LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ,m ¥ Shetfi2>__G>- UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. NOVISSIMA; OR, Where do our Departed Go? r ZBEi^isr.A.itXD O'IR/Zeill.-y-., ID. 3D.. D. LIT., "LAVAL." "Thou hast made us, O Lord, for Thee; and our heart knoweth not rest till it repose in Thee."— St. Augustine. BALTIMORE : THE BALTIMORE PUBLISHING COMPANY, No. rn W. Baltimore Street. 1886. Copyright, 1886, The Baltimore Publishing Company. The Library OF CONGRRH Press of The Baltimore Publishing Companyi The Author's Preface. The subject of this little book has long haunted me. A portion of it was written on my return from Spain to the United States over two years ago. The rest was the result of an interval of comparative repose during my stay in Ireland. It is natural that, as I approach the limit assigned by Scrip- ture to the ordinary life of man, I should think a little of the "eternal years," and of the goal toward which I am traveling. If I have, in answering the question, "Where do our de- parted go?" only treated of everlasting rewards, it is not because I feared to consider the subject of eternal punishment. The title given to this work* would have been misleading had it not been my purpose to verify it by treating in a future volume both of the punishment and purification to be undergone after death. Fra Angelico, in painting his exquisite "Last Judgment," lavished all the splendor of his genius and the affection of his gentle nature on the representation of his Saints and angels. They are truly heavenly, divine. It is evident that he recoiled with horror from the uncongenial task of painting hell, with its demons and lost souls. I confess that the labor of writing about the supernatural destiny of man, about God's infinite generosity, and "the un- searchable riches of Christ" — bestowed on us in part in this * Novissima— " The Last Things." life, but more especially reserved for the life to come — has been to me a more congenial work than that of fathoming the divine justice in its awards to the wicked. • If the germs of thought I have presumed to present to the reader in the following pages, can afford him a small portion of the comfort they have given me, or if, by meditating on them in a leisure momeut, he can lift heart and mind nearer to heaven and its glorious realities, my pains shall be amply repaid. Whatever the un-Christian or the half-Christian world may dream or dare to say about eternal punishment, a calm con- sideration of the magnificence of God's rewards, and of the fitness of the heavenly beatitude to satisfy all the tendencies, aspirations, and cravings of human nature at its noblest, must result in acknowledging the truth, the beauty, the har- mony, and the completeness of the revealed doctrine con- cerning the life to come. I have avoided controversy, and exposed the teaching of the Bible and the Church — the interpreter of the Bible — because I wished this little volume to bring light, consolation, strength, and rest to the homes that might welcome it, and the troubled of heart who would chance to peruse its pages. BERXARD O'REILLY. Dublin, September 29, 1885, Feast of St. Michael the Archangel. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Introductory, . . . . . . . .'•'.. 1 CHAPTER II. With Christ, 18 CHAPTER III. " To be Dissolved and be with Chrtst " — The Yearning, 34 CHAPTER IV. With Christ at the Fount of Life— The Realization, . 52 CHAPTER V. Within the Ocean Depths of Light and Life, . . 09 CHAPTER VI. Still Among the Depths, . . . . . .83 CHAPTER VII. The Society Enjoyed in God's Heavenly Empire, . 100 CHAPTER VIII. Among the Multitudes of the Blessed in Christ's Human Kingdom, Ill CHAPTER IX. Lost Among the Human World of Heaven, . .121 CHAPTER X. An Hour in Heaven with the Angels, . . . . 138 VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER XI. The Place Itself, 153 CHAPTER XII. The Place Itself — Its Physical Conditions, . . 168 CHAPTER XIII. The Empire of Charity, 185 CHAPTER XIV. The Belief in the Resurrection of the Body, . . 200 CHAPTER XV. The New Birth of Mankind, 217 CHAPTER XVI. The General Judgment, 233 CHAPTER XVII. Christ's Human Empire After the Resurrection, . 250 CHAPTER XVIII. The Triumph of Christ, 265 CHAPTER XIX. The Utmost Goal of Human Aspiration and Progress, 285 CHAPTER XX. How to Find Heaven on Earth, 302 CHAPTER XXI. The Eternity of Heaven, 321 SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. We all ask ourselves the question: "Where do our departed go?'' It has been asked by all mankind in the past, as it is at present — A belief in the survival of the soul and in a future state underlying this question — The pagans believed in a future life — Glorious witnesses of this truth and of a belief in the resurrec- tion of the body among the Hebrew race — The seven Machabee martyrs and their mother — St. Paul attests the faith of his race — Apostolic testimony to the Christian belief — Christian heroism and self-sacrifice founded on the hope of eternal rewards — Armies of the self-sacrificing in both hemispheres — ' ' The perfect way ' ' and "the treasure in heaven." CHAPTER II. WITH CHRIST. The rest which death gives to the weary — The rest which the true Christian looks forward to — To be with Christ everlastingly — Christ gave us a foretaste of our destiny in being on earth our Emmanuel, "God with us" — In heaven we are to be " with God" — "God with us" — Preludes to the incarnation in the old law — The angel Jehovah — God's intercourse with Moses, and His abiding with the Hebrew people — "Show me Thy glory," spoke the yearning of the human soul — Our Emmanuel coming among us " in a cloud " — How He made His divinity to be felt by those who approached Him — His Spirit communicated to Mary and Joseph, and to other personages — The ecstasy of the transfigura- tion a foretaste of paradise — The risen Christ "walking with" the disciples of Emmaus. CHAPTER III. "to be dissolved and be with christ" — the yearning. St. Paul before and after his conversion — Raised up to paradise while still in the body — Preaching " the unsearchable riches of via SYNOPSIS. Christ, " ' ' the charity of Christ which surpasseth all knowledge' ' — "Desiring to be dissolved and be with Christ" — The idea of "dissolution" to the Christian is the welcome permission to depart for home — Examples-: The poor fever-stricken immigrant woman and her son ; St. Ferdinand, the conqueror of Cordova and Seville, CHAPTER, IV, . WITH CHRIST AT THE FOUNT OF LIFE — THE REALIZATION. What constitutes the life eternal ? The possession of God by- clear knowledge and love — The Eucharistic Sacrament and sacri- fice a pledge and foretaste of the eternal possession — The banquet of earth and the banquet of heaven — The particular judgment after death — The first meeting of Christ with the holy soul on the frontier of His everlasting kingdom — The "peace be to you ! " on passing out of the shadow of the valley of death — The sight of His glorified human countenance a preliminary to the Beatific Vision — What the "Fount of Life" is — In heaven we are not absorbed in the abyss of the Godhead : we preserve our personal identity and exercise our proper vital acts — What God gives us in heaven — The heaven of Eastern pantheism and the Christian heaven — The yearning for the clear sight of God, as expressed in the Old Testament — Christ's explicit declaration and definition of life eternal — The Beatific Vision — What the council of Florence decrees it to be — The great dogmatic fact concerning the bliss of the life to come affirms that the blessed ' ' see God as He is in Himself ' ' — Xo sleep of the soul after death — A passage from a lower to the highest life. CHAPTER, V. WITHIN THE OCEA.N DEPTHS OF LIGHT AND LIFE — SEEING AND POSSESSING GOD. We are tried by faith in this life, and rewarded by clear sight in the next — This, probably, was also the trial imposed on the angels in the beginning — Harmonies, anticipations, and aspira- tions in our nature and in the duties of human society — Apostolic testimonies bearing on the Beatific Vision — The pursuit and possession of knowledge, the tendency and felicity of the human mind — The supreme good the necessary object of the heart's desires — Both of these necessary aspirations and appetites of /SYNOPSIS. • IX rational nature fulfilled in the Beatific Vision— Supernaturalness of this Vision and the consequent felicity — Illustrations — St. Paul explains our present imperfect knowledge and longings, and their fulfillment — What takes place in the Beatific Vision— The embrace of God our Father— Illustrations. CHAPTER VI. STILL AMONG THE DEPTHS. The doctrine of the clear sight of God immediately after death, the belief of the early Christian ages — St. Irenceus, martyr — St. Gregory Nazianzen — St. Gregory of Nyssa— St. John Chrysostom — St. Augustine — St. John Damascene— How the "light of glory" elevates and enlarges the mind — Analogies from the natural world and science — The will or affections simultaneously and harmoniously elevated, enlarged, perfected — The love or charity of heaven proportioned to the knowledge there given — Scope of the knowledge conveyed in tho Beatific Vision — Helps and illustrations toward understanding its im- mensity — Its blissfulness derived from the perfect insight into the nature and operations of the Godhead— Inability of the human intellect in our present state to sound these divine depths— Besides God, the primary object of this clear sight, all outside of God, are known and seen perfectly— His mysteries and the whole course of His providence — The heavenly empire, its worlds and inhabitants — The material universe, its substances and laws. CHAPTER VII. THE SOCIETY ENJOYED IN HEAVEN. I. The parents of regenerated humanity — The companionship, of Christ and of those who were upon earth called His parents — Bliss arising from the clear sight of Christ in heaven, and from intercourse with Him— His beautiful character, as known through the gospels, the object of intense and enthusiastic study in our day — Incomparably greater the knowledge of Him enjoyed by the blessed — St. Bonaventure's ecstatic prayer to Christ — We cannot study Christ in His earthly career without finding by His side the ^Blessed Mother and St. Joseph — We cannot dissociate them from Him in heaven — They are near Him where He thrones as King and Head over the elect of our race. X SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER VIII. AMONG THE MULTITUDES OF THE BLESSED. II. The society of the Saints and elect — Theirs is the assem- blage of the truest, best, and loveliest — The friendship of such an assemblage — A pause to consider what is this moral perfection which renders the Saints in heaven so admirable — Transfiguration of the entire man in the life to come — Analogies and illustra- tions — The present life too short for the earnest worker to attain perfection in anything — The mighty moral growth witnessed here a guarantee of the perfection attained hereafter — St. Paul's witness — Glimpses of paradise. CHAPTER IX. LOST AMONG THE HUMAN WORLD IN HEAVEN ITS IMMENSITY. 1. Christ's human kingdom in heaven — Intoxicating effect of beholding such countless numbers of the glorious and the good — The felicity derived from the friendship, the love, and merited praise of such a kingdom — The holy ties of earth bind souls together in heaven — Examples : Who those are who ' ' shine like stars ' ' among these multitudes of the good and great — Holy •families — Holy Patriarchs — Peoples who have kept the faith — The ancient Hebrews — Modern peoples. 2. Population of Christ's human kingdom in heaven — What may be, at present, their real numbers — Bases for forming an estimate — How we are to interpret the words of Christ about ''the small number of the elect" and the "narrow gate" — Those who labor among the masses know how many there are who are faithful to God — If we may compute the number of the elect at one thousand millions, the present estimated population of the globe — If so, what glory and felicity to be one of such a kingdom! — Illustrations — The real nature and source of social happiness: To feel that those we are with are our own; loving us, beloved by us, and deserving of our utmost love. CHAPTER X. FROM THE HUMAN TO THE ANGELIC SOCIETY — AN HOUR WITH THE ANGELS IN HEAVEN. 1. Lingering to count accurately the millions of the blessed — Everything in eternity partakes of the infinite — In the Middle SYNOPSIS. XI Ages all men sought to die well — Men then remembered Christ's bestowing from the cross paradise on the penitent criminal crucified with Him — In these Christian ages the oppressed and suffering multitudes were not all excluded from Christ's grace and love — We may, without exceeding, estimate Christ's kingdom on high at three thousand millions. 2. Christ's Angelic Empire — It is that of our brethren and friends ; our own also — Its population — Testimonies from Scrip- ture — The Book of Job asks if there "is any numbering" of them?— The "scientific imagination" of the theologian and the Christian readily adopts the grandest views of God's works — St. Denis, the Areopagite, and St. Thomas Aquinas — The latter' s doctrine and estimates most worthy of our acceptance — The angelic world numbering more substances than the whole inferior creation — We are safe in estimating the population of the angelic empire as incomparably superior to the human — St. John's vision of both of these worlds — Catholic theologians adopt the theory of the Areopagite about the division of the angels into three hierarchies, each including three orders : nine divisions in all — Nine concentric and subordinate worlds — Such is the angelic society — Magnificence of this subject of study on earth and con- templation in heaven — Glory and bliss of this fellowship. CHAPTER XI. THE PLACE ITSELF — THE LAND OF THE LIVING. The Prophet Baruch's sublime conception of it—Ideas of the location of heaven — A world created apart — Bellarmine's concep- tion of it — The immensity of the heavenly world and the Beatific Vision — St. Ignatius Loyola sees God in all things — We need to expand our minds in thinking of divine things — Every part of this heavenly empire accessible to the blessed — How easy inter- course with all its parts will be even after the resurrection — Illustrations — Magnificence of this empire — It is called m Scrip- ture the bride, and, sometimes, the dwelling place of the bride — This argues the utmost magnificence the Bridegroom can display — It is the country and home of God's beloved children — Illustration from parental love — The paradise and garden of delights — Mag- nificence and glory of its inhabitants. Xll SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER Xn. PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE HEAVENLY EMPIRE. These conditions are in harmony with the final perfection of the inhabitants — Analogy founded on the conditions for life on earth — Everything in the supernal world will satisfy the exalted imagination and the purified sensibility of man — St. John's descriptions imply all this — Comparison of the earthly Paradise with the heavenly — The heavenly prepared as a reward for the Saints — Social condition in harmony — Unspeakable happiness and greatness of this empire — God willed man from the beginning to set his heart on it — Impulses — Comparison with the greatest and happiest of earthly realms — Solomon's wisdom and folly — David's aspirations. CHAPTER