APL2MN'5 ^ER^nONS John Talbot ^mith ^rnmlmTnllmm' inTTmi^l mllln LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Chap. Copyright No. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, CHAPLAIN'S Rev. JOHN TALBOT SMITH, LL.D. AUTHOR OF " OUR SEMINARIES, AN ESSAY ON CLERICAL TRAINING," 'A WOMAN OF CULTURE, HONOR THE MAYOR," AND '* SOLITARY ISLAND, SARANAc" :: :: ;i .-^ np co^ ^H! -^A"^' ^ ^ NEW YORK WILLIAM H. YOUNG & COMPANY 31 Barclay Street 1896 s^. 11^ .^t^ WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 0\XX Seminaries. An Essay on Clerical Train- ii''g' 330 pages; bound in cloth, . . . $1.00 Library Edition, . . . . . .1.50 Novels at $1.25 Each B TKHoman of Culture, . . . .355 pages Solitary IFslan^, 432 " 1bi0 Ibonor tbe /iba^or, . . . . 260 " Saranac, 280 " AND B Ibistor^ ot tbe SXocese ot ©gDensburgb. 354 pages, Ii.oo G:be Iprairie aSO^. a story for Boys, . . .75 Copyright, 1896 BY JOHN TALBOT SMITH A II rights 7-eserved •Hibfl ©bstat: Thos. L, Kinkead, Censor. Imprimatur : •|- Michael Augustine, Archbishop of New York. ^preface. The writing of sermons is so far from the line of work usually followed by the author of this volume that he has ventured unwillingly into the field. The failures among sermon-books are notorious. Yery few priests seem to have found in them the aid for which they looked, and the sentiment is well-nigh universal that one need not read sermon-books for useful, vivid, fruitful, and instructive models in preaching the gospel. It is possible that the failure of these books lies rather with the users than with the authors. The finest sermons can be no more than suggestive to others beside him who first preached them. Each man has his own way of ar- ranging and presenting a subject, and any other arrangement and presentation seem awkward to him. Too much, therefore, must not be expected of the sermon-writer. If he provides one with a suggestive train of thought, which will stir the imagination, stimulate the reasoning powers, and please the cor- rect taste on a given subject, he has done as much as can be expected from even a genius. It is the present writer's hope that his sermons may achieve in some degree for inexperienced preach- ers a success on the above lines. The sermons in this volume have been preached more than once to iii IV PREFACE. congregations representing tlie average grade of in- telligence, and they have now been specially prepared for the young preachers. The writer has avoided the two extremes in sermon- writing : the skeleton sermon, as not providing enough, and the full ser- mon, as providing too much. Moreover, the full sermon, printed as it was preached, is always the author's ; and even with his consent priests do not like to use it as their ov/n : whereas in the present instance, the author having simply given the i)lan and a brief description of the points, each preacher can build up a new sermon which will be really his own. He will owe no more to the author than the author owes to his models and sources of informa- tion. The plan adopted for the arrangement of each sermon is the result of careful experimenting in two matters : aiding the preacher's memory and keeping a congregation interested to the end. The writer is of that numerous class who are unable to write a ser- mon and commit it to memory, yet have sufficient command of words to talk for an hour on a chosen subject. Such preachers are apt to be long-winded, inaccurate, inelegant in expression, faulty in memory so as to forget their points, and often flurried by these lapses of memory. Keeping in mind these common faults of extempore speakers, and also the ever-present need of interesting and pleasing the people, the author adopted the plan of dividing a sermon into three parts, as one divides a play into three acts, and of again dividing each part into two, three, or four points. This plan aids the memory. When parts and points have been selected, a study of them leads the preacher into such an arrange- PREFACE. V ment of tliem as will increase by natural degrees the interest of listeners up to the close of the sermon. No careful preacher will neglect this study of in- creasing interest and holding it to the end. It is the one secret of success in preaching, as it is in the writing of plays, novels, essays, orations, — in fact, of every species of literary composition. There must be an ascending climax, which develops fully only at the close, and to which the ascent must be gradual. It will be noticed that the sermons are not com- posed on the usual plan of logical sequence and obvious connection among the divisions and points of the subject. The aim has been to present the picturesque rather than the logical and obvious. The average congregation generally is not interested in preachers who only reason deeply and well. In the sermon on St. John the Baptist, for example, the main divisions are concerned with the three periods of his life, and are named Hebron, the Jordan, Machaerus, as a picturesque way of presenting the theme : and certainly the people will remember more easily the holy house of Zachary, the wonders done at the Jordan, and the tragedy of Herod's prison, and all that may be said under these heads, than the finest reasoning in the world. In presenting the picturesque, however, it is not intended that sermons shall be mere word-paintings, or pretty confections, more sugar than meat. Little as the average audi- ence cares for exact proof of a dogma, one cannot go too deeply for them in solid instruction, and in the explanation of profound principles; provided that one explains these principles simply and briefly, VI PREFACE. and passes at once to ricli illustrations of them, taken from the common life of the time. Thus, in the sermon on the Nativity, the least intelligent Catholic audience will thoroughly appreciate the application to ordinary human conditions of the three laws of the religious state, poverty, obedience, and chastity. The writer hopes that this volume may be of use to many of his younger brethren. He has gone out of his usual path simply to be of service to them in that divine office of preaching, which, after the administration of the sacraments, is the highest honor of the Christian priesthood. New Yokk, October 31. ConicntB. PAQB Preface, , . iii The Advent Season, 1 Go forth to meet him and say : Tell us if Thou art the One about to reign over Israel. — Brev. The Precursor, 9 And he shall go before Him in the spirit and the power of Elias : that he may turn the hearts of the fathers unto the children, and the incredulous to the wisdom of the just, to prepare unto the Lord a perfect people. —Luke i. 17. The Scribes and the Pharisees, 18 Ye offspring of vipers, who hath shewed you to flee from the wrath to come ? — Luke iii. 7. Responsibilities of Christians, .... 27 The night is past and the day is at hand ; let us, there- fore, cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.— Rom. xiii. 12. The Immaculate Conception, 36 Behold from henceforth all nations shall call me blessed. — Luke i. 48. Christmas Day, 44 For this day is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign ■ unto you : Tou shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and laid in a manger. — Luke ii. 11, 12. vii Vlll CONTENTS. PAOS New Year's Day, . . . . . . . .53 Wlien a man hath done then shall he begin. — Ecclus. xviii. 6. The Epiphany, 61 He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. —John 1. 11. St. Patrick, 69 Behold a great priest, who in his days was pleasing to God, and was found just, and in the time of wrath was made a reconciliation. — Brev. St. Joseph, 77 A holy death makes others divine after death, and glory embraces those who have earned the palm : but thou, more blessed in thy wonderful destiny, while yet a mortal, equalled the celestials in the full enjoyment of God. — Breviary hymn. The Lenten Season, . . . . . . .86 What wilt thou that I do to thee ? And he said, Lord, that I may see. — Luke xvii. 41. Death, 95 It is appointed unto men once to die. — Heb. ix. 27. By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death. — Rom. v. 13. The Final Account, 104 But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment. — Matt, xii. 36. Heaven, 112 But as it is written : the eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him. — 1 Cor. ii. 9. CONTENTS. IX Everlasting Failure, 121 Then shall He say to the wicked : depart from Me, ye accursed, into everlasting fire. — Matt. xxv. 46. The Passion of Christ, 129 And Jesus again crying with a loud voice yielded up His Spirit. — Matt, xxvii. 59. Faith, 137 Blessed are they that have not seen and have believed. — John XX. 29. I have kept the faith.— 2 Tim. iv. 7. But the just shall live in his faith. — Hab. xi. 4. The Knowledge and Love of Jesus Christ, . . 146 Furthermore I count all things to be but loss, for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord : for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but as dung, that I may gain Christ. — Phil. iii. 8. The Sacraments, 155 Wisdom hath built herself a house, she hath hewn her out seven pillars. — Prov. ix. 1. I saw seven golden candlesticks, and in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, one like the Son of Man, clothed with, a garment down to the feet, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. — Apoc. i. 12, 13. Sin, . 164 Then when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin : and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. — James i. 15. For the wages of sin is death : but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. — Rom. vi. 23. X CONTENTS. PAGE Penance, ... 173 Unless you do penance you shall all likewise perish. — Luke xiii. 3. Holy Thursday, 181 And whilst they were eating, Jesus took bread : and blessing broke, and gave to them, and said : Take ye and eat, This is My Body.— Mark xiv. 22. What is Wrong with the Men, 189 Now there was much grass in the place : the men there- fore sat down in number about five thousand.— John vi. 10. But while the men were sleeping his enemy came, sowed cockle amid the wheat, and went his way. — Matt, xiii. 25. The Christian Family, 197 And He went down with them and came to Nazareth : and He was subject to them. And His mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age, and grace with God and men. Luke ii. 51, 52. Prayer, ... ..... 205 And He spoke a parable to them, that men ought al- ways to pray, and not to faint. — Luke xviii. 1. Priestcraft, . . 213 The Lord hath sworn and He will not repent : thou art a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech. — Psalm cix. The Four Last Things, 222 In all thy works remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin. — Ecclus. vii. 40. CONTENTS. XI PAGE The Holy Name of Jesus, ...... 230 Tliou slialt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.— Matt. i. 21. The Married State, 238 A man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife : and they shall be two in one flesh. — Gen. ii. 24. This is a great sacrament, but I speak in Christ and in the Church.— Ephes. v. 32. The Child, 246 Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not : for of such is the kingdom of God.— Mark X. 14. Easter Sunday, . . .... 254 He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. — 1 Cor. XV. 4. Christ rising again from the dead, dieth now no more ; death shall no more have dominion over Him. — Eom. vi. 9. The Ascension of the King*, ...... 262 And when He had said these things, whilst they looked on. He was raised up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.— Acts i. 9. The Feast of Pentecost, 270 But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, Whom the Father will send in My name. He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you. — John xvi. 26. The Blessed Trinity, 278 Going, therefore, teach ye all nations : baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.— Matt, xxviii. 19. Xll CONTENTS. PAGE For there are three who give testimony in heaven : the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one. — 1 John v. 7. Corpus Christi, . 286 He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath everlasting life : and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. — John vi. 55, 56. The Assumption, 294 A great sign appeared in heaven : a Woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. — Apoc. xii. 1. The Angels, 303 Thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before him. —Dan. vii. 10. It came to pass that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. — Luke xvi. 22. The Feast of All Saints, 311 After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and peoples, and kindreds, and tongues, stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands.— Apoc. vii. 9. The Souls in Purgatory, . . ... 318 Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord : Lord, hear my voice. — Ps. cxxix. It is, therefore, a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins. —1 Mac. xii. 46. CONTENTS. Xni PAGE The Saints, 326 To him that shall overcome I shall give to sit with Me in my throne : as I also have overcome, and am sat down with My Father in his throne. — Apoc. iii. 21. They are equal to the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. — Luke XX. 36. Index of Subjects, 389 Index for Sundays of the year, 389 Index for Special Courses, 340 C^e ^bf?ent ^edBon. Oo forth to iiuet Him and say : Tell us if TJwu art the One about to reign over Israel. — Brev. OUTLINE. 1. The Church begins her New Year in Advent without festivities. 2. Her majestic voice carries to all men the message of the coming King. 3. She alone announces with power the virginal birth of Jesus. 4. The grandeur of both message and messenger forces men to listen with profound emotion. 5. Many deny importance to either message or messenger, and their arguments are answered. 6. Men will hear the truth, and cannot refuse it either open or secret homage. 7. The Church exhausts her energies in presenting to men at particular times the great truths of religion. 8. By emphasizing in the Advent season the first coming of the Son of God, she hopes to prepare men for His second and more solemn coming. 9. Therefore her glorious voice wakes all men from the sleep of sin and indifference to watch in repentance and hope at the crib of Bethlehem. I. The Call to the People. 1. As the CYwil year begins with the month of January, so the Church year begins with the season of Advent. There is perhaps more of accident than of design in the selection of one month over another for the first place in the calendar ; whereas the idea of spiritual preparation for the Nativitj^ of Christ directs the Church in fixing the opening day for the eccle- siastical year. Her new year's day is strangely lack- ing in the appearances of a festival. The churches are draped in the penitential color, and the Gloria is dropped from the hymns of praise ; the liturgy of the time is a mingled cry of joy and sorrow; and the ■ 1 . ~ ■ 2 THE chaplain's SERMONS. lessons of the daily office describe the joyous coming of a great leader together with the fearful sufferings of a man, despised and rejected, who " came unto his own, and his own received him not." So used are we to the celebration of this Advent season, that its beau- tiful significance escapes our feeble vision. "What we are doing to-day in honor of Christ's coming, the millions of Catholics scattered over the globe are doing in precisely the same way, and with the same spirit. What a tremendous spectacle it would be to the eye which could take in the scene, as does the mind, at one glance; these millions of people and leaders crying out one to another and to the world, "Brethren, it is now the hour for us to rise from sleep. For now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. " — Kom. xiii. 2. This is the cry of the great Church of Christ, and her colors are penitential, because with her great graces are met by preparatory penances; heaven is the reward of a life of restraint and obedience ; the crown is preceded by sickness, death, judgment, pur- gatory; the honor of numbering God among this mortal race is acknowledged in garments of penance, with tears of joy and sorrow. She begins her year in penance that she may end it in glory. Thus clad she stands before the nations, both the heedful and the indifferent, and calls them to the road of preparation, the way of the kings to Bethlehem. AVhat an inspir- ation to the dullest to behold her majestic figure standing before the world of to-day, and crying out her invitation and her warning, as did the prophets to the ancient world, as did the Angel to Mary and Joseph and the Shepherds, as did John the Baptist THE ADVENT SEASON. 3 to the Scribes and Pharisees. Her glorious voice touches the remotest isles, searches the depths of the seas, reaches into the abysses of human hearts; it breaks across the hum of unprincipled trade, drowns the clamors of earthly passions, silences the speech of unbelief a moment, so that all mankind hears and acknowledges the message of the herald : Hasten to adore the coming King. 3. Alas, that she should stand so utterlj^ alone at this hour, that among the descendants of Christians she must find millions who listen with indifference and ignorance, instead of love. " The ox hath known his owner, and the ass his master's stall; but Israel hath not known me, and my people hath not under- stood." — Isa. i. 3. Alone she announces that a God is about to honor the race by the assumption of mor- tality, which then becomes Di^dne. The sects have no Advent, no preparation worthy of the name. A few struggle to imitate her methods, but the millions born in their fold look on without care, or take no part. There is neither beginning nor end to the sect year, for it does not exist. They teach the Christ, but are not sure of His miraculous birth, of His divinity, of His promised kingdom, of His resurrec- tion, nay, of His sanity. They spend an Advent in discussing these doubts. The great Church alone cries out with a voice as certain as the prophet's when he spoke to Achaz: "Behold, a Virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and His name shall be called Emmanuel." — Isa. vii. THE chaplain's SERMONS. n. The Listening World. 1. The world listens to this cry with respect, or scorn, or curiosity. It must listen. Thousands of priests to-day announce from the altars the name and character of the coming King. Two hundred millions of souls shout back their joy at the tidings. Both priests and people gather in prayer and penance to make ready for the Christmas festival, and the indif- ferent millions cannot but ask the meaning of all this clamor of petition and preparation. The interested aesthetic is charmed with the ritual of these days, with the reading of the prophecies of Isaias, with the beauty of the antiphons in the holy offices. The atheist bemoans the vitality of the Christian " super- stition." The indifferent Catholic is touched at this reminder of his own neglect, and the ignorant but innocent pagan is drawn by a mysterious sympathy toward the truth so beautifully announced. Thus each year by example and teaching the world is made aware of the God who rules the world ; and, the mes- sage delivered, each man must justify to himself the manner in which he receives it. Men will not be able to say at judgment that the truth was not announced to them. 2. Many deny that it is the truth, and refuse to accept the splendor of the announcement as a witness to the Divinity of Christ or of Christianity. They point out the millions that profess Buddhism, and ask if a similar cry or call to worship its divinities should be the more heeded because so many believe in them. They forget that it is not the numbers which THE ADVENT SEASON. 5 follow Christ that make Him the Son of God ; nor is it the success of the Christian idea which makes it the truth. Its vitality is from God, from truth itself. What a terror shook the court of Herod when the Kings of the East in their innocence came asking for the King of the Jews ! What joy filled the hearts of the weary people, sad with waiting and expectation. It was not numbers that drew from Simeon his pro- phetic utterances in the temple, frightening once more the corrupt court, but a helpless child of humble parents. When John scorned the Pharisees and an- nounced the Christ, when Jesus called Himself the Son of God, drove the vile from the temple with lashing, and openly rebuked both Herod and the Pharisees, there were no numbers to impress men. Neither was there a multitude in Eome when the em- perors began their struggle with the Popes of the catacombs, and learned that in their dominion was a power which did not depend on the strength of this world. Finally there were no numbers in this very country of ours, when the first Catholic immigrants began to celebrate the neglected Christmas festival. It was both scorned and neglected in those days, though to-day most popular of the feasts of the year. 3. Men must listen to the truth, because they were made to know and love it, almost as soon as presented to them. It was truth which drew the Kings, fright- ened Herod and the Pharisees, made the Popes powerful, and rescued the feast of Christmas from oblivion in this country. To-day, as when first the Prophets cried out to the world, as when Christ preached, and afterward the Apostles, men hear the same message: the Son of God is come into this 6 THE chaplain's SERMONS. world to save mankind. Then follow all the truths dependent on this message : the Blessed Trinity and the eternal life of heaven; the conditions of salva- tion, and the conditions of damnation; the fact and the sense or conviction of sin ; its judgment ; repent- ance here, and restoration in the life to come ; and the responsibilities which spring from these. These things are tremendous truths or still more tremendous falsehoods. They must be accepted or destroyed. They are the basis of the teaching of Christ, and have brought consolation and strength and happiness to hundreds of millions. Once more in this season of Advent the Church announces them to men. ni. The Last Coming. 1. Not alone in her churches, pulpits, offices does the Church make the announcement of the King's coming and the need of preparation; but also by that impulse which, through the Holy Spirit, she gives to all the faithful. Convinced of this truth, each Catholic passes the message to his neighbor, his friend, his acquaintance, and the whole world trembles with joy or with uneasiness. The Protes- tant Christian wonders at the persistency which makes of this Advent an annual affair, an universal festival involving the whole world, and immense activity. Would not a mere notice from the pulpit be sufficient when the anniversary came around, or a paragraph in the journal ? Man is not constituted to be deeply impressing by such routine methods. Some of his impressions must be received daily and even hourly, and at the least one year's round must THE ADVENT SEASON. 7 bring him face to face with important anniversaries. Nature has so ordained it. The processes of vegeta- tion repeat themselves in the annual round of the seasons ; at fixed times the constellations begin anew their wondrous course through space ; and so in the mental, social, and spiritual orders man is necessi- tated to renew his afiirmation for the things that are. Each year a new generation arises and must be taught the same truths, vdih. ever-freshening emphasis and illustration; for they, no less than their begetters, have souls to save. 2. Still, queries the economist, what need of such a display of earnestness, such a waste of force? The Church seems to exhaust mankind in the effort to prepare them for a mere anniversary. No : it is not only the mere anniversary for which the Church pre- pares. The first coming of Christ is a thing of the past; the second coming of the Son of God is the motive for so great persistency and earnestness. The crib will one day yield to the throne of judgment, and before this Child, now helpless and free to the love or hate or indifference of men, the nations of time must pass for the last sentence. What a con- trast, these two comings of Christ! In Bethlehem, and on the anniversaries, a little Child ready to re- ceive any that believe in Him, or that long for faith and certainty; helpless before ill-treatment, eager only to bestow the gift of life. On the throne a just Judge, v/ho must render to every man according to his works, who comes in the clouds of heaven with exceeding power and majesty, and who will divide all men into two multitudes, one for the life of heaven and the other for the life of hell. Can the sum of 8 THE chaplain's SERMONS. human earnestness and persistency be too great to waste upon the training of men for the supreme moment of destiny? 3. Therefore, awake, mankind, and set out to find the King with earnest hearts and loving intentions. The sleep which has dulled you into indifference to the things of eternal life is often too profound for the power of God to disturb, and thousands have waked from it only at the bar of judgment. They now have an eternity in which to consider its fatal strength. What an enchanter's sleep money-getting, pleasures of sense, love of ease, petted passions, cast upon the soul. In vain the priest, the friend, the scourges of God shout in the sleeper's ear, and rain blows on the slumberer! By the million men deliver themselves with joy and speed to the sleep of sin, and would have it so deep that no power could waken them even to immortality. Let the prophet, the angel, the ruler, the church cease for one year to cry out to men, and this fatal sleep will have claimed other millions. Therefore for twenty centuries has the church stood in the market-place, and announced the King ; alone, ridiculed, and persecuted; but with a voice so per- suasive and piercing that only the wilfully deaf fail to hear. And to-day salvation is much nearer to the universal world than at any time since the Christ. €^t (jprecutBor. Afid he sJiall go before Him ia the spirit and tlie 'power of Elias; that he may turn the hearts of the fatfters unto the children, and the incredulous to the wisdom of the just, to prepare unto the Lord a perfect people. — Luke i. 17. OUTLINE. 1. The Precursor held the high office of preparing the Jews for the imme- diate coming of the Christ. 2. The splendid circumstances attending his birth. 3. His companionship with Jesus in boyhood. 4. His weird and solemn appearance preaching on the banks of the Jordan. 5. The substance of his powerful teachings. 6. His meeting with Christ marks the turning-point of his career, 7. The earthly reward of his labors is the splendid testimony of Christ. 8. The world rewards his devotion by imprisonment and death. 9. As John spoke of Christ to the world in his day, so in our day the Church preaches the Messiah to all men. I. Hebkon. 1. God prepared the old world for the coming of His Son by the prophets, the actors in the opening scenes of the Saviour's life by the Angel Gabriel, as he prepares each year the Christian world by the solemn celebrations of the Church. The day in which Christ lived was enlightened as to the char- acter of Christ by the power and genius of John the Baptist. He burst upon the Jewish nation like a meteor, and the whole race went out to meet him. The loftiness and sweetness of his wonderful nature are somewhat obscured for us by his closeness to the light of the world, Christ Himself ; just as the won- 9 10 THE chaplain's SERMONS. derful holiness of Mary and Joseph fade before the splendor of the Divinity. These exalted souls cer- tainly rejoiced in their obscurity, which for them meant light beyond what earthly fame could ever give them. Yet with all their effacement it is through them our human wits get some understanding of the glorious nature of Jesus ; and the more we dwell upon their careers and endowments the more humbly and lovingly do we adore the Divine Man. The resem- blance in many points of the Saviour and His Pre- cursor stirs the heart to deep emotion. 2. His entrance into the world is the noblest known to man, and its sublime circumstances as related by St. Luke touch even the dry hearts of pagans. The Angel announced him in the very temple of God to the father serving incense at the altar in terms which suit only the princes of men, the leaders whom genius and lofty character have endowed with the purple; the Holy Family sanctified him in his mother's womb, in the great mystery of the Visitation; at that moment the Precursor recognized His Master, and in the recognition was freed from the touch of original sin; and the two mothers, Mary and Elizabeth, lifted up with the enthusiasm of the Holy Spirit, uttered the prayers and the canticle which have echoed through the world for so manj centuries. The Angel's salute to Mary was completed by Elizabeth, and the beautiful Magnificat leaped from the heart and lips of the Mother of Jesus. The Baptist was welcomed into the world by the Holy Family, and received his holy name in their presence; and his father sang to God that other canticle, the Benedictus, whose beauty has given it enduring life in the Church. THE PRECURSOR. 11 No poet of loftiest genius could have imagined and described a scene more sublime than the entrance of John into the world. 3. Although we have no knowledge of the youth of John other than the statement of his life in the desert, all tradition assures us that the families of Joseph and Zachary enjoyed intimacy for many years before death had removed the parents of John, and the Spirit had sent him into solitude to prepare for his mission. Therefore, we see in so many paintings the little Precursor as the companion and playfellow of Christ. We have only to look at the holy children around us, the children whom God has specially marked for His own, and set in such homes as these once ruled by Joseph and Zachary, by Mary and Elizabeth, to get an understanding of what that com- radeship must have been. The angels rejoiced in it. It was human no less than divine. No sorrows peculiar to this world were spared its immortal actors. Exile and the dread of a King's jealousy kept Joseph in obscure Galilee and away from his own; then death called the priest of Hebron and his wife to their rest ; and finally the desert beckoned to John and re- ceived him into its solitude. It requires no fancy to see the smiles which lit the faces of the two boys at each meeting, and the tears which graced each parting ; to hear the comforting words of Jesus whispered into the ear of John over the graves of his beloved parents ; and, when the final parting came, and the holy boy withdrew from the society of men, when the family of Hebron was no more on this earth, and the tears of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph mingled with John's at the loss of so much loveliness, to hear the mingled bless- 12 THE chaplain's SERMONS. ings of Son and Mother and Patriarch showered upon the loveliest boy that the earth ever nourished after the Boy of Galilee. They might have remained together, but their first thought and desire was the will of God. II. The Joedan. 1. They met again only when the Holy Ghost had ended the period of preparation for John, who sud- denly appeared in the desert near Jerusalem to an- nounce the Messiah and to " prepare a perfect people to the Lord. " As innocent and holy as when he came from the womb of his mother, illumined by that long and lonely life in the desert with God, filled with one desire to render his people fit for the Messiah, he stood up before the world of that time and called it to penance. He was clad in skins, he ate no meat and drank no wine, and his words so touched the hearts of those who heard them that the report spread through all the country of a new prophet sent by God to His people. The Jews had been long without a prophet, but so deeply had they longed for one, and particularly^ for the last and greatest, the Messiah, that the marks of the true prophet were familiar to the commonest. John went not near the city, but did his work in the wilderness; and the sincere, the curious, the hopeful went out to meet him, hoping in those sad times for a message that meant help from heaven for a very sick world. They were more than satisfied, for this strange, weird, awful character who preached the necessity of penance, announced himself as the herald of One still greater than himself, whose coming would bring eternal joy to the world. THE PRECURSOR. 13 2. He cried but penance to listeners for whom penance was a lost art ; and lie put his finger on the weak spot of Judaism at that time, when he warned the Pharisees and Sadducees that their descent from Abraham was not enough to save them from the wrath to come. These aristocrats promptly de- nounced him, but the multitude did not desert him in consequence; they still crowded to the Jordan, wept for their sins, and were baptized in the river as a sign of their regenerated hearts. They asked re- peatedly what they were to do. To some the Pre- cursor answered, "He that hath two coats, let him give to him that hath none ; and he that hath meat let him do in like manner." To the tax-collectors, he said : " Do nothing more than that which is appointed you;" to soldiers: "Do violence to no man, neither calumniate any man, and be content with your pay." And to all he declared that he was not Elias, nor the Messiah, nor anything more than a mere voice sent by God to prepare men for the One who was to baptize men with the Holy Ghost and with fire. The life of the desert under the influence of the Holy Spirit had emancipated John from the slavery to tradition and formalism in which lived the Scribes and the Pharisees ; he saw the condition of society with the clear eyes of the prophet and hermit; and, therefore, he did not hesitate to denounce the power- ful and hard-hearted rulers of the time in vigorous language, calling the Pharisees a set of vipers, and publicly reproaching Herod for his crimes. To them also he announced a Messiah, whose axe was at the root ; but while for the repentant His coming was to bring joy and hope, for such as these the Christ would have only unquenchable fire. 14 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 3. His wonderful career may be said to have cul- minated with the baptism of Christ. The leaders of the people had rejected him, and the court was scheming to put him out of the way without starting a riot ; from one end of the land to the other had gone the report of his character and his teaching; and while men were talking in wonder and joy of the Great Being foretold by him as soon to come to man's relief, Jesus appeared on the Jordan and presented Himself like a sinner for baptism. We can well pause in astonishment at this mystery ; we can sym- pathize with the Precursor as he said : " I ought to be baptized by Thee, and comest Thou to me?" and we can understand in a measure the comfort of the Saviour's reply : " Suffer it to be so now, for so it be- cometh us to fulfil all justice. Then he suffered Him." It was the Master's testimony to the work of His servant; the Holy Ghost confirmed that testi- mony by manifesting Himself to the Precursor as He descended on Jesus in the form of a dove ; and the Father's voice sounded in the ears of John in ac- knowledgment of His beloved Son. The Baptist knew that his work was ended, that the voice which had stirred all Judea was to sound no more the glories of the Messiah, that his light was eclipsed ; and we feel the pathos of his words to his disciples : " He must increase, but I must decrease." For a little while he preached to the multitudes ; then the prison of Herod closed upon him forever. THE PRECURSOR. 15 III. Machaerus. 1. The reward of his labors for the world was a prison, in which the hatred of a harlot kept him locked, with the fourth part of a king as his jailer. As his life had been pure, disinterested, severe, his mind lofty, his soul seraphic, so his persecutors, his enemies, his prison were among the meanest on the earth. What place they have kept in history is due to their mighty victim ; but it is a mean and infamous place, in which their crime and their stupidity are pilloried together. Though John made glorious the fortress in whose dungeons his life ended, none the less bitter were those last days for him. We can see him in his lonely cell, overcome, as man cannot help but be, with sweet memories of the past and the ter- rors of the future. The days of his childhood, the sweet home at Hebron, the glorious freedom of the desert, the days of his mission, rise before him side by side with the meanness of Herod, the hatred of Herodias, the hardships of the prison, the momentary expectation of a violent death. Angels may have com- forted him, have strengthened him; but the human heart still suffers from its own weaknesses, and the son of Zachary and Elizabeth suffered, as his Master suffered, all the natural pains of his situation. One voice of comfort broke into the gloom and sadness of the prison. " What went you out into the desert to see? A reed shaken with the wind? But what went you out to see? A man clothed in soft garments? Behold, they that are clothed in soft garments are in the houses of kings. But what went you out to see? 16 THE chaplain's SERMONS. A prophet? Yea, I tell you, and more than a prophet. For this is he, of whom it is written : Behold I send my Angel before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee. Amen I say to you, among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist." — Matt. xxi. 2. Yet a shameless dancer cut short his life, and the head of the Precursor was struck off at the bid- ding of Herod. So the beast Nero treated St. Paul, and a later beast, Henry YIII., pleased himself with the heads of More and Fisher. The crowned mean- ness and vileness of this world often fattens on the blood of the really great. The Precursor died as his Master was to die, a criminal, having denounced the sins of the rulers ; after a life too brief for so much loveliness of heart and power of soul ; loved indeed by the people, but scorned by the rulers, who declared him possessed of the devil. In all things he was truly the Precursor of Christ, and to study his spirit, the externals of his character, and his career, is to get a deeper glimpse into the soul of Jesus. 3. It is the fashion with many to look upon the age in which he lived as peculiarly blessed because of his presence; and the multitudes v/ho followed him as very fortunate in having so great an impulse to good, so great an encouragement to keep in the way of virtue. It is also a fashion to wonder at the folly and blindness of the Jewish leaders, who could listen and watch at his feet, and return home with the belief that the Precursor possessed a devil. We are all ready to denounce the malice and wickedness which handed him over to a painful imprisonment and an ignoble, death. Yet in what are our days different from . the THE PRECURSOR. 