^berkeley\ • 
 
 LIBRARY I 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF I 
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SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 The Vatican Council and its Definitions. By Henry Edward, 
 Archbishop of Westminster. 
 
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 Lectures by the Most Reverend Henry Edward Manning, Arch- 
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SIN 
 
 AND 
 
 ITS CONSEQUENCES. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY EDWARD, 
 
 ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 D & J. SADLIER & COMPANY, 
 
 31 BARCLAY STREET. 
 
 MONTREAL:— 275 NOTRE DAME STREET. 
 
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 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 THE NATURE OF SIN -. . . 9 
 
 It is expedient for you that I go ; for if I go not, the Para- 
 clete will not come unto you ; but if I go, I will send Him 
 to you ; and when He is come, He shall convince the world 
 of sin. St. John xvi. 7. 
 
 II. 
 
 MORTAL SIN ... . . 39 
 
 If any man shall see his brother sin a sin which is not unto 
 death, he shall ask, and life shall be given unto him that sin- 
 neth not unto death. There is a sin unto death : I do not 
 say for that any man shall ask. All iniquity is sin ; and there^ 
 is a sin unto death. 1 St. John v. 16, 17. 
 
 III. 
 
 VENIAL SIN 71 
 
 He that knoweth his brother to sin a sin which is not unto 
 death, let him ask, and life shall be given to him who sinneth 
 not to death. There is a sin unto death : for that I say not 
 that any man ask. 1 St. John v. 16. 
 
 IV. 
 
 SINS OF OMISSION .- . . 103 
 
 Who can understand sins ? From my secret sins cleanse 
 me, O God. Psalm viii. 13. 
 
 (v) 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 V. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE .... 131 
 
 Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, 
 they are forgiven them ; whose sins you shall retain, they are 
 retained. St. John xx. 22, 23. 
 
 VI. 
 TEMPTATION . . .163 
 
 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into* the desert to be 
 tempted by the devil. St. Matt. iv. 1. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS 203 
 
 From the sixth hour there was darkness over the whole 
 earth until the ninth hour ; and about the ninth hour Jesus 
 cried with a loud voice, saying : Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani ? 
 that is to say, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken 
 Me ? St. Matt, xxvii. 45. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION 233 
 
 Jesus said unto her : Mary. She saith unto Him : Rabboni : 
 lhat is to say, Master. St. John xx. 16. 
 
I. 
 
 THE NATUKE OP SIN 
 
THE NATURE OF SIN. 
 
 It is expedient for you that I go : for if I go not, the Paraclete 
 will not come unto you ; but if I go, I will send Him to you ; and 
 when He is come, He shall convince the world of sin. John xvi. 
 
 Singe last Lent began, how many souls that were 
 
 gathered here have passed into eternity. And before 
 
 another Lent begins, how many will stand before the 
 
 Great "White Throne. Who among ns shall be the 
 
 first to go to judgment % Let us, therefore, enter 
 
 upon this Lent as if knowing it to be our last ; let 
 
 us begin this time of conversion to God as if we were 
 
 sure that another would never be granted to us. 
 
 " Bring forth, therefore, fruits worthy of penance, 
 
 for now the axe is laid to the root of the tree ; every 
 
 tree, therefore, that bringeth not forth good fruit is 
 
 hewn down, and cast into the fire." * These thoughts 
 
 have made me choose a subject, sad indeed and severe 
 
 in all its parts, but vital to every one of us, necessary 
 
 for our salvation, the root and the foundation of all — 
 
 * St. Matt. iii. 8-10. 
 1* (9) 
 
10 THE NATURE OF SIN. 
 
 I mean sin, its nature, its effects, its consequences. 
 And I have chosen this subject because there can be 
 none other so necessary, and because the precept of 
 the Church, binding us all to confession and com- 
 munion at Easter, begins more urgently to warn the 
 conscience of every member of the Catholic Church. 
 I therefore appeal to you all. I appeal to your con- 
 science to fulfill, each one of you for yourselves, this 
 duty of salvation ; and not for yourselves alone. 
 Fathers and mothers, warn your families and house- 
 holds ; friends and neighbors, warn with humility 
 and charity all whom you know to be neglecting the 
 practice of their duty to God. 
 
 The words of our Divine Saviour reveal to us 
 what is the work and office of the Holy Ghost : " He 
 shall convince the world of sin." Both in the old 
 creation and in the new, both before the Incarnation 
 of the Son of God and after His ascension into 
 heaven, it has been, and it is, and it will be to the 
 end of the world, the work and the office of the 
 Holy Ghost to convince the world of sin ; that is to 
 say, to convince the intellect, and to illuminate the 
 reason of man to know and to understand what sin 
 is ; and also to convict the consciences of men, one 
 by one, of their sinfulness, and to make them, each 
 one, conscious that they are guilty before God. This 
 is the office of the Holy Ghost ; and in all time, from 
 
THE NATURE OF SIN. 11 
 
 the beginning of the world, the Holy Spirit of God 
 has illuminated and convinced the intellect and the 
 conscience of men to know God and themselves, and 
 thereby to understand in some degree the nature of 
 sin. But the fullness of that light and illumination 
 was reserved unto the day of Pentecost, when the 
 Holy Ghost came in person to dwell forever in the 
 Mystical Body of Christ. 
 
 In the beginning, when God made man, He made 
 him sinless, and He gave him the light of the Holy 
 Spirit ; so that man knew God, His holiness and per- 
 fections ; and he knew himself, and the nature in 
 which God had created him. He knew the law of 
 God ; but he did not know sin, because as yet the law 
 had not been broken. He could not know it, because 
 he had as yet no experience of the transgression of 
 the law, with its bitterness and its fatal consequences ; 
 but when man sinned against God, then all was 
 changed. Then he was conscious of his guilt, and 
 strove to hide himself from the face of his Maker ; 
 but he only hid God from his own conscience. He 
 could not escape from the presence nor from the eye 
 of God ; but he could hide the light of God's presence 
 from himself — and this he did. Therefore, from the 
 beginning of time, God in His mercy, by the working 
 and the light of His Spirit, taught men to know, in 
 some measure at least, His own perfections and their 
 
12 THE NATURE OF SEST. 
 
 own sinfulness ; but it was only like the twilight pre- 
 ceding the noonday. We are in the noonday ; and 
 if in the noonday we are blind to the perfections of 
 God and to our own sinfulness, woe to us in the day 
 of judgment. 
 
 Therefore, my purpose is to begin by the most 
 general outline of what sin is, and to lay down cer- 
 tain broad but simple principles which I shall have 
 to apply hereafter iii our future subjects. I there- 
 fore purpose first to speak of the nature of sin, of 
 what it is, and of certain distinctions of sin, which 
 will be necessary for us hereafter to refer to. 
 
 I. First, then, what is sin ? There are many defi- 
 nitions of it, and one is this : it is the transgression 
 of the law. " Sin is the transgression of the law." * 
 God is a law to Himself ; His perfections are the law 
 of His own nature ; and God wrote upon the con- 
 science of man, even in the state of nature, the outline 
 of His own perfections. He made man to know right 
 from wrong ; He made him to understand the nature 
 of purity, justice, truth and mercy. These are per- 
 fections of God, and on the conscience of man the 
 obligations of this law are written. Every man, born 
 into the world in a state of nature, has this outline 
 of God's law written upon him, and sin is the trans- 
 gression of that law. Another definition of sin is : 
 * 1 St. John iii. 4. 
 
THE NATURE OF SIM". 13 
 
 any thought, word, or deed contrary to the will of 
 God. Now, the will of God is the perfection of 
 God Himself — holy, just, pure, merciful, true ; and 
 anything contrary to these perfections in thought, 
 word, or deed is sin. The conformity of man to 
 the will of God, to the perfections of God, is the 
 sanctity or the perfection of the human soul ; and 
 the more he is conformed to the will of God, the 
 holier and more perfect he is. Therefore, to be 
 at variance with God is to be deformed ; and the 
 monstrous deformity of the human frame is not 
 more humbling nor more hideous — nay, it is not 
 humbling and hideous compared with the deformity 
 of the soul. When the soul is unlike to God, when 
 it is departed from the perfection of God, when in- 
 stead of purity there is impurity, instead of justice 
 there is injustice, instead of truth there is falsehood, 
 instead of mercy there is cruelty, instead of the per- 
 fections of God there is the direct contrary of those 
 perfections, no deformity or hideousness that can 
 strike the eye is so terrible. 
 
 The malice, then, of sin consists in this, that it is a 
 created will in conscious variance with the uncreated 
 will of God. God made us to His own image and 
 to His own likeness ; He gave us all that He could 
 bestow upon us. He could not bestow upon us His 
 own nature, because that is uncreated, and no crea- 
 
14 THE NATURE OF SIN. 
 
 ture can partake of the uncreated nature of God ; 
 but God could bestow, and He did by His omnipo- 
 tence with His mercy, bestow upon us His likeness, 
 His image, an intelligence and a will, a heart and a 
 conscience, so that we become intelligent and moral 
 beings. The malice of sin consists, then, in this: 
 that an intelligent creature, having a power of will, 
 deliberately and consciously opposes the will of its 
 Maker. The malice of sin is essentially internal to 
 the soul. The external action wherebv the sinner 
 perpetrates his sin adds, indeed, an accidental malice 
 and an accidental increase of wickedness ; but the 
 essence, the life of the malice, consists in the state 
 of the soul itself. We see, then, that sin is the con- 
 scious variation of our moral being from the will of 
 God. We abuse our whole nature, we abuse our in- 
 tellect by acting irrationally, in violation of the will 
 of God which is written upon the conscience ; we 
 abuse our will, because we deliberately abuse the 
 power of the will, whereby we originate our actions 
 in opposition to the will of God who gave it. We 
 apply our intellect and will, with our eyes open and 
 with freedom and choice, to the perpetration of 
 acts, or the utterance of words, or the harboring of 
 thoughts which are known to be contrary to the will 
 of God; and, therefore, in every sin there is the 
 knowledge of the intellect of what we are doing, the 
 
 s> 
 
THE NATURE OF SIN. 15 
 
 consent of the will in doing it, and the consciousness 
 of the mind fixed upon the action with two objects 
 before it — the law and the Lawgiver — the law of 
 God known to us, and the Giver of that law, who is 
 God Himself ; so that we deliberately, with onr eyes 
 open and of our own free will, break God's law in 
 God's face. Now, that is the plain definition and 
 description of sin ; and here I must, for a moment, 
 turn aside from our path. 
 
 These last generations have become fruitful of im- 
 piety and of immorality of a stupendous kind ; and 
 among other of their impious and immoral offspring 
 is a pestilent infidel school, who, with an audacity 
 never before known in the Christian world, are at 
 this time assailing the foundations of human society 
 and of Divine Law. They have talked of late of 
 what they call independent morality. And what do 
 you suppose is independent morality ? It means the 
 law of morals separated from the Lawgiver. It is a 
 proud philosophical claim to account for right and 
 wrong without reference to God, who is the Giver of 
 the Law. And what is the object of this theory ? 
 It is to get rid of Christianity, and of God, and of 
 right and wrong altogether, and to resolve all moral- 
 ity into reason ; and inasmuch as, it tells us, the dic- 
 tates of human reason are variable all over the world, 
 and change from generation to generation, this Phil- 
 
16 THE NATURE OF SIN. 
 
 osophy denies and destroys the foundations of moral- 
 ity itself. Now, I should not turn aside to mention 
 this monster of immorality and impiety, if it were 
 not that at this time there is an effort making in 
 England to introduce under a veil this same subtle 
 denial of morals, both Christian and natural. Only 
 the other day I read these words : " That in the edu- 
 cation of the people it is not possible, indeed, as 
 things are, to* teach morality without teaching doc- 
 trine ; because the English people are so accustomed 
 to associate morality and doctrine together, that they 
 have not as yet learned any other foundation for 
 morals." God forbid they ever should ! The mean- 
 ing of this is : Teach children right and wrong, but 
 say nothing about God, nothing about the Lawgiver ; 
 teach them right and wrong if you will, but nothing 
 about Jesus Christ. What is this but a stupidity as 
 well as an impiety ! For morals are not the dead, 
 blind, senseless relations that we have to stocks and 
 stones, but the relations of duty and of obligation we 
 have to the living Lawgiver, who is our Maker and 
 Redeemer. There are no morals excepting in the 
 relations between God and man, and between man 
 and man. Morals mean the relations and duties of 
 living and moral agents ; and this independent mo- 
 rality, this morality without God for school-children, 
 is bottomless impiety if ^it be not the stupidity of un- 
 
THE NATURE OF SIN. 17 
 
 belief. I could not help touching this in passing, 
 and we will now go back to our subject once more. 
 
 II. I have now to draw two distinctions in the 
 nature of sin. There are what are called formal 
 sins, and what are called material sins. The import- 
 ance of this distinction you will see hereafter. 
 
 1. Now, let us first understand what is a formal 
 sin. It means a sin committed with a full know- 
 ledge of what we do, and a full consent to do it ; so 
 that in proportion as men have light, and know the 
 law and the Lawgiver, in that proportion the sinful- 
 ness of their disobedience is increased. The holy 
 angels were created by God in the full knowledge 
 and light of His presence ; and those who fell from 
 their perfection by rebellion were formally guilty, in 
 proportion to that angelic knowledge which left them 
 without excuse. All those who possess a clear light 
 to know what is the law, and yet violate that law, are 
 guilty, as Peter was guilty for denying his Master, 
 and as Judas was guilty for selling Him ; both were 
 guilty in the proportion of their light. Those who, 
 knowing the natural law, break that law, are guilty, 
 because the law is written upon their conscience. 
 Those who break the Christian law, knowing the 
 Christian faith, in the proportion of their light are 
 guiltier ; and, above all men, those who have the 
 full light of the Catholic faith, if they break the 
 
18 THE NATURE OF SIN. 
 
 laws of Jesus Christ, are the guiltiest on the face of 
 the earth. You are guilty in the measure in which 
 you have greater light ; in the measure in which you 
 have a fuller illumination, in that measure your guilt 
 before God is greater. 
 
 Such sins, then, are formal, when committed with 
 full light and consent. Now, what are material sins ? 
 The same actions done without sufficient knowledge, 
 or without intention. Two men may commit the 
 very same action, and the one be guilty before God, 
 and the other not guilty. If, in the dark, I think 
 that I am felling a tree, and with my axe I cut down 
 a man, I am not a murderer. I have committed 
 manslaughter in the dark, and without intention ; 
 and if the man I have slain be my own father, I am 
 not a parricide ; yet the act I have committed is 
 materially an act of murder and of parricide. The 
 quality of sinfulness, therefore, is purified, and taken 
 away from the action, if I do not know what I am 
 about, and if I do not intend it. Our Divine Lord 
 prayed for the greatest sin that was ever committed 
 on the face of the earth in these words : " Father, 
 forgive them ; they know not what they do." In 
 His Divine compassion He prayed for His crucifiers ; 
 and the Apostle, speaking of Him, says : " Whom 
 none of the princes of this world knew : for had 
 they known Him they would not have crucified the 
 
THE NATURE OF SIN". 19 
 
 Lord of Glory." That is to say, among the multi- 
 tude, perhaps the greater number did not know what 
 they* did, and that Divine prayer of compassion re- 
 veals a law of God's equity and pity upon the igno- 
 rant. 
 
 Nevertheless, those who know, or have it in their 
 power to know, are guilty ; for we are responsible 
 not only for all that we do know, but for all that we 
 might know, and therefore ought to know. 
 
 This is what you hear of as vincible or invincible 
 ignorance. Ignorance takes away the guilt of our 
 actions if that ignorance be invincible, for then we 
 cannot overcome it. If we could not know any bet- 
 ter, then God in His infinite mercy, though we have 
 committed a material sin, will not take account 
 with us as if it were a formal sin. But there is 
 another kind of ignorance which is called vincible, 
 because it may be overcome if We use the proper 
 diligence to know ; and God has put within our 
 reach the means of knowledge sufficient if we will 
 diligently seek it. Now let me apply these prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 First. In the East there are Churches which once 
 were in communion with the Catholic Church, but 
 have been for ages separated from it ; and among 
 those Churches some have fallen from the Catholic 
 faith, in respect to the Holy Trinity and the Incarna- 
 
20 THE NATUKE OF SIN. 
 
 tion. Generation after generation, millions have been 
 born into that state ; they never knew the perfect 
 truth ; they never were in the nnity of the One Church. 
 They believe that God has revealed Himself in 
 Christianity, and they believe the doctrines they have 
 been taught from their childhood to be that revela- 
 tion. They believe God has a Church upon earth, 
 and they believe the Church in which they find them- 
 selves to be that Church of God ; and the simple, 
 the unlearned, and those who have not the means of 
 knowing better — we have every reason before God 
 to believe in their good faith — live and die, and God 
 in His mercy- — we may also hope — does not take 
 account of them, as if they had the formal light to 
 know the perfect truth. But to come nearer home. 
 
 It is to me a consolation and joy — I say it again 
 and again, and more strongly as I grow older — to 
 know that in the last three hundred years multitudes 
 of our own countrymen, who have been born out of 
 the unity of the Faith, nevertheless believe in good 
 faith with all their hearts that God has revealed 
 Himself in Jesus Christ, and that what they have 
 been taught from their childhood is His revelation, 
 and that He has founded upon earth a Church, and 
 that the Church, which in their baptismal creed they 
 call the Holy Catholic Church, is the Church in 
 which they themselves have been baptized, reared, 
 
THE NATURE OF SIN. 21 
 
 and instructed. It is my consolation to believe that 
 multitudes of such persons are in good faith, and 
 that God in His mercy will make allowance for them, 
 knowing what are the prejudices of childhood, of an 
 education studiously erroneous, what is the power 
 and influence of parents and of teachers, of public 
 authority, and of public opinion, and of public law : 
 how all these things create in their minds a convic- 
 tion that they are in the right, that they believe the 
 one Faith, and are in the one Church, in which alone 
 is salvation. We rejoice to commend them to the 
 love of our Heavenly Father, believing that though 
 they may be materially in error, and in many things 
 materially in opposition to His truth and to His will, 
 yet they do not know, and, morally speaking, many 
 cannot know it, and that therefore He will not re- 
 quire it at their hands. 
 
 2. This, then, is the first distinction of sin, into 
 formal and material sin ; yet I must draw one more, 
 and that is between original sin and actual sin. 
 What is original sin ? It is the transgression of the 
 law in the head of the human race, whereby all who 
 are born are sinners before God, and born into a 
 state of privation. The transgression of the law in 
 our head is our sin, because, when God created man, 
 He created mankind. In that man the whole race of 
 mankind was contained. Mankind springs from one 
 
22 THE NATUKE OF SIN. 
 
 head, and that head was the heir to all the benedic- 
 tions of the kingdom of God in onr behalf : onr in- 
 heritance was contained in him. If he had stood 
 from him, we should have inherited the kingdom of 
 God ; he fell, and by his fall disinherited the race of 
 mankind. ' We hear men of this day say : " What 
 can be more absurd than to believe that the human 
 race fell because Adam ate an apple ? " I put the 
 words with all the bald impertinence of the world. 
 Let us see now whether the ways of God need justi- 
 fication. God created Adam, and placed him in 
 Paradise in the midst of a garden. He gave him a 
 dominion over every tree of that garden, except one 
 only. Such was the generosity of God. He did not 
 say : " Thou mayest eat of the fruit of that one tree, 
 but of the ten thousand other fruit-bearing trees of 
 the garden thou shalt not eat ; and in whatsoever 
 day thou eatest of them thou shalt die the death." 
 God did not, with the parsimony of a human heart, 
 give Adam permission to eat of one tree, and forbid 
 him ten thousand. No. He gave him free permis- 
 sion to eat of ten thousand, and forbade him to eat 
 of one alone. Was there anything unreasonable in 
 1 this ? Was it not what you would do if you had the 
 will to try the obedience of any one % Was it not 
 what you would do, and what men do at this day, 
 when out of liberality they lease their lands upon 
 
THE NATURE OF SIN. 23 
 
 what is called a peppercorn rent ? When the world 
 speaks impertinently, I may answer the world in its 
 own tongue. The landlord who leases out his estate, 
 taking only a nominal acknowledgment, is com- 
 mended by all men as generous, large-hearted, noble- 
 minded. He acts as a friend, without self-interest, 
 when he intrusts to another man the enjoyment and 
 enrichment which arise from his estates, upon the 
 mere acknowledgment that, after all, they belong to 
 him. He is only reserving his right. Now what 
 did Almighty Grod in that commandment do ? He 
 reserved His right as Sovereign — He reserved His ' 
 right over the obedience of the man whom He had 
 created. He thereby revealed that He had jurisdic- 
 tion over that garden, and over the man to whom He 
 had permitted its free enjoyment. He put him upon 
 trial — it was the test of his fidelity. More than this : 
 it was a test so slight, that I may say there was no 
 temptation to break the law. If he had been, for- 
 bidden to eat of all the trees of the garden, save one, 
 he would have been tempted at every turn. Every 
 tree he gazed upon would have been a fresh tempta- 
 tion ; he would have been followed and haunted by 
 temptation wherever he went. God did not deal so 
 with him — He forbade him one, and one alone ; so 
 that he had perfect liberty to go, to and fro, gather- 
 ing from the whole garden, except from that one 
 
24 THE NATURE OF SIN. 
 
 tree. Where, then, was the temptation ? As on 
 God's part there was Divine generosity, so on man's 
 part there was the wantonness of transgression. It 
 may, indeed, be my defect, but I can see nothing in 
 this that is not consonant with Divine wisdom, Divine 
 goodness, Divine sovereignty, and Divine mercy. I 
 see nothing to warrant the impertinence of the world. 
 Well, this law was slight, and without any tempta- 
 tion whatsoever Adam transgressed it. He held the 
 enjoyment of his perfection, and of the promise of 
 eternal life, and of the kingdom of God, upon the 
 payment, as I said before, of that quit rent, of that 
 mere acknowledgment of the sovereignty of his 
 Maker, and even to this he would not submit. 
 
 What, then, was the consequence ? Man, as God 
 made him, had three perfections. First, he was per- 
 fect in body and soul. Secondly, he had the higher 
 perfection of the Holy Spirit dwelling in his heart, 
 whereby his soul was ordered and sanctified, and the 
 passions were held in perfect subjection to the reason 
 and the will. Thirdly, he had a perfection arising 
 from that higher perfection, namely, immortality in 
 the body and perfect integrity in the soul. So that 
 he had these three perfections : a natural perfection 
 in body and soul, a supernatural perfection by the 
 indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and a preternatural 
 perfection of immortality ; and all these by one act 
 
THE NATTTEE OF SIN. 25 
 
 of disobedience lie lost. When he sinned, the spirit 
 of God departed from him, his soul died because it 
 was separated from God, his immortality was for- 
 feited, the integrity or harmony of the soul was lost 
 likewise, the passions rebelled, the will was weakened, 
 the intellect became confused, and the nature of man 
 was deprived of its supernatural perfection and of all 
 that follows from it. This is the meaning of the 
 words, " In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt 
 die the death." It was spiritual' and temporal death, 
 followed, except on repentance, by eternal death 
 hereafter. 
 
 We see, then, the meaning of original sin in us. 
 It is that we, being born of that forefather, are born 
 disinherited of these three perfections which we lost 
 in him by his disobedience. We are born into this 
 world without the Spirit of God ; we receive it in 
 our baptism, which is our second birth. By our first 
 birth " that which is born of the flesh is flesh." We 
 have the three "wounds," as they are called, of 
 Adam — ignorance in the intellect, weakness in the 
 will, and turbulence in the passions. This is the 
 state in which we are born into this world, and there- 
 fore we are spiritually dead before God. I see in 
 this, as I said before, nothing but Divine wisdom : 
 and wisdom is justified of her children. And here I 
 
 wish to answer what may perhaps rise in the minds 
 
 2 
 
26 THE NATURE OF SIN. 
 
 of some of you concerning infants that die before 
 baptism. Sometimes people say, " How can I be- 
 lieve that those infants who die before baptism, 
 through no fault of their own, should go to eternal 
 torment ? " God forbid. Infants that die with 
 original sin only — never having committed an actual 
 sin — who believes that they descend into a place of 
 torment ? Their eternal state is a state of happiness, 
 though it be not in the Yision of God : for we know 
 of no way in which any human soul can see the 
 Yision of God, except by regeneration of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 Without receiving the grace of * holy baptism, 
 the soul is not in the supernatural order ; and of 
 those who die in the natural order, we are unable to 
 affirm that the grace which belongs to the supernat- 
 ural order is extended, and that, because for this we 
 have no revelation. It is, however, certain that the 
 privation attached to original sin carries with it 
 nothing which the world, sometimes contradicting 
 the Christian faith for the purpose of maligning it, 
 most unreasonably says against it. But though 
 original sin is only punished by privation, every 
 actual sin will be punished by actual pain. There is 
 the pain of loss which follows original sin; there 
 is the pain of sense which follows actual sin ; and 
 every actual sin that men commit will be punished 
 
THE NATURE OF SEN". 27 
 
 by pain, either temporal or eternal, for pain follows 
 sin as the shadow follows the substance. 
 
 Lastly, we come to actual sin. What is it ? Let us 
 recall the principles with which I began. Actual sin 
 is the conscious variance of a creature to the known 
 will of its Creator ; and that conscious variance in- 1 
 eludes the light of the intellect, and the consent of 
 the will, and the knowledge and intention of what 
 we are doing. The essential malice of sin is in the 
 will : and there is a threefold malice in every actual 
 sin committed by a Christian. First, there is a 
 malice against God the Father, who made man to 
 His image and likeness, that He might be the object 
 of his love ; that he might love Him, know Him, 
 serve Him, worship Him, be conformed to Him, and 
 dwell with Him in eternity. The Christian who sins 
 against God sins against his Creator, and worships 
 the creature more than the Creator ; that is to say, 
 worships the world, his pleasures, himself. Self- 
 worship he puts in the place of the worship of God, 
 and in that he does an infinite offence — infinite, 
 though he be finite — because the Person against 
 whom that offence is committed is an infinite God. * 
 Secondly, there is a malice against our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, the Redeemer- of the world. The Apostle 
 says every sinner is " an enemy of the Cross of 
 Christ." He says, " They that do such things, I 
 
28 THE NATUEE OF SIN. 
 
 have told you often, and now again tell yon weeping, 
 that they are enemies of the Cross of Christ." * And 
 why ? Because Jesus Christ suffered on the Cross 
 for those very sins which such men commit. The 
 sinner nails Him on the Cross once more. The nails 
 and the hammer were but the material instruments 
 of crucifixion ; the moral cause of the crucifixion of 
 the Son of God was the sin which you and I have 
 committed ; and if we commit such sins again, we 
 deliberately renew the causes which nailed Him on 
 the Cross. Again, the Apostle says, " If those who 
 despised the law of Moses were condemned, of how 
 much severer punishment shall he be thought worthy 
 who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and 
 put Him to open shame, and counted the Blood of 
 the Testament, whereby he was sanctified, unclean ; 
 and hath done this in despite to the Spirit of Grace ! "f 
 The Christian who deliberately commits sin wounds 
 our Divine Saviour. He opens those Five Sacred 
 Wounds, majdng them bleed afresh. With a cold 
 and ungrateful heart he renews the sorrows which 
 caused the agony of Gethsemane, and made Him 
 sweat His Sweat of Blood. Not this only ; but, 
 thirdly, there is a malice against the Holy Ghost. 
 Every sin that is committed, is committed against 
 the light and grace of the Holy Spirit in the con- 
 * Phil. iii. 18. t Heb. x. 29. 
 
THE NATURE OF SIN. 29 
 
 science ; and in this there are three degrees. "We 
 may grieve the Holy Ghost, we may resist the Holy 
 Ghost, and we may quench the Holy Ghost. Our 
 Divine Lord has said, "Every sin and every blas- 
 phemy shall be forgiven unto men, except the 
 blasphemy of the Holy Ghost ; and if any man shall 
 speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be for- 
 given him ; but whosoever speaketh against the 
 Holy Ghost, it shall never be forgiven him in this 
 world nor in the world to come."* Now what is the 
 meaning of this ? A man may speak against Jesus 
 Christ, ay, blaspheme his Lord, and the Holy Spirit, 
 convincing him of sin, may bring him to repentance, 
 may convert him to God, and his soul may be saved ; 
 but any man who blasphemes the Holy Ghost — Who 
 is the Spirit of Penance, the Spirit of Absolution, 
 the Absolver of the penitent — rejects the whole dis- 
 pensation of grace ; and, therefore, the sin that shall 
 never be forgiven is the sin of impenitence. Every 
 sin that men repent of shall be forgiven ; but the sin 
 that is not repented of shall never be forgiven, neither 
 in this world, nor in the world to come. 
 
 In giving these definitions, I am afraid that what 
 
 I have said is somewhat abstract, perhaps somewhat 
 
 tedious ; but it is impossible for me to make clear 
 
 what I have to say hereafter, without laying down 
 
 * St. Matt. xii. 31. 
 
30 THE NATUKE OF SIN. 
 
 first principles. I will now, therefore, only make 
 application of what I have said. We have here two 
 practical principles. 
 
 1. The first is this : no one is so blind to his own 
 sins as the man who has most sin upon him. If a 
 man is plague-stricken, he can see it by the discolora- 
 tion of the skin. If the scales of leprosy are coming 
 up upon his arm, he can tell that he is a leper. If a 
 cloud is growing over the pupil of the eye, he can 
 tell that he is losing the light of heaven. All the 
 diseases of the body make themselves known em- 
 phatically ; but it is the subtilty and danger and 
 deadliness of sin that it conceals itself. No men 
 know the light of God's presence so little as those 
 who are covered with sin ; and the more sin they 
 have upon them the less they can see it. Though all 
 the perfections of God, like the rays of the sun 
 which encircle the head of the blind man, are round 
 about them all the day long, they are unconscious of 
 His presence. They are like Elymas, the magician, 
 who, for his impiety, had scales upon his eyes ; and 
 because they do not see the light of God, therefore 
 they do not see His perfections, and therefore they 
 do not see themselves ; for the light of the know- 
 ledge of self comes from the light of the knowledge 
 of God. How shall a man know what unholiness is, 
 if he does not know what holiness is % How shall 
 
THE NATURE OF SIN". 31 
 
 lie know what falsehood is, if he does not know 
 what truth is ; or impurity, if he does not know 
 purity : or impiety, if he does not know the duty 
 we owe to God, and the majesty of God, to whom 
 worship is due ? Just in the proportion in which the 
 light of the perfections of God is clouded, we lose 
 the light of the knowledge of ourselves ; and the 
 end of it is that when men hear snch words as I am 
 speaking now, they say, " That is just the character 
 of my neighbor — that is the very picture of my 
 brother : " they do not see themselves in the glass. 
 You may describe their character, and they will not 
 recognize it ; you may tell them, " This is yourself," 
 and they will not believe it. There is something 
 within them which darkens the conscience ; and why 
 is it ? Because sin stupefies the intellect and the 
 heart : it draws a veil and a mist over the brightness 
 of the intelligence, and it darkens the light of the 
 conscience. Sin is like hemlock : it deadens the 
 sense, so that the spiritual eye begins to close, and 
 the spiritual ear becomes heavy, and the heart grows 
 drowsy. And when men have brought themselves 
 to that state by their own free will, then comes the 
 just judgment of God : " I will give them eyes that 
 they may not see, ears that they may not hear, 
 hearts that they may not understand, lest they 
 should be converted, and I should heal them. These 
 
32 THE NATURE OF SIN. 
 
 » 
 
 things said Isaias, when he saw His glory and spoke 
 of Him."* 
 
 2. There is one other truth — that no men see the 
 nature of sin so clearly as those who are freest from 
 sin ; just as no intelligence knows sin with such an 
 intensity of knowledge as God Himself. Our Divine 
 Lord Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, knew sin 
 in all its hatefulness so as no other human heart has 
 ever known it. His Immaculate Mother — because 
 sinless — knew the sinfulness of sin by the light of 
 her intelligence, and by a pure horror of her whole 
 spiritual nature. So in like manner the Saints of 
 God, each one of them in the proportion of his 
 sanctity ; and so you likewise, in the measure in 
 which you are free from sin, in that measure will you 
 hate it, in that measure you understand and estimate 
 its sinfulness. And if at any time in your life you 
 have committed sin — in the measure in which you 
 are separated from your past life, in the measure in 
 which that old character of yours has been taken off, 
 and you can see "the old man" which you have 
 sloughed off, that old being and nature of yours 
 which cleaves to you no longer, which you look on 
 as a thing hideous and horrible, belonging to you no 
 more, belonging to your childhood, boyhood, or 
 youth, but yours no longer now — in that measure 
 
 * St. John xii. 40, 41. 
 
THE NATURE OF SIN. 33 
 
 you understand the sinfulness of sin. You can look 
 back on your past life, and understand your sins as 
 you did not understand them then ; and when you 
 come to die, your present character and your present 
 life will be seen by you in a light, brighter and more 
 intense than that under which you see them now. 
 Look up, therefore, into the light of God's presence, 
 and pray God to make you to know yourselves as He 
 knows you, and to see yourselves as He sees you 
 now ; for when you have seen the worst of your 
 sins, what are they, compared with those which God 
 sees in you ? Therefore, do not let us ever think 
 that we know all our sins ; yet do not let us imagine 
 that we fully know our own sinfulness. We are 
 only beginning to learn it, and we shall have to learn 
 it all our life. There are three great depths which 
 no human line can sound — the depth of our sinful- 
 ness, the depth of our unworthiness, and the depth 
 of our nothingness. If you are beginning to learn 
 those three things, happy are you. Be not afraid, 
 the more you see your own sinfulness ; and for this 
 reason. "Who is showing it to you ? It is the light 
 of the Spirit of God. It is He Who alone searches 
 the heart, Who alone makes us know ourselves ; and 
 the more you see of your own sinfulness, the truer 
 pledge you have of His presence ; that He is with 
 you, that He is within you, that He is busied about 
 2* 
 
34 THE NATUKE OF SIN. 
 
 your salvation. He is giving yon a pledge and a 
 promise that every sin yon see He will help you to 
 repent of, and every sin you repent of- shall be 
 washed away in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. 
 Therefore, one last word. My first counsel to you 
 in this Lent is this : Try to know yourselves, try to 
 learn during these days such knowledge of yourselves 
 as you have never had before. Begin as if it were 
 for the first time. Take the ten commandments : 
 read them in the letter : understand them* in the 
 spirit ; and try your life from your childhood, from 
 your earliest memory, by that Divine rule. Take 
 the seven deadly sins, try yourselves by them, in 
 deed, in word, and in thought. Pray to the Spirit 
 of God, whose work and office it is to convince the 
 world of sin. Pray every day in this Lent, morning 
 and night, that the Spirit of God may illuminate 
 your reason to understand the nature of sin, and 
 convince your conscience, that you may know what 
 sins are upon you. Pray to Him that the light of 
 the presence of God may come down upon you like 
 the light of the noonday, that you may see not only 
 the broad outlines of your sins, but your finer and 
 more delicate and more subtle offences against God, 
 even as we see the motes which float in the sunbeam 
 at noonday. The more you have the presence of 
 God with you, the more the light of His perfections 
 
THE NATURE OF SIN. 35 
 
 is upon you, the more you will see yourselves. The 
 Patriarch Job, who, though he had long lived in 
 prayer, in converse, and in communion with God, 
 and had been grievously afflicted (which more than 
 any other discipline brings men to know themselves), 
 nevertheless, at the end of all his trials, when God 
 spoke to him out of the light of His presence, said : 
 " With the hearing of the ear I have heard Thee, 
 but now mine eye seeth Thee ; wherefore I condemn 
 myself, and do penance in dust and ashes." * 
 
 * Job xlii. 5, 6. 
 
II. 
 
 MORTAL SIN 
 
MORTAL SIN". 
 
 If any man shall see his brother sin a sin which is not unto 
 death, he shall ask, and life shall be given unto him that sinneth 
 not unto death. There is a sin unto death : I do not say for that 
 any man shall ask. All iniquity is sin, and there is a sin unto 
 death.— 1 St. John v. 16, 17. 
 
 From the written "Word of God it is clear, beyond 
 controversy, that some sins are unto death, and some 
 sins are not unto death. That is to say, that some 
 sins are mortal, and some sins are not mortal. 
 
 Our next subject, as I said, is mortal sin. But be- 
 fore I enter upon it, I wish to recall to your memo- 
 ries the general principles already laid down. First, 
 we know that the end of man is God ; that God made 
 man for Himself ; that He made him to His own 
 likeness ; that He made him capable of knowing, 
 loving, and serving Him, and of being like to God ; 
 ' and that in the knowledge, the love, and the service, 
 and the likeness of God, is the bliss of man. There- 
 fore, conformity to God is our perfection, and union 
 with God is eternal life ; but deformity, or departure 
 
 (39) 
 
40 MORTAL SIN. 
 
 from the likeness of God, is sin, and separation from 
 God is eternal death. The nature of sin is, as we 
 have defined it, the transgression of the law of God ; 
 or, in other words, any thought, word, or deed delib- 
 erately committed with the knowledge of the intel- 
 lect, and the consent of the will, contrary to the will 
 of God ; or, in other words again, it is the variance 
 of the created will against the uncreated will — of the 
 will of the creature against the will of the Creator. 
 The essential malice of sin, then, consists in the 
 variance of the will, the hostility of the will of the 
 creature against the will of his Maker. These were 
 the principles which I laid down last time. We will 
 now take them up again, and make application of 
 them in one particular point. 
 
 St. John, in the words with which I began, tells 
 us that if any man see his brother sin a sin which is 
 not unto death, he ought to pray for him. Now, 
 what are the sins that are not unto death ? Sins of 
 infirmity ; sins of impetuosity ; sins of strong tempt- 
 ation ; sins which by the subtlety of Satan lead men 
 astray ; sins of passion, in which human nature, be- 
 ing weak and tempestuous, and liable to disorder, is 
 drawn aside : if in all these there be no malice, either 
 against God, or against our neighbor. Now, these 
 are sins which all Christians are liable to commit, and 
 do commit, and which, without doubt, you yourselves 
 
MORTAL SIN. 41 
 
 are profoundly conscious of committing. These are 
 sins not unto death, as we may trust, because, if there 
 be no malice against God or our neighbor, then the 
 essential sinfulness of sin is wanting ; and in that 
 case, St. John says, " Let him pray for him, and God 
 will give life unto those that sin not unto death ;" 
 that is to say, He will give grace, sorrow, pardon, 
 help, protection, and perseverance. He will watch 
 over those souls if in humility and in sorrow they 
 persevere ; and the prayer of those who are faithful 
 and steadfast will obtain grace for those that sin not 
 unto death. Then he goes on : " There is a sin unto 
 death : for that I say not that any man should ask ;" 
 that is, that any man should pray. Now, what is 
 this sin unto death. The sin of Judas was a sin 
 unto death % With his eyes open, with a knowledge 
 of his Master, — though, perhaps, he did not know of 
 the mystery of the Incarnation as we know it now ; 
 nevertheless he knew enough, — he sold his Master, 
 and yet, perhaps, not knowing that he sold Him to 
 be crucified. This, then, was a sin unto death. The 
 sin of Simon Magus was a blasphemy and a sin unto 
 death. The sin of those that blaspheme the Holy 
 Ghost, which shall never be forgiven, is a sin unto 
 death. The sin of apostates from the faith, who, 
 having known the truth, and having had the full 
 light and illumination to know God, afterwards fall 
 
42 MORTAL SIN. 
 
 from Him, is described by St. Paul in the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews, where he says, "It is impossible for 
 those who have been once enlightened, and have 
 tasted of the Heavenly Gift, and of the good Word 
 of God, and of the powers of the world to come, if 
 they shall fall away, to be renewed again unto re- 
 pentance."* In one word, all who are impenitent 
 sin nnto death. All those who, having had full light 
 and knowledge of God in His revelation, with their 
 eyes open, turn from it, of whom St. John says, 
 " They went out from us because they were not of 
 us ; for if they had been of us, without doubt they 
 would have continued with us "f — all these who so 
 sin, sin unto death, and are left to the judgment of 
 God. St. John in these words does not forbid us to 
 pray ; he says, " I do not say " — that is, " I do not 
 enjoin it." He leaves it to the conscience of every 
 man. He says of those who sin not unto death, that 
 " we have all confidence we may obtain pardon and 
 grace for them ;" but for those who do sin unto death 
 as I have described, "we have no such confidence, 
 and, therefore, though I do not enjoin it, I do not 
 forbid it." 
 