XIII. HEAVEN BEFORE THE RESURRECTION — THE EMPIRE OF CHARITY. The Church of heaven and the Church on earth — What is seen in the blessed city of God : The altar of the Lamb — What is seen in the Church on earth: "AH nations and tribes" around the altar of the Lamb — Wherever the children of the Church are encamped, the armies of angels ascending and descending — Divine security and unchangeableness of the city of God on earth — "God in her midst — She shall not be moved" — The charity which is the soul of the communion of Saints — Heaven "the kingdom of perfect charity" — "The charity of Christ presseth us" also — The two great armies of charity here below — Their labors and creations — Charity of men and women in the world — Example. CHAPTER XIV. * BELIEF IN THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY. The Christian religion founded on the fact of Christ's Resur- rection — Witnesses to the fact : The dogma of the resurrection before Christ; Christ's teaching; Facts of resurrection before Christ ; Persons restored to life by Christ ; Moses and Elias at the Transfiguration ; Resurrection of Lazarus ; The question, "Who has come back to tell ns of the life to come?" Christ has j Miracles of the Apostles in confirmation of this fact ; Stephen dying beholds Christ in heaven ; The world has accepted Christianity founded on this fact, and on the belief in the resur- SYNOPSIS. Xlll 1'ection — St. Paul's testimony: He saw Christ last of all the Apostles and Disciples ; His doctrine on the resurrection — The plea of "impassibility" put in by unbelievers — Magnificent horizons opened up by our belief. CHAPTER XV. THE NEW BIRTH OF MANKIND. St. Paul — Gospel of the resurrection — Christ's prediction — Events preceding the general resurrection — St. Paul's teaching and description of the event itself — The consummation of the Creator's work in the physical world — Clothing a barren conti- nent with verdure and filling it with animal life, a work of Omnipotence, helping us to understand the new birth of man- kind — With Him is the secret and the fount of life — St. Paul on the new bodily life— Objection : The total material changes occurring periodically in the human frame — "Which body shall we rise in ? Most probably the body consigned to the grave — The veneration of all ages and races for the remains of the dead — Violation of tombs by the Reformers and the Roundheads — Their example imitated by the French Revolutionists — French scientists desecrating Egyptian tombs — Desecration now openly practiced in the name of science — Reverence of the Church for the human body — Anointed temples of the Holy Ghost — Christian burial, a depositing in the furrows the seed for the future spring- tide — God giveth life and increase — St. Paul's text further ex- amined — Coming down from heaven of the angelic and human spirits — Souls from the Limbus or intermediate world: fallen angels and fallen men — The sounding of the trumpet— The fairest sight ever beheld by the Creator Himself. CHAPTER XVI. THE RESURRECTION OF JUDGMENT. God's triumph— A favorite subject with artists in the Christian ages — The mystery of free-will and divine providence cleared up — Man enlightened from the beginning about his supernatural destiny — Free to serve or not to serve God and gain heaven — Helps toward securing his eternal happiness — God, through Christ Crucified, taught the world the infinite value of the heavenly treasure, and the infinite loss entailed by its forfeiture — xiV SYNOPSIS. Ttie book of the crucifix — The book of judgment — Hell is the loss of Christ — The judgment — Preliminaries — The scene as described by Christ — The two-fold law of charity, the soul of all divine legislation — Why Christ bases on its observance or viola- tion the award He pronounces — God wills us to pay the debt we owe Himself to the poor and suffering who hold His place — Timeliness and necessity of insisting on this divine law of brotherly charity in our age — How and where we can find on our road Christ in the persons of the needy and suffering — Golden opportunities — Example of St. Francis of Assisi — Confirmation of the Christian doctrine on heaven and hell from ancient Persian literature. CHAPTER XVII. THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE BLESSED. Christ's glorious human empire — We must take the infallible Church's interpretation of the Scriptural doctrine of the Resurrec- tion — Christ makes of each blessed human soul, on the last day, a "quickening spirit" like His own — The risen bodies of the blessed must bear ' ' the image ' ' of the heavenly Adam — Quali- ties or "gifts" of these bodies: Incorruption or impassibility: lightsomeness ; agility or power; explanations of the holy Father's subtility or spirituality ; analogies borrowed from the teachings of modern science ; imponderable fluids, their subtility, energy, velocity ; universal ether and its agency and spirit-like substance and qualities ; the Transfiguration of Christ, and that of each of His blessed — Peculiar happiness of soul and body auising from this re-union and this Transfiguration — This happi- ness a compensation for bodily privations and sufferings in this life — Christ's triumphant ascension. CHAPTER XVIII. THE TRIUMPH OF CHRIST. The preludes to the Wedding Feast — -Exaltation after humili- ation — Spoils won by the cross — Numbers added to the elect by the Church — The flock gathered into heaven by the Good Shep- herd — The regal progress of our King — The select bands in the army of Saints — They sing Te Deum Laudamus as they go — The LXXXVIII Psalm — Joys of eternity and joys of earth — In SYNOPSIS. XV heaven all have the perfect power to enjoy — The divine har- monies of heaven — Human feet treading the soil of the heavenly empire — It blooms afresh beneath the feet of Christ triumphant — Beautiful legends about St. Francis of Assisi — "I have said, ye are gods, and all sons of the Most High" — The Bridegroom and the Bride — ''King of kings and Lord of lords." CHAPTER XIX. THE SUPPER OP THE LAMB. A royal wedding feast the ideal on earth of magnificence and enjoyment — Even among the poor a wedding means sumptuosity and hospitality unbounded — What we know it to be among the wealthy — The banquets of Assuerus — What we are to under- stand by the Supper of the Lamb — It inaugurates a new era in heaven — Members of the elect to whom heaven is new — Magnifi- cent pageant of their arrival at the Feast — True conception of the banqueting place — Two worlds, the angelic and human, seated at the Banquet — The heavenly fare at that Supper — Anticipations on earth of that divine Food: "I am the Bread of Life." " Take ye and eat : This is My Body. " "Drink ye all of this: For this is My Blood." "I will not drink from henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I shall drink it with you new in the kingdom of My Father" — What " this fruit of the vine " is — Partaking of the Divinity — Christ's instruction to His Disciples : "I am the Vine. . . . You the branches" — The cup which man and angel drink at that Feast — The Father's joy in giving ; the children's bliss in re- ceiving — In what consists the "newness" of the wine given at that Feast — 1. Man in heaven only a spiritual being before the Resurrection ; now he lives there in body — After the resurrec- tion the wine of the Beatific Vision intoxicates body and soul — New transports of that hour — The sight of Christ with our bodily eyes — 2. Intoxicating effect of beholding with the bodily sense the new heavens and their angelic and human inhabi- tants — It will be new for the parents of regenerated humanity to have their family around them there. . . . New for the Eternal Father to welcome to His kingdom the entire family of the elect — Joy, like "the rush of a river, inundating the city of God." XVI SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER XX. HOW TO FIXD HEAVEN ON EARTH. The end in heaven; "God all in all" — Divine love finds means to be "all in all" to us, even in this life. I. God present in all things — He fills heaven and earth : the immense and infinite — Present in all things as Creator, Preserver, Ruler — Easy to find Him — Present in man. II. God works for us in all the energies and activities of the material, intellectual, social, and religious world — St. Paul to the Corinthians : ' "All things are yours ; " " the sufferings of time ; ' ' the glory to come" — God directs all things toward our good — Human infirmity supplemented by almighty power and divine generosity — The Three divine Persons working for us — The mystery of free-will — How man may work divinely for God — St. Francis Xavier — A docile instrument in the hand of God — Human weakness transformed into divine energy — How attentive meditation can help us — The "Ladder of Jacob" not yet with- drawn — The angelic world working for us — And the Saints in heaven — St. Paul's example : "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? ' ' — To die for Christ the privilege of the few — To live and labor for Christ that of many — "We should be spurred on to work by the prospect of winning an everlasting inherit- ance — "What we see gold-seekers daring and enduring. CHAPTER XXI. THE ETERNITY OF HEAVEN. Precautions taken by business men to invest and secure money — Stability and perpetuity a great ground of confidence— Vain to seek either outside of God — Two memorable examples — The Christian's foundation — God and His eternity — Eternal life as explained in the light of revealed truth — The last article of the Creed — Utterances of our Lord and His Apostles on eternal or everlasting life — The Beatific Vision and the partaking of God's own life in heaven imply eternity — Conclusion : Every- thing divine in the heavenly life ; therefore its duration should be divine, eternal — The everlasting society of God, His angels and Saints — The eternity of the heavenly universe ; all our own, for evermore — The eternal God possessed eternally. NOVISSIMA. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY. "Where are they gone, of yore My best delight, Dear and more dear, though now Hidden from sight? — Lady Nairn. " Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God ; believe also in Me." — St. John, xiv, 1. THE QUESTION ASKED BY ALL MEN. Where is the man or woman whose heart has not been troubled by the thought of that dread and mysterious hereafter, toward which the stream of life irresistibly hurries them ? Around us, while the skeptic's doubts come out of the darkness, and take shape like the phantoms of a horrible dream, we hear our contemporaries asking aloud, with concern and with fear : Whether the generations which preceded us have been as utterly blotted out of life, of all personal existence, as the grass of the prairie over which the flames have passed destroying the very roots of every green thing, as the races of geological monsters which have left behind no living representative ? 2 XOVISSIMA. \Ye who, arrived near the limit assigned to hitman life, behold the shadows fast lengthening on our road, and the sun about to disappear into a world to us unknown, cannot help seeing in his setting the image of our own existence. With troubled hearts we, too, ask ourselves : What sphere will receive our spirit when our day is ended ? Into what company shall we be ushered in parting with this body of clay ? For we know that all living peoples, as well as those who have gone before us, are unanimous in believing that the soul survives the dissolution of the body. And we know as well, that they asked themselves in their day, as we do now, with anxiety not unmixed with fear : Where do our departed go ? The question, and the grave thoughts it suggests, will not be put away, in the evening of life espe- cially. Like travelers who have climbed a steep hill after a long road, we look back to find those who started with us, and perceive, with a shudder, that few, very few indeed, are by our side. Where are they ? We remember the aged to whom we looked up for guidance and counsel on beginning life's journey ; the strong, the wise, the venerable, on whom our soul leaned for support ; they dropped away, one after the other, like ripe fruit from the overladen tree. Does the earth cover all that we loved and revered in them ? Our own parents too — the father who taught us all generosity of aim and deed ; the mother whose tenderness was deeper than the springs of ocean, whose pure and loving soul was to us as God's angel in human form ; they, too, in their turn, closed their race of devotion and suffering, with their eyes NOVISSIMA. 6 looking fondly for the dawn of a better life, in which we should be reunited with them. Is this reunion in a blissful eternity only a delusion sent by nature to deceive the hopes of earth's dearest and best ? Have we lost forever the sweet companion- ship of those who first discoursed with us on immor- tality? Are we never again to be folded within those dear arms ? Shall their loved voices never more make music in our souls ? Every day, as we advance toward the goal, we hear fond parents mourning by our side over the grave of children cut off in the springtide of lovely womanhood, or a manhood full of brilliant promise. They were rearing children for heaven ; they watched over them as if they had to keep angels in the body free from earthly stain, while training them to all earthly heroism. Is there no heaven, then, for the bright, pure spirits departed from their home? Within the Christian home, as outside of it, the young are called to watch by the death-bed of their best beloved ; nothing soothes for them the pang of separation but the faith in a better life, and the certain hope of meeting there those who are a part of themselves. Is there, then, to be no reunion hereafter ? Has all mankind conspired to cheat themselves with this magnificent dream of a future life and a bettor world? Let us meditate seriously on this thought at the very threshold of our inquiry. Has all mankind, therefore, believed, and believed firmly, in a future state ? Yes ; all ! ATTESTING VOICES FROM THE TOMB. Examine, in every portion of the habitable globe, the records and monuments of the most ancient 4 KOVISSIMA. empires; consult the religious beliefs and the funereal customs of races the most civilized or the most savage ; from every land and age, from the lit- eratures of the pagan world and the world worship- ing the one true God, from the tombs of Egypt, Assyria, India, China, and Japan, as well as from the sepulchres of Palestine and Etruria, come solemn voices attesting the soul's immortality — everlasting rewards for the good, everlasting punishments for the wicked. From the reverently preserved remains of the half-famished tribes wandering around Hud- son's Bay or through the forests of Alaska, from the sepulchral mounds of races long extinguished, scat- tered over the valleys of the Ohio and the Missis- sippi, down through Mexico and Central America, and the vast regions of the Southern Continent to Cape Horn — the care bestowed on the dead of yes- terday, as well as the love and respect paid to the bodies of those who died thousands of years ago, alike proclaim that all these races believed in the survival of the soul. More than that. The care taken by men, while living, to secure for their remains after death a safe and inviolable resting-place, as well as the sentiment in the survivors prompting to carry out the wish of the dying, and impelling children to give to parents the honorable sepulture which they hoped for in return — all spoke of the primitive revelation prom- ising not only the life to come, but the revival of the body to partake thereof. SURVIVAL OF THE SOUL. Leaving all discussion of "the resurrection of the flesh" to a future chapter, w 7 e insist upon this una- nimity with which mankind in the past, as in the NOVISSIMA. 