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DISCOURSES
ADDRESSED TO
M IX E D CON GRE G AT I O N S.

TIONDON :
GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERs,
ST. JoFIN’s SQUARE.
DISCOURSES
-—
ADDRESSED TO 3 º -/ & /
MIXED CON GREGATIONS.
BY
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D.,
OF THE ORATORY.
A7/AWTH AEDITIOAV.
3.0 mb on :
BURNS, OATES, & CO.,
17 AND 18 PORTMAN STREET, AND 63 PATERNOSTER ROW.
1876 •
TO THE
RIGHT REW, NICHOLAS WISEMAN, D.D.,
'BISHOP of MEIHPOTAMUs,
AND WICAR APOSTOLIC OF THE LONDON DISTRICT,
ETC., ETC., ETC.
MY DEAR LORD,
I present for your Lordship's kind acceptance
and patronage the first work which I publish as a
Father of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. I have a
sort of claim upon your permission to do so, as a
token of my gratitude and affection toward your
Lordship, since it is to you principally that I owe it,
under God, that I am a client and subject, however
unworthy, of so great a Saint.
When I found myself a Catholic, I also found
myself in your Lordship's district; and, at your
suggestion, I first moved into your immediate neigh-
bourhood, and then, when your Lordship further
desired it, I left you for Rome. There it was my
blessedness to be allowed to offer myself, with the
condescending approval of the Holy Father, to the
service of St. Philip, of whom I had so often heard
A 2
vi AJedication.
you speak before I left England, and whose bright
and beautiful character had won my devotion, even
when I was a Protestant.
You see then, my dear Lord, how much you have
to do with my present position in the Church. But
your concern with it is greater than I have yet stated;
for I cannot forget, that when, in the year 1839, a
doubt first crossed my mind of the tenableness of the
theological theory on which Anglicanism is based, it
was caused in no slight degree by the perusal of a
controversial paper, attributed to your Lordship, on
the schism of the Donatists.
That the glorious intercession of St. Philip may be
the reward of your faithful devotion to himself, and
of your kindness to me, is,
My dear Lord,
while I ask your Lordship’s blessing on me and mine,
the earnest prayer of
Your affectionate friend and servant,
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN,
OF THE ORATORY.
In Fest, S. Caroli,
1849.
CONTENT S.
T}ISCOURSE I.
THE SALWATION OF THE HEARER THE MOTIVE OF TEIE PREACHER
DISCOURSE II.
NEGLECT OF DIVINE CALLS AND WARNINGS
TXISCOUTSE III.
MEN, NOT ANGELS, THE PRIESTS OF THE GOSPEL
DISCOURSE IV.
PURITY AND LOVE
DISCOURSE W.
\
SAINTLINESS THE STANDARD OF CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE
DISCOURSE WI.
GOD’S WILL THE END OF LIFE
DISCOURSE VII.
PERSEVERANCE IN GRACE ' . • *
DISCOURSE VIII. ~
NATURE AND GRACE
DISCOURSE IX.
IILUMINATING GRACE
DISCOURSE X.
FAITH AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT
F.A.G.E.
1.
22
G2
83
104
124
146
170
193
viii * Contents.
DISCOURSE XI.
PAGE
IFAITH AND DOUBT - e {º & † we © & . 215
DISCOURSE XII.
PROSPECTS OF THE CATHOLIC MISSIONER, tº º is . 239
& !
** DISCOURSE XIII.
MYSTERIES OF NATJ RE AND OF GRACE . * & s . .261
DISCOURSE XIV.
THE MYSTERY OF DIVINE CONDESCENSION º © & . 285
DISCOURSE XW.
THE INFINITUDE of THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTEs . sº & . 306
DISCOURSE XVI.
MENTAL SUFFERINGS OF OUR LORD IN HIS PASSION s . 324
IDISCOURSE XVII.
THE GLORIES OF MARY FOR THE SAKE of HER son & . 343
DISCOURSE XVIII.
ON THE FITNESS OF TEIE GLORIES OF IMARY . g tº . 361
DISCO U R S E I.
7THZ SAA. W.4 ZZOAV OAP 7 AAF AAAAA’AA’ 7A/E MO 77PA2
OA' 7TA/AE AAEA 4 CAZAZAe.
WHEN a body of men come into a neighbourhood
jo them unknown, as we are doing, my brethren,
strangers to strangers, and there set themselves down,
and raise an altar, and open a school, and invite, or
even exhort all men to attend them, it is natural that
they who see them, and are drawn to think about
them, should ask the question, What brings them
hither? Who bids them come? What do they
want P What do they preach P What is their war-
rant 2 What do they promise 2–You have a right,
my brethren, to ask the question.
Many, however, will not stop to ask it, as thinking
they can answer it without difficulty for themselves.
Many there are who would promptly and confidently
answer it, according to their own habitual view of
things, on their own principles, the principles of the
world. The views, the principles, the aims of the
world are very definite, are everywhere acknowledged,
and are incessantly acted on. They supply an ex-
planation of the conduct of others, whoever they be,
TB
2 The Salvaſion of the Hearer
ready at hand, and so sure to be true in the common
run of cases, as to be probable and plausible in any
case in particular. When we would account for
effects which we see, we of course refer them to
causes which we know of. To fancy causes of which
we know nothing, is not to account for them at all.
The world then naturally and necessarily judges of
others by itself. Those who live the life of the world,
and act from motives of the world, and live and act
with those who do the like, as a matter of course
ascribe the actions of others, however different they
may be from their own, to one or other of the motives
which weigh with themselves; for some motive or
other they must assign, and they can imagine none
but those of which they have experience.
We know how the world goes on, especially in this
country; it is a laborious, energetic, indefatigable
world. It takes up objects enthusiastically, and
vigorously carries them through. Look into the
world, as its course is faithfully traced day by day in
those publications which are devoted to its service,
and you will see at once the ends which stimulate it,
and the views which govern it. You will read of
great and persevering exertions, made for some tem-
poral end, good or bad, but still temporal. Some
temporal end it is, even if it be not a selfish one ;-
generally, indeed, it is such as name, influence, power,
wealth, station; sometimes it is the relief of the ills
of human life or society, of ignorance, sickness,
poverty, or vice—still some temporal end it is, which
is the exciting and animating principle of those
the Motive of the Preacher. 3
exertions. And so pleasant is the excitement which
those temporal objects create, that it is often its own
reward; insomuch that, forgetting the end for which
they toil, men find a satisfaction in the toil itself, and
are sufficiently repaid for their trouble by their trouble,
—by the struggle for success, and the rivalry of party,
and the trial of their skill, and the demand upon their
resources, by the vicissitudes and hazards, and ever
new emergencies, and varying requisitions of the con-
test which they carry on, though that contest never
comes to an end. rºs-
Such is the way of the world; and therefore, I say,
it is not unnatural, that, when it sees any persons
whatever anywhere begin to work with energy, and
attempt to get others about them, and act in outward
appearance like itself, though in a different direction,
and with a religious profession, it should unhesi-
tatingly impute to them the motives which influence,
or would influence its own children. Often by way of
blame, but sometimes not as blaming, but as merely
stating a plain fact, which it thinks undeniable, it
takes for granted that they are ambitious, or restless,
or eager for distinction, or fond of power. It knows
no better; and it is vexed and annoyed if, as time
goes on, one thing or another is seen in the conduct
of those whom it criticises, which is inconsistent with
the assumption on which, in the first instance, it so
summarily settled their position and anticipated their
course. It took a general view of them, looked them
through, as it thought, and from some one action of
theirs which came to its knowledge, assigned to them
B 2
4. The Salvaſion of the A/earer
unhesitatingly some particular motive as their habi-
tual actuating principle; but presently it finds it is
obliged to shift its ground, to take up some new
hypothesis, and explain to itself their character and
their conduct over again. Oh, my dear brethren, the
world cannot help doing so, because it knows us not ;
it ever will be impatient with us for mot being of the
world, because it is the world; it is necessarily blind
to the one motive which has influence with us, and,
tired out at length with hunting through its cata-
logues and note-books for a description of us, it sits
down in disgust, after its many conjectures, and
flings us aside as inexplicable, or hates us as if
mysterious and designing.
My brethren, we have secret views—secret, that is
from men of this world; secret from politicians, secret
from the slaves of mammon, secret from all ambitious,
covetous, selfish, and voluptuous men. For religion
itself, like its Divine Author and Teacher, is, as I
have said, a hidden thing from them; and not
knowing it, they cannot use it as a key to interpret
the conduct of those who are influenced by it. They
do not know the ideas and motives which religion sets
before that mind which it has made its own. They do
not enter into them, or realize them, even when they
are told them ; and they do not believe that a man
can be influenced by them, even when he professes
them. They cannot put themselves into the position
of a man simply striving, in what he does, to please
God. They are so narrow-minded, such is the mean-
ness of their intellectual make, that, when a Catholic
the Motive of the Preacher. 5
makes profession of this or that doctrine of the
Church,--sin, judgment, heaven and hell, the blood
of Christ, the power of Saints, the intercession of the
Blessed Virgin, or the Real Presence in the Eucharist,
—and says that these are the objects which inspire
his thoughts and direct his actions through the day,
they cannot take in that he is in earnest ; for they
think, forsooth, that these points ought to be his very
difficulties, and are at most nothing more than trials
to his faith, and that he gets over them by putting
force on his reason, and thinks of them as little as he
can ; and they do not dream that truths such as these
have a hold upon his heart, and exert an influence on
his life. No wonder, then, that the sensual, and
worldly-minded, and the unbelieving, are suspicious
of one whom they cannot comprehend, and are so
intricate and circuitous in their imputations, when
they cannot bring themselves to accept an explana-
tion which is straight before them. So it has been
from the beginning ; the Jews preferred to ascribe the
conduct of our Lord and His forerunner to any motive
but that of a desire to fulfil the will of God. To the
Jews they were, as He says, “like children sitting in
the market-place, which cry to their companions, say-
ing, We have piped to you, and you have not danced;
we have lamented to you, and you have not mourned.”
And then He goes on to account for it : “I thank
Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou
hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and
hast revealed them to little ones. Yea, Father; for
so hath it been pleasing in Thy sight.”
6 7%e Sa/vation of the Hearer
º, º *
Let the world have its way, let it say what it will
about us, my brethren ; but that does not hinder our
saying what we think, and what the eternal God
thinks and says, about the world. We have as good
a right to have our own judgment about the world, as
the world to have its judgment about us ; and we
mean to exercise that right; for, while we know well
it judges us amiss, we have God's testimony that we
judge it truly. While, then, it is eager in aséribing
our earnestness to one or other of its own motives,
listen to me, while I show you, as it is not difficult to
do, that it is our very fear and hatred of those motives,
and our compassion for the souls possessed by them,
which makes us so busy and so troublesome, which
prompts us to settle down in a district, so destitute
of outward recommendations, but so overrun with
religious error and so populous in souls.
Oh my brethren, little does the world, engrossed, as
it is, with things of time and sense, little does it trouble
itself about souls, about the state of souls in God’s
sight, about their past history, and about their prospects
for the future. The world forms its views of things for
itself, and in its own way, and lives in them. It never
stops to consider whether they are sound and true; nor
does it come into its thought to seek for any external
standard, or channel of information, by which their
truth can be ascertained. It is content to take things
for granted according to their first appearance; it does
not stop to think of God; it lives for the day, and (in
a perverse sense) “is not solicitous for the morrow.”
What it sees, tastes, handles, is enough for it; this is
the Motive of the Preacher. 7
the limit of its knowledge and of its aspirations; what
tells, what works well, is alone respectable ; efficiency
is the measure of duty, and power is the rule of right,
and success is the test of truth. It believes what it
experiences, it disbelieves what it cannot demonstrate. J
And, in consequence, it teaches that a man has not
much to do to be saved; that either he has committed
no great sins, or that he will, as a matter of course, be
pardoned for committing them ; that he may securely
trust in God’s mercy for his prospects in eternity; and
that he ought to discard all self-reproach, or depreca-
tion, or penance, all mortification and self-discipline,
as affronting or derogatory to that mercy. This is
what the world teaches, by its many sects and philo-
sophies, about our condition in this life; but what, on
the other hand, does the Catholic Church teach con-
cerning it?
She teaches that man was originally made in God’s
image, was God’s adopted son, was the heir of eternal
glory, and, in foretaste of eternity, was partaker here
on earth of great gifts and manifold graces; and she
teaches that now he is a fallen being. He is under
the curse of original sin; he is deprived of the grace
of God; he is a child of wrath; he cannot attain to
heaven, and he is in peril of sinking into hell. I do
not mean he is fated to perdition by some necessary
law; he cannot perish without his own real will and
deed; and God gives him, even in his natural state, a
multitude of inspirations and helps to lead him on to
faith and obedience. There is no one born of Adam
but might be saved, as far as divine assistances are
8 The Sa/vation of the Hearer
*
concerned; yet, looking at the power of temptation,
the force of the passions, the strength of self-love and
self-will, the sovereignty of pride and sloth, in every
one of his children, who will be bold enough to assert
of any particular soul, that it will be able to maintain
itself in obedience, without an abundance, a profusion
of grace, not to be expected, as bearing no proportion,
I do not say simply to the claims (for they are none),
but to the bare needs of human nature? We may
securely prophesy of every man born into the world,
that, if he comes to years of understanding, he will, in
spite of God’s general assistances, fall into mortal sin
and lose his soul. It is no light, no ordinary succour,
by which man is taken out of his own hands and de-
fended against himself. He requires an extraordinary
remedy. Now what a thought is this l what a light
does it cast upon man’s present stateſ how diffe-
rent from the view which the world takes of it; how
piercing, how overpowering in its influence on the
hearts that admit it !
Contemplate, my brethren, more minutely the
history of a soul born into the world, and educated
according to its principles, and the idea, which I am
putting before you, will grow on you. The poor infant
passes through his two, or three, or five years of
innocence, blessed in that he cannot yet sin; but at
length (Oh woeful day !) he begins to realize the dis-
tinction between right and wrong. Alas! sooner or
later, for the age varies, but sooner or later the awful
day has come; he has the power, the great, the dread-
ful, the awful power of discerning and pronouncing a
the Motive of the Preacher. 9
thing to be wrong, and yet doing it. He has a distinct
view that he shall grievously offend his Maker and his
Judge by doing this or that ; and while he is really
able to keep from it, he is at liberty to choose it, and
to commit it. He has the dreadful power of commit-
ting a mortal sin. Young as he is, he has as true an
apprehension of that sin, and can give as real a con-
sent, as did the evil spirit, when he fell. The day is
come, and who shall say whether it will have closed,
whether it will have run out many hours, before he
will have exercised that power, and have perpetrated,
in fact, what he ought not to do, what he need not
do, what he can do? Who is there whom we ever
knew, of whom we can assert that, had he remained
in a state of nature, he would have used the powers
given him, that if he be in a state of nature, he has
used the powers given him,-in such a way as to
escape the guilt and penalty of offending Almighty
God? No, my brethren, a large town like this is a
fearful sight. We walk the streets, and what num-
bers are there of those who meet us who have never
been baptized at all ! And the remainder, what is it
made up of, but for the most part of those who,
though baptized, have sinned against the grace given
them, and even from early youth have thrown them-
selves out of that fold in which alone is salvation
Reason and sin have gone together from the first.
Poor child, he looks the same to his parents They
do not know what has been going on in him; or perhaps,
did they know it, they would think very little of it,
for they are in a state of mortal sin as well as he. '
gº.
I O 7%e Sa/wa/ion of the A/earer
\J N &
They too, long before they knew each other, had
sinned, and mortally too, and were never reconciled
to God; thus they lived for years, unmindful of their
state. At length they married; it was a day of joy
to them, but not to the Angels; they might be in high
life or in low estate, they might be prosperous or not
in their temporal course, but their union was not
blessed by God. They gave birth to a child; he was
not condemned to hell on his birth, but he had the
omens of evil upon him, it seemed that he would go
the way of all flesh : and now the time is come; the
presage is justified; and he willingly departs from
God. At length the forbidden fruit has been eaten ;
sin has been devoured with a pleased appetite; the
gates of hell have yawned upon him, silently and
without his knowing it; he has no eyes to see its
flames, but its inhabitants are gazing upon him ; his
place in it is fixed beyond dispute;—unless his Maker
interfere in some extraordinary way, he is doomed.
Yet his intellect does not stay its growth, because
he is the slave of sin. It opens: time passes; he
learns perhaps various things; he may have good
abilities, and be taught to cultivate them. He may
have engaging manners; anyhow he is light-hearted
and merry, as boys are. He is gradually educated for
the world; he forms his own judgments; chooses his
principles, and is moulded to a certain character. That
character may be more, it may be less amiable; it
may have much or little of natural virtue: it matters
not—the mischief is within ; it is done, and it spreads.
- The devil is unloosed and abroad in him. For a while
the Motive of the Preacher. . I I
he used some sort of prayers, but he has left them off;
they were but a form, and he had no heart for them;
why should he continue them P and what was the use
of them P and what the obligation ? So he has rea-
soned; and he has acted upon his reasoning, and
ceased to pray. Perhaps this was his first sin, that
original mortal sin, which threw him out of grace—
a disbelief in the power of prayer. As a child, he
refused to pray, and argued that he was too old to
pray, and that his parents did not pray. He gave
prayer up, and in came the devil, and took possession
of him, and made himself at home, and revelled in
his heart. -
Poor child ! Every day adds fresh and fresh mortal
sins to his account; the pleadings of grace have less
and less effect upon him; he breathes the breath of
evil, and day by day becomes more fatally corrupted.
He has cast off the thought of God, and set up self in
His place. He has rejected the traditions of religion
which float about him, and has chosen instead the
more congenial traditions of the world, to be the guide
of his life. He is confident in his own views, and
does not suspect that evil is before him, and in his
path. He learns to scoff at serious men and serious
things, catches at any story circulated against them,
and speaks positively when he has no means of judg-
ing or knowing. The less he believes of revealed
doctrine, the wiser he thinks himself to be. Or, if his
natural temper keeps him from becoming hard-hearted,
still from easiness and from imitation he joins in
mockery of holy persons and holy things, as far as
(#)
@)
I 2 7%e Salvation of the Hearer
& )
they come across him. He is sharp and ready, and
humorous, and employs these talents in the cause of
Satan. He has a secret antipathy to religious truths
and religious doings, a disgust which he is scarcely
aware of, and could not explain, if he were. So was
it with Cain, the eldest born of Adam, who went on to
murder his brother, because his works were just. So
was it with those poor boys at Bethel who mocked the
great prophet Eliseus, crying out, Go up, thou bald
head Anything serves the purpose of a scoff and
taunt to the natural man, when irritated by the sight
of religion.
Oh my brethren, I might go on to mention those
other more loathsome and more hidden wickednesses
which germinate and propagate within him, as time
proceeds, and life opens on him. Alas! who shall
sound the depths of that evil whose wages is death?
Oh what a dreadful sight to look on, is this fallen
world, specious and fair outside, plausible in its pro-
fessions, ashamed of its own sins and hiding them,
yet a mass of corruption under the surface | Ashamed
of its sins, yet not confessing to itself that they are
sins, but defending them if conscience upbraids, and
perhaps boldly saying, or at least implying, that, if an
impulse be allowable in itself, it must be always right
in an individual, nay, that self-gratification is its own
warrant, and that temptation is the voice of God.
Why should I attempt to analyze the intermingling -
influences, or to describe the combined power, of pride
and lust-lust exploring a way to evil, and pride
fortifying the road, till the first elementary truths
the Motive of the Preacher. I 3
of Revelation are looked upon as mere nursery tales 2
No, I have intended nothing more than to put
wretched nature upon its course, as I may call it, and
there to leave it, my brethren, to your reflections, to
that individual comment which each of you may be
able to put on this faint delineation, realizing in
your own mind and your own conscience what no
words can duly set forth.
His secular course proceeds: the boy has become a
man; he has taken up a profession or a trade; he has
fair success in it; he marries, as his father did before
him. He plays his part in the scene of mortal life;
his connexions extend as he gets older: whether in a
higher or a lower sphere of society, he has his reputa-
tion and his influence : the reputation and the in-
fluence of, we will say, a sensible, prudent, and shrewd
man. His children grow up around him; middle age
is over, —his sun declines in the heavens. In the
balance and by the measure of the world, he is come
to an honourable and venerable old age; he has been
a child of the world, and the world acknowledges and
praises him. But what is he in the balance of heaven 2
What shall we say of God’s judgment of him 2 What
about his soul?—about his sou/ ? Ah, his soul; he had
forgotten that ; he had forgotten he had a soul, but it
remains from first to last in the sight of its Maker.
Posuisti saculum nostrum in illuminatione vultiſs Tui ;
“Thou hast placed our life in the illumination of Thy
countenance.” Alas! alas ! about his soul the world
knows, the world cares, nought; it does not recog-
nize the soul; it owns nothing in him but an intel-
I4. The Salvation of the Hearer
lect manifested in a mortal frame; it cares for the
man while he is here, it loses sight of him when he
is there. Still the time is coming when he is leaving
here, and will find himself there ; he is going out of
sight, amid the shadows of that unseen world, about
which the visible world is so sceptical; so, it concerns
us who have a belief of that unseen world, to inquire,
“How fares it all this while with his soul?” Alas !
he has had pleasures and satisfactions in life, he has,
I say, a good name among men; he sobered his views
as life went on, and he began to think that order and
religion were good things, that a certain deference
was to be paid to the religion of his country, and a
certain attendance to be given to its public worship;
but he is still, in our Lord’s words, nothing else but
a whited sepulchre; he is foul within with the bones
of the dead and all uncleanness. All the sins of his
youth, never repented of, never put away, his old pro-
fanenesses, his impurities, his animosities, his idolatries,
are rotting with him ; only covered over and hidden
by successive layers of newer and later sins. His
heart is the home of darkness, it has been handled,
defiled, possessed by evil spirits; he is a being with-
out faith, and without hope; if he holds anything for
truth, it is only as an opinion, and if he has a sort of
calmness and peace, it is the calmness, not of heaven,
but of decay and dissolution. And now his old enemy
has thrust aside his good Angel, and is sitting near
him ; rejoicing in his victory, and patiently waiting
for his prey ; not tempting him to fresh sins lest they
should disturb his conscience, but simply letting well
the Motive of the Preacher. I 5
alone; letting him amuse himself with shadows of Nº
faith, shadows of piety, shadows of worship ; aiding
him readily in dressing himself up in some form of
religion which may satisfy the weakness of his declin-
ing age, as knowing well that he cannot last long,
that his death is a matter of time, and that he shall
soon be able to carry him down with him to his fiery
dwelling. *
O how awful and at last the inevitable hour is
come. He dies—he dies quietly—his friends are
satisfied about him. They return thanks that God
has taken him, has released him from the troubles of
life and the pains of sickness; “a good father,” they
say, “a good neighbour,” “ sincerely lamented,”
“lamented by a large circle of friends.” Perhaps
they add, “ dying with a firm trust in the mercy of
God;”—may, he has need of something beyond mercy,
he has need of some attribute which is inconsistent
with perfection, and which is not, cannot be, in the
All-glorious, All-holy God;—“ with a trust,” for-
sooth, “in the promises of the Gospel,” which never
were his, or were early forfeited. And then, as time
travels on; every now and then is heard some passing
remembrance of him, respectful or tender; but he all
the while (in spite of this false world, and though its
children will not have it so, and exclaim, and protest,
and are indignant when so solemn a truth is hinted
at), he is lifting up his eyes, being in torment, and
lies “buried in hell.” -
Such is the history of a man in a state of nature, or
in a state of defection, to whom the Gospel has never
I6 7%e Salvation of the Hearer
(`)
been a reality, in whom the good seed has never taken
root, on whom God’s grace has been shed in vain, with
whom it has never prevailed so far as to make him
seek His face and to ask for those higher gifts which
lead to heaven. Such is his dark record. But I have
spoken of only one man : alas ! my dear brethren, it
is the record of thousands; it is, in one shape or other,
the record of all the children of the world. “As soon
as they are born,” the wise man says, “they forthwith
have ceased to be, and they are powerless to show any
sign of virtue, and are wasted away in their wicked-
ness.” They may be rich or poor, learned or ignorant,
polished or rude, decent outwardly and self-disci-
plined, or scandalous in their lives, but at bottom
they are all one and the same; they have not faith,
they have not love; they are impure, they are proud;
they all agree together very well, both in opinions and
conduct; they see that they agree; and this agreement
they take as a proof that their conduct is right and
their opinions true. Such as is the tree, such is the
fruit; no wonder the fruit is the same in all when it
comes of the same root of unregenerate, unrenewed
nature; but they consider it good and wholesome,
because it is matured in so many; and they chase
away, as odious, unbearable, and horrible, the pure
and heavenly doctrine of Revelation, because it is so
severe upon themselves. No one likes bad news, no
one welcomes what condemns him; the world slanders
the Truth in self-defence, because the Truth denounces
the world. - -
My brethren, if these things be so, or rather (for
the Motive of the Preacher. I7
this is the point here), if we, Catholics, firmly believe
them to be so, so firmly believe them, that we feel it
would be happy for us to die rather than doubt them,
is it wonderful, does it require any abstruse explana-
tion, that men minded as we are should come into the
midst of a population such as this, and into a neigh-
bourhood where religious error has sway, and where
corruption of life prevails' both as its cause and as its
consequence ;-a population, not worse indeed than
the rest of the world, but not better; not better,
because it has not with it the gift of Catholic truth;
not purer, because it has not within it that gift of
grace which alone can destroy impurity; a population,
sinful, I am certain, given to unlawful indulgences,
laden with guilt and exposed to eternal ruin, because
it is not blessed with that Presence of the Word
Incarnate, which diffuses sweetness, and tranquillity,
and chastity, over the heart;--is it a thing to be
marvelled at, that we begin to preach to such a
population as this, for which Christ died, and try to
convert it to Him and to His Church 2 Is it necessary
to ask for reasons? is it necessary to assign motives
of this world, for a proceeding which is so natural in
those who believe in the announcements and require-
ments of the other? My dear brethren, if we are sure
that the Most Holy Redeemer has shed His blood
for all men, is it not a very plain and simple conse-
quence that we, His servants, His brethren, His priests,
should be unwilling to see that blood shed in vain,--
wasted, I may say, as regards you, and should wish
to make you partakers of those benefits which have
C
18 The Salvation of the //earer
been vouchsafed to ourselves? Is it necessary for any
by-stander to call us vain-glorious, or ambitious, or
2/2/02) >
restless, greedy of authority, fond of power, resentful,
party-spirited, or the like, when here is so much more
powerful, more present, more influential a motive to
which our eagerness and zeal may be ascribed 2 What
is so powerful an incentive to preaching as the sure
belief that it is the preaching of the truth P What so
constrains to the conversion of souls, as the conscious-
ness that they are at present in(guilt and in peril 2
What so great a persuasive to bring men into the
Church, as the conviction that it is the special means
by which God effects the salvation of those whom the
world trains in sin and unbelief ? Only admit us to
believe what we profess, and surely that is not asking
a great deal (for what have we done that we should be
distrusted?)—only admit us to believe what we pro-
fess, and you will understand without difficulty what
we are doing. We come among you, because we
believe there is but one way of salvation, marked out
from the beginning, and that you are not walking
along it ; we come among you as ministers of that
extraordinary grace of God, which you need; we come
among you because we have received a great gift from
God ourselves, and wish you to be partakers of our joy;
because it is written, “Freely ye have received, freely
give; ” because we dare not hide in a napkin those
mercies, and that grace of God, which have been given
us, not for our own sake only, but for the benefit of
others.
Such a zeal, poor and feeble though it be in us, has
the Motive of the Preacher. - I9
been the very life of the Church, and the breath of her
preachers and missionaries in all ages. It was such a
sacred fire which brought our Lord from heaven, and
which He desired, which He travailed, to communicate
to all around Him. “I am come to send fire on the
earth,” He says, “ and what will I, but that it be
kindled ” Such, too, was the feeling of the great
Apostle to whom his Lord appeared in order to impart
to him this fire. “I send thee to the Gentiles,” He
had said to him on his conversion, “to open their
eyes, that they may be converted from darkness to
light, and from the power of Satan unto God.” And,
accordingly, he at once began to preach to them, that
they should do penance, and turn to God with worthy
fruits of penance, “for,” as he says, “the charity of
Christ constrained him,” and he was “made all things
to all that he might save all,” and he “bore all for the
elect’s sake, that they might obtain the salvation
which is in Christ Jesus, with heavenly glory.”
Such, too, was the fire of zeal which burned within
those preachers, to whom we English owe our Chris-
tianity. What brought them from Rome to this
distant isle and to a barbarian people, amid many
fears, and with much suffering, but the sovereign un-
controllable desire to save the perishing, and to knit the
members and slaves of Satan into the body of Christ P
This has been the secret of the propagation of the
Church from the very first, and will be to the end;
this is why the Church, under the grace of God, to the
surprise of the world, converts the nations, and why
no sect can do the like; this is why Catholic mission-
Cº
C 2 -
2O 7%e Salvaſion of £he Hearer
l,
ſº
aries throw themselves so generously among the
fiercest savages, and risk the most cruel torments, as
knowing the worth of the soul, as realizing the world
to come, as loving their brethren dearly, though they
never saw them, as shuddering at the thought of the
A.Y. / w tº g x º, s
Cº-eternal woe, and as desiring to increase the fruit of
their Lord’s passion, and the triumphs of His grace.
We, my brethren, are not worthy to be named in
connexion with Evangelists, Saints, and Martyrs;
we come to you in a peaceable time and in a well-
ordered state of society, and recommended by that
secret awe and reverence, which, say what they will,
Englishmen for the most part, or in good part, feel
for that Religion of their fathers, which has left in the
land so many memorials of its former sway. It
requires no great zeal in us, no great charity, to
come to you at no risk, and entreat you to turn from
the path of death, and be saved. It requires nothing
great, nothing heroic, nothing saint-like; it does but
require conviction, and that we have, that the Catholic
Religion is given from God for the salvation of man-
kind, and that all other religions are but mockeries;
it requires nothing more than faith, a single purpose,
an honest heart, and a distinct utterance. We come
to you in the name of God; we ask no more of you
than that you would listen to us; we ask no more
than that you would judge for yourselves whether or
not we speak God’s words; it shall rest with you
whether we be God’s priests and prophets or no. This
is not much to ask, but it is more than most men
will grant; they do not dare listen to us, they are
the Motive of the Preacher. 21
impatient through prejudice, or they dread conviction.
Yes! many a one there is, who has even good reason
to listen to us, nay, on whom we have a claim to be
heard, who ought to have, a certain trust in us, who
yet shuts his ears, and turns' away, and chooses to
hazard eternity without weighing what we have to
say. How frightful is this but you are not, you
cannot be such; we ask not your confidence, my
brethren, for you have never known us: we are not
asking you to take for granted what we say, for we
are strangers to you; we do but simply bid you first
to consider that you have souls to be saved, and next
to judge for yourselves, whether, if God has revealed
a religion of His own whereby to save those souls,
that religion can be any other than the faith which
we preach.
DISCO U R S E II.
AWAE GZAZC 7" OA' Z)/ V/AVAE CA1//.S AAWD WA RAW/AWGS.
O one sins without making some excuse to himself
for sinning. He is obliged to do so: man is not
like the brute beasts; he has a divine gift within him
which we call reason, and which constrains him to
account before its judgment-seat for what he does.
He cannot act at random; however he acts, he must
act by some kind of rule, on some sort of principle,
else he is vexed and dissatisfied with himself. Not
that he is very particular whether he finds a good
reason or a bad, when he is very much straitened for
a reason; but a reason of some sort he must have.
Hence you sometimes find those who give up religious
duty altogether, attacking the conduct of religious
men, whether their acquaintance, or the ministers or
professors of religion, as a sort of excuse—a very bad
one—for their neglect. Others will make the excuse
that they are so far from church, or so closely occupied
at home, whether they will or not, that they cannot
serve God as they ought. Others say that it is no use
trying to do so, that they have again and again gone
to confession and tried to keep out of mortal sin, and
AVeglect of Divine Ca//s and Warnings. 23
cannot; and so they give up the attempt as hopeless.
Others, when they fall into sin, excuse themselves on
the plea that they are but following nature; that the
impulses of nature are so very strong, and that it
cannot be wrong to follow that nature which God has
given us. Others are bolder still, and they cast off
religion altogether : they deny its truth ; they deny
Church, Gospel, and Bible; they go so far perhaps as
even to deny God’s governance of His creatures.
They boldly deny that there is any life after death :
and, this being the case, of course they would be fools
indeed not to take their pleasure here, and to make as
much of this poor life as they can.
And there are others, and to these I am going to
address myself, who try to speak peace to themselves
by cherishing the thought that something or other
will happen after all to keep them from eternal ruin,
though they now continue in their neglect of God;
that it is a long time yet to death; that there are
many chances in their favour; that they shall repent
in process of time when they get old, as a matter of
course; that they mean to repent some day; that they
mean, sooner or later, seriously to take their state
into account, and to make their ground good; and, if
they are Catholics, they add, that they will take care
to die with the last Sacraments, and that therefore
they need not trouble themselves about the matter.
Now these persons, my brethren, tempt God; they
try Him, how far His goodness will go ; and, it may
be, they will try Him too long, and will have expe-
rience, not of His gracious forgiveness, but of His
24 Neglect of Divine Calls and Warmings.
severity and His justice. In this spirit it was that
the Israelites in the desert conducted themselves to-
wards Almighty God: instead of feeling awe of Him,
they were free with Him, treated Him familiarly, made
excuses, preferred complaints, upbraided Him; as if
- the Eternal God had been a weak man, as if He had
been their minister and servant; in consequence, we
are told by the inspired historian, “The Lord sent
among the people fiery serpents.” To this St. Paul
refers when he says, “Neither let us tempt Christ, as
some of them tempted, and perished by the serpents;”
a warning to us now, that those who are forward and
bold with their Almighty Saviour, will gain, not the
pardon which they look for, but will find themselves
within the folds of the old serpent, will drink in his
poisonous breath, and at length will die under his
fangs. That seducing spirit appeared in person to our
Lord in the days of His flesh, and tried to entangle
Him, the Son of the Highest, in this very sin. He
placed Him on the pinnacle of the Temple, and said
- to Him, “If Thou art the Son of God, cast Thyself
down, for it is written, He has given His Angels
charge of Thee, and in their hands they shall lift. Thee,
lest perchance Thou strike Thy foot against a stone;”
but our Lord’s answer was, “It is also written, Thou
shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” And so num-
bers are tempted now to cast themselves headlong
down the precipice of sin, assuring themselves the
while that they will never reach the hell which lies at
the bottom, never dash upon its sharp rocks, or be
plunged into its flames; for Angels and Saints are
Meglect of Divine Ca//s and W.armings. 25
there, in their extremity, in their final need,—or at
least, God’s general mercies, or His particular pro-
mises, to interpose and bear them away safely. Such
is the sin of these men, my brethren, of which I am
going to speak; not the sin of unbelief, or of pride, or
of despair, but of presumption. -
I will state more distinctly the kind of thoughts
which go through their minds, and which quiet and
satisfy them in their course of irreligion. They say to
themselves, “I cannot give up sin now ; I cannot
give up this or that indulgence; I cannot break
myself of this habit of intemperance; I cannot do
without these unlawful gains; I cannot leave these
employers or superiors, who keep me from following my
conscience. It is impossible I should serve God now ;
and I have no leisure to look into myself; and I do
not feel the wish to repent ; I have no heart for reli-
gion. But it will come easier by and by ; it will be
as natural then to repent and be religious, as it is now.
natural to sin. I shall then have fewer temptations,
fewer difficulties. Old people are sometimes indeed
reprobates, but, generally speaking, they are religious;
they are religious almost as a matter of course; they
may curse and swear a little, and tell lies, and do
such-like little things; but still they are clear of
mortal sin, and would be safe if they were suddenly
taken off.” And when some particular temptation
comes on them, they think, “It is only one sin, and
once in a way; I never did the like before, and never
will again while I live ;” or, “I have done as bad
before now, and it is only one sin more, and I shall
26 Meglect of Divine Caſs and Warnings.
have to repent any how ; and while I am about it, it
will be as easy to repent of one sin more as of one less,
for I shall have to repent of al/ sin;” or again, “If
I perish, I shall not want company;-what will häp-
pen to this person or that? I am quite a Saint com-
pared with such a one; and I have known men
repent, who have done much worse things than I have
done.” . -
Now, my dear brethren, those who make such ex-
cuses to themselves, know neither what sin is in its
own nature, nor what their own sins are in particular ;
they understand neither the heinousness nor the mul-
titude of their sins. It is necessary, then, to state
distinctly one or two points of Catholic doctrine, which
will serve to put this matter in a clearer view than men
are accustomed to take of it. These truths are very
simple and very obvious, but are quite forgotten by the
persons of whom I have been speaking, or they would
never be able to satisfy their reason and their conscience
by such frivolous pleas and excuses, as those which I
have been drawing out. - - *
First then observe, that when a person says, “I
have sinned as badly before now,” or, “This is only
one sin more,” or, “I must repent any how, and then
will repent once for all,” and the like, he forgets that
all his sins are in God’s hand and in one page of the
book of judgment, and already added up against him,
according as each is committed, up to the last of them ;
that the sin he is now committing is not a mere single,
isolated, sin, but that it is one of a series, of along cata-
logue; that though it be but one, it is not sin one, or
Meglect of Divine Calls and Warnings. 27
sin two, or sin three in the list, but it is the thousandth,
the ten thousandth, or the hundred thousandth, in a
long course of sinning. It is not the first of his sins,
but the last, and perhaps the very last and finishing
sin. He himself forgets, manages to forget, or tries to
forget, wishes to forget, all his antecedent sins, or
remembers them merely as instances of his having
sinned with impunity before, and proofs that he may
sin with impunity still. But every sin has a history:
it is not an accident ; it is the fruit of former sins in
thought or in deed; it is the token of a habit deeply
seated and widely spread; it is the aggravation of a
virulent disease; and, as the last straw is said to break
the horse's back, so our last sin, whatever it is, is that
which destroys our hope, and forfeits our place in
heaven. Therefore, my brethren, it is but the craft of
the devil, which makes you take your sins one by one,
while God views them as a whole. “Signasti, quasi
in saccuſo, delicta mea,” says holy Job, “Thou hast
sealed up my sins as in a bag,” and one day they will
all be counted out. Separate sins are like the touches
and strokes which the painter gives, first one and then
another, to the picture on his canvas; or like the
stones which the mason piles up and cements together
for the house he is building. They are all connected
together; they tend to a whole; they look towards an
end, and they hasten on to their fulfilment. •
Go, commit this sin, my brethren, to which you are
tempted, which you persist in viewing in itself alone,
look on it as Eve looked on the forbidden fruit, dwell
upon its lightness and insignificance; and perhaps
f
28 Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings.
you may find it after all to be just the coping-stone
of your high tower of rebellion, which comes into re-
membrance before God, and fills up the measure of
your iniquities. “Fill ye up,” says our Lord to the
hypocritical Pharisees, “the measure of your fathers.”
The wrath, which came on Jerusalem, was not simply
caused by the sins of that day, in which Christ came,
though in that day was committed the most awful of
all sins, viz., His rejection ; for that was but the
crowning sin of a long course of rebellion. So again,
in an earlier age, the age of Abraham, ere the chosen
people had got possession of the land of promise,
there was already great and heinous sin among the
heathen who inhabited it, yet they were not put out
at once, and Abraham brought in ;-why? because
God’s mercies were not yet exhausted towards them.
He still bestowed His grace on the abandoned people,
and waited for their repentance. But He foresaw
that He should wait in vain, and that the time of
vengeance would come; and this. He implied when He
said, that He did not give the chosen seed the land at
once, “for as yet the iniquities of the Amorrhites were
not at the full.” But they did come to the full some
hundred years afterwards, and then the Israelites were
brought in, with the command to destroy them utterly
with the sword. And again, you know the history of
the impious Baltassar. In his proud feast, when he
was now filled with wine, he sent for the gold and
silver vessels which belonged to the Temple at Jeru-
salem, and had been brought to Babylon on the
taking of the holy city, - he sent for these sacred
AVeglect of Divine Ca//s and Warnings. 29
vessels, that out of them he might drink more wine,
he, his nobles, his wives, and his concubines. In
that hour, the fingers as of a man’s hand were seen
upon the wall of the banqueting-room, writing the
doom of the king and of his kingdom. The words
were these : “God hath numbered thy kingdom, and
hath finished it; thou art weighed in the balance,
and art found wanting.” That wretched prince had
kept no account of his sins; as a spendthrift keeps no
account of his debts, so he went on day after day and
year after year, revelling in pride, cruelty, and sensual
indulgence, and insulting his Master, till at length
he exhausted the Divine Mercy, and filled up the
chalice of wrath. His hour came : one more sin he
did, and the cup overflowed; vengeance overtook him
on the instant, and he was cut off from the earth.
And that last sin need not be a great sin, need not
be greater than those which have gone before it;
perhaps it may be less. There was a rich man, men-
tioned by our Lord, who, when his crops were plenti-
ful, said within himself, “What shall I do, for I have
not where to bestow my fruits? I will pull down my
barns, and build greater; and I will say to my soul,
Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years;
take thy rest, eat, drink, make good cheer.” He was
carried off that very night. This was not a very
striking sin, and surely it was not his first great sin;
it was the last instance of a long course of acts of
self-sufficiency and forgetfulness of God, not greater
in intensity than any before it, but completing their
number. And so again, when the father of that
30 AWeglect of Divine Calls and Warmings.
impious king, whom I just now spoke of, when
Nabuchodonosor had for a whole year neglected the
warning of the prophet Daniel, calling him to turn
from his pride and to repent, one day as he walked in
the palace of Babylon, he said, “Is not this great
|Babylon, which I have built for the home of the
kingdom, in the strength of my power and in the
glory of my excellence?” and forthwith, while the
word was yet in his mouth, judgment came upon him,
and he was smitten with a new and strange disease,
so that he was driven from men, and ate hay like the
ox, and grew wild in his appearance, and lived in the
open field. His consummating act of pride was not
greater, perhaps, than any one of those which through
the twelvemonth had preceded it. -
No ; you cannot decide, my brethren, whether you
are outrunning God’s merey, merely because the sin
you now commit seems to be a small one; it is not
always the greatest sin that is the last. Moreover you
cannot calculate, which is to be your last sin, by the
particular number of those which have gone before it,
even if you could count them, for the number varies
in different persons. This is another very serious
circumstance. You may have committed but one or
two sins, and yet find that you are ruined beyond
redemption, though others who have done more are
not. Why we know not, but God, who shows mercy
and gives grace to all, shows greater mercy and gives
more abundant grace to one man than another. To
all He gives grace sufficient for their salvation; to all
He gives far more than they have any right to
AVeglect of Pivine Calls and W.armings. 3 I
expect; and they can claim nothing ; but to some
He gives far more than to others. He tells us Him-
self, that, if the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon had
seen the miracles done in Chorazin, they would have
done penance and turned to Him. That is, there was
that which would have converted them, and it was not
granted to them. Till we set this before ourselves, we
have not a right view either of sin in itself, or of our
1 *
|
yº
own prospects if we live in it. As God determines
for each the measure of his stature; and the com-
plexion of his mind, and the number of his days, yet
not the same for all; as one child of Adam is pre-
ordained to live one day, and another eighty years, so
is it fixed that one should be reserved for his eightieth
sin, another cut off after his first. Why this is, we
know not; but it is parallel to what is done in human
matters without exciting any surprise. Of two con-
victed offenders one is pardoned, one is left to suffer;
and this might be done in a case where there was
nothing to choose between the guilt of the one and of
the other, and where the reasons which determine the
difference of dealing towards the one and the other,
whatever they are, are external to the individuals
themselves. In like manner you have heard, I dare-
say, of decimating rebels, when they had been Cap-
tured, that is, of executing every tenth and letting off
the rest. So it is also with God’s judgments, though
we cannot sound the reasons of them. He is not ob-
liged to let off any ; He has the power to condemn
all: I only bring this to show how our rule of justice
here below does not preclude a difference of dealing
32 Aſeglect of Divine Calls and W.armings.
with one man and with another. The Creator gives
one man time for repentance, He carries off another
by sudden death. He allows one man to die with the
last Sacraments; another dies without a Priest to re-
ceive his imperfect contrition, and to absolve him :
the one is pardoned, and will go to heaven; the other
goes to the place of eternal punishment. No one can
say how it will happen in his own case; no one can
promise himself that he shall have time for repen-
tance; or, if he have time, that he shall have any
supernatural movement of the heart towards God; or,
even then, that a Priest will be at hand to give him
absolution. We may have sinned less than our next-
door neighbour, yet that neighbour may be reserved
for repentance and may reign with Christ, while we
may be punished with the evil spirit.
Nay, some have been cut off and sent to hell for
their first sin. This was the case, as divines teach,
as regards the rebel Angels. For their first sin, and
that a sin of thought, a single perfected act of pride,
they lost their first estate, and became devils. And
Saints and holy people record instances of men, and
even children, who in like manner have uttered a
first blasphemy or other deliberate sin, and were cut
off without remedy. And a number of similar in-
stances occur in Scripture; I mean of the awful
punishment of a single sin, without respect to the
virtue and general excellence of the sinner. Adam,
for a single sin, small in appearance, the eating of
, the forbidden fruit, lost Paradise, and implicated all
his posterity in his own ruin. The Bethsamites
AVeglect of /Jivine Ca//s and Warnings. 33
looked upon the ark of the Lord, and more than fifty
thousand of them in consequence were smitten. Oza
touched it with his hand, as if to save it from falling,
and he was struck dead on the spot for his rashness. g
The man of God from Juda ate bread and drank
water at Bethel, against the command of God, and he
was forthwith killed by a lion on his return. Ananias
and Sapphira told one lie, and fell down dead almost
as the words left their mouth. Who are we, that
God should wait for our repentance any longer, when
He has not waited at all, before He cut off those who
sinned less than we?
Oh my dear brethren, these presumptuous thoughts
of ours arise from a defective notion of the malignity
of sin viewed in itself. We are criminals, and we
are no judges in our own case. We are fond of our-
selves, and we take our own part, and we are familiar
with sin, and, from pride, we do not like to confess
ourselves lost. For all these reasons, we have no
real idea what sin is, what its punishment is, and
what grace is. We do not know what sin is, because
we do not know what God is ; we have no standard
with which to compare it, till we know what God is.
Only God’s glories, His perfections, His holiness,
His Majesty, His beauty, can teach us by the contrast
how to think of sin; and since we do not see God
here, till we see Him, we cannot form a just judgment
what sin is; till we enter heaven, we must take what
God tells us of sin, on faith. Nay, even then, we
shall be able to condemn sin, only so far as we are
able to see and praise and glorify God; He alone can
D
34 Neglect of Divine Calls and W.armings.
W duly judge of sin who can comprehend God; He only
judged of sin according to the fulness of its evil, who,
knowing the Father from eternity with a perfect
- knowledge, showed what He thought of sin by dying
&
for it; He only, who was willing, though He was
God, to suffer inconceivable pains of soul and body in
order to make a satisfaction for it. Take His word, or
rather, His deed, for the truth of this awful doctrine,
—that a single mortal sin is enough to cut you off
from God for ever. Go down to the grave with a
single unrepented, unforgiven sin upon you, and you
have enough to sink you down to hell; you have that,
which to a certainty will be your ruin. It may be
the hundredth sin, or it may be the first sin, no
matter: one is enough to sink you ; though the more
you have, the deeper you will sink. You need not
have your fill of sin in order to perish without
remedy; there are those who lose both this world and
the next ; they choose rebellion, and receive, not its
gains, but death. -
Or grant, that God’s anger, delays its course, and
you have time to add sin to sin, this is only to in-
crease the punishment when it comes. God is terrible,
when He speaks to the sinner; He is more terrible,
when He refrains; He is more terrible, when He is
silent and accumulates wrath. Alas ! there are those
who are allowed to spend a long life, and a happy
life, in neglect of Him, and have nothing in the out-
ward course of things to remind them of what is
coming, till their irreversible sentence bursts upon
them. As the stream flows smoothly before the
AVeglect of Divine Calls and Warnings. 35
cataract, so with these persons does life pass along
swiftly and silently, serenely and joyously. “They
are not in the labour of men, neither shall they be
scourged like other men.” “They are filled with
hidden things; they are full of children, and leave
their remains to their little ones.” “Their houses
are secure and at peace, neither is the rod of God
upon them. Their little ones go out like a flock, and
their children dance and play. They take the timbrel
and the harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ.
They spend their days in good, and in a moment they
go down to hell.” So was it with Jerusalem, when
God had deserted it; it seemed never so prosperous
before. Herod the king had lately rebuilt the Temple;
and the marbles with which it was cased were wonder-
ful for size and beauty, and it rose bright and glitter-
ing in the morning sun. The disciples called their
Lord to look at it, but He did but see in it the whited
sepulchre of a reprobate people, and foretold its over-
throw. “See ye all these things?” He answered
them, “Amen, I say to you, stone shall not be here
left upon stone, which shall not be thrown down.”
And “ He beheld the city, and wept over it, saying,
If thou hadst known, even thou, and in this thy day,
the things that are for thy peace, but now they are
hidden from thine eyes!” Hid, indeed, was her
doom ; for millions crowded within the guilty city at
her yearly festival, and her end seemed a long way
off, and ruin to belong to a far future age, when it
was at the door.
Oh the change, my brethren, the dismal change at
D 2
36 AWeglect of Divine Calls and Warnings.
last, when the sentence has gone forth, and life ends,
and eternal death begins ! The poor sinner has gone
on so long in sin, that he has forgotten he has sin to
repent of. He has learned to forget that he is living
in a state of enmity to God. He no longer makes
excuses, as he did at first. He lives in the world, and
believes nothing about the Sacraments, nor puts any
trust in a Priest if he falls in with one. Perhaps he
has hardly ever heard the Catholic religion mentioned
except for the purpose of abuse; and never has spoken
of it, but to ridicule it. His thoughts are taken up
with his family and with his occupation; and if he
thinks of death, it is with repugnance, as what will
separate him from this world, not with fear, as what
will introduce him to another. He has ever been
strong and hale. He has never had an illness. His
family is long-lived, and he reckons he has a long
time before him. His friends die before him, and he
feels rather contempt at their nothingness, than
sorrow at their departure. He has just married a
daughter, and established a son in life, and he thinks
of retiring from his labours, except that he is at a loss
to know how he shall employ himself when he is out
of them. He cannot get himself to dwell upon the
thought of what and where he will be, when life is
over, or, if he begins to muse awhile over himself and
his prospects, then he is sure of one thing, that the
Creator is absolute and mere benevolence, and he is
indignant and impatient when he hears eternal
punishment spoken of. And so he fares, whether for
a long time or a short; but whatever the period, it
AVeglect of Zivine Ca//s and Warnings. 37
must have an end, and at last the end comes. Time
has gone forward noiselessly, and comes upon him
like a thief in the night; at length the hour of
doom strikes, and he is taken away. -
Perhaps, however, he was a Catholic, and then the
very mercies of God have been perverted by him to
his ruin. He has rested on the Sacraments, without
: earing to have the proper dispositions for attend-
ing them. At one time he had lived in neglect of .
religion altogether; but there was a date when he
felt a wish to set himself right with his Maker; so
he began, and has continued ever since, to go to Con-
fession and Communion at convenient intervals. He
comes again and again to the Priest; he goes through
his sins; the Priest is obliged to take his account of
them, which is a very defective account, and sees no
reason for not giving him absolution. He is absolved,
as far as words can absolve him ; he comes again to the
Priest when the season comes round; again he con-
fesses, and again he has the form pronounced over
him. He falls sick, he receives the last Sacraments:
he receives the last rites of the Church, and he is
lost. He is lost, because he has never really turned
his heart to God; or, if he had some poor measure of
contrition for awhile, it did not last beyond his first
or second confession. He soon taught himself to come
to the Sacraments without any contrition at all; he
deceived himself, and left out his principal and most
important sins. Somehow he deceived himself into
the notion that they were not sins, or not mortal sins ;
for some reason or other he was silent, and his con-
38 Neglect of Divine Calls and W.armings.
fession became as defective as his contrition. Yet
this scanty show of religion was sufficient to soothe
and stupefy his conscience: so he went on year after
year, never making a good confession, communicating
in mortal sin, till he fell ill; and then, I say, the
viaticum and holy oil were brought to him, and he
committed sacrilege for his last time, and so he
went to his God. - .
Oh what a moment for the poor soul, when it comes
to itself, and finds itself suddenly before the judgment-
seat of Christ ! Oh what a moment, when, breathless
with the journey, and dizzy with the brightness, and
overwhelmed with the strangeness of what is happen-
ing to him, and unable to realize where he is, the
sinner hears the voice of the accusing spirit, bringing
up all the sins of his past life, which he has forgotten,
or which he has explained away, which he would not
allow to be sins, though he suspected they were; when
he hears him detailing all the mercies of God which
he has despised, all His warnings which he has set at
nought, all His judgments which he has outlived ;
when that evil one follows out into detail the growth
and progress of a lost soul-how it expanded and
was confirmed in sin,_how it budded forth into leaves
and flowers, grew into branches, and ripened into fruit,
—till nothing was wanted for its full condemnation
And, oh! still more terrible, still more distracting,
when the Judge speaks, and consigns it to the jailors,
till it shall pay the endless debt which lies against it !
“Impossible, I a lost soul! I separated from hope
and from peace for ever ! It is not I of whom the
AVeglect of Divine Ca//s and Warmings. 39
Judge so spakel There is a mistake somewhere;
Christ, Saviour, hold Thy hand,-one minute to ex-
plain it ! My name is Demas: I am but Demas, not
Judas, or Nicholas, or Alexander, or Philetus, or
Diotrephes. What? hopeless pain for me! impos-
sible, it shall not be.” And the poor soul struggles
and wrestles in the grasp of the mighty demon which
has hold of it, and whose every touch is torment. “Oh,
atrocious !” it shrieks in agony, and in anger too, as
if the very keenness of the affliction were a proof of .
its injustice. “A second l and a third I can bear no
more! stop, horrible fiend, give over; I am a man, and
not such as thou ! I am not food for thee, or sport for
thee! I never was in hell as thou, I have not on me
the smell of fire, nor the taint of the charnel-house !
I know what human feelings are ; I have been taught
religion; I have had a conscience; I have a culti-
wated mind; I am well versed in science and art; I
have been refined by literature; I have had an eye for
the beauties of nature; I am a philosopher or a poet,
or a shrewd observer of men, or a hero, or a statesman,
or an orator, or a man of wit and humour. Nay,+I
am a Catholic; I am not an unregenerate Protestant;
I have received the grace of the Redeemer; I have
attended the Sacraments for years; I have been a
Catholic from a child; I am a son of the Martyrs; 'I
died in communion with the Church: nothing, nothing .
which I have ever been, which I have ever seen, bears.
any resemblance to thee, and to the flame and stench
which exhale from thee; so I defy thee, and abjure
thee, O enemy of man l’ -
4O A.eglect of Divine Calls and Warnings.
(ſ)
Alas! poor soul; and whilst it thus fights with
that destiny which it has brought upon itself, and
with those companions whom it has chosen, the man’s
name perhaps is solemnly chanted forth, and his
memory decently cherished among his friends on
earth. His readiness in speech, his fertility in thought,
his sagacity, or his wisdom, are not forgotten. Men
talk of him from time to time; they appeal to his
authority ; they quote his words; perhaps they even
raise a monument to his name, or write his history.
* So comprehensive a mind l such a power of throwing
light on a perplexed subject, and bringing conflicting
ideas or facts into harmony ” “Such a speech it
was that he made on such and such an occasion; I
happened to be present, and never shall forget it ;”
or, “It was the saying of a very sensible man;” or,
“A great personage, whom some of us knew ;” or, “It
was a rule with a very worthy and excellent friend of
mine, now no more ;” or, “Never was his equal in
society, so just in his remarks, so versatile, so unob-
trusive;” or, “I was fortunate to see him once when
I was a boy;” or, “So great a benefactor to his
country and to his kind;” “His discoveries so great;”
or, “His philosophy so profound.” O vanity vanity
of vanities, all is vanity What profiteth it? What
profiteth it? His soul is in hell. O ye children of
men, while thus ye speak, his soul is in the beginning
of those torments in which his body will soon have
part, and which will never die. .
Vanity of vanities misery of miseries they will
not attend to us, they will not believe us. We are
AVegåect of /Jivine Ca//s and Warnings. 4 I
but a few in number, and they are many; and the
many will not give credit to the few. O misery of .
miseries | Thousands are dying daily ; they are
waking up into God’s everlasting wrath; they look
back on the days of the flesh, and call them few and
evil; they despise and scorn the very reasonings which
then they trusted, and which have been disproved by
the event; they curse the recklessness which made
them put off repentance; they have fallen under His
justice, whose merey they presumed upon;–and their
companions and friends are going on as they did, and
are soon to join them. As the last generation pre-
sumed, so does the present. The father would not
believe that God could punish, and now the son will
not believe; the father was indignant when eternal
pain was spoken of, and the son gnashes his teeth and
smiles contemptuously. The world spoke well of
itself thirty years ago, and so will it thirty years to
come. And thus it is that this vast flood of life is
carried on from age to age ; myriads trifling with
God's love, tempting His justice, and, like the herd
of swine, falling headlong down the steep ! O mighty
God O God of lovel it is too much it broke the
heart of Thy sweet Son Jesus to see the misery of man
spread out before His eyes. He died by it as well as
for it. And we, too, in our measure, our eyes ache,
and our hearts sicken, and our heads reel , when we
but feebly contemplate it. O most tender heart of
Jesus, why wilt Thou not end, when wilt Thou end,
this ever-growing load of sin and woe When wilt
Thou chase away the devil into his own hell, and close
42 N.get of Divine Ca//s and Warnings.
the pit’s mouth, that Thy chosen may rejoice in Thee,
quitting the thought of those who perish in their
wilfulness? But, oh! by those five dear Wounds in
Hands, and Feet, and Side—perpetual founts of merey,
from which the fulness of the Eternal Trinity flows
ever fresh, ever powerful, ever bountiful to all who
seek Thee—if the world must still endure, at least
gather Thou a larger and a larger harvest, an
ampler proportion of souls out of it into Thy
garner, that these latter times may, in sanctity,
and glory, and the triumphs of Thy grace, exceed the
former. - -
“ Deus misereatur nostri, et benedicat nobis ;”
“God, have mercy on us, and bless us; and cause
His face to shine upon us, and have mercy on us;
that we may know Thy way upon earth, Thy salvation
among all the nations. Let the people praise Thee,
O God; let all the people praise Thee. Let the
nations be glad, and leap for joy; because Thou
dost judge the people in equity, and dost direct
the nations on the earth. God, even our God, bless
ºf the
us, may God bless us; and may all the ends
earth fear Him.”
D IS CO U R S E III.
MEAV, AWOT AAVGZ.Z.S., 7A/E PRIZESTS OF 7A/A GOSPAEZ.
WHEN Christ, the great Prophet, the great
\ Preacher, the great Missionary, came into the
world, He came in a way the most holy, the most
august, and the most glorious. Though He came in
humiliation, though He came to suffer, though He
was born in a stable, though He was laid in a manger,
yet. He issued from the womb of an Immaculate
Mother, and His infant form shone with heavenly
light. Sanctity marked every lineament of His charac-
ter and every circumstance of His mission. Gabriel
announced His incarnation; a Virgin conceived, a
Virgin bore, a Virgin suckled Him ; His foster-father
was the pure and saintly Joseph ; Angels proclaimed
His birth ; a luminous star spread the news among
the heathen ; the austere Baptist went before His face;
and a crowd of shriven penitents, clad in white gar-
ments and radiant with grace, followed Him wherever
He went. As the sun in heaven shines through the
clouds, and is reflected in the landscape, so the eternal
Sun of justice, when He rose upon the earth, turned
44 Men, noſ Ange/s,
night into day, and His brightness made all things
bright. -
He came and He went ; and, seeing that He came
to introduce a new and final Dispensation into the
world, He left behind Him preachers, teachers, and
missionaries, in His stead. Well then, my brethren,
you will say, since on His coming all about Him was
so glorious, such as He was, such must His servants
be, such His representatives, His ministers, in His
absence; as He was without sin, they too must be
without sin; as He was the Son of God, they must
surely be Angels. Angels, you will say, must be
appointed to this high office; Angels alone are fit to
preach the birth, the sufferings, the death of God.
They might indeed have to hide their brightness, as
He before them, their Lord and Master, had put on a
disguise; they might come, as they came under the
Old Covenant, in the gårb of men; but still, men they
could not be, if they were to be preachers of the ever-
lasting Gospel, and dispensers of its divine mysteries.
If they were to sacrifice, as He had sacrificed; to con-
tinue, repeat, apply, the very Sacrifice which He had
offered; to take into their hands that very Victim
which was He Himself; to bind and to loose, to bless
and to ban, to receive the confessions of His people,
and to give them absolution for their sins; to teach
them the way of truth, and to guide them along the
way of peace; who was sufficient for these things but
an inhabitant of those blessed realms of which the
Lord is the never-failing Light?
And yet, my brethren, so it is, He has sent forth,
the Priests of the Gospel. . 45
for the ministry of reconciliation, not Angels, but
men ; He has sent forth your brethren to you, not
beings of some unknown nature and some strange
blood, but of your own bone and your own flesh, to
preach to you. “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye
gazing up into heaven P” Here is the royal style
and tone in which Angels speak to men, even though
these men be Apostles; it is the tone of those who,
having never sinned, speak from their lofty eminence
to those who have. But such is not the tone of those
whom Christ has sent; for it is your brethren whom
He has appointed, and none else,_sons of Adam,
sons of your nature, the same by nature, differing
only in grace,—men, like you, exposed to tempta-
tions, to the same temptations, to the same warfare
within and without ; with the same three deadly
enemies—the world, the flesh, and the devil; with
the same human, the same wayward heart : differing
only as the power of God has changed and rules it.