 Then he goes on to say, "All iniquity is sin." 
 Now, iniquity means all departure from the rectitude 
 of God and of the law of God. Iniquity is inequality, 
 * Heb. vi. 6. \1 St. John ii. 19. 
 
MORTAL SIN. 43 
 
 or crookedness. Everything that is not conformed 
 to the rectitude of God, to His perfections, to His 
 law, and to His will, is sin. "And there is a sin nnto 
 death." We have here a distinction of those sins 
 which are and those which are not mortal. My pur- 
 pose now is very roughly to define what it is that 
 constitutes this distinction ; and, secondly, to show 
 what are the effects of this mortal sin which is unto 
 death. 
 
 As I have said before, to constitute a mortal sin it 
 is necessary that the man who commits it should 
 know what he does — there must be a knowledge of 
 the intellect ; if not, the sin is only, as I then said, a 
 material sin, and not a formal sin, unless his ignor- 
 ance be a culpable and guilty ignorance. Next, he 
 must not only know that he is doing wrong, but his 
 will must consent to the wrong-doing. Thirdly, he 
 must know and consent deliberately, with such an 
 advertence or attention to what he is about as to make 
 him conscious of his action. A man who should 
 transgress the law of God in the least possible way 
 would fulfill these three conditions. It would be a 
 transgression of the law of God if I should take an 
 apple off the tree of my neighbor without his leave. 
 It was his : I had not a right to take it, and I thereby 
 broke the commandment, " Thou shalt not steal ; " 
 but that certainly would not be a sin unto death. It 
 
44: MORTAL SIN. 
 
 became a sin unto death when a divine prohibition 
 was laid npon such an act under pain of death, and 
 that the pain of eternal death ; but where there is no 
 such command laid under pain of death, it is quite 
 clear that the taking of an apple would not constitute 
 a sin unto death. Therefore it is necessary that there 
 should be a gravity in the matter of the sin ; and 
 the gravity of that matter will be constituted in one 
 of two ways — it is either the material gravity, that 
 is, the extent, or amount, or quantity of the sin com- 
 mitted ; or it is the moral gravity derived from the 
 circumstances of the case. An illustration will at 
 once make this clear. If I were to rob a man of a 
 very large amount of his property, no one would 
 doubt for an instant that I had committed a sin unto 
 death, or a mortal sin. The common sense of man- 
 kind, the instincts of justice, would at once pronounce 
 against me. If I were to take a needle from some 
 rich person, the instincts of justice would acquit me 
 of a sin unto death. I have taken that which did not 
 belong to me, but no one would say that, in taking 
 that needle from the rich man, who could obtain 
 an abundant supply of needles, I had committed a 
 sin unto death. No. But suppose that needle be- 
 longed to a poor seamstress, who gained her daily 
 bread by the industrious use of that one needle, and 
 that she had not the means to buy another ; and that 
 
MORTAL SIN". 45 
 
 if she were robbed of it, her industry must cease, and 
 she could no longer gain her bread ; and that I knew 
 all those facts ; and that, with my eyes open, know- 
 ing the extent of the injury I was doing, in violation 
 of the law of charity, as well as of the law of justice, 
 I should take that needle with a perfect conscious- 
 ness that I was destroying the means of industry 
 and reducing her to hunger. You see at once that 
 there is a moral guilt which arises from these circum- 
 stances. Suppose, still further, that I myself were 
 jealous of her prosperity, being of the same trade or 
 calling, and that I take the needle in order to ruin 
 her for my own advantage. You see, therefore, that 
 in so small a theft as the stealing of a needle there 
 may be an enormity of moral guilt. It is not enough, 
 then, that there should be the knowledge of the intel- 
 lect, and the consent of the will to the action, unless 
 the matter in which that action is committed shall be 
 of a grave kind, either materially or morally, before 
 God. 
 
 There are seven capital sins, the names of which 
 you all know. First of all, there is pride, which 
 separates the soul from God ; secondly, there is 
 envy, or jealousy, which separates a man from his 
 neighbor ; thirdly, there is sloth, which is a burden 
 pressing down the powers of man, so that he be- 
 comes weary of his duty towards God, and forsakes 
 
46 MORTAL SIN. 
 
 Him ; fourthly, there is avarice, which plunges a 
 man deep into the mire of this world, so that he 
 makes it to be his god ; fifthly, there is gluttony, 
 which makes a sensual fool ; sixthly, there is anger, 
 which makes a man a slave to himself ; and, lastly, 
 there is impurity, which makes a man a slave of the 
 devil. In those seven kinds there are seven ways of 
 eternal death ; and all those who, with their eyes 
 open, with the knowledge of the intellect, and the 
 full consent of the will, commit sin in any of those 
 seven kinds, are walking in the way towards sin unto 
 death. 
 
 1. We come now to the effects. The first effect 
 of one mortal sin is to strike the soul dead. The 
 grace of God is the life of the soul, as the soul is the 
 life of the body ; and one sin unto death, in any one 
 of the kinds that I have spoken of, strikes the soul 
 dead. The soul dies at once, and on the spot ; not as 
 the tree which is blasted by the lightning and dies 
 gradually, day after day ; first in the leader, then it 
 begins to die in the branches, and then it dies in 
 the trunk, and then it dies in the root. This is a 
 slow process, but not so with the soul. One single 
 sin unto death strikes the soul dead at once, and that 
 for this reason : the grace of God is the life of the 
 soul, and one mortal sin separates the soul from God. 
 The holy angels, when they were created, lived in 
 
MORTAL SIN". 47 
 
 the presence of God, though, they did not as yet see 
 the face of God. They were on probation. Every 
 creature depends on God in two ways : he needs the 
 support of God for his existence ; and of the grace 
 of God for his sanctifLcation. If God were not 
 present with us at this moment in our physical life, 
 we should die. If He were not in this building, the 
 walls of it would vanish. So it was with the angels 
 in their first state of bliss. It was the assistance of 
 God which sustained them in their being as pure 
 intelligences, spotless in their innocence, excellent in 
 their strength, surpassing in their energy. " He 
 maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame 
 of fire."* They also needed grace. The angels 
 were holy just as we are holy, because the Holy 
 Ghost was with them ; and all the actions of the 
 angelic perfection were sustained by an actual grace 
 and help of God, just like our own. By one sin — 
 one sin unto death — and that a sin of pride, purely 
 spiritual, they fell and died eternally and without 
 redemption ; and, as St. Jude writes : " Leaving their 
 habitations, were cast down into darkness and ever- 
 lasting chains until the day of judgment." f As it 
 was with the angelic natures, so it was with man. 
 God, when He created man, constituted him, as I 
 said before, with three perfections — the perfection of 
 * Heb. i. 7. f St. Jude 6. 
 
48 MORTAL SIN. 
 
 nature, that is, of body and soul ; the supernatural 
 perfection, or the indwelling of the Holy Ghost and 
 of sanctification ; and the preternatural perfection or 
 the perfect harmony of the soul in itself and with 
 God ; and the immortality of the body. These 
 three perfections, natural, supernatural, and preter- 
 natural, make up what is called original justice ; and 
 in that state man was constituted when he was 
 created. But by one sin of disobedience, with his 
 eyes open, with the consent of his will and with full 
 deliberation — and that in a matter light in itself, 
 as I have said, but grave because the prohibition of 
 God under the penalty of eternal death was laid upon 
 it — in that slight trial, without temptation save only 
 the listening to the tempter, who aw T akened a spirit 
 of curiosity and disobedience, where all around him 
 was permitted and one only thing forbidden, man 
 sinned against God, and by that one sin was struck 
 dead. The Holy Ghost departed from him, and all 
 his perfections were wrecked. The supernatural 
 perfection was lost, the preternatural perfection was 
 -forfeited, the soul fell from God, the body was struck 
 by death. He became from that time disinherited, 
 shorn of sanctity and life : one sin unto death 
 separated him and all his posterity from God. As 
 it was in the case of Adam, so it is also in the case 
 of the regenerate ; so it is in our own. We who are 
 
MOETAL SEST. 49 
 
 born into the world, spiritually dead, have once more, 
 by regeneration in baptism, the life of the Spirit. If 
 we sin mortally, with our eyes open and with con- 
 sent of our will, we forfeit the presence of the Holy 
 Ghost in the soul, the charity of God which unites 
 us to Him, the sanctifying grace whereby we are 
 made children of God, the seven gifts of the Holy 
 Ghost which are always inseparably united to His 
 presence. There is left in us, indeed, the grace of 
 hope and the grace of faith. These two remain like 
 the beating of the pulse and the breathing of the 
 lungs : there is just so much left of the life of grace 
 with the light of faith and the aspiration of hope 
 after God ; but our union with God is broken : we 
 are separated from Him, and at variance with Him. 
 This is the first effect of mortal sin; for habitual 
 grace and the presence of God are the life of the soul ; 
 and the loss of that grace, which is the loss of the 
 presence of God, is the death of the soul. 
 
 2. But further: one mortal sin destroys all the 
 merits that the soul has ever heaped up. Understand 
 what is meant by merit. The doctrine of the Catholic 
 Church is this : not that any creature can merit in 
 the sense of claiming out of the hand of his Maker, 
 Redeemer, and Judge, by any right of his own, any- 
 thing whatsoever in nature or in grace. Cast out of 
 your minds forever all shadow of misunderstanding 
 3 
 
50 MOETAL SIN. 
 
 upon this. Merit does not signify that the creature 
 can by any right of his own, either in the order of 
 nature or of grace, challenge and demand of God the 
 gift or the possession of anything. No. The word 
 " merit " is used in two senses. There is the merit 
 for good, and the merit for evil. Every good action 
 has a merit — that is, a certain conformity to the will 
 of God ; and every evil action has a merit, that is, a 
 deformity, which will be followed by punishment. 
 Therefore, " merit " is a word altogether indifferent 
 in itself, and derives its meaning for good or for evil 
 from its context. Merit signifies the connection or 
 link that exists between certain actions done in grace 
 and certain awards ; and that connection or link is 
 constituted sovereignly and gratuitously by the grace 
 and promise of God. So that every man who does 
 acts of faith, or of charity, or of self-denial, or of 
 piety, will receive a reward, both in this life and the 
 next, according to those actions. Every man who 
 does acts of charity will receive an increase of charity 
 and of grace in this life ; and hereafter, as the Coun- 
 cil of Florence defines, the glory of the blessed shall be 
 in proportion to the measure of their charity on earth. 
 There is a link, then, between the measure of our char- 
 ity here and the measure of our glory hereafter. This 
 is what is called merit ; and all through our life, if 
 we are living faithfully in the grace of God, we are 
 
MORTAL SIN. 51 
 
 thereby heaping up merits, and acquiring in virtue 
 of the promise a greater reward and a greater bliss. 
 I may give as example the life of the Apostles, who, 
 through the whole of their career, even to their mar- 
 tyrdom, were continually increasing in the sight of 
 God the accumulation of His good-will, of His grace, 
 and of His reward. This is true of you all, and 
 through your whole life everything that you do ac- 
 cording to the will of God, being in a state of grace, 
 has in the Book of Remembrance a record, and in 
 the Sacred Heart of our Divine Master a promise of 
 reward, which shall be satisfied at His coming. One 
 sin, then, unto death, unless afterwards repented of, 
 utterly cancels all these merits of a whole life. It mat- 
 ters not how long you may have been living a life of 
 justice, of charity, of humility, of generosity, and 
 of piety, before God — one mortal sin, and the whole 
 of that record is canceled from the Book of His re- 
 membrance. It is all gone as if it had never been. 
 Do you need proofs of it ? Take the history of 
 David, the "man after God's own heart."* You 
 remember his faith, his patience, his fidelity, his 
 courage, his prayer, his spirit of thanksgiving. He 
 is the Psalmist of Israel, the man with the greatest 
 of all titles — " the man after God's own heart." But 
 in one moment, by the twofold sin of murder and 
 
 * Acts xiii. 22. 
 
52 MORTAL SIN. 
 
 adultery, lie canceled before God every merit of liis 
 youth and of his manhood : all was dead before God. 
 Solomon, the son of David, the type of our Divine 
 Lord, the King of Peace, the man famous for wis- 
 dom — not only because he received it as a divine 
 gift, but because he had the wisdom to ask for wis- 
 dom, not for riches — the man illuminated beyond all 
 other men, because afterwards he fell away from 
 God into sin unto death, all the merit of that long 
 life of wisdom and light and of early sanctity was 
 canceled. Judas, in his childhood, and in his boy- 
 hood, and hi his youth, was perhaps as faithful to the 
 light of his conscience as you have been. He left 
 kindred and all that he had, to follow his Master. 
 'No doubt there were in his heart struggles and 
 aspirations and prayers and desires to walk in the 
 footsteps of his Divine Lord ; but there crept upon 
 him the sin of covetousness. He carried the bag, 
 and that which was put therein ; and Satan tempted 
 him, and then entered into him, and he sold his 
 Master. Ananias, in like manner, renounced the 
 world, periled his own life to become a Christian, 
 sold all that he had, made sacrifice of everything ; 
 but kept back part of the price. Demas was the 
 companion of Apostles, and exposed his life to danger, 
 and lived in toil and poverty and perpetual risk, the 
 companion of the Apostle of the Gentiles until he 
 
MORTAL SIN. 53 
 
 forsook him, having loved this present world ; * and 
 all the merits of that life of faith, and of all those 
 actions which once were recorded in the Book of 
 God's remembrance, were in one moment canceled ; 
 and therefore St. Paul said of himself, "I keep 
 under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest,^ 
 after I have preached the Gospel to others, I myself 
 should become a castaway." f The prophet Ezekiel 
 says, "When the just man turneth away from justice 
 he hath done, and committeth iniquity ; in the ini- 
 quity he hath done, in the sin he hath committed, in 
 that he shall die, and his justice shall be no more 
 remembered." :£ 
 
 3. The third effect is even more terrible ; it mor- 
 tifies and kills the very power of serving God. All 
 the actions of a man in a state of mortal sin are dead ; 
 they have no merit or power to prevail before God 
 for his salvation. So long as he is separated from 
 God, nothing he does has saving power. Just as a 
 tree that has life bears living fruit, and a tree that is 
 dead has nothing but fruit that is withered and dead 
 likewise, so a soul that is planted in God, as we all 
 are by baptism, strikes its root as the tree by the* 
 rivers of water, and increases continually in faith, 
 hope, and charity, and in the seven gifts of the 
 Holy Ghost, which expand themselves like the 
 
 * 2 Tim. iv. 10. f 1 Cor. ix. 27. % Ezek - m - 30 - 
 
54 MORTAL SIN. 
 
 leaves upon the branch, and the twelve fruits of 
 the Holy Ghost unfold themselves and ripen. On 
 the other hand, a soul that is separated from God is 
 like 'the tree that is cut asunder at the root, and as 
 the severed tree withers from the topmost spray and 
 every fruit upon it dies, so the soul in the state of 
 mortal sin, if it be only one, so long as it remains in 
 that state, is separated from God, and can bear no 
 fruit unto salvation. The Apostle has declared this 
 in the most express words : " Though I speak with 
 the tongue of men and of angels, and have not 
 charity, I become as sounding brass and a tinkling 
 cymbal ; and if I have all prophecy and all know- 
 ledge, and can understand all mysteries, and though 
 I have faith and could remove mountains, and have 
 not charity, I am nothing ; and though I give my 
 goods to feed the poor and my body to be burned, 
 and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing :.?*/** 
 that is to say, a soul separatee! from God, not having 
 the love of God ; it matters not what the soul may 
 know, it may be able to prophecy, to expound mys- 
 teries, to work miracles : it may give all it possesses 
 to the poor in alms, it may be martyred, as men may 
 think, and yet, if it hath not the love of God, it 
 profits nothing to salvation. There will be at the 
 last day those who will come to our Divine Lord 
 
 * 1 Cor. xiii. 1-3. 
 
MORTAL SIN. 55 
 
 and say, " Lord ! Lord ! we prophecied in Thy name, 
 we cast out devils and did many mighty works in 
 Thy name ; we have eaten and drunk in Thy pres- 
 ence ; and He will say nnto them, Depart from Me, 
 I never knew you : " * that is to say, a soul that has 
 sinned unto death by one sin, one transgression, con- 
 tinuing in that state, until restored to union with 
 God by charity and by grace, is dead before God, 
 and all the actions of the soul are dead. Those who 
 are in such a condition are like men looking up to a 
 high mountain on which the sun dwells perpetually 
 in its splendor, and there is a glory as of the 
 Heavenly City upon it, and they long to climb up 
 to it ; but before them there is the breast of a pre- 
 cipice, which no human foot can scale, and they pine 
 away with longing and with the impossibility of as- 
 cending : or they are like men gazing upon a fair 
 country, the Promised Land of vineyards and olive- 
 yards and fig-trees, and rivers flowing with milk and 
 honey ; and homes of peace are before them ; but at 
 their feet there is a river, so deep and rapid, without 
 ferry and without ford, which the mightiest swimmer 
 cannot pass. So it is with sinners. The law of God 
 stands between the soul that is cut off from Him, 
 between the soul that is out of grace and the peace 
 of God. 
 
 * St. Matt. vii. 22. 
 
56 MORTAL SIN. 
 
 4. And not this only : the soul in itself begins to 
 lose its vigor and its strength. As I said before, 
 every creature needs the help of nature and of grace : 
 and the supernatural gifts of God — faith, hope, and 
 charity — are by a mortal sin either entirely destroyed 
 or weakened. Charity is utterly destroyed. Hope 
 remains and faith remains, but hope begins to grow 
 faint ; for a man conscious of having sinned mor- 
 tally against God cannot deceive himself with the 
 hope of salvation unless he has grounds for hope ; 
 and what grounds can an impenitent sinner have ? 
 The faith that remains in him — what does it show to 
 him? "The Great White Throne," "the smoke 
 that ascendeth up before the Seat of Judgment," the 
 law of God written in letters of fire : " There is no 
 peace, saith my God, for the wicked," * and " with- 
 out holiness no man shall see the Lord."f Faith 
 shows him judgment to come, and the witnesses that 
 will stand before the Throne on that day and bear 
 testimony against him ; and therefore the faith that 
 remains in him is a terrible light, warning him and 
 piercing his conscience. So far the supernatural 
 grace that is still with him is goading him with fear 
 to bring him back to God ; more than this it cannot 
 do. The natural powers of the soul are also affected 
 when a man is in a state of sin. The heart becomes 
 * Isa. xlviii. 22. + Heb. xii. 14. 
 
MORTAL SIN. 57 
 
 corrupt, the soul becomes weak. Let me take what 
 may seem to be an example not fitting for you. You 
 who listen to me are not likely to be tempted to ex- 
 cess, or intoxication, but it is an apt example to 
 illustrate every kind of sin. The man who indulges 
 himself in drink loses the vigor and command of 
 his will. The will becomes feeble and loses its 
 imperious control. It can no longer command the 
 man. It is like a rotten helm which the ship will 
 not obey. The will itself becomes paralyzed — there 
 is a solvent which has been eating away its elasticity 
 and its power, and what happens in this gross ex- 
 ample happens in every other. I might take false- 
 hood, sloth, or other sins I named before — but you 
 must make application for yourselves. The very will 
 loses its power of repenting. Ay, and there is a still 
 more terrible thought than this. Sometimes the 
 sins that men have committed long ago are the cause 
 of their instability, their inconsistency, their waver- 
 ing, and irresolution at this day. They have never 
 yet returned to God ; they have never yet been 
 really restored to the grace of G-od and vitally united 
 to Him. They carry within them that which we 
 read of in the Book of Job, where it says : " His 
 bones are full of the vices of his youth, and they 
 shall go down with him to his grave." * 
 
 * Job xx. 11. 
 3* 
 
58 MORTAL SIN. 
 
 5. Lastly, there is another effect of the sin unto 
 death ; that is, that it brings a man into a double 
 debt before God — it brings him into the debt of 
 guilt, and into the debt of pain — and he will have to 
 pay both. The debt of guilt he must answer at the 
 Day of Judgment. The debt of pain he must suffer 
 before he can see God, either here, or after death in 
 the state of purification : or in hell to all eternity. 
 Every substance in this world has its shadow. You 
 cannot separate the shadow from the substance. 
 Where the substance moves the shadow follows, so 
 every sin has its pain ; it matters not whether we 
 think of it or no, whether we believe it or no. So it 
 is : God has ordained it from the day in wliich He 
 said : " In the day that thou eat est thereof, thou 
 shalt die the death." From that day onward, no sin 
 has ever been committed that has not been followed 
 by its measure of judicial pain. It must be some 
 day expiated, either by bearing it here or bearing it 
 hereafter, or by a loving sorrow prevailing with God 
 through the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, to wash 
 out from the book of His remembrance the great 
 debt of accumulated sin. 
 
 I will not go further into these effects ; I will 
 only sum up what I have said. First of all, one 
 mortal sin unto death strikes a soul dead. Secondly, 
 one such sin when the soul is struck dead destroys 
 
MORTAL SIN. 59 
 
 all the merits of a long life, be they what they may 
 — hereafter I will show how they may all revive 
 again, like the spring after the winter-time ; but this, 
 not for the present. .Thirdly, one such sin unto 
 death mortifies, kills, and destroys the saving power 
 of every action that the soul may do while in that 
 state of separation from God. Fourthly, it weakens 
 both the supernatural graces that remain in the soul, 
 and the natural powers and faculties of the soul itself. 
 Lastly, it brings the soul into the double debt of 
 guilt and pain. These are the five effects of a sin 
 unto death. 
 
 I have but a few words of counsel to add. The 
 first is this : meditate every day of your lives upon 
 this great and awful truth — how easy it is to fall 
 from God ; and say to yourselves, " God is my end ; 
 for Him I was created ; and if I fall short of that 
 end by a hair's-breadth, if I swerve aside from attain- 
 ing that end, I shall go down into eternal death." 
 An arrow shot at a mark, a hair's-breadth aside from 
 its aim, fails to attain it. A ship steered by a con- 
 fident and cunning hand, if it miss the light, is 
 wrecked, be it never so near the port : and a soul that 
 does not attain to union* with God here in a state of 
 grace will be separated from God to all eternity. 
 Next say to yourselves, " If I do not correspond with 
 the grace which God has given me, I shall miss my 
 
60 MORTAL SIN. 
 
 eternal end." As I have before said, God is co- 
 operating with every creature. The drawing of His 
 Holy Spirit, and the gifts of His grace, are like a 
 chain of gold drawing every created soul to Himself. 
 " God wills all men to be saved, and to come to the 
 knowledge of the truth;" and again, our Divine 
 Lord has said : "And I, if I be lifted up from the 
 earth, will draw all things unto Me." God is draw- 
 ing every created soul to Himself. He is drawing 
 them to the knowledge of Himself and of His In- 
 carnate Son, and of the Precious Blood shed on the 
 Cross from the Sacred Heart of Jesus ; and the 
 graces and the love and the breathings of the Holy 
 Ghost are perpetually going out and drawing souls to 
 Himself, and to the unity of the Church. God is 
 always drawing souls to repentance, and through 
 repentance to perfection, and from one degree of 
 perfection to another, raising them higher and higher 
 to union with Himself. This is always going on, 
 but we must correspond with it. Listen to Him, 
 respond, answer, lay hold of that grace which is 
 offered to you, keep fast the links of that golden 
 chain, never let it go, and take heed lest you break 
 its links. 
 
 We often think if a soul that is already in eternal 
 death could once more return, what would be the 
 fervor of such a soul through all the time granted 
 
MORTAL SIN. m 61 
 
 it on earth. What humility, what hatred of sin, 
 what holy fear of its occasions, what piety, what self- 
 denial, what self-sacrifice, would mark a soul that 
 once had tasted eternal death, if it could return, and 
 have one more opportunity of salvation. What a 
 life of the Cross, and of intense devotion to God, 
 that soul would live ! You have never yet gone 
 down into eternal death. You have been the sub- 
 ject of a greater grace than even if you had been 
 liberated. You are still in life, still surrounded by 
 the light of truth, you have yet the graces of the 
 Holy Ghost in abundance, you have time, you have 
 opportunity, you have the seven Sacraments, you 
 have the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, the Precious 
 Blood of Jesus Christ : all that is needful for eternal 
 life — ay, and that in abundance, without stint and 
 without measure. You are like the Prodigal Son 
 before he left his father's house — you have not yet 
 tasted that far country, and the misery and condem- 
 nation of falling from God. Therefore, say to your- 
 selves : " God be praised ! I am still in life, and my 
 day of grace is not gone by." The sun is yet in the 
 heavens — with some it is in the morning still, with 
 ' others it is the noontide, with some who hear me it 
 is declining towards the horizon. Say : " Lord, abide 
 with us ; for it is towards evening, and the day is far 
 spent. Give me grace to make my peace with Thee, 
 
62 MORTAL SIN. 
 
 that I may be united with Thee, lest Thou find me 
 parted from Thee in the day of Thy coming." 
 
 This, then, is the first thought I would pray you 
 with all my heart to make day after day ; and the 
 other is like unto it, but it is more terrible. Day 
 after day say this to yourselves : " If I fall from God 
 — as I easily may — I shall go down alive into hell." 
 Dear brethren, we live in days when men must 
 speak plainly. There are among us, going to and 
 fro, as there are in foreign countries, mockers, scoffers, 
 blasphemers, ministers of Satan, apostles of lies, 
 who say there is no hell. Eternal punishment ! 
 mediaeval fables ! Popish superstition ! True it is 
 that the Church which is called " Popish " inflexibly 
 maintains that there is a hell, that there is an eternal 
 punishment, and that they who live and die impeni- 
 tent will go down quick into that torment. It is a 
 glory that such a charge is laid against the Church 
 of Pome. I accept the accusation — ay, and as a 
 minister of Jesus Christ, and as an apostle of His 
 Gospel, I declare that God has revealed that there 
 is hereafter eternal pain and everlasting death. As 
 there is a heaven, so there is a hell. As there is 
 eternal life, so there is eternal death. Be on your 
 guard, then, dear brethren. Be not so shallow or so 
 credulous. Let no impostors, who pretend to philos- 
 ophy and to criticism, lead you for one moment to 
 
MORTAL SIN. 63 
 
 believe that the existence of hell and eternal punish- 
 ment is by an arbitrary law, by a mere act of Divine 
 legislation, like a statute made by despotic power. 
 Eternal death is an intrinsic necessity of the perfec- 
 tion of God, and of the wilful apostasy of man. If 
 there be a God who is holy, just, pure, true, and un- 
 changeable ; then, if man is impure, unjust, unholy, 
 and false, and will not change by repentance, as light 
 and darkness cannot exist together, God and that 
 soul cannot unite in eternity. It is not a statute 
 law. It is an intrinsic necessity of the Divine per- 
 fection on the one hand, and of the sinfulness of the 
 human soul upon the other. Why is the human soul 
 unholy and unjust ? By the abuse of the free will 
 which God has given us — as I said in the beginning 
 — by the open-eyed transgression of God's law, by 
 the deliberate breaking of His commandments, by 
 the impenitent persevering in that state of disobe- 
 dience and of separation from God, which in itself 
 is death, which is eternal death in time, which is hell 
 upon earth. Except the soul repent, it already begins 
 to taste the condemnation of eternity. 
 
 Therefore, bear in mind that the holiness of God 
 and the sinfulness of man are enough clearly to de- 
 monstrate the intrinsic necessity of an eternal sepa- 
 ration. And what is hell but to be separated from 
 God eternally ? and to be separated from God not as 
 
64: MORTAL SIN. 
 
 we are here, with our souls clogged and stupefied by 
 sin, intoxicated by the world, ignorant of ourselves ? 
 No. After death, the eyes of the soul will be opened, 
 the scales will fall from its sight, it will see itself 
 for the first time, as it will for the first time see 
 God in judgment. And when it shall see God in 
 judgment, all that instinct of the soul in which it 
 was from the beginning created for God — an instinct 
 like the needle of the compass, which points by its 
 own law always to the north, as in the blaze of the 
 noonday, so in the darkness of the midnight, will 
 return to its direction. The lost soul that was cre- 
 ated in the image of God, of which the beatific end 
 is God, and to be united with God is life, will then 
 begin to hunger and thirst after God, when to be 
 united with God is impossible forever. Just as 
 breathing is a vital necessity to the body, so union 
 with God is a vital necessity to the soul. You know 
 sometimes in sleep a sense of stifling and suffocation 
 in which you seem to lie an endless night in torment ; 
 conceive to yourselves an eternity of that suffocation, 
 when the soul is conscious of the vital necessity of 
 its union with God, when to be united with God is 
 eternally impossible. Ay, more than this, there will 
 be a torment in the soul which is the undying worm 
 that will gnaw to all eternity. What is that torment ? 
 Remorse. The consciousness that the soul has com- 
 
MORTAL SIN. 65 
 
 mitted self-murder, that it died because it sinned 
 unto death, and that it sinned unto death of its own 
 free will. There was no constraint, no necessity. 
 With its own free will it sinned against God, and 
 broke the link of union with Him. In eternal death 
 the worm that dieth not, the perpetual tooth of re- 
 morse, will make the soul conscious of an anguish 
 which no human heart can conceive. There is no 
 need of fire to torment ; this alone is torment enough, 
 to lose God eternally ,* to have eternal remorse with- 
 out anything more is hell ; but there will be more. 
 Those who are lost will be lost together — multitudes, 
 myriads of millions — all in misery, all separated from 
 God, all in remorse, all feeding on themselves, hate- 
 ful and hating one another. I have not said one 
 word as yet of that which I now will add. / It is true 
 there is a Divine mystery which we shall know — 
 God grant not by experience. Our Divine Lord has 
 said it : " Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is 
 not quenched." And again : " Go, ye cursed, into 
 everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." 
 There is an eternal pain by fire. God has declared 
 it. Woe to the man that denies it ! Satan is always 
 endeavoring to efface this belief out of the minds of 
 men — doing everything he can by subtle philosophy, 
 by specious reasoning, by appeals to the mercy of 
 God, by wonderful exaltations of the Divine perfec- 
 
66 MOETAL SIN. 
 
 tions, and criticisms upon the Greek Testament, by 
 laughter, derision, scoffing, and mockery, before which 
 many a man who is not afraid of going into battle is 
 coward enough to run away. Satan is always en- 
 deavoring to root out the belief of eternal fire from 
 the minds of men. I will tell you why. Because 
 the greater multitude of men have so little hunger 
 and thirst after God, so little aspiration after union 
 with Him, that they are conscious only of the fear of 
 an eternal pain to keep them from sin. If he could 
 only efface from the minds of men the thought of 
 eternal pain, there is nothing left to restrain them ; 
 and for this he is always laboring. There is nothing 
 Satan loves better than to get men to laugh at him, 
 to use his name in jest, to interlard their conversa- 
 tion with some reference to him in mocking levity, 
 which very soon makes men cease to fear him, and 
 then cease to believe in his existence. On the other 
 hand, God is always striving to awaken and revive 
 in the conscience of each one of us the sense of the 
 danger of eternal death by His Divine Word, by the 
 voice of His Church, by the whispers of conscience. 
 He is perpetually reviving in every one of us the sense 
 and belief that there is hereafter a judgment and a 
 condemnation to eternal fire. 
 
 Live, then, as you would wish to die ; because as 
 you die, so you will be to all eternity. Precisely that 
 
MOETAL SIN. 67 
 
 character which you have woven for yourself through 
 life by the voluntary acts of your free will, be it for 
 good or be it for evil, that will be your eternal state 
 before God. If God find you clothed in the white 
 raiment which is the justice of the saints, happy are 
 you ; you will walk before Him in white forever. 
 If you be found in the rags and tatters of the Prod- 
 igal before his repentance, you will be cast out 
 from His face, and all men will see your shame. As 
 you live, so you will die ; as you die, so you will be 
 forever. God is unchangeable. You are continually 
 changing ; but death will precipitate the form in 
 which you die, and you will be so fixed forever. As 
 the tree falls, so it shall be. Make one mistake, and 
 that mistake is made forever. Oh, dear brethren, 
 look round about us ; how many men there are that 
 are learned, and scientific, and noble, and eloquent, 
 and prosperous, whom the world honors ! How 
 many there are that are amiable, and loving, and 
 loved, and their neighbors think no evil of them ; 
 they see nothing but the fair outside — the whited 
 disguise. Some one mortal sin — God knows what — 
 unrepented of, is within. Whited sepulchres — fair 
 without; within, full of dead men's bones, and of 
 uncleanness. Dear brethren, that may be our case. 
 Say to yourselves, every one of you : " That may be 
 my case — that may be my likeness before God at this 
 
68 MORTAL SIN. 
 
 moment." " It is appointed unto all men once to die, 
 and after that the judgment."* And hear what 
 that judgment will be : "I saw a great White Throne 
 and One sitting on it, before whose face the heaven 
 and earth fled away, and there was no place found 
 for them ; and I saw the dead, small and great, stand 
 before God; and the books were opened, and the 
 dead were judged out of the things that are written in 
 the books ; and another book was opened, which was 
 the Book of Life, and death and hell were cast into 
 the pool of fire — which is the second death ; and 
 whosoever was not found written in the Book of 
 Life was cast into the pool of fire." f 
 
 * Heb. ix. 27. f A P°c xx. 11-15. 
 
III. 
 
 VENIAL SIN 
 
VENIAL SIN. 
 
 He that knoweth his brother to sin a sin which is not unto 
 death, let him ask, and life shall be given to him who sinneth not 
 to death. There is a sin unto death ; for that I say not that any 
 man ask. 1 John v. 16. 
 
 There is therefore a distinction between sins unto 
 death, and sins not unto death ; or, in other words, 
 sins that are mortal, and sins that are venial — a dis- 
 tinction not spun out by the subtleties of theologians, 
 but written broadly in the- Word of God. Last time 
 I spoke of the sins unto death ; it remains for me 
 now to speak of the sins that are not unto death. 
 The sum of what I said last time is this : that the 
 sins unto death are deadly, for that they separate the 
 soul from God. God is the life of the soul, and a 
 soul separated from God is dead. A soul separated 
 from God in this world, unless restored to union 
 with God in this world, by the operation of His 
 grace and of repentance, after the death of the body 
 will be separated from God for all eternity. Such is 
 
 the second death, or in other words, is hell. I drew 
 
 (71) 
 
72 VENIAL SIN. 
 
 out the reasons to show the existence and the neces- 
 sity of hell — that hell, or the loss of God forever, is 
 in strict truth the perpetuity of the state of separa- 
 tion from God which the sinner has freely chosen for 
 himself in this world, and that so hell is linked by 
 an intrinsic necessity to mortal sin ; that the separa- 
 tion of the soul from God through mortal sin results, 
 by an intrinsic necessity, from the unchangeable per- 
 fections of God on the one hand, and the obstinate 
 variance of the created will against God on the other ; 
 and that, therefore, every soul that dies eternally dies 
 by self-murder. It is not more a just judgment 
 pronounced at the bar of a future tribunal than an 
 intrinsic necessity of that state to which the soul has 
 freely reduced itself. 
 
 This is the sum of what I have already said ; and 
 I now go on to those sins which are not unto death, 
 or which, in the common language of theology, are 
 called "venial." The word "venial" is used here 
 in the sense of pardonable; venial sins are those 
 which may be pardoned. In a general sense, there 
 is only one sin which cannot be pardoned. Every 
 mortal sin that man commits — if repented of — may 
 be pardoned : " Every sin and blasphemy shall be 
 forgiven, except only the blasphemy of the Holy 
 Ghost. That shall never be forgiven, either in this 
 world or in the world to come." * And therefore in 
 * St. Matt. xii. 31. 
 
VENIAL SIN. 73 
 
 one sense, and that a general sense, every mortal sin 
 is venial in this way — that it may be pardoned to the 
 trne penitent through the Precious Blood of Jesus 
 Christ. But the technical sense of the word " venial " 
 is something precise and distinct. It means those 
 sins which may be found in souls that are united withi 
 God, and are in the grace of God, and in the love of 
 God, and in a state of habitual obedience. This 
 needs to be more carefully explained ; and I am con- 
 scious that in explaining it I ought to distinguish 
 between venial sins and temptations, but time will 
 not now suffice. I must hope hereafter to find an 
 occasion on which I may speak of the subject of 
 temptation as distinct from sin. Therefore, I inten- 
 tionally set it aside at present. 
 
 The sins which may be found even in holy men 
 are sins of infirmity committed through weakness ; 
 or sins of surprise committed by sudden or strong 
 temptation ; or sins of impetuosity, where passion 
 carries a man for a moment beyond self-control ; or 
 sins of indeliberation, that is, done in haste, before 
 as yet conscience and the reason have had time to 
 deliberate and weigh what they are about ; or, lastly, ■ 
 they may be sins committed with some degree of 
 deliberation. Now, the seven mortal sins, as they are 
 called, anger, pride, gluttony, impurity, ambition, 
 
 jealousy, and sloth — these seven are the capital sins, 
 4 
 
n 
 
 VENIAL SIN. 
 
 under which almost every kind of sin may ultimately 
 be reduced ; and of those, six at least may be venial. 
 The seventh is one in which, if any man sin delibe- 
 rately, with his eyes open, and with the consent of his 
 will, he can hardly be free from mortal sin, because 
 lightness of matter cannot be supposed in that in- 
 stance to exist — I mean sins against the holy virtue 
 of purity. But sins of anger, of pride, of gluttony, 
 of ambition, of jealousy, of sloth, are susceptible of 
 degrees and shades and distinctions ; and they may 
 be committed, as I said before, through infirmity, 
 through surprise, through impetuosity, and without 
 deliberation, and even with some degree of delibera- 
 tion, without being mortal. This will explain what 
 we read in Holy Scripture : " The just man falleth 
 seven times." " Who can understand sins ? From 
 my secret faults cleanse me, O Lord." * It is clear 
 that even the saints of God, through infirmity, and 
 through temptation, have offended against God, and 
 yet they have not broken their friendship, nor 
 separated their souls from Him. For example, all 
 those who preserve their baptismal innocence are in 
 a state of union with God, and all such will be saved. 
 They are united with God through the indwelling of 
 the Holy Ghost ; they are children of God, and if 
 they die they will most assuredly inherit the king- 
 * Prov. xxiv. 16 ; Ps. xviii. 13, 
 
VENIAL SIN. 75 
 
 dom of heaven. Nevertheless, all those who preserve 
 their baptismal innocence — and I trust that many 
 who hear me have never lost it — are conscious while 
 they hear me of the multitude of personal faults — 
 ay, and it may be habitual faults of temper, of am- 
 bition, of jealousy — of which they are guilty. Is 
 there any one here who will venture to say he is not 
 conscious of some besetting sin, of some — ay, perhaps, 
 of many faults — and yet he may still be in the grace 
 of his baptism ; and of this we may believe our Lord 
 spoke when He said : " He that is washed hath no 
 need save to wash his feet, but he is clean every 
 whit." * That is to say, he has been cleansed in the 
 Precious Blood of Jesus Christ in holy baptism, 
 therefore those lesser sins are washed away by sor- 
 row, by contrition, by mortification, and by absolu- 
 tion. 
 
