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DISCOURSES 
 
 ADDRESSED TO 
 
 MIXED CONGREGATIONS. 
 
LOlTDO^f : 
 
 GILBEET A^D EIVINGTON, PEINTEES, 
 
 ST. JOHN'S SQUABE. 
 
DISCOURSES 
 
 ADDRESSED TO 
 
 MIXED CONGREGATIONS. 
 
 JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN. 
 
 SIXTH EDITION. 
 
 HouHou : 
 
 BURNS & OATES. 
 1881. 
 
\ S-5-/. 
 
 ZZ^S'/^ 
 
TO THE 
 
 EIGHT EEY. NICHOLAS AVISEMAN, D.D.. 
 
 BISHOP OF MELIPOTAMTJS, 
 
 AND VICAE APOSTOLIC OP THE LONDON DISTBICT, 
 
 ETC., ETC., ETC. 
 
 My dear Lord, 
 
 I present for your Lordship's kind acceptance 
 and patronage the first work which I publish as a 
 Father of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. I have a 
 sort of claim upon your permission to do so, as a 
 token of my gratitude and affection toward your 
 Lordship, since it is to you principally that I owe it, 
 under God, that I am a client and subject, however 
 unworthy, of so great a Saint. 
 
 When I found myself a Catholic, I also found 
 myself in your Lordship's district; and, at your 
 suggestion, I first moved into your immediate neigh- 
 bourhood, and then, when your Lordship further 
 desired it, I left you for Rome. There it was my 
 blessedness to be allowed to offer myself, with the 
 condescending approval of the Holy Father, to the 
 service of St. Philip, of whom I had so often heard 
 
vi Dedication, 
 
 you speak before I left England, and whose bright 
 and beautiful character had won my devotion, even 
 when I was a Protestant. 
 
 You see then, my dear Lord, how much you have 
 to do with my present position in the Church. But 
 your concern with it is greater than I have yet stated ; 
 for I cannot forget, that when, in the year 1839, a 
 doubt first crossed my mind of the tenableness of the 
 theological theory on which Anglicanism is based, it 
 was caused in no slight degree by the perusal of a 
 controversial paper, attributed to your Lordship, on 
 the schism of the Donatists. 
 
 That the glorious intercession of St. Philip may be 
 the reward of your faithful devotion to himself, and 
 of your kindness to me, is. 
 
 My dear Lord, 
 
 while I ask your Lordship's blessing on me and mine, 
 
 the earnest prayer of 
 
 Your affectionate friend and servant, 
 
 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, 
 
 OF THE OBA.TOBY. 
 
 In Test. S. Caroliy 
 1849. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 PAGB 
 THE SALVATION OF THE HEAEEE THE MOTIVE OF THE 
 
 PEEACHEE 1 
 
 DISCOURSE 11. 
 
 NEGLECT OF DIVINE CALLS AND WAENINGS ... 22 
 
 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 MEN, NOT ANGELS, THE PEIESTS OF THE GOSPEL . . 43 
 
 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 PUEITT AND LOVE 62 
 
 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 SAINTLINESS THE STANDAED OF CHEI8TIAN PEINCIPLE . 83 
 
 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 god's will THE END OF LIFE 104 
 
 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 PEESEVEEANCE IN GEACE 124 
 
 DISCOURSE VIII. 
 
 NATUEE AND GEACE 146 
 
 DISCOURSE IX. 
 
 ILLUMINATING GEACE 170 
 
 DISCOURSE X. 
 
 PAITH AND PEIVATE JUDGMENT 193 
 
viii Contents, 
 
 L»ISCOURSE XI. 
 
 TAGE 
 
 FAITH AND DOUBT 215 
 
 DISCOURSE XII. 
 
 PROSPECTS OF THE CATHOLIC MISSIONEE .... 239 
 
 DISCOURSE XIII. 
 
 MTSTEEIES OF NATUEE AND OF GEACE .... 261 
 
 DISCOURSE XIV. 
 
 THE MYSTEET OF DIVINE CONDESCENSION .... 285 
 
 DISCOURSE XV. 
 
 THE INFINITUDE OF THE DIVINE ATTEIBUTES . . . 306 
 
 DISCOURSE XVI. 
 
 MENTAL SUFFEEINGS OF OUE LOED IN HIS PASSION . . 324 
 
 DISCOURSE XVII. 
 
 THE GLOEIES OF MAEY FOE THE SAKE OF HEE SON . .« 343 
 
 DISCOURSE XVIII. 
 
 ON THE FITNESS OF THE GLOEIES OF MAEY . . . 361 
 
DISCOURSE I. 
 
 TJTE SALVATION OF THE HEARER THE MOTIVE 
 OF THE PREACHER. 
 
 TT/'HEN a body of men come into a neighbourhood 
 * to them unknown, as we are doing, my brethren, 
 strangers to strangers, and there set themselves down, 
 and raise an altar, and open a school, and invite, or 
 even exhort all men to attend them, it is natural that 
 they who see them, and are drawn to think about 
 them, should ask the question. What brings them 
 hither? Who bids them come? What do they 
 want? What do they preach? What is their war- 
 rant? What do they promise ? — You have a right, 
 my brethren, to ask the question. 
 
 Many, however, will not stop to ask it, as thinking 
 they can answer it without difficulty for themselves. 
 Many there are who would promptly and confidently 
 answer it, according to their own habitual view of 
 things, on their own principles, the principles of the 
 world. The views, the principles, the aims of the 
 world are very definite, are everywhere acknowledged, 
 and are incessantly acted on. They supply an ex- 
 planation of the conduct of others, whoever they be, 
 
2 The Salvation of the Hearer 
 
 ready at hand, and so sure to be true in the common 
 run of cases, as to be probable and plausible in any 
 case in particular. When we would account for 
 effects which we see, we of course refer them to 
 causes which we know of. To fancy causes of which 
 we know nothing, is not to account for them at all. 
 The world then naturally and necessarily judges of 
 others by itself. Those who live the life of the world, 
 and act from motives o£ the world, and live and act 
 with those who do the like, as a matter of course 
 ascribe the actions of others, however different they 
 may be from their own, to one or other of the motives 
 which weigh with themselves; for some motive or 
 other they must assign, and they can imagine none 
 but those of which they have experience. 
 
 We know how the world goes on, especially in this 
 country; it is a laborious, energetic, indefatigable 
 world. It takes up objects enthusiastically, and 
 vigorously carries them through. Look into the 
 world, as its course is faithfully traced day by day in 
 those publications which are devoted to its service, 
 and you will see at once the ends which stimulate it, 
 and the views which govern it. You will read of 
 great and persevering exertions, made for some tem- 
 poral end, good or bad, but still temporal. Some 
 temporal end it is, even if it be not a selfish one ; — 
 generally, indeed, it is such as name, influence, power, 
 wealth, station ; sometimes it is the relief of the ills 
 of human life or society, of ignorance, sickness, 
 poverty, or vice — still some temporal end it is, which 
 is the exciting and animating principle of those 
 
the Motive of the Preacher. 3 
 
 exertions. And so pleasant is the excitement which 
 those temporal objects create^ that it is often its own 
 reward; insomuch that, forgetting the end for which 
 they toil, men find a satisfaction in the toil itself, and 
 are sufficiently repaid for their trouble hy their trouble, 
 — by the struggle for success, and the rivalry of party, 
 and the trial of their skill, and the demand upon their 
 resources, by the vicissitudes and hazards, and ever 
 new emergencies, and varying requisitions of the con- 
 test which they carry on, though that contest never 
 comes to an end. 
 
 Such is the way of the world ; and therefore, I say, 
 it is not unnatural, that, when it sees any persons 
 whatever anywhere begin to work with energy, and 
 attempt to get others about them, and act in outward 
 appearance like itself, though in a different direction, 
 and with a religious profession, it should unhesi- 
 tatingly impute to them the motives which influence, 
 or would influence its own children. Often byway of 
 blame, but sometimes not as blaming, but as merely 
 stating a plain fact, which it thinks undeniable, it 
 takes for granted that they are ambitious, or restless, 
 or eager for distinction, or fond of power. It knows 
 no better; and it is vexed and annoyed if, as time 
 goes on, one thing or another is seen in the conduct 
 of those whom it criticises, which is inconsistent with 
 the assumption on which, in the first instance, it so 
 summarily settled their position and anticipated their 
 course. It took a general view of them, looked them 
 through, as it thought, and from some one action of 
 theirs which came to its knowledge, assigned to them 
 B 2 
 
4 The Salvation of the Hearer 
 
 unhesitatingly some particular motive as their nabi- 
 tual actuating principle; but presently it finds it is 
 obliged to shift its ground, to take up some new 
 hypothesis, and explain to itself their character and 
 their conduct over again. Oh, my dear brethren, the 
 world cannot help doing so, because it knows us not; 
 it ever will be impatient with us for not being of the 
 world, because it is the world ; it is necessarily blind 
 to the one motive which has influence with us, and, 
 tired out at length with hunting through its cata- 
 logues and note-books for a description of us, it sits 
 down in disgust, after its many conjectures, and 
 flings us aside as inexplicable, or hates us as if 
 mysterious and designing. 
 
 My brethren, we have secret views — secret, that is 
 from men of this world ; secret from politicians, secret 
 from the slaves of mammon, secret from all ambitious, 
 covetous, selfish, and voluptuous men. For religion 
 itself, like its Divine Author and Teacher, is, as I 
 have said, a hidden thing from them; and not 
 knowing it, they cannot use it as a key to interpret 
 the conduct of those who are influenced by it. They 
 do not know the ideas and motives which religion sets 
 before that mind which it has made its own. They do 
 not enter into them, or realize them, even when they 
 are told them ; and they do not believe that a man 
 can be influenced by them, even when he professes 
 them. They cannot put themselves into the position 
 of a man simply striving, in what he does, to please 
 God. They are so narrow-minded, such is the mean- 
 ness of their intellectual make, that, when a Catholic 
 
the Motive of the Preache7\ 5 
 
 makes profession of this or that doctrine of the 
 Churchj — sin, judgment, heaven and hell, the blood 
 of Christ, the power of Saints, the intercession of the 
 Blessed Virgin, or the real presence in the Eucharist, 
 — and says that these are the objects which inspire 
 his thoughts and direct his actions through the day, 
 they cannot take in that he is in earnest ; for they 
 think, forsooth, that these points ought to be his very 
 difficulties, and are at most nothing more than trials 
 to his faith, and that he gets over them by putting 
 force on his reason, and thinks of them as little as he 
 can; and they do not dream that truths such as these 
 have a hold upon his heart, and exert an influence on 
 his life. No wonder, then, that the sensual, and 
 worldly-minded, and the unbelieving, are suspicious 
 of one whom they cannot comprehend, and are so 
 intricate and circuitous in their imputations, when 
 they cannot bring themselves to accept an explana- 
 tion which is straight before them. So it has been 
 from the beginning ; the Jews preferred to ascribe the 
 conduct of our Lord and His forerunner to any motive 
 but that of a desire to fulfil the will of God. To the 
 Jews they were, as He says, " like children sitting in 
 the market-place, which cry to their companions, say- 
 ing, We have piped to you, and you have not danced ; 
 we have lamented to you, and you have not mourned.^' 
 And then He goes on to account for it : "I thank 
 Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou 
 hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and 
 hast revealed them to little ones. Yea, Father; for 
 so hath it been pleasing to Thy sight.^"* 
 
6 The Salvation of the Hearer 
 
 Let the world have its way, let it say what it will 
 about uSj my brethren ; but that does not hinder our 
 saying- what we think, and what the eternal God 
 thinks and says, about the world. We have as good 
 a right to have our own judgment about the world, as 
 the world to have its j udgment about us : and we 
 mean to exercise that right ; for, while we know well 
 it judges us amiss, we have God's testimony that we 
 judge it truly. While, then, it is eager in ascribing 
 our earnestness to one or other of its own motives, 
 listen to me, while I show you, as it is not difficult to 
 do, that it is our very fear and hatred of those motives, 
 and our compassion for the souls possessed by them, 
 which makes us so busy and so troublesome, which 
 prompts us to settle down in a district, so destitute 
 of outward recommendations, but so overrun with 
 religious error and so populous in souls. 
 
 Oh my brethren, little does the world, engrossed, as 
 it is, with things of time and sense, little does it trouble 
 itself about souls, about the state of souls in God's 
 sight, about their past history, and about their prospects 
 for the future. The world forms its views of things for 
 itself, and in its own way, and lives in them. It never 
 stops to consider whether they are sound and true; nor 
 does it come into its thought to seek for any external 
 standard, or channel of information, by which their 
 truth can be ascertained. It is content to take things 
 for granted according to their first appearance; it does 
 not stop to think of God ; it lives for the day, and (in 
 a perverse sense) "is not solicitous for the morrow.^' 
 What it sees, tastes, handles, is enough for it ; this is 
 
the Motive of the Preacher, J 
 
 the limit of its knowledge and of its aspirations; what 
 tells, what works well, is alone respectable ; efficiency 
 is the measure of duty, and power is the rule of right, 
 and success is the test of truth. It believes what it 
 experiences, it disbelieves what it cannot demonstrate. 
 And, in consequence, it teaches that a man has not 
 much to do to be saved ; that either he has committed 
 no great sins, or that he will, as a matter of course, be 
 pardoned for committing them ; that he may securely 
 trust in God's mercy for his prospects in eternity; and 
 that he ought to discard all self-reproach, or depreca- 
 tion, or penance, all mortification and self-discipline, 
 as affronting or derogatory to that mercy. This is 
 what the world teaches, by its many sects and philo- 
 sophies, about our condition in this life ; but what, on 
 the other hand, does the Catholic Church teach con- 
 cerning it ? 
 
 She teaches that man was originally made in God's 
 image, was God'^s adopted son, was the heir of eternal 
 glory, and, in foretaste of eternity, was partaker here 
 on earth of great gifts and manifold graces ; and she 
 teaches that now he is a fallen being. He is under 
 the curse of original sin ; he is deprived of the grace 
 of God ; he is a child of wrath ; he cannot attain to 
 heaven, and he is in peril of sinking into hell. I do 
 not mean he is fated to perdition by some necessary 
 law ; he cannot perish without his own real will and 
 deed ; and God gives him, even in his natural state, a 
 multitude of inspirations and helps to lead him on to 
 faith and obedience. There is no one born of Adam 
 but might be saved, as far as divine assistances are 
 
8 The Salvation of the Hearer 
 
 concerned ; yet_, looking at the power of temptation, 
 the force of the passions, the strength of self-love and 
 self-will, the sovereignty of pride and sloth, in every 
 one of his children, who will be bold enough to assert 
 of any particular soul, that it will be able to maintain 
 itself in obedience, without an abundance, a profusion 
 of grace, not to be expected, as bearing no proportion, 
 I do not say simply to the claims (for they are none), 
 but to the bare needs of human nature ? We may 
 securely prophesy of every man born into the world, 
 that, if he comes to years of understanding, he will, in 
 spite of God's general assistances, fall into mortal sin 
 and lose his soul. It is no light, no ordinary succour, 
 by which man is taken out of his own hands and 
 defended against himself. He requires an extraordinary 
 remedy. Now what a thought is this ! what a light 
 does it cast upon man's present state ! how diffe- 
 rent from the view which the world takes of it ; how 
 piercing, how overpowering in its influence on the 
 hearts that admit it ! 
 
 Contemplate, my brethren, more minutely the 
 history of a soul born into the world, and educated 
 according to its principles, and the idea, which I am 
 putting before you, will grow on you. The poor infant 
 passes through his two, or three, or five years of 
 innocence, blessed in that he cannot yet sin ; but at 
 length (Oh woeful day !) he begins to realize the dis- 
 tinction between right and wrong Alas ! sooner or 
 later, for the age varies, but sooner or later the awful 
 day has come; he has the power, the great, the dread- 
 ful, the awful power of discerning and pronouncing a 
 
the Motive of the Preacher, 9 
 
 thing to be wrong", and yet doing it. He has a distinct 
 view that he shall grievously offend his Maker and his 
 Judge by doing this or that ; and while he is really 
 able to keep from it, he is at liberty to choose it, and 
 to commit it. He has the dreadful power of commit- 
 ting a mortal sin. Young as he is, he has as true an 
 apprehension of that sin, and can give as real a con- 
 sent, as did the evil spirit, when he fell. The day is 
 come, and who shall say whether it will have closed, 
 whether it will have run out many hours, before he 
 will have exercised that power, and have perpetrated, 
 in fact, what he ought not to do, what he need not 
 do, what he can do ? Who is there whom we ever 
 knew, of whom we can assert that, had he remained 
 in a state of nature, he would have used the powers 
 given him, — that if he be in a state of nature, he has 
 used the powers given him, — in such a way as to 
 escape the guilt and penalty of offending Almighty 
 God ? No, my brethren, a large town like this is a 
 fearful sight. We walk the streets, and what num- 
 bers are there of those who meet us who have never 
 been baptized at all ! And the remainder, what is it 
 made up of, but for the most part of those who, 
 though baptized, have sinned againsrt the grace given 
 them, and even from early youth have thrown them- 
 selves out of that fold in which alone is salvation ! 
 Reason and sin have gone together from the first. 
 Poor child, he looks the same to his parents ! They 
 do not know whathasbeen going on in him; or perhaps, 
 did they know it, they would think very little of it, 
 for thev are in a ttate of mortal sin as well as he. 
 
lo The Salvation of the Hearer 
 
 They too_, long before they knew each other, had 
 sinned, and mortally too, and were never reconciled 
 to God; thus they lived for years, unmindful of their 
 state. At length they married ; it was a day of joy 
 to them, but not to the Angels ; they might be in high 
 life or in low estate, they might be prosperous or not 
 in their temporal course, but their union was not 
 blessed by God. They gave birth to a child; he was 
 not condemned to hell on his birth, but he had the 
 omens of evil upon him, it seemed that he would go 
 the way of all flesh: and now the time is come; the 
 presage is justified ; and he willingly departs from 
 God. At length the forbidden fruit has been eaten ; 
 sin has been devoured with a pleased appetite ; the 
 gates of hell have yawned upon him, silently and 
 without his knowing it ; he has no eyes to see its 
 flames, but its inhabitants are gazing upon him ; hi& 
 place in it is fixed beyond dispute ; — unless his Maker 
 interfere in some extraordinary way, he is doomed. 
 
 Yet his intellect does not stay its growth, because 
 he is the slave of sin. It opens : time passes ; he 
 learns perhaps various things ; he may have good 
 abilities, and be taught to cultivate them. He may 
 have engaging manners ; anyhow he is light-hearted 
 and merry, as boys are. He is gradually educated for 
 the world ; he forms his own judgments ; chooses his 
 principles, and is moulded to a certain character. That 
 character may be more, it may be less amiable ; it 
 may have much or little of natural virtue : it matters 
 not — the mischief is within; it is done, and it spreads. 
 The devil is unloosed and abroad in him. For a while 
 
the Motive of the Preacher. 1 1 
 
 he used some sort of prayers, but he has left them off; 
 they were but a form, and he had no heart for them ; 
 why should he continue them ? and what was the use 
 of them ? and what the obligation ? So he has rea- 
 soned ; and he has acted upon his reasoning, and 
 ceased to pray. Perhaps this was his first sin, that 
 original mortal sin, which threw him out of grace — 
 a disbelief in the power of prayer. As a child, he 
 refused to pray, and argued that he was too old to 
 pray, and that his parents did not pray. He gave 
 prayer up, and in came the devil, and took possession 
 of him, and made himself at home, and revelled in his 
 heart. 
 
 Poor child ! Every day adds fresh and fresh mortal 
 sins to his account; the pleadings of grace have less 
 and less effect upon him ; he breathes the breath of 
 evil, and day by day becomes more fatally corrupted. 
 He has cast off Ihe thought of God, and set up self in 
 His place. He has rejected the traditions of religion 
 which float about him, and has chosen instead the 
 more congenial traditions of the world, to be the guide 
 of his life. He is confident in his own views, and 
 does not suspect that evil is before him, and in his 
 path. He learns to scoff at serious men and serious 
 things, catches at any story circulated against them, 
 and speaks positively when he has no means of 
 judging or knowing. The less he believes of revealed 
 doctrine, the wiser he thinks himself to be. Or, if his 
 natural temper keeps him from becoming hard-hearted, 
 still from easiness and from imitation he joins in 
 mockery of holy persons and holy things, as far as 
 
1 2 The Salvation of the Hearer 
 
 they come across him. He is sharp and ready, and 
 humorous, and employs these talents in the cause of 
 Satan. He has a secret antipathy to religious truths 
 and religious doings, a disgust which he is scarcely 
 aware of, and could not explain, if he were. So was 
 it with Cain, the eldest born of Adam, who went on to 
 murder his brother, because his works were just. So 
 was it with those poor boys at Bethel who mocked the 
 great prophet Eliseus, crying out. Go up, thou bald 
 head ! Anything serves the purpose of a scoff and 
 taunt to the natural man, when irritated by the sight 
 of religion. 
 
 Oh my brethren, I might go on to mention those 
 other more loathsome and more hidden wickednesses 
 which germinate and propagate within him, as time 
 proceeds, and life opens on him. Alas ! who shall 
 sound the depths of that evil whose wages is death ? 
 Oh what a dreadful sight to look on, is this fallen 
 world, specious and fair outside, plausible in its pro- 
 fessions, ashamed of its own sins and hiding them, 
 yet a mass of corruption under the surface ! Ashamed 
 of its sins, yet not confessing to itself that they are 
 sins, but defending them if conscience upbraids, and 
 perhaps boldly saying, or at least implying, that, if an 
 impulse be allowable in itself, it must be always right 
 in an individual, nay, that self-gratification is its own 
 warrant, and that temptation is the voice of God. 
 Why should I attempt to analyze the intermingling 
 influences, or to describe the combined power, of pride 
 and lust, — lust exploring a way to evil, and pride 
 fortifying the road, — till the first elementary truths 
 
the Motive of the Preacher, 1 3 
 
 of Revelation are looked upon as mere nursery tales ? 
 No, I have intended nothing- more than to put 
 wretched nature upon its course, as I may call it, and 
 there to leave it, my brethren, to your reflections, to 
 that individual comment which each of you may be 
 able to put on this faint delineation, realizing* in 
 your own mind and your own conscience what no 
 •words can duly set forth. 
 
 His secular course proceeds : the boy has become a 
 man ; he has taken up a profession or a trade ; he has 
 fair success in it ; he marries, as his father did before 
 him. He plays his part in the scene of mortal life ; 
 his connexions extend as he gets older : whether in a 
 higher or a lower sphere of society, he has his reputa- 
 tion and his influence: the reputation and the in- 
 fluence of, we will say, a sensible, prudent, and shrewd 
 man. His childrien grow up around him ; middle age 
 is over, — his sun declines in the heavens. In the 
 balance and by the measure of the world, he is come 
 to an honourable and venerable old age ; he has been 
 a child of the world, and the world acknowledges and 
 praises him. But what is he in the balance of heaven ? 
 What shall we say of God's judgment of him ? What 
 about his soul ? — about his soul? Ah, his soul ; he had 
 forgotten that ; he had forgotten he had a soul, but it 
 remains from first to last in the sight of its Maker. 
 Posuisti sceculum nostrum in illuminatione vultus Ttii ; 
 '^Thou hast placed our life in the illumination of Thy 
 countenance.''-' Alas ! alas ! about his soul the world 
 knows, the world cares, nought; it does not recog- 
 nize the soul ; it owns nothing in him but an intel- 
 
1 4 The Salvation of the Hea^^er 
 
 lect manifested in a mortal frame; it cares for the 
 man while he is here, it loses sight of him when he 
 is there. Still the time is coming when he is leaving 
 here, and will find himself 2^>^^r^ ; he is going out of 
 sight, amid the shadows of that unseen worlds about 
 which the visible world is so sceptical ; so, it concerns 
 us who have a belief of that unseen world, to inquire, 
 " How fares it all this while with his soul ? ^* Alas ! 
 he has had pleasures and satisfactions in life, he has, 
 I say, a good name among men ; he sobered his views 
 as life went on^ and he began to think that order and 
 religion were good things, that a certain deference 
 was to be paid to the religion of his country, and a 
 certain attendance to be given to its public worship ; 
 but he is still, in our Lord's words, nothing else but 
 a whited sepulchre ; he is foul within with the bones 
 of the dead and all uncleanness. All the sins of his 
 youth, never repented of, never put away, his old pro- 
 fanenesses,his impurities, his animosities, his idolatries, 
 are rotting with him ; only covered over and hidden 
 by successive layers of newer and later sins. His 
 heart is the home of darkness, it has been handled, 
 defiled, possessed by evil spirits; he is a being with- 
 out faith, and without hope ; if he holds anything for 
 truth, it is only as an opinion, and if he has a sort of 
 calmness and peace, it is the calmness, not of heaven, 
 but of decay and dissolution. And now his old enemy 
 has thrust aside his good Angel, and is sitting near 
 him ; rejoicing in his victory, and patiently waiting 
 for his prey ; not tempting him to fresh sins lest they 
 should disturb his conscience, but simply letting well 
 
the Motive of the Preacher, 1 5 
 
 alone; letting* him amuse himself with shadows of 
 faith, shadows of piety, shadows of worship ; aiding 
 him readily in dressing himself up in some form of 
 religion which may satisfy the weakness of his declin- 
 ing age^ as knowing well that he cannot last long, 
 that his death is a matter of time, and that he shall 
 soon be able to carry him down with him to his fiery 
 dwelling. 
 
 O how awful ! and at last the inevitable hour is 
 comef. He dies — he dies quietly — his friends are 
 satisfied about him. They return thanks that God 
 has taken him, has released him from the troubles of 
 life and the pains of sickness ; ^^ a good father," they 
 say, "a good neighbour," "sincerely lamented," 
 "lamented by a large circle of friends."" Perhaps 
 they add, " dying with a firm trust in the mercy of 
 God ; " — nay, he has need of something beyond mercy, 
 he has need of some attribute which is inconsistent 
 with perfection, and which is not, cannot be, in the 
 All-glorious, All-holy God ; — " with a trust," for- 
 sooth, " in the promises of the Gospel," which never 
 were his, or were early forfeited. And then, as time 
 travels on, every now and then is heard some passing 
 remembrance of him, respectful or tender j but he all 
 the while (in spite of this false world, and though its 
 children will not have it so, and exclaim, and protest, 
 and are indignant when so solemn a truth is hinted 
 at), he is lifting up his eyes, being in torment, and 
 lies " buried in hell." 
 
 Such is the history of a man in a state of nature, or 
 in a state of defection, to whom the Gospel has never 
 
1 6 The Salvation of the Hearer 
 
 been a reality, in whom the good seed has never taken 
 root, on whom God's grace has been shed in vain, with 
 whom it has never prevailed so far as to make him 
 seek His face and to ask for those higher gifts which 
 lead to heaven. Such is his dark record. But I have 
 spoken of only one man : alas ! my dear brethren, it 
 is the record of thousands ; it is, in one shape or other, 
 the record of all the children of the world. " As soon 
 as they are born,'' the wise man says, *^ they forthwith 
 hav3 ceased to be, and they are powerless to show any 
 sign of virtue, and are wasted away in their wicked- 
 ness.''' They may be rich or poor, learned or ignorant, 
 polished or rude, decent outwardly and self-disci- 
 plined, or scandalous in their lives, — but at bottom 
 they are all one and the same ; they have not faith, 
 they have not love ; they are impure, they are proud ; 
 they all agree together very well, both in opinions and 
 conduct ; they see that they agree ; and this agreement 
 they take as a proof that their conduct is right and 
 their opinions true. Such as is the tree, such is the 
 fruit; no wonder the fruit is the same in all when it 
 comes of the same root of unregenerate, unrenewed 
 nature; but they consider it good and wholesome, 
 because it is matured in so many; and they chase 
 away, as odious, unbearable, and horrible, the pure 
 and heavenly doctrine of Revelation, because it is so 
 severe upon themselves. No one likes bad news, no 
 one welcomes what condemns him ; the world slanders 
 the Truth in self-defence, because the Truth denounces 
 the world. 
 
 My brethren, if these things be so, or rather (for 
 
the Motive of the Preacher, 1 7 
 
 this is the point here), if we, Catholics, firmly believe 
 them to be so, so firmly believe them, that we feel it 
 would be happy for us to die rather than doubt them, 
 is it wonderful, does it require any abstruse explana- 
 tion, that men minded as we are should come into the 
 midst of a population such as this, and into a neigh- 
 bourhood where religious error has sway, and where 
 corruption of life prevails both as its cause and as its 
 consequence; — a population, not worse indeed than 
 the rest of the world, but not better ; not better, 
 because it has not with it the gift of Catholic truth ; 
 not purer, because it has not within it that gift of 
 grace which alone can destroy impurity ; a population, 
 sinful, I am certain, given to unlawful indulgences, 
 laden with guilt and exposed to eternal ruin, because 
 it is not blessed with that Presence of the Word 
 Incarnate, which" diffuses sweetness, and tranquillity, 
 and chastity, over the heart ; — is it a thing to be 
 marvelled at, that we begin to preach to such a 
 population as this, for which Christ died, and try to 
 convert it to Him and to His Church ? Is it necessary 
 to ask for reasons ? is it necessary to assign motives 
 of this world, for a proceeding which is so natural in 
 those who believe in the announcements and require- 
 ments of the other ? My dear brethren, if we are sure 
 that the Most Holy Redeemer has shed His blood 
 for all men, is it not a very plain and simple conse- 
 quence that we. His servants. His brethren. His priests, 
 should be unwilling to see that blood shed in vain, — 
 wasted, I may say, — as regards you, and should wish 
 to make you partakers of those benefits which have 
 
 c 
 
1 8 The Salvation of the Hearer 
 
 been vouchsafed to ourselves ? Is it necessary for any 
 by-stander to call us vain-glorious, or ambitious, or 
 restless, greedy of authority, fond of power, resentful, 
 party- spirited, or the like, when here is so much more 
 powerful, more present, more influential a motive to 
 tvhich our eagerness and zeal may be ascribed ? What 
 is so powerful an incentive to preaching as the sure 
 belief that it is the preaching of the truth ? What so 
 constrains to the conversion of souls, as the conscious- 
 ness that they are at present in guilt and in peril ? 
 What so great a persuasive to bring men into the 
 Church, as the conviction that it is the special means 
 by which God effects the salvation of those whom the 
 world trains in sin and unbelief? Only admit us to 
 believe what we profess, and surely that is not asking 
 a great deal (for what have we done that we should be 
 distrusted ?) — only admit us to believe what we pro- 
 fess, and you will understand without difficulty what 
 we are doing. We come among you, because we 
 believe there is but one way of salvation, marked out 
 from the beginning, and that you are not walking 
 along it ; we come among you as ministers of that 
 extraordinary grace of God, which you needj we come 
 among you because we have received a great gift from 
 God ourselves, and wish you to be partakers of our joy; 
 because it is written, '^ Freely ye have received, freely 
 give ; " because we dare not hide in a napkin those 
 mercies, and that grace of God, which have been given 
 us, not for our own sake only, but for the benefit of 
 others. 
 
 Such a zeal, poor and feeble though it be in us, has 
 
the Motive of the Preacher. 19 
 
 been the very life of the Church, and the breath of her 
 preachers and missionaries in all ages. It was such a 
 sacred fire which brought our Lord from heaven, and 
 wliich He desired, which He travailed, to communicate 
 to all around Him. " I am come to send fire on the 
 earth,^^ He says, " and what will I, but that it be 
 kindled ? ^^ Such, too, was the feeling of the great 
 Apostle to whom his Lord appeared in order to impart 
 to him this fire. " I send thee to the Gentiles,^' He 
 had said to him on his conversion, *^ to open their 
 eyes, that they may be converted from darkness to 
 light, and from the power of Satan unto God.^' And, 
 accordingly, he at once began to preach to them, that 
 they should do penance, and turn to God with worthy 
 fruits of penance, " for," as he says, *' the charity of 
 Christ constrained him," and he was " made all things 
 to all that he might save all," and he '^ bore all for 
 the elect's sake, that they might obtain the salvation 
 which is in Christ Jesus, with heavenly glory." 
 Such, too, was the fire of zeal which burned within 
 those preachers, to whom we English owe our Chris- 
 tianity. What brought them from Rome to this 
 distant isle and to a barbarian people, amid many 
 fears, and with much suffering, but the sovereign un- 
 controllable desire to save the perishing, and to knit the 
 members and slaves of Satan into the body of Christ? 
 This has been the secret of the propagation of the 
 Church from the very first, and will be to the end ; 
 this is why the Church, under the grace of God, to the 
 surprise of the world, converts the nations, and why 
 no sect can do the like ; this is why Catholic mission- 
 c 2 
 
20 The Salvation of the Hearer 
 
 aries throw themselves so generously among the 
 fiercest savages, and risk the most cruel torments, as 
 knowing the worth of the soul, as realizing the world 
 to come, as loving their brethren dearly, though they 
 never saw them, as shuddering at the thought of the 
 eternal woe, and as desiring to increase the fruit of 
 their Lord^s passion, and the triumphs of His grace. 
 
 We, my brethren, are not worthy to be named in 
 connexion with Evangelists, Saints, and Martyrs ; 
 we come to you in a peaceable time and in a well- 
 ordered state of society, and recommended by that 
 secret awe and reverence, which, say what they will. 
 Englishmen for the most part, or in good part, feel 
 for that Religion of their fathers, which has left in 
 the land so many memorials of its former sway. It 
 requires no great zeal in us, no great charity, to 
 come to you at no risk, and entreat you to turn from 
 the path of death, and be saved. It requires nothing 
 great, nothing heroic, nothing saint-like ; it does but 
 require conviction, and that we have, that the Catholic 
 Religion is given from God for the salvation of man- 
 kind, and that all other religions are but mockeries ; 
 it requires nothing more than faith, a single purpose, 
 an honest heart, and a distinct utterance. We come 
 to you in the name of God ; we ask no more of you 
 than that you would listen to us ; we ask no more 
 than that 3'ou would judge for yourselves whether or 
 not we speak God's words; it shall rest with you 
 whether we be God's priests and prophets or no. This 
 is not much to ask, but it is more than most men 
 will grant ; they do not dare listen to us, they are 
 
the Motive of the Preacher, 2 1 
 
 injpatient through prejudice, or they dread conviction. 
 Yes ! many a one there is, who has even good reason 
 to listen to us, nay, on whom we have a claim to be 
 heard, who ought to have a certain trust in us, who 
 yet shuts his ears, and turns away, and chooses to 
 hazard eternity without weighing what we have to 
 say. How frightful is this ! but you are not, you 
 cannot be such; we ask not your confidence, my 
 brethren, for you have never known us : we are not 
 asking you to take for granted what we say, for we 
 are strangers to you ; we do but simply bid you first 
 to consider that you have souls to be saved, and next 
 to judge for yourselves, whether, if God has revealed 
 a religion of His own whereby to save those souls, 
 that religion can be any other than the faith which 
 we preach. 
 
DISCOURSE II. 
 
 NEGLECT OF DIVINE CALLS AND WARNINGS. 
 
 IVr O one sins without making some excuse to himself 
 for sinning. He is obliged to do so : man is not 
 like the brute beasts; he has a divine gift within him 
 which we call reason, and which constrains him to 
 account before its judgment-seat for what he does. 
 He cannot act at random ; however he acts, he must 
 act by some kind of rule, on some sort of principle, 
 else he is vexed and dissatisfied with himself. Not 
 that he is very particular whether he finds a good 
 reason or a bad, when he is very much straitened for 
 a reason ; but a reason of some sort he must have. 
 Hence you sometimes find those who give up religious 
 duty altogether, attacking the conduct of religious 
 men, whether their acquaintance, or the ministers or 
 professors of religion, as a sort of excuse — a very bad 
 one — for their neglect. Others wall make the excuse 
 that they are so far from church, or so closely occupied 
 at home, whether they will or not, that they cannot 
 serve God as they ought. Others say that it is no use 
 trying to do so, that they have again and again gone 
 to confession and tried to keep out of mortal sin, and 
 
Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings, 2 3 
 
 cannot ; and so they give up the attempt as hopeless. 
 Others, when they fall into sin, excuse themselves on 
 the plea that they are but following nature; that the 
 impulses of nature are so very strong, and that it 
 cannot be wrong to follow that nature which God has 
 given us. Others are bolder still, and they cast oflP 
 religion altogether : they deny its truth; they deny 
 Church, Gospel, and Bible ; they go so far perhaps 
 as even to deny God's governance of His creatures. 
 They boldly deny that there is any life after death : 
 and, this being the case, of course they would be fools 
 indeed not to take their pleasure here, and to make as 
 much of this poor life as they can. 
 
 And there are others, and to these I am going to 
 address myself, who try to speak peace to themselves 
 by cherishing the thought that something or other 
 will happen after all to keep them from eternal ruin, 
 though they now continue in their neglect of God : 
 that it is a long time yet to death ; that there are 
 many chances in their favour ; that they shall repent 
 in process of time when they get old, as a matter of 
 course ; that they mean to repent some day ; that they 
 mean, sooner or later, seriously to take their state 
 into account, and to make their ground good ; and, if 
 they are Catholics, they add, that they will take care 
 to die with the last Sacraments, and that therefore 
 they need not trouble themselves about the matter. 
 
 Now these persons, my brethren, tempt God ; they 
 try Him, how far His goodness will go ; and, it may 
 be, they will try Him too long, and will have expe- 
 rience, not of His gracious forgiveness, but of His 
 
24 Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings. 
 
 severity and His justice. In this spirit it was that 
 the Israelites in the desert conducted themselves to- 
 wards Almighty God: instead of feeling awe of Him, 
 they were free with Him, treated Him familiarly, made 
 excuses, preferred complaints, upbraided Him; as if 
 the Eternal God had been a weak man, as if He had 
 been their minister and servant ; in consequence, we 
 are told by the inspired historian, " The Lord sent 
 among the people fiery serpents.'* To this St. Paul 
 refers when he says, " Neither let us tempt Christ, a 
 some of them tempted, and perished by the serpents -'^ 
 a warning to us now, that those who are forward and 
 bold with their Almighty Saviour, will gain, not the 
 pardon which they look for, but will find themselves 
 within the folds of the old serpent, will drink in his 
 poisonous breath, and at length will die under hiss 
 fangs. That seducing spirit appeared in person to our 
 Lord in the days of His flesh, and tried to entangle 
 Him, the Son of the Highest, in this very sin. He 
 placed Him on the pinnacle of the Temple, and said 
 to Him, " If Thou art the Son of God, cast Thyself 
 down, for it is written. He has given His Angels 
 charge of Thee, and in tlieir hands they shall lift Thee, 
 lest perchance Thou strike Thy foot against a stone -y' 
 but our Lord's answer was, '^ It is also written. Thou 
 shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.^^ And so num- 
 bers are tempted now to cast themselves headlong 
 down the precipice of sin, assuring themselves the 
 while that they will never reach the hell which lies at 
 the bottom, never dash upon its sharp rocks, or be 
 plunged into its flames ; for Angels and Saints are 
 
Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings. 25 
 
 there^ in their extremity, in tlieir final need, — or at 
 least, God's general mercies, or His particular pro- 
 mises, — to interpose and bear them away safely. Such 
 is the sin of these men, my brethren, of which I am 
 going to speak ; not the sin of unbelief, or of pride, 
 or of despair, but of presumption. 
 
 I will state more distinctly the kind of thoughts 
 which go through their minds, and which quiet and 
 satisfy them in their course of irreligion. They say to 
 themselves, ^^I cannot give up sin now; I cannot 
 give up this or that indulgence ; I caimot break 
 myself of this habit of intemperance; I cannot do 
 without these unlawful gains; I cannot leave these 
 employers or superiors, who keep me from foUowingmy 
 conscience. It is impossible I should serve God now ; 
 and I have no leisure to look into myself; and I do 
 not feel the wish to repent ; I have no heart for reli- 
 gion. But it will come easier by-and-by; it will be 
 as natural then to repent and be religious, as it is now 
 natural to sin. I shall then have few^er temptations, 
 fewer difficulties. Old people are sometimes indeed 
 reprobates, but, generally speaking, they are religious ; 
 they are religious almost as a matter of course ; they 
 may curse and swear a little, and tell lies, and do 
 such-like little things ; but still they are clear of 
 mortal sin, and would be safe if they were suddenly 
 taken off.'^ And when some particular temptation 
 comes on them, they think, " It is only one sin, and 
 once in a way ; I never did the like before, and never 
 will again while I live ; " or, '' I have done as bad 
 before now, and it is only one sin more, and I shall 
 
26 Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings. 
 
 have to repent any how ; and while I am about it, it 
 will be as easy to repent of one sin more as of one less, 
 for I shall have to repent of all sin ; '' or again, '' If 
 I perish, I shall not want company ; — what will 
 happen to this person or that? I am quite a Saint 
 compared with such a one ; and I have known men 
 repent, who have done much worse things than I have 
 done." 
 
 Now, my dear brethren, those who make such ex- 
 cuses to themselves, know neither what sin is in its 
 own nature, nor what their own sins are in particular ; 
 they understand neither the heinousness nor the mul- 
 titude of their sins. It is necessary, then, to state 
 distinctly one or two points of Catholic doctrine, which 
 will serve to put this matter in a clearer view than men 
 are accustomed to take of it. These truths are very 
 simple and very obvious, but are quite forgotten by the 
 persons of whom I have been speaking, or they would 
 never be able to satisfy their reason and their conscience 
 by such frivolous pleas and excuses, as those which I 
 have been drawing out. 
 
 First then observe, that when a person says, " I 
 have sinned as badly before now,-'^ or, " This is only 
 one sin more,^^ or, " I must repent any how, and then 
 will repent once for all,*' and the like, he forgets that 
 all his sins are in God's hand and in one page of the 
 book of judgment, and already added up against him, 
 according as each is committed, up to the last of them ; 
 that the sin he is now committing is not a mere single, 
 isolated, sin, but that it is one of a series, of a long cata- 
 logue ; that though it be but one, it is not sin one, or 
 
Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings. 2 7 
 
 sin two, or sin three in the list, but it is the thousandth, 
 the ten thousandth, or the hundred thousandth, in a 
 long course of sinning. It is not the first of his sins, 
 but the last, and perhaps the very last and finishing 
 sin. He himself forgets, manages to forget, or tries to 
 forget, wishes to forget, all his antecedent sins, or 
 remembers them merely as instances of his having 
 sinned with impunity before, and proofs that he may 
 sin with impunity still. But every sin has a history: 
 it is not an accident ; it is the fruit of former sins in 
 thought or in deed ; it is the token of a habit deeply 
 seated and widely spread ; it is the aggravation of a 
 virulent disease ; and, as the last straw is said to break 
 the horse's back, so our last sin, whatever it is, is that 
 which destroys our hope, and forfeits our place in 
 heaven. Therefore, my brethren, it is but the craft of 
 the devil, which makes you take your sins one by one, 
 while God views them as a whole. " Signasti, quasi 
 in sacculo, delict a mea,'' says holy Job, ^^ Thou hast 
 sealed up my sins as in a bag,^^ and one day they will 
 all be counted out. Separate sins are like the touches 
 and strokes which the painter gives, first one and then 
 another^ to the picture on his canvas ; or like the 
 stones which the mason piles up and cements together 
 for the house he is building. They are all connected 
 together ; they tend to a whole ; they look towards 
 an end, and they hasten on to their fulfilment. 
 
 Go, commit this sin, my brethren, to which you are 
 tempted, which you persist in viewing in itself alone, 
 look on it as Eve looked on the forbidden fruit, dwell 
 upon its lightness and insignificance; and perhaps 
 
28 Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings, 
 
 you may find it after all to be just the coping-stone 
 of your higli tower of rebellion, which conies into re- 
 membrance before God_, and fills up the measure of 
 your iniquities. ^* Fill ye up," says our Lord to the 
 hypocritical Pharisees, " the measure of your fathers/' 
 The wrath, which came on Jerusalem, was not simply 
 caused by the sins of that day, in which Christ came, 
 though in that day was committed the most awful of 
 all sins, viz.. His rejection ; for that was but the 
 crowning sin of a long course of rebellion. So again, 
 in an earlier age, the age of Abraham, ere the chosen 
 people had got possession of the land of promise, 
 there was already great and heinous sin among the 
 heathen w^ho inhabited it, yet they were not put out 
 at once, and Abraham brought in ; — why ? because 
 God's mercies were not yet exhausted towards them. 
 He still bestowed His grace on the abandoned people, 
 and waited for their repentance. But He foresaw 
 that He should wait in vain, and that the time of 
 vengeance would come ; and this He implied when He 
 said, that He did not give the chosen seed the land at 
 once, " for as yet the iniquities of the Amorrhites were 
 not at the full.'' But they did come to the full some 
 hundred years afterwards, and then the Israelites were 
 brought in, with the command to destroy them utterly 
 with the sword. And again, you know the history of 
 the impious Baltassar. In his proud feast, when he 
 was now filled with wine, he sent for the gold and 
 silver vessels which belonged to the Temple at Jeru- 
 salem, and had been brought to Babylon on the 
 taking of the holy city, — he sent for these sacred 
 
Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings, 29 
 
 vessels, that out of them he mig-ht drink more wine, 
 he, his nobles, his wives, and his concubines. In 
 that hour, the fingers as of a man^s hand were seen 
 upon the wall of the banqueting-room, writing the 
 doom of the king and of his kingdom. The words 
 were these : " God hath numbered thy kingdom, and 
 hath finished it; thou art weighed in the balance, 
 and art found wanting/' That wretched prince had 
 kept no account of his sins ; as a spendthrift keeps no 
 account of his debts, so he went on day after day and 
 year after year, revelling in pride, cruelty, and sensual 
 indulgence, and insulting his Master, till at length 
 he exhausted the Divine Mercy, and filled up the 
 chalice of wrath. His hour came : one more sin he 
 did, and the cup overflowed ; vengeance overtook him 
 on the instant, and he was cut off from the earth. 
 
 And that last sin need not be a great sin, need not 
 be greater than those which have gone before it; 
 perhaps it may be less. There was a rich man, men- 
 tioned by our Lord, who, when his crops were plenti- 
 ful, said within himself, " What shall I do, for I have 
 not where to bestow my fruits ? I will pull down my 
 barns, and build greater ; and I will say to my soul, 
 Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years ; 
 take thy rest, eat, drink, make good cheer.'' He was 
 carried off that very night. This was not a very 
 striking sin, and surely it was not his first great sin ; 
 it was the last instance of a long course of acts of 
 self-sufficiency and forgetfulness of God, not greater 
 in intensity than any before it, but completing their 
 number. And so again, when the father of that 
 
30 Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings, 
 
 impious king, whom I just now spoke of, when 
 Nabuchodonosor had for a whole year neglected the 
 warning of the prophet Daniel, calling him to turn 
 from' his pride and to repent, one day as he walked in 
 the palace of Babylon, he said, " Is not this great 
 Babylon, which I have built for the home of the 
 kingdom, in the strength of my power and in the 
 glory of my excellence ? " and forthwith, while the 
 word was yet in his mouth, judgment came upon him, 
 and he was smitten with a new and strange disease, 
 so that he was driven from men, and ate hay like the 
 ox, and grew wild in his appearance, and lived in the 
 open field. His consummating act of pride was not 
 greater, perhaps, than any one of those which through 
 the twelvemonth had preceded it. 
 
 No ; you cannot decide, my brethren, whether you 
 are outrunning God's mercy, merely because the sin 
 you now commit seems to be a small one; it is not 
 always the greatest sin that is the last. Moreover you 
 cannot calculate, which is to be your last sin, by the 
 particular number of those which have gone before it, 
 even if you could count them, for the number varies 
 in different persons. This is another very serious 
 circumstance. You may have committed but one or 
 two sins, and yet find that you are ruined beyond 
 redemption, though others who have done more are 
 not. Whv we know not, but God, who shows mercy 
 and gives grace to all, shows greater mercy and gives 
 more abundant grace to one man than another. To 
 all He gives grace suflScient for their salvation ; to all 
 He gives far more than they have any right to 
 
Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings. 3 r 
 
 expect; and they can claim nothing; but to some 
 He gives far more than to others. He tells us Him- 
 self, that, if the inhabitants of Tvre and Sidon had 
 seen the miracles done in Chorazin, they would have 
 done penance and turned to Him. That is, there was 
 that which would have converted them, and it was not 
 granted to them. Till we set this before ourselves, we 
 have not a right view either of sin in itself, or of our 
 own prospects if we live in it. As God determines 
 for each the measure of his stature, and the com- 
 plexion of his mind, and the number of his days, yet 
 not the same for all ; as one child of Adam is pre- 
 ordained to live one day, and another eighty years, so 
 is it fixed that one should be reserved for his eightieth 
 sin, another cut off after his first. Why this is, we 
 know not ; but it is parallel to what is done in human 
 matters without exciting any surprise. Of two con- 
 victed offenders one is pardoned, one is left to suffer ; 
 and this might be done in a case where there was 
 nothing to choose between the guilt of the one and of 
 the other, and where the reasons which determine the 
 difference of dealing towards the one and the other, 
 whatever they are, are external to the individuals 
 themselves. In like manner you have heard, I dare- 
 say, of decimating rebels, when they had been cap- 
 tured, that is, of executing every tenth and letting off 
 the rest. So it is also with God^s judgments, though 
 we cannot sound the reasons of them. He is not 
 obliged to let off any ; He has the power to condemn 
 all : I only bring this to show how our rule of justice 
 here below does not preclude a difference of dealing 
 
32 Neglect of Divine Calls ajtd Warnings, 
 
 with one man and with another. The Creator gives 
 one man time for repentance, He carries off another 
 by sudden death. He allows one man to die with the 
 last Sacraments ; another dies without a Priest to re- 
 ceive his imperfect contrition, and to absolve him : 
 the one is pardoned, and will go to heaven ; the other 
 goes to the place of eternal punishment. No one can 
 say how it will happen in his own case ; no one can 
 promise himself that he shall have time for repen- 
 tance ; or, if he have time, that he shall have any 
 supernatural movement of the heart towards God ; or, 
 even then, that a Priest will be at hand to give him 
 absolution. We may have sinned less than our next- 
 door neighbour, yet that neighbour may be reserved 
 for repentance and may reign with Christ, while we 
 may be punished with the evil spirit. 
 
 Nay, some have been cut off and sent to hell for 
 their first sin. This was the case, as divines teach, 
 as regards the rebel Angels. For their first sin, and 
 that a sin of thought, a single perfected act of pride, 
 they lost their first estate, and became devils. And 
 Saints and holy people record instances of men, and 
 even children, who in like manner have uttered a 
 first blasphemy or other deliberate sin, and were cut 
 off without remedy. And a number of similar in- 
 stances occur in Scripture; I mean of the awful 
 punishment of a single sin, without respect to the 
 virtue and general excellence of the sinner. Adam, 
 for a single sin, small in appearance, the eating of 
 the forbidden fruit, lost Paradise, and implicated all 
 his posterity in his own ruin. The Bethsamites 
 
Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings, '^^'^^ 
 
 looked upon the ark of the Lord, and more than fifty 
 thousand of them in consequence were smitten. Oza 
 touched it with his hand, as if to save it from falling", 
 and he was struck dead on the spot for his rashness. 
 The man of God from Juda ate bread and drank 
 water at Bethel, against the command of God, and he 
 was forthwith killed by a lion on his return. Ananias 
 and Sapphira told one lie, and fell down dead almost 
 as the words left their mouth. Who are we, that 
 God should wait for our repentance any longer, when 
 He has not waited at all, before He cut off those who 
 sinned less than we? ^^ 
 
 Oh my dear brethren, these presumptuous thoughts 
 of ours arise from a defective notion of the malignity 
 of sin viewed in itself. We are criminals, and we 
 are no judges in our own case. We are fond of our- 
 selves, and we take our own part, and we are familiar 
 with sin, and, from pride, we do not like to confess 
 ourselves lost. For all these reasons, we have no real 
 idea what sin is, what its punishment is, and what 
 grace is. We do not know what sin is, because 
 we do not know what God is ; we have no standard 
 with which to compare it, till we know what God is. 
 Only God^s glories. His perfections. His holiness. 
 His Majesty, His beauty, can teach us by the contrast 
 how to think of sin ; and since we do not see God 
 here, till we see Him, we cannot form a just judgment 
 what sin is ; till we enter heaven, we must take what 
 God tells us of sin, on faith. Nay, even then, we 
 shall be able to condemn sin, only so far as we are 
 able to see and praise and glorify God ; He alone can 
 
 D 
 
34 Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings. 
 
 duly judge of sin who can comprehend God ; He only 
 judged of sin according to the fulness of its evil, who, 
 knowing the Father from eternity with a perfect 
 knowledge, showed what He thought of sin hy dying 
 for it; He only, who was willing, though He was 
 God, to suffer inconceivable pains of soul and body in 
 order to make a satisfaction for it. Take His word, or 
 rather, His deed, for the truth of this awful doctrine, 
 — that a single mortal sin is enough to cut you off 
 from God for ever. Go down to the grave with a 
 single unrepented, unforgiven sin upon you, and you 
 have enough to sink you down to hell ; you have that, 
 which to a certainty will be your ruin. It may be 
 the hundredth sin, or it may be the first sin, no 
 matter : one is enough to sink you ; though the more 
 you have, the deeper you will sink. You need not 
 have your fill of sin in order to perish without 
 remedy ; there are those who lose both this world and 
 the next; they choose rebellion, and receive, not its 
 gains, but death. 
 
 Or grant, that God's anger delays its course, and 
 you have time to add sin to sin, this is only to in- 
 crease the punishment when it comes. God is terrible, 
 when He speaks to the sinner ; He is more terrible, 
 when He refrains; He is more terrible, when He is 
 silent and accumulates wrath. Alas ! there are those 
 who are allowed to spend a long life, and a happy 
 life, in neglect of Him, and have nothing in the out- 
 ward course of things to remind them of what is 
 coming, till their irreversible sentence bursts upon 
 them. As the stream flows smoothly before the 
 
Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings. 35 
 
 cataract, so with these persons does life pass along 
 swiftly and silently, serenely and joyously. '^ They 
 are not in the labour of men, neither shall they be 
 scourged like other men." '^ They are filled with 
 hidden things ; they are full of children, and leave 
 their remains to their little ones.^' ^* Their houses 
 are secure and at peace, neither is the rod of God 
 upon them. Their little ones go out like a flock, and 
 their children dance and play. They take the timbrel 
 and the harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. 
 They spend their days in good, and in a moment they 
 go down to hell." So was it with Jerusalem, when 
 God had deserted it ; it seemed never so prosperous 
 before. Herod the king had lately rebuilt the Temple ; 
 and the marbles with which it was cased were wonder- 
 ful for size and beauty, and it rose bright and glitter- 
 ing in the morning sun. The disciples called their 
 Lord to look at it, but He did but see in it the whited 
 sepulchre of a reprobate people, and foretold its over- 
 throw. " See ye all these things ? " He answered 
 them, " Amen, I say to you, stone shall not be here 
 left upon stone, which shall not be thrown down." 
 And " He beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, 
 If thou hadst known, even thou, and in this thy day, 
 tlie things that are for thy peace, but now they are 
 hidden from thine eyes ! " Hid, indeed, was her 
 doom ; for millions crowded within the guilty city at 
 her yearly festival, and her end seemed a long way 
 off, and ruin to belong to a far future age, when it 
 was at the door. 
 
 Oh the change, my brethren, the dismal change at 
 D % 
 
36 Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings. 
 
 last, when the sentence has gone forth, and life ends, 
 and eternal death begins ! The poor sinner has gone 
 on so long in sin, that he has forgotten he has sin to 
 repent of. He has learned to forget that he is living 
 in a state of enmity to God. He no longer makes 
 excuses, as he did at first. He lives in the world, and 
 believes nothing about the Sacraments, nor puts any 
 trust in a Priest if he falls in with one. Perhaps he 
 has hardly ever heard the Catholic religion mentioned 
 except for the purpose of abuse ; and never has spoken 
 of it, but to ridicule it. His thoughts are taken up 
 with his family and with his occupation ; and if he 
 thinks of death, it is with repugnance, as what will 
 separate him from this world, not with fear, as what 
 will introduce him to another. He has ever been 
 strong and hale. He has never had an illness. His 
 family is long-lived, and he reckons he has a long 
 time before him. His friends die before him, and he 
 feels rather contempt at their nothingness, than 
 sorrow at their departure. He has just married a 
 daughter, and established a son in life, and he thinks 
 of retiring from his labours, except that he is at a loss 
 to know how he shall employ himself when he is out 
 of them. He cannot get himself to dwell upon the 
 thought of what and where he will be, when life is 
 over, or, if he begins to muse awhile over himself and 
 his prospects, then he is sure of one thing, that the 
 Creator is absolute and mere benevolence, and he is 
 indignant and impatient when he hears eternal 
 punishment spoken of. And so he fares, whether for 
 a long time or a short ; but whatever the period, it 
 
Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings, 3 7 
 
 must have an end, and at last the end comes. Time 
 has gone forward noiselessly, and comes upon him 
 like a thief in the night ; at length the hour of 
 doom strikes, and he is taken away. 
 
 Perhaps, however, he was a Catholic, and then the 
 very mercies of God have been perverted by him to 
 his ruin. He has rested on the Sacraments, without 
 caring to have the proper dispositions for attend- 
 ing them. At one time he had lived in neglect of 
 religion altogether; but there was a date when he 
 felt a wish to set himself right with his Maker; so 
 he began, and has continued ever since, to go to Con- 
 fession and Communion at convenient intervals. He 
 comes again and again to the Priest ; he goes through 
 his sins ; the Priest is obliged to take his account of 
 them, which is a very defective account, and sees no 
 reason for not giving him absolution. He is absolved, 
 as far as words can absolve him ; he comes again to the 
 Priest when the season comes round ; again he con- 
 fesses, and again he has the form pronounced over 
 him. He falls sick, he receives the last Sacraments : 
 he receives the last rites of the Church, and he is 
 lost» He is lost, because he has never really turned 
 his heart to God ; or, if he had some poor measure of 
 contrition for awhile, it did not last beyond his first 
 or second confession. He soon taught himself to come 
 to the Sacraments without any contrition at all ; he 
 deceived himself, and left out his principal and most 
 important sins. Somehow he deceived himself into 
 the notion that they were not sins, or not mortal sins; 
 for some reason or other he was silent, and his con- 
 
^S Neglect of Divine Calls and Wamiings. 
 
 fession became as defective as his contrition. Yet 
 this scanty show of religion was sufficient to soothe 
 and stupefy his conscience : so he went on year after 
 year, never making a good confession, communicating 
 in mortal sin, till he fell ill ; and then, I say, the 
 viaticum and holy oil were brought to him, and he 
 committed sacrilege for his last time, — and so he 
 went to his God. 
 
 Oh what a moment for the poor soul, when it comes 
 to itself, and finds itself suddenly before the judgment- 
 seat of Christ ! Oh what a moment, when, breathless 
 with the journey, and dizzy with the brightness, and 
 overwhelmed with the strangeness of what is happen- 
 ing to him, and unable to realize where he is, the 
 sinner hears the voice of the accusing spirit, bringing 
 up all the sins of his past life, which he has forgotten, 
 or which he has explained away, which he would not 
 allow to be sins, though he suspected they were ; when 
 he hears him detailing all the mercies of God which 
 he has despised, all His warnings which he has set at 
 nought, all His judgments which he has outlived; 
 when that evil one follows out into detail the growth 
 and progress of a lost soul, — how it expanded and 
 was confirmed in sin, — how it budded forth into leaves 
 and flowers, grew into branches, and ripened into fruit, 
 — till nothing was wanted for its full condemnation ! 
 And, oh ! still more terrible, still more distracting, 
 when the Judge speaks, and consigns it to the jailors, 
 till it shall pay the endless debt which lies against it! 
 " Impossible, I a lost soul ! I separated from hope 
 and from peace for ever ! It is not I of whom the 
 
Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings. 39 
 
 Judg'e so spake ! There is a mistake somewhere ; 
 Christ, Saviour, hold Thy hand, — one minute to ex- 
 plain it ! My name is Demas : I am but Demas, not 
 Judas, or Nicholas, or Alexander, or Philetus, or 
 Diotrephes. What ? hopeless pain ! for me ! impos- 
 sible, it shall not be/^ And the poor soul struggles 
 and wrestles in the grasp of the mighty demon which 
 has hold of it, and whose every touch is torment. "Oh, 
 atrocious!^'' it shrieks in agony, and in anger too, as 
 if the very keenness of the affliction were a proof of 
 its injustice. "A second! and a third! I can bear no 
 more ! stop, horrible fiend, give over; I am a man, and 
 not such as thou ! I am not food for thee, or sport for 
 thee! I never was in hell as thou, I have not on me 
 the smell of fire, nor the taint of the charnel-house 1 
 I know what human feelings are ; I have been taught 
 religion ; I have had a conscience ; I have a culti- 
 vated mind; I am well versed in science and art; I 
 have been refined by literature ; I have had an eye for 
 the beauties of nature ; I am a philosopher or a poet, 
 or a shrewd observer of men, or a hero, or a statesman, 
 or an orator, or a man of wit and humour. Nay, — I 
 am a Catholic; I am not an unregenerate Protestant; 
 I have received the grace of the Redeemer ; I have 
 attended the Sacraments for years ; I have been a 
 Catholic from a child ; I am a son of the Martyrs ; I 
 died in communion with the Church : nothing, nothing 
 which I have ever been, which I have ever seen, bears 
 anj^ resemblance to thee, and to the flame and stench 
 which exhale from thee ; so I defy thee, and abjure 
 thee, O enemy of man ! " 
 
40 Neglect of Divine Calls a^id Warnings, 
 
 Alas ! poor soul ; and whilst it thus fights with 
 that destiny which it has brought upon itself, and 
 with those companions whom it has chosen, the man^s 
 name perhaps is solemnly chanted forth, and his 
 memory decently cherished among his friends on 
 earth. His readiness in speech, his fertility in thought, 
 his sagacity, or his wisdom, are not forgotten. Men 
 talk of him from time to time ; they appeal to his 
 authority ; they quote his words ; perhaps they even 
 raise a monument to his name, or write his history. 
 " So comprehensive a mind ! such a power of throwing 
 light on a perplexed subject, and bringing conflicting 
 ideas or facts into harmony!'^ *^ Such a speech it 
 was that he made on such and such an occasion ; I 
 happened to be present, and never shall forget it ; ^* 
 or, *' It was the saying of a very sensible man; " or, 
 "A great personage, whom some of us knew/^ or, ''It 
 was a rule with a very worthy and excellent friend of 
 mine, now no more ; '^ or, " Never was his equal in 
 society, so just in his remarks, so versatile, so unob- 
 trusive ; ■'^ or, " I was fortunate to see him once when 
 I was a boy ; " or, " So great a benefactor to his 
 country and to his kind;^^ *^His discoveries so great/' 
 or, '* His philosophy so profound.'"' O vanity! vanity 
 of vanities, all is vanity ! AVhat profiteth it ? What 
 profiteth it ? His soul is in hell. O ye children of 
 men, while thus ye speak, his soul is in the beginning 
 of those torments in which his body will soon have 
 part, and which will never die. 
 
 Vanity of vanities ! misery of miseries ! they will 
 not attend to us, they will not believe us. We are 
 
Neglect of Divine Calls and Wajniings. 41 
 
 but a few in number, and tbey are many ; and the 
 many will not give credit to the few. O misery of 
 miseries ! Thousands are dying daily ; they are 
 waking up into God^s everlasting wrath ; they look 
 back on the days of the flesh, and call them few and 
 evil j they despise and scorn the very reasonings which 
 then they trusted, and which have been disproved by 
 the event ; they curse the recklessness which made 
 them put off repentance ; they have fallen under His 
 justice, whose mercy they presumed upon ; — and their 
 companions and friends are going on as they did, and 
 are soon to join them. As the last generation pre- 
 sumed, so does the present. The father would not 
 believe that God could punish, and now the son will 
 not believe ; the father was indignant when eternal 
 pain was spoken of, and the son gnashes his teeth and 
 smiles contemptuously. The world spoke well of 
 itself thirty years ago, and so will it thirty years to 
 come. And thus it is that this vast flood of life is 
 carried on from age to age ; myriads trifling with 
 God''s love, tempting His justice, and, like the herd 
 of swine, falling headlong down the steep ! O mighty 
 God ! O God of love ! it is too much ! it broke the 
 heart of Thy sweet Son Jesus to see the misery of man 
 spread out before His eyes. He died by it as well as 
 for it. And we, too, in our measure, our eyes ache, 
 and our hearts sicken, and our heads reel, when we 
 but feebly contemplate it. O most tender heart of 
 Jesus, why wilt Thou not end, when wilt Thou end, 
 this ever-growing load of sin and woe ? When wilt 
 Thou chase away the devil into his own hell, and close 
 
42 Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings, 
 
 the pit^s mouth, that Thy chosen may rejoice in Thee, 
 quitting the thought of those who perish in their 
 wilfulness ? But, oh ! by those five dear Wounds in 
 Hands, and Feet, and Side — perpetual founts of mercy, 
 from which the fulness of the Eternal Trinity flows 
 ever fresh, ever powerful, ever bountiful to all who 
 seek Thee — if the world must still endure, at least 
 gather Thou a larger and a larger harvest, an 
 ampler proportion of souls out of it into Thy 
 garner, that these latter times may, in sanctity, 
 and glory, and the triumphs of Thy grace, exceed the 
 former. 
 
 *' Deus misereatur nostriy et benedicat nobis ; " 
 " God, have mercy on us, and bless us ; and cause 
 His face to shine upon us, and have mercy on us ; 
 that we may know Thy way upon earth. Thy salvation 
 among all the nations. Let the people praise Thee, 
 O God ; let all the people praise Thee. Let the 
 nations be glad, and leap for joy; because Thou 
 dost judge the people in equity, and dost direct 
 the nations on the earth. God, even our God, bless 
 us, may God bless us ; and may all the ends of the 
 earth fear Him.'^ 
 
DISCOURSE III. 
 
 MEN, NOT ANGELS, THE PRIESTS OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 T/TTHEN Christ, the great Prophet, the great 
 Preacher, the great Missionary, came into the 
 world, He came in a way the most holy, the most 
 angust_, and the most glorious. Though He came in 
 humiliation, though He came to suffer, though He 
 was born in a stable, though He was laid in a manger, 
 yet He issued from the womb of an Immaculate 
 Mother, and His infant form shone with heavenly 
 light. Sanctity marked every lineament of His charac- 
 ter and every circumstance of His mission. Gabriel 
 announced His incarnation ; a Virgin conceived, a 
 Virgin bore, a Virgin suckled Him ; His foster-father 
 was the pure and saintly Joseph ; Angels proclaimed 
 His birth ; a luminous star spread the news among 
 the heathen ; the austere Baptist went before His face ; 
 and a crowd of shriven penitents, clad in white gar- 
 ments and radiant with grace, followed him wherever 
 He went. As the sun in heaven shines through the 
 clouds, and is reflected in the landscape, so the eternal 
 Sun of justice, when He rose upon the earth, turned 
 
44 Men^ not Angels^ 
 
 night into day, and His brightness made all things 
 bright. 
 
 He came and He went; and, seeing that He came 
 to introduce a new and final Dispensation into the 
 world, He left behind Him preachers, teachers, and 
 missionaries, in His stead. Well then, my brethren, 
 you will say, since on His coming all about Him was 
 so glorious, such as He was, such must His servants 
 be, such His representatives, His ministers, in His 
 absence ; as He was without sin, they too must be 
 without sin ; as He was the Son of God, they must 
 surely be Angels. Angels, you will say, must be 
 appointed to this high office ; Angels alone are fit to 
 preach the birth, the sufferings, the death of God. 
 They might indeed have to hide their brightness, as 
 He before them, their Lord and Master, had put on 
 a disguise ; they might come, as they came under the 
 Old Covenant, in the garb of men ; but still, men they 
 could not be, if they were to be preachers of the ever- 
 lasting Gospel, and dispensers of its divine mysteries. 
 If they were to sacrifice, as He had sacrificed ; to con- 
 tinue, repeat, apply, the very Sacrifice which He had 
 offered ; to take into their hands that very Victim 
 which was He Himself; to bind and to loose, to bless 
 and to ban, to receive the confessions of His people, 
 and to give them absolution for their sins ; to teach 
 them the way of truth, and to guide them along the 
 way of peace; who was sufficient for these things but 
 an inhabitant of those blessed realms of which the 
 Lord is the never-failing Light ? 
 
 And yet, my brethren, so it is. He has sent forth. 
 
the Priests of the Gospel. 45 
 
 for the ministry of reconciliation, not Angels, but 
 men ; He has sent forth your brethren to you, not 
 beinofs of some unknown nature and some strange 
 blood, but of your own bone and your own flesh, to 
 preach to you. " Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye 
 gazing up into heaven ? " Here is the royal style 
 and tone in which Angels speak to men, even though 
 these men be Apostles; it is the tone of those who, 
 having never sinned, speak from their lofty eminence 
 to those who have. But-such is not the tone of those 
 whom Christ has sent ; for it is your brethren whom 
 He has appointed, and none else. — sons of Adam^ 
 sons of your nature, the same by nature, differing 
 only in grace, — men, like you, exposed to tempta- 
 tions, to the same temptations, to the same warfare 
 within and without; with the same three deadly 
 enemies— the world, the flesh, and the devil; with 
 the same human, the same wayward heart : differing 
 only as the power of God has changed and rules it. 
 So it is; we are not Angels from Heaven that speak 
 to you, but men, whom grace, and grace alone, has 
 made to differ from you. Listen to the Apostle: — 
 When the barbarous Lycaonians, seeing his miracle, 
 would have sacrificed to him and St. Barnabas, as to 
 gods, he rushed in among them, crying out, "O 
 men, why do ye this ? we also are mortals, men like 
 unto you ; " or, as the words run more forcibly in 
 the original Greek, ^' We are of like passions with 
 you.^^ And again to the Corinthians he writes, " We 
 preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ our Lord ; and 
 ourselves your servants through Jesus. God, who 
 
4^ Me7i, not Angels^ 
 
 commanded the light to shine out of darkness, He 
 hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the 
 knowledge of the glory of God in the ftice of Christ 
 Jesus : hut we hold this treasure in earthen vessels." 
 And further, he says of himself most wonderfully, 
 that, " lest he should be exalted by the greatness of 
 the revelations, there was given him " an angel of 
 Satan " in his flesh " to buffet him/' Such are your 
 Ministers, your Preachers, your Priests, Oh my 
 brethren; not Angels, not Saints, not sinless, but 
 those who would have lived and died in sin except for 
 God's grace, and who, though through God's mercy 
 they be in training for the fellowship of Saints here- 
 after, yet at present are in the midst of infirmity and 
 temptation, and have no hope, except from the un- 
 merited grace of God, of persevering unto the end. 
 