So it is ; we are not Angels from Heaven that speak
to you, but men, whom grace, and grace alone, has
made to differ from you. Listen to the Apostle: –
When the barbarous Lycaonians, seeing his miracle,
would have sacrificed to him and St. Barnabas, as to
gods, he rushed in among them, crying out, “O men,
why do ye this 2 we also are mortals, men like unto
you ; ” or, as the words run more forcibly in
the original Greek, “We are of like passions with
you.” And again to the Corinthians he writes, “We
preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ our Lord; and
ourselves your servants through Jesus. God, who
|
...~". A /
ºf Zh./ſº
#. f
46 Men, not Angels,
commanded the light to shine out of darkness, He
hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ
Jesus: but we hold this treasure in earthen vesseſs.”
And further, he says of himself most wonderfully,
that, “lest he should be exalted by the greatness of
the revelations, there was given him “an angel of
Satan” in his flesh “to buffet him.” Such are your
Ministers, your Preachers, your Priests, Oh my
brethren ; not Angels, not Saints, not sinless, but
those who would have lived and died in sin except for
God’s grace, and who, though through God’s mercy
they be in training for the fellowship of Saints here-
after, yet at present are in the midst of infirmity and
temptation, and have no hope, except from the un-
merited grace of God, of persevering unto the end.
What a strange, what a striking anomaly is this
All is perfect, all is heavenly, all is glorious, in the
Dispensation which Christ has vouchsafed us, except
the persons of His Ministers. He dwells on our
altars Himself, the Most Holy, the Most High, in
light inaccessible, and Angels fall down before Him
there; and out of visible substances and forms He
chooses what is choicest to represent and to hold Him.
The finest wheat-flour, and the purest wine, are taken
as His outward symbols; the most sacred and majestic
words minister to the sacrificial rite; altar and
sanctuary are adorned decently or splendidly, as our
means allow ; and the Priests perform their office in
befitting vestments, lifting up chaste hearts and holy
hands; yet those very Priests, so set apart, so conse-
the Priests of the Gospel. 47
crated, they, with their girdle of celibacy and their
maniple of sorrow, are sons of Adam, sons of sinners,
of a fallen nature, which they have not put off, though
it be renewed through grace. So that it is almost the
definition of a Priest that he has sins of his own to
offer for. “Every high Priest,” says the Apostle,
“taken from among men, is appointed for men, in
the things that appertain unto God, that he may offer
gifts and sacrifices for sins; who can condole with
those who are in ignorance and error, because he also
himself is compassed with infirmity. And therefore
he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer
for sins.” And hence in the Mass, when he offers up
the Host before consecration, he says, Suscipe, Sancte
Pater, Omnipotens, afferne Deus, “Accept, Holy Father,
Almighty, Everlasting God, this immaculate Host,
which I, Thine unworthy servant, offer to Thee, my
Living and True God, for mine innumerable sins,
offences, and negligences, and for all who stand
around, and for all faithful Christians, living and
dead.” -
Most strange is this in itself, my brethren, but not
strange, when you consider it is the appointment of
an all-merciful God; not strange in Him, because the
Apostle gives the reason of it in the passage I have
quoted. The Priests of the New Law are men, that
they may “condole with those who are in ignorance
and error, because they too are compassed with
infirmity.” Had Angels been your Priests, my
brethren, they could not have condoled with you,
sympathized with you, have had compassion on you,
48 - Men, not Angels,
tenderly felt for you, and made allowances for you, as
we can ; they could not have been your patterns and
guides, and have led you on from your old selves into
a new life, as they can who come from the midst of you,
who have been led on themselves as you are to be led,
who know well your difficulties, who have had ex-
perience, at least of your temptations, who know the
strength of the flesh and the wiles of the devil, even
though they have baffled them, who are already dis-
posed to take your part, and be indulgent towards you,
and can advise you most practically, and warn you
most seasonably and prudently. Therefore did He send
you men to be the ministers of reconciliation and in-
tercession; as He Himself, though He could not sin,
yet, by becoming man, took on Him, as far as was
O
possible to God, man’s burden of infirmity and trial
in His own person. He could not be a sinner, but He
ſ could be a man, and He took to Himself a man's
heart that we might entrust our hearts to Him, and
“ was tempted in all things, like as we are, yet
without sin.” - -
Ponder this truth well, my brethren, and let it be
your comfort. Among the Preachers, among the
Priests of the Gospel, there have been Apostles, there -
have been Martyrs, there have been Doctors;–Saints
in plenty among them ; yet out of them all, high as
has been their sanctity, varied their graces, awful their
gifts, there has not been one who did not begin with
the old Adam ; not one of them who was not hewn
6 out of the same rock as the most obdurate of repro-
bates; not one of them who was not fashioned unto
the Priests of the Gospel. 49
honour out of the same clay which has been the
material of the most polluted and vile of sinners;
not one who was not by nature brother of those poor
souls who have now commenced an eternal fellowship
with the devil, and are lost in hell. Grace has
vanquished nature; that is the whole history of the
Saints. Salutary thought for those who are tempted
to pride themselves in what they do, and what they
are ; wonderful news for those who sorrowfully re-
cognize in their hearts the vast difference that exists
between them and the Saints; and joyful news, when
men hate sin, and wish to escape from its miserable
yoke, yet are tempted to think it impossible !
Come, my brethren, let us look at this truth more
narrowly, and lay it to heart. First consider, that,
since Adam fell, none of his seed but has been con-
ceived in sin; none, save one. One exception there
has been, who is that one P not our Lord Jesus, for
He was not conceived of man, but of the Holy Ghost ;
not our Lord, but I mean His Virgin Mother, who,
though conceived and born of human parents, as
others, yet was rescued by anticipation from the com-
mon condition of mankind, and never was partaker
in fact of Adam’s transgression. She was conceived
in the way of nature, she was conceived as others are ;
but grace interfered and was beforehand with sin;
grace filled her soul from the first moment of her
existence, so that the evil one breathed not on her,
nor stained the work of God. Tota pulchra es, Maria;
et macula originalis non est in te. “Thou art all fair,
O Mary, and the stain original is not in thee.” But
. E
*...*
RO Men, moſſ Ange/s,
\}
putting aside the Most Blessed Mother of God, every
one else, the most glorious Saint, and the most black
and odious of sinners, I mean, the soul which, in the
event, became the most glorious, and the soul which
became the most devilish, were both born in one and
the same original sin, both were children of wrath,
both were unable to attain heaven by their natural
powers, both had the prospect of meriting for them-
selves hell. -
They were both born in sin; they both lay in sin;
and the soul, which afterwards became a Saint, would
have continued in sin, would have sinned wilfully,
and would have been lost, but for the visitings of an
unmerited supernatural influence upon it, which did
for it what it could not do for itself. The poor infant,
destined to be an heir of glory, lay feeble, sickly,
fretful, wayward, and miserable; the child of sorrow ;
without hope, and without heavenly aid. So it lay
for many a long and weary day ere it was born ; and
when at length it opened its eyes and saw the light, it
shrank back, and wept aloud that it had seen it. But }
God heard its cry from heaven in this valley of tears,
and He began that course of mercies towards it which
led it from earth to heaven. He sent His Priest to
administer to it the first sacrament, and to baptize it
with His grace. Then a great change took place in it,
for, instead of its being any more the thrall of Satan,
it forthwith became a child of God; and had it died
that minute, and before it came to the age of reason,
it would have been carried to heaven without delay by
Angels, and been admitted into the presence of God.
the Priests of the Gospel. 5 I
But it did not die ; it came to the age of reason,
and, Oh, shall we dare to say, though in some blessed
cases it may be said, shall we dare to say, that it did
not misuse the great talent which had been given to
it, profane the grace which dwelt in it, and fall into
mortal sin” . In some instances, praised be God! we
dare affirm it; such seems to have been the case with
my own dear father, St. Philip, who surely kept his
baptismal robe unsullied from the day he was clad in
it, never lost his state of grace, from the day he was
put into it, and proceeded from strength to strength,
and from merit to merit, and from glory to glory,
through the whole course of his long life, till at the
age of eighty he was summoned to his account, and
went joyfully to meet it, and was carried across pur-
gatory, without any scorching of its flames, straight
to heaven, .
Such certainly have sometimes been the dealings of
God’s grace with the souls of His elect ; but more
commonly, as if more intimately to associate them
with their brethren, and to make the fulness of His -º
favours to them a ground of hope and an encourage-
ment to the penitent sinner, those who have ended in
being miracles of sanctity, and heroes in the Church,
have passed a time in wilful disobedience, have thrown
themselves out of the light of God’s countenance,
have been led captive by this or that sin, by this or
that religious error, till at length they were in various
ways recovered, slowly or suddenly, and regained the
state of grace, or rather a much higher state, than that
which they had forfeited. Such was the blessed Mag-
E 2 -
52 M.en, not A ngels,
dalen, who had lived a life of shame; so much so, that
even to be touched by her was, according to the reli-
gious judgment of her day, a pollution. Happy in this
world’s goods, young and passionate, she had given
her heart to the creature, before the grace of God pre-
vailed with her. Then she cut off her long hair, and
put aside her gay apparel, and became so utterly what
she had not been, that, had you known her before and
after, you had said it was two persons you had seen,
not one; for there was no trace of the sinner in the
penitent, except the affectionate heart, now set on
heaven and Christ; no trace besides, no memory of
º
that glittering and seductive apparition, in the modest
form, the serene countenance, the composed gait, and
the gentle voice of her who in the garden sought and
found her Risen Saviour. Such, too, was he who from
a publican became an Apostle and an Evangelist; one
who for filthy lucre serupled not to enter the service of
the heathen Romans, and to oppress his own people.
Nor were the rest of the Apostles made of better clay
than the other sons of Adam ; they were by nature
animal, carnal, ignorant; left to themselves, they
would, like the brutes, have grovelled on the earth, and
gazed upon the earth, and fed on the earth, had not
the grace of God taken possession of them, and set
them on their feet, and raised their faces heavenward.
And such was the learned Pharisee, who came to Jesus
by night, well satisfied with his station, jealous of his
reputation, confident in his reason; but the time at
length came, when, even though disciples fled, he re-
mained to anoint the abandoned corpse of Him, whom
the Priests of the Gospel. 53
when living, he had been ashamed to own. You see
it was the grace of God that triumphed in Magdalen,
in Matthew, and in Nicodemus; heavenly grace came
down upon corrupt nature; it subdued impurity in the
youthful woman, covetousness in the publican, fear of
man in the Pharisee. - -
Let me speak of another celebrated conquest of
God’s grace in an after age, and you will see how it
pleases Him to make a Confessor, a Saint, a Doctor
of His Church, out of sin and heresy both together.
It was not enough that the Father of the Western
Schools, the author of a thousand works, the trium-
phant controversialist, the especial champion of grace,
should have been once a poor slave of the flesh, but
he was the victim of a perverted intellect also. He,
who of all others, was to extol the grace of God, was
left more than others to experience the helplessness
of nature. The great St. Augustine (I am not speak-
ing of the holy missionary of the same name, who
came to England and converted our pagan forefathers,
and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, but
of the great African Bishop, two centuries before him)
—Augustine, I say, not being in earnest about his
Soul, not asking himself the question, how was sin to
be washed away, but rather being desirous, while
youth and strength lasted, to enjoy the flesh and the
world, ambitious and sensual, judged of truth and
falsehood by his private judgment and his private
fancy; despised the Catholic Church because it spoke
so much of faith and subjection, thought to make his
own reason the measure of all things, and accordingly
54 Men, not Angels,
©ſe/º
Q,
joined a far-spread sect, which affected to be philo-
sophical and enlightened, to take large views of
things, and to correct the vulgar, that is the Catho-
lic notions of God and Christ, of sin, and of the way
to heaven. In this sect of his he remained for some
years; yet what he was taught there did not satisfy
him. It pleased him for a time, and then he found
he had been eating for food what had no nourishment
in it; he became hungry and thirsty after something
more substantial, he knew not what; he despised him-
self for being a slave to the flesh, and he found his
religion did not help him to overcome it; thus he
understood that he had not gained the truth, and he
cried out, “Oh, who will tell me where to seek it, and
who will bring me into it?”
Why did he not join the Catholic Church at once 2
I have told you why; he saw that truth was nowhere
else, but he was not sure it was there. He thought
there was something mean, narrow, irrational, in her
system of doctrine; he lacked the gift of faith. Then
a great conflict began within him, the conflict of
mature with grace; of nature and her children, the
flesh and false reason, against conscience and the
pleadings of the Divine Spirit, leading him to better
things. Though he was still in a state of perdition,
yet God was visiting him, and giving him the first
fruits of those influences which were in the event to
bring him out of it. Time went on ; and looking at
him, as his Guardian Angel might look at him, you
would have said that, in spite of much perverseness,
and many a successful struggle against his Almighty
the Priests of the Gosſe/. 55
Adversary, in spite of his still being, as before, in a
state of wrath, nevertheless grace was making way in
his soul, he was advancing towards the Church. He
did not know it himself, he could not recognize it
himself; but an eager interest in him, and then a
joy, was springing up in heaven among the Angels of
God. At last he came within the range of a great
Saint in a foreign country; and, though he pretended
not to acknowledge him, his attention was arrested
by him, and he could not help coming to sacred
places to look at him again and again. He began to
watch him and speculate about him, and wondered
with himself whether he was happy. He found him-
self frequently in Church, listening to the holy
preacher, and he once asked his advice how to find
what he was seeking. And now a final conflict came
on him with the flesh: it was hard, very hard, to part
with the indulgences of years, it was hard to part and
never to meet again. Oh, sin was so sweet, how could
he bid it farewell ? how could he tear himself away
from its embrace, and betake himself to that lonely
and dreary way which led heavenwards? but God's
grace was sweeter far, and it convinced him while it
won him; it convinced his reason, and prevailed;—
and he who without it would have lived and died a
child of Satan, became, under its wonder-working
g power, an oracle of sanctity and truth.
And do you not think, my brethren, that he was
better fitted than another to persuade his brethren as
he had been persuaded, and to preach the holy doctrine
which he had despised? Not that sin is better than
56 Men, not Angels,
obedience, or the sinner than the just; but that God
in His mercy makes use of sin against itself, that He
turns past sin into a present benefit, that, while He
washes away its guilt and subdues its power, He leaves
it in the penitent in such sense as enables him, from
his knowledge of its devices, to assault it more vigor-
ously, and strike at it more truly, when it meets him
in other men; that, while He, by His omnipotent
grace, can make the soul as clean as if it had never
been unclean, He leaves it in possession of a tenderness
and compassion for other sinners, an experience how to
deal with them, greater than if it had never sinned;
and again that, in those rare and special instances,
of one of which I have been speaking, He holds up to
us, for our instruction and our comfort, what He can
do, even for the most guilty, if they sincerely come to
Him for a pardon and a cure. There is no limit to be
put to the bounty and power of God’s grace; and that
we feel sorrow for our sins, and supplicate His mercy,
is a sort of present pledge to us in our hearts, that He
will grant us the good gifts we are seeking. He can
do what He will with the soul of man. He is infinitely
more powerful than the foul spirit to whom the sinner
has sold himself, and can cast him out. -
O my dear brethren, though your conscience witnesses
against you, He can disburden it; whether you have
sinned less or whether you have sinned more, He can
- make you as clean in His sight and as acceptable to
Him as if you had never gone from Him. Gradually
will He destroy your sinful habits, and at once will He
restore you to His favour. Such is the power of the
the Priests of the Gospel. - 57
Sacrament of Penance, that, be your load of guilt
heavier or be it lighter, it removes it, whatever it is. It
is as easy to Him to wash out the many sins as the few.
Do you recollect in the Old Testament the history of
the cure of Naaman the Syrian, by the prophet Eliseus?
He had that dreadful, incurable disease called the
leprosy, which was a white crust upon the skin, making
the whole person hideous, and typifying the hideous-
mess of sin. The prophet bade him bathe in the river
Jordan, and the disease disappeared; “ his flesh,”
says the inspired writer, was “restored to him as the
flesh of a little child.” . Here, then, we have a repre-
sentation not only of what sin is, but of what God’s
grace is. It can undo the past, it can realize the
hopeless. No sinner, ever so odious, but may become
a Saint; no Saint, ever so exalted, but has been, or
might have been, a sinner. Grace overcomes nature,
and grace only overcomes it. Take that holy child,
the blessed St. Agnes, who, at the age of thirteen,
resolved to die rather than deny the faith, and stood
enveloped in an atmosphere of purity, and diffused
around her a heavenly influence, in the very home of
evil spirits into which the heathen brought her; or
consider the angelical Aloysius, of whom it hardly is
left upon record that he committed even a venial sin;
or St. Agatha, St. Juliana, St. Rose, St. Casimir, or St.
Stanislas, to whom the very notion of any unbecoming
imagination had been as death; well, there is not one
of these seraphic souls but might have been a degraded,
loathsome leper, except for God’s grace, an outcast
from his kind; not one but might, or rather would,
58 * /l/ezz, zzof Angels, -
have lived the life of a brute creature, and died the
death of a reprobate, and lain down in hell eternally
in the devil’s arms, had not God put a new heart and
a new spirit within him, and made him what he could
not make himself. * . t
All good men are not Saints, my brethren—all con-
verted souls do not become Saints. I will not promise,
that, if you turn to God, you will reach that height of
sanctity which the Saints have reached;—true; still
I am showing you that even the Saints are by nature
no better than you; and so, much more, that the Priests,
who have the charge of the faithful, whatever be their
sanctity, are by nature no better than those whom
they have to convert, whom they have to reform. It
is God's special merey towards you that we by nature
are no other than you; it is His consideration and
compassion for you that He has made us, who are your
brethren, His legates and ministers of reconciliation.
This is what the world cannot understand; not that
it does not apprehend clearly enough that we are by
nature of like passions with itself; but what it is so
blind, so narrow-minded as not to comprehend, is,
that, being so like itself by nature, we may be made
so different by grace. Men of the world, my brethren,
know the power of nature; they know not, experience
not, believe not, the power of God’s grace; and since
they are not themselves acquainted with any power
that can overcome nature, they think that none exists,
and therefore, consistently, they believe that every one,
Priest or not, remains to the end such as nature made
him, and they will not believe it possible that any one
the Priests of the Gospel. 59
can lead a supernatural life. Now, not Priest only,
but every one who is in the grace of God, leads a
supernatural life, more or less supernatural, according
to his calling, and the measure of the gifts given
him, and his faithfulness to them. This they know
not, and admit not ; and when they hear of the life
which a Priest must lead by his profession from youth
to age, they will not credit that he is what he pro-
ºfesses to be. They know nothing of the presence of God,
the merits of Christ, the intercession of the Blessed
Virgin ; the virtue of recurring prayers, of frequent
confession, of daily Masses; they are strangers to the
transforming power of the Most Holy Sacrament, the
Bread of Angels; they do not contemplate the efficacy
of salutary rules, of holy companions, of long-enduring
habit, of ready spontaneous vigilance, of abhorrence
of sin and indignation at the tempter, to secure
the soul from evil. They only know that when
the tempter once has actually penetrated into the
heart, he is irresistible; they only know that when
the soul has exposed and surrendered itself to his
malice, there is (so to speak) a necessity of sinning.
They only know that when God has abandoned it, and
good Angels are withdrawn, and all safeguards, and
protections, and preventives are neglected, that then
(which is their own case), when the victory is all but
gained already, it is sure to be gained altogether.
They themselves have ever, in their best estate, been
all but beaten by the Evil One before they began to
fight; this is the only state they have experienced :
they know this, and they know nothing else. They
6O Men, not Ange/s,
have never stood on vantage ground; they have never
been within the walls of the strong city, about which
the enemy prowls in vain, into which he cannot pene-
trate, and outside of which the faithful soul will be
too wise to venture. They judge, I say, by their
experience, and will not believe what they never knew.
If there be those here present, my dear brethren,
who will not believe that grace is effectual within the
Church, because it does little outside of it, to them I
do not speak: I speak to those who do not narrow
their belief to their experience; I speak to those who
admit that grace can make human nature what it is
not ; and such persons, I think, will feel it, not a
cause of jealousy and suspicion, but a great gain, a
great mercy, that those are sent to preach to them, to
receive their confessions, and to advise them, who can
sympathize with their sins, even though they have not
known them. Not a temptation, my brethren, can
befall you, but what befalls all those who share your
nature, though you may have yielded to it, and they
may not have yielded. They can understand you, they
can anticipate you, they can interpret you, though they
have not kept pace with you in your course. They
will be tender to you, they will “instruct you in the
spirit of meekness,” as the Apostle says, “ considering
themselves lest they also be tempted.” Come then
unto us, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and ye shall find rest to your souls; come unto us,
who now stand to you in Christ's stead, and who
speak in Christ’s Name; for we too, like you, have
been saved by Christ's all-saving blood. We too, like
the Priests of Że Gosſeſ. 6 I
you, should be lost sinners, unless Christ had had
mercy on us, unless His grace had cleansed us, unless
His Church had received us, unless His saints had
& interceded for us. Be ye saved, as we have been
saved; “ come, listen, all ye that fear God, and we
will tell you what He hath done for our souls.” Listen
to our testimony; behold our joy of heart, and in-
crease it by partaking in it yourselves. Choose that
good part which we have chosen ; join ye yourselves
to our company; it will never repent you, take our
word for it, who have a right to speak, it will never
repent you to have sought pardon and peace from the
Catholic Church, which alone has grace, which alone
has power, which alone has Saints; it will never re-
pent you, though you go through trouble, though you
have to give up much for her sake. It will never re-
pent you, to have passed from the shadows of sense
and time, and the deceptions of human feeling and
false reason, to the glorious liberty of the sons of God.
And oh, my brethren, when you have taken the great
step, and stand in your blessed lot, as sinners recon-
ciled to the Father you had offended (for I will antici-
pate, what I surely trust will be fulfilled as regards
many of you), oh then forget not those who have been
the ministers of your reconciliation; and as they now
pray you to make your peace with God, so do you, when
reconciled, pray for them, that they may gain the great
gift of perseverance, that they may continue to stand
in the grace in which they trust they stand now, even
till the hour of death, lest, perchance, after they have
preached to others, they themselves become reprobate.
DISCO URSE IV.
AUA MTV AAVO ZO WAE.
WE find two especial manifestations of divine grace
in the human heart, whether we turn to Scrip-
ture for instances of it, or to the history of the Church ;
whether we trace it in the case of Saints, or in persons
of holy and religious life; and the two are even found
among our Lord’s Apostles, being represented by the
two foremost of that favoured company, St. Peter and
St. John. St. John is the Saint of purity, and St. Peter
is the Saint of love. Not that love and purity can
ever be separated; not as if a Saint had not all virtues
in him at once; not as if St. Peter were not pure as
well as loving, and St. John loving, for all he was so
pure. The graces of the Spirit cannot be separated
from each other ; one implies the rest ; what is love
but a delight in God, a devotion to Him, a surrender
of the whole self to Him Y what is impurity, on the
other hand, but the turning to something of this
world, something sinful, as the object of our affections
instead of God? What is it but a deliberate abandon-
ment of the Creator for the creature, and seeking
pleasure in the shadow of death, not in the all-blissful
Purity and Zove. 63
Presence of light and holiness? The impure then
cannot love God; and those who are without love of
God cannot really be pure. / Purity prepares the soul
for love, and love confirms the soul in purity. The
flame of love will not be bright unless the substance
which feeds it be pure and unadulterate; and the
most dazzling purity is but as iciness and desolation
unless it draws its life from fervent love. \
Yet, certain as this is, it is certain also that the
spiritual works of God show differently from each
other to our eyes, and that they display, in their
character and their history, some of them this virtue
more than other virtues, and some that. In other
words, it pleases the Giver of grace to endue His
Saints specially with certain gifts, for His glory,
which light up and beautify one particular portion or
department of their souls, so as to east their other ex-
cellences into the shade. And then this special gift of
grace becomes their characteristic, and we put it first
in our thoughts of them, and consider what they have
besides, as included in it, or dependent upon it, and
speak of them as if they had not the rest, though we
know they really have them; and we give them some
title or description taken from that particular grace
which is so emphatically theirs. And in this way we
may speak, as I intend to do in what I am going to
say, of two chief classes of Saints, whose emblems
are the lily and the rose, who are bright with angelic
purity or who burn with divine love.
The two St. Johns are the great instances of the
Angelic life. Whom, my brethren, can we conceive
y
o ſ
ſºlº ſº. Cº.
64 Purity and Zove.
to have such majestic and severe sanctity as the Holy
Baptist? He had a privilege which reached near upon
the prerogative of the Most Blessed Mother of God;
for, if she was conceived without sin, at least without sin
he was born. She was all-pure, all-holy, and sin had no
part in her : but St. John was in the beginning of his
existence a partaker of Adam’s curse : he lay under
God’s wrath, deprived of that grace which Adam had
, received, and which is the life and strength of human
nature. Yet as soon as Christ, his Lord and Saviour,
came to him, and Mary saluted his own mother,
Elizabeth, forthwith the grace of God was given to
him, and the original guilt was wiped away from his
soul. . And therefore it is that we celebrate the nativity
of St. John; nothing unholy does the Church celebrate;
not St. Peter's, nor St. Paul’s, nor St. Augustine's, nor
St. Gregory’s, nor St. Bernard's, nor St. Aloysius’s,
nor the nativity of any other Saint, however glorious,
because they were all born in sin. She celebrates their
conversions , their prerogatives, their martyrdoms, their
deaths, their translations, but not their birth, because
in no case was it holy. Three nativities alone does she
commemorate, our Lord’s, His Mother's, and lastly,
St. John’s. What a special gift was this, my brethren,
separating the Baptist off, and distinguishing him from
all prophets and preachers, who ever lived, however
holy, except perhaps the prophet Jeremias And such
as was his commencement, was the course of his life.
He was carried away by the Spirit into the desert, and
there he lived on the simplest fare, in the rudest
clothing, in the caves of wild beasts, apart from men,
Purity and Zove. 65
for thirty years, leading a life of mortification and of
meditation, till he was called to preach penance, to
proclaim the Christ, and to baptize Him; and then
having done his work, and having left no act of sin on
record, he was laid aside as an instrument which had
lost its use, and languished in prison, till he was
suddenly cut off by the sword of the executioner.
Sanctity is the one idea of him impressed upon us from
first to last; a most marvellous Saint, a hermit from
his childhood, then a preacher to a fallen people, and
then a Martyr. Surely such a life fulfils the expecta-
tion, which the salutation of Mary raised concerning
him before his birth. -
Yet still more beautiful, and almost as majestic, is
the image of his namesake, that great Apostle, Evan-
gelist, and Prophet of the Church, who came so early
into our Lord’s chosen company, and lived so long
after all his fellows. We can contemplate him in his
youth and in his venerable age; and on his whole life,
from first to last, as his special gift, is marked purity.
He is the virgin Apostle, who on that account was so
dear to his Lord, “ the disciple whom Jesus loved,”
who lay on His Bosom, who received His Mother from
Him when upon the Cross, who had the vision of all
the wonders which were to come to pass in the world
to the end of time. “Greatly to be honoured,” says
the Church, “is blessed John, who on the Lord’s
Breast lay at supper, to whom, a virgin, did Christ on
the Cross commit his Virgin Mother. He was chosen
a virgin by the Lord, and was more beloved than the
rest. The special prerogative of chastity had made
- F
66 Purity and Zove.
him meet for his Lord’s larger love, because, being
chosen by Him a virgin, a virgin he remained unto
the end.” He it was who in his youth professed his
readiness to drink Christ’s chalice with Him ; who
wore away a long life as a desolate stranger in a
foreign land; who was at length carried to Rome and
plunged into the hot oil, and then was banished to a
far island, till his days drew near their close.
O how impossible it is worthily to conceive of the
sanctity of these two great servants of God, so different
is their whole history, in their lives and in their
deaths, yet agreeing together in their seclusion from
the world, in their tranquillity, and in their all but
sinlessness Mortal sin had never touched them, and
we may well believe that even from deliberate venial
sin they were ever exempt; nay, that at particular sea-
sons or on certain occasions they did not sin at all. The
rebellion of the reason, the waywardness of the feel-
ings, the disorder of the thoughts, the fever of passion,
the treachery of the senses, these evils did the all-
powerful grace of God subdue in them. They lived
in a world of their own, uniform, serene, abiding ; in
visions of peace, in communion with heaven, in anti-
cipation of glory ; and, if they spoke to the world
without, as preachers or as confessors, they spoke as
from some sacred shrine, not mixing with men while
they addressed them, as “a voice crying in the wilder-
ness” or “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day.” And
therefore it is we speak of them rather as patterns of
sanctity than of love, because love regards an external
object, runs towards it and labours for it, whereas
Purity and Love. 67
such Saints came so close to the Object of their love,
they were granted so to receive Him into their breasts,
and so to make themselves one with Him, that their
hearts did not so much love heaven as were them-
selves a heaven, did not so much see light as were
light ; and they lived among men as those Angels in
the old time, who came to the patriarchs and spake as
though they were God, for God was in them, and
spake by them. Thus these two were almost absorbed
in the Godhead, living an angelical life, as far as man
could lead one, so calm, so still, so raised above sorrow
and fear, disappointment and regret, desire and aver-
sion, as to be the most perfect images that earth has
seen of the peace and immutability of God. Such too
are the many virgin Saints whom history records for
our veneration, St. Joseph, the great St. Antony, St.
Cecilia who was waited on by Angels, St. Nicholas
of Bari, St. Peter Celestine, St. Rose of Viterbo, St.
Catherine of Sienna, and a host of others, and above
all, the Virgin of Virgins, and Queen of Virgins, the
Blessed Mary, who, though replete and overflowing
with the grace of love, yet for the very reason that
she was the “seat of wisdom,” and the very “ark of
the covenant,” is more commonly represented under
the emblem of the lily than of the rose.
But now, my brethren, let us turn to the other
class of Saints. I have been speaking of those who
in a wonderful, sometimes in a miraculous way, have
been defended from sin, and conducted from strength
to strength, from youth till death; but now suppose
it has been the will of God to shed the light and
F 2
68 Purzáy and /love.
power of His Spirit upon those who have misused the
talents, and quenched the grace already given them,
and who therefore have a host of evils within them of
which they are to be dispossessed, who are under the
dominion of obstinate habits, indulged passions, false
opinions; who have served Satan, not as infants
before their baptism, but with their will, with their
reason, with their faculties responsible, and their hearts
alive and conscious. Is He to draw these elect souls
to Him without themselves, or by means of them-
'selves 2 Is He to change them at His word, as He
created them, as He will make them die, as He will
raise them from the grave, or is He to enter into their
souls, to address Himself to them, to persuade them,
and so to win them 2 Doubtless He might have been
urgent with them, and masterful; He might by a
blessed violence have come upon them, and so turned
them into Saints; He might have superseded any
process of conversion, and out of the very stones have
raised up children to Abraham. But He has willed
otherwise; else, why did He manifest Himself on
earth 2 Why did He surround Himself on His com-
ing with so much that was touching and attractive
and subduing P Why did He bid His angels proclaim
that He was to be seen as a little infant, in a manger
and in a Virgin’s bosom, at Bethlehem P Why did
He go about doing good 2 Why did He die in public,
before the world, with His mother and His beloved
disciple by Him? Why does He now tell us how He
is exalted in Heaven with a host of glorified Saints,
who are our intercessors, about His throne? Why
Purity and Zove. 69
does He give us His own Mother Mary for our mother,
the most perfect image after Himself of what is beau-
tiful and tender, and gentle and soothing, in human
nature ? Why does He manifest Himself by an
ineffable condescension on our Altars, still humbling
Himself, though He reigns on high 2 What does all
this show, but that, when souls wander away from
Him, He reclaims them by means of themselves, “by
cords of Adam,” or of human nature, as the prophet
speaks,—conquering us indeed at His will, saving us
in spite of ourselves, and yet by ourselves, so that the
very reason and affections of the old Adam, which
have been made “the instruments of iniquity unto
sin,” should, under the power of His grace, become
“ the instruments of justice unto God 2 °
, Yes, doubtless He draws us “by cords of Adam,”
and what are those cords, but, as the prophet speaks
in the same verse, “the cords,” or “the twine of love?”
It is the manifestation of the glory of God in the Face
of Jesus Christ; it is that view of the attributes and
perfections of Almighty God; it is the beauty of His
sanctity, the sweetness of His mercy, the brightness
of His heaven, the majesty of His law, the harmony
of His providences, the thrilling music of His voice,
which is the antagonist of the flesh, and the soul’s
champion against the world and the devil. “Thou
has seduced me, O Lord,” says the prophet, “ and I
was seduced ; Thou art stronger than I, and hast pre-
vailed;” Thou hast thrown Thy net skilfully, and its
subtle threads are entwined round each affection of my
heart, and its meshes have been a power of God, “bring-
ſ
\}
70 |
Purity and Zoze.
ing into captivity the whole intellect to the service of
Christ.” If the world has its fascinations, so surely
has the Altar of the living God; if its pomps and
vanities dazzle, so much more should the vision of
Angels ascending and descending on the heavenly
ladder; if sights of earth intoxicate, and its music is a
spell upon the soul, behold Mary pleads with us, over
against them, with her chaste eyes, and offers the
Eternal Child for our caress, while sounds of cherubim
are heard all round singing from out the fulness of the
Divine Glory. Has divine hope no emotion ? Has
divine charity no transport? “How dear are Thy
tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!” says the prophet; “my
soul doth lust, and doth faint for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God.
Better is one day in Thy courts above a thousand : I
have chosen to be an abject in the house of my God,
rather than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners.”
So is it, as a great Doctor and penitent has said, St.
Augustine; “It is not enough to be drawn by the will ;
thou art also drawn by the sense of pleasure. What
is it to be drawn by pleasure? “Delight thou in the
", Lord, and He will give thee the petitions of thy heart.”
There is a certain pleasure of heart, when that heavenly
Bread is sweet to a man. Moreover, if the poet saith,
“Every one is drawn by his own pleasure,” not by
necessity, but by pleasure ; not by obligation, but by
delight; how much more boldly ought we to say, that
man is drawn to Christ, when he is delighted with
truth, delighted with bliss, delighted with justice, de-
lighted with eternal life, all which is Christ 2 Have
Purity and Zoze. 7 I
the bodily senses their pleasures, and is the mind with-
out its own 2 If so, whence is it said, ‘The sons of
men shall hope under the covering of Thy wings; they
shall be intoxicate with the richness of Thy house,
and with the torrent of Thy pleasure shalt Thou give
them to drink : for with Thee is the well of life, and
in Thy light we shall see light?’ ‘ He, whom the
Father draweth, cometh to Me,’” he continues;
“Whom hath the Father drawn P’’ him who said,
‘Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.’ You
present a green branch to the sheep, and you draw it
forward; fruits are offered to the child, and he is drawn;
in that he runs, he is drawn, he is drawn by loving,
drawn without bodily hurt, drawn by the bond of the
heart. If then it be true that the sight of earthly
delight draws on the lover, doth not Christ too draw
us when revealed by the Father? For what doth the
soul desire more strongly than Truth ?”
Such are the means which God has provided for the
creation of the Saint out of the sinner ; He takes him
as he is, and uses him against himself: He turns his 2
affections into another channel, and extinguishes a
carnal love by infusing a heavenly charity. Not as if
He used him as a mere irrational creature, who is im-
pelled by instincts and governed by external incite-
ments without any will of his own, and to whom one
pleasure is the same as another, the same in kind,
though different in degree. I have already said, it is –4
the very triumph of His grace, that He enters into the
heart of man, and persuades it, and prevails with it,
while He changes it. He violates in nothing that
72 . Purity and Love.
h
→ (' , ČJA.
original constitution of mind which He gave to man:
He treats him as man; He leaves him the liberty of
acting this way or that ; He appeals to all his powers *
and faculties, to his reason, to his prudence, to his
moral sense, to his conscience: He rouses his fears
as well as his love; He instructs him in the depravity
of sin, as well as in the mercy of God; but still,
on the whole, the animating principle of the new
life, by which it is both kindled and sustained, is the
flame of charity. This only is strong enough to destroy
the old Adam, to dissolve the tyranny of habit, to
quench the fires of concupiscence, and to burn up the
strongholds of pride. -
And hence it is that love is presented to us as the
distinguishing grace of those who were sinners before
they were Saints; not that love is not the life of all
Saints, of those who have never needed a conversion,
, of the Most Blessed Virgin, of the two St. Johns, and
of those others, many in number, who are “first-fruits
unto God and the Lamb; ” but that, while in those who
have never sinned gravely love is so contemplative as
almost to resolve itself into the sanctity of God Himself;
in those, on the contrary, in whom it dwells as a
principle of recovery, it is so full of devotion, of zeal,
of activity, and good works, that it gives a visible
character to their history, and is ever associating itself
with our thoughts of them. i
Such was the great Apostle, on whom the Church
is built, and whom I contrasted, when I began, with
his fellow-Apostle St. John ; whether we contemplate
him after his first calling, or on his repentance, he who
gº.
Purity and Zove. 73
denied his Lord, out of all the Apostles, is the most
conspicuous for his love of Him. It was for this love
of Christ, flowing on, as it did, from its impetuosity
and exuberance, into love of the brethren, that he was
chosen to be the chief Pastor of the fold. “Simon,
son of John, lovest thou Me more than these ?” was
the trial put on him by his Lord; and the reward was,
“Feed My lambs, feed My sheep.” Wonderful to
say, the Apostle whom Jesus loved, was yet surpassed
in love for Jesus by a brother Apostle, not virginal as
he ; for it is not John of whom our Lord asked this
question, and who was rewarded with this commission,
but Peter.
Look back at an earlier passage of the same narra-
tive; there,too, the two Apostles are similarly contrasted
in their respective characters; for when they were in
the boat, and their Lord spoke to them from the shore,
and “they knew not that it was Jesus,” first “that
disciple, whom Jesus loved, said to Peter, It is the
Lord,” for “the clean of heart shall see God;” and
5
then at once “Simon Peter,” in the impetuosity of
his love, “girt his tunic about him, and cast himself
into the sea,” to reach Him the quicker. St. John
beholds and St.Peter acts.
Thus the very presence of Jesus kindled Peter's
heart, and at once drew him unto Him; also at a
former time, when he saw his Lord walking on the
sea, his very first impulse was, as in the passage to
which I have been referring, to leave the vessel and
hasten to His side : “Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come
to Thee upon the waters.” And when he had been
74 Purity and Zove.
betrayed into his great sin, the very Eye of Jesus
brought him to himself: “And the Lord turned and
looked upon Peter; and Peter remembered the word
of the Lord, and he went out and wept bitterly.”
Hence, on another occasion, when many of the dis-
ciples fell away, and “Jesus said to the twelve, Do
ye too wish to go away?” St. Peter answered, “Lord,
to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal
life; and we have believed and have known that Thou
art Christ, the Son of God.”
Such, too, was that other great Apostle, who, in so
many ways, is associated with St. Peter—the Doctor
of the Gentiles. He indeed was converted mira-
culously, by our Lord’s appearing to him, when he
was on his way to carry death to the Christians of
Damascus: but how does he speak? “Whether we
are beside ourselves,” he says, “it is to God; or
whether we be sober, it is for you : for the charity of
Christ constraineth us. If, therefore, any be a new
creature in Christ, old things have passed away,
behold, all things are made new.” And so again :
“With Christ am I nailed to the cross; but I live,
yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life
• I now live in the flesh, Ilive by the faith of the Son of
God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” And
again: “I am the least of the Apostles, who am not
worthy to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted
the Church of God. But by the grace of God I am
what I am ; and His grace in me hath not been void,
but I laboured more abundantly than they all, yet not
I, but the grace of God with me.” And once more :
Purity and Zove. 75
“Whether we live, unto the Lord we live ; whether
we die, unto the Lord we die; whether we live or
whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” You see, my
brethren, the character of St. Paul’s love; it was a
love fervent, eager, emergetic, active, full of great
works, “strong as death,” as the Wise Man says, a
flame which “many waters could not quench, nor the
streams drown,” which lasted to the end, when he
could say, “I have fought the good fight, I have
finished the course, I have kept the faith ; henceforth
is laid up for me the crown of justice, which the Lord
will render to me at that day, the just Judge.”
And there is a third, my brethren, there is an illus-
trious third in Scripture, whom we must associate
with these two great Apostles, when we speak of the
saints of penance and love. Who is it but the loving
Magdalen 2 Who is it so fully instances what I am
showing, as “the woman who was a sinner,” who
watered the Lord’s feet with her tears, and dried them
with her hair, and anointed them with precious oint-
ment 2 What a time for such an act She, who had
come into the room as if for a festive purpose, to go
about an act of penance It was a formal banquet,
given by a rich Pharisee, to honour, yet to try, our
Lord. Magdalen came, young and beautiful, and
“ rejoicing in her youth,” “walking in the ways of
” she came as
her heart and the gaze of her eyes:’
if to honour that feast, as women were wont to honour
such festive doings, with her sweet odours and cool
unguents for the forehead and hair of the guests.
And he, the proud Pharisee, suffered her to come, so
&
76 Purity and Zove.
that she touched not him; let her come, as we might
suffer inferior animals to enter our apartments, with-
out caring for them; suffered her as a necessary
embellishment of the entertainment, yet as having no
soul, or as destined to perdition, but anyhow as
nothing to him. He, proud being, and his brethren
like him, might “compass sea and land to make one
proselyte; ” but, as to looking into that proselyte’s
heart, pitying its sin, and trying to heal it, this did
not enter into the circuit of his thoughts. No, he
thought only of the necessities of his banquet, and he
let her come to do her part, such as it was, careless
what her life was, so that she did that part well, and
confined herself to it. But, lo, a wondrous sight !
was it a sudden inspiration, or a mature resolve 2 was
it an act of the moment, or the result of a long con-
flict 2–but behold, that poor, many-coloured child of
guilt approaches to crown with her sweet ointment
the head of Him to whom the feast was given; and
see, she has stayed her hand. She has looked, and
she discerns the Immaculate, the Virgin's Son, “the
brightness of the Eternal Light, and the spotless
mirror of God’s majesty.” She looks, and she re-
cognizes the Ancient of Days, the Lord of life and
death, her Judge ; ar.d again she looks, and she sees
in His face and in His mien a beauty, and a sweet-
ness, awful, serene, majestic, more than that of the
sons of men, which paled all the splendour of that
festive room. Again she looks, timidly yet eagerly,
and she discerns in His eye, and in His smile, the
loving-kindness, the tenderness, the compassion, the
Purity and Zove. 77
- mercy of the Saviour of man. She looks at herself,
and oh! how vile, how hideous is she, who but now
was so vain of her attractions !—how withered is that
comeliness, of which the praises ran through the
mouths of her admirers l—how loathsome has become
the breath, which hitherto she thought so fragrant,
savouring only of those seven bad spirits which dwell
within her And there she would have stayed, there
she would have sunk on the earth, wrapped in her
confusion and in her despair, had she not cast one
glance again on that all-loving, all-forgiving Counte-
nance. He is looking at her : it is the Shepherd
looking at the lost sheep, and the lost sheep sur-
renders herself to Him. He speaks not, but He eyes
her; and she draws nearer to Him. Rejoice, ye
Angels, she draws near, seeing nothing but Him, and
caring neither for the scorn of the proud, nor the
jests of the profligate. She draws near, not knowing
whether she shall be saved or not, not knowing
whether she shall be received, or what will become of
her; this only knowing that He is the Fount of holi-
ness and truth, as of mercy, and to whom should she
go, but to Him who hath the words of eternal life?
“Destruction is thine own, O Israel; in Me only is
thy help. Return unto Me, and I will not turn away
My face from thee : for I am holy, and will not be
angry for ever.” “Behold we come unto Thee; for
Thou art the Lord our God. Truly the hills are false,
and the multitude of the mountains: Truly the Lord
our God is the salvation of Israel.” Wonderful meet-
ing between what was most base and what is most
78 Purity and Love.
purel Those wanton hands, those polluted lips, have
touched, have kissed the feet of the Eternal, and He
shrank not from the homage. And as she hung over
them, and as she moistened them from her full eyes,
how did her love for One so great, yet so gentle, wax
vehement within her, lighting up a flame which never
was to die from that moment even for ever ! and what
excess did it reach, when He recorded before all men
her forgiveness, and the cause of it ! “Many sins
are forgiven her, for she loved much ; but to whom
less is forgiven, the same loveth less. And He said
unto her, Thy sins are forgiven thee; thy faith hath
made thee safe, go in peace.” - -
Henceforth, my brethren, love was to her, as to St.
Augustine and to St. Ignatius Loyola afterwards,
(great penitents in their own time), as a wound in the
soul, so full of desire as to become anguish. She
could not live out of the presence of Him in whom
her joy lay : her spirit languished after Him, when
she saw Him not; and waited on Him silently,
reverently, wistfully, when she was in His blissful
Presence. We read of her, on one occasion, sitting
at His feet, and listening to His words; and He tes-
tified to her that she had chosen that best part which
should not be taken away from her. And, after His
resurrection, she, by her perseverance, merited to see
Him even before the Apostles. She would not leave
the sepulchre, when Peter and John retired, but stood
without, weeping; and when the Lord appeared to her,
and held her eyes that she should not know Him, she
said piteously to the supposed keeper of the garden,
Purity and Zove. 79
“Tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take
Him away.” And when at length He made Himself
known to her, she turned herself, and rushed im-
petuously to embrace His feet, as at the beginning,
but He, as if to prove the dutifulness of her love,
forbade her : “Touch Me not,” He said, “for I have
not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren,
and say to them, I ascend to My Father and your
Father, to My God and your God.” And so she was
left to long for the time when she should see Him, and
hear His voice, and enjoy His smile, and be allowed
to minister to Him, for ever in heaven.
Such then is the second great class of Saints, as
viewed in contrast with the first. Love is the life
of both : but while the love of the innocent is calm
and serene, the love of the penitent is ardent and im-
petuous, commonly engaged in contest with the world,
and active in good works. And this is the love which
you, my brethren, must have in your measure, if you
would have a good hope of salvation. For you were
once sinners; either by open and avowed contempt of
religion, or by secret transgression, or by carelessness
and coldness, or by some indulged bad habit, or by
setting your heart on some object of this world, and
doing your own will instead of God’s, I think I may
say you have needed, or now need, a reconciliation to
Him. You have needed, or you need, to be brought
near to Him, and to have your sins washed away in
His blood, and your pardon recorded in Heaven. And
what will do this for you, but contrition ? and what is
contrition without love? I do not say that you must
8O Purity and Zove.
have the love which Saints have, in order to your for-
giveness, the love of St. Peter or of St. Mary Magdalen ;
but still without your portion of that same heavenly
grace, how can you be forgiven at all? If you would
do works meet for penance, they must proceed from a
living flame of charity. If you would secure perse-
verance to the end, you must gain it by continual loving
prayer to the Author and Finisher of faith and obedi-
ence. If you would have a good prospect of His
acceptance of you in your last moments, still it is love
alone which secures His love, and blots out sin. My
brethren, at that awful hour you may be unable to
obtain the last Sacraments; death may come on you
suddenly, or you may be at a distance from a Priest.
You may be thrown on yourselves, simply on your own
compunction of heart, your own repentance, your own
resolutions of amendment. You may have been weeks
and weeks at a distance from spiritual aid; you may
have to meet your God without the safeguard, the
compensation, the mediation of any holy rite; and
oh what will save you in such disadvantage, but the
exercise of divine love “poured over your hearts by
the Holy Ghost who is given to you”? At that hour
nothing but a firm habit of charity, which has kept
you from mortal sins, or a powerful act of charity
which blots them out, will be of any avail to you.
Nothing but charity can enable you to live well or to
die well. How can you bear to lie down at night, how
can you bear to go a journey, how can you bear the
presence of pestilence, or the attack of ever so slight
all indisposition, if you are ill provided in yourselves
Purity and Zove. - 8 I
with divine love against that change, which will come
on you some day, yet when and how you know not
Alas ! how will you present yourselves before the
judgment-seat of Christ, with the imperfect mixed
feelings which now satisfy you, with a certain amount
of faith, and trust, and fear of God’s judgments, but
with nothing of that real delight in Him, in His
attributes, in His will, in His commandments, in His
service, which Saints possess in such fulness, and
which alone can give the soul a comfortable title to
the merits of His death and passion ?
How different is the feeling with which the loving
soul, on its separation from the body, approaches the
judgment-seat of its Redeemer It knows how gret
a debt of punishment remains upon it, though it has
for many years been reconciled to Him; it knows that
purgatory lies before it, and that the best it can
reasonably hope for is to be sent there. But to see
His face, though for a moment 1 to hear His voice, to
hear Him speak, though it be to punish O Saviour of
men, it says, I come to Thee, though it be in order to be
at once remanded from Thee ; I come to Thee who art
my Life and my All ; I come to Thee on the thought
of whom I have lived all my life long. To Thee I
gave myself when first I had to take a part in the
world; I sought Thee for my chief good early, for
early didst Thou teach me, that good elsewhere there
was none. Whom have I in heaven but Thee? whom
have I desired on earth, whom have I had on earth,
but Thee? whom shall I have amid the sharp flame
but Thee? Yea, though I be now descending thither,
G
82 - Purity and Zove.
into “a land desert, pathless and without water,” I
will fear no ill, for Thou art with me. I have seen
Thee this day face to face, and it sufficeth; I have
seen Thee, and that glance of Thine is sufficient for a
century of sorrow, in the nether prison. I will live
on that look of Thine, though I see Thee not, till I see
Thee again, never to part from Thee. That eye of
Thine shall be sunshine and comfort to my weary,
longing soul; that voice of Thine shall be everlasting
music in my ears. Nothing can harm me, nothing
shall discompose me : I will bear the appointed years,
till my end come, bravely and sweetly. I will raise
my voice, and chant a perpetual Confteor to Thee and
to Thy Saints in that dreary valley;-* to God Omni-
potent, and to the Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin,” (Thy
Mother and mine, immaculate in her conception),
“ and to blessed Michael Archangel,” (created in his
purity by the very hand of God), and “to Blessed
John Baptist,” (sanctified even in his mother’s womb);
and after these three, “to the Holy Apostles Peter
and Paul.” (penitents, who compassionate the sinner
from their experience of sin); “to all Saints,” (whether
they have lived in contemplation or in toil, during
the days of their pilgrimage), will I address my sup-
plication, begging them to “remember me, since it is
well with them, and to do mercy by me, and to make
mention of me unto the King that He bring me out
of that prison.” And then at length “God shall
wipe away every tear from my eyes, and death shall
be no longer, nor mourning, nor crying, nor pain any
more, for the former things are passed away.”
DISCOURSE V.
SA/WZTL/AWAESS 7 HAE STAAWDARZ) OF CHRYST/AAV"
AAEM/VC/A/A2. \
You know very well, my brethren, and there are
few persons anywhere who deny it, that in the
breast of every one there dwells a feeling or percep-
tion, which tells him the difference between right and
wrong, and is the standard by which to measure
thoughts and actions. It is called conscience; and
even though it be not at all times powerful enough
to rule us, still it is distinct and decisive enough to
influence our views and form our judgments in the
various matters which come before us. Yet even this
office it cannot perform adequately without external
assistance; it needs to be regulated and sustained.
Left to itself though it tells truly at first, it soon be-
comes wavering, ambiguous, and false; it needs good
teachers and good examples to keep it up to the mark
and line of duty; and the misery is, that these ex-
ternal helps, teachers, and examples are in many
instances wanting. * -
Nay, to the great multitude of men they are so far
wanting, that conscience loses its way and guides the
(?
G 2
84 Saint/iness the Standard
soul in its journey heavenward but indirectly and
circuitously. Even in countries called Christian, the
natural inward light grows dim, because the Light,
which lightens every one born into the world, is
removed out of sight. I say, it is a most miserable
and frightful thought, that, in this country, among
this people which boasts that it is so Christian and so
enlightened, the sun in the heavens is so eclipsed that
the mirror of conscience can catch and reflect few rays,
and serves but poorly and scantily to preserve the
foot from error. That inward light, given as it is by
God, is powerless to illuminate the horizon, to mark
out for us our direction, and to comfort us with the
certainty that we are making for our Eternal Home.
That light was intended to set up within us a standard
of right and of truth ; to tell us our duty on every
emergency, to instruct us in detail what sin is, to
judge between all things which come before us, to
discriminate the precious from the vile, to hinder us
from being seduced by what is pleasant and agree-
able, and to dissipate the sophisms of our reason.
But alas! what ideas of truth, what ideas of holiness,
what ideas of heroism, what ideas of the good and
great, have the multitude of men P I am not asking
whether they act up to any ideas, or are swayed by
any ideas, of these high objects; that is a further
point; I only ask, have they any ideas of them at all?
or, if they cannot altogether blot out from their souls
their ideas of greatness and goodness, I ask still,
whether their mode of conceiving of them, and the
things and persens in which they embody them, be
of Christian Principle. 85
not such, that we may truly say of the bulk of man-
kind, that “the light that is in them is darkness.”
Attend to me, my dear brethren, I am saying
nothing very abstruse, nothing very difficult to un-
derstand, nothing unimportant ; but something intel-
ligible, undeniable, and of very general concern.
You know there are persons who never see the light
of day; they live in pits and mines, and there they
work, there they take their pleasure, and there par-
haps they die. Do you think they have any right
idea, though they have eyes, of the sun’s radiance, of
the sun’s warmth º any idea of the beautiful arching
heavens, the blue sky, the soft clouds, and the moon
and stars by night? any idea of the high mountain,
and the green smiling earth 2 Oh what an hour it is
for him who is suddenly brought from such a pit or
cave, from the dull red glow and the flickering glare of
torches, and that monotony of an artificial twilight,
in which day and night are lost,--is suddenly, I say,
brought thence, and for the first time sees the bright
sun moving majestically from East to West, and wit-
nesses the gradual graceful changes of the air and
sky from morn till fragrant evening ! Andoh what
a sight for one born blind to begin to see,_a sense
altogether foreign to all his previous conceptions !
What a marvellous new state of being, which, though
he ever had the senses of hearing and of touch, never
had he been able, by the words of others, or any
means of information he possessed, to bring home to
himself in the faintest measure! Would he not find
himself, as it is said, in a “new world” 2 What a
.86 Saint/iness the Standard
revolution would take place in his modes of thought,
in his habits, in his ways, and in his doings hour by
hour ! He would no longer direct himself with his
hands and his hearing, he would no longer grope
about; he would see;—he would at a glance take in
ten thousand objects, and, what is more, their relations
and their positions the one towards the other. He would
know what was great and what was little, what was
near, what was distant, what things converged together
and what things were ever separate—in a word, he
would see all things as a whole, and in subjection to
himself as a centre. -
But further, he would gain knowledge of something
closer to himself and more personal than all these
various objects; of something very different from the
forms and groups in which light dwelt as in a taber-
nacle, and which excited his admiration and love.
He would discover lying upon him, spreading over
him, penetrating him, the festering seeds of un-
healthiness and disease in their primary and minutest
forms. The air around us is charged with a subtle
powder or dust, which falls down softly on every-
thing, silently sheds itself on everything, soils and
stains everything, and, if suffered to remain undis-
turbed, induces sickness and engenders pestilence.
It is like those ashes of the furnace which Moses
was instructed to take up and scatter in the face of
heaven, that they might become ulcers and blisters
upon the flesh of the Egyptians. This subtle plague
is felt in its ultimate consequences by all, the blind as
well as those who see; but it is by the eyesight that
of Christian Principle. 87
we discern it in its origin and in its progress; it is by
the sun’s light that we discern our own defilement;
and the need we have of continual cleansing to rid
ourselves of it.
Now what is this dust and dirt, my brethren, but a
figure of sin” so subtle in its approach, so multi-
tudinous in its array, so incessant in its solicitations,
so insignificant in its appearance, so odious, so poison-
ous in its effects. It falls on the soul gently and
imperceptibly; but it gradually breeds wounds and
j
Sores, and ends in everlasting death. And as we …
cannot see the atoms of dust that have settled on us
without the light, and as that same light, which
enables us to see them, teaches us withal, by their
very contrast with itself, their unseemliness and dis-
honour, so the light of the invisible world, the teach-
ings and examples of revealed truth, bring home to us
both the existence and also the deformity of sin, of
which we should be unmindful or forgetful without
them. And as there are men who live in caverns and
mines, and never see the face of day, and do their
work as best they can by torch-light, so there are
multitudes, nay, whole races of men, who, though
possessed of eyes by nature, cannot use them duly,
because they live in the spiritual pit, in the region of
darkness, “in the land of wretchedness and gloom,
where there is the shadow of death, and where order
is not.” .
There they are born, there they live, there they die;
and instead of the bright, broad, and all-revealing
luminousness of the sun, they grope their way from
88 Saint/iness the Standard
f
place to place with torches, as best they may, or fix
up lamps at certain points, and “walk in the light of
, their fire, and in the flames which they have kindled;”
because they have nothing clearer, nothing purer, to
serve the needs of the day and the year. Light of
some kind they must secure, and, when they can do no
better, they make it for themselves. Man, a being
endued with reason, cannot on that very account live
altogether at random; he is obliged in some sense to
live on principle, to live by rule, to profess a view of
life, to have an aim, to set up a standard, and to take
to him such examples as seem to him to fulfil it. His
reason does not make him independent (as men
sometimes speak); it forces on him a dependency on
definite principles and laws, in order to satisfy its own
demands. He must by the necessity of his nature,
look up to something ; and he creates, if he cannot
discover, an object for his veneration. He teaches him-
self, or is taught by his neighbour, falsehoods,if he is not
taught truth from above; he makes to himself idols,
if he knows not of the Eternal God and His Saints.
Now, of which of the two, think you, my brethren, are
our own countrymen in possession 2 have they pos-
session of the true Object of worship, or have they a
'false one? have they created what is not, or discovered
what is 2 do they walk by the luminaries of heaven, or
are they as those who are born and live in caverns, and
who strike their light as best they may, by means of
the stones and metals of the earth P
Look around, my brethren, and answer for your-
selves. Contemplate the objects of this people’s
of Christian Principle. 89
praise, survey their standards, ponder their ideas and
judgments, and then tell me whether it is not most
evident, from their very notion of the desirable and
the excellent, that greatness, and goodness, and sanc-
tity, and sublimity, and truth are unknown to them :
and that they not only do not pursue, but do not even
admire, those high attributes of the Divine Nature.
7%is is what I am insisting on, not what they actually
do or what they are, but what they revere, what they
adore, what their gods are. Their god is mammon ;
I do not mean to say that all seek to be wealthy, but
that all bow down before wealth. Wealth is that
to which the multitude of men pay an instinctive
homage. They measure happiness by wealth ; and by
wealth they measure respectability. Numbers, I say,
there are, who never dream that they shall ever be rich
themselves, but who still at the sight of wealth feel
an involuntary reverence and awe, just as if a rich
man must be a good man. They like to be noticed by
some particular rich man; they like on some occasion
to have spoken with him ; they like to know those
who know him, to be intimate with his dependants,
to have entered his house, nay, to know him by sight.
Not, I repeat, that it ever comes into their mind that
the like wealth will one day be theirs; not that they
See the wealth, for the man who has it may dress, and
live, and look like other men; not that they expect to
gain some benefit from it: no, theirs is a disinterested
homage, it is a homage resulting from an honest,
genuine, hearty admiration of wealth for its own sake,
such as that pure love which holy men feel for the
go Saint/iness ſhe Standard
Q}
Maker of all; it is a homage resulting, from a pro-
found faith in wealth, from the intimate sentiment of
their hearts, that, however a man may look—poor,
mean, starved, decrepit, vulgar; or again, though he
may be ignorant, or diseased, or feeble-minded,
though he have the character of being a tyrant or a
profligate, yet, if he be rich, he differs from all
others; if he be rich, he has a gift, a spell, an omni-
potence;—that with wealth he may do all things.
Wealth is one idol of the day, and notoriety is a
second. I am not speaking, I repeat, of what men
actually pursue, but of what they look up to, what
they revere. Men may not have the opportunity of pur-
suing what they admire still. Never could notoriety
exist as it does now, in any former age of the world;
now that the news of the hour from all parts of
the world, private news as well as public, is brought
day by day to every individual, as I may say, of the
community, to the poorest artizan and the most se-
cluded peasant, by processes so uniform, so unvarying,
so spontaneous, that they almost bear the semblance
of a natural law. And hence notoriety, or the making
a noise in the world, has come to be considered a great
good in itself, and a ground of veneration. Time was
when men could only make a display by means of ex-
penditure; and the world used to gaze with wonder on
those who had large establishments, many servants,
many horses, richly-furnished houses, gardens, and
parks: it does so still, that is, when it has the oppor-
tunity of doing so; for such magnificence is the fortune
of the few, and comparatively few are its witnesses.
of Christian Principle. 9 I
Notoriety, or, as it may be called, newspaper fame, is
to the many what style and fashion, to use the language
of the world, are to those who are within or belong to
the higher circles; it becomes to them a sort of idol,
worshipped for its own sake, and without any refer-
ence to the shape in which it comes before them. It
may be an evil ſame or a good fame; it may be the
notoriety of a great statesman, or of a great preacher,
or of a great speculator, or of a great experimentalist,
or of a great criminal ; of one who has laboured in the
improvement of our schools, or hospitals, or prisons,
or workhouses, or of one who has robbed his neighbour
of his wife. It matters not; so that a man is talked
much of, and read much of, he is thought much of;
nay, let him even have died justly under the hands of
the law, still he will be made a sort of martyr of His
clothes, his handwriting, the circumstances of his guilt,
the instruments of his deed of blood, will be shown
about, gazed on, treasured up as so many relies; for
the question with men is, not whether he is great, or
good, or wise, or holy; not whether he is base, and vile,
and odious, but whether he is in the mouths of men,
whether he has centred on himself the attention of
many, whether he has done something out of the way,
whether he has been (as it were) canonized in the
publications of the hour. All men cannot be notorious:
the multitudes who thus honour notoriety, do not seek
it themselves; nor am I speaking of what men do, but
how they judge; yet instances do occur from time to
time of wretched men, so smitten with passion for
notoriety, as even to dare in fact some detestable and
92 Saint/iness the Standard
«»
wanton act, not from love of it, not from liking or
dislike of the person against whom it is directed, but
simply in order thereby to gratify this impure desire
of being talked about, and gazed upon. “These are
thy gods, Oh Israel!” Alas! alas! this great and
noble people, born to aspire, born for reverence, behold
them walking to and froby the torch-light of the cavern,
or pursuing the wild-fires of the marsh, not understand-
ing themselves, their destinies, their defilements, their
needs, because they have not the glorious luminaries of
heaven to see, to consult, and to admire -
But oh! what a change, my brethren, when the
good hand of God brings them by some marvellous
providence to the pit’s mouth, and then out into the
blessed light of day ! what a change for them when
they first begin to see with the eyes of the soul, with
the intuition which grace gives, Jesus, the Sun of
Justice; and the heaven of Angels and Archangels in
which He dwells; and the bright Morning Star, which
is His Blessed Mother; and the continual floods of light
falling and striking against the earth, and transformed
as they fall into an infinity of hues, which are His
Saints; and the boundless sea, which is the image of
His divine immensity; and then again the calm, placid
Moon by night, which images His Church; and the
silent stars, like good and holy men, travelling on in
lonely pilgrimage to their eternal rest | Such was the
surprise, such the transport, which came upon the
favoured disciples, whom on one occasion our Lord
took up with Him to the top of Tabor. He left the
sick world, the tormented, restless multitude, at its
of Christian Principle. 93
foot, and He took them up, and was transfigured
before them. “His Face did shine as the sun, and
His raiment was white as the light;" and they lifted
their eyes, and saw on either side of Him a bright
form ;-these were two Saints of the elder covenant,
Moses and Elias, who were conversing with Him.