17 days of the Baptist? Where the world had only one Judea we have a Judea in every church that honors the land; where the world had only one John the Baptist to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord we have the splendid universal Church, making the world ring with her joyous announcement of the King ; and while at that time both the Precursor and his Master were confined to a small corner of the world, to-day the Son of God is on every altar, and Jesus finds His Precursor in every faithful priest, in every devout Christian. We wonder at the folly of the Pharisees ! Look around ! See the multitude pursuing pleasure, and the means of pleasure, with the gospel trumpeted in their ears as it never was in the days of the Baptist ; thousands of leaders, millions of Christians, the telegraph and the press, the churches, systems of charity, a thousand important facts clamoring in the public places of the life to come, of the days of Ad- vent, of the King, of sin and its judgment. Yet the multitude turns as did the Jewish leaders to curse the herald of such tidings. It prefers to worship the devil; where it can persecute it does not hesitate to use the rack, the dungeon, and the scaffold. It is the same fool-world as in the days of St. John ; and since it cannot get at the Christ or the Precursor, it turns like a tiger on their followers to rend them. C^e ^criBec (Xnb f^e (p^amuB. Ye offspring of vipers, who hath sTcewed you to flee from the wrath to come. — Luke in. 7. OUTLINE. 1. God prepared the Jews with great care for the coraing of His Son. 2. Yet the Jewish leaders, the Scribes and the Pharisees, though intelli- gent, wealthy, and witnesses of many marvels, 3. Rejected and slew both the Precursor and Our Lord, 4. Chiefly because they allowed their deep-rooted prejudices and habits of sin to blind their judgment. 5. Their prejudices rejected a carpenter as the Messiah. 6. Habits of sin led them into the guilt of Deicide. 7. Their punishment was the destruction of their order and their city. 8. They have successors at the present time in all poor Catholics. I. The Beood of Yipers. 1. The ingratitude which man so often displays toward God as well as toward his fellows ne^er was better illustrated than in the history of the powerful classes known as the Scribes and the Pharisees. God the Father prepared the Jews with wonderful care for the coming of that ruler, whose kingdom was to be the hearts of men, and through whom the chosen people were to rule the world. The Prophets an- nounced the Messiah, the Angel Gabriel carried various messages to Zachary, to the Blessed Mother, to St. Joseph, and to the shepherds, which prepared them for the Saviour's coming, and the Kings aroused Jerusalem to the immediate fulfilment of the long- studied prophecies; while Jesus, by His wonderful 18 THE SCRIBES AND THE PHARISEES. 19 miracles, and Jolin the Baptist, by his express declar- ations, made clear to the highest and lowest of the Jews that the Messiah had really come among men. Never in the history of the world was a nation or its leaders more carefully and precisely prepared for its particular destiny than the Jewish nation for its mission of enlightenment to the world. 2. Yet observe the fearful malice which actuated the leaders of the Jewish nation in all their dealings with the Saviour. Bear in mind that the Scribes and the Pharisees were the wealthy, educated, intelligent, and powerful classes of Judea; all power was prac- tically in their hands ; and while the common people might through ignorance mistake an impostor for the Messiah, the intelligence and training of the Scribes and the Pharisees were of so high an order, that mis- takes of that kind, failure to recognize the Messiah as soon as He presented His claims, should have been next to impossible. As a matter of fact when the Kings from the East made inquiry as to the new- born King of the Jews, these well-trained and expert leaders promptly named His birthplace, and the royal house from which He was to spring. When John the Baptist came out of the desert and began his work of preparation for his Master, these same Scribes and Pharisees sent delegates to interview him, that they might know if he were the Messiah, or a prophet, or a messenger of God ; so alert were they for the com- ing of that leader who was to bring them out of bond- age and give them a place once more among the nations. When Christ began His wonderful career, their agents and spies missed no possible opportunity of watching Him. Their best men argued with 20 THE chaplain's SERMONS. Him, their princes sought to entertain Him. His greatest miracles were witnessed by many of them, and the first converts came from their ranks. They heard the Saviour's claims to the position of Son of God, as the Messiah, they saw His raising of Lazarus from the dead, they felt the charm and power of His magnificent teachings, they felt bitterly His great in- fluence over the people, an influence never attained by them. The more they sought to discover the secret of His powers the more were they convinced that this wonderful Being came from God. 3. But alas ! to what horrors did not their evil dis- positions lead them in spite of their careful training, their intelligence, the open declarations of the Baptist and the miracles of Jesus, their own convictions and tremblings, the reports of their numerous spies. They came to the conclusion that John was possessed of the devil, that his testimony was diabolical, his doctrines vain, and himself an impostor. They had no defence for him, no criticism of Herod, when first the prison and then the grave closed upon the Pre- cursor. Rather they rejoiced that he had been made away with in his youth, before he had had time to injure them, whom he had called to their very faces a brood of vipers. They set on foot plans for the murder of the Saviour, as a still more dangerous man among the people. His miracles did not convince, but only maddened them. His greatness irritated them, because the assassin might not strike at Him in the daylight or in the public place. That beauti- ful life had to be sought in the darkness, or destroyed through the Roman tribunals. They gnashed their teeth at Him, and cursed the fortunates whose phys- THE SCRIBES AND THE PHARISEES. 21 ical woes had been healed by the word or the touch of the Son of God. They left no stone unturned to compass His final destruction. "^Mien we compare the lavish generosity of God the Father in His treat- ment of the Jews with the malice of the leaders in the time of Christ, it is easy to understand the exceeding patience of God with weak and malicious mankind. II. Theie Sins. 1. "Why should they have been so blind, so mali- cious, so murderous? What was the secret of a stupidity so marvellous that even the pagan world wonders at it to-day ? Even had they not accepted Christ as the Messiah, He might have been granted the honors and privileges of a great teacher, a genius whose doctrines could not but bring good to mankind ; or He might have been pleasantly banished to remote countries, Avith orders ,to be seen no more in Judea. The Scribes and Pharisees might at least have spared their name the guilt of innocent blood. But this prudence was not within their power. Deep-rooted prejudices and long enjoyment of the first places in the state made decency impossible. For generations they had looked for this leader, the Messiah, and had pictured Him as coming like a prince of this world to take possession of His own. Statesmen were to stand at His mother's bedside to welcome Him into exist- ence; a nation was to wait at His palace gates to greet Him; He was to grow up under the care of kings, and to go forth in His maturity a general of renown, a sage, a politician, suiTounded by the Scribes and Pharisees, and other leading classes in 22 THE CHAPLAIN S SERMONS. the state, who were to conquer the world under His banner, and to possess all the good things of spoiled kingdoms. And they were now asked to give up this brilliant dream for the reality of a carpenter of Nazareth, a mere teacher in the synagogue, a wander- ing and perhaps crazy philosopher, who had never seen an army, or handled a sword, and who despised the Pharisees! It was absurd, madness itself! A carpenter in place of a prince ; a preacher instead of a warrior; an obscure Galilean in place of a scion of David ! The Scribes and the Pharisees laughed the idea to scorn. 2. But even had they accepted Him, He would not accept them in their pride and sin. As their prejudices hindered them from seeing the Messiah in the carpenter, so their sins, their worldliness, their love of the first places, their cruelty to the poor, their corruption, made them hateful to the Son of God. Merciful as He was to penitent sinners, He had no pity for such hypocrites. They were made to understand from the beginning of their relations with Him that repentant publicans, weeping Magdalens, apostolic Levis, fishermen like Peter, were more acceptable to Him than the whited sepulchres seated in high places. The corruption and the hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders must have been extraordinary at this period. While they went about praying long prayers at the street-corners, and in the market-place ; or in time of fasting carried pallid and emaciated faces before the people ; or displayed the most rigid exactness in carrying out the details of the Mosaic ritual ; at the same time their greed for public po- sition was notorious, their injustices against the THE SCRIBES AND THE PHARISEES. 23 poor were public talk, and their secret corruption was as marked as tlieir outward elegance. Their domi- neering and ugly insolence had long made them hated of the people, who listened with joy to the denuncia- tions heaped upon them by the Precursor and Christ. They hated Christ because He would not be a party to their foulness, would not secure them in their high places, would not sanction their iniquities, and threatened to remove them from the seats they so un- worthily hlled. They were mere worldlings, who sought a Messiah that would minister to their pas- sions and secure their private interests. 3. They deserved and received the scorn of Christ. One shudders at the tremendous denunciations hurled at these faithless leaders in the presence of the people whom they were supposed to control, denunciations which they had to accept in silence and to rave over in the secrecy of their councils against the Messiah. As they never approached Him unless with the pur- pose of humiliating and entrapping Him, so He never received them but with coldness, or open scorn, or withering denunciation. " O generation of vipers, how can you speak good things, whereas you are evil?" is his saying in Matt. xii. Another time He quotes Isaias against them : " This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." To His disciples He said of them : " They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit." When the children cried out in the temple, " Hosanna to the Son of David !" and the indignant Pharisees asked why He did not rebuke them, He replied with perfect scorn : " Yea, have you not read. Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings, 24 THE chaplain's SERMONS. thou hast perfect i3 raise?" That they might know He was informed of their plottings against His sacred life, He described for them the parable of the man who owned a vineyard, and placed his workmen in it; but these were vicious ingrates, who longed to seize the vineyard for their own; and they killed their employer's agents one after another, until he sent his own son to reason with them, sure that they would reverence him. But they killed the son also in the hope of securing the vineyard for their own. " And when the chief priests and the Pharisees had heard his parables, they knew that he spoke of them." — Matt. xxi. But all His utterances against them were summed up in the declaration : " Amen I say to you that the publicans and the harlots shall go into the kingdom of God before you;" and in that terrific outburst contained in the twenty-third chapter of St. Matthew: "Woe unto you. Scribes and Pharisees." Read the list of His epithets against them : hypo- crites, blind guides, foolish, full of rapine and un- cleanness, whited sepulchres, full of hypocrisy and iniquity, serpents, generation of vipers, robbers of the widow, and children of hell. Thus described have they gone down to all the generations of men. III. Their Punishment. 1. So thoroughly had they exhausted the patience of the Father and Son, so desperately had they cut down every movement of grace in their own hearts, so bitterly had they clung to evil in the face of the wonders worked among them, that Christ THE SCRIBES AND THE PHARISEES. 25 foretold their punisliment long before ihey had hurried Him to violent death. " Behold, your house shall be left to you, desolate." — Matt, xxiii. "Amen I say to you, there shall not be left here a stone upon a stone that shall not be destroyed." — Matt, xxiv. His prophecies were fulfilled to the letter. Many a Scribe and Pharisee who stood and mocked beneath the cross of Calvary lived to see the de- struction of the temple and Jerusalem, and the wiping out of the two classes who had done so much to spill the precious blood of John, and had com- passed the cruel death of the Son of God. Jerusalem has come to life again, but the temple and the Scribes and the Pharisees are seen no more. The memory of that majestic structure is revered by all men ; the memory of the Scribes and Pharisees is held in exe- cration. The Jews still wander over the earth, but their leaders have no longer place in the councils of men. Christ has written their shameful place in history. 2. The sin of the Pharisee is hypocrisy first; and second it is the abuse of great graces. What about the Pharisees of the present moment? Have we none amongst us ? Behold this Catholic sitting in the high places of the world, giving generously to all public charities, who avoids the sacraments, and derives his immense income from direct oppression of the poor, through miserable wages and long hours of labor, through dishonest combinations with other merchants to control market prices. Eegard this intelligent pagan, well educated, well situated, who for a lifetime has witnessed the marvels wrought in the world by the religion of Christ, and yet has never dared to 26 THE chaplain's SERMONS. sacrifice pleasure to truth and follow the Christ. Here is a man who makes with tremendous reverence the sign of the cross, and does not hesitate to leave his wife and children in necessity, while he spends his wages in drink. The world is full of Scribes and Pharisees at this moment, and a good number of them can be found among Catholics. They are as detest- able as their ancient forerunners. The denunciations of Christ apply to them, and the punishment of the Pharisees hangs over them. Let them not be de- ceived. Their house shall finally be left to them, desolate. The gospel of Christ has been preached to the civilized world, and its graces have been poured out upon the nations far more thoroughly even than in the days of ^he Saviour. If the Scribes and the Pharisees were condemned in time and eternity for rejecting the Precursor and the Saviour, how shall the modern world, so familiar with Christianity, escape hell for its indifference to Christ? (ge0pon0t6tftfte6 of C^xxetiane. The night is past and the day is at hand; let its, therefore, cast off the iDorks of darkness and put on the armor of light. — Rom. xiii. 12. OUTLINE. 1. Whoever has heard the gospel of truth thereby assumes a certain re- sponsibility. 2. The messagre and witness of the Church impose on men a certain re- sponsibility. 3. To get rid of it men persecute and deny the Church, as the ancient world slew the Prophets, the Precursor, and finally the Christ. 4. The responsibilities of Christians and how they are to be carried are learned from various illustrious examples. 5. The special graces poured upon individual Catholics make their re- sponsibility heavy, 6. Our responsibility to ourselves, our neighbors, and our God. I. Grace and its Kejection. 1. The old world had faith and hope kept alive in it by the nation of the Jews, taught and inspired by the holy prophets to look for the coming of Christ, to announce Him to the world, and so to strengthen the tradition among the Gentiles that a great leader would one day deliver the w^orld from its sorrows. The angels, the Magi, and the doctors of the law bore testimony in various ways to the birth of Christ when that event occurred. John the Baptist and the won- drous miracles of Jesus both testified to the Jews that the Messiah had at last come into the world. For the nation of the Jews, and for all the strangers who had heard prophets or angels, Magi or the Bap- 27 28 THE chaplain's sermons. tist, who had seen the miracles of Christ, or had in any way distinctly learned of faith in Christ, there at once arose an obligation to respond in some way to the grace granted to them. Since God had chosen them for witnesses to His manifestations, both grace and reason urged them to accept and use His gifts ; and when they failed to do so of their own fault, they incurred a guilt similar to that which brought such woe on Bethsaida and Corozain. " For if in Tyre and Sidon had been wrought the mighty works that have been wrought in jon, they would have done penance long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you." — Luke x. 2. From the ascension of Christ the Church which He founded has been in every age the well-known witness to His life and mission, and has made known to the world by every means in her power the destiny of men under Christ. This testimony of the Church, so freely given to the civilized and the barbarous world, imposes on men the responsibility of acknowl- edging it as God intended. Catholics are more specially bound to this acknowledgment, since each moment of their lives has been directly blessed and sustained by Christ, that they may bear constant witness to the truth. Their responsibility is the heaviest of all. If the savage who has just heard of the Blessed Trinity, eternal life, and the danger of its loss, and in whose soul a ray of light has descended to urge him to accept what he has heard, be bound to respond to the particular grace offered him, how much more is the Christian bound to respond to all graces, who has been so carefully and lovingly tended RESPONSIBILITIES OF CHRISTIANS. 29 by Christ from liis conception to his grave. This responsibility cannot be shirked. If for every idle word that men shall speak, they must render account of it in the day of judgment, surely the graces placed at their disposal must also be accounted for, as the money placed at the disposal of a servant by his master must be returned with interest. Here are Our Lord's own words to the foolish servant: "Thou oughtest therefore to have committed my money to the bankers, and at my coming I should have received my ow^n with usury." — Matt. xxv. 3. Alas, how easily we free ourselves from the heavy responsibility imposed upon us. The Jews put many of their prophets to death, the court of Herod laughed at the mission of the Magi, Herod slew the Innocents to reach the Christ, John the Baptist was accused of having a devil, was imprisoned, and ig- nominously i)ut to death, and Christ Himself, after a life so beautiful that only the depraved could have rejected it, was crucified. The history of the Church has been a history of persecution, now in one form, again in another. The arena to-day, Bismarck to- morrow, Freemasonry the third day! But always persecution ! Because men are so bent on ignoble and unlawful pleasures, they will not hear of responsi- bilities that interfere with their pleasant sins; and they are willing and even eager to slay, or imprison, or banish the witness to the truth, who stands in the market-place crying out to all men their destiny and the demands it makes upon them. And bear in mind that it is not alone the stranger who is guilty of this persecution. How many an unfortunate Catholic has raised hand and voice against the truth, either by 30 THE chaplain's SERMONS. stifling conscience within himself, or by direct attack, or by bad example, or by cultivating wilful ignorance of the obligations of faith. " He came unto His own, and His own received Him not." — John i. II. Nature of our RESPONSiBiLrriES. 1. It is of serious importance then that we should all know our responsibilities, and how minutely they must be looked after, if we are to withstand success- fully the judgment after death. David sings in one of his psalms, Thou hast decreed that thy command- ments be most carefully observed; and Christ de- scribes His Eternal Father as a most jealous God, who will have the last jot of His own. What He has given us we must return to Him with interest. Ob- serve how all the characters in the sacred drama of the Advent season and of the Christmas festival re- sponded to the immense graces and favors with which God honored them; and learn from their example what labors we must endure to carry out the designs of the Master in our regard. The Angel Gabriel an- nounced to Our Lady the honor God wished to bestow upon her in making her the mother of His Son ; the same glorious messenger had just informed Zachary, the father of John the Baptist, of the coming birth of John ; he also spoke to St. Joseph in his sleep to have confidence in the integrity of Mary, and again when it was time to take the Child and His mother and fly into Egypt; and to the shepherds watching their flocks on the hills around Bethlehem he brought the news of the birth of their King. Mark the i^rompt- ness with which all these people, so greatly honored, RESPONSIBILITIES OP CHRISTIANS. 31 responded to the graces oifered them. The virgin re- plied to the Angel's message, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, may it be done unto me according to thy word;" St. Joseph's mind was set at rest in the first instance, and in the second he did not hesitate a minute to obey the Angel's command; the shepherds arose on the instant and hastened to adore Christ on His manger throne. Faith and love conspired to make their obedience as illustrious as the grace received. 2. With what courage the Kings of the East fol- lowed that star which announced to them the birth of the God-Man. The Jews were too wrapped up in their daily affairs to discover if the time had not come for the fulfilment of the prophecies, and they waited for these devoted strangers to frighten them by the inquiry, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? In spite of the long journey, the temporary disappearance of the star, the apathy of the Jews to their own King, they persevered to the last. How greatly were they rewarded ! Old Simeon w^aited a lifetime in the temple looking for the advent of that Child, whom he was to see and bless, as the Holy Ghost assured him, before his holy eyes closed on this world. The delay did not weary him, and his faithful correspondence with grace was rewarded by that wonderful scene of the Presentation, when Jesus and Mary and Joseph came unto him, and he held in his arms the Holy One of Israel, the long-desired of the world. All these famous souls owe their heavenly happiness and their earthly fame to the promptness and intelligence with which they answered the de- mands of God. Imagine for a moment the loss to 32 THE chaplain's sermons. them had these commands found them sleeping, or incredulous, or wrapped up in the affairs of the world. 3. What excuse is there for us, that we are not as prompt to recognize our responsibilities, and as eager to fulfil them? We often say flippantly, it has not been our happy lot to receive special visits from the angels, illuminations from the Holy Spirit, and inter- views with the Kings. What blindness ! God has done as much for us in ways suited to our conditions as for the famous saints of the past. Were we to make a list of the favors heaped upon us as members of the one true Church, a book would not be able to hold the account. Look around you on the multitude that know not God. Compare the details of your life with theirs. Before you were conceived the grace of Christ had long been busy preparing for you a relig- ious father and a pious mother, a clean orderly home, devoted friends and relatives, a well-regulated govern- ment, opportunities of all kinds for clean and beauti- ful living. A few days after birth the waters of baptism flowed upon your soul, your first lessons were those of prayer to God; the Church waited for the dawn of reason in you to bring you to the mass, the sacraments; the priest and the guardian angel were ever at your side through the years of youth; sermons, advice, useful books, missions, retreats, in- structions were multiplied for you ; every step of the way was guarded and beautified in the most wonder- ful manner. In point of fact the miracles of the first Advent, at which we all wonder, become in our day the daily incidents of common lives, so that they seem wonderful no more, and are even forgotten. Why RESPONSIBILITIES OF CHRISTIANS. 33 should our brethren without the Church have been left without these manifold graces, and we have been overwhelmed by them? Are we not bound, there- fore, by greater responsibilities than they? And if we fail to respond will not our failure bring us hea\der punishment most deservedly? "And that servant who knew the will of his lord, and prepared not him- self, and did not according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes." — Luke xii. III. Use of Our Eesponsibilities. 1. In this Advent time let us examine once more the duties of our position as Catholics to discover our remissness and arouse our interest. We have seen how the faithful souls of the first Advent acquitted themselves of their duties ; we have also seen how the Scribes and Pharisees deliberately rejected the graces poured upon them at that time ; we have now to ask ourselves whether we stand in this Advent with Mary, Joseph, the Kings, and the shepherds, or with the unfortunate leaders of the Jewish nation. God has made us the channel of His wonderful graces for our- selves and for our neighbors. Have we deepened that channel with the years so that it now flows deep and broad, carrying joy to all dependent upon us, or have we allowed it to grow shallower as we advanced in years toward our final judgment? Have we allowed it to become choked with the mud and slime of this world, so that we are less pure and devoted to- day after forty or fifty years of life than in the days of our childhood and youth? How heartily men con- demn the sleepy pilot whose drowsiness brought 34 wreck to the noble ship, how deeply they curse the drunken engineer whose stupor of drink hurled a score of human beings to a cruel death, how universal is execration of the false leader who drove his country to ruin through his ambition ! But what of the false souls to whom God confided the salvation of His children, only to see these little ones neglected and lost? What of the lazy and faithless parents, the un- grateful children, the harsh and cheating employers, the untrustworthy and thieving servants, the dissolute youth with their scandalous lives, who should have held the light of Christ up before men, before chil- dren, friends, and fellows, yet preferred to extinguish it in their own lives, and so extinguished it for many others? If these condemn the Scribes and the Pharisees, then must they condemn themselves, for they have sinned in precisely the same way. 2. They console themselves with the thought that they have done no harm to Christ, and have kept their evil to themselves. They forget that they have never roused themselves to one real act of the love of God. They have feared Him, as the lord of life and death, before whose throne they may be forced to go this moment ; they have trembled at the thought of His hell, which their conduct has deserved; but neither fear nor trembling has stirred their hearts to love. The first and greatest commandment is that we love God with all our hearts. They are unable to observe it, and they will die without having accom- plished the first and greatest duty of religion. Wake then, dear brethren, from the sleep which has held you too long. This is the season when all men should be awake to meet the coming King. Turn away from RESPONSIBILITIES OF CHRISTIANS. 35 sin, and look into tJiese grave responsibilities which rest upon you as servants of God. You are all preachers of the gospel of Christ to your dependents, your friends, your neighbors. They must see and feel in you, and even share with you, the graces of your baptism, confirmation, and all the other sacra- ments which you have received. You are the lamps of Jesus Christ, whom He has filled with fragrant, long-burning oil, and your light must shine before men so clearly that none shall be in doubt but that you are truly the servants of Christ. Woe to you, as formerly to Scribe and Pharisee, if the light has gone out, and men find you a stumbling-block in the darkness. Z^t 'immdcutatt Conupiion. Behold from hencefoi'th all nations shall call me blessed. — 8t. Luke i. 48. OUTLINE. 1. The doctrine of Mary's spotless conception approved by Pope Pius IX. 2. The share of the laity in the declaration of a doctrine. 3. The instinctive belief of Catholics in Mary's imnaaculate conception. 4. The Prophet Isaias is the first to foretell the Virgin's future glory. 5. The virginity of Mary and her Divine maternity. 6. The one measures her personal, the other her public dignity. 7. Through love for Mary the people discover and reject errors respect- ing Her Son. 8. Thus she guards Jesus in the people's hearts, as once she guarded Him from Herod. 9. Her increasing greatness before men indicates to theologians her spotless conception. 10. To the faith and love of His Son's followers God leaves the declaration of this truth. 11. Greatly is Mary loved and honored of the people, but still more so of Her Divine Son. I. The Prophecy Fulfilled. 1. A fact which sharply distinguishes Catholics from other believers in Christ is the celebration of this day, passed over by millions of Christians who are ignorant of the truth it commemorates, and pity us believers; while on the other hand millions of Catholics give the day double honor for their neglect, and thank God for giving us so pure and spotless a mother. It is interesting to recall that the believing world once divided on the question of Christ's divinity ; the assembled church decided the question at Nice, and the Arians, finding themselves suddenly unchristian, died out. Not many centuries back theologians were divided on the question of Mary's 36 THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 37 immaculate conception; Pius IX. by his declaration of the doctrine forever closed the disi^ute. Before it ended in both cases every argument for and against that man could offer from reason, history, tradition, scripture was well considered ; then the church pro- nounced decision, and so careful was that judgment, so exhaustive had been previous controversy, that these questions have never been re-opened in a hostile spirit with any profit to mankind. 2. Note the share the people had in helping to these decisions. The bishops in council with the Pope at their head made the formal and precise state- ment of the doctrines ; but long previous the Holy Spirit, moving teachers and hearers alike, had brought the people to accept and cherish with the instinct of faith what the teachers had accepted from grace and study together. The individual members of the church are at no time deprived of a proper share in the development of doctrine. They are now building up the future declaration of the dogma of the As- sumption by their enthusiasm in celebrating the fifteenth of August. Theologians will point to that universal enthusiasm in the day of final discussion. In every age the Christian has this share in the evo- lution of truths. So that it is no less an honor to be a listener to the word, silent and humble, than to be its most eloquent teacher. Before God the unedu- cated faithful, believing and praying, have as honor- able share in the declaration of a dogma as the glorious doctor of the Church. 3. Hence in to-day's feast we not only glorify God and His Blessed Mother, we also honor our fathers for the steady faith, the quick response to the Holy 38 THE chaplain's sermons. Spirit, which made possible the feast. We know it was the pious and pure lips of our dear ones that be- sought God to give to a sure instinct the immortality of a dogma. We know their strong faith helped to give it shape. God has so willed it that man shall have a large share in his own redemption. We are often told by our enemies that we are only a dumb herd, believing at the command of our drivers. Here is our answer. Spontaneously we fulfil the prophecy of the Queen of prophets. Every age calls her blessed ; teachers and taught with the same impulse cry out; all nations except her from the common taint while the doctors are studying the reasons for exemption. The Pope and bishops of the year 1854 declare the dogma, but the Christians of all races and all times and all conditions have held the truth, and longed for its acceptance. The Holy Spirit does not drive a dumb herd. He leads a human people. n. The YniGMN Mothee. 1. Isaias the Prophet was the first to define the future greatness of Mary in his distinct prophecy of her virginity. God had, indeed, announced to Adam a deliverer, and Moses had foretold another leader like himself. But Isaias said: "Hear, O House of Israel ! the Lord Himself shall give you a sign. . . . Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and shall bear a son, and His name shall be called Emmanuel." — Isa. vii. 14. When the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, her reply to his message clearly shows that her virginity had already been consecrated to God, and that she was prepared to surrender the dignity of Divine motherhood rather than lose it. When the woman in THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 39 the crowd cried out to the Saviour, " Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the breasts that gave Thee suck," He replied, "Yea, but more blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it." The Son of God and His mother were of one mind on the matter, and that mind was verj different from the Protestant theory. To serve God perfectly was of greater im- portance than to hold Mary's high position. Thus thought the Mother of God in preferring her virginity to her glorious maternity; thus thought the Father when He chose a virgin for His Son's mother. 2. Chastity is a virtue in the virgin and in the un- married alike; but virginity is the noblest form of chastity . In this fact lies the reason why the Mother of God remained a Virgin. After her Son she was to be the glory of the human race. She could have been a chaste and spotless mother, indeed, without vir- ginity, but her chastity would have been inferior in degree to that of many saints, an inferiority which God would not permit. Eeason rejects the supposi- tion as heartily as faith rejects it. The maternity of Mary is the measure of her dignity in the church ; but the measure of her worth is the spotless purity of her soul, the intensity of her detachment from all things, the strength of her devotion to God, all in- dicated by her virginity. Catholics love to say of her with truth: "The Lord hath placed His taber- nacle in the sun." They rejoice to believe of her that " this gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall pass through it: because the Lord, the God of Israel hath entered in by it, and it shall be shut. For the Prince, the Prince himself shall sit in it, to eat bread before the Lord." — Ezechiel xliv. 2, 3. 40 THE chaplain's SERMONS. m. The Lvimaculate Conception. 1. In all this we have heard no word of the Immac- ulate Conception. The Spirit of God, breathing into the millions of Christians that have lived and died in the last eighteen centuries, drew from them one con- tinuous prayer for certainty as to this doctrine. It was left to the faith and love of the people to discover her exemption from the common lot. It came about very simply. A teacher of error strove to destroy the Divinity of Christ, but the people refused to de- pose the Blessed Mother from her exalted throne. A second teacher of error distinguished between the personality of God and man in the Christ, making two persons where there was but one ; again the people refused to follow the erroneous teaching ; with them she could never be less than the mother of the Person, the mother of God. The theologians routed the heresies scientifically, but the people, who cannot follow abstruse reasoning, were saved from heresy by their simple love of the Blessed Mother. They could not understand the hair-splitting of the heretics, but they were indignant at the wrong to be inflicted on the Mother. 2. The constancy of the faithful made plain two facts to the teachers : first, that as in the days when Jesus was a little child. His mother cared for and defended Him, so now she defended Him and cared for Him in the hearts of the people ; and second, that in becoming the Mother of God her office was to be perpetual and of age-long service to the church. They saw devotion to her blossoming spontaneously THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 41 among the people, and renewing its bloom with each generation ; then they began to search the Scriptures in order to find the Scriptural foundation for this work of the Holy Spirit. The result is seen and made comprehensible to the simplest mind in the popular Litany of Loretto. The faith and learning of all the ages unite in calling her the Mother of God, the ever- virgin mother, the purest, chastest, most wonderful of mothers ; the most renowned, powerful, and mer- ciful of virgins ; the mystical rose, the tower of David, the golden house, the ark of God's everlasting cove- nant with men ; the gate of heaven and the morning star; the actual Queen in name and excellence of all the prophets, patriarchs, apostles, martyrs, confes- sors, and virgins that have served God perfectly, and perfectly honored men. 3. Little by little, stone by stone, our fathers built up the edifice of her greatness. As they built other truths presented themselves. As her dignity, her ex- alted office, her perfect virtues came home to them slowly and surely, they began to declare that one fact alone could explain this ever-increasing majesty and influence: the Mother of the Lord was conceived without sin, and had never been under its dominion. The conclusion was irresistible. "Within five cen- turies of her death they were discussing the question, perhaps earlier, if we had the records. It was not until the ninth year of Pius IX. that the fact was pronounced a dogma of the faith. At that time the world was sneering at Catholics for the honors paid to Mary. It had already attempted to destroy her virginity, her honor eve]i, and the divinity of her Son: the Church replied by making her almost 42 THE chaplain's SERMONS. divine. "Thou glory of Jerusalem, thou joy of Israel, thou rich honor of the nation." — Jud. xv. lY. The Yigtoby of Faith. 