 What a strange, what a striking anomaly is this ! 
 All is perfect, all is heavenly, all is glorious, in the 
 Dispensation which Christ has vouchsafed us, except 
 the persons of His Ministers. He dwells on our 
 altars Himself, the Most Holy, the Most High, in 
 light inaccessible, and Angels fall down before Him 
 there ; and out of visible substances and forms He 
 chooses what is choicest to represent and to hold Him. 
 The finest wheat-flour, and the purest wine, are taken 
 as His outward symbols; the most sacred and majestic 
 words minister to the sacrificial rite ; altar and 
 sanctuary are adorned decently or splendidly, as our 
 means allow ; and the Priests perform their oflice in 
 befitting vestments, lifting up chaste hearts and holy 
 hands ; yet those very Priests, so set apart, so conse- 
 
the Priests of the Gospel. 47 
 
 crated, they, with their girdle of celibacy and their 
 maniple of sorrow, are sons of Adam, sons of sinners, 
 of a fallen nature, which they have not put off, thoug-h 
 it be renewed through grace. So that it is almost the 
 definition of a Priest that he has sins of his own to 
 offer for. '^ Every high Priest," says the Apostle, 
 "taken from among men, is appointed for men, in 
 the things that appertain unto God, that he may offer 
 gifts and sacrifices for sins ; who can condole with 
 those who are in ignorance and error, because he also 
 himself is compassed with infirmity. And therefore 
 he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer 
 for sins/^ And hence in the Mass, when he offers up 
 the Host before consecration, he says, Suscipe, Sancte 
 Pater, Omnipotens, ceterne Beus, " Accept, Holy Father, 
 Almighty, Everlasting God, this immaculate Host, 
 which I, Thine unworthy servant^ offer to Thee, my 
 Living and True God, for mine innumerable sins, 
 offences, and negligences, and for all who stand 
 around, and for all faithful Christians, living and 
 dead.^' 
 
 Most strange is this in itself, my brethren, but not 
 strange, when you consider it is the appointment of 
 an all-merciful God ; not strange in Him, because the 
 Apostle gives the reason of it in the passage I have 
 quoted. The Priests of the New Law are men, that 
 they may " condole with those who are in ignorance 
 and error, because they too are compassed with 
 infirmity." Had Angels been your Priests, my 
 brethren, they could not have condoled with you, 
 sympathized with you, have had compassion on you. 
 
48 Men, not Angels^ 
 
 tenderly felt for you, and made allowances for you, as 
 we can ; they could not have been 3^our patterns and 
 guides, and have led you on from your old selves into 
 a new life, as they can who come from the midst of you, 
 who have been led on themselves as you are to be led, 
 who know well your difficulties, who have had ex- 
 j)erience, at least of your temptations, who know the 
 strength of the flesh and the wiles of the devil, even 
 though they have baffled them, who are already dis- 
 posed to take your part, and be indulgent towards you, 
 and can advise you most practically, and warn you 
 most seasonably and prudently. Therefore did He send 
 you men to be the ministers of reconciliation and in* 
 tercession ; as He Himself, though He could not sin, 
 yet, by becoming man, took on Him, as far as was 
 possible to God, man^s burden of infirmity and trial 
 in His own person. He could not be a sinner, but He 
 could be a man, and He took to Himself a man's 
 heart that we might entrust our hearts to Him, and 
 " was tempted in all things, like as we are, yet 
 without sin.'^ 
 
 Ponder this truth well, my brethren, and let it be 
 your comfort. Among the Preachers, among the 
 Priests of the Gospel, there have been Apostles, there 
 have been Martyrs, there have been Doctors ; — Saints 
 in plenty among them ; yet out of them all, high as 
 has been their sanctity, varied their graces, awful their 
 gifts, there has not been one who did not begin with 
 the old Adam ; not one of them who was not hewn 
 out of the same rock as the most obdurate of repro- 
 bates ; not one of them who was not fashioned unto 
 
the Priests of the Gospel. 49 
 
 honour out of the same clay which has been the 
 material of the most polluted and vile of sinners ; 
 not one who was not by nature brother of those poor 
 souls who have now commenced an eternal fellowship 
 with the devil, and are lost in hell. Grace has 
 vanquished nature ; that is the whole history of the 
 Saints. Salutary thought for those who are tempted 
 to pride themselves in what they do, and what they 
 are; wonderful news for those who sorrowfully re- 
 cognize in their hearts the vast difference that exists 
 between them and the Saints ; and joyful news, when 
 men hate sin, and wish to escape from its miserable 
 yoke, yet are tempted to think it impossible ! 
 
 Come, my brethren, let us look at this truth more 
 narrowly, and lay it to heart. First consider, that, 
 since Adam fell, none of his seed but has been con- 
 ceived in sin; none, save one. One exception there 
 has been, — who is that one ? not our Lord Jesus, for 
 He was not conceived of man, but of the Holy Ghost ; 
 not our Lord, but I mean His Virgin Mother, who 
 though conceived and born of human parents, as 
 others, yet was rescued by anticipation from the com- 
 mon condition of mankind, and never was partaker 
 in fact of Adam's transgression. She was conceived 
 in the way of nature, she was conceived as others are; 
 but grace interfered and was beforehand with sin; 
 grace filled her soul from the first moment of her 
 existence, so that the evil one breathed not on her, 
 nor stained the work of God. Tota pulchra es, Maria ; 
 et macula originalis non est in te. "Thou art all fair, 
 O Mary, and the stain original is not in thee.^' But 
 
 E 
 
50 Men, 7iot Angels, 
 
 putting- aside the Most Blessed Mother of God^ every 
 one else, the most glorious Saint, and the most black 
 find odious of sinners, I mean, the soul which, in the 
 event, became the most glorious, and the soul which 
 became the most devilish, were both born in one and 
 the same original sin, both were children of wrath, 
 both were unable to attain heaven by their natural 
 powers, both had the prospect of meriting for them- 
 selves hell. 
 
 They were both born in sin ; they both lay in sin ; 
 and the soul, which afterwards became a Saint, would 
 have continued in sin, would have sinned wilfully, 
 and would have been lost, but for the visitings of an 
 unmerited supernatural influence upon it, which did 
 for it what it could not do for itself. The poor infant, 
 destined to be an heir of glory, lay feeble, sickly, 
 fretful, wayward, and miserable; the child of sorrow ; 
 without hope, and without heavenly aid. So it lay 
 for many a long and weary day ere it was born ; and 
 when at length it opened its eyes and saw the light, it 
 shrank back, and wept aloud that it had seen it. But 
 God heard its cry from heaven in this valley of tears, 
 and He began that course of mercies towards it which 
 led it from earth to heaven. He sent His Priest to 
 administer to it the first sacrament, and to baptize it 
 with His grace. Then a great change took place in it, 
 for, instead of its being any more the thrall of Satan, 
 it forthwith became a child ^of God ; and had it died 
 that minute, and before it came to the age of reason, 
 it would have been carried to heaven without delay by 
 Angels, and been admitted into the presence of God. 
 
the Priests of the Gospel. 5 1 
 
 But it did not die ; it came to the ag-e of reason, 
 and. Oh, shall we dare to say, though in some blessed 
 cases it may be said, shall we dare to say, that it did 
 not misuse the great talent which had been given to 
 it, profane the g-race which dwelt in it, and fall into 
 mortal sin ? In some instances, praised be God ! we 
 dare affirm it ; such seems to have been the case with 
 my own dear father, St. Philip, who surely kept his 
 baptismal robe unsullied from the day he was clad in 
 it, never lost his state of grace, from the day he was 
 put into it, and proceeded from strength to strength, 
 and from merit to merit, and from glory to glory, 
 through the whole course of his long* life, till at the 
 age of eighty he was summoned to his account, and 
 went joyfully to meet it, and was carried across pur- 
 g-atory, without any scorching of its flames, straight 
 to heaven. 
 
 Such certainly have sometimes been the dealings of 
 God's grace with the souls of His elect ; but more 
 commonly, as if more intimately to associate them 
 with their brethren, and to make the fulness of His 
 favours to them a ground of hope and an encourage- 
 ment to the penitent sinner, those who have ended in 
 being miracles of sanctity, and heroes in the Church, 
 have passed a time in wilful disobedience, have thrown 
 themselves out of the light of God's countenance, 
 have been led captive by this or that sin, by this or 
 that religious error, till at length they were in various 
 ways recovered, slowly or suddenly, and regained the 
 state of grace, or rather a much higher state, than that 
 which they had forfeited. Such was the blessed Mag- 
 
 E 2 
 
52 Men, not Angels^ 
 
 dalen, who had lived a life of shame ; so much so, that 
 even to be touched by her was, according" to the reli- 
 gious judgment of her day, a pollution. Happy in this 
 world^s goods, young and passionate, she had given 
 her heart to the creature, before the grace of God pre- 
 vailed with her. Then she cut off her long hair, and 
 put aside her gay apparel, and became so utterly what 
 she had not been, that, had you known her before and 
 after, you had said it was two persons you had seen, 
 not one ; for there was no trace of the sinner in the 
 penitent, except the affectionate heart, now set on 
 heaven and Christ; no trace besides, no memory of 
 that glittering and seductive apparition, in the modest 
 form, the serene countenance, the composed gait, and 
 the gentle voice of her who in the garden sought and 
 found her Risen Saviour. Such, too, was he who from 
 a publican became an Apostle and an Evangelist; one 
 who for filthy lucre scrupled not to enter the service 
 of the heathen Romans, and to oppress his own people. 
 Nor were the rest of the Apostles made of better clay 
 than the other sons of Adam ; they were by nature 
 animal, carnal, ignorant; left to themselves, they 
 would, like the brutes, have grovelled on the earth, and 
 gazed upon the earth, and fed on the earth, had not 
 the grace of God taken possession of them, and set 
 them on their feet, and raised their faces heavenward. 
 And such was the learned Pharisee, who came to Jesus 
 by night, well satisfied with his station, jealous of his 
 reputation, confident in his reason ; but the time at 
 length came, when, even though disciples fled, he re- 
 mained to anoint the abandoned corpse of Him, whom 
 
the Priests of the Gospel. 53 
 
 when living, he had been ashamed to own. You see 
 it was the grace of God that triumphed in Magdalen, 
 in Matthew, and inNicodemus; heavenly grace came 
 down upon corrupt nature ; it subdued impurity in the 
 youthful woman, covetousness in the publican, fear of 
 man in the Pharisee. 
 
 Let me speak of another celebrated conquest of 
 God's grace in an after age, and you will see how it 
 pleases Him to make a Confessor, a Saint, a Doctor 
 of His Church, out of sin and heresy both together. 
 It was not enough that the Father of the Western 
 Schools, the author of a thousand works, the trium- 
 phant controversialist, the especial champion of grace, 
 should have been once a poor slave of the flesh, but 
 he was the victim of a perverted intellect also. He, 
 who of all others, was to extol the grace of God, was 
 left more than others to experience the helplessness 
 of nature. The great St. Augustine (I am not speak- 
 ing of the holy missionary of the same name, who 
 came to England and converted our pagan forefathers, 
 and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, but 
 of the great African Bishop, two centuries before him) 
 — Augustine, I say, not being in earnest about his 
 soul, not asking himself the question, how was sin to 
 be washed away, but rather being desirous, while 
 youth and strength lasted, to enjoy the flesh and the 
 world, ambitious and sensual, judged of truth and 
 falsehood by his private judgment and his private 
 fancy ; despised the Catholic Church because it spoke 
 so much of laith and subjection, thought to make his 
 own reason the measure of all things, and accordingly 
 
54 Men, 7iot Angels, 
 
 joined a far-spread sect, which affected to be philo- 
 sophical and enlightened, to take large views of 
 things, and to correct the vulgar, that is the Catho- 
 lic notions of God and Christ, of sin, and of the way 
 to heaven. In this sect of his he remained for some 
 years ; yet what he was taught there did not satisfy 
 him. It pleased him for a time, and then he found 
 he had been eating for food what had no nourishment 
 in it ; he became hungry and thirsty after something 
 more substantial, he knew not what ; he despised him- 
 self for being a slave to the flesh, and he found his 
 religion did not help him to overcome it; thus he 
 understood that he had not gained the truth, and he 
 cried out, " Oh, who will tell me where to seek it, and 
 who will bring me into it ? ^^ 
 
 Why did he not join the Catholic Church at once ? 
 I have told you why ; he saw that truth was nowhere 
 else ; but he was not sure it was there. He thought 
 there was something mean, narrow, irrational, in her 
 system of doctrine ; he lacked the gift of faith. Then 
 a great conflict began within him, — the conflict of 
 nature with grace ; of nature and her children, the 
 flesh and false reason, against conscience and the 
 pleadings of the Divine Spirit, leading him to better 
 things. Though he was still in a state of perdition, 
 yet God was visiting him, and giving him the first 
 fruits of those influences which were in the event to 
 bring him out of it. Time went on ; and looking at 
 him, as his Guardian Angel might look at him, you 
 would have said that, in spite of much perverseness, 
 and many a successful struggle against his Almighty 
 
the Priests of the Gospel. 5 5 
 
 Adversary, in spite of his still being, as before, in a 
 state of wrath, nevertheless grace was making way in 
 his soul, — he was advancing towards the Church. He 
 did not know it himself, he could not recognize it 
 himself; but an eager interest in him, and then a 
 joy, was springing up in heaven among the Angels of 
 God. At last he came within the range of a great 
 Saint in a foreign country ; and, though he pretended 
 not to acknowledge him, his attention was arrested 
 by him, and he could not help coming to sacred 
 places to look at him again and again. He began to 
 watch him and speculate about him, and wondered 
 with himself whether he was happy. He found him- 
 self frequently in Church, listening to the holy 
 preacher, and he once asked his advice how to find 
 what he was seeking. And now a final conflict came 
 on him with the flesh : it was hard, very hard, to part 
 with the indulgences of years, it was hard to part and 
 never to meet again. Oh, sin was so sweet, how could 
 he bid it farewell ? how could he tear himself away 
 from its embrace, and betake himself to that lonely 
 and dreary way which led heavenwards ? But God's 
 grace was sweeter far, and it convinced him while it 
 won him ; it convinced his reason, and prevailed ; — 
 and he who without it would have lived and died a 
 child of Satan, became, under its wonder-working 
 power, an oracle of sanctity and truth. 
 
 And do you not think, my brethren, that he was 
 better fitted than another to persuade his brethren as 
 he had been persuaded, and to preach the holy doctrine 
 which he had despised ? Not that sin is better than 
 
56 Alefi, not Angels, 
 
 obedience, or the sinner than the just; but that God 
 in His mercy makes use of sin against itself, that He 
 turns past sin into a present benefit, that, while He 
 washes away its guilt and subdues its power, He leaves 
 it in the penitent in such sense as enables him, from 
 his knowledge of its devices, to assault it more vigor- 
 ously, and strike at it more truly, when it meets him 
 in other men ; that, while He, by His omnipotent 
 grace, can make the soul as clean as if it had never 
 been unclean, He leaves it in possession of a tenderness 
 and compassion for other sinners, an experience how to 
 deal with them, greater than if it had never sinned ; 
 and again that, in those rare and special instances, 
 of one of which I have been speaking, He holds up to 
 us, for our instruction and our comfort, what He can 
 do, even for the most guilty, if they sincerely come to 
 Him for a pardon and a cure. There is no limit to be 
 put to the bounty and power of God's grace ; and that 
 we feel sorrow for our sins, and supplicate His mercy, 
 is a sort of present pledge to us in our hearts, that he 
 will grant us the good gifts we are seeking. He can 
 do what He will with the soul of man . He is infinitely 
 more powerful than the foul spirit to whom the sinner 
 has sold himself, and can cast him out. 
 
 O my dear brethren, though your conscience witnesses 
 against you. He can disburden it ; whether you have 
 sinned less or whether you have sinned more. He can 
 make you as clean in His sight and as acceptable to 
 Him as if you had never gone from Him. Gradually 
 will He destroy your sinful habits, and at once will He 
 restore you to His favour. Such is the power of the 
 
the Priests of the Gospel. 57 
 
 Sacrament of Penance, that, be your load of guilt 
 heavier or be it lighter, it removes it, whatever it is. It 
 is as easy to Him to wash out the many sins as the few. 
 Do you recollect in the Old Testament the history of 
 the cure of Naaman the Syrian, by the prophet Eliseus? 
 He had that dreadful, incurable disease called the 
 leprosy, which was a white crust upon the skin, making 
 the whole person hideous, and typifying the hideous- 
 ness of sin. The prophet bade him bathe in the river 
 Jordan, and the disease disappeared; "his flesh,'^ 
 says the inspired writer, was " restored to him as the 
 flesh of a little child/'' Here, then, we have a repre- 
 sentation not only of what sin is, but of what God's 
 grace is. It can undo the past, it can realize the 
 hopeless. No sinner, ever so odious, but may become 
 a Saint; no Saint, ever so exalted, but has been, or 
 might have been, a sinner. Grace overcomes nature, 
 and grace only overcomes it. Take that holy child, 
 the blessed St. Agnes, who, at the age of thirteen, 
 resolved to die rather than deny the faith, and stood 
 enveloped in an atmosphere of purity, and diffused 
 around her a heavenly influence, in the very home of 
 evil spirits into which the heathen brought her; or 
 consider the angelical Aloysius, of whom it hardly is 
 left upon record that he committed even a venial sin ; 
 or St. Agatha, St. Juliana, St. Rose, St. Casimir, or St. 
 Stanislas, to whom the very notion of any unbecoming 
 imagination had been as death ; well, there is not one 
 of these seraphic souls but might have been a degraded, 
 loathsome leper, except for God's grace, an outcast 
 from his kind ; not one but might, or rather would, 
 
5 8 Men^ not Angels, 
 
 have lived the life of a brute creature, and died the 
 death of a reprobate, and lain down in hell eternally 
 in the devil's arms, had not God put a new heart and 
 a new spirit within him, and made him what he could 
 not make himself. 
 
 All good men are not Saints, my brethren — all con- 
 verted souls do not become Saints. I will not promise, 
 that, if you turn to God, you will reach that height of 
 sanctity which the Saints have reached: — true; still, 
 I am showing you that even the Saints are by nature 
 no better than you; and so, much more, that the Priests, 
 who have the charge of the faithful, whatever be their 
 sanctity, are by nature no better than those whom 
 they have to convert, whom they have to reform. It 
 is God's special mercy towards you that we by nature 
 are no other than you ; it is His consideration and 
 compassion for you that He has made us, who are your 
 brethren. His legates and ministers of reconciliation. 
 
 This is what the world cannot understand ; not that 
 it does not apprehend clearly enough that we are by 
 nature of like passions with itself; but what it is so 
 blind, so narrow-minded as not to comprehend, is, 
 that, being so like itself by nature, we may be made 
 so different by grace. Men of the world, my brethren, 
 know the power of nature ; they know not, experience 
 not, believe not, the power of God's grace ; and since 
 they are not themselves acquainted with any power 
 that can overcome nature, they think that none exists, 
 and therefore, consistently, they believe that every one. 
 Priest or not, remains to the end such as nature made 
 him, and they will not believe it possible that any one 
 
the Priests of the Gospel. 59 
 
 can lead a supernatural life. Now^ not Priest only, 
 but every one who is in tlie grace of God, leads a 
 supernatural life, more or less supernatural, according 
 to his calling, and the measure of the gifts given 
 him, and his faithfulness to them. This they know 
 not, and admit not ; and when they hear of the life 
 which a Priest must lead by his profession from youth 
 to age, they will not credit that he is what he pro- 
 fesses to be. They know nothing of the presence of God, 
 the merits of Christ, the intercession of the Blessed 
 Virgin ; the virtue of recurring prayers, of frequent 
 confession, of daily Masses ; they are strangers to the 
 transforming power of the Most Holy Sacrament, the 
 Bread of Angels; they do not contemplate the eflScacy 
 of salutary rules, of holy companions, of long-enduring 
 habit, of ready spontaneous vigilance, of abhorrence 
 of sin and indignation at the tempter, to secure 
 the soul from evil. They only know that when 
 the tempter once has actually penetrated into the 
 heart, he is irresistible; they only know that when 
 the soul has exposed and surrendered itself to his 
 malice, there is (so to speak) a necessity of sinning. 
 They only know that when God has abandoned it, and 
 good Angels are withdrawn, and all safeguards, and 
 protections, and preventives are neglected, that then 
 (which is their own case), when the victory is all but 
 gained already, it is sure to be gained altogether. 
 They themselves have ever, in their best estate, been 
 all but beaten by the Evil One before they began to 
 fight ; this is the only state they have experienced : 
 they know this, and they know nothing else. They 
 
6o Men, not Angels, 
 
 have never stood on vantag-e ground ; they have never 
 been within the walls of the strong city, about which 
 the enemy prowls in vain, into which he cannot pene- 
 trate, and outside of which the faithful soul will be 
 too wise to venture. They judge, I say, by their 
 experience, and will not believe what they never knew. 
 If there be those here present, my dear brethren, 
 who will not believe that grace is effectual within the 
 Church, because it does little outside of it, to them I 
 do not speak : I speak to those who do not narrow 
 their belief to their experience; I speak to those who 
 admit that grace can make human nature what it is 
 not; and such persons, I think, will feel it, not a 
 cause of jealousy and suspicion, but a great gain, a 
 great mercy, that those are sent to preach to them, to 
 receive their confessions, and to advise them, who can 
 sympathize with their sins, even though they have not 
 known them. Not a temptation, my brethren, can 
 befall you, but what befalls all those who share your 
 nature, though you may have yielded to it, and they 
 may not have yielded. They can understand you, they 
 can anticipate you, they can interpret you, though they 
 have not kept pace with you in your course. They 
 will be tender to you, they will " instruct you in the 
 spirit of meekness/^ as the Apostle says, " considering 
 themselves lest they also be tempted." Come then 
 unto us, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, 
 and ye shall find rest to your souls ; come unto us, 
 who now stand to you in Christ's stead, and who 
 speak in Christ's Name ; for we too, like you, have 
 been saved by Carist's all-saving blood. We too, like 
 
the Priests of the Gospel. 6 1 
 
 you, should be lost sinners, unless Christ had had 
 mercy on us, unless His grace had cleansed us, unless 
 His Church had received us, unless His saints had 
 interceded for us. Be ye saved, as we have been 
 saved ; " come, listen, all ye that fear God, and we 
 will tell you what He hath done for our souls/' Listen 
 to our testimony ; behold our joy of heart, and in- 
 crease it by partaking" in it yourselves. Choose that 
 good part which we have chosen ; join ye yourselves 
 to our company; it will never repent you, take our 
 word for it, who have a right to speak, it will never 
 repent you to have sought pardon and peace from the 
 Catholic Church, which alone has grace, which alone 
 has power, which alone has Saints; it will never re- 
 pent you, though you go through trouble, though you 
 have to give up much for her sake. It will never re- 
 pent you, to have passed from the shadows of sense 
 and time, and the deceptions of human feeling and 
 false reason, to the glorious liberty of the sons of God. 
 And oh, my brethren, when you have taken the great 
 step, and stand in your blessed lot, as sinners recon- 
 ciled to the Father you had offended (fori will antici- 
 pate, what I surely trust will be fulfilled as regards 
 many of you), oh then forget not those who have been 
 the ministers of your reconciliation ; and as they now 
 pray you to make your peace with God, so do you, when 
 reconciled, pray for them, that they may gain the great 
 gift of perseverance, that they may continue to stand 
 in the grace in which they trust they stand now, even 
 till the hour of death, lest, perchance, after they have 
 preached to others, they themselves become reprobate. 
 
DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 PURl TY AND LO VE. 
 
 TT7E find two especial manifestations of divine grace 
 in the human hearty whether we turn to Scrip- 
 ture for instances of it, or to the history o£ the Church ; 
 whether we trace it in the case of Saints, or in persons 
 of holy and religious life ; and the two are even found 
 among our Lord^s Apostles, being represented by the 
 two foremost of that favoured company, St. Peter and 
 St. John. St. John is the Saint of purity, and St. Peter 
 is the Saint of love. Not that love and purity can 
 ever be separated ; not as if a Saint had not all virtues 
 in him at once ; not as if St. Peter were not pure as 
 well as loving, and St. John loving, for all he was so 
 pure. The graces of the Spirit cannot be separated 
 from each other ; one implies the rest ; what is love 
 but a delight in God, a devotion to Him, a surrender 
 of the whole self to Him ? what is impurity, on the 
 other hand, but the turning to something of this 
 world, something sinful, as the object of our affections 
 instead of God ? What is it but a deliberate abandon- 
 ment of the Creator for the creature, and seeking 
 pleasure in the shadow of death, not in the all-blissful 
 
Purity and Love, 63 
 
 Presence of light and holiness ? The impure then 
 cannot love God ; and those who are without love of 
 God cannot really be pure. Purity prepares the soul 
 for love^ and love confirms the soul in purity. The 
 flame of love will not be bright unless the substance 
 which feeds it be pure and unadulterate ; and the 
 most dazzling purity is but as iciness and desolation 
 unless it draws its life from fervent love. 
 
 Yet, certain as this is, it is certain also that the 
 spiritual works of God show differently from each 
 other to our eyes, and that they display, in their 
 character and their history, some of them this virtue 
 more than other virtues, and some that. In other 
 words, it pleases the Giver of grace to endue His 
 Saints specially with certain gifts, for His glory, 
 which light up and beautify one particular portion or 
 department of their souls, so as to cast their other ex- 
 cellences into the shade. And then this special gift of 
 grace becomes their characteristic, and we put it first 
 in our thoughts of them, and consider what they have 
 besides, as included in it, or dependent upon it, and 
 speak of them as if they had not the rest, though we 
 know they really have them ; and we give them some 
 title or description taken from that particular grace 
 which is so emphatically theirs. And in this way we 
 may speak, as I intend to do in what I am going to 
 say, of two chief classes of Saints, whose emblems 
 are the lily and the rose, who are bright with angelic 
 purity or who burn with divine love. 
 
 The two St. Johns are the great instances of the 
 Angelic life. Whom, my brethren, can we conceive 
 
64 Purity and Love. 
 
 to have such majestic and severe sanctity as the Holy 
 Baptist ? He had a privilege which reached near upon 
 the prerogative of the Most Blessed Mother of God ; 
 for^if she was conceived without sin^ at least without sin 
 he was born. She was all-pure, all-holy, and sin had no 
 part in her: but St. John was in the beginning of his 
 existence a partaker of Adam's curse : he lay under 
 God's wrath, deprived of that grace which Adam had 
 received, and which is the life and strength of human 
 nature. Yet as soon as Christ, his Lord and Saviour, 
 came to him, and Mary saluted his own mother, 
 Elizabeth, forthwith the grace of God was given to 
 him, and the original guilt was wiped away from his 
 soul. And therefore it is that we celebrate the nativity 
 of St. John ; nothing unholy does the Church celebrate; 
 not St. Peter^s nor St. PauFs, nor St. Augustine's, nor 
 St. Gregory's, nor St. Bernard's, nor St. Aloysius's, 
 nor the nativity of any other Saint, however glorious, 
 because they were all born in sin. She celebrates their 
 conversions, their prerogatives, their martyrdoms, their 
 deaths, their translations, but not their birth, because 
 in no case was it holy. Three nativities alone does she 
 commemorate, our Lord's, His Mother's, and lastly, 
 St. John's. What a special gift was this, my brethren, 
 separating the Baptist off, and distinguishinghimfrom 
 all prophets and preachers, who ever lived, however 
 holy, except perhaps the prophet Jeremias ! And such 
 as was his commencement, was the course of his life. 
 He was carried away by the Spirit into the desert, and 
 there he lived on the simplest fare, in the rudest 
 clothing, in the caves of wild beasts, apart from men, 
 
Purity and Love, 65 
 
 for thirty years, leading' a life of mortification and of 
 meditation, till he was called to preach penance, to 
 proclaim the Christ, and to baptize Him; and then 
 having done his work, and having left no act of sin 
 on record, he was laid aside as an instrument which 
 had lost its use, and languished in prison, till he was 
 suddenly cut off by the sword of the executioner. 
 Sanctity is the one idea of him impressed upon us from 
 first to last ; a most marvellous Saint, a hermit from 
 his childhood, then a preacher to a fallen people, and 
 then a Martyr. Surely such a life fulfils the expecta- 
 tion, which the salutation of Mary raised concerning 
 him before his birth. 
 
 Yet still more beautiful, and almost as majestic, is 
 the image of his namesake, that great Apostle, Evan- 
 gelist, and Prophet of the Church, who came so early 
 into our Lord^s chosen company, and lived so long 
 after all his fellows. We can contemplate him in his 
 youth and in his venerable age ; and on his whole life, 
 from first to last, as his special gift, is marked purity. 
 He is the virgin Apostle, who on that account was so 
 dear to his Lord, '^ the disciple whom Jesus loved,^' 
 who lay on His Bosom, who received His Mother from 
 Him when upon the Cross, who had the vision of all 
 the wonders which were to come to pass in the world 
 to the end of time. " Greatly to be honoured," says 
 the Church, " is blessed John, who on the Lord''s 
 Breast lay at supper, to whom, a virgin, did Christ on 
 the Cross commit his Virgin Mother. He was chosen 
 a virgin by the Lord, and was more beloved than the 
 rest. The special prerogative of chastity had made 
 
66 Purity and Love. 
 
 him meet for "his Lord^s larger love, because, being* 
 chosen by Him a virgin, a virgin he remained unto 
 the end." He it was who in his youth professed his 
 readiness to drink Christ's chalice with Him ; who 
 wore away a long life as a desolate stran^rer in a 
 foreign land ; who was at length carried to Rome and 
 plunged into the hot oil, and then was banished to a 
 far island, till his days drew near their close. 
 
 O how impossible it is worthily to conceive of the 
 sanctity of these two great servants of God, so dif- 
 ferent is their whole history, in their lives and in their 
 deaths, yet agreeing together in their seclusion from 
 the world, in their tranquillity, and in their all but 
 sinlessness ! Mortal sin had never touched them, and 
 we may well believe that even from deliberate venial 
 sin they were ever exempt ; nay, that at particular 
 seasons or on certain occasions they did not sin at all. 
 The rebellion of the reason, the waywardness of the 
 feelings, the disorder of the thoughts, the fever of 
 passion, the treachery of the senses, these evils did the 
 all-powerful grace of God subdue in them. They 
 lived in a world of their own, uniform, serene, abiding ; 
 in visions of peace, in communion with heaven, in 
 anticipation of glory ; and, if they spoke to the world 
 without, as preachers or as confessors, they spoke as 
 from some sacred shrine, not mixing with men while 
 they addressed them, as " a voice crying in the wilder- 
 ness " or '' in the Spirit on the Lord's Day." And 
 therefore it is we speak of them rather as patterns of 
 sanctity than of love, because love regards an external 
 object, runs towards it and labours for it, whereas 
 
Purity and Love, 67 
 
 such Saints came so close to the Object of their love, 
 they were granted so to receive Him into their breasts, 
 and so to make themselves one with Him, that their 
 hearts did not so much love heaven as were them- 
 selves a heaven, did not so much see light as were 
 light ; and they lived among men as those Angels in 
 the old time, who came to the patriarchs and spake as 
 though they were God, for God was in them, and 
 spake by them. Thus these two were almost absorbed 
 in the Godhead, living an angelical life, as far as man 
 could lead one, so calm, so still, so raised above sorrow 
 and fear, disappointment and regret, desire and aver- 
 sion, as to be the most perfect images that earth has 
 seen of the peace and immutability of God. Such too 
 are the many virgin Saints whom history records for 
 our veneration, St. Joseph, the great St. Antony, St. 
 Cecilia who was waited on by Angels, St. Nicholas 
 of Bari, St. Peter Celestine, St. Rose of Viterbo, St. 
 Catherine of Sienna, and a host of others, and above 
 all, the Virgin of Virgins, and Queen of Virgins, the 
 Blessed Mary, who, though replete and overflowing 
 with the grace of love, yet for the very reason that 
 she was the " seat of wisdom,'' and the very " ark of 
 the covenant,'' is more commonly represented under 
 the emblem of the lily than of the rose. 
 
 But now, my brethren, let us turn to the other 
 class of Saints. I have been speaking of those who 
 in a wonderful, sometimes in a miraculous way, have 
 been defended from sin, and conducted from strength 
 to strength, from youth till death ; but now suppose 
 it has been the will of God to shed the light and 
 
68 Purity and Love. 
 
 power of His Spirit upon those who have misused the 
 talents, and quenched the grace already given them, 
 and who therefore have a host of evils within them of 
 which they are to be dispossessed, who are under the 
 dominion of obstinate habits, indulged passions, false 
 opinions; who have served Satan, not as infants 
 before their baptism, but with their will, with their 
 reason, with their faculties responsible, and their hearts 
 alive and conscious. Is He to draw these elect souls 
 to Him without themselves, or by means of them- 
 selves ? Is He to change them at His word, as He 
 created them, as He will make them die, as He will 
 raise them from the grave, or is He to enter into their 
 souls, to address Himself to them, to persuade them, 
 and so to win them ? Doubtless He might have been 
 urgent with them, and masterful ; He might by a 
 blessed violence have come upon them, and so turned 
 them into Saints; He might have superseded any 
 process of conversion, and out of the very stones have 
 raised up children to Abraham. But He has willed 
 otherwise ; else, why did He manifest Himself on 
 earth ? Why did He surround Himself on His com- 
 ing with so much that was touching and attractive 
 and subduing ? Why did He bid His angels proclaim 
 that He was to be seen as a little infant, in a manger 
 and in a Virgin's bosom, at Bethlehem ? Why did 
 He go about doing good ? Why did He die in public, 
 before the world, with His mother and His beloved 
 disciple by Him ? Why does He now tell us how He 
 is exalted in Heaven with a host of glorified Saints, 
 who are our intercessors, about His throne ? Why 
 
Purity and Love, 69 
 
 does He give us His own Mother Mary for our mother, 
 the most perfect image after Himself of what is beau- 
 tiful and tender, and gentle and soothing, in human 
 nature ? Why does He manifest Himself by an 
 ineffable condescension on our Altars, still humbling 
 Himself, though He reigns on high ? What does all 
 this show, but that, when souls wander away from 
 Him, He reclaims them by means of themselves, ^' by 
 cords of Adam/' or of human nature, as the prophet 
 speaks, — conquering us indeed at His will, saving us 
 in spite of ourselves, — and yet by ourselves, so that the 
 very reason and affections of the old Adam, which 
 have been made " the instruments of iniquity unto 
 sin,^^ should, under the power of His grace, become 
 ''the instruments of justice unto God^^? 
 
 Yes, doubtless He draws us " by cords of Adam/' 
 and what are those cords, but, as the prophet speaks 
 in the same verse, " the cords,'^ or "the twine of love'^? 
 It is the manifestation of the glory of God in the Face 
 of Jesus Christ ; it is that view of the attributes and 
 perfections of Almighty God ; it is the beauty of His 
 sanctity, the sweetness of His mercy, the brightness 
 of His heaven, the majesty of His law, the harmony 
 of His providences, the thrilling music of His voice, 
 which is the antagonist of the flesh, and the soul's 
 champion against the world and the devil. " Thou 
 hast seduced me, O Lord," says the prophet, " and I 
 was seduced ; Thou art stronger than I, and hast pre- 
 vailed ; " Thou hast thrown Thy net skilfully, and its 
 subtle threads are entwined round each affection of my 
 heart, and its meshes have been a power of God, "bring- 
 
70 Purity and Love. 
 
 ing" into captivity the whole intellect to the service of 
 Christ/'' If the world has its fascinations, so surely 
 has the Altar of the living God ; if its pomps and 
 vanities dazzle, so much more should the vision of 
 Angels ascending and descending on the heavenly 
 ladder ; if sights of earth intoxicate^ and its music is a 
 spell upon the soul, behold Mary pleads with us, over 
 against them, with her chaste eyes, and offers the 
 Eternal Child for our caress, while sounds of cherubim 
 are heard all round singing from out the fulness of the 
 Divine Glory. Has divine hope no emotion ? Has 
 divine charity no transport ? " How dear are Thy 
 tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!'''' says the prophet; '^my 
 soul doth lust, and doth faint for the courts of the Lord ; 
 my heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God. 
 Better is one day in Thy courts above a thousand : I 
 have chosen to be an abject in the house of my God, 
 rather than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners.*^ 
 
 So is it, as a great Doctor and penitent has said, St. 
 Augustine; '^It is not enough to be drawn by the will; 
 thou art also drawn by the sense of pleasure. What 
 is it "to be drawn by pleasure ? ' Delight thou in the 
 Lord, and He will give thee the petitions of thy heart.^ 
 There is a certain pleasure of heart, when that heavenly 
 Bread is sweet to a man. Moreover, if the poet saith, 
 ' Every one is drawn by his own pleasure,' not by 
 necessity, but by pleasure ; not by obligation, but by 
 delight ; how much more boldly ought we to say, that 
 man is drawn to Christ, when he is delighted with 
 truth, delighted with bliss, delighted with justice, de- 
 lighted with eternal life, all which is Christ ? Have 
 
Purity and Love. 71 
 
 the bodily senses their pleasures, and is the mind with- 
 out its own ? If so, whence is it said, * The sons of 
 men shall hope under the covering of Thy wings; they 
 shall be intoxicate with the richness of Thy house, 
 and with the torrent of Thy pleasure shalt thou give 
 them to drink : for with Thee is the well of life, and 
 in Thy light we shall see light ? ' * He, whom the 
 Father draweth, cometh to Me ' ■" ? he continues ; 
 " Whom hath the Father drawn ? " him who said, 
 ' Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.' You 
 present a green branch to the sheep, and you draw it 
 forward ; fruits are offered to the child, and he is drawn; 
 in that he runs, he is drawn, he is drawn by loving, 
 drawn without bodily hurt, drawn by the bond of the 
 heart. If then it be true that the sight of earthly 
 delight draws on the lover, doth not Christ too draw 
 us when revealed by the Father ? For what doth the 
 soul desire more strongly than truth ? '* 
 
 Such are the means which God has provided for the 
 creation of the Saint out of the sinner ; He takes him 
 as he is, and uses him against himself: He turns his 
 affections into another channel, and extinguishes a 
 carnal love by infusing a heavenly charity. Not as if 
 He used him as a mere irrational creature, who is im- 
 pelled by instincts and governed by external incite- 
 ments without any will of his own, and to whom one 
 pleasure is the same as another, the same in kind, 
 though different in degree. I have already said, it is 
 the very triumph of His grace, that He enters into the 
 heart of man, and persuades it, and prevails with it, 
 while He changes it. He violates in nothing that 
 
72 Purity and Love. 
 
 original constitution of mind which He gave to man : 
 He treats him as man ; He leaves him the liberty of 
 acting this way or that; He appeals to all his powers 
 and faculties, to his reason, to his prudence, to his 
 moral sense, to his conscience : He rouses his fears 
 as well as his love ; He instructs him in the depravity 
 of sin, as well as in the mercy of God; but still, 
 on the whole, the animating principle of the new 
 life, by which it is both kindled and sustained, is the 
 flame of charity. This only is strong enough to destroy 
 the old Adam, to dissolve the tyranny of habit, to 
 quench the fires of concuj^iscence, and to burn up the 
 strongholds of pride. 
 
 And hence it is that love is presented to us as the 
 distinguishing grace of those who were sinners before 
 they were Saints ; not that love is not the life of all 
 Saints, of those who have never needed a conversion, 
 of the Most Blessed Virgin, of the two St. Johns, and 
 of those others, many in number, who are " first-fruits 
 unto God and the Lamb;"*^ but that, while in those who 
 have never sinned gravely love is so contemplative as 
 almost to resolve itself into the sanctity of God Him- 
 self ; in those, on the contrary, in whom it dwells as 
 a principle of recovery, it is so full of devotion, of zeal, 
 of activity, and good works, that it gives a visible 
 character to their history, and is ever associating itself 
 with our thoughts of them. 
 
 Such was the great Apostle, on whom the Church 
 is built, and whom I contrasted, when I began, with 
 his fellow- Apostle St. John : whether we contemplate 
 him after his first calling, or on his repentance, he who 
 
Purity and Love. "j^^ 
 
 denied Lis Lord, out of all the Apostles, is the most 
 conspicuous for his love of Him. It was for this love 
 of Christ, flowing" on, as it did, from its impetuosity 
 and exuberance, into love of the brethren, that he was 
 chosen to be the chief Pastor of the fold. " Simon, 
 son of John, lovest thou Me more than these ? ^^ was 
 the trial put on him by his Lord ; and the reward was, 
 " Feed My lambs, feed My sheep." Wonderful to 
 say, the Apostle whom Jesus loved, was yet surpassed 
 in love for Jesus by a brother Apostle, not virginal as 
 he ; for it is not John of whom our Lord asked this 
 question, and who was rewarded with this commission, 
 but Peter. 
 
 Look back at an earlier passage of the same narra- 
 tive ; there, too, the two Apostles are similarly con- 
 trasted in their respective characters ; for when they 
 were in the boat, and their Lord spoke to them from 
 the shore, and ** they knew not that it was Jesus,^' first 
 " that disciple, whom Jesus loved, said to Peter, It is 
 the Lord," for ^^ the clean of heart shall see God ;" 
 and then at once ^^ Simon Peter,-*' in the impetuosity 
 of his love, " girt his tunic about him, and cast him- 
 self into the sea/' to reach Him the quicker. St. 
 John beholds and St. Peter acts. 
 
 Thus the very presence of Jesus kindled Peter^s 
 heart, and at once drew him unto Him ; also at a 
 former time, when he saw his Lord walking on the 
 sea, his very first impulse was, as in the passage to 
 which I have been referring, to leave the vessel and 
 hasten to His side : *' Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come 
 to Thee upon the waters/' And when he had been 
 
74 Purity and Love. 
 
 betrayed into his great sin, the very Eye of Jusus 
 brought him to himself : " And the Lord turned and 
 looked upon Peter ; and Peter remembered the word 
 of the Lord, and he went out and wept bitterly/^ 
 Hence, on another occasion, when many of the dis- 
 ciples fell away, and " Jesus said to the twelve, Do 
 ye too wish to go away 1 " St. Peter answered, 
 " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words 
 of eternal life ; and we have believed and have known 
 that Thou art Christ, the Son of God/' 
 
 Such, too, was that other great Apostle, who, in so 
 many ways, is associated with St. Peter — the Doctor 
 of the Gentiles. He indeed was converted miracu- 
 lously, by our Lord's appearing to him, when he 
 was on his way to carry death to the Christians of 
 Damascus : but how does he speak ? ^' Whether we 
 are beside ourselves,'' he says, "it is to God; or 
 whether we be sober, it is for you : for the charity of 
 Christ constraineth us. If, therefore, any be a ncAV 
 creature in Christ, old things have passed away, 
 behold, all things are made new." And so again : 
 *' With Christ am I nailed to the cross ; but I live, 
 yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me ; and the life 
 I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of 
 God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." And 
 again : " I am the least of the Apostles, who am not 
 worthy to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted 
 the Church of God. But by the grace of God I am 
 what I am; and His grace in me hath not been void, 
 but I laboured more abundantly than they all, yet not 
 I, but the grace of God with me." And once more : 
 
Purity and Love, 75 
 
 " Whether we live, unto the Lord we live ; whether 
 we die, unto the Lord we die ; whether we live or 
 whether we die, we are the Lord's.'^ You see, my 
 brethren, the character of St. PauPs love ; it was a 
 love fervent, eager, energetic, active, full of great 
 works, '^ strong as death," as the Wise Man says, a 
 flame which *' many waters could not quench, nor the 
 streams drown,-*^ which lasted to the end, when he 
 could say, " I have fought the good fight, I have 
 finished the course, I have kept the faith ; henceforth 
 is laid up for me the crown of justice, which the Lord 
 will render to me at that day, the just Judge/^ 
 
 And there is a third, my brethren, there is an illus- 
 trious third in Scripture, whom we must associate 
 with these two great Apostles, when we speak of the 
 saints of penance and love. Who is it but the loving 
 Magdalen ? Who is it so fully instances what I am 
 showing, as '' the woman who was a sinner,'^ who 
 watered the Lord's feet with her tears, and dried them 
 with her hair, and anointed them with precious oint- 
 ment ? What a time for such an act ! She, who had 
 come into the room as if for a festive purpose, to go 
 about an act of penance ! It was a formal banquet, 
 given by a rich Pharisee, to honour, yet to try, our 
 Lord. Magdalen came, young and beautiful, and 
 '' rejoicing in her youth,'''' '^ walking in the ways of 
 her heart and the gaze of her eyes :" she came as if 
 to honour that feast, as women were wont to honour 
 such festive doings, with her sweet odours and cool 
 unguents for the forehead and hair of the guests. 
 And he, the proud Pharisee, suffered her to come, so 
 
76 Purity and Love. 
 
 that she touched not him ; let her come, as we might 
 suffer inferior animals to enter our apartments, with- 
 out caring for them ; suffered her as a necessary 
 embellishment of the entertainment, yet as having no 
 soul, or as destined to perdition, but anyhow as 
 nothing to him. He, proud being, and his brethren 
 like him, might " compass sea and land to make one 
 proselyte;" but, as to looking into that proselyte^s 
 heart, pitying its sin, and trying to heal it, this did 
 not enter into the circuit of his thoughts. No, he 
 thought only of the necessities of his banquet, and he 
 let her come to do her part, such as it was, careless 
 what her life was, so that she did that part well, and 
 confined herself to it. But, lo, a wondrous sight! 
 was it a sudden inspiration, or a mature resolve ? was 
 it an act of the moment, or the result of a long con- 
 flict ? — but behold, that poor, many-coloured child of 
 guilt approaches to crown with her sweet ointment 
 the head of Him to whom the feast was given ; and 
 see, she has stayed her hand. She has looked, and 
 she discerns the Immaculate, the Virgin's Son, " the 
 brightness of the Eternal Light, and the spotless 
 mirror of God^s majesty.^^ She looks, and she re- 
 cognizes the Ancient of Days, the Lord of life and 
 death, her Judge ; and again she looks, and she sees 
 in His face and in His mien a beauty, and a sweet- 
 ness, awful, serene, majestic, more than that of the 
 sons of men, which paled all the splendour of that 
 festive room. Again she looks, timidly yet eagerly, 
 and she discerns in His eye, and in His smile, the 
 loving-kindness, the tenderness, the compassion, the 
 
Purity and Love. 77 
 
 mercy of the Saviour of man. She looks at herself, 
 and oh ! how vile, how hideous is she, who but now 
 was so vain of her attractions ! — how withered is that 
 comeliness, of which the praises ran through the 
 mouths of her admirers ! — how loathsome has become 
 the breath, which hitherto she thought so fragrant, 
 savouring only of those seven bad spirits which dwell 
 within her ! And there she would have stayed, there 
 she would have sunk on the earth, wrapped in her 
 confusion and in her despair, had she not cast one 
 glance again on that all-loving, all-forgiving Counte- 
 nance. He is looking at her : it is the Shepherd 
 looking at the lost sheep, and the lost sheep sur- 
 renders herself to Him. He speaks not, but He eyes 
 her ; and she draws nearer to Him. Rejoice, ye 
 Angels, she draws near, seeing nothing but Him, and 
 caring neither for the scorn of the proud, nor the 
 jests of the profligate. She draws near, not knowing 
 whether she shall be saved or not, not knowing 
 whether she shall be received, or what will become of 
 her ; this only knowing that He is the Fount of holi- 
 ness and truth, as of mercy, and to whom should she 
 go, but to Him who hath the words of eternal life? 
 ^^ Destruction is thine own, O Israel ; in Me only is 
 thy help. Return unto Me, and I will not turn away 
 My face from thee : for I am holy, and will not be 
 angry for ever.''^ '^ Behold we come unto Thee ; for 
 Thou art the Lord our God. Truly the hills are false, 
 and the multitude of the mountains : Truly the Lord 
 our God is the salvation of Israel.'' Wonderful nieet- 
 ing between what was most base and what is most 
 
78 Purity and Love. 
 
 pure ! Those wanton hands, those polluted lips, have 
 touched, have kissed the feet of the Eternal, and He 
 shrank not from the homage. And as she hang over 
 them, and as she moistened them from her full eyes, 
 how did her love for One so great, yet so gentle, wax 
 vehement within her, lighting up a flame which never 
 was to die from that moment even for ever ! and what 
 excess did it reach, when He recorded before all men 
 her forgiveness, and the cause of it ! " Many sins 
 are forgiven her, for she loved much ; but to whom 
 less is forgiven, the same loveth less. And He said 
 unto her. Thy sins are forgiven thee ; thy faith hath 
 made thee safe, go in peace/' 
 
 Henceforth, my brethren, love was to her, as to St, 
 Augustine and to St. Ignatius Loyola afterwards, 
 (great penitents in their own time), as a wound in the 
 soul, so full of desire as to become anguish. She 
 could not live out of the presence of Him in whom 
 her joy lay : her spirit languished after Him, when 
 she saw Him not; and waited on Him silently, 
 reverently, wistfully, when she was in His blissful 
 Presence. We read of her, on one occasion, sitting 
 at His feet, and listening to His words ; and He testi- 
 fied to her that she had chosen that best part which 
 should not be taken away from her. And, after His 
 resurrection, she, by her perseverance, merited to see 
 Him even before the Apostles. She would not leave 
 the sepulchre, when Peter and John retired, but stood 
 without, weeping ; and when the Lord appeared to her, 
 and held her eyes that she should not know Him, she 
 said piteously to the supposed keeper of the garden. 
 
Purity and Love. 79 
 
 '^Tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take 
 Him away/^ And when at length He made Himself 
 known to her, she turned herself, and rushed im- 
 petuously to embrace His feet, as at the beginning, 
 but He, as if to prove the dutiful ness of her love, 
 forbade her : " Touch Me not,'' He said, " for I have 
 not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren, 
 and say to them, I ascend to My Father and your 
 Father, to My God and your God/' And so she was 
 left to long for the time when she should see Him, and 
 hear His voice, and enjoy His smile, and be allowed 
 to minister to Him, for ever in heaven. 
 
 Such then is the second great class of Saints, as 
 viewed in contrast with the first. Love is the life 
 of both : but while the love of the innocent is calm 
 and serene, the love of the penitent is ardent and im- 
 petuous, commonly engaged in contest with the world, 
 and active in good works. And this is the love which 
 you, my brethren, must have in your measure, if you 
 would have a good hope of salvation. For you were 
 once sinners ; either by open and avowed contempt of 
 religion, or by secret transgression, or by carelessness 
 and coldness, or by some indulged bad habit, or by 
 setting your heart on some object of this world, and 
 doing your own will instead of God's, I think I may 
 say you have needed, or now need, a reconciliation to 
 Him. You have needed, or you need, to be brought 
 near to Him, and to have your sins washed away in 
 His blood, and your pardon recorded in Heaven. And 
 what will do this for you, but contrition ? and what is 
 contrition without love ? I do not say that you must 
 
8o Purity and Love, 
 
 have the love which Saints have, in order to your for- 
 giveness, the loveof St. Peter or of St. Mary Magdalen; 
 but still without your portion of that same heavenly 
 grace, how can you be forgiven at all? If you would 
 do works meet for penance, they must proceed from a 
 living flame of charity. If you would secure perse- 
 verance to the end, you must gain it by continual loving 
 prayer to the Author and Finisher of faith and obedi- 
 ence. If you would have a good prospect of His 
 acceptance of you in your last moments, still it is love 
 alone which secures His love, and blots out sin. My 
 brethren, at that awful hour you may be unable to 
 obtain the last Sacraments ; death may come on you 
 suddenly, or you may be at a distance from a Priest. 
 You may be thrown on yourselves, simply on your own 
 compunction of heart, your own repentance, your own 
 resolutions of amendment. You may have been weeks 
 and weeks at a distance from spiritual aid ; you may 
 have to meet your God without the safeguard, the 
 compensation, the mediation of any holy rite ; and 
 oh ! what will save you in such disadvantage, but the 
 exercise of divine love " poured over your hearts by 
 the Holy Ghost who is given to you ^^ ? At that hour 
 nothing but a firm habit of charity, which has kept 
 you from mortal sins, or a powerful act of charity 
 which blots them out, will be of any avail to you. 
 Nothing but charity can enable you to live well or to 
 die well. How can you bear to lie down at night, how 
 can you bear to go a journey, how can you bear the 
 presence of pestilence, or the attack of ever so slight 
 an indisposition, if you are ill provided in yourselves 
 
Purity and Love. 8 1 
 
 with divine love ag-ainst that change, which will come 
 on you some day, yet when and how you know not ? 
 Alas ! how will you present yourselves before the 
 judgment- seat of Christ, with the imperfect mixed 
 feelings which now satisfy you, with a certain amount 
 of faith, and trust, and fear of God's judgments, but 
 with nothing of that real delight in Him, in His 
 attributes, in His will, in His commandments, in. His 
 service, which Saints possess in such fulness, and 
 which alone can give the soul a comfortable title to 
 the merits of His death and passion ? 
 
 How different is the feeling with which the loving 
 soul, on its separation from the body, approaches the 
 judgment-seat of its Redeemer ! It knows how great 
 a debt of punishment remains upon it, though it has 
 for many years been reconciled to Him ; it knows that 
 purgatory lies before it, and that the best it can 
 reasonably hope for is to be sent there. But to see 
 His face, though for a moment ! to hear His voice, to 
 hear Him speak, though it be to punish ! O Saviour of 
 men, it says, I come to Thee, though it be in order to be 
 at once remanded from Thee ; I come to Thee who art 
 my Life and my All ; I come to Thee on the thought 
 of whom I have lived all my life long. To Thee I 
 gave myself when first I had to take a part in the 
 world ; I sought Thee for my chief good early, for 
 early didst Thou teach me, that good elsewhere there 
 was none. Whom have I in heaven but Thee ? whom 
 have I desired on earth, whom have I had on earth, 
 but Thee ? whom shall I have amid the sharp flame 
 but Thee ? Yea, though I be now descending thither, 
 
 
 
82 Purity and Love. 
 
 into " a land desert, pathless and without water/^ I 
 will fear no ill, for Thou art with me. I have seen 
 Thee this day face to face, and it sufficeth ; I have 
 seen Thee, and that glance of Thine is sufficient for a 
 century of sorrow, in the nether prison. I will live 
 on that look of Thine, though I see Thee not, till I see 
 Thee again, never to part from Thee. That eye of 
 Thine shall be sunshine and comfort to my weary, 
 longing soul ; that voice of Thine shall be everlasting 
 music in my ears. Nothing can harm me, nothing 
 shall discompose me: I will bear the appointed years, 
 till my end come, bravely and sweetly. I will raise 
 my voice, and chant a perpetual Confiteor to Thee and 
 to Thy Saints in that dreary valley ; — " to God Omni- 
 potent, and to the Blessed Mary Ever- Virgin/^ (Thy 
 Mother and mine, immaculate in her conception), 
 " and to blessed Michael Archangel," (created in his 
 purity by the very hand of God), and '' to Blessed 
 John Baptist,'^ (sanctified even in his mother^s womb); 
 and after these three, " to the Holy Apostles Peter 
 and Paul," (penitents, who compassionate the sinner 
 from their experience of sin); " to all Saints," (whether 
 they have lived in contemplation or in toil, during 
 the days of their pilgrimage), will I address my sup- 
 plication, begging them to " remember me, since it is 
 well with them, and to do mercy by me, and to make 
 mention of me unto the King that He bring me out 
 of that prison." And then at length " God shall 
 wipe away every tear from my eyes, and death shall 
 be no longer, nor mourning, nor crying, nor pain any 
 more, for the former things are passed away." 
 
DISCOURSE V. 
 
 SAINTLINESS THE STANDARD OF CHRISTIAN 
 PRINCIPLE. 
 
 XrOU know very well, my brethren_, and there are 
 -*- few persons anywhere who deny it, that in the 
 breast of every one there dwells a feeling or percep- 
 tion, which tells him the difference between right and 
 wrong, and is the standard by which to measure 
 thoughts and actions. It is called conscience ; and 
 even though it be not at all times powerful enough 
 to rule us, still it is distinct and decisive enough to 
 influence our views and form our judgments in the 
 various matters which come before us. Yet even this 
 office it cannot perform adequately without external 
 assistance; it needs to be regulated and sustained. 
 Left to itself though it tells truly at first, it soon be- 
 comes wavering, ambiguous, and false; it needs good 
 teachers and good examples to keep it up to the mark 
 and line of duty : and the misery is, that these ex- 
 ternal helps, teachers, and examples are in many 
 instances wanting. 
 
 Nay, to the great multitude of men they are so far 
 wanting, that conscience loses its way and guides the 
 G 2 
 
84 Saintliness the Standard 
 
 soul in its journev heavenward but indirectly and 
 circuitously. Even in countries called Christian^ the 
 natural inward light grows dim, because the Lights 
 which lightens every one born into the world, is 
 removed out of sight. I say, it is a most miserable 
 and frightful thought, that, in this country, among 
 this people which boasts that it is so Christian and so 
 enlightened, the sun in the heavens is so eclipsed that 
 the mirror of conscience can catch and reflect few rays, 
 and serves but poorly and scantily to preserve the 
 foot from error. That inward light, given as it is by 
 God, is powerless to illuminate the horizon, to mark 
 out for us our direction, and to comfort us with the 
 certainty that we are making for our Eternal Home. 
 That light was intended to set up within us a standard 
 of right and of truth ; to tell us our duty on every 
 emergency, to instruct us in detail what sin is, to 
 judge* between all things which come before us, to 
 discriminate the precious from the vile, to_hinderji^ 
 from being seduced by what is pleasant and agree- 
 able, and to dissipate the sophisms of our reason. 
 But alas ! what ideas of truth, what ideas of holiness, 
 w^hat ideas of heroism, what ideas of the good and 
 great, have the multitude of men ? I am not asking 
 whether they act up to any ideas, or are swayed by 
 any ideas, of these high objects ; that is a further 
 point ; I only ask, have they any ideas of them at all? 
 or, if they cannot altogether blot out from their souls 
 their ideas of greatness and goodness, I ask still, 
 whether their mode of conceiving of them, and the 
 things and persons in which they embody them, be 
 
of Christian Principle . 8 5 
 
 not such, that we may truly say of the bulk of man- 
 kind, that '^ the light that is in them is darkness/* 
 
 Attend to me, my dear brethren, I am saying 
 nothing very abstruse, nothing very difficult to un- 
 derstand, nothing unimportant ; but something intel- 
 ligible, undeniable, and of very general concern. 
 You know there are persons who never see the light 
 of day ; they live in pits and mines, and there they 
 work, there they take their pleasure, and there per- 
 haps they die. Do you think they have any right 
 idea, though they have eyes, of the sun's radiance, of 
 the sun's warmth ? any idea of the beautiful arching 
 heavens, the blue sky, the soft clouds, and the moon 
 and stars by night ? any idea of the high mountain, 
 and the green smiling earth ? Oh what an hour it is 
 for him who is suddenly brought from such a pit or 
 cave, from the dull red glow and the flickering glare of 
 torches, and that monotony of an artificial twilight, 
 in which day and night are lost, — is suddenly, I say, 
 brought thence, and for the first time sees the bright 
 sun moving majestically from East to West, and 
 witnesses the gradual graceful changes of the air and 
 sky from morn till fragrant evening ! And oh ! what 
 a sight for one born blind to begin to see, — a sense 
 altogether foreign to all his previous conceptions! 
 What a marvellous new state of being, which, though 
 he ever had the senses of hearing and of touch, never 
 had he been able, by the words of others, or any 
 means of information he possessed, to bring home to 
 himself in the faintest measure ! Would he not find 
 himself, as it is said, in a '' new world '' ? What a 
 
86 Saint line ss the Standard 
 
 revolution would take place in his modes of thought, 
 in his habits, in his ways, and in his doings hour by 
 hour ! He would no longer direct himself with his 
 hands and his hearing, he would no longer grope 
 about ; he would see ; — he would at a glance take in 
 ten thousand objects, and, what is more, their relations 
 and their positions the one towards the other. He would 
 know what was great and what was little, what was 
 near, what was distant, what things converged together 
 and what things were ever separate — in a word, he 
 would see all things as a whole, and in subjection to 
 himself as a centre. 
 
 But further, he would gain knowledge of something 
 closer to himself and more personal than all these 
 various objects ; of something very different from the 
 forms and groups in which light dwelt as in a taber- 
 nacle, and which excited his admiration and love. 
 He would discover lying upon him, spreading over 
 him, penetrating him, the festering seeds of un- 
 heal thiness and disease in their primary and minutest 
 forms. The air around us is charged with a subtle 
 powder or dust, which falls down softly on every- 
 thing, silently sheds itself on everything, soils and 
 stains everything, and, if suffered to remain undis- 
 turbed, induces sickness and engenders pestilence. 
 It is like those ashes of the furnace which Moses 
 was instructed to take up and scatter in the face of 
 heaven, that they might become ulcers and blisters 
 upon the flesh of the Egyptians. This subtle plague 
 is felt in its ultimate consequences by all, the blind as 
 well as those who see ; but it is by the eyesight that 
 
of Christian Principle, 87 
 
 we discern it in its origin and in its progress ; it is by 
 the sun^s light that we discern our own defilement, 
 and the need we have of continual cleansing to rid 
 ourselves of it. 
 
 Now what is this dust and dirt, my brethren, but a 
 figure of sin ? so subtle in its approach, so multi- 
 tudinous in its array, so incessant in its solicitations, 
 so insignificant in its appearance, so odious, so poison- 
 ous in its effects. It falls on the soul gently and 
 imperceptibly ; but it gradually breeds wounds and 
 sores, and ends in everlasting death. And as we 
 cannot see the atoms of dust that have settled on us 
 without the light, and as that same light, which 
 enables us to see them, teaches us withal, by their 
 very contrast with itself, their unseemliness and dis- 
 honour, so the light of the invisible world, the teach- 
 ings and examples of revealed truth, bring home to us 
 both the existence and also the deformity of sin, of 
 which we should be unmindful or forgetful without 
 them. And as there are men who live in caverns and 
 mines, and never see the face of day, and do their 
 work as best they can by torch -light, so there are 
 multitudes, nay, whole races of men, who, though 
 possessed of eyes by nature, cannot use them duly, 
 because they live in the spiritual pit, in the region of 
 darkness, "in the land of wretchedness and gloom, 
 where there is the shadow of death, and where order 
 is not. 
 
 There they are born, there they live, there they die ; 
 and instead of the bright, broad, and all-revealing 
 luminousness of the sun, they grope their way from 
 
88 Saint lines s the Sta^idard 
 
 place to place with torches, as best they may^ or fix 
 up lamps at certain points^ and " walk in the light of 
 their fire, and in the flames which they have kindled /' 
 because they have nothing clearer, nothing purer, to 
 serve the needs of the day and the year. Light of 
 some kind they must secure, and, when they can do no 
 better, they make it for themselves. Man, a being 
 endued with reason, cannot on that very account live 
 altogether at random ; he is obliged in some sense to 
 live on principle, to live by rule, to profess a view of 
 life, to have an aim, to set up a standard, and to take 
 to him such examples as seem to him to fulfil it. His 
 reason does not make him independent (as men 
 sometimes speak) ; it forces on him a dependency on 
 definite principles and laws, in order to satisfy its own 
 demands. He must by the necessity of his nature, 
 look up to something ; and he creates, if he cannot 
 discover, an object for his veneration. He teaches him- 
 self, or is taught by his neighbour, falsehoods, if he is not 
 taught truth from above ; he makes to himself idols, 
 if he knows not of the Eternal God and His Saints. 
 Now, of which of the two, think you, my brethren, are 
 our own countrymen in possession ? have they pos- 
 session of the true Object of worship, or have they a 
 false one ? have they created what is not, or discovered 
 what is ? do they walk by the luminaries of heaven, or 
 are they as those who are born and live in caverns, and 
 who strike their light as best they may, by means of 
 the stones and metals of the earth ? 
 
 Look around, my brethren, and answer for your- 
 selves. Contemplate the objects of this people^s 
 
of Christian Principle, 89 
 
 praise, survey their standards, ponder their ideas and 
 judgments, and then tell me whether it is not most 
 evident, from their very notion of the desirable and 
 the excellent, that greatness, and goodness, and sanc- 
 tity, and sublimity, and truth are unknown to them ; 
 and that they not only do not pursue, but do not even 
 admire, those high attributes of the Divine Nature. 
 This is what I am insisting on, not what they actually 
 do or what they are, but what they revere, what they 
 adore, what their gods are. Their god is mammon ; 
 I do not mean to say that all seek to be wealthy, but 
 that all bow down before wealth. Wealth is that 
 to which the multitude of men pay an instinctive 
 homage. They measure happiness by wealth ; and by 
 wealth they measure respectability. Numbers, I say, 
 there are, who never dream that they shall ever be rich 
 themselves, but who still at the sight of wealth feel 
 an involuntary reverence and awe, just as if a rich 
 man must be a good man. They like to be noticed by 
 some particular rich man ; they like on some occasion 
 to have spoken with him ; they like to know those 
 who know him, to be intimate with his dependants, 
 to have entered his house, nay, to know him by sight. 
 Not, I repeat, that it ever comes into their mind that 
 the like wealth will one day be theirs ; not that they 
 see the wealth, for the man who has it may dress, and 
 live, and look like other men ; not that they expect to 
 gain some benefit from it : no, theirs is a disinterested 
 homage, it is a homage resulting from an honest, 
 genuine, hearty admiration of wealth for its own sake, 
 such as that pure love which holy men feel for the 
 
90 Saintliness the Standard 
 
 Maker of all ; it is a homag'e resulting- from a pro- 
 found faith in wealth, from the intimate sentiment of 
 their hearts, that, however a man may look, — poor, 
 mean, starved, decrepit, vulgar ; or again, though he 
 may be ignorant, or diseased, or feeble-minded; 
 though he have the character of being a tyrant or a 
 profligate, yet, if he be rich, he differs from all 
 others ; if he be rich, he has a gift, a spell, an omni- 
 potence ; — that with wealth he may do all things. 
 
 Wealth is one idol of the day, and notoriety is a 
 second. I am not speaking, I repeat, of what men 
 actually pursue, but of what they look up to, what 
 they revere. Men may not have the opportunity of pur- 
 suing what they admire still. Never could notoriety 
 exist as it does now, in any former age of the world; 
 now that the news of the hour from all parts of the 
 world, private news as well as public, is brought day 
 by day to every individual, as I may say, of the 
 community, to the poorest artisan and the most 
 secluded peasant, by processes so uniform, so unvarying, 
 so spontaneous, that they almost bear the semblance 
 of a natural law. And hence notoriety, or the making 
 a noise in the world, has come to be considered a great 
 good in itself, and a ground of veneration. Time was 
 when men could only make a display by means of ex- 
 penditure ; and the world used to gaze with wonder 
 on those who had large establishments, many servants, 
 many horses, richly-furnished houses, gardens, and 
 parks : it does so still, that is, when it has the oppor- 
 tunity of doing so : for such magnificence is the fortune 
 of the few, and comparatively few are its witnesses. 
 
of Christian Principle, 91 
 
 Notoriety, or, as it may be called, newspaper fame, is 
 to the many what style and fashion, to use the language 
 of the world, are to those who are within or belong to 
 the higher circles ; it becomes to them a sort of idol, 
 worshipped for its own sake, and without any refer- 
 ence to the shape in which it comes before them. It 
 may be an evil fame or a good fame ; it may be the 
 notoriety of a great statesman, or of a great preacher, 
 or of a great speculator, or of a great experimentalist, 
 or of a great criminal ; of one who has laboured in the 
 improvement of our schools, or hospitals, or prisons, 
 or workhouses, or of one who has robbed his neighbour 
 of his wife. It matters not ; so that a man is talked 
 much of, and read much of, he is thought much of; 
 nay, let him even have died justly under the hands of 
 the law, still he will be made a sort of martyr of. His 
 clothes, his handwriting, the circumstances of his guilt, 
 the instruments of his deed of blood, will be shown 
 about, gazed on, treasured up as so many relics ; for 
 the question with men is, not whether he is great, or 
 good, or wise, or holy ; not whether he is base, and vile, 
 and odious, but whether he is in the mouths of men, 
 whether he has centred on himself the attention of 
 many, whether he has done something out of the way, 
 whether he has been (as it were) canonized in the 
 publications of the hour. All men cannot be notorious : 
 the multitudes who thus honour notoriety, do not seek 
 it themselves ; nor am I speaking of what men do, but 
 how they judge; yet instances do occur from time to 
 time of wretched men, so smitten with passion for 
 notoriety, as even to dare in fact some detestable and 
 
92 Samtliness the Standard 
 
 wanton act, not from love of it, not from liking* or 
 dislike of the person against whom it is directed, but 
 simply in order thereby to gratify this impure desire 
 of being talked about, and gazed upon. " These are 
 thy gods. Oh Israel ! " Alas ! alas ! this great and 
 noble people, born to aspire, born for reverence, behold 
 them walking to and fro by the torch -light of the 
 cavern, or pursuing the wild-fires of the marsh, not 
 understanding themselves, their destinies, their defile- 
 ments, their needs, because they have not the glorious 
 luminaries of heaven to see, to consult, and to admire ! 
 But oh ! what a change, my brethren, when the 
 good hand of God brings them by some marvellous 
 providence to the pit's mouth, and then out into the 
 blessed light of day ! what a change for them when 
 they first begin to see with the eyes of the soul, with 
 the intuition which grace gives, Jesus, the Sun of 
 Justice ; and the heaven of Angels and Archangels in 
 which He dwells; and the bright Morning Star, which 
 is His Blessed Mother; and the continual floods of light 
 falling and striking against the earth, and transformed 
 as they fall into an infinity of hues, which are His 
 Saints ; and the boundless sea, which is the image of 
 His divine immensity ; and then again the calm, placid 
 Moon by night, which images His Church; and the 
 silent stars, like good and holy men, travelling on in 
 lonely pilgrimage to their eternal rest ! Such was the 
 surprise, such the transport, which came upon the 
 favoured disciples, whom on one occasion our Lord 
 took up with Him to the top of Tabor. He left the 
 sick world, the tormented, restless multitude, at its 
 
of Christian Principle, 93 
 
 foot, and He took tliem up, and was transfigured 
 before them. " His Face did shine as the sun, and 
 His raiment was white as the light ; ■'^ and they lifted 
 their eyes, and saw on either side of Him a bright 
 form ; — these were two Saints of the elder covenant, 
 Moses and Elias, who were conversing with Him. 
 How truly was this a glimpse of Heaven ! the holy 
 Apostles were introduced into a new range of ideas, 
 into a new sphere of contemplation, till St. Peter, 
 overcome b}^ the vision, cried out, " Lord, it is good 
 to be here ; and let us make three tabernacles/' He 
 would fain have kept those heavenly glories always with 
 him ; everything on earth, the brightest, the fairest, 
 the noblest, paled and dwindled away, and turned to 
 corruption before them ; its most substantial good was 
 vanity, its richest gain was dross, its keenest joy a 
 weariness, and its sin a loathsomeness and abomina- 
 tion. And such as this in its measure is the contrast, 
 to which the awakened soul is witness, between the 
 objects of its admiration and pursuit in its natural 
 state, and those which burst upon it when it has 
 entered into communion with the Church Invisible, 
 when it has come *^ to mount Zion, and to the city of 
 the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to that 
 multitude of many thousand Angels, and to the Church 
 of the first-born, who are enrolled in heaven, and to 
 God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the just 
 now perfected, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New 
 Testament." From that day it has begun a new life : 
 I am not speaking of any moral conversion which takes 
 place in it ; whether or not it is moved (as surely we 
 
94 Saintliness the Standard 
 
 believe it will be) to act upon the sights which it sees, 
 still consider only what a change there will be in its 
 views and estimation of things, as soon as it has 
 heard and has faith in the word of God^ as soon as it 
 understands that wealth, and notoriety, and influence, 
 and high place, are not the first of blessings and the 
 real standard of good ; but that saintliness and all its 
 attendants, — saintly purity, saintly poverty, heroic 
 fortitude and patience, self-sacrifice for the sake of 
 others, renouncement of the world, the favour of 
 Heaven, the protection of Angels, the smile of the 
 Blessed Virgin, the gifts of grace, the interpositions 
 of miracle, the intercommunion of merits, — that these 
 are the high and precious things, the things to be 
 looked up to, the things to be reverently spoken of. 
 Hence worldly-minded men, however rich, if they are 
 Catholics, cannot, till they utterly lose their faith, be 
 the same as those who are external to the Church ; 
 they have an instinctive veneration for those who have 
 the traces of heaven upon them, and they praise what 
 they do not imitate. 
 
