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Tha laat racordad frama on aach microficha shall contain tha symbol -^-(moaning "CON- TINUED"), or tha symbol y (moaning "END"), whichavar appliaa. Maps, piataa. charts, ate., may ba filmad at diffarant raduction ratios. Thoaa too larga to ba antiraly includad in ona axpoaura ara filmad baginning in tha uppar laft hand cornar. laft to right and top to bottom, as many framaa as raquirad. Tha following diagrams illustrata tha mathod: Las imagas suivantas ont 6tA raproduitas avec le plus grand soin, compta tanu da la condition et da la nattat* da l'axamplaira film S, Matt. iii. 8-10. THE NATURE OF SIN. sin, its nature, its oficcts, its consequences. And I have chosen this suhjcct because there can bo nono other so necessary, and because the precept of the Church, binding us all to confession and communion at Easter, begins more urgently to warn the con- science of every member of the Catholic Church. I therefore appeal to you all. I appeal to your con- science to fulfil, each one of you for yourselves, this duty of salvation ; and not for yourselves alone. Fathers and mothers, warn your families and house- holds ; friends and neighbours, warn with humility and charity all whom you know to be neglecting the practice of tlu'ir duty to God. The words of our Divine Saviour reveal to us what is the work and office of the Holy Ghost : * He shall convince the world of sin.' Both in the old crea- tion and in the new, both before the Incarnation of the Son of God and after His ascension into heaven, it has been, and it is, and it will be to the end of the woild, the work and the office of the Holy Ghost to convince the world of sin ; that is to say, to convince the intellect, and to illuminate the reason of man to know and to understand what sin is ; and also to con- vict the consciences of men, one by one, of their sinful- ness, and to make them, each one, conscious that they are guilty before God. This is the office of the Holy I f THE NATURE OF SIN. 5 Gliost ; and in nil timo froni tlio hoglnning of tlio world the Holy Spirit of God liaH illuminutcd iind con- vinced the intellect and tlio conscience of men to know- God and tliomsclves, and thereby to understand in some decree the nature of sin. J kit the fulness oftliat lidit and illumination was reserved unto the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost came in person to dwell for ever in the Mysticai *iody of Christ. In the beginning who". God made man, He made him sinless, and lie ^ave him the light of the Holy Spirit ; so that mm knew ijod. His holiness and per- fections ; and he knew himseif, and the nature in which God had created him. He knew the law of God; but he did not know sin, because as yet the law had not been broken. He could not knew it, because he had as yet no experience of the transgression of the law with its bitterness and its fatal consequences; but when man sinned against God, then all was changed. Then he was conscious of his guilt, and strove to hide himself from the face of his Maker; but he only hid God from his own conscience. He could not escape from the presence nor from the eye of God; but he could hide the liglit of God's presence from himself—and this he did. Therefore, from the beginning of time, God in His mercy, by the working and the light of His Spirit, taught men to know% in THE NATURE OF SIN. some measure at icast, His own perfections and tlicir own sinfulness ; but it was only like the twilight pre- ceding the noonday. We are in the noonday ; and if in the noonday we are blind to the perfections of God and to our own sinfulness, woe to us in the day of judgment. Therefore, my purpose is to begin by the most general outline of what sin is, and to lay down cer- tain broad but simple principles which I shall have to apply hereafter in our future subjects. I there- fore intend first to speak of the nature of sin, of what it is, and of certain distinctions of sin, which will be necessary for us hereafter to refer to. I. First, then, what is sin ? There are many de- finitions of it, and one is this : it is the transgression of the law. * Sin is the transgression of the law.'^ God is a law to Himself ; His perfections are the law of His ow^n nature ; and God wrote upon the conscience of man, even in the state of nature, the outline of His ow^n perfections. He made man to know right from wrong ; He made him to understand the nature of purity, justice, truth, and mercy. These are per- fections of God, and on the conscience of man the obligations of this law are written. Every man, born into the world in a state of nature, has this outline 8 1 S. John iii. 4. 'I THE NATURE OF SIN. I of God's law written upon him, and sin is the trans- gression of that law. Another definition of sin is : any thought, word, or deed contrary to the will of God. Now, the will of God is the perfection of God Himself— holy, just, pure, merciful, true ; and anything contrary to these perfections in thought, word, or deed is sin. The conformity ol man to the will of God, to the perfections of God, is the sanctity or the perfection of the human soul ; and the more he is conformed to the will of God, the holier and more perfect he is. Therefore, to be at variance with God is to be deformed ; and the monstrous deformity of the human frame is not more humbling nor more hideous — nay, it is not humbling and hideous compared with the deformity of the soul. When the soul is unlike to God, when it is departed from the perfection of God, when instead of purity there is impurity, instead of justice there is injustice, instead of truth there is falsehood, instead of mercy there is cruelty, instead of the perfections of God there is the direct contrary of those perfections, no deformity or hideousness that can strike the eye is so terrible. The malice, then, of sin consists in this, that it is a created will in conscious variance with the un- created will of God. God made us to His own image m 8 THE NATURE OF SIX. and to His own likeness ; He gave us all that He could bestow upon us. He could not bestow upon us His own nature, because that is uncreated, and no creature can partake of the uncreated nature of God ; but God could bestow, and He did by His omnipot- ence with His mercy, bestow upon us His like- ness. His image, an intelligence and a will, a heart and a conscience, so that we become intelligent and moral beings. The malice of sin consists, then, in this : that an intelligent creature, having a power of will, deliberately and consciously opposes the will of its Maker. The malice of sin is essentially inter- nal to the soul. The external action whereby the sinner perpetrates his sin adds indeed an accidental malice and an accidental increase of wickedness ; but the essence, the life of the malice, consists in the state of the soul itself. We see, then, that sin is the conscious variation of our moral being from the will of God. We abuse our whole nature, we abuse our intellect by actmg irrationally, in violation of the will of God which is written upon the conscience; we abuse our will, because we deliberately abuse the power of the will, whereby we originate our actions in opposition to the will of God who gave it. We apply our intellect and will, with our eyes open and with freedom and choice, to the perpetration of acts, o THE NATURE 01<' SIN. 9 or the utterance of words, or tlie harbouring of thoughts which are known to be contrary to the will of o'od ; and therefore in every sin there is the knowledge of the intellect of what we are doing, the consent of the will in doing it, and the conscious- ness of the mind fixed upon the action with two ob- jects before it-the law and the Lawgiver-the law of God known to us, and the Giver of that law, who is God Himself; so that we deliberately, with our eyes open and of our own free will, break God's law in God's face. Now, that is the plain definition and de- scription of sin ; and here I must, for a moment, turn aside from our path. These last generations have become fruitful of impiety and of immorality of a stupendous kind ; and among other of their impious and immoral offspring is a pestilent infidel school, who, with an audacity never before known in the Christian world, are at this time assailing the foundations of human society and of Divine Law. They have talked of late of what they call imhpcndent morality. And what do you suppose is independent morality? It means the law of morals separated from the Lawgiver. It ic a proud philosophical claim to account for right and wrong without reference to God, who is the Giver of the Law. And what is the object of this theory? 11 10 THE NATURE OF SIN. It is to get rid of Christianity, and of God, and of right and wrong altogether, and to resolve all mo- rality into reason ; and inasmuch as, it tells us, the dictates of human reason are variahle all over the world, and change from generation to generation, this Philosophy denies and destroys the foundations of morality itself. Now, I should not turn aside to mention this monster of immorality and impiety, if it were not that at this time there is an effort making in England to introduce under a veil this same subtil denial of morals, both Christian and natural. Only the other day I read these words : * That in the education of the people it is not pos- sible indeed, as things are, to teach morality with- out teaching doctrine ; because the English people are so accustomed to associate morality and doc- trine together, that they have not as yet learned any other foundation for morals.* God forbid they ever should ! The meaning of this i3 ; Teach chil- dren right and wrong, but say nothing about God, nothing about the Lawgiver ; teach them right and wrong if you will, but nothing about Jesus Christ. What is this but a stupidity as well as an impiety ! For morals are not the dead, blind, senseless relations that we have to stocks and stones, but the relations of duty and of obligation we have to the living Law- THE NATURE OP SIN. 11 giver, who is our Maker and Eedeemer. There are no morals excepting in the relations between God and man, and between man and man. Morals mean the relations and duties of living and moral agents ; and this independent morality, this morality without God for school-children, is bottomless impiety if it be not the stupidity of unbelief. I could not help touching this in passing, and we will now go back to our subject once more. II. I have here to draw two distinctions in the nature of sin. There are what are called formal sins, and what are called material sins. The importance of this distinction you will see hereafter. 1. Now let us first understand what is a formal sin. It means a sin committed with a full know- ledge of what we do, and a full consent to do it ; so that in proportion as men have light, and know the law and the Lawgiver, in that proportion the sinfulness of their disobedience is increased. The holy angels were created by God in the full knowledge and light of His presence ; and those who fell from their per- fection by rebellion were formally guilty, in propor- tion to that angelic knowledge which left them with- out excuse. All those who possess a clear light to know what is the law, and yet violate that law, are guilty, as Peter was guilty for denying his Master, 12 THE NATURE OF SIN. I I! and as Judfis was guilty for sellini^- Him ; Loth were guilty ill the proportion ^.f their light. Those who, knowing the natural law, break that law, are guilty, because the law is written upon their conscience. Those who break the Christian law, knowing the Christian faith, in the proportion of their light are guiltier; and, above all men, those who have the full light of the Catholic faith, if they break the laws of Jesus Christ, are the guiltiest on the face of the earth. You are guilty in the measure in which you have greater light; in the measure in which you have a fuller illumination, in that measure your guilt before God is greater. Such sins, then, are formal, when committed with full light and consent. Now what are material sins ? The same actions done without sufficient knowledge, or without intention. Two men may commit the very same action, and the one be guilty before God, and the other not guilty. If, in the dark, I think that I am felling a tree, and with my axe I cut down a man, I am not a murderer. I have committed manslaughter in the dark, and without intention ; and if the man I have slain be my own father, I am not a parricide; yet the act I have committed is materially an art of murder and of parricide. The quality of sinfulness therefore is purified, and taken \ \ THE NATURE OP SIN. 13 \ away from the action, if I do not know what I am about, and if I do not intend it. Our Divine Lord prayed for the greatest sin that was ever committed on the face of the earth in these words : * Father, forgive them ; they know not what they do.' In His Divine compassion He prayed for His crucifiers ; and the Apostle, speaking of Him, says : * Whom none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known Him they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.' That is to sa}, among the multitude, perhaps the greater number did not know what they did, and that Divine prayer of compassion re- veals a law of God's equity and pity upon the ignorant. Nevertheless, those who know, or have it in their power to know, are guilty; for we are responsible not only for all that we do know, but for all that we might know, and therefore ought to know. This is what you hear of as vincible "or invincible ignorance.. Ignorance takes away the guilt of our actions if that ignorance be invincible, for then we cannot overcome it. If we could not know any bet- ter, then God in His infinite mercy, though we have committed a material sin, will not take account with us as if it were a formal sin. But there is another kind of ignorance which is called vincible, I (I'll ¥1 my I'i 14 THE NATURE OP SIN. !i because it may be overcome if we use the proper diligence to know; and God has put within our reach the means of knowledge sufficient if we will diligently seek it. Now let me apply these prin- ciples. First. In the East there are Churches which once were in communion with the Catholic Church, but have been for ages separated from it; and among those Churches some have fallen from the Catholic faith, in respect to the Holy Trinity and the Incarna- tion. Generation after generation, millions have been born into that state ; they never knew the perfect truth ; they never were in the unity of the One Church. They believe that God has revealed Himself in Christianity, and they believe the doctrines they have been taught from their childhood to be that revela- tion. They believe God has a Church upon earth, and they believe the Church in which they find them- selves to be that Church of God ; and the simple the unlearned, and those who have not the means of knowing better — we have every reason before God to believe in their good faith — live and die, and God in His mercy— we may also hope — does not take account of them, as if they had the formal light to know the perfect truth. But to come nearer home. It is to me a consolation and joy — I say it again 9 THE NATUnE OF SIN. 15 and again, and more strongly as I grow older — to know that in the last three hundred years multitudes of our own countrymen, who have been born out of the unity of the Faith, nevertheless believe in good faith with all their hearts that God has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, and that what they have been taught from their childhood is His revelation, and that He has founded upon earth a Church, and that the Church, which in their baptismal creed they call the Holy Catholic Church, is the Church in which they themselves have been baptised, reared, and instructed. It is my consolation to believe that mul- titudes of such persons are in good faith, and that God in His mercy will make allowance for them, knowing what are the prejudices of childhood, of an education studiously erroneous, what is the power and influence of parents and of teachers, of public authority, and of public opinion, and of public law : how all these things create in their minds a convic- tion that they are in the right, that they believe the one Faith, and are in the one Church, in which alone is salvation. We rejoice to commend them to the love of our Heavenly Father, believing that though they may be materially in error, and in many things materially in opposition to His truth and to His will, yet they do not know, and, morally speaking, many 16 THE NATURE OF SIN. cannot know it, and that therefore He will not re- quire it at their hands. 2. This, then, is the first distinction of sin, into formal and material sin ; now I must draw one more, and that is between original sin and actual sin. What is original sin ? It is the transgression of the law in the head of the human race, whereby all who are born are sinners before God, and born into a state of privation. The transgression of the law in our head is our sin, because when God created man He created mankind. In that man the whole race of mankind was contained. Mankind springs from one head, and that head was the heir to all the benedictions of the kingdom of God in our behalf: our inheritance was contained in him. If he had stood, from him we should have inherited the king- dom of God ; he fell, and by his fall disinherited the race of mankind. We hear men of this day say : * What can be more absurd than to believe that the human race fell because Adam ate an apple ?' I put the words with all the bald impertinence of the world. Let us see now whether the ways of God need justification. God created Adam and placed him in Paradise in the midst of a garden. He gave him a dominion over every tree of that garden, ex- cept one only. Such was the generosity of God. He I r i_ THE NATURE OF SIN. 17 did not say : * Thou mayest eat of the fruit of that one tree, but of the ten thousand other fruit-bearing trees of the garden thou shalt not eat ; and in what- soever day thou eatest of them thou shalt die the death.* God did not, with the parsimony of a hu- man heart, give Adam permission to eat of one tree, and forbid him ten thousand. No. He gave him free permission to eat of ten thousand, and forbade him to eat of one alone. Was there anything unrea- sonable in this ? Was it not what you would do if you had the will to try the obedience of any one '? Was it not what you would do, and what men do at this day when out of liberality they lease their lands upon what is called a peppercorn rent ? When the world speaks impertinently, I may answer the world in its own tongue. The landlord who leases out his estate, taking only a nominal acknowledgment, is commended by all men as generous, large-hearted, noble-minded. He acts as a friend without self- interest when he intrusts to another man the enjoy- ment and enrichment which arise from his estates, upon the mere acknowledgment that after all they belong to him. He is only reserving his right. Now what did Almighty God in that commandment do? He reserved His right as Sovereign — He re- served His right over the obedience of the man whom c 18 THE NATURE OP SIN. if lie had created. He thereby revealed that Ho had jurisdiction over that garden and over the man to whom He had permitted its free enjoyment. Ho put him npon trial — it was the test of his fidelity. More than this : it was a test so slight, that I may say there was no temptation to break the law. If ho had been forbidden to eat of all the trees of the garden save one, he would have been tempted at every turn. Every tree he gazed upon would have been a fresh temptation ; he would have been followed and haunted by temptation wherever he went. God did not deal so with him — He forbade him one, and one alone ; so that he had perfect liberty to go, to and fro, gathering from the whole garden except from that one tree. Where then was the temptation ? As on God's part there was Divine generosity, so on man's part there was the wantonness of transgression. It may indeed be mydefecL, but I can see nothing in this that is not consonant with Divine wisdom, Divine goodness. Divine sovereignty, and Divine mercy. I see nothing to warrant the impertinence of the world. Well, this law was slight, and without any temp- tation whatsoever Adam transgressed it. He held the enjoyment of his perfection, and the promise of eternal life, and of the kingdom of God, upon the payment, as I said before, of that quit rent, of that I I THE NATURE OF SIN. 19 mere acknowlcclgment of tlio sovereignty of his Maker, and e\cu to this he would not submit. What, then, was the consequence ? Man, as God made him, had three perfections. First, ho was per- fect in hody and soul. Secondly, he had the higher perfection of the Holy Spirit dwelling in his heart, wherehy his soul was ordered and sanctified, and the passions were held in perfect subjection to the reason and the will. Thirdly, ho had a perfection arising from that higher perfection, namely, immortality in the hody and perfect integrity in the soul. So that he had these three perfections : a natural perfection in body and soul, a supernatural perfection by the Indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and a preternatural perfection of immortality ; and all these by one act of disol)cdience he lost. When he sinned, the spirit of God departed from him, his soul died because it was separated from God, his immortality was forfeited, the integrity orhaimonyof the soul was lost likewise, the passions rebelled, the will was weakened, the in- tellect became confused, and the nature of man was deprived of its supernatural perfection and of all that follows from it. This is the meaning of the words, * In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt die the death.' It was spiritual and temporal death, followed, except on repentance, by eternal death hereafter. 20 THE NATURE OP SIN. ^i'' ! We see, then, the meaning of original sin in us. It is that we, being born of that forefather, are born disinherited of these three perfections which we lost in him by his disobedience. We are born into this world without the Spirit of God ; we receive it in our baptism, which is our second birth. By our first birth ' that which is born of the flesh is flesh.* We have the three * wounds,' as they are called, of Adam, — ignorance in the intellect, weakness in the will, and turbulence in the passions. This is the state in which we are born into this world, and therefore we are spiritually dead before God. I see in this, as I said before, nothing but Divine wisdom : and wisdom is justified of her children. And here I wish to answer what may perhaps rise in the minds of some of you concerning infants that die before baptism. Sometimes people say, *How can I believe that those infants who die before baptism, through no fault of their own, should go to eternal torment?' God forbid. Infants that die with original sin only — never having committed an actual sin — who believes that they descend into a place of torment ? Their eternal state is a state of happiness, though it be not in the Vi- sion of God : for we know of no way in which any human soul can see the Vision of God, except by re- generation of the Holy Ghost. Without receiving the THE NATURE OF SIN. 21 grace of holy baptism the soul is not in the super- natural order ; and of those who die in the natural order, we are unable to affirm that the grace which belongs to the supernatural order is extended, and that, because for this we have no revelation. It is, however, certain that the privation attached to original sin carries with it nothing which the world, sometimes contradicting the Christian faith for the purpose of maligning it, most unreasonably says against it. But though original sin is only punished by privation, every actual sin will be punished by actual pain. There is the pain of loss which follows original sin ; there is the pain of sense which follows actual sin ; and every actual sin that men commit will be punished by pain, either temporal or eternal, for pain follows sin as the shadow fellows the sub- stance. Lastly we come to actual sin. To understand it let us recall the principles with which I began. Actual sin is the conscious variance of a creature to the known will of its Creator; and that conscious variance includes the light of the intellect, and the consent of the will, and the knowledge and intention of what we are doing. The essential malice of sin is in the will : and there is a threefold malice in every actual sin committed by a Christian. First, r-H: I il f- tS 22 '^:he nature of sin. il iw ^M1 there is a malice against God the Father, who made man to His image and likeness, that He might be the object of his love ; that he might love Him, know Him, serve Him, worship Him, be conformed to Him, and dwell with Him in eternity. The Christian who sins against God sins against his Creator, and wor- ships the creature more than the Creator ; that is to say, worships the world, his pleasures, himself. Self- worship he puts in the place of the worship of God, and in that he does an infinite offence — infinite,* though he be finite — because the Person against whom that offence is committed is an infinite God. Secondly, there is a malice against our Lord Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world. The Apostle says every sinner is * an enemy of the Cross of Christ.* He says, * They that do such things, I have told you often, and now again tell you weeping, that they are enemies of the Cross of Christ.'^ And why ? Because Jesus Christ suffered on the Cross for those very sins which such men commit. The sinner nails Him on the Cross once more. The nails and the hammer were but the material instruments of crucifixion; the moral cause of the crucifixion of the Son of God was the sin which you and I have committed ; and if we commit such sins again, we deliberately renew the 3 PhU. iii. 18. THE NATURE OF SIN. 23 causes which nailed Him on the Cross. Again, the Apostle says, * If those who despised the law of Moses were condemned, of how much severer punishment shall he he thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and put Him to open shame, and counted the Blood of the Testament, whereby he was sanctified, unclean; and hath done this in de- spite to the Spirit of Grace !'* The Christian who deliberately commits sin wounds our Divine Saviour. *He opens those Five Sacred Wounds, making them bleed afresh. With a cold and ungrateful heart he renews the sorrows which caused the agony of Geth- semani, and made Him sweat His Sweat of Blood. Not this only ; but, thirdly, there is a malice against the Holy Ghost. Every sin that is committed is committed against the light and grace of the Holy Spirit in the conscience ; and in this there are three degrees. We may grieve the Holy Ghost, we may resist the Holy Ghost, and we may quench the Holy Ghost. Our Divine Lord has said, * Every sin and every blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, except the blasphemy of the Holy Ghost ; and if any man shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall never be forgiven him in * Heb. X. 29. I 24 THE NATURE OF SIN. lii I !:i ill' :|1- I this world nor in the world to come.'* Now what is the meaning of this ? A man may speak against Jesus Christ, ay, blaspheme his Lord, and the Holy Spirit, convincing him of sin, may bring him to re- pentance, may convert him to God, and his soul may be saved; but any man who blasphemes the Holy Ghost — Who is the Spirit of Penance, the Spirit of Absolution, the Absolver of the penitent — rejects the whole dispensation of grace; and there- fore the sin that shall never be forgiven is the sin of impenitence. Every sin that men repent of shall be forgiven ; but the sin that is not repented . of shall never be forgiven, neither in this world, nor in the world to come. In giving these definitions, I am afraid that what I have said is somewhat abstract, perhaps somewhat tedious ; but it is impossible for me to make clear what I have to say hereafter without laying down first principles. I will now, therefore, only make application of what I have said. We have here two practical principles. 