How truly was this a glimpse of Heaven the holy
Apostles were introduced into a new range of ideas,
into a new sphere of contemplation, till St. Peter,
overcome by the vision, cried out, “Lord, it is good
to be here; and let us make three tabernacles.” He
would fain have kept those heavenly glories always with
him; everything on earth, the brightest, the fairest,
the noblest, paled and dwindled away, and turned to
corruption before them ; its most substantial good was
vanity, its richest gain was dross, its keenest joy a
weariness, and its sin a loathsomeness and abomina-
tion. And such as this in its measure is the contrast,
to which the awakened soul is witness, between the
objects of its admiration and pursuit in its natural
state, and those which burst upon it when it has
entered into communion with the Church Invisible,
when it has come “to mount Zion, and to the city of
the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to that
multitude of many thousand Angels, and to the Church
of the first-born, who are enrolled in heaven, and to
God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the just
now perfected, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New
Testament.” From that day it has begun a new life:
I am not speaking of any moral conversion which takes
place in it; whether or not it is moved (as surely we
|
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94. Saint/iness ſ/he Standard
believe it will be) to act upon the sights which it sees,
still consider only what a change there will be in its
views and estimation of things, as soon as it has
heard and has faith in the word of God, as soon as it
understands that wealth, and notoriety, and influence,
and high place, are not the first of blessings and the
real standard of good; but that saintliness and all its
attendants, saintly purity, saintly poverty, heroic
fortitude and patience, self-sacrifice for the sake of
others, renouncement of the world, the favour of
Heaven, the protection of Angels, the smile of the
Blessed Virgin, the gifts of grace, the interpositions
of miracle, the intercommunion of merits, that these
are the high and precious things, the things to be
looked up to, the things to be reverently spoken of.
Hence worldly-minded men, however rich, if they are
Catholics, cannot, till they utterly lose their faith, be
the same as those who are external to the Church ;
they have an instinctive veneration for those who have
the traces of heaven upon them, and they praise what
they do not imitate.
Such men have an idea before them which a Pro-
testant nation has not ; they have the idea of a Saint ;
they believe, they realize the existence of those rare
servants of God, who rise up from time to time in the
Catholic Church like Angels in disguise, and shed
around them a light, as they walk on their way heaven-
ward. They may not in practice do what is right and
good, but they know what is true; they know what to
think and how to judge. They have a standard for their
principles of conduct, and it is the image, the pattern of
of Christian Principſe. 95
Saints which forms it for them. A Saint is born like
another man ; by nature a child of wrath, and needing
God’s grace to regenerate him. He is baptized like
another, he lies helpless and senseless like another,
and like another child he comes to years of reason.
But soon his parents and their neighbours begin to
say, “This is a strange child, he is unlike any other
child; ” his brothers and his playmates feel an awe of
him, they do not know why; they both like him and
dislike him, perhaps love him much in spite of his
strangeness, perhaps respect him more than they love
him. But if there were any holy Priest there, or
others who had long served God in prayer and obedi-
ence, these would say, “This truly is a wonderful
child; this child bids fair to be a Saint.” And so he
grows up, whether at first he is duly prized by his
parents or not ; for so it is with all greatness, that,
because it is great, it cannot be comprehended by
ordinary minds at once; but time, and distance, and
contemplation are necessary for its being recognized
by beholders, and, therefore, this special heir of glory
of whom I am speaking, for a time at least excites
no very definite observation, unless indeed (as some-
times happens) anything of miracle occurs from time
to time to mark him out. He has come to the age of
reason, and, wonderful to say, he has never fallen
away into sin. Other children begin to use the gift
of reason by abusing it ; they understand what is
right, only to go counter to it; it is otherwise with
him, not that he does not sin in many things, when
we place him in the awful ray of divine purity, but
ſcº
96 Saint/iness the Standard
that he does not sin wilfully and grievously,–he is
preserved from mortal sin, he is never separated from
God by , sin, nay, perhaps, he is betrayed only at
intervals, or never at all, into any deliberate sin, be
it ever so slight, and he is ever avoiding the occasions
of sin and resisting temptation. He ever lives in the
presence of God, and is thereby preserved from evil,
for “ the wicked one toucheth him not.” Nor, again,
as if in other and ordinary matters, he necessarily
differed from other boys; he may be ignorant, thought-
less, improvident of the future, rash, impetuous; he
is a child, and has the infirmities, failings, fears, and
hopes of a child. He may be moved to anger, he may
say a harsh word, he may offend his parents, he may
be volatile and capricious, he may have no fixed view
of things, such as a man has. This is not much to
allow ; such things are accidents, and are compatible
with the presence of a determinate influence of grace,
uniting his heart to God. O that the multitude of
men were as religious in their best seasons, as the
Saints are in their worst ! though there have been
Saints who seem to have been preserved even from
the imperfections I have been mentioning. There
have been Saints whose reason the all-powerful grace
of God seems wonderfully to have opened from the
very time of their baptism, so that they have offered
to their Lord and Saviour, “a living, holy, acceptable
sacrifice,” “a rational service,” even while they have
been infants. And, anyhow, whatever are the acts
of infirmity and sin in the child I am imagining, still
they are the exception in his day’s course ; the course
of Christian Principle. 97
of each day is religious: while other children are
light-minded, and cannot fix their thoughts in prayer,
prayer and praise and meditation are his meat and
drink. He frequents the Churches, and places himself
before the Blessed Sacrament; or he is found before
some holy image; or he sees visions of the Blessed
Virgin, or the Saints to whom he is devoted. He
lives in intimate converse with his guardian Angel,
and he shrinks from the very shadow of profaneness
or impurity. And thus he is a special witness of the
world unseen, and he fulfils the vague ideas and the
dreams of the supernatural, which one reads of in
poems or romances, with which young people are so
much taken, and after which they cannot help sighing,
before the world corrupts them.
He grows up, and he has just the same temptations
as others, perhaps more violent ones. Men of this
world, carnal men, unbelieving men, do not believe
that the temptations which they themselves experience,
and to which they yield, can be overcome. They reason
themselves into the notion that to sin is their very
nature, and, therefore, is no fault of theirs; that is,
they deny the existence of sin. And accordingly, when
they read about the Saints or about holy men generally,
they conclude either that these have not had the tempta-
tions which they experienced themselves, or that they
have not overcome them. They either consider such an
one to be a hypocrite, who practises in private the sins
which he denounces in public ; or, if they have decency
enough to abstain from these calumnies, then they
consider that he pever felt the temptation, and they
H
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98 Saint/iness the Standard
C.
regard him as a cold and simple person, who has never
outgrown his childhood, who has a contracted mind
who does not know the world and life, who is despic-
able while he is without influence, and dangerous and
detestable from his very ignorance when he is in
power. But no, my brethren ; read the lives of the
Saints, you will see how false and narrow a view this
is ; these men, who think, forsooth, they know the
world so well, and the nature of man so deeply, they
know nothing of one great far-spreading phenomenon
e, in man,—and that is, his nature under the operation of
grace; they know nothing of the second nature, of the
a supernatural gift, induced by the Almighty Spirit
upon our first and fallen nature; they have never met,
they have never read of, and they have formed no
conception of, a Saint.
He has, I say, the same temptations as another;
perhaps greater, because he is to be tried as in a fur-
nace, because he is to become rich in merits, because
there is a bright crown reserved for him in Heaven;
still temptation he has, and he differs from others, not
in being shielded from it, but in being armed against it.
Grace overcomes nature; it overcomes indeed in all who
shall be saved; none will see God’s face hereafter who
do not, while here, put away from them mortal sin of
every kind; but the Saints overcome with a determina-
tion and a vigour, a promptitude and a success, beyond
any one else. You read, my brethren, in the lives of
Saints, the wonderful account of their conflicts, and
their triumphs over the enemy. They are, as I was
Saying, like heroes of romance, so gracefully, so nobly,
of Christian Principle. 99
so royally do they bear themselves. Their actions are
as beautiful as fiction, yet as real as fact. There was
St. Benedict, who, when a boy, left Rome, and betook
himself to the Apennines in the neighbourhood. Three
years did he live in prayer, fasting, and solitude, while
the Evil One assaulted him with temptation. One
day, when it grew so fierce that he feared for his per-
severance, he suddenly flung himself, in his scanty
hermit’s garb, among the thorns and nettles near him,
thus turning the current of his thoughts, and chastis-
ing the waywardness of the flesh, by sensible stings
and smarts. There was St. Thomas, too, the Angelical
Doctor, as he is called, as holy as he was profound, or
rather the more profound in theological science, because
he was so holy. “Even from a youth” he had “sought
wisdom, he had stretched out his hands on high, and
directed his soul to her, and possessed his heart with her
from the beginning;” and so,when the minister of Satan
came into his very room, and no other defence was at
hand, he seized a burning brand from the hearth, and
drove that wicked one, scared and baffled, out of his
presence. And there was that poor youth in the early
persecutions, whom the impious heathen bound down
with cords, and then brought in upon him a vision of
evil; and he in his agony bit off his tongue, and spit it
out into the face of the temptress, that so the intense-
ness of the pain might preserve him from the seduction.
Such acts as these, my brethren, are an opening of
the heavens, a sudden gleam of supernatural brightness
across a dark sky. They enlarge the mind with ideas
it had not before, and they show to the multitude
H 2. ; : :"... :: ;;
o * ee
s •
© e © tº e
º
IOO Saën//ºness ſ/he Standard
C,
*
** what God can do, and what man can be. Though,
doubtless, all Saints have not been such in youth :
for there are those on the contrary, who, not till after
a youth of sin, have been brought by the sovereign
grace of God to repentance, yet, when once con-
verted, differed in nothing from those who had ever
served Him, not in greatness of gifts, not in ac-
ceptableness, not in detachment from the world, nor in
union with Christ, nor in exactness of obedience,—in
nought save in the severity of their penance. Others
have been called, not from vice and ungodliness, but
from a life of mere ordinary blamelessness, or from a
state of lukewarmness, or from thoughtlessness, to
heroical greatness; and these have often given up
lands, and property, and honours, and station, and
repute, for Christ’s sake. Kings have descended
from their thrones, bishops have given up their rank
and influence, the learned have given up their pride
of intellect, to become poor monks, to live on coarse
fare, to be clad in humble weeds, to rise and pray
while others slept, to mortify the tongue with silence
and the limbs with toil, and to avow an unconditional
obedience to another. In early times were the Martyrs,
many of them children and even girls, who bore the
most cruel, the most prolonged, the most diversified
tortures, rather than deny the faith of Christ. Then
came the Missionaries among the heathen, who, for
the love of souls, threw themselves into the midst of
savages, risking and perhaps losing their lives in the
attempt to extend the empire of their Lord and
Sayigur, and who, whether living or dying, have by
of Christian Princip/e. IOI
their lives or by their deaths succeeded in bringing
over whole nations into the Church. Others have
devoted themselves in the time of war or captivity, to
the redemption of Christian slaves from pagan or
Mahometan masters or conquerors; others to the
care of the sick in pestilences, or in hospitals; others
to the instruction of the poor; others to the education
of children; others to incessant preaching and the
duties of the confessional; others to devout study
and meditation; others to a life of intercession and
prayer. Very various are the Saints, their very
variety is a token of God’s workmanship ; but how-
ever various, and whatever was their special line of
duty, they have been heroes in it ; they have attained
such noble self-command, they have so crucified the º
flesh, they have so renounced the world; they are so
meek, so gentle, so tender-hearted, so merciful, so
sweet, so cheerful, so full of prayer, so diligent, so
forgetful of injuries; they have sustained such great
and continued pains, they have persevered in such
vast labours, they have made such valiant confessions,
they have wrought such abundant miracles, they have
been blessed with such strange successes, that they
have been the means of setting up a standard before us
of truth, of magnanimity, of holiness, of love. They
are not always our examples, we are not always bound
to follow them; not more than we are bound to obey
literally some of our Lord’s precepts, such as turning
the cheek or giving away the coat; not more than we
ean follow the course of the sun, moon, or stars in
the heavens; but, though not always our examples,
IO2 Saint/iness the Standard
they are always our standard of right and good; they
are raised up to be monuments and lessons, they re-
2 mind us of God, they introduce us into the unseen
world, they teach us what Christ loves, they track
out for us the way which leads heavenward. They
are to us who see them, what wealth, notoriety, rank,
and name are to the multitude of men who live in
darkness, – objects of our veneration and of our
homage. .
Oh, who can doubt between the two 2 The national
religion has many attractions; it leads to decency
and order, propriety of conduct, justness of thought,
beautiful domestic tastes; but it has not power to lead
the multitude upward, or to delineate for them the
Heavenly City. It comes of mere nature, and its teach-
ing is of nature. It uses religious words, of course,
ſº else it could not be called a religion; but it does not
impress on the imagination, it does not engrave upon
the heart, it does not inflict upon the conscience, the
tº supernatural; it does not introduce into the popular
mind any great ideas, such as are to be recognized
by one and all, as common property, and first prin-
ciples or dogmas from which to start, to be taken for
granted on all hands, and handed down as images
and specimens of eternal truth from age to age. It
in no true sense inculcates the Unseen; and by
consequence, sights of this world, material tangible
objects, become the idols and the ruin of its children,
of souls which were made for God and Heaven. It
is powerless to resist the world and the world’s teach-
ing: it cannot supplant error by truth; it follows
of Christian Principle. - 103
when it should lead. There is but one real Antagonist
of the world, and that is the faith of Catholics;–
Christ set that faith up, and it will do its work on º
earth, as it ever has done, till He comes again. \!. 3 r
DISCO U R S E VI.
GO/O’S WZZZ 7A/E AEAVAD OF Z/AEA.
\
AM going to ask you a question, my dear brethren,
so trite, and therefore so uninteresting at first
sight, that you may wonder why I put it, and may
object that it will be difficult to fix the mind on it, and
may anticipate that nothing profitable can be made of
it. It is this:—“Why were you sent into the world?”
Yet, after all, it is perhaps a thought more obvious
than it is common, more easy than it is familiar; I
mean it ought to come into your minds, but it does
not, and you never had more than a distant acquaint-
ance with it, though that sort of acquaintance with it
you have had for many years. Nay, once or twice,
perhaps you have been thrown across the thought
somewhat intimately, for a short season, but this was
an accident which did not last. There are those who
recollect the first time, as it would seem, when it came
home to them. They were but little children, and
they were by themselves, and they spontaneously
asked themselves, or rather God spake in them,
“Why am I here? how came I here 2 who brought
me here? What am I to do here?” Perhaps it was
God’s Will the Ænd of Zife. IO5
tº e & —n
the first act of reason, the beginning of their real
responsibility, the commencement of their trial; per-
haps from that day they may date their capacity, their
awful power, of choosing between good and evil, and
of committing mortal sin. And so, as life goes on,
the thought comes vividly, from time to time, for a
short season across their conscience; whether in illness,
or in some anxiety, or at some season of solitude, or
on hearing some preacher, or reading some religious
work. A vivid feeling comes over them of the vanity
and unprofitableness of the world, and then the ques-
tion recurs, “Why then am I sent into it?”
And a great contrast indeed does this vain, unpro-
fitable, yet overbearing world, present with such a
question as that. It seems out of place to ask such
a question in so magnificent, so imposing a presence,
as that of the great Babylon. The world professes to
supply all that we need, as if we were sent into it for
the sake of being sent here, and for nothing beyond
the sending. It is a great favour to have an introduc-
tion to this august world. This is to be our exposition,
forsooth, of the mystery of life. Every man is doing
his own will here, seeking his own pleasure, pursuing
his own ends, and that is why he was brought into
existence. Go abroad into the streets of the populous
city, contemplate the continuous outpouring there of
human energy, and the countless varieties of human
character, and be satisfied The ways are thronged,
carriage-way and pavement; multitudes are hurrying
to and fro, each on his own errand, or are loitering
about from listlessness, or from want of work, or have
º
IO6 God’s Wiſ/ ſhe Znd of Zäſe.
come forth into the public concourse, to see and to be
seen, for amusement or for display, or on the excuse
of business. The carriages of the wealthy mingle
with the slow wains laden with provisions or merchan-
dise, the productions of art or the demands of luxury. .
The streets are lined with shops, open and gay, invit-
ing customers, and widen now and then into some
spacious square or place, with lofty masses of brick-
work or of stone, gleaming in the fitful sunbeam, and
surrounded or fronted with what simulates a garden’s
foliage. Follow them in another direction, and you
find the whole groundstead covered with large build-
ings, planted thickly up and down, the homes of the
mechanical arts. The air is filled, below, with a
ceaseless, importunate, monotonous din, which pene-
trates even to your most innermost chamber, and
rings in your ears even when you are not conscious of
it; and overhead, with a canopy of smoke, shrouding
God’s day from the realms of obstinate sullen toil.
This is the end of man
Or stay at home, and take up one of those daily
prints, which are so true a picture of the world; look
down the columns of advertisements, and you will
see the catalogue of pursuits, projects, aims, anxieties,
amusements, indulgences which occupy the mind of
man. He plays many parts: here he has goods to
sell, there he wants employment; there again he
seeks to borrow money, here he offers you houses,
great seats or small tenements; he has food for the
million, and luxuries for the wealthy, and sovereign
medicines for the credulous, and books, new and
God's Will the End of Life. IO7
cheap, for the inquisitive. Pass on to the news of the
day, and you will learn what great men are doing at
home and abroad : you will read of wars and rumours
of wars; of debates in the Legislature ; of rising men,
and old statesmen going off the scene; of political
contests in this city or that county; of the collision
of rival interests. You will read of the money
market, and the provision market, and the market
for metals; of the state of trade, the call for manu-
factures, news of ships arrived in port, of accidents at
sea, of exports and imports, of gains and losses, of
frauds and their detection. Go forward, and you
arrive at discoveries in art and science, discoveries
(so called) in religion, the court and royalty, the
entertainments of the great, places of amusement,
strange trials, offences, accidents, escapes, exploits,
experiments, contests, ventures. Oh this curious,
restless, clamorous, panting being, which we call
life l—and is there to be no end to all this? Is
there no object in it 2 It never has an end, it is
forsooth its own object * -
And now, once more, my brethren, put aside what
you see and what you read of the world, and try to
penetrate into the hearts, and to reach the ideas and
the feelings of those who constitute it; look into
them as closely as you can ; enter into their houses
and private rooms; strike at random through the
streets and lanes: take as they come, palace and
hovel, office or factory, and what will you find P
Listen to their words, witness, alas ! their works;
you will find in the main the same lawless thoughts, a
IO8 God's Wil/ the End of Zife.
the same unrestrained desires, the same ungoverned
passions, the same earthly opinions, the same wilful
deeds, in high and low, learned and unlearned; you
will find them all to be living for the sake of living ;
they one and all seem to tell you, “We are our own
centre, our own end.” Why are they toiling 2 why
are they scheming 2 for what are they living P “We
live to please ourselves; life is worthless except we
have our own way; we are not sent here at all, but
we find ourselves here, and we are but slaves unless
we can think what we will, believe what we will, love
what we will, hate what we will, do what we will.
We detest interference on the part of God or man.
We do not bargain to be rich or to be great ; but we
do bargain, whether rich or poor, high or low, to live
for ourselves, to live for the lust of the moment, or,
according to the doctrine of the hour, thinking of the
future and the unseen just as much or as little as we
please.” i
Oh, my brethren, is it not a shocking thought, but
who can deny its truth? The multitude of men are
living without any aim beyond this visible scene;
they may from time to time use religious words, or
they may profess a communion or a worship, as a
matter of course, or of expedience, or of duty, but, if
there was any sincerity in such profession, the course
of the world could not run as it does. What a con-
trast is all this to the end of life, as it is set before us
in our most holy Faith ! If there was one among the
sons of men, who might allowably have taken His
pleasure, and have done His own will here below,
God's Will the End of Ziſe. Io9
surely it was He who came down on earth from the
bosom of the Father, and who was so pure and spot-
less in that human nature which He put on Him, that
He could have no human purpose or aim inconsistent
with the will of His Father. Yet He, the Son of
God, the Eternal Word, came, not to do His own
will, but His who sent Him, as you know very well
is told us again and again in Scripture. Thus the
Prophet in the Psalter, speaking in His person, says,
“Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.” And He says
in the Prophet Isaias, “the Lord God hath opened
Mine ear, and I do not resist; I have not gone back.”
And in the Gospel, when He had come on earth,
“My food is to do the will of Him that sent Me,
and to finish His work.” Hence, too, in His agony
He cried out, “Not My will, but Thine, be done;”
and St. Paul, in like manner, says, that “ Christ
pleased not Himself; ” and elsewhere, that, “though
He was God’s Son, yet learned He obedience by the
things which He suffered.” Surely so it was ; as
being indeed the Eternal Co-equal Son, His will was
one and the same with the Father’s will, and He had
no submission of will to make; but He chose to take
on Him man’s nature, and the will of that nature;
He chose to take on Him affections, feelings, and
inclinations proper to man, a will innocent indeed
and good, but still a man’s will, distinct from God’s
will; a will, which, had it acted simply according to
what was pleasing to its nature, would, when pain and
toil were to be endured, have held back from an active
co-operation with the will of God. But, though He
4
**
|
*
f
|
º
Lio God's Will the End of Zºº.
ſly
took on Himself the nature of man, He took not on
Him that selfishness, with which fallen man wraps
himself round, but in all things He devoted Himself
as a ready sacrifice to His Father. He came on
earth, not to take His pleasure, not to follow His
taste, not for the mere exercise of human affection,
but simply to glorify His Father and to do His will.
He came charged with a mission, deputed for a
work; He looked not to the right nor to the left,
He thought not of Himself, He offered Himself up
to God.
Hence it is that He was carried in the womb of a
poor woman, who, before His birth, had two journeys
to make, of love and of obedience, to the mountains
and to Bethlehem. He was born in a stable, and laid
in a manger. He was hurried off to Egypt to sojourn
there; then He lived till He was thirty years of age
in a poor way, by a rough trade, in a small house, in
a despised town. Then, when He went out to preach,
He had not where to lay His head; He wandered up
and down the country, as a stranger upon earth. He
was driven out into the wilderness, and dwelt among
the wild beasts. He endured heat and cold, hunger
and weariness, reproach and calumny. His food was
coarse bread, and fish from the lake, or depended on
the hospitality of strangers. And as He had already
left His Father’s greatness on high, and had chosen
an earthly home; so again, at that Father's bidding,
He gave up the sole solace given Him in this world,
and denied Himself His Mother's presence. He
parted with her who bore Him ; He endured to be
God's Will the End of Life. I 11
strange to her ; He endured to call her coldly
“woman,” who was His own undefiled one, all
beautiful, all gracious, the best creature of His hands,
and the sweet nurse of His infancy. He put her
aside, as Levi, His type, merited the sacred ministry,
by saying to His parents and kinsmen, “I know you
not.” He exemplified in His own person the severe
maxim, which He gave to His disciples, “He that
loveth mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.”
In all these many ways He sacrificed every wish of
His own; that we might understand, that, if He, the
Creator, came into His own world, not for His own g
pleasure, but to do His Father's will, we too have
most surely some work to do, and have seriously to
bethink ourselves what that work is.
Yes, so it is ; realize it, my brethren;–every one
who breathes, high and low, educated and ignorant,
young and old, man and woman, has a mission, has
a work. We are not sent into this world for nothing;
we are not born at random; we are not here, that we
may go to bed at night, and get up in the morning,
toil for our bread, eat and drink, laugh and joke, sin
when we have a mind, and reform when we are tired
of sinning, rear a family and die. God sees every one
of us; He creates every soul, He lodges it in the body,
one by one, for a purpose. He needs, He deigns to .
need, every one of us. He has an end for each of us ;
we are all equal in His sight, and we are placed in
our different ranks and stations, not to get what we
can out of them for ourselves, but to labour in them
for Him. As Christ has His work, we too have ours;
112 God's Will Me End of Zºº.
&
as He rejoiced to do His work, we must rejoice in ours
also. - -
St. Paul on one occasion speaks of the world as a
scene in a theatre. Consider what is meant by this.
You know, actors on a stage are on an equality with
each other really, but for the occasion they assume a
difference of character; some are high, some are low,
some are merry, and some sad. Well, would it
not be a simple absurdity in any actor to pride him-
self on his mock diadem, or his edgeless Sword,
instead of attending to his part? what, if he did but
gaze at himself and his dress? what, if he secreted,
or turned to his own use, what was valuable in it?
Is it not his business, and nothing else, to act his
part well? common sense tells us so. Now we are
all but actors in this world; we are one and all equal,
we shall be judged as equals as soon as life is over;
yet, equal and similar in ourselves, each has his
special part at present, each has his work, each has
his mission,-not to indulge his passions, not to
make money, not to get a name in the world, not to
save himself trouble, not to follow his bent, not to be
selfish and self-willed, but to do what God puts On
him to do. s
Look at that poor profligate in the Gospel, look at
Dives; do you think he understood that his wealth
was to be spent, not on himself, but for the glory of
God?—yet for forgetting this, he was lost for ever
and ever. I will tell you what he thought, and how
he viewed things:—he was a young man, and had
succeeded to a good estate, and he determined to
God's Will the Ænd of Zäſe. I 13
enjoy himself. It did not strike him that his wealth
had any other use than that of enabling him to take
his pleasure. Lazarus lay at his gate; he might
have relieved Lazarus; that was God’s will; but he
managed to put conscience aside, and he persuaded
himself he should be a fool, if he did not make the
most of this world, while he had the means. So he
resolved to have his fill of pleasure; and feasting was
to his mind a principal part of it. “He fared sump-
tuously every day;” everything belonging to him was
in the best style, as men speak; his house, his furni-
ture, his plate of silver and gold, his attendants, his
establishments. Everything was for enjoyment, and
for show too; to attract the eyes of the world, and to
gain the applause and admiration of his equals, who
were the companions of his sins. These companions
were doubtless such as became a person of such pre-
tensions; they were fashionable men; a collection of
refined, high-bred, haughty men, eating, not glutton-
ously, but what was rare and costly; delicate, exact,
fastidious in their taste, from their very habits of
indulgence; not eating for the mere sake of eating,
or drinking for the mere sake of drinking, but making
a sort of science of their sensuality; sensual, carnal,
as flesh and blood can be, with eyes, ears, tongue,
steeped in impurity, every thought, look, and sense, .
witnessing or ministering to the evil one who ruled ‘....
them ; yet, with exquisite correctness of idea and
judgment, laying down rules for sinning ;-heartless
and selfish, high, punctilious, and disdainful in their
outward deportment, and shrinking from Lazarus,
- I
114 God's Will the End of Zife.
who lay at the gate, as an eye-sore, who ought for the
sake of decency to be put out of the way. Dives was
one of such, and so he lived his short span, thinking
of nothing, loving nothing, but himself, till one day
he got into a fatal quarrel with one of his godless as-
sociates, or he caught some bad illness; and then he
lay helpless on his bed of pain, cursing fortune and
his physician, that he was no better, and impatient
that he was thus kept from enjoying his youth, trying
to fancy himself mending when he was getting worse,
and disgusted at those who would not throw him
some word of comfort in his suspense, and turning
more resolutely from his Creator in proportion to his
suffering ;-and then at last his day came, and he
died, and (O miserable!) “was buried in hell.” And
so ended he and his mission. - .
This was the fate of your pattern and idol, oh ye, if
any of you be present, young men, who, though not
possessed of wealth and rank, yet affect the fashions
of those who have them. You, my brethren, have not
been born splendidly or nobly; you have not been
brought up in the seats of liberal education ; you
have no high connexions; you have not learned the
manners nor caught the tone of good society; you
have no share of the largeness of mind, the candour,
the romantic sense of honour, the correctness of taste,
the consideration for others, and the gentleness which
the world puts forth as its highest type of excellence;
you have not come near the courts or the mansions of
the great ; yet you ape the sin of Dives, while you are
strangers to his refinement. You think it the sign of
God's Will the End of Ziſe. 115
a gentleman to set yourselves above religion, to
criticize the religious and professors of religion, to look
at Catholic and Methodist with impartial contempt,
to gain a smattering of knowledge on a number of
subjects, to dip into a number of frivolous publica-
tions, if they are popular, to have read the latest
novel, to have heard the singer and seen the actor of
the day, to bewell up with the news, to know the names,
and, if so be, the persons of public men, to be able to
bow to them, to walk up and down the street with
your heads on high, and to stare at whatever meets
you ;—and to say and do worse things, of which these
outward extravagances are but the symbol. And this
is what you conceive you have come upon earth for
The Creator made you, it seems, O my children, for
this work and office, to be a bad imitation of polished
ungodliness, to be a piece of tawdry and faded finery,
or a scent which has lost its freshness, and does but
offend the sense ! Oh, that you could see how absurd
and base are such pretences in the eyes of any but
yourselves | No calling of life but is honourable; no
one is ridiculous who acts suitably to his calling and
estate ; no one, who has good sense and humility, but
may, in any station of life, be truly well-bred and º
refined; but ostentation, affectation, and ambitious
efforts are, in every station of life, high or low,
nothing but vulgarities. Put them aside, despise
them yourselves, O my very dear sons, whom I love,
and whom I would fain serve;—oh, that you could feel
that you have souls oh, that you would have mercy
on your souls oh, that, before it is too late, you
I 2
116 God's Will the End of Liſa.
would betake yourselves to Him who is the Source of
all that is truly high and magnificent and beautiful,
all that is bright and pleasant, and secure what you
ignorantly seek, in Him whom you so wilfully, so
awfully despise ! -
He alone, the Son of God, “the brightness of the
Eternal Light, and the spotless mirror of His
Majesty,” is the source of all good and all happiness
to rich and poor, high and low. If you were ever so
high, you would need Him; if you were ever so low,
you could offend Him. The poor can offend Him;
the poor man can neglect his divinely appointed
mission as well as the rich. Do not suppose, my
brethren, that what I have said against the upper or
the middle class, will not, if you happen to be poor,
also lie against you. Though a man were as poor as
Lazarus, he could be as guilty as Dives. If you are
resolved to degrade yourselves to the brutes of the
field, who have no reason and no conscience, you need
not wealth or rank to enable you to do so. Brutes
have no wealth ; they have no pride of life; they have
no purple and fine linen, no splendid table, no
retinue of servants, and yet they are brutes. They are
brutes by the law of their nature: they are the poorest
among the poor; there is not a vagrant and outcast
who is so poor as they ; they differ from him, not in
their possessions, but in their want of a soul, in that
he has a mission and they have not, he can sin and
they can not. O my brethren, it stands to reason,
a man may intoxicate himself with a cheap draught,
as well as with a costly one; he may steal another's
God's Will Me End of Zºº. 117
money for his appetites, if he does not waste his own
upon them ; he may break through the natural and
social laws which encircle him, and profane the
sanctity of family duties, though he be, not a child of
nobles, but a peasant or artisan,—nay, and perhaps
he does so more frequently than they. This is not
the poor’s blessedness, that he has less temptations to
self-indulgence, for he has as many, but that from
his circumstances he receives the penances and
corrections of self-indulgence. Poverty is the mother
of many pains and sorrows in their season, and these
are God’s messengers to lead the soul to repentance ;
but, alas ! if the poor man indulges his passions,
thinks little of religion, puts off repentance, refuses
to make an effort, and dies without conversion, it
matters nothing that he was poor in this world, it
matters nothing that he was less daring than the
rich, it matters not that he promised himself God’s
favour, that he sent for the Priest when death came,
and received the last Sacraments; Lazarus too, in
that case, shall be buried with Dives in hell, and
shall have had his consolation neither in this world
nor in the world to come. -
My brethren, the simple question is, whatever a
man’s rank in life may be, does he in that rank per-
form the work which God has given him to do 2 Now
then, let me turn to others, of a very different descrip-
tion, and let me hear what they will say, when the
question is asked them ;-why, they will parry it thus:
—“You give us no alternative,” they will say to me,
“except that of being sinners and Saints. You put
II 8 God's Will the Ænd of Ziſe. -
before us our Lord’s pattern, and you spread before us
the guilt and the ruin of the deliberate transgressor;
whereas we have no intention of going so far one way
or the other; we do not aim at being Saints, but we
have no desire at all to be sinners. We neither intend
to disobey God’s will, nor to give up our own. Surely
there is a middle way, and a safe one, in which God’s
will and our will may both be satisfied. We mean to
enjoy both this world and the next. We will guard
against mortal sin; we are not obliged to guard
against venial; indeed it would be endless to attempt
it. None but Saints do so; it is the work of a life;
we need have nothing else to do. We are not monks,
we are in the world, we are in business, we are parents,
we have families; we must live for the day. It is a
consolation to keep from mortal sin; that we do, and
it is enough for salvation. It is a great thing to keep
in God’s favour; what indeed can we desire more ?
We come at due time to the Sacraments; this is our
comfort and our stay ; did we die, we should die in
grace, and escape the doom of the wicked. But if we
once attempted to go further, where should we stop 2
how will you draw the line for us; the line between
mortal and venial sin is very distinct; we understand
that; but do you not see that, if we attended to our
venial sins, there would be just as much reason to
attend to one as to another? If we began to repress
our anger, why not also repress vainglory? why not
also guard against niggardness? why not also keep
from falsehoods? from gossiping, from idling, from
excess in eating 2 And, after all, without venial sin we
God's Wil/ the End of Ziſe. I IQ
never can be, unless indeed we have the prerogative of
the Mother of God, which it would be almost heresy
to ascribe to any one but her. You are not asking us
to be converted; that we understand; we are converted,
we were converted a long time ago. You bid us aim
at an indefinite vague something, which is less than
perfection, yet more than obedience, and - which,
without resulting in any tangible advantage, debars
us from the pleasures and embarrasses us in the duties
of this world.” - -
This is what you will say; but your premisses, my
brethren, are better than your reasoning, and your
conclusions will not stand. You have a right view
why God has sent you into the world, viz., in order
that you may get to heaven; it is quite true also that
you would fare well indeed if you found yourselves,
there, you could desire nothing better; nor, it is true,
can you live any time without venial sin. It is true
also that you are not obliged to aim at being Saints;
it is no sin not to aim at perfection. So much is true
and to the purpose; but it does not follow from it that
you, with such views and feelings as you have ex-
pressed, are using sufficient exertions even for attain-
ing to purgatory. Has your religion any difficulty in
it, or is it in all respects easy to you ? Are you simply
taking your own pleasure in your mode of living, or
do you find your pleasure in submitting yourself to ‘’
God’s pleasure ? In a word, is your religion a work?
for if it be not, it is not religion at all. Here at once,
before going into your argument, is a proof that it is
an unsound one, because it brings you to the conclusion
120 God's Will the End of Life.
that, whereas Christ came to do a work, and all Saints,
nay, nay, and sinners do a work too, you, on the con-
trary, have no work to do, because, forsooth, you
are neither sinners nor Saints; or, if you once had
a work, at least you have despatched it already, and
you have nothing upon your hands. You have attained
your salvation, it seems, before your time, and have
nothing to occupy you, and are detained on earth too
long. The work-days are over, and your perpetual
holiday is begun. Did then God send you, above all
other men, into the world to be idle in spiritual
matters? Is it your mission only to find pleasure
in this world, in which you are but as pilgrims and
sojourners? Are you more than sons of Adam, who,
by the sweat of their brow, are to eat bread till they
return to the earth out of which they are taken?
Unless you have some work in hand, unless you are
struggling, unless you are fighting with yourselves,
you are no followers of those who “ through many
tribulations entered into the kingdom of God.” A
fight is the very token of a Christian. He is a soldier
of Christ; high or low, he is this and nothing else.
If you have triumphed over all mortal sin, as you
seem to think, then you must attack your venial sins;
there is no help for it; there is nothing else to do, if .
ou would be soldiers of Jesus Christ. But, O simple
souls' to think you have gained any triumph at all!
No : you cannot safely be at peace with any, even the
least malignant, of the foes of God; if you are at
peace with venial sins, be certain that in their com-
pany and under their shadow mortal sins are lurking.
God's Will the End of Ziſe. 121
Mortal sins are the children of venial, which, though
they be not deadly themselves, yet are prolific of death.
You may think that you have killed the giants who
had possession of your hearts, and that you have
nothing to fear, but may sit at rest under your vine
and under your fig-tree ; but the giants will live
again, they will rise from the dust, and, before you
know where you are, you will be taken captive and
slaughtered by the fierce, powerful, and eternal enemies
of God.
The end of a thing is the test. It was our Lord’s
rejoicing in His last solemn hour, that He had done
the work for which He was sent. “I have glorified
Thee on earth,” He says in His prayer, “I have
finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do; I have
manifested Thy name to the men whom Thou hast
given Me out of the world.” It was St. Paul’s consola-
tion also; “I have fought the good fight, I have
finished the course, I have kept the faith; henceforth
there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the
Lord shall render to me in that day, the just Judge.”
Alas! alas ! how different will be our view of things
when we come to die, or when we have passed into
eternity, from the dreams and pretences with which
we beguile ourselves now ! What will Babel do for
us then P Will it rescue our souls from the purgatory
or the hell to which it sends them 2 If we were
created, it was that we might serve God; if we have
His gifts, it is that we may glorify Him ; if we have
a conscience, it is that we may obey it ; if we have the
prospect of heaven, it is that we may keep it before
122 God's Will Me End of Zºº.
us; if we have light, that we may follow it; if we
have grace, that we may save ourselves by means of it.
Alas! alas ! for those who die without fulfilling their
mission who were called to be holy, and lived in sin;
who were called to worship Christ, and who plunged
into this giddy and unbelieving world; who were
called to fight, and who remained idle; who were called.
to be Catholics, and:who did but remain in the religion
of their birth Alas for those who have had gifts and
talents, and have not used, or have misused, or abused
them ; who have had wealth, and have spent it on
themselves; who have had abilities, and have advocated
what was sinful, or ridiculed what was true, or scattered
doubts against what was sacred; who have had leisure,
and have wasted it on wicked companions, or evil
books, or foolish amusements 1 Alas! for those, of
whom the best that can be said is, that they are harm-
less and naturally blameless, while they never have
attempted to cleanse their hearts or to live in God’s
sight ! -
The world goes on from age to age, but the holy
Angels and blessed Saints are always crying alas !
alas ! and woe woe 1 over the loss of vocations, and
the disappointment of hopes, and the scorn of God’s
love, and the ruin of souls. One generation succeeds
another, and whenever they look down upon earth
from their golden thrones, they see scarcely anything
but a multitude of guardian spirits, downcast and sad,
each following his own charge, in anxiety, or in terror,
or in despair, vainly endeavouring to shield him from
the enemy, and failing because he will not be shielded.
God's Will the Ænd of Zife. I 23
Times come and go, and man will not believe, that
that is to be which is not yet, or that what now is
only continues for a season, and is not eternity. The
end is the trial; the world passes; it is but a pageant
and a scene; the lofty palace crumbles, the busy city
is mute, the ships of Tarshish have sped away. On
heart and flesh death is coming; the veil is breaking.
Departing soul, how hast thou used thy talents, thy
opportunities, the light poured around thee, the
warnings given thee, the grace inspired into thee?
O my Lord and Saviour, support me in that hour in
the strong arms of Thy Sacraments, and by the fresh
fragrance of Thy consolations. Let the absolving
words be said over me, and the holy oil sign and seal
me, and Thy own Body be my food, and Thy Blood &
my sprinkling; and let my sweet Mother Mary
breathe on me, and my Angel whisper peace to me,
and my glorious Saints, and my own dear Father,
Philip, smile on me; that in them all, and through
them all, I may receive the gift of perseverance, and
die, as I desire to live, in Thy faith, in Thy Church,
in Thy service, and in Thy love. - 4.
DISCO U R S E VII.
AEAEA’.S.A. W.E.R.A.AWCAE ZAV GA’A C/E.
THERE is no truth, my brethren, which Holy
Church is more earnest in impressing upon us
than that our salvation from first to last is the gift of
God. It is true indeed that we merit eternal life by
our works of obedience ; but that those works are
meritorious of such a reward, this takes place, not
from their intrinsic worth, but from the free appoint-
ment and bountiful promise of God; and that we are
able to do them at all, is the simple result of His
grace. That we are justified is of His grace; that we
º have the dispositions for justification is of His grace;
that we are able to do good works when justified is of
His grace; and that we persevere in those good works
is of His grace. Not only do we actually depend on
His power from first to last, but our destinies depend
on His sovereign pleasure and inscrutable counsel.
He holds the arbitration of our future in His hands;
without an act of His will, independent of ours, we
should not have been brought into the grace of the
Catholic Church; and without a further act of His
will, though we are now members of it, we shall not
Perseverance in Grace. I 25
be brought on to the glory of the kingdom of Heaven.
Though a soul justified can merit eternal life, yet
neither can it merit to be justified, nor can it merit to
remain justified to the end ; not only is a state of
grace the condition and the life of all merit, but
grace brings us into that state of grace, and grace
continues us in it ; and thus, as I began by saying,
our salvation from first to last is the gift of God.
Precise and absolute as is the teaching of Holy
Church concerning the sovereign grace of God, she is
as clear and as earnest in teaching also that we are
really free and responsible. Every one upon earth
might, without any verbal evasion, be saved, as far as
God’s assistances are concerned. Every man born of
Adam's seed, simply and truly, might save himself, if
he would, and every man might will to save himself;
for grace is given to every one for this end. How
it is, however, that in spite of this real freedom of
man’s will, our salvation still depends so absolutely
on God’s good pleasure, is unrevealed; divines have
devised various modes of reconciling two truths which
at first sight seem so contrary to each other; and
these explanations have severally been received by
some theologians, and not received by others, and do
not concern us now. How man is able fully and
entirely to do what he will, while God accomplishes
His own supreme will also, is hidden from us, as it is
hidden from us how God created out of nothing, or
how He foresees the future, or how His attribute of
justice is compatible with His attribute of love. It
is one of those “hidden things which belong unto
Sº | º
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|
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I 26 Perseverance in Grace.
the Lord our God;” but “what are revealed,” as the
inspired writer goes on to say, “are for us and our
children even for everlasting.” And this is what is
revealed, viz.:-on the one hand, that our salvation
depends on ourselves, and on the other, that it de-
pends on God. Did we not depend on ourselves, we
should become careless and reckless, nothing we did
or did not do having any bearing on our salvation;
did we not depend on God, we should be presump-
tuous and self-sufficient. I began by telling you,
my brethren, and I shall proceed in what is to come,
more distinctly to tell you, that you depend upon
God; but such admonitions necessarily imply your
dependence upon yourselves also ; for, did not your
Salvation in some sufficient sense depend on your-
selves, what would be the use of appealing to you not
to forget your dependence on God? It is, because
you have so great a share in your own salvation, that
it avails, that it is pertinent, to speak to you of God’s
part in it.
He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the
ending, as of all things, so of our salvation. We
should have lived and died, every one of us, destitute
of all saving knowledge and love of Him, but for a
gift which we could not do anything ourselves to
secure, had we lived ever so well,—but for His grace;
and now that we have known Him, and have been
cleansed from our sins by Him, it is quite certain
that we cannot do anything, even with the help of
grace, to purchase for ourselves perseverance in justice
and sanctity, though we live ever so well. His grace
Perseverance 27, Grace. I 27
begins the work, His grace also finishes it; and now
I am going to speak to you of His finishing it; I
mean of the necessity under which we lie of His finish-
ing it; else it will never be finished, or rather will
be reversed; I am going to speak to you of the gift
of perseverance in grace, of its extreme preciousness,
and of our utter hopelessness, in spite of all that we
are, without it. -
It is this gift which our Lord speaks of, when He
prays His Father for His disciples, before He departs
from them : “Holy Father, keep in Thy name those
whom Thou hast given Me; . . . I ask not that Thou
take them out of the world, but that Thou preserve
them from evil.” And St. Paul intends it when he
declares to the Philippians that “He who had begun
a good work” in his disciples, “ would perfect it unto
the day of Christ Jesus.” St. Peter, too, when he
says in like manner, that “ God, who had called His
brethren into His eternal glory, would perfect, confirm,
and establish them.” And so the Prophet in the
Psalms prays that God would “perfect his walking
in His paths, that his steps might not be moved ;”
and the Prophet Jeremias declares in God’s name, “I
will put my fear in their hearts, that they draw not
back from Me.” In these and many other passages
of Scripture the blessing spoken of is the gift of final
perseverance, and I will tell you how and why it is
necessary. -
This is what we find to be the case, not only in
matters of religion, but of this world, viz., that, let a
person do a thing ever so well, the chance is that he
I 28 Perseverance 272 Grace.
©2
will not be able to do it a number of times running
without a mistake. Let a person be ever so good an
accountant, he will add up a sum wrongly now and
then, though you could not guess beforehand when or
why he was to fail. Let him get by heart a number
oflines ever so perfectly, and say them accurately over,
yet it does not follow that he will say them a dozen
times and be accurate throughout. So it is with our
religious duties; we may be able to keep from every
sin in particular, as the particular temptation comes,
but this does not hinder its being certain that we shall
not in fact keep from all sins, though that “all” is
made up of those particular sins. This is how the
greatest Saints come to commit venial or lesser sins,
though grace they have sufficient to keep them from
any sin whatever. It is the result of human frailty;
nothing could keep the Saints from such falls, light as
they may be, but a special prerogative, and this, the
Church teaches, has been granted to the Blessed
Virgin, and apparently to her alone. Now these lesser
or venial sins do not separate the soul from God, or
forfeit its perseverance in grace; and they are per-
mitted by the Giver of all grace for a good purpose,
to humble us, and to give us an incentive to works of
penance. No exemption then from these is given us,
because it is not necessary in order to our perseverance
that we should be exempted; on the other hand, what
is most necessary is, that we should be preserved from
mortal sins, yet here too that very difficulty besets us
in our warfare with them which meets us in the case
of venial. Here too, though a man may have grace
Perseverance in Grace. I 29
sufficient to keep him clear of all mortal sins whatever,
taken one by one, still we may prophesy surely, that
the hour will come, sooner or later, when he will
neglect and baffle that grace, unless he has some
further gift bestowed on him to guard him against
himself. He needs grace to use grace; he needs
something over and above to secure his being faithful
to what he has already. And he needs it imperatively;
for, since even one mortal sin separates from God, he
is in immediate risk of his salvation, if he has it not.
This additional gift is called the gift of perseverance;
and it consists in an ever-watchful superintendence of
us, on the part of our All-merciful Lord, removing
temptations which He sees will be fatal to us, succour-
ing us at those times when we are in particular peril,
whether from our negligence or other cause, and order-
ing the course of our life so, that we may die at a time
when He sees that we are in a state of grace. And,
since it is so simply neeessary for us, God grants it
to us; nay, did He not, no one could be saved. He
grants it to us, though He does not grant even to
Saints the prerogative of avoiding every venial sin;
He grants it, out of His bounty, to our prayers, though
we cannot merit it by anything we do for Him or say
to Him, even with the aid of His grace. gº
What a lesson of humility and watchfulness have
we in this doctrine as now explained ! It is one ground
of humiliation, that, do what we will, strive as we will,
we cannot escape from lesser sins while we are on
earth. Though the aids which God gives us are
sufficient to enable us to live without sin, yet our
E.
130 Perseverance in Grace.
infirmity of will and of attention is a match for them,
and we do not do in fact that which we might do.
And again, what is not only humbling, but even
frightful and appalling, we are in danger of mortal
sin as well as in certainty of venial ; and the only
reason why we are not in certainty of mortal is, that
an extraordinary gift is given to those who supplicate
for it, to secure them from mortal, though no such
... extraordinary gift is given to secure them from venial.
In spite of the presence of grace in our souls, in spite
of the actual assistances given us, we owe any hope we
have of heaven, not to that inward grace simply, nor to
those aids, but, I repeat, to a supplementary mercy
which protects us against ourselves, rescues us from
occasions of sin, strengthens us in our hour of danger,
and ends our days at that very time, perhaps cuts
short our life in order to secure a time, when no
mortal sin has separated us from God. Nothing we
are, nothing we do, is any guarantee to us that this
supplementary mercy has been accorded to us; we
cannot know till the end; all we know is, that God
has helped us hitherto, and we trust. He will help us
still. But yet the experience of what He has already
done is no proof that He will do more ; our present
religiousness need not be the consequence of the gift
of perseverance as bestowed upon us; it may have
been intended merely to prompt and enable us to pray
earnestly and continually for that gift. There are
men who, had they died at a particular time, would
have died the death of Saints, and who lived to fall.
They lived on here to die eternally. O dreadful
Perseverance in Grace. I 3 I
thought ! Never be you offended, my brethren, or
overwhelmed, when you find that the good and gentle,
or the zealous and useful, is cut down and taken off
in the midst of his course; it is hard to bear, but who
knows but he is taken away & facie malitia, “ from
the presence of evil,” from the evil to come 2 “ He
was taken away,” as the Wise Man says, “lest wicked-
ness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile
his soul. For the bewitching of vanity obscureth good
things, and the wandering of concupiscence over-
turneth the innocent mind. Being made perfect in a
short space, he fulfilled a long time. For his soul
pleased God; and therefore He hastened to bring him
out of the midst of iniquities. But the people see this
and understand not, nor lay such things in their
hearts; that the grace of God and His mercy is with
His Saints, and that He hath respect unto His
chosen.”
bad is it to bear, when such a one is taken away;
cruel to his friends, sad even to strangers, and a sur-
prise to the world; but oh, how much better, how
happy so to die, instead of being reserved to sin
You may wonder how sin was possible in him, my
brethren; he had so many graces, he had lived and
matured in them so long; he had overcome so many
temptations. He had struck his roots deeply, and
spread abroad his branches on high. One grace grew
out of another; and all things in him were double one
against another. He seemed from the very complete-
mess of his sanctity, which encircled him on every side,
to defy assault and to be proof against injury. He, if
k 2
I 32 Perseverance 27, Grace.
anyone, could have said with the proud Church in the
Apocalypse, “I am wealthy and enriched, and have
need of nothing;” that he had started well, seemed
a reason why he should go on well; strength would
lead to strength, and merit to merit; as a flame
increases and sweeps along and round about, as soon
as, and for the very reason that, it is once kindled, so
he had on him the presage of greater and greater
triumphs as time proceeded. He was fit to scale
Heaven by an inherent power, which, though at first
of grace, yet, when once given, became not of grace,
but of a claim for more grace, as by the action of a law
and the process of a series, in which grace and merit
alternated, man meriting and meriting, and the God
of grace being forced to give and give again, if He
would be true to His promise. Thus we might look
at him, and think we had already in our hands all the
data of a great and glorious and infallible conclusion,
and deny that a reverse or a fall was possible. My
brethren, there was once an Eastern king, in his day
the richest of men; and a Grecian sage came to visit
him, and, having seen all his glory and his majesty,
was pressed by this poor child of vanity to say whether
he was not the happiest of men. To whom the wise.
man did but reply, that he should wait till he saw the
end. So it is as regards spiritual wealth; because
Almighty God, in spite of His ample promises, and
His faithful performance of them, has not put out of
His own hands the issues of life and death, and the
end comes from Him as well as the beginning. When
He has once given grace, He has not therefore simply
Perseverazzee 272 Grace. I 33
made over to the creature his own salvation. The
creature can merit much; but as he could not merit
the grace of conversion, neither can he merit the gift
of perseverance. From first to last he is dependent
on Him who made him; he cannot be extortionate
with Him, he cannot turn His bounty to the prejudice
of the Bountiful; he may not exalt himself, he dare
not presume, but “if he thinketh he standeth, let
him take heed lest he fall.” He must watch and
pray, he must fear and tremble, he must “chastise
his body and bring it into subjection, lest, after
he has preached to others, he himself should be
reprobate.” -
But I need not go to heathen history for an in-
stance in point; Scripture furnishes one a thousand
times more apposite and more impressive. Who was
so variously gifted, so inwardly endowed, so laden with
external blessings, as Solomon? on whom are lavished,
as on him, the titles and the glories of the Eternal
Son, God and man 2 The only aspect of Christ's
adorable Person, which his history does not represent,
does but bring out to us the peculiarity of his privi-
leges. He does not symbolize Christ's sufferings; he
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was neither a Priest, nor, like David his father, had
he been a man of strife and toil and blood. Every-
thing which betokens mortality, everything which
savours of the fall, is excluded from our idea of Solo-
mon. He is as if an ideal of perfection; the king of
peace, the builder of the temple, the father of a happy
people, the heir of an empire, the wonder of all nations;
a prince, yet a sage; palace-bred, yet taught in the
I 34. Perseverazace 272 Grace.
Ç
schools; a student, yet a man of the world; deeply
read in human nature, yet learned too in animals
S and plants. He has the crown without the cross,
peace without war, experience without suffering, and
all this not in the mere way of men, or from the
, general providence of God, but vouchsafed to him
from the very hands of his Creator, by a particular
designation, and as the result of inspiration. He
obtained it when young ; and where shall we find
anything so touching in the whole of Scripture as the
circumstances of his obtaining? who shall accuse him
of want of religious fear and true love, whose dawn-
ing is so beautiful? When the Almighty appeared
to him in a dream on his coming to the throne and
said, “Ask what I shall give thee;” “O Lord God,”
he made answer, “Thou hast made Thy servant king
instead of David my father; and I am but a child,
and know not how to go out and come in. And Thy
servant is in the midst of the people which Thou hast
chosen, an immense people, which cannot be numbered
nor counted for multitude.” Accordingly, he asked
for nothing else but the gift of wisdom to enable him
to govern his people well; and as his reward for so
excellent a petition, he received, not only the wisdom
for which he had asked, but those other gifts for which
he had asked not : “And the Lord said unto Solomon,
Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not
asked for thyself long life, nor riches, nor the lives of
thine enemies, but hast asked for thyself wisdom to
discern judgment, behold I have done to thee accord-
ing to thy words, and I have given to thee a wise and
Perseverance in Grace. I 35
understanding heart, so that none has been like thee
before thee, nor shall rise after thee. Yea, and the
things also, which thou didst not ask, I have given to
thee, to wit, riches and glory, so that none has been
like to thee among the kings in all days hereto-
fore.” * ,
Rare inauguration to his greatness! the most splen-
did of monarchs owes nothing to injustice, or to
cruelty, or to violence, or to treachery, nothing to
human art or to human arm, that he is so powerful,
so famous, and so wise; it is a divine gift which en-
dued him within, which clothed him without. What
was wanting to his blessedness? seeking God in his
youth, growing up year after year in sanctity, forti-
fying his faith by wisdom, and his obedience by
experience, and his aspirations by habit, what shall he
not be in the next world, who is so glorious in this?
He is a Saint ready made; he is in his youth what
others are in their age; he is fit for heaven ere others
begin the way heavenward: why should he delay?
what lacks he yet? why tarry the wheels of his
chariot ? why does he remain longer on earth, when
he has already won his crown, and may be carried
away in a happy youth, and be securely taken into
God’s keeping, not with the common throng of holy
souls, but, like Enoch and Elias, passing his long mys-
terious ages up on high, in some fit secret paradise till
the day of redemption ? Alas! he remains on earth
to show us that there might be one thing lacking
amidst that multitude of graces; to show that though
there be all faith, all hope, all love, all wisdom,
I 36 Perseverance in Grace.
though there be an exuberance of merits, it is all but
a vanity, it is only a woe in the event, if one gift be
wanting-the gift of perseverance He was in his
youth, what others hardly are in age ; well were it,
had he been in his end, what the feeblest of God’s
servants is in his beginning !
His great father, whose sanctity had been wrought
into him by many a fight with Satan, and who knew
how difficult it was to persevere, when his death drew
near, as if in prophecy rather than in prayer, had
spoken thus of and to his son and his people: “God
said to me, Thou shalt not build a house to My name,
because thou art a man of war, and hast shed blood.
Solomon, thy son, shall build My house and My
courts; for I have chosen him to Me for a son, and
I will be to him a father; and I will establish his
kingdom even for ever, if he shall persevere to do My
precepts and judgments, as at this day. And thou,
Solomon, my son, know the God of thy father, and
serve Him with a perfect heart and a willing mind,
for if thou shalt forsake Him, He will cast thee off
for ever.” And then, when he had collected together
º
Q
the precious materials for that house which he him-
self was not to build, and was resigning the kingdom
to his son, “I know,” he said, “O my God, that
Thou provest hearts, and lovest simplicity, wherefore,
have I in the simplicity of my heart and with joy
offered to Thee all these things; and Thy people too,
which are present here, have I seen with great joy to
offer to Thee their gifts. O Lord God of Abraham,
and Isaac, and Israel, our fathers, keep for ever this
Perseverance in Grace. I 37
will of our hearts, and let this mind remain alwaysº,
for the worship of Thee. And to Solomon also, my
son, give a perfect heart, that he may keep Thy com-
mandments and Thy testimonies, and Thy ceremonies,
and do all things, and build the building for the
which I have provided the charges.” Such had been
the dim foreboding of the father, fearing perhaps for
his son from the very abundance of that son’s pros-
perity. And in truth, it is not good for a man to live
in so cloudless a splendour, and under so unchequered
a heaven. There is a moral in the history, that he,
who prefigured the coming Saviour in all His offices
but that of suffering, should fall; that the King and
the Prophet, who was neither Priest nor Warrior,
should come short;-thereby to show that penance
is the only sure mother of love. “They who sow in a
tears shall reap in exultation;” but Solomon, like
the flowers of the field which are so beautiful, yet are
cast into the oven, so he too, with all his glory, re-
tained not his comeliness, but withered in his place.
He who was wisest became as the most brutish ; he
who was the most devout was lifted up and fell; he
who wrote the Song of Songs became the slave and
the prey of vile affections. “King Solomon loved
many strange women, unto them he clave with the
most burning love. And when he was now old, his
heart was depraved by women, to follow other gods,
Astarte goddess of the Sidonians, and Moloch the
idol of the Ammonites; and so did he for all his
strange wives, who did burn incense and sacrifice
unto their gods.” Oh, what a contrast between that
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I 38 Perseverance 272 Grace.
grey-headed apostate, laden with years and with sins,
bowing down to women and to idols, and the bright
and youthful form standing, on the day of Dedication,
in the Temple he had built, as a mediator between
God and his people, when he acknowledged so simply,
so fervently, God’s mercies and God’s faithfulness,
and prayed that He would “ incline their hearts unto
Himself, that they might walk in all His ways, and
keep His commandments, and His ceremonies, and
His judgments, whatever He had commanded to their
fathers | * |
Well were it for us, my dear brethren, were it only
kings and prophets and sages, and other rare creations
of God’s grace, to whom this warning applied; but it
applies to all of us. It is indeed most true that the
holier a man is, and the higher in the kingdom of
heaven, so much the greater need has he to look care-
fully to his footing, lest he stumble and be lost; and
a deep conviction of this necessity has been the sole
preservative of the Saints. Had they not feared, they
never would have persevered. Hence, like St. Paul,
they are always full of their sin and their peril. You
would think them the most polluted of sinners, and
the most unstable of penitents. Such was the
blessed Martyr Ignatius, who, when on his way to
his death, said, “Now I begin to be Christ’s dis-
ciple.” Such was the great Basil, who was ever
ascribing the calamities of the Church and of his
country to the wrath of Heaven upon his own sins.
Such was St. Gregory, who submitted to his elevation
to the Popedom, as if it were his spiritual death.
Perseverance in Grace. I 39
Such too was my own dear Father St. Philip, who
was ever showing, in the midst of the gifts he received
from God, the anxiety and jealousy with which he +
regarded himself and his prospects. “Every day,”
says his biographer, “ he used to make a protest to
God with the Blessed Sacrament in his hands, say-
ing, ‘Lord, beware of me to-day, lest I should betray
Thee, and do Thee all the mischief in the world.”
At other times he would say, “The wound in Christ's
side is large, but, if God did not guard me, I should
make it larger.” In his last illness, “Lord, if I
recover, so far as I am concerned, I shall do more
evil than ever, because I have promised so many
times before to change my life, and have not kept
my word, so that I despair of myself.” He would
shed abundance of tears and say, “I have never done
one good action.” When he saw young persons, he
began considering how much time they had before
them to do good in, and said, “Oh, happy you ! oh,
happy you!” He often said, “I am past hop e”)
and, when urged, he added, “but I trust in God.”
When a penitent of his called him a Saint, he turned
to her with a face full of anger, and said, “Begone
with you, I am a devil, not a Saint.” When another
said to him, “Father, a temptation has come to me
to think you are not what the world takes you for,”
he answered, “Be sure of this, that I am a man like
my neighbours, and nothing more.”
What a reflection on ordinary Christians is the
language of Saints about themselves | Multitudes
indeed live in mortal sin, and have no concern at all
I4O Perseverance in Grace.
about present, past, or future. But even those who
go so far as to come to the Sacraments, never trouble
themselves with the thought of perseverance. They
seem to take it as a matter of course that, if they are
in a good state of mind at present, it will continue.
Perhaps they have been converted from a sinful life,
and are very different from what they have been.