 Such men have an idea before them which a Pro- 
 testant nation has not ; they have the idea of a Saint ; 
 they believe, they realize the existence of those rare 
 servants of God, who rise up from time to time in the 
 Catholic Church like Angels in disguise, and shed 
 around them a light, as they walk on their way heaven- 
 ward. They may not in practice do what is right and 
 good, but they know what is true ; they know what to 
 think and how to judge. They have a standard for their 
 principles of conduct, and it is the image, the pattern of 
 
of Christian Principle, 95 
 
 Saints which forms it for them. A Saint is born like 
 another man ; by nature a child of wrath, and needing 
 God's grace to regenerate him. He is baptized like 
 another, he lies helpless and senseless like another, 
 and like another child he comes to years of reason. 
 But soon his parents and their neighbours begin to 
 say, " This is a strange child, he is unlike any other 
 child ; " his brothers and his playmates feel an awe of 
 him, they do not know why ; they both like him and 
 dislike him, perhaps love him much in spite of his 
 strangeness, perhaps respect him more than they love 
 him. But if there were any holy Priest there, or 
 others who had long served God in prayer and obedi- 
 ence, these would say, "This truly is a wonderful 
 child ; this child bids fair to be a Saint." And so he 
 grows up, whether at first he is duly prized by his 
 parents or not ; for so it is with all greatness, that, 
 because it is great, it cannot be comprehended by 
 ordinary minds at once; but time, and distance, and 
 contemplation are necessary for its being recognized 
 by beholders, and, therefore, this special heir of glory 
 of whom I am speaking, for a time at least excites 
 no very definite observation, unless indeed (as some- 
 times happens) anything of miracle occurs from time 
 to time to mark him out. He has come to the age of 
 reason, and, wonderful to say, he has never fallen 
 away into sin. Other children begin to use the gift 
 of reason by abusing it; they understand what is 
 right, only to go counter to it ; it is otherwise with 
 him, — not that he does not sin in many things, when 
 we place him in the awful ray of divine purity, but 
 
g6 Saintliness the Standard 
 
 that he does not sin wilfully and grievously, — he is 
 preserved from mortal sin, he is never separated from 
 God by sin, nay, perhaps, he is betrayed only at 
 intervals, or never at all, into any deliberate sin, be 
 it ever so slight, and he is ever avoiding the occasions 
 of sin and resisting temptation. He ever lives in the 
 presence of God, and is thereby preserved from evil, 
 for " the wicked one toucheth him not/' Nor, again, 
 as if in other and ordinary matters, he necessarily 
 differed from other boys ; he may be ignorant, thought- 
 less, improvident of the future, rash, impetuous ; he 
 is a child, and has the infirmities, failings, fears, and 
 hopes of a child. He may be moved to anger, he may 
 say a harsh word, he may offend his parents, he may 
 be volatile and capricious, he may have no fixed view 
 of things, such as a man has. This is not much to 
 allow ; such things are accidents, and are compatible 
 with the presence of a determinate influence of grace, 
 uniting his heart to God. O that the multitude of 
 men were as religious in their best seasons, as the 
 Saints are in their worst ! though there have been 
 Saints who seem to have been preserved even from 
 the imperfections I have been mentioning. There 
 have been Saints whose reason the all-powerful grace 
 of God seems wonderfully to have opened from the 
 very time of their baptism, so that they have offered 
 to their Lord and Saviour, " a living, holy, acceptable 
 sacrifice,^^ " a rational service,"''' even while they have 
 been infants. And, anyhow, whatever are the acts 
 of infirmity and sin in the child I am imagining, still 
 they are the exception in his day's course ; the course 
 
of Christian Principle, 97 
 
 of each day is religious : while other children are 
 light-minded, and cannot fix their thoughts in prayer, 
 prayer and praise and meditation are his meat and 
 drink. He frequents the Churches, and places himself 
 before the Blessed Sacrament ; or he is found before 
 some holy image ; or he sees visions of the Blessed 
 Virgin, or the Saints to whom he is devoted. He 
 lives in intimate converse with his guardian Angel, 
 and he shrinks from the very shadow of profaneness 
 or impurity. And thus he is a special witness of the 
 world unseen, and he fulfils the vague ideas and the 
 dreams of the supernatural, which one reads of in 
 poems or romances, with which young people are so 
 much taken, and after which they cannot help sighing, 
 before the world corrupts them. 
 
 He grows up, and he has just the same temptations 
 as others, perhaps more violent ones. Men of this 
 world, carnal men, unbelieving men, do not believe 
 that the temptations which they themselves experience, 
 and to which they yield, can be overcome. They reason 
 themselves into the notion that to sin is their very 
 nature, and, therefore, is no fault of theirs ; that is, 
 they deny the existence of sin. And accordingly, when 
 they read about the Saints or about holy men generally, 
 they conclude either that these have not had the tempta- 
 tions which they experienced themselves, or that they 
 have not overcome them. They either consider such an 
 one to be a hypocrite, who practises in private the sins 
 which he denounces in public ; or, if they have decency 
 enough to abstain from these calumnies, then they 
 consider that he never felt the temptation, and they 
 
 H 
 
98 Saint liness tJie Standard 
 
 regard him as a cold and simple person, who has never 
 outgrown his childhood, who has a contracted mind, 
 who does not know the world and life, who is despic- 
 able while he is without influence, and dangerous and 
 detestable from his very ignorance when he is in 
 power. But no, my brethren ; read the lives of the 
 Saints, you will see how false and narrow a view this 
 is ; these men, who think, forsooth, they know the 
 world so well, and the nature of man so deeply, they 
 know nothing of one great far-spreading phenomenon 
 in man, — and that is, his nature under the operation of 
 grace ; they know nothing of the second nature, of the 
 supernatural gift, induced by the Almighty Spirit 
 upon our first and fallen nature ; they have never met, 
 they have never read of, and they have formed no 
 conception of, a Saint. 
 
 He has, I say, the same temptations as another ; 
 perhaps greater, because he is to be tried as in a fur- 
 nace, because he is to become rich in merits, because 
 there is a bright crown reserved for him in Heaven ; 
 still temptation he has, and he differs from others, not 
 in being shielded from it, but in being armed against it. 
 Grace overcomes nature ; it overcomes indeed in all who 
 shall be saved ; none will see God^s face hereafter who 
 do not, while here, put away from them mortal sin of 
 every kind ; but the Saints overcome with a determina- 
 tion and a vigour, a promptitude and a success, beyond 
 any one else. You read, my brethren, in the lives of 
 Saints, the wonderful account of their conflicts, and 
 their triumphs over the enemy. They are, as I was 
 saying, like heroes of romance, so gracefully, so nobly. 
 
of Christian Principle, 99 
 
 so royally do they bear themselves. Their actions are 
 as beautiful as fiction, yet as real as fact. There was 
 St. Benedict, who, when a boy, left Rome, and betook 
 himselftothe Apennines in the neighbourhood. Three 
 years did he live in prayer, fasting-, and solitude, while 
 the Evil One assaulted him with temptation. One 
 day, when it grew so fierce that he feared for his per- 
 severance, he suddenly flung himself, in his scanty 
 hermit's garb, among the thorns and nettles near him, 
 thus turning the current of his thoughts, and chastis- 
 ing the waywardness of the flesh, by sensible scings 
 and smarts. There was St. Thomas, too, the Ano-elical 
 Doctor, as he is called, as holy as he was profound, or 
 rather the more profound in theological science, because 
 he was so holy. "Even from a youth " he had " sought 
 wisdom, he had stretched out his hands on high, and 
 directed his soul to her, and possessed his heart with her 
 from the beginning ;'' and so, when the minister of Satan 
 came into his very room, and no other defence was at 
 hand, he seized a burning brand from the hearth, and 
 drove that wicked one, scared and baffled, out of his 
 presence. And there was that poor youth in the early 
 persecutions, whom the impious heathen bound down 
 with cords, and then brought in upon him a vision of 
 evil ; and he in his agony bit off* his tongue, and spit it 
 out into the face of the temptress, that so the intense- 
 ness of the pain might preserve him from the seduction. 
 Such acts as these, my brethren, are an opening of 
 the heavens, a sudden gleam of supernatural brightness 
 across a dark sky. They enlarge the mind with ideas 
 it had not before, and they show to the multitude 
 
 H % 
 
lOO Saint liness the Standard 
 
 what God can do^ aiid what man can be. Though, 
 doubtless, all Saints have not been such in youth : 
 for there are those on the contrary, who, not till after 
 a youth of sin, have been brought by the sovereign 
 grace of God to repentance, yet, when once con- 
 verted, differed in nothing from those who had ever 
 served Him, — not in greatness of gifts, not in ac- 
 ceptableness, not in detachment from the world, nor in 
 union with Christ, nor in exactness of obedience, — in 
 nought save in the severity of their penance. Others 
 have been called, not from vice and ungodliness, but 
 from a life of mere ordinary blamelessness, or from a 
 state of lukewarmness, or from thoughtlessness, to 
 heroical greatness ; and these have often given up 
 lands, and property, and honours, and station, and 
 repute, for Christ's sake. Kings have descended 
 from their thrones, bishops have given up their rank 
 and influence, the learned have given up their pride 
 of intellect, to become poor monks, to live on coarse 
 fare, to be clad in humble weeds, to rise and pray 
 while others slept, to mortify the tongue with silence 
 and the limbs with toil, and to avow an unconditional 
 obedience to another. In early times were the Martyrs, 
 many of them children and even girls, who bore the 
 most cruel, the most prolonged, the most diversified 
 tortures, rather than deny the faith of Christ. Then 
 came the Missionaries among the heathen, who, for 
 the love of souls, threw themselves into the midst of 
 savages, risking and perhaps losing their lives in the 
 attempt to extend the empire of their Lord and 
 Saviour, and who, whether living or dying, have by 
 
of Christian Principle, loi 
 
 their lives or by their deaths succeeded in bringing 
 over whole nations into the Church. Others have 
 devoted themselves in the time of war or captivity, to 
 the redemption of Christian slaves from pagan or 
 Mahometan masters or conquerors; others to the 
 care of the sick in pcvstilences, or in hospitals ; others 
 to the instruction of the poor ; others to the education 
 of children; others to incessant preaching and the 
 duties of the confessional; others to devout study 
 and meditation ; others to a life of intercession and 
 prayer. Very various are the Saints, their very 
 variety is a token of God's workmanship ; but how- 
 ever various, and whatever was their special line of 
 duty, they have been heroes in it ; they have attained 
 such noble self-command, they have so crucified the 
 flesh, they have so renounced the world ; they are so 
 meek, so gentle, so tender-hearted, so merciful, so 
 sweet, so cheerful, so full of prayer, so diligent, so 
 forgetful of injuries; they have sustained such great 
 and continued pains, they have persevered in such 
 vast labours, they have made such valiant confessions, 
 they have wrought such abundant miracles, they have 
 been blessed with such strange successes, that they 
 have been the means of setting up a standard before us 
 of truth, cf magnanimity, of holiness, of love. They 
 are not always our examples, we are not always bound 
 to follow them ; not more than we are bound to obey 
 literally some of our Lord's precepts, such as turning 
 the cheek or giving away the coat ; not more than we 
 can follow the course of the sun, moon, or stars in 
 the heavens ; but, though not always our examples, 
 
I02 Saint lines s the Standard 
 
 they are always our standard of right and g-ood ; they 
 are raised up to be monuments and lessons, they re- 
 mind us of God, they introduce us into the unseen 
 world, they teach us what Christ loves, they track 
 out for us the way which leads heavenward. They 
 are to us who see them, what wealth, notoriety, rank, 
 and name are to the multitude of men who live in 
 darkness, — objects of our veneration and of our 
 homage. 
 
 Oh, who can doubt between the two ? The national 
 religion has many attractions; it leads to decency 
 and order, propriety of conduct, justness of thought, 
 beautiful domestic tastes ; but it has not power to lead 
 the multitude upward, or to delineate for them the 
 Heavenly City. It comes of mere nature, and its teach- 
 ing is of nature. It uses religious words, of course, 
 else it could not be called a religion ; but it does not 
 impress on the imagination, it does not engrave upon 
 the heart, it does not inflict upon the conscience, the 
 supernatural ; it does not introduce into the popular 
 mind any great ideas, such as are to be recognized 
 by one and all, as common property, and first prin- 
 ciples or dogmas from which to start, to be taken for 
 granted on all hands, and handed down as images 
 and specimens of eternal truth from age to age. It 
 in no true sense inculcates the Unseen; and by 
 consequence, sights of this world, material tangible 
 objects, become the idols and the ruin of its children, 
 of souls which were made for God and Heaven. It 
 is powerless to resist the world and the world's teach- 
 ing : it cannot supplant error by truth; it follows 
 
of Christian Principle, 103 
 
 when it should lead. There is but one real Antagonist 
 of the world, and that is the faith of Catholics; — 
 Christ set that faith up, and it will do its work on 
 earth, as it ever has done, till He comes again. 
 
DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 GOD'S WILL THE END OF LIFE. 
 
 T AM going to ask you a question, my dear brethren, 
 -■- so trite, and therefore so uninteresting at first 
 sight, that you may wonder why I put it, and may 
 object that it will be difficult to fix the mind on it, and 
 may anticipate that nothing profitable can be made of 
 it. It is this : — " Why were you sent into the world ? ^' 
 Yet, after all, it is perhaps a thought more obvious 
 than it is common, more easy than it is familiar; I 
 mean it ought to come into your minds, but it does 
 not, and you never had more than a distant acquaint- 
 ance with it, though that sort of acquaintance with it 
 you have had for many years. Nay, once or twice, 
 perhaps you have been thrown across the thought 
 somewhat intimately, for a short season, but this was 
 an accident which did not last. There are those who 
 recollect the first time, as it would seem, when it came 
 home to them. They were but little children, and 
 they were by themselves, and they spontaneously 
 asked themselves, or rather God spake in them, 
 " Why am I here ? how came I here ? who brought 
 me here ? What am I to do here ? " Perhaps it was 
 
Gods Will the End of Life, 105 
 
 the first act of reason, the beginning of their real 
 responsibility, the commencement of their trial ; per- 
 haps from that day they may date their capacity, their 
 awful power, of choosing between good and evil, and 
 of committing mortal sin. And so, as life goes on, 
 the thought comes vividly, from time to time, for a 
 short season across their conscience ; whether in illness, 
 or in some anxiety, or at some season of solitude, or 
 on hearing some preacher, or reading some religious 
 work. A vivid feeling comes over them of the vanity 
 and unprofitableness of the world, and then the ques- 
 tion recurs, " Why then am. I sent into it ? " 
 
 And a great contrast indeed does this vain, unpro- 
 fitable, yet overbearing world, present with such a 
 question as that. It seems out of place to ask such 
 a question in so magnificent, so imposing a presence, 
 as that of the great Babylon. The world professes to 
 supply all that we need, as if we were sent into it for 
 the sake of being sent here, and for nothing beyond 
 the sending. It is a great favour to have an introduc- 
 tion to this august world. This is to be our exposition, 
 forsooth, of the mystery of life. Every man is doing 
 his own will here, seeking his own pleasure, pursuing 
 his own ends, and that is why he was brought into 
 existence. Go abroad into the streets of the populous 
 city, contemplate the continuous outpouring there of 
 human energy, and the countless varieties of human 
 character, and be satisfied ! The ways are thronged, 
 carriage-way and pavement ; multitudes are hurrying 
 to and fro, each on his own errand, or are loitering 
 about from listlessness, or from want of work, or have 
 
io6 GocTs Will the End of Life. 
 
 come forth into the public concourse, to see and to be 
 seen, for amusement or for display, or on the excuse 
 of business. The carriages of the wealthy mingle 
 with the slow wains laden with provisions or merchan- 
 dise, the productions of art or the demands of luxury. 
 The streets are lined with shops, open and gay, invit- 
 ing customers, and widen now and then into some 
 spacious square or place, with lofty masses of brick- 
 work or of stone, gleaming in the fitful sunbeam, and 
 surrounded or fronted with what simulates a garden's 
 foliage. Follow them in another direction, and you 
 find the whole groundstead covered with large build- 
 ings, planted thickly up and down, the homes of the 
 mechanical arts. The air is filled, below, with a 
 ceaseless, importunate, monotonous din, which pene- 
 trates even to your most innermost chamber, and 
 rings in your ears even when you are not conscious of 
 it ; and overhead, with a canopy of smoke, shrouding 
 God's day from the realms of obstinate sullen toil. 
 This is the end of man ! 
 
 Or stay at home, and take up one of those daily 
 prints, which are so true a picture of the world ; look 
 down the columns of advertisements, and you will 
 see the catalogue of pursuits, projects, aims, anxieties, 
 amusements, indulgences which occupy the mind of 
 man. He plays many parts : here he has goods to 
 sell, there he wants employment; there again he 
 seeks to borrow money, here he offers you houses, 
 great seats or small tenements ; he has food for the 
 million, and luxuries for the wealthy, and sovereign 
 medicines for the credulous, and books, new and 
 
^ God's Will the End of Life. 107 
 
 cheap, for the inquisitive. Pass on to the news of the 
 day, and you will learn what great men are doin^ at 
 home and abroad : you will read of wars and rumours 
 of wars ; of debates in the Legislature ; of rising" men, 
 and old statesmen going* off the scene; of political 
 contests in this city or that county ; of the collision 
 of rival interests. You will read of the money 
 market, and the provision market, and the market 
 for metals ; of the state of trade, the call for manu- 
 factures, news of ships arrived in port, of accidents at 
 sea, of exports and imports, of gains and losses, of 
 frauds and their detection. Go forward, and you 
 arrive at discoveries in art and science, discoveries 
 (so called) in religion, the court and royalty, the 
 entertainments of the great, places of amusement, 
 strange trials, offences, accidents, escapes, exploits, 
 experiments, contests, ventures. Oh this curious, 
 restless, clamorous, panting being, which we call 
 life ! — and is there to be no end to all this ? Is 
 there no object in it? It never has an end, it is 
 forsooth its own object ! 
 
 And now, once more, my brethren, put aside what 
 you see and what you read of the world, and try to 
 pentrate into the hearts, and to reach the ideas and 
 the feelings of those who constitute it; look into 
 them as closely as you can ; enter into their houses 
 and private rooms; strike at random through the 
 streets and lanes: take as they come, palace and 
 hovel, office or factory, and what will you find? 
 Listen to their words, witness, alas! their works; 
 you will find in the main the same lawless thoughts. 
 
io8 God's Will the End of Life. 
 
 the same unrestrained desires^ the same ungoverned 
 passions, the same earthly opinions, the same wilful 
 deeds, in high and low, learned and unlearned ; you 
 will find them all to be living for the sake of living ; 
 they one and all seem to tell you, " We are our own 
 centre, our own end/^ Why are they toiling? why 
 are they scheming ? for wdiat are they living ? '' We 
 live to please ourselves; life is worthless except we 
 have our own way ; we are not sent here at all, but 
 we find ourselves here, and we are but slaves unless 
 we can think what we will, believe what we will, love 
 what we will, hate what we will, do what we will. 
 We detest interference on the part of God or man. 
 We do not bargain to be rich or to be great ; but we 
 do bargain, whether rich or poor, high or low, to live 
 for ourselves, to live for the lust of the moment, or, 
 according to the doctrine of the hour, thinking of the 
 future and the unseen just as much or as little as we 
 please. ^^ 
 
 Oh, my brethren, is it not a shocking thought, but 
 who can deny its truth ? The multitude of men are 
 living without any aim beyond this visible scene; 
 they may from time to time use religious words, or 
 they may profess a communion or a worship, as a 
 matter of course, or of expedience, or of duty, but, if 
 there was any sincerity in such profession, the course 
 of the world could not run as it does. What a con- 
 trast is all this to the end of life, as it is set before us 
 in our most holy Faith ! If there was one among the 
 sons of men, who might allowably have taken His 
 pleasure, and have done His own will here below. 
 
God's Will the End of Life, 109 
 
 surely it was He who came down on earth from the 
 bosom of the Father, and who was so pure and spot- 
 less in that human nature which He put on Him, that 
 He could have no human purpose or aim inconsistent 
 with the will of His Father. Yet He, the Son of 
 God, the Eternal Word, came, not to do His own 
 will, but His who sent Him, as you know very well 
 is told us again and again in Scripture. Thus the 
 Prophet in the Psalter, speaking in His person, says, 
 « Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God/^ And He says 
 in the Prophet Isaias, " the Lord God hath opened 
 Mine ear, and I do not resist ; I have not gone back." 
 And in the Gospel, when He had come on earth, 
 " My food is to do the will of Him that sent Me, 
 and to finish His work."" Hence, too, in His agony 
 He cried out, ^^ Not My will, but Thine, be done ;" 
 and St. Paul, in like manner, says, that '' Christ 
 pleased not Himself ;" and elsewhere, that, "though 
 He was God's Son, yet learned He obedience by the 
 things which He suffered.''' Surely so it was; as 
 being indeed the Eternal Co-equal Son, His will was 
 one and the same with the Father*s will, and He had 
 no submission of will to make ; but He chose to take 
 on Him man's nature, and the will of that nature ; 
 He chose to take on Him affections, feelings, and 
 inclinations proper to man, a will innocent indeed 
 and good, but still a man's will, distinct from God's 
 will ; a will, which, had it acted simply according to 
 what was pleasing to its nature, would, when pain and 
 toil were to be endured, have held back from an active 
 co-operation with the will of God. But, though He 
 
I lo Gods Will the End of Life. 
 
 took on Himself the nature of man, He took not on 
 Him that selfishness, with which fallen man wraps 
 himself round, but in all things He devoted Himself 
 as a ready sacrifice to His Father. He came on 
 earth, not to take His pleasure, not to follow His 
 taste, not for the mere exercise of human affection, 
 but simply to glorify His Father and to do His will. 
 He came charged with a mission, deputed for a 
 work ; He looked not to the right nor to the left. 
 He thought not of Himself, He offered Himself up 
 to God. 
 
 Hence it is that He was carried in the womb of a 
 poor woman, who^ before His birth, had two journeys 
 to make, of love and of obedience, to the mountains 
 and to Bethlehem. He was born in a stable, and laid 
 in a manger. He was hurried off to Egypt to sojourn 
 there ; then He lived till He was thirty years of age 
 in a poor way, by a rough trade, in a small house, in 
 a despised town. Then, when He went out to preach, 
 He had not where to lay His head ; He wandered up 
 and down the country, as a stranger upon earth. He 
 was driven out into the wilderness, and dwelt among 
 the wild beasts. He endured heat and cold, hunger 
 and weariness, reproach and calumny. His food was 
 coarse bread, and fish from the lake, or depended on 
 the hospitality of strangers. And as He had already 
 left His Fa therms greatness on high, and had chosen 
 an earthly home ; so again, at that Father's bidding. 
 He gave up the sole solace given Him in this world, 
 and denied Himself His Mother's presence. He 
 parted with her who bore Him ; He endured to be 
 
Gods Will the End of Life. 1 1 1 
 
 strange to her; He endured to call her coldly 
 " woman/^ who was His own undefiled one, all 
 beautiful, all gracious, the best creature of His hands, 
 and the sweet nurse of His infancy. He put her 
 aside, as Levi, His type, merited the sacred ministry, 
 b}^ saying to His parents and kinsmen, " I know you 
 not/"* He exemplified in His own person the severe 
 maxim, which He gave to His disciples, " He that 
 loveth mother more than Me is not worthy of Me/' 
 In all these many ways He sacrificed every wish of 
 His own ; that we might understand, that, if He, the 
 Creator, came into His own world, not for His own 
 pleasure, but to do His Father^s will, we too have 
 most surely some work to do, and have seriously to 
 bethink ourselves what that work is. 
 
 Yes, so it is ; realize it, my brethren ; — every one 
 who breathes, high and low, educated and ignorant, 
 young and old, man and woman, has a mission, has 
 a work. We are not sent into this world for nothing ; 
 we are not born at random ; we are not here, that we 
 may go to bed at night, and get up in the morning, 
 toil for our bread, eat and drink, laugh and joke, sin 
 when we have a mind, and reform when we are tired 
 of sinning, rear a family and die. God sees every one 
 of us ; He creates every soul, He lodges it in the body, 
 one by one, for a purpose. He needs, He deigns to 
 need, every one of us. He has an end for each of us ; 
 we are all equal in His sight, and we are placed in 
 our different ranks and stations, not to get what we 
 can out of them for ourselves_, but to labour in them 
 for Him. As Christ has His work, we too have ours ; 
 
112 God's Will the End of Life, 
 
 as He rejoiced to do His work, we must rejoice in ours 
 also. 
 
 St. Paul on one occasion speaks of the world as a 
 scene in a theatre. Consider what is meant by this. 
 You know, actors on a stage are on an equality with 
 each other really, but for the occasion they assume a 
 diflPerence of character ; some are high, some are low, 
 some are merry, and some sad. "Well, would it 
 not be a simple absurdity in any actor to pride him- 
 self on his mock diadem, or his edgeless sword, 
 instead of attending to his part ? what, if he did but 
 gaze at himself and his dress ? what, if he secreted, 
 or turned to his own use, what was valuable in it ? 
 Is it not his business, and nothing else, to act his 
 part well ? common sense tells us so. Now we are 
 all but actors in this world ; we are one and all equal, 
 we shall be judged as equals as soon as life is over; 
 yet, equal and similar in ourselves, each has his 
 special part at present, each has his work, each has 
 his mission, — not to indulge his passions, not to 
 make money, not to get a name in the world, not to 
 save himself trouble, not to follow his bent, not to be 
 selfish and self-willed, but to do what God puts on 
 him to do. 
 
 Look at that poor profligate in the Gospel, look at 
 Dives ; do you think he understood that his wealth 
 was to be spent, not on himself, but for the glory of 
 God?— yet for forgetting this, he was lost for ever 
 and ever. I will tell you what he thought, and how 
 he viewed things : — he was a young man, and had 
 succeeded to a good estate, and he determined to 
 
God's Will the End of Life, 1 1 3 
 
 enjoy himself. It did not strike him that his wealth 
 had any other use than that of enabling him to take 
 his pleasure. Lazarus lay at his gate; he might 
 have relieved Lazarus; that v^sls God's will; but he 
 managed to put conscience aside, and he persuaded 
 himself he should be a fool, if he did not make the 
 most of this world, while he had the means. So he 
 resolved to have his fill of pleasure; and feasting was 
 to his mind a principal part of it. " He fared sump- 
 tuously every day;'' everything belonging to him was 
 in the best style, as men speak ; his house, his furni- 
 ture, his plate of silver and gold, his attendants, his 
 establishments. Everything was for enjoyment, and 
 for show too ; to attract the eyes of the world, and to 
 gain the applause and admiration of his equals, who 
 were the companions of his sins. These companions 
 were doubtless such as became a person of such pre- 
 tensions ; they were fashionable men ; a collection of 
 refined, high-bred, haughty men, eating, not glutton- 
 ously, but what was rare and costly ; delicate, exact, 
 fastidious in their taste, from their very habits of 
 indulgence ; not eating for the mere sake of eating, 
 or drinking for the mere sake of drinking, but making 
 a sort of science of their sensuality; sensual, carnal, 
 as flesh and blood can be, with eyes, ears, tongue, 
 steeped in impurity, every thought, look, and sense, 
 witnessing or ministering to the evil one who ruled 
 them ; yet, with exquisite correctness of idea and 
 judgment, laying down rules for sinning; — heartless 
 and selfish, high, punctilious, and disdainful in their 
 outward deportment, and shrinking from Lazarus, 
 
 I 
 
1 14 God's Will the End of Life. 
 
 who lay at the gate, as an eye-sore, who ought for the 
 sake of decency to be put out of the way. Dives was 
 one of such, and so he lived his short span, thinking 
 of nothing, loving nothing, but himself, till one day 
 he got into a fatal quarrel with one of his godless as- 
 sociates, or he caught some bad illness ; and then he 
 lay helpless on his bed of pain, cursing fortune and 
 his physician, that he was no better, and impatient 
 that he was thus kept from enjoying his youth, trying 
 to fancy himself mending when he was getting worse, 
 and disgusted at those who would not throw him 
 some word of comfort in his suspense, and turning 
 more resolutely from his Creator in proportion to his 
 suflPering ; — and then at last his day came, and he 
 died, and (O miserable!) *^ was buried in hell/' And 
 so ended he and his mission. 
 
 This was the fate of your pattern and idol, oh ye, if 
 any of you be present, young men, who, though not 
 possessed of wealth and rank, yet affect the fashions 
 of those who have them. You, my brethren, have not 
 been born splendidly or nobly; you have not been 
 brought up in the seats of liberal education ; you 
 have no high connexions ; you have not learned the 
 manners nor caught the tone of good society; you 
 have no share of the largeness of mind, the candour, 
 the romantic sense of honour, the correctness of tast«, 
 the consideration for others, and the gentleness which 
 the world puts forth as its highest type of excellence ; 
 you have not come near the courts or the mansions of 
 the great ; yet you ape the sin of Dives, while you are 
 strangers to his refinement. You think it the sign of 
 
God^s Will the End of Life. 1 1 5 
 
 a gentleman to set yourselves above religion, to 
 criticize the religious and professors of religion, to look 
 at Catholic and Methodist with impartial contempt, 
 to gain a smattering of knowledge on a number of 
 subjects, to dip into a number of frivolous publica- 
 tions, if they are popular, to have read the latest 
 novel, to have heard the singer and seen the actor of 
 the day, to be well up with the news, to know the names, 
 and, if so be, the persons of public men, to be able to 
 bow to them, to walk up and down the street with 
 your heads on high, and to stare at whatever meets 
 you ; — and to say and do worse things, of which these 
 outward extravagances are but the symbol. And this 
 is what you conceive you have come upon earth for ! 
 The Creator made you, it seems, O my children, for 
 this work and office, to be a bad imitation of polished 
 ungodliness, to be a piece of tawdry and faded finery, 
 or a scent which has lost its freshness, and does but 
 offend the sense ! Oh, that you could see how absurd 
 and base are such pretences in the eyes of any but 
 yourselves ! No calling of life but is honourable ; no 
 one is ridiculous who acts suitably to his calling and 
 estate ; no one, who has good sense and humility, but 
 may, in any station of life, be truly well-bred and 
 refined; but ostentation, affectation, and ambitious 
 efforts are, in every station of life, high or low, 
 nothing but vulgarities. Put them aside, despise 
 them yourselves, O my very dear sons, whom I love, 
 and whom I would fain serve; — oh, that you could feel 
 that you have souls ! oh, that you would have mercy 
 on your souls ! oh, that, before it is too late, you 
 I 2 
 
1 1 6 God's Will the End of Life, 
 
 would betake yourselves to Him who is the Source of 
 all that is truly high and magnificent and beautiful, 
 all that is bright and pleasant, and secure what you 
 ignorantly seek, in Him whom you so wilfully, so 
 awfully despise ! 
 
 He alone, the Son of God, " the brightness of the 
 Eternal Light, and the spotless mirror of His 
 Majesty," is the source of all good and all happiness 
 to rich and poor, high and low. If you were ever so 
 high, you would need Him; if you were ever so low, 
 you could offend Him. The poor can offend Him; 
 the poor man can neglect his divinely appointed 
 mission as well as the rich. Do not suppose, my 
 brethren, that what I have said against the upper or 
 the middle class, will not, if you happen to be poor, 
 also lie against you. Though a man were as poor as 
 Lazarus, he could be as guilty as Dives. If you are 
 resolved to degrade yourselves to the brutes of the 
 field, who have no reason and no conscience, you need 
 not wealth or rank to enable you to do so. Brutes 
 have no wealth ; they have no pride of life ; they have 
 no purple and fine linen, no splendid table, no 
 retinue of servants, and yet they are brutes. They are 
 brutes by the law of their nature : they are the poorest 
 among the poor ; there is not a vagrant and outcast 
 who is so poor as they ; they differ from him, not in 
 their possessions, but in their want of a soul, in that 
 he has a mission and they have not, he can sin and 
 they can not. O my brethren, it stands to reason, 
 a man may intoxicate himself with a cheap draught, 
 as well as with a costly one ; he may steal another^s 
 
God^s Will the End of Life, 1 1 7 
 
 money for his appetites, if he does not waste his own 
 upon them ; he may break through the natural and 
 social laws which encircle him, and profane the 
 sanctity of family duties, though he be, not a child of 
 nobles, but a peasant or artisan, — nay, and perhaps 
 he does so more frequently than they. This is not 
 the poor^s blessedness, that he has less temptations to 
 self-indulgence, for he has as many, but that from 
 his circumstances he receives the penances and 
 corrections of self-indulgence. Poverty is the mother 
 of many pains and sorrows in their season, and these 
 are God's* messengers to lead the soul to repentance; 
 but, alas ! if the poor man indulges his passions, 
 thinks little of religion, puts off repentance, refuses 
 to make an effort, and dies without conversion, it 
 matters nothing that he was poor in this world, it 
 matters nothing that he was less daring than the 
 rich, it matters not that he promised himself God^s 
 favour, that he sent for the Priest when death came, 
 and received the last Sacraments; Lazarus too, in 
 that case, shall be buried with Dives in hell, and 
 shall have had his consolation neither in this world 
 nor in the world to come. 
 
 My brethren, the simple question is, whatever a 
 man's rank in life may be, does he in that rank per- 
 form the work which God has given him to do ? Now 
 then, let me turn to others, of a very different descrip- 
 tion, and let me hear what they will say, when the 
 question is asked them ; — why, they will parry it thus : 
 — *^ You give us no alternative,^' they will say to me, 
 " except that of being sinners and Saints. You put 
 
1 1 8 Goc^s Will the End of Life, 
 
 before us our Lord's pattern, and you spread before us 
 the guilt and the ruin of the deliberate transgressor; 
 whereas we have no intention of going so far one way 
 or the other ; we do not aim at being Saints, but we 
 have no desire at all to be sinners. We neither intend 
 to disobey God^s will, nor to give up our own. Surely 
 there is a middle way, and a safe one, in which God's 
 will and our will may both be satisfied. We mean to 
 enjoy both this world and the next. We will guard 
 against mortal sin; we are not obliged to guard 
 against venial ; indeed it would be endless to attempt 
 it. None but Saints do so ; it is the work of a life ; 
 we need have nothing else to do. We are not monks, 
 we are in the world, we are in business, we are parents, 
 we have families ; we must live for the day. It is a 
 consolation to keep from mortal sin ; that we do, and 
 it is enough for salvation. It is a great thing to keep 
 in God's favour ; what indeed can we desire more ? 
 We come at due time to the Sacraments ; this is our 
 comfort and our stay ; did we die, we should die in 
 grace, and escape the doom of the wicked. But if we 
 once attempted to go further, where should we stop ? 
 how will you draw the line for us ; the line between 
 mortal and venial sin is very distinct ; we understand 
 that ; but do you not see that, if we attended to our 
 venial sins, there would be just as much reason to 
 attend to one as to another ? If we began to repress 
 our anger, why not also repress vainglory ? why not 
 also guard against niggardness ? why -not also keep 
 from falsehoods ? from gossiping, from idling, from 
 excess in eating ? And, after all, without venial sin we 
 
God^s Will the End of Life, 119 
 
 never can be, unless indeed we have the prerogative of 
 the Mother of God, which it would be almost heresy 
 to ascribe to any one but her. You are not asking us 
 to be converted ; that we understand ; we are converted, 
 we were converted a long time ago. You bid us aim 
 at an indefinite vague something, which is less than 
 perfection, yet more than obedience, and which, 
 without resulting in any tangible advantage, debars 
 us from the pleasures and embarrasses us in the duties 
 of this world.''' 
 
 This is what you will say ; but your premisses, my 
 brethren, are better than your reasoning, and your 
 conclusions will not stand. You have a right view 
 why God has sent you into the world, viz., in order 
 that you may get to heaven \ it is quite true also that 
 you would fare well indeed if you found yourselves 
 there, you could desire nothing better ; nor, it is true, 
 can you live any time without venial sin. It is true 
 also that you are not obliged to aim at being Saints ; 
 it is no sin not to aim at perfection. So much is true 
 and to the purpose ; but it does not follow from it that 
 3'ou, with such views and feelings as you have ex- 
 pressed, are using sufficient exertions even for attam- 
 ing to purgatory. Has your religion any difficulty in 
 it, or is it in all respects easy to you ? Are you simply 
 taking your own pleasure in your mode of living, or 
 do you find your pleasure in submitting yourself to 
 God's pleasure ? In a word, is your religion a work ? 
 for if it be not, it is not religion at all. Here at once, 
 before going into your argument, is a proof that it is 
 an unsound one, because it brings you to the conclusion 
 
I 20 God's Will the End of Life. 
 
 that, whereas Christ came to do a work, and all Saints, 
 nay, nay, and sinners do a work too, you, on the con- 
 trary, have no work to do, because, forsooth, you 
 are neither sinners nor Saints ; or, if you once had 
 a work, at least you have despatched it already, and 
 you have nothing* upon your hands. You have attained 
 your salvation, it seems, before your time, and have 
 nothing to occupy you, and are detained on earth too 
 long. The work-days are over, and your perpetual 
 holiday is be^un. Did then God send you, above all 
 other men, into the world to be idle in spiritual 
 matters ? Is it your mission only to find pleasure 
 in this world, in which you are but as pilgrims and 
 sojourners ? Are you more than sons of Adam, who, 
 by the sweat of their brow, are to eat bread till they 
 return to the earth out of which they are taken ? 
 Unless you have some work in hand, unless you are 
 struggling, unless you are fighting with yourselves, 
 you are no followers of those who "through many 
 tribulations entered into the kingdom of God." A 
 fight is the very token of a Christian. He is a soldier 
 of Christ ; high or low, he is this and nothing else. 
 If you have triumphed over all mortal sin, as you 
 seem to think, then you must attack your venial sins ; 
 there is no help for it \ there is nothing else to do, if 
 you would be soldiers of J esus Christ. But, O simple 
 souls ! to think you have gained any triumph at all ! 
 No : you cannot safely be at peace with any, even the 
 least malignant, of the foes of God ; if you are at 
 peace with venial sins, be certain that in their com- 
 pany and under their shadow mortal sins are lurking. 
 
God's Will the End of Life, 121 
 
 Mortal sins are the children of venial^ which, thoug-h 
 they be not deadly themselves, yet are prolific of death. 
 You may think that you have killed the giants who 
 had possession of your hearts, and that you have 
 nothing to fear, but may sit at rest under your vine 
 and under your fig-tree ; but the giants will live 
 again, they will rise from the dust, and, before you 
 know where you are, you will be taken captive and 
 slaughtered by the fierce, powerful, and eternal enemies 
 of God. 
 
 The end of a thing is the test. It was our Lord's 
 rejoicing in His last solemn hour, that He had done 
 the work for which He was sent. " I have glorified 
 Thee on earth/' He says in His prayer, '*I have 
 finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do ; I have 
 manifested Thy name to the men whom Thou hast 
 given Me out of the world. ^' It was St. PauFs consola- 
 tion also; "I have fought the good fight, I have 
 finished the course, I have kept the faith ; henceforth 
 there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the 
 Lord shall render to me in that day, the just Judge."" 
 Alas ! alas ! how diff'erent will be our view of things 
 when we come to die, or when we have passed into 
 eternity, from the dreams and pretences with which 
 we beguile ourselves now ! What will Babel do for 
 us then ? Will it rescue our souls from the purgatory 
 or the hell to which it sends them? ^If we were 
 created, it was that we might serve God; if we have 
 His gifts, it is that we may glorify Him ; if we have 
 a conscience, it is that we may obey it ; if we have the 
 prospect of heaven, it is that we may keep it before 
 
122 God's Will the End of Life, 
 
 us ; if we have light, that we may follow it ; if we 
 have grace, that we may save ourselves by means of it. 
 Alas ! alas ! for those who die without fulfilling their 
 mission ! who were called to be holy, and lived in sin ; 
 who were called to worship Christ, and who plunged 
 into this giddy and unbelieving world; who were 
 called to fight, and who remained idle ; who were called 
 to be Catholics, and who did but remain it the religion 
 of their birth ! Alas for those who have had gifts and 
 talents, and have not used, or have misused, or abused 
 them; who have had wealth, and have spent in on them- 
 selves ; who have had abilities, and have advocated 
 what was sinful, or ridiculed what was true, or scattered 
 doubts against what was sacred ; who have had leisure, 
 and have wasted it on wicked companions, or evil 
 books, or foolish amusements ! Alas ! for those, of 
 whom the best that can be said is, that they are harm- 
 less and naturally blameless, while they never have 
 attempted to cleanse their hearts or to live in God's 
 sight ! 
 
 The world goes on from age to age, but the holy 
 Angels and blessed Saints are always crying alas ! 
 alas ! and woe ! woe ! over the loss of vocations, and 
 the disappointment of hopes, and the scorn of God's 
 love, and the ruin of souls. One generation succeeds 
 another, and whenever they look down upon earth 
 from their golden thrones, they see scarcely anything 
 but a multitude of guardian spirits, downcast and sad, 
 each following his own charge, in anxiety, or in terror, 
 or in despair, vainly endeavouring to shield him from 
 the enemy, and failing because he will not be shielded. 
 
God's Will the End of Life, 1 2 3 
 
 Times come and go, and man will not believe, that 
 that is to be which is not yet, or that what now is 
 only continues for a season, and is not eternity. The 
 end is the trial ; the world passes; it is but a pageant 
 and a scene ; the lofty palace crumbles, the busy city 
 is mute, the ships of Tarshish have sped away. On 
 heart and flesh death is coming ; the veil is breaking. 
 Departing soul, how hast thou used thy talents, thy 
 opportunities, the light poured around thee, the 
 warnings given thee, the grace inspired into thee ? 
 O my Lord and Saviour, support me in that hour in 
 the strong arms of Thy Sacraments, and by the fresh 
 fragrance of Thy consolations. Let the absolving 
 words be said over me, and the holy oil sign and seal 
 me, and Thy own Body be my food, and Thy Blood 
 my sprinkling; and let my sweet Mother Mary 
 breathe on me, and my Angel whisper peace to me, 
 and my glorious Saints, and my own dear Father, 
 Philip, smile on me ; that in them all, and through 
 them all, I may receive the gift of perseverance, and 
 die, as I desire to live, in Thy faith, in Thy Church, 
 in Thy service, and in Thy love. 
 
DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 PERSEVERANCE IN GRACE. 
 
 rriHERE is no truth, my brethren, which Holy 
 Church is more earnest in impressing upon us 
 than that our salvation from first to last is the gift of 
 God. It is true indeed that we merit eternal life by 
 our works of obedience ; but that those works are 
 meritorious of such a reward, this takes place, not 
 from their intrinsic worth, but from the free appoint- 
 ment and bountiful promise of God ; and that we are 
 able to do them at all, is the simple result of His 
 grace. That we are justified is of His grace ; that we 
 have the dispositions for justification is of His grace ; 
 that we are able to do good works when justified is of 
 His grace ; and that we persevere in those good works 
 is of His grace. Not only do we actually depend oa 
 His power from first to last, but our destinies depend 
 on His sovereign pleasure and inscrutable counsel. 
 He holds the arbitration of our future in His hands ; 
 without an act of His will, independent of ours, we 
 should not have been brought into the grace of the 
 Catholic Church; and without a further act of His 
 will, though we are now members of it, we shall not 
 
Perseverance in Grace. 125 
 
 be brought on to the glory of the kingdom of Heaven. 
 Though a soul justified can merit eternal life, yet 
 neither can it merit to be justified, nor can it merit to 
 remain justified to the end ; not only is a state of 
 grace the condition and the life of all merit, but 
 grace brings us into that state of grace, and grace 
 continues us in it ; and thus, as I began by saying, 
 our salvation from first to last is the gift of God. 
 
 Precise and absolute as is the teaching of Holy 
 Church concerning the sovereign grace of God, she is 
 as clear and as earnest in teaching also that we are 
 really free and responsible. Every one upon earth 
 might, without any verbal evasion^ be saved, as far as 
 God's assistances are concerned. Every man born of 
 Adam's seed, simply and truly, might save himself, if 
 he would, and every man might will to save himself; 
 for grace is given to every one for this end. How 
 it is, however, that in spite of this real freedom of 
 man's will, our salvation still depends so absolutely 
 on God's good pleasure, is unrevealed ; divines have 
 devised various modes of reconciling two truths which 
 at first sight seem so contrary to each other; and 
 these explanations have severally been received by 
 some theologians, and not received by others, and do 
 not concern us now. How man is able fully and 
 entirely to do what he will, while God accomplishes 
 His own supreme will also, is hidden from us, as it is 
 hidden from us how God created out of nothing, or 
 how He foresees the future, or how His attribute of 
 justice is compatible with His attribute of love. It 
 is one of those " hidden things which belong unto 
 
126 Perseverance in Grace, 
 
 the Lord our God ; '^ but ^' what are revealed/' as the 
 inspired writer g-oes on to say, '* are for us and our 
 children even for everlasting*/' And this is what is 
 revealed, viz. : — on the one hand, that our salvation 
 depends on ourselves, and on the other, that it de- 
 pends on God. Did we not depend on ourselves, we 
 should become careless and reckless, nothing we did 
 or did not do having any bearing on our salvation ; 
 did we not depend on God, we should be presump- 
 tuous and self-suflScient. I began by telling* you, 
 my brethren, and I shall proceed in what is to come, 
 more distinctly to tell you, that you depend upon 
 God; but such admonitions necessarily imply your 
 dependence upon yourselves also ; for, did not your 
 salvation in some sufficient sense depend on your- 
 selves, what would be the use of appealing to you not 
 to forget your dependence on God? It is, because 
 you have so great a share in your own salvation, that 
 it avails, that it is pertinent, to speak to you of God's 
 part in it. 
 
 He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the 
 ending, as of all things, so of our salvation. We 
 should have lived and died, every one of us, destitute 
 of all saving knowledge and Jove of Him, but for a 
 gift which we could not do anything ourselves to 
 secure, had we lived ever so well, — but for His grace; 
 and now that we have known Him, and have been 
 cleansed from our sins by Him, it is quite certain 
 that we cannot do anything, even with the help of 
 grace, to purchase for ourselves perseverance in justice 
 and sanctity, though we live ever so well. His grace 
 
Perseverance in Grace, 127 
 
 begins the work, His grace also finishes it ; and now 
 I am going to speak to you of His finishing it ; I 
 mean of the necessity under which we lie of His finish- 
 ing it; else it will never be finished, or rather will 
 be reversed ; I am going to speak to you of the gift 
 of perseverance in grace, of its extreme preciousness, 
 and of our utter hopelessness, in spite of all that we 
 are, without it. 
 
 It is this gift which our Lord speaks of, when He 
 prays His Father for His disciples, before He departs 
 from them : " Holy Father, keep in Thy name those 
 whom Thou hast given Me ; . . . I ask not that Thou 
 take them out of the world, but that Thou preserve 
 them from evil/' And St. Paul intends it when he 
 declares to the Philippians that " He who had begun 
 a good work ^' in His disciples, " would perfect it unto 
 the day of Christ Jesus." St. Peter, too, when he 
 says in like manner, that " God, who had called His 
 brethren into His eternal glory, would perfect, confirm, 
 and establish them." And so the Prophet in the 
 Psalms prays that God would '' perfect his walking 
 in His paths, that his steps might not be moved ; " 
 and the Prophet Jeremias declares in God^s name, '^I 
 will put My fear in their hearts, that they draw not 
 back from Me." In these and many other passages 
 of Scripture the blessing spoken of is the gift of final 
 perseverance, and I will tell you how and why it is 
 necessary. 
 
 This is what we find to be the case, not only in 
 matters of religion, but of this world, viz., that, let a 
 person do a thing ever so well, the chance is that he 
 
128 Perseverance in Grace, 
 
 will not be able to do it a number of times runninsf 
 without a mistake. Let a person be ever so good an 
 accountant, he will add up a sum wrongly now and 
 then, though you could not guess beforehand when or 
 why he was to fail. Let him get by heart a number 
 of lines ever so perfectly, and say them accurately over, 
 yet it does not follow that he will say them a dozen 
 times and be accurate throughout. So it is with our 
 religious duties ; we may be able to keep from every 
 sin in particular, as the particular temptation comes, 
 but this does not hinder its being certain that we shall 
 not in fact keep from all sins, though that " all " is 
 made up of those particular sins. This is how the 
 greatest Saints come to commit venial or lesser sins, 
 though grace they have sufficient to keep them from 
 any sin whatever. It is the result of human frailty; 
 nothing could keep the Saints from such falls, light as 
 they may be, but a special prerogative, and this, the 
 Church teaches, has been granted to the Blessed 
 Virgin, and apparently to her alone. Now these lesser 
 or venial sins do not separate the soul from God, or 
 forfeit its perseverance in grace ; and they are per- 
 mitted by the Giver of all grace for a good purpose, 
 to humble us, and to give us an incentive to works of 
 penance. No exemption then from these is given us, 
 because it is not necessary in order to our perseverance 
 that we should be exempted ; on the other hand, what 
 18 most necessary is, that we should be preserved from 
 mortal sins, yet here too that very difficulty besets us 
 in our warfare with them which meets us in the case 
 of venial. Here too, though a man may have grace 
 
Perseverance in Grace, 129 
 
 sufficient to keep him clear of all mortal sins whatever, 
 taken one by one, still we may prophesy surely, that 
 the hour will come, sooner or later, when he will 
 neglect and baffle that grace, unless he has some 
 further gift bestowed on him to guard him against 
 himself. He needs grace to use grace ; he needs 
 something over and above to secure his being faithful 
 to what he has already. And he needs it imperatively ; 
 for, since even one mortal sin separates from God, he 
 is in immediate risk of his salvation, if he has it not. 
 This additional gift is called the gift of perseverance ; 
 and it consists in an ever- watchful superintendence of 
 us, on the part of our All-merciful Lord, removing 
 temptations which He sees will be fatal to us, succour- 
 ing us at those times when we are in particular peril, 
 whether from our negligence or other cause, and order- 
 ing the course of our life so, that we may die at a time 
 when He sees that we are in a state of grace. And, 
 since it is so simply necessary for us, God grants it 
 to us ; nay, did He not, no one could be saved. He 
 grants it to us, though He does not grant even to 
 Saints the prerogative of avoiding every venial sin ; 
 He grants it, out of His bounty, to our prayers, though 
 we cannot merit it by anything we do for Him or say 
 to Him, even with the aid of His grace. 
 
 What a lesson of humility and watchfulness have 
 we in this doctrine as now explained ! It is one ground 
 of humiliation, that, do what we will, strive as we will, 
 we cannot escape from lesser sins while we are on 
 earth. Though the aids which God gives us are 
 sufficient to enable us to live without sin, yet our 
 
 K 
 
130 Perseverance in Grace, 
 
 infirmity of will and of attention is a match for them, 
 and we do not do in fact that which we might do. 
 And again, what is not only humbling, but even 
 frightful and appalling, we are in danger of mortal 
 sin as well as in certainty of venial ; and the only 
 reason why we are not in certainty of mortal is, that 
 an extraordinary gift is given to those who supplicate 
 for it, to secure them from mortal, though no such 
 extraordinary gift is given to secure them from venial. 
 In spite of the presence of grace in our souls, in spite 
 of the actual assistances given us, we owe any hope we 
 have of heaven, not to that inward grace simply, nor to 
 those aids, but, I repeat, to a supplementary mercy 
 which protects us against ourselves, rescues us from 
 occasions of sin, strengthens us in our hour of danger, 
 and ends our days at that very time, perhaps cuts 
 short our life in order to secure a time, when no 
 mortal sin has separated us from God. Nothing we 
 are, nothing we do, is any guarantee to us that this 
 supplementary mercy has been accorded to us ; we 
 cannot know till the end ; all we know is, that God 
 has helped us hitherto, and we trust He will help us 
 still. But yet the experience of what He has already 
 done is no proof that He will do more ; our present 
 religiousness need not be the consequence of the gift 
 of perseverance as bestowed upon us; it may have 
 been intended merely to prompt and enable us to pray 
 earnestly and continually for that gift. There are 
 men who, had they died at a particular time, would 
 have died the death of Saints, and who lived to fall. 
 They lived on here to die eternally. O dreadful 
 
Perseverance in Grace, 1 3 1 
 
 thought ! Never be you offended, my brethren, or 
 overwhelmed, when you find that the good and gentle, 
 or the zealous and useful, is cut down and taken off 
 in the midst of his course ; it is hard to bear, but who 
 knows but he is taken away a facie malitice, '' from 
 the presence of evil/'' from the evil to come ? " He 
 was taken away,^' as the Wise Man says, " lest wicked- 
 ness should alter his understanding/ or deceit beguile 
 his soul. For the bewitching of vanity obscureth good 
 things, and the wandering of concupiscence over- 
 turneth the innocent mind. Being made perfect in a 
 short space, he fulfilled a long time. For his soul 
 pleased God ; and therefore He hastened to bring him 
 out of the midst of iniquities. But the people see this 
 and understand not, nor lay such things in their 
 hearts ; that the grace of God and His mercy is with 
 His Saints, and that He hath respect unto His 
 chosen." 
 
 Bad is it to bear, when such a one is taken aw^ay ; 
 cruel to his friends, sad even to strangers, and a sur- 
 prise to the world ; but oh, how much better, how 
 happy so to die, instead of being reserved to sin ! 
 You may wonder how sin was possible in him, my 
 brethren ; he had so many graces, he had lived and 
 matured in them so long ; he had overcome so many 
 temptations. He had struck his roots deeply, and 
 spread abroad his branches on high. One grace grew 
 out of another ; and all things in him were double one 
 against another. He seemed from the very complete- 
 ness of his sanctity, which encircled him on every side, 
 to defy assault and to be proof against injury. He, if 
 K 2 
 
132 Perseverance in Grace. 
 
 any one, could have said with the proud Church in the 
 Apocalypse, "I am wealthy and enriched, and have 
 need of nothing ; " that he had started well, seemed 
 a reason why he should go on well ; strength would 
 lead to strength, and merit to merit; as a flame 
 increases and sweeps along and round about, as soon 
 as, and for the very reason that, it is once kindled, so 
 he had on him the presage of greater and greater 
 triumphs as time proceeded. He was fit to scale 
 Heaven by an inherent power, which, though at first 
 of grace, yet, when once given, became not of grace, 
 but of a claim for more grace, as by the action of a law 
 and the process of a series, in which grace and merit 
 alternated, man meriting and meriting, and the God 
 of grace being forced to give and give again, if He 
 would be true to His promise. Thus we might look 
 at him, and think we had already in our hands all the 
 data of a great and glorious and infallible conclusion, 
 and deny that a reverse or a fall was possible. My 
 brethren, there was once an Eastern king, in his day 
 the richest of men ; and a Grecian sage came to visit 
 him, and, having seen all his glory and his majesty, 
 wiis pressed by this poor child of vanity to say whether 
 he was not the happiest of men. To whom the wise 
 man did but reply, that he should wait till he saw the 
 end. So it is as regards spiritual wealth ; because 
 Almighty God, in spite of His ample promises, and 
 His faithful performance of them, has not put out of 
 His own hands the issues of life and death, and the 
 end comes from Him as well as the beginning. When 
 He has once given grace, He has not therefore simply 
 
Perseverance in Grace, 133 
 
 made over to the creature his own salvation. The 
 creature can merit much ; but as he could not merit 
 the grace of conversion^ neither can he merit the gift 
 of perseverance. From first to last he is dependent 
 on Him who made him; he cannot be extortionate 
 with Him, he cannot turn His bounty to the prejudice 
 of the Bountiful ; he may not exalt himself, he dare 
 not presume, but " if he thinketh he standeth, let 
 him take heed lest he fall." He must watch and 
 pray, he must fear and tremble, he must " chastise 
 his body and bring it into subjection, lest, after 
 he has preached to others, he himself should be 
 reprobate." 
 
 But I need not go to heathen history for an in- 
 stance in point ; Scripture furnishes one a thousand 
 times more apposite and more impressive. Who was 
 so variously gifted, so inwardly endowed, so laden with 
 external blessings, as Solomon ? on whom are lavished, 
 as on him, the titles and the glories of the Eternal 
 Son, God and man? The only aspect of Christ's 
 adorable Person, which his history does not represent, 
 does but bring out to us the peculiarity of his privi- 
 leges. He does not symbolize Christ's sufferings ; he 
 was neither a priest, nor, like David his father, had 
 he been a man of strife and toil and blood. Every- 
 thing which betokens mortality, everything which 
 savours of the fall, is excluded from our idea of Solo- 
 mon, He is as if an ideal of perfection ; the king of 
 peace, the builder of the temple, the father of a happy 
 people, the heir of an empire, the wonder of all nations ; 
 a prince, yet a sage ; palace-bred, yet taught in the 
 
134 Perseverance in Grace. 
 
 schools ; a student, yet a man of the world ; deeply 
 read in human nature, yet learned too in animals 
 and plants. He has the crown without the cross, 
 peace without war, experience without suffering", and 
 all this not in the mere way of men, or from the 
 general providence of God, but vouchsafed to him 
 from the very hands of his Creator, by a particular 
 designation, and as the result of inspiration. He 
 obtained it when young; and where shall we find 
 anything so touching in the whole of Scripture as the 
 circumstances of his obtaining ? who shall accuse him 
 of want of religious fear and true love, whose dawn- 
 ing is so beautiful? When the Almighty appeared 
 to him in a dream on his coming to the throne and 
 said, '' Ask what I shall give thee ; '' " O Lord God,'' 
 he made answer, " Thou hast made Thy servant king 
 instead of David my father ; and I am but a child, 
 and know not how to go out and come in. And Thy 
 servant is in the midst of the people which Thou hast 
 chosen, an immense people, which cannot be numbered 
 nor counted for multitude.'' Accordingly, he asked 
 for nothing else but the gift of w^isdom to enable him 
 to govern his people well ; and as his reward for so 
 excellent a petition, he received, not only the wisdom 
 for which he had asked, but those other gifts for which 
 he had asked not : ^^ And the Lord said unto Solomon, 
 Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not 
 asked for thyself long life, nor riches, nor the lives of 
 thine enemies, but hast asked for thyself wisdom to 
 discern judgment, behold I have done to thee accord- 
 ing to thy words, and I have given to thee a wise and 
 
Perseverance in Grace, 135 
 
 understanding heart, so that none has been like thee 
 before thee, nor shall rise after thee. Yea^ and the 
 things also, which thou didst not ask, I have given to 
 thee, to wit, riches and glory, so that none has been 
 like to thee among the kings in all days hereto- 
 fore/^ 
 
 Bare inauguration to his greatness ! the most splen- 
 did of monarchs owes nothing to injustice, or to 
 cruelty, or to violence, or to treachery, nothing to 
 human art or to human arm, that he is so powerful, 
 so famous, and so wise ; it is a divine gift which en- 
 dued him within, which clothed him without. What 
 was wanting to his blessedness ? seeking God in his 
 youth, growing up year after year in sanctity, forti- 
 fying his faith by wisdom, and his obedience by 
 experience, and his aspirations by habit, what shall he 
 not be in the next world, who is so glorious in this ? 
 He is a Saint ready made ; he is in his youth what 
 others are in their age ; he is fit for heaven ere others 
 begin the way heavenward: why should he delay? 
 what lacks he yet? why tarry the wheels of his 
 chariot ? why does he remain longer on earth, when 
 he has already won his crown, and may be carried 
 away in a happy youth, and be securely taken into 
 God's keeping, not with the common throng of holy 
 souls, but, like Enoch and Elias, passing his long mys- 
 terious ages up on high, in some fit secret paradise tdl 
 the day of redemption ? Alas ! he remains on earth 
 to show us that there might be one thing lacking 
 amidst that multitude of graces ; to show that though 
 there be all faith, all hope, all love, all wisdom, 
 
136 Perseve7^ance in Grace. 
 
 though there be an oxuberance of merits, it is all but 
 a vanity, it is only a woe in the event, if one gift be 
 wanting, — the gift of perseverance ! He was in his 
 youth, what others hardly are in age ; well were it, 
 had he been in his end, what the feeblest of God's 
 servants is in his beginning ! 
 
 His great father, whose sanctity had been wrought 
 into him by many a fight with Satan, and who knew 
 how difficult it was to persevere, when his death drew 
 near, as if in prophecy rather than in prayer, had 
 spoken thus of and to his son and his people : " God 
 said to me. Thou shalt not build a house to My name, 
 because thou art a man of war, and hast shed blood. 
 Solomon, thy son, shall build My house and My 
 courts ; for I have chosen him to Me for a son, and 
 I will be to him a father; and I will establish his 
 kingdom even for ever, if he shall persevere to do My 
 precepts and judgments, as at this day. And thou, 
 Solomon, my son, know the God of thy father, and 
 serve Him with a perfect heart and a willing mind, 
 for if thou shalt forsake Him, He will cast thee off 
 for ever.'''' And then, when he had collected together 
 the precious materials for that house which he him- 
 self was not to build, and was resigning the kingdom 
 to his son, " I know,'' he said, " O my God, that 
 Thou provest hearts, and lovest simplicity, wherefore, 
 have I in the simplicity of my heart and with joy 
 offered to Thee all these things ; and Thy people too, 
 which are present here, have I seen with great joy to 
 offer to Thee their gifts. O Lord God of Abraham, 
 and Isaac, and Israel, our fathers, keep for ever this 
 
Perseverance in Grace, 137 
 
 will of our hearts^ and let this mind remain always 
 for the worship of Thee. And to Solomon also, my 
 son, give a perfect heart_, that he may keep Thy com- 
 mandments and Thy testimonies, and Thy ceremonies, 
 and do all things, and build the building for the 
 which I have provided the charges/' Such had been 
 the dim foreboding of the father, fearing perhaps for 
 his son from the very abundance of that son's pros- 
 perity. And in truth, it is not good for a man to live 
 in so cloudless a splendour, and under so unchequered 
 a heaven. There is a moral in the history, that he, 
 who prefigured the coming Saviour in all His offices 
 but that of suffering, should fall ; that the King and 
 the Prophet, who was neither Priest nor Warrior, 
 should come short; — thereby to show that penance 
 is the only sure mother of love. " They who sow in 
 tears shall reap in exultation;^-' but Solomon, like 
 the flowers of the field which are so beautiful, yet are 
 cast into the oven, so he too, with all his glory, re- 
 tained not his comeliness, but withered in his place. 
 He who was wisest became as the most brutish ; he 
 who was the most devout was lifted up and fell ; he 
 who wrote the Song of Songs became the slave and 
 the prey of vile affections. "King Solomon loved 
 many strange women, unto them he clave with the 
 most burning love. And when he was now old, his 
 heart was depraved by women, to follow other gods, 
 Astarte goddess of the Sidonians, and Moloch the 
 idol of the Ammonites; and so did he for all his 
 strange wives, who did burn incense and sacrifice 
 unto their gods.'' Oh, what a contrast between that 
 
138 Perseverance in Grace. 
 
 grey-headed apostato, laden with years and with sins, 
 Lowing down to women and to idols, and the bright 
 and youthful form standing, on the day of Dedication, 
 in the Temple he had built, as a mediator between 
 God and his people, when he acknowledged so simply, 
 so fervently, God's mercies and God^s faithfulness, 
 and prayed that He would " incline their hearts unto 
 Himself, that they might walk in all His ways, and 
 keep His commandments, and His ceremonies, and 
 His judgments, whatever He had commanded to their 
 fathers ! " 
 
 Well were it for us, my dear brethren, were it only 
 kings and prophets and sages, and other rare creations 
 of God's grace, to whom this warning applied ; but it 
 applies to all of us. It is indeed most true that the 
 holier a man is, and the higher in the kingdom of 
 heaven, so much the greater need has he to look care- 
 fully to his footing, lest he stumble and be lost ; and 
 a deep conviction of this necessity has been the sole 
 preservative of the Saints. Had they not feared, they 
 never would have persevered. Hence, like St. Paul, 
 they are always full of their sin and their peril. You 
 would think them the most polluted of sinners, and 
 the most unstable of penitents. Such was tlie 
 blessed Martyr Ignatius, who, when on his way to 
 his death, said, " Now I begin to be Christ's disciple." 
 Such was the great Basil, who was ever ascribing the 
 calamities of the Church and of his country to the 
 wrath of Heaven upon his own sins. Such was 
 St. Gregory, who submitted to his elevation to the 
 Popedom, as if it were his spiritual death. Such too 
 
Perseverance in Grace, 139 
 
 was my own dear Father St. Philip, who was ever 
 showing, in the midst of the gifts he received from 
 God, the anxiety and jealousy with which he re- 
 garded himself and his prospects. " Every day," 
 says his biographer, " he used to make a protest to 
 God with the Blessed Sacrament in his hands, saying, 
 ^* Lord, beware of me to-day, lest I should betray 
 Thee, and do Thee all the mischief in the world/ " 
 At other times he would say, " The wound in Christ's 
 side is large, but, if God did not guard me, I should 
 make it larger." In his last illness, " Lord, if I 
 recover, so far as I am concerned, I shall do more 
 evil than ever, because I have promised so many 
 times before to change my life, and have not kept my 
 word, so that I despair of myself" He would shed 
 abundance of tears and say, ^' I have never done one 
 good action." When he saw young persons, he began 
 considering how much time they had before them to 
 do good in, and said, ^^ Oh, happy you ! oh, happy 
 you ! " He often said, '^ I am past hope," and, when 
 urged, he added, "but I trust in God." When a 
 penitent of his called him a Saint, he turned to her 
 with a face full of anger, and said, " Begone with you, 
 I am a devil, not a Saint." When another said to 
 him, " Father, a temptation has come to me to think 
 you are not what the world takes you for," he 
 answered, '' Be sure of this, that I am a man like my 
 neighbours, and nothing more." 
 
 What a reflection on ordinary Christians is the 
 language of Saints about themselves! Multitudes 
 indeed live in mortal sin, and have no concern at all 
 
140 Perseverance in Grace, 
 
 about present, past, or future. But even those who 
 go so far as to come to the Sacraments, never trouble 
 themselves with the thought of perseverance. They 
 seem to take it as a matter of course that, if they 
 are in a good state of mind at present, it will continue. 
 Perhaps they have been converted from a sinful life, 
 and are very different from what they have been. 
 They feel the comfort of the change, they feel the 
 peace and satisfaction of a cleansed conscience, but 
 they are so taken up with that comfort and peace, 
 tbat they rest in it and become secure. They do not 
 guard against temptation, or pray for support under 
 it; it does not occur to them that, as they have 
 changed from sin to religion, so they may, if so be, 
 change back again from religion to sin. They do not 
 realize enough their continual dependence on God; 
 some temptation comes on them, or some vicissitude of 
 life, they are surprised, they fall, and perhaps they 
 never recover. 
 
 What a scene is this life, a scene of almost universal 
 disappointment ! of springs blighted,— of harvests 
 beaten down by the storm, when they should have 
 been gathered into the storehouses ! of tardy and im- 
 perfect repentances, when there is nothing else left to 
 be done, of unsatisfactory resolves and poor efforts, 
 when the end of life is come ! O my dear children, 
 how subdued our rejoicing in you is, even when you 
 are walking well and hopefully ! how anxious are we 
 for you, even when you are cheerful from the light- 
 ness of your conscience and the sincerity of your 
 hearts ! how we sigh when we give thanks for you. 
 
