Ctic CatfjeDral dBDition 
 
 THE WORKS OF THE RT. REV. 
 CHARLES C. GRAFTON, S.T.D., LL.D. 
 
 SECOND BISHOP OF FOND DU LAC 
 
 EDITED BY 
 B. TALBOT ROGERS, M.A., D.D. 
 
 WARDEN OF GRAFTON HALL, CANON OF ST. PAUL'S 
 CATHEDRAL, FOND DU LAC 
 
 IN EIGHT VOLUMES 
 VOLUME I 
 
 MCMXIV
 
 TO OUR ADORABLE LORD 
 AND ONLY SAVIOUR 
 
 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 THIS RECORD OF THE LIFE, LOVE AND WORKS 
 
 OF HIS DEVOTED SAINT 
 IS REVERENTLY INSCRIBED
 
 IT has been a very great privilege to be allowed to 
 collect the writings of Bishop Grafton. 
 
 The spiritual opportunity in so humble an occu- 
 pation as reading the proof for this edition has been 
 to take a course in theology, and to learn the deep 
 spiritual convictions of a long life that was conse- 
 crated with unswerving consistency to the service 
 of Jesus Christ for the extension of His Kingdom in 
 the hearts and lives of his fellow-men by the bonds 
 of the life-giving sacraments of the Holy Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 We have undertaken to gather Bishop Grafton's 
 literary remains in a uniform edition of eight vol- 
 umes that includes a volume of his Sermons and 
 Letters. A volume of miscellanies could be in- 
 creased to two or three, but in writing for so many 
 different occasions the same teaching was often re- 
 peated in altered form. In order to avoid repeti- 
 tion it was necessary to omit much that might 
 otherwise have been included, but it has been our 
 aim to preserve all that the Bishop taught in his 
 writings without diminution or alteration. 
 
 The value of his writings is largely due to the 
 representative character of his life. It was repre-
 
 vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 sentative, in a broad and large way, of the Church's 
 work. It illustrates for the individual and the 
 Church the results of loyalty to our Catholic heritage. 
 He would be the first to deny any originality in his 
 writings. He ever sought to be loyal and bear 
 faithful witness to "the Faith once for all delivered 
 to the Saints." 
 
 The value of the personal equation was his ability 
 to translate that teaching into the terms of modern 
 thought, and to indicate the manner of its applica- 
 tion to the life and problems of to-day. 
 
 In his autobiography, so aptly called, "A Journey 
 Godward," he indicates his early environment as 
 Puritan and Calvinistic. From this he revolted in 
 early manhood and, as is often the case, he gave his 
 allegiance to that form of Church teaching and ser- 
 vice that emphasizes the Church's differences from 
 Protestantism rather than Her resemblance to the 
 modern religious bodies and movements about Her. 
 
 It was always his contention that the Church held 
 a stronger position and was more likely to succeed by 
 showing that she had something to give those out- 
 side Her Communion. He thought that it was 
 more statesmanlike as well as loyal to Her standard 
 to uphold Her Catholic heritage and privileges 
 rather than to represent Her as one of many denomi- 
 nations. 
 
 After ten years of devoted service in Maryland 
 he went to England and threw himself into the 
 second stage of the Oxford movement that inaugu- 
 rated Parochial Missions and founded Religious
 
 INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 Communities. For seven years he took the training 
 and experience that an active part in this work gave 
 him. 
 
 It was always a satisfaction to him to have known 
 Dr. Pusey, and to have assisted him in services, 
 so that he was able to answer those who raised the 
 question, that Dr. Pusey not only loyally set forth 
 the Catholic faith and teaching of the Church, but 
 also used all the traditional ceremonial that accom- 
 panied and illustrated that teaching, as lights, in- 
 cense, vestments and acts of adoration. 
 
 He returned to Boston in 1872 and for sixteen 
 years proved himself a past master hi the art and 
 generalship of organizing and developing a great 
 city parish. Opposition from within and without 
 led to the development of two strong parishes where 
 one weak one had been before. Both may be 
 counted as monuments to his zeal and devotion and 
 Christian forbearance. The Church throughout 
 New England was stronger and better for his wise 
 leadership. 
 
 Then for twenty-three years he served his Master 
 as Bishop of Fond du Lac. We are still under the 
 spell of his influence, and it is impossible to estimate 
 the value of that on the American Church. That 
 he remade a diocese and set an example that many 
 seek to emulate, that his influence on legislation was 
 statesmanlike, that the Canons on Provinces, Re- 
 ligious Orders, and many others were his drafting, 
 and that he warded off much adverse legislation is 
 well known. His writings during the later years of
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 his episcopate circulated throughout the Anglican 
 Communion. That he will rank as one of the great 
 leaders we cannot doubt. He was the first Monk 
 to be made a Bishop since the Reformation, and he 
 earnestly strove to restore all spiritual privileges in 
 the Church. 
 
 In his published works the Bishop aimed at the 
 practical and useful rather than the scholarly. 
 
 Volume one of this edition, " Christian and Catho- 
 lic," is most valuable because it is a well adapted 
 work in Apologetics. It aims to meet the present 
 need for a readable book on the grounds of Relig- 
 ion, the Christian Religion, and the Catholic Religion 
 distinguished on the one hand from Protestantism 
 and on the other from Romanism. So well adapted 
 for present needs has it proved that one Bishop 
 wrote from Australia that he was giving it to his 
 Lay readers to use in place of sermons. 
 
 Volume two, "The Lineage of the American 
 Catholic Church," isintended as an exposition of the 
 essential marks of the Church, and the turning points 
 in Her history that seemed most important to stress 
 at this time. It has been eagerly read, and especially 
 by those outside Her Communion. Her histori- 
 cal continuity, essential Catholicity, and national 
 peculiarities have been treated with clearness and 
 loyalty. 
 
 Volume three, "A Catholic Atlas, " is a theological 
 prompter and analysis of the entire field of theology. 
 It is well called an Atlas and is like a geographical 
 and topographical Chart of Christian Dogma. It
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 has proved most valuable to theological students, 
 and to parochial clergy in preparing outlines for 
 courses of Instruction, Lectures, and Sermons. 
 
 Volume four, "A Journey Godward, " is the revela- 
 tion of a long life dedicated to the service of Christ 
 and His Church in early manhood, and consistently 
 true to that gift of Himself to the closing hours of 
 life and his viaticum. 
 
 With all the enthusiasm of youth he gave himself 
 to the Religious life and kept the threefold vows to 
 the end. He founded a number of Communities, 
 though contrary to his own desires deprived at last 
 by circumstances beyond his control of the help 
 and companionship of Community life. 
 
 His consistency and singleness of purpose was 
 indicated by the fact that friends of his early days 
 loyally supported his efforts to the end. 
 
 Volume five gathers up his teaching on the Re- 
 ligious life. 
 
 Volume six, his practice as a priest at the Altar 
 and his Missionary pamphlets known as the Fond 
 du Lac Tracts. 
 
 Volume seven contains selections from his Corre- 
 spondence. It begins with an essay on the Slavery 
 Question, his earliest extant writing includes his letters 
 from Oxford at the time of the founding of the Society 
 of St. John the Evangelist, at Cowley St. John, Ox- 
 ford, and covers his association with Dr. Pusey, Dr. 
 Neale, and Canon Liddon. His later letters were 
 filled with Church teaching and a love for souls. 
 This volume concludes with a letter to his Indians.
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 Volume eight contains Sermons, Addresses, and 
 Meditations. 
 
 Let us here acknowledge the debt of sincere grati- 
 tude that we owe to the Hon. Elbridge T. Gerry, 
 LL.D., whose generous devotion has made this work 
 possible. It is eminently fitting that his name 
 should be associated with this enterprise. As a 
 layman he has stood before the world as an uncom- 
 promising Catholic, and has crystallized his faith in 
 permanent foundations, and a life of service for the 
 welfare of others, especially in arousing the Ameri- 
 can Conscience as to its duty toward Children. It 
 was he who made possible the manifestation of 
 Catholic worship throughout an entire diocese, and 
 laid enduring foundations that give promise of per- 
 petuating the faith and service of Bishop Grafton 
 for many generations. 
 
 The proceeds from the sale of this edition will 
 help to perpetuate the Bishop's work in the cause 
 of Religion. 
 
 Devout souls north, south, east, and west looked to 
 him as a spiritual leader who never failed them, nor 
 swerved from the narrow way. For their sakes this 
 uniform edition of his writings is compiled. May 
 their faith and loyalty be further strengthened. 
 And may we who knew and loved him, and those 
 who come to know him by his works, have the 
 Grace of final perseverance. 
 
 B. TALBOT ROGERS. 
 
 ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, FOND DU LAC, 
 Whitsuntide, 1914.
 
 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC
 
 CHRISTIAN 
 AND CATHOLIC 
 
 BY 
 
 THE RIGHT REVEREND 
 CHARLES C. GRAFTON, S.T.D., LL.D. 
 
 BISHOP OF FOND DU LAC 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 
 LONDON, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA AND MADRAS 
 IQI4
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1905 
 BY LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 First Edition, February, 1905 
 
 Second Edition (revised), May, 1905 
 
 Reprinted, November, 1906, and December, 1907 
 
 Third Edition (revised), January, 1910 
 
 Cathedral Edition, October, 1914 
 
 THE'PLIUPTON- PRESS 
 
 NORWUOD-MASS-U'S-A
 
 To 
 
 MY DEAR AND ESTEEMED FRIEND 
 
 ELBRIDGE T. GERRY, LL.D. 
 SENIOR WARDEN OF S. EDWARD'S THE MARTYR, 
 
 BY PERSONAL SERVICE, 
 
 A PROTECTOR OF CHRIST'S LITTLE ONES; 
 
 A DEVOUT UPHOLDER OF 
 
 CATHOLICK FAITH AND WORSHIP, 
 
 WHO WELL ILLUSTRATES THE TlTLB 
 
 OF THIS BOOK
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIS book is not controversial. In these days 
 of unbelief we are only too glad to recognize 
 believers in Christ, whatever degree of faith they 
 may have attained. By whatever name nonconform- 
 ists and sectarians call themselves, we recognize all 
 baptized and faithful followers of Christ as Christians. 
 The sins of former generations which rent us apart 
 will not make us guilty of schism if we do not refuse 
 enlightenment and seek for reunion. We recognize, 
 on the other hand, the Orthodox Churches of the East 
 and the Roman Catholic as portions of the Church of 
 Christ and their members as our fellow churchmen. 
 They are most potent agencies in the preservation 
 of the Christian religion. In the devotion of their 
 members we recognize a zeal we might well emulate. 
 We gladly welcome all acts of Christian recognition 
 on their part and are ready to reciprocate them. 
 Our Church accepts their orders and places no bar- 
 riers in the way of intercommunion. 
 
 Our purpose in writing is to offer some help, if by 
 God's grace we can do so, to any who, as they say, 
 wish to believe but cannot ; or, believing in God and 
 Christianity, are for any cause in doubt as to their 
 duty respecting church membership. There are, we 
 know, many such. Yet we would sincerely say that 
 our chief desire is not to make them converts, much
 
 xviii PREFACE 
 
 as we love it, to that special portion of Christ's Body 
 the Church to which we belong. 
 
 The reason of this is that our religious experience 
 has developed in us a strong antagonism to prosely- 
 tism. There is apt to be so much of what is merely 
 selfish and sectarian in it. Men want to get others 
 to join their side, their party, their church, by way of 
 triumph over some other body, or party, or church. 
 They want their side to win, their congregation, parish, 
 or sect to grow. They want to enlarge their tale of 
 converts, after the manner of a Roman triumph, that 
 all the world may see how successful they are. This 
 spirit leads in almost every town to jealousies and 
 rivalries between sects and churches. It undermines, 
 however, their spiritual life. 
 
 The professional proselytizer, as we know the class, 
 is a repulsive character. He studies the art of 
 injecting doubts into devout minds, of playing on 
 the weaknesses and vanities of his proposed con- 
 verts. He exaggerates the discords within their 
 church, the contrariant opinions, the lack of discip- 
 line. Sometimes he cajoles, sometimes he seeks to 
 terrify, sometimes he tries to influence by social ad- 
 vantages, sometimes he seeks to take souls captive 
 by subtle sophisms. He is apt to be self-deceived as 
 well as a deceiver, while asserting that he is working 
 for the "greater glory of God." In reality he is doing 
 what our Lord condemned in the Pharisees. They 
 compassed heaven and earth to make proselytes, but 
 failed grievously in making them true children of 
 God. For themselves and their converts the result" 
 was just the opposite.
 
 PREFACE xix 
 
 It is right to try to help our brothers who are in 
 honest doubt, just in the same spirit as we would be 
 glad for them to help us when in need. It is right if 
 our motive is to aid any Christian soul to come into 
 closer union with Christ. Even should any one be- 
 lieve that his church was the only true one, yet to 
 work for it in the same spirit one works for the 
 success of an earthly object is to belie its character. 
 We must work, not for any personal gain but as 
 Christ did. Our guiding pole-star must be the good 
 of others' souls. If our own words are found of help 
 to any, enabling them to know better God's Will, in 
 whatever way He leads them, may they have grace 
 to follow it. 
 
 Our purpose will be also accomplished if in these 
 days of absorbing secular interests we can aid in 
 arousing religious inquiry. With the baubles of am- 
 bition clinking on the ear and cheating the eye, with 
 the engrossing dream of splendid luxury captivating 
 the heart, many impatiently push aside any suggestion 
 of religion. Others give a slight but superficial con- 
 sideration to it. By the law of association of ideas, 
 thoughts idly come and as idly go through our minds. 
 We cannot stop this any more than the circulation of 
 our blood. But it is not painstaking thinking. No 
 wonder the air is laden with murmurings and com- 
 plaints of the disappointed, when so many never 
 seriously face the problems, what are we, why are we 
 here, what will our future be, in what does our real 
 happiness consist, and what will bring a man peace 
 at the last? 
 
 Some deliberately refuse to entertain these ques-
 
 xx PREFACE 
 
 tions. Religion is not like a philosophy or literature 
 or science. She stands over against our conscience, 
 a stern censor, and demands something. Steep and 
 craggy is the ascent to the eternal heights, and it calls 
 for exertion. She calls us to a life which has not self- 
 interest for its governing principle, but to one based 
 on the higher motive of service. The consequence is 
 that whether a man believes or not depends largely on 
 his predispositions and will. With the self-indulgent 
 or self-satisfied Christianity has but little chance. 
 God may have seemingly exhausted the resources of 
 His entreaties, but His children stop their ears and 
 harden their hearts. 
 
 Yet there are those who do wish help and are glad 
 to receive it. They care not by whose hands the 
 Lamp of Truth is held up to them ; it is the light 
 they want. They are alive to the folly of neglecting 
 investigation and longer postponing decision. Oppor- 
 tunity has been likened to an Angel that presents 
 herself with bandaged eyes and winged feet. Her 
 eyes are bandaged, for men so often fail to discern 
 her presence ; her feet are winged, for she so quickly 
 takes her flight. The Voice of God speaking within 
 the soul says " To-day is the accepted time, to-day is 
 the day of Salvation." The call is a loving and an 
 imperative one, and our prayerful response should be, 
 "O God, make me willing in this day of Thy power." 
 
 C. C. FOND DU LAC.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE xvii 
 
 PART I. CHRISTIAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 RELIGION. 
 
 Definition. A union between God and man. The existence of one 
 supreme intelligent and will energy. Its necessary personality. 
 The nature of man. Three degrees of his union with God, by 
 nature, grace, and glory. The first two concern us now. The need 
 of a response in order to know God. Religion thus developed brings 
 strength and joy to man 3 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 HEAVEN'S AMBASSADOR. 
 
 The revelation of God to man a gradual and progressive one. It has 
 presented itself in other forms than that of Christianity. But Chris- 
 tianity presents the noblest conception of God and the highest end 
 for man. What, then, think ye of its founder, Christ ? He was a 
 teacher sent by God. This proved by His coming in fulfilment of 
 prophecy. It declared His three offices and set forth His life and 
 death. Our need of such a teacher 17 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE DIVINE TEACHER. 
 
 Christ was unique. Certain characteristics of Christ show that He does 
 not belong to the category of a mere man. This proved by the fact 
 that He was free from those prejudices no other known man has been
 
 xxii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 without. The singular perfection of His character combining both 
 masculine and feminine excellence. The balanced union of the 
 active and contemplative aspects of His spiritual life. His minute 
 obedience to the previously revealed divine plan for the world's 
 redemption. His inner life, its supernatural motives and self- 
 sacrifice and death. His unique sinlessness. His life and character 
 become a warrant of His truthfulness. His teaching primarily con- 
 cerns Himself. He claims a pre-existent life, to have been sent from 
 heaven, and to be one with the Father as the Son of God .... 30 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE GREAT CREDENTIAL. 
 
 The resurrection. Christ prophesied He would rise and He kept His 
 word. Sunday a witness to it. The resurrection examined. His 
 death proved. Answer to objections why He showed not Himself 
 to Pilate. His resurrection borne witness to both by His enemies 
 and friends. The former give us five distinct confirmatory evidences. 
 Many of them also changed their minds and believed. The two 
 sections of the positive evidence. First, that outside of the Gospel 
 narrative. The witness of the sacraments to the resurrection, and 
 that of S. Paul. The divergences in the Gospels explained. Each 
 evangelist setting forth a different side of Christ's nature and 
 offices naturally records those incidents of the resurrection which 
 illustrate his particular theme. The witness of the women and of 
 the grave-clothes and -the Apostles. Answer to a late objection. 
 The resurrection can not be accounted for on the myth, or ghost, 
 or mental hallucination theories. It is confirmed by the change 
 wrought in the Apostles and their concurrent testimony and the 
 Gospel's power. The resurrection is in accord with the grandeur of 
 the incarnation, and confirms and illustrates it 46 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 CHRIST'S TEMPTATION. 
 
 How can Christ be an example to us if not tried by temptation ? How 
 reconcile His temptation with His absolute sinlessness? The three 
 kinds of trial to which He was exposed. How He was under a per- 
 petual trial. How He was tried in all portions of His humanity, 
 body and soul, affections, moral and spiritual nature. Consequently 
 His power of sympathy with us. How by His victories virtues were 
 developed which were to be extended in us. His trials and sufferings 
 were the outcome of His love and appeal for ours in return ... 71
 
 CONTENTS xxiii 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 ETERNAL LIFE. 
 
 PACK 
 
 Christ came to consummate creation by uniting it to God by a new tie. 
 His original purpose is not baffled by man's sin. Sin had separated 
 man from God, made him the servant of Satan, and marred his 
 nature. How Christ removed these evils. How He brought to man 
 four great gifts, truth, an example, deliverance from sin and 
 death, eternal life. How He opened His side and communicates 
 His nature to us through the sacraments. How the ancient peoples 
 and the heathen could be made partakers of Christ What the gift 
 of eternal life is, and how it must either be attained through union 
 with Christ or lost 86 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 LOVE AND SERVICE. 
 
 The three manifestations of love. Its welcome. Its progress. Its 
 response. An examination of ourselves. Contrast of our ingratitude 
 and selfishness with His unselfish love. Our spiritual life a journey. 
 Its purificative, illuminative, and unificative stages. The work of 
 the Holy Spirit. The call to service 105 
 
 PART II. CATHOLIC. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE RULE OF FAITH. 
 
 The differences among Christians. How shall a Christian know what he 
 ought to believe ? Two axioms. The three rules proposed, the 
 Protestant, Roman, and Catholic. The tests applied to them. The 
 true rule the Catholic one. Christ speaks through His Church. It 
 is a living voice. The four points in the Catholic rule. Christ 
 reveals, the Holy Spirit guards, the Church declares, the Christian 
 knows. Answer to objection concerning the divisions of Christen- 
 dom. These divisions have been a means by which the Church's 
 prophetical office as an infallible guide has been preserved. The 
 Anglican Church declaring the Catholic faith as held by the undi- 
 vided Church speaks with a living and authoritative voice .... 127
 
 xxiv CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 SACRIFICE. 
 
 PACK 
 
 Religion requires an outward expression of worship. What is the origin 
 of sacrifice ? The sacrifices of the heathen and the Jew. The two- 
 fold character of the latter, corporate and individual. The necessity 
 of the inward spirit with the outward oblation. The sacrifice of 
 Christ embraces both and fulfils the types of two orders of priest- 
 hood. Sacrifice seen to be a reciprocal action between God and 
 man. Hence no true and complete religion without it. Shown to 
 exist in all the four dispensations. In Paradise, under the Law, in 
 the Kingdom of grace, and glory. The Eucharist the Gospel sacri- 
 fice. Answer to some Protestant objections 148 
 
 V 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 
 
 Worship by sacrifice postulates the necessity of a priesthood. Christ 
 held the office of priest. Answer to objection that He did not use 
 that term in relation to Himself. The Church as His mystical body 
 is identified with His priesthood. Christ is its head and our High 
 Priest. All of its members, being united in Him, are collectively a 
 priesthood. How the Apostles were clothed with special priestly 
 powers, commissioned, and finally consecrated. How they ordained 
 others, and the three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons arose. 
 The members of the second order, by the powers given it, proved by 
 Holy Scripture to be priests in the Old Testament sense .... 169 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS. 
 
 The Anglican Church has always been in possession of an Apostolic 
 ministry. Objections of Sectarians and of Romans, I. It is zprima 
 facie proof of the Anglican Church having orders that she claims 
 and acts as if she had. II. How the succession from the Apostles 
 has been preserved to her through three lines of descent. All Angli- 
 can bishops trace their orders to Archbishop Laud, in whom these 
 lines converged. The consecration of Matthew Parker by four 
 bishops an admitted fact III. The validity of the ordinal by which 
 he was consecrated. The intention of its framers. The preserva- 
 tion in it of a valid matter and form. The validity of the orders 
 demonstrated 188
 
 CONTENTS xxv 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 THE SEVEN MYSTERIES. 
 
 PACB 
 
 The sacraments divided into two classes. The seven separately ex- 
 plained. The four Baptisms in the New Testament. The gift of 
 the spirit in confirmation. The sacrament of penitence. Its parts, 
 contrition, confession, absolution. Holy unction, its institution, 
 the blessings it conveys, when it may be administered. Holy Order 
 and matrimony. Baptism a condition of Christian marriage. The 
 indissolubility of the bond. The three kinds of Christian marriage 
 and the witness they severally bear to Christ and His Church. The 
 Holy Eucharist. As a witness to the faith, as a communion, as a 
 sacrifice 217 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 UNITY AND UNION. 
 
 The Church a spiritual organism. The papacy not a principle of unity. 
 The sacramental union with Christ the true principle of unity. 
 Divine love, not the papacy, the principle of the Church's union. 
 The present condition of Christendom foretold by type and prophecy 
 no ground of despondency. The duties Catholics owe to all parts of 
 the Church : the Church militant, to work for it ; the Church ex- 
 pectant, to pray for the dead ; the Church in glory, to unite our 
 prayers with its members and make them intercessors while we also 
 pray for them 242 
 
 PART III. CATHOLIC, NOT ROMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 S. PETER'S PRE-EMINENCE. 
 
 It must be examined along with the distinctions given other Apostles. 
 Three have special titles given them. They each have special and 
 personal offices. The things said of S. Paul of equal significance as 
 those said of S. Peter. The two lives contrasted. Their calling. 
 Their part in the establishment of the ministry. In regard to the 
 Church's discipline. Their visions. The miracles they wrought. 
 Their deliverances from prison. Their preaching. Their salutation 
 to one another. Their deaths. Their pre-eminence and the offices 
 they respectively held required no successors 263
 
 xxvi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 S. PETER AND S. JOHN. 
 
 PACK 
 
 S. Peter type and representative of the old dispensation, S. John of the 
 new. Their lives contrasted. S. Peter the older and a married 
 man, S. John the younger and a virgin. Their respective homes and 
 occupants. The different manner of their call. The new names or 
 titles given to each. The meaning of Christ's preaching out of 
 Peter's boat. The questions they respectively address to Christ. 
 The different rebukes our Lord administers to each. The questions 
 He addresses to them. The two Apostles' conduct at the Last 
 Supper, judgment hall, the cross, and at the resurrection. The 
 care of the B. Virgin, the type of the Church, given to S. John. 
 Their different deaths illustrative of their positions in the Church . 281 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 S. PETER AT ROME. 
 
 The claim that Christ created, as different from the episcopate, an office 
 of supreme pontiff. Necessity of Romans proving that S. Peter 
 not only consecrated a bishop at Rome but instituted him into this 
 office. Is it a demonstrated certainty or only a historical probability 
 that Peter was at Rome ? The evidence is argumentative and cir- 
 cumstantial only. The Romantic and the Ecclesiastic accounts. 
 No plain record of it in the Holy Scriptures. No contemporaneous 
 witnesses. The evidence of S. Clement, Tertullian, Eusebius, and 
 others. Three comments. Conclusion. No such evidence exists 
 as warrants our making "the Holy Roman Church" an article of 
 the Creed 294 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 THE ROMAN CLAIM. 
 
 The pope, the vicar of Christ, the monarch, supreme governor, and 
 doctor of the Church. Printa facie evidence against this claim. 
 Cannot be accounted for by a development. The evidence of Holy 
 Scripture. The authority vested in the twelve. Peter and the first 
 council. His rebuke by S. Paul. The three texts alleged by the 
 Romans interpreted. Grammatical and theological reasons why 
 Peter cannot be the rock. The testimony of the fathers. The 
 Roman claim disproved 304
 
 CONTENTS xxvii 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 THE HOLY SEE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 What claim has Rome to this title? Some historical features of that 
 see. The forgeries connected with its development. The evil 
 character of many of its pontiffs. Its worldly spirit and lust for 
 power. Its present agitation for a temporal sovereignty. Contrast 
 between the spirit of its services and that of the Holy Eastern Church. 
 The Roman see has no special claim to holiness; it is rather the 
 worldly see 330 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 SECESSIONS. 
 
 The Tractarian movement. The secessions of some. One cause the 
 difficulties arising in England from the connection of the Church 
 with the State. The number of those clergy who have stayed larger 
 than that of those who have left. Some reasons accounting for the 
 action of many of the latter class. What has been the effect on their 
 spiritual lives. The sin of secession the most terrible a Christian 
 man can commit 343 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 ANGLICANISM AND REUNION. 
 
 The continuity of the Anglican Church. The different schools within 
 her supplementary of each other. The danger in each. Extremes 
 working out their own cure. Contrast with Rome and her struggles. 
 Two great Providential blessings, the death of Edward VI and Pope 
 Leo's denial of Anglican orders. The attitude of the East and the 
 possibility of reunion. Prayer for its restoration 355 
 
 INDEX 369
 
 Part One 
 
 CHRISTIAN
 
 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 RELIGION 
 
 LET me in love put myself beside a soul whose 
 condition was once my own. The stones over 
 which one has stumbled may prove perhaps stepping- 
 stones to another. 
 
 Let me begin with a very rudimentary inquiry, 
 What is your definition of Religion? There have 
 been many given. The one I suggest as a working 
 hypothesis is this, a personal union of an intelli- 
 gent and spiritual nature with a personal God. It 
 is somewhat of a large definition and it involves these 
 three factors : God, man, and the union between 
 them. Even if you believe this, it will do you no 
 harm to try and grasp the following as one of the 
 many lines of argument which lead to Religion. 
 
 First, let us say that we rejoice in all that modern 
 science has demonstrated and regard its exponents 
 as the high priests of nature. They have convicted 
 the theologians of error in holding to a wrong inter- 
 pretation of scripture and believing in a six days' 
 creation. They have unfolded the evolutionary pro- 
 cess by which man was made from the dust of the 
 earth.
 
 4 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Scientific research has tended more and more to 
 the idea of the unity of the material universe and, 
 by its discovery of the correlation of its forces, to the 
 oneness of the energy of which it is the expression. 
 It is not ordinarily known that the first theological 
 definition of God, as given by the schoolmen, is that 
 of " pure activity." In this science and theology 
 seemingly come into close agreement. The happy 
 discoveries of the last century revealed, moreover, 
 the processes by which the present stage of material 
 perfection was attained. It has taken millions of 
 years. It is like the ordered march of a drama, or 
 a musical composition, to its climax. We could as 
 well suppose a play of Shakespeare's capable of 
 production by the shaking together of a million let- 
 ters of the alphabet as to suppose this world and 
 man to have been produced by a mere fortuitous 
 collocation of material atoms. It is a reasonable de- 
 duction that the energy of which the material world 
 is the expression, must be an intelligent one. 
 
 It manifests Itself as an intelligent Energy, for It 
 acts in an intelligent way. A noted unbeliever once 
 said, if there was a God He ought to write His Name 
 where men could see it, on every blade of grass. 
 The difficulty would then arise, in what language 
 should He write it? Now there is one, and one only, 
 universal language, and that is mathematics. And 
 God has written His Name in that language and 
 where all men may see it. There must be like in- 
 telligence employed in setting the mathematical 
 problems involved in the movement of the stars as 
 in the astronomers who solve them. The substances
 
 RELIGION 5 
 
 we find in nature are always the result of an exact 
 mathematical combination of primary elements. The 
 structure of the world and the universe is the mani- 
 festation of pure mathematical thought. 
 
 We find also a like token of this intelligence in the 
 things beneath our feet. The ants and bees con- 
 struct their fortress homes and order their interior 
 construction with mechanical ingenuity and statesman- 
 like skill, but the little things never thought out their 
 wonderful plans. They act mechanically, in obedience 
 to an instinct they must obey. And what is in- 
 stinct? It is something different from reason; for 
 as the reasoning powers develop in nature's work- 
 shop, instinct decays. So the two things are different. 
 What then is it? It is Wisdom in action. It is the 
 Intelligent Energy that pulsates throughout the world. 
 Again, the skill that so forms and paints the flowers 
 as thereby to allure the bees within their honeyed 
 traps and make them, despite themselves, fertilizing 
 agents of fresh life, comes not from the flowers, for 
 they have no minds to think with, but is the expres- 
 sion of that same Mind that guides unerringly the 
 planets in their courses, and moves in insects, bees, 
 and ants, and paints the flowers, and dwells in man as 
 well. We are in the presence, science and philosophy 
 attest, of an Energy Eternal and Intelligent. 
 
 This Energy, because it is also an Eternal Energy, 
 must be a Will. 
 
 This may require a little more attention than the 
 former point. 
 
 First, it is evident that this Energy must be an 
 Eternal one, because something must always have
 
 6 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 existed. For if something has not always existed 
 then once nothing existed. If once absolutely nothing 
 existed, then this world could never have come into 
 existence, for out of nothing nothing comes. But 
 from the fact that we ourselves know ourselves to 
 be* we are compelled to believe something has always 
 existed. 
 
 Now what is this something? It cannot be a mere 
 unintelligent physical energy, i.e., the action of atoms 
 acting on atoms. Because all such continued move- 
 ments require in every instance some antecedent 
 movement. So-called spontaneous action is only the 
 result in some way of antecedent co-operative or 
 preparatory activity. Now the something which is 
 an Eternal activity cannot be of that kind that 
 requires perpetually an antecedent, as all the move- 
 ments of matter do. Such movements as are depend- 
 ent on antecedent actions are caused, whereas what is 
 Eternal cannot be dependent on any antecedent and 
 so must be uncaused. 
 
 We may make this clearer by an anecdote. Once 
 a scholar came to his Indian teacher and said, 
 " Father, what does this great world rest on?" " It 
 rests, my son, on the back of the giant Atlas who 
 stands upon the Turtle." " And what, father, does 
 the Turtle rest on? " " The Turtle, my son, rests on 
 a great rock." " And, father, what does the rock 
 rest on?" "Why," said the teacher, somewhat 
 impatiently, " the rock rests on another rock." 
 " And, father, dear, what does that other rock rest 
 on?" "You little fool," said the perplexed and 
 irritated teacher, " there are rocks all the way down."
 
 RELIGION 7 
 
 Where one thing rests on another, or one act 
 necessarily precedes another, as in a chain of physical 
 causation, a fresh antecedent is ever being demanded. 
 Now that which requires an antecedent or a begin- 
 ning cannot be eternal, for anything to be eternal 
 must have no antecedent or beginning. "An endless 
 chain of physical causation is unthinkable." 
 
 An Eternal Energy must then be a self-caused or 
 self-moved Energy, in other words a self-existing, 
 self-acting Will. " Conscious Volition," it has been 
 said, " is the ultimate source of all force." 
 
 This leads on to another truth. The Intelligent 
 Will-Energy must be a person. 
 
 When it is said that God is a person, some have 
 replied, " I can go so far with you as to believe in an 
 Intelligent Will and Power developing the universe, 
 but I cannot conceive of It as a person." When 
 one comes to find out what they object to, it is the 
 notion that God is a great Being living somewhere in 
 the sky and who from a distant throne looks down upon 
 the earth. They have some such conception of person 
 as is embodied in those unreal pictures which represent 
 the blessed Trinity as consisting of three individuals. 
 They confound the notion of person with that of an 
 individual. Now God is not an individual. He 
 is not, as that word expresses, one of a kind. But 
 He is a Person. For surely if He is possessed of In- 
 telligence He knows Himself to be. If He does this 
 He is a person, for self-consciousness is personality. 
 
 Pantheism has, in its objection to Theism, maintained 
 that the ideas " Absolute " and " Personal " are con- 
 tradictory. It does this on the ground that person-
 
 8 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 ality is founded on the distinction between self and 
 non-self. If it were, then self, it is obvious, would be 
 limited by that which is not-self. But limitation is 
 inconsistent with what is Absolute and so it is con- 
 cluded the Absolute, or God, is not a person. But 
 as an abler philosophy, by Lotze and others, has 
 pointed out, " Personality " is not founded on the dis- 
 tinction between self and non-self. It is based on 
 " self-subsistence which self-consciousness affirms." 
 It does this without any reference to that which is 
 not-self. You know you are, without reference to any 
 one else. Therefore, personality is not a limitation of 
 being. So far as it deserves the name of limitation, 
 it is j^-limitation, and " self-limitation is inseparable 
 from a complete nature." " The Infinite and Eternal 
 Power " may be, as Herbert Spencer is reported to 
 have said, " beyond what our words imply," but being 
 necessarily self-conscious He is a Person. Thus our 
 natural reason leads us to believe there is a Personal 
 God. 
 
 But a merely intellectual assent to this fact will be 
 to us of no more moral benefit than our belief in a 
 proposition of Euclid. What we need is not only to 
 believe there is a God, but to know Him. 
 
 How can we arrive at this knowledge? There 
 is a distinction, which is often overlooked, between 
 " believing " and " knowing." Man has a reasoning 
 faculty that enables him within certain limits to arrive 
 at belief in religious matters. This belief is based on 
 the preponderating weight of arguments. We be- 
 lieve what seems most probable. An examination, 
 however, of man shows that besides having a rational
 
 RELIGION 9 
 
 mind he has a spiritual and related nature. It is by 
 virtue of this relativity and spirituality he knows. 
 We are not saying that man is born with innate ideas 
 or intuitions. Innate ideas require words and man 
 is not born with words. But the way his intellectual 
 and spiritual nature works shows that it works in 
 union with an intellectual and spiritual nature other 
 than his own. Just as his body cannot stand up- 
 right save in union with its atmospheric environ- 
 ment, so his mental and spiritual faculties do not act 
 rightly save in union with the Eternal Intelligence 
 and Will. 
 
 This union is proved to us by one fact among 
 many, that man finds himself by his nature knowing 
 more than his reason can prove. He knows, and no 
 argument can alter his conviction, that there is a 
 world external to himself, though his reason alone 
 cannot prove it. He is forced to reason according 
 to syllogistic laws, which he did not make for him- 
 self and can no more alter than the laws which govern 
 his digestion. He believes as certain and acts upon 
 the universality of law, which his reason and experi- 
 ence alone cannot prove. He has a sense of right and 
 wrong, of happiness when he does right and its loss' 
 when he does wrong, which is independent of his 
 mental reasonings. The solution of all this is that 
 his intellectual powers and thinkings are connected 
 in their operation with the Great-Thought Thinking- 
 " The natural light of reason," S. Thomas says, " is 
 itself a certain participation of the divine Light." 
 " Our own existence, that of the world, of the moral 
 law of God," wrote Bishop Alexander, of Derry, " are
 
 io CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 given us in postulates prior to proof." And what 
 men call conscience is not a judgment of the under- 
 standing nor an independent faculty, but is the action 
 of our spiritual nature " knowing together " with God. 
 
 A little child was playing in a garden, and, in child- 
 like mischief, poking with a stick a poor little toad. 
 Presently he put down the stick and came to his 
 mother, and sitting in her lap told her that as he was 
 poking the toad something in him said, " Don't." 
 "What was it?" "My child," said his mother, 
 "some persons call it conscience; I call it God." 
 
 Rightly, then, as we trust our reason acting in its 
 province, so we must trust our spiritual nature in its 
 sphere. For as by our reason we are led to believe 
 there is a God, so by the action of our spiritual 
 nature He comes to be known. 
 
 From this consideration of man's nature we may 
 learn two things: what Religion is, and what is its 
 origin. 
 
 Religion is not generated from non-religious ele- 
 ments, such as the appearance of departed ancestors 
 in dreams, or from the imagination which sees ghostly 
 forms in shadowy clouds or waving trees. It is some- 
 thing universal. It belongs to the nature of man. It 
 would be strange indeed if God did not thus reveal 
 Himself to His intelligent creature. For if He did 
 not, creation would be, not only an inexplicable act, 
 but it would be an immoral one. 
 
 The reply to the question what is Religion is seen 
 then to be this : It is a union between man and 
 God. 
 
 There are three different degrees of union between
 
 RELIGION 1 1 
 
 man and God. These are by the ways of nature, 
 grace, and glory. The last two will engage our at- 
 tention later. We are now dwelling on the first of 
 these, union by the way of nature. All things are 
 united to God and sustained by His power. From 
 the tiniest seed sporule to the most developed organ- 
 ism, from the ferns waving their unspoken flowers to 
 the oak in its triumphant strength, from the coral sea- 
 hidden palaces teeming with industrious life, to life 
 developing upward in conquering intellectual strength, 
 God, in the language of our modern thought, is im- 
 manent in nature though He transcends it. In the 
 language of Browning, our philosophical Christian 
 poet, 
 
 " God dwells in all, 
 
 From life's minute beginnings, up at last 
 To man the consummation of this scheme 
 Of being the completion of this sphere 
 Of life." 
 
 The same truth is embodied in the old Latin hymn 
 said daily at nones : 
 
 " O God, creation's secret force, 
 Thyself unmoved, all motion's source." 
 
 God's immanence in nature has always been a familiar 
 thought to the Church. " God," S. Gregory said, 
 " dwelleth within all things, without all things." 
 
 While recognizing God's immanence we. do well, 
 however, not to fall into either one of two errors. 
 There are some who hold that created things have no 
 real existence, for uncreated Spirit alone is "Being." 
 There is a truth and an untruth in this. All that
 
 12 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 God has created stands in two separate relations, 
 one to God and one to themselves. In its relation to 
 God nothing made is possessed of independent or 
 substantial life. In the relation created things stand 
 to each other they are correlated realities. Thus, 
 matter is to us a true category, and pain or matter 
 in disorder is something actual or real. The other 
 error does not recognize God's transcendence of 
 nature. Its postulate is that creation was a necessity 
 of God's own life. This could not be, seeing the 
 Eternal and Infinite must be identical with the Ab- 
 solute, and so God is complete in Himself. The 
 Christian religion explains to us this completeness 
 and also the beatitude of which God is possessed. 
 For the ever Blessed Trinity having in Himself as 
 Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the perfect object and 
 complete return of His own love, is thereby relieved 
 from the otherwise intolerable misery of solitariness. 
 But if creation is a necessitated action, God is neither 
 complete in Himself nor possessed of satisfying per- 
 fection and bliss. Moreover, a necessitated creative 
 action would involve an emanation of His own nature, 
 and, logically, being a necessary act it would be an 
 eternal one. The outcome of this is Pantheism. It 
 would also make God not a permitter, but the author 
 of evil ; for in the Pantheistic system whatever sin 
 is committed, it is God Himself who sins. 
 
 The more rational view is thus expressed by Pusey, 
 one of modern England's greatest theologians and 
 saints : 
 
 " God is Omnipresent, that is, everywhere. Our earthly 
 substances do not shut out God. God's way of being is
 
 RELIGION 13 
 
 wholly different from ours. It is not with God as when we 
 build a house and part off what is without the house from 
 what is within, so that God should be shut out by the works 
 of His Own Hands. He is above them ; without them, 
 within them ; not a part of them, not intermingled with 
 them, not confused with them ; nor are they part of Him ; 
 yet they hinder not His presence. He is not in one way 
 within them, and in another way without ; but one and the 
 same God wholly everywhere. He does not fill one part 
 with Himself, and another with another part of Himself; but 
 is one and the same in all." 
 
 In the lately discovered " Sayings of Jesus," it is 
 found written, "Jesus saith, wherever there are (two) 
 they are not without God, and wherever there is one 
 alone, I say, I am with him. Raise the stone and 
 there shalt thou find Me ; cleave the wood and there 
 am I." 
 
 The conclusion seems to be that the All is not 
 God though God is in All. 
 
 This mode of union, however, does not make God 
 the author of sin, for man is a free agent. Nor does 
 the aspect of nature, " red in tooth and claw," dis- 
 prove God's goodness. Before man's advent the 
 predatory animals lived on each other, as man now 
 lives on them. But by this union between man and 
 God, man may, if he will, come the better to know 
 God. Nature will be to him but a Velamen Domini, 
 beneath whose folds of beauty he will discern the 
 movements of the Almighty. Nature will be to him 
 a great Cathedral where, alone on mountain tops or 
 in the woods or by the sea, in the gladsome hum of 
 insect life or multitudinous laughter of the waves or
 
 14 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 message-laden woods, he may listen to the hidden 
 Mind articulate in nature's song of life. It develops 
 into a chorus of correlated power, a symphonic har- 
 mony of law. " And of Law there can be no less 
 acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, 
 her voice the harmony of the world." Overpowered 
 by God's greatness and his own littleness, man feels 
 himself to be like a tiny insect that can but rub its 
 wings together and make one utterance of praise, or 
 cry for help. 
 
 But with every effort union grows and light flows 
 into the soul. Our faces must be turned heavenward 
 if they are to reflect His. He cometh silently as light, 
 unseen as sound. He cometh gently as the dew upon 
 the earth. We must watch the promptings of our 
 better nature, and by response learn their author. 
 We must speak to Him in prayer if we would have 
 Him speak to us. For by prayer our nature is trained 
 in communion with His, and by obedience we become 
 conscious of His guiding will. 
 
 Let one only begin to seek God and he shall find 
 Him. He sha]l also find that religion brings an in- 
 crease of strength and joy. It comes to man laden 
 with both these blessings. It brings to him an 
 increase of strength, because he becomes thereby the 
 better master of his nature. All his faculties work 
 more harmoniously with each other and in the true 
 order of their subordination. For each department 
 of our nature to work at its best, the body must be 
 subordinated to the soul, and the soul to the spirit. 
 So does the body work more healthily, the soul more 
 wisely, the spirit with a higher power of usefulness.
 
 RELIGION 15 
 
 The religious man becomes a freeman, emancipated 
 from the thraldom of passion, more than owner of 
 himself, a monarch crowned. 
 
 Increase of strength also is his, because he lives and 
 works in conscious union with God. He has not 
 " hitched," as Emerson said, " his destiny to a star," 
 but to God, and God dwelleth in him and he in God. 
 He has set his mill on the Rock, and the river of God 
 forever turns his wheels. He has the courage to do 
 and endure ; to do right because it is right, whatever 
 the cost may be; to endure bravely the ills of life, for 
 he is given a strength not his own. Poverty may 
 come with its gaunt visage and pinching grip, sickness 
 with its weariness and pain, disappointment breaking 
 the crystal vase of love, and separations that seem to 
 wipe out from earth all that makes earth dear. But 
 like the three children in the midst of the fiery fur- 
 nace, he has for his support One walking with him in 
 the flames, Whose countenance is like that of the Son 
 of God. 
 
 Besides the strength religion gives, it brings a joy. 
 The religious man is in the possession of peace, in 
 the conscious development of growth, in the satisfac- 
 tion of his highest faculties, and in the enjoyment of 
 life. For it alone makes life worth living. It adds 
 something to every earthly pleasure. To the relig- 
 ious eye the earth ever takes on new beauties. The 
 sun shines more joyfully into the humblest cabin, and 
 God blesses all His gifts to His children. 
 
 There are presentations of religion, that seemingly 
 ignore all earthly enjoyment. Matter is regarded as 
 the source of all evil, and man's nature as totally de-
 
 16 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 praved. Religion does not come to bless man here, 
 but chiefly to save his soul. Such were the Puritans. 
 They were men of grim and dour countenance. They 
 denied themselves all pastimes, amusements, recrea- 
 tions. Things innocent in themselves were denounced 
 as sins or marks of a carnal state. They turned Sun- 
 day into a day of penance, a weariness to men, and an 
 intolerable bore to children. 
 
 But the Church teaches us that all that God has 
 made is good, that matter is not evil, that while we 
 are not to let our appetites run riot, God gave them 
 and takes delight in their right exercise. God desires 
 His children to be happy, and religion comes to bless 
 and sanctify every enjoyment. To the true child of 
 God all nature speaks of Him. Home is a different 
 thing to him. Wife and children are better loved. 
 Friendships are stronger and more unselfish. Re- 
 ligion fills him with joy, and its joy is renewed day by 
 day. It is like the fabled music that issued from 
 Memnon's Tower, that day by day welcomed the 
 coming dawn. It reveals to man a heavenly Father 
 whose delight is to be with the children of men.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 HEAVEN'S AMBASSADOR 
 
 THE revelation of Himself which God primarily 
 makes in nature and man, He has given more 
 fully to the race through philosophers, poets, seers, 
 in all lands and times, unfolding more and more His 
 divine purpose, man's destiny and His Love. Soaring 
 above their fellows like great mountain tops, these 
 chiefs among men first caught the rays of the coming 
 day. 
 
 It has been a gradual and progressive revelation 
 adapted to the races' childhood, maturity, needs. 
 God gave to different nations their separate work in 
 the progress of humanity. He overruled their an- 
 tagonisms and their successions in power. He gave 
 to each a special mission. He made Israel the world's 
 religious lighthouse. He made the Hebrew prophets 
 the organs of the revelation of His Oneness. There 
 were not, as pagans held, gods of the rivers and of the 
 mountains and of the plains. The Olympian deities 
 of man's creation had no existence. " The Lord thy 
 God is one God." This was Israel's message. It was 
 something more. The childish idea of God is a God 
 of power, a God Almighty. In apprehension the 
 quantitative precedes the qualitative. The earlier 
 man-created deities were thus gods of force. They 
 hurled vast mountains together, forged fated armor,
 
 i8 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 ruled the bellowing clouds, and on bent shoulders 
 upheld the world. But Israel's God was not only the 
 Almighty One. He was the God of Truth and 
 Righteousness. The Indian Law of Karma, the Greek 
 Nemesis, issued from His judgment seat. He pun- 
 ished the guilty. He watched over the oppressed. 
 But He ordereth all to ends beyond any individual's 
 rights or needs, for He was for all and over all. He 
 was the God for all time and of all people. The mark 
 of limitation, showing its transitory character, rested 
 on all pagan worship. It was so bound up with cer- 
 tain nationalities that it could never have a universal 
 application. But the revelation of Israel not only 
 declared the Oneness of God but foretold its own 
 development. It enshrined the great prophecy of a 
 Teacher to whom all nations would come. A light 
 was to break forth as the sun from the clouds and 
 illumine the world. With man's advancing prepara- 
 tion, the daylight gradually increased, and at last that 
 fuller light came in the person of Jesus Christ 
 
 Before, however, considering Him we must recog- 
 nize the fact that religion, being an element of our 
 nature, presents itself in several forms besides that of 
 Christianity. 
 
 We can but pause here to remark how its revelation 
 of God, man's destiny, and the aids it brings, denotes 
 its superiority. It has elevated and enriched man- 
 kind more than any other religion. It has been an 
 invigorating force in man's progressive elevation. 
 Under its benign influence slavery has been abolished, 
 the horrors of war have been mitigated, woman has 
 risen in position and dignified companionship. Multi-
 
 HEAVEN'S AMBASSADOR 19 
 
 form philanthropies have extended their alleviating 
 blessings into every byway of human misery. It has 
 enriched man's intellect and been the mother of art. 
 It has left an ennobling impress on. the character of 
 every Christian nation in Europe. It has tended to 
 the unity of the human family, and made man more 
 considerate of the rights of his brother man. In its 
 principles are to be found the only solution for the de- 
 structive contests between labor and capital. Christ 
 was not, as some modern socialists have declared, a 
 failure. He was not a mere ideal philanthropist 
 preaching an impractical religion. He set in motion 
 an agency for the benefit of mankind which has 
 achieved a permanent success, and is extending itself 
 with a self-productive energy. He has revealed and 
 made possible an elevation of man in a final union 
 with God beyond aught that any other religion has 
 conceived. Christianity offers an end to man, beyond 
 that of any scheme of human progress, an end worthy 
 of God and most ennobling to man. 
 
 It presents us with the noblest conception of God, 
 as not only an Almighty and Omnipresent Being, 
 but as Wisdom, Goodness, Love, Beauty itself. It 
 represents Him not as a merely ever-existing Ancient 
 of Days, but as Eternal Youth. It condemns Him 
 not to the misery of an eternal solitude, but reveals 
 Him as having, in the self-consciousness of each of His 
 necessary eternal activities, of Being, Knowing, Lov- 
 ing, a triple personality, so that He has ever an 
 adequate object and return to His own Infinite Love. 
 It solves best the purpose of creation by the revela- 
 tion of its destined progress to the evolution of a new
 
 20 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 heaven and earth from which all evil and sin shall be 
 forever banished. It explains best the permission of 
 temptation with its consequent evils in this preparatory 
 stage, as necessary to the development of the charac- 
 ter of a nature endowed with free will. It offers the 
 highest conceivable end to man in the attainment of 
 such a further union with God, as, without destroying 
 his personality, will secure him in permanent right- 
 eousness and consequently everlasting bliss. It comes 
 to him with a free offer of pardon for all his errors 
 and sins, a blotting out of the guilty past, an elevation 
 and transformation of his nature, fitting it for eternal 
 glory. It sets all this before him, in and through 
 union with Christ. 
 
 And so we come to a question it behooves us to 
 seriously consider. It was a question once put by 
 the great Master Himself. " What think ye of Christ? " 
 If you think at all favorably about Christianity, what 
 do you think of its Founder? Nothing is more 
 certain than that Jesus Christ lived in Palestine and 
 was publicly put to death there by the Roman gov- 
 ernor. It is as certain as the life and death of any 
 recorded in history, as that of Socrates or Julius 
 Caesar or Abraham Lincoln. " Not to be interested 
 in the life of Jesus Christ is to be," said Liddon, " I 
 do not say irreligious, but unintelligent. It is to be 
 insensible to the nature and claim of the most power- 
 ful force that has ever moulded the thought and 
 swayed the destinies of civilized man." Listening, 
 at St. Helena, to the bells that called to church 
 attendance on Sunday, Napoleon said he recognized 
 in Christ a power greater than he or any of the
 
 HEAVEN'S AMBASSADOR 21 
 
 world's conquerors possessed. A modern French 
 orator, speaking of the motive forces of late centuries, 
 how liberty had been the watchword of the eigh- 
 teenth century and progress that of the nineteenth, 
 exclaimed, " But, gentlemen, Jesus Christ is Progress." 
 By the acclaim which all nations have accorded Him, 
 He stands as a Religious Teacher, matchless and 
 supreme. If we accept this in any fair degree, we 
 may well ask ourselves, what has given Him this 
 pre-eminence, and what are His credentials for it? 
 
 The first characteristic concerning Him, and that 
 differentiates Him from all other of the world's 
 renowned religious teachers, is that He came as the 
 fulfilment of prophecy. In this He is unique. 
 Modern critical research may show us how the Bible 
 grew into its present shape. It may show us how 
 many were its writers or redactors. How, as it inti- 
 mates, in its composition they used ancient myths and 
 legends. How they made selections from various 
 sources. How they rewrote history. The Bible 
 ends in a revelation of the wonderful mystery of 
 Grace and Glory, just as it begins with an inspired 
 allegory which sets forth the mystery of Creation, 
 But all the way through there is from the beginning 
 to the end of the Old Testament the promise of a 
 Messiah who shall enlighten and redeem Mankind. 
 
 In the light of that wonderful revelation wherein 
 we first learn of man's relation to His Maker and the 
 dire results of separating himself from God, we read 
 also of man's promised Deliverer. One would come 
 who should " bruise the serpent's head." God put 
 man outside of the garden where he had access to
 
 22 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 the Tree of Life, to teach him that sin separates from 
 God. Separation indeed from God's power man 
 cannot accomplish, for that were to annihilate himself; 
 and annihilation would be an act of omnipotence 
 equal to creation itself. Man can, however, separate 
 himself from the Grace of God, and to do this is to 
 bring upon himself spiritual death. Of this God lov- 
 ingly forewarned him. " In the day thou eatest thereof 
 thou shalt surely die." Given the possibility, to pass 
 after trial into a state of secured sinlessness and so 
 bliss, man lost the special grace by which alone that 
 supernatural end could be secured. This grace being 
 a superadded gift to his nature, when forfeited, man 
 could not regain the prize he had lost. A super- 
 natural end cannot be attained by natural effort. 
 The flaming Cherubim of Righteousness and Justice 
 stood guard over the sacred way. But a Deliverer 
 coming for man and as man, could retrieve man's 
 defeat, and for human nature, win its re-entrance into 
 paradise and its renewed union with God. 
 
 " O loving wisdom of our God ! 
 
 When all was sin and shame 
 A second Adam to the fight 
 
 And to the rescue came. 
 O Wisest love ! that flesh and blood 
 
 Which did in Adam fail 
 Should strive afresh against the foe, 
 
 Should strive and should prevail." 
 
 The promise that a Deliverer should come is next 
 narrowed by promise that he shall be of a particular 
 race. He shall be of the seed of Abraham. " In thy 
 seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."
 
 HEAVEN'S AMBASSADOR 23 
 
 This S. Peter quoted on the day of Pentecost as 
 applicable to Christ, whom S. Matthew tells us was 
 descended from Abraham. The same promise was 
 renewed to Jacob, who by like authority is recorded 
 as the ancestor of Christ. Subsequently it was fur- 
 ther narrowed to a tribe. He was to come of the 
 tribe of Judah. Then as God in guarded wisdom 
 revealed His purpose, a special family was designated. 
 The Messiah was to be a rod out of the stem of Jesse. 
 The Lord also declared to David that He would 
 " establish his throne for ever " ; and this promise the 
 Angel Gabriel quoted to the Blessed Virgin concern- 
 ing her offspring, saying, " The Lord God shall give 
 unto Him the Throne of His father David : and of 
 His Kingdom there shall be no end." 
 
 His threefold offices also were prophetically set 
 forth; slowly God drew the .portrait of the coming 
 One. He was to be a prophet like unto Moses, the 
 great leader of Israel out of bondage : " The Lord thy 
 God will raise up unto thee a prophet like unto me, 
 unto whom ye shall hearken." Of this special prophet, 
 unlike all others and for whom the nation looked, the 
 Pharisees made inquiry of John Baptist, " Was he that 
 prophet?" To this promise S. Peter and S. Ste- 
 phen both appealed, and claimed that Jesus was that 
 prophet that should come into the world. He was no 
 mere teacher revealing truths, but a mighty leader 
 like unto Moses. So He came to the Jewish sheep- 
 fold and led His people out from Judaism into the 
 broader Christian pastures and the brighter day. 
 
 It was also prophesied that the Great Deliverer 
 should wear the vestment and character of a priest.
 
 24 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 He should be a high priest for ever after the order of 
 Melchisedek. The order of Melchisedek was a priest- 
 hood unlike that of Aaron, in that it had an assigned 
 supernatural descent. The person of Melchisedek ap- 
 pears as a mysterious figure upon the stage of history. 
 He was as if a supernatural being without father, 
 without mother. The writer of Genesis omits, perhaps 
 by ignorance or forgetfulness, his genealogy. It is an 
 interesting and instructive instance of how God makes 
 use even of the ignorance and imperfection of His 
 creatures to declare His message. The omission 
 was an inspired mistake. Thereby was set forth the 
 eternal character of Christ's priesthood. He was to 
 come not only after the order of Aaron and offer a 
 bloody sacrifice, but like Melchisedek to bring forth an 
 offering of Bread and Wine. In the upper chamber 
 Christ fulfilled this type. On the Cross and at the 
 Institution we recognize Christ as our High Priest. 
 
 He was also to be a King. The Jewish heart beat 
 wild with delight as they dwelt on this element of the 
 promised Deliverer. He was to occupy the throne 
 of His father David, and of His kingdom there was to 
 be no end. The Kingdom He founded was indeed 
 unlike the worldly one they expected ; nevertheless it 
 was a Kingdom. It was so heralded, and the gospel 
 He preached was " the gospel of the Kingdom." 
 Asked by Pilate if He was a King, He declared He 
 was, Thou sayest, that I am, a King. 
 
 He was to be certified to the world by a special 
 herald. A special messenger, a second Elijah, was to 
 precede Him. " I will send my messenger and he 
 shall prepare the way before me." " I will send you
 
 HEAVEN'S AMBASSADOR 25 
 
 Elijah the prophet before the day of the Lord." 
 Speaking of John Baptist, Christ said this is Elias 
 which was for to come. Moreover, the place was 
 designated where he was to be born. He was to 
 be born in Bethlehem of Judea. To this the priests 
 and scribes bear witness, quoting the prophecy, " and 
 thou, Bethlehem," etc. He was to come, so Isaiah 
 foretold, preaching good tidings, healing the broken- 
 hearted, bringing deliverance to captives, recovering 
 of sight to the blind. This He claimed to have done, 
 and to it every account of His life bears witness. 
 His manner and His method were preannounced and 
 so also was His rejection. The incidents of the final 
 tragedy are by different prophets most minutely fore- 
 told. We could gather its history from the prophets 
 alone. They give a connected story from His entry 
 into Jerusalem, " Behold thy King cometh unto thee," 
 to the " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken 
 me?" He will be betrayed by a friend and for thirty 
 pieces of silver, and abandoned by His disciples. 
 " Smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scat- 
 tered." He is to be treated as a criminal, " numbered 
 with the transgressors," and He is to be despised and 
 rejected of men. False witnesses are to rise up against 
 Him and He is to be oppressed and afflicted, yet 
 openeth not His mouth. He will be grievously in- 
 sulted and scourged. He will hide not His face from 
 shame and spitting, and He will give His back to the 
 smiters. He shall be put to a most cruel death of 
 crucifixion. "They pierced my hands and my feet," 
 and "They shall look on Him whom they have 
 pierced." The scene on Calvary is minutely de-
 
 26 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 scribed. " They part my garments among them and 
 cast lots upon my vesture." " They shall stand 
 jeering upon me." " They gave me gall to eat, and 
 when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink." 
 These and other details are given by the prophets. 
 Daniel declares that the expected " Monarch shall be 
 cast off." Isaiah sees Him as One who was wounded 
 for our transgressions. " He was bruised for our in- 
 iquities. He was oppressed and afflicted. He was 
 cast off out of the land of the living, and He made 
 His grave with the wicked and with the rich in His 
 death." 
 
 Nor by these alone, but by a series of connected 
 types, and by the whole Jewish ceremonial law, its 
 worship and sacrifices, was the coming Deliverer and 
 His offices and work proclaimed. We may not ac- 
 cept the application of all these many and sometimes 
 mystical references to Christ, but a Mind other than 
 the writer's evidently moved them, age after age, to 
 depict with increasing particularity the Person of 
 Christ, His advent, character, life, and death. The 
 critical spirit of our day in its rigid demand for 
 proof rejects the spiritual exegetical methods of the 
 fathers. But enough and more than enough remains, 
 in a broad view of Jewish history, to justify the 
 contention, that Israel looked forward to a great 
 Deliverer. He was to be anointed from on high, 
 and God's purpose to bless mankind through Israel 
 was to find its fulfilment through Him. Any reason- 
 able view of the life of our Lord so conforms to these 
 multiform predictions as to show that Christ was He. 
 
 And not alone did Hebrew pjophets proclaim His
 
 HEAVEN'S AMBASSADOR 27 
 
 advent, but aided by that divine light that lighteth 
 every man that cometh into the world, heathen poets 
 and philosophers saw, in their better moments of 
 inspiration and through their tears over the falling 
 fortunes of mankind, the coming of One who should 
 restore its lost nobility and usher in a brighter day. 
 So through the haze of hopes and fears Plato and 
 Virgil and others, kindling with aspirations for hu- 
 manity's betterment, discerned a shadowy outline of 
 a Heaven-sent Ideal and to the pagan world foretold 
 of Christ. Ancient prophecy thus becomes focussed 
 on Him. As has been well said, " Prophecy takes off 
 its crown and lays it at the feet of One who is to be." 
 Thus Christ stands out on the luminous background 
 of prophecy, peerless and supreme, among the 
 world's religious teachers. He alone comes authen- 
 ticated by the cumulative evidence of a series of 
 converging lines of prophecy. It is then a fair and 
 reasonable conclusion, believing that there is a God, 
 that Christ is a Teacher sent by Him. Not merely 
 like those not so authenticated, but with the tran- 
 scendant authority of One, specially certificated to be 
 the Prophet and Light of the world. 
 
 Is it then wise, O man, not to think of the future, 
 and to grope thy way alone? Sphinx-like thy destiny 
 confronts thee and by natural powers thou canst not 
 solve the riddle. Does the idea of the unknowable 
 rise up like an adamantine barrier and baffle thee? 
 It may appal but need not lead thee to sit down 
 in contented unbelief. In philosophy and religion 
 truths polarize. There are truths and counter-truths. 
 Wisdom lays hold of each. Man can apprehend what
 
 28 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 he cannot wholly comprehend. To his aid God has, 
 we have seen, sent a Teacher. All sensible persons 
 accept gladly the assistance of those wiser than them- 
 selves. In religious matters, the intellectual more 
 than others, need it. It is spiritual suicide to reject 
 the Great Teacher's help. Shall we be like logs 
 drifting on the stream of life ignorant of our origin, 
 careless of our destiny? When a light is seen shining 
 out on the waters, is it the dictate of prudence or 
 common sense for the shipwrecked to ignore it? 
 Shall we be like the fools who say, "if God made 
 me, He will take care of me," when we neglect the 
 means which His care and Love has provided? How 
 long shall we persist in saying we cannot believe 
 when we really do not want to, and do not try? 
 
 Belief lies largely in the power of our predispositions 
 and our will. If we are willing to believe, God will 
 give the light. It is as clear as the shining of the 
 sun that Christ is the most truth-unfolding teacher 
 the world has ever known. If we do not mean to 
 throw our souls hopelessly away, if we have gotten 
 any control over our brutish passions, if there is any 
 spark of unworldly and divine aspiration in us, if we 
 have any conception of our eternal and royal destiny, 
 we shall willingly accept from the Great Teacher the 
 help He proffers. We shall let His words be a light 
 to our path, and His Spirit direct our conduct. Un- 
 like all other Teachers He extends His aid most 
 generously. Why refuse it? Why stand apart in the 
 vanity of our self-conceit, criticising and accepting 
 and rejecting this or that portion of His teaching? 
 Why not be a real and loyal disciple, humbly sitting
 
 HEAVEN'S AMBASSADOR 29 
 
 at His Feet as learners? If He is a Teacher sent 
 from our Heavenly Father, why not trust Him as a 
 child trusts the wider wisdom of his parents? If we 
 do this He will be then our Companion, a Friend, a 
 more than Lover. He will be to thee a shield and 
 castle and a sure defence. He will be thy comfort in 
 life, thy support in death, thy reward in Eternity.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE DIVINE TEACHER 
 
 THAT Christ was a teacher divinely sent is thus 
 stated in the Acts : " God anointed Jesus of 
 Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power, Who 
 went about doing good, and healing all that were 
 oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him." 
 And in the midst of the present tumult and strife of 
 tongues, the cry is not unfrequently heard, " Let us 
 get back to Christ. What we men of the twentieth 
 century want is, not the Christ overladen with dogmas, 
 not the Christ of the churches; we want the real 
 Christ, Christ with His own rich purposes for mankind, 
 with His own inner life, the Christ who having known 
 our nature in all the range of trial and temptation can 
 sympathize with it. Give back to us, O theologians, 
 the Christ you have seemingly taken away; the 
 Christ indomitable in His courage before the Ro- 
 man governor and Jewish high priest, Who could 
 for others' sake suffer poverty and wretchedness and 
 die on the cross, yet Who loved the flowers and birds 
 and little children." 
 
 The writer is very far from being able to set forth 
 that life. He has a feeling that it is a subject the 
 contemplation of an eternity cannot exhaust. He is 
 neither worthy nor able to enter into so holy a sanc- 
 tuary. He would put his shoes from off his feet, and
 
 THE DIVINE TEACHER 31 
 
 bow his head to the dust, before the glory of this 
 burning mystery. But as God ofttimes uses the weak 
 things of earth, so it may please Him to let these 
 words be of service. 
 
 What has been commonly observed respecting 
 Christ is His freedom from the prejudices of His race 
 and time. On all of the world's great heroes we see 
 more or less distinctly traced their national predilec- 
 tions and those of their age. No child of man is inde- 
 pendent of or superior to his environment. The age 
 out of which a man is born is the mother of his mind, 
 and she impresses her features more or less distinctly 
 on the features of her child. The greatest of the 
 world's conquerors are themselves conquered. The 
 Caesar is ever the great Roman conqueror ; the reform- 
 ing Mahomet remains the uncultured Arab. With 
 philosophers or poets, statesmen or seers, it is the 
 same. But of Christ it has been said, " No Jewish 
 sect could claim Him as its adherent; no Jewish 
 teacher has left on Him a narrowing impress. No 
 popular errors among the people received any sanc- 
 tion at His hands. He will not hear of their su- 
 perstition about Sabbath observance. He will not 
 sanction their intolerance of the Samaritans." Here 
 is one, born amongst the most prejudiced and bigoted 
 of people, with prejudices so bitter and deep that 
 nineteen centuries of oppression have not effaced 
 them, Who rose superior to them all, Who came and 
 announced a religion, which set at naught all the 
 intense convictions of the Jewish heart, Who taught 
 a doctrine that swept away all the barriers between 
 Jew and Gentile, Who declared the Fatherhood of
 
 32 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 God over all the race and the universality of His 
 religion. He, in a word, proclaimed a religion such 
 as had never entered into the mind of Hebrew prophet 
 or Greek philosopher to conceive or dream. 
 
 You are ready, in the presence of this great marvel, 
 to say that Christ was the greatest of all religious 
 teachers, that He was the greatest of men. But do 
 we not fall into a logical fallacy in saying this? For 
 the question is whether He was merely a man or no. 
 If He was merely man, why had He not some of those 
 prejudices of age or race, that no other known man 
 has been without? The most logical inference is 
 that this Teacher is in some way different from the 
 children of men. We cannot put ourselves into His 
 category. He stands apart from our own. He is 
 unique. 
 
 Gazing also at the beauty and harmony of His 
 character we see why by almost universal acclaim He 
 is recognized as the Ideal Man. " It is impossible," 
 said Liddon, " to maintain with any show of reason 
 that some one particular temperament shapes His 
 acts and words, that He is cynical, or choleric, or 
 melancholy, or phlegmatic." He is not a sanguine 
 person, who, carried away with His own enthusiasm, 
 sees only a bright future to His enterprise. He calmly 
 foretells His own crucifixion, the martyrdom of His 
 Apostles, and after it has gone throughout the world, 
 the final failure of His religion. "When the Son of 
 Man cometh will He find faith on the earth ? " Yet He 
 is not a melancholy recluse. He sits at meat at the 
 publican's table, is a guest at the marriage feast, cheers 
 and gladdens His disciples' hearts with the gift of a
 
 THE DIVINE TEACHER 33 
 
 triumphant hope. He comes not like a common 
 Reformer, with choleric temper, breaking down with 
 indiscriminate zeal the institutions of the past. " I 
 come not to destroy the law, but to fulfil." 1 He is 
 not of a lymphatic temperament, combining spasmod- 
 ically energetic action with exhausted periods of 
 sluggishness. As the sun in the heavens, so steadily 
 did He pursue His life's task. " My Father worketh 
 hitherto, and I work." 
 
 With this freedom He combines in a wonderful 
 manner the two types of masculine and feminine ex- 
 cellence. We see in Him the fortitude, resoluteness, 
 independence, leadership, government of others, that 
 marks the manly side of character ; together with the 
 marked unselfishness, thoughtfulness of others, tender- 
 ness, gentleness, which are woman's characteristics. 
 What heroic courage is seen in His very walk as, on 
 His last journey with all that was before, we read 
 " that they were on the way going up to Jerusalem ; 
 and Jesus went before them : and they were amazed ; 
 and as they followed they were afraid." 2 What 
 moral courage is displayed by His dealings with the 
 high priests and Pilate, what marvellous endurance 
 is seen in His silence during the terrible scourging, 3 
 what surpassing control in His prolonged agony on 
 the cross. Yet with woman's care He heals the sick, 
 provides for the wants of the multitude ; forgetful of 
 self, heals the ear of His enemy, 4 as He is being led 
 away. He is at once the Lion of the Tribe of Judah 
 and the Lamb of God. 
 
 1 S. Matt. v. 17. S. Matt, xxvii. 26. 
 
 8 S. Mark x. 32. * S. Luke xxii. 51.
 
 34 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Moreover, we observe in Him a most happy agree- 
 ment and harmony of the active and the contem- 
 plative life. In the religious world we see the 
 greatest diversity between the two kinds of saints. 
 One is more meditative, receptive, retiring ; the other 
 more speculative, active, enterprising. The mystic 
 loves the solitude of the hermit or the cell of the 
 recluse. The active spirit loves the crowded mart 
 and the habitations of men. The one gives to the 
 Church the Elijahs and S. John, a S- Theresa and 
 S. John of the Cross ; the other a S. Paul, a Howard, 
 a Vincent de Paul. Bound together in practical 
 union were these two principles in the life of Christ. 
 Who more active, immersed in labors, incessant in 
 His toil? In city, in country, in temple and syna- 
 gogue, by the lake, in the wilderness, by the well- 
 side and in the house, ever was He mingling with 
 men. It was a life of incessant labor and uncertain 
 repose. Yet in the midst of it all He gave nights to 
 prayer, 1 and abode ever in conscious communion 
 with God. The exasperating calumnies of His 
 opponents, the yells of the maddened multitude do 
 not disturb His inward peace. 
 