They feel the comfort of the change, they feel the
peace and satisfaction of a cleansed conscience, but
they are so taken up with that comfort and peace,
that they rest in it and become secure. They do not
guard against temptation, or pray for support under
it; it does not occur to them that, as they have
changed from sin to religion, so they may, if so be,
change back again from religion to sin. They do not
realize enough their continual dependence on God;
some temptation comes on them, or some vicissitude
of life, they are surprised, they fall, and perhaps they
neVěr FēCOWeI’. -
What a scene is this life, a scene of almost universal
disappointment l of springs blighted,—of harvests
beaten down by the storm, when they should have
been gathered into the storehouses of tardy and
imperfect repentances, when there is nothing else left
to be done, of unsatisfactory resolves and poor efforts,
when the end of life is come! O my dear children,
how subdued our rejoicing in you is, even when you
are walking well and hopefully how anxious are we
for you, even when you are cheerful from the light-
ness of your conscience and the sincerity of your
hearts | how we sigh when we give thanks for you,
Perseverance 272 Grace. I4 I
and tremble even while we rejoice in hearing your
confessions and absolving you ! And why? because
we know how great and high is the gift of perseve-
rance. When Hazael came with his presents to the
prophet Eliseus, the man of God stood over against
him, in silence and in bitter thought, till at last the
blood mounted up into his countenance, and he wept.
He wept, to Hazael's surprise, at the prospect of the
dreadful butcheries which the soldier before him, little
as he himself expected it, was to perpetrate when he
succeeded to the throne of Syria. We, O honest and
cheerful hearts, are not prophets as Eliseus, nor are
you destined to high estate and extraordinary tempta-
tion as Hazael; but still the tears which the man of God
shed, what if some Angel should be shedding the like
over any of you, what time you are receiving pardon
and grace from the voice and hand of the Priests of
Christ Oh, how many are there who pass well and
hopefully through what seem to be their most critical
years, and fall just when one might consider them
beyond danger! How many are good youths, yet
careless men; blameless from fifteen to twenty, yet
captives to habits of sin between twenty and thirty
How many persevere till they marry, and then per-
haps get inextricably entangled in the cares or plea-
sures of this world, and give up attendance on the
Sacraments, and other holy practices, which they
have hitherto observed how many pass through their
married life well, but lapse into sin on the death of
wife or husband How many are there who by mere
change of place lose their religious habits, and be-
I42 Perseverance in Grace.
, ſº
come first careless and then shameless! How many
upon the commission of one sin fall into remorse,
disgust of themselves, and recklessness, avoid the
Confessional from shame and despair, and live on
year after year, burdened with the custody of some
miserable secret ! How many fall into trouble, lose
their spirit and heart, shut themselves up in them-
selves, and feel a sort of aversion to religion, when
religion would be all in all to them How many
come to some great prosperity, and, carried away by
it, “ wax fat and kick, and leave God their Maker,
and recede from God their Saviour !” How many
fall into lukewarmness almost like death, after their
first fervour ! How many lose the graces begun in
them by self-confidence and arrogant impetuosity |
How many, not yet Catholics, who under God’s guid-
ance were making right for the Catholic Church,
suddenly turn short and miss, “like a crooked bow !”
How many, when led forward by God’s unmerited
grace, are influenced by the persuasions of relatives
or the inducements of station or of wealth, and be-
come in the event sceptics or infidels when they
might have almost died in the odour of sanctity |
How many, whose contrition once gained for them
even the grace of justification, yet afterwards, by re-
fusing to go forward, have gone backwards, though
they maintain a semblance of what they once were,
by means of the mere natural habits which super-
natural grace has formed within them What a
miserable wreck is the world, hopes without substance,
promises without fulfilment, repentance without
Perseverance in Grace. I43
amendment, blossom without fruit, continuance and
progress without perseverancel
O my dearest children, let me not depress you ;
it is your duty, your privilege to rejoice; I would not
frighten you more than it is good for you to be
frightened. Some of you will take it too much to
heart, and will fret yourselves unduly, as I fear. I
do not wish to sadden you, but to make you cautious;
doubt not you will be led on, fear not to fall, pro-
vided you do but fear a fall. Fearing will secure
you from what you fear. Only “be sober, be vigi-
lant,” as St. Peter says, beware of taking satisfaction
in what you are, understand that the only way to
avoid falling back is to press forward. Dread all
occasions of sin, get a habit of shrinking from the
beginnings of temptation. Never speak confidently
about yourselves, nor contemptuously of the religious-
ness of others, nor lightly of sacred things; guard
your eyes, guard the first springs of thought, be
jealous of yourselves when alone, neglect not your
daily prayers; above all, pray specially and continu-
ally for the gift of perseverance. Come to Mass as
often as you can, visit the Blessed Sacrament, make
frequent acts of faith and love, and try to live in the
Presence of God. And further still, interest your
dear Mother, the Mother of God, in your success;
pray to her earnestly for it; she can do more for you
than any one else. Pray her by the pain she suffered,
when the sharp sword went through her, pray her, by
her own perseverance, which was in her the gift of the
?
{
&
I 44 Perseverance in Grace.
º
same God of whom you ask it for yourselves. God
will not refuse you, He will not refuse her, if you
have recourse to her succour. It will be a blessed
thing, in your last hour, when flesh and heart are
failing, in the midst of the pain, the weariness, the
restlessness, the prostration of strength, and the ex-
haustion of spirits, which then will be your portion,
it will be blessed indeed to have her at your side,
more tender than an earthly mother, to nurse you
and to whisper peace. It will be most blessed, when
the evil one is making his last effort, when he is
coming on you in his might to pluck you away from
your Father's hand, if he can,—it will be blessed
indeed if Jesus, Joseph, and Mary are then with you,
waiting to shield you from his assaults and to receive
your soul. If they are there, all is there; Angels
are there, Saints are there, heaven is there, heaven is
begun in you, and the devil has no part in you. That
dread day may be sooner or later, you may be taken
away young, you may live to fourscore, you may die
in your bed, you may die in the open field, but if
Mary intercedes for you, that day will find you
watching and ready. All things will be fixed to
secure your salvation; all dangers will be foreseen,
all obstacles removed, all aids provided. The hour
will come, and in a moment you will be translated
beyond fear and risk, you will be translated into a
new state where sin is not, nor ignorance of the
future, but perfect faith and serene joy, and assur-
ance and love everlasting. i
Perseverance in Grace. - I 45
“Jesu, Joseph, and Mary, I offer you my heart and
my soul!
Jesu, Joseph, and Mary, assist me in my last
agony
Jesu, Joseph, and Mary, let me breathe out my soul
with you in peace!”
DISCO URSE VIII.
AVA 7'OA’Aº A/VZ) GA’A CAE.
N the Parable of the Good Shepherd our Lord
sets before us a dispensation or state of things,
which is very strange in the eyes of the world. He
speaks of mankind as consisting of two bodies, dis-
tinct from each other, divided by as real a line of de-
marcation as the fence which encloses the sheepfold.
“I am the Door,” He says, “ by Me if any man shall
have entered in, he shall be saved: and he shall go in
and go out, and shall find pastures. My sheep hear
My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me, and
I give them life everlasting ; and they shall not
perish for ever, and no man shall snatch them out of
My Hand.” And in His last prayer for His disciples
to His Eternal Father, He says, “I have manifested
Thy Name to the men whom Thou hast given Me
out of the world. Thine they were, and Thou hast
given them to Me, and they have kept Thy word. I
pray for them, I pray not for the world, but for those
whom Thou hast given Me, for they are Thine.
Holy Father, keep them in Thy Name whom Thou
hast given Me, that they may be one, as We also.”
AWature and Grace. . I47
Nor are these passages solitary or singular; “Fear
not, little flock,” He says, by another Evangelist,
“for it hath pleased your Father to give you the
kingdom.” And again, “I thank Thee, Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these
things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed
° and again, “How narrow is
the gate, and strait the way which leadeth to life, and
few there are who find it !” St. Paul repeats and
insists on this doctrine of his Lord, “Ye were once
darkness, but now are light in the Lord; ” “He hath
delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath
translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His
love.” And St. John, “Greater is He that is in you
than he that is in the world. They are of the world,
we are of God.” Thus there are two parties on this
them unto little ones; ”
earth, and two only, if we view men in their religious
aspect; those, the few, who hear Christ’s words and
follow Him, who are in the light, and walk in the
narrow way, and have the promise of heaven; and
those, on the other hand, who are the many, for whom
Christ prays not, though He has died for them, who
are wise and prudent in their own eyes, who are
possessed by the Evil One, and are subject to his ºl
rule. - -
And such is the view taken of mankind, as by their
Maker and Redeemer, so also by the small company
in whom He lives and is glorified; but far differently
does the larger body, the world itself, look upon man-
kind at large, upon its own vast multitudes, and upon , ,
those whom God has taken out of it for His own special Epº |
L 2 º
148 AWature and Grace.
inheritance. It considers that all men are pretty
much on a level, or that, differ though they may, they
differ by such fine shades from each other, that it is
impossible, because it would be untrue and unjust, to
divide them into two bodies, or to divide them at all.
JEach man is like himself and no one else; each man
has his own opinions, his own rule of faith and con-
duct, his own worship ; if a number join together in
a religious form, this is an accident, for the sake of
convenience; for each is complete in himself; reli-
gion is simply a personal concern; there is no such
thing really as a common or joint religion, that is,
one in which a number of men, strictly speaking,
partake; it is all matter of private judgment. Hence,
as men sometimes proceed even to avow, there is no
such thing as a true religion or a false; that is true
to each, which each sincerely believes to be true; and
what is true to one, is not true to his neighbour.
There are no special doctrines, necessary to be believed
in order to salvation; it is not very difficult to be
saved; and most men may take it for granted that
they shall be saved. All men are in God’s favour,
except so far as, and while, they commit acts of sin;
but when the sin is over, they get back into His favour
again, naturally and as a thing of course, no one
knows how, owing to God’s infinite indulgence,
unless indeed they persevere and die in a course of
sin, and perhaps even then. There is no such place
as hell, or at least punishment is not eternal. Pre-
destination, election, grace, perseverance, faith,
sanctity, unbelief, and reprobation are strange ideas,
AWature and Grace. 149
and, as they think, very false ones. This is the cast
of opinion of men in general, in proportion as they
exercise their minds on the subject of religion, and
think for themselves; and if in any respect they
depart from the easy, cheerful, and tranquil temper of
mind which it expresses, it is when they are led to
think of those who presume to take the contrary
view, that is, who take the view set forth by Christ
and His Apostles. On these they are commonly
severe, that is, on the very persons whom God
acknowledges as His, and is training heavenward,
on Catholics, who are the witnesses and preachers of
those awful doctrines of grace, which condemn the
world and which the world cannot endure.
In truth the world does not know of the existence
of grace; nor is it wonderful, for it is ever contented
with itself, and has never turned to account the
supernatural aids bestowed upon it. Its highest idea
of man lies in the order of nature; its pattern man is
the natural man; it thinks it wrong to be anything
else than a natural man. It sees that nature has a
number of tendencies, inclinations, and passions; and
because these are natural, it thinks that each of them
may be indulged for its own sake, so far as it does no
harm to others, or to a person’s bodily, mental, and
temporal well-being. It considers that want of mode-
ration, or exeess, is the very definition of sin, if it goes
so far as to recognize that word. It thinks that he is
the perfect man who eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and
walks, and diverts himself, and studies, and writes, and
attends to religion, in moderation. The devotional
I 50 AWature and Grace.
feeling and the intellect, and the flesh, have each its
claim upon us, and each must have play, if the Creator is
to be duly honoured. It does not understand, it will
not admit, that impulses and propensities, which are
found in our nature, as God created it, may nevertheless,
if indulged, become sins, on the ground that He has
subjected them to higher principles, whether these
principles be in our nature, or be superadded to our
nature. Hence it is very slow to believe that evil
thoughts are really displeasing to God, and incur
punishment. Works, indeed, tangible actions, which
are seen and which have influence, it will allow to be
wrong; but it will not believe even that deeds are
sinful, or that they are more than reprehensible, if
they are private or personal; and it is blind utterly to
the malice of thoughts, of imaginations, of wishes, and
of words. Because the wild emotions of anger, desire,
greediness, craft, cruelty, are no sin in the brute
creation, which has neither the means nor the com-
mand to repress them, therefore they are no sins in a
being who has a diviner sense and a controlling power.
Concupiscence may be indulged, because it is in its
first elements natural.
Behold here the true origin and fountain-head of
the warfare between the Church and the world; here
they join issue, and diverge from each other. The
Church is built upon the doctrine that impurity is
hateful to God, and that concupiscence is its root;
with the Prince of the Apostles, her visible Head, she
denounces “the corruption of concupiscence which is
in the world,” or, that corruption in the world which
AVature and Grace. 15 I
comes of concupiscence; whereas the corrupt world
defends, nay, I may even say, sanctifies that very con-
cupiscence which is the world’s corruption. Its bolder
and more consistent teachers, as you know, my bre-
thren, make the laws of this physical creation so
Supreme, as to disbelieve the existence of miracles, as
being an unseemly violation of them; well, and in
like manner, it deifies and worships human nature and
its impulses, and denies the power and the grant of
grace. This is the source of the hatred which the world
bears to the Church; it finds a whole catalogue of sins
brought into light and denounced, which it would fain
believe to be no sins at all; it finds itself, to its in-
dignation and impatience, surrounded with sin, morn-
ing, noon, and night; it finds that a stern law lies
against it, where it believed that it was its own master
and need not think of God; it finds guilt accumulat-
ing upon it hourly, which nothing can prevent, nothing
remove, but a higher power, the grace of God. It
, finds itself in danger of being humbled to the earth
as a rebel, instead of being allowed to indulge its self-
dependence and self-complacency. Hence it takes its
stand on nature, and denies or rejects divine grace.
Like the proud spirit in the beginning, it wishes to.
find its supreme good in its own self, and nothing
above it; it undertakes to be sufficient for its own
happiness; it has no desire for the supernatural, and
therefore does not believe in it. And because nature
cannot rise above nature, it will not believe that the
narrow way is possible; it hates those who enter upon
it as if pretenders and hypocrites, or laughs at their
I 52 AWature and Grace.
*
aspirations as romance and fanaticism;-lest it should
have to believe in the existence of grace.
Now you may think, my brethren, from the way in
which I have been contrasting nature and grace, that
they cannot possibly be mistaken for each other; but
I wish to show you, in the next place, how grace
may be mistaken for nature, and nature mistaken for
grace. They may easily be mistaken for each other,
because, as it is plain from what I have said, the dif-
ference is in a great measure an inward, and therefore
a secret one. Grace is lodged in the heart; it puri-
fies the thoughts and motives, it raises the soul to God,
it sanctifies the body, it corrects and exalts human
nature in regard to those sins of which men are
ashamed, and do not make a public display. Accord-
ingly, in outward show, in single actions, in word, in
profession, in teaching, in the social and political
virtues, in striking and heroical exploits, on the public
transitory scene of things, nature may counterfeit
grace, may even to the deception of the man himself
in whom the counterfeit occurs. Recollect that it is
by nature, not by grace, that man has the gifts of
reason and conscience; and mere reason and conscience
will lead him to discover, and in a measure pursue,
objects which are, properly speaking, supernatural
and divine. The natural reason is able, from the
things which are seen, from the voice of tradition,
from the existence of the soul, and from the necessity
of the case, to infer the existence of God. The natural
heart can burst forth by fits and starts into emotions of
love towards Him; the natural imagination can depict
- AWałure and Grace. - I 5 s
the beauty and glory of His attributes; the natural
conscience may ascertain and put in order the truths
of the great moral law, may even to the condemnation
of that concupiscence, which it is too weak to subdue,
and is therefore persuaded to tolerate. The natural
will can do manythings really good and praiseworthy;
nay, in particular cases, or at particular seasons, when
temptation is away, it may seem to have a strength.
which it has not, and to be imitating the austerity and
purity of a Saint. One man has no temptation to
hoard; another has no temptation to gluttony and
drunkenness; another has no temptation to ill-humour;
another has no temptation to be ambitious and over-
bearing. Hence human nature may often show to
great advantage; it may be meek, amiable, kind,
benevolent, generous, honest, upright, and temperate;
and, as seen in its happier specimens, it may become
quite a trial to faith, seeing that in its best estate it.
has really no relationship to the family of Christ, and
no claim whatever to a heavenly reward, though it
can talk of Christ and heaven too, read Scripture, and
“do many things willingly ’’ in consequence of read-
ing it, and can exercise a certain sort of belief, how-
ever different from that faith which is imparted to us ."
by grace.
Certainly,it is a most mournful, often quite a piercing
thought, to contemplate the conduct and the character
of those who have never received the elementary grace
of God in the Sacrament of Baptism. They are some-
times so benevolent, so active and untiring in their
benevolence; they may be so wise and so considerate;
I 54 AVaſure and Grace.
they may have so much in them to engage the affections
of those who see them Well, let us leave them to
God; His grace is over all the earth; if that grace
comes to good effect and bears fruit in the hearts of
the unbaptized, He will reward it ; but, where grace
is not, there doubtless what looks so fair has its re-
ward in this world, for such good as is in it, but has
no better claim on a heavenly reward than skill in
any art or science, than eloquence or wit. And
moreover, it often happens, that, where there is much
that is specious and amiable, there is also much that
is sinful, and frightfully so. Men show their best
face in the world; but for the greater part of their
time, the many hours of the day and the night, they
are shut up in their own thoughts. They are their
own witnesses, none see them besides, save God and
His Angels; therefore in such cases we can only judge
of what we actually see, and can only admire what is
in itself good, without having any means of deter-
mining the real moral condition of those who display
it. Just as children are caught by the mere good-
nature and familiarity with which they are treated by
some grown man, and have no means or thought of
forming a judgment about him in other respects, and | ,
may be surprised, when they grow up, to find how
unworthy he is of their respect or affection; as the
uneducated, who have seen very little of the world,
have no faculties for distinguishing between one rank
of men and another, and consider all persons on a
level who are respectably dressed, whatever be their
accent, their carriage, or their countenance; so all
Mature and Grace. & I 55
of us, not children only or the uncultivated, are
but novices, or less than novices, in the business of
deciding what is the real state in God’s sight of this
or that man, who is external to the Church, yet in
character or conduct resembles her true sons. Not
entering then upon this point, which is beyond us, so
much we even can see and are sure of, that human
nature is, in a degree beyond all words, inconsistent,
and that we must not take for granted that it can do
anything at all more than it actually does, or that
those, in whom it shows most plausibly, are a whit
better than they look. We see the best, and (as far
as moral excellence goes) the whole of them. We can-
not argue from what we see in favour of what we do
not see; we cannot take what we see as a specimen
of what they really are. Sad, then, as the spectacle of
such a man is to a Catholic, he is no difficulty to
him. He may be benevolent, and kind-hearted, and
generous, upright and honourable, candid, dispas-
sionate, and forbearing, yet he may have nothing of
a special Christian cast about him, meekness, purity,
or devotion. He may like his own way intensely,
have a great opinion of his own powers, scoff at faith
and religious fear, and seldom or never have said a
prayer in his life. Nay, even outward gravity of
deportment is no warrant that there is not within
an habitual indulgence of evil thoughts, and secret
offences odious to Almighty God. We admire then
whatever is excellent in the ancient heathen (as in
moderns, who are often in their condition); we acknow-
ledge without jealousy whatever they have done
I 56 * AWałure and Grace.
virtuous and praiseworthy, but we understand as little
of the character or destiny of the being in whom that
goodness is found, as we understand the nature of the
material substances which present themselves to us
under the outward garb of shape and colour. They
are to us as unknown causes which have influenced or
disturbed the world, and which manifest themselves
in certain great effects, political, social, or ethical;
they are to us as pictures, which appeal to the eye,
but not to the touch. We do not know that they
would prove to be more real than a painting, if we
could touch them. Thus much we know, that, if
they have attained to heaven, it has been by the
grace of God and their co-operation with it; if they
have lived and died without that grace, they will
never see life; and, if they have lived and died in
mortal sin, they are in the state of bad Catholics,
and will for ever see death. *
Yet, taking the mere outward appearance of things,
and the more felicitous, though partial and occasional,
efforts of human nature, how great it is, how amiable,
how brilliant, that is, if we may pretend to the power
of viewing it distinct from the supernatural influences
which have ever haunted it ! How great are the old
Greek lawgivers and statesmen, whose histories and
works are known to some of us, and whose names to
many more How great are those stern Roman
heroes, who conquered the world, and prepared the way
for Christ How wise, how profound, are those
ancient teachers and sages what power of imagina-
tion, what a semblance of prophecy, is manifest in their
AWałętre and Grace. I57
poets' The present world is in many respects not so
great as in that old time, but even now there is enough
in it to show both the strength of human nature in
this respect, and its weakness. Consider the solidity
of our own political fabric at home, and the expansion
of our empire abroad, and you will have matter enough
spread out before you to occupy many a long day in
admiration of the genius, the virtues, and the resources
of human nature. Take a second meditation upon it;
alas! you will find nothing of faith there, but only
expedience as the measure of right and wrong, and
only temporal well-being as the end of action. Again,
many are the tales and poems written now-a-days,
expressing high and beautiful sentiments; I dare say
some of you, my brethren, have fallen in with them,
and perhaps you have thought to yourselves, that he
must be a man of deep religious feeling and high
religious profession who could write so well. Is it so
in fact, my brethren? it is not so; why? because after
all it is but poetry, not religion; it is human nature */
exerting the powers of imagination and reason, which it
has, till it seems also to have powers which it has not.
There are, you know, in the animal world various
creatures, which are able to imitate the voice of man;
nature in like manner is often a mockery of grace.
The truth is, the natural man sees this or that prin-
ciple to be good or true from the light of conscience;
and then, since he has the power of reasoning, he knows
that, if this be true, many other things are true like-
wise; and then, having the power of imagination, he
pictures to himself those other things as true, though
I 58 AWature and Grace. g
ſ
-º
he does not really understand them. And then he
brings to his aid what he has read and gained from
others who have had grace, and thus he completes his
sketch ; and then he throws his feelings and his heart
into it, meditates on it, and kindles in himself a sort
of enthusiasm, and thus he is able to write beautifully
and touchingly about what to others indeed may be a
reality, but to him is nothing more than a fiction.
Thus some can write about the early Martyrs, and
others describe some great Saint of the Middle Ages,
not exactly as a Catholic, but as if they had a piety
and a seriousness to which really they are strangers.
So, too, actors on a stage can excite themselvestill they
think they are the persons they represent; and, as you
know, prejudiced persons, who wish to quarrel with
another, impute something to him, which at first they
scarcely believe themselves; but they wish to believe
it and act as if it were true, and raise and cherish
anger at the thought of it, till at last they come simply
to believe it. So it is, I say, in the case of many an
author in verse and prose; readers are deceived by his
fine writing; they not only praise this or that senti-
ment, or argument, or description, in what they read,
which happens to be true, but they put faith in the
writer himself; and they believe sentiments or state-
ments which are false on the credit of the true. Thus
it is that people are led away into false religions and
false philosophies; a preacher or speaker, who is in a
state of nature, or has fallen from grace, is able to say
many things to touch the heart of a sinner or to strike
his conscience, whether from his natural powers, or
AWature and Grace. I59
from what he has read in books; and the latter forth-
with takes him for his prophet and guide, on the
warrant of these accidental truths which it required no
supernatural gifts to discover and enforce.
Scripture provides us an instance of such a prophet,
(nay,of one far more favoured and honoured than any
false teacher is now,) who nevertheless was the enemy
of God; I mean the prophet Balaam. He went forth
to curse the chosen people in spite of an express
prohibition from heaven, and that for money; and at
length he died fighting against them in battle. Such
was he in his life and in his death; such were his
deeds; but what were his words? most religious, most
conscientious, most instructive. “If Balac,” he says,
“shall give me his house full, of silver and gold, I
cannot alter the word of the Lord my God.” Again,
“Let my soul die the death of the just, and let my - * ,
end be like to theirs!” And again, “I will show
thee, O man, what is good, and what the Lord re-
quireth of thee; to do judgment and to love mercy,
and to walk heedfully with thy God.” Here is a man,
who is not in a state of grace, speaking so religiously,
that at first sight you might have thought he was to
be followed in whatever he said, and that your soul
would have been safe with his. - v
And thus it often happens, that those who seem so
amiable and good, and so trustworthy, when we only
know them from their writings, disappoint us so pain-
fully, if at length we come to have a personal acquaint-
ance with them. We do not recognize in the living
being the eloquence or the wisdom which so much
16O AWature and Grace.
Q
enchanted us. He is rude, perhaps, and unfeeling;
he is selfish, he is dictatorial, he is sensual, he is
empty-minded and frivolous; while we in our sim-
plicity had antecedently thought him the very embodi-
ment of purity and tenderness, or an oracle of heavenly
truth. -
Now, my dear brethren, I have been engaged in
bringing before you what human nature can do, and
what it can appear, without being reconciled to God,
without any hope of heaven, without any security
against sin, without any pardon of the original curse,
nay, in the midst of mortal sin; but it is a state
which has never existed in fact, without great
modifications. No one has ever been deprived of the
assistance of grace, both for illumination and con-
version ; even the heathen world as a whole had to a
certain extent its darkness relieved by these fitful and
recurrent gleams of light; but I have thought it
useful to get you to contemplate what human nature
is, viewed in itself, for various reasons. It explains
how it is that men look so like each other as they
do, grace being imitated, and, as it were, rivalled
by nature, both in society at large, and in the hearts
of particular persons. Hence the world will not be-
lieve the separation really existing between it and the
Church, and the smallness of the flock of Christ. And
hence too it is, that numbers who have heard the
Name of Christ, and profess to believe in the Gospel,
will not be persuaded as regards themselves that
they are exterior to the Church, and do not enjoy her
privileges; merely because they do their duty in some
...”
AWałure and Grace. I6 I
general way, or because they are conscious to them-
selves of being benevolent or upright. And this is a
point which concerns Catholics too, as I now proceed
to show you.
Make yourselves quite sure then, my brethren, of
the matter of fact, before you go away with the belief,
that you are not confusing, in your own case, nature
and grace, and taking credit to yourselves for super-
natural works, which merit heaven, when you are but
doing the works of a heathen, are unforgiven, and lie
under an eternal sentence. Oh, it is a dreadful thought,
that a man may deceive himself with the notion that
he is secure, merely because he is a Catholic, and be-
cause he has some kind of love and fear of God,
whereas he may be no better than many a Protestant
round about him, who either never was baptized, or
threw himself once for all out of grace on coming to ſº
years of understanding. This idea is entirely conceiv-
able; it is well if it be not true in matter of fact.
You know, it is one opinion entertained among divines
and holy men, that the number of Catholics that are
to be saved will on the whole be small. Multitudes of
those who never knew the Gospel will rise up in the
judgment against the children of the Church, and
will be shown to have done more with scantier oppor-
tunities. Our Lord speaks of His people as a small
flock, as I cited His words when I began : He says,
“Many are called, few are chosen.” St. Paul, speaking,
in the first instance, of the Jews, says that but “a
remnant is saved according to the election of grace.”
He speaks even of the possibility of his own reproba-
M
I62 Mature and Grace.
tion. What a thought in an Apostle yet it is one
with which Saints are familiar; they fear both for
themselves and for others. It is related in the history
of my own dear Patron, St. Philip Neri, that some
time after his death he appeared to a holy religious,
and bade him take a message of consolation to his
children, the Fathers of the Oratory. The consolation
was this, that, by the grace of God, up to that day not
one of the Congregation had been lost. “None of
them lost !” a man may cry out; “well, had his con-
solation for his children been, that they were all in
paradise, having escaped the dark lake of purgatory,
that would have been something worth telling; but
all he had to say was, that none of them were in hell !
Strange if they were! Here was a succession of men,
who had given up the world for a religious life, who
had given up self for God and their neighbour, who
had passed their days in prayer and good works, who
had died happily with the last Sacraments, and it is
revealed about them, as a great consolation, that none
of them were lost l” Still such after all is our holy
Father’s consolation; and, that it should be such,
only proves that salvation is not so easy a matter, or
so cheap a possession, as we are apt to suppose. It is
not obtained by the mere wishing. And, if it was a
thing so to be coveted by men, who had made
sacrifices for Christ, and were living in sanctity, how
much more rare and arduous of attainment is it in
those who have confessedly loved the world more than
God, and have never dreamed of doing any duty to
which the Church did not oblige them 1
AWałure and Grace. I63
Tell me, what is the state of your souls and the rule
of your lives? You come to Confession, once a year,
four times a year, at the Indulgences; you commu-
nicate as often ; you do not miss Mass on days of
obligation; you are not conscious of any great sin.—
There you come to an end; you have nothing more to
say. What? do you not take God’s name in vain?
only when you are angry;-that is, I suppose, you are
subject to fits of violent passion, in which you use
every shocking word which the devil puts into your
mouth, and abuse and curse, and perhaps strike the
objects of your anger ?–Only now and then, you say,
when you are in liquor. Then it seems you are given
to intoxication ?—you answer, you never drink so
much as not to know what you are doing. Well, have
you improved in these respects in the course of several
years past? You cannot say you have, but such sins
are not mortal at the most. Then, I suppose, you
have not lately fallen into mortal sin at all? You
pause, and then you are obliged to confess that you
have, and that once and again; and the more I ques-
tion you, perhaps the longer becomes the catalogue of
offences which have separated you from God. But
this is not all; your sole idea of sin is, the sinning in
act and in deed; sins of habit, which cling so close to
you that they are difficult to detect, and manifest
themselves in slight but continual influences on your
thoughts, words, and works, do not engage your
attention at all. You are selfish, and obstinate, and ,
worldly, and self-indulgent; you neglect your children;
you are fond of idle amusements; you scarcely ever
*
M 2
164 - AVatzlºe and Grace.
think of God from day to day, for I cannot call your
hurried prayers morning and night any thinking of
Him at all. You are friends with the world, and live
a good deal among those who have no sense of religion.
Now what have you to tell me which will set against
this? what good have you done? in what is your hope of
heaven? whence do you gain it? You perhaps answer
me, that the Sacrament of Penance reconciles you from
time to time to God; that you live in the world;
that you are not called to the religious state; that it
is true you love the world more than God, but that
you love God sufficiently for salvation, and that you
rely in the hour of death upon the powerful interces- f
sion of the Blessed Mother of God. Then besides, you
have a number of good points, which you go through,
and which are to you signs that you are in the grace
of God; you conceive that your state at worst is one
of tepidity. Tepidity I tell you, you have no marks
of tepidity; do you wish to know what a tepid person
is one who has begun to lead almost the life of
a Saint, and has fallen from his fervour; one who
retains his good practices, but does them without
devotion; one who does so much, that we only blame
him for not doing more. No, you need not confess
tepidity, my brethren;–do you wish to have the judg-
ment which I am led to form about you? it is, that
probably you are not in the grace of God at all. The
probability is, that for a long while past you have
gone to Confession without the proper dispositions,
without real grief, and without sincere purpose of
amendment for your sins. You are probably such,
Mature and Grace. 165
that were you to die this night, you would be lost for
ever. What do you do more than nature does? You do
certain good things; “what reward have ye? do not.
even the publicans so? what do ye more than others?
do not even the heathen so?” You have the ordinary
virtues of human nature, or some of them; you are
what nature made you, and care not to be better.
You may be naturally kind-hearted, and then you do
charitable actions to others; you have a natural
strength of character, if so, you are able to bring
your passions under the power of reason; you have a
natural energy, and you labour for your family; you
are naturally mild, and so you do not quarrel; you have
a dislike of intemperance, and therefore you are sober.
You have the virtues of your Protestant neighbours,
and their faults too; what are you better than they P
Here is another grave matter against you, that you
are so well with the Protestants about you; I do not
mean to say that you are not bound to cultivate peace
with all men, and to do them all the offices of charity
in your power. Of course you are, and if they respect,
esteem, and love you, it redounds to your praise and
will gain you a reward; but I mean more than this;
they do not respect you, but they like you, because
they think of you as of themselves, they see no diffe-
rence between themselves and you. This is the very
reason why they so often take your part, and assert or
defend your political rights. Here again, there is a
sense of course in which our civil rights may be advo-
cated by Protestants without any reflection on us, and
with honour to them. We are like others in this, that
166 AWature and Grace.
(y.
we are men; that we are members of the same state
with them, subjects, contented subjects, of the same
Sovereign, that we have a dependence on them, and
have them dependent on us; that, like them, we feel
pain when ill-used, and are grateful when well-treated.
We need not be ashamed of a fellowship like this,
and those who recognize it in us are generous in doing
so. Bht we have much cause to be ashamed, and
much cause to be anxious what God thinks of us, if
we gain their support by giving them a false impres-
sion in our persons of what the Catholic Church is,
and what Catholics are bound to be, what bound to
believe, and to do; and is not this the case often, my
brethren, that the world takes up your interests,
because you share its sins 2
Nature is one with nature, grace with grace; the
world then witnesses against you by being good friends
with you; you could not have got on with the world
so well, without surrendering something which was
precious and sacred. The world likes you, all but
your professed creed; distinguishes you from your
creed in its judgment of you, and would fain separate
you from it in fact. Men say, “These persons are
better than their Church; we have not a word to say
for their Church; but Catholics are not what they
were, they are very much like other men now. Their
Creed certainly is bigoted and cruel, but what would
you have of them 2 You cannot expect them to con-
fess this; let them change quietly, no one changes in
public, be satisfied that they are changed. They are
as fond of the world as we are; they take up political
AWałure and Grace. . 167
objects as warmly; they like their own way just as
well; they do not like strictness a whit better; they
hate spiritual thraldom, and they are half ashamed of
the Pope and his Councils. They hardly believe "any
miracles now, and are annoyed when their own brethren”
officiously proclaim them ; they never speak of purga-
tory; they are sore about images; they avoid the
subject of Indulgences; and they will not commit
themselves to the doctrine of exclusive salvation. The
Catholic doctrines are now mere badges of party.
Catholics think for themselves and judge for them-
selves, just as we do ; they are kept in their Church
by a point of honour, and a reluctance at seeming to
abandon a fallen cause.”
Such is the judgment of the world, and you, my
brethren, are shocked to hear it;-but may it not be,
that the world knows more about you than you know
about yourselves? “If ye had been of the world,”
says Christ, “the world would love its own ; but be-
cause ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you
out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” So
speaks Christ of His Apostles. How run His words
when applied to you? “If ye be of the world, the
world will love its own; therefore ye are of the world,
and I have not chosen you out of the world, because
the world loveth you.” Do not complain of the
world’s imputing to you more than is true; those who
live as the world give colour to those who think them
of the world, and seem to form but one party with
them. In proportion as you put off the yoke of
Christ, so does the world by a sort of instinct re-
I68 AWature and Grace.
cognize you, and think well of you accordingly. Its
highest compliment is to tell you that you disbelieve.
Oh, my brethren, there is an eternal enmity between
the world and the Church. The Church declares by
the mouth of an Apostle, “Whoso will be a friend of
the world, becomes an enemy of God;” and the world
retorts, and calls the Church apostate, sorceress,
Beelzebub, and Antichrist. She is the image and the
mother of the predestinate, and, if you would be found
among her children when you die, you must have part
in her reproach while you live. Does not the world
scoff at all that is glorious, all that is majestic, in our
holy religion? Does it not speak against the special
creations of God’s grace P Does it not disbelieve the
possibility of purity and chastity? Does it not slander
the profession of celibacy? Does it not deny the
virginity of Mary 2 Does it not cast out her very
name as evil? Does it not scorn her as a dead
woman, whom you know to be the Mother of all
living, and the great Intercessor of the faithful?
Does it not ridicule the Saints P Does it not make
light of their relics? Does it not despise the Sacra-
ments P Does it not blaspheme the awful Presence
which dwells upon our altars, and mock bitterly and
fiercely at our believing that what it calls bread and
wine is that very same Body and Blood of the Lamb,
which lay in Mary’s womb and hung on the Cross?
What are we, that we should be better treated than
Our Lord, and His Mother, and His servants, and His
works? Nay, what are we, if we be better treated,
AWałure and Grace. I69
but the friends of those who treat us well, and who
ill-treat Him P
Oh, my dear brethren, be children of grace, not of
nature; be not seduced by this world’s sophistries
and assumptions; it pretends to be the work of God,
but in reality it comes of Satan. “I know My
sheep,” says our Lord, “ and Mine know Me, and
they follow Me.” “ Show me, O Thou whom my
soul loveth,” says the Bride in the Canticle, “where
Thou feedest, where Thou restest at noon :” and He
answers her, “Go forth, and follow after the steps of
the flocks, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds'
tents.” Let us follow the Saints, as they follow
Christ; so that, when He comes in judgment, and the
wretched world sinks to perdition, “on us sinners,
His servants, hoping in the multitude of His mercies,
He may vouchsafe to bestow some portion and fellow-
ship with His Holy Apostles and Martyrs, with John,
Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander,
Marcelline, Peter, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy,
Agnes, Cicely, Anastasia, and all His Saints, not for
the value of our merit, but according to the bounty of C
His pardon, through the same Christ our Lord.”
DISCO URSE IX.
AZ ZO/////VA ZTVAVG GACA CAE.
HEN man was created, he was endowed withal
with gifts above his own nature, by means of
which that nature was perfected. As some potent
stimulant which is not nourishment, a scent or a
draught, rouses, invigorates, concentrates our animal
powers, gives keenness to our perceptions, and inten-
sity to our efforts, so, or rather in some far higher
sense, and in more diversified ways, did the super-
natural grace of God give a meaning, and an aim, and
a sufficiency, and a consisteney, and a certainty, to
the many faculties of that compound of soul and body,
which constitutes man. And when man fell, he lost
this divine, unmerited gift, and, instead of soaring
heavenwards, fell down feeble to the earth, in a state
of exhaustion and collapse. And, again, when God,
for Christ’s sake, is about to restore any one to His
favour, His first act of mercy is to impart to him a
portion of this grace; the first-fruits of that sovereign,
energetic power, which forms and harmonizes his
whole nature, and enables it to fulfil its own end,
while it fulfils one higher than its own.
Now, one of the defects which man incurred on the
fall was ignorance, or spiritual blindness; and one of
///uminating Grace. I 71
f
the gifts received on his restoration is a perception of N
things spiritual; so that, before he is brought under
the grace of Christ, he can but inquire, reason, argue,
and conclude, about religious truth; but afterwards
he sees it. “Blessed art Thou, Simon, son of Jona,”
said our Lord to St. Peter, when he confessed the In-
carnation, “for flesh and blood hath not revealed it
to thee, but My Father, which is in heaven.” Again :
“I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and hath revealed them unto little ones. . . .
No one knoweth the Father, save the Son, and no one
knoweth the Son but the Father, and he to whom it
shall please the Son to reveal Him.” In like manner
St. Paul says, “The animal” or natural “man per-
ceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; ” and
elsewhere, “No one can say the Lord Jesus, but in
the Holy Ghost.” And St. John, “Ye have an
unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.”
The Prophets had promised the same gift before Christ
came ;-‘‘I will make all thy sons taught of the
Lord,” says Isaias, “ and the multitude of peace upon
thy sons; ” “No more,” says Jeremias, “shall man
teach his neighbour, and man his brother, saying,
Know the Lord, for all shall know Me from the least
of them even to the greatest of them.” -
Now here you may say, my brethren, “What is the
meaning of this 2 are we men, or are we not ? have
we lost part of our nature by the fall, or have we not?
is not the Reason a part of man’s nature? does not
the Reason see, as the eye does P cannot we, by the
g/ſ/Ø
º j | A
2%
~ :
2/
I 72 ///uminating Grace.
natural power of our Reason, understand all kinds of
truths, about this earth, about human society, about
the realms of space, about matter, about the soul ?
why should religion be an exception ? Why, then, {
cannot we understand by our natural reason about
Almighty God and heaven?—if we can inquire into
one thing, we can inquire into another; if we can
imagine one thing, we can imagine another; how
then is it that we cannot arrive at the truths of re-
ligion without the supernatural aid of grace?” This
is a question which may give rise to some profitable
reflections, and I shall now attempt to answer it.
You ask, what it is you need, besides eyes, in order
to see the truths of revelation : I will tell you at once;
you need light. Not the keenest eyes can see in the
dark. Now, though your mind be the eye, the grace
of God is the light; and you will as easily exercise
your eyes in this sensible world without the sun, as
you will be able to exercise your mind in the spiritual
world without a parallel gift from without. Now you
are born under a privation of this blessed spiritual
light ; and, while it remains, you will not, cannot,
really see God. I do not say you will have no thought
at all about God, nor be able to talk about Him.
True, but you will not be able to do more than
reason about Him. Your thoughts and your words
will not get beyond a mere reasoning. I grant then
what you claim ; you claim to be able by your mental
powers to reason about God; doubtless you can, but
to infer a thing is not to see it in respect to the
physical world, nor is it in the spiritual.
Aluminating Grace. I73
Consider the case of a man without eyes talking
about forms and colours, and you will understand
what I mean. A blind man may pick up a good deal
of information of various kinds, and be very conversant
with the objects of sight, though he does not see. He
may be able to talk about them fluently, and may be
fond of doing so; he may even talk of seeing as if he
really saw, till he almost seems to pretend to the
faculty of sight. He speaks of heights and distances,
and directions, and the dispositions of places, and
shapes, and appearances, as naturally as other men;
and he is not duly aware of his own extreme privation;
and, if you ask how this comes about, it is partly
because he hears what other men say about these
things, and he is able to imitate them, and partly
because he cannot help reasoning upon the things he
hears, and drawing conclusions from them ; and thus
he comes to think he knows what he does not know "
at all. - & - - -
He hears men converse; he may have books read to
him; he gains vague ideas of objects of sight, and
when he begins to speak, his words are tolerably
correct, and do not at once betray how little he knows
what he is talking about. He infers one thing from
another, and thus is able to speak of many things
which he does not see, but only perceives must be so,
granting other things are so. For instance, if he
knows that blue and yellow make green, he may pro-
nounce, without a chance of mistake, that green is
more like blue than yellow is ; if he happens to know
that one man is under six feet in height, and another
I 74 Z//uminating Grace.
is full six feet, he may, when they are both before
him, boldly declare, as if he saw, that the latter is the
taller of the two. It is not that he judges by sight,
but that reason takes the place of it. There was
much talk in the world some little time since of a
man of science, who was said to have found out a new
planet; how did he do it? Did he watch night after
night, wearily and perseveringly, in the chill air,
through the tedious course of the starry heavens, for
what he might possibly find there, till at length, by
means of some powerful glass, he discovered in the
dim distance this unexpected addition to our planetary
system P Far from it; it is said, that he sat at his
ease in his library, and made calculations on paper in
the daytime, and thus, without looking once up at the
sky, he determined, from what was already known
of the sun and the planets, of their number, their
positions, their motions, and their influences, that, in
addition to them all, there must be some other body
in that very place where he said it would be found, if
astronomers did but turn their instruments upon it.
Here was a man reading the heavens, not with eyes,
but by reason. Reason, then, is a sort of substitute
for sight ; and so in many respects are the other
senses, as is obvious. You know how quick the blind
are often found to be in discovering the presence of
friends, and the feelings of strangers, by the voice,
and the tone, and the tread; so that they seem to
understand looks, and gestures, and dumb show, as if
they saw, to the surprise of those who wish to keep
their meaning secret from them.
Z//uminating Grace. I 75
\
Now this will explain the way in which the natural
man is able partly to understand, and still more to
speak upon, supernatural subjects. There is a large
floating body of Catholic truth in the world; it comes
down by tradition from age to age; it is carried for-
ward by preaching and profession from one generation
to another, and is poured about into all quarters of
the world. It is found in fulness and purity in the
Church alone, but portions of it, larger or smaller,
escape far and wide, and penetrate into places which
have never been blest with her presence and ministra-
tion. Now men may take up and profess these scat-
tered truths, merely because they fall in with them;
these fragments of Revelation, such as the doctrine of
the Holy Trinity, or the Atonement, are the religion
which they have been taught in their childhood ; and
therefore they may retain them, and profess them, and
repeat them, without really seeing them, as the Catholic
sees them, but as receiving them merely by word of
mouth, from imitation of others. And in this way
it often happens that a man external to the Catholic
Church writes sermons and instructions, draws up
and arranges devotions, or composes hymns, which are
faultless, or nearly so, which are the fruit, not of his
own illuminated mind, but of his careful study, some-
times of his accurate translation, of Catholic originals.
Then, again, Catholic truths and rites are so beautiful,
so great, so consolatory, that they draw one on to love
and admire them with a natural love, as a prospect
might attract us, or a skilful piece of mechanism. Hence
men of lively imagination may profess this doctrine
176 Illuminating Grace.
or that, or adopt this or that ceremony or usage, for
its very beauty-sake, not asking themselves whether
it be true, and having no real perception or mental
hold of it. Thus, too, they will decorate their churches,
stretch and strain their ritual, introduce candles, west-
ments, flowers, incense, and processions, not from
faith, but from poetical feeling. And, moreover, the
Catholic Creed, as coming from God, is so harmonious,
so consistent with itself, holds together so perfectly,
so corresponds part to part, that an acute mind, know-
ing one portion of it, would often infer another portion,
merely as a matter of just reasoning. Thus a correct
thinker might be sure, that if God is infinite and man
finite, there must be mysteries in religion. It is not
that he really feels the mysteriousness of religion, but
he infers it; he is led to it as a matter of necessity,
and from mere clearness of mind and love of consist-
ency, he maintains it. Again, a man may say, “Since
this or that doctrine has so much historical evidence in
its favour, I must accept it ;” he has no real sight or
direct perception of it, but he takes up the profession
of it, because he feels it would be absurd, under the
conditions with which he starts, to do otherwise. He
does no more than load himself with a form of words,
instead of contemplating, with the eye of the soul,
God himself, the source of all truth, and this doctrine
as proceeding from His mouth. A keen, sagacious
intellect will carry a man a great way in anticipating
doctrines which he has never been told;—thus, before
it knew what Scripture said on the subject, it might
argue; “Sin is an offence against God beyond con-
//luminating Grace. 177
ception great, and involving vast evils on the sinner,
for, if it were not so, why should Christ have suffered?”
that is, he sees that it is necessary for the Christian
system of doctrine that sin should be a great evil,
without necessarily feeling in his conscience that it is
so. Nay, I can fancy a man conjecturing that our
bodies would rise again, as arguing it out from the
fact that the Eternal God has so honoured our mortal
flesh as to take it upon Him as part of Himself. Thus
he would be receiving the resurrection or eternal pun-
ishment merely as truths which follow from what he
knew already. And in like manner learned men, out-
side the Church, may compose most useful works on
the Evidences of religion, or in defence of particular
doctrines, or in explanation of the whole scheme of
Catholicity; in these cases reason becomes the hand-
maid of faith: still it is not faith ; it does not rise
above an intellectual view or notion ; it affirms, not
as grasping the truth, not as seeing, but as “being
of opinion,” as “judging,” as “ coming to a conclu-
sion.”
Here, then, you see what the natural man can do;
he can feel, he can imagine, he can admire, he can
reason, he can infer; in all, these ways he may pro-
ceed to receive the whole or part of Catholic truth;
but he cannot see, he cannot love. Yet he will per-
plex religious persons, who do not understand the
secret by which he is able to make so imposing a dis-
play; for they will be at a loss to understand how it
()
is he is able to speak so well, except he speak, though
he be out of the Church, by the Spirit of God. Thus
- N
178 A.//uminating Grace.
it is with the writings of some of the ancient heretics,
who wrote upon the Incarnation ; so it is with
hereties of modern times who have written on the
doetrine of grace; they write sometimes with such
beauty and depth, that one cannot help admiring what
they say on those very subjects, as to which we know
withal that at the bottom they are unsound. But, my
T brethren, the sentiments may be right and good in
themselves, but not in those men; these are the solitary
truths which they have happened to infer in a range
of matters about which they see and know nothing, and
their heresy on other points, which are close upon the
acceptance of these truths, is a proof that they do not
see what they speak of. A blind man, discoursing
upon form and colour, might say some things truly,
and some things falsely ; but even one mistake
which he happened to make, though only one, would
be enough to betray that he had no real possession of
the truths which he enunciated, though they were
many; for, had he had eyes, he not only would have
been correct in many, but would have been mistaken
in none. For instance, supposing that he knew that
two buildings were the same in height, he might per-
haps be led boldly to pronounce that their appearance
was the same when we looked at them, not knowing
that the greater distance of the one of them from us
might reduce it to the eye to half or a fourth of the
other. And thus men who are not in the Church,
and who have no practical experience of Catholic
devotion to the Blessed Mother of God, when they read
our prayers and litanies, and observe the strength of
Z//uminating Grace. * I 79
their language, and the length to which they go, con-
fidently assert that she is, in every sense and way,
the object of our worship, to the exclusion, or in
rivalry, of the Supreme God; not understanding that
He “in whom we live, and move and are,” who new-
creates us with His grace, and who feeds us with His
own Body and Blood, is closer to us and more inti-
mately with us than any creature; that Saints and
Angels, and the Blessed Virgin herself, are neces-
sarily at a distance from us, compared with Him, and,
that whatever language we use towards them, though
it be the same as that which we use to our Maker,
it only carries with it a sense which is due and
proportionate to the object we address. And thus
these objectors are detected, as Catholics feel, by their
objection itself, as really knowing and seeing nothing
of what they dispute about.
And now I have explained sufficiently what is
meant by saying that the natural man holds divine
truths merely as an opinion and not as a point of
faith; grace believes, reason does but opine ; grace
gives certainty, reason is never decided. Now it is
remarkable that this characteristic of reason is so
clearly understood by the persons themselves of whom
I am speaking, that, in spite of the confidence which
they have in their own opinions, whatever that be,
still, conscious that they have no grounds for real
and fixed conviction about revealed truth, they boldly
face the difficulty, and consider it a fault to be cer-
tain about revealed truth, and a merit to doubt. For
instance, “the Holy Catholic Church’’ is a point of
WYA
Q
N 2
I8O ///uminating Grace.
faith, as being one of the articles of the Apostles’
Creed ; yet they think it an impatience to be dissatis-
fied with uncertainty as to where the Catholic Church
is, and what she says. They are well aware that no
man alive of fair abilities would put undoubting faith
and reliance in the Church Established, except by
doing violence to his reason; they know that the
great mass of its members in no sense believe in it,
and that of the remainder no one could say more than
that it indirectly comes from God, and that it is
safest to remain in it. There is, in these persons, no
faith, only a mere opinion, about this article of the
Creed. Accordingly they are obliged to say, in mere
defence of their own position, that faith is not neces-
sary, and a state of doubt is sufficient, and all that is
expected of us. In consequence they attribute it to
mere restlessness, when one of their own members
seeks to exercise faith in the Holy Catholic Church as
a revealed truth, as they themselves profess to exer-
cise it in the Holy Trinity or our Lord’s resurrection,
and when in consequence he hunts about, and asks
on all sides, how he is to do so. Nay, they go so far
as to impute it to a Catholic as a fault, when he mani-
fests a simple trust in the Church and her teaching.
It sometimes happens that those who join the Catholic
Church from some Protestant communion, are ob-
served to change the uncertainty and hesitation of
mind on religious subjects, which they showed before
their conversion, into a clear and fearless confidence;
they doubted about their old communion, they have
no doubt about their new. They have no fears, no
Z//uminating Grace. I8 I
anxieties, no difficulties, no scruples. They speak,
accordingly, as they feel; and the world, not under-
standing that this is the effect of the grace which (as
We may humbly trust) these happy souls have received,
—not understanding that, though it has full experience
of the region of the shadow of death in which it lies,
it has none at all of that city, whereof the Lord God
and the Lamb is the light-measuring what Catholies
have by what itself has not, the world, I say, cries
out, “How forward, how unnatural, how excited, how
extravagant;” and it considers that such a change is
a change for the worse, and is proved to be a mistake
and a fault, because it produces precisely that effect,
which it would produce were it a change for the
better. - -
It tells us that certainty, and confidence, and bold-
ness in speech, are unchristian; is this pleading a
cause, or a judgment from facts P Was it confidence
or doubt, was it zeal or coldness, was it keenness or
irresolution in action, which distinguished the Martyrs
in the first ages of the Church 2 Was the religion of
Christ propagated by the vehemence of faith and love,
or by a philosophical balance of arguments? Look
back at the early Martyrs, my brethren, what were
they why, they were very commonly youths and
maidens, soldiers and slaves;––a set of hot-headed
young men, who would have lived to be wise, had
they not been obstinately set on dying first; who tore
down imperial manifestos, broke the peace, challenged
the judges to dispute, would not rest till they got into
the same den with a lion, and who, if chased out of
I 82 Z//uminating Grace.
Q
one city, began preaching in another | So said the
blind world about those who saw the Unseen. Yes!
it was the spiritual sight of God which made them
what they were. No one is a Martyr for a conclusion,
no one is a Martyr for an opinion; it is faith that
makes Martyrs. He who knows and loves the things
of God has no power to deny them; he may have a
natural shrinking from torture and death, but such
terror is incommensurate with faith, and as little acts
upon it as dust and mire touch the sun's light, or
scents or voices could stop a wheel in motion. The
Martyrs saw, and how could they but speak what they
had seen 2 They might shudder at the pain, but they
had not the power not to see; if threats could undo
the heavenly truths, then might pain silence their con-
fession of them. Oh, my brethren, the world is inquir-
ing, and large-minded, and knows many things; it
talks well and profoundly; but is there one among its
Babel of religious opinions which it would be a Martyr
for P. Some of them may be true, and some false; let it
choose any one of them to die for. Its children talk
loudly, they declaim angrily against the doctrine that
God is an avenger; would they die rather than con-
fess it? They talk eloquently of the infinite indul-
gence of God; would they die rather than deny it 2
If not, they have not even enthusiasm, they have not
even obstinacy, they have not even bigotry, they have
not even party spirit to sustain them,-much less
have they grace; they speak upon opinion only, and
by an inference. Again, there are those who call on
men to trust the Established Communion, as consider-
I//uminating Grace. 183
ing it to be a branch of the Catholic Church ; they
may urge that this opinion can be cogently defended,
but an opinion it is; for say, oh, ye who hold it, how
many of you would die rather than doubt it P Do you
now hold it sinful to doubt it? or rather, as I have
already said, do you not think it allowable, natural,
necessary, becoming, humble-minded and sober-
minded to doubt it 2 do you not almost think better
of a man for doubting it, provided he does not follow
his doubts out, and end in disbelieving it 2
Hence these very same persons, who speak so
severely of any one who leaves the communion in
which he was born, doubting of it themselves, are in
consequence led to view his act as an affront done to
their body, rather than as an evil to himself. They
consider it as a personal affront to a party and an
injury to a cause, and the affront is greater- or less
according to the mischief which it does them in the
particular case. It is not his loss but their incon-
venience, which is the real measure of his sin. If a
person is in any way important or useful to them,
they will protest against his act ; if he is troublesome
to them, if he goes (as they say) too far, if he is a
scandal, or a centre of perverse influence, or in any
way disturbs the order and welfare of their body, they
are easily reconciled to his proceeding; the more
courteous of them congratulate him on his honesty,
and the more bitter congratulate themselves on being
rid of him. Is such the feeling of a mother and of
kinsmen towards a son and a brother ? “can a woman
forget her babe, that she should not have compassion
I84 Z//uminating Grace.
on the son of her womb 2 * Did a man leave the
Catholic Church, our first feeling, my brethren, as
you know so well, would be one of compassion and
fear; we should consider that though we were even
losing one who was a scandal to us, still that our
gain would be nothing in comparison to his loss. We
know that a man cannot desert the Church without
< . quenching an inestimable gift of grace; that he has
already received a definite influence and effect upon
º his soul, such that he cannot dispossess himself of it
without the gravest sin; that, though he may have
had many temptations to disbelieve, they are only like
temptations to sensuality, harmless without his will-
ing co-operation, This is why the Church cannot
sanction him in reconsidering the question of her own
divine mission; she holds that such inquiries, though
the appointed means of entering her pale, are super-
seded on his entrance by the gift of a spiritual sight,
a gift which consumes doubt so utterly, in any proper
sense of the word, that henceforth it is not that he
must not, but that he cannot entertain it; cannot
entertain it except by his own great culpability; and
therefore must not, because he cannot. This is what
we hold, and are conscious of, my brethren; and, as
holding it, we never could feel satisfaction and relief,
on first hearing of the defection of a brother, be he
ever so unworthy, ever so scandalous; our first feeling
would be sorrow. We are, in fact, often obliged to
bear with scandalous members against our will, from
charity to them; but those, whose highest belief is
but an inference, who are obliged to go over in their
Z//uminating Grace. I85 º:
minds from time to time the reasons and the ground
of their creed, lest they should suddenly find them-
selves left without their conclusion, these persons not
having faith, have no opportunity for charity, and
think that when a man leaves them who has given
them any trouble, it is a double gain—to him, that he
is where he is better fitted to be ; to themselves, that
they are at peace. *
What I have been saying will account for another
thing, which otherwise will surprise us. The world
cannot believe that Catholics really hold what they
profess to hold; and supposes that, if they are educated
men, they are kept up to their profession by external
influence, by superstitious fear, by pride, by interest,
or other bad or unworthy motive. Men of the world
have never believed in their whole life, never have had
simple faith in things unseen, never have had more
than an opinion about them, that they might be true
and might be false, but probably were true, or doubt-
less were true; and in consequence they think an
- absolute, unhesitating faith in anything unseen to be
simply an extravagance, and especially when it is ex-
ercised on objects which they do not believe them-
selves, or even reject with scorn or abhorrence. And
hence they prophesy that the Catholie Church must
lose, in proportion as men are directed to the sober
examination of their own thoughts and feelings, and
to the separation of what is real and true from what is
a matter of words and pretence. They cannot under-
stand how our faith in the Blessed Sacrament is a
genuine living portion of our minds; they think it a
I86 /Muminating Grace.
mere profession which we embrace with no inward
assent, but only because we are told that we shall be
lost unless we profess it; or because, the Catholic
Church having in dark ages committed herself to it,
we cannot help ourselves, though we would, if we
could, and therefore receive it by constraint, from a
sense of duty towards our cause, or in a spirit of party.
They will not believe but what we would gladly get
rid of the doctrine of transubstantiation, as a heavy
stone about our necks, if we could. What shocking
words to use ! It would be wrong to use them, were
they not necessary to make you understand, my
brethren, the privilege which you havé, and the world
has not. Shocking indeed and most profane a relief
to rid ourselves of the doctrine that Jesus is on our
Altars l as well say a relief to rid ourselves of the
belief that Jesus is God; to rid ourselves of the belief
that there is a God. Yes, that I suppose is the true
relief, to believe nothing at all, or, at least, not to be
bound to believe anything; to believe first one thing,
then another; to believe what we please for as long 2.S
we please; that is, not really to believe, but to have an
opinion about everything, and let nothing sit close
" upon us, to commit ourselves to nothing, to keep the
unseen world altogether at a distance. But if we are
to believe anything at all, if we are to make any one
heavenly doctrine our own, if we are to take some
propositions or dogmas as true, why it should be a
burden to believe what is so gracious, and what so
concerns us, rather than what is less intimate and less
winning, why we must not believe that God is among
A Zuminating Grace. 187
us, if God there is, why we may not believe that God
dwells on our Altars as well as that He dwells in the
sky, certainly is not so self-evident, but that we have
a claim to ask the reasons for it of those, who profess
to be so rational and so natural in all their determina-
tions. Oh, my brethren, how narrow-minded is this
world at bottom after all, in spite of its pretences and
in spite of appearances ! Here you see, it cannot
by a stretch of imagination conceive that anything
exists, of which it has not cognizance in its own
heart ; it will not admit into its imagination the mere
idea that we have faith, because it does not know what
faith is from experience, and it will not admit that -
there is anything in the mind of man which it does
not experience itself, for that would be all one with
admitting after all that there is such a thing as a
mystery. It must know, it must be the measure of
all things; and so in self-defence it considers us
hypocritical, as professing what we cannot believe,
lest it should be forced to confess itself blind. “Be-
hold what manner of love the Father had bestowed
on us, that we should be named, and should be, the
sons of God; therefore the world knoweth not us,
because it knoweth not Him l’” -
It is for the same reason that inquirers, who are
approaching the Church, find it difficult to persuade
themselves that their doubts will not continue after
they have entered it. This is the reason they assign for
not becoming Catholics; for what is to become of them,
they ask, if their present doubts continue after their
conversion; they will have nothing to fall back upon,
188 Z//uminating Grace. -
They do not reflect that their present difficulties are
moral ones, not intellectual;-I mean, that it is not
that they really doubt whether the conclusion at which
they have arrived, that the Catholic Church comes
from God, is true; this they do not doubt in their
reason at all, but that they cannot rule their mind to
grasp and keep hold of this truth. They recognize it
dimly, though certainly, as the sun through mists and
clouds, and they forget that it is the office of grace to
- clear up gloom and haziness, to steady that fitful vision,
to perfect reason by faith, and to convert a logical con-
5 clusion into an object of intellectual sight. And thus
they will not credit it as possible, when we assure
them, of what we have seen in so many instances,
that all their trouble will go, when once they have
entered the communion of Saints and the atmosphere
of grace and light, and that they will be so full of
peace and joy as not to know how to thank God
enough, and from the very force of their feelings and
the necessity of relieving them, they will set about
converting others with a sudden zeal which contrasts
strangely with their late vacillation.
Two remarks I must add in conclusion, in explana-
tion of what I have been saying. -
First, do not suppose I have been speaking in dis-
paragement of human reason : it is the way to faith;
its conclusions are often the very objects of faith. It
precedes faith, when souls are converted to the
Catholic Church; and it is the instrument which the
Church herself is guided to make use of, when she is
called upon to put forth those definitions of doctrine,
J.Wuminating Grace. 189
in which, according to the promise and power of her
Lord and Saviour, she is infallible; but still reason
is one thing and faith is another, and reason can as
little be made a substitute for faith, as faith can be
made a substitute for reason.
Again, I have been speaking as if a state of nature
were utterly destitute of the influences of grace, and
as if those who are external to the Church acted
simply from nature. I have so spoken for the sake
of distinctness, that grace and nature might clearly
be contrasted with each other; but it is not the fact.
God gives His grace to all men, and to those who
profit by it He gives more grace, and even those who “...i
quench it still have the offer. Hence some men act
simply from nature; some act from nature in some
respects, not in others; others are yielding themselves
to the guidance of the assistances given them ; others,
who have faithfully availed themselves of that guidance,
and are sincerely in search of the Church and her gifts,
may even already be in a state of justification. Hence
it is impossible to apply what has been said above to
individuals, whose hearts are a secret with God.