1. The first is this : no one is so blind to his own sins as the man who has most sin upon him. If a man is plague-stricken, he can see it by the discoloration of the skin. If the scales of * S. Matt. xii. 31. i ■1 ■■■! THE NATURE OP SIN. 25 J » T4 ,t ^ i leprosy are coming up upon his arm, he can tell that he is a leper. If a cloud is growing over the pupil of the eye, he can tell that he is losing the light of heaven. All the diseases of the body make them- selves known emphatically; but it is the subtilty and danger and deadliness of sin that it conceals it- self. No men know the light of God's presence so little as those who are covered with sin ; and the more sin they have upon them the less they can see it. Though all the perfections of God, like the rays of the sun which encircle the head of the blind man, are round about them all the day long, they are un- conscious of His presence. They are like Elymas the magician, who for his impiety had scales upon his eyes ; and because they do not see the light of God, therefore they do not see His perfections, and therefore they do not see themselves ; for the light of the knowledge of self comes from the light of the knowledge of God. How shall a man know what unholiness is, if he does not know what holiness is ? How shall he know what falsehood is, if he does not know what truth is: or impurity, if he does not know purity : or impiety, if he does not know the duty we owe to God, and the majesty of God, to whom worship is due? Just in the proportion in which the light of the perfections of God is clouded, 111 28 THE NATURE OF SIN. ii'lti ■'ill 11: we lose the light of the knowledge of ourselves ; and the end of it is that when men hear such words as I am speaking now, they say, * That is just the character of my neighbour — that is the very picture of my bro- ther :' they do not see themselves in the glass. You may describe their character, and they will not re- cognise it ; you may tell them, * This is yourself,* and they will not believe it. There is something within them which darkens the conscience ; and why is it ? Because sin stupefies the intellect and the heart : it draws a veil and a mist over the bright- ness of the intelligence, and it darkens the light of the conscience. Sin is like hemlock: it deadens the sense, so that the spiritual eye begins to close, and the spiritual ear becomes heavy, and the heart grows drowsy. And when men have brought themselves to that state by their own free will, then comes the just judgment of God : * I will give them eyes that they may not see, ears that they may not hear, hearts that they may not understand, lest they should be converted, and I should heal them. These things said Isaias, when he saw His glory and spoke ofHim.'S 2. There is one other truth — that no men see the nature of sin so clearly as those who are freest from « S. John xii. 40, 41. THE NATURE OF SIN. 27 sin; just as no intelligence knows sin with such an intensity of knowledge as God Himself. Our Divine Lord Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, knew sin in all its hatefulness so as no other human heart has ever known it. His Immaculate Mother — because sinless — knew the sinfulness of sin by the light of her intelligence, and by a pure horror of her whole spiritual nature. So in like manner the Saints of God, each one of them in the proportion of his sanctity; and so you likewise in the measure in which you are free from sin, in that measure will you hate it, in that measure you understand and estimate its sinfulness. And if at any time in your life you have committed sin — in the measure in which you are separated from your past life, in the measure in which that old character of yours has been taken off, and you can see * the old man' which you have sloughed off, that old being and nature of yours which cleaves to you no longer, which you look on as a thing hideous and horrible, belonging to you no more, belonging to your child- hood, boyhood, or youth, but yours no longer now — in that measure you understand the sinfulness of sin. You can look back on your past life, and understand your sins as you did not understand them then ; and when you come to die, your present :il % Sl.A 28 Tfl^ NATURE OF SIN. i'' i' j'ti character and your present life will be seen by you in a light, brighter and more intense than that under which you see them now. Look up, therefore, into the light of God's presence, and pray God to make you to know yourselves as He knows you, and to see yourselves as He sees you now ; for when you have seen the worst of your sins, what are they compared with those which God sees in you ? Therefore do not let us ever think that we know all our sins yet, do not let us imagine that we fully know our own sinfulness. We are only beginning to learn it, and we shall have to learn it all our life. There are three great depths which no human line can sound — the depth of our sinfulness, the depth of our unworthi- ness, and the depth of our nothingness. If you are beginning to learn those three things, happy are you. Be not afraid, the more you see your own sinfulness ; and for this reason. Who is showing it to you ? It is the light of the Spirit of God. It is He Who alone searches the heart, vVho alone makes us know ourselves ; and the more you see of your own sinful- ness, the truer pledge you have of His presence ; that He is with you, that He is within you, that He is busied about your salvation. He is giving you a pledge and a promise that every sin you see He will help you to repent of, and every sin you repent of THE NATURE OP SIN. 29 shall be washed away in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. Therefore, one last word. My first counsel to you in this Lent is this, Try to know yourselves, try to learn during these days such knowledge of your- selves as you have never had before. Begin as if it were for the first time. Take the ten command- ments : read them in the letter : understand them in the spirit; and try your life from your child- hood, from your earliest memory, by that Divine rule. Take the seven deadly sins, try yourselves by them, in deed, in word, and in thought. Pray to the Spirit of God, whose work and office it is to convince the world of sin. Pray every day in this Lent, morning and night, that the Spirit of God may illuminate your reason to understand the nature of sin, and convince your conscience, that you may know what sins are upon you. Pray to Him that the light of the presence of God may come down upon you like the light of the noonday, that you may see not only the broad outlines of your sins, but your finer and more delicate and more subtil off'ences against God, even as we see the motes which float in the sunbeam at noonday. The more you have the presence of God with you, the more the light of His perfections is upon you, the more * V ill i :t:.;i: 80 THE NATURE OF SIN. you will see yourselves. The Patriarch Job, who, though he had long lived in prayer, in converse, and in communion with God, and had been grievously afflicted (which more than any other discipline brings men to know themselves), nevertheless at tho end of all his trials, when God spoke to him out of the light of His presence, said : * With the hearing of the ear I have heard Thee, but now mine eye seeth Thee ; wherefore I condemn myself, and Jo penance in dust and ashes. '^ ' Job xlii. 5, 6. I,' .I't' I I! I' i ;1 i-r f I n. MORTAL SIN. ♦ .•' A i I MORTAL SIN. If any man sliall see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and life shall be given unto him that sinneth not unto death. There is a sin unto death : I do not say for that any man shall ask. All iniquity is sin, and there is a sin unto death. 1 S. John v. 16, 17. From the written Word of God it is clear, beyond controversy, that some sins are unto death, and some sins are not unto death. That is to say, that some sins are mortal, and some sins are not mortal. Our next subject, as I said, is mortal sin. But be- fore I enter upon it, I wish to recall to your memories the general principles already laid down. First, we know that the end of man is God ; that God made man for Himself; that He made him to His own like- ness ; that He made him capable of knowing, loving, and serving Him, and of being like to God ; and that in the knowledge, the love, and the service, and the likeness of God, is the bliss of man. Therefore conformity to God is our perfection, and union with God is eternal life ; but deformity, or departure d 84 MORTAL SIN. 11 I in from the likeness of God, is sin, and separation from God is eternal death. The nature of sin is, as we have defined it, the transgression of the law of God ; or, in other words, any thought, word, or deed deli- berately committed with the knowledge of the in- tellect, and the consent of the will, contrary to the will of God ; or, in other words again, it is the vari- ance of the created will against the uncreated will — of the will of the creature against the will of the Creator. The essential malice of sin, then, consists in the variance of the will, the hostility of the will of the creature against the will of his Maker. These were the principles which I laid down last time. We will now take them up again, and make application of them in one particular point. Saint John, in the words with which I began, tells us that if any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he ought to pray for him. Now what are the sins that are not unto death? Sins of infirmity; sins of impetuosity; sins of strong temptation ; sins which by the subtilty of Satan lead men astray ; sins of passion, in which human nature, being weak and tempestuous and liable to disorder, is drawn aside : if in all these thore be no malice, either against God, or against our neighbour. Now these are sins which all Christians are liable to commit, and > ? I % ' -^i MORTAL SIN. 35 1 do commit, and which, without doubt, you yourselves are profoundly conscious of committing. These are sins not unto death, as we may trust, because if there be no malice against God or our neighbour, then the essential sinfulness of sin is wanting ; and in that case, Saint John says, * Let him pray for him, and God will give life unto those that sin not unto death;' that is to say. He will give grace, sorrow, pardon, help, protection, and perseverance. He will watch over those souls if in humility and in sorrow they persevere ; and the prayer of those who are faithful and steadfast will obtain grace for those that sin not unto death. Then he goes on : ' There is a sin unto death : for that I say not that any man should ask ;' that is, that any man should pray. Now what is this sin unto death ? The si of Judas was a sin unto death. With his eyes open, with a knowledge of his Master, — though perhaps he did not know of the mystery oi the Incarnation as we know it now ; nevertheless he knew enough, — he sold his Master, and yet perhaps not knowing that ho sold Him to be crucified. This, then, was a sin unto death. The sin of Simon Magus was a blarnhemy and a sin unto death. The sin of those that blaspheme the Holy Ghost, which shall nev.;r be forgiven, is a sin unto death. The sin of apostates from the faith. iSi Wi I; I Id 36 MORTAL SIN. ' ;i; !'! r ,ji| i:;,' II ! who, having known the truth, and having had the full light and illumination to know God, afterwards fall from Him, is described by Saint Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where he says, 'It is im- possible for those who have been once enlightened, and have tasted of the Heavenly Gift, and of the good Word of God, and of the powers of the world to come if they shall fall away, to be renewed again unto repentance.'^ In one word, all who are impeni- tent sin unto death. All those who, having had full light and knowledge of God in His revelation, with their eyes open, turn from it, of whom Saint John says, ' They went out from us because they were not of us ; for if they had been of us, without doubt they would have continued with us" — all these who so sin, sin unto death, and are left to the judgment of God. Saint John in these words does not forbid us to pray ; he says, ' I do not say' — that is, *I do not enjoin it.' He leaves it to the con- science of every man. He says of those who sin not unto death, that * we have all confidence we may obtain pardon and grace for them ;' but for those who do sin unto death as I have described, * we have no such confidence, and therefore, though I do not enjoin it, I do not forbid it.' » Heb. vi. 6. « IS. John a 19. MORTAL SIN. 37 »-y'' Mri: Then lie goes on to say, * All iniquity is sin.' Now iniquity means all departure from the rectitude of God and of the law of God. Iniquity is inequality, or crookedness. Everything that is not conformed to the rectitude of God, to His perfections, to His law, and to His will, is sin. * And there is a sin unto death.' We havo here a distinction of those sins which are and those which are not mortal. My pur- pose now is very roughly to define what it is that constitutes this distinction; and secondly, to show what are the effects of this mortal sin which is unto death. As I have said before, to constitute a mortal sin it is necessary that the man who commits it should know w^hat he does — there must be a knowledge of the intellect ; if not, the sin is only, as I then said, a material sin, and not a formal sin, unl^ ^ t his ignor- ance be a culpable and guilty ignorance. Next, he must not only know that he is doing wrong, but his ftill must consent to the wrong-doing. Thirdly, he must know and consent deliberately, with such an ad- vertence or attention to what he is about as tc make him conscious of his action. A man who should transgress the law of God in the least possible way would fulfil these three conditions. It would be a transgression of the law of God if I should take an •.:,:fi ' ■ im ' :, P4. .41* 38 MORTAL SIN. m apple off the tree of my neighbour without his leave. It was his : I had not a right to take it, and I thereby broke the commandment, ' Thou shalt not steal;' but that certainly would not be a sin unto death. It be- came a sin unto death when a divine prohibition was laid upon such an act under pain of death, and that the pain of eternal death ; but where there is no such command laid ^ "^r pain of death, it is quite clear that the taking c. ^n apple would not constitute a sin unto death. Therefore it is necessary that there should be a gravity in the matter of the sin ; and the gravity of that matter will be constituted in one of two ways — it is either the material gravity, that is, the extent, or amount, or quantity of the sin com- mitted ; or it is the moral gravity derived from the circumstances of the case. An illustration will at once make this clear. If I were to rob a man of a very large amount of his property, no one would doubt for an instant that I had committed a sin unto death, or a mortal sin. The common sense of mankind, the instincts of justice, would at once pronounce against me. If I were to take a needle from some rich per- son, the instincts of justice would acquit me of a sin unto death. I have taken that which did not belong to me, but no one would say that, in taking that needle from the rich man, who could obtain an MORTAL SIN. 89 abundant supply of needles, I had committed a sin unto death. No. But suppose that needle belonged to a poor seamstress, who gained her daily bread by the industrious use of that one needle, and that she had not the means to buy another ; and that if she were robbed of it, her industry must cease, and she could no longer gain her bread ; and that I knew all those facts; and that, with my eyes open, knowing the extent of the injury I was doing, in violation of the law of charity, as well as of the law of justice, I should take that needle with a perfect conscious- nf ss that I was destroying the means of industry and reducing her to hunger. You see at once that there is a moral guilt which arises from these circumstances. Suppose, still further, that I myself were jealous of her prosperity, being of the same trade or calling, and that I take the needle in order to ruin her for my own advantage. You see, therefore, that in so small a theft as the stealing of a needle there may be an enormity of moral guilt. It is not enough then that there should be the knowledge cf the intellect, and the consent of the will to the action, unless the matter in which that action is committed shall be of a grave kind, either materially or morally, before God. There are seven capital sins, the names of which :'iv ii ** 40 MOHTAL SIN. rv I '1 I ■ itM LI i ■ /I 1 M'ki you all know. First of all there is pride, which separates the soul from God; secondly, there is envy, or jealousy, which separates a man from his neighbour; thirdly, there is sloth, which is a burden pressing down the powers of man, so that he be- comes weary of his duty towards God, and forsakes Him; fourthly, there is avarice, which plunges a man deep into the mire of this world, so that he makes it to be his god ; fifthly, there is gluttony, which makes a sensual fool ; sixthly, there is anger, which makes a man a slave to himself; and lastly, there is impurity, which makes a ijian a slave of the devil. In those seven kinds there are seven ways of eternal death; and all those who, with their eyes open, with the knowledge of the intellect, and the full consent of the will, commit sin in any of those seven kinds, are walking in the way towards sin unto death. 1, We come now to the effects. The first effect of one mortal sin is to strike the soul dead. The grace of God is the life of the soul as the soul is the life of the body; and one sin unto death, in any one of the kinds that I have spoken of, strikes the soul dead. The soul dies at once, and on the spot ; not as the tree which is blasted by the lightning and dies gradually day after day ; first in the leader, then it begins to die in the branches, and then it dies in ill MORTAL SIN. 41 the trunk, and then it dies in the root. This is a slow process, but not so with the soul. One single sin unto death strikes the soul dead at once, and that for this reason : the grace of God is the lii'e of the soul, and one mortal sin separates the soul from God. The holy angels, when they were created, lived in the presence of God, though they did not as yet see the face of God. They were on probation. Every creature depends on God in two ways : he needs the support of God for his existence ; and of the grace of God for his sanctification. If God were not present with us at this moment in our physical life we should die. If He were not in this building, the walls of it would vanish. So it was with the angels in their first state of bliss. It was the assistance of God which sustained them in their being as pure intelligences, spotless in their innocence, excellent in their strength, sur- passing in their energy. *He maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire.'^ They also needed grace. The angels were holy just as we are holy, because the Holy Ghost was with them ; and all the actions of the angelic perfection were sustained by an actual grace and help of God, just like our own. By one sin — one sin unto death « Heb. i. 7. m m is; r I 42 MORTAL SIN. .!l'i — and that a sin of pride, purely spiritual, they fell and died eternally and without redemption ; and as S. Jude writes : ' Leaving their habitations, were cast down into darkness and everlasting chains until the day of judgment.'* As it was with the angelic natures, so it was with man. God, when He created man, constituted him, as I said before, with three perfections — the perfection of nature, that is, of body and soul ; the supernatural perfection or the indwelling of the Holy Ghost and of sanctifica- tion ; and the preternatural perfection or the per- fect harmony of the soul in itself and with God; and the immortality of the body. These three perfec- tions, natural, supernatural, and preternatural, make up what is called original justice ; and in that state man was constituted when he was created. But by one sin of disobedience, with his eyes open, with the consent of his will and with full deliberation — and that in a matter light in itself, as I have said, but grave because the prohibition of God under the ' enalty of eternal death was laid upon it — in that slight trial, without temptation save only the listen- ing to the tempter, who awakened a spirit of curiosity and disobedience, where all around him was permitted and one only thing forbidden, man sinned against < S. Jude 6. MORTAL SIN. 43 God, and by that one sin was struck dead. The Holy Ghost departed from him, and all his perfections were wrecked. The supernatural perfection was lost, the preternatural perfection was forfeited, the 3oul fell from God, the body was struck by death. He became from that time disinherited, shorn of sanctity and life : one sin unto death separated him and all his posterity from God. As it was in the case of Adam, so it is also in the case of the regenerate ; so it is in our own. We who are born, into the world, spiritually dead have once more, by regeneration in baptism, the life of the Spirit. If we sin mortally with our eyes open, and with consent of our will, we forfeit the pre- sence of the Holy Ghost in the soul, the charity of God which unites us to Him, the sanctifying grace whereby we are made children of God, the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost which are always inseparably united to His presence. There is left in us, indeed, the grace of hope and the grace of faith. These two remain like the beating of the pulse and the breath- ing of the lungs : there is just so much left of the life of grace with the light of faith and the aspira- tion of hope after God ; but our union with God is broken: we are separated from Him, and at vari- ance with Him. This is the first effect of mortal sin ; for habitual grace and the presence of God l!i \M m Bii \<\ 44 MORTAL SIN. I> ! [» I M ■w 'i I 'ii'N are the life of the soul ; and the loss of that grace, which is the loss of the presence of God, is the death of the soul. 2. But further : one mortal sin destroys all the merits that the soul has ever heaped up. Understand what is meant by merit. The doctrine of the Catholic Church is this : not that any creature can merit in the sense of claiming out of the hand of his Maker, Redeemer, and Judge, by any right of his own, any- thing whatsoever in nature or in grace. Cast out of your minds for ever all shadow of misunderstanding upon this. Merit does not signify that the creature can by any right of his own, either in the order of nature or of grace, challenge and demand of God the gift or the possession of anything. No. The word * merit' is used in two senses. There is the merit for good, and the merit for evil. Every good action has a merit — that is, a certain conformity to the will of God ; and every evil action has a merit, that is, a deformity, which will be followed by punishment. Therefore * merit' is a word altogether indifferent in itself, and derives its meaning for good or for evil from its context. Merit signifies the connection or link that exists between certain actions done in grace and certain awards ; and that connection or link is constituted sovereignly and gratuitously by the grace MORTAL SIN. 45 and promise of God. So that every man who does acts of faith, or of charity, or of self-denial, or of piety, will receive a reward, both in this life and the next, according to those actions. Every man who does acts of charity will receive an increase of charity and of grace in this life ; and hereafter, as the Council of Flo- rence defines, the glory of the blessed shall be in proportion to the measure of their charity on earth. There is a link then between the measure of our char- ity here and the measure of our glory hereafter. This is what is called merit; and all through our life, if we are living faithfully in the grace of God, we are thereby heaping up merits, and acquiring in virtue of the promise a greater reward and a greater bliss. I may give as example the life of the Apostles, who, through the whole of their career, even to their martyrdom, were continually increasing in the sight of God the accumulation of His good -will, of His grace, and of His reward. This is true of you all, and through your whole life everything that you do according to the will of God, being in a sta.c of grace, has in the Book of Remembrance a record, and in the Sacred Heart of our Divine Master a promise of reward, which shall be satisfied at His coming. One sin then, unto death, unless afterwards repented ol, utterly cancels all these merits of a whole life. It mat- a ( i, m •ifS m 46 MORTAL SIN. m ij; ' , ■ .1' 'iM m ters not how long you may have been living a life of justice, of charity, of humility, of generosity, and of piety, before God — one mortal sin, and the whole of that record is cancelled from the Book of His re- membrance. It is all gone as if it had never been. Do you need proofs of it ? Take the history of David, the * man after God's own heart. '^ You re- member his faith, his patience, his fidelity, his cour- age, his prayer, his spirit of thanksgiving. He is the Psalmist of Israel, the man with the greatest of all titles — ' the man after God's own heart.' But in one moment, by the twofold sin of murder and adultery, he cancelled before God every merit of his youth and of his manhood : all was dead before God. Solomon, the son of David, the type of our Divine Lord, the King of Peace, the man famous for wis- dom — not only because he received it as a divine gift, but because he had the wisdom to ask for wis- dom, not for riches — the man illuminated beyond all other men, because afterwards he fell away from God into sin unto death, all the merit of that long life of wisdom and light and of early sanctity was cancelled. Judas, in his childhood, and in his boyhood, and in his youth, was perhaps as faithful to the light of his conscience as you have been. He ' Acts xiii. 22. MORTAL SIN. 47 left kindred, and all that he had, to follow his Master. No doubt there were in his heart struggles and aspirations and prayers and desires to walk in the footsteps of his Divine Lord"*; but there crept upon him the sin of covetousness. He carried the bag, and that which was put therein; and Satan tempted him, and then entered into him, and he sold his Master. Ananias in like manner renounced the world, perilled his own life to become a Christian, sold all that he had, made sacrifice of everything ; but kept back part of the price. Demas was the companion of Apostles, and exposed his life to dan- ger, and lived in toil and poverty and perpetual risk, the companion of the Apostle of the Gentiles until he forsook him, having loved this present world ;^ and all the merits of that life of faith, and of all those actions which once were recorded in the Book of God's remembrance, were in one moment can- celled ; and therefore S. Paul said of himself, * I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest, after I have preached the Gospel to others, I myself should become a castaway.'^ The prophet Ezekiel says, * When the just man turneth away from justice he hath done, and committeth iniquity ; in the iniquity he hath done, in the sin he hath com- « 2 Tim. iv. 10. » 1 Cor. ix. 27. ! ■ m I rii i'\ i.ilr ■ '' f '■ 1 ill,:: '-''1 '1 ii ': i 1 1 il ' : . . :,':,il 1 '*i ill m i i 1 -hi i ■ lil ■ '■ '1' ';:'■'■■ '■ ■ il'fi'lJili ■ (iii. ili:i.M '! ' ! ■ '.i' ■ ' ' 1 ■, 1 j ' ' , i i ,: i 1 48 MORTAL SIN. mitted, iu that he shall die, and his justice shall he no more remembered.'^ 3. The third effect is even more terrible ; it mor- tifies and kills the vei^ power of serving God. All the actions of a man in a state of mortal sin are dead ; they have no merit or power to prevail before God for his salvation. So long as he is separated from God, nothing he does has saving power. Just as a tree that has life bears living fruit, and a tree that is dead has nothing but fruit that is withered and dead likewise, so a soul that is planted in God, as we all are by baptism, strikes its root as the tree by the rivers of water, and increases continually in faith, hope, and charity, and in the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, which expand themselves like the leaves upon the branch, and the twelve fruits of the Holy Ghost unfold themselves and ripen. On the other hand, a soul that is separated from God is like the tree that is cut asunder at the root, and as the severed tree withers from the topmost spray and every fruit upon it dies, so the soul in the state of mortal sin, of whatsoever kind, so long as it remains in that state, is separated from God, and can bear no fruit unto salvation. The Apostle has declared this in the most express words ; * Though I speak with • Ezck. iii. 10. |: MORTAL SIN. 49 the tongue of men and of angels, and have not cha- rity, I become as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal ; and if I have all prophecy and all know- ledge, and can understand all mysteries, and though I have faith and could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing ; and though I give my goods to feed the poor and my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing :'^ that is to say, a soul separated from God, not having the love of God ; it matters not what that soul may know, it may be able to prophesy, to expound mys- teries, to work miracles : it may give all it possesses to the poor in alms, it may be martyred, as men may think, and yet if it have not the love of God it profits nothing to salvation. There will be at the last day those who will come to our Divine Lord and say, * Lord ! Lord ! we prophesied in Thy name, we cast out devils and did many mighty works in Thy name ; we have eaten and drunk in Thy pre- sence ; and He will say unto them. Depart from Me, I never knew you :'^^ that is to say, a soul that has sinned unto death by one sin, one transgression, continuing in that state, until restored to union with God by charity and by grace, is dead before God, and all the actions of the soul are dead. Those • 1 Cor. xiii. 1-3. »« S. Matt. vii. 22. I .11 :1 : ''hi ■ 6'0 MORTAL SIN. i; :' ill iii" ill llil ;;! fir'' ,■ !