1. God might have told us explicitly in the Scrip- tures that the Mother of His Son was utterly sinless ; He tells us that she shall crush the serpent's head, and shall be a Virgin ; His holiest angels bow before her, humbly salute her ; hers is the gift of prophecy ; the Kings of the East acknowledge her divine maternity. Yet to the faith and love of His Son's followers He leaves it to discover her spotless concep- tion, the perfection of her nature; to the least and poorest as well as to the greatest. They proclaim it with a courage and a clear vision that surely make the voice of the people the voice of God, and they proclaim it while the world sneers at them. 2. Love and honor the Blessed Mother as we may, the entire Church can never surpass the love and honor received from her Son. He never forgets, as we too often do, that the first embrace, and the last, which He ever received from a mortal, was in her arms ; that the first look of His human eyes in the cave of Bethlehem was for her, and for her also His last earthward glance from the cross ; that she taught Him His first words in the house of Nazareth, and heard His last upon Calvary ; as when a child in His moments of suffering He ran to her for sympathy and aid, so in the mortal anguish of His passion He must have sighed for the help and sympathy of her spotless mother-love. If we sometimes forget these things, brethren, we can surely never forget the holy human THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 43 lips that have invoked her name; the saints and martyrs, the common sufferers that have cried to her in supplication. Can they who have stood at the deathbeds of their beloved, and heard the last prayers from dying lips, forget how they mingled the names of Jesus and Mary. Never! and never again from the human heart, any more than from human history, can human power root out the influence of the Virgin Mother, whom all are drawn to, but whom Catholics alone love and honor with truth and with true devotion. C^xietmiXB ©djj. For this dap is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling-clothes and laid in a man- ger. — LuJceii. 11, 12. OUTLINE. 1. The whole world, both friendly and hostile, pauses each Christmas be- fore the crib of Bethlehem. 2. The scene of the Nativity is one of ordinary family life, father, mother, and Child. 3. But this Child has been long foretold as the glory and salvation of mankind. 4. To save the world men look to statesmen, sages, warriors ; but God de- pends on a Child. 5. God's wisdom made clear to us by the familiar fact that the child rules the world. 6. The child is the emblem of Christianity in his meekness, poverty, and purity. 7. Unless the world possess his natural poverty it goes down to ruin. 8. Unless it have his willing obedience to its own laws it must infallibly perish. 9. Unless, in the main, it practise his chastity disease will invade and de- stroy it. I. The Babe of Bethlehem. 1. On Christmas the willing and unwilling world stands at guard over the manger of the Christ. The willing Christian bows with the shepherds before the Son of God, the philosopher acknowledges the birth of the greatest mind among men, the pagans cannot refuse to the ever-recurring mystery of birth a hom- age which to deny would be an insult to themselves. The Christians accept a Kedeemer and a God, the philosophers reverence the greatest human force which time has brought forth, the pagans are willing to celebrate in this event the renewal of the race. 44 CHRISTMAS DAY. 45 But, willing or unwilling, the entire world pauses each year before this Child, as it has done for twenty centuries, as it must do to the end ; all questions of mind, and body, and soul, and the expression of these in society, law, science, and art must enter His birth- place to account for their agreement or difference with Him. 2. In the scene itself there is nothing to explain this universal homage. A woman of rare character nurses the infant; a man of holy mien attends on both ; the Child is beautiful in helplessness and inno- cence; but only the shepherds and the illuminated see and hear the joy and the hymns of the celestial world. It is the everyday scene of life : the family and the home. Thus every human being comes into the world, and is met on the threshold by the mother's arms, by the father's blessing and joy; and no matter how mean the spot, how beggarly the actors, it becomes sanctified by the entrance into nature of its king, mortal in body but immortal in soul, and with an everlasting career before him. 3. True, this child has been expected of the nations, foretold of the Almighty and of the prophets, desired of the great souls of the past. The noblest book of time derives its glory from Him, its sublimity and hope from His character and His coming ; the only poets and saints of the early world that are known to history found in Him the inspiration of their genius. Were an artist to paint these noble spirits of the past in one group, Bethlehem would be the perspective of the picture, and their grand faces would be turned in its direction with the one expression of hope and de- sire. The present world has justified their hopes and 46 THE chaplain's SERMONS. prophecies, and pays tribute to their faith and un- quenchable desire. As the Babe was the hope of the past, so is He the joyful possession of the present. As all life centered about Him before His birth, so all interest hinges on Him to-day. A little Child ! II. The Teue Kuler of Men. 1. The ways of God are beyond all measure by men, yet when they are seen man's reason at once justifies them, while they excite him to boundless ad- miration. God first manifests HimseK to men through the helplessness of a child. If there is one thing man despises it is weakness ; nor can he under- stand how absolute weakness can overcome absolute violence. The philosophers were in a sad condition for a few centuries before Christ with the grand failure of their schemes to revivify the rotten world. They had tried and recommended hundreds of plans for the removal of corruption, and the injection of strength into society. In all these plans their starting-point was a force known to men; a great senate, a leader like Augustus, an orator like Cicero, a philosopher like Plato, a nation like the Roman. God presented them with a Child, poorly born, ob- scure, persecuted from the beginning. And the mad- dened Jews, who had looked for a combination of Solomon, David, Moses, and Joshua, planned to kill Him. 2. Yet man and history have justified the Divine plan of redemption. It is not the kings and the philosophers who are the rulers and the movers of the forces of society ; it is the child. Those guide, CHRISTMAS DAY. 47 administer, judge, execute; but lie rules. He is the center of the interest, the care, the love of all men. The king himself is the servant of his heir, and a most willing and anxious servant. He is the envied of the great, for he alone is immortal in his ignorance of death, his joy in life, his certainty that present happiness is eternal. The millions toil for him, and get their best inspirations in toiling for him; the sages think out his road, smooth it for his feet, struggle with its obstacles; kings and legislatures execute the sage's schemes in his behalf. One has only to study for a few minutes the details to be in wonder over the multiplied activities of this world in behalf of the child. 3. To get a glimpse of his influence look into the heart of the mother who surrenders but one child to the reaper. Death. The years almost obliterate the little grave, but her tears fall as freshly in her age as on the day of his burial. In a sacred place for many a decade she keeps the little shoes and dresses, the faded toys, the primer, the slate, the pencil, that were such a joy to him ; and what day in all her pil- grimage has not seen them anointed with her holy tears? A great name fades from history in half a century; but the hand of a little child reaches out from its grave over the same period to stir a human heart to its noblest grief. In fact, the great strength of a mother's love is that its roots are in the memory of a child, who may grow to maturity, achieve great- ness, fade into decrepitude ; yet the mother sees only the child that tugged at her bosom. It was Mary's keenest sorrow that she saw on Calvary's cross the innocent, helpless Babe of Bethlehem. It was 48 THE chaplain's sermons. Divine wisdom that having spoken to us formerly through the prophets, " in these days hath spoken to us by His Son," the little Child of Bethlehem. III. Keystone of Christianity. 1. The Child is therefore the emblem of the Chris- tian life. It was Our Lord that one day placed in the midst of the wrangling Apostles a little child and said: "Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." — Matt, xviii. 3. The meaning is plain ; ours must be the spirit of the child in all things ; we must cultivate as an offset to the violence of selfishness the conviction of our helplessness, our dependence on God ; and as against our lust the love of purity, which is secured to the child through his innocence. This is only another way of saying that the state to which the monk binds himself by vow, the true follower of Christ must accept as the proper condition for his salvation. Poverty, obedience, and chastity, in one sense, are as necessary to spirituality in the layman as, in an- other sense, they are necessary to the religious. They are certainly the characteristics of the state of childhood, which has no wealth, no wit but simplicity, and finds its chief safety and happiness in obedience, its highest protection in its innocence. What then becomes of honest wealth, freedom, and pleasure, cries the worldling. 2. The answer is very apt and even overpowering. Society itself depends on that very state of poverty, obedience, and chastity for its happy continuation. The command and the example of Christ, and the CHRISTMAS DAY. 49 laws of society on the one hand, on the other the stern conditions of nature, give even the libertine no choice between decency based on the three detach- ments of the monk, practised on a lower standard, and the punishment of the lawbreaker. Is not the general condition of living men that of poverty? Only the few are born so rich as to need no effort in money-making. The individual and the nation alike begin existence with the soil and their bare hands as the elements of future wealth. At what period in the history of any known nations did the majority become rich? In fact without poverty the spur to effort is lost for the crowd. It is not wealth which ever ac- complished anything for man, except as the servant of the industrious; and wherever it became the master, either of the citizens or the state, the latter at once sank into decay. Our Lord declared an economic, as well as a spiritual fact, when He cried out, "Woe unto you, ye rich." "How hardly shall •they that have riches enter the kingdom of heaven." "And the rich man died, and was buried in hell." To be ever poor, and ever laborious, this is the lot of man, and in this consists his happiness ; which even the rich man admits, since he is never tired of add- ing to his treasure, preferring activity to mere con- templation of dead gold. Ask the dead money-kings of the past what ease does wealth bring to the heart at any time. 3. Obedience is the necessary condition of man as much for the elder as for the child. The latter looks utterly to the parent, the parent looks to God, and reason points out the necessity of strict deference to the laws of existence. Who can refuse to enter the 4 50 THE CHAPLAIN*S SERMONS. world through the womb of his mother, or to leave it when vitality dies? Who can offend the laws of nature and live ; throw himself from a height, feed on poisons, leap into water, fire, or noxious gases? One must eat to live, and work is the condition of getting bread. As children we have no choice but to obey, as human beings we must live such or perish, as members of society we must obey its laws or suffer extinction, as dependents upon our surroundings for physical necessaries we must conform to their nature or seek another world. These are the days of revolu- tions, and talk is large and bombastic over our powers, rights, liberties; but these essentials no revolution can affect, no orations change, and when men reject them they do so successfully only by suicide. In the moral order we have the same con- ditions. The various isms are simply crimes against the nature of things as God constituted them ; and while they may satisfy the reason for a time, their true result is only to blind and deaden men to the- inevitable disaster. All men must obey as scrupu- lously where their will is free, as where their nature binds them ; or suffer accordingly. 4. It is still more wonderful how necessary from the mere conditions of nature is chastity, not as a virtue but as a condition. With all the impurity in the world, and the desire for it, and the schemes to secure indulgence, the grand majority of men are compelled to chastity through one or another neces- sity. The millions that die before nature or oppor- tunity permits impurity ; the millions for whom age destroys power and inclination ; the millions happily led into control of their inclinations through religion, CHRISTMAS DAY. 51 early marriage, or other influences ; the steady labor of the multitude, which means sobriety and normal impulses for many millions more; the intervals of sickness, and a score of other hindrances ; all serve to confine unchastity as a habit to the minority of the race. Even those, who through riches and leisure are enabled to indulge their passions, suffer from the limitations of nature; and with all their desire and opportunity they must live for long periods as chaste in deed as any virtuous monk, if only to save their wretched lives for later indulgence. And just as chastity is necessary in the individual so is it neces- sary to the race and the state, if they are to survive. 5. Since, then, poverty, obedience, and chastity are necessities for men, both from the command of God and the nature of things. Our Lord in His scheme of right living would simply give us the merit of honorably intending that which in the order of nature we must do if we would save ourselves here as well as hereafter. To live up to His law with knowl- edge we must get His help and His instruction ; and for this came He into the world, made Himself one of us, came as a child, lived as a child, died as a child, and left us His positive declaration that we must also become children in docility, simplicity, purity, dependence, obedience, attachment to Him, indifference to the world. And what else do we be- come at the last moment in spite of our pride and violence ; when sickness leaves us to be attended as in our infancy, and the shadow of death takes our thoughts and desires from the money, the estate, the success which once fooled us into believing that we were gods, able to stand forever on our own merits. 52 THE chaplain's SERMONS. We leave the world as we entered it, children. But how few have kept until the last the sweetness of soul and holy innocence which Jesus and Mary and a few of the followers of the Master retained through the grace of God to the end. Compare with all that has here been said the following quotations from Isa. xi. 6, and Matt. viii. "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid ; the calf and the lion, and the sheep shall abide together, and a little child shall lead them. " " And Jesus calling unto Him a little child, set him in the midst of them, and said: Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and be- come as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, he is the greater in the kingdom of heaven." WJien a man hath done then shall he begin. — Ecclus. xmii. 6. OUTLINE. 1. The beginning of an enterprise is usually full of interest, and for many enterprises this remains the only interest. 2. To be ever beginning is the best fight men can make against the nat- ural tendency to decay. 3. Those who pursue sin, pleasure, fame, wealth are often in one respect models for religious souls who make ragged beginnings. 4. In the day of resolutions give the soul, as the nobler part, the first place and the closest attention. 5. Give Christ the Lord, our one sure, steadfast Friend, the most steadfast resolutions. 6. Let church, country, family, and friends have their due share of good resolves. 7. This continuous beginning each year is a foretaste of heaven, which is the eternal beginning. 8. The great resolution of the Christian life is that we bend all our ener- gies to the true service of Christ in faith, hope, and love. I. Never Tire of Beginning. 1. We are at the doorway of another year, and the horizon shines clear with the sun of hope. Once more we make a beginning of time, and onr hearts are cheerful, because we see in our dreams the ploughed field, the scattered seed, the blooming wheat and corn, the ripened and gathered harvest, the rich returns of a year's labors. Hope always fires our hearts thus in the beginning of a work which interests us. The beginnings of human things are always in- teresting, even where tragedy is certain to overshadow the end. The coming of the tender spring, with its wealth of color, bloom, and perfume stirs the coldest heart, warms the chilliest blood; the strong ship 53 54 THE chaplain's sermons. setting out upon her long voyage with sails wide spread to the wind, the young lovers launching their ship of wedded love on life's violent sea, the little babe just leaving the font, the sinewy youth plunging vigorously into the struggle for fortune, these and kindred things touch us all alike. Who is there that had not his beginning, his hour of hope and vision and lofty purpose? Nor would the most despairing of us break in upon these beautiful moments with stories of broken lives, of withered hopes, of dreams that came to nothing, of labor without reward. It would be to small purpose if we did, for men will make their beginnings, though all the wrecks of time lay hideous on the harbor shore. The hope that burns in the youthful heart remains undaunted by the tales of experience. It is pitiful that so many be- ginnings remain no more than beginnings ; the ship founders, or floats waterlogged on strange, deserted seas, the lovers become drabs, the babe grows up a loafer, the youth reaps the harvest of disaster. 2. We are always beginning in time, because life is a current whose banks are ever changing and ever new. Each bend in the river is a new starting-point. The babe struggles for speech, the child for knowl- edge, the youth for experience, the man for success, the old for health and longer living. There is in everything mundane a tendency to decay, which is unconquerable in the long run ; but the energy of life is best shown in resisting its advance until that moment ordained by God as the limit of our mortal career. Therefore, we should never tire of beginning, which is the best evidence of energy and healthful activity. And although we have all come to smile NEW year's day. 55 at the custom of taking a fresh start on the first day of the year, and often ridicule its new resolutions, the custom and the resolutions are part of our nature, and more than commendable. It is our fight against decay. The resolution is an acknowledgment that the past could have been better, it is a sign that we know our own weaknesses and are bent upon remov- ing them, it is an evidence that hope and will in us are not dead, and that we still have vitality sufficient to direct our course rather than to drift with the cur- rent, helpless and indifferent. 3. We are often too indifferent or too ashamed to make resolutions on this day looking to the better- ment of our spiritual condition. We can resolve to drink less, to live more carefully as to health, to spend less money on gaming, to spend more time at home, to read more wisely, to cultivate prudence, and other natural virtues ; but in religious matters we are not quite so ready. In this point we can take a lesson from those concerned in mere worldly affairs. Here is the man who pursues the way of sin, and finds it pleasant travelling ; on this day he looks back at his course, revels once more in its delights, sees how they might have been increased, and finds him- self urged to a cheerful resolve to continue on his way, reserving his forces for those forms of enjoyment which give most pleasure with least waste of time and health. The man of business carefully examines the ground he has travelled, discovers the avenues which gave him richest return, and resolves to drop all others but these. The man of income and leisure goes over the past years with no less care, finds numerous pleasures which are a mere waste of time, 56 THE chaplain's SERMONS. and others which repay cultivation with interest, and resolves to avoid the one and to pursue the other. All these materialists enter upon the new year with fresh resolves to enjoy life, to make the most of time. Should the religious man do less? Should not the man who is convinced of his soul's existence and des- tiny do as much for eternal life as sinners do for sin, rich men for pleasure, business men for trade? II. Special Eesolutions. 1. It is therefore a useful and noble custom which urges us to make fresh resolves for the new year in all our departments. Very few but will attend to matters of health, fortune, and family. It is for sin- cere Christians to do as much for their souls, the better part of them, which is to survive forever the passing interests of this world. The first and best resolution for them is that in the coming year they will give the soul a chance to rise from the prison of routine in which it has been so long confined, and to breathe the heavenly mountain air. These divine souls of ours, how little we feel for them, understand and pity them ! they were made for the companion- ship of angels, of Christ Himself, and we bind them to ledgers, and fashion, and other slaveries. An angel chained to earth and shut off from heaven could hardly suffer more. Let us resolve at this moment to release them from their prison, to deny ourselves, as the epistle says, "ungodliness and worldly desires," and to send our souls frequently into the sweet fields of prayer, meditation, good reading, to bathe them in the grace of the sacraments and of the Holy Spirit, NEW year's day. 57 and above all to give tliem frequent converse witli Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. 2. He is the one friend who is ever faithful to the soul. We are very proud of our fidelity to our friends, and of their devotion to us, which often affects us to tears. As often as we think of their kind hearts and faithful services we are moved to stronger resolves to be worthy of and to return that service and love. Yet how poor appears the dearest and most helpful friend of longest service beside the Master whose love has pursued us from conception, and is alone able to succor us in the really trying moments of life. Although " the grace of God our Saviour hath appeared to all men," and especially to the Catholic, it is not certain that even the pious Catholics have always a strong and vivifying love for their Saviour. They look upon Him as God, they know that all things are ruled by Him, they feel cer- tain of meeting Him one day at judgment, they have a deep regard for His majesty and power, they adore Hira by faith in the Blessed Sacrament ; but the one thing which He desires they are often unable through sheer incompetence to give, — their hearts. They rather fear than love Him. In human life it is not a pleasant household where the father is feared rather than loved, nor would an intelligent and loving father care for such a distinction. It is love that Our Lord wants, ^pulsating human love, purified and elevated by the Holy Spirit, but nevertheless human love. The first resolve then of this day should be to acquire by petition a true love for Our Master. It is sad that too often we do not know how to go about get- ting that love. We who are so skilful in stirring our 68 THE chaplain's sermons. hearts to a throbbing love of human beings, and se- curing their love in return, even where they care little for us at first, are at a loss to discover how we shall love Jesus Christ. " Ask and you shall receive. " 3. Christ and the soul having received the homage of our first resolutions, it is inevitable that other re- solves should second them for the sake of clearer sight and wiser action in our dealings with those around us. Loving Christ and freeing the soul from bondage to earthly things, we cannot but love the church, our country, our family, and our friends more deeply and wisely. Yet we must also resolve upon these things. As we are often ignorant of Christ and our own souls in the higher ways, so are we often ignorant of church, country, family, and friends. We take them as we take the air, things to which we have a strict right every instant of life. And we rather expect service from them, as from the air, than the rendering of constant and intelligent service to them. We work for them, it is true, but it is in great part selfish service, that which pleases us and does not greatly benefit them. For example, one is satisfied with a reasonable alms to the church, a bland feeling of patriotism and prompt payment of taxes to his country, a supposed commercial educa- tion to his children, and the exchange of sentiment with friends; yet he may be so ignorant of his church's history as not to know the day of its foun- dation or the name of its first Pope, unwilling to lift a finger for the overthrow of intolerable abuses in the state, harsh to his children in exercising paternal authority or rarely at home with them, and very devoted to friends who care not a button for him ex- NEW year's day. 59 cept when he can help them. These sins are very common, and are apt to be grave enough to the parties concerned. Therefore, the resolution of this day should be, in regard to the Church, some knowl- edge of her history and deeper appreciations of her claims upon us : in regard to the country a determi- nation to play the part of prudent and courageous citizens in all matters with which we may lawfully interfere ; in regard to our families, the cultivation of intimacy with our own and the study of all things connected with their welfare ; in regard to our friends and neighbors, to seek rather their happiness than the gratification of our own selfishness. In all which we simply follow the Scriptures: "The first com- mandment of all is. Hear, O Israel: the Lord thy God is one God. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength. This is the first commandment, and the second is like to it : Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is no other commandment greater than these." Thus spoke Our Lord to the Jews ac- cording to St. Mark xii. 29. And St. Paul added his word in writing to Titus his disciple : " Admonish them to be subject to princes and powers." In a word, to use the saying of the epistle, "we should live soberly, and justly, and godly in this world." 4. In this way we are forever beginning the spiritual life with the day upon which Our Lord may be said to have begun His official life, for on this day He received His holy name of Jesus. We are thus resisting decay at every point, decay in busi- ness, in body, in mind, in duty, in soul, and we are 60 THE chaplain's SERMONS. living a life bearing a likeness to that life eternal for whicli we men are destined. That life is an end- less beginning, a morning which never loses the glory of the morning, though bright as the noon and soft as the evening. All our labors in this world get their meaning and their beauty from the life to come, and have no beauty or significance without that life. We look "for the blessed hope and coming of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" with the great St. Paul. That hope and that coming cast their united glory over the simple daily life of millions of Christians, and give them a tremendous significance. We begin here to end, there to continue forever; we labor here in uncertainty often and in distress, there all distress is exchanged for joy; our greatest and most sucessful enterprises do not secure us against anxiety and sorrow here, yet if carried on in the proper spirit they earn us eternal peace in heaven; very often we are failures from the world's standpoint, our fortunes vanish, our children go their own ways and our friends desert us until we become of no consequence; yet these very disasters, accepted with resignation and borne with patience, are coin which will make us very rich in eternity. It is cer- tainly a good thing to have the peace and confidence of success, wealth, health, dear friends, and other fine things of earth ; but it is still better to possess above these things the peace of Christ, which sur- passeth all understanding. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.— John i. 11. OUTLINE. 1. The Magi are astonished to find Jerusalem unprepared for the King they were seeking. 2. The doctors of the law, however, are able to inform them that Bethle- hem is to be the birthplace of the Messiah. 3. On the way to Bethlehem they meet again the star, which would not shine over the corrupt City of David. 4. The opportunity which Herod the Great lost on this occasion. 5. A similar glorious opportunity lost by the proud leaders of the Jews. . 6. Strangers greet the King in Bethlehem, while His own stand apart in ignorance. 7. The miserable after-fate of Herod and his dynasty. 8. The extinction of the Scribes and the Pharisees. 9. The holy Kings alone come down in history, beloved and honored for their faith and courage. I. The King's City. 1. It was truly a sensation which the wise men of the East created when they entered Jerusalem, and began their inquiries for Him that was born King of the Jews. Having lost the star that for so long had guided them, it was only natural and sensible that they should make their way to the capital city of the new King, and look for Him there surrounded by His court and His army, the object of adoration and love, a prince of his people and the regenerator of the world. What a murmur of emotion rose from the people of Jerusalem at the sight of these princes and their retinue, at the first utterance of that tre- mendous question, " Where is He that is born King of the Jews?" The people were prepared for the question; it was the hope of their lives and of the 61 62 THE chaplain's SERMONS. nation; but the court heard it with misgiving and alarm. Their plans for pleasure and power had not at any time taken into consideration a new king, a new dynasty, even the Messiah ; and His appearance at that moment meant disaster for them. All gathered about these sages from the mysterious East to ask and to wonder. The sages were not less puzzled at the general ignorance of the One Being for whom the earth longed. At the birth of an heir to a great throne, the great few and the common multitude stand about the chamber, the ambassadors of other nations are in waiting, the majesty just brought into the world is saluted with military honors, the greeting of race and nations. Yet to the immense disappointment of the kings, in His capital the new-born King is known only to themselves, strangers, and no eye has yet seen Him. 2. Still, the Magi find that He is not altogether unknown. The Scribes and the Pharisees, the Doctors of the law, the princes of the court, nay, even the king himself, the great and cruel Herod, gather together to explain to these ambassadors of the Gentiles all that the prophets of the nation have foretold of the new King. It is declared upon their authority that His birthplace is to be in Bethlehem, and the time for His appearance is not distant, if the computations are correct. Probably they explained their own indifference to the mission of the sages by a courteous indication of their belief that the new King would appear first in the palaces of the king, so stamped with power and glory that no one could mis- take or resist Him. The sages in telling their story could only say that tradition and prophecy and star THE EPIPHANY. 63 had led them, that they knew nothing of the manner of His coming, that their supposition was He would be found in the reigning house. The court must have smiled at the story of the star. But for their wealth and importance the Magi might have been accused of a clever trick to secure notoriety and con- sequent gain. As it was none considered them more than sincere enthusiasts, whose search would end in disappointment. Herod, relieved of fear, ironical, courteous to the last, accepting the implied compli- ment of their inquiry in his city, cautious as became the statesman of a slippery age, gave them secret audi- ence, asked for further explanations of their motives, and dismissed them with the request that they would permit him to join them in adoration of the Child, when found. 3. Alas ! outside of Jerusalem the star shines over their pathway again ! Its tender light disdained the great city ; it was a star of innocence and joy, w^hose light was never meant for the polluted town on whose throne sat Herod, in whose court schemed a Caiphas, within whose limits was Calvary. The Child of their search was found in an obscure cave of an obscure town, surrounded by common laborers, nursed by a woman of the multitude, guarded by a carpenter, too poor to pay for the lodging of a merchant, not to speak of a prince. Yet how truly were these men princes of faith and wisdom is made clear by their adoration of the King, their joyful acknowledgment of His nature ; falling down they adored Him, offer- ing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. What privileges the Child lavished on them: to converse with Mary and Joseph, to hear the story of the 64 THE chaplain's sermons. wondrous events of the past year, to read the prophe- cies of His coming and to see the fulfilment of a few with their own eyes, and to carry the Holy Infant again and again in their arms. While at a little dis- tance slept, ate, drank, schemed, and sinned the stupid court of Herod ; too lazy or too busy, too in- curious to follow these men, or to set a commonplace spy on them, and thus secure the Master of the world. Yet can we criticise them for their indifference with the certainty that our nation is any the better pre- pared for the Christ than were the Jews for Bethle- hem? "We have only to look into our own hearts, into our own high places and great cities, to feel that the star would disdain them as it did Jerusalem, and that Herod and Calvary have there a footing. II. Lost Oppoetunities. 1. The peoples of the world might be easily de- scribed as the children of lost opportunities. It thrills us at this day to see how much the shrewd and talented Herod missed when he let the Kings depart so easily. He was a man of boundless ambition, who would have sacrificed a world to secure for him- self a deathless name at the close of a career of des- potic power. This was his greatest opportunity. He was king of that domain in which Christ was born ; to find and adore Him, to present Him to His people and to act as regent for His youth would have secured for Herod immortal fame and everlasting life. Alas ! to see such an opportunity and to use it, Herod would have to be born again. Ambition sup- ported by crime, a life of sin, had closed his eyes to THE EPIPHANY. 65 truth, as sin closes the eyes of the soul to its own advantages. The three Kings came and went carrying the gifts of God with them, and Herod saw them de- part from his gates never to entertain them or their gifts again. His judgment ! 2. Beside him stood the Scribes and the Pharisees, never in their lives so blind as at that critical moment, never more deserving of the reproach of the Saviour : " Blind leaders of the blind." They could give to the Kings with a sneer the exact spot where the Christ was to be found, but could not summon enough energy to go out and see for themselves. They had already formed from their own stormy hearts an idea of the Messiah, and to them any other was a manifest absurdity. Their joy was power and place, and all things necessary to secure and continue their ambi- tions ; luxurious lives in splendid palaces, the praise and service of men, the control of the nation, success in statecraft and war, immense wealth and noble blood. And their Messiah was the concrete image of this materialism. He was to be a prince of David's line, unconnected with carpenters; a warrior of genius and success ; an unparalleled statesman and an absolute tyrant; whose wealth, power, luxury, no less than his faithful observance of the Pharisaical law, would astonish and subdue the world to Judaism, that is, to the Scribes and Pharisees. Their oppor- tunity also came and went with the Kings, for they too would have to be made over again to understand the Christ. Yet how simple the means, how cheap the price at which they would have purchased the grati- tude of mankind ; a mere ride to Bethlehem, an ador- ation of the Child, and a presentation of Him to the 66 THE chaplain's sermons. people ; and thenceforward the world was theirs and immortal life beside. Theirs was Herod's judgment. 3. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. Oh! the pity of it. The stranger from far-off countries alone seizes the opportunity to greet and acknowledge the new-born King. The prophecies were fulfilled in their coming, but what a shame their sole acknowledgment cast upon the chosen people. For their faith to feed upon there were only the ancient traditions, the accounts of the Holy Books of the Jews, the stories of travellers, and last of all the star ; what immense difficulties they must have faced and overcome to acquire their conviction, to understand the star, to reach Jerusalem, to pierce the veil of obscurity which hung about the Divinity of the Child ; what a contrast the lavish preparation spent upon the chosen people! It reminds us of those mournful cases, in which the poor pagan, standing for half a lifetime without the temple, is suddenly pierced with the knowledge and love of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and can never leave Him again ; while many a baptized Christian in utter indifference to the God he has never recognized with all the training lavished on him, can sneer or wonder at the enthusiasm of the convert. III. The Penalties. 