Many, I repeat, are under the influence partly of
reason and partly of faith, believe some things firmly,
and have but an opinion on others. Many are in con-
flict with themselves, and are advancing to a crisis,
after which they embrace or recede from the truth.
Many are using the assistances of grace so well, that
they are in the way to receive its permanent indwell-
ing in their hearts. Many, we may trust, are enjoying
that permanent light, and are being securely brought
I90 ///uminating Grace.
forward into the Church; some, alas! may have
received it, and, as not advancing towards the Holy
House in which it is stored, are losing it, and, though
they know it not, are living only by the recollections
of what was once present within them. These are
secret things with God; but the great and general
truths remain, that nature cannot see God, and that
grace is the sole means of seeing Him; and that,
while it enables us to do so, it also brings us into His
Church, and is never given us for our illumination,
but it is also given to make us Catholics. .
Oh, my dear brethren, what joy and what thankful-
ness should be ours, that God has brought us into the
Church of His Son | What gift is equal to it in the
& whole world in its preciousness and in its rarity ? In
this country in particular, where heresy ranges far
and wide, where uncultivated nature has soundisputed
a field all her own, where grace is given to such
numbers only to be profaned and quenched, where
baptisms only remain in their impress and character,
and faith is ridiculed for its very firmness, for us to
find ourselves here in the region of light, in the home
of peace, in the presence of Saints, to find ourselves
where we can use every faculty of the mind and affee-
tion of the heart in its perfection because in its
appointed place and office, to find ourselves in the
possession of certainty, consistency, stability, on the
highest and holiest subjects of human thought, to
have hope here and heaven hereafter, to be on the
º) Mount with Christ, while the poor world is guessing
and quarrelling at its foot, who among us shall not
Illuminating Grace. 191
wonder at his own blessedness, who shall not be awe-
struck at, the inscrutable grace of God, which has
brought him, not others, where he stands P. As the
Apostle says, “Through our Lord Jesus Christ we
have through faith access into this grace wherein we
stand, and glory in the hope of the glory of the sons
of God. And hope confoundeth not; because the
love of God is poured out into our hearts by the
Holy Ghost who is given to us.” And, as St. John
says, still more exactly to our purpose, “Ye have an
unction from the Holy One;”—your eyes are anointed
by Him who put clay on the eyes of the blind man;
“from Him have you an unction, and ye know,” not
conjecture, or suppose, or opine, but “know,” see, “all
things.” “Solet the unction which you have received
of Him abide in you. Nor need ye that any one teach
you, but as His unction teaches you of all things, and is
true and no lie, and hath taught you, so abide in
Him.” You can abide in nothing else; opinions
change, conclusions are feeble, inquiries run their
course, reason stops short, but faith alone reaches to
the end, faith only endures. Faith and prayer alone
will endure in that last dark hour, when Satan urges
all his powers and resources against the sinking soul.
What will it avail" us then, to have devised some
1 Te maris et terrae, numeroque carentis arenae
Mensorem cohibent, Archyta,
Pulveris exigui prope littus parva Matinum
Munera; nec quicquam tibi prodest
Aerios tentasse domos, animoque rotundum
Percurrisse polum, morituro !
I 92 ///uminating Grace.
C.
subtle argument, or to have led some brilliant attack,
or to have mapped out the field of history, or to have
numbered and sorted the weapons of controversy, and
to have the homage of friends and the respect of the
world for our successes;–what will it avail to have
had a position, to have followed out a work, to have
re-animated an idea, to have made a cause to triumph,
if after all we have not the light of faith to guide us
on from this world to the next 2 Oh, how fain shall
we be in that day to exchange our place with the
humblest, and dullest, and most ignorant of the sons
of men, rather than to stand before the judgment-
seat in the lot of him who has received great gifts
from God, and used them for self and for man, who
has shut his eyes, who has trifled with truth, who has
repressed his misgivings, who has been led on by
God’s grace but stopped short of its scope, who has
neared the land of promise, yet not gone forward to
take possession of it !
DISCOURSE X.
FAITH AND PRIVATE 70DGMEW7.
HEN we consider the beauty, the majesty, the
completeness, the resources, the consolations, of
the Catholic Religion, it may strike us with wonder,
my brethren, that it does not convert the multitude
of those who come in its way. Perhaps you have felt
this surprise yourselves; especially those of you who
have been recently converted, and can compare it,
from experience, with those religions which the
millions of this country choose instead of it. You
know, from experience, how barren, unmeaning, and
baseless those religions are; what poor attractions
they have, and how little they have to say for them-
selves. Multitudes, indeed, are of no religion at all;
and you may not be surprised that those who cannot
even bear the thought of God, should not feel drawn
to His Church; numbers, too, hear very little about
Catholicism, or a great deal of abuse and calumny
against it, and you may not be surprised that they do
not all at once become Catholics; but what may fairly
surprise those who enjoy the fulness of Catholic
blessings is, that those who see the Church ever so
distantly, who see even gleams or the faint lustre of
O
194 Faith and Private % udgment.
her majesty, nevertheless should not be so far attracted
by what they see as to seek to see more, should not
at least put themselves in the way to be led on to the
Truth, which of course is not ordinarily recognized in
its divine authority except by degrees. Moses, when
he saw the burning bush, turned aside to see “that
great sight;” Nathanael, though he thought no good
could come out of Nazareth, at least followed Philip to
Christ, when Philip said to him, “Come and see ;”
but the multitudes about us see and hear, in some
measure, surely,–many in ample measure, and yet
are not persuaded thereby to see and hear more, are
not moved to act upon their knowledge. Seeing they
see not, and hearing they hear not ; they are con-
tented to remain as they are : they are not drawn to
inquire, or at least not drawn on to embrace.
TMany explanations may be given of this difficulty;
I will proceed to suggest to you one, which will sound
like a truism, but yet has a meaning in it. Men do
not become Catholics, because they have not faith.
Now you may ask me, how this is saying more than
that men do not believe the Catholic Church because
they do not believe it; which is saying nothing at
all. Our Lord, for instance, says, “He who cometh
to Me shall not hunger, and he who believeth in Me
shall never thirst;”—to believe then and to come are
the same thing. If they had faith, of course they
would join the Church, for the very meaning, the very
exercise of faith, is joining the Church. But I mean
something more than this: faith is a state of mind, it
is a particular mode of thinking and acting, which is
Faith and Private judgment. 19 5
exercised, always indeed towards God, but in very
various ways. Now I mean to say, that the multitude
of men in this country have not this habit or cha-
racter of mind. We could conceive, for instance, their
believing in their own religions, even if they did not
believe in the Church; this would be faith, though a
faith improperly directed; but they do not believe
even their own religions; they do not believe in any-
thing at all. It is a definite defect in their minds:
as we might say that a person had not the virtue of
meekness, or of liberality, or of prudence, quite in-
dependently of this or that exercise of the virtue, so
there is such a virtue as faith, and there is such a
defect as the absence of it. Now I mean to say that
the great mass of men in this country have not this
particular virtue called faith, have not this virtue at º
all. As a man might be without eyes or without
hands, so they are without faith; it is a distinct want
or fault in their soul; and what I say is, that since
they have not this faculty of believing, no wonder
they do not embrace that, which cannot really be
embraced without it. They do not believe any teach-
ing at all in any true sense; and therefore they do s
not believe the Church in particular. .
Now, in the first place, what is faith ? it is assenting
to a doctrine as true, which we do not see, which we g
cannot prove, because God says it is true, who cannot
lie. And further than this, since God says it is true,
not with His own voice, but by the voice of His
messengers, it is assenting to what man says, not
simply viewed as a man, but to what he is commis-
O 2
I96 Faith and Private % udgment.
|
Y:
1.
sioned to declare, as a messenger, prophet, or ambas-
sador from God. In the ordinary course of this
world we account things true either because we see
them, or because that we can perceive that they
follow and are deducible from what we do see; that
is, we gain truth by sight or by reason, not by faith.
You will say indeed, that we accept a number of
things which we cannot prove or see, on the word of
others; certainly ; but then we accept what they say
only as the word of man; and we have not commonly
that absolute and unreserved confidence in them,
which nothing can shake. We know that man is
open to mistake, and we are always glad to find some
confirmation of what he says, from other quarters, in
any important matter; or we receive his information
with negligence and unconcern, as something of little
consequence, as a matter of opinion; or, if we act
upon it, it is as a matter of prudence, thinking it best
and safest to do so. We take his word for what it is
worth, and we use it either according to our necessity,
or its probability. We keep the decision in our own
hands, and reserve to ourselves the right of re-opening
the question whenever we please. This is very dif-
ferent from divine faith; he who believes that God
is true, and that this is His word, which He has
committed to man, has no doubt at all. He is as
certain that the doctrine taught is true, as that God
is true; and he is certain, because. God, is true, de-
cause God has spoken, not because he sees its truth
or can prove its truth. That is, faith has two pecu-
liarities;—it is most certain, decided, positive, im-
Aaith and Private %udgment. I97
moveable in its assent, and it gives this assent not
because it sees with eye, or sees with the reason, but
because it receives the tidings from one who comes
from God.
This is what faith was in the time of the Apostles,
as no one can deny; and what it was then, it must be
now, else it ceases to be the same thing. I say, it
certainly was this in the Apostles’ time, for you know
they preached to the world that Christ was the Son
of God, that He was born of a Virgin, that He had
ascended on high, that He would come again to judge
all, the living and the dead. Could the world see all
this 2 could it prove it? how then were men to re-
ceive it? why did so many embrace it 2 on the word
of the Apostles, who were, as their powers showed,
messengers from God. Men were told to submit
their reason to a living authority. Moreover, what-
ever an Apostle said, his converts were bound to
believe; when they entered the Church, they entered
it in order to learn. The Church was their teacher;
they did not come to argue, to examine, to pick and
choose, but to accept whatever was put before them.
No one doubts, no one can doubt this, of those primi-
tive times. A Christian was bound to take without
3)
doubting all that the Apostles declared to be re-
vealed; if the Apostles spoke, he had to yield an
internal assent of his mind; it would not be
enough to keep silence, it would not be enough
not to oppose; it was not allowable to credit in a
measure; it was not allowable to doubt. No ; if a
convert had his own private thoughts of what was
198 Faith and Private } udgment.
said, and only kept them to himself, if he made some
secret opposition to the teaching, if he waited for
farther proof before he believed it, this would be a proof
that he did not think the Apostles were sent from
God to reveal His will; it would be a proof that he
a did not in any true sense believe at all. Immediate,
implicit submission of the mind was, in the lifetime
of the Apostles, the only, the necessary token of
faith; then there was no room whatever for what is
now called private judgment. No one could say, “I
will choose my religion for myself, I will believe this,
I will not believe that ; I will pledge myself to
nothing ; I will believe just as long as I please and
no longer; what I believe to-day I will reject to-
morrow, if I choose. I will believe what the Apostles
have as yet said, but I will not believe what they
shall say in time to come.” No ; either the Apostles
were from God, or they were not ; if they were,
everything that they preached was to be believed by
their hearers; if they were not, there was nothing for
their hearers to believe. To believe a little, to believe
more or less, was impossible; it contradicted the very
notion of believing : if one part was to be believed,
every part was to be believed; it was an absurdity
to believe one thing and not another; for the word
of the Apostles, which made the one true, made the
other true too; they were nothing in themselves, they
2 were all things, they were an infallible authority, as
coming from God. The world had either to become
Christian, or to let it alone; there was no room for
private tastes and fancies, no room for private judgment.
Faith and Private } udgment. I99
Now surely this is quite clear from the nature of the
case; but it is also clear from the words of Scripture.
“We give thanks to God,” says St. Paul, “without
ceasing, because when ye had received from us the
word of hearing, which is of God, ye received it, not
as the word of men, but (as it is indeed) the word of
God.” Here you see St. Paul expresses what I have
said above; that the word comes from God, that it is
spoken by men, that it must be received, not as man’s
word, but as God’s word. So in another place he
says, “He who despiseth these things, despiseth not
man, but God, who hath also given in us His Holy
Spirit.” Our Saviour had made a like declaration
already, “He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he
that despiseth you, despiseth Me; and he that de-
spiseth Me, despiseth Him that sent Me.” Accord-
ingly St. Peter on the day of Pentecost said, “Men
of Israel, hear these words, God hath raised up this
Jesus, whereof we are witnesses. Let all the house of
Israel Ánow most certain/y that God hath made this
Jesus, whom we have crucified, both Lord and Christ.”
At another time he said, “We ought to obey God,
rather than man; we are witnesses of these things,
and so is the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to
all who obey Him.” And again, “He commanded
us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is He
(Jesus) who hath been appointed by God to be the
Judge of the living and of the dead.” And you know
that the continual declaration of the first preachers
was, “ Believe, and thou shalt be saved:” they do
not say, “prove our doctrine by your own reason,”
200 Faith and Private 7 udgment.
2^)
nor “wait till you see, before you believe;” but,
“believe without seeing and without proving, because
our word is not our own, but God’s word.” Men
might indeed use their reason in inquiring into the
pretensions of the Apostles; they might inquire
whether or not they did miracles; they might inquire
whether they were predicted in the Old Testament as
coming from God; but when they had ascertained
this fairly in whatever way, they were to take all the
Apostles said for granted without proof; they were to
is exercise their faith, they were to be saved by hearing.
Hence, as you perhaps observed, St. Paul significantly
calls the revealed doctrine “the word of hearing,” in
the passage I quoted; men came to hear, to accept,
to obey, not to criticize what was said; and in accord-
ance with this he asks elsewhere, “How shall they
believe Him, whom they have not heard? and how
shall they hear without a preacher? Faith cometh
by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”
Now, my dear brethren, consider, are not these two
states or acts of mind quite distinct from each other;
a –to believe simply what a living authority tells you;
and to take a book, such as Scripture, and to use it
as you please, to master it, that is, to make yourself
the master of it, to interpret it for yourself, and to
admit just what you choose to see in it, and nothing
more ? Are not these two procedures distinct in
this, that in the former you submit, in the latter you
º judge P. At this moment I am not asking you which
is the better, I am not asking whether this or that is
practicable now, but are they not two ways of taking
Faith and Private } udgment. 201
up a doctrine, and not one? is not submission quite
contrary to judging? Now, is it not certain that
faith in the time of the Apostles consisted in submit-
ting 2 and is it not certain that it did not consist in
judging for one’s self? It is in vain to say that the
man who judges from the Apostles’ writings, does
submit to those writings in the first instance, and
therefore has faith in them; else why should he refer
to them at all P There is, I repeat, an essential dif-
ference between the act of submitting to a living º
oracle, and to his book; in the former case there is no
appeal from the speaker, in the latter the final deci-
sion remains with the reader. Consider how different
is the confidence with which you report another's
words in his presence and in his absence. If he be
absent, you boldly say that he holds so and so, or
said so and so; but let him come into the room in the
midst of the conversation, and your tone is imme-
diately changed. It is then, “I think I have heard you
say something like this, or what I took to be this;”
or you modify considerably the statement or the fact
to which you originally pledged him, dropping one-
half of it for safety-sake, or retrenching the most
startling portions of it; and then after all you wait
with some anxiety to see whether he will accept any
portion of it at all. The same sort of process takes
place in the case of the written document of a person
now dead. I can fancy a man magisterially expound-
ing St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians or to the Ephe-
sians, who would be better content with the writer’s
absence than his sudden re-appearance among us;
2O2 Aaith and Private ºudgment.
lest the Apostle should take his own meaning out of
his commentator’s hands and explain it for himself.
In a word, though he says he has faith in St. Paul’s
writings, he confessedly has no faith in St. Paul; and
though he may speak much about truth as found in
Scripture, he has no wish at all to have been one of
the Christians who are found there.
I think I may assume that this virtue, which was
exercised by the first Christians, is not known at all
among Protestants now; or at least if there are
instances of it, it is exercised towards those, I mean
their teachers and divines, who expressly disclaim
that they are fit objects of it, and who exhort their
people to judge for themselves. Protestants, generally
speaking, have not faith, in the primitive meaning of
that word; this is clear from what I have been saying,
and here is a confirmation of it. If men believed now,
as they did in the times of the Apostles, they could
not doubt nor change. No one can doubt whether a
word spoken by God is to be believed; of course it is ;
whereas any one, who is modest and humble, may
easily be brought to doubt of his own inferences and
deductions. Since men now-a-days deduce from Scrip-
ture, instead of believing a teacher, you may expect
to see them waver about ; they will feel the force of
their own deductions more strongly at one time than
at another, they will change their minds about them,
or perhaps deny them altogether; whereas this cannot
be, while a man has faith, that is, belief, that what a
preacher says to him comes from God. This is what
St. Paul especially insists on, telling us that Apostles,
Aaith and Private } udgment. 2O3
prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, are given
us that, “we may all attain to unity of faith,” and, on 3
the contrary, in order “ that we be not as children
tossed to and fro, and carried about by every gale of
doctrine.” Now, in matter of fact, do not men in this
day change about in their religious opinions without
any limit 2 Is not this, then, a proof that they have
not that faith which the Apostles demanded of their
converts? If they had faith, they would not change.
Once believe that God has spoken, and you are sure
He cannot unsay what He has already said; He
cannot deceive; He cannot change; you have received
it once for all; you will believe it ever.
Such is the only rational, consistent account of faith;
but so far are Protestants from professing it, that they
laugh at the very notion of it. They laugh at the
notion itself of men pinning their faith (as they
express themselves) upon Pope or Council; they think
it simply superstitious and narrow-minded, to profess
to believe just what the Church believes, and to assent
to whatever she shall say in time to come on matters
of doctrine. That is, they laugh at the bare notion of
doing what Christians undeniably did in the time of
the Apostles. Observe, they do not merely ask
whether the Catholic Church has a claim to teach, has
authority, has the gifts;–this is a reasonable question;
—no, they think that the very state of mind, which
such a claim involves in those who admit it, namely,
the disposition to accept without reserve or question,
that this is slavish. They call it priesteraft to insist
on this surrender of the reason, and superstition to
2O4 Faith and Private } udgment.
make it. That is, they quarrel with the very state of
mind which all Christians had in the age of the
Apostles; nor is there any doubt, (who will deny it 2)
that those who thus boast of not being led blindfold,
of judging for themselves, of believing just as much
and just as little as they please, of hating dictation,
and so forth, would have found it an extreme difficulty
to hang on the lips of the Apostles, had they lived at
their date, or rather would have simply resisted the
sacrifice of their own liberty of thought, would have
thought life eternal too dearly purchased at such a
price, and would have died in their unbelief. And they
would have defended themselves on the plea that it was
absurd and childish to ask them to believe without
proof, to bid them give up their education, and their
intelligence, and their science, and, in spite of all those
difficulties which reason and sense find in the Christian
doctrine, in spite of its mysteriousness, its obscurity,
its strangeness, its unacceptableness, its severity, to
require them to surrender themselves to the teaching
of a few unlettered Galilaeans, or a learned indeed but
fanatical Pharisee. This is what they would have said
then; and if so, is it wonderful they do not become
Catholics now P The simple account of their remain-
ing as they are, is, that they lack one thing, they
have not faith; it is a state of mind, it is a virtue,
which they do not recognize to be praiseworthy, which
they do not aim at possessing.
What they feel now, my brethren, is just what both
Jew and Greek felt before them in the time of the
Apostles, and what the natural man has felt ever since.
Faith and Private } udgment. 205
The great and wise men of the day looked down upon
faith, then as now, as if it were unworthy the dignity
of human nature, “See your vocation, brethren, that
there are not,” among you “many wise according to
the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but the
foolish things of the world hath God chosen to con-
found the strong, and the mean things of the world, and
the things that are contemptible, hath God chosen,
and things that are not, that He might destroy the
things that are, that no flesh might glory in His
sight.” Hence the same Apostle speaks of “the
foolishness of preaching.” Similar to this is what
our Lord had said in His prayer to the Father;
“I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and hast revealed them unto little ones.”
Now is it not plain that men of this day have just
inherited the feelings and traditions of these falsely
wise and fatally prudent persons in our Lord's day?'
They have the same obstruction in their hearts
to entering the Catholic Church, which Pharisees and
Sophists had before them; it goes against them to
believe her doctrine, not so much for want of evidence
that she is from God, as because, if so, they shall have
to submit their minds to living men, who have not
their own cultivation or depth of intellect, and because
they must receive a number of doctrines, whether they
will or no, which are strange to their imagination and
difficult to their reason. The very characteristic of
the Catholic teaching and of the Catholic teacher is
to them a preliminary objection to their becoming
*
206 Faith and Private %udgment.
Q
Catholics, so great, as to throw into the shade any
argument however strong, which is producible in
behalf of the mission of those teachers and the origin
of that teaching. In short, they have not faith.
They have not in them the principle of faith; and
I repeat, it is nothing to the purpose to urge that at
least they firmly believe Scripture to be the word of
God. In truth, it is much to be feared that their
acceptance of Scripture itself is nothing better than a
prejudice or inveterate feeling impressed on them when
they were children. A proof of it is this; that, while
they profess to be so shocked at Catholic miracles, and
are not slow to call them “lying wonders,” they have
no difficulty at all about Scripture narratives, which
are quite as difficult to the reason as any miracles
recorded in the history of the Saints. I have heard
on the contrary of Catholics, who have been startled
at first reading in Scripture the narrative of the ark
in the deluge, of the tower of Babel, of Balaam and
Balac, of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt and entrance
into the promised land, and of Esau’s and Saul’s
rejection; which the bulk of Protestants receive with-
out any effort of mind. How, then, do these Catholics
accept them 2 by faith. They say, “God is true, and
every man a liar.”
How come Protestants so easily to
receive them 2 by faith? Nay, I conceive that in most
cases there is no submission of the reason at all; simply
they are so familiar with the passages in question,
that the narrative presents no difficulties to their
imagination; they have nothing to overcome. If, ;
however, they are led to contemplate these passages
Faith and Private %udgment. 207
in themselves, and to try them in the balance of pro-
bability, and to begin to question about them, as will
happen when their intellect is cultivated, then there
is nothing to bring them back to their former habitual
or mechanical belief; they know nothing of submit-
ting to authority, that is, they know nothing of faith;
for they have no authority to submit to. They either
remain in a state of doubt without any great trouble
of mind, or they go on to ripen into utter disbelief on
the subjects in question, though they may say no-
thing about it. Neither before they doubt, nor when
g
they doubt, is there any token of the presence in them
of a power subjecting reason to the word of God. No ;
what looks like faith, is a mere hereditary persuasion,
not a personal principle: it is a habit which they
have learned in the nursery, which has never changed
into anything higher, and which is scattered and dis-
appears, like a mist, before the light, such as it is, of
reason. If, however, there are Protestants, who are
not in one or other of these two states, either of
credulity or of doubt, but who firmly believe in spite
of all difficulties, they certainly have some claim to
be considered under the influence of faith; but there
is nothing to show that such persons, where they are
found, are not in the way to become Catholics, and
perhaps they are already called so by their friends,
showing in their own examples the logical, indisput-
able connexion which exists between possessing faith
and joining the Church.
If, then, faith be now the same faculty of mind, the
same sort of habit or act, which it was in the days of
208 Faith and Private %udgment.
4,
the Apostles, I have made good what I set about show-
ing. But it must be the same; it cannot mean two
things; the word cannot have changed its meaning.
Either say that faith is not necessary now at all, or
take it to be what the Apostles meant by it, but do
not say that you have it, and then show me something
quite different, which you have put in the place of it.
In the Apostles’ days the peculiarity of faith was sub-
mission to a living authority; this is what made it so
distinctive; this is what made it an act of submission
at all; this is what destroyed private judgment in mat.
ters of religion. If you will not look out for a living
authority, and will bargain for private judgment, then
say at once that you have not Apostolic faith. And in
fact you have it not; the bulk of this nation has it
not; confess you have it not ; and then confess that
this is the reason why you are not Catholics. You are
not Catholics because you have not faith. Why do not
blind men see the Sun ? because they have no eyes;
in like manner it is vain to discourse upon the beauty,
the sanctity, the sublimity of the Catholic doctrine
and worship, where men have no faith to accept them
as divine. They may confess their beauty, sublimity,
and sanctity, without believing them ; they may
acknowledge that the Catholic religion is noble and
majestic ; they may be struck with its wisdom, they
may admire its adaptation to human nature, they may
be penetrated by its tender and winning bearing, they
may be awed by its consistency. But to commit them-
selves to it, that is another matter; to choose it for
their portion, to say with the favoured Moabitess,
Faith and Private 7 udgment. 209
“Whithersoever thou shalt go, I will go; and where
thou shalt dwell, I will dwell; thy people shall be my .
people, and thy God my God,” this is the language of
faith. . A man may revere, a man may extol, who has
no tendency whatever to obey, no notion whatever of
professing. And this often happens in fact: men
are respectful to the Catholic religion; they acknow-
ledge its services to mankind, they encourage it and
its professors; they like to know them, they are inte-
rested in hearing of their movements, but they are not,
and never will be Catholics. They will die, as they
have lived, out of the Church, because they have not
possessed themselves of that faculty by which the
Church is to be approached. Catholics who have not
studied them or human nature, will wonder they re-
main were they are; nay, they themselves, alas for
them will sometimes lament they cannot become
Catholics. They will feel so intimately the blessed-
ness of being a Catholic, that they will cry out, “Oh,
what would I give to be a Catholic l oh, that I could
believe what I admire but I do not, and I can no
more believe merely because I wish to do so, than I
can leap over a mountain. I should be much happier
were I a Catholic; but I am not; it is no use deceiving
myself; I am what I am ; I revere, I cannot accept.”
Oh, deplorable state deplorable because it is utterly
and absolutely their own fault, and because such great
stress is laid in Scripture, as they know, on the neces-
sity of faith for salvation. Faith is there made the
foundation and commencement of all acceptable obe-
dience. It is described as the “argument ’’ or “proof
P
21o Faith and Private } udgment.
of things not seen;” by faith men have understood
that God is, that He made the world, that He is a
rewarder of those who seek Him, that the flood was
coming, that their Saviour was to be born. “With-
out faith it is impossible to please God; ” “by faith
we stand;” “by faith we walk;” “by faith we over-
come the world.” When our Lord gave to the Apos-
tles their commission to preach all over the world, He
continued, “He that believeth and is baptized, shall
be saved; but he that believeth not, shall be con-
demned.” And He declared to Nicodemus, “He
that believeth in the Son, is not judged; but he that
doth not believe is alreadyj udged, because he believeth
not in the Name of the Only-begotten Son of God.”
He said to the Pharisees, “If you believe not that I
am He, ye shall die in your sins.” To the Jews,
“Ye believe not, because ye are not of My sheep.”
And you may recollect that before His miracles, He
commonly demands faith of the supplicant ; “ All
things are possible,” He says, “to him that believeth;”
and we find in one place “He could not do any
miracle,” on account of the unbelief of the inhabitants.
Has faith changed its meaning, or is it less necessary
now 2 Is it not still what it was in the Apostles’
day, the very characteristie of Christianity, the special
instrument of renovation, the first disposition for
justification, one out of the three theological virtues?
God might have renewed us by other means, by sight,
by reason, by love, but He has chosen to “purify our
hearts by faith;” it has been His will to select an
instrument which the world despises, but which is of
Faith and Private } udgment. 21 t
immense power. He preferred it, in His infinite
wisdom, to every other; and if men have it not, they
have not the very element and rudiment, out of which
are formed, on which are built, the Saints and Ser-
wants of God. And they have it not, they are living,
they are dying, without the hopes, without the aids
of the Gospel, because, in spite of so much that is
good in them, in spite of their sense of duty, their
tenderness of conscience on many points, their bene-
volence, their uprightness, their generosity, they are
under the dominion (I must say it) of a proud fiend;
they have this stout spirit within them, they will
be their own masters in matters of thought, about
which they know so little; they consider their own
reason better than any one's else; they will not admit
that any one comes from God who contradicts their
own view of truth. What l is none their equal in
wisdom anywhere? is there none other whose word is
to be taken on religion ? is there none to wrest from
them their ultimate appeal to themselves? Have they
in no possible way the occasion or opportunity of faith ?
Is it a virtue, which in consequence of their transcendent
sagacity, their prerogative of omniscience, they must
despair of exercising? If the pretensions of the
Catholic Church do not satisfy them, let them go
somewhere else, if they can. If they are so fastidious
that they cannot trust her as the oracle of God, let
them find another more certainly from Him than the
House of His own institution, which has ever been
called by His Name, has ever maintained the same
claims, has ever taught one substance of doctrine,
P 2
212 Faith and Private %udgment.
and has triumphed over those who preached any other.
Since Apostolic faith was reliance on man’s word as
being God’s word, since what faith was in the beginning
such it is now, since faith is necessary for salvation,
let them attempt to exercise it towards another, if
they will not accept the Bride of the Lamb. Let
them, if they can, put faith in some of those religions
which have lasted a whole two or three centuries in a
corner of the earth. Let them stake their eternal
prospects on kings and nobles and parliaments and .
soldiery, let them take some mere fiction of the law,
or abortion of the schools, or idol of a populace, or
upstart of a crisis, or oracle of lecture-rooms, as the
prophet of God. Alas! they are hardly bestead if
they must possess a virtue, which they have no means
of exercising, if they must make an act of faith,
they know not on whom, and know not why •
What thanks ought we to render to Almighty God,
my dear brethren, that He has made us what we are
It is a matter of grace. There are, to be sure, many
cogent arguments to lead one to join the Catholic
Church, but they do not force the will. We may
know them, and not be moved to act upon them. We
may be convinced without being persuaded. The two
things are quite distinct from each other, seeing you
ought to believe, and believing ; reason, if left to
itself, will bring you to the conclusion that you have
sufficient grounds for believing, but belief is the gift
of grace. You are then what you are, not from any
excellence or merit of your own, but by the grace of
God who has chosen you to believe. You might have
Aaith and Private } udgment. 213
been as the barbarian of Africa, or the freethinker of
Europe, with grace sufficient to condemn you, because
it had not furthered your salvation. You might have
had strong inspirations of grade and have resisted
them, and then additional grace might not have been
given to overcome your resistance. God gives not the
same measure of grace to all. Has He not visited you
with over-abundant grace? and was it not necessary
for your hard hearts to receive more than other people?
Praise and bless Him continually for the benefit; do
not forget, as time goes on, that it is of grace; do not
pride yourselves upon it; pray ever not to lose it ; and
do your best to make others partakers of it.
And you, my brethren, also, if such be present, who
are not as yet Catholics, but who by your coming
hither seem to show your interest in our teaching, and
your wish to know more about it, you too remember,
that though you may not yet have faith in the Church,
still God has brought you into the way of obtaining
it. You are under the influence of His grace; He has
brought you a step on your journey; He wishes to
bring you farther, He wishes to bestow on you the
fulness of His blessings, and to make you Catholics.
You are still in your sins; probably you are laden
with the guilt of many years, the accumulated guilt of
many a deep mortal offence, which no contrition has
washed away, and to which no Sacrament has been
applied. You at present are troubled with an uneasy
conscience, a dissatisfied reason, an unclean heart, and
a divided will; you need to be converted. Yet now the
first suggestions of grace are working in your souls,
214 Faith and Private %udgment.
and are to issue in pardon for the past and sanctity for
the future. God is moving you to acts of faith, hope,
love, hatred of sin, repentance; do not disappoint
Him, do not thwart Him, concur with Him, obey
Him. You look up, and you see, as it were, a great
mountain to be scaled; you say, “How can I possibly
find a path over these giant obstacles, which I find in
the way of my becoming Catholic 2 I do not compre-
hend this doctrine, and I am pained at that ; a third
seems impossible; I never can be familiar with one
practice, I am afraid of another; it is one maze and
discomfort to me, and I am led to sink down in de-
spair.” Say not so, my dear brethren, look up in hope,
trust in Him who calls you forward. “Who art thou,
O great mountain, before Zorobabel ? but a plain.”
He will lead you forward step by step, as He has led
forward many a one before you. He will make the
crooked straight and the rough plain. He will turn
the streams, and dry up the rivers, which lie in your
path. “He shall strengthen your feet like harts’ feet,
and set you up on high places. He shall widen your
steps under you, and your tread shall not be weak-
ened.” “There is no God like the God of the
righteous; He that mounts the heaven is thy Helper;
by His mighty working the clouds disperse. His
dwelling is above, and underneath are the everlasting
arms; He shall cast out the enemy from before thee,
and shall say, Be brought to nought.” “The young
shall faint, and youths shall fall; but they that hope
in the Lord shall be new-fledged in strength, they
shall take feathers like eagles, they shall run and not
labour, they shall walk and not faint.”
D IS CO U R S E XI.
AºA ZZTAZ AAVZ) ZDOO/B 7.
HOSE who are drawn by curiosity or a better motive
to inquire into the Catholic Religion, sometimes
put to us a strange question,-whether, if they took
up the profession of it, they would be at liberty, when
they felt inclined, to reconsider the question of its
divine authority; meaning, by “reconsideration” an
inquiry springing from doubt of it, and possibly end-
ing in a denial. The same question, in the form of
an objection, is often asked by those who have no
thoughts at all of becoming Catholics, and who en-
large upon it, as something terrible, that whoever once
enters the pale of the Church, on him the door of
egress is shut for ever; that, once a Catholic, he never,
never can doubt again ; that, whatever his misgivings
may be, he must stifle them, nay must start from them
as the suggestions of the evil spirit; in short, that he
must give up altogether the search after truth, and do
a violence to his mind, which is nothing short of im-
moral. This is what is said, my brethren, by certain
objectors, and their own view is, or ought to be, if
they are consistent, this, that it is a fault ever to
2I 6 Faith and Z)0uðt. -
make up our mind once for all on any religious subject
whatever; and that, however sacred a doctrine may be,
and however evident to us, let us say, for instance,
the divinity of our Lord, or the existence of God, we
ought always to reserve to ourselves the liberty of
doubting about it. I cannot help thinking that so
extravagant a position, as this is, confutes itself; how-
ever, I will consider the contrary (that is, the Catholic)
view of the subject, on its own merits, though without
admitting the language in which it was just now
stated by its opponents. -
It is, then, perfectly true, that the Church does not
allow her children to entertain any doubt of her teach-
ing; and that, first of all, simply for this reason,
because they are Catholics only while they have faith,
and faith is incompatible with doubt. No one can be
a Catholic without a simple faith, that what the Church
declares in God’s name, is God’s word, and therefore
true. A man must simply believe that the Church
is the oracle of God; he must be as certain of her
mission, as he is of the mission of the Apostles. Now,
would any one ever call him certain that the Apostles
came from God, if, after professing his certainty, he
added, that, for what he knew, he might doubt one
day about their mission? Such an anticipation would
be a real, though latent, doubt, betraying that he was
not certain of it at present, A person who says, “I
believe just at this moment, but perhaps I am excited
without knowing it, and I cannot answer for myself,
that I shall believe to-morrow,” does not believe. A
man who says, “Perhaps I am in a kind of delusion,
Faith and Doubt. 2 I 7
which will one day pass away from me, and leave me
as I was before; ” or, “I believe as far as I can
tell, but there may be arguments in the background
which will change my view,” such a man has not faith
at all. When, then, Protestants quarrel with us for
saying that those who join us must give up all ideas
of ever doubting the Church in time to come, they do
nothing else but quarrel with us for insisting on the
necessity of faith in her. Let them speak plainly ;
our offence is that of demanding faith in the Holy
Catholic Church; it is this, and nothing else. I must
insist upon this: faith implies a confidence in a man's
mind, that the thing believed is really true; but, if it
is once true, it never can be false. If it is true that God
became man, what is the meaning of my anticipating
a time when perhaps I shall not believe that God be-
came man P this is nothing short of anticipating a time
when I shall disbelieve a truth. And if I bargain to
be allowed in time to come not to believe, or to doubt,
that God became man, I am but asking to be allowed
to doubt or to disbelieve what is an eternal truth. I
do not see the privilege of such a permission at all, or
the meaning of wishing to secure it —if at present I
have no doubt whatever about it, then I am but asking
leave to fall into error; if at present I have doubts
about it, then I do not believe it at present, that is, I
have not faith. But I cannot both really believe it now,
and yet look forward to a time when perhaps I shall
not believe it; to make provision for future doubt, is
to doubt at present. It proves I am not in a fit state
to become a Catholic now. I may love by halves, I
218 Faith and Doué.
may obey by halves; I cannot believe by halves: either
I have faith, or I have it not.
And so again, when a man has become a Catholic,
were he to set about following out a doubt which has
occurred to him, he has already disbelieved. I have
not to warn him against losing his faith, he is not
merely in danger of losing it, he has lost it; from the
nature of the case he has already lost it; he fell from
grace at the moment when he deliberately entertained
and pursued his doubt. No one can determine to doubt
what he is sure of ; but if he is not sure that the
Church is from God, he does not believe it. It is not
I who forbid him to doubt; he has taken the matter
into his own hands when he determined on asking for
leave ; he has begun, not ended, in unbelief; his very
wish, his purpose, is his sin. I do not make it so, it
is such from the very state of the case. You some-
times hear, for example, of Catholics falling away,
who will tell you it arose from reading the Scriptures,
which opened their eyes to the “unscripturalness,”
so they speak, of the Church of the Living God. No ;
Scripture did not make them disbelieve (impossible!);
they disbelieved when they opened the Bible; they
opened it in an unbelieving spirit, and for an un-
believing purpose; they would not have opened it,
had they not anticipated—I might say, hoped—that
they should find things there inconsistent with Catho-
lic teaching. They begin in self-will and disobedience,
and they end in apostasy. This, then, is the direct
and obvious reason why the Church cannot allow her
children the liberty of doubting the truth of her word.
Araith and Douáž. 2 I 9
He who really believes in it now, cannot imagine the
future discovery of reasons to shake his faith; if he
imagines it, he has not faith; and that so many
Protestants think it a sort of tyranny in the Church
to forbid any children of hers to doubt about her
teaching, only shows they do not know what faith is
—which is the case; it is a strange idea to them. Let
a man cease to inquire, or cease to call himself her
child.
This is my first remark, and now I go on to a
second. You may easily conceive, my brethren, that
they who are entering the Church, or at least those
who have entered it, have more than faith; that they
have some portion of divine love also. They have
heard in the Church of the charity of Him who died
for them, and who has given them. His Sacraments 2,S
the means of conveying the merits of His death to
their souls, and they have felt more or less in those
poor souls of theirs the beginnings of a responsive
charity drawing them to Him. Now, does it stand
with a loving trust, better than with faith, for a man
to anticipate the possibility of doubting or denying
the great mercies in which he is rejoicing P Take an
instance; what would you think of a friend whom
you loved, who could bargain that, in spite of his
present trust in you, he might be allowed some day
to doubt you? who, when a thought came into his
mind, that you were playing a game with him, or that
you were a knave, or a profligate, did not drive it from
him with indignation, or laugh.it away for its absur-
dity, but considered that he had an evident right to
22O Paith and Doubt.
indulge it, nay, should be wanting in duty to himself,
unless he did? Would you think that your friend
trifled with truth, that he was unjust to his reason,
that he was wanting in manliness, that he was hurting
his mind, if he shrank from it ? or would you not call
him cruel and miserable if he did not ? For me, my
brethren, if he took the latter course, may I never be
intimate with so unpleasant a person ; suspicious,
jealous minds, minds that keep at a distance from
me, that insist on their rights, fall back on their own
centre, are ever fancying offences, and are cold, cen-
sorious, wayward, and uncertain, these are often to
be borne as a cross; but give me for my friend one
who will unite heart and hand with me, who will
throw himself into my cause and interest, who will
take my part when I am attacked, who will be sure
4|
beforehand that I am in the right, and, if he is criti-
cal, as he may have cause to be towards a being of
sin and imperfection, will be so from very love and
loyalty, from anxiety that I should always show to
advantage, and a wish that others should love me as
heartily as he does. I should not say a friend trusted
me, who listened to every idle story against me; and I
should like his absence better than his company, if he
gravely told me that it was a duty he owed to himself
to encourage his misgivings of my honour.
Well, pass on to a higher subject;-could a man
be said to trust in God, and to love God, who was
familiar with doubts whether there was a God at all,
or who bargained that, just as often as he pleased, he
might be at liberty to doubt whether God was good,
Faith and Douá. 22 I
or just or almighty; and who maintained that, unless
he did this, he was but a poor slave, that his mind
was in bondage, and could render no free acceptable
service to his Maker;-that the very worship which
God approved was one attended with a caveat, on the
worshipper's part, that he did not promise to render it
to-morrow, that he would not answer for himself that
some argument might not come to light, which he
had never heard before, which would make it a grave
moral duty in him to suspend his judgment and his
devotion ? Why, I should say, my brethren, that
that man was worshipping his own mind, his own
dear self, and not God; that his idea of God was a
mere accidental form which his thoughts took at this
time or that, for a long period or a short one, as the
case might be, not an image of the great Eternal
Object, but a passing sentiment or imagination
which meant nothing at all. I should say, and most
men would agree with me, did they choose to give
attention to the matter, that the person in question
was a very self-conceited, self-wise man, and had
neither love, nor faith, nor fear, nor anything super-
natural about him; that his pride must be broken, -
and his heart new-made, before he was capable of any
religious act at all. The argument is the same, in its
degree, when applied to the Church; she comes to us
as a messenger from God, how can a man who
feels this, who comes to her, who falls at her feet as
such, make a reserve, that he may be allowed to doubt
her at some future day ? Let the world cry out, if it
will, that his reason is in fetters; let it pronounce
2 22 Faith and Doubt.
that he is a bigot, unless he reserves his right of
doubting; but he knows full well himself that he
would be an ingrate and a fool, if he did. Fetters,
indeed! yes, “ the cords of Adam,” the fetters of
love, these are what bind him to the Holy Church; he
is, with the Apostle, the slave of Christ, the Church’s
Lord; united, (never to part, as he trusts, while life
lasts) to her Sacraments, to her Sacrifices, to her
Saints, to the Blessed Mary her advocate, to Jesus, to
God. -
The truth is, that the world, knowing nothing of
the blessings of the Catholic faith, and prophesying
nothing but ill concerning it, fancies that a convert,
after the first fervour is over, feels nothing but disap-
pointment, weariness, and offence in his new religion,
and is secretly desirous of retracing his steps. This is
at the root of the alarm and irritation which it mani-
fests at hearing that doubts are incompatible with a
Catholic's profession, because it is sure that doubts
will come upon him, and then how pitiable will be his
state | That there can be peace, and joy, and know-
ledge, and freedom, and spiritual strength in the
Church, is a thought far beyond its imagination; for
it regards her simply as a frightful conspiracy against
the happiness of man, seducing her victims by speci-
ous professions, and, when they are once hers, caring
nothing for the misery which breaks upon them, so
that by any means she may detain them in bondage.
Accordingly, it conceives we are in perpetual warfare
with our own reason, fierce objections ever rising within
us, and we forcibly repressing them. It believes that,
Æazáſ, azza! /Jozzóá. 223
after the likeness of a vessel which has met with some
accident at sea, we are ever baling out the water which
rushes in upon us, and have hard work to keep afloat ;
we just manage to linger on, either by an unnatural
strain on our minds, or by turning them away from
the subject of religion. The world disbelieves our
doctrines itself, and cannot understand our own be-
lieving them. It considers them so strange, that it is
quite sure, though we will not confess it, that we are
haunted day and night with doubts, and tormented
with the apprehension of yielding to them. I really
do think it is the world’s judgment, that one principal
part of a confessor's work is the putting down such
- misgivings in his penitents. It fancies that the rea-
son is ever rebelling, like the flesh; that doubt, like
concupiscence, is elicited by every sight and sound,
and that temptation insinuates itself in every page of
letter-press, and through the very voice of a Protes-
tant polemic. When it sees a Catholic Priest, it looks
hard at him, to make out how much there is of folly
in his composition, and how much of hypocrisy. But,
my dear brethren, if these are your thoughts, you are
simply in error. Trust me, rather than the world,
when I tell you, that it is no difficult thing for a
Catholic to believe ; and that unless he grievously
mismanages himself, the difficult thing is for him to
doubt. He has received a gift which makes faith easy;
it is not without an effort, a miserable effort, that any
one who has received that gift, unlearns to believe.
He does violence to his mind, not in exercising, but
in withholding his faith. When objections occur to
224 Faith and Doubſ.
him, which they may easily do if he lives in the world,
they are as odious and unwelcome to him as impure
thoughts are to the virtuous. He does certainly shrink
from them, he flings them away from him, but why?
not in the first instance, because they are dangerous,
but because they are cruel and base. His loving Lord
has done everything for him, and has He deserved
such a return? Popule meus, quid feel tibi 2 “O My
people, what have I done to thee, or in what have I
molested thee? answer thou Me. I brought thee out
of the land of Egypt, and delivered thee out of the
house of slaves; and I sent before thy face Moses, and
Aaron, and Mary; I fenced thee in, and planted thee
with the choicest vines; and what is there that I ought
to do more to My vineyard that I have not done to it?”
He has poured on us His grace, He has been with us
in our perplexities, He has led us on from one truth
to another, He has forgiven us our sins, He has satisfied
our reason, He has made faith easy, He has given us
His Saints, He shows before us day by day His own
Passion; why should I leave Him? What has He
ever done to me but good? Why must I re-examine
what I have examined once for all? Why must I listen
to every idle word which flits past me against Him, on
pain of being called a bigot and a slave, when, if I did,
I should be behaving to the Most High, as you your-
selves, who so call me, would not behave towards a
human friend or benefactor 2 If I am convinced in
my reason, and persuaded in my heart, why may I
not be allowed to remain unmolested in my worship 2
I have said enough on the subject; still there is a
Aºazáh and /Jouðt. 225
third point of view in which it may be useful to con-
sider it. Personal prudence is not the first or second
ground for refusing to hear objections to the Church,
but a motive it is, and that from the peculiar nature
of divine faith, which cannot be treated as an ordinary
conviction or belief. Faith is the gift of God, and
not a mere act of our own, which we are free to exert
when we will. It is quite distinct from an exercise
of reason, though it follows upon it. I may feel the
force of the argument for the divine origin of the
Church; I may see that I ought to believe ; and yet
I may be unable to believe. This is no imaginary
case; there is many a man who has ground enough
to believe, who wishes to believe, but who cannot
believe. It is always indeed his own fault, for God
gives grace to all who ask for it, and use it, but still
such is the fact, that conviction is not faith. Take
the parallel case of obedience; many a man knows
he ought to obey God, and does not and cannot,
through his own fault indeed, but still he cannot;
for through grace alone can he obey. Now, faith is
not a mere conviction in reason, it is a firm assent, it
is a clear certainty greater than any other certainty;
and this is wrought in the mind by the grace of God,
and by it alone. As then men may be convinced,
and not act according to their conviction, so may they
be convinced, and not believe according to their convic-
tion. They may confess that the argument is against
them, that they have nothing to say for themselves,
and that to believe is to be happy; and yet, after all,
they avow they cannot believe, they do not know why,
- Q
226 Faith and Doubt.
but they cannot ; they acquiesce in unbelief, and they
turn away from God, and His Church. Their reason
is convinced, and their doubts are moral ones, arising
in their root from a fault of the will. In a word, the
arguments for religion do not compel any one to
believe, just as arguments for good conduct do not
compel any one to obey. Obedience is the consequence
i of willing to obey, and faith is the consequence of
willing to believe; we may see what is right, whether
in matters of faith or obedience, of ourselves, but we
cannot will what is right without the grace of God...
Here is the difference between other exercises of
reason, and arguments for the truth of religion. It
requires no act of faith to assent to the truth that two
and two make four ; we cannot help assenting to it;
and hence there is no merit in assenting to it; but
there is merit in believing that the Church is from
God; for though there are abundant reasons to prove
it to us, yet we can, without an absurdity, quarrel
with the conclusion; we may complain that it is not
clearer, we may suspend our assent, we may doubt
about it, if we will, and grace alone can turn a bad
will into a good one. - r
And now you see why a Catholic dare not in pru-
dence attend to such objections as are brought against
his faith; he has no fear of their proving that the
Church does not come from God, but he is afraid, if
he listened to them without reason, lest God should
punish him by the loss of his supernatural faith. This
is one cause of that miserable state of mind, to which
I have already alluded, in which men would fain be
- Aazz/; and Doubt. 227
Catholics, and are not. They have trifled with con-
viction, they have listened to arguments against what
they knew to be true, and a deadness of mind has
fallen on them; faith has failed them, and, as time
goes on, they betray in their words and their actions,
the Divine judgment, with which they are visited.
They become careless and unconcerned, or restless and
unhappy, or impatient of contradiction; ever asking
advice and quarrelling with it when given; not at-
tempting to answer the arguments urged against them,
but simply not believing. This is the whole of their
case, they do not believe. And then it is quite an
accident what becomes of them ; perhaps they con-
tinue on in this perplexed and comfortless state,
lingering about the Church, yet not of her; not know-
ing what they believe and what they do not, like
blind men, or men deranged, who are deprived of the
eye, whether of body or mind, and cannot guide them-
selves in consequence; ever exciting hopes of a return,
and ever disappointing them ;-Or, if they are men of
more vigorous minds, they launch forward in a course
of infidelity, not really believing less, as they proceed,
for from the first they believed nothing, but taking
up, as time goes on, more and more consistent forms
of error, till sometimes, if a free field is given them,
they even develope into atheism. Such is the end of
those who, under the pretence of inquiring after truth,
trifle with conviction. -
Here then are some of the reasons why the Catholic
Church cannot consistently allow her children to doubt
the divinity and the truth of her words. Mere investiga-
Q 2
228 Aazáſ, and ZOozzóð.
tion indeed into the grounds of our faith is not todoubt;
nor is it doubting to consider the arguments urged
against it, when there is good reason for doing so; but
I am speaking of a real doubt, or a wanton entertain-
ment of objections. Such a procedure the Church
denounces, and not only for the reasons which I have
assigned, but because it would be a plain abandonment
of her office and character to act otherwise. How can
she, who has the prerogative of infallibility, allow her
children to doubt of her gift 2 It would be a simple
inconsistency in her, who is the sure oracle of truth
and messenger of heaven, to look with indifference on
rebels to her authority. She simply does what the
Apostles did before her, whom she has succeeded.
“He that despiseth,” says St. Paul, “ despiseth not
man, but God, who hath also given in us His Holy
, Spirit.” And St. John, “We are of God; he that
knoweth God, heareth us; he that is not of God,
heareth us not ; by this we know the spirit of truth and
the spirit of error.” Take, again, an instance from
the Old Testament:-When Elias was taken up into
heaven, Eliseus was the only witness of the miracle;
on his coming back then to the sons of the Prophets,
they doubted what had become of his master, and
wished to search for him; and, though they acknow-
ledged Eliseus as his successor, they in this instance
refused to take his word on the subject. Eliseus had
struck the waters of Jordan, they had divided, and he
had passed over; here, surely, was ground enough for
faith, and accordingly “the sons of the Prophets at
Jericho, who were over against him, seeing it, said,
Aaith and Douffſ. 229
The spirit of Elias hath rested upon Eliseus; and they
came to meet him, and worshipped him, falling to the
ground.” What could they require more? they con-
fessed that Eliseus had the spirit of his great master,
and, in confessing it, they implied that that master
was taken away; yet, they proceed, from infirmity of
mind, to make a request indicative of doubt; “Behold,
there are with thy servants fifty strong men, that can
go and search for thy master, lest perhaps the Spirit
of the Lord hath taken him up, and cast him upon
some mountain or into some valley.” Now here was
a request to follow up a doubt into an inquiry; did
Eliseus allow it? he knew perfectly well that the in-
quiry would but end, as it really did end,in confirmation
of the truth, but it was indulging a wrong spirit to en-
gage in it, and he would not allow it. These religious
men were, as he would feel, strangely inconsistent:
they were doubting his word whom they had just now
worshipped as a Prophet, and, not only so, but they
were doubting his supreme authority, for they implied
that Elias was still among them. Accordingly be
forbade their request; “He said, Send not.” This is
what the world would call stifling an inquiry; it was,
forsooth, tyrannical and oppressive to oblige them to
take on his word what they might ascertain for them-
selves ; yet he could not do otherwise without being
unfaithful to his divine mission, and sanctioning them
in a fault. It is true when “they pressed him, he
consented, and said, Send; ” but we must not suppose
this to be more than a condescension to their weakness,
or a concession in displeasure, like that which Almighty
23O Aaiú/. and ZDozzóź.
God gave to Balaam, who pressed his request in a
similar way. When Balaam asked to go with the
ancients of Moab, God said, “Thou shalt not go with
them;” when Balaam asked Him “once more,” “God
said to him, Arise and go with them;” then it is
added, “Balaam went with them, and God was angry.”
Here in like manner, the prophet said, Send; “and
they sent fifty men, and they sought three days, but
found him not ;” yet though the inquiry did but prove
that Elias was removed, Eliseus showed no satisfaction
at it, even when it had confirmed his authority: but
“ he said to them, Said I not to you, Send not?” It
is thus that the Church ever forbids inquiry in those
who already acknowledge her authority; but if they
will inquire, she cannot hinder it ; but they are not
justified in doing so. -
And now I think you see, my brethren, why inquiry
precedes faith, and does not follow it. You inquired
before you joined the Church; you were satisfied, and
God rewarded you with the grace of faith; were you
now determined to inquire further, you would lead us
to think you had lost it again, for inquiry and faith
are in their very nature incompatible. I will add,
what is very evident, that no other religious body has
3. right to demand such an exercise of faith in them,
and a right to forbid you further inquiry, but the
Catholic Church; and for this simple reason, that no
other body even claims to be infallible, let alone the
proof of such a claim. Here is the defect at first
starting, which disqualifies them, one and all, from
ever competing with the Church of God. The sects
Aaith and Douáà. 23 I
about us, so far from demanding your faith, actually
call on you to inquire and to doubt freely about their
own merits; they protest that they are but voluntary
associations, and would be sorry to be taken for any-
thing else; they beg and pray you not to mistake
their preachers for anything more than mere sinful
men, and they invite you to take the Bible with you
to their sermons, and to judge for yourselves whether
their doctrine is in accordance with it. Then, as to
the Established Religion, grant that there are those
in it who forbid inquiry into its claims; yet still, dare
they maintain that it is infallible? If they do not,
(and no one does) how can they forbid inquiry
about it, or claim for it the absolute faith of any of
its members? Faith under these circumstances is
not really faith, but obstinacy. Nor do they com-
monly venture to demand it; they will say, negatively,
“Do not inquire;” but they cannot say positively,
“Have faith ;” for in whom are their members to
have faith? of whom can they say, whether individual
or collection of men, “He or they are gifted with in-
fallibility, and cannot mislead us”? Therefore, when
pressed to explain themselves, they ground their duty
of continuance in their communion, not on faith in it,
but on attachment to it, which is a very different
thing; utterly different, for there are very many
reasons why they should feel a very great liking for
the religion in which they have been brought up. Its
portions of Catholic teaching, its “decency and order,”
the pure and beautiful English of its prayers, its
literature, the piety found among its members, the
232 Aaith and Doubt.
influence of superiors and friends, its historical
associations, its domestic character, the charm of a
country life, the remembrance of past years, there is
all this and much more to attach the mind to the
national worship. But attachment is not trust, nor
is to obey the same as to look up to, and to rely upon ;
nor do I think that any thoughtful or educated man
can simply believe or confide in the word of the Esta-
blished Church. I never met any such person who
did, or said he did, and I do not think that such a
person is possible. Its defenders would believe if
they could; but their highest confidence is qualified
by a misgiving. They obey, they are silent before the
voice of their superiors, but they do not profess to
believe. Nothing is clearer than this, that if faith
in God’s word is required of us for salvation, the
Catholic Church is the only medium by which we can
exercise it. * t
And now, my brethren, who are not Catholics,
perhaps you will tell me, that, if all inquiry is to
cease when you become Catholics, you ought to be
very sure that the Church is from God before you join
it. You speak truly; no one should enter the Church
without a firm purpose of taking her word in all
matters of doctrine and morals, and that, on the
ground of her coming directly from the God of Truth.
You must look the matter in the face, and count the
cost. . If you do not come in this spirit, you may as
well not come at all; high and low, learned and igno-
rant, must come to learn. If you are right as far as
this, you cannot go very wrong; you have the foun-
Faith and Doubt. 233
dation; but, if you come in any other temper, you
had better wait till you have got rid of it. You must
come, I say, to the Church to learn; you must come,
not to bring your own notions to her, but with the
intention of ever being a learner; you must come
with the intention of taking her for your portion and
of never leaving her. Do not come as an experiment;
do not come as you would take sittings in a chapel,
or tickets for a lecture-room; come to her as to your
home, to the school of your souls, to the Mother of
Saints, and to the vestibule of heaven. On the
other hand do not distress yourselves with thoughts
whether, when you have joined her, your faith will
last; this is a suggestion of your Enemy to hold you
back. He who has begun a good work in you, will
perfect it; He who has chosen you, will be faithful to
you; put your cause into His hand, wait upon Him,
and you will surely persevere. What good work will
you ever begin, if you bargain first to see the end of
it? If you wish to do all at once, you will do nothing;
he has done half the work, who has begun it well;
you will not gain your Lord's praise at the final
reckoning by hiding His talent. No ; when He
brings you from error to truth, He will have done the
more difficult work (if aught is difficult to Him), and
surely. He will preserve you from returning from truth
to error. Take the experience of those who have gone
before you in the same course; they had many fears
that their faith would fail them, before taking the
great step, but those fears vanished on their taking
it; they had fears, before the grace of faith, lest, after
234 Æaith and /Jouðá.
receiving it, they should lose it again, but no fears
(except on the ground of their general frailness)
after it was actually given. -
Be convinced in your reason that the Catholic
Church is a teacher sent to you from God, and it is
enough. I do not wish you to join her, till you 3 T€.
If you are half convinced, pray for a full conviction,
and wait till you have it. It is better indeed to come
quickly, but better slowly than carelessly; and some-
times, as the proverb goes, the more haste, the worse
speed. Only make yourselves sure that the delay is
not from any fault of yours, which you can remedy.
God deals with us very differently; conviction comes
slowly to some men, quickly to others; in some it
is the result of much thought and many reasonings,
in others of a sudden illumination. One man is con-
vinced at once, as in the instance described by St.
Paul : “If all prophesy,” he says, speaking of expo-
sition of doctrine, “ and there come in one that be-
lieveth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all,
he is judged of all. The secrets of his heart are made
manifest ; and so, falling down on his face, he will
worship God, and say that God is among you of a
truth.” The case is the same now ; some men are
converted merely by entering a Catholic Church;
others are converted by reading one book; others by
one doctrine. They feel the weight of their sins, and
they see that that religion must come from God which
alone has the means of forgiving them. Or they are
touched and overcome by the evident sanctity, beauty,
and (as I may say) fragrance of the Catholic Religion.
Faith and Doubt. 2 35
Or they long for a guide amid the strife of tongues;
and the very doctrine of the Church about faith, which
is so hard to many, is conviction to them. Others,
again, hear many objections to the Church, and follow
out the whole subject far and wide; conviction can
scarcely come to them except as at the end of a long
inquiry. As in a court of justice, one man’s innocence
may be proved at once, another's is the result of a
careful investigation; one has nothing in his conduct
or character to explain, another has many presump-
tions against him at first sight ; so Holy Church pre-
sents herself very differently to different minds who
are contemplating her from without. God deals with
them differently; but, if they are faithful to their
light, at last, in their own time, though it may be a
different time to each, He brings them to that one
and the same state of mind, very definite and not to
be mistaken, which we call conviction. They will have
no doubt, whatever difficulties may still attach to the
subject, that the Church is from God; they may not
be able to answer this objection or that, but they will
be certain in spite of it. & -
This is a point which should ever be kept in view :
conviction is a state of mind, and it is something be-
yond and distinct from the mere arguments of which
it is the result; it does not vary with their strength
or their number. Arguments lead to a conclusion,
and when the arguments are stronger, the conclusion
is clearer; but conviction may be felt as strongly in
consequence of a clear conclusion, as of one which is
clearer. A man may be so sure upon six reasons, that
236 Faith and Doubt.
he does not need a seventh, nor would feel surer if he
had it. And so as regards the Catholic Church : men
are convinced in very various ways—what convinces
one, does not convince another; but this is an acci-
dent; the time comes anyhow, sooner or later, when
a man ought to be convinced, and is convinced, and
then he is bound not to wait for any more arguments,
though more arguments be producible. He will find
himself in a condition when he may even refuse to
hear more arguments in behalf of the Church; he
does not wish to read or think more on the subject,
his mind is quite made up. In such a case it is his
duty to join the Church at once; he must not delay;
let him be cautious in counsel, but prompt in execu-
tion. This it is that makes Catholics so anxious about
him : it is not that they wish him to be precipitate;
but knowing the temptations which the evil one ever
throws in our way, they are lovingly anxious for his
soul, lest he has come to the point of conviction, and
is passing it, and is losing his chance of conversion.
If so, it may never return; God has not chosen every
one to salvation : it is a rare gift to be a Catholic ; it
may be offered to us once in our lives and never
again; and, if we have not seized on the “accepted
time,” nor known “in our day the things which are
for our peace,” oh, the misery for us! What shall
we be able to say when death comes, and we are not
converted, and it is directly and immediately our own
doing that we are not ? *
“Wisdom preacheth abroad, she uttereth her voice
in the streets: How long, ye little ones, love ye
Faith and Doubt. 237
childishness, and fools covet what is hurtful to them,
and the unwise hate knowledge? Turn ye at My
reproof; behold, I will bring forth to you My Spirit,
and I will show My words unto you. Because I have
called, and ye refused, I stretched out My hand, and
there was none who regarded, and ye despised all My
counsel and neglected My chidings; I also will laugh
in your destruction, and will mock when that shall
come to you which you feared; when a sudden storm
shall rush on you, and destruction shall thicken as a
tempest, when tribulation and straitness shall come
upon you. Then shall they call on Me, and I will
not hear; they shall rise betimes, but they shall not
, find Me; for that they hated discipline, and took not
on them the fear of the Lord, nor acquiesced in My
counsel, but made light of My reproof, therefore shall
they eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled with
their own devices.” -
Oh, the misery for us, as many of us as shall be in
that number Oh, the awful thought for all eternity
Oh, the remorseful sting, “I was called, I might have
answered, and I did not l” And oh, the blessedness,
if we can look back on the time of trial, when friends
implored and enemies scoffed, and say,+The misery
for me, which would have been, had I not followed on,
had I hung back, when Christ called ! Oh, the utter
confusion of mind, the wreck of faith and opinion,
the blackness and void, the dreary scepticism, the
hopelessness, which would have been my lot, the
pledge of the outer darkness to come, had I been
afraid to follow Him! I have lost friends, I have lost
238 Aaith and Doubt.
the world, but I have gained Him, who gives in Him-
self houses and brethren and sisters and mothers and
children and lands a hundred-fold; I have lost the
perishable, and gained the Infinite; I have lost time,
and I have gained eternity; “O Lord, my God, I am
Thy servant, and the son of Thine handmaid; Thou
hast broken my bonds. I will sacrifice to Thee the
sacrifice of praise, and I will call on the Name of the
Lord.”
D IS CO U R S E XII.
PROSPECTS OF THE CATHOL/C MISSIONER.
A STRANGE time this may seem to some of you,
my brethren, and a strange place, to commence
an enterprise such as that, which relying on God’s
mercy, we are undertaking this day." In this huge
city, amid a population of human beings, so vast that
each is solitary, so various that each is independent,
which, like the ocean, yields before and closes over
every attempt made to influence and impress it, in
this mere aggregate of individuals, which admits of
neither change nor reform, because it has no internal
order, or disposition of parts, or mutual dependence,
because it has nothing to change from and nothing to
change to, where no one knows his next-door neigh-
bour, where in every place are found a thousand
worlds, each pursuing its own functions unimpeded by
the rest,-how can we, how can a handful of men, do
any service worthy of the Lord who has called us, and
the objects to which our lives are dedicated ? “Cry
aloud, spare not l” says the Prophet; well may he
say it ! no room for sparing ; what cry is loud enough,
except the last trumpet of God, to pierce the omni-
1 This discourse was delivered in substance, at the first opening
of the London Oratory, in 1849.
24O Prospects of
present din of turmoil and of effort, which rises, like
an exhalation from the very earth, along the public
thoroughfares, and to reach the dense multitudes on
each side of them in the maze of buildings known only
to those who live in them P It is but a fool’s work to
essay the impossible; keep to your own place, and you
are respectable; tend your sheep in the wilderness, and
you are intelligible; build upon the old foundations,
and you are safe; but begin nothing new, make no
experiments, quicken not the action, nor strain the
powers, nor complicate the responsibilities of your
Mother, lest in her old age you bring her to shame,
and the idlers laugh at her who once bare many
children, but now is waxed feeble. ,
And here is another thing, the time; the time of
your coming hither! Now, when you rest on no im-
moveable centre, as of old, when you are not what you
were lately, when your life is in jeopardy, your future
in suspense, your Master in exile; look at home, you
have enough to do at home. Look to the Rock whence
ye were cut, and to the quarry whence ye were chopped
Where is Peter now P Magn? nominis umbra, as the
heathen author says: an antiquated cause, noble in its
time, but of a past day; nay, true and divine in its
time, as far as anything can be such, but false now,
and of the earth now, because it is feeble now, bent
with the weight of eighteen hundred years, tottering
to its fall; for with Englishmen, you should know,
success is the measure of principle, and power is the
exponent of right. Do you not understand our rule of
action ? we take up men and lay them down, we praise
//ºe Catholic Missioner. 24. I
or weblame, we feel respect or contempt, according as
they succeed or are defeated. You are wrong, because
you are in misfortune; power is truth. Wealth is
power, intellect is power, good name is power, know-
ledge is power; we venerate wealth, intellect, name,
knowledge. Intellect we know, and wealth we know,
but who are ye? what have we to do with the ghosts
of an old world and the types of a former organization?
It is true, my brethren, this is a strange time, a
strange place for beginning our work. A strange
place for Saints and Angels to pitch their tabernacles
in, this metropolis; strange,_I will not say for thee,
my Mother Mary, to be found in ; for no part of the
Catholic inheritance is foreign to thee, and thou art
everywhere, where the Church is found, Porta manes
et Ste//a maris, the constant object of her devotion,
and the universal advocate of her children, – not
strange to thee, but strange enough to him, my own
Saint and Master, Philip Neri. Yes, dear Father, it
is strange for thee, to pass from the bright calm cities
of the South to this scene of godless toil and self.
trusting adventure; strange for thee to be seen hurry-
ing to and fro across our crowded streets, in thy
grave black cassock, and thy white collar, instead of
moving at thy own pace amid the open ways or vacant
w spaces of the great City, in which, according to God’s
guidance of thee in thy youth, thou didst for life and
death fix thy habitation. Yes, it is all very strange
to the world; but no new thing to her, the Bride of
the Lamb, whose very being and primary gifts are
stranger in the eyes of unbelief, than any details, as to
IR,
242 Prospects of
place of abode and method of proceeding, in which
they are manifested. It is no new thing in her, who
came in the beginning as a wanderer upon earth,
whose condition is a perpetual warfare, and whose
empire is an incessant conquest.
In such a time as this, did the prince of the
Apostles, the first Pope, advance towards the
heathen city, where, under a divine guidance, he was
to fix his seat. He toiled along the stately road
which led him straight onwards to the capital of the
world. He met throngs of the idle and the busy, of
strangers and natives, who peopled the interminable
suburb. He passed under the highgate, and wandered
on amid marble palaces and columned temples; he
met processions of heathen priests and ministers in
honour of their idols; he met the wealthy lady, borne
on her litter by her slaves; he met the stern legion-
aries who had been the “massive iron hammers” of
the whole earth; he met the anxious politician with
his ready man of business at his side to prompt him
on his canvass for popularity; he met the orator re-
turning, home from a successful pleading, with his
- young admirers and his grateful or hopeful clients.
He saw about him nothing but tokens of a vigorous
power, grown up into a definite establishment, formed
and matured in its religion, its laws, its civil tradi-
tions, its imperial extension, through the history of
many centuries; and what was he but a poor, feeble,
aged stranger, in nothing different from the multi-
tude of men,_an Egyptian or a Chaldean, or perhaps
a Jew, some Eastern or other, as passers-by would
the Catholic Missioner. 243
guess according to their knowledge of hum an kind
carelessly looking at him (as we might turn our
eyes upon Hindoo or gipsy, as they met us), without
the shadow of a thought that such a one was destined
then to commence an age of religious sovereignty, in
which they might spend their own heathen times
twice over, and not see its end -
In such a time as this did the great Doctor, St.
Gregory Nazianzen, he too an old man, a timid man,
a retiring man, fond of solitude and books, and
unpractised in the struggles of the world, suddenly
appear in the Arian city of Constantinople; and, in
despite of a fanatical populace, and an heretical
clergy, preach the truth, and prevail, to his own
wonder, and to the glory of that grace which is strong
in weakness, and is ever nearest to its triumph when
it is most despised. - - -
In such a time did another St. Gregory, the first
Pope of the name, when all things were now failing,
when barbarians had occupied the earth, and fresh
and more savage multitudes were pouring down, when
pestilence, famine, and heresy ravaged far and near,
—oppressed, as he was, with continual sickness, his
bed his Pontifical Throne,—in such a time did he
rule, direct, and consolidate the Church, in what he
augured were the last moments of the world; subdu-
ing Arians in Spain, Donatists in Africa, a third
heresy in Egypt, a fourth in Gaul, humbling the
pride of the East, reconciling the Goths to the
Church, bringing our own pagan ancestors within her
pale, and completing her order and beautifying her
R 2
244 - Prospects of
ritual, while he strengthened the foundations of her
power. r - :
And in such a time did the six Jesuit Fathers,
Ignatius and his companions, while the world was
exulting in the Church’s fall, and men “made merry,
and sent their gifts one to another,” because the
prophets were dead which “tormented them that
dwelt upon earth,” make their vow in the small
Church of Montmartre; and, attracting others to
them by the sympathetic force of zeal, and the
eloquence of sanctity, went forward calmly and
silently into India in the East, and into America
in the West, and, while they added whole nations
to the Church abroad, restored and reanimated the
Catholic populations at home.
It is no new thing then with the Church, in a time
of confusion or of anxiety, when offences abound, and
the enemy is at her gates, that her children, far from
being dismayed, or rather glorying in the danger, as
vigorous men exult in trials of their strength, it is no
new thing, I say, that they should go forth to do her
work, as though she were in the most palmy days of
her prosperity. Old Rome, in her greatest distress,
sent her legions to foreign destinations by one gate,
while the Carthaginian conqueror was at the other.
In truth, as has been said of our own countrymen,
we, Catholics, do not know when we are beaten; we
advance, when by all the rules of war we ought to fall
back; we dream, but of triumphs, and mistake (as the
world judges) defeat for victory. For we have upon
us the omens of success in the recollections of the
the Catholic Missioner. 245
past; we read upon our banners the names of many
an old field of battle and of glory; we are strong in
the strength of our fathers, and we mean to do, in our
humble measure, what Saints have done before us. It
is nothing great or wonderful in us to be thus minded;
only Saints indeed do exploits, and carry contests
through, but ordinary men, the serving men and
privates of the Church, are equal to attempting them.
It needs no heroism, in us, my brethren, to face such
a time as this, and to make light of it; for we are
Catholics. We have the experience of eighteen hundred
years. The great philosopher of antiquity tells us,
that mere experience is courage, not indeed of the
highest kind, but sufficient to succeed upon. It is
not one or two or a dozen defeats, if we had them,
which will reverse the majesty of the Catholic Name.
We are willing to take this generation on its own
standard of truth, and to make our intenseness of pur-
pose the very voucher for our divinity. We are con-
fident, zealous, and unyielding, because we are the
heirs of St. Peter, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Gregory.
Pope, and all other holy and faithful men, who, in
their day, by word, deed, or prayer, have furthered the
Catholic cause. We share in their merits and inter-
cessions, and we speak with their voice. Hence we
do that without heroism, which others, who are not
Catholics, do only with it. It would be heroism in
others, certainly, to set about our work. Did Jews
aim at bringing over this vast population to the rites
of the Law, or did Unitarians address themselves to
the conversion of the Holy Roman Church, or did the
246 . Prospects of
Society of Friends attempt the great French nation,
this might rightly be called heroism; not a true re-
ligious heroism, but it would be a something extraor-
dinary and startling. It would be a peculiar, special,
original, audacious idea; it would be making a great
venture on a great uncertainty. But there is nothing
of special courage, nothing of personal magnanimity,
in a Catholic’s making light of the world, and begin-
ning to preach to it, though it turn its face from him.
He knows the nature and habits of the world; and it
is his immemorial way of dealing with it; he does
but act according to his vocation; he would not be a
Catholic, did he act otherwise. He knows whose
vessel he has entered; it is the bark of Peter. When
the greatest of the Romans was in an open boat on
the Adriatic, and the sea rose, he said to the terrified
boatman, Casarem vehis et fortunam Casaris—
“Caesar is your freight and Caesar's fortune.” What
he said in presumption, we, my dear brethren, can
repeat in faith, of that boat, in whicn Christ once sat
and preached. We have not chosen it to have fear
about it ; we have not entered it to escape out of it ;
mo, but to go forth in it upon the flood of sin and un-
belief, which would sink any other craft. We began
our work at the first with Peter for our guide, on the
very Feast of his Chair, and at the very Shrine of his
relics; so, when any of you marvel that we should
choose this place and this time for our missionary
labours, let him know that we are of those who
measure the present by the past, and poise the world
upon a distant centre. We act according to our
f/he Catholic Missioner. 247,
name; Catholics are at home in every time and place,
in every state of society, in every class of the com-
munity, in every stage of cultivation. No state of
things comes amiss to a Catholic priest; he has always:
a work to do, and a harvest to reap. *
Were it otherwise, had he not confidence in the
darkest day, and the most hostile district, he would
be relinquishing a principal note, as it is called, of
the Church. She is Catholic, because she brings an
universal remedy for an universal disease. The disease
is sin; all men have sinned; all men need a recovery
in Christ; to all must that recovery be preached and
dispensed. If then there be a preacher and dispenser
of recovery, sent from God, that messenger must speak,
not to one, but to all; he must be suited to all, he
must have a mission to the whole race of Adam, and
be cognizable by every individual of it. I do not
mean that he must persuade all, and prevail with all—
for that depends upon the will of each; but he must
show his capabilities for converting all by actually con-
verting some of every time, and every place, and every
rank, and every age of life, and every character of
mind. If sin is a partial evil, let its remedy be
partial; but, if it be not local, not occasional, but
universal, such must be the remedy. A local religion
is not from God. The true religion must indeed begin,
and may linger, in one place; nay, for centuries remain
there, provided it is expanding and maturing in its
internal character, and professes the while that it is
not yet perfect. There may be deep reasons in God’s
counsels, why the proper revelation of His will to man
© e"e © º º
c O g • * e
• , e. o • *
tº gº tº *
:
248 Prospects of
:
•
-:
:
should have been slowly elaborated and gradually
completed in the elementary form of Judaism ; but
that Revelation was ever in progress in the Jewish
period, and pointed by its prophets to a day when it
should be spread over the whole earth. Judaism then.
was local because it was imperfect; when it reached
perfection within, it became universal without, and
took the name of Catholic. -
Look around, my brethren, at the forms of religion
now in the world, and you will find that one, and
one only, has this note of a divine origin. The
Catholic Church has accompanied human society
through one revolution of its great year; and is
now beginning a second. She has passed through
the full cycle of changes, in order to show us that
she is independent of them all. She has had trial
of East and West, of monarchy and democracy, of
peace and war, of imperial and of feudal tyranny,
of times of darkness and times of philosophy, of
barbarousness and luxury, of slaves and freemen, of
cities and nations, of marts of commerce and seats of
manufacture, of old countries and young, of metro-
polis and colonies. She arose in the most happy age
which perhaps the world has ever known ; for two or
three hundred years she had to fight against the author-
ity of law, established forms of religion, military power,
an ably-cemented empire, and prosperous, contented
populations. And in the course of that period, this
poor, feeble, despised Association was able to defeat its
imperial oppressor, in spite of his violent efforts, again
and again exerted, to rid himself of so despicable an
the Catholic Missioner. 249
assailant. In spite of calumny, in spite of popular
outbreaks, in spite of cruel torments, the lords of the
world were forced, as their sole chance of maintaining
their empire, to come to terms with that body, of
which the present Church is in name, in line, in
doctrine, in principles, in manner of being, in moral
characteristics, the descendant and representative.
They were forced to humble themselves to her, and
to enter her pale, and to exalt her, and to depress
her enemies. She triumphed as never any other
triumphed before or since. But this was not all;
scarcely had she secured her triumph, or rather
set about securing it, when it was all reversed ;
for the Roman Power, her captive, which with so much
blood and patience she had subjugated, suddenly came
to nought. It broke and perished; and against her
rushed millions of wild savages from the north and
east, who had neither God nor conscience, nor even
natural compassion. She had to begin again; for
centuries they came down, one horde after another,
like roaring waves, and dashed against her base.
They came again and again, like the armed bands
sent by the king of Israel against the Prophet; and,
as he brought fire down from heaven which devoured
them as they came, so in her more gracious way did
Holy Church, burning with zeal and love, devour her
enemies, multitude after multitude, with the flame
which her Lord had kindled, “heaping coals of fire
upon their heads,” and “overcoming evil with good.”
Thus out of those fierce strangers were made her truest
and most loyal children;–and, when from among them
25O Prospects of
there arose a strong military power, more artificially
constructed than the old Roman, with traditions and
precedents which lasted on for centuries, at first the
Church’s champion and then her rival, here too she had
to undergo a new conflict, and to gain a new triumph.
And so I might proceed, going to and fro, and telling
of her political successes since, and of her intellectual
vietories from the beginning, and of her social im-
provements, and of her encounters with those other
circumstances of human nature or combinations of
human kind, which I just now enumerated; all which
prove to us, with a cogency as great as that of a
physical demonstration, that she comes not of earth,
that she holds not of earth, that she is no servant of
man, else he who made could have destroyed her.
How different, again I say, how different are all
religions that ever were, from this lofty and unchange-
able Catholic Church They depend on time and
place for their existence, they live in periods or in
regions. They are children of the soil, indigenous
plants, which readily flourish under a certain tempera-
ture, in a certain aspect, in moist or in dry, and die if
they are transplanted. Their habitat is one article of
their scientific description. Thus the Greek schism,
Nestorianism, the heresy of Calvin, and Methodism,
each has its geographical limits. Protestantism has
gained nothing in Europe since its first outbreak.
Some accident gives rise to these religious manifesta-
tions; some sickly season, the burning sun, the
vapour-laden marsh, breeds a pestilence, and there it
remains, hanging in the air over its birth-place perhaps
the Catholic Missioner. 251
for centuries; then some change takes place in the
earth or in the heavens, and it suddenly is no more.
Sometimes, however, it is true, such scourges of God
have a course upon earth, and affect a Catholic range.
They issue as from some poisonous lake or pit in
Ethiopia or in India, and march forth with resistless
power to fulfil their mission of evil, and walk to and
fro over the face of the world. Such was the Arabian
imposture of which Mahomet was the framer; and
you will ask, perhaps, whether it has not done that,
which I have said the Catholic Church alone can do,
and proved thereby that it had in it an internal prin-
ciple, which, depending not on man, could subdue him
in any time or place P No, my brethren; look nar-
rowly, and you will see the marked distinction which
exists between the religion of Mahomet and the Church
of Christ. For Mahometanism has done little more
than the Anglican communion is doing at present.
That communion is found in many parts of the world;
its primate has a jurisdiction even greater than the
Nestorian Patriarch of old; it has establishments in
Malta, in Jerusalem, in India, in China, in Australia,
in South Africa, and in Canada. Here at least you
will say is Catholicity, even greater than that of
Mahomet. Oh, my brethren, be not beguiled by words: -
will any thinking man say for a moment, whatever
this objection be worth, that the established Religion
is superior to time and place P well, if not, why set
about proving that it is 2 rather, does not its essence
lie in its recognition by the State P is not its estab-
lishment its very form & what would it be, would it
252 Prospects of r
last ten years, if abandoned to itself? It is its estab-
lishment which erects it into a unity and individuality;
can you contemplate it, though you stimulate your
imagination to the task, abstracted from its churches,
palaces, colleges, parsonages, revenues, civil prece-
dence, and national position ? Strip it of this world,
and you have performed a mortal operation upon it,
for it has ceased to be. Take its bishops out of the
legislature, tear its formularies from the Statute Book,
open its universities to Dissenters, allow its clergy to
become laymen again, legalize its private prayer-
meetings, and what would be its definition ? You
know that, did not the State compel it to be one, it
would split at once into three several bodies, each
bearing within it the elements of further divisions.
Even the small party of Non-jurors, a century and a
half since, when released from the civil power, split
into two. It has then no internal consistency, or
individuality, or soul, to give it the capacity of propa-
gation. Methodism represents some sort of an idea,
Congregationalism an idea; the Established Religion
has in it no idea beyond establishment. Its extension
has been, for the most part, passive not active; it is
carried forward into other places by State policy, and
it moves because the State moves; it is an appendage,
whether weapon or decoration, of the sovereign power;
it is the religion, not even of a race, but of the ruling
portion of a race. The Anglo-Saxon has done in this
day what the Saracen did in a former. He does
grudgingly for expedience, what the other did heartily
from fanaticism. This is the chief difference between
the Catholic Missioner. & 253
the two; the Saracen, in his commencement, converted
the heretical East with the sword; but at least in
India the extension of his faith has been by immigra-
tion, as the Anglo-Saxon’s now ; he grew into other
nations by commerce and colonization ; but, when he
encountered the Catholic of the West, he made as
little impression upon Spain, as the Protestant Anglo-
Saxon makes on Ireland. .
There is but one form of Christianity, my brethren,
possessed of that real internal unity which is the
primary condition of independence. Whether you
look to Russia, England, or Germany, this note of
divinity is wanting. In this country, especially,
there is nothing broader than class religions; the
established form itself is but the religion of a class.
There is one persuasion for the rich, and another for
the poor; men are born in this or that sect; the enthu-
siastic go here, and the sober-minded and rational go
there. They make money, and rise in the world, and
then they profess to belong to the Establishment.
This body lives in the world’s smile, that in its frown;
the one would perish of cold in the world’s winter,
and the other would melt away in the summer. Not
one of them undertakes human nature: none com-
passes the whole man; none places all men on a level;
none addresses the intellect and the heart, fear and
love, the active and the contemplative. It is con-
sidered, and justly, as an evidence for Christianity,
that the ablest men have been Christians; not that
all sagacious or profound minds have taken up its
profession, but that it has gained victories among
2 54 Prospects of
them, such and so many, as to show that it is not the
mere fact of ability or learning which is the reason
why all are not converted. Such too is the character-
istic of Catholicity; not the highest in rank, not
the meanest, not the most refined, not the rudest, is
beyond the influence of the Church ; she includes
specimens of every class among her children. She
is the solace of the forlorn, the chastener of the pros-
perous, and the guide of the wayward. She keeps a
mother’s eye for the innocent, bears with a heavy
hand upon the wanton, and has a voice of majesty for
the proud. She opens the mind of the ignorant, and
she prostrates the intellect of even the most gifted.
These are not words; she has done it, she does it still,
she undertakes to do it. All she asks is an open field,
and freedom to act. She asks no patronage from the
civil power : in former times and places she has asked
it ; and, as Protestantism also, has availed herself of
the civil sword. It is true she did so, because in
certain ages it has been the acknowledged mode of
acting, the most expeditious, and open at the time to
no objection, and because, where she has done so, the
people clamoured for it and did it in advance of her;
but her history shows that she needed it not, for she
has extended and flourished without it. She is ready
for any service which occurs; she will take the world
as it comes; nothing but force can repress her. See,
my brethren, what she is doing in this country now ;
for three centuries the civil power has trodden down
the goodly plant of grace, and kept its foot upon it;
at length circumstances have removed that tyranny,
the Catholic Missioner. 255
and lo! the fair form of the Ancient Church rises up
at once, as fresh and as vigorous as if she had never
intermitted her growth. She is the same as she was
three centuries ago, ere the present religions of the
country existed; you know her to be the same; it is the
charge brought against her that she does not change;
time and place affect her not, because she has her
source where there is neither time nor place, because she
comes from the throne of the Illimitable, Eternal God.
With these feelings, my brethren, can we fear that
we shall not have work enough in a vast city like this,
which has such need of us? He on whom we repose
is “yesterday, and to-day, and the same for ever.”
If He did His wonders in the days of old, He does
His wonders now ; if in former days the feeble and
unworthy were made His instruments of good, so are
they now. While we trust in Him, while we are true
to His Church, we know that He intends to use us;
how, we know not ; who are to be the objects of His
mercy, we know not ; we know not to whom we are
sent; but we know that tens of thousands cry out for
us, and that of a surety we shall be sent to His chosen.
“The word which shall issue from His mouth shall not
return unto Him void, but shall do His pleasure, and
shall prosper in the things whereto He hath sent it.”
None so innocent, none so sinful, none so dull, none so
wise, but are objects forthe grace of the Catholic Church.
If we do not prevail with the educated, we shall prevail
with the rude; if we fail with the old, we shall gain the
young ; if we persuade not the serious and respectable,
we shall succeed with the thoughtless; if we come short
256 Prospects of
of those who are near the Church, we shall reach even
to those who are far distant from it. God’s arm is
not shortened; He has not sent us here for nothing;
unless (which He Himself forbid!) we come to nothing
by reason of our own disobedience. 4
True, there is one class of persons to whom we
might seem to be sent more than to others, to whom
we could naturally address ourselves, and on whose
attention we have a sort of claim. How can I fitly
bring these remarks to an end without referring to
them 2 There are those, I say, who, like ourselves,
were in times past gradually led on step by step, till
with us they stood on the threshold of the Church.
They felt with us that the Catholic Religion was dif-
ferent from anything else in the world; and though it is .
difficult to say what more they felt in common (for no
two persons exactly felt alike), yet they felt they
had something to learn, their course was not clear to
them, and they wished to find out God’s will. Now,
what might have been expected of such persons, what
was natural in them, when they heard that their own
friends, with whom they had sympathized so fully,
had gone forward, under a sense of duty, to join the
Catholic Church P Surely it was natural,—I will not
say that they should at once follow them (for they had
authority also on the side of remaining), but, at least,
it was natural that they should weigh the matter well,
and listen with interest to what their friends might
have to tell them. Did they do this in fact P alas, some
of them did just the contrary : they said, “Since our
common doctrines and principles have led you forward,
the Catholic Missioner. 257
for that very reason we will go backward; the more
we have hitherto agreed with you, the less can we now
be influenced by you. Because you have gone, there-
fore, we make up our minds once for all to remain.
You are a temptation to us, because your arguments
are strong. You are a warning to us, because you
must not be our example. We do not wish to hear
more, lest we hear too much. . You were straight-
forward when on our side, therefore you must be
sophistical now that you have left it. You were
right in making converts then, therefore you are
wrong in making converts now. You have spoiled a
promising cause, and you deserve from us no mercy.”
Thus they speak; let them say it before the
judgment-seat of Christ Take it at the best ad-
vantage, my brethren, and what is the argument
based upon but this, that all investigation must be
wrong, which results in a change of religion ? The
process is condemned by its issue; it is a mere
absurdity to give up the religion of our birth, the
home of our affections, the seat of our influence, the
well-spring of our maintenance. It was an absurdity
in St. Paul to become a Christian ; it was an absurdity
in him to weep over his brethren who could not listen
to him. I understand now, as I have not under-
stood before, why it was the Jews hugged themselves
in their Judaism, and were proof against persuasion.
In vain the Apostles insisted, “Your religion leads to
ours, and ours is a fact before your eyes; why wait for
what is already present, as if it were still to come 2
do you consider your Church perfect? do you profess
S
258 Prospects of
to have attained 2 why not turn at least your thoughts
towards Christianity?” “No,” said they, “we will
live, we will die, where we were born ; the religion of
our ancestors, the religion of our nation, is the only
truth; it must be safe not to move. We will not un-
church ourselves, we will not descend from our preten-
isions; we will shut our hearts to conviction, and will
stake eternity on our position.” O great argument,
not for Jews only, but for Mahometans, for Hindoos
great argument for heathen of all lands, for all who
prefer this world to another, who prefer a temporary
peace to truth, present ease to forgiveness of sins, the
smile of friends to the favour of Christ ! but weak
argument, strong delusion, in the clear ray of heaven,
and in the eye of Him who comes to judge the world
with fire |
O my dear brethren, if any be here present to
whom these remarks may more or less apply, do us not
the injustice to think that we aim at your conver-
sion for any party purpose of our own. What should
we gain from your joining us but an additional charge
and responsibility? But who can bear to think that
pious, religious hearts, on which the grace of God
has been so singularly shed, who so befit conversion,
who are intended for heaven, should be falling back
into the world out of which they have been called,
and losing a prize which was once within their reach !
Who that knows you, can get himself to believe that
you will always disappoint the yearning hopes of
those whom once you loved so much, and helped
forward so effectually Dies venit, dies Tua, the day
the Cañoſic /ſ/?ssãozzer. 259 .
shall come, though it may tarry, and we will in
patience wait for it. Still the truth must be spoken,
—we do not need you, but you need us; it is not we
who shall be baffled if we cannot gain you, but you
who will come short, if you be not gained. Remain,
then, in the barrenness of your affections, and the decay
of your zeal, and the perplexity of your reason, if
you will not be converted. Alas, there is work enough
to do, less troublesome, less anxious, than the care
of your souls. There are thousands of sinners to be
reconciled, of the young to be watched over, of the
devout to be consoled. God needs not worshippers;
He needs not objects for His mercy; He can do with-
out you; He offers His benefits, and passes on ; He
delays not; He offers once, not twice and thrice; He
goes on to others; He turns to the Gentiles; He turns
to open sinners; He refuses the well-conducted for
the outcast; “He hath filled the hungry with good
things, and the rich He hath sent empty away.”
For me, my brethren, it is not likely that you *
will hear me again; these may be my first and last
words to you, for this is not my home. Să justift-
care me vo/uero, os meum condemnaffit me, “If I wish
to justify myself, my mouth shall condemn me; if I
shall show forth my innocence, it shall prove me
perverse;” yet, though full of imperfections, full of
miseries, I trust that I may say in my measure after
the Apostle, “I have lived in all good conscience
before God unto this day. Our glory is this, the
testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity of
heart and sincerity of God, and not in carnal wisdom,
S 2
26o Prospects of the Catholic Missioner.
but in the grace of God, we have lived in this world,
and more abundantly towards you.” I have followed
His guidance, and He has not disappointed me; I
have put myself into His hands, and He has given
me what I sought; and as He has been with me
hitherto, so may He, and His Blessed Mother, and
all good Angels and Saints, be with me unto the end.
DISCOURSE XIII.
MVS 7 AACAA.S. OAP AWA 7TO/ACAF AAVZ) OAF GACA CAE.
AM going to assert, what some persons, my
brethren, those especially whom it most con-
cerns, will not hesitate to call a great paradox; but
which, nevertheless, I consider to be most true, and
likely to approve itself to you more and more, the
oftener you turn your thoughts to the subject, and
likely to be confirmed in the religious history of
this country, as time proceeds. It is this: —that
it is quite as difficult, and quite as easy, to believe
that there is a God in heaven, as to believe that
the Catholic Church is His oracle and minister on
earth. I do not mean to say, that it is really diffi-
cult to believe in God (God Himself forbid 1) no;
but that belief in God and belief in His Church stand
on the same kind of foundation; that the proof of the
one truth is like the proof of the other truth, and
that the objections which may be made to the one are
like the objections which may be made to the other ;
and that, as right reason and sound judgment over-
rule objections to the being of a God, so do they
supersede and set aside objections to the divine mis-
sion of the Church. And I consider that, when once
262 Mysteries of AWaſatre and of Grace.
a man has a real hold of the great doctrine that there
is a God, in its true meaning and bearings, then
(provided there be no disturbing cause, no peculiarities
in his circumstances, involuntary ignorance, or the
like), he will be led on without an effort, as by a
natural continuation of that belief, to believe also in
the Catholic Church as God’s messenger or Prophet,
dismissing as worthless the objections which are ad-
ducible against the latter truth, as he dismisses objec-
tions adducible against the former. And I consider,
on the other hand, that when a man does not believe
in the Church, then (the same accidental impediments.
being put aside as before), there is nothing in reason
to keep him from doubting the being of a God.
The state of the case is this;–every one spon-
taneously embraces the doctrine of the existence of
God, as a first principle, and a necessary assumption.
It is not so much proved to him, as borne in upon his
mind irresistibly, as a truth which it does not occur
to him, nor is possible for him, to doubt; so various
and so abundant is the witness for it contained in the
experience and the conscience of every one. He
cannot unravel the process, or put his finger on the
independent arguments, which conspire together to
create in him the certainty which he feels; but certain
of it he is, and he has neither the temptation nor the
wish to doubt it, and he could, should need arise, at
least point to the books or the persons from whence
he could obtain the various formal proofs on which
the being of a God rests, and the irrefragable demon-
stration thence resulting against the freethinker and
Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 263
the sceptic. At the same time he certainly would
find, if he was in a condition to pursue the subject
himself, that unbelievers had the advantage of him
so far as this, that there were a number of objections
to the doctrine which he could not satisfy, questions
which he could not solve, mysteries which he could
neither conceive nor explain ; he would perceive that
the body of proof itself might be more perfect and .
complete than it is; he would not find indeed any-
thing to invalidate that proof, but many things which
might embarrass him in discussion, or afford a plau-
sible, though not a real, excuse for doubting about it.
The case is pretty much the same as regards the
great moral law of God. We take it for granted, and
rightly; what could we do, where should we be,
without it? how could we conduct ourselves, if there
were no difference between right and wrong, and if one
action were as acceptable to our Creator as another ?
Impossible 1 if anything is true and divine, the rule
of conscience is such, and it is frightful to suppose
the contrary. Still, in spite of this, there is quite
room for objectors to insinuate doubts about its autho-
rity or its enunciations; and where an inquirer is cold
and fastidious, or careless, or wishes an excuse for dis-
obedience, it is easy for him to perplex and disorder his
reason, till he begins to question whether what he has
all his life thought to be sins, are really such, and
whether conscientiousness is not in fact a superstition.
And in like manner as regards the Catholic Church;
she bears upon her the tokens of divinity, which come
home to any mind at once, which has not been pos-
264 Mysteries of AWature and of Grace.
sessed by prejudice, and educated in suspicion. It is
not so much a process of inquiry as an instantaneous
recognition, on which the mind believes. Moreover,
it is possible to analyze the arguments and draw up
in form the great proof, on which her claims rest ;
but, on the other hand, it is quite possible also for
opponents to bringforward certain imposing objections,
which, though they do not really interfere with those
claims, still are specious in themselves, and are suff-
cient to arrest and entangle the mind, and to keep
it back from a fair examination of the proof, and of
the vast array of arguments of which it consists. I
am alluding to such objections as the following ;-
How can Almighty God be Three and yet One; how
can Christ be God and yet man; how can He be at
once in the Blessed Sacrament under the form of
Bread and Wine, and yet in heaven; how is the doc-
trine of eternal punishment consistent with the Infinite
Mercy of God;—or again, how is it that, if the
Catholic Church be from God, the gift of belonging
to her is not, and has not been, granted to all men;
how is it that so many apparently good men are ex-
ternal to her; why does she pay such honour to the
Blessed Virgin and all Saints; how is it that, since
the Bible also is from God, it admits of being quoted
in opposition to her teaching; in a word, how is it, if
she is from God, that everything which she does and
says, is not perfectly intelligible to man; intelligible,
not only to man in general, but to the reason and
judgment and taste of every individual of the species,
taken one by one P
Mysteries of Wature and of Grace. 265
Now, whatever my anxiety may be about the next
generation, I trust I need at present have none in in-
sisting, before a congregation however mixed, on the
mysteries or difficulties which attach to the doctrine
of God’s existence, and which must be of necessity
acquiesced in by every one who believes it. I trust,
and am sure, that as yet it is safe even to put before one
who is not a Catholic some points which he is obliged
to accept, whether he will or no, when he confesses
that there is a God. I am going to do so, not wan-
tonly, but with a definite object, by way of showing
him, that he is not called on to believe anything in
the Catholic Church more strange or inexplicable
than he already admits when he believes in a God; so
that, if God exists in spite of the difficulties attending
the doctrine, so the Church may be of divine origin,
though that doctrine too has its difficulties;–nay, I
might even say, the Church is divine, because of those
difficulties; for the difficulties which exist in the
doctrine that there is a Divine Being, do but give
countenance and protection to parallel difficulties in
the doctrine that there is a Catholic Church. If there
be mysteriousness in her teaching, this does but show
that she proceeds from Him, who is Himself Mystery,
in the most simple and elementary ideas which we
have of Him, whom we cannot contemplate at all
except as One who is absolutely greater than our
reason, and utterly strange to our imagination.
First then, consider that Almighty God had no
beginning, and that this is necessary from the nature
of the case, and inevitable. For if (to suppose what
266 Mysteries of AWature and of Grace.
is absurd) the maker of the visible world was himself
made by some other maker, and that maker again by
another, you must anyhow come at last to a first
Maker who had no maker, that is, who had no begin-
ning. If you will not admit this, you will be forced
to say that the world was not made at all, or made
itself, and itself had no beginning, which is more
wonderful still; for it is much easier to conceive that
a Spirit, such as God is, existed from eternity, than
that this material world was eternal. Unless then
we are resolved to doubt that we live in a world of
beings at all, unless we doubt our own existence, if we
do but grant that there is something or other now
existing, it follows at once, that there must be some-
thing or other which has always existed, and never
had a beginning. This then is certain from the neces-
sity of the case ; but can there be a more overwhelm-
ing mystery than it is 2 To say that a being had no
beginning seems a contradiction in terms; it is a
mystery as great, or rather greater, than any in the
Catholic Faith. For instance, it is the teaching of
the Church that the Father is God, the Son God, and
the Holy Ghost God, yet that there is but one God;
this is simply incomprehensible to us, but at least, so
far as this, it involves no self-contradiction, because
God is not Three and One in the same sense, but He
is Three in One sense and One in another ; on the
contrary, to say that any being has no beginning, is
like a statement which means nothing and is an ab-
surdity. And so again, Protestants think that the
Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence cannot be true,
Mysteries of AWature and of Grace. 267
because, if so, they argue that our Lord's Body is in
two places at once, in Heaven and upon the Altar,
and this they say is an impossibility. Now, Catho-
lies do not see that it is impossible at all, that our
Lord should be in Heaven yet on the Altar; they do
not indeed see how it can be, but they do not see why
it should not be; there are many things which exist,
though we do not know how ;-do we know how any-
thing exists?—there are many truths which are not
less truths because we cannot picture them to ourselves
or conceive them; but at any rate, the Catholic
doctrine concerning the Real Presence is not more
mysterious than how Almighty God can exist, yet
never have come into existence. We do not know
what is meant by saying that Almighty God will have
no end, but still there is nothing here to distress or
confuse our reason, but it distorts our mental sight
and makes our head giddy to have to say (what
nevertheless we cannot help saying), that He had no
beginning. Reason brings it home clearly to us, yet
reason again starts at it ; reason starts back from its
own discovery, yet is obliged to embrace it. It dis-
covers, it shrinks, it submits; such is the state of
the case, but, I say, they who are obliged to bow their
neck to this mystery, need not be so sensitive about
the mysteries of the Catholic Church. -
Then think of this again, which, though not so
baffling to the reason, still is most bewildering to the
imagination;–that, if the Almighty had no begin-
ning. He must have lived a whole eternity by Him-
self. What an awful thought ! for us, our happiness
268 Mysteries of Nature and of Grace.
lies in looking up to some object, or pursuing some ... •
end; we, poor mortal men, cannot understand a
prolonged rest, except as a sort of sloth and self-
forgetfulness; we are wearied if we meditate for one
short hour ; what then is meant when it is said, that
He, the Great God, passed infinite ages by Him-
self? What was the end of His being 2 He was His
own end; how incomprehensible ! And since Helived
a whole eternity by Himself, He might, had He so
willed, never have created anything ; and then from
eternity to etermity there would have been none but
He, none to witness Him, none to contemplate Him,
none to adore and praise Him. How oppressive to
think of ! that there should have been no space, no
time, no succession, no variation, no progression,
no scope, no termination. One Infinite Being from
first to last, and nothing else ! And why He? Which
is the less painful to our imagination, the idea of
only one Being in existence, or of nothing at all ?
O my brethren, here is mystery without mitigation,
without relief! how severe and frightfull The mys-
teries of Revelation, the Catholic dogmas, inconceivable
as they are, are most gracious, most loving, laden
with mercy and consolation to us, not only sublime,
but touching and winning;-such is the doctrine that
God became man. Incomprehensible it is, and we
can but adore, when we hear that the Almighty Being,
of whom I have been speaking, “ who inhabiteth
eternity,” has taken flesh and blood of a Virgin’s
veins, lain in a Virgin’s womb, been suckled at a
Virgin’s breast, been obedient to human parents,
Mysteries of AWałure and of Grace. 269
worked at a humble trade, been despised by His
own, been buffeted and scourged by His creatures,
been nailed hand and foot to a Cross, and has died
a malefactor's death; and that now, under the form
of Bread, He should lie upon our Altars, and suffer
Himself to be hidden in a small tabernacle | Most
incomprehensible, but still, while the thought over-
whelms our imagination, it also overpowers our heart;
it is the most subduing, affecting, piercing thought
which can be pictured to us. It thrills through us,
and draws our tears, and abases us, and melts us
into love and affection, when we dwell upon it. O
most tender and compassionate Lord ' You see,
He puts out of our sight that mysteriousness of His,
which is only awful and terrible; He insists not on
His past eternity; He would not scare and trouble
His poor children, when at length. He speaks to
them ; no, He does but surround Himself with His
own infinite bountifulness and compassion; He bids
His Church tell us only of His mysterious conde-
scension. Still our reason, prying, curious reason,
searches out for us those prior and more austere
mysteries, which are attached to His Being, and He
suffers it to find them out. He suffers it, for He knows
that that same reason, though it recoils from them, must
put up with them; He knows that they will be felt by
it to be clear, inevitable truths, appalling as they are.
He suffers it to discover them, in order that, both by
the parallel and by the contrast between what reason
infers and what the Church reveals, we may be drawn
on from the awful discoveries of the one to the
270 Mysteries of Nature and of Grace.
gracious announcements of the other ; and in order,
too, that the rejection of Revelation may be its own
punishment, and that they who stumble at the Catholic
mysteries may be dashed back upon the adamantine
rocks which base the Throne of the Everlasting, and
may wrestle with the stern conclusions of reason,
since they refuse the bright consolations of faith.
And now another difficulty, which reason discovers,
yet cannot explain. Since the world exists, and did
not ever exist, there was a time when the Almighty
changed that state of things, which had been from
all eternity, for another state. It was wonderful that
He should be by Himself for an eternity; moreover,
it had been wonderful, had He never changed it; but
it is wonderful, too, that He did change it. It is
wonderful that, being for an eternity alone, He
should ever pass from that solitary state, and sur-
round Himself with millions upon millions of living
beings. A state which had been from eternity might
well be considered unchangeable; yet it ceased, and
another superseded it. What end could the All-
blessed have had in beginning to create, and in
determining to pass a second eternity so differently
from the first 2 This mystery, my brethren, will
tend to reconcile us, I think, to the difficulty of a
question sometimes put to us by unbelievers, viz.,
if the Catholic Religion is from God, why was it set
up so late in the world’s day ? Why did some thou-
sands of years pass before Christ came, and His gifts
were poured upon the race of man P But, surely, it
is not so strange that the Judge of men should have
Mysteries of Wature and of Grace. 271
changed His dealings towards them “in the midst
of the years,” as that He should have changed the
history of the heavens in the midst of eternity. If
creation had a beginning at a certain date, why
should not redemption? And if we be forced to be-
lieve, whether we will or no, that there was once an
innovation upon the course of things on high, and
that the universe arose out of nothing, and if, even
when the earth was created, still it remained “empty
and void, and darkness was upon the face of the
deep,” what so great marvel is it, that there was a
fixed period in God’s inscrutable counsels, during
which there was “a bond fastened upon all people,”
and a “web drawn over them,” and then a date, at
which the bond of thraldom was broken, and the web
of error was unravelled P
Well, let us suppose the innovation decreed in the
eternal purpose of the Most High, and that creation
is to be ; of whom, my brethren, shall it consist P
Doubtless of beings who can praise and bless Him,
who can admire His perfections, and obey His will,
who will be least unworthy to minister about His
Throne, and to keep Him company. Look around,
and say how far facts bear out this anticipation.
There is but one race of intelligent beings, as far as
we have experience by nature, and a thousand races
which cannot love or worship Him who made them.
Millions upon millions enjoy their brief span of life,
but man alone can look up to heaven; and what is
man, many though he be, what is he in the pre-
sence of so innumerable a multitude? Consider the
272 Mysteries of Nature and of Grace.
abundance of beasts that range the earth, of birds
under the firmament of heaven, of fish in the depths
of the ocean, and, above all, the exuberant varieties
of insects, which baffle our enumeration by their
minuteness, and our powers of conception by their
profusion. Doubtless they all show forth the glory
of the Creator, as do the elements, “ fire, hail, snow,
and ice, stormy winds, which fulfil His word.” Yet
not one of them has a soul, not one of them knows
who made it, or that it is made, not one can render
Him any proper service, not one can love Him. In-
deed how far does the whole world come short in all
respects of what it might be l It is not even pos-
sessed of created excellence in fulness. It is stamped
with imperfection ; everything indeed is good in its
kind, for God could create nothing otherwise, but
how much more fully might. He have poured His
glory and infused His grace into it, how much more
beautiful and divine a world might He have made,
than that which, after an eternal silence, He sum-
moned into being ! Let reason answer, I repeat,-
Why is it that He did not surround Himself with
spiritual intelligences, and animate every material
atom with a soul? Why made He not the very foot-
stool of His Throne and the pavement of His Temple
of an angelic nature, beings who could praise and
bless Him, while they did Him menial service? Set
man's wit and man's imagination to the work of
devising a world, and you would see, my brethren,
what a far more splendid design he would submit
for it, than met the good pleasure of the Omnipo-
Mysteries of AWałure and of Grace. 273
tent and All-wise. Ambitious architect he would
have been, if called to build the palace of the Lord
of all, in which every single part would have been
the best conceivable, the colours all the brightest,
the materials the most costly, and the lineaments
the most perfect. Pass from man’s private fancies
and ideas, and fastidious criticisms on the vast sub-
ject; come to facts which are before our eyes, and
report what meets them. We see an universe, ma-
terial for the most part and corruptible, fashioned
indeed by laws of infinite skill, and betokening an
All-wise Hand, but lifeless and senseless; huge globes,
hurled into space, and moving mechanically; subtle
influences, penetrating into the most hidden corners
and pores of the world, as quick and keen as thought,
yet as helpless as the clay from which thought
has departed. And next, life without sense; myriads
of trees and plants, “ the grass of the field,” beau-
tiful to the eye, but perishable and worthless in the
sight of heaven. And, then, when at length we
discover sense as well as life, what, I repeat, do
we see but a greater mystery still? We behold
the spectacle of brute nature; of impulses, feelings,
propensities, passions, which in us are ruled or re-
pressed by a superintending reason, but from which,
when ungovernable, we shrink, as fearful and hate-
ful, because in us they would be sin. Millions of
irrational creatures surround us, and it would seem
as though the Creator had left part of His work in
its original chaos, so monstrous are these beings,
which move and feel and act without reflection and
T
274 Mysteries of Wature and of Grace.
without principle. To matter He has given laws; He
has divided the moist and the dry, the heavy and
the rare, the light and the dark; He has “ placed
the sand as a boundary for the sea, a perpetual pre-
cept which it shall not pass.” . He has tamed the
elements, and made them servants of the universal
good; but the brute beasts pass to and fro in their
wildness and their isolation, no yoke on their neck
or “bit in their lips,” the enemies of all they meet,
yet without the capacity of self-love. They live on
each other's flesh by an original necessity of their
being ; their eyes, their teeth, their claws, their
muscles, their voice, their walk, their structure
within, all speak of violence and blood. They seem
made to inflict pain; they rush on their prey with
fierceness, and devour it with greediness. There is
scarce a passion or a feeling which is sin in man,
but is found brute and irresponsible in them. Rage,
wanton cruelty, hatred, sullenness, jealousy, revenge,
cunning, malice, envy, lust, vain-glory, gluttony, each
has its representative; and say, O philosopher of
this world, who wouldest fain walk by reason only,
and scornest the Catholic faith, is it not marvel-
lous, or explain it, if thou canst, that the All-wise
and All-good should have poured over the face of
His fair creation these rude and inchoate existences,
to look like sinners, though they be not; and these
too created before man, perhaps for an untold period,
and dividing the earth with him since, and the actual
lords of a great portion of it even now 2
The crowning work of God is man; he is the flower
Mysteries of Mature and of Grace. 275
and perfection of creation, and made to serve and
worship his Creator; look at him then, O Sages, who
scoff at the revealed word, scrutinize him, and say in
sincerity, is he a fit offering to present to the Great
God? I must not speak of sin; you will not acknow-
ledge the term, or will explain it away; yet consider
man as he is found in the world, and,-owning as you
must own, that the many do not act by rule or princi-
ple, and that few are any honour to their Maker—seeing,
as you see, that enmities, frauds, cruelties, oppressions,
injuries, excesses are almost the constituents of human
life—knowingtoothe wonderful capabilities of man, yet
their necessary frustration in so brief an existence,—can
youventureto say that the Church’syoke is heavy, when
you yourselves, viewing the Universe from end to end,
are compelled, by the force of reason, to submit your
reason to the confession that God has created nothing
perfect, a world of order which is dead and corruptible,
a world of immortal spirits which is in rebellion ? f
I come then to this conclusion;–if I must submit -
my reason to mysteries, it is not much matter whether
it is a mystery more or a mystery less: the main diffi-
culty is to believe at all; the main difficulty to an in-
quirer is firmly to hold that there is a Living God, in
spite of the darkness which surrounds Him, the Creator,
Witness, and Judge of men. When once the mind is
broken in, as it must be, to the belief of a Power above
it, when once it understands, that it is not itself the
measure of all things in heaven and earth, it will have
little difficulty in going forward. I do not say it will,
or can, go on to other truths, without conviction ; I do
T 2.
276 Mysteries of Nature and of Grace.
fiot say it ought to believe the Catholic faith without
grounds and motives; but I say that, when once it
believes in God, the great obstacle to faith has been
taken away,+a proud self-sufficient spirit. When
once a man really, with the eyes of his soul and by
the power of divine grace, recognizes his Creator, he
has passed a line; that has happened to him which
cannot happen twice; he has bent his stiff neck, and
triumphed over himself. If he believes that God has
no beginning, why not believe that He is Three yet
One? if he owns that God created space, why not own
also that He can eause a body to subsist without de-
pendence on place P if he is obliged to grant that God
created all things out of nothing, why doubt. His
power to change the substance of bread into the Body
of His Son? It is as strange that, after an eternal
rest, He should begin to create, as that, when He once
created, He should take on Himself a created nature;
it is as strange that man should be allowed to fall so
low, as we see before our eyes in so many dreadful in-
stances, as that Angels and Saints should be exalted
even to religious honours; it is as strange that, such
large families in the animal world should be created
without souls and subject to vanity, as that one crea-
ture, the Blessed Mother of God, should be exalted
over all the rest; as strange, that the book of nature
should read differently from the rule of conscience or
the conclusions of reason, as that the Scriptures of the
Church should admit of being interpreted in opposition
to her Tradition. And if it shocks a religious mind
to doubt of the being of the All-wise and All-good
Mysteries of AWature and of Grace. 277
God, on the ground of the mysteries in Nature,
why may it not shrink also from using the revealed
mysteries as an argument against Revelation ?
And now, my dear brethren, who are as yet exter-
nal to the Church, if I have brought you as far as
this, I really do not see why I have not brought you
on to make your submission to her. Can you delibe-
rately sit down amid the bewildering mysteries of crea-
tion, when a refuge is held out to you, in which reason
is rewarded for its faith by the fulfilment of its hopes?
Nature does not exempt you from the trial of believ-
ing, but it gives you nothing in return; it does but
disappoint you. You must submit your reason any-
how ; you are not in better circumstances if you turn
from the Church; you merely do not secure what you
have already sought in nature in vain. The simple
question to be decided is one of fact, has a revelation
been given P You lessen, not increase your difficulties
by receiving it. It comes to you recommended and
urged upon you by the most favourable anticipations
of reason. The very difficulties of nature make it
likely that a revelation should be made ; the very mys-
teries of creation call for some act on the part of the
Creator, by which those mysteries shall be alleviated
to you or compensated. One of the greatest of the
perplexities of nature is this very one, that the Creator
should have left you to yourselves. You know there
is a God, yet you know your own ignorance of Him,
of His will, of your duties, of your prospects. A re-
velation would be the greatest of possible boons which
could be vouchsafed to you. After all, you do not
278 Mysteries of AWature and of Grace.
know, you only conclude that there is a God; you see
Him not, you do but hear of Him. He acts under a
veil; He is on the point of manifesting Himself to
you at every turn, yet He does not. He has impressed
on your hearts anticipations of His majesty; in every
part of creation has He left traces of His presence
and given glimpses of His glory; you come up to the
spot, He has been there, but He is gone. He has
taught you His law, unequivocally indeed, but by de-
duction and by suggestion, not by direct command.
He has always addressed you circuitously, by your in-
ward sense, by the received opinion, by the events of
life, by vague traditions, by dim histories; but as if
of set purpose, and by an evident law, He never actu-
ally appears to your longing eyes or your weary heart,
He never confronts you with Himself. What can be
meant by all this? a spiritual being abandoned by its
Creator there must doubtless be some awful and all- + -
wise reason for it; still a sore trial it is; so sore,
surely, that you must gladly hail the news of His
interference to remove or diminish it.
The news then of a revelation, far from suspicious, .
is borne in upon our hearts by the strongest presump-
tions of reason in its behalf. It is hard to believe that
it has not been given, as indeed the conduct of mankind
has ever shown. You cannot help expecting it from
, the hands of the All-merciful, unworthy as you feel
yourselves of it. It is not that you can claim it, but
that He inspires hope of it; it is not you that are
worthy of the gift, but it is the gift which is worthy
of your Creator. It is so urgently probable, that
Mysteries of AWature and of Grace. 279
little evidence is required for it, even though but little
were given. Evidence that God has spoken you
must have, else were you a prey to impostures; but its
extreme likelihood allows you, were it necessary, to
dispense with all proof that is not barely sufficient
for your purpose. The very fact, I say, that there is
a Creator, and a hidden one, powerfully bears you on
and sets you down at the very threshold of revelation,
and leaves you there looking up earnestly for divine
tokens that a revelation has been made. -
Do you go with me as far as this, that a revelation
is probable P well then, a second remark, and I have
done. It is this, the teaching of the Church mani-
festly is that revelation. Why should it not be 2
This mark has she upon her at very first sight, that
she is unlike every other profession of religion. Were
she God’s Prophet or Messenger, she would be dis-
tinctive in her characteristics, isolated, and special;
and so she is. She is one, not only internally, but
in contrast to everything else: she has no relation-
ship with any other body. And hence too, you see
the question lies between the Church and no divine
messenger at all; there is no revelation given us,
unless she is the organ of it, for where else is there a
Prophet to be found P Your anticipation, which I
have been speaking of, has failed, your probability
has been falsified, if she be not that Prophet of God.
Not that this conclusion is an absurdity, for you cannot
take it for granted that your hope of a revelation will
be fulfilled; but in whatever degree it is probable that
it will be fulfilled, in that degree it is probable that
28o Mysteries of AWature and of Grace.
the Church, and nothing else, is the means of fulfil-
ling it. Nothing else; for you cannot believe in your
heart that this or that Sect, that this or that Estab-
lishment is, in its teaching and its commands, the
oracle of the Most High. I know you cannot say in
your heart, “I believe this or that, because the
English Establishment or the Scotch declares that it
is true.” Nor could you, I am sure, trust the Russian
hierarchy, or the Nestorian, or the Jacobite, as
speaking from God; at the utmost you might, if you
were learned in these matters, look on them as vener-
able depositories of historical matter, and witnesses
of past ages. You would exercise your judgment and
criticism on what they said, and would never think
of taking their word as decisive ; they are in no sense
Prophets, Oracles, Judges, of supernatural truth; and
the contrast between them and the Catholic Church
is a preliminary evidence in her favour.
A Prophet is one who comes from God, who speaks
with authority, who is ever one and the same, who is
precise and decisive in his statements, who is equal to
successive difficulties, and can smite and overthrow
error. Such has the Catholic Church shown herself
in her history, such is she at this day. She alone has
had the divine spell of controlling the reason of man,
and of eliciting faith in her word from high and low,
educated and ignorant, restless and dull-minded.
Even those who are alien to her, and whom she does
not move to obedience, she moves to respect and
admiration. The most profound thinkers and the
most Sagacious politicians predict her future triumphs,
Mysteries of AWačure and of Grace. 281
while they marvel at her past. Her enemies are
frightened at the sight of her, and have no better
mode of warfare against her than that of blackening her
with slanders, or of driving her into the wilderness.
To see her is to recognize her; her look and bearing
is the evidence of her royal lineage. True, her tokens
might be clearer than they are ; I grant it ; she
might have been set up in Adam, and not in Peter;
she might have embraced the whole family of man;
she might have been the instrument of inwardly con-
verting all hearts; she might have had no scandals
within or misfortunes without ; she might in short
have been a heaven on earth; but, does she not show
as glorious in our sight as a creature, as her God does
as the Creator 2 If He does not display the highest
possible tokens of His presence in nature, why should
His Messenger display hers in grace? You believe the
Scriptures; does she not in her character and conduct
show as divine as Jacob does, or as Samuel, or as
David, or as Jeremias, or in a far higher measure ?
Has she not notes far more than sufficient for the
purpose of convincing you? She takes her rise from
the very coming of Christ, and receives her charter,
as also her very form and mission, from His mouth.
“Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and
blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father
who is in heaven. And I say unto thee, that thou
art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of
heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth,
282 Mysteries of AWałure and of Grace.
shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever thou
shalt loose on earth, shall be loosed also in heaven.”
Coming to you then from the very time of the
Apostles, spreading out into all lands, triumphing
over a thousand revolutions, exhibiting so awful a
unity, glorying in so mysterious a vitality, so majestic,
so imperturbable, so bold, so saintly, so sublime, so
beautiful, Oh, ye sons of men, can ye doubt that she
is the Divine Messenger for whom you seek? Oh, long
sought after, tardily found, desire of the eyes, joy of
the heart, the truth after many shadows, the fulness
after many foretastes, the home after many storms,
come to her, poor wanderers, for she it is, and she
alone, who can unfold the meaning of your being and
the secret of your destiny. She alone can open to
you the gate of heaven, and put you on your way.
“Arise, shine, O Jerusalem; for thy light is come,
and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee; for,
behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and a mist the
people, but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and His
glory shall be seen upon thee.” “Open ye the gates,
that the just nation, that keepeth the truth, may
enter in. The old error is passed away; Thou wilt
keep peace,—peace, because we have hoped in Thee.
Lord, Thou wilt give peace to us, for Thou hast
wrought all our works for us. O Lord, our God, other
lords besides Thee have had dominion over us, but in
Thee only make we mention of Thy Name. The
dying, they shall not live; the giants, they shall not
rise again; therefore Thou hast visited and broken
them, and hast destroyed all their memory.”
Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 283
O my brethren, turn away from the Catholic
Church, and to whom will you go? it is your only
chance of peace and assurance in this turbulent,
changing world. There is nothing between it and
scepticism, when men exert their reason freely.
Private creeds, fancy religions, may be showy and
imposing to the many in their day; national religions
may lie huge and lifeless, and cumber the ground for
centuries, and distract the attention or confuse the
judgment of the learned; but on the long run it will
be found that either the Catholic Religion is verily
and indeed the coming in of the unseen world into
this, or that there is nothing positive, nothing
dogmatic, nothing real in any of our notions as to
whence we come and whither we are going. Unlearn
Catholicism, and you become Protestant, Unitarian,
Deist, Pantheist, Sceptic, in a dreadful, but infallible
succession; only not infallible, by some accident of
your position, of your education, and of your cast of
mind; only not infallible, if you dismiss the subject
of religion from your view, deny yourself your reason,
devote your thoughts to moral duties, or dissipate them
in engagements of the world. Go, then, and do your
duty to your neighbour, be just, be kindly-tempered,
be hospitable, set a good example, uphold religion as
good for society, pursue your business, or your profes-
sion, or your pleasure, eat and drink, read the news,
visit your friends, build and furnish, plant and sow,
buy and sell, plead and debate, work for the world,
settle your children, go home and die, but eschew
religious inquiry, if you will not have faith, nor hope
284 Mysteries of Nature and of Grace.
that you can have faith, if you will not join the
Church. . . . - . . .
Avoid, I say, inquiry else, for it will but lead you
thither, where there is no light, no peace, no hope; it
will lead you to the deep pit, where the sun, and the
moon, and the stars, and the beauteous heavens are
not, but chilliness, and barrenness, and perpetual
desolation. O perverse children of men, who refuse
truth when offered you, because it is not truer l O
restless hearts and fastidious intellects, who seek a
gospel móre salutary than the Redeemer’s, and a
creation more perfect than the Creator’s God, for-
sooth, is not great enough for you; you have those
high aspirations and those philosophical notions,
inspired by the original Tempter, which are content
with nothing that is, which determine that the Most
High is too little for your worship, and His attributes
too narrow for your love. Satan fell by pride; and
what was said of old as if of him, may surely now, by
way of warning, be applied to all who copy him —
“Because thy heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I
am God, and I sit in the chair of God, . . whereas thou
art a man and not God, and hast set thy heart as if it
were the heart of God, therefore . . I will bring thee
to nothing, and thou shalt not be, and if thou be
sought for, thou shalt not be found any more for ever.”
And, while we thus speak of the evil one and his
followers, let us not forget to look to ourselves. God
forbid that, while we preach to others, we ourselves
should become castaways
DISCOURSE XIV.
7A/Z MV SZTAEA' V OAF Z)/ V/AVAE COAVZ) ZSCAEAVS/OAV.
THE Eternal Word, the Only-begotten Son of the
Father, put off His glory, and came down upon
earth, to raise us to heaven. Though He was God,
He became Man; though He was Lord of all, He be-
came as a servant; “ though He was rich, yet for our
sakes He became poor, that we, through His poverty,
might be rich.” He came from heaven in so humble
an exterior, that the self-satisfied Pharisees despised
Him, and treated Him as a madman or an impostor.
When He spoke of His father Abraham, and implied
His knowledge of him, who was in truth but the
creature of His hands, they said in derision, “Thou
art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abra-
ham P” He made answer, “Amen, amen, I say
unto you, Before Abraham was made, I am.” He had
seen Abraham, who lived two thousand years before;
yet in truth. He was not two thousand years old,
more than He was fifty. He was not two thousand
years old, because He had no years; He was the
Ancient of Days, who never had beginning, and who
never will have an end; who is above and beyond
286 The Mystery of Divine Condescension.
time; who is ever young, and ever is beginning, yet
never has not been, and is as old as He is young, and
was as old and as young when Abraham lived as when
He came on earth in our flesh to atone for our sins.
And hence He says, “Before Abraham was, I am,”
and not “I was ;” because with Him there is no past
or future. It cannot be properly said of Him, that
He was, or that He will be, but that He is; He is
always; always the same, not older because He has
lived two thousand years in addition, not younger
because He has not lived them. º :
My brethren, if we could get ourselves to enter into
this high and sacred thought, if we really contemplated
the Almighty in Himself, then we should understand
better what His incarnation is to us, and what it is
in Him. I do not mean, if we worthily contemplated
Him as He is; but, even if we contemplated Him
in such a way as is really possible to us, if we did but
-fix our thoughts on Him, and make use of the reason
which He has given us, we should understand enough
of His greatness to feel the awfulness of His volun-
tary self-abasement. Attend, then, while I recall to
your mind the doctrines which reason and revelation
combine to teach you about the Most High, and,
next, when you have fixed your mind upon His
infinity, then go on to view, in the light of that
infinity, the meaning of His incarnation.
