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THE 
 
 INTERNAL MISSION 
 
 OF 
 
 THE-HOLY GHOST. 
 
 ' 
 
 BY 
 
 fl, 
 HENRY EDWARD : 
 
 Vira 
 
 CARDINAL ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER, 
 
 Spiritus Domini replevit orbem terrarum, Liber Sapientic, i. 7, 
 
 Cui enim adest Spiritus gratia, nihil deest. 
 tur, magnarum plenitudo virtutum est, 
 S. AMBROSIUS, Expos. Evang. Luc. lib. i. s3et. 34. 
 Cum in corpore esset, vivebat: precisum amittit vitam. 
 tianus Catholicus est, dum in corpore vivit : precisus hereticu 
 brum amputatum non sequitur Spiritus. 
 
 8, AUG. Serm. in Die Pent. i. tom. v. p. 1090, 
 
 Et cui Spiritus Sanctus infundi- 
 
 Sic homo Chrig- 
 S factus est, memes 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: BURNS AND OATES. 
 1878. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 In 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 httos://archive.org/details/internalmissiono0OOmann_0O- 
 
cs A ; 3 
 TO THE CONGREGATION... 
 
 OF THE 
 
 OBLATES OF 8. CHARLES. 
 
 ee 
 
 REVEREND AND DEAR FATHERS, 
 
 Nearly ten years ago I dedicated 
 to you a very slender book on The Temporal 
 Mission of the Holy Ghost. And now once more 
 I add another, which traces at least the outline 
 of the same subject. 
 
 The former book was on the special office 
 of the Holy Ghost in the one visible Church, 
 which is the organ of His divine Voice. The 
 present volume deals with the universal office 
 of the Holy Ghost in the souls of men. The 
 former or special office dates from the Incarha- 
 tion and the Day of Pentecost; the latter or 
 universal! office dates from the Creation, and at 
 this hour still pervades by its operations the 
 whole race of mankind. Itis true to say with 
 S. Irenseus, Ubi Ecclesia bi Spiritus,— Where 
 
Vlil DEDICATION. 
 
 the Church is there is the Spirit; but it would 
 not be true to say, Where the Church is not, 
 neither is the Spirit there. The operations of 
 the Holy Ghost have always pervaded the whole 
 race of men from the beginning, and they are 
 now in full activity even among those who are 
 without the Church; for God ‘will have all 
 men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge 
 of the truth,” 
 
 I have, therefore, in this present volume, 
 spoken of the universal office of which every 
 living man has shared, and does share at this 
 hour: and I have tried to draw the outline of 
 our individual sanctification. | Nobody can be 
 more fully aware how slender and insufficient 
 are both these books. ‘They are only put out 
 as provocations, in the hope of rousing you 
 to fill up the outline. 
 
 It is my hope that some of you may be 
 stirred up to edit, in one volume, the treatises 
 of 8S. Didymus, 8. Basil, and S. Ambrose on 
 the Holy Ghost; and also certain portions of 
 S. Bonaventure, S$. Thomas, 8. Dionysius the 
 Carthusian, and §S. Bernardine of Sienna on 
 the Graces and Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost 
 
 a) nee 
 
DEDICATION. 1X 
 
 and on the Beatitudes which spring from them. 
 These united would make a precious store for 
 students and for preachers. 
 
 My belief is that these topics have a special 
 fitness in the nineteenth century. They are — 
 the direct antidote both of the heretical spirit 
 which is abroad, and of the unspiritual and 
 worldly mind ofso many Christians. The pre- 
 sence of the Holy Ghost in the Church is the 
 source of its infallibility ; the presence of the 
 Holy Ghost in the soul is the source of its 
 sanctification. These two operations of the 
 same Spirit are in perfect harmony. The test 
 of the spiritual man is his conformity to the 
 mind of the Church. Sentire cum Ecclesia, 
 in dogma, discipline, traditions, devotions, 
 customs, opinions, sympathies, is the counter- 
 sign that the work in our hearts is not from 
 the diabolical spirit, nor from the human, but 
 from the Divine. 
 
 S. Ambrose, S. Francis, 8. Philip, 8. Teresa, 
 had an ardent devotion to the Holy Ghost. 8. 
 Teresa in her Life tells us that one day after 
 Mass, on the vigil of Pentecost, in a very retired 
 place where she often used to pray, she was 
 reading a work on the Feast of Pentecost by a 
 
x DEDICATION. 
 
 Carthusian. I have always thought and hoped 
 that it may have been the work of Dionysius, 
 from whom I have quoted in these pages. His 
 spiritual treatises are of singular beauty and 
 depth; uniting the subtilty and accuracy of a 
 scholastic with the spiritual light and sweet- 
 ness of a mystical theologian. 
 
 It would seem to me that the development 
 of error has constrained the Church in these 
 times to treat especially of the third and last 
 clause of the Apostles’ Creed: ‘I believe in 
 the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, 
 the Communion of Saints.’ The definitions of 
 the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of 
 God, of the Infallibility of the Vicar of Christ, 
 bring out into distinct relief the twofold office 
 of the Holy Ghost, of which one part is His 
 perpetual assistance in the Church, the other 
 His sanctification of the soul, of which the 
 Immaculate Conception is the firstfruits and 
 the perfect exemplar. 
 
 The living consciousness which the Catho- 
 lic Church has, that it 1s the dwelling-place of 
 the Spirit of Truth and the organ of His Voice 
 seems to be still growing more and more vividly 
 upon its pastors and people, as the nations are 
 
DEDICATION. X1 
 
 falling away. Hi sunt, qui segregant semetip- 
 sos animales, Spiritum non habentes.2 This 
 prophecy of the Apostle is visibly fulfilling 
 before our eyes ; while the unity, outward and 
 inward, the unanimity and supernatural ex-— 
 pansion of the Catholic Church by its own 
 imperishable life and intrinsic force, bear wit- 
 ness of a Presence, a Mind, a Will, and a 
 Power which is not of man, but of God. 
 We seem to see and to touch the evidence of 
 the promise: ‘J will ask the Father, and He 
 shall give you another Paraclete, that He may 
 abide with you for ever.’ 
 
 ‘It is expedient for you that I go; for if I 
 go not, the Paraclete will not come to you; but 
 if I go, I will send Him to you,’ ‘the Spirit of 
 Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because 
 it seeth Him not, nor knoweth Him; but you 
 shall know Him, because He shall abide with 
 you, and shall be in you.’ 
 
 My purpose, however, is not to enter upon 
 this large field in a preface, but only to commend 
 to you, as the matter of your special study and 
 the burden of your constant preaching, ‘the 
 ministration of the Spirit’ under which we 
 
 £§. Jude 19. 
 
Xil DEDICATION. 
 
 are. S. Ambrose says, S¢ appellare dominum: 
 Jesum sine Spiritu non possumus, utique sine 
 Spiritu predicare non possumus.? 1 can desire 
 for you, therefore, no better gift than that you 
 may all be plenz Spiritu Sancto et Sapientia. 
 Et vos, unctionem quam accepistis ab Eo, maneat 
 in vobis. Et non necesse habetis ut aliquis doceat 
 vos: sed sicut unctio ejus docet vos de omnibus, 
 et verum est, et non est mendacitum. Et sicut 
 docuit vos, manete in Eo.* 
 
 Believe me, Reverend and dear Fathers, 
 Yours very affectionately in Jesus Christ, 
 
 ~ HENRY EDWARD, 
 
 Archbishop of Westminster. 
 Ash Wednesday 1875. 
 
 3 De Spiritu Sancto, lib, i. xi. 124. 
 4 Acts vi. 3. 51S. John niga 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 iW, PAGE 
 GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON . Fi ue L-29 
 
 The Spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole world; and 
 that which containeth all things hath knowledge of the voice. 
 WIspom i. 7, 
 
 IL. 
 SALVATION BY GRACE. : ° . : . . 33-62 
 
 We are confident of this very thing, that He Who hath 
 begun the good work in you will perfect the same unto the day 
 of Christ Jesus, PHILIPPIANS i, 6, 
 
 III. 
 THE VIRTUE OF FAITH ; ‘ : : ° . 65-95 
 
 Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of 
 Christ, Romans x. 17, 
 
 IV. 
 THE VIRTUE OF HOPE : ° : : : 97-119 
 
 The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believ- 
 ing, that you may abound in hope and in the power of the Holy 
 Ghost. Romans xv, 13. 
 
X1V CONTENTS. 
 
 THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. . . «~~ ~~ 128-144 
 
 Hope confoundeth not, because the charity of God is poured 
 forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, Who is given unto us. 
 
 RoMANSs v. 5. 
 
 VI. 
 a GEO. SOP SONS ia) ar, : Se ee ie 147-166 
 
 Those whom He foreknew, them He also did predestinate 
 to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be 
 the firstborn among many brethren. And whom He predesti- 
 nated, them He also called. And whom He called, them He 
 also justified. And whom He justified, them He also glorified. 
 RoMANS viii. 29, 
 
 VIi. 
 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST . 169-197 
 
 There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a 
 flower shall rise up out ofhis root. And the Spirit of the Lord 
 shall rest upon him; the spirit of wisdom and of understand- 
 ing, the spirit of counsel and of fortitude, the spirit of know- 
 ledge and of godliness; and he shall be filled with the Spirit 
 of the fear of the Lord. IsatAs xi, 1-3, 
 
 VIII. 
 THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR . - ° : ° 201-226 
 
 And He shall be filled with the Spirit of the fear of the 
 Lord, Isaras xi. 3, 
 
 OG, 
 Po eG OUSPINTY | a : ° . . ° 229-260 
 
 We have received the spirit of sons, whereby we cry Abba, 
 Father. Romans viii. 15. 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 xX. PAGE 
 THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE . : ; ‘ é 263-291 
 Labour as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, 2 Tim. ii. 3. 
 
 XI. 
 THE GIFT OF SCIENCE ° : : ° ‘ 295-319 
 
 I account all things to be but loss for the excellent know- 
 ledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, PHiLipprians iil. 8, 
 
 XII, 
 THE GIFT OF COUNSEL : . . : » 823-348 
 
 Counsel in the heart of a man is like deep water, and the 
 wise man will draw itout, PROVERBS xx. 5. 
 
 XIII. 
 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING : : ~ 851-380 
 
 Therefore from the day that we heard it we have ceased 
 not to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the 
 knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understand- 
 ing. CoLossIANs i, 9. 
 
 ELV 
 THE GIFT OF WISDOM . : . ° . 3883-408 
 
 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Pro- 
 VERBS 1. 7. 
 
 XV. 
 THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. : ‘ . 411-428 
 
 The fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace, patience, be- 
 nignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, con- 
 tinency, chastity. GALATIANS Vv, Des 
 
XVi CONTENTS. 
 
 AVI. PAGE 
 THE BEATITUDES : . A 431-458 
 
 And seeing the multitudes, He went up into a mountain; 
 and when He was sat down, His disciples came to Him, And 
 opening His mouth He taught them. §S. Mart, v. 1, 2. 
 
 XVII. 
 DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST , ° « 461-485 
 
 Because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of His Son 
 into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. GaALATIANs iy. 6, 
 
aw 
 
 GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 
 
 —_—_>—__ 
 
 The Spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole world; and that which 
 containeth all things hath knowledge of the voice. Wispomi. 7. 
 
 THE Spirit of the Lord is God the Holy Ghost, and 
 the Holy Ghost fills the whole world. There is no 
 place where He is not; because, being God, He is 
 boundless and omnipresent. He contains all things 
 in Himself. He ‘hath knowledge of the voice,’ 
 that is, He understands the voice of the whole cre- 
 ation of God; for ‘the heavens declare the glory 
 of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork ;’ 
 and the earth and the waters lift up their voices. The 
 fowls of the air cry to their Maker, and He feedeth 
 them; and the abyss calls to the abyss, and the 
 hearts of men are perpetually putting up their cry. 
 There is a cry of worship and a cry of wickedness, a 
 ery of piety and a cry of blasphemy, a cry of joy and 
 a cry of sorrow; and all these voices are heard in 
 the ears of the Lord of hosts. Such is the plain 
 meaning of the text. 
 
 My purpose is to trace in outline the work of the 
 
 I 
 
2 GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 
 
 Holy Ghost in the souls of men, one by one. ‘The 
 ever-blessed Trinity, whether in creation, or in re- 
 demption, or in sanctification, works in all things 
 with a unity of will and power. There is one God, 
 and all the acts of omnipotence are the acts of that 
 one God; nevertheless, there are special offices which 
 have been assumed and are exercised by the three 
 Persons distinctly. God the Father is the Creator, 
 God the Son is the Redeemer, God the Holy Ghost 
 is the Sanctifier; and yet not so that the Son and 
 the Holy Ghost are excluded from creation, or the 
 Father and the Holy Ghost from redemption, or the 
 Father and the Son from our sanctification. But 
 each of these three Persons has assumed to Himself, 
 by an economy of His own supreme wisdom, the 
 special discharge of one of these three offices. 
 
 Now God the Holy Ghost has the office of our 
 sanctification; and the office of Sanctifier is twofold. 
 There is the work of the Holy Ghost in every indivi- 
 dual soul from the beginning of the world; and that 
 work of sanctification in each individual soul will 
 continue to the end of the world. There is also the 
 work of the Holy Ghost in the mystical Body of 
 Christ, that is His Church, which office began from 
 the day of Pentecost, and will continue to the second 
 advent of the Son of God. ) Its fruit will be eternal ; 
 
GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 8 
 
 but of this latter, or corporate office of the Holy 
 Ghost, it is not my purpose now to speak. At other 
 times, and as I could, I have spoken on this matter, 
 and I have pointed out how the Church or the mystical 
 Body of Christ is in its structure imperishable, and 
 in its life indefectible, because it is indissolubly united 
 to the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Life-giver ; I have 
 shown also how, because it is indissolubly united to 
 the Spirit of Truth, it can never fail in the knowledge 
 of the perfect revelation of God; and how, because 
 its knowledge can never fail, its voice also is always 
 guided by the continual light and assistance of the 
 Spirit of Truth. It can therefore never err in enun- 
 ciating or declaring the revealed knowledge which it 
 possesses. But these are not the points on which I 
 have to now speak. We are speaking of the office of 
 the Sanctifier. It is because the Holy Ghost is united 
 to the mystical Body of Christ, that the mystical 
 Body is also holy. Sanctity is one of its notes. God 
 the Holy Ghost dwells in it. The Fountain of holi- 
 ness is open in the unity of that Body. The streams 
 of holiness flow into it from His presence, and the 
 fruits of holiness are to be seen in its members. 
 This is the point of which I have now to speak: and 
 yet not of the sanctity of the Church as a whole, but 
 
 of the sanctification of individuals one by one; that 
 
4 GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 
 
 is to say, of the work and the operation of the Holy 
 Ghost in the individual soul, not of saints only, but 
 of penitents, and of us all, even such as we are. 
 
 / 1. First, then, we must distinguish between the 
 general work of the Holy Ghost which began with the 
 beginning of the world, and the special work of the 
 Holy Ghost which began with the Incarnation and 
 the day of Pentecost. The general work of the Holy 
 Ghost, as the Sanctifier of the soul in man, began 
 before the Fall in the creation of man; for Adam 
 when created was constituted in the state of grace. 
 He was not created in, but constituted in, the state 
 of original justice. The distinction between created 
 and constituted is this : original justice was no part 
 of the nature of man; it was a superadded gift, a 
 supernatural perfection over and above the perfection 
 or integrity of human nature. It was not due to man 
 that he should have the gift of original justice: his 
 perfection consisted in the body and the soul, the 
 faculties and the powers—intellectual and moral— 
 which constitute human nature. (But original jus- 
 
 tice is more than this: namely, the gift of a super- 
 natural grace and state, by the indwelling of the Holy 
 
 Ghost in the soul, illuminating it by the infusion 
 of His light in the form of truth; and sanctifying it 
 by the infusion of His grace in the form of sanctity. 
 
ad 
 
 GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. v 
 
 This was original justice, and therefore Adam was in 
 two ways the son of God. He was a son of God by 
 nature, because he was created by God; and a son of 
 God by grace, because the Holy Ghost dwelt in him,/ 
 Further, because he had this original justice, he had 
 also two other gifts. He had immortality in the body, 
 because he was without sin; and he had perfect har- 
 mony and integrity, or order, in the soul, because 
 the soul was under the direction and guidance of the 
 Spirit of God. Therefore in Adam there were three 
 perfections : there was the perfection of nature, the 
 body and the soul; there was the supernatural per- 
 fection, or the indwelling of the Holy Ghost and of 
 sanctifying grace; there was the preternatural per- 
 fection of immortality in the body and of harmony 
 in the soul, in and with itself. Such was the work / 
 of the Holy Ghost. We do not indeed certainly know, 
 but many theologians of the Church teach as probable, 
 that in Adam there was by the light of faith an anti- 
 cipation of the mysteries of the kingdom of God, so 
 that he knew, at least in outline, the ever-blessed 
 Trinity and the Incarnation of God. This at least 
 is certain, that the fulness of light which was in him 
 excluded all ignorance, for ignorance signifies the 
 not knowing that which we ought to know. Now 
 Adam had all knowledge which belonged to his state. 
 
6 GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 
 
 There was in Adam a nescience of many things. 
 There was much that he did not know; but he was 
 not bound to know, he had no obligation to know, 
 that which was beyond his state. And as his illumi- 
 nation was more perfect than ours, so in like manner 
 the sanctification of the soul of the first man was the 
 most perfect, the most profuse, save only the highest 
 sanctification in the order of grace, of which we will 
 speak hereafter: namely, that of the Second Adam 
 and of His Immaculate Mother. 
 
 Such was the work of the Holy Spirit before the 
 fall of man. By an act of disobedience that first 
 creation was shattered, the presence of the Holy Ghost 
 was forfeited, and the soul and the body of man were 
 left in the substantial integrity which belongs to our 
 nature ; but it was wounded with the three wounds 
 of ignorance, of weakness, and of passion. 
 
 Since the Fall, the Spirit of God has assisted from 
 the beginning every man that has come into the world 
 born of Adam ; so that there never yet was any soul 
 which had not sufficient grace, if it had sufficient 
 fidelity to correspond with it, to escape eternal death. 
 Keep ever in mind this great truth ; for it is the found- 
 ation of the whole doctrine of grace. There are men 
 So narrow as to say, that no soul among the heathen 
 can be saved. The perfections of God, the attributes 
 
GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. vi 
 
 of mercy, love, tenderness, justice, equity—all rise up 
 in array against so dark a theology. The word of God 
 declares, first of all, that the Son of God is ‘ the true 
 Light that enlighteneth every man that cometh into 
 the world.’! Every soul created to the likeness of God 
 is illuminated by the light of God even in his crea- 
 tion. There never yet was a soul born into the 
 world that had not the light of reason, and the light 
 of conscience, that is, the light of God, shining in the 
 soul. The whole world is the reflection of the pre- 
 sence and of the perfection of God. The reason and 
 the conscience, rightly exercised, can see and read 
 His existence, His glory, and His Godhead, in the 
 works of His hands. Again, the Psalmist says, speak- 
 ing of God: ‘He hath set His tabernacle in the sun ;’ 
 and again, ‘He cometh forth out of the ends of heaven, 
 and His circuit goeth to the end thereof again. There 
 is no one that can hide himself from the heat there- 
 of? That is, the glory, and the majesty, and the 
 love of God, fill the whole world, pervade all things, 
 all men are encompassed by it. No man can hide’ 
 himself from the love and from the glory of God. 
 Go where he may—if he walk upon the earth, God — 
 is there; if he ascend into heaven, He is there also ; 
 
 if he go down into the deep, God is there before Him. 
 1 §. Johni. 9. 2 Pg, xviii. 6, 7. 
 
8 GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 
 
 Every living soul therefore has an illuraination of 
 God in the order of nature, by the light of conscience, 
 and by the light of reason, and by the working of the 
 Spirit of God in his head and in his heart, leading 
 him to believe in God, and to obey Him. Once more; 
 Saint Paul. says that ‘God will have all men to be 
 saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth:’’ 
 that is, without any exception, Jew or Gentile. And 
 once more: ‘ We hope in the living God, Who is the 
 Saviour of all men, and especially of the faithful ;’* 
 that is, of those who believe, therefore of all men with- 
 out exception. And two Pontiffs have condemned as 
 heresy the two following assertions. That the heathen, 
 and the Jews, and heretics, receive no influence from 
 Jesus Christ, but that their will is without help, 
 that is without grace, was condemned as a heresy by 
 Alexander VIII. Again, that there is no grace given 
 outside the Church, was also condemned as heresy 
 by Clement XI.° The work, therefore, of the Holy 
 Ghost, even in the order of nature, so to say, that 
 is, outside of the Church of God and of the revealed 
 knowledge of Jesus Christ among the heathen—that 
 working is universal in the soul of every individual 
 
 human being; and if they who receive the assistance 
 
 Bale imglin, 4 Ib-iv. 10. 
 * Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, Wiirzburg, 1874, nn. 
 1162 and 1244. 
 
* GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 9 
 
 of the Holy Ghost are faithful in corresponding with 
 it, God in His unrevealed mercies will deal with 
 them in ways secret from us. His mercies unknown 
 to us are over all His works; and the infinite merits 
 of the Redeemer of the world are before the mercy- 
 seat of our Heavenly Father, for the salvation of 
 those that follow even the little light which in the 
 order of nature they receive. 
 
 Any gift of God given freely is a grace. Our very 
 existence is a grace; every gift in nature is a grace; 
 every light we receive from the world leading us to the 
 knowledge of God—much more every doctrine we 
 receive from revelation—is a grace; but this is not the 
 sense in which we are speaking now. When we talk of | 
 the grace of the Holy Ghost we mean something in- 
 terior dwelling in the soul; and therefore the grace 
 of the Holy Spirit working in the soul may be thus” 
 defined. It is a gift of God infused into the soul, 
 not due to nature, but something superadded to 
 nature, a perfection above nature elevating the soul 
 to the supernatural order, and leading it to justifi- 
 cation and eternal life. Or, to put it shortly, it is the 
 sanctifying power and the influx of the Holy Ghost ; 
 it is the presence of the Holy Ghost entering into the 
 soul, and infusing sanctity into the soul. When grace 
 
 takes possession of the soul, in the reason it assumes 
 
"a 
 
 10 GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 
 
 the form of faith; in the will it takes the form of — 
 hope; and in the heart it takes the form of love: 
 
 faith, hope, and charity are the three primary work- 
 
 _ings of the Holy Ghost in the soul. Again, grace 
 
 may be described as the breath of the supernatural 
 life, which God breathes into the soul of man. A 
 breath of life as necessary to the soul as the natural 
 breath of life is to.the body. Therefore it has an 
 operation universal, gratuitous, derived from the 
 sovereign love of God, necessary, vital to man, and 
 sufficient to eternal life. This, then, is the first 
 working of the Holy Spirit from the beginning of the 
 world; and is at this moment even among those 
 nations that have never received the faith. 
 
 2. But, secondly, the special office of the Holy 
 Ghost as our Sanctifier, of which we now speak, is 
 within the bounds of the revelation of faith. From 
 the beginning of the world there has always been a 
 certain line of elect souls, who form a chain of the 
 saints of God. God from all eternity foreknew who 
 would be saved, and He predestinated them, first to 
 grace in this world, and, through the faithful use of 
 that grace, to glory in the world to come. God 
 knows the number of His elect, and the world will 
 goon until the last of that number has been gathered 
 out and made perfect for the kingdom of God. Do 
 
GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 11 
 
 not misunderstand me for a moment, as if that 
 predestination of God in any way conflicts with the 
 perfect freedom of the human will. All those who 
 are saved eternally will be saved by the sovereign 
 grace of God, and by the free co-operation of their _ 
 own will; and all those who are lost eternally will be 
 lost because, by the free resistance of their will, they 
 have refused to co-operate with the grace of God. 
 The predestination of God in no way violates or 
 takes away the perfect liberty of the human will. 
 God created the will of man with liberty, and He 
 respects the work of His own hands; but from the 
 beginning there has been a line of His elect multi- 
 plying perpetually from Abel the just, continuing to 
 expand in number from Abel to Enoch, from Enoch 
 to Noe, from Noe to Abraham, from Abraham to 
 Moses. In the twelve tribes of Israel the saints of 
 God were multiplying continually; and to them God 
 continually gave more and more of His graces, visions, 
 revelations, promises, inspirations, vocations, and spe- 
 cial calls: like that which called Abraham out from 
 Ur of the Chaldees; inspirations like that which 
 made Moses to be the Law-giver of His people, and 
 made Aaron to be the Priest to minister before Him— 
 graces which constituted the Prophets of Israel as 
 the teachers, the rebukers, and the admonishers of 
 
TZ GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 
 
 the people of God. All those were special graces 
 bestowed by the Holy Ghost for the illumination 
 and sanctification of the people of God; but over 
 and above these there were special interior workings 
 and graces of the Holy Ghost, increasing continually 
 in their measure until the coming of Jesus Christ. 
 
 \ Every saint before the coming of Jesus Christ was 
 sanctified by the Holy Ghost in virtue of the foreseen 
 redemption upon Calvary. The merits of the Lamb 
 slain from the foundation of the world obtained 
 graces for the sanctification of God’s elect from the 
 beginning; and the sanctity of every saint like 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of every penitent like 
 David, the special graces of Saint Joseph and the 
 Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, were 
 all purchased by the same most Precious Blood shed 
 by the Son of God. 
 
 And now what is the nature of that grace? ‘The 
 law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came 
 by Jesus Christ, and of His fulness we have all re- 
 ceived, and grace for grace.”® The first Adam, of whom 
 we are born by nature, was constituted in grace, but, 
 by sinning, fell and died; ‘and that which is born of 
 the flesh is flesh.” Weare born flesh and blood, and 
 the Holy Ghost is not in us. The Second Adam is 
 
 “py. Jobn i. 16,17. Se LD. 111.0, 
 
GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 13 
 
 the Son of God Incarnate, the Fountain and Well- 
 spring of all grace; and in Him the Holy Ghost 
 dwells, and from Him the graces of the Holy Ghost 
 are poured out on us. This was the promise which 
 He made when He was going away: ‘ It is expedient ~ 
 for you that I go. For if I go not, the Paraclete will 
 not come; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” ‘I 
 will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” 
 On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Ghost, the Third 
 Person of the Blessed Trinity, came to take up His 
 office through the Incarnation of the Son. Our 
 Lord had said: ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and 
 now I work;’!° that is, the Father, the Creator, in 
 the early dawn of the world manifested Himself by 
 His power as the Maker of all things; next, the Son 
 manifested Himself by His Incarnation. Now we 
 live under the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. We 
 are at this time committed to the care and guidance 
 of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity; so that 
 the dispensation under which we are is the dispensa- 
 tion of the Spirit of God, the Sanctifier. It is 
 wonderful, then, how men with the page of the New 
 Testament before them can fail to see this—that the 
 one great evangelical gift, the one great gift of the 
 Gospel, is the gift of the Holy Ghost. ‘ For you have 
 § §. John xvi. 7. 9 Ib. xiv. 18. see evenly: 
 
14 GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 
 
 not received the spirit of bondage again in fear; but 
 you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, 
 whereby we cry: Abba, Father.’ ... ‘And if we 
 be sons, we are heirs of God and joint-heirs with 
 Christ." Our whole state is elevated. Because we 
 are the children of the Second Adam, His Father is 
 our Father ; because we are the sons of God by 
 grace, He is our elder Brother. The Holy Ghost 
 dwells in us, because He descends from our Head 
 upon all His members. We are born again through 
 Christ into a new and supernatural state. We are 
 not restored to the state of original justice, but we 
 are placed in a state of union with God through the 
 Holy Ghost, like, though distinct from, that which 
 the first man received. There is this further differ- 
 ence—he was in original justice, but it was possible 
 for him to fall; we are united to a divine Head sin- 
 less and immortal, Who therefore can never fall, for 
 Heis God. We, who are united with Him, receive 
 from Him, by our regeneration, a special indwelling 
 of the Holy Ghost. Not only every grace that was 
 ever given to man before, all the graces that were 
 ever granted under the law to the saints and to the 
 penitents of Israel—not only all those are still 
 
 given in fulness now to members of the Church, but 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 15, 17. 
 
GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 15 
 
 there are superadded other graces which were never 
 before given. In Israel there were no proper sacra- 
 ments. There were shadows of sacraments, but the 
 substance was not come. There was circumcision, 
 and there were sacrifices of bulls and of goats, and | 
 ceremonial actions, and washing, and purifications, 
 which were the types and shadows of things to come; 
 but those were not proper sacraments, and they did not 
 convey grace. ‘There was no grace in them. They 
 were external actions, like the taking of holy water, 
 and they depended for their sanctifying power upon 
 the internal state of the heart of those who used 
 them. According to the measure of faith and piety 
 in the heart of those who received them, was the 
 measure of the grace received by their use. The 
 grace did not spring from them, nor come through 
 them, for they were not fountains or channels of 
 grace. But the sacraments oi the Church are foun- 
 tains of grace—that is, grace is lodged in them; and 
 they who receive them, if they put no bar of mortal 
 sin in the way, infallibly receive that grace. Every 
 soul that is baptised, if it put no bar, receives in- 
 fallibly the grace of regeneration. Every soul that 
 receives the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of 
 Jesus Christ, if it put no bar of mortal sin, infallibly 
 
 receives it ; and so of all the other sacraments. There 
 
16 GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 
 
 is this also to be borne in mind. Every sacrament 
 of the Church has two kinds of grace to bestow: 
 there is the grace of the sacrament, and there 1s 
 the sacramental grace. The grace of the sacrament is 
 that which is infallibly communicated to every soul 
 that does not put the bar of mortal sin. For instance, 
 as I have said, Baptism confers a new birth; the 
 Sacrament of the Altar confers the Body and Blood 
 of our Lord; but every sacrament confers, over and 
 above this, a sacramental grace ; and this is a special 
 and peculiar privilege of the new law of Jesus Christ 
 and of the dispensation of the Holy Ghost, whereby 
 God has sanctified every state of man, and has 
 given to every such state a special and proportionate 
 grace, to enable those who are in it to discharge 
 its duties. Together with the gift of regeneration 
 in Baptism is given the sacramental grace, which 
 enables the regenerate to fulfil the duties of love, 
 piety, and obedience—that is, all the duties of a son 
 of God. In the Sacrament of Penance, over and 
 above absolution, is given the sacramental grace to 
 raise our sorrow from attrition to contrition, to in- 
 spire the will of mortification, and to fulfil all the 
 duties of a penitent. In Confirmation, over and 
 above the special and singular grace of strength, is 
 
 given a sacramental grace, which abides in the soul, 
 
GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 17 
 
 enabling it to fulfil all the duties of a good soldier 
 of Jesus Christ, and to endure the whole warfare of 
 the world, the flesh, and the devil. In the Sacra- 
 ment of the Altar, over and above the Body and 
 Blood of Jesus Christ, is given the sacramental grace 
 of piety, devotion, tenderness, love, generosity, self- 
 denial, conformity to the Sacred Heart of our Lord, 
 according to the measure of the devotion and of the 
 capacity of the heart. In the Sacrament of Matri- 
 mony there is given sacramental grace to fulfil all the 
 duties, bear all the burdens, and to discharge all the 
 offices belonging to the state in which those enter 
 who make that lifelong contract. In the Sacrament 
 of Orders there is given a grace, whereby a priest 
 will always have a perpetual assistance for the dis- 
 charge of his office in all its difficulties, whether in 
 guiding others, or of preaching the Word of God, or 
 in the administration of sacraments, or in the warfare 
 that comes, first and above all, upon the priest in our 
 conflict with the world. Lastly, to those who upon 
 a dying bed receive the Sacrament of Extreme Unc- 
 tion, there is given all that is necessary to strengthen 
 and prepare the soul to meet its Judge. It goes 
 forth, cleansed and absolved, glad to expiate the last 
 remaining debt, if need be, in waiting and in suffer- 
 
 ing the loving chastisements of purgatory. 
 
18 GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 
 
 Now here we must observe that, over and above 
 all the graces that have ever been given by the Holy 
 Spirit of God before the day of Pentecost, we have 
 received the special grace of a new dispensation. 
 We who are born again, and are members of the 
 mystical Body of Christ, are under a dispensation of 
 the Holy Ghost, so full, and of such manifold grace, 
 that there is no state of man which is not embraced 
 by it, and in which there is not given an abund- 
 ance of grace, exceeding all measure that we can 
 conceive, and meted out according to the necessities of 
 each individual soul. Our Lord intended this when 
 He said: ‘I am come that they may have life, and 
 that they may have it more abundantly.’’? Upon all 
 this spiritual grace comes the sonship which we have 
 received. We are made sons of God by adoption. 
 The glory of the sons of God is already upon us. 
 We are united with God as children of our Heavenly 
 Father by a bond the most intimate that is possible 
 between the Creator and a creature. There is one 
 only union higher and more intimate, and that is in- 
 communicable: namely, the consubstantial unity of 
 the Eternal Son with our manhood, after the like- 
 ness of which we, by adoption and grace, are made 
 the sons of God. Therefore it is that Saint Paul, in 
 
 12 §, John x. 10. 
 
GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 19 
 
 the Epistle to the Corinthians, draws out the contrast 
 between the Law and the Gospel in this way: ‘We 
 are made,’ he says, ‘ fit ministers, not of the letter 
 but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, the spirit 
 giveth life.’’* He adds, that upon our hearts is written 
 the law of God, ‘not with ink, but by the Spirit of 
 God on the fleshy tables of the heart,’!* according 
 to the promise God made before: ‘ This is the testa- 
 ment I will make with them: after those days, saith 
 the Lord, I will write My laws in their minds, and in 
 their hearts I will place them.’ Lastly, Saint Paul 
 says, glorious as was the law, and glorious as was 
 the face of Moses after he had spoken with God, so 
 that the people could not look upon his countenance, 
 and Moses had need to cover his face with a veil 
 because they could not endure its splendour, never- 
 theless we are under a dispensation of the Holy 
 Ghost which is yet more glorious because ‘ we, with 
 open face beholding the glory of the Lord, are 
 changed into the same image from glory to glory as 
 by the Spirit of the Lord.’ !® 
 
 My purpose has been to draw out this truth, in 
 order to show that the state of grace in which we are, 
 by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in our hearts, 
 
 3 2 Cor. iii. 6. 14° Tb. iii, 3. 
 1 Jerem. xxxi. 83; Heb. viii. 10, x. 16. 6 2 Cor, iii. 18. 
 
20 GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 
 
 and by the exuberant assistance of grace in every state 
 of the Christian life, lifts and elevates us to a super- 
 natural order, higher than all that the world has ever 
 known from the beginning. This elevation of man 
 was specially reserved to these last times—that is, 
 until the Incarnation of the Son of God. ‘The state 
 of a Christian child transcends, in supernatural grace 
 and dignity, all that God has ever before bestowed 
 upon His creatures. If, then, this be so, there are 
 some plain practical lessons for us to learn. 
 
 1. And first, we ought to be habitually conscious 
 that we are in a supernatural order. 
 
 If there be one thing that is to our shame, one 
 thing which ought to cast us down with our faces in 
 the dust, it is this: that we live all the day long as if 
 there were no Holy Ghost, as if we were like the 
 Ephesians who, when the Apostle asked them if they 
 had received the Holy Ghost since they believed, 
 said: ‘ We have not so much as heard whether there 
 be a Holy Ghost.’!” We live in the world and are 
 worldly ; we live on the earth and of the earth are 
 earthy ; we live for pleasure, we live for trade, for 
 money, for levities, for frivolities, for the indulgence 
 of our own will. Many live for worse: for they live 
 in pride, in covetousness, in jealousies, in envies, in 
 
 7 Acts xix. 2. 
 
GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 21 
 
 animosities, in malice one with another. Many live in 
 worse still, if it were possible so to say. They spend 
 their years in revelling, wallowing in gross sins of 
 sensuality; and yet they have been made temples of 
 the Holy Ghost. They have been born again, they are 
 regenerate, they have been made sons of God, heirs of 
 His kingdom: and to all eternity they will bear the 
 mark of their regeneration, the indelible character 
 stamped upon them at the font, and they will bear 
 also the mark of their confirmation—two terrible and 
 divine witnesses against them: the evidence of their 
 disobedience, because they have grieved the Holy 
 Ghost until they quenched His light, and died in 
 their sin. Is it not true that if you look round the 
 world you see men on every side living as if they 
 had never been born again? They live as if they 
 were born of the flesh, and of the flesh only. They 
 live for the world, and for nothing else. The words 
 of the Apostle are terrible: ‘The sensual man per- 
 ceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, because 
 they are foolishness unto him; neither can he 
 understand them, because they are spiritually ex- 
 amined;’!* that is, spiritually discerned, spiritually 
 known, spiritually tasted. I would ask you whether 
 the traders, and the merchants, and the profligates, 
 
 eel COrali 4s 
 
22, GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 
 
 and the worldlings, and the ambitious, and the 
 proud, and the covetous, and the violent, and the 
 unjust, are not living all the day long, and all 
 the year round, and all their life through, in this 
 blindness of the sensual man? The word ‘ sensual 
 man’ in the original means the animal man, the 
 man of flesh and blood, of the fleshly reason, and of 
 the carnal will without the Spirit of God. Such, 
 because they have fallen from baptismal grace, is the 
 state of multitudes of baptised Christians. 
 
 Task you, then, to examine yourselves as in God’s 
 sight. Have you any of these marks upon you ? 
 If you have, then you are grieving the Spirit of your 
 baptism. Perhaps you may have already lost its 
 grace. If you are insensible of these things, it may 
 be that you cannot discern that your baptismal inno- 
 cence exists no longer, that you have even now the 
 character of your baptism marked upon you for your 
 condemnation, that the gruce of the Spirit of God is 
 departed; for ‘the Holy Spirit of discipline fleeth 
 from the deceitful, and withdraweth Himself from 
 the thoughts that are without understanding, and wall 
 not abide when iniquity enters in.’” ‘ The spiritual 
 man judgeth all things, and himself is judged of no 
 
 man.’”” Now who is the spiritual man? It is the man 
 
 19 Wisdom i. 5. 1 Cor. 1, 16. 
 
GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 93 
 
 who follows the Spirit of his baptism, who has either 
 kept his baptismal innocence, or, if he had lost it, has 
 received it again by penance; and, living in the holy 
 fear of God, purifies himself, asking daily of the Holy 
 Ghost to sanctify him altogether, in every thought 
 and affection and passion, to illuminate his under- 
 standing with a knowledge of truth, to sanctify and 
 cleanse his heart from every taint of sin, to inspire 
 his will with a generous obedience. A man that lives 
 such a life, and is conscious of the supernatural help 
 that is in him, and is faithful to the duties of his 
 state in the world, and discharges them with an 
 exact fidelity, because he does them not for man but 
 for God—a man who remembers continually that he 
 is predestined to eternal life, but that yet he may 
 fall from grace, that this world is not his resting- 
 place, that his home is in eternity, that he is but a 
 stranger, wayfaring upon earth, who keeps himself 
 detached from the world and unspotted by it—such 
 a man lives a supernatural life. Ask yourselves now 
 in earnest, which of these two lives are you lead- 
 ing ? Are you conscious that there is a supernatural 
 life in you? If you are, then you are taking care to 
 feed and sustain it with supernatural grace, with 
 holy sacraments, with prayer, with meditation. You 
 avoid all things which are contrary to that life. And 
 
24 GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 
 
 just as you would avoid a pestilent atmosphere, or as 
 you would not drink of a poisoned well or risk any- 
 thing which would be hurtful to your bodily life, so 
 do you with constant vigilance avoid the occasions of 
 sin, and all things which are hurtful to your spiritual 
 life and health. Saint John, writing by the inspira- 
 tion of the Spirit of God, says this: ‘ Behold what 
 manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that 
 we should be called, and should be, the sons of God. 
 Therefore, the world knoweth us not because it knows 
 Him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and 
 it does not yet appear what we shall be: but we 
 know that when He shall appear we shall be like 
 Him, for we shall see Him as He is; and every man 
 that hath this hope in him sanctifieth himself, even 
 as He also is holy.’*! If you realise this your 
 supernatural state, it will be the motive of your 
 daily life. 
 
 2. Secondly, we ought to co-operate generously 
 and faithfully with the will of the Holy Spirit that is 
 working in us. You remember that, when the Lord 
 called Samuel in his childhood, at first he did not 
 know the divine voice; but when Eli bade him to 
 answer: ‘Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth,’? he 
 
 obeyed, and from that time he understood the will of 
 
 a8, dobn ital; eens tO, 
 
GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 25 
 
 God. The voice of the Lord is always calling to you: 
 ‘Behold, I stand at the gate and knock. If any man 
 will hear My voice, and will open the door, I will 
 come in to him, and sup with him, and he with 
 Me.” All the day long the Spirit of God is in your 
 hearts ; all hours of the day He is calling on you to 
 correspond with the will of God, that by it you may 
 be sanctified. But do you correspond with it? You 
 know that if you strike a note of music, all the 
 octave notes will vibrate. Does your heart vibrate 
 in correspondence and harmony with the voice of the 
 Holy Ghost, prompting you to holy thoughts, good 
 works, charitable actions, peace with all men, prayer 
 and piety towards God? No grace that God gives 
 ever fails of its effect, except through our fault. The 
 seeds that fall upon the barren sand can bear no 
 fruit; that which is cast upon the sea cannot strike 
 a root; that which falls upon a mind which is like 
 the troubled sea, or upon a heart which is like the 
 barren sand, will bear no spiritual fruit. Neverthe- 
 less, the grace of God in itself is always fruitful ; it 
 never fails of its effect, unless we mar it. Are you, 
 then, corresponding with the exuberant graces, which 
 God is always bestowing upon you? Think of what 
 you have received from your childhood. The lights 
 
 23 Apoc. ili. 20. 
 
26 GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 
 
 that have come down on you from heaven all your life 
 long are not more abundant than the graces of the 
 Holy Spirit, which have been bestowed upon you to 
 impart the knowledge of self and the knowledge of 
 God. The showers that water the earth are not more 
 exuberant than the graces of sanctity which God has 
 poured out into your hearts. How have you corre- 
 sponded with them? How have you wasted them ? 
 Let us all learn, for we all alike have need—and what 
 I say to you I say first to myself—let us learn to have 
 a delicate conscience, to understand promptly, and to 
 correspond, if we can, proportionately ; not to re- 
 ceive great graces languidly, and squander one half 
 of them, and correspond faintly with the rest. Try 
 with your whole soul and strength to rise up and to 
 obey, when the grace of God calls you to any higher 
 state or to any better action. 
 
 3. Lastly, I will but touch on one other lesson, 
 which is so vital to our salvation, that I would most 
 earnestly pray you to learn it well. Let it be the 
 lasting fruit of all I have attempted hitherto to say. 
 Resolve from this time, with all your spiritual power, 
 to be devout to the Holy Ghost. Pray to have a 
 devotion, personal, constant, daily, to the Third Per- 
 son of the Blessed Trinity. In your baptism you 
 were committed to His care. He is your Guide, 
 
GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. Dai 
 
 your Foster-Father, your Friend, your Counsellor, 
 your Guardian. When the Patriarch Jacob had seen 
 in a vision the ladder which reached up from earth 
 to heaven, and the angels ascending and descending 
 upon it, he woke up filled with a supernatural terror, 
 
 and said: ‘Indeed, God is in this place and I knew | 
 it not; this is no other than the house of God, and this 
 the gate of heaven.’ So would it be with us, if we 
 were to wake up and be conscious that God the Holy 
 Ghost is about us, that He encompasses us behind 
 and before, that He is within us, that He pervades us 
 as the Uncreated Spirit of God alone can do, that 
 our very soul is not so intimately united to our 
 body as He is to our soul; that He is all ear to hear 
 every breathing of our heart, that He is all eye to see 
 every thought which flits across our imagination ; 
 that our whole being is open before Him, that ‘the 
 Word of God is living, and powerful, and sharper 
 than any two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing 
 asunder of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and is 
 a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart ; 
 neither is there any creature that is not manifest in 
 His sight, for all things are open and naked to the 
 eyes of Him to Whom we must account.” If we 
 
 only felt this, we should wake up and say: ‘ Indeed, 
 
 * Gen. xxviii. 17. _ 2% Heb. iv. 12, 13. 
 
28 GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 
 
 God is in this place and I knew it not: all my life 
 long I have been unconscious. Now I know that 
 my own soul is the house of God, and my own heart 
 is to me the gate of heaven.’ 
 
 Let us then resolve, from this time, all we can, to 
 love the Spirit of God, to conform ourselves to His 
 will, to worship him day by day, to pray to Him 
 personally, to place ourselves under His guid- 
 ance, to beware of disobedience —of those three 
 degrees of disobedience of which He Himself has 
 | warned us: ‘Grieve not the Spirit of God, whereby 
 ye are sealed unto the day of redemption ;’° ‘ Resist 
 not the Spirit ;”’ ‘Quench not the Spirit.’° These 
 are three degrees by which we may fall from His love 
 and from His presence. Beware also not of actual 
 disobedience only, but of that tardy slothful neg- 
 ligence by which you may provoke Him to a just 
 impatience. ‘ Behold, thou art neither cold nor hot, 
 but lukewarm. I would thou wert either cold or 
 hot.” Nothing provokes the Holy Spirit of God, 
 Who is the fire of the love of God, more than the 
 lukewarmness with which we allow His graces and 
 mercies to pass by us, and to pass by us unperceived. 
 Ask, then, of the Holy Spirit of God to give you 
 
 76 Eph. iv. 30. 27 Acts vii. 51. 
 2% 1 Thess. v. 19. 7 Apoc, iii. 15. 
 
GRACE THE WORK OF A PERSON. 29 
 
 light to know Him, to know His presence, to be con- 
 scious of His indwelling in your hearts. Say to Him: 
 ‘O my God, I give myself to Thee with all my liberty, 
 all my intellect and heart and will. I desire to be 
 bound to Thee ; for ‘ where the Spirit of the Lord is, — 
 there is liberty,’ no other liberty is true; I desire to 
 ‘be free from the servitude of my own false freedom, 
 which is the worst bondage of the human soul. To be 
 Thy servant is to be in the liberty of the sons of 
 God. They that are led by the Spirit of God are 
 the sons of God. O Holy Spirit of God, take me 
 as Thy disciple, guide me, illuminate me, sanctify 
 me, bind my hands that I may not do evil, cover my 
 eyes that I may see it no more, sanctify my heart 
 that evil may not rest within me. Be Thou my God, 
 be Thou my Guide: wheresoever Thou leadest me I 
 will go; whatsoever Thou forbiddest I will renounce; 
 and whatsoever Thou commandest, in Thy strength 
 I will do.’ 
 
at 
 
 ak 
 Wd he te 
 
 om 
 \ 
 
 asf 
 hoe 
 a 
 
IT. 
 
 SALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
4, oa 5 " ’ i ° ¢ 1 f 4 a ~ 
 é 4 . a 4 
 a re pat 4 © he / 
 
 “ eh ho” ce RTS be R 7 
 oe coy) a 8 ae ae 
 ‘ f * a * +s at SS tS so eg 
 
 LJ 
 : “hk 
 ae 
 
SALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
 We are confident of this very thing, that He Who hath begun the 
 good work in you will perfect the same unto the day of Christ 
 Jesus. PHILIPPIANS i. 6. 
 
 THE greater part of men live as if they had no souls. 
 
 Of pains and ailments in the body they are keenly 
 
 conscious: they know at once when they are suffering. 
 
 But in their souls they may be as lepers white as snow, 
 
 without the least consciousness of their misery. They 
 
 live worldly, earthly, sensual lives, without the faintest 
 perception of any spiritual taint or spiritual disease ; 
 and they are no more conscious of the existence of 
 their soul than they are of the circulation of their 
 blood. Of those too who are more or less conscious 
 that they have a soul at stake, and that it may be saved 
 or lost eternally, even of these the greater part live 
 as if God did not dwell in them. They are uncon- 
 
 scious of the Divine presence: I do not mean in the 
 
 a 
 
84 SALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
 world round about them, because it is an axiom of the 
 human reason, that God is everywhere; and the men 
 of this world, except sceptics, who have put their eyes 
 out, will always profess that God is omnipresent. I 
 am not, however, speaking of this external presence 
 of God—I am speaking now of the internal presence 
 of God the Holy Ghost working in the soul. Even 
 they who are Christians in faith and in spiritual 
 light, who are conscious, and are continually saying 
 that they have a soul at stake, even they, too, live 
 without a habitual daily sense that they are never 
 alone : that as the soul is in the body, so God is in the 
 soul. Now this is the truth which I have endeavoured 
 to bring out. We have seen what is the twofold office 
 of the Holy Ghost—the one part of His work is His 
 universal sanctifying presence in the soul of man; the 
 other, His perpetual presence in the mystical Body 
 of Christ. I then drew, as a general conclusion from 
 these truths, that we are in a supernatural state, that 
 God the Holy Ghost dwells in us one by one; that 
 we therefore ought to worship, to adore, to love, to 
 serve the Holy Spirit of God Who abides in us, and 
 makes our soul His dwelling-place. This is the true 
 nature of the grace of God; but it is to be feared 
 that many who are perpetually telling us that we are 
 saved only by grace little know what grace is. ‘The 
 
SALVATION BY GRACE. 35 
 
 word grace signifies the free and gratuitous operation 
 of God, but it does not adequately bring out His im- 
 mediate presence. What I will therefore try to do is 
 to translate the word into its full meaning. 
 
 The full meaning of grace is this: the Divine pre- 
 sence and operation of God the Holy Ghost in the | 
 soul of man. Where He works He is. We must not | 
 forget His presence in His operation, or reduce it to 
 the notion of an agency, or an influence, or, as our 
 unbelievers would say, a force. Grace is of a twofold 
 kind: it is created and uncreated. The created grace 
 is a quality which is infused into the soul. Faith, 
 hope, and charity are qualities poured into our hearts. 
 But the uncreated grace of God is God Himself in- | 
 habiting the soul, the Fountain of all other gifts. 
 Therefore, as I have said before, we are in a super- 
 natural state: unless, indeed, we are reprobates, 
 unless we are in mortal sin, for then the Holy Ghost 
 no longer dwells in us. If by any mortal sins of the 
 flesh or of the spirit we have driven the Holy Ghost 
 from our hearts, then, indeed, we are not in a state 
 of grace; nevertheless, we are still in a supernatural 
 state. We are born again, we are regenerate, we are 
 sons of God; we shall be outcast sons of God to all 
 eternity, even in the outer darkness, Even though 
 
 we be spiritually dead, we are yet in a supernatural 
 
36 SALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
 state, because we still have faith in us, and we have 
 also hope; but because we have not charity, and 
 therefore have not the sanctifying grace of the Holy 
 Ghost, for that cause we are spiritually dead. They 
 who are in the supernatural state, and living a life 
 of grace, are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and 
 the objects of His special love. He perpetually per- 
 vades their intellect with the light of faith, and then 
 their heart by the working of charity, and their will 
 by the inspiration of His own ; and from this springs 
 the growth and ripeness of faith, hope, and charity 
 which we receive in our Baptism. 
 
 Such, then, is the full and adequate meaning of 
 prace; and in this sense we must still use the word, 
 because it is the familiar and technical term which 
 pervades our theology: and is to be found also in the 
 New Testament. But we must carefully distinguish 
 its many senses. Theology distinguishes the grace, 
 or the working of the Holy Spirit, into these three 
 kinds. There is what is called preventing grace; 
 that is, God going before us by His operations in 
 every good thing we do. Just as a guide carries a light 
 to show us our path, so the Spirit of God enlightens 
 us, and leads us in the way of life. But, secondly, 
 it is not enough to lead, unless He help us to follow 
 
 the light. Those whom He leads He also strengthens. 
 
BALVATION BY GRACE. oF 
 
 He goes with them, and gives them the concurrent 
 assistance of His own power. This is His co- 
 operating grace. And, thirdly, He makes perfect 
 that which He has begun, according to the words of 
 the Apostle, who says: ‘We are confident of this 
 very thing, that He Who has begun the good work 
 in you will perfect the same unto the day of Jesus 
 Christ.’ There are, therefore, three kinds of grace 
 —the preventing grace, which goes before us; the 
 accompanying or co-operating grace, which helps us 
 in our way; and the perfecting grace, which accom- 
 plishes and crowns the work of God in us. But 
 these are only three modes of the operation of a 
 Divine Person presentin us. I will endeavour, then, — 
 to draw this out, not speculatively, but practically : 
 for the guidance of our daily life. 
 
 1. God is both the author and the perfecter of : 
 our salvation. He is the Alpha and the Omega, 
 the beginning and the end. But though our salva- 
 tion begins in Him, is carried on by Him, and 
 is accomplished by Him, nevertheless our will 
 is actively at work in it from the beginning to 
 the end. There is but one grace in which our 
 will has no part, and that grace is the first. The 
 first grace which God gives to us in Baptism He 
 
 gives to us when we are unconscious in our mother’s 
 
38 -  §ALVATION BY GRACE? 
 
 arms; in this there is no action of our will: but 
 in all the other workings of His grace through all 
 our life our will must bear a part. And therefore, 
 as I have already said, there will be no soul lost 
 eternally that is not lost by want of co-operation of 
 its own will; and there is no soul that will be saved 
 eternally that has not co-operated with the grace of 
 God in working out its salvation. God, then, be- 
 gins everything in us, even our natural existence. 
 He created us out of nothing. He foreknew us from 
 all eternity. We were once a thought in the mind 
 of God. It was the love of God which willed to create 
 us; and His power following His will called us 
 _ into existence out of the boundless multitude of 
 possible creatures, leaving more than the mind of 
 man can imagine non-existent still. This wonderful 
 work of God’s love to us, calling us into existence, 
 was a preventing grace of His sovereign love, wisdom, 
 and goodness towards us. In like manner, God ac- 
 complished our redemption before ever we were, before 
 ever we came into being, because He willed His own 
 Son to be incarnate ; and the Incarnate Son shed His 
 Precious Blood for us when eternally He willed to die. 
 When we came into existence, God, having foreknown 
 and predestinated us to grace, called us to Holy Bap- 
 tism; and out of the millions and hundreds of mil- 
 
SALVATION BY GRACE. 839 
 
 lions of men on the face of the earth we were called 
 to be born again through the Precious Blood of Jesus 
 Christ. Our Baptism was a predestination. This, 
 then, was a grace bestowed upon us without any will 
 of our own. And if those who are baptised abide in 
 their baptismal innocence, the grace of God is always 
 beforehand with their will, through their whole life, 
 in childhood, boyhood, youth, and manhood, to the 
 end: it always precedes them; they always follow it, 
 and their salvation is made sure by their fidelity in 
 obedience to this preventing grace. The presence of 
 the Holy Ghost, given to them in the unconscious 
 state of infancy, has continually led them in the path 
 of salvation; they have obeyed it; and therefore the 
 faith, piety, charity, and purity of those that keep 
 their baptismal grace are the fruits of a Personal Love 
 and Power preceding every operation of their own 
 will. God began the good work in them; and so long 
 as they put no bar across His work, He has been per- 
 fecting it in them. In those who grow up in their 
 baptismal innocence there is also an unconsciousness 
 of evil. They are ignorant of a multitude of things 
 which the men of the world think it wisdom to know. 
 But that knowledge is a canker and a stain: it may 
 even be the destruction of the soul. Moreover, those 
 
 who keep their baptismal innocence are not only 
 
40 SALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
 unconscious of evil, they are even unconscious of any 
 good in themselves, because, in proportion as they 
 are humble and united with God, in that proportion 
 they are sanctified, and, in proportion as they are 
 sanctified, they ascribe all good to God alone, and 
 nothing to themselves. Well, as it is with those who 
 grow up in their first innocence, so it is in those 
 who are converted. They also are brought back from 
 their sins by the preventing grace of God. Those 
 who have fallen away, it may be, even from the Chris- 
 tian faith, or those who have violated the law of God, 
 those who have left the house of their Heavenly Father 
 —wandering out into the far country, and have 
 wasted the grace of their Baptism in an evil life— 
 when they return to God, what is it that brings them 
 back again? It may be the case with some who hear 
 me, who have come back to God after all their mise- 
 ries, or who were born out of the light of truth, and 
 have now entered into the full illumination of faith. 
 You can perhaps remember what your past life was 
 once: now it is altogether changed. What wrought 
 that change in you? From what source came the first 
 light in your reason which showed you where you 
 were, and by what dangers you were encompassed ? 
 From what hand came that first sting in your con- 
 science that made you fear to look at yourself, and 
 
SALVATION BY GRACE. 41 
 
 desire to hide yourself from the eye of God? From 
 what will came that impulse in your heart which made 
 you say: ‘I had rather die at the foot of the Cross ; I 
 had rather fall down on my face in the brightness of 
 God’s presence, though all the stains and wounds of 
 my soul will be revealed to me in an intolerable light 
 —rather this than die as I am. I will arise and go 
 to my Father : I will go into the confessional : I will 
 go and tell the worst against myself: I will keep 
 nothing back: I will anticipate the day of Judgment: 
 everything that will be told against me by the accuser 
 then shall be told by my own lips now.’ When you 
 said this, what brought you to that resolution? Per- 
 haps it was some word that you heard in a sermon— 
 some preacher spoke and touched your heart, so that 
 you could never rest afterwards ; some book that you 
 picked up, as you say, by chance—a mere sentence in 
 a page of it went to your heart, and you had never any 
 peace till you had gone to accuse yourself in a true 
 confession; or it may be some great sickness struck 
 you down, and, in the danger of impending death, you 
 saw yourself as God saw you; or perhaps it was the 
 death of some one dear to you that opened your eyes. 
 You thought it was these chances or accidents, or 
 earthly things, that made the change in you. No; 
 God was working by these things: He was behind the 
 
42, SALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
 veil. These were but the instruments He made use of: 
 He was hiding Himself behind them ; and through 
 them He was working the grace of conversion in your 
 soul. It was ‘the finger of God touching the heart.” 
 It was His doing: a personal action of the love of God 
 and of the Holy Ghost upon your intellect, and upon 
 your conscience, and upon your heart, and upon your 
 will. Through the whole of our spiritual life, whether 
 innocent or penitent, this work of salvation springs 
 from God. It is His grace preventing even our first 
 thoughts of good. 
 
 2. But, as I have already said, the grace of God 
 co-operates with us or works with us. I cannot make 
 this clearer than by putting before you what I can- 
 not doubt most of you have seen. You have seen a 
 lock in a river; and you have watched how, when the 
 lock is shut, the water rises against the gate. It 
 presses with its full weight against the gate until a 
 hand—it may be the hand of a child, with such facility 
 it is accomplished—opens the gate of the lock; at 
 once the flood pours in, the level of the water rises, 
 the stream runs strong, and carries forward those 
 that float upon it, almost without effort of their own. 
 The grace of God, that is, the power of the Holy 
 
 Ghost, is always pressing against our will, always in 
 
 ! Conc. Trid. sess. vi. cap. v.: ‘ Tangente Deo cor hominis.’ 
 
SALVATION BY GRACE. 43 
 
 contact with our heart, moving us onward towards 
 God, impelling us to good. And this pressure of 
 the Holy Ghost against our will waits only for our 
 will to open: ‘Behold, I stand at the gate and knock. 
 Ifany man shall hear My voice and open the door, I will 
 goin to him and sup with him, and he with Me.’? The 
 Holy Spirit of God is waiting at the door all the day 
 long: in every action we do He is pressing upon our 
 will to make us do good, and when we are doing good to 
 make us do better. But He waits for our will to corre- 
 spond. Heneverforcesit. The will must be willing. 
 If we only open the gate, the full tide of His grace 
 will flow in, and uniting itself with all our powers, 
 will elevate our personal will above itself, strengthen 
 it with supernatural force, and carry it onward with 
 facility and speed. Now, this co-operation of the 
 Spirit of God in us is followed also by an increase of 
 grace. Those that believe, if they follow the light 
 of faith, become stronger and more illuminated in 
 faith ; those that hope, and act in hope, become con- 
 firmed and matured into confidence ; those that live 
 in charity, and exercise the graces of charity, become 
 fruitful in all its works, and, in that measure, sancti- 
 fied with the love of God and their neighbour. So 
 it is with humility, and piety, and self-denial, and 
 
 2 Apoc. iii. 20, 
 
44 SALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
 generosity, and with all the graces of the Christian 
 character. In proportion as you willingly accept and 
 use the help of the Spirit of God in the duties and 
 works to which you are prompted by these several 
 graces, these graces themselves will be increased and 
 multiplied, enlarged and deepened. And, lastly, the 
 Holy Spirit of God, dwelling in the souls of the faith- 
 ful, deals with us.as we deal with children. When 
 you teach a child to read, your mature intelligence 
 guides the intelligence of the child. Your intelligence 
 elevates the child’s intelligence. What the child can- 
 not understand you explain; and the intelligence of 
 the child rises up to yours. As a lesser flame rises 
 up and mingles with a greater, so the intelligence of 
 the child is elevated, and its light is enlarged, by 
 your intelligence presiding over it. If you teach a 
 child to write, you lay your hand upon its hand and 
 suide it in the formation of the letters. If you 
 attempt to teach a child anything, you supply atten- 
 tion. You give it self-control; a fixedness of will; 
 you keep the mind of the child steady and intent upon 
 what it is doing. Unless your mature will assists 
 the weak will of the child, even the intelligence of 
 the child will not unfold its native power. If the 
 child will not attend, or if the child will not work 
 with you by a will to understand, much more if the 
 
SALVATION BY GRACE. 45 
 
 child withdraws its hand from your guidance, it can 
 learn nothing. It must co-operate with you even to 
 begin, and it must work with you to advance; and 
 as it works together with you, in that measure it 
 advances in knowledge. So itis with the soul. The 
 Holy Spirit of God illuminates us, and if we receive 
 that illumination, we receive from Him larger mea- 
 sures of light ; but the condition on which we are 
 illuminated is, that we co-operate with the light we 
 already have. The way in which we learn the science 
 of God, in all its greatest principles, and all its least 
 details, is by following the working of the Spirit of 
 God in our hearts. The whole, then, of our sancti- 
 fication is a personal action of God dwelling in our 
 soul, and unfolding the intelligence and the will to a 
 conformity with His own. 
 
 8. And, lastly, Saint Augustine says that ‘ God 
 crowns His own work in us;”* that is to say, the work 
 of our sanctification and salvation is of God from 
 first to last, from the beginning to the end. God 
 crowns it when He makes it perfect. He puts the 
 crown upon the head of His own work in us when 
 He sustains us to a holy death. Unless God Himself 
 
 makes our salvation perfect, we shall never be saved ; 
 
 3 ‘Sua dona coronabit non merita tua.’ §. Aug. in Ps. lxx. 
 enarratio, p. 551, ed. Ben., Antwerp, 1700, 
 
hae 
 
 46 SALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
 unless we have the gift of perseverance, we shall 
 never endure to the end. And this gift of perse- 
 verance is the crown of our sanctification. It is not 
 in our own power to stand for one day, much less to 
 hold out to the last. Perseverance is a gift of God. 
 It comes from His sovereign grace, and He gives it 
 to those who co-operate with Him; and on them He 
 bestows it as a free grace of His love. You know 
 that if we were to shoot a thousand arrows at a 
 mark, every arrow might hit the mark; it is phy- 
 sically possible. There is nothing to hinder such a 
 feat. But we know with a perfect certainty that out 
 of that thousand arrows many will never strike the 
 mark. They will fall short, or go beyond, or swerve on 
 either side. And why? Because that which is phy- 
 sically possible is defeated by some infirmity, either 
 of the eye, or of the hand, or of our posture, or of 
 our poise and balance, or something in the bow or 
 in the string, or it is a current in the wind, or some 
 undetected flaw in the circumstances of the action. 
 Any one of these will divert the arrow’s flight. So 
 it is in all our moral life. That which we may do 
 is often not done. It fails through our own defects. 
 God indeed gives us sufficient grace to fulfil what is 
 necessary for our salvation: and though it is possible 
 for us never to fail, it is perfectly certain that in 
 
SALVATION BY GRACE. 47 
 
 many things we shall fail. If, then, there were not 
 a special grace of God watching over and taking up 
 His work in us, it would fall from our hands. Through 
 our weakness it never would be made perfect. 
 
 Now the gift of perseverance is twofold. First, it 
 is a duty on our part; and next, it is a gift on God’s 
 part. It is a duty on our part, as our Lord has said: 
 ‘He that endureth to the end the same shall be 
 
 saved ;’4 
 
 meaning to say, that no man shall be saved 
 who does not so endure. The duty of perseverance 
 on our part is made up of three things: of fidelity in 
 following the Spirit of God ; of fervour, that is exact- 
 ness, regularity, punctuality in the discharge of our 
 duties towards God and our neighbour; and lastly, of 
 delicacy of conscience, so that our ear is prompt to hear 
 the voice of the Holy Spirit, and our eye is quick to 
 see what He requires of us. When the conscience is 
 delicate and sensitive, we listen, hear, and respond. 
 When its sight is open and clear, we watch for the 
 tokens, and rise up quickly at the guidance of the Holy 
 Spirit. They who have fidelity, fervour, and delicacy 
 of conscience will surely persevere, because God will 
 bestow upon them the gift of perseverance, the sove- 
 reign and crowning grace added over and above all the 
 
 other graces He has bestowed. The gift of persever- 
 
 * §, Matt. xxiv. 13. 
 
48 SALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
 ance also, I may say, consists of three things, which are 
 these: First of all, a watchful providence guarding 
 us round about. We do not know the dangers that 
 surround us day and night. We do not know how 
 many fiery shafts of the wicked one have been cast 
 at us in our most unguarded moments. They have 
 been warded off from us by a shield unseen. We shall 
 never know till we are in the light of eternity, before 
 the Throne of God, over how many pitfalls and gulfs 
 where there was no bridge to bear us, through what 
 perils ready to fall upon us, we have passed safely, 
 and unconsciously, because the Spirit of God was 
 our Guide. To be shielded on either side and to be 
 protected from all sin is that which we pray for every 
 day in the words: ‘Lead us not into temptation, but 
 deliver us from evil.’ Our Heavenly Father fulfils 
 that petition, and He guards us from ten thousand 
 dangers of which we are not aware. Next, He leads 
 us in a path that is safe, in the path of which the 
 Prophet Isaias speaks when he says: ‘There shall 
 be a path and a way, and it shall be called the way 
 of holiness: the unclean shall not pass over it; and 
 this shall be unto you a straight way, so that fools 
 shall not err therein.’® God will lead all who are 
 faithful in that safe path of holiness. And, lastly, 
 
 5 Isaias xxxv. 8. 
 
SALVATION BY GRACE. 49 
 
 just as we keep a lamp alight by careful watching, 
 and by pouring in fresh oil when the wick begins to 
 burn dim, so the Holy Ghost lovingly and tenderly 
 watches over the state of our hearts. When He sees 
 there is spiritual decay, and that the light is declin- 
 ing, that our charity is less, or that our piety is 
 faint, He pours in larger measures of His grace, 
 whereby the spiritual life within us is kept vigorous 
 and strong, and its decays are continually repaired. 
 They who have this gift of holy perseverance are 
 thereby kept to the end. Our salvation, therefore, 
 depends upon a chain of grace, link within link. The 
 first grace was the grace given to us in Baptism, 
 when we were unconscious; the last grace is that 
 which is bestowed upon us out of the sovereign love 
 of God, keeping us to the end. God Himself holds 
 the first grace and the last in His own hand; and 
 that golden chain of mercy is let down within our 
 reach. We must hold fast by it; and we must hold 
 fast by every link as it passes through our hands, 
 co-operating with every grace as He gives it to us— 
 if not with the grace of obedience and sanctity, then 
 at least with the grace of sorrow and contrition; and 
 ,80 persevering, God will accomplish the work He 
 began in us until the day of Jesus Christ. 
 
 1. And now, to sum up: from all that I have said 
 
 4 
 
50 _ §ALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
 certain truths of a very practical kind directly flow. 
 The first is this, that the work of our salvation, which 
 the Holy Ghost is accomplishing in us, can never 
 fail on God’s part. The whole creation and the life 
 of all created things is sustained by the presence and 
 the providence of God. The ruin and the wreck of 
 all things comes not from God, but from man. So 
 in our spiritual life God is always pouring into our 
 hearts more and more of His grace. If we do not 
 bar and hinder His operations in us, He will accom- 
 plish His own work. It is we alone who hinder it. 
 It is we alone who can wreck it. God never forsakes 
 those whom He has once called. He may at last 
 judicially reject them ; but only after long patience, 
 an ample trial, a judicial process, and an inevitable 
 judgment. As He rejected Pharao for his impeni- 
 tence, as it may be He rejected Ananias and Sapphira, 
 as He rejected Judas, so He may reject us. If we 
 harden ourselves against His grace by sins of the 
 flesh, or, what is more subtil and more stealthy, by ? 
 sins of the spirit, which are even more deadly, because 
 more Satanic, and harder to be cured, then, indeed, 
 God may reject us judicially; but God never forsakes 
 anybody, as the holy Council of Trent teaches, who 
 does not forsake Him first. ‘The gifts and the call- 
 ing of God are without repentance.” His will is to 
 
 Conc. Trid. sess. vi. cap. xi. 7 Rom, xi. 29. 
 
SALVATION BY GRACE. 51 
 
 save us; and He never changes that will. We may 
 defeat the purpose of His mercy; but then the failure 
 comes from us, and not from Him. This is the first 
 truth. 
 
 2. The second is, that though our salvation will 
 not fail on God’s part, it may fail on ours ; andif it 
 does fail, it will fail by our own will. In this there is 
 both something very fearful and something very con- 
 soling. It is very fearful to think that we have it in 
 our power to destroy the whole work of God in our 
 souls; but it is very consoliug to know that if our 
 will is upright and faithful, nothing can destroy that 
 work: even the gates of hell cannot destroy it. All 
 the legions of the Evil One have no power over a 
 Christian child who is faithful to its baptismal grace. 
 A Christian child in its baptismal innocence is as 
 ‘safe as the child who was in the arms of our Divine 
 Saviour. 
 
 The danger, then, from our own will is this. It 
 is our will that determines our whole destiny. You 
 all know well the difference between the features of 
 your face and your countenance. God made your 
 features, but you made your countenance. Your 
 features were His work, and He gives to every man 
 his own natural face—all difierent from each other, 
 
 and yet all of one type. But the countenances of 
 
52. SALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
 men are far more diverse even than their features. 
 Some men have a lofty countenance, some have a 
 lowering countenance, or a worldly or ostentatious 
 vain-glorious countenance, or a scornful counten- 
 ance, or a cunning and dissembling countenance. 
 “We know men by their look. We read men by 
 looking at their faces—not at their features, their 
 eyes or lips, because God made these; but at a 
 certain cast and motion, and shape and expression, 
 which their features have acquired. It is this that 
 we call the countenance. And what makes this 
 countenance? The inward and mental habits; the 
 constant pressure of the mind, the perpetual repeti- 
 tion of its acts. You can detect at once a vain-glori- 
 ous, or conceited, or foolish person. It is stamped on 
 their countenance. You can see at once on the faces 
 of the cunning, the deep, the dissembling, certain 
 corresponding lines traced on the face as legibly as if 
 they were written. Well, now, as it is with the 
 countenance so if is with the character. God gave 
 us our intellect, our heart, and our will; but our 
 character is something different from the will, the 
 heart, and the intellect. The character is that intel- 
 lectual and moral texture into which all our life long 
 we have been weaving up the inward life that is in 
 
 us. It is the result of the habitual or prevailing use 
 
SALVATION BY GRACE. 53 
 
 we haye been making of our intellect, heart, and will. 
 We are always at work like the weaver at a loom; 
 the shuttle is always going, and the woof is always 
 growing. So we are always forming a character for 
 ourselves. 
 