1. The faith of the Kings had its reward, and the infidelity of the court its fearful punishment. Herod had lost his last chance, and madness seized him ; not the madness of the brain but of the heart, the most fearful visitation which man can bring upon THE EPIPHANY. 67 himself. With his powerful brain clear till his death hour, but with a heart given over to fury, remorse, despair, as really mad as the brain could be, as dis- ordered, he passed from one crime to another as sus- picion led him. The rumors growing that the kings so sneered at had really found the Child and fled the land, Herod put to the sword the Innocents of Bethlehem, and ferociously pursued the Holy Family and the Magi as far as his powder extended. His life closed in painful despair. He had proved him- self great as the world accounts greatness, he had founded a dynasty which was to be snuffed out by the Eoman power as one snuffs a candle, the crimes of his life were not to sustain it a moment after Caesar condemned, several fools were to succeed him on his bloody throne to imitate only his crimes and shame him by their folh : here was the sum and substance of his achievements. He was to go do^vn to history as the murderer of infants, and the devourer of his own family. 2. Yet hard as was the fate he brought upon him- self it was agreeable compared with that prepared b}^ the Scribes and the Pharisees. They are no longer to be found on the earth ; with the dynasty of Herod they are in the dust. Their name is the universal synonym for hypocrisy and vile cunning. They possess the dishonor of having led their people into that ditch out of which there is no getting. The people remain, but they are not ; the temple is gone, and the nation is scattered, a reproach wherever they are found, no matter how innocent their lives ; their rituals, etiquette, interpretations of the law a,re the scorn and the ridicule of the sensible and the 68 THE chaplain's SERMONS. scholarly; to be and to be known as a Pharisee is the special dishonor among men. 3. The Kings alone stand before history as the benefactors of mankind, and their day is the feast-day of the nations; it sheds gladness over the whole earth ; in Spain the children put little shoes on the window-sills on the eve of the feast, that the good Kings, who loved one Child so dearly, may fill them with gifts on their way to Bethlehem. Their wisdom reflects its lustre on the nations who in their day knew not God, and on their present descendants. They were our representatives before the throne of Bethlehem, the representatives of the human race, foretold of the prophets and loved of all that since have followed the Christ. They arose out of ob- scurity and returned to its gloom ; we guess at their names, their country, their after-lives; but it is a gloom more beautiful than the light of the most pro- found history ; for we know they were chosen of God, simply by noting the jjersons in the gospel who were permitted to recognize the Saviour and the unfor- tunate who would not see Him; the one class were saints, the other wilful and malicious sinners. The Holy Spirit has said also, after the mournful words at the head of this discourse : " But to as many as hath received Him, He hath given power to become the sons of God, to those who believe in His name." ^. (pAixicL Behold a great priest, who in his clays was pleasing to God, and was fomidjust, and in the time of wrath was made a reconciliation.— Ths Breviary. OUTLINE. 1. The sceptical point to the poor condition of Ireland when the greatness of this early missionary is described. 2. The Irish have again and again been declared an inferior race because of their devotion to the true faith. 3. In declaring this to the whole world, men flung, as it were, a challenge in the face of Christ to defend his own. 4. The Irish exodus of the last fifty years seemed to justify the slanders against the people. 5. Yet it was much to have kept the faith against all persecution, and against time itself for so many centuries. 6. Finally, in this century Christ makes answer to the challengers. 7. The triumphs of the race and its religion through the very exile which was intended to destroy it. 8. The severe punishment of their enemies, and the vindication of Saint Patrick. I. The Challenge to Chkist. 1. The character and labor of St. Patrick have long been placed beyond dispute by scholars, and the great missionary takes rank with the greatest of his time as a miracle of holiness and of devotion. Yet in our day, when men look on the miserable social condition of the country he Christianized, many a sneer touches the lip because the faith has not been of material benefit to Ireland. St. Patrick has even to be defended against his own children in this matter, when national pride gets uppermost in the heart. All admit that the wealth and rank of Ireland among the nations might have been very high at this moment had the Irish joined the English in the deliberate 70 THE chaplain's SERMONS. treason against Christ, perpetrated by the delectable Henry VIII. and his virtuous court. But it is to be doubted if wealth and worldly honor could make up to any nation for the disgrace of association with such a crew as compassed the destruction of English Catholicity. The history of Ireland has yet to be written, sad as has been its long and mournful pref- ace. And as the years are but minutes to the patient Lord, the rest of the volume may so dim with glory the tragic past, as to make the time of persecution briefer than it now appears. God does not desert His saints. To the end He leads them " through the right ways," so that no man can point the finger of scorn at them. In our day He has justified St. Patrick even to the political economists. 2. When poverty drove the people of Ireland to America, the road was made harder by the gratuitous insults of certain English journals, which ridiculed the sorrowful exodus, and announced to the whole world that the meanest part of the British empire was pouring itself out on the American shore. No order of exile, such as Russia put upon the Jews, drove the Irish from their native soil ; in consequence, Englishmen were asked for an explanation of the phe- nomenon, thousands of citizens flying from the most prosperous nation in the world to a political rival of the British power beyond the Atlantic wave. The reply of certain English leaders in parliament and in print was memorable and characteristic. They said to the listening world : the Irish are an inferior race by nature, and an ignorant, dirty, unprogressive race by choice ; having long kept up an unequal conflict with their superior rivals, and having reached the ST. PATRICK. 71 end of their resources, they are retreating like van- quished barbarians deeper into the wilderness, and will soon be absorbed by the wilds of America ; de- voted to superstition, eternally hostile to the religion of Henry VIII., too stubborn to strike a treaty of self-extinction with the English nation, they leave their lands to the superior race, and depart to do the kitchen work of America, for which their rude tem- perament is well adapted. These apologists did not explain why their lofty civilization had had so little influence upon the children of St. Patrick. The penal laws, which made education a crime in Ireland, and rewarded such violations of the commandments as favored English rule among the Irish, were not mentioned; the industrial wrongs suffered by the Irish that English manufacturers might grow richer, the artificial famines, the premium put upon dirt, and other outward shows of wretchedness, were left undescribed. 3. It was simply said, as a self-evident fact, with which Europe was well acquainted, that the Catholic superstition had degraded the Irish as deeply as the Protestant inspiration had lifted the English to the pinnacle of glory. English preachers from a thou- sand pulpits offered this degraded mob of exiles, pouring out of English ports with tearful eyes and pallid faces, as a terrific illustration of the wicked- ness of Catholicity. If the Irish were mean, igno- rant, poor, superstitious, dirty, incapable of political power, unworthy to hold their own lands, worship- pers of St. Patrick, it was all because of their devo- tion to Eome. This was the sole source of their vileness. The United States was congratulated iron- 72 THE chaplain's sermons. ically on securing the refuse of Great Britain for the building up of its empire. Emerson, the stone prophet of a dead Puritanism, referred classically to tlie Irish immigration as " the black vomit." In other words the fidelity of the people converted from paganism to Christ by St. Patrick, their fidelity to the Christ of Judea, of Calvary, of Mount Olivet, of the Apostles, of the ages of persecution, was made the cause of their misery and supposed worthlessness. The whole world was made to understand this belief of the proud nation which had vanquished St. Peter and St. Patrick in its triumph over the bitter obsti- nacy of the Irish. Thus a challenge was flung down publicly to Christ in the face of the whole world ; His most faithful people were made an illustration of the results of his principles. II. The Answer of Christ. ' 1. It was impossible that such a challenge should go unanswered. Yet the first years of the exodus seemed to justify the worst tales of the slanderers. No kindly greeting met the Irish in America, deeply as they loved the nation which had succeeded where they had failed. The sour souls of men like Emer- son had curdled the milk of human kindness in the land. Poverty and oppression they had left behind, cold hearts and mean tongues were their portion in the land of the stranger. Even persecution sought them out for a brief period, and in liberty's name burned their churches, stole their children, bribed their orphans and leaders, and shut the doors to for- tune and advancement. The bigots could not bear to ST. PATRICK. 73 see them other than slaves, a visible argument against the Pope. A few gleams of light shone on their his- tory and condition. It was something to have kept the faith undefiled, and the race distinct from the race of apostates. It was very much to have made white chastity a national virtue and fidelity to Peter a national tradition at a time when impurity and treason ravaged the independent Catholic nations of Europe. 2. Then, of a sudden, the clouds burst from over the devoted race, and the Irish stood revealed in the radiance of a new day. The eyes of English heresy might well have withered before the sight, and the lying tongue of Froude certainly met paralysis at the spectacle. While the bloody mist of war hung over the American Kepublic, and England was bus^^ watch- ing the hoped-for tragedy, a new birth had taken place, which only the daylight of peace revealed. The organization of the children of St. Patrick had come to pass under the banner of the cross. In quick succession Hughes, McCloskey, Gibbons wore the highest honors of the Eoman Church, and held im- mense influence over the American people; while behind them stood a hierarchy of numbers and dis- tinction. Sheridan's superb figure posed before Eu- rope as the commander-in-chief of the American army, and around him stood a score of fighting gen- erals, whose faith and blood boded little good to England. Millionaires of every degree, political leaders of all shades of ability, representatives in all departments of human activity, senators, governors, representatives, judges, litterateurs, artists, held their own in numbers on American soil, unashamed of their 74 THE chaplain's sermons. faith or their blood. And this wondrous vision was repeated in every country that spoke the English tongue; in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand, even in England itself. The inferior race, the dirty, ignorant, superstitious race, had in three decades shown itseK the very contrary ; or had left it to its enemies to explain how inferiority, dirt, ignorance, and superstition, under certain circumstances, can surpass civilization of the English sort in elevating men. Thus did Christ answer the challenge flung down to Him so confidently, and thus did he vindi- cate his people, and their holy leader. " The Lord led the just man in all his ways, showed him the kingdom of God, . . . made him honorable in his labors, and completed his labors." — Breviary. III. The Punishment. 1. Not only was there vindication, but also punish- ment. Very significant, very instructive is that pun- ishment. The Anglican heresy has found its strongest ally in the English language, so widely spread over the globe. The Irish w^ere robbed of their Celtic tongue, and had the English tongue forced ujjon them, one would think, for the sole purpose of teaching the English-speaking nations how deep was the treach- ery of the Eighth Henry and his brood of conspira- tors against the truth ; and it may be added, for the purpose of inspiring the same nations with a hearty distrust of this great apostate, so proud of her apos- tasy. The Irish and their children have used the English tongue as their best weapon, in poetry and prose, in politics and journalism, in the home and ST. PATRICK. 75 the forum, for solidifying universal opx)Osition to the English name. Thus have they repaid their oppres- sor for the robbery of the tongue in which St. Patrick spoke to them. 2. Very proud has England been of her political prestige everywhere, and her particular influence in certain countries. Her leaders have alv>'ays attrib- uted this prestige and influence to the religion of Henry YHE. Wherever the Irish have settled, their vigorous faith and outspoken opposition have either destroyed or neutralized the power of the English name. An anti-English policy alone is popular in the United States, and no administration dare adopt one favorable to England. In Canada and Australia men like D'Arcy McGee and Gavan Duffy shook her influence by constitutional measures. In Ireland her grip has been loosened in the same way. She robbed the Irish of their right to live in their own land, and in return they have weakened her prestige and influ- ence, by marking known the enormities of her rule in Ireland and elsewhere. Proud of her heresy, bloody in her crimes to graft it on the Irish, she has been repaid for her malice by the erection of hierarchies in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and the resurrection of the Scotch and Eng- lish hierarchies, all made possible by the spread of the Irish over the world, by her deliberate banish- ment of the Irish race from their native isle. In fact, wherever the English language is sjjoken at this time, the Irish have built up against the English heresy a social and religious organization, subversive of its influence and humiliating to its pride, which cannot be reached by English power. 76 THE chaplain's sermons. 3. It is easy to see, therefore, that God has not deserted the faithful race, nor forgotten the apostle who carried the faith to Erin. It is often said that still greater honors than these mentioned would have resulted had Ireland remained unstained by degrad- ing vassalage to England. Granted. Yet when we remember the uncalled-for apostasy of England, and the shameful condition of France, when we recall the changes which wealth and power produce in the vir- tuous, it is not so certain that Ireland would have remained faithful and filled so wonderful a place in the history of this time. It is evident that her history is but beginning. Her years of sorrow are mysterious, as human misery must ever be. We cannot fathom the suffering of a child, much less the suffering, the long martyrdom of a nation. But we are close enough to the dawn of Ireland's coming day to recognize that it will be very wonderful, if it fulfils the promise of this moment. And its glory will not be born of bloody conquest or treaty -cheating, but of the peace and good will of Christ. ^f. %OBtp^. A holy death makes others divine after death, and glory embraces tJwse wlw have earned the palm; but thou, rnm^e blessed in thy tconderful destiny, while yet a mortal equalled the celestials in the full enjoyment of Ood. — Breviary Hymn. OUTLINE. 1. The splendor of this feast of St. Joseph as it is kept around the world is remarkable. 3. Greatly as public heroes are honored, their celebrations do not com- pare with those accorded to the carpenter of Nazareth, 3. He was chosen as the guardian of Jesus because his life was lofty and pure. 4. He was chosen patron of the Church before any of its great popes and doctors because he had so faithfully guarded its Founder. 5. The most fervid imagination fails in attempting to describe this humble man's relationships with Jesus and the Blessed Trinity. 6. Living for thirty years with the Son of God, he dies in His arms, and enters Limbo the ambassador from Jesus to the holy souls in prison. 7. Since the foundation of the Church his fame has grown with each age, and it is piously believed that with Jesus and Mary he rejoices body and soul in heaven. 8. He is not only the protector of the Church, but also the model and patron of the dying, and of all faithful fathers aevoted to their families. I. The Guaedian of Jesus and Maey. 1. An important feast of the universal Church is that of St. Joseph, and its celebration is in its details a wonderful thing. The majority of men never see beyond the three-mile horizon of their particular locality, and to the average Catholic the feast of a saint means the public Mass in his honor and a mere mention of the saint's name. Yet it would take much space and time to tell all the notable and beautiful things that will be done this day in St. Joseph's honor. Thousands of churches scattered around the habitable globe will repeat his glorious name in the 77 78 public prayers, a splendid ritual will do him public honor, thousands of priests will recite his office in the breviary, sermons will be preached on his life and virtues, hymns will be sung to him in all the lan- guages of earth, and the Catholic millions will invoke him. Could one get above the earth for these twenty- four hours, and with angelic faculties see and hear all this while the globe revolves under the sun, the spec- tacle, the human harmonies would ravish as if from heaven. 2. We are more impressed with the public celebra- tion in honor of a civic hero, in honor of Washington for instance, or of our dead soldiers on Decoration Day, or of the Day of Independence. Napoleon the Great is a world's hero, and his fame and genius are brought home to the meanest in many w^ays. His story is made common in print, his portraits are everywhere, his deeds of battle are on fine canvasses, in bronze, in books, in engravings, in poems and novels and histories, his statues cover France and are in the art museums of the nations. Frenchmen go wild with enthusiasm at the mention of his name. Yet the public celebrations in his honor, in honor of Washington, or our dead soldiers, or Independence Day are small matters compared with the honors ten- dered to St. Joseph on this feast. All nations ob- serve it; he is praised in every language; his statues adorn a million churches, schools, and homes; his altars are buried in lights and flowers ; and the hu- man millions, the sick, the unfortunate, the wretched, the sinful, the grateful, murmur his name in petition and in thanksgiving. What honors could compare with these of the universal church? ST. JOSEPH. 79 3. Yet the recipient of so much honor was no more than a carpenter of Judea, so obscure that the dates of his birth and death are alike unknown, and his history can be learned only through a study of the life of the Saviour. He had the unique privilege of serving the Deity as guardian of His Son. He was master of the house of Nazareth, and for m&iiy years Jesus was known as his son. " Is not this the car- penter's son?" said the irritated villagers of Naza- reth. In spite of the obscurity of his life, the church chose him as her patron, seeing no inconsistency in making him guardian of the church, who had been guardian of the church's Founder. In publicly cele- brating his virtues and offices, she exhausts her splen- dors of ritual. n. The Fathee and Pateon. 1. In selecting a protector for His Son, it would have seemed more fitting to have chosen a prince of the earth, such as St. Louis was, or David, or Solo- mon in his youth; whose genius and power might have been at the service of the Saviour ; yet the Eter- nal Father chose the carpenter, and scarcely removed him from his original obscurity in elevating him to his high position. It is evident that He chose a man already in love with those virtues and human con- ditions which were to be illustrated as the most ex- cellent in the life of Jesus ; a man who loved purity and chastity and union with God, obscurity, labor, prayer, humiliation, and poverty, and had chosen all these things as the best of life ; a man who trusted absolutely to the providence of God and not at all to himself or his kind ; who put God first, his brother 80 THE chaplain's SERMONS. second, and himself last; and who in all things was just. He must have been a man before whom the angels could bow without shame, as did their King ; to whom Mary could look up, as did her Son ; in whom the Son of God found a companion as well as a guardian, whose death broke the mould which had fashioned him. 2. In the same manner of reasoning it would have seemed more fitting for the church to have chosen a great pope, the first one perhaps, or his companion, St. Paul, for the oJQ&ce of universal patron. No doc- tor ever had the right which St. Paul might have claimed to the honor and the title ; because the might- iness of his faith and his intellect was such that the church will bear the impress of both until the end of time. St. John had claims also, and even St. Augus- tine ; yet the church passes these saints by for the obscure carpenter of Nazareth. The reason is evi- dent. The sanctity of St. Joseph matched the dig- nity of his office. Had not the Saviour taken the title of King of the Saints, his earthly guardian could claim it ; a statement which could hardly be made of any other holy soul. In the hymn of his feast the church declares his superiority to all others in the comparison and the apostrophe of the last stanza but one : " Post mortem reliquos mors pia consecrat, pal- mamque emeritos gloria suscipit : tu vivens, Superis par, frueris Deo, mira sorte beatior." m. The Thikty Yeaes. 1. Naturally we ask what did the man do to merit these extraordinary honors from the church, which is Christian mankind. The conditions of his life fur- ST. JOSEPH. 81 nish the answer, and justify tlie absence of even the slim record which remains to us. He was the master of the home which sheltered Jesus for thirty years. It was the w^ork of his hands, supported by his labor and care. It is impossible to dwell on the details of the home life of Joseph, without extraordinary emo- tion. The priests of the sanctuary are intimate with their Master, and carry His Sacred Body about in their ministrations, touch and receive It in the Mass ; saints have had visions of the Child, have held Him in their loving arms ; but what are such things to the privileges accorded St. Joseph? See the loving and continuous intimacy of the ordinary father and infant in a thousand homes. It is both sweet and touching, common as it is ; and such was the hourly intimacy of Joseph Avith Jesus from the moment of his birth until his infancy had passed. It was a small thing for this carpenter to converse with the angels, having in his possession their King and Queen. Let us mention it with holy reverence and reticence, but who shall set limits to his intimacy with the Blessed Trinity, having in his possession as ward One of the Divine Persons. In fact the holiest imagination pauses before this man's relationship to God. It is too much for us. 2. It is perhaps as well to follow the Scripture and draw the veil over these intimacies, so overwhelming to human thought and littleness. But consider briefly the relations of this father and Son from the date of His young manhood until their separation. Whoever has had the privilege of witnessing father and son, superior in nature and attainments, grow old in affection for each other, ripen with the years 6 82 THE chaplain's sermons. in mutual confidence and love while increasing in virtue, and drawing closer to each other as the thought of separation grows upon them, such a one will have a picture of the daily union of Jesus and Joseph in the home of Nazareth. It seems marvellous that any- human being could have endured it ; still more won- derful that having enjoyed it for thirty years, a man could have remained the mere clod that St. Joseph remains to the Protestant world. He must have re- flected the Divine at the very least, as the senseless mirror reflects the sun. 3. He died in the arms of his Son, and saw the human tears fall from Jesus' eyes, heard his sobs as He resigned Himself to a separation, none the less painful to His human nature that He was God. The dying man could look without fear into his Son's face, could accept Mary's ministrations without re- proach, for he had been the most faithful of guardians to the Mother and the Son. Perhaps his last peti- tion was to remain with them until the tragedy of Calvary had passed; no other desire disturbed his union with the glorious will of God. Jesus received his last sigh, folded his dead hands on his breast, followed his holy body to the grave, and wept over his resting-place, services He did not render to His Blessed Mother. And it is easy to picture the two mourners, in the quiet and sorrow of the days when Joseph was no longer with them, talking with each other of the hundred things which had endeared him to them. 4. Without doubt his entrance into Limbo was as the ambassador of the Lord. From Adam no more distinguished soul had entered the prison of patience, ST. JOSEPH. 83 and he brought with him that news which no other could have brought, the news of speedy deliverance. With what wonder and joy the holy souls of men heard the story of his thirty years in the presence of Jesus. This man had seen, and held in his arms, and trained the Eedeemer ; he had but just left Him that moment; he could describe His appearance, His words, His history; and prophets heard with love and awe the fulfilment of their own prophecies ; saints heard of Him Whom they had desired from the far- off centuries ; and the parents of the race, the weak guardians of Paradise, listened in dread and hope to the description of the two beings, Jesus and Mary, whose perfection restored to earth the race in its first perfection, while the Divinity of Jesus honored it beyond description, and made these guilty two the progenitors of a Divine Man. What must have been the honor, reverence, and love heaped upon Joseph by these millions of holy ones, when they understood the height of glory to which God had raised him. IV. His Earthly Fame. 1. It was morally impossible that the dignity and worth of such a man should remain hidden from men, when publicity is won by mere human genius. To grasp the strength and proportion of his fame and his use to his race, compare with his the worth and the fame of such a character as Napoleon or Csesar, or their betters on honest grounds, Charlemagne and the Saxon Alfred. The former are but names to ex- cite the less noble passions; the latter are known only to the learned, or to the average readers, touch- 84 THE chaplain's SERMONS. ing actual life in almost accidental fashion. But this humble guardian of the Lord has his elSigy on every altar, in church, school, home; his character is the inspiration of orator, poet, artist; his name honors the noblest temples and other public buildings ; mil- lions of pure and noble hearts or of weak and repent- ant ones, cry out to him daily in love and petition ; all Christians regard him as the patron of their dying hours, and scarcely a faithful soul leaves the world without his sacred name on the lip, mingled with the names of Jesus and Mary. If God had conferred on him no other honor, this last would have been enough. Of all the great and good souls that have honored the earth with their virtues not one outside of the Holy Family has ever received so universal, so spontaneous a tribute of affection and esteem from the human race. The career of Napoleon living or dying and his kind is a mere stench to the human race; compared with the career of St. Joseph, the history of such leaders looks like a plague, to be re- membered only with awe and horror, to be prayed against, as a crime against the human race. 2. Yet brilliant as is the place now held in public estimation by the carpenter of Nazareth, it has not reached its maturity. "Joseph is a growing son." It is more than probable that the Holy Family lives in heaven the same life which it lived on earth, and that the Mother and her Spouse rejoice in that com- pleteness of nature which will be secured to all the just after the resurrection. It is not a doctrine of the church, but it is a favorite teaching with spiritual writers. The feast of the Assumption implicitly teaches that the Blessed Mother enjoys the privilege; ST. JOSEPH. 85 it seems fitting that the third member of the Nazareth household should be similarly honored. What a lesson is this humble life of a Judean car- penter to the proud world. The honest and dishon- est strivings of its greatest geniuses have not secured so beautiful, so true, so glorious, so enduring a fame as this obscure man, who lifted not his finger to se- cure any earthly glory. What a consolation his career must be to the common man, who has no hope of fame, or of being remembered any longer than his gravestone carries his epitaph, nor as long. To be remembered by God is the thing ; to be blessed for years by the grateful prayers and thoughts of poor souls whom we have helped in body or soul is greater fame than the miserable glory which attaches to the names of Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon. The particular force of St. Joseph's life is that he was a faithful father, the model of fathers. Nothing less than his devotion to his family, his single-minded- ness in their regard, his lofty standard of duty, his personal sanctity, will secure to the parent, not only the good sons of time but the immortal sons of eternity. ZU feenfen ^edson. What wilt thou that I do to thee? And he said, Lord, that 1 may see. — Lukexmi. 4.1 OUTLINE. 1. The celebration of Lent is a most efifective and honest way to a right understanding of the tragedy of Calvary. 8. Fifty years ago Lent was ridiculed in this country as a superstition, while to-day it is held in respect. 3. To whom we are indebted for this change of public sentiment. 4. The best rule for the observance of Lent is to cut ourselves off from human aflfairs as far as we can. 5. If this seems difficult, picture the summary fashion in which sickness would remove them from our interest. 6. Examine in retirement the road of life so far travelled, and that part which is yet to come. 7. Cry out with the blind beggar for the mercy of light in the darkness of our souls. 8. How much we need light is plain from our confident belief that we already see plainly. 9. Lent is a happy time in which to ask and receive the light of the Holy Spirit. 1. Lent. 1. There is a touching fitness in the gospel selected for our edification on the Sunday before Lent. The Catholic world is about to enter on its preparation for the Passion of the Lord, to leave secular affairs for the space of forty days and join Our Saviour in the desert, to fit itself for a right understanding of its own destiny, and a right appreciation of the sublime tragedy which nailed the fairest flower of the human race to a cross. The wisdom of the church gives us this selection from the words and deeds of the Mas- ter, that we may catch the true meaning of the task THE LENTEN SEASON. 87 we are to perform. The celebration of Lent is a most effective and honest way to a right understanding of the tragedy of Calvary. In silence and humiliation, in sackcloth, ashes, and hunger, with all pleasures of sense laid aside, and the cares of life put away, be- wailing the blindness which sent our King to a shameful death, the sins which made it possible, we travel slowly to the scene of our shame, — Calvary. The Gospel invites us. " Behold, we go up to Jeru- salem, and all things that are written by the prophets concering the Son of Man shall be accomplished." The spirit of the blind man should be ours : " Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me." His pitiful peti- tion is the true prayer for Lent : " Lord, that I may see." The blindness of men is something to wonder at. We see it in our indifference to the tragedy of the Cross, which never comes home to us as a crime in which we have a share, or a disgrace which rests on our race. 2. Li the civilized world to-day the Catholic body alone celebrates the Lenten season w4th spirit and thoroughness ; for it alone is convinced to a degree of the necessity of penance. It alone seems to under- stand rightly the words of Christ: "Unless ye do penance, ye shall all likewise perish." It alone seems to have kept a right view of that crime against God and man perpetrated on Calvary. In the early days of the faith, the celebration of Lent was without system ; each locality had its days of fast previous to the day of the crucifixion, and many had the com- memoration of the Master's fast of forty days. Lit- tle by little, as the church grew, uniformity was introduced, and soon the entire Christian world was 88 THE chaplain's sermons. in possession of the season of Lent as it is celebrated to-day. None disputed its fitness or its advantages until the Lutheran revolt, which, rejecting a few truths at the beginning, is about to end by rejecting all. In particular the public fasts and abstinences of the church became in time an object of popular ridi- cule, and even an argument against the church. Fifty years ago in this country the celebration of Lent was looked upon as a superstition. Yet what a change in public opinion at this date. The faithful Catholic millions, pluckily adhering to their Lenten practices, have brought the social and business world to respect their motives, and to make room for their celebration of Lent. It is well known now that the business world feels the presence of Lent as a time in which inventories can be made; the places of amusement reduce expenses to meet the falling off in attendance, fashionable society retires into a semi- obscurity, a half-retirement out of respect for the season ; and the nation, in spite of itself, stands aside from its everlasting pursuit of money and pleasure, while the Catholic is at his prayers and fastings. 3. Strangely enough this Lenten period of silence, rest, thoughtfulness, and abstinence has received the unqualified approval of physicians without any relig- ious belief. They see in it a chance of rest for minds and bodies worn out with surfeiting, with emotion and passion, which will not benefit by treatment as long as they are subjected to the strain of fast living. These physicians encourage their Catholic patients to take advantage of Lent for its physical benefits, and praise the season for their non-Catholic patients, advising them also to imitate its withdrawal from THE LENTEN SEASON. 89 secular affairs. Thus approved by scientists, ac- cepted by the fashionable world, and acknowledged by business circles, Lent has come to be an immense social influence in this country. To whom are we indebted for this surprising change in public senti- ment? Surely not to the cool-faithed Catholics, who are ever paring the practices and doctrines of the faith to suit the circumstances of the hour, and the prejudices of their non-Catholic friends ; nor yet to the Catholics who become invalids of the most des- perate sort just before Lent; nor to the many who pass through the season with such thought of its spirit and as great knowledge of its aim as Hotten- tots? Rather are we indebted, for the present na- tional deference to Lent, to the faitliful souls of every grade of life, who did their dutj^ as it came to them with the one thought of honoring the Master by obedience to His church. 11. The Way to Observe Lent. 1. In order to use this holy season to advantage bear in mind that it has been instituted to help us toward that freedom from the slavery of the body which too great an interest in business, money-mak- ing, pleasure, comfort, no matter how lawful, is sure to impose. We are born for a spiritual world, as well as for this, and the heavenly life is the better. Li Lent we cut ourselves loose from this world, and whether we are able to fast and abstain, this cutting off is possible and necessary. It makes the body once more the slave where for ten months it has played the master. It gives us the right view of 90 THE chaplain's SERMONS. things ; and we see ourselves in some measure as we shall see ourselves after death when this world will be far from us. The best rule for the observance of Lent is, therefore, to cut ourselves off from human affairs as far as we can; to transact them as if they were the affairs of a stranger, or as if fatal sickness had attacked us, and in a few months they would be out of our hands altogether, as one day they will surely be. 2. If this seems difficult either to the will or the imagination, picture to yourself the manner in which these same affairs would worry along while a serious illness confined you for months to the sick-room. We are all apt to imagine that the world, at least our corner of it, could not get along without our super- vision ; a mere glance at the children, the estates of persons dead a few years, or still on the sick list, makes plain our conceit. In the same way we are given to fancying that fast and abstinence are impos- sible for us ; another glance at the slender eating of the poor and their vigorous health, at the good results of well-ruled abstinence in bodies which have ceased to grow, will show our mean attempts at self-decep- tion, the one art in which man is a master without previous training. 3. Yet if it be true that fasting and abstinence are impossible for us, the spirit of Lent is a thing to be observed, and penance is a duty which cannot be shirked. There are two penances which ought to be specially cultivated in Lent. The first is a more than ordinary devotion to the duties of our state. To watch and examine ourselves as to the spirit and manner in which we are doing things that have be- THE LENTEN SEASON. 