process. God the Father was invisible; Christ passed into the invisible, to reign, as they ardently believed, at God’s right hand. But shortly after, according to his promise, they felt descend upon them a heav- enly influence, the Spirit at once of their Father in heaven and of Christ their Friend, a Spirit who breathed upon them heavenly grace, who The Creed 55 was to direct and rule their hearts, to guide them deeper into truth, to make them more and more consciously at one with it. He also, for they confused him neither with the Father nor with the Son, was God, the Spirit of God and of Christ. They had definitely different experi- ence of each, of Father, of Son, and of Holy Ghost. But it goes without saying that these Jewish followers of Jesus had not suddenly come to believe in three Gods. Nay, from the beginning, they believed and they expressed themselves as believing that they had three distinct experiences of God,—as Father, God the Creator, the source of all things; as Son, Jesus Christ, Lord and Leader, the Captain of their salvation and friend of their souls, the Head also of the body which they themselves constituted and called the Church; and as Holy Ghost, the divine Spirit, Inspirer, Strengthen- er, Comforter, who dwelt in their hearts; who was their guide in the way. These three, though distinguishable, were yet one. Here are the essential elements of the doctrine of the Trinity, the data, so to speak, upon which the Church—divinely guided as they believed, as Catholics always have held—had to go in stating for her children in successive gen- erations what must be believed about the na- 56 Values of Catholic Faith ture of God; none to be neglected, unrecog- nized, disparaged. Were the intellectual work of the Catholic Church, such as crystallized in the doctrine of the Trinity, to be undertaken afresh, and were the experience of the Apostolic Christians to be recorded anew in technical language for the safe-guarding of its vital truth and for its transmission to subsequent ages, inevitably the result would be the same—just what has been handed down by the Church in symbolic form- ulae—the exact equivalents of the Creeds. And as a matter of fact this assertion would hold, whether the hypothesis of divine guidance be | true or not. It is difficult to see what other dogmatic statements could have been deduced from the data in hand—the age-long Jewish monotheism, the wonderful companying with Jesus and the Apostles’ trust in him and belief about him, the vivid experience of Pentecost and the power in which henceforth those dis- ciples of Jesus worked and preached and bap- tized. In like manner a true historic sense and an informed imagination might analyse all the essential dogmas implied or stated in the Creeds, precisely as an exact summary in brief- est terms of the Apostolic experience. It is often asserted, however, that no the- The Creed by ory of the Atonement is defined in the Creed. But surely the Nicene symbol states the doc- trine clearly enough in such phrases as—‘‘Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven,” and “‘And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.’ It is again a recon- struction of the Apostolic experience that will indicate why the Church, though it defined the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation, refrained from any particular definition of a theory of the Atonement. That a theory of Christ’s relation to God, of the fact and method of his incarnation, was inevitable, is indicated by the curiosity and in- terest of the Apostles in the Lord’s person from the beginning, culminating in Peter’s in- spired confession. That Jesus lived and died for them was evident; it needed but conviction of his messiahship and faith in his divinity to invest the thought of Atonement with all its infinite implications and its personal applica- bleness. Of the love and sympathy and good- will and self-sacrifice of Jesus they were as- sured; but they needed something more, and they received something more. In the person of the Son they beheld God identifying himself with their struggling hu- manity. They saw him tempted; they saw him 58 Values of Catholic Faith die. They were witnesses, moreover, that he conquered both sin and death. The Cross measured his will to save them; the Resurrec- tion proved his power. In the gift of the Spirit there was salvation, sanctification, life eternal, and by Church and Sacrament this redemptive process was extended. In the light of Easter morning the Cross became the Tree of glory. The gospel news was that what Christ had done, they in Christ could do. Bethlehem, Geth- semane, Calvary, the garden of Joseph of Arimathea, were incidents in a _ continued drama of redemption; were all parts of the one sacrificing triumph of God for his people; all means to the end that Christ’s divinely con- — quering life might be made over, literally given to his disciples, to the pilgrims in the Way. As with suffering humanity Christ had identified himself, so with his glorious humanity it was made possible for them to identify themselves. Faith, prayer, works, worship, communion, sac- rifice, are all directed to this supreme end: that the pilgrim shall live in the Spirit of Christ, know the truth in him, be made free in him, share his life, until it will be no more he who lives but Christ in him. J live, and yet not I. Christ liveth in me! That is the splendid cry of triumph uttered by St. Paul, amidst difficulties, The Creed 59 discouragements, and afilictions that made him bitterly aware of what Jesus passed through on Calvary, and, with the memory warm and rich within him of the transcendent vision on the Damascus road, made him thrillingly aware of something that Jesus passed into on the right hand of God. And this is essentially the experience of every Apostle: it is this which the Creed expresses by the words, “* and was cru- cified for us... . He suffered and was buried... and on the third day he rose again. .. . and as- cended into heaven.” And all this is meant by Atonement. To describe it in detail—it is in- definable—would be to set forth a treatise in dogmatic theology: to state it briefly could not be done more succinctly and concisely than in the existing creed. Zia What has been said with reference to the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement, cardinal doctrines of the Christian creed, is at best but suggestive of what the first followers of Jesus experienced in their relation to him, their effort to explain that experience in in- tellectual terms, and their action to carry out their conviction of being supernaturally en- dowed by his Spirit to carry on his work and 60 Values of Catholic Fatth word. What gradually (by steps often retraced in modern days by scholarly investigators ) came to be formulated in technical phraseology, was simply the inevitable result of recording and safeguarding the Apostolic experience. The Catholic Church, by every conceivable means in her power, though not without prolonged discussion and sometimes acrimonious contro- versy, gave to these technical formulations of belief her imprimatur. That the Creeds represent the traditional belief of the Church is no longer disputed. They have as important a value, however, in being the norm to which all subsequent Chris-- tian experience has adapted itself; or which, failing such accommodation, has demonstrably indicated itself as separation from the life that is peculiarly and characteristically Christian. This may be at least suggestively indicated by considering only two of those doctrines that have already served to illustrate how the Creed originated in the Apostolic experience. The burden of modern criticism of the Creeds, not avowedly hostile, is the assertion that they need to be rewritten in modern terms. But what primarily is it that is to be so reéx- pressed? The normal Christian experience is faith in God, a Father in heaven; faith in God The Creed 61 as revealed in Jesus Christ; faith in God who reveals himself, at least makes his influence felt, as a Holy Spirit within the soul. And what differentiates Christianity from other forms of monotheism is primarily belief that Jesus ade- quately reveals God, because he is himself di- vine. And as a matter of fact, and the point need not be laboured anew, if this fundamental dogma is accepted, the Nicene theology is its logical development. - Belief in the divinity of Christ, subjected to interrogation, appeals to the Gospel record. Therein Jesus Christ appears as the unique figure in human history, and he has lost noth- ing of vividness and originality in the lapse of centuries. What at its highest and deepest the pilgrim of today can feel about Christ is there- in set forth with artless grace and persuasive force. He feels that with the greatest simplic- ity, the utmost directness, and from the highest possible motives, the Apostolic writers endeav- oured to relate what Jesus did, what he said, the claims he made for himself, and the im- pression he made upon them. Granted the strik- ing differences in their style and mode of ex- pression, the contradictions in detail, there is yet such remarkable unanimity in their report of what Christ did and said and in their es- 62 Values of Catholic Faith timate of who Christ was, that their witness can only be discredited by, in effect, rejecting 1. Jesus fulfilled the ancient prophecies, he met all the requirements laid down by the Prophets of old whereby Messiah was to be known. He convinced those with whom he dwelt in continuous intimacy that he was not merely sinless, but that his was an actively and positively perfect life. He is the supreme ex- ample, the ideal model of conduct and charac- ter. Moreover, he demonstrates his power to help his followers reproduce conduct and char- acter that approximate his. In short, far more | than being merely a model to imitate, he is, in a mystic but intensely real sense, Life itself. And his marvelous assertions, his unique and absolute claims made under the imagery of figures and analogies, seem the most accurate description of what he really is. He is the Vine, of which those who are his are the branches. He is the Water of Life, of which drinking, men shall no more thirst. He is the Light of the World, the light that lighteth all who come into the world, especially illuminating for those who will follow the way to God. He is the Door through which alone is there entrance into the fold of salvation. He is the Head of a The Creed 63 divine body of which his disciples are members. He is the Shepherd of all wandering sheep, the seeker and lover of souls, the Light of the world, I AM. All such transcendent images (and there are many more), far from seeming egotistic assertions, as they would seem on the part of any other man who ever lived, fall from the lips of Jesus as gracious and beautiful statements of truth, as words of life, as assur- ances, convincing assurances, of his will and power to save. [hey are living words that inspire faith and draw his followers to him in the bands of utterly unselfish, vividly pure, and entirely blessed love. It is scarcely an additional step in thought to acknowledge him as Justification for faith, ransom for sin, ground for hope in immor- tality. For his sake, in him, souls are forgiven, received, justified of God; in truth, saved, re- deemed, regenerated, made over, given new hearts and new minds. And faith in him in- volves to some degree at least a share in his purity, his holiness, his happiness, his health. Existence itself is conceivable and indeed con- ceived as an ever-increasing, vivid, transfigur- ing, transforming life in his spirit. And when he says, ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” it seems but the simplest enunciation 64 Values of Catholic Faith of what is simply, though most wonderfully, the truth. He is himself a fountain of grace and a seat of absolute justice. And all this goes along with absolute as- surance of his perfect humanity, his sensitive- ness to pain and joy, that he could be tempted, be moved to laughter and to tears, that indeed he could suffer the pains of death. And yet in- escapably an absolute belief and a passionate conviction forms itself—he is to be adored with such adoration as God alone may claim. And this experience, this irresistible impres- sion of the evangelical record, renews itself wherever the Gospel is preached, wherever and through all Christian centuries the word of Jesus Christ is preached and his claims pre- sented. Even in a sophisticated age of doubt, such as this, saturated as men are with false philosophy and pseudo-science, tainted as they are with the malady of the age; yet the words of Jesus repeat themselves. ‘Through the power of the Spirit he lives. in the imagination and the heart. He makes his claims. He utters the ineffable words of life. He offers rest, peace, forgiveness, happiness. His perfection rebukes imperfection. His purity shames selfishness and greed. And though his “hard sayings’? seem impossible to fulfill; and now and then, for the The Creed 65 moment, he seems remote from the confusion, the alarms, the hopes and fears, of these dis- tracted days; yet ever and anon, in extraordi- nary ways, it is perceived that he is inextricably a part of the age; the unique figure in a univer- sal movement of man toward God, the witness and the pledges of God’s ageless love for men. He embodies all that we really conceive as di- vine, all of the best that we know as human. There is a spell in those pages of the Gospel that nothing can destroy; there is beauty in them far more solid and untarnishable than in anything man has created ... He speaks again, it is as the voice of many waters. He speaks to the heart, to the mind, to the imagina- tion, to the soul clouded by doubt, oppressed by difficulty. He speaks in all the experience of good and evil. And always that voice is an in- vitation, a call—‘‘Come unto me .. .”’ As in his name bread is broken and wine poured forth, what is called an altar resolves itself into a mystic Calvary. It appears that he offers an eternal sacrifice in that he laid down his life for his friends. His friends share in that sacri- fice. Experience after experience opens and re- opens heart and mind and will to a risen and a living Christ. Difficulties may not be solved, but they no longer inhibit. Doubts vanish in the 66 Values of Catholic Faith fullness and gladness of believing. Unworthi- ness does not hinder, for men offer themselves, not as they are, but as they can be, as they might be, as they may be, as they will to be, in him. Many explanations, demonstrably inade- quate, have been offered in vain to account for this experience. The pilgrim asks—but re- ceives no answer—what other words can bet- ter or as well express what he feels and thinks and believes about Jesus and the faith he has in him, than those which he utters in the thun- derous credo of the Universal Church? And I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God; Begotten of his Fa- ther before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God; Begotten, not made; Being of one substance with the Father; By whom all things were made; Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, And was made man. And precisely as the words of the Creed ex- press for the pilgrim in the Way what he be- lieves about Christ, so its phrases express sufh- ciently—no words could describe or define all that he means—what Christ has done for him. The Creed 67 He can but say, dnd I believe that he “was cru- cified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suf- fered and was buried; And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures; And as- cended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of the Father.” For as the pilgrim looks back upon his own spiritual life, so often marred by shortcoming and positive sin, what has more and more brought him back to God and held him, even as he may waywardly pursue a path of fresh wrong-doing and renewed repentance, is just his faith in God’s righteousness and love re- vealed in Christ. Brought back from sin and his feeble efforts to justify himself by some such judgment as Peter’s—‘To whom else shall we go; thou hast the words of eternal life ?’’—he rises to the ideal of trying to be like Christ; and when oftentimes he finds that ideal hopeless of fulfilment, for that which he would he does not, and what he would not, that he does, he begins to realize that he can not be like Christ except it were that he should get Christ’s life in him. He begins to appreciate the force of St. Paul’s conception, that getting Christ’s life in him, means being in Christ. He has loved Christ as the beautiful figure that trod the ‘ways of Galilee and sailed its seas; and he 68 Values of Catholic Fatth learns that it is his own sin that dims his sense of comradeship. It was through love for such as he—even for him—that Christ gave up his life upon the Cross. Death could not conquer such love; such love alone could conquer death. The Resurrection was the test of Christ’s power; Pentecost was its fulfilment. What the pilgrim would not do if he could, what he could not do if he would, in love and sorrow for him so sinning, Christ has done by life given for him and life given to him. And so with the pilgrim’s thought of the death upon the Cross, which convicts and grieves him for his weakness and waywardness, his love of soft- © ness and of self, there commingles joy that by Christ’s rising from the dead there is pos- sibility and promise for his union with a Risen Lord, no mere feeble imitation of a gracious but vanished master. The Atonement effected by the Death is perfected by the Resurrection. More and more in his pilgrimage he wants to be made good, and he is glad that being made good means the gradual extinction in him of self-centered, self-willed life and the dwelling in him more and more of Christ his life. And of that indwelling he is continually assured as he partakes of the broken bread and the poured-out wine, knowing well that Christ has The Creed 69 power to do who said, This is my body broken for you, and, This my blood shed for you. The Atonement perfected by the Resurrection is applied in the sacraments, and by prayer, and whenever the heart is uplifted to God, when the mind dwells upon the divine mind, and the will is bent unto the eternal will. The pilgrim knows, as the Apostles knew, that in death en- dured and conquered by Christ, there is for him redemption, union with God, life immortal and eternal. ‘Therefore he can say to his com- panions in the Way: We have boldness to enter into the holiest, not because we are holy, but because he is holy; and we are being made at one with him. We enter by a new and living Way, by his body broken and his blood shed, by his rising to life, and by his giving of life. And as he has ascended to the Father, we have a great high priest over the house of God. Therefore, let us draw near with true hearts in the full assurance of faith. It is from this assurance of faith, from its richness, depth, breadth, heighth, its spiritual grace, its saving power, its pledge of immor- tality, that the pilgrim, following in the foot- steps of the Apostles, has made, has preserved, will defend, and must ever hold and continu- ally utter the Catholic Creed. 