 Once more. I will suppose that a man has fallen 
 from his baptismal grace ; and that through a true 
 conversion and a real and solid repentance he has 
 returned to God. Perhaps some who hear me are in 
 this state. They are conscious that they would rather 
 lay down their lives than offend God again, in the 
 way in which they had offended Him before, never- 
 theless they are perfectly conscious of a multitude of 
 faults against God and their neighbor ; and yet those 
 * St. John xiii. 10. 
 
76 VENIAL SIN. " 
 
 faults do not prevail to break their union with Him, 
 nor to turn, away the friendship of God from them, 
 and they have not relapsed into their former state. 
 We are, in fact, like soldiers in warfare ; wounded 
 we must be, and spotted and spattered by the blood 
 of the conflict. We are laborers out in the field, and 
 the soils and stains of our toil will cleave to us. We 
 are wayfarers in the road, and the dust will settle 
 upon us even when we do not know it. We cannot 
 go out of the world and the world's evil. We are in 
 contact with it, and it will cast more than its shadow 
 upon us. It will cast its stain, and the stain will 
 abide. The most perfect machine, constructed with 
 the most faultless accuracy, if it be jarred by a shock, 
 is at once thrown out of gear, it loses its perfect ac- 
 tion, and its motions become eccentric. So it is with 
 human nature. It was created perfect — in the image 
 of God, with the three perfections, natural, super- 
 natural, and preternatural, of which I have spoken 
 already ; but by the shock of the Fall was thrown out 
 of gear. It became eccentric, it lost its rest upon 
 God, its true centre, and it began to turn faultily 
 round itself. The three wounds of the soul — ignor- 
 ance in the intellect, turbulence in the passions, 
 weakness in the will — are the injury done to that 
 perfect machine. Wherefore, continually our nature 
 is acting abnormally, that is, in departure from the 
 
VENIAL SIN. 77 
 
 law of its Maker. This seems to be the Apostle's 
 meaning when he says : " I know that in me — that 
 is, in my flesh— dwelleth no good thing. For to will 
 is present with me ; but how to perform that which 
 is good I find not. For the good that I would, I do 
 not ; bnt the evil which I would not, that I do. Now 
 if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, 
 but sin that dwelleth in me. But I see another law 
 in my members, warring against the law of my mind, 
 and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin 
 which is in my members. Unhappy man that I am, 
 who shall deliver me from the body of this death % " * 
 These were the words of the Holy Ghost by the 
 Apostle, and this is precisely what I have been 
 describing. The Apostle was a saint of God, in 
 union with God, in friendship with God ; but he 
 was conscious that in himself there was a perpetual 
 warfare, a turbulence in his nature, a weakness in his 
 will ; yet those sinful emotions, passions, and tempta- 
 tions were not sins : only an act of consent could 
 make them sins in the sight of God. 
 
 We have got, then, what I may call a definition of 
 venial sin. It is a transgression of the law of God ; 
 a thought, word, or deed, at variance with the will 
 of God, through infirmity, and without deliberate 
 malice. This will suffice to distinguish the sin which 
 * Rom. vii. 18-24. 
 
78 VENIAL SIN. 
 
 is not unto death from that which I described last 
 time, where, with eyes open and willing consent, a 
 sinner breaks the law of God in the face of God. 
 What I have now to point out are the consequences 
 of these venial sins. 
 
 It is quite true they do not break our friendship 
 with God ; but do not for one moment deceive your- 
 selves by thinking that venial sins are what are called 
 little sins. There is no such thing as a little sin. 
 Before I have done, I hope to convince you that all 
 sins are great, even those that are not unto death. 
 The consequences, then, of venial sins are these : 
 
 1. First, venial sins diminish the grace of God in 
 the soul. When theologians say that venial sins 
 diminish grace, they always make this distinction — 
 they do not mean to say that the quantity of the 
 grace of God is made less, because the grace of God 
 is like life, which cannot be diminished. We are 
 either alive or dead ; but the living powers may be 
 diminished. Life remains, but the health and the 
 vigor and the strength of the living man are lessened. 
 Therefore, the diminution of grace means, that it 
 diminishes the fervor and the operation and energy 
 and efficacy of grace. St. Bernard says that fervor — 
 that is to say, the life of fidelity and obedience — has 
 many effects ; and two of those effects are these : 
 First, it renders whatever we have to do easy to us ; 
 
VENIAL SIN. 79 
 
 and, secondly, whatever we do easily, we do with 
 pleasure, and find a sweetness in it. They know this 
 who have learned to speak a foreign language, or to 
 use a musical instrument. Nothing is more tedious, 
 repulsive, or trying, than the acquisition either of a 
 foreign language or of the practice of music ; but the 
 moment we have attained a certain facility in either, 
 there is a sweetness in exercising that acquired skill ; 
 so that we are ready at all hours to practice it, and 
 at every moment we have a sensible enjoyment in 
 making use of the acquired faculty. JSTow, it is just 
 so with obedience, with prayer, with mortification, 
 which is the most repulsive of all things to our 
 nature. They who use self-denial and mortification 
 grow to love it, and find a sweetness in it ; but the 
 moment they begin to indulge venial sins of any 
 sort or kind, they begin to lose that sweetness. The 
 moment they begin to commit venial sins of worldli- 
 ness, of vanity, of self-indulgence, the palate becomes 
 vitiated, the taste is spoiled. The pure spiritual 
 taste, which makes self-denial and prayer sweet to 
 them, loses its purity, and the world's excitement, 
 pleasure, vanity, flattery, incense, and the like, be- 
 come sweet ; and as these things become sweet, the 
 facility of prayer and self-denial is lost, and they 
 become difficult. A repugnance to them grows up ; 
 they are done with effort ; they are postponed ; they 
 
80 VENIAL SEN". 
 
 are limited ; they are restricted ; they are reduced to 
 a minimum ; and, finally, the fervor of the soul is 
 lost. 
 
 What, then, is fervor ? It does not mean emotion. 
 Fervor consists in these three things : regularity, 
 punctuality, and exactness — that is, doing our duty 
 to God by rule ; doing it punctually at the right 
 time ; and exactly, that is, .as perfectly as we can. 
 But if we have been indulging venial sins of any 
 sort or kind, we begin to do our duty towards God 
 in a slovenly way ; we neglect the right time ; we do 
 it irregularly ; we put God off with an imperfect 
 service. Those venial sins are like the dust settling 
 upon the perfect machine of which I spoke. As the 
 dust accumulates upon the timepiece, the motion of 
 the timepiece becomes slower; and as it becomes 
 sluggish it loses its perfection. So, again, as I said, 
 mortal sin is the death of the soul, but venial sin is 
 the disease of the soul. Those who willingly allow 
 themselves to fall into such infirmities and imperfec- 
 tions, which are not yet mortal, are like men who are' 
 making bad blood — men in whom morbid humors 
 are accumulating : a lingering malady is upon them, 
 through ill-using the vigor of their life. This is the 
 first effect. 
 
 2. We are always receiving sufficient grace from 
 Almighty God, who, in His infinite mercy, " maketh 
 
VENIAL SIN. 81 
 
 His sun to rise upon the evil and the good, who send- 
 eth His rain upon the just and the unjust." * There 
 is a perpetual flood and inundation of the grace of 
 God, coming down upon the whole race of mankind ; 
 but most especially upon those who are in the light 
 of His faith, and in the unity of His fold. Well, the 
 effect of these venial sins — these personal faults, these 
 besetting infirmities — I will not again go into a de- 
 tailed account, you must individually examine your 
 hearts, and make application — the effect of these sins 
 is to hinder the reception of grace, to shut grace out. 
 The Apostle says, " We are not straitened in Him, 
 we are straitened in ourselves." f If our hearts were 
 as large as His hand, we should be filled with His 
 grace ; but our hearts are narrow. The hands of 
 Almighty God, which are infinite, are perpetually 
 pouring out grace upon us. It is like the rain that 
 comes down upon the sand of the shore, or upon a 
 hungry sea, or upon the stony mountains. 
 
 There are two kinds of grace we are continually 
 receiving : the one is the grace in the Sacraments ; 
 the other, the grace out of the Sacraments. The 
 grace in the Sacraments is of two kinds. Every 
 Sacrament has what is called the grace of the Sacra- 
 ment, and also the sacramental grace. These words 
 seem very much alike, but the things are very dis- 
 
 * St. Matt. v. 45. f 2 Cor - vi - 13 « 
 
 4* 
 
82 VENIAL SIN. 
 
 tinct. In baptism the grace of the Sacrament is the 
 gift of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the soul, 
 by which we are made children of God : " the grace 
 of adoption, whereby we can cry Abba (Father)." * 
 The sacramental grace is the grace of the Holy Spirit 
 accompanying that chief grace, whereby we are en- 
 abled to fulfill all the duties that belong to the chil- 
 dren or to the sons of God. This is the meaning of 
 St. John, when he says, " To as many as received 
 Him, to them gave He power to be made the sons of 
 God." f That is, every baptized person has grace from 
 the time of his baptism to fulfill every duty of the 
 love of God and of his neighbor, every duty of piety 
 towards God, every duty of obedience ; so that at no 
 time in his life — childhood, boyhood, youth, or man- 
 hood — will he ever fail of doing his duty towards 
 God from any lack or denial of grace on God's part. 
 But those who, having received the grace of baptism, 
 as I have said, in this twofold sense, begin from early 
 childhood with all manner of little faults, and grow 
 up to boyhood and youth with faults growing strong- 
 er and stronger, and more and more in number, yet 
 perhaps not arriving at sin unto death — such men 
 are continually choking, stifling, keeping down the 
 working of grace within them. So, again, in the 
 Sacrament of Penance. Those who have come to 
 * Rom. viii. 15. t St. John i. 12. 
 
VENIAL SIN. 83 
 
 the Sacrament of Penance in mortal sin, and there- 
 fore without the" love of God, and unable to bring 
 with them any sorrow whatsoever, except the sorrow 
 of fear and hope, receive in the Sacrament the grace 
 of Charity, that is, the love of God is restored to 
 them. Afterwards they are able to make the acts 
 of contrition perfect in kind, though not perfect in 
 degree, and fulfill all the duties of a penitent ; but 
 if they begin to return to their venial sins, to give 
 way to their infirmities, impetuosities, and tempta- 
 tions in the manifold kinds I have described, the 
 spirit of penance, contrition, and humility is hindered 
 and lasts but a little time. 
 
 Once more. Perhaps one of the most wonderful 
 phenomena of the spiritual life is this : that whereas 
 one Communion worthily made, in which we receive 
 the Precious Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, is 
 enough to make us tabernacles of the Holy Ghost 
 and saints ; there are those who go to Holy Com- 
 munion every week, and perhaps every day, and, to 
 our shame, there are priests of God who every day 
 offer the Holy Sacrifice, and receive the Precious 
 Body and Blood of our Lord, and yet are not saints. 
 It is a miracle of our insensibility and earthliness that 
 we should be what we are, and yet be daily holding 
 in our hands the Holy Sacrifice of the Body and 
 Blood of Jesns Christ. Why is all this ? The grace 
 
84 VENIAL SIN. 
 
 of that Sacrament is the Presence of our Lord — the 
 sacramental grace is the abundance of the outpouring 
 of His Spirit, which accompanies the Holy Sacrament 
 as the rays of the sun go with the sun. Where the 
 sun is, the splendor of his presence is besides ; and 
 if our hearts were not narrow and cold, and choked 
 by a multitude of faults and infirmities, we should 
 be so filled by one Communion that we should be 
 elevated from the low level on which we are to a life 
 that is far above us. 
 
 Next, there are the graces out of the Sacrament. 
 There are lights by which God makes tho soul to 
 know His truth, and by which he draws the soul to 
 His presence. We read in Holy Scripture : " When 
 Thou hast said, Seek ye My face ; my heart said, 
 Thy face, Lord, will I seek." If Such is our answer ; 
 but it is a ray of light from Him. It is a ray of the 
 light of Divine truth and of the Divine grace, which 
 speaks to the intellect and the conscience. If we 
 would open our intellect with sincerity to receive the 
 light of truth, and our conscience to receive the 
 attraction of Divine grace, it would fill and illuminate 
 us ; but by faults of self-indulgence, worldliness, f ear 
 of man, and human respect, we bring a film over our 
 eyes, and the inward eye of the intellect and con- 
 science at last loses its faculty of discernment. Its 
 
 * Ps. xxvi. 8. 
 
VENIAL SIN. 85 
 
 sight is confused, like men who have what is called 
 color-blindness. They cannot distinguish colors, they 
 put red for green, and green for red ; and so some 
 people "put light for darkness, and darkness for 
 light, and sweet for bitter, and bitter for sweet," as 
 the Prophet says; that is, confusing together the 
 grace of God and the inspirations of nature. We all 
 are between two attractions ; there is the attraction 
 of God, and the attraction of the world ; and without 
 breaking with God, there are multitudes who are 
 living under the play and influence of the world. 
 They would not break with God for anything that 
 could be offered, even for the world and all contained 
 therein ; nevertheless, they would not break with 
 the world, and they try to do that impossible thing 
 — that is, to " serve God and Mammon." Thus they 
 are in the condition of which our Lord speaks, when 
 He' says : " Behold, thou art neither cold nor hot. 
 I would thou were cold or hot ; but because thou art 
 neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm, I will cast thee 
 out of My mouth." * 
 
 3. Thirdly, another consequence of venial sins is 
 that they dispose the soul for mortal sin. Just as ail- 
 ments and slight sicknesses are the forerunners which 
 pull down the strength and render men susceptible 
 of greater diseases, so lesser sins prepare the way for 
 
 * Apoc. iii. 15. 
 
86 VENIAL SIN. 
 
 greater. It is like, I may say, the heaping up 
 fuel. 
 
 Let me take as an example what we call a smoulder- 
 ing temper. People who are irascible and tempted 
 to anger, though for a long time they fight against it, 
 afterwards begin to indulge it, and to allow the 
 smouldering temper to go on like a charred beam in 
 a house, which may smoulder for months before the 
 fire breaks out. Some day there comes an occasion 
 when a temptation meets that smouldering temper, 
 like letting air in on the burning beam ; and the 
 whole soul is in a blaze, and malice, or hatred, or 
 resentment, or revenge breaks out into activity. 
 Again, there are such things as pattering lies, little 
 insincerities, slight swervings from truth. The world 
 is full and the atmosphere of the world is thick with 
 those insincerities. They may not be unto death, 
 they may be venial, they may be little lies of courtesy, 
 little falsehoods of excuse ; but the day comes when 
 this perverse habit of not speaking the exact truth 
 has so confirmed itself upon the tongue and upon the 
 will, that upon an occasion in which a man would 
 have cut off his right hand rather than have told a 
 }ie, he will tell a lie boldly, and will stand to it. He 
 has been long laying up the fuel for this sin. Once 
 more — but this is an example which I postpone, 
 because I shall have to speak of the subject more 
 
VENIAL SEN. 87 
 
 fully — little negligences and omissions prepare the 
 way at last for the mortal sin of sloth. 
 
 More than this, these venial sins have the effect of 
 giving a perverse inclination to the will. If in winter- 
 time the rain descends upon the unfinished wall of a 
 house, soaking through to its very core, and if then 
 there come a frost, the frost makes the wall swell, 
 and it loses its perpendicular. The winter has been 
 a still winter, and the snow has fallen and the wind 
 has not risen. At last comes the wintry wind, and 
 as the Prophet says : " The breach in the wall f alleth 
 suddenly when no man looketh for it." * The will, 
 which was once united with God, and converted to 
 God, has begun gradually to avert itself from God. 
 There is no such thing as an equilibrium between 
 God and sin ; that cannot be ; and when the will- 
 loses its union with God, it immediately inclines 
 itself towards sin. 
 
 There is a thought which is indeed terrific, and 
 ought to alarm every one of us who are conscious, as 
 we are, of committing venial sins with such facility. 
 St. Theresa said : " If I were to commit venial sin, 
 I feel as if I should die ; and that because every sin 
 we commit, we commit in God." It is in God ; for 
 in Him we live, and move, and are ; by Him we are 
 sustained ; our very being is supported by His being ; 
 
 * Isa. xxx. 13. 
 
88 VENIAL SIN. 
 
 the very power we abuse, when we transgress His 
 law, is power He has lent to us, as the Prophet says : 
 " You made Me to serve with your sins, and wearied 
 Me with your iniquities." * That is, God is physic- 
 ally united with us, even in the very actions we do 
 against Him. We use the powers of nature against 
 the will of God in His grace. Therefore it is that 
 these venial sins, as they are called, are in themselves 
 great, as you will see hereafter ; and they dispose 
 the soul towards greater sin for this reason, that they 
 keep up the trade of sinning, they "blunt the con- 
 science, they bring on insensibility, they cloud the 
 presence of God, they familiarize us with abusing the 
 power which God has given us, against Himself. 
 
 4. Then, fourthly, such sins displease God ; and 
 can any sin be small which displeases God 1 When 
 we walk about at noonday, we walk about in the full 
 splendor of the noonday light — we are bathed in it, 
 encompassed by it — we cannot escape from it, go 
 where we may — if we go on the north side of a wall, 
 the light is still there. So it is with the presence of 
 God. All our deeds, words, and thoughts are in the 
 presence of God ; in the light of the rays of the 
 Divine holiness, justice, truth, mercy, which inundate 
 the soul as the light of the noonday inundates the 
 world. Everything we do, we do before Him, of 
 
 * Isa. xliii. 24. 
 
VENIAL SIN". 89 
 
 whom St. John says : " His eyes are like a flame of 
 fire." * We displease God, then, as our Father and 
 as our Maker. We knowingly displease Him by un- 
 grateful and unfilial disobedience. It is as if the 
 Prodigal, after his return home and after being re- 
 invested with the " first robe, and the ring on his 
 hand, shoes on his feet," and after receiving the 
 " kiss of peace," had again begun, and with his eyes 
 open, to murmur and complain at his father's will. 
 We displease also our Divine Redeemer, who died 
 for us, our Divine Friend, and we displease Him by 
 mean, treacherous, tricky, and hateful violations of 
 the duties of friendship. And, thirdly, we displease 
 and grieve the Holy Ghost ; ay, we grieve the Holy 
 Ghost by things which we think splendid, noble, 
 laudable, admirable. I will give you some examples. 
 In society, a man is thought dull and stupid who 
 cannot talk about his neighbor, and satirically de- 
 scribe, and make others laugh at his humorous 
 descriptions of the failings and faults, and sometimes 
 of the sins, of those that are known to him. A man 
 that is simple in his conversation and bridles his 
 tongue is a dull companion. He chills society. They 
 are the most popular in society who have no bridle 
 in their mouth, who will say anything, criticize any- 
 body, ridicule all things, dress up and satirize every 
 
 * Apoc. i. 14. 
 
90 VENIAL SIN. 
 
 person, every event, and every scandal of the day. 
 These are the entertaining men in society ; these are 
 the men that make their way. I should like to know, 
 when they go home at night, how many sins of the 
 tongue have been written down in the book of God's 
 remembrance ; and I should like to know how many 
 sins of listening to that detraction, and encouraging 
 it by curiosity and laughter, have been written down 
 also in the page of remembrance for those who heard 
 it. Take another example — those who go into the 
 world, dressed out in the vanity and folly and osten- 
 tation of what is called "fashion." I wonder by 
 what name it will be known in the Last Judgment. 
 " Fashion " is a word in the mouths of men and 
 women — have the Holy Angels got any equivalent 
 word, and will "fashion" be written down in the 
 book of God's remembrance ? What will it be 
 called ? Yanity, willful tempting of others, vain- 
 glory, luxury, self -exhibition ; ay, and that often to 
 the peril and danger of those who look on. You 
 have seen what looks like bloom upon the fruit. It 
 is not bloom, but blight. This blight upon the social 
 characters of those who please the world is thought 
 to be a perfection ; but if you take a microscope, and 
 if you look at that false bloom, you will see that it 
 is alive. It is a vile blight, it is an animal disease, 
 eating the fruit ; and if the microscope is powerful 
 
VENIAL SIN. 91 
 
 enough, and the light is clear enough, you will see 
 the miserable parasites moving in all their repulsive 
 reality. What, I ask, are these venial sins of vanity, 
 of pride, of detraction, and others which I will not 
 specify — what are they ? I will call them by their 
 true name — the vermin of the human soul. They 
 are the worms of death — the worms that will feed 
 on the body are but typical of the vermin on the 
 human soul ; and in the light of God's presence 
 they are seen at this moment, as the blight on the 
 fruit through the lens, and so they will be seen by 
 us in all their deformity in the light of the Day of 
 Judgment. 
 
 5. Lastly, there is one other effect of venial sin, of 
 which I will speak. Just as a small ailment may be- 
 come a mortal sickness, so a venial sin may become 
 a mortal sin, and that with great facility. Not that 
 any number of venial sins, if they be heaped to- 
 gether, would make a mortal sin ; because, as I have 
 shown you from the first, mortal sins consist in their 
 malice, and venial sins are without this deliberate 
 malice ; but they may put off their character and 
 stature of venial sins, and they may put on the char- 
 acter and rise to the stature of deadly sins. This 
 they do in five ways. First of all, a venial sin may 
 be committed with the intention of covering or ac- 
 complishing some mortal sin, and then it is mortal 
 
92 VENIAL SIN. 
 
 too. Or, secondly, it may be committed with a con- 
 sciousness that it will certainly lead to a mortal sin, 
 and yet, nevertheless, is persevered in. Or, thirdly, 
 it may be done with a knowledge of God's prohibi- 
 tion, with an open-eyed consciousness, and out of 
 contempt of just authority. Or, fourthly, it may be 
 so publicly and notoriously done, as to give scandal 
 to others, and to encourage and invite them to com- 
 mit grave sin. Or, lastly, it may be done in the 
 proximate peril of falling into mortal sin, and that 
 with our eyes open ; and thus to expose ourselves to 
 mortal sin is mortal in itself. Now, to give an 
 example of what I mean. Suppose a man to tell a 
 lie in a very light matter — some little deceit. He is 
 asked, " Is such a one in this place % " He answers, 
 " ~No ; " because he intends thereby to cover and to 
 commit a mortal sin. The two tins then become 
 one. Or, if I take a book — some book of levity, 
 which may not in itself be positively wrong — I begin 
 to read it on a Sunday morning, and I am deter- 
 mined I will finish it ; and I know that in half-an- 
 hour it is my duty to go to Holy Mass. I am bound 
 under the strictest obedience, under mortal sin, to 
 obey the precept of the Church, and nevertheless I 
 go on reading, indulging myself, disregarding my 
 duty, until at last I turn my back on our Divine 
 Lord. Or, let me suppose that I am reading a book, 
 
VENIAL SIN. 93 
 
 and as I read on, I become conscious that the matter 
 of it is contrary to the revelation or the holiness of 
 God. Now, the world is full of books that are writ- 
 ten against Christianity. There are the criticisms of 
 rationalists, and the scoffs of false science. Do not 
 misunderstand me. All true science comes from 
 God. "We have no fear of science in all its perfec- 
 tion ; but there is a science, falsely so called, which 
 is a stupidity. A science which is contrary to the 
 revelation of God is not a science. Suppose, then, 
 I have a book in my hand, with some unbelieving 
 criticisms, or rationalistic interpretations, or argu- 
 ments against revelation, or some misapplications of 
 science with false data, to prove that the world was 
 not created, or is eternal, and the like. I come 
 gradually upon this matter ; and if I act upon my 
 faith and conscience, I should put that book down. 
 I know that whatever is contrary to the revelation 
 of God may destroy my faith ; but if I go on 
 curiously reading it, without call of duty, with the 
 light of God and His revelation shining in judgment 
 on the page of the book, I am tempting God. And 
 I will further suppose that standing by me are some 
 who look up to me as an example, as children look 
 up to their fathers and mothers, or younger brothers 
 and sisters to their elder. They see me poring over 
 that book, and I go on doing so in their sight ; will 
 
94 VENIAL SIN. 
 
 they not do the same when I have left the room ? 
 and have I not set them the example, for the con- 
 sequences of which I shall have to answer at the Day 
 of Judgment ? Or, lastly, suppose I know perfectly 
 well the book I am reading will turn up in two or 
 three pages some abomination, such as are profusely 
 written — not, I thank God, so much in this country 
 as in a country not far off, and yet profusely imported 
 into this. I grieve to know that on the tables in 
 families and homes, where the Name of G-od is 
 honored, there lie books which ought to be burned, 
 ay, and burned with the marks of public infamy ; 
 not burned simply that they may disappear in smoke, 
 but that they may be gibbeted and condemned by 
 the detestation of all pure-minded men and women. 
 If I have one of those in my hand, and know if I 
 read on I shall meet these abominations face to face, 
 and yet continue to read, I am exposing myself to a 
 danger of mortal sin. My mind may be stained by 
 the abomination of that book ; and, as a man that 
 touches a leper may be infected, and may never be 
 healed, if I make my mind leprous, the scales of 
 that leprosy may never be cleansed away. 
 
 That which begins as a venial sin may easily end 
 in mortal. There are two other examples I would 
 fain give if time would permit me. The one is 
 theatres. I do not deny that theatres may be in- 
 
VENIAL SIN. 95 
 
 nocent — that to go to a theatre may be lawful. I 
 have been often asked, during the long years of my 
 duty in directing souls, whether it is lawful to go to 
 a theatre. My answer has been always, If the rerJf e- 
 sentation is not bad in itself, I cannot forbid you. 
 If you ask me what I advise, I say, without hesita- 
 tion, Do not go. I cannot lay it upon you as a 
 prohibition. This, I know, will sound rigorous ; 
 nevertheless, it is the better choice ; it is the more 
 excellent way. I do not say it is the way of obliga- 
 tion. The Apostle says, "All things to me are law- 
 ful, but all things are not expedient ; " * therefore, 
 I distinguish and say : Those things which are lawful 
 I cannot forbid ; but those things, though not for- 
 bidden, I counsel you with all my heart to renounce. 
 As to theatres, there may be, indeed, innocent repre- 
 sentations ; but I ask your own consciences, look 
 over the representations which in a country, as I say, 
 not far off, during this last winter, have been de~ 
 scribed to us by eye-witnesses. No man who has a 
 pure heart, no man whose face is susceptible of the 
 noblest and manliest suffusion, of a blush, could, if 
 he remember himself, set his foot in any theatre 
 where such a representation is to be seen — I will not 
 say no woman ; I leave that to yourselves. As to 
 our own theatres, I thank God it is not often they 
 
 * 1 Cor. vi. 12. 
 
96 VENIAL SIN. 
 
 are openly and publicly stained. Such things happen 
 sometimes. Such scandals are imported among us : 
 it is not only English dramas that are presented to 
 us* I leave the whole of this to your own con- 
 sciences, saying only that I would to God that those 
 who can refrain from such things, as an offering to 
 our Divine Redeemer, would refrain forever. When 
 people say, " It does me no harm," I say to myself, 
 " You do not know what harm it does you. You 
 are not conscious how much has been taken off from 
 the bloom of your mind, or from the clear purity of 
 your eye and heart, by what you have seen, heard, 
 and been conscious of, even though it has neither 
 met the ear nor the eye." 
 
 One more example. If there is anything in the 
 » 
 
 world which causes deterioration of character, mani- 
 fold temptation, obscuration of mind, darkening and 
 tainting of heart, it is dangerous friendships. The 
 friends we choose — friends that are pleasant to us or 
 flatter us, whose heart within, though known to God, 
 is not suspected by men, and yet perhaps known to 
 us — may be a world of temptation. Choose your 
 friends from among the friends of God. Be not 
 united with any that are separated from Him ; for 
 they will breathe into your ear, while you are* un- 
 conscious, that which will pervade your whole 
 spiritual being. All the dangerous temptations that 
 
VENIAL SIN. 97 
 
 you are likely to be exposed to — books, theatres, 
 and the like — are as nothing compared to a danger- 
 ous friendship. 
 
 I will now simply sum up what I have said. The 
 consequences of venial sins are, first of all, diminu- 
 tion of grace, the hindrance of the reception and- 
 operation of grace, the predisposing of the soul to 
 mortal sin, the displeasing of God the Father, Son, 
 and Holy Ghost, and the unspeakable facility with 
 which those venial sins may pass into mortal. 
 
 In the commencement, I said I hoped to satisfy 
 you before I finished, that venial sins are not small 
 sins. Not many words are necessary. No sin can 
 be small which is a great offence against a great God 
 — against a great majesty, a great authority, a great 
 purity, a great justice, a great truth. No sins can 
 be small which can only be cleansed away in the 
 Precious Blood of the Incarnate Son of God. No ; 
 not the least venial sin that was ever committed can 
 be absolved but through the Precious Blood which 
 was shed upon the Cross. Little sins ! God have 
 mercy on those who talk this language ! Once 
 more. The least venial sin grieves the Holy Ghost. * 
 Can any sin be small which grieves the Spirit of 
 God, of whom it is said, "All sin and blasphemy 
 shall be forgiven unto men, save only the blasphemy 
 against the Holy Ghost ? " Lastly, the venial sins 
 
98 VENIAL SIN. 
 
 we so easily commit will detain us from the Vision 
 of God after death, we know not how long. Though 
 they do not, like mortal sin, separate us from the 
 Vision of God to all eternity, they will, we know 
 not how long, separate us until every pain has been 
 borne, and every sin has been expiated. 
 
 My last word, dear brethren, shall be very prac- 
 tical. Disorderlv minds — that is, minds that live 
 without rule, minds that have no order in their life 
 — are always in danger of venial sins, and there- 
 fore of mortal — always walking on the brink of the 
 precipice, always on the very verge, always putting 
 their foot into the net. Now, I will give you one easy 
 rule of practice. Every day of your life place your- 
 selves, as I have said, under that noonday sun of 
 God's perfections, and pray to God the Holy Ghost 
 to illuminate your hearts with such a knowledge of 
 God and of yourselves, that, in the light of His per- 
 fection, you may see the least deviation of your 
 thoughts, words, and deeds from His holy will. 
 There was a time when you — every one of you — were 
 white as snow, in your baptismal innocence you were 
 spotless ; you had not then a stain ! The Precious 
 Blood had cleansed away original sin, and as yet you 
 had not contracted mortal sin, and perhaps in your 
 childhood few venial sins. In the sight of the Judge, 
 in the sight of your Redeemer, what are you now % 
 
VENIAL SIN. 99 
 
 What spots, what stains dark as night and red 
 as scarlet ! How is all that beauty and whiteness 
 destroyed by ill habits, not of mortal sin — remem- 
 ber, I am not speaking of that now — by tempers, 
 jealousies, envy, sloth, neglect of God, . self -indul- 
 gence ! The examples I have given are sufficient — 
 sins of the tongue, sins of personal ostentation, sins 
 of reading, sins of worldly pleasure, sins of dangerous 
 friendship. What are you now % Where is the 
 white robe of your baptism % Unless a life of pen- 
 ance, self-denial, generous sorrow shall cleanse away 
 those stains in this life, there remains but one way 
 in which those spots can be cleansed. Hear the 
 Word of God : " Other foundation can no man lay 
 than that which is laid ; which is Jesus Christ. JSTow 
 if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, 
 precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, every man's work 
 shall be made manifest ; for the day shall declare it, 
 because it shall be revealed by fire ; and the fire shall 
 try every man's work of what sort it is. If any 
 man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he 
 shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be 
 burned, he shall suffer loss " (therefore those words 
 are spoken not of mortal sinners, those words are 
 altogether spoken of those who have upon them only 
 venial sins) ; " but he himself shall be saved, yet so 
 as by fire." * 
 
 * 1 Cor. iii. 11-15. 
 
IV. 
 SINS OF OMISSION. 
 
SINS OF OMISSION. 
 
 Who can understand sins ? From my secret sins cleanse me, 
 O God. PsAiiM viii. 13. 
 
 If, as we have seen, the knowledge of the intellect 
 and the consent of the will be necessary to constitute 
 a sin, how can there be secret sins — how*can there 
 be sins which we do not know ? First, because we 
 may have committed what we have afterwards for- 
 gotten, which thus becomes secret to us, but is yet 
 recorded in the book of God's remembrance. Next, 
 we may only half understand the sinfulness of that 
 which we do, and one-half of our guilt is secret from 
 us. Again, through a culpable ignorance of our- 
 selves, we do not know how often we offend God. 
 We read in Holy Scripture these words, which at 
 first sight are most alarming : " There are wise men, 
 and there are just men, and their work is in the 
 hand of God ; yet no man knoweth whether he be 
 worthy of love or hatred."* That is, even the just 
 man, even the wise man, even the man that does 
 
 * Eccles. ix. 1. 
 
 (103) 
 
104 SINS OF OMISSION. 
 
 many works which are remembered before God, even 
 he cannot know with a perfect consciousness whether 
 in the sight of God he be an object of love or an 
 object of hatred ; and that because in the light of 
 the presence of God sins which are perfectly invisi- 
 ble to us — sins of thought, word, and deed which, in 
 the twilight of our conscience, in the confusion of 
 our soul — are secret to us, are visible to God. They 
 who know this best can only have the confidence of 
 hope that their sins before God are forgiven. They 
 have no revelation of it, and therefore they cannot 
 know it with a Divine certainty ; and that which we 
 do not know with a Divine certainty, we can only 
 know by a trust of confidence and hope springing 
 from the promises of God, and the consciousness of 
 our own soul. This must be manifest to every one 
 who at all knows himself. He knows that the leaves 
 which fall from the trees in autumn are not more 
 in multitude than the words we scatter every day ; 
 that the lights of the sun, glancing to and fro all 
 the day long, are not more multitudinous than the 
 thoughts perpetually rising in our hearts; that the 
 motion of the sea, or the restlessness of the air, is 
 not more continuous than the working of our ima- 
 gination, our heart, our affections, our passions ; and 
 in this mystery, this confusion of our being, who is 
 there that will venture to say that the good pre- 
 
SINS OF OMISSION. 105 
 
 dominates over the evil, the light over the darkness, 
 and that in the sight of God he is an object of love 
 rather than of hatred ? Now I have felt that our sub- 
 jects hitherto have been of a severe kind, and the 
 subject that we have now will not be less so ; but 
 hereafter I hope we shall be able to pass on to the 
 grace and the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to 
 the consolations for which all that I have said is but 
 the preparation. We are approaching to our Easter 
 joys ; that is, to the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ 
 and to the perfect absolution of sin, which He has 
 laid up for all those who are penitent. Let me, then, 
 take up and complete this last part of what I have 
 said. 
 
 We have already seen t e nature of sins of com- 
 mission. They are either the mortal sins, which 
 separate the soul from God in this life, and, if not 
 repented of, in the life to come; or they are the 
 venial sins, which are the disease though they are not 
 the death of the soul; and these are the greatest 
 evils, next after mortal sin, that the heart of man 
 can conceive. They are the preludes of mortal sin in 
 many, and are punished by detention from the vision 
 of God, both in this world and in the world to come. 
 This, then, was the first part of our subject; the 
 last part will be sins of omission. The first was, the 
 sin of doing evil ; the last, the sin of leaving good 
 
106 SINS OF OMISSION. 
 
 undone. Now let me suppose that which is intellec- 
 tually conceivable, though it has never existed; let 
 me suppose a soul created in the likeness of God, 
 and committing no sin, but bearing no fruit. This 
 is precisely the state described in the parable of the 
 barren tig-tree. The tree was alive, the root strong 
 and in the ground, the branches were covered with 
 leaves ; but when, year after year, the fruit was 
 sought, none was to be found. This is a parable and 
 description of a soul, alive indeed, but not fulfilling 
 the end of its creation. And for what end was the 
 soul created? To know, to love, to serve, to wor- 
 ship, and to be made like to God ; and a soul that 
 does not fulfill the end of its creation, that does not 
 know and love and serve and worship God, and is 
 not likened and assimilated to God its Maker and 
 its Original — that soul, not fulfilling the end of its 
 creation, would therefore be in a state of condem- 
 nation, and the words of the parable would be true 
 and just : " Cut it down. Why cumbereth it the 
 ground ? "* 
 
 We are bound by three obligations to glorify God 
 by fulfilling the end of our creation. First, by the 
 law of our creation itself. We were created to glorify 
 Him by a life of obedience as much as the earth was 
 created to bear fruit, and the firmament to give light. 
 * St. Luke xiii. 7. 
 
SINS OF OMISSION. 107 
 
 If the firmament were turned into darkness, and the 
 earth into desolation, it would not fulfill the end for 
 which it was made ; and so, too, with the soul that 
 does not glorify God. Again, we are bound to glo- 
 rify God by a direct commandment, and that direct 
 commandment is written in the Decalogue and in 
 the two precepts of charity : " Thou shalt love the 
 Lord thy God with thy whole heart, with thy whole 
 soul, with thy whole mind, with thy whole strength, 
 and thy neighbor as thyself."* And we are bound 
 to fulfill these two precepts of charity under pain, of 
 eternal death. There is also a third obligation — 
 not indeed binding under pain of eternal death, a 
 law of which I shall speak hereafter — and that is the 
 law of liberty — the law of love, of gratitude, and 
 of generous freedom, which is written by the Holy 
 Ghost on the heart of all those who, being born 
 again in Baptism, are united to our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ by the bond of charity. Sins 
 of omission are against either the law of our crea- 
 tion, or the law of the two precepts of charity, or 
 against the law of liberty. If we leave undone the 
 good or the duties to whieh we are bound by those 
 obligations, we commit sins of omission. I have 
 already shown how sins that are venial lead to sins 
 that are mortal, so I will now show how sins of 
 * St. Matt. xxii. 37, 39. 
 
108 SINS OF OMISSION. 
 
 omission lead on to sins of commission. They are 
 the beaten pathway which leads to actual sins. Now 
 sins of omission, or the leaving duty undone, may 
 indeed arise from any one of the seven capital sins : 
 and then it is also a sin of commission. A son may 
 omit his duty to his father through anger. The sin 
 of anger adds a sin of commission. So I might take 
 examples from the others ; but I will select one only, 
 and that because it has the greatest affinity to sins 
 of ommission ; I mean the sin of sloth. 
 
 We understand at once that pride, anger, jeal- 
 ousy, and the like, may be mortal sins, because we can 
 understand their intrinsic hatefulness and guilt ; but 
 sometimes men say, " How can a sin of sloth be mor- 
 tal ? " "We must therefore distinguish. The sin of 
 slothfulness is not mortal except under certain cir- 
 cumstances ; but a state of sloth and a habit of sloth 
 is certainly a mortal sin. We must therefore distin- 
 guish between slothfulness and sloth, Slothfulness is 
 the habit or state of the soul, tending towards the last 
 mortal state of sloth, which I will describe hereafter. 
 Let us take this as our example, and I will show 
 how this slothfulness leads to sins of omission, and 
 how these sins of omission lead to sins of com- 
 mission, and how these sins of commission at last 
 terminate in the mortal sin of sloth. 
 