91 come a second nature to us, perhaps, is a task of magnitude, and of penitential merit; to stand aside like a curious observer determined to find fault, never to approve, and in that spirit to note each move of mind and will, each resulting act; to question mo- tives, to denounce flattery to ourselves by ourselves : what a true and penitential occupation for Lent! With our actions and intentions brought daily before the bar of judgment, as they will surely one day be, what discoveries of faithless or foolish parents would result, of mean children, who thought themselves models of filial love, of cold Catholics who mistook lack of faith for equanimity of feeling, of vicious dis- positions which thought themselves honorably severe, of malice which talked like charity, of hypocrisy cloaked by respectability. 4. The second penance is to examine that road which so far we have travelled between birth and judgment, and in particular to study the portion which is still ahead. Eecall the souls that began the journey with us. The man of twenty can easily find some sorrowful tragedies among them ; the jail has closed on one or two, and everlasting shame ; unhon- ored and sinful exit from this world has disgraced another; a third has fallen from faith, or from its practice ; many have gone home in peace and virtue ; yet he is still here, healthy, happy, virtuous, with a career of honor ahead, no stain upon his name or his soul. How much longer will these advantages re- main to him? Who can tell, when the most prosper- ous, the most virtuous suddenly tumble into rain of one kind or another ! 93 THE CHAPLAIN *S SERMONS. III. The Blind Beggak. 1. The ease with which we sin, the difficulty with which we come to a real repentance, alike spring from unconsciousness of the misery sin brings upon the soul. We cannot cry out with the anguish of the blind beggar. Son of David, have mercy on us. He knew his own wretchedness, he had suffered it for a lifetime, and the whole world could not silence the cry for mercy that rose like a tornado from his heart, when he found himself so close to the One Being able and willing to remove or lighten human misery. The respectable people nearest him appealed to his hu- man respect to force him to be silent, and yet he only cried out the more; had Rome's emperor at the head of an army ordered him to silence he would still have cried out for pity, so deep was the sense of his own misery in his heart. The Son of God made way for him, and granted the most touching and pitiful petition ever presented to Him: "Lord, that I may see." Look into the depths of that long-nursed anguish, sadder even than the physical darkness in which the beggar had sat for years, and hear in that cry for mercy and light the great cry that has gone up from the nations sitting in darkness since man appeared on the earth. Its strength and yearning are beyond description. It was easy for the bystanders to chide his insistence; they had never been blind. If we could feel our blindness as he felt his, what a cry for mercy would reach the Master, and how quickly He would respond to the appeal. Alas ! we too often think our blind- ness sound sight, and instead of prayer for light, we THE LENTEN SEASON. 93 have only congratulations for ourselves on our clear seeing, or foolish praise for God that such sight is His gift! 2. In this very gospel we have a striking example of the blindness of men. The disciples, as the inti- mates of the Saviour, thought that little was wanting to them in the way of comprehending Him. They could even reproach the beggar that he troubled the Lord for sight instead of being content with his condition as they were. They knew it all; yet only a short time previous they had been guilt^^ of a blindness which to us appears culpable. When the Saviour announced to them His coming passion, and in the plainest language, fit for infants, told them that He was to be crucified and after His death to rise again, no understanding of the facts reached them, " And they understood none of these things." Yet in their conceit they could reprove the insistent beggar. If these princes of the earth and of heaven, these pupils of Christ, His dear associates on the mission, could be so blind, what cannot happen to ourselves? What may not be the depths of that darkness in which we have hidden ourselves from ourselves, while stupidly calling it light? 3. We see this blindness all about us. Here is an industrious and sober man, who drinks without drunkenness enough of his small wages to stint the house in necessities, to deprive the children of decent clothing, to force them to work too early in life. Here is a rich man who gives to the poor one-tenth of what he is able and ought to give, and congratu- lates himself on his generosity. Here is a youth who misses no external law of the church, and is eaten up 94 THE chaplain's sermons. by the dry rot of impurity because dry rot is thought little of in society; it is cancer which is dreaded. This woman frequents the sacraments and misses no chance to spread the tale which injures a reputation ; another is so bent on securing a footing in society for her boys and girls as to be utterly unaware they are losing faith and virtue in that society. And these instances might be multiplied without end. The power of self-deception belonging to man is very great. Hence the fitness of that petition for Lent : "Lord, that I may see." ®CAt$. It is appointed unto men once to die. — Heb. ix. 27. By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death. — Rom. OUTLINE. 1. The human race forever wrestles with the mysterious problem of death. 2. The pagan thinks it solved when he has schooled himself to accept death with indifference. 3. Yet this solution brings him no alleviation of the anguish of death. 4. Sinners are compelled to create their own philosophy of death. 5. But it is never as dignified or consistent as the pagan's. 6. In the agony of death none so religious in form as the sinner. 7. The true and devout Christian accepts death as the punishment of sin. 8. Serene he treads the path to death because Jesus and the saints trod it before him. 9. For him the light of the resurrection shines ever on the grave. I. The Pkoblem of Death. 1. Man lias some understanding of the problem of life. The work in which he is engaged, the hopes and ambitions which he cherishes, the pleasant rela- tions with neighbors, friends, and kinsfolk are tangi- ble and comprehensible things ; but death, the cessa- tion of work, of hope and ambition, of all relationship with earth, has been a problem from the beginning, and for the natural man remains a mystery to the end. Men have argued over its solution for centuries, have adored it, flouted it, reverenced and mocked it by turns ; they have tried to destroy it by such doc- trines as transmigration, or to let it alone as an in- different fact of nature like the change of seasons ; they have tried to take it gayly like the Epicureans, 95 96 THE chaplain's SERMONS. making it tlie excuse for greater merriment in life ; or they have endeavored with the modern scientists to explain it as one of nature's happy processes, to which we should submit resignedly as to the winter. But all these wandering moods have not solved the mystery of death, or brought consolation and resig- nation to a single creature in the presence of the dread messenger. Men still wrestle with the prob- lem, and continue to shape their lives or their plans with the dread fact in view. In spite of philosophers the problem remains a problem still. "Have the gates of death been opened to thee, and hast thou seen the darksome doors?" Job xxxviii. 2. In our day the cultured pagan has made a vigor- ous attempt to treat it as a natural and poetic fact, which should have no other influence on our lives than that which urges us to keep our estates in order for our heirs. He reasons that as man knows noth- ing about it after centuries of argument and research, therefore there is nothing to be learned of its nature ; that since God sent us into the world without our own knowledge or consent, He will discharge us from it in the same way ; that it is not for us to worry over what does not concern us. He denounces the preach- ers of death's sorrows as disturbers of man's happi- ness, making death a bitter dolor where it should be a passing into rest ; he asks ironically where these preachers got their information as to judgment and the account to be rendered of this life ; and he con- veniently forgets all that has been taught of that ac- count and the life hereafter by the sages of human history. Admitting the fact of death he teaches that life should be made all the more beautiful because of DEATH. 97 the fact, that dying should be done graciously and bravely, "like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams," that the hobgoblins of sin and judgment should not be permitted to disturb the death-moment, that roses should be scattered over the dead body and over the grave, gracious marbles should mark the resting- place, and sweet memories of the loved and lost should linger in the memory forever. 3. This philosophy makes beautiful reading, but it can be doubted if it ever eased one pang of the dy- ing moment for either philosopher or slave. Even without the dread of judgment and hell, death re- mains a dreadful thing. It is not the agony of dying which affrights the soul, nor the farewell to fortune, nor the entrance to corruption ; but rather the cessa- tion of life, the eternal separation from all we loved, and the surrender of every hope and ambition that so long fed the fires of the heart. The pagan cannot hide this great anguish of separation from our own personality under rhetoric and roses, marbles and memories. If he has loved deeply, the death of his beloved reduces him to the most piteous despair, and resignation is beyond him. Memory mocks him, for that which he loved is extinct, a mere handful of ashes, which it seems folly to keep in the heart. " Suffer me, therefore, that I may lament my sorrow a little, before I go and return no more, to a land that is dark and covered with the mist of death ; a land of misery and darkness where the shadow of death, and no order, but everlasting horror dwelleth." — Job X. " O Death ! how bitter is the remembrance of thee 1 98 THE chaplain's sermons. to a man that hath peace in his possessions." — Ec- clus. xli. II.— Sinners and Death. 1. For Christians who have taken to a life of sin death has no secrets, since they are acquainted with the teachings of the Church on the end of man's career in this world. However, as man must render to himself regularly an account of the use he is mak- ing of life, sinners are compelled to have a philos- ophy of death even as the pagan's, which will explain and condone their constant violation of the laws of God. They still believe, and are not willing to lose their faith ; they are certain of the punishment of sin, of judgment, purgatory, and hell ; and the grace of fear still holds their hearts, and often poisons the pleasure for which they have risked their happiness hereafter, their peace of mind here. They may have sunk so low, may have acquired so strong an attach- ment to sin, as to wish that death were the end of all things for them, and that faith, religion, command- ments had never existed for men. Yet in spite of the paralysis which they have brought on the soul, they still believe in the life to come, still hope to give up sin one day when the appetite for it has died out. They forget the wise man's saying: "Kemember that death is not slow." — Ecclus. xiv. 2. The pagan endeavors to forget death; the be- lieving sinner plans to cheat the law and its oj6&cers at the last moment. He counts first on the vigor of his constitution to carry him into old age, and second on the placidity of his passions when youth and ma- turity have departed. He supposes that in the de- DEATH. 99 cline of life his temper will incline to religion and its duties, and that he will have time to make a long preparation. He pleads that the passions of j^outh are so strong as to require an outlet, and as long as he does wrong to no man that in some way indul- gence is lawful to him. He soothes his loose con- science with the promise that he will soon repent, or wdth regular attendance at Mass, or with the wearing of a scapular or the recitation of the rosary or the giving of generous alms. At times the grace of fear becomes so insistent that these and similar sedatives refuse to control conscience, and he is forced to make a mission, or to make a confession which results in good behavior for a brief time. Then he returns to his sins again. His philosophy is not as consistent, nor as admirable as the pagan's, but it serves sinners for many years, as a powerful opiate serves unfor- tunates dying from slow and painful disease. 3. When death comes to the pagan he makes a bold and often a successful attempt to lie down with dignity to cheerful dreams; while the sinner against light sneaks off meanl}^ like a " quarrj^-slave at night, scourged to his dungeon." He is like one rushed out to trial and execution before his affairs can be settled, his counsel summoned, his witnesses secured, his case prepared. He hopes against hope for that luck which, in spite of the decree of physicians, will return him to active life once more ; he clings to the priest, to the crucifix, to the scapular, to the lighted candle, to the holy water, no aged devotee being able to surpass his devotion to these little planks, which relieve his ever-increasing sensation of drowning. But his devotion has no heart in it, and is only the 100 THE chaplain's SERMONS. expression of liis despair. There may be some dignity in the death of a pagan ; there seems to be only meanness in the death of a sinner, unless grace has flowed in upon his soul in a flood, and floated him above the meanness of his life. " By what things a man sinneth, by the same also he is tormented." — Wis. xi. III. — The Sanctified and Death. 1. The vagaries of both pagan and sinner in this matter spring from their poor understanding of the mystery of death, which only the true Christian com- prehends rightly, and gives its proper place in his philosophy of life. He has it from the Holy Spirit that death is the punishment of sin ; for by sin came death into the world. Therefore he accepts it as a punishment, which falls inexorably on every son of Adam, sinner and saint alike. All must accept its anguish, as did Christ and His holy ones, and thereby pay off a portion of the debt of justice, which Christ by His death paid wholly. He holds that of all life's days the last is the most imj)ortant, as in the race- course the goal takes first place in the minds of athletes and spectators. In one respect life is a train- ing for death, that the soul may pass the finishing- post with its every power in vigorous action. Like a practical philosopher he believes in preparing first and always for that which must be ; therefore death is a well-considered element in all his daily calcula- tions. Nor is it in consequence a spectre at the feast, a shadow on life's pathway; for it looms before him grand and majestic, the portal to the eternal life, the gloom of its earthward side softened by the light of DEATH. 101 heaven. Hence when life has honored him with its best gifts, and has little more to give, a certain indif- ference to living longer, a noble disregard of our puny, physical life takes possession of him, and he finds himself longing, as do the saints always, for the true life of heaven. " One day in thy courts is above a thousand." — Psalm Ixxxiii. 2. At the same time he does not try to hide under roses and rhythms the terrors of death. The man of faith is always acutely alive to the ordeal which he must undergo in his last moments, too sensitive per- haps to its anguish. The very strength of his body in health reminds how feeble, how tormented, how painful that body will become in the grasp of fatal disease ; how fever will consume it, and pain oppress it; how dreadful will become the bed so eagerly sought in health after the day's labors. He is chilled now at the thought of the grave and its painful cor- ruption, though his body will be insensible to the worm. His sins, long repented of, trouble him, as he catches sight of the majesty of an offended God. The judgment has many terrors for him, because it has terrified the spotless saints after their lives of labor and deaths of love. More than all, the separa- tion from his beloved, the parting with those who are far dearer than life, will be a second death to him. It drew bitter tears and groans from the Son of God, that separation from the best of life ; why should it not rend the heart of the ordinary Christian dying? These and a hundred other sorrows often overpower for the moment the most fervent and innocent soul. " My tongue hath cleaved to my jaws, and Thou hast brought me down into the dust of death. — Ps. xxi. 102 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 3. With the just man the consolations of faith finally outweigh the apprehensions of the mind. He recalls how faithfully he has striven to walk in the way of the commandments, to prepare himself by a pure and devoted life for the final ordeal. How often has he meditated on death, accepted its pains beforehand with resignation to the Divine will, and poured out his petitions for fidelity to the end. "Remember thy last end and thou wilt never sin," has been his motto. He is consoled by recalling that Jesus did not spare Himself the bitter journey to the grave by way of awful Calvary, that tender martyrs followed their Lord by the road of fire, of torture, of the bloody arena, that the glorious bodies of the saints underwent the humiliations of the grave in crumbling into dust, and that the God, in whose hands are all these things, will w^atch each detail, as He watches the fall of a sparrow. " Are not ye of much more value than they?" He knows that a splendid strength will be conferred upon him by the sacraments of the last hour ; the Son of God HimseK will feed him, the priest will absolve him, the church load him with her favors; the last oiling, the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, will warm the chilling heart and strengthen the faltering limbs for the journey through the valley of shadows ; and at his side will walk his angel, his patrons, to cheer the lonely way. Though it is the Judge he meets at the great tribunal, he recalls that in life He had ever been his friend, bound to him by many ties, but most of all by the tried service he had rendered to His Master on many occasions. " I was hungry and ye fed me, naked and ye clothed Me." That painful separation from his beloved on earth is DEATH. 103 only for a short time ; and if he cannot repress his anguish and fear that they will not do as well without him, nor be as faithful to God, his trust in His Mas- ter quells both fear and anguish. Finally, he knows that the Church will lay his body to rest with rever- ence as once the temple of the Holy Ghost, and guard it with care for the resurrection. It will be laid away with honor, and its name held in benediction. With all these beautiful consolations in his mind, how can the death of the Christian be other than it is, simple, sweet, enlightened, pathetic, and hopeful? The pagan stoic fails like a lamp extinguished or drops with the dumb resignation of a noble animal struck by a blow he cannot understand nor resist; the Christian departs like another Columbus into the great unknown, confident of finding another and more glorious world. The dawn of an eternal day sheds its light on his paling face, and if we who survive must weep, it is because the doors of death have shut him from our human sight forever, and to see him again we must travel the road b}^ which he de- parted. But the light of the resurrection shines ever on his grave. " O Death, where is thy victory ! O Death, where is thy sting !" — 1 Cor. xv. 55. tU itMf Recount. But I say unto you, that every idle word tJiat men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment.— Matt, ni. 36. OUTLINE. 1. There should be no exaggeration in descriptions of a fact so solemn and inevitable as the judgment. 2. In that moment we shall meet our souls, as it were for the first time. 3. The personages of the scene alone are suflBcient to fill us with reverence and dread. 4. Yet they do not constitute the chief dread of judgment, which is that now we are to get justice done us. 5. To understand this more clearly, picture Augustine and Napoleon at judgment. 6. The judgment-hour ought to be the home-coming of sons, whereas it is too often the trial of mean malefactors. 7. The world always ridicules the doctrine of the final account. 8. But in spite of its ridicule men continue to hope and believe in a final balancing of the innumerable and insolent injustices of this world. 9. How we may use this doctrine to the best advantage. I. — The Judgment Alone Teerible. 1. CoMPAEED with sickness and death, the last ac- count which man must render of himself to God has superior terrors ; yet sickness is painful, to be in its fatal grasp without hope of escape rends the heart, and death, cessation, departure is the dread of na- ture ; still, the thought of passing before the throne for sentence surpasses in anguish many sicknesses, many deaths. This is the moment chosen by God to justify Himself to man for the mystery which has surrounded His providence in the world, and to se- cure man's assent to the decision of the Judge in 104 THE FINAL ACCOUNT. 105 man's own case. It is the marvel of this judgment that man himself accepts the sentence as just. No matter how stupid in life, at his own trial he enjoys the wit of the immortals, and can see and ratify the conclusions of his own life as they appear at this moment. Believers, therefore, need every encourage- ment in descriptions of this tremendous event, so certain, so perfect, so irrevocable. Exaggeration, inference, word-painting are mostly uncalled for ; be- cause when the least has been said, which the words of the Master authorize and the teachings of the Church as well, enough has been told to disturb men seriously. Cardinal Newman did us inestimable ser- vice when he wrote his consoling "Dream of Geron- tius," a true antidote for the horrifying descriptions of the judgment so often indulged in by the impru- dent. 2. At the same time there should be no minimizing of the fact itself. Sickness, death, and judgment are made bearable to the just and the penitent by the grace of God, and they can look with holy trust upon the approach of these trials. No human being can escape them ; in judgment we must answer for our use of the talents intrusted to us ; and we have the declaration of Christ that we shall account even for our idlest words. It is well for us to know without excess or diminution what we are to meet in that hour. A sentence is to be pronounced, and we have the shaping of the sentence. Therefore, in brief, the details of this last event will take form from the mat- ter of examination and the manner of it. As to the latter, how strange and awesome are the circum- stances? Just dispossessed of our earthly tenement, 106 THE chaplain's SERMONS. we meet for tlie first time, as it were, our own souls on the borders of eternity, the better part of our hu- man nature, yet always the least known and under- stood. Little in time, insignificant members of hu- man society, we are in a moment immortals; mean in our mental capacity and disposition, suddenly we are become generous in both ; self-deceivers while on earth, our candor now is simply appalling. We see sin, error, truth, justice naked, which in mortal life were constantly dressed in our prejudices; and we now give them their right names in love or in horror. 3. We enter the great hall of judgment made won- derful by all the human glories and infamies that entered it ahead of us. We who trembled like slaves on being dragged before earthly courts stand now at the dread bar which passed sentence on Homer, Augustus, Yirgil, Peter, Augustine. The Father and the son meet face to face for the first time ; their re- lationship is evident to all in the likeness of the son to the Father; a likeness which shines out through all deformities of evil. The Blessed Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, holds the seat of judgment, and the witnesses stand in that August Presence ready with their testimony. They are incorruptible and eager ; the Angel that guarded us all our lives, Satan that desired us, the souls injured by our sins, perhaps lost through our deficiencies, that now de- mand compensation and justice. What need to add anything to this plain statement of facts. The brav- est and purest soul sighs with emotion at the baldest description of the scene. THE FINAL ACCOUNT. 107 II.— We Shall Get Justice. 1. Yet it is not the personages of judgment that constitute its dread. We are in constant spiritual communication with them during our lives ; and when we have put on immortality, to see them may not so seriously disturb us. The chief dread of that hour will be the fact that here we are to receive justice. We have ever been ready to mete it to others, we have cried to heaven for it many a time against our perse- cutors, yet it is certain we shall not be so eager for it in God's visible presence. We have never under- stood perfect justice. Our sins may have been known to us, and their malice atoned for by many tears and severe penances; but how many meditate upon the unseen consequences of these sins, or even dream that sins have consequences? The father who ne- glected his children, maimed their career by his fail- ures ; the sensualist whose graceful obscenity started the young upon the road of pleasure; the teacher whose love of ease cost many souls their faith or vir- tue ; the author whose gay book led many into less esteem for truth and purity ; all will find that many generations must pass before the consequences of their injustice have passed from the earth. We must suffer for these consequences; justice demands it, and at this tribunal justice will be satisfied. Yet it is mercy which we need more than justice, we count upon mercy to carry us beyond the danger of hell; but if Satan and the witnesses against us, the unfor- tunates who trace the source of their misfortunes to us, can make a clear case against us, what mercy can 108 THE chaplain's SERMONS. save ? "I will take a time, and I will judge jus- tices," is the declaration of the Spirit. 2. To understand this better be present in mind at the judgment of two historical personages : Augus- tine and Napoleon. One was a saint, whose life at the beginning was more or less sinful or indifferent, while its maturity and close were splendid in virtue and services to God and man ; the other was a tre- mendous military genius and leader of men, over whom religion and principle had small influence. Both have left upon the world impressions which may never fade. Yet their greatness made their judg- ment only the more searching and severe. How in- significant were those two souls with all their genius beside the majesty of angelic intelligence or the power of Satan ! The Prince of darkness might have been discouraged before the magnitude of Augustine's re- pentance, yet he still had the years of his heresy and sin. In the great emperor he had a splendid case, which no repentance would seem to overcome; his personal sins, his monstrous ambition, his unneces- sary wars, his cruelties and his lust, the awful miser- ies which his career poured upon Europe. What height of human genius and power could match the far-reaching consequences of his sins? 3. Such men have much to offer in excuse at judg- ment, but we have nothing. No great temptation dis- turbed us, no powerful allurements drew us from the right way. We sinned because we desired the taste of sin, wantonly. Judgment was not made simply to be a terror to us ; it was meant to be the moment of public acknowledgment of our fidelity. It ought really to be the homecoming of sons from a noble THE FINAL ACCOUNT. 109 war, crowned with everlasting and bloodless honor, whose Captain presents them with joy to the Eternal King, and asks for them approval and a share in the great kingdom; whose scars are honorable, even though evidencing human weakness, the moments of half-yielding to the foe! Alas! what an array of skulkers, cowards, weaklings, traitors passes before that throne ; what joy to Satan as their careers are laid bare, what shame to the Great Captain who trusted and endowed them, only to pass shameful judgment on them now. III. — The Wokld Eidicules. 1. Whatever may have been the design of God in establishing the seat of judgment, the busy and pleas- ure-loving world ridicules the doctrine, or does its best to diminish its significance for man. Neither the private nor the general judgment disturbs it in the pursuit of money and sin, and it meets the cry of the preachers and the warnings of the Saviour with a shrug of the shoulder, saying. These things are still far-off. It will not permit itself to get a clear impression, natural or supernatural, of the final ac- count. It dare not; for with the impression would tumble like a house of cards that fine structure of daily wickedness which it is forever building and embellishing. The world must have irresponsible power. It cannot bear the idea of one day account- ing for each atom of time and grace. Kings must still be gods, as they were of old, though the name of divinity be gone ; ministers must own standing armies with which to carry out their picayune policies, 110 THE chaplain's SERMONS. though the people starve and corruption thrives; financiers, as they are called, must be at liberty to manipulate railroads, to organize trusts, to steal the earth; the seducer, the swindler, the voluptuary would not enjoy their pursuits and rewards with the idea of an accounting lodged in their minds. So, the world acts as if no past would ever rise to meet it with exact details of its sins ; it boldly declares that in this world force, fraud, craft, money, are the true rulers, and God does not interfere to prevent their injustices, as is seen in the fact that every species of wrong marks the history of the nations. 2. This scepticism no doubt weakens our faith, but it has not yet succeeded in destroying the belief of mankind in the day of settlement. No sane soul could stand over the corpse of John the Baptist and admit that the injustice of his death is to have no other vengeance than the luxurious career and ordi- nary ending permitted to Herod Antipas; or admit that all these mysteries of God's providence are never to have explanation. Such an ending to man's his- tory shocks reason in the mere mention. Religion or not, men will believe in their hearts that the devil- parent whose children died criminals because of him, the devil-king whose subjects died amid war's horrid miseries for his pleasure, and the whole tribe of ma- licious sinners will one day somewhere have meted out to them in generous measure every pang they inflicted on their victims. Justice demands it, and human reason approves. 3. It is certain that the judgment has three uses : to vindicate God's providence to each man, to bestow on man true justice, to determine his reward or pun- THE FINAL ACCOUNT. Ill ishment. But these things are of eternity. Its use here is to teach us the importance of our own actions, and to set us on strict guard over them. Not a hair of our heads drops to the ground without the permis- sion and knowledge of God, who knows our most se- cret thoughts and actions. What an inspiration to the good that each minute of labor and patience is to be recognized by Him ; what a deterrent to willing sinners that every shade of intention and resolution in their violation of the law shall one day stand up to accuse them ! Sinner and saint alike will see their entire lives with the eye of the Divinity, as clear as a map through all their years, with consequences run- ning far into time and eternity. Both the elect and the condemned will stand for an instant beside the Judge, and with immortal intelligence look into the present mystery of God's dealings with men; and they will admit His justice, wisdom, and mercy from the beginning, though for one the result of life has been eternal condemnation. J5^t>en. But as it is written: the eye hath Twt seen, nor ear heard, nor huth it entered into the heart of man, what things Ood hath prepared for them that love him. — t Cor. ii. 9. OUTLINE. 1. The civilized world is slowly dividing into two camps: the believers in the immortality of man, and the unbelievers. 2. In spite of the teachings of the latter men still refuse to feel and think as animals. 3. Yet many, while believing in a life to come, are entirely dominated by the life of this world. 4. And the ideas of death, judgment, and hell are more potent in their lives than heaven. 5. The true idea of heaven and the joys and activities of heaven. 6. It is the perfection of the life begun here, the resurrection and renewal of it. 7. The testimonies of the New Testament are very clear and consoling on this matter. 8. If heaven has little or no influence on our lives, it is because we are not certain of its existence. 9. Did not death so often take from us our best beloved, oiu* thoughts would rarely turn toward our last home. I. — The Crown of Life. 1. In religious matters two hostile camps now face one another on the great battle-field of the world. On one side are the sinners and certain scientists, on the other the followers of Christ. The former de- clare their disbelief in a future career for man outside of this world, the sinners through self-interest, the scientists through gratuitous assumption. The Christians base their lives on the eternity of heaven and hell, and look to a career of perfect happiness in heaven with the God who made them. Grouped around these two camps is that great multitude of sincere, right-living people who know not what to be- 113 HEAVEN. 113 lieve in the clamor of discussion going on around them. The scientists declare that there exists no evi- dence of an eternal world other than our own, which may be eternal, even if man is not ; that the ingrained superstition of men, and the shrewdness of selfish priesthoods, have joined forces to proclaim and main- tain a delusive and foolish hope, beautiful in concep- tion, and sublime in expression, but so utterly with- out reality as to be the source of many miseries to man. The sinners support the scientists with enthu- siasm because the existence of another world means eternal death to them. The Christians continue to teach the glory of heaven, convinced by faith and by reason also that the end of man's career is not in this world. The two camps will one day go out against each other in pitched battle, and not for the first time, as this struggle has been from the beginning. 2. It is quite possible that God might have made man what the scientists think he is, simply the high- est form of animal life, made to enjoy the earth for a little time, and then like the inferior animals to be returned to his native dust; in which case the resem- blance of man to the most intelligent beast would have been much closer than it appears at present. Man would have lived and died content to be merely an animal. His personal comfort would have been his highest ambition, and, his wants and pleasures sat- isfied, he would hardly have worn himself out with mental sorrows over a condition of life possibly high- er than his own. Sickness and death would not have had such prospective terrors for him as now, and the parting at the grave would not sadden the last moments of the dying nor cast so deep a gloom over 8 114 THE chaplain's SERMONS. the lives of surviving friends. The poet and the ar- tist and the sculptor, the architect, the statesman, the warrior, might have enjoyed their careers as in the present hour, but without so much anxiety and labor in the severe effort to attain eminence, and without bitter disappointment if only moderate suc- cess or absolute failure greeted their efforts. How- ever, in spite of the sinners and the scientists men continue to act as if there ought to be a life to come. They grieve immoderately over their sick and dead, instead of cultivating the happy stoicism and indiffer- ence of the animal ; the fire within them urges them on to the most heroic labors in behalf of art, com- merce, literature, and charity ; and when they accept the teachings of the scientists, it is with the apathy of despair ; or with a kind of madness, which secretly curses the fate that gave them existence without a motive sufficient to make life pleasurable, sickness and failure indifferent matters, and death the pleas- ant end of something worth ending. 3. Catholics, strong in the faith of eternal life, re- gard these unfortunates with pitying eye. For them there can never be but the one camp, where Jesus is the Captain and heaven is the veteran's prize; and life always remains sweet and hopeful to them, even in the darkest hours, because earth is only the step- ping-stone to that kingdom, of whose glory there shall never be an end. Yet even Catholics can be criticised very often for the little use they make of their belief in heaven to comfort their weary mo- ments, and to lighten the burdens of life. In the average Christian life you will find that death, judg- ment, and hell play a larger part in moulding or di- HEAVEN. 115 recting the soul than heaven. Men seem to be most quickly, if not most powerfully, influenced by fear, not love, though this be strongest in the long run. The honest life of the world, for here we are not speaking of sinners, too often so dominates souls, that the thought of heaven is repellent, since it in- volves the pain of separation from earthly activities. Success in life urges most men to put away such dis- agreeable thoughts as death ; but, what is stranger, it removes the idea of heaven as well, and men can wade long in suffering, in adversity, in sorrow, in bad for- tune, without once taking actual comfort in the sweet thought of heaven. It was St. Paul's great consola- tion in his last days that "as for the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just judge, will render to me in that day; and not only to me, but to them also that love his com- ing."— 2 Tim. iv. II.