Perseverance m Grace, 141 
 
 and tremble even while we rejoice in hearing your con- 
 fessions and absolving you ! And why ? because we 
 know how great and high is the gift of perseverance. 
 When Hazael came with his presents to the prophet 
 Eliseus, the man of God stood over against him, in 
 silence and in bitter thought, till at last the blood 
 mounted up into his countenance, and he wept. He 
 wept, to Hazael's surprise, at the prospect of thfj 
 dreadful butcheries which the soldier before him, little 
 as he himself expected it, was to perpetrate when he 
 succeeded to the throne of Syria. We, O honest and 
 olieerful hearts, are not prophets as Eliseus, nor are 
 you destined to high estate and extraordinary tempta- 
 tion as Hazael ; but still the tears which the man of 
 God shed, what if some Angel should be shedding the 
 like over any of you, what time you are receiving par- 
 don and grace from the voice and hand of the Priests 
 of Christ ! Oh, how many are there who pass well 
 and hopefully through what seem to be their most 
 critical years, and fall just when one might consider 
 them beyond danger ! How many are good youths, 
 yet careless men ; blameless from fifteen to twenty, yet 
 captives to habits of sin between twenty and thirty ! 
 How many persevere till they marry, and then perhaps 
 get inextricably entangled in the cares or p ensures 
 of this world, and give up attendance on the 
 Sacraments, and other holy practices, which they have 
 hitherto observed ! how many pass through their 
 married life well, but lapse into sin on the death of 
 wife or husband ! How many are there who by m<jre 
 change of place lose their religious habits, and be- 
 
142 Perseverance in Grace. 
 
 come first careless and then shameless ! How many 
 upon the commission of one sin fall into remorse, 
 disgust of themselves, and recklessness, avoid the 
 Confessional from shame and despair, and live on 
 year after year, burdened with the custody of some 
 miserable secret ! How many fall into trouble, lose 
 their spirit and heart, shut themselves up in them- 
 selves, and feel a sort of aversion to religion, when 
 religion would be all in all to them ! How many 
 come to some great prosperity, and, carried away by 
 it, '^ wax fat and kick, and leave God their Maker, 
 and recede from God their Saviour ! '^ How many 
 fall into lukewarmness almost like death, after their 
 first fervour ! How many lose the graces begun in 
 them by self-confidence and arrogant impetuosity ! 
 How many, not yet Catholics, who under God's 
 guidance were making right for the Catholic Church, 
 suddenly turn short and miss, " like a crooked bow ! " 
 How many, when led forward by God's unmerited 
 grace, are influenced by the persuasions of relatives 
 or the inducements of station or of wealth, and be- 
 come in the event sceptics or infidels when they 
 might have almost died in the odour of sanctity ! 
 How many, whose contrition once gained for them 
 even the grace of justification, yet afterwards, by re- 
 fusing to go forward, have gone backwards, though 
 they maintain a semblance of what they once were, 
 by means of the mere natural habits which super- 
 natural grace has formed within them ! What a 
 miserable wreck is the world, hopes without sub- 
 stance, promises without fulfilment, repentance with- 
 
Perseverance in Grace, 143 
 
 out amendment, blossom without fruit, continuance 
 and progress without perseverance ! 
 
 O my dearest children, let me not depress you ; it 
 is your duty, your privilege to rejoice ; I would not 
 frighten you more than it is good for you to be 
 frightened. Some of you will take it too much to 
 heart, and will fret yourselves unduly, as I fear. I 
 do not wish to sadden you, but to make you cautious; 
 doubt not you will be led on, fear not to fall, pro- 
 vided you do but fear a fall. Fearing will secure you 
 from what you fear. Only " be sober, be vigilant/' 
 as St. Peter says, beware of taking satisfaction in 
 what you are, understand that the only way to avoid 
 falling back is to press forward. Dread all occasions 
 of sin, get a habit of shrinking from the beginnings 
 of temptation. Never speak confidently about your- 
 selves, nor contemptuously of the religiousness of 
 others, nor lightly of sacred things ; guard your eyes, 
 guard the first springs of thought, be jealous of your- 
 selves when alone, neglect not your daily prayers ; 
 above all, pray specially and continually for the gift 
 of perseverance. Come to Mass as often as you can, 
 visit the Blessed Sacrament, make frequent acts of 
 faith and love, and try to live in the Presence of God, 
 And further still, interest your dear Mother, the 
 Mother of God, in your success; pray to her 
 earnestly for it ; she can do more for you than any 
 one else. Pray her by the pain she suffered, when 
 the sharp sword went through her, pray her, by her 
 own perseverance, which was in her the gift of the 
 
144 Perseverance in Grace, 
 
 same God of whom you ask it for yourselves. God 
 will not refuse you. He will not refuse her, if you 
 have recourse to her succour. It will be a blessed 
 thing, in your last hour, when flesh and heart are 
 failing, in the midst of the pain, the weariness, the 
 restlessness, the prostration of strength, and the ex- 
 haustion of spirits, which then will be your portion, 
 it will be blessed indeed to have her at your side, 
 more tender than an earthly mother, to nurse you 
 and to whisper peace. It will be most blessed, when 
 the evil one is making his last effort, when he is 
 coming on you in his might to pluck you away from 
 your Father's hand, if he can, — it will be blessed 
 indeed if Jesus, Joseph, and Mary are then with you, 
 waiting to shield you from his assaults and to receive 
 your soul. If they are there, all is there ; Angels are 
 there, Saints are there, heaven is there, heaven is 
 begun in you, and the devil has no part in you. That 
 dread day may be sooner or later, you may be taken 
 away young, you may live to fourscore, you may die 
 in your bed, you may die in the open field, but if 
 Mary intercedes for you, that day will find you 
 watching and ready. All things will be fixed to 
 secure your salvation ; all dangers will be foreseen, 
 all obstacles removed, all aids provided. The hour 
 will come, and in a moment you will be translated 
 beyond fear and risk, you will be translated into a 
 new state where sin is not, nor ignorance of the 
 future, but perfect faith and serene joy, and assurance 
 and love everlasting. 
 
Perseverance in Grace, 145 
 
 '^ Jesu, Joseph, and Mary, I offer you my heart and 
 
 my soul ! 
 Jesu, Joseph, and Mary, assist me in my last 
 
 agony ! 
 Jesu, Joseph, and Mary, let me hreathe out my soul 
 
 with you in peace ! ^* 
 
DISCOURSE VIII. 
 
 NATURE AND GRACE. 
 
 TN the Parable of the Good Shepherd our Lord 
 -^ sets before us a dispensation or state of things, 
 which is very strange in the eyes of the world. He 
 speaks of mankind as consisting of two bodies, dis- 
 tinct from each other, divided by as real a line of 
 demarcation as the fence which encloses the sheep fold. 
 '* I am the Door,^* He says, " by Me if any man shall 
 have entered in, he shall be saved : and he shall go in 
 and go out, and shall find pastures. My sheep hear 
 My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me, and 
 I give them life everlasting; and they shall not 
 perish for ever, and no man shall snatch them out of 
 My Hand." And in His last prayer for His disciples 
 to His Eternal Father, He says, " I have manifested 
 Thy Name to the men whom Thou hast given Me 
 out of the world. Thine they were, and Thou hast 
 given them to Me, and they have kept Thy word. I 
 pray for them, I pray not for the world, but for those 
 whom Thou hast given Me, for they are Thine. 
 Holy Father, keep them in Thy Name whom Thou 
 hast given Me, that they may be one, as We also." 
 
Nature and Grace, 147 
 
 Nor are these passag-es solitary or singular; ''Fear 
 not, little flock/' He says by another Evangelist, 
 " for it hath pleased your Father to give you the 
 kingdom." And again, ''\ thank Thee, Father, 
 Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these 
 things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed 
 them unto little ones ; '' and again, '^ How narrow is 
 the gate, and strait the way which leadeth to life, and 
 few there are who find it ! '^ St. Paul repeats and 
 insists on this doctrine of his Lord, " Ye were once 
 darkness, but now are light in the Lord ; " " He hath 
 delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath 
 translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His 
 love." And St. John, " Greater is He that is in you 
 than he that is in the world. They are of the world, 
 we are of God.'' Thus there are two parties on this 
 earth, and two only, if we view men in their religious 
 aspect ; those, the few, who hear Christ's words and 
 follow Him, who are in the light, and walk in the 
 narrow way, and have the promise of heaven; and 
 those, on the other hand, who are the many, for whom 
 Christ prays not, though He has died for them, who 
 are wise and prudent in their own eyes, who are 
 possessed by the Evil One, and are subject to his 
 rule. 
 
 And such is the view taken of mankind, as by their 
 Maker and Redeemer, so also by the small company 
 in whom He lives and is glorified ; but far differently 
 does the larger body, the world itself, look upon man- 
 kind at large, upon its own vast multitudes, and upon 
 those whom God has taken out of it for His own special 
 L 2 
 
148 Nature and Grace . 
 
 inheritance. It considers that all men are pretty 
 much on a level, or that, differ though they may, they 
 differ by such fine shades from each other, that it is 
 impossible, because it would be untrue and unjust, to 
 divide them into two bodies, or to divide them at all. 
 Each man is like himself and no one else ; each man 
 has his own opinions, his own rule of faith and con- 
 duct, his own worship ; if a number join together in 
 a religious form, this is an accident, for the sake of 
 convenience; for each is complete in himself; re- 
 ligion is simply a personal concern ; there is no such 
 thing really as a common or joint religion, that is, 
 one in which a number of men, strictly speaking, 
 partake; it is all matter of private judgment. Hence, 
 as men sometimes proceed even to avow, there is no 
 such thing as a true religion or a false ; that is true 
 to each, which each sincerely believes to be true ; and 
 what is true to one, is not true to his neighbour. 
 There are no special doctrines, necessary to be believed 
 in order to salvation; it is not very difficult to be 
 saved ; and most men may take it for granted that 
 they shall be saved. All men are in God's favour, 
 except so far as, and while, they commit acts of sin ; 
 but when the sin is over, they get back into His favour 
 again, naturally and as a thing of course, no one 
 knows how, owing to God^s infinite indulgence, 
 unless indeed they persevere and die in a course of 
 sin, and perhaps even then. There is no such place 
 as hell, or at least punishment is not eternal. Pre- 
 destination, election, grace, perseverance, faith, 
 sanctity, unbelief, and reprobation are strange ideas. 
 
Nature and Grace, 149 
 
 and, as they think, very false ones. This is the cast 
 of opinion of men in general, in proportion as they 
 exercise their minds on the subject of religion, and 
 think for themselves ; and if in any respect they 
 depart from the easy, cheerful, and tranquil temper of 
 mind which it expresses, it is when they are led to 
 think of those who presume to take the contrary 
 view, that is, who take the view set forth by Christ 
 and His Apostles. On these they are commonly 
 severe, that is, on the very persons whom God 
 acknowledges as His, and is training heavenward, — 
 on Catholics, who are the witnesses and preachers of 
 those awful doctrines of grace, which condemn the 
 world and which the world cannot endure. 
 
 In truth the world does not know of the existence 
 of grace ; nor is it wonderful, for it is ever contented 
 with itself, and has never turned to account the 
 supernatural aids bestowed upon it. Its highest idea 
 of man lies in the order of nature; its pattern man is 
 the natural man ; it thinks it wrong to be anything 
 else than a natural man. It sees that nature has a 
 number of tendencies, inclinations, and passions ; and 
 because these are natural, it thinks that each of them 
 may be indulged for its own sake, so far as it does no 
 harm to others, or to a person's bodily, mental, and 
 temporal well-being. It considers that want of mode- 
 ration, or excess, is the very definition of sin, if it goes 
 so far as to recognize that word. It thinks that he is 
 the perfect man who eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and 
 walks, and diverts himself, and studies, and writes, 
 and attends to religion, in moderation. The devotional 
 
1 50 Nature and Grace. 
 
 feeling and the intellect, and the flesh, have each its 
 claim upon us, and each must have play^ if the Creator 
 is to he duly honoured. It does not understand, it will 
 not admit, that impulses and propensities, which are 
 found in our nature, as God created it, may nevertheless, 
 if indulged, become sins, on the ground that He has 
 subjected them to higher principles, whether these 
 principles be in our nature, or be superadded to our 
 nature. Hence it is very slow to believe that evil 
 thoughts are really displeasing to God, and incur 
 punishment. Works, indeed, tangible actions, which 
 are seen and which have influence, it will allow to be 
 wrong ; but it will not believe even that deeds are 
 sinful, or that they are more than reprehensible, if 
 they are private or personal ; and it is blind utterly to 
 the malice of thoughts, of imaginations, of wishes, and 
 of words. Because the wild emotions of anger, desire, 
 greediness, craft, cruelty, are no sin in the brute 
 creation, which has neither the means nor the com- 
 mand to repress them, therefore they are no sins in a 
 being who has a diviner sense and a controlling power. 
 Concupiscence may be indulged, because it is in its 
 Srst elements natural. 
 
 Behold here the true origin and fountain-head of 
 the warfare between the Church and the world ; here 
 they join issue, and diverge from each other. The 
 Church is built upon the doctrine that impurity is 
 hateful to God, and that concupiscence is its root; 
 with the Prince of the Apostles, her visible Head, she 
 denounces " the corruption of concupiscence which is 
 in the world,''' or, that corruption in the world which 
 
Nature and Grace, 1 5 1 
 
 comes of concupiscence; whereas the corrupt world 
 defends, nay, I may even say, sanctifies that very con- 
 cupiscence which is the world's corruption. Its bolder 
 and more consistent teachers, as you know, my bre- 
 thren, make the laws of this physical creation so 
 supreme, as to disbelieve the existence of miracles, as 
 being an unseemly violation of them ; well, and in 
 like manner, it deifies and worships human nature and 
 its impulses, and denies the power and the grant of 
 grace. This is the source of the hatred which the world 
 bears to the Church ; it finds a whole catalogue of sins 
 brought into light and denounced, which it would fain 
 believe to be no sins at all ; it finds itself, to its in- 
 dignation and impatience, surrounded with sin, morn- 
 ing, noon, and night ; it finds that a stern law lies 
 against it, where it believed that it was its own master 
 and need not think of God ; it finds guilt accumulat- 
 ing upon it hourly, which nothing can prevent, nothing 
 remove, but a higher power, the grace of God. It 
 finds itself in danger of being humbled to the earth 
 as a rebel, instead of being allowed to indulge its self- 
 dependence and self-complacency. Hence it takes its 
 stand on nature, and denies or rejects divine grace. 
 Like the proud spirit in the beginning, it wishes to 
 find its supreme good in its own self, and nothing 
 above it ; it undertakes to be sufficient for its own 
 happiness; it has no desire for the supernatural, and 
 therefore does not believe in it. And because nature 
 cannot rise above nature, it will not believe that the 
 narrow way is possible ; it hates those who enter upon 
 it as if pretenders and hypocrites, or laughs at their 
 
1 5 2 Nature and Grace, 
 
 aspirations as romance and fanaticism ; — lest it should 
 have to believe in the existence of grace. 
 
 Now you may think, my brethren, from the way in 
 which I have been contrasting nature and grace, that 
 they cannot possibly be mistaken for each other ; but 
 I wish to show you, in the next place, how grace 
 may be mistaken for nature, and nature mistaken for 
 grace. They may easily be mistaken for each other, 
 because, as it is plain from what I have said, the dif- 
 ference is in a great measure an inward, and therefore 
 a secret one. Grace is lodged in the heart ; it puri- 
 fies the thoughts and motives, it raises the soul to God, 
 it sanctifies the body, it corrects and exalts human 
 nature in regard to those sins of which men are 
 ashamed, and do not make a public display. Accord- 
 ingly, in outward show, in single actions, in word, in 
 profession, in teaching, in the social and political 
 virtues, in striking and heroical exploits, on the public 
 transitory scene of things, nature may counterfeit 
 grace, nay even to the deception of the man himself 
 in whom the counterfeit occurs. Recollect that it is 
 by nature, not by grace, that man has the gifts of 
 reason and conscience ; and mere reason and conscience 
 will lead him to discover, and in a measure pursue, 
 objects which are, properly speaking, supernatural 
 and divine. The natural reason is able, from the 
 things which are seen, from the voice of tradition, 
 from the existence of the soul, and from the necessity 
 of the case, to infer the existence of God. The natural 
 heart can burst forth by fits and starts into emotions of 
 love towards Him ; the natural imagination can depict 
 
Nature and Grace, 153 
 
 the beauty and glory of His attributes ; the natural 
 conscience may ascertain and put in order the truths 
 of the great moral law, nay even to the condemnation 
 of that concupiscence, which it is too weak to subdue, 
 and is therefore persuaded to tolerate. The natural 
 will can do many things really good and praiseworthy; 
 nay, in particular cases, or at particular seasons, when 
 temptation is away, it may seem to have a strength 
 which it has not, and to be imitating the austerity and 
 purity of a Saint. One man has no temptation to 
 hoard; another has no temptation to gluttony and 
 drunkenness; another has no temptation to ill-humour; 
 another has no temptation to be ambitious and over- 
 bearing. Hence human nature may often show to 
 great advantage ; it may be meek, amiable, kind, 
 benevolent, generous, honest, upright, and temperate ; 
 and, as seen in its happier specimens, it may become 
 quite a trial to faith, seeing that in its best estate it 
 has really no relationship to the family of Christ, and 
 no claim whatever to a heavenly reward, — though it 
 can talk of Christ and heaven too, read Scripture, and 
 " do many things willingly ^^ in consequence of read- 
 ing it, and can exercise a certain sort of belief, how- 
 ever different from that faith which is imparted to us 
 by grace. 
 
 Certainly, it is a most mournful, often quite a piercing 
 thought, to contemplate the conduct and the character 
 of those who have never received the elementary grace 
 of God in the Sacrament of Baptism. They are some- 
 times so benevolent, so active and untiring in their 
 benevolence; they may be so wise and so considerate; 
 
154 Nature a?id Grace, 
 
 they may have so much in them to engage the affections 
 of those who see them ! Well, let us leave them to 
 God; His grace is over all the earth; if that grace 
 comes to good effect and bears fruit in the hearts of 
 the unbaptized, He will reward it ; but, where grace 
 is not, there doubtless what looks so fair has its re- 
 ward in this world, for such good as is in it, but has 
 no better claim on a heavenly reward than skill in 
 any art or science, than eloquence or wit. And 
 moreover, it often happens, that, where there is much 
 that is specious and amiable, there is also much that 
 is sinful, and frightfully so. Men show their best 
 face in the world ; but for the greater part of their 
 time, the many hours of the day and the night, they 
 are shut up in their own thoughts. They are their 
 own witnesses, none see them besides, save God and 
 His Angels ; therefore in such cases we can only judge 
 of what we actually see, and can only admire what is 
 in itself good, without having any means of deter- 
 mining the real moral condition of those who display 
 it. Just as children are caught by the mere good- 
 nature and familiarity with which they are treated by 
 some grown man, and have no means or thought of 
 forming a judgment about him in other respects, and 
 may be surprised, when they grow up, to find how 
 unworthy he is of their respect or affection; as the 
 uneducated, who have seen very little of the world, 
 have no faculties for distinguishing between one rank 
 of men and another, and consider all persons on a 
 level who are respectably dressed, whatever be their 
 accent, their carriage, or their countenance ; so all 
 
Nature and Grace, 155 
 
 of us, not children only or the uncultivated, are 
 but novices, or less than novices, in the business of 
 deciding" what is the real state in God^s sight of this 
 or that man, who is external to the Church, yet in 
 character or conduct resembles her true sons. Not 
 entering then upon this point, which is beyond us, so 
 much we even can see and are sure of, that human 
 nature is, in a degree beyond all words, inconsistent, 
 and that we must not take for granted that it can do 
 anything" at all more than it actually does, or that 
 those, in whom it shows most plausibly, are a whit 
 better than they look. We see the best, and (as far 
 as moral excellence goes) the whole of them. We can- 
 not argue from what we see in favour of what we do 
 not see ; we cannot take what we see as a specimen 
 of what they really are. Sad, then, as the spectacle of 
 such a man is to a Catholic, he is no difficulty to 
 him. He may be benevolent, and kind-hearted, and 
 generous, upright and honourable, candid, dispas- 
 sionate, and forbearing, yet he may have nothing of 
 a special Christian cast about him, meekness, purity, 
 or devotion. He may like his own way intensely, 
 have a great opinion of his own powers, scoff at faith 
 and religious fear, and seldom or never have said a 
 prayer in his life. Nay, even outward gravity of 
 deportment is no warrant that there is not within 
 an habitual indulgence of evil thoughts, and secret 
 offences odious to Almighty God. We admire then 
 whatever is excellent in the ancient heathen (as in 
 moderns, who are often in their condition); we acknow- 
 ledge without jealousy whatever they have done 
 
156 Nature and Grace, 
 
 virtuous and praiseworthy, but we understand as little 
 of the character or destiny of the being* in whom that 
 goodness is found, as we understand the nature of the 
 material substances which present themselves to us 
 under the outward garb of shape and colour. They 
 are to us as unknown causes which have influenced or 
 disturbed the world, and which manifest themselves 
 in certain great effects, political, social, or ethical; 
 they are to us as pictures, which appeal to the eye, 
 but not to the touch. We do not know that they 
 would prove to be more real than a painting, if we 
 could touch them. Thus much we know, that, if 
 they have attained to heaven, it has been by the 
 grace of God and their co-operation with it ; if they 
 have lived and died without that grace, they will 
 never see life ; and, if they have lived and died in 
 mortal sin, they are in the state of bad Catholics, 
 and will for ever see death. 
 
 Yet, taking the mere outward appearance of things, 
 and the more felicitous, though partial and occasional, 
 efforts of human nature, how great it is, how amiable, 
 how brilliant, — that is, if we may pretend to the power 
 of viewing it distinct from the supernatural influences 
 which have ever haunted it ! How great are the old 
 Greek lawgivers and statesmen, whose histories and 
 works are known to some of us, and whose names to 
 many more ! How great are those stern Roman 
 heroes, who conquered the world, and prepared the 
 way for Christ ! How wise, how profound, are those 
 ancient teachers and sages ! what power of imagina- 
 tion, what a semblance of prophecy, is manifest in their 
 
Nature and Grace, 157 
 
 poets ! The present world is in many respects not so 
 great as in that old time, but even now there is enough 
 in it to show both the strength of human nature in 
 this respect, and its vveakness. Consider the solidity 
 of our own political fabric at home, and the expansion 
 of our empire abroad, and you will have matter enough 
 spread out before you to occupy many a long day in 
 admiration of the genius, the virtues, and the resources 
 of human nature. Take a second meditation upon it ; 
 alas ! you will find nothing of faith there, but only 
 expedience as the measure of right and wrong, "and 
 only temporal well-being as the end of action. Again, 
 many are the tales and poems written now-a-days, 
 expressing high and beautiful sentiments ; I dare say 
 some of you, my brethren, have fallen in with them, 
 and perhaps you have thought to yourselves, that he 
 must be a man of deep religious feeling and high 
 religious profession who could write so well. Is it so 
 in fact, my brethren ? it is not so ; why ? because after 
 all it is hut poetry, not religion ; it is human nature 
 exerting the powers of imagination and reason, which it 
 has, till it seems also to have powers which it has not. 
 There are, you know, in the animal world various 
 creatures, which are able to imitate the voice of man ; 
 nature in like manner is often a mockery of grace. 
 The truth is, the natural man sees this or that prin- 
 ciple to be good or true from the liglit of conscience ; 
 and then, since he has the power of reasoning, he knows 
 that, if this be true, many other things are true like- 
 wise; and then, having the power of imagination, he 
 pictures to himself those other things as true, though 
 
158 Nature a7id Grace, 
 
 he does not really understand them. And then he 
 brings to his aid what he has read and gained from 
 others who have had grace, and thus he completes his 
 sketch ; and then he throws his feelings and his heart 
 into it, meditates on it, and kindles in himself a sort 
 of enthusiasm, and thus he is able to write beautifully 
 and touchingly about what to others indeed may be a 
 reality, but to him is nothing more than a fiction. 
 Thus some can write about the early Martyrs, and 
 others describe some great Saint of the Middle Ages, 
 not exactly as a Catholic, but as if they had a piety 
 and a seriousness to which really they are strangers. 
 So, too, actors on a stage can excite themselves till they 
 think they are the persons they represent ; and, as you 
 know, prejudiced persons, who wish to quarrel with 
 another, impute something to him, which at first they 
 scarcely believe themselves ; but they wish to believe 
 it and act as if it were true, and raise and cherish 
 anger at the thought of it, till at last they come simply 
 to believe it. So it is, I say, in the case of many an 
 author in verse and prose ; readers are deceived by his 
 fine writing ; they not only praise this or that senti- 
 ment, or argument, or description, in what they read, 
 which happens to be true, but they put faith in the 
 writer himself; and they believe sentiments or state- 
 ments which are false on the credit of the true. Thus 
 it is that people are led away into false religions and 
 false philosophies ; a preacher or speaker, who is in a 
 state of nature, or has fallen from grace, is able to say 
 many things to touch the heart of a sinner or to strike 
 his conscience, whether from his natural powers, or 
 
Nature and Grace. 159 
 
 from what he has read in books ; and the latter forth- 
 with takes him for his prophet and guide, on the 
 warrant of these accidental truths which it required no 
 supernatural gifts to discover and enforce. 
 
 Scripture provides us an instance of such a prophet, 
 (nay, of one far more favoured and honoured than any 
 false teacher is now,) who nevertheless was the enemy 
 of God; I mean the prophet Balaam. He went forth 
 to curse the chosen people in spite of an express 
 prohibition from heaven, and that for money ; and at 
 length he died fighting against them in battle. Such 
 was he in his life and in his death ; such were his 
 deeds ; but what were his words ? most religious, most 
 conscientious, most instructive. " If Balac/'' he says, 
 " shall give me his house full of silver and gold, I 
 cannot alter the word of the Lord my God.''^ Again, 
 "Let my soul die the death of the just, and let my 
 end be like to theirs ! '■' And again, " I will show 
 thee, O man, what is good, and what the Lord re- 
 quireth of thee ; to do judgment and to love mercy, 
 and to walk heedfully with thy God." Here is a man, 
 who is not in a state of grace, speaking so religiously, 
 that at first sight you might have thought he was to 
 be followed in whatever he said, and that your soul 
 would have been safe with his. 
 
 And thus it often happens, that those who seem so 
 amiable and good, and so trustworthy, when we only 
 know them from their writings, disappoint us so pain- 
 fully, if at length we come to have a personal acquain- 
 tance with them. We do not recognize in the living 
 being the eloquence or the wisdom which so much 
 
1 60 Nature and Grace. 
 
 enchanted us. He is rude, perhaps, and unfeeling ; 
 he is selfish, he is dictatorial, he is sensual, he is 
 empty-minded and frivolous; while we in our sim- 
 plicity had antecedently thought him the very embodi- 
 ment of purity and tenderness^ or an oracle of heavenly 
 truth. 
 
 Now, my dear brethren, I have been engaged in 
 bringing before you what human nature can do, and 
 what it can appear, without being reconciled to God, 
 without any hope of heaven^ without any security 
 against sin, without any pardon of the original curse, 
 nay, in the midst of mortal sin ; but it is a state 
 which has never existed in fact, without great 
 modifications. No one has ever been deprived of the 
 assistance of grace, both for illumination and con- 
 version ; even the heathen world as a whole had to a 
 certain extent its darkness relieved by these fitful and 
 recurrent gleams of light; but I have thought it 
 useful to get you to contemplate what human nature 
 is, viewed in itself, for various reasons. It explains 
 how it is that men look so like each other as they 
 do, — grace being imitated, and, as it were, rivalled 
 by nature, both in society at large, and in the hearts 
 of particular persons. Hence the world will not be- 
 lieve the separation really existing between it and the 
 Church _, and the smallness of the flock of Christ. And 
 hence too it is, that numbers who have heard the 
 Name of Christ, and profess to believe in the Gospel, 
 will not be persuaded as regards themselves that 
 they are exterior to the Church, and do not enjoy her 
 privileges ; merely because they do their duty in some 
 
Nature and Grace, 1 6 1 
 
 general way, or because they are conscious to them- 
 selves of being benevolent or upright. And this is a 
 point which concerns Catholics too, as I now proceed 
 to show you. 
 
 Make yourselves quite sure then, my brethren, of 
 the matter of fact, before you go away with the belief, 
 that you are not confusing, in your own case, nature 
 and grace, and taking credit to yourselves for super- 
 natural works, which merit heaven, when you are but 
 doing the works of a heathen, are unforgiven, and lie 
 under an eternal sentence. Oh, it is a dreadful thought, 
 that a man may deceive himself with the notion that 
 he is secure, merely because he is a Catholic, and 
 because he has some kind of love and fear of God, 
 whereas he may be no better than many a Protestant 
 round about him, who either never was baptized, or 
 threw himself once for all out of grace on coming to 
 years of understanding. This idea is entirely conceiv- 
 able; it is well if it be not true in matter of fact. 
 You know, it is one opinion entertained among divines 
 and holy men, that the number of Catholics that are 
 to be saved will on the whole be small. Multitudes of 
 those who never knew the Gospel will rise up in the 
 judgment against the children of the Church, and 
 will be shown to have done more with scantier oppor- 
 tunities. Our Lord speaks of His people as a small 
 flock, as I cited His words when I began : He says, 
 " Many are called, few are chosen.^^ St. Paul, speaking, 
 in the first instance, of the Jews, says that but *' a 
 remnant is saved according to the election of grace.'' 
 He speaks even of the possibility of his own reproba- 
 
 M 
 
1 62 Nature and Grace, 
 
 tion. What a thought in an Apostle ! yet it is one 
 with which Saints are familiar ; they fear both for 
 themselves and for others. It is related in the history 
 of my own dear Patron, St. Philip Keri, that some 
 time after his death he appeared to a holy religious, 
 and bade him take a message of consolation to his 
 children, the Fathers of the Oratory. The consolation 
 was this, that, by the grace of God, up to that day not 
 one of the Congregation had been lost. '' None of 
 them lost ! ^' a man may cry out ; " well, had his con- 
 solation for his children been, that they were all in. 
 paradise, having escaped the dark lake of purgatory, 
 that would have been something worth telling ; but 
 all he had to say was, that none of them were in hell ! 
 Strange if they were ! Here was a succession of men, 
 who had given up the world for a religious life, who 
 had given up self for God and their neighbour, who 
 had passed their days in prayer and good works, who 
 had died happily with the last Sacraments, and it is 
 revealed about them, as a great consolation, that none 
 of them were lost ! *' Still such after all is our holy 
 Father's consolation; and, that it should be such, 
 only proves that salvation is not so easy a matter, or 
 so cheap a possession, as we are apt to suppose. It is 
 not obtained by the mere wishing. And, if it was a 
 thing so to be coveted by men, who had made 
 sacrifices for Christ, and were living in sanctity, how 
 much more rare and arduous of attainment is it in 
 those who have confessedly loved the world more than 
 God, and have never dreamed of doing any duty to 
 which the Church did not oblige them ! 
 
Nahtre and Grace, 1 6 
 
 Tell me, what is the state of your souls and the rule 
 of your lives ? You come to Confession, once a year, 
 four times a year, at the Indulgences ; you commu- 
 nicate as often ; you do not miss Mass on days of 
 obligation ; you are not conscious of any great sin. — 
 There you come to an end ; you have nothing more 
 to say. What ? do you not take God^s name in vain ? 
 only when you are angry ; — that is, I suppose, you are 
 subject to fits of violent passion, in which you use 
 every shocking word which the devil puts into your 
 mouth, and abuse and curse, and perhaps strike the 
 objects of your anger ? — Only now and then, you say, 
 when you are in liquor. Then it seems you are given 
 to intoxication? — you answer, you never drink so 
 much as not to know what you are doing. Well, have 
 you improved in these respects in the course of several 
 years past ? You cannot say you have, but such sins 
 are not mortal at the most. Then, I suppose, you 
 have not lately fallen into mortal sin at all ? You 
 pause, and then you are obliged to confess that you 
 have, and that once and again ; and the more I ques- 
 tion you, perhaps the longer becomes the catalogue of 
 offences which have separated you from God. But 
 this is not all ; your sole idea of sin is, the sinning in 
 act and in deed ; sins of habit, which cling so close 
 to you that they are difficult to detect, and manifest 
 themselves in slight but continual influences on your 
 thoughts, words, and works, do not engage your 
 attention at all. You are selfish, and obstinate, and 
 worldly, and self-indulgent; you neglect your children; 
 you are fond of idle amusements ; you scarcely ever 
 M % 
 
1 64 Nature and Grace, 
 
 think of God from day to day, for I cannot call your 
 hurried prayers morning and night any thinking of 
 Him at all. You are friends with the world, and live 
 a good deal among those who have no sense of religion. 
 Now what have you to tell me which will set against 
 this? what good have you done? in what is your hope of 
 heaven ? whence do you gain it ? You perhaps answer 
 me, that the Sacrament of Penance reconciles you from 
 time to time to God ; that you live in the world ; 
 that you are not called to the religious state ; that it 
 is true you love the world more than God, but that 
 you love God sufficiently for salvation, and that you 
 rely in the hour of death upon the powerful interces- 
 sion of the Blessed Mother of God. Then besides, you 
 have a number of good points, which you go through, 
 and which are to you signs that you are in the grace 
 of God ; you conceive that your state at worst is one 
 of tepidity. Tepidity ! I tell you, you have no marks 
 of tepidity ; do you wish to know what a tepid person 
 is ? one who ha§ begun to lead almost the life of a 
 Saint, and has fallen from his fervour; one who 
 retains his good practices, but does them without 
 devotion ; one who does so much, that we only blame 
 him for not doing more. No, you need not confess 
 tepidity, my brethren; — do you wish to have the judg- 
 ment which I am led to form about you ? it is, that 
 probably you are not in the grace of God at all. The 
 probability is, that for a long while past you have 
 gone to Confession without the proper dispositions, 
 without real grief, and without sincere purpose of 
 amendment for your sins. You are probably such. 
 
Nature and Grace. 165 
 
 that were you to die this night, you would be lost for 
 ever. What do you do more than nature does ? You do 
 certain good things ; " what reward have ye ? do not 
 even the publicans so ? what do ye more than others ? 
 do not even the heathen so ? " You have the ordinary 
 virtues of human nature, or some of them ; you are 
 what nature made you, and care not to be better. 
 You may be naturally kind-hearted, and then you 
 do charitable actions to others ; you have a natural 
 strength of character, — if so, you are able to bring 
 your passions under the power of reason ; you have a 
 natural energy, and you labour for your family ; you 
 are naturally mild, and so you do not quarrel ; you have 
 a dislike of intemperance, and therefore you are sober. 
 You have the virtues of your Protestant neighbours, 
 and their faults too ; what are you better than they ? 
 Here is another grave matter against you, that you 
 are so well with the Protestants about you ; I do not 
 mean to say that you are not bound to cultivate peace 
 with all men, and to do them all the offices of charity 
 in your power. Of course you are, and if they respect, 
 esteem, and love you, it redounds to your praise and 
 will gain you a reward ; but I mean more than this ; 
 they do not respect you, but they like you, because 
 they think of you as of themselves, they see no diflfe- 
 rence between themselves and you. This is the very 
 reason why they so often take your part, and assert or 
 defend your political rights. Here again, there is a 
 sense of course in which our civil rights may be advo- 
 cated by Protestants without any reflection on us, and 
 with honour to them. We are like others in this, that 
 
1 66 Nature and Grace. 
 
 we are men ; that we are members of the same state 
 with them, subjects, contented subjects, of the same 
 Sovereign, that we have a dependence on them, and 
 have them dependent on us ; that, like them, we feel 
 pain when ill-used, and are grateful when well-treated. 
 We need not be ashamed of a fellowship like this, 
 and those who recognize it in us are generous in doing 
 so. But we have much cause to be ashamed, and 
 much cause to be anxious what God thinks of us, if 
 we gain their support by giving them a false impres- 
 sion in our persons of what the Catholic Church is, 
 and what Catholics are bound to be, what bound to 
 believe, and to do ; and is not this the case often, my 
 Ijrethren, that the world takes up your interest, 
 because you share its sins ? 
 
 Nature is one with nature, grace with grace; the 
 world then witnesses against you by being good friends 
 with you ; you could not have got on with the world 
 so well, without surrendering something which was 
 precious and sacred. The world likes you, all but 
 your professed creed; distinguishes you from your 
 creed in its judgment of you, and would fain separate 
 you from it in fact. Men say, " These persons are 
 better than their Church ; we have not a word to 
 say for their Church ; but Catholics are not what they 
 were, they are very much like other men now. Their 
 Creed certainly is bigoted and cruel, but what would 
 you have of them ? You cannot expect them to con- 
 fess this ; let them change quietly, no one changes in 
 public, be satisfied that they are changed. They are 
 as fond of the world as we are ; they take up political 
 
Nature and Grace, 1 6 7 
 
 objects as warmly; they like their own way just as 
 well ; they do not like strictness a whit better ; they 
 hate spiritual thraldom, and they are half ashamed of 
 the Pope and his Councils. They hardly believe any 
 miracles now, and are annoyed when their own brethren 
 officiously proclaim them ; they never speak of pur- 
 gatory; they are sore about images ; they avoid the 
 subject of Indulgences; and they will not commit 
 themselves to the doctrine of exclusive salvation. The 
 Catholic doctrines are now mere badges of party. 
 Catholics think for themselves and judge for them- 
 selves, just as we do ; they are kept in their Church 
 by a point of honour, and a reluctance at seeming to 
 abandon a fallen cause." 
 
 Such is the judgment of the world, and you, my 
 brethren, are shocked to hear it ; — but may it not be, 
 that the world knows more about you than you know 
 about yourselves ? " If ye had been of the world," 
 says Christ, '' the world would love its own ; but be- 
 cause ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you 
 out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." So 
 speaks Christ of His Apostles. How run His words 
 when applied to you ? '' If ye be of the world, the 
 world will love its own ; therefore ye are of the world, 
 and I have not chosen you out of the world, because 
 the world loveth you." Do not complain of the 
 world's imputing to you more than is true ; those who 
 live as the world give colour to those who think them 
 of the world, and seem to form but one party with 
 them. In proportion as you put off the yoke of 
 Christ, so does the world by a sort of instinct re- 
 
1 68 Nature and G^^ace, 
 
 cognize you, and think well of you accordingly. Its 
 highest compliment is to tell you that you disbelieve. 
 Oh, my brethren, there is an eternal enmity between 
 the world and the Church. The Church declares by 
 the mouth of an Apostle, " Whoso will be a friend of 
 the world, becomes an enemy of God ; '^ and the world 
 retorts, and calls the Church apostate, sorceress, 
 Beelzebub, and Antichrist. She is the image and the 
 mother of the predestinate, and, if you would be found 
 among her children when you die, you must have part 
 in her reproach while you live. Does not the world 
 scoflP at all that is glorious, all that is majestic, in our 
 holy religion ? Does it not speak against the special 
 creations of God^s grace ? Does it not disbelieve the 
 possibility of purity and chastity ? Does it not slander 
 the profession of celibacy ? Does it not deny the 
 virginity of Mary ? Does it not cast out her very 
 name as evil ? Does it not scorn her as a dead 
 woman, whom you know to be the Mother of all 
 living, and the great Intercessor of the faithful ? 
 Does it not ridicule the Saints ? Does it not make 
 light of their relics? Does it not despise the Sacra- 
 ments ? Does it not blaspheme the awful Presence 
 which dwells upon our altars, and mock bitterly and 
 fiercely at our believing that what it calls bread and 
 wine is that very same Body and Blood of the Lamb, 
 which lay in Mary's womb and hung on the Cross? 
 What are we, that we should be better treated than 
 our Lord, and His Mother, and His servants, and His 
 works ? Nay, what are we, if we he better treated. 
 
Nature and Grace, 1 69 
 
 but tlie friends of those who treat us well, and who 
 ill-treat Him ? 
 
 Oh, my dear brethren, be children of grace, not of 
 nature ; be not seduced by this world^s sophistries 
 and assumptions ; it pretends to be the work of God, 
 but in reality it comes of Satan. " I know My 
 sheep,^^ says our Lord, " and Mine know Me, and 
 they follow Me." '^ Show me, O Thou whom my 
 soul loveth/' says the Bride in the Canticle, " where 
 Thou feedest, where Thou restest at noon :^^ and He 
 answers her, '' Go forth, and follow after the steps of 
 the flocks, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds' 
 tents.'' Let us follow the Saints, as they follow 
 Christ; so that, when He comes in judgment, and the 
 wretched world sinks to perdition, ''on us sinners, 
 His servants, hoping in the multitude of His mercies, 
 He may vouchsafe to bestow some portion and fellow- 
 ship with his Holy Apostles and Martyrs, with John, 
 Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander, 
 Marcelline, Peter, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, 
 Agnes, Cicely, Anastasia, and all His Saints, not for 
 the value of our merit, but according to the bounty of 
 His pardon, through the same Christ our Lord." 
 
DISCOURSE IX. 
 
 ILLUMINATING GRACE. 
 
 TIT HEN man was created^ he was endowed withal 
 with gifts above his own nature, by means of 
 which that nature was perfected. As some potent 
 stimulant which is not nourishment, a scent or a 
 draught, rouses, invigorates, concentrates our animal 
 powers, g^ves keenness to our perceptions, and inten- 
 sity to our efforts, so, or rather in some far higher 
 sense, and in more diversified ways, did the super- 
 natural grace of God give a meaning, and an aim, and 
 a sufficiency, and a consistency, and a certainty, to 
 the many faculties of that compound of soul and body, 
 which constitutes man. And when man fell, he lost 
 this divine, unmerited gift, and, instead of soaring 
 heavenwards, fell down feeble to the earth, in a state 
 of exhaustion and collapse. And, again, when God^ 
 for Christ's sake, is about to restore any one to His 
 favour. His first act of mercy is to impart to him a 
 portion of this grace ; the first-fruits of that sovereign, 
 energetic power, which forms and harmonizes his 
 whole nature, and enables it to fulfil its own end, 
 while it fulfils one higher than its own. 
 
 Now, one of the defects which man incurred on the 
 fall was ignorance, or spiritual blindness ; and one of 
 
Illuminating Grace, 1 7 1 
 
 the gifts received on his restoration is a perception of 
 things spiritual ; so that, before he is brought under 
 the grace of Christ, he can but inquire, reason, argue, 
 and conclude, about religious truth ; but afterwards 
 he sees it. '^ Blessed art Thou, Simon, Son of Jona/' 
 said our Lord to St. Peter, when he confessed the In- 
 carnation, " for flesh and blood hath not revealed it 
 to thee, but My Father, which is in heaven.''^ Again : 
 " I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, 
 because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and 
 prudent, and hath revealed them unto little ones. . . . 
 No one knoweth the Father, save the Son, and no one 
 knoweth the Son but the Father, and he to whom it 
 shall please the Son to reveal Him." In like manner 
 St. Paul says, " The animal ^' or natural '^ man per- 
 ceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ; " and 
 elsewhere, " No one can say the Lord Jesus, but in 
 the Holy Ghost." And St. John, "Ye have an 
 unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things." 
 The Prophets had promised the same gift before Christ 
 came; — "I will make all thy sons taught of the 
 Lord," says Isaias, " and the multitude of peace upon 
 thy sons;" "No more," says Jeremias, " shall man 
 teach his neighbour, and man his brother, saying, 
 Know the Lord, for all shall know Me from the least 
 of them even to the greatest of them." 
 
 Now here you may say, my brethren, " What is the 
 meaning of this ? are we men, or are we not ? have 
 we lost part of our nature by the fall, or have we not ? 
 is not the Reason a part of man's nature ? does not 
 the Reason see, as the eye does ? cannot we, by the 
 
172 Illuminating Grace, 
 
 natural power of our Reason, understand all kinds ot 
 truths, about this earth, about human society, about 
 the realms of space, about matter, . about the soul? 
 why should religion be an exception ? Why, then, 
 cannot we understand by our natural reason about 
 Almighty God and heaven ? — if we can inquire into 
 one thing, we can inquire into another; if we can 
 imagine one thing, we can imagine another; how 
 then is it that we cannot arrive at the truths of re- 
 ligion without the supernatural aid of grace ? '^ This 
 is a question which may give rise to some profitable 
 reflections, and I shall now attempt to answer it. 
 
 You ask, what it is you need, besides eyes, in order 
 to see the truths of revelation : I will tell you at once ; 
 you need light. Not the keenest eyes can see in the 
 dark. Now, though your mind be the eye, the grace 
 of God is the light ; and you will as easily exercise 
 your eyes in this sensible world without the sun, as 
 you will be able to exercise your mind in the spiritual 
 world without a parallel gift from \vithout. Now you 
 are born under a privation of this blessed spiritual 
 light; and, while it remains, you will not, cannot, 
 really see God. I do not say you will have no thought 
 at all about God, nor be able to talk about Him. 
 True, but you will not be able to do more than 
 reason about Him. Your thoughts and your words 
 will not get beyond a mere reasoning. I grant then 
 what you claim ; you claim to be able by your mental 
 powers to reason about God ; doubtless you can, but 
 to infer a thing is not to see it in respect to the 
 physical world, nor is it in the spiritual. 
 
Illuminating Grace, 173 
 
 Consider the ease of a man without eyes talking 
 about forms and colours, and you will understand 
 what I mean. A blind man may pick up a good deal 
 of information of various kinds, and be very conversant 
 with the objects of sight, though he does not see. He 
 may be able to talk about them fluently, and may be 
 fond of doing so ; he may even talk of seeing as if he 
 really saw, till he almost seems to pretend to the 
 faculty of sight. He speaks of heights and distances, 
 and directions, and the dispositions of places, and 
 shapes, and appearances, as naturally as other men ; 
 and he is not duly aware of his own extreme privation ; 
 and, if you ask how this comes about, it is partly 
 because he hears what other men say about these 
 things, and he is able to imitate them, and partly 
 because he cannot help reasoning upon the things he 
 hears, and drawing conclusions from them ; and thus 
 he comes to think he knows what he does not know 
 at all. 
 
 He hears men converse ; he may have books read to 
 him ; he gains vague ideas of objects of sight, and 
 when he begins to speak, his words are tolerably 
 correct, and do not at once betray how little he knows 
 what he is talking about. He infers one thing from 
 another, and thus is able to speak of many things 
 which he does not see, but only perceives must be so, 
 granting other things are so. For instance, if he 
 knows that blue and yellow make green, he may pro- 
 nounce, without a chance of mistake, that green is 
 more like blue than yellow is ; if he happens to know 
 that one man is under six feet in height, and another 
 
174 Illuminating Grace, 
 
 is full six feetj he may, when they are both before 
 him, boldly declare, as if he saw, that the latter is the 
 taller of the two. It is not that he judges by sight, 
 but that reason takes the place of it. There was 
 much talk in the world some little time since of a 
 man of science, who was said to have found out a new 
 planet; how did he do it? Did he watch night after 
 night, wearily and perseveringly, in the chill air, 
 through the tedious course of the starry heavens, for 
 what he might possibly find there, till at length, by 
 means of some powerful glass, he discovered in the 
 dim distance this unexpected addition to our planetary 
 system ? Far from it ; it is said, that he sat at his 
 ease in his library, and made calculations on paper in 
 the daytime, and thus, without looking once up at the 
 sky, he determined, from what was already known 
 of the sun and the planets, of their number, their 
 positions, their motions, and their influences, that, in 
 addition to them all, there must be some other body 
 in that very place where he said it would be found, if 
 astronomers did but turn their instruments upon it. 
 Here was a man reading the heavens, not with eyes, 
 but by reason. Reason, then, is a sort of substitute 
 for sight; and so in many respects are the other 
 senses, as is obvious. You know how quick the blind 
 are often found to be in discovering the presence of 
 friends, and the feelings of strangers, by the voice, 
 and the tone, and the tread ; so that they seem to 
 understand looks, and gestures, and dumb show, as if 
 they saw, to the surprise of those who wish to keep 
 their meaning secret from them. 
 
Illuminating Grace. 1 75 
 
 Now this will explain the way in which the natural 
 man is able partly to understand, and still more to 
 speak upon, supernatural subjects. There is a large 
 floating" body of Catholic truth in the world ; it comes 
 down by tradition from age to age ; it is carried for- 
 ward by preaching and profession from one generation 
 to another, and is poured about into all quarters of 
 the world. It is found in fulness and purity in the 
 Church alone, but portions of it, larger or smaller, 
 escape far and wide, and penetrate into places which 
 have never been blest with her presence and ministra- 
 tion. Now men may take up and profess these scat- 
 tered truths, merely because they fall in with them ; 
 these fragments of Revelation, such as the doctrine of 
 the Holy Trinity, or the Atonement, are the religion 
 which they have been taught in their childhood ; and 
 therefore they may retain them, and profess them, and 
 repeat them, without really seeing them, as the Catholic 
 sees them, but as receiving them merely by word of 
 mouth, from imitation of others. And in this way 
 it often happens that a man external to the Catholic 
 Church writes sermons and instructions, draws up 
 and arranges devotions, or composes hymns, which are 
 faultless, or nearly so, which are the fruit, not of his 
 own illuminated mind, but of his careful study, some- 
 times of his accurate translation, of Catholic originals. 
 Then, again. Catholic truths and rites are so beautiful, 
 so great, so consolatory, that they draw one on to love 
 and admire them with a natural love, as a prospect 
 might attract us, or a skilful piece of mechanism. Hence 
 men of lively imagination may profess this doctrine 
 
1/6 Illuminating Grace, 
 
 or that, or adopt this or that ceremony or usage, for 
 its very heauty-sake, not asking themselves whether 
 it be true, and having no real perception or mental 
 hold of it. Thus, too, they will decorate their churches, 
 stretch and strain their ritual, introduce candles, vest- 
 ments, flowers, incense, and processions, not from 
 faith, but from poetical feeling. And, moreover, the 
 Catholic Creed, as coming from God, is so harmonious, 
 so consistent with itself, holds together so perfectly, 
 so corresponds part to part, that an acute mind, know- 
 ing one portion of it, would often infer another portion, 
 merely as a matter of j ust reasoning. Thus a correct 
 thinker might be sure, that if God is infinite and man 
 finite, there must be mysteries in religion. It is not 
 that he really feels the mysteriousness of religion, but 
 he infers it ; he is led to it as a matter of necessity, 
 and from mere clearness of mind and love of consist- 
 ency, he maintains it. Again, a man may say, " Since 
 this or that doctrine has so much historical evidence in 
 'its favour, I must accept it ; '^ he has no real sight or 
 direct perception of it, but he takes up the profession 
 of it, because he feels it would be absurd, under the 
 conditions with which he starts, to do otherwise. He 
 does no more than load himself with a form of words, 
 instead of contemplating, with the eye of the soul, 
 God Himself, the source of all truth, and this doctrine 
 as proceeding from His mouth. A keen, sagacious 
 intellect will carry a man a great way in anticipating 
 doctrines which he has never been told ; — thus, before 
 it knew what Scripture said on the subject, it might 
 argue ; " Sin is an offence against God beyond con- 
 
Illuminating Grace, 177 
 
 ception great, and involving vast evils on the sinner, 
 for, if it were not so, why should Christ have suffered?'' 
 that is, he sees that it is necessary for the Christian 
 system of doctrine that sin should be a great evil, 
 without necessarily feeling in his conscience that it is 
 so. Nay, I can fancy a man conjecturing that our 
 bodies would rise again, as arguing it out from the 
 fact that the Eternal God has so honoured our mortal 
 flesh as to take it upon Him as part of Himself. Thus 
 he would be receiving the resurrection or eternal pun- 
 ishment merely as truths which follow from what he 
 knew already. And in like manner learned men, out- 
 side the Church, may compose most useful works on 
 the Evidences of religion, or in defence of particular 
 doctrines, or in explanation of the whole scheme of 
 Catholicity ; in these cases reason becomes the hand- 
 maid of faith : still it is not faith ; it does not rise 
 above an intellectual view or notion ; it affirms, not 
 as grasping the truth, not as seeing, but 4s " being 
 ofopinion,'' as "judging,''' as "coming to a conclu- 
 sion." 
 
 Here, then, you see what the natural man can do ; 
 he can feel, he can imagine, he can admire, he can 
 reason, he can infer; in all these ways he may pro- 
 ceed to receive the whole or part of Catholic truth ; 
 but he cannot see, he cannot love. Yet he will per- 
 plex religious persons who do not understand, the 
 secret by which he is able to make so imposing a dis- 
 play ; for they will be at a loss to understand how it 
 is he is able to speak so well, except he speak, though 
 he be out of the Church, by the Spirit of God. Thus 
 
1 yS Illuminating Grace. 
 
 it is with the writinf^-s of some of the ancient heretics, 
 who wrote upon the Incarnation ; so it is with 
 heretics of modern times who have written on the 
 doctrine of grace ; they write sometimes with such 
 beauty and depth, that one cannot help admiring what 
 they say on those very subjects, as to which we know 
 withal that at the bottom they are unsound. But, my 
 brethren, the sentiments may be right and good in 
 themselves, but not in those men ; these are the solitary 
 truths which they have happened to infer in a range 
 of matters about which they see and know nothing, and 
 their heresy on other points, which are close upon the 
 acceptance of these truths, is a proof that they do not 
 see what they speak of. A blind man, discoursing 
 upon form and colour, might say some things truly, 
 and some things falsely; but even one mistake 
 which he happened to make, though only one, would 
 be enough to betray that he had no real possession of 
 the truths which he enunciated, though they were 
 many ; for, had he had eyes, he not only would have 
 been correct in many, but would have been mistaken 
 in none. For instance, supposing that he knew that 
 two buildings were the same in height, he might per- 
 haps be led boldly to pronounce that their appearance 
 was the same when we looked at them, not knowing 
 that the greater distance of the one of them from us 
 might reduce it to the eye to half or a fourth of the 
 other. And thus men who are not in the Church, 
 and who have no practical experience of Catholic 
 devotion to the Blessed Mother of God, when they read 
 our prayers and litanies, and observe the strength of 
 
Illuminating Grace. 179 
 
 their language, and the length to which they go, con- 
 fidently assert that she is, in every sense and way, 
 the object of our worship, to the exclusion, or in 
 rivalry, of the Supreme God ; not understanding that 
 He '' in whom we live, and move and are,^' who new- 
 creates us with His grace, and who feeds us with His 
 own Body and Blood, is closer to us and more inti- 
 mately with us than any creature ; that Saints and 
 Angels, and the Blessed Virgin herself, are neces- 
 sarily at a distance from us, compared with Him, and, 
 that whatever language we use towards them, though 
 it be the same as that which we use to our Maker, 
 it only carries with it a sense which is due and 
 proportionate to the object we address. And thus 
 these objectors are detected, as Catholics feel, by their 
 objection itself, as really knowing and seeing nothing 
 of what they dispute about. 
 
 And now I have explained sufSciently what is 
 meant by saying that the natural man holds divine 
 truths merely as an opinion and not as a point of 
 faith ; grace believes, reason does but opine ; grace 
 gives certainty, reason is never decided. Now it is 
 remarkable that this characteristic of reason is so 
 clearly understood by the persons themselves of whom 
 I am speaking, that, in spite of the confidence which 
 they have in their own opinions, whatever that be, 
 still, conscious that they have no grounds for real 
 and fixed conviction about revealed truth, they boldly 
 face the dijSiculty, and consider it a fault to be cer- 
 tain about revealed truth, and a merit to doubt. For 
 instance, ''the Holy Catholic Church " is a point of 
 N 2 
 
i8o Illuminating Grace, 
 
 faith, as being one of the articles of the Apostles' 
 Creed ; yet they think it an impatience to be dissatis- 
 fied with uncertainty as to where the Catholic Church 
 is, and what she says. They are well aware that no 
 man alive of fair abilities would put undoubting faith 
 and reliance in the Church Established, except by 
 doing violence to his reason ; they know that the 
 great mass of its members in no sense believe in it, 
 and that of the remainder no one could say more than 
 that it indirectly comes from God, and that it is 
 safest to remain in it. There is, in these persons, no 
 faith, only a mere opinion, about this article of the 
 Creed. Accordingly they are obliged to say, in mere 
 defence of their own position, that faith is not neces- 
 sary, and a state oF doubt is sufficient, and all that is 
 expected of us. In consequence they attribute it to 
 mere restlessness, when one of their own members 
 seeks to exercise faith in the Holy Catholic Church as 
 a revealed truth, as they themselves profess to exer- 
 cise it in the Holy Trinity or our Lord's resurrection, 
 and when in consequence he hunts about, and asks 
 on all sides, how he is to do so. Nay, they go so far 
 as to impute it to a Catholic as a fault, when he mani- 
 fests a simple trust in the Church and her teaching. 
 It sometimes happens that those who join the Catholic 
 Church from some Protestant communion, are ob- 
 served to change the uncertainty and hesitation of 
 mind on religious subjects, which they showed before 
 their conversion, into a clear and fearless confidence ; 
 they doubted about their old communion, they have 
 no doubt about their new. They have no fears, no 
 
Illuminating Grace. 1 8 1 
 
 anxieties, no difficulties, no scruples. They speak, 
 accordingly, as they feel ; and the world, not under- 
 standing* that this is the effect of the grace which (as 
 we may humbly trust) these happy souls have received, 
 — not understanding that, though it has full experience 
 of the region of the shadow of death in which it lies^ 
 it has none at all of that city, whereof the Lord God 
 and the Lamb is the light, — measuring what Catholics 
 have by what itself has not, the world, I say, cries 
 out, " How forward, how unnatural, how excited, how 
 extravagant;" and it considers that such a change is 
 a change for the worse, and is proved to be a mistake 
 and a fault, because it produces precisely that effect, 
 which it would produce were it a change for the 
 better. 
 
 It tells us that certainty, and confidence, and bold- 
 ness in speech, are unchristian ; is this pleading a 
 cause, or a judgment from facts ? Was it confidence 
 or doubt, was it zeal or coldness, was it keenness or 
 irresolution in action, which distinguished the Martyrs 
 in the first ages of the Church ? Was the religion of 
 Christ propagated by the vehemence of faith and love, 
 or by a philosophical balance of arguments ? Look 
 back at the early Martyrs, my brethren, what were 
 they? why, they were very commonly youths and 
 maidens, soldiers and slaves ; — a set of hot-headed 
 young men, who would have lived to be wise, had 
 they not been obstinately set on dying first ; who tore 
 down imperial manifestos, broke the peace, challenged 
 the judges to dispute, would not rest till they got into 
 the same den with a lion, and who, if chased out of 
 
1 8 2 Ilium inating Grace . 
 
 one city, began preaching in another ! So said the 
 blind world about those who saw the Unseen. Yes ! 
 it was the spiritual sight of God which made them 
 what they were. No one is a Martyr for a conclusion, 
 no one is a Martyr for an opinion ; it is faith that 
 makes Martyrs. He who knows and loves the things 
 of God has no power to deny them ; he may have a 
 natural shrinking from torture and death, but such 
 terror is incommensurate with faith, and as little acts 
 upon it as dust and mire touch the sun's light, or 
 scents or voices could stop a wheel in motion. The 
 Martyrs saw, and how could they but speak what they 
 had seen ? They might shudder at the pain, but they 
 had not the power not to see ; if threats could undo 
 the heavenly truths, then might pain silence their con- 
 fession of them. Oh, my brethen, the world is inquir- 
 ing, and large-minded, and knows many things ; it 
 talks well and profoundly ; but is there one among its 
 Babel of religious opinions which it would be a Martyr 
 for ? Some of them may be true, and some false; let it 
 choose any one of them to die for. Its children talk 
 loudly, they declaim angrily against the doctrine that 
 God is an avenger ; would they die rather than con- 
 fess it ? They talk eloquently of the infinite indul- 
 gence of God ; would they die rather than deny it ? 
 If not, they have not even enthusiasm, they have not 
 even obstinacy, they have not even bigotry, they have 
 not even party spirit to sustain them, — much less 
 have they grace ; they speak upon opinion only, and 
 by an inference. Again, there are those who call on 
 men to trust the EstabKshed Communion, as consider- 
 
Illuminating Grace, 183 
 
 ing it to be a brancli of the Catholic Church ; they 
 may urge that this opinion can be cogently defended, 
 but an opinion it is ; for say, oh, ye who hold it, how 
 many of you would die rather than doubt it ? Do you 
 now hold it sinful to doubt it ? or rather, as I have 
 already said, do you not think it allowable, natural, 
 necessary, becoming, humble-minded and sober- 
 minded to doubt it ? do you not almost think better 
 of a man for doubting it, provided he does not follow 
 his doubts out, and end in disbelieving it ? 
 
 Hence these very same persons, who speak so 
 severely of any one who leaves the communion in 
 which he was born, doubting of it themselves, are in 
 consequence led to view his act as an aifront done to 
 their body, rather than as an evil to himself. They 
 consider it as a personal affront to a party and an 
 injury to a cause, and the affront is greater or less 
 according' to the mischief which it does them in the 
 particular case. It is not his loss but their incon- 
 venience, which is the real measure of his sin. If a 
 person is in any way important or useful to them, 
 they will protest against his act ; if he is troublesome 
 to them, if he goes (as they say) too far, if he is a 
 scandal, or a centre of perverse influence, or in any 
 way disturbs the order and welfare of their body, they 
 are easily reconciled to his proceeding ; [the more 
 courteous of them congratulate him on his honesty, 
 and the more bitter congratulate themselves on being 
 rid of him. Is such the feeling of a mother and of 
 kinsmen towards a son and a brother ? " can a woman 
 forget her babe, that she should not have compassion 
 
184 Illuminating Grace, 
 
 on the son of her womb ? " Did a man leave the 
 Catholic Church, our first feeling-, my brethren, as 
 you know so well, would be one of compassion and 
 fear ; we should consider that thoug-h we were even 
 losing one who was a scandal to us, still that our 
 gain would be nothing in comparison to his loss. We 
 know that a man cannot desert the Church without 
 quenching an inestimable gift of grace ; that he has 
 already received a definite influence and effect upon 
 his soul, such that he cannot dispossess himself of it 
 without the gravest sin ; that, though he may have 
 had many temptations to disbelieve, they are only like 
 temptations to sensuality, harmless without his will- 
 ing co-operation. This is why the Church cannot 
 sanction him in reconsidering the question of her own 
 divine mission; she holds that such inquiries, though 
 the appointed means of entering her pale, are super- 
 seded on his entrance by the gift of a spiritual sight, 
 a gift which consumes doubt so utterly, in any proper 
 sense of the word, that henceforth it is not that he 
 must not, but that he cannot entertain it; cannot 
 entertain it except by his own great culpability ; and 
 therefore must not, because he cannot. This is what 
 we hold, and are conscious of, my brethren ; and, as 
 holding it, we never could feel satisfaction and relief, 
 on first hearing of the defection of a brother, be he 
 ever so unworthy, ever so scandalous ; our first feeling 
 would be sorrow. We are, in fact, often obliged to 
 bear with scandalous members against our will, from 
 charity to them ; but those, whose highest belief is 
 but an inference, who are obliged to go over in their 
 
Ilhcminating Grace, 185 
 
 minds from time to time the reasons and the ground 
 of their creed, lest they should suddenly find them- 
 selves left without their conclusion, these persons not 
 having faith, have no opportunity for charity, and 
 thintf that when a man leaves them who has given 
 them any trouble, it is a double gain — to him, that he 
 is where he is better fitted to be ; to themselves, that 
 they are at peace. 
 
 What I have been saying will account for another 
 thing, which otherwise will surprise us. The world 
 cannot believe that Catholics really hold what they 
 profess to hold ; and supposes that, if they are educated 
 men, they are kept up to their profession by external 
 influence, by superstitious fear, by pride, by interest, 
 or other bad or unworthy motive. Men of tlie world 
 have never believed in their whole life, never have had 
 simple faith in things unseen, never have had more 
 than an opinion about them, that they might be true 
 and might be false, but probably were true, or doubt- 
 less were true ; and in consequence they think an 
 absolute, unhesitating faith in anything unseen to be 
 simply an extravagance, and especially when it is ex- 
 ercised on objects which they do not believe them- 
 selves, or even reject with scorn or abhorrence. And 
 hence they prophesy that the Catholic Church must 
 lose, in proportion as men are directed to the sober 
 examination of their own thoughts and feelings, and 
 to the separation of what is real and true from what is 
 a matter of words and pretence. They cannot under- 
 stand how our faith in the Blessed Sacrament is a 
 genuine living portion of our minds; they think it a 
 
:86 Illuminatmg Grace, 
 
 mere profession which we embrace with no inward 
 assent, but only because we are told that we should be 
 lost unless we profess it; or because, the Catholic 
 Church having in dark ages committed herself to it, 
 we caunot help ourselves, though we would, if we 
 could, and therefore receive it by constraint, from a 
 sense of duty towards our cause, or in a spirit of party. 
 They will not believe but what we would gladly get 
 rid of the doctrine of transubstantiation, as a heavy 
 stone about our necks, if we could. What shocking 
 words to use ! It would be wrong to use them, were 
 they not necessary to make you understand, my 
 brethren, the privilege which you have, and the world 
 has not. Shocking indeed and most profane ! a relief 
 to rid ourselves of the doctrine that Jesus is on our 
 Altars ! as \vell say a relief to rid ourselves of the 
 belief that Jesus is God; to rid ourselves of the belief 
 that there is a God. Yes, that I suppose is the true 
 relief, to believe nothing at all, or, at least, not to be 
 bound to believe anything ; to believe first one thing, 
 then another ; to believe what we please for as long as 
 we please ; that is, not really to believe, but to have an 
 opinion about everything, and let nothing sit close 
 upon us, to commit ourselves to nothing, to keep the 
 unseen world altogether at a distance. But if we are 
 to believe anything at all, if we are to make any one 
 heavenly doctrine our own, if we are to take some 
 propositions or dogmas as true, why it should be a 
 burden to believe what is so gracious, and what so 
 concerns us, rather than what is less intimate and less 
 winning, why we must not believe that God is among 
 
Illuminating Grace, 1S7 
 
 us, if God there is, why we may not believe that God 
 dwells on our Altars as well as that He dwells in the 
 sky, certainly is not so self-evident, but that we have 
 a claim to ask the reasons for it of those, who profess 
 to be so rational and so natural in all their determina- 
 tions. Oh, my brethren, how narrow-minded is this 
 world at bottom after all, in spite of its pretences and 
 in spite of appearances ! Here you see, it cannot 
 by a stretch of imagination conceive that anything 
 exists, of which it has not cognizance in its own 
 heart ; it ^dll not admit into its imagination the mere 
 idea that we have faith, because it does not know what 
 faith is from experience, and it will not admit that 
 there is anything in the mind of man which it does 
 not experience itself, for that would be all one with 
 admitting after all that there is such a thing as a 
 mystery. It must know, it must be the measure of 
 all things ; and so in self-defence it considers us 
 hypocritical, as professing what we cannot believe, 
 lest it should be forced to confess itself blind. ** Be- 
 hold what manner of love the Father had bestowed 
 on us, that we should be named, and should be, the 
 sons of God ; therefore the world knoweth not us, 
 because it knoweth not Him ! '' 
 
 It is for the same reason that inquirers, who are 
 approaching the Church, find it difficult to persuade 
 themselves that their doubts will not continue after 
 they have entered it. This is the reason they assign for 
 not becoming Catholics; for what is to become of them, 
 they ask, if their present doubts continue after their 
 conversion ; they will have nothing to fall back upon. 
 
1 88 Illuminating Grace. 
 
 They do not reflect that their present difficulties are 
 moral ones, not intellectual ; — I mean, that it is not 
 that they really doubt whether the conclusion at which 
 they have arrived, that the Catholic Church comes 
 from God, is true; this they do not doubt in their 
 reason at all, but that they cannot rule their mind to 
 grasp and keep hold of this truth. They recognize it 
 dimly, though certainly, as the sun tlirough mists and 
 clouds, and they forget that it is the office of grace to 
 clear up gloom and haziness, to steady that fitful vision, 
 to perfect reason by faith, and to convert a logical con- 
 clusion into an object of intellectual sight. And thus 
 they will not credit it as possible, when we assure 
 them, of what we have seen in so many instances, 
 that all their trouble will go, when once they have 
 entered the communion of Saints and the atmosphere 
 of grace and light, and that they will be so full of 
 peace and joy as not to know how to thank God 
 enough, and from the very force of their feelings and 
 the necessity of relieving them, they will set about 
 converting others with a sudden zeal which contrasts 
 strangely with their late vacillation. 
 
 Two remarks I must add in conclusion, in explana- 
 tion of what I have been saying. 
 
 First, do not suppose I have been speaking in dis- 
 paragement of human reason : it is the way to faith ; 
 its conclusions are often the very objects of faith. It 
 precedes faith, when souls are converted to the 
 Catholic Church ; and it is the instrument which the 
 Church herself is guided to make use of, when she is 
 called upon to put forth those definitions of doctrine^ 
 
Illuminating Grace, 189 
 
 in which, according to the promise and power of her 
 Lord and Saviour, she is infallible ; but still reason 
 is one thing and faith is another, and reason can as 
 little be made a substitute for faith, as faith can be 
 made a substitute for reason. 
 
 Again, I have been speaking as if a state of nature 
 were utterly destitute of the influences of grace, and 
 as if those who are external to the Church acted 
 simply from nature. I have so spoken for the sake 
 of distinctness, that grace and nature might clearly 
 be contrasted with each other ; but it is not the fact. 
 God gives His grace to all men, and to those who 
 profit by it He gives more grace, and even those who 
 quench it still have the offer. Hence some men act 
 simply from nature ; some act from nature in some 
 respects, not in others; others are yielding themselves 
 to the guidance of the assistances given them ; others, 
 who have faithfully availed themselves of that guidance, 
 and are sincerely in search of the Church and her gifts, 
 may even already be in a state of justification. Hence 
 it is impossible to apply what has been said above to 
 individuals, whose hearts are a secret with God. 
 Many, I repeat, are under the influence partly of 
 reason and partly of faith, believe some things firmly, 
 and have but an opinion on others. Many are in con- 
 flict with themselves, and are advancing to a crisis, 
 after which they embrace or recede from the truth. 
 Many are using the assistances of grace so well, that 
 they are in the way to receive its permanent indwell- 
 ing in their hearts. Many, we may trust, are enjoying 
 that permanent light, and are being securely brought 
 
190 Ilhimmating Grace, 
 
 forward into the Churcli; some, alas! may have 
 received it, and, as not advancing" towards the Holy 
 House in which it is stored, are losing it, and, though 
 they know it not, are living only by the recollections 
 of what was once present within them. These are 
 secret things with God; but the great and general 
 truths remain, that nature cannot see God, and that 
 grace is the sole means of seeing Him ; and that, 
 while it enables us to do so, it also brings us into His 
 Church, and is never given us for our illumination, 
 but it is also given to make us Catholics. 
 