5 present, all civilizations and religions, affirm the immortality of the soul, its future accountability to its Maker and Judge, and the everlasting happiness of the good, as an offset to the proud, pretentious and shallow few, who put out the eyes of their own intelligence lest they should see the necessity of the life to come, the magnificence of its rewards, and the salutary terrors of its threatened punishments. The pagan Cicero and the pagan Plato revolted in their day against the few Materialists whose practice and teaching aimed at depriving the toiling and suffering masses — as well as all who set virtue and conscience above the honors, enjoyments, and happi- ness of the present life — of the comforting hope of a blissful immortality. And so, even now, heathen philosophy and heathen religions rebuke the pur- blindness of the false science, which, seated in the chair at Oxford, from which Roger Bacon taught, seeks to extinguish in men's souls, one after the other, the lights and the hopes which made Bacon's life so bright and happy amid toil, and obloquy, and persecution. He only gave utterance to this article of the uni- versal pagan creed who wrote : 'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us, 'Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. If there's a Power above us (And that there is, all nature cries aloud Through all her works), He must delight in virtue ; And that which He delights in must be happy.'* GLORIOUS WITNESSES AMONG THE HEBREAV RACE. But whatever doubt obscured or weakened the traditional faith of the heathen nations, among the *Addison. 6 N0VISSI3IA. Hebrew race, holding fast to revealed truth, there was no doubt on the cardinal doctrine of the life to come. From the lips of none, among this chosen people, may we learn a lesson on this matter more profitably than from the glorious martyrs, who, amid torments, testified to their belief in the life eternal and its rewards. Let us seat ourselves, therefore, in spirit among the half-pagan, half-Jewish crowd, which surrounds the mother of the Machabees and her seven sons, as the children first and then the mother, each in succession sacrifices limb and life rather than sin against the law of God. The oldest has already suffered his long agony and triumphed beneath the eyes of the heroic mother. The second, undismayed, has en- dured tortures unspeakable. " When he was at the last gasp," the sacred historian tells us, "he said thus (to King Antiochus) : ' O most wicked man, thou indeed destroyest us out of this present life. But the King of the world will raise us up, who die for His laws, in the resurrection of eternal life/ " * The third son, in like manner, allowed the execu- tioners to torture and mutilate as their ingenuity taught them. Limb after limb was cut off. "And when he was required, he quickly put forth his tongue and courageously stretched out his hands, and said with confidence: ' These I have from Heaven, but for the laws of God I now make little of them, because I hope to receive them again from Him. ? "t Even so the fourth: "When he was now ready to die, he spoke thus: 'It is better, being put to death by men, to look for hope from God, to be raised up * 2 Machabees, vii, 9. t Ibidem, 10-11. NOVissraA- 7 again by Him. For, as to thee, (King Antiochus), thou shalt have no resurrection unto life/ " * We must pause in the midst of this fearful tragedy to listen to the words of that heroic mother, whose sublime spirit suffered and triumphed in each of her boys. It was she who had instilled into them, with the milk of infancy, the fear and love of God — that constancy which no torture and no bribe could move. Hear how she repeats before Antiochus and his satellites the lesson so often taught before : " Now the mother was to be admired above meas- ure, and worthy to be remembered by good men, who beheld her seven sons slain in the space of one day, and bore it with a good courage for the hope that she had in God. And she bravely exhorted every one of them in her own language, being filled with wisdom, and joining a man's heart to a woman's thought : i I neither gave you breath, nor soul, nor life, 9 she says; 'neither did I frame the limbs of every one of you. But the Creator of the world, that formed the nativity of man, and that found out the origin of all, He will restore to you again in His mercy both breath and life, as now you deprive your- selves for the sake of His laws.' " f The martyrdom of the seventh and the youngest raised to a pitch of sublimity never heard of in the ancient world, or conceived of by Plato or iEschylus, the courage and constancy of mother and son. An- tiochus, baffled and beaten in his impious design by the unconquerable spirit of parent and children, en- deavors to win the only survivor by cajolery and the promise of wealth, honor and royal favor. He failed. He then turned to the mother. " The king * Machabees, vii, 14-15. -f Ibidem, 20-23. 8 NOVISSIMA. called the mother, and counselled her to deal with the young man to save his life. . . . She prom- ised that she would counsel her son." The interest of the courtiers and the crowd is excited to the highest degree. Is she going to give up to the maddened ferocity of king and executioners her only remaining one? Listen again: " I beseech thee, my son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them ; and consider that God made them out of nothing, and mankind also. So thou shalt not fear this tormentor; but, being made a worthy partner with thy brethren, receive death, that in that mercy I may receive thee again with thy brethren." * Such is, among the people of God, and before the coming of Christ, the most glorious testimony borne to the belief in the life to come, the resurrection of the dead, the bliss of heaven, and the fearful retri- bution in store for the wicked. As we meditate together, in the light of such ex- amples, the answer to the question, "Where do our dead go?" we may well exult at the heroic faith of these saints of the Old Testament. Of them, St. Paul, the Apostle of this faith, enlarged and perfected by Christ, wrote to the Christian Hebrews of his day : ST. PAUL CONFIRMS THAT TESTIMONY. "Now, of the things which we have spoken, this is the sum : We have such a High Priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of Majesty in the heavens, a Minister of the Holies, and of the true Tabernacle, which the Lord hath pitched, and not man.f . . . Having, therefore, a confidence, brethren, in the entering into the Holies by the * Macliabees, vii, 25-29. t Hebrews, viii, 1-2. NOVISSIMA. 9 blood of Christ, a new and living way which He hath dedicated for us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh, and a High Priest over the House of God, let us draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith. . . . Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He is faithful that hath promised." * Be comforted, troubled hearts; and let the light from above break gradually, sweetly on your dark- ness. See you not that all the faith and hope of the world before Christ pointed to heaven, to the true Holy of Holies, to the House of God, unbuilt by man, and over which Christ our Lord is King? Into that house and home the blood of Christ has opened to us "a new and living way." Now, from the cradle of our race in Eden down to this day, survey the generations of believers, who have lived, labored, suffered, and died, fixing their eyes on the promise of that Redeemer, Restorer, and King — on the Hope of the Heaven which His blood was to reopen ; on the glorious prospect of the Resurrection so openly proclaimed in Antioch by the seven Machabee Martyrs and their mother. "Now, faith is the substance of things to be hoped for; the evidence of things that appear not. . . . By faith Abel offered to God a sacrifice exceeding that of Cain, by which he obtained a testi- mony that he was just, God giving testimony to his gifts, and by it being dead yet speaketh. By faith Henoch was translated, that he should not see death, and he was not found because God had translated him. For before his translation he had testimony that he pleased God. But without faith it is impos- * Hebrews, x, 19-23. 10 XOVISSI31A, sible to please God. For he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and is a Rewarder to them that seek Him "By faith he that is called Abraham obeyed to go out into a place which he was to receive for an in- heritance ; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he abode in the land, dwelling in cottages, with Isaac and Jacob, the co-heirs of the same promise. For he looked for a City that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. . . . All these died according to faith, not having received the promises, but beholding them afar off, and saluting them, and confessing that they are pilgrims and strangers on the earth. For they that say these things do signify that they seek a country. And truly if they had been mindful of that from whence they came out, they had doubtless time to return. But now they desire a better, that is to say, a Heavenly Country. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He hath prepared for them a City." * Such is the living faith of that chosen Hebrew race, who were the predecessors and spiritual parents of the Christian people. Among them the belief in the life and the world to come shines like a stream of light along the entire path of their his- tory down to Christ; and since His teaching has only made the existence of the " Heavenly Country," of the "City" with eternal foundations, "whose builder and maker is God," a more distinct and glorious Reality. * Hebrews, xi, 1-16. XOVISSIMA. 11 "LIFE and incorruption brought to light by THE GOSPEL. "I know whom I have believed/'* writes St. Paul from his prison in Rome; "our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath destroyed death, and hath brought to light Life and Ineorruption by the Gospel." t It was this heroic Apostle of the perfected Revelation, who, in penning the sublime eulogy of Hebrew faith in the past, wished to nourish that of the new-born Christian Church, composed so largely of Hebrew converts. Persecution and suffering had been the lot of be- lievers in the long ages before Christ; persecution and suffering are the inheritance held forth to Christ's followers; and all this to be accounted as nothing in view of the eternal reward. The Hebrew Church was personified in Moses, who, "when he was grown up, denied himself to be the son of Pharoah's daughter, rather choosing to be afflicted with the people of God than to have the pleasure of sin for a time, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasure of the Egyptians. For he looked unto the Reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the fierceness of the king; for he endured as seeing Him that is invisible. % This Unseen God and the invisible world in which He lives and reigns with His faithful ser- vants, the angelic spirits and the spirits of just men, is precisely what modern unbelief, . under the usurped name of science, would have us look upon as the Unknowable. With St. Paul, each of us Christians must reply to the skeptic and the mate- * 2 Timothy, i, 12. X Hebrews, xi, 24-27. t Ibidem, 10. 1'2 -NOVISSIMA. rialist : " I know whom I have believed ! . * Our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath destroyed death." Therefore, while turning to the very best account this short mortal life in glorifying our Maker, in helping our brethren, and in sanctifying ourselves, we account earth and all things temporal as of little moment, because we, too, look forward to the Reward, to that "Life and Incorruption" brought to light by the Gospel. ATTESTED BY THE HOSTS OF THE SELF-SACKIFICTNG. "Were we not sure of this prospect, St. Paul's words to the Corinthian Christians of his day might literally apply to Christians the whole world over at the close of this nineteenth century : " If in this life only we have faith in Christ, we are of all men the most miserable." * Look around you, inside and outside your homes, and count those of your acquaintance who try ear- nestly and consistently to serve God with their whole heart and soul — men and women who, while living in the world, and fulfilling every duty of their sta- tion with scrupulous fidelity, endeavor to follow Christ Crucified by self-denial and self-sacrifice. We speak not of churchmen, or persons bound by monastic vows to special abnegation, but of the secular crowd traveling along the common road of life. How many beautiful souls there are among the toiling, travel-soiled, over-burdened multitudes ? Is their faithful service to go unrewarded ? Is their hope of immortality and its repose all vain ? Is there for these indefatigable toilers, these patient, uncomplaining sufferers, these devoted lovers of the *1 Cor.,. xv, 19. NOVISSIHA. 13 poor and the afflicted, no greater assurance of a life beyond the grave than there is for the horse, the ass, or the mule, that falls down dead by the roadside? Is there no more certainty of survival and everlast- ing honor for the martyr who gladly bares his breast to the persecutor's steel in China or Tonquin than there is for the ox or the sheep slaughtered in the shambles ? Suffering, persecution, martyrdom have not yet ceased to be the portion on earth of those who are dearest to Christ. It is to all such, in our days, that another Apostle also writes from prison and from the verge of the grave : " Dearly beloved, think not strange the burning heat which is to try you, as if some new thing happened to you. But if you partake of the suffering of Christ, rejoice that when His glory shall appear you may also be glad with exceeding joy." * Are we now to believe that the future reality will give the lie to both Peter and Paul? Look abroad into the world and count these mighty armies of men and women who have torn themselves from home, from all the satisfaction and bliss of domestic life, from all the pursuits and noble rewards that a legitimate or praiseworthy ambition opens up to the well-born, the educated, the gifted, and accomplished; they have chosen to share Christ's poor and laborious life, while doing for the bodies and souls of His people all that the experience of nineteen centuries of Christianity points out as most needful, most salutary, most glorious, and most heroic in self-sacrificing devotion. Do you doubt that He desires such imitators or *1 St. Peter, iv, 12-13. 