 1. Suppose, then, some Christian, who is in the 
 
SINS OF OMMISSION. 109 
 
 state of grace and communion with God, living in 
 charity, in the love of God and the love of his neigh- 
 bor — that is, leading a good and pions life. One of 
 the chief duties which he will punctually and care- 
 fully fulfill is the duty of prayer. You will remem- 
 ber in the Book of Acts, when Saul the persecutor 
 was converted by a special miracle, the sign given 
 of his conversion was this : " Behold he prayeth." * 
 Prayer is the breath of the soul. Just as breathing 
 is the sign of life, prayer is the sign of the life of the 
 soul. Prayer means the union of the soul with God, 
 the converse of the soul with God, the soul speaking 
 with God, " ascending to God," as St. Augustine 
 says, " by thought," that is, in meditation ; " by the 
 affections," that is, in worship ; and " by the will," 
 that is, making resolutions of obedience. Every day, 
 a man who is a Christian, and living in a state of 
 grace, will pray to Almighty God, not only morning 
 and night, but at other times in the day. Prayer 
 will be his habit. Now, what is the effect of sins of 
 omission in respect of prayer % Let me suppose that 
 business, professions, pleasure, worldly distractions, 
 begin to break the habit of prayer. Perhaps at first 
 a man only shortens his prayers; or he does not 
 even shorten them, he says them more hastily. He 
 says them materially as before, but not mentally, for 
 
 * Acts ix. 11. 
 
110 SINS OF OMISSION. 
 
 his heart is somewhere else. He is in haste, and 
 though he repeats literally his usual prayers, his 
 heart is far off : or, at least, he ceases to pray with the 
 same sweetness and goodwill and fixedness and recol- 
 lection. Here is an example of a sin of omission 
 which is very common. I do not take the example 
 of a man giving up his prayers — that stands to reason 
 — but even if he begins to omit the fervor and recol- 
 lection with which he says his prayers, what does it 
 lead on to ? A certain wandering of the mind, a 
 multiplicity of thoughts which crowd upon him ; the 
 associations, which glance off, as it were, from every 
 angle of his memory and of his intellect. His mind 
 is full of colors cast in from the world, even while 
 kneeling before God. Little by little his mind gets 
 the habit of wandering, and then he begins to com- 
 plain that he cannot pray. When he kneels down, his 
 heart is in his house of business, or in the pleasures 
 of last night, or in the amusements of to-morrow. 
 He js, as we say, in the state of distraction or of dis- 
 sipation ; his mind is scattered, he has lost his recol- 
 lection. What is the next step ? He begins to talk 
 much, to scatter his words without consideration. A 
 man of prayer has a habit of weighing, of measuring 
 his words. As he has the habit of prayer, so he will 
 have the habit of silence ; he will be what we call 
 an interior man. His mind will be turned in on 
 
SINS OF OMISSION. Ill 
 
 itself. He will not be a chatterer ; but men who 
 begin to lose their habit of recollection before God 
 become chatterers among men. Solitude becomes 
 irksome ; to be alone is torment ; to be silent is a 
 pain — he must be always speaking. An uneasiness 
 of being alone with themselves makes such men 
 seek for society ; and a desire to get rid of uneasy 
 recollections makes them continually talk : and in 
 this way they commit a multitude of faults by 
 their tougue. But for every idle word that men 
 shall speak, they shall account in the Day of Judg- 
 ment.* "Well, there is worse than this. St. Paul 
 of the Cross used to say to those about him, " Stay 
 at home ; stay at home." When they asked, " "What 
 do you mean ? Am I never to go out of my house ?" 
 he would answer them, " Stay in the solitude of your 
 own heart before God, and keep three lamps always 
 burning before the altar — faith, hope, and charity — 
 before the presence of God in your heart." Now, 
 the man I have been describing began, perhaps, with 
 thoughtfulness ; but little by little the dissipation of 
 his thoughts and the constant talk of his lips have 
 made him to be, as we say, " all aboard." He is not 
 " at home ; " he is not dwelling with God ; the three 
 lamps grow dim ; faith, hope, and charity burn low. 
 This is just the state that our Divine Lord has de- 
 * St. Matt. xii. 36. 
 
112 SINS OF OMISSION. 
 
 scribed, when He says : "Any man putting his hand 
 to the plough and looking back, is not fit for the 
 kingdom of God."* He does not say that he will 
 never be saved, because he may turn back and steadily 
 follow out the furrow to the end ; but so long as he 
 has his face averted from God, all the activity of his 
 mind and being is turned from God to creatures. 
 
 2. This is the first effect of a sin of omission ; 
 the next is that it produces a kind of sluggishness 
 in everything that he does. Outwardly, perhaps, the 
 actions of his life are to the eye of his neighbors 
 just the same as they were before ; but to the eye 
 of God, a change has passed upon him. The eye 
 of God, to whom all things are open, sees that 
 the inward state of that man is not what it was. 
 There is a certain sluggishness which no human 
 eye can detect, but God sees it in everything that 
 he does. I have said before, that fervor consists in 
 doing our duty with great exactness. He begins to 
 do his duties with a certain carelessness, so that the 
 motives from which he acts, and the manner in which 
 he does even things that are good, are not what they 
 were. Just as a man who writes in haste, or who 
 draws in haste, will not complete any figure or 
 any letter with exactness; so it is with the man 
 who begins to lose his fervor. Then he begins 
 * St. Luke ix. 62. 
 
SINS OF OMISSION. 113 
 
 to be unpunctual. He puts off his prayers in the 
 morning ; he forgets them till noonday, and per- 
 haps, at noonday, he says only half of them ; and 
 at night he says them with an uneasy conscience. 
 Perhaps the next day it is the same, or even worse. 
 Unpunctnality begins to run through all his secret 
 duties before God. Then comes irregularity. That 
 is to say, he used to live by rule, he used to take 
 the will of God as his will, and try to' conform him- 
 self to it as well as he could ; but now he lives by 
 the rules of the world, the customs of men, and I 
 may say, at haphazard and at random. 
 
 The next step is this : he begins openly to leave 
 duties undone. To take one example : every one 
 who is in a state of grace has the seven gifts of the 
 Holy Ghost. Now these seven gifts are : Wisdom, 
 Understanding, Counsel, Knowledge, Piety, Forti- 
 tude, and the Fear of the Lord. Four of these per- 
 fect the intellect, and three of them perfect the will ; 
 but a man in this state of sluggishness ceases to 
 act according to the light and direction of these gifts 
 of the Holy Spirit of God. These seven gifts have 
 been described as the sails of a ship ; the more we 
 spread them the more we speed the soul ; and the 
 more we speed the soul the more we are carried 
 onwards in the way of salvation. Those who neg- 
 lect those gifts, or by sins of omission do not make 
 
114 SIXS OF OMISSION. 
 
 use of them, leave the sails reefed or furled ; and 
 their course in the way of eternal life is retarded. 
 Again, there are in every one of us the graces of 
 faith, hope, and charity. In your prayer-books you 
 are bid to make the acts of these three virtues. 
 But what do acts mean ? They are inward actions 
 of the soul towards God, whereby we exert the grace 
 of faith, or the grace of hope, or the grace of charity 
 in union with God. But these soon lose their power 
 in a man who has ceased to pray. Next comes neg- 
 lect of the manifold duties of charity towards our 
 neighbor. What was the sin of the Priest and of 
 the Levite when each of them saw the wounded man 
 in the road between Jerusalem and Jericho ? The 
 priest came that way, and looked upon him, and 
 passed by. The Levite came, and saw him, and 
 passed on. They committed a sin of omission, in 
 respect to the charity they owed to their neighbor. 
 What was the sin of Dives, at whose door Lazarus 
 lay full of sores ? We do not read that he refused to 
 help him — we certainly do not read that he drove 
 him away from his house — but he gave him no help. 
 It was a sin of omission. Our Lord says that at the 
 Last Day He will say : " I was hungry, and ye gave 
 Me no meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink ; 
 I was naked, and ye clothed Me not."* He will not 
 * St. Matt. xxv. 35. 
 
, SINS OF OMISSION. 115 
 
 say : " I asked you, and you refused Me ;" but "Ye did 
 not seek me out ;" which again is a sin of omission. 
 Lastly comes the sin of omission of love towards God. 
 We are bound to love God with our whole heart and 
 our whole mind ; and the man who commits sins 
 of omission in charity towards his neighbor fails 
 also in charity towards God, for " he that loveth not 
 his brother whom he seeth, how can he love God 
 whom he seeth not ?"* The state of such a soul is 
 thus described in the parable :f the servant who had 
 received a pound took and buried it, and another 
 who had received a talent wrapped it in a napkin. 
 When the Lord came, they both restored that which 
 they had received undiminished; but it was not 
 increased — and why ? Because they were guilty of 
 a sin of omission. They had not used that trust 
 which was committed to their stewardship ; and the 
 excuse given was this : "I knew that thou wert an 
 austere man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and 
 gathering where thou hast not strewed." That is to 
 say, when he had begun to lose his love to his Master, 
 he lost his confidence in his Master's love. He 
 began to distrust the love of God, because he knew 
 that he was wanting in love towards Him. So 
 3 that the sin of omission at last threatens the life 
 of the soul : for charity is the life of the soul. 
 * 1 St. John iv. 20. f St. Luke xix. 20. 
 
116 SINS OF OMISSION. 
 
 3. Then, thirdly, from these sins of slothfulness 
 comes a certain animosity against those who love God. 
 J nst as the sonl tnrns away from God, in that pro- 
 portion it has an animosity against those who con- 
 tinue to persevere in the love of God ; so much so, 
 that the very sight of any one who is fervent in the 
 love of God becomes an eye-sore. We know — and you, 
 I have no doubt, know by yonr own experience — that 
 we can tolerate anybody as a companion who is less 
 pious than we are, but we cannot easily tolerate any- 
 body who is more pious. Any one who prays more, 
 or any one who makes more of his duties towards 
 God and his neighbor : any one who is more just or 
 more holy is a constant reproof and rebuke to us. 
 We are ill at ease in his presence ; but anybody who 
 is lower than ourselves we can tolerate easily. He 
 is neither a reproof nor a rebuke ; on the contrary, 
 we think we can teach him, and we are soothed by 
 thinking that we can set him an example. There 
 is nothing galling or painful in the companionship 
 of those who are lower than ourselves in the spiritual 
 life; but those who are above us, unless we are 
 humble, make us restless. One sign of those who 
 are declining from God is this : they do not like to 
 see people go so often to Communion ; they get 
 impatient at hearing of their going so often to 
 confession; or if they know that they often visit 
 
SINS OF OMISSION. 117 
 
 the Blessed Sacrament, or that they spend a long 
 time in their room in prayer, all this makes them 
 uneasy. Finally, even the grace of God, which they 
 see in others becomes to them a trial. If they 
 see people more zealous than they are, more fer- 
 vent, more self-denying, more prosperous in working 
 for God — in saving souls, in doing works of charity, 
 or in labors of spiritual mercy — even that very 
 spiritual prosperity of their neighbor makes them 
 to fret. They are conscious that they are not like 
 them, and that consciousness is painful. If you look 
 for an example out of Holy Scripture, I will give you 
 two. When the Prodigal Son came home, and the 
 father forgave him, and gave him shoes on his feet, 
 and the first robe,* and made the festival of joy, the 
 elder brother, when he heard the music, refused to 
 come in. He was jealous and angry. When our 
 Divine Lord sat in the house of Simon the Pharisee, 
 and poor Mary Magdalen, with all her sins upon her, 
 burst into the midst of that banquet, and washed the 
 feet of our Lord with her tears, and anointed them and 
 kissed them, Simon the Pharisee said to himself: 
 "This man, if he were a prophet, would know who and 
 what manner of woman this is, for she is a sinner." 
 Our Lord said : " Simon, I have somewhat to say to 
 thee. I entered into thy house ; thou gavest Me no 
 * St. Luke xv. 22. 
 
118 SINS OF OMISSION. 
 
 water for my feet : this woman since I came in hath 
 washed My feet with her tears. My head with oil 
 thou didst not anoint; but she had anointed My 
 feet with ointment. Thou gavest Me no kiss ; she, 
 since I came in, kissed My feet."* In the heart of 
 that Pharisee, upright as no doubt he was, and pure 
 from the sins which stained poor Mary Magdalen, 
 there was a lack of charity before God, a pride, and 
 censoriousness, which was rebuked by the grace of 
 penance in that poor, fallen woman. 
 
 4. A fourth effect of the sins of omission and of 
 this decline of the soul is despondency, which is akin 
 to despair. A consciousness of sin has the effect of 
 depressing the soul, and, unless it soften it, of mak- 
 ing it to doubt its own salvation ; for where the charity 
 of God and our neighbor has become low and faint, 
 if it be not altogether lost, there both hope and faith 
 begin likewise to decline. Any man who is con- 
 scious of his own sins, knows that though men do 
 not see them or suspect them — though they are 
 only half known and half seen even by his own con- 
 science — they are all perfectly seen and known to the 
 eye of Almighty God. This consciousness of sinful- 
 ness, coupled with the consciousness of impenitence, 
 the sense that he is not softened, nor humbled, but 
 rather that he is irritated by the clear sight of his 
 * lb. vii. 37, 46. 
 
SINS OF OMISSION. 119 
 
 own sin and of the graces of those that are about 
 him, lights up a high fever of resentful heat which 
 grows more fierce as charity declines. The will in 
 its stiffness refuses to, bow itself before God, and 
 though a cloud on the conscience half hides many 
 sins that are not altogether forgotten, he is half con- 
 scious of many, and therefore full of fear, not know- 
 ing whether or no he is the object of a final hatred. 
 A soul in that state becomes desponding and reck- 
 less, so that in a multitude of cases, instead of turn- 
 ing towards God by repentance, it turns recklessly 
 away from God and plunges further into sin. So long 
 as there is a hope of salvation, a hope of pardon, and 
 so long as a good name and fame among men is 
 not lost, a man is sustained by a certain lingering 
 confidence and restrained from a multitude of sins ; 
 but the moment hope is lost and the last spring is 
 broken, a man who began only with sins of omission 
 and then sins of sloth, will at last plunge recklessly 
 into sins he never committed before, saying : " It is 
 too late — I have gone too far — I am too bad. Spots 
 are not visible upon a black garment, and I am 
 black before God, whether I am so before man or 
 not ;" on this, he plunges himself further and further 
 into sin. Those who answer to this description 
 verify the words of our Divine Lord to the Church 
 of Sardis : " I know thy works, and that thou hast 
 
120 SINS OF OMISSION. 
 
 the name of being alive, and thon art dead. Be 
 watchful and strengthen the things that remain 
 which are ready to die. For I find not thy works 
 full before My God."* The meaning of this is : Thou 
 has lost thy first charity; there remain faith and 
 hope in a little measure. The reed, though bruised, 
 is not broken — the flax, though smoking only, is 
 not quenched ; there is hope yet, for faith and hope 
 are not yet dead ; but when once hope is dead, what 
 can remain 1 Take example from Scripture. Judas 
 sold his Master; Peter denied Him. Judas had 
 lost his love for his Master, but Peter loved Him 
 still. Judas had lost his hope, but Peter hoped yet ; 
 and Peter went out and wept bitterly, and was for- 
 given ; and Judas went out and hanged himself. 
 
 5. Lastly, there is one more effect, and that 
 is the state which is called the sin of sloth — the 
 state of the soul which, having fallen from charity 
 and having lost hope, has become sick of God and 
 weary of God. Such a man says : "I wish to God 
 that I had never been born !" I have heard those 
 words again and again out of the mouth of sinners : 
 " I wish to God I had never heard the name of Jesus 
 Christ ; I should not then have been responsible. I 
 would to God I had never known the truth ; for I 
 should not have to answer for it. I should die like 
 
 * Apoc. iii. 1. 
 
SINS OF OMISSION. 121 
 
 a dog — and better to die like a dog than die as 
 I shall, with the illumination to know God and 
 Jesus Christ, to know His will, and His truth, and 
 to be forever as I am now!" Such things every 
 priest has heard, and perhaps you yourselves have 
 heard. The soul, weary and sick of God, turns away«- 
 from the Holy Sacraments, turns away from prayer, 
 turns away from holy people, from every memorial 
 of God and His service, until at last such a man will 
 say : "Almighty God, why dost thou persecute me 
 with Thy perfections ? Thy justice, which I cannot 
 deny, is like the blaze of the noonday sun, terrible 
 and scorching; and Thy holiness is like the light 
 that pervades the world, and I cannot escape from 
 it." Souls in that state say in an inverted sense the 
 very words of the Psalmist : " Whither shall I go 
 from Thy presence, and whither shall I flee from 
 Thy face % If I go up in heaven, Thou art there ; 
 if I go down into hell, Thou art there also. If in 
 the morning I take wings and flee to the uttermost 
 parts of the earth, even there Thy hand leadeth me, 
 and Thy right hand upholdeth me. If I say, Dark- 
 ness shall cover me, the darkness is no darkness to * 
 Thee. The darkness and the light to Thee are both 
 alike,"* This is what the people of Jerusalem said : 
 the forefathers of those who cried, "His blood be 
 
 * Ps. cxxxviii. 7-12. 
 
 6 
 
122 SINS OF OMISSION. 
 
 upon us and upon our children."* They said : " Let 
 the Holy One of Israel cease from before us ;"f that 
 is, let God get out of our way. Now, brethren, this is 
 what the sin of sloth comes to at last. I have traced 
 it from its beginning in a sin of omission — a sin 
 of omission in prayer ; because, as I said, prayer is 
 the life and breath of the soul, and the soul that 
 prays is united with God. The soul that loses its 
 union with God bj prayer may fall into the bottom- 
 less pit. There is no depth of eternal death into 
 which a soul that ceases to pray may not fail. It 
 will not fall all at once ; it falls very gradually, little 
 by little, insensibly, and there is the chief danger. 
 This exactly expresses the words with which I be- 
 gan : " Who can understand sins \ From my secret 
 sins cleanse me, O Lord." 
 
 I hope, then, that 1 need speak no more upon 
 this severe part of our subject. I will only give two 
 very short counsels. The one is this : aim at the 
 highest and greatest things of God's kingdom. Do 
 not think that it is humility to try to live a common- 
 place Christian life. Dear brethren, it is like sea- 
 men who say, " I will not launch out into the deep, 
 but I will keep near the shore." To keep near the 
 shore is not always safety ; to keep near the shore 
 requires the greater seamanship ; to keep near the 
 * St. Matt, xxvii. 25. \ Isa. xxx. 11. 
 
SINS OF OMISSION. 123 
 
 shore may be to run the greatest risk of wrecking. 
 Do not imagine for one moment that this is humility. 
 The humblest may seek the greatest things in God's 
 kingdom. Aim at the highest. You have been 
 called to be saints, every one of you. The very 
 name by which we are called in the New Testament 
 is " saints." With all your sins and imperfections 
 about you, you are called to be saints. If you are 
 to be saved, saints you must be before the throne 
 in the kingdom of God hereafter. Saints you are 
 now, if the Holy Ghost dwell in you, and you are 
 united in love to God and your neighbor. Sanctity 
 is in you ; and as the twilight of the morning is the 
 light of day, and differs from the noonday only in 
 the degree of its splendor, so the sanctity which is 
 in you now differs only in the degree of its mani- 
 festation from that perfect sanctity which shall be in 
 you when " the just shall shine as the sun in the 
 kingdom of their Father." * Is it possible, then, 
 that we can aim at anything lower than this % It is 
 a deceit of the devil for any man to turn aside from 
 the path which leads him upward to the highest 
 Christian life under the notion of humility or of im- 
 possibility. The grace that is given to each one of 
 you is measured according to the vocation wherewith 
 you are called. If God has called you to be saints, 
 * St. Matt. xiii. 43. 
 
124 SINS OF OMISSION. 
 
 lie has given you, and will give you, grace sufficient 
 to enable you to become saints — ay, the guiltiest 
 among you, and there may be some ears listening to 
 my words conscious of the stain of mortal sin. 
 Even the guiltiest that hears me has grace offered 
 now, at this moment, to become penitent, and through 
 penitence to become a saint. The most tempted, the 
 most buffeted, the soul that has fallen oftenest, that 
 has been cast down over and over again by long 
 habitual and inveterate sin, even to that soul grace 
 sufficient is offered at this time to be a saint if it 
 have the will to receive it. More than this : the 
 most slothful, the' most sluggish souls, the souls 
 most conscious that they are covered with sins of 
 omission, and that there is not a duty they do which 
 they do not do so tardily and imperfectly as to be 
 utterly ashamed in secret of themselves before God, 
 even such souls as these have the grace of fervor 
 and zeal and strength and piety and perseverance 
 offered at this moment if they have only the will 
 to accept it. The only condition is this : break with 
 the world, with sin, and with yourselves, and be on 
 God's side. Take up your cross boldly ; follow Jesus 
 Christ. Have no compromises, no reserves, and He 
 will do the rest for you. 
 
 The other counsel is this. Cast yourselves with all 
 your offences of commission and omission, all your 
 
SINS OF OMISSION. 125 
 
 faults, all your stains, all your weight, with the 
 whole burden of your sins on you — cast yourselves 
 upon the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as John lay upon 
 His bosom at supper. Do not think that this is not 
 for you. Do not say, " It is not for me to cast my- 
 self there — there where the beloved Disciple lay." 
 Why did he lie there ? Was it because he loved his 
 Lord ? No ; it was because his Lord loved him ; 
 and that same love which He had for John, not in 
 degree it may be, but in kind, in its infinite tender- 
 ness and its infinite compassion, that same love is 
 yours. He loves you, if not in the same measure, 
 in the same manner, and therefore cast yourselves 
 upon the love of our Lord. The gift of free will, 
 which we all have, is a perilous gift. It is a wonderful 
 mystery that a man can balance and poise his body 
 to stand or walk — every motion rests in a mysterious 
 manner on the balance of nature ; but the freedom 
 of the will is still more mysterious, and still more 
 easily cast down. We are surrounded by temptation 
 all the day long, and the world is constantly playing 
 upon us by its powers of assimilation. Worse than 
 this, there is the treachery of false and subtle hearts, 
 of hearts always ready to take fire. All the day long 
 sin springs up within to meet the temptation from 
 without. For that reason you have more need. Do 
 not say, " That makes me less able to cast myself 
 
126 SINS OF OMISSION. 
 
 upon the Sacred Heart of my Redeemer." It is for 
 that very reason that you need to do it. As the 
 blind man went to the Pool of Siloe ; as the lepers 
 came within reach of the hand of our Saviour ; as 
 the poor woman touched the hem of His garment — so, 
 as your miseries are the greater, you have the more 
 need ; and if you will come to Him, He, by His 
 Spirit within you, and by His protection about you, 
 will keep you from all evil, and will confirm you in 
 His grace. And that you may do this, I will bid 
 you adopt from this day one practice. 
 
 Every day of your life pray G-od to give you light 
 to see yourselves just as He sees you now : to show 
 you what sin is in all its hideousness, in all its sub- 
 tilty, and to show you those secret sins which now 
 you do not see in yourselves. Every day of your 
 life ask this of God. Remember the young man who 
 came to our Lord, and asked what he should do to 
 inherit the kingdom of heaven. Our Lord said : 
 " Sell all thou hast and give to the poor, and come 
 and follow Me." * He went away sorrowing, and 
 that one thing wanting lost him all things. You 
 remember the Rye wise and the five foolish virgins. 
 The five foolish virgins went out with the five that 
 were wise ; they were attired in the same bridal 
 raiment ; they all carried their lamps with them, and 
 * St. Matt. xix. 21. 
 
SINS OF OMISSION. 127 
 
 their lamps were lighted — in this they were all alike ; 
 and they all slumbered and slept. What was the 
 difference between the five wise and the five foolish ? 
 The five wise had oil in their vessels with their 
 lamps ; the five foolish had omitted to bring oil in 
 their vessels with their lamps. And while they all 
 slumbered their lamps went out ; and when the cry 
 was heard at midnight, " The bridegroom cometh ! " 
 they waked up and found their lamps gone out. 
 They first would borrow ; but it is impossible to bor- 
 row grace. They went to buy ; but while they were 
 gone the bridegroom entered, and the door was shut. 
 "When they came back they knocked upon the door, 
 and said : " Lord, Lord, open to us." But He an- 
 swered from within : " I never knew you." 
 
V. 
 
 THE GRACE AND WORKS OP 
 PENANCE. 
 
 
THE GKACE AND WOKKS OF PENANCE. 
 
 Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, 
 they are forgiven them ; whose sins you shall retain, they are 
 retained. St. John xx. 22, 23. 
 
 It was late in the evening of the first day of the 
 week when Jesus rose from the dead that His dis- 
 ciples were gathered together, and the doors were 
 shut for fear of the Jews. When they least expected 
 it, unawares, and by His divine power, He came, 
 though the doors were closed, and stood in the midst 
 of them, and His first words were, " Peace be unto 
 you." And when He had assured them that it was 
 He Himself, their fears were dispelled. He then 
 said, " Eeceive ye the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost 
 proceeds from the Father and from the Son, and I, 
 the Son of God, breath upon you — receive ye the 
 Holy Ghost ; whose sins you shall forgive, they are 
 forgiven them ; whose sins you shall retain, they are 
 retained." That is, He gave them the proof of His 
 Godhead in the power of absolution. He gave them 
 
 the proof of His Godhead — for the Pharisees were 
 
 (131) 
 
132 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 
 
 right when they asked, " Who shall forgive sins but 
 God only ? "* God alone can absolve, and God alone 
 can give the power of absolution. When the power 
 absolution is exercised by any man, he is but an in- 
 strument in the hand of God : the absolver is always 
 God Himself. Our Lord exercised, among many 
 other attributes of His Godhead upon earth, these 
 three powers of special divinity — He raised the dead ; 
 He multiplied the bread in the wilderness ; and He 
 cleansed the lepers: and these three works of al- 
 mighty power, which are altogether divine, He has 
 committed a spiritual form to His Church for ever. 
 When He said, " Go, and make disciples of all na- 
 tions, baptising them in the name of the Father, 
 Son, and Holy Ghost," in that power of baptism He 
 gave to His Apostles and their successors the power 
 of raising from spiritual death to spiritual life. 
 Those who are born dead in sin are raised by a new 
 birth to spiritual life. When he instituted the most 
 Holy Sacrament of His Body and Blood, and gave 
 to His Church the authority to say, "This is My 
 Body," He gave the power to feed His people with 
 the Bread of Life, and to multiply that Bread forever. 
 When He said, " Whose sins ye shall forgive, they 
 are forgiven unto them," He gave the power of cleans- 
 ing the leprosy of the soul. Sometimes, incoherent 
 * St. Matt. ii. 10. 
 
THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 133 
 
 or, what is worse, controversial minds imagine, or 
 at least say, that this power was confined to the 
 Apostles. The very words are enough to prove the 
 contrary ; but there is an intrinsic reason in the 
 thing which, to any Christian mind, mnst be suffi- 
 cient to show that these three powers are perpetual ; 
 for what are these three powers, but the authority to 
 apply to the souls of men for ever the benefits of the 
 most Precious Blood of Jesus Christ ? The Precious 
 Blood would have been shed in vain, if it were not 
 applied to the souls of men one by one. The most 
 potent medicines work no cures, save in those to 
 whom they are applied; and the Precious Blood, 
 which is the remedy of sin, works the healing of the 
 soul only by its application. Baptism, the Holy 
 Sacrament of the Altar, and the Sacrament of Pen- 
 ance are three divine channels whereby the Pre- 
 cious Blood of Jesus Christ is applied to the soul. 
 
 I am conscious that our thoughts hitherto have 
 been full of sharpness and severity. We have been 
 dwelling upon sin — upon mortal and venial sins, 
 and upon sins of omission. We enter now upon 
 another region — the realm of peace, of grace, of 
 pardon, and of healing. Therefore we will speak 
 of the grace and the works of penance. 
 
 Penance is both a virtue and a sacrament. Pen- 
 ance means simply repentance. I do not suppose 
 
134 THE GKACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 
 
 that anybody who hears me is so narrow-minded or 
 so little cultivated as to ring the changes of contro- 
 versial misunderstanding upon the word " penance," 
 and the like. " Repentance," or " penitence," or 
 " penance," are all one and the same, word and thing. 
 Just as the word " alms " is the contraction of the 
 word " eleemosyne." So the word "penance" is but 
 a contraction of the word "penitence." A little 
 learning is a dangerous thing, and in controversy it is 
 worst of all. From the beginning of the world the 
 grace of penance has been poured out upon men. It 
 is an interior disposition of the soul before God; 
 and from the beginning of the world the Holy Ghost, 
 whose office it is to convince the world of sin, has 
 convinced sinners of their transgressions, has con- 
 verted them to penance, and from penance has made 
 them saints. But penance, in the Christian law, is 
 also a sacrament ; and I have to explain the meaning 
 of the grace and the action of the sacrament, and 
 how they are united. 
 
 1. First, penance is a grace or inward disposition 
 of the soul, and I need not go far to find an explana- 
 tion. I need not frame any explanation of my own, 
 for we have a divine delineation of what penance is, 
 drawn, as it were, by a pencil of light by our Divine 
 s Saivour Himself in the parable of the Prodigal Son. 
 There we have a revelation of what the grace of pen- 
 
THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 135 
 
 ance is. You remember the parable. A man had 
 two sons, and the younger came to him and said: 
 "" Give me' the portion that f alleth to me ; " and when 
 he had received it, he went into a far country and 
 wasted it in riot, fell into misery and returned to his 
 father, and was pardoned. Let us take the main fea- 
 tures of this. First, the son who, under the roof of 
 a loving father, had need of nothing — for his father 
 was rich — chafed and was fretful because the autho- 
 rity of a superior will was upon him. He could not 
 bear the yoke of living under a paternal rule, and 
 his imagination was all on fire with the thought of 
 liberty. He looked at the horizon — it may be the 
 mountains that bounded the lands and fields of his 
 father — and pictured to himself the valleys and plains 
 and cities full of youth and happiness and life and 
 freedom — a happy land, if only he could break away 
 from the restraints of home. He came to his father, 
 and with a cold-hearted insolence said : " Give me 
 the portion that falleth to me ; " which being trans- 
 lated, is, " Give me what I shall have when you are 
 dead." There was a spirit of undutifulness and of in- 
 gratitude in that demand ; but the father gave it ; and 
 the parable says that not many days after — that is, 
 with all speed, in fact — " gathering all things to- 
 gether," all he had and all he could get, he went off 
 into a far country, and there he spent all he had in 
 
136 THE GEACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 
 
 living riotously. Then there came a mighty famine, 
 and he, having spent all things, was reduced to beg- 
 gary. His fair-weather friends all forsook him; 
 the parasites who fed at his table all abandoned him : 
 and those that spoke him fair, when he was rich and 
 had anything to give them, turned their backs upon 
 him : his very servants were not to be seen. He 
 found himself isolated, destitute, and brought to such 
 extremity that " he went to one of the citizens of 
 that country," and offered himself as his servant. 
 The citizen accepted him ; not into his house — he 
 did not even send him into his garden, no, nor into 
 his vineyard. He sent him into his fields ; and not 
 to tend his sheep, no, nor to watch over his oxen, 
 but " to feed his swine." Such is the degradation of 
 a sinner. In that extremity of need no man gave 
 to him ; all his old friends were afar off ; if they pos- 
 sessed anything, they kept it to themselves, or at 
 least they gave nothing to him. There was no me- 
 mory, no gratitude of their past friendship. He was 
 fain to fill his hunger with the husks — not only the 
 husks which the swine did eat, but the husks which 
 the swine had left — the husks which fell, as it were, 
 from the trough of a herd of swine. Reduced to 
 such misery, which is the picture of a soul in mor- 
 tal sin, as I have described before, he came to 
 himself — the word is, he "returned to himself." 
 
THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 137 
 
 He not only had left his father, but had forsaken 
 himself — he was out of himself — besides himself; 
 for sin is madness. When he returned to him- 
 self, he said : " How many hired servants of my 
 father have bread in abundance, and I here perish 
 for hunger. I will arise and go to my father, and 
 will say unto him : Father, I have sinned against 
 heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to 
 be called thy son ; make me as one of thy hired ser- 
 vants." Here was the consciousness of unworthi- 
 ness. He did not aspire to be a son again ; that, 
 he thought, was lost forever. It was enough for 
 him, and he was content to accept the position of a 
 hired servant under his father's roof. And he arose 
 and went to his father. And as he was coming, it 
 may be, down the path of the mountain side, bare- 
 foot and ragged, up which he had gone a little while 
 ago in all the bravery of his apparel and his pride, 
 before he caught sight of his father, his father saw 
 him afar off, for love gives keenness of sight to a 
 father's eye : he saw his son returning, and he ran 
 towards him. He was as eager to forgive as the 
 son was to be forgiven — ay, more, he fell upon 
 his neck, and the prodigal son began his confession : 
 "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before 
 thee ;" but before he could finish — the words " make 
 me as one of thy hired servants" never came out of 
 
138 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 
 
 his mouth — his father fell upon his neck and kissed 
 him, and forgave him all. He was perfectly absolved. 
 And the father said : " Bring forth quickly " — that 
 is, make haste, no delay — " the first robe," the robe 
 he had before, and put it on him. Put shoes on 
 his feet and a ring on his hand. Restore him not 
 only to the state of pardon, but to the full posses- 
 sion of all he had before his fall ; for this my son 
 was dead, and is alive again ; he was lost, and is 
 found. 
 
 We see here in the Prodigal Son the grace of 
 penance — that is, self-knowledge, self-condemnation, 
 sorrow for the past, conversion, and self -accusation. 
 We have here then, I say, a divine delineation of 
 what it is. Let us take another example. There 
 was in Jerusalem one who was rich, and abounded 
 in all things. She possessed also the fatal gift 
 of beauty, which has been eternal death to tens of 
 thousands. She was living in wealth and luxury 
 and enjoyment, and, as the Apostle said, was " dead 
 while she lived." She decked herself out in gold 
 and in fine apparel, like the daughters of Jeru- 
 salem, of whom the Prophet Isaias says, that they 
 were haughty, and walked with their necks stretched 
 out, with wanton glances in their eyes, and mak- 
 ing a noise with their feet, and walking with a 
 mincing step, with the affectation of an immodest 
 
THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 139 
 
 and luxurious life. She was known to be a sinner, 
 and was notorious in the city. On a day — we 
 know not when, we know not where, for it is not 
 written — she chanced, as we say, to light upon the 
 presence and to hear the voice of our Divine Re- 
 deemer. It may be that it was in the Temple where 
 He daily taught. It may be she had gone up to the 
 Temple in all the bravery and all the ostentation of 
 her apparel, not to worship the Holy One of Israel, 
 but from curiosity, and to be seen, and to show her- 
 self to men. But she found herself in the presence 
 of One whose calm dignity abashed her. At first, it 
 may be, she resisted the sound of the voice; but 
 there was something in it which thrilled to the 
 depth of the heart. There was something in the still 
 steady gaze of , that divine eye which she could not 
 escape. A shaft of light cut her heart asunder, and 
 an illumination showed her to herself, even as God 
 saw her, covered with sins red as scarlet, and, as the 
 leper, white as snow. She went her way with the 
 wound deep in the heart — a wound which could 
 never be healed save only by the hand that made it. 
 She went to her own home, no doubt, and cast over 
 in her mind what she had heard. The gaze that had 
 been fixed upon her and the sound of that voice were 
 still in her memory. She could escape them nowhere. 
 No doubt there was a conflict going on day after day, 
 
140 THE GRACE AND WOEKS OF PENANCE. 
 
 and her old companions, her evil friends, and the 
 manifold dangers of life came thick about her as be- 
 fore ; but she had no soul for them. At last, laying 
 aside her finery and ostentation, unclasping the jewels 
 from her head, and with her hair all loose about her, 
 with an alabaster box of ointment, she walked through 
 the streets of Jerusalem before the eyes of men, 
 caring for no one, thinking of no one but of God 
 and of her own sins. Hearing that Jesus of Nazareth 
 sat at meat in the house of Simon the Pharisee, she 
 broke into the midst of the banquet, under the 
 scornful, piercing, indignant eyes that were fixed 
 upon her ; without shame, because her only shame 
 was before the eye of God ; without fear, knowing 
 what she was, because she had come to know of the 
 love and tenderness of Him who had, spoken to her. 
 She stood silent behind Him weeping. She had the 
 courage even to kiss His feet, to wash them with her 
 tears, to wipe them with the hair of her head ; while 
 the Pharisee secretly rebuked our Divine Lord, and 
 asked himself in his heart : " If this man had been 
 a prophet, would He not have known what man- 
 ner of woman this is? She is a sinner, and He 
 would not have allowed her to touch His feet." But 
 those feet had in them the healing of sin. The 
 touch of those feet, powerful as the touch upon the 
 hem of His garment, cleansed that poor sinner. He 
 
THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 141 
 
 turned, and in the hearing of them all, He said: 
 " Her sins, which are many, are forgiven her, be- 
 cause she has loved much." Here is an example of 
 the grace of penance ; and an example not of penance 
 only, but of perfect and full absolution given in a 
 moment ; more than this, of a complete restoration 
 of purity given to the most fallen. In token of that 
 absolution and of that restoration, privileges were 
 granted to Mary Magdalen beyond others. She, out 
 of whom Jesus cast seven devils, was the one who 
 stood at the foot of the cross with the Immaculate 
 Mother of God. It was she who kissed His feet at 
 that supper, who afterwards anointed them, and 
 wound them in the fine linen for His burial. It was 
 she, the greatest of sinners, -who, next after His 
 Immaculate Mother, saw Him before all others when 
 He arose from the dead ; and these tokens of the love 
 of Jesus to penitents, and to the greatest of peni- 
 tents, have been followed in the kingdom of heaven 
 with a glory proportioned to her sorrow and to her 
 love. Mary Magdalen is set forth for ever as an 
 example of the grace of penitence, and of the perfect 
 absolution of the most Precious Blood. 
 
 But perhaps you will say, She had never known 
 our Saviour. She committed all her sins before she 
 came to the knowledge of His love. I have known 
 Him, and therefore the sins I have committed I have 
 
142 THE GEACE AND WOKKS OF TENAXCE. 
 
 committed against tlie light ; and my sins are more 
 ungrateful than hers, and are therefore guiltier, and 
 I have less hope of pardon. Let us see, then, if 
 there be another example. Is there an example of 
 any friend, who had been highly privileged, greatly 
 blessed, who had known everything, who had received 
 all the light and grace which came from the presence 
 and the words of our Divine Saviour in those three 
 years of His public life — is there any such who 
 afterwards sinned against Him ? There was one to 
 whom the light of the knowledge of the Son of God 
 was first revealed by the Father in heaven. There 
 was one who was First of all the Apostles, because of 
 this illumination of faith, and to whom our Divine 
 Lord said : " I say unto thee, thou art Peter, and upon 
 this Rock I will build My Church ; and the gates of 
 hell shall not prevail against it: and unto thee will 
 I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; and what- 
 soever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in 
 heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth 
 shall be loosed in heaven." This friend, preferred 
 above all others, dignified above all others, protested 
 to his Master : " Though all men should forsake 
 Thee, yet will not I. I am ready to go with Thee 
 to prison and to death.* Thougli all men shall deny 
 Thee, I will never deny Thee." He had the courage 
 * St. Lube xxii. 33. 
 
THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 143 
 
 to draw his sword in the garden, and cut off the ear 
 of the servant of the high-priest ; yet this man three 
 times denied his Master. He denied him utterly : "I 
 never knew the Man. I am not of his disciples." And 
 with cursing and swearing he renounced his Lord. 
 Here, then, is the ingratitude and the sin of a cher- 
 ished friend. But on that night he went out, and 
 he wept bitterly ; and his hitter tears upon that 
 night of sin obtained for him not only perfect abso- 
 lution in the evening of the first day of the week, 
 but the power of absolving the sins of others, sinners 
 like himself. " Receive ye the Holy Ghost ; whose 
 sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven unto them." 
 Peter received his own absolution, his own forgiv- 
 ness, and in that moment he was restored to his 
 dignity as Prince of the Apostles. Though he was 
 upbraided in the grey of the morning, on the Sea of 
 Tiberias, by the three questions of tender reproof : 
 " Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me, lovest thou 
 Me more than these ?" to remind him of his three 
 falls, Peter was restored to more than he had before. 
 He was made Head on earth of the Mystical Body 
 of Christ ; he died a martyr for his Lord, and he 
 reigns in heaven by his Master's side. 
 
 We have here again an example of the grace of 
 penance ; and what do we see in it ? Just the same 
 sorrow, self-accusation, reparation as before. Hero 
 
144 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 
 
 is the virtue and grace of penance; what, then, is 
 the sacrament? This grace of penance is as old 
 as the world : it is to be found everywhere where 
 the Hoi j Spirit works in the hearts of men, if they 
 are faithful and correspond with it. What, then, is the 
 meaning of the sacrament % Our Lord has instituted 
 a Divine Sacrament, in which He gives the absolu- 
 tion of His most Precious Blood to those that accuse 
 themselves. He instituted it on that night, when 
 He spoke the words with which I began ; and the 
 reason for which He instituted it is this — that we 
 may have something more than our self-assurance 
 on which to depend for the hope of our absolution. 
 The Pharisee in the Temple, who stood afar off and 
 said, " God, I thank Thee that I am not as other 
 men are — extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as 
 this publican,"* that Pharisee absolved himself ; but 
 his absolution was not ratified in heaven. And 
 so it is often among men. There are men who 
 absolve themselves all the day long. They forget 
 the sins of their childhood, boyhood, youth, and 
 manhood — ay, the sins of last year, the sins of yes- 
 terday ; and, having a slippery treacherous memory 
 of their own sins, though retentive and tenacious of 
 the sins of other men, they are perpetually absolving 
 themselves, and assuring themselves that they are 
 * St. Luke xviii. 11 
 
THE GRACE AND WOEKS OF PENANCE. 145 
 
 pardoned and forgiven before God. There cannot be 
 a state more dangerous, delusive, or fatal ; and in 
 order to guard us from this, our Divine Lord has 
 instituted a sacrament, in which to assure us of our 
 absolution, in which our absolution is a judicial act, 
 an authoritative sentence, an act pronounced by one 
 who is impartial, and who has authority. We are 
 not left to absolve ourselves ; we are absolved in the 
 name and by the power of Jesus Christ by a judge 
 empowered by himself. 
 
 Moreover, in that sacrament there is grace given ; 
 and that grace is the grace of the Holy Ghost, having 
 two effects : first, to give us light to know ourselves 
 more truly, and thereby to understand, to count up, 
 to measure, and to appreciate our sins and the gravity 
 of them ; and secondly, that same grace enables us 
 to be contrite, and to make the acts of sorrow. For 
 those reasons our Lord instituted the sacrament; 
 that is, he took the grace of penance which was 
 working from the beginning of the' world, and incor- 
 porated it in a visible sign : and He communicates 
 His absolution and the grace of penance to those 
 who come for it, as He gives the Bread of Life to * 
 those who receive Lloly Communion at the altar. 
 
 Every sacrament, as you know, has an outward 
 sign of inward grace. It has also what is called the 
 form and the matter. What, then, is the form of pen- 
 7 
 
146 THE GRACE AND W0KKS OF PENANCE. 
 
 ance % It is in these words : "I absolve thee from thy 
 sins." But who can forgive sins except God only \ Is 
 it the priest ? Do yon imagine for one moment that 
 the Holy Catholic Church is — I will not say so su- 
 perstitious, but is so dull of heart, so dark of under- 
 standing as either to believe or teach that it is the 
 man who absolves % It is the office that absolves ; 
 and what is the office ? The priesthood of Jesus 
 Christ Himself. There are not two, there is but one 
 Priest and one priesthood ; and the priesthood that 
 we bear is the participation of that one priesthood of 
 Jesus Christ Himself. What we do, we do not of 
 ourselves. It is he who does it by us. It is simply 
 ministerial on our part. It is solely and entirely His 
 act. When at the altar we say, " This is My Body, 
 this is My Blood," do we speak in our own name ? 
 Is it possible that anybody with Catholic books be- 
 fore them can be either so dull of sight, or so dull of 
 understanding 1 There is but one Absolver, Jesus 
 Christ Himself ; but he has ten thousand ministers 
 on earth, through whom he applies His Precious 
 Blood to souls that are truly penitent. The act of 
 absolution is His. 
 
 Such, then, is the form; next, what is the matter? 
 There are two kinds of matter : there is the matter 
 which is called remote, and the matter which is 
 called proximate. The remote matter of the sacra- 
 
THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 147 
 
 ment is the sins that we have commited. It is 
 called remote for this reason — they may be the sins 
 of our childhood, a long way off ; the sins of our 
 youth, long forgotten, but now at last remembered ; 
 the sins that we have committed, and have long 
 hesitated to confess — remote from the present mo- 
 ment, because they are a long way off in our past 
 life; or if they were only of yesterday, still they 
 are not present now. Proximate matter is that state 
 of heart which we must bring with us at the moment, 
 then and there. Now this remote matter is also of 
 two kinds. First, there is the necessary matter 
 which we are bound to confess under the pain of 
 eternal death ; and there is what is called the volun- 
 tary matter, which it is good, wholesome, safe, and 
 better to confess, though it is not of absolute neces- 
 sity. Now the first means all mortal sins committed 
 after baptism. As we know of no revealed way in 
 which the mortal original sin in which we are born 
 can be absolved except by baptism, so we know of no 
 other revealed way whereby mortal actual sins com- 
 mitted after baptism can be absolved, save only by 
 the Sacrament of Penance. You will remember the 
 principles which I laid down in the first and second 
 on these subjects on which I have spoken to you — 
 how that one mortal sin separates the soul from God. 
 A soul separated from God is dead ; and therefore it 
 
148 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 
 
 is a necessity that every mortal sin we have com- 
 mitted should be confessed and absolved. The vol- 
 untary matter is our venial sins. As to venial sins, 
 there are two reasons why it is good to confess them. 
 The first is because, as I showed you, venial sins 
 may easily pass into mortal sins. Sometimes, through 
 the self-love which is in us, we do not distinguish 
 between them ; and we consider what God knows and 
 sees to be mortal to' be only venial, and in this we may 
 make dangerous mistakes. Again, to promote hu- 
 mility, self -accusation, sorrow, and therefore the grace 
 of perseverance, and to renew our peace with God, it 
 is good to accuse ourselves of everything we know 
 we have committed, even in the least — even in the 
 sins of omission of which I lately spoke. It is safer, 
 better, and more wholesome to confess our sins of 
 omission, and to ask God to forgive them ; neverthe- 
 less, it is quite true that these sins, being venial, are 
 not of necessary confession. Well, the proximate 
 matter means the state of the heart. If any man 
 were to kneel down in the confessional, and accuse 
 himself without sorrow for his sins, he would com- 
 mit another sin. It would be an act of sin in itself. 
 It would be a sacrilege to come and receive that 
 sacrament without the proper dispositions, that is, 
 without being worthy ; and the man who has no sor- 
 row for sin is not worthy. Next, there must be a state 
 
THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 149 
 
 of the will. If a man come and ask for pardon, even 
 were lie to accuse himself perfectly, without having a 
 resolved purpose not to sin again, that man would 
 commit a sacrilege. Therefore, the heart and mind 
 must be sorrowful, and the will resolved not to com- 
 mit sin again. You will say : " How can a man say 
 this, knowing his weakness and instability?" The 
 answer is, that, if any man sincerely resolves not to 
 sin, and is conscious of his own weakness, and afraid 
 of it, that is a true and a good resolution, and God 
 will accept it, even though afterwards through sud- 
 denness or subtlety of temptation he should be cast 
 down. At the time he was perfectly sincere in his 
 resolutions, and that is all that God requires. 
 
 Next, the Sacrament of Penance has three effects. 
 The first is that it absolves or looses the soul from 
 the bond of sin. We are using metaphors ; to bind 
 and to loose is a metaphor. What is it that binds a 
 soul ? It is the sin. And what is the sin % I told 
 you in the beginning. It is the variance or the op- 
 position of the will against God ; it is the crooked- 
 ness and perversity of the will ; it is the palsy of the 
 heart, the darkness of the conscience ; this is the 
 bond of sin, and the Sacrament of Penance gives the 
 grace of the Holy Ghost ; and it is the Holy Spirit of 
 God which brings the will back to God by a change 
 wrought upon the will itself. The second effect of 
 
150 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 
 
 the Sacrament of Penance is that it infuses grace. 
 That is to say, a man in mortal sin comes to his 
 confession without charity, without the love of God, 
 for this reason, that a man in a state of mortal sin no 
 longer has charity or the love of God. Charity or the 
 love of God is the life of the soul ; and if he had this 
 life he would not be in mortal sin. The commission 
 of mortal sin extinguishes the charity and love of 
 God in him, and the soul dies for that reason. He, 
 therefore, when he comes to accuse himself, has 
 nothing left in his soul but hope and faith ; he hopes 
 to be pardoned, and he believes that God will par- 
 don him if his confession be good. In that act of 
 self-accusation, when he receives his absolution, the 
 grace of charity is restored to him, the life of the 
 soul is given back, he is united with God once more, 
 he possesses faith, hope, and charity, as he did in 
 his baptism — as he did before he fell, for the sacra- 
 ment puts him back again into the state of grace as 
 at first. Thirdly, it does something further : it re- 
 stores the soul to its previous condition. You re- 
 member that I told you some time ago that if any 
 man had lived a life of faith, charity, piety, gener- 
 osity, and good works, and afterwards fell into one 
 mortal sin, all those fruits would be dead upon the 
 tree, because the tree itself was dead ; but when he 
 is restored to grace, all those fruits that were once 
 
THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 151 
 
 dead revive with the tree also. The leaves expand 
 once more in their tenderness and freshness, and the 
 fruits are once more ripe upon the bough. All the 
 acts of the past life, which were mortified and lost 
 by one mortal sin, come to life again; and when 
 they are restored to life, the merit of every such 
 act — and you remember what I told you merit is, 
 the link between the action and the reward con- 
 stituted by the promise of God in his free and sove- 
 reign grace — all this merit likewise is restored ; and 
 with this, also, the powers of the soul are renewed. 
 The soul in mortal sin had lost its grace, its 
 conscience was blind, its ear was deaf, and its will 
 was weak. Like as our Divine Lord, in His miracles, 
 opened the eyes of the blind, and the ears of the 
 deaf, straightened the feet of the lame, and made 
 the man with the withered hand to stretch it out 
 like the other, so, when the soul is restored by abso- 
 lution and grace in the Sacrament of Penance, the 
 powers of the soul are again restored. 
 
 You see, then, what the Sacrament of Penance is. 
 It is the grace of penance enlarged, multiplied, as- 
 sured, brought within the reach of men, offered all 
 the day long, within the power of everybody. That 
 which in the beginning was all over the world in one 
 sense, but unseen ' and secret, now is embodied 
 visibly in a sacrament of grace, that men may know 
 
152 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 
 
 where to find the Fountain in which they may wash 
 and be clean. 
 
 I can say but few words more. When He insti- 
 tuted, in our behalf, this holy sacrament out of the 
 tenderness of His love and the superabundance of His 
 grace to sinners, our Divine Lord has set no limit 
 whatever to its efficacy. It is like His own Precious 
 Blood. It is powerful and omnipotent to cleanse all 
 sin. He sets no limit ; there is indeed a limit, as 
 I will show you, but it is not God who imposes it. 
 There is no sin of any kind, howsoever deep, dark, 
 black as midnight, and often committed, nothing 
 so inveterate, nothing which in the sight of God is 
 so hateful, nothing which to the soul of man is so 
 deadly, that there cannot be absolution for it in the 
 Sacrament of Penance. Do not for one moment 
 imagine that you have sinned beyond the power of 
 pardon. There is no man who hears me, whatever 
 his sin may have been, who, if he will turn and re- 
 pent and accuse himself with sorrow, shall not be 
 washed as white as snow. Next, there is no kind of 
 sin that is beyond the reach of absolution. There 
 is no number of sins, howsoever frequent, which 
 shall not be pardoned. Though a man were to go 
 on all his life-long sinning day and night, repeating 
 sins over and over again, yet repenting of them on 
 his deathbed, the Precious Blood shall wash him 
 
THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 153 
 
 white as snow. Our Divine Lord has said that " if 
 our brother offend against us seventy times seven, 
 ay, and that in one day, and turn and repent, we are 
 to forgive him." * In saying that, He used a form of 
 speech to show there is no number — there is no 
 numerical limit. There can only be a moral limit, 
 and a moral limit there is ; but what is it ? I said 
 before : " All sin and all blasphemy shall be forgiven 
 unto men, save only the blasphemy of the Holy 
 Ghost ; that shall never be forgiven in this world or 
 in the world to come." f But what is this blasphemy 
 of the Holy Ghost ? It is the resistance of the known 
 truth. It is the refusal of the grace of penance. It 
 is the outrage done to the Absolver Himself, the 
 Giver of Life; and that by the impenitence of the 
 sinner. The*one only sin which is beyond the reach 
 of absolution, the one only sin which the Precious 
 Blood cannot absolve, is the sin that is not repented 
 of ; that is the sole and only sin that shall not be 
 washed as white as snow. 
 
 Finally, as our Divine Lord has set no limit to 
 His forgiveness, and as the limit is set by man, and by 
 man only through his own impenitence, so our Di- 
 vine Saviour has attached to this grant of His pardon 
 only those conditions without which He would cease 
 to be what He is — holy, just, true, and merciful. If 
 * St, Luke xvii. 4. f St. Matt. xii. 31. 
 
154 THE GEACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 
 
 He were to require more, He would require more 
 than we can do. If He were to require less, He 
 would violate His own divine perfections. The Sac- 
 rament of Penance is the Precious Blood, and the 
 pardon of the Precious Blood let down within the 
 reach of the lowest sinner — lower it cannot be ; for 
 it is within the reach of all. The conditions which 
 are attached to it are four in number. The first 
 is that we be sorry. He would cease to be God — 
 He would cease to be just, holy, and pure — if He 
 were to forgive those who are not sorry for their 
 sins, who still love them, and are therefore at vari- 
 ance with Him, and at variance with His perfections. 
 Secondly, we must come to Him. If the prodigal 
 had lingered in the far country, his father could not 
 have fallen on his neck. If Mary Magdalen had not 
 broken into the midst of that banquet, she would 
 not have heard the words of her absolution. We, then, 
 must come to Him. He has commanded us to 
 come. He has said : " I am the way, the truth, and 
 the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by 
 Me." * And the way he has ordained for penitents 
 to come to Him is in self -accusation, in the Sac- 
 rament of Penance. Thirdly, when we come to 
 Him, we must accuse ourselves honestly, truly, sin- 
 cerely. There must be no excusing, no painting of 
 
 * St. John xiv. 6. 
 
THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 155 
 
 the face. We cannot paint the heart, and God looks 
 at the heart, and not at the countenance. Our ac- 
 cusation must be truthful to the very last. Every 
 mortal sin that we have committed from our earliest 
 childhood, so far as we remember, it must be at 
 some time confessed before it can be absolved. It is 
 not requiring much of the sinner that he should 
 come and say what is his disease, that he should 
 show his wounds, and his miseries, and the symp- 
 toms of death that are upon him. The physician 
 requires no more for healing, and he can require no 
 less. Lastly, He requires of us a steadfast resolu- 
 tion to sin no more, and to avoid the occasions of sin 
 — of which I will speak hereafter — that is, a stead- 
 fast change of the will, retracing the variance and 
 the opposition of the will against His will, and a sin- 
 cere resolution to offend Him no more. Less than 
 this He could not require ; and more than this He 
 does not. Here are the four conditions : sorrow for 
 having offended Him ; the coming to Him in His 
 own way ; true self -accusation ; and steadfast reso- 
 lution to sin no more. 
 
 O, dear brethren, anticipate the Day of Judg- 
 ment. Be beforehand with it. That day is coming, 
 inevitably coming, as the rising of to-morrow's sun. 
 The day is not far off when the Great White Throne 
 will be set up, and we shall stand before Him ; and 
 
156 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 
 
 the eyes, that are as a flame of lire, will search, us 
 through and through ; and not His eyes alone, but 
 the eyes of all men will be upon us ; and the ears of 
 men will hear that which the accuser will say against 
 us in that day. There will be no secrecy then ; no 
 hiding of our sins, nothing concealed from God, or 
 from that multitude which, is around the Great White 
 Throne. What does He require of you now ? The 
 Great White Throne is veiled in His mercy. In the 
 holy Sacrament of Penance He sits as the Judge, not 
 arrayed in the splendors which will dazzle and blind 
 us at the Last Day, but as the Good Shepherd, and 
 as the Good Physician, the Friend of sinners, who is 
 " come not to call the just, but sinners to repentance. 5 ' 
 There He sits in His mercy. Come to Him, then, 
 one by one. Be beforehand with the Day of Judg- 
 ment. That which you confess now will be blotted 
 out and forgiven in that day. That which you hide 
 now will be in the book of God's remembrance, laid 
 up for a record in the day of the great assize. It 
 is not much He requires of us — to come and tell it 
 in the ear of one man in His stead — a man bound 
 under a seal, which, if he were to break, he would 
 commit a mortal sin of sacrilege ; a seal which no 
 priest would break, even if it cost him his life upon 
 the spot. If it be painful to you, if shame cover 
 your face, offer up the pain and the shame as a part 
 
THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 157 
 
 of the penance, as Mary Magdalen in the midst of 
 that great banquet. It is precisely for this purpose : 
 that the salutary pain may he the medicine of our 
 pride. Dear brethren, then, be beforehand with the 
 Day of Judgment, while the day of grace lasts : and 
 come to Him as you are. Do not say, " I must wait " 
 — do not say, " I cannot come with all my sins upon 
 me, stained as I am, covered from head to foot with 
 spots crimson as blood. I cannot come as I am. 
 Let me wait a little while. I shall be better and 
 fitter hereafter." Do not reason thus with your- 
 selves. These are the whispers of the enemy, who 
 desires to stand between you and your absolution. 
 Come with all your sins upon you, though they are 
 more numerous than the hairs of your head, though 
 they are black as night, though they are beyond all 
 count and all measure. Come just as you are. If 
 you have a mortal sickness, would you put off going 
 to the physician until the symptoms are abated? 
 The more intense and threatening the symptoms, 
 the faster you will go for counsel and for healing. 
 Do not say to yourselves, " I am so hard-hearted. I 
 have not a tear. I have not the feeling of sorrow." 
 How can you, if you are in sin ? It is sin that 
 hardens the heart and dries the eyes. In the Sacra- 
 ment of Penance the grace of the Holy Ghost will 
 give you both sorrow and the emotion of sorrow. Do 
 
158 THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 
 
 not say, " I am so unstable. If I were pardoned to- 
 day, I should fall to-morrow." Are you more likely 
 to stand to-morrow because you will not be forgiven 
 to-day? O, no. Dear brethren, whatever be your 
 sins, how many, however guilty, come with them all, 
 like the poor woman who touched the hem of His gar- 
 ment, like the poor prodigal, bare-footed and ragged, 
 when he came back to his father's house. Come 
 as you are, and do not lose time. Time and grace 
 are God's gift : we know not how long they may 
 last. At this moment the Sacred Heart of Jesus 
 bleeds for you on the Cross, yearns for you in heaven. 
 The father who saw the prodigal afar off, and who 
 ran to meet him, is the pledge, ay, and the earnest of 
 that yearning fervent love and thirsting desire with 
 which Jesus is waiting to forgive you. Every soul 
 washed in the Precious Blood is a joy to the Good 
 Shepherd. He knows what is stirring in you. He 
 has seen the strings of your conscience. He has seen 
 the wavering of your will. He has seen the good im- 
 pulses that have been prompting you. He knows the 
 temptations that are keeping you back, and the as- 
 pirations that have been lifting you up towards Him 
 — the longing for strength and courage to cast your- 
 self at His feet, and make your peace with Him. 
 He knows all this. Dear brethren, do not resist Him. 
 Take heed lest you quench those emotions of grace 
 
THE GRACE AND WORKS OF PENANCE. 159 
 
 that are within you. How long, how long, how long 
 shall He wait for? Remember His own words: 
 " There is joy in heaven over one sinner doing pen- 
 ance more than over ninety-and-nine just persons 
 that need no repentance."* 
 
 * St. Luke xv. 7. 
 
VI. 
 
 TEMPTATION. 
 
TEMPTATION. 
 
 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert, to be tempted 
 by the devil. St. Matt. iv. 1. 
 
 The Son of God, who is Incarnate Sanctity and 
 Eternal Life, when He came into the world to redeem 
 mankind, placed Himself in the most intimate con- 
 tact, possible to His perfections, with sin in the 
 desert, and with death upon the Cross. In the 
 temptation in the desert, Jesus tasted of all the 
 bitterness of sin, except only of its guilt: in His 
 death upon the Cross, the immortal God tasted death 
 for every man. Now I have taken the temptation of 
 our Divine Saviour as the outset of our present 
 thoughts, because in itself it is sufficient proof of 
 what I affirmed some time ago, namely, that to be 
 tempted is not to sin, and that many who are the 
 most tempted are innocent. You will remember I 
 * was speaking about the distinctions of sin, when I 
 touched upon the subject of temptation. It was neces- 
 sary to guard what I was saying, lest those who are 
 
 (163) 
 
164 TEMPTATION. 
 
 tempted, and perhaps sorely and habitually, should 
 lose heart, and begin to fear lest their temptations are 
 personal sins. Now the example of onr Divine Lord 
 shows ns, that One who is sinless may be trie sub- 
 ject of temptation. He suffered temptation for our 
 sakes, just as He suffered death for onr sakes. He 
 suffered temptation, in order, as St. Paul says, " that 
 we may have such a High Priest, not one who cannot 
 have compassion or be touched with a feeling of our 
 infirmities, bnt one who was tempted in all things 
 like as we are, yet without sin ; " * and again, that 
 " He suffered, being tempted, that He might know how 
 to succor or give help to those that are tempted." f 
 It was that, out of His own personal experience, the 
 Son of God, incarnate in our humanity, might taste 
 of sin in all its bitterness, in all its penalties, save 
 only that which to Him is impossible, the guilt of 
 sin, that so He might be a Saviour full of sympathy 
 with sinners. 
 
 And now it is necessary to observe the dis- 
 tinction, which I have drawn with all possible care 
 and precision. Though it is true that temptation 
 is not sin, nevertheless temptation and sin are very 
 nearly allied — they are very like each other, and 
 they may be easily mistaken ; secondly, temptations 
 are the occasions of sin; and thirdly, temptations 
 * Heb. iv. 15. f lb. ii. 18. 
 
TEMPTATION. 165 
 
 with great rapidity and with- great facility pass 
 into sins. For this cause it is necessary with all 
 accuracy to distinguish between them. Perhaps 
 some one will say: "I can quite understand that 
 the Son of God being man was capable of being 
 tempted ; but that gives me little encouragement, 
 because every temptation presented to His sinless 
 , soul was instantly quenched, like as sparks falling 
 upon the face of pure water are immediately ex- 
 tinguished ; but when temptations come to me, 
 the sparks are struck upon the touchwood, they 
 fall upon the flax, and upon the dry leaves which 
 are ready to kindle." There is indeed this difference. 
 The temptations of our Divine Saviour were alto- 
 gether from without, and none of them from within ; 
 our temptations are indeed in great part from with- 
 out ; but a very large part of them, and the worst 
 part of them, are from within. They come up out 
 of our own hearts, they are in our own thoughts, in 
 our own passions, in our own tempers, in our faculties, 
 in our memory — here are the lairs and the haunts of 
 temptation. These are the most dangerous, and the 
 example of our Divine Lord does not reach to what 
 we suffer. Now, nothing is more certain than this, 
 that all the sorrows which come upon a man in life — 
 sickness, pain, bereavements, afflictions, all the crosses 
 he may meet with, losses, disappointments, bank- 
 
166 TEMPTATION. 
 
 ruptcy — all these things are nothing, compared with 
 the bitterness, the keenness, of temptation. A man 
 may say : " I could bear all these things readily. 
 They come fr.om without ; and they have not that 
 which is the special suffering of temptation, the 
 bitterness of sin is not in them. They do not come 
 between me and God. Indeed the more of suffering 
 and sorrow I have in this world, the more I am 
 driven to the presence of God. They are rods and 
 scourges, driving me nearer and nearer to Him ; but 
 my temptations come between me and God. They 
 come and cut me off from Him. - They hang like a 
 dark cloud between me and the face of God. They 
 make me feel it to be impossible that God can love 
 me, impossible that I can be saved, impossible that 
 I should not be grieving the Holy Spirit of God all 
 the day long. I am like those who are described in 
 Holy Scripture, who do many things for the best ; 
 nevertheless, after all, do not know whether they are 
 the objects of love or hatred."* 
 
 Now, I dare say there is not one of you who 'does 
 not know and feel what Holy Scripture calls " the 
 wound of his own heart." The wound of a man's 
 heart is the great master fault, or the besetting sin, 
 or the three or four besetting sins, such as pride, 
 anger, irritability of temper, jealousy, envy, slothful- 
 
 * Eccles. ix. 1. 
 
TEMPTATION. 167 
 
 ness, and many others which I need not specify. I 
 desire to meet the objection of such persons, and I 
 desire to show and to prove, that it is quite possible 
 that a man who suffers all the day long from tempta- 
 tions of this kind, may, nevertheless, in the sight of 
 God, be innocent ; and so far as those temptations 
 go, he may be perfectly guiltless. I do not say 
 that this is a common case, but I say it may be ; 
 and, therefore, every one may, if he will only be faith- 
 ful to the rules I will hereafter try to lay down, 
 take to himself, at least in part, this consolation. 
 
 1. First of all, then, temptation is inevitable. 
 Until we have put off our mortality, until corruption 
 is turned into incorruption, we shall be assailed by 
 temptation. To be tempted is simply to be man ; 
 to be man is to be tempted. In Holy Scripture, in 
 the book of Genesis, we read these words, that " God 
 did tempt Abraham ; " * but in the Epistle of St. 
 James, we read, " Let no man when he is tempted 
 say that he is tempted by God." f This seems to be 
 a contradiction ; but it is not because the word 
 " tempt " is a word of perfectly neutral signification. 
 It does not necessarily mean " tempt with evil ; " it 
 simply means to " try " — " God did try Abraham ; " 
 for God puts us on our trial, and that in two ways. 
 lie either by his providence sends us a variety of 
 * Gen. xxii. 1. f St. James i. 13. 
 
168 TEMPTATION. 
 
 afflictions, or crosses, or losses, or contradictions, by 
 which He tries what our spirit is ; or, secondly, He 
 permits that Satan should try us, as He permitted 
 Satan to try and afflict Job. Therefore, when it is 
 said that God " tempts," it means that God tries us ; 
 but the other signification is an evil one ; for all the 
 temptations that come from Satan are evil in them- 
 selves. He never tempts any man to good, unless 
 some accidental good may be the occasion of evil. 
 Now, it is in this latter sense that I am going to speak 
 — that is, of our being tried by evil, tried by Satan. 
 God overrules even the temptations of Satan for our 
 benefit, as I will show. I say, then, that these 
 temptations are inevitable, and that for this reason : 
 from the time when the Dragon and his angels were 
 overcome by Michael and his angels in heaven, and 
 Satan was cast out with his evil angels upon earth, 
 from that moment to this there has been warfare 
 round about us. Remember that Satan is an angel 
 created with an intelligence and a will and a power 
 far exceeding that of man. There is something 
 satanic in the contempt and the ridicule with which 
 men treat Satan. I say it is satanic, because it is a 
 satanic illusion to make men cease to fear him, or 
 cease even to believe in him. He is never more com- 
 pletely master of a man than when the man ridicules 
 his existence — when, as we hear in these days, men 
 
v TEMPTATION. 169 
 
 say, " There is no devil." The man most under the 
 power of the tempter is he who does not believe in 
 the existence of his enemy. His enemy is round 
 about him day and night, and under his feet. Satan, 
 being of angelic nature, has an angelic intelligence 
 greater than that of man, pervaded by craft and by 
 subtilty. He has also an angelic will mightier than 
 ours, pervaded by an intensity of malice. He has 
 also a power greater than ours, which is always 
 exerted out of jealousy against those who are re- 
 deemed in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. It 
 was not shed for him ; and he is laboring, there- 
 fore, day and night, without ceasing, to destroy those 
 who are the heirs of salvation. 
 
 There are two titles given to Satan in Holy 
 Scripture : Our Lord called him " the prince of this 
 world," * and St. Paul calls him " the god of this 
 world ; " f and therefore we have closely surrounding 
 usj like an atmosphere, the world of which he is the 
 prince, and, I may say, the sanctuary of which he is 
 the god. For what is the world ? It is the intel- 
 lectual and moral state of the race of mankind with- 
 out God, pervaded, darkened, falsified, and corrupted ' 
 by the influence of Satan into the likeness of his 
 own malice. Therefore, Holy Scripture declares 
 that the world is an enemy of God, an immutable 
 
 * St. John xiv. 30. f 2 Cor. iv. 4. 
 
 8 
 
170 TEMPTATION. 
 
 enemy ; that the world can never be reconciled 
 with God, or God with the world ; that the world 
 can never be purified ; that even the waters of 
 baptism only save individuals out of the world ; 
 and that the world itself will never be saved, but 
 will be burned up by fire. Now, this world signifies 
 the tradition of the sin of mankind, the world-wide 
 corruption of human nature by the sins of the flesh 
 and the sins of the spirit, with all their falsehood, 
 impiety, and malice against God. This hangs in 
 the atmosphere of the world : outside Christendom 
 it reigns supreme ; inside Christendom it has en- 
 tered again, like as in the time of pestilence, the 
 very air of our dwellings, after all the care we can 
 bestow, is infected. Even among baptized nations 
 the spirit of the world, wafted from without, and 
 arising up again under our feet from the cor- 
 rupt soil of human nature, is perpetually renewing 
 itself ; and we live surrounded by an atmosphere in 
 which all the forms of truth are distorted, and where 
 illusions are presented on every side, so that men 
 are misled, and are turned away from God and from 
 His laws. We live in the midst of such a world, 
 and that world we renounced in our baptism — " the 
 world with all its pomps ;" nevertheless, it has a per- 
 petual action and influence upon every one of us. 
 There is what is called the worldly spirit, which 
 
TEMPTATION. 171 
 
 enters with the greatest subtilty into the character 
 of even good people ; and there is what is called the 
 time-spirit, which means the dominant way of think- 
 ing and of acting which prevails in the age in which 
 we live ; and these are powerful temptations, full of 
 danger, and in perpetual action upon us. 
 
 Then, thirdly, we carry our temptations about 
 us. We have every one of us the three wounds of 
 original sin : ignorance in the understanding ; tur- 
 bulence in the affections, so that they become pas- 
 sions ; instability and weakness in the will. The 
 soul is wounded with those three wounds ; and never- 
 theless it is in perpetual motion in thought, word, 
 and deed, save only during the time of sleep. In 
 our waking hours our nature is in unceasing activity, 
 and in perpetual anarchy too, except in those who, 
 being guided by the Spirit "of God, are under the 
 influence of grace and conformed to the truth.. The 
 thoughts, tempers, affections, passions of the heart, 
 are in- a state of ceaseless turbulence, so that the 
 Holy Ghost by the Prophet describes the heart in 
 these words : " The wicked are like a raging sea which 
 cannot rest, casting up mire and dirt." * As the sea 
 casts up from its depths the soil under the waters, 
 so the perpetual activity of the heart is casting up 
 the passions and the sins that lie within it. This 
 
 * lea. lvii. 20. 
 
172 TEMPTATION. 
 
 description applies in its measure to every one of us. 
 We are all in this state ; and, therefore, the tempta- 
 tions of Satan, the temptations of the world which are 
 without us, and the temptations from our own heart 
 within — these three temptations are inevitable. We 
 cannot escape them. Every one of us singly stands 
 between two spirits — there is the Spirit of God on 
 the one side, there is the spirit of Satan on the other ; 
 and the human spirit, that is, the soul with its intel- 
 ligence, heart, and will, stands between. These two 
 spirits, of God and of Satan, are in perpetual conflict 
 round about us and for us — the spirit of Satan striv- 
 ing to pervert, to delude, and to cast us down ; the 
 Spirit of God perpetually guiding, strengthening, and 
 upholding us. The thoughts of Satan are infused 
 into us, and also the lights of the Holy Ghost : and 
 sometimes we do not know the one from the other. 
 We sometimes mistake the false lights of Satan for 
 the lights of truth. We sometimes fancy that the 
 lights of truth which come are only temptations. 
 Sometimes we imagine our own human thoughts to 
 be the thoughts and the lights of God ; and so we 
 deceive ourselves. We are in this constant state of 
 temptation, which is common to all men. 
 
 2. Next, the universality of this temptation is so 
 great, that there is no state of man that is not visited 
 by it. Take, for example, sinners, those that live 
 
TEMPTATION. 173 
 
 voluntarily in sin. Satan tempts them ; they are the 
 subjects of- constant satanic temptation ; but be sure 
 that they are not the chief subjects of his tempta- 
 tions, for this reason : they are his servants already, 
 they are already doing his will, they already share 
 his own mind, they already love those evils to which 
 he tempts them. Satan leaves his own servants to 
 do their work for him ; they have united themselves 
 with his evil angels. When our Lord was tempted in 
 the wilderness, it was but the lifting of the veil, and 
 the making visible of that which invisibly is taking 
 place every hour and every moment round about us. 
 " We wrestle not with flesh and blood," as the Apos- 
 tle says, " but with principalities and powers, and spir- 
 itual wickedness in high places ;" * that is, with the 
 whole hierarchy of fallen angels round about us. 
 They are mingling among evil and wicked men ; the 
 evil and the wicked have united themselves to their 
 allegiance, and Satan leaves them alone, they are 
 doing his work. The blasphemer is not tempted to 
 blasphemy. Why should he be % He blasphemes 
 already. The unbeliever is not tempted to unbe- 
 lief — he has lost his faith. The scoffer is no longer 
 tempted to scoffing — he scoffs enough already to sat- 
 isfy even the " god of this world." So I might go 
 on with every other kind of sin. They have become 
 
 * Eph. vi. 12. 
 
174 TEMPTATION. 
 
 the members of the " mystery of impiety." * Just as 
 all faithful children of God are members of Christ, 
 and the mind and the will and spirit of Jesus Christ 
 descend into them ; and being living members of the 
 mystical body of Christ, they are united to their Di- 
 vine Head, so tho wicked and sinful are pervaded by 
 the mind and the spirit and the will and the malice 
 of Satan : they are members of Satan, members of 
 the mystical body of Satan, and are" united to their 
 satanic head, and are under his guidance. 
 
 But, next, if any one of them strives to return to 
 God, he becomes the subject of a twofold temptation. 
 Satan follows up every deserter who leaves his camp, 
 and he follows him with an intensity of redoubled 
 malice. He multiplies all his temptations. Those 
 by which he fell before, when he tries to rise again 
 and to escape from them, Satan doubles their power 
 and their effect. He never gives him rest. If any 
 of you have tried to break off a fault, I have no 
 doubt you have found that you have been more 
 tempted to that same fault from the very time you 
 began to master it. Need I tell you why? Bo- 
 fore, you were swimming with the stream ; but 
 when you tried to break off that fault you were 
 swimming against the stream, and you felt the 
 strength of the stream against you. That is to 
 
 * 2 Thess. ii. 7. 
 
TEMPTATION. 175 
 
 say, you were going onward before the temptation 
 until you turned from sin, then you felt the full 
 force of temptation against you like the stream and 
 current of a river ; and that stream and current was 
 doubled by the malice of the temper. He is not 
 only very strong in his temptations, but he is very 
 subtle ; and when men begin to break off sins of one 
 kind, he will leave them perfectly quiet on that side, 
 and will tempt them on the other to something else 
 which is altogether unlike their former faults. As, 
 for instance, if any man has been tempted to gross 
 sins and has gained the mastery, he will find him- 
 self tempted to spiritual sins, which, casting him 
 down, will bring him back to where he was before. 
 Be sure of it, whoever begins, for example, to mortify 
 such a sin as excess in food, if he gains the mastery, 
 will find himself tempted perhaps to some spiritual 
 sin, such as anger, ill-temper, or, it may be, vain- 
 glory at what he ha% achieved. It is all one ; what 
 does it matter? There are seven capital sins, of 
 which three may be said to be of the body and four 
 of the soul, but they all cast the soul into hell ; and 
 if a man perishes by spiritual sin, he is just as cer- 
 tainly condemned to eternal death as if he perishes 
 by the grossest sins of the flesh. Satan in his sub- 
 tlety knows this, and follows up every man that has 
 turned away from him ; and those who turn from 
 
176 TEMPTATION. 
 
 him and strive to convert their souls to God are his 
 special objects of temptation. 
 
 Even those whom we call servants of God, who 
 have really turned away from Satan, and are con- 
 firmed in a life of faith and piety, they too have 
 special temptations. For instance, when Satan sees 
 any soul escape out of his hands, and no longer 
 under the dominion of the grosser sins of the body, 
 he changes himself into the likeness of an angel of 
 light. He knows that the grosser forms of temptation 
 will have no more power, that they will be disgust- 
 ing and alarming, that they will repel and will drive 
 the soul from him ; and therefore he changes himself 
 into an angel of light. He comes as a messenger of 
 peace and a preacher of justice and a teacher of 
 purity :. and then he will stimulate and excite the 
 imprudent to strain after perfections of penance and 
 perfections of prayer and mystical reaches of the 
 spiritual life, which we read q£ no doubt in saints, 
 but such as are yet far out of the grasp of those 
 who are beginning to serve God. Nevertheless, these 
 things are sufficient to turn the head and to infuse 
 vainglory, and to call men off from the humble 
 practice of daily duty, and make them climb and 
 clamber up into high places, where they have not the 
 head to stand, and at last they fall through a spir- 
 itual intoxication. So, also, those who have turned 
 
TEMPTATION. 177 
 
 away from him he tempts to a censorious judgment 
 of others. When they have light to know their own 
 faults and their eyes are opened to discern sin, the 
 use they make of their enlightened eyes is very often 
 to be quick and searching to find the faults of their 
 neighbors ; and by turning their eyes outwardly, 
 which are intended to be turned inwardly, they range 
 to and fro, finding out and censuring the faults of 
 other people, and perpetually committing rash judg- 
 ments in their hearts, and very often, sins of detrac- 
 tion with their tongues. 
 