 Oh, my dear brethren, what joy and what thankful- 
 ness should be ours, that God has brought us into the 
 Church of His Son ! What gift is equal to it in the 
 whole world in its preciousness and in its rarity ? In 
 this country in particular, where heresy ranges far 
 and wide, where uncultivated nature has so undisputed 
 a field all her own, where grace is given to such 
 numbers only to be profaned and quenched, where 
 baptisms only remain in their impress and character, 
 and faith is ridiculed for its very firmness, for us to 
 find ourselves here in the region of light, in the home 
 of peace, in the presence of Saints, to find ourselves 
 where we can use every faculty of the mind and 
 affection of the heart in its perfection because in its 
 appointed place and office, to find ourselves in the 
 possession of certainty, consistency, stability, on the 
 highest and holiest subjects of human thought, to 
 have hope here and heaven hereafter, to be on the 
 Mount with Christ, while the poor world is guessing 
 and quarrelling at its foot, who among us shall not 
 
I Ihiminating Grace. 191 
 
 wonder at his ov/n blessedness, who shall not be awe- 
 struck at the inscrutable grace of God, which has 
 brought him, not others, where he stands ? As the 
 Apostle says, " Through our Lord Jesus Christ we 
 have through faith access into this grace wherein we 
 stand, and glory in the hope of the glory of the sons 
 of God. And hope confouudeth not; because the 
 love of God is poured out into our hearts by the 
 Holy Ghost who is given to us/^ And, as St. John 
 says, still more exactly to our purpose, ^^ Ye have an 
 unction from the Holy One /' — your eyes are anointed 
 by Him who put clay on the eyes of the blind man ; 
 " from Him have you an unction, and ye know,^* not 
 conjecture, or suppose, or opine, but "know,'^ see, "all 
 things." " So let the unction which you have received 
 of Him abide in you. Nor need ye that any one teach 
 you, but as His unction teaches you of all things, and is 
 true and no lie, and hath taught you, so abide in 
 Him." You can abide in nothing else; opinions 
 change, conclusions are feeble, inquiries run their 
 course, reason stops short, but faith alone reaches to 
 the end, faith only endures. Faith and prayer alone 
 will endure in that last dark hour, when Satan urges 
 all his powers and resources against the sinking soul. 
 What will it avail ' us then, to have devised some 
 
 1 Te maris et terrse, numeroque carentis arense 
 
 Mensorem cohibeut, Archyta, 
 Pulveris exigui prope littus parva Matinum 
 
 Munera ; nee quicquam tibi prodest 
 Aerios tentasse clomos, animoque rotundura 
 
 Percurrisse polum, morituro ! 
 
192 Illuminating Grace, 
 
 subtle argument, or to have led some brilliant attack, 
 or to have mapped out the field of history, or to have 
 numbered and sorted the weapons of controversy, and 
 to have the homage of friends and the respect of the 
 world for our successes, — what will it avail to have 
 had a position, to have followed out a work, to have 
 re-animated an idea, to have made a cause to triumph, 
 if after all we have not the light of faith to guide us 
 on from this world to the next ? Oh, how fain shall 
 we be in that day to exchange our place with the 
 humblest, and dullest, and most ignorant of the sons 
 of men, rather than to stand before the judgment- 
 seat in the lot of him who has received great gifts 
 from God, and used them for self and for man, who 
 has shut his eyes, who has trifled with truth, who has 
 repressed his misgivings, who has been led on by 
 God's grace, but stopped short of its scope, who has 
 neared the land of promise, yet not gone forward to 
 take possession of it ! 
 
DISCOURSE X. 
 
 FAITH AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 
 
 TTTHEN we consider the beauty, the majesty, the 
 completeness^ the resources, the consolations, 
 of the Catholic Religion, it may strike us with won- 
 der, my brethren, that it does not convert the multi- 
 tude ol' those who come in its way. Perhaps you have 
 felt this surprise yourselves ; especially those of you 
 who have been recently converted, and can compare 
 it, from experience, with those religions which the 
 millions of this country choose instead of it. You 
 know, from experience, how barren, unmeaning, and 
 baseless those religions are; what poor attractions 
 they have, and how little they have to say for them- 
 selves. Multitudes, indeed, are of no religion at all ; 
 and you may not be surprised that those who cannot 
 even bear the thought of God, should not feel drawn 
 to His Church ; numbers, too, hear very little about 
 Catholicism, or a great deal of abuse and calumny 
 against it, and you may not be surprised that they do 
 not all at once become Catholics ; but what may fairly 
 surprise those who enjoy the fulness of Catholic bless- 
 ings is, that those who see the Church ever so dis- 
 tantly, who see even gleams or the faint lustre of her 
 
 o 
 
1 94 Faith a^td Private Judgment, 
 
 majesty, nevertheless should not be so fa attracted 
 by what they see as to seek to see more, — should not 
 at least put themselves in the way to be led on to the 
 Truth, which of course is not ordinarily recognized in 
 its divine authority except by degrees. Moses, when 
 he saw the burning bush, turned aside to see " that 
 great sight ;'' Nathanael, though he thought no good 
 could come out of Nazareth, at least followed Philip to 
 Christ, when Philip said to him, " Come and see ;^' 
 but the multitudes about us see and hear, in some 
 measure, surely, — many in ample measure, — and yet 
 are not persuaded thereby to see and hear more, are 
 not moved to act upon their knowledge. Seeing they 
 see not, and hearing they hear not ; they are con- 
 tented to remain as they are : they are not drawn to 
 inquire, or at least not drawn on to embrace. 
 
 Many explanations may be given of this difficulty ; 
 I will proceed to suggest to you one, which will sound 
 like a truism, but yet has a meaning in it. Men do 
 not become Catholics, because they have not faith. 
 Now you may ask me, how this is saying more than 
 that men do not believe the Catholic Church because 
 they do not believe it ; which is saying nothing at all. 
 Our Lord, for instance, says, " He who cometh to Me 
 shall not hunger, and he who believeth in Me shall 
 never thirst;" — to believe then and to come are the 
 same thing. If they had faith, of course they would 
 join the Church, for the very meaning, the very 
 exercise of faith, is joining the Church. But I mean 
 something more than this : faith is a state of mind, it 
 is a particular mode of thinking and acting, which is 
 
Faith and Private Judgment, 195 
 
 exercised, always indeed towards God, but in very 
 various ways. Now I mean to say, that the multi- 
 tude of men in this country have not this habit or 
 character of mind. We could conceive, for instance, 
 their believing- in their own religions, even if they did 
 not believe in the Church ; this would be faith, though 
 a faith improperly directed ; but they do not believe 
 even their own religions; they do not believe in any- 
 thing at all. It is a definite defect in their minds : 
 as we might say that a person had not the virtue of 
 meekness, or of liberality, or of prudence, quite in- 
 dependently of this or that exercise of the virtue, so 
 there is such a virtue as faith, and there is such a 
 defect as the absence of it. Now I mean to say that 
 the great mass of men in this country have not this 
 particular virtue called faith, have not this virtue at 
 all. As a man might be without eyes or without 
 hands, so they are without faith ; it is a distinct want 
 or fault in their soul ; and what 1 say is, that since 
 they have not this faculty of believing, no wonder they 
 do not embrace that, which cannot really be embraced 
 without it. They do not believe any teaching at all 
 in any true sense ; and therefore they do not believe 
 the Church in particular. 
 
 Now, in the first place, what is faith? it is assenting 
 to a doctrine as true, which we do not see, which we 
 cannot prove, because God says it is true, who cannot 
 lie. And further than this, since God says it is true, 
 not with His own voice, but by the voice of His mes- 
 sengers, it is assenting to what man says, not simply 
 viewed as a man, but to what he is commissioned to 
 o 2 
 
1 g6 Faith and Private judgment. 
 
 declare, as a messenger, prophet, or ambassador from 
 God. In the ordinary course of this world we account 
 thing's true either because we see them, or because 
 that we can perceive that they follow and are 
 deducible from what we do see ; that is, we gain 
 truth by sight or by reason, not by faith. You will 
 saj^ indeed, that we accept a number of things which 
 we cannot prove or see, on the word of others ; 
 certainly ; but then we accept what they say only as 
 the word of man ; and we have not commonly that 
 absolute and unreserved confidence in them, which 
 nothing can shake. We know that man is open to 
 mistake, and we are always glad to find some confir- 
 mation of what he says, from other quarters, in any 
 important matter ; or we receive his information with 
 negligence and unconcern, as something of little con- 
 sequence, as a matter of opinion ; or, if we act upon it, 
 it is as a matter of prudence, thinking it best and safest 
 to do so. We take his word for what it is worth, and 
 we use it either according to our necessity, or its 
 probability. We keep the decision in our own hands, 
 and reserve to ourselves the right of re-opening the 
 question whenever we please. This is very different 
 from divine faith ; he who believes that God is true, 
 and that this is His word, which He has committed 
 to man, has no doubt at all. He is as certain that 
 the doctrine taught is true, as that God is true; 
 and he is certain, because God is true, because 
 God has spoken, not because he sees its truth or 
 can prove its truth. That is, faith has two pecu- 
 liarities; — it is most certain, decided, positive, im- 
 
Faith and Private Judgment, 197 
 
 moveable in its assent, and it gives this assent not 
 because it sees with eye, or sees with the reason, but 
 because it receives the tidings from one who comes 
 from God. 
 
 This is what faith was in the time of the Apostles, 
 as no one can deny ; and what it was then, it must be 
 now, else it ceases to be the same thing. I say, it 
 certainly was this in the Apostles* time, for you know 
 they preached to the world that Christ was the Son 
 of God, that He was born of a Virgin, that He had 
 ascended on high, that He would come again to judge 
 ail, the living and the dead. Could the world see all 
 this ? could it prove it ? how then were men to re- 
 ceive it ? why did so many embrace it ? on the word 
 of the Apostles, who were, as their powers showed, 
 messeno-ers from God. Men were told to submit 
 their reason to a living authority. Moreover, what- 
 ever an Apostle said, his converts were bound to 
 believe ; when they entered the Church, they entered 
 it in order to learn. The Church was their teacher ; 
 they did not come to argue, to examine, to pick and 
 choose, but to accept whatever was put before them. 
 No one doubts, no one can doubt this, of those primi- 
 tive times. A Christian was bound to take without 
 doubting all that the Apostles declared to be re- 
 vealed ; if the Apostles spoke, he had to yield an 
 internal assent of his mind; it would not be 
 enough to keep silence, it would not be enough 
 not to oppose ; it was not allowable to credit in a 
 measure; it was not allowable to doubt. No; if a 
 convert had his own private thoughts of what was 
 
198 Faith and Private ytidg77ient. 
 
 said, and only kept them to himself, if he made some 
 secret opposition to the teaching, if he waited for 
 farther proof before he believed it, this would be a proof 
 that he did not think the Apostles were sent from 
 God to reveal His will ; it w^ould be a proof that he 
 did not in any true sense believe at all. Immediate, 
 implicit submission of the mind was, in the lifetime 
 of the Apostles, the only, the necessary token of 
 faith ; then there was no room whatever for what is 
 now called private judgment. No one could say, " I 
 will choose my religion for myself, I will believe this, 
 I will not believe that; I will pledge myself to 
 nothing; I will believe just as long as I please and 
 no longer; what I believe to-day I will reject to- 
 morrow, if I choose. I will believe what the Apostles 
 have as yet said, but I will not believe what they 
 shall say in time to come." No ; either the Apostles 
 were from God, or they were not; if they were, 
 everything that they preached was to be believed by 
 their hearers ; if they were not, there was nothing for 
 their hearers to believe. To believe a little, to believe 
 more or less, was impossible ; it contradicted the very 
 notion of believing : if one part was to be believed, 
 every part was to be believed ; it was an absurdity 
 to believe one thing and not another ; for the word 
 of the Apostles, which made the one true, made the 
 other true too ; they were nothing in themselves, they 
 were all things, they were an infallible authority, as 
 coming from God. The world had either to become 
 Christian, or to let it alone ; there was no room for 
 private tastes and fancies, no room for private judgment. 
 
Faith and Private yudgment, 1 99 
 
 Now surely this is quite clear from the nature of the 
 ease ; but it is also clear from the words of Scripture. 
 " We give thanks to God/' says St. Paul, " without 
 ceasing", because when 3'e had received from us the 
 word of li earing, which is of God, ye received it, not 
 as the word of men, but (as it is indeed) the word of 
 God.'' Here you see St. Paul expresses what I have 
 said above ; that the word comes from God, that it is 
 spoken by men, that it must be received, not as man's 
 word, but as God's word. So in another place he 
 says, " He who despiseth these things, despiseth not 
 man J but God, who hath also given in us His Holy 
 Spirit." Our Saviour had made a like declaration 
 already, '^ He that heareth you, heareth Me ; and he 
 that despiseth you, despiseth Me; and he that de- 
 spiseth Me, despiseth Him that sent Me." Accord- 
 ingly St. Peter on the day of Pentecost said, " Men 
 of Israel, hear these words, God hath raised up this 
 Jesus, whereof we are witnesses. Let all the house of 
 Israel know most certainly that God hath made this 
 Jesus, whom we have crucified, both Lord and Christ." 
 At another time he said, " We ought to obey God, 
 rather than man ; we are wiMesses of these things, 
 and so is the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to 
 all who obey Him." And again, " He commanded 
 us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is He 
 (Jesus) who hath been appointed by God to be the 
 Judge of the living and of the dead." And you know 
 that the continual declaration of the first preachers 
 was, '' Believe, and thou shalt be saved : " they do 
 not say, " prove our doctrine by your own reason," 
 
200 Faith aftd Private yudgment, 
 
 nor " wait till you see before you believe ; " but, 
 '^ believe without seeing and without proving", because 
 our word is not our own, but God^s word/"* Men 
 might indeed use their reason in inquiring into the 
 pretensions of the Apostles ; they might inquire 
 whether or not they did miracles ; they might inquire 
 whether they were predicted in the Old Testament as 
 coming from God ; but when they had ascertained 
 this fairly in whatever way, they were to take all the 
 Apostles said for granted without proof; they were to 
 exercise their faith, they were to be saved by hearing. 
 Hence, as you perhaps observed, St. Paul significantly 
 calls the revealed doctrine " the word of hearing,^^ in 
 the passage I quoted ; men came to hear, to accept, 
 to obey, not to criticize what was said ; and in accord- 
 ance with this he asks elsewhere, " How shall they 
 believe Him, whom they have not heard ? and how 
 shall they hear without a preacher ? Faith cometh 
 by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.^' 
 
 Now, my dear brethren, consider, are not these two 
 states or acts of mind quite distinct from each other ; 
 — to believe simply what a living authority tells you ; 
 and to take a book, such as Scripture, and to use it 
 as you please, to master it, that is, to make yourself 
 the master of it, to interpret it for yourself, and to 
 admit just what you choose to see in it, and nothing 
 more? Are not these two procedures distinct in 
 this, that in the former you submit, in the latter you 
 judge ? At this moment I am not asking you which 
 is the better, I am not asking whether this or that is 
 practicable now, but are they not two ways of taking 
 
Faith and Private Jiidgnient, 201 
 
 up a doctrine, and not one ? is not submission quite 
 contrary to judging? Now, is it not certain that 
 faith in the time of the Apostles consisted in submit- 
 ting" ? and is it not certain that it did not consist in 
 judging for one's self? It is in vain to say that the 
 man who judges from the Apostles' writings, does 
 submit to those writings in the first instance, and 
 therefore has faith in them ; else why should he refer 
 to them at all ? There is, I repeat, an essential dif- 
 ference between the act of submitting to a living 
 oracle, and to his book ; in the former case there is no 
 appeal from the speaker, in the latter the final deci- 
 sion remains with the reader. Consider how different 
 is the confidence with which you report another's 
 words in his presence and in his absence. If he be 
 absent, you boldly say that he holds so and so, or 
 said so and so ; but let him come into the room in the 
 midst of the conversation, and your tone is imme- 
 diately changed. It is then, " I tliink I have heard you 
 say something lihe this, or what I tooh to be this ; " 
 or you modify considerably the statement or the fact 
 to which you originally pledged him, dropping one- 
 half of it for safety-sake, or retrenching the most 
 startling portions of it ; and then after all you wait 
 with some anxiety to see whether he will accept any 
 portion of it at all. The same sort of process takes 
 place in the case of the written document of a person 
 now dead. I can fancy a man magisterially expound- 
 ing St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians or to the Ephe- 
 sians, who would be better content with the writer*s 
 absence than his sudden re-appearance among us; 
 
202 Faith and Private yudg77ient. 
 
 lest the Apostle should take his own meaning oat of 
 his commentator's hands and explain it for himself. 
 In a word, though he says he has faith in St. Paul's 
 writings, he confessedly has no faith in St. Paul ; and 
 though he may speak much about truth as found in 
 Scripture^ he has no wish at all to have been one of 
 the Christians who are found there. 
 
 I think I may assume that this virtue, which was 
 exercised by the first Christians, is not known at all 
 among Protestants now ; or at least if there are 
 instances of it, it is exercised towards those, I mean 
 their teachers and divines, who expressly disclaim 
 that they are fit objects of it, and who exhort their 
 people to judge for themselves. Protestants, generally 
 speaking, have not faith, in the primitive meaning of 
 that word ; this is clear from what I have been saying, 
 and here is a confirmation of it. If men believed now, 
 as they did in the times of the Apostles, they could 
 not doubt nor change. No one can doubt whether a 
 word spoken by God is to be believed ; of course it is ; 
 whereas any one, who is modest and humble, may 
 easily be brought to doubt of his own inferences and 
 deductions. Since men now-a-days deduce from Scrip- 
 ture, instead of believing a teacher, you may expect 
 to see them waver about ; they will feel the force of 
 their own deductions more strongly at one time than 
 at another, they will change their minds about them, 
 or perhaps deny them altogether ; whereas this cannot 
 be, w^hile a man has faith, that is, belief, that what a 
 preacher says to him comes from God. This is what 
 St. Paul especially insists on, telling us that Apostles, 
 
Faith and Private yudgment, 203 
 
 prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, are given 
 us that, " we may all attain to unity of faith/' and, on 
 the contrary, in order " that we be not as children 
 tossed to and fro, and carried about by every gale of 
 doctrine/' Now, in matter of fact, do not men in this 
 day change about in their religious opinions without 
 any limit ? Is not this, then, a proof that they have 
 not that faith which the Apostles demanded of their 
 converts ? If they had faith, they would not change. 
 Once believe that God has spoken, and you are sure 
 He cannot unsay what He has already said ; He 
 cannot deceive ; He cannot change ; you have received 
 it once for all ; you will believe it ever. 
 
 Such is the only rational, consistent account of faith; 
 but so far are Protestants from professing it, that they 
 laugh at the very notion of it. They laugh at the 
 notion itself of men pinning their faith (as they 
 express themselves) upon Pope or Council; they think 
 it simply superstitious and narrow-minded, to profess 
 to believe just what the Church believes, and to assent 
 to whatever she shall say in time to come on matters 
 of doctrine. That is, they laugh at the bare notion of 
 doing what Christians undeniably did in the time of 
 the Apostles. Observe, they do not merely ask 
 whether the Catholic Church has a claim to teach, has 
 authority, has the gifts ;— this is a reasonable question ; 
 — no, they think that the very state of mind, which 
 such a claim involves in those who admit it, namely, 
 the disposition to accept without reserve or question, 
 that this is slavish. They call it priestcraft to insist 
 on this surrender of the reason, and superstition to 
 
204 Faith and Private Judgment. 
 
 make it. That is, they quarrel with the very state of 
 roind which all Christians had in the age of the 
 Apostles ; nor is there any doubt, (who will deny it ?) 
 that those who thus boast of not being led blindfold, 
 of judging for themselves, of believing just as much 
 and just as little as they plense, of hating dictation, 
 and so forth, would have found it an extreme difficulty 
 to hang on the lips of the Apostles, had they lived at 
 their date, or rather would have simply resisted the 
 sacrifice of their own liberty of thought, would have 
 thought life eternal too dearly purchased at such a 
 price, and would have died in their unbelief. And they 
 would have defended themselves on the plea that it was 
 absurd and childish to ask them to believe without 
 proof, to bid them give up their education, and their 
 intelligence, and their science, and, in spite of all those 
 difficulties which reason and sense find in the Christian 
 doctrine, in spite of its mysteriousness, its obscurity, 
 its strangeness, its unaeceptableness, its severity, to 
 require them to surrender themselves to the teaching 
 of a few unlettered Galilseans, or a learned indeed but 
 fanatical Pharisee. This is what they would have said 
 then ; and if so, is it wonderful they do not become 
 Catholics now ? The simple account of their remain- 
 ing as they are, is, that they lack one thing, — they 
 have not faith ; it is a state of mind, it is a virtue, 
 which they do not recognize to be praiseworthy, which 
 they do not aim at possessing. 
 
 What they feel now, my brethren, is just what both 
 Jew and Greek felt before them in the time of the 
 Apostles, and what the natural man has felt ever since. 
 
Faith and Private yudgment, 205 
 
 The great and wise men of the day looked down upon 
 faith, then as now, as if it were unworthy the dignity 
 of human nature_, " See your vocation, brethren, that 
 there are not,"*' among you " many wise according to 
 the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble ; but the 
 foolish things of the world hath God chosen to con- 
 found the strong, and the mean things of the world, and 
 the things that are contemptible, hath God chosen, 
 and things that are not, that He might destroy the 
 things that are, that no flesh might glory in His 
 sight/' Hence the same Apostle speaks of '^ the 
 foolishness of preaching." Similar to this is what 
 our Lord had said in His prayer to the Father ; 
 *' I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, 
 because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and 
 prudent, and hast revealed them unto little ones/' 
 Now is it not plain that men of this day have just 
 inherited the feelings and traditions of these falsely 
 wise and fatally prudent persons in our Lord's day ? 
 They have the same obstruction in their hearts 
 to entering the Catholic Church, which Pharisees and 
 Sophists had before them ; it goes against them to 
 believe her doctrine, not so much for want of evidence 
 that she is from God, as because, if so, they shall have 
 to submit their minds to living men, who have not 
 their own cultivation or depth of intellect, and because 
 they must receive a number of doctrines, whether they 
 will or no, which are strange to their imaginatioa and 
 difficult to their reason. The very characteristic of 
 the Catholic teaching and of the Catholic teacher is 
 to them a preliminary objection to their becoming 
 
2o6 Faith and P7^zvate Judg7nent, 
 
 Catholics, so great, as to throw into the shade any 
 argument however strong, which is producible in 
 behalf of the mission of those teachers and the origin 
 of that teaching. In short, they have not faith. 
 
 They have not in them the principle of faith ; and 
 I repeat, it is nothing to the pui-pose to urge that at 
 least they firmly believe Scripture to be the word of 
 God. In truth, it is much to be feared that their 
 acceptance of Scripture itself is nothing better than a 
 prejudice or inveterate feeling impressed on them when 
 they were children, A proof of it is this ; that, while 
 they profess to be so shocked at Catholic miracles, and 
 are not slow to call them " lying wonders," they have 
 no difficulty at all about Scripture narratives, which 
 are quite as difficult to the reason as any miracles 
 recorded in the history of the Saints. I have heard 
 on the contrary of Catholics who have been startled 
 at first reading in Scripture the narrative of the ark 
 in the deluge, of the tower of Babel, of Balaam and 
 Balac, of the Israelites' flight from Egypt and entrance 
 into the promised land, and of Esau's and Saul's 
 rejection ; which the bulk of Protestants receive with- 
 out any effort of mind. How, then, do these Catholics 
 accept them ? by faith. They say, " God is true, and 
 every man a liar." How come Protestants so easily to 
 receive them ? by faith ? Nay, I conceive that in most 
 cases there is no submission of the reason at all; simply 
 they are so familiar with the passages in question, 
 that the narrative presents no difficulties to their 
 imagination ; they have nothing to overcome. If, 
 however, they are led to contemplate these passages 
 
Faith and P^Hvate Jtcdgment, 207 
 
 in themselves, and to try them in the balance of pro- 
 bability, and to begin to question about them, as will 
 happen when their intellect is cultivated, then there 
 is nothing" to bring them back to their former habitual 
 or mechanical belief; they know nothing of submit- 
 ting to authority, that is, they know nothing of faith ; 
 for they have no authority to submit to. They either 
 remain in a state of doubt without any great trouble 
 of mind, or they go on to ripen into utter disbelief on 
 the subjects in question, though they may say no- 
 thing about it. Neither before they doubt, nor when 
 they doubt, is there any token of the presence in them 
 of a power subjecting reason to the word of God. No; 
 what looks like faith, is a mere hereditary persuasion, 
 not a personal principle : it is a habit which they 
 have learned in the nursery, which has never changed 
 into anything higher, and which is scattered and dis- 
 appears, like a mist, before the light, such as it is, of 
 reason. If, however, there are Protestants, who are 
 not in one or other of these two states, either of 
 credulity or of doubt, but who firmly believe in spite 
 of all difficulties, they certainly have some claim to 
 be considered under the influence of faith ; but there 
 is nothing to show that such persons, where they are 
 found, are not in the way to become Catholics, and 
 perhaps they are already called so by their friends, 
 showing in their own examples the logical, indisput- 
 able connexion which exists between possessing faith 
 and joining the Church. 
 
 If, then, faith be now the same faculty of mind, the 
 same sort of habit or act, which it was in the days of 
 
2o8 Faith and Private Judgment, 
 
 the Apostles, I have made good what I set about show- 
 ing. But it must be the same ; it cannot mean two 
 things ; the word cannot have changed its meaning. 
 Either say that faith is not necessary now at all, or 
 take it to be what the Apostles meant by it^ but do 
 not say that you have it, and then show me something 
 quite diflPerent, which you have put in the place of it. 
 In the Apostles' days the peculiarity of faith was sub- 
 mission to a living authority ; this is what made it so 
 distinctive ; this is what made it an act of submission 
 at all ; this is what destioyed private judgment in mat- 
 ters of religion. If you will not look out for a living 
 authority, and will bargain for private judgment, then 
 say at once that you have not Apostolic faith. And in 
 fact you have it not ; the bulk of this nation has it 
 not ; confess you have it not ; and then confess that 
 this is the reason why you are not Catholics. You are 
 not Catholics because you have not faith. Why do not 
 blind men see the sun ? because they have no eyes ; 
 in like manner it is vain to discourse upon the beauty, 
 the sanctity, the sublimity of the Catholic doctrine 
 and worship, where men have no faith to accept them 
 as divine. They may confess their beauty, sublimity, 
 and sanctity, without believing them ; they may 
 acknowledge that the Catholic religion is noble and 
 majestic ; they may be struck with its wisdom, they 
 may admire its adaptation to human nature, they may 
 be penetrated by its tender and winning bearing, they 
 may be awed by its consistency. But to commit them- 
 selves to it, that is another matter ; to choose it for 
 their portion, to say with the favoured Moabitess, 
 
Faith and Private Judgment, 209 
 
 '' Whithersoever thou shalt go, I will go ; and where 
 thou shalt dwell, I will dwell ; thy people shall be my 
 people, and thy God my God/' this is the language of 
 faith. A man may revere, a man may extol, who has 
 no tendency whatever to obey, no notion whatever of 
 professing. And this often happens in fact : men 
 are respectful to the Catholic religion ; they acknow- 
 ledge its services to mankind, they encourage it and 
 its professors ; they like to know them, they are inte- 
 rested in hearing of their movements, but they are not, 
 and never will be Catholics. They will die, as they 
 have lived, out of the Church, because they have not 
 possessed themselves of that faculty by which the 
 Church is to be approached. Catholics who have not 
 studied them or human nature, will wonder they re- 
 main where they are ; nay, they themselves, alas for 
 them ! will sometimes lament they cannot become 
 Catholics. They will feel so intimately the blessed- 
 ness of being a Catholic, that they will cry out, " Oh, 
 what would I give to be a Catholic ! oh, that I could 
 believe what I admire ! but I do not, and I can no 
 more believe merely because I wish to do so, than I 
 can leap over a mountain. I should be much happier 
 were I a Catholic ; but I am not ; it is no use deceiving 
 myself ; I am what I am ; I revere, I cannot accept." 
 Oh, deplorable state ! deplorable because it is utterly 
 and absolutely their own fault, and because such great 
 stress is laid in Scripture, as they know, on the neces- 
 sity of faith for salvation. Faith is there made the 
 foundation and commencement of all acceptable obe- 
 dience. It is described as the '' argument '' or '' proof 
 
 p 
 
2 1 o Faith and Private Judgment, 
 
 of things not seen;"" by faith men have understood 
 that God is, that He made the world, that He is a 
 re warder of those who seek Him, that the flood was 
 coming", that their Saviour was to be born. " With- 
 out faith it is impossible to please God/^ *'by faith 
 we stand ;" " by faith we walk ;" " by faith we over- 
 come the world/^ When our Lord gave to the Apos- 
 tles their commission to preach all over the world, He 
 continued, " He that believeth and is baptized, shall 
 be saved ; but he that believeth not, shall be con- 
 demned/' And He declared to Nicodemus, "He 
 that believeth in the Son, is not judged ; but he that 
 doth not believe is already judged, because he believeth 
 not in the Name of the Only -begotten Son of God/' 
 He said to the Pharisees, '' If you believe not that I 
 am He, ye shall die in your sins." To the Jews, 
 " Ye believe not, because ye are not of My sheep.'' 
 And you may recollect that before His miracles. He 
 commonly demands faith of the supplicant ; " All 
 things are possible," He says, '^ to him that believeth ;" 
 and we find in one place " He could not do any miracle," 
 on account of the unbelief of the inhabitants. 
 
 Has faith changed its meaning, or is it less necessary 
 now ? Is it not still what it was in the Apostles' 
 day, the very characteristic of Christianity, the special 
 instrument of renovation, the first disposition for 
 justification, one out of the three theological virtues ? 
 God might have renewed us by other means, by sight, 
 by reason, by love, but He has chosen to " purify our 
 hearts by faith ;" it has been His will to select an 
 instrument which the world despises, but which is of 
 
Faith and Private Jtidgment, 2 1 1 
 
 immense power. He preferred it, in His infmite 
 wisdom, to every other ; and if men have it not, they 
 have not the very element and rudiment, out of which 
 are formed, on which are built, the Saints and Ser- 
 vants of God. And they have it not, they are living, 
 they are dying", without the hopes, without the aids 
 of the Gospel, because, in spite of so much that is 
 good in them, in spite of their sense of duty, their 
 tenderness of conscience on many points, their bene- 
 volence, their uprightness, their generosity, they are 
 under the dominion (I must say it) of a proud fiend ; 
 they have this stout spirit within them, they will 
 be their own masters in matters of thought, about 
 which they know so little ; they consider their own 
 reason better than any one^s else ; they will not admit 
 that any one comes from God who contradicts theii 
 own view of truth. What ! is none their equal in 
 wisdom anywhere ? is there none other whose word is 
 to be taken on religion ? is there none to wrest from 
 them their ultimate appeal to themselves ? Have they 
 in no possible way the occasion or opportunity of faith ? 
 Is it a virtue, which in consequence of their transcendent 
 sagacity, their prerogative of omniscience, they must 
 despair of exercising? If the pretensions of the 
 Catholic Church do not satisfy them, let them go 
 somewhere else, if they can. If they are so fastidious 
 that they cannot trust her as the oracle of God, let 
 them find anothor more certainly from Him than the 
 House of His own institution, which has ever been 
 called by His Name, has ever maintained the same 
 claims, has ever taught one substance of doctrine, 
 p 2 
 
212 Faith and Private Judgment, 
 
 and has triumphed over those who preached any other. 
 Since Apostolic faith was reliance on man's word as 
 being God^sword, since what faith was in the beginning 
 such it is now, since faith is necessary for salvation, 
 let them attempt to exercise it towards another, if 
 they will not accept the Bride of the Lamb. Let 
 them^ if they can, put faith in some of those religions 
 w^hich have lasted a whole two or three centuries in a 
 corner of the earth. Let them stake their eternal 
 prospects on kings and nobles and parliaments and 
 soldiery, let them take some mere fiction of the law, 
 or abortion of the schools, or idol of a populace, or 
 upstart of a crisis, or oracle of lecture-rooms, as the 
 prophet of God. Alas ! they are hardly bestead if 
 they must possess a virtue, which they have no means 
 of exercising, — if they must make an act of faith, 
 they know not on whom, and know not why ! 
 
 What thanks ought we to render to Almighty God, 
 my dear brethren, that He has made us what we are ! 
 It is a matter of grace. There are, to be sure, many 
 cogent arguments to lead one to join the Catholic 
 Church, but they do not force the will. We may 
 know them, and not be moved to act upon them. We 
 may be convinced without being persuaded. The two 
 things are quite distinct from each other, seeing you 
 ought to believe, and believing; reason, if left to 
 itself, will bring you to the conclusion that you have 
 sufficient grounds for believing, but belief is the gift 
 of grace. You are then what you are, not from any 
 excellence or merit of your own, but by the grace of 
 God who has chosen you to believe. You might have 
 
Faith and Private Judgment, 2 1 3 
 
 been as the barbarian of Africa, or the freethinker of 
 Europe, with grace sufficient to condemn you, because 
 it had not furthered your salvation. You might have 
 had strong inspirations of grace and have resisted 
 them, and then additional grace might not have been 
 given to overcome your resistance. God gives not the 
 same measure of grace to all. Has He not visited you 
 with over abundant grace ? and was it not necessary 
 for your hard hearts to receive more than other people? 
 Praise and bless Him continually for the benefit ; do 
 not forget, as time goes on, that it is of grace ; do not 
 pride yourselves upon it ; pray ever not to lose it; and 
 do your best to make others partakers of it. 
 
 And you, my brethren, also, if such be present, who 
 are not as yet Catholics, but who by your coming 
 hither seem to show your interest in our teaching, and 
 3^our wish to know more about it, you too remember, 
 that though you may not yet have faith in the Church, 
 still God has brought you into the way of obtaining 
 it. You are under the influence of His grace ; He has 
 brought you a step on your journey ; He wishes to 
 bring you farther, He wishes to bestow on you the 
 fulness of His blessings, and to make you Catholics. 
 You are still in your sins ; probably you are laden 
 with tUe guilt of many years, the accumulated guilt of 
 many a deep mortal offence, which no contrition has 
 washed away, and to which no Sacrament has been 
 applied. You at present are troubled with an uneasy 
 conscience, a dissatisfied reason, an unclean heart, and 
 a divided will ; you need to be converted. Yet now the 
 ' first suggestions of grace are working in your souls, 
 
2 1 4 Faith and Private ytidgment. 
 
 and are to issue in pardon for the past and sanctity for 
 the future. God is moving" you to acts of faith, hope, 
 love, hatred of sin, repentance ; do not disappoint 
 Him, do not thwart Him, concur with Him, obey 
 Him. You look up, and you see, as it were, a great 
 mountain to be scaled ; you say, " How can I possibly 
 find a path over these giant obstacles, which I find in 
 the way of my becoming Catholic ? I do not compre- 
 hend this doctrine, and I am pained at that ; a third 
 seems impossible ; I never can be familiar with one 
 practice, I am afraid of another ; it is one maze and 
 discomfort to me, and I am led to sink down in de- 
 spair/'' Say not so, my dear brethren, look up in hope, 
 trust in Him who calls you forward. " Who art thou, 
 O great mountain, before Zorobabel ? but a plain." 
 He will lead you forward step by step, as He has led 
 forward many a one before j^ou. He will make the 
 crooked straight and the rough plain. He will turn 
 J:he streams, and dry up the rivers, which lie in your 
 path. " He shall strengthen your feet like harts' feet, 
 and set you up on high places. He shall widen your 
 steps under you, and your tread shall not be weak- 
 ened." " There is no God like the God of the 
 righteous ; He that mounts the heaven is thy Helper; 
 by His mighty working tlie clouds disperse. His 
 dwelling is above, and underneath are the everlasting 
 arms ; He shall cast out the enemy from before thee, 
 and shall say, Be brought to nought." ^' The young 
 shall faint, and youths shall fall ; but they that hope 
 in the Lord shall be new-fledged in strength, they 
 shall take feathers like eagles, they shall run and not 
 labour, they shall walk and not faint.''' 
 
DISCOURSE XI. 
 
 FAITH AND DOUBT. 
 
 rilHOSE who are drawn by curiosity or a better motive 
 ^ to inquire into the Catholic Religion, sometimes 
 put to us a strange question, — whether, if they took 
 up the profession of it, they would be at liberty, when 
 they felt inclined, to reconsider the question of its 
 divine authority ; meaning, by " reconsideration ^' an 
 inquiry springing from doubt of it, and possibly end- 
 ing in a denial. The same question, in the form of 
 an objection, is often asked by those who have no 
 thoughts at all of becoming Catholics, and who en- 
 large upon it, as something terrible, that whoever once 
 enters the pale of the Church, on him the door of 
 egress is shut for ever ; that, once a Catholic, he never, 
 never can doubt again ; that, whatever his misgivings 
 may be, he must stifle them, nay must start from them 
 as the suggestions of the evil spirit ; in short, that he 
 must give up altogether the search after truth, and do 
 a violence to his mind, which is nothing short of im- 
 moral. This is what is said, my brethren, by certain 
 objectors, and their own view is, or ought to be, if 
 they are consistent, this, — that it is a fault ever to 
 
2 1 6 Faith and Doubt, 
 
 make up our inind once for all on any religious subject 
 whatever ; and that, however sacred a doctrine may he, 
 and however evident to us, — let us say, for instance, 
 the divinity of our Lord, or the existence of God, — we 
 ought always to reserve to ourselves the liberty of 
 doubting about it. I cannot help thinking that so 
 extravagant a position, as this is, confutes itself; how- 
 ever, I will consider the contrary (that is, the Catholic) 
 view of the subject, on its own merits, though without 
 admitting the language in which it was just now 
 stated by its opponents. 
 
 It is, then, perfectly true, that the Church does not 
 allow her children to entertain any doubt of her teach- 
 ing; and that, first of all, simply for this reason, 
 because they are Catholics only while they have faith, 
 and faith is incompatible with doubt. No one can be 
 a Catholic without a simple faith, that what the Church 
 declares in God^s name, is God's word, and therefore 
 true. A man must simply believe that the Church 
 is the oracle of God ; he must be as certain of her 
 mission, as he is of the mission of the Apostles. Now, 
 would any one ever call him certain that the Apostles 
 came from God, if, after professing his certainty, he 
 added, that, for what he knew, he might doubt one 
 day about their mission ? Such an anticipation would 
 be a real, though latent, doubt, betraying that he was 
 not certain of it at present. A person who says, " I 
 believe just at this moment, but perhaps lam excited 
 without knowing it, and I cannot answer for myself, 
 that I shall believe to-morrow,^' does not believe. A 
 man who says, ^' Perhaps I am in a kind of delusion. 
 
Faith and Doubt. 2 1 7 
 
 which will one day pass away from me, aud leave me 
 as I was before ; ^' or, " I believe as far as I can 
 tell, but there may be arguments in the background 
 which will change my view/^ such a man has not faith 
 at all. When, then, Protestants quarrel with us for 
 saying that those who join us must give up all ideas 
 of ever doubting the Church in time to come, they do 
 nothing else but quarrel with us for insisting on the 
 necessity of faith in her. Let them speak plainly; 
 our offence is that of demanding faith in the Holy 
 Catholic Church ; it is this, and nothing else. I must 
 insist upon this : faith implies a confidence in a man's 
 mind, that the thing believed is really true ; but, if it 
 is once true, it never can be false. If it is true that God 
 became man, what is the meaning of my anticipating 
 a time when perhaps I shall not believe that God be- 
 came man ? this is nothing short of anticipating a time 
 when I shall disbelieve a truth. And if I bargain to 
 be allowed in time to come not to believe, or to doubt, 
 that God became man, I am but asking to be allowed 
 to doubt or to disbelieve what is an eternal truth. I 
 do not see the privilege of such a permission at all, or 
 the meaning of wishing to secure it : — if at present I 
 have no doubt whatever about it, then I am but asking 
 leave to fall into error ; if at present I have doubts 
 about it, then I do not believe it at present, that is, I 
 have not faith. But I cannot both really believe it now, 
 and yet look forward to a time when perhaps I shall 
 not believe it; to make provision for future doubt, is 
 to doubt at present. It proves I am not in a fit state 
 to become a Catholic now. I may love by halves, I 
 
2 1 8 Faith and Doubt, 
 
 may obey by halves; I cannot believe by halves : either 
 I have faith, or I hav^e it not. 
 
 And so again^ when a man has become a Catholic, 
 were he to set about following out a doubt which has 
 occurred to him, he has already disbelieved. / have 
 not to warn him against losing his faith, he is not 
 merely in danger of losing it, he has lost it ; from the 
 nature of the case he has already lost it ; he fell from 
 grace at the mpment when he deliberately entertained 
 and pursued his doubt. No one can determine to doubt 
 what he is sure of ; but if he is not sure that the 
 Church is from God, he does not believe it. It is not 
 I who forbid him to doubt ; he has taken the matter 
 into his own hands when he determined on asking for 
 leave; he has begun, not ended, in unbelief; his very 
 wish, his purpose, is his sin. I do not make it so, it 
 is such from the very state of the case. You some- 
 times hear, for example, of Catholics falling away, 
 who will tell you it arose from reading the Scriptures, 
 which opened their eyes to the ^' unscripturalness,^' 
 so they speak, of the Church of the Living God. No; 
 Scripture did not make them disbelieve (impossible !) ; 
 they disbelieved when they opened the Bible; they 
 opened it in an unbelieving spirit, and for an un- 
 believing purpose ; they would not have opened it, 
 had they not anticipated — I might say, hoped — that 
 they should find things there inconsistent with Catho- 
 lic teaching. They begin in self-will and disobedience, 
 and they end in apostasy. This, then, is the direct 
 and obvious reason why the Church cannot allow her 
 children the liberty of doubting the truth of her word. 
 
Faith and Doubt, 2 1 9 
 
 He who really believes in it now, cannot imagine the 
 future discovery of reasons to shake his faith ; if he 
 imagines it, he has not faith ; and that so many 
 Protestants think it a sort of tyranny in the Church 
 to forbid any children of hers to doubt about her 
 teaching, only shows they do not know what faith is 
 — which is the case ; it is a strange idea to them. Let 
 a man cease to inquire, or cease to call himself her 
 child. 
 
 This is my first remark, and now I go on to a 
 second. You may easily conceive, my brethren, that 
 they who are entering the Church, or at least those 
 who have entered it, have more than faith ; that they 
 have some portion of divine love also. They have 
 heard in the Church of the ch'irity of Him who died 
 for them, and who has given them His Sacraments as 
 the means of conveying the merits of His death to 
 their souls, and they have felt more or less in those 
 poor souls of theirs the beginnings of a responsive 
 charity drawing them to Him. Now, does it stand 
 with a loving trust, better than with Taith, for a man 
 to anticipate the possibility of doubting or denying 
 the great mercies in which he is rejoicing ? Take an 
 instance ; what would you think of a friend whom 
 you loved, who could bargain that, in spite of his 
 present trust in you, he might be allowed some day 
 to doubt you ? who, when a thought came into his 
 mind, that you were playing a game with him, or that 
 you were a knave, or a profligate, did not drive it from 
 him with indignation, or laugh it away for its absur- 
 dity, but considered that he had an evident right to 
 
2 20 Faith and Doubt. 
 
 indulge it, nay, should be wanting in duty to nimself, 
 unless he did ? Would you think that your friend 
 trifled with truth, that he was unjust to his reason, 
 that he was wanting* in manliness, that he was hurting 
 his mind, if he shrank from it ? or would you not call 
 him cruel and miserable if he did not ? For me, my 
 brethren, if he took the latter course, may I never be 
 intimate with so unpleasant a person ; suspicious, 
 jealous minds, minds that keep at a distance from 
 me, that insist on their rights, fall back on their own 
 centre, are ever fancying offences, and are cold, cen- 
 sorious, wayward, and uncertain, these are often to 
 be borne as a cross ; but give me for my friend one 
 who will unite heart and hand with me, who will 
 throw himself into my cause and interest, who will 
 take my part when I am attacked, who will be sure 
 beforehand that I am in the right, and, if he is criti- 
 cal, as he may have cause to be towards a being of 
 sin and imperfection, will be so from very love and 
 loyalty, from anxiety that I should always show to 
 advantage, and a wish that others should love me as 
 heartily as he does. I should not say a friend trusted 
 me, who listened to every idle story against me ; and I 
 should like his absence better that his company, if he 
 gravely told me that it was a duty he owed to himself 
 to encourage his misgivings of my honour. 
 
 Well, pass on to a higher subject ; — could a man 
 be said to trust in God, and to love Gocjl, who was 
 familiar with doubts whether there was a God at all, 
 or who bargained that, just as often as he pleased, he 
 might be at liberty to doubt whether God was good, 
 
Faith and Doubt. 2 2 1 
 
 or just or almighty ; and who maintained that, unless 
 he did this, he was but a poor slave, that his mind 
 was in bondage, and could render no free acceptable 
 service to his Maker ; — that the very worship which 
 God approved was one attended with a caveat^ on the 
 worshipper's part, that he did not promise to render it 
 to-morrow, that he would not answer for himself that 
 some argument might not come to light, which he 
 had never heard before, which would make it a grave 
 moral duty in him to suspend his judgment and his 
 devotion ? Why, I should say, my brethren, that 
 that man was worshipping his own mind, his own 
 dear self, and not God ; that his idea of God was a 
 mere accidental form which his thoughts took at this 
 time or that, for a long period or a short one, as the 
 case might be, not an image of the great Eternal 
 Object, but a passing sentiment or imagination 
 which meant nothing at all. I should say, and most 
 men would agree with me, did they choose to give 
 attention to the matter, that the person in question 
 was a very self-conceited, self-wise man, and had 
 neither love, nor faith, nor fear, nor anything super- 
 natural about him ; that his pride must be broken, 
 and his heart new-made, before he was capable of any 
 religious act at all. The argument is the same, in its 
 degree, when applied to the Church ; she comes to us 
 as a messenger from God, — how can a man who 
 feels this, who comes to her, who falls at her feet as 
 such, make a reserve, that he may be allowed to doubt 
 her at some future day ? Let the world cry out, if it 
 will, that his reason is in fetters ; let it pronounce 
 
22 2 Faith and Doubt. 
 
 that he is a bigot, unless he reserves his right of 
 doubting ; but he knows full well himself that he 
 would be an ingrate and a fool, if he did. Fetters, 
 indeed ! yes, '' the cords of Adam/' the fetters of 
 love, these are what bind him to the Holy Church ; he 
 is, with the Apostle, the slave of Christ, the Churches 
 Lord ; united, (never to part, as he trusts, while life 
 lasts,) to he^- Sacraments, to her Sacrifices, to her 
 Saints, to the Blessed Mary her advocate^ to Jesus, to 
 God. 
 
 The truth is, that the world, knowing nothing of 
 the blessings of the Catholic faith, and prophesying 
 nothing but ill concerning it, fancies that a convert, 
 after the first fervour is over, feels nothing but disap- 
 pointment, weariness, and offence in his new religion, 
 and is secretly desirous of retracing his steps. This is 
 at the root of the alarm and irritation which it mani- 
 fests at hearing that doubts are incompatible with a 
 Catholic^s profession, because it is sure that doubts 
 will come upon him, and then how pitiable will be his 
 state ! That there can be peace, and joy, and know- 
 ledge, and freedom, and spiritual strength in the 
 Church, is a thought far beyond its imagination ; for 
 it regards her simply as a frightful conspiracy against 
 the happiness of man, seducing her victims by spe- 
 cious professions, and, when they are once hers, caring 
 nothing for the misery which breaks upon them, so 
 that by any means she may detain them in bondage. 
 Accordingly, it conceives we are in perpetual warfare 
 with our own reason,fierce objections ever rising within 
 us, and we forcibly repressing them. It believes that. 
 
Faith and Doubt. 223 
 
 after the likeness of a vessel which has met with some 
 accident at sea, we are ever baling out the water which 
 rushes in upon us^ and have hard work to keep afloat ; 
 we just manage to linger on, either by an unnatural 
 strain on our minds, or by turning them away from 
 the subject of religion. The world disbelieves our 
 doctrines itself, and cannot understand our own be- 
 lieving them. It considers them so strange, that it is 
 quite sure, though we will not confess it, that we are 
 haunted day and night with doubts, and tormented 
 wdth the apprehension of yielding to them. I really 
 do think it is the world's judgment, that one principal 
 part of a confessor's work is the putting down such 
 misgivings in his penitents. It fancies that the rea- 
 son is ever rebelling, like the flesh ; that doubt, like 
 concupiscence, is elicited by every sight and sound, 
 and that temptation insinuates itself in every page of 
 letter-press, and through the very voice of a Protes- 
 tant polemic. When it sees a Catholic Priest, it looks 
 hard at him, to make out how much there is of folly 
 in his composition, and how much of hypocrisy. But, 
 my dear brethren, if these are your thoughts, you are 
 simply in error. Trust me, rather than the world, 
 when I tell you, that it is no difficult thing for a 
 Catholic to believe; and that unless he grievously 
 mismanages himself, the difficult thing is for him to 
 doubt. He has received a gift which makes faith easy ; 
 it is not without an effort, a miserable effort, that any 
 one who has received that gift, unlearns to believe. 
 He does violence to his mind, not in exercising, but 
 in withholding his faith. When objections occur to 
 
2 24 Faith and Doubt. 
 
 him, which they may easily do if he lives in the world, 
 they are as odious and unwelcome to him as impure 
 thoughts are to the virtuous. He does certainly shrink 
 from them, he flings them away from him, but why ? 
 not in the first instance, because they are dangerous, 
 but because they are cruel and base. His loving Lord 
 has done everything for him, and has He deserved 
 such a return ? Popule meus, quid feci tibi ? " O My 
 people, what have I done to thee, or in what have I 
 molested thee? answer thou Me. I brought thee out 
 of the land of Egypt, and delivered thee out of the 
 house of slaves ; and I sent before thy face Moses, and 
 Aaron, and Mary ; I fenced thee in, and planted thee 
 with the choicest vines ; and what is there that I ought 
 to do more to My vineyard that I have not^done to it ? " 
 He has poured on us His grace. He has been with us 
 in our perplexities. He has led us on from one truth 
 to another, He has forgiven us our sins. He has satisfied 
 our reason. He has made faith easy. He has given us 
 His Saints, He shows before us day by day His own 
 Passion ; why should I leave Him ? What has He 
 ever done to me but good ? Why must I re-examine 
 what I have examined once for all ? Why must I listen 
 to every idle word which flits past me against Him, on 
 pain of being called a bigot and a slave, when, if I did, 
 I should be behaving to the Most High, as you your- 
 selves, who so call me, would not behave towards a 
 human friend or benefactor? If I am convinced in 
 my reason, and persuaded in my heart, why may I 
 not be allowed to remain unmolested in my worship ? 
 I have said enough on the subject ; still there is a 
 
Faith and Doubt. 225 
 
 third point of view in which it may be useful to con- 
 sider it. Personal prudence is not the first or second 
 ground for refusing- to hear objections to the Church, 
 but a motive it is, and that from the peculiar nature 
 of divine faith, which cannot be treated as an ordinary 
 conviction or belief. Faith is the gift of God, and 
 not a mere act of our own, which we are free to exert 
 when we will. It is quite distinct from an exercise 
 of reason, though it follows upon it. I may feel the 
 force of the argument for the divine origin of the 
 Church ; I may see that I ought to believe; and yet 
 I may be unable to believe. This is no imaginary 
 case ; there is many a man who has ground enough 
 to believe, who wishes to believe, but who cannot 
 believe. It is always indeed his own fault, for God 
 gives grace to all who ask for it, and use it, but still 
 such is the fact, that conviction is not faith. Take 
 the parallel case of obedience ; many a man knows 
 he ought to obey God, and does not and cannot, — 
 through his own fault indeed, but still he cannot ; 
 for through grace alone can he obey. Now, faith is 
 not a mere conviction in reason, it is a firm assent, it 
 is a clear certainty greater than any other certainty ; 
 and this is wrought in the mind by the grace of God, 
 and by it alone. As then men may be convinced, 
 and not act according to their conviction, so may they 
 be convinced, and not believe according to their convic- 
 tion. They may confess that the argument is against 
 them, that they have nothing to say for themselves, 
 and that to believe is to be happy ; and yet, after all, 
 they avow they cannot believe, they do not know why, 
 
2 26 Faith and Doubt. 
 
 but they cannot \ they acquiesce in unbelief, and they 
 turn away from God and His Church. Their reason 
 is convinced, and their doubts are moral ones, arising 
 in their root from a fault of the will. In a word, the 
 arguments for religion do not compel any one to 
 l-^ believe, just as arguments for good conduct do not 
 compel any one to obey. Obedience is the consequence 
 of willing to obey, and faith is the consequence of 
 willing to believe ; we may see what is right, whether 
 in matters of faith or obedience, of ourselves, but we 
 cannot will what is right without the grace of God. 
 Here is the difference between other exercises of 
 reason, and arguments for the truth of religion. It 
 requires no act of faith to assent to the truth that two 
 and two make four ; we cannot help assenting to it ; 
 and hence there is no merit in assenting to it ; but 
 there is merit in believing that the Church is from 
 God ; for though there are abundant reasons to prove 
 it to us, yet we can, without an absurdity, quarrel 
 with the conclusion ; we may complain that it is not 
 clearer, we may suspend our assent, we may doubt 
 about it, if we will, and grace alone can turn a bad 
 will into a good one. 
 
 And now you see why a Catholic dare not in pru- 
 dence attend to such objections as are brought against 
 his faith ; he has no fear of their proving that the 
 Church does not come from God, but he is afraid, if 
 he listened to them without reason, lest God should 
 punish him by the loss of his supernatural faith. This 
 is one cause of that miserable state of mind, to which 
 I have already alluded, in which men would fain be 
 
Faith and Doubt. 227 
 
 Catholics, and are not. They have trifled with con- 
 viction, they have listened to arguments against what 
 they knew to be true, and a deadness of mind has 
 fallen on them ; faith has failed them, and, as time 
 goes on, they betray in their words and their actions, 
 the Divine judgment, with which they are visited. 
 They become careless and unconcerned, or restless and 
 unhappy, or impatient of contradiction ; ever asking 
 advice and quarrelling with it when given ; not at- 
 tempting to answer the arguments urged against them, 
 but simply not believing. This is the whole of their 
 case, they do not believe. And then it is quite an 
 accident what becomes of them ; perhaps they con- 
 tinue on in this perplexed and comfortless state, 
 lingering about the Church, yet not of her; not know- 
 ing what they believe and what they do not, like 
 blind men, or men deranged, who are deprived of the 
 eye, whether of body or mind, and cannot guide them- 
 selves in consequence ; ever exciting hopes of a return, 
 and ever disappointing them ; — or, if they are men of 
 more vigorous minds, they launch forward in a course 
 of infidelity, not really believing less, as they proceed, 
 for from the first they believed nothing, but taking 
 up, as time goes on, more and more consistent forms 
 of error, till sometimes, if a free field is given them, 
 they even develope into atheism. Such is the end of 
 those who, under the pretence of inquiring after truth, 
 trifle with conviction. 
 
 Here then are some of the reasons why the Catholic 
 Church cannot consistently allow her children to doubt 
 the divinity and the truth of her words. Mere investiga- 
 Q2 
 
2 28 Faith and Doubt, 
 
 tion indeed into the grounds of our faith is not to doubt; 
 nor is it doubting to consider the arguments urged 
 against it, when there is good reason for doing so ; but 
 I am speaking of a real doubt, or a wanton entertain- 
 ment of objections. Such a procedure the Church 
 denounces, and not only for the reasons which I have 
 assigned, but because it would be a plain abandonment 
 of her office and character to act otherwise. How can 
 she, who has the prerogative of infallibility, allow her 
 children to doubt of her gift ? It would be a simple 
 inconsistency in her, who is the sure oracle of truth 
 and messenger of heaven, to look with indifference on 
 rebels to her authority. She simply does what the 
 Apostles did before her, whom she has succeeded. 
 '* He that despiseth,''^ says St. Paul, '* despiseth not 
 man, but God, who hath also given in us His Holy 
 Spirit.'' And St. John, " We are of God ; he that 
 knoweth God, heareth us ; he that is not of God, 
 heareth us not ; by this we know the spirit of truth and 
 the spirit of error." Take, again, an instance from 
 the Old Testament : — When Elias was taken up into 
 heaven, Eliseus was the only witness of the miracle ; 
 on his coming back then to the sons of the Prophets, 
 they doubted what had become of his master, and 
 wished to search for him ; and, though they acknow- 
 ledged Eliseus as his successor, they in this instance 
 refused to take his word on the subject. Eliseus had 
 struck the waters of Jordan, they had divided, and he 
 had passed over ; here, surely, was ground enough for 
 faith, and accordingly ^^ the sons of the Prophets at 
 Jericho, who were over against him, seeing it, said, 
 
Faith and Doubt, 229 
 
 The spirit of Elias hath rested upon Eliseus ; and they 
 came to meet him, and worshipped him, falling to the 
 ground/' What could they require more ? they con- 
 fessed that Eliseus had the spirit of his great master, 
 and, in confessing it, they implied that that master 
 was taken away ; yet, they proceed, from infirmity of 
 mind, to make a request indicative of doubt ; " Behold, 
 there are with thy servants fifty strong men, that can 
 go and search for thy master, lest perhaps the Spirit 
 of the Lord hath taken him up, and cast him upon 
 some mountain or into some valley." Now here was 
 a request to follow up a doubt into an inquiry \ did 
 Eliseus allow it ? he knew perfectly well that the in- 
 quiry would but end, as it really did end, in confirmation 
 of the truth, but it was indulging a wrong spirit to en- 
 gage in it, and he would not allow it. These religious 
 men were, as he would feel, strangely inconsistent : 
 they were doubting his word whom they had just now 
 worshipped as a Prophet, and, not only so, but they 
 were doubting his supreme authority, for they implied 
 that Elias was still among them. Accordingly he 
 forbade their request ; " He said, Send not.'' This is 
 what the world would call stifling an inquiry ; it was, 
 forsooth, tyrannical and oppressive to oblige them to 
 take on his word what they might ascertain for them- 
 selves ; yet he could not do otherwise without being 
 unfaithful to his divine mission, and sanctioning them 
 in a fault. It is true when '' they pressed him, he 
 consented, and said. Send ;" but we must not suppose 
 this to be more than a condescension to their weakness, 
 or a concession in displeasure, like that which Almighty 
 
230 Faith and Doubt, 
 
 God gave to Balaam, who pressed his request in a 
 similar way. When Balaam asked to go with the 
 ancients of Moab^ God said, ^' Thou shalt not go with 
 them '" when Balaam asked Him '^ once more," ^^ God 
 said to him, Arise and go with them -'^ then it is 
 added, " Balaam went with them, and God was angry /^ 
 Here in like manner, the prophet said. Send ; " and 
 they sent fifty men, and they sought three days, but 
 found him not /^ yet though the inquiry did but prove 
 that Elias was removed, Eliseus showed no satisfaction 
 at it, even when it had confirmed his authority : but 
 \^ he said to them, Said I not to you. Send not ? ^^ It 
 is thus that the Church ever forbids inquiry in those 
 who already acknowledge her authority ; but if they 
 will inquire, she cannot hinder it ; but they are not 
 justified in doing so. 
 
 And now I think you see, my brethren, why inquiry 
 precedes faith, and does not follow it. You inquired 
 before you joined the Church ; you were satisfied, and 
 God rewarded you with the grace of faith ; were you 
 now determined to inquire further, you would lead us 
 to think you had lost it again, for inquiry and faith 
 are in their very nature incompatible. I will add, 
 what is very evident, that no other religious body has 
 a right to demand such an exercise of faith in them, 
 and a right to forbid you further inquiry, but the 
 Catholic Church; and for this simple reason, that no 
 other body even claims to be infallible, let alone the 
 proof of such a claim. Here is the defect at first 
 starting, which disqualifies them, one and all, from 
 ever competing with the Church of God. The sects 
 
Faith and Doubt. 23 1 
 
 about us, so far from demanding' your faith, actually 
 call on you to inquire and to doubt freely about their 
 own merits ; they protest that they are but voluntary 
 associations, and would be sorry to be taken for any- 
 thing* else ; they beg and pray you not to mistake 
 their preachers for anything more than mere sinful 
 men, and they invite you to take the Bible with you 
 to their sermons, and to judge for yourselves whether 
 their doctrine is in accordance with it. Then, as to 
 the Established Religion, grant that there are those 
 in it who forbid inquiry into its claims ; yet still, dare 
 they maintain that it is infallible ? If they do not, 
 (and no one does,) how can they forbid inquiry 
 about it, or claim for it the absolute faith of any of 
 its members ? Faith under these circumstances is 
 not really faith, but obstinacy. Nor do they com- 
 monly venture to demand it ; they will say, negatively, 
 '^ Do not inquire /' but they cannot say positively, 
 " Have faith f for in whom are their members to 
 have faith ? of whom can they say, whether individual 
 or collection of men, " He or they are gifted with in- 
 fallibility, and cannot mislead us '' ? Therefore, when 
 pressed to explain themselves, they ground their duty 
 of continuance in their communion, not on faith in it, 
 but on attachment to it, which is a very different 
 thing; utterly different, for there are very many 
 reasons why they should feel a very great liking for 
 the religion in which they have been brought up. Its 
 portions of Catholic teaching, its " decency and order," 
 the pure and beautiful English of its prayers, its 
 literature, the piety found among its members, the 
 
232 Faith and Doubt. 
 
 influence of superiors and friends, its historical 
 associations, its domestic character, the charm of a 
 country life, the remembrance of past years, — there is 
 all this and much more to attach the mind to the 
 national worship. But attachment is not trust, nor 
 is to obey the same as to look up to, and to rely upon ; 
 nor do I think that any thoughtful or educated man 
 can simply believe or confide in the word of the Esta- 
 blished Church. I never met any such person who 
 did, or said he did, and I do not think that such a 
 person is possible. Its defenders would believe if 
 they could ; but their highest confidence is qualified 
 by a misgiving. They obey, they are silent before the 
 voice of their superiors, but they do not profess to 
 believe. Nothing is clearer than this, that if faith 
 in God^s word is required of us for salvation, the 
 Catholic Church is the only medium by which we can 
 exercise it. 
 
 And now, my brethren, who are not Catholics, 
 perhaps you will tell me, that, if all inquiry is to 
 cease when you become Catholics, you ought to be 
 very sure that the Church is Crom God before you join 
 it. You speak truly ; no one should enter the Church 
 without a firm purpose of taking her word in all 
 matters of doctrine and morals, and that, on the 
 ground of her coming directly from the God of Truth. 
 You must look the matter in the face, and count the 
 cost. If you do not come in this spirit, you may as 
 well not come at all ; high and low, learned and igno- 
 rant, must come to learn. If you are right as far as 
 this, you cannot go very wrong; you have the foun- 
 
Faith and Doubt. 233 
 
 dation ; but, if you come in any other temper, you 
 had better wait till you have got rid of it. You must 
 come, I say, to the Church to learn ; you must come, 
 not to bring" your own notions to her, but with the 
 intention of ever being* a learner; you must come 
 with the intention of taking her for your portion and 
 of never leaving her. Do not come as an experiment ; 
 do not come as you would take sittings in a chapel, 
 or tickets for a lecture-room ; come to her as to your 
 home, to the school of your souls, to the Mother of 
 Saints, and to the vestibule of heaven. On the 
 other hand do not distress yourselves with thoughts 
 whether, when you have joined her, your faith will 
 last ; this is a suggestion of your enemy to hold you 
 back. He who has begun a good work in you, will 
 perfect it ; He who has chosen you, will be faithful to 
 you ; put your cause into His hand, wait upon Him, 
 and you will surely persevere. What good work will 
 you ever begin, if you bargain first to see the end of 
 it ? If you wish to do all at once, you will do nothing ; 
 he has done half the work, who has begun it well ; 
 you will not gain your Lord's praise at the final 
 reckoning by hiding His talent. No; when He 
 brings you from error to truth, He will have done the 
 more difficult work (if aught is difficult to Him), and 
 surely He will preserve you from returning from truth 
 to error. Take the experience of those who have gone 
 before you in the same course ; they had many fears 
 that their faith would fail them, before taking the 
 great step, but those fears vanished on their taking 
 it ; they had fears, before the grace of faith, lest, after 
 
234 Faith and Doubt. 
 
 receiving" it, they shjuld lose it again, but no fears 
 (except on the ground of their general frailness) after 
 it was actually given. 
 
 Be convinced in your reason that the Catholic 
 Church is a teacher sent to you from God, and it is 
 enough. I do not wish you to join her, till you are. 
 If you are half convinced, pray for a full conviction, 
 and wait till you have it. It is better indeed to come 
 quickly, but better slowly than carelessly ; and some- 
 times, as the proverb goes, the more haste, the worse 
 speed. Only make yourselves sure that the delay is 
 not from any fault of yours, which you can remedy. 
 God deals with us very differently \ conviction comes 
 slowly to some men, quickly to others ; in some it 
 is the result of much thought and many reasonings, 
 in others of a sudden illumination. One man is con- 
 vinced at once, as in the instance described by St. 
 Paul : " If all prophesy," he says, speaking of expo- 
 sition of doctrine, '' and there come in one that be- 
 lieveth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, 
 he is judged of all. The secrets of his heart are made 
 manifest; and so, falling down on his face, he will 
 worship God, and say that God is among you of a 
 truth.'"' The case is the same now; some men are 
 converted merely by entering a Catholic Church; 
 others are converted by reading one book ; others by 
 one doctrine. They feel the weight of their sins, and 
 they see that that religion must come from God which 
 alone has the means of forgiving them. Or they are 
 touched and overcome by the evident sanctity, beauty, 
 and (as I may say) fragrance of the Catholic Religion. 
 
Faith and Doubt, 235 
 
 Or tbey long for a guide amid the strife of tongues ; 
 and the very doctrine of the Church about faith, which 
 is so hard to many, is conviction to them. Others, 
 again, hear many objections to the Church, and follow- 
 out the whole subject far and wide ; conviction can 
 scarcely come to them except as at the end of a long 
 inquiry. As in a court of justice, one man's innocence 
 may be proved at once, another's is the result of a 
 careful investigation ; one has nothing in his conduct 
 or character to explain, another has many presump- 
 tions against him at first sight ; so Holy Church pre- 
 sents herself very differently to different minds who 
 are contemplating her from without. God deals with 
 them differently ; but, if they are faithful to their 
 light, at last, in their own time, though it may be a 
 different time to each, He brings them to that one 
 and the same state of mind, very definite and not to 
 be mistaken, which we call conviction. They will have 
 no doubt, whatever difficulties may still attach to the 
 subject, that the Church is from God ; they may not 
 be able to answer this objection or that, but they will 
 be certain in spite of it. 
 
 This is a point which should ever be kept in view : 
 conviction is a state of mind, and it is something be- 
 yond and distinct from the mere arguments of which 
 it is the result ; it does not vary with their strength 
 or their number. Arguments lead to a conclusion, 
 and when the arguments are stronger, the conclusion 
 is clearer; but conviction may be felt as strongly in 
 consequence of a clear conclusion, as of one which is 
 clearer. A man may be so sure upon six reasons, that 
 
236 Faith and Doubt, 
 
 he does not need a seventh^ nor would feel surer if he 
 had it. And so as regards the Catholic Church : men 
 are convinced in ver}^ various ways, — what convinces 
 one. does not convince another ; but this is an acci- 
 dent ; the time comes anyhow, sooner or later, when 
 a man ought to be convinced, and is convinced, and 
 then he is bound not to wait for any more arguments, 
 though more arguments be producible. He will find 
 himself in a condition when he may even refuse to 
 hear more arguments in behalf of the Church ; he 
 does not wish to read or think more on the subject, 
 his mind is quite made up. In such a case it is his 
 duty to join the Church at once ; he must not delay ; 
 let him be cautious in counsel, but prompt in execu- 
 tion. This it is that makes Catholics so anxious about 
 him : it is not that they wish him to be precipitate ; 
 but knowing the temptations which the evil one ever 
 throws in our way, they are lovingly anxious for his 
 soul, lest he has come to the point of conviction, and 
 is passing it, and is losing his chance of conversion. 
 If so, it may never return ; God has not chosen every 
 one to salvation : it is a rare gift to be a Catholic ; it 
 may be offered to us once in our lives and never 
 again ; and, if we have not seized on the " accepted 
 time,^' nor known '^ in our day the things which are 
 for our peace,'^ oh, the misery for us ! What shall 
 we be able to say when death comes, and we are not 
 converted, and it is directly and immediately our own 
 doing that we are not ? 
 