■ wliO are in such a condition are like men looking up to a high mountain on which the sun dwells per- petually in its splendour, and there is a glory as of the Heavenly City upon it, and they long to climb up to it ; but before them there is the breast of a preci- pice, which no human foot can scale, and they pine away with longing and with the impossibi^'+v of as- cending: or they are like men gazing up^n a fair country, the Promised Land of vineyards and olive- yards and fig-trees, and rivers flowing with milk and honey; and homes of peace are before them ; but at th^ir feet there is a river, so deep and rapid without ferry and without ford, which the mightiei^t swim- mer cannot pass. So is it with sinners. The law of God stands between the soul that is cut off from Him, between the soul that is out of grace, and the peace of God. 4. And not this only: the soul in itself begins to lose its vigour and its strength. As I said before, every creature needs the help of nature and of grace : and the supernatural gifts of God — faith, hope, and charity — are by a mortal sin either entirely destroyed or weakened. Charity is utterly destroyed. Hope remains and faith remains, but hope begins to grow faint ; for a man conscious of having sinned mor- tally against God cannot deceive himself with the m Nil, MORTAL SIN. 51 hope of salvation unless he has grounds for hope ; and what grounds can an impenitent sinner have ? The faith that remains in him — what does it shov/ to him ? * The Great White Throne,' * the smoke that ascendeth up before the Seat of Judgment,' the law of God written in letters of fire : * There is no peace, saith my God, for the wicked, '^^ and * with- out holiness no man shall see the Lord.'^^ Faith shows him judgment to come, and the witnesses that will stand before the Throne on that day and bear testimony against him ; and therefore the faith that remains in him is a terrible light, warning him and piercing his conscience. So far the supernatural grace that is still with him is goading him with fear to bring him back to God ; more than this it cannot do. The natural powers of the soul are also affected when a man is in a state of sin. The heart becomes corrupt, the soul becomes weak. Let me take what may seem to be an example not fitting for you. You who listen to me are not likely to be tempted to ex- cess, or intoxication, but it is an apt example to illustrate every kind of sin. The man who indulged himself in drink loses the vigour and command of his will. The will becomes feeble and loses its im- perious control. It can no longer command the " Isa. xlviii. 22. '2 Heb. xii. 14. "m \ '\> '■■■ mi (II -!:",■: I ''• '!1' ' ili'i *%4 ! . ,,:! 1\1 l'\ \i !i: :■! ■ 52 MORTAL SIN. man. It is like a rotten helm which the ship will not obey. The will itself becomes paralysed — there is a solvent which has been eating away its elasticity and its power, and what happens in this gross ex- ample happens in every other. I might take false- hood, sloth, or other sins I named before — ^but you must make application for yourselves. The very will loses its power of repenting. Ay, and there is a still more terrible thought than this. Sometimes the sins that men have committed long ago are the cause of their instability, their inconsistency, their waver- ing, and irresolution at this day. They have never yet returned to God; they have never yet been really restored to the grace of God and vitally united to Him. They carry within them that which we read of in the Book of Job, where it says: *His bones are full of the vices of his youth, and they shall go down with him to his grave.'^^ 6. Lastly, there is another efifect of the sin unto death; that is, that it brings a man into a double debt before God — it brings him into the debt of guilt, and into the debt of pain — and he will have to pay both. The debt of guilt he must answer at the Day of Judgment. The debt of pain he must suffer before he can see God, either here, or after death in the " Job XX. 11. MOKTAL SIN. 53 state of purification : or in hell to all eternity. Every substance in this world has its shadorw. You can- not separate the shadow from the substance. Where the substance moves the shadow follows, so every sin has its pain ; it matters not whether we think of it or no, whether we believe it or no. So it is : God has ordained it from the day in which He said : ' In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die the death.' From that day onward, no sin has ever been com- mitted that has not been followed by its measure of judicial pain. It must be some day expiated, either by bearing it here or bearing it hereafter, or by a loving sorrow prevailing with God through the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, to wash out from the book of His remembrance the great debt of accumu- lated sin. I will not go further into these effects; I will only pum up what I have said. First of all, one mortal sin unto death strikes a soul dead. Secondly, one such sin when the soul is struck dead destroys all the merits of a long life, be they what they may — hereafter I will show how they may all revive again like the spring after the winter time ; but this, not for the present. Thirdly, one such sin unto death mortifies, kills, and destroys the saving power of every action that the soul may do while in that state of y-u !' I m 'I ii]i i « II II: I :!:.■! :;i.!. m MORTAL SIN. separation from God. Fourthly, it weakens both the supernatural graces that remain in the soul, and the natural powers and faculties of the soul itself. Lastly, it brings the soul into the double debt of guilt and pain. These are the five effects of a sin unto death. I have but a few words of counsel to add. The first is this : meditate every day of your lives upon this great and awful truth — how easy it is to fall from God ; and say to yourselves, * God is my end ; for Him I was created ; and if I fall short of that end by a hair's-breadth, if I swerve aside from attaining that end, I shall go down into eternal death.' An arrow shot at a mark, a hair's breadth aside from its aim, fails to attain it. A ship steered by a confident and cunning hand, if it miss the light, is wrecked, be it never so near the port : and a soul that does not attain to union with God here in a state of grace will be separated from God to all eternity. Next say to yourselves, * If I do not correspond with the grace which God has given me, I shall miss my eternal end.' As I have before said, God is co-oper- ating with every creature. The drawing of His Holy Spirit, and the gifts of His grace, are like a chain of gold drawing every created soul to Himself. * God wills all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth ;' and again, our Divine Lord has said; lit MORTAL SIN. 55 'And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things unto Me.' God is drawing every created soul to Himself. He is drawing them to the knowledge of Himself and of His Incarnate Son, and of the Precious Blood shed on the Cross from the Sacred Heart of Jesus ; and the graces and the love and the breathings of the Holy Ghost are perpetually going out and drawing souls to Himself, and to the unity of the Church. God is always drawing souls to re- pentance, and through repentance to perfection, and from one degree of perfection to another, raising them higher and higher to union with Himself. This is always going on, but we must correspond with it. Listen to Him, respond, answer, lay hold of that grace which is ofifered to you, keep fast the links of that golden chain, never let it go, and take heed lest you break its links. We often think if a soul that is already in eter- nal death could once more return, what would be the fervour of such a man through all the time granted him on earth. What humility, what hatred of sin, what holy fear of its occasions, what piety, what self- denial, what self-sacrifice, would mark a soul that once had tasted eternal death, if it could return, and have one more opportunity of salvation. What a life of the Cross, and of intense devotion to God, that m :-'!''. I )■ I; • ^1 m m It >\- [[ III :|, !• i1 I- !i lit li! II il :i l| :! ■■" '!:i I: ! ■ ' i ■;, iM 1.]. 1-1 J ! 56 MORTAL SIN. so:i! would live ! You have never yet gone down into eternal death. You have been the subject of a greater grace than even if you had been liberated. You are still in life, still surrounded by the light of truth, you have yet the graces of the Holy Ghost in abundance, you have time, you have opportunity, you have the seven Sacraments, you have the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ : all that is needful for eternal life — ay, and that in abundance, without stint and without mea- sure. You are like the Prodigal Son before he left his father's house — you have not yet tasted that far country, and the misery and condemnation of falling from God. Therefore say to yourselves : * God be praised ! I am still in life, and my day ol grace is not gone by.* The sun is yet in the heavens — with some it is in the morning still, with others it is the noontide, with some who hear me it is declining towards the horizon. Say: 'Lord, abide with us ; for it is towards evening, and the day is far spent. Give me grace to make my peace with Thee, that I may be united with Thee, lest Thou find me parted from Thee in the day of Thy coming.* This, then, is the first thought I would pray you with all my heart to make day after day ; and the other is like unto it, but it is more terrible. Day MOBTAL SIN. 57 after day say this to yourselves : * If I fall from God — as I easily may — I shall go down alive into hell.' Dear brethren, we live in days when men must speak plainly. There are among us going to and fro, as there are in foreign countries, mockers, scoffers, blasphemers, ministers of Satan, apostles of lies, who say there is no hell. Eternal punishment ! mediaeval fables ! Popish superstition ! True it is that the Church which is called * Popish' inflexibly maintains that there is a hell, that there is an eternal punishment, and that they who live and die im- penitent will. go down quick into that torment. It is a glory that such a charge is laid against the Church of Rome. I accept the accusation — ay, and as a minister of Jesus Christ, and as an apostle of His Gospel, I declare that God has revealed that there is hereafter eternal pain and everlasting death. As there is a heaven, so there is a hell. As there is eternal life, so there is eternal death. Be on your guard then, dear brethren. Be not so shallow or so credulous. Let no impostors, who pretend to philo- sophy and to criticism, lead you for one moment to believe that the existence of hell and eternal punish- ment is by an arbitrary law, by a mere act of Divine legislation, like a statute made by despotic power. Eternal death is an intrinsic necessity of the perfec- M-fll- '' «o lli lii 1 58 MORTAL SIN. I i' i: «! i' I 11 :'i I'll' ' w\ h tion of God, and of the wilful apostasy of man. If there be a God who is holy, just, pure, true, and unchangeable; then, if man is impure, unjust, unholy, and false, and will not change by repentance, as light and darkness cannot exist together, God and that soul cannot unite in eternity. It is not a sta- tute law. It is an intrinsic necessity of the Divine perfection on the one hand, and of the sinfulness of the human soul upon the other. Why is the human soul unholy and unjust ? By the abuse of the free will which God has given us — as I said in the begin- ning — by the open-eyed transgression of God's law, by the deliberate breaking of His commandments, by the impenitent persevering in that stato of dis- obedience and of separation from God, which in itself is death, which is eternal death in time, which is hell upon earth. Except the soul repent, it already begins to taste the condemnation of eternity. Therefore, bear in mind that the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man are enough clearly to de- monstrate the intrinsic necessity of an eternal sepa- ration. And what is hell but to be separated from God eternally ? and to be separated from God not as W8 are here, with our souls clogged and stupefied by sin, intoxicated by the world, ignorant of ourselves ? No. After death, the eyes of the soul will be opened, MOKTAL SIN. 69 the scales will fall from its sight, it will see itself for the first time, as it will for the first time see God in judgment. And when it shall see God in judgment, all that instinct of the soul in which it was from the beginning created for God — an instinct like the needle of the compass, which points by its own law always to the north, as in the blaze of the noonday, so in the darkness of the midnight, will return to its direction. The lost soul that was created in the image of God, of which the beatific end is God, and to be united with God is life, will then begin to hunger and thirst after God, when to be united with God is impossible for ever. Just as breathing is a vital necessity to the body, so union with God is a vital necessity to the soul. You know sometimes in sleep a sense of stifling and suffocation in which you seem to lie an endless night in torment; conceive to yourselves an eternity of that suff'ocation, when the soul is conscious of the vital necessity of its union with God, when to be united with God is eternally impossible. Ay, more than this, there will be a torment in the soul which is the un- dying worm that will gnaw to all eternity. What is that torment? Kemorse. The consciousness that the soul has committed self-murder, that it died be- cause it sinned unto death, and that it sinned unto :■;!■ I" ..i^' I'm I*- .'I 111 i ' '•! 60 MOBTAL SIN. death of its own free will. There was no constraint, no necessity. With its own free will it sinned against God, and broke the link of union with Him. In eternal death the worm that dieth not, the per- petual tooth of remorse, will make the soul conscious of an anguish which no human heart can conceive. There is no need of fire to torment; this alone is tor- ment enough, to lose God eternally ; to have eternal remorse without anything more is hell ; but there will be more. Those who are lost will be lost together — multitudes, myriads of millions — all in misery, all se- parated from God, all in remorse, all feeding on them- selves, hateful and hating one another. I have not said one word as yet of that which I now will add. It is true there is a Divine mystery which we shall know — God grant not by experience. Our Divine Lord has said it : * Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.' And again : * Go, ye cursed, into ever- lasting fire, prepared for the devil and i.»is angels.' There is an eternal pain by fire. God has dec^ ^i it. Woe to the man that denies it ! Satan is ai ys endeavouring to efi'ace this belief out of the minds of men — doing everything he can by subtil philosophy, by specious reasoning, by appeals to the mercy of God, by wonderful exaltations of the Divine perfections, and criticisms upon the Greek Testament, by laughter. MORTAL SIN, 61 derision, scoffing, and mockery, before which many a man who is not afraid of going into battle is coward enough to run away. Satan is always endeavouring to root out the belief of eternal fire from the minds of men. I will tell you why. Because the greater multitude of men have so little hunger and thirst after God, so little aspiration after union with Him, that they are conscious only of the fear of an eternal pain to keep them from sin. If he could only efface from the minds of men the thought of eternal pain, there is nothing left to restrain them ; and for this be is always labouring. There is nothing Satan loves better than to get men to laugh at him, to use his name in jest, to interlard their conversation with some reference to him in mocking levity, which very soon makes men cease to fear him, and then cease to believe in his existence. On the other hand, God is always striving to awaken and revive in the con- science of each one of us the sense of the danger of eternal death by His Divine "Word, by the voice of His Church, by the whispers of conscience. He is perpetually reviving in every one of us the sense and belief that there is hereafter a judgment and a condemnation to eternal fire. Live, then, as you would wish to die ; because as you die, so you will be to all eternity. Precisely that 'if!! if Hi t t'. <', i! , 's1» ; ) I :; f: *'H >i' liMm fel i ill lit i i-? t ? ;« m ; i I ISjii Ml 'i .1 li 62 MORTAL SIN. iJMl:^'! iJiii ■'1! !: f m character wliich you have woven for yourself through life by the voluntary acts of your free will, be it for good or be it for evil, that will be your eternal state before God. If God find you clothed in the white raiment which is the justice of the saints, happy are you ; you will walk before Him in white for ever. If you be found in the rags and tattors of the Pro- digal before his repentance, you will be cast out from His face, and all men will see your shame. As you live, so you will die; as you die, so you will be for ever. God is unchangeable. You are con- tinually changing ; but death will precipitate the form in which you die, and you will be so fixed for ever. As the tree falls, so it shall be. Make one mistake, and that mistake is made for ever. 0, dear brethren, look round about us; how many men there are that are learned, and scientific, and noble, and eloquent, and prosperous, whom the world hon- ours ! How many there are that are amiable, and loving, and loved, and their neighbours think no evil of them ; they see nothing but the fair outside — the whited disguise. Some one mortal sin — God knows what— unrepented of, is within. Whited se- pulchres — fair without; within, full of dead men's bones, and of uncleanness. Dear brc thren, thaL may be our case. Say to yourselves, every one of you : * That %. MORTAL SIN. 63 may be my case — that may be my likeness before God at this moment.' * It is appointed mito all men once to die, and after that the judgment.'^* And hear what that judgment will be : ' I saw a great White Throne and One sitting on it, before whose face the heaven and earth fled away, and there was no place found for them ; and I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened, and the dead were judged out of the things that are writ- ten in the books ; and another book was opened which was the Book of Life, and death and hell were cast into the pool of fire — which is the second death; and whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the pool of fire.'^^ " Heb. ix. 27. " Apoc. xx. 11-15. 1 'I y I » 551 II I ,i,!, I jiiif II iii h illll ::| it ■.u, lEL VENIAL SIN. ' I ■ H ,:i!: II |:^: ■T'^li'li'i Wl: IH: ,'i I: Mi it VENIAL SIN. He that knoweth Ms brother to gin a sin which is not unto death, let him ask, and life shall h^ given to him who sinneth not to death. There is a sin unt& duath ; for that I say not that any man ask. 1 John v. 16. There is therefore a distinction between sins unto death, and sins not unto death ; or in other words, sins that are mortal, and sins that are venial — a distinction not spun out by the subtilties of theolo- gians, but written broadly in the Word of God. Last time I spoke of the sins unto death ; it remains for me now to speak of the sins that are not unto death. The sum of what I said last time is this : that the sins unto death are deadly, for that they separate the soul from God. God is the life of the soul, and a soul separated from God is dead. A soul separated from God in this world, unless restored to union with God in this world, by the operation of His grace and of repentance, after the death of the body will be separated from God for all eternity. Such is the 68 VENIAL SIN. ( i Ih3 : li| I! II' I1I<> second death, or in other words, is hell. I drew out the reasons to show the existence and the necessity of hell — that hell, or the loss of God for ever, is in strict truth the perpetuity of the state of separation from God which the sinner has freely chosen for him- self in this world, and that so hell is linked by an intrinsic necessity to mortal sin ; that the separation of the soul from God through mortal sin results by an intrinsic necessity, from the unchangeable per- fections of God on the one hand, and the obstinate variance of the created will against God on the other ; and that therefore every soul that dies eternally dies by self-murder. It is not more a just judgment pro- nounced at the bar of a future tribunal than an intrinsic necessity of that state to which the soul has freely reduced itself. This is the sum of what I have already said ; and I now go on to those sins which are not unto death, or which, in the common language of theology, are called * venial.* The word * venial' is used here in the sense of pardonable ; venial sins are those which may be pardoned. In a general sense there is only one sin which cannot be pardoned. Every mortal sin that man commits — if repented of — may be par- doned : ' Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven, except only the blasphemy of the Holy Ghost. That VENIAL SIN. 69 shall never be forgiven either in this world or in the world to come.'^ And therefore in one sense, and that a general sense, every mortal sin is venial in this way — that it may be pardoned to the true penitent through the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. But the technical sense of the word * venial' is something precise and distinct. It means those sins which may be found in souls that are united with God, and are in the grace of God, and in the love of God, and in a state of habitual obedience. This needs to be more carefully explained ; and I am conscious that in ex- plaining it I ought to distinguish between venial sins and temptations, but time will not now suffice, must hope hereafter to find an occasion on which I may speak of the subject of temptation as distinct from sin. Therefore I intentionally set it aside at present. The sins which may be found even in holy men are sins of infirmity committed through weak- ness; or sins of surprise committed by sudden or strong temptation; or sins of impetuosity, where passion carries a man for a moment beyond self-con- trol ; or sins of indeliberation, that is, done in haste, before as yet conscience and the reason have had time to deliberate and weigh what they are about; • S. Matt. xii. 31. 70 VENIAL SIN. i:i!. U\\r\ 'H' or lastl}^ tliey may be sins committed with some degree of deliberation. Now the seven mortal sins, as they are called, anger, pride, gluttony, impurity, ambition, jealousy, and sloth — these seven are the capital sins under which almost every kind of sin may ultimately be reduced ; and of those, six at least may be venial. The seventh is one in which, if any man sin deliberately, with his eyes open, and with the consent of his will, he can hardly be free from mortal sin, because lightness of matter cannot be supposed in that instance to exist — I mean sins against the holy virtue of purity. But sins of anger, of pride, of gluttony, of ambition, of jealousy, of sloth, are susceptible of degrees and shades and dis- tinctions ; and they may be committed, as I said before, through infirmity, through surprise, through impetuosity, and without deliberation, and even with some degree of deliberation, without being mortal. This will explain what we read in Holy Scripture : * The just man falleth seven times.' * Who can un- derstand sins ? From my secret faults cleanse me, Lord.'^ It is clear that even the saints of God, through infirmity, and through temptation, have of- fended against God, and yet they have not broken their friendship, nor separated their souls from Him. « Prov. xxiv. 16 ; Ps. xviii. 13. li li VENIAL SIN. 71 For example, all those who preserve their baptismal innocence are in a state of union with God, and all such will be saved. They are united with God through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost ; they are children of God, and if they die they will most assuredly inherit the kingdom of heaven. Nevertheless all those who preserve their baptismal innocence — and I trust that many who hear me have never lost it — are conscious while they hear me of the multi- tude of personal faults — ay, and it may be habitual faults of temper, of ambition, of jealousy — of which they are guilty. Is there any one here who will venture to say he is not conscious of some besetting sin, of some — ay, perhaps of many faults — and yet he may still be in the grace of his baptism ; and of this we may believe our Lord spoke when He said : * He that is washed hath no need save to wash his feet, but he is clean every whit.'^ That is to say, he has been cleansed in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ in holy baptism, therefore those lesser sins are washed away by sorrow, by contrition, by mortifi- cation, and by absolution. Once more. I will suppose that a man has fallen from his baptismal grace ; and that through a true conversion and a real and solid repentance he has m ■i :y S. John xiii. 10. 72 VENIAL SIN. 11 '. 1 i \\''A ii!.- I II! ;Ti returned to God. Perhaps some who hear me are in this state. They are conscious that they would rather lay down their lives than offend God again, in the way in which they had offended Him before, nevertheless they are perfectly conscious of a multi- tude of faults against God and their neighbour ; and yet those faults do not prevail to break their union with Him, nor to turn away the friendship of God from them, and they have not relapsed into their former state. We are, in fact, like soldiers in warfare ; wounded we must be, and spotted and spattered by the blood of the conflict. We are labourers out in the field, and the soils and stains of our toil will cleave to us. We are wayfarers in the road, and the dust will settle upon us even when we do not know it. We cannot go out of the world and the world's evil. We are in contact with it, and it will cast more than its shadow upon us. It will cast its stain, and the stain will abide. The most perfect machine, constructed with the most fault- less accuracy, if it be jarred by a shock, is at once thrown out of gear, it loses its perfect action, and its motions become eccentric. So it is with human nature. It was created perfect — in the image of God, with the three perfections, natural, superna- tural, and preternatural, of which I have spoken VENIAL SIN. 73 already; but by the shock of the Fall was thrown out of gear. It became eccentric, it lost its rest upon God, its tru3 centre, and it began to turn faultily round itself. The three wounds of the soul — ignor- ance in the intellect, turbulence in the passions, weakness in the will — are the injury done to that perfect machine. Wherefore, continually our nature is acting abnormally, that is, in departure from the law of its Maker. This seems to be the Apostle's meaning when he says : * I know that in me — that is, in my flesh — dwelleth no good thing. For to will is present with me ; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would, I do not ; but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?'* These were the words of the Holy Ghost by the Apostle, and this is precisely what I have been describing. The Apostle was a saint of God, in union with God, in friendship with God; but he was conscious that in himself there was a perpetual * Eom. vii. 18-24. m '!':'!''! v/ \\ f 74 VENIAL SIN. m ■■$ 1 '! i, I, ; ■■ I t warfare, a turbulence in his nature, a weakness in his will; yet those sinful emotions, passions, and temptations were not sins: only an act of consent could make them sins in the sight of God. We have got, then, what I may call a definition of venial sin. It is a transgression of the law of God ; a thought, word, or deed at variance with the will of God, through infirmity, and without deliberate malice. This will suffice to distinguish the sin which is not unto death from that which I described last time, where, with eyes open and willing consent, a sinner breaks the law of God in the face of God. What I have now to point out are the consequences of these venial sins. It is quite true they do not break our friendship with God ; but do not for one moment deceive your- selves by thinking that venial sins are what are called little sins. There is no such thing as a little sin. Before I have done, I hope to convince you that all sins are great, even those that are not unto death. The consequences, then, of venial sins are these : 1. First, venial sins diminish the grace of God in the soul. When theologians say that venial sins diminish grace, they always make this distinction — they do not mean to say that the quantity of the grace of God is made less, because the grace of God VENIAL SIN. 75 is like life, which cannot be diminished. We are either alive or dead ; but the living powers may bo diminished. Life remains, but the health and the vigour and the strength of the living man are lessened. Therefore the diminution of grace means, that it diminishes the fervour and the operation and energy and efficacy of grace. S. Bernard says that fervour — that is to say, the life of fidelity and obedience — has many effects ; and two of those elBfects are these. First, it renders whatever we have to do easy to us ; and secondly, whatever we do easily, we do with pleasure, and find a sweetness in it. They know this who have learned to speak a foreign language, or to use a musical instrument. Nothing is more tedious, repulsive, or trying than the acquisition either of a foreign language or of the practice of music ; but the moment we have attained a certain facility in either, there is a sweetness in exercising that acquired skill ; so that we are ready at all hours to practise it, and at every moment we have a sensible enjoyment in making use of the acquired faculty. Now it is just so with obedience, with prayer, with mortifica- tion, whichis the most repulsive of all things to our nature. They who use self-denial and mortificat?'on grow to love it, and find a sweetness in it ; but the moment they begin to indulge venial sins of any ■i H; I t. 7G vENIAL SIN. l\ i '1- iitl'rl i Jill t, ! i „; ; 1 i !' Mli sort or kind, tlioy begin to lose that sweetness. The moment they begin to commit venial sins of world- liness, of vanity, of self-indulgence, the palate be- comes vitiated, the taste is spoiled. The pure spi- ritual taste, which makes self-denial and prayer sweet to them, loses its purity, and the world's excitement, pleasure, vanity, flattery, incense, and the like become sweet ; and as these things become sweet, the facility of prayer and self-denial is lost, and they become difficult. A repugnance to them grows up ; they are done with effort ; they are postponed ; they are limited ; they are re- stricted ; they are reduced to a minimum ; and finally the fervour of the soul is lost. What then is fervour? It does not mean emotion. Fervour consists in these three things: regularity, punctuality, and exactness — that is, doing our duty to God by rule ; doing it punctually at the right time; and exactly, that is, as perfectly as we can. But if we have been indulging venial sins of any sort or kind, we begin to do our duty towards God in a slovenly way ; we neglect the right time ; we do it irregularly ; we put God off with an imperfect service. Those venial sins are like the dust settling upon the perfect machine of which I spoke. As the dust accumulates upon the timepiece, the motion of VENIAL SIN. 77 the timepiece becomes slower; and as it becomes sluggish it loses its perfection. So again, as I said, mortal sin is the death of the soul, but venial sin is the disease of the soul. Those who willingly allow themselves to fall into such infirmities and imper- fections, which are not yet mortal, are like men who are making bad blood — men in whom morbid hum- ours are accumulating : a lingcinng malady is upon them, through ill-using the vigour of their life. This is the first effect. 2. We are always receiving sufficient grace from Almighty God, who, in His infinite mercy, * maketh His sun to rise upon the evil and the good, who send- ethHis rain upon the just and the unjust.'^ There is a perpetual flood, and inundation of the grace of God, coming down upon the whole race of mankind ; but most especially upon those who are in the light of His faith, and in tho unity of His fold. Well, the effect of these venial sins — these personal faults, these be- setting infirmities — I will not again go into a detailed account, you must individually examine your hearts, and make application — the effect of these sins is to hinder the reception of grace, to shut grace out. The Apostle says, * We are not straite ed in Hf.m , we are straitened in ourselves.'^ If our hearts were » S. Matt. V. 45. • 2 Cor. vi. 12. .'■ \ i^ • I s liiJ.:fl M i in ' m. ■ >\ ;' ' !« ■ il |ri r M : i f: hi: iM 78 VENIAL SIN. as large as His hand, we should be filled with His grace; but our hearts are narrow. The hands of Almighty God, which are infinite, are perpetually pouring out grace upon us. It is like the rain that comes down upon the sand of the shore, or upon a hungry sea, or upon the stony mountains. There are two kinds of grace we are continually receiving : the one is the grace in the Sacraments ; the other, the grace out of the Sacraments. The grace in the Sacraments is of two kinds. Every Sacrament has what is called the grace of the Sacra- ment, and also the sacramental grace. These words seem very much alike, but the things are very dis- tinct. In baptism the grace of the Sacrament is the gift of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the soul, by which we are made children of God : * the grace ol;' adoption, whereby we can cry Abba (Father).'^ The sacramental grace is the grace of the Holy Spirit ac- companying that chief grace, whereby we are enabled to fulfil all the duties that belong to the children or to the sons of God. This is the meaning of S. John, when he says, * To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to be made the sons of God.'^ That is, every baptised person has grace from the time of his baptism to fulfil every duty of the love of God ' Eom. viii. 15. 8 S. John i. 12. VENIAL SIN. 79 and of his neighbour, every duty of piety towards God, every duty of obedience ; so that at no time in his life — childhood, boyhood, youth, or manhood — will he ever fail of doing his duty towards God from any lack or denial of grace on God's part. But those who, having received the grace of baptism, as I have said, in this twofold sense, begin from early childhood with all manner of little faults, and grow up to boyhood and youth with faults growing stronger and stronger, and more and more in number, yet perhaps not ar- riving at sin unto death, — such men are continually choking, stifling, keeping down the working of grace within them. So again in the Sacrament of Penance. Those who have come to the Sacrament of Penance in mortal sin, and therefore without the love of God, and unable to bring with them any soirow whatso- ever, except the sorrow of fear and hope, receive in the Sacrament the grace of Charity, that is, the love of God is restored to them. Afterwards they are able to make the acts of contrition, perfect in kind though not perfect in degree, and fulfil all the duties of a penitent ; but if they begin to return to their venial sins, to give way to their infirmities, impetuosities, and temptations, in the manifold kinds I have de- scribed, the spirit cf penance, contrition, and hu- mility is hindered and lasts but a little time. ' J" It 'v t M iit^ I i' * .i^li^l 1 .iM. II.': ■ ill I'illl I''!' ■' III! I 80 VENIAL SIN. Once more. Perhaps one of the most wonderful phenomena of the spiritual life is this : that whereas one Communion worthily made, in which we receive the Precious Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, is enough to make us tabernacles of the Holy Ghost and saints ; there are those who go to Holy Commu- nion every week, and perhaps every day, and, to our shame, there are priests of God who every day offer the Holy Sacrifice, and receive the Precious Body and Blood 01 our Lord, and yet are not saints. It is a miracle of our insensibility and earthliness that we should be what we are, and yet be daily holding in our hands the Holy Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Why is all this ? The grace of that Sacrament is the Presence of our Lord — the sacra- mental grace is the abundance of the outpouring of His Spirit, which accompanies the Holy Sacrament as the rays of the sun go with the sun. Where the sun is, the splendour of his presence is besides ; and if our hearts were not narrow and cold, and choked by a multitude of faults and infirmities, we should be so filled by one Communion that we should be elevated from the low level on which we are to a life that is far above us. Next, there are the graces out of the Sacrament. There are lights by which God makes the soul to VENIAL SIN. 81 know His truth, and by which He draws the soul to His presence. We read in Holy Scripture: *When Thou Last said, Seek ye My face ; my heart said, Thy face. Lord, will I seek."^ Such is our answer ; but it is a ray of light from Him. It is a ray of the light of Divine truth and of the Divine grace, which speaks to the intellect and the conscience. If we would open our intellect with sincei'ity to receive the light of truth, and our conscience to receive the attraction of Divine grace, it would fill and illumi- nate us; but by faults of self-indulgence, worldliness, fear of man, and human respect, we bring a film over our eyes, and the inward eye of the intellect and conscience at last loses its faculty of discern- ment. Its sight is confused, like men who have what is called colour-blindness. They cannot dis- tinguish colours, they put red for green, and grcvn for ]'cd ; and so some people ' put light for darkness and darkness for light, and sweet for bitter and bit- ter for sweet,' as the Prophet says; that is, confusii^g together the grace of God and the inspirations of nature. We all are between two attractions; there is the attraction of God, and the attraction of the world ; and without breaking with God, there are multitudes who are living under the play and inHu- » Ps. xxvi. 8. :i ,H il I \i'\ il m II 82 VENIAL SIN. ence of the world. They would not break with God for anything that could be offered, even for the world and all contained therein; nevertheless they would not break with the world, and they try to do that im- possible thing — that is, to ' serve God and Mammon.' Thus thev are in the condition of which our Lord speaks when He says : * Behold, thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou were cold or hot ; but because thou art neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm, I will cast thee out of My mouth. '^^ 3. Thirdly, another consequence of venial sins is that they dispose the soul for mortal sin. Just as ailments and slight sicknesses are the forerunners which pull down the strength and render men sus- ceptible of greater diseases, so lesser sins prepare the way for greater. It is like, I may say, the heap- ing up fuel. Let me take as an example what we call a smouldering temper. People who are irascible and tempted to anger, though for a long time they fight against it, afterwards begin to indulge it, and to allow the smouldering temper to go on like a charred beam in a house which may smoulder for months be- fore the fire breaks out. Some day there comes an occasion when a temptation meets that smouldering temper, like letting air in on the burning beam ; and 10 Apoc. iii. 15. "^ VENIAL SIN. 83 the whole soul is in a blaze, and malice, or hatred, or resentment, or revenge breaks out into activity. Again, there are such things as pattering lies, little insincerities, slight swervings from truth. The world is full and the atmosphere of the world is thick with those insincerities. They may not be unto death, they may be venial, they may be little lies of courtesy, little falsehoods of excuse ; but the day comes when this perverse habit of not speaking the exact truth has so confirmed itself upon the tongue and upon the will, that upon an occasion in which a man would have cut off his right hand rather than have told a lie he will tell a lie boldly and will stand to it. He has been long laying up the fuel for this sin. Once more — but this is an example which I postpone, because I shall have to speak of the subject more fully — little negligences and omissions prepare the way at last for the mortal sin of sloth. More than this, these venial sins have the effect of giving a perverse inclination to the will. If in winter time the rain descends upon the unfinished wall of a house, soaking through to its very core, and if then there come a frost, the frost makes the wall swell and it loses its perpendicular. The win- ter has been a still winter, and the snow has fallen and the wind has not risen. At last comes the win- $ Siiil m !' i ■■I i; ih m h ,;:ill.' 'I ^1 u 84 VENIAL SIN. try wind, and as the Prophet says : * The breach in the wall fallctli suddenly when no man looketh for it.'^^ The will which was once united with God, and converted to God, has begun gradually to avert itself from God. There is no such thing as an equilibrium between God and sin; that cannot be; and when the will loses its union with God, it immediately inclines itself towards sin. There is a thought which is indeed terrific, and ought to alarm every one of us, who are conscious as we are of committing venial sins with such facility. S. Theresa said : ' If I were to commit venial sin, I feel as if I should die ; and that because every sin we commit, we commit in God.' It is in God ; for in Him we live, and move, and are ; by Him we are sustained ; our very being is supported by His being; the very power we abuse, when we transgress His law, is power He has lent to us, as the Prophet says : ' You made Me to serve with your sins, and wearied Me with your iniquities. '^^ That is, God is physic- ally united with us, even in the very actions we do against Him. We use the powers of nature against the will of God in His grace. Therefore it is that these venial sins, as they are called, are in themselves great, as you will see hereafter ; and ihey »» Isa. XXX. 13. 12 lb. xliii. 24. VENIAL SIN. 85 dispose the soul towards greater sin for tliis reason, that they keep np the trade of sinning, they blunt the conscience, they bring on insensibility, they cloud the presence of God, they familiarise us with abusing the power which God has given us, against Himself. 4. Then, fourthly, such sins displease God ; and can any sin be small which displeases God ? When we walk about at noonday, we walk about in the full splendour of the noonday light — we are bathed in it, encompassed by it — we cannot escape from it, go where we may — if we go on the north side of a wall the light is still there. So it is with the presence of God. All our deeds, words, and thoughts are in the presence of God ; in the light of the rays of the Divine holiness, justice, truth, mercy, which inundate the soul as the light of the noonday inundates the world. Everything we do, we do before Him, of whom S. John says : * His eyes are like a flame of fire.'^'^ We displease God, then, as our Father and as our Maker. We knowingly displease Him by ungrateful and unfilial disobedience. It is as if the Prodigal after his return home, and after being reinvested with the * first robe, and the ring on his hand, shoes on his feet,' and after receiving the ' kiss of peace,' had again begun, and with his eyes open, to murmur and " Apoc. i. 14. [ii'i ■4 I I"- .1.: 'r; 4$i n m M > i m \ Hi;!:''- r.ii' ! 86 VENIAL SIN. complain at his father's will. We displease also our Divine Kedeemer who died for us, our Divine Friend, and we displease Him by mean, treacherous, tricky, and hateful violations of the duties of friendship. And, thirdly, we displease and grieve the Holy Ghost ; ay, we grieve the Holy Ghost by things which we think splendid, noble, laudable, admirable. I will give you some examples. In society, a man is thought dull and stupid who cannot talk about his neighbour, and satirically describe, and make others laugh at his humorous descriptions of the failings and faults, and sometimes of the sins, of those that are known to him. A man that is simple in his conversation and bridles his tongue is a dull com- panion. He chills society. They are the most popular in society who have no bridle in their mouth, who will say anything, criticise anybody, ridicule all things, dress up and satirise every person, every event, and every scandal of the day. These are the entertaining men in society ; these are the men that make their way. I should like to know, when they go home at night, how many sins of the tongue have been written down in the book of God's remembrance; and I should like to know how many sins of listening to that detraction, and encouraging it by curiosity and laughter, have been written down also in the VENIAL SIN. 87 page of remembrance for those who heard it. Take another example — those who go into the world, dressed out in the vanity and folly and ostentation of what is called * fashion.' I wonder by what name it will be known in the Last Judgment. * Fashion' is a word in the mouths of men and women — have the Holy Angels got any equivalent word, and will 'fashion' be written down in the book of God's remembrance? What will it be called? "Vanity, wilful tempting of others, vainglory, luxury, self- exhibition, ay, and that often to the peril and danger of those who look on. You have seen what looks like bloom upon the fruit. It is not bloom but blight. This blight upon the social characters of those who please the world is thought to be a perfection : but if you take a microscope, and if you look at that false bloom, you will see that it is alive. It is a vile blight, it is an animal disease eating the fruit ; and if the microscope is powerful enough, and the light is clear enough, you will see the miserable parasites mov- ing in all their repulsive reality. What, I ask, are these venial sins of vanity, of pride, of detraction, and others which I will not specify — what are they ? I will call them by their true name — the vermin of the human soul. They are the worms of death — the worms that will feed on the body are but typical of I >i iWli ^%.^^> IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) k // /. ^ :/. 1.0 I.I l^|2£ 125 140 11:25 HI 1.4 12.0 1.6 Photographic Sciences Corporation Ui WIST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. MStO (716)«72-4S03 iV ^ ^ 37 <^ ^4^0 6^ > 88 VENIAL SIN. m m the vermin on the human soul; and in the light of God's presence they are seen at this moment, as the blight on the fruit through the lens, and so they will he seen by us in all their deformity in the light of the Day of Judgment. 6. Lastly, there is one other effect of venial sin, of which I will speak. Just as p> small ailment may ba- come a mortal sickness, so a venial sin may become a mortal sin, and that with great facility. Not that any number of venial sins, if they be heaped together, would make a mortal sin ; because, as I have shown you from the first, mortal sins consist in their malice, and venial sins are without this deliberate malice ; but they may put off their character and stature of venial sins, and they may put on the character and rise to the stature of deadly sins. This they do in five ways. First of all, a venial sin may be committed with the intention of covering or accomplishing some mortal sin, and then it is mortal too. Or secondly, it may be committed with a consciousness that it will certainly lead to a mortal sin, and yet nevertheless is persevered in. Or thirdly, it may be done with a knowledge of God's prohibition, with an open-eyed consciousness, and out of contempt of just authority. Or fourthly, it may be so publicly and notoriously done, as to give scandal to others, VENIAL SIN. 89 and to encourage and invite tliem to commit grave sin. Or lastly, it may be done in the proximate peril of falling into mortal sin, and that with our eyes open ; and thus to expose ourselves to mortal sin is mortal in itself. Now to give an example of what I mean. Suppose a man to tell a lie in a very light matter — some little deceit. He is asked, * Is such a one in this place ?' He answers, * No ;' because he intends thereby to cover and to commit a mortal sin. The two sins then become one. Or if I take a book — some book of levity which may not in itself be positively wrong — I begin to read it on a Sunday morning, and I am determined I will finish it ; and I know that in half-an-hour it is my duty to go to Holy Mass. I am bound under the strictest obedience, under mortal sin, to obey the precept of the Church, and neverthe- less I go on reading, indulging myself, disregarding my duty, until at last I turn my back on our Divine Lord. Or let me suppose that I am reading a book, and as I read on I become conscious that the matter of it is contrary to the revelation or the holiness of God. Now the world is full of books that are written against Cliristianity. There are the criticisms of rationalists, and the scofl's of false science. Do not misunderstand me. All true science comes from God. We have no fear of science in all its perfection ; r TP m in 90 VENIAL SIN. but there is a science, falsely so called, which is a stupidity. A science which is contrary to the revela- tion of God is not science. Suppose, then, I have a book in my hand, with some unbelieving criticisms, or rationalistic interpretations, or arguments against revelation, or some misapplications of science with false data, to prove that the world was not created, or is eternal, and the like. I come gradually upon this matter ; and if I act upon my faith and conscience, I should put that book down. I know that whatever is contrary to the revelation of God may destroy my faith ; but if I go on curiously reading it, without call of duty, with the light of God and His revelation shin- ing in judgment on the page of the book, I am tempt- ing God. And I will further suppose that stand- ing by me are some who look up to me as an ex- ample, as children look up to their fathers and mothers, or younger brothers and sisters to their elder. They see me poring over that book, and I go on doing so in their sight ; will they not do the same when I have left the room ? and have I not set them the example, for the consequences of which I shall have to answer at the day of Judg- ment ? Or lastly, suppose I know perfectly well the book I am reading will turn up in two or three pages some abomination, such as are profusely written — VENIAL SIN. 91 III! not, I thank God, so much in this country as in a country not far off, and yet profusely imported into this. I grieve to know that on the tables in families and homes, where the Name of God is honoured, there lie books which ought to be burned, ay, and burned with the marks of public infamy ; not burned simply that they may disappear in smoke, but that they may be gibbeted and condemned by the detestation of all pure-minded men and women. If I have one of those in my hand, and know if I read on I shall meet these abominations face to face, and yet continue to read, I am exposing myself to a danger of mortal sin. My mind may h stained by the abomination of that book; and as a man that touches a leper may be infected, and may never be healed, if I make my mind leprous, the scales of that leprosy may never be cleansed away. That which begins as a venial sin may easily end in mortal. There are two other examples I would fain give if time would permit me. The one is theatres. I do not deny that theatres may be inno- cent — that to go to a theatre may be lawful. I have been often asked, during the long years of my duty in directing souls, whether it is lawful to go to a theatre. My answer has been always, If the repre- sentation is not bad in iisclf, I cannot forbid you. . f m VENIAL SIN. If you ask me what I atlvise, I say without hesita- tion, Do not go. I cannot hiy it upon you as a pro- hibition. This, I know, will sound rigorous; never- theless it is the better choice, it is the more excellent way. I do not say it is the way of obligation. The Apostle says, ' All things to me are lawful, but all things are not expedient :'^^ therefore I distinguish and say : Those things which are lawful I cannot for- bid ; but those things, though not forbidden, I coun- sel you with all my heart to renounce. As to thea- tres, there may be indeed innocent representations ; but I ask your own consciences, look over the repre- sentations which in a country, as I say, not far off, during this last winter have been described to us by eye-witnesses. No man who has a pure heart, no man whose face is susceptible of the noblest and manliest suffusion, of a blush, could, if he remember himself, set his foot in any theatre where such a representation is to be seen — I will not say no wo- man ; I leavf that to yourselves. As to our own theatres, I thank God it is not often they are openly and publicly stained. Such things happen sometimes. Such scandals are imported among us : it is not only English dramas that are presented to us. I leave the whole of this to your own consciences, saying " 1 Cor vi. 12. VENIAL SIN. 93 only, that I would toGod that those who can refrain from such things, as an offering to our Divine Re- deemer, would refrain for ever. When people say, * It does me no harm,* I say to myself, * You do not know what harm it does you. You are not conscious how much has heen taken off from the bloom of your mind, or from the clear purity of your eye and heart, by what you have seen, heard, and been conscious of, even though it has neither met the ear nor the eye.' One more example. If there is anything in the world which causes deterioration of character, mani- fold temptation, obscuration of mind, darkening and tainting of heart, it is dangerous friendships. The friends we choose — friends that are pleasant to us or flatter us, whose heart within, though known to God, is not suspected by men, and yet perhaps known to us — maybe a world of temptation. Choose your friends from among the friends of God. Be not united with any that are separated from Him ; for they will breathe into your ear, while you are unconscious, that which will pervade your whole spiritual being. All the dangerous temptations that you are likely to be exposed to — books, theatres, and the like — are as nothing compared to a dangerous friendship. I will now simply sum up what I have said. ■ri 'H' •i m IP "m i II 94 VENIAL SIN. The consequences of venial sins are, first of alJ, diminution of grace, the hinderance of the reception and operation of grace, the predisposing of the soul to mortal sin, the displeasing of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the unspeakable facility with which those venial sins may pass into mortal. In the commencement I said I hoped to satisfy you before I finished that venial sins are not small sins. Not many words are necessary. No sin can be small which is a great offence against a great God — against a great majesty, a great authority, a great purity, a great justice, a great truth. No sins can be small which can only be cleansed away in the Precious Blood of the Incarnate Son of God. No ; not the least venial sin that was ever committed can be absolved but through the Precious Blood which was shed upon the Cross. Little sins ! God have mercy on those who talk this language ! Once more. The least venial sin grieves the Holy Ghost. Can any sin be small which grieves the Spirit of God, of whom it is said, * All sin and blasphemy shall be for- given unto men, save only the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost' ? Lastly, the venial sins we so easily commit will detain us from the Vision of God after death, we know not how long. Though they do not, like mortal sin, separate us from the Vision VENIAL SIN. 95 of God to all eternity, they will, we know not how lonjy, separate us until every pain has been borne, and every sin has been expiated. My last word, dear brethren, shall be very prac- tical. Disorderly minds — that is, minds that live without rule, minds that have no order in their life — are always in danger of venial sins, and there- fore of mortal — always walking on the brink of the precipice, always on the very verge, always putting their foot into the net. Now I will give you one easy rule of practice. Every day of your life place your- selves, as I have said, under that noonday sun of God's perfections, and pray to God the Holy Ghost to illuminate your hearts with such a knowledge of God and of yourselves, that, in the light of His per- fection, you may see the least deviation of your thoughts, words, and deeds from His holy will. There was a time when you — every one of you — were white as snow, in your baptismal innocence you were spotless ; you had not then a stain ! The Precious Blood had cleansed away original sin, and as yet you had not contracted mortal sin, and perhaps in your childhood few venial sins. In the sight of the Judge, in the sight of your Redeemer, what are you now ? What spots, what stains dark as night and red as scarlet! How is all that beauty and whiteness .1 ;■■ »! I ■' Ur 96 VENIAL SIN. M 1 1 destroyed by ill habits, not of mortal sin — remem- ber, I am not speaking of that now — by tempers, jealousies, envy, sloth, Tieglect of God, self-indulgence ! The examples I have given are sufficient — sins of the tongue, sins of personal ostentation, sins of reading, sins of worldly pleasure, sins of dangerous friend- ship. What are you now? Where is the white robe of your baptism ? Unless a life of penance, self-denial, generous sorrow shall cleanse away those stains in this life, there remains but one way in which those spots can be cleansed. Hear the Word of God: * Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid; which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, every man's work shall be made manifest ; for the day shall declare it, be- cause it shall be revealed by fire ; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss' (therefore those words are spoken not of mortal sinners, those words are altogether spoken of those who have upon them only venial sins) ; ' but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by firc.'^^ »5 1 Cor. iii. 11-15. IV. SINS OF OMISSION. ■M I t ¥ iiti SINS OF OMISSION. Who can understand sins? From my •• crel sins cleanse me, God. Psalm viii. 13. f^ p: Tf, as we have seen, the knowledge of the intellect and the consent of the will bo necessary to constitute a sin, how can there he secret Fins — how can there be sins which we do not know ? FLi-st, because we may have committed what we have aftorwards for- gotten, which thus becomes secret to us, but is yet recorded in the book of God's remembrance. Next, we may only half understand the sinfulness of that which we do, and one-half of our guilt is secret from us. Again, through a culpable ignorance of our- selves, we do not know how often we offend God. We read in Holy Scripture these words, which at first sight are most alarming: * There are wise men, and there are just roen, and their work is in the hand of God ; yet no man knoweth whether he be worthy of love or hatred.'^ That is, even the just > Eccles. ix. 1. 'I I i! ii I i'ii ■m^ 100 SINS OF OMISSION. man, even the wise man, even the man that does many works which are remembered before God, even he cannot know with a perfect consciousness whether in the sight of God he be an object of love or an object of hatred; and that because in the light of the presence of God sins which are perfectly invisi- ble to us — sins of thought, word, and deed which, in the twilight of our conscience, in the confusion of our soul — are secret to us, are visible to God. They who know this best can only have the confidence of hope that their sins before God are forgiven. They have no revelation of it, and therefore they cannot know it with a Divine certainty ; and that which we do not know with a Divine certainty, we can only know by a trust of confidence and hope springing from the promises of God, and the consciousness of our own soul. This must be manifest to every one who at all knows himself. He knows that the leaves which fall from the trees in autumn are not more in multitude than the words we scatter every day ; that the lights of the sun, glancing to and fro all the day long, are not more multitudinous than the thoughts perpetually rising in our hearts ; that the motion of the sea, or the restlessness of the air, is not more continuous than the working of our ima- gination, our heart, our afiections, our passions ; and ^^ SINS OF OMISSION. 101 in this mystery, this confusion of our being, who is there that will venture to say that the good pre- dominates over the evil, the light over the darkness, and that in the sight of God he is an object of love rather than of hatred ? Now I have felt that our sub- jects hitherto have been of a severe kind, and the subject that we have now will not be less so ; but hereafter I hope we shall be able to pass on to the grace and the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the consolations for which all that I have said is but the preparation. We are approaching to our Easter joys; that is, to the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ and to the perfect absolution of sin, which He has laid up for all those who are penitent. Let me, then, take up and complete this last part of what I have said. We have already seen the nature of sins of com- mission. They are either the mortal sins, which separate the soul from God in this life, and, if not repented of, in the life to come ; or they are the venial sins, which are the disease though they are not the death of the soul; and these are the greatest evils, next after mortal sin, that the heart of man can conceive. They are the preludes of mortal sin in many, and are punished by detention from the vision of God, both in this world and in the world to come. i! ■■ • ! ii I ■^■ !l^ I IH- '^11 ^^1 mi. 102 SINS OF OMISSION. This, then, was the first part of our subject ; the last part will be sins of omission. The first was, the sin of doing evil ; the last, the sin of leaving good undone. Now let me suppose that which is intellec- tually conceivable, though it has never existed ; let me suppose a soul created in the likeness of God, and committing no sin, but bearing no fruit. This is precisely the state described in the parable of the barren fig-tree. The tree was alive, the root strong and in the ground, the branches were covered with leaves; but when, year after year, the fruit was sought, none was to be found. This is a parable and description of a soul, alive indeed, but not fulfilling the end of its creation. And for what end was the soul created ? To know, to love, to serve, to wor- ship, and to be made like to God ; and a soul that does not fulfil the end of its creation, that does not know and love and serve and worship God, and is not likened and assimilated to God its Maker and its Original — that soul not fulfilling the end of its creation would therefore be in a state of condem- nation, and the words of the parable would be true and just : 'Cut it down. Why cumbereth it the ground ?'^ We are bound by three obligations to glorify God 2 S. Luke xiii. 7. SINS OF OMISSION. 103 by fulfilling the end of our creation. First, by the law of our creation itself. We were created to glorify Him by a life of obedience as much as the earth was created to bear fruit, and the firmament to give light. If the firmament were turned into darkness, and the earth into desolation, it would not fulfil the end for which it was made ; and so, too, with the soul that does not glorify God. Again, we are bound to glo- rify God by a direct commandment, and that direct commandment is written in the Decalogue and in the two precepts of charity : * Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul, with thy whole mind, with thy whole strength, and thy neighbour as thyself.'^ And we are bound to fulfil these two precepts of charity under pain of eternal death. There is also a third obligation — not indeed binding under pain of eternal death, a law of which I shall speak hereafter — and that is the law of liberty — the law of love, of gratitude, and of generous freedom, which is written by the Holy Ghost on the heart of all those who, being born again in Baptism, are united to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by the bond of charity. Sins of omission are against either the law of our crea- tion, or the law of the two precepts of charity, or « S. Matt. xxii. 37, 39. m 104 SINS OF OMISSION. ■■}'' ' ! against the law of liberty. If we leave undone the good or the duties to which we are bound by those obligations, we commit sins of omission. I have already shown how sins that are venial lead to sins that are mortal, so I will now show how sins of omission lead on to sins of commission. They are the beaten pathway which leads to actual sins. Now sins of omission, or the leaving duty undone, may indeed arise from any one of the seven capital sins : and then it is also a sin of commission. A son may omit his duty to his father through anger. The sin of anger adds a sin of commission. So I might take examples from the others ; but I will select one only, and that because it has the greatest affinity to sins of omission ; I mean the sin of sloth. "We understand at once that pride, anger, jeal- ousy, and the like, may be mortal sins, because we can understand their intrinsic hatefulness and guilt; but sometimes men say, * How can a sin of sloth be mor- tal?' We must therefore distinguish. The sin of slothfulness is not mortal except under certain cir- cumstances ; but a state of sloth and a habit of sloth is certainly a mortal sin. We must therefore distin- guish between slothfulness and sloth. Slothfulness is the habit or state of the soul, tending towards the last mortal state of sloth, which I will describe hereafter. SINS OP OMISSION. 105 Let us take this as our example, and I will show how this slothfulness leads to sins of omission, and how these sins of omission lead to sins of com- mission, and how these sins of commission at last terminate in the mortal sin of sloth. 1. Suppose, then, some Christian, who is in the state of grace and communion with God, living in charity, in the love of God and the love of his neigh- hour — that is, leading a good and pious life. One of the chief duties which he will punctually and care- fully fulfil is the duty of prayer. You will remem- ber in the Book of Acts, when Saul the persecutor was converted by a special miracle, the sign given of his conversion was this : ' Behold, he prayeth.'* Prayer is the breath of the soul. Just as breathing is the sign of life, prayer is the sign of the life of the soul. Prayer means the union of the soul with God, the converse of the soul with God, the soul speaking with God, * ascending to God,' as S. Augustine says, * by thought,' that is, in meditation ; * by the afiec- tions,' that is, in worship ; and ' by the will,' that is, making resolutions of obedience. Every day, a man who is a Christian, and living in a state of grace, will pray to Almighty God not only morning and night, but at other times in the day. Prayer will be * Acts ix. 11. f I :!l|| ' l! 106 SINS OF OMISSION. his habit. Now what is the effect of sins of omis- sion in respect of prayer? Let me suppose that business, professions, pleasure, worldly distractions, begin to break the habit of prayer. Perhaps at first a man only shortens his prayers ; or he does not even shorten them, he says them more hastily. He says them materially as before, but not mentally, for his heart is somewhere else. He is in haste, and though he repeats literally his usual prayers, his heart is far off: or at least he ceases to pray with the same sweetness and goodwill and fixedness and recol- lection. Here is an example of a sin of omission which is very common. I do not take the example of a man giving up his prayers — that stands to reason — but even if he begins to omit the fervour and recol- lection with which he says his prayers, what does it lead on to ? A certain wandering of the mind, a multiplicity of thoughts, which crowd upon him ; the associations, which glance off, as it were, from every angle of his memory and of his intellect. His mind is full of colours cast in from the world even while kneeling before God. Little by little his mind gets the habit of wandering, and then he begins to com- plain that he cannot pray. When he kneels down, his heart is in his horae o^ business, or in the pleasures of last night, or in the amusements of to-morrow. i\\ SINS OF OMISSION. 107 He is, as we say, in the state of distraction or of dis- sipation ; his mind is scattered, he has lost his recol- lection. What is the next step ? He begins to talk much, to scatter his words without consideration. A man of prayer has a habit of weighing, of measuring his words. As he has the habit of prayer, so he will have the habit of silence ; he will be what we call an interior man. His mind will be turned in on itself. He will not be a chatterer; but men who begin to lose their habit of recollection before God become chatterers among men. Solitude becomes irksome ; to be alone is torment ; to be silent is a pain — he must be always speaking. An uneasiness of being alone with themselves makes such men seek for society ; and a desire to get rid of uneasy recollections makes them continually talk: and in this way they commit a multitude of faults by their tongue. But for every idle word that men shall speak, they shall account in the Day of Judg- ment.^ Well, there is worse than this. S. Paul of the Cross used to say to those about him, * Stay at home ; stay at home.* When they asked, * What do you mean ? Am I never to go out of my house ?' he would answer them, * Stay in the solitude of your own heart before God, and keep three lamps always » S. Matt. xii. 36. -i!*:'. , -i I' ■■'Ul F 108 SINS OF OMISSION. ft ' ' l! ,il:r 'ill ■ I ! i M ! ■ i. burning before the altar — faith, hope, and charity— before the presence of God in your heart.' Now the man I have been describing began, perhaps, with thoughtfulness ; but little by little the dissipation of his thoughts and the constant talk of his lips have made him to be, as we say, * all abroad.' He is not * at home ;' he is not dwelling with God ; the three lamps grow dim ; faith, hope, and charity burn low. This is just the state that our Divine Lord has de- scribed, when He says : * Any man putting his hand to the plough and looking back, is not fit for the kingdom of God. '^ He does not say that he will never be saved, because he may turn back and steadily follow out the furrow to the end ; but so long as he has his face averted from God, all the activity of his mind and being is turned from God to creatures. 2. This is the first effect of a sin of omission ; the next is that it produces a kind of sluggishness in everything that he does. Outwardly, perhaps, the actions of his life are to the eye of his neighbours just the same as they were before ; but to the eye of God, a change has passed upon him. The eye of God, to whom all things are open, sees that the inward state of that man is not what it was. There is a certain sluggishness which no human « S. Luke ix. 62. SINS OF OMISSION. 109 eye can detect, but God sees it in everything that he does. I have said before, that fervour consists in doing our duty with great exactness. He begins to do his duties with a certain carelessness, so thac the motives from which he acts, and the manner in which he does even things that are good, are not what they were. Just as a man who writes in haste, or who draws in haste, will not complete any figure or any letter with exactness, so it is with the man who begins to lose his fervour. Then he begins to be unpunctual. He puts off his prayers in the morning; he forgets them till noonday, and perhaps at noonday he says only half of them ; and at night he says them with an uneasy conscience. Perhaps the next day it is the same, or even worse. Unpunctuality begins to run through all his secret duties before God. Then comes irregularity. That is to say, he used to live by rule, he used to take the will of God as his will, and try to conform him- self to it as well as he could ; but now he lives by the rules of the world, the customs of men, and I may say, at haphazard and at random. The next step is this : he begins openly to leave duties undone. To take one example: every one who is in a state of grace has the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. Now these seven gifts are : Wisdom, P( ii f i;i ::!■!!' r^ii'fiii r I.! i 1 110 SINS OP OMISSION. Understanding, Counsel, Knowledge, Piety, Forti- tude, and the Fear of the Lord. Four of these per- fect the intellect, and three of them perfect the will ; but a man in this state of sluggishness ceases to act according to the light and direction of these gifts of the Holy Spirit of God. These seven gifts have been described as the sails of a ship ; the more we spread them the more we speed the soul ; and the more we speed the soul the more we are carried onwards in the way of salvation. Those who neg- lect those gifts, or by sins of omission do not make use of them, leave the sails reefed or furled; and their course in the way of eternal life is retarded. Again, there are in every one of us the graces of faith, hope, and charity. In your prayer-books you are bid to make the acts of these three virtues. But what do acts mean ? They are inward actions of the soul towards God, whereby we exert the grace of faith, or the grace of hope, or the grace of charity in union with God. But these soon lose their power in a man who has ceased to pray. Next comes neg- lect of the manifold duties of charity towards our neighbour. What was the sin of the Priest and of the Levite when each of them saw the wounded man in the road between Jerusalem and Jericho ? The priest came that way, and looked upon him, and f SINS OF OMISSION. Ill passed by. The Levite came, aud saw liim, and passed on. They committed a sin of omission, in respect to the charity they owed to their neighbour. What was the sin of Dives, at whose door Lazarus lay full of sores ? We do not read that he refused to help him — we certainly do not read that he drove him away from his house — but he gave him no help. It was a sin of omission. Our Lord says that at the Last Day He will say : * I was hungry, and ye gave Me no meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink ; I was naked, and ye clothed Me not.'^ He will not say : * I asked you, and you refused Me ;' but, * Ye did not seek Me out ;' which again is a sin of omission. Lastly comes the sin of omission of love towards God. We are bound to love God with our whole heart and our whole mind ; and the man who commits sins of omission in charity towards his neighbour fails also in charity towards God, for * he that loveth not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love God whom he seeth not ?'* The state of such a soul is thus described in the parable :* the servant who had received a pound took and buried it, and another who had received a talent wrapped it in a napkin. When the lord came, they both restored that which they had received undiminished; but it was not ' S. Matt. zsv. 35. • 1 S. John iv. 20. » S. Luke xix. 20. I m I I I t ■; fll i :' 1: 112 SINS OP OMISSION. increased — and why? Because they were guilty of a sin of omission. They had not used that trust which was committed to their stewardship ; and the excuse given was this : * I knew that thou wert an austere man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strewed.' That is to say, when he had begun to lose his love to his Master, he lost his confidence in his Master's love. He began to distrust the love of God, because he knew that he was wanting in love towards Him. So that the sin of omission at last threatens the life of the soul : for the life of the soul is charity. 3. Then, thirdly, from these sins of slothfulness comes a certain animosity against those who love God. Just as the soul turns away from God, in that pro- portion it has an animosity against those who con- tinue to persevere in the love of God ; so much so, that the very sight of any one who is fervent in the love of God becomes an eye-sore. We know — and you, I have no doubt, know by your own experience — that we can tolerate anybody as a companion who is less pious than we are, but we cannot easily tolerate any- body who is more pious. Any one who prays more, or any one who makes more of his duties towards God and his neighbour : any one who is more just or more holy is a constant reproof and rebnke to us. SINS OF OMISSION. 113 We are ill at ease in his presence ; but anybody who is lower than ourselves we can tolerate easily. He is neither a reproof nor a rebuke ; on the contrary we think we can teach him, and we are soothed by thinking that we can set him an example. There is nothing galling or painful in the companionship of those who are lower than ourselves in the spiritual life ; but those who are above us, unless we are humble, make us restless. One sign of those who are declining from God is this : they do not like to see people go so often to Communion ; they get impatient at hearing of their going so often to confession ; or if they know that they often visit the Blessed Saerament, or that they spend a long time in their room in prayer, all this makes them uneasy. Finally, even the grace of God which they see in others becomes to them a trial. If thev see people more zealous than they are, more fer- vent, more self-denying, more prosperous in working for God — in saving souls, in doing works of charity, or in labours of spiritual mercy — even that very spiritual prosperity of their neighbour makes them to fret. They are conscious that they are not like them, and that consciousness is painful. If you look for an example out of Holy Scripture I will give you two. When the Prodigal Son came home, and the I:,, I ■il 114 SINS OF OMISSIo:*. i;ii ir\: h ''f f ill, '^h father forgave bim, and gave him shoes on his feet, and the first robe,^^ and made the festival of joy, the elder brother, when he heard the music, refused to come in. He was jealous and angry. When our Divine Lord sat in the house of Simon the Pharisee, and poor Mary Magdalen, with all her sins upon her, burst into the midst of that banquet, and washed the feet of our Lord with her tears, and anointed them and kissed them, Simon the Pharisee said to himself: * This man if he were a prophet would know who and what manner of woman this is, for she is a sinner.' Our Lord said : * Simon, I have somewhat to say to thee. I entered into thy house ; thou gavest Me no water for My feet : this woman since I came in hath washed My feet with her tears. My head with oil thou didst not anoint; but she hath anointed My feet with ointment. Thou gavest Me no kiss ; she, since I came in, kissed My feet.'^^ In the heart of that Pharisee, upright as no doubt he was, and pure from the sins which stained poor Mary Magdalen, there was a lack of charity before God, a pride, and censoriousness which was rebuked by the grace of penance in that poor, fallen woman. 4. A fourth effect of the sins of omission and of this decline of the soul is despondency, which is akin »• S. Luke XV. 22. " lb. vii. 37, 46. SINS OF OMISSION. 115 to despair. A consciousness of sin lias tlie effect of depressing the soul, and, unless it soften it, of mak- ing it to doubt its own salvation ; for where ther charity of God and our neighbour has become low and faint, if it be not altogether lost, there both hope and faith begin likewise to decline. Any man who is con- scious of his own sins, knows that though men do not see them or suspect them — though they are only half known and half seen even by his own con- science — they are all perfectly seen and known to the eye of Almighty God. This consciousness of sinful- ness coupled with the consciousness of impenitence, the sense that he is not softened, nor humbled, but rather that he is irritated by the clear sight of his own sin and of the graces of those thai are about him, lights up a high fever of resentful heat which grows more fierce as charity declines. The will in its stiffness refuses to bow itself before God, and though a cloud on the conscience half hides many sins that are not altogether forgotten, he is half con- scious of many and therefore full of fear, not know- ing whether or no he is the object of a final hatred. A soul in that state becomes desponding and reck- less, so that in a multitude of cases, instead of turn- ing towards God by repentance, it turns recklessly away from God and plunges further into sin. So long m\ ^1 116 SINS OF OMISSION. L Ml 1^ Ni: {.' 1 ;!; as there is a hope of salvation, a hope of pardon, and so long as a good name and fame among men is not lost, a man is sustained by a certain lingering confidence and restrained from a multitude of sins ; but the moment hope is lost and the last spring is broken, a man who began only with sins of omission and then sins of sloth, will at last plunge recklessly into sins he never committed before, saying : ' It is too late — I have gone too far — I am too bad. Spots are not visible upon a black garment, and I am black before God, whether I am so before man or not;' on this, he plunges himself further and further into sin. Those who answer to this description verify the words of our Divine Lord to the Church of Sardis : * I know thy works, and that thou hast the name of being alive, and thou art dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things that remain which are ready to die. For I find not thy works full before My God.'^^ The meaning of this is : Thou hast lost thy first charity ; there remain faith and hope in a little measure. The reed, though bruised, is not broken — the flax, though smoking only, is not quenched ; there is hope yet, for faith and hope are not yet dead ; but when once hope is dead, what can remain ? Take example from Scripture. Judas ^^ Apoc. iii. 1. SINS OP OMISSION. 117 sold his Master; Peter denied Him. Judas had lost his love for his Master, hut Peter loved Him still. Judas had lost his hope, hut Peter hoped yet ; and Peter went out and wept bitterly, and was for- given ; and Judas went out and hanged himself. 5. Lastly, there is one more effect, and that is the state which is called the sin of sloth — the state of the soul which, having fallen from charity and having lost hope, has become sick of God and weary of God. Such a man says : ' I wish to God that I had never been born !' I have heard those words again and again out of the mouth of sinners : * I wish to God I had never heard the name of Jesus Christ ; I should not then have been responsible. I would to God I had never known the truth ; for I should not have to answer for it. I should die like a dog — and better to die like a dog than die as I shall, with the illumination to know God and Jesus Christ, to know His will, and His truth, and to be for ever as I am now!' Such things every priest has heard, and perhaps you yourselves have heard. The soul weary and sick of God turns away from the Holy Sacraments, turns away from prayer, turns away from holy people, from every memorial of God and His service, until at last such a man will say : ' Almighty God, why dost Thou persecute me "& !!■( il i"' f ir :i 1 118 SINS OF OMISSION. 11 !l '\i Mi m with Thy perfections ? Thy justice, which I cannot deny, is like the blaze of the noonday sun, terrible and scorching ; and Thy holiness is like the light that pervades the world, and I cannot escape from it.' Souls in that state say in an inverted sense the very words of the Psalmist : * Whither shall I go from Thy presence, and whither shall I flee from Thy face ? If I go up in heaven, Thou art there ; if I go down into hell. Thou art there also. If in the morning I take wings and flee to the uttermost parts of the earth, even there Thy hand leadeth me, and Thy right hand upholdeth me. If I say. Dark- ness shall cover me, the darkness is no darkness to Thee. The darkness and the light to Thee are both alike.'^^ This is what the people of Jerusalem said: the forefathers of those who cried, * His blood be upon us and upon our children.'^* They said, * Let the Holy One of Israel cease from before us ;'^® that is, let God get out of our way. Now, brethren, this is what the sin of sloth comes to at last. I have traced it from its beginning in a sin of omission — a sin of omission in prayer ; because, as I said, prayer is the life and bi-.ath of the soul, and the soul that prays is united to God. The soul that loses its union with God by prayer may fall into the bottom- »» Ps. cxxxviii. 7-12. >« S. Matt, xxvii. 25 » Isa. xxx. 11. SINS OF OMISSION. 119 less pit. There is no depth of eternal death into which a squI that ceases to pray may not fall. It will not fall all at once ; it falls very gradually, little by little, inbensibly, and there is the chief danger. This exactly expresses the words with which I be- gan : * Who can understand sins ? From my secret sins cleanse me, Lord.' I hope, then, that I need speak no more upon this severe part of our subject. I will only give two very short counsels. The one is this : aim at the highest and greatest things of God's kingdom. Do not think that it is humility to try to live a common- place Christian life. Dear brethren,, it is like sea- men who say, * I will not launch out into the deep, but I will keep near the shore.' To keep near the shore is not always safety ; to keep near the shore requires the greater seamanship ; to keep near the shore may be to run the greatest risk of wrecking. Do not imagine for one moment that this is humility. The humblest may seek the greatest things in God's kingdom. Aim at the highest. You have been called to be saints, every one of you. The very name by which we are called in the New Testament is * saints.' With all your sins and imperfections about you, you are called to be saints. If you are to be saved, saints you must be before the throne ! |lif fl! u mi] H ■m 1 r,; I ■I 111' 120 SINS OF OMISSION. in the kingdom of God hereafter. Saints jou are now, if the Holy Ghost dwell in you, and you are united in love to God and your neighbour. Sanctity is in 3^ou ; and as the twilight of the morning is the light of day, and differs from the noonday only in the degree of its splendour, so the sanctity which is in you now differs only in the degree of its mani- festation from that perfect sanctity which shall be in you when ' the just shall shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.'^® Is it possible, then, that we can aim at anything lower than this ? It is a deceit of the devil for any man to turn aside from the path which leads him upward to the highest Christian life under the notion of humility or of im- possibility. The grace that is given to each one of you is measured according to the vocation wherewith you are called. If God lias called you to be saints, He has given you, and will give you, grace sufficient to enable you to become saints — ay, the guiltiest among you, and there may be some ears listening to my words conscious of the stain of mortal sin. Even the guiltiest that hears me has grace offered now, at this moment, to become penitent, and through peni- tence to become a saint. The most tempted, the most buffeted, the soul that has fallen oftenest, that »« S. Matt. xiii. 43. SINS OF OMISSION. down and over again 121 by long has been cast down over habitual and inveterate sin, even to that soul grace sufficient is offered at this time to be a saint if it have the will to receive it. More then this : the most slothful, the most sluggish souh, the souls most conscious that they are covered with sins of omission, and that there is not a duty they do which they do not do so tardily and imperfectly as to be utterly ashamed of themselves in secret before God, even such souls as these have the grace of fervour and zeal and strength and piety and perseverance offered at this moment if they have only the will to accept it. The only condition is this : break with the world, with sin, and with yourselves, and be on God's side. Take up your cross boldly; follow Jesus . Christ. Have no compromises, no reserves, and He will do the rest for vou. The other counsel is this. Cast yourselves with all your offences of commission and omission, all your faults, all your stains, all your weight, with the whole burden of your sins on you — cast yourselves upon the Sacred Heart of Jesus as John lay upon His bosom at supper. Do not think that this is not for you. Do not say, ' It is not for me to cast my- self there — there where the beloved Disciple lay.' •Why did he lie there ? Was it because he loved his ,, i I. m IM Ui 122 SINS OF OMISSION. ii 'tJ km li ii' :'ii'i:'i'l Lord ? No ; it was because his Lord loved him ; and that same love which He had for John, not in degree it may be, but in kind, in its infinite tender- ness and its infinite compassion, that same love is yours. He loves you, if not in the same measure, in the same manner, and therefore cast yourselves upon the love of our Lord. The gift of free will, which we all have, is a perilous gift. It is a wonderful mystery that a man can balance and poise his body to stand or walk — every motion rests in a mysterious manner on the balance of nature ; but the freedom of the will is still more mysterious, and still more easily cast down. We are surrounded by temptation all the day long, and the world is constantly playing upon us by its powers of assimilation. Worse than this, there is the treachery of false and subtil hearts, of hearts always ready to take fire. All the day long sin springs up within to meet the temptation from without. For that reason you have mor/v need. Do not say, ' That makes me less able to cast myself upon the Sacred Heart of my Redeemer.' It is for that very reason that you need to do it. As the blind man went to the Pool of Siloe ; as the lepers came within reach of the hand of our Saviour; as the poor woman touched the hem of His garment — so, as your miseries are the greater, you have the more SINS OF OMISSION. 123 need ; and if you will come to Him, He by His Spirit within you, and by His protection about you, will keep you from all evil, and will confirm you in His grace. And that you may do this, I will bid you adopt from this day one practice. Every day of your life pray God to give you light to see yourselves just as He sees you now: to show you what sin is in all its hideousness, in all its sub- tilty, and to show you those secret sins which now you do not see in yourselves. Every day of your life ask this of God. Remember the young man who came to our Lord, and asked what he should do to inherit the kingdom of heaven. Our Lord said : * Sell all thou hast and give to the poor, and come and follow Me.'^^ He went away sorrowing, and that one thing wanting lost him all things. You re- member the five wise and the five foolish virgins. The five foolish virgins went out with the five that were wise ; they were attired in the same bridal raiment ; they all carried their lamps with them, and their lamps were lighted — in this they were all alike ; and they all slumbered and slept. What was the differ- ence between the five wise and the five foolish ? The five wise had oil in their vessels with their lamps; the five foolish had omitted to bring oil in their " S. Matt. xix. 21. .Vi^ f' i 'I t ! ' 124 SINS OF OMISSION. vessels with their lamps. And while they all slum- bered their lamps went out ; and when the cry was heard at midnight, ' The bridegroom cometh!' they waked up and found their lamps gone out. They first would borrow; but it is impossible to borrow grace. They went to buy; but while they were gone the bridegroom entered, and the door was shut. When they came back they knocked upon the door, and said: 'Lord, Lord, open to us.' But He answered from within: • I never knew you.' (111! In HI Hi ml i: • V. THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. m SI f !l I' ill "^isiilil : \-y^i' l^ I t ii THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. Beceive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; whose sins you shall retain, they are retained. S. John xx. 22, 23. Tt was late in the evening of the first day of the week when Jesus rose from the dead that His dis- ciples were gathered together, and the doors were shut for fear of the Jews. When they least expected it, unawares, and by His divine power, He came, though the doors were closed, and stood in the midst of them, and His first words were, ' Peace be unto you.' And when He had assured them that it was He Himself, their fears were dispelled. He then said, ' Receive ye the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and from the Son, and I, the Son of God, breathe upon you — receive ye the Holy Ghost ; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them ; whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.' That is. He gave them the proof of His Godhead in the power of absolution. ] gave them (ill k ' ,?':■ '|i ¥ %\ if 1 i::;|| 1 li; 11 i ■!' 128 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. the proof of His Godhead — for the Pharisees were right when they asked, ' Who shall forgive sins but God only ?'^ God alone can absolve, and God alone can give the power of absolution. When the power of absolution is exercised by any man, he is but an in- strument in the hand of God : the absolver is always God Himself. Our Lord exercised, among many other attributes of His Godhead upon earth, these three powers of special divinity — He raised the dead ; He multiplied the bread in the wilderness ; and He cleansed the lepers: and these three works of al- mighty power, which are altogether divine. He has committed in a spiritual form to His Church for ever. When He said, ' Go, and make disciples of all na- tions, baptising them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,' in that power of baptism He gave to His Apostles and their successors the pov/er of raising from spiritual death to spiritual life. Those who are born dead in sin are raised by a new birth to spiritual life. When He instituted the most Holy Sacrament of His Body and Blood, and gave to His Church the authority to say, * This is My Body,' He gave the power to feed His people with the Bread of Life, and to multiply that Bread for ever. When He said, * Whose sins ye shall forgive, they » S. Matt. ii. 10. THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 129 are forgiven unto them,' He gave the power of cleans- ing the leprosy of the soul. Sometimes, incoherent or, what is worse, controversial minds imagine, or at least say, that this power was confined to the Apostles. The very words are enough to prove the contrary; but there is an intrinsic reason in the thing which, to any Christian mind, must be suffi- cient to show that these three powers are perpetual ; for what are these three powers, but the authority to apply to the souls of men for ever the benefits of the most Precious Blood of Jesus Christ ? The Precious Blood would have been shed iu vain, if it were not applied to the souls of men one by one. The most potent medicines work no cures, save in those to whom they are applied ; an^ the Precious Blood, which is the remedy of sin, works the healing of the soul only by its application. Baptism, the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, and the Sacrament of Pe- nance arc three divine channels whereby the Pre- cious Blood of Jesus Christ is applied to the soul. I am conscious that our thoughts hitherto have been full of sharpness and severity. We have been dwelling upon sin — upon xnortal and venial sins, and upon sins of omission. We enter now upon another region — the realm of peace, of grace, of 1 ^■ I: . 1 it 1 1|: I ; ■? i ^•l \ i :! : i '1' ; ' 'I II I iSii' m I li W hi I Is '■ I' ': I im i ■ : : I- .¥': IllIM ■!!(■ ' •'Til i i:|!|| 130 THE GRACE AND WOBKS OF PENANCE. pardon, and of healinpf. Therefore we will speak of the grace and the works of penance. Penance is both a virtue and a sacrament. Pen- ance means simply repentance. I do not suppose that anybody who hears me is so narrow-minded or so little cultivated as to ring the changes of contro- versial misunderstanding upon the word 'penance,' and the like. * Repentance,' or 'penitence,' or 'pen- ance,' are all one and the same, word and tlung. Just as the word * alms ' is the contraction i,^ the word * eleemosyne.' So the word ' penance' is but a contraction of the word 'penitence.' A little learn- ing is a dangerous thing, and in controversy it is worst of all. From the beginning of the world the grace of penance has been poured out upon men. It is an interior disposition of the soul before God ; and from the beginning of the world the Holy Ghost, whose office it is to convince the world of sin, has convinced sinners of their transgressions, has con- verted them to penance, and from penance has made them saints. But penance, in the Christian law, is also a sacrament ; and I have to explain the mean- ing of the grace and the action of the sacrament, and how they are united. 1. First, penance is a grace or inward disposition of the soul, and I need not go far to "ind an explana- m^ dtion liana- THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 131 tion. I need not frame any explanation of my own, for we have a divine delineation of what penance is, drawn, as it were, by a pencil ot light by our Divine Saviour Himself in the parable of the Prodigal Son. There we have a revelatio' of what the grace of pen- ance is. You remember the parable. A man had two sons, and the younger came to him and said : *Give me the portion that falleth to me;' and when he had received it, he went into a far country and wasted it in riot, fell into misery and returned to his father, and was pardoned. Let us take the main fea- tures of this. First, this son who, under the roof of a loving father, had need of nothing — for his father was rich — chafed and was fretful because the autho- rity of a superior will was upon him. He could not bear the yoke of living under a pateixj J rule, and nis imagination was all on fire with the thought of liberty. He looked at the horizon — it may be the ^Ti ountains that bounded the lands and fields of his father — and pictured to himself the valleys and plains and cities full of youth and happiness and life and freedom — a happy land, if only he could break away from the restraints of home. He came to his father, and with a cold-hearted insolence said : * Give me the portion that falleth to me ;* which, being trans- lated, is, * Give me what I shall have when jou are i. 1 ' i I m ''\\ ii m 1 1 I •Ijiri ii ■; i;i' «IM., il mi 132 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. dead.* There was a spirit of undutifulness and of in- gratitude in that demand ; hut the father gave it ; and the parable says that not many days after — that is, with all speed, in fact — 'gathering all things toge- ther,' all he had and all he could get, he went off into a far country, and there he spent all he had in living riotously. Then there came a mighty famine, and he, havii ^ nt all things, was reduced to beg- gary. His fair ■ eather friends all forsook him ; the parasites who fed at his table all abandoned him : and those that spoke him fair, when he was rich and had anything to give them, turned their backs upon him : his very servants were not to be seen. He found himself isolated, destitute, and brought to such extremity that *he went to one of the citizens of that country,' and offered himself as his servant. The citizen accepted him ; not into his house — he did not even send him into his garden, no, nor into his vineyard. He sent him into his fields ; and not to tend his sheep, no, nor to watch over his oxen, but * to feed his swine.' Such is the degradation of a sinner. In that extremity of need no man gave to him ; all his old friends were afar off; if they pos- sessed anything, they kept it to themselves, or at least they gave nothing to him. There was no me- mory, no gratitude of their past friendship. He was THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 133 fain to fill bis hunger with the husks — not only the husks which the swine did eat, but the husks which the swine bad left — the husks which fell, as it were, from the trough of a herd of swine. Reduced to such misery, which is the picture of a soul in mor- tal sin, as I have described before, he came to himself — the word is, he * returned to himself.' He not only had left his father, but had forsaken himself, he was out of himself — beside himself ; for sin is madness. When he returned to him- self, he said : * How many hired servants of my father have bread in abundance, and I here perish for hunger. I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him : Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son ; make me as one of thy hired ser- vants.* Here was the consciousness of unworthi- ness. He did not aspire to be a son again; that, he thought, was lost for ever. It was enough for him, and he was content to accept the position of a hired servant under his father's roof. And he arose and went to his father. And as he was coming, it may be, down the path of the mountain side, bare- foot and ragged, up which he had gone a little while ago in all the bravery of his apparel and his pride, before he caught sight of his father, his father saw i: mrr 134 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. ^iHi' '. i;; ; 1 ' mn ')", I ■If" 'i ••ills m il IIP f li ! him afar off, for love gives keenness of sight to a father's eye : he saw his son returning, and he ran towards him. He was as eager to forgive as the son was to he forgiven — ay, more ; he fell upon his neck, and the prodigal son began his confession : * Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee ;' but before he could finish — the words * make me as one of thy hired servants' never came out of his mouth — his father fell upon his neck and kissed him, and forgave him all. He was perfectly absolved. And the father said : * Bring forth quickly' — that is, make haste, no delay — * the first robe,' the robe he had before, and put it on him. Put shoes on his feet and a ring on his hand. Restore him not only to the state of pardon, but to the full posses- sion of all he had before his fall ; for this my son was dead, and is alive again ; he was lost, and is found. We see here in the Prodigal Son the grace of penance — that is, self-knowledge, self-condemnation, sorrow for the past, conversion, and self-accusation. We have here then, I say, a divine delineation of what it is. Let us take another example. There was in Jerusalem one who was rich, and abounded in all things. She possessed also the fatal gift of beauty, which has been eternal death to tens of THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 135 tliousands. She was living in wealth and luxury and enjoyment, and, as the Apostle said, was ' dead while she lived.' She decked herself out i.. gold and in fine apparel, like the daughters of Jeru- salem, of whom the Prophet Isaias says, that they were haughty, and walked with their necks stretched out, v THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 137 She stood silent beliiad Him weeping. She had the courage even to kiss His feet, to wash them with her tears, to wipe them with the hair of her head ; while the Pharisee secretly rebuked our Divine Lord, and asked himself in his heart : * If this Man had been a prophet, would He not have known what man- ner of woman this is ? She is a sinner, and He would not have allowed her to touch His feet.' But those feet had in them the healing of sin. The touch of those feet, powerful as the touch upon the hem of His garment, cleansed that poor sinner. He turned, and in the hearing of them all. He said : ' Her sins, which are many, are forgiven her, be- cause she has loved much.' Here is an example of the grace of penance ; and an example not of penance only, but of perfect and full absolution given in a moment ; more than this, of a complete restoration of purity given to the most fallen. In token of that absolution and of that restoration, privileges were granted to Mary Magdalen beyond others. She, out of whom Jesus cast seven devils, was the one who stood at the foot of the cross with the Immaculate Mother of God. It was she who kissed His feet at that supper, who afterwards anointed them, and wound them in the fine linen for His burial. It was she, the greatest of sinners, who, next after His f ^"':l til ii 138 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. mi I' I Immaculate Mother, saw Him before all others when He rose from the dead ; and these tokens of the love of Jesus to penitents, and to the greatest of peni- tents, have been followed in the kingdom of heaven with a glory proportioned to her sorrow and to her love. Mary Magdalen is set forth for ever as an example of the grace of penitence, and of the perfect absolution of the most Precious Blood. But perhaps you will say. She had never known our Saviour. She committed all her sins before she came to the knowledge of His love. I have known Him, and therefore the sins I have committed I have committed against the light ; and my sins are more ungrateful than hers, and are therefore guiltier, and I have less hope of pardon. Let us see, then, if there be another example. Is there an example of any friend, who had been highly privileged, greatly blessed, who had known everything, ^vho had received all the light and grace which came from the presence and the words of our Divine Saviour in those three years of His public life — is there any such who afterwards sinned against Him ? There was one to whom the light of the knowledge of the Son of God was first revealed by the Father in heaven. There was one who was First of all the Apostles, because of this illumination of faith, and to whom our Divine THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 139 Lord said : * I say unto thee, thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I will build My Church ; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it : and unto thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; and what- soever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.' This friend, preferred above all others, dignified above all others, protested to his Master : * Though all men should forsake Thee, yet will not I. I am ready to go with Thee to prison and to death. ^ Though all men shall deny Thee, I will never deny Thee.' He had the courage to draw his sword in the garden, and cut off the ear of the servant of the high-priest; yet this man three times denied his Master. He denied Him utterly : * I never knew the Man. I am not of His disciples.' And with cursing and swearing he renounced his Lord. Here, then, is the ingratitude and the sin of a cher- ished friend. But on that night he went out, and he wept bitterly; and his bitter tears -rfon that night of sin obtained for him not only perfect abso- lution in the evening of the first day of the week, but the power of absolving the sins of others, sinners like himself. * Receive ye the Holy Ghost ; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven unto them.' ^ S. Luke xxii. 33. i; f',-^ I i 'M WHK mt ill iliiiii 140 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. Peter received his own absolution, his own forgive- ness, and in that moment he was restored to his dignity as Prince of the Apostles. Though he was upbraided in the grey of the morning, on the Se - x Tiberias, by the three questions of tender reproof : * Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me, lovest thou Me more than these ?' to remind him of his three falls, Peter was restored to more than he had before. He was made Head on earth of the Mystical Body of Christ ; he died a martyr for his Lord, and he reigns in heaven by his Master's side. We have here again an example of the grace penance ; and what do we see in it ? Just the same sorrow, self-accusation, reparation as before. Here is the virtue and grace of penance ; what, then, is the sacrament ? This grace of penance is as old as the world : it is to be found everywhere where the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of men, if they are faithful and correspond with it. What, then, is the meaning of the sacrament ? Our Lord has instituted a Divine Sacrament, in which He gives the absolu- tion of His most Precious Blood to those that accuse themselves. He instituted it on that night, when He spoke the words with which I began ; and the reason for which He instituted it is this — that we may have something more than our self-assurance THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 141 on which to depend for the hope of our ahsolution. The Pharisee in the Temple, who stood afar oflf and said, * God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are — extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican,'^ that Pharisee absolved himself; but his absolution was not ratified in heaven. And so it is often among men. There are men who absolve themselves all the day long. They forget the sins of their childhood, boyhood, youth, and manhood — ay, the sins of last year, the sins of yes- terday; and, having a slippery treacherous memory of their own sins, though retentive and tenacious of the sins of other men, they are perpetually absolving themselves, and assuring themselves that they are pardoned and forgiven before God. There cannot be a state more dangerous, delusive, or fatal; and in order to guard us from this, our Divine Lord has instituted a sacrament, in which to assure us of our absolution, in which our absolution is a judicial act, an authoritative sentence, an act pronounced by one who is impartial, and who has authority. We are not left to absolve ourselves ; we are absolved in the name and by the power of Jesus Christ by a judge empowered by Himself. Moreover, in that sacrament there is grace given ; • S. Luke xviii. 11. m III Iff ' I |! fli! ! 1. I ll !: !■. 4'; 111; 1 r,^-: S!' 1 j :' '' ' j. ■ 1 , ■ 1': i r [ 1 : 142 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. [? ¥3. ini:i|:,|t m ^m ij; i'ili and that grace is the grace of the Holy Ghost, having two effects : first, to give us light to know ourselves more truly, and thereby to understand, to count up, to measure, and to appreciate our sins and the gravity of them ; and secondly, that same grace enables us to be contrite, and to make the acts of sorrow. For those reasons our Lord instituted the sacrament ; that is. He took the grace of penance which was working from the beginning of the world, and incor- porated it in a visible sign : and He communicates His absolution and the grace of penance to those who come for it, as He gives the Bread of Life to those who receive Holy Communion at the altar. Every sacrament, as you know, has an outward sign of inward grace. It has also what is called the form and the matter. What then is the form of pen- ance ? It is in these words : * I absolve thee from thy sins.' But who can forgive sins except God only ? Is it the priest ? Do you imagine for one moment that the Holy Catholic Church is — I will not say so su- perstitious, but is so dull of heart, so dark of under- standing as either to believe or teach that it is the man who absolves? It is the office that absolves; and what is the office? The priesthood of Jesus Christ Himself. There are not two, there is but one Priest and one priesthood ; and the priesthood that THE GRACE AND WORKS OP PENANCE. 143 we bear is the participation of that one priesthood of Jesus Christ Himself. What we do, we do not of ourselves. It is He who does it by us. It is simply ministerial on our part. It is solely and entirely His ast. When at the altar we say, * This is My Body, this is My Blood,' do we speak in our own name '? Is it possible that anybody with Catholic books be- fore them can be either so dull of sight, or so dull of understanding ? There is but one Absolver, Jesus Christ Himself; but He has ten thousand ministers on earth, through whom He applies His Precious Blood to souls that are truly penitent. The act of absolution is His. Such, then, is the form; next, what is the matter ? There are two kinds of matter : there is the matter which is called remote, and the matter which is called proximate. The remote matter of the sacra- ment is the sins that we have committed. It is called remote for this reason — they may be the sins of our childhood, a long way off; the sins of our youth, long forgotten, but now at last remembered ; the sins that we have committed, and have long hesitated to confess — remote from the present mo- ment, because they are a long way off in our past life ; or if they were only of yesterday, still they are not present now. Proximate matter is that state ill H Iff P' 144 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. i'l\M It'iH. '■;.!:: lilfl" i\m '«!ll, i ' 11 1 |;J| ii 1 *''" ■ ¥: if ,.. of heart which we must bring with us at the moment, then and there. Now this remote matter is also of two kinds. First, there is the necessary matter which we are bound to confess under the pain of eternal death ; and there is what is called the volun- tary matter, which it is good, wholesome, safe, and better to confess, though it is not of abi. ate neces^ sity. Now the first means all mortal sins committed after baptism. As we know of no revealed way in which the mortal original sin in which we are born can be absolved except by baptism, so we know of no other revealed way whereby mortal actual sins com- mitted after baptism can be absolved, st've only by the Sacrament of Penance. You will remember the principles which I laid down in the first and second of these subjects on which I have spoken to you — how that one mortal sin separates the soul from God. A soul separated from God is dead ; and therefore it is a necessity that every mortal sin we have com- mitted should be confessed and absolved. The vo- luntary matter is our venial sins. As to venial sins there are two reasons why it is good to confess them. The first is because, as I showed you, venial sins may easily pass into mortal sins. Sometimes, through the self-love which is in us, we do not distinguish between them ; and we consider what God knows and THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 145 tiees to be mortal to be only venial, and in this we may make dangerous mistakes. Again, to promote hu- mility, self-accusation, sorrow, and therefore the grace of perseverance, and to renew our peace with God, it is good to accuse ourselves of everything we know we have committed, even in the least — even in the sins of omission of which I lately spoke. It is safer, better, and more wholesome to confess our sins of omission, and to ask God to forgive them ; neverthe- less, it is quite true that these sins, being venial, are not of necessary confession. Well, the proximate matter means the state of the heart. If any man were to kneel down in the confessional, and accuse himself without sorrow for his sins, he would com- mit another sin. It would be an act of sin in itself. It would be a sacrilege to come and receive that sacrament without the proper dispositions, that is, without being worthy ; and the man who has no sor- row for sin is not worthy. Next there must be a state of the will. If a man come and ask for pardon, even were he to accuse himself perfectly, without having a resolved purpose not to sin again, that man would commit a sacrilege. Therefore, the heart and mind must be sorrowful, and the will resolved not to com- mit sin again. You will say : * How can a man say this, knowing his weakness and iiislabiliiy ?' The 1 ' I lliij: m il 146 THE GRACE AND WORKS OP PENANCE. '\m :ivi ^i 1: 1 i; ■•;:•■ I IllHJ answer is, that, if any man sincerely resolves not to sin, and is conscious of his own weakness, and afraid of it, that is a true and a good resolution, and God will accept it, even though afterwards through sud- denness or suhtilty of temptation he should be cast down. At the time he was perfectly sincere in his resolutions, and that is all that God requires. Next, the Sacrament of Penance has three effects. The first is that it absolves or looses the soul from the bond of sin. We are using metaphors ; to bind and to loose is a metaphor. What is it that binds a soul ? It is the sin. And what is the sin ? I told you in the beginning. It is the variance or the op- position of the will against God ; it is the crooked- ness and perversity of the will ; it is the palsy of the heart, the darkness of the conscience; this is the bond of sin, and the Sacrament of Penance gives the grace of the Holy Ghost ; and it is the Holy Spirit of God which brings the will back to God by a change wrought upon the will itself. The second effect of the Sacrament of Penance is that it infuses grace. That is to say, a man in mortal sin comes to his confession without charity, without the love of God, for this reason, that a man in a state of mortal sin no longer has charity or the love of God. Charity or tho love of God is the life of the soul ; and if he had this I! .1 THE GRACE AND WORKS OP PENANCE. 