Now first consider that reason teaches you there
must be a God; else how was this all-wonderful
universe made 2 It could not make itself; man
could not make it, he is but a part of it; each man
7%e Mystery of /Jivine Condescension. 287
has a beginning, there must have been a first man,
and who made him 2 To the thought of God then
we are forced from the nature of the case; we must
admit the idea of an Almighty Creator, and that
Creator must have been from everlasting. He must
have had no beginning, else how came He to be 2
Else, we should be in our original difficulty, and must
begin our argument over again. The Creator, I say,
had no beginning; for, if He was brought into being
by another before Him, then how came that other to
be 2 And so we shall proceed in an unprofitable
series or catalogue of creators, which is as difficult to
conceive as an endless line of men. Besides, if it
was not the Creator Himself who was from everlasting,
then there would be one being who was from everlast-
ing, and another who was Creator; which is all one
with saying there are two Gods. It is least trial then
to our reason, it is simplest and most natural, to pro-
nounce, that the Creator of the world had no begin-
ning;-and if so, He is self-existing ; and if so, He
can undergo no change. What is self-existing and
everlasting has no growth or decay; It is what It
ever was, and ever shall be the same. As It originated
in nothing else, nothing else can interfere with It or
affect It. Besides, everything that is has originated
in It; everything therefore is dependent on It, and
It is independently of everything.
Contemplate then the Supreme Being, the Being
of beings, even so far as I have yet described Him;
fix the idea of Him in your minds. He is one; He
has no rival; He has no equal; He is unlike anything
288 The Mystery of Divine Condescension.
else; He is sovereign; He can do what He will.
He is unchangeable from first to last; He is all-
perfect; He is infinite in His power and in His
wisdom, or He could not have made this immense
world which we see by day and by night.
Next, this follows from what I have said;—that,
since He is from everlasting, and has created all
things from a certain beginning, He has lived in an
eternity before He began to create anything. What a
wonderful thought is this there was a state of things
in which God was by Himself, and nothing else but
He. There was no earth, no sky, no sun, no stars,
no space, no time, no beings of any kind; no men,
no Angels, no Seraphim. His throne was without
ministers; He was not waited on by any ; all was
silence, all was repose, there was nothing but God;
and this state continued, not for a while only, but
for a measureless duration ; it was a state which had
ever been ; it was the rule of things, and creation
has been an innovation upon it. Creation is, com-
paratively speaking, but of yesterday; it has lasted
a poor six thousand years, say sixty thousand, if you
will, or six million, or six million million; what is
this to eternity ? nothing at all; not so much as a
drop compared to the whole ocean, or a grain of sand
to the whole earth. I say, through a whole eternity
God was by Himself, with no other being but Himself;
with nothing external to Himself, not working, but at
rest, not speaking, not receiving homage from any,
not glorified in creatures, but blessed in Himself and
by Himself, and wanting nothing.
7%e Mystery of Divine Condescension. 289
What an idea this gives us of the Almighty He
is above us, my brethren, we feel He is; how little can
we understand Him We fall in even with men upon
earth, whose ways are so different from our own, that
we cannot understand them ; we marvel at them ; they
pursue courses so unlike ours, they take recreations so
peculiar to themselves, that we despair of finding any-
thing in common between them and us; we can-
not make conversation when we are with them. Thus
stirring and ambitious men wonder at those who live
among books; sinners wonder at those who attend
the Sacraments and mortify their passions; thrifty
persons wonder at those who are lavish of their money;
men who love society wonder at those who live
in solitude and are happy in it. We cannot enter
even into, our fellows; we call them strange and
incomprehensible; but what are they, compared with
the all-marvellousness of the Everlasting God? He
alone indeed is incomprehensible, who has not only
lived an eternity without beginning, but who has
lived through a whole eternity by Himself, and has
not wearied of the solitude. Which of us, or how
few of us, could live a week in comfort by ourselves?
You have heard, my brethren, of solitary confinement
as a punishment assigned to criminals, and at length
it becomes more severe than any other punishment :
it is said at length to drive men mad. We cannot
live without objects, without aims, without employ-
ments, without companions. We cannot live simply
in ourselves; the mind preys upon itself, if left to
itself. This is the case with us mortal men; now
TJ
290 The Mystery of Divine Condescension.
raise your minds to God. Oh, the vast contrast ! He
lived a whole eternity in that state, a few poor years
of which to us is madness. He lived a whole eternity
without change of any kind. Day and night, sleep
and meal-time, at least are changes, unavoidable *
changes, in the life of the most solitary upon earth.
A prison, if it has nothing else to relieve its dreariness
and its hopelessness, has at least this, that the poor
prisoner sleeps; he sleeps, and suspends his misery;
he sleeps, and recruits his power of bearing it ; but
the Eternal is the sleepless, He pauses not, He sus-
pends not His powers, He is never tired of Himself;
He is never wearied of His own infinity. He was
from eternity ever in action, though ever at rest;
ever surely in rest and peace profound and ineffable;
yet with a living, present mind, self-possessed, and
all-conscious, comprehending Himself and sustaining
the comprehension. He rested ever, but He rested
in Himself; His own resource, His own end, His
own contemplation, His own blessedness.
Yes, so it was ; and if it is incomprehensible that
He should have existed solitary through an eternity,
is it not incomprehensible too, that He should have
ever given up that solitariness, and have willed to sur-
round Himself with creatures? Why was He not con-
tent to be as He had been 2 Why did He bring into
existence those who could not add to His blessedness,
and were not secure of their own 2 Why did He give
them that gift which we see they possess, of doing
right or wrong as they please, and of working out
their ruin as well as their salvation ? Why did He
The Mystery of Divine Condescension. 29 I
create a world like that which is before our eyes,
which at best so dimly shows forth His glory, and at
worst is a scene of sin and sorrow 2 He might have
made a far more excellent world than this; He might
have excluded sin; but, oh, wonderful mystery, He has
surrounded Himself with the cries of fallen souls, and
has created and opened the great pit. He has willed,
after an eternity of peace, to allow of everlasting
anarchy, of pride, and blasphemy, and guilt and
hatred of Himself, and the worm that dieth not.
Thus He is simply incomprehensible to us, mortal
men. Well might the ancient heathen shrink from
answering, when a king, his patron, asked him what
God was . He begged for a day to consider his reply;
at the end of it, for two more; and, when the two were
ended, for four besides; for in truth he found that
meditation, instead of bringing him towards the solu-
tion of the problem, did but drive him back; the more
he questioned, the vaster grew the theme, and where
he drew one conclusion, thence issued forth a hundred
fresh difficulties to confound his reason. For in truth
the being and attributes of God are a subject, not for
reason simply, but for faith; and we must accept His
own word about Himself. - . *
And now proceed to another thought, my brethren,
which I have partly implied and partly expressed
already. If the Almighty Creator be such as I have
described Him, He in no wise depends on His creatures.
They sin, they perish, they are saved, they praise Him
eternally; but, though He loves all the creatures of
His hand, though He visits all of them without ex-
U 2 "w
292 The Mystery of Divine Condescension.
ception with influences of His grace, so numerous and
so urgent, that not till the disclosures of the last day
shall we rightly conceive of them; though He deigns
to be glorified in His Saints, though He is their all in
all, their continued life, and power, and blessedness,
still they are nothing to Him. They do not increase
His happiness if they are saved, or diminish it if they
are lost. I do not mean that He is at a distance from
them; He does not so live in Himself as to abandon His
creation to the operation of laws which He has stamped
upon it. No ; He is everywhere a vigilant and active
Providence; He is in every one of His creatures, and
in every one of their actions; if He were not in them,
they would fall back into nothing. He is everywhere
on earth, and sees every crime committed, whether
under the sun or in the gloom of night; He is even
the sustaining power of those who sin; He is most
close to every the most polluted soul; He is in the
midst of the eternal prison; but what I mean to say
is, that nothing touches Him, though He touches all
things. The sun’s rays penetrate into the most hideous
recesses, yet keep their brightness and their perfection;
and so the Almighty witnesses and suffers evil, yet
is not touched or tried by the creature’s wilfulness,
pride, uncleanness, or unbelief. The lusts of earth
and the blasphemies of hell neither sully His purity
nor impair His majesty. If the whole world were to
go and plunge into the eternal gulf, the loss would be
theirs, not His. In the dread contest between good
and evil, whether the Church conquers at once, or is
oppressed for the time, and labours, whether she is
7%e Mystery of Divine Condescension. 293
in persecution, or in triumph, or in peace, whether
His enemies hold out or are routed, when the innocent
sin, when the just are falling, when good Angels weep,
when souls are hardened, He is one and the same. He
is in His blessedness still, and not even the surface is
ruffled of His everlasting rest. He neither hopes nor
fears, nor desires, nor sorrows, nor repents. All
around Him seems full of agitation and confusion,
but in His eternal decrees and infallible foreknow-
ledge there is nothing contingent, nothing uncer-
tain, nothing which is not part of one vast plan, as
fixed in its issue, and as unchangeable, as . His own
Essence.
Such is the great God, so all-sufficient, so all-
blessed, so separate from creatures, so inscrutable, so
unapproachable. Who can see Him P who can fathom
Him? who can move Him? who can change Him?
who can even speak of Him? He is all-holy, all
patient, all-serene, and all-true. He says and He
does; He delays and He executes; He warns and He
punishes; He punishes, He rewards, He forbears, He
pardons, according to an eternal decree, without im-
perfection, without vacillation, without inconsistency.
And now that I have set before you, my brethren,
in human language, some of the attributes of the
Adorable God, perhaps you are tempted to complain
that, instead of winning you to the All-glorious and
All-good, I have but repelled you from Him. You are
tempted to exclaim, He is so far above us that the
thought of Him does but frighten me; I cannot be-
294 7%e Mystery of Divine Condescension.
lieve that He cares for me. Ibelieve firmly that He
is infinite perfection; and I love that perfection, not
so much indeed as I could wish, still in my measure
I love it for its own sake, and I wish to love it above
all things, and I well understand that there is no
creature but must love it in his measure, unless he
has fallen from grace. But there are two feelings,
which, alas, I have a difficulty in entertaining ; I
believe and I love, but without fervour, without keen-
ness, because my heart is not kindled by hope, nor
subdued and melted with gratitude. Hope and grati-
tude I wish to have, and have not; I know that He is
loving towards all His works, but how am I to believe
that He gives to me personally a thought, and cares
for me for my own sake? I am beneath His love; He
looks on me as an atom in a vast universe. He acts
by general laws, and, if He is kind to me, it is, not
for my sake, but because it is according to His
Inature to be kind. And hence it is that I am drawn
over to sinful man with an intenser affection than to
my glorious Maker. Kings and great men upon earth,
when they appear in public, are not content with a
mere display of their splendour, they show themselves
as well as their glories; they look around them; they
notice individuals; they have a kind eye, or a cour-
teous gesture, or an open hand, for all who come near
them. They scatter among the crowd the largess of
their smiles and of their words. And then men go
home, and tell their friends, and treasure up to their
latest day, how that so great a personage took notice
of them or of a child of theirs, or accepted a present.
The M.ſystery of Divine Condescension. 295
at their hand, or gave expression to some sentiment,
without point in itself, but precious as addressed to
them. Thus does my fellow-man engage and win me;
but there is a gulf between me and my great God. I
shall fall back on myself, and grovel in my nothing-
ness, till He looks down from heaven, till He calls me,
till He takes interest in me. It is a want in my
nature to have one who can weep with me, and rejoice
with me, and in a way minister to me; and this would
be presumption in me, and worse, to hope to find in
the Infinite and Eternal God.
This is what you may be tempted to say, my bre-
thren, not without impatience, while you contemplate
the Almighty God, as conscience portrays Him, and
as reason concludes about Him, and as creation wit-
nesses of Him; and I have dwelt on it, in order, by
way of contrast, to set before you, as I proposed when
I began, how your complaint is answered in the great
mystery of the Incarnation. Never suppose that you
are left by God; never suppose that He does not know
you, your minds and your powers, better than you do
yourselves. Ought you not to conclude, that, if your
complaint be true, He has thought of it before you?
“Before they call, I will attend,” says He, “and
while they speak, I will hear.” Add this to your
general notion of His incomprehensibility, viz., that
though He is infinite, He can bow Himself to the
finite; have faith in the mystery of His condescen-
sion; confess that, though He “inhabiteth eternity,”
He “ dwelleth with a contrite and humble spirit,”
and “ looketh down upon the lowly.” Give up this
296 7%e Mystery of Divine Condescension.
fretfulness, quit these self-consuming thoughts, go
out of yourselves, lift up your eyes, look around, and
see if you can discern nothing more hopeful, more
gracious in this wide world, than these perplexities
over which you have been brooding. No, my brethren,
we are so constituted by our Maker, as to be able to
love Him ardently, and He has given us means of
doing so. He has not founded our worship of Him in
hope, nor made self-interest the measure of our vene-
ration. And we have eyes to see much more than the
difficulties of His Essence; and the great consolatory
disclosures of Him, which nature begins, Revelation
brings to perfection. Lift up your eyes, I say, and
look out even upon the material world, and there you
will see one attribute above others on its very face
which will reverse your sad meditations on Him who
made it. He has traced out many of His attributes
upon it, His immensity, His wisdom, His power, His
loving-kindness, and His skill; but more than all, its
very face is illuminated with the glory and beauty of
His eternal excellence. This is that attribute in which
all His attributes coalesce, which is the perfection, or
(as I may say) the flower and bloom of their combina-
tion. As among men, youth, and health, and vigour,
have their finish in that grace of outline, and lustre.
of complexion, and eloquence of expression, which we
call beauty, so in the Almighty God though we can-
not comprehend His holy attributes, and shrink from
their unfathomable profound, yet we can, as creatures,
recognize and rejoice in the brightness, harmony, and
serenity, which is their resulting excellence. This is
The Mystery of Divine Condescension. 297
that quality which, by the law of our nature, is ever
able to draw us off ourselves in admiration, which
moves our affections, which wins from us a disinte-
rested homage; and it is shed in profusion, in token
of its Creator, over the visible world. .
Leave, then, the prison of your own reasonings, leave
the town, the work of man, the haunt of sin; go forth,
my brethren, far from the tents of Cedar and the slime
of Babylon; with the patriarch go forth to meditate
in the field, and from the splendours of the work
imagine the unimaginable glory of the Architect.
Mount some bold eminence, and look back, when the
sun is high and full upon the earth, when mountains,
cliffs, and sea, rise up before you like a brilliant
pageant, with outlines noble and graceful, and tints
and shadows soft, clear, and harmonious, giving depth
and unity to the whole; and then go through the
forest, or fruitful field, or along meadow and stream,
and listen to the distant country sounds, and drink in
the fragrant air which is poured around you in spring
or summer; or go among the gardens, and delight
your senses with the grace and splendour, and the
various sweetness of the flowers you find there; then
think of the almost mysterious influence upon the
mind of particular scents, or the emotion which some
gentle, peaceful strain excites in us, or how soul and
body are rapt and carried away captive by the concord
of musical sounds, when the ear is open to their
power; and then, when you have ranged through
sights, and Sounds, and odours, and your heart kindles,
and your voice is full of praise and worship, reflect,
298 7%e Mystery of Zivine Condescension.
not that they tellyou nothing of their Maker-but that
they are the poorest and dimmest glimmerings of His
glory, and the very refuse of His exuberant riches, and
but the dusky smoke which precedes the flame, com-
pared with Him who made them. Such is the Creator
in His Eternal Uncreated Beauty, that, were it given
to us to behold it, we should die of very rapture at the
sight. Moses, unable to forget the token of it he had
once seen in the Bush, asked to see it fully, and on
this very account was refused. “He said, Show me
Thy glory; and He said, Thou canst not see Nſy Face;
for man shall not see Me and live.” When Saints
have been favoured with glimpses of it, it has thrown
them into ecstasy, broken their poor frames of dust and
ashes, and pierced them through with such keen distress,
that they have cried out to God, in the very midst of
their transports, that He would hold His hand, and,
in tenderness to them, check the abundance of His
consolations. What Saints partake in fact, we enjoy
in thought and meditation; and even that mere re-
flection of God’s glory is sufficient to sweep away the
gloomy, envious thoughts of Him, which circle round
us, and to lead us to forget ourselves in the contem-
plation of the All-beautiful. He is so bright, so
majestic, so serene, so harmonious, so pure ; He so
surpasses, as being its archetype and fulness, all that
is graceful, gentle, sweet, and fair on earth; His voice
is so touching, and His smile so winning while so
awful, that we need nothing more than to gaze and
listen, and be happy. Say not this is not enough for
love and joy; even in sights of this earth, the pomp
7%e Mystery of Zivine Condescension. 299
and ceremonial of royalty is sufficient for the beholder;
he needs nothing more than to be allowed to see ; and
were we but admitted to the courts of heaven, the
sight of Him, ever transporting, ever new, though
He addressed us not, would be our meat and drink
to all eternity. -
And if He has so constituted us, that, in spite of
the abyss which lies between Him and us, in spite of
the mystery of His attributes and the feebleness of
our reason, the very vision of Him dispels all doubt,
allures our shrinking souls, and is our everlasting joy,
what shall we say, my brethren, when we are told that
He has also condescended to take possession of us and
to rule us by means of hope and gratitude, those
“cords of Adam,” by which one man is bound to
another ? You say that God and man never can be
one, that man cannot bear the sight and touch of his
Creator, nor the Creator condescend to the feebleness
of the creature; but blush and be confounded to hear,
oh, peevish, restless hearts, that He has come down
from His high throne and humbled Himself to the
creature, in order that the creature might be inspired
and strengthened to rise to Him. It was not enough
to give man grace; it was little to impart to him a
celestial light, and a sanctity such as Angels had re-
ceived; little to create Adam in original justice, with a
heavenly nature superadded to His own, with an intel-
lect which could know God and a soul which could
love Him; He purposed even in man’s first state of
innocence a higher mercy, which in the fulness of time
was to be accomplished in his behalf. It became the
3oo 7%e Mystery of Divine Condescension.
Wisdom of God, who is the eternally glorious and
beautiful, to impress these attributes upon men by
His very presence and personal indwelling in their
flesh, that, as He was by nature the Only-begotton
Image of the Father, so He might also become “the
First-born of every creature.” It became Him who is
higher than the highest, to show that even humility,
if this dare be said, was in the number of His attributes,
by taking Adam’s nature upon Himself, and manifest-
ing Himself to men and Angels in it. It became Him,
of whom are all things, and who is in all things, not
to create new natures, which had not been before, in-
constant spirit and corruptible matter, without taking
them to Himself and absorbing them into a personal
union with God. And see, my brethren, when you
complain that we men are cut off from God, see that
He has done more for you than He has done for those
“who are greater in strength and power.” The
Angels surpass us in their original nature ; they are
immortal spirits, and we are subject to death; they
have been visited by larger measures of God’s grace,
and they serve in His heaven, and are blessed by the
vision of His face; yet “He took not on Him the
care of Angels;” He turned aside from the eldest-
born of creation, He chose the younger. He chose
him in whom an immortal spirit was united to a frail
and perishable body. He turned aside to him whom an
irritable, wayward, dim-sighted, and passionate nature
rendered less worthy of His love; to him. He turned ;
He made “the first last, and the last first;” “He raised
the needy from the earth, and lifted the poor out of the
7%e Mystery of Divine Condescension. 301
mire,” and bade Angels bow down in adoration to a
material form, for it was His own.
Well, my brethren, your God has taken on Him
your nature, and now prepare yourselves to see in
human flesh that glory and that beauty on which the
Angels gaze. Since you are to see Emmanuel, since
“ the brilliancy of the Eternal Light and the unspotted
mirror of God's majesty, and the Image of His good-
ness,” is to walk the earth, since the Son of the
Highest is to be born of woman, since the manifold
attributes of the Infinite are to be poured out before
your eyes through material channels and the opera-
tions of a human soul, since He, whose contemplation
did but trouble you in nature, is coming to take you
captive by a manifestation, which is both intelligible
to you and a pledge that He loves you one by one,
raise high your expectations, for surely they cannot
suffer disappointment. Doubtless, you will say, He
will take a form such as “eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard of ’’ before. It will be a body framed in the
heavens, and only committed to the custody of Mary;
a form of light and glory, worthy of Him, who is
“blessed for evermore ” and comes to bless us with
His presence. Pomp and pride of men He may
indeed despise; we do not look for Him in kings’
courts, or in the array of war, or in the philosophic
school; but doubtless He will choose some calm and
holy spot, and men will go out thither and find their
Incarnate God. He will be tenant of some paradise,
like Adam or Elias, or He will dwell in the mystic
garden of the Canticles, where nature ministers its
302 7%e Mystery of Divine Condescension.
best and purest to its Creator. “The fig-tree will
put forth her green figs, the vines in flower yield their
” “ spikenard and saffron” will be there;
sweet smell;
“ the sweet cane and cinnamon, myrrh and aloes, with
all the chief perfumes;” “the glory of Libanus, the
beauty of Carmel,” before “the glory of the Lord and
the beauty of our God.” There will He show Himself
at stated times, with Angels for His choristers and
Saints for His doorkeepers, to the poor and needy, to
the humble and devout, to those who have kept their
innocence undefiled, or have purged their sins away by
long penance and masterful contrition. }, .
Such would be the conjecture of man, at fault when
he speculated on the height of God, and now again at
fault when he tries to sound the depth. He thinks
that a royal glory is the note of His presence upon
earth ;—lift up your eyes, my brethren, and answer
whether he has guessed aright. O, incomprehensible
in eternity and in time ! solitary in heaven, and soli-
tary upon earth “Who is This, that cometh from
Edom, with dyed garments from Bozra P Why is Thy.
cloak red, and Thygarments like theirs that tread in the
wine-fat P” It is because the Maker of man, the Wis-
dom of God, has come, not in strength, but in weakness.
He has come, not to assert a claim, but to pay a
debt. Instead of wealth, He has come poor; instead of
honour, He has come in ignominy; instead of blessed-
mess, He has come to suffer. He has been delivered
over from His birth to pain and contempt; His deli-
cate frame is worn down by cold and heat, by hunger
and sleeplessness; Hishands are rough and bruised with
7%e Mystery of /Jivine Condescension. 303
a mechanic’s toil; His eyes are dimmed with weeping ;
His Name is cast out as evil. He is flung amid the
throng of men; He wanders from place to place ; He
is the companion of sinners. He is followed by a
mixed multitude, who care more for meat and drink
than for His teaching, or by a city’s populace which
deserts Him in the day of trial. And at length “the
Brightness of God’s Glory and the Image of His
Substance ’’ is fettered, haled to and fro, buffeted,
spit upon, mocked, cursed, scourged, and tortured.
“He hath no beauty nor comeliness; He is despised
and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows and
acquainted with infirmity;” nay, He is a “ leper, and
smitten of God, and humbled.” And so His clothes,
are torn off, and He is lifted up upon the bitter Cross,
and there He hangs, a spectacle for profane, impure,
and savage eyes, and a mockery for the evil spirit
whom He had cast down into hell.
O wayward man discontented first that thy God
is far from thee, discontented again when He has
drawn near, complaining first that He is high, com-
plaining next that He is low, unhumbled being,
when wilt thou cease to make thyself thine own
centre, and learn that God is infinite in all He does,
infinite when He reigns in heaven, infinite when He
serves on earth, exacting our homage in the midst of
His Angels, and winning homage from us in the
midst of sinners P Adorable He is in His eternal
rest, adorable in the glory of His court, adorable in
the beauty of His works, most adorable of all, most
royal, most persuasive in His deformity. Think you
304 The M.ſystery of Divine Condescension.
not, my brethren, that to Mary, when she held Him
in her maternal arms, when she gazed on the pale
countenance and the dislocated limbs of her God,
when she traced the wandering lines of blood, when
she counted the weals, the bruises, and the wounds,
which dishonoured that virginal flesh, think you not
that to her eyes it was more beautiful than when she
first worshipped it, pure, radiant, and fragrant, on
the night of His nativity P Di/ectus meus candidus
et rubicundus, as the Church sings; “My beloved is
white and ruddy; His whole form doth breathe of
love, and doth provoke to love in turn; His drooping
head, His open palms, and His breast all bare. My
beloved is white and ruddy, choice out of thousands;
His head is of the finest gold; His locks are branches
of palm-trees, black as a raven. His eyes as doves
upon brooks of waters, which are washed with milk,
and sit beside the plentiful streams. His cheeks are
as beds of spices set by the perfumers; His lips are
lilies dropping choice myrrh. His hands are turned
and golden, full of jacinths; His throat is most sweet,
and He is all lovely. Such is my beloved, and He is
my friend, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.”
So is it, O dear and gracious Lord ; “the day of
death is better than the day of birth, and better is
the house of mourning than the house of feasting.”
Better for me that Thou shouldst come thus abject
and dishonourable, than hadst Thou put on a body
fair as Adam’s when he came out of Thy Hand. Thy
glory sullied, Thy beauty marred, those five wounds
welling out blood, those temples torn and raw, that
7%e Mystery of Divine Condescension. 305
broken heart, that crushed and livid frame, they teach
me more, than wert Thou Solomon “in the diadem
wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his
heart's joy.” The gentle and tender expression of
that Countenance is no new beauty, or created grace;
it is but the manifestation, in a human form, of
Attributes which have been from everlasting. Thou
Canst not change, O Jesu ; and, as Thou art still
Mystery, so wast Thou always Love. I cannot com-
prehend Thee more than I did, before I saw Thee on
the Cross; but I have gained my lesson. I have
before me the proof, that in spite of Thy awful nature,
and the clouds and darkness which surround it, Thou
Canst think of me with a personal affection. Thou hast
died, that I might live. “Let us love God,” says Thy
Apostle, “ because He first hath loved us.” I can love
Thee now from first to last, though from first to last
I cannot understand Thee. As I adore Thee, O Lover
of souls, in Thy humiliation, so will I admire Thee and
embrace Thee in Thy infinite and everlasting power.
DISCO U RSE XV.
7THE ZAVAE/AWZZTUZ)/2 OA' 7"AZ Z)/V/AVAE A 7'7"RZA'O" ZTAE.S.
E all know well, and firmly hold, that our Lord
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the Cross
in satisfaction for our sins. This truth is the great
foundation of all our hopes, and the object of our most
earnest faith and most loving worship. And yet, how-
ever well we know it, it is a subject which admits of
drawing out, and insisting on in detail, in a way which
most persons will feel profitable to themselves. I
shall now attempt to do this in some measure, and to
follow the reflections to which it leads; though at
this season" many words would be out of place.
Christ died for our sins, for the sins of the whole
world; but He need not have died, for the Almighty
God might have saved us all, might have saved the
whole world, without His dying. He might have par-
doned and brought to heaven every individual child of
Adam without the incarnation and death of His Son.
He might have saved us without any ransom and with-
out any delay. He might have abolished original
sin, and restored Adam at once. His word had been
enough; with Him to say is to do. “All things art
1 Passion-tide.
7%e /m/?nitude of the Divine Attributes. 307
&l
possible to Thee,” was the very reason our Lord gave
in His agony for asking that the chalice might pass from
Him. As in the beginning. He said, “Let light be made,
and it was made ;”
so might. He have spoken again,
and sin would have vanished from the soul, and guilt
with it. Or He might have employed a mediator less
powerful than His own Son; He might have accepted
the imperfect satisfaction of some mere man. He
wants not for resources; but He willed otherwise. He
who ever does the best, saw in His infinite wisdom
that it was expedient and fitting to take a ransom.
As He has not hindered the reprobate from resisting
His grace and rejecting redemption, so He has not
pardoned any who are to enter His eternal kingdom
without a true and sufficient satisfaction for their sin.
Both in the one case and the other, He has done, not
what was possible merely, but what was best. And
this is why the coming of the Word was necessary;
for if a true satisfaction was to be made, then nothing
could accomplish this short of the incarnation of the
All-holy.
You see, then, my brethren, how voluntary was the
mission and death of our Lord ; if an instance can be
imagined of voluntary suffering, it is this. He came
to die when He need not have died; He died to satisfy
for what might have been pardoned without satisfac-
tion; He paid a price which need not have been asked,
nay, which needed to be accepted” when paid. It may
be said with truth, that, rigorously speaking, one
* Dicendum videtºur satisfactionem Christi, licet fuerit rigorosa
quoad &qualitatem et condignitatem pretii soluti, non tamen fuisse
X 2
308 The Zn/initude of the Divine Attributes.
being can never, by his own suffering, simply dis-
charge the debt of another’s sin.” Accordingly, He
died, not in order to exert a peremptory claim on the
divine justice, if I may so speak, as if He were bar-
gaining in the market-place, or pursuing a plea in a
court of law;-but in a more loving, generous, muni-
ficent way, did He shed that blood, which was worth ten
thousand lives of men, worth more than the blood of
all the sons of Adam poured out together, in accord-
ance with His Father’s will, who, for wise reasons
unrevealed, exacted it as the condition of their pardon.
Nor was this all;-one drop of His blood had been
sufficient to satisfy for our sins; He might have
offered His circumcision as an atonement, and it would
have been sufficient ; one moment of His agony of
blood had been sufficient, one stroke of the scourge
might have wrought a sufficient satisfaction. But
neither circumcision, agony, nor scourging was our
redemption, because He did not offer them as such.
rigorosam quoad modum solutionis, sed indiguisse aliquà gratié
liberă Dei. . . . Si aliquis ita peccavit, ut justè puniatur exilio
unius mensis, et velit redimere pecuniá illud exilium, offeratgue
Summarm aequivalentem, immo excedenterm, non dubium quin Satis-
fiat rigori justitiae vindicativae, si attendas ad mensuram poenae;
non tamen satisfit, si attendas ad modum ; si enim judex gratiosé
non admittat illam compensationem, jus habet ex rigore justitiae
punitivae ad exigendum exilium, quantumvis alia aequalis et longè
major poena offeratur.—De Lug. Incarn. iii. 10. *
* Quiredemit captivum solvendo pretium, solvit quantum domino
debetur ex justitiã, Solum enim debetur illi pretium ex contractu
et conventione inter ipsum et redemptorem. . . . Nullum est justi-
tiae debitum cui non satisfiat per solutionem illius pretii. At vero
pro injwriá non Solum debetur ex justitià satisfactio uticunque, sed
eaſhibenda ab ipso offensore . . . sicut nec qui abstulit librum,
Satisfacit adaequate reddendo pretium aequivalens.—Ibid. iv. 2.
The /m/initude of the Divine Attributes. 309
The price He paid was nothing short of the whole
treasure of His blood, poured forth to the last drop
from His veins and sacred heart. He shed His whole
life for us; He left Himself empty of His all. He
left His throne on high ; He gave up His home on
earth; He parted with His Mother, He gave His
strength and His toil, He gave his body and soul, He
offered up His passion, His crucifixion, and His death, -
that man should not be bought for nothing. This is
what the Apostle intimates in saying that we are
“bought with a great price;” and the Prophet, while
he declares that “with the Lord there is merey, and
with Him a copious ”or “ plenteous redemption.”
This is what I wished to draw out distinctly, my
brethren, for your devout meditation. We might
have been pardoned without the humiliation of the
Eternal Word; again, we might have been redeemed
by one single drop of His blood; but still on earth
He came, and a death He died, a death of inconceivable
suffering ; and all this He did as a free offering
to His Father, not as forcing His acceptance of it.
From beginning to the end it was in the highest
sense a voluntary work; and this is what is so
overpowering to the mind in the thought of it. It
is as if He delighted in having to suffer; as if He
wished to show all creatures, what would otherwise
have seemed impossible, that the Creator could prac-
tise, in the midst of His heavenly blessedness, the
virtues of a creature, self-abasement and humility
. It is, as if He wished, all-glorious as He was from
all eternity, as a sort of addition (if we may so
3 Io The ſºftnitude of the Divine Affriðutes.
speak) to His perfections, to submit to a creature’s
condition in its most afflictive form. It is, if we
may use human language, a prodigality of charity,
or that heroic love of toil and hardship, which is
poorly shadowed out in the romantic defenders of the
innocent or the oppressed, whom we read of in history
or in fable, who have gone about the earth, nobly
exposing themselves to peril for any who asked their
aid.
Or rather, and that is what I wish to insist upon,
it suggests to us, as by a specimen, the infinitude
of God. We all confess that He is infinite; He has
an infinite number of perfections, and He is infinite
in each of them. This we shall confess at once ; but,
we ask, what is infinity ? what is meant by saying
He is infinite? We seem to wish to be told, as if we
had nothing given us to throw light on the question.
Why, my brethren, we have much given us; the out-
ward exhibition of infinitude is mystery; and the
mysteries of nature and of grace are nothing else
than the mode in which His infinitude encounters
us and is brought home to our minds. Men confess
that He is infinite, yet they start and object, as soon
as His infinitude comes in contact with their imagi-
nation and acts upon their reason. They cannot bear
the fulness, the superabundance, the inexhaustible
flowing forth, and “ vehement rushing,” and encom-
passing flood of the divine attributes. They restrain
and limit them to their own comprehension, they
measure them by their own standard, they fashion
* Tanquam advenientis spiritās vehementis.
The Zn/initude of the Divine Attributes. 31 I
them by their own model; and when they discern
aught of the unfathomable depth, the immensity, of
any single excellence or perfection of the Divine
Nature, His love, or His justice, or His power, they
are at once offended, and turn away, and refuse to
believe.
Now, this instance of our Lord’s humiliation is a
case in point. What would be profusion and extra-
vagance in man, is but suitable or necessary, if I may
say so, in Him whose resources are illimitable. We
read in history accounts of oriental munificence,
which sound like fiction, and which would gain, not
applause but contempt in Europe, where wealth is not
concentrated, as in the East, upon a few out of a whole
people. “Royal munificence” has become a proverb,
from the idea that a king’s treasures are such, as
to make the giving of large presents and bounties, not
allowable only, but appropriate in him. He, then,
who is infinite, may be only doing what is best, and
holiest, and wisest, in doing what to man seems
infinitely to exceed the necessity; for He cannot
exceed His own powers or resources. Man has limited
means and definite duties; it would be waste in him
to lavish a thousand pieces of gold on one poor man,
when with the same he might have done substantial
good to many; but God is as rich, as profound and
vast, as infinite, after He has done a work of infinite
bounty, as before He set about it. “ Knowest thou
not,” He says, “ or hast thou not heard P the Ever-
lasting God, the Lord, who has created the ends of
the earth, shall not faint, nor weary; nor is there
312 The Zºſimizude of the Divine Attributes.
searching of His wisdom.” He cannot do a small
work; He cannot act by halves; He ever does whole
works, great works. Had Christ been incarnate for
one single soul, who ought to have been surprised ?
who ought not to have praised and blessed Him for
telling us in one instance, and by a specimen, what
that love and bounty are, which fill the heavens P and
in like manner, when in fact He has taken flesh for
those, who might have been saved without it, though
more suitably to His glorious majesty with it, and
moreover has shed His whole blood in satisfaction,
when a drop might have sufficed, shall we think such
teaching strange and hard to receive, and not rather
consider it consistent, and merely consistent, with that
great truth, which we all start with admitting, that
He is infinite? Surely it would be most irrational in
us, to admit His infinitude in the general, and to
reject the examples of it in particular ; to maintain
that He is mystery, yet to deny that His acts can be
mysterious.
We must not, then, bring in our economical theories,
borrowed from the schools of the day, when we would
reason about the Eternal God. The world is ever
doing so, when it speaks of religion. It will not allow
the miracles of the Saints, because it pretends that
those wrought by the Apostles were sufficient for the
purpose which miracles had, or ought forsooth to have,
in view. I wonder how the world comes to admit that
such multitudes of human beings are born and die in
infancy; or that a profusion of seeds is cast over the
face of the earth, some of which fall by the way-side,
7%e /m/initude of the Divine Attributes. 313
some on the rock, some among thorns, and only a
remnant on the good ground. How wasteful was that
Sower so thinks the world, but an Apostle cries out,
“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the
knowledge of God l how incomprehensible are His
judgments, and how unsearchable His ways l’’
The world judges of God’s condescension as it judges
of His bounty. We know from Scripture that “the
teaching of the Cross" was in the beginning “foolish-
ness” to it; grave thinking men scoffed at it as
impossible, that God, who is so high, should humble
Himself so low, and that One who died a malefactor's
death should be worshipped on the very instrument of
His punishment. Voluntary humiliation they did not
understand then, nor do they now. They do not
indeed express their repugnance to the doctrine so
openly now, because what is called public opinion does
not allow them ; but you see what they really think of
Christ, by the tone which they adopt towards those
who in their measure follow Him. Those who are
partakers of His fulness, are called on, according as
the gift is given them, whether by His ordinary sug-
gestions or by particular inspiration, to imitate His
pattern; they are carried on to the sacrifice of self,
and thus they come into collision with the maxims of
the world. A voluntary or gratuitous mortification in
one shape or another, voluntary chastity, voluntary
poverty, voluntary obedience, vows of perfection, all
this is the very point of contest between the world and
the Church, the world hating it, and the Church
counselling it. “Why cannot they stop with me?”
314 7%e /n/initude of the Divine Attributes.
says the world; “why will they give up their station
or position, when it is certain they might be saved
where they are? Here is a lady of birth; she might
be useful at home, she might marry well, she might
be an ornament to society, she might give her coun-
tenance to religious objects, and she has perversely left
us all; she has cut off her hair, and put on a coarse
garment, and is washing the feet of the poor. There
is a man of name and ability, who has thrown himself
out of his sphere of influence, and he lives in a small
room, in a place where no one knows who he is ; and
he is teaching little children their catechism.” The
world is touched with pity, and shame, and indignation
at the sight, and moralizes over persons who act so
unworthily of their birth or education, and are so cruel
towards themselves. And worse still, “here is a Saint,
and what must he do but practise eccentricities?”—as
they really would be in others, though in him they
are but the necessary antagonists to the temptations
which otherwise would come on him from “the great-
ness of the revelations,” or are but tokens of the love
with which he embraces the feet of his Redeemer.
And “here again is another, and she submits her flesh
to penances shocking to think of, and wearies herself
out in the search after misery, and all from some notion
that she is assimilating her condition to the voluntary
self-abasement of the Word.” Alas, for the world !
which is simply forgetful that God is great in all He
does, great in His sufferings, and that He makes
Saints and holy men in their degree partakers of that
greatness.
7%e /m/initude of the Divine A tributes. 315
Here, too, is another instance in point. If there is
one divine attribute rather than another, which forces
itself upon the mind from the contemplation of the
material world, it is the glory, harmony, and beauty
of its Creator. This lies on the surface of the creation,
like light on a countenance, and addresses itself to all.
To few men indeed is it given to penetrate into the
world’s system and order so deeply, as to perceive, in
addition, the wonderful skill and goodness of the
Divine Artificer; but the grace and loveliness which
beam from the very face of the visible creation are
cognizable by all, rich and poor, learned and ignorant.
It is indeed so beautiful, that those same philosophers,
who devote themselves to its investigation, come to
love it idolatrously, and to think it too perfect for them
to allow of its infringement or alteration , or to tolerate
even that idea. Not looking up to the Infinite Creator,
who could make a thousand fairer worlds, and who has
made the fairest portion of this the most perishable,
—blooming, as it does, to-day, and to-morrow burning
in the oven,_loving, I say, the creature more than the
Creator, they have taken on them in all ages to dis-
believe the possibility of interruptions of physical order,
and have denied the miracles of Revelation. They have
denied the miracles of Apostles and Prophets, on the
ground of their marring and spoiling what is so perfect
and harmonious, as if the visible world were some work
of human art, too exquisite to be wantonly dashed on
the ground. But He, my brethren, the Eternal Maker
of time and space, of matter and sense, as if to pour
contempt upon the forward and minute speculations of
s 16 7%e /m/initude of the Divine Attributes.
His ignorant creatures about His works and His will,
in order to a fuller and richer harmony, and a higher
and nobler order, confuses the laws of this physical
universe and untunes the music of the spheres. Nay,
He has done more, He has gone farther still; out of
the infinitude of His greatness, He has defaced His
OWI). glory, and wounded and deformed His own beauty,
—not indeed as it is in itself, for He is ever the same,
transcendently perfect and unchangeable, but in the
contemplation of His creatures,--by the unutterable
condescension of His incarnation. -
Semetipsum erinamivit, “He made Himself void or
empty,” as the earth had been “void and empty '' at
the beginning; He seemed to be unbinding and
letting loose the assemblage of attributes which made
Him God, and to be destroying the idea which He
Himself had implanted in our minds. The God of
miracles did the most awful of signs and wonders, by
revoking and contradicting, as it were, all His per-
fections, though He remained the while one and the
same. Omnipotence became an abject; the Life
became a leper; the first and only Fair came down
to us with an “inglorious visage,” and an “unsightly
form,” bleeding and (I may say) ghastly, lifted up
in nakedness and stretched out in dislocation before
the eyes of sinners. Not content with this, He per-
petuates the history of His humiliation; men of this
world, when they fall into trouble, and then recover
themselves, hide the memorials of it. They conceal
their misfortunes in prospect, as long as they can ;
bear them perforce, when they fall into them ; and,
The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes. 317
when they have overcome them, affect to make light
of them. Kings of the earth, when they have rid
themselves of their temporary conquerors, and are
reinstated on their thrones, put all things back into
their former state, and remove from their palaces,
council-rooms, and cities, whether statue or picture
or inscription or edict, all which bears witness to the
suspension of their power. Soldiers indeed boast of
their scars, but it is because their foes were well-
matched with them, and their conflicts were necessary,
and the marks of what they have suffered is a proof
of what they have done; but He, who oblatus est,
quia vo/uit who “ was offered, for He willed it,” who
exposed Himself to the powers of evil, yet could have
saved us without that exposure, who was neither weak
in that He was overcome, nor strong in that He
overcame, proclaims to the whole world what He has
gone through, without the tyrant's shame, without
the soldier’s pride;—He (wonderful it is) has raised
up on high, He has planted over the earth, the
memorial, that that Evil One whom He cast out of
heaven in the beginning, has in the hour of darkness
inflicted agony upon Him. For in truth, by con-
sequence of the infinitude of His glory, He is more
beautiful in His weakness than in His strength; His
wounds shine like stars of light; His very Cross
becomes an object of worship; the instruments of
His passion, the nails and the thorny crown, are
replete with miraculous power. And so He bids the
commemoration of His Bloody Sacrifice to be made
3.18 The I.Aftnätzude of Žhe /Ozzyżze A #2262.Ées.
day by day all over the earth, and He Himself is there
in Person to quicken and sanctify it; He rears His
bitter but saving Cross in every Church and over
every Altar; He shows Himself torn and bleeding
upon the wood at the corners of each street and in
every village market-place; He makes it the symbol
of His religion; He seals our foreheads, our lips, and
our breast with this triumphant sign; with it. He
begins and ends our days, and with it He consigns
us to the tomb. And when He comes again, that
Sign of the Son of Man will be seen in heaven; and
when He takes His seat in judgment, the same
glorious marks will be seen by all the world in His
Hands, Feet, and Side, which were dug into them at
the season of His degradation. Thus “hath King
Solomon made Himself a litter of the wood of Libanus.
The pillars thereof He made of silver, the seat of gold,
the going up of purple; the midst He covered with
charity for the daughters of Jerusalem. Go forth,
ye daughters of Sion; and see King Solomon in the
diadem, wherewith His mother crowned Him in the
day of His espousals, and in the day of His heart’s joy.”
I must not conclude this train of thought, without
alluding to a sterner subject, on which it seems to •
throw some light. There is a class of doctrines
which to the natural man are an especial offence and
difficulty; I mean those connected with the divine
judgments. Why has the Almighty assigned an
endless punishment to the impenitent sinner? Why
is it that vengeance has its hold on him when He
The Zn/initude of the Divine Attributes. 319
passes out of this life, and there is no remedy ? Why,
again, is it that even the beloved children of God,
that holy souls who leave this life in His grace and
in His favour, are not at once admitted to His face;
but, if there be an outstanding debt against them,
first enter purgatory and exhaust it? Men of the
world shrink from a doctrine like this as impossible,
and religious men answer that it is a mystery; and a
mystery it is, that is, it is but another of those in-
stances which Nature and Revelation bring before us
of the Divine Infinitude; it is but one of the many
overpowering manifestations of the Almighty, when
He acts, which remind us, which are intended to
remind us, that He is infinite, and above and beyond
human measure and understanding, which lead us
to bow the head and adore Him, as Moses did, when
He passed by, and with him awfully to proclaim. His
Name, as “ the Lord God, who hath dominion, keep-
ing mercy for thousands, and returning the iniquity of
the fathers upon the children and children’s children
to the third and fourth generation.”
Thus the attributes of God, though intelligible to
us on their surface,—for from our own sense of mercy
and holiness and patience and consistency, we have
general notions of the All-merciful and All-holy and
All-patient, and of all that is proper to His Essence,—
yet, for the very reason that they are infinite, transcend
our comprehension, when they are dwelt upon, when
they are followed out, and can only be received by
faith. They are dimly shadowed out, in this very
respect, by the great agents which He has created in
320 The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes.
the material world. What is so ordinary and familiar
to us as the elements, what so simple and level to
us, as their presence and operation ? yet how their
character changes, and how they overmaster us, and
triumph over us, when they come upon us in their
fulness | The invisible air, how gentle is it, and in-
timately ours! we breathe it momentarily, nor could
we live without it ; it fans our cheek, and flows around
us, and we move through it without effort, while it
obediently recedes at every step we take, and obse-
quiously pursues us as we go forward. Yet let it come
in its power, and that same silent fluid, which was
just now the servant of our necessity or caprice, takes
us up on its wings with the invisible power of an
Angel, and carries us forth into the regions of space,
and flings us down headlong upon the earth. Or go
to the spring, and draw thence at your pleasure, for
your cup or your pitcher, in supply of your wants; you
have a ready servant, a domestic ever at hand, in large
quantity or in small, to satisfy your thirst, or to purify
you from the dust and mire of the world. But go
from home, reach the coast: and you will see that
same humble element transformed before your eyes.
You were equal to it in its condescension, but who
shall gaze without astonishment at its vast expanse in
the bosom of the ocean P who shall hear without awe
the dashing of its mighty billows along the beach?
who shall without terror feel it heaving under him,
and swelling and mounting up, and yawning wide, till
he, its very sport and mockery, is thrown to and fro,
hither and thither, at the mere mercy of a power which
7%e /m/initude of the Divine Attributes. 321
was just now his companion and almost his slave?
Or, again, approach the flame : it warms you, and it
enlightens you ; yet approach not too near, presume
not, or it will change its nature. That very element
which is so beautiful to look at, so brilliant in its
light, so graceful in its figure, so soft and lambent in
its motion, will be found in its essence to be of a keen
resistless kind; it tortures, it consumes, it reduces to
ashes that, of which it was just before the illumination
and the life. So is it with the attributes of God; our
knowledge of them serves us for our daily welfare;
they give us light and warmth and food and guidance
and succour; but go forth with Moses upon the mount
and let the Lord pass by, or with Elias stand in the
desert amid the wind, the earthquake, and the fire,
and all is mystery and darkness; all is but a whirling
of the reason, and a dazzling of the imagination, and
an overwhelming of the feelings, reminding us that
we are but mortal men and He is God, and that the
outlines which Nature draws for us are not His perfect
image, nor to be pronounced inconsistent with those
further lights and depths with which it is invested by
Revelation.
Say not, my brethren, that these thoughts are too
austere for this season, when we contemplate the self-
sacrificing, self-consuming charity wherewith God
our Saviour has visited us. It is for that very reason
that I dwell on them; the higher He is, and the more
mysterious, so much the more glorious and the more
subduing is the history of His humiliation. I own it,
my brethren, I love to dwell on Him as the Only-
Y.
322 7%e /m/?nitude of the ZJivine Attributes.
begotten Word; nor is it any forgetfulness of His
sacred humanity to contemplate His Eternal Person.
It is the very idea, that He is God, which gives a
meaning to His sufferings; what is to me a man, and
nothing more, in agony, or scourged, or crucified?
there are many holy martyrs, and their torments were
terrible. But here I see One dropping blood, gashed
by the thong, and stretched upon the Cross, and He
is God. It is no tale of human woe which I am read-
ing here; it is the record of the passion of the great
Creator. The Word and Wisdom of the Father, who
dwelt in His bosom in bliss ineffable from all eternity,
whose very smile has shed radiance and grace over the
whole creation, whose traces I see in the starry heavens
and on the green earth, this glorious living God, it is
He who looks at me so piteously, so tenderly from the
Cross. He seems to say,+I cannot move, though I
am omnipotent, for sin has bound Me here. I had had
it in mind to come on earth among innocent creatures,
more fair and lovely than them all, with a face more
radiant than the Seraphim, and a form as royal as that
of Archangels, to be their equal yet their God, to fill
them with My grace, to receive their worship, to enjoy
their company, and to prepare them for the heaven to
which I destined them; but, before I carried My pur-
pose into effect, they sinned, and lost their inheritance,
and so I come indeed, but come, not in that brightness
in which I went forth to create the morning stars and
to fill the sons of God with melody, but in deformity
and in shame, in sighs and tears, with blood upon My
cheek, and with My limbs laid bare and rent. Gaze
The /m/initude of the Divine Attributes. 323
on Me, O My children, if you will, for I am helpless;
gaze on your Maker, whether in contempt, or in faith
and love. Here I wait, upon the Cross, the appointed
time, the time of grace and mercy; here I wait till
the end of the world, silent and motionless, for the
conversion of the sinful and the consolation of the
just ; here I remain in weakness and shame, though
I am so great in heaven, till the end, patiently ex-
pecting My full catalogue of souls, who, when time is
at length over, shall be the reward of My passion and
the triumph of My grace to all eternity.
DISCO U R S E XVI.
A/AEAVTA / SUAEAPAA’/WGS OF OUR ZOAC/D AV AZS AASS/OM.
Every passage in the history of our Lord and
Saviour is of unfathomable depth, and affords
inexhaustible matter of contemplation. All that con-
cerns Him is infinite, and what we first discern is but,
the surface of that which begins and ends in eternity.
It would be presumptuous for any one short of Saints
and Doctors to attempt to eomment on His words and
deeds, except in the way of meditation; but meditation
and mental prayer are so much a duty in all who wish
to cherish true faith and love towards Him, that it
may be allowed us, my brethren, under the guidance
of holy men who have gone before us, to dwell and
enlarge upon what otherwise would more fitly be
adored than scrutinized. And certain times of the
year, this especially, call upon us to consider, as
closely and minutely as we can, even the more sacred
portions of the Gospel history. I would rather be
thought feeble or officious in my treatment of them,
than wanting to the season; and so I now proceed,
1 Passion-tide.
Al/en/a/ Sufferings of our Zord. 325
because the religious usage of the Church requires it,
and though any individual preacher may well shrink
from it, to direct your thoughts to a subject, especially
suitable now, and about which many of us perhaps
think very little, the sufferings which our Lord endured
in His innocent and sinless soul.
You know, my brethren, that our Lord and Saviour,
though He was God, was also perfect man; and hence
He had not only a body, but a soul likewise, such as
ours, though pure from all stain of evil. He did not
take a body without a soul, God forbid! for that
would not have been to become man. How would He
have sanctified our nature if He had taken a nature
which was not ours ? Man without a soul is on a
level with the beasts of the field ; but our Lord came
to save a race capable of praising and obeying Him,
possessed of immortality, yet dispossessed of their
hope of an immortality of bliss. Man was created in
the image of God, and that image is in his soul; when
then his Maker, by an unspeakable condescension,
came in his nature, He took on Himself a soul in
order to take on Him a body; He took on Him a soul
as the means of His union with a body; He took on
Him in the first place the soul, then the body of man,
both at once, but in this order, the soul and the body;
He Himself created the soul which He took on Himself,
while He took His body from the flesh of the Blessed
Virgin, His Mother. Thus He became perfect man
with body and soul; and, as He took on Him a body
of flesh and nerves, which admitted of wounds and
death, and was capable of suffering, so did He take a
326 Mental Sufferings of
soul too, which was susceptible of that suffering, and
moreover was susceptible of the pain and sorrow which
are proper to a human soul; and, as His atoning pas-
sion was undergone in the body, so it was undergone
in the soul also. -
As the solemn days proceed, we shall be especially
called on, my brethren, to consider His sufferings in
the body, His seizure, His forced journeyings to and
fro, His blows and wounds, His scourging, the crown
of thorns, the nails, the Cross. They are all summed
up in the Crucifix itself, as it meets our eyes; they
are represented all at once on His sacred flesh, as it
hangs up before us, and meditation is made easy by
the spectacle. It is otherwise with the sufferings of
His soul, they cannot be painted for us, nor can they
even be duly investigated: they are beyond both sense
and thought ; and yet they anticipated His bodily
sufferings. The agony, a pain of the soul, not of the
body, was the first act of His tremendous sacrifice;
“My soul is sorrowful even unto death,” He said;
nay, if He suffered in the body, it really was in the
soul, for the body did but convey the infliction on to
that, which was the true recipient and seat of the
anguish. - .
This it is very much to the purpose to insist upon ;
I say, it was not the body that suffered, but the soul
in the body; it was the soul and not the body which
was the seat of the suffering of the Eternal Word.
Consider, then, there is no real pain, though there
may be apparent suffering, when there is no kind of
inward sensibility or spirit to be the seat of it. A tree,
our Zord in A/7s Passion. 327
for instance, has life, organs, growth, and decay; it
may be wounded and injured; it droops, and is killed;
but it does not suffer, because it has no mind or sen-
sible principle within it. But wherever this gift of an
immaterial principle is found, there pain is possible,
and greater pain according to the quality of the gift.
Had we no spirit of any kind, we should feel as little
as a tree feels; had we no soul, we should not feel
pain more acutely than a brute feels it ; but, being
men, we feel pain in a way in which nonesbut those
who have souls can feel it.
Living beings, I say, feel more or less according to
the spirit which is in them; brutes feel far less than
man, because they cannot think of what they feel;
they have no advertence or direct consciousness of
their sufferings. This it is that makes pain so trying,
viz., that we cannot help thinking of it, while we suffer
it. It is before us, it possesses the mind, it keeps
our thoughts fixed upon it. Whatever draws the
mind off the thought of it lessens it; hence friends try
to amuse us when we are in pain, for amusement is
a diversion. If the pain is slight, they sometimes
succeed with us; and then we are, so to say, without
pain, even while we suffer. And hence it continually
happens that in violent exercise or labour, men meet
with blows or cuts, so considerable and so durable in
their effect, as to bear witness to the suffering which
must have attended their infliction, of which never-
theless they recollect nothing. And in quarrels and
in battles wounds are received which, from the excite-
ment of the moment, are brought home to the con-
328 Mental Sufferings of
sciousness of the combatant, not by the pain at the
time of receiving them, but by the loss of blood that
follows. f
I will show you presently, my brethren, how I mean
to apply what I have said to the consideration of our
Lord’s sufferings; first I will make another remark.
Consider, then, that hardly any one stroke of pain is
intolerable; it is intolerable when it continues. You
ery out perhaps that you cannot bear more; patients
feel as if they could stop the surgeon’s hand, simply
because he continues to pain them. Their feeling is
that they have borne as much as they can bear; as if
the continuance and not the intenseness was what
made it too much *for them. What does this mean,
but that the memory of the foregoing moments of pain
acts upon (and as it were) edges the pain that suc-
ceeds? If the third or fourth or twentieth moment of
pain could be taken by itself, if the succession of the
moments that preceded it could be forgotten, it
would be no more than the first moment, as bearable
as the first; but what makes it unbearable is, that it
is the twentieth ; that the first, the second, the third,
on to the nineteenth moment of pain, are all concen-
trated in the twentieth ; so that every additional
moment of pain has all the weight, the ever-increasing
weight, of all that has preceded it. Hence, I repeat,
it is that brute animals would seem to feel so little
pain, because, that is, they have not the power of
reflection or of consciousness. They do not know
they exist; they do not contemplate themselves; they
do not look backwards or forwards; every moment as
our ſloyal 2m //7s Passion. 329
it succeeds, is their all; they wander over the face of
the earth, and see this thing and that, and feel pleasure
and pain, but still they take everything as it comes,
and then let it go again, as men do in dreams. They
have memory, but not the memory of an intellectual
being ; they put together nothing, they make nothing
properly one and individual to themselves out of the
particular sensations which they receive; nothing is to
them a reality or has a substance beyond those sensa-
tions; they are but sensible of a number of successive
impressions. And hence, as their other feelings, so
their feeling of pain is but faint and dull, in spite of
their outward manifestations of it. It is the intellec-
tual comprehension of pain, as a whole diffused through
successive moments, which gives it its special power
and keenness, and it is the soul only, which a brute
has not, which is capable of that comprehension.
Now apply this to the sufferings of our Lord;—do
you recollect their offering Him wine mingled with
myrrh, when He was on the point of being crucified ?
He would not drink of it; why? because such a
portion would have stupified His mind, and He was
bent on bearing the pain in all its bitterness. You
see from this, my brethren, the character of His
sufferings; He would have fain escaped them, had
that been His Father’s will; “If it be possible,” He
said, “let this chalice pass from Me;” but since it
was not possible, He says calmly and decidedly to the
Apostle, who would have rescued Him from suffering,
“The chalice which my Father hath given Me, shall I
not drink it?” If He was to suffer, He gave Himself
33O Mental Sufferings of
to suffering; He did not come to suffer as little as He
could ; He did not turn away His face from the suffer-
ing; He confronted it, or, as I may say, He breasted
it, that every particular portion of it might make its
due impression on Him. And as men are superior to
brute animals, and are affected by pain more than
they, by reason of the mind within them, which gives
a substance to pain, such as it cannot have in the
instance of brutes; so, in like manner our Lord felt
pain of the body, with an advertence and a conscious-
ness, and therefore with a keenness and intensity, and
with a unity of perception, which none of us can
possibly fathom or compass, because His soul was so
absolutely in His own power, so simply free from the
influence of distractions, so fully directed upon the
pain, so utterly surrendered, so simply subjected to
the suffering. And thus He may truly be said to have
suffered the whole of His passion in every moment
of it. - - - :
Recollect that our Blessed Lord was in this respect
different from us, that, though He was perfect man,
yet there was a power in Him greater than His soul,
which ruled His soul, for He was God. The soul of
other men is subjected to its own wishes, feelings,
impulses, passions, perturbations; His soul was
subjected simply to His Eternal and Divine Person.
Nothing happened to His soul, by chance, or on a
sudden; He never was taken by surprise; nothing
affected Him without His willing beforehand that it
should affect Him. Never did He sorrow, or fear, or
desire, or rejoice in spirit, but He first willed to be
our Zord in His Passion. 33 I
sorrowful, or afraid, or desirous, or joyful. When we
suffer, it is because outward agents and the uncontrol-
lable emotions of our minds bring suffering upon us.
We are brought under the discipline of pain involun-
tarily, we suffer from it more or less acutely according to
accidental circumstances, we find our patience more
or less tried by it according to our state of mind, and
we do our best to provide alleviations or remedies of
it. We cannot anticipate beforehand how much of it
will come upon us, or how far we shall be able to
sustain it ; nor can we say afterwards why we have
felt just what we have felt, or why we did not bear
the suffering better. It was otherwise with our Lord.
His Divine Person was not subject, could not be ex-
posed, to the influence of His own human affections
and feelings, except so far as He chose. I repeat,
when He chose to fear, He feared; when He chose to
be angry, He was angry; when He chose to grieve,
He was grieved. He was not open to emotion, but
He opened upon Himself voluntarily the influence by
which He was moved. Consequently, when He deter-
mined to suffer the pain of His vicarious passion,
whatever He did, He did, as the Wise Man says,
instanter, “earnestly,” with His might; He did not
do it by halves; He did not turn away His mind from
the suffering, as we do;—(how should He, who came
to suffer, who could not have suffered but of His own
act?) no, He did not say and unsay, do and undo;
He said and He did ; He said, “Lo, I come to do
Thy will, O God; sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest
not, but a body hast Thou fitted to Me.” He took a
332 Mental Sufferings of
body in order that He might suffer; He became man,
that He might suffer as man; and when His hour was
come, that hour of Satan and of darkness, the hour
when sin was to pour its full malignity upon Him, it
followed that He offered Himself wholly, a holocaust,
a whole burnt-offering;-as the whole of His body,
stretched out upon the Cross, so the whole of His soul,
His whole advertence, His whole consciousness, a
mind awake, a sense acute, a living co-operation, a
present, absolute intention, not a virtual permission,
not a heartless submission, this did He present to His
tormentors. His passion was an action; He lived
most energetically, while Helay languishing, fainting,
and dying. Nor did He die, except by an act of the
will ; for He bowed His head, in command as well as
in resignation, and said, “Father, into Thy hands I
commend My Spirit;” He gave the word, He sur-
rendered His soul, He did not lose it. -
Thus you see, my brethren, had our Lord only
suffered in the body, and in it not so much as other
men, still as regards the pain, He would have really
suffered indefinitely more, because pain is to be
measured by the power of realizing it. God was the
sufferer; God suffered in His human nature; the
sufferings belonged to God, and were drunk up, were
drained out to the bottom of the chalice, because God
drank them ; not tasted or sipped, not flavoured,
disguised by human medicaments, as man disposes of
the cup of anguish. And what I have now said will
further serve to answer an objection, which I shall
proceed to notice, and which perhaps exists latently
our Zord in Aſis Passion. 333
\
in the minds of many, and leads them to overlook the
part which our Lord's soul had in His gracious satis-
faction for sin. - .
Our Lord said, when His agony was commencing,
“My soul is sorrowful unto death;” now you may
ask, my brethren, whether He had not certain con-
solations, peculiar to Himself, impossible in any other,
which diminished or impeded the distress of His soul,
and caused Him to feel, not more, but less than an
ordinary man. For instance, He had a sense of
innocence which no other sufferer could have : even
His persecutors, even the false apostle who betrayed
Him, the judge who sentenced Him, and the soldiers
who conducted the execution, testified His innocence.