 " Wisdom preacheth abroad, she uttereth her voice 
 in the streets : How long, ye little ones, love ye 
 
Faith and Doubt, 237 
 
 childishness, and fools covet what is hurtful to them, 
 and the unwise hate knowledge? Turn ye at My 
 reproof j behold, I will bring forth to you My Spirit, 
 and I will show My words unto you. Because I have 
 called, and ye refused, I stretched out My hand, and 
 there was none who regarded, and ye despised all My 
 counsel and neglected My chidings; I also will laugh 
 in your destruction, and will mock when that shall 
 come to you which you feared ; when a sudden storm 
 shall rush on you, and destruction shall thicken as a 
 tempest, when tribulation and straitness shall come 
 upon you. Then shall they call on Me, and I will 
 not hear ; they shall rise betimes, but they shall not 
 find Me ; for that they hated discipline, and took not 
 on them the fear of the Lord, nor acquiesced in My 
 counsel, but made light of My reproof, therefore shall 
 they eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled with 
 their own devices.^' 
 
 Oh, the misery for us, as many of us as shall be in 
 that number ! Oh, the awful thought for all eternity ! 
 Oh, the remorseful sting, ''I was called, I might have 
 answered, and I did not ! '' And oh, the blessedness, 
 if we can look back on the time of trial, when friends 
 implored and enemies scoffed, and say, — The misery 
 for me, which would have been, had I not followed on, 
 had I hung back, when Christ called ! Oh, the utter 
 confusion of mind, the wreck of faith and opinion, 
 the blackness and void, the dreary scepticism, the 
 hopelessness, which would have been my lot, the 
 pledge of the outer darkness to come, had I been 
 afraid to follow Him ! I have lost friends, I have lost 
 
238 Faith and Doubt. 
 
 the world, but I have gained Him, who gives in Him- 
 self houses and brethren and sisters and mothers and 
 children and lands a hundred-fold ; I have lost the 
 perishable, and gained the Infinite ; I have lost time, 
 and I have gained eternity ; " O Lord, my God, I am 
 Thy servant, and the son of Thine handmaid ; Thou 
 hast broken my bonds. I will sacrifice to Thee the 
 sacrifice of praise, and I will call on the Name of the 
 Lord." 
 
DISCOURSE XII. 
 
 PROSPECTS OF THE CATHOLIC MISSIONER. 
 
 A STRANGE time this may seem to some of yon, 
 -^^ my brethren, and a strange place, to commence 
 an enterprise such as that, which relying on God^s 
 mercy, we are undertaking this day.' In this huge 
 city, amid a population of human beings, so vast that 
 each is solitary, so various that each is independent, 
 which, like the ocean, yields before and closes over 
 every attempt made to influence and impress it, — in 
 this mere aggregate of individuals, which admits of 
 neither change nor reform, because it has no internal 
 order, or disposition of parts, or mutual dependence, 
 because it has nothing to change from and nothing to 
 change to, where no one knows his next-door neigh- 
 bour, where in every place are found a thousand 
 worlds, each pursuing its own functions unimpeded by 
 the rest, — how can we, how can a handful of men, do 
 any service worthy of the Lord who has called us, and 
 the objects to which our lives are dedicated ? " Cry 
 aloud, spare not ! " says the Prophet ; well may he 
 say it ! no room for sparing ; what cry is loud enough, 
 except the last trumpet of God, to pierce the omni- 
 
 1 This discourse was delivered in substance, at the first opening 
 of the London Oratory, in 1849. 
 
240 Prospects of 
 
 present din of turmoil and of effort, which rises, like 
 an exhalation from the very earth, along the public 
 thoroughfares, and to reach the dense multitudes on 
 each side of them in the maze of buildings known only 
 to those .who live in them ? It is but a fool's work to 
 essay the impossible ; keep to your own place, and you 
 are respectable ; tend your sheep in the wilderness, and 
 you are intelligible ; build upon the old foundations, 
 and you are safe ; but begin nothing new, make no 
 experiments, quicken not the action, nor strain the 
 powers, nor complicate the responsibilities of your 
 Mother, lest in her old age you bring her to shame, 
 and the idlers laugh at her who once bare many 
 children, but now is waxed feeble. 
 
 And here is another thing, the time ; the time of 
 your coming hither ! Now, when you rest on no im- 
 moveable centre, as of old, when you are not what you 
 were lately, when j'our life is in jeopardy, your future 
 in suspense, your Master in exile ; look at home, you 
 have enough to do at home. Look to the rock whence 
 ye were cut, and to the quarry whence ye were chopped ! 
 Where is Peter now ? Magni nominis umbra ^ as the 
 heathen author says : an antiquated cause, noble in its 
 time, but of a past day ; nay, true and divine in its 
 time, as far as anything can be such, but false now, 
 and of the earth now, because it is feeble now, bent 
 with the weight of eighteen hundred years, tottering 
 to its fall ; for with Englishmen, you should know, 
 success is the measure of principle, and power is the 
 exponent of right. Do you not understand our rule of 
 action? we take up men and lay them down, we praise 
 
the Catholic Missioner, 241 
 
 or we blame, we feel respect or contempt, according- as 
 they succeed or are defeated. You are wrong, because 
 you are in misfortune; power is truth. Wealth is 
 power, intellect is power, good name is power, know- 
 ledge is power ; we venerate wealth, intellect, name, 
 knowledge. Intellect we know, and wealth we know, 
 but who are ye ? what have we to do with the ghosts 
 of an old world and the types of a former organization ? 
 It is true, my brethren, this is a strange time, a 
 strange place for beginning our work. A strange 
 place for Saints and Angels to pitch their tabernacles 
 in, this metropolis ; strange, — I will not say for thee, 
 my Mother Mary, to be found in ; for no part of the 
 Catholic inheritance is foreign to thee, and thou art 
 everywhere, where the Church is found. Porta manes 
 et Stella maris , the constant object of her devotion, 
 and the universal advocate of her children, — not 
 strange to thee, but strange enough to him, my own 
 Saint and Master, Philip Neri. Yes, dear Father, it 
 is strange for thee, to pass from the bright calm cities 
 of the South to this scene of godless toil and self- 
 trusting adventure; strange for thee to be seen hurry- 
 ing to and fro across our crowded streets, in thy 
 grave black cassock, and thy white collar, instead of 
 moving at thy own pace amid the open ways or vacant 
 spaces of the great City, in which, according to God's 
 guidance of thee in thy youth, thou didst for life and 
 death fix thy habitation. Yes, it is all very strange 
 to the world ; but no new thing to her, the Bride of 
 the Lamb, whose very being and primary gifts are 
 stranger in the eyes of unbelief, than any details, as to 
 
242 Prospects of 
 
 place of abode and method of proceeding, in which 
 they are manifested. It is no new thing in her, who 
 came in the beginning as a wanderer upon earth, 
 whose condition is a perpetual warfare, and whose 
 empire is an incessant conquest. 
 
 In such a time as this, did the prince of the 
 Apostles, the first Pope, advance towards the 
 heathen city, where, under a divine guidance, he was 
 to fix his seat. He toiled along the stately road 
 which led him straight onwards to the capital of the 
 world. He met throngs of the idle and the busy, of 
 strangers and natives, who peopled the interminable 
 suburb. He passed under the high gate, and wandered 
 on amid marble palaces and columned temples ; he 
 met processions of heathen priests and ministers in 
 honour of their idols ; he met the wealthy lady, borne 
 on her litter by her slaves; he met the stern legion- 
 aries who had been the ^' massive iron hammers ^' of 
 the whole earth ; he met the anxious politician with 
 his ready man of business at his side to prompt him 
 on his canvass for popularity ; he met the orator re- 
 turning home from a successful pleading, with his 
 young admirers and his grateful or hopeful clients. 
 He saw about him nothing but tokens of a vigorous 
 power, grown up into a definite establishment, formed 
 and matured in its religion, its laws, its civil tradi- 
 tions, its imperial extension, through the history of 
 many centuries ; and what was he but a poor, feeble, 
 aged stranger, in nothing different from the multi- 
 tude of men, — an Egyptian or a Chaldean, or perhaps 
 a Jew, some Eastern or other, — as passers-by would 
 
the Catholic Mzssioner, 243 
 
 guess according to their knowledge of human kind 
 carelessly looking at him (as we might turn our 
 eyes upon Hindoo or gipsy, as they met us), without 
 the shadow of a thought that such a one was destined 
 then to commence an age of religious sovereignty, in 
 which they might spend their own heathen times 
 twice over, and not see its end ! 
 
 In such a time as this, did the great Doctor, St. 
 Gregory Nazianzen, he too an old man, a timid man, 
 a retiring man, fond of solitude and books, and 
 unpractised in the struggles of the world, suddenly 
 appear in the Arian city of Constantinople ; and, in 
 despite of a fanatical populace, and an heretical 
 clergy, preach the truth, and prevail, — to his own 
 wonder, and to the glory of that grace which is strong 
 in weakness, and is ever nearest to its triumph when 
 it is most despised. 
 
 In such a time did another St. Gregory, the first 
 Pope of the name, when all things were now failing, 
 when barbarians had occupied the earth, and fresh and 
 more savage multitudes were pouring down, when 
 pestilence, famine, and heresy ravaged far and near, 
 — oppressed, as he was, with continual sickness, his 
 bed his Pontifical Throne, — in such a time did he 
 rule, direct, and consolidate the Church, in what he 
 augured were the last moments of the world ; subdu- 
 ing Arians in Spain, Donatists in Africa, a third 
 heresy in Egypt, a fourth in Gaul, humbling the 
 pride of the East, reconciling the Goths to the 
 Church, bringing our own pagan ancestors within her 
 pale, and completing her order and beautifying her 
 R 2 
 
244 Prospects of 
 
 ritual, while lie strengthened the foundations of her 
 power. 
 
 And in such a time did the six Jesuit Fathers, 
 Ignatius and his companions, while the world was 
 exulting in the Church's fall, and men " made merry, 
 and sent their gifts one to another,^' because the 
 prophets were dead which "tormented them that 
 dwelt upon earth," make their vow in the small 
 Church of Montmartre; and, attracting others to 
 them by the sympathetic force of zeal, and the 
 eloquence of sanctity, went forward calmly and 
 silently into India in the East, and into America 
 in the West, and, while they added whole nations 
 to the Church abroad, restored and reanimated the 
 Catholic populations at home. 
 
 It is no new thing then with the Church, in a time 
 of confusion or of anxiety, when offences abound, and 
 the enemy is at her gates, that her children, far from 
 being dismayed, or rather glorying in the danger, as 
 vigorous men exult in trials of their strength, — it is no 
 new thing, I say, that they should go forth to do her 
 work, as though she were in the most palmy days of 
 her prosperity. Old Rome, in her greatest distress, 
 sent her legions to foreign destinations by one gate, 
 while the Carthaginian conqueror was at the other. 
 In truth, as has been said of our own countrymen, 
 we, Catholics, do not know when we are beaten ; we 
 advance, when by all the rules of war we ought to fall 
 back ; we dream but of triumphs, and mistake (as the 
 world judges) defeat for victory. For we have upon 
 us the omens of success in the recollections of the 
 
the Catholic Missioner. 245 
 
 past ; we read upon our banners the names of many 
 an old field of battle and of glory ; we are strong in 
 the strength of our fathers, and we mean to do, in our 
 humble measure, what Saints have done before us. It 
 is nothing great or wonderful in us to be thus minded ; 
 only Saints indeed do exploits, and carry contests 
 through, but ordinary men, the serving men and 
 privates of the Church, are equal to attempting them. 
 It needs no heroism, in us, my brethren, to face such 
 a time as this, and to make light of it ; for we are 
 Catholics. We have the experience of eighteen hundred 
 years. The great philosopher of antiquity tells us, 
 that mere experience is courage, not indeed of the 
 highest kind, but sufficient to succeed upon. It is 
 not one or two or a dozen defeats, if we had them, 
 which will reverse the majesty of the Catholic Name. 
 We are willing to take this generation on its own 
 standard of truth, and to make our intenseness of pur- 
 pose the very voucher for our divinity. We are con- 
 fident, zealous, and unyielding, because we are the 
 heirs of St. Peter, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Gregory 
 Pope, and all other holy and faithful men, who, in 
 their day, by word, deed, or prayer, have furthered the 
 Catholic cause. We share in their merits and inter- 
 cessions, and we speak with their voice. Hence we 
 do that without heroism, which others, who are not 
 Catholics, do only with it. It would be heroism in 
 others, certainly, to set about our work. Did Jews 
 aim at bringing over this vast population to the rites 
 of the Law, or did Unitarians address themselves to 
 the conversion of the Holy Roman Church, or did the 
 
246 Prospects of 
 
 Society of Friends attempt the great French nation, 
 this might rightly be called heroism ; not a true re- 
 ligious heroism, but it would be a something extraor- 
 dinary and startling. It would be a peculiar, special, 
 original, audacious idea ; it would be making a great 
 venture on a great uncertainty. But there is nothing 
 of special courage, nothing of personal magnanimity, 
 in a Catholic^s making light of the world, and begin- 
 ning to preach to it, though it turn its face from him. 
 He knows the nature and habits of the world ; and it 
 is his immemorial way of dealing with it; he does 
 but act according to his vocation ; he would not be a 
 Catholic, did he act otherwise. He knows whose 
 vessel he has entered ; it is the bark of Peter. When 
 the greatest of the Romans was in an open boat on 
 the Adriatic, and the sea rose, he said to the terrified 
 boatman, Ccesarern veins et fortunam Ccesaris — 
 " Caesar is your freight and Caesar's fortune.^' What 
 he said in presumption, we, my dear brethren, can 
 repeat in faith, of that boat, in which Christ once sat 
 and preached. AVe have not chosen it to have fear 
 about it ; we have not entered it to escape out of it ; 
 no, but to go forth in it upon the flood of sin and un- 
 belief, which would sink any other craft. We began 
 our work at the first with Peter for our guide, on the 
 very Feast of his Chair, and at the very Shrine of his 
 relics ; so, when any of you marvel that we should 
 choose this place and this time for our missionary 
 labours, let him know that we are of those who 
 measure the present by the past, and poise the world 
 upon a distant centre. We act according to our 
 
the Catholic Missioner, 247 
 
 name ; Catholics are at home in every time and place, 
 in every state of society, in every class of the com- 
 munity, in every stage of cultivation. No state of 
 things comes amiss to a Catholic priest ; he has always 
 a work to do, and a harvest to reap. 
 
 Were it otherwise, had he not confidence in the 
 darkest day, and the most hostile district, he would 
 be relinquishing a principal note, as it is called, of 
 the Church. She is Catholic, because she brings an 
 universal remedy for an universal disease. The disease 
 is sin ; all men have sinned ; all men need a recovery 
 in Christ ; to all must that recovery be preached and 
 dispensed. If then there be a preacher and dispenser 
 of recovery, sent from God, that messenger must speak, 
 not to one, but to all ; he must be suited to all, he 
 must have a mission to the whole race of Adam, and 
 be cognizable by every individual of it. I do not 
 mean that he must persuade all, and prevail with all — 
 for that depends upon the will of each ; but he must 
 show his capabilities for converting all by actually con- 
 verting some of every time, and every place, and every 
 rank, and every age of life, and every character of 
 mind. If sin is a partial evil, let its remedy be 
 partial; but, if it be not local, not occasional, but 
 universal, such must be the remedy. A local religion 
 is not from God. The true religion must indeed begin, 
 and may linger, in one place; nay, for centuries remain 
 there, provided it is expanding and maturing in its 
 internal character, and professes the while that it is 
 not yet perfect. There may be deep reasons in God's 
 counsels, why the proper revelation of His will to man 
 
248 Prospects of 
 
 should have heen slowly elaborated and gradually 
 completed in the elementary form of Judaism ; but 
 that Revelation was ever in progress in the Jewish 
 periodj and pointed by its prophets to a day when it 
 should be spread over the whole earth. Judaism then 
 was local because it was imperfect ; when it reached 
 perfection within, it became universal without, and 
 took the name of Catholic. 
 
 Look around, my brethren, at the forms of religion 
 now in the world, and you will find that one, and 
 one only, has this note of a divine origin. The 
 Catholic Church has accompanied human society 
 through one revolution of its great year; and is 
 now beginning a second. She has passed through 
 the full cycle of changes, in order to show us that 
 she is independent of them all. She has had trial 
 of East and West, of monarchy and democracy, of 
 peace and war, of imperial and of feudal tyranny, 
 of times of darkness and times of philosophy, of 
 barbarousness and luxury, of slaves and freemen, of 
 cities and nations, of marts of commerce and seats of 
 manufacture, of old countries and young, of metro- 
 polis and colonies. She arose in the most happy age 
 which perhaps the world has ever known ; for two or 
 three hundred years she had to fight against the author- 
 ity of law, established forms of religion, military power,, 
 an ably-cemented empire, and prosperous, contented 
 populations. And in the course of that period, this 
 poor, feeble, despised Association was able to defeat its 
 imperial oppressor, in spite of his violent efforts, again 
 and again exerted, to rid himself of so despicable an 
 
the Catholic Mtssio?ier, 249 
 
 assailant. In spite of calumny, in spite of popular 
 outbreaks, in spite of cruel torments, the lords of the 
 world were forced, as their sole chance of maintaining 
 their empire, to come to terms with that body, of 
 which the present Church is in name, in line, in 
 doctrine, in principles, in manner of being, in moral 
 characteristics, the descendant and representative. 
 They were forced to humble themselves to her, and 
 to enter her pale, and to exalt her, and to depress 
 her enemies. She triumphed as never any other 
 triumphed before or since. But this was not all; 
 scarcely had she secured her triumph, or rather 
 set about securing it, when it was all reversed; 
 for the Roman Power, her captive, which with so much 
 blood and patience she had subjugated, suddenly came 
 to nought. It broke and perished ; and against her 
 rushed millions of wild savages from the north and 
 east, who had neither God nor conscience, nor even 
 natural compassion. She had to begin again; for 
 centuries they came down, one horde after another, 
 like roaring waves, and dashed against her base. 
 They came again and again, like the armed bands 
 sent by the king of Israel against the Prophet ; and, 
 as he brought fire down from heaven which devoured 
 them as they came, so in her more gracious way did 
 Holy Church, burning with zeal and love, devour her 
 enemies, multitude after multitude, with the flame 
 which her Lord had kindled, '' heaping coals of fire 
 upon their heads/' and " overcoming evil with good.'' 
 Thus out of those fierce strangers were made her truest 
 and most loyal children ; — and, when from among them 
 
250 Prospects of 
 
 there arose a strong military power, more artificially 
 constructed than the old Roman, with traditions and 
 precedents which lasted on for centuries, at first the 
 Churches champion and then her rival, here too she had 
 to undergo a new conflict, and to gain a new triumph. 
 And so I might proceed, going to and fro, and telling 
 of her political successes since, and of her intellectual 
 victories from the beginning, and of her social im- 
 provements, and of her encounters with those other 
 circumstances of human nature or combinations of 
 human kind, which I just now enumerated; all which 
 prove to us, with a cogency as great as that of a 
 physical demonstration, that she comes not of earth, 
 that she holds not of earth, that she is no servant of 
 man, else he who made could have destroyed her. 
 
 How different, again I say, how different are all 
 religions that ever were, from this lofty and unchange- 
 able Catholic Church ! They depend on time and 
 place for their existence, they live in periods or in 
 regions. They are children of the soil, indigenous 
 plants, which readily flourish under a certain tempera- 
 ture, in a certain aspect, in moist or in dry, and die if 
 they are transplanted. Their habitat is one article of 
 their scientific description. Thus the Greek schism, 
 Nestorianism, the heresy of Calvin, and Methodism, 
 each has its geographical limits. Protestantism has 
 gained nothing in Europe since its first outbreak. 
 Some accident gives rise to these religious manifesta- 
 tions; some sickly season, the burning sun, the 
 vapour-laden marsh, breeds a pestilence, and there it 
 remains, hanging in the air over its birth-place perhaps 
 
the Catholic Missioner, 2 5 1 
 
 for centuries ; then some change takes place in the 
 earth or in the heavens, and it suddenly is no more. 
 Sometimes, however, it is true, such scourges of God 
 have a course upon earth, and affect a Catholic range. 
 They issue as from some poisonous lake or pit in 
 Ethiopia or in India, and march forth with resistless 
 power to fulfil their mission of evil, and walk to and 
 fro over the face of the world. Such was the Arabian 
 imposture of which Mahomet was the framer; and 
 you will ask, perhaps, whether it has not done that, 
 which I have said the Catholic Church alone can do, 
 and proved thereby that it had in it an internal prin- 
 ciple, which, depending not on man, could subdue him 
 in any time or place ? No, my brethren ; look nar- 
 rowly, and you will see the marked distinction which 
 exists between the religion of Mahomet and the Church 
 of Christ. For Mahometanism has done little more 
 than the Anglican communion is doing at present. 
 That communion is found in many parts of the world ; 
 its primate has a jurisdiction even greater than the 
 Nestorian Patriarch of old ; it has establishments in 
 Malta, in Jerusalem, in India, in China, in Australia, 
 in South Africa, and in Canada. Here at least you 
 will say is Catholicity, even greater than that of 
 Mahomet. Oh, my brethren, be not beguiled by words : 
 will any thinking man say for a moment, whatever 
 this objection be worth, that the established Religion 
 is superior to time and place? well, if not, why set 
 about proving that it is ? rather, does not its essence 
 lie in its recognition by the State? is nob its estab- 
 lishment its ^axy form? what would it be, would it 
 
252 Prospects of 
 
 last ten years, if abandoned to itself? It is its estab- 
 lishment which erects it into a unity and individuality ; 
 can you contemplate it, though you stimulate your 
 imagination to the task^ abstracted from its churches, 
 palaces, colleges, parsonages, revenues, civil prece- 
 dence, and national position ? Strip it of this world, 
 and you have performed a mortal operation upon it, 
 for it has ceased to be. Take its bishops out of the 
 legislature, tear its formularies from the Statute Book, 
 open its universities to Dissenters, allow its clergy to 
 become laymen again, legalize its private prayer- 
 meetings, and what would be its definition? You 
 know that, did not the State compel it to be one, it 
 would split at once into three several bodies, each 
 bearing within it the elements of further divisions. 
 Even the small party of Non-jurors, a century and a 
 half since, when released from the civil power, split 
 into two. It has then no internal consistency, or 
 individuality, or soul, to give it the capacity of propa- 
 gation. Methodism represents some sort of an idea, 
 Congregationalism an idea ; the Established "Religion 
 has in it no idea beyond establishment. Its extension 
 has been, for the most part, passive not active ; it is 
 carried forward into other places by State policy, and 
 it moves because the State moves ; it is an appendage, 
 whether weapon or decoration, of the sovereign power; 
 it is the religion, not even of a race, but of the ruling 
 portion of a race. The Anglo-Saxon has done in this 
 day what the Saracen did in a former. He does 
 grudgingly for expedience, what the other did heartily 
 from fanaticism. This is the chief difference between 
 
the Catholic Missioner. 253 
 
 the two ; the Saracen, in his commencement, converted 
 the heretical East with the sword; but at least in 
 India the extension of his faith has been by immigra- 
 tion, as the Anglo-Saxon's now; he grew into other 
 nations by commerce and colonization ; but, when he 
 encountered the Catholic of the West, he made as 
 little impression upon Spain, as the Protestant Anglo- 
 Saxon makes on Ireland. 
 
 There is but one form of Christianity, my brethren, 
 possessed of that real internal unity which is the 
 primary condition of independence. Whether you 
 look to Hussia, England, or Germany, this note of 
 divinity is wanting. In this country, especially, 
 there is nothing broader than class religions ; the 
 established form itself is but the religion of a class. 
 There is one persuasion for the rich, and another for 
 the poor ; men are born in this or that sect ; the enthu- 
 siastic go here, and the sober-minded and rational go 
 there. They make money, and rise in the world, and 
 then they profess to belong to the Establishment. 
 This body lives in the world''s smile, that in its frown; 
 the one would perish of cold in the world's winter, 
 and the other would melt away in the summer. Not 
 one of them undertakes human nature : none com- 
 passes the whole man ; none places all men on a level ; 
 none addresses the intellect and the heart, fear and 
 love, the active and the contemplative. It is con- 
 sidered, and justly, as an evidence for Christianity, 
 that the ablest men have been Christians ; not that 
 all sagacious or profound minds have taken up its 
 profession, but that it has gained victories among 
 
254 Prospects of 
 
 them, such and so many, as to show that it is not the 
 mere fact of ability or learning which is the reason 
 why all are not converted. Such too is the character- 
 istic of Catholicity; not the highest in rank, not 
 the meanest, not the most refined, not the rudest, is 
 bej^ond the influence of the Church; she includes 
 specimens of every class among her children. She 
 is the solace of the forlorn, the chastener of the pros- 
 perous, and the guide of the wayward. She keeps a 
 mother's eye for the innocent, bears with a heavy 
 hand upon the wanton, and has a voice of majesty for 
 the proud. She ojiens the mind of the ignorant, and 
 she prostrates the intellect of even the most gifted. 
 These are not words ; she has done it, she does it still, 
 she undertakes to do it. All she asks is an open field, 
 and freedom to act. She asks no patronage from the 
 civil power : in former times and places she has asked 
 it ; and, as Protestantism also, has availed herself of 
 the civil sword. It is true she did so, because in 
 certain ages it has been the acknowledged mode of 
 acting, the most expeditious, and open at the time to 
 no objection, and because, where she has done so, the 
 people clamoured for it and did it in advance of her; 
 but her history shows that she needed it not, for she 
 has extended and flourished without it. She is ready 
 for any service which occurs ; she will take the world 
 as it comes ; nothing but force can repress her. See, 
 my brethren, what she is doing in this country now ; 
 for three centuries the civil power has trodden down 
 the goodly plant of grace, and kept its foot upon it ; 
 at length circumstances have removed that tyranny. 
 
the Catholic Mtssioner. 255 
 
 and lo ! the fair form of the Ancient Church rises up 
 at oncCj as fresh and as vigorous as if she had never 
 intermitted her growth. She is the same as she was 
 three centuries ago, ere the present religions of the 
 country existed ; you know her to be the same ; it is the 
 charge brought against her that she does not change ; 
 time and place affect her not, because she has her 
 source where there is neither time nor place, because she 
 comes from the throne of the Illimitable, Eternal God. 
 With these fieelings, my brethren, can we fear that 
 we shall not have work enough in a vast city like this, 
 which has such need of us ? He on whom we repose 
 is '' yesterday, and to-day, and the same for ever.'"* 
 If He did His wonders in the days of old, He does 
 His wonders now; if in former days the feeble and 
 unworthy were made His instruments of good, so are 
 they now. While we trust in Him, while we are true 
 to His Church, we know that He intends to use us ; 
 how, we know not ; who are to be the objects of His 
 mercy, we know not ; we know not to wdiom we are 
 sent ; but we know that tens of thousands cry out for 
 us, and that of a surety we shall be sent to His chosen. 
 '^ The word which shall issue from His mouth shall not 
 return unto Him void, but shall do His pleasure, and 
 shall prosper in the things whereto He hath sent it.'' 
 None so innocent, none so sinful, none so dull, none so 
 wise, but are objects for the grace of the Catholic Church. 
 If we do not prevail with the educated, we shall prevail 
 with the rude ; if we fail with the old, we shall gain the 
 young ; if we persuade not the serious and respectable, 
 we shall succeed with the thoughtless ; if we come short 
 
256 Prospects of 
 
 of those who are near the Church, we shall reach even 
 to those who are far distant from it. God's arm is 
 not shortened ; He has not sent us here for nothing* ; 
 unless (which He Himself forbid !) we come to nothing 
 by reason of our own disobedience. 
 
 TruCj there is one class of persons to whom we 
 might seem to be sent more than to others, to whom 
 we could naturally address ourselves, and on whose 
 attention we have a sort of claim. How can I fitly 
 bring these remarks to an end without referring to 
 them ? There are those, I say, who, like ourselves, 
 were in times past gradually led on step by step, till 
 with us they stood on the threshold of the Church. 
 They felt with us that the Catholic Religion was dif- 
 ferent from anything else in the world; and though it is 
 difficult to say what more they felt in common (for no 
 two persons exactly felt alike), yet they felt they 
 had something to learn, their course was not clear to 
 them, and they wished to find out God's will. Now, 
 what might have been expected of such persons, what 
 was natural in them, when they heard that their own 
 friends, with whom they had sympathized so fully, 
 had gone forward, under a sense of duty, to join the 
 Catholic Church ? Surely it was natural, — I will not 
 say that they should at once follow them (for they had 
 authority also on the side of remaining), — but, at least, 
 it was natural that they should weigh the matter well, 
 and listen with interest to what their friends might 
 have to tell them. Did they do this in fact ? alas, some 
 of them did just the contrary : they said, " Since our 
 common doctrines and principles have led you forward, 
 
the Catholic Missioner, 257 
 
 for that very reason we will go backward ; the more 
 we have hitherto agreed with you, the less can we now 
 be influenced by you. Because you have gone, there- 
 fore, we make up our minds once for all to remain. 
 You are a temptation to us, because your arguments 
 are strong. You are a warning to us, because you 
 must not be our example. We do not wish to hear 
 more, lest we hear too much. You were straight- 
 forward when on our side, therefore you must be 
 sophistical now that you have left it. You were 
 right in making converts then, therefore you are 
 wrong in making converts now. You have spoiled a 
 promising cause, and you deserve from us no mercy.'' 
 • Thus they speak; let them say it before the 
 judgment- seat of Christ ! Take it at the best ad- 
 vantage, my brethren, and what is the argument 
 based upon but this, — that all investigation must be 
 wrong, which results in a change of religion ? The 
 process is condemned by its issue ; it is a mere 
 absurdity to give up the religion of our birth, the 
 home of our affections, the seat of our influence, the 
 well-spring of our maintenance. It was an absurdity 
 in St. Paul to become a Christian ; it was an absurdity 
 in him to weep over his brethren who could not listen 
 to him. I understand now, as I have not under- 
 stood before, why it was the Jews hugged themselves 
 in their Judaism, and were proof against persuasion. 
 In vain the Apostles insisted, " Your religion leads to 
 ours, and ours is a fact before your eyes ; why wait for 
 what is already present, as if it were still to come ? 
 do you consider your Church perfect? do you profess 
 
 s 
 
258 Prospects of 
 
 to have attained ? why not turn at least your thoughts 
 towards Christianity ? " " No," said they, '' we will 
 live, we will die, where we were born ; the religion of 
 our ancestors, the religion of our nation, is the only 
 truth ; it must be safe not to move. "We will not un- 
 church ourselves, we will not descend from our preten- 
 sions ; we will shut our hearts to conviction, and will 
 stake eternity on our position." O great argument, 
 not for Jews only, but for Mahometans, for Hindoos ! 
 great argument for heathen of all lands, for all who 
 prefer this world to another, who prefer a temporary 
 peace to truth, present ease to forgiveness of sins, the 
 smile of friends to the favour of Christ ! but weak 
 argument, strong delusion, in the clear ray of heaven, 
 and in the eye of Him who comes to judge the world 
 with fire ! 
 
 O my dear brethren, if any be here jDresent to 
 whom these remarks may more or less apply, do us not 
 the injustice to think that we aim at your conver- 
 sion for any party purpose of our own. What should 
 we gain from your joining us but an additional charge 
 and responsibility ? But who can bear to think that 
 pious, religious hearts, on which the grace of God 
 has been so singularly shed, who so befit conversion, 
 who are intended for heaven, should be falling back 
 into the world out of which they have been called, 
 and losing a prize which was once within their reach ! 
 Who that knows you, can get himself to believe that 
 you will always disappoint the yearning hopes of 
 those whom once you loved so much, and helped 
 forward so effectually ! Lies re^iit, dies Tua, the day 
 
the Catholic Missioner, 259 
 
 shall come, though it may tarry, and we will in 
 patience wait for it. Still the truth must be spoken, 
 — we do not need you, but you need us ; it is not we 
 who shall be baffled if we cannot gain you, but you 
 who will come short, if you be not gained. Remain, 
 then, in the barrenness of your affections, and the decay 
 of your zeal, and the perplexity of your reason, if 
 you will not be converted. Alas, there is work enough 
 to do, less troublesome, less anxious, than the care 
 of your souls. There are thousands of sinners to be 
 reconciled, of the young to be watched over, of the 
 devout to be consoled. God needs not worshippers ; 
 He needs not objects for His mercy; He can do with- 
 out you ; He offers His benefits, and passes on; He 
 delays not ; He offers once, not twice and thrice ; He 
 goes on to others ; He turns to the Gentiles ; He turns 
 to open sinners ; He refuses the well-conducted for 
 the outcast ; " He hath filled the hungry with good 
 things, and the rich He hath sent empty away.^^ 
 
 For me, my brethren, it is not likely that you 
 will hear me again ; these may be my first and last 
 words to you, for this is not my home. 81 justiji- 
 care me voliierOj os meum condemnahit me, *' If I wish 
 to justify myself, my mouth shall condemn me ; if I 
 shall show forth my innocence, it shall prove me 
 perverse ;" yet, though full of imperfections, full of 
 miseries, I trust that I may say in my measure after 
 the Apostle, "I have lived in all good conscience 
 before God unto this day. Our glory is this, the 
 testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity of 
 heart and sincerity of God, and not in carnal wisdom, 
 s 2 
 
26o Prospects of the Catholic Missioner, 
 
 but in the grace of God, we have lived in this world, 
 and more abundantly towards you." I have followed 
 His guidance, and He has not disappointed me; I 
 have put myself into His hands, and He has given 
 me what I sought ; and as He has been with me 
 hitherto, so may He, and His Blessed Mother, and 
 all good Angels and Saints, be with me unto the end. 
 
DISCOURSE XIIL 
 
 MYSTERIES OF NATURE AND OF GRACE, 
 
 T AM going to assert, what some persons, my 
 -■- brethren, those especially whom it most con- 
 cerns, will not hesitate to call a great paradox ; but 
 which, nevertheless, I consider to be most true, and 
 likely to approve itself to you more and more, the 
 oftener you turn your thoughts to the subject, and 
 likely to be confirmed in the religious history of 
 this country as time proceeds. It is this: — that 
 it is quite as difficult, and quite as easy, to believe 
 that there is a God in heaven, as to believe that 
 the Catholic Church is His oracle and minister on 
 earth. I do not mean to say, that it is really diffi- 
 cult to believe in God (God Himself forbid!) no; 
 but that belief in God and belief in His Church stand 
 on the same kind of foundation ; that the proof of the 
 one truth is like the proof of the other truth, and 
 that the objections which may be made to the one are 
 like the objections which may be made to the other ; 
 and that, as right reason and sound judgment over- 
 rule objections to the being of a God, so do they 
 supersede and set aside objections to the divine mis- 
 sion of the Church. And I consider that, when once 
 
262 Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 
 
 a man has a real hold of the great doctrine that there 
 is a God, in its true meaning and bearings, then 
 (provided there be no disturbing cause, no peculiarities 
 in his circumstances, involuntary ignorance, or the 
 like), he will be led on without an effort, as by a 
 natural continuation of that belief, to believe also in 
 the Catholic Church as God's messenger or Prophet, 
 dismissing as worthless the objections which are ad- 
 ducible against the latter truth, as he dismisses objec- 
 tions adducible against the former. And I consider, 
 on the other hand, that when a man does not believe 
 in the Church, then (the same accidental impediments 
 being put aside as before), there is nothing in reason 
 to keep him from doubting the being of a God. 
 
 The state of the case is this ; — every one spon- 
 taneously embraces the doctrine of the existence of 
 God, as a first principle, and a necessary assumption. 
 It is not so much proved to him, as borne in upon his 
 mind irresistibly, as a truth which it does not occur 
 to him, nor is possible for him, to doubt ; so various 
 and so abundant is the witness for it contained in the 
 experience and the conscience of every one. He 
 cannot unravel the process, or put his finger on the 
 independent arguments, which conspire together to 
 create in him the certainty which he feels ; but certain 
 of it he is, and he has neither the temptation nor the 
 wish to doubt it, and he could, should need arise, at 
 least point to the books or the persons from whence 
 he could obtain the various formal proofs on which 
 the being of a God rests, and the irrefragable demon- 
 stration thence resulting against the freethinker and 
 
Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 263 
 
 the sceptic. At the same time he certainly would 
 find, if he was in a condition to pursue the subject 
 himself, that unbelievers had the advantage of him 
 so far as this, — that there were a number of objections 
 to the doctrine which he could not satisfy, questions 
 which he could not solve, mysteries which he could 
 neither conceive nor explain ; he would perceive that 
 the body of proof itself might be more perfect and 
 complete than it is; he would not find indeed any- 
 thing to invalidate that proofs but many things which 
 might embarrass him in discussion, or afford a plau- 
 sible,, though not a real, excuse for doubting about it. 
 The case is pretty much the same as regards the 
 great moral law of God. We take it for granted, and 
 rightly; what could we do, where should we be, 
 without it ? how could we conduct ourselves, if there 
 were no difference between right and wrong, and if one 
 action were as acceptable to our Creator as another ? 
 Impossible ! if anything is true and divine, the rule 
 of conscience is such, and it is frightful to suppose 
 the contrary. Still, in spite of this, there is quite 
 room for objectors to insinuate doubts about its autho- 
 rity or its enunciations ; and where an inquirer is cold 
 and fastidious, or careless, or wishes an excuse for dis- 
 obedience, it is easy for him to perplex and disorder his 
 reason, till he begins to question whether what he has 
 all his life thought to be sins, are really such, and 
 whether conscientiousness is not in fact a superstition. 
 And in like manner as regards the Catholic Church j 
 she bears upon her the tokens of divinity, which come 
 home to any mind at once, which has not been pos- 
 
264 Mysteries of Nature and of Grace, 
 
 sessed by prejudice, and educated in suspicion. It is 
 not so much a process of inquiry as an instantaneous 
 recognition, on which the mind believes. Moreover, 
 it is possible to analyze the arguments and draw up 
 in form the great proof, on which her claims rest ; 
 but, on the other hand, it is quite possible also for 
 opponents to bring forward certain imposing objections, 
 which, though they do not really interfere with those 
 claims, still are specious in themselves, and are suffi- 
 cient to arrest and entangle the mind, and to keep 
 it back from a fair examination of the proof, and of 
 the vast array of arguments of which it consists. I 
 am alluding to such objections as the following; — 
 How can Almighty God be Three and yet One ; how 
 can Christ be God and yet man ; how can He be at 
 once in the Blessed Sacrament under the form of 
 Bread and Wine, and yet in heaven ; how is the doc- 
 trine of eternal punishment consistent with the Infinite 
 Mercy of God; — or again, how is it that, if the 
 Catholic Church be from God, the gift of belonging 
 to her is not, and has not been, granted to all men ; 
 how is it that so many apparently good men are ex- 
 ternal to her ; why does she pay such honour to the 
 Blessed Virgin and all Saints ; how is it that, since 
 the Bible also is from God, it admits of being quoted 
 in opposition to her teaching ; in a word, how is it, if 
 she is from God, that everything which she does and 
 says, is not perfectly intelligible to man ; intelligible, 
 not only to man in general, but to the reason and 
 judgment and taste of every individual of the species, 
 taken one by one ? 
 
Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 265 
 
 Now, whatever my anxiety may be about the next 
 generation, I trust I need at present have none in in- 
 sisting, before' a congregation however mixed, on the 
 mysteries or difficulties which attach to the doctrine 
 of God's existence, and which must be of necessity 
 acquiesced in by every one who believes it. I trust, 
 and am sure, that as yet it is safe even to put before one 
 who is not a Catholic some points which he is obliged 
 to accept, whether he will or no, when he confesses 
 that there is a God. I am going to do so, not wan- 
 tonly, but with a definite object, by way of showing 
 him, that he is not called on to believe anything in 
 the Catholic Church more strange or inexplicable 
 than he already admits when he believes in a God ; so 
 that, if God exists in spite of the difficulties attending 
 the doctrine, so the Church may be of divine origin, 
 though that doctrine too has its difficulties ; — nay, I 
 might even say, the Church is divine, because of those 
 difficulties; for the difficulties which exist in the 
 doctrine that there is a Divine Being, do but give 
 countenance and protection to parallel difficulties in 
 the doctrine that there is a Catholic Church. If there 
 be mysteriousness in her teaching, this does but show 
 that she proceeds from Him, who is Himself Mystery, 
 in the most simple and elementary ideas which we 
 have of Him, whom we cannot contemplate at all 
 except as One who is absolutely greater than our 
 reason, and utterly strange to our imagination. 
 
 First then, consider that Almighty God had no 
 beginning, and that this is necessary from the nature 
 of the case, and inevitable. For if (to suppose what 
 
266 Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 
 
 is absurd) the maker of the visible world was himself 
 made by some other maker, and that maker again by 
 another, you must anyhow come at last to a first 
 Maker who had no maker, that is, who had no begin • 
 ning. If you will not admit this, you will be forced 
 to say that the world was not made at all, or made 
 itself, and itself had no beginning, which is more 
 wonderful still ; for it is much easier to conceive that 
 a Spirit, such as God is, existed from eternity, than 
 that this material world was eternal. Unless then 
 we are resolved to doubt that we live in a world of 
 beings at all, unless we doubt our own existence, if we 
 do but grant that there is something or other now 
 existing, it follows at once, that there must be some- 
 thing or other which has always existed, and never 
 had a beginning. This then is certain from the neces- 
 sity of the case ; but can there be a more overwhelm- 
 ing mystery than it is ? To say that a being had no 
 beginning seems a contradiction in terms ; it is a 
 mystery as great, or rather greater, than any in the 
 Catholic Faith. For instance, it is the teaching of 
 the Church that the Father is God, the Son God, and 
 the Holy Gtost God, yet that there is but one Godj 
 this is simply incomprehensible to us, but at least, so 
 far as this, it involves no self-contradiction, because 
 God is not Three and One in the same sense, but He 
 is Three in One sense and One in another ; on the 
 contrary, to say that any being has no beginning, is 
 like a statement which means nothing and is an ab- 
 surdity. And so again, Protestants think that the 
 Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence cannot be true. 
 
Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 267 
 
 because, if so, they argue that our Lord-'s Body is in 
 two places at once, in Heaven and upon the Altar, 
 and this they say is an impossibility. Now, Catho- 
 lics do not see that it is impossible at all, that our 
 Lord should be in Heaven yet on the Altar ; they do 
 not indeed see liow it can be, but they do not see why 
 it should not be ; there are many things which exist, 
 though we do not know how ; — do we know how any- 
 thing exists ? — there are many truths which are not 
 less truths because we cannot picture them to ourselves 
 or conceive them ; but at any rate, the Catholic 
 doctrine concerning the Real Presence is not more 
 mysterious than how Almighty God can exist, yet 
 never have come into existence. We do not know 
 what is meant by saying that Almighty God will have 
 no end, but still there is nothing here to distress or 
 confuse our reason, but it distorts our mental sight 
 and makes our head giddy to have to say (what 
 nevertheless we cannot help saying), that He had no 
 beginning. Reason brings it home clearly to us, yet 
 reason again starts at it ; reason starts back from its 
 own discovery, yet is obliged to embrace it. It dis- 
 covers, it shrinks, it submits ; such is the state of 
 the case, but, I say, they who are obliged to bow their 
 neck to this mystery, need not be so sensitive about 
 the mysteries of the Catholic Church. 
 
 Then think of this again, which, though not so 
 bafl3ing to the reason, still is most bewildering to the 
 imagination j — that, if the Almighty had no begin- 
 ning He must have lived a whole eternity by Him- 
 self. What an awful thought ! for us, our happiness 
 
268 Mysteries of Nahire arid of Grace. 
 
 lies in looking up tc some object, or pursuing some 
 end ; we, poor mortal men, cannot understand a 
 prolonged rest, except as a sort of sloth and self- 
 forgetfulness ; we are wearied if we meditate for one 
 short hour ; what then is meant when it is said, that 
 He, the Great God, passed infinite ages by Him- 
 self ? What was the end of His being ? He was His 
 own end ; how incomprehensible ! And since He lived 
 a whole eternity by Himself, He might, had He so 
 willed, never have created anything; and then from 
 eternity to eternity there would have been none but 
 He, none to witness Him, none to contemplate Him, 
 none to adore and praise Him. How oppressive to 
 think of! that there should have been no space, no 
 time, no succession, no variation, no progression, 
 no scope, no termination. One Infinite Being from 
 first to last, and nothing else ! And why He ? Which 
 is the less painful to our imagination, the idea of 
 only one Being in existence, or of nothing at all ? 
 O my brethren, here is mystery without mitigation, 
 without relief ! how severe and frightful ! The mys- 
 teries of Revelation, the Catholic dogmas, inconceivable 
 as they are, are most gracious, most loving, laden 
 with mercy and consolation to us, not only sublime, 
 but touching and winning ; — such is the doctrine that 
 God became man. Incomprehensible it is, and we 
 can but adore, when we hear that the Almighty Being, 
 of whom I have been speaking, " who inhabiteth 
 eternity," has taken flesh and blood of a Virgin's 
 veins, lain in a Virgin's womb, been suckled at a 
 Virgin-'s breast, been obedient to human parents. 
 
Mysteries of Nahtre and of Grace. 269 
 
 worked at a humble trade, been despised by His 
 own, been buffeted and scourged by His creatures, 
 been nailed hand and foot to a Cross, and has died 
 a malefactor's death ; and that now, under the form 
 of Bread, He should lie upon our Altars, and suffer 
 Himself to be hidden in a small tabernacle ! Most 
 incomprehensible, but still, while the thought over- 
 whelms our imagination, it also overpowers our heart; 
 it is the most subduing, affecting, piercing thought 
 which can be pictured to us. It thrills through us, 
 and draws our tears, and abases us, and melts us 
 into love and affection, when we dwell upon it. O 
 most tender and compassionate Lord ! You see. 
 He puts out of our sight that mysteriousness of His, 
 which is only awful and terrible; He insists not on 
 His past eternity ; He would not scare and trouble 
 His poor children, when at length He speaks to 
 them ; no. He does but surround Himself with His 
 own infinite bountifulness and compassion ; He bids 
 His Church tell us only of His mysterious conde- 
 scension. Still our reason, prying, curious reason, 
 searches out for us those prior and more austere 
 mysteries, which are attached to His Being, and He 
 suffers it to find them out. He suffers it, for He knows 
 that that same reason, though it recoils from them, must 
 put up with them; He knows that they will be felt by 
 it to be clear, inevitable truths, appalling as they are. 
 He suffers it to discover them, in order that, both by 
 the parallel and by the contrast between what reason 
 infers and what the Church reveals, we may be drawn 
 on from the awful discoveries of the one to the 
 
2 70 Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 
 
 gracious announcements of the other; and in order, 
 too, that the rejection of Revelation may be its own 
 punishment, and that they who stumble at the Catholic 
 mysteries may be dashed back upon the adamantine 
 rocks which base the Throne of the Everlasting, and 
 may wrestle with the stern conclusions of reason, 
 since they refuse the bright consolations of faith. 
 
 And now another difficulty, which reason discovers, 
 yet cannot explain. Since the world exists, and did 
 not ever exist, there was a time when the Almighty 
 changed that state of things, which had been from 
 all eternity, for another state. It was wonderful that 
 He should be by Himself for an eternity ; moreover, 
 it had been wonderful, had He never changed it ; but 
 it is wonderful, too, that He did change it. Ifc is 
 wonderful that, being for an eternity alone. He 
 should ever pass from that solitary state, and sur- 
 round Himself with millions upon millions of living 
 beings. A state which had been from eternity might 
 well be considered unchangeable ; yet it ceased, and 
 another superseded it. What end could the All- 
 blessed have had in beginning to create, and in 
 determining to pass a second eternity so differently 
 from the first? This mystery, my brethren, will 
 tend to reconcile us, I think, to the difficulty of a 
 question sometimes put to us by unbelievers, viz., 
 if the Catholic Religion is from God, why was it set 
 up so late in the world's day ? Why did some thou- 
 sands of years pass before Christ came, and His gifts 
 were poured upon the race of man ? But, surely, it 
 is not so strange that the Judge of men should have 
 
Mysteries of Nature and of Grace, 2 7 1 
 
 changed His dealings towards them '^ in the midst 
 of the years/^ as that He should have changed the 
 history of the heavens in the midst of eternity. If 
 creation had a beginning at a certain date, why 
 should not redemption ? And if we be forced to be- 
 lieve, whether we will or no, that there was once an 
 innovation upon the course of things on high, and 
 that the universe arose out of nothing, and if, even 
 when the earth was created, still it remained " empty 
 and void, and darkness was upon the face of the 
 deep,^"* what so great marvel is it, that there was a 
 fixed period in God^s inscrutable counsels, during 
 which there was " a bond fastened upon all people,'' 
 and a " web drawn over them,'' and then a date, at 
 which the bond of thraldom was broken, and the web 
 of error was unravelled ? 
 
 Well, let us suppose the innovation decreed in the 
 eternal purpose of the Most High, and that creation 
 is to be ; of whom, my brethren, shall it consist ? 
 Doubtless of beings who can praise and bless Him, 
 who can admire His perfections, and obey His will, 
 who will be least unworthy to minister about His 
 Throne, and to keep Him company. Look around, 
 and say how far facts bear out this anticipation. 
 There is but one race of intelligent beings, as far as 
 we have experience by nature, and a thousand races 
 which cannot love or worship Him who made them. 
 Millions upon millions enjoy their brief span of life, 
 but man alone can look up to heaven; and what is 
 man, many though he be, what is he in the pre- 
 sence of so innumerable a multitude ? Consider the 
 
272 Mysteries of Nature and of Grace, 
 
 abundance of beastp that range the earth, of birds 
 under the firmament of heaven, of fish in the depths 
 of the ocean, and, above all, the exuberant varieties 
 of insects, which baffle our enumeration by their 
 minuteness, and our powers of conception by their 
 profusion. Doubtless they all show forth the glory 
 of the Creator, as do the elements, " fire, hail, snow, 
 and ice, stormy winds, which fulfil His word/^ Yet 
 not one of them has a soul, not one of them knows 
 who made it, or that it is made, not one can render 
 Him any proper service, not one can love Him. In- 
 deed how far does the whole world come short in all 
 respects of what it might be ! It is not even pos- 
 sessed of created excellence in fulness. It is stamped 
 with imperfection ; everything indeed is good in its 
 kind, for God could create nothing otherwise, but 
 how much more fully might He have poured His 
 glory and infused His grace into it, how much more 
 beautiful and divine a world might He have made, 
 than that which, after an eternal silence, He sum- 
 moned into being ! Let reason answer, I repeat, — 
 Why is it that He did not surround Himself with 
 spiritual intelligences, and animate every material 
 atom with a soul ? Why made He not the very foot- 
 stool of His Throne and the pavement of His Temple 
 of an angelic nature, beings who could praise and 
 bless Him, while they did Him menial service ? Set 
 man's wit and man's imagination to the work of 
 devising a world, and you would see, my brethren, 
 what a far more splendid design he would submit 
 for it, than met the good pleasure of the Omnipo- 
 
Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 273 
 
 tent and All-wise. Ambitious architect he would 
 have been, if called to build the palace of the Lord 
 of all, in which every single part would have been 
 the best conceivable, the colours all the brightest, 
 the materials the most costly, and the lineaments 
 the most perfect. Pass from man's private fancies 
 ^nd ideas, and fastidious criticisms on the vast sub- 
 ject ; come to facts which are before our eyes, and 
 report what meets them. We see an universe, ma- 
 terial for the most part and corruptible, fashioned 
 indeed by laws of infinite skill, and betokening an 
 All- wise Hand, but lifeless and senseless; huge globes, 
 hurled into space, and moving mechanically ; subtle 
 influences, penetrating into the most hidden corners 
 and pores of the world, as quick and keen as thought, 
 yet as helpless as the clay from which thought 
 has departed. And next, life without sense ; myriads 
 of trees and plants, " the grass of the field,'' beau- 
 tiful to the eye, but perishable and worthless in the 
 sight of heaven. And, then, when at length we 
 discover sense as well as life, what, I repeat, do 
 we see but a greater mystery still ? We behold 
 the spectacle of brute nature; of impulses, feelings, 
 propensities, passions, which in us are ruled or re- 
 pressed by a superintending reason, but from which, 
 when ungovernable, we shrink, as fearful and hate- 
 ful, because in us they would be sin. Millions of 
 irrational creatures surround us, and it would seem 
 as though the Creator had left part of His work in 
 its original chaos, so monstrous are these beings, 
 which move and feel and act without reflection and 
 
 T 
 
2 74 Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 
 
 without principle. To matter He has given laws ; He 
 has divided the moist and the dry, the heavy and 
 the rare, the light and the dark; He has *^ placed 
 the sand as a boundary for the sea, a perpetual pre- 
 cept which it shall not pass." He has tamed the 
 elements, and made them servants of the universal 
 good ; but the brute beasts pass to and fro in their 
 wildness and their isolation, no yoke on their neck 
 or " bit in their lips,"*' the enemies of all they meet, 
 yet without the capacity of self-love. They live on 
 each other^s flesh by an original necessity of their 
 being; their eyes, their teeth, their claws, their 
 muscles, their voice, their walk, their structure 
 within, all speak of violence and blood. They seem 
 made to inflict pain ; they rush on their prey with 
 fierceness, and devour it with greediness. There is 
 scarce a passion or a feeling which is sin in man, but 
 is found brute and irresponsi})le in them. Rage, 
 wanton cruelty, hatred, sullenness, jealousy, revenge, 
 cunning, malice, envy, lust, vain-glory, gluttony, each 
 has its representative; and say, O philosopher of 
 this world, who wouldest fain walk by reason only, 
 and scornest the Catholic faith, is it not marvellous, 
 or explain it, if thou canst, that the All-wise and 
 All-good should have poured over the face of His fair 
 creation these rude and inchoate existences, to look 
 like sinners, though they be not ; and these too 
 created before man, perhaps for an untold period, and 
 dividing the earth with him since, and the actual 
 lords of a great portion of it even now ? 
 
 The crownino" work of God is man : he is the flower 
 
Mysteries of Nature and of Grace, 275 
 
 and perfection of creation, and made to serve and 
 worship his Creator; look at him then, O Sages, who 
 scoff at the revealed word, scrutinize him, and say in 
 sincerity, is he a fit offering* to j)resent to the Great 
 God ? I must not speak of sin ; you will not acknow- 
 ledge the term, or will explain it away ; yet consider 
 man as he is found in the world, and, — owning as you 
 must own, that the many do not act by rule or princi- 
 ple, and that few are any honour to their Maker — seeing, 
 as you see, that enmities, frauds, cruelties, oppressions, 
 injuries, excesses are almost the constituents of human 
 life — knowing too the wonderful capabilities of man, yet 
 their necessary frustration in so brief an existence, — can 
 you venture to say that the Churches yoke is heavy, when 
 you yourselves, viewing the Universe from end to end, 
 are compelled, by the force of reason, to submit your 
 reason to the confession that God has created nothing 
 perfect, a world of order which is dead and corruptible, 
 a world of immortal spirits which is in rebellion ? 
 
 I come then to this conclusion ; — if I must submit 
 my reason to mysteries, it is not much matter whether 
 it is a mystery more or a mystery less : the main diffi- 
 culty is to believe at all ; the main difficulty to an in- 
 quirer is firmly to hold that there is a Living God, in 
 spite of the darkness which surrounds Him, the Creator, 
 Witness, and Judge of men. When once the mind is 
 broken in, as it must be, to the belief of a Power above 
 it, when once it understands, that it is not itself the 
 measure of all things in heaven and earth, it will have 
 little difficulty in going forward. I do not say it will, 
 or can, go on to other truths, without conviction ; I do 
 T % 
 
2 76 Mysteries of Nature and of Grace, 
 
 not say it ought to believe the Catholic faith without 
 grounds and motives ; but I say that, when once it 
 believes in God, the great obstacle to faith has been 
 taken away, — a proud self-sufficient spirit. When 
 once a man really, with the eyes of his soul and by 
 the power of divine grace, recognizes his Creator, he 
 has passed a line ; that has happened to him which 
 cannot happen twice ; he has bent his stiff neck, and 
 triumphed over himself. If he believes that God has 
 no beginning, why not believe that He is Three yet 
 One ? if he owns that God created space, why not own 
 also that He can cause a body to subsist without de- 
 pendence on place ? if he is obliged to grant that God 
 created all things out of nothing, why doubt His 
 power to change the substance of bread into the Body 
 of His Son ? It is as strange that, after an eternal 
 yest, He should begin to create, as that, when He once 
 created. He should take on Himself a created nature; 
 it is as strange that man should be allowed to fall so 
 low, as we see before our eyes in so many dreadful in- 
 stances, as that Angels and Saints should be exalted 
 even to religious honours ; it is as strange that such 
 large families in the animal world should be created 
 without souls and subject to vanity, as that one crea- 
 ture, the Blessed Mother of God, should be exalted 
 over all the rest ; as strange, that the book of nature 
 should read differently from the rule of conscience or 
 the conclusions of reason, as that the Scriptures of the 
 Church should admit of being interpreted in opposition 
 to her Tradition. And if it shocks a religious mind 
 to doubt of the being of the All- wise and All-good 
 
Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 277 
 
 God, on the ground of the mysteries in Nature, 
 why may it not shrink also from using the revealed 
 mysteries as an argument against Revelation ? 
 
 And now, my dear brethren, who are as yet exter- 
 nal to the Church, if I have brought you as far as 
 this, I really do not see why I have not brought you 
 on to make your submission to her. Can you delibe- 
 rately sit down amid the bewildering mysteries of crea- 
 tion, when a refuge is held out to you, in which reason 
 is rewarded for its faith by the fulfilment of its hopes? 
 Nature does not exempt you from the trial of believ- 
 ing, but it gives you nothing in return ; it does but 
 disappoint you. You must submit your reason any- 
 how ; you are not in better circumstances if you turn 
 from the Church ; you merely do not secure what you 
 have already sought in nature in vain. The simple 
 question to be decided is one of fact, has a revelation 
 been given ? You lessen, not increase your difficulties 
 by receiving it. It comes to you recommended and 
 urged upon you by the most favourable anticipations 
 of reason. The very difficulties of nature make it 
 likely that a revelation should be made ; the very mys- 
 teries of creation call for some act on the part of the 
 Creator, by which those mysteries shall be alleviated 
 to you or compensated. One of the greatest of the 
 perplexities of nature is this very one, that the Creator 
 should have left you to yourselves. You know there 
 is a God, yet you know your own ignorance of Him, 
 of His will, of your duties, of your prospects. A re- 
 velation would be the greatest of possible boons which 
 could be vouchsafed to you. After all, you do not 
 
278 Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 
 
 knoWj you only conclude that there is a God ; you see 
 Him not, you do but hear of Him. He acts under a 
 veil j He is on the point of manifesting Himself to 
 you at every turn, yet He does not. He has impressed 
 on your hearts anticipations of His majesty ; in every 
 part of creation has He left traces of His presence 
 and given glimpses of His glory ; you come up to the 
 spot. He has been there, but He is gone. He has 
 taught you His law, unequivocally indeed, but by de- 
 duction and by suggestion, not by direct command. 
 He has always addressed you circuitously, by your in- 
 ward sense, by the received opinion, by the events of 
 life, by vague traditions, by dim histories ; but as if 
 of set purpose, and by an evident law. He never actu- 
 ally appears to your longing eyes or your weary heart, 
 He never confronts you with Himself. What can be 
 meant by all this? a spiritual being abandoned by its 
 Creator ! there must doubtless be some awful and all- 
 wise reason for it; still a sore trial it is; so sore, 
 surely, that you must gladly hail the news of His 
 interference to remove or diminish it. 
 
 The news then of a revelation, far from suspicious, 
 is borne in upon our hearts by the strongest presump- 
 tions of reason in its behalf. It is hard to believe that 
 it has not been given, as indeed the conduct of mankind 
 has ever shown. You cannot help expecting it from 
 the hands of the All-merciful, unworthy as you feel 
 yourselves of it. It is not that you can claim it, but 
 that He inspires hope of it; it is not you that are 
 worthy of the gift, but it is the gift which is worthy 
 of your Creator. It is so urgently probable, that 
 
Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 2 79 
 
 little evidence is required for it, even though but little 
 were given. Evidence that God has spoken you 
 must have, else were you a prey to impostures ; but its 
 extreme likelihood allows you, were it necessary, to 
 dispense with all proof that is not barely sufficient 
 for your purpose. The very fact, I say, that there is 
 a Creator, and a hidden one, powerfully bears you on 
 and sets you down at the very threshold of revelation, 
 aud leaves you there looking up earnestly for divine 
 tokens that a revelation has been made. 
 
 Do you go with me as far as this, that a revelation 
 is probable ? well then, a second remark, and I have 
 done. It is this, — the teaching of the Church mani- 
 festly is that revelation. Why should it not be? 
 This mark has she upon her at very first sight, that 
 she is unlike every other profession of religion. Were 
 she God's Prophet or Messenger, she would be dis- 
 tinctive in her characteristics, isolated, and special ; 
 and so she is. She is one, not only internally, but 
 in contrast to everything else ; she has no relation- 
 ship with any other body. And hence too, you see 
 the question lies between the Church and no divine 
 messenger at all; there is no revelation given us, 
 unless she is the organ of it, for where else is there a 
 Prophet to be found ? Your anticipation, which I 
 have been speaking of, has failed, your probability 
 has been falsified, if she be not that Prophet of God. 
 Not that this conclusion is an absurdity, for you cannot 
 take it for granted that your hope of a revelation will 
 be fulfilled ; but in whatever degree it is probable that 
 it will be fulfilled, in that degree it is probable that 
 
28o Mysteries of Nature and of Grace, 
 
 the Church, and nothing else, is the means of fulfil- 
 ling it. Nothing else ; for you cannot believe in your 
 heart that this or that Sect, that this or that Estab- 
 lishment is, in its teaching and its commands, the 
 oracle of the Most High. I know you cannot say in 
 your heart, "I believe this or that, because the 
 Eno-lish Establishment or the Scotch declares that it 
 is true/^ Nor could you, I am sure, trust the Russian 
 hierarchy, or the Nestorian, or the Jacobite, as 
 speaking from God ; at the utmost you might, if you 
 were learned in these matters, look on them as vener- 
 able depositories of historical matter, and witnesses 
 of past ages. You would exercise your judgment and 
 criticism on what they said, and would never think 
 of taking their word as decisive ; they are in no sense 
 Prophets, Oracles, Judges, of supernatural truth ; and 
 the contrast between them and the Catholic Church 
 is a preliminary evidence in her favour. 
 
 A Prophet is one who comes from God, who speaks 
 with authority, who is ever one and the same, who is 
 precise and decisive in his statements, who is equal to 
 successive difficulties, and can smite and overthrow 
 error. Such has the Catholic Church shown herself 
 in her history, such is she at this day. She alone has 
 had the divine spell of controlling the reason of man, 
 and of eliciting faith in her word from high and low, 
 educated and ignorant, restless and dull-minded. 
 Even those who are alien to her, and whom she does 
 not move to obedience, she moves to respect and 
 admiration. The most profound thinkers and the 
 most sagacious politicians predict her future triumphs, 
 
Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 2 8 1 
 
 while they marvel at her past. Her enemies are 
 frightened at the sight of her, and have no better 
 mode ofvrarfare against her than that of blackening her 
 with slanders, or of driving her into the wilderness. 
 To see her is to recognize her ; her look and bearing 
 is the evidence of her royal lineage. True, her tokens 
 might be clearer than they are ; I grant it ; she 
 might have been set up in Adam, and not in Peter ; 
 she might have embraced the whole family of man ; 
 she might have been the instrument of inwardly con- 
 verting all hearts ; she might have had no scandals 
 within or misfortunes without ; she might in short 
 have been a heaven on earth ; but, does she not show 
 as glorious in our sight as a creature, as her God does 
 as the Creator ? If He does not display the highest 
 possible tokens of His presence in nature, why should 
 His Messenger display hers in grace ? You believe the 
 Scriptures ; does she not in her character and conduct 
 show as divine as Jacob does, or as Samuel, or as 
 David, or as Jeremias, or in a far higher measure ? 
 Has she not notes far more than sufficient for the 
 purpose of convincing you ? She takes her rise from 
 the very coming of Christ, and receives her charter, 
 as also her very form and mission, from His mouth. 
 "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and 
 blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father 
 who is in heaven. And I say unto thee, that thou 
 art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, 
 and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 
 And 1 will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of 
 heaven j and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth. 
 
282 Mysteries of Natter e and of Grace. 
 
 shall be bound also in heaven^ and whatsoever thou 
 shalt loose on earth, shall be loosed also in heaven/* 
 
 Coming to you then from the very time of the 
 Apostles, spreading out into all lands, triumphing 
 over a thousand revolutions, exhibiting so awful a 
 unity, glorying in so mysterious a vitality, so majestic, 
 so imperturbable, so bold, so saintly, so sublime, so 
 beautiful. Oh, ye sons of men, can ye doubt that she 
 is the Divine Messenger for whom you seek ? Oh, long 
 sought after, tardily found, desire of the eyes, joy of 
 the heart, the truth after many shadows, the fulness 
 after many foretastes, the home after many storms, 
 come to her, poor wanderers, for she it is, and she 
 alone, who can unfold the meaning of your being and 
 the secret of your destiny. She alone can open to 
 you the gate of heaven, and put you on your way. 
 " Arise, shine, O Jerusalem ; for thy light is come, 
 and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee ; for, 
 behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and a mist the 
 people, but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and His 
 glory shall be seen upon thee.'"' " Open ye the gates, 
 that the just nation, that keepeth the truth, may 
 enter in. The old error is passed away ; Thou wilt 
 keep peace, — peace, because we have hoped in Thee. 
 Lord, Thou wilt give peace to us, for Thou hast 
 wrought all our works for us. O Lord, our God, other 
 lords besides Thee have had dominion over us, but in 
 Thee only make we mention of Thy Name. The 
 dying, they shall not live ; the giants, they shall not 
 rise again; therefore Thou hast visited and broken 
 them, and hast destroyed all their memory.'^ 
 
Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 283 
 
 O my brethren, turn away from the Catholic 
 Church, and to whom will you go ? it is your only 
 chance of peace and assurance in this turbulent, 
 changing world. (There is nothing between it and 
 scepticism, when men exert their reason freelylj 
 Private creeds, fancy religions, may be showy and 
 imposing to the many in their day ; national religions 
 may lie huge and lifeless, and cumber the ground for 
 centuries, and distract the attention or confuse the 
 judgment of the learned ; but on the long run it will 
 be found that either the Catholic Religion is verily 
 and indeed the coming in of the unseen world into 
 this, or that there is nothing positive, nothing 
 dogmatic, nothing real in any of our notions as to 
 whence we come and whither we are going. lUnlearn 
 Catholicism, and you become Protestant, Unitarian, ' 
 Deist, Pantheist, Sceptic, in a dreadful, but infallible 
 succession 7] only not infallible, by some accident of 
 your position, of your education, and of your cast of 
 mind ; only not infallible, if you dismiss the subject 
 of religion from your view, deny yourself your reason, 
 devote your thoughts to moral duties, or dissipate them 
 in engagements of the world. Go, then, and do your 
 duty to your neighbour, be just, be kindly- tempered, 
 be hospitable, set a good example, uphold religion as 
 good for society, pursue your business, or your profes- 
 sion, or your pleasure, eat and drink, read the news, 
 visit your friends, build and furnish, plant and sow, 
 buy and sell, plead and debate, work for the world, 
 settle your children, go home and die, but eschew 
 religious inquiry, if you will not have faith, nor hope 
 
284 Mysteries of Nature and of Grace. 
 
 that you can have faith, if you will not join the 
 Church. 
 
 Avoid, I say, inquiry else, for it will but lead you 
 thither, where there is no light, no peace, no hope ; it 
 will lead you to the deep pit, where the sun, and the 
 moon, and the stars, and the beauteous heavens are 
 not, but chilliness, and barrenness, and perpetual 
 desolation. perverse children of men, who refuse 
 truth when offered you, because it is not truer ! O 
 restless hearts and fastidious intellects, who seek a 
 gospel more salutary than the Redeemer's, and a 
 creation more perfect than the Creator's ! God, for- 
 sooth, is not great enough for you ; you have those 
 high aspirations and those philosophical notions, 
 inspired by the original Tempter, which are content 
 with nothing that is, which determine that the Most 
 High is too little for your worship, and His attributes 
 too narrow for your love. Satan fell by pride ; and 
 what was said of old as if of him, may surely now, by 
 way of warning, be applied to all who copy him : — 
 *^ Because thy heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I 
 am God, and I sit in the chair of God, . . whereas thou 
 art a man and not God, and hast set thy heart as if it 
 were the heart of God, therefore . . I will bring thee 
 to nothing, and thou shalt not be, and if thou be 
 sought for, thou shalt not be found any more for ever." 
 
 And, while we thus speak of the evil one and his 
 followers, let us not forget to look to ourselves. God 
 forbid that, while we preach to others, we ourselves 
 should become castaways ! 
 
UKIVERSITl 
 DISCOURSE XIV. 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF DIVINE CONDESCENSION: 
 
 rr HE Eternal Word, the Only-begotten Son of the 
 ^ Father, put off His glory, and came down upon 
 earth, to raise us to heaven. Though He was God, 
 He became Man ; though He was Lord of all. He be^ 
 came as a servant; ''though He was rich, yet for our 
 sakes He became poor, that we, through His poverty, 
 might be rich." He came from heaven in so humble 
 an exterior, that the self-satisfied Pharisees despised 
 Him, and treated Him as a madman or an impostor. 
 When He spoke of His father Abraham, and implied 
 His knowledge of him, who was in truth but the 
 creature of His hands, they said in derision, " Thou 
 art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abra- 
 ham?'' He made answer, ''Amen, amen, I say 
 unto you. Before Abraham was made, I am.'' He had 
 seen Abraham, who lived two thousand years before ; 
 yet in truth He was not two thousand years old, 
 more than He was fifty. He was not two thousand 
 years old, because He had no years; He was the 
 Ancient of Days, who never had beginning, and who 
 never will have an end; who is above and beyond 
 
286 The Mystery of Divine Co7tdescension, 
 
 time ; who is ever young', and ever is beginning, yet 
 never has not been, and is as old as He is young, and 
 was as old and as young when Abraham lived as when 
 He came on earth in our flesh to atone for our sins. 
 And hence He says, "Before Abraham was, I am'' 
 and not " I was s" because with Him there is no past 
 or future. It cannot be properly said of Him, that 
 He was, or that He will be, but that He is ; He is 
 always ; always the same, not older because He has 
 lived two thousand years in addition, not younger 
 because He has not lived them. 
 
 My brethren, if we could get ourselves to enter into 
 this high and sacred thought, if we really contemplated 
 the Almighty in Himself, then we should understand 
 better what His incarnation is to us, and what it is 
 in Him. I do not mean, if we worthily contemplated 
 Him as He is ; but, even if we contemplated Him 
 in such a way as is really possible to us, if we did but 
 fix our thoughts on Him, and make use of the reason 
 which He has given us, we should understand enough 
 of His greatness to feel the awfulness of His volun- 
 tary self-abasement. Attend, then, while I recall to 
 your mind the doctrines which reason and revelation 
 combine to teach you about the Most High, and, 
 next, when you have fixed your mind upon His 
 infinity, then go on to view, in the light of that 
 infinity, the meaning of His incarnation. 
 