 Moreover, in our estimate of character we bring 
 each man's life to the test of duty. We ask how he 
 performed his work. Knowing also that particular 
 virtues are not tests of character, we ask what was 
 the general underlying motive of his conduct? And 
 here Christ's life shines out with an unparalleled 
 splendor. Where is the man, however great, in 
 ancient or modern times in whom some flaw is not 
 
 1 S. Luke vi. 12.
 
 THE DIVINE TEACHER 35 
 
 to be found ? Socrates is superstitious, Cicero vain, 
 Seneca avaricious, Goethe selfish. Most men have 
 their weak side, and in their strenuous pursuit of 
 some, neglect other duties. But Christ is consistent 
 all the way up and all the way through. He is 
 obedient to His mother and foster-father. He keeps 
 the Church's law. From childhood up He is about 
 His Father's business. 1 He is led by the Spirit. 2 
 And the one governing motive that animates Him 
 is the desire for the Father's glory and the salvation 
 of men. It makes Him even thirst for the Cross as 
 the means of its accomplishment. " I have a baptism 
 to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till 
 it be accomplished." 3 It inspires His High Priestly 
 intercession, " Father, forgive them for they know not 
 what they do." 4 
 
 It has been well said of Him that " He is tender 
 without false sentiment, benevolent without a trace of 
 weakness, resolute without passion, decided without 
 obstinacy. His condescension never degenerates into 
 mere familiarity. His incomparable dignity never 
 touches the confines of pride. His lofty freedom 
 from the world's tyranny never becomes contempt 
 for man. His repugnance to man's obduracy never 
 takes on any form of misanthropy. His implacable 
 hostility to sin is always allied to the warmest love 
 for sinners." 
 
 Evil in all its forms He condemns. Teaching after 
 the Eastern fashion by an acted parable He con- 
 demns the barren fig-tree as a symbol of Israel's 
 
 1 S. Luke ii. 49. * S. Luke xii. 50. 
 
 * S. Luke iv. i. * S. Luke xxiii. 34.
 
 36 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 unfruitfulness. 1 At the beginning and end of His 
 ministry He purifies the Temple. At the first cleans- 
 ing, when the cattle are there, He takes to drive them 
 out a whip of small cords. 2 At the last cleansing, 
 when there are only present the money changers 
 and sellers of goods, He does not need one. 3 The 
 buyers and sellers in the temple do not resist Him 
 as they would if it were an act of human passion, but 
 recognize the dignity of His prophetical character 
 and the justice of His action. 4 Acting by that divine 
 supremacy that subordinates individual rights to 
 nature's laws, He destroys the herd of swine which 
 were illegally being kept. 5 He is obliged to speak 
 the word of condemnation upon Jerusalem, 6 though 
 He does it with tears. He must, as judge, pro- 
 nounce the catalogue of woes upon the scribes and 
 Pharisees, 7 while He bestows the blessings of the 
 Beatitudes on His disciples. 8 He is full of mercy 
 and tenderness to all who will accept Him. The 
 publicans and harlots found access to Him on repen- 
 tance. He is equally Righteous and strictly Just. 
 He will " reward every man according to his works," 9 
 and finally divide the sheep from the goats. 10 
 
 Again, every man has his own inner life which 
 self-interest bids him shield from the world's gaze. 
 But we are enabled to gaze into the inner temple of 
 the life of Christ. And what do we find? Like afl 
 great saints He had His special maxims on whose 
 
 1 S. Matt. xxi. 19. 6 S. Luke xiii. 34. 
 
 * S. John ii. 15. 7 S. Matt, xxiii. 14. 
 
 8 S. Mark xi. 15. S. Matt. v. 3-13. 
 
 4 S. Mark xi. 17. 9 S. Matt. xvi. 27. 
 
 6 S. Mark v. 13. 10 S. Matt. xxv. 33.
 
 THE DIVINE TEACHER 37 
 
 lines His life was fashioned. The word of prophecy 
 was His ruling thought, " Lo, I come to do Thy will, 
 O God." 1 It was not His last but His constant 
 prayer, " Not My will but Thine be done." It is the 
 first and emphatic utterance of His boyhood : " Wist 
 ye not that I must be about My Father's business." 2 
 And that Father's business He read delineated in 
 every Messianic Psalm, in the details of every sacri- 
 fice offered in the Temple. He knew thereby that 
 He was to be, as John the Baptist proclaimed, " The 
 Lamb of God." From the first He had Calvary 
 before Him : " I have a baptism to be baptized with ; 
 and how am I straitened till it be accomplished." 3 It 
 was not an apprehension of how His life might pos- 
 sibly terminate. It was to be the great instrumentality 
 for the world's deliverance. " The Son of man came 
 to minister and to give His life a ransom for many." 4 
 He came not as other reformers have come, work- 
 ing out some self-designed plan, modifying it accord- 
 ing to circumstances or learning by failures. From 
 the first He announced the character of His Gospel. 
 It was " the gospel of the Kingdom." The .long-ex- 
 pected King and Kingdom had come. " The Kingdom 
 of God is not within you (as the text is mistranslated), 
 but among you." It was to be a visible organization, 
 like a city 5 or a temple. It would also be a spiritual 
 power, like leaven hidden in the meal, leavening hu- 
 manity, like a grain of mustard seed growing to a 
 great tree. 6 
 
 1 Ps. xl. 7. 4 S. Matt. xx. 28. 
 
 2 S. Luke ii. 49. 6 S. Matt. v. 14. 
 
 8 S. Luke xii. 50. 6 S. Luke xiii. 19.
 
 38 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 The cross also stood out from the very first clearly 
 before Him. 1 Long before the crucifixion occurred 
 He foretold to the disciples the details of His cruci- 
 fixion. 2 He knew the fruitfulness of self-sacrifice. 
 "Whoso shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and 
 whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it." 3 He 
 saw beyond the horizon of His own day. He prophe- 
 sied His death and resurrection, 4 the gift of the Com- 
 forter, the fall of Jerusalem, 5 the martyrdom of the 
 Apostles, 6 the extension of His Kingdom throughout 
 the world, 7 its continuance till the end of time, His 
 return to judge the world. 8 
 
 He spoke with authority and as never man spake. 
 He argued not as the doctors and scribes, 9 but it 
 was " I say unto you." 10 He condemned not, as the 
 ancient prophets had done, the vices of the people, 
 but laid bare the inner motives of conduct. There is, 
 it is said, a point in a block of stone which being 
 struck the mass parts asunder. He revealed in His 
 condemnation of the Pharisees how vices may be the 
 parent of seeming virtues. He revealed the law of 
 goodness; doing right because it is right. The 
 rationalizing Sadducees and the Pharisaic formalists 
 were indeed scathingly censured. Yet His words 
 were balm to all penitent hearts. As no other 
 teacher has dared to address humanity, He said, 
 " Come unto Me, all ye that travail and are heavy 
 
 1 S. John iii. 14. 6 S. Luke xxi. 16. 
 
 2 S. Matt. xvi. 21. 7 S. Mark xiii. 10. 
 
 8 S. Luke xvii. 33. 8 S. Matt, xxviii. 20. 
 
 4 S. Mark ix. 9. 9 S. Matt. vii. 29. 
 
 6 S. Luke xix. 43-44; S. Matt. xxiv. 2. 10 S. Matt. v. 18.
 
 THE DIVINE TEACHER 39 
 
 laden and I will refresh you." l His words have 
 gone like morning over the earth. " Whosoever 
 cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out." No 
 wonder the poor, the sick, the publicans, the sinners 
 flocked about Him, for the touch of His garment 
 brought health and His word life to their souls. 
 
 And how gradually He led His Apostles on to the 
 recognition of Himself. He taught not as others 
 have done, laying down postulate and premise,- argu- 
 ment and conclusion. He drew men to Him saying, 
 " Come and see." And as they dwelt with Him, little 
 by little they came to discern Him as the prophet 
 for whose advent the nation waited ; as the Messiah, 
 as something yet more wonderful, till finally Peter 
 made the confession for them all : " Thou art the 
 Christ, the Son of the living God." 2 
 
 But the culminating characteristic of Christ is His 
 sinlessness. Sin is common to all the children of 
 men. None is so obtuse as to be unconscious of it. 
 According to the old heathen saying, we know the 
 better but pursue the worse. Mea Culpa is our con- 
 stant plea. The burning invective of S. Paul finds 
 a universal response. We are all guilty before God. 
 Not those only who have lived in defiant rebellion, 
 but those whose moral aim has been highest. The 
 complaint of humanity finds its expression in the 
 Apostle's words, " O wretched man that I am, who 
 shall deliver me from the body of this death." But 
 amidst the universal corruption there arises one spot- 
 less exception. To His sinlessness His enemies were 
 witness. Pilate could find no fault in Him. " I am 
 
 i S. Matt. xi. 28. 2 S. Matt. xvi. 16.
 
 40 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 innocent of the blood of this just person." l Judas' 
 remorse came from his knowing he had shed inno- 
 cent blood. 2 Peter had felt its power when Christ 
 wrought the miracle of the fishes. 3 The Apostles 
 have left on record their testimony. " He was the 
 Holy One and the Just." 4 " He was the Lamb with- 
 out blemish." 5 " He was Jesus Christ the Right- 
 eous." " He was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate 
 from sinners." 6 "He knew no sin." 7 "He was 
 without sin." 8 "He did no sin, neither was guile 
 found in His mouth." 9 
 
 It has been remarked that it is harder to gain such 
 witness from friends than enemies. " Every con- 
 siderable man is having materials of his life written 
 as with a pen of iron that never blunts, with an ink 
 that never fades, with a curiosity that never falters. 
 He is watched by unsuspected eyes and reported by 
 unexpected hands. Christ's disciples had been with 
 Him in all circumstances of familiarity. They had 
 tenanted the same narrow chamber ; they had rocked 
 in the same little boat. One hasty word, one ques- 
 tionable look, one act of selfishness would have 
 caused the light to fade from His Face and the dia- 
 dem to pale upon His Brow." Yet it is from those 
 so intimate with Him, that there goes up the uni- 
 versal testimony as to His absolute sinlessness. 
 Moreover, we have Christ's own testimony. The 
 greater the saint, the more he realizes his own defi- 
 
 S. Luke xxiii. 14; S. Matt, xxvii. 24. 
 
 S. Matt, xxvii. 4. 6 Ileb. vii. 26. 
 
 S. Luke v. 8. 7 2 Cor. v. 21. 
 
 Acts iii. 14. 8 Heb. iv. 15. 
 
 i Peter i. 19. ' I Pet. ii. 22.
 
 THE DIVINE TEACHER 41 
 
 ciencies before God, his imperfections in contrast 
 with God's sanctity, his need of pardon and of help. 
 But the prayers which Christ addresses to the Father 
 contain no acknowledgment of any fault or defect, 
 but assertions such as no created being could make 
 of His absolute obedience to God's will. They are 
 divine colloquies, of an equal to an equal. 1 
 
 We have in this imperfect survey omitted all refer- 
 ence to the miracles or signs wrought by Christ. 
 We have simply examined some of the leading ele- 
 ments of His character. It can but be noticed that 
 we have also omitted reference to S. John's Gospel. 
 The synoptics give us all that our present purpose 
 needs. They reveal Christ's unique and matchless 
 character. It shows Him to be separate from us. 
 
 We may then consider what He claimed concerning 
 Himself. What was His own testimony concerning 
 Himself? 
 
 Though the temple was God's covenanted meet- 
 ing-place with man, and there He placed His Name, 
 yet Christ could say " that in this place is One 
 greater than the temple." 2 He was greater than 
 the most sacred manifestation of God because God 
 was in a fuller sense manifested in Him. Again God, 
 in the awful glories of Sinai, had revealed His sover- 
 eign will and bade men keep the Sabbath day holy 
 with strict observance. But as of equal authority 
 with the Divine Lawgiver, Christ proclaims Himself 
 to be "Lord also of the Sabbath." 3 John Baptist, 
 greatest of prophets, feels the mysterious element in 
 Christ that separates them. " I indeed baptize you 
 
 1 S. Matt. xi. 25, 27. a S. Matt. xii. 6. * S. Mark ii. 28.
 
 42 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 with water unto repentance : but He that cometh 
 after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not 
 worthy to bear: He shall baptize you with the Holy 
 Ghost and fire." l As showing that He is acting in 
 His own right and not as an agent, Christ baptizes 
 His Church at Pentecost with the unique sign of 
 fire. Who is it that can thus send the Holy Ghost 
 save one who is equal to Him? Again, the angels 
 who are God's servants, are sent by Him. He calls 
 them His angels "whom He will send." 2 He has 
 an equal jurisdiction over them as the Almighty. 
 However, when the high priest solemnly adjured 
 Him " to tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son 
 of God," Jesus replied, "Thou hast said." 3 He, the 
 Son of Man, had also a higher sonship. He was 
 the Son of God. Speaking of the relation that existed 
 between the Father and Himself, He declared that 
 " no man knoweth who the Son is but the Father and 
 who the Father is but the Son, and he to whom the 
 Son will reveal Him." 4 As no one can compre- 
 hend God but God, He here declares Himself to be 
 God. He asserts also that He shall come in the 
 glory of His Father with His angels, and then He 
 shall reward every man according to his works. 5 
 He could no more clearly declare His divinity than 
 by claiming thus to be the judge of all men. For 
 who can judge the acts and thoughts of all men and 
 rightly sit on that Throne but God Himself? No 
 wonder Peter for himself and the Apostles acknowl- 
 
 1 S. Matt. iii. u. * S. Luke x. 22. 
 
 2 S. Matt. xxiv. 31. * S. Matt. xvi. 27. 
 ' S. Matt. xxvi. 64.
 
 THE DIVINE TEACHER 43 
 
 edged Him to be the " Son of the Living God." The 
 evil spirits also with their spiritual discernment so 
 recognized Him. The unclean spirits when they saw 
 Him fell down before Him and cried, saying, " Thou 
 art the Son of God." "Jesus, Son of the most high 
 God." l He accepts the homage due to Himself. 
 The holy women when He meets them prostrate 
 themselves. "They came and held Him by the .feet 
 and worshipped Him." 2 S. Thomas as he does so 
 exclaims, " My Lord and My God." 
 
 There are two ways of looking at a man's life. One 
 that gives the historical setting of it, the other its 
 meaning, its purpose and influence. The first records 
 His acts, the second His character. To some extent 
 we see this division in the Gospels. The Synoptists 
 set forth the first, S. John the latter. These two 
 traditions grew up contemporaneously together and 
 each has its value. If, having seen what the histori- 
 cal account says of Christ, we turn to S. John, we 
 find that his testimony is in accord with it. 
 
 There we find that Christ declared that He came 
 down from Heaven and was in existence before Abra- 
 ham was born. He asserted that He came from 
 being with the Father, and came forth out of God. 
 He is united to the Father by no mere sympathetic 
 or moral agreement, but by a unity of nature He 
 and the Father are one. They work in a co-ordinate 
 equality of ceaseless activity. " The Father worketh 
 hitherto and I work." He calls on the Father to 
 glorify Him, not with some created glory, but with 
 that glory deity alone could sustain. " Father, glorify 
 1 S. Mark iii. n. 2 S. Matt, xxviii. 9.
 
 44 CHRISTIAN AND' CATHOLIC 
 
 Thou me with Thine Own Self." Nor was it to be 
 something newly added to His nature, but to be " the 
 glory which I had with Thee before the world was." 
 Men are to give Him divine honor and worship, 
 and to honor the Son even as they honor the 
 Father. Thus the accounts in the Gospels, in relation 
 to the divine character of His person, harmonize. 
 
 As we contemplate this unique character we feel 
 no wonder that Renan, unbeliever that he was, felt 
 obliged to declare that Jesus will never be surpassed. 
 
 He was, as the Unitarians Channing and Walker 
 enthusiastically championed Him, divine. If the life 
 and death of Socrates, exclaimed Rousseau, with 
 passionate emotion, are those of a philosopher, the 
 life and death of Jesus Christ are those of a god. 
 
 If, then, towards a teacher whose fulfilment of 
 prophecy shows He was sent by God we can but 
 entertain a spirit of profound reverence, what ought 
 to be our feelings towards One of so transcendent and 
 majestic a character? Surely it is wise to take Him 
 for our religious Teacher and to trust ourselves to 
 Him as our Guide. Practical wisdom and common 
 sense can ask no less. 
 
 Doing so, then from these considerations of His 
 character and His prophetical office one inference 
 may be safely drawn. 
 
 First, concerning His character. When we con- 
 sider the supreme sanctity, sincerity, humility of 
 Christ's character, we can but accept in their full 
 import the assertions He was obliged to make con- 
 cerning Himself, that He was one with the Father. 
 He was the Son of God. If they were not made by
 
 THE DIVINE TEACHER 45 
 
 the necessity of their truthfulness Christ sinks below 
 the standard of ordinary morality. He is no longer 
 humble, unambitious, sincere. From such an alter- 
 native, every fair and sober mind must shrink. "Dis- 
 puting Thy divinity, O Blessed Lord, we could no 
 longer clearly recognize Thy human perfections. 
 Gazing on Thy human beauty and listening to Thy 
 words, we cannot deny that Thou art the only Son 
 of God Most High." l 
 
 Second, concerning His office as a Teacher, there 
 are two undisputed facts we may well remember. 
 God punished the Hebrew nation severely for the sin 
 of idolatry. At last they were delivered from it, and 
 through Israel the world was taught that " the Lord 
 thy God is One God." Men may come to disbelieve 
 in a God, but the world will never go back to Poly- 
 theism. There is but one God, and the worship of 
 any other is the sin of idolatry. This was the lesson 
 that God took two thousand years to enforce on the 
 human mind. The other fact is this : that ninety- 
 nine hundredths of Christ's followers have worshipped 
 Him as God, and there is no ground to suppose they 
 will ever do otherwise. As we cannot suppose God 
 would send a teacher into the world to undo His own 
 work and lead the world back into the sin of idolatry, 
 we must either give up Christ as a Teacher in any 
 way sent from God, or else admit that divine worship 
 is rightly paid Him because He is God. 
 
 In deed and in truth Thou art the King of Glory, 
 
 O Christ ; Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father. 
 
 1 Liddon's Bampton Lectures.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE GREAT CREDENTIAL 
 
 THE Divinity of Christ may be proved by argu- 
 ment, but He can only be known by submis- 
 sion and prayer. When the soul accepts Him for its 
 Master and Guide, it is willing to believe what He 
 says because He says it, and to do what He wills 
 because He wills it. 
 
 Now Our Lord gave one great credential of Him- 
 self. Men asked Him to give them a sign for the 
 authority He claimed to possess. " Destroy this 
 temple," and He spake of the temple of His Body, 
 " and in three days I will raise it up." l Likewise on 
 several occasions He foretold His resurrection to His 
 disciples. " The Son of Man shall be betrayed into 
 the hands of men. And they shall kill Him, and the 
 third day He shall be raised again." 2 It is clear that 
 He speaks not in a metaphorical sense of His resur- 
 rection. For just as He foretold that His crucifixion 
 was to be a literal one, so, His words imply, was to be 
 His resurrection. If one was literal so was the other. 
 He reiterated this promise again and again. He 
 pledged Himself to it. Believing in Christ we rest 
 securely on His Word. We know He rose from the 
 dead, because He said He would. This is enough for 
 
 i S. John ii. 19. 
 
 8 S. Matt. xvii. 23, xvi. 23; S. Mark, ix. 31, x. 34.
 
 THE GREAT CREDENTIAL 47 
 
 a Christian. There is no higher authority ^or more 
 secure proof. 
 
 We may ask, however, what corroborative evidence 
 is there that He did so rise? 
 
 We will not pause to argue with those who believe 
 that no evidence can be sufficient, because the resur- 
 rection involves the violation of the natural order. 
 Any idea of law which makes a miracle impossible is 
 inconsistent with an intelligent belief in the existence 
 of God. A miracle is only an unusual manifestation 
 of power, but it does not necessarily involve an infrac- 
 tion of law. If man can work marvels, which are 
 miracles to the unlearned, by combinations of nature's 
 laws, more so can the Almighty, who knows them in- 
 timately and thoroughly as His own thoughts. God 
 does not contradict Himself when He works a miracle, 
 but uses modes unknown to us. The so-called laws 
 of nature are but as a keyboard upon which the 
 Almighty Hand doth play. 
 
 The first corroborative proof that Christ kept His 
 word is to be found in a fact of which we all are cog- 
 nizant. For the Master did not leave the evidence 
 of Himself, as many seem to think, to the risk of 
 manuscripts, liable as they are to destruction and in- 
 terpolation. He established a much more sure and 
 certain witness. Men were not forced to rely on 
 manuscripts, but were to have a living witness of His 
 resurrection. Christianity extends throughout the 
 world. However separated, it is solidly in accord in 
 one matter. Throughout the world on the first day 
 of the week all Christians assemble to worship. They 
 have done so from the beginning. " Upon the first
 
 48 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 day of the week the disciples came together to break 
 bread." l And now everywhere on the first day we 
 hear the church bells calling men to worship. How 
 are we to account for this fact? Christianity rose out 
 of Judaism. The Jew with the strictest observance 
 sacredly guarded the seventh day of the week. God 
 Himself had bidden him so to keep it, and its obliga- 
 tion had the awful sanction of Sinai. The Christian 
 Church began keeping another day which in time su- 
 perseded the Jewish Sabbath. What right had it so 
 to do ? Something as tremendous as the proclamation 
 of the law on Sinai could alone be its warrant. We 
 know the reason. On the third day Christ rose from 
 the dead. Christians kept, therefore, the first day of 
 the week and called it " the Lord's Day." 2 It stands 
 as a witness of the resurrection. It declares that 
 such was the universal belief from the beginning, and 
 that it was on the third day Christ rose. 
 
 In examining the proofs of the resurrection, we 
 find it gains credibility from the attacks unbelievers 
 and hostile critics have made upon it. It has been 
 said, for instance, that Christ did not really die. He 
 swooned and became numb, and in that condition was 
 placed in the tomb. The coolness of the stony 
 chamber stayed the hemorrhage, the aromatic odor 
 of the spices with which He was embalmed restored 
 animation. Somehow, the manner not explained, 
 He got out of the tomb after some days, and rejoined 
 the disciples. The disciples deceived themselves 
 into calling it a resurrection, and He Who was the 
 Truth itself let them cultivate this delusion. Then 
 
 i Acts xx. 7. a Rev. i. 10.
 
 THE GREAT CREDENTIAL 49 
 
 He, to help on the fraud, went away and hid Himself 
 in some obscure place where, unattended and uncared 
 for by His former devoted friends, He died. 
 
 Now it has a bearing on His resurrection that by 
 the ordering of Divine Providence our Lord met His 
 death in a most public manner. It was also a matter 
 of great concern to a large number of persons that He 
 should be put to death. These persons were of the 
 highest rank in the Church and State. His death 
 was a great public event upon which the attention of 
 the nation was concentrated. It was at the time of 
 the great feast, when Jerusalem was crowded, and the 
 many thousand pilgrims were encamped on her hills. 
 He was tried before the High Priest and the Ecclesias- 
 tical tribunal and examined by Herod and Pilate. 
 He was condemned, publicly executed, and the 
 Roman centurion made an official report of His death. 
 To make His death doubly sure, His side was pierced 
 and the spear-thrust touched the heart. The water 
 and the blood flowed out. If He had been in a swoon, 
 the piercing would have extinguished life, while the 
 outflowing water, modern science tells us, indicated that 
 life was already extinct. There is no question, then, 
 but that Christ died on the cross. As to the theory 
 of His recovering, Strauss contemptuously shattered 
 it. " Would," he said, " a man half dead, dragging 
 himself from the mortuary cell, so weak as to require 
 medical treatment and an infinity of care, who finally, in 
 spite of all, succumbs to his sufferings, would he have 
 produced on the Apostles the impression that He was 
 the Prince of Life, the Vanquisher of the Tomb?" 
 
 Another criticism which has been made from the 
 
 4
 
 50 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 time of Celsus asks why did not Christ show Himself 
 to Pilate, Herod, and the chief priests? This objec- 
 tion is also a helpful one, for its answer will reveal the 
 character and purpose of the resurrection. But first 
 let us say there was no more obligation on our Lord's 
 part to appear to them than to doubters of any suc- 
 ceeding age or to us. But there were moral consid- 
 erations why Christ should not appear to His enemies. 
 There is no reason to believe that our Lord's appear- 
 ance would have done them any good. They were 
 prepared to reject every kind of proof. Their state 
 of mind is shown by their words. " That deceiver 
 said while He was yet alive, after three days I will 
 rise again." J They were prepared for Him. Had 
 our Lord appeared they would have either denied 
 His identity, or said, as they had before, it was the 
 work of Beelzebub. They would have again seized 
 upon Him and endeavored to subject Him to further 
 indignity. It was better for them that Christ should 
 not appear before them. It gave to any in whom was 
 aught of good a chance of restoration by an act of 
 faith. But in respect of ourselves, so far as evidence 
 is concerned, their testimony would have been of 
 little value. They were not competent witnesses 
 to His identity. They had seen Him but little. 
 They did not know, as the Apostles did, His look, 
 movement, gait, manner, voice. It required previous 
 and intimate acquaintance with these in order to 
 identify the Risen Lord with the Christ of Calvary. 
 But these are not the real reasons why Christ showed 
 not Himself to Pilate and the high priests. 
 1 S. Matt, xxvii. 63.
 
 THE GREAT CREDENTIAL 51 
 
 The reason was He had finished His work with the 
 world. With Him creation advances into a new 
 stage of development. He is the new Fact and the 
 Beginner of the new elevation in the evolutionary 
 process. His public life was divided into three periods, 
 viz. : His prophetical life, His priestly and suffering 
 life, and his risen and royal life. When He had 
 attained to the latter, He could no more go back into 
 those that preceded it than the world having attained 
 one geological period could return to a former period. 
 His prophetical ministry to the world was closed and 
 He could not return to it. 
 
 Moreover, it is well to remember that Christ's 
 resurrection was not a return to His former life. By 
 His own will He had separated His soul from His 
 body. " I have power," He said, " to lay down My 
 life and power to take it again." It was not by the 
 crucifixion that His natural life was taken, but the 
 soul was separated from His body by His own will. 
 Yet though separated from each other, neither was 
 separated from His Divinity. For, as we have seen, 
 He was Divine. His body and soul hung on His 
 Divinity as the sword and sheath to the warrior's belt. 
 As the drawing of the sword from its scabbard sepa- 
 rates neither from the soldier, so the human soul and 
 body of Christ when separated from each other were 
 not separated from His Divine Person. His body is 
 in the tomb, but it cannot see corruption. It was 
 dead only in the sense that the soul was separated from 
 it, but was not dead as cur bodies are said to be dead. 
 For it was living with an indestructible life in that 
 it was united to the Divine Nature. When that soul
 
 52 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 returned and re-entered the body, then it rose. He 
 did not, as in the cases of Jairus' daughter or of 
 Lazarus, come back to the old conditions of life. He 
 had passed through death and, so to speak, come out 
 on the other side. So in the days of His resur- 
 rection He gathers about Him those only who were 
 His, and to His disciples only He appears. 
 
 Let us turn to other corroborative confirmation 
 of Christ's words. It has been so ordered that the 
 resurrection of Christ should be evidenced both by 
 His enemies and His friends. 
 
 Let us consider first the proofs offered by the 
 former. 
 
 They are five in number. First, if Christ did not 
 rise from the dead, His enemies were bound to prove 
 He did not by producing the body. All the accounts 
 agree in this, that Christ's Body having been taken 
 down from the cross was laid in a new tomb which 
 had been hewn out in the rock and " wherein was 
 never man yet laid." The Jews went to Pilate, 
 saying, " Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, 
 After three days I will rise again. Command, there- 
 fore, that the sepulchre be made sure until the third 
 day." " Pilate said, ye have a watch : go your way, 
 make it as sure as ye can. So they went, and made 
 the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a 
 watch." Now it is admitted that shortly after the 
 Apostles in Jerusalem preached publicly that Christ 
 had risen. His body had been taken charge of by 
 the Jews. They were responsible for it. They were 
 therefore bound to produce it, or give some reasona- 
 ble explanation of its disappearance.
 
 THE GREAT CREDENTIAL 53 
 
 The explanation given furnishes us with another 
 proof. The story told of the disciples coming by 
 night while the soldiers slept and taking the body is 
 on the face of it a lie. It is incredible that the Roman 
 guard would all have been asleep ; and if so, how 
 could they have known who were the perpetrators of 
 the deed. This lie is effective evidence of the truth 
 of the account it seeks to disparage. 
 
 Again, the act assigned to the Apostles is without 
 any adequate motive. Why should they wish to dis- 
 turb the tomb? Either they believed Christ would 
 rise and in that case they would do nothing, or they 
 were in a state of doubt, and still less would they take 
 any action ; or they had lost all hope in Christ as the 
 Messiah, then surely they would not have risked their 
 lives for a man or a cause in which they had lost all 
 faith. Terrified, heart-broken, crushed, an effort to 
 recover the body is the last thing that would have 
 entered their minds. 
 
 One of the latest efforts at explanation is to say 
 that the Jews took away the body themselves. This 
 theory clears the Apostles but is open to an easy 
 refutation. Within a few weeks of the resurrection 
 the Apostles were arraigned before Annas, the high 
 priest, and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and 
 the rulers and elders and scribes, for curing the im- 
 potent man, and they boldly proclaimed that it was 
 by the power of Jesus Christ whom God raised from 
 the dead. It is inconceivable if the Jews themselves 
 had the body of Christ secreted in some place, thaf 
 they should not, by producing it, have crushed and 
 annihilated the hated Christian sect
 
 54 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 We offer as another proof the fact that Christ's 
 enemies admitted the truth of the resurrection. 
 When the Apostles were brought before them they 
 did not dispute their story. If the tomb was still 
 sealed they would have pointed it out. If they had 
 removed the body they would have produced it. 
 They did not venture on what they knew was a lie, 
 and accuse the Apostles of having taken it. All 
 they did was to forbid the Apostles to speak in the 
 name of Jesus. Their inability to meet the testimony 
 of the Apostles is an admission of its truth. 
 
 But finally, many of Christ's enemies changed 
 their minds and believed. Upon the preaching of 
 the resurrection of Christ by S. Peter about three 
 thousand converts were made ; shortly after, we read, 
 " Many of them which heard the Word believed ; and 
 the number of men was about five thousand." We 
 learn also that " a great company of the priests were 
 obedient to the faith." There was thus a very large 
 number, eight thousand or more, who believed the 
 Apostles' witness. Undoubtedly, living in Jerusalem 
 they made for themselves every investigation. The 
 tomb would be visited by every tentative believer. 
 Every person connected with the event would be 
 obliged to tell his story again and again to untired 
 listeners. The intelligent and critical inquirers would 
 be sure to examine and cross-examine every detail. 
 It is said that the critical faculty was not so developed 
 as in our day. This is true " if we apply it to certain 
 departments of literary evidence, like the authorship 
 of a book or the value of a local tradition." But there 
 is no truth in it as applied to a public fact, like that
 
 THE GREAT CREDENTIAL 55 
 
 of the resurrection. The common-sense methods 
 of rinding out whether a fact of this kind is true are 
 unvarying, and were possessed equally as well by the 
 Jews of that day as by ourselves. Starting out as 
 unbelievers, this large jury of eight thousand persons 
 became convinced. The evidence must have been 
 irrefutable to have converted so many. 
 
 One thing, moreover, is sure, that had the Apostles 
 merely related their Galilean experience, they would 
 not have made their converts in Jerusalem. If they 
 had merely declared that after the third day, when, 
 as they alleged, Christ rose, they had gone away into 
 Galilee and there He had been seen by them, their 
 story could have received little credence. If, it would 
 be said, He rose on the third day, why did He not 
 appear to some one or some persons on that day? 
 Why, if He rose here, out of a tomb in Jerusalem, 
 did He not appear here in Jerusalem ? Why wait for 
 days and then appear in distant Galilee where we 
 cannot go and examine the conditions of His appa- 
 rition? If He desired that we here in Jerusalem 
 should believe, by all these reasons He was bound to 
 appear here. It is foolish to suppose that the report 
 of S. Peter's sermons are a whole account of what 
 was said and done by the Eleven. It was because 
 the Apostles, dealing with individuals, could appeal 
 to all the facts relating to His entombment, the empty 
 tomb, the failure of the Jewish rulers to produce the 
 body, and could give their own witness to His appear- 
 ances at Jerusalem, that they carried conviction. 
 Thus Christ's enemies by their conversion testify to 
 the truth of His resurrection.
 
 56 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Let us now turn to the other side of the case. 
 Here the evidence divides itself into two sections. 
 What can be known apart from the narratives in the 
 four Gospels, and what is assured us by them ? 
 
 In the first category we are struck first with the re- 
 markable change of conduct found in the Apostles 
 after the alleged resurrection. 
 
 The death of Christ had confounded the Apostles 
 and crushed their hopes. All through the bright 
 days of His ministry, when the sick had crowded 
 about Him for healing and the common people had 
 heard Him gladly, they had looked eagerly forward 
 to the restoration of the Kingdom. The glories 
 which had filled the visions of the prophets were 
 upon the eve of their accomplishment. With what 
 buoyant expectation had they awaited the glorious 
 triumph. Suddenly all was at an end. A most dire 
 calamity had taken place. Christ had succumbed to 
 His enemies. He had been unable to extricate Him- 
 self. No intervention had taken place from heaven. 
 The Father with whom He had associated Himself 
 had not come to His assistance. Like a miserable 
 criminal He had been nailed to the cross of shame, 
 and He was dead. They would never see Him again 
 or hear His voice. He was completely vanquished, 
 and there was an end of all their hopes. They were 
 shocked, completely cowed, and in a state of physical 
 as well as moral collapse. They are found either 
 wandering away or huddled together in a room, with 
 locked doors, in fear. 
 
 In what vivid contrast is their appearance after the 
 resurrection. They are not in hiding, they are pub-
 
 THE GREAT CREDENTIAL 57 
 
 licly in the Temple, and elsewhere, preaching Christ 
 Risen. They are standing before the great Ecclesias- 
 tical Court, and do not hesitate to tell Annas and 
 Caiaphas and all the assembled dignitaries that they 
 had crucified the Christ. They declared that He was 
 risen from the dead. No threats, no punishments 
 can make them cease their testimony. No one of 
 them falters from his great truth-proclaiming mission. 
 They go everywhere, throughout the world proclaim- 
 ing it. They manifest the sincerity of their own be- 
 lief by laying down their lives for its truth. We ask, 
 What wrought this change? Whence had they the 
 sustaining energy of their conviction? The only sat- 
 isfactory answer is to be found in the fact of the res- 
 urrection. No interior reminiscence, no shadowy or 
 imaginary vision could have kept them united. Noth- 
 ing but hard facts could have enabled them to bear 
 necessarily oft-recurring questioning and mental strain. 
 It was because Christ had risen that they, resting on 
 that adamantine fact, became transformed from de- 
 sponding cowards, to transcendent heroes and martyrs. 
 Another corroboration may be found in those two 
 sacraments which are called by us on account of their 
 universal application, " Sacraments of the Gospel." 
 Christ, as we have said, left not His revelation to be 
 evidenced by manuscripts alone. Christianity came 
 into the world as an institution. This institution is a 
 living organism, in which the Holy Spirit dwells and 
 through which He acts and speaks. This organism 
 has from the first declared that on the third day 
 Christ rose from the dead. It does this to-day, not 
 only by her creeds, but by her sacraments.
 
 58 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Go into what Christian Church you will, and infants 
 and adults are all baptized by the same formula, viz. : 
 " In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
 the Holy Ghost." Now, at the beginning of each dis- 
 pensation we find God's character and nature re- 
 vealed by a new Name. This is the mark upon the 
 Patriarchal and Mosaic developments. The Christian 
 is, in like manner, marked by the new and wonderful 
 revelation of the Name of the Triune God. It lies at 
 the basis of the Christian dispensation, and upholds 
 it. But where and when was this great revelation 
 made by Christ? Not during His life, anterior to the 
 resurrection. There is nothing said about it in His 
 public teaching. It was made after His resurrection, 
 consequently the resurrection was not a myth nor an 
 apparition alone, but a reality. Every baptism is a 
 continuous witness that Christ rose from the dead. 
 For it teaches, moreover, that Christians are buried 
 with Christ and risen in Him. This, it is obvious, 
 would be an unmeaning metaphor or symbolism, if 
 Christ rose not from the dead. 
 
 The Holy Eucharist bears the same witness to the 
 resurrection. It commemorates, as we all know, the 
 death of Christ. But why should the Church do it, if 
 Christ rose not from the dead ? Why celebrate the 
 tragedy in which Christ closed His life, which, if He 
 rose not according to His promise, was only a tragic 
 failure ? If He rose not, the words and action of the 
 Eucharist are a meaningless sham and a horrible 
 falsification. For in that Holy Service are neces- 
 sarily said the words, " This is My Body which is 
 given for you," and "This Cup is the new covenant
 
 THE GREAT CREDENTIAL 59 
 
 in My Blood." The words give the lie to the theory 
 that our Lord did not resume His body and does not 
 now wear it. For if His body saw corruption and 
 disappeared, then the words, " The bread which we 
 break is it not a participation of the Body of Christ," 
 would not be true. For there would be no body in 
 existence, spiritually or otherwise, of which we could 
 be partakers. There could be no communion of 
 body and blood that had ceased to exist. The Holy 
 Eucharist thus bears witness to the death and resur- 
 rection of Christ. The two witnesses stand before 
 the Temple doors, and proclaim that Christ has risen. 
 Again, apart from the Gospels, we have an inde- 
 pendent witness in S. Paul. His testimony is re- 
 corded in the fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to 
 the Corinthians. This epistle, written about A. D. 57, 
 is accepted by all critics as authentic. There he 
 writes, " I delivered unto you first of all, that which I 
 also received, how that Christ died for our sins ac- 
 cording to the scriptures ; and that He was buried, 
 and that He rose again the third day according to the 
 scriptures ; and that He was seen of Cephas, then of 
 the twelve: after that, He was seen of above five 
 hundred brethren at once ; of whom the greater part 
 remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. 
 After that, He was seen of James ; then of all the 
 Apostles. And last of all He was seen of me also, as 
 of one born out of due time." S. Paul had, so we 
 learn from himself, received his information directly 
 from S. Peter and S. James, whom he had visited in 
 Jerusalem ; we have thus the record of their testimony 
 apart from the Gospel narrative. S. Paul adds also
 
 60 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 his own. He knew the difference between an inter 
 nal spiritual revelation, a vision, and an external 
 bodily appearance of Christ. 1 The Lord had ap- 
 peared to him bodily in the Damascus roadway, and 
 the glory of His ascended body, like as when S. 
 John beheld it, had blinded him. It has been asked, 
 why does not S. Paul say aught concerning the visit 
 of the holy women and the walk to Emmaus. His 
 omission does not show he did not know them. He 
 omits them because he is not giving an account of the 
 resurrection, but is telling the Corinthians what as 
 Christians they were bound to believe. He therefore 
 states the fact of the resurrection and cites the 
 authority of S. Peter and the Apostles as being by 
 Christ authorized witnesses to it. It was on their 
 authority and witness that the resurrection on the 
 third day had become an article in the Creed, which 
 existed before the Gospels were written. S. Paul 
 adds his own testimony, and cites the fact of which 
 he most well assured himself, that five hundred per- 
 sons could testify to the resurrection. 
 
 Let us now examine the Gospel narrative. 
 
 Each evangelist gives an account, and with such 
 differences as show there was no prearrangement 
 These differences, then, are a proof of their credi- 
 bility. Moreover, under the guidance of the Holy 
 Spirit, they were intended to set forth different as- 
 pects of Christ. One emphasizes His kingship, an- 
 other His priesthood ; one dwells on His humanity, 
 another on His divinity. These different character- 
 istics run through each Gospel from the beginning to 
 1 i Cor. i. 15.
 
 THE GREAT CREDENTIAL 61 
 
 the end. They consequently differ in their account 
 of the resurrection. S. Matthew, who depicts in his 
 Gospel Christ as the king and His kingdom, makes the 
 chief event in the resurrection the assembly at Galilee 
 and the royal mandate of Jesus : " All power is given 
 unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore and 
 make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the 
 name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
 Ghost, and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the 
 end of the world." S. Luke, who brings out the 
 priesthood of Christ, has nothing to say of Galilee, 
 but dwells upon the recovery and appearance to S. 
 Peter, and the wandering disciples, and the making 
 Himself known in the breaking of bread, and the 
 command that repentance and remission of sins should 
 be preached to all nations ; and ends with lifting up 
 His hands and blessing them ; and their continually 
 abiding in the temple. S. John, the evangelist of 
 the Incarnation, and who especially sets forth the 
 divinity of Christ, gives the apparition of our Lord 
 both at Jerusalem and in Galilee. He dwells upon 
 the divine side of His resurrection, on the evidence 
 of the empty tomb and the grave clothes, which first 
 flashed belief into his soul, on the interview with 
 Mary Magdalene, wherein our Lord revealed His 
 gracious humanity, and the divine sanctity of His 
 nature. " Touch me not ; for I am not yet ascended 
 to my Father." " I ascend," not unto our Father, 
 but to " my Father and your Father and to my God 
 and your God." S. John alone records the mysteri- 
 ous gift of peace and the solemn breathing on the 
 Apostles, their wonderful empowering, " Receive ye
 
 62 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 the Holy Ghost Whose soever sins ye remit, they 
 are remitted unto them ; and whose soever sins ye 
 retain, they are retained." It is in this Gospel of the 
 divinity that we have recorded the confession of St. 
 Thomas, " My Lord and my God." This closes the 
 manifestation in Jerusalem. In Galilee we have the 
 last miraculous draft of fishes. S. John, true to 
 the spirit of his evangel, is the only one who records 
 this, the only miracle wrought in the days of the 
 resurrection. It is the only miracle, save the greater 
 one of mercy, by which, on his threefold protestation, 
 Christ restores Peter to his apostleship and the 
 Gospel closes with the promise of the Divine Lord 
 that He will come again. S. Mark is the delineator 
 of Christ as the prophet and Son of Man. His 
 Gospel is shorter than the others, but is fuller of 
 detail and human incident. It is questioned by critics 
 where the original of S. Mark's Gospel closes. If it 
 ends at the sixteenth chapter, ninth verse, we have the 
 empty tomb, an angel announcing to the women the 
 resurrection. If it ends later, there is a brief confir- 
 mation of the Emmaus incident, and a description of 
 our Lord appearing to the eleven as they sat at meat, 
 quite characteristic of S. Mark, and with the com- 
 mand to go into all the world and preach. 
 
 We thus see why the evangelists do not give the 
 same identical accounts of the resurrection. One 
 dwells, like S. Matthew, on the Galilean manifestation, 
 with its kingly command ; one, like S. Luke, on 
 that at Jerusalem, with its remission of sins and 
 benediction. S. Mark brings out the human side ; 
 S. John, the divine. We may not be able to har-
 
 THE GREAT CREDENTIAL 63 
 
 monize all the details. " We are not bound to de- 
 mand identical accounts from historians who were 
 unequally informed, who had no intention of recount- 
 ing everything, and who, moved to write by different 
 motives, distributed the events in different order." 
 The accounts given, however, do not, necessarily, con- 
 tradict each other. The differences fit in with, and are 
 consistent with, the characteristics of the separate 
 Gospel. The Gospel narratives thus are credible and 
 bear witness to the resurrection of Christ 
 
 Let us now look at some details. All the evangel- 
 ists tell us of the visit of the band of women to the 
 tomb. They came bringing the spices they had 
 prepared. They find the stone rolled away and the 
 tomb empty. They seem to have met at some ap- 
 pointed rendezvous. They set off together, when 
 we may suppose that either Mary Magdalene goes 
 ahead as an advance guard, for they were in much 
 fear, to see that the way was clear, or that the others 
 lingered for some one of the party to join them, or went 
 back for something which may have been forgotten. 
 This accounts for the Magdalene arriving alone and 
 first at the tomb. Finding it empty she immediately 
 goes by some other way to find Peter and John, who 
 were probably staying together. Meanwhile, the other 
 women arrive and are addressed by an angel, who 
 tells them Christ is risen. They depart with fear 
 and great joy. And as they went to tell His dis- 
 ciples, behold Jesus met them, saying, "All hail. 
 And they came, and held Him by the feet, and wor- 
 shipped Him." 1 
 
 i S. Matt, xxviii. 8, 9.
 
 64 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Meanwhile, Peter and John arrive and examine 
 the condition of the tomb and depart. Then Mary 
 Magdalene, who has followed, sees the two angels 
 sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet, 
 where the body of Jesus had lain. They address her, 
 " Woman, why weepest thou ? " Her memorable reply 
 need not be repeated. The question and answer show 
 it was not in a vision. As she was not expecting the 
 resurrection, there was no suggestive motive which 
 would predispose her to imagine one. With loving 
 slowness so as not to overpower or suddenly shock 
 her, Jesus discloses Himself. During all the resur- 
 rection time we discern Christ's majestic calmness 
 and dignity coupled with personal consideration and 
 tenderness. It is the same Christ who delivered the 
 Sermon on the Mount, testified before Pontius Pilate, 
 stooped with loving-kindness to the fallen, who 
 calls His faithless disciples by the endearing name of 
 "children," and who consoles Mary. "Jesus saith 
 unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest 
 thou?" And she, supposing the speaker to have been 
 the gardener, saith, " Sir, if thou have borne Him hence, 
 tell me where thou hast laid Him and I will take Him 
 away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned 
 herself, and saith unto Him, Rabboni ; which is to 
 say, Master. And she came and told the disciples 
 she had seen the Lord." 
 
 Not less interesting and confirmatory is the visit of 
 the two Apostles to the sepulchre. They run both 
 together. Naturally S. John, who gives us the ac- 
 count, being the younger, outruns Peter and comes 
 first to the tomb. With his meditative, contemplative
 
 THE GREAT CREDENTIAL 65 
 
 manner he stoops down and looks, then pauses, but 
 does not go in. S. Peter, following, with his eager, 
 impulsive nature, enters at once, gazes about and 
 retires. " Then went in also that other disciple which 
 came first to the sepulchre and he saw and believed." 1 
 The interesting question that arises here is, what did 
 he see that made him believe? The answer is to be 
 found in the Eastern manner in which the body was 
 wrapped and bandaged for interment. A hundred 
 pounds of spices had been used and the body then 
 tightly wound in linen, made fast by long strips 
 which were wound under and over the body and 
 crossed behind and before. The head was treated 
 after the anointing in the same way and the head- 
 gear resembled a sort of covering or helmet. Now 
 what was it S- John saw? He saw the linen clothes. 
 This might suggest to him the fact that the body 
 had not been surreptitiously removed. Had the Jews, 
 or had any one, taken the body they would have re- 
 moved it just as it was. The myrrh would have 
 caused the linen clothes to adhere closely to the body, 
 and it would be a long as well as useless task to re- 
 move them. The body could not, therefore, have been 
 stolen. But this would not account for the convic- 
 tion that flashed into S. John's mind that Christ was 
 risen. What he observed was that the grave clothes in 
 which the body had been wrapped were not, as is given 
 in the authorized version, " Laid by themselves," but, 
 as in the Revised Version, simply " lying." Lying, as 
 we read in S. Luke, lying alone, /. e., lying empty. 2 The 
 clothes had gaved in and were lying down flat. The 
 
 1 S. John xx. 8. a S. Luke xxiv. 12.
 
 66 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 napkin which had been upon His head was rolled up 
 in a place by itself. It had been bound and bandaged 
 about the head, and had retained its helmet-like 
 form. It was not rolled up like a ball, but held the 
 twisted shape it had received and now stood by itself 
 in the place where the head had been. It is not un- 
 likely, as it retained some marks of the countenance 
 of our Lord, that this was the origin of the ancient 
 legend of S. Veronica. When S. John saw this 
 arrangement of the grave clothes there was only one 
 deduction to be drawn. No body could have been 
 taken -out of those clothes, with the bandages lying 
 as they were, nor could any one have got out of 
 them without disturbing them. When Christ rose, 
 He passed through them, even as He did through the 
 tomb, and as His body subsequently came through 
 the closed doors. So John saw and believed. 
 
 It is but fair to state the last opposing theory of 
 German criticism. It is that there are two accounts 
 or two sets of appearances, one at Jerusalem and the 
 other in Galilee. The latter is found in S. Matthew 
 and S. Mark. They say nothing about the Jerusalem 
 manifestations, if the last nine verses of Mark are 
 omitted. S. Luke and S. John give the Judean ap- 
 pearances, and say nothing of Galilee, if we may omit 
 the last chapter of John. Now these two accounts 
 present great difficulties in the way of harmonizing 
 them. We must therefore give up one or the other. 
 The Galilean one is the simpler and more methodical, 
 is in S. Mark and should therefore be adopted. In 
 confirmation of this theory we have the testimony of 
 S. Paul who does not mention the Jerusalem inci-
 
 THE GREAT CREDENTIAL 67 
 
 dents. He says Christ rose on the third day, and 
 that He appeared to Peter. But that is not saying 
 He appeared to Peter on the third day. The disciples 
 had fled terrified to Galilee. There Peter imagined he 
 saw Christ. The spirit of seeing visions became con- 
 tagious, so the Apostles thought they saw Him. 
 They came back to Jerusalem, kept quiet, settled 
 down, and gradually belief in the resurrection grew. 
 
 We have, however, seen why the Gospel narratives 
 are not identical. It is therefore difficult to harmo- 
 nize them. Our Lord most fittingly, however, appears 
 both in Judea and in Galilee. S. Paul gives not a 
 full account of the resurrection but adduces the 
 authorized proof of it. He learned from S. Peter 
 himself the fact of our Lord's appearance to him. S. 
 Luke, who wrote under S. Paul's oversight, is the 
 only one who records the fact, and it takes place not 
 in Galilee but in Jerusalem. The Apostles told their 
 story publicly and at once, and were arrested for it. 
 The eight thousand at Jerusalem would never have 
 been converted by such a Galilean tale. The ques- 
 tions concerning the body, where it was if Christ had 
 not risen, would remain unanswered. This theory 
 does not hold well together. It leaves the credibility 
 of the Gospel narrative unshaken. 
 
 Let us, then, draw our conclusion. It is of record 
 that S. Peter preached at Pentecost that Christ had 
 risen, and so it is clear that the story was not a myth. 
 For myths grow, but this account did not. It was 
 stated from the beginning. 
 
 The Apostles declared they had seen the Lord. It 
 was not then a spectral illusion, could not have been
 
 68 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 a ghost. For they knew the voice, touched the body, 
 put their hands into His side, they walked with Him, 
 they ate with Him. He said, " Handle me, and see ; 
 for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me 
 have." 
 
 As it was not a ghost, neither was it a reminiscence 
 which took delusive shape in their minds. They 
 would have soon got tired of announcing as a fact 
 what in sober moments they would know was but a 
 mental illusion. It could not have been a reminis- 
 cence for the further reason that Christ went on with 
 His teaching. He opened their minds to the under- 
 standing of the scriptures. He revealed the new 
 name of God, which they knew not before. He gave 
 them the royal power of administering absolution. 
 He established the sacrament of Holy Baptism. 
 
 He rose from the dead and was with the Apostles 
 off and on during forty days. Rising in triumph over 
 death, it was but natural, as the benefit was for all 
 the world, He should appear in Judea and in Galilee 
 of the Gentiles. 
 
 The Apostles saw Him in the house, by the lake, 
 in the evening, at daybreak, at all times, and listened 
 to His instruction and received His gifts which were 
 embodied in institutions. 
 
 Then He led them out to Bethany, and according 
 to His promise that He would ascend into heaven, 
 openly, in broad daylight, He ascended till the cloud 
 received Him out of their sight. Not only did He 
 promise it, but one whole Book of the New Testa- 
 ment, which might be called the Gospel of the 
 Ascension, bears witness to it. Thus He the divinely
 
 THE GREAT CREDENTIAL 69 
 
 sent and commissioned Teacher, whose words and life 
 prove His divinity, rose from the dead and ascended 
 to the Right Hand of Power. 
 
 What a light this Great Credential throws upon His 
 whole life. He was, as St. John declares, the Word 
 Incarnate. God had wrapped round His divine na- 
 ture our humanity, that through it He might set forth 
 the Divine Life. 
 
 We need not be staggered by the consideration 
 that this planet is a small one. God loves little 
 things. He loves to hide Himself. He comes to the 
 little nation. He is born in the little town. So He 
 comes to the small planet. Yet as He comes into the 
 world for all men, He comes into creation for the 
 benefit of the whole of it. The universe is a unit and 
 God enters it that He might unite all things in Heaven 
 and earth in Himself. 
 
 He has thus given us proof of His divine nature 
 by His resurrection. No wonder that one who had 
 so supernatural an exit from this world should have 
 an equally supernatural entrance. As our first parents 
 could not have been derived from a preceding pair, 
 but must have been singly produced, so when Creation 
 advances to a new stage, the new Head and Type is 
 produced in like unique manner. Christ Himself 
 bore testimony to His own pre-existence. Blessed S. 
 Joseph declares he is not His earthly father. The 
 sanctity of the ever Blessed Virgin bears witness to 
 the testimony S. Luke has recorded. God the Word 
 became Flesh. 
 
 What wonder, then, that when He was born all 
 creation was present at His birth to honour it. The
 
 ;o CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 stars, created it may be for the very purpose, shone 
 at His birth. One especially formed or angel-borne 
 guided the Magi from their Eastern home. The 
 angel hosts and chorus from off the great rood 
 screen of the skies, jewelled and lit with its many 
 thousand lamps, chanted the glad gospel of peace and 
 of good-will to man. All nations were represented 
 by Jew and Gentile; the shepherds and the kings 
 came to do Him homage. The high and low, the 
 rich and poor, man and woman, surround His cradle 
 throne. There, too, are the kneeling or waiting cattle, 
 and the sheep of the flock, and the produce of the 
 earth, the straw of the manger, and the mineral gifts 
 of the kings. When the Lord of creation entered it, 
 most fittingly all creation was representatively present. 
 Most naturally, too, when He entered on His work, 
 all creation acknowledged Him as its Lord. The 
 winds and waves obey His command. He controls 
 the law of gravitation by a greater law, and walks 
 on the sea. He is Master of the law of the extension 
 of matter, and multiplies the loaves. The fishes obey 
 His behests and gather in crowds into the net. The 
 fig tree withers away at His condemnation. The 
 Roman soldiers go back and fall to the ground at 
 His simple word. Sickness and disease flee before 
 Him who is the life itself. The blind regain their 
 sight, the lame walk, the lepers are healed, death 
 gives up its prey and the dead are raised.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 CHRIST'S TEMPTATION 
 
 IT is easy to imagine a reader now saying, you have 
 surrounded Christ with a divine halo, but in doing 
 so you have taken Him away from me. I have been 
 drawn to Him by the attractions of His crystalline 
 character, the inspirations of His exalted teaching, and 
 His wondrous, never-exhausted sympathy. He would, 
 I feel sure, know my case, the baffling impotences of 
 my mental powers, the tortuous ways of my self- 
 deceiving heart. His invitation was world wide, 
 " Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy 
 laden, and I will refresh you," and " Whosoever 
 cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out." 
 
 But if He was divine how was it possible for Him 
 to be tried and tempted? If temptation was only 
 like a dart thrown against some invulnerable 
 shield, how can He know what it is? How sympa- 
 thize with us, round whom, from youth to age, temp- 
 tation's " poisoned arrows hurtle," changing with 
 advancing years, but ever present. How know of 
 
 That dreary sickness of the soul ; 
 
 When all the generations of mankind, 
 
 With all their purposes, their hopes and fears, 
 
 Seem nothing truer than those wandering shapes 
 
 Cast by a trick of light upon the wall.
 
 72 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 How know of those fierce contentions between clam- 
 orous desire and exacting duty, the lassitude of 
 weakness and the necessity of exertion ; the enticing 
 influences of affection and the calls to self-sacrifice ; 
 the anger-arousing exasperations of false accusations 
 and the law of Christian charity? 
 
 How can He be an example to us if it was impos- 
 sible for Him to know our strain of trial? Yet on 
 the other hand, if He was divine, how can He be 
 tempted? There is no root nor tendency to lawless- 
 ness in any portion of His nature, as there is in us, to 
 which temptation can appeal. So we are seemingly 
 shut up in this trying dilemma. Either He could be 
 tempted and thus was not divine, or He could not be 
 tempted and therefore He is no example for us. 
 
 In addressing ourselves to the solution of this 
 problem, we must first say that it is revealed truth 
 that Christ was tempted. " He was in all points 
 tempted like as we are, yet without sin." Therefore, of 
 the reality of His temptations there can be no doubt. 
 They are a ground of our supplication in the litany. 
 We not only plead by Christ's priceless Cross and 
 Passion, but by His temptation. " By thy Baptism, 
 Fasting, and Temptation, good Lord, deliver us." 
 
 How, then, can we reconcile His temptation with 
 His absolute sinlessness? How can one who is holy, 
 harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, be tempted? 
 We must admit that the mere presentation of a temp- 
 tation would not satisfy the conditions of the case. 
 Yet it is in this way that some theologians have stated 
 it. To be in a real and true sense a temptation there 
 must not only be something placed before the will,
 
 CHRIST'S TEMPTATION 73 
 
 but a conscious strain between conflicting desires 
 requiring a choice. 
 
 There were three kinds of temptations to which our 
 Lord while being perfectly sinless was perpetually 
 exposed. First, He was bound to be true to the 
 human nature He had assumed. Human nature in 
 its struggle for righteousness had been defeated. It 
 bore the marks of its defeat upon it in its obvious 
 weakness to rectify itself. Christ came on behalf of 
 man to fight over his lost battle and to reverse his 
 defeat. Therefore, He took upon Himself that nature, 
 and became man. He became thus the second Adam, 
 or new Head of a new race. As temptation is a 
 necessity of a progressive life, affecting angels and 
 men, Christ as the second Adam had to be tried. 
 
 The first source of trial would be in our composite 
 nature. He had, like us, to suffer from hunger, thirst, 
 and weariness. There is no sin in experiencing any 
 of these natural desires, and they may be severe. 
 We know our Lord was an hungered after His great 
 forty days' fast. It left Him a wan and emaciated 
 figure. We see how weary He was when the 
 Apostles took Him as He was into the boat, or when 
 He sat so tired at Samaria's well. But the unrelax- 
 ing calls of duty ever triumphed over the feebleness 
 of the flesh. 
 
 The peculiarity of our Lord's temptations arises 
 from the fact that he possessed a divine power by 
 which all bodily pains could be set aside. This was 
 a second and a persistent source of temptation. It 
 was the temptation to use His divine power for 
 the reliefer the support of His human nature. Now
 
 74 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 this was the very thing He was not to do. He had 
 assumed our nature and identified Himself with it to 
 retrieve its defeat. He was to present to God human 
 nature as perfectly obedient to the divine will. Thus 
 He was to fulfil the original conception of God in 
 creating a creature endowed with free will, who should 
 reflect His image. It would therefore have violated 
 the very purpose for which He came, if He had used 
 His divine power to protect or defend Himself. In 
 Him humanity was to triumph. It was to rise to the 
 height God had designed for it. It was to be victori- 
 ous in the necessary strife. His humanity might be 
 aided by the Holy Spirit, as His followers may be. 
 But He must not draw on the resources of His divinity 
 to aid Him in the struggle. He may indeed do so in 
 aid of others. He may work miracles for others' 
 benefit. He may multiply the loaves to feed the fam- 
 ishing multitude. But He must not turn the stones 
 into bread to save His own life. He may assuage the 
 pains of the diseased, open the eyes of the blind, raise 
 the dead, but not for a moment may He use that 
 divine power for His own deliverance. It is true that 
 when His enemies take up stones to kill Him He 
 hides Himself and goes out of the temple, but this is 
 not in the spirit of shunning death, but of saving Him- 
 self for that more cruel death to which He was 
 appointed. 
 
 Again, a third source of temptation arose from the 
 fact that the plan of the world's redemption had been 
 laid down for Him. He found in Holy Scripture His 
 Redeeming life-work traced out. This explains how 
 frequently it is said " that the scripture might be ful-
 
 CHRIST'S TEMPTATION 75 
 
 filled." He cast His human mind into its mould. 
 He will not take the offered anaesthetic at the Cruci- 
 fixion, that the Word of God might be kept. He was 
 obedient from childhood to this rule, which governed 
 His whole life. He was to fulfil every prophecy and 
 every type of the promised Messiah. He will not 
 descend, before the assembled worshippers in the 
 temple, from its pinnacle and so gain their adher- 
 ence. He will not take the kingdoms of the earth 
 from Satan, by doing homage, because He is to win 
 the kingdom by a victory over him. That victory 
 was to be won on the battle-field of the cross. It had 
 been ordained that the feet that should press the eter- 
 nal stairway should be marked by the nail-prints, and 
 the hand that should grasp the royal sceptre should 
 be a pierced hand. 
 
 Our Lord was therefore under a perpetual strain, 
 first by reason of the composite human nature as- 
 sumed, and next by a more trying one through union 
 of that human nature with His divinity; and also by 
 virtue of the plan ordained for man's redemption to 
 which He was to conform. 
 
 These causes led at special times and crises to 
 more severely felt trials. When, for example, He 
 was so exhausted after His first prolonged fast. Try 
 and think what condition His body was in after that 
 terrifically weakening mortification. Painters have 
 loved to delineate the Christ in a form of exceeding 
 grace and beauty. But He began His ministry in 
 this emaciated condition, and His three years' labors, 
 having no place wherein to lay His head, and having 
 at times to supply His bodily wants with the raw ears
 
 76 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 of corn, left Him so worn that at the crucifixion His 
 enemies stand jeering at Him. 
 
 But why did He, unlike a human teacher who knows 
 His life is a valuable one, so begin His ministry? One 
 reason undoubtedly was that as has been stated He 
 came to identify Himself with us and fight over again 
 for us our lost battle. So He took His stand beside 
 us, where our sins had placed us, not in paradise, but 
 in the wilderness. He places Himself without the 
 gates kept by the flaming Cherubim to win for man 
 an entrance into the tree of life. But another reason 
 was that by taking on Himself the results of sickness 
 He might be in all points tempted as we are, yet 
 without sin. He made His body to feel weakness 
 and racking pain, that no sufferer but should know He 
 had felt the same. Then when His bodily nature has 
 been so reduced, as we may say to its last gasp, He 
 is assailed by a most subtle temptation. The temp- 
 tation to satisfy nature in order to save His life for the 
 sake of others. To exert His rightful divine power 
 and turn the stones into bread. Why not? What 
 withheld Him? This: He was to be true to the 
 nature He had assumed. If for one moment He had 
 ever failed in being true to the conditions of His 
 humanity, His work for man's redemption had been 
 undone. 
 
 We are apt to think that only on the one occasion 
 of the wilderness was our Lord tempted. It was 
 indeed a special trial. So it was when, in more 
 subtle ways than Satan's argument, there came from 
 a loved disciple the insinuating plea, " Be it far from 
 Thee, O Lord." The strength of the rebuke to Peter
 
 CHRIST'S TEMPTATION 77 
 
 tells us of the strength of the appeal he made to 
 Christ. Satan left Him, we know, for a season only, 
 for He said to His Apostles, "Ye are they which have 
 continued with me in my temptations." 
 
 It is therefore for us to realize that our Lord was 
 under constant fire and a perpetual strain. In this 
 His trial differed from that of the angels and of 
 man. God placed before the angels their trial, but 
 it was only one. He made it short. The obedient, 
 humble, and faithful rose by their choice of God into 
 the enfolding protection of the Divine Light. He 
 gave to the first Adam one simple test of obedience, 
 by which he might secure his proffered supernatural 
 reward. But the second Adam had no such brief 
 probation. It lasted from infancy to the end. 
 
 It affected and tried all portions of His human 
 nature. So it was with the test presented to the first 
 Adam. Adam was to abstain from the forbidden 
 fruit. This was a discipline, however slight, of the 
 body. He was to remember the particular tree and 
 the Lord's command, and this was a discipline of the 
 memory. He was to obey the injunction not to eat, 
 and this involved the submission of the reason and 
 the will. The tree became thereby his offering, by 
 which he offered himself. It tested all portions of his 
 nature. So it was with Christ He came and passed 
 through all the stages of our mortal life. He came 
 not as the first Adam did, in the fulness of His 
 powers. Christ lay first of all a helpless infant in the 
 arms of His Blessed Mother. He is to sanctify every 
 human stage and is to be true to its conditions. He 
 joined our human nature to His divine nature in
 
 78 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 His one personality. So He who lies in Mary's arms 
 is God. But He must, to redeem us, be true to the 
 conditions of infancy. Neither His Mother's loving 
 caress nor threatened danger must lead Him to 
 break the law of infancy by word or sign. He is 
 God bound, so far as this exercise of His omnipo- 
 tence is concerned, in swaddling bands. His mental 
 powers undergo the same discipline. He is subject 
 to earthly parents, though He knows how mistaken 
 they often are in their judgments. He obeys S. 
 Joseph in the carpenter's shop, though assured that 
 the directions he gives are far from the most scien- 
 tific and correct. He submits His human reason to 
 God's will as revealed for Him in the Holy Scrip- 
 tures. He follows and keeps it as His rule of life. 
 He surrenders also His soul to the Holy Spirit, and 
 is led in all things by Him. 
 
 He comes not to do His own will or speak His own 
 message. " As I hear, so I speak." " The Word is 
 not mine, but His that sent me." In all ways He was 
 to be tempted like ourselves. As He was to subor- 
 dinate His reason to revelation, so was He to sup- 
 press and discipline a rightful mental curiosity. Of 
 all things that we may suppose Him most anxious 
 to know was the time when the kingdom would be 
 consummated by His return in glory. Yet of that 
 day and that hour He said, "knoweth no man but my 
 Father only." His human mind could have known 
 it at any time, for it was united with His divine 
 nature. It enjoyed perpetually what we call the 
 beatific vision. He had but to look into it and this 
 knowledge would have been His. But it was part of
 
 CHRIST'S TEMPTATION 79 
 
 His discipline not to know. He must keep the cur- 
 tain drawn down over that source of information. He 
 must undergo the temptation that besets our curiosity 
 and impatient desire to know what has not been re- 
 vealed, or seek to be wise above that which is fitting. 
 What a help to us in learning to be content with our 
 partial knowledge, and to walk by the light of faith. 
 So also was Christ tried in His affections. There 
 has been no human relation so radiantly beautiful 
 with love as that which bound Jesus and His Blessed 
 Mother. 
 
 " Two were they, yet in heart and purpose one. 
 Two like the brain whose halves ne'er think apart, 
 But beat and answer to one loving heart." 
 
 How marvellous must have been that intercourse for 
 thirty years, where every word was freighted with 
 divine inspiration, and every kiss a sacrament of 
 grace. The wonderful degree of Mary's sanctity is 
 seen in her sublime standing in perfect faith and 
 self-surrendering restraint and co-operation with Him 
 at the foot of the cross. How were their hearts not 
 united to one another by divine grace. Can we not 
 think it was an inexpressible pain to our Lord when 
 the hour came that He must separate Himself from 
 her and go forth to His work? It was a trying 
 ordeal to leave her who had no other support, and to 
 abandon her to God's providential care. Such in 
 smaller way it may be known to souls who leave father 
 and mother, husband and wife, and go forth at duty's 
 call. Our hearts almost break under the struggle. 
 But He would be tempted in all points like as we are,
 
 80 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 and teach us how no earthly love should hold us back 
 from obeying the call of God. 
 
 So too was His heart pierced and tried, with Phari- 
 sees and scribes, with the hardness of their hearts, 
 with their exasperating contentions, and the rejection 
 by His own people. Is there a more heartrending 
 scene than when our Lord is beheld looking with 
 His divine tenderness into all that lay before Jeru- 
 salem? We see Him, the strong Man, breaking down 
 in tears over it. " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that 
 killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent 
 unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy 
 children together, even as a hen gathereth her 
 chickens under her wings, and ye would not! " 
 
 No portion of our Lord's nature escaped its trial. 
 His moral nature as well as His intellectual one and 
 His affections. To see this we must follow Him step 
 by step through the indignities of trial. See how His 
 persecutors blindfolded Him, hustled Him about the 
 room, jeered at Him, mocked Him, how one with 
 terrible energy inflicted a blow, and another spat in 
 His face. We know how indignant we should feel 
 if we saw a friend subjected to such insults. We 
 know what feelings of anger would arise within us if 
 we were the subject of such outrages. And this feel- 
 ing would not in itself be wrong. Anger at what is 
 wrong, said the great Butler, is but a reflection of the 
 righteous wrath of God. It is right for us to feel 
 indignant at cruelty and wickedness, and we are want- 
 ing if it is not so. Now our Lord knew who He was 
 and what was due to Himself. He was God, whom 
 angels and saints adore. He might for our sakes
 
 CHRIST'S TEMPTATION 81 
 
 lay aside His glory, but He could not lay aside the 
 dignity of His royal person. And beyond our con- 
 ception of it, He felt the wrong that was done Him. 
 God, we must remember, does not feel less because 
 He is so great, but the refinement of His moral 
 nature causes Him to feel more. Christ felt the in- 
 sults. But why does He not resent them? Why 
 not utter some word of condemnation? Because it 
 had been ordained for Him that He was to be both 
 priest and victim. He was to be the Lamb of God 
 who before His shearers was not to open His mouth. 
 There was thus the righteous indignation, repressed 
 by the duty of His being the victim. 
 
 If He is tried in His moral, so is He in His 
 spiritual nature. He had lived all His human life 
 with His soul in union with God and in the enjoy- 
 ment of the beatific vision. It gave Him that 
 majestic calmness and inward peace that neither 
 inquisitorial questions nor the howlings of the 
 maddened mob could disturb. His soul, like some 
 moon-lit lake, was ever reflecting the face of His 
 Father. But there came a time when the awful 
 vision of the world's sins and sinfulness passed be- 
 fore His soul. He had, to save it, identified Himself 
 with a lost race. He had been baptized, sinless as 
 He was in Himself, with the baptism of repentance. 
 He had come to be the representative penitent, and 
 to do penance on humanity's behalf. We see Him 
 doing this, bent beneath the olive trees of Geth- 
 semane. He beholds the sins of the race, and, as 
 if it were some filthy garment taken from a leper's 
 dead body, He wraps it about Himself. He feels
 
 82 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 that wretchedness of heart and wrong done to God 
 our Father by our wrongdoings. Rather, as if He 
 were the guilty one, for our sins, which He makes His 
 own, He weeps repentant tears of blood. We shall 
 never learn how to repent as we should till we kneel 
 beside Him there. Then was His soul, that had 
 been so full of gladness, sorrowful even unto death. 
 And so there came a conflict we cannot measure, but 
 a real one, ensuing in " not my will but Thine be 
 done." 
 
 No less terrible is that trial which awaits Him on 
 Calvary. Souls, Christian souls, often experience the 
 trial, and with it the temptations, of spiritual desola- 
 tion. They feel as though God had forsaken them. 
 Their hearts are withered and dry. They are in the 
 darkness and the great desolation. But did He not 
 pass that way too? Did He not, beyond what we can 
 measure, feel that loss? In those saddest moments 
 of the world's history, the Divine Sufferer exclaims, 
 " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" 
 It reveals a spiritual trial. It reveals also a victory 
 of faith. 
 
 Thus in all portions of His being and in all His 
 relations to God and man was He tried. It was 
 a persistent series of temptations, every one of 
 which resulted in a victory and every victory in the 
 development of a virtue. For He was not only to 
 win our lost battle, but to be the source of new vir- 
 tues to the race. Therefore, well may we, having 
 His numberless victories in mind, adoringly sing, 
 " Crown Him, crown Him with many crowns." 
 