70 Values of Catholic Fatth a) It is one of the ironies of life that there should so often appear a conflict between re- ligion and science. It confirms belief in the reality of the Devil, a malignant and powerful intelligence who works to set against each other in gratuitous and factitious antagonism two natural allies in the service of truth. Rightly conceived, religion and science can be but complementary methods of approach to the same goal, different pathways to the same reality. It is true that many religionists and many scientists have quarrelled, and the result © of their quarrels is often to make their de- partments of knowledge incompatible or hos- tile. Sometimes it is the ignorance of the scien- tist, sometimes that of the religionist, that is to blame; more often it is due to the fact that either or both hold a false philosophy in addi- tion to whatever scientific or religious truth they have attained. As a matter of fact neither science nor religion necessitates any scheme of philosophy beyond the inescapable axioms and assumptions of common sense. Indeed, both are independent of such, and are themselves the matter from which the ultimate philosophy must be deduced. Science presents no obstacles The Creed 71 to faith nor does faith interfere with the freest pursuit of scientific truth. It is the unwarranted assumptions of philosophic theory that alike impugn the validity of religion and generate crude skepticism in the realm of scientific knowledge. One of the many reasons for which the Christian values the Creed as an irreversible statement of revealed truth is the involuntary witness it is continually receiving at the hands of scientists. It is this that makes him increas- ingly indifferent to the assertions of philo- sophers (who have a strange conceit oftentimes of calling themselves historians) that miracles do not happen and that the notion of revela- tion is incredible. The pilgrim, supported by the supernatural grace of the sacraments, goes serenely on his way, reiterating the ancient formulas of the changeless faith as confidently as the scientist depends on the axioms of mathe- matics and the inescapable assumptions of com- mon sense. These remarks may be illustrated by the brief examination of one of the fundamental problems that confront every thinker about life. Perhaps the experiences that most try scientist, religionist, and philosopher alike are those recurring catastrophic calamities in the 72 Values of Catholic Faith physical order with their attendant human suf- fering. It is equally difficult to reconcile such phenomena with an orderly evolution toward a better world, with a harmonious expansion of the idea of the Absolute, or with the exis- tence of a just and beneficent God. A satis- factory solution of the problem is yet to be achieved by any method of thought; but it is the Christian, with his faith in a loving, Heavenly Father, who finds in the latest hypotheses of science indications of what the solution will likely prove to be. Simple and unreflecting souls are apt to see in the untoward manifestations of nature, with their thwarting of human effort and their crushing of human life, the mysterious but di- rect interventions of a divine Providence: the very terribleness of them witnesses to almighty power and is evidence of inscrutable justice. And the Christian pilgrim, who may indeed manifest simplicity without at the same time being unreflecting, inclines to share that natural instinct. It is easier for him to see in the fright- ful eruptions of natural or even social forces the intervention of God, than it is to absolve an hypothetical deity from any connection with the untoward events that happen in his uni- verse. The Creed 73 He recalls that on an occasion when certain persons undertook to nonplus Jesus with this very problem, the Master gave what seems at first glance to be an equivocal reply, but which appears on scrutiny to be a hint toward the adequate solution; a hint moreover that now, after many centuries have passed, appears to receive unlooked-for elucidation from the most recent scientific hypothesis ... “I tell you, Nay; but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.’ Apparently Jesus would have had them understand that, though it was not a ques- tion of the degree of sin, it was most emphati- cally a question of the fact of sin; that all are under a universal condemnation from which there is possible escape only by repentance, a reversal of standards, a renewal of life, a turn- ing toward God; in other words, that evil in the universe is directly cause for pain, suftfer- ing, disaster, war, earthquake, flood, even the crashing of worlds: not evil of individuals, but the evil of the race, which is one, which should be God’s children, but which is rebellious and disobedient. For long time indeed this has seemed but dogmatic assertion. It has been tolerated by those who for other reasons ac- cept the spiritual claims of Jesus Christ, but has been assimilated, like many other of his 74. Values of Catholic Faith hard sayings, by few pilgrims in the Way. It too often has seemed, even to Christians, to be but one of the antiquated series of anthropo- morphic ideas that philosophers assert do duty for the absence of any true philosophy back of the creeds. But modern scientists, though cer- tainly with no purpose of relieving the em- barrassment of pilgrims, much less of theolo- gians, come to the rescue with persuasive and increasingly-popular hypotheses. Certainly science does afirm an end of the world; it has quite exploded the old notion of “matter”; it is asserting discontinuity in the field of physics, and in so doing disavowing its older notion of a purely mechanical process. Evolution, therefore, can no longer be taken in the sense of a mere unfolding of the im- plicit; it confronts us with the idea of a creative process; and, though science as such can go no further, a creative process involves the constant intervention of chance or intelligence. There seems, therefore, good reason to believe, as it is man’s native disposition to believe, that there are two factors in the world-process—‘“‘matter”’ and ‘‘mind’’; and if the latter of these is al- lowed at all, it must be granted priority both in a temporal and qualitative sense—in a casual sense. Indeed, partly by experimenta- The Creed 75 tion, partly by mathematical deduction, many speculative scientists have gone on gayly sub- dividing ‘‘matter’”’ into such infinitely infinites- imal quantities that there can be conceived no quantities more infinitesimal than those of the thought (or the ‘‘mind’’) that conceives them. Whether or no, as some have guessed, thought is the primordial substance or stuff of which all this universe is fashioned; or, as others prefer, the creating mind is somehow mysteriously re- sponsible, there is predicated a Thinker for whom at least God is an adequate name. Thought, so far as can be observed, achieves its highest expression in the self-consciousness of man. Certainly in the state of self-conscious- ness it can be dealt with, investigated, reasoned about, as nowhere else and under no other con- ditions. Thought in man, as it is known by each little personal experience as well as by observa- tion of the general experience, is impregnated with evil, marked by a rebellious tendency and will to turn away from goodness, truth, and beauty, as well as by a will to struggle toward those things. And it is practically general con- viction that this evil in thought is something alien, something which keeps it from being what it should be. That is personal experience for practically every rational being. It is race 76 Values of Catholic Faith experience. It is highly probable that it is uni- verse experience. It is this alien element of rebellious evil in the thought of the universe that has as its direct and inevitable consequence all that is painful and untoward, all that is dis- astrous and destructive, in nature and in man. This hypothesis of modern science is the im- plication of revealed religion, and it is the in- dubitable teaching of Jesus. So stubborn and inveterate is this evil in the universe, that to Christ’s thought the Incarnation and Atone- ment of the Son of God was God’s estimate of its power and danger. So stubborn and inveter- ate is it that Jesus himself did not assert the final triumph of good, nor even predict it until this present order had been dissolved in catas- trophic ruin. So too, universal catastrophe is the prediction of the prophets of modern science. Indeed, in those discourses about what is called “the end of the world,” discourses now more generally explained away than credited by Christians, Jesus definitely prophesied the collapse and destruction of this universe of time and space in which evil has done such in- calculable damage. But in the terrible warning of doom uttered by him there is the note of hope, the assurance of a possible and a final The Creed 77 salvation. ‘‘All these,” he said, ‘“‘are the be- ginnings of sorrows.” The original Greek for the word translated sorrows is od, and lit- erally rendered, the phrase would read, “All these are the beginnings of birth-pangs.” For the word div is everywhere else used to de- note the sorrows, the pangs, that come upon a woman in travail; that come when she is about to bring new life into the world. Sorrow indeed, pain indeed: but sorrow and pain that shall ultimately be swallowed up in joy. In the light of this prophecy, so understood (as it must be taken to be correctly under- stood) ; in view of Christ’s warning that all are in danger of catastrophe from cataclysms of nature and cataclysms of the human spirit (indeed, they be inextricably intertwined in the evolution of the universe) clues may be found to a solution of the fundamental problem under such cursory examination. There is for encour- agement the prediction of ultimate victory, of new and eternal life; of what the author of the Apocalypse called a new heaven and a new earth. No more is claimed than that these consid- erations indicate the intellectual solution of the problem. And an intellectual solution must be possible, for it is implied by all the content of 78 Values of Catholic Faith the creeds: the obligation of belief in a just and a beneficent Father in Heaven, in a Saviour who atones for evil and makes the re- deemed at one with God; in a divine Spirit, who carries out and applies this atonement to souls in this actual, existing, ever-changing world. On the other hand, it may be asserted, the moral and spiritual solution of the problem is immediate and inescapable. God’s ways may or may not by study be found less mysterious than they are to superficial observation: but whether or not, there is upon every one, as an individ- | ual, and as member of community, nation, race, church, the spiritual compulsion and the divine command of repentance, of turning Godwards, of seeking new life of thought and action, to which God calls, to which Jesus persuades, and to which the Spirit is ever inwardly seeking to compel. And after all—of this at any rate the pil- grim is convinced—the words of the Saviour indicate for him a Way in which his own spirit may keep serene; in which his footsteps, though they falter, yet shall not fail; following which, no catastrophes that happen in nature or in society can quench his hope or still his joy. If this be true — and for their conviction that it is The Creed 79 true countless pilgrims have suffered unto death —is it not more than conceivable, is it not per- suasively probable despite intellectual difficul- ties that prevent the absolute rationalization of faith and hope, that were men as a race to adopt this moral and spiritual solution of their problem—the following in the Way—they might know the fellowship of Jesus’s sufferings and the power of his Resurrection? And then, can it be doubted that a race morally regener- ated and spiritually redeemed would see with a clearer vision and know with an uncorrupted mind? At any rate, the Catholic Church has no doubt in this matter; but utters an everlasting Yea. Mankind is one. Science, philosophy, reli- gion, equally witness this. On any ground, therefore, intellectual integrity can not be as- sumed while moral instability and _ spiritual blindness exist. Given the race as it has been and is, a true religion, except it be also a re- vealed religion, is inconceivable. The situation reduces to this: the followers of Jesus know that they are in the way of life, in the way that leads to God. ‘This Way was revealed inade- quately of old to prophets, most adequately by Christ. Its essentials were wrought out by his first followers from their experience of him 80 Values of Catholic Faith and of their following after him in the sensible power of his Spirit and under the absolute con- viction of his authority. To brief statements of those essentials they gave their authority and claimed the attestation of his Spirit. An unceas- ing stream of pilgrims ever since find in those statements the norm of their own experience and the essence of their belief. That flowing stream of pilgrims constitutes a body which calls itself the Church. And not even in times of ignorance, persecution, corruption, has the faith of that body failed; nor has the Church by any organ that has ever given expression to its faith, given assent to the notion that change is possible in, much less repudiation of, any article of its ancient and universal creed. In view of this the pilgrim does not con- ceive that philosophic criticism can urge against the creed of the Church anything that will in- validate the truth it symbolizes, destroy its practical utility for the Christian life, or per- suade that change of its phraseology, if con- ceivable, is to be desired. The more faithfully he follows, the more positively he is convinced. if The term Symbolism has become current in recent years, particularly in connection with The Creed SI attempts to rationalize religious faith and ex- perience. It has been largely appropriated by those who seem to desire to retain Catholic values while apparently they deny the histor- icity of the events with which those values are traditionally and logically associated. It is, for example, frequently alleged that since the Creed is a symbol and its phrases symbolical, the ex- pression about Christ sitting on the right hand of God is a triumphant demonstration that the language of the Creed can not be literally inter- preted. It is alleged that the sort of interpreta- tion necessarily given to this phrase may be applied to any other article. Moreover, it is often argued that this freedom of interpreta- tion absolves the Christian from holding Christ’s birth of a virgin to be a literal fact any more than can be his literal session on the right hand of God. The arguments for and against such freedom of interpretation are familiar, since they have been the principal matter of theological controversy in recent times, and need not be rehearsed. But the problem is more subtle than is commonly assumed, and con- troversialists on the one hand and on the other have not been particularly happy in express- ing the ends in view. Little as particular points of iconoclastic criticism may be accepted, little 82 Values of Catholic Faith as what purports to be results of reconstructive statement may be adopted, it is impossible not to feel (and it is a matter of feeling largely) that the purpose behind this demand for free- dom of interpretation is a sincere effort to ar- rive at the reality of which symbols obviously are but the expression. Symbols, if they mean anything, are the signs and representations of something real; the Creed, therefore, to any one who claims to be a Christian, is the great symbolical state- ment of the revelation of God in and through Jesus Christ. The Creed attempts (succeeds, shall it not be said?) in asserting the unique relation of Jesus to God as Son and his unique relation to men as Saviour. The Catholic must realize that even the definitions of the Athana- sian Creed only safeguard, and do not explain, Jesus’s unique Sonship; just as the most pro- found experience of mystical union with God through Christ, though it brings passionate conviction and ardent faith, in no degree dimin- ishes from the mystery of salvation. What emerges from all Chrisitan thought and experi- ence, orthodox and other, is that Christ has the value of God. About that central fact there is really little dispute: where that ceases to be the case, the thinker ceases to be Christian. The The Creed 83 Creeds do no more than assert that as fact, in technical terms that safeguard against misinter- pretation. It is not conceivable on Catholic principles that the Church will repeal articles of the Creed or reject any technical expressions that have found their way into it; but it should not seem improbable, even to a Catholic, that study, prayer, speculation, may much more deeply illumine the statements of the Creeds; draw the Christian infinitely nearer the reality of which they are the symbol. Freedom of in- terpretation can not touch this reality; whereas, the effort to discipline and restrict thought, as has sometimes happened in the Church, may hamper and even thwart apprehension of that reality. It is only through freedom of specula- tion, in the last resort inspired by the Spirit, that deeper and deeper truths of religion may emerge into consciousness. In so far as modern criticism has been a mere effort to return for its religious faith and experience to what Jesus did and said in Galilee and Jerusalem nineteen hundred years ago it is demonstrably futile. The effort of more recent criticism, for which the Catholic should have patient sympathy however little he may share its arguments or conclusions, is surely to ascertain not only what Jesus was in his earthly ministry, but what he 84. Values of Catholic Fatth is in the counsels of the Eternal, what he is in the age-long experience of the Church. Cathol- icism is often considered, and in its popular manifestations too often appears, a static re- ligion; whereas, in truth, it is dynamic. Ideally it is destined to embrace all truth and all wis- dom. For itself it is the universal symbol of reality in this sacramental universe, the exten- sion of the Incarnation in the world, the reve- lation of God and of man in Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. It need not fear, therefore, the freest interpretation. For after all, what now by general consent constitutes the Catholic religion, has been worked out, under divine guidance doubtless, from the free thought of Christians interpreting, speculating upon, meditating upon their experience of a unique person. The truth, Jesus said, should make his followers free. Surely, therefore, it is only in an atmosphere of freedom that truth can emerge, persist, persuade. And that is a circumstance which, if more generally accepted, would have made church history a far more edifying record. That the Catholic Church, in the name of discipline, should be intolerant (however definitely it may affirm, and however authoritatively it should teach), is to destroy one of its chief values as a way to God. The Creed 85 It is one of those strange paradoxes so often apparent in Christian thought and ex- perience that the freedom demanded in the name of symbolism has been most fully achieved by those who, thanks to some particular grace or some native character, appear most indifferent to the symbols of the faith. It is not necessarily, the fact, though that is their own conviction, that mystics attain to deeper reality, but there is a quality of immediacy about their experience that makes it distinctive. What is characteristic of all genuine Christian experi- ence, whether it be in the nature of mysticism, in a practical imitation of Christ, or along the lines of traditional Catholic symbolism, is that to the pilgrim it is the pathway to reality. IV. THE DIVINE OFFICE if TuHoucH for the Catholic Christian the Mass is the complete and perfect form of prayer, yet since the Eucharist is the occasion primarily of worship, sacrifice, and communion, it is convenient to consider prayer independent- ly of the Mass, and particularly as it is given expression in the Divine Office, which the Church so beautifully has called “the work of prayer,” and which she lays upon those definite- ly vowed to her service as a daily obligation. * There are various forms of the Divine Office authorized in the Church, and though 1 The failure of many of the Anglican clergy to realize their priesthood, as is often justly charged against them, may well be due in part to the extent to which many of them neglect this obligation of the daily recitation of the offices. It is a duty recognized, if not always observed, by the clergy of the English Church, but hardly even generally recognized by Anglican priests in America. Surely this is an instance of the discipline of the mother Church of England, from which her American daughter did not intend to depart. The Divine Office 87 indeed all follow certain general outlines, the variety so characteristic of the different com- munions may not be ignored as seemed possible in the case of the different liturgies. ° In considering the Divine Office it is de- sirable to bear in mind what is the fundamental and primary purpose of prayer. If the Pater Noster is taken for the model of prayer, as certainly it seemed the Lord’s intention it should be taken, it would appear impossible to misunderstand that its purpose is to train the soul in the will of God; and the soul should be understood as embracing the mind, the affec- tions, and the imagination. Prayer, in the model provided by the Saviour, is the recogni- tion, not only on the part of the individual but by the brotherhood, by the band of pilgrims in the Way, of the holiness of the divine will, of the blessedness of fulfilling it, of the glory of finding in that fulfilment the realization of the Kingdom. To this fundamental conception every form of prayer is both subordinate and complementary; and of it certainly the Divine Office is the richest expression, for it, indeed, embraces or implies practically every form of ? That is to say it is impossible to consider Matins and Evensong of the Prayer Book as translations, or even as mere variants, of the old hours. They are in effect new services. 