1-4 tfOYlSSIMA. holds out to them all that a God can give in the life to come ? Then listen to the Gospel narrative : " When He was gone forth into the way, a certain man, running up and kneeling before Hirn, asked Him : ' Good Master, what shall I do that I may receive life everlasting ? ' "And Jesus said to him : ' Why callest thou Me good? None is good but one — God. Thou knowest the Commandments : Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, bear not fcdse witness, do no fraud, honor thy father and mother. ,' SELF-SACRIFICE AXD THE TREASURE IN HEAYEX. " But he answering, said to Him : ' Master, all these things I have observed from my youth.' And Jesus, looking on him, loved him, and said to him : 'One thing is wanting unto thee; go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven ; and come, follow Me ! ' Who, being struck sad at that saying, went away sorrow- ful, for he had great possessions. " * In St. Matthew's narrative of the same incident, our Lord says to the young man : " If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell what thou hast, . . . and come, follow Me." f This, then, is the " perfect way " of evangelical poverty and self-sacrifice to which Christ invites heroic souls, holding out to them, after death, the " life everlasting," the mighty "treasure in heaven," which is to compensate for all that the most heroic can renounce and undergo in this life. Hence the pregnant sequel in the next verses. "And Peter began to say unto Him: 'Behold, we *St. Mark, x, 17-30. T St. Matthew, six, 21. KOVISSIMA. 15 have left all things, and have followed Thee/ Jesus answering, said : 'Amen, I say to yon, there is no man who hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands for My sake and for the Gospel who shall not receive an hundred times as much, now in this time; houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come life everlasting.' " The rich young man of the Gospel, frightened by the thought of all he should have to give up to follow the Master into the narrow way, turned back sad and "sorrowful" from his quest. He could not, then at least, in spite of his earnest desire of attain- ing to the life without end, renounce all the good things of the present. If he could have seriously reflected on the eternal possession of that " treasure in heaven/' how paltry had appeared to him the price demanded! But the little band among whom Peter was spokes- man had given up their all at Christ's first call to follow Him. And now, when the young man had gone his way, and they are assured of the "persecu- tions " that await them in the future, their heroism is still further tested by the prophecy of Christ's near crucifixion. It is not perfect renouncement only, or perfect self-denial, which is demanded of those who follow Him in the better way, but self-sacrifice and self- crucifixion. Oh, what hosts of those noble men and women, all through both hemispheres, rise up before our mind's eye, ever toiling, like their Master and Model, to make earth the foretaste of 16 tfOVISSIMA. heaven, and the children of man the true children of God! "Olives beloved wherein once mine did live, Thinking your thoughts, and walking in your ways, On your dear presence pasturing all my days, In pleasantness and peace ; whose moods did give The measure to my own! how vainly strive Poor fancy's fingers, numbed by time, to raise The veil of woven years, that from my gaze To hide what now you are doth still contrive!" What hosts of these, the glory and the crown of our humanity, have gone to their rest and their reward; other legions, more numerous still, filling up the void in their blessed ranks, and continuing to sow this earth of ours with the seed of all divine virtues ! Have these — have all who, since this world came into existence, devoted and sacrificed their lives to the good of others, prompted by the instincts and the hope of their immortality — have they been fol- lowing only the light of a " will-o'-the-wisp," which went out in utter and eternal darkness on the grave ? No! On the contrary. In presence of these " clouds of witnesses" to the nobleness of self- renouncement, and the divinity of self-sacrifice — wit- nesses whose shining ranks stretch back to Calvary and beyond it — we solemnly profess our belief that charity, the heaven-born love of God, and the self- devoting, self-denying, self-sacrifidlig love of the brotherhood, shall have its exceeding great reward beyond the grave. Our soul may be filled with grief and anxiety when, in the midst of a Christian society, whose moral laws and loftiest virtues all repose on the belief in the souPs immortality, and in the eternity KOVISSIMA. 17 of rewards and punishments for deeds done in the flesh, false teachers' voices, like notes of discord in the divinest of harmonies, are heard denying the existence of the life to come. THE MASTER'S ANSWER TO THE QUESTION. We, who cling with mind and heart to Christ our Master, as Ave do to the certainty of our own exist- ence ; we, who mourn for the dear ones sent before us, and see ourselves brought near the end of our pilgrimage — we must not allow materialistic or anti-Christian doubts to trouble the serenity of the evening of life, or to cloud the eye of our soul as it looks upward to the everlasting hills. We must place ourselves in spirit at the feet of the Master and drink in His dear w orcls : " Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God: believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions. If it ivere not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and will take you to Myself; that where I am you also may be." * We know, then, "where our departed go." Not in vain do we place all our trust in Him who alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Even on this side of the grave, and while the cold mists of earth fall thick and chilling around our path, we feel that "this is eternal life to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." f The firm faith of the present is only the prelude and the pledge of the clear knowledge of the future. We know that He, who is the Way, hath gone before us, * St. John, xiv, 1, 2, 3. t St. John, xvii, 3. 18 NOVISSIMA. and taken possession of the Father's house with its many mansions, of the land of the living with its vast empire and its unfading glories. We know that those who, either yesterday or long ago, parted with us on the road, and died believing in Him, trusting in His promises, and loving Him with the last pulsation of their hearts, are ivith Him. "Where they rejoice to be, There is the land for me ; Fly time, fly speedily ; Come life and light ! CHAPTER II. WITH CHRIST. My feet are wearied and my hands are tired, My soul oppressed ; And with desire have I long desired Rest— only Rest. — Ryan. To the half-believing multitude, weary of bootless toil, weighed down by oppression and care, despair- ing Of seeing wrong righted, or the earth yielding to their sweat even a sufficiency, death, the seeming end of all things, might be looked forward to and welcomed for the rest it brings to hand, and head, and heart. And there are many, very many, among the wealthy, the fortunate, and the great, to whom life, with all its advantages, is so full of bitterness, so intolerable a burthen, that they long to be at rest in the grave. NOVISSIMA. . 19 THE REST FOR WHICH THE CHRISTIAN YEARNS. But, the true Christian, whether the poorest peas- ant, the most ill-requited laborer, or the man or woman placed- in the highest position, and conscious of the heaviest responsibility, the rest which comes with the end of. present toil and care, is not the mere cessation from labor, nor the mere relief from sorrow and trouble. It is, above all things, for pure and lofty souls the release from all the moral dangers^from the fear of temptation and sin, from the terrors of the judgment following speedily after death, and from the uncer-: tainty of one's eternal fate. For the man or the woman who look their last upon earth, who have kept the faith, fought the good fight, and been true to the God of their salvation, the Judge has comforts in store for the last hour, and sweet sentiments of filial trust, enabling the departing soul to look for- ward to meeting, on the frontier of His kingdom, with the Creator, the Father, the Saviour, in whose hand is peace, and rest, and length of days. We know in whom we believe, in whom we trust, and whom we serve, we strive to live, to labor, to suffer for Him here; we make His will our own. Is it not from His lips we shall hear : " Well done, thou good and faithful servant ! . . . Enter into the joy of thy Lord!" Our rest is to be with Christ, to be with Him everlastingly, in the joys of His most glorious and most blissful existence. Who has ever thought out fully and explained to the world what it is to be with Christ in His king- dom — to be with Him everlastingly f This companionship and union is the supernatural 20 KOVISSiMA. destiny for which man was created and redeemed. It is the end of all God's providence and govern- ment here below. It is to secure this companion- ship, this union with Christ, and with the glorious society of angels and saints, forming one moral person with Him, that God disposes all things, counting on man's free co-operation with His grace. THE DESTINY FOR WHICH MAX WAS CREATED. To be with Christ, with God everlastingly, is our destiny. The following chapters will set forth the meaning of these words, and tell the reader some- thing of the mighty and blissful reality. In this present chapter, Ave would fain have you meditate with us how that same Eternal Word and Wisdom by whom God created all things and through whom He disposeth all tilings in conformity with that sublime end, wished by tiie Incarnation to be "God with us" upon earth, in order to teach us to be worthy of being ourselves, as it were, God's, the adopted sons of God, with Him eternally in Heaven. I. GOD WITH US. What was that near and sensible presence, that familiar, almost, and friendly intercourse, with which God honored Moses all through the course of the latter's long mission and arduous labors of free- ing and guiding God's p'eople toward the Promised Land? The interpreters of Holy Writ have seen in the Angel-Jehovah, through whose ministry the KOVISSIMA. 21 miracles were performed in Egypt, the Law de- livered on the Mount, and the constitutions of the Twelve Confederated Tribes were framed, the Person of the Eternal Word thus veiling His Majesty under the appearance of an angel and pre- luding the Incarnation. Be that as it may, and whether it be really Jehovah Himself who spoke directly to the Hebrew deliverer, or an angel com- missioned to speak in His name and act with His power and authority, Moses, so far as we can judge, reverenced and worshiped the Speaker, Revealer, and Guide as very God. The nearness to that veiled Majesty, from the day when the vision appeared amid the burning bush to Mount Sinai, with its alternate scenes of abject terror and insolent idol-worship, produced in Moses not only resistless yearning to see, without cloud or veil, the divine Being who spoke to him, but also unbounded love for God's people. AYhen the idolaters have been signally punished for their sin, this love of charity for the people breaks forth in the touching prayer: te /I beseech Thee, this people hath sinned a heinous sin, and they have made themselves gods of gold. Either forgive this trespass, or, if Thou do not, strike me out of the book which Thou hast written.' And the Lord answered him : ( He that hath sinned against Me, him will I strike out of My book ; but go thou and lead this people whither I have told thee ; My angel shall go before thee.' ; ' * Here it is plainly intimated that it is the Lord of Angels Himself who has been the Revealer ; that He it is against whom, while in communication * Exodus, xxxii, 31-34. 22 KOVISSIMA. with Moses on the near mountain-top, the sin of idolatry was committed. He is unwilling further to continue this nearness to "a stiff-necked people. " "And Moses said to the Lord : ' Thou commandest me to lead forth this people, and Thou dost not let me know whom Thou wilt send with me, especially whereas Thou hast said : " I know thee by name, and thou hast found favor in My sight." If, therefore, I have found favor in Thy sight, show me Thy face, that I may know Thee, and may find grace before Thy eyes. Look upon Thy people, this nation.' "And the Lord said: 'My face shall go before thee, and I will give thee rest.' And Moses said : 'If Thou Thyself dost not go before, bring us not out of this place. For how shall we be able to know, I and Thy people, that we have found grace in Thy sight unless Thou walk with us, that we may be glorified by all the people that dwell upon the earth ? ? " * Then follows the ardent request that the Godhead should unveil Himself to Moses, and the answer, " I will show thee all good" So, as we see in this pregnant prophetic passage, the Hebrew leader would not be satisfied to have, in the fulfillment of his mission, the assurance that God would be with them by His presence in power, by the terror of His mighty as shown in Egypt, and signified by the words, " My face shall go before thee." He wanted an indwelling of the Godhead with His people ; He was to " walk with them ; " * Exodus, xxxiii, 12-16. KOVISSIMA. 23 He whose being is " all good," the infinite truth and the infinite perfection and loveliness, must be in their midst as their very own to satisfy the craving of the true of heart and noble of soul among them. WE YEARN TO BEHOLD GOD FACE TO FACE. Moses spoke the yearning of the human soul enlightened by faith and undismayed by conscious sin: " Shew me Thy glory! " But the privilege of beholding in its essence the unveiled and awful majesty of God is one reserved to the supernatural perfection of man in the life to come. Neither our bodily eyes in this mortal state, nor the eyes of our soul can look upon the divine Being as He is in Himself. To be raised to tfie divine condition and endowed with the almost divine powers fitting us for the Beatific Vision, is the reward of our present merits through His grace, who is the Author, Repairer, and Perfecter of our nature. Listen then to what the Hebrew lawgiver relates of the manner in which God fulfilled, in a certain measure, the ardent prayer of His servant : a And when the Lord was come down in a cloud, Moses stood with Him, calling upon the name of the Lord. And when He passed before him, he said, 'O Lord! the Lord God! merciful and gracious, patient and of much compassion, and true; who keepest mercy unto thousands; who takest away iniquity, and wickedness, and sin; and no man of himself is innocent before Thee.' . . . And Moses, making haste, bowed down prostrate upon the earth, and adoring." * * Exodus, xxxiv, 5-8. 24 KOVISSIMA. OUR EMMANUEL- Aye, we can only look upon the Sun of Right- eousness, as through a cloud, with these bodily and unhallowed eyes of ours. We may feel that He is near us j that He comes as He did in the Tabernacle of Moses, or in the Temple of Solomon, veiled in a cloud to dwell with us and be our Emmanuel. He is " God with us," our Helper, our Healer, merciful, patient, compassionate of our sufferings and misery, taking away iniquity and sin; true to us in His promises, and true in His teachings, our faithful and infallible Guide. All this He is while "walking with us in the way," and abiding as our Guest in our tabernacles. But what shall it be, when the journey is over, and He takes us to Himself, to be where He is, with Himself inseparably and eternally? FORESHADOWING. This is the sweet mystery of the life to come, the shoreless ocean of light, of truth supernal, of heavenly bliss, whose abysses we have to explore in these chapters — as a son and heir after long wander- ing from the glorious patrimony and the splendid halls of his ancestors is allowed by night to enter stealthily, and to be led by some devoted old servant through every portion of the noble mansion which is one day to be his own. He can only pass through rapidly, fearfully; for he is but the unreconciled, unacknowledged prodigal ; while outside the regal home all is shrouded in the darkness of night. Even so may we in spirit, guided by the light of the divine oracles, and directed by the teaching of the Church, soar above those heights, descend into those NOVISSIMA. 