 There is also another temptation, even for those 
 that are advancing far in the way of perfection. 
 Spiritual writers tell us that there is a temptation 
 which they call " the storm in the harbor ;" that is, 
 as a ship which has passed through a tempestuous 
 sea and has come at last into the haven of rest, and 
 is lying calmly over its anchors, may yet be struck 
 by lightning or by a sudden squall, and may founder 
 even in the port of safety ; so spiritual pride, spir- 
 itual self-love, vainglory at our own imagined perfec- 
 tion, may wreck us at last. By looking at ourselves in 
 the glass, by reading the lives of the saints until we 
 believe we are saints, by filling our mind with dispro- 
 portionate and strained imaginations, and then apply- 
 ing them to ourselves : by dreaming that we are that 
 which we can describe, and that there is an aureola, a 
 
178 TEMPTATION. 
 
 crown of light hanging over our heads, we may finally 
 cast ourselves down from God. These imaginings 
 and delusions, which come from a profound self-love, 
 and as profound a want of self-knowledge, will turn 
 the heads and the consciences even of those who have 
 escaped from grosser sins, and make them like Simon 
 the Pharisee, who, being blind to his own faults, and 
 censorious of the faults of others, was, in comparison 
 with poor Mary Magdalen, a sinner before the eyes 
 of our Lord : or like to the Pharisee in the Temple, 
 who, after thanking God he was not like other men, 
 went down to his house not justified as the poor 
 Publican was. Therefore we see that temptations are 
 inevitable and universal ; and whether you are only 
 penitents or on the way to be saints, do not expect 
 to be exempt from them. 
 
 Remember, then, that "there is nothing come 
 upon you," as the Apostle says, " but that which is 
 common to man ; and God will make also an issue, 
 or a way of escape, so that you may be able to bear 
 it." * No temptation is a perfect circle. If indeed the 
 circle of temptation were complete, there would be 
 no way out of it. God never permits any temptation 
 to be a perfect ring ; there is always an outlet, always 
 a break out of which the soul with safety may escape. - 
 
 3. There is still another reason why temptation 
 * 1 Cor. x. 13. 
 
TEMPTATION. 179 
 
 is not sin. However much you may be tempted, whe- 
 ther it be to deadly sins or to lighter, it matters not, 
 those temptations will never be -imputed to you as 
 sins, unless you willingly consent to them. This is 
 the way of escape which is always open, the sure 
 and certain issue by which every soul may pass, even 
 out of a furnace heated sevenfold. You remember, 
 some time ago we laid down as the essential condition 
 of sin, that it is an evil act contrary to the will of 
 God, with knowledge of the intellect, with the consent 
 of the will, and with the consciousness of what we are 
 doing. ~Now that one rule will precisely distinguish 
 between sins and temptations. St. Paul, in the 
 seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Komans, says : 
 " The good I would, I do not ; the evil that I would 
 not, that I do. I consent to the law of God in the 
 inward man ; but I find another law in my members, 
 warring against the law of my mind, and bringing 
 me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my 
 members. So if I do the evil that I would not, it is 
 no more I, but sin that dwelleth in me." * Therefore, 
 he distinguishes between the indwelling sin of his 
 nature and himself. He says : " It is no more I." 
 Why is it no more himself ? Because his will had 
 no part nor lot in that inward sinfulness. 
 
 The actions that we do may be distinguished, 
 * Rom. vii. 15-20. 
 
180 TEMPTATION. 
 
 therefore, into those that are deliberate, and those 
 that are not deliberate, or, as it is called, indeliberate. 
 This distinction will precisely draw the line. A 
 deliberate action of sin is what I have described — 
 with knowledge, consent, and consciousness. An 
 indeliberate action is that in which these elements 
 are wanting. Bnt yon will say : " How is that pos- 
 sible?" It is most possible. When we are out in 
 the sun, we feel the warmth by no act of our own. If 
 the wind blows cold, we feel chilled by no act of our 
 own will. All round about us, and all the day long, 
 the images of the world fill the eye, and yet we can 
 only look at one thing at a time. Though we see a 
 thousand, we can only look at one : and that one we 
 look at with the act of our will ; but all the rest simply 
 fall upon our passive sight. We go through the streets, 
 we hear a multitude of words to which we do not 
 listen — we know their meaning as they fall upon 
 our passive ear. ISTow all these are what I may call 
 indeliberate acts. There is no action of the will in 
 them : and we can no more hinder ourselves from see- 
 ing and hearing than from being hot or cold. The 
 thoughts that are in us are set in motion ; and the 
 thoughts weave their associations. The memory 
 revives, and gives up the images of the past; and 
 the imagination adds to them — and this process goes 
 on at all hours; for in truth our minds are never 
 
TEMPTATION. 181 
 
 at rest. Ay, even in sleep we dream ; which is a 
 reason to believe that, though the body is perfectly 
 suspended in its conscious action, the mind is never 
 suspended. Now a great deal of this mental action 
 may indeed become sin if we consent to it ; but it 
 is not sin if we do not consent to it : and that for 
 the following reason. 
 
 The will, as I have already said before, is the 
 rational appetite of the soul. It is the desire we 
 have in us, guided by reason, choosing and determin- 
 ing what we shall pursue. But round about the will 
 there is, first of all, a circle of affections, which, as 
 God created them, were all pure. Round about the 
 affections are the passions, which, as sin has wounded 
 them, are all of them somewhat in disorder; and 
 round about the passions are the senses — sight and 
 hearing, taste and touch — these are the inlets 
 through which sin gains entrance. The Prophet 
 says : " Death climbs up by the windows ; "* which 
 spiritual writers interpret, of sin finding its entrance 
 through the senses — through the open eyes, the open 
 ears — which are like the windows of the soul stand- 
 ing wide. Satan has no power at all to enter into 
 the soul against our will. The Holy Ghost can enter 
 into the soul, because He is the Creator of the soul, 
 and the Uncreated Spirit of God pervades all crea- 
 
 * Jer. ix. 21. 
 
182 TEMPTATION". 
 
 tures. He is the Searcher of the heart, because He 
 pervades the whole heart. He knows it all, because 
 He is present in all ; but Satan cannot enter the 
 heart as the Holy Ghost. All that he can do is 
 to stand without, watching at the windows, and 
 casting in " the fiery darts." * These " fiery darts " are 
 the temptations which enter through the senses, fall 
 upon the passions, and kindling them, disorder the 
 affections, and through them affect the will ; but if 
 the will does not consent, the presence of any amount 
 of temptation may be mere suffering, and however 
 intense, it will not be sin. 
 
 So that the way to distinguish between what is 
 temptation and what is sin is to ask yourselves, Do 
 you welcome it ? Do you open the door ? Do you 
 throw up the window ? Do you invite it to come in 
 and dwell ? or do you say : " The Lord rebuke thee — 
 get thee behind me, Satan " % How do you receive 
 these temptations ? When the fiery darts are cast in 
 by the window, do you trample them out or leave 
 them to kindle, till by the eye, or the ear, the memory, 
 and the imagination, are set on fire ? You feel as if a 
 touch had moved you ; as for example, what is a fit 
 of anger but a sudden touch of fire, which comes be- 
 fore we have a moment to deliberate % An offensive 
 answer, or some insolent gesture, or something done 
 
 * Eph. vi. 16. 
 
TEMPTATION. 183 
 
 in a way to provoke the natural passion of wrath, will 
 immediately elicit our anger. It is in our nature ; 
 we cannot help it. As on striking a flint you strike 
 a spark, so on striking human nature, anger imme- 
 diately responds ; and that first emotion of anger is 
 not sinful. It is a sin, if I deliberately welcome it 
 and say, " O, this is just come in time. This is just 
 what I wanted. I have a will to be angry." If you 
 heap on fuel, by thinking of the offence that has been 
 committed, and stir the fire to make it burn more 
 fiercely, then indeed you make it your own. I might 
 give other examples, but you can find them for your- 
 selves, because every one of the seven capital sins 
 may be taken in like manner. I have given the 
 example of one only, to save time, and also because 
 it is better that you make them for yourselves. 
 
 Another certain test whether it is temptation or 
 sin is this : does the presence of the temptation give 
 you pleasure, or pain ? Do you feel rather gratified 
 by being stirred up to a sense of resentment, or does 
 it give you a sensible pain that you have lost your 
 calmness? If you have a sensible pleasure in it, 
 then most assuredly you have been consenting ; if it 
 gives you pain, then as certainly it is contrary to 
 your will. You know it to be contrary to the law of 
 God, to the example of Jesus Christ ; you feel it to 
 be contrary to His meekness, His charity, His love, 
 
184 TEMPTATION. 
 
 His compassion, and His generosity, and you feel 
 inwardly grieved and pained with yourself that you 
 are so unlike Him. You know it to be contrary, I 
 will say, to the holiness of God and the purity of 
 your own soul ; and therefore you hate the tempta- 
 tion when it comes. You strive against it, you re- 
 ject it, you pray God to rebuke the presence of the 
 tempter and bruise him under your feet ; then you 
 may be well satisfied that all this is a temptation, and 
 not a sin. 
 
 I will not say that there may not be some ad- 
 hesion of your will, some internal contract as it were, 
 which for a moment puts you in danger ; but the 
 example of the first Adam, who, when he was 
 tempted, was sinless, and of the second, who was 
 God, are proofs to us that fiery temptations which 
 we hate may come upon innocent persons. 
 
 4. All the manifold temptations of life are used 
 by God for these two purposes : first, to try us, as I 
 have said, and to increase our merit, and therefore 
 our reward ; and secondly, to sanctify the soul — out 
 of the very temptations themselves God creates the 
 discipline of sanctification. As to the first, you un- 
 derstand what merit is. We took care to distinguish 
 and define with all precision what is the meaning of 
 merit. It does not mean that we as creatures can 
 snatch by right anything out of the hands of God ; 
 
TEMPTATION. 185 
 
 but that God has promised He will attach to certain 
 actions a certain reward of His own sovereign grace. 
 Well, a man is tempted to anger, ambition, false- 
 hood, or whatever you will — if he resists those temp- 
 tations as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, he proves 
 himself to be faithful and fearless in his warfare. 
 If he resists the temptations to sloth, indulgence, 
 and pleasure, which prevail over softer natures, he 
 shows himself to be a child of God, and a faithful 
 friend to his Divine Friend. He proves that he will 
 neither be scared nor bribed to give up his fidelity ; 
 and therefore, every such act of resistance to tempta- 
 tion is, first of all, an act of faith. It is done for 
 motives of faith, it is done because we appreciate the 
 goodness and love of God. We make a deliberate 
 choice between God and the temptation ; and we put 
 our foot on the temptation, that we may hold fast by 
 God. Every single act of resisting temptation ob- 
 tains merit and reward in the sight of God, and they 
 who are the most tempted obtain the most merit, if 
 they faithfully resist; so that the life that is har- 
 assed and buffeted with temptations without ceasing, 
 if we persevere, is laying up perpetually more and 
 more of merit before God, and more and more of re- 
 ward in eternal life. And every such act of resistance 
 to temptation is an act of love to God. Though we 
 say nothing, our actions are always breathing up- 
 
186 TEMPTATION. 
 
 wards : " O my God, I would rather die than do this : 
 and that, for Thy sake." And every time we so act, 
 God interprets it as an act of love to Himself. He 
 knows ns as our Lord knew Peter, when he said : 
 " Lord, Thou knowest all things — Thou knowest that 
 I love Thee."* And once more. It is an act of self- 
 mortification. We are mortifying ourselves in the 
 doing of it ; and when we mortify ourselves, that act 
 is acceptable in the sight of God. It is the spirit of 
 the Cross, it is an inward crucifixion of the flesh, of 
 its affections and concupiscences, which is the mark 
 of a true Christian. So, as I said before, though a 
 man were walking in the furnace of temptations of 
 'every kind, yet if he resists them he is making acts 
 of faith, love, and self -mortification all the day long, 
 increasing his merit before God, and the reward that 
 is laid up for him in heaven. 
 
 5. And the other effect is this — that God uses 
 those very temptations as the means of our sanctifi- 
 cation. You remember St. Paul says : " Lest I should 
 be lifted up by the multitude of the revelations, God 
 gave me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan 
 to buffet me. And for this cause I besought the 
 Lord thrice that it might depart from me ; but He 
 said : My grace is sufficient for thee, for strength is 
 made perfect in infirmity "f — that is to say, that God 
 * St. John xxi. 15. f Cor. xii. 7. 
 
TEMPTATION. 187 
 
 made use of his temptations to perfect him in sanc- 
 tity. First of all, He humbles us by them. There is 
 nothing that gives self-knowledge so much as temp- 
 tation. Until a man is tried, nobody knows what is 
 in him. It is an old proverb. Until a man is tried 
 in temptation, he does not know himself. He does 
 not know how he will act in any circumstances, ex- 
 cept those of his ordinary life, until he is tried. A 
 man who thinks that he is afar off from being proud, 
 let him find himself superior to his neighbors; a 
 man who thinks he is in no danger of being covet- 
 ous, let him suddenly become rieh; a man who 
 thinks he is in no danger of falling into particular 
 temptations, some day finds himself surrounded by 
 them — he then learns what he is. Some man who 
 thinks he could never tell a lie, is taken all of a sud- 
 den — he falls from his sincerity. Now temptation 
 teaches us to know what we are. It throws a light 
 in upon our hearts, and we learn that before God we 
 are spotted and stained, and full of tumultuous affec- 
 tions and passions, with crookedness in the will, 
 darkness in the understanding ; and when we come 
 to the knowledge of this, it breaks down the loftiness 
 of our vainglory. It is a very unpleasant discovery, 
 but very wholesome — nothing so salutary as for a 
 man to find his own great instability, that he cannot 
 trust himself. When he has come to know that he 
 
188 TEMPTATION. 
 
 cannot trust himself, then he has come to know his 
 need of the grace of God ; and not till then. We 
 read in the life of St. Philip Neri two most instructive 
 passages— the one is this : he used to have a habit of 
 saying, " O my God, keep Thy hand on my head ; 
 for if Thou shouldst let me go, I should break loose 
 and do Thee all manner of harm. The wound in 
 Thy side is large, but I should make it larger." He 
 had such a sense of his own instability, and of his 
 own weakness by nature, that unless the grace of 
 the Holy Spirit sanctified and sustained him, he 
 knew he could not stand ; and that if he fell, there 
 was no knowing to what he might go. This grew 
 upon him all his life ; so that in a sickness in which 
 they thought he was near to die, he prayed that God 
 would raise him up, that he might do a little more 
 good before he died. He was raised up ; but some 
 years afterwards he fel] again sick unto death, 
 as all about him believed. And for what did he 
 pray then ? " O my God, take me away, that I may 
 do no more harm." He had learned to know him- 
 self profoundly. Temptations and trials had made 
 him understand his own nature; and in the sight 
 of God he was becoming humbler and holier every 
 day. 
 
 Next, God uses temptations to chastise us ; for 
 the temptations which beset us are nine times in ten 
 
TEMPTATION. 189 
 
 the effects and the consequences of the faults and 
 sins of our life past. God makes use of the sins and 
 faults we have committed in past years — in child- 
 hood, boyhood, youth — to scourge and to humble us 
 in our manhood and old age : and He thereby brings 
 to our memory things we should have forgotten. 
 
 Lastly, he uses temptations to awaken and excite 
 in our hearts a hatred of sin ; and nothing makes us 
 hate sin so much. When once we have turned away 
 from sin, and are no longer consciously guilty, then 
 the hatefulness, hideousness, deformity, the black- 
 ness of sin, becomes more and more terrible to us the 
 longer we live. In whose eyes is sin the most hate- 
 ful ? Is it hateful in the eyes of the sinner, or is it 
 hateful in the eyes of God ? In proportion as we 
 are free from sin, in that proportion sin becomes 
 hateful. Just as we grow in light and in grace, in 
 purity, in sanctification, just in that measure sin is 
 hateful to us ; and just as we are tempted we learn 
 to know more and more the hatefulness of sin. We 
 begin first by hating sin in itself, but we do not stop 
 with that abstract hatred. Our next hatred is against 
 what we were once. We remember what we were 
 once upon a time, we recollect what our boyhood or 
 youth was, and there it is before us. The sun, by 
 the photograph, does not take so precise and so ter- 
 rible a portrait as the conscience, enlightened by the 
 
190 TEMPTATION. 
 
 Holy Ghost, takes of our past life. When we see 
 what we once were before the grace of God converted 
 us, the sins we committed in all their darkness and 
 in all their multitude, in all their perversity and in 
 all their ingratitude — when all this is before us and 
 we see our past, the character we once had, hanging 
 like a portrait on the wall, drawn by the pencil of 
 the Holy Ghost, in all its hideousness, we hate our- 
 selves. We hate what we were then ; and we hate 
 everything that reminds us of it — the places, the per- 
 sons, the memorials, the tokens — everything associ- 
 ated with it. Ay, the music and the pictures, and the 
 objects of sight, the books, and tales, and poems, the 
 persons whose influence and whispers were in time 
 past the darkness and downfall of our soul- -all this 
 is hateful. And we go on farther. Our present self, 
 our present character, full of imperfections, ay, and 
 more than that — and the more we know ourself in 
 the light of God's presence, the more we shall come 
 to have that humble sense of self-abhorrence, which, 
 in the sight of God, is the mark of a true penitent. 
 
 Now, brethren, I have given you the way to dis- 
 tinguish between sins and temptations, and I say 
 with confidence that anybody who can look upon his 
 past and upon his present, with this feeling of hatred, 
 and sorrow, and humility, may console himself with 
 the conviction that, whatever temptations beset him 
 
TEMPTATION. 191 
 
 from without, his heart and his will are intensely 
 and firmly set against those temptations, and that 
 sin has no part in him : " It is no more I, but sin 
 that dwelleth in me." * I then have given you the 
 reasons, first, that temptation is inevitable, that 
 temptation is universal, that temptation which is not 
 consented to is not sin, that temptation resisted is a 
 perpetual increase of merit, and temptation resisted 
 brings a continual growth of sanctification. 
 
 I have now only two simple counsels to add. 
 All this is true, subject to two conditions. The one 
 is that we avoid the occasions of sin. You know 
 what the word means. There is a difference between 
 an occasion of sin, and a temptation to sin. A 
 temptation to sin means a positive danger, present 
 here and now ; but an occasion of sin may mean 
 something lawful in itself which may lead us on to 
 the danger of sin. The occasions may sometimes 
 be lawful things altogether, innocent things which, 
 like slippery places in our path, deceive our tread. 
 
 There are three reasons why we are bound to 
 avoid the occasions of sin. The first is this, that no 
 man, when he makes his confession kneeling under 
 a crucifix, can make a good confession, or can escape 
 the risk of a sacrilegious confession, and no man can 
 receive a valid absolution, who does not, at the time 
 
 * Rom. vii. 17. 
 
192 TEMPTATION. 
 
 when he accuses himself of his sins, make a firm, 
 sincere, and steadfast resolution to avoid those sins 
 and all that leads to them. If he has not got the 
 will to give up the occasions which have caused him 
 in past times to sin, and to commit the very sins of 
 which he is now asking absolution in the presence of 
 God, it is a perfect certainty that he has not the 
 sorrow which is necessary for the sins he has com - 
 mitted. Now, there are two kinds of occasions : there 
 are some which are called necessary, and some that 
 are called voluntary. The distinction is this : let 
 me suppose for a moment that some of you are 
 tempted to unbelief — I trust in God none of you 
 are — but let me suppose it as possible, and that 
 you have a brother living in the same house with 
 you, who, unfortunately being an unbeliever, pours 
 out all kinds of infidel objections and rationalistic 
 doubts against the revelation of God. You cannot 
 leave your home — you cannot send him out of it — 
 there he is. You are obliged to dwell with him. It 
 is an occasion of temptation to you, and may be an 
 occasion of sin. You cannot get rid of it — it is 
 necessary — there it abides — it is beyond your power 
 and control. God will not call you to an account for 
 not leaving your home under those circumstances ? 
 But if you voluntarily and willingly seek conversation 
 on those matters with such a person, that is your 
 
TEMPTATION. 193 
 
 voluntary act ; and if yon do so yon are responsible ; 
 and unless you steadfastly resolve not to do so, you 
 cannot have absolution of those sins of doubt against 
 faith, into which you have voluntarily plunged your- 
 self. I give this as an example. Apply it in your 
 own heart to every form of sin and of temptation . I . 
 will not particularize, but you know perfectly well 
 how easily you may transfer the example I have given 
 to every other kind. It is necessary, then, to your 
 valid absolution that you should steadfastly resolve 
 to avoid every voluntary occasion of sin. 
 
 Secondly, it is a part of the reparation due from 
 you to our- Divine Saviour, that, having offended 
 Him, you will not allow yourselves to be drawn back 
 into the same occasions. The spirit of reparation 
 which you owe to Him, after He has absolved you in 
 His Precious Blood, is steadfastly to resist, and watch- 
 fully to avoid all those circumstances and occasions 
 which have led you to offend Him before. We read 
 in the book of Acts that the Christians at Ephesus 
 were given to what are called " curious arts,"* omens, 
 magic, superstition, and the like. When they were 
 illuminated by the faith, they brought their books " 
 and burned them in a public place. The people of 
 Milan, after a mission, collected together their foolish 
 books, romances, poetry, bad books and bad pictures, 
 
 * Acts xix. 19. 
 9 
 
194 TEMPTATION. 
 
 masks, dresses used in masquerades, musical instru- 
 ments used in vanity and folly, the luxurious and 
 ostentatious ornaments of their persons, and a mul- 
 titude of other things, as cards, dice, the means of 
 gambling, folly, and loss of time, whatsoever had been 
 to them causes of temptation — they brought them 
 all together into the Piazza del Duomo, and made 
 of them a great bonfire. I am not going to ask 
 you to make a great bonfire in the streets of Lon- 
 don ; but what they did materially, you may do spir- 
 itually and morally, every one of you. Yon know, 
 and will find out, what things have been the cause 
 and occasion of sin to you, not only in deed, but 
 in word, in thought, in imagination. Give them up 
 — have nothing to do with them — put them far 
 from you — turn your face from them — put your foot 
 on them ; and then, if your temptations recur, you 
 may look up in the face of your Heavenly Father 
 and your Divine Master, and take the peace of 
 knowing that the recurrence of those temptations 
 is chastisement and humiliation, and not your pres- 
 ent fault. I do not wish to go into particulars ; to 
 do so would lead me into minute details which it is 
 well rather to avoid. It is better rather to give 
 principles and rules, because men of mature mind, 
 persons of Christian faith, will be able to make an 
 application ; but I will mention the names of a few 
 of these things. 
 
TEMPTATION. 195 
 
 1 ask, first of all, in the use of jour food, how 
 much money is wasted in the needless indulgence of 
 the palate ? What delicacy and fastidiousness of 
 pleasing the taste is to be found where nobody would 
 suspect it ! How much money is wasted in drink ! 
 and I am not speaking to you as I should speak if I 
 were in some other part of my flock ; but I must 
 say that, even in those who are educated, who be- 
 long to the upper region or stratum of society, there 
 is an amount of excessive indulgence in those things 
 which blunts the intelligence, unnerves the will, 
 relaxes the habits of life, deadens the heart, extin- 
 guishes the spirit of piety, disturbs the peace of 
 homes, and may lead on to worse. I am bound to 
 tell you openly that, even among persons of educa- 
 tion, refinement and of birth, every Priest in his 
 experience, and I myself in mine, have known terrible 
 examples of this bondage to drink, which has con- 
 tinued even unto death. How many miserable souls 
 have died, bound in chains of a vice which began 
 perhaps with habits like your own, never suspected 
 it at first, until at last they become indissoluble. 
 Therefore, I say, in your food, in eating and drinking, 
 be simple, be self-denying. Have the high common 
 sense of Christians; do not care for such things; 
 give no thought to them. The Church enjoins fast- 
 ing and abstinence ; but fasting and abstinence seem 
 dying out. Why \ Because people are growing so 
 
196 TEMPTATION. 
 
 self-indulgent and so fanciful. Their health will not 
 stand it, and their physician says they cannot en- 
 dure it, and sometimes even their confessor is be- 
 sieged until he gives way. There is a law of liberty 
 by which we are to be judged at the Last Day. 
 St. James says : " So speak ye and do as being to be 
 judged by the law of liberty." * Now I am appealing 
 to you in the liberty of Christians, in the generosity 
 and gratitude of those who have been redeemed by 
 the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. I say, deny 
 yourselves in these trivial but dangerous things. 
 
 Next, there is a subject too large for me to do 
 more than touch — I mean your dress. I put it first 
 upon the ground of costliness and expense and waste 
 of money ; but I may not put it on that only. Dear 
 brethren, I always avoid entering into details on this 
 matter. I have nothing to do with colors, forms, 
 and fashions — these are things which belong to you ; 
 but I have to do with the morals of dress. I have 
 to do with the faults that spring from luxury in 
 dress ; and the sin to which luxury and ostentation of 
 dress may lead, that I have to deal with ; and what 
 I always try to do is to lay down counsels of broad 
 Christian common sense. I only wish you knew 
 where fashions come from — from some obscure room, 
 in some luxurious and corrupt city, where, by a 
 * St. James ii. 12. 
 
TEMPTATION. 197 
 
 sort of secret society of folly, rules are laid down 
 and decrees come forth year after year, which are 
 followed with a servility and, I may say, with a want 
 of Christian matronly dignity, so that the foolish 
 fashion that some foolish person has foolishly in- 
 vented is propagated all over the civilized coun- 
 tries of Europe. From winter to winter and spring 
 to spring our nearest friends are hardly to be rec- 
 ognized. They are dressed up and built up and 
 masqueraded in a way, sometimes, to provoke laugh- 
 ter, or pity, or regret. I must tell you what once 
 happened to me. I was walking through one of our 
 parks and I saw three persons, of whom one was 
 dressed according to the novelty of some fashion then 
 coming in, and there followed behind them two plain 
 working men. I heard one say to the other, " She 
 only does it to be looked at ! " Remember these words 
 of just reproof. That is the estimate which is 
 formed of fashion by the good solid sense of the 
 English people. They pity it and despise it. Our 
 forefathers and the women of another age did not 
 bend and undulate with every wind that is wafted 
 over the sea. They dressed and attired themselves 
 as Christian women, taking counsel of their good 
 sense, and attiring themselves as was befitting their 
 station in life, without singularity of plainness, 
 which is one of the affectations of vanity, and 
 
198 TEMPTATION. 
 
 without a servile copying of fashion, which is the 
 spirit of this world. This will give you certain prin- 
 ciples, and all I will add is, that there was a time 
 when in Lent people wore black. I do not say it 
 made them more pious or penitent, but I do say it 
 is more in accordance with the time of humiliation 
 and fasting than the gewgaws and glaring colors, 
 peacocks' tails and rainbows, which are to be seen 
 not only in our streets, but round about our altars. 
 There was a custom, only a little while ago (and it 
 prevails now in Catholic countries), that no woman 
 came into the house of God except her head was 
 covered ; by the wearing of a veil, or at least some 
 such covering of the head. It is enjoined in Scrip- 
 ture, and enjoined too by a law on the door of every 
 church in Rome, ay, and at this moment I believe it 
 is still to be found there. I doubt even if the revo- 
 lution has taken it down. I remember that as long 
 as Rome was the City of the Yicar of Jesus Christ, 
 women were wont to come to the church in fitting 
 attire. I leave this again to you. Now I have done ; 
 this is a subject beyond me, except so far as the 
 morals of dress. All the rest of it I leave to your 
 good sense and to your piety. 
 
 I cannot dwell on the other points, but I would 
 say: study well what you can do, in a spirit of 
 liberty and generosity, in the expenditure of money. 
 
TEMPTATION. 199 
 
 See how many thousands are in want ! The hos- 
 pitals of London will not contain the one-fifteenth 
 part of those that are mortally sick ; and we go 
 about spending money without thinking of those 
 who are dying round about us. There are tens of 
 thousands of children perishing in the streets with- 
 out Christian education ; and we can, with all pos- 
 sible calmness, go and squander our money upon 
 ourselves. I apply the same to your pleasures. I 
 am no rigorist and no puritan, and I love to see 
 people happy and to look on at their innocent enjoy-, 
 ment ; but there are some kinds of enjoyments and 
 amusements, some kinds of tastes, which a Christian 
 instinct forbids us to approve. Dear brethren, I 
 hope you will consult Holy Scripture and your con- 
 science, and see what kind of amusement and what 
 kind of pleasure you will look back on calmly from 
 your deathbed, and what kind of enjoyment will give 
 you peace in that hour. Lastly, I would say to you, 
 make a resolution this Lent — for Lent is now finish- 
 ing. We shall meet again on Good Friday to medi- 
 tate upon the Passion of our Divine Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ. Make now some one reso- 
 lution of self-denial out of your full Christian liberty ; 
 offer up something as a memorial. I will not pre- 
 scribe it ; choose it for yourselves. 
 
 Prayer, piety, watchfulness, self-denial, and purity 
 
200 TEMPTATION. 
 
 of heart — these five things will keep your will 
 firm, and if your will be firm it will expel every 
 temptation that enters by the senses, or by the 
 passions, or by the affections, as the flame of a fur- 
 nace which consumes everything that approaches to 
 its mouth. It will expel and cast out of you all 
 things contrary to your sanctiiication. Remember 
 then what our Lord has promised. He suffered 
 temptation that He might have a fellow-feeling with 
 you ; and you may appeal to Him in your tempta- 
 tions. You may say, " O my Lord, who didst suffer 
 in the desert for my sake, Thou seest the power of 
 this temptation which is upon me. Have pity on 
 me ; uphold me, for of myself I cannot stand." He 
 knows how to feel with those who are tempted, and 
 in the midst of your temptations He is perpetually 
 saying to each one of you : " He that overcometh, to 
 him I will give to eat of the tree of Life, whiih is in 
 the midst of the paradise of my God. He that over- 
 cometh shall be a pillar in the temple of my God, 
 and he shall go no more out. To him that over- 
 cometh I will give to eat of the hidden manna and a 
 white counter, and on the white counter a new name 
 written, which name knoweth no man save only him 
 that receiveth it. He that overcometh shall sit down 
 in My throne, even as I also overcame and am sat 
 down in the throne of My Father." * 
 * Apoc. ii. 7, 17 ; iii. 12, 21. 
 
VII. 
 THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 
 
 9* 
 
THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 
 
 From the sixth hour there was darkness over the whole earth 
 until the ninth hour ; and about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with 
 a loud voice, saying : Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani ? that is to say, 
 My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ? St. Matt, xxvii. 54. 
 
 It was about the third hour when Jesus set out on 
 
 the way to Calvary ; and it was towards the sixth 
 
 hour that He reached the place of His passion. 
 
 They stripped Him of His garments, and left Him 
 
 sitting in the cold, withering morning wind ; and 
 
 they began to prepare the crosses of the crucifixion. 
 
 He sat patiently waiting, in His wounds, upon the 
 
 top of that hill ; and at last, when the cross was 
 
 ready, He was nailed upon it. The cross was lifted 
 
 up in the eyes of men ; and the Son of God was 
 
 seen stripped and stretched upon it, hanging by the 
 
 weight of His whole body upon the nails, driven 
 
 through His hands and feet. They then began to 
 
 crucify the thieves that were with Him ; and some 
 
 time passed, while He was all alone in His agony. 
 
 (203) 
 
204: THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 
 
 They were so busy, they were so intent upon this 
 work of death — plying the hammer and the nails in 
 the cruel work of crucifixion — and the people who 
 stood by were so fixed upon the scene of horror, that 
 no one perceived that the sky was growing sickly, 
 that the morning became yellow, that a mist was 
 covering the sun, and that shadows, like the shadows 
 of the evening, were falling upon the earth. These 
 things they did not perceive, till of a sudden the 
 thick darkness became palpable ; then they became 
 conscious of it as in a moment. They felt it to be a 
 portent and a sign of the anger of God. Thick 
 darkness covered the hill of Calvary ; and the people, 
 one by one, began to stream away from the top of 
 the mountain and from that sight of horror — struck 
 with fear but not with repentance — overwhelmed 
 by horror of that supernatural darkness. And if 
 there was fear upon Calvary, what was there in 
 Jerusalem? If the birds became silent, and the 
 creatures of the field herded together, as in some 
 unwonted terror, what was the fear that fell upon 
 men % What was the terror that fell upon the multi- 
 tude who had cried out, " His blood be upon us, and 
 upon our children V* * They already saw the witness 
 of God's wrath coming to take them at their word. 
 Along the streets of Jerusalem men could not find 
 
 * St. Matt, xxvii. 25. 
 
THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS, 205 
 
 their way ; they encountered one another in the dark- 
 ness ; they fell flat on the earth for fear ; or sat on 
 the doorsteps, not knowing where to iind their home. 
 If there was fear in the streets of Jerusalem, what 
 was there in the houses of Annas and of Caiaphas 
 and of Pilate ? What was there in the homes and in 
 the hearts of those who had consciously shed the 
 innocent blood? The darkness was also upon the 
 Temple, and in the courts of the Temple, and in the 
 Holy of Holies ; and the priests could not see to ac- 
 complish the sacrifice. The sacrifice was interrupted, 
 and they could not see each other's face. The Sanc- 
 tuary was filled with the tokens of the wrath of 
 God and of the departure of His Presence. Such was 
 the darkness which covered all the earth ; and in the 
 midst of it, and in a darkness, if possible, deeper than 
 that which was visible, Jesus cried with a loud voice : 
 " My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me V 
 Now, brethren, this is the part of our Lord's 
 Passion to which I wish to draw your thoughts, and 
 I wish to connect it with the profound truth on 
 which our minds have been set in all the past days 
 — I mean the sorrow for sin, the conversion of the 
 soul, contrition of heart, the grace of compunction, 
 by which we obtain pardon through the Most Pre- 
 cious Blood. But here is a wonder and a mystery. 
 That God should become incarnate is in itself a 
 
206 THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 
 
 mystery of faith ; and yet, to God's omnipotence all 
 things are possible. That God, being made man, 
 should be tempted, seems to follow from the nature 
 of His humanity — that being made man He should 
 die is only the law of man, and He accepted it for 
 our sakes ; but that He should be forsaken of His 
 Father, that His sinless soul should be darkened, 
 that He should taste this penalty which is attached 
 to guilt — this is indeed a mystery, this is a wonder 
 which surpasses all beside. Let us, then, try to 
 understand what was this dereliction, this isolation, 
 this darkness, this solitude of the divine soul of 
 Jesus — let us trace, as far as it is possible for us, 
 what was its nature, what were its reasons, what are 
 its instructions to us. 
 
 1. It consisted in three things ; and the first of 
 those three things was the unutterable and uncon- 
 soled and unrelieved pain of the body. When He 
 was in His temptation, after He had fasted forty 
 days and forty nights, angels came and ministered 
 unto Him. He was refreshed in the f aintness and in 
 the exhaustion of His temptation. In the Agony of 
 the Garden, when He sweat great drops of Blood, 
 there was seen an angel from heaven strengthening 
 Him. Holy angels were about Him in His tempta- 
 tion and in His Agony; but upon the Cross — not 
 one. There was no ray of consolation, no ministering 
 
THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 207 
 
 of relief ; He hung upon the Cross with the whole 
 weight of His Sacred Humanity, and with the unre- 
 lieved anguish of His frame. As He had said before : 
 " Thinkest thou not that I cannot ask My Father, and 
 He would send Me twelve legions of angels ?" * if He 
 had had the will to ask it, there would have been 
 angelic ministries in myriads round about Him. He 
 had not the will to ask it : He deprived Himself of 
 their ministry and of their relief ; and He seemed to 
 plead with his Father, as much as to say, " Thou 
 knowest My need, and yet I will not ask it. Thou 
 knowest well My weakness and My pain, and Thou 
 couldst relieve Me if Thou wouldst ; and if in Thy 
 wisdom Thou seest it good, I trust Myself in Thy 
 hands — I will not ask Thee." 
 
 It is impossible, dear brethren, for any words of 
 ours to draw out, or in the least to describe, the 
 agony of the crucifixion ; and,- for myself, I always 
 feel, when attempts are made to picture or to paint 
 the agonies of the Cross, that they not only fall short 
 of our thoughts, but they seem to deaden our feel- 
 ing. How is it possible to understand the agony 
 of those cold wounds, from a whole night of scourg- 
 ing, the long hours in which His Sacred Flesh was 
 furrowed to the bone % And now those wounds, grown 
 cold in the chill of the night, were opened once more 
 * St. Matt, xxxvi. 53. 
 
208 THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 
 
 upon Calvary, when from His sacred body they 
 rudely dragged His garments, all clotted with dried 
 blood and cleaving to His wounds. Who can con- 
 ceive this bodily anguish ? Who can imagine the 
 crown of thorns with which He had been twice 
 crowned; which had been beaten upon His head, 
 and had been torn from His head in the stripping, 
 and again forced upon His brows — that crown of 
 thorns, which hindered all power of resting His 
 head upon the Cross ; for if it touched the Cross, 
 the thorns pierced deeper? Or who can conceive 
 the rending of those wounds when — the sharp nails 
 driven through his hands and feet — the whole 
 weight of his body stretched and tore them open 
 till the very structure of the hands and feet was 
 distorted? Or who can conceive the thirst — the 
 parching, the drying thirst of that Sacred Body, which 
 wrung from Him the cry, " I thirst " — that is, the 
 dying of the whole frame when the vital spirits ebbed, 
 the draining of blood, the chilling of the wind, the 
 fulfillment to the letter of the words of the Psalmist 
 in prophecy : " My tongue cleaveth to the roof of my 
 mouth. Thou hast brought me into the dust of 
 death V * Dear brethren, I cannot attempt — and I 
 feel you would rather I should not attempt, but that 
 I should leave to your hearts — the conception of the 
 
 * Psalm xxi. 16. 
 
THE DEEELICTION ON THE CROSS. 209 
 
 bodily pains of our Divine Redeemer. And all this 
 without relief. There was no ministry of so much 
 as one angel to help Him ; there was no diminution 
 of one anguish of the body ; but He suffered to the 
 last all the agony of His crucifixion ; and in the 
 midst of it His Heavenly Father left Him there, to 
 drink of the chalice which he had chosen, even to 
 the last drop, and all alone to die. 
 