 Now first consider that reason teaches you there 
 must be a God; else how was this all-wonderful 
 universe made? It could not make itself; man 
 could not make it, he is but a part of it ; each man 
 
The Mystery of Divine Condescension. 287 
 
 has a begmning, there must have been a first man, 
 and who made him ? To the thought of God then 
 we are forced from the nature of the case ; we must 
 admit the idea of an Almighty Creator, and that 
 Creator must have been from everlasting. He must 
 have had no beginning, else how came He. to be? 
 Else, we should be in our original difficulty, and liiust 
 begin our argument over again. The Creator, I say, 
 had no beginning ; for, if He was brought into being 
 by another before Him, then how came that other to 
 be ? And so we shall proceed in an unprofitable 
 series or catalogue of creators, which is as difficult to 
 conceive as an endless line of men. Besides, if it 
 was not the Creator Himself who was from everlasting, 
 then there would be one being who was from everlast- 
 ing, and another who was Creator ; which is all one 
 with saying there are two Gods. It is least trial then 
 to our reason, it is simplest and most natural, to pro- 
 nounce, that the Creator of the world had no begin- 
 ning; — and if so, He is self-existing; and if so. He 
 can undergo no change. What is self-existing and 
 everlasting has no growth or decay ; It is what It 
 ever was, and ever shall be the same. As It originated 
 in nothino" else, nothing: else can interfere with It or 
 affect It. Besides, everything that is has originated 
 in It j everything therefore is dependent on It, and 
 It is independently of everything. 
 
 Contemplate then the Supreme Being, the Being 
 of beings, even so far as I have yet described Him ; 
 fix the idea of Him in your minds. He is one; He 
 has no rival ; He has no equal ; He is unlike anything 
 
288 The Mystery of Divine Condescension. 
 
 else; He is sovereign; He can do what He will. 
 He is unchangeable from first to last ; He is all- 
 perfect; He is infinite in His power and in His 
 wisdom, or He could not have made this immense 
 world which we see by day and by night. 
 
 Next, this follows from what I have said; — that, 
 since He is from everlasting, and has created all 
 things from a certain beginning, He has lived in an 
 eternity before He began to create anything. What a 
 wonderful thought is this ! there was a state of things 
 in which God was by Himself, and nothing else but 
 He. There was no earth, no sky, no sun, no stars, 
 no space, no time, no beings of any kind ; no men, 
 no Angels, no Seraphim. His throne was without 
 ministers ; He was not waited on by any ; all was 
 silence, all was repose, there was nothing but God ; 
 and this state continued, not for a while only, but 
 for a measureless duration ; it was a state which had 
 ever been ; it was the rule of things, and creation 
 has been an innovation upon it. Creation is, com- 
 paratively speaking, but of yesterday ; it has lasted 
 a poor six thousand years, say sixty thousand, if you 
 will, or six million, or six million million ; what is 
 this to eternity ? nothing at all ; not so much as a 
 drop compared to the whole ocean, or a grain of sand 
 to the whole earth. I say, through a whole eternity 
 God was by Himself, with no other being but Himself; 
 with nothing external to Himself, not working, but at 
 rest, not speaking, not receiving homage from any, 
 not glorified in creatures, but blessed in Himself and 
 by Himself, and wanting nothing. 
 
The Mystery of Divine Condescension. 289 
 
 What an idea this gives us of the Almig-hty ! He 
 is above us, my brethren, we feel He is; how little can 
 we understand Him ! We fall in even with men upon 
 earth, whose ways are so different from our own, that 
 we cannot understand them ; we marvel at them ; they 
 pursue courses so unlike ours, they take recreations so 
 peculiar to themselves, that we despair of finding any- 
 thing in common between them and us; we can- 
 not make conversation when we are with them. Thus 
 stirring and ambitious men wonder at those who live 
 among books; sinners wonder at those who attend 
 the Sacraments and mortify their passions ; thrifty 
 persons wonder at those who are lavish of their money; 
 men who love society wonder at those who live 
 in solitude and are happy in it. We cannot enter 
 even into our fellows; we call them strange and 
 incomprehensible ; but what are they, compared with 
 the all-mar vellousness of the Everlasting God? He 
 alone indeed is incomprehensible, who has not only 
 lived an eternity without beginning, but who has 
 lived through a whole eternity by Himself, and has 
 not wearied of the solitude. Which of us, or how 
 few of us, could live a week in comfort by ourselves? 
 You have heard, my brethren, of solitary confinement 
 as a punishment assigned to criminals, and at length 
 it becomes more severe than any other punishment : 
 it is said at length to drive men mad. We cannot 
 live without objects, without aims, without employ- 
 ments, without companions. We cannot live simply 
 in ourselves ; the mind preys upon itself, if left to 
 itself. This is the case with us mortal men ; now 
 
 u 
 
290 TJie Mystery of Divine Condescension, 
 
 raise your minds to God. Oh, the vast contrast ! He 
 lived a whole eternity in that state, a few poor years 
 of which to us is madness. He lived a whole eternity 
 without change of any kind. Day and night, sleep 
 and meal- time, at least are changes, unavoidable 
 changes, in the life of the most solitary upon earth. 
 A prison, if it has nothing else to relieve its dreariness 
 and its hopelessness, has at least this, that the poor 
 prisoner sleeps ; he sleeps, and suspends his misery ; 
 he sleeps, and recruits his power of bearing it; but 
 the Eternal is the sleepless. He pauses not. He sus- 
 pends not His powers. He is never tired of Himself; 
 He is never wearied of His own infinity. He was 
 from eternity ever in action, though ever at rest ; 
 ever surely in rest and peace profound and ineffable ; 
 yet with a living, present mind, self-possessed, and 
 all-conscious, comprehending Himself and sustaining 
 the comprehension. He rested ever, but He rested 
 in Himself; His own resource. His own end. His 
 own contemplation. His own blessedness. 
 
 Yes, so it was ; and if it is incomprehensible that 
 He should have existed solitary through an eternity, 
 is it not incomprehensible too, that He should have 
 ever given up that solitariness, and have willed to sur- 
 round Himself with creatures ? Why was He not con- 
 tent to be as He had been ? Why did He bring into 
 existence those who could not add to His blessedness, 
 and were not secure of their own ? Why did He give 
 them that gift which we see they possess, of doing 
 right or wrong as they please, and of working out 
 their ruin as well as their salvation ? Why did He 
 
The Mystery of Divine Condescension, 291 
 
 create a world like that which is before our eyes, 
 which at best so dimly shows forth His glory, and at 
 worst is a scene of sin and sorrow ? He might have 
 made a far more excellent world than this ; He might 
 have excluded sin ; but, oh, wonderful mystery, He has 
 surrounded Himself with the cries of fallen souls, and 
 has created and opened the great pit. He has willed, 
 after an eternity of peace, to allow of everlasting 
 anarchy, of pride, and blasphemy, and guilt and 
 hatred of Himself, and the worm that dieth not. 
 Thus He is simply incomprehensible to us, mortal 
 men. Well might the ancient heathen shrink from 
 answering, when a king, his patron, asked him what 
 God was ! He begged for a day to consider his reply ; 
 at the end of it, for two more ; and, when the two were 
 ended, for four besides ; for in truth he found that 
 meditation, instead of bringing him towards the solu- 
 tion of the problem, did but drive him back ; the more 
 he questioned, the vaster grew the theme, and where 
 he drew one conclusion, thence issued forth a hundred 
 fresh difficulties to confound his reason. For in truth 
 the being and attributes of God are a subject, not for 
 reason simply, but for faith -, and we must accept His 
 own word about Himself. 
 
 And now proceed to another thought, my brethren, 
 which I have partly implied and partly expressed 
 already If the Almighty Creator be such as I have 
 described Him, He in no wise depends on His creatures. 
 They sin, they perish, they are saved, they praise Him 
 eternally ; but, though He loves all the creatures ot 
 His hand, though He visits all of them without ex- 
 u 2 
 
292 The Mystery of Divine Condescension, 
 
 ception with influences of His grace, so numerous and 
 so urgent, that not till the disclosures of the last day- 
 shall we rightly conceive of them ; though He deigns 
 to be glorified in His Saints, though He is their all in 
 all, their continued life, and power, and blessedness, 
 still they are nothing to Him. They do not increase 
 His happiness if they are saved, or diminish it if they 
 are lost. I do not mean that He is at a distance from 
 them ; He does not so live in Himself as to abandon His 
 creation to the operation of laws which He has stamped 
 upon it. No ; He is everywhere a vigilant and active 
 Providence ; He is in every one of His creatures, and 
 in every one of their actions ; if He were not in them, 
 they would fall back into nothing. He is everywhere 
 on earth, and sees every crime committed, whether 
 under the sun or in the gloom of night ; He is even 
 the sustaining power of those who sin ; He is most 
 close to every the most polluted scul ; He is in the 
 midst of the eternal prison ; but what I mean to say 
 is, that nothing touches Him, though He touches all 
 things. The sun's rays penetrate into the most hideous 
 recesses, yet keep their brightness and their perfection ; 
 and so the Almighty witnesses and suffers evil, yet 
 is not touched or tried by the creature's wilfulness, 
 pride, uncleanness, or unbelief. The lusts of earth 
 and the blasphemies of hell neither sully His purity 
 nor impair His majesty. If the whole world were to 
 go and plunge into the eternal gulf, the loss would be 
 theirs, not His. In the dread contest between good 
 and evil, whether the Church conquers at once, or is 
 oppressed for the time, and labours, whether she is 
 
The Mystery of Divine Condescension. 293 
 
 in persecution, or in triumph, or in peace, whether 
 His enemies hold out or are routed, when the innocent 
 sin, when the just are falling, when good Angels weep, 
 when souls are hardened. He is one and the same. He 
 is in His blessedness still, and not even the surface is 
 ruffled of His everlasting rest. He neither hopes nor 
 fears, nor desires, nor sorrows, nor repents. All 
 around Him seems full of agitation and confusion, 
 but in His eternal decrees and infallible foreknow- 
 ledge there is nothing contingent, nothing uncer- 
 tain, nothing which is not part of one vast plan, as 
 fixed in its issue, and as unchangeable, as His own 
 Essence. 
 
 Such is the great God, so all-sufficient, so all- 
 blessed, so separate from creatures, so inscrutable, so 
 unapproachable. Who can see Him ? who can fathom 
 Him ? who can move Him ? who can change Him? 
 who can even speak of Him? He is all-holy, all- 
 patient, all-serene, and all-true. He says and He 
 does \ He delays and He executes ; He warns and He 
 punishes j He punishes. He rewards, He forbears. He 
 pardons, according to an eternal decree, without im- 
 perfection, without vacillation, without inconsistency. 
 
 And now that I have set before you, my brethren, 
 in human language, some of the attributes of the 
 Adorable God, perhaps you are tempted to complain 
 that, instead of winning you to the All-glorious and 
 All-good, I have but repelled you from Him. You are 
 tempted to exclaim, — He is so far above us that the 
 thought of Him does but frighten me ; I cannot be- 
 
294 The Mystery of Divine Condescension, 
 
 lieve that He cares for me. I believe firmly that He 
 is infinite perfection ; and I love that perfection, not 
 so much indeed as I could wish, still in my measure 
 I love it for its own sake, and I wish to love it above 
 all things, and I well understand that there is no 
 creature but must love it in his measure, unless he 
 has fallen from grace. But there are two feelings, 
 which, alas, I have a difficulty in entertaining; I 
 believe and I love, but without fervour, without keen- 
 ness, because my heart is not kindled by hope, nor 
 subdued and melted with gratitude. Hope and grati- 
 tude I wish to have, and have not ; I know that He is 
 loving towards all His works, but how am I to believe 
 that He gives to me personally a thought, and cares 
 for me for my own sake ? I am beneath His love ; He 
 looks on me as an atom in a vast universe. He acts 
 by general laws, and, if He is kind to me, it is, not 
 for my sake, but because it is according to His 
 nature to be kind. And hence it is that I am drawn 
 over to sinful man with an intenser affection than to 
 my glorious Maker. Kings and great men upon earth, 
 when they appear in public, are not content with a 
 mere display of their splendour, they show themselves 
 as well as their glories ; they look around them ; they 
 notice individuals ; they have a kind eye, or a cour- 
 teous gesture, or an open hand, for all who come near 
 them. They scatter among the crowd the largess of 
 their smiles and of their words. And then men go 
 home, and tell their friends, and treasure up to their 
 latest day, how that so great a personage took notice 
 of them or of a child of theirs, or accepted a present 
 
The Mystery of Divine Condescension. 295 
 
 at their hand^ or gave expression to some sentiment, 
 without point in itself, but precious as addressed to 
 them. Thus does my fellow-man engage and win me ; 
 but there is a gulf between me and my great God. I 
 shall fall back on myself, and grovel in my nothing- 
 ness, till He looks down from heaven, till He calls me, 
 till He ta.kes interest in me. It is a want in my 
 nature to have one who can weep with me, and rejoice 
 with me, and in a way minister to me ; and this would 
 be presumption in me, and worse, to hope to find in 
 the Infinite and Eternal God. 
 
 This is what you may be tempted to say, my bre- 
 thren, not without impatience, while you contemplate 
 the Almighty God, as conscience portrays Him, and 
 as reason concludes about Him, and as creation wit- 
 nesses of Him ; and I have dwelt on it, in order, by 
 way of contrast, to set before you, as I proposed when 
 I began, how your complaint is answered in the great 
 mystery of the Incarnation. Never suppose that you 
 are left by God ; never suppose that He does not know 
 you, your minds and your powers, better than you do 
 yourselves. Ought you not to conclude, that, if your 
 complaint be true. He has thought of it before you ? 
 "Before they call, I will attend," says He, "and 
 while they speak, I will hear.^' Add this to your 
 general notion of His incomprehensibility, viz., that 
 though He is infinite. He can bow Himself to the 
 finite ; have faith in the mystery of His condescen- 
 sion ; confess that, though He " inhabiteth eternity,'' 
 He "dwelleth with a contrite and humble spirit," 
 and " looketh down upon the lowly." Give up this 
 
296 The Mystery of Divine Condescension, 
 
 fretfulness, quit these self-consuming" thoughts, go 
 out of yourselves, lift up your eyes, look around, and 
 see if you can discern nothing more hopeful, more 
 gracious in this wide world, than these perplexities 
 over which you have been brooding. No, my brethren, 
 we are so constituted by our Maker, as to be able to 
 love Him ardently, and He has given us means of 
 doing so. He has not founded our worship of Him in 
 hope, nor made self-interest the measure of our vene- 
 ration. And we have eyes to see much more than the 
 difficulties of His Essence ; and the great consolatory 
 disclosures of Him, which nature begins, Revelation 
 brings to perfection. Lift up your eyes, I say, and 
 look out even upon the material world, and there you 
 will see one attribute above others on its very face 
 which will reverse your sad meditations on Him who 
 made it. He has traced out many of His attributes 
 upon it. His immensity, His wisdom, His power. His 
 loving-kindness, and His skill ; but more than all, its 
 very face is illuminated with the glory and beauty of 
 His eternal excellence. This is that attribute in which 
 all His attributes coalesce, which is the perfection, or 
 (as I may say) the flower and bloom of their combina- 
 tion. As among men, youth, and health, and vigour, 
 have their finish in that grace of outline, and lustre 
 of complexion, and eloquence of expression, which we 
 call beauty, so in the Almighty God though we can- 
 not comprehend His holy attributes, and shrink from 
 their unfathomable profound, yet we can, as creatures, 
 recognize and rejoice in the brightness, harmony, and* 
 serenity, which is their resulting excellence. This is 
 
The Mystery of Divine Condescension. 297 
 
 that quality which, by the law of our nature, is ever 
 able to draw us off ourselves in admiration, which 
 moves our affections, which wins from us a disinte- 
 rested homage; and it is shed in profusion, in token 
 of its Creator, over the visible world. 
 
 Leave, then, the prison of your own reasonings, leave 
 the town, the work of man, the haunt of sin ; go forth, 
 my brethren, far from the tents of Cedar and the slime 
 of Babylon ; with the patriarch go forth to meditate 
 in the field, and from the splendours of the work 
 imagine the unimaginable glory of the Architect. 
 Mount some bold eminence, and look back, when the 
 sun is high and full upon the earth, when mountains, 
 cliffs, and sea, rise up before you like a brilliant 
 pageant, with outlines noble and graceful, and tints 
 and shadows soft, clear, and harmonious, giving depth 
 and unity to the whole; and then go through the 
 forest, or fruitful field, or along meadow and stream, 
 and listen to the distant country sounds, and drink in 
 the fragrant air which is poured around you in spring 
 or summer ; or go among the gardens, and delight 
 your senses with the grace and splendour, and the 
 various sweetness of the flowers you find there ; then 
 think of the almost mysterious influence upon the 
 mind of particular scents, or the emotion which some 
 gentle, peaceful strain excites in us, or how soul and 
 body are rapt and carried away captive by the concord 
 of musical sounds, when the ear is open to their 
 power; and then, when you have ranged through 
 sights, and sounds, and odours, and your heart kindles, 
 •and your voice is full of praise and worship, reflect, — 
 
^9^ The Mystery of Divine Condescension. 
 
 not that they tell you nothing of their Maker, — but that 
 they are the poorest and dimmest glimmerings of His 
 glory, and the very refuse of His exuberant riches, and 
 but the dusky smoke which precedes the flame, com- 
 pared with Him who made them. Such is the Creator 
 in His Eternal Uncreated Beauty, that, were it given 
 to us to behold it, we should die of very rapture at the 
 sight. Moses, unable to forget the token of it he had 
 once seen in the Bush, asked to see it fully, and on 
 this very account was refused. " He said, Show me 
 Thy glory ; and He said, Thou canst not see My Face ; 
 for man shall not see Me and live.^' When Saints 
 have been favoured with glimpses of it, it has thrown 
 them into ecstasy, broken their poor frames of dust and 
 ashes, and pierced them through with such keen distress, 
 that they have cried out to God, in the very midst of 
 their transports, that He would hold His hand, and, 
 in tenderness to them, check the abundance of His 
 consolations. What Saints partake in fact, we enjoy 
 in thought and meditation; and even that mere re- 
 flection of God''s glory is sufficient to sweep away the 
 gloomy, envious thoughts of Him, which circle round 
 us, and to lead us to forget ourselves in the contem- 
 plation of the All-beautiful. He is so bright, so 
 majestic, so serene, so harmonious, so pure ; He so 
 surpasses, as being its archetype and fulness, all that 
 is graceful, gentle, sweet, and fair on earth ; His voice 
 is so touching, and His smile so winning while so 
 awful, that we need nothing more than to gaze and 
 listen, and be happy. Say not this is not enough for 
 love and joy ; even in sights of this earth, the pomp 
 
The Mystery of Divine Condescension. 299 
 
 and ceremonial of royalty is sufficient for the beholder ; 
 he needs nothing- more than to be allowed to see ; and 
 were we but admitted to the courts of heaven, the 
 sight of Him, ever transporting, ever new, though 
 He addressed us not, would be our meat and drink 
 to all eternity. 
 
 And if He has so constituted us, that, in spite of 
 the abyss which lies between Him and us, in spite of 
 the mystery of His attributes and the feebleness of 
 our reason, the very vision of Him dispels all doubt, 
 allures our shrinking* souls, and is our everlasting* joy, 
 what shall we say, my brethren, when we are told that 
 He has also condescended to take possession of us and 
 to rule us by means of hope and gratitude, those 
 '* cords of Adam,'' by which one man is bound to 
 another? You say that God and man never can be 
 one, that man cannot bear the sight and touch of his 
 Creator, nor the Creator condescend to the feebleness 
 of the creature ; but blush and be confounded to hear, 
 oh, peevish, restless hearts, that He has come down 
 from His hio^h throne and humbled Himself to the 
 creature, in order that the creature might be inspired 
 and strengthened to rise to Him. It was not enough 
 to give man grace ; it was little to impart to him a 
 celestial light, and a sanctity such as Angels had re- 
 ceived ; little to create Adam in original justice, with a 
 heavenly nature superadded to His own, with an intel- 
 lect which could know God and a soul which could 
 love Him ; He purposed even in man's first state of 
 innocence a higher mercy, which in the fulness of time 
 was to be accomplished in his behalf. It became the 
 
300 The Mystery of Divine Condescension, 
 
 Wisdom of God, wlio is the eternally glorious and 
 beautiful, to impress these attributes upon men by 
 His very presence and personal indwelling in their 
 flesh, that, as He was by nature the Only-begotten 
 Image of the Father, so He might also become " the 
 First-born of every creature." It became Him who is 
 higher than the highest, to show that even humility, 
 if this dare be said, was in the number of His attributes, 
 by taking Adam^s nature upon Himself, and manifest- 
 ing Himself to men and Angels in it. It became Him, 
 of whom are all things, and who is in all things, not 
 to create new natures, which had not been before, in- 
 constant spirit and corruptible matter, without taking 
 them to Himself and absorbing them into a personal 
 union with God. And see, my brethren, when you 
 complain that we men are cut off from God, see that 
 He has done more for you than He has done for those 
 " who are greater in strength and power/' The 
 Angels surpass us in their original nature ; they are 
 immortal spirits, and we are subject to death ; they 
 have been visited by larger measures of God^s grace, 
 and they serve in His heaven, and are blessed by the 
 vision of His face ; yet " He took not on Him the 
 care of Angels ; '^ He turned aside from the eldest- 
 born of creation, he chose the younger. He chose 
 him in whom an immortal spirit was united to a frail 
 and perishable body. He turned aside to him whom an 
 irritable, wayward, dim-sighted, and passionate nature 
 rendered less worthy of His love ; to him He turned ; 
 He made " the first last, and the last first ; '* " He raised 
 the needy from the earth, and lifted the poor out of the 
 
The Mystery of Divine Condescension. 301 
 
 mire/' and bade Angels bow down in adoration to a 
 material form, for it was His own. 
 
 Well, my brethren, your God has taken on Him 
 your nature, and now prepare yourselves to see in 
 human flesh that glory and that beauty on which the 
 Angels gaze. Since you are to see Emmanuel, since 
 " the brilliancy of the Eternal Light and the unspotted 
 mirror of God's majesty, and the Image of His good- 
 ness/' is to walk the earth, since the Son of the 
 Highest is to be born of woman, since the manifold 
 attributes of the Infinite are to be poured out before 
 your eyes through material channels and the opera- 
 tions of a human soul, since He, whose contemplation 
 did but trouble you in nature, is coming to take you 
 captive by a manifestation, which is both intelligible 
 to you and a pledge that He loves you one by one, 
 raise high your expectations, for surely they cannot 
 sufl'er disappointment. Doubtless, you will say. He 
 will take a form such as " eye hath not seen, nor ear 
 heard of" before. It will be a body framed in the 
 heavens, and only committed to the custody of Mary ; 
 a form of light and glory, worthy of Him, who is 
 " blessed for evermore " and comes to bless us with 
 His presence. Pomp and pride of men He may 
 indeed despise; we do not look for Him in kings' 
 courts, or in the array of war, or in the philosophic 
 school ; but doubtless He will choose some calm and 
 holy spot, and men will go out thither and find their 
 Incarnate God. He will be tenant of spme paradise, 
 like Adam or Elias, or He will dwell in the mystic 
 garden of the Canticles, where nature ministers its. 
 
302 The Mystery of Divine Condescension. 
 
 best and purest to its Creator. " The fig-tree will 
 put forth her green figs, the vines in flower yield their 
 sweet smell;" " spikenard and saffron ^^ will be there ; 
 '' the sweet cane and cinnamon, myrrh and aloes, with 
 all the chief perfumes ;" '* the glory of Libanus, the 
 beauty of Carmel," before '* the glory of the Lord and 
 the beauty of our God." There will He show Himself 
 at stated times, with Angels for His choristers and 
 Saints for His doorkeepers, to the poor and needy, to 
 the humble and devout, to those who have kept their 
 innocence undefiled, or have purged their sins away by 
 long penance and masterful contrition. 
 
 Such' would be the conjecture of man, at fault when 
 he speculated on the height of God, and now again at 
 fault when he tries to sound the depth. He thinks 
 that a royal glory is the note of His presence upon 
 earth ; — lift up your eyes, my brethren, and answer 
 whether he has guessed aright. O, incomprehensible 
 in eternity and in time ! solitary in heaven, and soli- 
 tary upon earth ! " Who is This, that cometh from 
 Edom, with dyed garments from Bozra ? Why is Thy 
 cloak red,and Thy garments like theirs that tread in the 
 wine- fat ? " It is because the Maker of man, the Wis- 
 dom of God, has come, not in strength, but in weakness. 
 He has come, not to assert a claim, but to pay a 
 debt. Instead of wealth, He has come poor ; instead of 
 honour, He has come in ignominy ; instead of blessed- 
 ness. He has come to suffer. He has been delivered 
 over from His birth to pain and contempt ; His deli- 
 cate frame is \vorn down by cold and heat, by hunger 
 and sleeplessness; His hands are rough and bruised with 
 
The Mystery of Divine Condescension, 303 
 
 a mechanic's toil ; His eyes are dimmed with weeping- ; 
 His Name is cast out as evil. He is flung- amid the 
 throng of men ; He wanders from place to place ; He 
 is the companion of sinners. He is followed by a 
 mixed multitude, who care more for meat and drink 
 than for His teaching, or by a city^s populace which 
 deserts Him in the day of trial. And at length " the 
 Brightness of God's Glory and the Image of His 
 Substance'' is fettered, haled to and fro, buffeted, 
 spit upon, mocked, cursed, scourged, and tortured. 
 " He hath no beauty nor comeliness ; He is despised 
 and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows and 
 acquainted with infirmity ;" nay. He is a '* leper, and 
 smitten of God, and humbled." And so His clothes 
 are torn off, and He is lifted up upon the bitter Cross, 
 and there He hangs, a spectacle for profane, impure, 
 and savage eyes, and a mockery for the evil spirit 
 whom He had cast down into hell. 
 
 O wayward man ! discontented first that thy God 
 is far from thee, discontented again when He has 
 drawn near,— complaining first that He is high, com- 
 plaining next that He is low, — unhumbled being, 
 when wilt thou cease to make thyself thine own 
 centre, and learn that God is infinite in all He does, 
 infinite when He reigns in heaven, infinite when He 
 serves on earth, exacting our homage in the midst of 
 His Angels, and winning homage from us in the 
 midst of sinners? Adorable He is in His eternal 
 rest, adorable in the glory of His court, adorable in 
 the beauty of His works, most adorable of all, most 
 royal, most persuasive in His deformity. Think you 
 
304 The Mystery of Divine Condescension. 
 
 not, my brethren, that to Mary, when she held Him 
 in her maternal arms, when she gazed on the pale 
 countenance and the dislocated limbs of her God, 
 when she traced the wandering* lines of blood, when 
 she counted the weals, the bruises, and the wounds, 
 which dishonoured that virginal flesh, think you not 
 that to her eyes it was more beautiful than when she 
 first worshipped it, pure, radiant, and fragrant, on 
 the night of His nativity ? Dilectus mens candidus 
 et rubicunduSj as the Church sings ; " My beloved is 
 white and ruddy ; His whole form doth breathe of 
 love, and doth provoke to love in turn ; His drooping 
 head, His open palms, and His breast all bare. My 
 beloved is white and ruddy, choice out of thousands ; 
 His head is of the finest gold ; His locks are branches 
 of palm-trees, black as a raven. His eyes as doves 
 upon brooks of waters, which are washed with milk, 
 and sit beside the plentiful streams. His cheeks are 
 as beds of spices set by the perfumers ; His lips are 
 lilies dropping choice myrrh. His hands are turned 
 and golden, full of jacinths ; His throat is most sweet, 
 and He is all lovely. Such is my beloved, and He is 
 my friend, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.'^ 
 
 So is it, O dear and gracious Lord ; " the day of 
 death is better than the day of birth, and better is 
 the house of mourning than the house of feasting.'* 
 Better for me that Thou shouldst come thus abject 
 and dishonourable, than hadst Thou put on a body 
 fair as Adam's when he came out of Thy Hand. Thy 
 glory sullied. Thy beauty marred, those five wounds 
 welling out blood, those temples torn and raw, that 
 
The Mystery of Divine Condescension. 305 
 
 broken heart, that crushed and livid frame, they teach 
 me more, than wert Thou Solomon " in the diadem 
 wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his 
 hearths joy/' The gentle and tender expression of 
 that Countenance is no new beauty, or created grace ; 
 it is but the manifestation, in a human form, of 
 Attributes which have been from everlasting. Thou 
 canst not change, O Jesu; and, as Thou art still 
 Mystery, so wast Thou always Love. I cannot com- 
 prehend Thee more than I did, before I saw The'e on 
 the Cross; but I have gained my lesson. I have 
 before me the proof, that in spite of Thy awful nature, 
 and the clouds and darkness which surround it. Thou 
 canst think of me with a personal affection. Thou hast 
 died, that I might live. " Let us love God,"" says Thy 
 Apostle, " because He first hath loved us.'' I can love 
 Thee now from first to last, though from first to last 
 T cannot understand Thee. As I adore Thee, O Lover 
 of souls, in Thy humiliation, so will I admire Thee and 
 embrace Thee in Thy infinite and everlasting power. 
 
DISCOURSE XV. 
 
 THE INFimrUDE OF THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES, 
 
 TXTE all know well, and firmly hold, that our Lord 
 ^ * Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the Cross 
 in satisfaction for our sins. This truth is the great 
 foundation of all our hopes, and the object of our most 
 earnest faith and most loving worship. And yet, how- 
 ever well we know it, it is a subject which admits of 
 drawing out, and insisting on in detail, in a way which 
 most persons will feel profitable to themselves. I 
 shall now attempt to do this in some measure, and to 
 follow the reflections to which it leads ; though at 
 this season * many words would be out of place. 
 
 Christ died for our sins, for the sins of the whole 
 world ; but He need not have died, for the Almighty 
 God might have saved us all, might have saved the 
 whole world, without His dying. He might have par- 
 doned and brought to heaven every individual child of 
 Adam without the incarnation and death of His Son. 
 He might have saved us without any ransom and with- 
 out any delay. He might have abolished original 
 sin, and restored Adam at once. His word had been 
 enough ; with Him to say is to do. *^ All things art 
 * Passion -tide. 
 
The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes. 307 
 
 possible to Thee/' was the very reason our Lord gave 
 in His agony for asking that the chalice might pass 
 from Him. As in the beginning He said, " Let light 
 be made, and it was made ; '^ so might He have spoken 
 again, and sin would have vanished from the soul, and 
 guilt with it. Or He might have employed a me- 
 diator less powerful than His own Son ; He might 
 have accepted the imperfect satisfaction of some mere 
 man. He wants not for resources ; but He willed 
 otherwise. He who ever does the best, saw in His 
 infinite wisdom that it was expedient and fitting to 
 take a ransom. As He has not hindered the repro- 
 bate from resisting His grace and rejecting redemp* 
 tion, so He has not pardoned any who are to enter 
 His eternal kingdom without a true and sufficient 
 satisfaction for their sin. Both in the one case and 
 the other, He has done, not what was possible merely^ 
 but what was best. And this is why the coming of 
 the Word was necessary ; for if a true satisfaction 
 was to be made, then nothing could accomplish this 
 short of the incarnation of the All-holy. 
 
 You see, then, my brethren, how voluntary was the 
 mission and death of our Lord ; if an instance can be 
 imagined of voluntary suffering, it is this. He came 
 to die when He need not have died ; He died to satisfy 
 for what might have been pardoned without satisfac- 
 tion ; He paid a price which need not have been asked, 
 nay, which needed to be accepted^ when paid. It may 
 be said with truth, that, rigorously speaking, one 
 
 2 Dicendum videtur satisfactionem Christi, licet fuerit rigorosa 
 quoad sequalitatem et condignitatem pretii soluti, non taiuen fuisse 
 
3o8 The hifinitude of the Divine Attributes, 
 
 being can never^ by his ovntq sufFering", simply dis- 
 charge the debt of another's sin.^ Accordingly^ He 
 died, not in order to exert a peremptory claim on the 
 divine justice, if I may so speak, — as if He were bar- 
 gaining in the market-place, or pursuing a plea in a 
 court of law ; — but in a more loving, generous, muni- 
 ficent way, did He shed that blood, which was worth ten 
 thousand lives of men, worth more than the blood of 
 all the sons of Adam j)Oured out together, in accord- 
 ance with His Father's will, who, for wise reasons 
 unrevealed, exacted it as the condition of their pardon. 
 Nor was this all ; — one drop of His blood had been 
 sufficient to satisfy for our sins ; He might have 
 offered His circumcision as an atonement, and it would 
 have been sufficient ; one moment of His agony of 
 blood had been sufficient, one stroke of the scourge 
 might have wrought a sufficient satisfaction. But 
 neither circumcision, agony, nor scourging was our 
 redemption, because He did not offer them as such. 
 
 rigoro?am quoad modum solutionis, sed indiguisse aliqua gratis 
 libera Dei. ... Si aliquis ita petcavit, ut juste puuiatur exilio 
 unius mensis, et velit redimere pecunia illud exiliuui, offeratque 
 summam aequivalentem, immo excedentem, non dubium quin satis- 
 tiat rigori justitise vindicativae, si attendas ad mensuram _pcensej 
 uon tamen satisfit, si attendas ad modum ; si enim judex gratiose 
 non admittat illam compensationem, jus habet ex rigore justitise 
 punitirse ad exigendum exilium, quantumvis alia aequalis et longe 
 major poena offeratur. — De Lug. Inearn. iii. 10. 
 
 3 Qui redemit captivum solvendo pretium, solvit quantum domino 
 debetur ex justitia, solum enim debetur illi pretium ex contractu 
 et conventioue inter ipsum et redemptorera. . . . Nullum est justi- 
 tise debitum cui non satisfiat per solutionem illius pretii. At vero 
 pro injuria non solum debetur ex justitia satisfactio utcunque, sed 
 exhibenda ab ipso offensore . . . sicut nee qui abstulit librum, 
 satisfaeit adsequate reddendo pretiuiu aequivalens. — Ibid. iv. 2. 
 
The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes. 309 
 
 The price He paid was nothing- short of the whole 
 treasure of His blood, poured forth to the last drop 
 from His veins and sacred heart. He shed His whole 
 life for us ; He left Himself empty of His all. He 
 left His throne on high; He gave up His home on 
 earth; He parted with His Mother, He gave His 
 strength and His toil. He gave His body and soul, He 
 offered up His passion. His crucifixion, and His death, 
 that man should not be boujj^ht for nothino^. This is 
 what the Apostle intimates in saying that we are 
 " bought with a great price ; " and the Prophet, while 
 he declares that ^' with the Lord there is mercy, and 
 with Him a copious" or "plenteous redemption. ^^ 
 
 This is what I wished to draw out distinctly, my 
 brethren, for your devout meditation. We might 
 have been pardoned f without the humiliation of the 
 Eternal Word ; again, we might have been redeemed 
 by one single drop of His blood ; but still on earth 
 He came, and a death He died, a death of inconceivable 
 suffering; and all this He did as a free offering 
 to His Father, not as forcing His acceptance of it. 
 From beginning to the end it was in the highest 
 sense a voluntary work; and this is what is so 
 overpowering to the mind in the thought of it. It 
 is as if He delighted in having to suffer ; as if He 
 wished to show all creatures, what would otherwise 
 have seemed impossible, that the Creator could prac- 
 tise, in the midst of His heavenly blessedness, the 
 virtues of a creature, self-abasement and humility. 
 It is, as if He wished, all-glorious as He was from 
 all eternity, as a sort of addition (if we may so 
 
3IO The hifinitude of the Divine AttribtUes. 
 
 speak) to His perfections, to submit to a creature's 
 condition in its most afflictive form. It is, if we 
 may use human language, a prodigality of charity, 
 or that heroic love of toil and hardship, which is 
 poorly shadowed out in the romantic defenders of the 
 innocent or the oppressed, whom we read of in history 
 or in fable, who have gone about the earth, nobly 
 exposing themselves to peril for any who asked their 
 aid. 
 
 Or rather, and that is what I wish to insist upon, 
 it suggests to us, as by a specimen, the infinitude 
 of God. We all confess that He is infinite ; He has 
 an infinite number of perfections, and He is infinite 
 in each of them. This we shall confess at once ; but, 
 we ask, what is infinity ? what is meant by saying 
 He is infinite ? We seem to wish to be told, as if we 
 had nothing given us to throw light on the question. 
 Why, my brethren, we have much given us ; the out- 
 ward exhibition of infinitude is mystery; and the 
 mysteries of nature and of grace are nothing else 
 than the mode in which His infinitude encounters 
 us and is brought home to our minds. Men confess 
 that He is infinite, yet they start and object, as soon 
 as His infinitude comes in contact with their imagi- 
 nation and acts upon their reason. They cannot bear 
 the fulness, the superabundance, the inexhaustible 
 flowing forth, and " vehement rushing," ^ and encom- 
 passing flood of the divine attributes. They restrain 
 and limit them to their own comprehension, they 
 measure them by their own standard, they fashion 
 ^ Tanqaam advenientis spiritus vehementis. 
 
The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes, 311 
 
 them by their own model; and when they discern 
 aught of the unfathomable depth, the immensity, of 
 any single excellence or perfection of the Divine 
 Nature, His love, or His justice, or His power, they 
 are at once offended, and turn away, and refuse to 
 believe. 
 
 Now, this instance of our Lord^s humiliation is a 
 case in point. What would be profusion and extra- 
 vagance in man, is but suitable or necessary, if I may 
 say so, in Him whose resources are illimitable. We 
 read in history accounts of oriental munificence, 
 which sound like fiction, and which would gain, not 
 applause but contempt in Europe, where wealth is not 
 concentrated, as in the east, upon,a few out of a whole 
 people. " Royal munificence ^' has become a proverb, 
 from the idea that a king^s treasures are such, as 
 to make the giving of large presents and bounties, not 
 allowable only, but appropriate in him. He, then, 
 who is infinite, may be only doing what is best, and 
 holiest, and wisest, in doing what to man seems 
 infinitely to exceed the necessity; for He cannot 
 exceed His own powers or resources. Man has limited 
 means and definite duties ; it would be waste in him 
 to lavish a thousand pieces of gold on one poor man, 
 when with the same he might have done substantial 
 good to many ; but God is as rich, as profound and 
 vast, as infinite, after He has done a work of infinite 
 bounty, as before He set about it. *^ Knowest thou 
 not,^^ He says, " or hast thou not heard ? the Ever- 
 lasting God, the Lord, who has created the ends of 
 the earth, shall not faint, nor weary; nor is there 
 
3 1 2 The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes. 
 
 searching of His wisdom/' He cannot do a small 
 work ; He cannot act by halves ; He ever does whole 
 works, great works. Had Christ been incarnate for 
 one single soul, who ought to have been surprised ? 
 who ought not to have praised and blessed Him for 
 telling us in one instance, and by a specimen, what 
 that love and bounty are, which fill the heavens ? and 
 in like manner, when in fact He has taken flesh for 
 those, who might have been saved without it, though 
 more suitably to His glorious majesty with it, and 
 moreover has shed His whole blood in satisfaction, 
 when a drop might have sufficed, shall we think such 
 teaching strange and hard to receive, and not rather 
 consider it consistent, and merely consistent, with that 
 great truth, which we all start with admitting, that 
 He is infinite ? Surely it would be most irrational in 
 us, to admit His infinitude in the general, and to 
 reject the examples of it in particular ; to maintain 
 that He is mystery, yet to deny that His acts can be 
 mysterious. 
 
 We must not, then, bring in our economical theories, 
 borrowed from the schools of the day, when we would 
 reason about the Eternal God. The world is ever 
 doing so, when it speaks of religion. It will not allow 
 the miracles of the Saints, because it pretends that 
 those wrought by the Apostles were sufficient for the 
 purpose which miracles had, or ought forsooth to have, 
 in view. I wonder how the world comes to admit that 
 such multitudes of human beings are born and die in 
 infancy ; or that a profusion of seeds is cast over the 
 face of the earth, some of which fall by the way-side. 
 
The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes, 3 1 3 
 
 some on the rock, some among* thorns, and only a 
 remnant on the good ground. How wasteful was that 
 sower ! so thinks the world, but an Apostle cries out, 
 " Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the 
 knowledge of God ! how incomprehensible are His 
 judgments, and how unsearchable His ways ! ^' 
 
 The world judges of God's condescension as it judges 
 of His bounty. We know from Scripture that ^* the 
 teaching of the Cross ^^ was in the beginning " foolish- 
 ness " to it ; grave thinking men scoffed at it as 
 impossible, that God, who is so high, should humble 
 Himself so low, and that One who died a malefactor^s 
 death should be worshipped on the very instrument of 
 His punishment. Voluntary humiliation they did not 
 understand then, nor do they now. They do not 
 indeed express their repugnance to the doctrine so 
 openly now, because what is called public opinion does 
 not allow them ; but you see what they really think of 
 Christ, by the tone which they adopt towards those 
 who in their measure follow Him. Those who are 
 partakers of His fulness, are called on, according as 
 the gift is given them, whether by His ordinary sug- 
 gestions or by particular inspiration, to imitate His 
 pattern ; they are carried on to the sacrifice of self, 
 and thus they come into collision with the maxims of 
 the world. A voluntary or gratuitous mortification in 
 one shape or another, voluntary chastity, voluntary 
 poverty, voluntary obedience, vows of perfection, all 
 this is the very point of contest between the world and 
 the Church, the world hating it, and the Church 
 counselling it. " Why cannot they stop with me ? '* 
 
314 The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes, 
 
 says the world ; '^ why will they give up their station 
 or position, when it is certain they might be saved 
 where they are ? Here is a lady of birth ; she might 
 be useful at home, she might marry well, she might 
 be an ornament to society, she might give her coun- 
 tenance to religious objects, and she has perversely left 
 us all ; she has cut off her hair, and put on a coarse 
 garment, and is washing the feet of the poor. There 
 is a man of name and ability, who has thrown himself 
 out of his sphere of influence, and he lives in a small 
 room, in a place where no one knows who he is ; and 
 he is teaching little children their catechism."" The 
 world is touched with pity, and shame, and indignation 
 at the sight, and moralizes over persons who act so 
 unworthily of their birth or education, and are so cruel 
 towards themselves. And worse still, "here is a Saint, 
 and what must he do but practise eccentricities ? '^ — as 
 they really would be in others, though in him they 
 are but the necessary antagonists to the temptations 
 which otherwise would come on him from *^ the great- 
 ness of the revelations," or are but tokens of the love 
 with which he embraces the feet of his Redeemer. 
 And " here again is another, and she submits her flesh 
 to penances shocking to think of, and wearies herself 
 out in the search after misery, and all from some notion 
 that she is assimilating her condition to the voluntary 
 self-abasement of the Word."*^ Alas, for the world! 
 which is simply forgetful that God is great in all He 
 does, great in His sufferings, and that He makes 
 Saints and holy men in their degree partakers of that 
 greatness. 
 
The Lifinitude of the Divine Attributes. 315 
 
 Here^ too, is another instance in point. If there is 
 one divine attribute rather than another, which forces 
 itself upon the mind from the contemplation of the 
 material world, it is the glory, harmony, and beauty 
 of its Creator. This lies on the surface of the creation, 
 like light on a countenance, and addresses itself to all. 
 To few men indeed is it given to penetrate into the 
 world^s system and order so deeply, as to perceive, in 
 addition, the wonderful skill and goodness of the 
 Divine Artificer ; but the grace and loveliness which 
 beam from the very face of the visible creation are 
 cognizable by all, rich and poor, learned and ignorant. 
 It is indeed so beautiful, that those same philosophers, 
 who devote themselves to its investigation, come to 
 love it idolatrously, and to think it too perfect for them 
 to allow of its infringement or alteration, or to tolerate 
 even that idea. Not looking up to the Infinite Creator, 
 who could make a thousand fairer worlds, and who has 
 made the fairest portion of this the most perishable, 
 — blooming, as it does, to-day, and to-morrow burning 
 in the oven, — loving, I say, the creature more than the 
 Creator, they have taken on them in all ages to dis- 
 believe the possibility of interruptions of physical order, 
 and have denied the miracles of Revelation. They have 
 denied the miracles of Apostles and Prophets, on the 
 ground of their marring and spoiling what is so perfect 
 and hai-monious, as if the visible world were some work 
 of human art, too exquisite to be wantonly dashed on 
 the ground. But He, my brethren, the Eternal Maker 
 of time and space, of matter and sense, as if to pour 
 contempt upon the forward and minute speculations of 
 
3 1 6 The hifijiitude of the Divine Ath'ibutes, 
 
 His ignorant creatures about His works and His will, 
 in order to a fuller and richer harmony, and a higher 
 and nobler order, confuses the laws of this physical 
 universe and untunes the music of the spheres. Nay, 
 He has done more, He has gone farther still ; out of 
 the infinitude of His greatness, He has defaced His 
 own glory, and wounded and deformed His own beauty, 
 — not indeed as it is in itself, for He is ever the same, 
 transcendently perfect and unchangeable, but in the 
 contemplation of His creatures, — by the unutterable 
 condescension of His incarnation. 
 
 Semetipsum ex'manivitj " He made Himself void or 
 empty ,''^ as the earth had been " void and empty ^^ at 
 the beginning ; He seemed to be unbinding and 
 letting loose the assemblage of attributes which made 
 Him God, and to be destroying the idea which He 
 Himself had implanted in our minds. The God of 
 miracles did the most awful of signs and wonders, by 
 revoking and contradicting, as it were, all His per- 
 fections, though He remained the while one and the 
 same. Omnipotence became an abject; the Life 
 became a leper; the first and only Fair came down 
 to us with an " inglorious visage,"" and an '^ unsightly 
 form," bleeding and (I may say) ghastly, lifted up 
 in nakedness and stretcthed ou in dislocation before 
 the eyes of sinners. Not content with this, He per- 
 petuates the history of His humiliation ; men of this 
 world, when they fall into trouble, and then recover 
 themselves, hide the memorials of it. They conceal 
 their misfortunes in prospect, as long as they can ; 
 bear them perforce, when they fall into them ; and. 
 
The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes, 3 1 7 
 
 when they have overcome them, affect to make light 
 of them. Kings of the earth, when they have rid 
 themselves of their temporary conquerors, and are 
 reinstated on their thrones, put all things back into 
 their former state, and remove from their palaces, 
 council-rooms, and cities, whether statue or picture 
 or inscription or edict, all which bears witness to the 
 suspension of their power. Soldiers indeed boast of 
 their scars, but it is because their foes were well- 
 matched with them, and their conflicts were necessary, 
 and the marks of what they have suffered is a proof 
 of what they have done; but He, who ohlatus est, 
 quia voluit who " was offered, for He willed it,^^ who 
 exposed Himself to the powers of evil, yet could have 
 saved us without that exposure, who was neither weak 
 in that He was overcome, nor strong in that He 
 overcame, proclaims to the whole world what He has 
 gone through, without the tyrant^s shame, without 
 the soldier^s pride ; — He (wonderful it is) has raised 
 up on high. He has planted over the earth, the 
 memorial, that that Evil One whom He cast out of 
 heaven in the beginning, has in the hour of darkness 
 inflicted agony upon Him. For in truth, by con- 
 sequence of the infinitude of His glory. He is more 
 beautiful in His weakness than in His strength ; His 
 wounds shine like stars of light; His very Cross 
 becomes an object of worship ; the instruments of 
 His passion, the nails and the thorny crown, are 
 replete with miraculous power. And so He bids the 
 commemoration of His Bloody Sacrifice to be made 
 
3 1 8 The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes, 
 
 day by day all over the earth, and He Himself is there 
 in Person to quicken and sanctify it ; He rears His 
 bitter but saving Cross in every Church and over 
 every Altar; He shows Himself torn and bleeding 
 upon the wood at the corners of each street and in 
 every village market-place ; He makes it the symbol 
 of His religion ; He seals our foreheads, our lips, and 
 our breast with this triumphant sign ; with it He 
 begins and ends our days, and with it He consigns 
 us to the tomb. And when He comes again, that 
 Sign of the Son of Man will be seen in heaven ; and 
 when He takes His seat in judgment, the same 
 glorious marks will be seen by all the world in His 
 Hands, Feet, and Side, which were dug into them at 
 the season of His degradation. Thus ^^ hath King 
 Solomon made Himself a litter of the wood of Libanus. 
 The pillars thereof He made of silver, the seat of gold, 
 the going up of purple; the midst He covered with 
 charity for the daughters of Jerusalem. Go forth, 
 ye daughters of Sion ; and see King Solomon in the 
 diadem, wherewith His mother crowned Him in the 
 day of His espousals, and in the day of His heart's joy." 
 I must not conclude this train of thought, without 
 alluding to a sterner subject, on which it seems to 
 throw some light. There is a class of doctrines 
 which to the natural man are an especial offence and 
 difficulty ; I mean those connected with the divine 
 judgments. Why has the Almighty assigned an 
 endless punishment to the impenitent sinner ? Why 
 is it that vengeance has its hold on him when He 
 
The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes. 319 
 
 passes out o£ this life, and there is no remedy ? Why, 
 again, is it that even the beloved children of God, 
 that holy souls who leave this life in His grace and 
 in His favour, are not at once admitted to His face ; 
 but, if there be an outstanding debt against them, 
 first enter purgatory and exhaust it ? Men of the 
 world shrink from a doctrine like this as impossible, 
 and religious men answer that it is a mystery ; and a 
 mystery it is, — that is, it is but another of those in- 
 stances which Nature and Revelation bring before us 
 of the Divine Infinitude ; it is but one of the many 
 overpowering manifestations of the Almighty, when 
 He acts, which remind us, which are intended to 
 remind us, that He is infinite, and above and beyond 
 human measure and understanding, — which lead us 
 to bow the head and adore Him, as Moses did, when 
 He passed by, and with him awfully to proclaim His 
 Name, as " the Lord God, who hath dominion, keep- 
 ing mercy for thousands, and returning the iniquity of 
 the fathers upon the children and children's children 
 to the third and fourth generation/' 
 
 Thus the attributes of God, though intelligible to 
 us on their surface, — for from our own sense of mercy 
 and holiness and patience and consistency, we have 
 general notions of the All-merciful and All-holy and 
 All-patient, and of all that is proper to His Essence, — 
 yet, for the very reason that they are infinite, transcend 
 our comprehension, when they are dwelt upon, when 
 they are followed out, and can only be received by 
 faith. They are dimly shadowed out, in this very 
 respect, by the great agents which He has created in 
 
320 The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes, 
 
 the material world. What is so ordinary and familiar 
 to us as the elements, what so simple and level to 
 us, as their presence and operation ? yet how their 
 character changes, and how they overmaster us, and 
 triumph over us, when they come upon us in their 
 fulness ! The invisible air, how gentle is it, and in- 
 timately ours ! we breathe it momentarily, nor could 
 we live without it ; it fans our cheek, and flows around 
 us, and we move through it without effort, w4iile it 
 obediently recedes at every step we take, and obse- 
 quiously pursues us as we go forward. Yet let it come 
 in its power, and that same silent fluid, which was 
 just now the servant of our necessity or caprice, takes 
 us up on its wings with the invisible power of an 
 Angel, and carries us forth into the regions of space, 
 and flings us down headlong upon the earth. Or go 
 to the spring, and draw thence at your pleasure, for 
 your cup or your pitcher, in supply of your wants ; you 
 have a ready servant, a domestic ever at hand, in large 
 quantity or in small, to satisfy your thirst, or to purify 
 you from the dust and mire of the world. But go 
 from home, reach the coast : and you will see that 
 same humble element transformed before your eyes. 
 You were equal to it in its condescension, but who 
 shall gaze without astonishment at its vast expanse in 
 the bosom of the ocean ? who shall hear without awe 
 the dashing of its mighty billows along the beach ? 
 who shall without terror feel it heaving under him, 
 and swelling and mounting up, and yawning wide, till 
 he, its very sport and mockery, is thrown to and fro, 
 hither and thither, at the mere mercy of a power which 
 
The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes. 321 
 
 was just now his companion and almost his slave ? 
 Or, again, approach the flame : it warms you, and it 
 enlightens you ; yet approach not too near, presume 
 not, or it will change its nature. That very element 
 which is so beautiful to look at, so brilliant in its 
 light, so graceful in its figure, so soft and lambent in 
 its motion, will be found in its essence to be of a keen 
 resistless kind ; it tortures, it consumes, it reduces to 
 ashes that, of which it was just before the illumination 
 and the life. So is it with the attributes of God ; our 
 knowledge of them serves us for our daily welfare ; 
 they give us light and warmth and food and guidance 
 and succour ; but go forth with Moses upon the mount 
 and let the Lord pass by, or with Elias stand in the 
 desert amid the wind, the earthquake, and the fire, 
 and all is mystery and darkness ; all is but a whirling 
 of the reason, and a dazzling of the imagination, and 
 an overwhelming of the feelings, reminding us that 
 we are but mortal men and He is God, and that the 
 outlines which Nature draws for us are not His perfect 
 image, nor to be pronounced inconsistent with those 
 further lights and depths with which it is invested 
 by Revelation. 
 
 Say not, my brethren, that these thoughts are too 
 austere for this season, when we comtemplate the self- 
 sacrificing, self-consuming charity wherewith God 
 our Saviour has visited us. It is for that very reason 
 that I dwell on them ; the higher He is, and the more 
 mysterious, so much the more glorious and the more 
 subduing is the history of His humiliation. I own it, 
 my brethren, I love to dwell on Him as the Only- 
 
 Y 
 
32 2 The Infinitude of the Divine Attridtctes. 
 
 begotten Word; nor is it any forgetfulness of His 
 sacred humanity to contemplate His Eternal Person. 
 It is the very idea, that He is God, which gives a 
 meaning to His sufferings ; what is to me a man, and 
 nothing more, in agony, or scourged, or crucified? 
 there are many holy martyrs, and their torments were 
 terrible. But here I see One dropping blood, gashed 
 by the thong, and stretched upon the Cross, and He 
 is God. It is no tale of human woe which I am read- 
 ing here ; it is the record of the passion of the great 
 Creator. The Word and Wisdom of the Father, who 
 dwelt in His bosom in bliss ineffable from all eternity, 
 whose very smile has shed radiance and grace over the 
 whole creation, whose traces I see in the starry heavens 
 and on the green earth, this glorious living God, it is 
 He who looks at me so piteously, so tenderly from the 
 Cross. He seems to say, — I cannot move, though I 
 am omnipotent, for sin has bound Me here. I had had 
 it in mind to come on earth among innocent creatures, 
 more fair and lovely than them all, with a face more 
 radiant than the Seraphim, and a form as royal as that 
 of Archangels, to be their equal yet their God, to fill 
 them with My grace, to receive their worship, to enjoy 
 their company, and to prepare them for the heaven to 
 which I destined them ; but, before I carried My pur- 
 pose into effect, they sinned, and lost their inheritance, 
 and so I come indeed, but come, not in that brightness 
 in which I went forth to create the morning stars and 
 to fill the sons of God with melody, but in deformity 
 and in shame, in sighs and tears, with blood upon My 
 cheek, and with My limbs laid bare and rent. Gaze 
 
The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes, 323 
 
 on Me, O My children, if you will, for I am helpless ; 
 gaze on your Maker, whether in contempt, or in faith 
 and love. Here I wait, upon the Cross, the appointed 
 time, the time of grace and mercy ; here I wait till 
 the end of the world, silent and motionless, for the 
 conversion of the sinful and the consolation of the 
 just ; here I remain in weakness and shame, though 
 I am so great in heaven, till the end, patiently ex- 
 pecting My full catalogue of souls, who, when time 
 is at length over, shall be the reward of My passion 
 and the triumph of My grace to all eternity. 
 
 Y I 
 
DISCOURSE XVI. 
 
 MENTAL SUFFERINGS OF OUR LORD IN HIS PASSION. 
 
 Tj^VEK/Y passage in the history of our Lord and 
 ■^ Saviour is of unfathomable depth, and affords 
 inexhaustible matter of contemplation. All that con- 
 cerns Him is infinite, and what we first discern is but 
 the surface of that which begins and ends in eternity. 
 It would be presumptuous for any one short of Saints 
 and Doctors to attempt to comment on His words and 
 deeds, except in the way of meditation ; but meditation 
 and mental prayer are so much a duty in all who wish 
 to cherish true faith and love towards Him, that it 
 may be allowed us, my brethren, under the guidance 
 of holy men who have gone before us, to dwell and 
 enlarge upon what otherwise would more fitly be 
 adored than scrutinized. And certain times of the 
 year, this especially,* call upon us to consider, as 
 closely and minutely as we can, even the more sacred 
 portions of the Gospel history. I would rather be 
 thought feeble or officious in my treatment of them, 
 than wanting to the season ; and so I now proceed, 
 * Passion-tide. 
 
Mental Sufferings of our Lord, 325 
 
 because the religious usage of the Church requires it, 
 and though any individual preacher may well shrink 
 from it, to direct your thoughts to a subject, especially 
 suitable now, and about which many of us perhaps 
 think very little, the sufferings which our Lord endured 
 in His innocent and sinless soul. 
 
 You know, my brethren, that our Lord and Saviour, 
 though He was God, was also perfect man ; and hence 
 He had not only a body, but a soul likewise, such as 
 ours, though pure from all stain of evil. He did not 
 take a body without a soul, God forbid ! for that 
 would not have been to become man. How would He 
 have sanctified our nature if He had taken a nature 
 which was not ours ? Man without a soul is on a 
 level with the beasts of the field : but our Lord came 
 to save a race capable of praising and obeying Him, 
 possessed of immortality, yet dispossessed of their 
 hope of an immortality of bliss. Man was created in 
 the image of God, and that image is in his soul ; when 
 then his Maker, by an unspeakable condescension, 
 came in his nature. He took on Himself a soul in 
 order to take on Him a body ; He took on Him a soul 
 as the means of His union with a body ; He took on 
 Him in the first place the soul, then the body of man, 
 both at once, but in this order, the soul and the body ; 
 He Himself created the soul which He took on Himself, 
 while He took His body from the flesh of the Blessed 
 Virgin, His Mother. Thus He became perfect man 
 with body and soul ; and, as He took on Him a body 
 of flesh and nerves, which admitted of wounds and 
 death, and was capable of sufiering, so did He take a 
 
326 Mental Sufferings of 
 
 soul too, which was susceptible of that suffering-, and 
 moreover was susceptible of the pain and sorrow which 
 are proper to a human soul ; and, as His atoning pas- 
 sion was undergone in the body, so it was undergone 
 in the soul also. 
 
 As the solemn days proceed, we shall be especially 
 called on, my brethren, to consider His sufferings in 
 the body, His seizure. His forced journeyings to and 
 fro, His blows and wounds, His scourging, the crown 
 of thorns, the nails, the Cross. They are all summed 
 up in the Crucifix itself, as it meets our eyes ; they 
 are represented all at once on His sacred flesh, as it 
 hangs up before us, — and meditation is made easy by 
 the spectacle. It is otherwise with the sufferings of 
 His soul, they cannot be painted for us, nor can they 
 even be duly investigated : they are beyond both sense 
 and thought; and yet they anticipated His bodily 
 sufferings. The agony, a pain of the soul, not of the 
 body, was the first act of His tremendous sacrifice ; 
 '* My soul is sorrowful even unto death,^' He said ; 
 nay ; if He suffered in the body, it really was in the 
 soul, for the body did but convey the infliction on to 
 that, which was the true recipient and seat of the 
 anguish. 
 
 This it is very much to the purpose to insist upon ; 
 I say, it was not the body that suffered, but the soul 
 in the body ; it was the soul and not the body which 
 was the seat of the suffering of the Eternal Word. 
 Consider, then, there is no real pain, though there 
 may be apparent suffering, when there is no kind of 
 inward sensibility or spirit to be the seat of it. A tree. 
 
our Lor din His Passio7i, 327 
 
 for instance, has life, organs, growth, and decay ; it 
 may be wounded and injured ; it droops, and is killed; 
 but it does not suffer, because it has no mind or sen- 
 sible principle within it. But wherever this gift of an 
 immaterial principle is found, there pain is possible, 
 and greater pain according to the quality o£ the gift. 
 Had we no spirit of any kind, we should feel as little 
 as a tree feels ; had we no soul, we should not feel 
 pain more acutely than a brute feels it ; but, being 
 men, we feel pain in a way in which none but those 
 who have souls can feel it. 
 
 Living beings, I say, feel more or less according to 
 the spirit which is in them ; brutes feel far less than 
 man, because they cannot think of what they feel; 
 they have no advertence or direct consciousness of 
 their sufferings. This it is that makes pain so trying, 
 viz., that we cannot help thinking of it, while we suffer 
 it. It is before us, it possesses the mind, it keeps 
 our thoughts fixed upon it. Whatever draws the 
 mind off the thought of it lessens it ; hence friends try 
 to amuse us when we are in pain, for amusement is 
 a diversion. If the pain is slight, they sometimes 
 succeed with us ; and then we are, so to say, without 
 pain, even while we suffer. And hence it continually 
 happens that in violent exercise or labour, men meet 
 with blows or cuts, so considerable and so durable in 
 their effect, as to bear witness to the suffering which 
 must have attended their infliction, of which never- 
 theless they recollect nothing. And in quarrels and 
 in battles wounds are received which, from the excite- 
 ment of the moment, are brought home to the con- 
 
328 Mental Sufferings of 
 
 sciousness of the combatant^ not by the pain at the 
 time of receiviag them, but by the loss of blood that 
 follows. 
 
 I will show you presently, my brethren, how I mean 
 to apply what I have said to the consideration of our 
 Lord^s sufferings ; first I will make another remark. 
 Consider, then, that hardly any one stroke of pain is 
 intolerable ; it is intolerable when it continues. You 
 cry out perhaps that you cannot bear more ; patients 
 feel as if they could stop the surgeon^s hand, simply 
 because he continues to pain them. Their feeling is 
 that they have borne as much as they can bear ; as if 
 the continuance and not the intenseness was what 
 made it too much for them. What does this mean, 
 but that the memory of the foregoing moments of pain 
 acts upon (and as it were) edges the pain that suc- 
 ceeds ? If the third or fourth or twentietii moment of 
 pain could be taken by itself, if the succession of the 
 moments that preceded it could be forgotten, it 
 would be no more than the first moment, as bearable 
 as the first ; but what makes it unbearable is, that it 
 is the twentieth ; that the first, the second, the third, 
 on to the nineteenth moment of pain, are all concen- 
 trated in the twentieth ; so that every additional 
 moment of pain has all the weight, the ever-increasing 
 weight, of all that has preceded it. Hence, I repeat, 
 it is that brute animals would seem to feel so little 
 pain, because, that is, they have not the power of 
 reflection or of consciousness. They do not know 
 they exist ; they do not contemplate themselves ; they 
 do not look backwards or forwards ; every moment as 
 
our Lord in His Passion, 329 
 
 it succeeds^ is their all ; they wander over the face of 
 the earth, and see this thing* and that, and feel pleasure 
 and pain, but still they take everything as it comes, 
 and then let it go again, as men do in dreams. They 
 have memory, but not the memory of an intellectual 
 being" ; they put together nothing, they make nothing 
 properly one and individual to themselves out of the 
 particular sensations which they receive j nothing is to 
 them a reality or has a substance beyond those sensa- 
 tions ; they are but sensible of a number of successive 
 impressions. And hence, as their other feelings, so 
 their feeling of pain is but faint and dull, in spite of 
 their outward manifestations of it. It is the intellec- 
 tual comprehension of pain, as a whole diffused through 
 successive moments, which gives it its special power 
 and keenness, and it is the soul only, which a brute 
 has not, which is capable of that comprehension. 
 
 Now apply this to the sufferings of our Lord ; — do 
 you recollect their offering Him wine mingled with 
 myrrh, when He was on the point of being crucified ? 
 He would not drink of it; why? because such a 
 portion would have stupified His mind, and He was 
 bent on bearing the pain in all its bitterness. You 
 see from this, my brethren, the character of His 
 sufferings; He would have fain escaped them, had 
 that been His Father's will ; '^f it be possible," He 
 said, " let this chalice pass from Me ;" but since it 
 was not possible. He says calmly and decidedly to the 
 Apostle, who would have rescued Him from suffering, 
 " The chalice which my Father hath given Me, shall I 
 not drink it V If He was to suffer, He gave Himself 
 
330 Mental Sufferings of 
 
 to suffering ; He did not come to suffer as little as He 
 could ; He did not turn away His face from the suffer- 
 ing; He confronted it^ or, as I may say. He breasted 
 it, that every particular portion of it might make its 
 due impression on Him. And as men are superior to 
 brute animals, and are affected by pain more than 
 they, by reason of the mind within them, which gives 
 a substance to pain, such as it cannot have in the 
 instance of brutes ; so, in like manner our Lord felt 
 pain of the body, with an advertence and a conscious- 
 ness, and therefore with a keenness and intensity, and 
 with a unity of perception, which none of us can 
 possibly fathom or compass, because His soul was so 
 absolutely in His own power, so simply free from the 
 influence of distractions, so fully directed upon the 
 pain, so utterly surrendered, so simply subjected to 
 the suffering. And thus He may truly be said to have 
 suffered the whole of His passion in every moment 
 of it. 
 
 Recollect that our Blessed Lord was in this respect 
 different from us, that, though He was perfect man, 
 yet there was a power in Him greater than His soul^ 
 which ruled His soul, for He was God. The soul of 
 other men is subjected to its own wishes, feelings, 
 impulses, passions, perturbations; His soul was 
 subjected simply to His Eternal and Divine Person. 
 Nothing happened to His soul, by chance, or on a 
 sudden ; He never was taken by surprise ; nothing 
 affected Him without His willing beforehand that it 
 should affect Him. Never did He sorrow, or fear, or 
 desire, or rejoice in spirit, but He first willed to be 
 
our Lord in His Passion. 331 
 
 sorrowful^ or afraid^ or desirous, or joyful. When we 
 suffer, it is because outward agents and the uncontrol- 
 lable emotions of our minds bring suffering upon us. 
 We are brought under the discipline of paiiLinvolun- 
 tarily, we suffer from it more or less acutely according 
 to accidental circumstances, we find our patience more 
 or less tried by it according to our state of mind, and 
 we do our best to provide alleviations or remedies of 
 it. We cannot anticipate beforehand how much of it 
 will come upon us, or how far we shall be able to 
 sustain it; nor can we say afterwards why we have 
 felt just what we have felt, or why we did not bear 
 the suffering better. It was otherwise with our Lord. 
 His Divine Person was not subject, could not be ex- 
 posed, to the influence of His own human affections 
 and feelings, except so far as He chose. I repeat, 
 when He chose to fear, He feared ; when He chose to 
 be angry. He was angry ; when He chose to grieve. 
 He was grieved. He was not open to emotion, but 
 He opened upon Himself voluntarily the influence by 
 which He was moved. Consequently, when He deter- 
 mined to suffer the pain of His vicarious passion, 
 whatever He did, He did, as the Wise Man says, 
 instanter, " earnestly,^^ with His might; He did not 
 do it by halves ; He did not turn away His mind from 
 the suffering, as we do ; — (how should He, who came 
 to suffer, who could not have suffered but of His own 
 act ?) no. He did not say and unsay, do and undo ; 
 He said and He did ; He said, " Lo, I come to do 
 Thy will, O God ; sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest 
 not, but a body hast Thou fitted to Me." He took a 
 
332 Mental Stiff erings of 
 
 body in order that He might suffer ; He became man, 
 that He might suffer as man ; and when His hour was 
 come, that hour of Satan and of darkness, the hour 
 when sin was to pour its full malignity upon Him, it 
 followed that He offered Himself wholly, a holocaust, 
 a whole burnt-offering ; — as the whole of His body, 
 stretched out upon the Cross, so the whole of His soul, 
 His whole advertence. His whole consciousness, a 
 mind awake, a sense acute, a living co-operation, a 
 present, absolute intention, not a virtual permission, 
 not a heartless submission, this did He present to His 
 tormentors. His passion was an action ; He lived 
 most energetically, while He lay languishing, fainting, 
 and dying. Nor did He die, except by an act of the 
 will ; for He bowed His head, in command as well as 
 in resignation, and said, " Father, into Thy hands I 
 commend My Spirit ; " He gave the word. He sur- 
 rendered His soul. He did not lose it. 
 
 Thus you see, my brethren, had our Lord only 
 suffered in the body, and in it not so much as other 
 men, still as regards the pain. He would have really 
 suffered indefinitely more, because pain is to be 
 measured by the power of realizing it. God was the 
 sufferer; God suffered in His human nature; the 
 sufferings belonged to God, and were drunk up, were 
 drained out to the bottom of the chalice, because God 
 drank them; not tasted or sipped, not flavoured, 
 disguised by human medicaments, as man disposes of 
 the cup of anguish. And what 1 have now said will 
 further serve to answer an objection, which I shall 
 proceed to notice, and which perhaps exists latently 
 
our Lord in His Passion, 333 
 
 in the minds of many, and leads them to overlook the 
 part which our Lord's soul had in His gracious satis- 
 faction for sin. 
 
 Our Lord said, when His agony was commencing, 
 " My soul is sorrowful unto death ; " now you may 
 ask, my brethren, whether He had not certain con- 
 solations, peculiar to Himself, impossible in any other, 
 which diminished or impeded the distress of His soul, 
 and caused Him to feel, not more, but less than an 
 ordinary man. For instance. He had a sense of 
 innocence which no other sufferer could have : even 
 His persecutors, even the false apostle who betrayed 
 Him, the judge who sentenced Him, and the soldiers 
 who conducted the execution, testified His innocence. 
 '^ I have condemned the innocent blood," said Judas ; 
 *' I am clear from the blood of this just Person,^' said 
 Pilate; '* Truly this was a just Man,^' cried the cen- 
 turion. And if even they, sinners, bore witness to 
 His sinlessness, how much more did His own soul ! 
 and we know well that even in our own case, sinners 
 as we are, on the consciousness of innocence or of 
 guilt mainly turns our power of enduring opposition 
 and calumny ; how much more, you will say, in the 
 case of our Lord, did the sense of inward sanctity 
 compensate for the suffering and annihilate the 
 shame ! Again, you may say, that He knew that 
 His sufferings would be short, and that their issue 
 would be joyful, whereas uncertainty of the future is 
 the keenest element of human distress ; but He could 
 not have anxiety, for He was not in suspense, nor 
 despondency or despair, for He never was deserted. 
 
334 Mental Sufferings of 
 
 And in coDfirmation you may refer to St. Paul who 
 expressly tells us, that " for the joy set before Him/'' 
 our Lord " despised the shame/^ And certainly there 
 is a marvellous calm and self-possession in all He does : 
 consider His warning" to the Apostles, " Watch and 
 pray, lest ye enter into temptation ; the spirit indeed 
 is willing, but the flesh is weak ; " or His words to 
 Judas, " Friend, wherefore art thou come ? " and 
 " Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss ?" 
 or to Peter, "All that take the sword, shall perish 
 with the sword ; " or to the man who struck Him, 
 " If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil ; but 
 if well, why smitest thou Me ? ^^ or to His Mother, 
 " Woman, behold thy Son." 
 
 All this is true and much to be insisted on ; but it 
 quite agrees with, or rather illustrates, what I have 
 been saying. My brethren, you have only said (to 
 use a human phrase) that He was always Himself. 
 His mind was its own centre, and was never in the 
 slightest degree thrown off its heavenly and most 
 perfect balance. What He suffered. He suffered be- 
 cause He put Himself under suffering, and that de- 
 liberately and calmly. As He said to the leper, " I 
 will, be thou clean ; " and to the paralytic, " Thy sins 
 be forgiven thee j^' and to the centurion, "I will come 
 and heal him ; ^' and of Lazarus, " I go to wake him 
 out of sleep ; " so He said, ^' Now I will begin to 
 suffer," and He did begin. His composure is but the 
 proof how entirely He governed His own mind. He 
 drew back, at the proper moment, the bolts and fasten- 
 ings, and opened the gates, and the floods fell right 
 
our Lord in His Passion, 335 
 
 upon His soul in all their fulness. This is what St. 
 Mark tells us of Him ; and he is said to have written 
 it from the very mouth of St. Peter, who was one of 
 three witnesses present at the time. '^ They came/' 
 he says, " to the place which is called Gethsemani ; 
 and He saith to His disciples. Sit you here while I 
 pray. And He taketh with Him Peter and James 
 and John, and He hegan to he frightened and to be 
 very heavy.'' You see how deliberately He acts ; He 
 comes to a certain spot ; and then, giving the word of 
 command, and withdrawing the support of the God- 
 head from His soul, distress, terror, and dejection at 
 once rush in upon it. Thus He walks forth into a 
 mental agony with as definite an action as if it were 
 some bodily torture, the fire or the wheel. 
 
 This being the case, you will see at once, my 
 brethren, that it is nothing to the purpose to say that 
 He would be supported under His trial by the con- 
 sciousness of innocence and the anticipation of tri- 
 umph ; for His trial consisted in the withdrawal, as 
 of other causes of consolation, so of that very con- 
 sciousness and anticipation. The same act of the will 
 which admitted the influence upon His soul of any 
 distress at all, admitted all distresses at once. It was 
 not the contest between antagonist impulses and views, 
 coming from without, but the operation of an inward 
 resolution. As men of self-command can turn from 
 one thought to another at their will, so, much more, 
 did He deliberately deny Himself the comfort, and 
 satiate Himself with the woe. In that moment His 
 soul thought not of the future, He thought only of the 
 
336 Mental Sufferings of 
 
 present burden whicli was upon Him^ and which He 
 had come upon earth to sustain. 
 
 And now_, my brethren, what was it He had to bear, 
 when He thus opened upon His soul the torrent of 
 this predestinated pain ? Alas ! He had to bear what 
 is well known to us, what is familiar to us, but what 
 to Him was woe unutterable. He had to bear, that 
 which is so easy a thing to us, so natural, so welcome, 
 that we cannot conceive of it as of a great endurance, 
 but which to Him had the scent and the poison of 
 death ; — He had, my dear brethren, to bear the weight 
 of sin ; He had to bear your sins ; He had to bear the 
 sins of the whole world. Sin is an easy thing to us ; 
 we think little of it ; we do not understand how the 
 Creator can think much of it ; we cannot bring our 
 imagination to believe that it deserves retribution, 
 and, when even in this world punishments follow upon 
 it, we explain them away or turn our minds from 
 them. But consider what sin is in itself; it is re- 
 bellion against God ; it is a traitor's act who aims at 
 the overthrow and death of His sovereign ; it is that, 
 if I may use a strong expression, which, could the 
 Divine Governor of the world cease to be, would be 
 sufficient to bring it about. Sin is the mortal enemy 
 of the All-holy, so that He and it cannot be together; 
 and as the All-holy drives it from His presence into 
 the outer darkness, so, if God could be less than God, 
 it is sin that would have power to make Him so. And 
 here observe, my brethren, that when once Almighty 
 Love, by taking flesh, entered this created system, 
 and submitted Himself to its laws, then forthwith this 
 
our Lord in His Passion. 337 
 
 antagonist of good and truth, taking advantage of tlie 
 opportunity, flew at that flesh, which He had taken, 
 and fixed on it, and was its death. The envy of the 
 Pharisees, the treachery of Judas, and the madness of 
 the people, were but the instrument or the expression 
 of the enmity which sin felt towards Eternal Purity, 
 as soon as, in infinite mercy towards men, He put 
 Himself within its reach. Sin could not touch His 
 Divine Majesty ; but it could assail Him in that way 
 in which He allowed Himself to be assailed, that is, 
 through the medium of His humanity. And in the 
 issue, in the death of God incarnate, you are but 
 taught, my brethren, what sin is in itself, and what it 
 was which then was falling, in its hour and in its 
 strength, upon His human nature, when He allowed 
 that nature to be so filled with horror and dismay at 
 the very anticipation. 
 
 There, then, in that most awful hour, knelt the 
 Saviour of the world, putting off" the defences of His 
 divinity, dismissing His reluctant Angels, who in 
 myriads were ready at His call, and opening His 
 arms, baring His breast, sinless as He was, to the 
 assault of His foe, — of a foe whose breath was a 
 pestilence, and whose embrace was an agony. There 
 He knelt, motionless and still, while the vile and 
 horrible fiend clad His spirit in a robe steeped in all 
 that is hateful and heinous in human crime, which 
 clung close round His heart, and tilled His conscience, 
 and found its way into every sense and pore of His 
 mind, and spread over Him a moral leprosy, till Ho 
 -almost felt Himself to be that which he never could 
 
 z . 
 
2,2,^ Mental Sufferings of 
 
 be, and which His foe would fain have made Him. 
 Oh, the horror^ when He looked, and did not know 
 Himself, and felt as a foul and loathsome sinner, from 
 His vivid perception of that mass of corruption which 
 poured over His head and ran down even to the skirts 
 of His garments ! Oh, the distraction, when He found 
 His eyes, and hands, and feet, and lips, and heart, as 
 if the members of the Evil One, and not of God ! Are 
 these the hands of the immaculate Lamb of God, once 
 innocent, but now red with ten thousand barbarous 
 deeds of blood? are these His lips, not uttering prayer, 
 and praise, and holy blessings, but as if defiled with 
 oaths, and blasphemies, and doctrines of devils ? or 
 His eyes, profaned as they are by all the evil visions 
 and idolatrous fascinations for which men have aban- 
 doned their Adorable Creator ? And His ears, they 
 ring with sounds of revelry and of strife; and His 
 heart is frozen with avarice, and cruelty, and unbelief ; 
 and His very memory is laden with every sin which 
 has been committed since the fall, in all regions of the 
 earth, with the pride of the old giants, and the lusts 
 of the five cities, and the obduracy of Egypt, and the 
 ambition of Babel, and the unthankfulness and scorn 
 of Israel. Oh, who does not know the misery of a 
 haunting thought which comes again and again, in 
 spite of rejection, to annoy, if it cannot seduce ? or of 
 some odious and sickening imagination, in no sense 
 one's own, but forced upon the mind from without ? or 
 of evil knowledge, gained with or without a raan^s 
 fault, but which he would give a great price to be rid 
 of at once and for ever ? And adversaries such as 
 
our Lord in His Passion, 339 
 
 these gather around Thee, Blessed Lord, in millions 
 now ; they come in troops more numerous than the 
 locust or the palmer-worm, or the plagues of hail, and 
 flies, and frogs, which were sent against Pharaoh. Of 
 the living and of the dead and of the as yet unborn, 
 of the lost and of the saved, of Thy people and of 
 strangers, of sinners and of Saints, all sins are there. 
 Thy dearest are there, Thy saints and Thy chosen are 
 upon Thee ; Thy three Apostles, Peter, James, and 
 John, but not as comforters, but as accusers, like the 
 friends of Job, '^ sprinkling dust towards heaven,^^ and 
 heaping curses on Thy head. All are there but one; 
 one only is not there, one only ; for she, who had no 
 part in sin, she only could console Thee, and therefore 
 she is not nigh. She will be near Thee on the Cross, 
 she is separated from Thee in the garden. She has 
 been Thy companion and Thy confidant through Thy 
 life, she interchanged with Thee the pure thoughts and 
 holy meditations of thirty years; but her virgin ear 
 may not take in, nor may her immaculate heart con- 
 ceive, what now is in vision before Thee. None was 
 equal to the weight but God ; sometimes before Thy 
 Saints Thou hast brought the image of a single sin, as 
 it appears in the light of Thy countenance, a venial 
 sin, perhaps, not a mortal one; and they have told us 
 that the sight did all but kill them, naj, would have 
 killed them, had it not been instantly withdrawn. 
 The Mother of God, for all her sanctity, nay, by reason 
 of it, could not have borne even one brood of that 
 innumerable progeny of Satan which compasses Thee 
 about. It is the long history of a world, and God 
 z 2 
 
340 Mental Sufferings of 
 
 alone can bear the load of it. Hopes blighted, vows 
 broken, lights quenched, warnings scorned, opportuni- 
 ties lost ; the innocent betrayed, the young hardened, 
 the penitent relapsing, the just overcome, the aged 
 failing; the sophistry of misbelief, the wilfulness of 
 passion, the obduracy of pride, the tyranny of habit, 
 the canker of remorse, the wasting fever of care, the 
 anguish of shame, the pining of disappointment, the 
 sickness of despair ; such cruel, such pitiable spec- 
 tacles, such heartrending, revolting, detestable, mad- 
 dening scenes ; nay, the haggard faces, the convulsed 
 lips, the flushed cheek, the dark brow of the willinoj' 
 victims of rebellion, they are all before Him now ; they 
 are upon Him and in Him. They are with Him 
 instead of that ineffable peace which has inhabited His 
 soul since the moment of His conception. They are 
 upon Him, they are all but His own ; He cries to His 
 Father as if He were the criminal, not the victim ; 
 His agony takes the form of guilt and compunction. 
 He is doing penance. He is making confession. He is 
 exercising contrition with a reality and a virtue 
 infinitely greater than that of all Saints and penitents 
 together ; for He is the One Victim for us all, the 
 sole Satisfaction, the real Penitent, all but the real 
 sinner. 
 
 He rises languidly from the earth, and turns around 
 to meet the traitor and his band, now quickly nearing 
 the deep shade. He turns, and lo ! there is blood 
 upon His garment and in His footprints. Whence 
 come these first-fruits of the passion of the Lamb ? 
 no soldier's scourge has touched His shoulders, nor 
 
our Lord in His Passion, 341 
 
 the hangman's nails His hands and feet. My brethren, 
 He has bled before His time j He has shed blood ; yes, 
 and it is His agonizing soul which has broken up 
 His framework of flesh and poured it forth. His 
 passion has begun from within. That tormented 
 Heart, the seat of tenderness and love, began at 
 length to labour and to beat with vehemence beyond 
 its nature ; '' the foundations of the great deep were 
 broken up ; '* the red streams rushed forth so copious 
 and fierce as to overflow the veins, and bursting _ 
 through the pores, they stood in a thick dew over His 
 whole skin ; then forming into drops, they rolled down 
 full and heavy, and drenched the ground. 
 
 *^ My soul is sorrowful even unto death,'' He said. 
 It has been said of that dreadful pestilence which 
 now is upon us, that it begins with death ; by which 
 is meant that it has no stages or crisis, that hope is 
 over when it comes, and that what looks like its course 
 is but the death agony and the process of dissolution, 
 and thus our Atoning Sacrifice, in a much higher 
 sense, began with this passion of woe, and only did 
 not die, because at His Omnipotent will His Heart did 
 not break, nor Soul separate from Body, till He had 
 suffered on the Cross. 
 
 No ; He has not yet exhausted that full chalice, 
 from which at first His natural infirmity shrank. The 
 seizure, and the arraignment, and the buffeting, and 
 the prison, and the trial, and the mocking, and the 
 passing to and fro, and the scourging, and the crown 
 of thorns, and the slow march to Calvary, and the 
 crucifixion, these are all to come. A night and a 
 
342 Mental Suffei^ings of our Loi^d. 
 
 day, hour after hour, is slowly to run out before the 
 end comes, and the Satisfaction is completed. 
 
 And then, when the appointed moment arrived, and 
 He gave the word, as His passion had begun with His 
 soul, with the soul did it end. He did not die of 
 bodily exhaustion, or of bodily pain ; His tormented 
 Heart broke, and He commended His Spirit to the 
 Father. 
 
 * * * * * :^ ^ 
 
 " O Heart of Jesus, all Love, I offer Thee these 
 humble prayers for myself, and for all those who unite 
 themselves with me in spirit to adore Thee. O holiest 
 Heart of Jesus most lovely, I intend to renew and to 
 offer to Thee these acts of adoration and these prayers, 
 for myself a wretched sinner, and for all those who 
 are associated with me in Thy adoration, through all 
 moments while I breathe, even to the end of my life. I 
 recommend to Thee, O my Jesu, Holy Church, Thy 
 dear spouse, and our true Mother, all just souls and 
 all poor sinners, the afflicted, the dying, and all 
 mankind. Let not Thy Blood be shed for them in 
 vain. Finally, deign to apply it in relief of the souls 
 in Purgatory, those in particular, who have practised 
 in the course of their life this holy devotion of adoring 
 Thee." 
 
DISCOURSE XVII. 
 
 THE GLORIES OF MARY FOR THE SAKE OF HER SON. 
 
 TITE know, my brethren, that in the natural world 
 nothing is superfluous, nothing incomplete, 
 nothing independent ; but part answers to part, and 
 all details combine to form one mighty whole. Order 
 and harmony are among the first perfections which we 
 discern in this visible creation ; and the more we exa- 
 mine into it, the more widely and minutely they are 
 found to belong to it. " All things are double,"*^ says 
 the Wise Man, " one against another ; and He hath 
 made nothing defective.^' It is the very character 
 and definition of ^^ the heavens and the earth,'' as con- 
 trasted with the void or chaos which preceded them, 
 that everything is now subjected to fixed laws ; and 
 every motion, and influence, and effect can be accounted 
 for, and, were our knowledge suflScient, could be antici- 
 pated. Moreover, it is plain, on the other hand, that it 
 is only in proportion to our observation and our research 
 that this truth becomes apparent ; for though a number 
 of things even at first sight are seen to proceed accord- 
 ing to an established and beautiful order, yet in other 
 
344 The Glories of Mary 
 
 instances the law tc which they are conformed is with 
 difficulty discovered; and the words ''chance/' and 
 ^' hazard/' and " fortune/' have come into use as 
 expressions of our ignorance. Accordingly, you may 
 fancy rash and irreligious minds who are engaged day 
 after day in the business of the world, suddenly look- 
 ing out into the heavens or upon the earth, and 
 criticizing the great Architect, arguing that there are 
 creatures in existence which are rude or defective in 
 their constitution, and asking questions which would 
 but evidence their want of scientific education. 
 
 The case is the same as regards the supernatural 
 world. The great truths of Revelation are all connected 
 together and form a whole. Every one can see this in 
 a measure even at a glance, but to understand the full 
 consistency and harmony of Catholic teaching requires 
 study and meditation. Hence, as philosophers of this 
 would bury themselves in museums and laboratories, 
 descend into mines, or wander among woods or on the 
 sea-shore, so the inquirer into heavenly truths dwells 
 in the cell and the oratory, pouring forth his heart in 
 prayer, collecting his thoughts in meditation, dwell- 
 ing on the idea of Jesus, or of Mary, or of grace, or of 
 eternity, and pondering the words of holy men who 
 have gone before him, till before his mental sight 
 arises the hidden wisdom of the perfect, '^ which God 
 predestined before the world unto our glory/' and 
 which He " reveals unto them by His Spirit/' And, 
 as ignorant men may dispute the beauty and perfection 
 of the visible creation, so men, who for six days in the 
 week are absorbed in worldly toil, who live for wealth. 
 
for the Sake of Her Son. 345 
 
 or name, or self-indulgence, or profane knowledge, 
 and do but give their leisure moments to the thought 
 of religion, never raising their souls to God, never 
 asking for His enlightening grace, never chastening 
 their hearts and bodies, never steadily contemplating 
 the objects of faith, but judging hastily and peremp- 
 torily according to their private views or the humour 
 of the hour ; such men, I say, in like manner, may 
 easily, or will for certain, be surprised and shocked at 
 portions of revealed truth, as if strange, or harsh, or 
 extreme, or inconsistent, and will in whole or in part 
 reject it. 
 
 I am going to apply this remark to the subject of 
 the prerogatives with which the Church invests the 
 Blessed Mother of God. They are startling and diffi- 
 cult to those whose imagination is not accustomed to 
 them, and wliose reason has not reflected on them ; 
 but the more carefully and religiously they are dwelt 
 on, the more, I am sure, will they be found essential 
 to the Catholic faith, and integral to the worship of 
 Christ. This simply is the point which I shall insist 
 on, — disputable indeed by aliens from the Church, but 
 most clear to her children, — that the glories of Mary 
 are for the sake of Jesus ; and that we praise and 
 bless her as the first of creatures, that we may duly 
 confess Him as our sole Creator. 
 
 When the Eternal Word decreed to come on earth, 
 He did not purpose, He did not work, by halves ; but 
 He came to be a man like any of us, to take a human 
 soul and body, and to make them His own. He did 
 not come in a mere apparent or accidental form, as 
 
34^ "^^^^ Glories of Mary 
 
 Angels appear to men ; nor did He merely over- 
 shadow an existing man, as He overshadows His 
 Saints, and call him by the name of God ; but He 
 " was made flesh." He attached to Himself a manhood, 
 and became as really and truly man as He was God, 
 so that henceforth He was both God and man, or, in 
 other words. He was One Person in two natures, divine 
 and human. This is a mystery so marvellous, so diflS- 
 cult, that faith alone firmly receives it ; the natural 
 man may receive it for a while, may think he re- 
 ceives it, but never really receives it ; begins, as soon 
 as he has professed it, secretly to rebel against it, 
 evades it, or revolts from it. This he has done from 
 the first ; even in the lifetime of the beloved disciple 
 men arose, who said that our Lord had no body at all, 
 or a body framed in the heavens, or that He did not 
 suffer, but another suffered in His stead, or that He 
 was but for a time with the human form which was 
 born and which suffered, coming on it at its baptism, 
 and leaving it before its crucifixion, or that He was a 
 mere man. That " in the beginning was the Word, 
 and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, 
 and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,'^ 
 was too hard a thing for the unregenerate reason. 
 
 The case is the same at this day ; mere Protestants 
 have seldom any real perception of the doctrine of God 
 and man in one Person. They speak in a dreamy, 
 shadowy way of Christ's divinity; but, when their 
 meaning is sifted, you will find them very slow to com- 
 mit themselves to any statement sufficient to express 
 the Catholic dogma. They will tell you at once, that 
 
for the Sake of Her Son, 347 
 
 the subject is not to be inquired into, for that it is 
 impossible to inquire into it at all, without being 
 technical and subtle. Then when they comment on 
 the Gospels, they will speak of Christ, not simply and 
 consistently as God, but as a being- made up of God 
 and man, partly one and partly the other, or between 
 both, or as a man inhabited by a special divine pre- 
 sence. Sometimes they even go on to deny that He 
 was in heaven the Son of God, saying that He became 
 the Son, when he was conceived of the Holy Ghost; 
 and they are shocked, and think it a mark both of 
 reverence and good sense to be shocked, when they 
 hear the Man spoken of simply and plainly as God. 
 They cannot bear to have it said, except as a figure or 
 mode of speaking, that God had a human body, or 
 that God suffered; they think that the '* Atonement/' 
 and " Sanctification through the Spirit,^' as they 
 speak, is the sum and substance of the Gospel, and 
 they are shy of any dogmatic expression which goes 
 beyond them. Such, I believe, is the ordinary cha- 
 racter of the Protestant notions among us on the 
 divinity of Christ, whether among members of the 
 Anglican communion, or dissenters from it, excepting 
 a small remnant of them. 
 
 Now, if you would witness against these unchristian 
 opinions, if you would bring out distinctly and beyond 
 mistake and evasion, the simple idea of the Catholic 
 Church that God is man, could you do it better than 
 by laying down in St. John's words that '^ God became 
 man'' ? and again could you express this more emphati- 
 cally and unequivocally than by declaring that He 
 
348 The Glories 0/ Mary 
 
 was horn a man, or that He had a Mother ? The world 
 allows that God is man ; the admission costs it little, 
 for God is everywhere, and (as it may say) is every- 
 thing*; but it shrinks from confessing that God is the 
 Son of Mary. It shrinks, for it is at once confronted 
 with a severe fact, which violates and shatters its own 
 unbelieving view of things ; the revealed doctrine 
 forthwith takes its true shape, and receives an his- 
 torical reality ; and the Almighty is introduced into 
 His own world at a certain time and in a definite way. 
 Dreams are broken and shadows depart ; the divine 
 truth is no longer a poetical expression, or a devotional 
 exaggeration, or a mystical economy, or a mythical 
 representation. " Sacrifice and offering,'^ the shadows 
 of the Law, " Thou wouldest not, but a body hast 
 Thou fitted to Me. That which was from the be- 
 ginning, which we have heard, which we have seen 
 with our eyes, which we have diligently looked upon, 
 and our hands have handled,^' " That which we have 
 seen and have heard, declare we unto you ; " — such is 
 the record of the Apostle, in opposition to those 
 " spirits '^ which denied that " Jesus Christ had ap- 
 peared in the flesh," and which ^' dissolved " Him by 
 denying either His human nature or His divine. And 
 the confession that Mary is Beipara, or the Mother of 
 God, is that safeguard wherewith we seal up and 
 secure the doctrine of the Apostle from all evasion, 
 and that test whereby we detect all the pretences of 
 those bad spirits of ^' Antichrist which have gone out 
 into the world.'' It declares that He is God; it implies 
 that He is man ; it suggests to us that He is God still, 
 
for the Sake of Her Son, 349 
 
 though He has become man, and that He is true man 
 though He is God. By witnessing to thQ process of the 
 union, it secures the reality of the two subjects of the 
 union, of the divinity and of the manhood. If Mary is 
 the Mother of God, Christ is understood to be Em- 
 manuel, God with us. And hence it was, that, when 
 time went on, and the bad spirits and false prophets 
 grew stronger and bolder and found a way into the 
 Catholic body itself, then the Church, guided by God, 
 could find no more effectual and sure way of expelling 
 them, than that of using this word Beipara against 
 them; and, on the other hand, when they came up 
 again from the realms of darkness, and plotted the 
 utter overthrow of Christian faith in the sixteenth 
 century, then they could find no more certain expedient 
 for their hateful purpose, than that of reviling and 
 blaspheming the prerogatives of Mary, for they knew 
 full sure that, if they could once get the world to dis- 
 honour the Mother, the dishonour of the Son would 
 follow close. The Church and Satan agreed together 
 in this, that Son and Mother went together ; and the 
 experience of three centuries has confirmed their testi- 
 mony; for Catholics who have honoured the Mother, 
 still worship the Son, while Protestants, who now have 
 ceased to confess the Son, began then by scofiing at 
 the Mother. 
 
 You see then, my brethren, in this particular, the 
 harmonious consistency of the revealed system, and 
 the bearing of one doctrine upon another; Mary is 
 exalted for the sake of Jesus. It was fitting that she, 
 as being a creature, though the first of creatures, 
 
350 The Glories of Mary 
 
 should have an office of ministration. She, as others, 
 came into the world to do a work, she had a mission 
 to fulfil ; her grace and her glory are not for her own 
 sake, but for her Maker's ; and to her is committed 
 the custody of the Incarnation ; this is her appointed 
 office, — " A Virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, 
 and they shall call His Name Emmanuel." As she 
 was once on earth, and was personally the guardian of 
 her Divine Child, as she carried Him in her womb, 
 folded Him in her embrace, and suckled Him at her 
 breast, so now, and to the latest hour of the Church, 
 do her glories and the devotion paid her proclaim and 
 define the right faith concerning Him as God and 
 man. Every Church which is dedicated to her, every 
 altar which is raised under her invocation, every image 
 which represents her, every Litany in her praise, every 
 Hail Mary for her continual memory, does but remind 
 us that there was One who, though He was all-blessed 
 from all eternity, yet for the sake of sinners, " did not 
 shrink from the Virgin's womb/'' Thus she is the 
 Turris Davidica, as the Church calls her, ^' the Tower 
 of David /* the high and strong defence of the King 
 of the true Israel; and hence the Church also addresses 
 her in the Antiphon, as having " destroyed all here- 
 sies in the whole world alone.''^ 
 
 And here, my brethren, a fresh thought opens upon 
 us, which is naturally implied in what has been said. 
 If the Deipara is to witness of Emmanuel, she must 
 be necessarily more than the Deipara. For consider ; 
 a defence must be strong in order to be a defence ; a 
 tower must be, like that Tower of David, " built with 
 
for the Sake of Her Son. 35 1 
 
 bulwarks ;'' '* a thousand bucklers hang- upon it, all 
 the armour of valiant men." It would not have suf- 
 ficed, in order to bring out and impress on us the idea 
 that God is man, had His Mother been an ordinary- 
 person. A mother without a home in the Church, 
 without dignity, without gifts, would have been, as far 
 as the defence of the Incarnation goes, no mother at 
 all. She would not have remained in the memory, or 
 the imagination of men. If she is to witness and re- 
 mind the world that God became man, she must be on 
 a high and eminent station for the purpose. She must 
 be made to fill the mind, in order to suggest the lesson. 
 "When she once attracts our attention, then and not 
 till then, she begins to preach Jesus. " Why should 
 she have such prerogatives,^^ we ask, *' unless He be 
 God ? and what must He be by nature, when she is so 
 high by grace ? " This is why she has otl^er preroga- 
 tives besides, namely, the gifts of personal purity and 
 intercessory power, distinct from her maternity ; she 
 is personally endowed that she may perform her ofiice 
 well ; she is exalted in herself that she may minister 
 to Christ. 
 
 For this reason, she has been made more glorious 
 in her person than in her ofiice ; her purity is a higher 
 gift than her relationship to God. This is what is 
 implied in Christ's answer to the woman in the crowd, 
 who cried out, when He was preaching, " Blessed is 
 the womb that bare Thee, and the breasts which Thou 
 hast sucked. '^ He replied by pointing out to His 
 disciples a higher blessedness ; '' Yea, rather blessed,'' 
 He said, '^are they who hear the word of God and 
 
352 The Glories of Mary 
 
 keep it/' You know, my brethren, that Protestants 
 take these words ^in disparagement of our Lady's 
 greatness, but they really tell the other way. For 
 consider them ; He lays down a principle, that it is 
 more blessed to keep His commandments than to be 
 His Mother ; but who even of Protestants will say that 
 she did not keep His commandments ? She kept them 
 surely, and our Lord does but say that such obedience 
 was in a higher line of privilege than her being His 
 Mother ; she was more blessed in her detachment from 
 creatures, in her devotion to God, in her virginal 
 purity, in her fulness of grace, than in her maternity. 
 This is the constant teaching of the Holy Fathers : 
 " More blessed was Mary," says St. Augustine, " in 
 receiving Christ's faith, than in conceiving Christ's 
 flesh " and St. Chrysostom declares, that she would 
 not have been blessed, though she had borne Him in 
 the body, had she not heard the word of God and kept 
 it. This of course is an impossible case ; for she was 
 made holy, that she might be made His Mother, and 
 the two blessednesses cannot be divided. She who 
 was chosen to supply flesh and blood to the Eternal 
 Word, was first filled with grace in soul and body ; 
 still, she had a double blessedness, of ofiice and of 
 qualification for it, and the latter was the greater. 
 And it is on this account that the Angel calls her 
 blessed ; " Full of grace'' he says, " Blessed among 
 women ;" and St. Elizabeth also, when she cries out, 
 " Blessed thou that hast believed.'* Nay, she herself 
 bears a like testimony, when the Angel announced to her 
 the high favour which was coming on her. Though all 
 
for the Sake of Her Son. 353 
 
 Jewish women in each successive age had been hoping 
 to be Mother of the Christ, so that marriage was 
 honourable among them, celibacy a reproach, she 
 alone had put aside the desire and the thought of so 
 great a dignity. She alone, who was to bear the Christ, 
 all but refused to bear Him ; He stooped to her, she 
 turned from Him ; and why ? because she had been 
 inspired, the first of womankind, to dedicate her vir- 
 ginity to God, and she did not welcome a privilege 
 which seemed to involve a forfeiture of her vow. How 
 shall this be, she asked, seeing I am separate from 
 man ? Nor, till the Angel told her that the concep- 
 tion would be miraculous and from the Holy Ghost, 
 did she put aside her " trouble " of mind, recognize 
 him securely as God's messenger, and bow her head 
 in awe and thankfulness to God's condescension. 
 
 Mary then is a specimen, and more than a specimen, 
 in the purity of her soul and body, of what man was 
 before his fall, and what he would have been, had he 
 risen to his full perfection. It had been hard, it had 
 been a victory for the Evil One, had the whole race 
 passed away, nor any one instance in it occurred to show 
 what the Creator had intended it to be in its original 
 state. Adam, you know, was created in the image and 
 after the likeness of God; his frail and imperfect 
 nature, stamped with a divine seal, was supported and 
 exalted^ by an indwelling of divine grace. Impetuous 
 passion did not exist in him, except as a latent element 
 and a possible evil; ignorance was dissipated by the 
 clear light of the Spirit ; and reason, sovereign over 
 every motion of his soul, was simply subjected to the 
 
 L a 
 
354 1^^^^ Glories of Mary 
 
 will of God. Nay, even his body was preserved from 
 every wayward appetite and affection, and was pro- 
 mised immortality instead of dissolution. Thus he 
 was in a supernatural state ; and, had he not sinned, 
 year after year would he have advanced in merit and 
 grace, and in God^s favour, till he passed from paradise 
 to heaven. But he fell ; and his descendants were 
 born in his likeness ; and the world grew worse in- 
 stead of better, and judgment after judgment cut off 
 generations of sinners in vain, and improvement 
 was hopeless, ^'because man was flesh/' and, " the 
 thoughts of his heart were bent upon evil at all 
 times." However, a remedy had been determined in 
 heaven ; a Redeemer was at hand ; God was about to 
 do a great work, and He purposed to do it suitably ; 
 '^ where sin abounded, grace was to abound more.'' 
 Kings of the earth, when they have sons born to them, 
 forthwith scatter some large bounty, or raise some high 
 memorial ; they honour the day, or the place, or the 
 heralds of the auspicious event, with some correspond- 
 ing mark of favour ; nor did the coming of Emmanuel 
 innovate on the world's established custom. It was 
 a season of grace and prodigy, and these were to be 
 exhibited in a special manner in the person of His 
 Mother. The course of ages was to be reversed ; the 
 tradition of evil was to be broken ; a gate of light 
 was to be opened amid the darkness, for the coming 
 of the Just; — a Virgin conceived and bore Him. It 
 was fitting, for His honour and glory, that she, who 
 was the instrument of His bodily presence, should 
 first be a miracle of His grace ; it was fitting that she 
 
for the Sake of Her Son. 355 
 
 should triumph, where Eve had failed, and should 
 " bruise the serpent's head '^ by the spotlessness of her 
 sanctity. In some respects, indeed, the curse was not 
 reversed ; Mary came into a fallen world, and resigned 
 herself to its laws ; she, as also the Son she bore, was 
 exposed to pain of soul and body, she was subjected 
 to death ; but she was not put under the power of sin. 
 As grace was infused into Adam from the first moment 
 of his creation, so that he never had experience of his 
 natural poverty, till sin reduced him to it ; so was grace 
 given from the first in still ampler measure to Mary, 
 and she never incurred, in fact, Adam's deprivation . She 
 began where others end, whether in knowledge or in 
 love. She was from the first clothed in sanctity, sealed 
 for perseverance, luminous and glorious in God's sight, 
 and incessantly employed in meritorious acts, which 
 continued till her last breath. Hers was emphatically 
 *' the path of the just, which, as the shining light, 
 goeth forward and increaseth even to the perfect day ;" 
 and sinlessness in thought, word, and deed, in small 
 things as well as great, in venial matters as well as 
 grievous, is surely but the natural and obvious sequel 
 of such a beginning. If Adam might have kept him- 
 self from sin in his first state, much more shall we 
 expect immaculate perfection in Mary. 
 
 Such is her prerogative of sinless perfection, and it 
 is, as her maternity, for the sake of Emmanuel ; hence 
 she answered the Angel's salutation Gratia plenay 
 with the humble acknowledgment, ^(PC^ ancilla Bominiy 
 " Behold the handmaid of the Lord." And like to this 
 is her third prerogative, which follows both from her 
 A a 2 
 
356 The Glories of Mary 
 
 maternity and from her purity, and which I will men- 
 tion as completing the enumeration of her glories. I 
 mean her intercessory power. For, if " God heareth 
 not sinners, but if a man be a worshipper of Him, 
 and do His will, him He heareth •" if " the continual 
 prayer of a just man availeth much ; " if faithful 
 Abraham was required to pray for Abimelech, " for 
 he was a prophet ; '^ if patient Job was to " pray for 
 his friends," for he had " spoken right things before 
 God /^ if meek Moses, by lifting up his hands, turned 
 the battle in favour of Israel against Amalec ; why 
 should we wonder at hearing that Mary, the only 
 spotless child of Adam^s seed, has a transcendent 
 influence with the God of grace ? And if the Gen- 
 tiles at Jerusalem sought Philip, because he was 
 an Apostle, when they desired access to Jesus, and 
 Philip spoke to Andrew, as still more closely in 
 our Lord's confidence, and then both came to Him, 
 is it strange that the Mother should have power 
 with the Son, distinct in kind from that of the purest 
 Angel and the most triumphant Saint? If we 
 have faith to admit the Incarnation itself, we must 
 admit it in its fulness ; why then should we start at 
 the gracious appointments which arise out of it, or are 
 necessary to it, or are included in it? If the Creator 
 comes on earth in the form of a servant and a crea- 
 ture, why may not His Mother on the other hand 
 rise to be the Queen of heaven, and be clothed with 
 the sun, and have the moon under her feet ? 
 
 I am not proving these doctrines to you, my brethren; 
 the evidence of them lies in the declaration of the 
 
for the Sake of Her Son, 357 
 
 Church. The Church is the oracle of religious truth, 
 and dispenses what the Apostles committed to her in 
 every time and place. We must take her word, then, 
 without proofs because she is sent to us from God to 
 teach us how to please Him ; and that we do so is the 
 test whether we be really Catholics or no. I am not 
 proving" then what you already receive, but I am show- 
 ing you the beauty and the harmony, as seen in one 
 instance, of the Churches teaching ; which are so well 
 adapted, as they are divinely intended, to recommend 
 that teaching to the inquirer and to endear it to her 
 children. One word more, and I have done ; I have 
 shown you how full of meaning are the truths them- 
 selves which the Church teaches concerning the Most 
 Blessed Virgin, and now consider how full of mean- 
 ing also has been the Churches dispensation of them. 
 You will find, then, in this respect, as in Mary^s 
 prerogatives themselves, there is the same careful 
 reference to the glory of Him who gave them to her. 
 You know, when first He went out to preach, she kept 
 apart from Him ; she interfered not with His work ; 
 and even when He was gone up on high, yet she, a 
 woman, went not out to preach or teach, she seated not 
 herself in the Apostolic chair, she took no part in the 
 Priest^s office ; she did but humbly seek her Son in the 
 daily Mass of those, who, though her ministers in 
 heaven, were her superiors in the Church on earth. 
 Nor, when she and they had left this lower scene, and 
 she was a Queen upon her Son's right hand, not even 
 then did she ask of Him to publish her name to the 
 ends of the world, or to hold her up to the world's gaze, 
 
35^ The Glories of Mary 
 
 but she remained waiting for the time, when her own 
 glory should be necessary for His. He indeed had been 
 from the very first proclaimed by Holy Church, and 
 enthroned in His temple, for He was God ; ill had it 
 beseemed the living Oracle of Truth to have with- 
 holden from the faithful the very object of their adora- 
 tion; but it was otherwise with Mary. It became 
 her, as a creature, a mother, and a woman, to stand 
 aside and make way for the Creator, to minister to her 
 Son, and to win her way into the world^s homage by 
 sweet and gracious persuasion. So when His name 
 was dishonoured, then it was that she did Him service ; 
 when Emmanuel was denied, then the Mother of 
 God (as it were) came forward ; when heretics said 
 that God was not incarnate, then was the time for 
 her own honours. And then, when as much as this 
 had been accomplished, she had done with strife ; 
 she fought not for herself. No fierce controversy, 
 no persecuted confessors, no heresiareh, no anathema, 
 marks the history of her manifestation ; as she had 
 increased day by day in grace and merit at Nazareth, 
 while the world knew not of her, so has she raised 
 herself aloft silently, and has grown [into her place 
 in the Church by a tranquil influence and a natural 
 process. She was as some fair tree, stretching forth 
 her fruitful branches and her fragrant leaves, and 
 overshadowing the territory of the Saints. And 
 thus the Antiphon speaks of her ; " Let thy dwell- 
 ing be in Jacob, and thine inheritance in Israel, and 
 siiilce thy roots in My elect."'^ Again, " And so in 
 Sion was I established^ and in the holy city I likewise 
 
for the Sake of Her Son. 359 
 
 rested, and in Jerusalem was my power. And I took 
 root in an'honourable people, and in the glorious com- 
 pany of the Saints was I detained. I was exalted like 
 a cedar in Lebanus, and as a cypress in Mount Sion ; 
 I have stretched out My branches as the terebinth, and 
 My branches are of honour and grace/* Thus was she 
 reared without hands, and gained a modest victory, 
 and exerts a gentle sway, which she has not claimed. 
 When dispute arose about her among her children, she 
 hushed it ] when objections were urged against her, 
 she waived her claims and waited ; till now, in this 
 very day, should God so will, she will win at length 
 her most radiant crown, and, without opposing voice, 
 and amid the jubilation of the whole Church, she will 
 be hailed as immaculate in her conception. 
 
 Such art thou, Holy Mother, in the creed and in 
 the worship of the Church, the defence of many truths, 
 the grace and smiling light of every devotion. In 
 thee, O Mary, is fulfilled, as we can bear it, an original 
 purpose of the Most High. He once had meant to come 
 on earth in heavenly glory, but we sinned ; and then 
 He could not safely visit us, except with a shrouded 
 radiance and a bedimmed Majesty, for He was God. 
 So He came Himself in weakness, not in power ; and 
 He sent thee a creature, in His stead, with a crea- 
 ture^s comeliness and lustre suited to our state. And 
 now thy very face and form, dear Mother, speak to us 
 of the Eternal ; not like earthly beauty, dangerous to 
 look upon, but like the morning star, which is thy 
 emblem, bright and musical, breathing purity, telling 
 of heaven, and infusing peace. O harbinger of day ! 
 
360 The Glories of Mary ^ etc. 
 
 O hope of the pilgrim ! lead us still as thou hast led 
 in the dark night, across the bleak wilderness, guide 
 us on to our Lord Jesus, guide us home. 
 
 Maria, mater gratise, 
 Duleis parens clementiae, 
 Tu nos ab hoste protege 
 Et mortis hora suscipe. 
 
DISCOURSE XVIII. 
 
 ON THE FITNESS OF THE GLORIES OF MARY. 
 
 XrOU may recollect, my brethren, our Lord^s words, 
 -■- when on the day of His resurrection He had joined 
 the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, and found 
 them sad and perplexed in consequence of His death. 
 He said, " Ought not Christ to suffer these things, and 
 so enter into His glory ? " He appealed to the fitness 
 and congruity which existed between this otherwise 
 surprising event and the other truths which had been 
 revealed concerning the divine purpose of saving the 
 world. And so too, St. Paul, in speaking of the same 
 wonderful appointment of God ; " It became Him,'^ he 
 says, " for whom are all things, and through whom 
 are all things, who had brought many sons unto glory, 
 to consummate the Author of their salvation by suffer- 
 ing.'' Elsewhere, speaking of prophesying, or the ex- 
 position of what is latent in divine truth, he bids his 
 brethren exercise the gift " according to the analogy 
 or rule of faith ;" that is, so that the doctrine preached 
 may correspond and fit into what is already received. 
 Thus you see, it is a great evidence of truth, in the 
 case of revealed teaching, that it is so consistent, that 
 it so hangs together, that one thing springs out of 
 
362 On the Fitness of 
 
 another,, that each part requires and is required by the 
 rest. 
 
 This great principle, which is exemplified so variously 
 in the structure and history of Catholic doctrine, which 
 will receive more and more illustrations the more care- 
 fully and minutely we examine the subject, is brought 
 before us especially at this season, when we are cele- 
 brating the Assumption of our Blessed Lady, the Mother 
 of God, into heaven. We receive it on the belief of 
 ages; but, viewed in the light of reason, it is the 
 fitness of this termination of her earthly course which 
 so persuasively recommends it to our minds : we feel 
 it " ought " to be ; that it *' becomes " her Lord and 
 Son thus to provide for one who was so singular and 
 special both in herself and her relations to Him. We 
 find that it is simply in harmony with the substance 
 and main outlines of the doctrine of the Incarnation, 
 and that without it Catholic teaching would have a 
 character of incompleteness, and would disappoint our 
 pious expectations. 
 
 Let us direct our thoughts to this subject to-day, 
 my brethren; and with a view of helping you to do 
 so, I will first state what the Church has taught and 
 defined from the first ages concerning the Blessed 
 Virgin, and then you will see how naturally the de- 
 votion which her children show her, and the praises 
 with which they honour her, follow from it. 
 
 Now, as you know, it has been held from the first, 
 and defined from an early age, that Mary is the Mother 
 of God. She is not merely the Mother of our Lord's 
 manhood, or of our Lord's body, but she is to be con- 
 
the Glories of Mary, 363 
 
 sidered tlie Mother of the Word Himself, the Word 
 incarnate. God, in the person of the Word, the 
 Second Person of the All-glorious Trinity, humbled 
 Himself to become her Son. Non horruisti Virginis 
 utemm, as the Church sings, ^^ Thou didst not shrink 
 from the Virgin's womb."'' He took the substance of 
 His human flesh from her, and clothed in it He lay 
 within Her; and He bore it about with Him after birth, 
 as a sort of badge and witness that He, though God, 
 was hers. He was nursed and tended by her; He 
 was suckled by her ; He lay in her arms. As time went 
 on, He ministered to her, and obeyed her. He lived 
 with her for thirty years, in one house, with an uninter- 
 rupted intercourse, and with only the saintly Joseph to 
 share it with Him. She was the witness of His growth, 
 of His joys, of His sorrows, of His prayers; she was blest 
 with His smile, with the touch of His hand, with the 
 whisper of His affection, with the expression of His 
 thoughts and His feelings for that length of time. 
 — Now, my brethren, what ought she to be, what is it 
 hecoming that she should be, who was so favoured ? 
 
 Such a question was once asked by a heathen king, 
 when he would place one of his subjects in a dignity 
 becoming the relation in which the latter stood towards 
 him. That subject had saved the king's life, and what 
 was to be done to him in return ? The king asked, 
 " What should be done to the man whom the king 
 desireth to honour ? " And he received the following 
 answer, " The man whom the king wisheth to honour 
 ought to be clad in the king's apparel, and to be 
 mounted on the king's saddle, and to receive the royal 
 
364 On the Fitness of 
 
 diadem on his head , and let the first among the king's 
 princes and presidents hold his horse, and let him 
 walk through the streets of the city, and say, Thus 
 shall he be honoured, whom the king hath a mind to 
 honour," So stands the case with Mary ; she gave 
 birth to the Creator, and what recompense shall be 
 made her? what shall be done to her, who had this 
 relationship to the Most High ? what shall be the fit 
 accompaniment of one whom the Almighty has deigned 
 to make, not His servant, not His friend, not His in- 
 timate, but His superior, the source of His second 
 being, the nurse of His helpless infancy, the teacher 
 of His opening years ? I answer, as the king was 
 answered : Nothing is too high for her to wiiom God 
 owes His human life ; no exuberance of grace, no ex- 
 cess of glory but is becoming, but is to be expected 
 there, where God has lodged Himself, whence God has 
 issued. Let her ^^ be clad in the king's apparel/' that 
 is, let the fulness of the Godhead so flow into her that 
 she may be a figure of the incommunicable sanctity, 
 and beauty, and glory, of God Himself: that she may 
 be the Mirror of Justice, the Mystical Rose, the Tower 
 of Ivory, the House of Gold, the Morning Star. Let 
 her *^ receive the king's diadem upon her head," as the 
 Queen of heaven, the Mother of all living, the Health 
 of the weak, the Refuge of sinners, the Comforter of 
 the afflicted. And '^ let the first amongst the king's 
 princes walk before her," let Angels, and Prophets, 
 and Apostles, and Martyrs, and all Saints kiss the hem 
 of her garment and rejoice under the shadow of her 
 throne. Thus is it that King Solomon has risen up 
 
the Glories of Mary, 365 
 
 to meet His Mother^ and bowed Himself unto her, and 
 caused a seat to be set for the King's Mother, and she 
 sits on His right hand. 
 
 We should be prepared then, my brethren, to believe, 
 that the Mother of God is full of grace and glory, from 
 the very fitness of such a dispensation, even though 
 we had not been taught it ; and this fitness will appear 
 still more clear and certain when we contemplate the 
 subject more steadily/ Consider then, that it has been 
 the ordinary rule of God's dealings with us, that per- 
 son^ sanctity should be the attendant upon high 
 s piritu al dignity of place or work. The Angels, who, 
 as the word imports, are God's messengers, are also 
 perfect in holiness ; " without sanctity no one shall see 
 God ; " no defiled thing can enter the courts of heaven ; 
 and the higher its inhabitants are advanced in their 
 ministry about the throne, the holier are they, and the 
 more absorbed in their contemplation of that Holiness 
 upon which they wait. The Seraphim, who imme- 
 diately surround the Divine Glory, cry day and night, 
 " Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts.'' So is it 
 also on earth ; the Prophets have ordinarily not only 
 gifts, but graces ; they are not only inspired to know 
 and to teach God's will, but inwardly converted to 
 obey it. For surely those only can preach the truth 
 duly, who feel it personally ; those only transmit it 
 fully from God to man, who have in the transmission 
 made it their own. 
 
 I do not say that there are no exceptions to this rule^ 
 but they admit of an easy explanation ; I do not say 
 that it never pleases Almighty God to convey any in- 
 
366 On the Fitness of 
 
 timation of His will throug-h bad men ; of course, for 
 all things can be made to serve Him. By all, even 
 the wicked, He accomplishes His purposes, and by the 
 wicked He is glorified. Our Lord's death was brought 
 about by His enemies, who did His will, while they 
 thought they were gratifying their own. Caiaphas, 
 who contrived and effected it, was made use of to pre- 
 dict it. Balaam prophesied good of God's people in 
 an earlier age, by a divine compulsion, when he wished 
 to prophesy evil. This is true; but in such cases 
 Divine Mercy is plainly overruling the evil, and mani- 
 festing His power, without recognizing or sanctioning 
 the instrument. And again, it is true, as He tells us 
 Himself, that in the last day *^ Many shall say. Lord, 
 Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy Name, and in 
 Thy Name cast out devils, and done many miracles?'^ 
 and that He shall answer, "I never knew you.'' This, 
 I say, is undeniable; it is undeniable first, that those 
 who have prophesied in God's Name may afterwards 
 fall from God, and lose their souls. Let a man be ever 
 so holy now, he may fall away ; and, as present grace 
 is no pledge of perseverance, much less are present 
 gifts ; but how does this show that gifts and graces do 
 not commonly go together? Again, it is undeniable 
 that those who have had miraculous gifts may never- 
 theless have w^y^f been in God's favour, not even when 
 they exercised them ; as I will explain presently. But 
 I am now speaking, not of having gifts, but of being 
 prophets. To be a prophet is something much more 
 personal than to possess gifts. It is a sacred oflSce, it 
 implies a mission, and is the high distinction, not of 
 
the Glories of Mary, ^t^y 
 
 the enemies of God, but of His friends. Such is the 
 Scripture rule. Who was the first prophet and preacher 
 of justice? Enoch, who walked "by faith/' and 
 " pleased God/' and was taken from a rebellious world. 
 Who was the second ? " Noe/' who " condemned the 
 world, and was made heir of the justice which is throuj^h 
 faith.-" Who was the next great prophet ? Moses, the 
 lawgiver of the chosen people, who was the " meekest 
 of all men who dwell on the earth/' Samuel comes 
 next, who served the Lord from his infancy in the 
 Temple; and then David, who, if he fell into sin, re- 
 pented, and was "a man after God's heart." And 
 in like manner Job, Elias, Isaias, Jeremias, Daniel, 
 and above them all St. John Baptist, and then again 
 St. Peter, St. Paul, St. John, and the rest, are all 
 especial instances of heroic virtue, and patterns to 
 their brethren. Judas is the exception, but this was 
 by a particular dispensation to enhance our Lord's 
 humiliation and suffering. 
 
 Nature itself witnesses to this connexion between 
 sanctity and truth. It anticipates that the fountain 
 fpom which pure doctrine comes should itself be pure ; 
 that the seat of divine teaching, and the oracle of 
 faith, should be the abode of Angels ; that the conse- 
 crated home, in which the word of God is elaborated, 
 and whence it issues forth for the salvation of the many, 
 should be holy, as that word itself is holy. Here you 
 see the difference of the office of a prophet and a mere 
 gift, such as that of miracles. Miracles are the simple 
 and direct work of God ; the worker of them is but an 
 instrument or organ. And in consequence he need not 
 
368 On the Fitness of 
 
 be holy, because he has not, strictly speaking", a share 
 in the work. So ag'ain the power of administering" 
 the Sacraments, which also is supernatural and mira- 
 culous, does not imply personal holiness ; nor is there 
 anything surprising in God^s giving to a bad man 
 this gift, or the gift of miracles, any more than in His 
 giving him any natural talent or gift, strength or 
 agility of frame, eloquence, or medical skill. It is 
 otherwise with the office of preaching and prophesying, 
 and to this I have been referring; for the truth first goes 
 into the minds of the speakers, and is apprehended 
 and fashioned there, and then comes out from them 
 as, in one sense, its source and its parent. The divine 
 word is begotten in them, and the offspring has their 
 features and tells of them. They are not like " the 
 dumb animal, speaking with mane's voice,^^ on which 
 Balaam rode, a mere instrument of God^s word, but 
 they have " received an unction from the Holy One, 
 and they know all things,^^ and ^' where the Spirit of 
 the Lord is, there is liberty ; " and while they deliver 
 what they have received, they enforce what they feel 
 and know. *' We have known and believed" says St. 
 John, " the charity which God hath to us.^^ 
 
 So has it been all through the history of the Church ; 
 Moses does not write as David ; nor Isaias as Jeremias ; 
 nor St. John as St. Paul. And so of the great Doctors 
 of the Church, St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, St. Am- 
 brose, St. Leo, St. Thomas, each has his own manner, 
 each speaks his own words, though he speaks the while 
 the words of God. They speak from themselves, they 
 speak in their own persons, they speak from the heart, 
 
the Glories of Mary » 369 
 
 from their own experience, with their own arguments, 
 with their own deductions, with their own modes of 
 expression. Now can you fancy, my brethren, such 
 hearts, such feelings to be unholy ? how could it be 
 so, without defiling, and thereby nullifying, the word 
 of God ? If one drop of corruption makes the purest 
 water worthless, as the slightest savour of bitterness 
 spoils the most delicate viands, how can it be that the 
 word of truth and holiness can proceed profitably from 
 impure lips and an earthly heart ? No, as is the tree, 
 so is the fruit; " beware of false prophets," says our 
 Lord ; and then He adds, *' from their fruits ye shall 
 know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs 
 of thistles ? " Is it not so, my brethren ? which of you 
 would go to ask counsel of another, however learned, 
 however gifted, however aged, if you thought him 
 unholy ? nay, though you feel and are sure, as far as 
 absolution goes, that a bad priest could give it as 
 really as a holy priest, yeb for advice, for comfort, for 
 instruction, you would not go to one whom you did 
 not respect. " Out of the abundance of the heart, the 
 mouth speaketh;'' ''a good man out of the good 
 treasure of his heart bringeth good, and an evil man 
 out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil.'' 
 
 So then is it in the case of the soul ; and so is it 
 with the body also ; as the offspring of holiness is holy 
 in the instance of spiritual births, so is it in the in- 
 stance of physical. The child is like the parent. Mary 
 was no mere instrument in God's dispensation ; the 
 Word of God did not merely come to her and go from 
 her • He did not merely pass through her, as He may 
 
 B b 
 
3 /O On the Fitness of 
 
 pass through us in Holy Communion ; it was no 
 heavenly body which the Eternal Son assumed, 
 fashioned by the Ang-els, and brought down to this 
 lower world: no; He imbibed, He sucked up her 
 blood and her substance into His Divine Person ; He 
 became man of her ; and received her lineaments and 
 her features, as the appearance and character under 
 which He should manifest Himself to the world. He 
 was known doubtless, by His likeness to her, to be her 
 Son. Thus she may be called the first of Prophets, 
 for of her came the Word bodily ; she is the sole oracle 
 of Truth, for the Way, the Truth, and the Life, vouch- 
 safed to be her Son ; she is the one mould of Divine 
 Wisdom, and in that mould it was indelibly cast. 
 Surely then, if " the first fruit be holy, the mass also 
 is holy; and if the root be holy, so are the branches." 
 It was natural, it was fitting, that so it should be ; it 
 was congruous that, whatever the Omnipotent could 
 work in the person of the finite, should be wrought in 
 her. I say, if the Prophets must be holy, '' to whom 
 the word of God comes,'' what shall we say of her, 
 who was so specially favoured, that the true and sub- 
 stantial Word, and not His shadow or His voice, was 
 not merely made in her, but born of her ? who was not 
 merely the organ of God's message, but the origin of 
 His human existence, the living fountain from which 
 He drew His most precious blood, and the material of 
 His most holy flesh ? Was it not fitting, beseemed it 
 not, that the Eternal Father should prepare her for 
 this ministration by some pre-eminent sanctification ? 
 Do not earthly parents act thus by their children ? do 
 
the Glories of Mary. 3 7 r 
 
 they put them out to strangers ? do they commit them 
 to any chance person to suckle them ? Shall even 
 careless parents show a certain tenderness and solici- 
 tude in this matter, and shall not God Himself show 
 it, when He commits His Eternal Word to the custody 
 of man ? It was to be expected then that, if the Son 
 was God, the Mother should be as worthy of Him, as 
 creature can be worthy of Creator ; that grace should 
 have in her its '* perfect work -" that, if she bore the 
 Eternal Wisdom, she should be that created wisdom 
 in whom "is all the grace of the Way and the 
 Truth ;" that if she was the Mother of " fair love, and 
 fear, and knowledge, and holy hope,'' *' she should 
 give an odour like cinnamon and balm, and sweetness 
 like to choice myrrh/' Can we set bounds to the 
 holiness of her who was the Mother of the Holiest ? 
 
 Such, then, is the truth ever cherished in the deep 
 heart of the Church, and witnessed by the keen appre- 
 hension of her children, that no limits but those proper 
 to a creature, can be assigned to the sanctity of Mary. 
 Did Abraham believe that a son should be born to 
 him of his aged wife ? then Mary^s faith was greater 
 when she accepted Gabriel's message. Did Judith 
 consecrate her widowhood to God to the surprise of her 
 people ? much more did Mary, from her first youth, 
 devote her virginity. Did Samuel, when a child, 
 inhabit the Temple, secluded from the world ? Mary 
 too was by her parents lodged in the same holy pre- 
 cincts, at the age when children begin to choose be- 
 tween good and evil. Was Solomon on his birth 
 called " dear to the Lord " ? and shall not the destined 
 B b 2 
 
372 On the Fitness of 
 
 Mother of God be dear to Him, from the moment she 
 was born ? But further still ; St. John Baptist was 
 sanctified by the Spirit before his birth ; shall Mary ])e 
 only equal to him ? is it not fitting* that her privilege 
 should surpass his ? is it wonderful, if grace, which 
 anticipated his birth by three months, should in her 
 case run up to the very first moment of her being, 
 outstrip the imputation of sin, and be beforehand with 
 the usurpation of Satan ? Mary must surpass all the 
 Saints ; the very fact that certain privileges are known 
 to have been theirs persuades us, almost from the 
 necessity of the case, that she had the same and higher. 
 Her conception then was immaculate, in order that 
 she might surpass all Saints in the date as well as the 
 fulness of her sanctification. 
 
 But though the grace bestowed upon her was so 
 marvellously great, do not therefore suppose, my 
 brethren, that it excluded her co-operation ; she, as 
 we, was on her trial ; she, as we, increased in grace j 
 she, as we, merited the increase. Here is another 
 thought leading to the conclusion which I have been 
 drawing. She was not like some inanimate work of 
 the Creator, made beautiful and glorious by the law 
 of its being ; she ended, not began, with her full per- 
 fection. She had a first grace and a second grace, and 
 she gained the second from the use of the first. She was 
 altogether a moral agent, as others ; she advanced on, as 
 all Saints do, from strength to strength, from height to 
 height, so that at five years old she had merited what 
 she had not merited at her birth, and at thirteen what 
 she had not merited at five. Well, my brethren, of 
 
the Glories of Mary, 373 
 
 what was she thought worthy, when she was thirteen? 
 what did it seem fitting to confer on that poor child, 
 at an age when most children have not hegun to think 
 of God or of themselves, or to use the grace He gives 
 them at all; at an age, when many a Saint, as he is 
 in the event, is still in the heavy slumber of sin, and is 
 meriting, not good, but evil at the hands of his just 
 Judge ? It befitteth the sanctity with which she was 
 by that time beautified, that she should be then raised 
 even to the dignity of Mother of God. There is 
 doubtless no measure between human nature and 
 God's rewards ; He allows us to merit what we cannot 
 claim except from His allowance. He promises us 
 heaven for our good deeds here, and under the covenant 
 of that promise we are justly said to merit it, though 
 heaven is an infinite good and we are but finite crea- 
 tures. When, then, I say that Mary merited to be the 
 Mother of God, I am speaking of what it was natural 
 and becoming that God, being God, should grant to 
 the more than angelical perfection which she by His 
 grace had obtained. I do not say that she could simply 
 claim, any more than she did contemplate, the reward 
 which she received ; but allowing this, still consider 
 how heroical, how transcendental, must have been that 
 saintliness, for which this prerogative was God's re- 
 turn. Enoch was taken away from among the wicked, 
 and we therefore say. Behold a just man who was too 
 good for the world. Noe was saved, and saved others, 
 from the flood ; and we say therefore that he earned 
 it by his justice. How great was Abraham's faith, 
 since it gained him the title of the friend of God ! 
 
374 ^^^ ^^^^ Fitness of 
 
 How o-reat was the zeal of the Levites, since they 
 merited thereby to be the sacerdotal tribe ! How great 
 the love of David, since^ for his sake^ the kingdom was 
 not taken away from his son when that son fell into 
 idolatry ! How great the innocence of Daniel, since 
 he had it revealed to hira in this life that he should 
 persevere to the end ! What then the faith, the zeal, 
 the love, the innocence of Mary, since it prepared her 
 after so brief a period to be the Mother of God ! 
 
 Hence you see, my brethren, that our Lady^s glories 
 do not rest simply on her maternity ; that prerogative 
 is rather the crown of them : unless she had been "full 
 of grace," as the Angel speaks, unless she had been 
 predestinated to be the Queen of Saints, unless she had 
 merited more than all men and Angels together, she 
 would not have fitly been exalted to her unspeakable 
 dignity. The feast of the Annunciation, when Gabriel 
 came to her, the Christmas Feast, when Christ was born, 
 is the centre, not the range of her glories ; it is the 
 noon of her day, the measure of her beginning and lier 
 ending. It recalls our thoughts to the Feast of her 
 Conception, and then it carries them on to the Feast 
 of the Assumption. It suggests to us how pure had 
 been her first rising, and it anticipates for us how 
 transcendent were to be the glories of her setting. 
 
 Come, my dear brethren, I would not weary you 
 with argument in a festive season, when we should 
 offer to the Blessed Virgin the homage of our love and 
 joy, rather than of our philosophy ; yet, let me finish 
 as I have begun ; — I will be brief, and bear with me 
 if I view her bright Assumption, as I have viewed her 
 
the Glories of Mary, 375 
 
 immaculate purity, rather as a point of doctrine, than 
 as a theme for devotion. 
 
 It was surely fitting then, it was beconjing, that she 
 should be taken up into heaven and not lie in the grave 
 till Christ's second coming, who had passed a life of 
 sanctity and of miracle such as hers. All the works of 
 God are in a beautiful harmony ; they are carried on 
 to the end as they begin. This is the difficulty which 
 men of the world find in believing miracles at all; 
 they think these break the order and consistency of 
 God^s visible world, not knowing that they do but 
 subserve to a higher order of things, and introduce 
 a supernatural perfection. But at least, my brethren, 
 when one miracle is wrought, it may be expected to 
 draw others after it for the completion of what is begun. 
 Miracles must be wrought for some great end ; and if 
 the course of things fell back again into a natural 
 order before its termination, how could we but feel a 
 disappointment ? and if we were told that this certainly 
 was to be, how could we but judge the information 
 improbable and difficult to believe ? Now this applies 
 to the history of our Lady. I say, it would be a greater 
 miracle, if, her life being what it was, her death was 
 like that of other men, than if it were such as to cor- 
 respond to her life. Who can conceive, my brethren, 
 that God should so repay the debt, which He con? 
 descended to owe to His Mother, for the elements of 
 His human Body, as to allow the flesh and blood 
 from which It was taken to moulder in the grave ? 
 Do the sons of men thus deal with their mothers ? do 
 they not nourish and sustain them in their feebleness, 
 
ZT^ On the Fitness of 
 
 and keep them in life while they are able ? Or who can 
 conceive, that that virginal frame, which never sinned, 
 w^as to undergo the death of a sinner ? Why should 
 she share the curse of Adam, who had no share in his 
 fall? "Dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return/' 
 was the sentence upon sin ; she then, who was not a 
 sinner, fitly never saw corruption. She died then, my 
 brethren, because even our Lord and Saviour died ; 
 she died, as she suffered, because she was in this world, 
 because she was in a state of thino-s in which sufferinjr 
 and death are the rule. She lived under their external 
 sway ; and, as she obeyed Caesar by coming for enrol- 
 ment to Bethlehem, so did she, when God willed it, 
 yield to the tyranny of death, and was dissolved into 
 soul and body, as well as others. But though she 
 died as well as others, she died not as others die ; for, 
 through the merits of her Son, by whom she was what 
 she was, by the grace of Christ which in her had an- 
 ticipated sin, which had filled her with light, which had 
 purified her flesh from all defilement, she had been 
 saved from disease and malady, and all that weakens 
 and decays the bodily frame. Original sin had not been 
 found in her, by the wear of her senses, and the waste 
 of her frame, and the decrepitude of years, propagating 
 death. She died, but her death was a mere fact, not 
 an effect ; and, vvhen it was over, it ceased to be. She 
 died that she might live ; she died as a matter of form or 
 (as I may call it) a ceremony, in order to fulfil, what 
 is called, the debt of nature, — not primarily for her- 
 self or because of sin, but to submit herself to her 
 condition, to glorify God, to do what her Son did ; 
 
the Glories of Mary, 377 
 
 not however as her Son and Saviour, with any suffering 
 for any special end ; not with a martyr^s death, for 
 her martyrdom had been in living ; not as an atone- 
 ment, for man could not make it, and One had made 
 it, and made it for all; but in order to finish her 
 course, and to receive her crown. 
 
 And therefore she died in private. It became Him, 
 who died for the world, to die in the world's sight ; it 
 became the Great Sacrifice to be lifted up on high, as 
 a light that could not be hid. But she, the lily of 
 Eden, who had always dwelt out of the sight of man, 
 fittingly did she die in the garden^s shade, and amid 
 the sweet flowers in which she had lived. Her depar- 
 ture made no noise in the world. The Church went 
 about her common duties, preaching, converting, suflPer- 
 ing ; there were persecutions, there was fleeing from 
 place to place, there were martyrs, there were triumphs; 
 at length the rumour spread abroad that the Mother 
 of God was no longer upon earth. Pilgrims went to 
 and fro ; they sought for her relics, but they found 
 them not ; did she die at Ephesus ? or did she die at 
 Jerusalem ? reports varied ; but her tomb could not 
 be pointed out, or if it was found, it was open ; and 
 instead of her pure and fragrant body, there was a 
 growth of lilies from the earth which she had touched. 
 So, inquirers went home marvelling, and waiting 
 for further light. And then it was said, how that 
 when her dissolution was at hand, and her soul was 
 to pass in triumph before the judgment-seat of her 
 Son, the Apostles were suddenly gathered together in 
 the place, even in the Holy City, to bear part in the 
 
 c c 
 
37^ On the Fihtess of 
 
 joyful ceremonial; how that they buried her with 
 fitting rites ; how that the third day, when they came 
 to the tomb, they found it empty, and angelic choirs 
 with their glad voices were heard singing day and 
 night the glories of their risen Queen. But, however 
 we feel towards the details of this history (nor is there 
 anything in it which will be unwelcome or difficult 
 to piety), so much cannot be doubted, from the con- 
 sent of the whole Catholic world and the revelations 
 made to holy souls, that, as is befitting, she is, soul 
 and body, with her Son and God in heaven, and that 
 we are enabled to celebrate, not only her death, but 
 her Assumption. 
 
 And now, my dear brethren, what is befitting in 
 us, if all that I have been telling you is befitting in 
 Mary ? If the Mother of Emmanuel ought to be the 
 first of creatures in sanctity and in beauty; if it 
 became her to be free from all sin from the very first, 
 and from the moment she received her first grace to 
 begin to merit more ; and if such as was her beginning, 
 such was her end, her conception immaculate and her 
 death an assumption ; if she died, but revived, and is 
 exalted on high ; what is befitting in the children of 
 such a Mother, but an imitation, in their measure, 
 of her devotion, her meekness, her simplicity, her 
 modesty, and her sweetness ? Her glories are not only 
 for the sake of her Son, they are for our sakes also. 
 Let us copy her faith, who received God's message by 
 the Angel without a doubt ; her patience, who endured 
 St. Joseph-'s surprise without a word ; her obedience. 
 
the Glories of Mary. 2,79 
 
 who went up to Bethlehem in the winter and bore our 
 Lord in a stable ; her meditative spirit, who pondered 
 in her heart what she saw and heard about Him : her 
 fortitude, whose heart the sword went throu<:^h ; her 
 self-surrender, who gave Him up during His ministry 
 and consented to His death. 
 
 Above all, let us imitate her purity, who, rather than 
 relinquish her virginity, was willing to lose Him for 
 a Son. O my dear children, young men and young 
 women, what need have you of the intercession of the 
 Virgin-mother, of her help, of her pattern, in this re- 
 spect ! What shall bring you forward in the narrow 
 way, if you live in the world, but the thought and 
 patronage of Mary ? What shall seal your senses, 
 what shall tranquillize your heart, when sights and 
 sounds of danger are around you, but Mary ? What 
 shall give you patience and endurance, when you are 
 wearied out with the length of the conflict with evil, 
 with the unceasing necessity of precautions, with the 
 irksomeness of observing them, with the tediousness 
 of their repetition, with the strain upon your mind, 
 with your forlorn and cheerless condition, but a loving 
 communion with her ! She will comfort you in your 
 discouragements, solace you in your fatigues, raise 
 you after your falls, reward you for your successes. 
 She will show you her Son, your God and your all. 
 When your spirit within you is excited, or relaxed, 
 or depressed, when it loses its balance, when it is 
 restless and wayward, when it is sick of what it has, 
 and hankers after what it has not, when your eye is 
 solicited with evil and your mortal frame trembles 
 
380 On the Fitness of the Glories of Mary, 
 
 under the shadow of the Tempter, what will bring 
 5^ou to yourselves, to peace and to health, but the 
 cool breath of the Immaculate and the fragrance of 
 the Rose of Sharon ? It is the boast of the Catholic 
 Religion, that it has the gift o£ niaking the young 
 heart chaste; and why is this, but that it gives us 
 Jesus Christ for our food, and Mary for our nursing 
 Mother? Fulfil this boast in yourselves; prove to 
 the world that you are following no false teaching, 
 vindicate the glory of your Mother Mary, whom 
 the world blasphemes, in the very face of the world, 
 by the simplicity of your own deportment, and the 
 sanctity of your words and deeds. Go to her for the 
 royal heart of innocence. She is the beautiful gift of 
 God, which outshines the fascinations of a bad world, 
 and which no one ever sought in sincerity and was 
 disappointed. She is the personal type and repre- 
 sentative image of that spiritual life and renovation 
 in grace, " without which no one shall see God.''' 
 " Her spirit is sweeter than honey, and her heritage 
 than the honeycomb. They that eat her shall yet be 
 hungry, and they that drink her shall still thirst. 
 Whoso hearkeneth to her shall not be confounded, 
 and they that work by her shall not sin." 
 
 THE END. 
 
 GILBERT AND EmNGTON, PEINTEES, ST. JOHN'S SQUAEE, LONDON. 
 
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