25 depths, wnere all is so radiant with the divinest hope, so well defined in every detail by the Spirit of God. But, in studying what light and what warmth the near Presence of God in the Old Law shed upon His people, upon His chosen servants, and those who sought Him with their whole heart, we are led necessarily to the very feet of the Incarnate God in the New Law, to that Home in Nazareth, where He abode as the Carpenter's Son during thirty years of His life among us. THE WORK OUR EMMANUEL DID AMONG US. Surely, the Only-Begotten Son, in coming down among us, came also " in a cloud;" and while He dwelt among us, He busied Himself in taking away iniquity and sin. The saintly precursor, whose light was only the forerunner of our Day-Star, said of Him, as he pointed Him out to the multitudes at the Jordan : " Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world ! " Not merely did He busy Himself with paying the ransom of our sins, and expiating our guilt, but He, the merciful, the compassionate, and the true, ap- plied Himself to repairing the consequences of sin. More than that. He sought to banish from our hearts and our lives the fruitful causes of sin — pride, vanity, sensuality, the lust of pleasure, and the lust of gold. He sought to kindle in our souls the fire of divinest generosity, by filling them with the supernatural love of His Father and Himself, as well as with the love of the human brotherhood as the inseparable fruit of the love of the Father. His grace — that is, the influence of His teaching and example, aided by special inspirations enlightening 26 NOVISSIMA. our mind and a corresponding impulse to the heart — tends to make us practice toward God and our brethren the humility which He practiced by em- bracing ignominy, shame, and suffering, in order to glorify God and save the world. He lived among us in obscurity, poverty, toil and persecution, and died crowned with thorns and nailed to a cross between malefactors, that we might learn the secret of His hidden wisdom, which chooses the w T eakest instruments to accomplish the mightiest purposes; vanquishes sin, death and hell by the shame of the cross; lifts man to heaven, and enables him to sanctify and lift up the world with himself by self-denial and self-sacrifice. THE VIRTUE THAT WENT OUT OF HIM. See how all who were nearest and dearest to our Emmanuel learned this lesson of a wisdom all hidden and divine, from the influence of His grace, the reading of His life, the light which escaped from within the cloud, and the secret fire which the near- ness of that mighty Heart kindled in theirs. Of Joseph's death we know nothing from the Gospels. But we may guess the rest, from the generosity dis- played, at the divine command, in silencing his own scruples, * in flying into exile at a moment's warn- ing with Mother and Babe, in abiding there amid dangers, poverty, and obscurity till warned to return, and then returning forthwith to face new clangers, new persecutions, hardship and obloquy, in fulfill- ment of the divine trust. Such a man showed that the Holy Ghost had taught him to " esteem the * St. Matthew, i, 19-24. KOVISSIMA. 2? reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasure of the Egyptians." * He, had he been among the living, would have stood with the Blessed Mother and St. John be- neath the wood which bore our Ransom, as His shame and suffering paid the price of all our pride and sensuality. But by following Him to the cross she, as well as the holy women who had been in Galilee the companions of her ministrations to Christ, showed how they had "learned Christ." So did John; and so, in a different measure, did presently the other Apostles and Disciples. Who could enable men to "learn Christ, and Christ Cru- cified," but the Spirit of Christ? After the Ascension that Spirit will be poured down on Apostles and Disciples, and divine gener- osity, manifesting itself in self-denial and self-sacri- fice, in glorying in the cross, and in being crucified for the love and the name of Christ, will be like the rush of inundating waters, flooding the whole earth. Such was the first result of Christ's stay upon earth; such fruits followed the first hidden hus- bandry of our Emmanuel, working silently, obscurely upon the minds, the hearts, the lives of men and women around them at Nazareth, at Bethlehem, in Jerusalem, in Samaria, among the "hundred towns of Galilee," and even in Egypt, where the stay of the divine Babe, like the central heat of the earth, when winter has passed with her thick overlying snows, covers hill and plain with verdure and bloom, burst later into the glories of Alexandria and the Thebaid. * Hebrews, xi, 26. 28 XOVISSIMA. To Joseph and Mary; to Elizabeth and Zachary; to John the Baptist; to holy Simeon and Anna; to the shepherds of Bethlehem, as they worshiped at His crib; to the Apostles attracted to His Person by the spell of a hidden magnetism, as to the multi- tudes who flocked to hear Him around Genesareth, and followed Him across the lake and into the wil- derness; to the crowds of the afflicted, the suffering, the sick, and the maimed, " a virtue went out of Him," healing, creating anew, enlightening the mind, puri- fying the heart and firing it, exalting and sanctifying the whole nature of man. The unborn babe felt that virtue as the hidden God was borne across his parent's threshold. The mothers of both precursor and Redeemer are filled with His Spirit, and pour forth their soul in adoration, praise and prophecy, when their Emmanuel brings them for the first time together. THE CLOUD LIFTED A MOMENT MAKES EAETH HE A VEX. When, on the Mount of Transfiguration, He allows some of the hidden glory to shine forth and irradiate the body about to be spit upon, scourged, and crucified, as the hill-top on which He thus appeared was suddenly changed into heaven, Peter, in the name of his two companions, could only exclaim in the excess of his rapture : " Lord, it is good to be here ! " And he would fain have pitched his tent and fixed his abode forever amid these splendors and the intoxicating spiritual delights of this new Presence. It was a foretaste of heaven, so to be with Christ. NOVISSIMA. -29 But, oh, the difference between the glory and delight of Tabor and the clear vision and bliss of Paradise ! Only that once did our Emmanuel treat those who were to promulgate His law to the nations and be His witnesses to the ends of the earth as He had treated Moses in the passage quoted above. Moses and Elias were both there to bear their testi- mony to His divinity. Thus did the Old Testament affirm the divinity of the New — the Law and the Prophets point to Christ as the fulfillment of all. Moses could only gaze upon the cloud which con- cealed the inaccessible brightness of the divine Majesty, or, when the Vision had passed from before the place Avhere he was hidden in the rock, catch a glimpse of the vanishing glory, as one can bear to look at the western horizon, on the fiery radiance which the just sinking sun leaves upon earth and sky. But Moses was privileged in the New Testa- ment to look upon the glorified face of Him who was very God in the flesh, Him on whose face we shall first look in Heaven ere the clear splendors of the Beatic Vision burst upon our sight. " In His light we shall see the Light" WALKING WITH US IX THE WAY. The secret but powerful and sweet action of our "hidden God and Saviour" on all to whom He drew near upon earth is well exemplified in what is related by St. Luke of the two Disciples journeying toward Emmaus on the day of our Lord's Resurrection. They were "talking together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that 30 * STOVISSIMA. while they talked and reasoned with themselves, Jesus Himself also drawing near went with them. But their eyes were held that they should not know Him." * Their minds, their hearts, were full of Him. Their faith, as yet, was only in its germinal state, like the bud on the fruit tree in early spring, ready to burst its enclosure, but fearing the nipping frost. He sets about teaching them, laying before them the entire scheme of Redemption and enlightening their eyes to perceive the necessary completion of the divine whole in the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our Emmanuel had " walked with them" the remainder of the way. The spell of His presence and word was on them. They could not bear to part with such a Teacher and Comforter. "Stay with us, because it is toward evening, and the day is now far spent." He yields, enters their present abode, seats Him- self at their table, "took bread, and blessed and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew Him, and He vanished out of their sight. And they said one to the other: 'Was not our heart burning within us, whilst He spoke in the way, and opened to us the Scriptures ? ? "And rising up the same hour, they went back to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven gathered to- gether, and those that were with them, saying : ' The Lord is risen, indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.' And they (the two Disciples) told what things were done in the way; and how they knew Him in the breaking of bread. Now, while they were speaking these things, Jesus stood in the midst of them, and saith to them : 'Peace be to you. It is I. Fear not.' *St. Luke, xxiv, H-16. NOVISSIMA. 31 u But they "being troubled and frighted, supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them: 'Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See My hands and feet, that it is Myself; handle, and see : for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see Me to have/ And when He said this, He showed them His hands and feet." * O Adonai, Emmanuel — Thou sweet Son of the Virgin Mary, Thou who condescendest to become bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh — how we still need that Thou shouldst be what Thou art indeed — God very near and dear to us — the God of our heart! WE KNOW HIM IN "THE BREAKING OF THE Even now, when our hearts are troubled "in the way," as we journey painfully along amid the pit- falls of the road, and the mists and darkness that beset our path, how we need that Thou shouldst " draw T near and go with us ! " that thou shouldst open our minds to understand the things of God and His ways ! that Thou shouldst touch our hearts with one secret spark of the fire from above ! We need that Thou shouldst tarry with us when the shadows lengthen on our path " toward evening," and our day is far spent." Ah, tarry with us, and let us, too, " know Thee in the breaking of Bread." O Bread of Life, come down from heaven; how many have seen every cloud of doubt vanish as they sate at that Table with Thee, where Thou blessest, breakest, and givest Thy supersubstantial Bread ; " and Thy gift is like fire from heaven laid on their * St. Luke, xxiv, 30-40. 32 KOTISSIMA. hearts to warm, to comfort, to strengthen, to inflame ! The two Disciples, when they had partaken of this Bread, and felt the sensible Presence withdrawn, at once followed the prompting of the divine charity which filled them. They return to impart to the eleven and the Disciples in Jerusalem the knowledge of His Resurrection, only to learn from them that Simon Peter had seen Him. And then they relate their own wonderful experience. But while the little band are thus rejoicing and talking about Him, lo ! there He is in their midst ! Poor human nature! They are all burning with the desire to look upon His face; to hear the sounds of His loved voice; to fall at the feet so cruelly pierced for them on the cross ; to feel the forgiving touch of these hands so often raised over themselves in blessing! And when He stands before them — not dazzling them with the glories of His risen body, but, as ever, veiling even the human majesty of His person — they think they " see a spirit," and are all trouble and fright ! Poor human nature ! pitiable alike in its weakness and in its presumption ! There are those among us who think that they could bear the sight of God's own native brightness and majesty, as He sees and knows Himself; and that their unaided power of intellect could contemplate, grasp and fathom "the multitude of His greatness;" measure from end to end the Infinite in every line of those manifold per- fections, which, by their very nature, exclude all limit and measure; and yet they are frightened by the mere thought of seeing a poor human disem- bodied spirit — a ghost ! He has proved Himself to be very God by announcing beforehand to these same men that He stovissima. 33 would be put to death shamefully and rise the third day by His own divine power. This miracle of miracles is now accomplished. They behold Him in flesh and blood ; and though Simon has thus seen Him and attested the fact to the other Apostles, and though the two Disciples who have just spoken attest a similar experience, they suppose that the risen Christ is only a spirit ! But that risen Body which He invites them to touch and feel is the pledge and prophecy of their own resurrection. The God-Man who, once freed from the grave, hastens to show Himself to them, to make them touch and feel these yawning wounds in hands and feet, is He in the light of whose counte- nance we shall see the essence of the Deity without cloud or veil in the life to come. Then it is we shall understand what it must be to be with Christ when the infirmities of our present state shall have passed away, when we shall look upon His countenance on the throne of His king- dom without " trouble or fright/' and when the glories of that face divine will prepare us for the Beatific Vision. The best of us while " on the way," the most enlightened in human and divine knowledge, are not without uneasiness, doubt, and sinking of the heart when we look beyond the horizon of the present existence, and endeavor to penetrate beyond the dark and deep gulf which death opens beneath our feet. We need to take up the divine Book, to medi- tate His battle with suffering and agony, to read of His arising immortal from the grave, of the love which made Him hasten to reveal Himself to His own. We feel that it is to reassure us in our half- 34 NOVISSIMA. belief, in our hesitation between His remembered promises and the scoffing and skepticism of the anti- Christian world, that He stands all of a sudden in the midst of the Disciples, with the greeting: " Peace be with you. It is I. Fear not ! " CHAPTER III OF THE WAY n. TO BE DISSOLVED AND BE WITH CHRIST' Dear Friend, far off, my lost desire, So far, so near in woe and weal; loved the most, when most I feel There is a lower and a higher ; Known and unknown, human, divine ; Sweet human hand and lip and eye ; Dear heavenly Friend, that canst not die, Mine, mine forever, ever mine ! — Tennyson. Paul was not, as we know, one of the eleven, or one even of the Disciples gathered " for fear of the Jews " in the upper chamber on that memorable evening of Christ's Resurrection. He was not privi- leged to be near the person of our Emmanuel either before His crucifixion or before His ascension. He was during the first stage of their apostolic preach- ing their bitter antagonist, the declared enemy of Christ. And then came the miracle of his conversion — that extraordinary scene on the road to Damascus, NOVISSIMA. 