 2. But next there was a desolation, if possible, 
 deeper still. It was not only for the three hours that 
 He hung upon the Cross, but for three-and-thirty 
 years He had been the Man of Sorrows. There were 
 two thieves, two malefactors, crucified with Him, 
 one on the right and one on the left, and they suf- 
 fered the same bodily agony ; but He had another 
 anguish of which they knew nothing — there was the 
 unimaginable loneliness of the Son of God. The 
 sympathy of the Son of God is so large that He 
 can feel with and for every son of man. There is 
 not among the sons of men any so outcast, with 
 whom the Son of God cannot sympathize in all the 
 largeness of His Sacred Heart, and all the tenderness 
 of His manhood. He knows all our sorrows, He 
 knows all our sadness, He knows all the wounds of 
 our hearts, He knows even the miseries we have 
 brought upon ourselves by sin ; and though sinless 
 Himself, He is touched by the feeling of our infirm- 
 
210 THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 
 
 ities, and has compassion on ns. But for Him there 
 was no commensurate sympathy. He was in this 
 creation of His own making, and in the midst of His 
 own creatures, without the sympathy of one who could 
 adequately sympathize with Him. At the most we 
 are but creatures, even His Immaculate and Blessed 
 Mother, she was but a creature ; and the sympathy of 
 that immaculate heart, though the largest of all, was 
 not adequate to the great sorrow of the Son of God. 
 All His friends, all His disciples, all His brethren, all 
 that were round about Him, were incapable of meet- 
 ing the demands for sympathy, such as the Sacred 
 Heart of Jesus needed. This was the filling up of 
 the divine loneliness of the Sacred Heart through all 
 His earthly life — the completion of those three-and- 
 thirty years of absolute and divine solitude. We 
 think He was alone, when He was in the desert 
 in His temptation. He was indeed alone, but not 
 more alone than when He was in the crowded streets 
 of Jerusalem. The Sacred Heart of Jesus was too 
 large, too divine, to find any companion, any fellow ; 
 and upon the Cross those mental sorrows were at 
 their full. All the streams had run into the deep 
 sea of that last sorrow, of which He said : " My soul 
 is sorrowful even unto death." * 
 
 " My soul ! " The whole abyss of that human and 
 deified soul of the Son of God, with a capacity of 
 
THE DERELICTION ON- THE CROSS. 211 
 
 sorrow beyond our imagination, was filled with sorrow 
 — and even " nnto death." What were those sorrows % 
 First of all, for three-and-thirty years He had been 
 in a world of sin, and in contact with sin. The Sin- 
 less One had breathed an atmosphere which is laden 
 with our sins. He had looked upon conntenances, of 
 which every one bore the marks, and most of them 
 the distortion, of sin. His ears had been filled with 
 voices which had the sharpness of sin. Sin had 
 come and breathed upon Him. Sin conversed with 
 Him. Sin came and looked in His face. Sin came 
 to Him, not knowing Who it was; and the Holy 
 One was surrounded — crowded upon by sinners. For 
 three-and-thirty years He endured this agony; and 
 the Agony in the Garden, when He sweat drops of 
 blood, was but the last expression of that mental 
 anguish which He had endured throughout all the 
 long years of His earthly life. 
 
 He had not only lived in the midst of this atmo- 
 sphere of evil, but He had been tempted. The 
 tempter had drawn near to Him — the tempter, with 
 insolence, had come to suggest evil to that divine 
 and sinless Heart — to suggest to Him mistrust of 
 His Heavenly Father, to suggest to Him presump- 
 tion, to put before Him visions of ambition, of self- 
 love, of vainglory. The anguish of that temptation 
 can be known only to those that are sinless. 
 
 Besides this, for three-and-thirty years He had 
 
212 THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 
 
 looked upon the vision of death — He, the Creator of 
 all things, who knew the perfection of His own work, 
 who knew to what pattern He had formed it, for what 
 use and for what end — He saw it ruined and a wreck 
 — trampled down, disfigured, dying daily. Lazarus 
 in the tomb was a holy and beautiful example of that 
 law of dissolution, compared with the universal death 
 which He saw devouring His creatures — the whole 
 creation groaning and travailing in pain together. 
 
 Once more. He could not trust even His own 
 friends. There was one whom He had called to be 
 a disciple, chosen to be an apostle, one whom He 
 had taught with His divine words, whom He had 
 impressed with the miracles of His power, whom He 
 had commissioned to go out and preach His kingdom, 
 whom He had fed at last with His Body and Blood, 
 whose feet He washed in that last night of His 
 sorrow ; and even he, His own familiar friend — he 
 sold Him ; and having sold Him, he betrayed Him ; 
 and betraying Him, he betrayed Him with a kiss. 
 
 There was another sorrow- — He was hated of men. 
 Have you ever been hated by anybody? Do you 
 know what it is to have the malice of some one who 
 hates you pursuing you everywhere ? — or have you 
 ever known what it is to be hated by some one who 
 never takes the pains or trouble to pursue you? 
 Are you conscious that to be the object of hatred to 
 
THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 213 
 
 any one, justly or unjustly, is an exceeding bitter- 
 ness, and a pain whenever we remember it ? Now He 
 was conscious at all times that He was an object of 
 universal and preternatural hatred by the multitudes 
 of Jerusalem. He knew that He had been con- 
 demned unjustly, accused falsely ; that lying witness 
 had been borne against Him ; but that men believed 
 Him to be guilty of the blasphemies of which He 
 was accused. God knew his innocence, and a hand- 
 ful of His disciples, and the poor it may be, for 
 " they heard Him gladly ; " * but the rulers, and the 
 rich, and the Pharisees, and the scribes, and the 
 lawyers, and the chief priests, and those who were 
 the leaders of the people, and the multitudes who 
 were deceived by them, believed Him to be guilty. 
 They hated Him for His guilt. And they hated him 
 for His holiness too ; He was the object of hatred, 
 not only because they had accused and condemned 
 Him, but because His presence rebuked them ; and 
 to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, full of pity and com- 
 passion and tenderness and of pardon, giving its own 
 life-blood for the salvation of His enemies, praying 
 for them on the Cross, " Father, forgive them, for 
 they know not what they do ! " f the consciousness 
 of that hatred was an intensity of anguish. 
 
 But, perhaps, He had friends still that were faith- 
 * St. Mark xii. 37. f St. Luke xxiii. 34 
 
214 THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 
 
 fill. There were, indeed, loving hearts — there was 
 His Immaculate Mother, always near the Cross; 
 there was the Beloved Disciple, who never forsook 
 Him; there was poor Mary Magdalen, who stood 
 with the spotless and sinless. Where were the rest ? 
 Where was Peter ? He was somewhere with his 
 head covered in his mantle, weeping bitterly. And 
 where were the rest ? Scattered afar off — not a 
 friend near Him : even His own dearest friends 
 had forsaken Him. 
 
 And then, lastly, there was the greatest sorrow of 
 the Son of God — the consciousness that in that hour 
 the great sin of the world had been accomplished : 
 that man had laid hands upon God, that, after 
 thousands of years of sin and of rebellion, he had 
 overtaken Him at last. The divine presence being out 
 of the reach of man, God had become incarnate. At 
 last God was made man — God came into the midst 
 of men — God was within the reach of the arms of 
 men ; and they laid hands upon Him, they scourged 
 Him, they blasphemed Him, and they put Him to 
 death. The world murdered its own Maker, and sin- 
 ners slew their own Redeemer. The world shed the 
 Blood of God ; it stained itself, and imprecated upon 
 itself the Blood of the Divine Innocent. He foresaw 
 in that hour the multitude of souls that, notwith- 
 standing the shedding of His Precious Blood, would 
 
THE DEEEHCTION ON THE CROSS. 215 
 
 never be saved — the redeemed souls, who shall go 
 down alive into hell — souls in multitudes who should 
 never hear His name, and would yet sin against Him 
 — Souls in multitudes, still worse, who having heard 
 His name would still sin against Him — souls on 
 whom He had poured out the grace of His Holy 
 Spirit, and who nevertheless would do despite to 
 Him, and perish impenitent, and go down, like the 
 leaves in autumn, countless in their multitude, into 
 eternal death. All these sorrows, these mental sor- 
 sows, which in prophecy were before Him all His 
 life-time, rose at last to their fullness, and inun- 
 dated the Sacred Heart in the hour of His Passion. 
 But there is still one more part of this suffering. He 
 might well say on the Cross, " My friends, My friends, 
 why have you forsaken Me % " but His true desolation 
 was this, that He had to cry, " My God, My God, 
 why hast Thou forsaken me ? " * That men forsake 
 Me is no wonder — I know what is in man ; but that 
 Thou shouldst forsake Me ? Why is it % 
 
 Now, brethren, we come to what I said in the 
 beginning is a divine depth of mystery — round 
 about which, indeed, we may walk in adoration ; into 
 which we shall never be able to descend — still there 
 is somewhat of this mystery that we can understand. 
 First of all, let us understand what that sorrow was 
 
 * Psalm xxi. 2. 
 
216 THE DERELICTION ON THE CEOSS. 
 
 not. It was not a separation of the Son from the 
 Fatuer. The Father and the Son and the Holy 
 Ghost are one God — con substantial, the Uncreated, 
 the Infinite, the Ever-Blessed ; therefore it was noth- 
 ing whatsoever of separation of the Son from the 
 Father, or of the Father from the Son. Again : the 
 Godhead and the Humanity in the One Person of 
 Jesus Christ, from the moment of the Incarnation, 
 by hypostatic union — that is, by union in one per- 
 sonality — are indissolubly united to all eternity ; and 
 therefore those words did not import or imply a 
 shadow of separation between the Godhead and the 
 Manhood of Jesus Christ. What, then, do they 
 signify ? Just as, in the Agony in the Garden, the 
 light and the sweetness and the consolation of His 
 Godhead were voluntarily withdrawn from the suf- 
 fering of His Manhood, because He had chosen for our 
 sakes to let in the full tide and flood of sorrow to fill 
 His Sacred Heart, so upon the Cross. We know what 
 follows after our sins — what darkness and desolation 
 come upon us ; but this comes from our corruption, 
 from our rebellion, from the sin that is in us. The 
 Son of God, the Holy One, had our humanity ; but in 
 that humanity there was no disorder, no corruption, 
 no spot of sin, for He had deified our humanity ; and 
 therefore all that He suffered was by a voluntary act 
 of His own — willingly withdrawing for a time the 
 
THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 217 
 
 sweetness and the light and the consolation of His 
 Heavenly Father. From the first moment of the 
 Incarnation, as you know, the human soul of Jesus 
 was in the Beatific Yision. It saw God, it loved 
 God with His whole Heart, and it worshipped God 
 with His whole soul; and while He was on earth*, 
 a wayfarer, He was already in the possession and 
 fruition of the Beatific Yision. But in the Agony in 
 the Garden, and in the three hours upon the Cross, 
 He voluntarily withdrew, as it were, the light and 
 the sweetness which He always had by right as God, 
 and by merit as Man. He allowed a veil, a cloud — 
 as the darkness covered the sun at that hour — to 
 spread over His soul. He allowed a darkness to be 
 drawn between the sweetness and the light of His 
 Godhead and His human soul ; and why was this ? 
 It was for our sakes. It was voluntary as His Incar- 
 nation, as His Temptation, as His Agony, as His 
 Death ; He was offered up, because He willed it ; He 
 was troubled in the Garden, because He willed it ; 
 He was desolate upon the Cross, because He willed 
 it. It was His own voluntary act, and that for our 
 sakes. It was not only voluntary ; it was also* 
 vicarious — it was suffered in our stead. And why ? 
 Because the penalty of our sin is separation from 
 God ; because separation from God is eternal death. 
 Because the loss of God is hell ; because the penalty 
 10 
 
218 THE DEEELICTIOX OX THE CEOSS. 
 
 of sin is the loss of God. Because, even after death , 
 those who are saved, unless they be perfectly expiated, 
 will be detained from the Yision of God ; because in 
 this life every sin we commit is followed by a shadow ; 
 and that shadow is darkness, and that darkness is a 
 part of desolation. And because we are under this 
 law, holy, just, and good, by which every sin is fol- 
 lowed by the penalty of desolation, He who, to ex- 
 piate all our sins and pains, voluntarily and vicari- 
 ously suffered all that His sinless and Divine Soul 
 could suffer, permitted Himself, in that moment of 
 His agony, to be deprived of the sweetness and con- 
 solation and light even of His own Godhead. The 
 inferior part of His Humanity, which suffered like as 
 ours, was in the dust of death, in the sorrows of this 
 world, and in the desolation of the hiding of His 
 Father's face. 
 
 And now, why was this ? First, as I have said, 
 to make expiation. It was to expiate our sin and our 
 pains, to save us from that and from worse. He 
 endured it for our sakes ; and He endured it that He 
 might reveal His love. He had revealed His love by 
 every manifestation, by works of mercy, by healing 
 lepers, by giving sight to the blind, by raising the 
 dead, by absolving the penitent. He had spoken words 
 of grace such as never came out of the lips of man — 
 words which were more than the words of man ; and 
 
THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 219 
 
 if men had had hearts to understand, they would 
 have known them to be words of a Divine Person ; 
 but these things were not enough : they did not even 
 yet persuade us of the great mystery of His love. 
 He had need of another language, of other words, of 
 something more articulate, something more convinc- 
 ing, something more persuasive : and what could that 
 be ? Sorrow unto death, penalty even to the extreme 
 verge of what is possible for the Son of God to suffer ; 
 and therefore He chose, voluntarily and vicariously, 
 to endure all things that His Divine Soul could 
 endure for our sakes, to convince us, if possible, of 
 His love — if possible, to make us believe how much 
 He loves us — if possible, to prevail over the hardness 
 of our hearts, that we at last may be convinced and 
 persuaded of the exceeding love of our Divine Re- 
 deemer, and all this to make us trust His love, that 
 by love He may win our love again. He knew that 
 it is not by command that we can be made to love 
 Him, it is not by reasoning that the love of God is 
 awakened in the heart, it is not by any means what- 
 soever save only by the manifestation of love. As we 
 know among ourselves, it is love that awakens love, 
 it is friendship, that kindles friendship, it is the sen- 
 sible manifestation of kindness and of tenderness of 
 heart, of disinterested and self-denvin£ love — it is 
 this that awakens us to love again ; so is it towards 
 
220 THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 
 
 Him. And He therefore endured all things first, to 
 persuade us to trust in His love. The great sin of 
 the world is that it does not trust in the love of God. 
 It is your great sin. It is the cause of all your sins. 
 You never could sin against God if you had the 
 feeling of His love to you ; you never could venture, 
 you could not endure to do it. If you felt the love 
 of God to you personally, as you feel the warmth of 
 the noonday sun, it would be impossible with the 
 knowledge of your heart to sin against Him. It 
 would be morally impossible. It would be the vio- 
 lation of your new nature. He said : " Greater love 
 hath no man than this : if a man give his life for his 
 friends." * He has given His life for you. What can 
 He say to you, what could He do for you, if this will 
 not persuade you ? Is it in the power of the Word 
 of God to convince vou of the love of Jesus Christ, if 
 His agony on the Cross is not enough ? Therefore, 
 He is all day long saying these words to you : " O My 
 friends, it was for you I was crucified. O My beloved, 
 it is you I have loved even unto death. O my chil- 
 dren, for you I shed My Precious Blood. What more 
 could I have done for you than that which I have 
 done? What more could I have given than that 
 which I have given ? What more could I suffer for 
 you than that which I have already suffered ? But you 
 * St. John xv. 13. 
 
THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 221 
 
 will not come unto Me that yon may have life — yon 
 will not believe My love. How often wonld I have 
 gathered yon nnder the shadow of My Cross ! How 
 often wonld I have covered you with the hem of My 
 garment ! For I have sought after you, to try and 
 bring yon within My own Sacred Heart ; but ye would 
 not." He has been burning with love to us, and we 
 have stood at a distance, cold and unmoved. He says 
 to us from the Cross : " What more could I do ? 
 what more could I give ? what more could I suffer ? 
 If there were anything I could suffer, I would suffer 
 it still. If it were necessary to die again for yon to 
 save you, I would die again. If it were possible to 
 suffer more, it should be suffered." And what is your 
 answer ? I do not mean in words, I mean in deeds. 
 He says to us : "I have loved you not in word, but 
 in deed. I have loved you not in professions, but 
 in Passion and Death. I have loved you not in 
 such protestations as Peter made to me, but by a 
 reality which no man can deny, no man can fail to 
 understand. I suffered death upon the Cross for 
 you. I was forsaken even of My Father ; and that 
 for your sakes." 
 
 Here, then, dear brethren, we have the meaning 
 in some little measure, the mere outline of this de- 
 reliction of our Divine Lord. It consisted in the 
 unrevealed agonies of the body, in the unconsoled 
 
222 THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 
 
 sorrows of His Sacred Heart ; and lastly, in that 
 mysterious taste of darkness and desolation, in the 
 withdrawal of the light and the sweetness of the 
 countenance of God, even in the hour of His 
 death. 
 
 Now, why was this ? When we are in sorrow 
 and in trouble of mind ; when pains of body, sharp 
 sicknesses, unkindness, ingratitude, the forsaking of 
 friends, the bitterness of life ; when dryness of heart, 
 darkness of soul — when these things come upon us, 
 we have no need to say, " My God, my God, why hast 
 Thou forsaken me ? " We know why, or we might 
 know, and we ought to know in one moment. It is 
 no mystery why we should be forsaken. Look back 
 on your mortal sins in childhood and boyhood, and 
 youth and manhood, and the mortal sins that you 
 remember, and the mortal sins you have forgotten, 
 and the mortal sins that you have not repented as 
 you ought even to this day. We have no reason to 
 ask, " Why hast thou forsaken me ? " Look back 
 upon the cloud of venial sins, which through long 
 years you have been committing — sins of self-love, 
 sins of vanity, sins of sloth, sins of ingratitude, sins 
 of neglect of God, sins of hardness of heart with the 
 crucifix before your eyes, sins of coldness even in the 
 presence of the Blessed Sacrament — look at that 
 cloud of venial sins which comes down and lowers 
 
THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 223 
 
 over you, perhaps every day of your lives. We have 
 no need to ask, " Why hast Thou forsaken me ? " 
 Once more. The sins of omission that you commit, 
 the duties that you so readily leave undone, the acts 
 of love and fidelity to our Divine Master which with 
 such lukewarmness you offer to Him, the great want 
 of generosity in all your life, the want of love re- 
 sponding to His love, and tenderness to His tender- 
 ness — surely these things explain why our hearts 
 should be cold and dark, and our prayers dry, and 
 why we should be buffeted with temptation, and why 
 we should find no solace. We have no difficulty in 
 understanding this. Nay, more — look at our insta- 
 bilities. What a life is ours ! We serve God by fits 
 and by starts ; we have cold fits and hot fits, like 
 men in an ague, like those that are struck by fever ; 
 sometimes we are in earnest, sometimes we give 
 up ; we are carried away by gusts of temptation ; 
 a frown of the world will kill off all our good reso- 
 lutions. Such is our life, perpetually tossed to and 
 fro, like waves of the sea. Where is our stability ? 
 And if we are unstable, why is it ? Because we do 
 not love. A friend that loves a friend does not vary 
 in his friendship. The variations of friendship show 
 how shallow and how reckless our love is. 
 
 And lastly, I say reckless ; and by reckless I mean 
 this — that we live all the day long as if Christ had 
 
224 THE DERELICTION ON THE CEOSS. 
 
 never died for us. Dear brethren, ask yourselves 
 what one thing is there that you left undone yester- 
 day for the recollection of the Passion of Jesus Christ 
 — for I hope you were then remembering the day of 
 His Agony in the Garden. You remember that we 
 were yesterday on the eve of the day of His cruci- 
 fixion. We are in Holy Week and the midst of the 
 thoughts of the Passion of Jesus Christ. Is it the 
 chief thought in your hearts ? What did all this 
 do for you yesterday, or what one thing did you do 
 or leave undone for the love of our Lord in His 
 Passion ? And if this be so, we have no reason to 
 wonder that we have sorrows, pains, chastisements, 
 rods, visitations, desolations. We lose the light of 
 our Father's countenance. The sweetness and the 
 consolation which we had once, it may be, are gone. 
 We have them no longer ; but the fault is our own. 
 Well, now let us learn for what end and purpose 
 this is. If Jesus Christ did not love us, He would 
 leave us to sin and to prosper, He would leave us to 
 go on as we are, and to enjoy the world. These are 
 the words of God : " Whom the Lord loveth He 
 chasten eth ; and scourge th every son whom He 
 receiveth."* If you be without chastisement, whereof 
 all are partakers, then are you no true sons of God. 
 The sign and the token of the love of our Divine 
 * Prob. iii. 12 ; Heb. xii. 6. 
 
THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 225 
 
 Lord is when He takes the thorns of His Crown 
 and puts them into our liead, and the nails of His 
 Crucifixion and runs them into our hands and feet 
 — the feet which we have used to do evil and to 
 walk in ways contrary to His will, them he crucifies ; 
 and the hands that have been busy in vanity and 
 folly and worldliness, and worse, on them in His 
 love He will imprint the marks of His own Crucifix- 
 ion ; and upon the heart that has been unfaithful to 
 Him, that has been wandering, selfish, careless, self- 
 indulgent, He impresses the tokens of His Passion. 
 By crosses, sicknesses, visitations, bereavements, 
 afflictions, chastisements, and rods — by those sacred 
 spiritual visitations of desolation and of dryness — 
 by these He wakens us up to know Him ; to see 
 that we are offending against Him, and that the penal 
 consequences of our sins and faults have found us 
 out. He permits them to come upon us, and permits 
 them in pity for our sanctification. He knows that 
 without them we cannot be saved ; He knows that 
 without them we should sin and prosper, that we 
 should go on in our worldly way, and should never 
 see God; and therefore He uses these things with 
 a manifold wisdom, with an exceeding tenderness. 
 He uses them first to check us, and, if need be, 
 to strike us down. A sinner in the guilt of his 
 sin, is struck down sometimes like Saul on the 
 10* 
 
226 THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 
 
 way to Damascus. A light from heaven which no 
 eye but his can see, and- he alone can recognize, 
 strikes him down with the consciousness of himself, 
 so that when he rises up he is blind to the world, 
 and his eyes are opened upon his own state, his own 
 peril, and his own guilt. It is in times of affliction, 
 sorrow, sickness, anxiety, and pain of heart and mind 
 — and in these last above all — that this loving stroke 
 of our Divine Saviour's hand is felt. He sends or 
 permits these desolations and sorrows to chastise 
 Us, to make us recollect what it is we have done. I 
 dare say you all know what it is to feel sad and cast 
 down, and to say : " I do not know why it is — I know 
 there is some cause ; and I know I felt it, and knew 
 it at the moment ; but I cannot remember now what 
 it is that has brought me this sadness." After a little 
 pause of thought, we trace out the real reason — we 
 remember what it was ; we have found how justly He 
 has dealt with us ; and this chastisement gives us a 
 self-knowledge, without which there is little contri- 
 tion. Moreover, it is by these trials that He puts 
 to test the love that we profess to Him. It is a 
 poor love which is warm only in the sunshine. It 
 is a mean love of God which does not bum even 
 under a cross. If we only serve God because it 
 is sweet — if we only turn from sin because we are 
 afraid of hell — if our motives for doing right, are that 
 
THE DERELICTION ON THE CEOSS. 227 
 
 we have a servile fear of doing wrong, we are merce- 
 naries and hirelings, we are unworthy of the pure 
 and generous love of Jesus Christ. He, the sinless 
 Son of G-od, endured all things for us — not for His 
 own sake, but solely and purely for ours ; and we 
 serve Him only for our own. It is by these penal 
 
 • 
 
 consequences of our sins that He tests our love and 
 purifies it, that He cleanses it of self-love, self- 
 indulgence, and of all that dwelling upon self, of 
 wounded self, of that pity for ourselves, springing 
 from the self-love of our heart which towards God 
 is — I Avill not say dead, but that it has little pulse 
 and little warmth within it. 
 
 Lastly, whatever sorrows you have of the body, 
 of the mind, or of the soul, these are intended 
 to produce in you one thing above all — that is, 
 compunction. Compunction means sorrow for sin, 
 springing from the love of the Five Sacred Wounds 
 which Jesus suffered in our behalf. Attrition, as 
 you know, means the sorrow of the heart that is 
 bruised ; contrition, the sorrow of the heart that is 
 broken ; compunction, the sorrow of the heart that 
 is pierced with Jesus Christ. Until we have come 
 to the foot of the Cross, and have contemplated the 
 Five Wounds of our Divine Saviour, and the love 
 of the Sacred Heart through His side opened by the 
 lance, and until we have entered into His love, and 
 
228 THE DERELICTION ON THE CROSS. 
 
 sorrowed because of that love, and because of our own 
 want of love, and because of our own ingratitude, our 
 sorrow is not worthy of the name of compunction. 
 He is perfecting in you this generous sorrow. If 
 you are suffering pains of body, unite them with 
 the sufferings of Jesus Christ upon His Cross. If 
 you have mental pains, sorrows of mind, trials of 
 your family, ingratitude of friends, disobedience of 
 children, the loss of those dear to you, whatsoever it 
 be, unite them with the mental sorrows of Jesus 
 dying upon the Cross. If you are suffering spiritual 
 dryness and darkness, and desolation and distance 
 from God, as you think, unite them with His Dere- 
 liction. Do not say, "My God, my God, why hast 
 Thou forsaken me ? " Say, " My God, my God, I 
 know well how I deserve this desolation. I know 
 well how all my life has merited that I should be 
 forsaken; but my hope is in Thy love, which has 
 never forsaken those that trust in Thee." 
 
 Therefore, dear brethren, sum up all I have said, 
 and sum it up in these two ways : first of all, choose 
 of your own will, gladly and willingly, a lot of sor- 
 row and of the Cross in this world, rather than a lot 
 that is bright and fair. If they were both before 
 you, held out in the hands of our Divine Saviour, 
 the one the lot of His Cross, the other the happiness 
 of this world, remember what was set before Him in 
 
THE DERELICTION, ON THE CROSS. 229 
 
 the mountain : " All these things will I give Thee, if 
 Thou falling down wilt adore me." * Put the world 
 aside — we cannot serve two masters — it is better to 
 choose the lot that He chose for Himself ; to be 
 made like to Him even in His Cross. It is more 
 safe for us, because it is more generous towards 
 Him. Next, if we have not the heart and courage 
 to choose this for His sake, let us bless Him, if, 
 contrary to our will, He choose it for us. If He 
 sends us this very lot from which we shrink, then 
 let us bless the wise and loving Physician, who, 
 seeing that we are cowardly — that we have neither 
 nerve nor firmness to take the knife to lay the wound 
 open, and that the wound if it fester will bring death, 
 let us bless Him that He in His love and tenderness 
 has chosen the lot of the Cross for us, has given it 
 to us, and that we have no choice to make but to 
 accept it, to press it to our heart, to love it for His 
 sake, and to pray to Him to give us grace to bear it. 
 We have offended against Him by every mem- 
 ber of the body, by every faculty of the mind, by 
 every passion of the heart, by every affection of the 
 soul ; and upon the Cross in His bodily pain, and 
 in His mental sorrow, and in His spiritual deso- 
 lation, He made a perfect and complete expiation 
 for all our sins. They are all expiated ; and in His 
 
 * St. Matt, h . 9. 
 
230 THE DEKELICTJON ON THE CROSS. 
 
 Precious Blood they will all be washed away on one 
 condition — that we are made like to Him ; and if we 
 can be made like to Him only by being crucified, 
 then let us be crucified. A will at variance with 
 His will is sin and eternal death ; a will crucified 
 with His will is holiness and eternal life. Let us 
 pray Him, then, to do His own work in us ; let us 
 say to Him, " Lord, Thon wast crucified for me, cru- 
 cify me with Thyself. I cannot save myself ; Thou 
 only canst save me — save me, lest I perish eternally." 
 Pray Him to crucify the living will which is within 
 you, for " they that are Christ's have crucified the 
 flesh, with the affections and concupiscences." This 
 is the token of a Christian. Pray Him to do it until 
 you can say these three words : "God forbid I should 
 glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 whereby the world is crucified unto me and I unto 
 the world." * And again : " With Christ I am nailed 
 to the Cross, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but 
 Christ liveth in me ; and the life that I now live in 
 the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved 
 me and delivered Himself to death for me." f Let 
 us say to Him every day : u Lord, whether I live let 
 me live unto Thee, and whether I die, let me die unto 
 Thee, that living and dying I may be Thine." £ 
 * Gal. iv. 14. f Gal. ii. 19, 20. % Rom. xiv. 8. 
 
VIII. 
 THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
THE JOYS OF THE EESURRECTION. 
 
 Jesus said unto her : Mary. She saith unto him : Rabboni ; that 
 is to say, Master. St. John xx. 16. 
 
 It was very early in the morning, while it was yet 
 dark, that Mary Magdalen and the other women 
 came to the garden ; and they found the stone rolled 
 away from the month of the sepulchre. Mary Mag- 
 dalen ran and told Peter and the Disciple whom 
 Jesus loved, saying : " They have taken away the Lord 
 out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they 
 have laid Him." Peter and John ran to the garden ; 
 John outran Peter, and came first to the sepulchre, 
 and stooping down looked in ; but Peter following, 
 came, and went into the sepulchre, and saw the linen 
 clothes lying. Then they returned to their home ; 
 but Mary Magdalen lingered. She had no home but 
 the sepulchre of Jesus. It was empty ; but she would 
 not go away. She stood without weeping : and as she 
 wept she stooped down and looked into the sepulchre, 
 
 and saw two angels in white, the one sitting at the 
 
 (233) 
 
234 THE JOYS OF THE RESUEKECTION. 
 
 head, and the other at the feet, where the Body of 
 Jesus had lain. Jesus stood behind her, and said to 
 her: Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest 
 thou ? And she, turning and seeing Him, but be- 
 lieving that He was the gardener, saith : " They have 
 taken my Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know 
 not where thev have laid Him. Sir, if thou hast 
 taken Him away, tell me where I may find Him, 
 that I may take Him away." And Jesus saith unto 
 her : " Mary !" She saith unto Him : " Rabboni !" that 
 is to say, Master. She had lingered out of love and 
 compunction ; she knew that she had pierced her 
 Lord by her sins and for her sins ; and she stood 
 weeping at the sepulchre ; and her lingering was 
 rewarded. She was rewarded with the vision of an- 
 gels — she was rewarded with the vision of Jesus 
 Himself. 
 
 Now, dear brethren, we have here revealed to us 
 the law and the order of the joy and consolation of 
 the Kingdom of God. They that suffer and sorrow 
 most shall be the most consoled and fullest of joy in 
 His Kingdom. He who suffered most and sorrowed 
 most was the Man of Sorrows, Who for our sakes 
 was crucified. He said before His agony : " My Soul 
 is sorrowful even unto death." * The deified Soul of 
 Jesus — a Soul like ours, because He was a man ; a 
 * St. Matt. xxvi. 38. 
 
THE JOYS OF THE RESTJRRECTIOX. 235 
 
 Sonl unlike ours, because it was deified by union 
 with the Godhead — had a capacity for sorrow that no 
 other human heart could ever know. As the sor- 
 rows of the Son of God Incarnate were the greatest 
 that son of man ever tasted, so, in a measure accord- 
 ing to the capacity of His Heart for sorrow, was the 
 capacity of His Sacred Heart for joy. In the hour of 
 His Resurrection, He was filled with the joy of His 
 Kingdom, and rejoiced over His accomplished work, 
 over the redemption of the world, over the sevenfold 
 shedding of His Precious Blood, over the remission 
 of our sins, over the vision of grace and the multi- 
 tude of His elect who should be saved eternally. 
 Jesus in that hour rejoiced with a heart filled with 
 a divine joy, which we may adore, but cannot com- 
 prehend. 
 
 Next after His was the joy of His Immaculate 
 Mother, the Mother of Seven Sorrows ; and as each 
 sorrow was sevenfold, so was her joy likewise a seven- 
 fold joy. Though, dear brethren, we do not read it 
 in the text of the Holy Gospels — for many things 
 are not written which Jesus did, the which if they 
 should all be written, the world itself would not 
 contain the books — the Church has believed always, 
 by the light and intuition of faith, that the first to 
 whom He manifested Himself in the glory of His 
 Resurrection was His blessed and sinless Mother, 
 
236 THE JOTS OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 who, next to the Man of Sorrows, suffered more 
 deeply and more sharply than any human heart. 
 And next after the Mother of God, to whom did 
 He show Himself in His joy? Was it to Peter, 
 whom He had made the Rock of His imperishable 
 Church ? Was it to John, who had lain upon His 
 bosom at supper ? It was to Mary Magdalen, out 
 of whom He had cast seven devils, from whose soul 
 He had washed away in the Precious Blood sins 
 sevenfold, red as scarlet, beyond all number — to her, 
 because she had loved much, and because out of 
 her great love she sorrowed much; and because 
 next after the Mother of God herself — her sorrows 
 were the greatest — He first showed Himself in the 
 glory of His Resurrection. He came and stood be- 
 hind her, while she was weeping at the sepulchre ; 
 and, while she did not recognize Him, He called her 
 by her name. He called her by the name so fami- 
 liar ; He said unto her, " Mary !" and the accent of 
 His well-known voice revealed to her Who it was. 
 She answered Him as she was wont to answer, " Rab- 
 boni !" that is to say, Master. And after her, next 
 He manifested Himself to Peter — the unstable, faith- 
 less friend, who had three times denied Him ; and 
 after Peter to His Disciples, faithful, fearful souls, 
 true to Him still, though their hearts could not 
 endure the perils of His crucifixion. 
 
THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 237 
 
 Here, then, we have laid open to ns a great law of 
 the Kingdom of God, namely, that the joy of the 
 Resurrection is measured out according to the sor- 
 row of our penitence, according to the sorrow that 
 we have endured here in the body, in the mind, and 
 in the soul. As we have tasted of His Cross and 
 of His desolation, so in the Kingdom of the Resurrec- 
 tion we shall taste of His glory and of His joy ; and 
 these forty days on which we have just entered are, 
 as it were, the type and the shadow, and the fore- 
 taste and the beginning of this eternal joy. Those 
 forty days, when Jesus was always near them, but not 
 always seen — always, as it were, ready to manifest 
 Himself, and yet still hiding Himself — those days 
 in which they first knew the fullness of His Godhead, 
 were indeed days of surpassing joy, as of heaven 
 upon earth ; and yet not heavenly alone, but earthly 
 too, that is, He came down to them in their sor- 
 rows and their humiliations. He did not ascend at 
 once to the throne of His glory ; but as by the incar- 
 nation He had humbled Himself to be made man 
 and to enter within the sphere of our sympathies, 
 so in those forty days, when He had revealed His 
 Godhead, He came to tarry in the midst of them, 
 to speak with them, to eat and drink with them, to 
 suffer them to touch Him. If He forbade Mary Mag- 
 dalen in the first moment of her joy, yet He suffered 
 
238 THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 Thomas to handle the wounds of His hands and side ; 
 and therefore those forty days bring before us both 
 the joys of faith, and the joys of vision. By the Res- 
 urrection of our Lord the fountains of the great deep 
 of the joy in heaven were broken up, and the whole 
 Church, according to the prophecy, was inundated 
 by the river which makes glad the City of G od. 
 
 The Church of God is inundated to this day by 
 this torrent of sweetness. Notwithstanding the war- 
 fare of the Church upon earth, notwithstanding the 
 bitter and relentless persecutions of the world, not- 
 withstanding the Cross, which we must all bear, one 
 by one, if we are true disciples of our Master ; never- 
 theless, there is a joy which He has given and no 
 man can take from us — a joy so inward, so deep, so 
 expanding, so multiplying as life goes on, that it is 
 a foretaste of our eternal joy. 
 
 1. First, there are the joys of faith. In what do 
 they consist ? In the same in which the joy of the 
 Disciples consisted in the forty days, that is, in the 
 presence of Jesus. He ascended to His Father ; but 
 He is with us still. To go to His Father is not to be 
 absent from us ; it is, indeed, to be out of sight, but 
 He is always near ; and therefore the Apostle said 
 to the Christians at Philippi, " Rejoice in the Lord 
 always ; and again I say rejoice. Let your modesty," 
 your moderation, " be known unto all men ;" * that is, 
 
THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 239 
 
 your self-control, jour self-command, jour Christian 
 dignitj ; f or " the Lord is nigh," jou are alwajs in 
 His presence. He is indeed " at the right hand of 
 the Father," according to the natural mode of His 
 existence; but He showed Himself to Stephen in 
 the moment of His martyrdom ; He showed Himself 
 to Saul on the waj to Damascus, He stood bj him 
 in his answer before the imperial tribunal in Home ; 
 He has manifested Himself to saints again and again ; 
 He is with us alwajs ; and He will come again. We 
 know that He will be seen once more upon earth ; 
 and between His first appearance and His last, though 
 withdrawn from our ordinary sight, He is still near 
 to us. We know that we are in His presence, and 
 the joy of His presence is our joy ; but there is an- 
 other Presence, perpetual, universal, intimate, veiled 
 indeed, but real and personal, always upon the altar. 
 Wheresoever the Holy Catholic Church is, there is 
 Jesus, reigning in the mystery of the Blessed Sacra- 
 ment, always near to us ; and our union with Him 
 is a union so intimate that the mind cannot define 
 it ; the heart alone, illuminated by faith, can know 
 by consciousness that which the intellect cannot com- 
 prehend. 
 
 But not only is His presence the source of our 
 joy, but also our loosing from sin and death, which 
 
 * Phil. iv. 4. 
 
240 THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 is now at this moment true and real, and if we be 
 faithful shall be eternal. We know that the Sacra- 
 ment of Holy Baptism was instituted by our Divine 
 Saviour to raise the soul by a spiritual resurrec- 
 tion from the death of original sin. It is a matter 
 of revelation, and therefore a matter of faith and of 
 the divine certainty of faith, that those who are bap- 
 tized are born again, made children of God, receive 
 the gift of supernatural life, are loosed from the bond 
 of original sin, and therefore from the doom of eter- 
 nal death. Dear brethren, this has passed upon you all. 
 You were every one of you baptized in the uncon- 
 sciousness of infancy. While as yet your will had 
 never varied or opposed itself to the will of our Re- 
 deemer, you received the grace of your regenera- 
 tion — you were loosed from sin and death. If you 
 have fallen under its dominion again — if you have 
 willfully become sinful, you have indeed been again 
 condemned to die ; but if you have preserved the 
 grace of your baptism, you are now loosed from sin 
 and death, the power of the Resurrection is upon you. 
 If since your baptism you have fallen again into 
 mortal sin and so have died once more, there is an- 
 other sacrament instituted in the Precious Blood, the 
 Sacrament of Penance ; and it is a matter of divine 
 revelation and of divine faith, that all who with true 
 contrition receive the absolution of that Sacrament 
 
THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 241 
 
 are once more loosed from all their actual sins, and 
 therefore from eternal death. 
 
 Here, then, is the first source of our joy. Why, 
 then, is it we do not rejoice ? Because our hearts are 
 cold, and our faith is dim. These great realities are 
 like the presence of God round about us, in the. 
 midst of which we walk to and fro every day uncon- 
 sciously. And once more : if we have faith, and if we 
 lay to heart the truths that I have tried to speak, then 
 we have the consciousness in us of a risen life. As 
 there is a soul which quickens the body, so there is 
 a supernatural life which quickens the soul ; and we 
 know that as we have the power of the body, so, that 
 we have the power of the soul ; and as thought, and 
 intelligence, and motion descend from the head of 
 the body into all our members, so the life that we 
 now live, we live in virtue of our union with our 
 Divine Head in heaven. This is what the Apostle 
 declares when he says : " There is therefore now no 
 condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus, who 
 walk not according to the flesh, but according to 
 the spirit. The law of the spirit of life in Christ 
 Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and. 
 death." * The spirit of the Resurrection, and the 
 risen life of our Divine Head, are in every one of us, 
 if we are not under the power of mortal sin ; and we 
 
 Rom. viii. 1. 
 11 
 
242 THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 have this countersign, that if we are become new 
 creatures, the " old things are passed away, all things 
 have become new : " that is to say, our old character, 
 our old mind, our old habits, our old loves, our old 
 hates, our old thoughts, our old sins, are stripped 
 from us like a leprous garment. There they are, our 
 grave-clothes cast away; there they are, before us 
 still, a vision of sin and death, reminding us of 
 what we were once ; but they are ourselves no longer. 
 The spirit of life in us has sloughed them off, like 
 the corrupt flesh of the leper. The winding-sheet, 
 and the bands of mortality, in which we were when 
 we were bound in sin, have been loosened and taken 
 off ; the old character is gone. If we are disciples 
 of Jesus Christ, a new mind, new loves, new hatreds, 
 new fears, new hopes, new aspirations, new affections, 
 new desires, have sprung up in us. " If any man be 
 in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature " * and in a new 
 creation. A change has passed upon him so great 
 that he may feel day after day the words of our 
 Divine Lord fulfilled in him : " In that day ye shall 
 know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I 
 in you." f 
 
 2. In this we see an outline of the joys of faith : 
 but -we cannot longer dwell on them, for there are 
 greater things than these. If these be the joys of 
 * 2 Cor. v. 17. f St. John xiv. 20. 
 