 He not only can sympathize with us in all our trials,
 
 CHRIST'S TEMPTATION 83 
 
 but by His temptations borne for our sake He shows 
 His love towards us. We are often baffled by the 
 mystery of pain. The child cries out in its suffering 
 to His Heavenly Father, " Why did Thou make us 
 thus ? " We in part understand this plague and 
 torment by seeing that it develops character. With- 
 out it there could be no manly heroism, no friendly 
 sympathy. The common danger and suffering binds 
 comrades together more closely than any bond of 
 gold. It has been said no parents know how much 
 they love each other till they stand by the grave 
 of their child. For pain borne for another is love's 
 highest expression. We may manifest our love for 
 each other by words that burn in poets' brains. We 
 may show our love by gifts most costly and rare. 
 But love finds its most perfect expression in suffer- 
 ing. " Greater love has no man than this, that a man 
 lay down his life for his friend." Therefore it was 
 that God so came to us. It contented not the divine 
 heart to tell us by inspired prophets of His love. 
 It satisfied Him not to surround us with blessings 
 and gifts. The highest expression of love can alone 
 satisfy His love. He must come and die for us. 
 How this comes home to us as we think of Christ's 
 temptations on the cross. He hangs there through 
 all those hours of excruciating bodily pain. And this 
 is the peculiarity of His trial, that separates it from 
 that of the saints and martyrs. At any moment, by 
 a single wish, a single exertion of His divine power 
 He could have freed Himself. Not only could he 
 have come down from the cross, but remaining there, 
 have dismissed the pain. Try and think of any
 
 84 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 severe pain you have endured, and ask yourself what 
 you would have done if by a single act of will you 
 could have been free from it. What was it that 
 withheld the Divine Sufferer from the exercise of His 
 power? It was love. It was not the nails that 
 held Him to the cross, but love. His love for men 
 and their salvation was greater than the pain. It was 
 divine love, love for sinners, love for the guilty, love 
 for the lost that held Him there. It was love for 
 you and me. 
 
 You have, perchance, sometime been in some soli- 
 tary place and, all alone, watched the coming day. 
 Little by little the smaller stars faded from sight, 
 night's shades began to pass, the welcome heralds of 
 the dawn began to glimmer in the east, the broad 
 oriflammes of the day unfolded in majestic beauty, 
 the piercing sun's rays shone above the horizon, and 
 at last, gladdening the earth with its brightness, rose 
 the sun in its strength. As you have watched the 
 transformation you could but have felt that if indeed 
 you were all alone, and the only human being upon 
 the planet, all the grand machinery of stars and sun 
 and revolving earth must go on, that little you might 
 live. 
 
 So sometimes as you recall, and recall it well you 
 may on your knees, earth's greatest tragedy, and 
 look up at the Divine Sufferer, crucified for love, you 
 may come to know the truth, that if you were the 
 only human being in existence, the only living sinner, 
 just as truly as that sun must rise if you are to live, 
 so must Christ the Lord come and suffer and die, 
 that you may be saved. Out of Christ's temptations
 
 CHRIST'S TEMPTATION 85 
 
 consummated on the cross we need to gain this truth 
 and make it a home truth. " He loved me, and gave 
 Himself for me." Then as true love always must 
 make its response, and as far as it can a like return, 
 our response will be self-surrender to His love. It 
 must be love for love and life for life. As Thou gav- 
 est Thyself, Blessed Lord, to me, so, poor and weak 
 and imperfect as I am, I give myself to Thee, 
 
 " Just as I am, though tossed about 
 With many a conflict, many a doubt, 
 Fightings and fears within, without, 
 O Lamb of God, I come. "
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 CREATION is an expression of the thoughts of 
 God. Its progressive character shows it moves 
 to an end. United to God by His power through 
 His immanence, it progresses to a farther union, by 
 union with Him in Jesus Christ. For He, uniting 
 the human and divine natures, joins together thereby 
 the created and uncreated. This is the greatest, 
 grandest work of God. It is the consummation of 
 creation. Whether we agree or not with some modern 
 scientific thought, that this planet occupies a central 
 position and is alone inhabited with beings like our- 
 selves, by God's entering into it by way of the Incar- 
 nation He makes it a centre for spiritual influence 
 throughout the universe. The answer, then, to the 
 objection, why should God have come into so little a 
 planet, is, God comes into the universe and on its 
 behalf, and our planet is the point of His entrance. 
 For He came that according to His purpose " He 
 might gather together in one all things in Christ both 
 which are in heaven and which are on earth." 
 
 As Christians, we may hold that this was from 
 the first God's original plan. He designed to enter 
 creation and become incarnate, and so unite it to 
 Himself. The other, an also allowable view, is that 
 He came in consequence of man's fall. But this is
 
 ETERNAL LIFE 87 
 
 to make God's greatest, grandest work dependent on 
 His creatures' sin. We believe, on the other hand, 
 that God always intended to come, and man's sin did 
 not baffle God's purpose. He came, indeed, differ- 
 ently from what He would have done, and the remedy 
 of sin brought out the greatest expression of His love. 
 But as Maurice has said, "The fall did not frustrate 
 the scheme of God. It is wrong to speak as if He 
 devised a scheme as a remedy for the consequences 
 of the fall. Christ was before all things, and by Him 
 all things consist. In Him He created man, and His 
 incarnation, though it came later than the fall, was 
 really in God's purpose before it." 
 
 Christ came to unite creation to God by a new tie, 
 by uniting man to God in Himself, and, since man 
 was alienated from God by sin and his nature marred, 
 to reconcile him to God and restore his nature. It 
 was by the Cross this work was to be effected. A 
 late French critic maintains that Christ did not expect 
 to die. He considered Himself safe at the Passover 
 feast, because the rulers would not dare then to arrest 
 Him. He intended at its close to go immediately 
 into Galilee where He could meet His disciples. 
 Judas, learning of this project, forced the hand of the 
 high priests to arrest Christ during the feast or else 
 He would escape them. This precipitated the tragedy. 
 But Christ had not intended to die, and it was the 
 peculiar genius of S. Paul, rilled with his Jewish ideas 
 of sacrifice, that originated the idea of a redemption 
 through Christ's death. 
 
 But this theory breaks down before two facts. 
 The prophets had foretold the suffering death of
 
 88 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 the Messiah. They had pictured almost every inci- 
 dent of it and had assigned to it a redemptive value. 
 " He was wounded for our transgressions, He was 
 bruised for our iniquities : the chastisement of our 
 peace was upon Him ; and with His stripes we are 
 healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; and 
 the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." 
 The other fact is that Christ foretold His crucifixion 
 long before it occurred. " If I be lifted up, I will 
 draw all men unto me." He taught the disciples 
 that the Son of Man would be " delivered into the 
 hands of men, and they shall kill Him." * He earnestly 
 desired it. He said, " I have a baptism to be bap- 
 tized with and how am I straitened till it is accom- 
 plished." He asked S. John and S. James, who 
 sought to sit on His right hand and left, whether 
 they could be baptized with the baptism He was 
 baptized with? He clearly declared to them the re- 
 demptive character of His death. The Son of Man 
 came " to minister and to give His life a ransom for 
 many." No question can be raised here concerning 
 the word Christ uses. He came to be a " ransom." 
 
 So likewise at the institution of the Last Supper, 
 He said, " Take ye, this is my body." " This is my 
 blood of the new covenant which is poured out for 
 many." We cite from S. Mark's Gospel where we 
 have the shortest form of the institution. But it is 
 sufficient for our purpose and the others agree with it. 
 Our Lord is contrasting His blood with the blood of 
 the victims under the old covenant. He implies 
 thereby that He also is a victim and His blood is 
 
 * S. Mark ix. 31.
 
 ETERNAL LIFE 89 
 
 shed in sacrifice. As the blood of the old sacrifice, 
 sprinkled upon the people, established them in a cov- 
 enanted relation with God, so His blood would be shed 
 for the benefit of many. As S. Matthew records it, 
 "This is my blood of the new covenant which is 
 shed for many for the remission of sins." J Christ 
 came therefore to die, not as a martyr, or to give an 
 inspiring example of stoic endurance, or to deliver us 
 mortals from the fear of death, but " to give Himself 
 a ransom," 2 " being made sin," 3 *. e., the sin-victim, 
 for us, that we might have " redemption through His 
 blood, even the forgiveness of sins." 4 
 
 Without attempting, what is beyond us, an exhaus- 
 tive theological analysis of Christ's ransom work on 
 Calvary, yet we may be helped to a practical consid- 
 eration of this mystery, by noticing the threefold 
 effects of sin which were by the cross removed. 
 
 First, sin separates man from God. Secondly, man 
 becomes the servant of him whom he obeys. Thirdly, 
 by sin man mars his own nature. It was to rectify 
 these three evils that Christ endured the cross. 
 
 The whole work of man's redemption has its source 
 in the love of the ever Blessed Trinity. It was a con- 
 ception of Milton, erroneous as audacious, that im- 
 agined a divergence between the Father and the Son. 
 God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost 
 loved the creature He had made and came to rescue 
 him from his evil and turn the evil into good. 
 
 1 S. Matt. xxvi. 28. 2 Cor. v. 21. 
 
 2 S. Matt. xx. 28. I Col. i. 14.
 
 90 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Another truth helps us. God deals with us as in- 
 dividuals, but also in our collective capacity. He 
 deals with us as families, as nations, and as a race. 
 There is great love and wisdom in God's doing this. 
 As a race, we are possessed of a common human 
 nature. In this we are unlike the angels. They are 
 created by God's fiat, in all their beauty, one by one. 
 God created human nature differently. He created a 
 nature and gave to it a law by which it extends itself. 
 All individuals share in that human nature and are 
 members of it. It accounts for that sympathy which 
 like a hidden force binds humanity together. Now this 
 nature abused its glorious prerogative, and, becoming 
 disobedient, separated itself from the grace of God. 
 
 How was it to be restored to God's favor? Did 
 God's anger need to be appeased? God, we venture 
 to think, needed nothing done to make Him love His 
 child. He had made him. He knew the temptations 
 to which he would be exposed. He knew whereof 
 we were made, He remembered we were but dust. 
 His child's misery only called into exercise the love 
 of His mercy. Sin or lawlessness is repellant to 
 His nature. But He loved His child, perhaps like 
 some earthly father, all the more for the wrong he 
 did to himself by his fall. 
 
 But if God loved His creature, did not His justice 
 or righteousness require that some penalty should be 
 undergone on the part of man, or his representative, 
 before a reconciliation should take place? This has 
 been pressed in modern times by some, to the extent 
 of a mercantile theory. According to it, for every 
 transgression, satisfaction must be made by a deter-
 
 ETERNAL LIFE 91 
 
 mined amount of pain. We need not say we do not 
 hold this theory. But in one sense (there may be 
 others), we can see why the justice and righteousness 
 of God demanded that a reparation should be made. 
 God, with an infinite love, loved His child, grieved 
 over his childlike folly and sins and falls and wicked- 
 ness. In spite of all his errors God's great heart 
 loved him beyond what earthly love can compass or 
 express. But while His child remained in a rebellious 
 attitude, God could not for His child's sake, or in 
 justice to Himself, treat him as He otherwise would. 
 The rebellion of the child hindered the free action of 
 God's love to him. For sin had created a barrier 
 between man and God. It was this barrier Christ did 
 away. Having taken upon Himself our human nature, 
 He became its representative. And acting for the 
 race, He became its representative penitent. Be- 
 neath the olive trees He wept, on the cross He 
 endured sin's penalty. He culminated a life-long 
 obedience by an obedience unto death. It was a 
 great price to pay, but so He paid it. Human nature, 
 on the cross, turned in obedient love to God. The 
 handwriting that was against us was done away. 
 The restraint upon the action of God's love was 
 removed. God and man were reconciled. 
 
 II 
 
 Again, man by his lawlessness brings himself under 
 the control of sin. Sin winds its cords about him 
 by ever-tightening habits. They seem at first light 
 as gossamer, but become as steel. The flippant, 
 cynical reason holds in prison the spiritual nature.
 
 92 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 The proud, rebellious will easily rules the unbeliev- 
 ing heart. Unseen, yet not without power, stand 
 close to us evil spirits who tempt us, as well as 
 angels who guard. He who knew, as we do not, 
 the unseen world, has revealed to us Satan's malefic 
 power. Serving evil spirits, men have so far come 
 under their control as to be in a degree possessed by 
 them. Sin, too, brings its own punishment. Sin, 
 when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Christ, for 
 those who are united to Him, changes death into a 
 gate of life. For others it is only a prelude to that 
 separation from God which is death eternal. 
 
 Now Christ by His cross delivered us from our 
 foes sin, Satan, and death. The cross rises 
 between earth and heaven, for by it God and man 
 are reconciled. It stretches laterally, and on its 
 transverse beam the blessed hands were nailed. 
 The cross was not only Christ's altar whereon He 
 as our high priest pleaded for our ransom ; it was also 
 a throne from which as the king He exercised His 
 sovereign power of forgiveness, His pulpit from 
 which He preached. It was a battle-field where He 
 fought with Satan, and all the powers of darkness, 
 and with death, and conquered. He delivered human 
 nature from the dominion of their powers. Death 
 had no dominion over Him nor those members who 
 are His. He delivered us from these our foes at a 
 great cost. As soldiers are said to have redeemed 
 their country, taking it out of the enemy's hand at 
 the cost of their lives, so Christ, our Redeemer, 
 redeemed us, and paid this great ransom. By Christ 
 man was set free, in Him men may be freed.
 
 ETERNAL LIFE 93 
 
 III 
 
 The third thing Christ did by the cross was to 
 restore and elevate man's nature. 
 
 And here we may notice the significant fact that 
 there are two distinct sheddings of the precious 
 blood. It flows down from His bleeding head, His 
 blessed hands and pierced feet. Through His long 
 agony it flowed from the wounds of His holy body. 
 But when this was over, and the " It is finished " was 
 said, there came another outpouring from His 
 pierced side. The soldier's lance that pierced to 
 the heart and caused the water and the blood to 
 flow added nothing save an indignity to Christ's 
 work of redemption. That work was over with the 
 dismissal of His Spirit into His Father's hands, the 
 offering unto death was then made. The merits, 
 infinite by reason of the infinite dignity of His per- 
 son, were all accumulated. Why then did the divine 
 economy provide for this second and independent 
 blood-shedding? Because human nature had not 
 only to be reconciled and redeemed, but restored. 
 
 Man needed four great aids to achieve his proper 
 greatness. He needed greater light concerning him- 
 self and destiny than nature alone could give. But 
 if this was his only need, God could have satisfied it 
 by sending angels who week by week might teach 
 us our duty and our destiny. But man wants some- 
 thing more than light. Angels might bring it to us. 
 But moral truth in abstract form would little profit 
 us. Angels with more than human eloquence might 
 present it to us, but we should reply, you have not a
 
 94 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 nature like our own and you cannot understand us. 
 What man cries out for, is truth and life embodied in 
 an example. It must be in a form that we can see. 
 It is one who goes before us, that says, step where I 
 step, take my hand, lean on my arm. 
 
 This is what we know Christ came to do. He is 
 our great exemplar. But if this was all we needed, 
 why should He not have come as the first Adam is 
 believed to have come? Why did He not take on 
 Himself the nature of man, formed from the dust, or 
 in some other way? Why did He humble Himself 
 to be born of a virgin? Why did He not appear, as 
 we find Him in His public life, and so set us an 
 example of the ideal man? If we only needed a 
 great exemplar He might have done so. But what 
 we also needed was to be delivered from the pangs 
 of conscience, the burden of sin, and to be reconciled 
 to God. Man had sinned and needed forgiveness. 
 And so, that He might deliver the race, God entered 
 into the race. He made Himself one with it. He 
 took our nature on Him in the womb of the Blessed 
 Virgin. He did not become like one of us, but one 
 of us. And so, as our representative, effected the 
 At-one-ment for the race and opened the way for 
 man's pardon. 
 
 But if the work stopped with our reconciliation and 
 pardon, why, when our Lord had effected it, did He 
 not lay aside the nature He had assumed? Why 
 should He not only rise from the tomb with it, but carry 
 it into heaven? Why wear it now and for all eternity? 
 Yet this is a fundamental Christian truth. The rea- 
 son is, because man needs not only acceptance and
 
 ETERNAL LIFE 95 
 
 pardon, but restoration. " No remission of penalty," 
 said S. Athanasius, " or equivalent compensation, no 
 fiat of God's will would have sufficed ; there was 
 needed a change in man himself." " It is not only 
 the penalty for sin, but sin itself, from which man 
 must be freed. The condition of deadness within 
 him must be quickened into life." 
 
 Of the forgiveness of sin and deliverance from its 
 effects nature knows nothing. " Each of us," said 
 Bishop Alexander, of Derry, " is set down in the 
 perilous game of life to contend with a player who is 
 perfectly fair but absolutely remorseless. Play but 
 one pawn ill, and you must abide the consequences. 
 You cannot take back a single move. You have to 
 do with the passionless majesty of an order that can 
 never be broken, with the pitiless sequence of an 
 unforgiving necessity. You are in the grasp of a 
 tyrant who says 
 
 " Fool ! All that is at all 
 Lasts ever. Past recall." 
 
 But what nature cannot do, Christ can. 
 
 As symbolizing this and proclaiming the means, 
 Christ's side is opened and the water and the blood 
 stream out. This mystery of the precious blood 
 declares to us that as Eve was formed out of the side 
 of Adam, so the Church, the second Eve, should be 
 formed from out the side of the second Adam, the 
 head of the new race. We can thus better under- 
 stand the text, " As in Adam all die, even so in Christ 
 shall all be made alive." We do not die in Adam 
 by believing in him, or by any mental connection 
 with him. We die in Adam because we are connected
 
 96 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 with him by an actual and real contact of natures, 
 through descent. Even so in Christ we are to be 
 made alive; not by any act of faith or trust or 
 repentance merely, but by union of our natures with 
 His. And the only way ordained by which this can 
 be secured is by the sacraments. For human nature 
 needed not only light, an exemplar, pardon, but 
 healing of its wounds, restoration, the invigoration by 
 a new, divinely given energy. So the water and the 
 blood are extended to us through the divinely ordered 
 channels of grace. We are by them incorporated 
 into Christ, are inoculated with His life, made par- 
 takers of His victory over sin and death, are crucified 
 to self and the world through union with His crucifix- 
 ion, are buried and risen with Him in newness of life, 
 and so pass through the living Door and Way, which 
 is Himself, to a joyful resurrection. 
 
 And here we may answer some questions we have 
 often heard. 
 
 If it is true that we are restored, not merely by 
 acts of faith but by an incorporation into the trium- 
 phant nature of Christ, how are the heathen and the 
 faithful Jews who lived before Christ to be saved? 
 Concerning the faithful dead who lived before Christ, 
 we know they did not go to heaven. One very satis- 
 factory reason is that for man heaven did not exist 
 Heaven is not only a place but a state in which man 
 enjoys the beatific vision of God. The human 
 nature of Christ was the first that possessed this vision 
 and it is as members of Christ and in Him that we 
 shall. The fathers of the Old Testament were in a 
 state of waiting and preparation. When our Lord
 
 ETERNAL LIFE 97 
 
 descended into Hades, He preached to them. He 
 delivered to them by word the same graces He gives 
 us, who are in the flesh, through the sacraments. 
 They had been justified by faith. They were just 
 men, justified by faith. But when Christ communi- 
 cated to them the grace of His humanity, they became 
 " the spirits of just men made perfect." Thus our 
 Lord provided for all the elect who had preceded 
 Him. The heathen, we are told, are a law unto them- 
 selves. But as the only way to eternal life is in and 
 through Christ, we may believe, as He provided for 
 the faithful Jews in that waiting world of " many 
 stations," so in some way He may reach them. 
 
 But then it is sometimes asked, why should God 
 have required all this process of Redemption : His 
 incarnation, redemption, suffering, machinery of 
 Church and sacraments? Why should not the 
 Almighty Father by a word of His power have 
 restored man and removed all evils from him? Grant- 
 ing that He could have done so, a difficulty would 
 yet remain. You complain that the scheme of 
 redemption does not look simple. You look at it 
 askance as being theological. Although there is 
 nothing very simple in this world, yet you want a 
 very simple solution of a matter the most intricate and 
 mysterious. Why, you ask, should not God have 
 determined the whole matter by a word of forgiveness 
 and restoration? But this difficulty would remain. 
 " How many times would you ask Him to go on 
 doing so? No forgiveness nor restoration by an 
 external word of power would secure man in a sinless 
 condition. As S. Athanasius said, man would then 
 
 7
 
 98 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 be worse off than he was in his original state because 
 he would have learned to sin. Moreover, if restored 
 in such wise he would be more likely, restoration 
 being found so easy, to sin again. So God would 
 have to go on eternally, and man would not be deliv- 
 ered from the power of sin, and evil would continue 
 in God's universe. 
 
 And this brings us to the final cause of the 
 Redeemer's work. He sought not only to provide a 
 way for man's forgiveness, deliverance, and restoration, 
 but to drive out sin and all evils from His universe. 
 He would complete creation, by so establishing it 
 that righteousness should reign forever. 
 
 If God's purposes are tending to so glorious a con- 
 summation our hearts should be filled with hope and 
 joy. Men, straining their eyes into the future, 
 prophesy great things for their country or for the 
 race. But " civilization is a self-limited elevator of 
 men." It rests on the law of inequality in men's 
 mental equipment and an unequal distribution of 
 wealth. It brings temptation as well as amelioration. 
 It has no specific remedy for the source of all evil, 
 sin. We know, too, how earthly kingdoms rise and 
 fall, and how the planet itself must run its course and 
 die. But the end of creation, revealed by Christ, 
 gives us the vision of a permanent kingdom that can 
 never dissolve and of a glory that will never pass 
 away. It secures forever the happiness of man and 
 reveals a purpose and an end of creation worthy of 
 God. 
 
 Do we in childish wonder ask, why did not God 
 begin by so making the universe? One reason is
 
 ETERNAL LIFE 99 
 
 because, in His great love, He desires us to work with 
 Him in the making of it. This is the greatest privi- 
 lege of man that he is allowed to be a co-worker with 
 God. If, for a short time and in a preparatory stage, 
 God allows sin and evil, it is that we, by a victory 
 over temptation, may be fitted for that further state. 
 God indeed might have so created us that, like the 
 plants and trees, we should have mechanically obeyed 
 His laws. But He has shown His omnipotence not 
 merely in making things, but in so making, that with 
 a free-will endowment His intelligent creatures might, 
 with His aid, rising to a higher degree of union with 
 God, make themselves. 
 
 But how is it that this condition of life and being is 
 to be eternally secured ? 
 
 To understand this we must know that there are 
 three degrees of union with God. First, man is united 
 to God by His power. We live and move and have 
 our being in Him. Next, as Christians we are united 
 to Christ, the God-Man, by grace. We are in Him 
 and He in us. Then there remains a third union 
 which is to come. Union with God in glory. In 
 Christ we may attain to the beatific vision and be 
 upheld, in a new way, in union with God's holiness 
 and bliss. 
 
 This final union with God is called the gift of eter- 
 nal life. "The gift of God is eternal life in Jesus 
 Christ our Lord." It is a gift, an added blessing, not 
 something that inherently belongs to our nature. It 
 is different from immortality. Immortality belongs to 
 us by the terms of our nature. The greatest of earth's 
 philosophic thinkers have believed this. What is so
 
 ioo CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 universal a desire in man's nature must have its satis- 
 faction. But there is a vast difference between natural 
 immortality and the gift of eternal life. Immortality 
 only assures us a future, it says nothing more. It tells 
 us nothing of the character of that future. It secures 
 us nothing in it. We merely know that we shall here- 
 after exist. 
 
 If, believing that we shall pass finally into some fair 
 heaven, pray ask yourself the question, what is to 
 secure your state or residence there? The angels 
 fell from heaven. Adam sinned in Paradise. You 
 may be sheltered there from many temptations, but 
 you will have yourself still to contend with. One sin 
 lost the angels their heavenly estate. One sin for- 
 feited for Adam Paradise. Any one spiritual sin 
 would shut out the brightness and joy of heaven from 
 the soul. It would fall like Lucifer. If then we are 
 merely elevated to a condition or place where our 
 position is only secure on our perfect obedience, is 
 this immortality to be desired? Is the warfare never 
 to cease? Is the struggle with self and temptation 
 never to be over? If this is so, take back, Mr. Phil- 
 osopher, your arguments about immortality. Under 
 this agonizing condition we don't want it. A heaven 
 in which we are not eternally secure is not desirable 
 and is no fitting climax to a divine creation. 
 
 The gift of eternal life makes our condition secure. 
 We enter into it, by a union by grace with Christ here 
 and attain in Him to a union with God in glory. 
 
 It is this final union with God that secures our 
 eternal happiness. For our real and true happiness 
 depends on our sinlessness. God is omnipotent, but
 
 ETERNAL LIFE 101 
 
 some things He cannot do. He cannot break His own 
 laws or violate His own nature. He cannot make 
 two and two five or make it right to tell a lie. And 
 He can only permanently secure men from falling 
 into sin but by uniting them in Christ to Himself in 
 glory. So the blessed souls who attain that state 
 may look down the opening avenues of eternity, and 
 know with absolute certainty that nothing can sepa- 
 rate them from the love and holiness of God, and 
 that in Him their estate is eternally secured. 
 
 But it may be asked, what of those who do not 
 attain this condition? What can we say but what 
 Christ has said ? There will come a time, how soon 
 we know not, when the drama of creation will come 
 to its last act ; when creation shall be perfected and 
 shine with radiant beauty, and God shall be all in all ; 
 when those who are eventually in Christ will rise up 
 into that final union with God in everlasting bliss ; 
 when, sad as it is to say it, there will be those who 
 miss their proffered end, and who will be lost. 
 
 But will not good eventually triumph over evil? 
 Shall there not come a time when truth and righteous- 
 ness shall triumph? Shall not God at last conquer 
 and banish all lawlessness and sin? Surely this con- 
 flict is not to go on forever? The good must win, 
 sin must disappear. 
 
 Very true, when the kingdom of glory begins sin 
 will cease. God's ideal creation will be complete. 
 But how is it that sin will cease ? In this wise : Those 
 who are gathered into the Divine Life and Light will 
 not sin, for they will be upheld in holiness by that 
 special union with God. Those who are left without
 
 102 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 will sin no more ; for, all grace being withdrawn, they 
 will not be able to act against it. They are in this 
 unhappy condition. They cannot separate them- 
 selves from the power of God, for that were to annihi- 
 late themselves, and to annihilate is an act of Deity as 
 great as to create. They cannot thus separate them- 
 selves from God and destroy themselves, but they 
 have separated themselves from the grace of God 
 and so ruined themselves. They continue in existence, 
 but their spiritual life is gone. They are in the dark- 
 ness, not in the light. 
 
 But should they ever repent could not God receive 
 them? 
 
 A superficial view might lead us to think this possi- 
 ble, but there are difficulties in accepting it. The 
 idea seems based on the theory that whenever man 
 repents God is bound to forgive him. Now God 
 has provided a way by which man can escape from 
 the evils he has brought on himself; if man does not 
 accept it, is God bound to do any more? If man 
 may go on, not only in this world but indefinitely for 
 ages in the next, defying God, and God is bound, 
 whenever man chooses to repent, to forgive him, we 
 have the spectacle of God dethroned, for God has 
 not conquered man, but man has conquered God. 
 
 Another difficulty is, that those in this condition 
 will feel no desire to repent. As they cannot sin be- 
 cause they have no spiritual life nor grace to sin 
 against, so also they cannot repent, for they have no 
 grace to repent with. One can no more repent with- 
 out grace than an animal can breathe in an exhausted 
 receiver.
 
 ETERNAL LIFE 103 
 
 What we must realize is that creation is a majesti- 
 cally progressive work. It proceeds under the im- 
 pulse of the Eternal Infinite Energy from stage to 
 stage. When one period, with its own productive- 
 ness and work is past, another succeeds. There is 
 no return; the door is shut. We see this written 
 everywhere in the great parable of nature. Take the 
 monkeys whose antics amuse us as children, but 
 whose strangely human faces repel us in later years. 
 As some biologists have said, we are descended or 
 developed from the same primordial germs. Only 
 there were some germs that corresponded to their 
 environment in one way and became humans, and the 
 others corresponded differently and became monkeys. 
 If the latter had at an earlier stage taken another 
 direction they would have developed to the higher 
 range of life. But they failed. They missed it. It 
 became lost to them. It is a permanent loss. They 
 are forever condemned to be monkeys. So it will be 
 for those men who will not correspond to their 
 Christian environment. They will miss their end, for- 
 feit what they might have been, and be lost 
 
 But we say, if a man is a good moral man, a good 
 citizen, good to his neighbors, public spirited, why 
 should he be lost? The reason is because he was so 
 self-willed and self-opinionated that he would not use 
 the means to be saved. Eternal life is not immor- 
 tality. It is a gift of God in Jesus Christ. It is, 
 being a gift, something added to nature. It is thus 
 a supernatural end offered to man. And a super- 
 natural end cannot be attained by natural goodness 
 or means. It can only be gained in Christ. There
 
 104 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 is no other name given under heaven whereby we 
 may be saved. 
 
 Unwilling to accept Christ's terms, men wrap them- 
 selves in the delusion that they are as good as most, 
 and that God must be a merciful God, and it is incon- 
 ceivable He would let any suffer an eternal loss. 
 
 True, most true is it, that God is goodness and 
 love itself. Most true is it that He is a merciful 
 God. He is so merciful that He sent His only-be- 
 gotten Son to suffer and die for us. Every drop of 
 blood that was shed, every agony He endured, tells of 
 His exceeding mercy and His love. 
 
 If tempted to reject His invitation, not to use the 
 means of union with Him, kneel down, and ask your- 
 self these questions: What could God have done 
 more than He has to show His love towards us? 
 How could His mercy have made the terms of salva- 
 tion easier than they are? If I reject His mercy ex- 
 tended now, how can I before His judgment seat 
 claim a mercy I have refused and rejected? If 
 obstinately acting on my own theories and opinions 
 I remain unmoved by love's entreaty and am lost, as 
 I shall be, whose fault will it be? Say it over again 
 and again to thyself, self-slain soul, Whose fault will 
 it be? 
 
 " As froth on the face of the deep, 
 
 As foam on the crest of the sea, 
 As dreams at the waking of sleep, 
 As gourd of a day and a night, 
 As harvest that no man shall reap, 
 
 As vintage that never shall be, 
 Is hope if it cling not aright, 
 O Lord Christ, unto Thee."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 LOVE AND SERVICE 
 
 GOD is Love. It is the essence of His nature. 
 He is the eternal Fountain from which it 
 flows. It flows out to us through the channel of 
 Christ's humanity. It enters into us by the com- 
 munication of His Holy Spirit. He quickens and 
 develops our responsive love. With the love thus 
 given, we love Him who is love. With every fresh 
 inflowing of love we are united by love to Him and 
 love Him more. 
 
 Thus we have three manifestations of love, Love's 
 welcome, its progress, its response. 
 
 LOVE'S WELCOME 
 
 The soul that has turned to God has been wel- 
 comed by Him. No words can tell the joy of the 
 Ever Blessed One as He takes His child, by baptism 
 or absolution, into His embrace. For this He made 
 him, for this redeemed him, for this bought him at 
 His passion's cost. For this He besieged him with 
 His providences, for this sent after him the arrows 
 of His love, and. at last the dear work was accom- 
 plished and His child was won ; won from out sin's 
 enticements, and Satan's rule ; won from death's dark
 
 106 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 misery and hell's abode; won from the tyranny of 
 self, its pride and obstinacy and self-deceit. Every 
 so welcomed soul cherishes as an eternal treasure the 
 remembrance of God's unselfish love. 
 
 For what are we that He should so love us? We 
 need not contrast ourselves with the angels, nor with 
 so many of His servants. We have not the intellect 
 of great doctors like a S. Augustine or a S. Thomas, 
 not the practical skill of a Vincent, nor the devotion 
 of the martyr, nor the heroism of the religious. We 
 are not upon any reasonable ground needful to Him. 
 His work would go on successfully without us. 
 Neither are we so very estimable that Christ should 
 desire us. In every spiritual grace thousands sur- 
 pass us. When we look at ourselves, what do we 
 see? What weak sides, what defects, what faults. 
 Our companions and friends, kindly, perhaps, but 
 critically, recognize our failings. Their sharp eyes 
 have seen through all the barriers our conventual 
 life has thrown about us. Our enemies are keener 
 still. The soul, too, knows its own hidden faults. It 
 remembers how it has failed under some trial or 
 temptation. There has come possibly to it, by some 
 shock or divine enlightenment, a great revelation of 
 itself; its weakness, sloth, gluttony, or other fleshly 
 sins; its self-interest, self-seeking, self-deceit, insta- 
 bility, ambition, spiritual pride; its snobby worldli- 
 ness, veneered piety, moral cowardice, praise-seeking, 
 uncharitable gossiping, spiritual coxcombry and pre- 
 tence. Is there, then, anything about us to appear 
 comely in God's sight? Have you never felt what a 
 poor character, after all, you are? How little, too, you
 
 LOVE AND SERVICE 107 
 
 have accomplished for good? Have you never felt 
 disappointed with yourself? Have you not seen the 
 same old faults returning to assault and baffle you? 
 Possibly you have become weary at times with the 
 perplexing struggle, then thought that if persons 
 knew you as you know yourself they would not esteem 
 you. Thought there was no use of trying any more. 
 " For our life seemed but as an arrow flying in the 
 dark, aimless and unprofitable." 
 
 Now the answer to all this is, our Lord knows us. 
 He knows all our faults of mind and heart, all our 
 secret and open sins, all our murmurings, our weak- 
 ness, our spiritual decadence. He sees how full we 
 are of self and self-love, knows the whole coast of 
 our discontent, not a single declension escapes His 
 scrutiny, and He beholds our soul's weakness and 
 its hideousness, too. To the divine righteousness it is 
 a clotted mass of corruption. Yet He loves us; 
 loves us with the persevering energy of His divine 
 nature ; loves us with a love that only His passion 
 can express. 
 
 Well may we say, how unselfish is His love. We 
 are like lepers at His gate. But when we were sinners 
 Christ died for us. None, therefore, need to sit down 
 in brooding despondency over the past. God does 
 not despair of you, you must never despair of your- 
 self. He who knows thee loves thee. You can 
 trust that love. He knows thy weakness but He 
 knows His strength. He who healed the lepers, and 
 cast out devils, and raised the dead, and can blot out 
 the past, can recreate thee in Himself. However 
 long since our first conversion it may have been, yet
 
 io8 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 the Christian soul ever confesses His love to have 
 been long-suffering. He has forgiven when He might 
 have condemned. The fatal shears have not parted 
 the narrow thread of life. We have been unfaithful 
 to Him and He has not put us away. In spite of all 
 our neglectfulness, ingratitude, waywardness, our luke- 
 warmness, slothfulness, if not actual rebellion, the 
 patience of divine love has waited for us. It has 
 stood without our heart's door listening for our 
 slightest response. Yet how dull of hearing have 
 we been, how slow has been our progress. How 
 heedless of calls and warnings and promptings to the 
 higher path. How easily contented with a low attain- 
 ment. At times how presumptuous and again how 
 careless of grace. If a servant had treated the orna- 
 ments in our drawing-rooms as we have the precious 
 jewels committed to our care, the punishment of 
 discharge would have been speedily given. 
 
 While, then, bearing with us He has also been 
 most true. Working for our good He has sent checks 
 and disappointments and afflictions. Love sent them 
 all. It was all for one end. There is only one safe 
 resting-place for the heart of man and that is the will 
 of God. Thither would He woo us, thither constrain 
 us. Ofttimes He withdraws His spiritual favors, that, 
 like the bride in the canticles, we may arise and with 
 self-abandonment seek Him. If the soul feels it 
 must have exhausted, by its failures, every claim on 
 His mercy, feels it has so broken every promise as 
 to have no reliance on itself, still He does not aban- 
 don us. When the sky was dark, without a ray of 
 hope, when we were in despair because we could not
 
 LOVE AND SERVICE 109 
 
 break sin's chains, when we have been as one ready 
 to perish, He has stretched out His hand to save. 
 He would not let us sink beneath the dark waters. 
 When all seemed lost He has delivered us from the 
 lion's mouth. When the avenger's hot breath had 
 overtaken us, He has opened His arms as our city 
 of refuge. When bringing nothing back to our 
 Father's house but the soiled and tattered garment 
 of our sins, He has sent us the kiss of peace. 
 
 " The world's crowns and songs are for success. His 
 divine generosity gives them to the beaten, with the 
 dust of flight upon their clothes and the flush of 
 shame upon their brow. He tells them His gentlest 
 tales, and sings them His sweetest songs, and opens 
 to them His greenest meadows, and arches over them 
 His bluest sky. And why? That they may be sure 
 that the Shepherd can find His sheep, and the woman 
 her drachma; sure that the sighing of their shame 
 may be lost, like one discordant ripple in the great 
 deep swelling of the angels' songs." 
 
 II 
 
 LOVE'S PROGRESS 
 
 Our Christian life has been compared to a journey 
 divided into three sections, called the purificative, 
 illuminative, and unitive ways. The illustration has 
 its defects. The spiritual work belonging to each 
 condition may be simultaneously present. Nor do 
 we regularly proceed from one degree to another, 
 leaving the former behind. Our progress is rather 
 like a spiral one which while reverting, relatively, to
 
 no CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 a former position yet continually ascends. Thus in 
 every new level reached we find an occurrence of 
 these threefold features. 
 
 The purification comes first, but the soul finds 
 every advance is preceded by a fresh purificative 
 action. We never can lay it aside. The tree as it 
 the higher ascends strikes its roots wider and deeper 
 in the soil. Unto life's end the soul must ever be 
 accompanied by four faithful knights. So first, abid- 
 ing Sorrow, in his brown garb of penitence, with a 
 scourge for his weapon, rides by our side. The 
 good God has in His covenanted mercy accepted this 
 pilgrim's soul. Its soul may have been as scarlet, 
 but now is whiter than snow. The great joy of ac- 
 ceptance is ever singing Te Deums in his heart. The 
 more he comes to know of God's paternal pathetic 
 love, the more he loves, the more he sorrows; yet 
 the more he sorrows, the more he loves. His soul 
 reaching heavenward is covered like the mountain 
 tops whose snow-clad summits burn at morn and at 
 eve with hidden glory fires, but ever flowing down 
 the sides are the rivulets of penitence that keep the 
 humble valleys green. 
 
 Beside him also ride two other trusty knights, 
 Hate and Fear. 
 
 Hate is love with its vizor down and its lance at 
 rest. Hate is a most potential guardsman and a 
 great gift of God. It is a gift bestowed out of the 
 treasury of His own divine nature. God hates sin. 
 The wrath of the Lamb is beyond the terrible, it is a 
 consuming fire. It is equal and commensurate with 
 God's unmeasurable love. It is the love of the holy
 
 LOVE AND SERVICE in 
 
 and good and true turned against the unholy and evil 
 and false. No scenes of Nature displaying in her 
 most awful aspects the terrifying results of geologic 
 catastrophy, no appalling earthquake or whirlwind of 
 deathly sulphuric flames from belching volcanic moun- 
 tain can adequately give an idea of the wrath of God. 
 Doubtless, He has so ordered Nature that as she ex- 
 presses, when earth is clothed in summer beauty and 
 the lake reflects the heavens in silvered cadence, His 
 beauty and His love, so she declares in her gigantic up- 
 heavals volcanic eruptions and whirlwind and storm, 
 His Holy Wrath. The pilgrim needs to gather 
 the forces of his soul together that with a condensed 
 energy he may hate sin. He needs by constant acts 
 of will to develop this power. He must cultivate an 
 aversion and hatred to all that tends to it. He must 
 practise it diligently as men with care and time prac- 
 tise at rifle-shooting. It must become a cherished and 
 vigorously energetic principle of action. He must 
 constantly take the little sins and dash them against 
 the rock. He will pray that God give him of His own 
 wrath, so that with the wrath of God he will loathe, 
 detest, and hate whatever leads from duty and from 
 God. 
 
 Beside the pilgrim also as a loyal helper rides Holy 
 Fear. There is a carnal fear, a physical fear, a human 
 fear, which seems akin. But this fear is Holy Fear. 
 It, too, is a gift of God. Its characteristic is its wis- 
 dom. It is far-sighted. It looks ahead. It forecasts 
 trials and temptations. It is keen in seeing through 
 disguises. It reads men through their masks. It 
 quickly discerns the subtleties of Satan. It gives the
 
 ii2 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 soul a quick alarm at his approach. It exposes to 
 the soul its spiritual idleness, the sin that hides itself 
 under its murmurings, despondencies, low spirits, com- 
 plainings, criticisms of others. It bids it beware of 
 the self-righteousness that rests in self or anything 
 save Christ. It is a most watchful, keen-eyed knight, 
 and rides with dart or arrow in its hand. 
 
 And, not in front, but modestly behind, comes 
 Fortitude. For Christian Fortitude is not the earth- 
 born virtue painters have loved to portray, refulgent 
 in shining armor, with tower-like shield and lion- 
 like helmet, giving challenge with drawn sword to 
 all comers. There is no boasting about her. S. 
 Paul, who well might boast, does not say I have 
 fought a good fight, but the good fight. Christian 
 Fortitude is a Joan of Arc virtue, she rides in armor 
 clad, a woman still. She it is who stands by the 
 cross when the disciples all have fled. She shrinks 
 not from self-sacrifice, endures the weariness of the 
 way, waits patiently on God's slowness. Fortitude is 
 full of hope and trust. She knows God sits above the 
 water flood, and the final victory is secure. She has 
 no trust in earthly means nor weapons ; puts not her 
 trust in princes. Her motto is, " Let come what will 
 come, Thy will is well-come." Defeat by the world 
 is the way the world defeats itself. Her weapon, un- 
 like the others, is not seen. It is hid in her heart. 
 It is the weapon of Faith. This is the victory that 
 overcometh the world. With these four surrounding, 
 protecting aids, the soul makes progress in the puri- 
 ficative way. 
 
 But the child of God desires not only to be free
 
 LOVE AND SERVICE 113 
 
 from evil, but to be Christ-like. Along with all that 
 belongs to the stage of purification he would enter 
 the illuminative way. He would follow Christ's ex- 
 ample and in Him become a new creature, trans- 
 formed after His likeness. 
 
 It helps us to understand this process by remember- 
 ing the triple character of our nature. Man, so 
 Scripture describes him, is a triple unit. He consists, 
 as S. Paul asserts, of body, soul, and spirit. In 
 each of these portions of our being there is a 
 tendency to predominance ; the body seeks ofttimes to 
 rule over the soul, the soul over the spirit. In each 
 of the three departments of our nature there is thus 
 a possibility and tendency to disorder or sin. In 
 the body it is called sensuality, in the soul covetous- 
 ness, in the spirit, pride. From these three roots of 
 sin or lawlessness all sin proceeds. These separate 
 seeds of evil are called in Holy Scripture " the lust 
 of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of 
 life." The fitness of the first definition declares it- 
 self. The second applies to the soul. As the soul 
 looks out on the world through its window, the eye, 
 it inordinately desires the possession of what it sees. 
 This sin of covetousness is designated as the " lust of 
 the eye." As the spirit of man rises up in proud 
 rebellion against God, its sin is declared to be the 
 "pride of life." 
 
 While there are, then, three root sins in us, there 
 are three attractive external forces which incite and 
 develop them. These are the three powers we re- 
 nounce at our baptism, the flesh, the world, and 
 the devil. The flesh excites our carnal appetites, the
 
 114 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 world displays its enticing attractions, Satan seeks to 
 make us disobedient by appeals to our independ- 
 ence and pride. But over and against these three 
 enemies there are three powerful antagonistic forces, 
 our Lord's humanity, the kingdom of heaven, the 
 Holy Spirit. In union with our Lord's humanity we 
 find the victory over our flesh. The kingdom of 
 heaven reveals to us the lasting riches. In union 
 with the Holy Spirit man's spirit rises into the Di- 
 vine Sonship. He becomes a son of God in Christ. 
 
 In this illuminative way Christ becomes the model 
 of our new life. He is no mere historical figure. 
 By His grace He repeats His miracles of mercy in us. 
 He opens our eyes, and the verities of the faith are 
 seen in their correlated beauty. He unstops our ears, 
 and what was before distasteful becomes a treasured 
 message to our hearts. He loosens our tongues that 
 we be not ashamed to confess Him before men. He 
 calms the fever of passion, heals the swellings of 
 pride, cures our leprosy, casts out the evil spirits from 
 our hearts. He takes us into His company and, as 
 we follow Him, love makes us graciously like that 
 we love. 
 
 But ever and along with this advancement the soul 
 begins to enter into the unitive way. We may have to 
 wait till besetting sins are mastered and Christian 
 principles have become dominant. We may have to 
 endure the hardness of the wilderness before we come 
 to the Holy Land. But Beulah does not lie only at 
 the end of the Christian pilgrimage. God gives His 
 children from the first, in increasing degrees, peace 
 and joy in believing. In proportion as self dies,
 
 LOVE AND SERVICE 115 
 
 Christ reigns within us. The establishment of His 
 reign is a slow and progressive work. Human nature 
 is wont to hurry, God's works are ordinarily slow. 
 But sometimes, by special gift to souls needing pecu- 
 liar help, more often by patient progress, the Christian 
 soul becomes conscious of its union with God. It 
 ceases to struggle and labor in the same way it did 
 before. It enters more into a passive and receptive 
 state. It becomes more attentive to God's working 
 than its own. It meditates less, contemplates more. 
 It finds a mystical truth in the saying, " Blessed are 
 the dead that die in the Lord." It finds that we may 
 pass even here to a joyful spiritual resurrection. It 
 is " no longer I, but Christ that liveth in me." 
 
 As this union is the work of the Holy Spirit, it will 
 be helpful to note His progressive action towards 
 mankind. His great characteristic is the desire for 
 union. He it is who binds together in oneness the 
 Blessed Trinity. Respecting creation He is repre- 
 sented as brooding over and longing to enter into it. 
 He feels its alienation from God and with tenderest 
 love strives with man. But at first He operates upon 
 mankind from without. His sunshine falls upon man- 
 kind, but is not a light within them. He cannot 
 enter in and abide with a defiled and sinful nature. 
 Like the dove He may traverse humanity but can 
 find no place of rest. He can indeed bestow gifts on 
 individuals. Gifts of cunning workmanship and skill 
 for the adornment of the Tabernacle. He may in- 
 spire seers and prophets. Holy men of old moved 
 by Him may write the sacred scriptures. But within 
 man, as creation's point of contact with Himself, He
 
 ii6 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 cannot enter. At last, however, His divine longing 
 is satisfied. God becomes incarnate. Then in that 
 sinless humanity the Holy Spirit can find a home. 
 With this advancement of creation towards its des- 
 tined perfection, the Being of God is filled with joy. 
 Now at last the Holy Spirit can enter into creation 
 and begin a new union of it with God. And the 
 Spirit was given without measure unto Christ. The 
 Holy Dove finds at last its resting-place. The 
 humanity of Christ received it, the divinity of Christ 
 enabled Him to sustain this transcendent gift. 
 
 And what was this to us? 
 
 Consider how the Holy Spirit dwelt in Christ. He 
 was with Him in all the stages of His life, from the 
 time He lay enfolded as an infant in His Blessed 
 Mother's arms, through all the labors of His public 
 life and the dark hours of His agony and passion, to 
 His resurrection and ascension. Christ was led by 
 the Spirit. He said nothing, did nothing, but as His 
 humanity was prompted and guided by the Holy 
 Ghost. How wonderfully close and intimate was that 
 connection. He refers to it when He says, "Of 
 myself I can do nothing," "As I hear so I speak." 
 The Holy Spirit never leaves Him. When at last 
 His humanity is elevated to the right hand of power, 
 He baptizes His waiting Church with the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 It is a popular error to suppose He sends the 
 Comforter as if the Blessed Spirit was external to 
 Himself. The fundamental truth of the pentecostal 
 mystery is that the Holy Spirit, having dwelt in the 
 humanity of Christ, is sent by Christ from Himself
 
 LOVE AND SERVICE 117 
 
 to us. Without leaving that most dear dwelling-place 
 He flows from Christ into His mystical body. The 
 Holy Spirit thus enters into the Church. It was a 
 unique and exceptional act. He descended never to 
 ascend. He came to abide in the Church forever. 
 There can no more be a repetition of Pentecost than 
 of the Nativity of Christ. Entering into the embryo 
 Church He quickened it into life, made it effective in 
 all its ministrations, and united it and its members to 
 Christ 
 
 We have thus the foundation of the unitive way. 
 Often the Christian soul may have wished a like priv- 
 ilege with the Apostles and holy women, of seeing 
 Christ in the flesh, of waiting on Him, of kneeling at 
 His feet. It may sometimes have longed to converse 
 with one of His disciples or Apostles and inquire of 
 them concerning His acts, His doctrine. It may 
 have desired to visit the Holy Land and see the very 
 places where He taught and died. But we have a 
 better guide than the Apostles with their limited 
 knowledge before Pentecost could possibly be to us. 
 They up to that time were but imperfectly enlightened. 
 The first three historical Gospels reveal only the state 
 of their pupilage. We can never get at Christ by 
 getting back to the state they were in. But what the 
 collective Church and we, as its members, now pos- 
 sess, is not the mere record of what Christ said and 
 did, but a witness who dwelt within Him. He spoke 
 no parable, wrought no miracle, delivered no dis- 
 course, but as moved by the Holy Spirit. All His 
 emotions, fears, hopes, sorrows, joys were Spirit- 
 guided and controlled. The Holy Spirit was with
 
 ii8 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Him as He lay in Mary's arms and as He hung upon 
 the cross. It is this same Spirit who abides in the 
 Church and in us. He not only reveals Christ to us, 
 but unites us to Him. Moreover, He transmits 
 Christ's virtues to us and makes us the extensions of 
 His own perfections. 
 
 This is the strength and joy of the unitive way. 
 Herein does the Church differ from sectarianism. 
 The latter points to Christ, bids us come to Christ, to 
 believe in Christ, trust ourselves to Christ, follow 
 Christ's example. But the Church more fully helps 
 us by giving us the Holy Spirit in confirmation, 
 and by her sacramental system unites us to Christ. 
 Travellers abroad have often seen in great picture gal- 
 leries of Europe industrious and skilful copyists, re- 
 producing with more or less art the famous works of 
 great masters. To whatever degree of perfection, 
 after life-long efforts, they may have attained, the 
 connoisseur knows their work is but a copy. In some 
 way the genius and inspiration, the imperceptible 
 touches of the original are wanting. So it is with 
 those who apart from sacramental grace strive to im- 
 itate Christ. His life is indeed inimitable. But He 
 has not asked us to strive to copy it, as the copyist 
 of the gallery does the great works of art He sends 
 to us His Holy Spirit to enter into us and reveal 
 His own life. It is not we who are copying Him, but 
 He who is remoulding us. His meekness comes into 
 us to make us meek, His patience to make us patient, 
 His fortitude to make us enduring, His zeal to make 
 us diligent, His unselfishness to make us care for 
 others, His temperance to make us temperate in all
 
 LOVE AND SERVICE 119 
 
 things, His prayerfulness to make us continuous in 
 prayer, His love to make us loving. 
 
 The soul learns to rest entirely on Him, on His 
 merits and in His love. We come to the Great Peace. 
 The wings of the dove carry us thither. Earthly 
 sorrow and trial may come, but they only come 
 freighted with love. By great bodily or spiritual af- 
 flictions Christ opens to some the inner doors of His 
 passion. The unknown depths of divine love re- 
 veal their awful and entrancing loveliness. If He 
 gives them to drink out of His own cup of sorrow, 
 He holds it to their lips. Dying in Christ they live, 
 receiving a death wound in their souls. They live 
 not so much as He now lives in them. Though on 
 their cross, in the darkness, suffering or deserted, 
 misunderstood or betrayed, alone in their enforced 
 solitude, or struggling with life's great burdens, yet 
 His peace takes possession of them. They cling not 
 to Him so much as He enfolds them in Himself. His 
 love so triumphantly asserts itself that they love all, 
 forgive all, bear with all for His sake. They only 
 rejoice and thank Him as every trial or distress makes 
 more real His peace within. They trust themselves 
 wholly to Him, rely solely on His merits, rest in His 
 love. Trusting wholly to His precious blood they 
 desire for His sake a cleansing from all stains. They 
 pray thus that they may be less unworthy of His dear 
 love. But disquietude and uneasiness about self 
 they know not, for they are in Him and He in them. 
 There is but one will and heart between them and 
 that is His. They became as little children to enter 
 into the kingdom, and now they are as babes at the
 
 120 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Divine Breast. Their love is a matured love that 
 shares His counsels, for it knows His love. Their 
 will sleeps, but the heart awaketh. The will reposes 
 in sweet content in His Will, and the heart increasingly 
 loves the love that loves it. Thither to this unitive 
 embrace the Divine Master, by secret inspirations, 
 allures devout and courageous souls. 
 
 " Resting on the faithfulness of Christ our Lord ; 
 Resting on the fulness of His own sure Word ; 
 Resting on His power, on His love untold ; 
 Resting on His covenant secured of old. 
 
 " Resting in the pastures, and beneath the Rock ; 
 Resting by the waters where He leads His flock ; 
 Resting while we listen, at His glorious Feet ; 
 Resting in His very Arms ; O rest complete." 
 
 Ill 
 
 LOVE'S RESPONSE 
 
 If we are His what shall we do for Him? 
 
 " The world is very evil, 
 The times are waxing late." 
 
 It is our blest privilege to live somewhere in the later 
 days. The secret of history lies not in the progress 
 of the race, but in the contest between the good and 
 the evil, the Church and the world. As the bride of 
 Christ, the Church must in her history repeat the life 
 of her Spouse. Like Him she was born, where the 
 first Eucharist was celebrated, in her Bethlehem or 
 house of bread. She then entered into her hidden 
 life, as Christ did His. She was hidden from the
 
 LOVE AND SERVICE 121 
 
 great world, in the Jewish Church and in the Gentile 
 world. She lay hidden among the poor and lowly, 
 and without popular recognition, as Christ was, as 
 the Carpenter at Nazareth. As we hear the cry of 
 the mothers at the slaughter of their little ones, so in 
 early centuries of the Church's hidden life we hear 
 of the sufferings of the martyrs in the Roman perse- 
 cutions. Then from out that hidden life the Church 
 went forth to her public mission. We may not pause 
 on it. But there comes a time when the Church is 
 rent, the disciples are divided ; when Peter falls away, 
 when the sun and moon, which symbolize Christ and 
 His Church, are darkened, when the sign of the Son 
 of man, the cross of persecution in many lands is 
 seen, when apostasies begin and men's hearts fail them 
 for fear. 
 
 We live in times when, according to the great 
 prophecy, the Roman empire having passed away, 
 another beast, even modern civilization, cometh up 
 out of the earth. It has all the power of the first 
 beast, by its world-wide alliances of treaty and com- 
 merce. It, with its pretentious philanthropy and 
 socialism, has horns like a lamb and the deceiving 
 subtlety of the speech of the serpent. It works, by 
 its scientific discoveries, mighty miracles for man's 
 comfort. It causes fire to come down from heaven 
 and, utilizing this wonder of electricity, transforms 
 the business of the world. It deceiveth them that 
 dwell on the earth by means of these miracles, and so, 
 deserting the worship of God, men worship the image 
 of the beast. And all that would succeed must bear 
 the mark of the beast on their hand or in their fore-
 
 122 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 heads. They cannot buy or sell or do anything suc- 
 cessfully unless they are branded with the world's 
 mark, and think as the world thinks, and do what it 
 bids them do. The world and the Church are becom- 
 ing thus more and more antagonistic. According to 
 our Lord's foretelling, the world will finally treat the 
 Church as it treated Him. Unbelief in Christ is the 
 most fatal of all sins, and at last the world will reject 
 Him. As once it cried out for Barabbas, so it will 
 prefer a counterfeit Christ, the product of modern 
 criticism and philanthropy. It will go on in its op- 
 portunism or delude itself with the dreams of arriving 
 at an earthly Utopia. It will not know that as the 
 law was given that, by the impossibility of keeping 
 it, man might learn his own weakness, so by his fail- 
 ures in the way of government he might learn that all 
 government results in failure that is not under God. 
 The glorious vision of a time of an " all hail " here- 
 after when these mammon days are done, is to find its 
 fulfilment when the king Himself shall appear on the 
 battle-field. Then time and its contests and sin shall 
 be no more. Then those who are His shall be gath- 
 ered up in the Eternal Life, and follow the Lamb in 
 all the further developments of creation, wheresoever 
 He goeth. 
 
 But as there was a special outpouring of divine 
 grace to welcome our Lord's first coming, so it will 
 be at His second advent. We know not how near 
 that may be, but the wheels of His chariot are speed- 
 ing on. It is our high privilege to be living when the 
 contest thickens. We live in times when if civilized 
 America and Europe are more and more rejecting
 
 LOVE AND SERVICE 123 
 
 Christ, heathen lands are being opened to Christian- 
 ity. We are living also in a portion of the Catholic 
 Church wherein a great struggle is going on, between 
 those who uphold the faith once delivered to the 
 saints, and those who believe in a faith developed by 
 the clash of modern opinion. We need not fear the 
 final result, for we know that when the number re- 
 quired for the mystical body of Christ is completed 
 the Lord will appear and the new era of creation's 
 progress be ushered in. But it is ours, with enthusi- 
 astic patience, indomitable faith, increasing self-sacri- 
 fice, to hasten that His joy. The Anglican Church 
 is not to be saved by the State, or by compromises of 
 the faith with it. State and Church are separating 
 everywhere. The Church can only recover her Cath- 
 olic heritage by a revival of the spirit of the martyrs, 
 the confessors, the religious. Christ and the Spirit 
 are working, the blessed angels are with intense 
 interest co-operating, the blessed saints and England's 
 confessors are pleading for it. The appreciation of 
 it should rouse and thrill every Catholic heart. A 
 few thousand lives of men and women consecrated to 
 God would ensure the Anglican Church's defence of 
 it If men by thousands are willing to sacrifice their 
 lives for their country, why should there not be the 
 like devotion to give their lives for the cause of Christ 
 and His kingdom? What is it holds souls back? 
 Cannot you give up the passing enjoyment of the 
 passing life for the eternal rewards? Do you sup- 
 pose God can ask you to give Him more than He can 
 in return give you? And Peter said, " Lord, if it be 
 Thou, bid me come to Thee on the water." And the
 
 124 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Divine Master said, " Come." Must we who preach 
 the cross, not preach from the cross ? If we cannot 
 give ourselves shall we not give of our substance, aid 
 by our labors, strengthen Christ's work by our 
 prayers? In that day when we shall meet Him in 
 His glory shall we regret any sacrifice we have made? 
 Life is the one opportunity of serving Him, when 
 it costs us something. Let us, churchmen, rouse our- 
 selves with the old battle-cry of the saints, " Our all 
 for Jesus and Jesus our all," and take up Christ's 
 trailing banner and carry it on to victory !
 
 Part Two 
 
 CATHOLIC
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE RULE OF FAITH 
 
 THERE are not a few believers in Christ who 
 are sincerely anxious to know what, as His 
 followers, they ought to believe and do. Possibly 
 they have been for a long time connected with some 
 Christian denomination. It has been a help to them 
 spiritually, and many associations bind them to it. 
 They have enjoyed its fellowship and accepted its 
 teaching. In a charitable spirit they have looked 
 upon others differing from them in belief or prac- 
 tice as fellow-Christians. But they have gotten ac- 
 customed to their own church ways, are known in its 
 social circle, and are contented with it. Yet they feel 
 at times that they should be able to give better rea- 
 sons than such as these for remaining where they 
 are. Mahometans in Europe, Mormons in America 
 can give the same. While they hold their own re- 
 ligious body to be preferable, they charitably admit 
 that Christians who differ from them have convictions 
 as strong as their own. 
 
 Which is right? 
 
 One way of cutting the Gordian knot is to say that 
 one denomination is best suited to one class or tem- 
 perament, and another to another. This is the easy 
 solution that inertia in its laziness, not wanting to be 
 disturbed, often takes. It might help us somewhat if
 
 128 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 the denominational differences related chiefly to forms 
 of worship. But their divergences concern not cere- 
 monial only, but involve doctrine. The dogmas held 
 by one body contradict those held by another. Here 
 one sect disbelieves in the deity of Christ, while others 
 worship Him, which is idolatrous if He is not divine. 
 Here the Catholic churches of the East and West be- 
 lieve in a system of sacerdotal and sacrificial worship, 
 which Protestants assert belong to the old dispensation 
 and was by Christ entirely swept away. There are 
 some who believe in the real presence of Christ in the 
 Holy Communion, and so give Him honor, which to 
 others who hold the service a mere memorial one is 
 perilously superstitious and wrong. 
 
 We have to admit that the differences are of a 
 serious doctrinal character. 
 
 Being thus aroused, the honest conscience demands 
 some better reason for our remaining where we are 
 than just because we are where we are. 
 
 But grant, a reply comes, that if there are doctrinal 
 differences, are they essential? But if they are not 
 essential, Christians have no right on account of them 
 to divide into separate organizations. The setting 
 up of pulpit against pulpit and altar against altar 
 is seriously condemned in Holy Scripture as a sin. 
 The earnest-minded men who have founded these 
 sects believed the differences for which they stood 
 were essential. It is obvious that they are, for they 
 present contrariant systems of belief and practice. 
 
 Others make reply that the multiplication of sects 
 is not so great an evil after all, for it has tended to 
 competition. Surely it has, and it has thereby placed
 
 THE RULE OF FAITH 129 
 
 a severe tax on church members to sustain, in our 
 smaller towns, seven or eight competing societies. 
 It is not, as in trade, where competition benefits the 
 public, by making goods cheaper, but this compe- 
 tition makes religion dearer. It also hinders its 
 growth, it damages the goods. " Until you Chris- 
 tians can agree, don't bring me your wares," says the 
 unbeliever ; " first unite among yourselves, then we 
 may listen to you." 
 
 What, then, shall we do? In taking any important 
 journey, do you not make inquiries about the various 
 routes? If going to some distant country, do you 
 not take into consideration not only the comforts 
 but the dangers of the way? Do you not seek, by 
 study and forethought, to provide against all the 
 hazards or perils of the journey? Do you say it 
 does not matter which route or way, " we are all 
 going to the same place"? On crossing the At- 
 lantic, would you think it just as well to get into an 
 eighteen-foot sailboat as to embark on a great ocean 
 steamer? Do you not prudently say, " I don't want 
 to run any unnecessary risk, I want to go in the safest 
 and best way?" 
 
 The earnest and prayerful inquirer seeking the 
 Christian truth thus often says, " I wish I really knew 
 which was right. I wish I knew what Christ taught 
 about these things. I love my own church, but I 
 love Him more. If I knew what He would have me 
 do, I would do it, no matter what it might cost." 
 Some of the Apostles began their training under S. 
 John the Baptist, and were devotedly attached to 
 him, but at the Master's call they came out from 
 
 9
 
 130 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 under that pupilage and followed Him. Should He 
 come to my sheepfold and call me, should I not 
 obey His voice, go out and follow Him wheresoever 
 He leadeth ? As a Christian I do not want merely to 
 please myself, but to obey and please Him. 
 
 The question then is, How shall a Christian, who 
 accepts Christ as a master, know what, as a follower 
 of Christ, he ought to believe and do ? 
 
 There are two axioms, which before attempting to 
 answer, it may be well to state. They would be ac- 
 cepted as such by almost all Christians. 
 
 Our Lord, we believe, was a prophet sent from God 
 to teach men what it is necessary for their eternal 
 welfare that they should know and do. He revealed 
 an elevation of being to which without such guidance 
 and provided aid they could not by themselves attain. 
 It was a matter of such supreme importance that One 
 must come from heaven as its revealer and guide. 
 Its need and transcendent value cannot be over- 
 estimated, for it concerns the glory of God, the per- 
 fection of creation, the salvation of man. Coming to 
 give such a revelation, Christ must have left some 
 way by which sincere inquirers were to learn, with 
 reasonable certainty, what they ought to believe and 
 do. The opposite proposition, viz., that He would 
 not have done so, but have left men to grope their 
 way as best they could, is not credible. He would 
 not only be shown thereby to be wanting in common 
 sense, but would forfeit all claim to be the world's 
 teacher. How could He be the world's teacher with- 
 out leaving some way by which the willing should 
 know what He taught and what they ought to do?
 
 THE RULE OF FAITH 131 
 
 How could He be a revealer of the way to heaven, 
 unless He clearly made known and established the 
 means of getting there? 
 
 The second axiom, which is a corollary of the first, 
 is this : The way which Christ established by which 
 His followers were to learn what they ought to be- 
 lieve and do, must be the best way, the safe way, the 
 common-sense way, in fact, the way a Christian should 
 follow. 
 
 Now we find ourselves surrounded by a babel of 
 conflicting creeds and competing religions. But upon 
 analysis they may, for the most part, be divided into 
 three classes, according to their different rules of faith. 
 By the " rule of faith " is not meant how a soul shall 
 be brought by faith to Christ, or how by faith he is 
 justified. But it here signifies the way by which, as a 
 Christian or desiring to be one, he is to know what the 
 faith is. It is his chart and compass, telling him how 
 best to proceed, and learn what he is to believe and 
 do. As enabling him to achieve this, it is called his rule 
 or measure of the faith. It is his measure to whose 
 test he brings every proposed doctrine, and accepts 
 or rejects it, as it comes up to, or falls short of the 
 standard. Now there are three well-known rules or 
 measures of this kind to be found among Christians. 
 However numerous their denominational divisions 
 appear, they may, according to their respective rules 
 be reduced to three groups. In seeking what as 
 Christians we ought to know and do, it becomes us 
 first to examine these three rules, and see which guide 
 it is best to adopt. 
 
 First, there is a large number, embracing all the
 
 132 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 prominent Protestant sects, who take as their guide 
 to correct belief, the rule, " the Bible and the Bible 
 only." This is their favorite motto, and by a famous 
 champion, Mr. Chillingworth, was regarded as the 
 glory and boast of Protestantism. Those who take 
 this rule inculcate on us the duty of patient, prayer- 
 ful study of God's word. We are told that if we do 
 so go to it, the Holy Spirit will enlighten us and 
 guide us into the truth. 
 
 This rule is defended by such texts as these : 
 " Search the Scriptures." The Jews were bidden by 
 our Lord to do this, for He said they testified of Him. 
 The Jews would be led thereby to believe in Him. 
 But He does not say this was the way they were to 
 learn what they were to believe, after they had done 
 so. The Bereans, we are told, were more noble than 
 the Thessalonicans, because they " searched the 
 Scriptures daily." But this was not the only ground 
 of their commendation; they were more noble, be- 
 cause from the Apostles " they received the word 
 with all readiness of mind." The Jew was told by 
 S. Peter that he would, by the study of the Holy 
 Scriptures, be brought out of Judaism into salvation, 
 through faith in Jesus Christ. The man of God 
 could also thereby be "furnished unto all good works." 
 None of these texts, however, state that, apart from 
 all teachers and authority, each Christian, by read- 
 ing Holy Scripture, is to learn what is Christian doc- 
 trine. But, nevertheless, most eloquently has the 
 Bible as the only rule been defended. Why, it is 
 said, go back to past times? Why seek light from 
 the fathers? Why perplex oneself with past contro-
 
 THE RULE OF FAITH 133 
 
 versies? The past belongs to antiquarians and book- 
 worms. The learning it brings is covered with the 
 dust of departed ages. We are living in the era of 
 discovery and light. Do you want to know the truth, 
 let nothing come between you and it. There is the 
 Bible. It is God's word. An open Bible was the 
 gift of the Reformation to the world. Go directly 
 to it. " It will make you wise unto salvation." 
 
 While much may be said in behalf of this rule, the 
 question we must ask ourselves is this : is it the rule 
 of faith that Jesus Christ, who established the Christian 
 religion, gave to us? Is it the way He ordered, by 
 which we are to know what is the Christian religion? 
 We must all admit that this is the true test as to its 
 correctness and value. For we have agreed that 
 Christ, being a divine teacher, must have left one way 
 by which honest inquirers should know what He 
 would have them do and believe. Preachers may 
 wax eloquent over " the Bible and the Bible only " 
 theory, but however attractive, was it the method 
 instituted by Christ? If it was, we dutifully accept 
 it; if not, we must not take it for our guide. 
 
 We can easily settle the question. There is no 
 recorded command of Christ to His Apostles bidding 
 them write a book and disseminate it. As a matter 
 of fact, the Christian Church was in existence and in 
 active operation before any of the Gospels were 
 written. The books also of the New Testament were 
 not collected and certified till the close of the second 
 century. Copying by hand was expensive, and so 
 comparatively few persons could possess a copy of 
 the whole Scripture. Now God could have had the
 
 134 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 art of printing invented in the first century as well as 
 in the fifteenth. He could have had the Bible put 
 into circulation when the Apostles went forth on their 
 missionary journeys. But here is the plain fact : He 
 did not do it. Nor does this theory meet the con- 
 dition of enabling sincere persons with reasonable 
 certainty to know the faith. For in every denomina- 
 tion there are persons abler and more learned than 
 ourselves, and just as prayerful and sincere, yet the 
 result of the Protestant theory is a babel of conflict- 
 ing and contradictory doctrines on matters admitted, 
 by their divisions into sects, to be essential. The 
 rule of faith upon which Protestantism is based is 
 not Christ's rule. We ought not, therefore, as His 
 followers, to adopt it. 
 
 Another rule of faith is just the opposite. It is 
 the Roman rule. Christianity, it is claimed, came 
 into the world, not as a philosophy or proclamation 
 of pardon, but as an institution. This institution is 
 known by themselves as the Holy Roman Church. 
 At its head is the pope. By God's endowment he 
 has an assisting official gift of infallibility. This 
 gift makes him, when he is speaking authorita- 
 tively in the exercise of his office as teacher, and as 
 is said ex cathedra, to the Church, on matters of faith 
 and morals, by himself and apart from any council, 
 infallible. 
 
 This rule has to many devout minds a great at- 
 traction. Not merely because they are Roman 
 Catholics and are brought up to surround with an 
 artificial halo the bishop of Rome, but to others 
 disturbed with the fruitless controversies of Protes-
 
 THE RULE OF FAITH 135 
 
 tantism. What we long for is a voice that can guide 
 us. What we desire is an authority that we may rest 
 upon. What we seek is relief from this weight of per- 
 sonal responsibility. We cannot trust ourselves to 
 the ever-shifting uncertainties of Protestantism. Let 
 us hear the voice of the Church speaking through 
 the holy father. 
 
 This rule, it is claimed, saves us from the chaos of 
 Protestantism. It delivers us from the anarchy of 
 individualism. It replaces doubt by infallible cer- 
 tainty. It, like the other rule, has its powerful and 
 eloquent defenders. The will o' the wisp of private 
 opinion, luring men into pitfalls, is contrasted with 
 the stately throne of the Vatican and the voice of 
 Peter's successor. 
 
 But we must hear what can be said on the other 
 side. It is to be noted that this assistance of infal- 
 libility is not attached to the holy see. The proof 
 of this is that during a papal vacancy it is held that 
 the Church can make no decree. It is thus seen to 
 be a gift with which the pope is personally invested. 
 But it is an universally admitted fact that a number 
 of the popes have been abnormally corrupt, monsters 
 in iniquity. How can the Holy Spirit, the Truth- 
 Guide, co-operate with such souls? How do it to 
 such a degree of union with Himself as to render 
 them infallible? Our minds may be, apart from such 
 a special union, enlightened by prevenient or actual 
 grace. But to be infallible we must be more than 
 gifted with light and guarded by such grace. This 
 assistance would not secure infallibility, for we may 
 resist such aid and guidance, and so err. An assist-
 
 136 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 ing grace does secure infallibility. To be secure 
 from error, we must be so united to God (who is 
 truth) as to be unable, for the purpose of being His 
 organ, of being separated from Him. This is the 
 way in which the Church becomes to us an infallible 
 guide. The Church is infallible because the Holy 
 Ghost dwells in it and securely unites it to Christ, 
 whose organ it thus becomes. How, then, can bad 
 popes with whom the Holy Spirit might plead, but 
 cannot by His indwelling unite to the truth, nor com- 
 pel without the destruction of free will, be the infal- 
 lible organ of His utterance? Irresistibility of divine 
 grace and the consequent loss of human freedom is 
 the very touchstone of Calvinism ! 
 
 We can understand how the official acts of bad 
 ecclesiastics are valid, for the validity of their sac- 
 ramental acts does not depend upon their morality, 
 but on their priestly character. God, it may be 
 urged, may make an ass a mechanical deliverer of 
 certain sounds, or the Spirit may apply to the words 
 of Caiaphas a wider than the speaker's sense ; but as 
 the Holy Spirit cannot dwell in bad men and so in- 
 separably unite them to God as to make them the 
 organs through whom He speaks, the infallibility of 
 those who by the grossness of their sins have be- 
 come separated from Christ is an impossibility. 
 
 It has been argued that though the Bible may be 
 God's word, yet it is not a safe guide, since those 
 who consult it may and often do err. But the 
 same objection applies to the Ro-man rule. Suppose 
 the pope is officially consulted and gives an official 
 response, is the recipient who adopts it secured
 
 THE RULE OF FAITH 137 
 
 thereby from error? Sergius, patriarch of Constan- 
 tinople, wrote to Pope Honorius to declare his 
 opinion on a very important theological question 
 which concerned the nature of Christ. The pope 
 did so, and bade Sergius declare his decision. The 
 result was, that both Sergius and Honorius were 
 afterwards condemned as heretics by the sixth ecu- 
 menical council, were anathematized and declared 
 cast out from the Holy Catholic Church. 
 
 Again, the rule of faith demands that the neces- 
 sary guide should really be a guide. Thus it is ob- 
 jected to the "Bible only" rule that it is not the 
 Bible that always controls, but the inquirer often 
 reads into it his own presuppositions. It means 
 what he wants it to mean. Does not the same ob- 
 jection apply to the papal rule? If the pope is the 
 divinely authorized guide, he will know himself to be 
 such, and will consequently know and act on the 
 limitations of his powers. If, for instance, the case 
 of Galileo was one of scientific fact, he would have 
 known it was one out of his province, and so would 
 not have condemned him. If it was for an erroneous 
 construction of Scripture, as is sometimes claimed, 
 Galileo was condemned, then the pope failed of 
 being a safe guide as to the interpretation of God's 
 word. In either case he was not an infallible guide. 
 
 Again, if the pope is the pastor and teacher of all 
 Christians, it is his prerogative and duty to guard 
 the Church from false doctrine. When heresies arise, 
 he will therefore take the lead in suppressing them. 
 But in the Arian heresy we find Pope Liberius apolo- 
 gizing to the Arian bishops for ever having defended
 
 138 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Athanasius, signing a deficient Arian creed, and giv- 
 ing the weight of his influence to Arianism ! S. Hil- 
 ary exclaims, " Anathema, I say to thee, Liberius ; " 
 and a third time, "Anathema to the prevaricator 
 Liberius." Thus in this contest for orthodoxy over 
 our Lord's deity the bishop of Rome was found not 
 to be a safe teacher and guide of the Church. 
 
 In the important Pelagian controversy, which was 
 concerned with grace and free will, we find Pope Inno- 
 cent deciding correctly. But we also find his suc- 
 cessor, Zosimus, being, as is now contended, imposed 
 upon by heretics, siding with them. He did so until 
 the African bishops, in council, firm in their resistance 
 to his letters, set him right. In the' last case he did 
 not guide the Church, but the Church guided him. 
 
 In the Monothelite contest, which involved the 
 truth of the two natures of Christ, with two wills, 
 human and divine, we find Pope Honorius, of whom 
 we spoke above, giving formally his sanction to the 
 heretical side, declaring, " We confess one will of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ." It is now, under the necessity 
 of upholding the late decree of the pope's infallibility, 
 contended either that he was not speaking ex cathe- 
 dra, to the whole Church, or probably his words may 
 bear an orthodox meaning. Granting this, it is an 
 undisputed fact, however, that the sixth ecumenical, 
 and two subsequent councils approved by popes, 
 condemned him as a heretic. We have thus pope 
 condemning pope. On the most charitable construc- 
 tion (and we desire to give it), Pope Honorius 
 lamentably failed at a most critical time to be the 
 Church's teacher and safe guide.
 
 THE RULE OF FAITH 139 
 
 Another objection made to the papal rule of faith 
 has been this : A rule or guide to the faith should 
 not be contradictory. The Prote'stants say that how- 
 ever different interpretations may be put on Holy 
 Scripture, nevertheless Holy Scripture itself does not 
 change. But on the other side the popes do change, 
 and what one has held, another pope, or the Church in 
 council, has denied. For instance, Pope Innocent IIL 
 (i 198) declared, " I can be judged by the Church for i 
 sin concerning the faith." Innocent IV. (1242) said, 
 " A pope can err in faith, and therefore no one oughl 
 to say, I believe what the pope believes, but, what the 
 Church believes." Adrian VI. declared " that it was 
 possible for popes to promulgate heresy in decrees." 
 
 Eugenius IV. said that the decision of a council is to 
 be preferred to the sentence of a bishop of Rome. 
 Innocent I. and Gelasius held, contrary to modern 
 opinion, that " infants who died without communion 
 went straight to hell." Stephen II. taught that bap- 
 tism administered with wine was lawful. Nicholas I. 
 assured the Bulgarians that baptism in the name of 
 Christ was valid. Gregory II. decided that marriages 
 between a freeman and a slave (they might be of the 
 same race) might be dissolved. Celestine III. held 
 that the marriage tie was dissolved if either party 
 became a heretic. Urban II. declared the lawfulness 
 of killing an excommunicated person. Eugenius IV. 
 in a formal document misstated the form and matter of 
 holy order, making the delivery of the instruments, 
 the paten and chalice, essential to its conveyance, 
 which if true would have nullified the orders of the 
 first thousand years.
 
 140 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 We must, in order to uphold the modern papal 
 theory, regard these, and other like pronouncements 
 with them, as the private opinions of the bishops of 
 Rome. But then we are still, so far as the rule of 
 faith is concerned, in the same difficulty. Why did 
 they not resort in these important matters to their 
 infallible power and decide correctly? Not to exert 
 a power so essential to the salvation of men is in the 
 highest degree criminal. Either, then, the popes did 
 not know they possessed this assisting gift, in which 
 case their ignorance proves they did not possess it; 
 or by giving out private and sometimes erroneous 
 opinions they have failed to exercise it, and so shown 
 that they are not safe, still less infallible guides. 
 
 But what shall we say in presence of the fact that 
 for a generation or more there have been rival popes 
 engaged in unhappy contests and excommunicating 
 one another? If one alone was the true pope, one 
 only was infallible. But how was the Church to know 
 which of the claimants was infallible and which not? 
 There were saints, we are told, ranged on all sides, 
 which seems to show that the element of papal infalli- 
 bility was not a necessary part of the rule of faith. 
 There has been, says the Protestant, no practical 
 difficulty as to what was the Bible, but a serious one 
 as to who was the pope. 
 
 But be all this as it may, the real test of the papal 
 rule is the same as that of the Protestant: is it the 
 one ordained by Christ? Is this the way He estab- 
 lished, by which His followers should know what they 
 were to believe and do? 
 
 We are here obliged as before to answer in the
 
 THE RULE OF FAITH 141 
 
 negative. If it had been the rule of Christ, it would 
 have been universally known as such and acted on 
 from the beginning. We know that the Orthodox 
 Eastern Church has never recognized its existence. 
 In the Roman Communion, the papal infallibility was 
 not made a dogma till 1 870. Before that year it was 
 indeed denied by persons in authority to be a doc- 
 trine of the Church. In " Keenan's Catechism," which 
 had the imprimatur of Roman bishops, we find the 
 question, " Must not Catholics believe the pope in 
 himself to be infallible?" Answer, "No; that is a 
 Protestant invention ; it is no article of the Catholic 
 faith ; no decision of his can oblige, under pain of 
 heresy, unless it be received and enforced by the teach- 
 ing body, that is, by the bishops of the Church." 
 The same was stated in a famous work, " The Faith 
 of Catholics," compiled by Fathers Berington and 
 Kirk. " It is no article of the Catholic faith to be- 
 lieve that the pope is in himself infallible, separated 
 from the Church, even in expounding the faith ; by 
 consequence, papal definitions or decrees, in what- 
 ever form pronounced, taken exclusively of a gen- 
 eral council or acceptance of the Church, oblige 
 none." 
 
 Now the rule of faith, to be the guide to truth, 
 must have been recognized as such from the begin- 
 ning. If it is a fatal objection to the Protestant 
 theory of "the Bible and Bible only," that the 
 Bible was not in the hands of the people till the 
 fifteenth century, it is equally a fatal objection to 
 the present Roman rule that its element of the papal 
 infallibility was not certified to the Church till the
 
 142 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 nineteenth century. Rome, in this respect, is three 
 hundred years, more modern than Protestantism. 
 
 Let us turn to the third rule to guide Christians. 
 Christ did not order or provide for any book to be 
 circulated. He forbade our following any one person. 
 " Call no man master." He endowed His Church 
 with the Holy Spirit, making the Church thereby a 
 living organism, through which He acts, gathering 
 souls into His saving light and life. In the Church 
 are to be found the Holy Scriptures and the sacra- 
 ments. By the Church the Scriptures are preserved 
 and interpreted to our enlightenment, and the sacra- 
 ments are administered for our reception of life. We 
 h^ar the voice of Christ speaking to us through the 
 Church as guided by the Holy Spirit, it interprets 
 the written word, and makes the truth known within 
 us by our union with it. 
 
 The four points of this rule of faith are these : - 
 Christ reveals, the Spirit guards, the Church utters, 
 the soul comes to know it. 
 
 I. The first point means that Christ not only 
 taught certain truths, but was Himself the truth. He 
 is the logos, the wisdom itself. He is the revelation. 
 It is complete in Him. What He was, did, and said 
 is the revelation of God to man. 
 
 We have thus an answer to the popular saying that 
 we are living in an age of enlightenment and new 
 discoveries and must not be tied to old truths. The 
 answer is this : A distinction must be observed be- 
 tween revealed truth and all other truth. The latter 
 depends for its progress on observation and experi- 
 ment. The longer the world lasts the more time it
 
 THE RULE OF FAITH 143 
 
 will have to make observations and experiments, and 
 so the wiser it will grow. But it is different with the 
 truth revealed in Christ. It was given in Him, in its 
 completeness, and once for all. While therefore it is 
 no objection in any other class of truth, that a pro- 
 posed theory is new or destructive of what has gone 
 before, in respect of Christian truth, it is an obvious 
 axiom that what is new is necessarily false. 
 
 II. The next point of the rule of faith is : The 
 Spirit guards it. Here we must notice the office of 
 the Holy Spirit in its relation to Christ. The Holy 
 Spirit does not dwell in the Church to make it the 
 organ of His revelations, for the Holy Spirit is not 
 the revealer of truth, but Christ ; who is the revealer 
 of God to man. The office of the Holy Spirit is to 
 guide the Church into all truth, by bringing to her 
 remembrance and giving her an understanding of all 
 that Christ was or uttered or did. 
 
 The Holy Spirit in the performance of this duty 
 guides and guards the Church in two ways, by en- 
 lightening her authorized teachers, and by His over- 
 ruling providence. When, in consequence of the rise 
 of a heresy, the Church in council is obliged to de- 
 fend the faith, the Holy Spirit enlightens the bishops 
 in their decisions and the Church in its acceptance of 
 them. By the new definition, if one is required, the 
 Church clears away the fog of error, and enables her 
 children to see clearly the old truth which had been 
 held from the beginning. When, however, the Holy 
 Spirit sees that the fathers in council, being under 
 duress or deceived by forged decretals, are likely to 
 go wrong, He prevents the council's decisions from
 
 144 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 having an ecumenical value. This is done in various 
 ways. The Church does not give her consent to the 
 conciliar action, or God overrules the divisions of 
 Christendom to the preservation of the Church in 
 her teaching office. Thus, while in the one case He 
 enlightens the Church, enabling her to speak, He also, 
 when she would go wrong, either by denying or 
 adding to the faith, lays His hand on her mouth. 
 Infallibility has been preserved by the division of 
 Christendom. In these two ways the Spirit guards 
 the faith once revealed. 
 
 III. This faith thus delivered and guarded the 
 Church declares. It is to be found in the common 
 consent of Christendom. What the Church has from 
 the beginning always and everywhere declared to be 
 the faith must indeed be so. For it is not possible 
 that a divine teacher would so poorly have provided 
 for the preservation of His revelation as that a great 
 majority of His followers would fall into error. This 
 faith so proclaimed has been also protected in the 
 accepted creeds. It is set forth in the liturgies of the 
 Eastern and Western Churches. It has efficaciously 
 been proclaimed by the sacraments, which may be 
 called the " gospel in action." In respect of the 
 Episcopal government of the Church, the three 
 sacred orders of the ministry, the preserved Apostolic 
 succession through Episcopal ordination, the Chris- 
 tian priesthood, and the real presence and eucharistic 
 sacrifice, Catholic Christendom is united. Protestant- 
 ism, having lost priesthood, has no consciousness of 
 these gifts. But wherever the Apostolic priesthood 
 has been preserved, the consciousness of all Catholics
 
 THE RULE OF FAITH 145 
 
 proclaims, by words and heroic lives of self-sacrifice, 
 their possession. 
 
 We may regret the divisions of Christendom, but' 
 God has overruled them in one way to good. In 
 consequence, the Church is protected from adding 
 with Ecumenical authority any articles to the faith. 
 This is an advantage, for it is not the Church's duty, 
 nor is it for man's good for her to answer all the 
 questions the curiosity of theologians may choose to 
 ask. The Holy Spirit dwells in the Church to protect 
 her in the truth revealed in Christ and enable man to be 
 wise unto salvation. What she has not, by the concur- 
 rence of her several parts, declared, she merely leaves 
 as matters of pious opinion. But as each portion of 
 the Church, the Eastern and Western, the Russian, 
 Greek, Roman, and Anglican, proclaims the faith of 
 undivided Christendom, each fulfils its prophetical 
 office and their respective members accept it on 
 the Church's authority. 
 
 The Anglican Church has not become reduced to like 
 " dogmatic helplessness," as Rome when for seventy 
 years there were rival popes. She maintains the 
 Catholic faith and her living utterance is to be found 
 in her Book of Common Prayer. In America, Dioce- 
 san Courts and Courts of Review are established, and 
 appeal lies in matters of doctrine to the House of 
 Bishops. In England the Lincoln judgment shows 
 that the metropolitan has not lost his ancient author- 
 ity. And let the fundamental truths of the creed be 
 denied and a bishop like Colenso or priests like Dr. 
 Crapsey and Rev. McQueary are deposed. 
 
 The voice of the Catholic Church in each divi-
 
 146 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 sion of it is thus not a dead but an authoritative and a 
 living voice. It is a living and continuous utterance. 
 Her conciliar decisions, for example, are not like those 
 of a secular court. What she declared of old at 
 Nicsea and elsewhere she has continued, day by day, 
 at thousands of altars and by hundreds of millions of 
 her children, to declare. As one approaches Niagara, 
 the traveller gradually recognizes the deep undertone 
 of the falls, solemn as the judgment, unfailing as 
 eternity. But the ears of the townspeople become 
 paralyzed to the awful utterance and only the atten- 
 tive ear hears the deep diapason of the water's voice. 
 So it is with the Catholic Church. She is ever pro- 
 claiming, in the midst of the world's tumultuous babel 
 of contending utterances, the faith once and for all 
 delivered to the saints, and the wise and humble- 
 minded listeners hear her living voice. It is a voice 
 coming up from behind and yet as present with them, 
 saying, " This is the way, walk ye in it." 
 
 The Christian soul comes with increasing clear- 
 ness of vision and certainty to know the truth. 
 Drawn by prevenient grace to accept Christ, the 
 newly baptized becomes united to the Church and 
 so becomes a living stone in that spiritual temple 
 which is filled with the Holy Spirit. As a member 
 of this temple and so spiritually illuminated, the 
 Christian soul hears the voice of the Spirit speaking 
 in and through it. At first, like a child it believes 
 what it is told to believe. As it advances in light 
 under the Church's paternal authority, the Holy 
 Scriptures are seen to corroborate the Church's teach- 
 ing and the proficient is able to give a reason for the
 
 THE RULE OF FAITH 147 
 
 faith that is in him. As he acts on the faith, he be- 
 comes gradually transformed by it. He then not 
 only holds certain truths, but the truth takes posses- 
 sion of him. He advances from belief based on 
 authority and reason to the certainty that comes from 
 possession. He knows in whom he believes. For 
 Christ dwells in him and he in Christ. 
 
 This is the Catholic rule of faith, ,the rule Christ 
 established when he told us to " hear the Church," 
 and " if any man will do His will he shall know of 
 the doctrine."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 SACRIFICE 
 
 LISTENING to the common tradition preserved 
 in our race, we find it bearing witness that sac- 
 rifice in some form, not necessarily with blood-shed- 
 ding, has been from an unknown antiquity a recognized 
 mode of man's approach to his apprehended Deity. 
 It is found in the non-Semitic as well as the Semitic 
 races. It has ever, and everywhere, been regarded 
 as a typical act of religion. 
 
 Naturally we ask, what is the origin and significance 
 of this religious function? We have to admit that, so 
 far as history goes, the answer is lost in the mist of 
 the unveiled past. We can only gather up the scat- 
 tered hints, and from what we know of man, make our 
 surmises as best we may. Man, finding himself in the 
 presence of powers before which he felt his impotence, 
 powers awful and gigantic, manifested in silent orderly 
 rise of tides, bellowing clouds, upheaving earthquakes, 
 volcanic fires or majestic march of sun and stars, may 
 have been led to make offerings to the deities his 
 imagination personified them to be. It was a natural 
 anthropomorphic conception. The sense of fear 
 and the desire for protection, not unlikely, are, then, 
 the primeval motives of his action. The social and 
 ethical may have come later. The gods of the race's 
 childhood were gods of the mountains and valleys, of
 
 SACRIFICE 149 
 
 the rivers and the clouds, of the sun in the heaven, of 
 the vivifying forces of nature on earth. Powerless 
 before them in their destructive potency, man's 
 instinct of self-preservation cried within him, " Give 
 the god something. He is angry, let us appease him ; 
 he is protecting us, make him an offering." The con- 
 ception of what would be acceptable would be deter- 
 mined by their conception of his character. Thus 
 by some external act man's apprehensions or grati- 
 tude may have expressed themselves in varying forms 
 of offering to the unseen. 
 
 Possibly, with his developing ethical perceptions, 
 the desire for friendly intercourse came to add a 
 further element to his oblations. Nature has her 
 beneficent as well as her terror-striking aspects. 
 Earth and sea and sky are swathed in beauty, and 
 nature's storehouse is full of pleasurable gifts. All 
 things develop and live in reciprocal action. 
 Nothing lives apart, but is dependent on other lives. 
 The song of nature is of union and love. Not 
 abnormally, then, the concept of some kind of fellow- 
 ship with the energies which were man's companions 
 began to find expression. The sense of kinship 
 follows close to the primitive one of dependence. 
 So along with the gift there comes to be associated 
 the desire for mutual recognition. The two parties 
 to the sacrifice partake together of the offering. The 
 participation in a common meal becomes a function 
 of the sacrificial rite. The manner and matter of 
 it may differ. The offerer may thus pour a portion 
 of the wine upon the ground as a libation to his 
 god. The Greek hero may spread his feast at
 
 150 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 which the gods attend. The Jew, beneath the shelter 
 of the tabernacle tent, may partake of the peace 
 offering he has made. The heathen temple of a more 
 costly construction becomes a banqueting house. 
 However degraded and degrading its orgies, the 
 basic conception was that of a mutually recognized 
 fellowship. Thus the germinal religious instinct 
 began its development in man. It was as yet un- 
 fettered by locality. The woods were God's first 
 temples. The sacrifice required no specially con- 
 structed altar or ritual. But what begins in some- 
 thing primarily crude is often found to have an unex- 
 pected depth and capacity of development. " It is a 
 testimony of the unity which underlies and binds 
 together the gradual unfolding of thought and life " 
 in the story of the universe. 
 
 An interesting question here arises whether, orig- 
 inally, any official or representative in a priestly 
 capacity was necessary. As sacrifice was an offering 
 of the individual man to God, we might suppose it 
 so began. Abel and Cain are said to have offered 
 sacrifices. But man is a social being ; Montesquieu 
 said, " He is born in society and there he remains." 
 If in the earliest stages of his existence he is not a 
 member of a tribe, yet he must needs be of a family. 
 The instances in the Old Testament in patriarchal 
 times represent him as the father, and acting in an 
 official capacity as head and representative. Thus we 
 read of Job and Noah and Abraham and Jacob build- 
 ing altars and offering sacrifices. They are all 
 fathers, and the heads and so priests of their family. 
 As the tribal condition develops we find the rulers
 
 SACRIFICE 151 
 
 and judges, like Gideon and Manoah and Samuel, 
 making offerings to God. In the enlargement of 
 tribal to the fuller corporate national life, King 
 Solomon prepared sacrifice at the first temple's dedi- 
 cation. It is the developed corporate conditions of 
 mankind that demands for its religious functions 
 official representation. So we find also among the 
 non-Semitic nations, in Babylon and Egypt and else- 
 where, an order of priesthood developed along with 
 the national life. Among the Jewish people priest- 
 hood came by commandment of God to belong to 
 a family, that of Aaron. It thus became hereditary. 
 It was continued by the law of natural descent from 
 the high priest Aaron, just as in the Gospel the 
 priesthood is continued by the law of a spiritual 
 descent by an Apostolical succession from the high 
 priest Jesus Christ. As the one was exclusive, so it 
 foreshadowed that the other was to be. The one, 
 as of earthly descent, had no assurance of permanence. 
 The other partakes of the abiding character of Him 
 who liveth a priest forever. 
 
 Conformably to the developed religious national 
 needs the sacrifices established became necessarily 
 of a twofold character. They were the expression 
 of the nation's corporate life and also of the in- 
 dividual's relation to God. The two great feasts of 
 the Passover and the Day of Atonement were the 
 religious expression of the nation's gratitude to God 
 for its deliverance and for the maintenance of its 
 covenanted relation to Him. The other fourfold 
 sacrifices express the individual's varying attitude to 
 the Almighty. The whole burnt offering told of the
 
 152 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 duty of man's entire outward and inward consecration, 
 the peace offering, of the reconciliation and established 
 communion between man and his Maker, the two sin 
 offerings, of man's penitence, proffered reparation, 
 and of God's forgiveness, and man's restoration to 
 covenanted privileges. 
 
 Providentially directed sacrifice had now become 
 organized and a priesthood established. But all 
 developments are attended with their dangers, all 
 elevations with their temptations, all gifts of God 
 with their possibilities of misuse. The magnificent 
 equipment of worship with which God had endowed 
 the Jew, was exposed to the subtle degradation of 
 ceremonial formalism a degradation so subtle and 
 potential as to evacuate of all its worth the efficacy 
 of sacrificial worship. God had, in His loving wisdom, 
 revealed to Moses a worship patterned after the un- 
 seen verities of heaven. It was a worship beautiful, 
 choral, liturgical, ritualistic, sacrificial ; but unless the 
 heart, mind, and will of the worshipper entered into 
 and went with it, it was valueless. Sacrifice, to be 
 pleasing to God and efficacious to man, must be no 
 mere outward gift. God was not to be placated by 
 ten thousands of burnt offerings or rivers of oil or 
 wine. More valuable than the hecatombs of animal 
 sacrifices was the sacrifice of the broken and contrite 
 heart. So, while God established the Levitical sacri- 
 fices, through the prophets He declared with intensi- 
 fying emphasis the need of the interior sacrifice ; for 
 the sacrifice to be acceptable and profitable the 
 inward and the outward must coalesce. 
 
 This brings us to the further development of the
 
 SACRIFICE 153 
 
 law of sacrifice as it is presented in Christ. All 
 Christians look to Him as fulfilling in His own person 
 its highest conceptions. He fulfils its Levitical, or- 
 dained, outward expression and its prophetically 
 required inward spirit. By manifold types the Levit- 
 ical ceremonial foreshadowed the blood-shedding and 
 sacrifice consummated on Calvary. The evangelical 
 prophet, commonly known as Isaiah, in words which 
 have profoundly moved the heart of Christendom, has 
 given us His inward life. He was to make on the 
 cross the offering of the bloody sacrifice typified by 
 the Aaronic ritual, and also was to be the Man of 
 Sorrows acquainted with grief, who makes His soul 
 an offering for sin. If the Levitical order depicts one 
 who, after the order of Aaron, fulfils the legal ritual, 
 the prophets foretold His interior self-oblation. 
 
 We find this conjunction of the inward and outward 
 proclaimed in the New Testament. In the epistle to 
 the Hebrews, the Holy Spirit represents Christ as the 
 victim, whose blood is shed on earth, entering as 
 the high priest within the Holy of Holies. Just as 
 the high priest of the Jewish order carried and 
 sprinkled the blood of the sacrifice in the most holy 
 place, upon the mercy seat, so Christ entering within 
 the veil carries and presents the blood that has passed 
 through death to the Eternal Father. The blood so 
 presented, not only meritoriously pleads, it is the 
 source of our new life. For His life-giving blood is 
 living by its connection with His divinity. By virtue 
 of its union with His own Eternal Spirit, 1 it becomes 
 the medium of communicating to our soul and spirits 
 * Heb. ix. 14.
 
 154 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 purging of conscience and spiritual life. In the same 
 epistle which declares His priesthood and sacrifice 
 of blood, we learn also of the interior offering of His 
 will, by which will we are sanctified. 
 
 The Apostolic writers also bring out this coales- 
 cence of the inward and outward in Jesus Christ. 
 
 S. Paul, guided by the Holy Spirit, gives us the 
 forensic and legal aspect of His sacrifice who, as 
 the second Adam and as a propitiation, achieved on 
 the cross redemption for us. S. John, who pillowed 
 on Christ's breast, reveals His interior life and His 
 self-consecration : " For their sakes I consecrate my- 
 self." 
 
 Thus in our Lord we discern the dual action, His 
 inward oblation and its outward manifestation. 
 
 Moreover, Christ was a priest after two orders ; He 
 was a priest after the order of Aaron, and after the 
 order of Melchisedek. After the first He offers Him- 
 self with shedding of blood on the cross. It is His 
 own offering. Speaking of His life He says, " I have 
 power to lay it down and I have power to take it 
 again." On the cross we behold Him offering Him- 
 self to God, the Holy to the Holy, in perfect and 
 loving obedience. There He offers Himself, obedient 
 unto death, in reparation for the sins of the humanity 
 with which He has identified Himself. There, per- 
 fect love, consummated in the supremest act of pen- 
 itence on our behalf, reconciles man to his Maker. 
 There He makes a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, 
 oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole 
 world. There He is seen exercising His triple offices 
 of Priest, Prophet, and King. As Priest for the guilty
 
 SACRIFICE 155 
 
 He intercedes : " Father forgive them." As King 
 He opens to the penitent the kingdom of heaven: 
 " To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." As 
 Prophet He consoles and reveals the principle of 
 the Church's unity. It is to be one by the bond 
 of divine charity, which shall unite its members to- 
 gether and unite them in Himself. " Son, behold thy 
 Mother; Mother behold thy son." 
 
 As priest, after the order of Melchisedek, He offers 
 Himself in the upper chamber. It was the new 
 temple taken by virtue of His prophetical insight and 
 divine sovereignty. It was built thus without sound 
 of axe or hammer, but by the word of His power. 
 Here we behold Him eternal in His generation, 
 unique in His office, consummating the life-long, free- 
 will offering of Himself. " Now when Jesus knew that 
 His hour was come that He should depart out of this 
 world unto the Father, . . . and knowing that the 
 Father had given all things into His hands and that 
 He was come from God and went to God ; He riseth 
 from supper and laid aside His garments " (sym- 
 bolical of putting aside the glory He had with the 
 Father before the world was) " and took a towel and 
 girded Himself" (as having taken and girded His 
 divine nature with our humanity), and with the water 
 He had Himself poured out, took the soiled feet of 
 His disciples into His own hands and washed and 
 wiped them with the towel wherewith He was girded. 
 Then presently He proceeded to bless and break the 
 bread, saying, " This is my body which is being broken 
 for you. This cup is the new covenant in my blood 
 which is shed for many." Like Melchisedek He brings
 
 156 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 forth bread and wine, and making them what His 
 Word declares them to be, offers Himself as a free- 
 will sacrifice to God. The action in the upper cham- 
 ber and on the cross are parts of the one great 
 sacrifice. The inward and outward perfectly coalesce. 
 Our great high priest embraces and fulfils the re- 
 quirements of the Levitical law and the inward 
 spiritual oblation of the Prophets. 
 
 We have come now to see, in this its highest 
 expression, the personal element that enters into 
 religious sacrifice. It is not to be the gift of some- 
 thing to God, but of the person along with the gift. 
 Regarding, then, religion as the bond which unites 
 man to God, sacrifice appears to be the outward act 
 by which it expresses itself. It is an established 
 means of worship and man's communion with Deity. 
 It is the revealed way by which the creature acknowl- 
 edges his position towards God, and offers himself 
 along with his gift to Him. It is also the ordained 
 means by which God, accepting the gift, returns, 
 according to the creature's spiritual condition, a gift 
 according to his needs. It is this reciprocal sacra- 
 mental action between God and man by means of 
 sacrifice that has been so popularly overlooked. 
 
 Regarding it in this large sense we shall expect to 
 find it in all dispensations. And we do so. We find 
 it existing in paradise, and under the law, and in the 
 kingdom of grace, and in glory. 
 
 In paradise the creature man was in an innocent 
 state, consequently the form of his sacrifice expressed 
 this condition. The ordained matter of the sacrifice 
 was the tree of knowledge. The tree was symbolical
 
 SACRIFICE 157 
 
 of man's innocence. There it stood, waving its green 
 banners, choral with the symphony of winds and birds, 
 beautiful with its buds and flowers, fragrant with the 
 incense of dew and blossoms, glorious in the sunshine 
 and with the stars for its vesper lights. It was typical 
 of man's dual, animal and spiritual, nature, having 
 its root in the earth but reaching, in its aspirations, 
 heavenwards. By abstaining from its fruit man offered 
 it up in sacrifice to God, and offered himself along 
 with it. For it tested and called into action his whole 
 nature. It called for a bodily act of self-denial, and 
 so touched his animal nature. It affected also every 
 department of his intellectual and moral one. He 
 was by his memory to keep in mind that it was that 
 tree, however undistinguished from the others. It 
 called for the sacrifice of his reason. He was to obey 
 the divine command, although there was no apparent 
 reason for his obedience. It was a command based 
 on a mystery which he could not fathom, but which 
 his heart could accept. By his obedient act of ab- 
 stinence, he united himself to the offering, and so 
 doing God designed to give Himself back to the 
 creature. Man would give himself to God, God would 
 give Himself to man. By outward gift of the tree 
 of knowledge man would submit himself to God ; by 
 the returning gift of the tree of life, God would bestow 
 a fuller gift to man. 
 
 The same principle is seen under the patriarchs. 
 The changed character of the sacrifice denotes the 
 changed relation of man to God. Disobedience hav- 
 ing separated man from God, he must offer a sacrifice 
 which shall symbolize his separated condition. By
 
 158 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 sin he has lost grace, and has come under a law of 
 death. Instead of the tree, beautiful with life and 
 fragrant with blossoms, for one offering, there must 
 now be the slaying of the victim and the cry of pain. 
 It symbolizes his condition. It is an acknowledg- 
 ment of his transgression and the righteousness of its 
 penalty. But offered in humble faith to God, God 
 will correspondingly give to man certain temporal and 
 covenanted blessings vouchsafed by his feeding on 
 the offering, and the pledge of a promised Redeemer. 
 
 When at length Christ comes the same law is dis- 
 cernible. A new form of sacrificial worship is estab- 
 lished. In the kingdom of grace we offer the Holy 
 Eucharist. We break the bread and bless the cup 
 which signifies the breaking of the holy body and 
 the outpouring of the precious blood. By this sacra- 
 mental action we set forth before the Eternal Father 
 the saving act of Calvary. We proclaim in the spiritual 
 body of Christ the mystery of the Lord's death till 
 He comes. And what we offer God gives us back 
 to feed upon. 
 
 While Christ had but one body, and that which is 
 present in the sacrament is one with His glorified 
 body (for the body which Christ has now is the same 
 He took of the Blessed Virgin and which hung on 
 the cross and rose from the dead), the action repre- 
 sented and pleaded on our earthly altars is the act 
 performed on earth. Into heaven, Christ, as the high 
 priest, carried the living blood sprinkled upon Him- 
 self as the Mercy Seat. " The Mercy Seat or Cap- 
 poreth was the golden lid which covered the sacred 
 ark, and upon which the blood of a bullock or goat
 
 SACRIFICE 159 
 
 was sprinkled at the yearly feast of expiation. This 
 lid covered not only the ark, containing the law, but l 
 the law itself. The blood of the appointed victims 
 only becomes propitiatory when it is on the Cap- 
 poreth." 2 Christ, as the " propitiation," 3 is identical 
 with the Capporeth, which signifies Christ sprinkled 
 with His own blood. 4 So He in Himself is the 
 Hebrew " Capporeth " or Propitiation. The offering 
 of the Church on earth is one in substance with that 
 in heaven, but it symbolically sets forth and pleads 
 by the breaking of the bread and the consecration of 
 the wine the sacrificial action made on Calvary. 
 
 The Church in her sacrificial worship thus offers 
 and presents to God Christ as her representative and 
 head. The whole body of the Church in heaven and 
 earth unitedly does this in one continuous action. 
 Moreover, the individual members of Christ's body 
 offer themselves to God in union with the sacrifice 
 with which, by participation, they are united. What 
 they corporately offer to God, that God gives back 
 to them individually. The Eucharistic sacrifice is 
 thus a theandric, a reciprocal God and man, action 
 and the ordained form of Christian worship. 
 
 In the condition we call that of " glory " there is no 
 mystical, symbolical immolation as in the Eucharist, 
 no actual one as on the cross. But there the Church 
 perpetually offers itself up to God through Christ its 
 high priest and head, and the Almighty gives Him- 
 self back in ever-flowing streams of life and blessing 
 through the Incarnate God. The necessary condition 
 
 1 Exod. xxx. 6. 8 Rom. iii. 25. 
 
 2 Lev. xvii. n ; xvi. 14, 15. 4 Liddon's Ep. Rom. iii. 25.
 
 160 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 of secured sinlessness, and so of an eternally advanc- 
 ing felicity, depends upon this perpetual reciprocal 
 activity. The tree of life is on either side of the river. 
 The law of communion with God is ever the same. 
 Sacrifice is the eternal law of the creature's life and 
 the ordained means of communion with deity. It 
 is a necessity of religion, and there is no complete 
 religion without it. For it is on man's part an ex- 
 pression of his condition and duty to God, and on 
 God's part a gift, through or associated with the offer- 
 ing, to man. It is, in the relation that man has with 
 God, what the vivifying law of exchange is in nature. 
 Nothing lives to itself alone. Each must give of its 
 life for other life, and, in giving, enrich its own. Earth 
 and air and sea and sky live in this loving fellowship. 
 They are ever imparting to one another, and receiving 
 a responsive benefit. The sea yields itself to the sky's 
 warm smile, and the sky returns its gift with showers. 
 The strong mountain shelters the valley, the valley 
 holds up its cup of moisture for the mountain to drink. 
 The angels by service pour back their lives into the 
 divine fount of life, and from thence wells forth to 
 them responsive tides of bliss. Sacrifice is aligned 
 to this law of relationship, and so is as lasting as the 
 relationship between God and man. 
 
 To this Protestantism is apt to reply that our Lord 
 made an offering for man once for all, and that He 
 having fulfilled the prophecies concerning the Mes- 
 sianic sacrifice, sacrifice forever passed away. We 
 must eagerly respond that, when this objection springs 
 from a sincere desire to guard the all-sufficiency of 
 Christ's atoning, piacular, vicarious sacrifice, we can
 
 SACRIFICE 161 
 
 but honor it. It cannot be too sacredly guarded. 
 His sacrifice was efficaciously offered for the whole 
 race. It was, by virtue of the divinity of His person, 
 of infinite value. It needs no supplementing, and 
 nothing can be added to it. It was all-sufficient 
 and complete in itself, and by it God and man were 
 reconciled. We can do nothing, and nothing is of 
 any virtue, apart from it. But it does not follow 
 from this that sacrifice has ceased and is no longer 
 an element of worship. The Church worships with a 
 sacrifice of prayer and thanksgiving as she presents 
 to God her blood-sprinkled Redeemer and Lord. 
 She worships as she, in obedience to the divine 
 command, makes and offers the memorial of Christ's 
 death. Her children worship as they make, what 
 was done once for humanity, available by partici- 
 pation for their own individual needs and sins. 
 
 It is only an impoverished Protestantism that, hav- 
 ing lost its full Christian heritage, fails to discern it. 
 The testimony given by the consciousness of united 
 Christendom is overwhelmingly in favor of the reten- 
 tion of sacrifice. The Russian and Greek communions, 
 with their one hundred and fifty millions of members,! 
 the Roman, with its two hundred and fifty, and the ', 
 Anglicans, all in their inherited liturgies, have re- ' 
 tained sacrifice. In the American book of common ' 
 prayer it is, in the communion service, most ex- 
 plicitly stated. After the consecration of the sacred 
 elements, the priest, standing, and so in the priestly 
 position, makes an oblation of them to Almighty God. 
 He says, " We Thy humble servants do celebrate and 
 make here before Thy Divine Majesty, with these Thy
 
 162 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 holy gifts, which we now offer unto Thee, the memo- 
 rial Thy Son hath commanded us to make." " The 
 Holy Eucharist," says Bishop Christopher Words- 
 worth, in his Commentary, 1 " partakes of the char- 
 acter of a sin-offering and of a peace-offering. In 
 that blessed sacrament there is both an oblation to 
 God and there is a participation by man. In it the 
 meritorious blood of Christ which was shed once for 
 all on the cross, ... is re-presented and pleaded 
 before God. And in it the blood of Christ is 
 sprinkled on the souls of all penitent and faithful 
 receivers." The testimony in favor of sacrifice is 
 practically universal. Churchman and non-church- 
 man both bear witness, one positively, the other 
 negatively. For Protestantism having lost the priest- 
 hood necessarily lost sacrifice, and the real objective 
 presence of Christ's body and blood in the Eucharist 
 and their Christian consciousness cannot bear wit- 
 ness to something they do not possess. Their neg- 
 ative testimony, therefore, confirms that of the vast 
 majority of Christians who, possessing the priesthood, 
 have retained belief in the real presence of Christ's 
 body and blood and the sacrifice of the altar. 
 
 If, then, we consider what the whole Church, East 
 and West, taught before the rise of Protestantism, we 
 see that all but a small fraction of Christians held to 
 the practice of a sacrificial worship. To apply here 
 our rule of faith, we cannot believe, if Christ was a 
 teacher sent from God, He could have so badly 
 taught His followers, that almost all should, on so 
 vital a matter, have been led into error. What the 
 
 1 Exod. xxiv. 6.
 
 SACRIFICE 163 
 
 Holy Spirit, speaking through the common Christian 
 consciousness, declares, must be true, for the Spirit 
 of truth cannot be a liar. The worship of God by 
 sacrifice is thus proved to be the Gospel method, and 
 the Eucharist the ordained Christian sacrifice. 
 
 But how are we to meet the argument, based on 
 Scripture, that Christ once for all offered Himself a 
 sacrifice for sin. 
 
 It may help us to understand this if we recall the 
 fact that there was, in the former dispensation, a 
 division between the sacrifices. Some sacrifices were 
 for individual offerings and others were of a corporate 
 character. God, as we know, deals with us both as 
 individuals and in our corporate capacity. In the 
 latter He deals with us as a nation or a race. We 
 find Him thus delivering, by the paschal meal and 
 the blood sprinkled on the door-posts, Israel's first 
 born from death, and the nation from Egyptian bond- 
 age. Its yearly memorial was a national act of 
 renewed gratitude to God, and a pledge of God's 
 continued protection to the nation. God also estab- 
 lished the nation in a covenanted relation to Himself 
 when Moses took the blood, part of which had been 
 offered on the altar, and with the other portion 
 sprinkled it on the people, saying, " Behold the 
 blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made 
 with you." And year by year, on the day of atone- 
 ment, by its special sacrifices was the nation recon- 
 ciled and the covenant on God's part renewed. 
 
 We can now see from the relation which the day 
 of atonement and its sacrifices bore to the Jewish 
 nation, what is the relation of the atonement made
 
 164 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 on Calvary to the Christian Israel. On the Jewish 
 holy day, the whole regular order of the daily temple 
 sacrifices stopped. The whole ecclesiastical machin- 
 ery, so to speak, ran down. The high priest put off 
 his glorious vestments, the regular daily offerings 
 could not be made. The whole nation, as a nation, 
 must first be reconciled to God. When that work 
 was accomplished, then the priests resumed their 
 functions and the power to offer the daily sacrifices 
 was restored. These were the representatives and 
 extension of that one great yearly sacrifice on the 
 day of atonement on which they legally depended 
 for their efficacy. Thus the day of atonement did 
 not make worship by sacrifice to cease, but, on the 
 contrary, enabled it to go on. In like manner Christ 
 offered Himself on the cross. He offered Himself 
 for the race as an entity. His act need not and can- 
 not be repeated. It was unique. He was " once 
 offered to bear the sins of many." "This man 
 offered one sacrifice for sin," the one sacrifice by 
 which God and man were reconciled. By it the race, 
 in its corporate capacity as a race, human nature as a 
 nature, man regarded as man, was brought into a 
 restored relationship with God. This work once 
 accomplished can neither be repeated nor added to. 
 It is complete. The seal of our Lord's word rests 
 upon it. " It is finished." But as the day of atone- 
 ment, which reconciled the Jewish nation, did not 
 cause the worship by sacrifice to cease, neither does 
 the atoning act which reconciled mankind. As the 
 Jewish atonement restored to the nation the privilege 
 of offering its daily sacrifices, so that made by Christ
 
 SACRIFICE 165 
 
 gave to His people the right of offering the more ac- 
 ceptable gospel sacrifices. And that sacrifices were 
 to continue, S. Paul tells us when he says that the 
 " heavenly things," that is the members of the new 
 Christian dispensation, should, in contrast with the 
 members of the former one, " be purified with better 
 sacrifices." * Chiefest and most acceptable among 
 them is that our Lord ordained when He said to His 
 Apostles, " Offer this as a memorial of Me." We 
 do not, therefore, by the Eucharistic sacrifice, deny 
 the uniqueness or all-sufficingness of the one sac- 
 rifice of the cross, nay, we establish it. 
 
 The Eucharist is the gospel sacrifice and it is a 
 sacrifice of fourfold aspects. It is a sacrifice of praise 
 and thanksgiving, for in the canon the priest asks 
 God to accept it as such. It is also a sacrifice of 
 prayer or the calves of our lips. " We pray that we 
 and all Thy whole Church may obtain remission of 
 our sins and all other benefits of His Passion." It 
 is a sacrifice of ourselves. " We offer ourselves, 
 our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and 
 living sacrifice unto Thee." The Church also offers 
 and presents Him, her Head, and pleads His death 
 and merits for herself and her children. On the 
 cross Christ died for humanity; by the offering of 
 the Eucharistic sacrifice we as individuals plead, and 
 appropriate that sacrifice to ourselves. Once the 
 command concerning sacrifice was " touch not," now 
 it is "offer"; once it was "eat not," now it is "eat 
 and live." 
 
 While it is a truth that Christian worship must be 
 
 i Heb. ix. 23.
 
 166 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 expressed by sacrifice, yet it is also true that sacrifice 
 is not the only revealed mode by which man is to 
 approach God. There have ever been two ordained 
 modes of approach, viz., by word only, and by act. 
 In Paradise we find both; man offers by sacrificial 
 worship the tree ; he also communes with God repre- 
 sented as abiding with man in the garden. So under 
 the law, the synagogue and its worship developed 
 along with that of the temple. So in the Christian 
 Church, along with the great gospel sacrifice, came 
 the development of the divine office. The Anglican 
 Church has preserved in her prayer-book both the 
 two divinely appointed forms, that of synagogue 
 worship and that of the temple. The higher, the 
 more important and efficacious is the sacrifice of the 
 altar. There Christ, always abiding in the midst of 
 His Church, in a special way manifests Himself. The 
 bread becomes His body, wine becomes His blood. 
 He veils His glory under sacramental forms, and the 
 whole Church in heaven and earth, with angels and 
 archangels, unites in jubilant worship. She presents 
 Christ as her Head, and presents herself, in Christ, 
 before Almighty God. It is the worship of the 
 Church in the Church by the Church. It is an act 
 performed, not in the domain of nature, but in that 
 of Christ's mystical body. It is neither governed by 
 any known physical laws, nor can it be sounded by 
 human metaphysics. From first to last everything 
 connected with the Blessed Sacrament and the holy 
 sacrifice belongs to the spiritual order of the new 
 creation. The Church and Altar by their consecra- 
 tion have become incorporated into it, and are cov-
 
 SACRIFICE 167 
 
 enanted meeting-places between God and man. The 
 priests are spiritual officers set apart and empowered 
 by the Holy Spirit for their work. The faithful are 
 not mere ordinary natural beings, but are spiritually 
 endowed persons and living stones of the spiritual 
 temple. Christ's body and blood which are present 
 are now in a glorified condition, and emancipated 
 from that of His visible earthly state. By the words 
 of Christ and the Holy Spirit the earthly elements 
 are transmuted into the heavenly realities. By faith 
 we spiritually partake, to our body and soul's health, 
 of the spiritual food of the body and blood of Christ. 
 By spiritual but real incorporation into Christ, the 
 whole body of the faithful rises into the divine fel- 
 lowship and progresses in its union with God. 
 
 It was not a copy of heathen rites or a survival of 
 Jewish traditions that led the Church to make her 
 sacrificial offering liturgical, choral, symbolical. Her 
 illuminated vision had caught sight of the heavenly 
 service and the Divine Spirit taught her to mould 
 her liturgy after it. In the Gospels the Church was 
 only in an inchoate and formative preparatory condi- 
 tion and our Lord said little about its worship. But 
 when the Church had been formed and led out from 
 Judaism, as of old Israel had been led out of Egypt, 
 then as God took Moses up and showed him the 
 things in heaven, which were to be the pattern of 
 the tabernacle, so He took up S. John, and the glory 
 of the worship, with its lights and incense and anthem 
 and antiphonal choirs and musical instruments and 
 priestly hierarchy and devout prostrations and song 
 of the redeemed and prayers of saints and dazzling
 
 168 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 splendor of throne and circling rainbow and the 
 shining sea, became a directory for the Church. She 
 learnt from heaven itself how to worship God in 
 spirit and in truth. 
 
 No churchman but would emphasize the supreme 
 importance of the inward spirit to all that is outward. 
 But it is well to remember two things : that the in- 
 ward will not be elevated by stern repression of the 
 outward, as Quakerism unwisely thought, and that no 
 concessions to the world or sectarianism will ever win 
 their members to the Church. True to her heavenly 
 guidance, the Church must hold fast to her inherited 
 faith and worship. To a general daily revival of the 
 Eucharist, the victory of the Anglican Church will be 
 given. But for it to avail, the offering of the inward 
 and the outward must coalesce. There must be an 
 enthusiastic revival of the spirit of entire consecration. 
 Men and women must give themselves to God with 
 the same devotion as men lay down their lives in 
 battle for the sake of their country. They must be- 
 come living sacrifices in union with that of Calvary 
 and the Altar.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY 
 
 OUR first inquiry is, how do we know that 
 Christ intended there should be an established 
 ministry? A class of Christians calling themselves 
 " Friends " deny that it was so proposed. We have 
 in this sect individualism carried to its consistent, 
 logical outcome. There cannot be in such a concep- 
 tion of Christianity either a ministry or sacrament. 
 Church history has, however, triumphed over this 
 spiritual idealism. Christ did institute a sacrament by 
 which persons were made members of an organized 
 Christian society. 
 
 If every organization requires officers how shall 
 they be appointed? If an organization is a humanly 
 made one and the officers represent its members and 
 derive their authority from them, most appropriately 
 they should be chosen by those whom they represent. 
 But if it is a divinely founded institution, and the 
 ministers are the ambassadors of the Founder, then it 
 is obvious, however designated, that they must receive 
 their authority from Him. Moreover, if the Founder 
 is not the unseen Divine Being, but the Incarnate 
 God-Man, the authority to act for Him is appro- 
 priately given and certified, as in the case of the 
 ambassador of an earthly monarch, by a visible and 
 ordained instrumentality. If the duty of the officer
 
 i;o CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 requires that he guard sacred things, have a care oi 
 souls, bless in God's name, and serve God by offering 
 sacrifice, then he is not only an ambassador but, in 
 Old Testament language, a priest. 
 
 It is sometimes said that the ministers of the new 
 dispensation are never called priests in God's word. 
 But such we read in the Old Testament, the ministers 
 of the Gospel were to be. In that blessed gospel- 
 time men were to be gathered out of all nations, " and 
 I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, 
 saith the Lord." 1 The character of priesthood was 
 to change, 2 but priesthood was never to cease. 3 
 Sacrifice was to be offered everywhere in all lands. 4 
 Under the Gospel it was to be of surpassing efficacy. 
 In the Church this prophecy has been fulfilled, and 
 from earliest times, throughout Christendom, East 
 and West, Russian, Greek, Roman, and Anglican, 
 sacrifice and priesthood have been preserved. These 
 are as clear and marked characteristic signs of the 
 true Church as the sun is in the heavens. Where 
 they are not we have man-made societies, but not the 
 Church founded by Jesus Christ. Sacrifice, as we 
 have seen, is the very essence of God's ordained 
 form of worship, and sacrifice offered by a corporate 
 society postulates the necessity of a priesthood. 
 
 Its development into the three orders which now 
 exist, and their special powers are an interesting 
 study. 
 
 The genesis of our triple ministry lies hidden in the 
 recesses of the evolution of the Jewish nationality. God 
 
 1 Isa. Ixvi. 21. Jer. xxxiii. 18. 
 
 a Heb. vii. 12. * Mai. i. n.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY 171 
 
 inspired their prophets and seers with the vision of a 
 coming one, who should be the anointed from on high 
 and the restorer of Israel. The more keenly enlight- 
 ened saw in the prophetic mist the figure of one who 
 would be the burden bearer and the emancipator of 
 mankind. Around their belief in the coming Messiah 
 were clustered all the hopes and aspirations of Israel. 
 In the midst of his national afflictions, in the dis- 
 heartening dreariness of the captivity, the Jew held 
 fast to the traditions of his race and the covenanted 
 promise. When the great Messiah should come, he 
 would be at once a prophet, priest, and king. " The 
 Lord God," so the great lawgiver declared, " will 
 raise up unto thee a prophet like unto me, unto 
 whom ye shall hearken." l " He shall be a priest," 
 said Zechariah, 2 and king. " Behold, thy king cometh 
 unto thee : He is just, and having salvation ; lowly, and 
 riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an 
 ass." 3 
 
 Into the threefold office of this Messiahship Jesus 
 was anointed. He took not upon Himself this honor, 
 but was called of God by a formal consecration, as was 
 Aaron. 4 It was the office of the greatest of all the 
 Hebrew prophets to perform this act. Jesus was 
 sealed from on high. The heavens were opened, and 
 the Spirit of God descended upon Him, and the voice 
 from heaven declared His Sonship. At His baptism 
 Jesus was anointed with the Spirit as the Messiah or 
 Christ. 
 
 1 Deut. xviii. 15. * Zech. ix. 9. 
 
 Zech. vi. 13. * Heb. v. 4, 5 ; vii. 21.
 
 i;2 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 We must here note the difference sometimes for- 
 gotten between His mediatorship and His Messiah- 
 ship. Respecting the first He claimed to be both the 
 Son of Man and the Son of God. As the God-Man, 
 joining the two natures in His one person, He is the 
 mediator. His office of mediator is to be the living 
 way between the created and uncreate. He is like a 
 bridge between the two. As God He touches the 
 divine life, for He is of one substance with it. As 
 man He touches the side of creation, with which by 
 His incarnation He has identified Himself. There 
 is no other possible way of our entering into and 
 being made partakers of the divine life, and so attain- 
 ing to eternal bliss, save by an incorporation into 
 Christ, who is the living way. As the Messiah, He 
 is the anointed one, exercising the three offices of 
 prophet, priest, and king. 
 
 It has been urged by sectarians against the exist- 
 ence of a priesthood in the Christian dispensation, 
 that Christ did not call Himself a priest. This may 
 be true. Indeed in the Epistle to the Hebrews we 
 read, " that if He were on earth, He should not be a 
 priest, seeing that there are priests who offer gifts 
 according to the law." 1 Yet in the same epistle, very 
 emphatically, is His consecration as a priest asserted, 
 and He is again and again called our high priest. 
 The explanation is easy. He was not like a Jewish 
 priest, but of a new and higher order. Priesthood 
 was not to be abolished, 2 but only the priesthood 
 changed. So, lest the Jews should confound His 
 priesthood with that of the Aaronic one, our Lord in 
 1 Heb. viii. 4. 2 Heb. vii. 12.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY 173 
 
 His public ministry avoids the use of the term. He 
 calls Himself, however, the Christ, which includes 
 all three offices ; and when He has ascended, by 
 an epistle which was written under the inspiration 
 of the Holy Ghost, His high priestly character is 
 explicitly asserted. He declares His priestly office 
 when He says that He will " give His life a ransom 
 for many." 
 
 The Church is the mystical body of Christ, and as 
 such is identified with His priesthood and sacrifice. 
 This identity Christ declared when He said, " I am 
 the Vine, ye are the branches." Christ and His 
 members form thus one body. The Holy Spirit 
 declares the same truth. The body is one, and all 
 the members of that one body are one body. " Ye are 
 the body of Christ." * The idea of a body implies 
 generation, birth, members, functions, corporate rela- 
 tionship, unification. S. Peter 2 speaks of its members 
 as newborn babes, as the offspring of a king and 
 a priest, as forming thus a generation, as united as a 
 holy nation and a royal priesthood, as built up as living 
 stones, a spiritual temple, as being an holy priesthood 
 to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by 
 Jesus Christ. Christians thus collectively form one 
 priesthood, and the individual members of the body 
 share, in different degrees, in its exercise. So it is 
 said of them, " they shall be priests of God and of 
 Christ." 3 
 
 Thus from the oneness of the Church with Christ, 
 her Head, comes her priestly character. " Priest and 
 sacrifice," said Dr. Moberly, " are the very heart's 
 
 1 i Cor. xii. 12-27. 2 i S. Pet. ii. 2-9. Rev. xx. 6.
 
 1/4 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 core of what He became as Man. The Church, as 
 His mystical Body, is wholly made one with His 
 manhood, and therefore is one with His priesthood 
 and sacrifice." The Church is not a mere aggre- 
 gation of believers, but is an organism welded into 
 oneness by the indwelling Spirit. It possesses as 
 such that which it has received from Christ and acts 
 in its corporate capacity. In her highest act of wor- 
 ship she presents Christ as her all-sufficient oblation, 
 and offers herself up as a living victim in union with 
 Him. Sacrifice is the law and means of her union 
 with God, and priesthood is essential to it. 
 
 If then the head of the Church is our high priest, 
 and the Church is a body of priests, it follows that the 
 officers of the body would be priests. They neces- 
 sarily would be clothed with all the special powers of 
 priesthood which their offices required. That they 
 were so, we have the consentient testimony of all 
 portions of Catholic Christendom. It will, however, 
 be helpful to study the process by which our Lord, as 
 the high priest, prophet, and king, trained and com- 
 missioned and finally consecrated those who were, 
 as the officers of the Church, to be teachers, rulers, 
 and priests, under Him ; and then how they were to 
 transmit their authority to others. 
 
 The method has all the slowness, hiddenness, and 
 progressiveness that is a characteristic of divinity. 
 Christ held in Himself the threefold office of the 
 Messiahship. He was the prophet, priest, and king. 
 Having called His twelve disciples He gradually and 
 by progressive commissions associated them with 
 Himself. During His visible ministry, when He was
 
 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY 175 
 
 especially exercising His prophetical office, He began 
 to unite the twelve to His office of teacher. Having 
 first continued all night in prayer to God, " He 
 ordained twelve, that they should be with Him, and 
 that He might send them forth to preach." l It was 
 at first a limited commission. As His own personal 
 ministry was then confined to Israel, theirs was to be 
 so likewise. After His resurrection, having defeated 
 the ruler of this world, and by right of conquest ex- 
 tended His kingdom to its prophetical dimensions, He 
 then gave them jurisdiction in all nations and over all 
 peoples. At first they were to preach only, saying, 
 " The kingdom of heaven is at hand," but after the 
 resurrection they were to make disciples, " teaching 
 them to observe all things I have commanded you." 
 They had then a wider commission to teach, and in 
 their collective capacity, to do so with authority. 
 " If a man neglect to hear the Church, let him be 
 unto thee as a heathen man and a publican." 2 When 
 our Lord formally began the great function of His 
 priesthood in the upper chamber, He then associated 
 the twelve with His priestly office. None others were 
 present. They alone were commissioned to " do " 
 or "offer" the memorial of His death and sacrifice. 
 When He had risen as the great victor over death and 
 hell, during the great forty days He made the disci- 
 ples partakers of His royal prerogatives. They were 
 to make persons subjects of His kingdom by baptism. 
 They were to restore to their allegiance by absolu- 
 tion those who had fallen away. So did Christ grad- 
 ually and progressively associate the twelve with His 
 
 l S. Mark iii. 14. 2 S. Matt, xviii. 17.
 
 i;6 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 threefold offices. They were to be under Him, in 
 His Church, prophets, priests, and kings. 
 
 But though by these separate acts they were com- 
 missioned, by one act were they finally empowered. 
 They received a gift of the Spirit, " actual " or " aiding " 
 grace when Christ breathed on them. But at Pen- 
 tecost, as John had foretold, Christ baptized the 
 Church with fire and the Holy Ghost. The Holy 
 Ghost came and dwelt in the Church. The Holy 
 Ghost had first dwelt in the humanity of Christ, for 
 the Spirit was given without measure unto Him. But 
 without leaving Christ, He enters into Christ's mys- 
 tical body. The anointing flows down from Aaron's 
 beard even to the skirts of his clothing. He fills the 
 Church with His presence and makes it a living thing. 
 It had been like Adam's body before God breathed 
 into it the breath of life. The Holy Ghost by His 
 indwelling made the Church a living spiritual organ- 
 ism. He filled all the Church, uniting all its members 
 to Christ and to one another in Him. He also 
 empowered the twelve to perform effectively those 
 offices into which they had been gathered. They 
 became thereby " able ministers of the Word," 
 enabled to do what Christ had commissioned them 
 to do. Thus was an order of ministry formed by Christ 
 the high priest within the royal and priestly body 
 to be representative prophets, priests, and kings. 
 
 But we have as yet arrived at but one order ; how 
 did it come to pass that the present three orders of 
 bishops, priests, and deacons were evolved out of it? 
 We may not be able to trace the whole process in all 
 its details. A complete knowledge of process is not
 
 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY 177 
 
 necessary for the demonstration of a fact. We will 
 however say this : The Church's order of govern- 
 ment was not established by the Apostles in obe- 
 dience to a written or explicitly revealed constitution. 
 It was evolved under the inward guidance of the 
 Holy Spirit and the pressing needs of outward 
 circumstances. This formative process was appar- 
 ently divided into two stages of development: the 
 filling up of the number of the twelve, and the 
 extension of the Apostolic ministry. 
 
 In this process we may observe that there were 
 two great facts respecting the Church, concerning 
 which the Apostles needed to be especially taught. 
 They were so important that God did it by two object- 
 lessons. The two facts were, that Christ and that the 
 Holy Ghost abode in the Church. The Lord had 
 not, by His ascension, left it. The Holy Ghost had 
 not come to take the place of an absent Lord. The 
 Church by the living bond of the Spirit was united to 
 Christ her Head. By the Spirit Christ was made 
 effectively present in His mystical body. The Apos- 
 tles were to have it impressed on them that Christ and 
 the Spirit were the abiding source of all authority 
 and life. The presence of these two Persons was 
 witnessed by the consecration of S. Matthias, in the 
 filling up of the twelve, and of S. Paul subsequently 
 in the extension of the Apostolate. 
 
 Now Matthias could not in the interval before 
 Pentecost be consecrated by the Apostles. They 
 could not by the laying on of hands join any into 
 their order, for the Apostolic order itself was not 
 yet fully constituted. Neither could they in any way
 
 178 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 impart the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit was not yet 
 given. All they could do, in that inchoate condition, 
 was to ask the Lord to designate whom He had 
 chosen to fill up the vacancy. This the Lord did. 
 Then Matthias being thus called (as they themselves 
 had been) was along with themselves consecrated an 
 Apostle by Christ and the Spirit at Pentecost. 
 
 Let us turn to the case of S. Paul. At Pentecost, 
 the Holy Spirit not only consecrated the Apostolic 
 order as the representative of Christ, as prophet, 
 priest, and king, but along with other gifts to the 
 Church inspired some as prophets to be a special 
 witness of Himself. Thus the Church is built, we 
 are told, on " the foundation of the Apostles and 
 prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief corner-stone." 
 By the prophets the truth was evidenced that the 
 Holy Spirit was not a mere influence, but a person 
 to whom the Apostles were subordinate and whom 
 they were to obey. Now the two facts of which we 
 are speaking, of Christ and the Holy Spirit abiding 
 in the Church, we see clearly expressed in the conse- 
 cration of S. Paul. Christ as dwelling in the Church 
 appears to Saul on the Damascus roadway, and gives 
 Him His Apostolic commission, as He had done 
 before in His visible ministry to the Twelve. But 
 though the Apostles could now consecrate, it being 
 since Pentecost, yet for their instruction a unique 
 action of the Holy Spirit occurred. " Now there 
 were at Antioch certain prophets," and as they min- 
 istered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, 
 " Separate (i. e,, consecrate) me Barnabas and Saul 
 for the work whereunto I have called them. And
 
 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY 179 
 
 when they had fasted and prayed and laid hands on 
 them, they sent them away." 1 Paul having been 
 personally called by Christ was empowered by the 
 Holy Ghost, and so became an Apostle, called and 
 consecrated just as the Twelve had been. He could 
 claim to be " Paul, an Apostle, not of men," not as 
 representing them, " neither by man," not as author- 
 ized by human authority, but by " Jesus Christ and 
 God the Father." So it was in the case of S. 
 Barnabas. There was, however, this difference. Paul 
 was called by Christ who visibly and miraculously 
 appeared to him. Barnabas was called by the Holy 
 Ghost, who miraculously spoke audibly and called 
 Barnabas through the Church. Then they were alike 
 empowered by the Spirit as the Twelve were at! 
 Pentecost. 
 
 But although by this on a spiritual equality with 
 the Twelve, neither Paul nor Barnabas could act 
 independently of them. They must be gathered into 
 the Apostolic fellowship, receive from them jurisdic- 
 tion, and become subject to the Church's discipline. 2 
 These two unique cases give no sanction to any min- 
 istry unconnected with Apostolic authority. They 
 were not of the original twelve founders whose office 
 as witnesses to the resurrection was unique. The 
 " Twelve," and the " prophets " as foundations, form 
 groups distinct by themselves, and as such they were 
 to pass away. The prophetical gifts were, however, 
 to continue diffused in the Church. The Apostolate 
 was to unfold itself into the three orders. 
 
 Thus we come to the second stage in the formation 
 
 1 Acts xiii. I. 2 Gal. ii. 9.
 
 i8o CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 of the Christian ministry, or its development into the 
 three orders. Pressed by the Church's growing needs, 
 the Apostles began to gather persons into different 
 degrees of fellowship with themselves, and so with 
 Christ ; making them thereby partakers of His three- 
 fold office and giving them the Holy Ghost for its 
 performance. 
 
 First we have the genesis of the diaconate. In 
 consequence of the disputings between the Grecians 
 and Hebrew converts, the Apostles were compelled 
 to set apart seven for a certain work. Their original 
 duties were something more than that of almoners, 
 for they were to be men " full of the Holy Ghost and 
 wisdom." They were not merely chosen, but formally 
 ordained by prayer and imposition of hands. "They 
 were set before the Apostles, and when they had 
 prayed, they laid their hands upon them." The 
 spiritual character of their office is seen in the con- 
 duct and ministrations of Stephen and Philip. They 
 can preach and baptize. Later we find the order 
 officially recognized by S. Paul in his salutation to 
 the Philippians, where he addresses " the bishops and 
 deacons." The personal qualifications of admission 
 are set forth in the epistle to S. Timothy. 
 
 Next, as the Church is extended by Apostolic 
 labors, we find S. Paul ordaining " overseers " or 
 " elders " in every Church. We have here the rise of 
 the second order of the Christian ministry. The use 
 of a double title is very significant of their office. In 
 whatever way it came about, a reverent Christian mind 
 believes it was of God's ordering. It was not unfitting 
 that a ministry that was to be world wide should, by
 
 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY 181 
 
 the Holy Spirit, be designated by titles expressive of 
 both Gentile and Jewish ideas. The title, episcopos, 
 or overseer, being taken from the Greek, the title 
 presbyter or elder being of Hebrew origin. More- 
 over, as this second order was, unlike the diaconate, 
 to share in the priestly and the kingly offices, they 
 had two names given them. As "overseers" they 
 partake of the Apostles' power of government in their 
 respective localities, and as " elders," they are gathered 
 into union with the Apostles' priestly functions. 
 
 The connection between the title "elder "and the 
 priesthood has sometimes been overlooked. It has 
 been thought to have been taken from the name of 
 the ruler of the Jewish synagogue. But the title 
 " elder " did not belong exclusively to that office. It 
 was a generic term applicable to any ruler, and so we 
 read of the elders of cities. It was not therefore 
 necessarily taken from the synagogue service, and 
 indeed it could scarcely have been so. For the elder 
 of the synagogue was only a presiding officer, and by 
 virtue of his office did neither sing nor read nor 
 preach nor pray. If the Christian minister does 
 neither of these things, but only presides, we might 
 have an argument that the term elder or presbyter 
 was borrowed from the synagogue. The title seems 
 like those of others, of Apostles (/'. e., one sent), of 
 deacon (i. e., a servant), taken from Christ. It seem- 
 ingly came about or rather was ordered by God in 
 this wise. God under the old covenant claimed the 
 first-born or elder son for His service, but accepted, 
 in lieu thereof, the Levites to serve in the sanctuary. 
 But when Christ came the true first-born and elder,
 
 1 82 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 and so the true priest the substituted and tempo- 
 rary passed away. Then this order of the gospel 
 ministry took a title which asserted its right to priest- 
 hood and united it to Christ our " elder Brother." The 
 second order of the Christian priesthood bore thus 
 the title of elder or presbyter. 
 
 Finally a third order was developed. S. Paul finds 
 it necessary to have what might be called an Apostolic 
 delegate, one who should have charge over the pres- 
 byters and deacons in a special locality, and so Timo- 
 thy and Titus are placed at Ephesus and Crete, and 
 have power to ordain. Subsequently we find local 
 presiding officers, called " angels," held responsible 
 for their respective churches. Later in Asia Minor 
 the three orders are perfected under the oversight of 
 S. John. The epistles of S. Ignatius bear ample 
 evidence to the fact that bishops, priests, and deacons 
 are recognized orders in the first century. At Jeru- 
 salem there was from the first the local Apostle S. 
 James, with his presbyters and deacon helpers, and 
 the Church, as it grew, naturally developed in con- 
 formity to the type given in the Mother Church. 1 
 The progress was somewhat slower in certain locali- 
 
 1 The weight of authority seems to be that S. James, the Lord's 
 cousin, was one of the original Twelve. If he was not and our 
 Lord's appearance to him was to manifest His choice and qualify 
 S. James to be a witness to the resurrection, then the Apostles 
 would not have been in doubt as to who was to fill the vacancy in 
 their number, and S. James and not S. Matthias would have been 
 chosen. After Pentecost the Apostles did not venture to extend 
 their order, and were only pressed into acceptance of Paul and 
 Barnabas, by special revelations and commands of Christ and the 
 Holy Ghost. As no such authorization is recorded of S. James the 
 safest inference is that he was one of the Twelve.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY 183 
 
 ties, like Rome and Alexandria, but finally becomes 
 universal. 
 
 Let us recapitulate : The two groups, viz., the 
 Twelve Apostles representing Christ, and the proph- 
 ets, as the ministers of the Spirit, fulfilled their 
 special functions. The prophets bore witness to the 
 indwelling presence and guiding power of the Holy 
 Ghost. The Twelve bore witness to Christ's resur- 
 rection, opened the kingdom to Jew and Gentile, 
 and laid the foundations. Having done their work, 
 the two as special groups pass. The temporary and 
 special are, however, succeeded by the ordinary and 
 permanent. The prophetical gifts of the Spirit abide, 
 divided to each as the Spirit wills and are ministered 
 as the Church has need in various ways. The original 
 Apostolate, the official representative of Christ, unfolds 
 itself in the three orders of bishops, priests, and dea- 
 cons, and so the formation of the Christian ministry 
 is complete. 
 
 There remains two questions of some interest. In 
 whom does the authority of ordination reside, and 
 how is it transmitted? In the Scriptures we find 
 S. Paul and S. Barnabas ordaining elders, and direc- 
 tions given to S. Timothy whom to ordain, and " to 
 lay hands suddenly on no man." We do not find any 
 ordination recorded apart from the episcopate. The 
 presbyters lay on hands. The ordination is with the 
 laying on of hands of the presbytery but by or through 
 the Apostle. 1 The common testimony as to the 
 Church's custom confined the power to the epis- 
 copal office. The case at Alexandria, where S. Jerome 
 i 2 Tim. i. 6.
 
 1 84 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 said the presbyters elected one of their number, might 
 not mean that the one so chosen was not subsequently 
 consecrated, as he asks, " For what except ordination 
 does a bishop do which a presbyter does not?" 
 Without reference to any other case we know that a 
 council at Alexandria, A.D. 324, declared null and 
 void an ordination by a presbyter only. Possibly, as 
 has been suggested, there were so-called presbyters 
 at Alexandria who had received at their ordination 
 episcopal authority. The consentient voice of the 
 Church, enforced by the undisturbed practice of fifteen 
 centuries, has been that the power of ordination lies 
 with the episcopate. 
 
 And how is it bestowed? All authority of the 
 three offices is with our Lord. Christ gathered the 
 Apostles into union with Himself, made them share 
 in His Messianic offices and the Holy Ghost em- 
 powered them. The Apostolic order represented by 
 the bishops, by prayer and laying on of hands, gathers 
 persons in different degrees of participation into fel- 
 lowship with itself and so with Christ. By this in- 
 gathering they receive from Christ the gift of the 
 Holy Ghost for the work of their ministry and grace 
 for its due exercise. The Episcopate, into whose 
 fellowship they are received, is of the nature of a 
 permanent instrumentality. Its members change as 
 the years pass, just as the atoms of the wave sweep- 
 ing to the shore change while the wave yet retains 
 its form. So the Episcopal order abides from age 
 to age, a living potential agency. And each new 
 bishop is by his consecration brought into union 
 with Christ and His offices, not by a grace which
 
 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY 185 
 
 has percolated through twenty centuries, as water 
 in some Italian garden descends from fountain to 
 fountain, but by an instrumentality as proximate as 
 brought the Holy Ghost to Paul and Barnabas at 
 Antioch, or the gift and grace of order to Timothy 
 by the hands of S. Paul. 
 
 We may now ask what are the powers of the Chris- 
 tian minister? Is he of the second order a priest? 
 Does the word "priest" in our prayer-book have a 
 " sacerdotal " meaning? Is it used there as more than 
 an abbreviated form of the title " presbyter," synony- 
 mous with the officer of the synagogue? Is it not 
 true that the title " priest " in the Old Testament sense 
 is not used in the word of God to designate the Chris- 
 tian ministry? 
 
 The answer is, it is not true that the word priest 
 is not applied in the Bible to the Christian ministry. 
 For in Isaiah we read " that in the day that God will 
 gather all nations, He will take of them for priests." 
 In the new dispensation the old title was at first 
 avoided lest the new, higher, spiritual priesthood 
 should be confounded with the lower Jewish one. 
 The Church has shown what she means by the title 
 presbyter by giving to its contraction " priest " the 
 synonym of sacerdos. Our own branch of the Cath- 
 olic Church has done so likewise by the Latin title 
 of her Twenty-third Article, where she uses this word 
 and calls the priests " sacerdotes." The American 
 prayer-book also speaks of the connection between the 
 rector and his people as a " sacerdotal relation." 
 
 The real test, however, whether the Christian min- 
 ister is a priest or not, will be found in the powers
 
 186 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 that are given in Holy Scripture. For it is true now, 
 as in the time of Socrates, " that things must be learned 
 not from their names but from themselves." Has, 
 then, the Christian presbyter the powers which dis- 
 tinguish the Jewish priest? The answer is, he has, 
 only in a higher degree. Did the Jewish priest give 
 torah, or judgment? was he a directing priest? did 
 the people seek the law at his mouth? did he exercise 
 ecclesiastical rule? Of the Christian priest it is said, 
 " Whosoever heareth you, heareth me, and whatsoever 
 ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and 
 whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in 
 heaven." Had the Jewish priest the power of rec- 
 onciliation or excommunication? To the Christian 
 priesthood was given the ministry of reconciliation, 
 that " whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted ; 
 and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." 
 Did the Jewish priest offer incense unto the Lord? 
 For the Christian service it is written, " in every place 
 incense shall be offered to my name and a pure offer- 
 ing." Did the Jewish priest once stand with his censer 
 between the living and the dead and stay the plague ? 
 To the Christian it is said, " Is any sick among you ? 
 Let him call for the elders of the Church and let them 
 pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of 
 the Lord ; and the prayer of faith shall save the sick." 
 Was the Jewish priest to bless in Jehovah's name? It 
 is of the Christian priest's office to say " peace to this 
 house," and to bless in the holy threefold name of 
 God. Was the Jewish priest to offer sacrifice ? This 
 is the work, too, of the Christian priest. " We have 
 an altar," and there he makes and offers before God
 
 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY 187 
 
 the memorial sacrifice of Christ's body and blood. 
 " Ministering in sacrifice," as S. Paul says, " the 
 Gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles 
 might be made acceptable, being sanctified by the 
 Holy Ghost." l 
 
 We have thus seen that sacrifice is the essence of 
 religion and priesthood is a necessity of it. Against 
 this conception the world raises its insidious cry of 
 sacerdotalism. It hates, as the great Liddon said, 
 anything that seems to assert aught of inequality be- 
 tween man and man. Forgetting the fact that in 
 God's providential government there are priests of 
 knowledge, priests of wealth, priests of political power, 
 priests in every department of the social order, it 
 rebels against any distinction of class in religion. 
 Sectarianism, ignorant of the Church's doctrine, that 
 the Church is a body of priests, and that her officers 
 are not different in kind from the laity but only in 
 the degree of powers they possess, cries out against 
 her in like reproachful spirit. Devout but mistaken 
 Christian churchmen, rightly jealous of Christ's unique 
 high priesthood, cry out against any priesthood as 
 coming between themselves and God, forgetting that 
 the priest at the altar no more does this than the 
 preacher in the pulpit. Both are but His represent- 
 atives and agents, claiming naught as their own, 
 seeking naught for themselves, but working as the 
 Church's servants for the Master's sake. When true 
 to its calling priesthood is not to be feared, but loved 
 and honored as one of God's best gifts to man. 2 
 
 1 Rom. xv. 16. 3 Un. Ser. Sacerdotalism.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS 
 
 OUR Lord established a ministry which would 
 be an extension of His own, and through 
 which He would act. It would extend His own 
 prophetical, priestly, and kingly offices and their 
 benefits to mankind. By its means He would con- 
 tinue in the world going about doing good. His 
 ministers as His authorized agents, by their official 
 acts of consecration, blessing, and pardon, bind Him. 
 Whom they bless, He blesses; whom they in His 
 name forgive, He forgives ; on whom they lay hands, 
 He lays His hands; what they confirm, He confirms; 
 what they consecrate, He consecrates; whom they 
 join in holy matrimony, He joins together in Him- 
 self. Of all the loving gifts of the Incarnate God to 
 His people, that of the priesthood is the most signal 
 token of His providential care. Therefore, Christ's 
 loyal children have ever felt it an honor to care for 
 those set over them in the Lord, and esteem them 
 very highly for the Lord's sake. 
 
 From its earliest formation the Anglican Church 
 has always been in possession of this Christ-founded 
 and Apostolic ministry. It was coeval with its ear- 
 liest beginnings. It continued throughout the British- 
 Saxon-Norman times. Its continuity was not broken 
 at the Reformation. The reformers officially declared,
 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS 189 
 
 and made it a part of the prayer-book, that the 
 ancient orders were to be " continued." It has been * h |S 
 securely guarded by canon law and an orthodox u>** oJ 
 liturgy. It has extended under the divine blessing ItuT 
 throughout the world. The loyal children of the 
 Church do not need to be convinced concerning it. ITU/JL ' 
 Its priests know, by its results, that they possess the f*<xc * 
 gift of sacred orders. The laity ask for no further)"^ 
 proofs than their own experience of their possession L 
 of true and effective sacraments. It is immaterial to ^ 
 them what those without their communion may say \ 
 
 or think. They know in whom they believe. They _ 
 know with the divine certainty what they possess. S^L2&! 
 The proof vouchsafed them is of the double kind of 
 interior verification by God's Holy Spirit, and by the 
 outward historical and theological evidence. No 
 more certain truth is there in the sphere of revealed 
 religion. No better evidence, indeed, is there for the 
 existence of God Himself than, believing in Him, ex- 
 ists for the validity of Anglican orders. 
 
 We do, however, meet with those who, if they do 
 not deny, at least question them. They are divided 
 in England into the two classes of non-Conformists, 
 Sectarians and Roman Catholics. The reasons, when 
 given by the first, seem based largely on ignorance, 
 the second on technicalities and policy. We must 
 meet both with fairness, sympathy, and charity. For 
 only by such a spirit can Christ's honor and the 
 true interests of His kingdom be served. 
 
 First, as to the sectarians. We must recognize 
 that all duly baptized are united to Christ, and extend 
 our love to all Christians by whatever name they call
 
 I 9 o CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 themselves. Their spiritual ancestors in England 
 went out from the Mother Church, and they have 
 inherited the results of the schism. The devout 
 among them have found Christ and feel assured of 
 their acceptance in Him. In their walk with the 
 Lord they have found Him precious to their souls. 
 So rich is the Gospel as they possess it, that it is 
 difficult for them to realize there is a fuller spiritual 
 life vouchsafed through participation of the sacra- 
 ments of the Catholic Church. They do not see 
 this spiritual result in the many worldly and indiffer- 
 ent churchmen, and so conclude that it is not to be 
 found in the Church. God in His dear love is, how- 
 ever, drawing souls desirous of a closer union with 
 Himself into the fuller embrace of those sacramental 
 gifts which the Church alone can give. 
 
 But the sectarian is so strongly entrenched in his 
 belief that he is ordinarily unwilling to even consider 
 the Church's claims. If he argues at all he brings up 
 Chillingworth's argument about the uncertainty of 
 the transmission of orders. His argument, however, 
 of the improbability of preserving a succession 
 through so many ages without -flaw applies to that 
 Roman doctrine which makes the validity of a sacra- 
 ment depend upon the personal intention of the 
 priest. But it does not apply to the transmission 
 of a divine commission according to the canon law 
 of the Church, which requires three bishops to act in 
 conferring it ; and the validity of whose action does 
 not depend upon their personal belief, but on their 
 official character as agents of the Church. And as 
 concerning the effect of such an orderly and regular
 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS 191 
 
 transmission from Apostolic times, " there is," says 
 Bishop Stillingfleet, " as great reason to believe the 
 Apostolic succession to be of divine institution, as 
 the canon of Holy Scripture or the observance of 
 the Lord's Day." 
 
 But, our inquirer asks, is it probable that God 
 would entrust such a gift to unholy and unbelieving 
 persons as some of the alleged transmitters certainly 
 have been? It would, however, be more improbable 
 if, in so important a matter, God should not have left 
 a regular and appointed method of transmission. 
 We have indeed this treasure in earthen vessels, but 
 the unholiness of the channel does not hinder the 
 conveyance of the gift The neglect or even denial 
 of their powers would not disrobe the priests of their 
 sacred character. "We do not become a mere crea- 
 ture of man though we sell ourselves to be his slave." 
 " Even if a bishop," wrote Newman, " were to use the 
 words, ' receive ye the Holy Ghost ' with little or no 
 meaning, or a priest the consecrating words in the 
 Eucharist, considering it only a commemoration of 
 Christ's death, or a deacon the water and words of 
 baptism, denying in his heart that it is regeneration, 
 yet they may in spite of their unbelief be instruments 
 of a power they know not of, and ' speak not of 
 themselves ' - they may be as Balaam or as Isaac." 
 
 Probably the argument which in their hearts most 
 affects sectarians is the logical outcome of the Apos- 
 tolic succession in application to their own ministry. 
 If the doctrine is true, are not their ministers without 
 authority to officiate in Christ's name ? They know 
 and love them. They have been helped by their
 
 192 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 ministrations. They see how God has blessed their 
 efforts. They take an honest pride in the growth 
 and power of their denomination. They are linked 
 to it by Christian friendships and many social ties. 
 They cannot think, whatever is urged, that their work 
 is not of God and dear to Him. Such a view and 
 feeling is highly commendable. Christians ought not 
 to deny whatever the Holy Spirit may have witnessed 
 in their own consciousness. But a distinction is to 
 be observed. The Church claims to have a priest- 
 hood and sacrifice and sacramental gifts of confirma- 
 tion and absolution. A sectarian does not claim to 
 have a priesthood or sacrifice. He does not call his 
 ministers priests. He rejects all sacerdotal powers. 
 It is therefore no want of liberality to deny to the 
 sectarian clergy what they themselves strenuously re- 
 pudiate. We do not deny that they are Christ's dis- 
 ciples declaring to the best of their knowledge His 
 Gospel, and that, where sincere, He blesses their work. 
 When, however, S. John Baptist had brought his 
 disciples to repentance and peace, they were to leave 
 their old master, grateful for what he had done for 
 them, to receive the fuller gifts of a more complete 
 union with Christ. So too Apollos may be an elo- 
 quent man, mighty in the Scriptures, instructed in 
 the way of the Lord, fervent in spirit, yet an Aquila 
 and Priscilla must take him unto themselves and 
 expound unto him the way of God more perfectly. 
 In like manner, humble and devout sectarians are 
 being led back into their old home, to find there an 
 illumination and spiritual gifts, a wider vision and a 
 deeper life than they before possessed.
 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS 193 
 
 Let us now, on the other hand, turn to our Roman 
 brethren. A great many devout Roman Catholics, 
 both of priests and laity, believe in their hearts in 
 the validity of Anglican orders. They have come into 
 friendly relations with Anglican priests and saintly 
 laymen. They see the same effects of sacramental 
 grace in them as they see in their own communion. 
 " By their fruits ye shall know them," said the Lord, 
 and their spiritual discernment tells them that Angli- 
 cans possess the sacraments as truly as themselves. 
 A ruling of the late Pope, Leo XIII., restrains the 
 expression of their belief, which they know to be true. 
 
 However, as has been said by Roman Catholics, 
 this papal utterance was not of the class to which 
 infallibility belongs ; and, as it contains some errors 
 of fact, his Holiness, by those who drew it up, was 
 obviously misinformed. So it may be in time to 
 come that the Roman Church, whose head is the first 
 bishop in Christendom, may find it to its advantage, 
 among the growing assaults of these later times, to 
 reverse, in the interests of Christian union, its own 
 opinion in the same manner as it reversed, concern- 
 ing the conveyance of holy orders, the decision of 
 Pope Eugenius IV. We can only say, with God all 
 things, even this, is possible, and for Christ's sake and 
 Rome's pray it may come to pass. 
 
 I 
 
 If any Christians, however, with honest intent, make 
 inquiry concerning our orders, it is well to call their 
 attention first to the fact that the Anglican Church 
 
 '3
 
 194 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 not only claims to have them, but acts as if she had. 
 While she holds that there are two sacraments 
 universally necessary for salvation, she does not deny 
 there are others. She regards holy orders as the 
 ordained means of communicating authority and 
 grace for the work of the ministry. In one of her 
 homilies she calls it by the term sacrament. It is 
 placed in this category by her ablest theologians. It 
 is the more commonly accepted belief in the Church 
 that the character conferred by the sacrament is in- 
 delible. Once a bishop or priest, always a bishop 
 or priest. 
 
 Again, she has also preserved carefully the dis- 
 tinctions between the three inherited orders. A dea- 
 con is the assistant only at the Holy Eucharist. He 
 may baptize infants in the absence of the priest, 
 and so bring them into the kingdom. The priest 
 alone can consecrate and offer the holy sacrifice. 
 It is he who ministers the word of reconciliation 
 in the absolving of penitents. The bishop alone 
 is possessed of the power of ordination. According 
 to Catholic usage he alone confirms, either doing so 
 in person or by consecrating the chrism used for that 
 purpose. He is the source of diocesan jurisdiction. 
 He exercises rule and authority. By thus preserving 
 intact the distinctive powers of each of the three 
 orders the Anglican Church officially declares her 
 belief in them. 
 
 She holds also to the Apostolic succession pre- 
 served through episcopal ordination. In the Ameri- 
 can prayer-book, in the office of institution, she thus 
 makes prayer for the instituted priest: "O Holy
 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS 195 
 
 Jesus, who hast purchased to Thyself an universal 
 Church, and hast promised to be with the ministers 
 of Apostolic succession to the end of the world : Be 
 graciously pleased to bless the ministry and service 
 of him who is now appointed to offer sacrifices of 
 prayer and praise to Thee in this house." 
 
 Again, she regards the word "presbyter" as syn- 
 onymous with priest, and gives in her Articles the title 
 of " Sacerdotes " to the ministers of the second order. 
 In the office of institution in her prayer-book the 
 bishop grants to the instituted minister authority for 
 the performance of " every act of sacerdotal func- 
 tion among the people." The American prayer-book 
 describes the relation between the people and the 
 clergy as a " sacerdotal relation." The priest praises 
 God as one who has been honored " to stand in Thy 
 house and to serve at Thy holy altar." 
 
 Moreover, the Church regards the priest as an 
 offerer of sacrifice. When he stands before the altar 
 he solemnly offers the holy and consecrated gifts of 
 Christ's body and blood to the Almighty Father. Ad- 
 dressing Him, he uses the liturgical words, " We, thy 
 humble servants, do celebrate and make here before 
 thy Divine Majesty, with these thy holy gifts, which we 
 now offer unto Thee, the memorial Jesus commanded 
 us to make." The sacerdotal character is thus 
 stamped upon her priests and all their ministrations. 
 
 The Church's belief in holy order as a sacrament,, 
 conveying character and grace, is also marked in 
 another way, for none but those episcopally ordained 
 can minister at her altars. If a Roman priest is led 
 to unite himself with her the Church does not again
 
 196 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 ordain him, for he is already a priest. If, on the 
 other hand, a sectarian minister is brought into the 
 Church, no matter how learned he may be, or what- 
 ever his attainments, the Church requires that he 
 must be confirmed and then ordained as if he were 
 a mere layman. He must be made first a deacon, 
 and then in due time elevated to the priesthood. 
 Now this attitude of the Church in respect to non- 
 conformists can only be justified on the ground of 
 the Church's belief in the necessity of episcopal 
 ordination and the sacrament of order. For if the 
 sectarian ministers are as fully and validly representa- 
 tives of Christ as we are, then the Church is guilty of 
 a great wrong, indeed of the sin of schism, in making 
 what is not in itself essential a matter of division. 
 
 Nor finally must it be overlooked that beside her 
 prayer-book in America she has an official hymn 
 book. The devotions of Anglicans are not confined 
 as they are in the Eastern Church to their formal 
 liturgy. To understand the spirit of the Anglican 
 Church one must study the hymns of her people. 
 They are their devotional life. Our collects may 
 seem cold in comparison with the East, but the spirit 
 of devotion breaks forth in our hymns. In them 
 we find the Church entreating the Holy Spirit to 
 make the ordained " a holy priesthood " ; she prays 
 that they may present and spread forth to God 
 
 " That only offering perfect in Thine eyes, 
 The one true, pure, immortal Sacrifice," 
 
 and that in the Holy Eucharist we may receive 
 
 "The Bread that is Christ's Flesh for food, 
 The Wine that is the Saviour's Blood."
 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS 197 
 
 So by her action, her liturgy, her hymns, the teach- 
 ing of her theologians, the manifestations of her 
 spiritual life, the Church bears witness to her posses- 
 sion of the sacrament of holy order. However in 
 evil times the sense of the priestly character may 
 have decayed, her priests since the Reformation have 
 never sunk in morals like those of the Roman com- 
 munion in Mexico, Brazil, or the Philippines. There 
 has been no such ignorance concerning the ministra- 
 tion of the sacraments or decadence of the priestly 
 character as S. Carlo Borromeo found existing among 
 the clergy when he became Bishop of Milan. When 
 at the end of the eighteenth century so many of the 
 French priests, with bishops, became apostates, the 
 clergy of England in that era of unbelief remained 
 faithful to Christ. The Church of England knows 
 she possesses holy orders, and the lives of her sons 
 and clergy declare it. 
 
 II 
 
 Our inquirer may ask, how have the orders been 
 preserved and transmitted? Was there an interrup- 
 tion at the time of the Reformation? Through whom 
 do the present bishops trace their descent? 
 
 An easy way of giving answer is to say that all the 
 living Anglican bishops trace their succession toj 
 the pre-Reformation ones and so through them up 
 to the Apostles, through Archbishop Laud. By re- 
 membering this fact the question of the Anglican 
 succession is much simplified. For Archbishop 
 Laud united in himself three separate and distinct 
 lines of consecrators. These were the Irish line, the
 
 198 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Italian line, and the English line, any one of which 
 being good, and there is no doubt about any one, 
 Laud was validly consecrated bishop. 
 
 Concerning the Irish line, it combined in its de- 
 scent the old Celtic line, also the Roman line, to 
 which resort was frequently made, and in pre-Refor- 
 mation times and during the reign of Queen Mary 
 the English line. 
 
 It is too often overlooked that under Queen 
 Elizabeth but two of the Irish bishops were deposed, 
 Leverous, of Kildare, and Walsh, of Meath, for refus- 
 ing to take the oath of supremacy. Most if not 
 all of the others who had been bishops during the 
 previous Roman Catholic period of Queen Mary 
 conformed. Among them was Hugh Kirwan, Arch- 
 bishop of Dublin, who had been consecrated by 
 Bonner, Thirlby, and Griffin during Queen Mary's 
 reign and according to the Roman pontifical. Some 
 of these conforming Irish bishops were transferred 
 in Elizabeth's time and later to English sees. 
 Through three of his consecrators, John Thorn- 
 borough, of Worcester, John Housen, of Oxford (one of 
 whose consecrators had the Irish succession through 
 Christopher Hampton, Archbishop of Armagh), and 
 Theophilus Field, Bishop of Landaff, one of whose 
 consecrators was George, Bishop of Derry, Laud 
 derived his succession. 
 
 The conveyance of orders through the Italian line is 
 also a matter of historical interest. M. A. Spalatro, 
 or Marco Antonio de Dominis (consecrated Bishop of 
 Segna in 1600, and translated to Spalatro on the east 
 shore of the Adriatic, in 1602) conformed to the
 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS 199 
 
 English Church. He was a Roman Catholic arch- 
 bishop. On uniting with the Church in England he 
 was made Dean of Windsor. He was a co-conse- 
 crator, in 1617, of George Montaigne, Bishop of Lon- 
 don, and Nicholas Felton, Bishop of Ely. When 
 Laud was consecrated on the i8th of November, 
 1621, as Bishop of St. David's, amongst his co- 
 consecrators were Bishop Montaigne and Bishop 
 Felton. 
 
 Laud also derived his succession through the Eng- 
 lish line. When Queen Elizabeth came to the throne 
 in 1559, Cardinal Pole, who was the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, had died. He passed away a few hours 
 after Queen Mary's death. The see of Canter- 
 bury had thus become vacant. Nominations and 
 elections to the see were made in legal manner. 
 The form of confirmation followed that was used 
 in Bishop Chicheley's case in the fifteenth century. 
 On the I7th of December, 1559, Dr. Mathew Parker 
 was consecrated Archbishop at Lambeth. The offi- 
 cial original record is preserved there. A fac-simile 
 (a photo-zincograph copy) has been made and 
 officially witnessed, and was published by Parker and 
 Company in 1870. 
 
 Roman Catholic historians like Dr. Lingard and 
 theologians like Canon Eastcourt have admitted the 
 fact of the consecration. They have retreated from 
 the former position taken by Roman writers and 
 apologized for it. Father Brandi, S. J., in " A Last 
 Word," says, " One cannot be held responsible for 
 what may be written on this or any other subject by 
 incompetent writers, but for a long time past no
 
 200 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 (English Catholic writer of any standing has used the 
 
 1 Nag's Head story as an argument." 1 
 
 " With regard to Parker's consecration," says Canon 
 Eastcourt (R. C.), " as an historical fact it is most 
 certain that it took place on the i/th of December, 
 1559, according to the description in the register." 2 
 
 It may be added that Dr. Cyriacus, a learned Or- 
 thodox Greek ecclesiastical historian, freely admits 
 Parker's consecration, of which he has no doubt. 3 
 
 In the words of Dr. Dollinger, spoken at the Bonn 
 Conference, in 1875, "The fact that Parker was con- 
 secrated by four rightly consecrated bishops, rite et 
 legitime, with the imposition of hands and the neces- 
 sary words, is so well attested that if one chooses to 
 doubt this fact, one could with the same right doubt 
 ten thousand facts ; " or in the words of Courayer, 
 "Everything concurs to set the truth in so great a 
 light that if the fact of the Lambeth ordination is 
 not above all doubt one must renounce acknowledg- 
 ing anything certain in history." 
 
 Very touching is the record of Archbishop Parker 
 made in his own private diary: " i/th of December, 
 1559. I was this day consecrated Archbishop of 
 Canterbury. Alas! Alas! O Lord God, for what 
 times hast Thou reserved me. Now am I come into 
 the deep waters, and the floods overflow me. O 
 Lord, I am in trouble. Answer for me." So incon- 
 testable is the evidence for Parker's consecration that 
 the pope in a late bull abandoned all objections to it. 
 
 1 " A Last Word," p. 5. 
 
 8 Eastcourt, "Anglican Orders," p. 371. 
 
 8 Denny, p. 22.
 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS 201 
 
 The consecration took place with dignified cere- 
 monial at Lambeth. We read that the chapel was 
 adorned with tapestry and the chancel covered with 
 red cloth, the altar was vested with a carpet or altar 
 cloth. The consecration, which was after the ordinal 
 of King Edward VI., took place according to the 
 ancient custom after the creed. The elect arch- 
 bishop entered, wearing a long scarlet cassock, with 
 four torches borne before him. He was accompanied 
 by four bishops. The celebrant was vested in a cope of 
 silk. In conferring the sacred order of the episcopate 
 four bishops participated. Two of these, Barlow, the 
 chief consecrator, and Hodgkins, had been consecrated 
 according to the old Catholic pontifical. Bishop 
 Barlow's consecration is certified by a great number 
 of proofs which place it beyond any reasonable 
 doubt. 1 The Roman Catholic historian Dr. Lingard 
 admits it. 2 He was duly installed in person as Bishop 
 of S. David's, and the mandate to install always re- 
 cites the fact of the consecration. He took his seat 
 in the House of Lords, which he could not have 
 done but on being presented by two witnesses to his 
 consecration. He was universally recognized as a 
 bishop in King Henry's time and King Edward's and 
 in legal documents by Queen Mary. His saying 
 that the king's appointment would make a layman as 
 good a bishop as himself would be meaningless if he 
 were not a duly consecrated bishop. There is no 
 reasonable doubt but that Barlow was a duly conse- 
 crated bishop, and consequently Archbishop Parker. 
 
 1 " Anglican Orders," Denny, S. P. C. K., 49-73. 
 
 2 Lingard, " Hist. Eng.," vi., p. 329.
 
 202 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 We must, however, notice that one departure tool? 
 place from the ordinary method. It is of record 
 that all four bishops, when they laid on hands, pro- 
 nounced the formula, " Receive the Holy Ghost," etc. 
 The occasion was a peculiar one and they felt the im- 
 portance of most carefully guarding the transmission 
 of the gift and grace of holy order. They thus 
 departed from the customary way of the chief con- 
 secrator alone using the words. By each of them 
 uttering the formula, each acted as a consecrator, so 
 that if any one of them was a validly consecrated 
 bishop the gift of orders would be conveyed. The 
 Roman Catholic Martene declared that the bishops 
 assisting in the laying on of hands are " not merely 
 witnesses, but co-operators." The Eastern Church 
 holds that as many bishops as are present and act 
 do consecrate. It can therefore be no matter of 
 doubt that Matthew Parker was solemnly set apart and 
 consecrated as bishop in the Church of God. 
 
 We can but note the contrast of this consecration 
 with that of Dr. Carroll, who was consecrated in 
 1790 as the first Roman bishop for the United 
 States, and upon the validity of whose consecration 
 that of the Roman hierarchy in America for half a 
 century depended. He was consecrated in the 
 private chapel of Lullworth Castle, and contrary to 
 the ancient canons, by one bishop only, and he a 
 bishop only in partibus, having no lawful jurisdiction 
 in England and assisted, so the records say, by two 
 priests! 
 
 Thus the preeminent caution taken in the conse- 
 cration of Archbishop Parker bears witness to the
 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS 203 
 
 Anglican Church's care in the transmission of holy 
 orders. The fact of his consecration is now, by the 
 admission of opponents, beyond dispute. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Let us next consider the ordinal. 
 
 In the opinion of a late pope the validity of the O \f ill 
 Edvvardine formula was denied. Like one of the "*" 
 English privy council decisions it was obviously so 
 dictated by policy as to be for Catholics without 
 weight. It could be no more so than preceding 
 opinions of former popes who have fallen into errors 
 respecting the orders of other bodies, or in what the 
 essence of holy order consists. Thus we find one 
 declaring certain orders invalid which Rome now 
 in uniat churches accepts, and Eugenius IV. de- 
 claring the essential " matter " to be the delivery of 
 the instruments which is an opinion now abandoned. 
 Pope Leo XIII. in turn contradicted the rulings of 
 his predecessors Julius III. and also of Paul IV. The 
 former authorized Cardinal Pole to grant dispensations 
 touching " the office of consecration which had been 
 granted even by bishops who were heretics and schis- 
 matics, or otherwise minus rite and without observ- 
 ance of the accustomed form of the Church." The 
 phrase "accustomed form" means the customary full 
 ritual, "minus rite," something less. The cardinal 
 accordingly informed Parliament that he would 
 receive " all who had obtained orders under the 
 pretended authority of the supremacy of the Angli- 
 can Church in the orders to which they had been
 
 204 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 so admitted." Paul IV. ratified the action of his 
 predecessor. 
 
 A question, however, had arisen whether the dis- 
 pensation granted applied to certain Lutheran and 
 Calvinistic ministers who by the king's grant had 
 been allowed to have churches of their own. Pope 
 Julius in his brief " Regimine universalis" decided 
 who were to be regarded as ordained and who not. 
 Those " alone can be said not to have been ordained, 
 rite et recte who were not ordained and consecrated 
 in the form of the Church." The phrase " form of 
 the Church " means that part of the accustomed form 
 which is sufficient to effect or confer a sacrament. 
 This had been wanting in the cases above mentioned. 
 There was no competent consecrator. But the pope 
 ruled " that others on whom orders had been con- 
 ferred by bishops ordained and consecrated in the 
 form of the Church had received the character of 
 the orders conferred and lacked nothing but the 
 execution thereof," /. e., papal recognition and con- 
 sent. It is thus seen to be a somewhat difficult task 
 to reconcile Pope Leo's opinion with that of his 
 predecessors. 
 
 It is also to be noticed that Leo fell, through the 
 way the case was represented to him, into a mistake 
 of fact. There was an authority given by Pope Paul 
 IV. to Cardinal Pole to condone or dispense persons 
 who had nulliter et de facto obtained during Henry's 
 and Edward's time various grants concerning orders 
 as well as ecclesiastical benefices. As cited by Leo, 
 the word " concerning " was omitted and the word 
 nulliter was translated "null" and made to refer to
 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS 205 
 
 the orders. It thus made the sentence convey the 
 idea that these orders were declared null. But it 
 has been shown that milliter in mediaeval Latin, as 
 given by Ducange in his " Glossary " means " un- 
 justly," " extra-legally," " illegitimately." It was so 
 used within a short time in the English ecclesiastical 
 courts. The meaning, therefore, is that certain irreg- 
 ularities might be dispensed, but not that the orders 
 were declared to be invalid. 1 These errors of fact 
 vacate the papal opinion of Leo of any value. As 
 the members of the great and learned Society of 
 Jesus have come to disregard the condemnation of 
 their order by Pope Clement, so in time to come they 
 may learn to disregard this political one of Leo. 
 
 However all this may be, the question of Anglican 
 orders is not effected by any papal decision. It must 
 stand on its own merits. 
 
 In respect of the ordinal, the Anglican Church 
 provided that the ancient orders of the priesthood 
 should be preserved and rightly transmitted. As the 
 ordinal was in hopeless confusion, perplexing differ- 
 ences existing between the Roman and the Sarum 
 rites, 2 and no one was able to say with certainty at 
 what time in the service the priest was ordained, 3 it 
 was of the first necessity that the ordinal should be 
 revised. In the Roman rite there are two laying 
 on of hands by the bishop. One when the words 
 "Receive the Holy Ghost" are said. But this is 
 
 1 " Leo XIII. and Paul IV.," pub. Parker & Co. Lacey's Supple- 
 mentum to De Hierarchia Anglicana. Dr. J. Fulton's " Examination 
 of Leo XIII. Bull," Apostolicte Cura, pp. 15-20. 
 
 8 B. Smith, " Ordinal, Past and Present," p. 70. 
 
 Mortimer, " Catholic Faith and Practice," Vol. ii., 103.
 
 206 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 said after the ordination ; for the ordained has been 
 acting as a co-consecrator of the Holy Eucharist with 
 the bishop, which unless ordained he could not do. 
 The other laying on of hands is at the beginning of 
 the service, when the hands of the bishop are laid 
 on, but nothing is said. For the removal of these 
 difficulties a revision was deemed advisable. 
 
 As no one universally received rite existed to 
 which the Anglican Church was bound to conform, 
 it cannot be inferred from the rectification of her 
 ordinal that she had any intention of departing from 
 Catholic faith or usage. She declared officially and 
 many times the contrary. In the changes she made 
 she had resort to Holy Scripture, ancient practice, and 
 Catholic tradition. The alterations were not made 
 because she accepted the Lutheran or Protestant 
 view of the ministry, for she rejected the proposal 
 of the foreign Lutheran Reformers to frame an ordinal 
 after their belief. 1 She set forth one founded on 
 essentially different and on Catholic principles. 
 
 It was not framed on a denial of priesthood and 
 sacrifice. If it had been, the title of " sacerdos " or 
 priest, which implies sacrifice, would have been 
 stricken out of the prayer-book as the sect of Re- 
 formed Episcopalians in America has done. The 
 Church's intention was to preserve the inherited 
 ancient orders. This is proved by two facts : First, 
 by the ordinal itself, where the distinction between 
 the three orders is preserved, and ordination is re- 
 quired by one of the Episcopal order. The proper 
 " matter" is provided by the laying on of the bishop's 
 
 1 Denny, " Anglican Orders," p. 104.
 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS 207 
 
 hands. An efficient " form " is set forth, namely, 
 prayer for the ordinand, with designation of the 
 order to be conferred and authorization for its work, 
 together with the gift of the Holy Ghost bestowed 
 for its exercise. 
 
 Secondly, the Church explicitly declared her inten- 
 tion to preserve the ancient orders in their integrity. 
 She declared her intention that her priests should be 
 what they were in pre-Reformation times. She did 
 this in a prpfarpjj> her ordinal. And here we must 
 expose a common error of interpretation into which 
 clerical writers are apt to fall. The private opinions 
 of the authors of any law cannot logically or legally 
 be appealed to in aid of its construction. The 
 opinions, for example, expressed in the debates in 
 Parliament cannot be cited in court to explain the 
 meaning of a statute. The reason is, the statute is 
 the utterance of the whole body as an entity, and not 
 merely of those who planned or advocated it. 
 
 Now the ordinal was adopted by the whole body 
 of bishops, all save one being in favor of it. This 
 body putting forth the ordinal expressed its intention 
 officially, as we have said, in its preface. We cannot 
 legally or logically go behind it to get at the ordinal's 
 meaning. It is clearly stated in words which cannot 
 be misunderstood or explained away. It states that 
 " from the Apostles' time there have been these 
 orders of ministers in Christ's Church : bishops, 
 priests, and deacons, . . . and therefore to the intent 
 that these orders may be continued, no man shall be 
 accounted or taken to be a lawful bishop, priest, or 
 deacon except he be admitted thereto according to
 
 208 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 \ 
 
 the form hereafter following, or hath had formerly 
 Episcopal consecration or ordination." 
 
 This explicitly declared intention legally governs 
 he interpretation of the ordinal. It also does so 
 morally, for a principal in common law is bound by 
 the " holdings out" or representations of an authorized 
 agent. So it is with the Church. She uses the well- 
 known terms, bishops, priests, and deacons. On the 
 " holding out " that she possesses them in their ancient 
 sense men are induced to enter holy orders and give 
 their lives to her service. She is therefore estopped 
 from explaining them away, or putting any other 
 than the recognized Catholic sense upon them. 
 
 So much for the intention of the ordinal. As for 
 the intention of those who used it in Archbishop 
 Parker's case, it must be observed that the bishops 
 were the officials of a Church whose ordinal was pro- 
 vided for them. They could not alter its meaning 
 by any interior views of their own. It is not, there- 
 fore, to be construed by their own private opinions 
 whatever they may have been. Acting as they did 
 seriously and with the intent of doing what the Church 
 ordered, their intention, as well as that of the Church's 
 ordinal, must be taken to be that of making and con- 
 tinuing a Catholic priesthood. 
 
 The care of the Church is also seen in the preser- 
 vation of the " matter and form " essential to the 
 sacrament. " Matter " expresses the outward sign, 
 and " form " the words that accompany it. Although 
 Pope Eugenius IV. declared the proper matter to be 
 the delivery in the service of the paten and chalice, 
 yet that decision had to be admitted erroneous when
 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS 209 
 
 it was discovered that this ceremony was unknown for 
 many hundred years. The commonly accepted belief 
 now is that the " matter " is the laying on of hands 
 by the bishop. This the Anglican rite provides for 
 in the giving of all the degrees of order. 
 
 There can therefore be no question concerning the 
 validity of the " matter." 
 
 When we come to consider the " form " we are met 
 by the fact that there never has been one universal 
 formula, but it is generally agreed that there should 
 be prayer for the ordinand, with a recognition of the 
 order to be given and the gift of the Holy Spirit for 
 its exercise. 
 
 We must here draw attention to the fact that here 
 are two views regarding the connection between the 
 matter and the form. One is that they must be co- 
 incident, the other that the service being considered 
 as a whole, they are legally and morally united though 
 in different parts of it. 
 
 The validity of Anglican orders is not affected 
 whichever opinion is adopted. 
 
 Let us examine the first as applied to the ordinal 
 in use at the time of Archbishop Parker's consecra- 
 tion. There, in the ordination of a priest, the bishop, 
 laying his hands on the head of the ordinand, says, 
 " Receive the Holy Ghost : whose sins thou dost for- 
 give, they are forgiven : and whose sins thou dost 
 retain, they are retained : and be thou a faithful dis- 
 penser of the Word of God, and of His Holy Sac- 
 raments: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, 
 and of the Holy Ghost." 
 
 We have here a bestowal of the Holy Spirit for
 
 210 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 the exercise of a power exclusively sacerdotal, which 
 thus designates the priest's office, and empowers him 
 to minister the " Word " and " the Sacraments." 
 The ministering of the sacraments includes all of 
 them, and all they include. The authorization and 
 empowering therefore includes the offering of the 
 gospel sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ. 
 
 It is well known that the essence of the priesthood 
 lies in its function of ministering in the Church and 
 for it, as it offers itself up in union with the sacrifice 
 of the altar to God, and as it ministers for God to its 
 members. It offers the holy sacrifice of the altar to 
 God, it dispenses from God the pardoning word of 
 reconciliation. These are the two special works cited 
 in Trent as characteristic of the priesthood. In order 
 to express the " Sacerdotium," or priesthood, it was 
 only necessary to incorporate one of these into the 
 ordaining form. The Anglican Church took the one 
 used by our Lord when He breathed upon the 
 Apostles. To insist that it is necessary more ex- 
 plicitly to express the sacerdotal function of the 
 priesthood would be to invalidate all the orders of 
 Christendom. 
 
 The Anglican " form " of conveying priesthood is 
 thus seen to be sufficient and valid. 
 
 In the bestowal of the episcopate the form given in 
 the ordinal was, " Take the Holy Ghost, and remem- 
 ber thou stir up the grace of God, which is in thee 
 by imposition of hands: for God hath not given us 
 the spirit of fear, but of power and love and of sober- 
 ness." This is equally as valid a form as that for the 
 priesthood.
 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS 211 
 
 It is to be remembered that this is the text 
 cited in the Council of Trent to prove holy orders a 
 sacrament. 
 
 Now the same reason that led the Anglican Church 
 to take for the " form " in the ordination of a priest 
 the words of Christ when He bestowed a sacerdotal 
 power led to the taking of the most significant words 
 in Holy Scripture connected with the character be- 
 longing to the episcopate. The episcopate is the 
 order of authority and power, it ordains and con- 
 secrates and rules. It therefore requires a gift of 
 "power" for ordination and consecration, which is 
 here implied, and the spirit of love and soberness to 
 rule wisely and well. Thus, by this text according 
 to Trent, the episcopate is designated, and the bishop 
 consecrated is empowered with the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost coincidently with the laying on of hands. 
 
 If, on the other hand, the other opinion is adopted 
 and the service is regarded as a whole, the gift of 
 priesthood and of the episcopate is equally evident. 
 This opinion has two reasons in its favor. First, it 
 is common sense. Seeing that the purpose and object 
 of the service is to ordain or consecrate a person a 
 priest or bishop, the whole service should legally be 
 construed together. Again, it is the way our Lord 
 Himself ordained the Apostles. He bade them at 
 one time offer the holy sacrifice; at another gave 
 them authority to forgive sin ; at another commanded 
 them to baptize ; lastly, gave them mission and juris- 
 diction. But their consecration was not complete 
 until He ascended and made them " able ministers 
 of the Word " by the gift of the Holy Ghost.
 
 212 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 It seems to be suggested, as the Anglican Arch- 
 bishops say, by the Pope that our present form of 
 ordination ought perhaps to be considered sufficient, 
 if it were not for the fact that between the years 1549 
 and 1662 the words, " For the office and work of a 
 priest " were lacking. But this is a quite groundless 
 objection, as the archbishops pointed out in their 
 reply to the Papal Bull, because during that time 
 words designating priesthood, which the Pope con- 
 siders necessary, were contained in the prayer, " Al- 
 mighty and everlasting God, giver of all good things, 
 who by Thy Holy Spirit has appointed divers orders 
 of ministers in Thy Church, mercifully behold these 
 Thy servants now called to the office of Priesthood" 
 This prayer, it must be remembered, was at that time 
 part of the ordination proper, and not, as now, the 
 Collect of the Mass, of which fact the Pope seemed to 
 be unaware. 
 
 But even now, however, this Collect is not separated 
 in time so far as the potential words of Christ to the 
 Apostles to offer the Holy Sacrifice and the effective 
 gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost which enabled 
 them to do so. If thus the " matter and form " must 
 for validity be absolutely coincident, then the Twelve, 
 including Peter, were never consecrated Apostles. 
 
 Let us then consider the service as a whole. We 
 are compelled by the declaration in the preface to 
 interpret the terms priest and bishop in their ancient 
 sense. We find in the ordinal, as set forth, the " in- 
 tention and form " declaratory of the priesthood and 
 episcopate wrought into every part. The titles of 
 the offices are, " The form of Ordering Priests,"
 
 AKGLICAN ORDERS 213 
 
 " The form of Consecrating a Bishop." The person 
 presenting the deacons has to say, " Reverend Father 
 in God, I present unto you these persons present, to 
 be admitted to the order of Priesthood." In the pres- 
 entation of the elect bishop, " We present unto you 
 this godly man to be Ordained and Consecrated 
 Bishop." In the case of the deacons the bishop says, 
 " Good People, these are they whom we purpose to 
 receive unto the holy Office of Priesthood." In the 
 Litany the bishop prays God " To bless these Thy 
 servants now to be admitted to the Order of Priests." 
 He prays in the Litany for the elect bishop that God 
 would send His grace on him that he may duly exe- 
 cute the office to which he is called. In the collect 
 for the Communion, which expresses the intention of 
 the holy sacrifice about to be offered, the celebrant 
 prays God, "Who hast appointed divers Orders of 
 Ministers in the Church ; Mercifully behold these 
 now called to the Office of Priesthood and so replenish 
 and adorn them, that they may faithfully serve Thee 
 in this Office." The collect for the consecration of 
 bishops recognizes their distinctive office as based 
 upon that of the Apostles, and prays for grace on all 
 bishops. 
 
 In the exhortation made to those to be ordained 
 priests they are put in charge how " high a Dignity, 
 and to how weighty an Office " they are called. In 
 the solemn and deep words of Holy Scripture, they 
 are as priests " to be Messengers, Watchmen, and 
 Stewards of the Lord." "Messengers," that is, angels. 
 Messengers sent with a heavenly message and divine 
 authority. They are, as S. Paul calls them, certified
 
 214 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 and authorized " ambassadors of Christ," speaking in 
 His name and by His authority. They are " watch- 
 men," that is, guardians, to whom is committed the 
 guardianship of the kingdom of Christ and the 
 faith. They are " stewards," who by their office are 
 official mediators between the members of the mysti- 
 cal body and its head; the offerers up of all the 
 body owes its head in connection with the appointed 
 gospel sacrifice, and the dispensers of all that the 
 head, by His sacraments, bestows on the members. 
 
 In the response made by the elect to the bishop, 
 he declares, in the name of God, that he believes 
 himself called to " the Order and Ministry of Priest- 
 hood." The Holy Ghost having been solemnly in- 
 voked by the recitation of the Veni Creator Spiritus, 
 prayer is said over the persons to be ordained or con- 
 secrated. Then follows the laying on of hands by the 
 bishop, who says the grace-bestowing form, " Receive 
 the Holy Ghost," and, as we have seen, at the same 
 time in the Edwardine Ordinal by words significant 
 of the office. 
 
 Thus the ordination of the Anglican priest is utterly 
 unlike in kind and character to the authorization of 
 a Protestant minister, where priesthood and sacrifice 
 are not recognized. 
 
 Not without its significance also is the fact that in 
 the Edwardine Ordinal, and our present one, the 
 ordination and consecration service are incorporated 
 into the mass. The ordination does not form a 
 separate service by itself. It does not come before 
 or after the Holy Communion. It is, as liturgical 
 writers say, " farced " into it and so becomes part of
 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS 215 
 
 it. It comes in before the Offertory. The Church 
 is about to offer herself, body, soul, and spirit, to God 
 in connection with her head. She does this by an 
 identification with Him in the sacrament of the altar. 
 Hither come those to make an offering of themselves 
 to be priests or bishops, as identified with Christ's 
 offices and for their extension. 
 
 To say there is not a sacerdotium or priesthood 
 designated in our ordinal is like saying in broad day- 
 light the sun is not shining. The Anglican ordinal 
 from beginning to end is full of priesthood, and pen- 
 etrated and illuminated by it. 
 
 O sad perversity of the human spirit that blinds 
 itself to the truth ! O foolish and deceived by party 
 zeal, who, though unconsciously, hinder the divine 
 purpose. O weak and doubting hearts that fail to 
 see the mountain full of protecting angel hosts. 
 A day of gloom it was when years ago Newman 
 addressed his memorable apostrophe to England's 
 Church and then bade her farewell. But the grace 
 of her sacraments has transformed her life and given 
 another meaning to his words. " O Mother of Saints ! 
 School of the Wise ! Nurse of the heroic ! Of whom 
 went forth, in whom have dwelt memorable names of 
 old to spread the truth abroad or cherish and incul- 
 cate it at home ! O thou from whom surrounding 
 nations lit their lamps ! " How hast thou arisen as 
 from the dust ! How hast the reproach upon thee of 
 a " miscarrying womb and dry breasts " been done 
 away. Marvel of marvels ! Miracle of repair ! The 
 branch again puts forth her leaves and buds, and 
 bears fruit an hundred-fold. A new enthusiasm for
 
 216 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 man as well as love of God fills her with fresh mis- 
 sionary zeal. Her educated sons have gone down to 
 live in the slums of great cities among the poor, to 
 elevate them by their friendly intercourse. Her 
 daughters have given themselves by hundreds to the 
 religious life with its noble service. Again the voice 
 of the ancient bishops and fathers is heard in her 
 pulpits. Again is the one sure and certain faith 
 Nicaea taught of old proclaimed. Again the daily 
 sacrifice is being restored to her altars. She is being 
 recognized in her true character. She is the shrine 
 of truth, guardian of the faith, teacher of the nations, 
 blessed home for the lonely, refuge for the dis- 
 tressed, ark for the perishing, body of Christ in 
 which He dwells, through which He acts. The 
 truth of the old prophecy, as Neale wrote, is being 
 fulfilled. 
 
 " Again do long processions sweep through the cathedral pile ; 
 Again do banner, cross, and cope gleam thro' the incensed 
 
 aisle ; 
 And the faithful dead do claim their part in the Church's 
 
 thankful prayer, 
 
 And the daily Sacrifice to God is duly offered there ; 
 And many an earnest prayer ascends from many a hidden spot ; 
 And England's Church is Catholic, though England's self be 
 
 not."
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 THE SEVEN MYSTERIES 
 
 THE gospel system is analogous to the processes 
 of God in the natural world. In nature we see 
 how God bestows His gifts. He loves to give them 
 while He hides His hand. Love indeed must mani- 
 fest itself, but true power loves hiddenness. " Verily," 
 says the prophet, " Thou art a God that hideth Thy- 
 self, O God of Israel the Saviour." So, hiding Him- 
 self in nature, He bestows His gifts through multiform 
 instrumentalities. Thus life and strength come to us 
 through ordained means. God sustains our natural 
 life through sacraments of the natural order. So it 
 is in the order of grace. 
 
 Our prayer-book employs two terms to describe 
 them. It speaks of the " Sacraments " and of the 
 " Holy Mysteries." They denote the same things 
 under different aspects. A sacrament is an outward 
 and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. It 
 is also a mystery by which the grace of God is given 
 unto us. 
 
 They are conveniently arranged in two classes. 
 First, there are those sacraments whose " matter and 
 form " were ordained by Christ and are of universal 
 application. These are Baptism and the Holy Com- 
 munion. They are necessary for salvation where 
 they may be had, and they have relation to the eternal
 
 2i8 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 existence and welfare of the Church. In the other 
 class are to be found Confirmation, Penitence, Unc- 
 tion, Orders, Matrimony. They are not necessary 
 for all men, and have relation to the temporal life 
 of the Church. She needs them in her militant state 
 and in her battle with sin. 
 
 The first in order of these is holy baptism. We shall 
 understand Christian baptism better if we analyze the 
 four kinds of baptism found in the New Testament. 
 
 There is first in order the baptism administered 
 by John the Baptist. This, though often confused 
 with it, was not Christian baptism. It is proven not 
 to have been such by two conclusive reasons. It 
 was not given in the name of the Blessed Trinity, 
 as Christian baptism must be, for the simple reason 
 that the name of the Blessed Trinity had not been 
 revealed to S. John Baptist. It had not connected 
 with it any sanctifying gift of the Holy Ghost, for 
 the " Spirit was not yet given." S. John was the 
 last and greatest prophet of the old dispensation, 
 and his baptism was like a Jewish ordinance. It was 
 a mere outward sign, but had no inward spiritual 
 gift. In other words, it was not a gospel sacra- 
 ment. The Apostles also baptized in like manner 
 before Pentecost, but it was only a continuation of 
 John's preparatory work. The manner, therefore, in 
 which S. John baptized, whether with more or less 
 water, would be no guide for Christian usage. And 
 not being Christian baptism, when the baptized dis- 
 ciples became Christians they had, as we read in the 
 nineteenth chapter of the Acts, to receive the Christian 
 sacrament.
 
 THE SEVEN MYSTERIES 219 
 
 The next baptism is that of Jesus Christ by S. John. 
 Why did He who was sinless come to a baptism 
 of repentance? Because having taken flesh of the 
 Blessed Virgin, He had thus identified Himself with 
 our race and became, as the second Adam, its new 
 representative head. As such He took upon Himself 
 the duty of making a reparation to God for its trans- 
 gressions. He thus begins, in His official capacity, 
 His life-long act of penitence. There was another 
 reason for Christ's action. He was to make repara- 
 tion to God and work out man's deliverance by the 
 fulfilment of His office as the Anointed One, or 
 Messiah. He was solemnly consecrated to be the 
 Christ at His baptism. The heavens were opened 
 and the voice of the Eternal Father was heard : " This 
 is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," and 
 the Holy Ghost, who from the first moment of His 
 conception had been given without measure to Him, 
 now was also given for His special work and office, 
 and He was anointed with the Holy Ghost. 
 
 The next baptism we read of is the baptism by 
 Jesus Christ Himself. During His visible or public 
 life, Jesus, we read, did not baptize. But John the 
 Baptist had foretold that He who came after him 
 should baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire. 
 This Christ did when He had ascended. Then He 
 baptized the Church ; the outward sign being tongues 
 of fire and a mighty wind, the inward gift being the 
 Holy Spirit. The whole mystical body was now bap- 
 tized and the Spirit of the Lord filled the temple. 
 
 The fourth baptism is Christian baptism. This was 
 first administered by the Apostles to the converts on
 
 220 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 the day of Pentecost. This was with water and in 
 the name of the Blessed Trinity. 
 
 Its subjects are both adults and infants. The con- 
 dition for adults is faith and repentance. Infants are 
 baptized because our Lord said " Suffer little children 
 to come unto Me, and forbid them not," and showed 
 that unconscious infancy was capable of receiving a 
 blessing, by taking them up in His arms and blessing 
 them. Faith and repentance are not required of 
 infants, for not having sinned they have no sins of 
 which to repent. And not having raised their wills 
 against God there is no necessity for their taking 
 them down by an act of submission or faith. Thus 
 the passive condition of the infant is the normal one 
 for receiving the baptismal gift. By repentance and 
 faith the adult puts himself in the condition of a 
 little child. We thus become like little children, 
 and fulfil the condition necessary to enter the king- 
 dom. 
 
 By its action baptism bestows a gift which can 
 most easily be remembered by reference to its effects 
 in regard to our past, present, and future. 
 
 In respect of our past, it heals the wounds of 
 inherited or original sin, and remits all our actual 
 sins. " I believe in one baptism for the remission 
 of sins." This gift of God is bestowed upon us for 
 the merits of Christ by the operation of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 A marked scriptural instance is to be found in 
 the case of S. Paul. On his way to Damascus 
 our Lord appeared to him. The brightness of our 
 Lord's glorified body caused his blindness, but the
 
 THE SEVEN MYSTERIES 221 
 
 Lord's words illuminated his soul. With agonized 
 earnestness Saul cried out, " Lord, what wilt thou 
 have me to do?" He was then and there a truly 
 converted man. It is a crucial question for sectarians 
 whether his sins were forgiven at the time of his 
 conversion. Their theological system requires an 
 affirmative answer. But in Holy Scripture we read 
 it was not so. For, three days after, Ananias, the 
 prophet of the Lord, comes to him and says, 
 " Brother Saul, arise and be baptized and wash 
 away thy sins." His sins not being washed away 
 by his conversion, but as Scripture states by his 
 subsequent baptism. Conversion is the turning of 
 man to God. Remission of sin in baptism is the 
 gift of God to man. 
 
 As related to the present time; by baptism we 
 are born again, or " born from above." This implies 
 two things, our being begotten anew by heavenly 
 power, and our being born out of a natural region 
 of darkness into one of light. We are begotten anew 
 by the Holy Spirit, which, blowing where it listeth, 
 works the soul's conversion ; and also in baptism 
 (the Holy Spirit accomplishing that whereunto it 
 is sent), we receive a new nature by our incorpora- 
 tion into Christ. " For as many of you as were 
 baptized unto Christ did put on Christ." 
 
 We discern here a distinction between our relation 
 to God by nature and that formed by baptism. By 
 the act of creation we are God's creatures ; by bap- 
 tism we are the sons of God as members of Christ. 
 Thus baptism is not like the coronation of a king to 
 which it is sometimes compared, for the king is one
 
 222 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 by right of his descent before he is crowned. Bap- 
 tism, however, is not an acknowledgment of what we 
 previously were, but an instrument by which we are 
 made members of Christ and so children of God. 
 
 Next as to the future. Having been, by baptism, 
 born into the kingdom of light, a prospect is opened 
 before us of attaining to the further light of the 
 beatific vision of God. We are made children of the 
 light. We are incorporated into this new kingdom 
 as living stones of a living temple. And so we are 
 not merely born into and immersed in it, but it is 
 also in us. The incipient virtues of faith, hope, and 
 charity are imparted by baptism. These gifts re- 
 ceived may be neglected and lie dormant, but as we 
 respond, more and more clear becomes the heavenly 
 vision, and we receive strength to attain it. 
 
 The effect of the loss of baptism is painfully seen 
 in America, in the increased power of evil spirits, and 
 the ease with which Satan deludes persons with false 
 religions, and by teachers who come in their own 
 name. 
 
 The baptismal faith is decisively expressed in our 
 baptismal offices. None can be found more full of 
 Scriptural and Catholic tradition. We utter it in the 
 words of our Church's hymnal in praise and devotion : 
 
 " Arise and be baptized, 
 
 And wash thy sins away ; 
 Thy league with God be solemnized, 
 
 Thy faith avouched to-day. 
 No more thine own, but Christ's ; 
 
 With all the saints of old, 
 Apostles, seers, evangelists, 
 
 And martyr throngs enrolled."
 
 THE SEVEN MYSTERIES 223 
 
 The second gospel mystery is confirmation. It has 
 three designations in Holy Scripture. It belongs 
 to the general Apostolic ministrations of laying on of 
 hands, which is spoken of as one of the principles of 
 the doctrine of Christ. 1 
 
 It is also referred to as an anointing or unction. 
 " Ye have an unction from the Holy One and ye 
 know all things. And the anointing which ye have 
 received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not 
 that any man teach you ; but as the same anointing 
 teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, 
 and even as it hath taught you, abide therein." 2 
 
 Again, it is known as the seal of the Lord. " Now 
 He which stablisheth us with you in Christ (by 
 baptism) and hath anointed us, is God ; who hath 
 also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in 
 our hearts." 3 
 
 It is administered by a bishop in the West, or by a 
 priest with chrism, consecrated by a bishop, in the 
 East. 
 
 "In the Anglican Church it is by laying on of the 
 bishop's hand, who in doing so in Scotland and in 
 other places makes with his thumb the sign of the 
 cross on the forehead of the confirmed. It is to be 
 desired, for conformity with the symbolism of Holy 
 Scripture, that this should be with chrism. Does it 
 lie within the jus liturgicum of the bishop to do so? 
 
 An interesting question has been of late much in- 
 vestigated by Anglican theologians, concerning the 
 difference between the gift of the Holy Spirit in 
 baptism and confirmation. 
 
 1 Heb. vi. 2. 2 i John ii. 20, 27. * 2 Cor. i. 21, 22.
 
 224 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Baptism is the sacrament of our new birth in Christ. 
 We are brought under the converting influence of the 
 Holy Spirit before baptism, and as a preparation for 
 it. In baptism, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, 
 we are made members of Christ and of His mystical 
 body. Being thus united to the humanity of Christ 
 in whom the Spirit dwells, we are in Him made, in- 
 directly, partakers of the Holy Spirit. Being made 
 living stones of the Spiritual Temple which is filled 
 with the Holy Spirit, we are immersed in it, and the 
 Spirit is in us. We receive in baptism both sancti- 
 fying grace and the Holy Spirit. Sanctifying grace, 
 which is necessary for our justification, the Holy 
 Spirit, who unites us to Christ. If we did not re- 
 ceive the Holy Spirit ..hen confirmation would be 
 a sacrament necessary to salvation. We pray in the 
 baptismal office, " Give Thy Holy Spirit to this 
 infant," and what we pray for, that we believe we 
 receive. 
 
 Confirmation is a sacrament of the gifts of the 
 Spirit. It does not merely increase the gifts received 
 in baptism. Even if one were made full of the Holy 
 Spirit at baptism, this would not preclude him from 
 receiving new and distinct gifts, for the activities of 
 the Spirit are not governed by the laws of material 
 mechanics. So gifts, different in kind, are bestowed 
 by confirmation. Born anew in baptism and made a 
 child of God, in confirmation we are ordained and 
 receive our first degree of priesthood and kingship. 
 All the laity are made kings and priests unto God. 
 In confirmation we receive also our mission to work 
 for Christ in the world, and grace for its fulfilment.
 
 THE SEVEN MYSTERIES 225 
 
 The laity, in all their church work, go out " as sent" 
 by the Lord. Receiving sanctifying grace for our jus- 
 tification in baptism, we receive in confirmation the 
 sevenfold gifts of the Holy Ghost for our advance- 
 ment and perfection in the spiritual life. These are 
 the spirit of wisdom, which makes us seek after God ; 
 of understanding, which teaches us the Catholic faith ; 
 of counsel, which enables us to choose the path of 
 duty ; of ghostly strength, which enables us to per- 
 form our Christian obligations; of knowledge, which 
 instructs us in the will of God as it pertains to our- 
 selves; of true Godliness, which inspires us to live 
 holy lives; of holy fear, which preserves us in rev- 
 erence and the worship of God. 
 
 In confirmation we are also sealed and receive a 
 character. In the old dispensation we read that 
 " seals " were given by God as tokens of spiritual citi- 
 zenship ; but in the Christian state we receive not 
 tokens or empty signs, we do not receive "seals" 
 only, but by the power of the Spirit we are sealed. 
 The distinction between the two is like unto the giv- 
 ing a person a ring to wear as a token of friendship, 
 or the impressing of the ring engraved with its arms 
 upon the wax. Confirmation imprints an ineffaceable 
 character on the soul. This character is impressed, 
 not on the essence of the soul, but on its intellectual 
 and effective powers. The child of grace becomes 
 in a degree a priest and king, and an armed soldier 
 in the army of Christ. Thus we sing in our con- 
 firmation hymn: 
 
 " O Christ, who didst at Pentecost 
 Send down from heaven the Holy Ghost;
 
 226 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 And at Samaria baptize 
 Those whom Thou didst evangelize; 
 And then on Thy baptized confer 
 The best of gifts, the Comforter 
 By Apostolic hands and prayer; 
 Be with us now, as Thou wert there. 
 
 " Thus consecrated, Lord, to Thee, 
 May each a living temple be. 
 Enrich that temple's holy shrine 
 With sevenfold gifts of grace divine ; 
 With wisdom, light, and knowledge bless, 
 Strength, counsel, fear, and godliness." 
 
 The third gospel mystery is known in Eastern and 
 Western Christendom as the sacrament of penitence. 
 It is the sacrament of restoration. It restores to 
 the soul the spiritual life lost or injured by sin. Like 
 all other mysteries it may be considered in regard to 
 its matter and form. The three acts of penitence, 
 which may be regarded as the matter, are contrition, 
 confession, and satisfaction or amendment. The ab- 
 solution of the priest is the form. Together these 
 signify and effect the sinner's reconciliation with 
 God ; his spiritual resurrection and restoration in 
 grace. 
 
 Contrition demands first a knowledge of God's 
 love to us in Christ, and a knowledge of ourselves. 
 This latter can only be obtained by self-examination 
 and prayer. We must ask God to show us our- 
 selves and Himself. We must, if we have never 
 done so, review our life in its different parts and 
 relationships, and see what we have done or left 
 undone. We must examine ourselves in the light of 
 God's commandments, the seven deadly sins, the
 
 THE SEVEN MYSTERIES 227 
 
 precepts of the Gospel, the duties of our station, 
 our privileged weaknesses and faults. We must try 
 to see ourselves in the light of God's justice, holi- 
 ness, and of His love, for, out of His love, who could 
 bear so ghastly a sight? 
 
 Contrition combines sorrow for having offended 
 God with a fear and hatred of sin, and a sincere 
 determination not to offend again. It is either per- 
 fect or imperfect It is called perfect when the 
 dominating motive is the love of God, or imperfect 
 when controlled by lesser religious motives, such as 
 the fear of hell or the loss of heaven. But mere 
 natural motives, such as the results of sin, the loss of 
 honor, the confusion of exposure, the obstacles our 
 faults oppose to worldly success, these do not deserve 
 the name of contrition. For contrition must be an 
 act of the heart and will, and be inspired by motives 
 based on religion. There must also be with our 
 sorrow a fear and hatred of sin ; a fear, because our 
 nature is so composite, our hearts are so self-deceiv- 
 ing, temptation is so subtle, our falls have been so 
 many. Because also we grow in the love of God just 
 in proportion as we grow in the hatred of sin ; be- 
 cause this hatred develops the strength of will, ena- 
 bling us to contend successfully with this deadly 
 enemy. 
 
 Contrition also demands a holy determination to 
 amend. The marks of such a sincere resolve are, 
 fidelity in prayer, vigilance against our spiritual 
 enemies, watchful correspondence with the interior 
 warnings of the Spirit, a rigorous avoiding of the 
 occasions of sin. We must learn, as S. Augustine
 
 228 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 said, to take the little ones, the first temptations, and 
 dash them against the rock that is Christ. 
 
 Confession is the next step in the soul's restoration. 
 It has its source in our moral nature that demands it. 
 Its duty has been revealed in the Old and New Testa- 
 ment. It must be made to God, against whom we 
 have sinned. As Christians it must be made to Him 
 in the person of Jesus Christ, for to Him all judgment 
 has been committed. In His great love He has left 
 those who represent Him, and who can communicate 
 to us His pardoning grace. They can say in His 
 name, son, daughter, thy sins be forgiven thee, go 
 in peace. 
 
 The form of this sacrament is the priest's word of 
 absolution. As possessed of this power the gospel 
 ministry is called the ministry of reconciliation. This 
 power of absolution our Lord gave to His Church 
 when He breathed on the Apostles and said, " Re- 
 ceive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye re- 
 mit, they are remitted unto them, and whose soever 
 sins ye retain, they are retained." When our Lord 
 spoke these words most probably others besides the 
 Apostles were present. There was reason for this. 
 Forgiveness of sins has reference both to sin in its 
 relation to God and in its relation to the Church's 
 discipline and to those whom we have injured. It 
 requires therefore both a personal forgiveness, an 
 ecclesiastical pardon as well as divine forgiveness. 
 To the Christian priesthood was given the power of 
 dispensing the two latter. 
 
 It may well be noticed that our Lord gave to the 
 Apostles their manifold powers at different times.
 
 THE SEVEN MYSTERIES 229 
 
 They were authorized at one time to preach, at 
 another to administer discipline, at another to heal 
 the sick, so also to ordain, to baptize, to offer the 
 Holy Eucharist. Each power of the priesthood was 
 given separately. So here we must conclude that a 
 special power to absolve the penitent was given to 
 the Apostles. 
 
 Christ, in this mystery of love, comes as the Good 
 Shepherd seeking His wandering sheep. He comes 
 to gather it up, trembling and with bleeding feet, and 
 take it in His arms and bear it back to the fold. No 
 sinner is so vile but the Sacred Heart is open to him; 
 no sins are so black that the precious blood cannot 
 cleanse. The reason given why frequent communions 
 often do not advance the soul more, is that persons 
 venture into the King's presence uncleansed and un- 
 absolved. In the Eucharist Jesus summons us to the 
 banquet of His love, which is a foretaste of heaven, 
 but we must go having on the clean wedding garment. 
 We go otherwise at our peril. He has provided most 
 freely for our reception of one. The tribunal of 
 penitence is the covenanted seat of mercy. It is the 
 way of rehabilitation : " Take away his filthy gar- 
 ments and give him a change of raiment." 
 
 " Weary of earth and laden with my sin, 
 I look at heaven and long to enter in ; 
 But there no evil thing may find a home ; 
 And yet I hear a voice that bids me ' Come.' 
 
 " The while I fain would tread the heavenly way, 
 Evil is ever with me day by day ; 
 Yet on mine ears the gracious tidings fall, 
 ' Repent, confess, thou shall be loosed from all.' "
 
 230 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 The next mystery is that of holy unction. As 
 penitence is concerned with the healing of the soul, 
 unction is concerned primarily with the healing of 
 the body. Our blessed Lord redeemed our whole 
 nature, body and soul, and it was but fitting that He 
 should provide sacramentally for the needs of each. 
 
 The body is the tabernacle of the soul, the house 
 which it inhabits. It is the garden in which the soul 
 dwells. It is intrusted to man as the fair garden of 
 Eden was to Adam. We are placed in it to take care 
 of it, to rule over it, and keep it in subjection. It is 
 to be our servant, not our master. By the discipline 
 thus imposed our souls are trained in Christian 
 knighthood. Our bodies being the temples of the 
 Holy Ghost, we stand guard over His honor who 
 trusts Himself to our care. We are to stand on guard, 
 like the cherubim at the gates of Paradise, whose eyes 
 were like a flame, and whose hand held a blazing 
 sword. But the body is not only to be kept under 
 the sceptre of the will. It must be cared for in its 
 weakness, disorder, and pain. " A merciful man," 
 said S. Francis, speaking of the body, " must be 
 merciful to his beast." The body and its soul must, 
 however, temporarily, at least, cease to be companions. 
 We all have to pass through the dark valley and bear 
 its sorrow. 
 
 But He who knows our necessities has provided 
 for us with a mother's care a sacrament testifying 
 to His protection, conveying its own restorative 
 aid, and blessing the means used for our body's re- 
 covery. So we read that, having received authority 
 from Jesus Christ, they " anointed with oil many that
 
 THE SEVEN MYSTERIES 231 
 
 were sick, and healed them." 1 They provided for 
 the continuance of this blessing. " Is any sick among 
 you ? Let him call for the elders of the Church ; and 
 let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the 
 name of the Lord ; and the prayer of faith shall save 
 the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up." 2 
 
 The occasion of its official promulgation by S. 
 James is not given, but we may well surmise it. 
 There were many after Pentecost who were possessed 
 of special gifts, among them that of healing. The 
 ill and the sick person's friends would naturally seek 
 out those who possessed, or who were supposed to 
 possess, this special gift. It was pfobably to check 
 a tendency not unaccompanied with spiritual dangers 
 both to the persons interested and to the Church's 
 good order that S. James gave his directions. The 
 sick were not to seek out those accounted possessed 
 of miraculous powers, but to send for the elders or 
 priests. So far as the care of the body was concerned 
 no specially gifted person was necessary. Let the 
 faithful trust themselves to the prayers of the ordained 
 priesthood. The ordained elder was a righteous man 
 whom God would hear just as He did His prophet 
 Elijah. The order taken by the Apostles was to do 
 away with the excitement of miracle or faith healing, 
 and substitute a regular method promulgated by the 
 Church. 
 
 There was also a further reason. The priest could 
 deal with the soul as a faith-healing or miracle-work- 
 ing layman could not. If the body was to be cured, 
 the first and most important thing for its recovery was 
 1 S. Mark vi. 13. * S. James v. 14, 15.
 
 232 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 to bring the soul into harmony with God. So the 
 sick was to make his confession, and prayer was to 
 be made over him, and then he was to be anointed. 
 The peace and healing of the soul would aid in the 
 healing of the body. 
 
 S. James uses the plural form ; " Call," he says, 
 " for the elders of the Church." Not as excluding 
 the ministrations of a single priest, but as teaching us 
 the efficacy that comes from united prayer. 
 
 The anointing is not to be used when illness is but 
 trifling, or merely when the person is in extremis, 
 but when any illness is serious we may resort to it, 
 and it may be repeated. 
 
 The " matter " of this mystery is the anointing of the 
 sick person. The " form " .is the prayer. By the 
 anointing God is recognized as the giver of health. 
 A blessing is invoked on the means used for recovery, 
 and through this instrumentality also, if God so wills, 
 restorative aid is given. For the comfort of our souls, 
 grace is also bestowed to meet the trials and tempta- 
 tions of illness. Moreover, the soul, when passing, is 
 fortified for its final passage. 
 
 Thus by unction a blessing comes for the healing 
 of our bodies; and our souls are calmed, gladdened, 
 refreshed, and fortified by a special gift of grace. 
 
 " In death's dark vale I fear no ill 
 
 With Thee, dear Lord, beside me ; 
 Thy rod and staff my comfort still, 
 
 Thy cross before to guide me. 
 Thou spread'st a table in my sight ; 
 
 Thy unction grace bestovueth; 
 And oh, what transport of delight 
 
 From Thy pure chalice floweth."
 
 THE SEVEN MYSTERIES 233 
 
 The two next mysteries are holy orders and mar- 
 riage. Holy order is for the generation and preser- 
 vation of the priesthood. Marriage was ordained for 
 that of the race. Holy order is indispensable to the 
 existence of the Church, marriage to that of society. 
 By holy order a spiritual paternity is established 
 between priest and people ; by marriage a natural one 
 between parent and children. Order is for the ruling 
 over the house of God ; marriage gives headship to 
 the Christian family. Order provides for the Church's 
 spiritual needs; marriage for the support of the 
 family's natural wants. Holy order secures to the 
 Church good government; marriage is for the preser- 
 vation in society of good morals. 
 
 We have already spoken sufficiently of holy orders. 
 Let us now consider marriage. 
 
 It has existed under three conditions of human 
 society : in man's state of innocence, when fallen or 
 apart from Christ, and under the Christian dispen- 
 sation. Each has its own separate law of union. We 
 will here speak of it only in its last condition. 
 
 Christian marriage is the union of a baptized man 
 and woman. Baptism is therefore an absolute neces- 
 sity, for it lies at the foundation of this as of all other 
 sacraments. The parties must be baptized into Christ 
 and made members of Christ in order to be united 
 together " in the Lord." 
 
 They must also be of legal age, not devoid of rea- 
 son, with no canonical impediment existing by reason 
 of affinity or consanguinity ; must be free in their 
 action, and not under grave fear or constraint, and 
 neither must have a partner by a former marriage 
 living.
 
 234 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 The " matter " of the sacrament is the two baptized 
 persons who purpose, and are capable, by canonical 
 law, of making a free and mutual choice. The " form " 
 is the words by which, in the presence of the priest, 
 they take one another to be man and wife, and to- 
 gether receive as one the blessing of the priest. In this 
 way they are united in matrimony and receive an in- 
 crease of sanctifying grace, and also the special grace 
 needed for the fulfilment of their mutual duties. It 
 is a grace given to enable them to live in love and 
 peace together " until death do us part." 
 
 To this, however, it has been objected that it makes 
 marriage rest, as it did under the Roman civil law, on 
 contract, and if by mutual consent the estate is created, 
 by mutual consent, as in Roman times, it might be 
 dissolved. But the consent of the parties here is not 
 like that to an ordinary civil contract, which is merely 
 an agreement to do or not to do a certain thing. It 
 is a contract which executes itself. By their mutual 
 agreement the wills and hearts of the two parties 
 meet and are thereby joined together. Marriage, 
 indeed, implies the union both of body and soul, but 
 the soul is the dominant factor, and thus the parties 
 before leaving the church are what the priest pro- 
 nounces them to be, man and wife. 
 
 The Church, however, does not recognize the char- 
 acter of indissolubility as attached to the union until 
 it has been wholly consummated. 
 
 This union being a sacramental one cannot be dis- 
 solved by civil courts. But though the bond cannot 
 thus be broken, a separation may be granted. 
 
 The unfaithfulness of a partner does not annul the
 
 THE SEVEN MYSTERIES 235 
 
 bond. The text in S. Matthew xix. which apparently 
 favors the opposite view is too corrupt or uncertain 
 to allow us to base an argument upon it. 1 If Christ's 
 words are correctly given the matter still remains in 
 doubt, as they were seemingly addressed to the Jews 
 and had respect to marriage in their case only. Even 
 if applicable to Christian marriage only separation, not 
 remarriage, is allowed. In those passages where our 
 Lord speaks to the Apostles, and clearly in relation 
 to the Christian state, no provision is made for any 
 dissolution of the bond. The great underlying reason 
 is that Christian marriage is to be a witness of the 
 indissoluble union between Christ and His Church. 
 
 The hardness and suffering thereby entailed on 
 the innocent party is to be met by reliance on Christ's 
 promise, " My grace is sufficient for thee." For 
 marriage is not to be considered merely in relation 
 to'our earthly state, but to our eternal reward. God 
 calls His servants to suffer in various ways, all of 
 us in some way. And when our sufferings are borne 
 for Him the soul increases in sanctity and secures an 
 increment of future bliss. 
 
 There are three kinds of Christian marriage. That 
 of the laity, of the priesthood, and that of those con- 
 secrated to the celibate life as religious. 
 
 The first is to bear its witness unto the indissolu- 
 bility of the union between Christ and His bride. 
 The second, if we construe Scripture strictly, allows 
 of but one marriage to the bishop or priest. As the 
 high priest under the old dispensation was allowed 
 to marry but once, and that a virgin, S. Paul makes 
 1 Watkins, " Holy Matrimony."
 
 236 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 the same ideal the standard of the Christian clergy. 
 By conformity to this rule they bear witness to the 
 oneness of the Church as the bride of Christ 
 
 The mystical marriage of those consecrated in 
 religion to our Lord is also a true special union of 
 the soul to Him, and, more powerfully than words can 
 tell, bears witness to the world of the all sufficiency 
 of the love and grace of the Bridegroom. 
 
 Of the latter Dr. Ptisey has said : J " Blessed, thrice 
 blessed they whom Christ alone sufficeth, the one aim 
 of whose being is to live to Him and for Him. He is 
 their light, their love, their holy joy ; to Him they 
 ever approach with trustfulness; Him they consult 
 in all things, on Him they wait; Him they love, and 
 desiring nothing from Him but His love, desire no 
 love but only His. ' I am my Beloved's, and my 
 Beloved is mine.' " 
 
 Of the former estate he says : " What is the 
 pattern and measure and model of the mutual love 
 of the husband and the wife ? What but the love 
 of Christ Himself, and of His redeemed Church for 
 Him, its Head ? " 
 
 " Love, then, with a tender, forbearing love, as 
 Christ is tender and compassionate with us ; behold- 
 ing us as what, by His grace, we shall one day be ; 
 cherishing one another, encouraging one another, 
 helping one the other along the narrow road which 
 leadeth unto Him; denying each self for the other, 
 as Christ loved our souls more than Himself. This 
 love shall grow with years, as the love of Christ, 
 which is the beauty of the soul, grows and is enlarged 
 
 1 Sermon on the Sacredness of Marriage.
 
 THE SEVEN MYSTERIES 237 
 
 in each. This love shall not decay, much less die. 
 For souls which are united in Christ shall not be 
 separated from Christ; they shall live on still-, one 
 in the one love of Christ." 
 
 " Lord, who at Cana's wedding feast 
 
 Didst as a guest appear, 
 Thou dearer far than earthly guest, 
 
 Vouchsafe Thy presence here ; 
 For holy Thou indeed dost prove 
 
 The marriage vow to be, 
 Proclaiming it a type of love 
 
 Between the Church and Thee. 
 The holiest vow that man can make, 
 
 The golden thread in life, 
 The bond that none may dare to break, 
 
 That bindeth man and wife." 
 
 The Holy Eucharist is the greatest of all mysteries. 
 It is the most grand and worthy of honor of all 
 the sacraments ; for while they convey grace, in the 
 Eucharist we have Jesus Christ Himself, the author 
 of grace. It is an ever-living witness of the incarna- 
 tion, sacrificial death, resurrection, and ascension of 
 the Lord. It is the consummation of religion on 
 earth, as it affords us the most intimate and perpetual 
 communication with Jesus Christ. It is the essence 
 of Christianity, as being the sacrifice, in union with 
 which the Christian makes that of Calvary applicable 
 to himself. It is the possession of the Church on 
 earth of Jesus Christ's real but veiled presence, as 
 she waits adoringly for His unveiling in the state of 
 glory. 
 
 We may for devotional and practical purposes 
 consider the mystery under three heads:
 
 238 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 First, as a witness. The sacraments are witnesses 
 to the faith. The Blessed Sacrament bears witness 
 to the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ, and the oneness of the Church in Him. By 
 the necessary recitation of the words of institution, 
 " This is my body," witness is thereby borne to the 
 fact that Christ had a body like our own. Moreover, 
 it is of faith that He assumed it, never to put it off. 
 So age after age the priest repeats these words at 
 the altar, which, if Christ had ceased to have a body, 
 would not be true. Also by the consecration of the 
 two elements the mystery tells us that the blood 
 was separated from the body by a sacrificial death. 
 " This cup is the new covenant in my blood poured 
 out for you." The mystery declares yet further that 
 He who died rose in that body, for otherwise the 
 words of the institution would be unreal. It more- 
 over declares as well as effects the unity of the 
 Church. We feed on Him, the living bread, and are 
 made one loaf in Him. 
 
 The sacrament is a communion. By the words of 
 institution and the power of the Holy Spirit the 
 elements become the body and blood of Christ. 
 Man's names designate, God's naming makes that 
 He names. It is not made in the natural order, or 
 governed by any natural laws. By the Spirit's power 
 the elements become what the Word declares them 
 to be, Christ's body and blood. 
 
 The Anglican Church has declared this as her faith 
 and embodied it in her catechism. In it she declares 
 that in the Blessed Sacrament there is an outward 
 part or sign, and there is an inward part or thing
 
 THE SEVEN MYSTERIES 239 
 
 signified, and thirdly there are the benefits which 
 partakers receive. 
 
 First, there is a sign. 
 
 At the time of the Reformation there was a so-called 
 Romish theory that the elements existed in appear- 
 ance only. Our theologians met this error by saying, 
 that by denying the existence of the sign, the in- 
 tegrity of the sacrament was fatally impaired, for a 
 sacrament consists both of an inward thing and an 
 outward sign. On the other hand, some within the 
 Church have mistaken the Church's meaning, and 
 taught that the inward part was something which 
 only signified Christ. In this way they have fallen 
 into the opposite error of making two signs. The 
 outward sign being one, and the inward part being 
 only in some way another sign, something signify- 
 ing Christ and not being the real body and blood of 
 our Lord. 
 
 There are three opinions held respecting this 
 mystery. Two belong to the Protestant category. 
 The Zwinglian makes the sacrament merely a 
 memorial of an absent Lord ; the Calvinistic view 
 is that along with the reception of the elements 
 Christ's body and blood are communicated to the 
 faithful and elect receiver. The Catholic belief as 
 stated in the catechism is that there is a sign and 
 a thing, and that the thing signified is the body 
 and blood of Christ. 
 
 A more intelligent apprehension of the mystery ^of 
 Christ's presence can be attained by considering 
 three points. 
 
 First, the whole transaction takes place not in the
 
 240 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 natural order of things, but in the spiritual body of 
 Christ. It is therefore governed by no natural laws 
 of matter and space, and can be comprehended by no 
 analogies drawn from natural life. 
 
 Secondly, by the consecration, acting through His 
 representatives, Christ gathers up the elements into 
 Himself, and they become His body and blood. No 
 local movement on the part of Christ is required to 
 effect this. The elements become what His almighty 
 word declares them to be, and receiving them with 
 faith we partake of Him. 
 
 Thirdly, an act of adoration is due Him from the 
 common law of courtesy which demands that every 
 act of condescension on the part of a superior must 
 be acknowledged by a reciprocal act of reverence, 
 and in case the superior is God, of adoration. We 
 do not adore the elements considered apart by 
 themselves, but our act of adoration has, for its 
 terminus ad quern, His divine personality, to whom 
 alone adoration is due. 
 
 The third aspect of the mystery is, that it is a 
 sacrifice. Slowly the Anglican Church has recovered 
 its grasp on this great truth. The Eucharistic sacri- 
 fice has a double relation. One to the act of our 
 Lord's blood shedding finished on Calvary, and one 
 to the presentation of that blood, which has passed 
 through death to the Eternal Father. 
 
 On Calvary the offering was made in behalf and in 
 reconciliation of the human race. On the altar it 
 is re-presented, pleaded, and appropriated by the 
 Church for the needs of her individual members. 
 
 It is, however, an imperfect apprehension of the
 
 THE SEVEN MYSTERIES 241 
 
 truth to regard the sacrifice of the altar as a presenta- 
 tion by the priest of Christ's death, apart from the 
 co-operation of the people. The deeper and fuller 
 view is that the Church offers up herself as a living 
 sacrifice to God. She does this in union with Christ, 
 her head, with whom she identifies herself, by par- 
 taking of the sacrifice of the altar. 
 
 Most glorious would it be if on every altar on 
 Sundays and holy days, and more frequently still, 
 the holy sacrifice was offered. The earnestly minded 
 have it in their power to make the Anglican Church 
 what they desire. But it is not by mere agitation, 
 or legislation, or change of relationship to the State, 
 or in any like ways, will they attain their end. It is 
 God and God only who can bring about the desired 
 result, and the most potent of all agencies which 
 move Him is the devout offering of the holy 
 sacrifice. 
 
 " Thou, who at thy first Eucharist didst pray, 
 That all Thy Church might be forever one, 
 
 Grant us at every Eucharist to say 
 
 With longing heart and soul, ' Thy will be done.' 
 
 Oh, may we all one Bread, one Body be, 
 
 Through this blest Sacrament of Unity. 
 
 " We pray Thee, too, for wanderers from Thy fold ; 
 
 Oh, bring them back, good Shepherd of the sheep, 
 Back to the faith which saints believed of old, 
 
 Back to the Church which still that faith doth keep ; 
 Soon may we all one Bread, one Body be, 
 Through this blest Sacrament of Unity." 
 
 16
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 UNITY AND UNION 
 
 HAPPY is that day to any devout soul when the 
 bright vision of the Catholic Church, as the 
 eternal and glorious bride of Christ, dawns upon it. 
 The soul is lifted up out of the narrow and contracted 
 technicalities of theological disputation, and is bathed 
 in the divine sunlight, and with the blessed saints 
 and angels rejoices in God. 
 
 There are three degrees of apprehension of Chris- 
 tianity. First, it is seen to be a spiritual power 
 within men. This is the strictly sectarian view. But 
 Christianity was not only like a grain of mustard seed 
 or leaven within the measures of meal. It came into 
 the world as an organization. The gospel that 
 Christ preached was the " gospel of the kingdom." 
 It was not only a truth or influence. It was these 
 embodied and organized. It was like unto a walled 
 city, a visible temple, a kingdom. 
 
 Next, it becomes apparent that this city, temple, 
 kingdom, was divinely founded and established. It 
 was not a mere voluntary association of believers. It 
 did not spring up like a human-made society. It was 
 an organization founded by Christ with its officers 
 and sacraments. This is the aspect that is much 
 dwelt on by Romans, but it is also an imperfect one. 
 For, to confine our vision exclusively to this last
 
 UNITY AND UNION 243 
 
 view is like a scientist, who, having to describe the 
 earth should fit himself for the task by throwing him- 
 self flat on its surface, and then, after applying his 
 eye closely to it, should give us as the result of his 
 investigation concerning the planet a description of 
 the structure and activities of an ant hill. In like 
 manner, those who confine their view of the Church 
 to it as existing only on this world see but a very 
 small part of it. It seems to them a very perfect 
 organization indeed. But it is not the whole Church. 
 In respect to it, the papacy is only an ant hill. 
 
 There is a third, a fuller and more complete view. 
 It does not confine its vision to the Church on earth. 
 It takes on a far wider horizon. It begins with Christ. 
 He is not apart from His Church. He is the head 
 of it. He is the sun of this system of light and life. 
 He is reigning now in glory. He is surrounded by 
 His multitudinous cohorts of angels and the innum- 
 erable company of His saints. Besides these there is 
 that vast number of souls in the purificative or ex- 
 pectant sphere of advancement. Lastly, there is that 
 small number who are as yet wayfarers, and confined 
 to the earthly state of trial. These three groups, in 
 their triumphant, expectant, militant conditions make 
 up the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. 
 This is the Church Christ founded and which is to 
 endure throughout eternity. It is a vast spiritual 
 organism whose centre is Christ, whose life-giving 
 atmosphere is the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Now what is the principle of unity which makes 
 and keeps the Church one? 
 
 Here we must discriminate between the two ideas
 
 244 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 of unity and union. " Unity " denotes the oneness 
 of the body. " Union " the co-operation of the mem- 
 bers of it. The first requires a principle that makes 
 the body one. The second a law that will regulate 
 co-operation ; both need the assisting power of the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 We must then first solve the question, What is 
 the principle of the Church's unity? The Roman 
 theory makes the unity to depend upon subjection 
 to the Western patriarch or bishop of Rome. The 
 other, and which we deem the Catholic theory, makes 
 the principle of unity our sacramental union with 
 Jesus Christ, the Church's head. Which theory is 
 the correct one? 
 
 For the argument's sake, let us put the Church 
 aside and ask in what does the principle of any body 
 consist? 
 
 There are three very obvious axioms which we 
 may here apply. First, the principle of unity of 
 any body must be coterminous with the body itself. 
 The principle, so to say, which makes an apple one 
 thing must be a principle which affects every atom 
 of its composition. Likewise the principle which 
 unites and makes the Church one must be a prin- 
 ciple which lays hold of and affects every member 
 of the Catholic Church. It must be a principle oper- 
 ating at one and the same time upon the ever Blessed 
 Virgin, the Blessed Mother of God, upon all the 
 saints in glory, upon all the waiting expectant souls, 
 and all the members of the Church militant. Thus 
 tested, the principle of submission to the papacy is 
 seen not to be a principle of unity, because it affects
 
 UNITY AND UNION 245 
 
 only one portion of the Church, namely, that on the 
 earth, and not the whole of it. 
 
 Next it must be admitted that any true principle 
 of unity of a body must be by its own nature as last- 
 ing as the body itself. The principle of unity con- 
 sequently, of a body that is endowed with an eternal 
 existence as the Church is, must be itself eternal. 
 As the papacy finally and before long must pass 
 away with this earth, it is clearly seen that it cannot 
 be in itself the principle of unity of a body, which by 
 its nature is of eternal duration. 
 
 Again, the principle of unity of any body must be 
 as indestructible as the body it proposes to unite in 
 oneness. Now history reveals the fact that there 
 have been at times two or three rival popes excom- 
 municating one another. For about seventy years 
 different nations in Europe were under different 
 popes. For several generations the faithful could 
 not know which was the pope if there was to be but 
 one. Also in consequence of its claimed supremacy 
 the four patriarchates of the East became separated 
 from that of Rome. In Russia alone there are one 
 hundred millions of Catholics to-day. The papacy 
 is thus seen not to have secured unity, but really to 
 have been the source of disunion. 
 
 On the other hand, the Catholic principle of unity 
 applies to the whole body of the Church wherever 
 any of its members may be, and it will last as long as 
 the Church lasts, and it is in itself indestructible. It 
 is like the unity that binds a family together. A 
 family is one because the same common life is to be 
 found in all its members. A family may quarrel and
 
 246 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 become a disunited family, but the blood relation 
 which unites its members is indestructible. Thus it 
 is in the Church of Christ. Christ prayed that His 
 Church should be one as He and the Father are one. 
 Now they are one by unity of nature, and that prayer 
 was answered. For though the members of the 
 Christian family have fallen out, and intercommunion 
 has been interrupted, yet the Church, united in all 
 its parts to Christ by sacramental grace, is one. All 
 the members having Christ's life in them are united 
 to one another. Neither the gates of hell, nor the 
 powers of evil, nor the quarrels of churchmen can 
 prevail against it. The Anglican Church, possessed 
 of sacramental grace, is possessed of the true principle 
 of unity. 
 
 The prayer of Christ also was for union as well as 
 unity. He prayed the Father that His followers 
 might " be one in us : that the world might believe 
 that Thou hast sent me." 
 
 Now as the principle of organic unity is the com- 
 mon participation in the nature of Christ, so the liv- 
 ing bond of the Church's union is not submission to 
 the papacy, but to the rule and guidance of the Holy 
 Ghost; for union no more than unity is preserved 
 by subordination to an earthly head. This indeed is 
 man's way. It is the principle of human organiza- 
 tions. It is, however, the principle condemned by 
 our Lord as applicable to His Apostles. He said, 
 " Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise 
 dominion over them, and they that are great exercise 
 authority upon them. But it shall not be so among 
 you." They were indeed to sit on thrones judging 
 
 1 S. Matt. xx. 25.
 
 UNITY AND UNION 247 
 
 the twelve tribes of Israel, but among themselves the 
 only title to greatness was not authority over their 
 brethren, but servitude. " Whosoever will be chief 
 among you, let him be your servant." 1 The relation be- 
 tween the Apostles and their spiritual children did not 
 prohibit the use of the term " father," but as among 
 themselves our Lord forbade the calling of any one 
 " father" or " master." It is this forbidden spirit of 
 " exercising authority," like a worldly monarch, that 
 has in the papacy rent Christendom and marred the 
 union for which Christ prayed. 
 
 The erection of the papacy with its monarchical 
 absolutism has been the great sin of Christendom. 
 It has been the outcome of human wisdom, and is a 
 rebellion against Christ. In this sense the papacy is 
 anti-Christ. Just as Israel sinned by not being con- 
 tent without having a visible head, so the Roman 
 Church has sinned likewise, and with the same result. 
 What Israel thought would be for the protection and 
 greatness of the State led to its disruption. Men 
 endeavored, mistaking Christ's teaching, to make a 
 better Church than Christ had made. What they 
 thought would secure its union led to its divisions. 
 
 The true principle or bond of union in the Church 
 is divine love, the love that is effective through the 
 indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This is seen in Christ's 
 prayer for union. Christ prayed that His Apostles 
 might "be one, even as we are one: I in them and 
 Thou in me." The bond which holds the Blessed 
 Trinity in unity is the living bond of the Holy Ghost. 
 He was to be the bond of union in His Church. So 
 
 1 S. Matt. xx. 27.
 
 248 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 held together, the world would witness a supernatural 
 union, one which would bear witness to the love of 
 the Father and the Son. It was to be the sight of 
 this union that was to lead the world to believe " that 
 Thou hast sent Me." In the monarchical principle of 
 the papacy no witness is given to the love of the 
 Father for the Son. The union it enforces is a human- 
 made one of a mechanical order and has nothing of a 
 divine or supernatural character to it. Such a union 
 has no power to lead men to believe in the unseen 
 or the mission of Christ. But union preserved by lov- 
 ing subordination to one another, and where none 
 claims to be the greatest, bears a fruitful witness to 
 the supernatural and the mission of Christ. 
 
 Do we ask how the Holy Ghost effects a union in 
 faith and fellowship? The Holy Spirit dwells in the 
 Church and expresses His mind in the Ecumenical 
 councils. They define the faith and give the law to 
 the Church. Union between the members of the 
 episcopate and the various portions of Christendom 
 is provided for by subordination to the law of the 
 whole body. And fellowship is cemented by the 
 divine charity that binds them in loving subordination 
 and co-operation together. Thus was the Church 
 united before the popes claimed absolute dominion. 
 The same bond to-day holds the Russian and the 
 Constantinople churches together. It unites in one 
 communion the various branches of the Anglican 
 Church. It could unite all. 
 
 Had it not been for the papacy the Church would 
 have remained united. But what our Lord and the 
 Apostles warned us against has come to pass. The
 
 UNITY AND UNION 249 
 
 gates of hell have not prevailed against the Church, 
 but she has been wounded. That which depended 
 on Christ's own making, i. e., unity, came to pass ; 
 that which depended on us, i. e., union, has been in- 
 jured. Unity has not been broken, but union has 
 been suspended. The inner garment of Christ has 
 not been rent, but the outer one has. The net that 
 secures the saved is not broken, but the one in earthly 
 service has been rent. Not a bone of His mystical 
 body is broken, but all the bones are out of joint. 
 The earthly visible organization of the Church has, 
 according to the type in the final chapter of the Acts, 
 suffered shipwreck, though each soul by the saving 
 wood of the cross comes safe to land. An enemy 
 hath sown tares in Christ's field and the tares and 
 wheat must grow together till He come. It is observ- 
 able that the gospel prophecy of the earthly future 
 of Christianity is hardly what we should have expected 
 it beforehand to be; there is a great absence of 
 brightness in it; the sky is overcast with clouds, and 
 birds of evil omen fly to and fro. Prophecy would 
 fain presage auspiciously, but as soon as she casts her 
 eye forward her note saddens, and the chords issue 
 in melancholy and sinister cadences. 1 Christ Him* 
 self prophesied that at the end there would be false 
 Christs and false prophets, false signs and wonders, 
 the moon would not give its light and the stars would 
 fall and the powers of heaven be shaken. The Church 
 also as the bride of Christ must pass through a life 
 like her Lord's, and at last the world will treat her 
 as it did Him. Be it ours not to desert our posts, 
 
 1 Mozley, University Sermons.
 
 250 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 but to abide with the ever Blessed Mother and S. John, 
 faithful to Jesus and His cross, one in Him by grace, 
 united to one another by love. 
 
 Anglican Catholics have three duties to perform 
 to the Church : one to the Church militant, another 
 to the Church expectant, and another to the Church 
 in glory. 
 
 A duty incumbent upon every member of the 
 Catholic Church militant is to work for its extension. 
 A missionary zeal should burn like fire in every 
 Christian's heart. The time is short and the second 
 coming of Christ draweth nigh. In all ways in our 
 power, by our alms and prayers and personal service, 
 we must labor to " press on the kingdom." Knowing 
 too that the Church's spiritual power lies in the co- 
 operation of all her members, valiant effort should be 
 made for the restoration of intercommunion and 
 Christian fellowship, especially between the Eastern 
 and the Anglican communions. 
 
 One of the most important steps in the attainment 
 of these ends is the deepening of the spiritual life in 
 our own Church, the re-establishment of our religious 
 orders and the recovery for her of her Catholic heri- 
 tage of faith, practice, and worship. What nobler 
 work can man or woman do than to give themselves 
 up to this service? By it the most effective victory 
 for Christ can be won. The fire of self-sacrifice 
 should kindle in every heart. To live and die for 
 Jesus is the watchword of Catholic saints. Let it 
 be ours. 
 
 The intellectual quagmire into which some honest 
 and good Anglican clergy fall, is to assume that the
 
 UNITY AND UNION 251 
 
 Anglican Church has a mind of her own apart from 
 the whole Catholic body. While this is right and 
 true in a measure, it is not true in respect of 
 matters of faith or practice determined by Ecumen- 
 ical authority. 
 
 Again, it may be very interesting to study the 
 history of the Reformation period, but the private 
 opinions or wishes of the reformers are absolutely 
 worthless in determining what morally or legally is 
 the teaching of our Church. Legally, for any law 
 enacted by a body of men cannot be interpreted by 
 the private intentions or opinions of its framers, but 
 by its words alone. Morally, for two reasons : those 
 who compiled our formularies were, unlike an ordinary 
 body of legislators, an ecclesiastical one, under the 
 guidance of the Holy Spirit, who used them to ex- 
 press His mind and not their own. Again, morally, 
 for if the Church is Catholic as she claims to be (and 
 to doubt it would prove us disloyal), we are bound 
 in honor to her to interpret her prayer-book and 
 formularies in correspondence with the teaching of 
 the whole body of Christ. 
 
 Hence it is the duty of the bishops to voice the 
 teaching of the solidarity of the episcopate, as heard 
 from the beginning, and not to give out as authori- 
 tative their own private opinions based on their own 
 interpretations of Holy Scripture or the book of 
 common prayer. Hence it is the duty of the laity 
 to listen to their bishops so speaking to them, and 
 obey their godly admonitions ; and for the different 
 schools to try the better to understand one another, 
 and to draw closer together in mutual forbearance,
 
 252 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 and so to " press on the kingdom." Not seeking to 
 make it large by making it popular, for orthodoxy 
 and sanctity are more important than numbers, and 
 the restoration of the Church's catholicity is more im- 
 portant than the preservation of any church's national 
 character. The Church is in the world not to save 
 the world, but to save men out of the world and make 
 ready a people prepared for the Lord. 
 
 Our duty to the Church expectant is to pray for 
 the faithful departed. After death, we know, comes 
 the judgment. There will be, indeed, a final judgment 
 when every man will receive according as his work 
 hath been. This final judgment is for the glory of 
 Christ and the reward of the faithful. The particular 
 judgment at the time of death determines our safety 
 or our eternal loss. It turns on the condition whether 
 we die in a state of grace or not. But though dying 
 in grace most souls are unfitted for immediate entrance 
 into glory ; for without holiness no man can see the 
 Lord. 1 The soul that after death happily finds itself 
 among the saved is secured from falling away by its 
 deliverance from temptations. But as it cannot, as 
 when here, resist temptation and thereby grow in 
 grace, it must be purified by God's disciplinary and 
 loving remedial processes. In this it is aided by the 
 offering of the holy sacrifice and the suffrages of the 
 faithful. The decline of prayers for the dead, which 
 our Lord we may say Himself practised, and which 
 has ever been a custom of Catholic Christendom, 
 largely led in the last century to unbelief in a future 
 state. It is a defect that our liturgy so little recog- 
 nizes this duty. But parents should teach their chil- 
 
 1 Heb. xii. 14.
 
 UNITY AND UNION 253 
 
 dren to pray for those of their family departed. 
 Priests should likewise teach the people to remember 
 them, for in the liturgy we pray not only for our- 
 selves, " but for the whole Church," which includes 
 the dead as well as the living. 
 
 " Oh, pray for us," our dear departed ones may be 
 presumed to say; "Oh, pray for us who loved and 
 labored and who prayed for you." Let us never 
 forget them before God. Let us pray that their 
 souls, accepted for the merits of Christ, may rest in 
 peace. May their stains and wounds made by sin 
 be all removed ; may they be perfected in Christ, 
 and continually advance in joy and felicity till they 
 reach in heaven the sight of God and are filled with 
 His bliss. 
 
 What is our duty to the Church triumphant and the 
 saints in glory? 
 
 The answer is to be found in the principle that 
 binds the whole Church together in its united action, 
 and that principle is love. As it is of the essence of 
 love that it must manifest itself by external action, 
 love expresses itself in the Church by the mutual 
 prayers of all the members for one another. There/ 
 can be no such thing as common prayer between! 
 Christians without mutual prayer. No Christian can 
 say the Lord's Prayer for himself alone, for that 
 prayer embraces in its petition, " Thy kingdom 
 come," not only himself and his brethren on earth, 
 but even the Mother of God and all the saints. So 
 the saints in their desire for the increase of Christ's 
 kingdom pray for us, and we, desirous of their 
 increase in bliss, pray for them.
 
 254 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 As the Church's worship is the worship of the 
 whole body, it is engaged in one united act of praise 
 and prayer. In its magnificent development the 
 choirs of angels and the saints call upon one another 
 to unite in magnifying God and exalting and praising 
 Him forever. So the Church on earth calls on all 
 creatures animate and inanimate, all the holy and 
 humble-hearted, and all the spirits and souls of the 
 righteous to bless the Lord. It is in realization of 
 this united worship that we both pray for the saints 
 and call on them, collectively and individually, to 
 pray for us. 
 
 From exaggerations developed in the Latin Church 
 whereby the Blessed Virgin was declared the neck 
 of the mystical body through whom all graces pass, 
 and saints were appealed to as sources of spiritual 
 gifts, the Anglican Church revolted. Here, as in 
 some other ways, the Reformation was a return 
 towards eastern orthodoxy. For the East recogniz- 
 ing the oneness of all the members in Christ, prays 
 for all the saints, even the Blessed Mother of God, 
 as well as invokes their prayers. In her high con- 
 ception of prayer she regards all the prayers of the 
 Church, past, present, and future, as rising up before 
 God as one united intercession, in response to which, 
 the God-bestowed grace came to the Blessed Mother 
 and to all the saints. The neglect of this pious de- 
 votion on our part may help to explain our feebler 
 grasp of the supernatural and the oneness of Christ's 
 mystical body. 
 
 Under the light of modern science the old ob- 
 jection as to how the saints can hear us is now but
 
 UNITY AND UNION 255 
 
 little urged. It is recognized that the spiritual world 
 is controlled by laws of its own. And if man can 
 send messages by wireless telegraphy across an 
 ocean, what cannot be accomplished by angels in 
 their sphere? In any event God hears our prayers 
 and can reveal them directly to His saints. But 
 partly from our Anglican insulation, partly from a 
 reverent fear, some of our theologians have dis- 
 couraged the practice as being a dangerous one. 
 
 Against this, however, it is to be replied that the 
 custom is not more dangerous than many others 
 which the Catholic Church approves, as, for instance, 
 prayers for the dead. There has never been any- 
 thing in the practice of invoking the saints to equal 
 the shameful traffic in masses which grew out of 
 prayers for the departed. If we are to reject prac- 
 tices because of their developed harmful results, 
 prayers for the dead have been the occasion of 
 greater harm than invocation of the saints. Yet 
 there are those who oppose the invocation of saints 
 who are most anxious to have prayers for the dead 
 restored. If one practice can be safeguarded and 
 rightly used, so can the other. 
 
 No book, as Liddon pointed out, has been more 
 abused and made the source of more error or the 
 cover of more wickedness than the Bible. Shall we 
 therefore dissolve our Bible societies and cease to 
 urge the reading of the Scriptures? 
 
 The truth is that there is no doctrine or practice 
 of the Catholic Church which the evil mind of man 
 has not at some time corrupted, and if we were to 
 give up all such doctrines and practices we should
 
 256 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 lapse into Theism. Therefore, we conclude a practice 
 is not necessarily to be given up because it is dan- 
 gerous, but the abuse being cut away it is to be 
 restored to what it was when it obtained the sanction 
 of the Church. 
 
 It has also been urged that a National Church has 
 a right to alter practices which have been found 
 dangerous. 
 
 Now it is observed that practices are either good, 
 bad, or indifferent. A good practice is that which 
 is founded upon some orthodox doctrine, a bad 
 practice is that which is founded on some heterodox 
 doctrine, an indifferent practice is one which is either 
 founded upon some pious opinion, or which has been 
 introduced from mere motives of reverence. 
 
 Of this latter sort it is to be observed, that a 
 National Church may remove them at pleasure. 
 She can " change and abolish ceremonies and rites 
 ordained only by man's authority." Of the second 
 kind, while a National Church might fall into the 
 error of a practice based on false doctrine, yet it is 
 impossible for the whole Church to do so. Other- 
 wise Christ's promise concerning her would fail. 
 When, however, an error in practice or by neglect 
 is discovered, it is the duty of the National Church 
 to correct its judgment by that of the whole Church. 
 Concerning those practices which are good and have 
 had the indorsement of the whole Church, a national 
 one has no power to abolish them. To do so would 
 be an assertion of its own independence of the body 
 of Christ and involve rejection of the Spirit's authority 
 and guidance.
 
 UNITY AND UNION 257 
 
 Now it is a doctrine of faith and the tradition of 
 the Catholic Church that the saints pray for us, and 
 secondly, the invocation of saints is founded on this 
 doctrine. The Fathers of the fourth century found 
 the practice well established in their day, a practice 
 which, so far as we know, antedated the direct invo- 
 cation of the third person of the most Holy Trinity. 
 It extended throughout the whole Church East and 
 West. It was universal throughout Christendom 
 till the Reformation. It is the custom now of some 
 three hundred and seventy out of the estimated four 
 hundred millions of Christians. Since, then, this 
 is not founded upon man's authority alone and so 
 practice may be changed, but is founded upon 
 a Catholic doctrine, and is one approved by the 
 Holy Spirit acting through the Christian conscious- 
 ness, it is a good practice ; and as such no National 
 Church is competent to abolish it without falling 
 into the initial error of Romanism, namely, rebellion 
 against the whole Church and the Holy Spirit of 
 God. 
 
 While a church may not condemn or abolish a 
 good practice, it can rightly do away with any abuses 
 that may have grown up about it, and this is what our 
 reformers did. They rejected the Romish doctrine 
 of invocation of saints, but not the Catholic doctrine. 
 And if under the stress of the times or unfortunate 
 continental influences they omitted invocations from 
 the public offices, this practice was not forbidden, 
 and in her religious houses and among an increasing 
 number of the faithful it still survives.
 
 258 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Let us carefully teach the true and full doctrine of 
 the communion of saints. Let us avoid the error of 
 Rome that there are two distinct classes of the de- 
 parted, one of which is to be prayed to and the other 
 prayed for. Let us with the holy Eastern Churches 
 realize the union in worship with all members of 
 Christ's body, and that any soul that can be prayed 
 for, the prayers of that soul may be asked. Let us, 
 give as a reason why certain saints are invoked in 
 public worship is not because they belong to a differ- 
 ent class from the rest of the holy souls, but only be- 
 cause their eminent sanctity has given them a wider 
 reputation and a greater nearness to God. Let us, 
 while we invoke their prayers, also pray, " Almighty 
 God, increase, we beseech Thee, the bliss and glory 
 of the Blessed Virgin Mary and all saints." So will 
 our devotions be like those of the Church in early 
 times, and as it is now in those orthodox Churches 
 of the East in whom the faith has been so wonder- 
 fully preserved, unharmed by the evils of ultramon- 
 tane or Protestant error. The revival of the recitation 
 of the Angelus would tend to strengthen the faith of 
 the Anglican Church in the glorious mystery of the 
 Incarnation, and make more real to her children the 
 vision of the saints in glory. We are surrounded 
 by a great cloud of witnesses. They look down 
 upon us in our struggle from their thrones in glory. 
 The departed worthies and saints of the Anglican 
 Church are sending up their ardent intercessions in 
 our behalf. They see more clearly now than ever 
 that the success of Christendom depends on the
 
 UNITY AND UNION 259 
 
 catholization of the Anglican Church. Let us be 
 willing to live and suffer and die for the Catholic 
 cause. And as we pray for them who are at rest, 
 let us also energetically follow their examples and 
 ask their prayers. 
 
 " Made coheirs with Christ in glory, 
 
 His celestial bliss they share; 
 May they now before Him bending, 
 Help us onward by their prayer."
 
 Part Three 
 
 CATHOLIC, NOT ROMAN
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 S. PETER'S PRE-EMINENCE 
 
 THERE comes a time to most Catholics when 
 in some form the claims of Rome are presented 
 to them. They can be presented most attractively 
 and they appeal to many sides of our religious 
 nature. The Roman church is a sister one to the 
 Anglican and to the churches of the East, and shares 
 in the glories of a common Catholicity. It would be 
 churlish and disingenuous not to admit that she has 
 special glories of her own. 
 
 We willingly acknowledge the advantage of her 
 discipline, the self-sacrificing lives of many of her 
 priests, the inspiring beauty of her worship, the 
 devotion and philanthropy of her religious orders. 
 We must accord to her high praise for her preserva- 
 tion of the Holy Eucharist as the supreme act of 
 worship. No less will we thank God for the lives 
 of her saints and the spiritual treasury of her ascetic 
 theology. 
 
 To aid any in solving the problem Rome presents, 
 let us first state the claim made by her to a supreme 
 headship and universal jurisdiction, and then ex- 
 amine fairly the proofs urged in their behalf. 
 
 The Church, it is asserted by accredited Roman 
 theologians, has two separate elements : the primacy 
 and priesthood. "These are embodied in the pontifi-
 
 264 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 cate and the episcopate. Christ did not institute the 
 visible Church as a constitutional government, but 
 as a monarchy. In a monarchy one person and 
 one alone is in possession of supreme power. As 
 universal ruler, the pope has power to make univer- 
 sal law to bind the whole Church. It is not in the 
 power of all the bishops in one body to make a 
 universal law. To the pontiff the election of bishops 
 belongs by divine right. It is inherent in the divinely 
 established primacy. He alone has authority to insti- 
 tute new dioceses. And when he speaks ex cathedra 
 he is infallible, and his judgments are irreformable." 
 We have condensed the above from an authorized 
 Roman work on the papacy. 1 
 
 Color is given to the Roman claim by the marked 
 prominence assigned to S. Peter in the Gospels. It 
 would be contrary to Catholic thought if we saw 
 nothing of spiritual significance in this fact. But 
 facts, according to the modern scientific method of 
 inquiry, are not to be considered apart, but in regard 
 to their growth, evolution, and co-ordinate relations. 
 In this way we must examine the pre-eminence of 
 S. Peter, and compare it with the distinctions given 
 other Apostles. In the Gospels we recognize the 
 transparent eminence of S. Peter, S. James, and S. 
 John. In the Acts and Epistles, the two most dis- 
 tinguished are S. Peter and S. Paul. In the Revela- 
 tion we have S. John. 
 
 The first point to be noticed in our examination is 
 that these three have all special names or titles of honor 
 given them. This distinction does not pertain, as is 
 
 * Humphrey, S. J., Urbs et Orbis.
 
 S. PETER'S PRE-EMINENCE 265 
 
 often overlooked, to S. Peter alone. All three have 
 their special designations of office and honor. S. 
 John has for his title that of " Son of Thunder." His 
 evangel is full of the light and life that came down 
 from heaven. He is the doctor of the incarnation, 
 of the Word made flesh. He is pre-eminent in his 
 intimacy with our Lord, and is called " the beloved 
 disciple." Saul's name is changed to Paul. The 
 change is significant of his conversion and office. 
 The latter is denoted by a change from a Hebrew to 
 a Roman name, marking out his mission as the great 
 Apostle to the Gentiles. Our Lord gives to Simon 
 an added name, the name of Cephas, " which is by 
 interpretation a stone." It was given to declare both 
 the needed transformation of his nature by union 
 with Christ, the Living Rock, and also his becoming 
 the first Apostolic foundation stone of the Christian 
 Church. To him also Christ gives the keys of the 
 new kingdom. 
 
 What are the ideas we naturally associate with 
 these names and titles? To Saul a changed name is 
 given declarative of his conversion and mission to 
 the Gentile world. S. John's name is not changed, 
 but a title is given him : " Son of Thunder." It 
 lifts our minds heavenward. We think of the majes- 
 tic roll of heaven's artillery, of the awe-compelling 
 voice from above, of the forked lightning's vivid 
 flash. We see how fitting this is to the great Apostle 
 and evangelist of the incarnation. He it is who pro- 
 claims as no other the awe-thrilling utterance of the 
 Word made flesh; who preserves the great sacra- 
 mental discourses; of the bread that came from
 
 266 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 heaven, of the birth from above, and the wind blowing 
 where it listeth ; who is the medium of communi- 
 cation between our Lord in glory and His Church, 
 and who proclaims that final coming which shall be 
 as lightning shining from the East to the West. 
 
 To Simon an added name was given. If S. John 
 was, as S. Augustine thought, a type of the new dis- 
 pensation and S. Peter of the old, we see how appro- 
 priate it was that to John, the loved disciple, a title 
 was given signifying that dispensation which was 
 inaugurated by the heavenly message to the Blessed 
 Virgin, and welcomed from off heaven's rood screen 
 by the angelic choir. Equally, how fitting it was 
 that Simon should have the name rock or stone 
 added to his former one, signifying thereby how the 
 new temple of which he was to be a part was to be 
 builded on the old foundation. 
 
 These three prominent Apostles, it is further to be 
 noticed, succeed one another, and pass before our 
 vision across the field of history in a most suggestive 
 order. S. Peter first engages our attention. He is 
 pre-eminent in the preparatory stage when our Lord 
 was engaged in laying the foundations of His king- 
 dom. But this pre-eminence does not continue. The 
 most superficial reader of the New Testament can but 
 notice the marked distinction between the position 
 given S. Peter in the first part of the Acts from that 
 he subsequently occupied. When our Lord was lay- 
 ing foundations, as recorded in the Gospels, then 
 Peter, who was the special type of that old order, is 
 pre-eminent among the other Apostles. When this 
 work is done a change takes place. S. Peter is no
 
 S. PETER'S PRE-EMINENCE 267 
 
 longer recorded as first, but the names in the Apos- 
 tolic roll-call are reversed, and it is " James, Peter, 
 and John." Then, as the figure of Peter fades away, 
 our spiritual gaze is concentrated on S. Paul. He 
 then becomes the central figure, the great world-wide 
 missionary, the specially consecrated Apostle, by 
 command of the Holy Ghost. When S. Peter and 
 S. Paul and all the other Apostles have passed from 
 earth, then S. John becomes the most prominent, and 
 his prominence is most significant and unique. We 
 behold him, the only surviving Apostle, certainly 
 with no earthly superior, ruling at Ephesus over the 
 Church; establishing the Episcopal order throughout 
 Asia; completing the New Testament by writing the 
 Fourth Gospel, his general Epistles and his Book of 
 Revelation. S. Peter's work was finished and so was 
 S. Paul's. Christ after the ascension instructs His 
 Church through neither of these two, but through 
 S. John. 
 
 As we thus contrast the prominence of these 
 Apostles we see that that of S. Peter was connected 
 with the foundation-laying period of the Church, 
 S. Paul to that of its extension to the Gentiles, 
 S. John to that of the completion of the Gospel 
 revelation and its settled organization. They pass 
 from earth and no one succeeds them in their re- 
 spective offices, for with their passing their personal 
 offices have ceased. 
 
 We have as yet only contrasted them in a general 
 way. Let us now analyze the life of S. Paul and see 
 what things are said of him? Are they of like sig- 
 nificance to those recorded of S. Peter? If so, and if
 
 268 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 they do not imply that Paul was consequently the 
 source of all jurisdiction and centre of unity, then 
 those of like character concerning Peter do not imply 
 what Rome now claims, namely, superiority of office 
 over the other Apostles. 
 
 The calling of the two Apostles was different. 
 Peter, a type of the old dispensation, was brought by 
 his converted younger brother Andrew to Christ. 
 To Saul our Lord miraculously appeared and com- 
 missioned him. He was to go to the Gentiles " unto 
 whom I now send thee. And not to the Gentiles 
 only, for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my 
 name before the Gentiles and the children of Israel." 
 Peter opens the kingdom to Jew and Gentile. Paul is 
 to extend it " among all nations" Paul's calling, 
 mission, consecration, v were entirely independent of 
 S. Peter, and his jurisdiction was regulated by the 
 Apostles. 
 
 Take another point. Consider the establishment 
 of the Christian ministry. How much had S. Peter 
 to do with it, and how much S. Paul? This will 
 surely give us a critical test as to their respective 
 pre-eminence in the Christian Church. Much is made 
 by Romans of S. Peter's publication of the vacancy 
 in the twelve foundations and the necessity of filling 
 Judas's place. But he does not fill the vacancy by 
 his own appointment as he would have done, were he, 
 as the pope claims to be, the vicar of Christ. The 
 duty he performed belonged to him as holding the 
 leadership among the Twelve. It was for him to 
 point out the vacancy, and this is all he is said to 
 have done. He did not even direct how the vacancy
 
 S. PETER'S PRE-EMINENCE 269 
 
 was to be filled. It was done by the action of the 
 whole assembled Church. 
 
 When we come to the establishment and ordination 
 of the Christian ministry it is significant that S. Peter 
 has nothing specially to do with it. How conclu- 
 sively this tells against the Roman theory is shown by 
 their unwarranted assertions. In a Roman life of S. 
 Peter which was put forth with the imprimatur of 
 several cardinals, it is stated 1 " that sometime after 
 this (Pentecost) S. Peter consecrated S. James Bishop 
 of Jerusalem ! " The Abbe Fouard in his book on S. 
 Peter 2 says " that the hierarchy was founded, deacons 
 ordained, the priesthood established, in fine, the 
 Church has detached herself from the synagogue, 
 and thus the ground plan of the work appears finished 
 before ever Paul begins his labors ! Indeed, far from 
 being an organizer, Saul of Tarsus is at this date a 
 simple layman ! " 
 
 Far different, however, is the record in the Word of 
 God. When the first order of the Christian ministry 
 begins to be formed, 3 S. Peter, save as being included 
 in the Twelve, is not even mentioned. It is the Twelve 
 who bid the multitude look out and select the seven 
 candidates, whom they set before the Apostles and on 
 whom the Apostles lay their hands. S. Peter is never 
 said by himself to have ordered the ordination or 
 ordained any one, either to the diaconate or priest- 
 hood or episcopate. But we do read that S. Paul 
 ordained " elders in every city," 4 and of his gathering 
 
 1 Deliquey, S. J., Life of S. Peter, p. 7. 
 
 2 S. Peter, Constant Fouard, p. 9. 
 
 8 Acts vi. 2. * Acts xiv. 23.
 
 2;o CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 by laying on of hands 1 Timothy and Titus into the 
 higher order of the episcopate. Moreover, in regard 
 to holy orders, it is not S. Peter but S. Paul 2 who 
 formulates the canon for the Church's guidance re- 
 garding the admission of persons, their qualifications, 
 and their subsequent discipline. The fact that S. 
 Peter had of record nothing to do with the ordaining 
 of the Christian ministry is another proof that his 
 pre-eminence has relation to the foundation-laying 
 period of the Church, and not to its subsequent 
 developed state. 
 
 Let us now consider the discipline of the Church. 
 Which of the two, S. Peter or S. Paul, has the pre- 
 eminence? Does the record show that S. Peter was 
 in this the superior of S. Paul? 
 
 There are two cases of discipline determined by S. 
 Peter ; one in Samaria on the Gentile Simon Magus, 3 
 and one in Solomon's porch, the remaining part of 
 the old temple, upon the Jews Ananias and Sapphira. 
 To S. Peter had been given the keys of the new king- 
 dom to open and shut, to bind or loose, and we find 
 him exercising this power both on Jew and Gentile. 
 We find in like manner S. Paul smiting the false 
 prophet Bar-Jesus, a Jew, and later pronouncing 
 judgment on the guilty Gentile Corinthian. But 
 note the difference in the sentence. S. Paul exer- 
 cises the more ghostly discipline of the Church. He 
 casts the guilty Corinthian out of the Church of God, 4 
 and delivers him over to Satan, and subsequently 
 inflicts the same penalty of excommunication on 
 
 1 2 Tim. i. 6. * Acts viii. 20. 
 
 2 I Tim. iii. * i Cor. v. 5.
 
 S. PETER'S PRE-EMINENCE 271 
 
 Hymenaeus and Alexander. S. Peter never excom- 
 municated any one. S. Paul did. This is a far 
 greater exercise of sovereignty than that of Peter's 
 infliction of a death penalty. The latter any earthly 
 monarch might inflict, only the representative of the 
 awful majesty of God could inflict the former. 
 
 In the general discipline of the Church we see 
 that it was'S. Paul who gave the canons for the 
 admission of persons to holy orders, condemned the 
 Corinthian Church 1 for sacrilegious administration 
 of the Holy Eucharist, gave the general rules con- 
 cerning the conduct of divine service; 2 and the 
 ancient liturgies, it has been observed, 3 follow the 
 order he records. While both he and S. Peter 
 alike exhort the clergy and laity, S. Paul decides the 
 great problems relating to the Church's discipline 
 and conduct, the marriage relation, the duties of 
 master and slaves, the use of the gifts of tongues in 
 church, the eating of things offered to idols. Upon 
 him comes, he exclaims, " the care of all the 
 churches." If this had been said of Peter how would 
 not that text have been reiteratedly pressed by Romans 
 to prove his supremacy. How blind, it would have 
 been said, are those Easterns and Anglicans who do 
 not see it. 
 
 We cannot close the point of church discipline 
 without mentioning that in the administration of his 
 office, Paul "withstood Peter to the face, because he 
 was to be blamed." 4 Not because they differed on 
 some subordinate matter of policy, as Romans are 
 
 1 I Cor. xi. 3 See Liddon's notes on I Timothy ii i. 
 
 2 i Tim. ii. I. * Gal. ii. u.
 
 272 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 wont to say, but because, as it is written, Peter 
 " walked not uprightly according to the truth of the 
 gospel." It was a severe arraignment. S. Paul 
 evidently did not regard S. Peter as an infallible guide 
 either in faith or in morals. How destructive this 
 incident is felt to be even by Romans themselves to 
 their theory is seen by the efforts made by them 
 to avoid its force. In the Roman book we have be- 
 fore referred to, page I, it is said : " That the Cephas 
 who was reproached by S. Paul for the inconsistency 
 of his conduct with respect to the Mosaic rites was 
 not S. Peter, is the opinion of the best writers ! " 
 Roman cardinals and archbishops and bishops gave 
 their imprimatur to this work. 
 
 Another way of contrasting these two Apostles is 
 to examine their visions. Each was wonderfully 
 favored by God. But their visions differ in number, 
 subjects, and purpose. When S. Peter was at Joppa l 
 he fell into a trance and saw heaven open and a great 
 sheet let down wherein were all manner of four-footed 
 beasts, etc., and there came a voice to him: " Rise, 
 Peter, kill and eat." By this vision he was prepared 
 to go to the Gentile Cornelius 2 and receive him into 
 the Church. At Pentecost he had gathered the Jews, 
 and now he was to bring in the Gentiles. This was 
 his special work as foundation layer and opener of 
 the kingdom. On the other hand, there are six 
 visions vouchsafed to S. Paul. In four our Lord 
 Himself appears to him. Saul was informed in a 
 vision 3 that Ananias would come and cure his blind- 
 ness. At Troas 4 a vision appeared to Paul in the 
 
 1 Acts x. 2 Acts x. 47. 8 Acts ix. 1 2. * Acts xvi. 9.
 
 S. PETER'S PRE-EMINENCE 273 
 
 night, and there stood a man of Macedonia who said, 
 " Come over and help us." At some place not given, 
 our Lord revealed to Paul the institution of the Holy 
 Communion, His one great act of worship, and that 
 it was a "shewing forth of His death till He come." 1 
 At Jerusalem, in the temple, 2 in a trance, the Lord 
 said unto him : " Make haste, depart, for I will send 
 thee far hence unto the Gentiles." At Corinth 3 the 
 Lord spake unto Paul in the night by a vision : " Be 
 not afraid ; but speak, and hold not thy peace, for I 
 am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt 
 thee." Again we read, 4 at night the Lord stood by 
 him and said : " Be of good cheer, Paul : for as thou 
 hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear 
 witness at Rome." No command, it may be noticed, 
 is ever given to Peter to bear witness at Rome. But 
 why not, if our being in the true Church depends on 
 it? At sea 5 S. Paul writes : " There stood by me this 
 night the angel of the Lord whose I am and whom I 
 serve, saying, Fear not, Paul, and lo, God hath given 
 thee all them that sail with thee!" What if these 
 words had been said of S. Peter ! Would they not have 
 been placed in the forefront of every Roman argu- 
 ment? Would they not have found place around S. 
 Peter's dome? But it is not said of those who are in 
 Peter's boat, but in Paul's. "The Lord hath given 
 thee all them that sail with thee." Contrast thus the 
 visions. They show Paul to be the special leader in 
 extending the new dispensation, as Peter was the 
 
 1 i Cor. xi. 26. 4 Acts xxiii. n. 
 
 2 Acts xxii. 18-21. 6 Acts xxvii. 23, 24. 
 8 Acts xviii. 9. 
 
 18
 
 274 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 foundation layer and door opener of it. In confirma- 
 tion of this pre-eminence in the way of visions, it is 
 never said of S. Peter as it was of S. Paul, he was 
 " caught up into the third heaven." 
 
 Take another department. Consider their miracles. 
 These also are not without their import. Through 
 each of these great servants the Lord shows forth 
 His power. He works through them. They stretch 
 forth " thine hand to heal." We find S. Peter healing 
 Eneas, sick of the palsy at Lydda, 1 and saying, 
 " Jesus Christ maketh thee whole." He also raises 
 Dorcas, 2 saying, " Tabitha, arise." At the temple 
 gate 3 Peter took the impotent man " by the right 
 hand and lifted him up." We read 4 that they 
 " brought forth the sick into the streets that at least 
 the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow 
 some of them," " and they were healed every one." 
 We read in like manner of S. Paul 5 that at Lystra 
 he healed the impotent man, saying, " Stand upright 
 on thy feet ; and he leaped and walked." At Troas, 
 at the Eucharist 6 he recalls life to Eutychus, " who 
 was taken up dead." At Thyatira 7 he cast out a 
 devil from the possessed damsel, saying, " I command 
 thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." 
 " God," we also read, 8 " wrought special miracles 
 by the hands of Paul : so that from his body were 
 brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, 
 and the diseases departed from them." But, and 
 here we shall find the most significant contrasts, 
 
 1 Acts ix. 34. 4 Acts v. 15, 16. T Acts xvi. 18. 
 
 2 Acts ix. 40. B Acts xiv. 10. 8 Acts xix. 12. 
 8 Acts iii. 6 Acts xx. 9.
 
 S. PETER'S PRE-EMINENCE 275 
 
 consider their marvellous deliverances. S. Paul's are 
 most notable and symbolical of the Christian dispen- 
 sation. He shakes off the viper from his hand with- 
 out harm, when the bystanders expect to see him 
 fall down dead. At Lystra he is stoned, and they, 
 supposing him to be dead, 1 carried his body out of 
 the city, when, as a type of the risen Christ, " he rose 
 up and came into the city." Nothing so wonderful 
 is recorded of S. Peter. 
 
 In addition, there is Paul's deliverance from prison 
 and death, and this should be most carefully ex- 
 amined in contrast with that of Peter. All the 
 Apostles were once delivered from prison, 2 and the 
 angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors 
 and brought them forth. But the two Apostles are 
 especially delivered, and these deliverances are full of 
 suggestive contrasts. S. Peter's is a type of the 
 deliverance of the Jewish Church ; S. Paul's, of the 
 inherent, indestructible life of the Christian. To 
 Peter, as to the Jewish Church, comes an angel with 
 his heavenly message. A light shines in the prison. 
 But the angel has to smite Peter, sunk in lethargy 
 like Judaism, to rouse him. He must arise and 
 clothe and gird himself, as Israel had to do by 
 penitence, and follow his heaven-sent guide. And 
 then, when past the iron gate of the law, he must 
 find his way to the house, symbolical of the Christian 
 Church, where prayer has been made for him. 
 
 Paul and Silas are likewise carefully secured and 
 are placed in the inner prison, their feet being made 
 fast in the stocks. At midnight they pray and sing 
 
 1 Acts xiv. 19, 20. a Acts v. 19.
 
 276 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 praises to God. Suddenly there was a great earth- 
 quake, " and all the doors were opened and every 
 one's bands were loosed." No angel comes with a 
 message from heaven, for they are possessed of the 
 new revelation. Peter, like the Jewish Church, sleeps, 
 and can only be roused by the sharp discipline of the 
 angel's blow. He owes his release to the prayers of 
 the Church without. But Paul and Silas, typical of 
 the Christian state, are awake and are praising God. 
 Even as Christ rose by His own inherent life-power, 
 they owe their deliverance to no external aid. It 
 is their own prayers and praises that bring on the 
 miraculous earthquake. Only from the hands of 
 the aroused Peter do the chains fall off; but in 
 the other case the gracious power of the Gospel 
 is seen, for "all the doors were opened and every 
 one's bands were loosed." In Peter's case we have 
 the sad ending of the judicial killing of the innocent 
 keepers. They may be a type of the unconverted 
 Jew or Gentile who perish. Paul's safety ends in no 
 such tragedy, but with the deliverance of his keeper 
 both from temporal and spiritual death. We are 
 assured of the keeper's newly found faith, his marvel- 
 lous conversion and his baptism. This great de- 
 liverance, moreover, ends with Christian feasting and 
 rejoicing, and Paul's triumph over the magistrates 
 themselves. It sets forth the triumph of the Christian 
 Church. 
 
 Consider, again, the preaching of the Apostles. We 
 should not have thought it needful to contrast the 
 preaching and witness-bearing of the Apostles, but 
 the fact of " Peter's standing up with the Eleven," and
 
 S. PETER'S PRE-EMINENCE 277 
 
 "in their midst," has been cited in proof of his 
 prominence. The question is, what does that promi- 
 nence signify? We have claimed for him a special 
 place of distinction and honor in the Apostolic 
 college. He is first of the Twelve. He has the 
 keys. He opens the kingdom by his sermons at 
 Pentecost l to the Jews, and at Caesarea 2 to the 
 Gentiles. He explains his reception of Cornelius 3 
 to the Apostles. These are his principal sermons. 
 At the council 4 it is unwarrantable to say " that he 
 presides." It is only fair to say that of the Apostles 
 he speaks first and gives his opinion. The same 
 view is maintained by Barnabas and Paul. Then 
 James gives his own judgment. Peter is not the 
 central figure, as Romans claim, and no more promi- 
 nent than the others. Neither would we assert, as 
 some have, that S. James, as the presiding prelate, 
 decided the case. What settles the matter against 
 Peter's pre-eminence is that the decree runs not in 
 the name of Peter, but in that of " the Apostles and 
 elders and brethren." 
 
 In connection with this it is not necessary to re- 
 count S. Paul's many sermons, his defence of the 
 faith before kings, or his writing more than half the 
 New Testament. His place as the great Apostolic 
 teacher is unique. In contrast with Peter, no words 
 of authority like Paul's are to be found in S. Peter's 
 epistles. " Lo," says S. Paul, " I have not shunned 
 to declare unto you all the counsel of God." 6 " If an 
 
 1 Acts iii. * Acts xv. 
 
 * Acts x. 6 Acts xx. 27. 
 
 8 Acts xi.
 
 278 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 angel from heaven or any man preach any other 
 gospel unto you than that we have preached unto 
 you, let him be accursed." 1 "Be ye followers of 
 me, as dear children." " If our gospel be hid, 
 it is hid to them that are lost." 2 What words also 
 of cheer he utters (the very words of Christ) : " There 
 shall not a hair fall from the head of any one of 
 you." 
 
 As in their mutual relationship there is seen to be 
 no superiority of authority of one over the other, so 
 in relation to the Apostolic college both are alike 
 subordinate to it. While, as Trent says, "the hierarchy 
 consists of the three sacred orders," the officers of the 
 Christian Church, as given in Corinthians and Ephe- 
 sians, are not, first Peter, but " first Apostles." S. 
 Peter only claims 3 to be " an Apostle," one like, not 
 one over the others. His glorious foundation-laying 
 office over, his name no longer stands first in the list, 
 which now reads " James and Cephas and John." 4 
 He does not exercise any jurisdictional authority over 
 the other Apostles, but is sent by them into Samaria. 6 
 He does not assume for himself jurisdiction, but, as 
 to Paul the care of the Gentiles is assigned, so to 
 Peter is committed by the Apostles that of the cir- 
 cumcision. 6 The three keys Peter holds in his hands, 
 says a Roman writer, shows " that authority in heaven, 
 in hell, and on earth is granted to him." This is the 
 assigned meaning to the pope's triple tiara. Any- 
 thing, we submit, more unlike the scriptural position 
 given Peter, it is difficult to imagine. 
 
 1 Gal. i. 8. 8 i Peter i. 6 Acts viii. 14. 
 
 2 2 Cor. iv. 3. 4 Gal. ii. 9. Gal. ii. 7.
 
 S. PETER'S PRE-EMINENCE 279 
 
 Nor is the manner in which these Apostles pass 
 from the scriptural record without its significance. 
 The last recorded appearance of S. Peter in Acts is 
 at the Council. He has laid the foundation and 
 opened the kingdom to Jew and Gentile, and now 
 his work of leadership is done. It was not an office 
 he could transmit to a successor. No one could ever 
 take his place. Like a foundation, he becomes in 
 Holy Scripture hidden and out of sight. But all 
 along there is noticeable a growing prominence of 
 S. Paul, and a resemblance, as a typical representative, 
 to Christ. Like Him, he suffered in the wilderness. 
 Like Christ, he was in watchings often, in hunger and 
 thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Like 
 Him, he is accused of speaking against the law of the 
 Jews, the temple, and Cassar. Like Him, the Jews 
 conspire to kill him. As Pilate declared of Christ, 
 " I have found no cause of death in Him," so Festus 
 said of Paul. Like Him, he was stoned. Like Him, 
 smitten when answering the High Priest. Like Him, 
 he was scourged. Like Him, he was deserted and 
 forsaken. He could say, " I bear in my body the 
 marks of the Lord Jesus." Like Christ, he is in the 
 storm. In spite of shipwreck, all who sail with him 
 are saved. The enduring nature of the Gospel is 
 seen in the last picture of him securely dwelling in 
 Rome in his own house, " Preaching the kingdom o{ 
 God and teaching those things which concern the 
 Lord Jesus Christ." The Word of God was rightly 
 interpreted by S. Ambrose when he said, " Nee Paulus 
 inferior Petro."
 
 280 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 May God open the eyes at least of all Anglicans 
 to a right understanding of His Word, and deliver 
 them from any delusion about Peter's pre-eminence as 
 significant of any office which made him the superior 
 of the other Apostles, and which was to be transmitted 
 to a successor.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 S. PETER AND S. JOHN 
 
 THE position of leadership held by Peter among 
 the Twelve was one of distinguished honor and 
 responsibility. With some of the fathers, we may call 
 him prince of the Apostles, meaning thereby what 
 Holy Scripture does when it records him as " first." 
 It gave him no office of authority over the others, 
 any more than when we say of some distinguished 
 lawyer that he is the head or leader of the bar. He 
 was, on many occasions, the spokesman of the Twelve. 
 His special work, of confessor of Christ on the part 
 of Israel, and his office as foundation layer, was not 
 such as to allow of a successor. He was in every 
 way a typical representative of the old dispensation. 
 The idea is an ancient one. In the catacombs there 
 has been found a symbolical device of Peter striking 
 the rock. Peter is not thereby represented to us as 
 another Moses, as Romans have claimed, but only 
 like unto Moses in striking the rock. Peter is thus 
 witnessed by the tradition of those early days not as 
 the rock; but the rock out from whom the living 
 waters flow is Christ. 
 
 We have seen in contrasting the recorded lives of 
 S. Peter and S. Paul how that the latter was the typi- 
 cal representative of the spirit of the new and the 
 former of the old Israelitish economy. One, the first
 
 282 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 opener with the keys of the new, whose power was 
 subsequently given to all ; l the other, the efficient 
 agent in its extension. In order that our examination 
 of the spiritual significance of the prominence of Peter 
 should be complete we must now contrast it with that 
 of S. John. If we find that the same interpretation 
 is applicable to both cases, we shall have conclu- 
 sive proof that it is the correct one. In discover- 
 ing it we shall have found the exegetical key which 
 fits and turns all the wards of the lock. 
 
 Let us then contrast the lives and sayings of the 
 two Apostles, what they did and what they said, what 
 they said to our Lord, and what He said to them. 
 If we would be careful as well as reverent, remember- 
 ing how pregnant with meaning Holy Scripture is, 
 we must not neglect particulars however small. For 
 it is often in seemingly insignificant details that the 
 spiritual mind discerns the hidden treasure of divine 
 wisdom. If we would discover it and make it our 
 own, we must also seek for it with humble minds and 
 prayer. 
 
 It is interesting to observe how S. Peter first came 
 to Christ. S. Andrew brought him. It is the familiar 
 type so often seen in the Old Testament, of the 
 younger taking precedence of the elder. Peter is 
 thus sought out, as God sought out his ancient 
 people, and is by his younger brother brought to 
 Christ. 
 
 Again, S. Peter and S. John stand together as the 
 older and younger man; and the contrast of age 
 begins to tell us of which dispensation each is the 
 
 1 S. Matt, xviii. 18.
 
 S. PETER AND S. JOHN 283 
 
 type. Their condition in life yet further portrays, 
 and with more distinctness, the same idea. S. Peter 
 is the married man, S. John the virgin disciple. 
 The one thereby a type of that older Church, so 
 often spoken of by the prophets as betrothed to 
 God; the other a symbol of the Bride, yet in its 
 virgin state and beauty, that was to be. 
 
 We know but little of their previous history, save 
 that both were fishermen ; but of their respective 
 homes, two references are recorded. In the begin- 
 ning of our Lord's ministry He goes to Peter's house. 
 And we may not wisely overlook the fact that it is at 
 the beginning of it. He finds there quite a type of 
 the state of the Jewish Church, Peter's wife's mother 
 sick of fever. And He came and took her by the 
 hand and lifted her up and the fever left her and she 
 arose and ministered to them. So at last, raised up 
 and restored, comes converted Israel to the Master's 
 aid. S. Peter's house is a type of the Jewish Church. 
 On the other hand, consider the house of S. John. 
 On the cross Christ says to S. John, " Behold thy 
 mother." And from that hour he took her, who 
 is the special type of the Christian Church, " to his 
 own home." The house of S. John is thus symboli- 
 cal of the Church of Christ. 
 
 No less declarative of the typical place these two 
 Apostles occupy in the Gospels is the different man- 
 ner in which they are called to discipleship. S. Peter 
 when called was in his own boat, while S. John, not 
 yet arrived at independent ownership, was yet in the 
 boat of his father. Peter, like the older organization 
 he represented, was diligently engaged in his occupa-
 
 284 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 tion, " casting a net into the sea." John was not so 
 engaged. He was not fishing, but only preparing to 
 do so. John and his brother "were mending their 
 nets." When Peter is called he leaves his fishing- 
 nets. John leaves his father and the ship and the 
 hired servant and goes after him. 
 
 New names and titles are given to each. Simon has 
 that of Cephas. It was emblematic of his destined 
 transformation by becoming, through incorporation 
 into the Living Rock, christianized and made a new 
 creature, a rock-man. He is also called the "First," 
 and in this office of leadership he is the spokesman 
 and confessor of Christ's Messiahship and Divinity. 
 He is also the foundation layer on the Rock, which 
 is Christ, of the new temple, of which, having the 
 keys, he is the first opener to Jew and Gentile. To 
 S. John also a special name is given. S. John is 
 named Boanerges, " Son of Thunder." It tells of the 
 light and life from heaven. He is therefore the 
 special evangelist of the incarnation. His title is 
 that of " the loved disciple." This title by itself 
 declares for which dispensation he stands. With a 
 special love which is again and again emphasized 
 Christ loved S. John. He lay, as it was granted to 
 no other, on Jesus' breast. So Christ loved His 
 Church and gave Himself for it. Everything about 
 S. John declares him to be the type and represen- 
 tative of the Christian Church. 
 
 We now easily understand the meaning upon which 
 Romans have laid stress, that Christ preached out of 
 Peter's boat. The facts are these: there were two 
 empty boats, one of them, Simon's, in charge of
 
 S. PETER AND S. JOHN 285 
 
 James and John, who were partners with Simon. 
 Our Lord selects Simon's as His pulpit from which 
 to address the multitude. The same reason incites 
 Him to do this that made Him choose Solomon's 
 porch for His audience-chamber. This porch was 
 the only remaining part of the ancient temple which, 
 at its dedication, "the glory of the Lord had filled." 
 Our Lord's life, unlike that of every other religious 
 teacher, had been foretold. As the foretold Messiah, 
 Christ came in the fulfilment of the law. The law 
 bore witness to Him. He unfolded the true meaning 
 of its prophecies and worship. Every ceremonial 
 detail of its sacrifices, every Messianic utterance of 
 its psalms, found their fulfilment in Him. So, not 
 in any honor of Peter, but because his boat symbol- 
 ized that which He came to fulfil, He preaches out of 
 Peter's boat. 
 
 The same symbolical meaning is to be found in 
 the other incidents of the story. We find, in con- 
 formity to the type, that it is Peter's net that breaks. 
 The fish once enclosed now rush back into the sea. 
 It is the remnant, not all Israel, that is saved. Then 
 in his distress Peter must call upon his partners in 
 the other boat, that they come and help him. The 
 old order thus calls for help unto the new to secure 
 and complete its work. John does not call out to 
 Peter, but Peter, beckoning entreatingly, summons 
 John to his aid. 1 If, it is to be observed, Christ thus 
 signifies Peter's symbolic prominence by preaching 
 out of his boat, the favor He subsequently grants to 
 John is of far more emphatic character. S. John, as 
 a type of the Christian Church, is taken up into 
 
 1 See note on page 293.
 
 286 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 heaven. To him are revealed the deep and hidden 
 things of the kingdom, the glories of heaven, the 
 mysteries of the underworld, the progressive battle 
 between the Church and her foes. 
 
 Equally declarative of their respective positions 
 are the questions and sayings they separately address 
 to Christ. The inquiries of Peter for the most part 
 are relative to Israel's search for the promised Mes- 
 siah. Those of John relate to the rights and powers 
 of the new kingdom. Thus S. Peter says to Christ : 
 " Declare unto us this parable ! " " Speakest Thou 
 this to us or unto all ? " " Lord, to whom shall we go ? " 
 S. John, filled with holy indignation at the Samaritans' 
 reflection of Christ, asks : " Lord, wilt Thou that we 
 command fire to come down from heaven and con- 
 sume?" However misapplied, the Son of Thunder 
 is filled with a sense of the awful powers which the 
 Christian Church possesses. 
 
 When Jesus said, "Who touched Me?" S. Peter 
 must, in Jewish-like undiscernment say, " Master, the 
 multitude presses on Thee and sayest Thou, ' Who 
 touched me ? ' ' How unlike S. John, who requires 
 no angel to tell him as he enters the empty tomb that 
 Christ is risen, but at once, as Peter did not, " sees 
 and believes." Peter, like Israel, seeks a sign. " Lord, 
 if it be Thou, bid me come to Thee on the water." 
 John needs no sign. He never asks for one. But 
 when Jesus stood on the shore and the disciples in 
 the boat knew not that it was Jesus, then " the dis- 
 ciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, ' It is the 
 Lord.' " It is John who here discloses and points out 
 Christ to Peter.
 
 S. PETER AND S. JOHN 287 
 
 Again, the Old Testament spirit is seen in Peter's 
 conduct at the transfiguration. He is bewildered, 
 and not discerning Christ's superiority to Moses and 
 Elias, says, " Master, let us make here three taber- 
 nacles," " for he wist not what to say." He comes, 
 exhibiting the same Jewish temper in respect to 
 morals, asking of Christ, " How oft shall my brother 
 sin against me and I forgive him; seven times?" 
 In like manner, not discerning our Lord's right to 
 exemption from the temple tax, because it was his 
 Father's house, he compromises His Master's claims 
 by telling the tax collectors that it is due from Christ. 
 S. John falls into his own grave errors likewise, but 
 they have reference to the new kingdom. He begins 
 to exercise authority before it had been conferred on 
 him : " Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy 
 name, and we forbade him, because he followeth not 
 with us." Peter, with the old Messianic, earthly 
 triumph in view, says, "Behold, we have forsaken 
 all, and followed Thee : what shall we have there- 
 fore?" S. John, looking beyond temporal things, 
 with right vision but with ambitious heart, says, 
 " Master, grant unto us that we may sit one on Thy 
 right hand and the other on Thy left hand in Thy 
 glory." 
 
 The rebukes which our Lord administered to them, 
 and He rebuked most those He loved, are also 
 deserving our attention. He rebuked the Twelve 
 collectively, for their hardness of heart, want of dis- 
 cernment, lack of trust, keeping the children from 
 Him, and for their strife amongst themselves for 
 pre-eminence. The only title to the latter was that
 
 288 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 of service. Every other distinction of rank was for- 
 bidden. " It shall not be so among you." But to 
 none did He utter such severe and humiliating re- 
 proofs as to Peter and John. Peter, voicing Israel's 
 carnal mind, would not have our Lord be a suffering 
 and crucified Messiah, saying, " Be it far from Thee, 
 O Lord, this shall not be unto Thee ! " And our 
 Lord rebuked him, saying, " Get thee behind me, 
 Satan; thou art an offence to me." Again, when 
 Peter drew his sword, appealing, as earthly kings 
 may do, to force, the Lord rebuked this idea of 
 earthly power and said, " Put up thy sword into 
 its sheath." S. John, giving way to his natural 
 temper, falls into his own sin. In his burning zeal 
 he would, Boanerges-like, call down fire from heaven. 
 to consume Christ's enemies. It was not the spirit 
 of the gospel. Christ rebuked His loved disciple 
 with the withering words : " Ye know not what spirit 
 ye are of." 
 
 Further, let us consider Christ's questions to the 
 two. " Peter, " we read, " and they that were with 
 him, followed after Christ." The Master's object 
 was to bring Israel to a confession of His true 
 nature. Thus the crucial question He at last puts 
 to Peter is: "Whom do ye say that I the Son of 
 Man am?" But the crucial question He puts to 
 the loved disciple is: "Are ye able?" "Are ye 
 able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of and 
 to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized 
 with?" Voicing believing Israel, Peter said, "Thou 
 art the Christ, the Son of the' living God." John, 
 speaking in the strength of the grace of the new
 
 S. PETER AND S. JOHN 289 
 
 dispensation, said, " We are able." Prevenient grace 
 is given to the Jew to discern Christ. Sanctifying, 
 indwelling grace is given to the Christian to become 
 like Him. 
 
 Each of the Apostles needed spiritual transfor- 
 mation. S. Peter needed conversion to Christ; S. 
 John, conformity to His Spirit. Peter's natural lack 
 was want of faith. Our Lord so addresses him : " O 
 thou of little faith ! " S. John, in his natural heat, 
 would call down fire on Christ's enemies. S. Peter 
 was great, warm-hearted, affectionate, sympathetic, 
 and impulsive. S. John was very unlike the popular 
 conception of him. He was no soft, gentle, tender- 
 hearted person. He was awful and sublime in the 
 singleness and purity of his soul. He loved not so 
 much with passion or emotion, and never on impulse, 
 but with a heart controlled by a will of steel. We 
 all, especially we stumblers and sinners, love Peter, 
 and Peter ever attracted others about him. They 
 followed Peter. He bravely goes as the pioneer out 
 of the boat to meet Christ. He is a leader and he 
 leads the way. S. John, ere his nature had been 
 mellowed and enriched by grace, walked, with won- 
 derful insight indeed, into divine mysteries, but for 
 the most part alone. Our Lord said to Peter, point- 
 ing out and asking about the fig-tree, a symbol of the 
 Judaism, that had withered away, " Have faith." Our 
 Lord loved John that by His love there might be 
 developed in him the charity that is divine. Our 
 Lord said to him, " Behold thy mother." One 
 needed perfection in faith ; the other to be perfected 
 in love.
 
 290 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Having in mind the representative character of 
 S. Peter, it is, moreover, interesting to study the pro- 
 cess of his conversion. The miraculous sign of the 
 great catch of fish at Christ's word brings to Peter 
 that which is the basis of all true conversion, the deep 
 sense of his own sinfulness. Falling on his knees, he 
 cries out, " Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, 
 O Lord ! " Then gradually he is brought by divine 
 help to confess Christ: "Thou art the Christ, the 
 Son of God." Then, trusting in his own strength, 
 boasting that " though all shall be offended yet will 
 not I," he falls. He who confessed the true faith, 
 that Christ is the Son of God, denies that faith, say- 
 ing, " I know not the man." But the prayer of our 
 great Advocate availed for his recovery. Satan had 
 asked to sift the Apostles as wheat ; but Christ had 
 prayed for their leader that his faith fail not. Christ 
 did not pray that Peter should not deny the faith, 
 but that, denying it, his faith in Christ should not fail. 
 So, on his bitter weeping and repentance, he is for- 
 given, and on his threefold reversal of his thrice-denial, 
 he is restored. Converted, he is to strengthen his 
 brethren, feed after Pentecost the lambs of the new 
 kingdom, and guide to Christ the sheep of the old. 
 He is now, in his great office as leader, to draw the 
 unbroken net to Christ standing on the shore. He 
 brings what has been gathered by the co-operation 
 of both dispensations to the risen Christ, to partici- 
 pate in the full blessings and gifts of the gospel cove- 
 nant ; to the living coals of fire of the Holy Spirit ; 
 to incorporation into the Incarnate One ; and to 
 feeding on the bread that Jesus gives His own.
 
 S. PETER AND S. JOHN 291 
 
 The relative spiritual positions of the two Apostles 
 is further seen at the Last Supper, where S. Peter 
 earnestly asks our Lord to wash not his feet only, but 
 his hands and head. What an acknowledgment of 
 the intellectual and moral Jewish condition ! It 
 needed a cleansing both in will and heart and mind. 
 Here, too, while John is seen resting on Jesus, a type 
 of Christ and His Church, Peter, being troubled, 
 desires to know who will betray Him. But he seeks 
 the solution of the mystery, not directly from Christ 
 Himself, but indirectly through John. It is not of 
 John to seek through Peter, for the Christian comes 
 not to Christ through the law, but it is Peter who 
 asks through John ; for Israel, through the Gospel, 
 comes to Christ. 
 
 Both Apostles follow Christ to the judgment hall. 
 Peter remains without. John enters within. Peter, 
 like Israel, starting aside, falls away. John remains 
 faithful to the end. At the cross, S. John and the 
 Blessed Mother are to be found, in different ways, 
 types of the Church. 
 
 The resurrection also is full of the symbolic mean- 
 ing we have unfolded. We find on the day itself the 
 two Apostles together. Christ had sent these two, 
 Peter and John, to prepare the passover. Both dis- 
 pensations had part in that He both fulfilled and 
 instituted. They were together near Him at the 
 transfiguration, where the law and Prophets bore 
 witness to Him, and where He revealed Himself as 
 the Light that had come. They were together near 
 Him in the garden, for Jew and Gentile needs alike 
 for salvation to be gathered into union with His
 
 292 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 passion. They also went together to His tomb. 
 There Peter, like the law, enters in first, and then 
 departs. It is all dark to him. But John, entering 
 in, sees and believes. The tomb for him is bright 
 with the revealed glory of the resurrection. 
 
 To penitents our Lord first disclosed Himself. So 
 it is He speaks first to Mary Magdalene, seeks out 
 the two wandering disciples, and so, as most need- 
 ing it, sends a message to broken-hearted Peter: 
 " Go and tell Peter." As type of restored Israel, 
 and of Peter to his Apostleship, our Lord says 
 to him, "Feed my lambs; tend my sheep." But 
 in contrast with this, our Lord gives to S. John 
 the care of His Blessed Mother, and says of John, 
 symbolical of the enduring life of the Christian 
 Church, "What and if I will that he tarry till I 
 come." 
 
 We have rested our exposition on the Word alone. 
 But if traditions may be cited for their illustrative 
 value, the legend declares how at last Peter, con- 
 demned to death, and fleeing from it, was met by our 
 Lord, who said, " Peter, where goest thou ? " Noble 
 and glorious was his martyrdom we confess. But 
 when John had been apprehended and dipped into 
 the oil, to be made a living flambeau, then we read 
 that, as a type of the Christian Church, against which 
 nothing can prevail and which will last till the Lord 
 comes again, S. John was, by some miracle of provi- 
 dence, delivered and preserved. He lingers on, 
 surviving all the Apostles, the organ of communication 
 between heaven and earth, and revealing to the 
 Church the mind of the ascended Lord.
 
 S. PETER AND S. JOHN 293 
 
 Now if this be the Holy Spirit's exposition of that 
 word He inspired, it will enlighten all humble minds 
 and keep them from seeing in the rightful pre-emi- 
 nence of S. Peter any proof of the wrongful supremacy 
 assigned him by Rome. 
 
 NOTE. See page 285. 
 
 In the Resurrection, Christ is seen standing on the shore. John 
 reveals Him to Peter. Peter draws the net through the water, a 
 type of the initial sacrament of baptism, to Christ, just as he brings 
 the sheep and lambs of the old and new dispensation to Him.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 S. PETER AT ROME 
 
 IT is claimed by Romans that Christ established 
 for the government of His Church two entirely 
 separate powers, the priesthood and the primacy. 
 The pope, therefore, is not to be regarded as the first 
 in rank of all bishops, not as a prince or primate 
 among brethren, but he belongs to a distinct official 
 class, of which he is the sole occupant. As the 
 supreme ruler of the Church he is " in possession of 
 supreme power and of the plenitude of power, as his 
 own power." 
 
 " This plenitude of power includes that which 
 belongs to the legislative, judicial, and coercive de- 
 partments of government. The pope can make laws 
 which bind the whole Church, and, in the vacancy of 
 the see, the making of a universal law is impossible. 
 By divine right he is supreme judge and he is the 
 ultimate judge of all causes, and from his judgment 
 there is no appeal. The Apostolic see is not one of 
 several of its kind, but is unique. It is supreme and 
 can be judged by none. As possessed of coercive 
 power, the supreme pontiff has the powers of binding 
 and loosing independent of any one. Christ gave the 
 keys of the kingdom, not to the episcopate, but to 
 the pontificate.
 
 S. PETER AT ROME 295 
 
 " The pontiff has also supreme liturgical power for 
 the regulation of the offering of the sacrifice, the 
 ministration of the sacraments, all things which per- 
 tain to public worship. He is the bishop of the 
 whole world, episcopus et urbis et orbis. Nothing 
 can be done lawfully against his will; and every 
 power within the kingdom is directly dependent on 
 him. The jurisdiction of any bishop can be validly 
 withdrawn by him even without any adequate cause 
 and without giving reason. Bishops obtain their 
 mission immediately from Christ's vicar. They 
 must all style themselves ' bishops by the grace of 
 God and of the Apostolic see.' All patriarchs, 
 primates, archbishops, bishops, are bound to visit 
 Rome periodically and report in person. They must 
 receive anew their ' faculties ' to exercise certain 
 episcopal powers for a limited term of years. The 
 pope can withhold them at his pleasure." 1 Such in 
 part are the prerogatives claimed by the bishop of 
 Rome, as set forth by approved Roman writers. 
 
 But on what grounds are we asked to submit to 
 the papacy? Any true lover of Christ desirous of 
 knowing the truth and obeying it will seriously ask 
 himself, how can these papal claims be proved? Did 
 S. Peter himself realize that he possessed this su- 
 preme authority? Is there any evidence in Scripture 
 to prove that he exercised it? Did the Apostles 
 recognize this alleged difference between the priest- 
 hood and this pontificate? Have they left us any 
 proof of their acknowledgment of Peter's superiority 
 to the collective priesthood? Did Peter himself, feel- 
 
 1 Urbs et Orbis, Humphrey, S. J., ch i.
 
 296 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 ing its grace and importance, formally and in some 
 public manner, which should be a witness for all time, 
 transmit it to any successor, or with it endow any 
 see? If Rome claims it, when and how was the 
 transfer formally made by Peter to that see? 
 
 It is only the last proposition with which we are 
 here chiefly concerned. It is certainly an important 
 one. Romans make, as we have seen, a distinction 
 between the priesthood, as embodied in the episco- 
 pate, and the papacy. They are obliged to do this; 
 otherwise their theory would fall to pieces. For the 
 pope does not ordain his successor. Nor does the 
 new pope succeed to the papacy as a king does, who, 
 by virtue of his birth, becomes the monarch immedi- 
 ately on the death of his predecessor. The new 
 pope succeeds by an election, and so there is 
 necessarily an interval longer or shorter before the 
 vacancy is filled. In some cases it has been as long 
 as a year and a half or two years. Therefore, there 
 is no personal transmission of authority from Peter 
 through successors to the new incumbent. The link 
 is broken at every vacancy. How, then, does the pope 
 become possessed of this supreme authority? The 
 only answer that can be given is that it is an authority 
 and pledged assistance of infallibility attached to an 
 office. And, moreover, if the claim of the papacy is 
 to be made good, that this office was, having been 
 received by Peter, by Peter originally attached to the 
 see of Rome, it is therefore incumbent upon Romans 
 to prove, by sure and certain evidence, that this was 
 done. 
 
 It is therefore necessary for Romans to prove some-
 
 S. PETER AT ROME 297 
 
 thing more than that Peter visited Rome, or was 
 martyred there, or even consecrated there a bishop, 
 or with S. Paul founded the see. He visited Antioch 
 we know from Holy Scripture, and probably con- 
 secrated a bishop there, who had charge of the 
 " circumcision." So, either with or without such 
 limitation, we may suppose him to have done at 
 Rome. All this, if proven, would fall far short of the 
 evidence required to establish the present papal 
 claims. For the pope cannot be, as we have seen, 
 the successor of S. Peter by consecration. If he 
 consecrated Linus, Linus consecrated no successor. 
 The pope succeeds by an election to this alleged 
 office of supreme pontiff. This office as one distinct 
 from the episcopate must have been attached by 
 Peter to the see of Rome. A personal authority 
 cannot be transferred without explicit permission in 
 the original grant to do so, and when transferred the 
 act or mode of transference must be explicitly 
 proved. 
 
 No churchman can rightly allow of the existence 
 of an office, as essential to the existence of the 
 Church as is that of the priesthood, without proof 
 equally clear as exists in the case of the ministry of 
 the creation of that office and the mode by which it 
 was to be filled and perpetuated. It is therefore 
 incumbent on papal advocates to prove that the 
 office of supreme pontiff was formally created by 
 Christ, given to Peter, and by Peter as formally con- 
 nected with the see of Rome. 
 
 Let us then see what the evidence of Peter's con- 
 nection with Rome is. It is noticeable that it is only
 
 298 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 argumentative or circumstantial. Dr. Dollinger puts 
 the first in the best form. It had been contended by 
 some that S. Peter could not have been at Rome 
 previous to S. Paul's advent, because the latter says 
 his rule was " not to build upon another's founda- 
 tion." This, we might grant, would not forbid his 
 writing a letter to the Romans. Dr. Dollinger says 
 that Paul had been detained in Asia, in observance 
 of his rule, but now that he was on his journey to 
 Spain he could visit Rome on the way. He was 
 unwilling to undertake a regular Apostolic visitation, 
 because the foundation was already laid at Rome. 
 If laid, Dr. Dollinger argued, it could not have been 
 by ordinary believers, for Paul's rule would not for- 
 bid him to preach where the Gospel had been pre- 
 viously preached, but only where there was an 
 Apostolic foundation ; and so, as no other Apostle 
 could have laid it, it must have been by S. Peter. 
 As to Paul's remaining at Rome for two years in his 
 own hired house, he was then there, not by his own 
 will, but as a prisoner. 
 
 Concerning the strength of this argument, it leaves 
 out of account the fact that Paul did not wish merely 
 to stop over at Rome-junction on his way to Spain, 
 but had a long-settled purpose to visit the great 
 world's capital as part of his legitimate Gentile mis- 
 sionary field. We find him saying, 1 " After I have 
 been there (Jerusalem) I must also see Rome." He 
 must have regarded it as belonging to his jurisdiction, 
 and assigned to him by the highest authority. For 
 the Lord had appeared to him and given him an 
 
 1 Acts xix. 21.
 
 S. PETER AT ROME 299 
 
 express command to go thither. " As thou hast 
 testified of Me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear wit- 
 ness also at Rome." 1 We do not, therefore, think the 
 argument that assumes for its premise that Paul 
 avoided an official stay at Rome, and so concludes 
 that Peter must have been there, is of much force. 
 
 When we examine the evidence of Peter's visit, 
 it divides itself into two classes, which may be called 
 the romantic and the ecclesiastic account. To the 
 former we owe the story of Peter's early visit to 
 Rome, his contest there with the magician Simon 
 Magus, and his twenty-five years' episcopate. The 
 first beginnings of this legend are found in Justin 
 Martyr in the second century, who mentions the visit 
 of Simon to Rome and the erection there of a statue 
 to him. The discovery in 1572 of the probable statue 
 with its inscription, which Justin mistranslated, shows 
 it to have been erected in honor of a Sabine god. 
 Then in the Clementine romance the account was 
 given of the contest between Simon Magus and the 
 Apostle. Simon Magus proposed to fly in the 
 Emperor's presence, and in answer to Peter's prayers 
 he falls to the ground. Eusebius, who wrote in the 
 fourth century, adds the gathered surmises, and 
 the statement of the twenty-five years' episcopate. 
 This last theory requires Peter to have gone to Rome 
 after his miraculous release from imprisonment, and 
 to have returned after the Council of Jerusalem. Of 
 such a journey and return there is no evidence. All 
 that Scripture says is that Peter " departed and went 
 into another place." None of the great ecclesiastical 
 
 1 Acts xxiii. II.
 
 300 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 historians of to-day accept the story in Eusebius as a 
 verified or established historical fact. It has all the 
 elements, in origin arid growth, which mark the 
 development of the myth, and may be dismissed as 
 unhistorical. 
 
 When we take up the historical evidence, that of 
 the first two or three centuries is circumstantial and 
 scanty. But that is all we have. There is no record 
 of it, where we should have a right to require it, viz., 
 in Holy Scripture. In excuse for its absence, Cardinal 
 Gibbons says, " For the same reason we might deny 
 that S. Paul was beheaded in Rome, that S. John 
 died in Ephesus." As, however, no article of the 
 Christian faith depends on these last-mentioned 
 events, no reason exists why they should be matters 
 of scriptural .record. But being essential to the 
 dogma of the Roman supremacy, and our being 
 members of Christ's Church, it is fatally significant 
 that scriptural proof of Peter's visit is lacking. 
 
 Not only is this wanting, but there are no contem- 
 poraneous witnesses to a fact so essential, and upon 
 which it is claimed the whole structure of the Christian 
 Church depends. Nor in the apologists, or defenders 
 of the Church, in the second century, where, if it were 
 a matter of importance, it would surely find a place, 
 is it to be found. 
 
 What, then, do we find in its favor? S. Peter closes 
 an epistle: "The co-elect one (feminine gender) in 
 Babylon saluteth you, together with Marcus my son." 
 Some have supposed that, as we know S. Peter was 
 married, his wife, who was at Babylon, is here re- 
 ferred to ; others that S. Peter was there himself and
 
 S. PETER AT ROME 301 
 
 wrote from Babylon. Just as S. Paul, as the Apostle 
 to the Gentile world, would most naturally desire to 
 visit the world's capital, so Peter, the special Apostle 
 to the Jews, would naturally be greatly drawn to visit 
 Babylon, the place of their great captivity. The 
 order in which he mentions in his epistle the coun- 
 tries adjacent to his abode beginning with those 
 nearest is somewhat corroborative of Babylon being 
 then his residence. It is thought by others that by 
 " Babylon " Rome is meant. Commentators differ 
 and the solution remains in doubt. But if indeed the 
 Holy Spirit has thus concealed the true fact from us, 
 whatever it was it is a natural inference that He 
 would not have us base anything of Church doctrine 
 upon it. This is a more reasonable supposition than 
 that Peter through fear sought to conceal his where- 
 abouts. 
 
 The next bit of evidence offered is in S. Clement's 
 Epistle to the Corinthians, at the close of the first 
 century. In it the name of Peter has been restored 
 in chapter v. by conjecture, the syllable " os " being 
 all that can, in the manuscript, be discerned. He 
 refers, filling this out as Peter, to Peter and Paul as 
 combatants " who have been nearest to us," who 
 suffered martyrdom. This is obviously very indefi- 
 nite, and, upon an issue upon which men's salvation is 
 said to depend, of little worth. S. Ignatius, who wrote 
 about 105, said in a letter to the Roman Christians: 
 ' I do not charge you like Peter and Paul, who are 
 Apostles." This does not state that they were ever 
 at Rome, for Ignatius might in his humility only be 
 saying that he, their successor in the see of Antioch,
 
 302 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 could not address them with the Apostolic authority 
 of his predecessors. The earliest explicit statement 
 in extant authors that we have of Peter's visit to 
 Rome, is found in Irenaeus, in his work on heresies. 
 It is supposed to be written after his consecration as 
 Bishop of Lyons, in 170 A.D. He speaks of that most 
 famous Church " founded and constituted at Rome 
 by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul." 
 
 In a rhetorical phrase, Tertullian, 1 makes the 
 earliest mention of the Apostle's martyrdom at 
 Rome. Fermillian makes an allusion to the two 
 Apostles as founders of the Roman Church. These 
 writers do not claim to have had access to any 
 original sources of information, and were probably 
 following statements previously made. When we 
 come to Eusebius in the fourth century, we find him 
 quoting from writings which are not extant, from 
 Papias, Dionysius, a Roman presbyter Caius, and 
 Origen, the latter being the first to state, if that is the 
 right translation of his words, that Peter was crucified 
 with his head downwards. For the reasons that this 
 evidence is late, and second hand, and also cannot be 
 verified, we should be justified in rejecting it. For 
 this is not like an ordinary historical question. It is 
 one on which most important issues depend, an issue 
 more important than life or death. Nothing less is at 
 stake than whether we are in the church that Christ 
 founded or not. Romans deny that we are in Christ's 
 Church, and consequently that we have no covenanted 
 pledge of salvation. In denying this to us, on the 
 ground of the special endowment of the Roman see, 
 
 1 Ad Marcion, iv. 5.
 
 S. PETER AT ROME 303 
 
 the burden of proof is on them to prove it was so 
 endowed. 
 
 But as our wish is to state, as strongly as the facts 
 will allow, the Roman side, let us admit it. There is 
 a late ingenious argument by the Rev. Fr. Barnes 
 rendering it quite probable that the tomb of the 
 Apostle still rests below the crypt of the present 
 S. Peter's. The strongest argument, we think, is the 
 uncontradicted tradition, which found expression 
 in the Church's councils. Upon this evidence a 
 number of writers, Calvin and Bishop Pearson, 
 Alford, and others, accept the account, so far as 
 relates to the visit and martyrdom under Nero, and 
 the foundation in common by Peter and Paul of the 
 Roman see. But all this does not prove the posses- 
 sion or the transference by S. Peter to the see of 
 that special office of supreme pontiff which Rome 
 claims to-day to be her original endowment. 
 
 There are three comments we desire to make. 
 
 1. While the evidence may be such as to warrant 
 our acceptance, as probable historical events, of 
 Peter's visit, martyrdom, and joint founding with Paul 
 of the see, it is not such as to warrant Romans in un- 
 churching those who cannot accept it, as proving, 
 what it fails to do, the endowment by S. Peter of that 
 see with supreme monarchical power. If one sitting 
 on a jury would not take away a man's life on such 
 inconclusive evidence, surely one ought not to con- 
 demn, by unchurching him, a brother to the peril of 
 what is worse, eternal loss. 
 
 2. According to the admission of some Roman 
 writers all possible doubt of Peter's consecration of
 
 304 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Linus is not by this evidence excluded. At the best, 
 it must be allowed, it falls short of absolute demonstra- 
 tion or certainty. All one can fairly say is that the pre- 
 dominating weight of probability is on that side. 
 But that being so, what becomes of the vast super- 
 structure, culminating in the papal infallibility, that 
 is built upon it? Infallibility cannot logically rest on 
 probability. It is like trying to build a pyramid on a 
 foundation of eggs. 
 
 3. Every doctrine contained in the creed which 
 involves a fact has that fact recorded in Holy 
 Scripture. The birth, crucifixion, resurrection of 
 Christ, the descent of the Holy Spirit are examples. 
 If the Church is so connected with the holy see 
 that we must say, as the Romans do in their creed as 
 set forth by Pope Pius IV. and of universal obligation, 
 " I believe in the Holy Roman Church," then the 
 visit of Peter and his endowment of that see with his 
 prerogatives should be proved in like manner. The 
 Holy Spirit, we may reverently say, would not have 
 omitted to do so in this case, if it were true, any 
 more than in the others. And therefore, as Christians, 
 we must conclude that there is no such evidence 
 given us as will warrant our making belief in the 
 Roman Church, with its monarchical pontiff, and its 
 claim to be the whole Church, a part of our Creed.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 THE ROMAN CLAIM 
 
 THE Roman claim is not that the bishop of 
 Rome is entitled to the first position of honor 
 and primacy in the Church by virtue of its canon 
 law. This, all Catholics will admit, certainly was 
 once his position. Is it asked why, if we admit this, 
 should we not by joining Rome recognize it? The 
 answer is twofold. First, because Rome has re- 
 pudiated this as her true position, and anathematizes 
 those who hold it, and we could not submit to her 
 without acknowledging an authority essentially dif- 
 ferent. And secondly, according to canon law, 
 whatever Rome may have had she, by excess of 
 claim, has now forfeited. Excess of privilege is de- 
 structive of the privilege itself. " Privilegium omnino 
 meretur amittere qui permissa sibi abutitur potes- 
 tate" 1 As Archdeacon Manning, in his " Unity of 
 the Church," 2 wrote, " The defeat of the pope's 
 canonical privileges is with himself." 
 
 What, however Rome claims, is not a primacy 
 either given by canon law, or in other way. The 
 underlying fallacy of many Roman arguments is that 
 they cite ancient authorities in favor of a primacy, 
 
 1 "The Privilege of Peter." Jenkins, pp. 7-40. Decret. p. n. 
 dist. xi. c. 63. 
 
 2 Page 364.
 
 306 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 which fall short of proving their claim to a supremacy. 
 The two are widely apart. Rome does not assert 
 that Peter, and so the bishop of Rome, was first 
 among peers, because in their high office the popes 
 have no peers. The pope is not first in the order of 
 bishops, but as supreme pontiff holds an office 
 distinct from the episcopate. Christ, it is claimed, 
 established two essential orders, the episcopate, each 
 member of which shares in its solidarity, and the 
 apostolate, which now resides, in its plenitude of 
 jurisdiction, solely in the pope. 
 
 He is the vicegerent of Jesus Christ. He is the 
 supreme governor of the Church. It is written of 
 him, "Whatever power Jesus Christ Himself could 
 exercise were He visibly present as the head of the 
 Church, the same does His vicar exercise. The 
 Church is bound to yield to him the same obedience 
 which she would give to Jesus Christ, were He to 
 demand it in His own proper person. The pope is 
 Christ in office, Christ in jurisdiction and power." 
 This power extends over things temporal and spiritual. 
 The pope stands on the apex of all authority. He 
 holds in his hands the two swords. In the bull Unam 
 sane t 'am, the .pope claimed that " being set above 
 kings and kingdoms by a divine pre-eminence of 
 power, we dispose of them as we think fit." 1 In 
 virtue of this power the pope has absolved subjects 
 from their allegiance, and claimed the right to take 
 away their dominions from those princes who would 
 not purge their dominions from heretics. In things 
 spiritual we are told that " whatever of power, what- 
 
 1 4. Lat. Council.
 
 THE ROMAN CLAIM 307 
 
 ever of sacramental grace, whatever of heavenly dis- 
 pensation is given by Christ the head of the Church, 
 all this is committed to the pope's dispensation." l 
 So that " it is altogether necessary for salvation that 
 every human creature should be subject to the Roman 
 pontiff." 
 
 In relation to the Church we read, " he alone has 
 the right to convoke councils and decide where they 
 shall be held, and to preside over them in person, or 
 by his representatives. Apart from him they cannot 
 act, so that in the vacancy of the see, they can de- 
 cree nothing. To him it belongs to appoint all the 
 bishops, to transfer and depose them. He alone has 
 the right to create, destroy, or change dioceses, and 
 to make and unmake archbishops. It is his to inter- 
 vene in all that concerns the general good of the 
 Church, and to no one on earth is he accountable. 
 He judges all, but is judged by none. As the 
 supreme judge in all causes that belong to the 
 Church, recourse may be had to his tribunal, and no 
 appeal lies from him to an Ecumenical council. For 
 the exercise of his authority he claims that an indepen- 
 dent territory over which he is to rule as a temporal 
 sovereign is needed. The proper exercise of the 
 spiritual powers Christ gave him requires him to be 
 an earthly king. 
 
 He is also the supreme doctor to whom the assist- 
 ance of the Holy Spirit is pledged, that he may in- 
 violably keep and expound the faith, and that his 
 ex cathedra utterances in his official capacity in faith 
 and morals may be infallible. Very naturally and 
 
 1 Council of Basle.
 
 308 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 well may the faithful as the result cry out, " We hail 
 thee, O Pope of Rome, successor of Peter, as the one 
 infallible witness and exponent of the truth on earth. 
 We bow before thy voice, O Pius, as before the voice 
 of Christ, the God of truth." In the words of an 
 approved Roman divine, " Every pontiff is the peren- 
 nial voice of God, placed in the world to teach and 
 guide all nations. He is the heir and minister of all 
 the powers of Christ, pontiff and eternal king." The 
 pope's voice is a " voice of heaven, not of earth ; the 
 voice of God, not of man. . . . He is the only plank of 
 salvation in the terrible shipwreck of perverted ideas 
 and facts. . . . He is the only true saviour of moribund 
 society." The above, taken from Roman sources, 
 declare the pope's office, and how he is regarded. 
 
 He is thus the Church's supreme monarch, the 
 centre of unity, the source of all jurisdiction, the in- 
 dependent possessor of its executive, judicial, legis- 
 lative powers, and, as doctor and teacher of the 
 Church, apart from council or general acceptance, 
 infallible. 
 
 The claim is a tremendous and appalling one. Did 
 our Lord bestow it? Is it set forth in Holy Scrip- 
 ture? Was it held by the Apostles? Was it so 
 stated by the Fathers? Was it commonly recog- 
 nized throughout Christendom that all the bishops 
 were directly or indirectly appointed by the pope? 
 Was it as a matter of fact accepted as a law, that all 
 their jurisdiction came from him? Was communion 
 with the pope the acknowledged test of being in the 
 Church? Were none ever acknowledged as saints 
 save those who lived and died in communion with
 
 THE ROMAN CLAIM 309 
 
 the holy see? Did the bishop of Rome always 
 summon the general councils and preside over them 
 by himself in person or by his legates? Was the 
 monarchical principle of the papal supremacy always 
 acted on by all portions of Christendom? Did the 
 Church in times of heresy at once appeal to the in- 
 fallibility that rested in the papal pontiff, or did it 
 assemble in council? Can the claim of privilege, 
 which requires by canon law positive and clear evi- 
 dence of its original gift, public exhibition and trans- 
 mission, be proved? The weight of testimony in 
 response to these questions will not, we believe, be 
 found On the Roman side. Let us, however, examine 
 the matter more in detail. 
 
 We are met at the outset by the prima facie fact 
 that four out of the five patriarchates of Christendom, 
 the fifth being Rome, or the claimant, deny and re- 
 ject the claim, and have done so at the expense of 
 a separation which has lasted nigh unto a thousand 
 years. Looked at from the orthodox and venerable 
 East, and from Jerusalem, which is the Mother Church 
 of Christendom, the rise of the present monarchical 
 papacy is seen to be the result, in a large part, of 
 human, worldly causes, and the expression of that 
 intellectual pride and independence which is the 
 basis of Protestantism. The pope, the East de- 
 clares, was the first Protestant. He rebelled against 
 the Church universal, and because it would not sub- 
 mit to him became a schismatic, erecting an inde- 
 pendent Church, claiming like the Donatists of old, 
 to be the whole and only body of Christ, and deceiv- 
 ing the West, by the forged decretals, into an accept-
 
 3io CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 ance of his claims, and by worldly policy building up 
 in the West his assumed monarchical powers. But 
 sin always finds man out, and the sin the parent com- 
 mits is often visited upon him by his children. If 
 Jacob lied, his children in turn lied to him. The 
 pope became the first Protestant and rebelled against 
 Christendom, and then, following his example, his 
 children rebelled against him. Entrusted with the 
 care of Western Europe, he lost the major part of 
 it. When at last the forgeries of the decretals were 
 discovered, aroused by the corruption and worldli- 
 ness of the papacy, for whose reform cardinals and 
 councils had for years vainly pleaded, the north of 
 Europe, awakened to the unevangelical, legal, me- 
 chanical system as then preached, revolted, and 
 claiming the right of private judgment, broke with 
 the papacy. The sin of the papacy came back upon 
 itself. It lost half of Europe, and to-day, confined 
 chiefly to the Latin races, it is seen to be a decaying 
 force in Europe. But the East, though exposed to 
 terrible sufferings and the inroads of Mahometanism, 
 has survived its assaults, has accomplished a wonder- 
 ful missionary work of evangelization among the Tar- 
 tar tribes of Russia, and throughout the whole of the 
 north of Asia. God has blest its labors. It maintains 
 the Catholic position and faith, as it has come from 
 the fathers and Apostles, while it rejects the papacy. 
 To understand the papacy one must look at it from 
 the viewpoint of the East and Jerusalem. The Apos- 
 tolic Orthodox Catholic churches of the East have 
 repudiated it as not part of the Catholic religion. 1 
 
 1 " What is Modern Romanism ? " p. 24.
 
 THE ROMAN CLAIM 311 
 
 In the face of this testimony and that of antiquity 
 some have undertaken to defend the Roman claim by 
 the theory of development. But " no theory of de- 
 velopment," says Bishop Seymour, " will explain the 
 change from the original government instituted by 
 Christ to the papacy as it now exists. Revolution, 
 usurpation, substitution, come between, not develop- 
 ment. The change is not such as comes from growth, 
 as when a child becomes a man, but such as happens 
 when Caesar strangles the republic and reigns su- 
 preme." Newman's theory of development, as Moz- 
 ley and Archer Butler, as well as the Roman Catholic 
 Bronson, showed, failed to satisfactorily account for 
 the transformation. 1 
 
 That which is a sufficient and should be the 
 decisive test of the validity of Roman claims is to be 
 found in Holy Scripture. It is all our space allows 
 us to consider. What does it disclose to us ? Does 
 it sustain the claim of the bishop of Rome to be the 
 Church's absolute monarch, the source of all juris- 
 diction, its supreme governor, infallible teacher, the 
 vicar of Jesus Christ ? 
 
 Now the prophetical, priestly, and kingly powers 
 entrusted to the Apostles were always given to them 
 by Christ in their corporate and collegiate capacity. 
 Our Lord said to the Twelve, in respect of the teach- 
 ing and judicial office, "Whatsoever ^<? shall bind on 
 earth, shall be bound in heaven." He said to them 
 assembled together in the upper chamber, " Offer this 
 as a memorial of Me." He made them representa- 
 tives of His kingly power when He gave them mission 
 
 1 See note on page 329. 2 S. Matt, xviii. 17, 18.
 
 312 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 and jurisdiction and said, " Go ye, and make disciples 
 of all the nations." He then gave to the united apos- 
 tolate their world-wide jurisdiction. Like as He had 
 given them as a body their prophetical and priestly 
 commissions, so in the days of His royalty He gave 
 to them mission and jurisdiction. Just as they could 
 gather others into union with their prophetical and 
 priestly offices, so they could apportion to others a 
 share in their universal jurisdiction. Thus, we find 
 the Apostles assigning to Paul jurisdiction over the 
 Gentiles, and appointing Peter to jurisdiction over 
 the Jews. 1 This clearly shows that our Lord did not 
 give a primacy and plenary jurisdiction to Peter, 
 from whom it was to be given to the other Apostles, 
 but the reverse. This settles the case of the Roman 
 claim to be the one source of jurisdiction. 
 
 It is equally clear that S. Peter was not the supreme 
 governor of the Church as it is claimed the pope is. 
 It is claimed that the pope as supreme governor by 
 a power derived from Peter appoints the bishops, 
 transfers them of his own motion, can depose them at 
 his will. In the New Testament we find Peter point- 
 ing out a vacancy in the apostolate, but not filling it. 
 We do not find him consecrating a single bishop or 
 ordaining a single priest. We find S. Paul, on the 
 other hand, without any reference to S. Peter, doing 
 these very things. S. Paul ordains elders and con- 
 secrates S. Timothy. Again, so far from appointing 
 any one of the clergy to any special jurisdiction, we 
 find that S. Peter was himself sent on missionary duty 
 by the Apostles. " When the Apostles which were 
 
 1 Gal. ii. 7.
 
 THE ROMAN CLAIM 313 
 
 in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the 
 word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John." 
 Peter did not send the other Apostles at any time to 
 any place. They sent him. He was not the supreme 
 governor. 
 
 The pope claims that he alone has the right to 
 convoke councils and to preside over them and 
 confirm their decrees. In the Acts we do not read 
 that the first council was called by Peter, but " that 
 the Apostles and elders came together to consider 
 the matter." Nothing is said about Peter calling 
 them. Very clearly he did not preside. He addressed 
 the council, so did the others. He spoke without 
 assuming an authority different from the other Apo- 
 stles. Moreover, the decree ran not in his name, but 
 in that of " the Apostles and elders and brethren." 
 S. Peter had no exceptional, judicial, or legislative 
 authority, but only possessed such authority in com- 
 mon with the Apostles. 
 
 What, we may ask, is the testimony respecting his 
 being the centre of unity ? It was to S. John, not to 
 S. Peter, that the care of the Blessed Virgin, the spe- 
 cial type of the Church, was committed. To S. John 
 especially was the vision of the Church, in all its parts 
 and workings, revealed. He is made keenly alive to 
 the faults and failings in faith and practice of the 
 seven representative churches. If God had estab- 
 lished a centre of unity in Rome, it is impossible to 
 suppose it should not have been found in the warn- 
 ings and instructions given them. The seven churches 
 (a type of the whole Church) would have been 
 earnestly called on to hear what the Spirit, " through
 
 314 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Peter," says to the churches. What we find is that 
 the seven churches are placed on the same level, and 
 there is no intimation of any church holding superi- 
 ority over the others, or one being the centre of 
 church unity. 
 
 Again, the Church is represented as having twelve 
 gates and twelve foundations, no one of which is 
 marked out as being superior to any other. The 
 priesthood of the old and new dispensation is repre- 
 sented by the four and twenty elders, no one of which 
 is above his fellows. " Come hither," said the angel, 
 " I will show thee the Bride, the Lamb's wife. And 
 he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high 
 mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy 
 Jerusalem. And the wall of the city had twelve 
 foundations, and in them the names of the twelve 
 Apostles of the Lamb." 1 The four-squared city, we 
 may observe, was not, as is popularly conceived, in 
 the form of a cube, but in that of a four-sided Eastern 
 cross. It was after this fashion and order that Israel 
 marched through the wilderness. The Holy City has 
 consequently four arms, twelve sides, a gate on each 
 side, and its twelve corner-stones. The head or chief 
 corner-stone is not placed on one side, but is in the 
 centre, and so is the bond of union to all the parts, 
 and the head and corner-stone is Christ. Thus in 
 this revelation of the Church, given by the Holy 
 Spirit, there is no special place reserved for Peter or 
 the Roman pontiff. As our Lord said, I am the vine, 
 and ye, including Peter, "are the branches." Peter is 
 thus only one branch among others, and so too the 
 
 1 Rev. xxi. 14.
 
 THE ROMAN CLAIM 315 
 
 heavenly city has twelve foundations, and Peter is 
 only one of them. This destroys the claim of his being 
 different from the others as the centre of unity. 
 
 Again, not only in the book of The Revelation does 
 the Holy Spirit, who is the guide of the Church into 
 all truth, give us the structure of the Church, but He 
 does so in the plain, literal, explicit words of S. Paul. 
 The Church is the body of Christ. As a body it 
 has a head. Like a human body it can have only one 
 head. As a divine society or body it must have a 
 divine head. This head can be no other than Christ. 
 He is a divine and visible head. He is visible to the 
 saints in glory. He is visible to the waiting Church, 
 as the individual members of it pass before His 
 judgment seat. He has visible and official repre- 
 sentatives of Himself in the Church militant in the 
 bishops of each diocese, each one of whom is made 
 visible to all the members of it by the duties of his 
 office. The pope, however, does not fulfil the re- 
 quirement of being a visible representative of the 
 unseen head. Locally confined by his office to one 
 city he is visible only to those who dwell there or 
 visit him. But as no obligation rests upon the faith- 
 ful to visit Rome, such as compels each bishop to 
 meet his clergy and people, the pope fails of being 
 a visible head. The oft-repeated saying that " a 
 visible Church must have a visible head," is just as 
 true as that " a divine Church must have a divine 
 head," but it does not prove that the pope is that 
 head. On the contrary, as a divine church must have 
 a divine head the head of the church is Christ. 
 
 The question is, Did our Lord set one Apostle over
 
 316 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 all the others and make his successors to be His 
 vicegerent on earth? 
 
 It has been argued that as every family has a head 
 and every nation a head, so the Church militant 
 should have a head. It is true that every family and 
 nation must have a head, but not that there should 
 be one head over all families and nations. Every 
 diocese, as the Church unit, must in like manner have 
 a head, but it does not follow that there must be a 
 visible head over all dioceses. Christ did, however, 
 designate one who should be His vicar, and did ap- 
 point Him in express terms. He would send the 
 Holy Ghost, the Comforter, who should guide the 
 Church into all truth, who should glorify Me : for He 
 !shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you. 
 To demand more, and that there shall be one visible 
 chief representative of Christ's headship on earth, is 
 to rebel against the ordering of Christ. The pope, 
 therefore, is not the representative head of Christ on 
 earth. 
 
 Is the pope the infallible teacher and doctor in all 
 matters of faith and morals ? 
 
 However it may be explained on a matter of dis- 
 cipline which involved that of doctrine, S. Paul with- 
 stood S. Peter to the face and said " he was to be 
 blamed." The ground is most explicitly stated, be- 
 cause he was not walking uprightly, according to 
 the truth of the Gospel. The various defences made 
 show how difficult it is felt to reconcile this condem- 
 nation with Peter's supposed office of supreme pastor 
 and doctor. S. Peter, we may also observe, makes 
 no claim to any personal authority as the teacher, the
 
 THE ROMAN CLAIM 317 
 
 centre of authority, or source of all jurisdiction. He 
 was, if it was part of the faith, bound to do this. He 
 cannot be excused from not owning it under plea of 
 humility no more than Christ could if He had re- 
 frained from declaring Himself to be the Son of God. 
 His failing to do this showed that he did know him- 
 self possessed of any office different from the others. 
 He was not the supreme doctor of the Church. 
 
 Again, S. Peter calls himself not the chief of the 
 Apostles but a fellow-elder. 1 In his epistles, unlike 
 the other Apostles, he gives no disciplinary instruc- 
 tions. There is less explicit dogmatic teaching in 
 them than in the epistles of S. John. He nowhere 
 asserts himself to be the rock, or a foundation in 
 any sense other than that of the other Apostles. 
 He nowhere makes the claims Rome assigns to him. 
 So far from union with him being a test of unity, to 
 say " I am of Peter " is the sign of a schismatical 
 spirit. 2 Those were condemned who said, " I am of 
 Cephas." It was a mark of schism to adhere thus 
 specifically to Peter. It is a mark of schism now. 
 
 We thus find the prima facie witness borne against 
 the papal claims by the four patriarchates corrobora- 
 ted by the Acts, Epistles, and Revelation, wherein we 
 find the Church revealed in its complete and estab- 
 lished form. 
 
 If we turn to the accounts, given in the gospels, of 
 the Church in its preparatory and formative stage, we 
 find Peter acting, as we have seen, with the promi- 
 nence of a leader, but with no such office assigned 
 him as the papal claim requires. 
 
 1 i Pet. v. i. 2 i Cor. i. 10-13.
 
 3i8 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 After Peter had fallen away, and by denying 
 Christ had forfeited his apostleship, we find on his 
 repentance our Lord restoring him to it. In repara- 
 tion for his former boldness and threefold denial, 
 S. Peter makes a most humble and threefold pro- 
 testation of his love and loyalty. Our Lord asks 
 him, referring to his former hot assertion made in 
 his own strength, " Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou 
 me?" Peter will not repeat Christ's word and say, " I 
 love Thee," but humbly says, " Yea, Lord, Thou 
 knowest I have an affection for Thee." Changing 
 his question, Christ finally asks him if he has an 
 affection for Him. The broken heart, placing no 
 longer reliance in itself, Peter replies, " Lord, Thou 
 knowest." " By this triple confession of blessed 
 Peter," says S. Cyril, " his sin consisting of a triple 
 denial was done away, and by the words of our 
 Lord, ' Feed my sheep,' a renewal of the apostleship 
 bestowed upon him is understood to take place." 
 
 Thus upon this lowly acknowledgment Christ re- 
 stores Peter to his Apostleship and to his special 
 office in it. He is to tend the sheep. He as the 
 foundation layer and holder of the keys and opener 
 of the kingdom is to shepherd the sheep. He is to 
 guide the sheep of the old dispensation into the 
 new. He is also to feed them and the new-born 
 lambs of the new kingdom. 
 
 There is nothing herein said of his having juris- 
 diction over any of the other shepherds of the flock. 
 Indeed, it is explicitly denied that he has any authority 
 pver other Apostles. For when S. Peter, seeing 
 S. John says, " What shall this man do? " Our Lord
 
 THE ROMAN CLAIM 319 
 
 says, "What is that to thee?" In our rough Eng- 
 lish, "That is no affair or business of yours." If the 
 other Apostles were to have any subordinate relation 
 to Peter, this was the time to declare it. If Peter 
 was to be the inheritor of the powers of the collective 
 Apostolate, when the individual members of it had 
 all passed away, this was the time to make it known. 
 But no, any superiority is not merely omitted, it is 
 explicitly declared that Peter has no jurisdiction over 
 the other Apostles. John's person and work are 
 here declared to be entirely independent of S. Peter. 
 He had nothing to do with them. Nor was he to be 
 an inheritor of the Apostolate when its members had 
 passed from earth. He was to die, so Christ fore- 
 told, while S. John might tarry till Christ came. 
 The meaning of our Lord is plain. The Apostolate 
 of which S. John was a part was to continue, but the 
 office that S. Peter held would pass away with his 
 death. S. Peter could have no successor who could 
 have jurisdiction over S. John, for Peter possessed 
 none himself; and so too no jurisdiction over the 
 episcopate resting on S. John's foundation or that of 
 any other Apostle. 
 
 Take another text, alleged as giving infallibility to 
 S. Peter. Our Lord said, " Simon, Simon, behold, 
 Satan hath desired to have you (plural and so signi- 
 fying the Apostles), that he may sift you as wheat : 
 but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not; and 
 when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." 
 It is said by Roman writers that here " Jesus the 
 Omnipotent prays absolutely that the faith of one 
 shall be unfailing. Then Simon's faith being estab-
 
 320 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 lished, he is commanded to strengthen the brethren 
 in the faith in which he had been solidly established. 
 Jesus first renders Simon's faith stable, and Simon in 
 turn is to give stability to the faith of his brethren." 
 Over against this we will quote the conclusion of the 
 learned authors of Janus. 1 " No single writer to the 
 end of the seventh century dreamt of such an in- 
 terpretation; all without exception, and there are 
 eighteen of them, explain it simply as a prayer of 
 Christ that His Apostle might not wholly succumb 
 and lose his faith entirely in his approaching trial." 
 The true exegesis is, that Satan desired to have all, 
 but Christ prays for Peter as being, as the result 
 shows, in the most danger. We may assume that 
 Christ's prayer was answered. Now Christ prayed, 
 not that Peter should not deny the faith, for this he 
 did. He denied the faith when he said of Him 
 whom he had confessed to be the Son of God, " I 
 know not the man ! " But our Lord prayed that so 
 denying in terms the faith, Peter's faith in Christ 
 should not fail. And it did not. At Christ's look 
 he was converted anew and more thoroughly than 
 ever. Having passed through that terrible spiritual 
 experience of fall and recovery, by divine grace, he 
 could, out of that signal experience of love and mercy, 
 confirm his brethren. Christ had forgiven him his 
 greater sin, He would forgive them who in the hour 
 of trial fell into a lesser one and deserted Him and 
 fled. There is nothing in this text that supports the 
 infallibility of Peter. 
 
 We have then only the text in S. Matthew to con- 
 
 1 Janus, 93.
 
 THE ROMAN CLAIM 321 
 
 sider. Roman Catholics are so brought up to re- 
 peat this text that they take it for granted, often 
 without examination, that it favors the papal claim. 
 Let us consider its meaning. "Jesus asked His dis- 
 ciples, saying, Whom say ye that I am?" Simon 
 Peter, replying for them said, " Thou art the Christ, 
 the Son of the Living God." " Jesus said, Blessed art 
 thou, Simon Bar-jona; for flesh and blood hath not 
 revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in 
 heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art 
 Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church ; 
 and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 
 And I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom 
 of Heaven." 
 
 We have seen what in this text was meant by the 
 power of the keys. What was promised to Peter 
 separately and representatively was subsequently 
 given to all collectively. The Apostolate was never 
 to pass away, for Christ said, " Lo, I am with you 
 alway unto the end of the world." It was also to 
 remain as held in joint tenure by a body. Pressed 
 by the difficulty that S. John, the last surviving 
 Apostle, could not have been subject to Linus, who 
 is said to have succeeded S. Peter at Rome, the 
 modern Roman theory is, that, after S. John's death, 
 the whole Apostolate survived in Peter. The theory, 
 however ingenious, is certainly lacking in scriptural 
 or historical proof. According to Scripture, the 
 Apostolate was not to remain surviving in Peter 
 alone, for the Church was to be forever resting, as 
 S. John described it, on its twelve foundations. See- 
 ing that the Apostolate must remain, and that there
 
 322 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 is no proof it does so in Peter alone and his supposed 
 successors, it is clear that it remains in the episco- 
 pate. By it our Lord fulfils His promise to be with 
 you, a collective body, until the world's end. S. Peter, 
 as we have seen, had in it a special and glorious 
 office, but a personal one. Of the Twelve he was 
 the first. In regard to the Apostles, he was a leader, 
 a spokesman, and by the experience of his own re- 
 covery, a strengthener of their faith. In regard to the 
 Church He was a foundation layer, a guide to the 
 sheep of the old covenant, a feeder of the sheep and 
 of the lambs of the new one. But the keys, while 
 they connote stewardship and so far oversight, do not 
 denote superiority over other stewards, or aught that 
 Rome now claims. 
 
 It remains, then, to inquire who is signified by the 
 rock on which the Church is built. As the text says, 
 it is built upon this rock, it points to one particular 
 subject. To what does "this" refer? Is it to Peter 
 or to Christ, confessed by Peter, to be the Son of 
 God? 
 
 Some of the reasons why it does not refer to Peter 
 are these. If Peter was to be the rock our Lord 
 would have made this clear by saying, " Thou art 
 Peter, the rock on which I will build my Church ; " 
 or, "Thou art Peter and upon thee I will build it." 
 The text is thus sometimes incorrectly quoted. It is 
 so cited in sermons that it has become a common 
 notion with the Roman laity that our Lord said He 
 would build His Church on Peter, or that Peter was 
 the rock. The first error, then, to be pointed out, is 
 this misquotation or misleading use of the text. Our
 
 THE ROMAN CLAIM 323 
 
 Lord did not say, " Thou art Peter, the rock on which 
 I will build my Church," but said, upon this rock 
 I will build my Church. The test of the correct 
 meaning is, to whom does "this" refer? Is it to 
 Peter or to Christ who was revealed to and confessed 
 by S. Peter to be the son of God ? 
 
 Now the word " this " in conversation may refer to 
 the speaker, as when our Lord says, " Destroy this 
 temple," meaning Himself, or it may refer to a third 
 person. " But it is doubtful whether any passage 
 can be cited in the New Testament where it is used 
 to denote a person to whom the person using it 
 speaks." * Here our Lord is speaking to S. Peter and 
 therefore " this rock " cannot refer to him. 
 
 Again, that it cannot refer to S. Peter is obvious 
 from the fact that the two words, " Peter " and " rock," 
 are of different genders. Peter, being a man's name 
 is in the masculine gender, while rock is feminine. 
 They cannot, therefore, refer to the same thing. 
 
 To this it has been replied that our Lord spoke in 
 Syriac or Aramaic, in which languages this distinction 
 would not be made. But other and as learned 
 scholars have thought otherwise. They have de- 
 clared that in the Syriac " Kepha," meaning rock, is 
 feminine. This is agreed to by all. But the word 
 used by our Lord to designate a man's name, either 
 in Syriac or Greek, would undoubtedly be masculine. 
 We find our Lord doing this when He first named 
 the Apostle, saying in Syriac, "Thou shalt be called 
 Cephas."' He thus most probably, in the language 
 He used, made the distinction in gender. 
 1 Wordsworth, Com. S. Matt. xvi. 18.
 
 324 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 But be this as it may, Greek is the language in 
 which God's later revelation is given to us, and we 
 have no right to go outside of it If Romans can do 
 so Protestants can do the same. If Romans may 
 assume what were the words our Lord spoke in 
 Syriac, of which we have no record, Protestants may 
 assume His accompanying explanatory actions. If 
 the one may assume that He used the same gender 
 in both clauses of the sentence, the other may suppose 
 that by laying His hand on Himself, when He 
 said, " On this rock I will build my Church," He 
 explained His meaning. We must leave all such 
 suppositions and receive the text as preserved in 
 God's Word. If our Lord did speak in Syriac or 
 Aramaic, we must nevertheless accept S. Matthew's 
 language as divinely inspired for the express purpose 
 of marking a difference which the Syriac failed to 
 accentuate or suggest. Romans therefore fail in 
 their attempt to prove that " this rock " refers to 
 Peter. 
 
 If the Roman interpretation is thus seen to be an 
 impossible one because ungrammatical, it is also un- 
 scriptural. It is an admitted rule in interpretation 
 that we must construe Scripture by Scripture. Now 
 in the Holy Scripture the word rock is used as a 
 synonym of God. It occurs some thirty-five times 
 in the Old Testament. We will quote a few instances. 
 " The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to 
 me." 1 "The Lord is my rock, and who is a rock 
 save our God." 2 "There is none holy as the Lord: 
 neither is there any rock like our God." 8 " Is there 
 
 1 2 Sam. xxiii. 3. a 2 Sam. xxii. 2, 32. 8 i Sam. ii. 2.
 
 THE ROMAN CLAIM 325 
 
 a God beside me? yea, no Rock, I know not any." 1 
 " The Lord Jehovah is the Rock of ages." 2 Seeing 
 that rock was a familiar title for God, and the con- 
 fession made being that Christ was the Son of God, 
 upon our Lord's saying, " Upon this rock I will build 
 my Church," the Apostles would naturally have 
 understood the word rock as referring to Himself. 
 Christ takes that title to Himself when He counsels 
 the wise man to build his house upon the rock that 
 the winds and waves cannot overcome. He claims 
 to be the Son of God, the Rock of ages. The Roman 
 exegesis again fails as being an unscriptural one. 
 
 Again, the words " Peter " and " rock " have dif- 
 ferent significations, and therefore cannot mean the 
 same thing, and so we have another proof that Peter 
 is not to be identified 'with the rock on which the 
 Church is founded. The difference is seen in the 
 titles given to our Lord. As the Son of God He is 
 the rock ; as Son of Man He is the stone. He was 
 the divine rock that followed Israel, and " that Rock 
 was Christ." He was as the Son of Man the Virgin 
 born, " the Stone cut out without hands." His divinity 
 was a rock of offence, His humanity a stone of stum- 
 bling. Now Cephas is, we read, by interpretation, 
 stone. It is, if we look at the Revised Version, not 
 necessarily a stone. The word signifies a kind or 
 quality of material. Applied to the person of Peter 
 it was to mark his spiritual transformation. By 
 nature he was Simon, unstable and weak, by union 
 with the Living Rock he became rocklike or petri- 
 fied. Thus in contrast with the term " rock " in 
 
 1 Isa. xliv. 8, marg. - Isa. xxvi. 4, marg.
 
 326 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Scripture the word " stone " marks a difference not 
 only of size but of quality of material. The " rock " 
 denotes something or some one who is divine ; "Peter" 
 or " stone," something of like nature with the rock, 
 but belonging to humanity. Consequently " Peter" 
 and "this rock" are two different things, and the 
 Church is not said to be founded on Peter, a man, 
 but on Christ, the Son of God. 
 
 Besides this, there are convincing theological 
 reasons why Peter cannot be the rock. The Catholic 
 faith is that the Church is built on the foundation of 
 all the Apostles. The Roman view is, that eleven of 
 these having passed, i. e., crumbled away, the Church 
 now rests upon the successor of one. The heavenly 
 city is thus more like an inverted pyramid, resting on 
 its apex, than rising four square on its twelve foun- 
 dations. This is contrary to the whole teaching of 
 Holy Scripture, as set forth in type, prophecy, and 
 revelation. There were the twelve patriarchs, the 
 twelve tribes, the twelve stones on the high priest's 
 breastplate, the twelve Apostles, the twelve sides and 
 corner-stones and twelve gates of the celestial city. 
 The Church is not an inverted pyramid, but has 
 twelve living foundations at its base. 
 
 Another objection is this : Christ said, Upon this 
 rock will I build my Church and the gates of hell, 
 /. e., hades, shall not prevail against it. The rock 
 signified must therefore be one that the gates of hell 
 cannot overcome. Now " hades " means the powers 
 of sin, Satan, and death. But it is obvious sin and 
 Satan did prevail over Peter, and led him, though 
 afterwards he recovered, to deny Christ. And in due
 
 THE ROMAN CLAIM 327 
 
 course he passed under the power of death. And if 
 the temporal power is as claimed essential to the 
 papacy, then the gates of hell have prevailed against 
 it. Against Christ, however, sin and Satan had no 
 power, and death had no dominion over Him. He 
 rose triumphantly with the keys of hell and of death 
 in His hands. The interpretation that makes Peter 
 the rock is thus seen to be untheological. Because' 
 only one who is in Himself the resurrection and life 
 can be the foundation of a church against which 
 death cannot prevail. Again, it has been argued by 
 Romans that as a rock is something permanent, and 
 the rock on which the Church is built must be as 
 enduring as the Church itself, therefore this promise 
 which they claim was made to Peter is also a promise 
 that he would have successors. But as the Church 
 is to last for all eternity and the papacy cannot 
 possibly last beyond the end of the world, it follows 
 that the rock cannot be Peter and his successors. 
 
 The limitations of this book do not allow of citation 
 from the fathers as to the meaning of this text. But 
 a great deal of needless search will be saved if the 
 legal rule is remembered that counts of little or no 
 value " obiter dicta" We should confine our inves- 
 tigations to what the fathers said when they were 
 engaged in writing an explanation of the text. All 
 these have been tabulated. 1 The result is that the 
 preponderance of authorities hold the view that Christ, 
 or the confession of Peter of His divinity, is the rock. 
 And while there are some who state that here an 
 authority or office was given to Peter, there are none 
 i See " Petrine Claims." S. P. C. K.
 
 328 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 who hold it was one which was to be transmitted to 
 a successor. The writers of Janus, who were Roman 
 theologians, wrote, as the result of their long and 
 f learned investigation : " Of all the fathers who inter- 
 ' pret these passages in the Gospels, 1 not a single one 
 applies them to the Roman bishops as Peter's suc- 
 cessors." " Not one has dropped the faintest hint 
 that the primacy of Rome is the consequence of the 
 commission and promise to Peter. Not one has ex- 
 plained the rock on which Christ would build His 
 Church as the office given to Peter to be transmitted 
 to his successors. But they understood by it, either 
 Christ Himself, or Peter's confession of faith in Christ, 
 or else that Peter was the foundation equally with the 
 others." 
 
 Launoy, 2 a Roman divine, made an exhaustive col- 
 lection from the fathers, church writers, and councils 
 showing their various interpretations of the text we 
 have been considering. Out of about eighty-five 
 citations sixty authorities take the rock to be Christ 
 or the confession of His divinity ; only seventeen see 
 in the rock any reference to S. Peter " and these say 
 nothing in this connection of his successor." 8 
 
 Concerning the papal infallibility a Roman au- 
 thority says, " It would, of course, be a monstrous 
 anachronism were we to attribute a belief in papal 
 infallibility to ante-Nicene fathers ; " 4 and as concern- 
 ing the papal claim to a supremacy of jurisdiction, 
 the Roman Bossuet, the great French theologian, 
 
 1 S. Matt. xvi. 18; S. John xxi. 17. 
 
 2 Launoy, Opera, torn. 5, par. 2, Ep. vii. 
 8 Peoples, " Roman Claims," p. 8. 
 
 * Addis and Arnold, " Catholic Dictionary," Art. Pope.
 
 THE ROMAN CLAIM 329 
 
 declared that the " very late invention that bishops 
 receive their jurisdiction from the pope, and are, as 
 it were his vicars, ought to be banished from Christian 
 schools, as unheard of for twelve centuries." 1 
 
 As Catholics, therefore, directed by our Anglican au- 
 thorities to interpret Holy Scripture according to the 
 fathers, and as the Romans also are directed by Trent 
 so to receive the Holy Scriptures, we cannot allow that 
 the present claim of Rome is part of the Christian 
 religion, or an accredited dogma of the Catholic faith. 
 
 1 Defensio Chri. Gallicani, Bk. viii. c. xiv. 
 
 NOTE. See page 311. 
 
 In every Christian there are two spirits that guide him, the human 
 spirit and the divine spirit. So it is with the Church. The develop- 
 ment theory may account for the rise of the Papacy, but not necessa- 
 rily for its divine authorship. If divine, its methods will be divine, 
 its end divine, its result divine. The methods by which the Papacy 
 were developed were human, among them forgeries and fraud. Now 
 God has no need of men's lies to carry out His purposes ; and where 
 frauds are used, the action is not divine. 
 
 The end reached by the development was that of an absolute mon- 
 archy. The Pope claimed universal jurisdiction, sole legislative power, 
 superiority to General Councils, a personal infallibility, and to be the 
 supreme arbiter of doctrine and morals, the Vicar of Christ. He also 
 claimed power of deposing all sovereigns, and absolving subjects from 
 allegiance to their lawful kings. He also claimed to be a temporal and 
 earthly king, surrounded by all the powers and court of an earthly mon- 
 arch, and this is claimed as an essential part of the Papacy. It is some- 
 thing entirely different in character from the Papacy of the early ages, 
 which was one of precedency and honor. 
 
 This is not such a kingdom as Christ founded. The monarchical 
 character of the Papacy shows it to be the outcome of the human 
 spirit. Moreover, the result of the establishment of the Papacy has 
 been to divide Christendom. It cannot therefore have been the out- 
 come of the divine spirit. It is of human growth and development, 
 not the work of God. As God bore both with Israel and Judah, 
 though the choice of a visible head was a sign of rebellion, so God 
 may have carried on His work of saving souls in spite of the Papacy. 
 It has been, however, instead of a principle of unity, a great cause of 
 division.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 THE HOLY SEE 
 
 IT is a habit with some to speak of the see of Rome 
 as the " Holy See." It is part of the effort to 
 present Rome in an attractive light and to create a 
 desire for union with her. 
 
 As Catholics all that is Catholic, in Rome or else- 
 where, we love. In many ways, her people, by their 
 faith and zeal, set us an inspiring example. We feel 
 that a church that so realizes the unseen world and 
 is so filled with such devotion must, on these accounts, 
 be dear to Christ. We have no desire, especially 
 when all Christians should be drawing together, to 
 say aught against the Catholicity she embodies. 
 Whatever we do say, it is with the consciousness and 
 willing acknowledgment of our own shortcomings. 
 Not then in disparagement of what is Catholic in our 
 sister Church, but writing for our own people, let us 
 examine Rome's claim to the title of " The Holy 
 See." 
 
 Holiness is one of the marks of the Catholic 
 Church. She is holy because the Holy Spirit dwells 
 within her. Holy because she possesses in her 
 sacraments the means of developing holiness. Holy 
 because she has in her saints the highest ideals of 
 holiness, and in every age is producing them. If the 
 special holiness claimed for the Roman see is like
 
 THE HOLY SEE 331 
 
 that of the Church, it will possess it in like manner 
 as a distinctive and permanent feature. Persons will 
 doubtless decide this question as they do similar ones, 
 governed largely by their religious presuppositions. 
 But admitting Newman's argument that where there 
 is the most grace, there through its rejection we shall 
 find the worst sin ; where, in other words, there is 
 the most light, there are the strongest shadows, yet 
 must we not shut our eyes to a good deal of history 
 to find in the Roman see any special marks of sanc- 
 tity? For must it not surpass all others in holiness 
 to make good its claim to be pre-eminently " The 
 Holy See," and can any unprejudiced historian say 
 that it does so? 
 
 Let us then consider together some of its notable 
 features. One feature of it is that, to a degree unlike 
 any other see in Christendom, it has the reputation 
 of being connected with a long series of forgeries. It 
 was the oft-repeated reproach of the Greeks that the 
 Roman Church was " the native home of inventions 
 and falsification of documents." Historians have 
 often in the pursuance of their duty brought them 
 before the public. The authors of " The Pope and 
 the Council," who were trained Roman theologians, 
 give some fifty pages to an account of them. " Like," 
 they say, " successive strata of the earth covering one 
 another, so layer after layer of forgeries and falsifica- 
 tions was piled up in the Church." 
 
 We will cite from the above-mentioned work some 
 few examples. 
 
 First, we find it inserted in the Roman manuscript 
 of the sixth Nicene canon that " the Roman Church
 
 332 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 always had the primacy," a fraud which was exposed 
 at the council of Chalcedon. Next, in the fathers, 
 S. Augustine had said that all those writings of the 
 Bible were pre-eminently attested which the Apos- 
 tolical Churches had received. This passage was 
 corrupted to signify that those epistles belong to 
 canonical writings which the holy see has issued. 
 This was to put the decretal letters of the popes on 
 a par with Scripture. Again, in proof of the alleged 
 holiness of the popes, the fable was invented " that 
 of the thirty popes before Constantine, all but one 
 were martyrs." Finding it difficult to explain the 
 apostasy of Pope Liberius, the story was credited that 
 Liberius, when exiled, had ordained Felix as his suc- 
 cessor, and then abdicated, so that his subsequent 
 apostasy did not matter. In order to increase the 
 papal power, two spurious epistles of Pope Julius 
 were forged, to the effect that the Apostles and 
 Nicene Council had said no council could be held 
 without the pope's injunction. " In the fifth and 
 beginning of the sixth century began the compilation 
 of spurious acts of Roman martyrs which modern 
 criticism, even at Rome, has been obliged to give up." 
 In the middle of the ninth century arose that huge 
 fabrication now known as the forged decretals. It 
 was a compilation of about a hundred pretended 
 decrees of the earliest popes, together with other 
 spurious writings. Those documents Pope Nicholas I. 
 (858), a man of great audacity, assured the Prankish 
 bishops had long been preserved in the archives of 
 the Roman Church. 
 
 " But the most potent instrument in the new papal
 
 THE HOLY SEE 333 
 
 system was Gratian's Decretum" Gratian was a great 
 jurist about the middle of the twelfth century, whose 
 work on canon law displaced all others. " No book 
 has ever come near it in its influence in the Church, 
 although there is scarcely another so full of gross 
 errors." All these fictions, ignorantly it may be, he 
 inserted into his code. How the Western Church 
 unsuspectingly received the accumulated forgeries, 
 how they gradually became adopted, how the great 
 theologians like Thomas Aquinas and Melchior Cano 
 built their theories of the papacy upon them, how 
 Popes Hildebrand and Innocent III. used them to 
 build up the present colossal papal system, is a matter 
 of ordinary history. Thus the whole structure of the 
 Church was changed from the ancient canonical pri- 
 macy to the modern monarchical supremacy. The 
 forged decretals did not, as Roman advocates have 
 claimed in extenuation, give utterance to the Church's 
 ancient tradition. The modern monarchical papacy 
 was not contained in the original constitution of the 
 Church as Christ made it. It could not come, as the 
 three orders came, by way of a providential ordering. 
 It was not a legitimate development, but a revolution. 
 " The forged decretals completely revolutionized 
 (Janus, 97) the whole constitution of the Church. On 
 that point there can be no controversy among candid 
 historians." To do this use was made, not of exist- 
 ing authenticated traditions, but of previously existing 
 forgeries. A black stream of fraud and ambition had 
 already contaminated the see, influential through its 
 wealth and boastful of its origin. Developments of 
 a legitimate kind there must be in God's Church,
 
 334 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 in its government as established by canons and, as 
 she guards by definition, the faith once received. But 
 God has no need, as Pere Gratry said, of man's lies, 
 to further His purposes. Whatever development is 
 formed thereby has on it a brand that denotes an evil 
 origin and is not a development ordained of God. 
 
 Gradually, built upon this foundation of falsehood, 
 the papacy developed into its portentous proportions. 
 It was not until after a thousand years had passed 
 that the bishop of Rome came to be called officially 
 as he is now the vicar of Christ. His power under 
 Hildebrand and Innocent III. became so magnified 
 that he could take away kingdoms and absolve sub- 
 jects from their allegiance. In the exercise of this 
 power, untold miseries were inflicted upon innocent 
 people, and nations were deluged with blood. As 
 the final outcome, in 1870 the pope was declared, 
 when speaking ex cathedra, to be officially in posses- 
 sion of the assisting aid of infallibility. German 
 Roman theologians of high repute declared this was 
 not the original Catholic faith, and revolted. Ameri 
 can Roman Catholics to-day are imposed upon by 
 being told that this infallibility is like that of the 
 supreme court. But the supreme court, when it 
 finds it has fallen into error, can and does reverse its 
 decisions. The pope, if infallible, cannot do so. 
 The decree of infallibility distinctly states that the 
 papal decisions are irreformable. So in one form or 
 another, the deceit goes on, sometimes by conceal- 
 ment of former teachings, made, for instance, in 
 Roman catechism, sometimes by audacious assertion. 
 For now three centuries the forgeries of these decre-
 
 THE HOLY SEE 335 
 
 tals have been exposed. Rome, beaten in the con- 
 troversy over their genuineness, has acknowledged 
 them to be fabrications. Popes as well as Roman 
 theologians have admitted them to be forgeries. Yet 
 like an arch from which the wooden constructive 
 skeleton has been removed, the papacy, built on this 
 framework of lies, remains. The same phenomenon 
 is to be found in Mormonism and other false religious 
 systems. The papacy remains strong as a consoli- 
 dated monarchical organization, but to the candid and 
 discerning, with the fatal telltale marks of its origin 
 upon it. It is not a holy see. 
 
 Again, where shall we look for special marks of 
 holiness, if it exists in the see, save in the pontiffs 
 themselves? So strongly has this been felt, that a 
 papal secretary once wrote : " Popes must be held 
 to inherit innocence and sanctity from Peter." 
 Gregory VII. made the holiness of the popes the 
 foundation of his claims to universal dominion. 
 " Every sovereign," he said, " however good before, 
 becomes corrupted by the use of power, whereas 
 every rightly appointed pope becomes a saint, 
 through the imputed merits of Peter." In our time 
 the papacy has been filled by two popes of recog- 
 nized Christian character. They were not free from 
 faults, but no such squibs were put on Pasquino, 
 Rome's jibing pillar, at their death, as on their pre- 
 decessor's, Pope Gregory XVI. He was represented 
 as offering to S. Peter a very large key, so large 
 indeed that it did not fit the heavenly gate. He 
 had to explain to the heavenly warden that by mis- 
 take he had brought the key to his capacious wine
 
 336 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 cellar ! We gladly record the fact that not only the 
 two late, but many popes, have been sincere followers 
 of Jesus Christ. But can we say, on examining the 
 history of the see, that it bears out the boast of 
 special sanctity? Rather are we not obliged to say 
 that no other see has been filled with so many and 
 such notoriously evil and bad men? 
 
 " For above sixty years," writes Janus, " from 883 
 to 955, the Roman Church was enslaved and degraded 
 while the Apostolic see became a prey and plaything 
 of rival factions of nobles, and for a long time of 
 ambitious and profligate women." " During the pa- 
 pacy of Sergius," says Dean Milman, 1 " rose into 
 power the infamous Theodora, with her daughters 
 Mazoria and Theodora, the prostitutes who, in the 
 strong language of historians, disposed for many 
 years of the papal tiara, and not content with dis- 
 gracing by their own licentious lives the chief city of 
 Christendom, actually placed their profligate para- 
 mours or base-born sons in the chair of Peter." The 
 well-known licentious life of Cardinal Borgia did not 
 hinder the electors from choosing him to fill S. Peter's 
 chair. He made one of his natural sons, Caesar 
 Borgia, a cardinal, and the brother of his mistress 
 Guilia, Alexandro Farnese, another. Dr. Creighton 
 in his work on the papacy felt himself obliged to 
 credit the scandalous story that Cardinal Caesar 
 Borgia gave a supper in Rome to fifty prostitutes. 
 Though conspicuous for his evil living, Alexander VI. 
 does not stand alone. " The secularized papacy a 
 
 1 "Latin Christianity," vol. iii. p. 158. 
 
 2 Creighton, vol. iv. p. 441.
 
 THE HOLY SEE 337 
 
 can excite nothing but disgust, but the seculariza- 
 tion of the papacy was begun by Sixtus IV., was pro- 
 found under Innocent VIII. as under Alexander VI., 
 and was not much mended under Julius II. and 
 Leo X." " Nearly all the line of pontiffs, 4 Nicho- 
 las V. (1447), Calixtus III. (1455), Pi us H. or ^Eneas 
 Sylvius (1458), Paul II. (1464), Sixtus IV. (1471), 
 Innocent VIII. (1484), Alexander VI. (1492), 
 Pius III. (1503), Julius II. (1503), and Leo X. 
 (1513), betrayed increasing love of pomp and worldly 
 pleasures. Nepotism was the prevailing motive in 
 their distribution of preferment; too many played 
 a leading part in base political intrigues. Nor may 
 we pass in silence the appalling profligacy which so 
 often stained the reputation of the later pontiffs." 
 Cardinal Baronius, in his history, admitting the terri- 
 ble degradation of the papacy in the tenth century, 
 could only wonder how the Church was preserved. 
 As we look at the see's stained record in her pontiffs, 
 we cannot, in historical justice, award it the title of 
 " The Holy See." 
 
 Again, we ask what has been the spirit of the 
 Roman see? Has it not been marked from the early 
 times with that of worldly ambition, thirst for power, 
 and political intrigues? Have there not been popes 
 and rival popes who have hated and excommunicated 
 one another, and Christendom been so disorganized 
 by their strife that Christians had no sure means of 
 knowing who the right pope was? Has the papacy, 
 as Peter was bidden to do, put up the sword into its 
 sheath, or has it not constantly appealed to the arm 
 
 1 " Hardwick's Hist.," p. 364. 
 
 23
 
 338 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 of flesh to accomplish its designs? Has not the 
 papacy intrigued to the setting of nobles against 
 kings, and kings against emperors, and when baffled, 
 called on the sultan's aid? Has it not in politics 
 been in alliance with all parties as best served its own 
 ends? When the struggle for freedom was going on 
 in England, was not the pope on the side of King 
 John, not with the barons? To-day, having dis- 
 covered that in our Republic his power and revenues 
 are greater than under a monarchy, the pope poses 
 as a friend of republicanism. But has the papacy 
 as a rule been on the side of progress, education, and 
 free government? The late pope put forth an admir- 
 able bull on the relation of capital and labor. There 
 are liberal Roman ecclesiastics in America. But what 
 about the papal government in Rome when it had the 
 power? And has there not been found in Rome a 
 greed for a world-wide rule which made the papacy 
 in mediaeval times a revived Caesarism? Has not 
 Rome claimed that Peter's two swords signified that 
 she was the head of all temporal and spiritual power 
 on earth? Has she not exercised this authority and 
 laid kingdoms under interdict, and for hostility to 
 herself excommunicated kings. One may possibly 
 condone Hildebrand believing in the forged decretals, 
 in his struggle for the Church's spiritual rights, but 
 the struggle of his successor, Innocent III., aiming at 
 increased temporal sovereignty, was something very 
 different. "The whole significance of the papacy," 
 says Dr. Creighton, 1 " was altered when this desire 
 to secure a temporal sovereignty became a leading 
 
 1 Creighton, " The Papacy," vol. i. p. 22.
 
 THE HOLY SEE 339 
 
 feature of the papal policy." " The great interests 
 of Christendom were forgotten in the struggle." 
 " The moral prestige of the papacy was irrevocably 
 lowered." This representative of the Lord of Peace, 
 in his greed for dominion, has been the inciter of 
 innumerable wars and a sea of blood flows round the 
 papal throne. It is not in anger, but in intense sorrow 
 we are forced to admit this. We must not allow our- 
 selves to be hypnotized into believing Rome to be 
 "the holy see." 
 
 Nor has this unholy spirit for worldly aggrandize- 
 ment abated. Not that it now aims at feudal as- 
 cendency, but still it determinedly claims a temporal 
 sovereignty. For years the Italians had grievously 
 suffered under the brutality of the ecclesiastical 
 papal government. It was one of the worst of 
 governments of nations called civilized. The press 
 was under inquisitorial supervision, and a daily paper 
 did not exist in Rome till 1846. Free speech was 
 not tolerated. Education was in the hands of priests 
 who thought an ignorant people were the easiest 
 governed. In many parishes there were no schools at 
 all. Robberies and brigandism abounded. 1 " Agri- 
 culture was at a standstill. Industrial enterprises were 
 hindered by heavy taxes, and clerical interference. 
 Poverty, pauperism, and beggary abounded. Justice 
 was shamefully administered. Persons were liable to 
 arrest without warrant. The judges were ecclesias- 
 tics, corrupt and incapable." " It is not," said Mr. 
 Gladstone, " mere imperfection, not occasional sever- 
 ity ; it is incessant, systematic violation of law by the 
 
 1 Robertson's Church in Italy.
 
 340 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 power appointed to watch over it." In 1870 those 
 who entered the dungeons of the inquisition found all 
 kinds of instruments of torture. 1 When in 1859 a 
 rising took place at Perugia, the pope's foreign 
 soldiers put it down, looting houses, massacring old 
 and young. Pope Pius IX. personally thanked the 
 general and had a medal struck in memory of the 
 event. Can any true-hearted American wonder that 
 the Italians were against such a government, or fail 
 to sympathize with them in their struggle for liberty? 
 A constitutional government united Italy under 
 Victor Emmanuel, and gave to the Italians the blessing 
 of freedom and legislative government. This govern- 
 ment, with great liberality, secured by its laws the 
 papacy in the free exercise of its spiritual powers. 
 By the articles called the " Papal Guarantees," the 
 person of the pope is held to be sacred and inviol- 
 able. The free action of the cardinals is secured in 
 their election of a pope. No agent of police or 
 government official can enter the residence of the 
 pontiff. He can have a post-office of his own, under 
 his control, and letters to and from the pope are free 
 from tax. Ambassadors to him are accorded the 
 prerogatives belonging to them. To him the Italian 
 Government renders sovereign honors and sets aside 
 $750,000 yearly for his use. It is therefore grossly 
 misleading to say that the pope is oppressed. He is 
 perfectly free to exercise all his spiritual functions 
 and powers. The free election of the present pope 
 is a testimony of this. But he still poses for sym- 
 pathy as a prisoner and begs for Peter's pence. It is 
 
 1 Robertson, 25.
 
 THE HOLY SEE 341 
 
 unnecessary for Americans to contribute to his sup- 
 port when he can have so ample an income. It is 
 untrue that his spirituality needs for its protection a 
 temporal sovereignty. Yet to gain this and bring 
 Italy back into its old state of political degradation 
 is the constant effort of the papacy. It is not Chris- 
 tianity, but its antithesis. It is not a " holy see." 
 
 We might dwell upon many other like features of 
 the papacy. Catholicity is of Christ, the papacy is 
 of man. And to the spiritual-minded its distinguish- 
 ing evil note is worldliness. Roman Catholicism is 
 full of contrivances, by appeals to fear for the ac- 
 quisition of wealth. The Roman Church is powerful 
 as a great money-getting machine, and the pope lives 
 surrounded by the etiquette of an earthly court. Rome 
 well knows how to make her performances attractive 
 and spectacular. The state and splendor of her mag- 
 nificent processions, with the pope borne in regal 
 state, surrounded by her cortege of richly vested 
 cardinals, escorted by her Swiss and noble guards, 
 with glittering armor and drawn swords, with ten 
 thousands of excited people shouting frantically for 
 their " Papa Re," make a spectacle thrilling, unique, 
 unequalled. No wonder those present and those who 
 read the sensational descriptions are carried away by 
 it. It appeals mostly to the class who gaze with 
 admiration on all display. Rome attracts and gains 
 adherents, Ruskin said, " as larks are lured by the 
 glitter of bits of glass into a trap." Her converts 
 are often, to use an Emersonianism, " victims of glare 
 and superstition." Her papal ceremonials appeal 
 seductively to the worldly minded. There is nothing
 
 342 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 of the spirit of Christ or Christian worship in this 
 papal pomp. It must grieve Christ and make, if 
 possible, the saints and angels weep. The Russian 
 and Eastern Churches have indeed an elaborate sym- 
 bolical ceremonial accompanying their worship. The 
 spirit of devotion, however, runs through it all. 
 The great ceremonies peculiar to the papal see, on 
 the other hand, have on them the mark of a worldly 
 kingdom as they are intended to have. This worldli- 
 ness is another and cumulative reason why we cannot, 
 in justice, give to Rome the title of " The Holy See." 
 Its true name should rather be " The Worldly See." 
 
 There is an agonizing cry going up in our day for 
 a more unworldly, purer Christianity. Men are say- 
 ing that it is not to be found in the churches ; that 
 the revelation of God in nature contradicts the com- 
 monly received theology; that the life of Christ has 
 been overlaid with scholastic dogmas ; that humanity 
 has been neglected for ecclesiastical interests. The 
 voice of the Lord is to be heard speaking through 
 the nations. If the Anglican Church is to meet our 
 century's want, she must be filled more fully with the 
 love of God and of our fellow-man. She must ener- 
 getically forward every enterprise for social and civic 
 betterment. She must become in action what she is 
 in her prayer-book. But she will not become united 
 in this loving work, nor realize her inherited Catho- 
 licity, until her members are convinced that the 
 revival of Catholicity does not purport reunion with 
 Rome, as she is, and submission to the papal 
 supremacy.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 SECESSIONS 
 
 THE great revival of Catholicity in the Anglican 
 communion stimulated theological investiga- 
 tion in every department and every direction. It 
 opened the long-closed storehouse of patristic learn- 
 ing. It studied anew the great Anglican divines. It 
 gave a new zest to biblical research and exegesis. It 
 reread with the aid of new discoveries the history of 
 the Reformation. It came to a deeper realization 
 of the mystery of the incarnation and its extension in 
 the sacraments. The whole range of Catholic theol- 
 ogy came out in more vivid colors and was grasped 
 with a new and more intense appreciation. The 
 movement developed higher ideals of sanctity and a 
 personal self-sacrificing devotion in clergy and laity. 
 The spiritual poverty of the Church's ministrations 
 to the people came to be keenly realized. Lives, 
 talents, means were lavishly poured out at the feet of 
 Christ. Perhaps never since the day of Pentecost 
 has there been a spiritual movement so learned, so 
 real, so intense. Great hopes were kindled for the 
 Church's progress. Men looked, with holy desire, 
 to a reunion of Christendom. They desired, believ- 
 ing in Christ's prayer, to think it possible. But so 
 great a movement was sure to arouse, to the utmost, 
 the animosity of Satan and all his malefic cunning.
 
 344 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 In every conceivable way the movement was har- 
 assed and attacked. No misrepresentation was too 
 gross, no weapon too vulgar. The odium theologi- 
 cinn was aroused to an exasperating degree. The air 
 was thick with the dust of controversy and contention. 
 The university tribunals were appealed to in Oxford, 
 the mobs, in the east of London. Bishops charged 
 against it, the Times and other newspapers denounced 
 it, the judges of the privy council soiled their ermine 
 by their displacement of law in behalf of policy. 
 
 We may look back over fifty years and see how 
 the cause has prospered, for it was of the Lord. 
 Neither the ofttimes folly of adherents nor the blind- 
 ness of adversaries could stop it. But like some 
 great battle, it has cost untold sacrifice and agonies 
 of soul. It has, however, by its furnace fires formed 
 and purified many to a high degree of sanctity, who 
 are now resting with God. In the time of prosperity 
 [men may attain salvation, but in times of suffering 
 (and adversity they are made saints. 
 
 It could not also but be that under the exasperating 
 and depressing temptations some were found who 
 could not bear the strain and in time of temptation 
 fell away. They laid down their arms. They turned 
 back in the day of battle. They became victims 
 of their doubts and fears. They began in their 
 recovery of old truths to lose sight of the propor- 
 tion of the faith, to question their position, or, at- 
 tracted by Rome's external appearance of unity, to 
 contrast unfavorably some aspects of the Anglican 
 Church with that of Rome. The latter church 
 took on, to their imagination, the character of an
 
 SECESSIONS 345 
 
 ideal one. They confounded the decisions of the civil 
 courts with that of the Church herself. They lost 
 faith in the possibility of England's Church ever 
 regaining its Catholic heritage. They said in their 
 despondency " Can these dry bones live?" And so 
 from one ostensible cause or another they sought 
 relief from responsibility by surrender to Rome. 
 Some, mostly women, were beguiled by the fascinat- 
 ing personality and artful arguments of certain skilled 
 proselyters. Comparatively few went from convic- 
 tion after a candid and full investigation of Scripture 
 and history. It was remarked in the early days of the 
 movement that the Verts were not found among the 
 great students of Holy Scripture, and believers in 
 the Church's authority, like Pusey, Keble, Marriott, 
 Isaac Williams, Neale, and others, but came from a 
 class of restless, speculating minds like Newman, 
 Ward, or poetical and imaginative ones like Faber, 
 Caswell, or ecclesiastic politicians like Manning. 
 
 Looking at the Anglican Church as she is to-day, 
 we see her extending throughout the world. She is 
 becoming rehabilitated. She is rising again in her 
 strength. If trials exist and difficulties confront her 
 they are diminishing forces. The Catholic church- 
 men in England have learned not to be affected by 
 decisions of State courts. They have learned some- 
 thing by their own mistakes, how to wait on God and 
 to tarry His leisure. It is His Church and He is 
 working out plans, not our plans but His own. We 
 can only read His providences as they accomplish 
 themselves, and by learning to conform ourselves to 
 them. Better than all by their conferences church-
 
 346 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 men are learning to trust one another more, and to 
 recognize the good in all schools of thought. Union 
 within the Church, it is being felt, must first be won 
 and established as the foundation of any union with 
 those without or with sister churches. There are 
 great grounds of encouragement and the skies are 
 bright with hopefulness. Only let churchmen trust 
 God more, get together, bear with one another, and 
 the Church will reap her joyful harvest. 
 
 It is true that Rome is busy with her proselyting 
 efforts, endeavoring to unsettle individuals, especially 
 those in the early and unripe stage of piety. There 
 are those who make this work of proselyting a 
 business and study the art of injecting doubt into 
 susceptible minds. And it is one of their common 
 stock arguments to refer to the number of persons 
 who have joined the Roman Church. Now during 
 the past thirty years there have been in England no 
 secessions of any great scholars, and in America 
 secessions have always been few. There are some 
 points, however, it would be well to consider. First, 
 more stay than go. 
 
 The movement has now gone on for some seventy 
 years, and during this time it would be safe to say 
 there have been about seventy thousand clergy in 
 the Anglican communion. These clergy are brought 
 up, not like Roman priests, who have not so unre- 
 stricted access to our books, but with the oppor- 
 tunity and with a felt duty to examine fully both 
 sides of the controversy between the Anglican Church 
 and Rome. We have never known an Anglican 
 clergyman who has not, sometime in his life, honestly
 
 SECESSIONS 347 
 
 and sincerely tried to do so. Considering the idio- 
 syncrasies of minds, the trials in the English Church, 
 the harsh treatment of Catholic churchmen, the de- 
 spondency that ofttimes overtakes a priest, the allure- 
 ments of Rome, the wonder is that so few have gone 
 over. Yet out of these seventy thousand clergy, 
 most of whom have conscientiously examined the 
 controversy, in spite of all the trials to which the 
 Catholic clergy are exposed, only a fraction of one 
 per cent has decided in favor of Rome's claims. 
 When, therefore, the convert-maker without or the 
 mischief-maker within points out that some one of 
 the clergy has gone to Rome, tell him that there 
 have been in the last seventy years nigh seventy 
 thousand who on their knees have examined the 
 question and who have stayed. 
 
 Another point it is well to keep in mind is this: 
 More have left Rome and come to the Catholic 
 position than have left and taken up with that of 
 Rome. In estimating the men and numbers on each 
 side we must take into account the fact that the 
 influence of the movement was not confined to 
 England but spread throughout Europe. Pusey, 
 Liddon, Bishop Forbes, and others, came into com- 
 munication with a number of leading Roman Catholic 
 doctors and professors on the continent, among 
 whom was the great Dr. Dollinger. Anglican books 
 were read, and the Catholic position regarding the 
 papacy was cordially recognized by these great 
 scholars. So that when the Roman Curia sprang 
 on the Western Church its scheme for decreeing 
 the papal infallibility in 1870 there was a revolt in
 
 348 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Germany, and Reinkens and Weber and Schiiltz and 
 Herzog, and others, with nigh a hundred thousand 
 followers, broke with Rome and established the old 
 Catholic communion. When, therefore, any one talks 
 about Newman's secession, we can tell him it was 
 more than offset by Dr. Dollinger's. No group of 
 English Roman converts can surpass in devotion or 
 learning the great divines who have left Rome on the 
 continent. If ten thousand of the laity or more have 
 joined Rome in England, ten times as many on the 
 continent have left her. So let us hold up the scales, 
 and while there is a small pile of grains of sand on the 
 Roman side, there are many iron pound weights on 
 the other. For more under the influence of this 
 Oxford movement have left Rome than have joined 
 her. 
 
 But it is asked, what takes the few, who do go, 
 over to Rome? What are the reasons for their 
 'verting? 
 
 So far as our knowledge goes, a change of faith is 
 usually preceded by a period of spiritual or mental 
 depression. For some cause, and a clergyman is 
 especially liable to such an attack, a mist of de- 
 spondency has settled on his soul. He has allowed 
 himself to become more and more critical of the 
 failings of his own church, and has gazed at them 
 until they have assumed exaggerated proportions. 
 He has met with parochial or other oppositions, and 
 not with the success he expected. He has had an 
 ideal of a perfect church such as is not to be found 
 in Holy Scripture. He has made certain ceremonies, 
 of which he is fond, tests of orthodoxy. He has
 
 SECESSIONS 349 
 
 allowed himself to dwell on the attractive features of 
 Rome until his imagination has made her an ideal 
 church. As the elder Pugin said, who awoke with a 
 great shock after his 'version, he had previously 
 thought Rome was a church filled with holy clergy, 
 holy churches, holy monks, holy nuns, holy every- 
 thing. He has been disturbed by the untheological, 
 perhaps misunderstood, utterances of a few very broad 
 churchmen. He complains of the laxity of discipline, 
 though not unfrequently he has in his independence 
 disregarded it himself. He censures the bishops for 
 not condemning heretical utterances, forgetting that 
 only a very few years ago the American bishops put 
 forth a special pastoral in the strongest terms doing 
 that very thing. He regards the clergy and bishops 
 as sadly in error, not realizing that the Church's 
 formal utterance is to be found in her prayer-book, 
 and that the failing of individual teachers is no reason 
 why one should leave one's post, but rather why one 
 should stay there. It is often difficult to get at real 
 reasons. The reasons men subsequently assign are 
 apt to be manufactured explanations. The papers 
 announce with great flourish that a priest has joined 
 Rome, and those acquainted with his inner life may 
 know that it is because of some secret sin, disappointed 
 ambition, or spiritual pride. For the most part the 
 unsettlement is occasioned by some unfaithfulness, 
 increased by disappointments, and not unfrequently 
 accompanied by obvious self-deceptions and deceit. 
 Comparatively few go, after a full examination of the 
 question, with the determination by God's grace to 
 go or stay as God might show the way.
 
 350 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 Secession suggests a further question. What has 
 been the effect on the spiritual life of those who have 
 left the Church for Rome? Have they as a rule 
 shown by their lives that they have been improved by 
 it? We know that thousands have come to us in this 
 country from the sects. More than a thousand of our 
 American clergy and bishops are converts. Coming 
 from religious motives and because they sought 
 Christ's Church, we find that after a while there is a 
 perceptible advance in spirituality. This is the usual 
 testimony. However good Presbyterians or Congre- 
 gationalists or Methodists they may have been, after 
 their union with the Church there is an obvious in- 
 crease in spiritual illumination and growth in holiness. 
 Now if the Roman Church is the only true church, 
 and is alone possessed of sacramental grace, the same 
 mark of improvement ought to be as obvious on the 
 bulk of her converts from us. But what is the case? 
 According to the account of some who have tried the 
 experiment, they have frankly stated that they were 
 no better after than before. Some, a small class, 
 become apostates and give up the faith entirely. Being 
 men of a critically intellectual turn of mind, they 
 found that they and others fell into the same sins as 
 they did when Anglicans, and that the Roman sacra- 
 ments gave no other aid than that they had previously 
 received. The devil then had them in a logical vise. 
 They had denied the Anglican sacraments to be 
 channels of grace, and now it was proved the Roman 
 were no better, and so nothing was to be believed. 
 There were others who grew spiritually, but no more 
 so than did those whom they had left behind. No
 
 SECESSIONS 351 
 
 one would say that Rome had any holier men than 
 Pusey or Keble or Carter. 
 
 One mark, however, was upon this last class of 
 converts. They were not content with Rome as they 
 found it. Faber developed, so old Romans said, a 
 new Italian Mariolatry in England. He could not 
 rest till the Immaculate Conception had been decreed. 
 Manning, the great political ecclesiastic, must work to 
 get the Roman system complete to his satisfaction by 
 bringing about the decree of the " Papal Infallibility." 
 While Newman, thwarted by Roman intrigues in all 
 of his three plans, for a new translation of the Scrip- 
 tures, a Catholic university, and a house for the 
 Oratorians at Oxford, stripped of his former influence, 
 lay, like a great stranded whale thrown up on the 
 shore, in the provincial town of Birmingham. Those 
 who knew well the lives of the converts have witnessed 
 that on the whole it was not satisfactory. 
 
 We cannot conclude without pointing out the sin of 
 secession. A churchman's joining Rome is a very 
 different act from that of a sectarian. In joining 
 Rome, the churchman must submit to a conditional 
 baptism. He must be confirmed, the repetition of 
 which sacrament is a sacrilege. By receiving his so- 
 called first communion he denies that he has before 
 sacramentally received the body and blood of the 
 Lord. If a priest, he denies his orders and the 
 validity of his sacraments. In all these acts he turns 
 against the Holy Ghost and his Lord, denying their 
 gifts and presence. Moreover, he deserts his post. 
 God has placed him in the Anglican Church there to 
 be a witness, just as he placed Elijah in Israel amidst
 
 352 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 its worship. It was very trying to the prophet and so, 
 heartsick, he fled away to the wilderness. But there 
 the Word of the Lord searched him out and said, 
 " What doest thou here, Elijah." It is just as much 
 desertion for a soldier to go over to some other regi- 
 ment or place on the battle-field as to run away. 
 Having the faith and sacraments and free from schism 
 we must stay where we are placed. Secession is thus 
 a sin presumptuous and deadly. 
 
 It is the most presumptuous sin we believe a 
 Christian man can commit. For in deciding on the 
 claims of the papal supremacy as against the Eastern 
 and Anglican Churches in favor of Rome, he assumes 
 to himself the powers of an Ecumenical council. It 
 is an act full of spiritual danger. For if Rome were 
 right in her claims, God could not condemn one who 
 said that as a Catholic he had not ventured to assume 
 an authority not given him ; and as God had not so 
 ordered it that a council of the whole Church had 
 declared the papal supremacy, he could not, by his 
 not submitting to it, be found guilty of disobeying 
 Him. 
 
 It is also the most terrible spiritual sin we believe 
 a Christian man can commit. For if Anglican orders 
 and sacraments are valid, and there is no surer proof 
 of the existence of God than there is of their validity, 
 he denies having received Christ in the sacraments, 
 and so perils his own soul. It is only very callow 
 persons who are caught by the proselyter's fallacy, 
 " You Anglicans say we Romans can be saved, but 
 we do not admit this about yourselves. As a matter 
 of prudence, therefore, come with us." The answer
 
 SECESSIONS 353 
 
 is : Catholics believe that those born in the Roman 
 communion and faithful to Christ can be saved, but 
 assert that for a churchman to deny his sacraments, 
 to desert his post, and to join Rome is to run a great 
 risk of being lost. 
 
 Not a few who have joined Rome have felt it their 
 duty to leave her and return. It is a hard and hu- 
 miliating task to acknowledge they have made a 
 mistake. It requires a high degree of Christian for- 
 titude to resist the solicitations of friends and the 
 threatenings of Roman clergy. But it is the way of 
 duty and honor, and the only way to make reparation 
 to our Blessed Lord. 
 
 Holding, as Anglican Catholics do, the most impor- 
 tant position in the great conflict, they are exposed to 
 special temptations, and none more subtle than to 
 leave their posts. They become depressed with the 
 outlook. They have an ideal of what the kmg's 
 daughter ought to be ; and they freely criticise and 
 find fault with their own communion as they would 
 not that God should criticise themselves. They for- 
 get that as God bears with them, so He bears with 
 His Church. Despondency when not occasioned by 
 physical causes is a work of Satan. Nothing so 
 helps it as for two sympathizing friends to talk over 
 together the evils existing in the Church. It may be 
 true that the general ignorance and prejudice is dis- 
 mal and virulent, that the Agnostic and Erastian spirit 
 is dominant, that Christianity is losing its hold, that 
 the bishops are timid, that the progress of the Cath- 
 olic cause is slow. There is some truth in all this, 
 but the more of truth the more reasons for courage 
 
 23
 
 354 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 and hope. When Israel is in the brick kiln then 
 cometh Moses. In the fourth watch of the night to 
 the tired rowers cometh Jesus on the waters. " Our 
 checks," said Dr. Pusey, " have always turned out to 
 be our greatest blessings. Let us tarry the Lord's 
 leisure." Let us remember the martyrs and confes- 
 sors. Let us offer the holy sacrifice and put our trust 
 in the Lord.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 ANGLICANISM AND REUNION 
 
 THERE are among others these glories which 
 belong to the Anglican Church. The first is 
 her continuity. She is not a sect of yesterday. She 
 is not a man-made organization. She did not begin, 
 as is falsely asserted, with King Henry the Eighth. 
 He had about the same relation to her as Pontius 
 Pilate had to Christianity. She reaches back in her 
 history to Apostolic times. The authority and spirit- 
 ual powers the Lord gave His Apostles have been 
 transmitted to her. The golden network of the Apos- 
 tolic succession binds its bishops and clergy to 
 Christ. At the Reformation no new Church was 
 founded. The Catholic Church in England rejected 
 the mediaeval growth of the papacy as the great 
 Eastern patriarchs and the Orthodox Churches of 
 the East had done before. The ancient faith, as 
 declared in the creeds and the undisputed Ecumeni- 
 cal councils, was retained. The appeal the Church 
 made in the conduct of her reforms was to Holy 
 Scripture and antiquity. While the general principle 
 was correct in the undertaking, no doubt some 
 mistakes were made, and the Church, while gaining 
 much, suffered some loss. " We buy," as Burke 
 said, " our blessings at a price." But no new 
 church was created, no change made in the orders
 
 356 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 of the ministry. The priesthood was preserved ; the 
 validity of the sacraments was secured; the torch 
 of living truth was handed on. 
 
 One proof of this is to be found in the fact that of 
 the fifty-six hundred clergy who celebrated mass in 
 Queen Mary's reign, only about some three hundred 
 beneficed clergy are known to have refused to accept 
 the book of common prayer and conform in the reign 
 of Queen Elizabeth. 1 It is stated, on the authority of 
 Chief Justice Coke, in a charge delivered by him at 
 Norwich, that the pope offered to allow the use of the 
 book of common prayer if the queen would only sub- 
 mit to his supremacy. 2 " There is no point," said 
 the non-Conformist Professor Beard in his Hibbert 
 lectures, " at which it can be said, ' Here the old 
 Church ends ; here the new begins.' " The historian 
 Freeman, the Lord Chancellor Selborne, the great 
 statesman Gladstone, emphatically said so likewise. 
 Judge Sir Robert Phillimore declared, " It is not only 
 a religious, but a legal error to suppose that a new 
 church was introduced into the realm at the time of 
 the Reformation. It is not less the language of our 
 law than of our divinity that the old church was re- 
 stored, not that a new one was substituted." Thus 
 the church founded and organized by Christ and 
 His Apostles has come down to us through the ages, 
 bearing the majestic treasures of the Apostolic order, 
 the life-giving sacraments, and the Catholic faith. 
 
 It is to be admitted that there are differences of 
 doctrinal expression, ceremonial, and practices to be 
 
 1 Gee's " Elizabethan Clergy." 
 
 2 Strype, " Life of Archbishop Parker."
 
 ANGLICANISM AND REUNION 357 
 
 found. These are often made a target by Roman 
 critics. But the existence of different schools of 
 theology is a sign of interest in religion. The 
 Western Church has its Thomists and Scotists, its 
 Gallicans and Ultramontanes. So long as the creeds 
 and dogmas proclaimed and certified by the whole 
 Church are held, differences of opinion on sub- 
 ordinate points are allowable. We have not any 
 such bitterness and party spirit as has been found ex- 
 isting between contending schools in Rome. There 
 are extreme dogmatists and men of exaggerated utter- 
 ances on both wings. But the differences between 
 the great body of churchmen are not so great as 
 they seem to superficial observers, or as the interested 
 advocates would make them out to be. 
 
 It is a help in understanding these differences to 
 remember the theological distinction between dog- 
 matic and systematic theology. By the first we 
 mean the great underlying and essential facts of the 
 Christian faith, and the creeds and the accredited 
 dogmas put forth by conciliar authority which ex- 
 press and guard them; by systematic theology, the 
 philosophical expressions, theories, and explanations 
 which unite them scientifically together. Now leaving 
 out the extremists, there is concerning the dogmatic 
 faith and creeds comparatively little difference. The 
 Anglican Church puts the creeds and liturgy and 
 ordinal and catechism and prayer-book into the 
 hands of her clergy, and bids them interpret Holy 
 Scripture according to the ancient fathers. Where 
 this is honestly done, men will find themselves 
 standing not so very far apart.
 
 358 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 It, moreover, is to be observed that the high and 
 low schools are not in principle antagonistic, but are 
 supplementary to each other. The low churchman 
 emphasizes the subjective side of religion. He 
 dwells on the sinfulness of man's nature, and his 
 redemption by the atoning efficacy of Christ's cross, 
 and the necessity of conversion and a living faith. 
 The high churchman dwells on the objective aspect 
 of religion. Christianity came into the world as an 
 institution. An Apostolic ministry is essential to 
 connect us with Christ's authority. The sacraments 
 are the ordained channels and instruments of con- 
 veying grace. The two aspects do not exclude one 
 another. The truth lies in their combination. 
 
 Every school, high, low, or broad, has its own 
 danger. The subjective or low church system, un- 
 balanced by the objective side of religion, leads to a 
 denial of the visible Church, its priesthood, and the 
 sacraments as instruments and effective signs of 
 grace ; the broad, or rationalizing, to a denial of all 
 that is supernatural in God's Word, and of authority, 
 and the Church's inherited dogmatic faith. The 
 extreme Catholic or pro-Roman one, by his devotion 
 to Western scholasticism, centralization in govern- 
 ment, mistaken interpretation of Scripture, impatient 
 with the condition of the English Church, turns in 
 faint-heartedness to the papacy. 
 
 But these errors lead to their own cure. The 
 divine life of our Church is no more forcibly shown 
 than in her inherent power of self-purification. Christ 
 is in her, and she shares in His indestructible and 
 resurrection life. The faith is preserved in her, not
 
 ANGLICANISM AND REUNION 359 
 
 by ecclesiastical trials, necessary as they must be. 
 Extremes lead to their own elimination; and so 
 we have found the extreme low churchmen, who 
 deny priesthood and sacramental grace, seceding 
 from the Church and founding a new sect, called 
 the Reformed Episcopalians. They tried in America 
 to get the Church to alter the prayer-book, which 
 they admitted was not in accord with their theology. 
 It taught, they said, the Apostolic succession, priest- 
 hood, baptismal regeneration, and the real presence. 
 The Church refused to change the prayer-book, and 
 they withdrew. It was the honest course to pursue 
 and the logical outcome of their theology. Likewise 
 Catholics, who have become pro-Romans, believing 
 in the divine power of the papacy, and our duty to 
 submit to its dominion, naturally gravitate to Rome. 
 They go out from us because they have ceased to 
 be Catholics and become papists. The rationalizing 
 broad churchmen who deny the fundamental facts 
 of the creed, such as the virgin birth and the resur- 
 rection of Christ's body, are eventually pricked by 
 conscience, which tells them they have no right to go 
 on saying one thing at the altar and denying it in the 
 pulpit. It is like leading a double life. They are in 
 a false position. It is dishonorable to eat the bread 
 of the Church whose creed they do not teach. It is 
 far better for all those who do not believe in the creed 
 and sacramental system of the Church to be outside 
 of it. They then are delivered from the sin of saying 
 what they do not believe, or not discerning the Lord's 
 body in the Eucharist, and so eating and drinking to 
 their own condemnation.
 
 360 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 In Western Christendom a tremendous struggle is 
 going on. It takes two forms, one in the Roman, 
 another in the Anglican communion. They are alike 
 in this, that Rome is having her struggle with the State 
 in France, and the Anglican with the State in England. 
 Both churches are assailed, in France by unbelief 
 in Christianity, in England by unbelief in Catholicity. 
 For all that is Catholic our sympathies must be with 
 the French Catholics, and we can but sorrow that so 
 many priests there are leaving the Church. There 
 is, however, a difference between the struggle of 
 the English Church to restore the Catholic faith and 
 worship, and that between the papacy and the Italian 
 Government. The two contests differ radically. The 
 English Church is trying to free herself in things 
 spiritual from State control, while the papacy is trying 
 to recover her lost temporal sovereignty. The one 
 is seeking to be loosed from bondage to the world's 
 power ; the other is trying to make herself a worldly 
 power. The English Church is struggling to resume 
 her spiritual rights ; the papacy is plotting to regain 
 her earthly sovereignty. 
 
 The positions also of the two bodies in England 
 are very different positions. The Church of England, 
 as possessed of a continuous life from the establish- 
 ment of Christianity in England, alone has lawful 
 jurisdiction; while the new modern Italian mission 
 is an intruding schismatical organization. Moreover, 
 as the sin of schism lies with that party that compels 
 withdrawal, by demanding uncatholic or uncanoni- 
 cal terms of communion, the Church of Rome is in 
 schism everywhere. She is in schism in the city of
 
 ANGLICANISM AND REUNION 361 
 
 Rome, though not equally and for the same reasons 
 that she is in London. Again, the English Church 
 (unlike other portions of the Anglican communion) 
 is suffering from her present connection with the 
 State, and so is feeble in the exercise of her own 
 courts of discipline ; but since she declares the faith 
 in her formularies, Catholics are not committed to 
 heresy by communicating with her. On the other 
 hand, while the Anglican Church is succeeding in 
 recovering the faith as once delivered, and by all 
 everywhere received, the Romans by late additions 
 and the turning of what were once acknowledged to 
 be but opinions into dogmas of the faith are failing 
 in holding fast to it. 
 
 Again, the Anglican Church has not added to the 
 faith, while the Roman has. The doctrine of the 
 papal infallibility and the immaculate conception 
 of the Blessed Virgin cannot bear the test of Cath- 
 olicity. Neither can that of the treasury of merits 
 accumulated by the saints' works of supererogation, 
 and placed at the disposal of the pope, on which 
 the modern system of indulgences is based. The 
 withdrawal of the chalice from the laity is in con- 
 tradiction of the universal custom of the Catholic 
 Church for over a thousand years, and that of the 
 Eastern Church to-day. And while no one would 
 question the marvellous grace bestowed on the ever- 
 blessed Theotokos, the Bringer-Forth of God, yet the 
 assigning to her the position and office of the neck 
 of the mystical body through whom all graces must 
 pass from the head to the members, is no part of the 
 original deposit of the faith. It is not the language
 
 362 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 of the fathers to say " God has constituted Mary as 
 the ordinary dispensatrix of His grace," nor that it 
 is safer to go to the Blessed Virgin than to our Lord, 
 or that " Mary so loved the world that she gave her 
 only begotten Son." "Mary is the most faithful 
 mediatrix of our salvation." " Thou, O Mary, art the 
 propitiatory of the whole world." " From whom thou 
 turnest away thy face there shall be no hope of salva- 
 tion." " It is impossible any sinner can be saved, 
 save through thy help and favor, O Virgin." " For 
 whom the justice of God save not, Mary saves by 
 her intercession, by infinite mercy." "The nation 
 and kingdom which shall not serve thee, shall 
 perish." l 
 
 The Anglican Church is thus seen to be free from 
 the charge of schism, and her formularies from her- 
 esy. On the other hand, Rome is both schismatical 
 and, as testified by her decrees and accredited teach- 
 ers, in error. It follows that while Anglican Catholics 
 are not committed to heresy by communicating in 
 the Anglican Church, because there may be some 
 heretics in it, yet to enter the Roman communion is 
 to make oneself responsible as a partaker of author- 
 ized schism and formally promulgated heresy. It is 
 painful to write this, for all that is Catholic in the 
 Latin communion we love, but in the presence of 
 efforts to unsettle the faith of English Church mem- 
 bers, loyalty to the Catholic faith requires it. 
 
 If Anglicans are ever desponding, they have only to 
 look to the past and see how God has protected their 
 
 1 See Dr. Pusey's "Sermon on Rule of Faith," pp. 50, 58, and 
 " Eirenicon." i vol.
 
 ANGLICANISM AND REUNION 363 
 
 communion. A branch cut off from the tree must 
 perish, but a living branch is known by its persistent 
 vitality and fruit. Assaulted, as seldom any portion 
 of the Church of Christ has been, during the past 
 three hundred years, it has by its inherent power re- 
 sisted all attacks and emerged a victor. Neither the 
 assaults of Rome under Mary, nor of the Puritans 
 under Cromwell, nor the disaster of the non-jurors' 
 withdrawal in the seventeenth, nor the Erastianism 
 of the eighteenth century, nor all the worldly com- 
 binations of the nineteenth, have crushed out her 
 Catholicity. 
 
 And not least of God's goodness to her is seen in 
 two great providences. The first was the early death 
 of King Edward VI. He was followed by Queen 
 Mary of unhappy memory. But the evils wrought 
 by Mary were temporary ones. Had, however, King 
 Edward lived, the Church would have lost its Catholic 
 heritage. With all the tyrannous spirit of a Tudor 
 monarch and all the narrowness and self-conceit of a 
 reforming Calvinist, the King would have made the 
 Church like unto the deformity of the Continental 
 reformers. We read in Strype's " Memorials of 
 Cranmer" that the king had determined to make 
 further changes, and if the bishops refused, to make 
 them on his own authority. The continuity of the 
 Church would have become so broken, and her 
 Catholic doctrine so marred, that she would have 
 largely lost her heritage and become a withered 
 branch of Christ's Church. God preserved the Church 
 by Edward's merciful removal. 
 
 Another, and we deem it the next great providential!
 
 364 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 blessing vouchsafed the Anglican Church, was the 
 denial of the validity of our orders by Leo XIII. It, 
 like the former providence, has wrought in a wonder- 
 ful way for the preservation of the Anglican Church. 
 It has helped to unite her members, has painfully 
 revealed to us the worldly policy that governs the 
 papacy, has destroyed the possibility of any belief in 
 the papal infallibility, has dissipated the dreams of 
 corporate reunion with Rome, has helped to fill the 
 Church with new courage, and, fixing her gaze on her 
 true mission, to discern the mighty work of evangeli- 
 zation she may do for God. Had the pope decided 
 otherwise, it is impossible to estimate the strong tide 
 of love and trust that would have impulsively turned 
 towards him. But providentially he did not so declare. 
 Anglicans know they possess valid orders and sacra- 
 ments. They can no more doubt this than the exist- 
 ence of God or any essential fact of Christianity. So 
 that when the pope decided against what Anglicans 
 knew, with a divine certainty, to be true, they knew 
 with the same certainty that he was not infallible. It 
 was seen to be a decision as contrary to the truth as 
 when he condemned Galileo and the planetary system. 
 So, for many, the glamour of the papacy passed away, 
 and the papal curia, looked at calmly and dispassion- 
 ately, was seen to be but a piece of skilfully con- 
 structed human machinery. The papal idol, to which 
 some, not discerning its real worldly origin and 
 character, had begun to turn, went down like that of 
 Dagon before the Ark of the Lord. Corporate union 
 with Rome, as she is, is seen to be beyond the range 
 of human possibility, and not the terminus of the
 
 ANGLICANISM AND REUNION 365 
 
 Tractarian movement, or the leading of Divine 
 Providence. 
 
 But while this is so, there are brightening prospects 
 in the East. Thither, it would seem, God's provi- h^v, pr 
 dence is directing us. The venerable orthodox Rus- ~" 
 sian and Greek Church is turning to us with friendly^'' 
 expressions of interest. She says, " We do not ask 
 you, as Rome does, to ' submit,' we only ask, ' Do v >- ^\^ 
 you hold the same Catholic faith we have inherited 
 from the Fathers? ' If you do this, we are brothers." 
 When we consider that the East has been but little 
 affected by the schoolmen, and had not to pass 
 through the convulsions of a Reformation, and has 
 for nine hundred years borne consistent witness for 
 the faith once delivered, and against Roman errors, 
 Anglicans should be willing to free themselves from 
 their prejudices and somewhat self-conceit, and listen 
 to her kindly words. 
 
 The Church, indwelt by Christ, guided by the 
 Holy Spirit, is a living organism, and we may trust 
 the Voice of God speaking through her before she 
 was rent into Eastern and Western divisions. The 
 Voice of God speaking to the churches is not confined, 
 as some Anglicans seem to think, to any particular 
 centuries. But in the seven Ecumenical councils we 
 have the Voice of the Spirit and in the seven holy 
 mysteries, the means of grace. 
 
 The question presenting the most difficulty has to 
 do with the Filioque. There is no difference in belief 
 between the Anglican communion and the venerable 
 East on the doctrine of the Filioque, but without 
 Ecumenical consent it has no right to be in the Creed.
 
 366 CHRISTIAN AND CATHOLIC 
 
 May God inspire the wise men of the Church to solve 
 the difficulty. Each church in the case of restored 
 intercommunion would retain its own independent 
 government and liturgy. Anglicans and Easterns 
 must be content with agreement in the ancient faith, 
 not in the uniformity of its outward expression. 
 While the faith is unchangeable, the Church, as the 
 bride of Christ, has been led to follow her Lord's life, 
 and sometimes has been more absorbed in devotion 
 to His incarnation, sometimes to His passion. The 
 faith abides from age to age; but ceremonies and 
 practices of devotion are the fresh outcome of the 
 Church's love. The East and the West have their own 
 ceremonial traditions, and the differences existing 
 should not hinder the restoration of Christian recog- 
 nition and fellowship. 
 
 If a reunion of Christendom is to be attained, it 
 will come through the union of the Anglican and 
 Eastern Churches. It is in this direction the safe 
 guiding providence of God directs His people. It 
 requires largeness of vision and generous toleration 
 of unessential differences, and much of the charity 
 that hopeth all things, believeth all things, and of the 
 faith that believes that with God all things are pos- 
 sible. For so glorious a consummation Anglicans 
 must be willing to recognize the devotion, the mis- 
 sionary zeal, and the orthodoxy of the Russian and 
 Greek Churches. The cause of the reunion of 
 Christendom is the dearest to the heart of Christ. 
 What saints have longed and prayed for, let the 
 Catholics of to-day labor to accomplish. We can 
 do much by learning more of the Easterns and their
 
 ANGLICANISM AND REUNION 367 
 
 worship, and studying their catechism. The all- 
 availing power of the Holy Sacrifice is ours and the 
 promise of answer to prayer in His Name. May the 
 sacrifice of the altar be more frequently offered for 
 the reunion of Christendom, and the prayer of blessed 
 Bishop Andrews be more in use among us ! 
 
 Bless, gracious JFatljer, tty ^olp Catholic 
 C imrci) ; fill it toitt) trutl) anD grace ; inhere it is cor- 
 rupt, purge it ; toljere it is in error, Direct it ; totjere 
 it is superstitious, rectify it ; toljere it is amiss, re- 
 form it ; ujljrrr it is rigiit, strengthen ant) confirm 
 it; uiljere it is DtUiDcD ant) rent asunuer, liral the 
 breaches of it, <$ ^tjou ^ofy <Dne of ^Israel ; t^roug^ 
 31esus Christ our ilort). 
 
 31esu tiear, 3f|e0u bless, 3Iesu anstoer our petition, 
 for tty ^ert^'s sabe. 
 
 Laus Or o,
 
 INDEX
 
 INDEX 
 
 ALEXANDER, Bishop of Deny, 
 
 9,95 
 
 ALEXANDRIA, Council of, 184 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS, from earliest 
 formation of the Anglican 
 Church in possession of Apos- 
 tolic Ministry, 188; objec- 
 tions of Sectarians and Roman 
 Catholics based on ignorance 
 or on policy, 189; prima facie 
 proof of Anglican orders being 
 valid that she claims and acts 
 as if she had, 194; preserves 
 carefully distinctions between 
 the three orders, 194; succes- 
 sion through three lines of 
 descent, 197; Irish line, 198; 
 Archbishop of Spalato, 198; 
 Archbishop Parker, 199; Lin- 
 gard, Eastcourt, Cyriacus, 
 Dollinger, Courayer, on 
 Parker's consecration, 199; 
 Barlow's call, 201; validity 
 of ordinal by which he was 
 consecrated, 203; intention of 
 its framers, 207; its valid 
 matter and form, 209 
 ANGLICANISM AND REUNION, the 
 glories belonging to the Angli- 
 can Church, 355; her con- 
 tinuity, 356; the different 
 schools within her supplemen- 
 tary of each other, 356 seq.; 
 
 theological distinction between 
 dogmatic and systematic the- 
 ology, 357; every school has 
 its danger, 358; these errors 
 lead to their own cure, 358; 
 Anglican Church free from 
 schism, 360; Church of Eng- 
 land suffering from her present 
 connection with the State, 
 361; Anglican Church has 
 not added to the faith, 361; 
 Two great providences, early 
 death of Edward VI and 
 Leo X's declaration, 363; 
 brightening prospects in East, 
 365; reunion of Christendom 
 will come through union of 
 Anglican with East, 366 
 AUGUSTINE, ST., 106 
 
 BAPTISM, Holy, 218 seq. 
 BOSSUET, on Bishops receiving 
 jurisdiction from Pope, 329 
 
 CARLO BORROMEO, ST., state of 
 
 clergy in Milan, 197 
 CARROLL (R.C.), consecrated by 
 
 one Bishop only, 202 
 CELSUS, 50 
 CHILLING WORTH, 132 
 CHRIST, certainty of His earthly 
 
 life and death, 20; modern 
 
 French Orator, Christ is Prog-
 
 372 
 
 INDEX 
 
 ress, 21 ; came as fulfilment 
 of prophecy, 21; man's prom- 
 ised Deliverer, 21; deliverer 
 of seed of Abraham, 22; of 
 tribe of Judah, 23; rod of stem 
 of Jesse, 23; His three-fold 
 offices, prophet, priest and 
 king, 23-24; certified to world 
 by special herald, 25; born in 
 Bethlehem, 25; preaching glad 
 tidings and doing gracious 
 works, 25; enter Jerusalem in 
 triumph, 25, betrayed, 25; 
 put to death, 25; incidents 
 of crucifixion foretold, 26; 
 prophecy of Christ in cere- 
 monial law, 26; heathen poets 
 and philosophers Virgil and 
 Plato prophesied, 27; a 
 teacher sent by God, 30; 
 independent of His race and 
 time, 31; contrasted with 
 Caesar and Mahomet, 31; 
 declared Fatherhood of God 
 over all the race and univer- 
 sality of His religion, 32; 
 comes not as common de- 
 stroying reformer, 33; His 
 energetic action not spas- 
 modic, 33; combines in Him- 
 self masculine and feminine 
 excellence, 33; harmony in 
 Him of the active and con- 
 templative life, 34; His adher- 
 ence to duty, 34; quotation by 
 Liddon, 35; condemns evil 
 in all its forms, 35-36; can 
 gaze into the inner temple of 
 His life, 36-37; worked out 
 no self-designed plan, 37; 
 
 spoke with authority, 38; 
 gradually led Apostles to 
 recognition of Himself, 39; 
 culminating characteristic sin- 
 lessness, 39; witnessed to by 
 friends and foes, 40; His 
 testimony about Himself, 41; 
 greater than Temple, 41; 
 Lord of the Sabbath, 41; 
 sender of Holy Spirit, 42; 
 revealer of the Father, 42; 
 Judge of all men, 42; Synop- 
 tists set forth historical set- 
 ting of His life, 43; St. John, 
 its meaning and influence 44; 
 Renan, Channing, Walker, 
 Rousseau witness to Christ 
 CLEMENT, ST., Corinthian Epis- 
 tle, 301 
 
 COMMUNION OF SAINTS, 258 
 CONFIRMATION, Holy, 223 
 
 DECRETALS, forged, 332 
 DOLLINGER, 298 
 
 EASTCOURT (R.C ), on the cer- 
 tainty of Parker's consecra- 
 tion, 200 
 
 ETERNAL LIFE, consummation 
 of creation, its union to God in 
 Jesus Christ, 86; sin did not 
 frustrate God's scheme, 87; 
 Maurice, 87; theory of late 
 French critic, 87; where it 
 breaks down, 88; the three 
 evils removed on Calvary, 89; 
 man's redemption springs out 
 of the love of the Blessed 
 Trinity, 89; Christ brought 
 four gifts, truth, an example,
 
 INDEX 
 
 373 
 
 deliverance from sin and death, 
 eternal life, 90-95; Bishop 
 Alexander of Deny, 95; gave 
 us Baptism and Eucharist, 95; 
 in what way the heathen and 
 the people before Christ could 
 be made partakers of Him, 96; 
 why God should require this 
 process of Redemption, 97; 
 St. Athanasius, 98; final cause 
 of Redeemer's work, 98; eter- 
 nal life, what it is, 99; and how 
 attained, 101; must accept 
 Christ's terms, 103 
 EUCHARIST, 58, 165 
 
 FABER, 351 
 
 FAITH OF CATHOLICS, 141 
 FAITH, THE RULE OF, differences 
 among Christians, 127; how 
 shall a Christian know what he 
 ought to believe, 128; some 
 say one denomination best 
 suited to our class or tempera- 
 ment, 128; but differences 
 involve essential doctrine, 128; 
 nullification of Sects bends to 
 competition, 129; but hinders 
 unbelievers, 129; Christ must 
 have left way by which inquir- 
 ers may learn what to believe 
 and do, 130; this way must 
 be the best and safest, 131; 
 three rules of faith proposed, 
 132; Protestant and Bible 
 only, 132; Roman and Church 
 as an institution under the 
 Pope's rule, 134; Siberino, 
 137; Zosimus and Pelagians, 
 138; Honorius and Monothe- 
 
 lite contest, 138; Innocent 
 III, Innocent IV, and Adrian 
 VI set councils above Popes, 
 139; wrongful decisions of 
 various Popes, 139; Keenan's 
 Catechism 141; faith of Cath- 
 olics, 141 ; true rule the Cath- 
 olic, 142; four points, 142; 
 Christ reveals, 142; the Holy 
 Spirit guards it, 143; the 
 Church utters it, 144; God 
 has overruled divisions for 
 good, 145; Anglican Church 
 not reduced to dogmatic help- 
 lessness, 145; Lincoln judg- 
 ment, 145; Colenso Christian 
 soul knows the truth, 145 
 
 HOLY ORDERS, 233. (See CHRIS- 
 TIAN MINISTRY) 
 
 HOLY SEE, the, Rome's claim 
 to the title, 331; Holiness 
 one of the marks of Catholic 
 Church, 331; some historical 
 features of that See, 332; 
 fraudulent Nicene canon ex- 
 posed at Chalcedon, 331; 
 passage in St. Augustine on 
 Bible corrupted, 332; fable 
 of the thirty Popes before 
 Constantine, 332; spurious 
 epistles of Pope Julius, 332; 
 forged decretals, 332; Gra- 
 tian's Decretum, 333; Vicar 
 of Christ, 334; power claimed 
 by Hildebrand and Innocent 
 III over secular kingdoms, 
 334; infallibility decree, 334; 
 many Popes dissolute, 336; 
 See's record stained, 337;
 
 374 
 
 INDEX 
 
 worldly ambition, 337; tem- 
 poral sovereignty, 338; Popes 
 against Italy's freedom, 339 
 HUMPHREY (S.J.), on power of 
 Papacy, 295 
 
 IGNATIUS, ST., 182 
 KEENAN'S "Catechism," 141 
 
 LAUD, Archbishop, union of 
 three lines in him, 197 
 
 LAUNOY, collection from the 
 Fathers as to "Rock," 328 
 
 LIDDON, 32, 45 
 
 LINGARD, admits Barlow's con- 
 secration, 199, 201 
 
 LOVE AND SERVICE, love the 
 essence of God's nature, 105; 
 three manifestations of love, 
 105; love's welcome, 105; 
 the eternal treasure of God's 
 unselfish love, 106; ST. 
 AUGUSTINE, 106; St. Thomas 
 Aquinas, 106; St. Vincent de 
 Paul, 106; our Lord knows 
 our faults, yet loves us, 107; 
 the world's crowns and songs 
 are for success, 109; Divine 
 love gives them to the beaten, 
 109; love's progress, 109; 
 each advance preceded by 
 fresh purificative action, no; 
 hate and fear, no; for- 
 titude, 112; three attractive 
 forces exciting three root sins, 
 113; three antagonistic forces 
 on the side of God, 114; our 
 spiritual life a journey in its 
 purificative, illuminative and 
 
 unificative stage, 114, 120; 
 
 love's response, 120; the 
 
 work of Holy Spirit, 121; 
 what shall we do? 122 
 
 MANNING, 305, 351 
 
 MATRIMONY, 233 
 
 MILTON, 89 
 
 MINISTRY, the Christian: So- 
 ciety of "Friends," 169; wor- 
 ship by sacrifice demands a 
 priesthood, 169; Old Testa- 
 ment prophecies, 170; Christ 
 a Priest, 172; urged that He 
 did not call Himself a Priest, 
 172; Epistle to Hebrews, 172; 
 mystical body of Christ iden- 
 tified with His priesthood, 
 173; New Testament refer- 
 ences, 173; Moberly, 173; 
 Apostles ordained, 174; this 
 method has characteristic of 
 divinity, 174; case of Mat- 
 thias, 177; case of St Paul, 
 178; ordination by Apostles 
 of successors, 180; the three- 
 fold ministry, 181; the pres- 
 byters proved by Scripture to 
 be priests in Old Testament 
 sense, 182. 
 
 MOBERLY, Dr., 173 
 
 NEWMAN, Cardinal, 191, 311, 
 
 PAPACY 'SECULARIZED, 337 
 PAPAL INFALLIBILITY, 136 seq. 
 PENITENCE, 226 
 
 PETER AND JOHN, SS., St. 
 Peter the representative of
 
 INDEX 
 
 375 
 
 old dispensation, 281; foun- 
 dation-layer, 281; contrast 
 prominence of St. Peter with 
 that of St. John, 282; con- 
 trast of age, 282; state, 283; 
 two references to their respect- 
 ive homes, 283; different 
 manner in which called to 
 discipleship, 283; new names 
 and titles given to each, 284; 
 Christ preaches out of Peter's 
 boat, 284; their respective 
 positions declared by their 
 questions to Christ, 286; Old 
 Testament spirit seen in Peter, 
 287; spirit of new kingdom 
 in John, 287; rebukes admin- 
 istered by our Lord to both 
 examined, 288; each needed 
 spiritual transformation, 289; 
 process of Peter's conver- 
 sion, 290; relative spiritual 
 positions of two Apostles at 
 Last Supper, 291; at empty 
 tomb, 291; Quo vadis, 292; 
 miracle of John's preserva- 
 tion, 292 
 
 PETER, ST., AT ROME, quotation 
 from Humphrey's Urbs et 
 Orbis on plenitude of Papal 
 power, 294 seq; Rome must 
 prove claim that Peter ordained 
 and instituted successor, 295; 
 personal transmission of au- 
 thority from Peter through 
 successors to new incumbent, 
 296; Peter's connection with 
 Rome argumentative or cir- 
 cumstantial, 298; Bellinger's 
 argument examined, 298; the 
 
 romantic and ecclesiastic ac- 
 counts of Peter's visit, 299; 
 ending of the Epistle, 300; 
 Clement's Epistle to Corin- 
 thians, 301; Irenaeus on Her- 
 esies, 302; Tertullian, 302; 
 Eusebius, 302; three com- 
 ments made on evidence, 303 
 PETER, ST., Roman claims, 263; 
 supreme headship and uni- 
 versal jurisdiction, 263; two 
 elements, primacy and priest- 
 hood, 263; prominence of St. 
 Peter in Joseph, 264; other 
 Apostles have special desig- 
 nation of office and honor, 
 265; St. John, St. Paul, 265; 
 suggestive order in which the 
 three great Apostles pass 
 across field of history, 266; 
 the things said of St. Paul of 
 equal significance with those 
 said of St. Peter, 267; calling 
 of the two Apostles different, 
 268; St. Peter's small share 
 in election of St. Matthias; 
 St. Paul's share in estab- 
 lishment and ordination of 
 ministry, 269; Deliquey, 269; 
 Abb6 Fouard, 269; Pre- 
 eminence of St. Paul in Church 
 discipline, 270; contrast of 
 two Apostles in importance of 
 their visions, 292; their mir- 
 acles, 274; their deliverances 
 from prison, 275; their preach- 
 ing, 276; their mutual relation- 
 ship, 278; significant manner 
 of their respective passing 
 from Scripture record, 279
 
 376 
 
 INDEX 
 
 PLATO, 27 
 
 POLE, Cardinal, 199 
 
 POPES, Adrian VI, 139; Alex- 
 ander VI, 336; Celestine, in, 
 139; Eugenius IV, 139, 208; 
 Gelasius, 139; Gregory, u, 
 139; Gregory XVI, 335; 
 . Hildebrand, 333; Honorius, 
 
 137, 138; Innocent I, 139; 
 Innocent III, 139, 333; Inno- 
 cent IV, 139; Julius III, 203; 
 Leo XIII, 203, 364; Liberius, 
 
 138, 332; Nicholas I, 139, 332; 
 Paul IV, 203, 205; Stephen 
 II, 139; Urban II, 139; 
 Zosimus, 138 
 
 RELIGION, definition, 3; School- 
 men's definition of God as 
 pure activity, 4; unity of 
 material universe, 4; mathe- 
 matics the universal language, 
 4; structure of Universe man- 
 ifestation of pure mathemati- 
 cal thought, 5; difference 
 between reason and instinct, 
 5; instinct wisdom in action, 
 5; Energy Eternal and In- 
 telligent is a Will, 5 ; anecdote 
 of Indian teacher, 6; intel- 
 ligent will-energy must be a 
 person, 7; self-consciousness 
 personality, 7; Pantheism, 
 7; knowledge of God neces- 
 sary, not only belief, 8; St. 
 Thomas Aquinas, 9; Bishop 
 Alexander, of Deny, 9; Re- 
 ligion not generated from 
 non-religious elements, 10; 
 three degrees of Union between 
 
 God and man, n; nature, 
 grace and glory, n; God's 
 immanence in nature, u; 
 Browning, n; St. Gregory 
 II, his errors as to Divine 
 immanence, n, 12; Pusey, 
 12; "Sayings of Jesus," 13; 
 God not author of sin, 13; 
 religion source of strength, 15; 
 of joy, 15; certain presenta- 
 tions of religion ignore earthly 
 enjoyment, 15; Christian 
 view, 16; being element in 
 our nature presents in several 
 forms besides Christianity, 
 18; but the Christian religion 
 gives us noblest conception of 
 God, 19; as ever having triple 
 personality, 19 
 
 RENAN, 44 
 
 RESURRECTION or CHRIST, great 
 credential to His mission and 
 Divinity, 46; foretold death 
 and resurrection, 46; no 
 further proofs needed by 
 Christian, 47; what corrobo- 
 rative evidence is there? 47; 
 Sunday, not the Jewish Sab- 
 bath, universally kept as the 
 Christian holy-day, 48; theory 
 of swoon and subsequent 
 reanimation refuted, 48; cru- 
 cifixion public, 49; numbers 
 desired His death, 48; spear 
 thrust, 48; Strauss' contempt 
 for theory, 48; why no 
 appearance to Pilate and 
 Priests, 50; morally better 
 for them, 50; and He had done 
 His work in the world, 51;
 
 INDEX 
 
 377 
 
 beginner of new elevation in 
 evolutionary process, 51; 
 resurrection not return to 
 former life, 51; died by His 
 own Will, 51; did not come 
 back to old conditions of life, 
 52; the five proofs of resur- 
 rection given by enemies, 52; 
 bound to produce today from 
 sealed tomb, 52; incredible 
 Roman guard asleep, 53; 
 terrified Apostles would not 
 dare or wish to disturb tomb, 
 53; theory that Jews removed 
 Body disproved, 53; did not 
 dispute Apostles' story when 
 brought before them, 54; 
 many enemies converted, 54, 
 55; evidence on side of friends, 
 56; remarkable change of 
 conduct in the Apostles, 56; 
 Sacraments of the Gospel, 
 57, 58; divergences in Gospels 
 explained, 59, 60; each Evan- 
 gelist views Resurrection from 
 his own standpoint of the 
 different side of Christ's na- 
 ture, 61, 62; testimony of the 
 women and the graveclothes, 
 63, 64; the visit of the two 
 Apostles, 65; answer to last 
 opposing theory of German 
 criticism, 66, 67; Resurrec- 
 tion no myth, 67; no spectral 
 illusion, 68; no hallucination, 
 68; Resurrection in accord 
 with doctrine of the Incarna- 
 tion, 69, 70 
 
 ROMAN CLAIM, The, Rome 
 granted primacy by canon 
 
 law, 305; but repudiates it 
 and claims supremacy, 305; 
 office distinct from episcopate, 
 306; vicegerent of Jesus 
 Christ, 306; no appeal from 
 him to Ecumenical Council, 
 307; supreme Doctor, 306; 
 Monarch and centre of Unity, 
 308; independent possessor of 
 Church's executive, judicial, 
 and legislative power, 308; no 
 support to claim in Holy 
 Scripture, 308; Fathers, 308; 
 Eastern Church repudiates, 
 309; cannot be accounted for 
 his development theory, 311; 
 the powers bestowed by Christ 
 given to all the Apostles, 311; 
 St. Peter not supreme governor 
 of Church, 312; St. Peter 
 and first Council, 313; to 
 St. John given vision of the 
 Church, 313; to St. Paul 
 the truth that Church is 
 Christ's Body, 315; Christ 
 appointed the Holy Ghost 
 His Vicar, 316; is Pope in- 
 fallible? 316; St. Paul's re- 
 buke of St. Peter, 316; St. 
 Peter calls himself fellow- 
 elder, 317; the four Patri- 
 archates of East, 317; St. 
 Cyril's commentary on re- 
 newal of Peter's apostleship 
 by Christ, 318; St. Peter's 
 question to the Risen Lord 
 concerning St. John and the 
 Lord's answer, 318; Christ's 
 words about Satan sifting 
 Peter as wheat, 319; The
 
 378 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Rock, 320; meaning of 
 "this" in "this rock," 321; 
 Roman interpretation un- 
 grammatical, 324; Fathers 
 against it, 327 
 ROUSSEAU, 44 
 
 SACRAMENTS, The Seven, Gospel 
 system analogous to God's 
 processes in natural world, 
 217; Sacraments Holy Mys- 
 teries, 217; arranged in two 
 classes, 217; four kinds of 
 Baptism in New Testament, 
 218 seq.; Christian Baptism, 
 220; action of Baptism, 220; 
 effect of loss of Baptism in 
 America, 222; three designa- 
 tions of Confirmation in Scrip- 
 ture, 223; how administered 
 in East and West, 223; effect 
 of Confirmation, 224; sacra- 
 ment of Penance, 226; its 
 three acts, 226 seq.; Holy 
 Unction, 230; St. James, 231; 
 Holy Orders and Marriage, 
 233; matter and form in 
 Marriage, 234; indissolu- 
 bility, 234; the three kinds 
 of Christian marriage, 235; 
 Holy Eucharist, 237; a wit- 
 ness to the faith, 238; a com- 
 munion, 238; a sacrifice, 240 
 
 SACRIFICE, recognized mode of 
 man's approach to his Deity, 
 148; origin and meaning, 148; 
 religion of nature, 149; higher 
 ethical perceptions in Hebrew, 
 150; gradual growth of ne- 
 cessity of an official in priestly 
 
 character, 150; Montesquieu, 
 150; sacrifices established of 
 two-fold character, 151; ex- 
 pression of corporate life, 151; 
 individual's relation to God, 
 152; ritual valueless without 
 the offering of heart and will, 
 152; further developments of 
 law of sacrifice in Christ, 153; 
 sacrifice the means reciprocal, 
 Sacramental action between 
 God and man, 156; in Eden, 
 157; under patriarchs, 157; in 
 the Church, 158; Eucharist, 
 159; some Protestant objec- 
 tions, 161 
 
 SAYINGS OF JESUS, 13 
 
 SECESSIONS, Tractarian move- 
 ment in Anglican Church, 343; 
 opposition by Bishops and 
 Journals, 344; natural that 
 under opposition some should 
 secede, 344; no great student 
 left, 345; Anglican Church 
 extending, 345; Rome's un- 
 ceasing efforts in proselyting, 
 346; number of secessions 
 very small (one per cent), 347; 
 Old Catholic revolt, 347; 
 effect on spiritual lives of 
 seceders, 350; sin of secession 
 a deadly one, 351 
 
 SERGIUS, Patriarch, 137 
 
 STILLINGFLEET, Bishop, 191 
 
 STRAUSS, 49 
 
 TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, Christ 
 no example to us if not tried 
 by temptation, 71; how recon- 
 cile His temptation with His
 
 INDEX 
 
 379 
 
 absolute sinlessness, 72; the 
 three kinds of Temptation 
 to which He was exposed, 
 73, 74; His strain perpetual, 
 75, 76; in body, soul, affec- 
 tions, moral and spiritual 
 nature, 77, 82; culminated on 
 Calvary, 82; hence can sym- 
 pathize and show His love to 
 us, 83 
 
 TERTULLIAN, scene of St. Peter's 
 martyrdom, 302 
 
 THOMAS AQUINAS, ST., 9, 106 
 
 UNCTION, 230 
 
 UNITY, Church a spiritual or- 
 ganism, 242; three groups 
 
 in triumphant, expectant, mil- 
 itant conditions, 243; Prin- 
 ciple of unity, 243; difference 
 between unity and union, 
 240; Papacy not the principle 
 of unity, 244 seq.; present 
 condition of Christendom in 
 type and prophecy, 249; need 
 not despair, 249; Catholics 
 owe three duties to Church, 
 250; love the principle of 
 unity, 253; the communion 
 of Saints, 254 
 
 VERONICA, Legend of, 66 
 VINCENT, ST., 106 
 VIRGIL, 27
 
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