88 Values of Catholic Faith prayer. When the purpose of prayer is so ap- prehended the objections sometimes urged or the difficulties alleged are simply without point. Indeed, there is but one form of prayer that presents any theoretical difficulty whatever, and this difficulty disappears upon reflection. Though there is no more instinctive prayer than that for others—prayer particularly to avert from a loved one some danger or dis- tress—yet it is sometimes questioned, if the purpose of prayer be the training and conform- ing of souls to the divine will, how such peti- tions may be justified. It is argued that since the danger and the distress must be according to God’s will, it is unreasonable and useless to suggest to God what may be, what apparently is, contrary to his will. But there is a deeper conception, and it would seem to be the true one, otherwise such prayer could scarcely be so universally instinctive. May it not be that the divine will can only be fulfilled in conjunction with and through such intercessory prayer? May not the divine will embrace at once, and embrace as one, the objective good desired for the beloved and the subjective willing of that good expressed in the prayer of the lover? If personalities are, as they seem, indissolubly in- terdependent, if destinies are inextricably inter- The Divine Office 89 twined, it would seem that they must be con- ceived as interdependent and intertwined by the divine will and to the divine mind. This would also appear to afford the explanation why so many of the difficulties that are the result of personal relationships find their solution in prayer. Intercession certainly may provide the necessary opening for the influence of the di- vine Spirit. It is, therefore, not only rational but vital. 2. The Divine Office is the Church’s most carefully ordered system of daily prayer—in- deed, of prayer seven times a day, to the en- richment of which has gone all the centuries of Christian devotion, as well as of what Chris- tians took over and illumined from the ancient Israel. Moreover, it is prayer expressive of the mind of the whole Church; and it is continually offered throughout the Church in choir and by individuals both voluntarily and of obligation. The device which, more than anything else, has contributed to the Divine Office so much of rich variety, of imaginative beauty, and of dramatic appeal, is the Christian Year. It orig- inated in the spontaneous instinct of the Christians to commemorate the Saviour as a 90 Values of Catholic Faith risen and a living Lord and their own beloved passed beyond the veil as alive in him. It first found expression in the Liturgy, but it was early applied to those offices of prayer that succeeded the ritual of Temple and synagogue, which, like them, was constructed about the Hebrew Psalter. As time went on it became a complete kalendar, having, on the analogy of the civil year, its seasons, its holydays, its fast days, and its ferias. Each generation of pil- grims made their own contribution, each group of pilgrims indeed; for the Christian Year varied in different parts of the Church, and a strictly universal kalendar was never suggested until the triumphant Papacy, with its passion ~ for uniformity and its interest in replacing lo- cal usages by Roman, attempted to impose one, without, however, conspicuous success. But even so highly organized a regulative body as the Congregation of Rites failed to prevent the overloading of the kalendar by the diverse sections of Christendom persistent in the com- memoration of local saints and heroes. Reform was deemed desirable in the middle age, and is still patiently pursued by the Roman Church. In the Sixteenth Century the break with Rome afforded the fathers of the English Reforma- tion opportunity for drastic revision, of which The Divine Office 9! they took the fullest advantage. Despite sub- sequent efforts to modify their radical revision, much yet remains to be remedied. But, according to whatever kalendar in use in the Church, to any one who attempts to fol- low the changing seasons of the Christian Year, with their alternating days of feast and fast, their commemorations of the chief events of the Master’s life and of the lives of his greatest followers (as the clergy must do in the very routine of their office), the admiration deepens for the wisdom and the appreciation of beauty that devised this scheme as an aid to the practice of the spiritual life. Year by year we follow the Saviour’s earthly ministry and hear all his essential teaching. Every year the great mysteries of faith are brought afresh to our contemplation, and as from time to time we commemorate the Blessed Virgin Mother, the Apostles, the Prophets and Evangelists, the Martyrs and Confessors, heroic leaders and holy women, and the ministering and guardian angels, more and more our worship and our practice unite themselves with that of “the whole company of heaven’”’; the veil that divides the visible from the invisible world as- sumes, as it were, a certain transparency of tex- ture; the distinction between the Church tri- 92 Values of Catholic Faith umphant above and militant here in earth be- comes less sharp, and we realize more sensibly the comforting truth expressed in the familiar hymn: “Q blest communion, fellowship divine! We feebly struggle, they in glory shine; Yet all are one in thee, for all are thine. “Alleluia.” It is precisely this truth to which witness is borne by one of the last festivals of the Christian Year when All Saints are gathered under one commemoration. The considerations that apply to this partic- ular festival are germane also, in part at least, to most other days that commemorate those pilgrims in the Way preéminent for heroism and for sanctity; and the setting forth of these considerations once for all should suffice to es- tablish the value of all such holydays. The spirit of the delicate skill that devised the Christian Year is nowhere more evident than in putting All Saints’ Day on the kalendar just where it is, toward the end, but not at the very end, of the Church year; in that mellow and lovely season when the fruits of the earth have been harvested and stored in barns; and when, though the trees are bare or such ver- The Divine Office 93 dure as still clings to them has fallen into the sear and yellow leaf, all their recent splendour is still fresh to mind; and when so often after the first touch of frost there comes a revived and caressing warmth, a peculiarly gracious time which is called Indian summer; which the English of the middle age, more familiar with certain aspects of Christian life, poetically and perhaps more appropriately termed the Little Summer of All Saints. It was indeed insight into the fitness of things that fixed the commemoration of all the saints at this season. The stored barns suggest the grace stored up in righteous character; the gauntness, straightness, bareness of the natural world suggest the strength of which the saints are possessed, of which pilgrims also should be possessed against the wintry storms of experi- ence; and yet the sweetness of the air, the lingering here and there of lovely bloom and the veiling of all the landscape in golden or silvery mist, softens harshness, recalls the re- cent brilliant beauty, and assures us of splen- dours and glories that yet shall be. It should be worth while to make some new estimate of the value of the observance of this season; for the perception of values deep- ens appreciation. It is evident that one of the 94. Values of Catholic Fatth readiest and soundest means of inculcating pa- triotism and of generating good citizenship in a people is to make them familiar with the lives and teachings uf the national heroes. This is done by setting aside their birthdays as holi- days; by holding commemorative exercises in schools and town halls, when their virtues are extolled in the fervid eloquence of village or- ators, passages of their own works are read— how familiar has Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech become through just such repetition!—and popular songs are rendered, recalling their ex- ploits or their principles. Their birthplaces are. set aside as shrines for patriotic pilgrims, as has been done so perfectly at Mount Vernon; and the best artists are called upon to design for their tombs monuments that shall appro- priately express the spirit of their endeavour. Their personalities are the theme of history, of literature, of drama, and most frequently of song. If these efforts are successful in civic life, it is worth while to realize that they are used with like success by the Church for the purpose of stimulating loyalty and developing good Churchmanship. Just as to strip a consciousness of all acquaintance with national heroes is to rob it of one of its greatest civic inheritances, The Divine Office 95 so to eliminate the saints from worship and de- votion is to deprive Christians of a precious re- ligious heritage. If at one time this sort of religious observance was over-emphasized to the point of thrusting out things more funda- mental and vital, a like danger need not be feared in this unidealistic, rebellious age. The zeal of the American Fathers for the saints to whom reference is made in Holy Scripture was greater than their sense of proportion. They pruned even the already well-pruned English kalendar with a vengeance. It might well be doubted if the cultural, historical, religious value of a commemoration of St. Bartholo- mew, Apostle though he were, equals that of a commemoration of St. Bernard, St. Anselm, St. George, St. Benedict, or St. Columba. The history of Christianity did not end with the closing of the New Testament canon: there are other periods of Christian development as in- teresting, as appealing, as rich with suggestion and example. The Reformation did not inter- rupt continuity with the Church of the earlier centuries, though it did so much to deaden and dull realization of that continuity. It would be a great gain to be given the opportunity of setting forth the golden deeds of Christian leaders, exemplars of strong and beautiful life, 96 Values of Catholic Fatth in other periods of the Church’s history than just the Apostolic. Reverence for Lincoln will never displace Washington in the admiration of Americans; nor need reverence for St. Peter and St. John and St. Paul shut out knowledge of and regard for St. Augustine, for St. Fran- cis, or for such a very modern saint as John Keble, who set to music so much of the gra- cious teaching of the Christian Year. It is a late notion that canonization can only be effect- ed by the Pope. The greater saints were canon- ized by the spontaneous devotion and admira- tion of the people. If for no other reason than as insistence on the right of the Anglican Com- munion to canonize her heroes, it is to be re- gretted the name of King Charles the Martyr no longer finds a place on the English kalendar. The pilgrims in the Way have need of the saints, not alone for their prayers in heaven, not alone as examples of varied types of Chris- tian character, but for the encouragement of their own loyalty to the faith, and for the deepening and broadening of their most modern Churchmanship. Again, All Saints’ Day is a direct means for stimulating the religious imagination. It is only as a knowledge of the splendid variety of Christian character is obtained that there can The Divine Office 97 be an adequate understanding of essential Christian personality, that is to say, of the Christ himself. A chief value of the saints is to see in them the reflection of the Saviour’s image, despite all the superficial differences of age, time, temperament, and circumstance. Each of them is, as it were, a mosaic, admir- able in itself, but chiefly admirable because it contributes to the perfection of the entire pic- ture. An old writer has said that the soul is dyed the colour of its thoughts. The colour of the soul of much modern religion therefore must be drab and grey, for its thought is so often prosaic, humdrum, colourless, stupidly respectable, decently dull. It lacks imagination. It needs colour, light, beauty, poetry, music, the thrill of adventure, the charm of romance. No device the Church has used is more adapted to produce this than the commemoration of the saints. And since All Saints’ Day—or more partic- ularly the first day of its octave, All Souls’— includes the commemoration not only of the heroic, but of the more personally beloved dead, its observance is a direct means of deep- ening that filial piety, that love of family, of home, of friends, so always necessary and so often wanting. It conduces to the realization 98 Values of Catholic Faith that to those who have faith in the Risen Christ separation is brief and reunion everlasting. To know the strengths and beauties of the saints is to admire, to reverence, to imitate; it deepens all human sympathies and helps to that true discernment of the hidden qualities of souls which was so divine a characteristic of the Christ. Perhaps more often than is realized the whole duty of a Christian might be summed up thus—to recognize, to appreciate, to aspire. “¥ In connection with the Christian Year the meditative mind loves to linger in contempla- tion upon those festivals dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary—her Conception, her Nativity, her Mother and her Spouse, the An- nunciation, the Visitation to her cousin Elisa- beth, the Purification, her falling asleep, for all of which liturgical skill has devised such beautiful offices. It is to be regretted that in the English kalendar the most of these feasts are marked only as minor or black letter days, and that in the American all but two are want- ing. If there was exaggeration in the devotion to the Madonna in the middle age, the minimi- zation of such devotion since the Reformation The Divine Office 99 is to the non-Roman Catholic the most serious blemish in his Christian Year. The picture of the lowly maiden of Naza- reth, kneeling, as the pencils of Christian artists have so tenderly depicted her, amongst her lilies, with the sweet wonder upon her face as she listens to the angelic salutation proclaim- ing her forever blessed among women, has captivated the imagination of mankind and awakened faith often when more solid reasons fail to appeal. The fairest lines, the most ex- quisite colours, the loveliest tones, have gone to the pictorial representation of the Virgin’s life; indeed, almost without exception, the greatest artists have fulfilled their dream of beauty in the imaginative presentation of the face of the Madonna, that glorious lady who of all the saints most warms the heart and up- lifts the pilgrim spirit. Some of the sweetest strains of poetry have been sung with Mary as the theme, from the rhythmic gladness of St. Luke’s Gospel of the Nativity to the rich medieval Latin of the Ave Stella Maris, from the restrained devotion of the old Teutonic Leistenteit to the tender syllables of Keble and the purest metres of Rosetti. The hymns for St. Mary are the finest of the old office books; and composers, ancient and modern, from Pal- 100 Values of Catholic Faith estrina to Gounod, have set them to melodious harmonies. In Holy Writ Mary appears as the pure and lovely Virgin, meekly obedient to the heav- enly vision, submitting herself in all humility to the divine miracle to be wrought in her; then, as the loving Mother with the Christ Child in her arms. A few glimpses there are of her watchful mother-love—at the Temple in Jerusalem for the solemn presentation of the first-born and her own ceremonial purification, according to old Hebrew custom; when, meet- ing with the aged Simeon, she let him take the child in his arms and heard him utter his Nunc dimittis; again at a later date on a journey back from keeping the Passover in the Holy City when, missing her boy, she finds him in the Temple courts, in his Father’s house. She was at the wedding-feast in Cana of Galilee, when Jesus sanctified innocent so- cial festivities by his presence; and once again when she called to him from the midst of a crowd that pressed about him; and he who men knew so deeply loved his mother, proved his love for men by calling them his mother. And finally she is seen at the foot of the Cross, the sword piercing her own soul also; faithful to the last, tenderly commended by the Saviour The Divine Office IOI to the care of the beloved John. Then the veil descends. She is seen no more. Tradition supposes her to have dwelt amongst the group of early Christians in the household of St. John, and later to have ac- companied him to Ephesus when that city be- came his Apostolic see. It is believed that it was she who furnished St. Luke with the de- tails of the Gospel of the Nativity. The ancient Church celebrated her falling asleep at some unknown time and place. So it is a natural won- der that would know more what manner of life was that of the Mother of Christ after the Beloved Disciple took her to his own home, but it must be left to inference what hopes, what privileges of vision, what consolations of the spirit, were hers in that hidden sanctuary. In the middle age pious souls came to believe that she had been assumed into heaven. It is not strange that the imagination of the faithful should reverently have enquired into the cir- cumstances of the falling into her last sleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and, since all authen- tic records of that event have perished, should have conceived the beautiful idea of her As- sumption. It requires no effort to believe in the ineffable purity of the Mother of Jesus; it is not difficult to suppose that angels bore the 102 Values of Catholic Faith Queen of Saints to the courts of heaven. There must be trust that now in heaven her prayers avail the pilgrim in the Way, as once her hum- ble obedience and willing consecration did so greatly avail to forward the redemption of his soul. The safest and surest measure of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Angelic salutation that hailed her blessed, and that spontaneous hymn to which on the occasion of her visit to Elisabeth she herself gave utter- ance. In the old antiphonaries, amongst the earliest service books extant, the Magnificat was called the Evangelium Mariae (the Gospel of Mary), and justly so, for it is indeed full of gladness and exultation. In the early brevi- aries it was assigned to Vespers, on the infer- ence that it was toward evening when Mary reached the home of Zacharias and Elisabeth. Thence it passed into the Evensong of the Book of Common Prayer, where it constitutes the heart of the service, accenting all the office with its sweet devotion, as of a prayer especial- ly sacred, as of a canticle of particular em- inence, as of an offering of unwontedly fra- grant incense. [he Magnificat is steeped in the language and sentiment of Old Testament de- votion; and has an intimate relation to the The Divine Office 103 Song of Hannah, which was uttered on a not dissimilar occasion; thus indicating that the Blessed Virgin was one of that pious circle who waited for the consolation of Israel, and was familiar with Israel’s deepest longings and as- pirations, particularly as they found expression in poetry and prophecy. It combines with sim- ple, and therefore truthful, art the personal devotion of Mary’s heart to God and her deep sense of her people’s religious hopes and needs. “My soul hath magnified the Lord..... for he hath visited and redeemed his people.” It is in virtue of this weaving together of the essential elements of prayer that it becomes so perfect a medium of devotion. There is first expressed the spontaneous giving of the heart to God, and the rejoicing in the happiness that is the result of such free giving. Such surrender is the beginning of all true mystical experience— the deep sense of communion with God to whom the heart is given; the peace and rest- fulness that succeed the disquiet and restless- ness of unspiritual life. As St. Augustine later expressed it: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless till they rest in thee. Save when it is riveted upon thee, my soul is riveted upon vanity, yea, though it be riveted upon things beautiful.”’ 