35 when the Crucified appeared to him, when the light from His glorified countenance flashed upon the per- secutor, overthrew him as with the suddenness of a thunderbolt, blinded him while opening up to the truth the eyes of his soul, and changed Saul into a chosen vessel of apostolic zeal. TRANSFORMED BY MEETING CHRIST ON THE AVAY. How utterly the convert gave himself up to the Master as an instrument to be used by the divine Hand for any and every purpose we also know. The blood of Stephen, which he had shed by the hands of others, was like a voice crying out from the ground whithersoever he turned, urging him to superhuman toils in the service of the cause he had once blasphemed. He had heard Stephen's dying words : " Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." * It became Saul's privilege while yet in the flesh, and in the very midst of his apostolic labors, to be carried by the Spirit of God up to the very portals of that heavenly kingdom, to look upon its splen- dors, and hear the language of its inhabitants. Kestored to earth and its labors, the Apostle ran his race as if his were the fire and strength and eloquence of a seraph. THE SERAPHIC FIRE OF THE APOSTLE. In his later epistles his love for our Lord, and for the Father who in Christ gave us all things desir- able for time and eternity, is like a fire which has long been secretly growing, growing till the flames burst forth into a mighty conflagration. The super- *Acts, vii, 55. 36 N0VISSI3IA. natural fire glows and burns in every page and line. When he speaks of that mystery of charity by which the Eternal Wisdom and Goodness planned our cre- ation and redemption, our sanctification here below and deification in the life to come, the great Apostle is beside himself. The vision of this loving and fatherly Providence, compelling all' things to con- spire towards our good, overwhelms this ardent soul. His language is full of breaks and reticences, as if hand and pen could not keep up with the torrent of thought and feeling. Read the first chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians to have some idea of the mighty forces which seemed to lift this Elias of the New Testament above the earth, and to be contin- ually carrying him heavenward, as in a vehicle of flame. oh! the uxseaechable eiches of cheist. "To me," he says, "the least of all the Saints, is given this grace to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to enlighten all men, that they may see what is the dispensation of the mystery which hath been hidden from eternity in God, who created all things ; that the manifold wisdom of God may be made known to the princi- palities and powers in the heavenly places through the Church, according to the eternal purpose which He made in Christ Jesus our Lord — in whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him. " Wherefore, I pray you not to faint at my tribu- lations for you, which is your glory. For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom all paternity in heaven and earth KOVISSIMA. 37 is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened by His Spirit with might unto the inward man ; that Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts; that, being rooted and founded in charity, you may be able to compre- hend, with all the Saints, what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth. ... To know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God." * WAITING AT THE GATES. All this was written from his prison in Rome, with the near prospect of a martyr's death before his eyes. The same sentiments, the same exultant love for Christ, and overflowing tenderness for the spirit- ual children left behind in Greece, Macedonia and Asia Minor, are manifest in the Epistle to the Philippians, written at the same time and from the same prison. He yearns for that heavenly compan- ionship with the Master, of which he had been vouchsafed a foretaste; he, too, would be at rest with that glorious company of the heavenly Jeru- salem. But the ravening wolves were abroad among the flock he had gathered to Christ, and how could he forsake them in their danger, even with the pros- pect of the near felicity ? " For to me, to live is Christ : and to die is gain. . . . I am strait- ened between two ; having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, a thing by far the better." f The yearning to be plunged into that abyss of brightness, of which he had only had a glimpse at the gates of Paradise ; the desire to be forever at rest at the feet of the Master on whose face he had : Ephesians, iii, 8-19. f Philippians, i, 21-23, 38 NOVISSMA. looked, half-blinded by the glory; the attraction toward that blissful company of angels and Saints, who had hailed him in advance as one of their own ; such were his preoccupations: how could he help preferring "to be dissolved, and to be with Christ?"-* "seek the things that are above." " If you be risen with Christ," he writes at the same time to the Christians of Colossac, " seek the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God : mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth. For you are dead; and } r our life is hid with Christ in God." * WHAT "DISSOLUTION" MEANS FOE THE CHRISTIAN. We are, therefore, brought in spirit to consider, with infinite reverence and awe, what it is "to be dissolved and to be with Christ ; " and thus to be " able to comprehend, with all the Saints, what is the breadth and length, and height and depth," of the glory and felicity which this everlasting companion- ship bestows. " To be dissolved," to be separated temporarily from this body, from the manifold ties which bind even the lowliest to this present life and its associa- tions, has no terrors for the soul who has lived, labored, and suifered for Christ, for whom God's will, in life and in death, has been the supreme law of love and duty. The perfect charity which makes the true Christian look up to the divine honor and glory as the aim of every deed and aspiration, to the divine pleasure as the source of every satisfaction and enjoyment, is only the preparation for that * Colossians, iii, 1-3. NOVISSTMA. 39 better, that perfect state, in which God is to fulfill to the utmost the purest aspirations, the holiest desires, of His faithful servant's will. Death, then — the " dissolution " which fills the sinful, the worldly, the slave to self-will, with uncon- trollable fear and agony — is bereft of all terrors for such as die in perfect charity with Christ ; a charity which also implies the supernatural love of all man- kind, and the ardent wish to satisfy all the claims of divine and human justice. To the mind's eye of him who writes this page a twofold instance of this heaven-sent charity is now vividly present — the one taken from the lowliest walks of life, the other from the very highest. HOW THE POOR OF CHRIST DIE. It is July in Canada, in the memorable year 1847. We are at the Quarantine Station, some thirty miles below Quebec. On a little island (" Grosse Isle "), midway in the St. Lawrence, where it turns seaward and broadens out into the dimensions of a lake beneath the capes of the northern mountains, are several thousands of the fever-stricken exiles of Ire- land, who have vainly fled from famine in their own native country, or been improvidently and cruelly heaped by the poor-house authorities in yonder emi- grant ships. Of these, between twenty and thirty are riding at anchor on the fiery bosom of the broad brackish stream, with many thousands more of the dying, the sick, the famishing, and the vainly ex- pectant, strong of limb and stout of heart. There is not hospital accommodation on the barren, unin- habited island for one-fifth of the diseased multi- tude. There is not a single spring of fresh and 40 xovissnrA. wholesome water there for the fevered wretches, who roam about among the rocks, with the ther- mometer above 90 °, in quest of a cool, refreshing draught. After a long day's labor, on ship and shore, the three priests who had come, in their turn, to minis- ter to the sick and dying, had lain down for a few hours of needed repose, when the sound of voices beneath our window awakened one, at least, of the the three — the only one whom these poor exiles could claim for their countryman. Our servant was warmly expostulating with a woman ^ho was as warmly pleading to see " the priest." " Sure, I know it's half-dead they must be, the darlin' gintlemin, every one of thim. But my poor boy is tuk very sudden intirely, and he won't give me any pace till I bring him the priest. An' it's meself is not much better, God help me, with the faver, and the thurst, and the grief that is breaking my heart. For I have buried three of thim since we left Cork. And he is the only wan I have now; glory be to God." And the voice sank into a low and pitiful wail. By this time the clergyman had come out into the sultry midnight air; and at his sight the poor mother poured forth a hymn of thanksgiving to God in that fervent, figurative, and eloquent language which wells so naturally from Irish lips up from the warm depths of the Irish heart. The woman was scarcely able to stand. The servant, who was him- self a devotod man, and had come to the place from no mercenary motive, brought her out a refreshing and invigorating draught, together with some whole- some food wrapped in a paper. XOVISSIMA. 41 She summoned all her remaining strength to guide the missionary to where she had left her dying son, still venting her gratitude in bursts of fervent thanksgiving to God and His minister. Happily, some of the hospital nurses who had directed the poor creature to the priest's house, met us as we blundered forward in the darkness, and half-sup- ported, half-carried her to where her son was. He had found no place in tent or hospital when landed with his mother on the island during the afternoon, and, like hundreds of others, had dragged himself down to the beach, hoping to slake his intense thirst in the brackish waters. He had drunk copiously of them, and they had fearfully increased both the dysentery, from which he was suffering, and the malignant ship-fever, which had only half-declared itself at his landing. Some of their fellow-immigrants, compassionating both mother and son, had found them a shady nook among the rocks, and beneath the shelter of some scrubby, overhanging firs. There, lying on a bundle of clothes, or bedding — the only remnant saved by the poor widow from the wreck of her home — lay a youth of twenty summers, a Tipperary boy, and no unworthy specimen of a noble race of men. The priest lost no time in doing his holy work with the dying man; for dying he was, with such fearful suddenness and rapidity did the malignant fever, complicated as it was with dysentery, the heat of the climate, and the absence of all proper dietary and medical treatment, carry off its victims. The boy was already half-delirious. But a draught from the cool and stimulating beverage brought by the clergy- man restored the sufferer to momentary conscious- 42 Kovissima. ness and vigor. He had been well brought up by parents who had known better fortunes ; and all the piety of a pure soul and a generous nature burst forth at the sight of the priest and the near prospect of death. His only care in dying was about his poor, lonely, widowed mother. But when the priest promised him that she should not be friendless, all his thoughts were for God. " I have seen so many die on ship-board, your Reverence/ 7 he said, " without priest or Sacraments, that I bless God from the bottom of my heart for having sent you to me." He had been to confession and Communion, as well as his mother, before setting sail. They had lived ever since in the near presence of death, of God, and of judgment, keeping their souls from sin. In the Viaticum given that night beneath the stars, with the tide-water of the great river beating on the rocks near at hand, and the guardian-angels of the Irish race kneeling invisibly around, He who was born in a cave by the wayside, and laid on the straw of a poor cold crib, came to be, to the young exile from far-away Tipperary, the pledge of the eternal possession. Oh, never did the divine Sacraments and consola- tions of the Christian faith appear more sublime or more comforting than amid all the horrors and deso- lation of Grosse Isle ! going home! " Sure, God has been good to us, acushla ma chree," she said, as she sate her down by her boy's side, when the last rite was ended, and the last blessing given, and had taken the weary, aching head on her lap. "Sure 'tis Himself has come for you, KovissimA. 43 asthore, to take you to Himself. It's in His own blessed heaven you'll soon be, avourneen ; and I'll not be long behind, plase God. For it's tired I am of this world, an' I'm longin' to be with God, an' with your father and the childher." And she fondly kissed the face turned up to her in the faint light of our lantern. The missionary, on his return to his cottage, sent back with one of the sick-nurses a warm shawl to protect the widow and her son from the heavy night dew, and some cooling drink for them. The next morning, as soon as he could, he hastened to the spot where he had left them, resolved to find them as speedily as possible a shelter from the burning sun. The boy was already dead, and some of the other able-bodied immigrants were with the discon- solate mother, offering whatever comfort and aid they could in their utter helplessness. She still sat with her back against the rock, as we had left her some six or seven hours previously, supporting the head of her son on her lap, and talking to him in a low, sweet voice, as if she beheld him in the better world. When she became aware of the priest's presence, she looked up at him with hollow, tearless eyes, but with a rapt expression, and a countenance that seemed touched with a light from beyond the grave. "Ah, then, ye're welcome, your Reverence," she said. " He's at home now, thank God. Yes, asthore ma chree, it's at home you are at last; and the priest's blessing was on you when you were near the end," she went on, looking down fondly on the calm young face of him who seemed to sleep so sweetly on the maternal bosom* 44 HOVISSIMA. (i Och, then, it's better for you to be with God, alanna, than to be thryin' to build up a cabin for the ould mother among strangers, far away from your own and from blessed Ireland. God '11 soon bring me to where you're all gone before me." And, as she spoke, the words fell from her lips one by one, wearily, almost inaudibly at the last. The missionary, deeply moved, and trying to steel himself against emotions, which took away much of the strength he needed, spoke to the bereaved mother as tenderly as he could. But she heard him not. She had fainted. When she recovered consciousness, it was evident that the strength of maternal love, which had till then kept her up, was giving way to the terrible fever. The change from ship-board to the open air, and the fever-laden atmosphere of the island, with a day and night of exposure, had fear- fully developed the germs of the disease in her system. The missionary had her carried to the little chapel near his cottage ; it had been changed into an hospi- tal. He managed — the interior being already filled — to place a cot for the now delirious and unconscious mother on the shady side of the chapel, where kind hands would minister to her. Why delay the reader ? Before sunset that even- ing the dead body of her tall, handsome son was laid with those of more than a hundred other victims in one common grave, and the Church's Requiem, the sublime and beautiful prayers for eternal rest and the surpassing peace of that other world, w^as said above these remains with such a feeling of holy ex- ultation as the priests in the catacombs laid to rest the bodies of the early martyrs. For he who writes NovissimA. 