 It is plain matter-of-fact truth that everybody 
 grows up in a certain character; some are good, 
 some bad, some excellent, and some unendurable. 
 Every character is formed by habits. If a man is 
 habitually proud, or vain, or false, and the like, he 
 forms for himself a character like in kind. It is the 
 permanent bias formed by continually acting in a par- 
 ticular way; and this acting in a particular way comes 
 from the continual indulgence of thoughts and wishes 
 of a particular tendency. The loom is invisible with- 
 in, and the shuttle is ever going in the heart; but it 
 is the will that throws it to and fro. The character 
 shows itself outwardly, but it is wrought within. 
 Every habit is a chain of acts, and every one of those 
 acts was a free act of the will. There was a time 
 when the man had never committed the sin which 
 first became habitual, and then formed his abiding 
 character. For instance, some people are habitually 
 false. We sometimes meet with men whose word we 
 can never take, and for this reason. They have lost 
 
 the perception of truth and falsehood. The distinc- 
 
54 SALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
 tion is effaced from their minds. They do not 
 know when they are speaking truly and when they 
 are speaking falsely. The habit of paltering, and 
 distinguishing, and concealing, and putting forward 
 the edge of a truth instead of showing boldly the full 
 face of it, at last leads men into an insincerity so 
 habitual, that they really do not know when they 
 speak the truth or not. They bring this state upon 
 themselves. But there was a time when those same 
 men had never told a lie. ‘The first they told was 
 perhaps with only half an act of the will; but gradu- 
 ally they grew to do it deliberately, then they added 
 lie to lie with a full deliberation, then with a fre- 
 quency which formed a habit; and when it became 
 habitual to them, then it became unconscious. Or take 
 another example; men who, perhaps, had never tasted 
 anything in their lives that could turn their brain 
 have at last acquired a habit of habitual drunken- 
 ness. Now, to make clear, do not suppose by the 
 words habitual drunkenness I mean only that sort of 
 gross reeling intoxication by which men openly in the 
 light of day shame themselves in the street. I wish 
 there were no other habits of intoxication than these. 
 There are men and women who live a refined life, 
 and in the full light of society, undetected, who ha- 
 bitually cloud their understanding, and habitually 
 
SALVATION BY GRACE. 55 
 
 undermine the moral powers of their will, by the use 
 of stimulants. This evil is growing in these days on 
 every side. Itis making a havoc of men, of women, 
 and, through the folly of parents, even of young chil- 
 dren. I must openly say that in this the imprud- 
 ence, the folly, the weak indulgence of parents, their 
 want of vigilance over their sons and daughters—I 
 am speaking, remember, of the upper classes—is 
 such, that they seem to me to be blind or infatuated. 
 
 There are at this time even young women who 
 habitually drink as much as would intoxicate a man; 
 God only knows the lives of misery and the deaths 
 of stupor or of madness to which they are advancing. 
 Now there was a time when they had never so much as 
 tasted intoxicating drink. There was a time when, 
 with a certain fear, a shrinking, a consciousness of 
 doing a wrong or doubtful act, they began to taste, 
 and then to drink, at first sparingly, then freely, 
 until gradually growing confident and bold, and the 
 temptation acquiring a great fascination, and the 
 taste being vitiated, a craving has been excited, and 
 _the delusion of a fancied need has come upon them. 
 They have gone on little by little, so insensibly, that 
 they have not become aware, until a bondage has been 
 created which, unless God by an almost miraculous 
 
 grace shall set them free, they will never break. 
 
56 SALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
 ‘What I have given in those two examples of a habit 
 insensibly formed I might give in everything else. 
 It applies equally to anger, jealousy, prodigality, pro- 
 fuseness, running into debt, and others IT need not 
 name. I will only take one more example, and that 
 shall be the sin of sloth. There is nothing which 
 grows so insensibly on souls in their spiritual life, 
 and it is mortal as the chill which in northern 
 regions comes upon the traveller before he 1s aware. 
 We are told that the fatal cold creeps on almost with 
 a sense of pleasure, until it numbs the whole tide 
 of life, and death takes possession before the victim 
 is aware. So it is with spiritual sloth. It begins by 
 little omissions, little neglects, little slacknesses, 
 until at last the careless man gets bolder. His con- 
 science grows easy even in making great omissions of 
 duty, first once in a way, then a second, then a third, 
 and then more frequently, until these omissions knit 
 themselves into a habit. And yet all the while every 
 one of these actions was quite as much an act of the 
 free will as it would be for me at this moment to 
 cease to speak. If I ceased to speak, it would be . 
 because that I have determined in my mind to speak 
 no longer. You would not say that this was an act of 
 omission. It would be the deliberate act of my will; 
 
 so are all those acts out of which the most dangerous 
 
SALVATION BY GRACE. 57 
 
 habits are formed. As I have said, even an act of 
 omission is an act of the will. If you were to cast your- 
 self down on the ground, it would be an act of your 
 will; if you were to refuse to get up, it would be equally 
 so. ‘To lie there would be, in one sense, an act of 
 omission; but that act of omission is a result at the 
 time of the will not to use the power you have to get 
 up. So people who begin to neglect their prayers, 
 their confessions, their Communions, their self-exa- 
 mination, the Holy Mass, the presence and love of 
 God, are all along committing distinct acts of the 
 will. These are not negative things, they are positive 
 acts; and, if we so begin as I have said, those acts will 
 knit themselves together into a chain. Saint Augus- 
 tine said, speaking of himself in his youth, while he 
 was in habits of sin, that they bound him like a fetter. 
 He says: ‘I was bound by a chain which I had made 
 for myself. No other man made it. I was bound 
 mea ferrea voluntate, by the chain of my own iron 
 will.’ What but this is eternal death ? What is the 
 eternal loss of God? It is the final state of a soul 
 which has lost its hold on God here by its own wilful 
 acts. Bound in ‘ropes of darkness,’ as Saint Peter 
 says, when the time of grace is over, and the day of 
 probation is gone down, and judgment is passed, the 
 soul that has deprived itself of God in this world is 
 
58 SALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
 cast out of the sight of God hereafter, and confirmed 
 in the intensity of its variance, and in its enmity 
 against God, Whom it can never see, because it has 
 bound its own eyes with the bandage of wilful blind- 
 ness, and all its powers with the iron fetters of its 
 own deliberate will. Therefore we can never fail of 
 our salvation except by our own free will; and our 
 will never fails except through our own fault. 
 
 Let us sum up what has been said. Saint Paul 
 writes: ‘We are confident of this very thing, that 
 God, Who has begun the good work, will perfect the 
 same to the day of Jesus Christ.’ Carry away with 
 you this lesson of confidence in God. Confidence 
 means hope resting on His goodness; trust reposing 
 on His love. Cast your whole weight upon it; throw 
 the whole burden of your soul upon God. He loves 
 you, He created you, He redeemed you, He has chosen 
 you, He has called you to His grace, He has been 
 working in you from your Baptism to this hour. If 
 you wish to know why you may confide in God’s love 
 to you not only in the general sense of confidence, 
 because He has mercy upon all, but why you may 
 confide in God’s love to you personally and by name, 
 and one by one—lay to heart these motives of trust 
 and gratitude. Remember what you were once. How 
 
 many who hear me can recollect the time when, 
 
_ SALVATION BY GRACE. 59 
 
 through sin, they were dead before God; when they 
 were, aS I said in the beginning, ‘like the leper white 
 as snow; when they were walking for years in dark- 
 ness, without the knowledge of God, turning their 
 back upon His light, in bondage to manifold sins. 
 Remember who and what it was that brought you 
 back to life. Your resurrection from that state of 
 spiritual death was as much a miracle of God’s 
 supernatural power as the raising of Lazarus from 
 the grave. God had mercy and love to you. He raised 
 you from death, and loosed you from your winding- 
 sheet of habitual sin. Confide in Him, therefore, for 
 the future. You did not then know what He was 
 doing for you. You knowit now. It is the pledge of 
 what He will do for you hereafter. He Who has begun 
 that good work, if you do not thwart it, will make it 
 perfect. Again, see what you are at this moment. 
 I trust that you who hear me are living the life of 
 grace, in union with God, in prayer, in self-know- 
 ledge, in habitual confession, and in communion in 
 the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. I will not doubt 
 that you are in full friendship with the Sacred Heart 
 of our Divine Lord through the working of His grace 
 in your hearts. If so, what brought you to this state? 
 Who brought on the spring after the winter, and the 
 summer after the spring? Who made you to be 
 
60 SALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
 what you are now? It was not yourselves. It was 
 the love und the grace of the Holy Spirit working in 
 you; chiefly when you knew it not. Think also what 
 you may be hereafter. You may be for ever cast 
 away. You may fall again into that spiritual death 
 from which God has once raised you. You may fall 
 away from Him. Unless you be faithful, I must almost 
 say you will. On the other hand, you may be saints. 
 You may persevere to the end. You may grow in the 
 light of faith all the days of your life, until upon ~ 
 your death-bed you will perhaps see the first rays of 
 the presence of God. You may grow in the confi- 
 dence of hope, until the calmness, and the sweetness, 
 and the brightness shed abroad in your soul shall 
 be a foretaste of the eternal bliss of God. All this is 
 within your reach: God has begun it in you. He 
 will accomplish it, if you will work together with 
 Him to the end. 
 
 Therefore, be watchful, walk before God in holy 
 fear. We so intimately depend upon His grace, that 
 if we are not faithfal we may in a moment fall from it. 
 Have a holy fear of consciously doing anything that 
 will grieve Him: a holy fear of going anywhere, en- 
 tering into any engagements, amusements, societies, 
 friendships, intimacies, which can come between 
 
 God and your soul. Have a holy fear of everything 
 
‘SALVATION BY GRACE. 61 
 
 which hinders the growth of the work of God in you. 
 Ask for a great humility. ‘He that thinketh him- 
 gelfto stand, let him take heed lest he fall.’> Remem- 
 ber what you are now. Remember what you have been. 
 Look at the scars, and seams, and wounds which your : 
 past life has left on you. Remember what God sees in 
 you at this moment. Remember that the best things 
 you ever did in your life in His sight are nothing 
 worth, that you are unprofitable servants. Remember, 
 also, that you are the creatures of His hands ; and 
 as creatures you ought to glorify Him, as the sun 
 by its brightness, and the fruit-tree by its fruit in 
 due season. But what light and what fruit has He 
 had from you? Be therefore humble in the sight of 
 God. But be joyful at the thought of His infinite 
 mercies. They have been round about you like the 
 waves of the sea all your life, and to this hour. Praise 
 Him for His manifold gifts. Do not only pray for 
 what you want, but give Him thanks for what you 
 have received. Praise Him as you will in eternity ; 
 tor our whole eternity will be praise. There will be 
 prayer no longer. When all are filled with God, what 
 more will there be to ask? We shall praise God for 
 ever; and praise is to know Him, to love Him, to 
 
 look up into His face, to contemplate His beauty, to 
 
 8 1 Cor. x. 12. 
 
62 SALVATION BY GRACE. 
 
 rejoice in Him for His great glory, to pray Him to 
 glorify Himself more and more in all the world, to 
 hallow His own Name, to hasten His kingdom, to 
 hasten the time when men shall do His will on earth 
 as it is done in heaven; above all, that these things 
 may be made perfect in you. The grace of the Holy 
 Ghost isin you. And grace is better than life, as 
 the soul is precious above the body, and eternity 
 above time. Every truth of faith is a light that comes 
 from God; every spark of charity comes from the 
 fire of the Holy Ghost. Grace is the finger of God 
 upon the soul. It is also a participation of the Divine 
 
 nature. It is the presence of the Sanctifier in us. 
 
 You are His temples, and His dwelling-place. Be 
 
 holy therefore in body and in spirit. It is but a little 
 time, and the veil which is between you and Him will 
 part asunder and vanish away. You see Him now 
 by the vision of faith ; in a little while you will see 
 Him by the vision of glory; and then you will be 
 like Him, ‘for we shall see Him as He is.’? 
 
 ® 158, Jobn iii. 2, 
 
 — ee eee 
 
UI. 
 
 THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 
 
THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 
 
 Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. 
 Romans x. 17. 
 We have defined grace to be a gift of God, infused 
 by the Holy Ghost into the soul; supernatural, that 
 is, not due to us, nor contained within the limits of 
 our natural perfection, but superadded by the free 
 sovereienty and love of God, through the merits of 
 Jesus Christ. The rational soul of man is the 
 dwelling-place of grace. We are thereby sanctified, 
 united with God, and by perseverance made perfect. 
 Such is the nature of grace. It is the spiritual work 
 of the Holy Ghost present in us. Now the first of 
 all the gifts or operations of grace in us is faith. 
 I purpose therefore to take this first in order, and 
 hereafter we will go on to hope, which springs from 
 faith, and to charity, which springs from faith and 
 
 5 
 
66 THE VIRTUE OF FAITE. 
 
 hope; then to our justification—that is, our union 
 with God and His indwelling in the soul; and 
 afterwards to the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. 
 Saint Paul says to the Romans that ‘ Faith 
 cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of 
 Christ! In order to understand the meaning of 
 these words, turn to the eleventh chapter of the Epis- 
 tle to the Hebrews. He begins in the opening of 
 that chapter by saying: ‘Faith is the substance of 
 things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that 
 are not seen as yet,’—that is to say, the things 
 which are future and out of sight are the subject- 
 matter of faith: and faith is that inward act of the 
 soul whereby we realise the things which we hope 
 for, and anticipate the things which we do not see. 
 He then draws out in that eleventh chapter the cata- 
 logue of the saints of God, and shows how it was by 
 faith that the servants of God in the Old Testament 
 pleased God. ‘ Without faith,’ he declares, ‘ itis im- 
 possible to please God. For he that cometh to God 
 must believe that He is, and is a rewarder to them 
 that seek Him.’ He then goes on to say Abel 
 offered a better sacrifice to God than Cain, through 
 faith. Henoch walked with God through faith. Noe 
 for one hundred and twenty years built the ark in 
 
 1 Rom. x. 17. 
 
THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 67 
 
 faith. Abraham went out from his own country in 
 faith. And so through the whole roll and lineage of 
 the saints and martyrs from the beginning, faith in 
 God and in the world to come was the law of their 
 life and of their salvation. They served God not by 
 sight, nor by the light of nature, but by the light of 
 God, by the gift of the Holy Ghost. By faith, then, 
 we must know and serve Him, for ‘ Without faith it 
 is impossible to please God.” 
 
 From the beginning, the Holy Spirit of God, as 
 we have already seen, has dwelt in every created 
 soul and wrought in every man born into this world. 
 No soul will be cast out of the peace of God into 
 eternal darkness which might not, if it had only put 
 forth the will, have dwelt with God for ever. God 
 casts no one away. He deprives no soul whom He 
 has made of the grace of salvation. Kven through- 
 out the heathen world the Spirit of God is present 
 working in the hearts of men. If they fail of eternal 
 life, the failure is in their own will, and not in the 
 will of God. 
 
 From the beginning of the world, the Spirit of 
 God has been leading men on towards faith and the 
 knowledge of God, therefore towards eternal life. 
 Since the coming of the Son of God by incarnation 
 
 * Heb. xi. 6. 
 
68 THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 
 
 into the world He has been drawing men towards 
 the full revelation of the kingdom of God, of justifi- 
 cation, and of incorporation with Himself in His 
 mystical Body. To the question, Quid est fides— 
 ‘What is faith ?—Saint Thomas answers, Credere 
 quod non vides—‘ To believe what you do not see.’ 
 We will take this as our definition of faith, under 
 limitations which I will show hereafter. 
 
 Now there are three things which are essential 
 to divine faith. First, it is a gift of God, by the 
 grace of the Holy Ghost. Secondly, the matter or 
 material object of faith is the truth revealed by God. 
 Thirdly, the reason why we believe it, or the formal 
 object of faith, is the authority of God Himself. 
 These are the three elements which constitute divine 
 faith. 
 
 1. Now, first of all, faith, as Saint Paul tells the 
 Ephesians,’ is a gift of God; and this he says lest 
 any man shall ascribe his salvation to himself; lest 
 he should conceive that his knowledge of God comes 
 from the light of his own intellect, or that his moral 
 superiority over the heathen comes from culture and 
 not from grace. The Apostle says, ‘ By grace you 
 are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves 
 
 —it is the gift of God, lest any man glory:’ that is 
 
 2 Eph. ii. 8. 
 
THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 69 
 
 to say, though faith is the most rational and the 
 most strictly intellectual act, though it is the highest 
 intellectual act of which the reason is capable, it is 
 not an act of its own power alone. Reason goes 
 before faith, and accompanies it and pervades it 
 always. The prelude or preamble of faith is a process 
 of reason. But the last act of reason must be full 
 and complete before the first act of faith can be 
 made. By the last act of reason I mean this: the 
 evidence of Christianity convinces me that it is a 
 divine revelation. And the first act of faith is to say: 
 therefore I believe it. The act of belief contains in 
 it a light of the Holy Spirit of God, illuminating the 
 reason, moving the will, and kindling in the heart a 
 love of the truth. This grace, which God gave in 
 measure throughout the whole world before the In- 
 carnation, He gives now in fulness to every regene- 
 rate child. It is given in Baptism by the infusion of 
 grace into the soul. Faith, hope, and charity are 
 infused into the soul of every baptised infant. As 
 by nature every human soul has reason and memory 
 and will, which three faculties are implanted in the 
 soul by its creation, so faith, hope, and charity are 
 infused into the soul in regeneration by supernatural 
 grace. They thenceforward reside in the soul; and 
 
 as we call an infant a rational being because by 
 
 a 
 
70 THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 
 
 nature it possesses reason, so we count a baptised 
 infant one of the faithful because it possesses the 
 infused virtue of faith. And this grace of faith, which 
 is in us from our regeneration, is developed by exer- 
 cise, just as the reason which we have from our birth 
 is developed by culture. And as the whole power of 
 numbers lies potentially in the reason of a child, as 
 fire lies in a flint, needing only to be elicited, so in 
 the soul of a regenerate child there is the power of 
 faith, which needs only instruction and exercise to 
 unfold it. Saint Paul speaks of another kind of 
 faith which is a fruit of the Holy Ghost.* But this is 
 not the theological virtue or power of belief which is 
 infused into all the regenerate; it is a mature habit 
 and pious facility of belief, an habitual consciousness 
 of the presence of God, of the unseen world, of the 
 relation of God to our own soul and our responsi- 
 bility to Him, of eternity, of judgment, of reward, 
 and of punishment to come. Such, then, is the first 
 element of the virtue of faith—it is a supernatural 
 grace infused into the soul whereby we have the 
 light and the will to believe. 
 
 2. Secondly, the matter that we believe is the 
 word of God. ‘Faith cometh by hearing, and hear- 
 ing by the word of Christ.’ Ifwe believe the word 
 
 4 Gal. v. 23. 
 
THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 71 
 
 of man, it is a mere human faith. If we believe 
 the word of historians, it is still no more than a 
 human faith. We believe because we trust the evid- 
 ence, or because we trust in historical criticism. 
 Call this evidence, or criticism, or what you will, but 
 faith it is not. Faith springs from a divine grace, 
 and rests upon the word of God. Just as the eye is 
 so formed and fitted that it needs the objects of the 
 visible world to terminate upon, and as light is the 
 condition of sight, so is it with this grace of faith. 
 The unseen world, which contains the objects of 
 faith, is necessary to the exercise of faith, and we 
 know them only from the light of the revelation of 
 God. Saint Paul says, in this eleventh chapter of 
 the Hebrews,’ that without faith we should not have 
 known how to please God. The light of reason by 
 itself, indeed, suffices to demonstrate the existence 
 of God as an intellectual problem; but over and 
 above that demonstration comes the light of faith, 
 which lighteth every man that cometh into this 
 world. By this-we know that God is, and that He is 
 a Rewarder of men. The creation we might indeed 
 metaphysically reason out; but God has revealed 
 the fact that He made the heaven and the earth. 
 We might indeed, from our moral nature, conceive 
 * Heb. xi. 6. 
 
72 THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 
 
 that we should one day be judged either for punish- 
 ment or reward, but God has revealed the fact of 
 judgment to come. We should not indeed have 
 known that after death the body would rise again 
 if God had not revealed the fact. From the nature 
 of the human goul and an expectation of the future 
 we might have believed its immortality, but God has 
 revealed that the soul shall never die. We thereby 
 know it by faith. Therefore these great truths and 
 phenomena of the natural order are also part of the 
 revelation of God. But this is not the power, or 
 faculty, or virtue, which we intend when we speak 
 of divine faith. The object of this is not the natu- 
 ral world, but the revelation which God made through 
 Jesus Christ. We speak of the divine truths and 
 divine facts which have been revealed to us by the 
 coming of the Holy Ghost. We speak of the mani- 
 festation of God in the flesh, and of the new creation 
 into which we are elevated by being born again of 
 the Spirit. Here is the subject-matter of faith, and 
 it is partly written and partly unwritten. We have 
 the record of parts of it in the Holy Scriptures. But 
 the whole world has become the scripture of this 
 word of God. Saint Paul therefore, in this same 
 place, says: ‘ Whosoever shall call upon the name of 
 the Lord shall be saved; but how shall they call upon 
 
THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 73 
 
 Him in Whom they have not believed, or how shall 
 they believe Him of Whom they have not heard, and 
 how shall they hear without a preacher ?’® Whereso- 
 ever the Church spread, there the word of God was 
 made known to the nations of the world, and the 
 whole Church throughout the world, from east to 
 west, became as it were one wide scripture of God 
 written on the hearts and in the minds of men. Saint 
 Irenzus says that many nations had never seen the 
 written Scriptures, but yet had believed the revela- 
 tion of Jesus Christ, because it was written on their 
 hearts by the Spirit dwelling in them. Therefore 
 the subject-matter of faith is the word, that is, the 
 revealed truth of God. 
 
 3. Now there are two things necessary to a doc- 
 trine of faith or to an act of Catholic faith. One 
 is, that God shall have revealed unto His Apostles 
 the truth that we believe; and the other is, that 
 His Church should teach it. This, shortly, is the 
 reason why we believe. Every Catholic child ig 
 taught to say day by day an act of faith such as this: 
 ‘O my God, I believe all that Thou hast revealed,’ 
 for these two reasons, ‘ because Thou art the truth, 
 and canst neither deceive nor be deceived ;’ or, as 
 
 Saint Augustine says, ‘We believe because God is 
 
 $ Rom. x. 13, 14, 18. 
 
74 THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 
 
 the truth— Deus est veritas et verax;’ He is the 
 true God, truth Himself, and He is veracious and 
 He cannot deceive us. It is therefore necessary 
 that our faith should terminate upon the authority 
 of God, and if our faith terminates upon the author- 
 ity of God, it is impossible that we can err. We 
 have an infallible reason for believing, because it is 
 the authority of God Himself Who teaches us what 
 to believe. 
 
 And now let us see, in passing, what is the con- 
 sequence of rejecting this principle. How can they 
 make acts of faith who misinterpret the revelation 
 of God; who criticise it by their own opinions ; who 
 twist and turn and torture His revealed word into 
 their own sense? ‘These are not divine acts, but 
 human; they are acts rather of unbelief than of 
 faith. The word of God is the word of God only in 
 the sense in which God spoke it. The word of God 
 turned and tortured and twisted by the criticism of 
 the individual mind becomes the word of man—it 
 ceases to be the word of God. How, then, can they 
 make acts of faith who, taking the revelation of God 
 apart from the authority of the Church of God, in- 
 terpret it for themselves and against the teaching of 
 that authority? The material object of faith ceases 
 
 to exist. Scripture misinterpreted ceases to be the 
 
THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 75 
 
 Scripture. The greatest of modern impostures, and 
 I will say the master error of modern heresies, is 
 what is paraded as scientific history and scientific 
 criticism in the matter of revelation. In what does it 
 consist ? I, an uninspired, unaided critic, take these 
 human documents—which in the first place are not 
 inspired, and, next, for the authenticity of which 
 there is no certain guarantee, inasmuch as they 
 have been handed down in various languages ard in 
 various lands, without any responsible custody or 
 witness of their genuine text—nevertheless, I take 
 them in hand, and I interpret them without rule 
 except my own, without a judge except myself, and 
 without a guide except the light of my own under- 
 standing ; I subject them absolutely to my own cri- 
 ticism ; and then, out of an arbitrary and subjective 
 process such as this, I tell the world that the Council 
 of the Vatican erred from the truth, and I tell the 
 whole Church on earth that it has departed from the 
 revelation it received from God. Surely this is a 
 form of insanity. Itis a fatuity which has inflated 
 the ‘ men of culture,’ as they love to be called. It is 
 Gnosticism risen again from the dead. To do this 
 a man ought to be the twelve Apostles or at least 
 the Vicar of Jesus Christ. But this barefaced form 
 
 of human vain-glory is too manifest to be dangerous 
 
76 THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 
 
 to many. A few professors and a handful who wor- 
 ship them are all whom it has led astray. 
 
 But there are much more subtil forms and 
 shades of this illusion. I sincerely respect zealous 
 and earnest men who, knowing the Bible to be the 
 word of God, and finding it full of light and sweet- 
 ness, think that it is enough for them to take that 
 divine word alone, and to read it for themselves. 
 They are nearer to the Fountain. There have been 
 doubtless in every age multitudes of humble and pious 
 men who, having been born out of the light of the 
 Catholic faith, and kuowing no better, have taken 
 the Bible as their sole rule of life, so far as they 
 could understand it. I sincerely respect all such, 
 and for this reason: they submit themselves with all 
 their heart to every word that they can understand 
 in that divine Scripture, and if they could know it 
 better and understand it more fully they would obey 
 it with all their sincerity and with all their soul. 
 But we must not forget the falseness of the principle 
 in the goodness of these people. The principle is 
 visibly erroneous. The endless contradictions and 
 the steady diminution of truth among those who go 
 by that principle would be sufficient to show that it 
 is not God’s way of faith. Unless the divine Scrip- 
 ture be read with the light of the day of Pentecost 
 
 —_— 
 
THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. os 
 
 upon its page, there is no divine and unerring inter- 
 pretation. For there is no channel through which 
 that light descends to us but only the one Church of 
 God. From no other interpreter can we learn the true 
 meaning of Holy Scripture. Through no channel but | 
 the Church alone can we receive the perfect material 
 object of faith—that is, the whole revelation of Jesus 
 Christ. A fragmentary Christianity may be put to- 
 gether by texts of Scripture truly understood ; but 
 the whole revelation of Pentecost can be known only 
 in and through the Church. A correct interpreta- 
 tion of many parts of Holy Scripture may be attained 
 without the guidance of the Church, but a divine 
 certainty that such interpretations are correct can- 
 not be attained without it. The Church received 
 the interpretation of the Book before the Book was 
 written; for it had the whole revelation in custody 
 before the Scriptures were committed to its charge. 
 It is the sole witness and guardian both of the mean- 
 ing and of the Book, and it is itself both the inter- 
 preter and the interpretation ; present, visible, and 
 perpetual. . 
 
 But there is, again, a still more subtil form of 
 this dependence upon human authority and collec- 
 tive private judgment. Let me suppose a thing 
 
 that has hitherto never been, a thing which it is 
 
78 THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 
 
 every day more manifestly certain can never come to 
 pass. Let us suppose that the Church of England 
 —go called—were perfectly unanimous in the doc- 
 trines which it teaches. I would to God it were so. 
 I lament over the steady disintegration, the rapid 
 dissolution, the certain approaching disappearance 
 off the face of England of that almost venerable frag- 
 ment. of our ancient Christianity. Suppose for a 
 moment that there were in its teaching even of the 
 truth, I will say of the Holy Trinity or of the Incar- 
 nation, a perfect unanimity. Would any man living 
 believe in its teaching because of its authority? 
 Would he believe that a doctrine emanating from an 
 even unanimous decision of that body was an infal- 
 lible decision? No man would believe it. And for 
 this reason: the Church of England has disclaimed 
 infallibility. In putting forth its decisions it accom- 
 panies them with a commentary which disclaims all 
 infallibility—nay, which denies the existence of any 
 infallible teacher in the world. It opposes the Holy 
 Catholic Church for this very reason, because the 
 Catholic and Roman Church claims to be infallible. 
 But faith needs a divine authority, and a divine 
 authority must be infallible. It is only playing with 
 terms and using words of no meaning if we speak 
 
 of a divine authority which is not infallible. Any 
 
THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 79 
 
 teacher, be it man or corporate body, which disclaims 
 infallibility cannot be a divine teacher. 
 
 Put these two texts in juxtaposition and judge 
 for yourselves: ‘Faith cometh by hearing, and hear- 
 ing by the word of Christ ;? and ‘ He that heareth 
 you heareth Me.’ How does the word of Christ come 
 to us? ‘ He that heareth you heareth Me.” ‘ Faith 
 cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.’ 
 And the word of Christ is the voice of the living 
 Church of God in every age, spreading from the sun- 
 rise to the sunset, speaking not only as a human 
 and historical witness which has filled the world for 
 eighteen centuries, but speaking as a supernatural 
 and divine witness, because the Head of it is the 
 Incarnate Truth Himself at the right hand of His 
 Father ; and the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Christ, 
 dwells in it and guides it, and speaks by it as the 
 organ of His Voice. 
 
 Surely this principle of divine faith is perfect in 
 its simplicity and universal in its application. It is 
 what the poor Catholic child says every day of its 
 life at its mother’s knee or in the school. It is what 
 Saint Thomas Aquinas said before his Crucifix 
 while he wrote his twenty volumes of theology. It is 
 like the breath of life—the same in all. If there were 
 
 7 §. Luke x. 16 
 
80 THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 
 
 anything further needed to prove the simplicity and 
 universality of this principle of divine faith, it might 
 be found in the philosophy of contrary facts. Set 
 before your eyes two things: the Holy Catholic and 
 Roman Church, one in faith, worship, and jurisdic- 
 tion, perfectly united, not only in dogma of faith, but 
 also in the principles and judgments which descend 
 from faith, filling. the whole world at this moment 
 with a compact and solid unity, against which the 
 world is storming in every language and conspiring 
 in every place. And with what result? As the 
 hammer welds the iron into a closer mass, so the 
 indissoluble unity of the Catholic Church is, by 
 persecution, tested, confirmed, and revealed. For 
 eighteen centuries the mystical vine has stood, a 
 living tree rising in its stature, spreading in its reach, 
 unfolding its leaves, multiplying its fruits, showing 
 its imperishable vitality in every branch and in 
 every spray. This is on one side. Look on the other. 
 Look at those who, three hundred years ago, re- 
 jected the principle of divine faith, and adopted in 
 its stead the theories of criticism, of private judg- 
 ment, of private interpretation. Look at Germany 
 and Switzerland: look nearer home. What do we 
 see at this day? The Christianity of these separated 
 countries is like a tree that is dying. If the trunk 
 
 ee ee ee ee ee ee 
 
 ES 
 
THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 81 
 
 stands, the branches are bare; or if there be leaves, 
 they are withered long ago. National religions are 
 gradually drying up. The tree is returning to the 
 dust, falling in upon its own roots. In a little while 
 the place thereof. shall know it no more. Because 
 men refused to believe in the Divine Teacher, they 
 have lost, first, the divine certainty of revelation ; 
 next, the fulness of truth; then the certain inter- 
 pretation of Holy Scripture; and, lastly, the inspira- 
 tion and canon of Scripture itself, together with the 
 consciousness that faith is a grace infused into the 
 soul, whereby we live in a supernatural order. 
 
 1. Two things only remain to be said. The first is, 
 how precious and how vital is faith. We can please 
 God only by faith, and ‘without faith it is impos- 
 sible to please God.’® A creature who has received 
 the gift of reason, if deprived of the light of faith, is 
 stunted. Faith elevates the reason of man, illumin- 
 ates, purifies, and perfects it. Reason is the highest 
 gift in nature, the closest likeness of God Himself; 
 and upon the gift of the light of reason comes the 
 gift of the light of faith, elevating reason and giving 
 to it new instincts, new faculties, new intuitions, 
 whereby to see that which is invisible to sense, and 
 
 to realise that which is to come. And more thap 
 
 2 Heb. xi. 6, 
 
82, THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 
 
 this, faith appreciates the things of faith ; it knows 
 them at their true worth; it lays hold of them, and 
 grasps them, so as to make them part of our own 
 spiritual consciousness. The realities of the king- 
 dom of God pass into our very nature ; they become 
 the principles of our whole life, the motives of our 
 action, the form of the soul, and therefore they unite 
 all our powers with God. And for this reason faith 
 
 is called a theological virtue; because it unites the 
 
 soul with its Maker, it gives man fellowship with. 
 
 Him. So Saint John writes: ‘ That which we have 
 seen and heard we declare unto you, . . . that our 
 fellowship may be with the Father, and with His Son 
 Jesus Christ; and this is the declaration which we 
 have heard from Him and declare unto you: That 
 God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness; and 
 if we say we have fellowship with Him and walk in 
 darkness, we lie and do not the truth ; but if we 
 walk in the light, as He also is in the light, we have 
 fellowship with one another.” 
 
 9. The other truth is this: that faith, vital and 
 precious as it is, may easily be lost. Being a gift of 
 God, it may be justly forfeited and judicially with- 
 drawn. Being a grace, it may be sinned away. It 
 
 is with faith as with all other graces of the Spirit 
 
 ®1§$ Johni. 3-7. 
 
THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 83 
 
 of God. You have in you the gift of charity; but 
 you may destroy it, if you have the will to be cruel or 
 malicious. You have in you the gift of purity; but 
 you may destroy it, if you taint it by deed, or word, or 
 thought. You have the gift of piety ; but you may 
 sin it away, if by sins of the heart you drive the 
 Holy Ghost from you. So it is with the gift of faith. 
 The gift of faith must be cherished as you would 
 cherish charity, purity, and piety. And there are two 
 things which destroy faith. The one is infidelity, 
 which destroys faith as its proper opposite, like as 
 water puts out fire; the other is immorality, which 
 destroys faith by stupefying the soul. Infidelity 
 means not only an intellectual denial of the truth ; it 
 means also the practical insensibility and indolent 
 refusal to correspond with the light of the Holy 
 Ghost. If men wantonly expose this precious gift 
 of faith to the attacks and to the subtilty of unbe- 
 lievers, or to the pestilence and infection of infidel 
 books, or to the poisonous literature which at this day 
 is written against Christianity in every tongue, and 
 above all against Christianity full and perfect, which 
 is the Catholic faith, they have no one to thank but 
 themselves. We in England are living and breathing 
 in an atmosphere which carries with it, and wafts to 
 and fro on every side, contradictions and subtilties 
 
84 THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 
 
 against the teaching of our Divine Master. And if 
 to this, which is inevitable, you voluntarily add the 
 invited temptations of either listening to those who 
 contradict the revelation of Jesus Christ, or of studi- 
 ously reading (which is a deliberate act, far more 
 guilty before God) the falsehoods which are written 
 against the truth which He has revealed, then you 
 have no one to thank but yourself if you lose your 
 faith, as you would have no one to thank but your- 
 self if through running into danger you lost purity, 
 or piety, or charity. 
 
 There is still another way in which faith may 
 be lost, and that is by a contentious spirit. We see 
 men on every side who are blinding themselves and 
 are being darkened by a judicial blindness. There 
 are terrible words in the Book of Psalms, ‘ Super- 
 cecidit in eos ignis et non viderunt solem—The fire 
 fell upon them, and they no longer saw the sun.”° 
 For the existence of God, which they deny, is as the 
 sun in the heavens. And the existence of the Holy 
 Catholic Church, which they deride, is as the light at 
 noonday. The luminous universality of the Church 
 is as the lightning, which shines from the east unto 
 the west; and yet there are men who profess that 
 they cannot see it. They deny that there was ever 
 
 10 Psalm lvii. 9. 
 
 eee eee ¥ 
 
THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 85 
 
 a Church founded by Jesus Christ; they deny that 
 He created us, or that God exists. How came they 
 to this pass? Pride, indocility, and prejudice, the 
 spirit of controversy, animosity, and perversity have 
 fallen upon them. Their passions are heated and 
 their wills are set on fire against the Church and 
 the faith. In their contentions against the truth 
 they have judicially blinded themselves. They have 
 eyes and cannot see, ears and cannot hear, hearts 
 and cannot understand. ‘Their darkness is the fore- 
 runner of the outer darkness which awaits those who 
 cannot, because they will not, believe. 
 
 But, as I said, there is also another agent which 
 will destroy faith, and that is immorality. Nothing 
 so deadens the heart, nothing so darkens the reason, 
 as vice; and when, as I sometimes do, I hear men 
 saying with an imperial air, ‘ I do not believe this—I 
 do not believe that,’ they remind me of the poor crea- 
 tures we see at the corners of the streets labelled 
 on their breast ‘ stone-blind.’ There is, however, this 
 difference: the poor sightless sufferers appeal to our 
 pity and ask our help; the unbelievers glory in their 
 self-inflicted blindness, and despise us who can see. 
 
 We have entered into a period when these warn- 
 ings are in season. Hitherto mankind has believed 
 
 that the gift of intelligence and the knowledge of 
 
 * 
 
86 THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 
 
 God through the light of reason are the true dignity 
 of man. If to possess an intelligence whereby he 
 knows the Infinite and Eternal God, perfect in His 
 attributes of love and mercy, of justice and power, 
 elevates man, then to lack this knowledge is no eleva- 
 tion. Surely if there be anything which ennobles man, 
 it is to be lifted upwards and united with the Divine 
 Original by Whom he was made. What, then, I ask 
 you, is the state of those who abuse that very reason, 
 which is God’s best gift; who misuse the intelli- 
 gence He gave for the knowledge of Himself to deny 
 His existence ; who say that the world is the only 
 reality of which we have any positive knowledge; 
 that the sensible facts and the phenomena of the 
 world, and the things that we can handle and taste, 
 and test and analyse by chemistry—that these things 
 are the only truths we can know, and that anything 
 beyond these—such as right and wrong, and con- 
 science and soul—are superstitions of theology or 
 abstractions of metaphysics? Does such a philo- 
 sophy dignify or degrade human nature? What 
 is the difference between a man and the dumb 
 creatures ? Is it not the possession and the right 
 use of reason? If that be so, then, as I have said 
 before and say again, such philosophy is the brutal 
 philosophy. Jt reduces man to the level of those 
 
 * 
 
 ee ee ee a a a 
 
 ee ee eee ae Pee 
 
THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 87 
 
 who know not God. Nay, it teaches that we cannot 
 know God. What more could be said of the brute 
 natures? But that which degrades this philosophy 
 more in my eyes is this, that it is not content with 
 abdicating the powers of reason for its own disciples. 
 They who profess it are not satisfied with their own 
 state of privation. They go about to rob other men 
 of their dignity. They will not let other men know 
 God, or have the use of reason to know God. And 
 there are none so tyrannical, none so bigoted, none 
 so intolerant, as those who do not believe in the ex- 
 istence of God. They are so sure that the reason of 
 man cannot know God, that they confidently affirm 
 that God does not exist. He is the unknowable, be- 
 cause they do not know Him. And because they do 
 not, we cannot. We have come at last to know that 
 there is a fanaticism worse than that which they im- 
 pute to us. These are truths very shameful and 
 humbling to human nature. The men of the nine- 
 teenth century who profess to be the guides and 
 lights of men, the creators and promoters of pro- 
 gress and modern civilisation, are beyond all men 
 intolerant, despotic, and tyrannous. They have 
 found out that the highest thing on earth is not 
 the Church of God, but the State; that the State is 
 supreme ; that liberty of conscience is a fiction; that 
 
88 THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 
 
 obedience is due in all things and from all men to 
 State laws, all revelation, all jurisdiction, all liberty, 
 all rights of God and of His Church notwithstanding. 
 This clumsy and incoherent philosophy is the nega- 
 tion of all faith: it is the deification of the human 
 reason as the sole rule of life and of the human will 
 as the sole source of law. Out of this philosophy of 
 the Unreasonable there has come an elaborate system 
 of politics, which has these two characteristics: first, 
 a claim to interfere with the intellectual belief of 
 other men ; and, secondly, a claim to control parental 
 rights. They preach liberty of speech and of the 
 press until it refutes them; then they gag and sup- 
 press it. They will not let fathers and mothers edu- 
 cate their offspring in their own faith or in their own 
 opinions. They banish all teachers who do not agree 
 with them ; they claim to interfere with the training 
 and formation even of the priesthood. Intoxicated 
 by temporal greatness and military success, - they 
 think to achieve that which no power of man has 
 ever yet accomplished—the subjugation of the Church 
 of God. Like Titans, they are attempting to do the 
 impossible, and God is bearing with them for a while 
 to open the eyes of the nations. They began by 
 deifying the State, declaring it to be omnipotent, not 
 
 only over taxes and customs, and coinage and com- 
 
THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 89 
 
 merce, and sewage and drainage (in which things we 
 willingly endure their omnipotence), but omnipo- 
 tent over the human conscience, over the soul of 
 man, over the Church of God. Here they go blind 
 and cannot see the sun; and here we tell them that 
 they are impotent. This portentous aberration of 
 the reason springs from a despotic atheism, and 
 this again springs from the disorder and tumult 
 which three hundred years of separation from divine 
 faith have inflicted on the world. 
 
 And now, before I end, I will bring all this to 
 a practical use. There are at this moment, and in 
 our country, attempts in hand to interfere with the 
 Christian education of your children. Suffer no chil- 
 dren of yours to go to any school whatsoever where 
 they will be exposed to the remotest danger of losing 
 their faith. Their faith is more vital than life itself. 
 If you voluntarily expose them to the danger of 
 losing it, you will be guilty of mortal sin. The con- 
 sequence of such an act you know. 
 
 God is infinite in His mercy to those who have 
 never heard the words or the Name of Jesus Christ. 
 ‘ How can they call on Him in Whom they have not 
 believed? how can they believe in Him of Whom they 
 have not heard? He sent of old a prophet to 
 
 1 Rom. x. 14. 
 
90 THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 
 
 Nineve, and He spared the city, ‘because there 
 were more than one hundred and twenty thousand 
 persons who did not know how to distinguish be- 
 tween their right hand and their left, and many 
 beasts.”2 Therefore He spared Nineve. He will 
 have mercy on all those who could not know 
 His truth. He will have mercy even upon the 
 heathen, for. there ‘shall come many from the east 
 and the west, and shall sit down in the kingdom 
 with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, when some 
 of us shall be cast out. Our Lord had compassion 
 on the multitude in the wilderness, ‘because they 
 had been with Him three days and had nothing 
 to eat.’ He pitied them lest they skould faint by 
 the way. Therefore He wrought a miracle to feed 
 them. If He so cared for the body, how much more 
 for the soul? Assuredly He will take care of the 
 races and nations who, through no rejection of His 
 truth, have never known His name. They will obtain 
 in some way secret to us the benefit of His infinite 
 mercy. But what shall be said of those who, having 
 both reason and faith, have rejected the one and 
 mutilated the other? What shall we say of the 
 Christian world, which, having been born again of 
 the Holy Ghost and illuminated by the light of faith, 
 
 12 Jonas iy. 11. 
 
THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 91 
 
 has apostatised from God and His Christ? Hear 
 what our Lord says to such: ‘ Wo to thee, Corozain ; 
 wo to thee, Bethsaida. For if in Tyre and Sidon 
 had been wrought the mighty works that have been 
 wrought in you, they would long ago have done pen- 
 ance in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall be more 
 tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment 
 than for you’? ‘J udgment will begin at the house 
 of God.”* It will begin with those who have been 
 illuminated with the light of Christianity and through 
 their own fault have lost it. Their judgment will be 
 heavier sevenfold than the judgment of those who 
 have never known the Name and the Precious Blood 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Therefore, above all things, let us cherish the gift 
 of faith. Cherish it by piety and prayer; and these 
 will inspire you with filial love to God, filial love to 
 our Divine Master, filial obedience to His voice 
 speaking through His Church. Prayer, by the con- 
 stant daily union of intellect and heart and con- 
 science and will with the Spirit of God, will elevate 
 the convictions of your reason into the consciousness 
 of faith. Cleave therefore to the material object of 
 faith: the whole revelation of God. Rest upon the 
 formal object of faith: the veracity of God, which 
 
 18 §. Matt. xi, 21, 22. 1¢ 1 Peter iv. 17. 
 
92, THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 
 
 speaks to us by the living and divine voice of the 
 Church. The truths of divine faith are the revela- 
 tion of mind of Jesus Christ. The truths which He 
 uttered have become doctrines to us. The doctrines 
 which He taught have, through conflict with the 
 falsehoods of men, become what men call dogma. 
 The commandments which He left for the guidance 
 of our lives, for the illumination of our hearts, are 
 the will of Jesus. The Church is His Presence 
 dwelling among us. The sacraments are the works 
 of His hands. As the multiplication of the bread in 
 the wilderness and the cleansing of the lepers and 
 the raising of the dead were miracles of mercy, so 
 His sacraments now are miracles of grace. Love 
 them, then, for His sake Who taught, ordained, and 
 gave them; for He is the Son of God, our Lord and 
 Master, our Brother, our Kinsman, our Friend. Love 
 every jot and tittle, every ray and spark of His truth 
 for His sake Who gave it. By these things He is 
 testing our love to Him. ‘He that hath My words 
 and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me.” We 
 see Him now by the light of faith: hereafter the 
 light of faith will change into the light of glory. 
 Faith comes from Him; it manifests Him to us; it 
 
 leads us into the fulness of His light. ‘Now we 
 
 16 §, John xiv. 21. 
 
THE VIRTUE OF FAITH. 93 
 
 know in part.’ ‘ Now we see through a glass darkly ; 
 then we shall see face to face.’ ‘ We know that when 
 He shall appear, we shall be like to Him, because 
 we shall see Him as He is,’ and then ‘ we shall know 
 even as we are known.” 
 
 1 Cor, xiii. 12; 18. John iii. 2. 
 
TV. 
 
 THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 
 
THE VIRTUE OF HOPE, 
 
 The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that 
 you may abound in hope and in the power of the Holy Ghost. 
 Romans xv. 18, 
 
 As reason is a gift of God in the order of nature, so 
 
 faith is a gift of God in the order of grace; and 
 
 as the order of grace is higher and better than the 
 order of nature, so faith is higher and better than 
 any natural gift. Both reason and faith may be 
 lost. But it were better far to lose even our natural 
 life than to lose our supernatural faith. The Coun- 
 cil of Trent, in its decree on faith, says that it is 
 
 ‘Radix et fundamentum omnis justificationis’—the 
 
 root and the foundation of the whole of our justifi- 
 
 cation ; that is, of our union with God, or our sanc- 
 tification in this world, and of our salvation in the 
 next. The Council of Trent, in these words, distin- 
 
 guishes the root from the foundation, because a 
 
 1 Concil. Trid. sess. vi. cap. viii. 
 
98 THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 
 
 foundation contributes only support: it contributes 
 no life to what rests on it; but a root is not only 
 the foundation of the tree, it is also the productive 
 principle from which it springs. Itis as the acorn 
 to the oak. It contains and produces the tree that 
 springs from it. In like manner, faith produces hope 
 and charity, from which our justification springs. 
 Faith is therefore the root of our whole salvation. 
 
 Now in these words to the Romans Saint Paul 
 says that God is the God of hope. Hope is so great 
 a grace that he gives the name and title of Hope to 
 God Himself, and that because He is the object of 
 our hope. God is our hope, because He is our bliss. 
 It is bliss that we hope for. Again, God is the 
 giver of our hope, because hope also is a gift of the 
 Holy Ghost. Moreover, God is the support of our 
 hope, because it is by His love, and His strength, 
 and His grace that the hope which He inspires into 
 us is nourished and sustained. God is also the mo- 
 tive of our hope, because of His infinite love. There- 
 fore he says, ‘The God of hope fill you with all 
 joy and peace in believing’—for peace and joy are 
 the fruits of hope, as hope is the fruit of faith— 
 ‘that you may abound in hope,’ that you may be 
 filled and pervaded and penetrated with hope, ‘and 
 in the power of the Holy Ghost.’ 
 
 ae 
 
THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 99 
 
 Now hope is the second of the three theolo- 
 gical virtues or powers infused into the soul. It is 
 a virtue which bestows on us a confidence of attain- 
 ing, by the grace of God, to future bliss, and of 
 receiving from God all the helps that are necessary 
 to attain that future bliss. The object of st 
 then, is the goodness and grace of God. 
 
 We will look a little more closely, first of all, into 
 what hope is; next, consider what are its fruits; and 
 then what are the contraries or opposites of hope. 
 
 I. Hope, then, is a gift of the Holy Ghost which 
 produces in the soul two things. The one isa desire 
 after God, and the other is a trust in God. And hope 
 itself is produced in this manner. The light of faith 
 illuminates the whole reason, and thence the whole 
 soul, with the knowledge of God, of His existence, of 
 His perfections, of His glory, of His beauty, and 
 of His sweetness. It reveals to the reason, and 
 through the reason to the whole soul, that God 
 created us for Himself, that He made us that we 
 might know Him, love Him, serve Him, and wor- 
 ship Him in this world and in eternity, and that 
 thereby we may become beatified or blessed in Him. 
 Faith therefore illuminates us to know that God is 
 the end for which we were made, and that, if we live 
 for anything below God or out of God we fail of the 
 
iGO THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 
 
 end of our creation. And faith shows us not this 
 only, but that God alone is the adequate end of the 
 human soul; that money, wealth, pleasure, friend- 
 ship, the whole world, is too small to fill the capacity 
 of the soul; that the soul of man, made in the image 
 of God, has a likeness of the immensity of God 
 Himself, and that nothing is adequate to fill it—to 
 fill his intellect, and his heart, and his mind—but 
 God only Who made him; and that unless he cor- 
 responds with the original to the likeness of which 
 he was made, he can never be satisfied. There will 
 be a hunger and thirst which nothing can satiate or 
 slake in time or in eternity. And as God is the 
 only adequate end of man, He is the only end for 
 which man can live without being degraded. If a 
 man lives for this world, or for pleasure, or for 
 money, or for honour, or for the science of this 
 world, whatsoever end below God he live for, the 
 soul in that proportion is lowered and debased. It is 
 changed into the likeness of creatures, and thereby 
 deprived of the likeness of the Creator. But the 
 soul that is united with God, and lives for God, is 
 elevated and conformed to the perfect original of 
 which it is the image. And, further, God is the 
 only end that can beatify or satisfy the soul with 
 bliss. Everything below God is mutable, imperfect, 
 
THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 101 
 
 full of change and of vicissitude. God, and God 
 alone, is immutable in His bliss, and He beatifies 
 immutably all those who are united with Him. All 
 other things, sweet as they may be, precious as we 
 count them, happy as we may be in them for a time, 
 all must change and pass away. God alone is 
 changeless, because God alone is eternal; and if we 
 live for any end that is not changeless and eternal, 
 we shall be disappointed of our hope. When the soul 
 is once illuminated with these truths, there springs 
 up a hunger and a thirst to which neither the hunger 
 nor the thirst of the body is for its intensity to be 
 compared. The body hungers and thirsts for its 
 natural food; the soul after God, Who is the breath 
 of its life, its sole and only sustenance. Its desire 
 becomes more and more intense as God is more and 
 more known and appreciated. We hope, therefore, 
 to attain our chief good, and we hope for all the 
 means and helps whereby we may attain to the love, 
 and the knowledge, and the worship, and the joy, 
 and the peace of God hereafter. Both the end and 
 the means, therefore, are the objects of hope. 
 
 The other motive of hope is a trust in God 
 springing irom experience. As we come to know 
 Him, we come to appreciate His character. In the 
 
 measure in which we know by experience that God 
 
102 THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 
 
 is charity, and sanctity, and pity, and goodness, and 
 fidelity, we grow to trust Him with a personal con- 
 fidence, as of heart with heart. Saint Augustine says 
 that it is out of our own heart that we believe in 
 the heart of a friend, for it is by faith that we love 
 one another. It is not by looking on the countenance 
 of a friend, for the countenance may beam upon us, 
 and we may trust it, but the heart may be false and 
 far off. That which we trust, and on which we rest 
 our hope, is the heart which we have never seen. 
 We know it only by a sort of intuition of faith, by 
 which we penetrate beyond that which we do see. 
 So it is with God. Though He is invisible, yet this 
 hunger and thirst of the soul, illuminated by faith, 
 reaches to the heart of God, and trusts in it. We 
 rest upon the goodness and upon the love of God, 
 not only as the great ruler of the universe, but upon 
 His personal goodness to ourselves, one by one, as 
 a friend and a father. And still more than this. 
 From this trust in God springs up an experience of 
 His goodness. Just as with a friend you may be 
 thoroughly persuaded of his love for you before you 
 hare ever made trial of it by experience, nevertheless, 
 as year after year goes on, you come to know by his 
 unvarying conduct that what he says he is, and that 
 what he does for you springs from his unchanging 
 
THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 103 
 
 love; from this you gain an experience of his cha- 
 racter higher and surer than all intellectual con- 
 viction. It is this that Saint Paul means when he 
 says, speaking of our Divine Lord, ‘I know Whom IT 
 have believed.” I know His character, His conduct, 
 His heart ; I have made trial of Him, ‘and Iam sure 
 that He is able to keep that which I have committed 
 unto Him,’ that is, myself and my salvation, ‘ unto 
 that day’*—the day of His coming. All our lives, 
 then, we are making trial by experience of the good- 
 ness of God. You have known it from your child- 
 hood. You have known it by the manifold and 
 multiplied indications of His love to you in every 
 period of your life, by the care with which He has 
 watched over you, by all the operations of grace 
 whereby He has guided you, all the absolutions 
 He has bestowed upon you, by the peace He has 
 shed abroad in your heart, by the help He has given 
 you in temptation, by the consolations that have 
 come down upon you like showers in the time of 
 your sorrow and desolation of heart. All this has 
 taught you to know Him, and to say out of the 
 depth of your own experience what the Psalmist 
 said, ‘I believe that I shall see the good things of 
 the Lord in the land of the living ;’* and again when 
 
 2 2 Tim. i. 12. 2 Ib. 4 Ps. xxvi. 13. 
 
104 THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 
 
 he said, ‘Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. 
 Blessed is the man that hopeth in Him; ‘ How 
 great is the multitude of Thy sweetness, which Thou 
 hast hidden for them that fear Thee.’® Such, then, 
 is the nature of hope. 
 
 II. Now what are its fruits? Just as faith 
 bears hope and charity like two fruitful branches, 
 so both hope and charity bear again a multitude 
 of fruits. The first fruit of hope is an appreciation 
 of God. You know that we are all bound, if we 
 would enter into life eternal, to love God above 
 all things. But that love of God does not mean 
 the love of our emotions, or the sensible love which 
 we feel towards human friends—it does not mean 
 this, because this cannot be commanded. But the 
 love of appreciation means the love of the reason, 
 the conscience, and the will. We know by the light 
 of faith, and we have made trial by the experience 
 of hope, that God is good and sweet above all 
 things, and that it were better for us to lay down 
 our lives than to lose God. When Judas appraised 
 our Lord at thirty pieces of silver, he was but an 
 example of what all men do who do not love God 
 above all things. They sell God for the world, for 
 a little gold or for baubles. They are continually 
 
 Suey XXXII: © i b:-xxxe cu. 
 
’ WHE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 105 
 
 showing that they set small price on the Eternal 
 God. But those who learn by hope and by trust 
 to know what God is, prize Him as they know Him 
 and as they have found Him by experience, and there- 
 fore above all other things. 
 
 And, next, where there is this appreciation there 
 is a great fear of losing God, a holy fear lest we 
 should come short of our union with God in eter- 
 nity. Just in proportion as we hope for the bliss 
 of God, in that proportion also we have the fear of 
 losing God, which, like a shadow following the sub- 
 stance, is inseparable. The more truly we prize 
 anything, the more we fear to lose it; and the fear 
 we have of losing anything may be taken as the 
 measure of the price we set upon it. If we love a 
 friend greatly, in that measure we fear to lose him. 
 We may take that fear as the measure of the love 
 we bear him. And therefore the holy fear of losing 
 God springs up straightway from our appreciation of 
 God. What is the pain of loss, which is a pain 
 more keen than the pain of sense even in souls that 
 are lost eternally, but the appreciation of God which 
 comes too late, when salvation is lost for ever, and 
 when union with God can no more be attained ? 
 From this holy fear springs humility; that is, the 
 
 consciousness of what we are. It shows us our en- 
 
106 THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 
 
 tire dependence upon God. In ourselves we are 
 nothing and can do nothing. Unless He sustain us 
 we cannot stand, and unless we stand we can never 
 persevere. We are as unstable as the perpetual 
 shifting of the wind and the restless undulation 
 of the water. We are never in one stay. Saint Paul 
 says, ‘I know that in me,’ that is, in my flesh, 
 ‘there dwelleth no good thing, for that which I would 
 I do not, and that I would not, that Ido.” Then, 
 from humility comes strength, which can spring 
 from nothing but hope. We never attempt things 
 that we know to be impossible. If we come face to 
 face with a perpendicular cliff, no man who has not 
 lost his reason would try to scale it; but if we come 
 to the foot of a mountain, howsoever high and steep 
 it may be, we know that we can scale it, if only we 
 will to put out our strength and persevere. Our sal- 
 vation is not barred by any cliff, because the Precious. 
 Blood of Jesus has made our way plain; but it is 
 like the mountain which is both precipitous and 
 steep. To scale it needs patient effort and strong 
 perseverance. And where there is hope, which 
 springs from the consciousness that all things are 
 possible, there will come strength at all hours to 
 
 accomplish our task. In warfare, men will fight as 
 
 7 Rom. vii. 18, 19. 
 
THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 107 
 
 long as there is hope of victory; in the instant in 
 which they fail of hope their weapons drop from 
 their hands; and even when in flight before the 
 enemy, men have strength to fly as long as there 
 is hope of escape, but, when the hope of escape is 
 lost, they cast themselves upon the ground; and as 
 a man swimming for life will strike out strongly so 
 long as there is hope to reach the shore, but will 
 cast up his arms and sink when that hope is gone, 
 —so it is in working out our salvation. When 
 Saint Paul says, ‘ Work out your salvation with fear 
 and trembling,’® he adds also the motive of unfailing 
 confidence and strength. The hope and the confi- 
 dence that our salvation is possible is this, ‘for it is 
 God that worketh in you to will and to do.’ 
 
 III. Lastly, let us see what are the opposites of 
 hope. 
 
 1. The first is presumption. As I have said, hope 
 is a sure confidence founded on the goodness and 
 grace of God. Presumption is a confidence founded 
 upon ourselves. When we trust in anything out of 
 and below God, it is a presumptuous confidence. 
 When our Divine Lord was carried to the pinnacle 
 of the temple, and was bid to cast Himself down 
 to prove His Godhead, Satan tempted Him to an 
 
 ® Phil. ii, 12, 13. 
 
108 THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 
 
 act of presumption. He knew the will of His Hea- 
 venly Father, and He would not pass beyond the 
 limits of that will. So is it with us. So long as 
 we are in the ways of God we are safe, because 
 so long we are strong. When we pass over the 
 bounds of that way, both safety and strength depart 
 from us. And the signs of this presumption are 
 many. First ofall, if men venture into the occasions 
 of sin, whether it be moral or intellectual danger, 
 it is clear they are trusting to themselves, for they 
 know that the help of God will keep them so long 
 only as they avoid temptation; but if they run into 
 temptation, having no warrant to believe that the 
 help of God will follow them, they are guilty oi 
 presumption. When men say, ‘I can take care of 
 myself; what matter where I go, or what I do, or 
 what I read, or with whom I live ?’—men that so 
 speak and act are trusting in themselves, and are 
 deliberately and formally putting from them the help 
 of God. Men who say, ‘I will repent one day, but 
 not yet. I hope I shall be a better man before i die. 
 I will go on for a while, but I always hope that the 
 day of conversion and repentance will come to me’— 
 such men are presumptuous. They have no warrant 
 so to hope for salvation. And they also who neglect 
 
 the means of salvation, prayer, and the holy sacra- 
 
THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 109 
 
 ments, with the other helps that are around us, have 
 no warrant whatever to expect that God will work 
 miracles of grace to save them. If they will not take 
 the way which God has shown them, they can have no 
 other hope to arrive at the end. Those who neglect 
 the holy sacraments, who turn their backs upon 
 confession and communion, and think that their sal- 
 vation may be otherwise obtained, have no warrant 
 whatever to expect that God will fulfil their con- 
 fidence. 
 
 I will give another example, and it is an answer 
 to a question often put to Catholics: ‘Why do you 
 ask the prayers of the saints? May you not pray to 
 God yourself ? May you not go straight to Him ?’ 
 Certainly we may. But the man who says, ‘I do not 
 ask for the prayers of others, because I can confide 
 in my own prayers,’ is self-convicted of presumption. 
 No, let us ask the prayers of all the friends of God 
 upon earth, and of all the saints of God in heaven. 
 They intercede for us. Let us pray for ourselves 
 indeed day by day, and that earnestly; but the more 
 prayers that are offered up for me, the more I thank 
 God for it; and if all the prayers of the servants 
 of God on earth and in heaven can be obtained by 
 asking them, I will ask them till I die. They who 
 despise these helps are neither humble nor have they 
 
110 THE VIRTUE OF HOPR. 
 
 the grace of confidence in hope. Such, then, is the 
 first opposite. | 
 
 2. The other opposite of hope is despair, which 
 grows into desperation. We have already seen that 
 the direct antagonist which destroys faith is infi- 
 delity: because infidelity is the proper opposite of 
 faith. Charity and the sanctifying grace of God 
 is lost by any mortal sin whatsoever, whether it be 
 of the flesh or the spirit. But faith and hope can 
 only be lost by their own proper opposites; and as 
 the proper opposite of faith is infidelity, so the 
 proper opposite of hope is desperation. What, then, 
 is desperation? I said before that hope and fear 
 always go together, and that as the one rises the 
 other falls. Now there are four kinds of fear. There 
 is the holy filial fear of losing God, of which I have 
 spoken before. This sanctifies the soul. It is called 
 a filial fear of God, because it is the fear of sons. It 
 was perfect in our Divine Lord and Saviour Jesus 
 Christ. But there is a fear which is called a servile 
 fear, which is the fear of servants, and this, too, is 
 compatible with the love of God and with salvation, 
 because there is a just and legitimate fear of sons, 
 and a just and legitimate fear of servants. Brut 
 there is a third kind of fear, which is called the fear 
 
 of slaves—a servile slavish fear of the terrors of hell, 
 
THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 111 
 
 a fear of the judgment without hatred of sin, without 
 love of God, without hunger and thirst after Him as 
 our bliss and as our eternal end. It is the fear of 
 which Saint Augustine speaks, when he says that 
 those who fear hell more than they fear sin show that 
 they neither love God nor hate sin. And then, lastly, 
 there is the fear of devils —the fear of those who 
 believe and tremble—and that diabolical fear is the 
 fear that generates despair. It is the fear that enters 
 when hope is lost, a fear, accompanied by a sick- 
 ness and a weariness of God, and this is akin to the 
 seventh deadly sin, called Sloth. From this state of 
 the heart and soul springs enmity against God. 
 When the hope of seeing Him in eternity is lost, 
 there comes a foretaste of the pain of loss, in which 
 men turn against God with the enmity of despair. 
 It is of such we read in the Apocalypse, where Saint 
 John says that those on whom the wrath of God was 
 poured gnawed their tongues for pain, and blas- 
 phemed the God of heaven.’ These, then, are the 
 two opposites of hope—presumption and despair. 
 Now let us turn back to the words of Saint Paul: 
 ‘The God of hope fill you with all peace and joy in 
 believing, that you may abound in hope and the 
 power of the Holy Ghost.’ The light of Heaven 
 
 ® Apoc. xvi. 10, 
 
Be THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 
 
 and the waters that come down to moisten the 
 earth are not more abundant than is the grace of 
 God in the hearts of those who are ready to receive 
 it. Open your hearts wide, and they shall be filled. 
 Lift up the empty vessels, and they shall overflow 
 
 with the presence of the Holy Ghost. 
 Therefore, in response to all this goodness, let our 
 
 first resolution be this: to hope for God’s greatest 
 gifts. Do not be deceived by the false humility of 
 those who say, ‘It is not for me to hope to be a 
 saint.’ You are all called to be saints; you are 
 therefore bound to be saints. Now or hereafter, if 
 you are saved, saints you must be. If you are to be 
 perfect in eternity before the Throne, you must be 
 saints in part and in some measure now on earth. 
 Ask, then, for the greatest gifts of grace. Ask that 
 your hearts may be dilated with the love of God; that 
 so you may love God above all things, that you may 
 love Him with your whole heart, your whole mind, 
 and your whole soul, and your whole strength. Be 
 contented with nothing less. ‘Seek ye first the 
 
 ° It is His com- 
 
 kingdom of God and His justice.” 
 mand. Can you seek for more than this? There 
 is neither humility nor obedience in seeking less. 
 
 The kingdom of God is God Himself. He is His 
 
 0 §, Matt. vi. 33. 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 113 
 
 kingdom, and if you have the kingdom of God you 
 have God Himself. In the Lord’s Prayer every day 
 we say ‘Hallowed be Thy name,’ that is, may Thy 
 name be sanctified throughout the whole world ; 
 
 ‘Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth 
 as it is in heaven.’ Ag the angels and saints do 
 Thy will, so may we. May sinful, corrupt, rebellious 
 men, a8 we are, be converted by Thy grace, and do 
 Thy will on earth as saints and angels. They who 
 have the mock humility of asking little things of 
 God, Who is the giver of all great and perfect gifts, 
 show a want of faith in the greatness of His gene- 
 rosity. He has already given His only- begotten 
 Son, He has given the Holy Ghost. What greater 
 gifts are there beyond these? Then let us ask for 
 the greatest blessings. Let us ask for them in their 
 perfect fulness. Let us ask for them because J esus 
 Christ has purchased them for us with His Precious 
 Blood; and if He has paid the price of His Precious 
 Blood to make them ours, will He refuse you when 
 you ask Him for them? Ask for them because He 
 has promised to give them. He has passed Hig 
 word, He has pledged His fidelity. ‘Ask, and you 
 shall receive ; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it 
 shall be opened unto you." ‘ Whatsoever you shall 
 
 i §. Matt vii. 7. 
 
114 THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 
 
 ask in prayer believing, you shall receive.” Ask the 
 greatest gifts of God, because in asking them you 
 honour Him. Ifa son should come to his father and 
 should ask him some paltry trifling gift, the father 
 would suspect that the heart of the son was mistrust- 
 ful, and that he did not confide in his paternal love. 
 If we treat friends in this niggardly and ungenerous 
 manner, they resent at once the misconception that 
 we show of their true character by the little things 
 that we can trust them to do for us; but when we 
 ask a friend to do great things for us, he takes it as 
 a proof that we confide in the largeness of his heart. 
 So it is with God. You will remember the servant 
 who, being indolent, folded his talent in a napkin 
 and buried his pound in the earth; and when his 
 master came, what was his excuse? ‘I knew that 
 thou wert an austere man ;’® that is, he added insult 
 to the wrong he had done—he had a mean, unwor- 
 
 thy, ungenerous conception of his master’s charac- 
 
 ter. There was the real root of his sin. His lord 
 
 would not have laid to heart the loss of the talent; 
 but he deeply laid to heart this mean conception 
 of his own generosity. Therefore we should hope 
 for the noblest, highest, and largest gifts; hope to 
 be saints; hope for every sort of good; hope that we 
 
 may see God speedily after departing hence. You 
 
 2 §. Matt. xxi. 22. 13 §. Luke xix. 21. 
 
 a ig > ee 
 
THE VIRTUE OF HOPR. 115 
 
 know that Purgatory and expiation are before us all. 
 Nevertheless, hope that that expiation may be speedy, 
 and that your entrance into the vision of God may 
 be hastened. And while you hope for the greatest 
 things, avoid the least occasions of sin. The man 
 that goes into the occasions of sin shows at once that 
 he does not appreciate God. He puts a mean price 
 upon God; he values God less than a fleeting plea- 
 sure or a worthless profit. It shows, too, that he 
 has no hatred of sin; and a heart that does not hate 
 sin is an unfilial and a servile heart. It is far on 
 the way to be an evil heart. Men do not willingly 
 go into the infection of plague, or fever, or pesti- 
 lence; yet they go boldly into the occasions of sin. 
 “He that loves danger will perish in it.’ The heart 
 that does not hate sin is a heart that does not hunger 
 and thirst after God. The love of God is not in it. 
 It is an ungenerous heart. If the sins we have 
 committed caused our Divine Redeemer His mental 
 sorrows, His agony in the garden, His passion upon 
 Calvary, and if, after all these, we are willing to ° 
 venture into the occasions of sin, if we are not will- 
 ing to choose His life of the Cross in preference to 
 the fair and bright life of the world, our hearts must 
 be unlike to His. He chose these things for us, and 
 
 we make Him ill returns. 
 
116 THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 
 
 Besides this, learn to know the worst of your- 
 selves. Do not paint your face and attire your heads 
 when you go before God. Learn to know yourselves 
 as you are in the sigat of God. Learn to know that 
 you are His creatures, and therefore that you are but 
 a little dust. The breath of God, and the steadfast 
 exercise of His benevolent will, keep you what you 
 are. You are His creatures. Learn, then, your own 
 unworthiness; your unprofitableness before Him. 
 You are servants of God. The stars shine, for God 
 made them to that end, and the trees drop their fruit, 
 for to that they were created, and the seed that we 
 sow in the field springs into its harvest. But man, 
 created to the image of God, with a reason like the 
 Eternal Son, and having in it the seven gifts of the 
 Holy Ghost, wastes his great gifts, and perishes. The 
 barren fig-tree is our type. But there is a deeperlesson 
 still. Learn to know what we are as sinners in the 
 sight of our Redeemer and our Sanctifier. Remember, 
 if now you can, the mortal sins which perhaps stained 
 and blotted your life in boyhood, manhood, middle life, 
 and even in the drawing on of old age. You know 
 what they are. Remember the crowd and the mul- 
 titude of venial sins which every day are committed, 
 so numerous, so subtil, so stealthy, that when you 
 
 kneel down at night to examine your conscience you 
 
THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 117 
 
 cannot fix upon a tenth part of them. Remember 
 the sins of omission you have committed all your 
 life. How you have broken the first commandment, 
 which commands you to have no other god but God 
 alone; and yet you have made idols of the world, 
 and of pleasures, and of vanities, and of friends, and 
 of yourselves. You worship and serve yourselves 
 more than God; and yet that commandment obliges 
 you to know and to love God above all. What else 
 shall say? Take the sum of the graces that God has 
 bestowed upon you on the one side, and the multi- 
 tude of sins that you have committed against God on 
 the other, multiply them together, and you will know 
 your debt before God. And when you have come to 
 know your state, so as to be perhaps almost tempted 
 to despair, and to say that it must be impossible for 
 you to be saved, cast yourselves with your whole 
 weight upon the eternal and changeless goodness of 
 God in Jesus Christ. When your sins are upon 
 you as black clouds, or glaring as crimson, so that 
 you are almost driven from your hope, cast yourself 
 into the fountain of the most Precious Blood of Jesus 
 Christ. When your temptations, and your miseries, 
 and the remnants of your past sins, and of your spiri- 
 tual maladies, cling to you with the tenacity of a 
 shadow, so that you are never at rest, cast yourself 
 
118 THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 
 
 into the furnace of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The 
 fire of that Divine Heart will consume them as the 
 dross. They will disappear before Him, and they 
 will have no power to harm. 
 