104. Values of Catholic Faith And then in the second place there is in the Magnificat, as in all pure devotion, the growing sense and consciousness that the sweetness and good that cometh of union with God, is a sweet- ness and good to be shared with others, until the overweening sense of God's presence in the soul merges with the consciousness of God amongst his people, of Israel visited and up- lifted, of Zion redeemed. The consecration of the heart to God begets a catholic charity: to love God is to love the brethren, the fellow pilgrims in the Way. “Ave Maria! blessed Maid! Lily of Eden’s fragrant shade, Who can express the love That nurtured thee so pure and sweet, Making thy heart a shelter meet For Jesus’ holy Dove? “Ave Maria! Mother blest, To whom, caressing and caress’d, Clings the Eternal Child; Favour’d beyond Archangels’ dream, When first on thee with tenderest gleam Thy new-born Saviour smil’d:— ““Ave Maria! thou whose name All but adoring love may claim, Yet may we reach thy shrine; The Divine Office 105 For He, thy Son and Saviour, vows To crown all lowly, lofty brows With love and joy like thine.” If so much may (and can less?) be justly said of the Madonna, Catholics who have re- vised the Divine Office of the middle age surely owe a duty of reparation to secure in the offices they accept a fuller recognition of the part that Mary plays in the great drama of Redemption. 4. It is not difficult to discern the reasons that determined the difference between the old and the reformed offices for feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary; but, in spite of those reasons, the actual course adopted was in direct conflict with one of the fundamental principles of the revision. Those principles would seem to be the translation of the old offices into the ver- nacular, the combination of the seven hours into two, the adaptation of them for use by the people, and finally a more extended use in them of Holy Scripture. Much indeed is to be said for and against the translation from the Latin into the English; but, considering the wider use to which the revised offices were to be put, that decision was perhaps inevitable. It is not nec- essary to argue the wisdom, or the lack of it, 106 Values of Catholic Faith that dictated the two instead of the seven offices; though it must be urged that the two were no more designed to surplant the Mass as the normal form of worship than the seven had been. But in view of the appeal to Holy Scripture, the obscuration of the commemora- tion of the Blessed Virgin is indefensible. In view of the fact that this appeal to Scripture underlies so much of the Anglican Reformation in its doctrine, practice, and wor- ship, and since it is in the Divine Office (with the exception of the unfortunate neglect of the Blessed Virgin in the revised kalendar) that this principle receives its most obvious applica- tion, some consideration of its merits is not inappropriate. The degree of the change may be briefly indicated. In the old breviaries the offices were built about the Psalter, on the theory that in the course of each week the psalms would be read through at least once. But owing to the overloading of the kalendar in the medieval age with a great variety of feast days, it result- ed that the ferial office was seldom, if ever, actually said. For it will be recalled that feasts have their proper psalms, with the result that certain psalms (the 110th is a conspicuous ex- ample) were said over and over, and those, en = The Divine Office 107 as it happens, by no means always of the great- est devotional value. To obviate this grave de- fect, which the modern Roman Psalter has at- tempted to deal with, though less radically and with less success, Matins and Evensong were built about the Psalter on the theory that the psalms would be said through in the course of each month, and this was practically accom- plished. Doubtless one of the reasons for practically disregarding the lesser hours in the revision was the great similarity and the deadening in- flexibility of those offices; for the old breviaries necessitated every day reading through in those hours of Psalm 119, of which the monotonous repetitions do not render it the most edifying. It is only within the present generation that the Roman Psalter has removed this great blemish, which made its lesser hours of such dubious value. At any rate the compilers of the Prayer Book eliminated Terce, Sext, and None; but whether or not that is to be regretted, it is dificult to understand their motives for elim- inating Compline. The American bishops in their Book of Offices have made a graceful gesture in the way of restoring Compline to Anglican usage, though they have not succeed- ed in devising an office that many would will- 108 Values of Catholic Faith ingly see incorporated in the Book of Common Prayer. It may be noted parenthetically that Anglican communities, in their desire to revive the more ancient usage, have fallen back upon translations and adaptations of the old breviar- ies, none of which however is likely to be- come widely used. The varied number of short Lessons pro- vided in the old night office of Matins and the Short Chapter (a verse or two) in the other offices gave place both in Morning and Even- ing Prayer to two much longer Lessons, one. from the Old and the other from the New Testament. These lessons, instead of being fixed as in the breviaries, were selected accord- ing to a Lectionary, which has grown more flex- ible and varied with every revision of the Prayer Book, so arranged that in the course of every year a great portion of the Old Testa- ment, certainly the more edifying and inspiring portion, and practically all of the New Testa- ment, is read through. Moreover the Canticles appointed to be read in the service are all taken from the Bible. The result is that Morning and Evening Prayer, with the exception of the Exhortation, Confession, and Absolution, Te Deum and the Prayers, are entirely in the words of Holy Scripture. The Divine Office 109 This more extended, systematic, and in- structive use of Scripture in the Divine Office is the usual and sufficient Anglican defense of the revision made in the Book of Common Prayer. The larger use of Scripture is an addi- tional argument for the translation into Eng- lish, as it provides the opportunity for thorough familiarization with the incompara- ble King James version of the Bible. iy In the affection of many who daily recite the Breviary, or who at least are familiar with its offices, Compline holds the first place. And since it is not only one of the most nearly per- fect but also one of the shortest of the offices, a more particular comment upon it will illus- trate the value the Divine Office must have for all pilgrims faithful in the prayer of the Church. * It is supposed by some liturgiologists that Compline (Complin, Completorum), the com- pletion or ending of all the Hours of the day, cx ® Nothing could be more welcome to many than the incorporation of an adequate version of Compline in the Book of Common Prayer. Oddly enough, Compline is the only point in the modern revision of the Roman Psalter that is not an improvement. It must seem loss rather than gain to give up the fixed psalms, endeared by long association and so peculiarly appropriate to the office, for the varied psalms now authorized by the Congregation of Rites. I10 Values of Catholic Faith was first arranged for the Breviary by St. Benedict; by others it is ascribed to St. Basil, since there are references in the ancient writ- ings to another “‘hour of prayer’ after Ves- pers; by a few even it is traced to St. Pach- omius and the early monasteries of Egypt. Probably in some form it was used by them all; what is certain is that St. Benedict is responsi- ble for the version that still (with immaterial additions) finds place in the Roman Breviary, Jube domne benedicere. Compline is normally said at the close of. day, in religious houses before the Great Silence, by individuals before retiring for the night; and it is consistent with the spirit of the office that silence should thereafter be observed. It begins, appropriately enough, by the invocation of a blessing upon the night’s re- pose. [he blessing is asked of God, not of right but of grace; for restful refreshing sleep, un- disturbed by evil thoughts or dreams and out- ward dangers; such a rest as foreshadows the peaceful end desired by the pilgrim soul “‘in the communion of the Catholic Church, in the confidence of a reasonable, religious, and holy hope, in favour. . . . with God, and in perfect charity with the world.” Sobrii estote, et vigilate: quia adversarius The Divine Office III vester diabolus tanquam leo rugiens circuit, quaerens quem devoret, cui resistite fortes in fide. In the old Benedictine monasteries the evening devotions included a short period of spiritual reading—Holy Scripture or other. Compline preserves the relic of this in the Short Lesson (I St. Peter, v. 8), the purpose of which is to suggest the theme for medita- tion. The pilgrim soul is to be sober and vigi- lant; for though he may cast his care and anxiety upon the Lord, yet the enemy is ever watchful, and as a roaring lion seeketh whom he may devour. The imagery is that of the prowl- ing lion of the Psalm and the Adversary of Job. The Christian, as he gives himself to sleep, is to do so in a Spirit of watchfulness, ready for alarm, prepared for attack; much as the guardian of a fortress does not permit himself to rest except it be with arms by his side. The pilgrim must be prepared to with- — stand temptations of the night—evil thoughts, vain imaginings, unchastened memories. he Evil One is to be shut out by a wall (crepéos, something hard or firm) of faith; but not for- getful that outside Satan wanders seeking a breach in the defenses, a door left unlocked, a gateway open. God is to be depended upon, 112 Values of Catholic Faith but the soul must take the precautions dictated by prudence. A djutorium noster in nomine Domini. Almost at once comes the great liturgical exhortation. The Name of the Lord is ever symbolical of all that God is. Of old the Israel- ites never ventured to pronounce the ineffable and sacred Name, but used a circumlocution possible to their language, whereby though the letters indicated Jehovah (Yahweh), the sound uttered was simply The Lord (Adonai). Very early in the life of the Church, pilgrims in the Way transferred the ancient reverence to the Name of Jesus, for which eventually a feast day was set aside and an office composed by St. Bernard, which comprises some of the loveliest hymns in honour of the Holy Name. The Name of Jesus is at the heart of all Christian faith, the abiding witness of Incarnation and Atonement. Indeed, in the first age of the Church, pilgrims were content to utter their faith in a single phrase, Jesus is Lord, mean- ing thereby quite all that later more elaborate creeds undertook to express. — Pater noster. The exhortation having been said aloud, because it proclaims a common heritage—the The Divine Office 113 Name whereby all must be saved; the Lord’s Prayer, summing up the desires of the soul, its hopes and fears and aspirations, is said secret- ly to God. Confiteor Deo. The preface to the office being finished, there is confession of sins in traditional liturgi- cal formula. It is made primarily to God, who has been chiefly offended and from whom for- giveness must come; and secondarily to the Saints, “the whole company of heaven,’’ whose intercession for the divine pardon would be engaged; and also, if there be occasion, to the brethren actually present and participating in the office. The soul, then freshly cleansed, is ready to unite with saints and angels in the praises of the Most High. Psalm iv. Cum invocarem. The first psalm is an evening prayer of great antiquity. In it the soul addresses itself to prayer in memory of the past; takes sides with God against his enemies, and to that end will purify itself with devotion and ordered sacri- fice. The depression of night, felt at the open- ing, soon changes into joyful trust. The care- less world is contrasted with the quiet peace of the cloister, of the soul in sanctuary. The evil 114 Values of Catholic Fatth sons of men blaspheme God by neglect, seek after vanity, and are deceived by lies; but God chooseth to himself the man that is godly. The pilgrim admonishes himself to wait patiently upon God in prayer and meditation. “Be still, and know that I am God.” “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” He is to offer sacrifices of righteousness. The thought of the religious in the cloister, as of the Psalm- ist in the Temple, is not primarily of the sac- rifice of the cultus, but of those spiritual sacri- fices of the will and the heart which prepare for the great sacrifice. The psalm closes on a note of confidence and thanksgiving, of trustful repose in God’s protecting care for the night. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” Psalm xxxiv. In te, Domine. Psalm xc. Qui habitat. This psalm, written in times of peace when Israel had free access to the Temple, assures the pilgrim soul of the safety of those who make God’s Temple their habitual resort. The Christian transfers the reference to Church and Altar. One of the verses, that which refers to the ‘sickness that destroyeth in the noonday,”’ re- The Divine Office 115 cited daily by such multitudes under the vows of Religion, has come in its Christian applica- tion to have a special reference to the sin of accidie, which Cassian describes as “‘weariness of heart” and identifies with this daemonium meridianum. Dante in the Inferno punishes those guilty of this sin, and makes them to say, “We were once sad In the sweet air, made gladsome by the sun; Now in these murky silences we are sad.” It has been identified with that “sorrow of the world’ which, St. Paul says, ‘“‘worketh death.” It is that sudden overwhelming distaste for the offices and practices of religion that now and again afflicts even faithful souls, denudes them of spiritual comfort, tries their faith, and tempts them to despair. “Yea, they thought scorn of that pleasant land, and gave no cre- dence unto his word; but murmured in their tents, and hearkened not unto the voice of the Lord.” Accidie slays myriads who know not what their trouble is, for its effects are deadly disease of mind and will. The psalm proposes the remedies against it: Prayer and Forti- And so the Psalter goes on, with its freight 116 Values of Catholic Faith of rich and tender and inspiring association. It is as if the words have taken on a deeper meaning and are charged with the power of the faith and devotion of the multitudes that have used them throughout the ages, have taken on almost a sacramental nature. The analysis, however, need be carried no further; even though so much must appear sadly inadequate to any pilgrim familiar with “the work of prayer,’ yet enough has been suggested to in- dicate the value of the Psalter to the pilgrim soul. Hymnus. Te lucis ante terminum. The hymn for Compline, ascribed to St. Ambrose in the fourth century, exquisitely gathers up afresh the lessons of the Psalter. At the end of day God the Father, the Cre- ator, is invoked as Keeper and Guardian of the soul, petitioned to inspire even dreams, to ban- ish unworthy fears and unholy thoughts, to preserve from the stain of sin and the attack of the Evil One, and all through Jesus Christ our Lord. Canticum Simeonis. Nunc dimittis. The Canticle of Compline, following upon the Short Lesson from Jeremiah and the fol- lowing Versicles and Responses, is the Song of The Divine Office 117 Simeon, the evening prayer dearest to the Christian heart, as it rejoices that now—after the day of work, expectation, suffering, trial— God mercifully permits it to behold his salva- tion, to be lightened by the Light that lighteth all the world. It is to such as Simeon that the Saviour comes: to those whose purity of heart prepares them for the vision of God; whose fidelity and patience have triumphed during slow, dull, uneventful years. “He to the lowly soul Doth still himself impart, And for His dwelling and His throne Chooseth the pure in heart.” Oremus. Visita, quaesumus, Domine. At last in this prayer the entire meaning, point, theme, of Compline is gathered into one petition—that God may vouchsafe his pres- ence and by that presence, destroy and make of no effect all those subtle snares by which evil spirits would entrap the soul; and grant to his faithful pilgrims the protection of the Angels. And then with the Benedicto the office of Compline is ended. By it, night by night, the Church reminds the faithful soul of the last great sleep of death; and that yet death is not to be a sleep but the finding of eternal sanctu- 118 Values of Catholic Fatth ary under the shadow of the Most High. The pilgrim shall sleep but to awake in the presence of God. It challenges the imagination to conceive how more perfectly, with what greater inspira- tion and beauty of word and tone and cadence, the Catholic Church might commend the work of prayer to the Christian soul than in the Di- vine Office. Vi THE KINGDOM OF GOD Ir HAS often created comment and vainly challenged explanation that while the term The Kingdom of God was so frequently upon the lips of Jesus, it apparently dropped almost en- tirely from the Apostolic preaching. In con- trast to the three-score and more times that it is used by the Saviour, St. Luke employs it only five times in the Acts, St. Paul but a few more times in his letters, and the author of the Apocalypse but once. In line with the Apos- tolic usage the expression does not find a place in the Creeds, and does not extensively appear in subsequent theology. It was for long the custom loosely to identify the Kingdom with the Church and to use the terms almost inter- changeably. The explanations for this differing usage are many, and perhaps most of them contain some element of truth. It may be that the idea of the Kingdom of God was too large 120 Values of Catholic Faith a concept, too inconclusive an one, to be patient of the formulization incumbent upon Christian teachers; as indeed it will appear by merely | cataloguing the various ways in which Jesus himself characterized the Kingdom and the many things to which he likened it. It is, in his conception, past, present, future; something which, though it exists in time, 1s yet eternal; something into which souls are born; something also that is born into souls. It is like a sower sowing good seed in various sorts of ground, good and bad, with strikingly different results; it is like the wheat-seed sown and springing up to be half-choked by tares. It is like to leaven hid in a measure of meal; to a candle set.upon a candlestick; to the housewife’s lost coin. It is as a merchant seek- ing goodly pearls and selling all that he has, to buy one of great price; it is like unto the grain of mustard-seed falling into the ground, decaying and growing up anew into a great shrub that will shelter the fowls of the air. It is like to a company of virgins waiting, with trimmed and untrimmed lamps, for the coming of the bridegroom; to a wedding supper to which the invited guests do not come, but from which also many are repelled because they are not worthy. It has many aspects and can be The Kingdom of God 121 seen with different effect from a multitude of angles. It is as a pool of water, clear as crystal, but unguessably deep, and still unplumbed. Now and again the Church could be substituted without violence to the imagery or the mean- ing of the parables; but as often such a sub- stitution is impossible. It is not offered as an adequate explanation, but only as a partial and tentative suggestion that the Kingdom of God stands in the conception of Jesus for the ideal, the all-embracing truth of God and of his own life and mission in revealing that truth; while the Church was devised by him as the great means, the principle instrument for bringing the Kingdom to pass. - It would be an endless task to attempt to consider the Kingdom in its every aspect and from every angle; but the effort to examine it from certain viewpoints, arbitrarily selected or determined by purely personal considerations, may not be uninstructive. r The most effective method of considering various implications of the Kingdom is by care- ful consideration of the similes used by the Master to convey the idea to his first disciples. 