THE JOYS OF THE KESTTKKECTION. 243 
 
 faith, what are the joys of vision ? What the ripe- 
 ness of summer is after the bitter piercing cold and 
 death of winter, such is the vision of God when the 
 vision of faith shall melt into the glory of His King- 
 dom. The same truths, the same realities, the same 
 persons, the same relations, which are here, will be 
 there, and will be eternal. Like as when the snow 
 melts away before the returning sun, the forms of 
 nature, the very same as they were before they were 
 buried, reappear ; so shall it be in the vision of glory. 
 This is the office and work of the Holy Ghost. Say 
 the last words of your baptismal creed : " I believe 
 in the Holy Ghost, in the Holy Catholic Church." 
 The Church is His creation: One, because He is 
 One ; holy, because He is holy ; infallible, because 
 He is the Light of truth : " And in the communion 
 of saints "—which is the ripe fruit gathered from the 
 Church on earth into the garners of the Kingdom : 
 " And in the forgiveness of sins " — in Baptism, in 
 Penance, in contrition : " And in the resurrection of 
 the body," which shall be raised by the Holy Ghost 
 from the dust, and knit together once more in its 
 perfect glory : " And in life everlasting," which is the 
 indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the souls of the 
 blessed. 
 
 This, then, is the joy of vision. And what will 
 be the first object of our sight ? Our Divine Lord 
 
244 THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 has said : " I am the Door, by which if any man shall 
 enter in, he shall be saved ; and he shall go in and 
 go ont, and shall find pasture " * — that is, the pas- 
 tures of eternal life. The presence of the Sacred 
 Humanity of Jesus, the vision of our Divine Master 
 in the glory of His Kingdom, is the fulfillment of the 
 promise and the prophecy, " his eyes shall behold the 
 King in His beauty, in the land that is far off." f 
 And what is the beauty of the Son of God ? The 
 beauty of God Himself. He is the Brightness of His 
 Father's Glory, the Image of His Substance ; and God 
 Himself is beauty. That Divine beauty was clothed 
 in the human beauty. The first Adam was beauti- 
 ful, for he was made unto the likeness and image of 
 God, Who is beauty itself ; and he was made to the 
 likeness and image of the Second Adam, that is, 
 the Word Incarnate. And the very Person of Jesus 
 Christ is, as the Word of God says, "the fairest 
 among the children of men." J But this outward 
 beauty, what is it compared with the inward beauty 
 — with the love, and the pity, and the compassion, 
 and the mercy, and the purity, and the sanctity of 
 the Sacred Heart ? We shall see the countenance of 
 the Friend who has loved us, sorrowed for us, died 
 for us ; the countenance of the Son of God fixed upon 
 each one of us ; the eyes of our Redeemer looking 
 * St. John x. 9. f Isa - xxxiii. 17- X Psalm xliv. 3. 
 
THE JOYS OF THF RESURRECTION. 24:5 
 
 upon us personally one by one ; His voice speaking 
 to us as He spoke to Mary at the sepulchre, calling 
 us each one by name, knowing each one of us in all 
 the intimate consciousness of our personality : this is 
 the beginning of the joy. 
 
 And next the consciousness that, through the 
 whole realm of His Kingdom there is but one Will, 
 holy, supreme, and sovereign ; and that His will per- 
 vades our whole being, so that there is not a beat in 
 the pulse, nor a motion of our whole spiritual nature, 
 that is not in perfect harmony with His ; and that 
 the same Will pervades all that are about Him in all 
 the heavenly court ; all the holy Angels, all the 
 companies of the Blessed ; thereby creating one joy 
 in all, and a mutual joy, so that the joy of all is the 
 joy of each. We all shall have a perfect conscious- 
 ness of our past in this world, a perfect personal 
 identity, the same there as we were here, sin only 
 excepted, a perfect recognition of each other, a perfect 
 interchange of intuition and of mutual intelligence, of 
 all that is in the soul, of each other's bliss and joy. 
 The greatest in the kingdom of God — because their 
 capacity is greater — shall have a greater joy in the 
 glory of the least, and the least, because their charity 
 is perfect, will rejoice with a greater joy in the glory 
 of those that are higher in bliss than they. 
 
 Add to this, that which would make even this 
 
246 THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 earth blissful. If for one moment the conflicts, the 
 hatreds, the contentions, the jealousies, the warfares, 
 the jangling, the discords of this world could be sus- 
 pended — if for one day from sunrise to sunset sin 
 could cease, even this world would be blissful. In 
 that world there shall be rest eternal ; rest, that is, no 
 temptation, warfare, or cross ; rest within, heart, 
 mind, soul, thought, affection, will — all in perfect 
 harmony with the perfect will of Jesus. And — that 
 which you perhaps will little realize when I say it — 
 rest from toil, rest from labor, rest from eating bread 
 in the sweat of your face — that which the multitudes 
 and the millions of Christendom, in all lands and 
 all languages, have for their earthly lot — the poor 
 laborer, the tiller of the ground — those who wring 
 hard sustenance out of the hard earth, who live lives 
 of cold, and pain, and disease, and privation, in homes 
 that are bare, with hungry children, with those 
 that are dearest to them languishing, and fading 
 for want of the food which their toil cannot supply — 
 this is an earthly burden of which you who hear 
 me perhaps know little. But in heaven " they shall 
 hunger no more, they shall thirst no more, neither 
 shall the sun light upon them nor any heat ; but the 
 Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne shall rule 
 over them, and shall lead them by the fountains of 
 the waters of life, and God shall wipe away all tears 
 
THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 247 
 
 from their eyes." * And once more : there shall be the 
 joy of conscious eternal health. You have known 
 perhaps in yourselves what pain and sickness is ; what 
 it is to languish long upon a bed of suffering ; you 
 remember the first day when you rose up again, and 
 went out into the free air and into the light of the 
 sun ; when you felt that health had come back, and 
 strength had returned to you, and that vigor was 
 once more in your limbs : what, then, shall be the 
 eternal health of the Kingdom of Grod, when there 
 shall be no more death, no more disease, no more 
 wasting of the poor body, no more crippled limbs, no 
 more blind eyes, no more ears without hearing, no 
 more distorted members, no more distracted minds, 
 no more unsound brain, or wandering intelligence, 
 or blankness of idiocy. These things shall be 
 gone forever ; for with the resurrection of the body 
 they shall be healed eternally ; and the soul made 
 perfect, after the image of Jesus, shall be clothed in 
 a glorified body like His own. As there is no more 
 death, there will be no more change. If in this world 
 we had all the desires of our hearts, they could not 
 last forever; and if they could last forever, they 
 could not satisfy our hearts ; but in the Kingdom of 
 God there shall be no more change to all eternity. 
 There shall be no yesterday, and there shall be no 
 
 * Apoc. vii. 16. 
 
248 THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 to-morrow, and there shall be no sunset ; it shall be 
 one eternal day — now, ever-present — the noon of 
 overpassing bliss. The happiness of life, the happi- 
 ness of home, the happiness of your past — where is 
 it ? You have to look back for it ; it is gone, ,or it 
 is going, transient and fleeting, and in a little while 
 it will be no longer ; but in the Kingdom of God, 
 that life ever new of body, of mind, of soul, of home, 
 of happiness, of perfect identity, of mutual recog- 
 nition, of restored bonds of love perfected and trans- 
 figured in the kingdom of the Resurrection, shall all 
 be changeless and eternal. 5 
 
 There yet remains another joy ; but it is one of 
 which I can hardly speak, because I can hardly under- 
 stand. We shall see God. We shall see Him as He 
 is ; our eyes shall behold the Eternal. We shall see 
 His uncreated nature ; we shall see that which our 
 hearts cannot conceive; we shall see Him, not by 
 the eyes of flesh and blood, nor by the bare intellect 
 of nature ; but by the Light of Glory. The Light of 
 Glory is from the Holy Ghost, the illumination of the 
 intellect by the power of the Holy Ghost. The soul 
 filled with Charity will be elevated by the Holy 
 Ghost to the vision of God, and to the union of all its 
 powers and all its affections with the uncreated Truth 
 and the uncreated Love — that is, God Himself. 
 We shall see Him not in His infinity — for the finite 
 
THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 249 
 
 mind cannot — but we shall see Him fully. Just as 
 when we see a spark of fire we see all fire, though the 
 fire has no limit that we can understand ; and as when 
 we see a ray of light we see the whole nature of light, 
 though that light be boundless ; so we shall see God. 
 When we shall see His sanctity, purity, wisdom, good- 
 ness, power, justice, mercy, pity, compassion, and all 
 the perfections of God, we shall see God as He is, 
 though not His infinity. And we shall see God the 
 Father in His uncreated essence ; we shall see God the 
 Son begotten of the Father ; we shall see God the Holy 
 Ghost proceeding from the Father and the Son ; we 
 shall see the essence of the glory and of the eternal 
 mutual knowledge, and of the eternal mutual love of 
 the Three Co-equal Persons in One Godhead. These 
 things surpass both our words and our thoughts; 
 but in the Kingdom of the Resurrection they shall 
 be manifested to all who enter by that Door, which 
 is Jesus Christ, by whose light all shall be revealed. 
 Here, then, are the joys of the Resurrection. 
 
 And now, what are the notes, what are the marks 
 of those who are the heirs of that joy? You, as 
 I have said, by your Baptism have been made par- 
 takers of the Resurrection ; by your Absolution you 
 have been loosed from sin and death ; you are heirs 
 therefore of the joys of faith and of the joys of vision ; 
 but as the Church itself has its notes, so those that 
 11* 
 
250 THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 are the true disciples of Jesus Christ have their 
 visible notes ; which are certain fruits of the Holy 
 Ghost ; and what are they ? 
 
 1. The first note, without which they are disciples 
 only in name, is this, the love of God and their 
 neighbor. St. John says, speaking by the Holy 
 Ghost, " We know that we have passed from death 
 unto life, because we love the brethren. He that 
 loveth not his brother abideth in death."* The mark 
 of a soul, that has the life of the Resurrection in it, 
 is the love of God above all things ; the love of our 
 neighbor as ourselves. The love of God above all 
 things is the love of appreciation, so that we shall 
 be willing to give up the whole world rather than 
 lose God. The love of our neighbor is the warmth 
 of charity sensibly felt by all around us. " Charity 
 begins at home," means this : that there is no charity 
 in the man who does not first pervade his own home 
 with the love of God and his neighbor ; and next, 
 that love reaches our friends, each of them in their 
 own order ;. and after our friends our enemies, and 
 all who stand in need of us. And they who stand in 
 need of us are the mourners, the outcast, the sick, 
 the tempted, the lost, the little children who have no 
 helpers, and lastly, our enemies, and those who bear 
 us ill-will without a cause. If you desire to have 
 * 1 St. John iii. 14. 
 
THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 251 
 
 a test whereby to know whether you have the life 
 of the Resurrection in you, see how you bear your- 
 selves to those whom you believe to bear ill-will 
 to you. They are among your best friends. The 
 friends that love you and speak fair and soft things 
 to you are not friends, compared to those who look 
 upon you with sharp eyes, and speak with cold 
 voices, and bear unkind hearts. They try what you 
 are ; they try your patience, the spirit of your hu- 
 mility, whether you have a crucified will, which is 
 the sure mark of the true disciple of Jesus Christ. 
 If you have enemies, look to see all that is good in 
 them. There is good in them all. Just as when 
 we look into thick tangled forests, there are rays of 
 the sun's light which come down on the leaves and 
 on the earth, here and there, broken and scattered, 
 little, it may be, but still the sun is there ; so in the 
 worst of men, unless they be reprobate, there are 
 still some traces of God. Look and find them : if 
 you have charity, you will have eyes to see that sun's 
 light ; and though you cannot be blind to their sin — - 
 for you must see it, if you have light and discernment 
 from the Holy Ghost — nevertheless, in your conduct 
 towards those who are sinful, and in your treatment 
 of sinners, you will be as if you were blind, you will 
 be even as our Lord is to you, "Who, although He sees 
 every sin in you, bears with you with an immutable 
 
252 THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 patience ; never sharpens His voice, never makes a 
 gesture of impatience, but seeing that the flax is 
 not yet quenched and the reed not yet broken, He 
 bears with you with a divine pity. So bear with 
 your enemies. And this charity of our hearts will 
 overflow to all the works of God. Ail the creation of 
 God is a mirror in which God's glory, pity, sweet- 
 ness, and goodness are reflected ; and all the crea- 
 tures are, as it were, a ladder of ascent whereby to 
 go up into the heart of God. It is through His crea- 
 tures that He speaks to us. We shall love everything 
 that He has made : the trees of the forest and the 
 flowers of the field, and the dumb creatures — they 
 all will be objects of love and kindness because they 
 are loved of their Maker, and their Maker's hand is 
 seen upon them. 
 
 2. Charity, then, is the first mark. And the sec- 
 ond is liberty, that is, while we love the creatures of 
 God, to be brought into bondage by none of them. 
 The great sin of the world is, that it worships and 
 loves the creature more than the Creator. The great 
 sin of us all is creature-worship, putting creatures in 
 the place of God ; and this brings us into bondage. 
 "We lose our liberty. The creatures darken our un- 
 derstanding, corrupt our hearts, bias our will, turn 
 us away from the service of God to serve the world, 
 with its ambitions and its prides, and its honors 
 
THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 253 
 
 and its fascinations, its covetousness, its craving, and 
 its servility. There is something sad and contempt- 
 ible in the dependence of men upon the breath of 
 the world, the praise of the world, the blame of 
 the world. If yon are men that are " risen with 
 Christ," as the Apostle says, " mind the things that 
 are above, not the things on the earth ; you are 
 dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."* Be 
 not brought into bondage to the world. But there 
 is one creature in the world which is the most subtle 
 of all — there is one creature which is the most fasci- 
 nating, the most deceitful, and which brings men 
 into bondage more than anything else, and that crea- 
 ture is Self — the love of self. The love of self is 
 shown in the violent choosing of our will for this or 
 for that, without wisdom and without reason ; setting 
 our hearts upon things until they grow so attached 
 that they grow into them ; and if they are taken 
 from us, we think we are wounded to death, as if 
 we had lost a limb ; then comes sorrow, disgust, 
 discontent, sadness — which is a possession of the 
 devil, for the " sorrow of this world worketh death ; "f 
 and then we rise in rebellion against God. The 
 Man of Sorrows sorrowed not for Himself, but for 
 us ; the true and perfect sympathy of the Man of Sor- 
 rows was for others. There are only two centres, 
 •Oofcfflt * 2 Cor. vii. 10. 
 
254 THE JOYS OF THE RESUREECTION. 
 
 God and ourselves ; and we must rest on one or on 
 the other. If we rest our full weight upon our- 
 selves, we are not resting so much as the weight of 
 a feather upon God, but simply living in ourselves 
 and for ourselves ; and we shall suffer — suffer in this 
 world continual sorrow, crosses, and disappointment ; 
 and if we so die, unless keen expiation shall prepare 
 us for the vision of peace, we may forfeit the face 
 of God to all eternity. Once more : a lot is meted 
 out to every one of us, and God has chosen it. We 
 do not choose our own lot ; some few of its details 
 we may control ; but we no more choose our entire 
 lot than we determine the country or the century in 
 which we are born. It is the providence of God ; 
 and He ordains what we shall have and shall not 
 have ; and that lot is given to us, to be content with 
 it, to be satisfied with it, to rejoice in it. More 
 than this, when we see others happier, richer, more 
 gifted than we are, we ought not only to be content 
 with our own lot, but to rejoice for their sakes if 
 they are preferred before us ; if they are more loved 
 than we are, if God has bestowed on them greater 
 graces, if He has put them first and put us last, to 
 rejoice in it all. These are the marks of a heart that 
 is living in the joy of the Resurrection. It lives out 
 of itself ; and living out of itself, by this unselfish 
 joy, it has a joy in itself which comes from the pres- 
 
THE JOTS OF THE RESURRECTION. 255 
 
 ence of Jesus Christ ; the overflow of His peace, 
 " which passeth all sense," * the consciousness of that 
 twofold relationship — His relation to us, our relation 
 to Him, and our mutual and indissoluble love. 
 
 3. Lastly: there is one more mark of which I 
 will speak ; and that is, a spirit of praise, a spirit of 
 thanksgiving, joy, and praise. We go on praying 
 all our life-time, craving, clamoring, with sharp and 
 discontented prayers, because we have not what we 
 desire ; and when we receive the gifts of God, we, like 
 the lepers, do not turn back to give Him thanks ; 
 the spirit of praise is not in us. And yet there will 
 be no prayer in heaven, there will be no prayer in 
 eternity. There will be perpetual praise ; praise will 
 be the work of the Blessed, praise will be our joy, 
 praise will be our sweetness forever. If, then, in 
 this life we do not praise God ; if praise is not now 
 on our lips nor in our hearts ; if, when we repeat the 
 words of the Psalter, our hearts are earthly and dry, 
 are we training for the praise of the Kingdom of 
 God ? Should we know how to sing the canticle of 
 Moses and of the Lamb, who have never learned it 
 here ? Remember what praise is. Praise consists in 
 the love of God, in wonder at the goodness of God, 
 in recognition of the gifts of God, in seeing God in all 
 things He gives us, ay, and even in the things that 
 
 * Phil, iv. 7. 
 
256 THE JOYS OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 He refuses to us ; so as to see our whole life in the 
 light of God ; and seeing this, to bless Him, adore 
 Him, and glorify Him : to say, " Holy, holy, holy," 
 in the words of the Seraphim ; to say, " Glory be to 
 God in the highest ; " in the words of the Angels, 
 to say, " Glory be to the Father and to the Son, 
 and to the Holy Ghost ; " to say always and in all 
 things, " Thanks be to God." Learn this spirit of 
 praise in all your daily life. 
 
 And now I have but one more word to add. Dear 
 brethren, for many long weeks we have been advanc- 
 ing to this day. We have come up from the desert, 
 through the wilderness of sin. We have dwelt on the 
 horrors of mortal sin and on venial sin, on sins of 
 omission, on temptation ; we have gone along the 
 way of the Cross ; and but the other day we rested on 
 Mount Calvary, gazing upon the Five Sacred Wounds 
 and upon the desolation of the Son of God. To-day 
 we have gone up from the sepulchre to the Throne of 
 the Kingdom of the Resurrection ; and round about 
 us we may see by faith those whom we shall here- 
 after see in vision : the Blessed Mother of God, sin- 
 less always ; the beloved Disciple, who was without 
 spot ; Mary Magdalen, stained through and through, 
 now white as snow : there they stand, the type of 
 saints and penitents, in the Kingdom of God, re- 
 deemed by the same Lord and Saviour, washed in 
 
THE JOYS OF THE RESUEEECTION. 257 
 
 the same Precious Blood, arrayed in light, the peni- 
 tent white as the sinless, because sinless forever ; 
 for all sins are done away. " These are they which 
 have come out of great tribulations, and have washed 
 their robes and made them white in the Blood of the 
 Lamb." * We have come, then, in joy, with peni- 
 tents, and with the saints, to the Kingdom of the 
 Resurrection : but we shall have some years still of 
 temptation and buffeting and sorrow and warfare and 
 of the Cross, on earth. These things must be : storms 
 upon the lake, clouds upon the mountain ; they are 
 our earthly lot. What matter ? If we be children 
 of the Resurrection, heaven is ours : and heaven is 
 near ; we know not how long : or how soon our day 
 may be. Before Easter next we may be in the light 
 of the Kingdom ; or we may be in its outskirts, 
 expiating and waiting for the vision of God. What 
 matter, then, a little pain, a little sorrow, a little 
 penance, a few crosses, if, after a little while there 
 be an inheritance of eternal joy % 
 
 * Apoc. vii. 14. 
 
 THE END. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Absolution, the Spirit of, 29 ; 
 
 perfect and full, 105, 141 ; 
 
 power of, 182, 145, 150, 152 ; 
 
 valid, 192. 
 Absolver, the, 29. 
 Abuse of human nature, 14. 
 Act, of faith, 185 ; of love, 185. 
 Actions, guilt of, 19 ; twofold, 
 
 180 ; indeliberate, 181. 
 Adam, sin of, 22, 47 ; trial of, 
 
 23 ; three wounds of, 25 ; the 
 
 Second, 243. , 
 Advertence in sin 43. 
 Affections, the, 181. 
 Affliction, discipline of, 35, 226. 
 Agony of our Lord, 207, 211, 
 
 216. 
 Ambition, sin of, 74. 
 Ananias, sin of, 52. 
 Angels, creation of the, 17, 47 ; 
 
 around our Lord, 206 ; in 
 
 heaven, 244. 
 Anger, sin of, 46, 73. 
 Anguish of temptation, 211. 
 Animosity against the good, 
 
 115. 
 Apostasy, sin of, 40. 
 Apostles, the, 51. 
 Attractions, the two, 84. 
 Attrition, 227. 
 Audacity, infidel, 9. 
 Augustine, St., on prayer, 109. 
 Avarice, sin of, 46. 
 
 Baptism, grace of, 82 ; infants 
 dying before. 26 ; regenera- 
 tion in, 48, 240. 
 
 Leauty of God, 244. 
 
 Bernard, St., on fervor, 78. 
 
 Blasphemy of the Holy Ghost, 
 
 29, 41, 153. 
 Blight of the soul, 90. 
 Blindness to sin, 30 ; to color, 
 
 84. 
 Blood of Jesus Christ, 34, 5?, 
 
 206. 
 Body of Christ, the mystical, 11. 
 Book of Remembrance, 51, 58, 
 
 89, 104; that ought to be 
 
 burned, 94. 
 Bread of Life. 132. 
 
 Calvary, 203, 208. 
 
 Centres, the two, 253. 
 
 Charity, of God, 250 ; destroyed 
 by sin, 55 ; life of the soul, 
 115 ; acts of, 113. 
 
 Chastisement, self-knowledge 
 from, 226. 
 
 Christendom and the world, 169. 
 
 Church, the Catholic, 242. 
 
 Color-blindness, 84. 
 
 Commandments, the Ten, 34. 
 
 Communion, Holy, 83 ; the 
 world's impatience of, 116. 
 
 Compassion, the Divine, 18. 
 
 Compunction, 226. 
 
 Confession, 82, 240.- 
 
 Confidence in God, 219. 
 
 Conformity to God, 39. 
 
 Conscience, convicted of sinful- 
 ness, 10 ; the law written on, 
 12 ; darkness of the, 31, 149 ; 
 twilight of, 104. 
 
 Consciousness of guilt, 11, 118. 
 
 Contempt of God, 93. 
 
 Contrition, 227. 
 
 Controversy, 134. 
 (259) 
 
260 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Conversion, time of, 9 ; true, 75. 
 Correspondence with grace, 59. 
 Council of Florence, 50. 
 Creation, end of, 105. 
 Creator, sins against our, 28. 
 Creature-worship, 252. 
 Cross of Christ, 28. 
 
 Darkness of the conscience, 81, 
 
 149. 
 Darts of Satan, 181. 
 David, twofold sin of, 51. 
 Day of Judgment, 12, 91, 155, 
 
 195. 
 Deadliness of sin, 30. 
 Death, spiritual, temporal, and 
 
 eternal, 24 ; sins unto, 39 ; of 
 
 the soul, 80. 
 Debt of guilt and pain, 57. 
 Deformity of the soul, 13, 39, 91. 
 Demas, sin of, 52. 
 Depths, the three, 33. 
 Dereliction of our Lord, 206. 
 Desert of sin, 256. 
 Despondency, 118. 
 Devil, deceit of the, 123 ; nega- 
 tion of, 168 ; darts of, 181 ; 
 
 ministers of, 62, 167 ; spirit 
 
 of, 171 ; malice of, 174. 
 Dictates of reason, 15. 
 Discipline of affliction, 35, 226. 
 Disease of the soul, 81). 
 Disobedience, sinfulness of, 16 ; 
 
 one act of, 25, 47 ; unfilial, 
 
 88. 
 Distraction, state of, 110. 
 Dives and Lazarus, 114. 
 Dreams, 180. 
 Dress, morals of, 195. 
 Drink, indulgence in, 56, 194. 
 Duty to God, 30 ; grace to fulfill, 
 
 81 ; exactness in, 112. 
 
 East, Churches of the, 19. 
 Elymas, the magician, 30. 
 End of creation, 105 ; of man, 
 
 39. 
 Enemy of the Cross of Christ, 
 
 27. 
 
 England, the Established 
 
 Church of, 20. 
 Envy, 45. 
 
 Ephesus, the Christians at, 193. 
 Equity of God, 18. 
 Error, material, 20. 
 Eternity, 9. 
 
 Exactness in duties, 112. 
 Expiation of our Lord, 218, 
 Fzekiel, words of, 53. 
 
 Facility of prayer, 79. 
 
 Faith, act of, 113, 185 ; joys of, 
 
 238 ; remaining after sin, 55. 
 Falsehood, knowledge of, 30. 
 Fashion, vanity of, 90, 196. 
 Fear, servile, 227. 
 Fervor, St. Bernard on, 78 ; loss 
 
 of, 112. 
 Fidelity, test of, 23, 185 ; life of, 
 
 78. 
 Florence, Council of, 50. 
 Friendship, with God, 78, 185 ; 
 
 dangerous, 96. 
 Fruits of penance, 9. 
 Furnace of temptation, 186. 
 
 Generosity of God, 20, 24. 
 
 Glory of the Blessed, 50, 247, 
 256. 
 
 Gluttony, sin of, 45, 73. 
 
 God, in Himself, 14, 88 ; infinite, 
 27 ; Divine wisdom, 25 ; per- 
 fections of, 12, 31, 34, 72 ; un- 
 changeable, 67 ; as Creator, 40, 
 88, 106, 181, 211 ; as revealed 
 in the Blessed Trinity, 27, 97, 
 216 ; as revealed in the Incar- 
 nation, 163, 206, 215, 244; 
 as the End of man, 39, 64 ; 
 His love, 54 ; His generosity, 
 attraction of, 60, 84, 185 ; the 
 true centre, 77 ; dependence 
 of creatures on, 47; distrust 
 of, 115 ; declension from, 116 ; 
 our duty to, 30, 79, 81 ; equity 
 of, 19 ; eye of, 11, 42 ; friend- 
 ship of, 76, 156, 186 ; holiness 
 of, 63, 183 ; loss of, 65 ; the 
 
INDEX. 
 
 261 
 
 life of the soul, 46 ; light of 
 the presence of, 11 ; just judg- 
 ment of, 31, 42 ; the knowl- 
 edge of, 30 ; his knowledge of 
 sin, 32 ; the law of, 43 ; the 
 mercy of, 21 ; no morality 
 without, 17 ; presence of, 88 ; 
 revelation of, 62, 93 ; all true 
 science from, 92 ; separation 
 from, 54, 60, 65, 147 ; sin com- 
 mitted in, 87 ; as Sovereign, 
 22 ; union with, 48, 54, 64, 73, 
 109 : weariness of, 46, 120 ; 
 the object of the Beatific Vi- 
 sion in heaven. 25, 249. 
 
 Gospel, apostle of the, 63. 
 
 Grace, correspondence with, 60 ; 
 diminished by venial sin, 78 ; 
 inundation of, 81 ; needed by 
 men and angels, 47 ; sacra- 
 men till, 82 ; out of the sacra- 
 ment, 84 ; sanctifying, 49 ; suf- 
 ficiency of, 81. 
 
 Gravity of Bin, 44. 
 
 Guilt, consciousness of, 11 ; of 
 actions, 19. 
 
 Happiness, lot of, 228 ; of the 
 kingdom of God, 428. 
 
 Harbor, storm in the, 178. 
 
 Harmony of the soul, 25. 
 
 Hateful n ess of sin, 32. 
 
 Hatred, of sin, 189 ; of men, 
 213. 
 
 Health, of tlie soul, 79 ; of the 
 kingdom of God, 247. 
 
 Heart, the sacred, 51 ; joy of, 
 235 ; sanctity of, 245 ; sor- 
 rows of, 221. 
 
 Hell, negation of, 62 ; necessity 
 of, 64, 72 ; loss of God, 218 ; 
 servile fear of, 227. 
 
 Hemlock, sin compared to, 31. 
 
 Holiness and unholiness, 30. 
 
 Holy Ghost, blasphemy of the, 
 28, 41, 97, 153 ; breathings of, 
 60 ; bringing back the will, 
 149 ; the convincer of yin, 10, 
 34 ; fruits of, 54 ; gifts of, 49, 
 
 53, 112; grieving the, 89; 
 guiding of, 171 ; indwelling 
 of, 24, 48, 75, 82, 123 ; life of 
 the soul, 46, 71 ; loss of, 72 ; 
 mission of, 131 ; office of, 243 ; 
 perfection of, 25 ; regenera- 
 tion of, 26 , words of, 77. 
 
 Hope, act of, 114 ; remaining 
 after sin, 55 ; lamp of, 111. 
 
 Humility, 122. 
 
 Ignorance, vincible and invin- 
 cible, 19 ; in the intellect, 25, 
 76, 171. 
 
 Image of God, 13, 28. 
 
 Imagination, 180. 
 
 Immortality of man, 25. 
 
 Impenitence, sin of, 29, 42 ; 
 consciousness of, 118. 
 
 Impertinence of the world, 22. 
 
 Impetuosity, sins of, 73. 
 
 Impiety, stupendous, 16. 
 
 Impurity, sin of. 30, 46, 74. 
 
 Inde liberation, sins of, 73, 
 
 Indulgence of the palate, 195. 
 
 Infants dying before baptism, 
 25. 
 
 Infirmity, sins of, 73. 
 
 Iniquity, 43. 
 
 Innocence, baptismal, 75. 
 
 Insincerities, little, 86. 
 
 Integrity in soul, 24 ; threefold, 
 48. 
 
 Intellect, confusion of, 24 ; to 
 convince the, 10 ; ignorance 
 in, 24, 76, 171. 
 
 Intoxication, 57. 
 
 Irregularity, 122. 
 
 Isaias, quoted, 31, 139. 
 
 Jealousy, sin of, 45, 74. 
 Jerusalem, the daughters of, 
 
 139. 
 Job, the patriarch 35 ; trials of, 
 
 168. 
 John, St., the beloved disciple, 
 
 125, 213, 233. 
 Joy, spirit of, 255. 
 Judas, sin of, 17, 41, 52, 120. 
 
262 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Jade, St., words of, 48. 
 Judgment, day of, 12, 91, 155, 
 
 19(3 ; of God, 31, 42. 
 Just, the, 123. 
 Justice, original, 48. 
 
 Knowledge of God, 30. 
 
 Labor, rest from, 246. 
 
 Lamps of faith, hope, and char- 
 ity, 121. 
 
 Language, acquisition of, 78. 
 
 Law, of God, 11 ; transgression 
 of, 12 ; of responsibility, 19 ; 
 of liberty, 107, 196. 
 
 Lawgiver, the living, 16. 
 
 Lazarus and Dives, 114 ; in the 
 tomb, 212. 
 
 Lent, custom of dressing in, 
 197. 
 
 Leprosy, 30 ; of the soul, 133. 
 
 Levity of matter, 74. 
 
 Liberty, law of, 107, 196, 199, 
 252. 
 
 Life, Bread of, 132 ; the spirit- 
 ual, 83. 
 
 Light, fullness of, 11 ; of the 
 Spirit of God, 28, 33 ; of the 
 intellect, 27 ; of glory, 249. 
 
 Lot of the Cross, 228, meted out 
 by God, 254. 
 
 Malice of sin, 13, 14. 
 
 Man, perfections of, 24. 
 
 Mary, Mother of God, 32, 214, 
 235, 256 ; Magdalen, 117, 138, 
 154, 157, 214, 233, 236, 237, 
 256. 
 
 Matter, remote and proximate, 
 146. 
 
 Memory, 180. 
 
 Merit, doctrine of, 49, 184 , re- 
 vival of, 150. 
 
 Michael the archangel, 168. 
 
 Milan, the people of, 194. 
 
 Mind, action of, 180. 
 
 Money, expenditure of, 198. 
 
 Morality, independent, 15. 
 
 Morals, denial of, 16 ; definition 
 
 of, 16 ; of dress, 196. 
 Mortification repulsive, 79. 
 Moses, 28. 
 Music, learning of, 79. 
 
 Nature, human, 14; uncreated, 
 of God, 14 ; perfections of, 
 76. 
 
 Necessity of hell, 63, 72. 
 Negation of the devil, 169. 
 Neighbor, love of our, 250. 
 
 Obedience, life of, 79 ; state of 
 habitual, 73 ; test of, 22. 
 
 Occasions of sin, 191 ; necessary 
 and voluntary, 192. 
 
 Office of the Holy Ghost, 10. 
 
 Omission, sins of, 106. 
 
 Pain of loss, 26 ; from tempta- 
 tion, 184. 
 Palate, indulgence of the, 195. 
 Palsy of the heart, 149. 
 Parable of the Prodigal Son, 
 
 117, 134, 154. 
 Paradise, Adam in, 22. 
 Parricide, mater al, 18. 
 Pas-ions, the, 178, 182. 
 Paul of the Cross. St., 111. 
 Peace of God, 255. 
 Penance, definition of, 133; fruits 
 
 of, 9, 137, 140, 143. 
 Penitence, 132, 236. 
 Penitent, the Absolver of the, 
 
 29 ; mark of the true, 190. 
 Perfections of man, 24, 39, 76; of 
 
 the intellect, 113; of the will, 
 
 113. 
 Peter, St., sin of, 120, 142, 143, 
 
 214 ; appearance of our Lord 
 
 to, 233, 236. 
 Pharisee in the Temple, 144. 
 Philip Neri, St., words of, 188. 
 Pleasure from temptation, 184. 
 Pomps of the world, 170. 
 Popularity in society, 89. 
 Prayer, duty of, 109 ; facility of, 
 
 80. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 263 
 
 Pr'de, 46, 47. 
 
 Priesthood of Jesus Christ, 146. 
 Probation of the angels, 47. 
 Prodigal Son, parable of, 117, 
 
 135, 154. 
 Providence of God, 255. 
 Punishment, eternal, 62. 
 
 Reason, dictates of, 16 ; illumi- 
 nation of, 10. 
 
 Recollection, habit of, 111. 
 
 Redeemer, sin against our. 28- 
 
 Regeneration of the Holy Ghost, 
 26, 49. 
 
 Relation between God and Man, 
 16. 
 
 Remembrance, book of, 51, 58, 
 90, 103. 
 
 Remorse, 64. 
 
 Reparation, spirit of, 193. 
 
 Repentance, 25, 60, 134 ; opera- 
 tion of, 71 ; real, 75. 
 
 Resistance of temptation, 185 ; 
 of the known truth, 153. 
 
 Responsibility, law of, 19. 
 
 Resurrection, joy of the, 237, 
 242. 
 
 Revival of merits, 150. 
 
 Sackilege in confession, 148, 
 192. 
 
 Sadnes3 caused by indulgence, 
 254. 
 
 Saint Paul of the Cross, 111 ; Pe- 
 ter, 17, 120, 141, 143, 213, 233, 
 236 ; Philip Neri, 188. 
 
 Saints, all called to be, 123. 
 
 Sanctification,184, 187. 
 
 Satan, 52, 66 ; malice of, 175 ; 
 messenger of, 186 ; ministers 
 of, 62, 168 ; powerless against 
 the will, 181 ; spirit of, 172. 
 
 Saul the persecutor, 109, 226, 
 239. 
 
 School, the infidel, 15. 
 
 Science, falsely so-called, 93. 
 
 Self-assurance, 144. 
 
 Self-denial, sweetness of, 79, 
 199. 
 
 Self-knowledge, 138, 186, 226. 
 
 Self-love, 148, 254. 
 
 Self-mortification, 186. 
 
 Self-murder, 64, 72. 
 
 Self-worship, 27, 254. 
 
 Silence, habit of, 110. 
 
 Siloe, pool of, 126. 
 
 Simon Magus, the sin of, 41. 
 
 Sin, the convincer of, 10; deadli- 
 ness of, 30 ; definitions of, 12, 
 26, 149 ; formal, 17 ; of infirm- 
 ity, 73; malice of, 13, 27 ; ma- 
 terial, 18; mortal effects of, 59; 
 occasions of, 191; original, 21, 
 25 ; pain following on, 26; ve- 
 nial, 71 ; wounds of, 171. 
 
 Sinfulness of man, 12 ; of diso- 
 bedience, 17 ; depth of, 33. 
 
 Sloth, sin of, 45, 73, 107. 
 
 Sluggishness, state of, 111, 113. 
 
 Society, modern, 89. 
 
 Solomon, 52. 
 
 Soul, integrity of the, 24 ; lepro- 
 sy of, 133 ; the life of, 71 ; sanc- 
 tity of. 13 ; windows of, 181. 
 
 Spirit, the Holy. See under Holy 
 Ghost 
 
 Spirit of the world, 171. 
 
 S'.orm in the harbor, 177. 
 
 Stupidity of unbelief, 16. 
 
 Surprise, sins of, 73. 
 
 Temptation, 23, 125, 164, 181, 
 191 ; anguish of, 271 ; furnace 
 of, 186 ; giving self-know- 
 ledge, 186 ; inevitable, 167 ; 
 threefold, 172. 
 
 Thanksgiving, spirit of, 256. 
 
 Theatres, 94. 
 
 Theresa, St., on venial sin, 87. 
 
 Thirst of our Lord, 208. 
 
 Thomas, St., apostle, 238. 
 
 Torment, eternal, 25. 
 
 Torrent of sweetness, 238. 
 
 Transgression of the law, 12 ; 
 wantonness of, 24. 
 
 Trust in God, 219. 
 
 Truth, 80. 
 
264: 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Turbulence in the passions, 25, 
 
 76, 170. 
 Twilight of conscience, 104. 
 
 Unbelief, stupidity of, 16. 
 Unholiness, 30. 
 Unpunctuality, 112. 
 
 Veils, wearing of, 197. 
 Vermin of the soul, 90. 
 Virgins, the wise and foolish, 
 
 126. 
 Vision of God, 25, 216 ; joys of, 
 
 243, 249. 
 
 "Wantonness of transgression, 
 
 23. 
 Wayfarer on earth, 216. 
 Weakness in the will, 25, 76, 
 
 170. 
 
 Weariness of God, 120. 
 
 Will of God, 13 ; abuse of, 14. 
 
 Will of man, weakness of, 24, 25, 
 76, 170; change of the, 155; the 
 rational appetite of the soul, 
 181; at variance with God ,229. 
 
 Windows of the soul, 181. 
 
 Wisdom, divine, 25. 
 
 Word of God, written, 39, 71. 
 
 World, spirit of the, 169 ; imper- 
 tinence of, 21 ; impatient of 
 zeal, 116. 
 
 Worms of death, 90. 
 
 Worship of self, 27. 
 
 Wounds of Adam, 25, 76, 170 ; 
 the Five Sacred, 28 ; of our 
 own heart, 166. 
 
 Zeal, the world's impatience of, 
 117. 
 
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