 Hear the words of the Holy Ghost, and hope in 
 Him: ‘ Casting all your care upon Him, for He hath 
 care of you.”* ‘When thou passest through the 
 waters, I will be with thee, and the rivers shall not 
 overflow. When thou walkest through the fire, thou 
 shalt not be burnt, and the flames shall not burn in 
 thee. In the midst of all temptations, remember 
 the words of our Divine Master when the Apostle 
 thrice besought him to deliver him from the minister 
 of Satan who buffeted him; the answer came, ‘ My 
 grace is sufficient for thee, for My strength is per- 
 fected in weakness.”® Put, therefore, your trust in 
 the Sacred Heart which was pierced for us, and say 
 to our Divine Lord in your prayers every day, ‘Thou 
 wilt keep peace, because we have hoped in Thee.’” 
 Lord, I trust in Thee that Thou wilt keep me, that 
 Thou wilt be round about me. ‘ Like the mountains 
 round about Jerusalem, so is the Lord round about 
 His people." Thou wilt keep me in perfect peace— 
 not only in peace, but in perfect peace—peace with 
 
 41. Peter v. 7. 15 Tgaias xliii. 2. 16 2 Cor. xii. 9. 
 17 Tsaias xxvi. 3. 18 Pg, cxxv. 2. 
 
THE VIRTUE OF HOPE. 119 
 
 God, peace with men, peace with myself, peace in 
 time, peace for eternity—perfect peace—in the peace 
 that passeth all understanding.’ But our minds 
 must be ‘stayed on Thee ;’ that is, our whole intellect 
 by the light of faith, and our whole heart by the 
 grace of hope, must rest on Thee. Our mind is 
 stayed on Thee, because it trusteth in Thee; it 
 trusts because it loves, and it loves because it knows. 
 We stay ourselves on Thee because we have had ex- 
 perience and trial of Thy love. 
 
 Therefore, ‘be careful for nothing, but in all 
 things, in supplication and thanksgiving, let your 
 requests be made known to God.”? Say to Him, 
 ‘Lord, I have hoped in Thee, and I know that nei- 
 ther in life, nor in death, nor in eternity, shall I 
 ever be confounded.’ 
 
 8 Phils ivy. 7. # Ib, iv. 6. 
 
V. 
 
 THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 
 
THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 
 
 Hope confoundeth not, because the charity of God is poured forth in 
 our hearts by the Holy Ghost, Who is given unto us. Romans 
 v. 5. 
 
 We have already seen what is the confidence of 
 hope, and how it is founded upon the knowledge of 
 the goodness of God seen by the supernatural light 
 of faith; and we have seen also that the super- 
 natural light of faith causes to spring up in the 
 heart a desire to obtain our chief good, which is our 
 eternal bliss. We further saw how with the knowledge 
 of that goodness there comes also a personal experi- 
 ence of it. As we trust in God, so He manifests 
 His personal goodness to us. 
 
 Saint Paul then goes on to say that ‘hope con- 
 foundeth not.’ Now the word ‘confound’ signifies 
 does not make ashamed, because it does not disap- 
 point. Hope shall never be baffled ofits expectation, 
 shall never fail of obtaining its desires, because God 
 
124 THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 
 
 is faithful, and God will keep His promise. Saint 
 Paul then goes on to give the reason. He Says : 
 ‘Hope confoundeth not, because the charity of God 
 is poured forth into our hearts by the Holy Ghost’ 
 —that is, the charity, or the love of God towards 
 us, from which springs our love to Him again. But 
 first it is the consciousness of the love of God to us 
 that is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Ghost 
 Who is given to us: and then the virtue of charity. 
 
 Now our next subject in order is charity, the 
 third of the three theological virtues which are given 
 to us in our Baptism. 
 
 Hope, as I have said, springs from faith, and 
 charity springs from faith and hope together. Now 
 all charity is love; but all love is not charity. 
 The word ‘love’ is very much wider than the word 
 ‘charity :’ and there are many kinds of love. 
 
 First, there is the love of nature; the soul of man 
 naturally desires that which is for its good and for its 
 happiness. It is the natural hunger and thirst of 
 the mind or the soul for that which is for its good. 
 This is the lowest form of it. 
 
 Secondly, there is a supernatural love, which 
 alone is properly called charity. Now the love of 
 charity means the love of appreciation. The word 
 caritas, or ‘charity,’ means the value or the price 
 
THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 125 
 
 we set upon anything. People, because they prize 
 each other or appreciate each other, are dear to one 
 another. 
 
 Thirdly, there is the love of predilection ; that 
 is, a love of selection or choice, when by affinity of 
 character, or by any special reason, we are drawn 
 towards some persons before others. 
 
 And lastly, there is the love of friendship. Now 
 the love of friendship is the highest, the purest, and 
 the most unselfish, and therefore the most perfect 
 form of love. 
 
 These four kinds of love are in every one of us; 
 if, that is, we be in the state of grace. There is in 
 every one who is united with God the love of na- 
 ture, which, “as I have shown, is the love of hope, 
 or the desire of God. The love of charity, too, is in 
 all those who receive the Holy Ghost. So also is 
 the love of predilection or of choice, with which we 
 love God, Who has loved us from all eternity, and 
 has chosen us for Himself. As He loves so we love 
 Him again, choosing Him out of all things, and lov- 
 ing Him even better than life itself. And, finally, 
 there is in all who are in grace the love of friend- 
 ship, which is the special union of the soul with 
 God by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. This it 
 
 is that constitutes the love and confidence of His 
 
126 THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 
 
 servants in this life. I am now going to speak only 
 of this last, namely, the love of friendship; for that 
 is the charity which is properly and specifically under- 
 stood when we speak of being in the love of God and 
 of our neighbour. The definition, then, of charity is 
 this: it is the love of friendship, by which we will 
 and desire for God all good things for His own 
 sake, and because of His infinite perfections. Now 
 every word of this definition has its force. The 
 charity of which I speak is distinct from the love 
 which springs from hope in this, that we there love 
 God for our own sakes, and for the good that He 
 bestows on us; but in this charity of friendship we 
 love God for His own sake, and we desire all good 
 and all glory to Him. It is an unselfish love; for 
 just as perfect hope casts out fear, so perfect cha- 
 rity casts out self. In the proportion in which self 
 is mixed with our charity, our love of God is not 
 pure; it is so far selfish, it is mercenary, it partakes 
 of the love of hirelings. But in the proportion in 
 which charity is purified and self is cast out, our 
 love for God is pure; and being pure, it wills and 
 desires all glory and all good things for God, and 
 for the sake of God. And what are those good things 
 that we will to Him? We ask them every day in 
 the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Our Father, Who art in hea- 
 
THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 127 
 
 ven, hallowed be Thy name.’ The hallowing of the 
 name of God is that He may be known, and wor- 
 shipped, and loved, and served, and honoured by all 
 His creatures. It is a desire that the grace of God 
 be poured upon all—that an increase of glory may 
 be given to God purely for His own sake. ‘Thy 
 kingdom come.’ That is, may the manifestation of 
 the glory of God, the accomplishment of His will 
 —may all the good that man can do and creatures 
 can accomplish—be done according to His will, and 
 accomplished for His sake. ‘Thy will be done on 
 earth as it is in heaven.’ That is, as Thou art 
 purely glorified in heaven, purely loved by all those 
 that are about Thy Throne, so mayst Thou be loved 
 and glorified upon earth. This is the love of friend- 
 ship. We will now examine the words of the text, 
 and we shall see precisely what it intends. Saint 
 Paul says: ‘The charity of God is poured forth 
 in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.’ Now the Holy 
 Ghost is the third Person of the ever-blessed Trin- 
 ity. We receive, then, as a gift the indwelling of the 
 third Person of the ever-blessed Trinity. The Holy 
 Ghost Himself comes to dwell in our hearts. You 
 will read this all through the New Testament. If 
 there be one thing more marvellous than another, 
 it is that we Christians and Catholics, with the light 
 
128 THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 
 
 of faith in our hearts, and with the Holy Scriptures 
 in our hands, go on sometimes half through our lives, 
 some almost through the whole of life, speaking of 
 the Father and of the Son, and are yet half-silent 
 of the Holy Ghost. We read the New Testament, 
 and especially the Epistles of Saint Paul to the 
 Ephesians and the Epistle of Saint John, and we 
 fail to see this: that the grace and the glory of Chris- 
 tians, as distinct from all others that have ever re- 
 ceived the grace of God before or since the coming 
 of our Lord, consists chiefly in this one thing, that 
 we are made the temples of God, and that God the 
 Holy Ghost dwells in us; that the Holy Ghost has 
 come to us as He never came before from the begin- 
 ning of the world until the day of Pentecost. Where- 
 soever He is, there is, too, the charity of God. These 
 are two distinct things. There is a distinction +o be 
 made between the Person of the Holy Ghost and the 
 charity which He gives, as there is between the sun 
 and the light and the heat of the sun. The sun in 
 the sky is always the fountain of light and heat. But 
 the light and the heat are not always with us, for 
 they may be intercepted by the clouds. Moreover, 
 the light and the heat are emanations from the sun; 
 they are not the sun; they do not constitute its 
 
 being or its existence; they flow from the fulness 
 
THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 129 
 
 and the power of light which radiates from the sun. 
 So is it with God the Holy Ghost. He ig the centre 
 of light and love: but the light and love are not the 
 Holy Ghost, they are the action of the Holy Ghost 
 upon the soul; and therefore there is a distinction 
 to be drawn between the Uncreated Charity of God, 
 Who is given to us, and the created charity of God, 
 which is a grace infused into the soul. The Un- 
 created Charity of God is the Holy Ghost Himself. 
 The Holy Ghost therefore personally dwells in the 
 heart of those who are in the State of grace, and 
 unites Himself to them. But the created charity of 
 God is, as I have said, like the sun’s light and heat. 
 _Wheresoever the sun is, there, by the action of its 
 light and heat, it gives life and form, and perfection 
 and fruitfulness, and maturity and ripeness to all 
 things. These qualities and perfections are depo- 
 sited, as it were, on the face of the earth; they be- 
 come the possession and the properties of the earth 
 and of the trees and fruits throughout the world. 
 So it is when the Holy Ghost is in the soul. The 
 love of God and of our neighbour is like the ripeness 
 and the fruitfulness which the sun bestows upon 
 the works of creation. These are all infused into 
 the soul, and are left abiding in the soul as qualities 
 
 and properties and perfections belonging to it. It 
 
 9 
 
130 THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 
 
 is by that created grace that the soul loves God with 
 all its mind and all its strength, and its neighbour 
 as itself. Observe well the meaning of these last 
 words. We are bound to love ourselves. Self-love, 
 which is the curse of mankind, is the abuse and 
 perversion of that love of self which is a divine law. 
 Now what is that legitimate love of self? It is this: 
 God made me, and I am a creature of God, and 
 therefore I belong to Him. I am not my own; I 
 have no rights over myself, except only those which 
 God gives me. For instance, I have no right over 
 my own life. JI cannot take my own life without 
 committing an act of high treason against God. A 
 suicide is a self-murderer; he breaks the second 
 great law of God. The first is to love God above 
 all things; the next is that we love ourselves. The 
 man who destroys his own life breaks the second 
 great commandment of God. It is with amazement 
 and, I must say, a kind of horror, that within the 
 last week, within this Christian land of England, in 
 this enlightened nineteenth century, I have seen 
 cultivated men, men of intellect, men of high attain- 
 ments, who have been defending in public the law- 
 fulness of suicide. It is a rising again of one of the 
 darkest forms of heathenism. As the thermometer, 
 
 when you fix the register, marks what the degree of 
 
THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 131 
 
 cold has been in the night, so this one fact marks to 
 me the state of apostasy into which some men in 
 England have fallen. They have fallen from the 
 revelation of Jesus Christ; ay I will go further, from 
 the light of nature. As we have no rights over our- 
 selves, and are bound to love ourselves with a ra- 
 tional love—that is, with the love of knowledge, the 
 knowledge that God has made us; and according to 
 the laws which He has imposed upon our nature, so 
 we are also bound to love our neighbour as ourselves ; 
 that is to say, he also is a creature of God, he is 
 the property and possession of God, just as I am, 
 and I am bound to pay to him the same respect, the 
 same love, and the same honour that I am bound to 
 pay to myself. IfI see that his soul can be saved 
 by the loss of my temporal life, the law of charity 
 prompts me to lose it. If I were to see that his tem- 
 poral life could be saved by the exposure of my own, 
 and even by the loss of my own, the law of charity 
 bids me, if it does not bind me, to risk it. If the 
 risk of my own life were necessary to procure him 
 some great and signal good, charity would counsel me 
 even to risk my life for it. But there is one thing 
 that I may not risk, neither to gain any temporal 
 good for myself nor to gain any temporal good for 
 
 another—I may not risk my spiritual life and my 
 
132 THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 
 
 eternal salvation. The rational law of love for my- 
 self there comes in to limit my freedom. And 
 though I may die for my neighbour to save his 
 soul, or even his life—the life of the body—I may 
 not risk my spiritual life or my salvation for any- 
 thing whatsoever. This, then, is the nature of 
 charity. 
 
 Here, therefore, we see the connection between 
 charity and the sanctification of the soul. I must 
 touch this very briefly, and then come to the prac- 
 tical application of what has been said. 
 
 You are well aware that the sanctification or 
 holiness of the soul means the indwelling of the 
 Holy Spirit of God, raising and conforming it to the 
 perfection for which it was created. Charity, or love, 
 is only one part of its perfection; but wheresoever the 
 Holy Ghost is, He bestows another gift—sanctity as 
 well as charity. These two come and go together; 
 they flow from the same fountain, and run in the 
 same channel. They are therefore inseparable. A 
 man that is not holy does not love God or his neigh- 
 bour; and a man that does not love God or his 
 neighbour is not holy. Sanctity and charity cannot 
 be put asunder. Moreover, charity is the greatest 
 of all the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Saint Paul 
 says: ‘There remaineth these three—faith, hope, and 
 
THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 1338 
 
 charity. But the greater of these is charity.” 
 And that because charity makes faith and hope per- 
 fect, and they are neither of them perfect without it. 
 And, next, charity unites the soul with God. Nei- 
 ther faith nor hope does this. Again, charity is God 
 Himself. Faith and hope are not God, but God is 
 charity. Furthermore, charity is our eternal perfec- 
 tion and bliss; but there will be neither faith nor 
 - hope in eternity ; for faith will have passed into vi- 
 sion, and hope will have passed into fruition. There 
 will only remain for ever charity made perfect. And, 
 again, Saint Paul says that charity is ‘the bond of 
 perfection ;” that is to say, like as a golden thread 
 sustains a string of pearls, and runs through them 
 all, or as a clasp of gold holds a vestment together, 
 so all the graces of the Hely Ghost, which constitute 
 the sanctification of the soul, are sustained and com- 
 pleted and clasped together by charity. You remem- 
 ber in that same thirteenth chapter of the first Epistle 
 to the Corinthians how Saint Paul says, ‘ Charity is 
 patient, is kind, is not ambitious, is not puffed up ; 
 believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all 
 things; rejoiceth not in evil, but rejoiceth in the 
 truth. This is his description of perfect charity; and 
 
 charity is the crown, or I may say the circle, of glory 
 
 21 Cor. xiii. 13. 2 Col. iii. 13. 3 1 Cor. xiii, 4-6. 
 
134 THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 
 
 which keeps all these things in their place. And 
 thus, as I have said, charity is not only the perfec- 
 tion of sanctity in this world, but charity is the bliss 
 of the soul in eternity, and that because without 
 charity we could not see God, and without the vi- 
 sion of God we could not be blessed; and in eternity 
 itis through charity that we shall see God. It is by 
 the light of faith changed into the light of glory that 
 the soul will receive the faculty or the eye whereby 
 to see God. It will receive also the perfection of 
 love or of the heart whereby to love God. It is the 
 vision of God, and the union of the soul through 
 charity with God, which will constitute its eternal 
 bliss. 
 
 Let us, then, see what is its connection with our 
 sanctification, and what is its connection with our 
 future bliss. The Council of Florence has defined 
 that the blessedness of the soul in eternity will be 
 according to the measure of its merits in this world; 
 and its merits in this world are in the measure of 
 its charity. They that have loved much shall be the 
 most glorified, and therefore the most blessed. They 
 that have loved least shall be the least glorified and 
 the least blessed. The measure of our charity will 
 be the measure of our eternal bliss. 
 
 1. Learn, then, some practical truths from this. 
 
THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 135 
 
 The first is, that throughout our whole life our cha- 
 rity ought to be ever on the increase, and, if in- 
 creased, so will be our bliss in eternity. 
 
 The charity which was infused into us in our 
 Baptism, compared with the love of eternity, was as 
 the smoking flax to the ardour of the sun. The fire 
 was there, yet it was but the first rising of a flame ; 
 but that faint beginning may be enlarged, and fed, 
 and nourished until it shall be like the flame of a 
 seraph before the Throne. This lifelong increase of 
 charity in the soul is wrought in two ways: first, by 
 acquisition on our part; and next, by gift and in- 
 fusion on God’s part. The acquisition on our part 
 is this: everything we do in the motive of charity 
 brings an increase of charity. Not only the splendid 
 alms, and the great labours, and the heroic sufferings 
 of apostles and martyrs, but every little act of Chris- 
 tian love, so minute and so unseen that no one but 
 our Heavenly Father, Who seeth in secret, is witness 
 of it, brings a measured increase of love. Charity has 
 the power of turning everything we do all day long, 
 and in every moment of the day, to gold. If we 
 have the motive of charity in our heart, our whole 
 commonplace life will be laying up a weight of 
 glory and an eternal multitude of sweetness and of 
 bliss. 
 
136 THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 
 
 If you cannot do great things for God, at least 
 you may have great desires. Desire His love and de- 
 sire to grow in charity. The very desire will increase 
 the love that is in you. Every exercise of it and 
 every the least action will make it to grow more. Like 
 as the use of the arm develops its muscle and its 
 power, so with charity. And, once more, even the 
 habitual state of the heart will gain grace for you. 
 , As you walk in the streets you see the men of this 
 world hurrying to and fro with countenances lower- 
 ing, and lined, and marked, I may say scarred, with 
 anxiety, and the worldliness of their minds. You 
 may see men who, from ambition, or from jealousy, 
 or from many passions, have countenances which are 
 furrowed deep by care. On the other hand, you will 
 See some whose countenances are always bright, 
 calm, and kindly. What makes the difference ? The 
 men I first described are living for this world. They 
 are harsh, churlish, disappointed, and confounded. 
 Their hopes betray them. Their confidence comes 
 to naught and their labour ig turned to bitterness. 
 What they are within they are without. Counten- 
 ance is transparent, and the soul shines through. 
 And they who are calm and bright have a gentle 
 expression : why is it so? Because things that are 
 bright, and calm, and sweet, and beautiful, God and 
 
THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 137, 
 
 His goodness and the world to come, the hopes which 
 bear them up, the trust which they know can never 
 fail—these diffuse over their whole mind and heart 
 the brightness and sweetness of the realities which 
 are ever before their sight. Even in the pelting 
 of the stones Stephen’s face shone, for heaven was 
 open to him. If any man will live in the love of 
 God, the love that is in him will be multiplied. 
 I will give you a practical test to try yourselves. 
 What are your first dispositions towards everybody 
 around you? What are your first thoughts about 
 them? Are they gentle and kindly, or censorious 
 and critical ? Is it an effort to you to be charitable, or 
 is it an effort to you to be severe? If the habitual 
 countenance, so to say, of your heart is charitable, 
 and thoughts of severity are acts of second thought 
 constrained by necessity, not prompted by your ha- 
 bitual state, then you are living in the love of God 
 and your neighbour. But if your habitual state, and 
 what I will call the countenance of your heart, is 
 contracted, and clouded, and churlish, if it is an 
 effort to you, if it needs deliberation, so that you must 
 put a force upon yourself before you can act or speak 
 charitably to others, then your habitual state can 
 hardly be one of the love of God and of your neigh- 
 
 bour. 
 
138 THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 
 
 If you live in mutual kindness with all about you, 
 the love of God will be abundantly poured into your 
 hearts; it will be given to you as a reward, and as an 
 increase of grace for your fidelity. ‘To him that hath 
 shall be given.’ All such shall have a special bless- 
 ing in their Communions. They put their lips te the 
 source; they draw-charity from the Holy Sacrament of 
 the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, and from His 
 Sacred Heart, the very fountain of charity. To them 
 it will be always open. They are the disciples of 
 the Sacred Heart; and where the Sacred Heart of 
 Jesus is, there is all grace. 
 
 2. But as your charity may be increased all 
 through your life, so your charity may be lost in one 
 moment of time. And it may be lost in two ways. Any 
 act of mortal sin, of any kind whatsoever, at once breaks 
 friendship with God ; and when the friendship of God 
 is broken the sanctifying grace of the Holy Ghost 
 departs. So also any mortal sins against charity, 
 any specific sins against the specific grace of charity, 
 will destroy it. For instance, an unjust action whereby 
 you wrong a neighbour—if it be done with delibera- 
 tion or malice—destroys the love of your neigh- 
 bour, and therefore the love of God, for they come 
 and go together. Again, to bear false witness against 
 
 your neighbour, or wilfully to strike a murderous 
 
 —s ee ee _ - 
 
THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 189 
 
 blow at his reputation, destroys the love you owe 
 to him, and with it the love of God. In like 
 manner detraction, though it may not amount to 
 bearing false witness, but the fretting, nibbling, 
 gnawing, pertinacious filing away of the fair name 
 of your neighbour,—this too destroys, little by little, 
 the charity of God. And more, it is not only the 
 committing detraction ourselves, but the permitting 
 others to commit it—that thirsty pricking of the ear 
 which is curious to listen, and so tempts another to 
 speak evil. To listen to detraction is as much an act 
 of detraction as to speak it. 
 
 And therefore, if in any of these ways we wilfully 
 sin against charity, we shall certainly lose it. Hear 
 the words of the Holy Ghost: ‘We know that we 
 have passed from death unto life, because we love 
 the brethren. He that loveth not abideth in death. 
 If any man loves not his brother, he is a murderer ; 
 and you know that no murderer hath eternal life. 
 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he 
 is a liar; for if he love not his brother whom he 
 hath seen, how shall he love God Whom he hath 
 not seen ?”* 
 
 8. And, further, let us bear in mind that, charity 
 once lost, it is beyond the power of the human will 
 
 4198. John iii. 14, 15; iv. 20. 
 
140 THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 
 
 to regain it. No will of man can regtore that which 
 the will of God alone at first bestowed. They who 
 have lost the love of God are dead before God. They 
 abide in spiritual death, and there is no voice that 
 can call them out of that spiritual death but the 
 voice of the Son of God. Until the voice which 
 called Lazarus from the grave shall say, ‘I absolve 
 thee from all thy sins,’ the love of God and the life 
 of the soul is not in them. And while the soul is 
 dead, all its works are dead. They are like the 
 nits that tradition says grew upon the trees about 
 the cities of the plain and on the shores of the 
 Dead Sea—fair to the eye without, but full of ashes. 
 Such are the actions of a man who is out of the 
 love of God and of his neighbour. The charity of 
 God is a gift of God not due to nature, a free 
 sovereign grace bestowed through the Precious 
 Blood of Jesus Christ. It was not due even to His 
 creatures in a state of innocence—it was a royal gift 
 superadded to their natural perfection. How much 
 less is it due to sinners who, having received it, have 
 again lost it by their wilful sin. Compare the Chris- 
 tian world with the heathen world around you. The 
 heathen world is dead because the love of God is not 
 init. What was it that raised the Christian world 
 from that state of death? The charity of God, which 
 
THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 141 
 
 was poured out upon it by the Holy Ghost. At this 
 moment the heathen world is dead before God; and 
 multitudes within the visible Church of God are twice 
 dead. The face of Christendom is like the vision of 
 the Prophet Ezekiel. The valley is covered with the 
 bones of the dead; a multitude beyond all count: 
 and behold ‘they are dry,’ ‘very dry,’ utterly dead, 
 and so dead that no voice of man, no will of man, 
 could give them life. Even the voice of the prophet 
 had no power until the spirit of life from the four 
 winds—that is, from heaven and from the God of 
 heaven—came and breathed upon the slain; not till 
 then did they stand upon their feet and live. God 
 only, Who at the first gave life, can give it back again; 
 and He has ordained a special sacrament whereby we 
 may be restored to charity. And until we have heard 
 the words of absolution, and have received from the 
 Holy Ghost into our hearts once more the infusion of 
 sanctifying grace, with which charity is inseparably 
 linked—until our Heavenly Father has fallen upon 
 the neck of the prodigal, and has once more given 
 us the kiss of peace—no soul which has lost charity 
 can be restored to the friendship of God. There are 
 some men who, having turned their back upon Him, 
 will not return. They live obstinately on the northern 
 
 side of the mountain, where there is perpetual rime 
 
142 THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 
 
 and mist, frost and snow, cold winds and sunless 
 skies. They wilfully keep out of the light and love 
 of God, and that because they are conscious of un- 
 repented sins or of sins they will not forsake. ‘ This 
 is the judgment: because the light is come into the 
 world, and men loved darkness rather than light, 
 for their works were evil. For every one that doth 
 evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, 
 lest his deeds should be reproved. ‘God is light, 
 and in Him there is no darkness.’ ‘If we say that 
 we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, 
 we lie, and do not the truth. But if we walk in the 
 light as He also is in the light, we have fellowship 
 one with another, and the Blood of Jesus Christ His 
 Son cleanseth us from all sin.’ 
 
 Learn, then, to know the love of God in the 
 Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is the Book of Life; open 
 to all; easily to be read. Take that Book of Life and 
 read it, every page. It is written within and without 
 with the pledges and the promises of God’s personal 
 love for you. They only in the sight of God are 
 great who have a great charity. Kings, emperors, 
 princes, statesmen, orators, men of science, are but 
 as the dust of the earth compared with the soul 
 that is filled with the love of God. What made 
 
 * §. John iii. 19, 20. £158. Johni. 5-7 
 
THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 148 
 
 the Apostles, and the Evangelists, and the Martyrs, 
 and the followers of Jesus Christ to be kings, and 
 priests, and princes in the Kingdom of God? The 
 love of God and their neighbour. And what is the 
 Kingdom of God upon earth? The reign of love, 
 the charity of God to man and of man to his fellow. 
 The Holy Catholic Church, the mystical Body of 
 Jesus Christ, is called by the name of charity. It is 
 the uncreated charity of God visibly incorporated. 
 You say it in your baptismal creed: ‘I believe in 
 the Holy Ghost, in the Holy Catholic Church.’ 
 ‘There is one body and one spirit.’ It is one, be- 
 cause where there is charity there are no divisions. 
 It is He Who made men to be of one mind in one 
 house, when it was shaken by the mighty wind com- 
 ing and illuminated by the tongues of fire. There 
 is a divine unanimity throughout the Universal 
 Church binding it together, because the love of 
 God is its light. The world, with its multitudinous 
 contentions, wars against the charity of God. But no 
 blow struck at it can destroy its life. Saint Hilary 
 says of the Passion of our Divine Master, that they 
 wounded His humanity, but the Godhead they could 
 not reach. The blows that were struck at Him 
 passed harmless through His Godhead, as a sword 
 
 passes through a flame. No weapon can cut it asun- 
 
144 THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY. 
 
 der. So is the Church of God imperishable. So all they 
 who have the love of God in them shall never perish. 
 The gates of hell cannot prevail against them. Saint 
 Paul says: ‘ Who shall lay anything to the charge of 
 God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he 
 that shall condemn? It is Christ that died, yea, 
 rather Who is risen again, Who is at the right hand 
 of God. Who shall separate us from the love of 
 Christ ?....Iam persuaded that neither life, nor 
 death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
 angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor depth, nor 
 height, nor any other creature, shall separate us from 
 the love of God, which is Christ Jesus our Lord.? 
 
 7 Rom. viii. 33-39. 
 
 5 
 
THE GLORY OF SONS. 
 
THE GLORY OF SONS. 
 
 Those whom He foreknew, them He also did predestinate to be con- 
 formed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn 
 among many brethren. And whom He predestinated, them He 
 also called. And whom He called, them He also justified. And 
 whom He justified, them He also glorified. Romans viii. 29, 30. 
 
 THESE words, when read in the light of the Holy 
 Catholic Faith, are as clear as the noonday; but out 
 of the unity of the Church they have been for ages 
 the centre of a perpetual conflict. They set before us 
 the steps by which God brings us to justification. | 
 
 From all eternity there was present to the Divine 
 intelligence a perfect foreknowledge both of the first 
 creation and of the second in all their fulness. God 
 foreknew all men, one by one, for He knows all whom 
 He has made; but the foreknowledge here spoken 
 of is not this, but a special foreknowledge of grace. 
 God has a purpose and work of election through the 
 
 Incarnation of His Son. Though all men are redeemed 
 
148 THE GLORY OF SONS. 
 
 by His Precious Blood, all are not called to the light 
 of faith. But those whom His intelligence foreknew, 
 His will decreed to be conformed to the image of His 
 Son, that is to the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ our 
 Lord, that He might be the firstborn of many bre- 
 thren. The first Adam is the father of the whole 
 race of mankind-born in sin and death. The Second 
 Adam is the divine original and the elder Brother of 
 the whole race of mankind born again through grace 
 unto eternal life. And those whom God had so pre- 
 destinated to grace He has also called—that is, in 
 due time, by the voice of His Spirit, He called them 
 to the knowledge of faith in Jesus Christ; and those 
 whom He called He also justified—that is, He sanc- 
 tified by His Spirit dwelling in them, whereby they 
 are made just before Him. And those whom He justi- 
 fied He also glorified. Now the word ‘ glorified’ does, 
 indeed, also signify to be beatified in heaven; but 
 that is not the special meaning of the word in this 
 place. Its special meaning is, that upon those whom 
 He justified He laid the glory of the adoption to be 
 the sons of God. He bestowed upon them the glory 
 of being the brethren of His Incarnate Son. They, 
 being adopted through grace to be His sons, have 
 therefore already, as Saint Peter says, in this world 
 the spirit of glory and of God resting upon them. 
 
THE GLORY OF SONS. 149 
 
 There is, then, a glory upon the head of every true 
 Christian, of every living member of Jesus Christ. 
 Even now the first rays of this eternal light are 
 around us. This, then, is the plain meaning of Saint 
 Paul’s words in the text.’ 
 
 Now we have already examined the nature and 
 office of the three theological virtues ; that is, of faith, 
 which, as I said, the Council of Trent has declared to 
 be the foundation and the root of our whole justifi- 
 cation; secondly, of hope, which springs from faith, 
 and is matured into confidence; and, thirdly, of 
 charity, or the love of God and of our neighbour, 
 which springs from faith and hope. Now all those 
 who are in charity are justified. Saint John says: 
 ‘God is charity; and he that abideth in charity 
 abideth in God, and God in him;” that is, the just 
 soul and God mutually dwell and abide in each other. 
 If these were not the words of the Holy Ghost, no 
 man would dare to speak them. God dwells in the 
 soul, and because of His indwelling the soul also 
 dwells in God. The soul is encompassed and pene- 
 trated by the perfections of God—by His holli- 
 
 } «He glorified by gifts of grace and the adoption.’ §. Chry- 
 sostom in Rom. Hom. xv. tom. ix. p. 595, ed. Ben. Paris, 1731. 
 ‘That they might be glorified by the endowment of graces.’ §. 
 Jerome in Rom. viii. 30, tom. v. p. 953, ed. Ben. Paris, 1706. 
 
 2158. John vi, 16. 
 
150 THE GLORY OF SONS. 
 
 ness, justice, mercy, charity, by the light of truth, 
 which is a radiance descending from the Divine Wis- 
 dom, and by sanctifying grace, which is infused by 
 the Holy Ghost. The soul, then, is enveloped and 
 encompassed in God. Livery soul that is in charity, 
 and lives in the love of God, is justified. How can 
 it not be justified if it abide in God, and God in it? 
 And if so, then it is already glorified, for where God 
 is there is His glory. | 
 
 But this text, as I said, has been the subject 
 of endless controversy. Though I need not dwell 
 upon it, I may at least in outline show what that 
 controversy has been. Now there are two worlds: 
 there is the world of truth and of reality, and there 
 is the world of shadows. The world of truth and 
 reality is the world of faith and grace into which 
 God has called us. The world of shadows is that 
 world of words, figures, metaphors, and abstractions 
 into which the master-builders of error, three hundred 
 years ago, led astray a multitude of the Christian 
 people. I will therefore, first, speak in passing of 
 these errors or shadows of truth; then I will state 
 what the perfect truth of the faith is. I need not 
 dwell upon the shadows, for in the light of truth all 
 shadows disappear. 
 
 There are five great errors which were introduced 
 
THE GLORY OF SONS. 151 
 
 into the subject of justification some three hundred 
 years ago, and they have continued, and have spread 
 through the minds of Christians, distorting and per- 
 verting the whole doctrine of our salvation. The 
 first is this—that by the fall and by original sin the 
 nature of man is essentially changed. It ‘is not 
 changed in its essence. Secondly, that by original 
 sin the free-will of man is destroyed. Our freedom is 
 not destroyed. Thirdly, that we are justified by the 
 imputation of the righteousness or justice of Jesus 
 Christ. We are not justified by the imputation, but 
 by the communication and infusion of justice, whereby 
 we are made just. Fourthly, that the disorder and 
 turbulence and ignorance which are in the soul, as the 
 consequence of the fall, are sin before God. These 
 things in the regenerate are not sin before God. They 
 may be the cause of sin and the matter of sin in 
 those who wilfully make themso. The whole nature 
 of sin is taken away in our regeneration, and we are 
 justified, though the three wounds still remain in 
 us. Lastly, it has been taught that the faith which 
 justifies us contains in itself a certainty of eternal 
 life—not only that certainty of hope of which I shall 
 speak hereafter, but a certainty of iaith which can 
 never be lost, and of itself constitutes our salvation. 
 
 Now here are five errors which, asI said before, I will 
 
152 THE GLORY OF SONS. 
 
 hot mention again; for when the Catholic doctrine 
 of justification is stated the shadows vanish away. 
 
 What, then, is our justification ? It is the infusion 
 and indwelling of justice, whereby the soul is trans- 
 lated from the state of death to the state of life. It is 
 the translation of the sons of Adam to the adoption 
 of the sons of God; or, once more, it is the restora- 
 tion of the due order between God and man, whereby 
 the intelligence and the will are subjected to God as 
 our last and supreme end for which we were created, 
 and from which, by the fall, we were turned aside. 
 
 1. Now, in order to make this more clear, I will 
 first of all show what was the state of original justice, 
 because our justification is our restoration, under a 
 certain reserve and with certain limitations, to that. 
 state of original grace from which man by disobe- 
 dience fell. What, then, is the state of original 
 justice? The Council of Trent, after having weighed 
 long whether to say that man was created in grace, 
 finally determined to say that man was constituted 
 in grace, and for this reason: if man had been created 
 In grace, it might have been possible for some one to 
 conceive that grace was an essential part of humaa 
 nature, because it was said to be a part of our creation. 
 It is not a part of human nature, nor is it a part of 
 our creation. It is something superadded to it, as 
 
THE GLORY OF SONS. 153 
 
 we shall presently see. And therefore, in saying 
 that man was constituted in grace, the Council of 
 Trent expressly, and with the greatest precision, de- 
 clares that man was placed in a state or condition 
 higher than his own nature. Now man, in the state 
 of original justice, had three perfections. He had a 
 natural perfection ; that is, his humanity was perfect 
 in all that constitutes its nature, the soul and the 
 body. The body was perfect in all that constitutes 
 its symmetry and its life; the soul was periect in its 
 three powers of intelligence, and will, and affection. 
 I do not now dwell upon this, nor will I attempt to say 
 how the intelligence of Adam in the beginning was 
 Uluminated, or what truths he knew. It is reason- 
 able to believe that he had an anticipation of many of 
 those supernatural truths which are known to us 
 by faith, that his will was in itself perfect as to the 
 power of originating his own actions, and that, as we 
 shall see hereafter, it was elevated and assisted by the 
 grace of God. His passions and affections were in a 
 state of subordination and tranquillity by the control 
 of his reason and his will. Such was the first and 
 natural perfection ofthe soul and the body. To this 
 was superadded a second perfection, which is super- 
 natural, the gift of the Holy Ghost. This is no part 
 
 of human nature—no part of creation—for the Holy 
 
154 THE GLORY OF SONS. 
 
 Ghost is the uncreated charity of God. Adam, in 
 the beginning, had the gift of the Holy Ghost dwell- 
 ing in him, and because he had the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost dwelling in him, therefore he was just. The 
 fruit of his justice was sanctity, illumination, and 
 union with God. He was also the son of God. This 
 is the supernatural perfection. But, thirdly, there is 
 a preternatural perfection, which arises from the 
 union of the natural with the supernatural; that is 
 to say, the immortality of the body, and immunity of 
 the soul from the rebellion of the passions. Now the 
 body was free from all disease, and the soul was 
 free from all sorrow, because free from all sin. In 
 original justice, no sorrow, no affliction of any kind, 
 had part in the soul ofman. These three perfections 
 constitute original justice. 
 
 Original sin consists in the loss of that state; 
 and the definition of sin is simply that it is the pri- 
 vation of grace. Just as blindness is the privation of 
 sight, and darkness is the privation of light, and 
 death is the privation of liie, so sin is the privation 
 of grace; and human nature without grace is in the 
 state of sin, which is a state of privation. We are 
 born in original sin, because we are born deprived of 
 grace. If we were born blind and deaf, we should 
 be born into the privation of sight and speech. 
 
THE GLORY OF SONS. 155 
 
 So they who are born without the Holy Ghost are 
 deprived of spiritual life, because they are without 
 the spiritual grace which is the life of the soul. 
 
 Now from this you may see that the doctrines 
 which tell you that original sin is an infection, or 
 taint, or corruption of our nature, simply mean 
 this, that when the grace of the Holy Ghost is lost, 
 the soul falls into a darkness which is ignorance, 
 into a weakness which comes from that darkness, and 
 therefore into disorder; the intelligence is darkened, 
 the will is weakened, and the heart is turbulent, by 
 reason of our losing the grace and indwelling of the 
 Holy Ghost, by Whom the soul was prevented, sus- 
 tained, and sanctified. 
 
 Our justification, then, is a restoration to that 
 supernatural state of grace in which man was con- 
 stituted in the beginning; and I say to a supernatural 
 state of grace, because we are not yet restored to the 
 natural and preternatural perfections above described. 
 Weare still subject to ignorance, weakness, disorder : 
 we are not immortal in the body, nor in perfect sub- 
 ordination to grace inthe soul. Nevertheless, by the 
 sanctifying presence of the Holy Ghost dwelling in 
 us we were made the sons of God, and they who are 
 made the sons of God are justified. We therefore 
 
 are put back again into the state of grace from which 
 
156 THE GLORY OF SONS. 
 
 Adam fell, but neither the natural nor the preter- 
 
 natural perfections are restored. There is still death 
 of the body, and diseases which are the forerunners of 
 death. There is still sorrow in the mind, for sorrow 
 came with sin into the world. More than this, there 
 is ignorance in the intelligence, weakness in the will, 
 turbulence in the‘affections ; and these affections be- 
 come passions, and the word ‘passion,’ which simply 
 signifies a state of suffering, has become an evil 
 word, because the turbulence and the disorder of the 
 human soul are evil. 
 
 2. You will see, then, that we are justified, not by 
 the imputation of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, 
 but by the imparting, and infusion, and indwelling of 
 the gift of justice by the operation of the Holy Ghost. 
 Our justification is not a shadow, but a reality; and 
 those who teach the doctrine of justification by im- 
 putation have simply confounded the language of 
 Christian men. ‘There are three words which are 
 sacred in the Theology of the Church—absolution, 
 sanctification, justification. No man is justified but 
 he who is at the same time absolved and sanctified ; 
 for when God absolves He infuses sanctifying grace. 
 
 Such, then, is the gift of justification. It is the 
 Holy Ghost dwelling in the soul, and restoring us to 
 sonship and to friendship with God. The Council 
 
THE GLORY OF SONS. 157 
 
 oa 
 
 of Trent says, that in those that are born again 
 ‘there is nothing that God hates.’* Understand the 
 meaning of these words. We are all conscious of 
 the effects of the fall. We have ignorance in our 
 understanding, we have all manner of rebellions in 
 our will, and we have also turbulence in our pas- 
 sions. We have an inward conflict and an inward 
 warfare, which Saint Paul describes in the very chap- 
 ter before that from which I have taken the text: ‘In 
 me [that is, in my flesh] dwelleth no good thing ; 
 for to will is present with me, but to accomplish that 
 which is good I find not. For the good which I will 
 I do not: but the evil which I will not that Ido.... 
 Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from 
 the body of this death?’ We have upon us the 
 effects of the fall and the penalties of sin. They are 
 the occasions of sin, and the fuel of temptation. It 
 is they that are for ever raising against us a con- 
 stant warfare. Nevertheless, they that are most 
 sorely tempted are not sinful before God unless they 
 consent to it. They who resist temptation, though 
 they walk in the midst of a fire, are not guilty so 
 long as they do not yield. It is only by consenting 
 to a temptation that temptation becomes sin, and 
 
 %*In renatis enim nihil odit Deus.’ Concil. Trid. Sess. vy. De 
 Pece. Orig. 5. * Rom. vii. 18, 19, 24, 
 
158 é TFE GLORY OF SONS. 
 
 our personal act. God sees no sin except in a will 
 which consents to evil. And in those who are justi- 
 fied this warfare is not sin. Itis the occasion of 
 greater grace, and of manifold acts of fidelity, and of 
 the love of God, and of perseverance, and is a pledge 
 of a greater reward hereafter. If at any time those 
 that are justified do, for a while or in any way, consent 
 to evil, it is immediately followed by contrition, and 
 the sorrow of contrition blots out and puts away the 
 partial, transient, and momentary acts in which they 
 wavered against the will of God. They abide still 
 in the state of justification, of friendship, and of 
 peace with God. God is their Father and their 
 friend; and persevering in that grace, they will be 
 surely saved. Even in this life they are in a state of 
 salvation; and if they shall persevere by fidelity on 
 their part, they will surely receive the gift of perse- 
 verance, which God on His part always bestows on 
 all who are faithful to Him. Such, then, is the doc- 
 trine of our justification. 
 
 I will end with a few practical words. 
 
 1. First of all, it is certain, with the certainty of 
 faith, that all baptised infants have been justified. 
 It is as certain that we were justified as that we were 
 born into the world, and that for this reason. We all 
 
 as infants were born again in Baptism; unless, in- 
 
THE GLORY OF SONS. 159 
 
 deed, I speak to some who, through the negligence of 
 parents, may have been defrauded of their Christian 
 inheritance. You have all, then, been baptised, and, 
 if so, you have all been born again, you have received 
 the gift of the Holy Ghost; and when you were re- 
 generated you were justified, you were placed again 
 in a state of justice before God. Every one of you 
 has received the gift of sanctifying grace; you have 
 been made children of God and heirs of His King- 
 dom. This is as certain as the earth under our feet. 
 But I do not say, nor can I say, it is certain with 
 the certainty of faith that you are justified now, for 
 that depends upon your fidelity to grace, of which I 
 cannot be certain. If you have persevered in that 
 state of justification, you have in your Baptism every 
 one of you been ‘washed, and sanctified, and justi- 
 fied in the name of our Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit 
 of our God.” And if you have again fallen, then in the 
 Sacrament of Penance the Precious Blood has come 
 down on you once more, and has washed away every 
 sin committed since your regeneration. You have 
 been once more restored to a state of justification: 
 unless, indeed, you have put a bar in the way of 
 grace—and there is no bar that can hinder it ex- 
 
 cept mortal sin. You have, moreover, eaten and 
 
 PPI COravii is 
 
160 THE GLORY OF SONS. 
 
 drunk the Precious Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. 
 It is not more certain that you have eaten the food 
 of the body that perishes, than that at the altar 
 you have received the Flesh and Blood of the Son 
 of God from His own hands. How is it possible, 
 then, that you should not be justified, or that you 
 should be unconscious of the great dignity of the state 
 in which you are? How is it possible that we can be 
 conscious of our name and state in this worldly life, 
 and of all things that are about us, and yet that we 
 should be unconscious of our state of grace before 
 God; that we should be conscious of having hands 
 and feet, and eyes and ears, and should live in all the 
 activity of our natural life, and yet be as unconscious 
 as if we were in a swoon or a sleep—many of us, 
 if not most—of our supernatural life, with all its 
 faculties, instincts, intuitions, and of the presence 
 of the Holy Ghost Who dwells in us? We are un- 
 conscious of the circulation of our blood; we are 
 unconscious of the indwelling of the soul in the body; 
 but this is only a faint sample of our unconscious- 
 ness of the perpetual operations of grace which flow 
 from the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in our soul. 
 2. It is certain, then, with the certainty of faith— 
 for God has revealed it to us—that Baptism gives 
 regeneration, that the Sacrament oi Penance gives 
 
THE GLORY OF SONS. 161 
 
 absolution, and that the Sacrament of the Altar gives 
 the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. These are re- 
 vealed truths, certain with the certainty of faith. It 
 is certain that we were justified in Baptism, because 
 as infants we put no bar to grace. But I said we are 
 not certain with the certainty of faith that we are in 
 a state of justification now. The Holy Scripture says 
 that ‘there are wise men and there are just men; 
 and their works are in the hands of the Lord, and no 
 man knoweth whether he be worthy of love or hatred.” 
 We know so little of the holiness of God, and we know 
 so little of our own sinfulness, we are such partial 
 judges of our state, that many a man pronounces an 
 absolution on himself when, in the sight of God, he is 
 spotted with sins from the crown of his head to the 
 sole of his foot. How, then, can we be certain that 
 Wwe are in a state of justification at this time ? Not by 
 the certainty of faith, but by the certainty of hope, 
 for we have no revelation of it. But we have the cer- 
 tainty of hope, the certainty of confidence, which 
 springs from hope, from the knowledge of the character 
 of God, and from the experience of His love to us. 
 From that hope and confidence we may judge of our 
 own state; whether or no we are still in the grace of 
 justification. If, then, you can say to yourself, ‘I am 
 
 5 Ecclesiastes ix. 1. 
 
 Bi 
 
162 THE GLORY OF SONS. 
 
 not conscious of any thought, or word, or deed in my 
 life wilfully indulged against the law of God,’ then 
 you may have this hope. But Saint Paul has said: 
 ‘I know nothing against myself; yet I am not there- 
 by justified’—he mistrusted his knowledge of him- 
 self—‘ but He that justifieth me is the Lord.* His 
 only hope was in the love of the Sacred Heart of 
 Jesus. If you are conscious, then, that you are striv- 
 ing to enter in at the strait gate, that you are not 
 looking back, but, like the Apostle, you are saying : 
 ‘Not as though I had already attained or were al- 
 ready perfect .... But one thing I do; forgetting 
 the things that are behind, and stretching forth to 
 these that are before, I press on to the mark, to 
 the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus nd 
 if you are conscious that you are doing your utmost, 
 and that you would rather lay down your life than 
 knowingly and wilfully break the law of God, then, 
 trusting in God, you may take the consolation of 
 hope; you may believe with a confidence founded upon 
 this knowledge of yourself, and much more of your 
 experience of the character and the love of God, that 
 you are still forgiven in His sight. And, in order to 
 assure ourselves of this, let us take care to keep our 
 
 hearts in union with God. 
 
 ¢1 Cor. iv. 4. 7 Phil. iii, 12-14, 
 
THE GLORY OF SQNs. 163 
 
 3. The bond of our union with God is the love 
 of God above all things. He that dwelleth in cha- 
 rity dwelleth in God, and God in him. Here is 
 the link of gold which binds the goul to God. Keep 
 that link fast, and do not be afraid when the 
 consciousness of your past sins and of your many 
 temptations seems to come down upon you and to 
 overwhelm you as a flood. In those darkest times, 
 be sure that if you love God you are still united 
 with Him. It is not when we walk in the bright- 
 ness of the noonday only that we are united with 
 Him. The purest union with God is when we walk 
 with Him in the darkness, without consolation and 
 without joy; having no other guide; our hand in 
 His hand; going on like children, not knowing 
 whither; but obeying the inspirations of God to 
 do or not to do as He wills: out in the bleak cold 
 sky, with no joy in our prayers and no rest of 
 heart, in constant inward fears, with temptations all 
 around, but always faithful to the guidance of the 
 Spirit of God. ‘Whosoever are led by the Spirit of 
 God, they are the sons of God.’ There are two 
 axioms in the Kingdom of God which shall never 
 fail: no penitent soul can perish, and no soul that 
 
 loves God can be lost. 
 
 8 Rom. viii, 14, 
 
164 THE GLORY OF SONS. 
 
 Lastly, therefore, let us make sure of our love 
 to God; and how are we to do so? By love to our 
 neighbour. ‘If any man shall say, I love God, and 
 hateth his neighbour, he is a liar; for if he love not 
 his brother whom he seeth, how can he love God 
 Whom he seeth not?”® Again, the Holy Ghost says 
 by the Apostle: ‘ We know that we have passed from 
 death into life, because we love the brethren.” It is 
 the sign and seal of God, attesting His divine work 
 in our translation from the state of death to the 
 
 tate of life. from the state of the sons of Cain, who 
 nate their brethren, to the state of the sons of God, 
 who love their neighbour. Let us, then, love our 
 neighbour in all the kinds and works of charity, 
 even in the least’ unnoticed actions; and not only in 
 actions, but in our words—in words of kindness, of 
 gentleness, of good will; and not only in our words, 
 but in our thoughts, not harbouring in our hearts 
 anything that is not loving, compassionate, and ten- 
 der towards other men—even to the unworthy, even 
 to the fallen, even to the repulsive and the ungrate- 
 ful. Bear the same hearts towards your neighbour 
 which you desire your neighbour to bear towards you. 
 Keep all your severities for yourselves. No man 
 
 loves his neighbour aright who is not severe to him- 
 
 ®15. John iv. 20. 10 Tb. iii. 14. 
 
THE GLORY OF SONS. 165 
 
 self. The man who looks lightly on his own faults, 
 and with facility absolves himself, is a scribe and a 
 pharisee. He will hardly escape the fault of judging 
 the conduct of his neighbour with severity. The more 
 severe we are to our own faults, the more gentle and 
 equitable we shall be to the faults of others; the more 
 indulgent we are to ourselves, the sharper and the 
 less just we shall be to other men. Therefore, know 
 yourselves: be conscious of your own dignity and be 
 conscious of the dignity of others. You are the 
 sons of the Great King, and your neighbours are 
 likewise the Great King’s sons. Honour one an- 
 other; live in charity. Let your life be as heirs 
 together of the Kingdom of God. From all eternity 
 God foreknew you, and in due time God called you 
 by the Holy Ghost; and when He called you He jus- 
 tified you, and when He justified you He put upon 
 you the glory of His children and the heirship of 
 His Kingdom. ‘Behold what manner of love the 
 Father has bestowed on you, that you should be 
 called, and should be’—not by name and imputation 
 only, but by infusion and reality—‘ the sons of God.’ 
 Therefore the world knoweth you not, because it 
 knew Him not; and if you are true followers of Jesus 
 Christ, it will misunderstand and reject you. ‘Now 
 are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear 
 
166 THE GLORY OF SONS. 
 
 what we shall be; but we know that when He shall 
 appear, we shall be like Him,’—conformed to Him 
 Who is the firstborn among the sons of God, because 
 He is the Son of God, begotten of the substance of 
 the Father before all worlds, and man of the gsub- 
 stance of His Mother born in the world. Such is 
 our predestination; ‘and every man that hath this 
 hope in him sanctifieth himself, even as He also is 
 holy.’ 
 "15. John iii. 1-3, 
 
VI. 
 
 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 —— 
 
 There shall come forth a rod out of the root of J esse, and a flower 
 shall rise up out of his root. And the Spirit of the Lord shall 
 rest upon him; the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the 
 spirit of counsel and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and 
 of godliness; and he shall be filled with the Spirit of the fear 
 of the Lord. Isaras xi. 1-3. 
 
 THESE words are a prophecy of the coming of Jesus 
 Christ. He is the ‘ rod out of the root of J esse,’ and 
 the ‘flower’ that has risen up ‘out of his root ; that 
 is to say, He is the strength and the beauty of God. 
 Upon the person of Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, 
 in all the fulness of His grace and of His seven oifts, 
 rested from the first moment of the Incarnation. 
 The mystery of the Incarnation was, in an especial 
 manner, the work of the Holy Ghost. ‘He was con- 
 ceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.’ 
 And the deified soul of Jesus Christ was sanctified 
 by the Holy Ghost according to the same laws and 
 in the same manner in which we are sanctified, 
 There was, indeed, between Him and us this differ- 
 
170 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 ence : that, being God Incarnate, His humanity had, 
 as the Church teaches, a double anointing or unction 
 ofthe Holy Ghost. First, His manhood was anointed 
 by the uncreated sanctity of the Eternal Son Who as- 
 sumed our humanity. And, secondly, it was anointed 
 by the special indwelling of the Holy Ghost. The 
 first anointing is exclusively His own, because He is 
 God. The second anointing is the same that we re- 
 ceive, only differing in this: that the Holy Ghost 
 rests upon every one of us as sinners and sanctifies 
 us only in measure: but the deified soul of Jesus 
 wag sanctified with an immensity of grace. 
 
 In this prophecy it is said that the seven gifts of 
 the Holy Ghost rested upon the Son of David, that is, 
 the Son of God Incarnate. The soul of Jesus Christ 
 was, in fact, the predestined and perfect original of the 
 soul of man. In His deified soul there was exactly, 
 and with one only exception, the same indwelling grace 
 of which I have hitherto spoken as the work of the 
 Holy Ghost in the soul of every one of us. There 
 was the presence of the Holy Ghost; there was the 
 sanctifying grace of the Holy Ghost; there was not 
 faith, indeed, because He was always in the beatific 
 vision ; but there was hope, because the work of the 
 Incarnation and of the Redemption of the world, until 
 
 accomplished, was still a matter of the future; and 
 
THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 171 
 
 there was charity in the amplest perfection. There 
 were also the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost even as 
 they are in ourselves, and there they will be to all 
 eternity. Therefore, first of all, the Holy Ghost 
 rested in all His plenitude upon the Head of the 
 Church, that is, Jesus Christ, and from the Head 
 flowed down into the whole body. But the Church 
 has both body and soul. The visible organisation 
 which we call the Church —with its head and its 
 members, its whole symmetry and structure, upon 
 earth—is, after the analogy of the body of man, de- 
 clared by the Holy Ghost to be the Body of Christ. 
 Saint Paul, in the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the 
 Ephesians, draws out this divine fact. But beside 
 this visible body there is the invisible soul of the 
 Church, which is the presence of the Holy Ghost in- 
 fusing the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, sancti- 
 fying grace, the seven gifts, and the charity of God 
 poured into the heart of the Church, whereby its 
 unity is perpetually maintained. But the subject of 
 which I have to speak to-day is neither the seven gifts 
 in the Head of the Church, nor the seven gifts in 
 the Body of the Church, but the seven gifts in every 
 member of the Church, one by one. These seven 
 
 gifts dwell in every one of you. As they dwelt in the 
 
 1 Ephes. iv. 16, 
 
fiy2 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 soul of our Divine Lord, to Whom we shall be con- 
 formed, precisely in that manner they dwell in every 
 one of us. They are inseparably united to sanctifying 
 grace and charity; so that they who, through mortal 
 sin, fall from sanctifying grace and charity no longer 
 possess them. 
 
 1. What, then, is the nature of these seven gifts ? 
 I can only describe them in this way: the sancti- 
 fying grace of the Holy Ghost means that indwell- 
 ing of the presence and power of the Holy Ghost 
 whereby we are made holy. The seven gifts are 
 seven habits or dispositions, as I have said before, 
 implanted in the soul, permanently abiding in it 
 and giving activity to the will, enabling it to elicit 
 or to call forth certain spiritual acts.? The effect, 
 then, of these seven gifts is to elicit the operations of 
 grace. The word ‘ elicit’ means to draw or strike out. 
 When we strike a spark out of a flint we elicit fire. 
 The fire lies in the flint ; it is always there, it is in- 
 separable from it. The spark which passes from the 
 flint does not exhaust the fire that lies in it; it does 
 
 2 *Donum Spiritus Sancti aliud prorsus non est, nisi habitualis 
 ac supernaturalis perfectio mentis create a divina bonitate imme- 
 diate per creationem infusa, in adjutorium expeditionemque virtu- 
 tum concessa: per quam redditur mens creata a supernaturali 
 rectore seu Spiritu Sancto faciliter mobilis.’ Dionys. Carthusion. 
 De Donis Spiritus Sancti, tract. i. art. 16, 
 
THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 173 
 
 not even lessen it. So the acts of grace called forth 
 by the seven gifts do not exhaust, but multiply and 
 increase, our sanctification. Therefore they are in- 
 separably united with sanctifying grace, and it is aug- 
 mented by their activity. For instance, as the gift 
 of science elicits the acts of faith, the virtue of faith 
 is strengthened; as the gift of fortitude elicits the 
 acts of hope, the virtue of hope is matured; as the 
 eift of piety elicits the acts of charity, the virtue of 
 charity is kindled and expanded. Charity is a virtue 
 that springs from the love of God poured out into 
 our hearts together with sanctifying grace; faith, 
 hope, and charity are virtues or faculties implanted 
 in the soul by the sanctifying operation of God, and 
 they unite the soul with God. 
 
 The seven gifts, then, are seven powers or seven 
 springs of action, whereby faith, hope, and charity 
 are called into activity, and are also directed in 
 their action. As Ihave said, the fire is always in 
 the flint, but it does not appear until by a stroke 
 we elicit it; in like manner, the sanctifying grace 
 of the Holy Ghost is always in the soul that grows 
 up united with God, but it is not always in activ- 
 ity unless it is brought into activity or elicited by 
 these seven gifts. In this, grace is in strict ana- 
 
 logy with nature. We possess three powers in our 
 
174 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 soul—the power of reason, the power of love, and the 
 power of will. I do not stop now to inquire how the 
 will contains in itself both the power of love and the 
 power of action. We are obliged to distinguish 
 them for clearness. You well know that in the 
 teaching and the training of your children you are 
 obliged to elicit from’ their reason acts of attention ; 
 you are obliged to elicit from their will acts of per- 
 severance and the patient desire to learn; you are 
 obliged to elicit from their hearts habits which lead 
 to the training and formation of their character. 
 Therefore your will—that is, a superior will — is 
 always acting upon the reason, heart, and will of 
 your children, in order to teach, to train, and to 
 elevate them into a mind and character higher than 
 their own. In this same way, faith, hope, and 
 charity perfect the reason, and the heart, and the 
 will; they are the three supernatural virtues of grace 
 which perfect the three natural powers of the soul. 
 So also the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost elicit both 
 from the three virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and 
 from the three natural powers of reason, heart, and 
 will, the acts which unite the soul more intimately 
 with God, and therefore make it perfect. In this, 
 then, we see what is the nature of these gifts. They 
 
 are powers giving facility whereby the soul is called 
 
THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 175 
 
 into activity according to its natural and its super- 
 natural perfections. And they are gifts of the Holy 
 Ghost, because it is He Who, by His presence in 
 us, acts upon us. Just as a harp is mute until the 
 hand ofa skilful player elicits the harmony which 
 hes in its strings, so the soul of man, though con- _ 
 taining the whole power of harmony with the will 
 of God, does not manifest it of its own strength 
 without the assistance of ‘the Finger of God,’ 
 which is the Holy Ghost, touching its faculties, 
 powers, and affections, both natural and superna- 
 tural. So far the analogy is true; but in one point 
 it fails. The strings have no active power of their 
 own. ‘They can originate neither sound nor motion. 
 But the soul of man is a principle of action, and the 
 will has an originating power to initiate its natural 
 action. But the perfection of the soul consists of 
 two things—the action of the Holy Spirit of God 
 upon it, and a voluntary, and perfect, and prompt con- 
 formity and response of the will to that operation of 
 grace. And further: just as you cultivate the in- 
 telligence, and the heart, and the will of a child by 
 constant and watchful education, so the seven gifts 
 cultivate the soul. First of all, they cultivate the 
 eye of the soul. We have by nature the power of 
 sight, but we have not all the power of design, and 
 
176 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 form, and perspective. The eye of some (from what 
 cause I do not know) is incapable of those wonderful 
 exercises of skill in painting and in sculpture which 
 distinguish one man from another. The germs of 
 these gifts appear in children almost before they can 
 speak plain. Some men have a subtil and vigilant 
 power of sight in-observing the phenomena of the 
 natural world, of which others seem to be entirely 
 destitute. Or, again, I might give other examples to 
 show that the power of sight is capable of cultiva- 
 tion, and that by training the eye you may bring it 
 to a precision and delicacy of perception which seems 
 almost like a new and higher gift. So it is with the 
 soul. When the gifts of the Holy Ghost—that is to 
 say, the light and action of the Holy Ghost—work 
 upon the spiritual sight of faith, men gain a know- 
 ledge of the truth, an interior penetrating knowledge 
 of revelation, which may be proved by a common ex- 
 ample. The Holy Scripture is in the hands of 
 everybody ; and yet some men may read it from their 
 childhood to the end of their life, and never urder- 
 stand it; sometimes a mere child will understand it 
 at once. What makes the difference? The man, 
 trusting in his own natural light and without spiri- 
 tual discernment, reads the letter; the child, being in 
 
 grace, having the love of God and the light of the 
 
THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HoLy GHOST. 11% 
 
 Holy Spirit in hig heart, looks through the letter and 
 beneath the letter, and reads the meaning. Ss, again, 
 the eye of the soul acquires a discernment whereby 
 some can instantly read the characters of others. 
 They can tell the temptations of other men; they 
 can read even their thoughts, and that by an insight 
 which does not come from nature. It comes from the 
 Holy Spirit. Once more, the eye of the soul acquires 
 the power of seeing things afar off—that is, of foresee- 
 ing events, changes, contingencies, and the conjune- 
 tures of all these circumstances; go that men seem 
 almost to prophesy. They can foretell, for instance, 
 that such a man ig going forward to his ruin, when 
 nobody as yet could see the first inclination to a fall. 
 A keen spiritual discernment in them has found out 
 that there was a flaw Somewhere. Now all these 
 perceptions and discernments are the Operations of 
 the Holy Spirit working upon the soul in the form 
 of knowledge, counsel, wisdom, understanding, which 
 are the four gifts that perfect the intellect, 
 
 2. But, next, all men have an ear, and yet we 
 know that many can never learn to play on a musical 
 instrument, nor to form a note. N 0 practice or toil 
 can ever make them sing in time. Others, again, seem 
 to be made of music. They can sing before they can 
 talk; and with a tapidity which seems to be not so 
 
 I2 
 
178 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 much an acquisition as a gift, they cultivate the ear 
 to perfection. Now what did our Divine Lord mean 
 when He said, ‘He that hath ears to hear, let him 
 hear,”® but the plain truth that they in whose hearts 
 the Holy Ghost reigns hear the word of God and 
 understand ; while others who are without the Holy 
 Ghost hear the sound of the words and do not answer 
 because they do not understand ? And when Saint 
 Paul says, ‘Faith cometh by hearing,“ he means 
 the same thing—that the Gospel was preached equally 
 to those who believed and to those who did not 
 believe. What made the difference? The difference 
 was, because in those whose hearts were faithful to 
 the call of the Holy Spirit the truth they heard 
 generated faith ; but in those who had not the Spirit 
 of God, or who, through pride, or presumption, or 
 obstinacy, or prejudice, set themselves against what 
 they heard, the truth elicited no faith. They did not 
 understand it, because they knew not the voice of 
 God. ‘He that is of God heareth the words of God ; 
 therefore you hear them not, because you are not of 
 God.’® What our Lord meant us to learn is simply 
 this: that the spiritual ear, which the Holy Ghost 
 makes keen and quick to listen, is not cultivated in 
 
 those who, when they hear the truth, do not believe 
 
 3 §,. Matt. xi. 15, &c. 4 Rom. x. 17. 5 §. John viii. 47. 
 
THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 179 
 
 it. ‘My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, 
 and they follow Me, for they know My voice; but a 
 stranger they follow not.’ 
 
 And then, once more, the soul has a taste, just 
 as the body. Therefore the Psalmist says, ‘ Taste 
 and see that the Lord is sweet.” Now there can be 
 no doubt that the name of God and the word of God 
 are not sweet to the great multitude of men; and 
 why ? Not because the Holy Ghost is not in them, 
 but because these gifts of the Holy Ghost, as I will 
 show hereafter, are suppressed and suffocated. The 
 Psalmist says again, ‘How sweet is Thy word unto 
 my lips; it is sweeter than the honey and the honey- 
 comb.’* And we know, in the lives of the saints, that 
 some of them, as soon as they heard the name of 
 God or the name of Jesus, have lost all memory of 
 other things, and have been carried out of themselves 
 with joy. No sweetness in the world, no sweetness 
 of music, no sweetness of sensible taste, was to them 
 comparable to the sweetness of the name of God or 
 of the name of Jesus. And why was this? We are 
 not so moved. It was because the spiritual taste in 
 them was cultivated ; because they were guided by 
 the gift of wisdom—the name of which is sapientia: 
 
 a word that signifies a knowledge by tasting the 
 
 S$ §. John iii. 27. * Pas xxx 9, § Tb. exviii. 103. 
 
189 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 truth; alight to discern and to taste the sweetness 
 of divine things. Now Saint Paul says all this in 
 few words: ‘The spiritual man judgeth all things ; 
 but he himself is judged by no man.” That is, he 
 has a discernment whereby he can taste spiritual 
 things ; and no man can correct his discrimination, 
 because men of the world do not understand the 
 things of the Spirit of God; because they cannot tell 
 sweet from bitter: they put bitter for sweet. ‘The 
 sensual man knoweth not the things of the Spirit of 
 God; for they are foolishness unto him, and he can- 
 not understand, because they are spiritually exam- 
 ined; that is, tested, tried, proved, and known by 
 the gift of the Spirit of God. i 
 
 3. The seven gifts of the Holy Ghost perfect the 
 whole soul; for in what does the perfection of the 
 soul consist but in these three things—illumination of 
 the reason, sanctification of the heart, and the union of 
 the will with the will of God. This is the perfection 
 of the soul in all its faculties. There are, as you 
 know, four kinds of light, by which we can shape 
 and govern our actions. There is the light of reason, 
 sufficient in the order of nature, but at times both 
 cold and dim. There are wide regions of truth in 
 
 which reason can hardly see its road. Reason can 
 
 ® 1 Cor. ii. 15. 10 Th, ii. 14. 
 
THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 181 
 
 see its way in the order of natural truths ; but with- 
 out the Spirit of God it cannot see its path in the 
 order of grace. Reason is a good light whereby to 
 travel on the earth; butit does not give light enough - 
 to show the way up the mountain which leads into 
 the kingdom of God. It can lead us some way, and 
 then we need another light, and reason delivers us 
 over to that other guide. When reason has done its 
 utmost in proving to us that God has revealed His 
 will, then we believe that revelation to be divine; 
 after that faith guides us onward. We make an act 
 of faith, which is the highest act of reason, and that 
 act of faith delivers us over to a divine guide. 
 Thenceforward reason and faith walk side by side. 
 All the rest of our lives we are guided by reason 
 and faith together. The lesser light is the light of 
 reason, the greater light is the light of faith; and 
 these two are distinct, but indivisible for ever. And 
 then, springing from reason and faith, there is the 
 light of prudence, which is both natural and super- 
 natural. But we have, lastly, another light which is 
 higher than all; and that is the light of faith made 
 perfect by the four gifts of wisdom, and of under- 
 standing, and of knowledge, and of counsel. These 
 four of the seven gifts perfect both the reason of 
 man and the virtue of faith; and, as I said before, 
 
182 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 faith is the most perfect act of the reason, the high- 
 est, and the noblest, and the nearest to that eternal 
 union of the intelligence with the uncreated wisdom 
 of God. Such is the illumination of the reason. 
 But, next, the heartis perfected by sanctification ; 
 that is to say, the heart and the will (which, as I 
 said in the beginning, may be taken together) are 
 perfected by the other three of the seven gifts: 
 namely piety, or the filial love of God and the frater- 
 nal love of our neighbour, which springs immediately 
 from the love of God our Father; next, holy fear, 
 whereby we would deliberately choose rather to lay 
 down our lives than offend God, or even go into the 
 danger of offending Him; and, lastly, fortitude, where- 
 by we are made willing and strong to bear anything 
 for His sake, to take up our cross and to follow Him. 
 These seven gifts, then, elicit into action and expand 
 into perfection the virtues of faith, hope, and charity; 
 and these, again, make perfect the reason, heart, and 
 will; and thereby the whole soul, in all its natural 
 and supernatural perfections, is made perfect and 
 united with God. And when these gifts are fully 
 expanded, they have been well likened to the sails of 
 a ship, which, when they are spread, catch every 
 wind, and the more widely they are spread, the more 
 
 wind is caught and the speedier is our course. 
 
THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 183 
 
 Such, then, are the gifts of the Holy Ghost ; 
 and when the inspirations of the Holy Ghost find 
 these gifts spread and expanded in the soul, they 
 impel it swiftly onwards in its way towards God and 
 eternity. But those who either have lost these Spiri- 
 tual gifts or by indolence have neglected to use them 
 are like ships that are dismantled, which lie motion- 
 less upon the waters. The winds blow upon them in 
 vain. There is no sail spread to catch them; there 
 is hardly power to impel them into motion. I am 
 not speaking of those who have altogether forfeited 
 grace by mortal sin, but of those who have hindered 
 their advance and weakened the power of grace in 
 their hearts by the frequent commission of venial sin. 
 They may, indeed, be making progress, but it is 
 slowly and uncertainly. They are making progress, 
 with painful effort, with labour and noise, like those 
 who are compelled to row with oars because they have 
 no sail to set, or can set no sail even if they have it. 
 They must depend upon the labour and toil of their 
 own strength. Having lost the help of grace, they 
 are endeavouring to force themselves onward in the 
 way of God by straining the powers of nature, which 
 can never bring a soul to salvation. 
 