122 Values of Catholic Faith The saying that the Kingdom is like a net is one of the simplest of these similes, and like all other of the Lord’s sayings, contains far deeper than just the obvious meanings. The word net is so simple and the thing for which it stands is so familiar, that it is not imme- diately apparent how precisely the word ex- emplifies the nature and constitution of the Church, which in this instance obviously is in- terchangeable with the word Kingdom. Con- sidering the Church, as Catholics must, as a divinely given and endowed organism, descend- ing from generation to generation with a con- tinuous (if always developing and expanding) tradition and doctrine, is to postulate author- itative organs of that continuity; is to see in the historic episcopate that principle of contin- uity in operation. And were the succession of | bishops to be set forth on paper, linking each bishop to each of his consecrators, there is a literal demonstration of the precision in the Saviour likening the Kingdom to a net; for the resulting diagram is an actual network. Unlike the succession of a dynasty from father to son, the authority of the Church is transmitted in the form of closely interwoven meshes, guar- anteeing not merely a continuous but a stable succession; for though it might break down at The Kingdom of God 123 this or that point, yet the whole would not be seriously impaired. . The netlike nature of the Kingdom is again apparent in the system of apologetic by which its faith is intellectually defended or by which it is rationally set forth to persuade minds not already convinced. Christian apologetic is sure- ly not a single sustained argument of flawless logic; that is to say, it is not a chain of reason- ing. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and if there were but one.argument for the Christian faith, and in that argument a single fallacy, the whole would be invalidated. On the contrary, Christian apologetic is a net- work of arguments, now loosely, now closely woven together, constituting an intricate and complicated pattern of philosophical, historical, psychological, and empirical strands; reasons and evidences capable of affording many acute minds infallible proofs of that wherein they have been instructed. Once more the netlike quality of the King- dom appears in the great and legitimate variety of practice and personal experience that obtain in it. Indeed, there is no variety of religious ex- perience (if it have any reason for existence) that can not find a home in the Catholic Church, that has not done so. Nothing could be more 124. Values of Catholic Faith impossible to define than the characteristic Christian experience. What is characteristic in the Kingdom is practically every experience that is one of true religious value. Moreover, it might seem as if the Master contemplated the inevitable existence of both heresy and schism, foresaw rents and tears in the fabric of his Church. But just as a net may be torn without ceasing to be a useful implement, so the Church, rent indeed as it actually has been and is, though with whatever loss to its efficien- cy, surely has not ceased to be useful. It is help- ful in this connection to recall that one of the most vivid and pleasing pictures in the Gospel is of the fishermen, called by Jesus to be fishers of men, mending their nets, indeed—it is to be inferred—spending much of their time in doing so. Doubtless he contemplated the probability that the members of his kingdom must often be engaged in the same task. y Again Jesus said of his Kingdom that it was like unto leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened. It has been generally assumed that by this saying he meant to indicate the secrecy and The Kingdom of God 125 rapidity with which the Kingdom would propa- gate itself in the world, and to prophesy that ultimately the existing state of society would, as a result of this process, coalesce with the Kingdom of God. Ingenious commentators have further seen in the three measures of meal esoteric references to the three parts of man—body, soul, and spirit; or to the three elements of society—the material earth on which it exists, the state, and the church.. This therefore was a favourite text in the nineteenth century when the idea of progress was so unl- versally entertained. Before attempting to ascertain the value of the Kingdom actually indicated by the Lord in this saying, it is worth while to note the inepti- tude of the common interpretation of it; an in- terpretation so inept indeed that it has been quoted in defense of ideas that it actually con- tradicts, or of late—since those ideas are no longer so confidently accepted—has been per- mitted to sink into unmerited obscurity through sheer inability to discover an adequate explana- tion. It may be asserted at once that the propa- gation of the Kingdom has been neither secret nor rapid. What the light-hearted commenta- tors who have glided easily over the parable 126 Values of Catholic Faith have alleged to be secrecy was in point of fact only the obscurity in which necessarily the Kingdom first developed. From that awful hour in Jerusalem, when what was done, so dreadful in itself and yet so beneficent in its effect, was not done ina corner, to the present “publicity” in which Christianity functions and for which its official leaders plead, secrecy is the least characteristic thing about it. From the insistence of the first apologists that there was nothing occult about Christian practice, to the indignation aroused by an ingenuous young Tractarian arguing for ‘‘a certain economy” in imparting religious truth, the notion that they have anything to conceal has been indignantly repudiated by Christians everywhere. Their very mysteries are celebrated openly; and are called mysteries because they are concerned with the infinite and the eternal, not because they are secrets to be imparted only to the initiate. Moreover, the notion that the King- dom is to develop secretly is strangely at va- riance with Jesus’s other description that it is as a light to be placed upon a candlestick so that it may illumine the whole house; and as strikingly in conflict with St. John’s conception of Christ as the Light that lighteth every man. Even when the Kingdom is conceived as a The Kingdom of God 127 spiritual force within, it is to be manifested outwardly and be known by its fruits. Nor is the notion of rapidity in the propa- gation of the Kingdom sustained by a serious reading of its history. Doubtless at different periods, after the conversion of Constantine, after the reorganization of Europe by Charle- magne, at the “Great Awakening,” there has been a rapid propagation of superficial Chris- tian ideas, but the very nations that have most quickly and easily been christened have been the least edifying examples of Christianization. Time is a baffling concept, but from what is reckoned the beginning of history, the Chris- tian era has occupied about a fourth part of that period; and if toward the end of two mil- leniums after Christ only a quarter of the in- habitants of the world are nominally Chris- tian and only a fraction of those genuinely so, it may well be doubted if the rapidity with which the Kingdom would propagate itself was the Lord’s meaning in likening it to leaven. And if indeed that was his meaning, it may be doubted if the simile was a true one. If for various reasons Jesus is to be trusted, it is a wiser, if not a common course, to relinquish what may be a mistaken interpretation than to deny the trustworthiness of his words. 128 Values of Catholic Fatth Happily it is no longer necessary to dispel the other notion that by this saying Jesus meant to teach the gradual evolution of society, by means of a steady progress, into the Kingdom of God, though it should comfort the pilgrim to recall that Jesus never uttered a sentence in support of the superstition of progress. But if it were the fact that somewhere else Jesus so taught, he does not do so in saying that the Kingdom is like unto leaven. In point of fact, it absolutely contradicts such a notion; and it is amazing that this has so seldom been real- ized. It is likely true that if an entire nation actu- ally believed and lived the life depicted in the Gospel, the civilization of that state would be- come as nearly ideal as we can conceive a civilization to be. It is surely right to hold that there is embedded in Christ’s teaching prin- ciples that would afford ideal solutions for so- cial as well as for individual problems; but it is a very different thing to assume that human society will inevitably work itself into this ideal situation. The assumption is warranted neither by what the Gospels assert as to the success of those principles nor by the fate which they have so far met at the hands of men. It is not without significance that on the same The Kingdom of God 129 occasion Jesus foretold the coming of the Holy Spirit, he uttered with equal solemnity the words of warning, The Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me. The Lord always set the world and the Kingdom over against each other in sharp contrast and contradiction. Though the pilgrims in the Way were to be in the world, they were never to be of it. The world would hate them, persecute them, en- deavour to destroy them as it had destroyed (or fancied it had destroyed) their Master be- fore them. Though none could know as he the infinite values of the truths he enunciated, not only for souls but for such groups as would accept them, apparently he had little confidence that many individuals or any society would do so. He foretold that to the very end his own would be set apart, and he asked with some- thing more than rhetorical effect whether he should find faith on earth when he came again. He foresaw such a complication of evils in human society and such a degeneration of the natural man as would finally result in complete disruption and catastrophic ruin. He spoke in no uncertain terms about an “end of the world,” which the majority of his followers have chosen to regard as so figurative as to be devoid of meaning. The notion of an ultimate 130 Values of Catholic Faith universal catastrophe has been tacitly dismissed as one of Jesus’s unfortunate mistakes, or if that is too harsh a term for the blithely op- timistic commentators to apply, as one of his “hard sayings” obviously not designed to be understood, or perhaps to be ultimately appre- hended in that large synthesis which phi- losophy assumes so glibly and of which as yet no signs are perceptible. In reality the hard sayings of Jesus are the least mysterious and the most definite in the Gospels. It is not that they are difficult of apprehension, but that they are distasteful to the unregenerate intel- ligence. Before 1914 it was sheer heresy to question the sacred secular dogma of progress. It was the creed of materialism that the world was growing better, and as materialism was in the saddle, assertion dispensed with argument. De- lusions are hard to dispel, especially when they minister to the sense of social security and physical comfort. If progress can be seen in the Great War and in the appalling miseries and disorders that accompanied it and still follow in its wake, there is no limit to human credulity. And as a matter of fact there is no such limit; for it is conceivable that were the universe in a state of collapse about them, there would be The Kingdom of God 131 optimistic souls still convinced that all was good in this best of all possible worlds. The delusion of progress, and the assumption that Jesus shared it, was not only entrenched as a popular superstition by the industrial revolu- tion of the eighteenth Century, but supported by the theories of the nineteenth invented to interpret recent observations of the material earth made by geologists and biologists. [t was readily assumed and passionately preached, that from very small beginnings, organic and inorganic matter were evolving toward ulti- mate perfection. What was true of matter must ‘obviously, so it was asserted, be true of man; history therefore was conceived likewise as an evolution from the imperfect to the perfect, through struggle and pain doubtless, by means of the survival of the fittest or by some other means (there were always a variety of hypoth- eses from which to choose, and if one were rendered untenable by criticism, speculation could easily slide to another) ; but by whatever means, mankind was evolving from the pri- mordial protoplasm, through pollywog and ape, to the perfect society of perfect men. Something of the sort Christians also persuaded them- selves Jesus must have meant by the Kingdom of God, and they fancied that his saying about 122 Values of Catholic Fatth leaven was a text to prove it. But this identifi- cation of evolution with progress is undergoing dissolution at the hands of the very science that established it. Scientific doctrine is suffering a revolution as disastrous for this notion as was the world war. The degradation of energy, the disintegration of matter, inevitable, ultimate, universal catastrophe, are now as freely postu- lated by speculative scientists as a generation ago they insisted that the conservation of energy, the uniformity of matter, and the ever- lasting permanence of the universe, were orthodoxies the which to question was to be an ignoramus. By contrast with some of these modern prophecies, those of Jesus seem rel- atively broad and vague. But since it is clear that Jesus never shared the delusion of prog- ress, it is not improbable that in likening the Kingdom of God to leaven he actually meant to make a helpful and not a confusing sugges- tion. It will help to understand this parable if it is remembered that leaven is a principle of cor- ruption, and that to speak of something being leavened is to assert that the leaven has worked in a bad sense. Even when leaven is thought of as working in meal or dough, though the effect is to lighten, refine, render more palatable, the The Kingdom of God 133 lump is not in the least purified. Therefore, in likening the Kingdom of God to leaven, Jesus was asserting that Christian principles would indeed work in human society, lightening it, re- fining it, rendering it superficially more accept- able and agreeable, but not by any means puri- fying it. Such in fact has been the effect of Christianity upon the world. There is scarcely a field of human activity and endeavour in the western world at least that has not been affected by Christianity; and yet it would be a rash and undemonstrable assertion, to say that any aspect of civilization is genuinely Christian. In manners, morals, art, literature, the devices systematized for commerce, comfort, govern- ment, in each and all can be traced the influence of Christian ideas, but not one of them in any particular exemplifies Christian ideals or ends or is designed to realize them. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump, but in the bad sense. For the worst feature of it all is that the leaven- ing influence of the Gospel has resulted, even amongst the great majority of those who acknowledge and confess themselves Christians, in confusing Christianity and civilization, the Kingdom of God and the world, inextricably to entangle those which Jesus taught should be sharply contrasted, set over against each 1 34. Values of Catholic Fatth other in permanent and irreconcilable antago- nism. Jesus but once again referred to leaven, and then it was to bid his disciples beware of it. St. Paul employs the figure in a graphic pas- sage of the First Epistle to the Corinthians (v, 7 ff), and precisely in the manner in which Jesus used it. He was contrasting the salvation by faith which is the heritage of the believer, with the evil but alluring world in which his lot was cast; and he was warning those who had already permitted themselves to yield to its temptations. “Your glorying,’’ he wrote to them, “is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us. [Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wicked- ness, but with the unleavened bread of sincer- ity and truth.” It was with something of the same thought in mind that in writing on an- other occasion to the same community of Chris- tians (II, v, 21) he gave utterance to the strik- ing paradox—‘‘He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin: that we might be the righteousness of God in him’’; daring to speak The Kingdom of God 135 of Christ in as startling a manner as Jesus himself spoke of his Kingdom. If Jesus’ profound and fundamental char- acterization of the Kingdom as not of this world could be apprehended (however difficult the long accepted mistakes render such appre- hension), the pilgrim has in his mind a clue to the meaning of history; and, indeed, the only clue. In the light of this truth, the parable of the leaven reveals to the pilgrim one of the greatest values of the Kingdom. It teaches him the danger in the present confusion of ideas, it instructs him anew as to the necessary delimita- tions of the Kingdom and the world; it enables him to avoid the dangerous and possibly fatal mistake of identifying a christened civilization or a secularized Church with the scheme of salvation; and it reveals to him once more, as in a clarified atmosphere, that the Kingdom is essentially a Way through the world unto God who is above and beyond it. ae Jesus said of his Kingdom that it was like unto a merchantman seeking goodly pearls, who, when he found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it (Met. xiii, 45). 