45 these words attests before heaven and earth that the sufferers to whom he ministered on that island appeared to him confessors and martyrs of the faith, men and women whose supreme care was to keep their souls from sin in the perpetual expectation of death and judgment. A day or two afterward, the poor widow from Tipperary breathed her last. In her own beautiful and most truthful language, she " went home " — to that home where every holy thought and aim, every holy word and deed, every pang of body and spirit borne for His love, who remembers all, has its unspeakably great reward. " Let my soul die the death of the just, and my last end be like to them ! " * SPAIN'S MO ST GLORIOUS SON. HOW CHRISTIAN KINGS DIE. We have seen how, among a deeply-religious people, death is considered only to be the end of the road that leads to the everlasting home, the close of our earthly pilgrimage, the secure rest provided after faithful labor and long waiting at the feet, in the bosom, and in the house of our Father and Creator. The very expression, "going home," and the simple, heaven-sent faith underlying it, are familiar senti- ments and language among a whole people long and much tried for their religion, and to whom that religion, with its promises, was the treasure supremely cherished. * Numbers, xxiii, 10. 46 xovissima. We have now to see how Christian kings know how to die the death of the Saints after having led a heroic and blameless life. In the Alcazar of Seville, the most beautiful relic of the domestic architecture of the Moors left in Spain after the Alhambra of Granada, the royal offi- cers in charge of the palace will show you through a succession of splendid courts and apartments, as well in the modern portion dating from the time of Ferdi- nand and Isabella as the more ancient mediaeval portion repaired and rebuilt by Pedro I. (surnamed, wrongly, the Cruel). We were not insensible to the exquisite artistic beauties abounding everywhere, nor ignorant of the legends — authentic and other- wise — attaching to these glittering marble courts and the historic apartments. For we had studied in Seville itself the history of its kings and its palaces. But the guides only related to ns the story of Don Pedro's terrible revenge or justice, or the anecdotes connecting Christopher Columbus with the modern portions of the pile. We remembered that the Alcazar had been the last dwelling place of the con- queror of Seville, St. Ferdinand, of Castile, and Leon, the twin-soul of his cousin, St. Louis, King of France, and one of the truest men and greatest Christians of all time. We told the chief guide that the memory of St. Ferdinand was dearer far to us than the misdeeds of the Arabs and Moors who had preceded him in Seville, than the crimes — imputed or real — of the degenerate descendants of the warrior-saint. We besought him to show us the apartments occupied by St. Ferdinand. Touched to the heart, evidently by our unusual demand, and the earnestness with which NOVISSIMA. 47 we urged it, he at once led us to the rooms which the traditions of the place point out as those occu- pied by Ferdinand. "This/ 7 the man said, "was his bed-chamber, and here he received the last Sacra- ments and died." We had already been privileged to kneel at his tomb in the neighboring cathedral, and to look leisurely on that face which corruption has not touched. We now knelt reverently on the spot where he breathed his last, lying in sackcloth and ashes on the marble floor. The reverence thus paid to the memory of those who have been Christ- like in life and death, is homage paid to Christ Him- self, who " is wonderful in His Saints." In the career of St. Ferdinand — from his boyhood so tenderly watched over and trained to all moral goodness and greatness by his heroic mother; from his early manhood, when she resigned in his favor, and placed on his head her own crown of Castile; all through his great undertakings and achievements for the redemption of Spain from the Moslem, and his fatherly enactments for the happiness of his people, to the conquest of Cordova, and Jaen, and Seville — there is enough of the real romance of war and chivalry, enough of the loftiest heroism in the deeds of the saintly king and his followers to furnish the matter of a dozen epic poems. The siege and fall of Seville alone surpasses in varied incident, and real grandeur of spirit and exploit, anything found in Homer or Virgil. Ferdinand, sick almost to death from the begin- ning to the end of this successful crusade against the Moors, was still the light and life of the enter- prise ; the wise and skillful commander of a great, proud and mixed host ; the ever-watchful and provi- 48 NOVISSIMA. dent ruler of his own kingdoms. In all, his army and his people knew him to be not only wise in council, indefatigable, skillful, un conquered in the field, but the unwearied man of prayer in his own privacy — the man of God in all tilings. Humane to the Mohammedans in their defeat, he respected their every right, save that of retaining possession of Spanish soil. Everything that a vic- torious prince could do to protect their property and persons, and to facilitate their passage to Africa or the neighboring Moslem States, St. Ferdinand did. For the peopling of the recovered principalities, and the regulation of their temporal and religious con- cerns, he took every measure that conscience and wisdom suggested. So intent w r as he on securing the success of this mighty undertaking, that he refused to leave his post of command to comfort his dying mother, whom he had so many reasons for revering and worshiping as he did. When Seville fell, the progress of the terri- ble disease which preyed upon him did not prevent him for a single day from pushing his conquests further, and securing them against all enemies, and from discharging every duty of the sovereign, the legislator, the Christian, and the man. ISTo king, all through the Christian ages, ever beheld around him so many heroic knights and soldiers ; so many men then and now reverenced as saints, as stood around Ferdinand III, of Castile, and Leon, on the day they returned thanks to the God of victories in the magnificent mosque of Seville, just consecrated as a Christian temple. And when Seville heard that her saintly king was near his death, never was death-bed surrounded NOVISSIMA. 49 by a throng as illustrious, or marked by more touch- ing circumstances— save only that of St. Louis, some years later, on the burning, plague-stricken shores of Northern Africa. When they told Ferdinand that his last day had come, the man whose life had been one long act of devotion to the divine glory, and self-sacrifice to the good of Spain and her people, only trembled lest he had left unfulfilled any one of the many duties attached to his high station and responsible office. From his constant intercourse with God in prayer, and the light which purity of heart and life had drawn on his soul, he only derived a deeper sense of humility; of the distance which separates the creat- ure from the Creator; the poor earthly servant from the infinite majesty of the heavenly Master; the sinner, conscious only of his failings, shortcomings, and guilt, from the most holy Judge and Rewarder of all human actions. Eternity, with its unspeakable grandeur, its glory, and its bliss, seemed to the dying king, as the last waves of life brought him to the shore of God's empire, so far above all human merits, so out of proportion with our nature and our utmost needs and aspirations, that the thought of his own little- ness, unworthiness, sinfulness, overwhelmed him. He commanded that they should clothe his tortured frame in sackcloth, and, with a cord round his neck, as one deserving of the worst punishment, to be laid prostrate on the ashes strewn on the floor. With his queen, his sons, nobles, his prelates, and followers in battle, around him, he confessed himself a sinner, deserving only of the divine wrath, and then poured out his soul in appeals for mercy, and tender 50 STOVISSIMA. protestations of his love for God, and his absolute submission to the divine Will. While princes, prelates, nobles and warriors knelt and wept aloud — they who knew what a beautiful, a spotless, a glorious life was thus ending — they minis- tered to the king the last Sacraments and consola- tions of religion. The entire city, the whole of Christian Spain, watched, wept, prayed around that death-bed, around that palace. To every one of the sublime and touching prayers of the Church, appointed to be said around the death- bed of the Christian, the warrior-king answered in a firm voice with the assistants — with a firmer voice, indeed ; for the strongest there were moved beyond all power of self-control. It was as if beyond the veil, the hosts of angels and Saints appeared with the Judge Himself, so earnestly did each supplication ascend for the soul just arrived on the confines of the world unseen. "All ye holy Angels and Archangels! Pray for him ! "0, ye entire Choir of the Just, Pray for him ! ''All ye Patriarchs and Prophets, All ye Apostles and Evangelists, All ye Disciples of the Lord, All ye Innocents and Martyrs, Pray for him ! " We sinners, God ! beseech Thee to hear us ! That Thou do show him mercy, We beseech Thee to hear us I ." And then the startling injunction uttered by the Church, the Mother here below of Christ's children : " Go forth from this world, Christian soul, in the name of God, the Father Almighty, who created thee ; NOVISSIMA. 51 "In the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, who suffered for thee ; "In the name of the Holy Ghost, who was poured forth upon thee "May thy place this day be in the everlasting peace; "And thy dwelling in the Holy Sion ! "May Christ deliver thee from all pain, who did Himself endure the. cross for thee! "May Christ deliver thee from the eternal death, who did Himself die for thee ! "May Christ, the Son of the living God, bring thee to the ever-green fields of His Paradise ; ' ' May that true Shepherd acknowledge thee there as one of His own flock ; ' ' May He absolve thee from all thy sins, and give thee a place at His right hand among His own elect. " May'st thou see thy Redeemer face to face, and, being ever by His side, mayest thou, with blissful eyes, contemplate the truth in its clearness. "And thus, having become a member of the countless hosts of the blessed, mayest thou enjoy for ever and ever the sweet- ness of beholding the Godhead ! ' ' So, at the gates of heaven, did the companions in arms of one who had ail his life battled in the cause of Christ, plead to the Most Holy and Most Just for the departing soul of a Saint ! So mighty is the empire into which we pass through the vale of the shadow of death! So per- fect is the purity without which none find entrance there ! So great is the glory, so unspeakable the bliss, so vast and shining the hosts of blessed angels and blessed men reigning there with Christ! And so, with the deepest humility, and the most loving trust in the God of his salvation, passed from this world the spirit of Ferdinand, of Castile, amid the tears and prayers of a nation, praised, blessed, and mourned by all Christendom. Is he higher in heaven than the gentle, suffering, faithful and pure-minded mother whose death we 52 NOVISSIMA. related above? It were vain and presumptuous to inquire. Both are with Christ in God, inseparably, eternally. What destiny can be compared to theirs ? Let us follow them in spirit beyond the Veil, and fathom leisurely the meaning of this great comfort- ing truth — that God is the reward of the children of God. CHAPTER IV. WITH CHRIST. AT THE FOUNT OF LIFE THE KEALIZATION. Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on ! The night. is dark, and I am far from home ! Lead Thou me on ! Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene — one step enough for me. — Cardinal Newman. THE TWOFOLD KNOWLEDGE CONSTITUTING ETEENAL LIFE. We can never meditate sufficiently the discourses and passing words of Him who, before the Incarna- tion, was "the true Light which enhghteneth every man that cometh into this world;"* and who, by His Incarnation, acquired, as it were, a new right to enlighten us, warm our souls into Godlike gener- osity, and lift our lives up to a divine level in all things. *St. John, i, 8. KOVISSIMA. 53 St. John, His own near kinsman according to the flesh, and the Disciple favored by His especial friend- ship, tells us in the same text * that " in Him [that is, in the divine Word from all eternity] was life, and the life was the light of men." At the end of His earthly labors, this heavenly Guide gave us, in His very last discourse, one truth among many, which discloses to us, when seriously pondered, un- derstood, and taken to heart, the whole secret of heavenly bliss : "This is eternal life: that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." f His passion was just about to begin, and every sentence and word here recorded of Him bears the stamp of a peculiar solemnity. There was a great fitness that He should forearm His Disciples — and through them forearm us — for the terrible struggle which the world wages against Christian truth and the Christian life. He, therefore, endeavors to fix their minds and hearts on the contemplation of the sublime end set before them. For nothing is so powerful to fire the souls of men, and animate them to the performance of the most heroic deeds, as the clear knowledge of a noble, a lofty, a most bene- ficial end to be reached. Hence it is that He sets before them clearly the one great purpose for which He had become Man, and for which He was now going to endure a shame- ful death : " This is life eternal : that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." * St. John, i, L t Ibidem, xvii, 3. 54 XOYISSniA. This is the life which they must win for them- selves by labors and a sacrifice like His own ; this is the life for the attainment of which they must teach the whole human race to labor and to suffer, sacri- ficing everything else, if need be, and deeming every lass a gain, if only the possession of life eternal be secured thereby. There is between this divine destiny set before the race, and Christ's last sacramental institution, a close and nevpr-to-be-forgotten connection. The Paschal Supper was followed by that Mystic Banquet in which the Eucharistic Bread and "Wine are substi- tuted for the sacrificial lamb commemorative of the Passover and the redemption from Egyptian slavery. But this Bread, by a miracle of almighty love, con- tains the Body of the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world ; and the Eucharistic Wine is the Blood about to be poured out on the cross in atonement of the sins of the entire human race. EEMIXDEE OF THE PEICE PAID AND THE INHERI- TANCE PUECHASED. The Oblation of this Bread and Wine is to be to the end of time, among all peoples, in every clime, the rite recalling the price paid for the life eternal, with its infinite treasures of glory and bliss. The banquet, in which this Bread is broken and this Wine partaken of daily all over the world, is to remind the believers in Christ and His promises that this supreme and abiding Gift of the God-Man to His own, and the divine Reality it contains, are the pledge of the eternal possession. It is u the mystery of faith " in which the believing soul NOVISSIMA. 