147 life he would 'not be in mortal sin. The commission It of mortal sin extinguishes the charity and love of God in him, and the soul dies for that reason. He, therefore, when he comes to accuse himself, has nothing left in his soul but hope and faith ; he hopes to be pardoned, and he believss that God will par- don him if his confession be good. In that act of self-accusation, when he receives his absolution, the grace of charity is restored to him, the life of the soul is given back, he is united with God once more, he possesses faith, hope, and charity, as he did in his baptism — as he did before he fell, for the sacra- ment puts him back again into the state of grace as at first. Thirdly, it does something further : it re- stores the soul to its previous condition. You re- member that I told you some time ago that if any man had lived a life of faith, charity, piety, gene- rosity, and good works, and afterwards fell into one mortal sin, all those fruits would be dead upon the tree, because the tree itself was dead ; but when he is restored to grace, all those fruits that were once dead revive with the tree also. The leaves expand once more in their tenderness and freshness, and the fruits are once more ripe upon the bough. All the acts of the past life, which were mortified and lost by one mortal sin, come to life again; and when \'h ll!| 14S THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. '■ * IkM they are restored to life, the merit of every such act — and you remember what I told you merit is, the link between the action and the reward con- stituted by the promise of God in His free and sove- reign grace — all this merit likewise is restored ; and with this, also, the powers of the soul are renewed. The soul in mortal sin had lost its grace, its conscience was blind, its ear was deaf, and its will was weak. Lik3 as our Divine Lord, in His miracles, opened the eyes of the blind, and the ears of the deaf, straightened the feet of the lame, and made the man with the withered hand to stretch it out like the other, so, when the soul is restored by abso- lution and grace in the Sacrament of Penance, the powers of the sciil are again restored. You see, then, what the Sacrament of Penance is. It is the grace of penance enlarged, multiplied, as- sured, brought within the reach of men, offered all the day long, within the power of everybody. That which in the beginning was all over the world in one sense, but unseen and secret, now is embodied visibly in a sacrament of grace, that men may know where to find the Fountain in which they may wash and be clean. I can say but few words more. When He insti- tuted, in our behalf, this holy sacrament out of the THE GRICE A.N'D WORKS OF PENANCE. 149 tenderness of His love and the superabundance of His grace to sinners, our Divine Lord imposed no limit whatever to its efficacy. It is like His own Precious Blood. It is powerful and omnipotent to cleanse all sin. He sets no limit ; there is indeed a limit, as I will show you, but it is not God who imposes it. There is no sin of any kind, howsoever deep, dark, black as midnight, and often committed, nothing so inveterate, nothing which in the sight of God is so hateful, nothing which to the soul of man is so deadly, that there cannot be absolution for it in the Sacrament of Penance. Do not for one moment imagine that you have sinned beyond the power of pardon. There is no man who hears me, whatever his sin may have been, who, if he will turn and re- pent and accuse himself with sorrow, shall not be washed as white as snow. Next, there is no kind of sin that is beyond the reach of absolution. There is no number of sins, howsoever frequent, which shall not be pardoned. Though a man were to go on all his life-long sinning day and night, repeating sins over and over again, yet repenting of them on his deathbed, the Precious Blood shall wash him white as snow. Our Divine Lord has said that * if our brother offend against us seventy times seven, ay, and that in one day, and turn and repent, we are It 150 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 'III! to forgive him.** In saying that, He used a form of •speech to show there is no number — there is no numerical limit. There can only be a moral limit, and a moral limit there is ; but what is it ? I said before : * All sin and all blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, save only the blasphemy of the Holy Ghost ; that shall never be forgiven in this world or in the world to come.'^ But what is this blasphemy of the Holy Ghost? It is the resistance of the known truth. It is the refusal of the grace of penance. It is the outrage done to the Absolver Himself, the Giver of Life ; and that by the impenitence of the sinner. The one only sin which is beyond the reach of absolution, the one only sin which the Precious Blood cannot absolve, is the sin that is not repented of; that is the sole and only sin that shall not be washed as white as snow. Finally, as our Divine Lord has set no limit to His forgiveness, and as the limit is set by man, and by man only through his own impenitence, so our Di- vine Saviour has attached to this grant of His pardon only those conditions without which He would cease to be what He is — holy, just, true, and merciful. If He were to require more. He would require more than we can do. If He were to require less. He * S. Luke xvii. 4. » S. Matt. xii. 31. ii \ w THE GRACE AND WORKS OP PENANCE. 151 would violate His own divine perfections. Tlie Sa- crament of Penance is the Precious Blood, and the pardon of the Precious Blood let down within the reach of the lowest sinner — lower it cannot be ; for it is within the reach of all. The conditions which are attached to it are four in number. The first is that we be sorry. He would cease to be God — He would cease to be just, holy, and pure — if He were to forgive those who are not sorry for their sins, who still love them, and are therefore at vari- ance with Him, and at variance with His perfections. Secondly, we must come to Him. If the prodigal had lingered in the far country, his father could not have fallen on his neck. If Mary Magdalen had not broken into the midst of that banquet, she would not have heard the words of her absolution. We, then, must come to Him. He has commanded us to come. He has said : * I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me.'^ And the way He has ordained for penitents to come to Him is in self- accusation, in the Sa- crament of Penance. Thirdly, when we come to Him, we must accuse ourselves honestly, truly, sin- cerely. There must be no excusing, no painting of the face. We cannot paint the heart, and God looks e s. John xiv. 6. if 'j 152 THE GRACE AND WORKS OP PENANCE. '•t }: n, ■■■':! ■ ^ V at the heart, and not at tho countenance. Our ac- cusation must be truthful to the very last. Every mortal sin that we have committed from our earliest childhood, so far as we remember it, must be at some time confessed before it can be absolved. It is not requiring much of the sinner that he should come and say what is his disease, that he should show his wounds, and his miseries, and the symp- toms of death that are upon him. The physician requires no more for healing, and he can require no less. Lastly, He requires of us a steadfast resolu- tion to sin no more, and to avoid the occasions of sin — of which I will speak hereafter — that is, a stead- fast change of the will, retracting the variance and the opposition of the will against His will, and a sin- cere resolution to offend Him no more. Less than this He could not require ; and more than this He does not. Here are the four conditions : sorrow for having offended Him ; the coming to Him in His own way; true self -accusation; and steadfast reso- lution to sin no more. 0, dear brethren, anticipate the Day of Judg- ment. Be beforehand with it. That day is coming, inevitably coming as the rising of to-morrow's sun. The day is not far off when the Great White Throne will be set up, and we shall stand before Him ; and THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 153 the eyes, that are as a flame of fire, will search us through and through ; and not His eyes alone, hut the eyes of all men will he upon us ; and the ears of men will hear that which the accuser will say against us in that day. There will be no secrecy then ; no hiding of our sins, nothing concoalcJ from God, or from that multitude which is around the Great White Throne. What does He require of you now ? The Great White Throne is veiled in His mercy. In the holy Sacv.iment of Penance He sits as the Judge, not arrayed in the splendours which will dazzle and blind us at the Last Day, but as the Good Shepherd, and as the Good Physician, the Friend of sinners, who is * come not to call the just, but sinners to repentance.' There He sits in His mercy. Come to Him, then, one by one. Be beforehand with the Day of Judg- ment. That which you confess now will be blotted out and forgiven in that day. That which you hide now will be in the book of God's remembrance, laid up for a record in the day of the great assizf^. It is not much He requires of us — to come and tell it in the ear of one man in His stead — a man bound under a seal, which if he were to break, he would commit a mortal sin of sacrilege ; a seal which no priest would break, even if it cost him his life upon the spot. If it be painful to you, if shame cover 154 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. '.■i'i.f 'J your face, offer up the pain and the shame as a part of the penance, as Mary Magdalene in the midst of that great banquet. It is precisely for this purpose : that the salutary pain may be the medicine of our pride. Dear brethren, then, be beforehand with the Day of Judgment, while the day of grace lasts : and come to Him as you are. Do not say, * I must wait' — do not say, * I cannot come with all my sins upon me, stained as I am, covered from head to foot with spots crimson as blood. I cannot come as I am. Let me wait a little while. I shall be better and fitter hereafter.* Do not reason thus with your- eelves. These are the whispers of the enemy, who desires to stand between you and your absolution. Come with all your sins upon you, though they are more numerous than the hairs of your head, though they are black as night, though they are beyond all count and all measure. Come just as you are. If you have a mortal sickness, would ycu put off going to the physician until the symptoms are ' ^t^d? The more intense and threatening the s^ i)toms, the faster you will go for counsel and for hcalir g. Do not say to yourselves, * I am so hard-hearted. I have not a tear. I have not the feeling of sorrow.* How can you, if you aro in sin ? It is sin that hardens the heart and dries the eyes. In the Sacra- ,ii I THE GRACE AND WORK» OF PENANCE. 155 ment of Pcnanco tlie grace of the Holy Ghost will give you both sorrow and the emotion of sorrow. Do not say, * I am so unstable. If I were pardoned to- day, I should fall to-morrow.* Are you more likely to stand to-morrow because you will not be forgiven to-day? 0, no. Dear brethren, whatever be your sins, how many, how guilty soever, come with them all, like the poor woman who touched the hem of His gar- ment, like the poor prodigal, bare-footed and ragged, when he came back to his father's house. Come as you are, and do not lose time. Time and grace are God's gift : we know not how long they may last. At this moment the Sacred Heart of Jesus bleeds for you on the Cross, yearns for you in heaven. The father who saw the prodigal afar off, and who ran to meet him, is the pledge, ay, and the earnest of that yearning fervent love and thirsting desire with which Jesus is waiting to forgive you. Every soul washed in the Precious Blood is a joy to the Good Shepherd. He knows what is stirring in you. He has seen the stings of your conscience. He has seen the wavering of your will. He has seen the good im- pulses that have been prompting you. He knows the temptations that are keeping you back, and the as- pirations that have been lifting you up towards Him — the longing for strength and courage to cast your- i J if 156 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. self at His feet, and make your peace with Him. He knows all this. Dear brethren, do not resist Him. Take heed lest you quench those emotions of grace that are within you. How long, how long, how long s lall He wait for you ? Remember His own words • ' There is joy in heaven over one sinner doing pen- ance more than over ninety- and- nine just persons that need no repentance. '^ ' S. Luke XV, 7. m Bl|'\i iH 1i..: VI. TEMPTATION. !!|s I 'i I! ., !; != ■ i:^ M r TEMPTATION. ■'i I Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert, to be tempted by the devil. S. Matt. iv. 1. The Son of God, who is Incarnate Sanctity and Eternal Life, when He came into the world to redeem mankind, placed Himself in the most intimate con- tact, possible to His perfections, with sin in the desert, and with death upon the Cross. In the temptation in the desert, Jesus tasted of all the bitterness of sin, except only of its guilt : in His death upon the Cross, the immortal God tasted death for every man. Now I have taken the temptation of our Divine Saviour as the outset of our present thoughts, because in itself it is sufficient proof of what I affirmed some time ago, namely, that to be tempted is not to sin, and that many who are the most tempted are innocent. You will remember I was speaking about the distinctions of sin, when I touched upon the subject of temptation. It was neces- m' " ; m r I m. m ?i.m. ilw^'^'^m mfi 160 TEMPTATION. sary to guard what I was saying, lest those who are tempted, and perhaps sorely and habitually, should lose heart, and begin to fear lest their temptations are personal sins. Now the example of our Divine Lord shows us, that One who is sinless may be the sub- ject of temptation. He suffered temptation for our sahes, just as He suffered death for our sakes. He suffered temptation, in order, as S. Paul says, ' that we may have such a High Priest, not one who cannot have compassion or bo touched with a feeling of our infirmities, but one who was tempted in all things like as we are, yet without sin :'^ and again, that * He suffered, being tempted, that He might know how to succour or give help to those that are tempted.'^ It was that, out of His own personal experience, the Son of God, incarnate in our humanity, might taste of sin in all its bitterness, in all its penalties, save only that which to Him is impossible, the guilt of sin, that so He might be a Saviour full of sympathy with sinners. And now it is necessary to observe the dis- tinction, which I have drawn with all possible care and precision. Though it is true that temptation is not sin, nevertheless temptation and sin are very nearly allied — they are very like each other, and » Hob. iv. 15. 2 lb. ii. 18. TEMPTATION. 161 :e n y d they may be easily mistaken ; secondly, temptations are the occasions of sin ; and thirdly, temptations with great rapidity and with great facility pass into sins. For this cause it is necessary with all accuracy to distinguish between them. Perhaps some one will say : * I can quite understand that the Son of God being man was capable of being tempted; but that gives me little encouragement, because every temptation presented to His sinless soul was instantly quenched, like as sparks falling upon the face of pure water are immediately ex- tinguished; but when temptations come to me, the sparks are struck upon the touchwood, they fall upon the flax, and upon the dry leaves which are ready to kindle. There is indeed this difference. The temptations of our Divine Saviour were alto- gether from without, and none of them from within ; our temptations are indeed in great part from with- out ; but a very large part of them, and the worst part of them, are from within. They come up out of our own hearts, they are in our own thoughts, in our own passions, in our own tempers, in our faculties, in our memory — here are the lairs and the haunts of temptation. These are the most dangerous, and the example of our Divine Lord does not reach to what we suffer. Now, nothing is more certain than this, m ' n 162 TEMPTATION. "''..jh Eh 'i .ii' that all the sorrows which come upon a man in Ji^e — sickness, pain, hereavements, afflictions, all the crosses he may meet with, losses, disappointments, bank- ruptcy — all these things are nothing, compared with the bitterness, the keenness, of temptation. A man may say : * I could bear all these things readily. They come from without ; and they have not that which is the special suffering of temptation, the bitterness of sin is not in them. They do not come between me and God. Indeed the more of suffering and sorrow I have in this world, the more I am driven to the presence of God. They are rods and scourges, driving me nearer and nearer to Him ; but my temptations come between me and God. They come and cut me off from Him. They hang like a dark cloud between me and the face of God. They make me feel it to be impossible that God can love me, impossible that I can be saved, impossible that I should not be grieving the Holy Spirit of God all the day long. I am like those who are described in Holy Scripture, who do many things for the best; nevertheless, after all do not know whether they are the objects of love or hatred.^ Now I dare say there is not one of you who does not know and feel what Holy Scripture calls * the 8 Eccles. ix. 1. TEMPTATION. 103 wound of his own heart.' The wound of a man's heart is the great master fault, or the besetting sin, or the three or four besetting sins, such as pride, anger, irritability of temper, jealousy, envy, slothful- ness, and many others which I need not specify. I desire to meet the objection of such persons, and I desire to show and to prove, that it is quite possible that a man who suffers all the day long from tempta- tions of this kind, may nevertheless in the sight of God be innocent ; and so far as those temptations go, he may be perfectly guiltless. I do not say that this is a common case, bul I say it may be ; and therefore every one may, if he will only be faith- ful to tho rules I will hereafter try to lay down, take to himself at least in part this consolation. 1. First of all, then, temptation is inevitable. Until we have put oflf our mortality, until corruption is turned into incorruption, we shall be assailed by temptation. To be tempted is simply to be man ; to be man is to be tempted. In Holy Scripture, in the book of Genesis, we read these words, that * God did tempt Abraham;'* but in the Epistle of S. James, we read, * Let no man when he is tempted say that he is tempted by God."* This seems to be a contradiction ; but it is not, because the word m * Gen. xxii. 1. ^ S. James i. 18. 164 TEMPTATION, y:r 'K r ^1 i:|Ih m •'W m m '■mm I 1 .,, ■! !■ ■ ; ■ '. :.i ■■ \ ■'■■,}■ : -h. 1: * tempt' is a word of perfectly neutral signification. It does not necessarily mean * tempt with evil;' it simply means to * try' — * God did try Abraham ;' for God puts us on our trial, and that in two ways. He either by His providence sends us a variety of afflic- tions, or crosses, or losses, or contradictions, by which He tries what our spirit is ; or, secondly. He permits that Satan should try us, as He permitted Satan to try and afflict Job. Therefore when it is said that God * tempts,' it means that God tries us ; but the other signification is an evil one ; for all the temptations that come from Satan are evil in them- selves. He never tempts any man to good, unless some accidental good may be the occasion of evil. Now it is in this latter sense that I am going to speak — that is, of our being tried by evil, tried by Satan. God overrules even the temptations of Satan for our benefit, as I will show. I say, then, that these temptations are inevitable, and that for this reason : from the time when the Dragon and his angels were overcome by Michael and his angels in heaven, and Satan was cast out with his evil angels upon earth, from that moment to this there has been warfare round about us. Remember that Satan is an angel created with an intelligence and a will and a power far exceeding that of man. There is something TEMPTATION. 1C5 Satanic in the contempt and the ridicule with which men treat Satan. I say it is satanic, because it is a Satanic illusion to make men cease to fear him, or cease even to believe in him. He is never more com- pletely master of a man than when the man ridicules , his existence — when, as we hear in these days, men say, * There is no devil.* The man most under the power of the tempter is he who does not believe in the existence of his enemy. His enemy is round about him day and night, and under his feet. Satan, being of angelic nature, has an angelic intelligence greater than that of man, pervaded by craft and by subtilty. He has also an angelic will mightier than ours, pervaded by an intensity of malice. He has also a power greater than ours, which is always exerted out of jealousy against those who are re- deemed in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. It was not shed for him ; and he is labouring, there- fore, day and night without ceasing to destroy those who are the heirs of salvation. There are two titles given to Satan in Holy Scripture : Our Lord called him * the prince of this world,'® and S. Paul calls him *the god of this world ;'^ and therefore we have closely surrounding us, like an atmosphere, the world of which he is the • S. John xiv. 30. 2 Cor. iv- 4. prw • ! I !■ 1G6 TEMPTATION. vii !i prince, and, I may say, the sanctuary of which he is the god. For what is the world ? It is the intel- lectual and moral state of the race of mankind with- out God, pervaded, darkened, falsified, and corrupted by the influence of Satan into the likeness of his own malice. Therefore Holy Scripture declares that the world is an enemy of God, an immutable enemy ; that the world can never be reconciled with God, or God with the world ; that the world can never be purified; that even the waters of baptism only save individuals out of the world ; and that the world itself will never be saved, but will be burned up by fire. Now this world signifies the tradition of the sin of mankind, the world-wide corruption of human nature by the sins of the flesh and the sins of the spirit, with all their falsehood, impiety and malice against God. This hangs in the atmosphere of the world : outside Christendom it reigns supreme ; inside Christendom it has en- tered again, like as in the time of pestilence, the very air of our dwellings, after all the care we can bestow, is infected. Even among baptised nations the spirit of the world, wafted from without, and arising up again under our feet from the cor- rupt soil of human nature, is perpetually renewing itself ; and we live surrounded by an atmosphere in .■i'i, M, TEMPTATION. 1G7 which all the forms of truth are distorted, and v.hcro illusions are presented on every side, so that men are misled, and are turned away from God and from His laws. We live in the midst of such a world, and that world we renounced in our baptism — * tl.e world with all its pomps ;' nevertheless it has a per- petual action and influence upon every one of us. There is what is called the vvorldly spirit, which enters with the greatest subtilty into the character of even good people ; and there is what is called the time-spirit, which means the dominant way of think- ing and of acting which prevails in the age in which we live ; and these are poweri'ul temptations, full of danger, and in perpetual action upon us. Then, thirdly, we carry our temptations about us. We have every one of us the three wounds of original sin : ignorance in the understanding ; tur- bulence in the affections, so that they become pas- sions ; instability and weakness in the will. The soul is wounded with those three wounds ; and never- theless it is in perpetual motion in thought, word, and deed, save only during the time of sleep. In our waking hours our nature is in unceasing activity, and in perpetual anarchy too, except in those who, being guided by the Spirit of God, are under the influence of cfrace and conformed to the truth. The li ■ ' ■I. , :i 1 ,i!' '' 1 ' ' ■ t! 't I ', B ' ii II i-i/ 1G8 TEMrTATION. thoughts, tempers, affections, passions of the heart, are in a state of ceaseless turhulence, so that the Holy Ghost by the Prophet describes the heart in these words : * The wicked are like a raging sea which cannot rest, casting up mire and dirt.'® As the sea casts up from its depths the soil under the waters, so the perpetual activity of the heart is casting up the passions and the sins that lie within it. This description applies in its measure to every one of us. We are all in this state ; and therefore the tempta- tions of Satan, the temptations of the world which are without us, and the temptations from our own heart within — these three temptations are inevitable. We cannot escape them. Evsry one of us singly stands between two spirits — there is the Spirit of God on the one side, there is the spirit of Satan on the other ; and the human spirit, that is the soul with its intel- ligence, heart, and will, stands between. These two spirits, of God and of Satan, are in perpetual conflict round about us and for us — the spirit of Satan striv- ing to pervert, to delude, and to cast us down ; the Spirit of God perpetually guiding, strengthening, and upholding us. The thoughts of Satan are infused into us, and also the lights of the Holy Ghost : and sometimes we do not know the one from the other. * Isa. Ivii. 20. TEMPTATION. 1G9 "VVe sometimes mistake the false lights of Satan for the lights of truth. We sometimes fancy that the lights of truth which come are only temptations. Sometimes we imagine our own human thoughts to he the thoughts and the lights of God ; and so we deceive ourselves. We are in this constant state of temptation, which is common to all men. 2. Next, the universality of this temptation is ab- solute, and there is no state of man that is not visited by it. Take, for example, sinners, those that live voluntarily in sin. Satan tempts them ; they are the subjects of constant satanic temptation ; but be sure that they are not the chief subjects of his tempta- tions, for this reason : they are his servants already, they are already doing his will, they already share his own mind, they already love those evils to which he tempts them. Satan leaves his own servants to do their work for him ; they have united themselves with his evil angels. When our Lord was tempted in the wilderness, it was but the lifting of the veil, and the making visible of that which invisibly is taking place every hour and every moment round about us. * We wrestle not with flesh and blood,* as the Apostle says, * but with principalities, and powers, and spi- ritual wickedness in high places ;'* that is, with the » E;5h. vi. 12. 170 TEMPTATION. Ili:'::, Si • !i whole hierarchy of fallen angels round about us. They are mingling among evil and wicked men ; the evil and the wicked have united themselves to their allegiance, and Satan leaves them alone, they are doing his work. The blasphemer is not tempted to blasphemy. Why should he be ? He blasphemes already. The unbeliever is not tempted to unbe- lief — he has lost his faith. The scoffer is no longer tempted to scoffing — he scoffs enough already, to sa- tisfy even the ' god of this world.' So I might go on with every other kind of sin. They have become the members of the ' mystery of impiety.'^® Just as all faithful children of God are members of Christ, and the mind and the will and spirit of Jesus Christ descend into them ; and being living members of the mystical body of Christ they are united to their Di- vine Head, so the wicked and sinful are pervaded by the mind and the spirit and the will and the malice of Satan : they are members of Satan, members of the mystical body of Satan, and are united to their Satanic head and are under his guidance. But next, if any one of them strives to return to God, he becomes the subject of a twofold temptation. Satan follows up every deserter who leaves his camp, and he follows him with an intensity of redoubled w 2 Th. S3, ii. 7. TEMPTATION. 171 malice. He multiplies all his temptations. Those by which he fell before, when he tries to rise again and to escape from them, Satan doubles their power and their effect. He never gives him rest. If any of you have tried to break ofif a fault, I have no doubt you have found that you have been more tempted to that same iault from the very time you began to master it. Need I tell you why ? Be- fore, you were swimming with the stream ; but when you tried to break off that fault you were swimming against the stream, and you felt the strength of the stream against you. That is to say you were going onward before the temptation until you turned from sin, then you felt the full force of temptation against you like the stream and current of a river ; and that stream and current was doubles by the malice of the tempter. He is not ouiy very strong in his temptations, but he is very subtil ; and when men begin to break off sins of one kind, he will leave them perfectly quiet on that side, and will tempt them on the other to something else which is altogether unlike their former faults. As, for instance, if any man \w ■ been tempted to gross sins and has gained the mastery, he will find him- self tempted to spiritual sins, which, casting him down, will bring him back to where he was before. ■II I'i m mm ' f( ;iiii,;:r i I i' If mi mmk. \: '■"Aif 172 TEMPTATION. Be sura of it, whoever begins, for example, to mortify such a sin as excess in food, if he gains the mastery, will find himself tempted perhaps to some spiritual sin, such as anger, ill-temper, or, it may be, vain- glory at what he has achieved. It is all one; what does it matter ? There are seven capital sins, of which three may be said to be of the body and four of the soul, but they all cast the soul into hell ; and if a man perishes by spiritual sin, he is just as cer- tainly condemned to eternal death as if he perishes by the grossest sins of the flesh. Satan in his sub- tilty knows this, and follows up every man that has turned away from him; and those who turn from him and strive to convert their souls to God are his special objects of temptation. Even those whom we call servants of God, who have really turned away from Satan, and are con- firmed in a life of faith and piety, they too have special temptations. For instance, when Satan sees any soul escape out of his hands, and no longer under the dominion of the grosser sins of the body, he changes himself into the likeness of an angel of light. He knows that the grosser forms of temptation will have no more power, that they will be disgust- ing and alarming, that they will repel and will drive the soul from him ; and therefore he changes himself 'I - TEMPTATION. 173 into an angel of light. He comes as a messenger of peace and a preacher of justice and a teacher of purity : and then he will stimulate and excite the imprudent to strain after perfections of penance and perfections of prayer and mystical reaches of the spiritual life, which we read of no doubt in saints, but such as are yet far out of the grasp of those who are beginning to serve God. Nevertheless these things are sufficient to turn the head and to infuse vainglory, and to call men off from the humble practice of daily duty, and make them climb and clamber up into high places, where they have not the head to stand, and at last they fall through a spiri- tual intoxication. So, also, those who have turned away from him he tempts to a censorious judgment of others. When they have light to know their own faults and their eyes are opened to discern sin, the use they make of their enlightened eyes is very often to be quick and searching to find the faults of their neighbours ; and by turning their eyes outwardly which are intended to be turned inwardly, they range to and fro, finding out and censuring the faults of other people, and perpetually committing rash judg- ments in their hearts, and very often sins of detrac- tion with their tongues. There is also another temptation even for those II', wl m ' <' i Pf MMtl'l ■■■tt It !• .vl;:! (ii^ "nii.:r:i:P'''^1i j^i' if 'W :i I II : I ■rv*- ' ' ,1 174 TEMPTATION. that are advancing far in the way of perfection. Spiritual writers tell us that there is a temptation which they call *the storm in the harbour;* that is, as a ship which has passed through a tempestuous sea and has come at last into the haven of rest, and is lying calmly over its anchors, may yet be struck by lightning or by a sudden squall, and may founder even in the port of safety ; so spiritual pride, spiri- tual self-love, vainglory at our own imagined perfec- tion, may wreck us at last. By looking at ourselves in the glass, by reading the lives of the saints until we believe we are saints, by filling our mind with dispro- portionate and strained imaginations, and then apply- ing them to ourselves : by dreaming that we are that which we can describe, and that tnere is an aureola, a crown of light hanging over our heads, we may finally cast ourselves down from God. These imaginings and delusions, which come from a profound self-love, and as profound a want of self-knowledge, will turn the heads and the consciences even of those who have escaped from grosser sins, and make them like Simon the Pharisee, who, being blind to his own faults, and censorious of the faults of others, was in comparison with poor Mary Magdalen a sinner before the eyes of our Lord : or like to the Pharisee in the Temple, who, after thanking God he was not like other men, TEMPTATION. 175 went down to his house not justified as the poor Publican was. Therefore we see that temptations are inevitable and universal; and whether you are only penitents or on the way to be saints, do not expect to be exempt from them. Eemember, then, that * there is nothing come upon you,' as the Apostle says, * but that which is common to man ; and God will make also an issue, or a way of escape, so that you may be able to bear it.'" No temptation is a perfect circle. If indeed the circle of temptation were complete, there would be no way out of it. God never permits any temptation to be a perfect ring ; there is always an outlet, always a break out of which the soul with safety may escape. 3. There is still another reason why temptation is not sin. However much you may be tempted, whe- ther it be to deadly sins or to lighter, it matters not, those temptations will never be imputed to you as sins, unless you willingly consent to them. This is the way of escape which is always open, the sure and certain issue by which every soul may pass, even out of a furnace heated sevenfold. You remember, some time ago we laid down as the essential condition of sin, that it is an evil act contrary to the will of God, with knowledge of the intellect, with the consent " 1 Cor. X. 13. H I,. m 176 TEMPTATION. '■'J'' 1 li ^ .■ M. if of the will, and with the consciousness of what we are doing. Now that one rule will precisely distinguish between sins and temptations. S. Paul in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans says : * The good I would, I do not ; the evil that I would not, that I do. I consent to the law of God in the inward man ; but I find another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. So if I do the evil that I would not, it is no more I, but sin that dwelleth in me.'^^ Therefore he distinguishes between the indwelling sin of his nature and himself. He says : * It is no more I.' Why is it no more himself? Because his will had no part nor lot in that inward sinfulness. The actions that we do may be distinguished, therefore, into those that are deliberate, and those that are not deliberate, or as it is called indeliberate. This distinction will precisely draw the line. A deliberate action of sin is what I have described — with knowledge, consent, and consciousness. An indeliberate action is that in which these elements are wanting. But you will say : ' How is that pos- sible ?' It is most possible. When we are out in the sun, we feel the warmth by no act of our own. If "^ Rom. vii. 15-20, |i i TEMPTATION. 177 the wind blows cold, we feel chilled by no act of our own will. All round about us, and all the day long tlie images of the world fill the eye, and yet we can only look at one thing at a time. Though we see a thousand, we can only look at one : and that one we look at by the act of our will : but all the rest simply fall upon our passive sight. We go through the streets, we hear a multitude of words to which we do not listen — we know their meaning as they fall upon our passive ear. Now all these are what I may call indeliberate acts. There is no action of the will in them : and we can no more hinder ourselves from see- ing and hearing than from being hot or cold. The thoughts that are in us are set in motion ; and the thoughts weave their associations. The memory revives, and gives up the images of the past ; and the imagination adds to them — and this process goes on at all hours ; for in truth our minds are never at rest. Ay, even in sleep we dream ; which is a reason to believe that, though the body is perfectly suspended in its conscious action, the mind is never suspended. Now a great deal of this mental action may indeed become sin if we consent to it ; but it is not sin if we do not consent to it: and that for the following reason. The will, as I have already said before, is the n 178 TEMPTATION. ill;! :l :l i : i::i' |,iii|;i!Hi| hi ii ! ;f!p! 1 I rational appetite of the soul. It is the desire we have in us guided by reason, choosing and determin- ing what we shall pursue. But round about the will there is first of all a circle of affections, which, as God created them, were all pure. Eound about the affections are the passions, which, as sin has wounded them, are all of them somewhat in disorder ; and round about the passions are the senses — sight and hearing, taste and touch — these are the inlets through which sin gains entrance. The Prophet says : * Death climbs up by the windows ;'^* which spiritual writers interpret, of sin finding its entrance through the senses — through the open eyes, the open ears — which are like the windows of the soul stand- ing wide. Satan has no power at all to enter into the soul against our will. The Holy Ghost can enter into the soul, because He is the Creator of the soul, and the Uncreated Spirit of God pervades all crea- tures. He is the Searcher of the heart, because He pervades the whole heart. He knows it all, because He is present in all ; but Satan cannot enter the heart as the Holy Ghost. All that he can do is to stand without, watching at the windows, and casting in * the fiery darts. '^* These * fiery darts' are the temptations which enter through the senses, fall it " Jer. ix. 21. " Eph. vi. 16. TEMPTATION. 179 upon the passions, and kindling tlicm, disorder tho affections, and through them affect the will ; but if the will does not consent, the presence of any amount of temptation may be mere suffering, and however intense, it will not be sin. So that the way to distinguish between what is temptation and what is sin is to ask yourselves, do you welcome it ? Do you open the door ? Do you throw up the window ? Do you invite it to come in and dwell ? or do you say : * The Lord rebuke thee— get thee behind me, Satan' ? How do you receive these temptations ? When the fiery darts are cast in by the window, do you trample them out or leave them to kindle, till by the eye, or the ear, the memory, and the imagination, are set on fire ? You feel as if a touch had moved you ; as, for example, what is a fit of anger but a sudden touch of fire; which comes be- fore we have a moment to deliberate ? An offensive answer, or some insolent gesture, or something done in a way to provoke the natural passion of wrath will immediately elicit our anger. It is in our nature ; we cannot help it. As on striking a flint you strike a spark, so on striking human nature, anger imme- diately responds ; and that first emotion of anger is not sinful. It is a sin, if I deliberately welcome it and say, * 0, this is come just in time. This is just Hi ■ ., I I. rl .1 ;;ii ■'15 . !*■' K'i ;v!:> i «:';.■'■! '■'.'I , 180 TEMPTATION. what I wanted. I have a will to be angiy.' If you heap on fuel, by thinking of the offence that has been committed, and stir the fire to make it burn more fiercely, then indeed you make it your own. I might give other examples, but you can find them for your- selves, because every one of the seven capital sins may be taken in like manner. I have given the example of one only, to save time, and also because it is better that you make them for yourselves. Another certain test whether it is temptation or sin is this : does the presence of the temptation give you pleasure, or pain ? Do you feel rather gratified by being stirred up to a sense of resentment, or does it give you a sensible pain that you have lost your calmness? If you have a sensible pleasure in it, then most assuredly you have been consenting ; if it gives you pain, then as certainly it is contrary to your will. You know it to be contrary to the law of God, to the example of Jesus Christ ; you feel it to be contrary to His meekness, His charity, His love. His compassion, and His generosity, and you feel inwardly grieved and pained with yourself that you are so unlike Him. You know it to be contrary, I will say, to the holiness of God and the purity of your own soul ; and therefore you hate the tempta- tion when it comes. You strive against it, you re- TEMPTATION. 181 ject it, you pray God to rebuke the presence of the ^ tempter and bruise him under your feet ; then you may be well satisfied that all this is a temptation, and not a sin. I will not say that there may not be some ad- hesion of your will, some internal contact as it were, which for a moment puts you in danger ; but the example of the first Adam, who, when he was tempted, was sinless, and of the second, who was God, are proofs to us that fiery temptations which we hate may come upon innocent persons. 4. All the manifold temptations of life are used by God for these two purposes : first, to try us, as I have said, and to increase our merit, and therefore our reward ; and secondly, to sanctify the soul— out of the very temptations themselves God creates the discipline of sanctification. As to the first, you un- derstand what merit is. We took care to distinguish and define with all precision what is the meaning of merit. It does not mean that we as creatures can snatch by right anything out of the hands of God ; but that God has promised He will attach to certain actions a certain reward of His own sovereign grace. Well, a man is tempted to anger, ambition, false- hood, or whatever you will— if he resist those tempta- tions as a good soldier of Jesus. Christ, he proves IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1^128 !^ 1^ 12.2 iM 12.0 lit IL25 lyiu I m 1.6 -► ^^ ^r Photographic _Sciences Corporation 23 WIST MAIN STRIIT -<^/E»STfR,N.Y. MSM (7U)«72-4S03 \ iV ^v ■1>^ <^ '^*<^'' ^i^^^ ^ O^ 183 TEMPTATION. [I !i himself to be faithful and fearless in his warfare. If he resists the temptations to sloth, indulgence, and pleasure, which prevail over softer natures, he shows himself to be a child of God, and a faithful friend to his Divine Friend. He proves that he will neither be scared nor bribed to give up his fidelity ; and therefore every such act of resistance to tempta- tion is, first of all, an act of faith. It is done for motives of faith, it is done because we appreciate the goodness and love of God. We make a deliberate choice between God and the temptation ; and we put our foot on the temptation that we may hold fast by God. Every single act of resisting temptation ob- tains merit and reward in the sight of God, and they who are the most tempted obtain the most merit, if they faithfully resist ; so that the life that is har- assed and buffeted with temptations without ceasing, if we perseveie, is laying up perpetually more and more of merit before God, and more and more of re- ward in eternal life. And every such act of resistance to temptation is an act of love to God. Though we say nothing, our actions are always breathing up- wards; * my God, I would rather die than do this: and that, for Thy sake.' And every time we so act, God interprets it as an act of love to Himself. He knows us as our Lord knew Peter when he said : TEMPTATION. 183 * Lord, Thou knowest all things— Thou knowest that I love Thee.'i^ And once more. It is an act of self- mortification. We are mortifying ourselves in the doing of it ; and when we mortify ourselves, that act is acceptable in the sight of God. It is the spirit of the Cross, it is an inward crucifixion of the flesh, of its affections and concupiscences, which is the mark of a true Christian. So, as I said before, though a man were walking in the furnace of temptations of every kind, yet if he resists them he is making acts of faith, love, and self-mortification all the day long, increasing his merit before God, and the reward that is laid up for him in heaven. 5. And the other effect is this— that God uses those very temptations as the means of our sanctifi- cation. You remember S. Paul says : * Lest I should be lifted up by the multitude of the revelations, God gave me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me. And for this cause I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me ; but He said : My grace is sufficient for thee, for strength is made perfect in infirmity'^^— that is to say, that God made use of his temptations to perfect him in sanc- tity. First of all. He humbles us by them. There is nothing that gives self-knowledge so much as temp- *• S. John xxi. 15. " Cor. xii. 7. 184 TEMPTATION. »• il I I tation. Until a man is tried, nobody knows what is in him. It is an old proverb. Until a man is tried in temptation, he does not know himself. He does not know how he will act in any circumstances, ex- cept those of his ordinary life, until he is tried. A man who thinks that he is afar off from being proud, let him find himself superior to his neighbours ; a man who thinks he is in no danger of being covet- ous, let him suddenly become rich; a man who thinks he is in no danger of falling into particular temptations, some day finds himself surrounded by them — he then learns what he is. Some man who thinks he could never teJl a lie, is taken all of a sud- den — he falls from his sincerity. Now temptation teaches us to know what we are. It throws a light in upon our hearts, and we learn that before God we are spotted and stained, and full of tumultuous affec- tions and passions, with crookedness in the will, darkness in the understanding ; and when we come to the knowledge of this, it breaks down the loftiness of our vainglory. It is a very unpleasant discovery, but very wholesome — nothing so salutary as for a man to find his own great instability, that he cannot trust himself. When he has come to know that he cannot trust himself, then he has come to know his need of the grace of God ; and not till then. We TEMPTATION. 185 read in the life of S. Philip Neri two most instructive passages— the one is this : he used to have a habit of saying, ' my God, keep Thy hand on my head ; for if Thou shouldst let me go, I should break loose and do Thee all manner of harm. The wound in Thy side is large, but I should make it larger.' He had such a sense of his own instability, and of his own weakness by nature, that, unless the grace of the Holy Spirit sanctified and sustained him, he knew he could not stand ; and that if he fell, there was no knowing to what he might go. This grew upon him all his life ; so that in a sickness in which they thought he was near to die, he prayed that God would raise him up, I A he might do a little more good before he died. He was raised up ; but some years afterwards he fell again sick unto death, as all about him believed. And for what did he pray then ? * my God, take me away that I may do no more harm.' He had learned to know him- self profoundly. Temptations and trials had made him understand his own nature; and in the sight of God he was becoming humbler and holier every day. Next, God uses temptations to chastise us; for the temptations which beset us are nine times in ten the effects and the consequences of the faults and ' 186 TEMPTATION. ' ii '■• ' si as of our life past. God makes use of the sins and faults we have committed in past years — in child- hood, hoyhood, youth — to scourge and to humhle us in our manhood and old age ; and He thereby brings to oar memory things we should have forgotten. Lastly, he uses temptations to awaken and excite in our hearts a hatred of sin ; and nothing makes us hate sin so much. When once we have turned away from sin, and are no longer consciously guilty, then the hatefu?.ness, hideousness, deformity, the black- ness of Gin, becomes more and more terrible to us the longer we live. In whose eyes is sin the most hate- ful ? Is it hateful in the eyes of the sinner, or is it hateful in the eyes of God ? In proportion as we are free from sin, in that proportion sin becomes hateful. Just as we grow in light and in grace, in purity, in sanctification, just in that measure sin is hateful to us; and just as we are tempted we learn to know more and more the hatefulness of sin. We begin first by hating sin in itself, but we do not stop with that abstract hatred. Our next hatred is against what we were once. We remember what we were once upon a time, we recollect what our boyhood or youth was, and there it is before us. The sun by the photograph does not take so precise and so ter- rible a portrait as the conscience enlightened by the • ■« <■ I TEMPTATION. 187 Holy Ghost takes of our past life. When we see what we once were before the grace of God converted us, the sins we committed in all their darkness and in all their multitude, in all their perversity and in all their ingratitude— when all this is before us and we see our past, the character we once had, hanging like a portrait on the wall, drawn by the pencil of the Holy Ghost, in all its hideousness, we hate our- selves. We hate what we were then ; and we hate everything that reminds us of it— the places, the per- sons, the memorials, the tokens — everything associ- ated with it. Ay, the music and the pictures and the objects of sight, the books, and tales, and poems, the friendships whose influence and whispers were in time past the darkness and downfall of our soul — all this is hateful. And we go on farther. Our present self, our present character, full of imperfections, ay, and more than that — and the more we know ourself in the light of God's presence, the more we shall come to have that humble sense of self-abhorrence which in the sight of God is the mark of a true penitent. Now, brethren, I have given you the way to dis- tinguish between sins and temptations, and I say with confidence that anybody who can look upon his past and upoL his present, with this feeling of hatred, and sorrow, and humility, may console himself with 188 TEMPTATION. 'i' iK;5 i ■; the conviction that, whatever temptations beset him from without, his heart and his will are intensely and firmly set against those temptations, and that sin has no part in him : * It is no more I, but sin that dwrelleth in me.'^^ I then have given you the reasons, first, that temptation is inevitable, that temptation is universal, that temptation which is not consented to is not sin, that temptation resisted is a perpetual increase of merit, and temptation resisted brings a continual growth of sanctification. I have now only two simple counsels to add. All this is true, subject to two conditionp The one is that we avoid the occasions of sin. You know what the word means. There is a difi'erence between an occasion of sin, and a temptation to sin. A temptation to sin means a positive danger, present here and now; but an occasion of sin may mean something lawful in itself which may lead us on to the danger of sin. The occasions may sometimes be lawful things altogether, innocent things which, like slippery places in our path, deceive our tread. There are three reasons why we are bound to avoid the occasions of sin. The first is this, that no man, when he makes his confession kneeling under a crucifix, can make a good confession, or can escape »' Rom. vii. 17. TEMPTATION. 18S the risk of a sacrilegious confession, and no man can receive a valid absolution, who does not, at the time when he accuses himself of his sins, make a firm, sincere, and steadfast resolution to avoid those sins and all that leads to them. If he has not got the will to give up the occasions which have caused him in past times to sin, and to commit the very sins of which he is now asking absolution in the presence of God, it is a perfect certainty that he has not the sorrow which is necessary for the sins he has com- mitted. Now there are two kinds of occasions : there are some which are called necessary, and some that are called voluntary. The distinction is this : let me suppose for a moment that some of you are tempted to unbelief — I trust in God none of you are — but let me suppose it as possible, and that you have a brother living in the same house with you, who, unfortunately being an unbeliever, pours out all kinds of infidel objections and rationalistic doubts against the revelation of God. You cannot leave your home — you cannot send him out of it — there he is. You are obliged to dwell with him. It is an occasion of temptation to you, and may be an occasion of sin. You cannot get rid of it — it is necessary — there it abides — it is beyond your nower and control. God will not call you to an account for 'ij ',1 ii'" i! I' 11 V 1; ' W>i if; 1 iil^ 1 1 ;■'!■ I' 190 TEMPTATION. not leaving your home under those circumstances ? But if you voluntarily and willingly seek conversation on those matters with such a person, that is your voluntary act ; and if you do so you are responsible ; and unless you steadfastly resolve not to do so you cannot have absolution of those sins of doubt against faith, into which you have voluntarily plunged your- self. I give this as an example. Apply it in your own heart to every form of sin and of temptation. I will not particularise, but you know perfectly well how easily you may transfer the example I have given to every other kind. It is necessary, then, to your valid absolution that you should steadfastly resolve to avoid every voluntary occasion of sin. Secondly, it is a part of the reparation due from you to our Divine Saviour, that, having offended Him, you will not allow yourselves to be drawn back into the same occasions. The duty of reparation which you owe to Him, after He has absolved you in His Precious Blood, is steadfastly to resist, and watch- fully to avoid all those circumstances and occasions which have led you to offend Him before. We read in the book of Acts that the Christians at Ephesus were given to what are called * curious arts,'^® omens, magic, superstition, and the like. When they were ** Acts zix. 19. ' yi TEMPTATION. 191 illuminated by the faith, they brought their books and burned them in a public place. The people of Milan, after a mission, collected together their foolish books, romances, poetry, bad books and bad pictures, masks, dresses used in masquerades, musical instru- ments used in vanity and folly the luxurious and ostentatious ornaments of their persons, and a mul- titude of other things, as cards, dice, the means of gambling, folly, and loss of time, whatsoever had been to them causes of temptation — they brought them all together into the Piazza del Duomo, and made of them a great bonfire. I am not going to ask you to make a great bonfire in the streets of Lon- don ; but what they did materially, you may do spi- ritually and morally, every one of you. You know, and will find out, what things have been the cause and occasion of sin to you, not only in deed, but in word, in thought, in imagination. Give them up — have nothing to do with them — put them far from you — turn your face from them — put your foot on them ; and then, if your temptations recur, you may look up in the face of your Heavenly Father and your Divine Master, and take the peace of knowing that the recurrence of those temptations is chastisement and humiliation, and not your pre- sent fault. I do not wish to go into particulars ; to 192 TEMPTATION. i ?\l V'