— Heaven as It Is. 1. "We do not take more comfort and happiness out of the thought of heaven because our ideas of that dwelling-place of angels and saints are dry and there- fore unfruitful. It does not require much imagina- tion or wide reading to get emphatic perceptions of death, judgment, and hell ; we are too keen on these matters, and must even repress our wayward fancy in their regard. Heaven is all that an ideal earth might be, and very much more. What are the natu- ral desires of the innocent and high-minded of this world as to their own happiness? We all desire youth, that beautiful period when the color of life is so rich and strong that sorrow and separation seem 116 THE chaplain's SERMONS. but distant shadows; we desire health and vigor, that we may enjoy life, and contribute our share to the joy of others; we long for riches, because so much of material beauty can be purchased by gold, and because want is painful ; we yearn for lixity in the persons, places, things we love, for they are nec- essary to happiness, and to lose them means sorrow ; we long to remain constantly with our beloved, to enjoy their company, to strengthen more and more the bonds of love between us ; and as our souls grow holier there rises within us an intense longing for nobler circumstances than those in which we live. 2. Does this world grant us these things? Youth flies with astonishing speed, and leaves us on life's road wrinkled, gray-headed, rheumatic, somewhat crabbed in temper, and utterly stripped of the vivacity and the illusions of youth ; death seems but a little ways off, and is the bitter seasoning of every banquet. In place of health and vigor we are reminded that the surplus of these is gone, and that we must husband what is left, if we would live to middle age. Most of us not only remain poor, but feel at times the cold shadow of actual want; it is only the few who enjoy sufficient incomes. The fact which causes us most pain and astonishment is the utter uncertainty of the shifty world about us ; in ten years the panorama of our lives changes completely ; hardly a soul we knew at life's start remains near us, and in twenty years change has not only robbed us of youth and hope and illusion, but has also taken the friends of childhood and youth, and placed us in an entirely new and more chilling set of circumstances. Worse yet, death and other fatalities have cut off from us the beloved of HEAVEN. 117 our hearts, and our best past lies beneath the church- yard mould. If we have been fortunate, new and holy relationships have taken root in us to ease the wounds of time ; none the less are they wounds, and at times we must stand apart and weep to be alone in the world. In place of the illusions of our youth has come a bitter sense of the meanness of men, which pesters and worries us like the winged nuisances of a new-opened wilderness. Lying, cheating, slander- ing, dishonesty of all kinds, envy, hypocrisy, po- lite obscenity, sham, fraud, unfaith, so crowd upon the decent and clean that they begin to feel unclean themselves ; but there is no escape from the wilder- ness. 3. Such are our desires, and such is the world's response to them. Is it not strange, then, that we should not turn with ardent longing to the thought of that heaven which is our only refuge from the world's meanness, the sure fulfilment of the desires which God has placed in our hearts? Heaven will give us eternal youth, health, vigor, wealth, beauty; it will be without change, or shadow of death and separa- tion ; we shall there find again our beloved, and the past and future shall be one with the present ; all the beauty of earth, intensified a thousand times and made eternal, will be ours. In fact, heaven means the resurrection and rehabilitation of the human race after death, except for that part of it which has been lost of its own wiU. The angels and saints shall live in a perfect society under the King of men and angels, and joy shall have no end. How is it, then, that with this splendid home awaiting us, we spend so little thought upon it? Simply because we are ignorant of 118 THE chaplain's SERMONS. the beauties of God's dwelling-place. Ignorant of heaven's beauty, we neither consider nor desire it. in. — The Divine Woed. 1. Let us hear what the Scriptures have to say about heaven. Here is the description given by St. John in the last chapters of the Apocalypse : " And I John saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice from the throne saying: Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people, and God himself with them shall be their God. And God shall wipe all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away. . . . And he shewed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, and the light thereof was like to a precious stone, as to the jasper-stone, even as crystal. . . . And the build- ing of the wall thereof was of jasper-stone ; but the city itself pure gold, like to clear glass. And the foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all manner of precious stones. . . . And the city hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof. And the nations shall walk in the light of it : and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory and honor into it. And the gates thereof shall not be shut by day : for there shall be no night there. . . . And there shall be no HEAVEN. 119 curse any more : but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him. And they shall see his face : and his name shall be on their foreheads. And night shall be no more: and they shall not need the light of the lamp, nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God shall en- lighten them, and they shall reign for ever and ever." 2. What can be added to this clear and shining testimony except the words of the Master Himself. " Wonder not at this, for the hour cometh wherein all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God. And they that have done good things shall come forth unto the resurrection of life." — John v. 28, 29. " The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage : but they that shall be accounted worthy of that world, and of the resurrection from the dead, shall neither be married, nor take wives. Neither can they die any more : for they are equal to the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. — Luke xx. 34-36. "In my Father's house there are many mansions. If not, I would have told you, that 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." These direct testi- monies from Our Lord might be multiplied beyond limit. What hope and joy ought they not rouse in our hearts ! Yet we are sceptical of the heaven in which we must believe. It is too beautiful, too won- derful to be true ; so we bury ourselves in the busi- ness, the physical, mental, and social joys of life, to distract our weary souls from the thoughts of death ; we pile up fortunes, grow greedy of human fame ; and 120 THE chaplain's SERMONS. when the moments of gloom arrive, as come they must to every man, no ray of heaven's glorious light pierces our darkness. We sicken and die, half de- spairing of the life to come, half hopeful, and almost wholly ignorant. 3. Therefore, Christ reminds us by the death of our nearest and best beloved that we have an ever- lasting home visible to the eyes of faith, and forces us to look for it through the mist of our tears, when our hearts are breaking. We kneel at the grave where our treasures lie, we beat against that awful barrier of death, we cry out that it is impossible they should be gone from us forever ; and out of the depths of human grief rises the light of that faith which we have let die in our souls; and we see at last the brightness and truth of heaven, and its peace and promise heal our griefs. But why wait for life's tragedies to force heaven's consolations upon us? Why not recognize it now, this home of the blest, and draw from it comfort for moments of sorrow, humil- ity for moments of pride, strength in temptation, hope in despair, and joy for every instant of life. The world is all the sweeter, and its dark hours are lit up, when men remember and constantly feel that the greatest joy of life on earth is its continuity in the glorious life to come. (Bt^erftiBttng :Sdtfute, ITien shall Tie say to the wicked: Depart from Me, ye accursed, into everlasting fire. — Matt. xxv. JfB. OUTLINE. 1. The failures met with in this life are a hint of the failures to be met with in eternity. 2. Thus the existence of hell can be surmised, even if the Church had not declared it. 3. But Christ did not leave us in doubt on this matter, and openly de- scribed for us hell and its eternity. 4. Men have argued against its existence, or against its eternity of pain. 5. Common-sense teaches that if men can make shipwreck of this life, they can do as much with the life to come. 6. Theologians have been willing to do away with the darker features of hell, but have found all things against them. 7. Lurid descriptions of this place of sorrow are useless and hurtful. 8. The dignity of the description of hell given by Christ in the parable of the rich man. 9. He Himself shows us that God and man do not lose in the home of eternal justice the dignity of their relationship. I.— The Existence of Hell. 1. All failure in the effort to reach the essential and necessary saddens the heart. We have only to look around us to see the innumerable wrecks which lie upon the shore of time ; the bankrupt merchants whose wealth and opportunity have fled together; the decaying bodies which disease is bearing to the grave ; the dismasted souls, which no longer make any pre- tence of sailing to a harbor, but float with their vices through all grades of self-indulgence towards the reef waiting to pierce them. The world is full of these failures, which are saddest when irretrievable. They have missed the aims of youth and ambition, and all 121 122 THE chaplain's SERMONS. know that life will offer them no other chance to re- establish themselves. Men accept this extinction as the inevitable, and if they struggle in spite of convic- tion, it is the struggle of despair, or of a hopeful na- ture that will not acknowledge defeat. It seems rea- sonable to infer, therefore, that as failure meets so many in the ordinary concerns of life, it will meet many at the judgment seat of God. The state of eternal glory is to be won by special effort on the part of each soul. It is not a state into which we fall as we fell into the world from the womb of the mother. " The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent bear it away." The commandments indicate what measures men must take to avoid failure in achieving the glory of heaven. " If you would enter into eternal life, keep the commandments." Yet the most ordinary observer can bear testimony that many souls pass years, entire lives, without keeping a com- mandment. 2. Hence the existence of hell can be suspected by the intelligent without any special revelation. One has only to examine the life prisoners in our prisons to understand why there should be place in the next world for the souls who made violation of the law their one pursuit. For Catholics the matter is set- tled in the teaching of the church that there is a hell, and that it is eternal. The great thinkers of the Christian body have rarely been willing to accept the eternity of suffering, and have often set themselves to explaining probabilities of suffering being done away with in the course of ages. But their reasonings and explanations have failed to diminish the dread mys- tery of eternal failure. No hint of a restoration is EVERLASTING FAILURE. 123 given in the scriptures. The soul which fails at the judgment seat, fails forever. If it cannot achieve glory in that last trial, there is nothing to indicate that the opportunity will ever again be offered it. 3. The Saviour Himself has spoken on the mystery of hell with no uncertain voice. In that solemn de- scription of the last judgment, to be found in the gospel according to St. Matthew at the close of the 25th chapter, the very details of the lost soul's des- tiny are plainly given, the causes of his failure to at- tain life eternal, the reasons for his condemnation to hell. Wrapped in selfishness such as marked the ca- reer of the wealthy Dives, these wrecked souls had no time but for their own sinful pleasures, they had no comfort for the wretched, no clothing for the naked, no food for the hungry, no shelter for the homeless, no consolation for the imprisoned; in a word, no charity either for others or themselves. And this is the condemnation of the merciful Christ who came to assure the world of mercy and hope: "Depart from me, ye accursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels." There is no need to dwell on this sentence. It is supplemented by the last verse of the chapter : " And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the just into life eternal." — Matt. xxv. II.— The World against Christ. 1. Naturally the interested deny the existence, or at least the more terrible features of hell. The unbe- liever pretends to derive an argument against religion from the horror with which he looks upon a God who 124 THE chaplain's SERMONS. could expose man to the risk of such a destiny ; a cer- tain sect denies that Christ ever uttered a word which can be interpreted as referring to an eternal hell; a second denies that the scriptures teach the eternity of punishment; and still a third cries out that the Church has not taught it, only a few ambi- tious theologians. All these statements are evidence of the dread with which man regards the mystery of hell. No doubt the theologians would be as happy as any others to accept arguments tending to destroy the terrors of hell; but the truth must be upheld though man suffer, for in truth alone is the safety of the race and the individual ; and, whether it be peas- ant or unlettered scientist who studies the teachings of Christ on this matter, common-sense must decide for both in the end as to the meaning of the tremen- dous passages in which Christ spoke of hell and its sufferings. 2. If there be no hell of any kind, then in the order of salvation or of the spiritual life there is no such thing as failure, and all our analogies are at fault. A man can destroy the organic life of the body : why can he not destroy the life of the soul? The scien- tists teach us that there is no mercy in nature, whose laws are fulfilled at any cost. If a star vary a hair's-breadth from its appointed course the deflec- tion means ruin for itself and many other planets, probably eternal ruin, only the matter of which they were composed remaining in space : why then cannot the soul, by its deflection from the law of its exist- ence, arrive at the same eternal ruin? Analogies of course prove nothing by themselves, and it would never do to argue too closely from them. As a mat- EVERLASTING FAILURE. 125 ter of fact, however, the materialists have accepted these analogies for their own guidance, and finding no escape from them in this question of the possibil- ity of eternal failure for the immortal soul, have dropped even speculative belief in the life to come. It was the best way to get out of the difficulty. For common-sense teaches us that if you can have abso- lute failure in all the known conditions of existence, you can have it in the life to come. When this state- ment of common-sense is supported by the authority of Christ, it becomes irresistible. 3. In like manner are the others answered. The conclusions which flow from their assertions are not tenable. If the element of eternity be taken from the scriptural hell, then this life is not the only probation to which the soul of man is subject. He will have another chance in the infernal regions, where he will be once more instructed in his duties to God, and brought to such an understanding of his wicked life upon earth as to repent thoroughly for his sins. There is no hint of this second probation in the scriptures, and to maintain it throws all belief on this point into confusion. Whatever is found in the sa- cred writings tends only to confirm the beliefs of Christians since Christ ascended. It is always "eternal fiire," "the inextinguishable fire," "the worm which never dies," to which the Saviour, St. John, the Baptist, and the Apostles always allude. The separation between the just and the unjust is always referred to as eternal. The great teachers of the church have been only too willing to mitigate the scriptural statements on hell, but have found no justification for explaining away these statements.. 126 THE chaplain's SERMONS. Hence the final decisions of the church : that there is a hell ; that it is eternal ; that the lost descend into it at the instant of death. As to those who find no hell at all in their philosophy, they lack the elementary sense of justice. The drunkard, the brigand, the tyrant, the sinners who die glorying in their sins, after perhaps deliberate rejection of grace, are to re- ceive the same reward as the souls which on earth led lives of holiness. The mere statement shows its ab- surdity. III. — Dives. 1. What is the nature of this place of sorrow? Who would dare to say ? For two thousand years the Infallible Church has uttered no word on the subject. What a pity that so many preachers have not oftener imitated her reticence. On the contrary, they have been prolific in descriptions of hell in proportion to the church's silence. With the confidence of men who have seen with their own eyes, they have de- scribed the tortures of the Inferno, found for them a sort of philosophic basis, and without art, without taste, without prudence, skill, or reservation, have pictured a hell from which reason revolts, which be- littles the majesty of God, and provides even the atheist with sound arguments against Divine good- ness and power. For it must be remembered— and it seems ridiculous even to make this remark — that in all things God is the loving Father of men; that His decrees are both merciful and just, and are carried out to the smallest detail in a way that offends not man's idea of dignity and taste and propriety. Hence, the pictures of children tied to red-hot pave- EVERLASTING FAILURE. 127 ments, and similar tasteful descriptions, are a real offence against the spirit of religion, and could be as heartily condemned as any heretical proposition, even if they do not as much harm. 2. What a model for preacher and hearer is Christ's own story of Dives in torment. Its simplic- ity, directness, mercy, and dignity put to shame the vulgar stories of the uncultured. What has the here- tic to say to the plain statement : " And the rich man died, and was buried in hell"? What can he say to that other striking declaration: "In all things be- tween us and you a great chaos is established, so that they who would pass hence to you are not able, neither can any one come hither thence" ? What a re- buke to the diabolical tortures of the eyes described by so many, that Dives " lifting up his eyes, when he was in torments, saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom ;" that he could address him, crying out, " Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Laz- arus that he may dip his finger in water, and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame." What a smarting reproach to the same dealers in horrors that Dives could offer up a petition for his brethren, favor for himself having been refused: "I beseech thee. Father, that you may send him into the home of my father. For I have five brethren, that he may tes- tify to them, lest they should come into this place of torments." How frequently we have heard from bad Christians and uneasy pagans the same appeal : " If one risen from the dead shall go to them, they will do penance;" and how thoroughly and powerfully are they answered in their madness : " If they wiU not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be- 128 THE chaplain's SERMONS. lieve one risen from tlie dead." It is unnecessary to dwell on this story ; it is the rebuke of Christ to her- etic and declaimer alike, to the deceivers of men, and the self-deceived. 3. The story of Dives teaches us above all things that God and man do not lose the dignity of nature and relationship even in hell, and that man accepts, as did Dives, his punishment as just. It shows us that hell is separation from God, from friend, from our own lofty destiny. It signifies eternal loneliness. It is the home of the failures, the deliberate or the willing failures, who made shipwreck of this life. It is the home of justice, which we cry out for so bit- terly in this world, and still more bitterly cry out against in the next. The sinner will get no sorrier fate than the indifferent — these dead souls that sin only by omission, and fancy their natural good- will is bound to land them safely, forgetting that it is wings, not mere good-will, which enables even a goose to fly. The one refraia of hell is "forever — never," like the refrain in Longfellow's poem. These two words contain the essence of hell's nature. Were it a balmy forest, eternity would rob it of its balm for those who walk its shades cut off from God, their race, and their destiny of glory. Were it even more horrible than the word-mongers have pictured it, yet had an end some time, its flames would become as cooling breezes. Since the dead will not rise again to preach its eternity, every believer should announce it on the housetops. To fear hell for what it really is, is to get some sense of sin ; the conviction of sin, sensitiveness to its foulness, means the making of a missionary and a saint. ^^e (pctBBion of Christ. And Jesus again crying with a loud voice yielded up His Spirit. — Matt, xxvii. 50. OUTLINE. 1. It is the shame of our race that we once condemned the most perfect of men to death. 2. The mystery of His death overwhelms us by its sadness. 3. With such difficulty do we realize that God became man, that His passion and death do not deeply touch us. 4. It is only when we distinctly see Christ's human nature that His sorrows appeal to us. 5. The average man leads a life of struggle and obscurity, which ends in the grave. 6. The King of men led the same life, but ended it as a criminal. 7. Yet death, which extinguishes men, raised our King to glory. 8. Because His strength had root in the eternal life, while ours is placed in such things as health and riches. 9. The struggle between the temporal and the eternal life is endless. 10. The victims of this struggle, the lost souls of men, made the bitter- ness of the passion of Christ. I. — The Mystery of the Passion. 1. It is the shame of our race, indelible and fright- ful, that we allowed to live in obscurity, and hurried to a judicial death of infamy the most perfect man the ages are to know. Having been honored by His glorious presence, taught by His word and example, led beyond death to eternal life by His love and power, we eternally discredited our own acumen by refusing to recognize Him as our King, our race by preferring to Him the robber Barabbas, our laws by securing under them His condemnation, our earthly rewards for success, ability, character, public service, posi- tion, mentality, by refusing Him any other honors 9 129 130 than the rag of mockery, the crown of thorns, the mean sceptre, the throne of the cross, the grave of the stranger; and history has set its seal on our folly by accepting these emblems as more honorable than our gold and purple, which are oftener the reward of in- justice and crime than of true merit and holy virtue. 2. The mystery of the Passion of Christ is that a God could suffer such ignominy and death. We stand appalled no less before the stupidity and malice which doomed Him to death than before His own consent to the deed. When we are told that He died to save us, we are at once conscious that our redemp- tion did not need so great a sacrifice to secure it. God could have chosen any one of a hundred ways to redeem us, without shedding a drop of His Son's blood. His Son might not have been born as man ; or might have led such a life as Moses, the life of a Divine ruler and legislator, and died in honor and peace. In fact, the mystery of Christ's Passion be- gins with His birth, that He should have become man at all, particularly as He foresaw His own career and its Calvary. There seems to be in His entire life a superfluity, which not only could hardly be expected from a God, but might even be reproached in a ruler of genius. It serves to deepen the mystery of His life and death. The unlettered and the sages stand in wonder before the cross and the crib. 3. One effect of this mental confusion and perplex- ity is to leave us indifferent to the sorrows of Our Lord's heart. We are inclined to doubt, not that He suffered, but that He was really able to suffer. Therefore, His life of poverty and His Passion are a parable rather than a fact, from which we can learn THE PASSION OF CHRIST. 131 much and even weep over it, as we do over the sor- rows of a hero of the stage or the novel ; but we are not stirred to shed such tears as wipe away our sins, or yet such as flow from the heart when real distress appeals to us. With dry-eyed wonder we read the descriptions of the birth in Bethlehem, of the flight into Egypt, of the agony in the garden, the trial, the crucifixion, the burial ; and we say to ourselves, how sorrowful this story would really be had it been the story of One who was only man ; but since He was also God— we cannot understand, and therefore we cannot weep. II.— One Explanation. 1. This indifference to the sorrows of the Master is wiped out by prompt acceptance of the Church's teaching that He was as truly man as He was God. The mystery of the Passion and of His life loses half its difficulty when we see some of the probable rea- sons which sent Him into His mother's womb. He came upon earth as a member of the race He had cre- ated to teach that race how to live here and hereafter. He was the type and the mirror of the race. Every human being studying that type was to see man in his perfection, such as each man could attain by close and perfect union with God. Every human being looking into that mirror was to see, as it were, his own personality, reflected in its immortality, its earthly littleness and meanness, its failures, sorrows, and even its sins; "for these He also bore." Christ was to be the leader of the race, first everywhere, so that the foot of man should press no ground which had not first been trod by the holy feet of the King. 132 THE chaplain's SERMONS. If these three terms be kept in view — type, leader, mirror — it will not be difficult to get a measurable grasp of the meaning of His life and death, and of its perfect reasonableness. 2. What is the ordinary life of the ordinary human being? To enter the world, to pass through and out of it, in obscurity ; to sweat and suffer for the means of living and the leisure of sickness and death; to endure the anguish of great appetites for which there is no satiety but in extinction; to encounter poverty, insignificance, failure, humiliation; to have visions of a splendid career and to learn to be content with merely living ; to live in the smallest of circles, to suffer slights and injuries, to be bruised for our sins and the sins of others, to die as if shoved off the earth by those hungry for our bread, and to be almost grudged the dust which covers us. The majority of human beings die young, poor, as obscure as the weeds of a swamp. Of those fitted to lead by ge- nius, the majority are wrecked on the shoals of dis- ease and sin before maturity can bring fame ; a per- centage struggles to the summit with clean hands and hearts, bent on helping their kind, and find them- selves on Calvary, the sport of the mob they would have aided. Poets die starving, philosophers rot in prison. What a sorrowful number enter the jails, criminals by law or fact, to end their lives in shame. In the end death stills the race, obscure and eminent alike, and the best feel the overwhelming sadness of the grave, into which must go the very emblems of their virtue and power. 3. Now, which one of all these that enter into the world can look into the mirror, Christ, on leaving it, THE PASSION OF CHRIST. 133 and say they saw themselves not? He was poor and obscure to the last, though a word w^ould have given Him the love and allegiance of every soul on earth. He chose for His field of labor an obscure Koman province, led a public life for only three years, and came into contact with the powers of the world only at the tribunal of judgment. From the material standpoint His career was a great failure ; He scarcely got a dubious mention in the public records of the day. His life ended where successful lives begin, at the age of thirty -three. He died in agony, a pauper and a criminal, so adjudged by the law. What soul that ever combined in his own person all the ills that life and injustice could fling at him is able to look into this mirror of Christ, and not see himseK re- flected? Here is the explanation of the career of the Saviour from one point of view. As no man can ac- cuse Him of sparing the means of salvation, so no man can say that his experience of sorrow surpassed Our Lord's. m.— ScoEN OF Life. 1. All men yield to the charm and power of the Christ, because the more they study Him the more do they see themselves in Him. He satisfies the learned and ignorant, the rude and the refined, the geniuses and the mediocrities, the holy and the defiled, the in- nocent and the guilty ; and aU strive to make them- selves like Him according to their bent, even where they may not believe in His Divinity. And most of all do men see their own day of suffering in His last agony, while they do not see the noble scorn of life which marked His words and acts from first to last, 134 THE chaplain's sermons. and which made His Passion a triumph, not an ex- tinction. We seem to understand no other life but this, and by giving it first place in our mind and heart we do violence to our nature, and aggravate the ills of life without increasing its satisfactions. When we get to regard death as the end of all things for us, and happy living as the sole source of happiness, then every bodily ill, financial loss, disappointment, failure, sickness, humiliation, become tragic ; and the longest life, the highest success, the most continuous luck turn into bitterness the moment the shadow of the grave falls upon them. 2. Instead of finding disgrace in death, the Saviour seems really there to have begun His reign both on earth and in heaven. Calvary drew all hearts to Him according to His own foretelling: "And I, being raised, shall draw all things unto Me." Here again the veil is lifted in part from the mysterious Passion. He scorned life as much as we value it, because be- fore His eyes was always the true life of eternity, of which this is only the shadow cast by time. It was this which helped Him to bear all sorrows ; He would not permit His Divinity to deaden His Humanity ; all His strength came from the same sources whence any man may derive help in suffering. He knew that heaven makes compensation for all woes on earth, and, while accepting this earthly life as the gift of His Father, it was only second with Him, as it should be with all. Therefore He threw away even the lawful chances of escaping early or painful death. Caiphas could have been won to His side by one glance ; He- rod needed only the miracle he asked for to intervene between Him and the Jews; Pilate was favorable THE PASSION OF CHRIST. 135 through his wife's appeal and his own sense of justice. Christ refused to encourage their aid. 3. And how mean is our clinging to life under all circumstances, how thoroughly and foolishly we place the good things of the world before the eternal life, is made plain in the conduct of these three men and its results. They were all worldly place-hunters; life and its pleasures and dignities were their constant pursuit. Caiphas wished to rule always, Herod sought only pleasure, Pilate saw his career closing only with the highest gifts of empire. In condemning Jesus they thought of securing their own honor, whereas they earned eternal disgrace. A word in be- half of the Saviour that night of sorrow might have hurled Caiphas to ruin, but cheap would have been the price for the earthly immortality thereby secured ; Herod had the chance to atone for the murder of John the Baptist, and missed it for the infamy of mankind ; Pilate could have bought by a little Koman justice a name which Csesar might have envied. These three lost all by the fatuity which marks the passionate love of men for this world. lY.— The Endless Struggle. 1. To-day the world has no emblems so glorious as the instruments of the Passion. Yet the struggle which made them holy, the struggle between the life of earth and the life of heaven, between love of self and love of God, between passion and faith, is with- out end. It began with the first parents. Calvary was only the most tragic of its incidents. In soci- ety, in the heart of man the same partisans that met 136 on Calvary in the darkness are forever at war for the supremacy. Hypocrisy, pride, sin, force, fraud, violence, rage for that power which crucifies inno- cence, holiness, helpless virtue — in a word, the life eternal. Because where that life is the dominant idea with men the beasts of the human heart lie in strong prisons chained ; and where it is feeble or un- known the human race is rent and bloody with the ravages of them. For these wounded souls Jesus wept in His Passion. Their sufferings were the weight of His woe in Gethsemane. He wept for them as a brother who sees the nature of their sufferings and has felt the full depths of their pain. 2. We can turn pale and weep over mangled bodies, but how many can weep over the wrecks of souls, or understand the wounds which the soul may carry under a respectable body ? Only the Christ could see them, understand them, weep His bloody tears over them, and only one human being at that tragedy, perhaps, was able to enter His heart, and sympathize with His grief— His mother. With Him she might have seen the sad procession of the generations that were to come ; passing from birth to death, from cre- ation to judgment, across the hill of Calvary, with only the averted face, or the dull stare of indiffer- ence, or the hate of the Jews, or the laugh of frivol- ity, or the glare of interrupted passion, for the mournful form and the heavy heart of the lover of man. It is something for us of the faith, if in spite of our ignorance and weakness, the weight of the mystery, the painful gloom, we can murmur with the centurion: "Indeed, this man was the Son of God." — Mark xxxix. mi Blessed are they that have not seen and ham believed. — John xx. ^9. 1 have kept the faith. — 2 Tim. iv. 7. But the just shall live in his faith. — JSab. xi. 4. OUTLINE. 1. The mark of the true Catholic should be a deep and ever-deepening faith. 2. We received the true faith in our baptism, and may deepen it daily. 3. Yet with many advantages the faith of the past shames us. 4. The unfaith of our time is very marked. 5. Men remain as stubborn toward religion as the ancient Jews in face of the miracles at Nairn and Bethany, 6. And to each problem of life and the soul and the future they answer: I do not know. 7. How much like these unfortunates are the faithless disciples, the habitual sinners, and the indifferent. 8. Contrast with them the faith of St. Paul, of the martyrs, of the devout in every age. 9. To every argument which the world brings against the faith, the true Catholic should answer with a firm Credo. I.— Tbge Faith of the Canaanite. 1. Lent is that season which the Church secures for her children that they may take time for thought and consequent resolution. For ten months of the year we are so busied in the cares of the world, that thought and purpose would drift away altogether from the life of the soul and the life to come, did not some power outside ourselves insist on a certain withdrawal from moneymaking and bread-winning, and an exam- ination of our present spiritual condition. This is the great advantage of Lent, and w^e should make a real effort to use it. First, let our thought be di- rected to that faith which is within us, to make sure 137 138 THE chaplain's sermons. we still possess it vitally; and then let us resolve from this time on to become more and more fervent Catholics. It may seem a superfluous resolution, for have we not been Catholics from our cradle? True; and the Apostles were followers and intimates of Christ for three years ; yet in the moment of His trial and danger, on the very night when they had boasted of their willingness to go to death with Him, they fled before the mob sent out by the Jewish leaders to seize Him in the garden of Gethsemane. Habitual sinners often boast that they will never give up the faith of their baptism, yet each hour of their sinful lives loosens another strand of it. Thought must pre- cede resolution, and resolution must be followed by steady action; without these what are mere words? 2. The faith of Catholics in our day ought to be of the strongest, so carefully and happily has it been nurtured in them. It is a fire that burns in the veins, not a mere set of words dropping from the lips. We hear on every side the declarations of men who pro- claim their faith in Christ ; but they have never been baptized, they repeat simply what they have heard from their teachers, and the true faith is not in them. By the sacrament of Baptism the true faith in Christ enters the heart of the Catholic child, it is enlarged and confirmed by the sacrament of Confirmation, and a hundred thousand graces influence his soul in con- sequence. He shares in the graces of the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist, the sacrament of Matri- mony has Torepared for him a holy home ; the minis- tration of priest, church, book, sermon, school is ever at his side urging to good, strengthening in temptation. The history of the great Church of two FAITH. 139 thousand years proves to him how thoroughly God has worked in that Church from the beginning, and its present greatness amid the storms of persecution proves to him its vitality. In fact, it would not be possible to name all the encouragements which we have to believe over those who lived in the days of Christ, of the Apostles, of the early persecutions. Within and without each Catholic soul the faith burns like a heavenly flame, unquenchable while men are faithful to the commandments. "If you keep my commandments you shall abide in my love." — John XV. 3. Yet with all our encouragements to strong faith, the faith of the gospel time shames us by its wonder- ful strength and fervor. The woman of Canaan puts a blush on the cheek of too many Catholics when they hear her story. Her daughter was possessed of the devil, and she appealed to Our Lord for a cure. " Who answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying : Send her away, for she crieth after us. And he answering said : I was not sent but to the sheep that are lost of the house of Israel. But she came and adored him, saying : Lord, help me. Who answering said : It is not good to take the bread of the children, and to cast it to the dogs. But she said : Yea, Lord ; for the whelps also eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters. Then Jesus answering said to her: O woman, great is thy faith : be it done to thee as thou wilt : and her daughter was cured from that hour." — Matt. xv. Three times He repulsed this faithful and believing mother, though that great and tender heart of His wept for her; and three times the faith in Him 140 THE chaplain's SERMONS. brought her to His feet, and won the miracle and the commendation. It was the same with the centurion, whose robust faith in the Son of God earned that splendid tribute from Christ : " Amen, I say to you, I have not found so great faith in Israel;" and whose sublime words, " I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant shall be healed," the Church has made her own forever. The woman of Canaan and the Roman soldier had not a tithe of the advantages we possess to urge them to believe in Christ; yet what Catholic of this century could show a faith more glorious ! II. — The Unfaith Aeound Us. 1. It is true that our time no longer makes it a re- proach to believe nothing of the life and destiny of the soul; and in consequence we cannot but be affected by the chilly atmosphere in which we live. Men even take a pride in announcing that they are no longer bound by superstitions, but live like freemen, that is, like animals, with no thought of the morrow. Faith is put down as a worn-out shackle of tyranny's day. Reason alone is supposed to rule in souls thus freed from ancient tyranny. How easy it is for men to forget that life becomes impossible for them and for society without faith of some kind. This entire community is built upon faith in other persons than ourselves. We have faith in the honesty and fidelity of the men who administer the government, in the leaders who command the army and the navy, in our representatives at foreign courts, though we know nothing about them ; we trust our lives to steamships FAITH. 141 and railroads, our money to banks, our goods to cus- tomers; we swear bj^ the honor of our parents, the purity of our daughters, wives, mothers, the honesty of our sons ; and we are ready to spill our own blood or the blood of others in defence of things which we take upon faith, for we have no other way of taking them. Yet when religion appeals to this human faith daily in a thousand ways, sceptics will have nothing to do with faith in their own conscience, or faith in the history of the past, because it is in the interest of the soul. 2. It was thus with the Jews in the time of Our Lord. They believed in a coming Messiah, in the existence of God, in the life to come, and in the judg- ment which preceded that life. They examined with care the pretensions of all teachers of the people such as John and Our Lord. They heard with their own ears the claims of the Saviour to the kingship of His people, and saw with their own eyes wondrous mira- cles. Some of them stood that day near the gate of the city of Nain when Jesus stopped the funeral pro- cession of him who was " the only son of his mother, and she was a widow." What bitter, unbelieving hearts they must have carried in their bosoms to re- main unaffected by the scene of the young man's re- turn from the dead. They saw the marble body, heard the commanding words which pierced the im- penetrable walls of death, saw life's red color run along the stiffened limbs and blush in the livid lip, and pallid cheek, sparkle in the glassy eye ; they saw mother and son clasped in loving embrace, and pros- trate adore the Lord of life and death ; they witnessed the terror, wonder, exaltation of the crowd ; and they 142 THE chaplain's SERMONS. could turn from this scene as from the raising of the daughter of Jairus, or of Lazarus, with only hate in their hearts for the Being who had come to disturb their self-admiration and upset their schemes of sin. 3. The unbelievers of this day are as fortunate in one way as were the ancient Jews. The religion of Christ has won its unconquerable place in the world, and no man can withhold admiration for its history and its lofty doctrines. It is as clear to the eye of all men as were the miracles of Jesus to the men of His time. It has had its unbroken and glorious his- tory of nearly twenty centuries, it has proved itself the only power of time that could successfully cope with the spiritual and mental miseries of men, it has withstood all the attacks of malice, ignorance, and time, it has given men hope for despair, faith for doubt, and love for hate, it has brought eternity to the very doors ; yet the sceptic miserably shuts his eyes and will not see. He is beset by the most cruel problems, which rack his life, which he cannot avoid unless he ceases to think ; and to them all he has that brilliant response : I do not know. The savage of the wilderness satisfies his poor mind with some sort of an answer to the inquiries raging witihin him, but the cultured unbeliever has only the reply of the child to his own soul : I do not know. After centuries of ex- perience, study, investigation, the result is : I do not know ! How admirable ! How flattering to reason, the great judge of all the things that are ! The times are dry-rotten with this unfaith, and the children of Christ cannot but be affected by it. FAITH. 143 m. — Credo, the Watchword. 1. We see the effects of the chilly atmosphere which we breathe in the numbers stolen from us by interest, passion, and downright laziness. Because we are Catholics by baptism many seem to think that the faith within us can be lost in no manner whatever. They do not rank faith as a virtue like purity or honesty, which can be at once destroyed by impurity or stealing, and they do not see it dying by inches through their failure to keep fuel to the fire. They dream that as born Catholics they will sureh^ be believers of a kind forever. The}" forget that a time came to certain disciples of Christ when, with all the wonders they had seen and heard, faith in Him was no longer to be found in them, and "they walked no more with Him." If this thing happened in the green wood, what may not be feared in the dry? The sinner is certain he will one day come back to the faith he is leaving for sin. He must know that every sin he commits loosens his hold on his faith a degree, and that the habit of sin destroys faith entirely in a very short time; at the moment of return to faith, he discovers that he is without it, that he cannot believe, that he has not the strength, or desire, or longing, for that return jour- ney which appeared so easy to make years ago. In what a miserable condition are these unfortunates. It shows us that faith is not a coat which can be put on or put off at will. Without faith it is impossible to please God, and by it the just man lives. As the engineer watches the fires in his engines, as the cap- 144 THE chaplain's sermons. tain studies and longs for the winds which fill his sails, as men cherish the fires of life, so should Christians keep up in their hearts that divine fire which is the motive power urging them on to heaven. 2. What a splendid faith had that mighty genius St. Paul, who could feel and write in a hopeless prison the fine utterances of his epistles. The Church in his day was but a seed in the tremendous acreage of the world, his work was ended and seemed so very little, death was soon to embrace him; yet the clear eye and the strong heart of faith were no whit discouraged by the fogs and damps of ill-suc- cess and overhanging tragedy. What hearts of iron had the martyrs of the first ages, who could court death, imprisonment, exile, poverty, separation, for Christ, and lose no spark of the faith that burned in them. Their nights had no darkness, for all things shone in the light of Christ; though no such com- forts as surround us belonged to their age. What a dignity belongs to the humblest soul in v/hom sound knowledge of his destiny is mingled with a high regard for the precepts of the faith. He is like a skilful pilot sailing the narrow channels of this world toward the safe ocean of eternity. The nights may be clear or foggy, the channels treacherous, the weather stormy, and he has no fear. His faith makes all things bright as the day, and his skill car- ries the good ship of the soul clear of reef and shal- low. He has no uncertainty. His eye sees but one thing, his heart beats to one joy : the great ocean of eternal joy ahead. " But the just shall live in his faith." 3. Faith, then, is the mark of the true Catholic, FAITH. 145 and in resolving to be true Catholics our resolve means that the fire of the faith shall burn brighter in us. The world through its sceptics is bent on destroying our faith. It cannot rest easy in its un- belief while any human being believes. Therefore to all its sneers, persuasions, arguments, let us answer with united Credo. When it cries out, You are the fools of superstition, the victims of the scheming priest, answer Credo ; when it smiles indulgently and points out the absurdity of this and that doctrine, answer Credo ; when it displays the bribe of place or fortune, answer Credo ; when it comes with the sword and flame of persecution, let the Credo resound in prison, in exile, in death with the martyr's vigor. The world has nothing to give worth the taking in the place of faith. What the world gives it always takes back again ; and what it takes from us in ex- change for its rather tawdry wares is never returned. Thus it has often cheated the ambitious into surren- dering youth for dissipation, happiness for power, freedom for wealth; it still owns its dissipations, power, and wealth, but the ambitious never saw youth, freedom, or happiness again. For our faith it would give us a very genteel doubt, which is no bargain, as faith is of the few, while doubt can always be picked up cheap in any auction-room, 10 €^t QKnotvfebge dnb Eot>e of %tBm Christ. FurtJiermore 1 count all things to he hut loss, for the excellent knowl- edge of Jesus Christ my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them hut as dung, that I may gain Christ. — Phil. Hi. 8. OUTLINE. 1. Faith gives the Christian insight into the heart and mind of Jesus Christ, 2. Yet many Christians pass through life better informed about popular heroes than about their Master. 3. They forget that each soul must see, know, and serve Him in judgment and eternity. 4. The Catholic has no excuse for not knowing Him well. 5. The Sacraments and the priesthood have their powers solely from Him. The external life of the Church has reference only to Him. 6. The Eucharist, which is Christ Himself , is the very centre of the visible and invisible life of the Church. 7. The result of knowing and loving Him is wisdom and love for the meanest. 8. Man may not serve the world and Him, as the examples of Judas, Pilate, and Peter prove. 9. How to attain true knowledge and love of Jesus Christ. I.— We Must Know and Loye Cheist. 1. Americans often return from a tour of Europe more deeply admiring their own country for its happy conditions. In the same way Catholics turn from the sects to the Church, delighted with the order and certainty found in it as compared with the disor- der and uncertainty outside. The source of this or- der and certainty in the Church is the perfect faith of the people on the one side and the infallible guid- ance of the Holy Spirit on the other. Faith is that virtue which accepts the great truths of religion with- out any other demoustration than their mere state- 146 THE LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST. 147 ment on God's authority. This faith confers upon man an insight into truths which are in a measure outside the domain of reason. He sees and compre- hends them. The light of heaven shines upon his nature, his condition, his various relationships, and enables him to follow, cultivate, improve them all be- yond what he could do by the light of reason alone. By faith he sees sin as a plague, death as a punish- ment of sin, judgment as a vindication of both God and man, heaven as an inheritance of love, hell as an inheritance of justice ; and above all he sees, learns to know and love Jesus Christ his Master, not merely by the light of history, but by the light of the Holy Ghost. This light so illuminates his reason, his will, and his heart, that he sees Jesus as His blessed mother saw Him, in the manger of Bethlehem, in the little home of Nazareth, on awful Calvary, on sublime Olivet. 2. To see Christ thus is the highest result, the most beautiful fruit of faith. For this was faith given to men, that they might arrive at intimacy with Jesus, not through the senses, but through comdc- tion. All their lives long by a hundred varying im- pressions the children of Christ are made acquainted wdth Him ; lisping His holy Name in infancy, hear- ing His praises in home, school, and church, brought to Him in the Eucharist, reading of Him in many books, seeing everywhere in stone, on canvas, in pic- tured art of e\eTY sort, the story of His wonderful life and love. And these impressions blend into one overwhelming conviction by the power of the Holy Ghost working upon willing and pure souls, until His disciples come to know Jesus even as His mother 148 THE chaplain's SERMONS. knew Him after thirty years of the intimacy of Naza- reth. Alas ! how few seem to care for this wonder- ful, this consoling knowledge and love of Jesus Christ ! Even the ordinary good can pass through life without such acquaintance with Him as they have with their least considered neighbors. A great body of Christians always stand like the cattle in the pastures, stupidly unable to distinguish their master from any stranger that passes on the road. The sinners put their sins about their understanding like a fog, the good put their prejudices, the indifferent their laziness, lest they may see and know their Di- vine Master. The popular heroes receive more atten- tion, arouse a livelier interest in these people, than the Son of God. Such a creature as Napoleon stim- ulates their fancy, while the Christ seems to dull it. The old, old failing of human nature! "I have brought up children and exalted them: but they have despised me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel hath not known me, and my people hath not understood. " — Isa. i. 3. Yet the day comes at last when we can no longer ignore His claims, and when the knowledge we have avoided so assiduously is forced upon us to our sor- row and shame. We pass to our judgment, where we shall see Him as He is, and see ourselves in our folly. At the judgment seat we shall learn to know Him in the twinkling of an eye, not as our beloved Master but as our Judge ; we shall see Him as the Avenger, not as the Father ; we shall serve Him, but it will hardly be with love. This thought ought to find consideration with the lazy and the careless, if not with the sinners, who are too much in love with THE LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST. 149 sin to regard any terror of the future. Our whole training as Catholics has but one aim : to bring us to the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ. We have but to move with the great current of the Church's life to acquire almost without effort this love and knowledge. What supreme folly to wait for that last moment to acquire intimacy with our one Friend ; until we are actually standing in His visible presence. II.— How TO Know and Loye Christ. 1. It sounds strangely to hear an intelligent and mature Catholic ask how he shall proceed to gain a knowledge and love of his Lord. His life, if it has had any religious training at all, has been lived face to face with Christ ; but so much a matter of course does humankind make the wonders of existence, that they see little beyond their precious kingdom of self. The great society called the Church was instituted solely to bring men to Christ and to keep them at His side. One has but to ride with the current, keeping ears and eyes wide open, and the mind interested, to gain unconsciously a tremendous intimacy with the Son of God. In fact, there is such an excess of teach- ing Christ, the Church has so levied on every possi- ble means of bringing men to Him, that it is regularly accused of obscuring Him, hiding Him, from the souls of men, by the multitude of details in its train- ing. So closely stands the priest to his iDeople, preaching Christ, that the infidels insult us with the term priest-ridden. All the details of the life of the Church are so many rays of light, which have their source in Him, the sun and centre of our existence. 150 THE chaplain's SERMONS. " I am the vine : you the branches : he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit : for without me you can do nothing." — John xv. 2. Examine a few of these innumerable details. The Pope as head of the Church claims his position in the name of Christ, the bishop does the same in his diocese, the priest likewise in his parish ; and all that they do by virtue of their office is done by His authority, and for His glory. The sacraments all speak of Him, as they were founded by Him and are administered according to His command; at Bap- tism the child is admitted into the Church in His name, included in the invocation of the Blessed Trinity ; at Confirmation the same child receives His special gift of the Holy Ghost; in Penance his sins are absolved in the name of the Trinity with the sign of the cross; in Holy Orders the young priest is sent out to preach the truth in His name ; in Matri- mony the man and woman are united in His name, a union which human power is forbidden to disturb; and in Extreme Unction the sick body and the sick soul are blessed in His name. The office of the preacher in the Church is exercised by His authority, and its main duty is to preach Jesus Christ cruci- fied; every prayer, whether made to God or to the angels and saints, is a petition whose efficacy de- pends upon Him ; and the honors publicly paid to Mary, Joseph, the saints, and the angels, have their sole source in the fact that these human and angelic beings are His most faithful and purest servants. The tower of this church speaks of Him in that it carries His gibbet, the now glorified cross ; this altar is the Calvary upon which He was crucified; this THE LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST. 151 ever-burning light, which tells of His Presence in the tabernacle, represents the eternal flame of His Body dwelling among us ; these sculptured stations, pictured windows, and frescoes, portray His life and the glory He shed upon His friends ; and the solemn and beautiful ceremonies of the sanctuary, the splen- did vestments, shadow forth in a feeble way the de- votion of the souls that serve Him. 3. Last of all, but immeasurably above all in Itself, is the Blessed Eucharist. These wonderful details of the external life of the Church draw our attention to Him, even bring us close to Him, and the Sacraments prepare us for union with Him; but the Blessed Eucharist is Christ Himself, Who becomes the actual and direct guide of the soul that seeks the knowledge and the love of Him. One can learn much of any man by studying with sympathy and affection his ordinary life, as it appears to the general world ; but one learns all when the man takes him into his house and into his heart, reveals his most secret comings and goings, and opens up the past and the present to the inquirer. Thus it is with Christ in the Blessed Eucharist. The souls who seek for the knowledge and love of Him there have little delay in getting those treasures which survive the wreck of human fortunes on the shores of time. III.— The Fruits of Knowledge and Loye. 1. It is not enough to say that we know and love Jesus Christ. Our thoughts and actions must give proof of both to ourselves and to our neighbors. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Lip-service is 152 THE chaplain's SERMONS. easy, and sounds well. Those who serve Christ with knowledge and love surprise the world by their wis- dom and wit where neither is looked for. The very young, the very old, the uneducated, the uncultured, fired by the spirit of Christ, excite the wonder of the sceptical, who look for wisdom and wit only under certain conditions. Catharine of Siena, an ordinary lady of rank, who lived in a day when study was somewhat primitive and elementary for women of rank, had political previsions that surprised states- men by their correctness, and theological ability that won the reverence of the doctors. St. Paul had much of the world's learning in his capacious brain, and ranked it with dung when compared with the knowl- edge and love of his Lord. The knowledge of Him is true wisdom ; for real stupidity seek out the learned pagan of the schools, like Spencer, for instance, who can follow a human emotion as an Indian follows a trail, and is blinder than a bat in the sun when relig- ion comes into question. Once you have seen Christ as He wishes that all should see Him, the glory of this world will have departed. The men that saw Him of old on Thabor and Olivet were so enraptured with that delight as never to forget the sweet visions. An empire put forth all its strength to persuade them of their folly in preaching Christ, and shrunk to lit- tleness in the effort ; but their faith in Him remained. 2. To know and to love Christ is a real power in our day, and is so acknowledged by the tricky world, which would have us politely serve both Christ and itself, as do those Catholics who profess their faith in Christ proudly, while serving their own pleasures and observing no commandments. We have already THE LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST. 153 been told by Our Lord that no man can serve two masters, and yet we are forever trying to perform this impossibility. Judas tried it, hoping to make a little money without doing his Master much harm, and the result was death for Christ, suicide and eternal dis- grace for himself. Pilate tried it, and the result was a shameful surrender to the murderous Jews, the con- demnation of the innocent, and the blasting of his own career. Peter tried it in denying Christ to save himself from danger, and wept to the last for the in- fidelity he displayed toward his Friend and Master. It may be taken for granted that where a Pope, an Apostle, and a Prince failed, we shall hardly succeed. A glance around at the numerous failures among our own acquaintances to run with Christ while dallying with sin, ought to satisfy us that only thorough knowl- edge of Jesus Christ can result in true love and ser- vice of Him. 3. You will come to thorough knowledge and per- fect love first by desiring both and asking for them. " Hitherto you have not asked anything in my name. Ask, and you shall receive; that your joy may be full." — John xvi. Next, make certain to keep the commandments. "If you love me, keep my com- mandments." — John xiv. Have the greatest in- terest in performing your duties to all who have a claim on you. " By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another." — John xiii. Cultivate a particular love for the poor, the wretched, the sinful, the helpless. "Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it unto me. " — Matt. xxv. Adherence to these simple rules will lead any honest 154 THE chaplain's SERMONS. soul to the knowledge and love of Jesus, and there will be no doubt about the possession of these splen- did gifts. Here is St. John's testimony: "And b}^ this we know that we have known him, if we keep his commandments. He who saith that he knoweth him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him ; but he that keepeth his word, in him in very deed the charity of God is perfected; and by this we know that we are in him." — 1 Ep. ii. Walking in the way of the commandments keeps the heart open to the divine inspirations. The mere study of the ways of the Church in making Christ better known to us all will fill us with knowl- edge of Him. And then by degrees we may arrive, if we choose, at that sublime height attained by St. Paul and many others, to regard aU things as mere rottenness compared with knowing and loving the Son of God. Z^ ^dcrdmentfi. Wisdom hath built herself a house, she hath hewn her out seven pil- lars. — Prov. ix. 1. 1 saw seven golden candlesticks, and in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, one like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment doicn to the feet, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. — Apocal. i. 12, 13. OUTLINE. 1. Our Lord knew the diflBculty of following His law, and therefore gave us the seven sacraments. 2. Hence, while pagans have some excuse for their commonplace lives. Catholics have none. 3. The great and continuous grace of Baptism is our first strength and glory. 4. Our second is the reception of the Holy Ghost and His gifts in Con- firmation. 5. By Penance we can preserve innocence, establish or protect virtue, root out habits of sin. 6. The Eucharist gives us the direct personal service of Christ. 7. Matrimony secures for the child a holy and well-ordered home. 8. Extreme Unction guards the hours of sickness, and soothes the anguish of death. 9. The ill-fortune of those who misuse the Sacraments. I. — The Life op Grace. 1. The Christian is called to the life of grace, to a life superior to that of nature, which the pagan usu- ally leads. It is no easy matter to live up to the Christian standard, particularly in a nation like ours, where the pagans are as numerous as the Christians, and utterly reject the purity and holiness of life de- manded by the teachings and the commands of Christ. Paganism looks only to this life and its pleasures. Eating and drinking luxuriously, dress- 155 156 ing sumptuously, amusing itself in all possible ways, completely given over to carnal delights, these are its occupations in leisure hours; and its labors are purely for money, earthly power, and rank, as the means by which greater pleasures are gained for the hours of idleness. It does not recognize the com- mandments. The outward forms of decency and re- finement it is careful to observe, and in young races the natural powers are vigorous enough to keep the nature sweet for a long time ; but for the most part pagan life is a great swamp from which rise the dead- liest vapors, fatal to the life of grace in any Christian exposed to them. The earliest Christians lived in the very heart of this swamp. We are more fortu- nate, yet our position is mournful. It is easier at any time to be a pagan than a Christian, because the life of grace is a life of effort, struggle, hard labor, while the pagan life runs with the current of passion. Surrounded as we are by the swamps of paganism, it requires all our watchfulness to neutralize the effects of their deadly vapors on our souls. Our Lord un- derstood the difficulties we would have to meet in following His commands; therefore He left us the seven sacraments as a perpetual and constant help against our own weaknesses and the influence of our fellows. 2. The scheme of these sacraments is of wonderful power and beauty. The little child is met at the door of life by Baptism and at once made a child of God ; when reason has developed Penance sheds its light and heat upon his mind and will ; while innocence is still strong in him the Eucharist becomes its ram- part; at the dawn of manhood Confirmation puts its THE SACRAMENTS. 157 glorious armor on him and sends him out to the world's struggle; Matrimony has already secured for him a decent home, Holy Orders has long provided him with leaders and teachers, and in his last mo- ments of sickness and death the soft light of Extreme Unction illumines the pathway to the grave. Christ cannot be accused of not having provided his children with every protection against the assaults of the world and their own nature. For this reason there is little or no excuse for us when we take up habits of sin, and deliberately remain in them. The pagan has some excuse. He has been trained as a child of nature, and has heard little of the life of grace. Our Lord said of the Jews: "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin ; but now they have no excuse for their sin. . . . If I had not done among them the works that no other man hath done, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated both me and my father." — John XV. To many pagans Christ has not yet spoken and so they are without sin ; but to us Our Lord has been speaking year after year since our birth and long be- fore it, and therefore our infidelities are sins. He has protected and adorned us with the jewels of the Sacraments. Yet for too large a number the gift of the Sacraments has been a mere casting of pearls before swine. 3. We are born to know and love Christ through the faith He established. Deep and abiding faith is the mark of the true Catholic, and the fruit of faith is the knowledge and love of Jesus. This faith is placed in us, deep in our souls like an eternal foun- tain in the rock, by the sacrament of Baptism, 158 THE chaplain's SERMONS. Through all our lives the flow of grace from this holy spring is to be endless. Its refreshing waters are in- tended to keep green and fruitful the soil of our human nature, and to develop in us all the virtues, as the mountain stream keeps fertile the valley through which it runs. Of itself the grace of Baptism is powerful enough, if properly used, to carry a man clean and -sdrtuous to his judgment. " He that be- lieveth and is baptized shall be saved." — Mark xvi. Yet so hard, arid, sandy is the soil of our na- ture, that the gracious stream, lacking the cooper- ation of our will, might flow for a century through the soul, and not secure a single harvest. We have seen the phenomenon in many arid Catholics. The pearl in this instance was thrown to the swine. II. — Three Other Channels of Grace. 1. To the gift of Baptism Our Lord added the sac- rament of Confirmation in which the Holy Ghost armed us like a knight of old with breast-plate, helmet, shield, and javelin, that we might carry Christ's standard honorably and bravely through the combats of time. Sin, temptation, nature's inclina- tions and passions, the world's bribes, are ferocious opponents; but straws are as strong as they when men oppose to them wisdom, knowledge, understand- ing, counsel, fortitude, piety, and the fear of the Lord, as these splendid gifts are given to us in Con- firmation. Did we use them as Christ intended, there is no power on earth able to overcome us ; but not only do we leave them to rust in idleness, we also forget that we ever received them, and the jeering THE SACRAMENTS. 159 world is often treated to the spectacle of the Chris- tian soldier flying from the field of battle without a stain of combat on his glorious armor, or casting it aside to fraternize with the enemy, to lie drunken and satiated at their feasts, even to die in their shameful dissipations. These two sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation are alone sufficient to carry us through the world with decency and honor and to present us before the throne of judgment crowned victors after life's battle. Nevertheless, hundreds forget that they ever received the innocence conferred by the one, and the powers conferred by the other. A second time is the pearl cast before the swine. 2. The generous love of God for His children was not satisfied with these two special gifts, and the Sacrament of Penance was added to them. That we might preserve the innocence of childhood, and pro- tect the virtue of our youth the priest of the confes- sional was provided for us ; that we might wash away the sins of our foolishness, root out the habits of sin, and supplant them by habits of virtue, the absolution of Penance, with its graces of purification and restora- tion, was set like a pillar in the Lord's temple. It is a great deal in a world which seeks innocence like an epicure his delicacies, to have kept an innocent soul in its original purity ; in a world which makes sin virtue, to convince a sinner of his filth and make him remove it by grace ; in a world which boasts of its power to hold man down to nature's level, to break the chain of habit and raise man to the supernatural life; yet all these things are the common successes of Penance. StiU, what multitudes of Catholics avoid the sacrament, and to quiet their consciences repeat 160 THE chaplain's SERMONS. the childish objections of human pride and ignorance : that men should not kneel to man, though the child kneels to the parent, the lover to his mistress, the criminal to his judge; that our secrets are not the priest's, though no one finds any difficulty in telling the most shameful secrets to friend, lawyer, physi- cian. With Baptism, Confirmation, and Penance men might lead the lives of the saints, and with Penance alone the world could be kept in order and cleanliness. In a third instance the precious pearls of Christ are thrown to the swine. 3. Still, the generosity of God is not exhausted, and to these Sacraments is added the great and mys- terious gift of the Christ Himself in the Blessed Eucharist. Men have remembered the visits of a king, or a poet, or a general, or a statesman to their houses, and bequeathed the memory " as a rich legacy unto their issue." The distinguished visitor usually left nothing behind and often took much away, yet the honor of the visit was never forgot by the recipi- ent, nor by posterity. Yet how numerous the Chris- tians who positively decline the visit of Christ under the veil of the bread and wine, who wish to forget the days when He honored their innocence by His Pres- ence, who have cast out all His gifts, the gifts of Him Who brought much and borrowed nothing. Eecall that this Prince in His earthly time spoke to the dead and life returned to them, looked upon the lepers and their rottenness fled into its native grave, touched the eyes of the blind, the ears of the deaf, the limbs of the paralyzed, and they became sound men. Re- member that this Man is beloved of the human race, of human history, of time itself, the Eternal King THE SACRAMENTS. 161 even of the pagans ; and wonder at the secret scorn, the dead indifference of those whom the visit of a king to their houses would overwhelm with honor! It is heartlessness and unfaith of this sort which disgust us with ourselves, with our race, and force us to doubt the reasonableness of our own nature. Once more the Lord has cast His choicest pearl to the swine. III. — The Eeward of the Swine. 1. Still the record of God's honors grows. The love which makes man and woman of one flesh, which propagates the human race in love, which trains the child and guards the race-nest in love, and which man regards rightly as a most perfect thing in the human order. Our Lord would honor with perma- nency, stability, and perfection, and therefore He establishes the Sacrament of Matrimony. Hencefor- ward, to those who will it, this noblest form of human love may take on a certain character of im- mortality, surviving youth, change, beauty, undis- turbed by sin and its temptations, never seduced by the passion of the moment, superior to the errors of the social philosophers, increasing with years, and utterly devoted to its human offspring. And that this offspring may in a measure touch heaven before death, that the visible human form of Christ may in a feeble way be ever in the sight of men, that the family, the nation, the soul may never be without a leader and teacher, that there may be a human link between heaven and earth, the Sacrament of Holy Orders gives us the priest, the perpetual man, who can no more fail from this earth until the judgment U 162 THE chaplain's SERMONS. than can the memory of the Christ. " How wonderful are thy ways, O God, and how incomprehensible thy judgments!" Even death has cast over it the holy veil of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. As man was received at the gate of life by Baptism, so is he dismissed to his eternity with the last oiling ; sanc- tified at his entrance, sanctified and comforted at his departure ; more honorable and more honored at the last moment, when he becomes useless to the hard world, than at the first, when the world sought him as food for its passions. Thus every moment of our lives is honored and blessed by the Sacraments of Christ. Is it strange that God can excuse no Catho- lic for a bad life or a cold heart ! 2. The more we study the wealth of grace which lies at the doors of a Christian, the more we wonder that true faith, true knowledge and love of Jesus Christ should be absent from any Christian heart. The lightest examination of the sacraments is suffi- cient to convince any man that here is grace enough to nullify all the poisons of paganism, and to build up the souls of men to the strength of giants. The existence of these sacraments is the condemnation of the indifferent and the sinful Catholics. That which builds up can also become a source of destruction. "Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel." — Luke ii. We are Catholics, born to the life of grace, which we must accept or go into eternal darkness and pain. In the latter case all our blessings turn to maledic- tions. Baptism made us the heirs to heaven, and instead we inherit hell ; Confirmation enlisted us as the soldiers of Christ, and in the end we are classed THE SACRAMENTS. 163 with the traitors ; Penance lifted us up many a time to heights of heavenly delight and made us the joy of the angels, and behold we are cast down forever to the joy of our eternal enemies ; and the Christ of the Eucharist, having desired us as His friends and intimates, and forced on us eternal life, must con- demn us to eternal death and the everlasting friend- ship of Satan. All this is the natural result of that stupidity and malice which treated the sacraments as the swine treat the pearls. "And the spirits be- sought him saying; Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And Jesus immediately gave them leave. And the unclean spirits going out, en- tered into the swine ; and the herd with great violence was carried headlong into the sea, being about two thousand, and were stifled in the sea." — Mark v. Then when lust hath conceived it hringeth forth sin: and sin, when itisfinisJied, hringeth forth death. — James i. 15. For the wages of sin is death; hut the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. — Rom. vi. 23. OUTLINE. 1. Men understand and value the important positions in life, and keenly feel their responsibility. 2. Yet what are these positions, and their responsibility, compared with the dignity and destiny of the Christian ? 3. Both dignity and destiny are destroyed at one blow by the awful power of sin. 4. The first consequence of sin is our surrender to justice. 5. The second is the natural results of sin for the whole race, death and the grave. 6. The others are the natural effects flowing from violation of the laws of life. 7. With the fate of public sinners before them men can still talk lightly of their sins. 8. Because the sense of sin is lost in them, as the sense of dirt in an un- clean person. 9. The grace of feeling keenly the stain of sin. I.