136 Values of Catholic Faith Obviously this parable illustrates the su- preme worth of the Kingdom; and it is paral- leled by that other saying of the Master about the utter worthlessness of the world, the which though a man gained the whole of it, and lost his soul, profiteth nothing. That the Kingdom is of supreme worth would not need to have been stressed were it not that pilgrims, though they are not to be of the world, are neverthe- less very much in it, and the sights and sounds of it are insistent, and oftentimes alluring. Even to the pilgrim in the Way, life is an affair of routine. The exceptions of whom this is not true are far more rare than appears to casual observation. his routine is practically inevitable. It is essential to successful endeavour in any department of activity; it has its part in the exchange of the amenities of social in- tercourse; indeed, is necessary even in play. Inevitable though it be, and definitely as its inevitability may be recognized, routine of any sort, nevertheless, tends to become dull and exercises a dulling effect upon the subject of it. The result is the paradoxical spectacle of most persons in the world making continual efforts to escape from routine; even when, as in many cases, they appreciate its value. These efforts to escape are made in response to a deep- The Kingdom of God 137 rooted instinct. They are as inevitable as routine itself. A casual glance will indicate the great va- riety of escapes possible in any cultural environ- ment. The exchange of hospitality in social life, the pursuit of sport or of games, the opera, the drama, the amateur cultivation of musical or artistic tastes, the indulgence in hobbies ;— a long catalogue might be drawn up of the ways in which people with more or less suc- cess seek to escape from the routine which life imposes upon all. These methods are in them- selves wholesome and desirable diversions, often useful avocations; wrong indeed only when indulged at the expense of primary duties and necessary work. But pursued to excess they issue in disastrous dissipations; the impulse to escape from routine becomes an end in itself, and in exact proportion as it does so, defeats its purpose; renders its victims the slaves of a still more intolerable routine, the hopeless effort to satisfy imperative and insatiable de- sires. But it is needless further to analyse con- ditions too sadly familiar. The point made is that these defeated attempts at escape are but the excessive yielding to an universal in- stinct; an instinct, however, that within limits must be indulged, lest sheer routine reduce 138 Values of Catholic Faith humanity to a mere mechanism, deprive it of the spiritual and intellectual freedom essential to happiness and satisfaction. Fortunately individuals are differently con- stituted, and their methods of escape are of a multiform variety. This is the source, since peo- ple do not understand each other, of much mutual criticism. Indeed, there are few things more frequently the subject of adverse com- ment than the way in which this person or that seeks to escape the routine of his life. It is easy to criticise that which does not make a personal appeal. Probably no method of escape seems so dull to people who do not pursue it as re- ligion. And yet religion in this respect is as a pearl of great price. Doubtless the idea of religion as a means of escape from the intolerable routine of a work-a-day world has not often occurred even to conscientious pilgrims. As an escape from sin or from the bondage of fear—these ideas are familiar enough; but just as wholesome and blessed escape from the intolerable routine of life, this is seldom realized. And yet it is one of the distinct values of the Kingdom of God. It is realized by many, perhaps, in a love of prayer and of the Church and its worship; for The Kingdom of God 139 some, doubtless, in a love of the intellectual ideas connoted by religious faith, theology in short; for others still, in a surrender to the use- ful service for which it affords such abundant ‘opportunity. In parenthesis, it may be observed, that the way religion oftenest fails as a means of escape is when it is conceived primarily as a code of conduct. This dictum often offends, since few are wholly emancipated from the in- fluence of puritan forefathers who completely succeeded in divorcing beauty from holiness. But, as a matter of fact, whenever religion is regarded “as a prop to morality, as playing second fiddle to conduct, as being the mere supernatural guarantee to a system of ethics, religion itself evaporates and morality hardens into austerity or degenerates into license. Morality, or, more strictly speaking, holiness, is the fruit of relig- ion; grows out of it; but when substituted for it or put first in thought or practice, has a fatal effect, not only on religion, but on itself. Re- ligion—that is to say, access to God, love of God as transcendent master and revealed re- deemer, as manifested in human brotherhood, —must be first and foremost: only so may its reality be appreciated; only so, indeed, will it prove inspiration to moral life and disciplined conduct. 140 Values of Catholic Faith So to the pilgrim, if religion does not appeal as a way of escape in the sense defined, it is because he has failed to use his intelligence and his imagination. Certainly it is often repre- sented just so in Scripture; and nowhere more poetically than in that beautiful hymn which the first Isaiah interpolates into his prophecy: In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah: We have a strong city; salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks. Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. Trust ye in the Lord forever: for in the Lord God is everlasting strength... . With my soul have I desired thee in the night: yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee Gatly es me Come, my people, enter thou into my chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment... . So it is in the terms of escape that the Lord often gives the call to follow him: — Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you. The Kingdom of God 141 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. For all that religion must become the in- spiration and the means to holiness, goodness, righteousness; for all that it must issue in lives of useful service, of charity and justice; the Saviour calls to religion first as an escape from the burden of life and the intolerable and numb- ing routine of mere living. He represents it as an orientation of the soul toward God, as a coming to himself, as a following in the Way, as a sharing in the divine spirit, and a partak- ing in the divine life. And religion in the soul first manifests itself as a spiritual response, an uplifting of the heart, a setting forth upon a pilgrimage, a questing for God. It is this sense of it, this experience of it, that invests it with its real allure, its persuasive appeal, its prom- ise of such ever-fresh realizations, of clear in- sights, of pure and strong emotions. It is so often and so wonderfully the opening of a door into another world, an initiation into a higher life; a world and a life in which emotion, fancy, imagination, idealism, all have freest and full- est play; in which the affections, disciplined and purged as is so often necessary, discover their 142 Values of Catholic Faith absolute liberty. his experience is not sus- ceptible to analysis in exact terms; to crystali- zation in words and ideas at once delicate and durable. It is a sense, however momentary, that the soul is really freed from the distractions and the cares alike of its ordinary existence; free to choose, to be what it will; nay, that it most wonderfully is all that God could wish, all that he could exact; and is this in spite of the tangled destinies, influences, in which it ap- pears outwardly to be enmeshed. For the dura- tion of the experience, time and eternity coalesce. There is an intuition of God, an in- tuition of the self, an intimation that reality has been surprised in its hiding-place, that im- mortality has been glimpsed and foretasted. It is something of this sort doubtless that the Saviour meant when he spoke of his King- dom under another figure, as like unto a fold from which his flock should go in and out, as into a higher world, and find pasture—sus- tenance for mind, body, spirit. It is this escape into the solitude of the spirit, into the spiritual inner world, that invigorates, revives, renews the soul. It is this escape that invests life upon return to the work-a-day world with a glorious and ever-renewed interest, and that enables the pilgrim to fulfill his necessary routine tasks The Kingdom of God 143 with zest, vigour, earnestness. Verily, it seemeth to him, he hath found a pearl of great price, and that had it been necessary to sell all with which to buy it, he would have acted wisely. 4. A poet has somewhere said that this mate- rial creation, at once so beautiful and so awe- ful, so intricate and so stupendous, is, as it were, the garment by which we perceive its divine Creator; or,.in more prosaic terms, that this outward, visible universe is the manifesta- tion of an inward, spiritual reality. Some such conception necessarily is involved in any spiri- tual interpretation of phenomena; it was frankly assumed by Jesus, and it is the essence of that sacramental principle developed into a system by his followers. It was a profound in- sight into this idea that led St. Paul to call the Church, equivalent in his thought to the King- dom of God, the Body of Christ. This figure, richest of the several designed to illustrate the many-sided nature of the King- dom, presents the Church as an organism of which Christ is the head and all those united to him are the members. The doctrine derived therefrom is capable of and has received ex- 144 Values of Catholic Faith tended development at the hands of theolo- gians. Perhaps because of the very multiplicity of words spent upon the exposition of it, for the pilgrim in the Way its outline is often blurred, and he is able to derive from it few clear and simple notions. Obviously he knows the Church to be a society or organism, of which Jesus is the head, into which sacramen- tally he is baptized, and wherein he is fed by sacramental food—Christ’s body and blood; but it is likely that he has learned the truth in- dependently of any information supplied by the Pauline metaphor. However instructive that figure has become when subjected to skill- ful development by theologians, such highly developed doctrine immediately is confusing rather than helpful. The expression The Body of Christ, having been used as a figure to ex- press the life of Christ given in the Eucharist, at first confuses when it is employed as a meta- phor to describe the Church, a situation from which many pilgrims are never delivered. With- out disputing the truth of the developed doc- trine, it is likely that the confusion arises in ordinary minds, as is the case with so many of the figures employed by Jesus and the Apostolic writers, simply because a literal meaning is not looked for and a direct interpretation at- The Kingdom of God 145 tempted. It should be recalled that both Jesus and his Apostles by their use of figures of speech designed to clarify, not to confuse, their teaching in the minds of the first disciples. To pilgrims these figures were to be lights on the Way; the metaphor was a veil but to the uninitiate. It follows naturally that the figures were chosen because they were true, and that they remain true however elaborately theology may develop the doctrine. Indeed, they afford the surest test whereby to check doctrinal de- velopment; a test as often honoured in the breach as in the observance. It remains that the sure way to ascertain the value of a parable or a figure of speech employed by Jesus or by the Apostolic writers, is by a direct and literal interpretation. Therefore in calling the Church the Body of Christ it may be assumed that St. Paul meant that pilgrims in the Way were quite literally to conceive themselves to be members of that body, that is to say, to be the eyes and ears, the lips and tongue, the hands and feet, of the Lord Jesus. Such a literal relation of the mem- bers of his Church to Christ fits in perfectly with the economy of the Incarnation. God re- veals himself in the human nature of Christ. Therefore human nature assumed by the di- 146 Values of Catholic Faith vine person Jesus is redeemed, and human be- ings are saved by their union with that Christ. This is the scheme of salvation. And no more exalted notion of the necessary union of the soul with Christ can be afforded than by a literal interpretation of the Pauline metaphor. The members of Christ’s body are the eyes with which he sees, the ears through which he hears, the hands which render his kindly and his healing offices, the feet which bear the messages of good tidings and good will, the lips and tongues which proclaim his truth and goodness. If Christ’s work is done, it must be done by those who are united with him in virtue of their membership in his body. This - conception gives a new and deeper understand- ing of the sacramental system as an extension of the Incarnation; it illustrates with a daz- zling light the Pauline conception of the bodies of the redeemed as temples of the Holy Ghost; and it gives a mystical apprehension of that ultimate reality when God shall be all in all. It is doubtful if any more profound exposition can convey the supreme value of this metaphor about the Kingdom of God as clearly and elo- quently as this simple and literal interpretation of it. For some at least, to say so much is to say as much as need be said. The Kingdom of God 147 5. A metaphor, frequently used by the Apos- tolic writers to describe the Church, so gener- ally equivalent in their thought to the King- dom of God, is the term, The Bride of Christ. Indeed, this figure is implied by Jesus himself when he asks if the children of the bridecham- ber can mourn or fast as long as the bride- groom is with them, and it is in the background of the somewhat elaborate parables of the Vir- gins with trimmed and untrimmed lamps and of the marriage feast made by the king for his son. * The use of this symbolism, however, was original neither with our Lord nor with his Apostles. They adopted and transferred an imagery frequently employed by the writers of the Old Testament, who depicted Yah- weh as the bridegroom and Israel as the bride. For thy maker is thy husband, is the basis of one of the second Isaiah’s exhortations to the people of God. Turn, O back-sliding children, saith the Lord, cried Jeremiah, for I am married unto you. Hosea still more beau- tifully expressed the idea by putting into the —_———————, 1The chief New Testament references are as follows:—Mt. ix, 15; Xxii, 2 sqq.; xxv, 4sqq.; Mk ii, 19; Lk v, 24; Jn iii, 29; 2 Cor. xi, 2; Eph. v, 25, 323: Rev. xix, 7; xxi, 29;. xxii, 17. 148 Values of Catholic Faith mouth of Yahweh the words: J will betroth them unto me forever; yea, I will betroth them unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies.” Despite the fact that Psalm 45 was in all probability a mar- riage ode composed and sung in honour of the nuptials of the conquering Jehu, the Jewish commentators have almost invariably seen in it a mystical presentation of the relation be- tween Yahweh and Israel. In like manner they have interpreted the Song of Songs, and been followed in both instances by Christian com- mentators, save that these transfer the imagery to Christ and his Church. Except for such a mystical interpretation it is doubtful if the. beautiful but sensuous idyll of the Song of Songs could have maintained a place in the Christian canon of scripture. This imagery, derived from the relation of the two sexes, has been by no means confined to Jewish or Christian thought. It seems, on the other hand, to be practically universal, to be the expression of an instinctive association rooted deep in humanity. Into the precise na- ture of that instinct it is not necessary to en- quire, nor indeed has it often proved profitable to do so. Its expression in pagan religions and ? Cf. Is. liv, 5; Jer. iii, 14; Hos. ii, 19. The Kingdom of God 149 in most of the cults of the ancient East are familiar. In particular the classic myths of Greece and Rome have become part of the in- tellectual heritage of the western world. But these myths have been so refined by poetic fancy and a chastened literary taste that their essential nature as well as their religious as- sociations have been mostly obscured or for- gotten. It was undoubtedly the essential gross- ness of the classic mythology that inspired the horror and justified the execration poured upon it by the early Fathers of the Church. Had it not been for the use of a kindred symbolism on the part of the psalmists and prophets of the Old Covenant, for that such a sensuous com- position as the Song of Songs was found in- corporated in their canon of scripture, and for that both the Saviour and his Apostles made frequent use of kindred metaphors, it is not likely that this imagery would have appeared in Christian thought. Its use must have devel- oped before the open conflict with paganism in the third century. But there is no need for regret that it was the Apostles rather than the Fathers who for- mulated the metaphors designed to describe God's Kingdom, as there is no reason to doubt that the very boldness with which they have 150 Values of Catholic Fatih been employed to elucidate the highest and most spiritual ideas has directly served a pure morality. Indeed, this symbolism has served to exalt the married state as not only in itself ideal but as the sole condition of physical love. The reaction from paganism had too nearly succeeded in exalting virginity permanently above the married state, and in emphasizing the value of ascetism quite at the expense of, indeed with disastrous consequence to, normal, happy relationships between the sexes. And when at times this was the case, it resulted often in the imagery depicting the relation be- tween Christ and his Church being employed to suggest that between Christ and individual members of the Church, a conception which it is difficult not to regard as definitely patho- logical. Happily these ideas, at the time in- evitably derived from the reaction against paganism, have not unwholesomely prevailed. On the contrary the Church emphasized the nobility of marriage, declared it modelled upon the union between Christ and the Church, and invested it with the dignity and value of a sacrament. And if also the Church, remember- ing the example of the Saviour and of his Mother, regarded virginity as a state of per- fection, it is to be noted that it has ever held The Kingdom of God 151 a special vocation and a particular grace as required therefor. But what is chiefly characteristic of this sym- bolism in Christian thought, what sharply con- trasts the use made of it in pagan religions, is that the emphasis in calling the Church the bride of Christ is upon the purity requisite in God’s People, the uniqueness, exclusiveness, and permanence of their relation to him, and the overwhelming devotion that must characterize them. Such emphasis underlies the occasional references of Jesus to himself as the bride- groom, and is emphatically asserted by St. Paul and by the author of the Apocalypse. Indeed, the Revelation of St. John the Divine com- monly refers to the relation of Christ and the Church as a betrothal, conceiving the marriage of the Lamb to be celebrated at the consumma- tion of all things; and usually, though not in- variably, it identifies the bride with that ideal and perfected Church to be revealed in all its glory only at the Last Day, the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; arrayed in fair linen, clean and white, which is the righteousness of the saints. It is desirable that such considerations be taken into account, for this imagery has so 152 Values of Catholic Fatih often been misconstrued and belittled or has been confused with kindred yet contradictory symbolism associated with other religions. Rightly estimated it has a positive value as a description of the Kingdom of God. To the enthusiasm of old time, when pagan- ism had been forgotten or perhaps too much assimilated, the Song of Songs was favourite pasturage for commentary in this connection, for witness to which it is but necessary to refer to the marginal notes of the translations of the King James version of the Bible or to innumer- able passages in the Fathers. ° Who is she that looketh forth as the morn- ing, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and ter- rible as an army with banners? * The modern pilgrim too commonly thinks of the Church merely in its practical aspect, as a visible organization engaged upon the preach- ®In the Roman Breviary and Missal the Song of Songs is fre- quently interpreted as applicable to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the spotless purity and exquisite loveliness of the King’s bride being justly estimated adequately to typify her. Indeed, all of the anti- phons of the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary are taken from the Song of Songs. Appropriate and beautiful as this usage often is, it nevertheless tends to confuse the traditional interpretation as describing the union between Christ and His Church. *Song of Songs vi, 10. This verse constitutes the short chapter in the Roman Office for the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is, however, invariably applied to the Church by the Fathers. The Kingdom of God 153 ing of the Gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and the direction of works of char- ity. He is a little unaccustomed to thinking of her as the immortal bride of the divine Lover, standing forth in all the beauty of early morn- ing, in the pale splendour of the setting moon, in the glorious light of the rising sun, and in a strength as terrible as it is beautiful. The sheer loveliness of her mystical aspect should oftener be contemplated. She is the nat- ural home of the soul, wherein devotion and love of the Father in heaven may find contin- - ual expression in the offices and liturgies sancti- fied by the piety of centuries, in the cadences of those ancient songs of Zion which voice the most tender as well as the most lofty aspira- tions, that give utterance to so much otherwise inexpressible. It finds expression also in the prayers of the saints, and in all that work of prayer upon which she is ever devoutly, happily, busily engaged. Lovely as the moonlight is the Bride of Christ, “, 4 «a rose of Sharon, A lily of the valleys . . . a fountain of gardens, A well of living waters, And flowing streams from Lebanon.” 154 Values of Catholic Faith So also she deserves contemplation as the sphere of truth. There is a modern notion that doctrine is a needless burden upon faith, and that only the credulous regard it as important: a notion as shallow as it is futile, if for no other reason than that the mind as restlessly seeks truth and will be ultimately dissatisfied with error, as that the heart is troubled with evil though it know not why, and is restless till it rest in God. It ignores the chief reason for the gift of the Holy Spirit, and denies the most important function of the Spirit as leader unto truth. hose who fixed the form—the content is revealed—of the Church’s faith have been literally the lights of the world. The teaching of the Catholic Church is the only system of © thought that has unchangingly persisted through the ages. The Bride of Christ is clear as the sun, and of the very quality of the sun. “Thou art all fair, my love; ‘There is no spot in thee . . .” But again, it needs must be remembered that the Church is the army of the Lord of Hosts, vowed to an unrelenting warfare against the forces of evil and the gates of hell. Te Deums are often sung to jubilant rhythms, but it re- mains that the conception of the bright hosts The Kingdom of God 155 who have contended for the faith is dim and blurred, and the imagination but faintly pic- tures the shining deeds of those who have so bravely and blithely followed the great Cap- tain of Salvation. Although St. John did not win the martyr’s palm, it is he above all who has revealed the vision of the Church Militant, the army of God, in the Apocalypse, that im- mortal epic of the holy warfare, which is to culminate only at Armageddon when Satan shall be cast into the bottomless pit and the peace of God finally inaugurated with a new earth and a new heaven. “Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, Comely as Jerusalem, Terrible as an army with banners. .. . “Set me as a seal upon thine heart, As a seal upon thine arm: For love is as strong as death; . . . “Many waters can not quench love, Neither can the floods drown it: “Thou that dwellest in the gardens, ‘The companions hearken to thy voice: Cause me to hear it.” 156 Values of Catholic Faith 6. The Church oftentimes is called the Temple of God: under which figure it is conceived to be God’s dwelling-place, the shrine of his pres- ence, the sphere of his worship, the treasury of grace: successor to what the Temple on Mount Zion with its Holy of Holies meant to the peo- ple of old. This imagery flows out of the very nature of the Church, and in part is based on the usage of the Apostles. It arose doubtless from the saying of Jesus that if they destroyed the temple in three days he would raise it up again, - referring, as St. John carefully explains, to the temple of his body, the unique dwelling-place © of the Holy Spirit. It was by an extension of this idea that St. Paul, in several striking pas- sages, refers to all followers of Jesus as temples of the living God, and in one instance (2 Cor. vi, 12) speaks of the whole body of Chris- tians, the Church herself, as God’s temple. The Apocalypse conceives the heavenly Jerusalem as a temple in which the perfect worship of the Almighty is continuously celebrated; though with his curious but characteristic inconsistency in the use of imagery the author, in depicting the final heaven, asserts that he saw no temple The Kingdom of God 157 therein, for that the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple thereof. It might be gathered from this expression that he con- ceived ultimate reality and its symbolical repre- sentation to be one; but this is a metaphysical notion which scarcely need be pressed. But in all this imagery, whether it be the per- son of Jesus that is considered, or the individ- ual follower united with him, or the whole company of believers who constitute his body the Church, or whether it be the perfected and ideal Church to be revealed in its fullness only at the last day, the point made is that the word temple indicates the dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit. The Church is the sphere wherein and through which the divine Spirit acts; and though the figure is not employed at the time by Jesus, all those marvelous last discourses preserved in the Gospel according to St. John elucidate this idea. Indeed, the idea is the clue to the meaning of history: the ageless effort of the Spirit of God to win the free spirits of men to truth and righteousness; from the days of man’s first dis- obedience and dim sense of guilt to the full revelation of the Father’s love in the person of the Son. It is God’s great adventure to win a people for himself, from the day when he called 158 Values of Catholic Faith the old patriarch Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees until now when he calls by gifts of beauty, joy, loving-kindness, by the light that shineth in the face of Jesus Christ. ‘Chis idea affords the clue to a right understanding of all the experience of pilgrimage in the Way—the clash in the soul between self-will and self- sacrifice; between desire for freedom and the acceptance of responsibility. All the expc rience of love and faith, of joy and fear, of grief and disappointment, of rebellion and submis: .on, of temptation, repentance, prayer, sacrament, wor- ship, service, is threaded through in all its warp and woof with the influences of the in- dwelling Spirit; and to the intent that men may | know in the Church the manifold wisdom of God; and that it may be given unto them by him according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit, that Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith, and being rooted and grounded in love, their souls may comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and height, and depth, and width, and know the love of Christ that passeth knowl- edge, and be filled with the fullness of God. The Kingdom of God 159 4 From the imagery used to describe the King- dom of God or the Church by the Saviour and his Apostles, which has already been subjected to some examination, it logically follows that the Church should be conceived as the Teacher of ‘Truth; that as Jesus spake with authority, so she speaks with authority, represents him in this capacity as in others, and is the sufficient, indefectible, and infallible guide in all matters pertaining to faith and morals. * To the modern mind, inevitably influenced by prevailing unbelief and confused by the con- flicting claims of different Christian organiza- tions, this seems a tremendous assertion. It is indeed a tremendous assertion; and yet a patient examination of the New ‘Testament must convince that theological formulae are careful and considered in comparison with Apostolic phraseology. But it should be obvious ®° The sufficiency of the Church is stated or implied in prac- tically every reference in the New Testament. It is not germane at the moment to consider the Petrine texts in detail, but merely to observe that Mt. xvi, 16-17, and its parallels plainly assert her indefectibility. Infallibility is obviously assumed in such passages as Mt. xviii, 17; xxviii, 19-20; Lk. x, 16, and throughout the farewell discourses of the Fourth Gospel promising the gift of the Spirit to lead the Apostles into all truth. Cf. also Ep. i, 22; iil, 10; V, 243 253; 27-28; Col. i, 18; 24; v, 16, etc.; and particularly i Ti. v, 15, where St. Paul provides a formula—‘‘. . . the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” 160 Values of Catholic Faith that to question either the indefectibility or the infallibility of the Church in the sphere over which she claims jurisdiction, is to invalidate her status as a divinely-appointed and divinely- inspired teacher of truth. If the Church in her corporate teaching can be proved mistaken in any particular in the domain of faith or morals, it logically follows that she may be mistaken in other points. The confusion characteristic of Christendom outside the Catholic pale, the con- fusion of those within the pale who have adopted Protestant notions, is sufficient evi- dence of the inevitable consequence of rejecting the Church’s absolute authority. It may be the fact that the Catholic Church - has not defined this absolute authority by a formula,* but she implies it and asserts it in all her doctrine, practice, tradition, and legis- lation; nor was this authority seriously ques- ®The Vatican Council in 1870 did indeed partially formulate such a definition in its doctrine of Papal infallibility. It is not the purpose of this essay to discuss the differences between the Roman and Anglican communions; but it is important to recognize, both for Roman and Anglo Catholics, that the authority of the Church was universally recognized for hundreds of years before Papal Infallibility was regarded as de fide even in the Roman communion, The fact of the authority of the Church, even for Roman Catholics, is independent of the question of the Pope as an infallible organ of that authority. Whether he be or not, does not affect the central question. The doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope is admittedly incomplete. When it has been actually completed by a subsequent Papal council it will be time for Anglicans to reckon with it. The Kingdom of God 161 tioned until the sixteenth century. It is as much a part of Catholic teaching as the doctrine of the Atonement, which likewise has never been formulated. The fact that the doctrine of the Authority of the Church has not been formulated, has led to much confusion even on the part of those who profess allegiance to the historic Church. The attempt of the individual to make such a formula must necessarily be futile. But there are certain considerations to which attention may be directed, which at least safeguard against prevalent errors. Authority is too often confused with dis- cipline. ‘he Church has always spoken with authority; but here her discipline is lax, while there it is strict; at this period it may seem in- effective, whereas once it was adequate. It is to be noted that the desire for uniformity (not a note of the Church, however desirable) tends to strict discipline, while laxity of discipline 1s confessedly for the sake of permitting the widest possible freedom of interpretation and practice. Both attitudes have their advantages and disadvantages. It is likely that Romans are keenly aware of the one, and Anglicans of the other. But whatever method be wisest, the question of authority is really not touched at 162 Values of Catholic Faith all. The authority of a parent may be scrupu- lously obeyed or outrageously flaunted, but in either case parental authority is not augmented or decreased. It is also obviously possible to accept the authority of the Church without having a for- mula to define it; indeed none claims that be- fore 1870 such a formula had been eftected. It is also practically possible to accept the author- ity of particular churches without disloyalty to the Catholic Church; just as the several authori- ties of nation, state, community, and family in the main can command loyal obedience though it is impossible strictly to delimit them. It would seem to be sufficient that the Catholic . recognize the Church as the teacher of truth in virtue of her endowment with the divine Spirit, and to hold that in any essential mat- ter of faith or morals she has not erred and can not err; and that she will never fail in her witness to the revelation made in Jesus Christ. There are many ways in which the Church exercises her authority. The direct teaching of the Saviour and his Apostles has been pre- served in a record that the Church regards as inspired and authentic. She has summarized this teaching in brief formulae known as the Creeds. She has, in various liturgies and ser- The Kingdom of God 163 vice books, systematized for worship and for instruction all essential details of faith and practice. She has accumulated a great body of unwritten tradition and regards it as essentially a part of her teaching as the unwritten conven- tions are integral factors of British or Ameri- can constitutional law. She has promulgated in many councils an enormous body of canon law, and that which has received oecumenical ap- proval she holds to possess most binding force. Moreover, there is the consensus of teaching in the writings of her great doctors and the- ologians, and the continuous witness through the centuries of the great Apostolic sees. All this constitutes a great body of teaching, with a penumbra of what may be doubtful or un- essential gathered about a core of unmistak- able truth. Any person of sincerity and good will can derive all that the Church teaches about the nature of God, the Trinity, the In- carnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Atonement of Jesus upon the cross, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the existence of the one holy catholic apostolic Church and the nature and constitution of that organization; he can know her doctrine concerning the necessity of the Sacraments she dispenses; the effect of Baptism, the Real Presence in the Eucharist, 164 Values of Catholic Faith and the Sacrifice of the Mass; the obligation of worship, and its essential nature. There is as little difficulty in ascertaining the teaching of the Church about the moral and spiritual life of a Christian; indeed, no Christian can mis- take the ideal that the Church puts before him, to wit, the example of the Saviour Christ. If in this conception of authority that the Church has always undoubtedly exercised and still exercises there are difficulties, there are far fewer difficulties than appear in the func- tioning of any and every other kind of author- ity. As the note of unity is obscured by schism and that of holiness by sin, so the authority of the Church is sometimes blurred by rebellion — and indiscipline; but she has emerged with re- newed youth from darker periods than the pres- ent, and she has asserted her authority with fresh conviction time and time again, when she has seemed even about to expire in company with the civilization which has corrupted so many of her children. So many and so various are the ways in which the Church exercises her authority ‘ that 7It is difficult to perceive that, even if possessed of a particular organ of infallibility in the Pope, the Roman Church teaches in any other ways than those enumerated. It would be difficult to think of any doctrine, save the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that is received by any Christian solely on the authority of the Pope. The Kingdom of God 105 even in a communion where a lax discipline tolerates practically disloyal teaching on the part of accredited ministers, it is not difficult to estimate the degree of that disloyalty. The Church speaks indeed with so living a voice that she can be heard above the shrill notes of those of her children who contradict her. But it is equally the fact that the Church can not teach those who will not come to her for instruction; and that fortunately she is no longer in a position, had she the desire, to at- tempt to impose her doctrine and practice by any other method than persuasion and appeal to its intrinsic value. If in addition to the authority of the Church exercised in so many ways, it is recalled that the pilgrim in the Way has the advantage of the light of conscience, and of conscience puri- fied by grace, there is still less excuse why he should be ignorant of anything essential which the Church would teach him to believe, to do, or to say. And to this pragmatic test there is the Lord’s promise that it shall be effective. 8. Jesus most frequently alluded to his per- sonal followers in the Way as his disciples. He was the master, they the pupils; he the teacher, 166 Values of Catholic Faith they the learners. It is a term that has been ex- tended to Christians since, but not as generally as is desirable. It is noteworthy that the word discipline is derived from the same root as the word dis- ciple. But discipline has come popularly to mean not merely the process of learning but rather training under and by a coercive authority. This popular interpretation of the word is a strik- ing illustration of the fate of the idea of dis- cipleship in Christian thought. Almost from the beginning there has been a dispute whether discipleship to Christ and the discipline of Christ is an affair of voluntary submission or of coercive authority exercised by whatever means can be commanded. Without doubt the evangelical record de- picts discipleship wholly as voluntary submis- sion following upon the Master’s call. ‘There is no instance of Jesus seeking to win a disciple save by the inherent persuasiveness of the call and of the instruction subsequent upon it. Nor, indeed, is there an instance of his attempting to restrain an unwilling disciple from abandoning the Way, except by persuasion or the mere statement of the inevitable, logical consequen- ces of faithlessness. ‘The teaching itself exempli- fied in the faithful life of the disciple was to The Kingdom of God 167 be the adequate test of its truth, indeed of its divine origin. And the disciple who failed to make the test became effectively one who was against the Master. It is unnecessary to contrast in detail the method of discipline exercised by the Lord with that practised by his Church at different pe- riods of her history. The age-long battle for religious tolerance, still not entirely won, has even to this day wholly failed to convince that, though religious truth is worth dying for, coer- cion always and necessarily fails to win faith- _ ful adherents. Jesus assigned the highest values to religion, but by example and precept elimi- nated force as a justifiable method of bring- ing men under its influence. ‘The fate that coer- cive discipline has encountered in the Church, and in the world when the Church has at- tempted to regulate secular affairs, suggests that the methods of the Gospel might prove more advantageous. Jesus’ discipline was based on the principle of strictness toward self and tolerance for others. At the hands of his followers this princi- ple has often been reversed. It is true that the discipline of Christ is not a method that a di- vided Christendom will readily apprehend or easily recover, but that is a circumstance that 168 Values of Catholic Faith but lays the heavier responsibility upon the disciple. | It was in the aspiration after personal per- fection which the Master inculcated, that the religious life, in the technical sense of that term, had its root, and the vows that characterize that state, their origin. As valuable propaganda for the Kingdom of God, monasticism needs no defense to the Catholic Churchman. Its failures, arising from laxity in following its ideals or from intolerance in furthering its own purposes, have not been permitted by histor- lans to remain inconspicuous; but nevertheless, they have been outweighed by the particular call and the special grace that, within its favour- ing atmosphere, have enabled so many pilgrims in the Way to attain unto sainthood. So ob- vious a means to holiness, congenial only to Catholic soil, must ever remain a fruit of Catholic faith, a witness to Catholic ideals, and an indication of a discipleship and a discipline that often fulfil the evangelical counsels of per- fection. 9. There was occasion, in the discussion of the _ values of the Creeds, to note that the definite - predictions of Jesus as to a catastrophic con- The Kingdom of God 169 summation of the present order were receiv- ing unexpected support from recent scientific hypotheses. The eschatological prophecies, both of the Lord himself and of the Apostolic writers, though they have been incorporated into and maintained by the official teaching of the Church, have undergone strange distor- tions at the hands of Christians. Even within the Church, though these prophecies have sel- dom been denied, they have often been ex- plained away, glossed over, or frankly neg- — lected. Outside the Church, criticism, which for long has learned little from tradition, in the case of the Liberal Protestant theologians has eliminated the eschatological prophecies from the authentic teaching of Jesus by deliberately excising them from the text of the Gospels; while in the case of a more recent school, prac- tically everything else in the Master’s teaching except eschatology has been put aside or treated as a mere “interim ethic,’” in what it is dificult not to regard as an attempt to prove Jesus to have been a mistaken fanatic. The mo- tive of the Liberal critics, mostly influenced by an Hegelian philosophy of evolution as applied to history, was to eliminate the supernatural from what they conceived to be otherwise the wise doctrine of an inspired prophet. The so- 170 Values of Catholic Faith called eschatologists, on the other hand, empha- sized the prophecies about the end of the world in the crudest possible manner, with the motive, it seems, not to preserve the wisdom of Jesus, but to deny it. Even in the field of criticism both movements have been abortive. The indifference to Jesus’s prophecies about the end of the world on the part of those Chris- tians who neither disbelieved the doctrine about Christ nor distrusted his moral teaching, has been due largely to their sharing the wide- spread delusion of progress characteristic of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The notion of progress developed under the in- fluence of the Hegelian philosophy as applied to an analysis of history, to which the industrial revolution followed by the rapid advance of material civilization and the post-Darwinian theories of evolution appeared for a long time to give a specious confirmation. The coalescence of these three movements gave the notion so great a popularity that the impossibility of reconciling it with the teaching of Jesus ceased to be a matter of interest, much less of concern, ‘even to Christians. Hegelianism no longer holds undisputed sway over the realm of speculative philosophy; material advance was rudely interrupted by the The Kingdom of God 171 world war; and the materialistic reconstruction now in process is attended by obvious and dis- concerting evils; the modern doctrines of the degradation of matter and the dissipation of energy play an increasing role in physical and chemical experiment and speculation. Under these circumstances the quondam dream of the whole creation tranquilly moving onward and upward no longer creates unmitigated confi- dence. It is at least not improbable that both science and philosophy will yet contemplate ul- timate universal catastrophe and destruction, a circumstance that should relieve the eschato- logical prophecies of Jesus of the burden of in- credibility which in the opinion of the world they have long borne. Jesus represented life as perpetual conflict between contending forces of good and evil, and he contemplated as possibilities, so far as individuals were concerned, victory and defeat. He predicted indeed the ultimate triumph of good; not, however, as the result of a steady progress and evolution of society into the Kingdom of God, but rather as a certain fear- ful coming of judgment, his own return as uni- versal judge, the destruction of the present or- der of time and space, and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth. 172 Values of Catholic Faith When subjected to analysis, the history of mankind affords less material for the theory of progress than is usually assumed to be the case; and this is true whether goodness, beauty, or truth, or all three, are taken to be mankind’s destined end. It is not possible, despite the many volumes that have been written on the theme, to subject prehistoric man to analysis, much less the hypothetical creature that certain schools of evolutionists imagine marked the transition between the anthropoid ape and prehistoric man; nor indeed does the compara- tive handful of bones that is the sole and not indubitable evidence for his existence, offer ma- terial for a convincing synthesis. Alike the con-_ siderable knowledge of a very brief portion of the life of mankind and unsatisfactory glimpses of vast periods of that life of which almost nothing is known, suggest a continuous state of ebb and flow, of progress and degeneration, mere perpetual change. Assuming that Jesus possessed prophetic insight into the future, the fact that he conceived the fate of the race to be a doom is not really incredible or improb- able; and it is difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile any theory of Christianity with his obvious teaching than that it is a way of escape from that doom. The Kingdom of God 173 Certainly the pilgrim who believes he has found such a way of escape has no intellectual difficulty in accepting the eschatology of Christ. He regards it as far from incredible, on the contrary peculiarly congruous, that, if Jesus came from heaven and has returned there, he will come again; and that whereas he first came as Saviour, he will, when his redemptive work is finished, return the second time as judge. And though the pilgrim is concerned not to deny that Jesus wrapped about his mysterious teaching of the end of all things a vivid orien- tal imagery agreeable to his day and to the minds of those who heard the words as they fell from his lips, he is concerned to deny that, however oriental, the imagery does not but veil a truth. Moreover, the imagery of Jesus’s es- chatological discourses seems not less vivid, not less fantastic, than the materialistic de- scriptions of the last man expiring in a frozen world or the last race of men pulverized to dust in the conflagration of colliding stars, which have been drawn by the lively pens of modern scientists. Nor, as the pilgrim struggles to understand the most recent theories of rela- tivity (which the more he understands the more they seem to be true), and as hardly he per- ceives that these theories reduce time and space 174. Values of Catholic Faith to mere forms under which he is required to think, the less unlikely does it seem to him, who has so many other reasons for believing Jesus Christ, that Jesus, or St. Paul after him, was mistaken in contemplating the non-existence of time and space when God should be all in all. In a sense, Jesus’s moral teaching is an “‘in- terim ethic,” but the interim during which it is designed to obtain is not only longer than the first disciples imagined it would be, but longer even than modern critics conceive; it is, indeed, the interim of time—before the world was and after it shall have ceased to be. The pilgrim, whether he considers the es- chatological teaching of Jesus philosophically, scientifically, ethically, or as a Christian (that is to say, from all three points of view) is con- tent to repeat the ancient creeds, feeling no compulsion to minimize their statements or to dissolve them into intellectual mist, J believe . . . he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. 10. The Kingdom of God, being an infinite con- cept, is an inexhaustible theme. The endeavour The Kingdom of God sy Be here has been but to note, by means of sugges- tion and illustration, certain of its definite values. These values, possibly not the most im- portant, have been arbitrarily selected for per- sonal reasons. [he illustrations, however, were chosen with consideration of the several aspects from which the Kingdom may be viewed; that is to say, from the similes used by the Lord in presenting the conception to his disciples, from the best known metaphors employed by the Apostles, endeavouring in their turn to expound the doctrine; and from certain experiences and ideas associated with or suggested by the King- dom. Before turning to the consideration of certain conflicting aspects of Catholic faith, it must suffice to express the hope that a method has been indicated whereby those who meditate upon this rich theme of the Saviour’s teaching may enrich their conception and deepen their faith in its infinite value. It is a happy augury of the renewal of Chris- tian interest in the question that the Pope has lately proclaimed a new festival of The King- dom of God for the Roman kalendar. It is a festival that all Christendom would do well to adopt and observe. VI THE WAY 1. THE PURPOSE of this essay has been to esti- mate certain values of Catholic faith as they have been personally apprehended. Since there has been no pretense of systematic apologetic or exhaustive treatment, these values have been arbitrarily selected. The Mass, the Creeds, the Divine Office, the Kingdom of God, were considered under several illustrative aspects with the hope of setting forth Catholic religion persuasively. Though no precise definition of Catholicism has been attempted, perhaps the purpose announced in the preliminary state- ment, the illustration and enlargement of the conception thereof, has been accomplished. It has been obvious that it is impossible to discuss Catholicism without reference to the Papal, Anglican, Orthodox forms with which The Way 177 it is practically everywhere associated. Differ- ences, however, amongst these groups have been, so far as possible, ignored; certainly have in no instance been treated controversially. Nevertheless, due to the unfortunate divisions of Christendom, what must challenge the Catholic engaged in estimating for himself the values of his religion is the claims and aspects of the faith as confessed by these now sharply divided groups. Whatever be the special ap- peal of Orthodoxy or whatever future effect may be derived from the growing sympathy and understanding between Eastern Christian- ity and Anglo-Catholicism, at the present Or- thodoxy is not for more than a few in the west- ern world an alternative either for Romanism or for Anglicanism. But in the West, particu- larly for English-speaking Christians, Rome and Canterbury are frequently in conflict and always in contrast. There has been a sincere attempt in these pages to subordinate the Anglican bias that inevitably has been evident; though to regard the Anglican as a Catholic communion is, on the Roman hypothesis, to exhibit such a bias. In conclusion, still with the intention of ignor- ing controversy, an effort must be made to esti- mate what seem to be the particular values of 178 Values of Catholic Faith these two forms of Catholic Christianity. If the emphasis proves to be laid upon the advan- tages of both of them, it should not be inferred that there is ignorance of or indifference to their difficulties or defects. For with St. Paul it is impossible to suppose that the Church will be without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, holy and without blemish, until, at the consum- mation of all things, Christ presents the Church to himself as altogether glorious, the fulfill- ment of the Kingdom. me Though offering the strongest contrasts, in many respects the Roman and Anglican com- munions are complementary to each other; a circumstance that encourages the hope of an ultimate synthesis between them; that implies the duty of sympathetic understanding and common prayer on the part of each. Perhaps the chief value that attaches to be- ing a member of the Roman Catholic Church is the sense of being in the main stream of Christian tradition, the sense of continuity of the Church of today with the Church of the ages. It is necessary to go a long way back, much farther than the average man ever goes, to find a period of history when Catholic Chris- The Way 179 tendom did not center about the Papacy; when the Pope did not, to intent and purpose, mean to the Catholic (save perhaps of the Byzan- tine East) much what he means to the Roman Catholic now. It is easy to disregard what critics call the rise of the Papacy; or if it be forced upon attention, to explain and dismiss it by an appeal to that development which all Christian doctrines have undergone. Nor, in- deed, does the allegation that Papal Infalli- bility was not defined until 1870 disturb the Papist, for he may justly assert that this defini- tion but clarified the Papal claim and did not augment it. In contrast to this sense of continuity the Anglican is conscious of a sharp sense of dis- continuity, if not with regard to essentials. (and this he does not feel), certainly with regard to practically everything that is incidental and occasional. He feels compensated for this dis- location in the history of his communion by the consciousness of having recovered for his faith and practice a scriptural quality, a scriptural basis, which Romanism obviously lacks. The Anglican whose religion is grounded upon the Book of Common Prayer is saturated with the phraseology of the Scriptures; and he is gen- erally content with such doctrine as may be 180 Values of Catholic Faith proved thereby; and he will usually feel that this reclamation of the Bible makes up for what has been lost of continuous tradition as exemplified by Rome. In the perfected Church it is difficult to imagine that either value will be emphasized at the expense of the other. The gradual recovery of a partially lost tradition is a healthy ten- dency amongst Anglicans, as with the Romans is an increasing interest in biblical studies. Again, throughout the Roman communion there is a practical uniformity of teaching with regard to essentials that imposes an inescap- able impression that what is so generally taught and accepted must be precisely the teaching of © the Church, uncolored by individual opinion. This practical uniformity is the result of dis- cipline, which since the Council of Trent has been marvelously effective. The Church speaks with an authority which is everywhere recog- nized; and the assurance that this begets in her members, despite that it is sometimes arro- gantly expressed, has a tremendous value. The believing Roman Catholic is less concerned with justifying his faith than any other kind of Christian. He conceives himself a soldier in an army that moves to a predestined goal in mili- tary obedience to the strategy of the high com- The Way 181 mand, and the orders of the high command are regarded as practically equivalent to the voice of God. In contrast with this essentially uniform teaching the Anglican must accommodate him- self to schools of thought in his communion, in consequence of which there is not only great diversity of teaching with respect to non-essen- tials, but actually contradictory teaching about cardinal doctrines of the faith, accompanied by a corresponding diversity of practice. The Anglo Catholic must admit the existence in his communion of a considerable amount of definite Protestant opinion. He finds his compensation for this variety in the freedom and toleration of which it is an indubitable witness; and he derives his comfort from the reflection that if this freedom seems to belie the notion of authority in his Church, it is only because dis- cipline is lax and practice does not correspond with theory. He is further encouraged when he realizes that during the past century there has been throughout the Anglican Churches an in- creasing appreciation of their Catholic heri- tage, accompanied by a revival of all that con- notes Catholic faith and practice. This is one of the most significant and impressive phe- nomena of Christendom. As the Anglican looks 182 Values of Catholic Fatth upon the Roman Catholic Church, he seems to observe authority imposed at the expense of freedom; in consequence of which he makes the best of a freedom which, though it has often degenerated into license, more and more will- ingly appears to submit itself to the corrective influence of traditional authority. There is a third conspicuous value of Roman Catholicism. Not only in its teaching about essentials, but in connection with all that pe- numbra of doctrine and practice that centers about and emerges from that teaching, there is developed and in turn there is ministered, a supernaturalism which the Christian religion definitely implies. ‘This supernaturalism, in spite. of the superstition into which admittedly it easily degenerates, generates a marvelous sense of reality in all that pertains to the worship and the practice of the Church. Moreover, though now and again it seems almost too graciously to accommodate itself to human weakness, it has proved the most effective school for saints. In contrast to this supernaturalism, this feel- ing of ease and familiarity with regard to re- ligious concepts and practice, the Anglican Church engenders and exhibits in its members a certain restraint with regard to the super- The Way 183 natural; a restraint at its worst difficult to dis- tinguish from coldness and indifference, but at its best a deeply tender and reverent attitude toward the divine and a profound sense of the holiness that God requires in those who ap- proach him. Ignoring on the one hand the Roman claim of the necessity of being in communion with the Pope, and on the other the admitted existence of Protestant elements in the Anglican com- munion, these two forms of Christianity ap- proach each other in essential doctrine, and both genuinely hold the Catholic faith as the necessary interpretation of Christian religion. Yet between them there is all along the line a marked contrast as to doctrine and practice, as well as with regard to polity; and the result has been to develop different types of Chris- tians. Admitting the validity of the Catholic hypothesis, is it too much to afirm that both systems have developed values of Catholic faith which are, if they can be shorn of their defects and abuses, definitely complementary? Certainly it is difficult to conceive of a reunited Christendom in which those values will not be fully appropriated and synthesized. It is impossible now to devise formulae which would serve as the basis of a reunion 184 Values of Catholic Faith between Rome and Canterbury. But in both communions, among the more. enlightened, there is surely growing an appreciation of the necessity of such a reunion if the Catholic Church is to fulfill her divine mission. Here and there and everywhere, though they be but as straws floating upon a stream, there are signs of a mutually developing interest in one an- other. It must be obvious that only in an at- mosphere of sympathy, of good will, of prayer, can these have practical effect. As sympathy deepens with clearer understanding, as good will becomes diffused with the overthrow of prejudice and ignorance, and as prayer, uniting itself with that of the great High Priest, be- comes importunate, doubtless the way will be revealed. And no Catholic should doubt that in that revelation will be seen in a new light and under a new glory, the path that leads the pilgrim wayfarer to Christ in God. PRINTED IN U. S. A. BY MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO., MILWAUKEE, WIS. , | om A iy Me ey to, tee Ag Taian Sous ' P cul ‘ ; na PR GY ean FeO 4 ya! \ F 2 Ae ee fe al | eke! may 6 Pe it aS ine ae raeey 40% FP ta td PIU ie weg ; ‘4 a ohn an Ra i} eat TRA i Mba t to a Th PRE ait yoy ae es. Pe Bed «be vy a Sy hive Ares 7A i i ‘ a mre aaa a RS Has Pon BE & . Wh ia 4