“I have condemned the innocent blood,” said Judas;
“I am clear from the blood of this just Person,” said
Pilate; “Truly this was a just Man,” cried the cen-
turion. And if even they, sinners, bore witness to
His sinlessness, how much more did His own soul |
and we know well that even in our own case, sinners
as we are, on the consciousness of innocence or of
guilt mainly turns our power of enduring opposition
and calumny; how much more, you will say, in the
case of our Lord, did the sense of inward sanctity
compensate for the suffering and annihilate the
shame! Again, you may say, that He knew that
His sufferings would be short, and that their issue
would be joyful, whereas uncertainty of the future is
the keenest element of human distress; but He could
not have anxiety, for He was not in suspense, nor
despondency or despair, for He never was deserted.
334 Mental Sufferings of
And in confirmation you may refer to St. Paul who
expressly tells us, that “for the joy set before Him,”
our Lord “despised the shame.” And certainly there
is a marvellous calm and self-possession in all He does:
consider His warning to the Apostles, “Watch and
pray, lest ye enter into temptation; the spirit indeed
is willing, but the flesh is weak;” or His words to
J udas, “ Friend, wherefore art thou come P” and
“Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?”
or to Peter, “All that take the sword, shall perish
with the sword;” or to the man who struck Him,
“If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but
if well, why smitest thou Me?” or to His Mother,
“Woman, behold thy Son.”
All this is true and much to be insisted on ; but it
quite agrees with, or rather illustrates, what I have
been saying. My brethren, you have only said (to
use a human phrase) that He was always Himself.
His mind was its own centre, and was never in the
slightest degree thrown off its heavenly and most
perfect balance. What He suffered, He suffered be-
cause He put Himself under suffering, and that de-
liberately and calmly. As He said to the leper, “I
will, be thou clean;” and to the paralytic, “Thy sins
be forgiven thee;” and to the centurion, “I will come
and heal him;” and of Lazarus, “I go to wake him
out of sleep;” so He said, “Now I will begin to
suffer,” and He did begin. His composure is but the
proof how entirely He governed His own mind. He
drew back, at the proper moment, the bolts and fasten-
ings, and opened the gates, and the floods fell right
our Zord in His Passion. 335
upon His soul in all their fulness. This is what St.
Mark tells us of Him; and he is said to have written
it from the very mouth of St. Peter, who was one of
three witnesses present at the time. “They came,”
he says, “ to the place which is called Gethsemani;
and He saith to His disciples, Sit you here while I
pray. And He taketh with Him Peter and James
and John, and He began to be frightened and to be
very heavy.” You see how deliberately He acts; He
comes to a certain spot; and then, giving the word of
command, and withdrawing the support of the God-
head from His soul, distress, terror, and dejection at
once rush in upon it. Thus He walks forth into a
mental agony with as definite an action as if it were
some bodily torture, the fire or the wheel.
This being the case, you will see at once, my
brethren, that it is nothing to the purpose to say that
He would be supported under His trial by the con-
sciousness of innocence and the anticipation of tri-
umph; for His trial consisted in the withdrawal, as
of other causes of consolation, so of that very con-
sciousness and anticipation. The same act of the will
which admitted the influence upon His soul of any
distress at all, admitted all distresses at once. It was
not the contest between antagonist impulses and views,
coming from without, but the operation of an inward
resolution. As men of self-command can turn from
one thought to another at their will, so, much more,
did He deliberately deny Himself the comfort, and
satiate Himself with the woe. In that moment His
soul thought not of the future, He thought only of the
336 Mental Sufferings of
present burden which was upon Him, and which He
had come upon earth to sustain.
And now, my brethren, what was it He had to bear,
when He thus opened upon His soul the torrent of
this predestinated pain? Alas! He had to bear what
is well known to us, what is familiar to us, but what
to Him was woe unutterable. He had to bear, that
which is so easy a thing to us, so natural, so welcome,
that we cannot conceive of it as of a great endurance,
but which to Him had the scent and the poison of
death;-He had, my dear brethren, to bear the weight
of sin; He had to bear your sins; He had to bear the
sins of the whole world. Sin is an easy thing to us;
we think little of it; we do not understand how the
Creator can think much of it; we cannot bring our
imagination to believe that it deserves retribution,
and, when even in this world punishments follow upon
it, we explain them away or turn our minds from
them. But consider what sin is in itself; it is re-
bellion against God; it is a traitor's act who aims at
the overthrow and death of His sovereign; it is that,
if I may use a strong expression, which, could the
Divine Governor of the world cease to be, would be
sufficient to bring it about. Sin is the mortal enemy
of the All-holy, so that He and it cannot be together;
and as the All-holy drives it from His presence into
the outer darkness, so, if God could be less than God,
it is sin that would have power to make Him so. And
here observe, my brethren, that when once Almighty
Love, by taking flesh, entered this created system,
and submitted Himself to its laws, then forthwith this
our Zordſ in His Passion. 337
antagonist of good and truth, taking advantage of the
opportunity, flew at that flesh, which He had taken,
and fixed on it, and was its death. The envy of the
Pharisees, the treachery of Judas, and the madness of
the people, were but the instrument or the expression
of the enmity which sin felt towards Eternal Purity,
as soon as, in infinite mercy towards men, He put
Himself within its reach. Sin could not touch His
Divine Majesty; but it could assail Him in that way
in which He allowed Himself to be assailed, that is,
through the medium of His humanity. And in the
issue, in the death of God incarnate, you are but
taught, my brethren, what sin is in itself, and what it
was which then was falling, in its hour and in its
strength, upon His human nature, when He allowed
that nature to be so filled with horror and dismay at
the very anticipation.
There, then, in that most awful hour, knelt the
Saviour of the world, putting off the defences of His
divinity, dismissing His reluctant Angels, who in
myriads were ready at His call, and opening His
arms, baring His breast, sinless as He was, to the
assault of His foe, of a foe whose breath was a
pestilence, and whose embrace was an agony. There
He knelt, motionless and still, while the vile and
horrible fiend clad His spirit in a robe steeped in all
that is hateful and heinous in human crime, which
clung close round His heart, and filled His conscience,
and found its way into every sense and pore of His
mind, and spread over Him a moral leprosy, till He
almost felt Himself to be that which He never could
- Z
338 Mental Sufferings of
be, and which His foe would fain have made Him.
Oh, the horror, when He looked, and did not know
Himself, and felt as a foul and loathsome sinner, from
His vivid perception of that mass of corruption which
poured over His head and ran down even to the skirts
of His garments Oh, the distraction, when He found
His eyes, and hands, and feet, and lips, and heart, as
if the members of the Evil One, and not of God! Are
these the hands of the immaculate Lamb of God, once
innocent, but now red with ten thousand barbarous
deeds of blood P are these His lips, not uttering prayer,
and praise, and holy blessings, but as if defiled with
oaths, and blasphemies, and doctrines of devils? Or
His eyes, profaned as they are by all the evil visions
and idolatrous fascinations for which men have aban-
doned their Adorable Creator P And His ears, they
ring with sounds of revelry and of strife; and His
heart is frozen with avarice, and cruelty, and unbelief;
and His very memory is laden with every sin which
has been committed since the fall, in all regions of the
earth, with the pride of the old giants, and the lusts
of the five cities, and the obduracy of Egypt, and the
ambition of Babel, and the unthankfulness and scorn
of Israel. Oh, who does not know the misery of a
haunting thought which comes again and again, in
spite of rejection, to annoy, if it cannot seduce? or of
some odious and sickening imagination, in no sense
one's own, but forced upon the mind from without 2 or
of evil knowledge, gained with or without a man’s
fault, but which he would give a great price to be rid
of at once and for ever? And adversaries such as
ozer ſlordſ ºn A/?s Passzoz. 339
these gather around Thee, Blessed Lord, in millions
now ; they come in troops more numerous than the
locust or the palmer-worm, or the plagues of hail, and
flies, and frogs, which were sent against Pharaoh. Of
the living and of the dead and of the as yet unborn,
of the lost and of the saved, of Thy people and of
strangers, of sinners and of Saints, all sins are there.
Thy dearest are there, Thy saints and Thy chosen are
upon Thee; Thy three Apostles, Peter, James, and
John, but not as comforters, but as accusers, like the
friends of Job, “sprinkling dust towards heaven,” and
heaping curses on Thy head. All are there but one;
one only is not there, one only ; for she, who had no
part in sin, she only could console Thee, and therefore
she is not nigh. She will be near Thee on the Cross,
she is separated from Thee in the garden. She has
been Thy companion and Thy confidant through Thy
life, she interchanged with Thee the pure thoughts and
holy meditations of thirty years; but her virgin ear
may not take in, nor may her immaculate heart con-
ceive, what now is in vision before Thee. None was
equal to the weight but God; sometimes before Thy
Saints Thou hast brought the image of a single sin, as
it appears in the light of Thy countenance, a venial
sin, perhaps, not a mortal one; and they have told us
that the sight did all but kill them, nay, would have
killed them, had it not been instantly withdrawn.
The Mother of God, for all her sanctity, nay, by reason
of it, could not have borne even one brood of that
innumerable progeny of Satan which compasses Thee
about. It is the long history of a world, and God
Z 2
34O Mental Sufferings of
alone can bear the load of it. Hopes blighted, vows
broken, lights quenched, warnings scorned, opportuni-
ties lost; the innocent betrayed, the young hardened,
the penitent relapsing, the just overcome, the aged
failing; the sophistry of misbelief, the wilfulness of
passion, the obduracy of pride, the tyranny of habit,
the canker of remorse, the wasting fever of care, the
anguish of shame, the pining of disappointment, the
sickness of despair; such cruel, such pitiable spec-
tacles, such heartrending, revolting, detestable, mad-
dening scenes; nay, the haggard faces, the convulsed
lips, the flushed cheek, the dark brow of the willing
victims of rebellion, they are all before Him now ; they
are upon Him and in Him. They are with Him
instead of that ineffable peace which has inhabited His
soul since the moment of His conception. They are
upon Him, they are all but His own; He cries to His
Father as if, He were the criminal, not the victim ;
His agony takes the form of guilt and compunction.
He is doing penance, He is making confession, He is
exercising contrition with a reality and a virtue
infinitely greater than that of all Saints and penitents
together; for He is the One Victim for us all, the
sole Satisfaction, the real Penitent, all but the real
sinner. 3.
He rises languidly from the earth, and turns around
to meet the traitor and his band, now quickly nearing
the deep shade. He turns, and lo! there is blood
upon His garment and in His footprints. Whence
come these first-fruits of the passion of the Lamb P.
no soldier's scourge has touched His shoulders, nor
on? / ord in A/?s Passion. 34. I
the hangman's nails His hands and feet. My brethren,
He has bled before His time; He has shed blood; yes,
and it is His agonizing soul which has broken up
His framework of flesh and poured it forth. His
passion has begun from within. That tormented
Heart, the seat of tenderness and love, began at
length to labour and to beat with vehemence beyond
its nature; “the foundations of the great deep were
broken up;” the red streams rushed forth so copious
and fierce as to overflow the veins, and bursting
through the pores, they stood in a thick dew over His
whole skin; then forming into drops, they rolled down
full and heavy, and drenched the ground.
“My soul is sorrowful even unto death,” He said.
It has been said of that dreadful pestilence which
now is upon us, that it begins with death; by which
is meant that it has no stages or crisis, that hope is
over when it comes, and that what looks like its course
is but the death agony and the process of dissolution.
and thus our Atoning Sacrifice, in a much higher
sense, began with this passion of woe, and only did
not die, because at His omnipotent will His Heart did
not break, nor Soul separate from Body, till He had
suffered on the Cross. -
No ; He has not yet exhausted that full chalice,
from which at first His natural infirmity shrank. The
seizure, and the arraignment, and the buffeting, and
the prison, and the trial, and the mocking, and the
passing to and fro, and the scourging, and the crown
of thorns, and the slow march to Calvary, and the
crucifixion, these are all to come. A night and a
342 Mental Sufferings of our Zord.
day, hour after hour, is slowly to run out before the
end comes, and the Satisfaction is completed.
And then, when the appointed moment arrived, and
He gave the word, as His passion had begun with His
soul, with the soul did it end. He did not die of
bodily exhaustion, or of bodily pain; His tormented
Heart broke, and He commended His Spirit to the
Father. - -
$ 3% # $ 3% # 3%
“O Heart of Jesus, all Love, I offer Thee these
humble prayers for myself, and for all those who unite
themselves with me in spirit to adore Thee. O holiest
Heart of Jesus most lovely, I intend to renew and to
offer to Thee these acts of adoration and these prayers,
for myself a wretched sinner, and for all those who
are associated with me in Thy adoration, through all
moments while Ibreathe, even to the end of my life. I
recommend to Thee, O my Jesu, Holy Church, Thy
dear spouse, and our true Mother, all just souls and
all poor sinners, the afflicted, the dying, and all
mankind. Ilet nót Thy Blood be shed for them in
vain. Finally, deign to apply it in relief of the souls
in Purgatory, those in particular, who have practised
in the course of their life this holy devotion of adoring
Thee.” * .
DISCO U R S E XVII.
7A/AE GAE. OR/ZS OF MAAC V. AſOA” 7TA/A SAATE OF AZAZA' SOAV.
E know, my brethren, that in the natural world
nothing is superfluous, nothing incomplete,
nothing independent; but part answers to part, and
all details combine to form one mighty whole. Order
and harmony are among the first perfections which we
discern in this visible creation ; and the more we exa-
mine into it, the more widely and minutely they are
found to belong to it. “All things are double,” says
the Wise Man, “one against another; and He hath
made nothing defective.” It is the very character
and definition of “ the heavens and the earth,” as con-
trasted with the void or chaos which preceded them,
that everything is now subjected to fixed laws; and
every motion, and influence, and effect can be accounted
for, and, were our knowledge sufficient, could be antici-
pated. Moreover, it is plain, on the other hand, that it
is only in proportion to our observation and our research
that this truth becomes apparent ; for though a number
of things even at first sight are seen to proceed accord-
ing to an established and beautiful order, yet in other
344 7%e Glories of Mary
instances the law to which they are conformed is with
difficulty discovered; and the words “chance,” and
“ hazard,” and “fortune,” have come into use as
expressions of our ignorance. Accordingly, you may
fancy rash and irreligious minds, who are engaged day
after day in the business of the world, suddenly look-
ing out into the heavens or upon the earth, and
criticizing the great Architect, arguing that there are
creatures in existence which are rude or defective in
their constitution, and asking questions which would
but evidence their want of scientific education.
The case is the same as regards the supernatural
world. The great truths of Revelation are all connected
together and form a whole. Every one can see this in
a measure even at a glance, but to understand the full
consistency and harmony of Catholic teaching requires
study and meditation. Hence, as philosophers of this
would bury themselves in museums and laboratories,
descend into mines, or wander among woods or on the
sea-shore, so the inquirer into heavenly truths dwells
in the cell and the oratory, pouring forth his heart in
prayer, collecting his thoughts in meditation, dwell-
ing on the idea of Jesus, or of Mary, or of grace, or of
eternity, and pondering the words of holy men who
have gone before him, till before his mental sight
arises the hidden wisdom of the perfect, “ which God
predestined before the world' unto our glory,” and
which He “reveals unto them by His Spirit.” And,
as ignorant men may dispute the beauty and perfection
of the visible creation, so men, who for six days in the
week are absorbed in worldly toil, who live for wealth,
for the Sake of Her Son. 345
or name, or self-indulgence, or profane knowledge,
and do but give their leisure moments to the thought
of religion, never raising their souls to God, never
asking for His enlightening grace, never chastening
their hearts and bodies, never steadily contemplating
the objects of faith, but judging hastily and peremp-
torily according to their private views or the humour
of the hour; such men, I say, in like manner, may
easily, or will for certain, be surprised and shocked at
portions of revealed truth, as if strange, or harsh, or
extreme, or inconsistent, and will in whole or in part
reject it. - -
I am going to apply this remark to the subject of
the prerogatives with which the Church invests the
Blessed Mother of God. They are startling and diffi-
cult to those whose imagination is not accustomed to
them, and whose reason has not reflected on them;
but the more carefully and religiously they are dwelt
on, the more, I am sure, will they be found essential
to the Catholic faith, and integral to the worship of
Christ. This simply is the point which I shall insist
on, disputable indeed by aliens from the Church, but
most clear to her children, that the glories of Mary are
for the sake of Jesus; and that we praise and bless her
as the first of creatures, that we may duly confess Him
as our sole Creator. - - -
When the Eternal Word decreed to come on earth,
He did not purpose, He did not work, by halves; but
He came to be a man like any of us, to take a human
soul and body, and to make them. His own. He did
not come in a mere apparent or accidental form, as
346 The Gories of Mary
Angels appear to men; nor did He merely over-
shadow an existing man, as He overshadows His
Saints, and call him by the name of God; but He
“ was made flesh.” He attached to Himself a manhood,
and became as really and truly man as He was God,
so that henceforth He was both God and man, or, in
other words, He was One Person in two natures, divine
and human. This is a mystery so marvellous, so diffi-
cult, that faith alone firmly receives it; the natural
man may receive it for a while, may think he re-
ceives it, but never really receives it; begins, as soon
as he has professed it, secretly to rebel against it,
evades it, or revolts from it. This he has done from
the first; even in the lifetime of the beloved disciple
men arose, who said that our Lord had no body at all,
or a body framed in the heavens, or that He did not
suffer, but another suffered in . His stead, or that He
was but for a time with the human form which was
born and which suffered, coming on it at its baptism,
and leaving it before its crucifixion, or that He was a
mere man. That “in the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,
and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,”
was too hard a thing for the unregenerate reason.
The case is the same at this day; mere Protestants
have seldom any real perception of the doctrine of God
and man in one Person. They speak in a dreamy,
shadowy way of Christ's divinity; but, when their
meaning is sifted, you will find them very slow to com-
mit themselves to any statement sufficient to express
the Catholic dogma. They will tell you at once, that
for the Sake of Her Son. 347
the subject is not to be inquired into, for that it is
impossible to inquire into it at all, without being
technical and subtle. Then when they comment on
the Gospels, they will speak of Christ, not simply and
consistently as God, but as a being made up of God
and man, partly one and partly the other, or between
both, or as a man inhabited by a special divine pre-
sence. Sometimes they even go on to deny that He
was in heaven the Son of God, saying that He became
the Son, when He was conceived of the Holy Ghost;
and they are shocked, and think it a mark both of
reverence and good sense to be shocked, when they
hear the Man spoken of simply and plainly as God.
They cannot bear to have it said, except as a figure or
mode of speaking, that God had a human body, or
that God suffered; they think that the “Atonement,”
and “Sanctification through the Spirit,” as they
speak, is the sum and substance of the Gospel, and
they are shy of any dogmatic expression which goes
beyond them. Such, I believe, is the ordinary cha-
racter of the Protestant notions among us on the
divinity of Christ, whether among members of the
Anglican communion, or dissenters from it, excepting
a small remnant of them. -
Now, if you would witness against these unchristian
opinions, if you would bring out distinctly and beyond
mistake and evasion, the simple idea of the Catholic
Church that God is man, could you do it better than
by laying down in St. John’s words that “ God became
man”? and again could you express this more emphati-
cally and unequivocally than by declaring that He
348 • 7%e G/ories of Mazy
was born a man, or that He had a Mother & The world
allows that God is man; the admission costs it little,
for God is everywhere, and (as it may say) is every-
thing; but it shrinks from confessing that God is the
Son of Mary. It shrinks, for it is at once confronted
with a severe fact, which violates and shatters its own
unbelieving view of things; the revealed doctrine
forthwith takes its true shape, and receives an his-
torical reality; and the Almighty is introduced into
His own world at a certain time and in a definite way.
Dreams are broken and shadows depart ; the divine
truth is no longer a poetical expression, or a devotional
exaggeration, or a mystical economy, or a mythical
representation. “ Sacrifice and offering,” the shadows
of the Law, “Thou wouldest not, but a body hast
Thou fitted to Me. That which was from the be-
ginning, which we have heard, which we have seen
with our eyes, which we have diligently looked upon,
and our hands have handled,” “That which we have
seen and have heard, declare we unto you; ”—such is
the record of the Apostle, in opposition to those
“spirits '' which denied that “Jesus Christ had ap-
peared in the flesh,” and which “ dissolved ” Him by
denying either His human nature or His divine. And
the confession that Mary is Deipara, or the Mother of
God, is that safeguard wherewith we seal up and
secure the doctrine of the Apostle from all evasion,
and that test whereby we detect all the pretences of
those bad spirits of “Antichrist which have gone out
into the world.” It declares that He is God; it implies
that He is man; it suggests to us that He is God still,
for the Sake of Her Son. 349
though He has become man, and that He is true man
though He is God. By witnessing to the process of the
union, it secures the reality of the two subjects of the
union, of the divinity and of the manhood. If Mary is
the Mother of God, Christ is understood to be Em-
manuel, God with us. And hence it was, that, when
time went on, and the bad spirits and false prophets
grew stronger and bolder and found a way into the
Catholic body itself, then the Church, guided by God,
could find no more effectual and sure way of expelling
them, than that of using this word Deipara against
them; and, on the other hand, when they came up
again from the realms of darkness, and plotted the
utter overthrow of Christian faith in the sixteenth
century, then they could find no more certain expedient
for their hateful purpose, than that of reviling and
blaspheming the prerogatives of Mary, for they knew
full sure that, if they could once get the world to dis-
honour the Mother, the dishonour of the Son would
follow close. The Church and Satan agreed together
in this, that Son and Mother went together; and the
experience of three centuries has confirmed their testi-
mony; for Catholics who have honoured the Mother,
still worship the Son, while Protestants, who now have
ceased to confess the Son, began then by scoffing at
the Mother.
You see then, my brethren, in this particular, the
harmonious consisteney of the revealed system, and
the bearing of one doctrine upon another; Mary is
exalted for the sake of Jesus. It was fitting that she,
as being a creature, though the first of creatures,
35C) The Glories of Mary
should have an office of ministration. She, as others,
came into the world to do a work, she had a mission
to fulfil; her grace and her glory are not for her own
sake, but for her Maker's; and to her is committed
the custody of the Incarnation; this is her appointed
office,—“A Virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son,
and they shall call His Name Emmanuel.” As she
was once on earth, and was personally the guardian of
her Divine Child, as she carried Him in her womb,
folded Him in her embrace, and suckled Him at her
breast, so now, and to the latest hour of the Church,
do her glories and the devotion paid her proclaim and
define the right faith concerning Him as God and
man. Every Church which is dedicated to her, every
altar which is raised under her invocation, every image
which represents her, every Litany in her praise, every
Hail Mary for her continual memory, does but remind
us that there was One who, though He was all-blessed
from all eternity, yet for the sake of sinners, “did not
shrink from the Virgin’s womb.” Thus she is the
Turris Davidica, as the Church calls her, “the Tower
of David;” the high and strong defence of the King
of the true Israel; and hence the Church also addresses
her in the Antiphon, as having “ destroyed all here-
sies in the whole world alone.” : -
And here, my brethren, a fresh thought opens upon
us, which is naturally implied in what has been said.
If the Deipara is to witness of Emmanuel, she must
be necessarily more than the Depara. For consider;
a defence must be strong in order to be a defence 3 a.
tower must be, like that Tower of David, “built with
for the Sake of A/er Son. 35 I
bulwarks;” “a thousand bucklers hang upon it, all
the armour of valiant men.” It would not have suf-
ficed, in order to bring out and impress on us the idea
that God is man, had His Mother been an ordinary
person. A mother without a home in the Church,
without dignity, without gifts, would have been, as far
as the defence of the Incarnation goes, no mother at
all. She would not have remained in the memory, or
the imagination of men. If she is to witness and re-
mind the world that God became man, she must be on
a high and eminent station for the purpose. She must
be made to fill the mind, in order to suggest the lesson.
When she once attracts our attention, then and not
till then, she begins to preach Jesus. “Why should
she have such prerogatives,” we ask, “unless He be
God? and what must He be by nature, when she is so
high by grace?” This is why she has other preroga-
tives besides, namely, the gifts of personal purity and
intercessory power, distinct from her maternity; she
is personally endowed that she may perform her office
well; she is exalted in herself that she may minister
to Christ. - *
For this reason, she has been made more glorious
in her person than in her office; her purity is a higher
gift than her relationship to God. This is what is
implied in Christ’s answer to the woman in the crowd,
who cried out, when He was preaching, “Blessed is
the womb that bare Thee, and the breasts which Thou
hast sucked.” He replied by pointing out to His
disciples a higher blessedness; “Yea, rather blessed,”
He said, “are they who hear the word of God and
352 7%e G/ories of Mary
keep it.” You know, my brethren, that Protestants
take these words in disparagement of our Lady’s
greatness, but they really tell the other way. For
consider them; He lays down a principle, that it is
more blessed to keep His commandments than to be
His Mother ; but who even of Protestants will say that
she did not keep His commandments? She kept them
surely, and our Lord does but say that such obedience
was in a higher line of privilege than her being His
Mother; she was more blessed in her detachment from
creatures, in her devotion to God, in her virginal
purity, in her fulness of grace, than in her maternity.
This is the constant teaching of the Holy Fathers:
’ says St. Augustine, “ in
“More blessed was Mary,’
receiving Christ’s faith, than in conceiving Christ’s
flesh;” and St. Chrysostom declares, that she would
not have been blessed, though she had borne Him in.
the body, had she not heard the word of God and kept
it. This of course is an impossible case; for she was
made holy, that she might be made His Mother, and
the two blessednesses cannot be divided. She who
was chosen to supply flesh and blood to the Eternal
Word, was first filled with grace in soul and body;
still, she had a double blessedness, of office and of
qualification for it, and the latter was the greater.
And it is on this account that the Angel calls her
blessed; “Full of grace,” he says, “blessed among
women; ” and St. Elizabeth also, when she cries out,
“Blessed thou that hast believed.” Nay, she herself
bears alike testimony, when the Angel announced to her
the high favour which was coming on her. Though all
for the Sake of Her Son. 353
Jewish women in each successive age had been hoping
to be Mother of the Christ, so that marriage was
honourable among them, celibacy a reproach, she
alone had put aside the desire and the thought of so
great a dignity. She alone, who was to bear the Christ,
all but refused to bear Him; He stooped to her, she
turned from Him; and why? because she had been
inspired, the first of womankind, to dedicate her vir-
ginity to God, and she did not welcome a privilege
which seemed to involve a forfeiture of her vow. How
shall this be, she asked, seeing I am separate from
man? Nor, till the Angel told her that the concep-
tion would be miraculous and from the Holy Ghost,
did she put aside her “ trouble” of mind, recognize
him securely as God’s messenger, and bow her head
in awe and thankfulness to God’s condescension.
Mary then is a specimen, and more than a specimen,
in the purity of her soul and body, of what man was
before his fall, and what he would have been, had he
risen to his full perfection. It had been hard, it had
been a victory for the Evil One, had the whole race
passed away, nor any one instance in it occurred to show
what the Creator had intended it to be in its original
state. Adam, you know, was created in the image and
after the likeness of God; his frail and imperfect
nature, stamped with a divine seal, was supported and
exalted by an indwelling of divine grace. Impetuous
passion did not exist in him, except as a latent element
and a possible evil; ignorance was dissipated by the
clear light of the S pirit; and reason, sovereign over
every motion of his soul, was simply subjected to the
A 3.
354 7%e Glories of Mary
will of God. Nay, even his body was preserved from -
every wayward appetite and affection, and was pro-
mised immortality instead of dissolution. Thus he
was in a supernatural state; and, had he not sinned,
year after year would he have advanced in merit and
grace , and in God’s favour, till he passed from paradise
to heaven. But he fell; and his descendants were
born in his likeness; and the world grew worse in-
stead of better, and judgment after judgment cut off
generations of sinners in vain, and improvement
W2,S hopeless, “ because man was flesh,” and, “the
thoughts of his heart were bent upon evil at all
times.” However, a remedy had been determined in
heaven; a Redeemer was at hand; God was about to
do a great work, and He purposed to do it suitably;
“ where sin abounded, grace was to abound more.”
Kings of the earth, when they have sons born to them,
forthwith scatter some large bounty, or raise some high
memorial; they honour the day, or the place, or the
heralds of the auspicious event, with some correspond-
ing mark of favour; nor did the coming of Emmanuel
innovate on the world’s established custom. It was a
season of grace and prodigy, and these were to be
exhibited in a special manner in the person of His
Mother. The course of ages was to be reversed; the
tradition of evil was to be broken; a gate of light
was to be opened amid the darkness, for the coming
of the Just ;-a Virgin conceived and bore Him. It
was fitting, for His honour and glory, that she, who
was the instrument of His bodily presence, should
first be a miracle of His grace; it was fitting that she
for the Sake of Her Son. 355
should triumph, where Eve had failed, and should
“bruise the serpent’s head” by the spotlessness of her
sanctity. In some respects, indeed, the curse was not
reversed; Mary came into a fallen world, and resigned
herself to its laws; she, as also the Son she bore, was
exposed to pain of soul and body, she was subjected
to death; but she was not put under the power of sin.
As grace was infused into Adam from the first moment
of his creation, so that he never had experience of his
natural poverty, till sin reduced him to it; so was grace
given from the first in still ampler measure to Mary,
and she never incurred, in fact, Adam’s deprivation. She
began where others end, whether in knowledge or in
love. She was from the first clothed in sanctity, sealed
for perseverance, luminous and glorious in God’s sight,
and incessantly employed in meritorious acts, which
continued till her last breath. Hers was emphatically
“ the path of the just, which, as the shining light,
goeth forward and increaseth even to the perfect day;”
and sinlessness in thought, word, and deed, in small
things as well as great, in venial matters as well as
grievous, is surely but the natural and obvious sequel
of such a beginning. If Adam might have kept him-
self from sin in his first state, much more shall we
expect immaculate perfection in Mary.
Such is her prerogative of sinless perfection, and it
is, as her maternity, for the sake of Emmanuel; hence
she answered the Angel’s salutation Grafia plena,
with the humble acknowledgment, Ecce anciſ/a Domini,
“Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” And like to this
is her third prerogative, which follows both from her
A a 2
3 56 The Glories of Mary
maternity and from her purity, and which I will men-
tion as completing the enumeration of her glories. I
mean her intercessory power. For, if “God heareth
not sinners, but if a man be a worshipper of Him,
and do His will, him. He heareth ;” if “the continual
prayer of a just man availeth much ;” if faithful
Abraham was required to pray for Abimelech, “for
he was a prophet;” if patient Job was to “pray for
his friends,” for he had “spoken right things before
God; ” if meek Moses, by lifting up his hands, turned
the battle in favour of Israel against Amalee; why
should we wonder at hearing that Mary, the only
spotless child of Adam's seed, has a transcendent
influence with the God of grace? And if the Gen-
tiles at Jerusalem sought Philip, because he was
an Apostle, when they desired access to Jesus, and
Philip spoke to Andrew, as still more closely in
our Lord's confidence, and then both came to Him,
is it strange that the Mother, should have power
with the Son, distinct in kind from that of the purest
Angel and the most triumphant Saint? If we
have faith to admit the Incarnation itself, we must
admit it in its fulness; why then should we start at
the gracious appointments which arise out of it, or are
necessary to it, or are included in it 2 If the Creator
comes on earth in the form of a servant and a crea-
ture, why may not His Mother on the other hand rise to
be the Queen of heaven, and be clothed with the sun,
and have the moon under her feet 2
I am not proving these doctrines toyou, my brethren;
the evidence of them lies in the declaration of the
for the Sake of Her Son. 357
Church. The Church is the oracle of religious truth,
and dispenses what the Apostles committed to her in
every time and place. We must take her word, then,
without proof, because she is sent to us from God to
teach us how to please Him; and that we do so is the
test whether we be really Catholics or no. I am not
proving then what you already receive, but I am show-
ing you the beauty and the harmony, as seen in one
instance, of the Church’s teaching; which are so well
adapted, as they are divinely intended, to recommend
that teaching to theinquirer and to endear it to her chil-
dren. One word more, and I have done; I have shown
you how full of meaning are the truths themselves
which the Church teaches concerning the Most Blessed
Virgin, and now consider how full of meaning also
has been the Church’s dispensation of them.
You will find, then, in this respect, as in Mary’s
prerogatives themselves, there is the same careful
reference to the glory of Him who gave them to her.
You know, when first He went out to preach, she kept
apart from Him ; she interfered not with His work;
and even when He was gone up on high, yet she, a
woman, went not out to preach or teach, she seated not
herself in the Apostolic chair, she took no part in the
Priest’s office; she did but humbly seek her Son in the
daily Mass of those, who, though her ministers in
heaven, were her superiors in the Church on earth.
Nor, when she and they had left this lower scene, and
she was a Queen upon her Son’s right hand, not even
then did she ask of Him to publish her name to the
ends of the world, or to hold her up to the world's gaze,
358 The Glories of Mary
but she remained waiting for the time, when her own
glory should be necessary for His. He indeed had been
from the very first proclaimed by Holy Church, and
enthroned in His temple, for He was God; ill had it
beseemed the living Oracle of Truth to have with-
holden from the faithful the very object of their adora-
tion; but it was otherwise with Mary. It became
her, as a creature, a mother, and a woman, to stand
aside and make way for the Creator, to minister to her
Son, and to win her way into the world’s homage by
sweet and gracious persuasion. So when His Name
was dishonoured, then it was that she did Him service;
when Emmanuel was denied, then the Mother of
God (as it were) came forward; when heretics said
that God was not incarnate, then was the time for
her own honours. And then, when as much as this
had been accomplished, she had done with strife ;
she fought not for herself. No fierce controversy,
no persecuted confessors, no heresiarch, no anathema,
marks the history of her manifestation ; as she had
increased day by day in grace and merit at Nazareth,
while the world knew not of her, so has she raised
herself aloft silently, and has grown into her place
in the Church by a tranquil influence and a natural
process. She was as some fair tree, stretching forth
her fruitful branches and her fragrant leaves, and
overshadowing the territory of the Saints. And
thus the Antiphon speaks of her; “Let thy dwel-
ling be in Jacob, and thine inheritance in Israel, and
strike thy roots in My elect.” Again, “And so in
Sion was I established, and in the holy city I likewise
for the Sake of Her Som. 359
rested, and in Jerusalem was my power. And I took
foot in an honourable people, and in the glorious com-
pany of the Saints was I detained. I was exalted like
a cedar in Lebanus, and as a cypress in Mount Sion ;
I have stretched out My branches as the terebinth, and
My branches are of honour and grace.” Thus was she
reared without hands, and gained a modest victory,
and exerts a gentle sway, which she has not claimed.
When dispute arose about her among her children, she
hushed it; when objections were urged against her,
she waived her claims and waited ; till now, in this
very day, should God so will, she will win at length
her most radiant crown, and, without opposing voice,
and amid the jubilation of the whole Church, she will
be hailed as immaculate in her conception.
Such art thou, Holy Mother, in the creed and in
the worship of the Church, the defence of many truths,
the grace and smiling light of every devotion. In
thee, O Mary, is fulfilled, as we can bear it, an original
purpose of the Most High. He once had meant to come
on earth in heavenly glory, but we sinned; and then
He could not safely visit us, except with a shrouded
radiance and a bedimmed Majesty, for He was God.
So He came Himself in weakness, not in power; and
He sent thee a creature, in His stead, with a crea-
ture's comeliness and lustre suited to our state. And
now thy very face and form, dear Mother, speak to
us of the Eternal; not like earthly beauty, dangerous
to look upon, but like the morning star, which is thy
emblem, bright and musical, breathing purity, telling
of heaven, and infusing peace. O harbinger of day !
360 The Glories of Mary, etc.
O hope of the pilgrim l lead us still as thou hast led;
in the dark night, across the bleak wilderness, guide
us on to Our Lord Jesus, guide us home.
Maria, mater gratiae,
Dulcis parens clementiae,
Tu nos ab hoste protege
Et mortis horá suscipe.
DISCO U R S E XVIII.
OAV ZA/AE AEX 7TWAESS OF 7TA:/A2 GZOA’ZAZS OF MAAC V.
OU may recollect, my brethren, our Lord’s words,
when on the day of His resurrection He had joined
the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, and found
them sad and perplexed in consequence of His death.
He said, “Ought not Christ to suffer these things, and
so enter into His glory?” He appealed to the fitness
and congruity which existed between this otherwise
surprising event and the other truths which had been
revealed concerning the divine purpose of saving the
world. And so too, St. Paul, in speaking of the same
wonderful appointment of God; “It became Him,” he
says, “for whom are all things, and through whom
are all things, who had brought many sons unto glory,
to consummate the Author of their salvation by suffer-
ing.” Elsewhere, speaking of prophesying, or the ex-
position of what is latent in divine truth, he bids his
brethren exercise the gift “according to the analogy
or rule of faith;” that is, so that the doctrine preached
may correspond and fit into what is already received.
Thus you see, it is a great evidence of truth, in the
case of revealed teaching, that it is so consistent, that
it so hangs together, that one thing springs out of
362 On the Fitness of
another, that each part requires and is required by the
rest. -
This great principle, which is exemplified so variously
in the structure and history of Catholic doctrine, which
will receive more and more illustrations the more care-
fully and minutely we examine the subject, is brought
before us especially at this season, when we are cele-
brating the Assumption of our Blessed Lady,the Mother
of God, into heaven. We receive it on the belief of
ages; but, viewed in the light of reason, it is the
fitness of this termination of her earthly course which
so persuasively recommends it to our minds: we feel
it “ought ° to be ; that it “becomes” her Lord and
Son thus to provide for one who was so singular and
special both in herself and her relations to Him. We
find that it is simply in harmony with the substance
and main outlines of the doctrine of the Incarnation,
and that without it Catholic teaching would have a
character of incompleteness, and would disappoint Oll].”
pious expectations. *
Let us direct our thoughts to this subject to-day,
my brethren; and with a view of helping you to do
so, I will first state what the Church has taught and
defined from the first ages concerning the Blessed
Virgin, and then you will see how naturally the de-
votion which her children show her, and the praises
with which they honour her, follow from it.
Now, as you know, it has been held from the first,
and defined from an early age, that Mary is the Mother
of God. She is not merely the Mother of our Lord’s
manhood, or of our Lord’s body, but she is to be con-
£he G/ories of Mary. 363
sidered the Mother of the Word Himself, the Word
incarnate. God, in the person of the Word, the
Second Person of the All-glorious Trinity, humbled
Himself to become her Son. Non horruisti Virginis
uſerum, as the Church sings, “Thou didst not shrink
from the Virgin’s womb.” He took the substance of
His human flesh from her, and clothed in it He lay
within Her; and He bore it about with Him after birth,
as a sort of badge and witness that He, though God,
was hers. He was nursed and tended by her; He
was suckled by her; He lay in her arms. As time went
on, He ministered to her, and obeyed her. He lived
with her for thirty years, in one house, with an uninter-
rupted intercourse, and with only the saintly Joseph to
share it with Him. She was the witness of His growth,
of Hisjoys, of His sorrows, of His prayers; she was blest
with His smile, with the touch of His hand, with the
whisper of His affection, with the expression of His
thoughts and His feelings for that length of time.
—Now, my brethren, what ought she to be, what is it
Öecoming that she should be, who was so favoured?
Such a question was once asked by a heathen king,
when he would place one of his subjects in a dignity
becoming the relation in which the latter stood towards
him. That subject had saved the king's life, and what
was to be done to him in return ? The king asked,
“What should be done to the man whom the king
desireth to honour?” And he received the following
answer, “The man whom the king wisheth to honour
ought to be clad in the king’ s apparel, and to be
mounted on the king’s saddle, and to receive the royal
364 On the Fitness of
diadem on his head; and let the first among the king’s
princes and presidents hold his horse, and let him
walk through the streets of the city, and say, Thus
shall he be honoured, whom the king hath a mind to
honour.” So stands the case with Mary; she gave
birth to the Creator, and what recompense shall be
made her? what shall be done to her, who had this
relationship to the Most High P what shall be the fit
accompaniment of one whom the Almighty has deigned
to make, not His servant, not His friend, not His in-
timate, but His superior, the source of His second
being, the nurse of His helpless infancy, the teacher
of His opening years? I answer, as the king was
answered : Nothing is too high for her to whom God
owes His human life; no exuberance of grace, no ex-
cess of glory but is becoming, but is to be expected
there, where God has lodged Himself, whence God has
issued. Let her “be clad in the king’s apparel,” that
is, let the fulness of the Godhead so flow into her that
she may be a figure of the incommunicable sanctity,
and beauty, and glory, of God Himself: that she may
be the Mirror of Justice, the Mystical Rose, the Tower
of Ivory, the House of Gold, the Morning Star. Tiet
her “receive the king's diadem upon her head,” as the
Queen of heaven, the Mother of all living, the Health
of the weak, the Refuge of sinners, the Comforter of
the afflicted. And “let the first amongst the king’s
princes walk before her,” let Angels, and Prophets,
and Apostles, and Martyrs, and all Saints kiss the hem
of her garment and rejoice under the shadow of her
throne. Thus is it that King Solomon has risen up
the Glories of Mary. 365
to meet His Mother, and bowed Himself unto her, and
caused a seat to be set for the King's Mother, and she
sits on His right hand.
We should be prepared then, my brethren, to believe,
that the Mother of God is full of grace and glory, from
the very fitness of such a dispensation, even though
we had not been taught it; and this fitness will appear
still more clear and certain when we contemplate the
subject more steadily. Consider then, that it has been
the ordinary rule of God’s dealings with us, that per-
sonal sanctity should be the attendant upon high
spiritual dignity of place or work. The Angels, who,
as the word imports, are God’s messengers, are also
perfect in holiness; “without sanctity no one shall see
God;” no defiled thing can enter the courts of heaven
and the higher its inhabitants are advanced in their
ministry about the throne, the holier are they, and the
more absorbed in their contemplation of that Holiness
upon which they wait. The Seraphim, who imme-
diately surround the Divine Glory, cry day and night,
“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts.” So is it
also on earth; the Prophets have ordinarily not only
gifts, but graces; they are not only inspired to know
and to teach God’s will, but inwardly converted to
obey it. For surely those only can preach the truth
duly, who feel it personally; those only transmit it
fully from God to man, who have in the transmission
made it their own. -
I do not say that there are no exceptions to this rule,
but they admit of an easy explanation ; I do not say
that it never pleases Almighty God to convey any in-
366 On the Fitness of
timation of His will through bad men; of course, for
all things can be made to serve Him. By all, even
the wicked, He accomplishes His purposes, and by the
wicked. He is glorified. Our Lord’s death was brought
about by His enemies, who did His will, while they
thought they were gratifying their own. Caiaphas,
who contrived and effected it, was made use of to pre-
dict it. Balaam prophesied good of God’s people in
an earlier age, by a divine compulsion, when he wished
to prophesy evil. This is true; but in such cases
Divine Mercy is plainly overruling the evil, and mani-
festing His power, without recognizing or sanctioning
the instrument. And again, it is true, as He tells us
Himself, that in the last day “Many shall say, Lord,
Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy Name, and in
Thy Name cast out devils, and done many miracles?”
and that He shall answer, “Inever knew you.” This,
I say, is undeniable ; it is undeniable first, that those
who have prophesied in God’s Name may afterwards
fall from God, and lose their souls. Let a man be ever
so holy now, he may fall away; and, as present grace
is no pledge of perseverance, much less are present
gifts; but how does this show that gifts and graces do
not commonly go together ? Again, it is undeniable
that those who have had miraculous gifts may never-
theless have never been in God’s favour, not even when
they exercised them ; as I will explain presently. But
I am now speaking, not of having gifts, but of being .
prophets. To be a prophet is something much more
personal than to possess gifts. It is a sacred office, it
implies a mission, and is the high distinction, not of
the Glories of Mary. 367
the enemies of God, but of His friends. Such is the
Scripture rule. Who was the first prophet and preacher
of justice? Enoch, who walked “by faith,” and
“ pleased God,” and was taken from a rebellious world.
Who was the second P “ Noe,” who “ condemned the
world,and was made heir of the justice which is through
faith.” Who was the next great prophet? Moses, the
lawgiver of the chosen people, who was the “meekest
of all men who dwell on the earth.” Samuel comes
next, who served the Lord from his infancy in the
Temple; and then David, who, if he fell into sin, re-
pented, and was “a man after God’s heart.” And
in like manner Job, Elias, Isaias, Jeremias, T)aniel,
and above them all St. John Baptist, and then again
St. Peter, St. Paul, St. John, and the rest, are all
especial instances of heroic virtue, and patterns to
their brethren. Judas is the exception, but this was
by a particular dispensation to enhance our Lord’s
humiliation and suffering. .
Nature itself witnesses to this connexion between
sanctity and truth. It anticipates that the fountain
from which pure doctrine comes should itself be pure;
that the seat of divine teaching, and the oracle of
faith, should be the abode of Angels; that the conse-
erated home, in which the word of God is elaborated,
and whence it issues forth for the salvation of the many,
should be holy, as that word itself is holy. Here you
see the difference of the office of a prophet and a mere
gift, such as that of miracles. Miracles are the simple
and direct work of God; the worker of them is but an
instrument or organ. And in consequence he need not
368 On the Fitness of
be holy, because he has not, strictly speaking, a share
in the work. So again the power of administering
the Sacraments, which also is supernatural and mira-
culous, does not imply personal holiness; nor is there
anything surprising in God’s giving to a bad man
this gift, or the gift of miracles, any more than in His
giving him any natural talent or gift, strength or
agility of frame, eloquence, or medical skill. It is
otherwise with the office of preaching and prophesying,
and to this Ihave been referring ; for the truth first goes
into the minds of the speakers, and is apprehended
and fashioned there, and then comes out from them
as, in one sense, its source and its parent. The divine
word is begotten in them, and the offspring has their
features and tells of them. They are not like “the
dumb animal, speaking with man’s voice,” on which
Balaam rode, a mere instrument of God’s word, but
they have “received an unction from the Holy One,
and they know all things,” and “ where the Spirit of
the Lord is, there is liberty;” and while they deliver
what they have received, they enforce what they feel
and know. “We have known and believed,” says St.
John, “the charity which God hath to us.” -
So has it been all through the history of the Church;
Moses does not write as David; nor Isaias as Jeremias;
nor St. John as St. Paul. And so of the great Doctors
of the Church, St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, St. Am-
brose, St. Leo, St. Thomas, each has his own manner,
each speaks his own words, though he speaks the while
the words of God. They speak from themselves, they
speak in their own persons, they speak from the heart,
the Glories of Mary. 369
from their own experience, with their own arguments,
with their own deductions, with their own modes of
expression. Now can you fancy, my brethren, such
hearts, such feelings to be unholy P how could it be
so, without defiling, and thereby nullifying, the word
of God? If one drop of corruption makes the purest
water worthless, as the slightest savour of bitterness
spoils the most delicate viands, how can it be that the
word of truth and holiness can proceed profitably from
impure lips and an earthly heart? No, as is the tree,
so is the fruit; “beware of false prophets,” says our
Lord; and then He adds, “from their fruits ye shall
know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs
of thistles?” Is it not so, my brethren? which of you
would go to ask counsel of another, however learned,
however gifted, however aged, if you thought him
unholy 2 nay, though you feel and are sure, as far as
absolution goes, that a bad priest could give it as
really as a holy priest, yet for advice, for comfort, for
instruction, you would not go to one whom you did
not respect. “Out of the abundance of the heart, the
mouth speaketh ;” “a good man out of the good
treasure of his heart bringeth good, and an evil man
out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil.”
So then is it in the case of the soul; and so is it
with the body also ; as the offspring of holiness is holy
in the instance of spiritual births, so is it in the in-
stance of physical. The child is like the parent. Mary
was no mere instrument in God's dispensation; the
Word of God did not merely come to her and go from
her; He did not merely pass through her, as He may
- B b
37O On the Fitness of
pass through us in Holy Communion; it was no
heavenly body which the Eternal Son assumed,
fashioned by the Angels, and brought down to this
lower world: no ; He imbibed, He sucked up her
blood and her substance into His Divine Person ; He
became man of her; and received her lineaments and
her features, as the appearance and character under -
which He should manifest Himself to the world. He
was known doubtless, by His likeness to her, to be her
Son. Thus she may be called the first of Prophets,
for of her came the Word bodily; she is the sole oracle
of Truth, for the Way, the Truth, and the Life, vouch-
safed to be her Son ; she is the one mould of Divine
Wisdom, and in that mould it was indelibly cast.
Surely then, if “the first fruit be holy, the mass also
is holy; and if the root be holy, so are the branches.”
It was natural, it was fitting, that so it should be ; it
was congruous that, whatever the Omnipotent could
work in the person of the finite, should be wrought in
her. I say, if the Prophets must be holy, “to whom
the word of God comes,” what shall we say of her,
who was so specially favoured, that the true and sub-
stantial Word, and not His shadow or His voice, was
not merely made in her, but born of her? who was not
merely the organ of God’s message, but the origin of
His human existence, the living fountain from which
He drew His most precious blood, and the material of
His most holy flesh? Was it not fitting, beseemed it
not, that the Eternal Father should prepare her for
this ministration by some pre-eminent sanctification ?
Do not earthly parents act thus by their children? do
the Glories of Mary. 37 I
they put them out to strangers? do they commit them
to any chance person to suckle them? Shall even
careless parents show a certain tenderness and solici-
tude in this matter, and shall not God Himself show
it, when He commits His Eternal Word to the custody
of man P. It was to be expected then that, if the Son
was God, the Mother should be as worthy of Him, as
creature can be worthy of Creator; that grace should
have in her its “perfect work;” that, if she bore the
Eternal Wisdom, she should be that created wisdom
in whom “is all the grace of the Way and the Truth;”
that if she was the Mother of “fair love, and fear, and
knowledge, and holy hope,” “she should give an
odour like cinnamon and balm, and sweetness like to
choice myrrh.” Can we set bounds to the holiness of
her who was the Mother of the Holiest? -
Such, then, is the truth ever cherished in the deep
heart of the Church, and witnessed by the keen appre-
hension of her children, that no limits but those proper
to a creature, can be assigned to the sanctity of Mary.
Did Abraham believe that a son should be born to
him of his aged wife? then Mary’s faith was greater
when she accepted Gabriel’s message. Did Judith
consecrate her widowhood to God to the surprise of her
people? much more did Mary, from her first youth,
devote her virginity. Did Samuel, when a child,
inhabit the Temple, secluded from the world? Mary
too was by her parents lodged in the same holy pre-
cincts, at the age when children begin to choose be-
tween good and evil. Was Solomon on his birth
called “dear to the Lord”? and shall not the destined
- B b 2
- 372 On the Fitness of
Mother of God be dear to Him, from the moment she
was born ? But further still; St. John Baptist was
sanctified by the Spirit before his birth; shall Mary be
only equal to him? is it not fitting that her privilege
should surpass his 2 is it wonderful, if grace, which
anticipated his birth by three months, should in her
case run up to the very first moment of her being,
outstrip the imputation of sin, and be beforehand with
the usurpation of Satan? Mary must surpass all the
Saints; the very fact that certain privileges are known
to have been theirs persuades us, almost from the
necessity of the case, that she had the same and higher.
Her conception then was immaculate, in order that
she might surpass all Saints in the date as well as the
fulness of her sanctification.
But though the grace bestowed upon her was so
marvellously great, do not therefore suppose, my
brethren, that it excluded her co-operation; she, as
we, was on her trial; she, as we, increased in grace ;
she, as we, merited the increase. Here is another
thought leading to the conclusion which I have been
drawing. She was not like some inanimate work of
the Creator, made beautiful and glorious by the law
of its being ; she ended, not began, with her full per-
fection. She had a first grace and a second grace, and
she gained the second from the use of the first. She was
altogether a moral agent, as others; she advanced on, as
all Saints do, from strength to strength, from height to
height, so that at five years old she had merited what
she had not merited at her birth, and at thirteen what
she had not merited at five. Well, my brethren, of
the Glories of Mary. 373
what was she thought worthy, when she was thirteen 2
what did it seem fitting to confer on that poor child,
at an age when most children have not begun to think
of God or of themselves, or to use the grace He gives
them at all; at an age, when many a Saint, as he is
in the event, is still in the heavy slumber of sin, and is
meriting, not good, but evil at the hands of his just
Judge P. It befitteth the sanctity with which she was
by that time beautified, that she should be then raised
even to the dignity of Mother of God. There is
doubtless no measure between human nature and
God’s rewards; He allows us to merit what we cannot
claim except from His allowance. He promises us
heaven for our good deeds here, and under the covenant
of that promise we are justly said to merit it, though
heaven is an infinite good and we are but finite crea-
tures. When, then, I say that Mary merited to be the
Mother of God, I am speaking of what it was natural
and becoming that God, being God, should grant to
the more than angelical perfection which she by His
grace had obtained. I do not say that she could simply
claim, any more than she did contemplate, the reward
which she received; but allowing this, still consider
how heroical, how transcendental, must have been that
Saintliness, for which this prerogative was God’s re-
turn. Enoch was taken away from among the wicked,
and we therefore say, Behold a just man who was too
good for the world. Noe was saved, and saved others,
from the flood; and we say therefore that he earned
it by his justice. How great was Abraham’s faith,
since it gained him the title of the friend of God!
374 On the Fitness of
How great was the zeal of the Levites, since they
merited thereby to be the sacerdotal tribe How great
the love of David, since, for his sake, the kingdom was
not taken away from his son when that son fell into
idolatry ! How great the innocence of Daniel, since
he had it revealed to him in this life that he should
persevere to the end | What then the faith, the zeal,
the love, the innocence of Mary, since it prepared her
after so brief a period to be the Mother of God!
Hence you see, my brethren, that our Lady’ s glories
do not rest simply on her maternity; that prerogative
is rather the crown of them : unless she had been “full
of grace,” as the Angel speaks, unless she had been
predestinated to be the Queen of Saints, unless she had
merited more than all men and Angels together, she
would not have fitly been exalted to her unspeakable
dignity. The feast of the Annunciation, when Gabriel
came to her, the Christmas Feast, when Christ was born,
is the centre, not the range of her glories; it is the
noon of her day, the measure of her beginning and her
ending. It recalls our thoughts to the Feast of her
Conception, and then it carries them on to the Feast
of the Assumption. It suggests to us how pure had
been her first rising, and it anticipates for us how
transcendent were to be the glories of her setting.
Come, my dear brethren, I would not weary you
with argument in a festive season, when we should
offer to the Blessed Virgin the homage of our love and
joy, rather than of our philosophy; yet, let me finish
as I have begun;–I will be brief, and bear with me
if I view her bright Assumption, as I have viewed her
the Glories of Mary. 375
immaculate purity, rather as a point of doctrine, than
as a theme for devotion.
It was surely fitting then, it was becoming, that she
should be taken up into heaven and not lie in the grave
till Christ's second coming, who had passed a life of
sanctity and of miracle such as hers. All the works of
God are in a beautiful harmony; they are carried on
to the end as they begin. This is the difficulty which
men of the world find in believing miracles at all;
they think these break the order and consistency of
God’s visible world, not knowing that they do but
subserve to a higher order of things, and introduce
a supernatural perfection. But at least, my brethren,
when one miracle is wrought, it may be expected to
draw others after it for the completion of what is begun.
Miracles must be wrought for some great end; and if
the course of things fell back again into a natural
order before its termination, how could we but feel a
disappointment? and if we were told that this certainly
was to be, how could we but judge the information
improbable and difficult to believe? Now this applies
to the history of our Lady. Isay, it would be a greater
miracle, if her life being what it was, her death was
like that of other men, than if it were such as to cor-
respond to her life. Who can conceive, my brethren,
that God should so repay the debt, which He con-
descended to owe to His Mother, for the elements of
His human Body, as to allow the flesh and blood
from which It was taken to moulder in the grave?
Do the sons of men thus deal with their mothers? do
they not nourish and sustain them in their feebleness,
376 On &
the Fitness of
and keep them in life while they are able? Or who can
conceive, that that virginal frame, which never sinned,
was to undergo the death of a sinner? Why should
she share the curse of Adam, who had no share in his
fall ? “Dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return,”
was the sentence upon sin; she then, who was not a
sinner, fitly never saw corruption. She died then, my
brethren, because even our Lord and Saviour died;
she died, as she suffered, because she was in this world,
because she was in a state of things in which suffering
and death are the rule. She lived under their external
sway; and, as she obeyed Caesar by coming for enrol-
ment to Bethlehem, so did she, when God willed it,
yield to the tyranny of death, and was dissolved into
soul and body, as well as others. But though she
died as well as others, she died not as others die; for,
through the merits of her Son, by whom she was what
she was, by the grace of Christ which in her had an-
ticipated sin, which had filled her with light, which had
purified her flesh from all defilement, she had been
saved from disease and malady, and all that weakens
and decays the bodily frame. Original sin had not been
found in her, by the wear of her senses, and the waste
of her frame, and the decrepitude of years, propagating
death. She died, but her death was a mere fact, not
an effect; and, when it was over, it ceased to be. She
died that she might live; she died as a matter of form or
(as I may call it) a ceremony, in order to fulfil, what
is called, the debt of nature, not primarily for her-
self or because of sin, but to submit herself to her
condition, to glorify God, to do what her Son did ;
the Glories of Mary. 377
not however as her Son and Saviour, with any suffering
for any special end; not with a martyr’s death, for her
martyrdom had been in living ; not as an atonement,
for man could not make it, and One had made it, and
made it for all; but in order to finish her course, and
to receive her crown. - -
And therefore she died in private. It became Him,
who died for the world, to die in the world’s sight; it
became the Great Sacrifice to be lifted up on high, as
a light that could not be hid. But she, the lily of
Eden, who had always dwelt out of the sight of man,
fittingly did she die in the garden's shade, and amid
the sweet flowers in which she had lived. Her depar-
ture made no noise in the world. The Church went
about her common duties, preaching, converting, suffer-
ing ; there were persecutions, there was fleeing from
place to place, there were martyrs, there were triumphs;
at length the rumour spread abroad that the Mother
of God was no longer upon earth. Pilgrims went to
and fro; they sought for her relics, but they found
them not ; did she die at Ephesus? or did she die at
Jerusalem P reports varied; but her tomb could not
be pointed out, or if it was found, it was open; and
instead of her pure and fragrant body, there was a
growth of lilies from the earth which she had touched.
So, inquirers went home marvelling, and waiting
for further light. And then it was said, how that
when her dissolution was at hand, and her soul was
to pass in triumph before the judgment-seat of her
Son, the Apostles were suddenly gathered together in
one place, even in the Holy City, to bear part in the
C C
378 On the Fitness of
joyful ceremonial; how that they buried her with
fitting rites; how that the third day, when they came
to the tomb, they found it empty, and angelic choirs
with their glad voices were heard singing day and
night the glories of their risen Queen. But, however
we feel towards the details of this history (nor is there
anything in it which will be unwelcome or difficult
to piety), so much cannot be doubted, from the con-
sent of the whole Catholic world and the revelations
made to holy Souls, that, as is befitting, she is, soul
and body, with her Son and God in heaven, and that
we are enabled to celebrate, not only her death, but
her Assumption. -
And now, my dear brethren, what is befitting in
us, if all that I have been telling you is befitting in
Mary 2 If the Mother of Emmanuel ought to be the
first of creatures in sanctity and in beauty; if it
became her to be free from all sin from the very first,
and from the moment she received her first grace to
begin to merit more; and if such as was her beginning,
such was her end, her conception immaculate and her
death an assumption; if she died, but revived, and is
exalted on high; what is befitting in the children of
such a Mother, but an imitation, in their measure,
of her devotion, her meekness, her simplicity, her
modesty, and her sweetness? Her glories are not only
for the sake of her Son, they are for our sakes also.
Let us copy her faith, who received God’s message by
the Angel without a doubt; her patience, who endured
St. Joseph’s surprise without a word; her obedience,
the Glories of Mary. 379
who went up to Bethlehem in the winter and bore our
Lord in a stable; her meditative spirit, who pondered
in her heart what she saw and heard about Him : her
fortitude, whose heart the sword went through ; her
self-surrender, who gave Him up during His ministry
and consented to His death.
Above all, let us imitate her purity, who, rather than
relinquish her virginity, was willing to lose Him for
a Son. O my dear children, young men and young
women, what need have you of the intercession of the
Virgin-mother, of her help, of her pattern, in this re-
spect ' What shall bring you forward in the narrow
way, if you live in the world, but the thought and
patronage of Mary 2 What shall seal your senses,
what shall tranquillize your heart, when sights and
sounds of danger are around you, but Mary 2 What
shall give you patience and endurance, when you are
wearied out with the length of the conflict with evil,
with the unceasing necessity of precautions, with the
irksomeness of observing them, with the tediousness
of their repetition, with the strain upon your mind,
with your forlorn and cheerless condition, but a loving
communion with her? She will comfort you in your
discouragements, solace you in your fatigues, raise
you after your falls, reward you for your successes.
She will show you her Son, your God and your all.
When your spirit within you is excited, or relaxed,
or depressed, when it loses its balance, when it is
restless and wayward, when it is sick of what it has,
and hankers after what it has not, when your eye is
solicited with evil, and your mortal frame trembles
38o One the Fitness of the Glories of Mary.
under the shadow of the Tempter, what will bring
you to yourselves, to peace and to health, but the
cool breath of the Immaculate and the fragrance of
the Rose of Sharon 2 It is the boast of the Catholic
Religion, that it has the gift of making the young
heart chaste; and why is this, but that it gives us
Jesus Christ for our food, and Mary for our nursing
Mother? Fulfil this boast in yourselves; prove to
the world that you are following no false teaching,
vindicate the glory of your Mother Mary, whom
the world blasphemes, in the very face of the world,
by the simplicity of your own deportment, and the
sanctity of your words and deeds. Go to her for the
royal heart of innocence. She is the beautiful gift of
God, which outshines the fascinations of a bad world,
and which no one ever sought in sincerity and was
disappointed. She is the personal type and repre-
sentative image of that spiritual life and renovation
in grace, “without which no one shall see God.”
“Her spirit is sweeter than honey, and her heritage
than the honeycomb. They that eat her shall yet be
hungry, and they that drink her shall still thirst.
Whoso hearkeneth to her shall not be confounded,
and they that work by her shall not sin.”
THE END.
GILBERT AND Riv1NGTON, PRINTERs, St. John’s SQUARF, LoNDON.
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