 (1) Let us now make application of what I have 
 said. The Holy Spirit of God is the creator of all 
 
184 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 things. It was He Who ordered the first creation. 
 ‘The Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters.’ 
 He impressed upon the first creation the law of its 
 perfection; He gave to everything its form and ful- 
 ness—to each after its kind. But in an especial 
 sense He is the Author and Perfecter of the new crea- 
 tion of God, which springs from the Incarnation. And 
 there are two operations which He is always carry- 
 ing on in this new creation of the regenerate. He is 
 always sanctifying the will of man, and He is always 
 illuminating the reason of man; for He is the H- 
 luminator and the Sanctifier: and this twofold office 
 constitutes His work in the soul. When the Holy 
 Ghost sanctifies the soul, He is creating the saints 
 of God. We are all of us ‘called to be saints.” 
 When you were regenerated, you were called to 
 sanctity—imperfect it may be in this world, but per- 
 fect in eternity. The power of sanctity was then im- 
 planted in you. I am but repeating the words of 
 the Holy Spirit, by whose guidance the Apostles 
 wrote. Do not begin to count up the canonised 
 saints, for I am not speaking of them only. I am 
 also speaking of them, indeed, for they were once in 
 the warfare and imperfections of this world just as 
 
 you are now; they were as commonplace; they were 
 
 11 Gen, i. 2. 12 Rom. i. 7. 
 
THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 185 
 
 as homely in their look and bearing ; they were as 
 weak ; they were as sorely tempted ; they were buf- 
 feted; they sinned; they fell; they were stained by 
 their falls; they rose again; they were penitent ; 
 they persevered unto the end. The saints now be- 
 fore the Throne in the kingdom of glory are only the 
 ripe and perfect fruit which has been gathered from 
 the mystical vine; and we are the unripe and imper- 
 fect fruit hanging in their stead. You are all bound 
 to be saints, The little children among us are the 
 most like saints on earth; for they are the fresh- 
 est from the waters of regeneration, and as yet the 
 world has not stained them, and their own will has 
 not departed from God. They are in their baptismal 
 innocence. And our Divine Saviour took a little 
 child and set him in the midst even of Apostles, 
 and said, ‘Unless you become as one of these, you 
 shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.’ We are, then, 
 surrounded by saints. We think that saints are 
 like the great mountains, or like the cedars of Leba- 
 non, in the kingdom of God—seldom to be seen and 
 afar off. There are saints standing amongst us, and 
 we know them not. They do not know it themselves ‘ 
 for sanctity sees only its own imperfections. And 
 you were once like the saints; you were once chil- 
 dren fresh in the innocence of grace; for you were 
 
186 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 then humble, and unstained, and docile, and obe- 
 dient. And there are other saints to be found on 
 earth. In the multitude of the poor there are to be 
 found the friends of Jesus and the followers of His 
 poverty, and they are saints. ‘ Blessed are the poor 
 in spirit.”* The state of poverty is a discipline 
 of mortification and self-denial, of humility and 
 submission. It generates the spirit of poverty, which 
 is true perfection. ‘Hath not God chosen the poor 
 of this world, rich in faith?’* ‘ A rich man shall 
 hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven?’ ‘ Woe 
 unto you, O rich ; for you have received your consola- 
 tion. Why did our Divine Master, pitiful and 
 tender as He is, speak so sternly? Because riches 
 generate pride; and from pride spring covetousness, 
 worldliness, selfishness, self-dependence, isolation, 
 unsympathetic hearts—and hearts without sympathy 
 are far offfrom God. Such hearts have little union with 
 the Sacred Heart of Jesus, or with the Holy Ghost. 
 Happy, then, are the poor, whose life is hard and 
 austere; whose hunger and thirst, if they are borne 
 in patience, are true fasting ; whose homes are more 
 bare and empty than the cell of an anchorite; whose 
 whole life is a life of toil, that chastises both the body 
 
 13 §, Matt. v. 3. 14 §. James ii. 5. 
 1 §. Matt. xix, 23, 16 §, Luke vi. 24. 
 
# 
 
 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 187 
 
 and the will. Such a state generates detachment 
 from self, and thankfulness, and dependence on the 
 good providence and watchful care of our Heavenly 
 Father. When our Divine Lord said, ‘ Blessed are ye 
 poor,’ He did not indeed bless those only who were 
 poor in this world with external poverty. He gave 
 this beatitude to all those, in whatsoever state they 
 are, who are poor in spirit. It matters not what 
 may be their outward state. They may possess in 
 safety their wealth, their broad lands, their noble 
 houses, their great titles, their prerogatives, royal 
 or imperial, if only their hearts are poor before God, 
 if they are detached from the world and detached 
 from self. All that they possess externally will not 
 hinder their sanctification any more than the exter- 
 nal poverty of the poor will insure their sanctifica- 
 tion. The richest and the noblest may be perfectly 
 detached from this world, poor in spirit in the midst 
 of all that it heaps upon them; and if so, their will 
 is sanctified, and they are among the saints of God. 
 Let us take examples of saints who by these seven 
 gifts renounced the world. 
 
 One held an honourable and useful office in 
 Rome. In the midst of the Pontifical Court, with all 
 its lawful splendours, he found the atmosphere too 
 
 dangerous for him. He therefore renounced it, and 
 
188 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 became a priest and spent his whole life in charity 
 for the salvation of souls. Such was Saint Caietan. 
 Another was practising at the bar, one day let slip 
 a slight untruth. He was so wounded in his con- 
 science, that in the greatest fear be renounced at 
 once the profession in which he had all before him. 
 Such was Saint Alphonsus. Saint Rose of Lima 
 was by nature beautiful, and had an appearance 
 which attracted notice. She cut off her hair, lest she 
 should draw around her temptations which might be 
 fatal to humility and to forgetfulness of self. These 
 were actions prompted by the gift of holy fear. The 
 gift of fortitude has created the martyrs. It made 
 Saint Pancratius, a little boy, as strong as Saint 
 Sebastian, who was a leader of the legions of Rome. 
 It made Saint Agnes, a child of fourteen years, as 
 strong in will and inflexible in courage as Saint 
 Lawrence and the martyred Pontiffs of the Church. 
 Fortitude made our great Saint Thomas of Canterbury. 
 For six long years, with a martyr’s will and a clear 
 foresight of the death that awaited him, he went on- 
 ward without swerving to his hour of martyrdom. 
 But, as I said before, it is not only the saints who 
 are canonised who could do these things, but you also, 
 if you have the gift of fortitude in your will. You 
 
 are even now willing to bear any cross that may come 
 
THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 189 
 
 upon you rather than betray your faith ; you will not 
 be ashamed of the scorn or the laughter of the world ; 
 you will not be afraid of its malice; you will not 
 fear the accusations that may be hurled at you. You 
 will say in the light of God’s presence, ‘I know that 
 these bitter words are the badge of the disciples of © 
 Jesus; the world’s hatred is His bequest. I know 
 that the faith for which Iam cast out is the truth 
 which the pencil of the Holy Ghost has written upon 
 the intelligence of the Holy Catholic Church, and I 
 will gladly die for it.’ More than this, if you have 
 fortitude in you, you will not be afraid of a little 
 penance, of a little fasting, of a little abstinence, a 
 little voluntary poverty, a little sharp dealing with 
 yourselves, a little crossing of your own self-in- 
 dulgence, a little secret privation, which none will 
 ever know save your Heavenly Father Who seeth in 
 secret. You may carry a penitent will even under the 
 soft raiment that you wear, because your state in life 
 demands it. Go through the world unnoticed if you 
 can. Those that make themselves singular in their 
 dress or manners are seldom free from vanity. Those 
 who make outward show of their austerities or their 
 penances are the least likely to persevere, because 
 singularity generates self-consciousness, and self- 
 
 consciousness generates pride. Secret privations, 
 
190 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 secret sacrifices of your own will, which will never 
 be known until all things are revealed, are surer in- 
 struments of perfection than chains and shirts of 
 hair. The Holy Ghost in this way creates His 
 saints. And when I say saints, [ mean such as you 
 are, or such as you may be. I can say nothing to 
 encourage you moré on the one hand, and I can say 
 nothing to humble us more on the other. Saints, 
 then, are made by the gifts that sanctify the will. 
 
 (2) Next, it is by the sanctification of the intel- 
 lect that the Holy Ghost creates the doctors of the 
 Church. I will not dwell on this; it is a subject 
 which ought to be taken by itself. Faith is like the 
 sun, and theology is like the rays which flow from 
 it. This great radiance of the faith is partly what 
 the world storms against as dogma, or dogmatic theo- 
 logy; partly it is what the world cannot understand, 
 that is, mystical theology; partly what the world 
 hates, ascetic theology; and partly that which the 
 world is always violating, I mean moral theology. And 
 these four great provinces of divine truth are culti- 
 vated in the Church by men whom the Holy Ghost 
 illuminates and sanctifies for that work. Saint Atha- 
 nasius, Saint Augustine, Saint Leo, our great Saint 
 Anselm of Canterbury, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint 
 
 Bonaventure, Saint Bernard, Saint Bernardine of 
 
 ee ee a —_ 
 
THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 191 
 
 Sienna, Saint Alphonsus, and a multitude who have 
 not been canonised on earth, though they are saints 
 in heaven, have been illuminated by the Holy Ghost, 
 by the four gifts which perfect the intellect, for the 
 illumination of the Church. They have each, accord- 
 ing as the gifts of science or counsel, intellect or 
 wisdom, prevailed in them, elaborated and taught the 
 science of dogmatic, or mystical, or ascetic, or moral 
 truth. To these may be added the Pontiffs who have 
 legislated for the Church. The sacred Canon law 
 against which the rebellious wills and shallow in- 
 tellects of men have ever clamoured is the noblest, 
 highest, purest legislation that mankind has ever 
 known. The jurisprudence of the Church is the per- 
 fection of wisdom and justice. And here the difference 
 between the Church and the world comes out into 
 light. The doctors and legislators of the world may be 
 unsanctified men. The doctors and law-givers of the 
 Church are created by the Holy Ghost. Of the men 
 of science who are the doctors of the world at this 
 day, many openly deny the existence of God. We 
 are living in a century when men pride themselves on 
 their intellectual culture, and on the illumination of 
 science, and I know not what; butit is an intellectual 
 culture which prides itself upon its independence of 
 God, and its divorce from the sanctification of the 
 
192 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 will. The whole power of ‘ progress and modern 
 civilisation’ is at this moment attempting to accom- 
 plish four things—to expunge God from science, to 
 drive His name out of education from the highest to 
 the lowest school, to shut out His revealed law from 
 the whole public order of states, and from the whole 
 culture of the human intellect. What wonder if the 
 apostles and prophets, the doctors and Pharisees, of 
 modern civilisation rose up and threw dust in the 
 air at the promulgation of the Syllabus? But I may 
 not go on. The Holy Ghost creates saints, and the 
 | Holy Ghost creates doctors, but fools create them- 
 ‘selves. And who are they whom the Word of God 
 numbers among the fools? Those who have not the 
 seven gifts of the Holy Ghost in them, or those who 
 having them by regeneration will not use the faculties 
 they have received; those who, having the light of 
 the Holy Spirit, which would make them wise and 
 understanding, suffocate these gifts by empty pride. 
 I use the word ‘fool’ because the Word of God has 
 used it before me, and the word ‘ fool’ in the Holy 
 Scripture is equivalent to the word sinner. 
 ‘Fools despise wisdom’” is the saying of the 
 Holy Ghost Himself. And the man that prefers this 
 world to the next makes the fool’s bargain. They 
 
 Prov. i. 7. 
 
THE SEVEN GIFTS oF THE HOLY GHOST; 193 
 
 who, having treasures within them beyond all that 
 man can give, squander them like spendthrifts and 
 wreck them like bankrupts, are fools indeed. And how 
 do they do this? In two ways. They do it, first, by 
 any mortal sin, which at once extinguishes all sanc-’ 
 tifying grace: and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost 
 go with it. They do it, next, by a habit of venial sin, 
 which stifles the operations of grace. I hope we may 
 believe that we are in a state of sanctifying grace. 
 Nevertheless, we may make ourselves fools even while 
 we abide in a state of grace. We may do so by the 
 venial sins which we commit every day with such 
 facility and in such a multitude. Like as the fine 
 dust which gathers gradually and imperceptibly upon 
 a timepiece slackens its motion and destroys its pre- 
 cision in marking the time, so the multitude of venia] 
 sins gradually clouds the conscience, and chokes ana 
 Slackens the action of these Seven gifts. At last 
 there is formed a habit, and then a character, oppo- 
 site and repugnant to these seven virtues; as, for 
 example, where pride gradually forms itself wisdom — 
 is cast out; where pride is wisdom goes out of itself, 
 for where pride is wisdom will not dwell. Pride is, 
 therefore, the Supreme folly of man. Again, where’: 
 there is presumption and rashness there is no holy" 
 
 fear. A man that is not afraid of the occasions of sin 
 
 bs: 
 
194 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 will soon fall. Again, people are afraid of the world, 
 or they love the world and worship of the world, or 
 they applaud the world that they may be applauded 
 again, that they may get into society, or that they 
 may gain position or the notice of those whose 
 names are known in the world. What fortitude is 
 there in such empty-hearts ?- They are ashamed of 
 the Name of our Divine Lord. Be sure of this, that 
 His disciples will always be looked down upon. It is 
 in some of these many ways that we form pride, self- 
 ishness, and worldliness. And these things hinder 
 the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and at last extinguish 
 them. All this is what Saint Paul has said in 
 words I have already quoted. ‘ The sensual man,’ or, 
 as the word is in the original, the animal man, the 
 natural man, ‘ perceiveth not the things of the Spirit; 
 for they are foolishness unto him, neither shall he per- 
 ceive them, because they are spiritually discerned.”® 
 Just as the spiritual man is supernatural, and the 
 world invisible is, to him, more real and sensible 
 than the world that he can see—and he lives for that 
 world, and for God Who reigns in it, and for the 
 interests of the kingdom of God—so the unspiritual 
 ‘man 1s a man who lives for this visible and perishing 
 
 __World. The worldly and natural man lives for every- 
 
 3°) Cor ii. 14. 
 
 —— 
 
THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 195 
 
 thing that is worldly. Nothing but what he can see, 
 and handle, and touch is real to him. Everything 
 that he can see is substantial, but nothing that he 
 cannot touch, handle, and see has action or power 
 over him. This is the state in which many begin; but 
 what is the state in which they may end? The Apostle 
 Saint Jude has told us: ‘ These be they who separate 
 themselves, sensual men not having the Spirit.’ 
 Here is the history of heretics and schismatics, and 
 all those who set themselves up against the truth 
 and the Church of God. Here is the secret of the 
 fall of the worldling, of the folly, of the pride of 
 those whom I have described. 
 
 ' (3) Being by no merits of our own, but by sove- 
 reign grace in the light of the wisdom of God, let 
 us pray every day, ‘ Lead us not into temptation,’ 
 but preserve us from the folly of our own hearts. 
 Be devout to the person of the Holy Ghost. ‘If 
 any man love the world, the love of the Father is 
 not in him.”° ‘If any man love not our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, maranatha.’2! 
 But if a man does not love the Holy Ghost, he 
 will sin against Him. If he sin against Him, ‘he 
 shall never be forgiven, neither in this world nor in 
 
 the world to come.” But there is no command to 
 
 #8. Judel9. #18. Johnii.15. 2! 1 Cor.xvi.22. 279. Matt. xii. 32. 
 
196 THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 love the Holy Ghost; and why? Because the Holy 
 Ghost is the Love of God and the Giver of love. He 
 is the Charity of God. He is poured forth into our 
 hearts. He is the Holy Ghost Who is given unto us. 
 There is therefore no need of commandment to love 
 Him. If we have God the Holy Ghost in us, we 
 cannot but love Him. We shall realise His per- 
 sonality; we shall know Him to be co-eternal and co- 
 equal to the Father and the Son; we shall be con- 
 scious of His presence; we shall know His voice 
 and His power, and we shall feel His friendship ; 
 we shall remember all day long that we are the 
 temples of the Holy Ghost, that He dwells in us; we 
 shall keep at the greatest distance from every contact 
 with sin and from its occasions; we shall not endure 
 a soil or a stain upon that white robe with which 
 He invested us in baptism, which also He cleanses 
 with such diligence and with such tenderness every 
 day of our life, whensoever we make an act of con- 
 trition. 
 
 Remember, then, His presence ; walk in the light 
 with which He encompasses you. Be faithful to His 
 inspirations. A heart that corresponds with His in- 
 spirations is enlarged and expanded. And the gifts 
 of the Holy Ghost in us are like the buds upon the 
 
 trees which are always unfolding into flower and 
 
THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 197 
 
 _ fruit. ‘We are not straitened in Him,’ as the Apostle 
 says; ‘ we are straitened in ourselves.’ Our hearts will 
 be enlarged, and we shall run the way of God’s com- 
 mandments, if we expand with the grace of the Holy 
 Ghost. A heart so enlarged is a heart that is full of 
 the peace of God—a heart full of strength, a heart 
 full of God Himself. And what is the bliss of 
 eternity? It is this: God the Holy Ghost will 
 transfigure the faith He has given us into the light 
 of glory. And when by the light of glory He has 
 perfected our intellect, with the gifts of wisdom and 
 of understanding, of knowledge and of counsel we 
 shall see God; and when He has made perfect our 
 heart in filial piety and holy fear, and in the virtue 
 of fortitude, we shall be united with God in love for 
 ever. This is the wedding garment which the Holy 
 Ghost will put upon us. The soul will be thereby 
 elevated and united with God; and then in His light 
 we shall see light, and ‘the Lord shall be our ever- 
 lasting light, and our God our glory.” 
 
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 And He shall be filled with the Spirit of the fear of the Lord. 
 Isatas xi. 3. 
 
 ‘TuESE words were spoken of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 They are a prophecy of the unction of the Holy 
 Ghost, which should rest in all its fulness upon the 
 head of the Incarnate Son, the Messias—that is, the 
 Anointed. And therefore the fear of the Lord 
 spoken of in this place is not a fear which arises 
 from sin, for in Him was no sin. It is a fear which 
 is one of the perfections of the human soul, and is 
 also a gift of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Now the gifts of the Holy Ghost are certain 
 habitual dispositions, or certain Supernatural facul- 
 ties of the soul by which it has a tendency and a 
 power to attain to special perfections. Fire has a 
 tendency to ascend; water has a tendency to descend. 
 The nature of fire and of water contains in itself 
 these two tendencies. The eye has a tendency, if it 
 be trained, to continual development of more perfect 
 
202 THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 
 
 sight. The ear, if it be cultivated, has a tendency 
 to acquire a more perfect perception of harmony. 
 Just so the fear which arises from the consciousness 
 of sin, if it be purified by grace, ripens at last into 
 the fear which is a gift of the Holy Ghost, and is 
 called the gift of holy fear. 
 
 We have already seen that of these seven gifts, 
 three perfect the will and four perfect the intellect. 
 
 The three that perfect the will are holy fear, 
 piety, and fortitude. The four that perfect the intel- 
 lect, or reason, are understanding, wisdom, science, 
 and counsel. Of these four I will speak hereafter. 
 We will take now the gift of holy fear. Remember 
 that these seven gifts are given to every baptised 
 soul. You have every one of you received them; 
 but they lie dormant in the soul until they are cul- 
 tivated and brought out into activity. As I said 
 before, the eye and the ear have dormant perfections 
 which are never known until they are cultivated ; so 
 these seven gifts of the Holy Ghost need cultivation 
 that they may be brought to their perfection. They 
 were all given to you in your Baptism, and they all 
 exist simultaneously in every soul so long as it is in 
 a state of grace. They are at once and all together 
 forfeited if any one falls into mortal sin. But so 
 
 long as the soul is in union with God, these seven 
 
THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 203 
 
 gifts are all present. Some, perhaps, lie dormant 
 altogether, all of them, indeed, at least in some 
 degree, but they are all simultaneously present in 
 the soul. I say this because we should form a false ~ 
 conception if we supposed them only to act suc- 
 cessively and in order of time. They do not act 
 one before the other, nor does one spring in succes- 
 sion out of the other; but they act all together, like 
 as the faculties of the intellect, which are all simul- 
 taneously at work in the mind. All are present, all 
 are in activity, though some are more fully developed 
 than others. 
 
 To make the gift of holy fear more intelligible, 
 let us examine what are the different kinds of fear. 
 
 There are four distinct kinds. The first is called 
 a worldly fear; that is to say, the fear which exists 
 in the soul of every man who is living without 
 God in the world. This is a fear of losing the 
 things that he loves. And what are the things that 
 a worldly man loves? Simply the things of this 
 life. He loves the world, its wealth, its honours, its 
 pleasure, its friendship, so far, that is, as it minis- 
 ters to his enjoyment or his profit. This is a sordid 
 fear. All men of the world are sordid, and the more 
 worldly the more sordid. They are haunted by the 
 dread of losing the things on which they have set 
 
904 THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 
 
 their heart. Now this worldly fear is like the sorrow 
 of the world, which the Apostle says ‘worketh death.” 
 Godly sorrow works the conversion of the soul unto 
 penance and salvation. The sorrow of the world you 
 see in such people when they are afflicted. Not know- 
 ing God, they do not turn to Him for consolation. 
 They devour themselves with grief; they gnaw their 
 own hearts. Such a sorrow, unrelieved by super- 
 natural light or solace, works death. People lose 
 their reason, break their health, and often die from 
 disappointed ambition, ruin of fortune, wreck of hopes. 
 The fear of the world is like its sorrow. Ambitious 
 or covetous men, who have set their whole hearts 
 upon something of this world, are always in fear 
 that they shall fail; and nine times out of ten they 
 do fail, and, worn out in brain and heart, break down 
 and die. - This is a fear which belongs not to Heaven 
 but to Hell. Itis no gift of the Holy Ghost, but a 
 perpetual grieving of His eternal love. 
 
 Secondly, there is a fear which is called servile 
 fear, because it is the fear of slaves. Now the fear 
 of slaves is the fear of punishment, the fear of the 
 lash, the fear of chains and the fear of bondage. A 
 servile fear in the service of God means this: that a 
 man forsakes sin only because he fears hell; and, as 
 
 1 2 Cor. vii. 10. 
 
THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 205 
 
 Saint Augustine says, the man that does not sin 
 only because he fears hell shows that he hates hell, 
 and not sin. There is no hatred of sin as sin in 
 him. He has no purity, no piety, no generosity. 
 ‘There is no aspiration for better things. He seems 
 to say: ‘If there were no hell and no eternal punish- 
 ment, [would sin; and I only wish that there were no 
 eternal punishment attached to these sins, because 
 I could then commit them with impunity. I would 
 commit many sins, if I did not know that by com- 
 mitting them I shall incur the eternal punishment 
 of God.’ This is a servile fear, base and slavish. 
 Thirdly, there is what is called the initial fear, 
 or the fear of the Lord in its beginning. And that 
 is in every one of us. I do not say, dear brethren, 
 that there is not also a mixture of servile fear in 
 every one of us, because no doubt there is. In pro- 
 portion as flesh and blood prevail over the Spirit and 
 grace of God in us there is this servile fear; for, as 
 Saint John says, ‘perfect charity casteth out fear ;’? 
 so, just in proportion as we grow in the love of God 
 this servile fear is cast out, that is, it is purified 
 of its love or will to sin. This initial fear means a 
 fear which springs, at least in some degree, from the 
 love of God, perhaps not as yet in any high degree— 
 
 21 St. John iv. 18. 
 
206 THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 
 
 but there is this higher motive, namely, a desire to 
 possess God in eternity—a desire to save our soul, a 
 desire to enter into eternal life. These are things 
 that we hope for by the light of faith, and these 
 show that we have at least the beginning of the love 
 of God in us. This initial fear, therefore, is a 
 higher kind of fear springing from the Holy Spirit ; 
 but it is not the gift of which we are speaking. 
 Fourthly—and this is the gift of the fear of 
 the Lord—there is what is called filial fear, the 
 fear, not of slaves, but of sons. It is a fear like that 
 of a dutiful and loving son, who desires in all 
 things to do the will of his father; not merely to 
 escape punishment, no, nor to obtain a reward—it is 
 neither servile, nor is it mercenary—but because of 
 the love of his father, because of his Father’s good 
 ness, and because he knows that his own bliss is 
 inseparable from his father’s love. Therefore he 
 stands in a filial fear of offending him. It is not 
 the terror with which we regard a taskmaster. It is 
 the fear with which we regard a great love, a great 
 tenderness, a great majesty ; towards which we bear 
 ourselves with reverence, submission, and obedience. 
 In proportion as we love the person we fear to offend 
 him. As love grows this filial fear becomes more 
 
 perfect. The more tenderly a child loves its parent, 
 
THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 207 
 
 the more sensitive and delicate it is to do not only 
 its father’s commands, but what it knows to be its 
 father’s desire. A mere look or glance of the eye is 
 enough to check, or to reprove, or to guide, a sensitive - 
 child. This, then, is the filial fear which is described 
 as the gift of the Holy Ghost.’ 
 
 Let us take an example which will put this sub- 
 ject fully before us, and then I will go on to describe 
 what are the fruits, or workings, of this filial fear. 
 The example I will take is that of our Divine Lord 
 Himself. As I have said, this prophecy of Isaias is 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, in Whom was no sin; in 
 Whom there could be nothing servile, nothing mer- 
 cenary, nothing of self; and yet in Him this holy 
 fear was perfect. It was, first, a profound worship 
 and veneration of God. Tt was, secondly, a perfect 
 dependence upon God; for, as man, His human soul 
 was capable of all the same perfections that we are. 
 Thirdly, it was a profound submission to the will of 
 God. Now these three things constitute this filial 
 fear— worship, dependence, and submission. You 
 see these things in their perfection throughout the 
 
 * ‘Timor est habitus voluntatis per quem efficitur homo optime 
 mobilis a supernaturali inspiratione Paracleti ad vitandum omne 
 malignum secundum directionem seu opem Spiritus Sancti super- 
 
 naturaliter in homine operantis.’ Dionys. Carthusian. De Donis 
 Spir, Sanct. tract. iii. art. 44, Oper. Minor. tom. i. Cologne, 1582. 
 
208 THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 
 
 whole life of our Lord, in the whole of His obedience, 
 and in the whole of His Passion, which was His 
 obedience made perfect by suffering. And in His 
 Passion we see these three perfections of holy fear in 
 their fulness. We will go on to examine what are 
 the workings, or, I may say, what are the fruits and 
 the effects, of this filial fear in us. 
 
 1. The first is a profound consciousness that in 
 the sight of God we are but sin and nothing. Just 
 in proportion as we have a sense of the perfection of 
 God and of the eternity of God, this consciousness 
 will be deeper. A Council of the Church in early 
 days said that of ourselves we have nothing but 
 falsehood and sin. Now what did the Council mean 
 by those two words? It meant that God made 
 us after His own likeness, and therefore made us 
 good; but that we have superadded to our nature no 
 perfection of our own, for we had none to give. Yet 
 there are two things we could add to it—we could 
 deface His image, and so falsify it; we could falsify 
 it, and so make it sinful. Therefore, when the 
 Council said that we have nothing of our own except 
 falsehood and sin, it meant this: that we have soiled 
 our innocence and have degraded our dignity. Such 
 is the state of man after the Fall, and that state is 
 
 our own work. What, then, is the meaning of saying 
 
THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 209 
 
 that before God we are sin and nothing? It means 
 simply this: first, that we are, every one of us, 
 sinners before God. We are sinners by original sin, 
 though our original sin is inherited, and no act of. 
 our own. Nevertheless, we are properly sinners be- 
 fore God, because we are born into this world of the 
 fallen race of Adam; and our sin consists in this : 
 that we are born deprived of the grace of the Holy 
 Ghost, and with three wounds: one in the intellect, 
 that is, ignorance ; one in the heart, that is, passion ; 
 one in the will, that is, infirmity. Such is our original 
 sin. But, secondly, we are actual sinners before 
 God. There is not one of us that has not the con- 
 sciousness within him of a whole world of thoughts, 
 words, and deeds, from his childhood to this day, 
 knowingly and wilfully committed against the eternal 
 law of God; and therefore we are every one of us 
 guilty before God. No human heart can conceive 
 what is the multitude, what is the innumerable multi- 
 tude, of the sins that we have perhaps committed even 
 in act; and if we cannot count up the sins we have 
 committed in act, who shall count up the sins that he 
 has committed in words? And who but God alone can 
 know the number of the sins we have committed in 
 thought ? Therefore before God we have been, or we 
 
 are, each one a world of iniquity; a world of darkness ; 
 
 14 
 
210 THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 
 
 a world of confusion; and therefore a world of spiri- 
 tual death. But even more than this. God created 
 everything that He made with a special law and for a 
 special purpose. He created the stars in the firma- 
 ment to give light; He created the trees of the earth 
 to bear fruit; He created our souls to manifest the 
 light of His imagé; and He implanted in us the 
 faculties and powers of the soul that we might bear 
 fruits of an intelligent and deliberate obedience. 
 What, then, are we in His sight ? Wandering stars 
 whose light is dim or quenched; barren fig-trees 
 whom He spares from year to year, from hour to hour; 
 ‘autumn trees, as the Apostle says, without fruit. 
 The fruit that we ought to have borne—the fruit of 
 innocence, the fruit of sanctity, the fruit of justice, 
 the fruit of piety, the fruit of generosity, or, at least, 
 the fruit of penance—where are they? What is our 
 life? And therefore before God we are not only 
 guilty of sin, but we are fruitless and unprofitable ; 
 we are unworthy; we have neglected the graces He 
 has given us; we have used our intellect for all 
 manner of untruth; we have used our heart for all 
 manner of disorderly affections; we have used our 
 wills for all manner of conscious variance to His 
 holy will. So far we are but sin. And next, we are 
 
 but nothing in His sight. We are mere creatures, 
 
THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 211 
 
 and therefore we have only a borrowed and dependent 
 existence. For what is a creature ? There is but One 
 Who exists, and it is He Whose name is ‘I am Who 
 
 > 
 
 am. All other beings are but as rays that come 
 forth from Him; they are mere acts of His will, 
 emanations of His will, and they are sustained by 
 His will, and they exist ag long as He wills them to 
 exist; and if for a moment He were to withdraw 
 that will from them they would exist no more. And 
 such are we. We are creatures who have come forth 
 from His omnipotence, and are sustained by His 
 almighty power, and we should pass away into no- 
 thing if that almighty power were withdrawn. And 
 yet we use the power He has given us to sin against 
 Him ; and yet we squander the faculties which He 
 has given us for His service. We stand before Him 
 like the stars that give no light, like the trees that 
 give no fruit. And therefore I exaggerated nothing 
 in the beginning when I gaid that if we have the gift 
 of holy fear in us, knowing God as He is and our- 
 selves as we are, we shall have a present conscious- 
 ness that in His sight we are but sin and nothing. 
 2. Now wherever there is this holy fear there is 
 a profound horror of sin. Imagine to yourself for 
 one moment what must have been the horror of the 
 Son of God—the sinless Son of God—when He 
 
O12 THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 
 
 came into the world and found Himself encompassed 
 by sinners, in contact with sin, tempted by the devil ; 
 when He saw sin and death ravaging the world, men 
 dying everywhere because they were stricken with 
 sin, and were therefore stricken with death. What 
 must have been the horror of the Sacred Heart of 
 Jesus in looking upon a sinful and dying world con- 
 sumed by sin. In proportion, then, as this gift of 
 holy fear is in the heart of any man, in that pro- 
 portion he will have a horror of sin. When he looks 
 upon sin he would shudder asif he were looking upon 
 leprosy; for a sinner is a leper crusted with disease, 
 which is eating away the very substance of his being. 
 If a man were suddenly conscious of a spot of leprosy 
 upon his hand, he would be horror-stricken. How is 
 it that we can see ourselves spotted all over, and yet 
 be without fear? Nay, more, if we have this holy 
 fear we shall see that sin paralyses the powers of the 
 soul. The human frame, so strong, so dignified, so 
 self-controlled in its perfections, when it is struck by 
 the palsy, can no longer maintain its own stability, 
 its own government, its own powers of act or will. 
 Such, in the sight of God, is a soul which is struck 
 by sin. And, still further, when sin takes possession 
 of the soul it extinguishes the senses. What more 
 helpless than the blind, or what more pitiable than 
 
THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. O15 
 
 the deaf and the dumb? But what is a sinner who 
 has ceased to see God, who has ceased to hear His 
 voice, who cannot speak a word of prayer or of praise? 
 The blind and the deaf and the dumb are not objects — 
 of compassion so great as he. Therefore the sight 
 of sin is a sight of horror, and any one who has holy 
 fear in him must hate sin, and shrink from it with 
 horror. But more than this, it is not only a ruin of 
 the creature, it is also a privation. <A cloud and a 
 darkness settle upon the reason and upon the heart, 
 so as to hide from them the light of God’s coun- 
 tenance. The union of the soul with God is strained 
 by every venial sin that a man commits; and, in the 
 end, the union of the soul with God is broken. But 
 what is more terrible than to be separated from God? 
 If a sinner could only see his state, he could hardly 
 live. A body out of which the soul has departed 
 strikes us with horror. If we were to turn a corner 
 of the road and find a lifeless corpse, we should start 
 back with a shock; and yet what in the sight of God 
 is one who’ is in mortal sin, and is therefore sepa- 
 rated both in soul and body from God? There is 
 nothing in God’s creation more horrible. And those 
 who have in them the holy fear of sin see sin and 
 death as God sees them, and have a horror in the 
 sight. But, still further than this, they have con- 
 
914 THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 
 
 sciousness of what God made them in the beginning. 
 No instrument of music, however perfect, is to be 
 compared in its perfection to the harmony of the 
 human soul in the unity of all its faculties and of 
 all its powers. But if you take in hand a musical 
 instrument that has been broken or jarred, all its 
 notes jangle in discord. What its beauty was we can 
 still perceive; what its ruin is every note declares. 
 So it is with the soul. How beautiful, how full of har- 
 mony, when God made it. How broken and harsh, how 
 full of discord now in all its tones. Such is a human 
 soul under the power of sin. It is the most pitiable 
 sight that God and His holy angels can look upon. 
 And those who have the holy fear of God in them 
 will partake of that intuition, that gaze of sorrow and 
 of dread. We read in the life of Saint Catharine of 
 Genoa that, out of a profound sense of humiliation, 
 she prayed Almighty God to grant that she might see 
 herself as she was seen in His sight. Her prayer 
 was heard. The light fell upon her, and she saw 
 herself and her sins as God saw them; and having 
 seen that sight of horror for a moment, she prayed 
 the more earnestly that the light might be taken 
 away, that she might see herself no longer, because 
 under the vision of herself she could not exist. This, 
 
 then, is the second effect of holy fear. 
 
THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 215 
 
 3. The third is this: that all those who have this 
 fear of sin in them, if they detect in themselves the 
 least spot of evil, will go at once to accuse themselves. 
 They cannot rest while it is upon them. They can- | 
 not bear to be soiled in the sight of God, or to delay 
 going to Him that they may be cleansed. Just as 
 the leper who sees the first beginning of the leprosy 
 will go at once to the physician, so, when they detect 
 in themselves the first rising of a spot of sin, they 
 will at once go to be made clean. If our face were 
 soiled, should we go into the presence of any one 
 whom we reverence? If our hands were soiled, 
 should we go into the midst of our friends? How, 
 then, shall we dare to go into the presence of God 
 with a heart that is stained? He sees the heart as 
 we see the face. If there be a spot in the heart, 
 those who have holy fear in them will at once accuse 
 themselves that the Holy Ghost may cleanse them. 
 They will accuse themselves, not only of deliberate 
 venial sin, but also of the sinful infirmities which 
 come from our want of holy fear. We are not speak- 
 ing, remember, of mortal sin, for holy fear only exists 
 in those who are in a state of grace. It is holy fear, 
 then, that prompts to the confession of venial sins. 
 They are not, indeed, necessary matter of confession ; 
 
 but a pure heart, which fears the approach of evil, 
 
216 THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 
 
 when it discovers venial sin, will not rest until it 
 has humbled itself before God, and cast itself at the 
 feet of our Lord. 
 
 We must also remember this. Ifyou had ever 
 been wounded, there would be a scar left behind; if 
 you had ever been burnt, there would remain the sear 
 of the burn as long as you live; and those who have 
 in time past been guilty of any sin whatsoever have 
 still remaining upon them what I may call the scar 
 and the sear of those sins. But they have more 
 than this. They have a proneness, and a weakness, 
 and a facility to fallagain. Let us take, for example, 
 temper. We are all liable to anger. There is not 
 one of us that is not more or less tempted to sudden 
 sallies and impetuosities of temper. Well, now, there 
 was a time when these temptations were compara- 
 tively slight. It was by the frequent giving way to 
 them that they became impetuous and strong. Never- 
 theless, we are sorry after we have been carried away. 
 We have tried to control our temptations, and in some 
 part we have succeeded. We have confessed them, 
 and have been absolved. But you well know that the 
 habit of indulging temper increases the proneness to 
 impetuosity. The effect of the past lingers as a 
 habit. Though repented of, it still remains to be our 
 
 trial and chastisement. Or let me take pride. Some 
 
THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. A 
 
 people in the early days of their life indulge their 
 pride. When they come to know themselves, they 
 are humbled. But the pride is there, and the pride 
 is stronger and harder to control because of past in- 
 dulgence. So, again, with the will, We know what 
 is the fault of wilfulness, as we call it. Many a 
 person who was wilful in childhood and in youth, 
 but has striven for years to control his will, is 
 afflicted with a headstrong mind for the rest of his 
 life by reason of the wilfulness indulged in early 
 days. Here, therefore, are faults which awaken, and 
 even increase, the gift of holy fear. They keep us 
 watching, and make us afraid. They show us our 
 weakness and our liability to fall, and thereby they 
 show us our need to watch over ourselves and to 
 mistrust ourselves, and to trust in God alone. 
 
 4. Another effect of this holy fear is to make us 
 watch over our external conduct in the world. You 
 remember the words of the Apostle: ‘ Brethren, the 
 time is short. It remaineth that they also who have 
 wives be as if they had none; and they that weep, 
 as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as if 
 they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they 
 possessed not; and they that use this world, as if 
 they used it not; for the fashion of this world pass- 
 eth away.” It is lawful to use the world; ‘for every 
 
 4 1 Cor. vii. 29-31. 
 
218 THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 
 
 creature of God is good, and nothing to be rejected 
 that is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified 
 by the word of God and prayer.” But few there are 
 who use this world without abusing it. What is the 
 meaning of abusing the world? .We are put into the 
 world by God Himself: it is our place ofduty. The 
 world is our place of trial ; the world is, so to speak, 
 the means whereby we are to attain our last end— 
 that is, the vision of God. And if we use this world 
 with a view to this end—if we set God above all things, 
 and use the world only in so far as is consistent with 
 the service of God—then we do not abuse it. But if 
 we use the world as the end for which we live—if we 
 live in its pleasures, and its possessions, and its am- 
 bitions, for their own sake, as ends out of God and 
 below God—then we abuse it. We know well what a 
 worldly character means. It means not necessarily 
 a person that deliberately rejects God, or forgets 
 God, or puts the world before God. A man who is 
 trying to serve two masters isa worldly man. When 
 the world ceases to tempt him, he will turn to God. 
 When it begins to draw him back, he will turn again 
 to the service of the world. He loves its honours, 
 its popularity, its prosperity, its great friendships. 
 Like a strong magnet, it draws the needle to itself. 
 
 51 Tim. iv. 4, 5. 
 
THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 219 
 
 The gift of holy fear will make a man stand on his 
 guard against the world. He will say: ‘I will not 
 of my choice go into any place, or society, or business, 
 or profession in which I know I shall be surrounded 
 by the fascinations of the world. I know that I can- 
 not trust myself. In the long-run they will pro- 
 bably be too strong for me. My safety is in keeping 
 out of them. If God calls me into them, He will 
 keep me, for then it will be His will and not mine.’ 
 Moreover, Saint Paul says: ‘ All things are to me law- 
 ful, but not all things expedient.’® There are many 
 lawful things which it is better for us altogether to 
 refuse. One way of using things is not to use them. 
 If we take the full pleasure of all that is lawful, it 
 is almost certain that we shall pass over the limit 
 of a lawful use, and go onward before long into that 
 which is unlawful. The way to use lawful things 
 safely is to keep far within the boundary, and the 
 farther we keep within the boundary the safer we 
 shall be. The most sparing use of lawful things is 
 safest. Saint Jerome says: ‘A diet always scanty is 
 better than three days of fasting.’ Moreover, in all 
 things we have to think of the example we shall be 
 to others round about us. If they see us taking the 
 
 full enjoyment of everything lawful, and sometimes, 
 
 OF 1. Coravivnss, 
 
29.0 THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 
 
 at least, seeming to go beyond the line, the effect upon 
 others may be full of danger. We may, perhaps, be 
 able to keep ourselves from going further, but those 
 who are led by our example may not be able so to do. 
 It is therefore a high part of the law of charity so 
 to use even lawful things as not to be an occasion of 
 falling to others. 
 
 - Another part of this outward watchfulness is the 
 custody of our senses. How much sin enters in by 
 the eye. How much by the ear. What soils and 
 stains reach the heart, which would never be there if 
 the eye were closed against a great deal that meets 
 it, and if the ear were turned away from a great deal 
 that falls upon it. The prophet says, ‘ Death climbs 
 up by the windows.” The eyes and the ears are the 
 windows of the soul; and through the eyes and the 
 ears the stains and fascinations of sin, and the fiery 
 darts of the evil one, are cast into the heart. 
 
 I need hardly give you particular instances; yet, to 
 make my meaning clear, I will mention one or two. 
 You will supply the rest. Books, that speak through 
 the eye, may be the worst of tempters. If books be 
 bad—and sometimes they are especially bad—no 
 tempters can be worse. And they are especially bad 
 
 when the badness is concealed; when that which is 
 
 7 Jeremias ix. 21. 
 
THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. vs | 
 
 concealed, if expressed in explicit grossness, would 
 shock and repel; but when thinly veiled it is read 
 without a blush, and the heart is poisoned before it is 
 aware. Such books are whisperers with fair faces 
 and foul hearts. I need not speak of the abuse of 
 the tongue, nor of the listening to words and tales 
 and unseemly jokes on matters which ought never 
 to be heard or spoken. I must, however, add the 
 abuse of our daily bread by fastidious or self-indul- 
 gent delicacy or immoderate use of meat and drink. 
 How many secret sins are committed in eating and 
 in drinking; how much real pampering of taste, 
 how much excess, are concealed under the veil of 
 social decency or custom. No human eye detects 
 them, but they are visible to God. And how many 
 who have begun by some small immoderation in 
 childhood and in refined homes have ended at last 
 in a bondage of habitual excess, and in the degrada- 
 tion of name and fame; outcast and lost. 
 
 5. And, lastly, this gift of the Holy Spirit will keep 
 a still more watchful guard over our heart within. The 
 world takes cognisance only of the exterior actions of 
 sin, and thinks itself innocent if it have done nothing 
 which other men can see. Strange blindness; and 
 that with the words of our Divine Redeemer before 
 
 us, Who tells us that the worst of sins may be com- 
 
2, THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 
 
 mitted in the heart without ever having been sus- 
 pected by the world. For the essential malice of sin 
 is not the external perpetration of the acty It is the 
 internal desire and intent to do wrong. This it is 
 which makes manslaughter differ from murder. The 
 man who commits manslaughter and the man who 
 commits murder both take away life; but one did 
 not intend to kill, the other did intend it. The in- 
 tention makes the difference. So with every sin that 
 man can commit; he has committed it in the heart 
 before it is ever accomplished by the deed. The 
 end is intended, and the will consenting makes the 
 man guilty before God though he may never execute 
 it in act. How much sin there is in the heart which 
 men pass by without so much as acknowledging to 
 themselves; or, if they acknowledge it to themselves, 
 they at once absolve themselves without so much as 
 a true thought of its guilt. Therefore it is that 
 they who have a holy and filial fear of offending our 
 Heavenly Father will have a gieat watchfulness over 
 the deliberate acts of the heart, over itg thoughts, 
 and its imaginations, and its memories, and its de- 
 sires. They will close their eyes and their ears, that 
 they may keep their inmost soul pure, and may in- 
 herit the blessing promised to the clean of heart. 
 
 Not only will they watch over their deliberate acts, 
 
THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 293 
 
 but over those half-deliberate acts, those internal 
 adhesions of their thought and will to the rising of 
 temptation, lest they should become internal sin. 
 For when the will consents the sin is theirs. 
 
 Now Saint Augustine has left in his book of 
 Confessions a vivid tracing of the internal conflict 
 which I have been trying to describe. The sum of 
 his words is this. He says: ‘ What marvel is this ? 
 My mind commands my hand, and it obeys; my 
 whole body is in obedience to my will, and what my 
 will commands my whole body executes. But when 
 my mind commands my will, my will does not obey ; 
 and my body, which is external to my mind, is 
 obedient to my mind, and my will, which is a ‘part 
 of my mind, is disobedient to my mind. I command 
 my body, and it obeys me. I command my will, and 
 it will not obey me.’ And then he says, ‘Whence 
 comes this marvel?’ And he answers, ‘It is because 
 my will is divided. Sin has wounded it in part, and 
 in part God has healed it; and therefore I partly will 
 what is right and I partly will what is wrong. Ihave 
 but one will, but that will is divided; and therefore 
 when my better will commands my worse, the worse 
 will does not obey.’ And what is this strange conflict, 
 but what the Apostle says in the seventh chapter of 
 the Epistle to the Romans: ‘The good that I will, 
 
22.4 THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 
 
 IT do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do. 
 When I have a will to do good, evil is present with 
 me; for I delight in the law in the inward man. But 
 I see another law in my members, fighting against 
 the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity, 
 to sin and death. Unhappy man that I am, who shall 
 deliver me from this body of death?’ This conflict 
 is in every one of you. You are daily conscious of 
 it. Pray God, then, to give you the gift of holy fear, 
 that the better and higher will in you may be made 
 strong, dominant, imperial, so as to subdue and put 
 down the motions of the worse and lower will, 
 which, like the sea, never rests, casting up its mire.® 
 
 Now let us make application of all this. We 
 have every one of us had this worldly fear upon us 
 in times past. I dare say there was a time in your 
 life when you had a greater fear of losing the favour 
 of the world than of losing the love of God. There 
 was a time, I dare say, when the thought of being 
 poor was more terrible to you than the thought of 
 being stripped of the grace of God; when the thought 
 of being hated by the world, or being looked down 
 upon by men, was far more afflicting to you than the 
 thought that God and His saints were turning their 
 faces from you. I hope that fear of the world is not 
 
 8 Tsaias lvii. 20. 
 
THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. G25 
 
 in any of you now. Then it may be you passed into 
 the state of servile fear. You knew what was right, 
 and you were tempted to do what was wrong; and 
 you said, ‘If I only dared to do it, I would; but I 
 know that if I do it I shall lose my soul; and I am 
 afraid of judgment, and I am afraid of hell.’ And 
 God, in His patience, bore with your ungenerous 
 heart. Then you-passed out, it may be, through that 
 region of servile fear, until at last the love of God 
 became a little stronger and a little more constrain- 
 ing. You then began to serve God for the love of 
 God, and for the desire of eternal happiness. You 
 hoped to be saved, and you would not offend God 
 because you desired to see His face in eternity. 
 
 Be of good heart then, in the fear of God. The 
 less you have of this fear, the more cause to be afraid ; 
 the more you have of this fear, the less reason you 
 have to be afraid. If you fear lest you should offend 
 God, lest you should be cast out of His sight, lest you 
 should lose the vision of His face in eternity, such a 
 fear isthe beginning of love. No man fears to lose 
 that which he does not care for. That which we 
 prize we fear to lose, and we fear to lose it in the 
 measure in which we love it. Therefore a great fear 
 of losing God is a sure sign of a great love to God. 
 
 And that love will ripen and grow, for God will in- 
 
 nS) 
 
22.6 THE GIFT OF HOLY FEAR. 
 
 crease it, and will bestow upon you the gift of fear 
 purified of all doubt and pain. For, as I said in the 
 beginning, the fear of sons springs not from sin, but 
 from the Holy Ghost. It was perfect in the sinless 
 and Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is in the saints of 
 God standing before the throne of God for all eter- 
 nity. The saints in the heavenly court cast their 
 crowns before the throne of God. They cast them- 
 selves down on their faces, and ‘adore Him that sit- 
 teth upon the throne.’? And in them is made perfect 
 that profound veneration of the Divine Majesty, that 
 profound sense of dependence upon their Maker and 
 their God, that profound submission of their will to 
 His perfect and eternal will, which is the root and 
 perfection of this holy fear. Therefore, ifwe attain to 
 eternal life, there will be in us for ever this great gift 
 of the Holy Ghost, which has guided us step by step 
 through this dark and dangerous world into the king- 
 dom of eternal bliss. 
 
 ® Apocalypse iv. 10, 
 
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 THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
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THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 We have received the spirit of sons, whereby we cry Abba, Father. 
 Romans viii. 15. 
 I Have explained before, and I need hardly remind 
 you again, that a gift of the Holy Ghost differs from 
 a grace of the Holy Ghost in this: the graces of the 
 Holy Ghost in the soul are to the gifts what the 
 faculties of sight and hearing are to their special and 
 disciplined perfection. The gifts of the Holy Ghost, 
 therefore, are certain powers by which these graces 
 are brought to maturity. But the gifts become 
 active in proportion to our fidelity in corresponding 
 with the graces of the Holy Spirit. And therefore, 
 though there are fear and piety in every one who is 
 born again, however low we may be in the spiritual 
 life, if only we are in a state of grace, nevertheless 
 the gift of holy fear and the gift of piety are the ripe 
 fruit, the blossom, the perfection and the beauty of 
 
 the spiritual graces. 
 
230 THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 We have seen that holy fear consists chiefly in 
 the filial fear of those who, loving God, are afraid of 
 losing Him, and therefore are afraid of offending 
 Him, lest they should lose God in eternity. 
 
 But the gift of piety springs in part from holy 
 fear. It is a ripe fruit, which grows out of charity, 
 or the love of God and our neighbour.’ We com- 
 monly understand piety to be our personal religion 
 towards God. This is indeed one sense, but it is 
 only a very narrow sense of the word. The word 
 piety in its original meaning signifies the natural 
 affection which parents have for their children and 
 children for their parents. Even in the lower ani- 
 mals there is a certain love, and care, and nurture in 
 the parent towards its offspring. There is also a 
 certain confidence—and I may say affection—in the 
 offspring towards the parent. This in the rational 
 natures, in the higher creation, becomes an instinct 
 of love with a government of the intelligence, and is 
 what we call natural affection. The natural love of 
 parents for their children, and of children for their 
 parents, is the basis or ground of piety. Now inas- 
 much as the gift of the love of God and our neigh- 
 
 1 *Pietas est benigne mentis dulcedo. grata omnibus auxilia- 
 trix infusa affectio divinique cultus religiosa devotio,’ Dionys. 
 Carthusian. de donis Spir. Sanct. tract. iii. art. 34. Oper. minor. 
 tom,i, Cologne, 1532. 
 
THE GIFT OF PIETY. ORG 
 
 bour is infused into us by the Holy Spirit of God 
 when we are born again in the supernatural order, so 
 piety, which we have in the order of nature, is ele- 
 vated, purified, and perfected into the love of God 
 andman. ‘This, then, is the first sense and the out- 
 line of piety; but we must go further. 
 
 We have already seen how the gift of holy fear is 
 exemplified in the Incarnate Son of God ; how in our 
 Divine Lord this gift of holy fear—that is, the filial 
 subjection, dependence, and submission to His Hea- 
 venly Father—was in its perfection ; and how, even 
 in the blessed in eternity, there will be for ever this 
 cift of holy fear in the reverence, adoration, and wor- 
 ship of the Heavenly Court. In like manner, we 
 shall best understand what is the gift of piety in the 
 example of the Incarnate Son. First of all, love, 
 together with worship, produces adoration, praise, 
 and thanksgiving. And the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 
 which was a human heart like ours, deified by union 
 in His person with the Godhead, had in itself love, 
 worship, adoration, praise, and thanksgiving in the 
 highest and the most perfect measure. God was 
 never worshipped and adored by any human heart 
 from the creation of the world as He was from the 
 first instant of the Incarnation, when the Sacred Heart 
 
 of Jesus, full and perfect in the first moment of its 
 
Bada THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 existence, adored our Heavenly Father. So, again, 
 the Sacred Heart of our Divine Lord, in its relation 
 to His Blessed and Immaculate Mother, had love, 
 reverence, and filial obedience in the utmost perfec- 
 tion. Once more, the Sacred Heart of our Divine 
 Lord, in His sympathy with mankind, surrounded as 
 He was by sin, and the sinful, and the miserable, and 
 the widows, and the orphans, and the lepers, and the 
 blind, and the deaf, and the maimed, all the day long, 
 poured out an infinite pity upon them, exhibiting this 
 gift of piety, which means love and pity, love and com- 
 passion towards all the creatures of God. In this 
 was the fulfilment of the prophecy in the book of the 
 Prophet Isaias, where, speaking of the Incarnation, 
 he says: ‘There shall come up a rod out of the root 
 of Jesse, and a flower shall spring out of his root.’ 
 Now who is that rod but the Son of David, Jesus 
 Christ Himself. And what is this flower but the 
 tenderness and the beauty of the divine and human 
 character of the Incarnate Son of God. We have 
 here, then, the full and perfect idea of what piety is. 
 
 I will now go on to trace out what are the objects 
 to which this gift of piety addresses itself; and, per- 
 haps, it is in this way we shall be able to make what 
 I have to say most intelligible and practical. 
 
 2 Isaias xi. 1. 
 
THE GIFT OF PIETY. 233 
 
 1. To begin, then, let us take the first and high- 
 est object of piety. It is God Himself. We see 
 this gift of piety manifested in its greatest breadth 
 and fulness throughout the history of Israel. The 
 books of the Old Testament tell us how the patri- 
 archs, and prophets, and saints of old walked with 
 God. There may be seen, in the most luminous 
 forms, this gift of piety. Take the prayer of Solo- 
 mon when he dedicated the Temple; or take the 
 whole book of Psalms, and you will see, from begin- 
 ning to end, this gift of piety, inspiring, enlarging, 
 and elevating. In the Theism and the Theocracy of 
 Israel we see the gift of piety in its fullest exercise. 
 And that which we see under the veils of the Old 
 Testament we see also in the noonday light of the 
 New. God, Who was known of oldas One Who was 
 inscrutable and incomprehensible, Whom no man 
 had seen or could see, is made known to us by visible 
 manifestations in our humanity, and has revealed to 
 us the glory of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost. The highest object of piety, therefore, is the 
 ever-blessed Trinity. The relation of sons to our 
 Heavenly Father, the relation of brethren to our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, the relation of disciples to the Holy 
 Ghost—all this is contained in the gift of piety. 
 And this supreme adoration of the glory of God in 
 
234 THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 three Persons fills the whole world, as Malachias 
 prophesied: ‘From the rising of the sun to the 
 going down of the same My name shall be great 
 among the Gentiles, and an oblation and incense of 
 pure offering shall be offered in My name.” And 
 where is the fulfilment of this prophecy to be found ? 
 It is the worship of the world-wide Church of God 
 —the supreme and united adoration of the sons of 
 God gathered into the one family of their Heavenly 
 Father—which is the one and only Church of Jesus 
 Christ, our elder brother, Who was made man for us, 
 Who has made us sons of God through His Incar- 
 nation. This world-wide adoration of the Church of 
 God glorifies the ever-blessed Trinity through all the 
 hours of the day and through all the watches of the 
 night. When our morning sacrifice is being offered 
 here at the sunrise, the evening sacrifice is being 
 offered in those regions of the world where the sun 
 is setting. The sunrise and the sunset both alike 
 look down upon the lights, and the incense, and the 
 beauty of the Holy Sacrament. Throughout all lands, 
 and people, and tongues, there is a perpetual chain 
 of worship, an unceasing service of God, an endless 
 glorifying of the ever-blessed Trinity, in the oblation 
 of Jesus, the Lamb of God, in the voices of praise 
 
 > Mal. i. 11. 
 
THE GIFT OF PIETY. 935 
 
 and thanksgiving which the priests of the Church 
 are offering all the day long,in the unseen worship of 
 those in whom the spirit of piety breathes in secret, 
 in the love of those who come up one by one to the ~ 
 House of the Lord and worship Him in spirit ana in 
 truth. All this is a perpetual sacrifice, always 
 ascending from the heart of the Church throughout 
 the world, uniting itself with the adoration of the 
 Heavenly Court, and going up before the Throne with 
 the worship of the saints and the piety of the Imma- 
 culate Mother of God. Such, then, is the gift of 
 piety in the Catholic Church ; and everything relating 
 to the worship of God, therefore, becomes an object 
 of piety tous. We consecrate the place where we 
 worship God; we consecrate the altar, and the 
 chalice, and the paten, whereby the sacrifice is 
 offered. The very books that are used in the wor- 
 ship of God are sacred. The man who steals them 
 is guilty of sacrilege ; the man who dishonours them 
 is guilty ofimpiety. There is a mark upon them all. 
 They belong to the service of God: holiness to the 
 Lord is graven upon them. All the order, and precepts, 
 and prescriptions of worship lay us under obedience. 
 They are the laws and tests of our piety. Therefore 
 this gift of piety pervades the whole Ritual of the 
 
 Church, and terminates, first and above all, upon 
 
236 THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 the ever-blessed Trinity, Three Persons in One God. 
 Next after God Himself piety loves and venerates 
 His Word. And the Word of God is twofold—the 
 unwritten and the written, the Faith and the Scrip- 
 tures. The unwritten Word of God is the perfect reve- 
 lation of God in Jesus Christ which was given partly 
 by the Son in the days of His humility, and partly by 
 the Holy Ghost upon the day of Pentecost. It was 
 preached by the Apostles in all the world before as 
 yet any word of it was written. There was no New 
 Testament—no written Word of God—when the 
 whole Christian faith was declared and believed 
 throughout the world. 
 
 The voice of the Holy Ghost, speaking by the 
 Apostles, filled the whole world; and all the nations 
 were illuminated with the knowledge of the ever- 
 blessed Trinity, and of the mysteries of the Incarna- 
 tion, and of the Redemption of Jesus Christ. This is 
 the tradition of divine faith written in the world-wide 
 intelligence of the Church by the Spirit of God. 
 And therefore it is that every one who has in him the 
 gift of piety has also an instinctive hatred of heresy. 
 The instinct which detests and recoils from heresy 
 is part of the gift of piety, because piety loves the 
 revealed truth of Jesus Christ. We are thought to 
 be intolerant and bigoted, because we will keep no 
 
THE GIFT OF PIETY. 245 | 
 
 peace with heresy. But how can any man love Jesus 
 Christ, and not love every jot and tittle of His truth? 
 And if we love His truth, that which contradicts it 
 must be hateful, for it contradicts Himself. And . 
 therefore, though we are to be tolerant towards the 
 persons of heretics, we are intolerant of the heresies 
 themselves. There is no degree of aversion with 
 which we may not lawfully look upon conscious con- 
 tradiction of any divine truth. There is this dis- 
 tinction between the heretic and the heresy. The 
 heresy we may deal with at once, with all peremptory 
 severity; the heretic we leave to the judgment of 
 God and of the Church. We are not the judges of 
 his guilt, because we cannot read the heart. 
 
 Then for the written Word of God. The Catholic 
 Church has, from the beginning, cherished and pre- 
 served the Holy Scriptures with the most vigilant 
 and jealous care. It is not permitted to man to alter 
 a jot or a tittle of the Word of God. That written 
 Word is a record of the inspired teaching of the 
 Holy Ghost. And the Catholic Church, therefore, has 
 preserved it as the greatest treasure committed to its 
 charge next after the living tradition of divine faith. 
 The saints of God have manifested their love for it 
 with every token of veneration. Saint Charles never 
 
 read it except with his head bare, and upon his 
 
238 THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 knees; Saint Edmund of Canterbury kissed the page 
 whensoever he opened the book, and kissed it again 
 when he closed it. In this way the saints of the 
 Catholic Church have revered the Holy Scriptures. 
 And yet we are told that the Catholic Church does 
 not honour the Holy Scripture, and does not give it 
 to its people. This is a superstition, and contrary 
 to the truth. The page of Holy Scripture is open to 
 all those who can read and understand it. If the 
 Catholic Church warns those who can neither un- 
 derstand it nor read it that they need the guidance 
 of others, it is out of piety and out of love both 
 for the truth and for souls. Tt is also because here- 
 tics have perverted the meaning of Holy Scripture, 
 and have perverted the version of the text, They 
 have perverted even the writing itself. Therefore the 
 Catholic Church is jealous over the Scriptures; and 
 that for a most evident reason. Holy Scripture is 
 Holy Scripture only in the right sense of Holy Serip. 
 ture. Just as a man’s will is a man’s will no longer 
 if it be misinterpreted by those who come after him. 
 If those who survive him misinterpret the disposition 
 of his property, they defeat his will, they defraud him 
 of his intentions. So it is with the Holy Scriptures 
 when they are misinterpreted—God is defrauded of 
 _ His Will and Testament, and His people are robbed. 
 
THE GIFT OF PIETY. 239 
 
 Therefore, the first and highest object of piety 
 is God, His worship and His Word. 
 
 2. The next is the same, but in another way. It 
 is still God, but God in another form; it is God 
 Incarnate, Jesus Christ our Lord, God manifest 
 among men, and dwelling among men, visible to faith. 
 Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has been, is, and ever 
 will be the object of our most tender, of our most fer- 
 vent piety. Just as those who were with Him upon 
 earth intensely loved Him, observed His every motion, 
 every expression of His countenance, were guided by 
 His eye, and listened with eagerness to every word 
 He spoke, so it is now. And the Person of Jesus 
 Christ is the loving meditation of the Church. We set 
 before us the life, and the example, and the character, 
 and the Passion of our Divine Lord as the chief ob- 
 ject of our piety. Every state He passed through— 
 His infancy, His childhood, His youth, His man- 
 hood—all these are objects of our mental prayer. But 
 more than this: His life of sorrows, in every part of it 
 _—the Agony in the Garden, the Five Sacred Wounds, 
 the instruments of His Passion, the effusions of His 
 Precious Blood, and, above all, His Sacred Heart, the 
 sanctuary of all love divine and human, the ineffable 
 expression of the tenderness and piety of God to- 
 
 wards us, the object of our love and piety towards 
 
240 » THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 Him. And this, not only as He is at the right hand 
 of God, not only as He is in His glory, but as He is in 
 the Blessed Sacrament, fulfilling His words: ‘Behold, 
 Tam with you all days, even to the consummation 
 of the world. Jesus dwelling on the altar always 
 in the midst of us, in Godhead and manhood, in His 
 divine and perfect personality, is the object of our 
 piety, as truly and as really as He was when the Apos- 
 tles were round about Him in the guest-chamber at 
 Jerusalem. Jesus always ready to receive us there, 
 offering Himself daily in the Holy Mass, as He offered 
 Himself at His last Paschal Feast : giving Himself 
 to us in the Holy Communion, as He gave His body 
 and His blood to the Apostles on that night before 
 He was betrayed ; always there lifting up His hands 
 over us in benediction; ever ready to receive our 
 prayers; listening in silence to all the unuttered con- 
 fession of our sins and of our sorrows: the same Jesus, 
 God and man, is to us now as He was then, the object 
 of the piety of His disciples, and will be for ever. 
 And, once more, He is not only with us upon 
 earth and in a visible way in His sacramental pre- 
 sence, but He is present upon earth and in a visible 
 way in His mystical body, which is the Church. The 
 Church of Jesus Christ, Head and members, is. the 
 
 4S. Matt. xxviii. 20. 
 
THE GIFT OF PIETY. 241 
 
 mystical person of Jesus Christ. Therefore Saint 
 Augustine says: ‘The head in heaven and the body 
 upon earth make up one person; so that the voice of 
 the Church is the voice of its Head.’ The promise, 
 ‘He that heareth you heareth Me,” is verified when- 
 soever we hear the living voice of the Church of 
 God; and therefore it is that the Church and its 
 divine voice are alike an object of our piety. This 
 is a thing unintelligible except to those who have 
 the light of the Catholic faith. In England, the 
 greater part of our fellow-countrymen seem to have 
 lost from their intelligence the idea of a visible 
 Church upon earth. They tell us that it is some- 
 thing invisible, something not in this but in the 
 unseen world, something not tangible, something 
 with which we can have no contact. To them, 
 therefore, it is an idea, it is a notion, it is an ab- 
 straction—I might therefore say a non-existence. 
 But that which does not exist cannot be an object of 
 piety. Not so the Catholic Church. It is next after 
 God the greatest of all realities. Beside it all other 
 things are light and fleeting as the dust. It is a reality 
 full of life and ofintelligence. It is the object of love, 
 fidelity, and service to all its members. When the 
 Church suffers anywhere it is felt everywhere. Every 
 
 5. §. Luke x. 16. 
 16 
 
949 THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 persecution wounds the whole body; every benediction 
 is acommon joy. And in this the words of Saint Paul 
 are fulfilled : that ‘we rejoice with those that rejoice, 
 and weep with those that weep.’® Because we are 
 members one of another, there is a perfect sym- 
 pathy binding the whole Church together. And for 
 this cause it is that the indignities heaped upon the 
 Vicar of Jesus Christ day by day excite a sense of 
 indignation and call forth a sorrow and a lamenta- 
 tion throughout the whole Catholic world. We feel 
 that in the person of His Vicar the Son of God Him- 
 self is insulted. The gift of piety which worships 
 the Master envelops also His Servant. Therefore 
 algo it is that when we see the pastors of the Church 
 slandered, fined, and imprisoned, exiled and cast out 
 of home and country, we feel that these outrages are 
 done to our Divine Master, for Whose sake they are 
 suffered. We have with those who suffer these things 
 a living sympathy; the sympathy of piety, that is, of 
 love and reverence. The outrages against their per- 
 son and their office are committed against us also. 
 Now this is what no man can feel who does not be- 
 lieve that the Church of God is a divine creation. 
 If he believes that the Church is created by a human 
 will or by human legislation, or that it is something 
 
 € Rom. xii. 15. 
 
THE GIFT OF PIETY. 943 
 
 which men have put together of themselves by 
 voluntary association, he may call it the Church of 
 God, but it can never be an object of piety to him. 
 He may have a great self-interest in it, but an object 
 of reverence it cannot be. But they who believe that 
 the Church visible on earth is the mystical body of 
 Christ, ever united by a living union with its Divine 
 Head in heaven, love it for His sake. The Divine 
 Head in heaven is so united to the mystical body 
 upon earth, that He is persecuted when it is perse- 
 cuted, and He is glorified when it is glorified. 
 Therefore they venerate the body because of the 
 divine glory of its Head. 
 
 3. And there is yet another object of this filial 
 piety, namely, His Blessed and Immaculate Mother. 
 Nothing more clearly shows how low the faith of 
 England in the Incarnation has declined than the ex- 
 tinction of the loving veneration which is due to the 
 Mother of Jesus. Is it possible that any man can 
 believe that the Eternal Son of God, co-equal to the 
 Father and the Holy Ghost, assumed our manhood 
 of the substance of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and in 
 assuming it made that manhood to be the humanity 
 01 God, so that she bore into this world an infant 
 whose personality is divine—is it possible, I ask, that 
 
 any man can really believe this, and not see at once 
 
244 THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 that she is thereby Mother of God, forasmuch as her 
 child is God? If any man does not believe or 
 does not see this, does he not at once convict him- 
 self of either not believing or of not understand- 
 ing the Incarnation of the Son of God? The one or 
 the other of these things is inevitable. If he believe 
 the Incarnation truly, and as it is revealed, then to 
 him Mary is the Mother of God. If he does not 
 give her that title, then I ask how does he believe 
 that her Son is God? But if he believes this, then, 
 next after her Divine Son, is there any object of 
 piety, that is, oflove and veneration, higher than she? 
 Let such a man lay these things to heart. She is the 
 Mother of the Divine Redeemer of the world; she is 
 the Mother of his Divine Lord and Master; she is 
 the Mother of his Divine and perfect Friend; she is 
 the Mother of the Saviour Who shed His precious 
 Blood for him on Calvary—is it possible, I ask, for 
 any man to believe these things, and not at once to 
 regard her, next after her Divine Son, Who is God, 
 with all the piety of his heart? Let him look at the 
 example of Jesus Himself. Next after His Heavenly 
 Father there was no one whom He venerated and 
 loved as He loved and venerated His Blessed Mother. 
 But the example of Jesus Christ is the law of our 
 
 life. We are bound to imitate it; we are bound to 
 
THE GIFT OF PIETY. 945 
 
 be like Him. But love and veneration to her are a 
 part of the perfection of Jesus Christ. We cannot be 
 like Him if we are unlike Him in this. He who 
 has not love and veneration to the Blessed Mother of 
 Jesus is unlike our Divine Saviour in that particular 
 perfection of His character which comes next after 
 His filial piety towards God. But, besides all this, 
 love and veneration are due to her for her own sake ; 
 because she is the Mother of the Redeemer of man- 
 kind; because, above all other creatures, she has 
 been sanctified by the Holy Ghost; and because, 
 in being made the Mother of the Incarnate Son, she 
 is made the Mother of us all. For how are we the 
 sons of God, how is the ‘spirit of adoption of sons 
 whereby we cry Abba, Father,” sent forth into our 
 hearts, except through the Incarnation of the Eternal 
 Son ? Andif His Father becomes our Father through, 
 His Incarnation, how does not His Mother become 
 our Mother too? If by His taking our humanity He 
 makes men to be sons of God, how is it that in tak- 
 ing that humanity He does not likewise make His 
 Mother to be our Mother in grace? Surely it is the 
 incoherence of mind which follows on the loss of 
 the light of faith that makes it possible for men to 
 say and unsay these divine truths in the same 
 
 7 Rom. viii. 15. 
 
246 THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 breath. As soon as a man receives into his heart 
 the full light of the Incarnation, two self-evident 
 truths arise upon his reason; the one, the presence 
 of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament; the other, the 
 love and veneration of His Blessed Mother. They 
 follow by the necessity of consequence. How can any 
 man fail to see these things? And, what is more, 
 every man that has the love of the Incarnation in him 
 will rejoice to see them. 
 
 4. Fourthly, there is another object of piety, 
 which must be taken as one though it is multitudi- 
 nous, that is, the Communion of Saints. All the 
 friends of God are the objects of piety to those who 
 have piety towards God, by Whom they were made 
 perfect. First, there are the saints of God in the 
 Heavenly Court around His Throne—the multitude 
 that no man can number, of all nations, races, and 
 tongues, in white raiment washed in the blood of the 
 Lamb. All these are reigning with Christ, and inter- 
 cede for us, and know our needs: not because they can 
 hear, nor because they are omnipresent—for these 
 things are the stupidities of heresy—but because they 
 know, and they know because they are in union with 
 God, and He makes known to them what He wills 
 they should know. Our Lord has said: ‘There shall 
 be joy among the angels of God over one sinner doing 
 
THE GIFT OF PIETY. DAT 
 
 penance.”® How can there be joy if there be not 
 knowledge? He declares that there is knowledge 
 among the angels of God; because He declares that 
 there is joy; and joy over one sinner doing penance. 
 But penance is a silent change of the heart—the 
 secret whispers of sorrow for sin committed, which 
 may never be uttered in articulate and audible words; 
 and these secret and inaudible whispers of the heart 
 are known before the Throne of God. How and 
 why? All things are known to God, and they are 
 known to all to whom God reveals them. It is so that 
 the friends of God round about His Throne know 
 our prayers, and continually pray in our behalf. 
 Whosoever has not piety towards the saints of God ; 
 whosoever does not love his guardian angel; whoso- 
 ever says, ‘ What need have I of patron saints ?’—such 
 a man has little of the gift of piety. Where there is 
 the spirit of piety, everything which unites us with 
 God will be an object of our love. The saints, by 
 their intercession and their patronage, unite us with 
 God. They watch over us, they pray for us, they ob- 
 tain graces for us. Our euardian angels are round 
 about us: they watch over and protect us. The 
 man who has not piety enough to ask their prayers 
 must have a heart but little like to the love and vene- 
 
 6 §, Luke xv. 7. 
 
248 THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 ration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. But there are 
 other friends of God to whom we owe a debt of piety. 
 They are those who are suffering beyond the grave, 
 in the silent kingdom of pain and expiation, in the 
 dark and yet blessed realm of purification, that is 
 to say, the multitudes who pass out of this world, 
 washed in the Precious Blood, perfectly absolved of 
 all guilt of sin, children and friends of God, blessed 
 souls, heirs of the kingdom of heaven, all but saints, 
 nevertheless they are not yet altogether purified for 
 His kingdom. They are there detained—kept back 
 from His presence—until their expiation is accom- 
 plished. You and J, and every one of us, will pass 
 through that place of explation. Neither you nor I 
 are saints, nor upon earth ever will be; therefore 
 before we can see God we must be purified by pain 
 in that silent realm. But those blessed souls are 
 friends of God next after His saints, and in the same 
 order they ought to be an object of our piety, that is, 
 of our love and compassion, of our sympathy and our 
 prayers. They can do nothing now for themselves: 
 they have no longer any sacraments; they do not 
 even pray for themselves. They are so conformed to 
 the will of God, that they suffer there in submission 
 
 and in silence. They desire nothing except that His 
 
 will should be accomplished. Therefore it is our 
 
 — os = OE ale i i 
 
THE GIFT OF PIETY. 249 
 
 duty to help them—to help them by our prayers, our 
 penances, our mortifications, our alms, by the Holy 
 Sacrifice of the Altar. There may be father and mo- 
 ther, brother and sister, friend and child, whom you 
 have loved as your own life—they may now be there. 
 Have you forgotten them? Have you no pity for 
 them now, no natural piety, no spirit of love for them? 
 Do you forget them all the day long ? Look back upon 
 those who made your home in your early childhood, 
 the light of whose faces you can still see shining in 
 your memories, and the sweetness of whose voice is 
 still in your ears—do you forget them because they 
 are no longer seen? Is it indeed ‘out of sight out of 
 mind’? What an impiety of heart is this. 
 
 The Catholic Church, the true mother of souls, 
 cherishes with loving memory all her departed. 
 Never does a day pass but she prays for them at 
 the altar; never does a year go by that there is not 
 a special commemoration of her children departed 
 on one solemn day, which is neither feast nor 
 fast, but a day of the profoundest piety and of the 
 deepest compassion. Surely, then, if we have the 
 spirit of piety in our hearts, the holy souls will be 
 a special object of our remembrance and our prayers. 
 How many now are there whom we have known in 
 
 life. There are those who have been grievously 
 
250 THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 afflicted, and those who have been very sinful, but, 
 through the Precious Blood and a death-bed repentance, 
 have been saved at last. Have you forgotten them ? 
 Are you doing nothing for them? There may also 
 be souls there for whom there is no one to pray on 
 earth; there may be souls who are utterly forgotten by 
 their own kindred, outcast from all remembrance, and 
 yet the Precious Blood was shed for their sakes. If 
 no one remembers them now, you, at least, if you have 
 in your hearts the gift of piety, will pray for them. 
 5. And lastly—for time would fail me if I were 
 to go on—every creature of God ought to be an ob- 
 ject. of loving piety. Do not imagine, as some do, 
 that when the love of God enters into a man his per- 
 fection consists in the hardening of natural affections. 
 Whensoever the spirit of devotion or piety narrows or 
 contracts the heart, and makes our home to be less 
 bright and happy, when it makes parents imperious 
 to children or children undutiful to parents, or lessens 
 the sympathy of brothers and sisters, or chills the 
 warmth of friendship,—whensoever the plea of re- 
 ligion, of greater fervour, of more exact piety, has the 
 effect of lessening the natural affections, be sure that 
 such piety is either perverted or not true. The best 
 son will make the best priest, and the best daughter 
 will make the best nun ; that is to say, the best train- 
 
THE GIFT OF PIETY. 251 
 
 ing for the most perfect character as a disciple or a 
 handmaid of Jesus Christ is to be found in the 
 natural affections of home. And therefore, if you 
 find any faults or defects in your natural affections 
 towards those whom you ought to love, do not make 
 excuses for yourselves, as if the love of God were any 
 palliation or defence. Love to kindred and friends, 
 with all the tenderness due to them, and not only to 
 friends but to your enemies, to those who are dis- 
 pleasing to you, to those who offend you and treat you 
 spitefully—this is the fruit and the proof of true and 
 loving piety. 
 
 The theologians of the Church teach that there is 
 no object of our natural affection which is not ele- 
 vated and perfected by the gift of supernatural piety. 
 They tell us that the two great objects of natural 
 piety upon earth are our kindred and our country. I 
 mention this expressly, because if there be anything 
 with which the world rings all day long it is the 
 foolish imputation that Catholics cannot love their 
 country. It is a part of our Catholic theology that a 
 man is bound by the gift of piety to love his country. 
 And for what reason? Because next after the father 
 and mother that bore him, the land and the people 
 among whom his birth is cast are the objects of his 
 charity. We call the land of our birth our mother 
 
252 ; THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 country or our fatherland. Our countrymen are 
 our kindred. Their welfare, their peace, their de- 
 fence, their prosperity, ought to be an object of our 
 most hearty, resolute, self-denying, and self-sacrific- 
 ing devotion. We are like men on board ship—all 
 that are together have one common interest, they are 
 all alike in peril.or in safety. And therefore our 
 fatherland or our mother country is an object of 
 piety to us. We invest them with the dearest names 
 which are borrowed from the sanctity of domestic life. 
 Do not therefore let anybody imagine that as Catho- 
 lies you are not loyal, that you are not lovers of your 
 country. Shall I tell you what the secret is? We 
 are not, indeed, such lovers of our country that if an 
 Apostle came to us from Judea, we should stone him 
 with stones, or stop our ears or harden our hearts 
 against him. We do not believe that every teacher 
 sent from God ought to be an Englishman. We do 
 not believe that all matters of spiritual judgment 
 and doctrine are to be decided within the four seas 
 of England. No, because that would be an impiety 
 —an impiety against God, an impiety against Jesus 
 Christ, an impiety against His Church, an impiety 
 against the Holy Ghost, an impiety against the 
 _ whole revelation of faith, an impiety against the 
 Whole Christian world. We know that when the 
 
 a 
 
an 
 
 THE GIFT OF PIETY. ASS: 
 
 Apostles were sent out with a divine commission to 
 make disciples of all nations, the nations listened to 
 them, all Jews as they were. They subdued the culti- 
 vated Greeks, and the imperial Romans, and our bar- | 
 barian forefathers into one family. And within 
 the circle of revealed truth, all these national dis- 
 tinctions were abolished. In Christ Jesus there is 
 ‘neither Jew nor barbarian, nor bond nor free.” We 
 are all one in Him. There is one Head and one 
 pastor over all, to whom our Lord said in Peter, 
 ‘Feed My sheep, feed My lambs;’’? and there is one 
 Holy Catholic Church having one faith, one juris- 
 diction, one power of legislation and of judgment, 
 ruling all the people of God upon earth. To every 
 attempt to set up national authorities and national 
 teachers where the Incarnate Son of God has 
 planted His kingdom, the gift of piety makes us 
 say, ‘Take my life if you will, but these human 
 authorities and human teachers I will never obey.’ 
 This refusal to obey is founded upon a revealed law. 
 I have told you that father and mother are the 
 object of piety to sons. Love, obedience, and sub- 
 mission are due from the son to his parents, and yet 
 our Divine Lord has said, ‘He that loveth father or 
 mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.’" There- 
 fore he that loves his country, or the laws or the 
 * Col. ii. 11. 10 §. John xxi. 10. 1 §, Matt. x. 37. 
 
254 THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 traditions of his people, more than the Church of 
 God, or the laws of Jesus Christ, is not worthy of — 
 Him. No, the best subjects are those who are first 
 and above all loyal to their Heavenly Master, and 
 to His heavenly kingdom. They will best keep the 
 laws of the land who do it for conscience’ sake. 
 Loyalty is a part. of our religion ; and that not be- 
 cause it is our interest, nor because it chimes ‘in 
 with our opinion. The days in which we live are 
 days of lawlessness and disloyalty ; the time is com- 
 ing when true fealty and true loyalty will be found 
 only in those who are loyal and true, first to a 
 heavenly King, and after this to the representatives 
 of His authority upon earth. 
 
 I have now, as far as I could, drawn out before 
 you what is this gift of piety, and what are its ob- 
 jects. You will remember that they are, first, God 
 our Father; next J esus, our Incarnate Lord, in His 
 Person, in the most Holy Sacrament, and in His 
 Church; then His Blessed and Immaculate Mother ; 
 then all His friends reigning with Him, or suffering 
 on their way to His kingdom ; lastly, parents, kins- 
 men, friends and enemies, and our own country— 
 subject always to the law ox God. 
 
 Now there are two short questions to be asked, 
 and then I have done. 
 
THE GIFT OF PIETY. 955 
 
 What is it that destroys the piety of men? You 
 answer at once, it is impiety. Just as unbelief de- 
 stroys faith, and as despair destroys hope, impiety 
 destroys piety. This is plain. But what is impiety ? 
 It is a want of faith to believe and a want of love to 
 venerate. How shall a man have piety towards God 
 if he does not believe in Him? How shall a man 
 love God if he does not venerate Him? And how is 
 it that men grow up without believing in God? There 
 are, I believe, a great many men who are without 
 faith in God; not so much through their own fault 
 as through the sin of their parents. I believe that 
 in this country of ours millions and millions are 
 evowing up without the knowledge and the love of 
 God. Why? Because three hundred years ago this 
 land was disinherited and robbed by the wickedness 
 of men; the light of the Catholic faith was extin- 
 guished. A fragmentary Christianity indeed re- 
 mained; but the altars were pulled down, and the 
 name of our Blessed Mother was taken away out of 
 the mouths, and at last out of the hearts, of her 
 children. Not so in a country close by us. A narrow 
 channel of sea divides us from a people who speak 
 the same tongue, who are of the same family with us, 
 who are our tellow-coantrymen, who are our brothers. 
 There, since Saint Patrick preached, the light ot faith 
 
256 THE GIFT OF PIETY, 
 
 has never been extinguished. Beliefin Jesus and the 
 Sacrament of the Altar, love of the Holy Mass, have 
 never failed ; love and piety towards His Blessed and 
 Immaculate Mother has never been chilled. Up on 
 the mountains, out in the morasses, in the cold of 
 winter, in all manner of suffering, the faithful people 
 of Ireland have preserved the tradition of piety, which 
 among us is grown so cold and dim. We can easily 
 understand that millions among us have not the 
 knowledge or the love of God, not so much through 
 their own fault as through the fault of those who 
 have gone before them. And yet there are also mul- 
 titudes who have it not through their own fault, 
 through their own grievous fault. There are men 
 among us who profess to be infidels, and who glory 
 in their unbelief, who have no shame to say, ‘I do 
 not believe in God or in Jesus Christ.’ There are 
 men whose intellectual pride cavils and perverts, 
 criticises and distorts, every truth of the revelation of 
 God. What shall we say of them? That they are 
 impious, and that it is the want of the love of truth 
 which causes this aberration of the human mind 
 when it is once grown to maturity. In childhood 
 the privation of which I spoke will account for much. 
 But when men come to maturity, do you think that 
 God has left the evidence of His revelation so ob- 
 
THE GIFT OF PIETY. COT 
 
 scure that it cannot be seen? This is to throw the 
 sin of their unbelief on God, and to accuse Him of 
 injustice. The fault by which they do not see Him 
 in the light of His truth is not on God’s part, but 
 on theirs. It is their own fault. There is another 
 reason. One of the chief causes of unbelief in mat- 
 ters of faith is sin, secret and sensual; the sins of 
 the heart, if not of the life. In many a soul impurity 
 is the cause of impiety. 
 
 Once more, there is another very dangerous 
 cause of impiety and unbelief: the gross heavy ma- 
 terial love of the world, of getting and hoarding, of 
 growing rich, of drowning the soul in things of this 
 world. And there is still another, the direct oppo- 
 site of this. It is a levity of mind, which is to be 
 found more often among educated than among un- 
 educated people. I thank God that the spirit of 
 mockery which desolated France in the last century, 
 and ran like a wildfire all through the upper classes 
 of that cultivated people, has found no home in 
 England. There were a few, here and there, in the 
 beginning of the last century, who attempted to imi- 
 tate it, but it soon went out; and it went out just as 
 an evil thing which cannot bear the light of the sun or 
 the pure air of heaven. Thank God that this evil spirit 
 of levity and mockery is not to be found widespread 
 
 of! 
 
258 THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 among us; it may indeed be found in individuals, 
 but Englishmen are a graver race. Anybody who 
 makes jokes on religion, or who ridicules the faith, 
 or who allows himself to speak with irreverence of 
 God, or of His Blessed Mother, or of the Saints, or 
 of the Holy Catholic Church, thereby blinds his own 
 eyes; and if there be anybody who from levity will 
 not heed, will not inquire into the truths of faith, 
 will not read, will not examine, will not listen, such a 
 man condemns himself to ignorance, and therefore to 
 unbelief. 
 
 I know that worldly and passionate minds, which 
 live in pleasure, become at last so shallow that the 
 thought of God can find no soil in which to root itself. 
 They become utterly light, like the thistledown which 
 is carried to and fro by the faintest breath. The 
 opinions of men, and the fashion of the day, and the 
 pestilence of bad literature which lies on the tables 
 of the educated, are quite enough to keep the reyela- 
 tion of Jesus Christ out of their hearts. They read 
 nothing but fictions and levities, till their very minds 
 become light and false. 
 
 How, then, is the spirit of piety to be matured 
 and sustained? In the outset of this subject, we 
 went back to the Old Testament, and to the exam- 
 ples of the patriarchs, and the prophets, and the 
 
THE GIFT OF PIETY. 259 
 
 saints of the old law. They were profound believers 
 in God. They were men who lived in the midst of 
 the divine attributes. They were men who walked to 
 and fro among the perfections of God; of His sanec- 
 tity, of His justice, of His mercy, of His truth, 
 of His purity, like as men walk to and fro upon 
 the high mountains, and in the midst of the splen- 
 dours of the noonday sun. And this is the mean- 
 ing of the counsel which God gave to Abraham : 
 ‘Walk before Me, and be perfect ;”!? walk before Me : 
 live in My presence, in the vision of My perfections, 
 and thou shalt be perfect. If only you will try and 
 impress upon yourselves in the morning, and keep 
 continually alive all the day long, the recollection of 
 ' the Divine Presence; if only you will pray with your 
 heart when you are not able to pray with your lips, 
 —then the spirit of piety which is in you will be per- 
 petually increasing in brightness and in ardour, as 
 the lamp that hangs before the Altar is perpetually 
 replenished with oil by a vigilant hand. 
 
 And therefore, to make an end and to sum up 
 what I have said, this gift of piety is a gift which 
 comes from the Holy Ghost. We ought to ask for it 
 day by day. ‘Ask, and you shall receive.” The pro- 
 mise never fails. And this gift of piety will make the 
 
 2 Gen. xvii. 1. 38. Matt. vii. 7; 
 
260 THE GIFT OF PIETY. 
 
 service of God sweet to you, prayer will be sweet to 
 you, the Holy Sacraments will be sweet to you, and 
 the Holy Mass, and visits to our Divine Lord in the 
 Blessed Sacrament of the Altar; all these things, of 
 which the world is weary, to you will be a sweetness 
 from the presence of God. You will then understand 
 the Psalmist’s words: ‘One thing have I desired of 
 the Lord; that will I seek for, that I may dwell in 
 the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to be- 
 hold the beauty of the Lord, and to visit His temple; 
 for in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His 
 tabernacle, He shall hide me in the secret of His 
 tabernacle, and shall set me up upon the rock.’* If 
 this be the reward of piety here, while we are way- 
 farers on earth, what will be its reward when we 
 shall see God face to face ? 
 
 4 Pg, xxvi. 4-6. 
 
X. 
 
 THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 
 
THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 
 
 —— 
 
 Labour as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. 2 Tim. il. 3. 
 
 Tue third and last of the three gifts of the Holy 
 Ghost which perfect the will is the gift of fortitude. 
 
 We have already drawn, at least in outline, what 
 is the gift of holy fear, and have seen that it is a 
 filial fear of losing God, a fear of sin, and a fear of 
 the occasions of sin, because it is by sin and by its 
 occasions that we may fall from God. Likewise we 
 have drawn out what is the gift of piety. We have 
 seen that it is a filial piety, that is, the love of sons, 
 together with a veneration which springs from love, 
 and the obedience which springs from that love and 
 veneration. 
 
 And now, thirdly, the gift of fortitude or strength, 
 of courage, of force, of endurance, is necessary to per- 
 fect the will. For if the will be soft, shrinking, 
 inconstant, and cowardly, it can never hold out under 
 suffering. The words of the Apostle, ‘Labour like a 
 
964 THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 
 
 good soldier,’ may be also translated ‘Endure hard- 
 ness ;’ that is, bear pain, rise up against difficulty, 
 accept crosses, suffering, privation, hardship, whatso- 
 ever may come in the way of duty. Fortitude, there- 
 fore, is of two kinds: there is an active fortitude and 
 a passive fortitude. The gift of fortitude is what we 
 commonly call courage. We see it in perfection in 
 the soldier saints of the Old Testament, in Josue, in 
 Gedeon, in David, in the Maccabees. They were what 
 the world calls heroes, what the Church calls saints. 
 And in all the history of the Church there is a multi- 
 tude of soldiers and warriors who have led armies, 
 and endured all hardships, dangers, and wounds, and, 
 at the same time, have walked with God in purity, 
 and humility, and charity. This is the active forti- 
 tude, but it is not the perfection of fortitude. The 
 perfection of fortitude is in its passive character. It 
 is to be seen in the life and Passion of our Blessed 
 Lord. The Son of God, Who never lifted His hand 
 but in benediction, nor stretched it out but to be 
 nailed to the Cross, is the perfect pattern of fortitude. 
 {n Him fortitude and courage were made perfect. 
 There was never fortitude like His in the thirty-three 
 years of His mental sorrow in the midst of this sinful 
 and dying world. There was never fortitude to be 
 
 compared to His submission in the agony of Geth- 
 
THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 965 
 
 semani; never courage comparable to His endurance 
 in that long night of pain before His crucifixion ; 
 never was there patience in man comparable to His in 
 the three hours of anguish on the Cross. The cour- 
 age which shows itself in action may be little more 
 than the energies of nature, and nature has a certain 
 satisfaction in putting out its latent power; but the 
 fortitude which is shown in suffering is, I may say, 
 contrary to nature. All our nature rises against it, 
 and it demands an energy of will, of self-constraint, 
 of self-subjugation, which is altogether not of nature 
 but of grace. Therefore, as I have said, fortitude is 
 necessary to perfect the will. It is necessary also to 
 perfect the holy fear of which I spoke, and even the 
 piety of sons; and for this reason. Fear without 
 fortitude degenerates into timidity and cowardice. 
 Piety without austerity—and austerity is a part of 
 fortitude—degenerates into emotion, excitement, and 
 weakness. And therefore, to sustain and perfect 
 holy fear and filial piety, fortitude is vitally necessary, 
 because it gives to the character strength, force, en- 
 durance, courage, and perseverance. 
 
 Active fortitude is one of the four cardinal vir- 
 tues, and belongs to the order of nature. But the 
 fortitude of which we are speaking is a gift of the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
266 THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 
 
 Now before we go further let us clearly under- 
 stand what are the four cardinal virtues. We ought 
 to understand what they are, and why there are four, 
 and not more than four. A little reflection and it will 
 stand to reason. The four cardinal virtues are prud- 
 ence, justice, fortitude, temperance. They are the ex- 
 cellences of the soul, and are related to the reason, 
 the will, and the passions. Prudence is the excellence 
 of the reason, and justice is the excellence of the will 
 in action; fortitude is the excellence of the will en- 
 during pain, and temperance is the excellence of the 
 will in controlling the passion for pleasure. There- 
 fore these four cardinal virtues are founded in the 
 nature of the soul itself. They mutually perfect each 
 other. Fortitude is necessary to perfect prudence, 
 justice, and temperance; and fortitude is the excel- 
 lence of the will by which the other cardinal virtues 
 are matured and made perfect. For example: a man 
 ought to be ready to endure, to suffer, to lose or to 
 sacrifice everything, rather than act contrary to pru- 
 dence; because in acting contrary to prudence he is 
 acting contrary to reason, and reason includes the 
 conscience. He ought also in like manner to be 
 ready to suffer or endure anything rather than act 
 contrary to justice, for justice is the duty which we 
 owe to our neighbour. And, further, we ought to be 
 
THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 267 
 
 ready to endure anything rather than to act contrary 
 to the equities which we owe to our neighbour—that 
 is, to the finer and more delicate duties of justice 
 —where our own interests draw us the other way. 
 Once more, a man ought to be prepared to suffer 
 anything rather than indulge his love of pleasure so 
 as to soften, to debase, to imbrute himself; that is 
 to say, it is fortitude which perfects temperance. 
 Fortitude therefore belongs, as a cardinal virtue, to 
 the excellence of man in the order of nature; but it 
 is not to be found in its perfection without the 
 assistance of grace. 
 
 The gift of fortitude is not only what I have 
 described; it is the ripeness and the supernatural 
 perfection of that which begins in nature. It is, 
 therefore, to be defined in this way. Fortitude is a 
 gift of the Holy Ghost, strengthening the soul against 
 pain and fear, and supporting the soul in fulfilling 
 every duty, not according to the light of nature only, 
 nor only according to the Ten Commandments, but 
 according to all the higher works of perfection which 
 
 come from the gift of counsel.’ 
 
 1 ¢Fortitudo est habitus supernaturalis atque infusus, secundum 
 principia fidei divinzeque legis agens et patiens.’ Dionys. Carthu- 
 sian. de donis Spir. Sanct. tract. iii. art. 16. Oper. minor. tom. i. 
 Cologne, 1532. 
 
2°68 THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 
 
 There are five chief times in which, unless we 
 exercise the gift of fortitude, we shall be in the 
 danger of losing God and eternal life. We will take 
 these five as examples ; for they will contain every- 
 thing else. 
 
 1. The first great peril by which the perseverance 
 of the soul in grace is threatened is the time of 
 temptation. Just as in the time of battle a soldier 
 needs courage, so it is in that moment that a Chris- 
 tian man needs the gift of fortitude. Courage does 
 not consist in underrating danger, or despising the 
 powers of the enemy. Those that despise their ad- 
 versaries are almost always defeated. True courage 
 looks danger in the face, measures its full stature, 
 and without fear goes out to meet it. So it is with 
 spiritual temptation. We are all surrounded by it; 
 we all carry it within us. And a man that does not 
 know that he is surrounded by temptation, and that he 
 has it within him, is like a man who is walking un- 
 consciously into the midst of fire. We have every 
 one of us personal temptations of various kinds. We 
 have our circumstantial temptations attaching to our 
 lot in life ; we have our private and domestic tempt- 
 ations in every path of duty. And unless we have 
 fortitude to overcome these temptations, they will 
 overcome us; one or the other is inevitable. If we 
 
THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 269 
 
 have not courage and strength to bruise them under 
 our feet, they will in the end bruise us under their 
 power. Our character is the result of this conflict. 
 And therefore the gift of fortitude, first of all, is to - 
 measure the whole of our danger; to realise the 
 presence of the tempter; to know him to be a fallen 
 angel, excellent in strength, surpassing in intelli- 
 gence, of supernatural craft and subtilty, and of a 
 diabolical malice. He is not an enemy to despise, 
 he is not an enemy to undervalue. Cowards laugh 
 at danger in order to get up their courage or to 
 conceal their fear; brave men are silent and look 
 danger in the face. The gift of fortitude, in making 
 us look at the strength and subtilty of the tempter, 
 makes us to mistrust our own strength. It will 
 make us to know the meaning of these words: ‘ He 
 that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed 
 lest he fall ;’ and while it inspires us with a great 
 mistrust of our own power, it fills us with a great 
 confidence in the presence and the protection of God. 
 Though our eyes are not open to see the mountain 
 full of the chariots of fire, as the prophet saw when 
 he opened the eyes of his servant, yet we know this : 
 that round about every faithful son of our Heavenly 
 Father there are the twelve legions of angels, which 
 the Son of God in His Passion would not call to His 
 
270 THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 
 
 own aid. The gift of fortitude, therefore, springs 
 from a confidence in God, from a knowledge that 
 God is round about us. Whatever our temptation 
 may be, if it comes upon us in the unrelenting 
 violence of sorrow after sorrow, assault after assault, 
 as it did of old upon Job, who was stripped of his 
 children and of all that he had, smitten from head 
 to foot with sore disease, separated from men, sitting 
 upon his dunghill, upbraided by all who knew him, 
 reproached even by his friends: still in the midst of 
 all temptation he had confidence, not in himself, 
 but in God; like him, we may say: ‘Though He kill 
 me, yet will I trust in Him.’? Patience overcame, 
 and in the end he was sevenfold rewarded. Saint 
 Paul, as he tells us, had a messenger of Satan sent 
 to buffet him, lest he should be exalted by the spiri- 
 tual favours he had received ; and in the conflict of 
 that temptation he besought the Lord thrice that it 
 might depart from him; but the answer came, ‘ My 
 grace is sufficient for thee.’? Hig cry was not heard, 
 nor was his prayer granted; and yet it was more 
 than answered, for the grace of God was perfected in 
 his weakness. So it will be with your temptations. 
 If you walk in the furnace like the three faithful sons 
 of Israel, there is a fourth ever with you, and He ig 
 
 2 Job xiii. 15. 3 2 Cor. xii. 9. 
 
THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. O71 
 
 the Son of God. To you the words of the prophet 
 will be fulfilled: ‘ When thou shalt pass through the 
 waters, I will be with thee, and the rivers shall not 
 cover thee; when thou shalt walk in the fire, thou 
 shalt not be burnt, neither shall the flames burn in 
 thee.’ * 
 
 2. Now another time of need is mortification of 
 self. A saint has said, ‘If I had one foot in heaven, 
 and should leave off to mortify myself, I should be 
 lost.’ We shall never see the kingdom of heaven if 
 we do not mortify ourselves. Our whole salvation is 
 made up of these two things—vmortification and 
 sanctification; that is, the slaying of the old man 
 that is within us, and the perpetual renewing of the 
 soul by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. But our 
 sanctification is exactly in the measure of our morti- 
 fication. Like as the thermometer tells the measure 
 of heat or cold, so our sanctification goes onward or 
 backward, just in proportion as we mortify ourselves. 
 Our tempers, our passions, our inward temptations, 
 our pride and vanity, the self-love, and the jealousies, 
 and the multitude of inward faults of which we are 
 conscious, will master us little by little unless we 
 master them. Why, then, is it we see so few people 
 persevering in anything like a life of solid piety? I 
 
 4 Isaias xliii. 2. 
 
272 THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 
 
 will tell you at once. It is from their want of forti- 
 tude in mortifying their faults. It is their softness 
 which makes them give up denying themselves; and 
 from that softness come inconstancy, wavering, 
 hesitation, a slackened step, and at last a looking 
 back ; and ‘he that putteth his hand to the plough, 
 and looketh back, is not fit for the kingdom of 
 heaven.’® We live in soft days. Who is there now 
 that fasts? Fasting means taking no food until sun- 
 set. We have introduced I know not what relaxa- 
 tions; and our Holy Mother the Church, because 
 she is benign with a maternal pity upon the culp- 
 able weakness of her children, rather than try them 
 too sharply, gives them all manner of indulgence. 
 Why, to this very day the people of Israel, three 
 times in the year, in great solemnity, taste no food 
 from the sunrise to the sunset—a bitter and sharp 
 rebuke to us, the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. We 
 are told that ‘ My physician says I cannot fast.’ Let 
 me ask you; do you believe it when you hear your 
 neighbour say so? I know you believe it when you 
 say so of yourselves. Why is it we are so ready to 
 believe what the physician says ? Suppose he were 
 to say to us, ‘ You must give up this or that pleasure.’ 
 We should not do it. But if he says, ‘You must 
 5 §, Luke ix, 62, 
 
THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 278 
 
 give up going so often to Mass; or going out so early 
 in the morning; you cannot fast,’ we believe him on 
 the spot, as if he were an evangelist. Why is this ? 
 Because of our softness. Shameuponus. However, 
 it is not only about fasting; but we cannot even 
 abstain. No, not even on a Friday. No, not one 
 day in the week. To go without meat for one day is 
 dangerous to our health ; it makes us ill; it pulls us 
 down. Why, half the human race never touch meat. 
 Are we not made up of the same dust of the earth ? It 
 is the corrupt civilisation from which we are sprung 
 which has so unnerved our whole being, that we 
 cannot go without meat one day in the seven. Now 
 ask yourselves: do you believe these valetudinarian 
 ‘superstitions? You are prevailed upon, I have no 
 doubt, by the trust you have in your physician, and 
 you readily give way. But would you give way so 
 readily if you had the gift of fortitude in you? 
 Would you be so ready to say, ‘I know that the 
 Church commands it; I know that the saints have 
 practised it; I know that the greater the saints the 
 severer their fasting; I know that every book I read 
 enjoins it; I know it will be good for me if I do it’? 
 And why then cannot you do it? JfI can touch or 
 trouble some of your consciences, I shall not regret 
 it. I feel confident of this: that we have entered 
 18 
 
274 THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 
 
 into a period of softness, in which the laws of the 
 Church and their sweet severity are being stealthily 
 obliterated from the hearts of men. 
 
 I will go further. Who is there now that has the 
 courage to live the life ofthe saints? We read their 
 lives, and admire them. The austerities they practised 
 in secret; the means they took to subdue their faults ; 
 the offerings of self-denial which they made to their 
 Divine Master, no one knowing it but He only; the 
 poverty in which they voluntarily lived; the raiment 
 they wore, which, in its fashion and in its quality, 
 bespoke a willing poverty like His own—all these 
 things we commend and shrink from. Let us try 
 ourselves a little. Are you willing to be tested? 
 Should you be willing to go out on a bright sum- 
 mer’s day, at noon, into the midst of one of our 
 thronging streets dressed in a threadbare coat? Are 
 you courageous enough to say grace at a dinner party? 
 Would you be willing to go to confession in the sight 
 of your Protestant friends? If we were tried, I am 
 afraid that we are such cowards—we stand in such 
 fear of the world—that we dare not live a life of 
 poverty with any outward token of it, or face the ridi- 
 cule of practising our faith openly. If we have faith 
 and piety, we conceal it. It is a.good thing indeed to 
 
 conceal it out of humility; and to pass it unnoticed 
 
THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. O75 
 
 lest we should be singular, lest we should be tempted 
 to vain-glory: that is not what Iam speaking of. But 
 if we deny ourselves, and give our money to the poor; 
 if we stint what we lay out on ourselves, and then are — 
 willing to bear the outward marks of poverty, not 
 through any affected singularity, but because it comes 
 by necessity of our state—then we have at least some 
 measure of fortitude. But if we have not fortitude 
 enough even for this, for what shall we be courageous? 
 We are all striving to be dressed in the fashion of the 
 day, so that the world may count us to be its own, 
 and then we call ourselves Christians. I might go on; 
 but this is more than enough on the subject of mortifi- 
 cation, though I have more to speak of. Let what I 
 have gaid suffice: only remember the words of the 
 Apostle, ‘I chastise my body, and bring it into sub- 
 jection.’ And why? ‘ Lest after I have preached the 
 Gospel to others I myself should become a castaway.”° 
 Such are the words of an Apostle, converted by a 
 miracle, who had seen the Son of God in His glory. 
 Even he feared lest if he should cease to chastise 
 his body and bring it into subjection, after having 
 preached the Gospel to others, and saved souls with- 
 out number, he himself shoald be cast out from the 
 
 face of God. 
 *] Cor, ix. 27 
 
276 THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 
 
 8. And then, once more. What do the words of 
 our Lord mean? ‘Marvel not, My brethren, if the 
 world hate you.? You know it hated Me before it 
 hated you. If you were of the world, the world 
 would love its own; but because you are not of the 
 world, and I have chosen you out of the world, there- 
 fore the world hateth you;’® and ‘ You shall be hated 
 of all men for My name’s sake.’® Again, the Holy 
 Ghost says: ‘The friendship of this world is the 
 enemy of God.” Now I wish you to ask yourselves 
 some questions. Does the world hate you? Have 
 you ever had any sensible token of its hatred? What 
 mark has it ever set upon you of hating you for the 
 name of Jesus? Are you conscious of this hatred ? 
 If not, hear these words of God once more: ‘ All that 
 will live goodly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecu- 
 
 tion.’ 
 
 When did you ever suffer persecution ? I 
 speak of us all; I will not say you—I will say when did 
 we ever suffer persecution? And therefore, unless we 
 have the enmity of the world against us, we certainly 
 have no sign that the gift of fortitude isin us. Now 
 how does the world show its hatred of us? First, 
 by all manner of false accusation. How did it treat 
 our Master? It called Him gluttonous, and a wine- 
 
 718. John iii. 13, 8 Tb, xv. 18. ® S. Matt. xxiv. 9. 
 10 §, James iv. 4. 1 Q Tim, iii. 12, 
 
THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 277 
 
 bibber,?? and a friend of publicans and sinners. ‘This 
 man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them,’ }* mean- 
 ing to say He is one of them. Have they ever said 
 anything of this kind of you? Again, Saint Athana- 
 sius, the saint of dogma, the witness of the Holy | 
 Trinity, the great doctor of the Incarnation, for fifty 
 long years was cast out, persecuted, hunted to and fro ; 
 and for what? For the truth of the co-equality of the 
 Son with the Father—for the truth of the Incarnation 
 of the Word made flesh. Now I ask you to tell me 
 honestly, have you ever suffered anything for the 
 truth’s sake ? And if you were to be tried, if you were 
 to be threatened, if you were to be in danger of losing 
 a situation, a place of trust, a place of lucrative em- 
 ployment, would you stand firm? There have been 
 saints who have been accused of all manner of evil, 
 being all the while innocent as the driven snow ; for 
 instance, Saint Vincent of Paul, Saint Francis of Sales. 
 Why were they accused? Because the world hated 
 them. Andwhy didit hatethem? Because of their 
 sanctity. Have you ever tasted of false accusation ? 
 And if you were to taste it, what would you do? 
 Would you not go up and down, trying to defend 
 yourself? Would you not seek everywhere for proofs 
 to refute the accusation ? Whatdid theydo? They 
 12, §, Matt. xi. 19. 3 §. Luke xv. 2. 
 
278 THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE, 
 
 never opened their lips. They committed their cause 
 to the judgment of God, and waited until He made 
 their innocence as clear as the light, and their justice 
 as the noonday. The world singles out the best of 
 our Master’s servants for its special hatred. If you 
 were to ask the world ‘ Why ?’ it could not say; and 
 in that it fulfils the words of prophecy: ‘ They hated 
 Me without cause.’ '* As they did with our Lord, so 
 they do with His servants. ‘If they have called the 
 good man of the house Beelzebub, how much more 
 them of His household. The disciple is not above 
 his Lord, nor the servant above his master. It is 
 enough for the disciple to be as his master.’ Shall I 
 give you one more example ? Is there anybody on the 
 face of the earth who is accused, hated, cast out, the 
 butt of the slings and stones, the insults and the con- 
 tumelies, the violence and the warfare, of the world, 
 like Pius IX.? See that old man, more than eighty 
 years of age, who for seven-and-twenty years has 
 stood, with the calm inflexibility of an apostle, with 
 the silent fortitude of his Master, against every kind 
 of treason, ingratitude, betrayal, revolution, the for- 
 saking of friends, the triumph of enemies. If there 
 can be found in the world an example of one who 
 seems to be utterly baffled, beaten, and cast down, it is 
 
 4 §, John xv. 25. 18 §, Matt. x. 24, 25. 
 
THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 279 
 
 Pius IX. Everything he possessed is torn from him; 
 the city which was his own sacrilegiously usurped; 
 everything that was sacred about it profaned ; and, 
 with the keen irony of those who know how to add 
 insult to injury, laws of guarantees passed for the 
 protection of his sovereign person,-—I do not think 
 that upon the face of the earth there is any man 
 whom the world regards as so complete a failure as 
 Pius IX. And there he is, in the sight of the nations, 
 like a man that is dumb, and cannot open his mouth. 
 What fortitude is required for all this. That forti- 
 tude has been tempted to compromises, as our Lord 
 was tempted with the kingdoms of this world, and 
 the glory of them, and he spurned them from him. 
 He has been tempted by menace and by threat, 
 which involved the peril of his own life, and he 
 has shown that the Vicar of Jesus Christ, if need 
 be, is ready to die. Everything that could be 
 used to bring down his great constancy has been 
 tried ; but the gift of fortitude is too strong, and 
 he is victorious. There was a correspondence the 
 other day between the weakest man, the most 
 isolated on the face of the earth, and the mighti- 
 est sovereign of the hour among men—one who 
 wields powers greater than any other earthly po- 
 
 tentate. Were ever weakness and strength matched 
 
280 THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 
 
 face to face in a more unequal conflict? Wait for 
 the end. The whole history of Christianity is but a 
 successive repetition of what we see before us, until 
 it runs up into the great Martyrdom—the Son of 
 God dying on the Cross, isolated, cast out, forsaken, 
 defeated, baffled, the greatest failure, as the world 
 would say, the false prophet and the foolish teacher 
 caught at last and hung up high on Calvary between 
 two thieves. The proof that out of divine weakness 
 has come the kingdom of God, through the fortitude 
 of Jesus, is the Christian world. As it was then, so 
 it shall be now. What seems to be failing in the 
 sight of men goes forth conquering and to conquer 
 in the patience of the Church. 
 
 4, And once more. Let us come nearer home. 
 Our Divine Lord said: ‘He that loveth father or 
 mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.’?® And 
 when a man came to Him and said: ‘ Lord, I will 
 follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest, but suffer me 
 first to go and bury my father;’” that is to say, ‘Let 
 me go home to my father’s house, and while he lives 
 let me tarry with him: when I have laid him in the 
 grave I will come and follow Thee,’ —our Divine 
 Lord, pitiful as He was, said: ‘Let the dead bury 
 their dead; come thou, and follow Me ;’® that is to 
 
 6 8. Matt. x. 37, 7 Tb, viii. 21. ae Tb 228 
 
THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 281 
 
 say, between us and the service of Jesus Christ no- 
 thing mustcome. If He call upon us to make sacri- 
 fice of everything in life, that sacrifice must be made. 
 The Apostles made it, the disciples made it, the first 
 
 Christians made it. Saint Paul was held in honour, | 
 trust, and public repute; he cast all these things 
 from him because he had seen Jesus of Nazareth. 
 All those who became disciples of the Son of God in 
 Jerusalem, one by one were cast off by country and by 
 friends; and accounted as dead; but they were will- 
 ing to lose all things because they knew the words 
 of their Master: ‘Whosoever doth not carry his cross 
 and come after Me cannot be My disciple;’” and ‘He 
 that will save his life shall lose it, for he that shall lose 
 his life for My sake shall save it.’®° So it was in the 
 early times and in imperial Rome with the sons and 
 daughters of patrician families, and with the members 
 of the senate who became Christians. They were out- 
 cast, despised, condemned, counted with the slaves, 
 and the Jews, and the grave-diggers, and the refuse 
 of the people ; all the world turned in anger against 
 them, and they were cast off by all who loved them - 
 the day before. And have not these same things 
 happened nearer home? In my own experience, I 
 have known men who had all things at their foot— 
 
 19 §, Luke xiv. 27. 20 Tb. ix, 24. 
 
282, THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 
 
 the world and its honours, and its power, and its 
 possessions—and in a moment, when the eye of the 
 Son of God looked upon them, and the gaze of that 
 Countenance pierced their hearts, they gladly cast 
 everything behind them for the sake of truth, for the 
 love of the kingdom of God, for the salvation of their 
 own souls. Nothing of this world could hold them 
 back. Father, mother, kindred, home, possessions 
 —all were nothing. Why? Because the light of 
 faith was in them; because holy fear taught them 
 that except they were faithful they might lose God 
 for ever; and because filial piety taught them that 
 unless they had a generous self-sacrificing love for 
 the Master Who gave Himself for them, they might 
 lose Him in the day of His coming. The gift of for- 
 titude filled them with the courage and endurance of 
 soldiers to endure whatever they had to suffer. Avy, 
 but itis not only men who have so endured. We have 
 known young girls, the delicate daughters of luxuri- 
 ous houses, reared and cultured in all manner of 
 softness—we have known them rise up with the 
 courage of confessors for the faith. For the sake of 
 Jesus Christ they have given up everything of this 
 world. The bright, sweet, luring visions of the future, 
 all that hovers before the thought of those who 
 are entering, in the innocence of life, on the path 
 
THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 283 
 
 that leads onward—to home, or wealth, or happiness 
 —all these things they forsook. And why? Because 
 they had come to know this: that the Good Shepherd 
 has on earth one fold and no other, and that the 
 voice of His Church on earth is His own voice—the 
 accents of it to the ear are human speech, but the 
 truth that is spoken is the truth of the Son of God. 
 The Son of God, Who speaks by the voice of His 
 Church, was calling them to Himself. And they 
 promptly answered, ‘Speak, Lord, for Thy servant 
 heareth ;’?! ‘Lord, my heart is ready.’®? And they 
 gave themselves to Him with the courage of con- 
 fessors, and I may say with the strength of martyrs. 
 What enabled them to do this? It was the gift of 
 the Holy Ghost ; the gift of fortitude. 
 
 5. And lastly. We do not live in an age of mar- 
 tyrdom ; but we live in an age when every man 
 must bear a martyr’s will. Now at the moment 
 I am speaking there are bishops of the Church of 
 God fined, threatened with imprisonment, imprisoned 
 and threatened with deposition, and under sentence 
 of pretended deposition. Be it so. Do you think that 
 one such pastor, who has received his consecration 
 from the Son of God, and who, through the Vicar of 
 Jesus Christ, has received the charge of his flock, 
 
 21 1 Kings iii. 9 Sab eelvinge 
 
984 THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 
 
 with the words, ‘Feed My sheep,’* that one such man 
 will be found who will lay down his pastoral staff at 
 the foot of an imperial throne ? Wait till we see it: 
 then we will believe it. The whole history of the 
 Church gives the lie to such a slander against the 
 fortitude of the bishops of the Catholic Church. But 
 the man who will prove this must carry the will of a 
 martyr in his heart, for who knows what may be 
 before him ? Now, as we are taught, there are three 
 kinds of martyrs. There are those who are martyrs 
 both in will and in deed, like the Apostles, all except 
 one ; next, there are those that are martyrs in will but 
 not in deed, like Saint John—he alone among them 
 died a natural death; thirdly, there are those who are 
 martyrs in deed if you like, but not in will, for they 
 die out of the Church, out of the faith. To what do 
 they bear witness ? Saint Cyprian says of such in his 
 day: ‘They are slain but not crowned—Occisi sed non 
 coronati.’ Now every man must at least bear in his 
 heart the will of Saint John ; he may never be called 
 upon to lay down his life, but he must have the will 
 to do it, if he were ever called to bear witness to the 
 faith or to the unity of the Church, or to its divine au- 
 thority, or to his own pastoral office. Then he must 
 have the will to suffer all things: fines, exile, or im- 
 
 2 §. John xxi. 17. 
 
THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 285 
 
 prisonment, violence usque ad sanguims effusionem— 
 even unto blood. And so it must ever be: it must be so 
 with you. For there are three kinds of martyrdoms, 
 as there are three kinds of martyrs. First of all, there 
 is the martyrdom of those who are slain by the 
 sword; secondly, there is the martyrdom of those 
 who willingly give their lives, if need be, in the care 
 of the sick and dying, and in the fever hospital, or in 
 times of pestilence. Theirs is a martyr’s will and a 
 martyr’s death. The poor priest, the Sisters of 
 Charity and of Mercy, and the like, and many a noble 
 generous heart, are in more peril in the fever hospital 
 than on the battlefield; and yet some have been 
 struck even there in their Master’s work, and have 
 given up their life in the midst of the wounded and 
 the dying. And, lastly, there is the martyrdom of 
 those who wear themselves out early and late, sum- 
 mer and winter, in weariness and poverty, by broken 
 rest at night, never-ending work by day, in the service 
 of their neighbour, and in the love of the souls for 
 whom Jesus shed His Precious Blood. Such men 
 have fortitude enough to care for nothing, if they 
 may finish their course with joy; and when kind, 
 bat not wise, friends tell them that they ought to 
 spare themselves, they remember what their Master 
 
 said to Peter. Now you may all have that spirit in 
 
286 THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 
 
 you. You may all have a ready will to lay down 
 your life by the bedside of the sick. The poor nuns, 
 the poor priests— whom the world despises and 
 hates—live all day long in that readiness to die for 
 their neighbour’s good. It is in our own lifetime— 
 only the other day, I may say—that a bishop and 
 twenty-seven of our priests gladly gave their lives, 
 struck down by fever, in the towns and cities of the 
 north of England. They came up one by one, each 
 filling the place of the other; as when a soldier is 
 struck down a man from the rear comes to the front, 
 so they died with the fortitude of martyrs. 
 
 The First and Chief, the great example of this 
 spirit of fortitude, as I have already said, is Jesus 
 Himself. And He has been followed from the begin- 
 ning by a line of martyrs. The martyrs of early days 
 you all know. The line has never been broken, though 
 at times the world has ceased for a while to per- 
 secute. Now fortitude is tried even more in the 
 foresight of the suffering that is to come than in the 
 actual presence of death. Our great Saint Thomas of 
 Canterbury knew for five years that he would have to 
 lay down his life for the liberties of the Church, 
 and, with that perfect knowledge before him, he in- 
 flexibly persevered, and even returned from safety in 
 
 exile to his martyrdom at Canterbury. Sir Thomas 
 
THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 287 
 
 More, the greatest of English laymen, as Saint Tho- 
 mas of Canterbury was the greatest of English pas- 
 tors, knew long before that his fate was sealed. He 
 foresaw that he would be called upon to deny the 
 supreme and divine authority of the Church of God, 
 and to choose between the divine jurisdiction of the 
 Vicar of Jesus Christ and the usurpation of a royal 
 master. And when called on to give his answer, he 
 gave it with fortitude and with joy. On the morning 
 of his first examination at Lambeth he had confessed 
 his sins and received absolution, and the Precious 
 Body and Blood of His Divine Master, to strengthen 
 him for the trial. And as he came back to Chelsea 
 in his boat upon the Thames, there was a radiant 
 joy upon his face. Those that were with him asked 
 why he was so glad. He answered, ‘ Because I have 
 gone so far now that my weakness can no longer 
 tempt me to go back.’ In this, too, he was like his 
 glorious predecessor Saint Thomas, who some hours 
 before he suffered, being asked why he was so merry, 
 answered, ‘A man must be merry who is going to 
 his Master.’ We need go no further than our own 
 land, and almost our own times, for heroic examples 
 of the gift of fortitude. They are to be found now at 
 this day in the missionaries of the Catholic Church. 
 
 While we in our every-day life here are reading of 
 
288 THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 
 
 martyrs in antiquity, we forget that there are martyrs 
 at this moment in the East, in Corea, and in China. 
 If you will read a book called The new Glories of the 
 Catholic Church, you might believe yourselves to be 
 reading the acts of the martyrs of the first ages. And 
 these martyrdoms have been taking place now, while 
 we have been living our commonplace life of the 
 nineteenth century here in London. I will give you 
 one example. A man and a boy, both converts to 
 Christianity, natives of Corea, were seized and 
 brought before the tribunal; the man was a cate- 
 chist, the boy was a catechumen, only just bap- 
 tised. The man, in terror, renounced his faith, and 
 the boy, bound to the stake, and scourged until the 
 blood burst from him, and the flesh was cut from 
 his bones, stood firm. Reproaching the man, he said 
 to him, ‘You are a man and I a poor boy; you 
 ought to have strengthened me, and I, a poor boy, 
 reproach you for your apostasy.’ Then taking a 
 remnant of his own torn flesh, in indignation, he cast 
 it at the apostate. These are things of our own day, 
 hardly twenty years ago. And from whence come 
 these glories of the faith? From the cardinal 
 virtue of fortitude raised and perfected by the gift of 
 the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Now let me sum up what I have said. 
 
THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 289 
 
 We have seen, as you remember, that there are 
 three gifts which perfect the will, and four which 
 perfect the intellect. We have finished the first part 
 of our subject, superficially I know, but as far as time 
 would allow. 
 
 You have seen, in the five examples I have 
 given, that it is this gift of fortitude which sustains 
 us in temptation, which supports us in mortify- 
 ing ourselves, which enables us to bear the warfare 
 of the world, which inspires us with a generous in- 
 flexibility, so as to make us account all things as 
 dross and loss for the sake of Christ. And, lastly, if 
 need be, it inspires us with the will to lay down even 
 life itself for the sake of our Divine Master. Our sub- 
 ject, then, so far, in outline is complete. 
 
 All I would say to you in conclusion ig this. 
 Ask for the fortitude to choose the love of God 
 above all things. Say to yourselves, ‘ No, not the 
 world; nor the things I love best; nor the love 
 of kindred; nor the friends dearest to me; no, 
 neither shame, or contempt, nor the mockery of the 
 world, shall stand between me and the faith of Jesus 
 Christ.’ Choose God above all things. If you will 
 do this, you will then understand the meaning of the 
 words, ‘ Ye shall be hated of all men for My name’s 
 sake.’ In choosing God you will break with the 
 
 aD) 
 
290 THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE 
 
 world, and, what is more, the world salt break with 
 you. But the world can do you no harm. The 
 world cannot hurt you, except in one way; that is, 
 if it can get you to love it. So long as you do not 
 love the world, the world has no power to harm you. 
 Ifit leave the mark ofits hatred upon you, bless God 
 for it. Thousands. and tens of thousands have died 
 in sight of the one Church, but out of its unity, for 
 fear of the world. 
 
 Now the marks of true fortitude are these. 
 They are the very marks which were seen on 
 Jesus Himself. First of all, when He was falsely 
 accused, when He was bound with cords, when 
 He was condemned, He held His peace; there 
 were no revilings, no reproaches, no contention. He 
 committed Himself to God, Who judgeth justly and 
 knows all things. So the prophet said of Him, ‘ As 
 a sheep before the shearers is dumb, He opened not 
 His mouth.’ And, lastly, rejoice if you share His 
 spirit; for if you have His patience, be sure that 
 every wound, every sorrow, every stigma, inflicted 
 upon you for His sake, willbe not only healed but 
 rewarded. Every wound will be glorified, and every 
 sorrow will increase your eternal joy. If, then, you 
 have the gift of fortitude, persevere to the end. 
 
 To you these words are spoken: ‘ He that sat upon 
 
THE GIFT OF FORTITUDE. 291 
 
 the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. 
 And He said unto me, Write, for these words are most 
 faithful and true. Iam alpha and omega, the be- 
 ginning and the end. To him that thirsteth will I 
 give of the fountain of the waters of life freely ;’** and 
 “To him that shall overcome, I will give to sit with 
 Me in My throne; as I also have overcome, and am 
 
 set down with My Father in His throne.’ ® 
 
 ™ Apoc. xx. 5, 6. 2° Tb. iii. 21, 
 
XI. 
 
 THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 
 
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 HAL ay > 
 
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 Ys Af HS" 
 
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THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 
 
 T account all things to be but loss for the excellent knowledge of 
 Christ Jesus my Lord. Putt. iii. 8. 
 
 We have already considered the three gifts of the 
 Holy Ghost which perfect the will; namely, holy 
 fear, piety, and fortitude. Holy fear is the begin- 
 ning of the obedience of the children of God; piety 
 is the filial affection of the sons of God; and forti- 
 tude makes the good soldiers of Jesus Christ. There 
 yet remain the other four to be treated ; and they are 
 those which perfect the intellect or the reason. Now 
 as the reason has a twofold cperation—that is to say, 
 either pure speculation or contemplation of abstract 
 truth, or practical judgment respecting truth and 
 falsehood, and right and wrong, as they bear upon our 
 conduct—so these four gifts are distinguished into the 
 two that perfect the speculative intellect—namely, 
 the gift of intellect, or understanding, and the gift 
 
 of wisdom; and the two which perfect the prac- 
 
296 THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. — 
 
 tical intellect—namely, the gift of science or know- 
 ledge and the gift of counsel. Inasmuch as the 
 practical intellect is the most widely diffused among 
 men—indeed, those who have little or no power of 
 speculation in them have often a very prompt and 
 unerring guidance in the practical intellect —it is 
 clear that this operation of the reason is the first 
 and the most important to the greater part of men. 
 We will, therefore, begin with the two gifts which 
 perfect the practical intellect, and with that which is 
 the first in order; namely, the gift of science. 
 
 Now you all understand that the word ‘science,’ 
 in Latin, is simply knowledge, though it has ac- 
 quired a more technical and exact meaning. The 
 word ‘knowledge,’ in our language, is so wide, so 
 general, and so vague, that it does not suffice to con- 
 vey the meaning of the gift of science. This gift of. 
 science is something between the exact and the wider 
 sense. It is neither the vague knowledge which we 
 commonly understand by the word, which may mean 
 the knowing of any particular thing or of all things, 
 neither does it mean technically and exactly a scien- 
 tific knowledge, because many things are not capable 
 of it. 
 
 I can readily understand that you will think this 
 to be a matter both abstract and speculative, and 
 
THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 297 
 
 therefore remote from practice. But I hope J shall be 
 able to show it is not remote from practice, but that it 
 is highly and immediately practical, and that it closely 
 touches the conscience and the responsibility of every | 
 one ofus. Though Ido not deny that a multitude of 
 
 sins come from passion, or from weakness, or from 
 malice, which is the corruption of the will, neverthe- 
 less it is most certain that the greater part of the sins 
 committed on the face of the earth come from the 
 perversion of the intellect, which is the corruption 
 and darkness of the reason; and that if we would 
 heal our own souls, we must begin by rectifying the 
 false action and the perversion of our intellect. There 
 is in every one of us a perversion of the reason, 
 at least in some matters; in many it spreads widely 
 over their intellect, in all it is to be found in some 
 measure. ‘The reason in man is like a lens through 
 which we can discern minutely both truth and false- 
 hood; but if there be a flaw in the lens, be it never 
 so small, every object we see through it will be in 
 some measure distorted. So it is with the intel- 
 lect. The reason or intellect in us is that part of 
 the soul which is nearest to God. The Son of God 
 became man by assuming a reasonable nature: when 
 He took upon Himself a created nature He did not 
 
 take it from the irrational creatures, He took it from 
 
298 WHE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 
 
 the reasonable creation. And the order of the In- 
 carnation was this : He took a human body by assum- 
 ing a human soul, and He assumed a human soul 
 by uniting His eternal intelligence with a created 
 intelligence ; so that the human reason is that part 
 of our nature which is in the most immediate contact 
 with God, and the reason which is in us is therefore 
 in a special way the image of God. It is the light of 
 God in the soul, whereby we are able to know God 
 and ourselves, and to judge of truth and falsehood, 
 and of right and wrong. The conscience is only the 
 reason judging of right and wrong in matters of prac- 
 tice, as the speculative intellect is the reason judging 
 of truth and falsehood in abstract truth. And so 
 long as the reason that is in us is conformed to the 
 intelligence of God—that is, to the truth and to the 
 will of God, which is the law of God—in that measure 
 we are like to God, and walk in His light. Our na- 
 ture is thereby rectified, and restored from the cor- 
 ruption and the distortion of the fall. But just in 
 proportion as the reason that is in us is darkened or 
 perverted, just in that measure we depart from God, 
 just in that measure we become deformed and the 
 image of God in us is obscured. Sin consists in a 
 conscious transgression of the law with the eyes of 
 
 our reason open. But the distinction between right 
 
THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 299 
 
 and wrong is discerned by the intellect. Is not this 
 a practical subject? Can there be anything more 
 practical? Is it not the purging and the cleansing 
 of the eye of the soul, and therefore of the conscience, 
 which is the light of God in us? 
 
 There is another reason why I have chosen this 
 subject. If there be one thing in this nineteenth 
 century of which men are proud, with an arrogant 
 self-cratulation, it is the intellectual illumination of 
 the days in which we live; and if there be anything 
 which more than another is making havoc, like a 
 devouring pestilence, in the whole Christian world, it 
 is what we call intellectual pride. Let us, therefore, 
 bring this intellectual progress to the test. Let us 
 see what it is. Let us see what men have to be 
 proud of. This, I think, will result from what I am 
 about to say. 
 
 Now there have been three periods of the world. 
 A period before the revelation of Christianity was 
 given, during which the reason of man was left un- 
 aided, except by the lights of nature and the in- 
 scrutable communications of God, of which we can- 
 not now stay to speak. What was the state of the 
 world when the intellect and the reason of man was 
 left to its own light? Read over the first chapter of 
 
 Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. I need not enter 
 
300 THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 
 
 into any detail. The utter and universal perversion 
 of the intellect of those who first multiplied gods, 
 and then worshipped the creature more than the 
 Creator, and the consequent moral corruption of the 
 heart in those who, being intellectually perverted, 
 could hardly discern right from wrong, is a picture 
 so horrible, that I have no will to dwell upon it. 
 Secondly, the reason of man under the light of reve- 
 lation has been rectified and conformed to the intelli- 
 gence and to the will of God in this, that God has 
 made both known to us by the declaration of His truth 
 and of His law; and the Christian world, so far as it is 
 worthy of the name, has been conformed to the truth 
 and the law of God. The intellect of the Christian 
 world has been thereby illuminated and sanctified. 
 And when the intellect or reason of man is illumin- 
 ated and sanctified, it carries the light of truth be- 
 fore the will in the path of obedience, and guides it 
 in the way of conformity to God; as the Psalmist 
 says: ‘ Thy word is a light unto my feet.’ Such was 
 once the state of the Christian world, and such it is 
 still, wherever faith reigns over the hearts of men. 
 God sustains and preserves His Church by the indwell- 
 ing of the Holy Ghost, the Fountain of all illumination 
 and of all grace, in its conformity with His own divine 
 intelligence. He guides the Catholic Church in the 
 
THE GIFT OF SCIENUR. 301 
 
 path of His eternal truth. That which we call in- 
 fallibility is nothing but this: the Church cannot 
 err from the path of revealed truth. And they who 
 are faithful to the Church are illuminated and sanc- 
 tified, even in the midst of the darkness and the dis- 
 tortion of this nineteenth century. 
 
 What is the intellectual state of the men who 
 have revolted from the Church, who have fallen away 
 from it, who have set themselves up on the outside 
 to be its critics, its judges, and its teachers? What 
 is the condition of those nations that have broken 
 away from the unity of the faith and of the Church 
 of God? We see a country which, intoxicated with 
 an excess of material power, is now daring, as a pre- 
 cursor to its own chastisement, to persecute the 
 Church of Jesus Christ. A fatal extinction of super- 
 natural light, the aberrations of false philosophy, 
 the inflation of false science, the pride of unbelief, 
 and a contemptuous scorn of those who believe, are 
 preparing Germany for an overthrow or for suicide. 
 The intellect of man in revolting from God falls from 
 God, and, falling from God, loses its own perfection ; 
 it thereby darkens itself, and, having lost the light 
 and the knowledge of God, loses also the knowledge 
 of His law. Saint Paul says of such: ‘ Their foolish 
 heart was darkened: professing themselves to be 
 
302 THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 
 
 wise, they became fools.’ The intellectual results of 
 this we see in the philosophies of the Absolute and 
 the Unknowable, of independent morality, of universal 
 scepticism, and the denial of all that is not subject 
 to sense. And this is ‘culture ;’ and its professors 
 ' and disciples are ‘men of culture,’ the lights of the 
 world, who from their intellectual heights look 
 down upon the nations, and pity men. To us simple 
 mortals it seems as if these intellectual Titans were 
 truncated men, walking about headless and uncon- 
 scious of their mutilation. To us they seem to be in- 
 tellectual pollards: stunted trees walking. They have 
 abdicated the elevation and the dignity of the human 
 reason in rejecting the knowledge of God, and in 
 rejecting God they have rejected their own highest 
 perfection. Such must be the condition of the world 
 after it has departed from faith, and of the intellect 
 and reason of man when the light which conforms it 
 to God has departed. It is, therefore, most practical 
 and opportune that we should consider in what way 
 the reason in man may be sanctified. If the intel- 
 lect of man degrades itself when it falls into darkness, 
 it rises again to its perfection when it is once more 
 sanctified by the Holy Spirit of God. And this is 
 the office of the gift of science. 
 
 First, then we will examine what this science is; 
 
THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 303 
 
 next, what is its action upon the reason or the intel- 
 ligence ; what is its intrinsic nature ; and then what 
 the subject-matter of it is.’ 
 
 1. Now what is it? There are in all men two 
 lights; there is the light of nature and the light of 
 faith. The light of nature, or what we call the na- 
 tural light of reason; the light of faith, which is the 
 supernatural light of the Holy Ghost. The light of 
 nature is in every man by his birth as man. This 
 is ‘the true light that lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world.’ But the light of faith is 
 given to.those who are ‘born again of water and of 
 the Holy Ghost.’ And yet the gift of science is not in 
 all those who have been born again. It was in every 
 one of them when they were baptised ; it is in every 
 one of you now if you are faithful. It is not in any 
 one of you if you have fallen from your baptismal 
 
 1 *Donum scientie lumen est rationis ostendens atque erudiens 
 quid de rebus creatis sentire oportet secundum divine legis seu 
 fidei documenta. Ht iste est primus ejus intimusque effectus, ra- 
 tionem taliter informare: potissime tamen docet hominem seipsum 
 veraciter considerare, presertim per operationem ad virtutes ac 
 vitia, an scilicet bonus an pravus existat, an conscientia sibi bonum 
 testimonium prebeat, an opus Dei negligenter persolvat. Secundus 
 doni hujus effectus est, quod facit abstinere a malis, id est, in 
 medio nationis prave atque perverse laudabiliter conversari. 
 
 ... Tertius effectus est temporalium rerum administratio recta 
 et efficax. Quartus est compendiosiorem efficacioremque profi- 
 ciendiviam et summam in cunctis agendis discretionem ostendere.’ 
 Dionysii Carth, Opp. min, tom. i. tract. iii. art. xxv. p. 127. 
 
804 THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 
 
 grace; unless, indeed, you have been restored to 
 grace by absolution. Faith is a special superadded 
 light, which takes up into itself the natural light 
 of reason. The light of faith remains even in those 
 who are in mortal sin. But the gift of science 
 is something over and above both reason and faith, 
 superadded by a special action of the Holy Ghost to 
 those that are faithful to grace. When the light of 
 nature has been trained and matured, we call it 
 prudence. It is prudence which perfects the natural 
 reason. 
 
 The gift of science is confined to those who 
 still abide in communion with God and in the grace 
 of sanctification ; because it is not only light, it is 
 also love; it is not only the light by which we know 
 the truth, but it is also the love of truth. Therefore 
 Saint Paul says of the Jews, and of other unbelievers 
 who rejected the Gospel, that they received not the 
 love of the truth that they might be saved: for 
 that cause God suffered them ‘to believe a lie.’ This 
 gift of science, then, is a certain love of truth, and 
 with that love comes a facility to discern and to act 
 upon truth. Science is based on the cardinal virtue 
 of prudence, which perfects the reason, and is elevated 
 by faith, which illuminates the reason. Science 
 
 therefore includes prudence and faith, and superadds 
 
THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 305 
 
 a special perfection. Such is precisely the descrip- 
 tion of this gift of science. It discerns a sweetness 
 in the truth of God and in the law of God. This, 
 then, is its nature. 
 
 2. Now what is the effect of this gift upon the rea- | 
 sonofman? It gives to the intellect a certain quality 
 akin to the truth itself. Just as light and heat are 
 akin to each other, and as heat and fire are also akin 
 to each other, just as some materials have a ready 
 affinity with others—some kindle, as the touchwood, 
 some absolutely refuse the fire, as the cold stone—so 
 the reason that has in it the light of faith and the love 
 of the truth, by this gift of the Holy Ghost becomes, 
 as it were, akin to the word of God. It gives a pre- 
 disposition to see and love the truth. And, again, as 
 when two flames are brought into the neighbourhood 
 of each other they draw to each other, and mingle 
 and become one flame, so the reason or the intelli- 
 gence, illuminated by the light of faith, and with an 
 instinct of love, unites itself to the truths of revela- 
 tion. It has a certain kindred nature whereby the 
 reason is conformed to the mind. Now no man is 
 more incapable of understanding the revelation of 
 God than a man whose intellect is falsified by the 
 habit of perverseness, such as insincerity and lying. 
 Moral obliquities bring on a crookedness which 
 
 20 
 
806 THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 
 
 hinders the faculty of discerning the rectitude of 
 God’s truth and the perfections of God’s law. Again, a 
 man that is sensual and impure blinds his moral sight. 
 The law of God in its purity and unspotted sanctity 
 is to such a man incomprehensible. A man who is 
 unjust has something in him which rises up against 
 the justice of God: he cannot understand the coun- 
 sels of God because his moral nature is depraved, 
 and his moral nature is depraved because his in- 
 tellect has a flaw in the lens. But when the rea- 
 gon is conformed to the light and the law of God, 
 then he can discern the truth of God with a faci- 
 _ lity which no sensual man can possess. Saint Paul 
 says, ‘ All things are clean to the clean, but to them 
 that are defiled, and to unbelievers, nothing is clean ; 
 but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.’ ? 
 
 3. Thirdly, what is the subject-matter of science ? I 
 cannot better express it than by saying that the main 
 object of the practical intellect is the Divine law 
 and the Divine Lawgiver. But these words contain 
 much. To know the Divine Lawgiver is to know 
 God in His perfections; to know the Divine law is 
 to know the will and the mind of God. And they 
 who have this light in them have a discernment that 
 reaches over all truth natural and revealed ; as, for 
 
 2 Titus i. 13. 
 
THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. S07 
 
 example, let me take it in the articles of our faith. 
 The theologians of the Church so treat the articles 
 of our baptismal Creed as to expand them into vo- 
 lumes of theology. That isa speculative action. But 
 the little child that hears me now repeats this bap- 
 tismal Creed and understands the articles contained 
 in it better than the ‘men of culture’ who have re- 
 jected both the Lawgiver and the law. Our Divine 
 Lord said: ‘I confess to Thee, Father, Lord of 
 heaven and earth, because Thou hast concealed these 
 things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed 
 them unto little ones: even s0, Father, for so it 
 seemed good in Thy sight.’ Now let me take another 
 example. The ‘men of culture’ of this day tell us 
 that the existence of the physical world does not 
 prove the existence of a Creator; that is to say, that 
 the argument has no force of conviction for them. 
 By whose fault? When a blind man looks me in the 
 face and says, ‘I cannot see you,’ am I therefore not 
 there ? And yet the ‘men of culture’ of these times 
 can look upon the face of the visible world, in which 
 the creatures of God are like the ladder in the patri- 
 arch’s vision. The Divine Presence was at the head 
 of it, and the angels ascended and descended upon it. 
 So is it with the creation and its works. They are 2 
 
 scale of ascent whereby we pass from the inorganic to 
 
308 THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 
 
 the organic, from the organic to the animate, from the 
 animate to the rational, and from the rational to the 
 spiritual; ascending by a continuous and unbroken 
 chain whereby we reach to the Cause of all. The 
 existence of the world demands the existence of a 
 Maker ; for ‘every house is built by some man, but 
 He that created all things is God.’* The physical 
 sciences are the only sciences that men of culture will 
 recognise as worthy of the name. But what are 
 they? They are like the foundation-stones of an 
 arch, upon which stone upon stone is laid; the piers 
 rise until the arch begins to spring; and the arch is 
 not perfected in the beauty of its form and the solidity 
 of its strength until the keystone is let in to tie it 
 all together. What is the keystone of all know- 
 ledge? It is theology, the science of God. When 
 the natural sciences, physical and moral, are read in 
 the light of God, they form one perfect whole. All 
 is order and symmetry, and beauty and light. Such is 
 the house that Wisdom has built for herself. By this 
 cift of science, all things are seen in the light of God, 
 and God is seen in all things. By one act of the 
 reason all is seen at once, just as the visible world is 
 seen in the light of the sun, and the light of the sun 
 is seen in everything. Wheresoever the eye falls 
 
 3 Heb. iii. 4. 
 
THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 309 
 
 there is still the sun. Such is the subject-matter ot 
 the gift of science. 
 
 4. But once more. This intellectual light shows 
 us not only what things we ought to believe, but what 
 things we ought to do. They that have this light 
 in them know how to interpret the commandments 
 of God, not only in the letter, but in the spirit—not 
 only in the outward circumstances, which many seem 
 to confuse with the law itself, but in the substance 
 and intent. The Pharisees, for lack of this gift, 
 gave tithes of mint, anise, and cummin, and neg- 
 lected the greater things of the law. It is precisely 
 this discernment in moral and spiritual things which 
 results from the gift of science. By it we discern be- 
 tween commandments and counsels, and between the 
 way of obedience and the way of perfection. It is 
 science that teaches us our relation to God and ou: 
 relation to our neighbour. It is this that explains to 
 us the meaning of the words: ‘Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbour as thyself.’ Have you ever reflected upon 
 these words ? How are you to love your neighbour as 
 yourselves? You are to love yourselves, then? But - 
 seli-love is the root of all sin; and yet there is a 
 rational self-love which is a duty towards God. The 
 suicide does not know the value of his own soul. He 
 does not love himself; and he casts his life back in 
 
310 THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 
 
 the face of his Maker, because he does not believe 
 either in his Maker, or in his own eternity, or in his 
 own responsibility. Therefore a rational love of self 
 is our first duty next after the love of God; and the 
 rational love of our neighbour springs from it. Now 
 perhaps, if you will ponder on this, you will have to 
 acknowledge that~you have not as yet ascertained 
 what is that rational love of yourselves. No man 
 that neglects the Holy Sacraments can really know 
 the value of his own soul. He therefore cannot have 
 a rational love of himself. No man who treats the 
 subject of religion with levity can have a rational 
 love of himself. If he had he would not so lightly 
 offend God. 
 
 Once more. What is it that teaches us to 
 know our own soul—to discern the conscious acts, 
 which are the inward facts, of our spiritual being ? 
 What is it that enables us to know our own sins of 
 commission as they really are in the sight of God ? 
 It is this gift of knowledge turned in upon ourselves. 
 How do we know our sins of omission but by knowing 
 the law and the Lawgiver ? And how do we come to 
 know our temptations—those that are universal to 
 all men, and those that are special to our peculiar 
 character—but by the spiritual discernment of this 
 gift of knowledge? And, once more, how do we 
 
THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. Sit 
 
 know the value of the graces that are round about us 
 but by this same gift? How do we come to know 
 these graces as the means to our final end, which is 
 God? How do we come to know how precious and 
 how vital they are to us? The greater part of men 
 live in the midst of the graces of God without change, 
 and therefore become insensible. They lose their 
 liberty to creatures; they sell their independence, 
 and perhaps lose their souls, for a momentary suc- 
 cess, for the flattery of the world, for the passing 
 sound ofmoney. Remember what the Apostle says: 
 ‘Love not the world, nor the things that are in the 
 world. Ifany man love the world, the love of the 
 Father is not in him.’* And again he says: ‘ They 
 that will become rich fall into temptation, and into 
 the snare of the devil, and into many unprofitable 
 and hurtful desires, which drown men into destruc- 
 tion and perdition; for the desire of money is the 
 root ofall evils, which some coveting have erred from 
 the faith, and have entangled themselves in many sor- 
 rows.” Such men are living for little else-than to be 
 rich. In their thoughts the world is first, and God 
 is second. Hven good people justify a worldly life by 
 saying that they must lay up for the future. They 
 must create an inheritance for their children : they 
 $18, John ii. 15. 518. Tim. vi. 9, 10. 
 
812 THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 
 
 must raise them in the world. Such people are 
 lacking in the light of discernment, which tells the 
 real worth of creatures. For of what worth are all 
 the creatures of this world? In themselves they are 
 worth nothing. But as means to the end for which 
 we came into the world, which is a holy death, they 
 are of great worth. Even the best, and the purest, 
 and the most perfect of creatures will not stand 
 these three following tests. Is there a creature of 
 God, however pure and perfect it may be, that is 
 commensurate with the needs of the human soul? 
 Every created thing is too small, and the human soul 
 is too large to be filled or satisfied. Next, is there 
 any creature, however perfect in itself, that can give 
 perfection to our nature? The Creator alone can 
 make us perfect. Lastly, if any creature were in 
 itself commensurate, and had in itself the power to 
 make perfect our nature, would it be eternal? but 
 nothing save that which is eternal can satisfy the soul 
 in man. Now this discernment shows us why it is 
 that so great a multitude of even good Christians are 
 perpetually making gross mistakes ; and even saints 
 have been deceived by false judgments, and have 
 been led astray and, it may be for along time, kept in 
 bondage until this gift of science has rectified their 
 
 discernment, and set them free. 
 
THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. Slo 
 
 Let us here sum up what is the nature of this eift. 
 It is a special grace of the Holy Ghost superadded to 
 the light of faith, but given only to those who live 
 faithfully in a state of grace, enabling them with a 
 greater facility to discern the truth and the law of 
 God—or, to put it in one word, it is Christian com- 
 mon sense. Christian common sense means the 
 prudence of the light of nature ripened into super- 
 natural prudence, made perfect and elevated by the 
 light of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 And now I have only two questions to ask. 
 
 1. Why is it that so many people manifest no 
 spark of this light ? what is it that destroys this gift 
 which they have in them by Baptism? <A mortal sin 
 extinguishes it. By one mortal sin sanctifying grace 
 and the love of God are lost; and with the love of God 
 are lost this gift and all the seven gifts. But I trust 
 we are not in that perilous and miserable state. And 
 yet in us, too, this Christian common sense—this 
 light of the knowledge of our duty to God, and to our 
 neighbour, and to ourselyes—may be very faint and 
 low. And what is it that clouds it? The venial sins 
 that we commit so easily—sins of worldliness, sins 
 of self-indulgence, sins of temper, sins of jealousy, 
 sins of pride, sins of vain-glory, sins of sloth, and 
 
 the like ; wherever there is any sin, but, above all, 
 
814 THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 
 
 wherever there is any tampering with unbelief, wher- 
 ever there is any parleying with the spirit of doubt, 
 wherever the intellect which is in you is exposed by 
 your own free will to the perversions of falsehood. 
 In this nineteenth century they assail us on every 
 side. We breathe an atmosphere charged with un- 
 certainty and doubt. The literature which lies upon 
 our tables—the books we take up every day of our 
 lives—are replete with denials of the law and of the 
 Lawgiver. Curiosity and recklessness fascinate thou- 
 sands to their fall. The want or the loss of the gift 
 of science, which as a sensitive instinct turns away 
 from error as you would turn away from evil, causes 
 even good minds to go astray. Sometimes they lose 
 the delicate perception of what is true and the deli- 
 cate horror of what is false. Take care, then, of 
 what books you read, of what friends you make, of 
 what conversations you indulge in, of everything that 
 can cloud the light and discernment of faith that is 
 within you. And, once more—I grieve to say it— 
 in characters that are pure, in characters that are not 
 without piety, there is to be found often a vein of 
 levity—a levity which hinders the appreciation of the 
 true value of things. The man that found the pearl 
 of great price knew its value: he could appreciate it. 
 He sold all for it with a resolute will. But there 
 
THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 815 
 
 are some who live so carelessly that they cannot tell 
 a true pearl from a counterfeit—they cannot tell gold 
 from glittering tinsel. Light minds are shallow: 
 what is real, severe, and true passes them unperceived. 
 From levity comes also irreverence—a light and jest- 
 ing spirit which is seldom grave, even about religious 
 truth. This often opens the door to sceptical doubt. 
 There are some among us who, if they had been upon 
 the mountain, in the presence of the burning bush, 
 would have drawn near to it with their heads covered 
 and their shoes upon their feet. If they had seen 
 the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves in the 
 wilderness, they would have carried away some of the 
 fragments that remained to subject them to chemical 
 analysis. This is an odious spirit wafted from the 
 world, and making havoc even among those that know 
 better—laying waste many a heart and many a home. 
 
 2. My other question is this: How is this gift, if it 
 be in us, to be ripened and perfected? First, and 
 above all, by prayer. Prayer is speaking with God, 
 speaking face to face with the Giver of all good gifts. 
 ‘Ask, and you shall receive.’ ‘If any man shall ask 
 the Father anything in My name, it shall be given to 
 him.’ ‘If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, 
 Who giveth liberally.’* When I say prayer, I do not 
 
 6 §. James i, 
 
316 THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 
 
 mean the reading of prayers out of your book. Vocal 
 prayer is a good thing, and enough for those that 
 can do nothing else. But when Isay prayer, I mean 
 the use of your intellect, and of your heart, and of 
 your will in mental prayer, by which you ascend te 
 God and unite yourselves with Him. And the other 
 means is diligent and accurate study. And by study 
 I do not mean the study of metaphysics. or the study 
 of history, or the study even of theology—I do not 
 mean the study of a multitude of books. I will only 
 bid you to study three books, and they will last your 
 life. The first book is God. Look up into the face 
 of God. Live in the light of His presence. Walk 
 to and fro in your daily life amidst the perfections of 
 God, of His justice, of His sanctity, of His purity, of 
 His truth, of His mercy, of His beauty, until, by 
 walking in the midst of that light, you receive some 
 of its brightness and read all things by its clearness. 
 The next book is Jesus Himself. This is what Saint 
 Paul meant when he said, ‘I account all things to bu 
 loss for the excellent knowledge of Christ Jesus my 
 Lord.’ He meant that he set before himself the life 
 of his Master, that he read beneath the outward life 
 and entered into the mind of Jesus Christ, that he 
 made the Sacred Heart of Jesus to be the manual of 
 his contemplation. And the third and last book is 
 
THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. Si7 
 
 your own self. When you have the light of God 
 and the vision of the perfections of Jesus Christ in 
 your intellect, then look into your own hearts. See 
 what is your own state, and shape, and colour in the ~ 
 sight of God. The study of these three books will 
 light up in you a threefold science: the science of God, 
 the science of Jesus, and the science of self-know- 
 ledge. Saint Paul says there is a ‘ science that puff- 
 eth up.’ It is the intellect of man without God. All 
 its operations are selfish, and its fruit is vain-glory. 
 There never was a century from the beginning when 
 this intellectual pride and the puffing-up of false 
 science were more conspicuous than in this. Let us 
 take an example. The old world, before the reason 
 of man came under the dominion of revelation, was 
 so full of the thought of God, so penetrated with the 
 consciousness of God’s presence, that it not only be- 
 lieved in one supreme God, but it multiplied on 
 every side the presence of divine persons, and there- 
 ky made to itself a multitude of gods. It was so 
 profoundly impressed by this theism, that so far from 
 refusing to believe in the existence of God, it invested 
 everything on every side with divine personalities. 
 What does the nineteenth century do? It has pro- 
 duced the greatest intellectual monster which the 
 
 world has ever seen—an atheist, a man who denies 
 
318 THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 
 
 the existence of God. And why does he deny His 
 existence ? Because he has no perception of purity, of 
 sanctity, of justice, of mercy, of truth—that is, of the 
 moral perfections which constitute the character of 
 the law as the transcript of the Lawgiver. But this 
 is too large a subject, and I must make an end—all 
 that I have said may be put in one word. 
 
 There is a science of God, and it is the gift of 
 God. Do not say ‘this science of God is too hard for 
 me.’ Ask for it, and it shall be given to you. The 
 most perfect act of the human reason, its highest de- 
 velopment, its ripest maturity, is to believe in a 
 Divine Teacher. They that submit themselves to the 
 Catholic Church, because they believe it to be infal- 
 lible by the perpetual presence and assistance of the 
 Holy Ghost, therein put forth the highest act of 
 the human reason. By submitting themselves to a 
 Teacher that is divine, they recognise the dependence 
 of the finite on the infinite intellect. Next, the no- 
 blest act of the human heart is to give that know- 
 ledge of God to those who have been robbed of it, to 
 those who have been born in the twilight, as the 
 multitudes of our land have been. ‘Freely you have 
 received, freely give.’ Nothing can be compared to 
 the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Give it freely. 
 Spread abroad this knowledge by word and deed ; 
 
THE GIFT OF SCIENCE. 319 
 
 spread it right and left. Break the Bread you have 
 received to all who stand in need of it. ‘Cast your 
 bread upon the water, and you shall find it after 
 many days.’’ ‘In the morning sow thy seed, and 
 in the evening hold not thy hand, for thou knowest 
 not which shall prosper.’* ‘You shall find it in the 
 great harvest-home upon the eternal hills. ‘They 
 that are learned [that is, with the science of God and 
 of salvation] shall shine as the brightness of the 
 firmament, and they that have instructed many unto 
 justice as the stars to all eternity.’ ® 
 
 7 Kecles, xi. 1, 8 Ib. 6, ® Dan, xii. 2, 
 
XIT. 
 
 THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 
 
THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 
 en genes 
 
 Counsel in the heart of a man is like deep water, and the wise 
 man will draw it out. Proverss xx. 5. 
 
 THE meaning of these words is plain, and needs no 
 explanation. Counsel—that is, the advice of wis- 
 dom —is like the waters of a deep well lying in the 
 heart ofa man; and a wise man, who knows his need 
 of counsel, will draw it out. He will ask for guid- 
 ance; and the man of counsel will draw it from the 
 depth of his own heart. :; 
 
 I have already touched very shortly on that which 
 is the characteristic mark of these latter days; I 
 mean the perversion of the intellect. The intellect 
 of man is withdrawing itself from the light of faith, 
 and therefore from conformity to God. And this 
 intellectual perversion is the source of a systematic 
 immorality in men, in households, and in states. 
 The intellect in man is the image of God in us. It 
 is the light of the soul; and if that light be dark- 
 
Hp! THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 
 
 ened, how great is the darkness. If that light be 
 clouded, how deep and deceitful is the twilight in 
 which men walk. As I have already said, a flaw in 
 a lens will distort all objects that are seen through 
 it. The intellect perverted in any way distorts prin- 
 ciples, judgments, and laws. And twenty errors in 
 practice are as nothing compared with one error in 
 principle. Twenty errors in practice may be cor- 
 rected, and the twenty-first may never be committed ; 
 but one erroneous principle is like a damaged wheel 
 in a machine. It can never work correctly after- 
 wards. One speculative error will produce an infinite 
 series of practical errors. The series is inexhaus- 
 tible, until the machine itself is either amended or 
 destroyed. We see at this day the revival of Gnos- 
 ticism. In the first age of Christianity, the Oriental 
 mind, inflated with a belief in its own knowledge, 
 refused to learn of a Divine Teacher. It spun for 
 itself visions, superstitions, genealogies without end, 
 respecting the nature of God and the nature of man. 
 We have it before us at this day in the illuminism 
 of those who refuse any light or teacher but their 
 own judgment; who proclaim that the reason in man 
 is all-sufficing for his own guidance. The first con- 
 sequence of this is, that they apply their reason as 
 
 the test of everything they are to believc; next, as 
 
THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 325 
 
 the measure of that which is credible; and thirdly, 
 they make their reason the source of all their faith. 
 And what is that faith? The credulity of unbelief ; 
 the rejection of the revelation of God. Such is 
 Rationalism. There has sprung up in the midst of 
 all this rankness a school of men who tell us that 
 the Absolute is unknowable, and that we can there- 
 fore know nothing about God. They say that they 
 do not deny the existence of God, because they know 
 nothing about Him. But if we know nothing about 
 God, we can know nothing about His law. As I 
 have said, if we reject the Lawgiver, at the same 
 time we reject the law. And if we know nothing 
 about the law of God, what can we know about right 
 and wrong? what can we know about morality ? 
 And therefore, if we know nothing of God, we know 
 nothing of morality. God and the moral law come | 
 and go together. Such is the condition of a large 
 number of highly-cultivated men in most countries 
 of Kurope at this day. This strange state of priva- 
 tion, happily, is not so rankly produced amongst 
 ourselves as in the older race, to which we bear a 
 certain kindred; but even among us there are too 
 many. Now what is the cause of this strange un- 
 belief? The cause of it is simply the rejection of 
 the principle of faith, that is, of submission to a Di- 
 
326 THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 
 
 vine Teacher ; and a rejection therefore of revelation, 
 which comes from a Divine Teacher; the erecting of 
 human reason in the place of that Divine Teacher. 
 The intellect of man becomes thereby a god to itself. 
 It is the primeval lie: ‘Ye shall be as gods.’* The 
 seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, especially those of 
 them that make perfect the intellect, form a subject 
 very timely and very wholesome for us; for the 
 sanctification of the intellect is the only direct and 
 adequate cure for the intellectual and philosophical 
 evils of our time. What, then, is the sanctification 
 of the intellect ? It is the illumination of the reason 
 of man by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God ; 
 it is the submission of the intellect of man to the 
 authority of a Divine Teacher; it is the conformity 
 of the reason, and therefore of the conscience, of 
 man to the truth and to the law of God. We have 
 already spoken of the gift of knowledge; we will 
 now go on to the gift of counsel. 
 
 If the subject be abstract or dry, the fault, no 
 doubt, will be chiefly mine; but it lies also in the 
 nature of the subject itself. But if you will pa- 
 tiently weigh the importance of these gifts, you will 
 not mind the dryness of the subject. Everybody 
 I suppose, knows the difference between a prudent 
 
 1 Gen, iii. 5. 
 
THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 327 
 
 man anda wise man. The prudent man is a man 
 who gives good and safe advice. We call such a 
 practical man, but we do not therefore call him a 
 wise man. Sometimes a wise man, in comparison 
 with a prudent man, will be thought very rash, and 
 perhaps very unreasonable. For example, why was 
 it that our Lord, when He was speaking to the 
 people of Capharnaum, and teaching them the great 
 mystery of the Body and Blood which He would 
 give for the life of the world,—why was it that He 
 did not enter into a full explanation of the mystery ? 
 Why did He not tell them exactly, and in particular 
 and point by point, anticipating their objections, and 
 interpreting all their doubts? We know that He 
 did not do so, and that it was the counsel of Divine 
 Wisdom which restrained Him from doing so. Again, 
 when He stood before King Herod, who for a long 
 time had desired to see Him, and to see some mi- 
 racle wrought by Him, why did He not then work a 
 miracle? Once more, when He stood before Pilate, 
 and was falsely accused, why did He not open His 
 mouth? Surely we have here an example of Divine 
 Wisdom acting in a manner which, in the eyes of the 
 prudent men of the world, would be thought rash, 
 imprudent, and unreasonable. Let me give another 
 example, closer to these times. Suppose any man to 
 
328 THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 
 
 do what Saint Charles Borromeo did—sell the whole 
 of his patrimony, and distribute it all in one day to 
 the poor. The world would certainly call him a fool. 
 The prudent men of this world would have thought 
 him mad. The political economist would have said 
 that he committed a double evil: that his profuse 
 almsgiving only promoted indolence and beggary, and 
 that stripping himself of all things was a signal im- 
 providence. Well, then, let me ask you, What is 
 the difference between prudence and wisdom? It 
 is this: prudence is the light which guides us in the 
 natural order and by the lights of nature. The hea- 
 then and the philosopher possessed it, and often in 
 a high degree of perfection. But wisdom is some-— 
 thing above this; and a wise man will often do and 
 often say things which, in the opinion of the world, 
 are extreme, extravagant, visionary, and impracti- 
 cable; and why ? Because he is acting by a higher 
 light, and in a higher sphere, and for a higher end. 
 Prudence, which belongs to the natural order of this 
 world, aims at two things: it aims at conduct which 
 shall be irreproachable in the eyes of men, and 
 at a certain happiness which shall be so attained. 
 But what does wisdom aim at? Wisdom aims at 
 conformity to the perfections of God; at a state 
 
 which is supernatural and eternal; at an end which 
 
THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 329 
 
 is above this earth; at a bliss which the world can 
 neither give nor understand ; ‘for eye hath not seen, 
 and ear hath not heard, nor has it entered into the 
 heart of man to conceive what God has prepared for 
 those that love Him.’? Therefore this gift of counsel 
 includes all natural prudence, as the greater includes 
 the less. Be sure of this: that no man guided by 
 the spirit of counsel will ever do an act or speak a 
 word that is really imprudent. All natural prudence 
 is included in the more perfect. All those lights of 
 faith whereby we know God, and ourselves, and the 
 world, and the law of God—all those lights of faith, 
 each and all of them, are included in the gift of 
 counsel. So also is charity, or the love of God and 
 our neighbour, which, as we have seen, is included 
 in the gift of knowledge or science, whereby we see 
 God in everything, and everything in the light of 
 God. This, as we saw, is the nature of science or 
 knowledge, like as we see all things in the light of the 
 sun, and the sun itself reflected in every visible thing. 
 But science, too, is contained in the gift of counsel, 
 and therefore all that is contained in science. 
 
 I. Whai, then, is this gift? It is a certain quality 
 or perfection’ infused into the reason of man by the 
 
 ‘74 Cor. ii; 9: 
 * *Consilium est habitus supernaturalis a Spiritu Sancto infusus, 
 
4 
 
 330 THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 
 
 grace of the Holy Ghost, whereby the reason is made 
 able to discern not only right and wrong, nor only 
 the way of obedience, but also the way of perfection ; 
 that is, to know that which, between two things both 
 good and right, is better, higher, and more pleasing 
 in the sight of God. It gives also, together with 
 that discernment, a certain promptness and facility; 
 that is, a ready will to do and to carry out into prac- 
 tice that which we see to be the higher and better 
 part. You know well the difference between the life 
 of commandments and the life of counsels. The life 
 of commandments is that which binds all Christians 
 in virtue of their Baptism; they are all bound to 
 obey the law of God, the six precepts of the Church, 
 and the like. But the life of counsels—that is, the 
 life of poverty, the life of chastity, the life of obedi- 
 ence, which is the life of the priesthood and the life 
 of those who enter into convents, is not an obligation 
 upon everybody, but a free act of those who choose 
 it, because they are called to it. 
 
 There is therefore a difference between the subject- 
 
 matter of prudence and the subject-matter of coun- 
 
 quo in operationibus humanis movemur secundum consilium 
 Spiritus Sancti id est secundum directionem ejus qua nostra con- 
 silia dirigit, vel certe vicissim preveniendo inspirat.’ Dionys. 
 Carthusian. Opp. min, tom, i, tract, iii, art. 4. p. 121. 
 
THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. Sor 
 
 sel. The subject-matter of prudence is the necessary 
 obedience to which we are all bound. Prudence 
 commands us with an imperial voice to obey the 
 commandments of God and the precepts of the 
 Church. But the gift of counsel moves, invites, 
 and draws the heart to go beyond that which is 
 literally necessary, to do that which is called a work 
 of supererogation; that is, we go over and beyond 
 that to which we are bound. I will give an ex- 
 ample. You are all bound to give alms; but Saint 
 Charles Borromeo, as I have said, gave the whole 
 of his patrimony. This was what we call an act of 
 Supererogation ; it went beyond the literal duty of 
 giving alms. So, I may say, all are bound to live 
 a life which is spotless before God; but all are not 
 bound to choose a life of separation from home and 
 kindred, and from all things that are dear to them. 
 The subject-matter of the counsels therefore is, 
 first of all, those actions which are free, which we 
 are not bound to do by the law of commandments, 
 but which we freely do out of the motive of glorify- 
 ing God, of sanctifying ourselves, and of making our 
 perseverance sure. The subject-matter of counsel 
 also is that more perfect way of serving God in 
 things that are lawful; the doing the better of two 
 
 things both of which are good; the choosing that 
 
332 THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 
 
 which is the higher when we may lawfully choose 
 that which is of a lower aim; and also the choosing 
 things that are hard and difficult to be done: as 
 when our Divine Lord called His Apostles to follow 
 Him, or as when He said to the young man, ‘ Go, 
 sell all thou hast, and give to the poor.’ These were 
 counsels of perfection, of higher and harder things 
 than were required from all men by common obliga- 
 tion. Such, then, is the nature of this gift of 
 counsel. Now let us see its application. 
 
 II. The first effect of it on the heart, I will say ofa 
 man of the world, is to turn him to God. How many 
 times have you heard a voice in your heart saying to 
 you, ‘If I live on as I am living now, shall I make a 
 good end? I desire to die the death of the just; 
 but have I begun to live the life of the just?’ Our 
 Lord has said, ‘ Behold, I stand at the gate and 
 knock.’* Have I yet opened to Him? There has 
 been a hand knocking at the door of your heart all 
 your lifelong. He has been calling you to turn from 
 sin. He has been saying continually in a clearer 
 voice, ‘The wages of sin is death,’® and ‘ The soul 
 that sinneth it shall die.’® These two voices have 
 come upon your heart many and many a time in 
 youth and manhood, by day and by night. And 
 
 * Apoc. ili, 20. 5 Rom, vi. 23. 6 Ezechiel xviii. 4, 
 
 ee 
 
THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. $33 
 
 they are the voice of the Holy Ghost, the voice of 
 the Counsellor. They have been the gift of counsel 
 itself striving with you, calling you to turn away 
 from the sin of which you are conscious. Again, a 
 voice has come to you and has said, ‘ The friendship 
 of this world is enmity with God.’’ ‘Love not the 
 world, nor the things of the world.* Ifany man love 
 the world, the love of the Father is not in him.’ But 
 if the love of the Father is not in him, how shall he 
 dwell in the kingdom of the Father for all eternity ? 
 The voice of counsel has been pleading with you to 
 give up the world. Again, there has come a voice 
 saying, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’ ® 
 Therefore, if I do not know the truth, how am I in 
 the way ? and if Iam not in the way, how shall I 
 enter into life? For the Son of God has said, ‘ No 
 man cometh unto the Father but by Me.’*° And if 
 I am not in the way, I shall not enter through the 
 gate. He has said, ‘I am the door; if any man by 
 Me shall enter in he shall be saved;’" meaning, ‘and 
 no other shall be.’ Have I, then, the truth? Dol 
 know the revelation of God? And do I believe, and 
 can I say to myself I know the whole truth as it is 
 in Jesus, and as it was revealed on the day of Pente- 
 
 7 §, James iv, 4. 8 18, John i, 15. ® §, John xiv. 6. 
 10 Th, lintb. x. 9: 
 
334 THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 
 
 cost—every doctrine, every commandment, and every 
 counsel ? How can any man say this, unless he 
 can also say, ‘I know the whole truth of Jesus 
 Christ, because I have it from the same Divine 
 Voice which revealed it on that day’? The voice of 
 counsel in this land of England is speaking in a 
 multitude of hearts conscious of their uncertainty, 
 conscious of their twilight, conscious of their doubts, 
 and is saying, ‘Turn to Me while there is time.’ 
 Every truth that God has revealed has an authority 
 and a jurisdiction over the soul of man as soon as it 
 is seen. Every truth, as it becomes known to us, 
 lays an obligation upon our conscience. The man 
 that comes to the knowledge of any truth, and fails 
 to obey it, is resisting the Holy Ghost. ‘ Resistance 
 of the known truth’ is one of the six sins against the 
 Holy Ghost. Every truth, then, as it becomes known 
 to us, every light as it ascends up above the horizon 
 of our knowledge, until the whole vision, like the 
 firmament at night, is filled with stars, binds our 
 conscience. When our intellect sees the illumination 
 of the doctrines of faith, every several doctrine, one by 
 one, lays its jurisdiction over us. ‘We are bound 
 from that moment to believe it, bound under pain of 
 eternal death. Such is the voice of counsel. Ifyou 
 
 were about to pass a river, and you saw before you a 
 
THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 335 
 
 bridge the soundness of which was doubtful, even if 
 you were not sure that it would bear you, would you 
 venture to tread it? Unless you were perfectly cer- 
 tain that the bridge would carry your weight, would 
 you set your foot upon it? It would be a rash act; 
 contrary to wise counsel. So the hope that you have 
 of salvation. Unless you build it on a divine cer- 
 tainty, founded upon the authority of a Divine Teacher, 
 how can you be sure what to believe? Human 
 teachers who may err and perish, contradictory 
 teachers who efface one another, teachers who change 
 from year to year, will not bear up the weight of your 
 soul in the hour of death. Nothing but the author- 
 ity ofa Divine Teacher Who never changes, the Spirit 
 of Truth, will suffice in that day. Unless you are, 
 then, assured that you are resting for your salvation 
 upon an authority which cannot deceive, you are not 
 listening to the voice of counsel which speaks in your 
 heart. This, then, is the first work of this gift. 
 There is another. When you have listened to 
 that voice, and have found the truth, and have sub- 
 mitted yourself to the Divine Teacher, the work is 
 not done; there is more to do. very soul has two 
 conversions: the first, to the truth and to penance ; 
 and the second, to a higher life and to perfection ; that 
 
 is, it is not enough for you simply to know the truth, 
 
336 THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 
 
 and to obey it in the things that are necessary—you 
 must go further. The Apostle says, ‘ All things to 
 me are lawful, but all things are not expedient.’ * 
 How often have we read these words, and how little 
 have we realised their searching force. My Christian 
 liberty allows me to do a multitude of things; but I 
 know well that, through my fault, many of those 
 things are not safe or good forme. Therefore they 
 are not expedient, and therefore I will give them up. 
 Let us get out of our minds, once for all, the notion 
 that it is enough for us just to keep out of mortal 
 sin. There are many who seem to think that if they 
 can just escape committing grievous sin they have 
 done enough. There are some who defend this doc- 
 trine as Christian liberty. When the Apostle said, 
 ‘All things to me are lawful, but all things edify 
 not,’'® he raised a higher standard. He was not 
 content with just keeping out of mortal sin. He 
 would have all men go onward to perfection. To be 
 perfect may be the attainment of few, but it is the 
 calling of all Christians. I have therefore told you 
 to apply this principle to your pleasures, and to your 
 amusements, and to your expenditure, and to the use 
 of your time, and to all the habits of your life, which, 
 though they may be in themselves lawful, are cer- 
 1201 Cor.* vie 12; 196 [DAxeeeo, 
 
THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 337 
 
 tainly not all expedient, and certainly do not edify. 
 The Apostle says more than this; he says, ‘If my 
 meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no more 
 meat for ever ;’™* that is, if anything in my life or in 
 my example—innocent though it may be, and lawful 
 though it may be for me to do—shall encourage or 
 embolden any other incautiously to do the same 
 things, and thereby to run into the occasions of sin, 
 and from the occasions of sin into temptation, and 
 through temptation into the commission of sin, I 
 will deny myself, and I will never again as long as I 
 live use the liberty which, though safe to me, is to 
 others dangerous. Let me give to parents one ex- 
 ample. Ifyou have sons or daughters who, in the 
 amusements of life, run into excitement and eXCeSs, 
 set them in yourselves the example of self-restraint, 
 and deny yourselves in lawful things. Your example 
 will either open their eyes, or will blind them to their 
 dangers. The severest and most rigorous counsel 
 that was ever spoken came not from the pen of an 
 Apostle, but from the lips of the pitiful Son of God 
 He says to us, ‘If thy eye scandalise thee, pluck 
 it out: it is better for thee to enter into the King- 
 dom of God with one eye, than having two eyes 
 to be cast into the hell of fire.’ If thy hand 
 4 1 Cor, viii. 13, 
 
 22 
 
338 THE GIFT OF CCUNSEL. 
 
 scandalise thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to 
 enter into life maimed, than having two hands to 
 go into hell, into unquenchable fire.’ That is to 
 say, nothing, however precious, however intimately 
 identified with ourselves, if it be in any way an 
 occasion of offending God, is to be retained. We 
 ought of our own will to reject it. These are coun- 
 sels; they are not commandments; they are left to 
 the free will of those who desire to be perfect in 
 God’s service. 
 
 ITI. Lastly, there is a law of liberty. Saint James 
 
 writes: ‘So speak ye and so do as being to be | 
 
 judged by the law of liberty.’1® What is this law 
 of liberty? If it be liberty, how are we bound ? if it 
 be a law, how are we free? It is precisely the law of 
 counsels. If we love God and our Divine Redeemer ; 
 if we hunger and thirst after justice; if we would 
 make sure of eternal life; if we know the will of 
 God, and ‘ This is the will of God,’ your sanctifica- 
 
 tion ;’” if we desire to be sanctified, if we desire 
 
 to be conformed to the likeness of our Divine Lord: 
 
 and His Immaculate Mother, —then the gift of 
 counsel and the prompting of generous love will 
 make us press onward and rise higher in the spi- 
 ritual life. Read the Sermon on the Mount: ‘If 
 
 1 §. Mark ix, 46, 42, 18 §. James ii. 12. 7 1 Thess. iv. 3, 
 
THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 
 
 ae) 
 
 v9 
 
 any man smite thee on the right cheek, turn the left 
 also; and if any man take away thy coat, let go thy 
 cloak also unto him.’!® Were these words spoken only 
 to a chosen few? were they spoken to recluses, or to 
 men living in the desert, or to religious in cloisters, 
 or to priests at the altar? They were spoken to the 
 people on the mountain, and in them to us. The 
 Sermon on the Mount is the law of perfection given 
 to the Christian people of the world: it is given to 
 you. Our Divine Master calls us to use our liberty 
 as Christians, to rise above the low level of that 
 which is absolutely necessary by the law of com- 
 mandments, and to ascend up by the law of liberty 
 towards Him, upon the mountain where He, our 
 Light and our Life, dwells eternally. What was it 
 that created the Christian world? Was it the Deca- 
 logue that was given from Sinai? What was it 
 covered the whole world with the fruitfulness of 
 Christian perfection? It was the Sermon on the 
 Mount. It was the law of perfection revealed to us 
 in the Face of Jesus Christ, and left to our liberty 
 to be fulfilled out of love and generosity for the sake 
 of our Divine Master. And therefore Saint James 
 writes: ‘Of His own will He hath begotten us again 
 by the word of truth, that we may be the first-iruits 
 8 §. Matt. v. 39, 
 
340 THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 
 
 of His creatures.’ 2° Christians are the first-fruits of 
 
 the Holy Ghost. Look at the heathen nations, out 
 of which we were taken. Compare the Christian 
 people with the nations of the ancient world. I may 
 say, compare the one Holy Catholic Church with the 
 nations which, once of its unity, have now fallen 
 away from it. Tell me where is to be found the 
 Sermon on the Mount; where is to be found volun- 
 tary poverty, where is to be found obedience even 
 unto death, where the spirit of martyrs, where the 
 self-denial of confessors, where the meekness of the 
 forgiving, and the mercy of those who die for their 
 brethren? These things are to be found whereso- 
 ever the law of liberty and the gift of counsel are the 
 light and the guidance of men. This, then, belongs 
 to all, but there are some among us to whom this is 
 an especial obligation of charity. Itis necessary, 
 indeed, that we should have this spirit in us, if we are 
 to be the pastors of the flock. Woe to the shepherd 
 who does not go out before his flock, who is not 
 ahead of his sheep in all perfection, who does not 
 bear the light ofa life bright with the reflection of his 
 || Divine Master. The pastor of the flock must lead 
 | the way. He must preach more by what he is than 
 ‘by what he says: not only in the ways of obedience, 
 
 19 §, James i. 18. 
 
THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. $41 
 
 but in all the ways of grace, of piety, of charity, and | 
 of humility. He must be to them a guide who is 
 always before them. He must preach these things 
 even when his lips are closed. Woe to us, pastors - 
 of souls, if we do not go before our flock. We shall 
 all be judged at the last day; but our judgment will 
 be tenfold more searching than yours. 
 
 To those who have the guidance of souls, the 
 gift of counsel gives the light to discern between 
 leprosy and leprosy. When they sit as judges in the 
 confessional, this light of discernment enables them 
 to know the innocent from the guilty. When they 
 sit there as spiritual physicians, it teaches them how 
 to apply the remedies. Therefore, I say again, woe to 
 us pastors if we are not guided by the gift of counsel. 
 To you also, fathers and mothers, to you masters and 
 mistresses, to you who have subjects or dependents, 
 whether they be children or servants—to you also this 
 gift of counsel is necessary: first, that you may 
 know how to guide yourselves; and next, that you 
 may know how to govern those that look up to you 
 for guidance. Such, then, is the nature of this oft. 
 
 1. Why is it, then, that there are so few who mani- 
 fest this gift of counsel? Why are there so few wise 
 among us, why are people so worldly, why are they 
 80 imprudent, why are they so rash, why do they live 
 
342 THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 
 
 at random, why will they not even listen to advice? 
 What is the reason of all this? I will tell you. This 
 gift of counsel lies dormant in them ; it is oppressed, 
 kept down by their own mental and moral faults. 
 They have made their ear dull of hearing and their 
 eye dark, so that they cannot discern. The first 
 great antagonist of this spirit of counsel is the wis- 
 dom of the world. And the wisdom of the world is 
 the fashion and opinion of men possessed with the 
 spirit which is. of the world and not of God. The 
 maxims, the traditions, the habits of thought, and 
 the habits of life which spring from flesh and blood 
 —‘the prudence of the flesh,’”° as the Holy Ghost 
 calls it—these things stifle the voice of counsel. Our 
 Divine Lord reproached the Pharisees in Jerusalem 
 because they made the ‘ commandments of God of no 
 effect by their traditions’ ?!—that is, by their rigor- 
 ous, fantastic, and artificial habits of mind; by their 
 precepts and definitions, which perverted the literal 
 meaning of the law of God, and inverted its spiritual 
 intention: teaching men to pay tithes of mint, anise, 
 and cummin—things of no moment—and to neglect 
 the greater commandments of the law—humility, 
 charity, and justice. Now this is true, in some de- 
 gree, of us all. This is the reason why so few men 
 
 7” Rom. viii. 6, 21 §, Mark vii. 13, 
 
THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 343 
 
 are wise, so few Christians are spiritually and super- 
 naturally led by the gift of counsel. 
 
 There are subtil kinds of pride which make men 
 foolish. The love of pre-eminence; the inordinate 
 desire of their own proper excellence; a self-con- 
 scious straining to be spiritual guides of other men, 
 to correct their faults, to criticise their actions and 
 their state before God, and to go about setting others 
 right — these are some of the least perceived and 
 subtilest workings of pride. The men of culture, as 
 they call themselves, and as they delight that others 
 should call them, are intellectual Pharisees. With 
 mutual admiration they turn each other’s heads. The 
 greatest intellects are sometimes found in the smallest 
 moral characters. The want of counsel makes them 
 to be strange mixtures of greatness and of littleness. 
 
 There is also a spirit of presumption which is 
 in every one of us. We trust ourselves: we give 
 counsel to every one, and we will not take it from 
 any man. At most, we will listen if they counsel 
 us according to our own likings, and speak pleasant 
 things; but if they say anything which touches our 
 self-love, we turn from them as shallow heads, helpless 
 advisers, useless talkers, in whom there is no light. 
 We set ourselves upon a pinnacle of the temple; or 
 we believe ourselves to have wings, and to be soaring 
 
344 THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 
 
 into heights ofthe spiritual life, while as yet we have 
 not trod the first steps in the path of humility. 
 This presumption, the root of which is in all of us, 
 will, if indulged, destroy and utterly extinguish the 
 gift of counsel. 
 
 9. Finally, there is an impetuosity in the nature 
 ofevery one. There are some men so precipitate that 
 they will not listen for a moment to the advice of 
 anybody. Flesh and blood impels them; they start 
 with vehemence in the way in which they will to 
 go, without listening to advice. Their natural pre- 
 cipitation they mistake for zeal; but it mars every- 
 thing. They are led by their own spirit; but those 
 only that are ‘led by the Spirit of God, they are the 
 sons of God.’?? And to be led by the Spirit of God 
 means this: that before we move from our place we 
 ask God to guide us. We ask the Holy Spirit of 
 counsel to give us light to know what is right, what 
 is well-pleasing, what is more perfect, what in us 
 and for us is best to do, or to be done. But im- 
 petuous men are led by the flesh, not by the Spirit. 
 They invert the divine order; and having set out 
 in the way of their own choosing, they come to 
 crosses and sorrows. Then they begin to ask for 
 counsel, and perhaps they ask it of God; but they 
 
 22 Rom. viii. 14. 
 
THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 345 
 
 ask it too late. They are already so committed that 
 they cannot go back. At last they so persuade them- 
 selves, that they will not follow good advice even if 
 it were given. We have an example of this in Holy 
 Scripture. The prophet Balaam was invited to curse 
 the people of God. He knew from the beginning 
 that to do so was a sin; nevertheless, he did not 
 refuse. Three times he offered sacrifice as if to ask 
 counsel from God; three times the Spirit of the 
 Lord came upon him, and he was constrained to 
 bless the people. He had it in his heart to curse 
 them; that is, he had set his heart upon the reward 
 which was offered to him, and to gain it he was 
 willing to go on. Before he took counsel, he had 
 chosen his own path; and the end was this: he wea- 
 ried the patience of God, and the angel of the Lord 
 left the road open and let him go his own way. The 
 reward of Balaam was, that when the enemies of God 
 were overthrown, he too was slain by the sword. So 
 men try to force their will upon God, and to make 
 His will give way, that they may do their own. Saint 
 Augustine says: ‘Thou, O Lord, givest counsel to 
 all that ask. If they ask of Thee divers things, Thou 
 always answerest the game; Thou answerest clearly 
 enough, but they will not hear Thee, for they ask 
 the things they desire, and they wish to make Thy 
 
846 THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 
 
 will bend to theirs. Thou answerest that which is 
 Thy will, and they hear what they will not; and 
 therefore they do it not. He is the best servant who 
 does not desire that God should say the things that 
 he wills, but who desires himself to will the things 
 that God says.’ And therefore, first of all, we must 
 try and mortify this impetuous and precipitate self- 
 will which is in us. ‘There is a twofold leprosy of 
 the soul of every man—that is, self-will and self- 
 counsel; and both are aberrations: duplex lepra, 
 propria voluntas et proprium judicium—the pride 
 of his own will, and the pride of his own judg- 
 ment. 
 
 3. To sum up in few words what I have said: 
 let us, to the utmost of our power, submit our will to 
 the will of God before we ask to know what it is His 
 will we should do. Let us say: ‘ Lord, my heart is 
 ready, my heart is ready ;’ ‘Speak, Lord, for Thy 
 servant heareth.’ When you kneel at the holy Mass, 
 put your heart upon the paten and let it be offered 
 up. God will counsel you. If you do His will, 
 even though it cross your own, then you have the 
 surest sign that you are not following your own 
 choice. 
 
 Let the intentions of your heart be pure. 
 ‘Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see 
 
THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 840 
 
 God.’*> Even in this world, in everything which re- 
 lates to their earthly life, there is a certain radiance 
 which comes from the presence of God to assure 
 them that they are walking in His sight. Then let 
 your intentions be single as the light. Do not try 
 to serve Him and at the same time try to serve the 
 world. If you try to please men, you are not the 
 servants of Jesus Christ. If you live to please your- 
 selves, you are seeking ‘the things which are your 
 own, and not the things which are Jesus Christ’s.’ ** 
 Desire, then, to please God above all things, and all 
 things shall be added unto you. If you cannot do 
 all you desire, at least desire great things for His 
 sake. Our Divine Lord said, ‘I confess to Thee, 
 O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou 
 hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and 
 
 >25, These divine 
 
 hast revealed them unto little ones. 
 words mean precisely this: God will guide the 
 humble in the way of truth, and of salvation, and 
 of perfection, and of perseverance. He will be their 
 Counsellor and their spiritual Guide. And our Di- 
 vine Lord said again: ‘Take up My yoke upon you, 
 and learn of Me; for I am meek and humble of heart, 
 
 23 5S. Matt. v. 8. rt ad 068 yet yt A 
 
 * 5. Matt, xi, 25. 
 
348 THE GIFT OF COUNSEL. 
 
 and you shall find rest to your souls; for My yoke 
 is sweet and My burden light.’ 6 Freely choose His 
 service ; for it is your freedom, and its own exceed- 
 ing great reward. 
 
 ™ §. Matt. xi. 29, 30, 
 
XIII. 
 
 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
ston 
 pe aay 
 
THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Therefore from the day that we heard it we have ceased not to pray 
 for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge 
 of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. Coxos. 
 1793 
 
 We have examined the nature of the two gifts of 
 
 the Holy Ghost which perfect the practical intellect 
 
 —that is to say, the intellect as it is in contact with 
 
 the will and with its moral perfections. These two 
 
 are the gift of science, or knowledge, and the gift of 
 counsel. 
 
 The gift of knowledge we have seen to be a cer- 
 tain special light given to the intellect whereby to 
 understand the will and the presence of God in all 
 things. From our earliest spiritual consciousness in 
 childhood we are assisted by this gift of knowledge. 
 It is closely related to the gift of piety: by which the 
 character of a child is formed, and through which a 
 perpetual light enters into the soul. Such is the 
 meaning of the words, ‘I have understood more 
 
352 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 than all my teachers, because Thy testimonies are 
 my meditation.’ This gift of knowledge pervades 
 the whole Christian life from its earliest conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 The gift of counsel, as we saw, signifies a certain 
 light and discernment of grace, whereby we perceive 
 not only that which we are bound by the Command- 
 ments to do, but that which, if freely done, is more 
 for the glory of God and more for our own sanctifica- 
 tion. As, for instance, the Sermon on the Mount - 
 contains the whole code of perfection, and in that 
 code there are a multitude of counsels to which we 
 are not literally bound by the Ten Commandments ; 
 but any one who desires to be spiritually perfect 
 must freely adopt those counsels as rules for his life. 
 To give an example. Some persons have taken as 
 the rule of their conduct that when they are in doubt 
 whether of two things they shall do, they will always 
 choose that which they believe to be more for the 
 glory of God. They are not bound to do so, but they 
 are prompted by the law of liberty, which is the law 
 of the love of God and of our neighbour written upon 
 our hearts, and making the will a law to itself. 
 
 Having thus finished this first part of the sub- 
 ject, which relates to the practical intellect, there 
 
 1 Ps. exviii. 99. 
 
THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 853 
 
 remains only the second which relates to the specula- 
 tive intellect, and that again divides itself into two ; 
 namely, the gift of understanding and the gift of 
 wisdom. I call it the gift of understanding, because 
 the word ‘intellect,’ as it is in the text, would only lead 
 to ambiguity. We will therefore take the common 
 English equivalent—namely, ‘ understanding.’ 
 
 I. First of all, we have every one of us by nature 
 the gift of intellect or understanding. But this natural 
 intellect is not the Gift of the Holy Ghost; it is a 
 gift of the order of nature, not of the supernatural 
 order of grace. Now the gift of intellect, or of reason, 
 which all men have by nature, consists in a certain 
 faculty in the soul, like the eye in the body, by which 
 we see, know, and understand. The eye is so organ- 
 ised and adapted to the light that, when illuminated 
 by the material light, we see: and the capacity and 
 the reach of the eye are developed by practice and 
 by experience. We all know that sight in a child is 
 not in its normal state until by experience it has ac- 
 quired what we may call the habit of sight, by which 
 it can combine, and judge, and measure the objects 
 before it. So also the natural intellect has a power 
 of perception or understanding, the limits of which 
 we have never reached. We know there are limits, 
 
 because the reason of man is not infinite; but the 
 
 23 
 
854 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 limits of the understanding within us have never yet 
 been ascertained. It is developed more and more in 
 proportion as its powers are called out, and when its 
 powers are called into act they seem to be fixed. 
 They do not again recede. Two men who have ex- 
 actly the same natural powers will be so unequal, if 
 the one be educated and the other be uneducated, 
 that they will seem to be almost of two different 
 grades or of two different kinds of being. This 
 natural intellect is in us all, and the men of science 
 who believe nothing often manifest the development 
 of this natural intellect in a very high degree of cul- 
 ture, subtilty, energy, and strength. But this is alto- 
 gether distinct from the gift of intellect or under- 
 standing, of which we have now to speak. This gift 
 of intellect or understanding, as it is a gift of the 
 Holy Ghost, is found in no man who is out of the 
 grace of God; and therefore in no one who is an un- 
 believer in the revelation of God, and therefore in no 
 one who is out of charity with God and his neigh- 
 bour. Itis a special intellectual power? or perfection 
 
 given to those who, corresponding to the light of 
 
 * ‘Tntellectus est habitus supernaturalis, non concreatus natu- 
 raliter mnibus sed simul cum charitate et gratia menti infusus per 
 quem prima principia Christiane sapientie cognoscuntur.’ Dionys. 
 Carthusian, Opp. min. tom. i. tract. ii, art, 21. 
 
a 
 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 355 
 
 faith and to the Spirit of God working within them, 
 receive, over and above the light and the power of 
 natural reason, a further supernatural gift, which 
 becomes habitual like a special faculty. J cannot 
 better explain what it is than by saying, that it is 
 a supernatural habit, or quality, or faculty abiding in 
 the intellect, whereby it is elevated and enabled, first, 
 to understand supernatural truth with especial clear- 
 ness ; and, next, to penetrate into the reasons and the 
 motives of faith; and, lastly, to exhibit and to pre- 
 vail on others, by the exhibition of the truth, to be- 
 lieve in the same. It is therefore a discernment, like 
 a subtil intuition of the eye, which penetrates with 
 great precision below the surface and discerns that 
 which lies beneath it. JIntellectus, we are told, is 
 from intus legere, the reading of that which is within 
 the letter. When the eye reads the page of a book 
 it reads that which is without; it reads the letters. 
 But the intellect reads that which is within—the 
 meaning of the letters, and of their combinations, and 
 of their suggestions. All this is unintelligible except 
 to those who have an understanding of the deeper 
 sense of what is read. Now this understanding of 
 the full and inward sense, this perception of what 
 hes beneath the letter, or, as we say, that which is to 
 
 be read between the lines of a book—the knowledge 
 
306 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 of the substance and of the implicit sense—is that 
 which we attain by this gift of understanding. I 
 might give examples in this way. There is in the 
 whole revelation of God a harmony, a proportion, an 
 analogy of parts, which is not perceived except by 
 those who have this special light and discernment. 
 For the want of this perception, as we shall see here- 
 after, many men with great intellectual power become 
 sceptics. Things which a mere child would know 
 they do not know: things that a child would solve 
 to them are insoluble difficulties. Such, then, is the 
 nature of this gift. 
 
 2. Now we will go on to see what are its opera- 
 tions. First, as we have seen, it enables us to under- 
 stand with a special clearness the hidden meaning of 
 the revelation of God. You will perhaps say, ‘ But 
 how can a man believe what he does not understand?’ 
 I have already said that the natural intellect is in all 
 men, and the natural intellect must be used, it must 
 be exerted to its utmost strength, in examining the 
 evidence upon which we believe. That is perfectly 
 true. Reason is the preamble of faith. Unless a 
 man were convinced by evidence that Christianity is 
 a divine revelation, how could he believe it? Unless 
 he believed upon evidence that Holy Scripture is the 
 Word of God, how could he accept it ? Unless he be- 
 
THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 307 
 
 lieved upon evidence that the Catholic Church is the 
 only and true Church of Jesus Christ, how could he 
 submit to it? It is quite true, then, that the natural 
 intellect must go first, and must examine what may 
 be called the preambles, before we can believe. After 
 having examined the proper evidences, and after be- 
 ing intellectually convinced that they prove Chris- 
 tianity to be a divine revelation, and the Scriptures to 
 be the Word of God, and the Catholic Church to be 
 the Church of God, and the like—then we believe 
 with a rational faith. There is no act more entirely 
 intellectual, and no act of the reason higher or more 
 perfect, than the believing in a Divine Teacher. It is 
 an act of submission to the teaching of God. There- 
 fore, do not let anybody imagine that faith is a blind 
 act, or an act of superstitious credulity, or the act of 
 those who cannot use their reason. It is in the 
 highest sense a precise and perfect act of our intel- 
 lectual power to submit our reason to a Divine 
 Teacher; and having accepted the whole revelation 
 on His authority, it is an intellectual act all the way 
 along the path of faith to examine and to understand 
 what we believe. We must know what it is, at least 
 in outline, and we must know why we ought to believe 
 it, before we can believe at all. Having first believed 
 
 Christianity to be a divine revelation, then we begin 
 
358 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 to examine its details. But we no longer examine 
 as in doubt whether to believe it or not: but in faith 
 that we may understand more fully what we believe. 
 We do not test its details ag critics, to pronounce 
 whether or no they are credible, whether or no they 
 mean this or that, whether or no God could or could 
 not have revealed such and such a thing, but we read 
 the Word of God as disciples, with a consciousness 
 that we are in the presence of a Divine Teacher ; that 
 we have in our hands a document which is divine ; and 
 that though our faith is founded upon an intellectual 
 conviction, it rises into a living and personal consci- 
 ousness that we are related to a Divine Person, and 
 that we can say what the Apostle said: ‘I know 
 Whom I have believed, and I am certain that He ig 
 able to keep that which I have committed unto Him 
 against that day;’® I know, that is, of Whom I am 
 learning this truth, and I know that He will never 
 mislead me, for He is Himself the uncreated Truth. 
 ‘But having believed,’ Saint Anselm Says, ‘as it would 
 be contrary to the divine order for us to examine and 
 to discuss by reasoning the revelation of God until 
 we have believed it, so it would be an act of great 
 negligence on our part if, after we have believed it, 
 we did not try thoroughly to understand it,’ thoroughly 
 PCPA WRT ER 
 
THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 359 
 
 to penetrate under the surface, beneath the letter 
 into the substance, into the analogies, and propor- 
 tions, and relations of truth with truth. 
 
 Now the gift of intellect or understanding is pre- 
 cisely that gift of the Holy Spirit which enables us 
 to understand the meaning of what we believe from 
 the time when we believe it. We have here, there- 
 fore, a distinct description of its office. Let us take 
 an example or two. We believe in the existence of 
 God by natural light. We believe that God is one in 
 three Persons by the light of revelation. A child 
 knows so much as this from his Catechism; but those 
 who have the gift of understanding will go on to con- 
 template in the Holy Trinity, so far as the human 
 mind can understand divine things, what are the re- 
 lations of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; 
 how They are three Persons, how They are coequal, 
 how They are coeternal, how They differ only in that 
 They are related to each other, and that all things in 
 Godare common save only the relations of Fatherhood, 
 Sonship, and Procession. Therefore I may say, that 
 the office of this gift of intellect is like that ofa lens, 
 by which we steadfastly look at any natural object 
 until we see lines and features that are not visible to 
 our ordinary sight. The naked eye cannot perceive 
 them, but the power of the microscope reveals them ; 
 
360 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 and as the powers of the microscope are multiplied, 
 we see more and learn more of the object, which still 
 remains always the same to our natural sight. I 
 might take for another example the Incarnation, and 
 I hardly know any example more complete. The one 
 phrase, ‘The Word was made flesh,’ contains the 
 whole theology of the Incarnation in all its treatises. 
 Compare that doctrine with the Nicene Creed, where 
 it is said that the Son of God is God of God, Light 
 of Light, true God of true God, consubstantial with 
 the Father before all worlds. This is but an expan- 
 sion of the words of Saint John. Take next the 
 Creed of Saint Athanasius, in which the Incarnation 
 is unfolded in precise terms—the two natures, the two 
 substances, the one Person, the perfect humanity. 
 Take next the third part of the Summa of Saint Tho- 
 mas and the works of Petavius. This gradual unfold- 
 ing of the simple utterance, ‘The Word was made 
 flesh,’ is an example of the action of the gift of un- 
 derstanding analysing and expanding the simple de- 
 claration of Saint John. The same might be shown 
 in the doctrine of the most Holy Sacrament, of the 
 Real Presence, of the mode ofthe Real Presence, and 
 its many other truths. 
 
 Lastly, this gift of understanding has relation to 
 
 the divine sovereignty and the divine operations in 
 
THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 361 
 
 the world. I will put an example which like the 
 pillar in the wilderness, is all cloud and darkness to 
 those who have not this gift of understanding, and 
 all light and clearness to those who have. If there 
 be anything written in history, it is this: that the 
 Church has always been persecuted and that the 
 world has always been prosperous; and yet we are 
 called upon to believe that God is the Sovereign over 
 the world and over the Church. Nevertheless, we 
 see faith always suffering, and we see unbelief always 
 in prosperity. The men of this world taunt us with 
 this. They are always saying, ‘Look at those coun- 
 tries that have rejected the Catholic faith, how they 
 thrive ; look at their material progress in everything, 
 their culture, their advancement, their solidity, their 
 wealth, their commerce, their enterprise. Look at 
 your Church. Why, the Head of it is shut up in his 
 house; all the nations of the world are rejecting him 
 one after another; they have ceased to believe in 
 him; and you tell us this is the kingdom of God.’ 
 Have you any difficulty in understanding this para- 
 dox? When the Divine Head of the Church was 
 upon earth was He not rejected; was He not isolated; 
 did not men disbelieve in Him; was He not perse- 
 cuted; was He not crucified? And is He not the 
 King of kings, the Lord of lords, and has He not all 
 
362 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 power in heaven and in earth? The world which 
 prospers for a day has its hour fixed, and its doom is 
 certain. The Psalmist, when he was perplexed with | 
 the prosperity of the ungodly, was cast down and 
 wondered until he went into the sanctuary of God, 
 and then he understood the end of these men. 
 It is precisely the light of this gift of understand- 
 ing which makes us to know at this moment that, 
 despite of all successes, the warfare of the world 
 against the Church can never prevail; that, despite 
 of all reverses and defeats, the Church must be more 
 than conqueror. Therefore, Pius IX. still sits upon 
 the throne of Peter; and Peter will reign unto the 
 end. Whatever comes, one thing cannot come. The 
 world will never subdue to its will the Church of 
 God. 
 
 The gift of understanding enables all who be- 
 lieve, and therefore, in an eminent degree, the 
 doctors and teachers of the Church, to propagate 
 and to defend the revelation of God. The Church 
 has a threefold office. It is a witness of those things 
 which in the beginning it saw and heard; secondly, 
 it is a teacher of truth in the sphere of intellect ; 
 and thirdly, an intellectual judge discerning between 
 truth and falsehood. Its discernment is not only 
 
 with the natural precision of the human reason, nor 
 
THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 363 
 
 only by its natural lights, but also by its superna- 
 tural consciousness it discerns between faith and 
 heresy. It is by the gift of understanding that we 
 can solve the apparent difficulties of belief. To those 
 who judge by the letter, or by outward facts, the sor- | 
 rows and miseries of the world seem to obscure its 
 witness to the gocdness, if not to the existence, of 
 God. But how else shall we account for the exist- 
 ence of the world, or for the freedom of the will in 
 man ? In like manner, how are we to account for the 
 Christian world? You see the natural world around 
 us: you believe in its existence, and I know not 
 how you can doubt of its Creator. So of the Chris- 
 tian world. You see in the midst of this natural 
 world the rise and expansion of a Christian world. 
 You cannot deny its existence, whether you believe it 
 to be of divine foundation or not. But I do not 
 know how an intellectual man or a consecutive rea- 
 soner can believe that it had no founder; for ‘ every 
 house is built by some man, but He that created all 
 things is God.* Surely He that built this Chris- 
 tian world must be something more than man. Saint 
 Augustine said to the heretics of his day: ‘ Securus 
 judicat orbis terrarum.’ It is true that we are sur- 
 rounded by unbelievers, and by Jews, and by heathens, 
 4 Heb. iii. 4. 
 
364 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 and by heretics, and by schismatics; but in the 
 midst of all this confusion the Church of God, sitting 
 calm in its seat of truth and power, looks round 
 about, and without care or fear is evidence of its own 
 truth. As a tree still rests upon its root, though 
 branches be broken from it by the wind, or by the 
 lightning, or by man, so the Church stands no less 
 firm and immovable in the midst of those who fall 
 from it. All that once was part of itself lies dead 
 under its shadow, but it remains living and unshaken 
 as it was before. 
 
 Once more. Does it not stand to reason that 
 error must vary from itself? Draw a thousand lines, 
 curved or straight, with a pencil, and try to find any 
 two of them that are identical. Walk a thousand 
 paces, and then try to return upon your footsteps. Do 
 you think that you could plant your foot a thousand 
 times in the same place? Put it to the test. You 
 will find that there is but one thing which in all 
 places is identical. The truth never varies, errs, or 
 changes. Wherever the truth is it is the same. 
 The Divine mind never varies. The mind of man 
 divinely guided is everywhere the same. But the ac- 
 tions of the unaided human mind are inconstant and 
 variable; in every mind they are diverse, in every time 
 
 they diverge, in every place they put off their iden- 
 
THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 365 
 
 tity. There is the variation of infirmity, of forget- 
 fulness, of inadvertence, of wilful innovation, of vain- 
 glorious singularity, of proud conceit. Error detects 
 itself by its multiplicity. Look, then, at the Catho- 
 lic Church, and look at all the forms of fragmentary ; 
 Christianity that surround it. Which is truth and 
 which is error? The gift of understanding can read 
 beneath the complex pretensions of error the simpli- 
 city and certainty of the only truth. 
 
 We will take one more example. Truth comes 
 from Him Who knows what is in man, from Him 
 Who bears in His hand the key of the human intel- 
 lect and of the human heart. The truth of God in 
 Jesus Christ is so precisely fitted to the heart and 
 intellect of man, that it alone can move through the 
 wards. Therefore, it is alone the true key. Find, if 
 you can, any other religion or any fragmentary form 
 of Christianity which can accomplish this. We see 
 every day that those who try their mutilated reli- 
 gion upon the human intellect and the human heart 
 break the wards and hamper the lock. There is but 
 one key, and that is the Key of David, which for these 
 eighteen hundred years has opened, and no man could 
 shut, and has shut, and no man could open, the king- 
 dom of God in the soul. We must choose between 
 
 one of two things: we must either believe the Catholic 
 
366 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 faith, or find a rational and intellectual solution of 
 the unity of truth, and of its adaptation to human 
 nature and of the existence of the Christian world. 
 3. A third office of this gift is to reduce the re- 
 velation of truth to the form of a science. We hear 
 much of science in these days. We hear of physical, 
 and social, and historical science; but as soon as any 
 man says that theology is a science, at once we see the 
 supercilious change and lines of countenance, which 
 we all well know, in those who have the courtesy at 
 least to keep silence. Let us ask what, after all, is sci- 
 ence? Science means the knowledge we have of truth 
 by resolving it into its first principles, which again 
 are self-evident. Now I fully admit that theology is 
 not a science in that strict sense; because revelation, 
 which is the matter of theology, is to be resolved into 
 the authority of God. Therefore it is not self-evident 
 to the human reason; but for that cause I altogether 
 deny that history, and a great deal of that which we 
 are called upon to receive as science, is science, or even 
 scientific. I fully admit that mathematics, arith- 
 metic, geometry, are sciences; and I would add, the 
 sciences of the physical world. They may be tested 
 by experiment, they may be resolved into self-evident 
 principles; therefore they may be called science. And 
 
 { will also use the word science of theology, for this 
 
THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 367 
 
 reason : that whatever is methodical, clear, definite, 
 precise, whatever can be stated in its principles, may 
 be called scientific, if not in the strictness of pro- 
 priety, at least next to it; and in that sense it is quite 
 true that the revelation of faith is a supernatural 
 science. For instance, there is nothing which is so 
 definite in its conceptions, in its terms, in its defini- 
 tions, as the Catholic faith. I have already given one 
 example. Take the theology of the Nature, and of the 
 Persons, and of the Perfections of God. Can any- 
 thing be more precise ? Its precision is turned to our 
 reproach. Take again the Athanasian Creed; take the 
 definitions by which we express every doctrine of the 
 faith. Ineed not prove that these things are definite. 
 The world cries out against us for that very definite- 
 ness ; the world denounces us because we are dogmatic. 
 If we were not dogmatic, who would know what we 
 teach ? If our doctrines had neither beginning nor 
 ending, nor circumference, like the opinions that are 
 tossed to and fro by conflicting sects, nobody would 
 know what we mean. The admission of one inde- 
 finite word into an argument, like the admission of 
 one false figure into a sum, confuses the whole; and 
 therefore the Church from the beginning has been 
 most rigorously precise in the choice of the very words 
 by which it conveys the faith. Having defined its 
 
368 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 doctrines, it assembles them and groups them to- 
 gether. Your baptismal Creed is the germ of a 
 whole science. The twelve articles of the Apostles’ 
 Creed are, in fact, the text of the whole theology 
 which the Councils of the Church have elaborated in 
 every age to this day, perpetually analysing more 
 and more exactly the meaning of every revealed 
 truth by this gift of understanding, and then com- 
 bining them all together into perfect unity and sym- 
 metry, and yet never venturing to draw a line round 
 it, or to say this contains the whole of the meaning ; 
 and that because in this life ‘we know in part, and we 
 prophesy in part,’ while we are waiting for that time 
 when the perfect shall come, and what is partial shall 
 be done away. We do not venture now to declare 
 that we possess the whole truth of any mystery, but 
 only so far as it is revealed. If you look from a high 
 mountain, you will see a multitude of paths and roads 
 and rivers diverging every way. At last they reach 
 the horizon and vanish. So it is with the truths of 
 revelation. We can trace them so far as they are re- 
 vealed to us, but at last they reach the vanishing 
 points, where they pass into the infinite mind of God; 
 there we cannot follow them. Theology does not 
 venture to give account of anything beyond that 
 
 which has been revealed; but that which has been 
 
THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 369 
 
 revealed, theology, with a precise treatment and exact 
 method, defines: and combining truths together, it 
 brings out that which is implicitly revealed. Theo- 
 logy surrounds the faith, like the radiance round the 
 sun. The science of God radiates from the baptismal 
 Creed. This, then, is another operation of the gift 
 of intellect. 
 
 4. We now come to a further office of this gift. 
 When theology comes in contact, and it may be in 
 conflict, with the sciences of the world, it is the office 
 of the Church to harmonise the science of revealed 
 truth with the sciences of the human intellect. We 
 are told that it cannot be harmonised with physical 
 sciences, and the stock example which is always 
 given us is this: that Galileo was condemned for 
 teaching the motion of the earth. It is true, indeed, 
 that a book of Galileo was examined at a time when 
 the whole world believed in the motion of the sun, 
 and when the motion of the earth was not as yet a 
 scientific truth. It had not been yet established by 
 science ; nor was it scientifically proved for one hun- 
 dred years afterwards. For a century after Galileo 
 some of the highest intellects still believed in the 
 motion of the sun. Many in this country lived and 
 died disbelieving the hypothesis of Galileo, and be- 
 lieving it to be contrary to Scripture. Therefore the 
 
 24 
 
370 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Church, at a time when the doctrine was but a hypo- 
 thesis and a conjecture, apparently running counter 
 to the belief of mankind, and to what seemed to be 
 the words of Scripture, discountenanced a book which 
 tended to unsettle the belief of men both in natural 
 and supernatural truth. The Church defined no- 
 thing, and uttered no doctrine. It made a discipli- 
 nary prohibition to protect men from the disturb- 
 ing effect of an unproved hypothesis. And what 
 has been the course of the Church since then? 
 From the moment that the motion of the earth was 
 established as a scientific truth the Church has ac- 
 cepted it; and why? Because the Church has no re- 
 velation of physical science. Holy Scripture is not 
 a book of cosmical science. No revelation whatever 
 is made of astronomy. The Book of Joshua uses the 
 language of sense, and not the language of science, 
 in saying that the sun stood still. Therefore faith 
 and theology are in no way implicated, and in no way 
 in conflict. They who accuse the Church betray 
 only the animus to throw stones which fall on their 
 own heads. 
 
 Once more. We are told by men of science that 
 the chronology of the Church is false; that the age 
 of the world, instead of 6,000 years, is at least 40,000 
 or 50,000, and I do not know how maay more. On 
 
THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 871 
 
 what ground do they tell us this? Because they 
 say that the accumulation of alluvial matter at the 
 mouths of great rivers could not be deposited within 
 a less period of time. They say, too, that they have 
 found bones of I do not know what animals in strata 
 which would require for their formation at least 
 40,000 years. My answer is this: Have you had a 
 letter from heaven to tell you? What you call facts 
 you make and unmake, and make so often over again, 
 that we never know where to find you. They are 
 to us nebulx, or gaseous vapours, without fixity or 
 permanent form. You serve them up to us like new 
 articles of science, and we recognise the old stamp 
 and the old worn-out brass and copper of exploded 
 systems. Till you agree among yourselves upon 
 some permanent facts, we must say: You know 
 little about it. We have positive proof that the de- 
 posits of rivers vary according to many conditions, 
 such as the fall of rain, the volume of the flood, the 
 speed of the currents, the beds of rivers. In a few 
 years waters have been seen to accumulate, or to 
 Sweep away, masses equal to any of these for the 
 deposit of which the chronological tables of our 
 modern philosophy would assign a thousand. Again, 
 they tell us that geology is inconsistent with the 
 doctrine of the creation of the world. Why? Were 
 
372 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 they there to see? On what do they found this as- 
 sertion ? How can they account for the existence of 
 the world over which they would establish their intel- 
 lectual lordship? This physical world was either 
 eternal, or it was created, or it made itself. This last 
 no sane man will say. The first is to deify both mat- 
 ter and decay. Nothing remains but to believe that 
 it had a beginning, and therefore a cause; but if it 
 was caused it was created. I do not know what 
 your intellect may say to this, but mine absolutely 
 refuses to accept any other supposition. I should 
 violate not only the gift of understanding, but my 
 natural reason, if I were to say that the world was 
 without a cause, or that it caused itself. When, then, 
 we are told that geology has shaken the foundations 
 of revelation, I say, Not yet. In those who already 
 did not believe, in those who use such language as a 
 plea for unbelief, I can understand it; but that any 
 man who ever had the light of faith could be shaken 
 by such pretended and periodically shifting facts, I 
 can hardly imagine. Such a man would not only 
 lose his faith, but abdicate his reason. Then we are 
 told: ‘If you say that man was descended from a 
 single pair, how can you account for the multitude of 
 nations?’ Well, the more we search out the origin 
 of mankind, the more clearly we find that the multi- 
 
THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 373 
 
 plicity of races may be traced up into four sreat 
 families, and these four again into two; and that 
 those two great families part on either side of one 
 tract or region, pointing to an unity of origin. As 
 Science advances it does not shake, but confirms, reve-_ 
 lation. Then they ask, ‘How can you account for the 
 multiplicity of tongues, dialects, and languages?’ In 
 like manner, the further we have analysed languages 
 the more we find them to run up into dialects, and 
 dialects to put off their peculiarities, and put on the 
 likeness of an original speech. They gradually as- 
 cend upwards, like the races themselves, pointing to 
 one fountain from which language came in the begin- 
 ning. Ido not here pretend to state these subjects 
 adequately. I give them only as examples of the 
 action of the gift of understanding. It is thus that 
 the Church is adjusting, and harmonising with all that 
 Survives of true science the revelation committed to 
 its custody. 
 
 TI will take one more example. We hear a great 
 deal of progress, intellectual advances, men of cul- 
 ture, and the like. Now I will ask, Has all the ad- 
 vancement of civilisation in ethics, in politics, and in 
 social culture refuted, or superseded, or changed the 
 bounds of one revealed truth? Does not Christianity 
 
 remain at this moment imperishable and immutable? 
 
374 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 It is constituted of these three aboriginal elements ; 
 namely, the purest and most perfect conception of 
 God that man ever knew; the purest and most perfect 
 conception of man, revealed in the Incarnation, that 
 the world ever saw; the purest and most perfect mor- 
 ality—that is, the relations between God and man, and 
 between man and man. I ask whether Christianity, 
 which contains these three great and constructive 
 elements, has in any sense been set aside or shaken 
 by the intellectual, or moral, or political, or social 
 progress of mankind? Has it elevated or corrected 
 the Christian conception of God, or of man, or of 
 morals? Now I will affirm that it has done no such 
 thing. Like as the ark floated on the waters; the 
 deeper they became, the higher it rose, so does 
 Christianity at this moment repose in all calmness 
 and majesty on the great flood of human science in 
 its highest cultivation. 
 
 5. My only other point is this: that the Church, 
 by the gift of understanding, ascertains and demon- 
 strates the perfect unity of science. ‘ Deus scientia- 
 rum Tu es. The Christian conception of the Divine 
 Nature is an infinite Intelligence—the Fountain ofall 
 Sciences. There is but one Uncaused, one Infinite, 
 and one Eternal; one Being Who is above all beings; 
 and to the Uncreated all created being is subordinate. 
 
THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 375 
 
 It stands related to Him in an order of which He is the 
 only Head. There is a Hierarchy of Being, and God 
 is the Lord of all; and this Hierarchy of Being is also 
 a Hierarchy of Intelligence. All created intelligences 
 are subordinate to the one uncreated intelligence of | 
 God. So also all sciences are related to the one sci- 
 ence of God, from Whom all descend and to Whom 
 all return; and in that hierarchy of sciences, theology, 
 or the science of God, is the first and the Queen. Ali 
 other sciences, physical and human—that is, relating 
 to the world and to man—are subordinate, but insepar- 
 ably united, because in God all truth is one. In the 
 Divine mind all truths are in harmonious unity; all 
 divergences, as we think them, are but apparent. We 
 see only in part. Only a portion of the infinite mind 
 of God is revealed to us. We have a part of an 
 eternal writing unrolled; the rest is unrevealed. We 
 cannot read the context. We see a part of the great 
 chart or map of truth, in which we only can follow 
 certain tracks and paths. A section of a diagram is 
 before us, the complement of which we do not know; 
 but when in the light of the kingdom of God we 
 shall see even as we are seen; then the perfect 
 unity of that intellectual light will be visible. Every 
 eye shall see it; every intelligence shall be full. The 
 white light of the day contains all prismatic colours, 
 
376 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 which, when separated by human skill and made 
 visible to the eye, seem to differ one from another; 
 but when once more they are all resolved again into 
 the perfect unity of the solar light, all differences are 
 lost in an undivided splendour. So with the sciences 
 of the world. So far as they are erroneous they will 
 be hereafter cast out; so far as they are true they 
 will all be taken up into that one infallible and un- 
 created light which lighteth every man that cometh 
 into the world. 
 
 Such then, in fewest words, is the action of this 
 gift of intellect. Time would fail me if I were to 
 attempt to point out what is its effect in forming the 
 teachers of the Church. This I must pass over; 
 but I cannot pass over one last truth. You are well 
 aware that the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius TX., has over 
 and over again, in letters without number, in the 
 Encyclical, and the Syllabus issued in the year 1864, 
 condemned in the most express and peremptory 
 terms the separation of philosophy and science from 
 revelation, and has enjoined upon all men of science 
 and all teachers of philosophy to cultivate both in 
 union with, and in subordination to, that one divine 
 science, the revelation of faith. The world has risen 
 in uproar against this supreme voice. The men of 
 
 science have everywhere clamoured against it as an 
 
THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. StF 
 
 attempt to bring them into intellectual subjection. 
 Professors of Germany rose up and appealed to 
 Cesar. The persecution of the Church which we see 
 at this moment in Germany is nothing more than 
 a revenge of the mortified pride of the men of culture - 
 and of the philosophers who are deposed from their 
 seats of error by the Vatican Council. They were 
 one by one put down. They were suspended by their 
 bishops, and finally, because they would not obey, 
 were put out; and being put out, they gathered 
 themselves together to make head against the Church 
 of God. But their end is sure. They will be scat- 
 tered from before its face, as all heretics have ever 
 been. The Holy See has always laid down this 
 great and vital principle—namely, that secular and 
 religious instruction shall never be parted in edu- 
 cation. It has laid down this principle not only for 
 the schools of the poor, but for the universities of 
 the rich. It has never wavered; it has never receded, 
 and it never will; and that because education is not 
 the mere teaching of intellectual opinions. Edu- 
 cation is the formation of the whole man—intellect, 
 heart, will, character, mind, and soul. Whether it 
 be the poor child in the parish school, or the son 
 of the rich man in the university, it is all the 
 
 same. The Catholic Church will accept as education 
 
378 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 nothing less than the formation of the whole man. 
 Therefore, when doctors and politicians talk of the 
 separation of the religious and the secular element, 
 the Church will have none of it, and that for this 
 plain reason—instruction is not education. Secular 
 teaching, without the light of faith and the gifts of 
 the Holy Ghost, not only cannot form the man, but 
 they deform the man. They form the man upon a 
 false model ; they unshape him from that original re- 
 flection of the image of God which is in him. First, 
 they deprive him of light; and where light departs, 
 darkness comes. The human mind, once deprived 
 of the light of revelation, is filled with the clouds of 
 unbelief or of credulity. It can give no account 
 of God; it has no knowledge of His character or of 
 its own nature. Is this education? ‘Though a man 
 were a professor of seven sciences, without the know- 
 ledge of God and of himself what is he? In the sight 
 of God he is like the men of the old world which 
 knew not God. He may be as wise as Empedocles 
 or Aristotle, but he is not a Christian. He is not 
 formed upon the type of Christianity: he is not 
 after the example of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Lastly, where the mind is deprived of light it is 
 perverted. The whole intellectual and moral nature 
 
 loses its normal shape. It is perpetually conceiving 
 
THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 379 
 
 and giving out erroneous judgments, erroneous prin- 
 ciples, erroneous maxims, which issue in erroneous 
 and dangerous actions. The separation of religious 
 from secular education wrecks altogether the seven 
 gifts of the Holy Ghost in the souls of those ~ 
 who have been baptised. Is it a wonder, then, 
 that the Catholic Church will never consent that its 
 children shall be reared without the knowledge 
 of their faith, or that education shall be so parted 
 asunder that secular knowledge shall be made the 
 subject of daily and earnest inculcation, and that 
 religion should be left out as an accident, to be picked 
 up when and as it may? 
 
 Finally, you all have this eift of understanding, 
 if you are in a state of grace. Pray therefore every 
 day, in the words of the Apostle, that you may ‘be 
 filled with the: knowledge of His will in all wisdom 
 and spiritual understanding.’ Lay to heart two 
 passages of Holy Scripture, for they are the words of 
 the Holy Ghost : ‘ God, Who commanded the light to 
 shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, and } 
 given the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
 in the face of Jesus Christ. If our gospel be hid, it 
 is hid to them that are lost; in whom the god of this 
 world hath blinded the minds of them that believe 
 not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of God 
 
oO 
 
 280 THE GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 should shine unto them.” And: ‘For this cause I 
 bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, that He would grant you according to the 
 riches of His glory to be strengthened by His Spirit 
 in the inward man; ... . that being rooted and 
 founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend 
 with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, 
 and height, and depth, to know the charity of Christ, 
 which surpasseth all knowledge, that you may be 
 filled unto all the fulness of God.” 
 
 5 2 Cor. ii. 4-6. ¢ Ephes, iii. 14-19, 
 
Ve 
 
 THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 
 
THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 
 
 pt a a 
 
 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Proverss i. 7. 
 
 Waar the root is to the tree in its full stature and 
 in the full spread of its branches, that holy fear is 
 to wisdom. Wisdom springs from holy fear as its 
 root, and without holy fear, if there could at all be 
 wisdom, there could be in it no stability. The wisest 
 of all the sons of men before the Incarnation of 
 the Son of God was Solomon, king of Israel, and his 
 wisdom was not by acquisition only, but by an in- 
 fused gift of God in answer to special prayer and a 
 promise made by God Himself; nevertheless, the 
 man who had become wise by the eift of God, whose 
 wisdom reached over all the works and mysteries of 
 God as then revealed, shamefully and utterly fell 
 by impurity and by idolatry. Holy fear, then, is 
 the beginning of the whole spiritual life; it is the 
 the stability and protection of the whole spiritual 
 
 structure in man. Therefore wisdom, which is the last 
 
384 THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 
 
 of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, may be said to 
 be the blossom, and the maturity, and, as it were, 
 the perfection ofall the seven gifts. Indeed, wisdom 
 is the only gift of the Holy Ghost which bears a 
 divine name. We do not call God Piety, or Intel- 
 lect, or Science, but Wisdom is the name of God 
 Himself; and the uncreated Wisdom of God is God 
 Himself; and the-uncreated Wisdom of God is the 
 Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and the 
 Son, Who is the image of the uncreated Wisdom of 
 God, was incarnate for us, and the uncreated Wisdom 
 of God was manifest among men, and, being mani- 
 fest among men, has built for Himself a house,! 
 Sapientia edificavit sibi domum. And what is that 
 house of Wisdom but the mystical Body of Jesus 
 Christ ? Those in whom the Holy Ghost dwells, by 
 His indwelling He perfects in wisdom, and builds 
 them up together as a temple for the inhabitation of 
 God. Such is the Holy Catholic Church, visible in 
 this world, and in communion with God and His 
 saints in the world unseen. 
 
 We have already defined and explained the na- 
 ture of intellect or understanding, and we saw that 
 it consists in a certain penetrating and precise dis- 
 cernment, whereby the intellect can read the inner 
 
 1 Wisdom ix. 1. 
 
THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 385 
 
 meaning, and substance, of the revelation of God, 
 and of all things bearing upon it. Now in what 
 does wisdom differ from intellect or understanding ? 
 It differs in this: that wisdom has two parts or ele- 
 ments ; it is a certain divine light given to the soul, 
 whereby it both sees and tastes God and divine 
 things. There are, then, two distinct operations in 
 it: there is a sight derived from the light of God, 
 whereby divine things are seen, and a taste or a 
 power of tasting those things, of knowing and dis- 
 cerning them by a taste of their divine sweetness. 
 These two operations go together ; therefore the light, 
 together with the power of taste, or, in other words, 
 illumination in the intellect, together with charity 
 inflaming the heart, constitute the gift of wisdom. 
 Now do not imagine that this gift is the exclusive 
 property of saints ; do not imagine that I am talking 
 high things over your heads and my own, which have 
 no application to us. The gift of wisdom is in every 
 one of you, if you are in your baptismal grace. It is 
 always expanding if you are faithful, or contracting 
 if you are unfaithful, to the working of the Spirit of 
 God. But there it still abides: there is not one of 
 you that may not possess this gift in its fulness. The 
 Book of Proverbs says : ‘ The fear of the Lord is the 
 beginning,’ or the first principle, ‘of wisdom,’ and 
 
 25 
 
386 THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 
 
 ‘humility goeth before glory.’ Now the path of 
 humility is open to everybody, and the glory that is 
 at the end of it is, therefore, within the reach of all: 
 the foot of that ladder is indeed upon earth, and 
 the humble may ascend it, but the head of that lad- 
 der is in the glory of God, and the poor and the 
 unlettered may go up into the light of the presence 
 of the Almighty often more surely than the cultured 
 and refined. 
 
 1. I have said that wisdom is the blossom, or the 
 perfection, of the seven gifts. They all grow up 
 into it in symmetry, and form, and beauty; they all 
 unite together in completing the outline of wisdom : 
 you cannot take one of them away without mutilating 
 in some degree the perfection of wisdom. I have 
 already said that these seven gifts are in every one 
 of you, unconscious as you may be, or may have 
 been, that you possess them ; and they work in you, 
 though it is true that they have a special proportion | 
 to the several ages and stages of our human life. 
 For instance, holy fear is the gift which first mani- 
 fests itself in childhood, and piety manifests itself in 
 youth, and fortitude in manhood; the intellectual 
 perfections, or the intellectual gifts, come out, per- 
 baps, simultaneously in various degrees, or some come 
 
 out sooner and some later; but there they are—all 
 
THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 387 
 
 lie hidden simultaneously. It is a mistake to 
 suppose that any one can have the gift of wisdom 
 without having the gift of knowledge; or the gift of 
 fortitude without having the gift of piety, and the , 
 like; but it is quite true that they work unequally 
 in different people, and that the inequality produces 
 such a diversity that it seems as if some possessed 
 one and some possessed another of those gifts, but that 
 hardly any possessed all. The truth is, that one 
 gift is prominent in some and less prominent in 
 others. For instance, the human countenance has 
 only the same features all over the family of man, 
 and those features are very few, and the number is 
 the same: nevertheless, they are capable of such in- 
 finite variety that no two human faces are perfectly 
 alike. Again, we know how complex and elaborate 
 are some of the harmonies of music, yet that all the 
 harmonies that were ever heard by the ear of man 
 may be resolved up into the seven simple notes. 
 And so may all the perfections of the human soul be 
 resolved up into the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost 
 —only with this distinction: that as some featureg 
 are prominent in some men, and some tones or notes 
 are dominant in some music, so certain gifts of the 
 Holy Ghost are dominant, and rule over the hearts 
 
 and the wills of some in a greater degree than in 
 
388 THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 
 
 others, and thereby give a distinct impress and pro- 
 portion to the character. And yet, although they 
 act simultaneously, they act unequally, but for some 
 mysterious reason which it is beyond us to under- 
 stand they produce in the end the same result. 
 We are often asked, Is it possible that men who are 
 so different one from another—some so exceptionally 
 good, others so inveterately evil—could have been 
 born in the same equal condition? Does not this 
 creat diversity divest them in some way of their per- 
 sonal responsibility? Must it not be in their very 
 nature from birth ? Not at all. If there were natural 
 inequalities, the adaptation of grace to nature would 
 redress them, and bring us all back again to one law, 
 though not to one level; namely, that whether we have 
 five talents, or one only, we are alike responsible to 
 God for working out our salvation, and that God has 
 viven to every one of us, whatever may be the diver- 
 sity of our natural character and disposition, the 
 vifts, and aids, and graces which adjust the balance. 
 For the moment I set aside all who are living out 
 of the grace of God, because, as I told you in the be- 
 cinning, these seven gifts are to be found only in 
 those who are in a state of grace or in charity and 
 the fear of God. In those who are in grace we see 
 
 such diversities that, at first sight, it seems as if they 
 
THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 389 
 
 were of different natures. For instance, some people 
 exhibit an immense energy of will in doing good, 
 and yet the amount of their intellectual light is small; 
 on the other hand, some men have a gift of mental 
 prayer and of contemplation, but they are wanting in 
 perseverance and in firmness. The explanation is, 
 that in the latter the gifts which perfect the will are 
 but feebly exercised, and those that perfect the in- 
 tellect have been more developed; and in the former 
 the gifts which form the solidity of the character have 
 been more developed, and therefore increased, and 
 those that relate to the intellect have been less 80. 
 Let us take an example. In the science of God, 
 that is, in what we call theology, there are many 
 branches ; one is dogmatic theology, or the science of 
 the revealed truth of God, precisely conceived and de- 
 finitely expressed. Take, as an example of this, Saint 
 Thomas Aquinas, in whom the gift of intellect 
 was sanctified in the highest degree. There is no 
 parallel to the writings of Saint Thomas, in point of 
 precision, consecutiveness, and unity, but the reason- 
 ings of the highest mathematicians. Or, take again 
 a writer like Saint Alphonsus, whose whole life was 
 spent as a pastor in the guidance of souls. His 
 writings are the most elaborate, minute, and delicate 
 
 examination of the laws and rules of duty as leading 
 
390 THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 
 
 to the perfection of the soul. In him we see the gift 
 of counsel. Or, again, take Saint John Chrysostom, 
 the great preacher on the reformation of life and 
 morals, in him we see the gift of science. And, 
 lastly, Saint Bonaventure, who united together two 
 things—a singular light of penetrating and precise 
 intellect in dogma, together with an ardent fervour 
 and glow of piety and of love to God. This is exactly 
 the gift of wisdom. Moreover, this same gift of 
 wisdom is variously shown as modified by combina- 
 tion with other gifts in the four great Doctors of the 
 Church. First, in the writings of Saint Augustine 
 
 we see one thing predominate throughout 
 
 namely, 
 the operations of grace in the soul, working by 
 charity, and the outward expression of it in the 
 world-wide unity of the Church: secondly, in Saint 
 Leo the Great the mystery of the Incarnation, and 
 the authority and the supreme power of the Holy 
 See: thirdly, in Saint Jerome, the translator and 
 commentator of Holy Scripture, in a wonderful per- 
 fection, a knowledge of the literal sense of the written 
 Word of God: and, lastly, in Saint Gregory the 
 Great, an intuitive perception of the meaning of 
 Holy Scripture; not the literal meaning only, but 
 the moral meaning of the Word of God. Now here 
 are four diversities of intellect, so great that we see 
 
THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 391 
 
 at once that they were different operations of the 
 same Divine Spirit, Who by His various gifts per- 
 fects the intellect of those whom He chooses out to 
 teach the faithful. 
 
 There are those who tell us that the gift of faith — 
 is for women and children. With scornful imper- 
 tinence they imply that none but fools believe. My 
 answer is, Look at the Christian world; tell me 
 what is the root out of which your men of science 
 and your mathematicians have sprung. Whence 
 came the intellectual maturity of your political philo- 
 sophers, your sceptical metaphysicians, who deny the 
 existence of the soul and the being of God? What 
 lifted them up to the intellectual elevation from 
 which they can look down and pretend to despise 
 those who believe, and to criticise and reject even the 
 revelation of God? It is the sanctified intellect of 
 Christendom which has built up the house of Wis- 
 dom. It is the mother of the whole race of those 
 that are born again. It is Christendom from which 
 they sprung, and from which they fell, as rotten 
 branches from the Tree of Life. The intellect of 
 man illuminated by faith is conformed to the un- 
 created intelligence of God Himself; and if the 
 world scorns you as unintellectual because you be- 
 
 lieve in the revelation of God and submit your 
 
392 THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 
 
 reason to the teaching of divine authority, you can 
 well bear it. 
 
 2. Next, this gift of wisdom, being, as I said, the 
 perfection of the seven gifts, perfects the soul itself. 
 It illuminates the intellect, it moderates the tumul- 
 tuous and rebellious passions ; it rectifies the affec- 
 tions of the soul; it directs the will to God. We 
 must distinguish between passions and affections. 
 In our Divine Lord there were no passions. We 
 never use that word in speaking of the Incarnation. 
 We say indeed, that there were in Him pro-passions ; 
 that is to say, His human nature was like ours in 
 all its susceptibilities, but being perfectly under the 
 dominion and control of His own will, there was in 
 those susceptibilities neither turbulence nor inordi- 
 nateness nor disorder. Now there are in us a multitude 
 of affections which become turbulent and inordinate : 
 nevertheless, they are from God. The use we make 
 of them alone is ours. In their right use and mea- 
 sure they are holy. For instance, zeal is an impetuous 
 desire to do good; and yet zeal sometimes becomes 
 a wildfire which sets the world in flames, and in 
 the end leads men to think that it does a service to 
 God when it puts men to death. Such was the zeal 
 of Saul. The gift of wisdom does not root out zeal ; 
 
 it chastens and rectifies it. So also with anger. 
 
 ood ping 
 
THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 393 
 
 The Apostle says, ‘Be angry and sin not;’ which 
 shows that anger is not necessarily a sin. Anger is 
 implanted in our hearts, just as strength is im- 
 planted in the muscle of the arm. Anger has its 
 proper use. Anger is the executive power of justice ; 
 but if you allow anger, which God gave us in order 
 to execute justice, to become vindictive and im- 
 placable, it is revenge by which men destroy one 
 another. It is we who change into sin that which, 
 in its proper measure, is the gift of God. There is 
 anger in God Himself. We anger the divine nature. 
 But the anger of God is never without a cause, and 
 never exceeds the bounds of justice and mercy. 
 Like the pure water in a clear vessel of glass, which 
 may be suddenly agitated and then in a moment be- 
 comes calm and leaves no sediment behind, so if 
 your anger be like this, it is anger rectified by wis- 
 dom. I might give many other examples, but these 
 are enough. 
 
 Further: the gift of wisdom not only perfects the 
 natural faculties of the soul, but it perfects also the 
 infused supernatural virtues. It is necessary that 
 wisdom should preside over the operations of faith, 
 hope, and charity. We are told that those who be- 
 lieve are credulous and superstitious. I do not deny 
 
 that credulity and superstition are parasites of faith. 
 
894 THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 
 
 Just as paralysis is a parasite of the human frame, 
 so superstition is a parasite of faith. It is the mor- 
 bid accident of a noble nature. Ido not deny this: 
 but superstition is faith without wisdom. "Wisdom 
 promptly and surely corrects both superstition and 
 fanaticism. It corrects false notions of piety; it opens 
 the eyes of the soul to see how much of zeal, and ex- 
 travagance, and self-choosing, and will-worship may 
 enter into faith. Wisdom purifies faith. Once more, 
 hope sometimes becomes presumption, sometimes in- 
 dolence, until wisdom has come in to correct it. Again 
 charity becomes prodigal, precipitate, unwise, con- 
 trary to prudence, and even contrary to justice, until 
 wisdom purifies and tempers it, and, as the Holy 
 Ghost says, impresses the law of order upon it, so 
 that the first object of charity is God, and the next 
 is a rational and wise love to ourselves, and the 
 third a love to our neighbour. And as we ought to 
 appreciate and prefer God before all things, that is, 
 before our own life, so we ought to prefer the spi- 
 ritual good of our neighbour even to our natural 
 life ; but we ought never to prefer his spiritual life 
 to our own, never to invert the order, never to think 
 that we can do anything wrong in the hope of saving 
 him, or that we can give up obedience for his sake. 
 
 In this wisdom orders and corrects charity. And, 
 
THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 395 
 
 lastly, wisdom guards the union of the soul with 
 God. Charity enters into wisdom, and gives to it 
 a discernment by taste of divine things. Wisdom, 
 therefore, unites the soul with God, because it pro- 
 duces in the soul the habit of recollection, a constant 
 sense of the presence of God, a spiritual consciousness 
 that His eye is upon us and that His ear is open. 
 When God said to Abraham, ‘Walk before Me and be 
 perfect,’ He gave him the highest rule of wisdom, and 
 Abraham walking before God was walking in the gift 
 of wisdom. He was encompassed by the divine pre- 
 sence. He sawall things in its light. He tasted in all 
 things the sweetness of God. Wisdom therefore is the 
 source of mental prayer. Isaac went out to meditate 
 in the fields at eventide. Meditation is the patient 
 thought of wisdom musing upon divine things. If 
 you find it hard to meditate, you may know the rea- 
 son. The gift of wisdom is in some way hindered. 
 But this gift is not to be obtained by eager poring 
 over books, nor by the stretch and strain of the 
 imagination or of the intellect. It is a gentle and 
 calm contemplation of God and His truth in the love 
 of it. Ifyou wish to learn the habit of meditation, 
 unite your heart with God humbly and patiently, 
 sitting, as it were, at the feet of God, and looking 
 up into His face. Let us take the example, a saint, 
 
396 THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 
 
 and let us remember that the chief difference be- 
 tween you and the saints is a difference of degree. 
 Do not for a moment say, ‘To give me the examples 
 of saints is to discourage me.’ You cannot imitate 
 their extraordinary actions, I admit; but their 
 ordinary actions in walking before God in the path 
 of sanctification, by which they ascended to their per- 
 fection, these you not only can but you must imitate. 
 Take, for instance, Saint Charles. There never was a 
 pastor of the Church who laboured harder and rested 
 so little; there never was any one who was more in- 
 cessantly at work for souls, who seemed never to take 
 a moment for himself. No doubt people would have 
 said, ‘What an unspiritual man! When can he ever 
 say his prayers? His life is a most commonplace 
 life at the best. There is nothing in it supernatural 
 or saintly.’ He was indeed continually surrounded 
 by men of business, by the clergy of his diocese, by 
 the people who stood in need. When had such a man 
 a moment to say his prayers? I may truly answer, 
 there never was a moment when he ceased to pray. 
 Filled, as he was, with the gift of wisdom in an 
 eminent degree, his whole heart and mind were 
 united to God with so close an intimacy, that his 
 union with God was never suspended. Whatever he 
 
 was doing he was always praying. Prayer and work 
 
 em = es 
 
THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 397 
 
 are so akin, that their double action need never inter- 
 fere the one with the other. Let us take another 
 example, Saint Philip Neri. For fifty years he never 
 left Rome, save only when he went out of the walls 
 to visit the Seven Churches, or to keep festival in 
 Some vineyard surrounded by Roman youths. He 
 was all day long either in his chamber or in the 
 church. He lived an unseen, unresting life for fifty 
 years day and night, like the rising and the setting 
 of the sun. We cannot tell when he prayed; but we 
 know that he prayed always. What was it that sus- 
 tained that wonderful perseverance of unremitting 
 industry ? What enabled him never to take a rest, 
 never do anything that other men would think so 
 necessary for their spiritual relaxation? Why. did 
 he never need it? Because he was always united 
 with God; and in that union with God he had his 
 lips to the fountain, from which he was always draw- 
 ing refreshment and strength. 
 
 3. My last and third point shall be this: that 
 wisdom is the foretaste of our eternal bliss. It is the 
 last perfection of the soul, in its union with God. As 
 I said in the beginning, the uncreated Wisdom of 
 God was incarnate for us, and those in whom the 
 Wisdom of God dwells are united with God in a spe- 
 cial intimacy. It is the contact of the soul with God 
 
398 THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 
 
 during time in this world which unfolds hereafter 
 into the beatific vision and the beatific union of eter- 
 nity. The light by which God is seen now through 
 faith will become the beatific vision. The love which 
 tastes the sweetness of God here will hereafter be- 
 come the beatific union. When the Psalmist Says, 
 ‘O, taste and see how sweet the Lord is,’ he calls us 
 to the beginning of this twofold Bliss. And when 
 Saint John says, ‘You have the unction from the 
 Holy One, and know all things, and you have no 
 need that any man should teach you, but the unc- 
 tion which is in you teacheth you all things,’ he is 
 speaking of the unction of wisdom; for that Unction 
 is the Holy Ghost Himself, and the wisdom which 
 flows from Him is the anointing of the faithful. 
 They who, by faith in a Divine Teacher, are united to 
 the incarnate Wisdom of God, need no human teacher; 
 they are under a Teacher Who came from God, that 
 is, the Holy Ghost, perpetually speaking through His 
 Church, guiding them infallibly in faith, bearing 
 witness in their hearts, and preparing them to see 
 Him as He is. 
 
 Wisdom is described in the Holy Scripture in this 
 way. “Wisdom, which is the worker of all things, 
 taught me. For in her is the spirit of under- 
 
 standing: holy, one, manifold, subtil, eloquent, 
 
THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 399 
 
 active, undefiled, sure, sweet, loving that which is 
 good, quick, which nothing hindereth, beneficent, 
 gentle, kind, steadfast, assured, secure, having all 
 power, overseeing all things, and containing all 
 spirits, intelligible and pure. For Wisdom is more 
 active than all active things, and reacheth everywhere 
 by reason of her purity. For she is a vapour of the 
 power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the 
 glory of the almighty God; and therefore no defiled 
 thing cometh into her. For she is the brightness of 
 eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God’s 
 majesty, and the image of His goodness. And being 
 but one, she can do all things; and remaining in her- 
 self the same, she reneweth all things, and through 
 nations conveyeth herself into holy souls; she maketh 
 the friends of God and prophets. For God loveth 
 none but him that dwelleth with Wisdom. For she 
 is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the 
 order of the stars: being compared with the light, 
 she is found before it. For after this cometh night, 
 but no evil can overcome wisdom.” Some men see 
 God as in the twilight; and some men see Him as 
 they see the sun under a cloud; and others, who have 
 the gift of wisdom in them, see God as in the noon- 
 
 day, neither in figure, nor form, nor outline, but by 
 
 2 Wisdom vii, 21-30. 
 
400 THE GiFT OF WISDOM. 
 
 a spiritual consciousness which illuminates the whole 
 soul; and, when they so see God, then they under- 
 stand these words of the Holy Ghost: ‘The animal 
 man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, 
 for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he 
 know them, for they are spiritually examined.’ The 
 light of the vision of God by faith gives to the intel- 
 lect.a supernatural discernment ; and not only a dis- 
 cernment by way of light, but a discernment by way of 
 taste. That which comes from God has a sweetness, 
 and that which comes from the world has a bitter- 
 ness; and those who have the gift of wisdom can 
 detect and discern the one from the other. The gift 
 of wisdom gives to the soul a special love for those 
 things that God loves, and a special hatred for that 
 which is hateful in His sight. It is intuitive and 
 instinctive, before all reasoning, and of a super- 
 natural sense. | 
 
 The distinction between the gift of science and 
 the gift of wisdom is this: in the gift of science we 
 see God in His creatures, and we ascend up by His 
 creatures to Himself; but by the gift of wisdom we 
 see God Himself, and, from the contemplation of 
 His perfections, we descend to a knowledge of His 
 works. And therefore it is that men who have 
 the gift of wisdom in them are unintelligible to the 
 
THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 401 
 
 world. ‘Therefore they know us not, because they 
 knew Him not.’® Therefore it is that those who 
 have even the least of the gift of wisdom in them 
 know the emptiness of all creatures in comparison 
 with God. And in the measure in which they have 
 this gift of wisdom, in that measure they are con- 
 formed to the mind of God Himself. It is wisdom 
 that makes men ‘the friends of God.’ And His 
 friends grow into His likeness. In the words of 
 the Apostle: ‘We all with open face, beholding as 
 in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into 
 the same image from glory to glory as by the Spirit 
 of the Lord.” 
 
 We see, then, what the gift of wisdom is, and 
 with few words we will make an end. TI said before, 
 do not imagine that I have been describing the life 
 ofsaints. I have been describing what your lives may 
 be. You may all of you walk in that same path. You 
 are all called to be saints, and if you press onward 
 in humility, you shall ascend up to the glory of the 
 saints before the Throne. There are some among us 
 who have a greater facility in acquiring the gift of 
 wisdom than others. And I will tell you who they 
 are: the poor, whose state generates the spirit of 
 poverty. It mortifies and casts out pride, which is 
 
 7158. John iii. 1. 402. Cor vil, 
 26 
 
402, THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 
 
 the great obstacle to wisdom. And next to the poor 
 are little children fresh from the waters of baptism, 
 whose souls have never yet been stained with sin ; 
 whose hearts, therefore, are not yet darkened. Does 
 not this explain to us why it is the world counts 
 us to be fools? Can there be anything more dia- 
 metrically opposed the one to the other than the 
 wise man and the worldly man? The wise man 
 sets his whole soul, the eyes of his intellect, and 
 the affections of his heart, upon God alone. As 
 I said, the object of wisdom is God. And the 
 worldly man sets his heart and his affections upon 
 things that are out of God, and below God, and be- 
 neath God, and beside God, and contrary to God— 
 for these things he lives and in these things he dies. 
 Is there any wonder, then, that he should think us 
 to be fools? Does he not explain the meaning of 
 Holy Scripture, where we read: ‘ We fools counted 
 his life madness, and his end to be without honour ; 
 but how is he numbered among the children of God 
 and his lot is among the saints’? These are the 
 words of the worldly wise when it is too late: when 
 their worldly wisdom, which is the love of wealth, 
 and honour, and pride, with all this world which they 
 worshipped, have passed away; when this animal or 
 
 carnal wisdom of theirs—the love of pleasure, ofsensu- 
 
THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 403 
 
 ality, and self-indulgence—have passed away for ever. 
 When the diabolical wisdom of the men without the 
 Holy Ghost, the arts and craft of pride, ambition, 
 rivalry, jealousy, covetousness, and warfare, one with 
 the other, are all stilled in the terrible silence of 
 the Day of Judgment, then they will see the reason 
 why fools counted the life of the just and wise to be 
 madness and his end to be without honour. It must 
 be so; for where there is wisdom there is detach- 
 ment from creatures; and the wise man will put his 
 foot upon the honour and the wealth of this world if 
 it casts so much as a shadow between his soul and 
 God. The gift of wisdom gives to the soul an attach- 
 ment to God, and all things that relate to God 
 and to our salvation. And more than this: it gives 
 to the soul a love of the cross—the very thing from 
 which all men shrink, ay, even some good men fear 
 and fly from. It makes the wise man able to say 
 what the Apostle said: ‘God forbid that I should 
 glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by 
 Whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the 
 world.” ‘With Christ I am nailed to the cross; 
 nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me, 
 and the life that I live in the flesh I live by faith in the 
 Son of God, Who loved me and delivered Himself ior 
 5 Gal, vi. 14. 
 
404 THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 
 
 me.’© When the Wisdom of God came into the world 
 He laid His hands upon a multitude of things—upon 
 the sick, upon the afflicted, the hungry, the dying ; 
 upon little children; upon the bread which He blessed 
 and brake in the wilderness; upon sorrow and upon 
 pain; and, lastly, He laid them upon the cross; and 
 wherever He laid His hands He left a sweetness and 
 a fragrance which wisdom can perceive and wisdom 
 alone can know. 
 
 I will not stay to sum up; but I will remind you 
 of the path by which we have come upward to this 
 gift of wisdom. We began by considering the work- 
 ing of the Holy Ghost in the soul, the nature of 
 grace, which is the indwelling and action of the Holy 
 Ghost in the heart by the gift of our regeneration, 
 
 whereby we are made sons of God and receive His 
 
 sanctifying grace: We went on to the theological | 
 
 virtues of faith, of hope, and of charity; we then 
 saw the sovereign grace of justification ; and after the 
 grace of justification we came to the glory of sonship, 
 and then to the seven gifts. We have tried to under- 
 stand the nature of those seven gifts; and how they 
 are distinct from the virtues and graces implanted 
 in baptism. We have gone over those seven gifts 
 one by one, and we have seen that the gift of holy 
 * Gal. ii. 19, 20. 
 
 ——* 
 
THE GIFT OF WISDOM, 405 
 
 fear is the gift of the children of God, and the gift of 
 piety is the gift of the sons of God, and the sift of 
 fortitude is the cift of the soldiers of Jesus Christ, 
 and the gift of science is the gift of the disciples of 
 
 the Holy Ghost, and the gift of counsel is the gift 
 of the pastors of the flock, and the gift of intellect is 
 the gift of the Doctors of the Church, and the gift of 
 wisdom is the gift of the saints, among whom are num- 
 bered little children, and all who are faithful to the 
 Spirit of God. There remain only two other subjects. 
 I have tried to describe to you the work of the Spirit 
 of God in the soul—which is like the growth ofa tree 
 from its root. We have reached at last the fulness of 
 its stature and its spread, the symmetry and outlines 
 of the Tree of Life, with its outreaching branches. I 
 said before that wisdom is the blossom—I did not 
 say it was the fruit, and for this reason: the Holy 
 Ghost, writing by the Apostle in the fifth chapter 
 of the Epistle to the Galatians, speaks of the fruits 
 of the Holy Ghost, and numbers them as _ twelve. 
 Afterwards come the Eight Beatitudes, which are the 
 eight perfections of the soul of man in its highest 
 and most intimate conformity with the mind and the 
 lite of Jesus Christ. I name them now in order to 
 show you how the subject of the seven gifts has its 
 
406 THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 
 
 complement and its perfection in the Twelve Fruits 
 and the Fight Beatitudes. 
 
 My object throughout has been to waken you and 
 to warn you against subsiding into your natural cha- 
 racter, to stir you up, if by God’s help I can, to 
 aim at a supernatural life and supernatural perfec- 
 tion. It has also been my aim, if possible, to make 
 clear the distinction between an unspiritual man, 
 in whom the gifts of the Holy Ghost are oppressed, 
 and the spiritual man, who is under the guidance 
 and the light of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 But all that I have tried to say may be summed 
 up in these words of the Holy Ghost Himself: ‘ There 
 is now, therefore, no condemnation to them that are 
 in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh. 
 For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath 
 made me free from the law of sin and death. For 
 what the law could not do, in that it was weak through 
 the flesh, God sending His Son in the likeness of 
 sinful flesh, hath condemned sin in the flesh, that 
 the justification of the law might be fulfilled in 
 us, who walk not according to the flesh, but accord- 
 ing to the spirit. For they that are according to 
 the flesh mind the things that are of the flesh; but 
 they that are according to the spirit mind the things 
 that are of the spirit. For the wisdom of the flesh is 
 
 sh 
 
THE GIFT OF WISDOM. 407 
 
 death ; but the wisdom of the spirit is life and peace. 
 Because the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to 
 God ; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither 
 can it be. And they who are in the flesh cannot 
 please God. But you are not in the flesh, but in the 
 spirit, if the Spirit of God dwell in you.’ ‘ For who- 
 soever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons 
 
 of God.’” 
 7 Rom. viii. 1-9, 14. 
 
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THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 The fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, 
 goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, 
 chastity. Gau. v. 22. 
 
 Our Lord speaks of these fruits of the Spirit in the 
 parable ofthe true vine. He says, as you remember, 
 ‘T am the true vine, and My Father is the husband- 
 man; and every branch in Me that beareth not fruit 
 He taketh away, and every branch that beareth fruit 
 He purgeth, thatit may bring forth more fruit. Abide 
 in Me, and I in you; except the branch abide in the 
 vine it cannot bring forth fruit; without Me you can 
 do nothing.” That is to say, we are all of us, by 
 our regeneration, grafted into Jesus Christ. As the 
 branches are grafted into the stem of the tree, and 
 derive from it their life, their sap, and their fruitful- 
 ness, so every soul that is ‘born again of water and 
 of the Holy Ghost,” being inhabited by the Holy 
 Spirit of God, lives by union with Jesus Christ and 
 1 §. John xvi. 1-5. *Albaltis ps 
 
- 419 THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 bears these spiritual fruits. The Apostle counts up 
 twelve fruits of the Spirit; and these constitute the 
 active perfection of the Christian life. Besides the 
 fruits of the Holy Ghost there are the Eight Beati- 
 tudes, which constitute the passive and final perfec- 
 tion of the Christian soul. 
 
 My purpose now is to speak of these fruits of the 
 Holy Ghost. | 
 
 There is a distinction to be drawn between the 
 fruits of the Holy Ghost and the three virtues of 
 faith, hope, and charity, and the Seven Gifts. As 
 we have reason, and will, and love, which are the 
 primary faculties of the natural soul, so we have faith, 
 and hope, and charity, which may be called the facul- 
 ties of the soul that is born again. But the fruits are 
 distinct from these. The virtues are faculties or 
 powers whereby we are capable of bearing these fruits. 
 So again the gifts are distinct from these twelve 
 fruits. For the gifts of the Holy Ghost are certain 
 helps of the Holy Spirit given to assist us in the 
 exercise of faith, hope, and charity. The seven gifts 
 of the Holy Ghost are not acquired by practice; they 
 are infused into the soul. They are supernatural 
 gifts which come from the Creator of all things, 
 and by the help of His grace they are elicited into 
 exercise, and they flow into the acts of faith, hope, 
 
THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 413 
 
 and charity. But the fruits of which I have spoken 
 are therefore distinct from these seven gifts. What, 
 then, are they? They are the ripe and full product 
 of the vine, of the three great virtues and the cifts 
 exercised together, producing certain actions in the 
 spiritual life.? Charity is the first of these fruits, and 
 for this reason. There can be no graces, and no gifts, 
 and no fruits in any soul that is not ‘rooted in 
 charity.* The soul must be rooted in the love of 
 God and our neighbour, or it can bear no spiritual 
 fruit. And the charity in which the soul is rooted 
 pervades and runs through every gift and fruit, just 
 as the sap from the root spreads through the stem 
 and the branches into every fruit upon the vine. 
 
 We will now take for our subject this active per- 
 fection of the soul. Our Divine Lord has said: ‘Every 
 tree is known by its fruits: either make the tree good 
 and the fruits good, or make the tree corrupt and 
 the fruits corrupt’*—that is to say, be one thing or 
 another. You cannot halt and hesitate between good 
 and evil; if you be found in that middle state you 
 will die eternally. ‘The axe is laid to the root of 
 
 * ‘Fructus Spiritus est delectatio seu dulcedo in actu virtutis 
 consistens, sed ipsa actio virtuosa, jucunda, ex gratia Spiritus 
 Sancti procedens: et ex spiritu rationali elicita et prodacta,’ 
 
 Dionys. Carthusian. Elem. Theol. prop. clvi. 
 * Eph. iii. 17. ’ 8.’ Matt. xii. 33. 
 
414 THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 the tree. Every tree therefore that doth not yield good 
 fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.’° You remem- 
 ber the parable of the barren fig-tree ; how the lord 
 of the vineyard came and turned over the leaves year 
 after year, to find fruit upon the tree, on which he had 
 bestowed go much care, and finding none, he said, 
 ‘Cut it down ; why cumbereth it the ground ?”7 
 
 Therefore it is a matter vital to us all to know 
 whether or no we are bearing fruits to our Lord. If 
 we are not bearing the fruits of the Spirit, we are 
 bearing the fruits of the flesh; if we are not bearing 
 the fruits of eternal life, we are bearing the fruits of 
 eternal death. There is no middle state. 
 
 1. What then are the signs and the tests by which 
 we shall know what fruits we are bearing? The fruit 
 of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace, and all the twelve 
 here named. See the fertility and the fruitfulness 
 of the soul that is in a state of grace and therefore in 
 ihe love of God. First of all, here is the relation of 
 the soul with God Himself: charity is the love which 
 unites us with God; joy, which means the thanks- 
 giving and the consciousness of God’s infinite good- 
 ness, in which we live and move; peace, whereby we are 
 at rest with God, and in ourselves, and with all man- 
 kind. And secondly, there are the fruits which have 
 
 6 §. Matt. iii. 10. 7 §. Luke xiii. 7. 
 
THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 415 
 
 relation to our neighbour, and the first is patience. 
 Do we bear with our neighbours? Are we irritable, 
 revengeful, resentful, malicious? If so, the fruits 
 ofthe Holy Ghost are not in us, because the benignity 
 of God is not in us. Next comes goodness; as a foun- 
 tain pours out pure water, so the good heart is per- 
 petually pouring out goodness and diffusing goodness 
 on all around. Longanimity is another name for 
 patience. Just as equity is the most delicate form 
 of justice, longanimity is the most perfect form of 
 charity, the perpetual radiance of a loving heart which, 
 in its dealings with all who are round about, looks 
 kindly upon them and judges kindly of their faults. 
 Longanimity means also perseverance, the not being 
 wearied in well-doing, not throwing up and saying, ‘I 
 have tried to do good for such a one, I have tried to 
 correct his faults, I have tried to win him; but he is 
 ungrateful, he is incorrigible, and I will have no more 
 to do with him.’ Our Lord does not so deal with us. 
 Longanimity means an unwearied perseverance in 
 doing good. Faith means veracity, so that a man’s 
 word is as good as an oath. Mildness means gentle- 
 ness, kindness, and forbearance, the dissembling of 
 wrong, the absence of the fire of resentment and of 
 the smouldering of ill-will. And then, lastly, there 
 
 are certain fruits which have relation to ourselves. 
 
416 THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 They are, first of all, modesty, which is both within 
 and without—modesty of bearing, modesty of con- 
 duct, of dress, of demeanour, a chastened and sen- 
 sitive regard for others, in all that is due from us to 
 them, which keeps us from obtrusiveness, and from 
 transgressing the delicate consideration which is 
 their right. There is also a modesty which means a 
 moderation in the use of all things, the setting a 
 bound and a limit even upon things that are lawful 
 —‘ All things to me are lawful, but all things are 
 not expedient ;’ and again, ‘ All things edify not.” 
 Continence means most especially the repressing of 
 passions—the passion of anger, the inclination to 
 pleasure, to honour, to wealth, and to graver things 
 which I need not name. Chastity is the transparent 
 purity of the soul and the custody of the senses, 
 because they are the avenues to the soul by which 
 sin enters. 
 
 Such, then, in few words, are the twelve fruits of 
 the Holy Ghost. And every soul that is in the grace 
 of God has in it this fertility. It may not bear them 
 all in equal measure, but it bears them all in some 
 
 proportion. 
 
 2. Then, secondly, see the variety of these fruits. 
 
 The description that the Apostle gives of the life of 
 
 84 Cor. vi. 12, x. 23. 
 
THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 417 
 
 our Divine Lord when He was upon earth is this: 
 “He went about doing good: that is, the life of 
 our Lord in this world was spent from first to 
 last in doing good to others; in bearing everywhere 
 and towards all men a loving heart. His hands 
 were always executing the promptings of His Sacred 
 Heart. And His Sacred Heart He bequeathed to 
 His Church, which is His mystical Body. The 
 vibration and the pulsation of that Heart of love are 
 felt throughout Christendom. In every work of all 
 good Christians the Sacred Heart is the animating 
 and quickening principle of charity. 
 
 Look at the world before the Son of God came 
 into it. Find one institute of mercy in it. Finda 
 hospital, or an asylum for the widow or for the orphan. 
 Find a home for those who were bereft of reason. 
 Find a ministry of charity to the sick. The culture 
 of classical nations was as cold as the ice, as hard as 
 a stone. The Sacred Heart of the Incarnate Son of 
 God cast fire upon the earth. And the Christian 
 world kindled and broke forth into all the works of 
 charity. As soon as the widows and the orphans 
 among those that believed were known to be destitute, 
 the Apostles set apart a special order—the sacred 
 order of Deacons—to be the ministers of the charity 
 
 ® Acts x. 38. 
 
 afi 
 
418 THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 of Jesus Christ to His poor. The law of alms came 
 in, which had no existence in the heathen world. 
 The life of community—not the communism of those 
 that do not believe in Jesus Christ, but the com- 
 munity of all things among those who, being mem- 
 bers of His Body, have a sympathy one with another, 
 and share in each other’s sorrows and joys, and in their 
 hunger, and thirst, and nakedness. The miseries of 
 mankind as they were seen by the Son of God Himself 
 are before the eyes of His Church. All the miseries 
 of mankind, of body and soul, are open to the heart 
 that is illuminated and kindled with the love of God 
 and our neighbour. The Church from the beginning 
 has shown an inventiveness of charity, in finding out 
 how it may apply the help of the love and of the 
 mercies of God to every form of human suffering. 
 And what the Church does as a body the saints 
 of the Church have done one by one. The life of 
 Saint Charles, the great pastor of Milan, was inex- 
 haustible in compassion. Saint Vincent of Paul, who 
 did not commence his works of mercy until he was 
 forty years of age, has filled the whole world with 
 the exercise of the most various forms of Christian 
 love, ministering to every form of distress and suffer- 
 ing. And what there is in the lives of saints there 
 
 ought to be in its measure in every one of you. Do 
 
THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 419 
 
 not say, ‘I have a preference for this or for that kind 
 of charity, and I am not called to other things.’ You 
 are called to show all these fruits of the Holy Ghost on 
 every occasion in which it is possible, at least in some 
 measure or in some degree, and that to all. 
 
 3. And then, thirdly, where these fruits are there 
 is a growing facility in doing them. Just as the fruit 
 on the vine ripens by a law common to all the growths 
 of nature—which begin in the summer, are made 
 perfect in the autumn, and when they are mellow and 
 full they drop into the hands of those that gather 
 them—so is it with the fruits of the Holy Ghost; 
 there is in the heart of every one who lives in the 
 love of God and his neighbour a certain facility of 
 doing and being all that these fruits describe. And 
 yet we all know too well that we constantly have a 
 repugnance to doing any duty if it be difficult; to 
 persevere in anything is always a trial to our patience; 
 we make excuses, and we say, ‘It is very hard; I 
 cannot do it, or I cannot bear it, or I cannot go on with 
 it. What does this prove? That we are not faith- 
 ful to the Spirit of God Who is in us, helping us; 
 that we are not faithful to the light and the love 
 which is prompting us with all the motives of charity 
 to God and to our neighbour. 
 
 And this facility in doing right, from what does it 
 
420 THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 spring ? Chiefly from three things. - First, from an 
 appreciation of God, above all things; from a know- 
 ledge of God’s love, of God’s goodness, of the reward 
 which is laid up for us, that is, God Himself, Who 
 will give Himself to those who bear the fruits of 
 the Holy Ghost in His service. They who have an 
 appreciation of God have in them a motive power 
 which will carry them over every obstacle, through 
 every opposition. It is the want of this appreciation 
 of God which makes us so feeble and so faint-hearted, 
 as we all are, in doing what is right. We are ready to 
 sell our Lord for thirty pieces of silver, when the gain 
 of this world comes across us, or for the enjoyment 
 of a little pleasure, when it allures us. Therefore we 
 say that duties are hard, because we have not in us 
 this strong mainspring which would carry us through 
 all repugnance and over all difficulties which bar our 
 way. 
 
 Secondly, it springs from the love of the Sacred 
 Heart. If we loved the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the 
 source of all our strength and all our hope, if we 
 loved our Lord with a love that is generous as His 
 love to us, and self-denying as His, then there is 
 not one of our hardest duties that we should not do 
 with a promptness and an energy which would over- 
 come all resistance. 
 
THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 491 
 
 And thirdly, it springs from the love of our neigh- 
 bour. If we really love our neighbour as ourselves 
 —if we have, first of all, a rational love of ourselves, 
 that is, if we know the value of our own soul, and if 
 we are ready to sacrifice everything in the world that 
 we may be saved—then we shall be ready to do all 
 things for our neighbour, just as we shall be ready 
 to do them for ourselves. We read in the life of a 
 true saint, though he is not yet canonised, a layman, 
 not a priest—that he spent his time in visiting the 
 hospitals in France, and that, as he was hanging 
 over the beds of the sick and the dying, even the 
 most repulsive, he used to be heard whispering to 
 himself, ‘O my Lord, what can I do for Thee? how 
 can I serve Thee?’ And then speaking to the sick and 
 dying as ifthey were Jesus Christ Himself, as seeing 
 his Divine Master in them, he would say, ‘ What do 
 you desire of me? O Lord, tell me what it is.’ 
 This it was that carried him through all the repug- 
 nance of nature and the repulsiveness of disease. 
 
 4. And where there is this facility there is a great 
 sweetness ; and, as I began by saying, in the fruits of 
 the Holy Ghost there is a special sweetness or delight 
 mingled with every act that is prompted by the 
 Holy Spirit of God. To do right by the power of 
 grace has in it a sweetness of its own. We know 
 
499, THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 that everything we do with facility we do gladly; 
 everything we do with difficulty is wearisome to us. 
 To learn a new language is a wearisome task, until 
 we can read it, and speak it, and pronounce it. Then, 
 _ with the facility to do these things, comes a certain 
 sweetness in the exercise of what we have acquired. 
 In learning to play upon a musical instrument, the 
 weary inaptitude of the hand and ear, until they 
 have acquired skill, makes the learning irksome and 
 distasteful; but as soon as the difficulty is over- 
 come, the exercise of what we have acquired has a 
 sweetness in itself. So it is in the service of God. 
 And if, when we are called to any duty howso- 
 ever hard, we could only say, ‘O my Lord, I do 
 this for Thee; it is for Thee I am doing it, not 
 for myself, not for any human friend, but for my 
 Divine Master; for Thy sake I do it;’ or when we 
 are called to any trial or any pain, if we could say, 
 ‘O my Lord, it is for Thee I suffer it ; I know it is 
 Thy will; therefore for Thy sake I will bear it; and 
 I know that Thou knowest all my motives, Thou art 
 looking on, Thou art listening, Thou knowest all 
 things,’—if we only had this consciousness, then 
 whatsoever comes it would be sweet. And besides, 
 whenever any one does an act of duty, there is another 
 
 sweetness which God Himself will pour out secretly 
 
THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 4938 
 
 into the heart. We cannot reason about it. But if 
 any one has ever, faithfully and for the love of Jesus 
 Christ, done or suffered anything, he will know that 
 there is a gentle rain of sweetness which comes down 
 in secret upon the heart: as the Psalmist says, ‘ How 
 great is the multitude of Thy sweetness, which Thou 
 hast hidden for them that fear Thee.’” 
 
 5. And then, lastly, in this consists the active 
 perfection of the soul. I say the active perfection, 
 because there is a passive perfection, which does not 
 belong to our present thoughts. The example of 
 Jesus Christ upon the Cross is the example of passive 
 perfection or perfect obedience in perfect patience. 
 But what I have tried to describe is the perfection 
 of active charity. And that perfection consists 
 chiefly not in what we do externally: nor in any out- 
 ward actions. Just as the essential malice of sin is 
 not in the outward act. It is not in the lifting the 
 hand to take the life of a fellow-creature, it is in the 
 malicious and murderous intention which lifts the 
 hand, that the sin of murder lies—so also it is with 
 perfection. Perfection is not in the giving of alms 
 —it is in the motive with which we give them. 
 The least things done for the love of our Divine 
 Master may be full in His sight of the richest and 
 
 10 Psalm xxx. 20. 
 
494 THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 the sweetest merit, and the greatest things we may do 
 or suffer, if they are not done in charity, are, as the 
 Apostle says, worth nothing: all these things, even 
 martyrdom, are as nothing unless they spring from 
 the constraining love of Jesus in the heart. And there- 
 fore, where these fruits of the Holy Ghost are found, 
 the heart will be loving, compassionate, gentle, kind, 
 forgiving. The first promptings of the thoughts, 
 before they have become deliberate, the very first 
 movements, as it were, which are raised by the con- 
 duct of others, will be kindly and charitable; much 
 more so our deliberate thoughts, when we have had a 
 moment to reflect ; and such will be therefore the whole 
 habit of the mind. And if the thoughts are such, so 
 will the motives be: the motives which govern the 
 whole life will be motives of love, of charity, of mercy, 
 of pity, of compassion; and where there are these 
 motives and thoughts of charity there will be desires, 
 large and ardent, which may never be fulfilled, be- 
 cause we have not the power to accomplish them. 
 Every day, in the Lord’s Prayer, we say, ‘ Hallowed 
 be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be 
 done on earth as it is in heaven ;’ we open our hearts 
 with desires as wide as the world and as lasting as 
 eternity. And where the Spirit of God dwells in the 
 heart there is this fruitfulness of desire. The heart 
 
THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 425 
 
 will desire things that are as high as heaven. I ask, 
 then, have you this fervent longing for the service of 
 God in you? Have you in your heart an ardent desire 
 to bear the Cross, if need be, in His service? Can 
 you say, ‘ The zeal of Thy house hath eaten me up’ ?" 
 Can you say in the time of duty, ‘ Behold, I come’ ?!? 
 Can you say, as the Apostle did, ‘I will most gladly 
 spend, and be spent myself, for your souls,’ for the 
 service of my Lord and for the elect for whom He 
 died ? 
 
 I have described to you what are the fruits of 
 the Holy Ghost, what are their motives, and from 
 what they spring. 
 
 Now there are two plain conclusions to be drawn. 
 
 1. The one is this: the danger of the barren soul 
 —of the soul that is bearing no fruit. Remember 
 the words of the master of the vineyard. He planted 
 the fig-tree, he had cultured it, he had dug about 
 it, he had manured it, he had tended it, and ap- 
 pointed one to watch over it. It bore no fruit, and 
 it was cut down. How has God dealt with you? He 
 has given His own Son to die for you, and the 
 Eternal Son of God Incarnate has shed His Precious 
 Blood for you. And God has given the Holy Ghost 
 to you; and the Holy Ghost has dwelt in your heart, 
 
 nu §. John ii. 17. #2 Psalm xxxix. 8; Heb. x. 7. 
 
426 THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 and He is in your heart at this moment if you be in 
 a state of grace. Ifso, what are the rights of God 
 over you? May He not come and look into your 
 hearts for the fruits of innocence? May He not say, 
 ‘I gave to your soul the graces of baptism and the 
 snnocence of a child of God—where are they? I gave 
 to your soul the graces of the Holy Ghost, that you 
 might live according to justice—where are the fruits 
 of justice? I have given to your soul the grace of con- 
 trition, that you might repent—where are the fruits 
 of penance? I have given to your soul the grace to 
 know My love, to feel the love that I have for you— 
 where is the return of love for love, where is your 
 generosity ? I have heaped upon your soul mercies 
 without number, poured out upon it blessings beyond 
 the heart of man to conceive—where is your spirit of 
 thanksgiving or of praise?” These are the rights that 
 God has over you. He may justly expect these things 
 from you. See, then, the disappointment of God. He 
 comes and He finds upon many and many a soul no 
 fruit at all—plenty of leaves, a profusion of show, of 
 fair outward appearance, but no fruit. On others he 
 finds a little fruit, a scanty fruit. After all the abund- 
 ance of His graces, after all the sunshine, and all the 
 showers, and all the culture that ought to have made 
 
 us to be saints, He comes and He finds here and 
 
THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 42.7 
 
 there only a scanty fruit; and even that scanty fruit 
 is often vapid and tasteless, because it is borne by 
 constraint, and without love, or generosity, or a pure 
 motive. Or He comes and He finds upon a soul that 
 has been born again and was once inhabited by the 
 Holy Ghost the fruits of the flesh—envy, jealousy, 
 hatred, schism, dissension, revelling, drunkenness, 
 all manner of fruits of the flesh, and of the world, and 
 of death. Is not God, then, justly disappointed ? 
 And is not our unworthiness incredible, even to our 
 own human hearts? That after all His mercies, and 
 graces, and long-suffering, and invitations, and re- 
 bukes, and chastisements, we should bear the fruits 
 of the flesh and not the fruits of the Spirit. But 
 there has been a voice that has been saying, ‘ Lord, 
 leave it alone this year also;’ and we have been 
 spared from year to year, through the intercession 
 of our guardian angel and of our Blessed and Im- 
 maculate Mother. 
 
 2. And now for a last word, see the sweetness of 
 bearing these fruits and the greatness of the reward. 
 There is a reward even in this life. The love and the 
 blessing of God follow those who bear the fruits of 
 the Spirit all their life long. The multitude of that 
 sweetness comes down upon them every year, and 
 
 every day, and every hour, and sets its token upon 
 
428 THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 them by the manifestation of His love in the secret 
 outpourings of His peace and joy into their hearts. 
 And even from men, from those among whom they 
 have lived, passing to and fro, and ministering to their 
 sorrows and sicknesses in soul and body, what love, 
 what gratitude, what thanksgiving, what sympathy, 
 what prayers do they who are loving and kindly 
 receive. This is the reward on earth. But there 
 is a sweeter reward hereafter. God Himself is ‘ the 
 exceeding great reward’ to all who love and serve 
 Him. And according to the measure of the charity 
 we have exercised here will be our glory and our bliss 
 hereafter; measured with the most precise and the 
 most just distribution will be the glory and the bliss 
 of eternal life to all those who have here borne, in 
 any measure, the fruits of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 18 Gen. xv. 1. 
 
XVI. 
 
 THE BEATITUDES. 
 
ici Pg 
 a. i 
 Ao hay! 
 
 ‘ a 
 
 anes” a 
 og Bacal Ie a 
 Rest rai Te 
 ste 4: CU eeiay, 
 
THE BEATITUDES. 
 
 And seeing the multitudes, He went up into a mountain; and when 
 He was sat down, His disciples came to Him. And opening 
 His mouth He taught them. 8. Marr. v. 1, 2. 
 
 Ir was then that Jesus spoke the Sermon on the 
 Mount, which has changed the desert of this world 
 into the garden of the Lord. And this gives us the 
 only other meditation we have to make on the beauti- 
 ful and divine work of our sanctification: that is to 
 say, on the Eight Beatitudes. We have already seen 
 how the fruits of the Holy Ghost grow upon the soul 
 as upon a tree planted in the waters of Baptism. We 
 have seen that they are the acts, internal and external, 
 of the love of God and our neighbour, of great fertility, 
 and variety, and facility, and sweetness. They con- 
 stitute the active perfection of the soul; for ‘ charity 
 is the bond of perfection.’ All other graces come 
 and go with charity, and where charity is the soul has 
 the full outline of its original. The life of Jesus 
 
432 THE BEATITUDES. 
 
 is the pattern of all perfection. He was all day 
 long pouring out the words and doing the works of 
 charity. The ardour of the Sacred Heart had no rest 
 in doing good. It was His thought from morning to 
 night. All the day long He was healing, absolving, 
 saving the souls of men. But the perfection of the 
 Son of God was not in His active works alone. He 
 was made perfect through suffering. Obedience is 
 perfected in patience. Jesus revealed the perfection 
 of the Sacred Heart always and everywhere, but no- 
 where, and at no time, as in the three hours’ agony 
 on the Cross. There His deified will was crucified— 
 there His heart and mind were conformed to God by 
 the last conformity of self-oblation and of suffering 
 unto death. Therefore the Church venerates, above 
 all, her martyred children. They are made perfect 
 in their passion, and ascend at once to the kingdom 
 of their crucified Lord. 
 
 We have therefore distinguished perfection, not 
 into two kinds, but into two degrees, the active and 
 the passive. The active perfection is the perfection 
 of the fruits of the Holy Ghost; the passive is the 
 perfection of the Beatitudes. 
 
 Now the Beatitudes are acts of a more excellent 
 and heroic degree; and in the doing of them the soul 
 is not only preparing itself for its eternal bliss, but it 
 
THE BEATITUDES. 438 
 
 already has a foretaste of its future beatitude.! There- 
 fore such acts are called Beatitudes because they 
 beatify the soul even here in this life of warfare. 
 They constitute also the highest perfections of the 
 saints—the closest conformity to the Sacred Heart of 
 Jesus. 
 
 The Beatitudes are eight in number. They describe 
 eight kinds of perfection by which the soul tastes of 
 its eternal sweetness. They are poverty of spirit, 
 meekness, holy sorrow, hunger and thirst for God, 
 mercifulness, cleanness of heart, peacemaking among 
 men, patience under persecution. We have here the 
 image of Jesus Christ from Bethlehem to Calvary. 
 Perfection begins in the stable, and is finished upon 
 the Cross; and all along the way of perfection the 
 children of the Beatitudes are known, not only for 
 their active charity, which is the sap and strength of 
 the twelve fruits of the Spirit, but by a gentle and 
 passive charity, which unites them, I may say, visi- 
 bly with God ; for no man could do the things they 
 do except God were with him. 
 
 1 ‘Beatitudo vie est dispositio, inchoatio, meritum atque pre- 
 ambulum beatitudinis patriex, ad quam ascenditur itur ac pervenitur 
 per octo beatitudines via. Ms o et . S 
 
 ‘ Beatitudines iste sunt actus virtutum et ut videtur quibusdam 
 sunt actus excellentium presertim heroicarum virtutum, cum beati« 
 tudo sit operatio optima,’ Dion. Carth. Elem. Theol. prop. cly. 
 tom. i. 
 
 28 
 
434 THE BEATITUDES. 
 
 Some, indeed, teach that the Beatitudes are heroic 
 acts of virtue; others, that every act in these eight 
 kinds, inasmuch as it beatifies the soul in some 
 measure, is also a Beatitude. This, no doubt, is true 
 in itself. But these two ways of speaking run up at 
 last into one. When we say that any man is meek 
 or a peacemaker, we mean that meekness and the 
 love of peace are so dominant in his character that 
 they describe it; that is to say, he is visibly, sensibly, 
 and characteristically meek. It is so also that we 
 speak of the Beatitudes. They are acts of the same 
 kind as those which we do every day, but in such a 
 degree and ripeness as to become marks or notes of 
 a character, and to bring a special sweetness into the 
 soul. And I may say that they are the last finishing 
 touches by which the Holy Spirit of God completes 
 His perfect will in us—that is, oar perfection. IT will 
 therefore, to wind up our subject, try to show—first, 
 what perfection is; secondly, who are called to it; 
 and, thirdly, what are the means of attaining it. 
 
 1. First, as to what perfection is. It is not to be 
 without sin, for then there would have been. none 
 perfect in this world except Jesus and His Blessed 
 Mother, Joseph, John Baptist, the Beloved Disciple, 
 Jeremias the Prophet, and any others who may have 
 
 been preserved from all sin. The perfection we speak 
 
THE BEATITUDES. 485 
 
 of is the state of sanctification to which such as we 
 are may attain in this life. Now any Christian who 
 exactly fulfils in his acts, and by the exercise of 
 virtues, the obligations of a son of God, is called 
 perfect. This is the meaning of our Lord’s words, 
 ‘Be you therefore perfect, as also your Heavenly Father 
 is perfect.’ He explains this. ‘Love your enemies; 
 do good to them that hate you.’ For God ‘ maketh 
 His sun to rise upon the good and bad; and raineth 
 upon the just and the unjust.” Our Lord here takes 
 the equal and unalterable goodness of God as the 
 pattern and law of our perfection. So, also, when 
 Saint Paul says to the Corinthians, ‘ Rejoice; be 
 perfect. Again, when Saint James says, ‘If any 
 man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man.” 
 
 In the Sacrament of Confirmation we arc made 
 “perfect Christians ;’ that is, all needful grace is given 
 to do and to suffer all that is needed to the active 
 and passive perfection of a son of God and of a good 
 soldier of Jesus Christ. 
 
 In a word, perfection consists in charity; for 
 charity is the perfection of God, and is therefore the 
 perfection of the soul. Charity is the bond of the soul 
 with God, and the indwelling of God in us. Charity 
 
 * 8S. Matt. v. 48, 44-45, $2 Cor. xiii. 11. 
 4 §. James iii. 2. 
 
436 THE BEATITUDES. 
 
 is the perfection of faith and hope, and will be perfect 
 when they are passed away. Charity is also the measure 
 of our bliss, and bliss itself. Itis, therefore, perfection 
 both in via and in patria, both here in our way to the 
 heavenly country and hereafter in the eternal home. 
 Charity, then, is personal perfection, as distinct from 
 what is called instrumental perfection—the state and 
 means by which it may be attained. ‘There are also 
 many degrees of perfection ; there is the perfection 
 of children, and of youths, and of men. Saint John 
 says, ‘I write unto you, little children, because your 
 sins are forgiven you, for His name’ssake. I write 
 unto you, fathers, because you have known Him Who 
 is from the beginning. 1 write unto you, young 
 men, because you have overcome the wicked one.” 
 This describes the three states of those who are 
 beginning, those who are advancing, and those who 
 have attained. Each state has its proportionate per- 
 fection. There is, lastly, the perfection of those who 
 are being made perfect and the perfection of those 
 who have attained perfection. There is also a dis- 
 tinction between a just man, and a holy man, anda 
 perfect man. A just man fulfils the law, and gives 
 to every man his due; a holy man is specially united 
 with God; a perfect man is both. 
 $s 1§. John ii. 12, 13. 
 
‘ THE BEATITUDES, 437 
 
 Now we will keep our thoughts upon this last, as 
 it completes the outline of all we have been saying 
 of the work of the Holy Ghost in us. 
 
 We have been tracing out this supernatural work 
 from its first beginning in our regeneration, when — 
 the graces of the Holy Spirit were infused into us 
 in our unconscious infancy. They were so given as 
 to abide as habits or inherent powers, inclining and 
 enabling us to believe, to hope, and to love. As 
 faith unfolds from a mere potentiality into actual 
 belief, the intellect grows into conformity with the 
 truth ; and because the truth is the revelation of the 
 mind of God, the intellect is conformed to the 
 divine intelligence. Faith believes the whole reve- 
 lation of God explicitly so far as it knows it; im- 
 plicitly so far as it is not known as yet. And faith 
 gives to hope its object and its motive, and sustains 
 it with the evidence of things not seen. As faith en- 
 larges, hope strengthens ; and as faith and hope illu- 
 minate and strengthen the soul, it loves the created 
 and uncreated truth. Charity grows broader in exten- 
 sion and more ardent in intensity as faith gives more 
 light to see the beauty and the bliss of God. Such is 
 the first outline and principle of our union with God. 
 But with these virtues we received sanctifying grace ; 
 that is, the indwelling and operation of the Holy 
 
438 THE BEATITUDES. ‘ 
 
 Ghost, imparting to us His sanctity, as the sun gives 
 its light and warmth to all things. As this sanctifying 
 grace grows in the heart, the intellect and will are 
 conformed to the intelligence and will of God; and 
 this growing conformity prepares both for the opera- 
 tion of the seven gifts. Then holy fear, and piety, 
 and fortitude control, and soften, and strengthen the 
 will; and knowledge and counsel form the practical 
 reason or conscience; and understanding and wis- 
 dom enlarge the head and the heart, and unite both 
 with God. Such is the growth of our sanctification ; 
 and such a man may be called a just man, and holy, 
 and wise. But as yet he may not have entered into 
 the region of perfection. There may still be flaws 
 and dents in the heart, mists in the intelligence, 
 twists and crookedness in the will. There may be 
 the roots of many faults yet alive; habitual faults 
 and deliberate venial sins. The complete circle of 
 charity and of its fertility is not yet expanded. There 
 may be no great self-denial, or generosity, or fervour. 
 Such a man may still seek his own things, and not 
 the things which are Jesus Christ’s. He keeps the 
 commandments, but not the counsels. He does 
 many good things, but he does not spend himself, 
 nor is he willing to be spent for the elect’s sake. We 
 
 say of such men that they are not large hearted ; they 
 
THE BEATITUDES. 489 
 
 ‘have no ready sympathy with their neighbours. 
 There is something upright indeed, but wooden, as 
 we say, and dry in all their contacts with mankind. 
 Such men are good men, but not perfect. They need 
 the glad promptness of charity, the fruitfulness in 
 good works, the inventiveness, the facility to listen, 
 to respond, to venture, to undertake the dictates of 
 charity. When they grow up into this region of their 
 conversion to God, which may be called the early 
 summer, when blossoms fall off and fruits are set, 
 then they enter within the circle of active perfection, 
 and multiply the fruits of the Spirit. And yet this 
 is not all. They have not attained, nor are they 
 already perfect. They have to learn a harder lesson. 
 Active works, even though they be with sel.-denial 
 and hardship, elicit the energies of nature, which are 
 so like the operations of the Spirit, that they are easily 
 mistaken for them. The Pharisees drilled themselves 
 with a human force of will and precision of conscience 
 which looked like perfection, and yet they were whited 
 sepulchres after all. The giving of alms, and blowing 
 of trumpets, and prayer at the corners of the streets 
 were in many altogether, and in many more in part, 
 only human acts from human motives, and for human 
 ends. ‘They loved the praise of men, they received 
 Phil. tis 12, 
 
440 THE BEATITUDES. 
 
 glory one of another. Therefore Saint Paul, by the 
 light of the Holy Ghost, draws out the charity of 
 God with a divine insight and delineation: ‘If I 
 speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have 
 not charity, Iam become as sounding brass or a 
 tinkling cymbal. And if I should have prophecy, 
 and should know all mysteries and all knowledge, 
 and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove 
 mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 
 And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the 
 poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burnt, and 
 have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity is 
 patient, is kind; charity envieth not, dealeth not 
 perversely, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, 
 seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, 
 thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but re- 
 joiceth with the truth; beareth all things, hopeth 
 all things, endureth all things.” I have repeated 
 the whole of these divine words to bring out that 
 they begin with patience and end with endurance, 
 The whole delineation is a counterpart of the Beati- 
 tudes. It shows us an inward region of the passive 
 perfection of the soul; a higher circle of the path 
 which winds round the mountain near to its summit, 
 at a height where clouds and storms begin to meet 
 
 7 1 Cor. xiii. 1-7. 
 
THE BEATITUDES. A4] 
 
 us, and the darkness of Calvary may not be far off. 
 Along the early path, from the waters of Baptism, 
 the soul is united with God in the light and the sun- 
 shine, and along the trodden path of faith, where the 
 morning and theevening have their twilight; but there 
 isno night there. This is the clear and conscious: 
 union of the soul with God; the support and reward 
 of those who are beginning, and even of those who 
 are far advanced. But there is another world to be 
 entered, in which spiritual trials multiply, with a 
 growing consciousness of the unapproachable sanctity 
 of God, and therefore of personal sinfulness ; reviving 
 temptations, old enemies, new antagonists, crosses 
 from bad men; worse than this, crosses from good 
 men; dryness and darkness of heart. God seems to 
 be nowhere. The earth is empty and void; every- 
 thing goes wrong; nothing prospers that is good ; 
 all seems to prosper that is evil. 
 
 Here is a realm which seems to be the home of 
 those whom God has forgotten; where His face is 
 never seen, nor a ray of His light ever shines. Let 
 us now read over the Beatitudes: ‘Blessed are the 
 poor in spirit;’ ‘Blessed are they that mourn ;’ 
 ‘Blessed are they that hunger and thirst;’ ‘ Blessed. 
 are ye when men shall persecute you for justice’ sake.’ 
 
 This is a region not so much of active charity as of 
 
449, THE BEATITUDES. 
 
 passive endurance. ‘There is hardly light enough to 
 work by, but we can suffer in the dark. It is here 
 that faith holds fast like an anchor out of sight: 
 deep down where no eye can reach. Hope says, 
 ‘Though He kill me, yet will I trust in Him ;’ and 
 Charity, ‘Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou 
 knowest that I love Thee ;’ and contrition turns into 
 compunction, and prayer into ‘ Father, if it be possi- 
 ble,’ once and again; the same words because no others 
 come. This isa stage in the journey which must be 
 passed by those that are perfect. They are learning 
 to suffer without and within: from the world, from 
 enemies, from friends, from Satan, from themselves. 
 They are learning to be patient as their Divine 
 Master ; gentle to all, even the most unworthy; gene- 
 rous to the ungrateful; thankful under the cross; and 
 their will in perfect submission to the will of God. 
 
 T am not describing canonised saints, but Chris- 
 
 tians such as we may be. ‘There are perhaps no mi-- 
 
 racles in such a life. But it is a true personal per- 
 fection, and the last conformity we shall bear, per- 
 haps, to our Master’s will. 
 
 Nevertheless, in such a state there may yet be 
 venial sins, and there are yet in the heart movements 
 which are still turbulent against the will, and in the 
 
 will itself infirmity. But there is no deliberate 
 
 eel lal 
 
THE BEATITUDES. 443 
 
 affection to anything contrary to the will of God. 
 Temptations resisted are not sins; and the indelibe- 
 rate adhesion of the mind to that which ig delibe- 
 rately resisted is not a transgression of the law. 
 And such souls are among the perfect. ‘The Lord 
 knoweth who are His.’ 
 
 2. Next, who are they that are called to perfection? 
 We are all called to be saints. We are, therefore, 
 all called to be perfect. All that are saved must be 
 made perfect before they can see the face of God. 
 But all are not called to the same perfection, nor to 
 the same degree of perfection, nor by the same way. 
 As in the kingdom of bliss there are many mansions, 
 so in this order of grace there are many ministra- 
 tions of the Spirit of God. One He called to be His 
 own Mother; another to be her Guardian; another 
 to be the forerunner of the Incarnate Word. Twelve 
 were called to be Apostles; one to be the foundation 
 and head of His Church, one to lie upon His bosom, 
 and one was a devil. As no two among them were 
 alike, so neither is there identity or equality among 
 the members of His Body. All are called, but not 
 all to the same office, or grace, or reward. All have 
 their vocation. Not one is left all the day idle. And 
 all shall have their wages when the evening is come. 
 
 Say lime ely. 
 
444 THE BEATITUDES. 
 
 In one thing they will be all alike. They will all 
 receive of the free sovereign gift of God—eternal life. 
 But they will not all have the same grace here nor 
 the same glory in heaven. All shall be full of 
 bliss, but there are orders and degrees of beati- 
 tude. 
 
 First, therefore, every one that is born of water 
 and of the Holy Ghost is called to go onward, from 
 faith, hope, charity, sanctifying grace, the seven 
 gifts, the twelve fruits, to the foot of the Cross. Not 
 all in equal measure ; but all in some measure. And 
 God alone knows in what measure to mete out His 
 grace to each one of us. Three things are certain : 
 first, that He gives us an exceeding abundance of 
 grace; secondly, that we do not correspond with 
 more than a part ofthe grace He pours so largely on 
 US; and, thirdly, that we might all attain to a greater 
 perfection than we do. 
 
 The essential perfection of the soul is the love of 
 God and our neighbour. Who is there that has 
 attained in this to what he might? What perfection 
 of charity is there that we might not attain? And 
 whose fault is it if we do not? We are. not 
 straitened in Him, but in ourselves. The Holy 
 Ghost pervades the whole Church of God with His 
 sanctifying grace. Therefore it has the note of 
 
 ge Pe 8 
 
THE BEATITUDES. 445 
 
 sanctity. With every living member He is perpetually 
 present, not only in the holy Sacraments, but every- 
 where, and always, and in every action of life. There 
 is no perfection of charity, humility, poverty of spirit 
 
 we may not attain. All of you living in the world, | 
 in trade and business, in the cares and works of 
 home, you may all be united with God in a close and 
 constant union; and with your lips to the fountain 
 may draw from Him the perfection of charity. We 
 do not realise our vocation to be sons of God; and 
 that, as I have already and often said, because we are 
 not spiritual. It is a snare and an illusion to hanker 
 after states which are not our own, and circum- 
 stances which can never be ours. Here and 
 now, where we are, we may attain to humility, 
 and through humility charity will be made per- 
 fect. A father of the desert was one day asked 
 in vision whether he would desire to see a soul more 
 perfect than himself. He was carried toa poor home 
 where he saw a mother toiling for her children. It 
 was a humble likeness of the Holy House, and 
 under that roof were cares, anxieties, weariness, pri- 
 vations, labour, self-denials, glad submission of will, 
 tenderness of affection, pity, and service, and filial 
 piety to God. These things are a discipline of per- 
 fection, which subdue the heart and keep it humble 
 
446 THE BEATITUDES. 
 
 before God and man. And humility is the mind 
 and perfection of Jesus Christ. This applies to 
 every state in life: from kings’ courts to the streets of 
 the cities, and to the hamlets and solitary dwellings 
 of the poor. Every state and trade, every condition 
 of wealth or poverty, lettered or unlettered, diverse in 
 all other things, are all alike in this: ‘God is charity; 
 and he that abideth in charity abideth in God, and 
 God in him ;’ and charity is perfection. 
 Nevertheless, there are some who are called to 
 perfection here and now. Our Lord called His 
 Apostles to be ‘the light of the world,’ and ‘the salt of 
 the earth;’ that is, to make other men perfect. If 
 so, they were called to be perfect themselves. He 
 called also all those whom they consecrated to be 
 priests by that very action to be perfect too. The 
 priesthood was created to guard and to transmit in a 
 living example the perfection of their Master. Priests 
 share His office and jurisdiction; they consecrate and 
 distribute His Body and His Blood; they judge sin- 
 ners, binding and loosing in His name. They are 
 His witnesses; they represent Him; they are to be 
 His living likeness, that men, in seeing them, may 
 see Him, or in hearing them may hear His voice. 
 Therefore every saint of the Church has spoken with 
 
 holy fear of the office of a priest. ‘They ought to 
 
THE BEATITUDES. 447 
 
 have a mind purer than the rays of the sun; and 
 ‘a hand purer than its light.’ Priests are called ‘the 
 holier members of the body; ‘the saviours of the 
 world; ‘the kinsmen of Christ ;"? ‘the gates of the 
 eternal city, through whom all who believe in Chris 
 enter into Christ ;"* ‘the documents and example of 
 life ;** ‘ fellow-helpers of God ;’ ‘ the fellow-servants 
 and companions of angels.’!® 
 
 But there is no language which can express the 
 dignity of a priest. He is ‘ Alter Christus.’ There- 
 fore, what measure is there of the perfection he ought 
 to have obtained? Saint Alphonsus says: ‘ Mere 
 sanctifying grace is by no means enough for the re- 
 ceiving of sacred orders ; but beyond this interior per- 
 fection is required, as the common consent of all the 
 holy Fathers and Doctors with one mouth demands.” 
 Saint Thomas says ‘that priests serve Christ Him- 
 self in the Sacrament of the Altar; for which greater 
 interior sanctity is required than the state of religion 
 requires." Again he says, ‘ They who are engaged 
 
 ® §. Joan Chrys. De Sacerdotio, lib. vi. c. 4. 
 
 0 §. Pet. Dam. Contra Cleric. Intemp. d. i. ¢. 7. 
 
 8. Hieron. in Abd. v.21. 8. Bern. Ad Past. in Synodo. 
 
 18S. Prosper. lib. ii. 2, De Vita Contempl. Sacerd. 
 
 SSE ICs S41 Cors iit 92 
 
 '6 §. Pet. Dam. De com. vita Canon. cap. 4. 
 
 7 Concil. Prov. Westm. IV. Dee. xii. 1, 2, 3. 
 18 Thid, 
 
448 ' HE BEATITUDES. 
 
 in the divine ministry acquire a royal dignity, and in 
 virtue ought to be perfect. And the Church, in 
 ordaining its priests, says that our Lord has shown 
 by word and deed that the ministers of His Church 
 ought to be perfect in faith and action ; that is, in the 
 twofold love of God and their neighbour.”? ‘They 
 are chosen out, set apart, and sanctified for this very 
 end, that they may make others perfect; and that 
 not so much by word as by deed. The best preach- 
 ing is the priest’s life. Ifhe go before his flock in 
 all spiritual perfection, in faith, hope, charity, sanc- 
 tity, the seven gifts, the twelve fruits, the eight 
 beatitudes, they will follow him. They will be fol- 
 lowers of him as he is also of Christ.’ They will be. 
 insensibly drawn, subdued, changed, assimilated to his 
 mind and will; and therefore to the mind and will 
 of Jesus. Blessed is such a priest; the cuardian of 
 the Most Holy Sacrament, the friend of his Lord. 
 
 3. Lastly, what are the means of attaining this 
 perfection ? 
 
 First, and above all, obedience to the command- 
 ments of God is necessary. Without this no man 
 will ever reach to it. ‘The law is not made for the 
 just man,’ because he is a law to himself. He has it 
 written on his heart. Saint Augustine says: ‘ Love 
 
 19 Concil. Prov. Westm. IV. Dec. ii. 1, 2, 3. 20 Thid. 
 
THE BEATITUDES. 449 
 
 God, and do what you will.’ To deviate from the law 
 of God, even in one point, is to turn away from per- 
 fection. It is a swerving from our eternal end: and 
 if we fail of this, or if our will be bent on anything 
 aside of or below this, we are out of the way, not 
 only of perfection, but of life. 
 
 Next, obedience to the precepts and to the au- 
 thority of the Church. The ultimate and certain 
 test whereby to know whether we are in the way of 
 perfection is perfect conformity to the mind of the 
 Church. I say tothe mind, because it is not enough 
 to believe all dogmas and to submit to all discipline. 
 Many do this in whom the spirit of pride, singularity, 
 _criticism, and self- choosing are dominant. The 
 mind of the Church is known not only by Pontiffs 
 and Councils, but by the mind of the saints, by the 
 traditions of piety, and by customs of approved or 
 permitted devotion. 
 
 Then, again, obedience to the authority of parents 
 for the young; and the authority of pastors for all. 
 
 But after these, and with these at all times, 
 the holy Sacraments are the chief means of receiving 
 from God the grace of interior perfection. 
 
 There can be no interior perfection without purity 
 of conscience; and the chief means of purifying the 
 
 conscience is the Sacrament of Penance, whereby the 
 
 ag 
 
450 THE BEATITUDES. 
 
 habit of self-examination and of circumspection is 
 maintained, and the grace of contrition and of self- 
 knowledge is continually increased. 
 
 Next, there can be no interior perfection without 
 cleanness of heart; but the chief sanctification of the 
 heart comes from communion in the Body and Blood 
 of our Divine Master; in the indwelling of His Sacred 
 Heart in us, and in the impression of His deified soul 
 upon all the affections of our own. 
 
 Beyond this are the counsels of perfection, as 
 they are called. The life of chastity, by which not 
 only the priest and the religious, both men and 
 women, but also many who are not called either 
 to the priesthood or to a convent, sanctify them- 
 selves in soul and body in the world. It is 
 sometimes thought, and even incautiously said, 
 that a man or a woman ought either to become a 
 priest or nun, or else to marry. This is a saying 
 which has no warrant from the Church. There are 
 many men who have no call to do either ; and many 
 women who have neither vocation, nor fitness, nor 
 inclination, either for a convent or for a married life. 
 The Holy Ghost has not laid down this alternative. 
 He has left this liberty now as it was in-the beginning. 
 The life of counsels is for everybody. The life of 
 
 priests or nuns is only for those who are called to 
 
 ee 
 
THE BEATITUDES. 451 
 
 such a state. It is a rash way of talking to imply that 
 the life of counsels is the privilege of priests and nuns. 
 It is offered to all. The eight Beatitudes imply that 
 the life of counsels is open to every one, though they 
 do not necessarily impose it. here have been, and 
 there are, multitudes living and dying in the world 
 who have sat at our Lord’s feet without distraction, 
 and have espoused themselves to Him with a perfect 
 and inviolate fidelity. Care and prudence no doubt 
 are needed, both in their directors and in themselves, 
 that they may not rashly engage in a life which is 
 above them ; also, that, having entered it, they walk 
 through it, notin the letter only, but in the spirit ; 
 and that in all the accessories and surroundings of 
 their life they watch to keep their hearts in the liberty 
 and the light of our Lord’s service. 
 
 They that are called either to the priesthood or to 
 the cloister enter at once, and openly before the 
 world, into the life of counsels. Chastity, poverty, 
 and obedience are the threefold cord which binds 
 them to the crucified life of our Lord. 
 
 In the cloister it is confirmed by a threefold vow, 
 which constitutes the state or way of perfection as a 
 means to its attainment. In the priesthood the law of 
 chastity is imposed with the yoke of Jesus, when the 
 hands of the bishop are laid upon the head of the 
 
452 THE BEATITUDES. 
 
 priest. In that hour also he promises obedience 
 to the successor of the Apostle who has consecrated 
 him to the service of the altar. The state of poverty is 
 happily now his inevitable lot. The Church has re- 
 turned into its primitive poverty, at least here in 
 England; and everywhere the world is doing us 
 
 the service of binding together pastors and people 
 
 by the generous interchange of temporal and 
 
 spiritual charity. The life of a priest in England is 
 indeed a life of detachment. He lives in a hired 
 house ; he has neither land nor revenue ; he eats the 
 bread that is given to him, as the Apostles did, by the 
 gatherings of the first day of the week. And with 
 this he has to provide all spiritual things for the altar, 
 and for the poor and for their children. It is a two- 
 fold poverty, full of anxiety, but, if it be loved for its 
 likeness to his Master’s lot, full of sanctifying grace. 
 Such a life is full of helps to personal perfection : the 
 daily Mass and daily Communion, the custody of the 
 Blessed Sacrament, the fellowship with Jesus on the 
 altar, daily mental prayer, ‘the habit of religion, the 
 sign of perfection,’ as Saint Thomas says, ‘ which he 
 received when he was tonsured.’ Add to this the cure 
 of souls, and the endless abnegation of self which the 
 seeking and saving of the lost, the striving with their 
 
 sins, the bearing of their perversities, the weary watch- 
 
THE BEATITUDES. 453 
 
 _ ing day and night, at the beck and bid of all, demand of 
 the priest. No shirt of hair is more penitential than 
 the pastoral life. No life more blessed to those who 
 have renounced themselves for Christ’s sake; none 
 more intolerable to the hireling and to those who love 
 their liberty and their ease. But the missionaries of 
 England bind themselves by a solemn promise on 
 oath, for the good of the Universal Church, never to de- 
 sert the cure of souls.”* There is in all this the instru- 
 mental perfection, and in all who have the cure of 
 souls there is also the state of perfection, at least 
 inchoate. For every pastor must be ready to lay 
 down his life for his sheep ; and many do so, either by 
 fever and pestilence or by the slow wasting of the 
 labour of unresting charity. 
 
 And if such be the obligation binding a priest 
 to perfection, far more formidable is the obligation of 
 the bishop. ‘ The ‘state of religion,’ Saint Thomas 
 says, ‘does not presuppose perfection, but leads on to 
 perfection. But the office of a bishop presupposes 
 perfection, so that the bishop is in the state of per- 
 fection already attained.’ 
 
 For the sustaining of this burden he has all the 
 
 21 Concil. Prov. Westm. IV. Dee. xii. 6, 7. 
 22 §. Thom. Opus. de Perf. Vite Spirit. c. xix. 2; Concil. Prov. 
 Westm. IV. Dee. vii. 2. 
 
454 THE BEATITUDES. 
 
 help given to the faithful and to the priesthood, and 
 with this a grace attached to the state in which he is 
 proportionate to his dangersandhis needs. He isa sign 
 to be spoken against ; a butt for all arrows and stones ; 
 a prey of tongues; and, as the key of the position, a 
 point of endless assault. These things might perfect 
 the least perfect. Sacraments and crosses sanctify 
 at last those who are least like the Good Shepherd. 
 
 Such, then, is the perfection to which we are 
 called; and here, with two more thoughts, we will 
 make an end. 
 
 1, First, let us confidently hope to attain the per- 
 fection of the Beatitudes, because it is a gift of God. 
 It is the sovereign and free gift of our Heavenly Father 
 for the merits of His Incarnate Son. His will is to 
 give it to us; for He is glorified in our periection. 
 Every soul that rises above the level of our common- 
 place life adds to His glory. The greatest glory ever 
 offered to God was the first act of love in the Sacred 
 Heart ofthe Divine Infant. All worship, and praise, 
 and thanksgiving, and adoration were there in a 
 measure above our infirmity. One perfect soul glo- 
 rifies God more than a score of lukewarm and earthly 
 minded. Saint Paul has given us a rule of perfec- 
 tion: ‘Whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever you 
 do, do all to the glory of God.’ If we made this 
 
THE BEATITUDES. 455 
 
 the text of our life, how much we should leave un- 
 done; how far more carefully would all our works be 
 examined and our motives purified from selfish re- 
 serves. Saints have ventured even to bind them- 
 selves by vow to do always that which is for God’s 
 greater glory. This is a hard and exacting law, which 
 only saints could keep. But if we greatly desire to 
 do His will more perfectly, He will not refuse our 
 prayer; for if He wills that we abide still in our 
 infirmities, it is to make us humble, and to keep us 
 so; and in this He will be more glorified than if we 
 received what we ask. It may be our desire to be 
 less imperfect was for our own greater glory, and He 
 Who knows all things read our hearts and granted 
 our prayer more perfectly than we intended. Never- 
 theless, there is no degree of humility that we may 
 not attain; for it is His gift. If, that is, we have 
 the courage to ask it, and not to shrink when the 
 humiliations come to fulfilour prayer. All our sanc- 
 tification, from the first gift of regeneration, comes 
 from Him, by a secret infusion of His Holy Spirit ; 
 and all our perfection is His work. Therefore it is 
 easy of attainment; for He loves to make perfect 
 what He has once begun. 
 
 2. The other truth is, that though all is of gift, 
 
 all except the first grace of regeneration is also ac- 
 
456 THE BEATITUDES. 
 
 quired. Our will must co-operate in all—in faith, and 
 hope, and charity—in all the gifts, and in all the fruits, 
 and in all the Beatitudes. We are fellow-workers 
 together with Him; and His will and ours, though 
 two, yet work as one. ‘We can do all things through 
 Christ, Who within us gives us strength.’ We must 
 not break a link in this golden chain of grace; we 
 must not strain it by reluctance, or by tardy and 
 grudging compliance. If we refuse His inspiration 
 when it moves us to things above ourselves, we do 
 not know what we may forfeit, never to be found 
 again. How many have been afraid to look at the 
 light when it shone clearly, and have lost it for ever. 
 It will never be known till the last day how many 
 were on the threshold of the heavenly city, and, 
 because they would not enter when they could, fell 
 under the bondage of their own making, and could 
 not enter when, like the foolish virgins, too late they 
 would. Never till that day shall we know how much 
 grace we have wasted, what golden seasons we have 
 lost, what springtides have slipped away, what sum- 
 mer fruits we might have gathered, what autumn 
 harvests we might have reaped and garnered for 
 eternity. Let us, then, pray God to show us all 
 His will, and give us strength to do it. 
 
 And now we have come to the end of our simple 
 
THE BEATITUDES. 457 
 
 thoughts on so divine a work. We have traced the 
 rising, and the growth, and the expansion, and the 
 fruitfulness of this mystical vine of our sanctification. 
 We are each one of us after the likeness of our Divine 
 Head; and our Father is the Husbandman Who 
 prunes and dresses His own work in us. Every 
 branch in us that beareth not fruit He taketh away, 
 and every branch that beareth fruit He purgeth, that 
 it may bring forth more fruit. His eyes are over us 
 all the day long, and the darkness is no darkness 
 with Him. He is always with us, and always at work 
 on our sanctification. ‘We know not what we shall 
 be, but we know that when He shall appear we shall 
 be like Him ; we shall see Him as He is.’ 
 
 We have come to the foot of the mountain of 
 Beatitudes, from which the new law of perfection has 
 gone forth to the ends of the earth. We see the 
 companies of the elect going up each in its order. 
 First the poor, wayworn, and footsore; here and 
 there one who on earth was great, and noble, and rich, 
 but poor in spirit, in the great multitude who eat 
 bread in the sweat of their face. Then the meek, 
 noiseless as the flight of-doves; then the mourners, 
 with their heads covered, following the Man of Sor- 
 row by the strait, sure road of affliction. After 
 them those that hunger after God in the vehemence 
 
458 : THE EEATITUDES. 
 
 of the spirit, speeding upward and saluting no man 
 by the way; next come the merciful, with their hands 
 full of alms, which look like roses. After them the 
 clean in heart, scaling the mountain like rays that 
 run upward with the speed of lightning ; then come the 
 peacemakers in the majesty of calm and joy; and in 
 the rear of all, the soldiers of J esus, the heralds of the 
 Holy Ghost to a world of sin, which smote them and 
 slew them for their charity. All these are going 
 upward. Shall we be left behind? Aim higher and 
 higher. Desire the best gifts. Be faithful over the 
 least. Commit yourselves to the guidance of the Spirit 
 of God, for He is Love, and Light, and Power. Ipse 
 perficiet. As He began so He will make perfect. 
 
XVII. 
 
 DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
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DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 A 
 
 Because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of His Son into your 
 hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Gat. iv. 6. 
 
 Ty closing what I have said on the work of the 
 Holy Ghost, it would seem to me that our thoughts 
 would be incomplete if we were not to conclude by 
 speaking of the devotion and adoration we owe to the 
 Person of the Holy Ghost Himself. 
 
 We will, therefore, take this last point, and with 
 it end our subject. 
 
 Now Saint Paul says to the Galatians, that be- 
 cause we are sons by adoption in Baptism, therefore 
 “God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our 
 hearts.’ In these words he speaks of the Father, the 
 Son, and the Spirit, the Three Persons of the ever- 
 blessed Trinity. They are all engaged simultaneously 
 in our sanctification. And it has always seemed to 
 me to be both strange and wonderful that whereas 
 
 we worship the ever-blessed Trinity—the Father, the 
 
462 DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 Son, and the Holy Ghost—in consubstantial unity ; 
 and whereas we worship the Person of the Father with 
 a special and daily adoration every time we say the 
 Lord’s Prayer, and whereas we worship the Person of 
 the Son by concluding all our prayers through His 
 Name, and by adoring Him in the ever-blessed Sacra- 
 ment; nevertheless, we rarely worship and adore with 
 wu distinct and special adoration the Person of God the 
 Holy Ghost. Why is this? I believe it to be for this 
 reason. The conception of the fatherhood of God and 
 of our sonship to Him is a conception altogether na- 
 tural to our hearts. We learn it in our home from our 
 earliest consciousness in the relation we bear to our 
 earthly father. The Incarnation of the Son of God 
 brings Him also within the sphere and range of our in- 
 telligence and of our heart; so that we conceive of Him 
 as Man incarnate, visible upon earth, and invested. with 
 all our sympathies, and with the love of His Sacred 
 Heart full of compassion for us. ‘These two concep- 
 tions are, I may say, within the range of nature. 
 They come to us at once. But the Holy Ghost, a 
 Spirit that has never been seen, has never been in- 
 carnate, inscrutable, present everywhere, never mani- 
 fest except by the operations of His power—this is a 
 reality, like the motion of the earth, which we know 
 
 in our reason, but cannot detect by any sense; or it 
 
DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 463 
 
 is like the circulation of the blood, which we know 
 as a fact, but never perceive all the day long. So the 
 indwelling and the work of the Holy Ghost in the 
 soul is a divine truth, so altogether inscrutable, so im- 
 palpable, so insensible, that we pass it by. Therefore 
 we do not so often adore the Author and Giver of all 
 grace with a special worship. 
 
 I will endeavour, then, to draw out, as far as now 
 I can, the motives which ought to awaken in us a 
 special devotion to God the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Saint Paul declares to the Galatians, that ‘ when 
 the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His 
 Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that we 
 might receive the adoption of sons;’! that is to say, 
 all the prophecies of the Old Testament were a pre- 
 lude to the advent of the Son of God into the world: 
 in like manner I may say that all the prophecies of 
 the Son of God when He came were specially pointed 
 to the advent of the Holy Ghost. He said: ‘It is 
 expedient for you that I go; for if I go not, the 
 Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will 
 send Him unto you.” ‘I will ask the Father, and 
 He will send you another Paraclete, that He may 
 abide with you for ever.’* And on the day of Pente- 
 
 1 Gal. iv. 4. 2 §. John xvi. 7. 
 3 §. John xiv. 16, 
 
464 DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 cost, as we read in the Acts, that prophecy was ful- 
 filled: the advent of the Holy Ghost was accomplished. 
 And Saint Augustine calls the day of Pentecost Dies 
 Natalis Spiritus Sancti—the nativity of the Holy 
 Ghost, parallel to the nativity of the Son. Saint Paul 
 draws out the contrast between the dispensation of 
 the Old Testament and the dispensation of the New 
 in this manner. He calls the Old Testament the 
 Ministry of the Letter, and he calls the New Testa- 
 ment the Dispensation of the Spirit. We are, there- 
 fore, under the dispensation of the Spirit, that is, 
 under the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. And 
 yet, with the New Testament in our hands, many 
 are still unconscious, as I said before, of the in- 
 timate personal relation in which we stand to the 
 Third Person of the ever-blessed Trinity, under 
 Whose immediate action we are for our sancti- 
 fication, and by Whose divine voice we are guided in 
 our faith. I can easily understand that a man igno- 
 rant of the Scripture history might travel through the 
 Holy Land, and pass through all the sacred places, 
 without being conscious of where he was or of the super- 
 natural history attaching to anything he saw. Another. 
 man, whose mind was full of the thought of Jesus of 
 Nazareth, who had the sacred geography of the land 
 consecrated by the footsteps of the Son of God in his 
 
DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 465 
 
 heart, in going through Judwa and Samaria would see 
 memorials and admonitions of our Divine Saviour on 
 every side. In like manner, any‘man who takes the 
 New Testament into his hands, without the realisa- 
 tion of the personality and presence of the Holy 
 Ghost, would perhaps read it from end to end and 
 not perceive the special relation in which we stand to 
 the Holy Ghost. But any one who will read the New 
 Testament, bearing this truth in mind, cannot fail to 
 perceive what I will call the footsteps, the traces, and 
 the marks of the coming and of the working of the 
 Holy Spirit in the Church and in our souls. He 
 will find the New Testament to be full of this main 
 idea of the Gospel—namely, that through the Incarna- 
 tion of the Son of God, the Holy Ghost has come, by 
 a special mission and with a special office, to dwell 
 personally in the midst of us. The Apostles received 
 the Holy Ghost when Jesus breathed upon them ; for 
 the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father 
 and the Son, and in time from the Son Incarnate. 
 The Holy Ghost dwells in the mystical Body, and in 
 every member of the same who is anited to the In- 
 _carnate Son. We are related to Him, and He dwells 
 in us, and it is through Him that we have union 
 both with the Son and with the Father. 
 
 Let us, therefore, now go on and review the mo- 
 
 re 
 
466 DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 tives which ought to prompt us to a special adoration 
 of the Divine Person of God the Holy Ghost. Ina 
 word, these reasons are the glory of His own Person, 
 the glory of His office, and the special and vital 
 work of salvation which He accomplishes in every 
 one of us. These are the three chief motives. 
 
 1. Let us take, first, the glory of His Person. 
 Every Whitsunday the Church brings this mystery be- 
 fore us; every time we say the Gloria Patri we declare 
 Him to be coequal with the Father and the Son ; every 
 
 time we make the sign of the Cross we make an act 
 
 of faith and, at least, an implicit act of adoration to — 
 
 the Holy Ghost. All the works of God in creation, 
 though they are works of the Holy Trinity, are in a 
 special sense the works of the Holy Ghost, because 
 it is the Third Person of the ever-blessed Trinity 
 Who is in immediate union with all creatures. The 
 titles of the Holy Ghost declare His divine glory. 
 He is the Term, or the Complement, of the Holy 
 Trinity, because the Son is begotten of the Father, 
 and the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and 
 the Son; but there the Holy Trinity rests complete. 
 No divine person proceeds from the Holy Ghost. He 
 is the last of the three Divine Persons, and therefore 
 He is the Complement, the Perfecter, and the Term 
 of the ever-blessed Three. He is, so to speak, the 
 
 : 
 
DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 467 
 
 Bound of the boundless nature, which is unlimited. 
 Again, He is called the Perfecter for this reason. 
 God the Father is uncreated being, God the Son is 
 uncreated intelligence, and God the Holy Ghost is 
 uncreated love ; and the uncreated being, intelligence, 
 and love of God are God. God without intelligence 
 would not be perfect; and God without love would 
 not be perfect ; and as we can conceive nothing beyond 
 being, intelligence, and love, God the Holy Ghost, 
 Who is the love of the Father and the Son, perfects the 
 mystery of the ever-blessed Trinity. But, inasmuch 
 as He is the Term of the Divine Persons, and after 
 Him and beyond Him there is no other divine per- 
 sonality, itis He Who is in immediate contact with 
 all creatures. Inthe Holy Ghost the infinite nature 
 of God has its fulness, and by Him the finite nature 
 of creatures begins to exist. All the creatures of 
 God are therefore from the Holy Ghost; they are 
 His works; He is therefore the Creator Spiritus, the 
 Spirit Who made all things, the Spirit Who im- 
 presses law, and order, and perfection upon all the 
 works of God. And as He has created all things, 
 so He is Himself the Giver of all things, He is 
 Dator munerum, as we say in the sequence of the 
 Holy Mass at Pentecost—‘ the Giver of all gifts.’ In 
 the Vent Creator Spiritus—a hymn which is a litany 
 
468 DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 made up of the titles of the Holy Ghost—we call 
 Him ‘Creator,’ ‘the Gift of the Most High God,’ 
 ‘the Living Fountain,’ or ‘the Fountain of Life,’ 
 ‘ the Fire,’ ‘the Paraclete,’ ‘the Sevenfold Gift,’ ‘the 
 Spiritual Unction.’ All these are titles of the Third 
 Person of the Holy Trinity, describing not so much 
 what He is as what He does. But what He does 
 He is; for He is the gift of God to us, and in 
 Him we have life, light, sanctity, and all things. 
 Therefore I say we ought to adore Him with a special 
 divine adoration; and to give Him His glory, co- 
 equal, coeternal with the Father and the Son, with 
 Whom, in His distinct personality, He is to be 
 adored and glorified with praise and thanksgiving, 
 with submission and obedience. Such, then, is the 
 first motive—the glory of His Person. 
 
 9. And the second motive is the glory of His 
 - office. I have already said that the first creation of 
 God was a work of the Holy Ghost; and the Spirit of 
 God, as we read, brooded or moved upon the face of 
 the waters when the world was without form and 
 void, a deep and dark abyss of God’s omnipotence. 
 And as He was the Author of the first creation of 
 nature, so in a far more eminent way He is the 
 Author of the second, or new creation of grace. For, 
 
 when sin and death had smitten the first creation 
 
 ; 
 
DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 469 
 
 of God, He sent forth His Spirit, and recreated all 
 things. A new creation began to rise. And ag in 
 the beginning God first created the light and then 
 both night and day—for the day is light measured 
 by the sun; so before the new creation of God arose 
 there was a day-spring, a dawn of twilight, a pre- 
 lude of the brightness of the coming noon. The 
 morning light was the Immaculate Conception of 
 the Mother of God—the firstfruits of the full and 
 perfect sanctifying grace of the Holy Ghost. She 
 was the first and the last in the natural lineage 
 of the children of Adam in whom sin had no place. 
 The Mother of the Incarnate Son was sheltered and 
 preserved from the inheritance of original sin, so 
 that never fora moment was so much as a shadow 
 cast by sin upon her spotless soul. In her was 
 no privation of grace. From the first moment of her 
 existence she was full of the Holy Ghost. The most 
 perfect work of sanctification that the world has ever 
 seen, purchased by the Precious Blood of the Son of 
 God Himself, and given out of free and sovereign 
 grace, is the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of 
 God. Such was the aurora before the sun. Next 
 came the day, the Incarnation of the Eternal Word. 
 The efficient author of the Incarnation was the 
 Holy Ghost: ‘ The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, 
 
ecm 
 
 470 DEVOTION TO THE HOLY. GHOST. 
 
 and the power of the Most High shall overshadow 
 thee; and therefore the Holy that shall be born of 
 thee shall be called the Son of God; and there- 
 fore we say in our baptismal Creed, Conceptus est 
 de Spiritu Sancto—‘ He was conceived of the Holy 
 Ghost.’ The work of the Incarnation, then, was the 
 work ofthe Holy Ghost. And as the Incarnation was 
 His work, so also was the sanctification of the Incar- 
 nate Son. The unction of the Holy Ghost rested 
 upon Him. And the seven gifts dwelt in Him in all 
 the plenitude of sanctifying grace, of which He is the 
 
 ' fountain to us. Even His resurrection from the dead 
 
 is ascribed to the Holy Ghost. He is declared to be the 
 Son of God in power, ‘ by the Spirit of sanctification” 
 which raised Him from the dead; and ‘if the Spirit 
 which raised up Jesus from the dead be in you, God 
 
 shall also quicken your mortal bodies; so that the 
 
 -whole work of the new creation is also the work of 
 
 Renta deeriat 
 
 grace. And as the natural body which the Son of 
 God took was fashioned by the omnipotence of the 
 Holy Ghost, so is His mystical Body. We read in 
 the Gospel of Saint John that ‘the Holy Ghost was not 
 yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified”—that 
 
 4 §. Luke i. 35. 5 Rom. i. 4. 
 6 Rom. viii. 11. 7 §. John vii. 39. 
 
DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 471 
 
 is, He must needs ascend into heaven betore the Holy 
 Ghost could descend upon earth: as He Himself had 
 said, ‘It is expedient for you that I go; for if I go 
 not, the Paraclete will not come.’® Therefore He 
 ascended ; and He ascended, as the prophecy declares, 
 ‘that He might receive gifts for men.’? What are 
 those gifts ? It was the Gift which contains all gifts. 
 It was the Donum Dei which He poured out on the day 
 of Pentecost—the Holy Ghost Who is given to us, and 
 - His personal presence to be with us for ever. When 
 the Holy Ghost descended from heaven on that day, 
 He came down upon each ofthe Apostles; and yet not 
 as upon twelve men separately taken one from another, 
 but upon twelve men as united in one body. They be- 
 came the centre and the germ of that mystical Body, 
 which consists of all who are united with the Head 
 in heaven by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And 
 the fellowship or society created by the indwelling of 
 the Holy Ghost in the faithful is the Holy Catho- 
 lic Church, or the mystical Body of Christ. Saint 
 Paul says: ‘ As the body is one, and hath many mem- 
 bers, so also is Christ’!’—Christ the head, and you 
 the members united to Him and to one another, in- 
 habited by one divine life, that is, by the Holy Ghost 
 Himself, Who is indissolubly united to that collective 
 8 §. John xvi. 7. 9 Eph. iv. 8. 191 Corexii 12. 
 
eae 
 
 472, DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 body, and endows it with imperishable life, with im- 
 mutable faith, and with inexhaustible sanctity. The 
 Sanctifier, then, dwells in the Church as the fountain 
 of sanctification to all the members of the mystical 
 Body. The note of sanctity by which the Church in 
 the world is known is the supernatural manifestation 
 of the presence of the Holy Ghost. And as the Holy 
 Ghost is the Creator and Sanctifier of the Church, He 
 is also its Guide and its Light. The presiding Intelli- 
 gence which preserves it in the way of truth is the 
 mind of the Spirit: and the voice of the Church is 
 the voice of the Holy Ghost. When men deny the 
 infallibility of the Church of Jesus Christ, they do 
 not know—at least so I trust—that they are denying 
 the office of the Holy Ghost Himself. And as the 
 Church is His work, so all of us who are born again 
 by Baptism, and grafted into that Church, become 
 thereby the firstborn and the firstfruits of the Holy 
 Ghost. He dwells in us, as Saint Paul said to the 
 Galatians, because we are the sons of God; ‘ God hath 
 sent forth His Spirit, the Spirit of His Son, into 
 our hearts, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.’ 
 
 The Apostle has said: ‘Know you not that the 
 Spirit of Christ is in you, except you be reprobates? 
 If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none 
 
 " Gal. iv. 6. 
 
DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 473 
 
 of His.” And again: ‘Know you not that your 
 body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, Which is in 
 you?’'® Why does he say ‘ your body’ ? Because the 
 soul is in the body, and the soul is the seat of the 
 indwelling presence of the Holy Ghost. Again he 
 says: ‘ What man knoweth the things of a man, save 
 the spirit of a man that is in him? Even so the 
 things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of 
 God.’ As no man knows the things of the Spirit 
 of God unless the Spirit of God dwells in him, so 
 also no man knows the personal experience and the 
 hidden consciousness of any other man, but only the 
 man himself. And once more Saint Paul says: ‘The 
 Spirit also beareth testimony with our spirit that we 
 are the sons of God.’ And therefore, as we have, 
 every one of us, the consciousness that we have a 
 soul endowed with intelligence and will, and as we are 
 intimately conscious of the inward facts which pass 
 within us, and of the inward acts of our thoughts and 
 of our volitions, so they who have the Spirit of God 
 dwelling in them have, or ought to have, a conscious- 
 ness of that divine presence and a knowledge of the 
 
 facts of His grace within them, and of the superna- 
 
 2 2 Cor. xiii. 5. 13 1 Cor. vi. 19. 
 41 Cor. ii. 11. 15 Rom, viii. 16. 
 
474 DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 tural acts of faith, hope, and charity which they 
 make by His power. 
 
 Shall I say it then, the whole truth, plainly? 
 We are not spiritual, we are not supernatural. We 
 live in the world and converse with it until we become 
 worldly in the habit of our lives. We do not keep 
 alive by mental prayer, and by recollection of the 
 divine presence without us and within, this great, 
 primary, and vital truth of the indwelling of the Holy 
 Ghost. And therefore it is that there is so little true, 
 loving, earnest charity among us. This conscious- 
 ness of a divine presence it is which, if the times re- 
 quired it, would make men martyrs; this it is which 
 would make men confessors, ready to lay down all 
 things in the world for conscience’ sake ; and this it 
 is which would make men who are never called to be 
 martyrs or confessors deny themselves all the day 
 long. If only we were conscious that we could 
 thereby glorify God, and better correspond with the 
 operations of grace within us, instead of living our 
 tardy laggard lives we should be guileless and fervent 
 disciples of Jesus Christ. 
 
 8. Thirdly, weigh what you owe to the person of 
 the Holy Ghost. Saint Paul says: ‘The charity of God 
 is poured forth into our hearts by the Holy Ghost, Who 
 
DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 475 
 
 is given to us." The personal Charity of God is poured 
 forth into our hearts. There is in you, as there is in 
 the Church itself, the Living Fountain; the fountain of 
 the waters of life is in you, God the Holy Ghost, the 
 Charity of God, by whom you are united to the Son 
 and to the Father. And that fountain of living water 
 is always rising, and, in the measure in which our 
 hearts expand to receive it, our hearts are enlarged ; 
 but in the measure in which our hearts are narrowed 
 by self-love, and the love of the world, and the things 
 of the world, the love of God has not room to spread 
 and to dilate our hearts. When the Psalmist says, 
 ‘Twill run the way of Thy commandments when Thou 
 hast enlarged my heart,’ he means precisely this : ‘I 
 will speed with fervour and energy in Thy law when 
 my heart is enlarged, when it is dilated by the love 
 of God within me.’ Ever since your first conscious- 
 ness—ay, even from your Baptism, when you were 
 unconscious—the Holy Ghost has been within you ; 
 all through your growth, in your childhood, in every 
 age, in all your spiritual life, the Holy Ghost has 
 been with you, springing up as a fountain of grace. 
 You have been encompassed and enveloped by the 
 love of God. Even if you have fallen from baptismal 
 innocence, it is He that stung your conscience and 
 
 16 Rom. v. 5. 17 Pg, exviii. 32. 
 
476 DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 brought you back to Himself. And all the while how 
 unconscious have we been. And more than this, how 
 we have wearied His patience. If His patience were 
 not divine, if His long-suffering were not infinite, 
 where should we have been long ago? We should 
 have been cast out of His love for ever. How we 
 have provoked Him by mortal sins, with our eyes 
 open ; by venial sins, committed in multitudes that 
 no man could number, committed deliberately and 
 habitually, morning and night, day by day, hour by 
 hour, year by year. And how we have provoked 
 Him by coldness and neglect, hiding our faces from 
 Him, turning our backs upon Him, even when He 
 has been calling us to Himself with the tenderness 
 of His love and pity. 
 
 Once more, what generosity does He show us. 
 As I have said before, the light of the sun, the 
 showers that water the earth, are not so abundant 
 as the graces of the Holy Ghost, as the lights and _ 
 inspirations which He has poured into our hearts. 
 We have been wasting the grace of God all our life 
 long, and there has been a hand unseen pouring in 
 oil, lest the light of the lamp should die out. If 
 there had not been a perpetual ministration of the 
 grace of God, of which we were unconscious, who 
 
 knows whether I should be here to speak to you or 
 
DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 477 
 
 you to hear me? He has given you strength, which 
 you have oftentimes neglected, oftentimes resisted, 
 oftentimes refused. In every duty that you have had 
 to do, and even in every duty that you have failed 
 to do, He has helped you. When you have thought 
 that you could do nothing, He has always given 
 you strength, even at the moment when you were 
 giving way; when you had lost all hope, you have 
 found that you had strength enough to do His will; 
 in every temptation under which you have been fall- 
 ing there has been a sudden and strong help, which 
 has carried you through all hindrances. You have 
 felt that it was not your own victory, but that God 
 had carried you over a gulf and set you upon a rock. 
 Under every cross, which you have said was so sharp 
 that you could bear it no longer, there has been erace 
 given from moment to moment. When you were 
 sinking, it bore you up. The words which He spoke 
 to the Apostle He has been speaking to you: ‘My 
 grace is sufficient for thee, for power is made per- 
 fect in infirmity.”* So He has been ever minis- 
 tering strength to you all your life long—in child- 
 hood, youth, and manhood—to this day. And at 
 times, when you least hoped for it, what sweetness 
 He has poured out into your hearts. You have not 
 
 18) Cor. xii. 9: 
 
478 DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 even looked to see from whence it came, but what 
 peace, what joy, what aspirations have lifted you up 
 towards heaven, and filled you with gladness. Who 
 gave all this to you, even when you forgot Him ? 
 Hear the words of Holy Scripture : ‘ How great 
 is the multitude of Thy sweetness, which Thou hast 
 hid for those that fear Thee’? The rain which comes 
 down in a flood is a multitude of drops, but the mul- 
 titude of the sweetness of God is as the waves of 
 the sea. The Giver of all sweetness is within you, 
 waiting only for you to ask it of Him. He has shed 
 it abroad in your hearts even when you have not 
 asked it; when you have been unconscious of the 
 gift, and have thought that it came from some solace 
 of friends or kindred. And in times of sorrow, of 
 mourning, of affliction, consolations have come over 
 you, like the soft breath of the evening, and like the 
 sweet fragrance of the field that God has blessed, and 
 you have rejoiced, and have returned to a peace 
 sensibly above all earthly happiness. Perhaps you 
 traced all this to natural sources. You have not said 
 to yourself, ‘ This is the gift of the Holy Ghost.’ If 
 you had said so, and had turned to Him, and blessed 
 Him, and adored Him, for what He was doing in your 
 heart, He would have multiplied that gift sevenfold. 
 19 Pg, xxx. 20. 
 
DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 479 
 
 Now here we have, I may say, the three motives 
 of devotion to the Holy Ghost—namely, the glory of 
 His Person, of His office, and of His work of love 
 and grace which He has been accomplishing in you 
 all your life long. 
 
 1. We owe Him, then, two things. First, we owe 
 Him adoration. We must adore Him as we adore 
 the Father; we must adore Him as we adore the © 
 Son ; and in order so to do we must realise with a 
 clear recognition of faith His Divine Personality as 
 coequal and coeternal with the Father and the Son 
 in all the splendour and glory of the ever-blessed 
 Trinity. And, next, we must have a more lively con- 
 ception of His presence within us. As He is present 
 in the Church of God, to be its infallible Light and 
 Guide, so He is present in our souls as our Sanctifier, 
 the source of all light and grace. He has been so 
 present in us from our earliest consciousness. And, 
 lastly, we must realise and have a perception that He 
 is at all times bearing ‘testimony in our hearts that 
 we are the sons, of God.’ We must in turn speak 
 with Him, and love Him, and praise Him, and 
 glorify Him, both by inward acts of adoration in our 
 soul and by outward acts of obedience in our lives. 
 
 2. And the other debt we owe Him is to make 
 
 Him reparation—reparation for our own many sins; 
 
480 DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 sins of commission, sins of omission, sins of thought, 
 word, and action, sins against the Commandments 
 of God, sins against our conscience, sins against His 
 light and grace; for, as the Apostle says, We may 
 grieve Him, and we may resist Him, and we may 
 quench His light. It may be that some who hear 
 me may have done all this, and yet have been re- 
 stored by His life-giving grace. We therefore owe 
 Him a reparation for the multitude of our sins ; and 
 not for ours only, but likewise for the sins of other 
 men. Look abroad upon the world round about you, 
 and tell me is it governed by the Spirit of God Who 
 made it, or is it governed by the spirit of Satan who 
 is the god and the destroyer of this world? For the 
 sins of all who have been born again of water and 
 the Holy Ghost in Baptism, and yet have offended 
 against Him, we ought to make reparation, and that 
 reparation ought to be made in this wise: first, by 
 promptness in following His inspirations; next, by 
 proportionate correspondence, so that when He bestows 
 a great grace upon us we correspond in the measure 
 of that grace; not niggardly, not burying the trust 
 that has been given us in a napkin, so that when He 
 gives us a grace of a thousand to make Him a return 
 of ten: and yet this we are doing all the day long; 
 thirdly, by serving Him in great purity of heart ; and 
 
 = a Pree 
 
DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 481 
 
 by purity of heart I mean two things: not only the 
 absence from the heart of all that defiles it, but the 
 absence from the heart of all that makes it double, 
 such as the love of the world, and of creatures, and of 
 self. These sins blot out the love of God and over- 
 power the grace of the Holy Ghost. Such, then, 
 are some of the many ways in which we may make 
 reparation. And to make this advice still more de- 
 finite, I will give you two short counsels that you may 
 easily put into practice. The first is to hunt down 
 and slay your little faults; he that is faithful in that 
 which is the least is faithful also in that which is 
 greater; and they who will hunt down, and slay, 
 and exterminate their little faults, be sure of it, will 
 never willingly commit greater sins. The other 
 counsel is this: do your little duties, which most 
 men make light of, with great exactness; for if you 
 will faithfully do your lesser duties, your greater 
 duties, I may say, will take care of themselves. 
 
 Now to conclude all that I have been saying 
 There is a conflict in the midst of which we are, a 
 warfare the more perilous because invisible. There 
 are three spirits always contending together; there — 
 is the Spirit of God, the spirit of Satan, and our poor 
 human spirit in midst of this strife of life and death. 
 These three spirits are on a battlefield, and the 
 
 a] 
 
 Su 
 
482 DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 ‘whole life of man is a warfare upon earth.’ If 
 you ‘are led by the Spirit of God, you are the sons of 
 God ;’ and if you are led by the spirit of the god of 
 this world, you are his servants; and if you are led 
 by your own spirit, you are his slaves. 
 
 Try your spiritual life in this balance. If you 
 know your dangers, the gift of holy fear will be very 
 dear to you, and wisdom will counsel you what to do in 
 every danger and in every trial. To some my words 
 may seem strange, remote from our daily life, theo- 
 vetical, and even fantastic. Why? If the Spirit 
 bears testimony in your hearts, and if you are the 
 sons of God, you will understand what I say. Saint 
 Augustine, who, before he knew God, was the type 
 of a man of the nineteenth century— intellectual, 
 cultivated, eloquent, scientific, full of philosophy— 
 sought God everywhere, but never found Him. When 
 
 he had learned the reason of his failure, he said: 
 
 ‘Thou, O God, wert within me, and I knew it not. I 
 
 was seeking Thee outside of myself. I sought Thee 
 everywhere, but could not find Thee, because I did not — 
 seek in my own soul, where Thou art to be found.’ 
 So it may be perhaps to some who hear me now. 
 They have been turning over the pages of books, they 
 have been straining their intellect with science, they 
 
 have been listening to the pompous dogmas of the 
 
DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 483 
 
 wise men of the world, they have read modern meta- 
 physics, they have enveloped themselves in the illu- 
 minism of Germany, they have studied the leading 
 articles of the newspapers, and they have not found 
 God; nay, even the existence of God is doubtful to 
 them. Why? Listen to Saint Augustine once more: 
 ‘Thou didst call me, and, after a long time, Thou 
 didst break through my deafness. Thou didst shine 
 round about me, Thy light was within me, and only 
 at length didst Thou open the eyes of my blindness. 
 Thou didst send forth Thy fragrance upon me, and 
 when I perceived it I was glad. Thou didst at last 
 
 touch me, and then I broke forth like a flame into 
 | Thy peace.’ 
 
 Now, it may be that some who are here listening 
 to me at this time have never yet made this discovery. 
 In all the sciences of the nineteenth century, this 
 spiritual science is the last that men cultivate. And 
 T will say to you all, however much you know of 
 God, you have all of you need to open your ears 
 more wistfully to His words, to open your eyes more 
 widely to His light, to put forth your hands still 
 more eagerly to feel the hand of God, to unfold the 
 spiritual life which is in you, and to unite your hearts 
 and your souls still more intimately with Him. There. 
 fore, in order to do this, I would ask you from this day 
 
cam argvener 
 
 484 DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 to the end of your lives to offer every day some act of 
 adoration and of reparation. Make up your mind 
 now that not a day shall pass from this day to your 
 last without some act of adoration to the Person of 
 the Holy Ghost, without some act of reparation made 
 to Him for your own sins and for the sins of other 
 men. Say day by day the majestic hymn ofthe Church, 
 the Veni Creator Spiritus, or that other, equally 
 beautiful, and even more full of human tenderness, 
 Veni Sancte Spiritus ; or say every day seven times 
 the Gloria Patri, in honour of the Holy Ghost, to 
 
 obtain His seven gifts; or make some prayer of 
 
 your own; raise up your hearts to God, and make, 
 each of you, some short act of reparation and adora- 
 tion out of the fulness of your soul; or say day by 
 day, ‘O God the Holy Ghost, Whom I have slighted, 
 grieved, resisted from my childhood unto this day, 
 reveal unto me Thy personality, Thy presence, Thy 
 power. Make me to know Thy sevenfold gifts: the — 
 spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and 
 fortitude, of knowledge and piety, and of the fear 
 of the Lord; and make me to be of quick under- 
 standing in the fear of the Lord. O Thou Who art 
 the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, O Thou Who 
 art the love of the Father and the Son, O Thou Who 
 baptisest with firc, and sheddest abroad the love of 
 
DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST. 485 
 
 God in our hearts, shed abroad Thy love in my heart. 
 One thing have I desired of the Lord: that will I 
 seek after: not wealth, rank, power, worldly home, 
 worldly happiness, or any worldly good, but one drop 
 of that holy flame, one drop of that heavenly fire, to 
 kindle me and set me all on fire with the love of 
 my God. Let that holy flame burn up and con- 
 sume in me every spot and soil of the flesh and of the 
 spirit. Purify me sevenfold with the fire of Thy love. 
 Consume me as a holy sacrifice acceptable unto Thee. 
 Kindle me with zeal, melt me with sorrow, that I 
 may live the life and die the death of a fervent 
 penitent,’ 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Aaron, inspiration of, 11, 
 Abel, sacrifice of, 66. 
 Abraham, faith of, 11, 67. 
 Absolution, of oneself, 161, 165; 
 state of, 153; words of, 141. 
 Adam, the first, 5; the Second, 
 13, 148. 
 
 Adoration of the Holy Ghost, 
 479. 
 
 Advent, the second, 2, 
 
 Affection, natural, 230. 
 
 Agnes, St., 188. 
 
 Alexander VIII., Pope,-8, 
 
 Almsgiving, 328, 439. 
 
 Alpha and Omega, 57, 
 
 Alphonsus, St., 188, 389, 447. 
 
 Altar, Sacrament of the, 16, 161, 
 
 Ananias, 50. 
 
 Angel, guardian, 247. 
 
 Anger, 393. 
 
 Anselm, St., 358. 
 
 Apocalypse, quoted, 111. 
 
 Apostasy, 131. 
 
 Apostles, the, 143, 236. 
 
 Appreciation of God, 104, 115, 
 420. 
 
 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 68, 79, 360, 
 389, 447, 453. 
 
 Aristotle, 378. 
 
 Assistance of grace, 20. 
 
 Attachment to God, 403. 
 
 Attention in teaching, 44. 
 
 Athanasius, St., 277; creed of, 
 360, 367. 
 
 Atheists, 317. 
 
 Attrition, 16. 
 
 Augustine, St., 45, 57, 73, 102, 
 111, 205, 223, 241, 845, 363, 
 390, 448, 483. 
 
 Austerity, 265, 274. 
 
 Author of salvation, 37. 
 
 Authority, obedience to, 449. 
 
 Axioms of reason, 34; of the king- 
 dom of God, 163. 
 
 Bataan, 345. 
 
 Baptism, first grace of, 16, 37, 
 158; faith, hope, and charity 
 in, 36; justification in, 161; a 
 predestination, 39. 
 
 Bar of mortal sin, 15, 159. 
 
 Beatitudes, the eight, 405, 412, 
 432. 
 
 Becket, St. Thomas, 286. 
 
 Bethlehem, 433. 
 
 Bible, the Holy, 73, 74, 76, 23%. 
 
 Bigotry, 87. 
 
 Bishops, imprisonment of, 283; 
 obligation of, 453. 
 
 Bitterness of the world, 400, 
 
 Blindness, judicial, 50, 84. 
 
 Bliss, eternal, 432, 
 
 Blood, the Precious, 12, 38. 
 
 Body, mystical, of Christ, 2, 34. 
 
 Bonaventure, St., 390. 
 
 Bondage of the soul, 29. 
 
 Books, bad, 220, 258; the three, 
 316, 
 
488 
 
 Borromeo, St. Charles, 237, 328, 
 331, 396, 418. 
 
 CAIETAN, St., 188. 
 
 Cain, sacrifice of, 66; sons of, 164. 
 
 Calvary, redemption of, 12, 433, 
 441, 
 
 Canker of sin, 39. 
 
 Canterbury, St. Thomas of, 286. 
 
 Catechism, teaching of, 359. 
 
 Catharine of Genoa, St., 214. 
 
 Character of man, 52, 269; 
 baptism, 21. : 
 
 Charity, poured into the heart, 35; 
 life of, 43; virtue of, 124, 126; 
 Sisters of, 285; defined, 435. 
 
 Charles Borromeo, St., 237, 328, 
 331, 396, 418. 
 
 Chastity, 416; life of, 450. 
 
 Christendom, face of, 141. 
 
 Christianity, fragmentary, 77,255. 
 
 Chrysostom, St. John, 390. 
 
 Church, the Catholic, infallibility 
 of, 3, 78, 301, 472; ritual of, 
 235; soul of, 171; unity of, 80. 
 
 Church of England, 78, 80. 
 
 Circumcision in Israel, 15. 
 
 Civilisation, modern, 87, 192, 273. 
 
 Clement XI., proposition con- 
 demned by, 8. 
 
 Commandments, the Ten, 352; 
 
 . life of the, 330, 438. 
 
 Communion of Saints, 109, 246. 
 
 Community, life of, 418. 
 
 Compunction, 442. 
 
 Conception, the Immaculate, 12, 
 A469. 
 
 Confidence in God, 43, 58. 
 
 Confirmation, Sacrament of, 16, 
 21, 435. 
 
 Conscience, definition of, 298; de- 
 
 of 
 
 licacy of, 47; the practical rea- 
 
 son, 438; sting of, 40. 
 Consciousness of sin, 33, 163, 208, 
 211. 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Continence, 417. 
 
 Contrition, 16. 
 
 Co-operation with the Holy Spirit, 
 45. 
 
 Corea, martyrs of, 288. 
 
 Corruption of the fall, 298; moral, 
 300. 
 
 Council, of Florence, 134; 
 Trent, 50, 97, 149, 153, 157; 
 of the Vatican, 75, 377. 
 
 Counsels, life of the, 330, 450. 
 
 Countenance, the human, 51. 
 
 Country, love of, 251. 
 
 Courage, 268. 
 
 Cowardice, 265. 
 
 Creation, the Blessed Trinity in, 
 2. 
 
 Creatures, emptiness of, 401; in 
 God’s sight, 210, 
 
 Credulity, parasite of faith, 393; 
 of unbelief, 325. 
 
 Creeds, the three, 360, 367. 
 
 Criticism, historical, 71, 74. 
 
 Culture, men of, 75, 191, 302, 
 307, 348, 482. 
 
 Custody of the senses, 220. 
 
 Cyprian, St., words of, 284. 
 
 Davin, penitent, 12; key of, 365 
 Day of judgment, 41, 403. 
 Death, spiritual, 35; eternal, 6. 
 Deification of reason, 88. 
 Deliberation, acts of, 54. 
 Delicacy of conscience, 26, 47. 
 Despair, 110. 
 Detraction, 139. 
 Development of doctrine, 360. 
 Devils, fear of, 111; subtilty of, 
 269; warfare with, 17. 
 Devotion to the Holy Ghost, 26, 
 195 ; motives of, 463. 
 Dionysius Carthusianus, 172, 207, 
 230, 267, 303, 329, 354. 
 Disobedience, the first act of, 6; 
 degrees of, 28. 
 
 of . 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Discernment, 312, 330, 400. 
 
 Dispensation of the Holy Ghost, 
 13, 18, 19, 464. 
 
 Doctors of the Church, 191. 
 
 Doctrine, development of, 360. 
 
 Drunkennegs, habit of, 54, 221. 
 
 Dryness of heart, 441. 
 
 Duty, faithfulness to, 23; of a 
 
 son of God, 16; sweetness of, 
 
 422. 
 
 Kar, perfections of the, 202. 
 Earth, motion of the, 369. 
 Edmund of Canterbury, St., 238. 
 Education, 89; principle of, 377. 
 HKlect, number of the, 10. 
 Empedocles, 378. 
 
 Emptiness of creatures, 401. 
 
 Encyclical of 1864, 376. 
 
 Endurance, 440. 
 
 England, atmosphere of, 83; 
 Church of, 78, 80; faith of, 
 243; heathenism in, 131. 
 
 Ephesians, the, 20. 
 
 Equity of God, 7, 415. 
 
 Krror, speculative, 324; teachers 
 of, 150; variations of, 364. 
 
 Eternity our home, 23. 
 
 Evangelists, 143. 
 
 Evil, unconsciousness of, 39, 
 
 Experience of God, 103. 
 
 Expiation, 115. 
 
 Extreme unction, Sacrament of, 
 17. 
 
 Hye, perfections of the, 202; of 
 the soul, 353. 
 
 ‘Ezekiel, 141. 
 
 FarrH, poured into the heart, 35; 
 easily lost, 82; explained, 357; 
 human, 71; light of, 36, 40, 43, 
 393; nature of, 70; perfecting 
 reason, 10, 81; root of our gal- 
 vation, 98; explicit and im- 
 plicit, 437. 
 
 489 
 
 Fall of man, 6; corruption of the, 
 298. 
 
 Falsehood, habit of, 54. 
 
 Fasting, 272, 
 
 Fear, holy, 60, 105, 110, 182, 202, 
 226, 230; servile, 110, 204, 225, 
 
 Features, 51. 
 
 Fervour, 47. 
 
 Fidelity, to grace, 39; in follow- 
 ing the Spirit, 47; to duty, 
 23. 
 
 Finger of God, 42, 62, 175. 
 
 Flesh, prudence of the, 342 ; War- 
 fare of the, 17, 
 
 Florence, Council of, 134. 
 
 Fools, 192. 
 
 Foreknowledge of God, 10, 147. 
 
 Fortitude, gift of, 182 ; active, 264; 
 of girls, 282. 
 
 France in the last century, 257. 
 
 Francis of Sales, 8t., 277. 
 
 Freedom of the will, 11. 
 
 Friends of God, 401. 
 
 Friendship, love of, 125; of the 
 world, 276. 
 
 GALILEO, 369, 
 
 Generosity, want of, 114. 
 
 Geology, 371. 
 
 Germany, state of, 80, 301, 377, 
 483. 
 
 Gethsemani, agony of, 264, 
 
 Ghost. See Holy Ghost. 
 
 Gift, the one great, 13; natural, 
 412, 
 
 Girls, fortitude of, 282. 
 
 Glories of the Church, 288. 
 
 Gnosticism, 75, 324, 
 
 God, appreciation of, 104; at- 
 tachment to, 403; author of 
 salvation, 37; axioms of the 
 kingdom of, 163 ; confidence in, 
 43, 58; desire after, 99; equity 
 of, 7,415; experience of, 108 ; 
 finger of, 42, 62, 175; fore. 
 
490 
 
 knowledge of, 10, 147; friends | 
 of, 401; holiness of, 161; image 
 of, 298; immutable, 101, love 
 of, 10; mercy of, 7, 9; omni- 
 presence of, 34; providence of, 
 48; sons of, 35, 165, 233; trust 
 in, 43, 58, 99, 102; union with, | 
 163; veracity of, 74, 91, 124; 
 word of, 236. 
 
 Good, the chief, 123. 
 
 Grace, assistance of, 20; chain of, 
 
 49; co-operating, 37, 42; cre- 
 ated, 35; fidelity to, 39; the fin- 
 ger of God, 62 ; the first, 37, 49; 
 increase of, 43; meaning of, 35; 
 nature of, 9, 34,65; perfecting, 
 37; predestination to, 38; pre- 
 venting, 36, 39; sufficient, 6, 
 A6. 
 
 Gregory the Great, St., 390. 
 
 Guidance of souls, 341. 
 
 Hasit a chain of acts, 53. 
 
 Harmony, of the soul, 5, 214; of 
 music, 387. 
 
 Heart, Sacred, 118, 432 ; disciples 
 of, 138, 233; love of, 162, 226, 
 231, 420. 
 
 Heathenism in England, 131. 
 
 Hell, fear of, 110. 
 
 Henoch, faith of, 66. 
 
 Heresy, 8, 236. 
 
 Heretics, 8, 195, 237. 
 
 Heroes, 264. 
 
 Hilary, St., 143. 
 
 History, scientific, 75, 366. 
 
 Holiness, path of, 47; fountain 
 of, 3. p 
 
 Holy Ghost, adoration of, 479; 
 devotion to the, 26; gifts of, 
 229; graces of, 437; indwelling 
 of, 14, 19, 29, 44, 129, 435, 463, 
 474, 479; office of, 34; repara- 
 tion to, 480; working of, 36. 
 
 Hope in the will, 10; motive of, 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 98; poured into the heart, 53 ; 
 strengthening, 437. 
 
 Horror of sin, 211. 
 
 Humility, false, 112; necessity 
 of, 61, 445, 455. 
 
 Hunger of the soul, 101. 
 
 Ipous of the world, 117. 
 
 Ignorance, wound of, 6. 
 
 Illumination, of faith, 40; of rea- 
 son, 180. 
 
 Image of God, 298. 
 
 Immorality, 83, 85. 
 
 Immortality of Adam, 5. 
 
 Impetuosity, 344. 
 
 Impiety, 255; cause of unbelief, 
 257. 
 
 Imprisonment of bishops, 283. 
 
 Impurity, 257, 306. 
 
 Incarnation, faith in the, 243; 
 
 . mystery of, 171. 
 
 Increase of grace, 43. 
 
 Individuals, sanctification of, 3, 
 
 8. 
 
 Indwelling of the Holy Ghost, 14, 
 19, 29, 44, 129, 156, 435, 463, 
 474, 479. 
 
 Infallibility of the Church, 3, 78, 
 301, 472. 
 
 Infidelity, 83. 
 
 Innocence, baptismal, 22, 39, 51, 
 185. 
 
 Insincerity, 305. 
 
 Instruments of God, 41. 
 
 Integrity in the soul, 5. 
 
 Intellect, pride in the, 299, 317, 
 343; meaning of, 355; the 
 practical, 296; perversion of, 
 300, 317. 
 
 Intelligence, misuse of, 86. 
 
 Interpretation of Scripture, 77. 
 Intolerance, 87. 
 
 Treland, 255. 
 
 Irenexus, St., 73. 
 
 Isaias, 48, 232. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Israel, theocracy of, 233; 
 sacraments in, 15. 
 
 Jacos, the patriarch, 27. 
 Jeremias, the prophet, 434. 
 Jerome, St. , 219, 390. 
 
 Jesus Christ; brethren of, 14, 233; 
 Church of, 234; the Wise of. | 
 75, 242, 253, 279 ; life of, 432. 
 
 Job, 270. 
 
 John Baptist, St., 434. 
 
 Joseph, St., 12, 434. 
 
 Joshua, Book of, 370. 
 
 Judas, 50, 104. 
 
 J udges i in Mie confessional, 341. 
 
 Judgment pride of, 346; day of, 
 
 41. 
 
 2 
 
 Justice, original, 4, 14, 153; the | 
 virtues of, 266, A15. 
 Justification, 97, 147, 153, 161. 
 
 Key of David, 365. 
 
 Kingdom of God, 10, 112, 143, 165. | 
 
 491 
 
 no | Malice of sin, 222. 
 
 Marriage, Sacrament of, 17, 450. 
 
 Martyrs of Christ, 143, 432; of 
 Corea, 288. 
 
 | Mary, the Blessed Virgin, 6, 12, 
 232, 235, 243, 469. 
 
 ' Meditation, 395. 
 
 | Meekness, 434, 
 
 ereys of God, 7, 9; Sisters of, 
 285. 
 
 Ministraticns of the Spirit, 443. 
 
 | Mockery, spirit of, 257. 
 
 Monster, intellectual, 317. 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, 287, 
 
 | Mortification, 16, 271, 
 
 Moses, 11. 
 
 Motion of the earth, 369. 
 
 | Mount, Sermon on the, 339, 352, 
 431. 
 
 | | Multiplicity of error, 364. 
 
 Music, harmonies of, 387; vibra- 
 tion in, 25. 
 
 Knowledge, of Adam, 5; of God, | Mysteriesof the Kingdom of God,5. 
 
 26 ; 
 308. 
 
 Law and the Gospel, 19. 
 
 Lazarus, raising of, 59. 
 
 Lepers, sinners like to, 33. 
 
 Leprosy, twofold, 341, 346. 
 
 Levity, spirit of, 257, 310, 314. 
 
 Liberty, Christian, 336 ; of the 
 will, 11. 
 
 Light, of faith, 303; of nature, 9, 
 303; of God, 7; four kinds ‘of, 
 180. 
 
 Longanimity, 415. 
 
 Love, beginning of, 225; duty of, 
 16; of God, 10; of self, 130 ; 
 natural, 124 ; sovereign, '38; of 
 our neighbour, 164, 
 
 Loyalty, 252, 254. 
 
 Lukewarmness, 28. 
 
 Lying, habit of, 54, 305. 
 
 Matacuias, prophecy of, 234. 
 
 canker of, 39; ‘keystone of, | 
 
 NATIONALISM, 81. 
 
 Nature, light of, 9, 303. 
 
 Negligence, 28. 
 
 Neighbours, love of our, 139, 164, 
 250. 
 
 | Neri, St. Philip, 397. 
 
 Nescience of Adam, 6. 
 Nineve, judgment of, 90. 
 Noe, faith of, 66. 
 
 Note of sanctity, 3, 444. 
 Nothing, creation from, 38. 
 Number of the elect, 10. 
 
 OBEDIENCE, duty of, 16, 448; 
 generous, 23; to grace, 39; 
 how perfected, 432. 
 
 Oblation of self, 432. 
 
 Occasions of sin, 115. 
 
 Octave, notes of the, 25, 387. 
 
 Omega, 37. 
 
 Omission, acts of, 57; sins of, 
 Lite 
 
492, 
 
 Omnipresence of God, 34. 
 
 Order, Sacrament of, 17; 
 supernatural, 9, 20. 
 
 Organisation of the Church, 171. 
 
 the 
 
 PaIn, consciousness of, 33. 
 
 Pancratius, St., 188. 
 
 Paralysis, 394. 
 
 Parents, 337, 341; authority of, 
 449, 
 
 Passion, wound of, 6. 
 
 Pastors, 340 ; authority-of, 449. 
 
 Patience, 440. 
 
 Patrick, St., 255. 
 
 Patriotism, 251. 
 
 Penance, Sacrament of, 17, 159, 
 449, 
 
 Pentecost, day of, 18, 76, 128, 
 464. 
 
 Perception of truth, 53. 
 
 Perfections, of the soul, 424; de- 
 grees of, 432; in Adam, 5; out- 
 line of, 431; rule of, 454. 
 
 Persecution, 276, 301, 377. 
 
 Perseverance, gift of, 46. 
 
 Person of God the Holy Ghost, 
 462. 
 
 Perversion of intellect, 300. 
 
 Petavius, 360. 
 
 Peter, St., 57. 
 
 Pharisees, intellectual, 343, 439, 
 482. 
 
 Philip Neri, St., 397. 
 
 Philosophy, the brutal, 86; false, 
 301. 
 
 Physicians, spiritual, 341. 
 
 Piety, gift of, 182, 230; duty of, 
 16; how maintained, 259; of 
 Solomon, 233. 
 
 Pius IX., fortitude of, 278, 362, 
 376. 
 
 Poverty, spirit of, 186, 340, 401, 
 433, 451. 
 
 Prayer, mental, 315; of the Saints, 
 109. 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Predestination, 11, 38, 166. 
 
 Predilection, love of, 125. 
 
 Presence of God, 33. 
 
 Presumption, 107, 348, 394. 
 
 Pride, intellectual, 299, 317, 343. 
 
 Priests called to perfection, 446, 
 451. 
 
 Professors astray, 76. 
 
 Progress, modern, 87, 192, 361. 
 
 Propassions in our Lord, 392. 
 
 Providence of God, 48. 
 
 Prudence, 266, 328; of the flesh, 
 342. 
 
 Purgatory, chastisements of, 17, 
 115. 
 
 Purity of heart, 480. 
 
 QueEncuHinG of the Spirit, 28. 
 
 RaTIONALISM, 325. 
 
 Reason, axiom of, 34; going be- 
 fore faith, 69; the highest gift, 
 81; illumination of, 180; per- 
 fected by faith, 81. 
 
 Redemption, the Blessed Trinity 
 in, 2. 
 
 Regeneration, grace of, 15, 21. 
 
 Reparation owed to the Holy 
 Ghost, 480. 
 
 Reprobates, 35. ‘ 
 
 Resistance of the Holy Ghost, 
 334. 
 
 Resurrection from sin, 59. 
 
 Revelation, rejection of, 391. 
 
 Ritual of the Church, 235. 
 
 Rose of Lima, St., 188. 
 
 SacRAMENTS, the seven, 15. 
 
 Sacrifice, spirit of, 280. 
 
 Saints, prayers of the, 109, 247; 
 communion of, 246. 
 
 Saint Agnes, 188; Alphonsus, 
 188, 389, 447; Athanasius, 
 277; Augustine, 45, 57, 73, 102, 
 111, 205, 223, 241, 345, 363 
 
INDEX. 
 
 390, 448, 482; Bonaventure, 
 390; Charles Borromeo, 237, 
 328, 331, 396, 419; Catharine 
 of Genoa, 214; Cyprian, 284; 
 Edmund of Canterbury, 238; 
 Francis of Sales, Gregory the 
 Great, Hilary, 143; Irenus, 
 73; Jerome, 219, 390; John 
 Baptist, 434; Joseph, 12, 434; 
 Patrick, 255; Peter, 57; Philip 
 Neri, 397; Rose of Lima, 188 ; 
 Thomas Aquinas, 68, 79, 360, 
 389, 447, 453; Thomas of Can- 
 terbury, 188, 286; Vincent de 
 Paul, 277, 417. 
 
 Samuel, calling of, 24. 
 
 Sanctification, 2, 45; crown of, 
 46; of the heart, 180. 
 
 Sanctity, note of, 3, 444. 
 
 Sapphira, 50. 
 
 Satan, 107, 481. 
 
 Sceptics, 34, 356. 
 
 Schismatics, 195. 
 
 Scripture, Holy, 176; misinter- 
 preted, 74. 
 
 Self, oblation of, 432. 
 
 Self-love, 130. 
 
 Sensuality, 21, 33. 
 
 Sermon on the Mount, 339, 352. 
 
 Shallowness, 258, 315. 
 
 Shepherds of the flock, 340. 
 
 Sin, mortal, 35; malice of, 272; 
 original, 154, 209; venial, 116 ; 
 £355,193, 213; 318. 
 
 Sinfulness, 161. 
 
 Sisters of Charity, 285. 
 
 Slaves, fear of, 110. 
 
 Sloth, 56, 111. 
 
 Softness, 272. 
 
 Solomon, piety of, 233, 383. 
 
 Sons of God, 35. 
 
 Souls, the greater number of, 33; 
 guidance of, 341; perfection of, 
 423, 444; wounds of, 6, 209. 
 
 State, supremacy of, 87. 
 
 493 
 
 Sting of conscience, 40. 
 
 Study, 316. 
 
 Submission to a Divine Teacher, 
 325, 357, 442. 
 
 Supererogation, 331. 
 
 Superstition, 393. 
 
 Sweetness of God, 400, 404, 421, 
 478; of duty, 422; of the law 
 of God, 305. 
 
 Switzerland, 80. 
 
 Syllabus of 1864, 192, 396. 
 
 Tempe of the Holy Ghost, 21. 
 
 Temptation, 55, 157; resistance 
 to, 443; time of, 268. 
 
 Theology, 308, 
 
 Thermometer, 271. 
 
 Thirst of the soul, 101. 
 
 Thomas Aquinas, St., 68, 79, 360, 
 389. 
 
 Thomas of Canterbury, St., 188, 
 286. 
 
 Titans, intellectual, 302. 
 
 Trent, Councilof, 50, 97, 149, 153, 
 157. 
 
 Trials, spiritual, 441. 
 
 Trinity, the Blessed, 2, 233. 
 
 Trust in God, 438, 58, 99, 102. 
 
 Unsetter, acts of, 74; credulity 
 of, 825 ; sin of, 257, 314, 
 
 Unconsciousness of evil, 39. 
 
 Unction, Extreme, 17. 
 
 Union with God, 163, 437. 
 
 Unity of the Church, 80. 
 
 Universality of the Church, 84. 
 
 VARIATION of error, 364. 
 
 Vatican, Council of the, 75, 377. 
 
 Veni Creator Spiritus, the hymn, 
 467, 484, 
 
 Veracity of God, 74, 91, 124. 
 
 Vicar of Christ, 75, 242, 253, 279. 
 
 Vincent de Paul, St.. 277, 418. 
 
 Vocation, 443. 
 
494 . INDEX. 
 
 Wacss, 443. ; Word of God, twofold, 236. 
 Water, holy, 15. World, idols of the, 117; bitter- 
 Weakness, wound of, 6. ness of 400 ; friendship of, 276; 
 
 Will, the human, 42; co-operation| warfare with, 17. 
 of, 445; freedom ‘of, 11;| Worldliness, 311, 342, 402. 
 failure of, 51, 67. Wounds of the soul, 6, 209. 
 
 Wisdom, of the world, 39; gift of, 
 
 179 ; compared with prudence, | Zzau, 396, 485. 
 328, 
 
 THE END. 
 
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