— The Power of Sin. 1. Men ever have one measure for the business of the body, and another for the business of the soul. Shrewd and even wise in the affairs of the market, they become the veriest fools in dealing with their soul's life; and where no manor combination of men, no cunning, no personal weakness, could overreach them by a penny, any ranter, the simplest of knaves, their own weaknesses, can deprive them of grace here and heaveu hereafter. They place large value on the important places in society. They appreciate to the 164 SIN. 165 utmost the skill of the lawyer, of the physician, and of the financier; they feel sincerely the debt which all men owe to the faithful captain of the steamer, the watchful engineer of the train, the brave general of the army, the devoted officer of the state; they praise earnestly the honest father of the family, the honest officer of a corporation, the honest teacher of the school. And none were so quick as they to denounce and condemn these people in responsible positions, when incapacity, ignorance, negligence, or drunken- ness led them into fearful disasters ; when the ship went down, or the train was wrecked, when govern- ment was robbed, or the army defeated, when the sick were neglected, the children corrupted, the banks broken, and the country's financial credit endangered, because the responsible proved faithless to their great trusts. 2. This is good sense, of course, and it must be turned against themselves. If they condemn these failures and applaud the sentence to death or to long imprisonment, what shall they say in their own de- fence? As the baptized children of Christ they have held important positions and worn high honors, which always carry with them grave responsibilities. From the multitude the Lord took them in the day of their baptism, and clothed them with the garments of the Christian, brought them up in holy homes, in innocence, in peace, accustomed them to the super- natural life in youth that it might not i3ress their shoulders too heavily in age, and promised them strength in this life, and eternal happiness in the wonderful life to come. In return He asked that they should love Him, keep His commandments, speak to 166 THE chaplain's SERMONS. all men of Him by example rather than by words, and thus spread among men the knowledge and love of Him. They were made princes of heaven, all their affairs became eternal in importance and interest, and the little matters which interest the animal in man sank into insignificance. Even the great places in the gift of society became small beside the dignity of the true Christian. And what a tremendous responsi- bility rested upon these favored children of God to remember their birthright, to observe its conditions, and to arrive safe at the eternal goal. 3. With one stroke sin destroyed both dignity and destiny. The faithless general yielded to treason, the captain of the steamer gave way to drunkenness, the father of the family became a castaway ; in conse- quence an army was defeated, a number of poor souls underwent the bitter anguish of death at sea, and the children turned beggars and thieves ; and in the same way the Christian given over to sin became a traitor to his Lord, drowned his destiny in evil, and turned his soul with all its graces forth among beggars and thieves. If death and execration pursued the traitor, the drunkard, and the parent, what punishment shall reach the faithless Christian? Here we see the awful power of sin. There is nothing in nature like it, though nature has terrible agencies of evil. The fanged adder which pierces the unwary foot treading the safe soil, the swift lightning whose bolt so fear- fully pierces life's bright armor, the assassin creeping with velvet step and fatal blade behind the vigorous victim, are faint types of the suddenness and power of sin. Great and sudden catastrophies in nature and among men usually make their presence known SIN. 167 by clamor and fearful portents, but sin does its work in peace, in dreadful silence, as if God and nature stood appalled; and it is only in after years that the cries of the victims reach the ears of men. We hear the groans of them that perish by death around us, but only the angels hear the anguished cries of dying, murdered souls. II. — The Punishments of Sin. 1. The power of sin ought to terrify us, but having lived in sin or beside it so long we have lost the sense of terror. The agencies of death we fear to the last moment of our lives, but the slayer of the soul is rather loved than feared. We must study the conse- quences of sin by the light of the Holy Spirit in order to awaken in our hearts that healthful terror which removes sin from our households. The first consequence of mortal sin is the surrender of our- selves to the justice of God. We are criminals, we have violated the law, and the offence is known to the authorities. What escape can there be for us? At any moment we may be summoned to the bar of eter- nal justice, this heart may cease to beat, these eyes may close to open on the dreadful scene of trial in one instant. With what dread criminals regard the prison which has ensnared them, the court which tries them, the sentence which will infallibly be pro- nounced and executed. Yet the violators of the law of God suffer no such pangs as these, and continue to sin with joy. They know that only a small per- centage of men dies suddenly without time for prepa- ration, and they count on the long sickness and the 168 THE chaplain's SERMONS. death-bed. They are right. It is only the few who are surprised in their sins by death. Their mistake is in supposing that time for preparation also includes the gift of repentance. 2. Sin carries with it, however, a series of natural punishments, which no man can escape. Sickness and death are the children of sin ; sickness with its wearisome hours, its pain and desolation, death with its separations, and the corruption of the grave. Study them for a moment. Men who have seen the agonies of one dying from the bite of a rattlesnake, or from hydrophobia, or from tetanus, never lose the memory of these horrors. Yet how few and insigni- ficant are these tragedies compared with the sick- nesses, separations, deaths of the billions of human beings that have passed away since the world began. We shudder at the poison of the serpent, the mad dog, the rusting nail, which have given a painful death to a few persons. But what of this poison of sin which has inflicted such suffering on an entire race for six thousand years? The serpent and his fjoison should not arouse an emotion of fear compared with that which the mere mention of sin ought to awake in the human heart. And still men do not fear and will not understand. Since death must come to all men they are satisfied to learn nothing from the last sickness, death, and the grave, and they continue in their sins. They continue to tremble be- fore the serpent, while hugging sin to their breast. 3. But if the fear of God's justice, and the warning of death and the grave do not move them to under- standing and terror, perhaps the particular punish- ments of particular sins may rouse them to a sense of SIN. 169 sin. The violations of God's laws are often the vio- lation of our human nature, sins against our natural happiness as well as against the Divine law. In this case nature takes vengeance on her own account. In the same way sins which affect society and particular individuals are avenged by the injured parties. Look around you on the world of suffering in all its forms, and discover the source of so much misery. From hospitals and lunatic asylums, from prisons, from sick-rooms, rises one long terrible wail of pain and despair. Nature, society, and the wronged are avenging the outraged laws of God. The drunkards, the impure, the dissipated, the criminals, the invad- ers of clean homes, the child-murderers, are paying to society, to nature, to man all that they stole from these powers. The innocent are suffering too, but when we subtract their suffering how much anguish remains which has its root solely in the sins of men. And again, God is merciful, most unwilling that death should surprise us, eager to wake us from the sleep of sin before it is too late ; therefore, He sends us the lightning-stroke of unexpected affliction to turn our wandering and benighted thoughts to heaven. The beloved child of the household dies, and broken hearts begin to feel a wider separation than that of the grave, the gulf of sin between them and the child of love ; a fortune disappears, and mean circumstances look meaner than the grave when the light of faith shines not on them ; and but for sin the child would still be living and the fortune still in the treasury. When we consider all these things, is it possible that we can still have no horror for sin? Could we realize them rightly no day would pass without a solemn 170 THE chaplain's SERMONS. execration for that evil power which has wrought such suffering for man. in. — The Sense of Sin. 1. And still men can sx)eak lightly of sin, and praise and love it. Even if the lost souls of the great rose from their Infernos to describe the power of sin, it is doubtful if men could be affected seriously toward a pure life. What a discourse could Herod the Little preach in any market-place to-day on the misery sin has inflicted upon him these two thousand years; in what moving accents Pilate and Judas, faithless judge and faithless friend, might describe the long centuries of their vain repentance ; in what burning words would not Napoleon relate the long list of consequences which flowed from his evil deeds as the conqueror of Europe; and the commoner princes, the multitude of commoner criminals, the murderers of virtue, the traders in innocence, the wretches that made incomes out of sin, how utterly before their pathetic eloquence, descriptive of their sufferings, would fade into insignificance the master- pieces of Cicero and Demosthenes. Yet none of these things would move men to the detestation of sin for long. "And he said: then. Father, I beseech thee that thou wouldst send him to my father's house, for I have five brethren, that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torments. And Abraham said to him: They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. But he said: No, father Abraham, but if one went to them from the dead, they will do penance. And he said to him : If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will SIN. 171 they believe if one rise again from the dead." — Luke xvi. 2. Unless the grace of God gives to men the sense of sin, no other power will influence them to avoid it. This sense of sin may be likened to the physical sense of cleanliness, or to the natural dread of loath- some disease. With what uneasiness do clean people bear the sensation of dirt on their bodies or gar- ments, with what horror do all men fly from the con- tagion of small-pox, cholera, or the yellow fever. The sense of sin in a human soul arouses the same horror and urges to the same flight when this pest of the soul appears. This sense of sin was infused into us in our baptism, and carefully cultivated by parents and teachers in our early childhood and youth. Who cannot remember the keen sense and horror of sin which he had in the days of his innocence, when the slightest falsehoods, the most excusable tempers, the lightest disobedience lay on the little soul with more weight than the grievous crimes of later years? Why is it that we do not carry the child's sense of sin into our days of maturity? Because the world cannot afford that we should. And therefore it begins its vile whisperings and insinuations the moment we ap- pear in its arena ; that sin is part of our nature, does no permanent harm, both benefits and pleases, has few consequences, is regularly practised by most respectable and eminent people, and, though de- nounced from pulpits, is the favorite of the world. It is pointed out from numerous examples that the preachers exaggerate all things connected with sin. In the end we follow the world, and the sense of sin dies within us forever. 172 THE chaplain's SERMONS. 3. Earely does it return in its original strength and beauty. Once we have dipped into sins of habit the memory of them is with us to the end, and only the shaking off of this mortal coil relieves the soul of the eternal flavor of the plague. Let us pray, then, for a deep and ever-deepening sense of sin. We have seen its power and its multiplied punishments. Let us not deceive ourselves with false hopes that we shall escape consequences. The man who trusts himself to a rotten bridge deserves his fall. The laws of nature are inexorable, and God will not in- terfere to prevent their action. The neglectful parent will have bad children to plague his age, the drunk- ard is certain of a painful life and death, the dissi- pated die early, the impure are buried in their own terrible quicksand. And at the close of the drama there remains the last sentence to be imposed by jus- tice. "Depart from me, ye accursed, into everlasting fire." "For the wages of sin is death." Unless you do penance you shall all likewise perish. — Luke xiii. 3. OUTLINE. 1. It astounds us to see the spirit of penance in the sinless Christ and in the saints. 2. While converted sinners have scarcely a tear for their past. 3. True conversion means lifelong regret for past sins. 4. And only through penance can we show that regret. 5. By penance we are saved from the consequences of past and present sin. 6. Corporal penances are good and salutary. 7. But the penances attending the strict performance of duty are better. 8. The rewards given to the contrite of heart. I. — The Spibit of Penance. 1. Common-sense teaches us the necessity of repair- ing any injuries we may have done to others. Regret is not enough, there must also be atonement and reparation. Therefore, sinners who have all but ex- tinguished the light of their baptism by steady viola- tion of the law, on their return to a Christian life must feel sharply the need of atoning in some way for their waste of God's graces. The light which the Church sheds on the pathway of its children from birth to death leaves the Catholic without excuse for his wickedness. Pagans may plead their unbaptized condition and poor training; but all the details of Catholic life and training reproach the faithless sin- ner for his lapses from the right. As we have all sinned with full knowledge of sin, we are bound to make reparation. Thus, the spirit of penance should 173 174 be the distinguishing mark of Christian penitents. This is easily understood. "What astounds us is the cultivation of this same spirit by our sinless Lord, and such saints as Aloysius, who never lost his baptismal innocence. The fasts and prayers of Jesus amaze us; and the mortifications and penances of Aloysius confound us. What need had the Master and the perfect disciples of atonement and reparation? None. But their love for us, their sense of sin's in- justice, their desire to atone for that injustice, urge them to the most painful penances. "Christ was offered once to exhaust the sins of many." — Heb. ix. 2. In us, who have such need of the deepest spirit of penance, how deficient is the mind and will in this regard. The comfort of converted sinners, whose youth was rottenness, is often appalling. They seem to have become virtuous rather because passion and opportunity disappeared, than through the disgust of a bad life and the desire for a better one. They have utterly forgotten that the seeds of sin planted by them in others have borne many harvests, which are being reaped year after year, and will continue to fill hell's barns long after their judgment. This wild and riot- ous parent left his children to grow up like savages ; he is now comfortably attending mass and frequenting the sacraments, a reformed and sober citizen, while his children are scattered over the land, faithful imi- tators of his disorders, breeding children even wick- eder than themselves ; and he is not even conscious of the immense share he must take in the final responsi- bility for so much e\dl. This unclean talker filled the mind of an innocent youth with vile images and his heart with lustful desires in one hour's conversa- PENANCE. 175 tion ; from that moment the youth walked the down- ward road of dissipation, while the sinner who destroyed him has forgotten his crime,— in fact, has never been cognizant of his share in the damnation of his brother. 3. Who shall tell us our forgotten and secret sins with all their lamentable consequences? Who can stretch out a strong hand and stay the march of these consequences before they meet and overwhelm us at judgment? God alone has that power. Moved by fervent prayers, bitter tears, and severe penances, He may convert those whom our example turned into evil ways, or may take from us the fearful responsi- bility for another's sins. "Be converted and do penance for all your iniquities, and iniquity shall not be your ruin."— Ex. xviii. "All the people cried to the Lord with great earnestness, and they humbled their souls in fastings and prayers, both they and their wives. And the priests put on haircloths and they caused the little children to lie prostrate before the temple of the Lord, and the altar of the Lord they covered with haircloth. And they cried to the Lord the God of Israel with one accord, that their children might not be made a prey, and their wives carried off, and their cities destroyed, and the Holy Things profaned, and that they might not be made a reproach to the Gentiles. Then Eliachim the High- Priest of the Lord went about all Israel, and spoke to them saying: 'Know ye that the Lord will hear your prayers, if you continue with perseverance in fastings and prayers in the sight of the Lord ' "—Judges iv. Continuance in penance is only possible when the soul is possessed of the spirit of penance. 176 THE chaplain's SERMONS. II. — Eeasons fob Penance. 1. The spirit of penance provides us with the par- ticular reasons for doing penance in our own behalf. We must atone for the sins and sinful negligences of the past, that kept us from rising to that high stand- ard of life demanded of the humblest Christian. Mortal sin is like a poison in the blood, which with- out killing the body outright destroys the fineness of the physical faculties. The sick cannot see, hear, taste, and feel like healthy persons, and their physi- cal enjoyments are thus curtailed. All that they do is tainted with their sickness. It is the same with habitual sinners. The spiritual life is so low in them that no action of theirs but seems tainted with the poison of sin ; and they go about the world helping to lower its spiritual vitality by their words and actions and indifference. They must not only atone for the sins deliberately committed, but are bound to do what they can to repair the mischief their sad condi- tion unwittingly caused to others. The justice of God is infinite, and there is no escaping it. The debt we contract through sin must be paid to the last farthing. The injury done to others and to ourselves must be repaired ; and at the same time we must not forget the injury done to God by the violation of His commandments, by direct treason to His Son, Jesus Christ. Some of these injustices we can repair, as we pay a debt in money, but others are beyond our powers, as in the case of widespread slander and wasted graces. In such cases God is satisfied with contrite hearts, a pure life, and the practice of PENANCE. 177 penance. It is all that we are able to do, and that is sufficient to atone for the wretched past. 2. But we must do penance not only to atone for the past, but to protect the present from the conse- quences of our own and our neighbors' sins. Sin has natural as well as spiritual consequences, and the laws of nature, once outraged, are pitiless in their ven- geance. The habit of sin begets a weakness in the will, which sometimes becomes a physical disease, as in the case of drunkards. What painful combats the converted sinner has to endure with his perverted nature ! He is often overcome by despair. The mis- erable children brought into the world by a dissipated parent remain to plague and terrify him by their evil lives long after he has received the grace of true con- version ; and in a similar way the evil passions which we generated in our days of sin return to torment our imagination and our bodies when cleanliness of soul has become a second nature to us, and when the mere thought of sin feels like the touch of material filth. We always stand in danger from our neighbor's sins. The calamities that befell the Jewish nation were shared by the innocent and virtuous, who endured the anguish of exile, poverty, and death along with their sinning brethren. We must therefore do penance to escape these consequences flowing naturally from man's violation of the laws of God and the laws of nature. 3l B seems even; necessary that innocence shall do penance in order to bridge the chasm that lies be- tween it and virtue. How many have passed out of innocence without entering the house of tried virtue. The animal is always strong in us, even where tempta- 13 178 THE chaplain's sermons. tion is absent. It is a fierce beast and quickly de- vours both the new and the old travellers on life's road. To tame this beast, to make him the domestic servant where he would fain be the master of the highway, penance is most necessary; and thus the youth whose innocence is scarcely yet conscious of passion, and the men of tried virtue, alike must de- pend upon the works of penance to keep them true to God. " Unless you do penance you shall all likewise perish." Finally, charity also compels us to do what we can in making atonement for the sins of others, for the souls in purgatory, for the indifferent, for the unwilling, even for the most hardened sinners, whose debts to justice the saints so often took upon their own shoulders in the hope of saving them. "Bear ye one another's burdens and so you shall fulfil the law of Christ." This was the spirit of penance in Our Lord, who gave Himself up as a scapegoat for the sins of men. III. — How TO Do Penance. 1. All things done or borne in a penitential sprit are good and salutary penances, but not all things are to be undertaken without careful consideration. To fast and pray, to give alms, to render service to the afflicted, are possible to all at times; but the duties of our state, ill-health, and poverty may very often make these penances impossible. We are not thereby absolved from doing penance. It is a com- mon experience that many who find themselves unable to fast, give alms, and visit the needy, never do penance in any other form ; and it is also not infre- PENANCE. 179 quent that many make the corporal penances a means of deceiving themselves as to the actual condition of their souls. This latter was the sin of the Pharisees, who seemed to think that their perfect observance of the external features of the law, their long fastings and public prayers, made up for their hidden sins of oppression and pride. In both these cases the spirit of penance is the corrective. It points out to the sick, the poor, the occupied, many ways of satisfying the justice of God, and prevents them from falling into indifference; and it hinders others from making too much of the corporal works of penance, which their condition enables them to perform. 2. A penance open to all, yet of the highest value, though hardly considered as a penance, is the strict performance of duty. Yery few dream how much self-denial is involved in the attemi)t to perform ordi- nary duties with perfect care and attention. The hearing of Mass, the act of praying, care of the inter- ests confided to us, healthful economy, the main- tenance of loving relationships with our own, if they are to be done with decency, require much effort, study, and self-denial. This fact is often overlooked, and in consequence we see penitents of great merit devoted to fastings and prayers and charities, who are sad failures in the matter of performing impera- tive duties. For parents, therefore, a natural and noble penance is increased devotion to the welfare of their children, and increasing affection for them ; for sons and daughters a saving penance would be the practice of perfect obedience; for the young the avoidance of temptation perfectly, and of extrava- gance, would be salutary penances; for workmen it 180 THE chaplain's SERMONS. would be a penance to show generosity in their care of an employer's interests; for all a saving penance would be to do more than the law demands. That is, hear a second Mass, or attend benediction on Sunday, earn salary or wages well and then throw in a half hour for justice's sake, make acts of resignation in trouble, and then go a step farther and make an act of thanksgiving, again for justice's sake. 3. It is wonderful the regard which God lavishes on sinners who testify to their repentance by doing penance. When the prophet Jonas preached in Ninive, and warned the people that their sins would destroy their city in a short space of time, the en- tire population with the king at their head did penance in sackcloth and ashes, forcing even the beasts of the field to fast with them ; and God not only heard their prayers and forgave them, but His Divine Son used their name in His day to reproach the Jews. "The men of Ninive shall rise in judg- ment with this generation, and shall condemn it ; be- cause they did penance at the preaching of Jonas. And behold a greater than Jonas here." — Matt. xii. Our Lord also declared: "I say to you that there shall be joy in heaven upon one sinner that doth penance, more than upon ninety -nine just, who need not penance." — Luke v. On the other hand for those who have no use for penance, and can see no need for it in their own lives or the lives of others, God has written down their punishment. " The inheritance of the children of sinners shall perish, and with their posterity shall be a perpetual reproach." — Eccl. xli. " And I will visit the evils of the world, and against the wicked for their iniquity." — Isa. xiii. J^ofg C^ureMg. And whilst they were eating, Jesus took bread; and blessing broke, and gave to them, and said: Take ye and eat : This is my Body. — Mark wiv. 22, OUTLINE. 1. We are so accustomed to the ordinary story of the Last Supper as to hear it without special emotion or deep interest, 2. Yet when it is told to us from another standpoint than that of the Evangelists, and in a different fashion, its wealth of interest amazes us. 3. And we realize that this wonderful Last Supper is repeated in the Church as often as Mass is said, and with similar circumstances. 4. The aim of Our Lord in establishing the Blessed Eucharist was that He might forever be physically among men. 5. Henceforward, without His Body and Blood there was to be no spirit- ual progress for men or for society. 6. Union with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is the most perfect and fruitful union which man can have with God. 7. Through this sacrament the glorious body of the Resurrection has fed the believing part of the human race for twenty centuries. 8. And the human priesthood has had conferred upon it the honor of per- petually repeating for men the sacrifice of Calvary, the glory of Mount Olivet. 9. The indifference of so many sinners to this glorious Presence is as dif- ficult to explain as the treason of Judas. I. The Last Supper. 1. It is to be regretted that so many Catholics miss the glory of this day, and fail to catch the full beauty of that scene in the supper-hall, when Our Lord gave Himself forever to His brethren. We read the evan- gelist's description of the Last Supper with reverence, of course, but without any special emotion, such as would stir us if Napoleon or any popular hero were the subject of the story. Christ was God, and for us naturally all other wonders of His life are absorbed in that fact. But they ought not to be obscured. 181 182 THE chaplain's SERMONS. Their natural and supernatural beauty and sublimity ought to appeal to our minds and hearts and bring us nearer to Him Who was both God and Man. When we lose sight of them, we lose sight of Him in part. He became man that we might understand His love for us better, and might love Him the more easily. All His human side was the expression of the Divine love for us in the ways we can best understand. Therefore, these scenes of His life should be very dear to us, and should be closely and lovingly studied. He took bread and wine, the most beautiful symbols of all human food, as the veil of His wonderful gift to us ; He chose the commonest, yet most emphatic cere- mony of our social and physical life, the hour of eat- ing, for the granting of the gift ; and He made it His last testament, leaving to His children the entire es- tate which His Father had given Him. 2. Thirteen men sat down in the supper-room to celebrate the religious feast peculiar to the Jewish nation. The thirteen were devoted friends, had been companions for some years in the same enterprise, and were under the command of a leader whose fame had filled the land through the wonders of healing He had done. No idea of disaster, separation, death, crime, tragedy, entered the mind of any man present save one. They were all healthy, young, ambitious, hope- ful, proud of their leader and their discipleship, and they looked forward to many years of comradeship, labor, and increasing honor under their Master. How shocked, how horrified, how humiliated, would these confident men have become could they at that moment have seen the darkness and crime of the next twenty-four hours. One had already arranged to play HOLY THURSDAY. 183 the part of traitor to his Master before the night passed, and by the morning dawn of the second day would be in his grave a disgraced, an infamous suicide ; the beloved Master was to leave the table for the prison, the prison for the tribunal, the tribunal for the scaffold, the scaffold for the stranger's grave, all within the short space of a day ; the chief of the disciples was to disgrace himself within a few hours by an act of cowardice ; and the others were to fly in terror from the Master they loved, thinking more of their own safety than of His. Never again were these thirteen to sit together in such harmony and love, and each was doomed to a life of hardship, and a death of violence. Look at the scene again under this light, and say if any more strange or awful has been enacted in the history of man. 3. Yet this is the exact truth with regard to the Last Supper, and might be made still more vivid by giving all the strange details connected with the scene. Moreover, it was not to be a scene of the moment, thereafter the mere historical fact; but for all time it was to be repeated among men with an ap- palling fidelity to the first circumstances. The bread and wine were to be changed continually into the Body and Blood of the Master ; the great feast was never to end, and the terror of the disciples, the treason of Judas, the meanness of Peter were to be its mournful shadows in every age ; for thus the Mass is offered up to this moment on Catholic altars, while outside rages the same world that plotted about the hall of the Last Supper, ready with jailers, soldiers, prisons, corrupt judges, mad populace, scourge, thorn-crown, cross, and Calvary to do away with Him 184 THE chaplain's SERMONS. Wlio calls Himself under the veil of the Bread and wine, as once under the veil of the carpenter, the Son of God and the King of the human race. How terri- ble look the Last Supper and the Mass in this light ! What a strange, what a wonderful scene was that which first saw the bread and wine made the Body and Blood of Christ for "the life of the world." Who can look upon the actors seated so calmly about the table, upon the grave Master, upon the pallid traitor, without infinite interest, infinite speculation? n. The Body of Christ. 1. Men sometimes wonder why Christ gave us such a gift, and it appears to them the strangest that God could offer to man. Many Protestant leaders of thoughtful and pious nature find it impossible to comprehend the Gift. When Our Lord first described It, many of His former disciples found it quite as in- comprehensible, and "walked no more with him." They said one to another, as so many say to Catho- lics in this day, " This saying is hard, and who can bear it." Yet if there be any gift in man's possession more comprehensible than another, it is the gift of self from a lover to the object of his love. "Two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one," is the poet's exact and striking description of true and perfect love realized by actual union. When Our Lord established the Blessed Sacrament he achieved the highest expression of the God-Man's love for His people ; He gave himself in His entirety to every soul that loved Him ; He gave Himself to each one in every age of the world, in every condi- HOLY THURSDAY. 185 tion ; and thus there could be no favoritism charged against Him, no jealousy on our part, for the slave, the beggar, the outcast of the last century of time stands in the same relation to Him in this sacrament as the Apostle, the prince, the philosopher of the Master's day. He achieved at the same time His own wonderful delight: "My delight is to be with the children of men." It is given to no human lover to bestow himself so completely upon the beloved. Such a power belongs only to God. When the mother has exhausted herself in her devotion to her child, she never comes as near to his heart as the woman whom he makes his wife ; when husband and wife are in the most complete accord their union is still subject to death, and their hearts suffer a holy division when the child claims a share of their affec- tion ; but the union of Christ and His beloved in the Blessed Eucharist is absolute and perfect, subject neither to time nor death nor any limitation, and is both physical and spiritual according to man's nature. 2. This sweet Body of Christ, therefore, became in a most peculiar and perfect way "the life of the world." For nearly twenty centuries the Christian world has sat at the banquet of the Last Supper, men coming and going by generations, so that the great feast has been continuous. Peter has always been there, and the other Apostles ; and Judas has been represented by individuals regularly, by nations at critical times. The old world broke up a score of times, but the Christian era has endured amid all ac- cidents of time and fortune, because Christ has been in its bosom; not merely the Christ of history, of the Sacred Books, of the faith of men, but the Christ 186 THE chaplain's SERMONS. of Nazareth, of Calvary, of Mount Olivet, in His Body and Soul. He has been nearer to this modern world than He ever was to the Judean age. For the meanest island of the remotest oceans is as near to Him in His tabernacle as was Bethany in the days of his loving visitations to the home of Lazarus. With- out Him in the Eucharist there is no real progress for any human being or any human society. His Body and His Blood are now the condition of life and happy continuance for man and society. " Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you." — John vi. 3. And what vigorous, buoyant, fruitful life that must be which has its arteries filled with the current that flows in the veins of the Eternal Christ ! What an incomparable union ! We are touched to tears by the examples of earthly union between devoted beings, we are often in admiration of the perfect union between beautiful inanimate things. The close knit- ting of the mother to the child of her flesh, of the friend with the friend as between David and Jona- than, have given the orators themes to stir the heart. The pathetic relationship between the rose and the sun, the final result of earth's forces in the sparkling juice of the grape, have inspired the poets in their sweetest and noblest songs. Yet how poor and mean are these beside the union of Christ with His beloved in the Eucharist. It has no parallel, no imitations, no shadows. It is unique, for the Son of God is the only Being of His kind in the universe. "And his countenance was as lightning, and his raiment as snow." — Matt, xxvii. HOLY THURSDAY. 187 III. The Glory of His Priesthood and People. 1. The astonishing feature of this Gift of Himself to His beloved is that he made it in a manner subject to His priesthood. To the priest He freely com- mitted this power of bringing Him physically among His people, and to no other ; and so absolutely, that without the priest there is no established means of securing His beautiful presence in the tabernacle, and of distributing Him among His own. Thus, when the English and German nations banished the priest from their confines, they drove out the Christ of the Eucharist; from their villages and temples He de- parted, and the light which had illumined them from early times was extinguished. The faith might re- main in part, or in its entirety, as in the case of a few faithful families, but the Master Himself, the Body of the Eesurrection morning went into exile with His priest. This Sacrament is, therefore, in a special sense the glory of the priesthood, both in its begin- ning, since it was founded in the presence of the first priests, and in its continuance, since it is a preroga- tive of the priesthood to bring it upon the altar. Hence, the priesthood is an office as enduring as time and the church, and its chief glory is its connection with the Blessed Eucharist. And for the people the same glory may be claimed, though of a different de- gree. The vitality and the perpetuity of the Chris- tian people are from Him in this Sacrament; and without His Body and Blood there is no longer any true life or real glory for any nation. 2. How then can we explain the indifference, the 188 THE chaplain's sermons. lack of interest, the absence of emotion, which so many Catholics suffer from on this wonderful day, and on every day of the year? What is to be said in defence of men and women with a certain belief in Christ, who can sit in His sacramental presence, year after year, without ever a thought of receiving Him, feeling even repugnance at the thought of communion? They are as inexplicable as Judas in his treason, who betrayed such a Master for thirty pieces of silver! Had he sold the Lord for a kingdom, or the first place in the Roman court, we might comprehend his baseness; but to purchase infamy so meanly, it is beyond us ! The neglectful are of the same stripe of meanness. For the laziness and dead indifference of these earthly years, they will probably pay a heavy sum to justice. They hope to receive Him once for all when death claims them. But they can be assured that they who do not recognize His beauty in the vigor of mind and body will hardly recognize Him in the mists and damps of death ! iVbto