55 grasps and holds beneath the sacramental veil Him whom we shall see face to face in the other life. The Bread here broken to us in God's house and at His table is the sign of the union by love and charity which binds together the souls of all God's true children on earth, and which will bind them everlastingly together in heaven. The Wine here poured forth is that blood which flows from the heart of Christ to the hearts of all His children — from the centre to the extremities of Christ's Body — warming us all into imitation of our Master, even as wine warms the strong man into attempting and executing superhuman deeds. Thus do the divine institutions and sacraments of earth foreshadow the ineffable union and charity of heaven, where God is to be all in all. Therefore was it that He who is the Author and Finisher of our faith, when He had given to His Apostles the supreme pledge of His love, commanding and empowering them to perpetuate it among men, He lifted His voice in prayer to the Father, and with lips all aflame with the two-fold charity of the God and the Man, declared : " This is eternal life : that they may know Thee, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." COMMUNION OF SAINTS ON EAETH AND IN HEAVEN. Let us ascend, therefore, from that earthly society of God's faithful servants, in which the sacramental Presence bequeathed to us as His last testament, is still the heart of the entire body, the centre and source of spiritual life, the sweet bond of communion between the living members; let us ascend to the glorious society of the City of God on high, where K ?tisstva. Christ thrones everlastingly in the midst of His redeemed, and of the angelic hosts v.ho are their brethren. There it is before its as St. Paul de- - it : •• You are conie to Mount Sion, and to the city : the liviDg God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and : company of many thousands of angels, and to the Church of the first-born, who are written in the heavens, and fcc God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Mediator of the New Testament, and to the sprink- ling of blood which speaketh better than that of Abel. See that you refuse Him not that speaketh."* Our efi >rts toward understanding the supernatural knowledge of the one true God. and of the my of His Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, as fully lisclosc I to the human intellect in the life to come, may be not unaptly likened to those of an infant who attempts fcc seize and hold a large globe of polished metal. Ravished at the sight of the splendid object, the child would fain possess himself of it; but every eager effort of the helpless little hands only seems to drive the shining mass farther from his reach. In this life, and during the imperfection and immaturity of our highest powers, >ox mind must be satisfied with gazing from afar, and '-through the glass darkly/ 1 at that Sun of the invisible heavens, wh se face we shall behold one day undazzled, and "in whose light we shall see the Light. " * Hebrews, adiL 22-25. NOVISSIMA. 57 WHEN WE HAVE THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF CHRIST'S FACE. Ere Christians departing this life without stain of sin are admitted to the joys of Paradise, they have to undergo, as the Church teaches, what is termed in theology "the particular judgment," as distinguished from the universal judgment at the end of time. In both the one and the other Christ is the Judge, whose sentence decides the eternal destiny of the soul. On the place or the other circumstances of this particular judgment the Church has not pro- nounced. Each one of us, therefore, has to come to Him on the confines of the two worlds in that brief interval which separates time from eternity, the present existence from the dread unknown and interminable future. To His own faithful followers, passing out of the shadow of death, is not He, our Jesus, the first light that dawns upon the disembodied spirit? Temper- ing the radiance of His glory, as He did when He appeared in the midst of His own the evening of the Resurrection day, the gentle voice of the Redeemer will say: "Peace be to you! It is I. Fear not ! " AT THE END OF THE WAY. Oh ! the blissful transition, from the dark and fearful shadows of the valley of death to the golden shadow of that peace which is the very atmosphere surrounding Him who paid our ransom and wrought our deliveranee! To the human souls just freed from all the snares and doubts of this life, half- unable to conceive the suddenness and the greatness 58 KOyissima. of their coming bliss, and in their humility still troubled at the remembrance of past guilt, and trembling at the thought of the Judge's tremendous justice and unapproachable holiness, how aptly are the words of Scripture spoken : " Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See My hands and feet, that it is I Myself." * Xow we can understand whence comes the light of judgment on all who believe in Christ and pro- fess to follow Him : " See My hands and feet." There, in the wounds of the Crucified, are the shining characters in which divine love has written the story of its generosity. In their light human love has to judge its own return to Jesus Crucified. But the scene in the upper chamber was one in which half-believing, half-doubting, troubled, and frightened men were the chief actors. At the meet- ing with the Judge at the very entrance to the land of the living, what a different meaning would the words of the Gospel have for spirits in whom already a mighty transformation has taken place ! THE INTRODUCTION TO THE FOUNT OF LIFE. To look upon the human face of Christ, to fall at His feet and adore them, to feel the blessings which descend like streams of creating and elevating; virtue from those pierced hands, to know that there, on the threshold of heaven, stands greeting us the Redeemer and Father of our souls ! What an introduction to the everlasting kingdom ! What a foretaste of that life, of that knowledge, that ecstatic joy, which are to follow on the Beatific Vision — the clear sight of *St. Luke, xxiv, 38-39. KOVISSIMA. 59 the essence of God, and the sense of possessing for- ever the very Fount of life and Author of all good ! So we may believe that the beginning of our beatitude in the life to come will be to look upon the face of our Saviour, our Model, our Judge, of Him who became Man to lift us up to the glory of chil- dren of God. In Him we know dwelleth incarnate the fullness of the Godhead. So on Him — " the first-begotten of the dead/ 7 * "the first-born among many brethren "f — these brethren, at their first entrance into His kingdom, can rest the eyes of their soul, enraptured with the divine beauty and great- ness of the Man-God, before being admitted to con- template the unveiled glories of the divine Essence Itself. Who that has tried to study Christ and the things of God earnestly while in the flesh, or has centered in the hope of that life eternal, spoken of above, all his deepest affections and aspirations, but could repeat truly, with all the voices of his heart, the words of the Parisian Hymn : videre Te, amare Te, Perenniter laudare Te ! "Oh, to see Thee, to love Thee, Eternally to praise Thee ! ' ' And yet we have not approached, by mounting the first step in the mighty ladder of contemplation, that Beatific Vision, in which God, seen as He is in Himself, is to the blessed soul of man, as He is to the angels, as He is to Himself, the very Fount of life, the Well-spring of beatitude. Here below, while we toil onward through temp- tations and pitfalls ; while we try to rise above the * Apocalypse, i, 5. t Romans, viii, 29. 60 KOYISSIMA. delusions and fascinations of sense, and keep our eyes fixed on Him, who is " the day-spring from on high," let us sing in our heart of hearts : Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on ! The night is dark, and I am far from liome ! Lead Thou me on ! Keep Thou my feet ; I do not ask to see The distant scene — one step enough for me. But when, the pilgrimage over, we are at the gates of home, and its light, peace, security, and rest, fall on us with the fragrance of the everlasting hills, how sweetly He, the Shepherd of the flock, will lead us from light to light, from glory to glory, till we reach the centre and summit of all the hopes and aspira- tions of the human soul — the everlasting possession of God, perfectly known and loved as He is known ; and with that possession, the added felicity of com- panionship with the blessed society of His angels and Saints. As we pause on the threshold of that home, on the frontier of that empire, from which death, sin, suffer- ing, fear, and doubt, are excluded by the Almighty Will, let us take this thought home to our hearts, that there God, in giving us Himself as our reward, gives us, with Himself, all that He has that is most precious — not merely that material world, His master-piece, created to be our home and kingdom, but the wealth of friendship, of love, of glory, enjoyed in the closest communion of our spirit with the spirits of all that is greatest, holiest, best and most perfect among angels and men. This is a mere naked statement of the mighty fact whose manifold realities we are now about to ex- plore. NOVISSIMA. 61 THE FOUNT ITSELF. God, then, perfectly known, securely and everlast- ingly possessed, is that Fount of Life for whose waters our souls are athirst. When we shall have arrived at some correct, though necessarily dim, conception of that God, infinitely great and good, infinitely to be admired, and praised, and loved, we shall be able to contemplate, with intelligence and rapture, that world of holy angels and holy men which forms God's crown in the heavens — and these heavens them- selves the glorious abode of the King of kings and of the countless myriads of His happy subjects. Our existence in that future state is to be life, true life, personal life, most perfect and most blissful life. The close and ineffable union between the soul and its Creator, between the supremely true and our intellect, between the supremely good, perfect, and lovely, and our heart, is to be a union between two persons who remain eternally distinct while being eternally united by mutual knowledge, esteem, praise and love. Dear reader, in guiding you upwards along those dazzling and giddy heights, I am anxious not to advance one step without feeling that we have the lamp of Revelation to shed its steady radiance on our progress, that we are safely following whither the teaching of the Master leads us. OUR BLISSFUL LIFE IN GOD NOT ABSORPTION IN GOD. Our union with God in the land of the living is, therefore, not annihilation, nor absorption in God, but the elevation, the perfection, the deification — it is not too strong an expression — of the life begun here. 62 NOYISSIMA. Do not weary, then, if I endeavor to account for and refute a few errors on this subject, and point out in the Old Testament writers the yearnings for this union with God, this clear sight of His Being, this secure possession of the Infinite Good. Some people are endeavoring, at the close of this nineteenth century of Christian civilization, to transplant hither the monstrous dogmas of Asiatic pantheism. Just compare their absurdity with the Gospel truth. THE HEAVEX OF PANTHEISM AXD THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. The religions of India and the far East hold out to their hundreds of millions of followers the prospect of annihilation after death, or of the absorption of man's being into the Divinity, as the highest bliss to which human nature can aspire. Far different is the destiny which revealed truth, the explicit and repeated declaration of Christ and His Apostles, and the consistent teaching of all Christian ages, propose to our belief. In the life to come man is to preserve his personal identity, his individual existence and consciousness, while enjoy- ing the rewards due to his merits in this life, or undergoing the punishment meted out to evil deeds unrepented of to the end. The glory and bliss of the good servant essen- tially depend on his being conscious of having labored to do the will of the Master. The misery of the wicked and unfaithful must equally flow from the voice of the individual conscience, recalling the trust betrayed, the opportunities lost, the graces abused, the dear ones ruined by neglect, or example, or positive teaching, and the companions scandalized NOVISSIMA. 63 and dragged down to the pit by the influence of a bad life. Among the multitudes of the blessed in heaven there is not an angelic spirit or a human being that does not preserve his individuality, his personal identity, as well as the perfection of his own vital acts in the fruition of that life eternal, of whose glories we are going to speak in detail. In like manner, in the multitudes of the wicked — fallen angels and fallen men — who are everlastingly sepa- rated from God, there is not one whose conscience does not evermore tell him that the loss endured is the just retribution for past misdeeds. The fatal fever dream of the East Indian, the Chinese, and the Japanese, that the soul is to be annihilated, or absorbed in the abyss of the Godhead, is only the perversion of the great truth revealed to man from the beginning — that the life after death, to which we are destined, consists in the closest union with Him who is the Fount of being and life. EEVEALED EELIGION TEACHES BLISSFUL UNION, NOT ABSOEPTION. No one among the great teachers of the Old Tes- tament has more frequently or more beautifully expressed the belief in this supernatural destiny, with its inheritance of bliss and glory, than the Prophet-Poet David: "I have said to the Lord, Thou art my God, for Thou hast no need of my goods. . . . The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup: it is Thou that will restore my inheritance to me. . . I set the Lord always in my sight: for He is at my right hand, that I be not. moved. Therefore my heart hath 64 NOVISSIMA. been glad, and my tongue hath rejoiced: moreover, my flesh also shall rest in hope. . . Thou hast made known to me the ways of life, Thou shalt fill me with joy with Thy countenance: at Thy right hand are delights even to the end." * All through the songs of the "Sweet Singer of Israel" there runs, together with the literal meaning, expressive of the present needs of the warrior-king or the sentiments of the hour, a vein of prophetic inspiration, all pregnant with a higher meaning, and colored by the light of another sphere. The little theocratic community of the twelve tribes was but the forerunner of the Universal Church; David was the figure of Christ; and the passing events which awakened these songs preluded the future revolu- tions of humanity, the history of all time, and the everlasting years beyond time's remotest boundary. Hear the following strain : " The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? .... One thing I have asked of The Lord, this will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life: that I may see the delight of the Lord, and visit His temple. . . . My heart hath said to Thee: