DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

HARD SAYINGS

A SELECTION OF MEDITATIONS AND STUDIES

GEORGE TYRRELL

AUTHOR OF " NOVA ET VETERA."

¦Durus est hie sermo, et quis potest eum audire?" — Joan. vi. 61.

SEVENTH IMPRESSION

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
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igio
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IRtbil ©b6tat :
Gulielmus Roche, S.J., Censor Deputatus.
imprimatur :
HERBERTUS CARD. VAUGHAN,
Archiep. Westmonast.

The Author wishes to thank those who have
in various ways helped him in the task of
producing the present volume; and more especially
Mr. C. ICegan Paul, who kindly read through the
proofs.

INTRODUCTION.

Although the following conferences and medita
tions were in no way originally designed to be parts
of a whole, written, as they were, at sundry times
and in divers manners, yet there has been some
imperfect attempt at method in their selection and
arrangement which, though not very apparent on
the surface, may make itself felt in the unity of
their effect upon the reader's mind. Their purport
is to illustrate and, so to say, turn over in various
ways a very few of the deepest and most wide-
reaching principles of Catholic Christianity, by
which they are pervaded and upon which they have
been built up with a somewhat dialectical severity
which can hardly escape unfavourable criticism, as
seeming to encourage an excessive rationalizing in
matters too delicate for the coarse hands of the
logician. The writer has had this danger con
tinually before his mind as something to guard
against, but since his aim has been confessedly to
simplify, explain, and co-ordinate, it would be too

viii INTRODUCTION.

much to hope that he has avoided all the errors and
extremes which usually beset such an undertaking.
For indeed there is a most unpardonable narrow
ness as well as impertinence in the desire to repre
sent the intercourse between the created spirit and
its indwelling Creator in terms as sharp and exact
as those which describe the dealings of father and
son, master and servant, ruler and subject, husband
and spouse. These familiar relationships bear a
distant analogy to those subsisting between God
and the soul, but fall immeasurably short of the
reality. They are as a few rough, suggestive strokes
drawn by a skilful hand, which will serve to bring
to our mind all the meaning and expression of a
face if only it be already familiar to us by experi
ence. But an inordinate love of clearness, an over-
pressing of analogies and similitudes is a form of
rationalism very fruitful in fallacies, and not very
uncommon in ascetical writings. If, however, we
use these metaphors with a full reflex conscious
ness of their imperfection, then indeed we may do
so fearlessly and abundantly, trusting that where
one is weak another may be strong, and that from
many faultv adumbrations some vague image of the
whole truth may shape itself in the mind.
What we have to guard against is the narrow
pride of that rationalism which inclines some to be
impatient of all ideas that are in any way obscure

INTRODUCTION. ix

and imperfectly defined ; to cast out of the mind as
worthless those that are not clear and distinct ; to
apply tbe methods and criteria of the "exact
sciences " to matters 8f a wholly different order ;
to be abhorrent of all that savours of mysticism.
For this is to forget that every new idea that enters
our soul, so far as it is new and incomparable, and
unlike what we have previously known, is fringed
with mystery, and is only very gradually defined and
analyzed as to its full contents ; it is to ignore the
simple fact that our mind comprehends fully only
what it has itself created — forms and numbers, and
figures and relations ; and that of the least atom of
God's creations it can at best grasp a side or a surface
or a corner, but can penetrate nothing. Still more
evident is it that most of the truths relating to the
commerce of God with the soul are necessarily
veiled, aad obscure to us in our present embodied
condition, since they can never be properly ex
pressed in terms of anything that falls under our
senses — in terms of the only language we are
skilled in. Ultimate truths, those which are con
cerned with the Alpha and Omega of our existence,
are from their very nature set at the extreme limit
of our intellectual horizon, so that we never see all
round them or beyond them. Our mind is made
for what lies between : for movements and processes
and the laws by which they are governed ; but

INTRODUCTION.

before the " Ultimates," the unchanging realities of
the timeless, spaceless world, whose existence is
postulated in our every thought, our progress is
abruptly arrested as by a dead wall, behind which
all is impenetrable mystery : " Hitherto shalt thou
come and no further, and here shalt thou break thy
swelling waves."
Yet these are the truths most essential to our
spiritual life, and ignorance of which is chiefly to
be deplored. They are, moreover, truths for which
man has by nature a most insatiable intellectual
curiosity that breaks out everywhere, even in the
most barbaric and uncultivated minds ; and yet with
Regard to which he is as helpless, as much in need
of God, as the babe is of its mother's breast ; and
if his craving for the mysterious, the wonderful, the
supernatural, be not fed by true religion, it will feed
itself on the garbage of any superstition that is
offered to it.
Indeed, the soul will never be raised higher or
further strengthened by any truth which it has once
thoroughly penetrated or comprehended, and which
therefore retains for it no element of mystery or
wonder, for it is only by straining to comprehend
what exceeds its present grasp that it grows great.
Mysticism deals with such half-veiled, half-
revealed truths as we speak of. There is no doubt
a false mysticism which values obscurity for its

INTRODUCTION. xi

own sake, and wraps up the simplest truisms of
morality in clouds of confusion till they loom great
and mysterious ; and which on this score lays claim
to special gnosis and prophetic insight. But this
child of affectation, or self-delusion, or ignorance, no
more discredits the true mysticism of a Kempis or
of St. Teresa, than spiritualism discredits spirits,.
or jugglery discredits the miracles of Christ.
Having thus insisted on the reasonableness and
necessity of mysticism, as opposed to crude rational
ism and to the non-sense of soi-disant "common
sense " in spiritual things, we must equally insist on
the importance of using all the light and help that
reason rightly used affords us in these matters ; of
recognizing here, as elsewhere, progress and develop
ment in our understanding of Divine truth (itself
unchanging) — a progress in distinctness and coher
ence of idea and statement ; a continual and faithful
retranslation of the words and forms of one age or
country into those of another; an adaptation of
immutable principles, to the ever mutable circum
stances of human life. For where this work is
neglected, the language and conceptions of a former
generation become, first, tasteless and common
place; and then distasteful and repugnant to the
changing fashions of thought and speech in
succeeding generations — except in the case of those
rare works of genius and inspiration which, like

INTRODUCTION.

the Scriptures or the Imitation, are catholic and
eternal. Thus much, then, in justification of what might
seem to be a too dialectical treatment of subjects
to a great extent beyond the reach of so rude a
method. Again, the writer may be reproached with
a certain indecency and irreverence in attempting
to make bare to the public gaze many of those
deeper mysteries of our holy religion which the
instinct of more delicate minds has ever hidden in
a language " not understanded of the people." This
disciplina arcani the Church has learnt from her
Divine Master, whose parables were "words to the
wise," mercifully veiling from the many the light
which they could not bear, and which would have
been only to their ruin and not to their resurrection.
Also there is a sacred duty of guarding the higher
truths of the Eternal Kingdom from the profana
tion of being discussed, perhaps ridiculed and
blasphemed by those whose minds and hearts are
void of the first principles whence a sympathetic
understanding of them might be evolved. As it is,
there is scarce a hireling journalist who is not as
ready with his flippant criticisms on the mysteries
of the Kingdom of God as he is with those on
political or scientific or literary topics. Nothing is
sacred from his omniscient pen. Is it then season-

INTRODUCTION.

able thus to cast pearls before those who will but
trample them under foot and turn again and
rend us ?
If after some hesitation the writer has deter
mined to face the possibility of such ill-conse-
-quences, it has been from a conviction that it is
rather through an insight into the high and all-
satisfying ethical conceptions of the Catholic religion
that men are drawn to embrace it than through any
more speculative considerations. Loquere ad cor
populi hujus — Speak unto the heart of this people,
was the Prophet's commission ; nor can it be denied
that it was because He knew what was in man that
Christ had such irresistible power over the hearts of
men ; for here if anywhere knowledge is power. So
there is nothing that establishes and confirms our
implicit faith in the Catholic religion of Christ more
than the clear conviction that she alone knows what
is in man, and holds the secrets of life's problems ;
that she alone has balm for the healing of the
nations; that she alone can answer firmly and
infallibly what all are asking, with an answer harsh
at first sounding, and austere, but on reflection kind
and consolatory, and, like the "hard sayings" of
her Master, " full of grace and truth."
It is not till men's hearts are deeply drawn
towards the Church for one reason or another,
that their minds are sufficiently freed from the

INTRODUCTION.

natural bias against a creed so exacting and
imperious in many ways, to make them desirous
or capable of listening to her claims.
For this reason, therefore, it is to the heart we
must make our first appeal, by bringing together as
far as we can those various truths which embody
the Church's explanation of life as we find it ; by
showing their mutual bearings, their harmony with-
one another, and with the stern facts they deal with
and explain. If the Church has an answer which
will give a meaning to pain and temptation and sin
and sorrow, which will point to law and order where
otherwise there is nothing apparent but painful
darkness and confusion, which will verify and;
connect what is to all seeming manifold and dis
connected, even though that answer be hard and
repulsive in its very simplicity, surely it should
make every honest truth-seeking mind pause to see
if indeed these things be so, if indeed darkness can
be so touched with light, and sorrow so turned into
joy. If the solution fits the problem it may indeed
be the result of chance, but it is a chance that
becomes ever more incredible as the conditions of
the problem are seen to be multiple and intricate :
and the more we know of life's complications on the
one hand and of the Church's simplification on the
other, the less possible is it for us to doubt that she
is from on high, the work of those hands which

INTRODUCTION.

fashioned the human soul, and which provide for
the needs of every creature they have fashioned.
We do not mean that our needs demand and
explain every point of Catholic teaching, as though
that religion were merely the complement of our
nature's exigencies, and were not also supernatural,
giving more than our heart as yet knows how to
desire. But the whole idea of personal trust and
faith is that those whom we have found loving and
true to us in matters we can test, should ever be
accredited with the same love and truth in matters
beyond our criticism. So it is with faith in God,
With faith in Christ, with faith in the Catholic
Church ; we understand enough to warrant full trust
in what we cannot understand, or cannot even
expect to understand.
It is, then, the belief that a deeper and more
comprehensive view of the Church's ethical and
spiritual ideals; of her conception as to the
capacities, the dignity and destiny of the human
soul, of the hope that she inspires in the midst of
so much that is otherwise disheartening, of the light
which she sheds over the dark abyss of sin and
temptation and sorrow — it is the belief that such a
comprehensive view may in some cases serve far
more effectually than any direct apologetic to win,
to establish, or to confirm an abiding faith in her
divine origin and operation, that must partly excuse

INTRODUCTION.

or justify an otherwise reprehensible popularizing of
the " secrets of the King."
Not indeed that any one mind however broad
and deep can ever hope to grasp the Catholic idea
in its entirety, or can ever count itself to have com
prehended perfectly what by reason of its magni
tude must elude all but an infinite thought. If every
advance in the knowledge of Nature advances us in
knowledge of our ignorance of Nature, the same
holds good of our study of the Christian revelation,
of the idea of Christ and the Church. Man's brain
grows-to and outgrows religions that are its own
creation, the provisional expression and images of
that Reality which touches him in conscience, and
cries out to him in Nature. But it does not, and
cannot, outgrow that revelation in which God has
expressed for him, albeit in faltering human
language, realities which are beyond all reason and
experience. Our conception of one whom we meet
and observe daily will grow in depth, in volume, in
accuracy; but our conception of one whom wa
know only by hearsay cannot go beyond what is
contained in that hearsay. Yet this content may
be infinite in potentiality, like some mathematical
expression from which a process of endless building-
up can be started. And so it is with that conception
of Himself and of His Christ and of His Church
which God has given us in the Christian revelation.

INTRODUCTION. xvii.

It is an idea which admits of infinite evolution,
which the Church keeps and broods over and
ponders in her heart ; in which the best thought of
every age finds its highest ideals satisfied and
surpassed. Superficial critics who shrink from the
labour of a wide induction, are perpetually treating
this idea as it is found in some particular mind or
nationality or period, and by consequence con
founding what is accidental with what is essential,
and failing to distinguish its morbid from its legiti
mate developments.
And indeed it is to the Church, who watches
over this process, that we must look for oiar
guidance as to results already obtained. But starting
where she leaves off and following in the direction
of the lines she has laid down, the minds of her
children will ever press on towards a fuller intelli
gence of the mysteries of faith, turning back at
times to gain her approval or to receive her rebuke
or to listen to her counsel; and thus, under her
supervision, they will purify the Catholic idea more
and more from all foreign admixture and build it
up member by member, nearing, yet never reaching,
a perfect disclosure of its organic unity, its simpli
city in complexity, its transcendent beauty.
Finally, in choosing Hard Sayings for a title,
allusion is made to the occasion when many of the
disciples of Jesus turned back and walked with Him

INTRODUCTION.

no more, because of His doctrine concerning the
great Mystery of Divine Love, in which all the other
mysteries of the Catholic faith are gathered up.
That this Man should give us His Flesh to eat, that
bread should be His Body, is indeed a "hard
saying " for the many who are the slaves of their
imagination, and who fancy that they know some
thing of the constitution of matter and the limits of
Divine omnipotence. But for the more thoughtful it
is a far harder saying that God should so care for
man's love as to come down from Heaven, and take
flesh that He might woo man in man's own
language — the language of suffering. And if these
things are hard to the understanding, it is still
harder for the weak will to hear that God must be
loved back as He has loved us, with a love that
yields pain for pain, sacrifice for sacrifice, death for
death. Here the Church has ever been faithful to her
Master. Others have, with false kindness, mitigated
the " hard sayings," and prophesied smooth things,
and drawn away the weak from her side. But
with all her human frailty, ever shrinking from the
stern ideal of the Cross, from the bitterness of the
Chalice of her Passion, when asked she has but one
ruthless answer, namely, that it is only through
many tribulations that we can enter the Kingdom
of God; that Christ's yoke is easy, not because

INTRODUCTION.

it is painless, but because love makes the pain
welcome. To whom then shall we go but to her who has
the words of eternal life, who for two thousand
years has kept all these sayings and pondered them
in her heart ?
G. T.

Wimbledon. SS. Peter and Paul, 1898.

CONTENTS.

TAGE
Introduction . .
* t
. vii
The Soul and her Spouse .
I
The Hidden Life .
15
The Presence of God . ,
29
God in Conscience .
45
Sin judged by Faith
69
Sin judged by Reason
93-
Sin and Suffering .
111
The Gospel of Pain
131
" Quid erit nobis ? " .
152
The Life Everlasting .
169
The Angelic Virtue ,
194
A Great Mystery .
22c
The Way of the Counsels
261
The Divine Precept ,
295
The Mystery of Faith
¦ 314
Idealism, its Use and Abuse
• 345
Discouragement .
» 37&
The Mystical Body
397
Appendix. — Note to " The Gospe
lof Pa
n"
449
THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.
Vent, Electa Mea, et ponam in Tt thronum meum.
" Come, My Chosen One, and I will stablish My throne in
thee."The end of man is, to save his soul — Salus animce.
But what this health and well-being consists in is
specified when St. Ignatius1 tells us that it is in
praising, reverencing, and serving God, in these
three manifestations of Divine love, that salvation
is realized. Health lies in the right balance of
nutrition, in regularity of function, in the orderliness
of our bodily conditions ; and our spiritual health,
in like manner, means ordination; the due propor
tion and subjection of all our faculties to God their
Creator and Lord ; the submission of our mind to
the rule of Divine truth ; of our affections to the
rule of Divine love. Hence the whole aim of the
Spiritual Exercises is to secure ordination; to
induce that all-mastering love of God in which the
soul is saved, perfected, and brought to its highest
state and noblest activity.
As the natural life of the soul depends on God's
dwelling in its substance, so the supernatural life or
Eternal Life of the soul is God, who dwells as light
1 This discourse has reference to the opening words of the
Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola.
B

THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.

in the mind and as love in the heart, and who is
the object of that light and love.
Here, as hereafter, the life of the soul is to see
God and to love Him, though the mode of seeing is
different ; here, it is through a glass darkly, in a
riddle, there, face to face ; here, in part, there,
wholly and perfectly ; here, as a child, there, as
one who has put away the things of a child. A
little girl thinks herself absolutely happy when she
nurses her first doll. As a woman, with a living
babe at her breast, she looks back on that former
bliss and laughs. In Heaven she greets her child
once more ; and once more she wonders that she
could ever have rejoiced before.
Eternal life is God in the soul. God is the soul's
soul. As the body corrupts when abandoned by
the soul, so too, the soul corrupts, morally and
intellectually, it becomes foetid, loathsome, disin
tegrated, deformed, apart from God. God is the
beauty, the health, the salvation of the soul. We
speak too exclusively of entering into Heaven, into
life, into God ; forgetting that the relation is truly —
perhaps more truly — expressed by saying that God,
and Heaven, and life, enter into us. We dwell in
God, just because God dwells in us. The branch
abides in the vine and the vine in the branch ; but
principally the vine in the branch. We feed upon
Christ, He does not feed upon us. " The Kingdom
of God is within you ; " it is in your midst ; there
fore we pray : A dveniat regnum tuum. We speak
of that Kingdom coming to us, not of our going
to it.

THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.

Vegna ver noi la pace del tuo regno
Che noi ad essa non potem da noi,
S'ella non vien, con tutto nostro ingegno.1
Heaven, in its substance and apart from mere
accessories, is simply the love of God perfected in the
soul ; the entire cleaving of the soul to God, whom
she embraces with mind and heart — Inveni quern
diligit anima mea ; tenui nee dimittam.2 And again :
Mihi adhtzrere Deo bonum est — My sovereign good,
my heaven, consists in cleaving to God. And as
eternal life is the love of God elevated and carried
to its extreme perfection, so eternal death is the
disease of sin worked out to its last consequences.
Hell, in its substance and apart from all accessories,
is in the soul, as truly as the soul is in Hell — perhaps
more truly.
This answer alone explains man, and proves its
own verity by its fitness. Were the soul a simple
problem, chance might stumble on many an apparent
solution ; but so complicated a riddle is past guess
work. A lock with a hundred intricate wards is the
only possible explanation of the key which alone
fits it, and which fits it alone. The soul, apart from
God, is as meaningless, as useless as a stray key.
Its whole structure and movement cries out for
God. Who could understand the eye, with its lenses
and mirrors and inexplicable mechanism, who knew
nothing of light ? Everything in the eye has reference
1 Thy Kingdom come, that peace with us may reign ;
For if it come not of itself, in vain
Our wit would toil that Kingdom to attain. (Dante, Purg. xi.)
* " I have found Him whom my soul loveth : I have laid hold
on Him, and I will not let Him go."

THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.

to light, and everything in the soul has reference to
God. Everything in the ear is unintelligible to one
born deaf, and everything in the soul is incoherent
and senseless for one who is dead to God. When
we see the vine straggling over the ground, its
tendrils are unexplained; but when it climbs and
clings to the prop we know what they were made
for. God is the soul's prop. The soul is simply
and wholly a capacity for God, and nothing else ;
just as the monstrance with all its golden rays and
gleaming jewels is simply and wholly a receptacle
for His Sacramental Presence — a crystal shrine
through which the faithful may see and adore the
Bread of Angels. Our soul is such a monstrance ;
and its highest beauty and glory is from Him who
dwells in it, and shines through it. He is the light,
she is the lamp. On Protestant altars we some
time see (or used to see) candles which are never to
be lighted. "How unmeaning!" is our first thought.
The soul is God's candle, on which He descends like
a flame and transforms her substance into His own
likeness. The candle was evidently made for the
flame which crowns it, beautifies it, quickens it.
God is not the soul, nor is the soul God ; but
as the candle is for the flame, so is the soul for
God. When Adam slumbered, God drew from his side
a help meet for him ; a being altogether made for
him, soul and body, inexplicable without him. God
drew the soul of man from His own side, and she is
restless till she returns thither again. The soul is
God's spouse; made for His embrace, made to

THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.

bring forth in herself His Word, His Image, His
Beloved Son. And the passion of the purest and
noblest heart of man is but the far-removed symbol
of the ardent love of God for His spouse. To Him
her whole being cries out : Thou hast made me for
Thyself, as the casket for the jewel, as the mirror
for the sun, as the eye for light, as the ear for
sound, as the harp for music. My mind craves for
truth, and Thou art the Truth ; my will for good,
and Thou art the Good ; my heart for love, and
Thou art Love ; mine eye for beauty, and Thou art
the Beautiful; my ear for music, and Thou art Song;
my soul for eternity, life, and salvation, and Thou
art Eternity, Life, and Salvation.
We may say of the soul what is said of
Divine Wisdom : Thesaurus est infinities quo qui usi
sunt facti sunt amici Dei ; she is an unending treasure
which few are aware they possess ; a secret and
unsuspected fount of perennial joy ; a well of living
water springing up unto life everlasting ; a deep and
difficult well for those who have not wherewith to
draw. With most of us our soul is as a musical instru
ment in unskilled or half-skilled hands; but from
which trained fingers can draw forth melody and
sweetness. We are too slothful to go through the
preliminary drudgery of practice. Impatient for
some little present gratification, we pick out little
tunes by ear, and never become masters in the
art of spiritual music. Or it is like a great
poem which to a child or a rude-minded person
seems tiresome and overrated, because a certain
amount of education is needed before the mind can

THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.

answer to its appeal, and enter into its joy ; or it is
as one of the old masters whom the crowd hurries
by in our picture-galleries in order to pause en
raptured before some flaring vulgarity, while the
true artist lingers over every line and shadow with
a pleasure which is accentuated and not blunted by
use. Qui edunt me adhuc esurient — " They that eat
me shall hunger for more," is true of God and of
every good that is Divine.
Plainly our chief care must be to learn to use
this treasure aright, to extract as much value out
each moment as we possibly can, to bring the
highest faculties of our soul into perfect play. For
" they who use it aright are made the friends of
God," — not as though friendship were an added
reward, but because friendship with God is itself
that very use for which the soul was created, and in
which its best faculties reach their highest develop
ment. We know how wonderfully mere human
friendship opens up the soul and betrays to it depths
of which before it was all unconscious, how all that
is best in it slumbers and sleeps till it is wakened
to energy by the touch of love, by the cry in the
midnight of its darkness : " Behold, the Bridegroom
cometh." And herein every other love but shadows
forth some aspect of that one all-satisfying, all-
transforming love which is the soul's eternal life,
which alone immortalizes her — the love of the
Heavenly King and Bridegroom, to whom she is
drawn by every need of her spiritual nature ; from
whose side she was taken that she might be a
spouse meet for Him, as it is written :

THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.

Virgins shall be drawn to the King in her train,
Her neighbours shall be brought unto thee,
They shall be brought in joy and exultation,
They shall be led into the temple of the King.1
These words are usually, and not unreasonably
applied by Holy Church to our Blessed Lady as to
the Queen of souls, through whom the souls of the
elect are brought to Christ in one living mass, as it
were, of swarming bees clustered round their queen.
She is the very centre and heart of that great soul-
world which God created and redeemed to be a
Kingdom for Himself; to be subject to Him as the
bride is subject in love to the bridegroom. Virgins
shall be drawn in her train to the King ; virgins of
whom St. Paul writes, " I am jealous of you with
the jealousy of God Himself, for I have espoused
you to one Husband, to present you as a chaste
virgin unto Christ." He speaks, indeed, of the
entire Church, the whole congregation of elect
souls ; but what is true of all is true of each ; each
is a kingdom, each a chaste virgin to be presented
spotless and undefiled to Christ, her Spouse and her
King. " Glorious things are spoken of thee, O thou
city of God, O thou soul of man, thou city of peace,
thou city of the great King." Mary is indeed the
Virgin of virgins, whose whole heart was His with
a wholeness unsurpassable ; but every soul, however
soiled and sin-stained, recovers its virginity when it
has been purified for God's embrace and taught
through many tribulations to love God not only
above all things, but alone. Therefore we are told
1 Psalm xliv. 15, 16.

THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.

that the King proves His elect bride as gold is
proved in fire seven times. And St. Paul, who like
the holy Baptist, is the paranymph, the friend of
the Bridegroom, who has His interests at heart and
prefers them to his own, is jealous with the jealousy
of God for those souls he is preparing for the King ;
jealous lest the purity of their affection should be
tarnished by the least spot of any love not for God,
or from God, or in God. And God Himself is
jealous and says : " I, the Lord thy God, am a
jealous God ; thou shalt have none other gods but
me ; " thou shalt give Me all thy love, for I will have
nothing less. He is jealous for that He knows that
He alone is our Peace, our Life, our all-satisfying
eternal Good.
And now see how souls are brought to God:
"Virgins shall be drawn to the King in her wake;"
drawn and not driven, drawn through their affections
with the silken cords of love, willing captives to that
most blessed tyranny. Drawn by the spell of the
King's beauty, whom at first they behold, not face to
face, but mirrored in His created reflex, yet nowhere
so fully, so faultlessly as in the Queen of souls who
stands at His right hand in her vesture of pure
gold, fringed round with many-coloured broiderings.
For if He is Speciosus prce filiis hominum — " fair
before all the sons of men," she too is all-fair, and
" grace is poured forth upon her lips." And as we
turn from a sudden light to see the source whence it
proceeds, so our eye travelling instinctively from
the glory which flashes upon Mary's gold mantle,
climbs to Heaven. It is as when we see one whose

THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.

eyes are fixed in rapture on something we cannot
see, and whose face is lit with a joy we cannot
understand ; yet we fain would know that secret,
and are drawn to wonder, and seek, and knock till
it be opened to us.
Thus it is that God draws souls to Himself, one
through another. Thus it is that we are each to
draw souls to Him in the wake of our own, Donee
occurramus omnes in unitatem fidei et agnitionis filii
Dei — until we are all run together in oneness of faith
and knowledge of the Son of God, until we are all
made into one vast body centred round Mary and
wedded to Christ, our Head and Spouse.
Proximce ejus afferentur tibi—" Her nearest shall
be brought unto Thee." It is those nearest to Mary
who are most quickly, most potently drawn ; those
in whose souls there is the least alloy, whose mind
and affection has been purged in the fire from all
dross and impurity. As the soul nears Mary, it
also nears its own birth-place in the heart of its
Creator, and is drawn with an ever-quickening speed
to its final repose. It is drawn in Icetitia et exulta-
tione — "in joy and exultation," which grows every
moment of its nearing. " In joy," for "though the
strife be sore, yet in His parting breath, Love
masters agony." Like all coming to birth, this
throwing off the bands of our narrower self, is
not without pain and anguish and cracking of
the heart-strings. If the soul is to come to the
King, she must forget her own people and her
father's house ; yet, labor ipse amatur, the pain
itself is loved as the expression and the relief of

THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.

love. " In exultation," " leaping, and walking, and
praising God," as the once-lam?, glorying in his
new-found, God-given strength, or as Mary herself
who when carried to the Temple of the King, and
being set down on the sacred steps from her mother's
arms, " danced with her feet," as the old legend says.
" I was glad when they said to me, Let us go into
the house of the Lord ; our feet shall stand within
thy courts, O City of Peace." And the thronging
souls who are drawn after her to be presented to
the King, they too have tasted the sweet bitterness
of sacrifice and offering, and in joy and exultation
have cried : " Lord, in the singleness of my heart,
gladsome I offer Thee this day all, without reserve "
— Domine in simplicitate cordis mei Icetus obtuli universa
hodie. But what manner of King is this that the
home to which His spouse is brought should be
called a temple rather than a palace ; that He
should be loved with a love of adoration and
worship ; with sacrifice and offering and absolute
self-surrender ? Ipse enim est Dominus Deus tuus,
says our Psalm, et adorabunt eum — " For He is the
Lord thy God whom all shall adore." " Thy Maker
is thy husband," says Isaias. His love and His
absolute right of kingship is founded on His creator-
ship, on the entire dependence of the soul upon His
abiding thought and care, a dependence whereof
that of the child upon the mother in whose womb
it lives, is but a feeble hint, even as that mother's
love is but a faint reflex of the love of the Creator
for the soul ever new-born in His bosom.

THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.

And He rules as King in the soul when all
her affections are so given to Him that she
loves Him, not only above all things, in such sort
that she would leave all else for Him, but alone,
loving nothing else but in relation to Him, in
the way that He loves it, and desires that she
should love it ; and for this consummation He
moves her to long, and pray, and labour, and suffer,
and cries out within her : A dveniat regnum tuum.
" Oh, when will there be an end to these miseries ;
when shall I be delivered from the wretched bondage
of these vices ; when shall I be mindful of Thee,
O Lord, alone ; when shall I rejoice in Thee to the
full ; when shall I be without all let of true liberty,
without burdening from mind or from body ; when
shall I contemplate the glory of Thy Kingdom ;
when wilt Thou be to me all in all ; when shall I be
with Thee in Thy Kingdom, which from eternity
Thou hast been getting ready for Thy dear ones ? "*
Of Mary, "the world's sad aspiration's one
success," the one soul in which God has had His
own way unimpeded, in which He has fully asserted
His presence and shone forth as through a faultless
crystal, of Mary it is said, " The Queen hath stood
at Thy right hand in vesture of gold with many-
coloured broiderings. Hearken, My daughter, behold,
and incline thine ear. Forget thy own people and
the house of thy father; and the King shall long
after thy beauty; for He is the Lord thy God,
whom all shall adore." For the soul is indeed a
queen, when she is all glorious within, and when
1 Imitation, iii. 48.

THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.

Christ rules over her with absolute unimpeded
dominion. Subject to any other rule but His, she
is so far a slave, nor has she yet perfect liberty,
perfect self-mastery. But subject to Christ, she is
by the very fact raised to a throne at His side and
shares His rule over her every faculty and move
ment; thus dying to live, and losing to gain, and
forsaking all to find a hundred-fold now, and ever
lasting liberty in the life to come. For what is
liberty but the perfect development and exercise of
all our powers in due order. Thus, King and Queen,
they reign side by side ; God and His little creature.
And she is His consort, con-sors, one who shares the
same lot or portion. She is ever with Him at His
right hand ; whether by His Cross on Calvary or by
His throne in Heaven. " If we suffer with Him,"
says St. Paul, "we shall also reign with Him." If
His kingship over her was purchased with sorrow,
her queenship is bought no cheaper; there is no
way to His side but through thorns and brambles.
How is the queen clad ? Like Mary, in her
broidered vesture of gold ; in her mantle of world
wide universal charity, big enough to shelter a
thousand worlds-full of sinners who fly thither for
refuge as chickens to their mother's wings ; that
mantle which enfolds the redeemed world as a
sunlit sky thinly curtaining off the place Christ is
preparing for us in secret, woven of gold purified
seven times by her seven sorrows, for what love.
is so pure as the love we bear those for whom,
and even from whom, we have suffered ? And the
many-coloured fringes with which this mantle is

THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE. 13
decked around, what are they but the virtues midst
which charity rules as mother and mistress, which
spring from her bosom, and draw their life from
her ; for love is the fulfilling of the law, the sum and
substance of all its precepts.
Finally, the vocation of Mary is in some
measure the vocation of every soul : " Hearken,
My daughter, and forget thy own people and thy
father's house," forget thyself and every other
affection so far as it is debased by any undue
infusion of self; lose thy life that thou mayest save
it, give and it shall be given to thee, full measure,
pressed down, shaken together, and running over;
"leave all, and thou shall find all; quit thy desires,
and thou shalt find rest." We Catholics need not
to be told that the call to closer union with God, to
love Him alone, far from deadening or quenching
any right and healthy nature affection, or warping
or maiming the soul ; perfects, purifies, deepens, and
exalts all that it regulates and restrains. None love
father or mother or brother or friend so tenderly,
truly, eternally, as they who love God more than all,
and all for God's sake, as Jesus loved Mary or John
or Lazarus, or the Magdalen, for Divine love is the
myrrh which embalms all other love and saves it
from taint and corruption. Ungoverned by that
over-ruling affection, our other affections are a dis
orderly riotous mob, weak individually and col
lectively, and dangerous by reason of their very
weakness and waywardness; but under that sway
they are disciplined, strengthened, and welded
together into the unity of an army with one mover,

14 THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.
one action, one end, and licence and confusion give
place to order and true liberty. This is that life
bought at the cost of death and mortification, in
which the self, forgotten in the remembrance and
thought of God, is found again in Him, recognized
almost as part of Him, and loved rightly for His
sake and in sympathy with Him. Precious in the
eyes of God is this death of the soul in which she
is buried in Him and from which she rises to a new
life — the death which Mary embraced when she
elected to be the sorrowful Mother of the Man of
Sorrows, and said, Ecce ancilla Domini.
Into the soul thus purified God looks as into a
burnished mirror and sees there the reflex of His
own beauty, "without spot or wrinkle," and longs
for that soul and draws it to Himself with the
impetuous ardour of the love He of necessity bears
towards the very least shadow of His own Divine
goodness; even as the earth draws back to her
bosom whatever would vainly fly from her thrall.
" The King shall then long for thy beauty, for He
is the Lord thy God ; " it is from His bosom thou
wert taken ; it is from Him thou wouldst vainly
flee ; it is to Him thou must return of necessity, in
the measure that the mirror of thy soul is purged of
selfishness and His nature and image shines out in
thee. "Glorious things are spoken of thee," O thou
soul of man, thou city of the great King.

THE HIDDEN LIFE.
" II faut se bien persuader qu'il n'y-a absolument d'utile,
de r£el, d'interessant que ce qui se passe entre notre ame et
Lui qui tout est la." — Mrs. Craven, Meditations.
As children our thoughts about God are childish of
necessity, and are no more suited to our later years
than the clothes and toys of our infancy. As men
we must put away the thoughts of childhood unless
our soul is to perish through nakedness and starvation.
We must recognize that God is not one who made
the world once for all and then retired from His
labours to rest in the distant heavens and to survey
His work from afar, but that whatever excellence is
found in any creature is due to the image of God
reflected there ; and that as the image in a mirror is
caused by the presence of him who stands in front
of it, and stays while he stays and goes when he
goes, so it is because God is most intimately present
to all things, is permeating and penetrating their
inmost substance, that they are what they are. For
they depend for every instant of their being and
every vibration of their activity on the continual,
sustained exercise of God's conscious love. He
radiates them into being as the flame radiates its
light and heat. As the thoughts and images which
we conjure up in our mind depend upon our will, so

1 5 THE HIDDEN LIFE.
creation (whose reality compared with God's is but
as a dream) hangs on the Divine will. Creatures are
nothing more nor less than mirrors or crystals
designed to show forth, to reflect and analyze the
multiform beauty of the Divine' Light, to split it up
into its infinitely various components. Their beauty,
their brightness, their colouring, is not their own, not
from themselves, but from the Light that permeates
them, from God who dwells in them. Yet while each
is in some measure a temple of His presence, accord
ing to the degree in which it mirrors His goodness,
it is in the soul of man, with its spiritual powers
and activities, that His image is most perfectly and
nobly displayed. Here, however, His indwelling is
two-fold. In the indestructible nature of the soul
and in those activities and perfections which are
common to good and evil alike, nay, which are
possessed in the most excellent degree even by the
fallen spirits, in these He dwells in the measure that
He wills, nor does His indwelling depend upon the
consent of the creature. But if He would reflect
and show forth those attributes which are essentially
perfections, not of the mind alone, but also of the
power of choice or of free-will, if He would dwell
in us as sanctity, as truthfulness, as justice, as
purity, as patience, as meekness, as love, still more,
if He would crown these natural virtues and raise
them to a Divine order by grace, and by His
indwelling Spirit, if He would work Faith, Hope,
and Charity in our hearts, then indeed He must
wait upon our will ; He must stand at the door and
knock until we open and receive Him.

THE HIDDEN LIFE. 17
It is of this indwelling that St. Paul writes : " I
live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." For all
Christian sanctity is simply the presence of Christ,
of God Incarnate dwelling in the soul, uttering
Himself, asserting Himself there ; nor can we boast
of anything, save that we have not shut the door in
His face. All the glory of the temple is from Him
who dwells in it. Whatever sanctity or spiritual
beauty is found in the members of Christ's Mystical
Body, flows into them from the Head. It is the
life of Christ, extended and manifested in His
Church on earth, which continues the sacrifice of
praise and holiness inaugurated by Him in His own
person upon earth. The Church is the tree which
has grown out of that seed. Hence St. Paul writes:
" To Him {i.e., to the Father) be glory in the Church
and in Christ for ever and ever ; " for Christ and the
Church are one thing.
We are sanctified, therefore, in proportion as
Christ lives and dsvells in us. But our spiritual life
is a life of thoughts, words, and actions ; it has
its outward and its inward side. And if we ask
ourselves which is the more important, the more
fundamental, there can be but one answer. For
as the soul is to the body, so is the interior
to the exterior man; and so is the inner life
of our thoughts and affections to the outer
life of our words and actions. Soul and body
alike are essential parts of humanity; yet the
body is for the soul, not the soul for the
body. Christ must dwell in our outward and in
our inward life, but principally in the latter; for
c

18 THE HIDDEN LIFE.
the outward is for the sake of the inward, and not
conversely. It is what we think about and what we love that
matters most, and that makes us what we really are in
God's eyes, as opposed to what we seem in the eyes
of others. It is the secret life of our heart which
is our highest, noblest life. It is in the theatre of
our inmost soul that the great drama of our life is
played. Men see but the shadows that flit across
the curtain now and then, and overhear an odd
word at times. God and our conscience are the
sole spectators.
Our life for all eternity will be a life, not of
speaking and doing, but of contemplating and
loving — an interior life. " This is life eternal, that
they should know Thee." Heaven is but the
triumphant advent, the unimpeded reign of God in
the soul. And so far as we here begin to entefinto
eternal life we must live principally at home in our
own hearts, and regard that as the chief scene
of our existence, — Regnum Dei intra vos est. In
brief, eternal life is friendship with God — with a
friend whom we find in our heart, whom we listen
to in our conscience.
This is not the truism it sounds. For though
we all admit as axiomatic that our inner life is of
the highest importance, and that without it the
outer life is only pretence and hypocrisy, yet in this
pseudo-practical age we are likely to invert the
right order of things, and to regard the importance
of the heart's life as subordinate and relative to the
life of our outward conduct ; to consider it as a

THE HIDDEN LIFE. 19
means to that end, and not as a co-ordinate and far
nobler end in itself. We recognize that good actions
and fair words, if they are not merely hypocritical,
are the children of good thoughts and desires, and
that if we want to enjoy the fruit, we must cultivate
the seed. Yet it is this very analogy of seed and
fruit which is so fallacious, which leads us to regard
the inner life as valuable simply for the sake of its
outward effects, and to forget that the hidden acti
vities of the soul are absolutely the highest. Truly
the greater includes the less, and if the heart is
right, it will not fail to overflow and betray itself in
our speech and conduct ; for " from the fulness of
the heart the mouth speaketh." But it is the
fulness of the heart that God looks to and values,
and not the utterances of the mouth. The Catholic
religion has always been very plain on this point,
setting the contemplative life above the active in
dignity, as more conformable to that of the angels,
who for ever behold the face of God. And as it is
necessary for the Church's corporate perfection that
there should be always some members set apart for
such a life, as many, namely, as is compatible with
the Church's active ministrations, so it is needful in
the life of the individual that there should be times
set apart for the cultivation of those inner activities
in which our highest and best life consists.
Here the childhood of the race presents a
parallel to that of the individual. The Law was
before the Gospel. It was written on tables of stone ;
it enjoined observances in word and deed. Excellent
and Divine, so far as it went, yet it brought nothing

THE HIDDEN LIFE.

to perfection till Christ came, not to destroy but
fulfil, not to make light of outward sanctity, but to
carry sanctification into the heart as well. For in
order of genesis the imperfect is before the perfect,
the animal before the spiritual, the earthly before
the heavenly, although in the order of Divine
intention that which is last to be realized is what is
first and chiefest to be desired, and is the parent of
all other desires. The Law forbade murder, but
Christ forbade the angry and revengeful thought ;
the Law restrained deeds of selfish arrogance and
violence, Christ taught men to be meek and humble
in their hearts, to think gently, humbly, forgivingly
of the weakness and sins of others. The Law said,
"Thou shalt not commit adultery," Christ demanded
purity of heart, cleanness of the imagination, and
chastity of desire. It is out of the heart of man,
according to Christ, that all lawlessness and wicked
ness proceed, and the external disorder caused by
such violence and licence, is but an insignificant
evil compared with the ruin of God's sanctuary
within the heart itself, the profanation of His image
in the soul of man, the darkening of the intellect, the
enslaving of the will, the chaos of the affections and
passions. So it is with each of us individually. When we
first turn to the service of God we are legalists,
imbued with the spirit of the Law, and if not
actually superstitious in our estimate of the import
ance of observances, yet incredulous of the extreme
necessity and all-importance of the secret life and
converse of the heart. We are careful, indeed, to

THE HIDDEN LIFE.

check evil desires, because we soon learn that, as
the smouldering spark gives birth to the flame, so
desire kindles up into action. But it is long before
we realize the simple fact that as our evil propen
sities — pride, anger, vanity, avarice, lust, and the
rest — are strengthened every time we yield to them
in outward act, so they can be fostered steadily,
persistently, unnoticeably, by the mere unheeded
dreamings of our imagination and wanderings of
our fancy — apart from all desire or purpose of
putting these fancies into effect. Nay, it is chiefly
from this perennial source that our vices are fed
and nurtured as by an insensible dew, so fine and
subtle as to be imperceptible. And thus it comes
to pass that our heart is overgrown with noxious
weeds and tangling briars which we cannot account
for, so silent and slow has been the growth, and yet
so steady and constant.
What is true of our evil propensities is equally
true of those that are pure and holy. It is by the
continual stream of our thoughts and imaginings
that they are insensibly nourished and strengthened,
rather than by our outward actions, which are
comparatively occasional and intermittent. We
live more by the air we breathe, sleeping and
waking, than by the food we take only from time to
time. Therefore St. Paul says:1 " Whatsoever things
are true, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever
1 " Qusecunque sunt vera quaecunque pudica, qusecunque justa,
quaecunque sancta, qusecunque amabilia, quocunque bonas famse,
si qua virtus, si qua laus discipline, haec cogitate." (Philipp.iv. 8.)

THE HIDDEN LIFE.

things are just, whatsoever things are holy, what
soever things are lovable, whatsoever things are of
good report, if there be any virtue, if any praise
worthy discipline, hcec cogitate; think about these
things ; " feed your heart on such food ; meditate
on the things of God, on anything that is good and
beautiful or true in the works of God's hands, or in
the laws of His world, or in the thoughts and
doings and lives of men ; on whatsoever is noblest
and best in human conduct. And though God
Himself, the source of all such goodness, should be
the chief food of our reflection, yet St. Paul knows
well that here we do not see God face to face, but
only in His works. Nor is it possible for our minds
always to be occupied directly and consciously about
the things of God, but it suffices that its theme be
something worthy and profitable, or in some way
referable to the service and glory of God, such as
our business or daily concerns, our lawful and
reasonable recreations, our converse with our
fellow-men. Still better it is for us to accustom our
mind to the higher thoughts that secular literature
and art furnish us with in such abundance ; to
cultivate a certain orderliness, purity, and elevation
in our imaginings; not to disdain the grace that
God offers us in a good education, and in the
opportunities of refining our taste. All this helps
to bring order into the tangled wilderness of our
fancies, to strengthen the faculties of the soul, and
to give us a more perfect control over their workings ;
so that when occasions offer we may use them more
effectually and faithfully in the direct service of God.

THE HIDDEN LIFE. 23
Speaking of the perfection of our outward
conduct, St. James says, that he who offends not
in tongue the same is a perfect man, for he is able
to govern himself as with a bridle. For although in
some sense the tongue has no movement of itself,
but only that which it receives from our thought
and will, yet it is so closely yoked with the imagina
tion, so ready for instant use at all times, that it
seems almost to share the automatic and semi-
independent nature of that faculty, and to drag us
along in its course, committing us to much that in
no sense represents our matured and deliberate
sentiments. In proportion as its movements are
minute, rapid, multitudinous, they more easily
evade our attention and self-control. Hence, since
self-government is the precise point in which man
differs from animals, he who can govern every
movement of his tongue is indeed a perfect man
and master of himself. Manifestly, he is perfect in
his outward conduct ; but more than this, he is also
to some extent perfect in the control of his thoughts
and affections ; for without this, by reason of the
close connection of word and thought, faultlessness
in speech is not possible in any positive sense.
For to master one's tongue is not to keep perpetual
silence, but to say the right thing in the right
place. Yet there are hours when even the most restless
energy must be still, and the busiest tongue must
be silent, when there is no room for any other
activity but that of the soul ; and then he is indeed
a perfect man who offends not ; whose thoughts and

24 THE HIDDEN LIFE.
approved feelings are faultless before God ; in whose
inner life Christ's image and indwelling is manifest ;
whose soul is united to the Divine Soul of our
Saviour in all its imaginings, reasonings, aspirations,
sentiments, through the indwelling of that same
Spirit which sanctified His Soul and the soul of His
Mother and of all His saints.
This is, indeed, the highest point of perfection ;
the most difficult, and therefore the last to be
attained in its fulness. The Law was our pedagogue
which led us to Christ ; the exterior life is the
scaffolding preparatory to the never-finished task of
building up the inner sanctuary of God's presence.
If our tongue seems to run away with us, far
truer is this of our thought, which may be compared
to an endless stream, springing from the hidden
depths of our memory, which rolls past us, bearing
on its bosom all manner of odds and ends, the litter
and debris of our past experiences and reflections ;
nor is it in our power to do much more than to
stand on the bank and watch, and with our attention
fix and arrest what is, profitable for our spiritual
food, suffering all else to float by, or even hastening
it on its way. True, it depends largely (not
altogether) upon our previous choice what this
stream of subjective time shall find in the storehouse
of our memory to carry past us in its current. We
are not immediately answerable for all the fancies
that flit across our brain, except so far as by
deliberate approval we make them virtually our own
act. But the general character and tone of our
involuntary memories and fancies is to a great

THE HIDDEN LIFE. 25
extent chargeable to our past conduct, exterior and
interior. Moreover, those who watch over their
hearts, gradually acquire a knowledge of the laws
which bind together our fancies into chains and
groups ; they know what leads to what ; and there
fore they can in some measure determine the
particular channel in which the stream shall flow ;
and so they can advance indefinitely nearer to that
perfect inner self-mastery which is never absolutely
attainable by mortal man in this life.
Perhaps this interior life was never more difficult,
never more apt to be underrated, neglected, forgotten
than in these days, when knowledge is multiplied to
the hurt of wisdom, and the means of mental
subsistence is exalted into an end. There is so
much to be known now-a-days if we would pass
muster as people of even ordinary education, so
much of the experiences and thoughts of other men
to be stored away in our memories, that life in most
cases is not long enough for the process and no
margin of leisure remains for digesting and assimi
lating the food with which we have been surfeited.
We deal it out to others as we ourselves received it,
crude and unchanged ; as it were, so much coin that
passes from hand to hand and bears no other stamp
than that of the nation.
And with the multiplication of knowledge and
information the evil increases daily, and thought
and reflection becomes the province of a dwindling
number of specialists, to whom the minds of the
millions are enslaved, for it is the tyranny of
capitalism in another sphere. We no longer have

26 THE HIDDEN LIFE.

time to think for ourselves, but our thinking is done
for us wholesale, and distributed to us through the
press, and the very faculty of meditation has grown
paralyzed from disuse.
This fault of modern education cannot but make
itself felt in the spiritual life of the faithful at large
in a decay of the ability and habit of reflection.
Not to speak of a narrow and exaggerated idea of
practical piety which would (if it dared, in the face
of Catholic tradition) make the service of God
chiefly consist in everlasting fussiness and external
activity, in " Church-work," and parish-work, and
controversy, in the corporal works of mercy, which
is secretly impatient of contemplative orders, con
templative saints, and contemplation in general,
which is puzzled how to defend the eremitical life or
the life of mere suffering and solitude that certain
saints have chosen ; — not to speak of all this, it is to
be feared that in regard even to our spiritual needs,
information and knowledge are apt to be mistaken
for that vital thought, that meditative wisdom which
is the true life of the soul, the quickening flame, of
which knowledge and information and experience is
but the fuel. We store our mind with the recorded
experiences and reflections of others, but we do not
compare these things and ponder them in our heart;
we do not assimilate and digest. We gather manna
ourselves and we distribute it to others ; but we
forget that it is given to us for food ; to be eaten,
not to be gazed on — and all because the leisure,
the practice, the habit, and therefore the ability of
tranquil reflection tends to become the privilege

THE HIDDEN LIFE. 27
of the few, and because there is so much to be
devoured that there is no time to ruminate.
However difficult the interior life may be, yet it
is all-important. " Except you eat the Flesh of the
Son of Man and drink His Blood ye have no life in
you." If the first sense of these words refers to
sacramental communion, it cannot be doubted but
they are also verified of the spiritual communion in
which Christ dwells in our hearts through faith.
Spiritual communion is not merely a substitute for
that which is sacramental, but it is the usual con
dition for the fruitfulness of the sacrament ; nay, in
some sort, it is the end to which the sacramental
eating of Christ is directed, the grace it is designed
to produce. In the Eucharist we receive the seed
of that supernatural life which ordinarily manifests
itself in our heart and in our conduct, but without
meditation the seed lies idle and uncultivated — the
force may be there, but it is latent. Christ, and
Christ Crucified, is the food of our soul, the daily
bread of our eternal life, the fuel of Divine love in
our heart. He is the Word Incarnate, the Divine
" Saying," which we must keep and ponder in our
heart; in whom whatsoever things are true, pure,
lovely, of good report, and praiseworthy, are
summed up and gathered together as in their source
and end.
In all this matter Mary must be our model of
the interior life; Mary, in whom Christ dwelt as
He dwelt in no other, in whose heart alone He had
His own way from the very first ; in whose life He
asserted Himself unimpeded. Her words and

18 THE HIDDEN LIFE.
actions, however full of sublime significance, were
few. But the whole record of her life of stupendous
fruitfulness and activity is epitomized for us in one
brief sentence : Mary kept all these sayings and
pondered them in her heart. " Blessed is the womb
that bore Thee," cries a voice in the crowd, " and
blessed the paps which Thou hast sucked." " Yea,
rather," says our Lord, " blessed are they that hear
the Word of God and keep it." Blessed was Mary
above all women in that she was Mother of God ;
yet more blessed in that she was full of grace and
had found favour with God ; blessed, in that Christ
dwelt in her womb, yet rather blessed, in that Christ
" dwelt in her heart by faith."

THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
Quo ibo a spiritu tuo et quo a facie tua fugiam.
"Whither shall I fly from Thy Spirit, whither escape from
Thy presence ? " — Psalm cxxxviii.
We are always told before entering on prayer to
"put ourselves in the presence of God ; " and at all
times to endeavour "to live in the presence of God."
Indeed, it may be said that sanctification lies in a
practical realizing of the presence of God. For
Heaven is the state in which we see God face to
face and stand in His presence continually ; and
sanctity is but Heaven begun upon earth. In pro
portion, therefore, as we live in God's presence, do
we enter into the lot of the saints in light. Plainly,
if God is omnipresent, if all things are naked and
open to His sight, whether we like it or not we are
always equally in His presence ; that is, we are
equally present to Him. But local or physical
presence is one thing, and conscious presence is
another. Two trees are physically present one to
another in the same garden, and this relation is
necessarily mutual. But while a tree is present to
the touch or sight or consciousness of an observer,
the observer is not present to the consciousness of
the tree, for it has none. So too, one person may
be present to the consciousness of another who is

30 THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
thinking of him, or looking at him, or listening to
him, and yet that other may not be present to him.
To live in God's presence, or to put ourselves in
His presence, means to become actually conscious
of God as present ; or at least so to live as though
we were thus actually conscious. For at times the
presence of others will act as a check upon us even
when we are not positively thinking about them at
all ; because we have a sort of latent sense, or sub
consciousness of being watched and observed. I
suppose it may be explained by saying that there is
a certain line of conduct and converse, a certain
pitch or tone, which we take according as we are
alone or in company, and, again, according to the
nature of our company ; and that when once the
consciousness of our surroundings has started us on
one of these lines, we persevere in it after we have
ceased to attend to the reason, unless something
diverts us altogether.
As children we must of necessity think of God
under the somewhat magnified figure of our earthly
parents and rulers. He lives, we know not how,
above the clouds, beyond the stars — wherever that
may be ; He surveys the earth and its dwellers from
afar, with an eagle-vision of surpassing keenness;
He rules it by some mysterious actio in distans,
except when He sends angels to execute His will,
as it were, in His absence. Religious art and
symbolism, nay, the enacted symbolism by which
Christ ascended, and was lifted up with the clouds,
or by which the clouds were parted for the descent
of the Dove, all tends to press this picture of

THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 31
the absent God still deeper into our imagination, so
that even when reason rises to the truth of God's
omnipresence, fancy ever gives it the lie and hinders
the practical realization of the fact. We lift up our
eyes and hands in prayer as to a God outside us
and above us ; and herein we follow the practice,
not merely of the rude and simple, but of all the
saints and of Christ Himself. The appearances
under which God has revealed Himself; the terms
and figures in which the inspired writings speak
of Him, all alike tend to set our imagination at
variance with our reason, nay, with our faith, which
tells us distinctly that God is a Spirit to be wor
shipped neither on Sion nor on Garizim, but in
spirit and in truth ; that He dwells not in temples
made with hands ; that the Heaven of heavens
cannot contain Him ; that if we go up into Heaven,
He is there ; if we descend into Hell, He is there ;
that His eyes are everywhere beholding the evil and
the good.
Herein our quarrel is with the necessary limita
tions of our finite nature, which require that
spiritual truths should be presented to our childish
mind, not in their naked purity, but in the swaddling-
bands of sensuous imagery, — God permitting or not
hindering the admixture of error, for the sake of the
golden grains of truth which cannot be otherwise
conveyed. But it is for us as we grow, to put away
the thoughts of childhood, as we put away its
clothes or its toys to adopt those more suitable to
our years. Unfortunately, while we educate and
develop our mind in every other direction, we are

32 THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
content to remain babes all our lives in the things
of God and our soul — "the things that belong to
our peace." But as the clothes of our infancy are
too strait for comfort and decency in our maturity,
so our first conceptions of God and spiritual things
are too crude and grotesque to be taken seriously
by our formed intelligence, or to exercise any
influence over our heart and will. Custom and
reverence may prevent our casting them aside
altogether ; but they have ceased to be a reality to
us. We are as those who having done a little Latin
and Greek in their boyhood before going into
business, wonder secretly what pleasure, still more
what use, some can profess to find in classical
literature ; and regard such enthusiasm as a craze
or affectation. Perhaps they remember a line or
two from Horace, or an aphorism from the Delectus
which they quote on occasion, to show a certain
respect for conventional ideas of education. So
we find many whose religion consists of a few
platitudes remembered from childhood, seeds still
lying by the wayside, which have never struck
root so as to become a living growth developing
pari passu with the growth of the soul. Human
respect may seal their lips, but in their hearts they
wonder what others can find in religion, and why
they speak of it as a necessity of life. Such minds
are an easy prey to the shallow sophist who has no
difficulty in persuading them of the untenableness
of their religious notions ; nor it is with much of a
wrench that they part from the faith which they
have never understood and never loved.

THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 33
"Why does God hide Himself? Why can I not
see Him or hear Him ? Why does He let things
run their course, and do so little to show His power
over Nature ? " These are some of the first diffi
culties which rise in our minds as we emerge from
childhood, suggesting to us that there are some
common features to be found in theology and in
fairy tales, and inclining us to put them into one
category. Figuring God as corporeal and human,
we unconsciously suppose that He makes Himself
invisible by some miraculous power; that He for
bears to make Himself heard for some capricious
reason ; that whereas we make our power over
Nature felt every moment, He chooses to be inert,
lest His presence should be detected. Perhaps our
ill-informed teachers tell us that God affects this
secrecy in order to try our faith ; and if we ask why
God should try us by faith, we are told that we may
not ask, but must take things as we find them — a
sort of answer which can silence but cannot satisfy.
Plainly, what we have failed to recognize is, that
God does not by some magic make Himself invisible,
but that He is naturally invisible to bodily eyes,
and that if He makes Himself seen or heard, it is
by a miracle ; that in such cases the form we see
is not God, nor are the words we hear His words,
as though He had voice and lips and tongue as we
have. Nor does God enter into conflict with Nature
and overcome it as we do, or turn aside the
orderly course of events as by some foreign external
agency ; for it is He who moves in all Nature, and
the orderly course of events is but the expxesgjeHagL
D

34 THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
His mind and will. It is in the language of His
creatures, in the workings of His providence, in the
voice of our conscience, that God is heard and seen.
He is not secret or hidden, if we search for Him
with the right faculty, namely, our intelligence.
Sound is not the object of sight, nor colour oi
hearing; nor is God the object of my sense, but
only of reason and intelligence. We are not
aggrieved because we cannot see electricity, since
it is naturally not visible. God is as naturally
invisible; nor is it caprice but necessity which
makes faith — in the wide sense of holding to in
visible realities — a condition for salvation. Indeed,
that which marks the progress of man from savagery
to perfect humanity, is the practical apprehension
and realization of invisible realities, shown in a
tendency to look beneath appearances to the under
lying substance of things, to pass from effects to
their hidden causes, to live more in the past and
the future by memory and foresight, and not as
mere animals on the apex of the present instant : in
a word, to be governed by reasons, ideas, principles,
rather than by sensations, impressions, impulses.
So that, even in the natural order, there is no
salvation without faith, which in this wide sense is
the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen.
Let us now determine a little more closely and
clearly what it is to live in the presence of God.
We are told that the angels and blessed always
behold the face of our Father who is in Heaven ; that
they see the very substance of God with the eye of

THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 35
their intelligence ; conceiving Him not merely as the
cause of some special effect which manifests His
presence ; but conceiving Him directly in Himself.
If I hear a great crash, I form a distinct conception
of it, by which I should recognize a similar crash as
belonging to the same class, and should say: "There's
another ! " I also know at once that it has a cause ;
but what the cause is, an explosion, or a train, or
an earthquake, I have no idea; or rather, I know
the cause simply as the cause of this noise, and
nothing more ; and I want to know something more
about it as well. I want to know it as directly as
I know the noise which it has caused. So in this
life we know a great deal about God as the cause
of creation, but we want to know Him as directly as
we know creation ; to know not merely what He is
in relation to His creatures, but also what He is in
Himself. For God is not merely a creator ; just
as a poet is not merely a poet, but a man with a
personality of his own, of which his poesy is but a
fragmentary manifestation.
But God is no more the proper object of
any created intelligence, than the blinding bright
ness of the sun intensified a thousand-fold is
of the vision of some dark-loving animal, an
bwl or a bat. Raised by grace to powers above
all their natural exigencies, the saints and angels
face that brightness boldly, without the medium
of any darkened glass ; they see God and yet
live. And that vision fascinates their gaze and
holds them spell-bound, so that they can never for
an instant cease to behold the face of the Father.

36 THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
And whatever else they do or think is the result of
that vision ; is consciously caused by it, and no
more interrupts it than an object seen in the light
interrupts my consciousness of the light. It is in
God as in a mirror, it is in the mind of God and in
the heart of God, that our angels always behold us.
They do not turn away from God to look at us ; but
rather they see us with the Divine eyes in con
sequence of their union with God. It is through
God, moreover, that they act upon us and minister
to us ; their will being altogether merged in His ;
even as love makes us one thing, having one thought,
one operation with those we love.
The blessed are thus continually conscious of
God's face ; and that, with a full and direct con
sciousness ; not as we are conscious of the light or
of the air, in an indirect manner, as of one ot
numerous elements in our present experience ; but
as of the principal and central object of their atten
tion to which everything else is secondary and
subordinate. As we cannot enjoy this face to face vision, so
neither is it possible for us during our mortal life to
be continually conscious even of God's veiled
presence. For, in the first place, whereas the
brightness of His face draws the eyes of the blessed
so irresistibly that they are absolutely unable to
avert their gaze, the contemplation of His hidden
presence needs an exertion of the attention.
In the former case, as far as attention is con
cerned, the mind is passive; it is difficult, nay,
impossible not to attend; but in the latter, the

THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 37
mind is active, and not to attend is easier. It is
well to observe this difference between passive and
active attention. Abstraction may be either a
power or a weakness, a matter of self-control, or
of want of self-control. In the latter case, when
it diverts the attention from something else, wholly
or in part, it should rather be called distraction.
Albeit the blessed are passive in their enrapt
abstraction, yet the rapture is not of defective
weakness, since no finite will can resist the draw
of infinite beauty.
But in this life we have to seek God if we would
find Him ; we have, to some little degree, to exert
ourselves, to open our eyes and keep them open ;
to watch and to listen ; to school ourselves to a
greater delicacy and readiness of perception.
There have been indeed men of holiness and deep
thought, who have maintained that God is always
confusedly present to our consciousness, that He is
mingled in our every momentary experience as the
central strand round which the rest are woven ; that
as we are always conscious of our own weight, though
normally it makes no separate impression on our
memory but only in states of weakness and weariness,
or as we are always conscious of the air we breathe
or of the light in which we walk, or of the health
which we enjoy, although no disturbance of these
conditions concentrates our attention upon them
as upon a principal object, so God is the most
universal, constant, and essential condition of all
our experiences, the spiritual light without which
we can see nothing; and yet just because of this

38 THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
unbroken regularity, evenness, matter-of-courseness,
it is impossible for us to separate this light from
the objects which it reveals to us, or to attend to
it as to a distinct and principal object. As all the
colours which we see with our bodily eyes are but
various limitations of the colourless light under
which we behold them ; so (they conceive) all finite
being is but a limitation of one infinite Being, in
which it lives, moves, and exists ; and is intelligible
just so far and no further. God is, as it were, the
intellectual light, by sharing which all these finite
things become visible to the eye of the mind. We
do not see that light apart, in its purity ; but only
in combination with the object which it illumines,
and which shows off, so to say, some one or other
of its infinite potentialities. As open to misunder
standing, through want of sufficient accuracy ol
expression, this teaching has been authoritatively
condemned. For indeed it would seem to imply
that God, or the Divine substance, in some way
actually entered into the constitution of creatures
or received into Himself those limitations whereby
they differ from one another in kind ; whereas this
can only be said of a certain abstraction of all finite
being which we call " Being-in-general," which is in
a wholly different and infinitely lower plane than the
Divine being. This "Being-in-general" is a mere
chimera of the mind whereby we give consistency
to God's creative activity after it has issued from
the Divine will and before it has been determined
to any specified effect; as though God said Fiat,
leaving the object undetermined. It is of this

THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 39
" being " only that every creature is rightly con
ceived as partaking, or as limiting it to some one
pha«e of its infinitely various potentiality, even as
everything we see with our bodily eyes singles out
and reflects some one ray of those splendours of
which the seven-stranded sunlight is woven. Now,
in truth, God is the Sun from which the light of
finite being proceeds ; but He is the cause of that
light, not the light itself. It is through His presence
and His influence that all creatures have existence
and intelligibility; but what they partake is not
divinity, but an effect of divinity.
Close as He is to all things, intimately as He
permeates all finite existences; yet He is a Light
infinitely different in kind from the light which He
imparts to them ; to us, unthinkable, ineffable. We
can at most touch the hem of His garment, but we
dare not face Him in our infirmity and littleness,
until He call us and bid us come : " Thou shalt call
me and I will answer Thee."
Still it must be our chief aim and study to live
as much as possible in His veiled presence. If we
cannot see His form, we can see His shadow ; if we
cannot hear His voice, we can hear His footfall ; if
we cannot touch His hands and side, we can touch
His vesture. We are surrounded by the signs of
His presence ; and we must learn to read them
quickly, to pass swiftly from the sign to that which
it signifies, so as at last to forget the sign and dwell
wholly on God. For a sign is first something
absolute in itself and afterwards something relative,
carrying the mind on to that which it points to ;

40 THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
and therefore it is possible for the mind to rest in
the sign finally without passing on at all. And this
is more true of those signs which are not entifely
designed and intended to lead our thought else
where. Smoke betrays the presence of fire ; and
a red light betrays the presence of danger on the
line ; but in the latter case the betrayal is designed,
which it is not in the former. God's works are in
some true sense designed and intended to reveal His
presence to us; but still it is not their only end;
and therefore it is most possible and easy for us to
think of them without thinking of Him, to rest in
the sign without passing on to the thing signified.
As children we read books without taking any
interest in the personality of the author ; but the
cultured and matured mind cares for literature
chiefly as a revelation of the soul from which it
sprang. Similarly with regard to music or painting,
which are loved best when they are loved as forms
of expression, as utterances of a spirit like our own.
How absolutely uninteresting, because soulless, is
all manner of machine-music and mock art, just
for the reason that the connection with the originat
ing mind is so remote, so much more than second
hand. It is not a sign of the presence of the artist.
We applaud the violinist or the pianist himself, and
not the instrument nor even the music regarded in
its own perfection. We pass straight from the
excellence of the product to the greater excellence
of the producer. But who would ever dream of
applauding the most finished performance on a
musical-box or a piano-organ ? The distance from

THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 41-
effect to cause is too great ; and we rest simply in
the effect. Now, if we cleave to our childish pictures
of God, if we take what might irreverently be
called a " clock-maker " view of the Deity, accord
ing to which He is conceived to have made the
world once for all, and wound it up, and set it
a-going, and to have retired to rest in an infinitely
distant Heaven ; then indeed we shall never be
able to cultivate a sense of the Divine presence.
But if we hold firmly to the truth of reason and
faith, and reflect on it, time after time, until it
becomes not only a truism of the mind, but alsa
well worked into our imagination ; if we remind
ourselves repeatedly that all the play of nature and
the play of our own being, body and soul, is the
effect of God's most intimate presence ; who, if He
is not the Soul of Nature, nor part of Nature, yet is
more intimate to all nature and more necessary to
its being and movement than our soul is to our
body ; then we shall gradually find ourselves passing
easily from the creature to God, with ever lessening
effort, and at last spontaneously with no effort at
all. And certainly love will accelerate the growth
of this habit. For where the treasure is, there will
the heart be also. We dwell most easily on that
which is most interesting. As has just been said,
our childish interest, unlike that of our riper
thought, is in the performance rather than the
performer; but when we have realized that there
is nothing really interesting on earth but the human
soul, then we are carried from the lesser to the
stronger attraction. Who cares, of all on board,

.42 THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
what hand has kindled the lighthouse-lamp, save
one perchance who knows that it has been kindled
by the loving hand of wife or mother, and who
while others cry, "There it is!" whispers in his
heart, " She is there ! " Such is the different mind
with which men view the world according as they
have not or have learnt to read God's presence
everywhere. Dominus est — " It is the Lord," says
the keen-sighted love of St. John. For as the
sensual by a selective sympathy find sensuality in a
thousand places where the pure-minded pass by
untainted ; or as the suspicious and resentful are
quick, too quick, to detect an affront ; so those
whose eyes are sharpened by love find God lurking
everywhere. Let us not look on this exercise of the presence
of God as an affair of the imagination, as though it
consisted in a certain fictitious picturing of God
ever beside us, or before us, or behind us. Such
efforts tire the head and give a sense of unreality
to religion. It is really a question of opening the
sealed eyes of our reason and seeing what is every
where to be seen, within us and without us, above
and below, on the right hand and on the left;
in all being, and life, and movement; in Heaven
and earth ; on sea and on land, and in everything
they contain ; in all beauty and grace and strength ;
in all loveliness of form and colour ; in all sweetness
of melody and harmony, in all delicacy of fragrance
and flavour ; in all sensation, and reason, and
intelligence ; in all love, and tenderness, and affec
tion ; in the fruit of man's mind and hand ; in the

THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 43
utilities of industrial art ; in the elegancies of
¦culture and refinement ; in the spirituality of liberal
arts ; in the discoveries of science ; in the high
dreamings of philosophy. Still more is God to be
seen in the moral attributes of the soul, in what
soever things are pure, true, lovely, virtuous,
praiseworthy. Above all, is He to be seen and
heard in that highest point of our soul, where our
being runs into His as the stalk which buries itself
in the earth that begets, supports, and nourishes it,
namely, in conscience, which cries to us, " Cleave
to the right," with a voice that is in us, but not of
us ; the voice of one who is with us yet over us.
For we walk not alone, but ever side by side
with God, whose arm is round us, whose lips are at
our ear, even when we are deaf to His whisper :
Lceva ejus sub capite meo et dextra illius amplexabitur
me — " His left hand is under my head and His right
hand embraceth me." So it is the soul walks through
the desert of life leaning on her Beloved. Etsi
ambidavero in medio umbrce mortis, non timebit cor
meum quia tu mecum es ; virga tua et baculus tuus
ipsa me consolata sunt — "Though I walk in the
midst of death's shadow my heart will not fear,
for Thou art with me, Thy rod and the staff have
consoled me." Conscience is the rod and staff
¦of our gentle Shepherd, who thereby checks and
stimulates us alternately that we may not run
forward or lag behind, or in any way be parted
from His side ; and if we have not grown callous
to this salutary sting and discipline, what greater
¦consolation can we have than such evidence of the

44 THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
presence and care of the Shepherd and Lover of our
souls ? " Thy crook and Thy staff are my conso
lation." " Enoch walked with God ; and was not ;
for God took him." Such is the history of those
souls who listen to the voice of the Shepherd,
who are conscious continually of a sort of double
personality, of being God's yoke-fellows, one of a
twain, of suffering and acting with God, thus
splitting up the simple " I " of their unreflecting
thought into " we," and finding another personality
intertwined with their own.
Finally, God is to be seen by those whose eyes
are open, in all the workings and dispositions ol
His providence, from the least to the greatest ; and
when the unenlightened cry out : " It is fate ; it is
fortune ; it is necessity of nature," faith and reason
say, " It is the Lord ; let Him do what seemeth
good unto Him ; " and : " Into Thy hand I com
mend my spirit," and, " My lots are in Thy hand."
Let us not then look on this practice of the
presence of God as one of many devotions which
we are at liberty to take or leave ; for it is the
great work we have come into this world to do.
To see God is eternal life, both here and hereafter ;
here, through a glass darkly; there, face to face.
We are here for a while that our weak eyes may be
gradually accustomed to that dim but growing light
which heralds the sunrise of eternity ; that we may
not be blinded by the brightness of His coming.

GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
" Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet
in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest
in its blessings and anathemas, and even though the eternal
priesthood throughout the Church should cease to be, in it
the sacerdotal principle would remain and have a sway."
— Newman.
It is much to be regretted that the word "conscience"
or " dictate of conscience " has come to be used
indiscriminately for two very distinct acts or utter
ances of the mind — for the moral judgment which
indicates to us what is right or wrong in human
conduct; and for the command which bids us follow
that indication. In either sense conscience may be
called the "voice of God," though more properly in
the latter.
In our moral judgments God speaks to us no
otherwise than in any ordinary utterance of our
understanding or our reason. Inasmuch as He
has created our mind to be in some finite way
a mirror of His own, and co-operates with all its
vitality and movement, and tries, so far as we will
permit Him, to flood and permeate it with His
light, it follows that whatever truth it tells us,
He may be said to tell us indirectly, and through
the instrumentality of the mind : indirectly — for
in every judgment the mind truly speaks, and is
not a mere passive instrument of conveyance. It

46 GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
originates in itself, not indeed without Divine assist
ance, the word of truth which falls upon our inward
ear. But except with regard to a few first principles,,
which are in a certain qualified sense inborn antf
irresistibly evident, the mind is subject to much
contingency in its inferences and deductions about
right and wrong ; in which there is room for endless
deviation and error. So far as the mirror of our
reason is flawed or flaws itself, and thereby distorts
and perverts the Divine Reason which it is made to
reflect, it can in no sense be said to speak to us with
the voice of God. It is indeed, in virtue of its office,
God's appointed messenger, delivering to us the
determinations of His will respecting our conduct
and happiness, but it is a fallible messenger, whose
ear, whose memory, whose tongue may be often at
fault ; and who thus may convey to us a very garbled
version of the Divine message or command. Yet
conscience, in the sense of our moral judgment, is
not so absolutely untrustworthy as might seem.
There are tests and rules to be applied here, as well
as in the case of human witnesses, whose testimony,
under due conditions and restrictions, is a source of
certainty. There are occasions without number
where it is intellectually possible to doubt the
verdict of our conscience, 3'et where it would be
culpably imprudent to pay any practical heed to
such doubt ; and there are other cases in which the
message is so palpably ambiguous and obscure as
to leave our liberty of action intact.
It is not our purpose here to examine the notion
of moral Tightness in conduct, which all know by

GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 47
intuition to be so distinct from any other kind of
Tightness. Men wrangle over the analysis and state
ment of the idea, but as to its existence and separate
character all are agreed. Like every other Tightness,
it implies an end to be reached, and an order to be
observed in reaching it. A right action is one which
preserves or promotes a certain desirable order in
our conduct, that is, in our words and outward
behaviour, or in the inner working of our mind and
heart, so far as they are under our free government.
And a wrong action, contrariwise, is one which
induces a disorder in our conduct.
The end with reference to which our conduct is
said to be morally right or wrong, is that chief and
supreme end which God has created us to attain,
namely, the salvation of our soul here and hereafter
in the exercise of the highest and most ideal love.
This end is in a strict sense obligatory and morally
necessary, and therefore such conduct as is required
to secure it has a corresponding and dependent
necessity. But this necessity and obligation is made
up of two very distinct factors ; of two forces which
exert a sort of compulsion upon our will. Of these
one is our irresistible attraction towards our ulti
mate and complete happiness, and all that we
conceive to be inseparably connected therewith ; the
other is the urgency of the Divine will brought to
bear upon us in the dictate of conscience.
First then there is this implanted desire for our
own fulness of joy, our true well-being, our ideal of
rest and happiness — a desire which we cannot resist
or put aside in any moment of our conscious activity.

48 GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
When once we recognize any action as inseparably
bound up with the realization of that desire, the
thought of that action begins to exercise a sort of
dominion over us, nor can we resist its power until
by some reversion or perversion of judgment we
divest it of that connection with our happiness
which was the secret of its sway.
" If you will enter into life," says Reason,
" keep the commandments." It is not possible
for us to deny our wish to enter into eternal
life, and to attain the solid joy that attends that
life ; but we can shut our eyes to the necessity
of keeping the commandments, and in this way
we can resist the pressure and obligation which
rightness exerts upon our will. Nature obliges us
to desire happiness, but does not oblige us to desire
any one method of life, except so far and so long as
we judge it to be requisite to our happiness. What
ever necessity and obligation there is, is from Nature ;
that is, from God as the author of the soul's essence.
To eat and drink is a necessity of our nature, but to
eat or drink this rather than that is left largely to
our choice.
Yet all this necessity and pressure is from our
selves, from that implanted appetite which is part of
our being. So far, wrong-doing is only shown to be
high treason against our own truest interest, an
offence against self. But we cannot subvert any
designed and established order without offending
him who has established and willed it. If while
I am waiting in the library for a friend whom I am
visiting I amuse myself by deliberately disarranging

GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 49
and mixing up the books which I see he has care
fully set in order, I cannot but be aware that besides
the material disorder and mischief I am producing,
there is another evil of a totally different and more
serious kind for which I am responsible, namely,
the ruffling of my friend's temper. There is nothing
we should value so much as the reasonable esteem
and affection of others ; and therefore the thing we
should dread most is the just censure and anger of
those whom we love and reverence. Whatever
servility there may sometimes be in the dread of the
consequences of their anger, yet there is nothing
servile in the dread of the anger itself. Children
playing at keeping school will patiently accept
punishments, which inflicted in anger by their
parents or teachers would be received with passionate
tears; showing that it is the implied censure and
displeasure which gives the punishment its worst
sting. Hence, the annoyance of my friend is the
worst consequence of my wanton mischief; com
pared with which the disarrangement of the books
is small and remediable. I can put the books in
order again, or can make some equivalent restitu
tion; but I cannot force my friend to be towards
me as before.
Every thinking creature is sensible, at least dimly
and„confusedly, of being dependent on some personal
power which has put him into this world among his
fellow-men, and has given him a definite nature
with a definite work and a definite end, however
imperfectly recognized ; and therefore that the
ascertaining and carrying out of that purpose is

go GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
not merely his own concern, but a duty which he
owes to another to whom he belongs ineffably and
absolutely. He finds, moreover, in his awakened
reason an instinctive love and desire for the objective
interests of reason and right order, quite irrespective
of his private and personal interests, which have at
times to give way to the more universal and impera
tive good. He finds himself angry against injustices,
which touch neither him nor his belongings, and
aglow for the cause of right and truth and order,
where no egoistic bias is assignable. And the growth
of this objective, disinterested love of Tightness is
checked or accelerated in the measure in which the
God-given instinct is yielded to or resisted. All this
points to the fact that his reason and will are given
him only to be instruments of the will of the
personal, subsistent Reason of God Himself, who
presses continually on the created spirit, guiding it
to an end of which it can have at most a partial and
instinctive perception, such as a horse may have of
the purpose of his rider.
Recognizing, therefore, that the order which
reason demands in our conduct with respect to
ourselves and to others is something dependent on
the nature of things established and willed by the
Supreme Reason, it is impossible for us to disturb
that order without being aware, at least in some
dim way, that we are incurring the anger and dis
pleasure of that personal Reason whose creatures
and instruments we are. And if the just censure
and anger of our parents and rulers is something we
should dread as a great evil, how far greater an evil

GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 51
is it to incur the anger of our Father who is in
Heaven, in whom we live and move and have our
being, on the breath of whose love our soul hangs
for every instant of its existence and movement,
who should be the supreme object of our love and
reverence and praise, in friendship with whom our
final happiness consists. To have made God angry,
this is the greatest evil of sin. The disorder we
have caused in God's -work, in our own soul, in
human society, however evil in itself, however
hateful to God, is a finite evil, for which a repara
tion is conceivable. But by what means shall we
force God to turn to us again with favour, and to
restore to us the priceless treasure of His love ?
Here then is a new pressure brought to bear
upon us of quite a distinct order ; an appeal to our
need of being loved by God, to our dread of being
hated by God ; or, if we are still servile and selfish,
to our desire of the consequences of being loved ;
to our dread of the consequences of being hated.
It is the pressure of will against will, and person
against person. It is no longer a question of treason
against self, but of treason against God. No man
can really sin against himself, except in a meta
phorical sense, which splits his personality in two ;
or which treats his lower and higher will as two
distinct persons. But conscience puts him en rapport
with a personality other than his own, and thus
deprives him of his falsely imagined liberty and
independence. It tells him he is chained fast to
another who is in a certain sense affected for good
or evil by his every movement, and that that other

5* GOD IN CONSCIENCE.

is no less than his God and Lord ; that he must no
longer think of himself as /, but rather as we; since
no act of his soul bears upon self alone, but upon
self and God.
It is in this sense of the pressure of God's will
upon ours that the obligation of conscience chiefly
consists. Whatever imperfect pressure may be put
upon us by our innate self-regard, it is as nothing
compared with that which is exerted upon us by our
equally natural regard for the Divine favour.
Let us then carefully distinguish conscience as the
sense of what is right, from conscience as the sense
of obligation or of a pressure exerted upon our will.
In the former case God speaks to us indirectly and
often fallibly through our reason, and tells us " This
is right, that is wrong." In the latter God reveals
to us infallibly His own will, and says, " Do what
you believe to be right ; do not, what you believe to
be wrong; " and by this revelation our will is brought
into immediate contact with His, whether to yield
to its pressure or to resist it. Who does not know
from human intercourse, the difference between a
mere communication and exchange of ideas in con
versation, and the far closer shock of soul with soul
when anger or love is excited, and will meets with
will in conflict or in embrace? It is as bringing
us into will-relations with God that conscience
differs so generically from any other act of our
mind. But why, it may be asked, should we treat the
impulse of conscience as the voice of God, rather
than the impulse of passion or of any lower instinct

GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 53

which is as certainly indicative of the will of Nature,
whose will is no other than the will of God ? The
fallacy of this objection lies in taking some one part
of our nature, some single spring of action, and
treating it as though it were the whole. Human
excellence is not the perfection of this faculty or of
that, but of all united under the rule of conscience.
Virtue for man means the subjection of the lower to
the higher, their harmonious blending. Meekness,
for example, or chastity, could not exist were there
not strong passions to curb, a self-centred attraction
to combat. All indeed is from God — the force that
is curbed, and the force that curbs ; but it is for
man to see that the thought of God's mind and
love, the Divine intention or ideal is fully, not
partially, uttered in his own conduct. The speech
may be marred and broken in the utterance, and
convey a distorted sense. No natural desire is
wrong or evil so long as it is shaped and modified
according to the pattern present to conscience ; but
when suffered to run riot, though the wasted force
is God's gift, yet its lawlessness is the fault of man.
We have different duties with regard to our
conscience, according as we mean by " conscience "
the sum total of our moral judgments, or the pressure
of God's will upon ours urging us to follow those
moral judgments. The very same imperative obli
gation which forces us to do what we believe to be
right, forces us no less, and as it were inclusively,
to find out what is right, to correct, perfect, and
develop our moral judgment by all means in our
power. It will not hear of that moral " indiffer-

54 GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
entism " which considers it but little matter what
we do, so long as we do it bond fide, believing it to
be right. He is no sincere friend of Right and
Truth, no sincere friend of God, who cares little
what offence he commits, what pain he gives, so
long as it is unintentional, who is indifferent to
"material" sin. True, the chief guilt, which
consists in the conflict of will with will, is absent,
if the fault be committed in blameless ignorance ;
but the lesser harm is not inconsiderable ; nor can
it be a matter of indifference to one whose soul is
in sympathy with God and His ways. Such a soul
will make it its first duty and most earnest desire
to learn the will of God in the minutest detail. Its
whole aspiration will be that of the 118th Psalm :
"Oh, let my ways be directed to the observance ol
Thy justifications; then shall I not be ashamed
when I shall have looked into all Thy command
ments. In my heart have I hid Thy Word that
I might not sin against Thee. Blessed art Thou,
O Lord, teach me Thy justifications ; unveil
my eyes that I may behold the wonders of Thy
law." In all other matters we are to some extent
bound to secure that our mind and reason shall
be, in its measure, a faithful mirror of the mind ot
God, without flaw or tarnish; but we are bound,
without any qualification, to a like care, where the
truth to be attained concerns the imperative will 01
God touching the hourly conduct of our lives. It
is therefore our first duty to educate and instruct
our moral judgment continually; to observe, to

GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 55
listen, to read, to ponder, to examine, to compare,
that by all means we enjoy the fullest attainable
light in a matter so paramount. Our sources of
information are the first principles of morality and
their legitimate consequences, applied to our own
experience and the experience of others ; the tradi
tions of society, the examples of the good and
great ; the advice of those whose wisdom and
experience give weight to their words ; and then
for us Christians there is the revealed law of God,
the teaching and example of Christ and His saints,
the guidance of the Catholic Church in the con
sensus of her approved writers, and in the private
direction whereby her priests apply and modify
general principles to individual cases.
Obviously, as long as life lasts, our mind will be
capable of further perfection and exactitude in this
as in other matters. Never shall we be so skilled
as not at times to experience perplexities and to
need the counsel of others. Yet our progress should
ever be towards a greater self-helpfulness and inde
pendence of judgment in the affairs of our own
conscience. There is no doubt a false independence
which despises the ordinary means of light and
information, and strives to weave a priori cobwebs
for its own use. But there is also a false depend
ence which springs from a certain mental laziness
and timidity, and which seeks to throw the whole
burden of one's decisions on other shoulders. As
in the practical affairs of every-day life, so in the
problems of conscience and self-government our aim
should be to profit in every way by the experience

56 GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
and wisdom of others in order to advance beyond
it, and to form a power of judging for ourselves.
While we are yet without experience, and while our
reasoning faculty is as yet rudimentary, we must
submit to the direction of others who know better.
But if the child's hand is always held and guided by
the teacher, if he is never told that the end of such
help is to enable him eventually to dispense with it,
he will never learn how to write. Similarly those
who make the voice of their spiritual director a
substitute for their own conscience, who never use
the light that God has given them in their own
reason and in the information they already possess,
become crippled and paralyzed as far as the faculty
of moral judgment is concerned. For the difference
between death and life is the difference between
that which is moved passively by another from
outside, and that which moves itself in virtue of
some inward principle which is part of itself.
Doubtless, as has been said, there are crises and
problems where the wisest and most experienced
are at a loss, and then it becomes a duty to have
recourse to those who are in a position to help us
to see for ourselves — which is the best kind of
direction — or else to command our faith and confi
dence in their claim to see what we cannot see.
But short of such extremes, it is the part of the
good educator and adviser not to help those who
can help themselves, and who in so doing advance
themselves towards a more perfect self-helpfulness.
Perhaps there is no more essential condition to
our growth in clearness of moral discernment, than

GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 57
that of practical fidelity to the light that is in us.
Nor is the reason far to seek. It is repugnant to
our natural and almost laudable pride, to sin in the
full face of our better knowledge; whence comes
the inevitable tendency to justify our faults both
before and after we commit them — a process which
involves a certain violent twisting or at least an
obscuring of our moral judgments about right and
wrong. Let these perversions be sufficiently frequent
and grievous and we soon fall under the natural
penalty of "judicial blindness," a state in which we
are culpably but really incapable of seeing the truth,
and rush blindfold to our own spiritual ruin. Nay,
even in smaller matters of counsel and higher per
fection, we are all continually tarnishing the clear
surface of that mirror wherein the pure of heart see
God and the will of God, as the sky is seen in
smooth water. The edge of our spiritual discern
ment is ever being blunted by rough usage, and
needing to be refined by self-examination and
correction. Moreover, if mere intellectualism sometimes
makes us skilful casuists and gives us a sort of
delicacy of touch in dealing with the niceties of
conscience, yet practical fidelity to the right, and
an earnest desire to live up to our ideals, will give
us a far surer guide in that instinct wherewith love
feels and apprehends what will be most pleasing to
the Beloved. Not that the act is purely blind and
instinctive, but so swift is the inference, so minute
and complex the data from which it is drawn, so
prompt the following up of the will, that memory

58 GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
has no time to record the process, and leaves us
with the impression that we have been inspired or
impelled from without. This "taste" or "tact,"
which love begets in us, is certainly a far safer
and more useful guide than any power of reflex
reasoning, however highly cultivated. The latter
is not only more fallible in its process, but also is
confined to problems where the data can be fully
and distinctly grouped as the premises of a formal
argument — a condition hardly ever realized in the
concrete. The way in which we recognize the
character of our own actions as right or wrong, is
something like the way a child discerns its mother's
pleasure or displeasure. It is done at a glance, and
with infallible certitude, but who shall give a satis
factory statement of the process, or answer all the
difficulties another might bring against the inadequate
reasons given for the decision ? For our mind appre
hends an action not under some one or more of its
formal aspects, but in its concrete entirety, in the
full clothing of its circumstances, amongst which
are our own character, personality, and antecedents,
the sum total of our innumerable and complex
motives, the clearness or unclearness of our vision
at the instant of action, the fulness or the imper
fection of our deliberation, the precise degree of
attraction or repugnance we experienced. This is
what we can never convey to another, what we
can never fully express to ourselves, so as to make
any formal and logical inference available against
the certainty of our intuitive judgment.
It is then by fidelity to the light which is in us,

GOD IN CONSCIENCE. S9

and by availing ourselves of the means of instruction
provided for us, that we may hope ever to progress
towards a greater refinement in our power of moral
judgment. And upon this refinement our religious
faith largely depends. For the more we see in God,
and the more sensitive we are to His beauty, the
stronger is the bond which enslaves us to Him.
But it is in proportion as we ourselves are just and
merciful and patient and pure, that the purity,
justice, and meekness of God and of His Church is
appreciated and loved by us. Without that, no
dialectic founded on prophecy and miracle, no
"natural theology," will be of any service to us,
either to win us, or to preserve us, or to recover
us. On the other hand, fidelity to conscience must
infallibly bring with it sufficient faith for salvation,
and moreover will change the dry stick of barren
orthodoxy into an ever-growing intelligence of the
things of God. " If thy heart were right, then
would every creature be unto thee a mirror of life
and a book of sacred lore ; for there is no creature
how small and mean soever, but reflects some ray
of God's goodness. Wert thou but inwardly good
and pure, thou wouldst see everything easily and
understand it clearly. A pure heart pierces Heaven
and Hell with its gaze. According to what we
ourselves are inside, so do we judge of that which
is outside."1 Moreover, faith rests on and springs from an
abiding sense of the duty of belief, from a permanent
recognition of God's will and command that we
1 A Kempis, ii. 4.

60 GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
i ,
should hold on blindly in the hour of darkness and
obscurity to the truths we were convinced of in the
hour of light and of clear intuition. For faith is a
hearing and an obeying. But the conscience which
has grown deaf to God's voice in other matters, is
in danger of this last degree of deafness, when'
the soul no longer recognizes the voice of the
Shepherd ; nor hears, nor follows, but wanders into
the darkness.
Up to this we have been dealing with our duty to
" conscience " regarded as the faculty of moral judg
ment ; and we have seen how this department of
our reason demands special care and cultivation,1
that it may become to its utmost capacity a reflex'
of the mind of God, of that ideal which God desires
to realize in us if we will but suffer Him to show
us His will and to help us to follow it.
But conscience stands even more properly for
the pressure and inclination exerted upon our will
by the will of God, which is brought to bear upon
it as soon as the mind recognizes " right " to be the
term and expression of a Will. This pressure is a
reverential fear of God's anger as in itself the worst
of evils and a self-regarding fear of the consequences
of that anger ; and also a love of God's good-will
and favour as in itself our chief good, besides a
desire for the resulting advantages of His favour.
Here, again, we owe a duty to our conscience,
regarded now, not as a judgment of the under
standing, but as an inclination or bent of the will.
Every time we yield to this Divine stimulus, we
not only maintain, but increase our sensitiveness to

GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 6r
its influence. We become more and more filled with
a reverential fear of God's expressed will. Contrari
wise, if we resist we grow callous and unimpression
able. Every time we brave God's anger we fear it
less, till at last we lose all fear, and become stone
deaf to that still small voice whose whisper is
caught by those only who are on the alert.
Let us notice how distinct these two forms of
" conscientiousness " are one from another. For
we may find a great delicacy of moral judgment
combined with a certain callousness of the will;
and, on the other hand, a remarkable sensitiveness
of will where the judgment is very ignorant and
erroneous. So, too, the words, lax. rigorous,
scrupulous, wide, and the like, are open to the same
ambiguity. Given the same moral judgment as to
the malice of a lie, one man will shrink from it far
less than another; and given equal reverence for
the Divine will, one will judge that to be grievous,
or at least sinful, which another thinks little or
nothing of.
It is precisely in conscience viewed as an incli
nation of the will, that the soul comes in contact
with God as the author of its moral life. In our
physical and psychical life, and to a large extent in
our intellectual life, God enters into us and displays
His attributes in us in spite of ourselves. His
power, His wisdom, His spiritual attributes, are
declared in the existence and operations of our
nature, in which He utters Himself in a finite
manner. But if He would display His moral attri
butes — those, namely, which are essentially perfec-

62 GOD IN CONSCIENCE.

tions of the free-will, perfect ways of choosing, He
must stand at the door and knock until by consent
we draw the bolt and let Him in. Then indeed He
enters in to sup with us, to permeate our soul with
His light and love, to fill her with a beauty not hei
own save so far as she has not hindered the entrance
of Him whose presence is her sole beauty. Nigra
sum sedformosa — she is of herself dark, but in virtue
of her Spouse she is full of beauty and brightness.
Conscience is then, as it were, the little stalk by
which the soul is united to God as to the parent
of its moral life ; hanging upon Him as the fruit
hangs on the tree. Through that narrow channel
the Divine life is poured into our spiritual veins, and
gives us our vigour and expansion, and full develop
ment ; and all that hinders that quickening inflow
impoverishes and weakens our soul. Through con
science God's ideal of our individual destiny, of that
final state which each one of us is capable of rising
to, is gradually transferred to our moral judgment,
wherein His thought is more or less imperfectly
reflected ; through conscience again, our will is
urged to realize the ideal thus set before us, and to
suffer God to assert Himself within us.
It is in recognizing God's will and presence in
the urgency of conscience that interior life consists.
Union and peace with God is but union and peace
with conscience viewed in a higher and truer light.
Here it is that God speaks to us ; not indeed as man
to man, but with a far closer and more intimate
communing, whereby without words or symbols we
are directly made conscious of His will. To the

GOD IN CONSCIENCE 63
unreflecting, conscience seems part of themselves;
its voice seems their own — so closely are God's
workings intertwined with those of their will and
reason. But reflection tells us that we cannot in
any true sense command ourselves, or disobey
ourselves, or fear our own anger, no more than we
can run after ourselves, or tell lies to ourselves, or
steal from ourselves.
The " otherness " of God from ourselves, and of
the voice of conscience from the voice of our own
free resolves, needs but be clearly stated in order to
be clearly recognized ; and when once recognized,
our solitude is gone. " It is not good for man to be
alone," is only so far true that, short of some
exempting condition or higher vocation, man is
fashioned and designed for the married state. But
of man's spiritual being it is absolutely and essen
tially true that he is not made to be alone, or to
live alone for one moment of his conscious life. He
is by his whole nature and destiny an instrument in
the hand of God, even as the pen I write with is
wholly and altogether an instrument in my hand
designed to express my thought. Conscience is the
point of contact where God lays hold of this instru
ment, and inclines it to His own purpose. " Inclines "
it, for it is free ; and herein is not like the pen,
which has no self-perverting, self-destroying power.
And He inclines it not by a blind instinct, but by an
intelligent whisper, gentle in expression, but strong
and terrible in authority. And the resulting action
is of us twain, whether in agreement or in disagree
ment ; we are tied together — God and myself, the

64 GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
Creator and the created instrument which He
chooses to wield; we are joint principles of one and
the same act by which He seeks to express Himself
in my conduct and life. While God is to us " He,"
or even "Thou," we have not yet realized that
intimacy which excludes all sense of distance and
separateness other than personal, and which dares
to couple together in thought as " we " and " us,"
God and the soul which He has wedded.
The sense of God's nearness and inseparable
intimacy to the hidden roots of our spiritual life has
been prominent in good men of all times, places,
and religions, who in one form or another have
re-echoed David's sentiments where he likens himself
to a sheep whom God leads forth to green pastures
and beside still waters, checking him with His crook,
or urging him with His staff, so as to keep him ever
close to His side. "Though I walk through the
valley of death's shadow I will fear no evil, for
Thou art with me, Thy crook and Thy staff are my
consolation." It is precisely in conscience that we
feel these alternative checks and urgings, and find
therein an assurance of the presence and careful
watchfulness of " the Great Shepherd and Bishop of
our souls." It is in the obedient following of con
science that we arrive at the green pastures, and lie
down in peace by the waters of rest, and lack for
nothing. It is the sense that God is with him that
enables the conscientious man to bear calmly all
manner of temptations and persecutions and in
justices. " A good man prides himself only in the
witness of a good conscience. Have a good conscience

GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 65
and you will have an abiding joy. A good con
science can stand a great deal, and be very cheerful
in spite of troubles. A bad conscience is always
timid and fidgetty. You will rest very sweetly if your
heart reproach you not. Never be glad except when
you have done the right thing."
If there is a false independence savouring of
selfish arrogance, there is also a certain true inde
pendence and " scorn of consequence," which has
characterized the really great and good of all ages ;
and this is due mainly to the sense of yielding
obedience to no creature but to conscience alone, or
else for conscience's sake. The Christian (explicit or
implicit) can never yield to wealth or position, or
force or numbers ; he is no respecter of persons ; to
God alone will he bend ; and thus he is fearless
when conscience justifies him, and he bears himself
towards all unjust usurpation with the pride of a
free son of God : Gloria justorum in conscientia sua et
non in ore hominum — "The pride of the just is in
their own conscience, not in the prate of men."
We have compared conscience to a little stalk
which ties us to God, the source of our spiritual
life, as the fruit is tied to the parent tree. To push
this illustration, we may notice that this bond may
be wholly severed, so that the fruit falls to earth
and loses vital connection with the branch ; or else
it may be merely weakened ; or, finally, it may be
strengthened indefinitely. Here we have a picture
of the bearing of our actions upon our vital union
with God through conscience. There is a fatal
disobedience which separates us wholly from Him ;
F

66 GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
and a lesser disobedience which disposes us for a
fall ; and then there is a close following of the mere
wishes and suggestions of conscience, whereby we
are knit ever more firmly to God, and the channel
of communication between the soul and her Spouse
grows ever wider and freer. But whether in
matters of command or of counsel and suggestion,
the voice of conscience unheeded grows fainter and
fainter, and sounds as from a great distance, until
at last it dies away altogether. The change is in
us and not in God. He has not gone far from us,
but we have gone far from Him, " into a far
country," where we seek freedom from the restraint
of His presence, and find slavery among the swine.
And if there He finds us out and pities and calls us,
and puts it into our heart to arise and return to
Him, still we have a long and painful journey
before us. We came downhill in the fulness of our
strength, we return uphill in the extremity of our
exhaustion. What hope is there for us, unless He
see us yet a long way off and run to meet us and
to cut short our weary labour ? In other words, to
recover the lost sensitiveness to conscience is a slow
and difficult task, impossible without God's grace.
The restoration of our perverted moral judgment is
comparatively easy. It is not hard to recognize
the fact that God was right and that we were
wrong; that the result of our "private judgment "
is that we are perishing with hunger, while the
mere hirelings of Heaven abound with bread. This
Peccavi, which is but the sentence of our own reason
upon our own folly, is the very first dawn of a con-

GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 67

version (be it in small matters or in great), which
is perfected in that Peccavi uttered in the bosom of
God. But it is hard to quicken a sentiment that has
once been killed by resistance. It is hard to feel at
will a fear of what we have schooled ourselves to
brave. We seem to need some new and far
stronger stimulus, if our heart is to be stirred. If
God should break the silence around us, and speak
to us with human voice and human words, we
should doubtless fall down terror-stricken and cry :
" What wouldst Thou have me to do ? " Yet the
same God, heard in the far closer voice of con
science, has no terrors for us, — so dependent are we
on habit and wont.
It is therefore to preserve us from this callous
ness, and in some measure perhaps to restore or
increase our reverential fear of conscience, that the
practice of examining our conscience is of such
vital importance. Plainly this does not mean com
paring our moral judgments (as manifested in our
conduct) with received standards, such as the
Decalogue or the teaching of moralists. This is a
duty and an important one, as we have already
insisted ; but is quite distinct in its object and end
from that of examining our relation of obedience or
disobedience to that voice which says : " Do what
you believe to be right, here and now." It is one
thing to inquire : Did I do what was objectively
right ? another : Did I do what I sincerely believed
to be right ? The first inquiry concerns the truth of
our moral judgments ; the second, the reverential

68 GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
submission of our will to God's. This latter is the
all-important inquiry which should be made, not
merely at stated times, which is well, but at all
times. Am I strictly conscientious ? Am I afraid
of my conscience ; afraid of God ? Or am I
growing callous and indifferent, and to what extent ?
Often, indeed, when the substance of the trans
gression is comparatively light, yet the harm done
to ourselves by violating conscience is considerable
and not easily undone; just as in the matter of
perseverance, an offence which 4*3- isolation is trivial,
is most serious when viewed as a breach in that
chain of virtuous acts by which a good habit is
generated. To notice an infidelity will not undo the harm
inflicted upon the will, — there, indeed, it seems that
God's medicinal skill is needed, — but it will stimulate
us to turn to God for forgiveness ; to beg restitution
to our former state or to a better ; to make repara
tion to His Divine Majesty; and, above all, to arrest
further downward progress. The wholesale and
persistent neglect of this natural duty is to induce
eventually that blindness and hardness of heart
through which a man comes at last to crucify his God
without knowing what he is doing. This is the
natural result, but it is no less, on that account, a
divinely inflicted punishment, since all natural
laws are but the expression of the necessary will
of God.

SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
" He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood
not in the truth ; because truth is not in him. When he
speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the
father thereof. But if I say the truth you believe Me not."
— St. John viii. 44.
" Cut it down, why doth it cumber the ground ? "
says the master of the vineyard to his husbandman ;
speaking of the fig-elm which had disappointed him
year after year. " Nay," says the other, " let me
dig about the roots and nourish them ; and if then
it is still fruitless, let it fall." It is the work of
meditation to dig about the roots of our spiritual
life and to nourish them, to go deep into first
principles and strengthen our grasp of them, — not
very attractive or easy work, nor productive of any
very sudden or sensibly violent moral revolution ;
yet in the long run, slowly and surely bearing
abundant and lasting fruit. Nor is it enough to
review, examine, and deepen our principles. We
must also judge ourselves by them ; contrasting with
them our practice ; clearing the mirror of conscience
and setting it before our face ; convincing ourselves
of sinfulness and of sin. But especially will it
conduce to that penitential spirit which is the very
root of self-reform, to clear and deepen our notion

70 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
of the nature and malice of sin, whether regarded
in itself and its effects, or as an offence against the
fear and reverence and worship we owe to God ;
still more, against that absolute love and devotion
which is His due.
And here revelation comes in largely to aid the
insufficiency of reason and to secure that, what
otherwise would be known only with difficulty and
hesitation by a few, may be known easily, certainly,
and universally ; and though we may never say that
revelation is a strict exigency of human nature, yet
in this matter it is almost evident that if revelation
were denied to us, some substitute would need to
have been provided if our race was to rise from
barbarism to any sort of higher moral development.
Children, having no experience and only the
rudiments of reason, are not expected to know what
is good and expedient for them in conduct, or what
is hurtful and dangerous. They must therefore
believe and obey those who do know. We assign
sanctions to their conduct, we threaten them with
penalties and hold out rewards which will appeal
to them, and will supply the place of intrinsic
reasons until such time as they shall be able to see
for themselves, and to justify the judgments which
now seem to them arbitrary and severe. But are
we not all far less than children in respect to God ?
Surely the babe just born knows as much of the
world and its ways as the wisest of us can know
of the ways of God, whose sway stretches over
heaven and earth, time and eternity. How can
one whose eye rests but on the surface of things,

SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 71
and ranges within the narrowest of circles for the
briefest of moments, pretend to join issue with Him
whose thought penetrates all things, and estimates
the bearing of the first instant of created time upon
the last ? What definite notion can we possibly
have of that final result to which we and all other
creatures are being moved as instruments in His
hand, guided by a thought which is in His mind
and not in ours ? What likelihood is there of our
clearly divining the meaning and scope of the
primary instincts of our conscience, of those in
explicable yet irresistible impulses in the interests
of right and truth and order, even at the expense
of our private and separate gain ; of those unselfish
sympathies with objective goodness dimly recognized
as the will of Him who creates us, whose we are,
and whom we serve ? Nor are we more likely to
grasp adequately the end and purpose of those
Divine commands and prohibitions which only reve
lation makes known to us. If nowhere else, at
least in the direction of our life to that end for
which God has given it to us, we need faith, the
simple obedient faith of little children. Our first
parents failed in this very point. They would be
as God, knowing good and evil, judging right and
wrong for themselves ; they, from the level of earth,
would equal their view to His who is enthroned
above the highest Heaven. They would know the
why and wherefore of this arbitrary and irksome
prohibition and of this threat of death ; or else they
would take no notice of it, as being a violation of
their dignity as intelligent and self-governing agents.

72 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
That this spirit of private judgment and unbelief
enters into every formal sin is what we shall see
a little later, when we come to consider sin in
the light of reason, as a disorder in itself and as
a personal offence against God. But reason is
useful in this matter rather as testing and verifying
the teaching of revelation, than as a guide or
exponent of the full truth. After it has told us all
it can tell, there still remains a large residue of
mystery which we must accept on faith ; nor is the
grasp of reason sufficiently firm and unfaltering to
offer a purchase for the will when under the pressure
of acute temptation and blinding passion. In such
crises our reason is soon dazed and bewildered, and
if we cannot hold fast to God's Word we are lost.
Even could we reason correctly, from the fullest
data, on the subject of sin, yet we cannot always
be reasoning, least of all in the hour of temptation.
Besides this, our data are hopelessly inadequate,
while few care to face the trouble of thought and
reflection, and fewer still can think successfully and
fruitfully. Obviously, therefore, faith is God's
appointed means for our guidance ; we must receive
the Kingdom of God into our soul as little children,
or not at all.
It is certainly the weak point of modern Christi
anity that there is so little of this faith in us, filled
as we are with the narrow rationalizing spirit of
protestant self-sufficiency. It is in the air, and we
inhale the poison at every breath. We are disposed
to make, each of us, a god for himself, accommo
dated to the subjective peculiarities of his under-

SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 73
standing, who shall be entirely comprehensible and
free from mystery, whose commands and prohi
bitions shall be perfectly explicable by the principles
of human conduct and government ; but the notion
of receiving God as He has revealed Himself
objectively, of taking difficulties as an indication,
not of error in that revelation, but of error in
our own mind, is far from us. In this spirit we
argue, as Eve did, not from the revealed punish
ment of sin to its internal and natural malice ; but
conversely we examine sin itself, weighing it in our
faulty balance, and then rise up in rebellion and
declare we will not believe that it can ever merit
eternal punishment. We do not ¦ see what harm
can come of our transgression ; and hence we
boldly pass to unbelief: "Hath God said ye shall
surely die ? Ye shall not surely die."
Now it is the nature of our finite intellect to
judge the seed by its fruits, and not by an intui
tion of its hidden capacities. We argue from
effects to causes ; from appearances to their parent
realities ; from shadows and consequences to sub
stances and antecedents. We cannot see directly
into the heart of a thing as God can, but we have
to wait until it unfolds itself. And therefore, that
we might not have to learn the nature of sin by
bitter experience, and when perhaps it was too late,
God gave us a revelation of the ultimate fruits and
consequences of sin. He showed us how, of its own
nature, it led to eternal death, so that believing His
word we might be assured that sin is a far greater
evil than we can ever expect to understand for

74 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
ourselves. So it is that a good Catholic should
view the question, and in the same day that we
cease to be guided herein as little children, and
insist on judging for ourselves, " we shall surely
die" — Morte moriemini.
It is, then, by meditating on these revealed con
sequences of sin that we shall most solidly establish
in ourselves that spirit of holy fear in which we are
so wanting in these days.
Yet fear, like hope, has a double object, one
direct and impersonal, the other indirect and
personal. I hope for eternal happiness ; and it is
to God I look for the realization of this hope.
Again, I fear eternal death, and it is before God I
tremble as the Just Judge who will inflict this
punishment on the unrepentant sinner. Here, for
the moment, it is our aim to cultivate a fear of the
person rather than of the thing ; of the anger of
God rather than of the consequences of that anger.
For as it is essential to our happiness to be loved
of God, so it is destructive of the same to be the
object of God's hatred and anger. In other words,
God's anger is a greater evil to us than any of its
consequences ; though when we are utterly hardened
and indifferent as to how God regards us, the fear
of the consequences of His wrath will sometimes
prevent us from falling, or will recall us to repent
ance. The fear of God is therefore a higher motive
than the fear of Hell.
Either fear, however, is rightly said to be the
"beginning of wisdom," or of that perfect love
which casts out fear. St. Augustine likens it to the

SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 75
needle which passes through the texture, but leaves
the thread behind it. For when fear is wakened in
the sinner, he begins forthwith to cast about for a
road of escape from the consequences of his sin,
whereby he may "flee from the wrath to come."
And there is but one road open. " If thou wilt
enter into life, keep the Commandments ; " and
these Commandments can be reduced to one — the
sovereign law of love : " Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with thy whole heart and soul and strength."
Hence by recourse to prayer and to the sacraments
he seeks to kindle in his heart once more the flame
of Divine love.
And while this love is yet feeble and imperfect,
it needs often to be backed up and supplemented
by fear ; not being of itself strong enough to with
stand the more violent assaults of temptation.
But when love is mature and perfect, then fear
is said to be cast out ; " for," says St. John, " fear
hath torment," i.e., he who needs the spur of fear
always acts with repugnance and unwillingly, as
one who chooses the less of two evils and finds no
joy in his choice. Whereas he who endures out of
love alone, counts the suffering as nothing.
Yet, as Aquinas explains, it is not strictly fear,
but the servility of fear, which is cast out by perfect
love. It is called servile, because it is the motive
of a slave who obeys because he must, and not ot
a son who obeys with love and has one common
interest with his father, or of a free soldier who
obeys his captain for love of their common country.
When we obey and serve God for love of His glory,

76 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
and out of sympathy with Him and His cause — the
cause of Truth and Love and Justice and Holiness
and Order — then our obedience is filial and not
servile. But as long and as far as we need the lash
of fear, we are slaves. Yet even when love is
perfect and fear can afford to be idle and rest from
active co-operation in our life, we must not suppose
that the motives of fear have been in any way
weakened, or that, like a disused organ, it becomes
atrophied and withers away. It is there all the
time, as an inner barrier, ready to come into use,
should the outworks give way through any mis
fortune. Thus St. Ignatius, in his Book of the
Exercises, bids me pray that if at any time, through
my fault, the love of God should grow cold in my
heart, at least the fear of Hell may check me in
my downward path, and turn my steps upward once
more. In truth, the fear and the love of God must
grow step by step together, because fear is the very
back-bone and strength of that love. It is not
something to which love is added and superimposed,
but is a constitutive element of love. For love is
not excited by some of the Divine attributes, as fear
is by others, but by the whole complexus, by the
Divine character in its entirety. Servile fear, indeed,
is begotten of a partial and imperfect view of God's
face ; it sees only the severer attributes — justice,
might, majesty, wrath ; it hears only the lower
notes of the chord, but is deaf to the higher and
sweeter tones which combine with them into a
perfect harmony. Those who do not know the

SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 77
greatness of God do not know His condescension ;
those who have no conception of His justice have
no conception of His mercy. We must tremble at
His wrath, before we can marvel at His patience
and gentleness ; we must be deafened by the thunders
of Sinai, before we can be subdued by the still small
voice of conscience. And all that nourishes love,
nourishes fear also ; for indeed, who were more
alive to the severity of God's judgments, and the
heinousness of sin, than those who were furthest
removed from the servility of fear — the saints and
the Blessed Mother of God herself? Let us be
assured that no tenderness of emotion, no thrills
of ecstatic ardour, are any proof of Divine love if
the spirit of fear is absent. The Seraphim, who
are on fire with love, veil their faces before God ;
and when St. John saw Him he fell at His feet as
one dead. Now-a-days men have made themselves
a god who is all indulgence, softness, weakness,
fashioned in their own image and likeness ; a god
who is as agnostic, as indifferent to truth and right
as they are themselves ; whose love is as unrestrained
by self-denial as their own. But we worship a
Father who chastens those whom He loves and
scourges every son whom He receives;1 who is
a fierce fire, consuming utterly whatever it cannot
convert into its own nature ; who is an invincible
force, crushing to powder whatever it cannot carry
along with it. It is either a blessed thing or a
fearful thing "to fall into the hands of the living
God " — a blessed thing to fall into the hands of His
1 Hebrews xii.

78 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
love ; a fearful thing to fall into the hands of His
anger. For anger and hatred of all evil is but
another dimension of the love and desire of all
good ; and where this latter is absolute, irresistible,
infinite, the former must be no less so.
In his Exercise on Sin, St. Ignatius1 would have
us dwell first of all upon the fall of the apostate
angels, of which we have no obscure statement in
revelation, albeit the details are not given to us.
It is commonly and very reasonably believed that
whereas man, the lowest spiritual creature, comes
to his fulness of knowledge gradually, and through
a process of alternate blunders and rectifications,
the unembodied spirits receive the full measure of
their natural light in the first instant of their
creation. Existing out of time, free from the slow
successions of natural change, they have no infancy
or adolescence, but are produced in their perfect
maturity. Thus, the good and the true is presented
to their choice fully and clearly in the first instant
of their being, to accept or to reject ; nor does there
await them any new aspect of the question which
might alter their judgment. Whereas to every
man, the good and the true is offered under a
thousand inadequate aspects, time after time, until
the appointed measure of light by which he is to
be judged has been accorded to him— a measure
manifestly differing for different individuals.
Hence it is accepted usually that the fall of the
angels was the work of one sin, accomplished in
1 This and the following discourse are developments of the first
f.v/0 exercises of the " First Week."

SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 79
one instant. The precise nature of that sin, or
how temptation could originate in a purely spiritual
being where bodily concupiscence and mental in
firmity found no place, does not directly concern us
here. They are rightly said to have fallen through
pride. For pride is nothing else than the rebellion
of the member against the head ; the desire to be
absolute and independent instead of subject; the
preference of one's separate and solitary advantage
to the good of the whole whereof one is but a part.
It is the self-centralizing, self-exalting tendency let
loose from the yoke of reason to run its course, and
not restrained to the service of God, and by the
higher law of universal good.
Nor must we confound the conflict between
nature and grace, between the higher and the
lower will, between truth and error, between
reason and disorder, with the struggle of mind
against matter, of spirit against sense, which goes
on in our human nature, compounded as it is ot
soul and body. In the worst of men we may at
times, not often perhaps, find the flesh subdued to
the spirit, or at least not rebellious. There may
be a complete control of the passions and feelings
induced by pride, ambition, or even diabolic malice.
There is such a thing as a victoria vitiosa, when one
vice dominates over all the rest and subdues them
in its own interest. But where passion is absent or
subdued, there may still be sin in the spirit ; for its
tendency is not simple but complex. And so in the
disembodied spirit, merely because it is a creature and
finite, there is not a simple, but a double appetite or

80 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
tendency — a resultant of two forces, one making for
self-preservation, self-preference, self-development ;
the other, using this force, checking it and directing
it to the universal and objective good, that is, to
the glory of God, whereof every creature is before
all else an instrument. I do not say two appetites,
but one complex appetite, which sin can resolve
into discordant elements. For the good or " end "
of every being corresponds exactly to its nature.
Every finite being is primarily for God, secondarily
for itself in order to God. Were these two ends
wholly disconnected, there would be two appetites.
But since one is subordinate to the other, they
harmonize into one complex appetite. If there is
discord through sin, then as death is the severence
of body and soul, neither being complete without
the other, so here also severance is moral death.
And it is in approving or in disturbing the due
balance of these component forces that free-choice
is exercised. Pride consents to the claims of self
and turns a deaf ear to the claims of God and
Truth. It is our love that is free. It is not enough to
see the truth and to see it clearly; we must also
love it. The angels saw with perfect clearness their
true position as creatures of God. They saw that
their own good should be subordinate to the universal
good ; that they were intended and designed primarily
for God and secondarily for themselves. They
recognized clearly in themselves fundamental in
stinctive tendencies in harmony with this double
nature and destiny of theirs. And yet being free

SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. Si
to know and love this plan, and throw themselves
into it, they chose otherwise.
And now we have to pause and see the terrible
ruin wrought by one sin in these the most glorious
of God's creatures, and then learn what a deadly
poison sin must be. As was the excellence of their
nature, the height to which they were called, such
was the depth to which they fell, and the vileness
of their corruption. Human nature, falling from a
lesser height, was not so irreparably shattered to
pieces, nor can any lost soul of man know the full
anguish of that " fire prepared for the devil and his
angels." For the capacity of suffering, like the
capacity of joy, is in proportion to the fineness and
delicacy of the spiritual nature. What are the pains
and pleasures of some sluggish reptile compared
with those of the highly organized frame of man ?
Similarly the angelic intellect suffers a perversion in
such sort that they who are by nature full of intelli
gence and understanding, and ministers of light, are
now changed into powers of darkness — " the rulers
of the darkness of this world." This is notoriously
the effect of sin, to induce a judicial blindness, so
that they who will not see when they can, cannot
see when they will. Once bring a false principle
into any mind, and in proportion as that mind is
more active and vigorous it will be reduced to a
completer and more utter confusion. A torpid mind
will hold the poison of a lie unassimilated long
enough ; but where reason works actively, either
the false principle must be thrown out, or else the
whole mind brought into conformity with it. Now
G

62 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.

what is effected in the human mind by a gradual
process of leavening, is effected instantaneously in
minds unfettered by time and cerebral limitation*
such as those of the angels. Hence we can imagine
the total and radical revolution caused by sin in the
?angelic intellect, inducing a confusion like that of a
panic-stricken army in retreat. Nor does this mean
a change in their essential nature ; but only a state
induced by their irrevocable free choice of a lie, to
which they must cleave for ever, having passed into
their eternal and unchanging condition.
What tastes sweet to a healthy palate tastes
bitter to one which is disordered. God, who is the
final perfection, the supreme desire and the joy of
the sound and healthy will, is the torment and horror
and death of the will perverted by sin. For it is at
once violently drawn towards Him by the funda
mental and ineradicable instinct of its nature, and
yet driven back in consequence of its self-induced
antagonism to truth and goodness; and thus it is
racked and straitened unceasingly. It is as when
one whose eyes are weak with disease is compelled
to endure a glare of light tolerable to none but the
strongest vision. Thus the whole force of the angelic
will is turned from love to hatred ; and there is no
hatred so bitter as that of what we once loved most
ardently. To the fallen angels, God, and man (the
image of God), and love, truth, justice, holiness,
order, beauty, harmony (the cause and interest of
God), are all as hateful as they are dear to the saints
and unfallen angels. And all this ruin is in a true
sense the natural effect of sin ; of trying to stand in

SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 83
stiff opposition against the irresistible onrush of
God's will and God's love. And when we say it is
the natural effect, we do not deny that such penalties
of sin are inflicted by the will of God. For all
natural effects result from the will or inclination of
nature, which is in truth the will of Him on whose
nature all natural laws depend. For it is indeed
the personal will of God which moves in all nature,
physical and spiritual, and is expressed in the laws
of nature. There are certain unessential determina
tions of the law of sin's penal consequences which
may depend on God's free-will, but the substance of
the law is from His necessary will, from the very
nature of things in themselves, that is, of God in
Himself. If a man leaps over a precipice, he cannot
blame the rocks below for dashing him to pieces ;
nor can we blame God if, when we wilfully fling
ourselves against the immoveable rock of His truth
and love, we are shattered to atoms and eternally
destroyed. We can only blame ourselves, our own
free choice.
But how can a God of love entrust His creatures "
with such a power of self-destruction ? Here again
we are complaining of the necessary will of God, as
though it were His free-will. The power of choice,
like every other grace, is given in resurrectionem ; for
our help, not for our hurt — it is intended for use, not
for abuse. If it is used for our hurt, in ruinam, that
is no part of God's will or design. Yet from the
very nature of the gift it must be capable of abuse in
those who are yet in a state of imperfection and
probation

84 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
Self-formation, self-movement is the very idea of
life. An animal is not a machine moved by God as
by an outside force ; but it forms and moves itself
in virtue of internal principles which obey God's
will, and God's will is no physical or mechanical
force. It is also the dignity and privilege of the created
spirit and of intelligent life, to be self-forming. We
become what we love ; we are true and good and
great by freely loving and choosing goodness and
truth and greatness ; we become divine by choosing
God. He puts before our eyes as an end to be
reached, as an ideal to be realized, a true self as-
opposed to a false self. He offers us life and death,
sweet and bitter, and leaves us free to enter into-
one heritage or the other.
The human spirit determines and forms itself to
some degree in its every free choice. Each act is of
its own nature a step taken in the right direction or
the wrong. It is implicitly a choice of an ideal
happiness in which God holds, either the sole
place, or at least the first place, or else in which
something takes precedence of God. But the angels
formed or misformed themselves finally and irre
vocably in their first choice made in the full light
of all the knowledge of which they were capable.
The contemplation of this ruin which the fallen
spirits wrought in themselves by their sin ought ta
breed in us that double fear of which we spoke
above ; first, a fear of those evil consequences them
selves, which is altogether prudential and self-
regarding; secondly, a great personal fear of God,

SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.

from whose necessary will and law all these terrors
proceed, and of whose past anger they are the effect
and expression. For indeed that anger itself is
more to be dreaded than any of its consequences,
since our greatest good is to be loved by God ; and
our greatest evil to be hated by Him.
We must therefore look back over our life of
continual rebellion against the voice of our conscience
and of our better self, against the voice of God
within us, and think how great a weight of indig
nation we have been storing up against ourselves,
albeit God's mercy has so far restrained the storm
from bursting upon us. No man ever violates the
laws of nature with impunity. The vengeance may
be slow, but it is sure. And the law of conscience
is just as inexorable, being no less an expression of
the same invincible will and love.
Yet in both orders there is room for miracle;
for the intervention of God's free-will, which can
supplement and determine, without contradicting
the natural and necessary course of things. He
who can heal the sick and raise the dead with His
word, can call the soul back from corruption ; He
who made a way through the Red Sea, can hold
back the billows of wrath already curving over the
sinner, ere they break and overwhelm him.
If we now turn to the story of the fall of our
first parents, the same lesson of sin's deadly character
is brought home to us again. We must dwell upon
the world as it would have been had Adam never
sinned nor forfeited all those preternatural pre
rogatives and conditions of nature by which God

86 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
designed to raise this earth to a paradise, to make
it the vestibule of Heaven itself. We must eliminate
sin, and concupiscence, and ignorance, and sickness,
and death from this world, and people it with
inhabitants who in happiness and holiness would be
more akin to angels than to men such as we are.
And with all this we have to contrast, not the
present world, whose corruption is mitigated with
the leaven of Christianity, whose despair is quelled
by the hope of redemption, but rather with such a
world as this would have been without the Gospel
and without all that light and grace by which it was
and is educated and prepared, so to say, for the
Gospel. And this contrast presents us with a measure of
the evil of sin and of the vehemence of God's
abhorrence of sin, of His natural and necessary
antagonism to wickedness and pride. He had in
Adam raised man from the dust of his unassisted
frail humanity, to set him with the princes of his
people, almost on a level with the angels in respect
of light, and self-control, and immortality; their
equal in point of supernatural grace ; their superior
in virtue of the prospective Incarnation of God and
His alliance with our family. He had made him
little less than a god, crowning him with glory and
honour. But being in honour man had no under
standing. He would not be less than a god, but
equal to God in the discernment of good and
evil ; and thus in the pride of knowledge he became
as the beasts that perish. He would clamber to a
yet higher eminence than God had allowed to him,

SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 87
and in the very act fell headlong to earth again,
maimed and crippled.
Finally, we may consider the revealed conse
quences of one single unrepented deadly sin. And
by a deadly sin we mean an act whereby the will
aims at an ideal of ultimate happiness in which the
possession of God and submission to Him does not
hold the first place, but is sacrificed to something
else. For in every free act, as has already been
said, we implicitly make for some such ideal. If
the act of its own nature and tendency is incom
patible with God's supremacy among the objects of
our final bliss, it is a mortal or deadly sin. If it is
compatible with that supremacy and yet is directed
to some final object which is not itself referred and
subordinated to God, but loved besides and together
with God, in such sort that it makes for an ultimate
state of bliss whereof God is the chief, but not the
only factor — then the sin is venial.
" He who loves father or mother more than Me
is not worthy of Me," says God. It may be that
such a man loves God very tenderly and sincerely.
But he does not love Him with the love due to God
if God holds the second place to any creature or to
all creatures put together. If, however, God does
hold the first and supreme place in his scheme of
happiness, then the welfare of his parents or children
may be an object of desire in two ways. First, in
such sort that he loves his child just in the way
God wishes him to love it, in sympathy with God's
mind and will in the matter; recognizing his own
affection as God-given and as indicating God's will ;

88 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
seeing God in the creature and the creature in God.
And such love is only an extension of the love of
God ; and its object is in a way united with God
into one complex object, and loved in harmony with
God. When all creatures are so loved, then a man
loves God not only supremely, but solely, with his
whole heart. And this is the perfection of sanctity ;
a state which we have to strive to attain. Secondly,
loving God supremely, and being willing if necessary
to make the sacrifice of Abraham, a man may love
his child or his reputation or some other creature
ultimately and for its own sake, and in some way
co-ordinately with God, albeit in no sense supremely.
He may be willing for the sake of that creature, not
indeed to break with God, but to sacrifice God's
lesser interests in certain matters, just as a man who
would die for his country may shirk paying taxes and
other small duties of a good citizen. And such sins
are venial ; incompatible with perfect love, but not
incompatible with sufficient and substantial love.
God preponderates in the affections, but He does
not satisfy and absorb them entirely.1
1 As the difference between venial sin and imperfection is a
source of difficulty to many, it may be well to note that "imper
fection " is used positively and negatively. Positively, for a
deficiency of some perfection that is due and obligatory ; as e.g., we
speak of an imperfectly formed letter, meaning a misformed letter.
It implies, however, that the defect is slight and not substantial. So
used, an imperfection in our moral conduct is the same as a venial sin.
Negatively, the term is used to denote the absence of some perfec
tion which is in no way due or obligatory, but which would add a
certain fulness and richness to the good action in question, and is a
matter perhaps of counsel. God is pleased if I am generous to the
poor : more pleased if I am more generous ; but not displeased if I

SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.

Our Saviour reveals to us the natural conse
quences of deadly sin when He says, " I say unto
you, My friends : Fear not them that can kill the
body, and after that have nothing more that they
can do. But I will tell you whom you shall fear:
fear Him who, after He hath killed, hath power to
cast both soul and body into Hell, yea, I say unto
you, fear Him." And here notice that He speaks
to His friends ; to those whose hearts are now full
-of loyal love for their Master. Yet neither they, nor
any of us, however fervent and devoted, can afford
to dispense with this safeguard of holy fear. And
who is it that speaks ? Jesus Christ, the very
am not more generous. If in some sense the more perfect act is
also the more reasonable, it does not mean that the less perfect is
positively unreasonable, but merely less reasonable, provided it be
¦entirely good, so far as it goes, and contain no positive disorder.
To make the better course always obligatory, to deny that an
action is good because it might be better, to exclude all possibility
of exercising free generosity by works of counsel and supererogation,
is also to open the door to interminable scrupulosity and to make
our every action sinful — as Luther would have it.
Thus when we speak of " perfect love" as a matter of precept,
and when we imply that in some sense it is necessary and obligatory
that God should entirely satisfy and absorb our affections, we mean
that to love ourselves or any creature with a love which is not
referable and at least implicitly referred to the love of God, is,
however venial, a positive imperfection. Such love is " perfect "
because it lacks nothing due to it. But that we should love God
with an heroic intensity of fervour, that we should explicitly and
frequently refer all our affections and interests to Him, that we
¦should be devoted and enthusiastic in His service, that we should
embrace the counsels as well as fulfil the precepts — all this adds a
perfection and fulness to our love which, however reasonable, is in
no way due or obligatory, and the withholding of which, though
less reasonable, is in no positive way unreasonable, imperfect, or
inordinate ; but only in a negative way.

go SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
Truth ; so calm and moderate and faithful in all
His utterances ; the same God who made man and
who made Hell; who became Man and died that
He might save man from Hell. He does not think
it a sordid thing to stand in awe of Him who is a
" consuming fire." He knows that such fear is the
very foundation and fibre of the tenderest and only
enduring filial love and self-forgetful devotion,
" Fear Him ; yea, I say to you, fear Him." How
He insists upon it ! Nor are we to forget that the
body is to bear its share in the soul's destiny for
evil as well as for good ; and that the fire prepared
for fallen spirits will contain all the virtuality of
bodily fire.
And again He says, " If thy right hand or right
foot cause thee to stumble, cut it off and cast it
from thee ; " that is, if your chief means of helpful
ness or of livelihood should be to you an occasion
of deadly sin; or if that on which your pre-eminence
and success in the race of life depends should
separate you from your allegiance to God, " cut it
off" — a sharp, decisive, painful sacrifice — "and cast
it from you ; " put it as far from you as you can ^
shake it off like a poisonous viper ; no regrets, no
looking back to the city of sin ! " And if thy right
eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee ; "
if father, mother, child, spouse, or friend, if one who
is dear to you as the apple of your eye, dearer far
than life itself, even if such a one should stand
between you and salvation, " pluck it out and cast
it from you ; " no compromise, no quarter. Surely
" this is a hard saying : who can bear it ? " Yet it is

SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 91
only what is said elsewhere: "He that loveth father,
or mother, or child more than Me is not worthy of
Me." It is only what the conscience of great and
good men, pagan or Christian, in all ages have told
them, that the claims of truth and justice are
paramount; that he who refuses if need be to
sacrifice his only son rather than lie, is not worthy
of the truth ; that death is a less evil than merited
dishonour. And why am I to nerve myself to such anguish ?
" It is better for thee," says our Lord. He does not
appeal to His own goodness, which claims my entire
love and service, but simply to my prudential self-
regard. And He assures me, as one who knows
and sees the Hell He is speaking of, that all I can
suffer in this life through loss of livelihood, through
failure, through poverty and contempt, through
loneliness and separation and the rending of my
heart-strings, is not worth a thought compared with
the misery and anguish of that eternal, unchanging
state of destruction and spiritual death, that
"gehenna of fire where the worm dieth not and
the fire is not quenched." And if that is what
mortal sin means; if that is the measure of its
hidden malice and of its vehement antagonism to
God's goodness, and, therefore, the measure of the
Divine anger and indignation which it necessarily
excites, have I not great reason to feel shame and
confusion at the thought of myself as I must appear
in the eyes of God, seeing what my past life has
been, and how persistently I have opposed God's
almighty will and love, constraining me through my

92 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
conscience, urging me ever onward and upward,
yet ever repulsed or at best unheeded.
And so I betake myself to the Cross whereon
God is dying in torments to save me from Hell ; and
I marvel and wonder why it is He has singled me
out for so much mercy, and patience, and forgiveness.
I think what He might have done to me a thousand
times over, in all justice, leaving me to the natural
consequences of my madness and folly; and I look up
to His bleeding brow and wounded hands and feet and
pierced Heart, and see what He has done instead.
0 mira circa nos tuce pietatis dignatio ! 0 inestimabilis
¦dilectio caritatis, ut servum redimeres Filium tradidisti !
— " O wondrous condescension of Thy pity in our
regard ! O unspeakable tenderness of charity ! to
ransom Thy slave Thou didst deliver up Thy
Son ! " And if the thought of His merited wrath
and indignation filled me with shame and confusion,
my shame is multiplied a hundred-fold when I
contemplate His patience and love. And then at
His feet with Mary Magdalene and in the presence
of His Blessed Mother weeping for my sins, I ask
myself what have I done for Christ in the past ; or
rather what have I not done against Him ? What
am I doing for Christ now? What am I going to
do for Christ in the future? And then I offer
myself to be His for ever. Domine, quid me vis
facere ? — " Lord, what wouldst Thou have me to
do?"

SIN JUDGED BY REASON.
" We have never been slaves to any man : how sayest
thou : You shall be free ? Jesus answered them : Amen,.
amen, I say unto you, that whosoever committeth sin is the
servant of sin." — St. John viii. 33.
We have now to ask ourselves what mere reason
can tell us about the nature of sin. Not that reason
unassisted could ever have got as far as it can now
get since faith has gone before and pointed out the
way. Faith tells us many things that are well
within the compass of reason ; but reason would
never have thought of them if faith had not suggested
them. There are times and moods for all of us — all who
are human, and not wanting in that frailty which,
mingling with the higher and nobler elements of our
nature, gives it its characteristic pathos — there are
times when we think that if there were no God, no
future life, no restrictions and prohibitions, life
would be aimless indeed, inexplicable, unmeaning,
yet for its brief span so much easier, more painless,
more enjoyable, that we almost regret our high
destiny as sons of God, and envy those whose
consciences have grown callous to scruples and
remorse. The constant peace and blessedness of
God's service makes but a slight dint in our memory,.

04 SIN JUDGED BY REASON.
compared with the occasional crosses and restraints
which are the small price we pay for it. To our
ingratitude it seems that all that is right is hard,
all that is wrong is easy, that God's ways are
perversely uphill and narrow, and the ways of sin
broad and downhill ; and we never look to the fruit
and issue of one and the other.
It is the policy of Satan to represent our loving
Father as an arbitrary tyrant, ruling us as slaves in
His own interest, or as an austere Master, reaping
where He has not sown and gleaning where He has
not scattered ; as one delighting in restrictions and
prohibitions for their own sake, and, as it were, in
order to find new occasions for the exercise and
display of authority. So it was that the tempter
argued with our first parents in Paradise, and so it
is that he tempts us all daily by whispered insinua
tions to that same effect. Well does St. Ignatius
speak of him as the "enemy of human nature."
Hating God, he necessarily hates God's image and
likeness and all that God loves ; and his one aim is
to obliterate and defile the likeness, since his malice
is impotent against the original. Still more, ever
since God in Christ has wed to Himself the human
family, and thus raised man above the highest
angels, does the " enemy of human nature " long to
degrade and profane what God has so exalted and
sanctified. No, God is not arbitrary ; and if His command
ment and discipline is grievous to us in our present
state, it is only because all growth and development
is necessarily attended with pain— moral growth no

SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 95
less than physical. It involves the death of the old,
and the birth of the new, a continual process ot
ceasing and becoming. It must be so in finite
creatures drawn forth from nothing and reaching
their last perfection in process of time. It is the
nature of time itself, which is but the dying and
passing away of the present to give place to the
future. " Except a grain of wheat fall into the
ground and die, it remaineth alone ; but if it die it
beareth much fruit." Wherefore if God afflicts and
chastens us, it is not willingly (that is, with pleasure),
but reluctantly ; it is not merely because He chooses,
but because He must. It is not because He forbids
sin that it is evil ; but because it is hurtful to us,
therefore He forbids it. As necessarily and as
vehemently as He loves His own nature, so neces
sarily, does He love man, the image of His nature,
and hate all that profanes and defiles that image ;
so that God's absolute detestation and abhorrence
of sin is only another aspect and dimension of that
infinite love, wherewith He necessarily loves His
own Divine goodness. Nor even are the sanctions
with which He enforces His necessary laws alto
gether arbitrary. Hell itself is as much the fruit
and outcome of sin as death is of starvation or of
mortal disease ; it is as much a natural law as the
sequence of poverty upon prodigality ; it is dependent
indeed upon the will of God, but not upon His free
will. Men are not sent to Hell, but they go there.
That he who walks over a precipice should fall to
the bottom, or that he who plucks out his eyes
should be blind, is necessarily the will of God — as

96 SIN JUDGED BY REASON.
are all natural sequences — but it is not a result of
His free choice and arbitrary decree. " Concupis
cence when it is conceived bringeth forth sin, and
sin when it is finished generates death," — by a
natural and necessary process.
However, it is not merely because it leads to the
everlasting torments of Hell that the path of sin is
thorny and perilous. Hell is the natural issue of
sin, just because sin is so bad in itself; it is the evil
fruit of an evil tree ; it is sin worked out to its full
and unimpeded consequences, and given unrestrained
dominion over us. And, in like manner, it is not
simply because the steep and narrow way leads to
Eternal Life that it is to be preferred and followed,
but because it is the right way, the best way, and
really the happiest way ; because, notwithstanding a
certain amount of surface suffering, the yoke of
Christ is easy, and the burden of His Cross is light
compared with the yoke and burden of sin ; because
Wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness, and all
her paths are peace.
Limited as our point of view must be, and feeble
as are our powers of intuition and reasoning, yet we
can, to some little extent, see for ourselves that what
God forbids is really bad for us in the long run,
however pleasant it may seem at first. If we cannot
always understand the evil of one solitary sinful act
itself, and apart from all its consequences, yet we can
form such an estimate of those consequences, both to
the individual and to human society at large, as to
understand why God, who loves us so vehemently
and irresistibly, must be so inexorably opposed to-

SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 97
the first beginnings of such harm ; so keen to stamp
out the first spark of so destructive a conflagration.
"Behold," says St. James, "how great a matter a
little fire kindleth." We ourselves hate the very
name or even the suggestion of those things which
we have cause to know to be evil and hurtful ; and
similarly God's love for us leads Him to a pro
portional hate of all that is even remotely connected
with our spiritual misery and destruction.
If we want to know what sin is and what it leads
to, we must not judge it merely by those effects
which fall under our eyes every day. For no one is
so thoroughly depraved as to give way to any sin
without the least attempt at restraint ; much less to
give way to all sins. Far less likely is it that society
at large or any great part of society should throw off
every yoke and abandon itself freely to evil inclina
tions of every description. Yet it is only by making
some such supposition that we can form any adequate
idea of the hurtfulness of sin. Let a man give way
to laziness and sloth without any restraint, and at
once we see life becomes impossible for him. One
such example of inertness is enough at times to
destroy a whole family and bring -it to poverty and
misery. What if the whole family were made up of
such members ? What if all society were so consti
tuted? Plainly this vice alone — whose seed is in
every one of us — would involve the speedy extinction
of the human race were it let have its own way.
How soon and how utterly the habit of telling
lies ruins the moral character of its victims ! how
quickly it extends, and how deeply its roots reach
H

98 SIN JUDGED BY REASON.
down into the soul ! How incurable it is ! How it
paralyzes the gift of speech, whose purpose is to
mirror the soul. And when the disease becomes
epidemic, how ruinous it is to mutual trust and
charity and reverence ! Yet perhaps we have seldom
met an wholly unmitigated liar who made no pre
tence whatever of veracity; and even the most
degraded populations have offered some kind of
resistance to the spread of the practice. Perhaps
one lie in itself may at times seem utterly harmless ;
not only free from all hurtful consequences, but
fruitful in good consequences, conducive to peace,
and charity, and justice. But there is an infinite
distance between the man who has never lied, whose
veracity is still " virgin," and him who has crossed
the line, and who has given proof that his allegiance
to truth is not absolute, but qualified. It may be a
little thing, but like so many other little things, it
involves a great principle. A lie, as such, is an
apostasy from the cause of God; a concession to
the cause of darkness and deception. " It is only a
venial sin," one may say. Yes, but God would
rather see you blind, halt, and maimed than that
you should commit a venial sin ; so differently does
He judge of what is hurtful to you. A lie, how
harmless soever, how helpful soever, is in His eyes
like to the first plague-spot of a disease which has
swept nations off the face of the earth ; it is a little
germ full of the most virulent poison, and with
unlimited powers of self-dissemination.
We may consider anger in the same way; the
suffering it causes to its victims and to all those

SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 99
around them ; what crimes it leads to — blasphemy,
cruelty, violence, injury; yet rarely is it wholly
unrestrained. What then if it had full play ; if it
were indulged in universally? Who could live in
such a hell upon earth ? And so of resentment,
peevishness, discontent, sarcasm, ill-nature, pride,
arrogance, boasting, meanness, avarice, selfishness,
fraud, dishonesty ; not to speak of coarser vices like
drunkenness and impurity. Let any one of them
run its course unimpeded, and it stands to reason
that it will destroy the happiness of mankind, and
make life, individual and social, altogether unbear
able and impossible.
It is, then, with the nature of things that our
quarrel is, and not with God. We want to be free
from the necessary consequences of our own actions;
to keep what we have thrown away ; we barter our
birthright for a mess of potage, and account our
selves wronged because we are held to our bargain.
We see clearly that it is by the repetition ot
single acts that habits are formed and customs
become general; and that though no one act can
produce the effect, yet unless single acts are forbidden
absolutely, each man will dispense himself on every
occasion. And notwithstanding we act as the
improvident spendthrift who, regarding each indi
vidual economy as insignificant, saves nothing, and
ends in beggary.
Again, our reason and intuition tell us that our
whole nature is so designed and intended, that the
spirit should have dominion over the flesh ; that wa
should never be swayed by mere feelings, passions

SIN JUDGED' B^: REASON.

and emotions, except so far as they have first been
summoned before the tribunal of conscience and
there approved. This is what we call self-control,
or being master of oneself; and every virtue or
moral strength is some particular form of self-mastery,
while every vice is some particular form of self-slavery.
Now, though we feel a sort of shame about merely
physical infirmities, to which we are necessarily
subjected, yet it is quite distinct in character from
that shame we experience in being convicted ot
moral weakness, of want of self-control where such
control is both possible and due, e.g., in being
detected in greediness, or meanness, or untruthful
ness, or dishonesty. We recognize that our nature is
thereby perverted and distorted, nay, rather inverted,
since what should be under is uppermost ; the flesh
leads and the spirit follows : Servi dominati sunt
nostri — " Those who should be our slaves, are our
masters." We feel the unmanliness of sin and vice.
Indeed, we are wont to characterize this lack of self-
mastery as effeminate, brutal, savage — words which
all confess that developed humanity implies perfect
self-control. Hence even when we sin we invariably
try to deceive ourselves and others by finding reasons
to justify our conduct, as though we scorned to ad
on mere inclination or otherwise than on principle,
thereby tacitly confessing that we are thoroughly
ashamed of ourselves for having acted otherwise.
And together with this natural shame at our
moral nakedness, there is a more or less explicit sense
of guilt or of offence committed against that neces
sary will of God made known to us in the ordinations

SIN JUDGED BY REASON.

of nature and in the design of our own spiritual
constitution ; a sense that we have not only marred
ourselves, but angered Him whose work and image
we are. All this, be it noted, is something quite dis
tinct from the sense of having merited the censure
of our fellow-men, or the censure that our own
mind tells us we should pass upon another who acted
similarly. It is distinct, moreover, from the appre
hension of any pains or punishments our sin may
bring upon us, of any pleasures and rewards it may
deprive us of. These apprehensions may co-exist
with the sense of guilt and moral shame, and even
predominate in our thought where conscience has
grown enfeebled, but they are merely prudential and
self-regarding motives, born of a love, right in itself,
but no way akin to that unselfish love of objective
Tightness and of the Divine will which finds utter
ance in the dictates of conscience.
But besides all the positive harm which sin
works in us, we must remember that it excludes
and deprives us of that Divine goodness and
happiness for which we were created, namely, the
unselfish love of our God and Maker and of our
fellow-men in God and for God. It ties us down
to what is sordid and transitory; it founds our
happiness on the shifting sand, and not on the
eternal rock. Pride is incompatible with the praise
of God ; self-sufficiency with reverence ; self-seeking
with service. In every sense, therefore, sin is our
ruin and destruction ; it is the death and corruption
cf our soul ; and it is only because at present we
can drug ourselves with the narcotic of pleasure, or

SIN JUDGED BY REASON.

of distracting excitement, and because the spirit is
not alone with itself but can pour itself out en
creatures, that we do not already somewhat experi
ence the torments of the damned by a faint fore
taste. Yet all this objective harm and disorder, this
hurt to ourselves and to others, is the least evil of
sin, even as reason considers the matter. For our
conscience testifies not only to a violation of order,
but to a defiance of the will of the ordainer ; it tells
us that sin is an opposition of person to person,
and of will to will ; an unjust opposition of the
creature to its God and Creator ; of the feeble and
finite will to the omnipotent and irresistible will of
the Divine Goodness and Love. We feel that we
have made ourselves hateful to the All-holy and All-
mighty. To be loved, no less than to love, is our
last end or beatitude — for all personal love is im
perfect and restless till it is mutual. We seek, not
God's gifts, but Himself, just as nothing we give
Him and do for Him will suffice if we withhold our
very self. Sicut non sufficeret tibi, omnibus habitis,
prceter me ; ita nee mihi placere poterit quidquid dederis,
te non oblato — "As the whole creation could not
satisfy thee without Me, so neither can all thy gifts
satisfy Me if thou give not thyself." 1 As it is by
loving Him that we give ourselves to God and He
possesses us, so it is by loving us that He gives
Himself to us and we possess Him. To be hated
by God, to be the object of His anger and dislike, is
in itself, apart from all other evil consequences in
Imitation, iv. 8.

SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 103
the way of punishment, the greatest evil that can
befall us.
And it is ptecisely as involving a resistance of
will to will that sin generates anger, like the steel
which strikes fire from the flint. We know this
from ourselves. However grieved we may be for
the hurt done to us, or the opposition offered to our
wishes by some inanimate or irresponsible cause,
we are not angry as with a person. But voluntary
opposition, especially if we conceive it to be unjust,
excites first annoyance, then indignation, which
grows and gathers like an angry storm-cloud, and
hursts at last in a fury of vengeance and reprisal. So
it is that by opposing the will and determination of
omnipotent Love, sin Stores up Divine indignation
against the sinner, which when let loose from the
restraining hand of mercy, will drive him from the
presence and favour of God as chaff is driven before
the face of the tempest.
And here St. Ignatius would have me contrast
myself with God, person with person ; and to this
end first to dwell upon the absolute insignificance
of my own personality, as but one of the almost
infinite multitudes of men which have peopled the
earth. A man may be somebody in his own house
hold and family; though even there he is soOn
forgotten — but what is he in a great crowd or
assembly ? what as one of a nation ? what aS one
of a race ? — and yet what is that race compared
with the numberless orders of spiritual personalities
which belong to the other world ? My moral and
personal insignificance therefore is hardly less than

io4 SIN JUDGED BY REASON.
my physical insignificance as an atom of this
material universe, or as a solitary ripple on the
endless sea of time. And then I am to contrast
my frailty and weakness with the Divine strength
and endurance, my fleeting life with God's
eternity ; what am I but an autumn leaf that
trembles on the bough and is caught away by
the first breeze — Folium quod vento rapitur, as Job
says ; on what a slender thread I hang ! What is
my physical force compared with the forces of
nature ; what stand could I make against the rage
of the ocean, or against the earthquake, or the
thunderbolt ; what resistance could I offer to the
impetus of a planet ; what to all the forces ol
the universe leagued against me ? And yet God
moves them with His finger, nay, with the least
breath of His Love, of His Holy Spirit — the Digitus
Dei. And it is against the infinite impetus of that
Love, against the omnipotence of that subsistent
Will, that I set myself when I sin. I defy the laws
not only of the universe, but of the Builder of the
universe; I endeavour not only to turn aside the
course of Nature, but to change that Divine Nature
whence created Nature derives all her force and
necessity. Is it wonderful if sin issues sooner or
later in the destruction of the sinner ?
Further, in every sin I set up my judgment
against God's judgment ; my wisdom against His ;
I pretend to know better than He what is good for
me, what I ought, to do. Or I refuse to obey
because I do not see the why and the wherefore.
I, from my little corner of this darkened cave of a

SIN JUDGED BY REASON. £05
universe, guessing from passing shadows and gleams
as to what is going on above and beyond, pretend
to an equality with Him whose eyes are over all
the earth, and see from end to end of time. Yet
what do I know compared with so many around
me? What, compared with the collective know
ledge of the race ? And what is this, compared
with what is knowable to man and may yet be
known? And this again is to God's wisdom and
knowledge as the light of a glow-worm to the light
of the sun. How sickening and irritating is the
scepticism or the dogmatism of the half-educated
mind inflated with its modicum of late-acquired,
ill-digested knowledge ! Yet is it anything like as
disgusting as must be the self-sufficiency and vain
intellectual conceit involved in every sin ?
And then I am to contrast the Divine good
ness with my own vileness and poverty of body
and soul ; dwelling on this corpus humilitatis — " this
body of humiliation," this burden of corruptible
flesh, with all its infirmities normal and morbid,
designed to be a perpetual Memento of our deri
vation from the slime of the earth. Memento homo,
says the Church to us year by year, quia pulvis es
et in pulverem reverteris — " Remember, O man, that
dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return."
Yet how little do men seem to remember it when
they strut about with their heads in the air, as
though they were not at best whited sepulchres ; as
though they did not need continual tending and
cleansing in order not to be altogether loathsome and
horrible; as though they were not at every turn liable

106 SIN JUDGED BY REASON.
to be seized upon by one of those legion diseases
which lie in ambush round our path in the service
of inevitable death and decay. In making man, in
yoking the lowest grade of spiritual substance to an
animal carcase, God's wisdom seemed to have devised
a being to whom pride should be impossible and
ridiculous, in whom it should find no food to feed
on, no cleft or cranny to lurk in. Even under the
most favourable conditions, if God has endowed me
with perfect health, vigour, strength, and beauty,
how perishable and transitory it is ; how slight and
common an excellence it is ; above all, how entirely
a gift of God through natural and necessary causes I
When I think of all the beauty and grace and
wisdom displayed in physical nature which has
inspired so much joy and worship in hearts of
kindred beauty, and when I remember that all
this, together with that of countless worlds as fair
and wonderful, is but a hint at that undreamt-of
Beauty which is God, surely I must be in straits
for something to pride myself on if I can find aught
in my body. Yet it cannot be denied that perfect
bodily health and beauty often breed a spirit of
independence, an insolence of pride, which leads to
sin. If I turn from my body to my soul, there I find
still less to boast of. Doubtless as it leaves God's
hands, the soul of man, however lowly its rank in
the spiritual order, is immeasurably greater and
nobler than anything in the world of matter. Yet
as there is no animal born so feeble and unprotected
as man, so urgently in need of assistance and nurture

SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 107
and education, depending as he does on the family
and on society for his proper development, in like
manner his soul's greatness is all potential and in
capacity, and depends for its development on union
and association with God. It is by nature a re
ceptacle or dwelling-place of God's light and love,
and derives all its goodness and beauty from His
indwelling. For as the body when the soul is
withdrawn becomes so much carrion and rotten
ness, so the soul when it ceases to "lean on her
beloved," to cling to Him as the vine to the elm,
becomes corrupt and abominable beyond all measure.
What brightness has the mirror apart from the sun,
and what greatness or goodness has the soul which
casts off God ? If this is true of all created spirits,
it is truest of man's soul, the least and feeblest,
albeit the dearest of all God's dear children. And
when the corruption of spiritual death once sets in,
then indeed, as St. Ignatius says, the soul becomes
no better than a centre of pestilential infection
streaming out on all sides.
We can perhaps never sufficiently realize how
sin ramifies in its harmful consequences as long as
the world lasts ; how it is a little spore which of its
own nature tends to multiply with fearful rapidity
long after the act has been forgiven by God and
forgotten by us. And this gives another point of
sharp contrast between the vileness of my own soul
and the goodness of God, whom I offend so easily..
From Him as from its source flows out all that is
good in this world, whether in Nature or the soul
of man ; all the light and glory of creation radiate3

jo8 SIN JUDGED BY REASON.
from this Sun, all darkness and death is only a name
for His absence ; while the only absolute and un
qualified evil which mars His work is sin, and sin
flows from the perverse will of man to " increase
and multiply and replenish the earth," and to change
it from Paradise into Hell.
Vile as I am, however, soul and body, by sin I
put myself on an equality with God ; as though
I were as good as He. I refuse to accept a position
of subjection and inferiority. It is so with every
rebel and his liege-lord ; he is always a leveller and
an upstart. We smile now superciliously at the
old Ptolemaic astronomy, which represented the sun
as whirled round the earth once a day. We show
how absurd it would be to suppose a body so vast
should sweep through a circle with a radius ol
ninety million miles in twenty-four hours ; how
much easier it is to suppose the daily revolution 01
the earth on its axis ; especially when the fixed
stars, whose mass and distance we now can con
jecture less inadequately, offer each of them a similar
and greater difficulty. And yet, when we sin we are
guilty of an immeasurably greater absurdity. We
make self the centre round which God and every
thing else is to revolve ; our will is to rule, and
God's is to be ruled. This is surely the worst part
of sin, the personal opposition of the creature to its
Creator, of will to will ; of our self-love to the love
of God ; the objective harm, which is the matter oi
prohibition, is a little evil compared with this;
though viewed in another aspect this too is an
objective disorder beyond all other. For obedience

SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 109-
Is itself a virtue, as much as any other virtue which
we practise under obedience ; and if reason is
violated by a disturbance of the due relation between
men, or by faults against temperance or self-control,
so most of all when man sets his will against the
will of God.
Here St. Ignatius would have me pause and
gather up the results of my recent reflections ;.
look back on that long indictment I brought
home to myself in the review of my past life ; weigh
ing well the severity of the Divine justice revealed
to me in Holy Writ ; seeing finally how all this
harmonizes with the dictates of my natural reason,
which is forced to cry out : Justus es, Domine, et
rectum judicium tuum — "Just art Thou, O God, and
right in Thy judgments." And if God has opened
my eyes and touched my heart, I shall surely break
out into a cry of astonishment at God's goodness
and mercy, which has borne with me so long and so
patiently. For when He might most justly over
and over again have cut me off in the midst of my
sins, or withdrawn all His richer graces, and suffered
me to run my own perverse course from bad to
worse, He has instead pursued me, and overwhelmed
me with forgiveness and generosity ; He has served
me in all His creatures, has fed and supported me ;
He has given me all my life, movement, thought,
and will — nay, the very acts and energies I turned
against Him were the gifts and evidences of His
present love. He might well have sent His angels
to destroy me, but instead, He gave them special'
charge over me to keep me in all my ways. Instead.

SIN JUDGED BY REASON.

of turning a deaf ear to the prayers of His Blessed
Mother and of His saints, and forbidding them so
much as to mention my name, He not only harkened,
but longed to be entreated in my behalf. In a word,
when every claim to His forbearance was forfeited,
when He might have loathed me in my degradation,
He pitied me instead, and secretly drew me to a
better mind, to a desire for His service ; and when
I was yet afar off He could bear the separation no
longer, but ran out to meet me, and silenced my
confession with a kiss of peace.
And so I betake myself once more to the foot of
His Cross, and marvel what there can be in my
miserable soul that God can so love ; what has
enslaved Him to this degree of self-abasement. And
from marvelling I pass to love and adoration, and
thence to the sorrow of a broken and contrite heart.

SIN AND SUFFERING.
" Amen I say to thee, thou shalt not go out from thence
till thou repay the last farthing." — St. Matt. v. z6.
In the preceding considerations we have spoken of
sin chiefly as of a personal offence and estrangement
from God. But how does this offence re-act upon
our own soul ? We know that God is the life of the
soul here and hereafter. The mind is made for
truth, as the eye is for colour or the ear for sound.
Knowledge is the life of the mind ; colour is the
life of the eye ; music is the life of the ear ; God is
the life of the whole soul, mind and heart. As the
ear is dead till music strikes it into life ; so the soul,
till God breaks upon its vision. Without God, it is
dead. Yet there is the negative death of inaction,
and the positive death of destruction. To hate
is more than not to love. When the soul hates
what is lovable; when it loves what is hateful,
then it is dead with the death of conscious destruc
tion. This is the " eternal death " which the Gospel
opposes to " eternal life." As the exercise of any
faculty concerning its fitting and proper object is
attended with joy, so pain results from its applica
tion to a wrong object. It is like forcing a lock with
a wrong key. By sin we do not merely cease to be

SIN AND SUFFERING.

God's friends, but we become His enemies; and this
with a mutual enmity. If it is the greatest ot
spiritual consolations to be at one with God ; it is
the greatest of miseries to be driven from His face.
A stone is not drawn more necessarily to the centre
of the earth than is the created spirit to the bosom
of God. Were the stone conscious of being held
back from its goal, still more of being driven from
it by some contrary violence, this consciousness
would mean misery. To continue the metaphor: the
nearer it approaches the centre, the more forcibly
and impetuously is it borne on. So when the soul
shakes off the fetters of matter, space, and time, and
enters its proper spiritual ether, its flight towards
God is as that of a bird, no longer wearying itself
with futile flutterings upwards, but freed from the
snare of the fowler, and steered to its home by an
unerring, God-given instinct. What then, if opposed
to this fundamental attraction of our whole spiritual
being, this blind restless craving for God, there be
found an overmastering repulsion, so that we are at
once driven and drawn ; drawn, by the deep-down,
ineradicable instinct of our spiritual nature and
constitution ; driven, in virtue of the self-induced
distortion of that nature; driven, by those same
forces and energies which we were left free either
to bring into harmony with our primary impulse or
else into conflict and discord with it. The pain of
conscious loss1 is no mere negation, but a sharp
1 There is conscious and unconscious loss ; and there is the con
sciousness of a loss apprehended distinctly (as when one has lost his
sight) and that of a loss vaguely guessed at (as in one born blind).

SIN AND SUFFERING. n3
agony, whose poignancy, no doubt, is proportioned
to the clearness and deliberateness of the soul's
aversion from God. The same impetus of Divine
love which hurries along to their bliss those souls
that yield themselves to its sway, crushes to
powder those who dare to oppose it, or stand stiff
against it ; the same light which fills the eyes of the
saints with glory, dazzles and darkens and withers
the eyes unanointed by grace ; the same fire which
warms and gladdens and comforts God's friends,
scorches, torments, and consumes His enemies.
God is the life of the soul, and God is the death of
the soul, "for our God is a consuming fire."1 No
one, save those to whom it is given, can see Him
and live. When the unpardoned soul passes " from
out the bourne of time and space " into the change
less instant of eternity, where longer and shorter
have no meaning, and joy and sorrow no divisible
dimension of duration, it finds itself for ever fixed
in a state of destruction; "for ever shattered, and
the same for ever." In that first eternal pang its
punishment is complete, for it is not more shattered
because it is longer shattered. " As the tree falls
there shall it lie."
And now we turn to the other element of sin —
the material element, as it used to be called. We
must view it as a disarrangement of God's plans ; a
spoiling of His designs ; a disturbance of the order
i We do not mean, of course, that God is to be identified with
the "fire which is not quenched," but that the thought of God's
goodness torments the soul of the wicked as much as it gladdens
the soul of the saint.
I

H4 SIN AND SUFFERING.
of creation ; an interference with God's created
glory. For God in His goodness has willed to
surround Himself with creation as with a halo of
glory which in no way indeed can add to His own
uncreated brightness and beauty, but of which glory
He is truly the subject, even as a king receives an
extrinsic glory from his retinue and the pageantry
of his royal Court. Here it is that God can in a
true sense be said to be dependent upon us; we
can further or hinder His designs; we can make
reparation for our own transgressions and the
transgressions of others.
When we examine most of God's precepts
and prohibitions we find, as far as our poor
reason carries us, that they are all directed by
His loving wisdom to the good of creation in
general and of man in particular ; and we can often
see how sin is naturally fraught with mischievous
consequences for the individual and for society.
Yet until we can mount up to God's throne and
view things with the eyes of Him " whose wisdom
reaches from end to end, and disposes of all things
sweetly," we can never hope to see more than an
infinitesimal fraction of the consequences of any
single human act. For example, a man tells a lewd
story — a little sin perhaps for him. He may mention
it in confession or he may forget it. It is passed
from mouth to mouth as time goes on, and gives
birth to a foul thought here and there; and this
springs up in the fancy unbidden a thousand times,
and draws others in its train; and perchance the
thought fructifies in deeds and actions, themselves

SIN AND SUFFERING. its
fruitful of others. Who can compute the harm or
tell where it will stop, if ever ? And so of many a
lie ; many a harsh and unkind word ; many a slander
and calumny; many a theft or injustice; many a
negligence and omission. How terrible it would be
were God to disclose to us the sum total of that
harm in the world which shall eventually be traceable
to our faults ! I think we should be driven to despair
at once. Still more when we consider that a blemish
is more hateful according as the beauty which it mars
is greater. Could we but enter into the grandeur
and glory of God's design, we should be utterly
confounded to see how stupendous a work we had
spoilt and profaned. Of course, when we sin we do
not know all this; nor do we always think very
explicitly of what we do know. Yet we are justly
blamed and held accountable, like little children
who are told not to meddle with the clock or with
some other piece of machinery which they don't
understand. We know very well that sin is
forbidden for good reasons, by God, whose provi
dence is over all; and that we ourselves are not
likely to form any adequate notion of those reasons,
since they are as wide-reaching as creation. But
in our littleness we want to be as God, knowing
good and evil for ourselves and measuring it by oui
own ken.
This disorder which sin produces in creation,
great as it may be, is yet a finite evil. It is
an injury done to God's garment, but not touch
ing His Person. As forbidden by Him, it cannot
be committed without an accompanying personal

SIN AND SUFFERING.

offence. But the two elements must not be
confounded. If I annoy my friend by upset
ting his house and furniture, I cannot undo his
annoyance. That is for him to do in his free
forgiveness. But if after I am forgiven I neglect to
re-arrange his affairs so far as I can, I tacitly
reiterate my offence. Similarly, after God has
forgiven us, if we neglect to set right, as far as we
can, what we have set wrong ; if we fail to restore
the order which we have destroyed, or to make any
compensation that is in our power, we thereby
relapse into our former offence. And by harm done
we must not understand the mere social effects of
sin, but the disturbance of that moral order which
requires the subjection of our own passions to the
rational will, and of the rational will to God. For
this too is a finite disorder, to be compensated by a
corresponding repression of the same rebellious
faculties ; in a word, by their punishment — for we
all feel at once that indulgence is balanced by
restriction, and over-feeding by a fast.
And this is what we mean by the temporal punish
ment due to sin. We say " temporal," because it is
finite, and we express finitude in terms of time. For
those who die in deadly sin, the temporal punishment
is said to become eternal. Not that it lasts time
without end, nor yet does it cease after a time — for
time is no more; but because, as Aquinas points
out, the state of the departed is unchangeable,
unprogressive. They are stayed, and, as it were,
petrified in their first conscious instant of other-
world existence. And over and above the pain of

SIN AND SUFFERING. 117

personal antagonism and opposition to God— their
lost treasure — there recoils upon them all the evil
that they have caused in God's creation, in them
selves and in others, so that the balance of the
moral order is restored, and truth and right are
triumphant — Deposuit potentes de sede, et exaltavit
humiles — The lofty are brought low, and the lowly •
uplifted. Yet compared with the anguish of
antagonism to God, which is the very death of the
soul, this penalty for the disorder of sin is finite.
As to the precise nature of that timeless torment it
is vain for us to speculate. In a modified sense we
may say of it : " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
nor heart conceived." For although it is not a
supernatural mystery like the Beatific Vision, yet it
belongs to that spirit world outside time and space,
whereof we have at best remotely analogical con
ceptions. Our Saviour speaks of a " fire unquench
able ; " and Holy Church forbids us to confine
the torments simply to remorse, or to deny that it
will penetrate to every corner of our conscious
being, so that the senses shall expiate their unlawful
indulgence by a consciousness of sense suffering.
The more we learn to look upon the whole
physical and visible world as the self-expression
and symbol of that world which is spiritual and
invisible, and to regard this frail body of our
humiliation as not merely the earthly tenement
of our immortal part, but as in some sense its
creation and its sacrament — even as the whole
world is God's creation and sacrament — the easier
does it become to conceive that the element whose

n8 SIN AND SUFFERING.
infusion transforms and spiritualizes the risen bodies
of the saints, releasing them from the fetters of
time and space, is no other than the sanctified soul
transfused with the fulness of the Divine indwelling;
and that as the natural soul fashions to itself a
fitting garment of flesh and blood, and commu
nicates its own nature and idea for the time being
to the matter which it stealthily draws from its
environment, so the same soul transfigured and
glorified, glorifies and transfigures that which it
assumes and subdues to itself. If this be so, it is
not incongruous to believe that when eternal death
is perfected in the soul, its sting should send its
poison into every fibre of our double nature. But
in all this we are simply groping after some less
inadequate statement of truths belonging to a world
wholly unimaginable, and are safe only in holding
to the words of the Gospel and of the Church, to
those divinely authorized expressions of a mystery
which is above and beyond our adequate appre
hension, which can never be exactly translated into
the language of the senses. " It belongeth to the
royal lordship of God," says Mother Julian of
Norwich, "to have His privy counsels in peace,
and it belongeth to His servants for obedience and
reverence not to will to know His counsels. Our
Lord hath pity and compassion on us for that some
creatures make themselves so busy therein ; and
I am sure if we wist how greatly we should please
Him and ease ourselves to leave it, we would. The
saints in Heaven they will nothing wit but what
our Lord will show them."

SIN AND SUFFERING. ng

There is yet another consequence of sin, that is,
of repeated sin, which we must take notice of;
namely, vice. Vice is a propension or inclination
towards sinful actions ; begotten chiefly by our own
sins, though perhaps to some extent inherited from
our sinful ancestors. There are also propensions to
sin which in no way owe their origin to personal
fault, but are merely constitutional. Now, as
virtue is an adornment of the soul — for we all
feel that a good disposition is a spiritual charm
distinct from that of good conduct, and that
good conduct is better if it proceeds from good
inclination and does not need to be forced — so
vice is undoubtedly a blemish which unfits the
soul for the presence of God ; not, indeed, a blemish
comparable to the stain of actual sin, but still
a deformity and disfigurement in point of dis
position. It was the error of Pelagianism to rate
men by their disposition rather than by their actual
conduct, to fix their eternal destiny by the considera
tion of what they would have done in hypothetical
circumstances, and not by what they did in their
actual circumstances. It is by our works that we
have to be judged, by our deliberate thoughts, and
resolves, and words, and actions; not by our habits,
inclinations, and dispositions. These latter are indeed
important, but wholly for the sake of the actions
to which they give birth. But so far as morality
stands for virtues, good habits, and inclinations, it
may be said that our whole moral evolution consists
in the gradual elimination of all evil inclinations, and
in the cultivation of contrary dispositions. Sin not

SIN AND SUFFERING'.

only retards but undoes our progress in this respect
However rich the repentant soul may be in grace,
yet until it is purged of all vicious tendencies it is
not fit for God's presence. For flesh and blood
shall not inherit that Kingdom ; nor corruption
incorruption. Our mortality and frailty must put
on strength and immortality. And as all birth and
growth and refinement is, for us earth-bound
limited creatures, at the cost of much suffering and
tribulation — per multas tribulationes — so the purifica
tion of our soul from vice and infirmity is a bitter
and laborious task.
It has been disputed1 whether the purgatorial
fire is merely expiatory of the pains due to forgiven
sins, or is also perfective of the heart and mind of
the sufferer. But in truth the difference of view is
more apparent than real. It is certain that nothing
1 sc, Between Bellarmine and Suarez. The former thinks that
even the guilt of venial sin is remitted in Purgatory : the latter
holds that such guilt, together with all vicious tendencies, is burnt
out of the soul at the Particular Judgment by an act of sovereign
love, leaving nothing but temporal debts for the purgatorial
fire. Plainly it is largely a matter of words. Both agree that
these three things — venial guilt, vicious inclination, and temporal
debt — need to be purged away, the two former by some intense act
of love (whose natural language is suffering or contrition), the third
by pain. Bellarmine views the three processes as simultaneous,
and calls it all Purgatory ; Suarez regards the third as subsequent
to the two first, and reserves to it the name of Purgatory. We know
too little about duration in the spirit world to make the controversy
very profitable. St. Catherine of Genoa seems to take a middle
position and to apply the term "Purgatory" to the second and
third processes. Needless to say, this discourse of ours is founded
on her classical treatise : In iis quce de Purgatorio determinata non
sunt ab Ecclesia, standum est iis qua sunt magis conformia dictis et revela-
tionibus sanctorum. (Aquinas, in 4. Sent. d. 2r. q. 1. a. 1.)

SIN AND SUFFERING. lit
defiled can enter Heaven, and that this refers not
only to the defilement of sin or to the debt of
temporal pain, but also to those vicious habits and
tendencies of the soul which remain after the fullest
absolution and indulgence, and are called the
reliquice peccati. These spiritual diseases and indis
positions must be cured before the soul can see
God ; and they are cured as soon as the medicine
of grace, already received, works its full effect ; that
is, when by strong, painful acts of love the soul has
corresponded to and utilized the secret forces
conveyed to it through the sacraments, and has thus
been perfected through suffering. Now, when we
say that temporal pain is due to forgiven sin —
that justice requires it, it is not to be thought that
pain as such can satisfy justice ; but rather pain as
atoning for that lack of reverence and love involved
in sin ; pain, as an expression and embodiment of
love and reverence. It is because there is no love
or reverence in the lost, because all they suffer is
against their will, that their pains cannot in the
strict sense satisfy justice, even as in this world the
wicked who rebel against God's lash rather increase
than remedy their guilt.
It is only love that can expiate the unjust with
holding of love ; and therefore the temporal punish
ment due to forgiven sin is really in the long run
medicinal, or at all events nutritive in respect to
the soul of the sufferer, whether on earth or in
Purgatory. As it is but a superficial and utilitarian view of
Christianity which regards it principally as a system

I2a SIN AND SUFFERING.
of morality whose end is social and political peace
and prosperity, and which therefore looks on the
life to come as a mere sanction subordinated to the
securing of those temporal effects; (whereas, in truth,
Christianity wholly subordinates this life to the
next, making it little better than a pre-natal
existence, a time of secret moulding and fashioning)
so it is a mistake to regard Purgatory as a sort of
accidental stage, a mere finishing process by which
the last touches are put upon a work which has
been substantially completed on earth. Truly in
some sense it is in this life that the foundation of
our salvation is laid, that its lines and dimensions
are determined and fixed, that our free-will accepts,
or rejects, or modifies the plans and ideals of the
Divine mind in our regard. But if the seed is sown
here, it is only in the glow of suffering that it
germinates and sends up its stalk ; and if in some
few exceptional cases that work of development is
to a great extent completed in the furnace of
earthly tribulation, yet for the most, and as a
general law, it is in Purgatory that the causes here
freely set in motion, find due conditions in which to
work out their necessary effects in the soul. Doubt
less the love of the martyrs, which, like that of their
Master, finds expression in absolute self-sacrifice
and in the bearing of unspeakable torments, perfects
the labour of many years in a little space ; but
though such extreme suffering is not for all men the
price of grace and salvation, yet it does not seem
likely that grace can yield its full fruit or that the
soul, already saved, can be fitted for the King's

SIN AND SUFFERING. 123
embrace short of an equal purification by pain.
The martyrs and confessors are those who to some
extent received here that purgatory which we all
must receive sooner or later. But the many are too
weak to purchase grace at such a cost, and God
condescends to their frailty by veiling from them
the full burden they have taken upon themselves
till such times as they shall be able to bear it
willingly. We are now in a better position to appreciate
the sufferings of the blessed souls in Purgatory.
When the pardoned soul passes out of this life it is
ushered into the presence of our Saviour,
And with the intemperate energy of love
Flies to the dear feet of Emmanuel :
But ere it reach them, the keen sanctity
Which with its effluence, like a glory, clothes
And circles round the Crucified, has seized
And scorched and shrivelled it ; and now it lies
Passive, and still, before the awful throne.
O happy, suffering soul ! for it is safe ;
Consumed, yet quickened by the glance of God.1
For it is thrust through with the sharp and fier>
sword of contrite love. Who has not at times been
filled with self-hatred, with a passion for self-
inflicted suffering, on the sudden conviction of
baseness and ingratitude towards some noble and
loving soul ! What then must be the anguish, the
thirst for self-vengeance, when the whole lovableness
of God and the whole extent and depth of its own
sinfulness is first flashed upon the soul — a pain that
is saved from being remorse, and yet is increased
1 Newman's Dream of Gerontius.

tin SIN AND St/FFEFlNG.
by the knowledge that in spite of all God loves it
still, loves it infinitely. And proportioned to the
awful force with which the disembodied and
pardoned soul is drawn towards the bosom of God,
is the strain and agony of that violent separation
which must last till it is perfected and purified.
This then is the first and chiefest pain of
Purgatory, the pain of bitter, though love-born
sorrow for past unlovingness ; the agony of violent
present separation from an embrace just missed. I
do not know if in the nature of things this suffering
can be alleviated by our prayers ; or that the Holy
Souls would willingly be spared a pang of that sweet
saving sorrow whereby every vice is burnt out by
the roots and every virtue burnt in.1 We do not
know if this process be measurable in terms of time,
or if it be, as Suarez seems to have thought, the
work of an instant. It is, indeed, a fiery trial,
whereby the gold is freed from its dross in the
scorching flame of Divine love, and as long as
there is dross and impurity there will be sharp
agonizing suffering.
But the same light which discloses to us our sin
as a treason against our Eternal Lover, also shows
it to us as to its intrinsic malice. There for the first
time we are set face to face with God's fair plan of
creation ; and we see what it is we have helped to
spoil, and to what extent. We trace the ramifica
tions of our guilty acts like ugly black lines spreading
1 Not that this involves any increase of sanctifying grace ; but
only that the grace and love already there should work its effect and
spread itself to every corner of the spiritual frame.

SIN AND SUFFERING. 125
out on all sides, and stretching forward to the last
syllable of recorded time. And if now our memory
leaves us conscious of only a big blot here and there,
then the whole story will stand out clear as to its
minutest detail ; and half-smothered motives that
we refused to admit to ourselves will be dragged
forth into clear light ; and we shall see ourselves
contrasted not only with what our inmost conscience
told us, but with what it might have told us if we
had used our opportunities of knowing better. And
our rectified will, in full sympathy with God's, will
be shocked and horrified at the hideous moral ruin
we have worked ; and it will be ardent and restless
in its desire to compensate and atone by its own
suffering and submission, for the disorder caused by
its past indulgence and rebellion. But how measure
less and all but infinite a task will this appear ! And
will it not be the earnest desire of such a soul that
all should by love and patient suffering make repara
tion to God in every possible way for this great
dishonour He has received ; and especially that for
the harm whereof it has itself been the author, it
may, by its own sufferings, or by those of others
near and dear to it, make due restitution. If I see
my friend's house on fire, I will get all I have any
claim on, to help me to put it out — still more, if it
is on fire through my carelessness ; or through some
past fault that I am now sorry for. In this it is
that the souls in Purgatory so earnestly desire our
help, that we may hasten the day when God's
honour shall be satisfied; and when they will no
longer feel the intolerable pain of responsibility for

126 SIN AND SUFFERING.
a disorder not remedied, for a debt still unpaid;
and when they will at last be able to enter into the
joy of God's presence purified, not only from the
relics of sin, from evil or imperfect inclinations, but
also from that debt of personal penalty whereof they
shall then have paid the last farthing.
Against the practice of assisting the souls in
Purgatory our laziness suggests, with some ingenuity,
that after all they are happy and blessed : Beati
mortui — " Happy are the dead." They are safe in
port ; out of all risk and danger. Would God we
were as well off! Let us therefore pray and work
for those who are still storm-tossed and uncertain of
salvation. What comparison can there be between
the two needs ?
First of all, this objection is not usually urged by
those who are very earnest in their intercession for
the living ; or who have, in consequence, no moment
of time left for the needs of the dead. On the
contrary, the charity which urges to the one form of
intercession, usually urges to the other. Then, it is
true that the souls in Purgatory are happy sub
stantially, fundamentally. But, as these words
suggest, our happiness lies in layers and is divisible.
Fundamental happiness is compatible with super
ficial or less fundamental misery. The saints on
earth had this fundamental happiness of being right
with God; but they also had great sufferings and
tribulations of soul and body to endure. And these
sufferings were very real ; and very worthy of pity.
I know there is a spirituality which despises — in the
case of others — any trouble that is not spiritual;

SIN AND SUFFERING. 127
which is so impressed with the advantages of trials
and pains for other people, that it can see nothing
in them to pity. " If a man has the grace of God, he
has a treasure of infinite worth. Why should we
pity him because be has got all the sorrows of Job
on his head ; because he has lost his home, and
children, and influence, and health ? These are but
temporal sorrows; these but the thorns of a
heavenly crown. Why pluck them out?" This is not
God's way, who made body and soul, and redeemed
both alike ; who desires not our fundamental happi
ness alone, but our entire happiness; who afflicts
always with regret, and only "for greater gain of
after-bliss;" who feels the least of our pains far
more than we feel it ourselves, being " afflicted in
all our afflictions;" who pities the pitiful, and
blesses the man who has consideration for the poor
and needy, and smoothes his pillow for him in his
sickness ; who calls a man a liar if he pretends to
bewail invisible and supernatural evils, and yet has
no pity for those that are visible and natural.1 The
same reasons which forbid us to neglect the temporal
and bodily needs of the living under pain of reproba
tion, forbid us to neglect the sufferings of the blessed
dead. Nay, because they are blessed and dearer to
God, we owe them a special care and service.
St. Paul tells us that our charity, which is due to all,
is first due to those that are of the household of the
faith. And are not the blessed dead more truly in
God's household than the living ? If God wants us
to visit Him in the prisons of earthly justice, much
1 1 St. John iv.

128 SIN AND SUFFERING.
more does He wait for our consolation in the
debtor's prison of heavenly justice. " Remember
the poor debtors," for they cry out to us day and
night with their endless Miseremini mei! Let us
make friends with them now, that when our time
comes they may help us, and at last welcome us into
everlasting habitations. For they will not be like
Pharao's butler, who, when released from prison,
no longer remembered Joseph his helper, but forgot
him. This, indeed, is the least of all motives, though
a good one. Still better, is the thought that alms
giving, if it be the child of real charity and pitying
love of others, cleanses our soul from all sin and
wins us a heritage of mercy. Also, whatever unselfs
us, and takes us out of our narrowness, and makes
us live for others and in other's, and dwell, not upon
our own wounds, but on those of Christ's Mystic
Body, is an incalculable good.
Again, charity to the dead is in some way more
beneficial to our faith than charity to the living.
For faith means a realization of the invisible world ;
and one reason why this devotion flags is because
we are more alive to pains we can see and imagine,
than to those of the mysterious spirit-world. Humani
tarian charity, important as it is, involves no great
exercise of faith in the invisible.
But beyond all these reasons and motives there
is one which appeals to our love of God, and of
His Blessed Mother, and of the saints, His friends
and courtiers. We have often heard of miners
being buried alive in the bowels of the earth,

SIN AND SUFFERING. t2g

while their parents and friends were standing above
their living grave, broken-hearted and terrified,
listening anxiously for some sound or sign from
the depths, to sustain and quicken their languish
ing hopes. So may we figure to ourselves, God
and His Blessed Mother and the saints, standing
on high above the abyss of Purgatory, where the
Holy Souls are buried under a vast depth of incum
brances and debts of punishment to be worked out,
through which their faint cries for assistance scarce
penetrate : " From the depths have I cried to Thee,
O Lord. Let Thy ears be attentive to the voice of
my supplication."
God is in some sense powerless, and dependent
on our co-operation for the deliverance of His dear
children, whom He afflicts not willingly but of
necessity ; His wisdom and justice tie His hands,
and bid Him wait for the payment of the last
farthing. And Mary longs to welcome them home
to her Mother's heart, with all their sufferings and
sorrows past, their tears wiped away, and their cup
of joy filled to the brim — even as she is said to have
waited with restless longing by the tomb through
the vigil of Easter to clasp to her breast the first-
fruits of the dead, the first-born of her many children.
And the saints are also athirst for the deliverance
of the blessed dead ; for every new-comer to their
festival increases the joy of all the rest— a joy that
grows and feeds on sympathy, a fire that burns
more fierce and bright for every new faggot that is
cast upon it.
And so, as usual, the instinct of the Catholic
J

i3o SIN AND SUFFERING.
religion is found to be true and right and faithful as
soon as we look into it carefully and devoutly. Our
faith is everywhere seen to be an exquisite harmony,
so delicate, so exact in composition, that no element
can be removed or disturbed without destruction to
the whole. The devotion to the Holy Souls might,
to a superficial thinker, seem an arbitrary accretion
to the body of Catholic teaching, something stuck
on from without, that could be removed without
hurt. But closer examination proves it a true vital
outgrowth whose veins and fibres reach down
through the whole plant to the very earth itself,
whence it draws its life. You cannot touch it or
tear it without injury to every other article of belief,
to the doctrine of sin and its consequences — which
again involves the doctrine of God as Creator and
Redeemer — to the doctrines of vicarious suffering, of
the communion of saints, of charity, of mercy, and
of all the doctrines which they depend upon and
involve.

THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
Aut pati, aut mori — " Let me either suffer or die."
We are told in the Breviary lesson for the feast of
St. Teresa1 that, not content with the passive,
patient, and loving endurance of the many crosses
and afflictions whereby in the ordinary course of
His providence God purified and chastened her
affections, and prepared her soul for an eternal
union with Himself, for the everlasting embrace of
the Heavenly Spouse, she was wont, in obedience
to the inspiration of Divine love, to go out of her
way in search of further sufferings, to regard them
as pearls of great price to be earnestly sought for,
and carefully hoarded when found ; that she was
restless, uneasy, fretful, if ever she were wholly free
from pain or sorrow or humiliation, from the Cross
in one form or another. For her, life without suffer
ing was not worth living ; it was death, worse than
death: Aut pati, aut mori — "Let me either suffer
or die." Her earliest manifestation of this strange passion
was when as a mere child she fled from home, hand
in hand with her little brother, to seek'martyrdom
among the Moors. That indeed was the greedy
1 This is the development of a sermon preached on her feast in
1896 in the Carmelite Church, Kensington, London

132 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
improvidence of childhood, which would have sacri
ficed the unknown treasures of suffering, hidden in
the womb of futurity, for one short, sharp ecstasy
of present pain ; which would have driven the pierc
ing sword home at a blow, rather than inch by
inch, with protracted lingerings and loving delays.
But God saved her from herself and from her
folly, as He always does those who love Him ;
thwarting her present good desire that He might
fulfil it a hundred-fold in due season. He had in
reserve for her a baptism, not of blood, but of sorrow,
a far deeper chalice of suffering than that which her
infant greed had thirsted for, a glorious chalice full
to the brim, overflowing, inebriating with heavenly
joy and ecstasy. Aut pati, aut mori : she was not to
die, but to suffer. Non moriar sed vivam — " You
shall not die, Teresa, but you shall live and suffer
and declare the wonderful works of God."
A strange answer, indeed, to the problem of life's
value, in these days when it is so generally assumed
as a first and self-evident principle that suffering is
the one unmitigated evil, and that to escape it
ourselves, or to lessen it for others, is the only
reasonable and worthy end we can put before us.
Here both egoist and altruist, he who lives for
himself and he who lives for others, are at one in their
estimate of good and evil. The former, indeed, by
cutting the cords which would bind him by affection
to his fellow-men and make him a sharer of their
sufferings, narrows the area in which Sorrow can
lodge the arrows she directs against him ; the latter
going out of himself by sympathy, makes, together

THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. i33
with the many with whom he is bound up, an easy
mark for her most casual dart. Yet what they fly
from, and what they fight against in both cases, is
one and the same thing — pain, suffering, sorrow.
None, however, are so short-sighted as not to see
that, however undesirable pain may be in itself, it is,
nevertheless, in the established order of things very
often a necessary condition of life and enjoyment;
that it must be faced firmly and frequently by those
who wish to extract the full value from a finite and
limited existence ; so that their very horror of pain
should lead them to bear it, nay, even to seek it, in
their own interest or in that of others for whose happi
ness they live. They recognize that all creation is
groaning and travailing, expecting its deliverance;
that pain is the inevitable condition of growth and
expansion ; that life feeds upon death ; that the
present must die in giving birth to the future. Aut
pati, aut mori ; no life but at the cost of suffering,
seems the universal law of evolution. To survive is
to struggle ; to struggle is to suffer, and to cause
suffering. And this law they extend from the
physical into the moral and social world, and they
tell us that those who, shrinking from its seeming
cruelty, would by some vain Utopian scheme end
this struggle between man and man, with its
attendant suffering, would in reality be courting
social death and decay, would be multiplying for
posterity those very evils they seek to avoid for
themselves. Thus those who hold most firmly that a pleasure-
able life, free from pain, sorrow, and affliction, is

i34 THE GOSPEL OF FAIN.
the one thing to aim at, are willing to allow that
only through many tribulations can we enter into
such a kingdom of enjoyment. Aut pati, aut mori;
those who flee the Cross cannot grasp even the
perishable crown of pleasure.
The most selfish and shameless of pleasure-
seekers, if he be not led blindly by his feelings from
moment to moment, if he exercise any foresight or
human prudence in the conduct of life, sees clearly
that he must suffer for pleasure's sake; that he
must deny himself and practise judicious self-
restraint ; that he must be a miser in economizing
the enjoyments of life in the present, for the sake
of greater eventual gain of enjoyment. Reflection
and experience alike tell him that the pleasures
of life stand out more brightly against a dark
background of pain. The most acute pleasure,
if continuously sustained at the same pitch, soon
ceases to affect our consciousness in any way ;
i.e., ceases to be pleasure ; for pleasure springs from
the consciousness of an agreeable -state, and con
sciousness is like a drugged sleeper kept awake only
by incessant rousings and changes of position.
Without going so far as those who say (with
Schopenhauer), that pleasure is only the conscious
ness of a cessation or mitigation of pain, every
pleasure-seeker must allow that pain is the very
tonic of the sensitive faculty, whereby the dulled
appetite for pleasure is sharpened anew; Without
suffering, life, even for such a one, were not
worth living, but would quickly exhaust itself
and become flat, stale, and unprofitable. Aut pati,

THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. i35
aut mori; if pleasure be life, one must either suffer
or die.If we turn to the philanthropist, i.e., to him
who, in obedience to a God-given instinct for which
most modern philosophy vainly seeks any coherent
justification, strives to communicate to others what
he himself esteems the truest happiness — we find
the same inevitable condition accepted. Positivism,
which includes in its scheme of benevolence all
sentient creation from man down to the meanest
insect, decks itself out in the blood-stained garment
of Christian asceticism. It breathes everywhere the
spirit of self-sacrifice, it speaks the language of
charity, it vaunts the Cross upon its brow. Nay, it
has rediscovered Christ ; it has raised from the dead
Him whom the Churches have slain. Aut pati, aut
mori, it says ; the greatest amount of enjoyment
for the many can only be secured by the self-sacri
fice of the few who devote their lives to a crusade
against pain, the arch-enemy, who suffer more, that
others may suffer less, and yet by sympathy with
the joy of others, find their own unselfish sorrow
turned into joy. In all this there is something so
analogous to Christian fraternal charity, that the
very elect themselves are often deceived. For here
too — so far as there is any definite positivist
morality or law — love to our neighbour is the
fulfilling of that law.
Christian and positivist alike live and suffer for
the common happiness. It is, however, in their
estimate, not only of what true happiness consists
in, but of the relation between pain and happiness,

136 The Gospel of pain.
that they are as antagonistic one to another, as light
to darkness. Too often, indeed, the kind-hearted,
good-natured philanthropist makes little profession
of any definite theory of life and happiness, but
busies himself incessantly " going about and doing
good " as his momentary instinct or feeling prompts
him. He does not delay to go minutely into the
remote or possible consequences of his benevolent
activity, or to search keenly into his motives, but
wherever he is pained by the sufferings of others
in any form, he at once seeks to relieve his own
pain by relieving theirs. And by yielding to this
kindly impulse and indulging it, it becomes more
and more tyrannical in its demand for gratifi
cation, so that eventually he is simply dominated
altogether and indiscriminately by his abhorrence
of every form of suffering. Were suffering really
the ultimate evil, and were enjoyment the ulti
mate good, such a tyranny of benevolence would
be ¦ simply the fulness and perfection of Divine
charity. Yet let such a one be reduced by poverty, sick
ness, or other causes to long years of helpless
suffering in which he can no longer minister to the
happiness of others, and let him be set face to face
with the problem as to what that happiness is which
he sought for them and which they should now
minister to him, and he will be forced to see that
he has hitherto been as a physician going about
dispensing drugs and remedies of which he knows
nothing, for the cure of diseases of which he knows
as little ; that he was healing others while he knew

The Gospel oF PAiti. 137
not how to heal himself; that he was a blind
leader of the blind ; plucking motes from his neigh
bour's eye, all unconscious of the beam in his own.
An indiscriminate pain-shirker himself, he dealt with
others as he himself would have wished to be dealt
with. Nay, in bearing the burdens of others he far
surpassed any Christian saint. For the Christian
may never, for the love of others, himself forego
one particle of that final happiness which he desires
to secure for them, nor incur the slightest taint of
that ultimate evil from which it is his supreme
endeavour to preserve them. He may never sin,
even a little, that others may sin less, or stand for
an instant in his own light that others may enjoy
a fuller view of God's face. Whereas the philan
thropist, viewing pain as the last and unqualified
evil, will endure it himself that others may escape
it ; thus sacrificing what he deems his own highest
good as a means to the highest good of others.
This self-care is sometimes objected to Christians
as indicating a lower altruism, a less absolute un
selfishness than obtains, at all events in theory,
among the disciples of Comte. Yet unjustly. For
though the Christian must love himself before his
neighbour, and though "charity begins at home,"
yet his self-care and self-love is subordinated as a
means to the care and love of others for God's sake,
that " he may have wherewith to give to him that is
in need." It is only in the measure that he has
found and tasted happiness himself that he will feel
the desire to impart it to others.

138 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
Flammescat igne caritas,
Accendat ardor proximos,1
is the Catholic principle. If, then, a man must love
his own soul before his neighbour's, it is a " before-
ness " of time rather than of affection. The Christian
conception of humanity as an organism, as a many-
branched tree rooted in God and drawing life from
Him, demands that each part be animated and
moved towards the general good of the whole
organism as its all-dominating aim ; and yet it is in
perfecting and strengthening itself that it contributes
most effectively towards this universal and unselfish
end. It never could possibly be for the happiness,
that is, for the true well-being, of others that
a man should neglect his own highest life ; but
rather, the stronger, the higher he is, the more
effectively can he raise and strengthen others.
The mother must feed herself for the sake of the
child at her breast. It is, therefore, the motive from
which it springs, the end to which it is directed,
that turns what would otherwise be spiritual selfish
ness into that truest altruism which regards God
and self and neighbour as one thing — vine and
branches — with one life, one movement, one interest.
Most of the kindness of modern humanitarians,
however well meant, is really as spurious as that of
the father who weakly yields to every wish and
whim of his children, who will never inflict the least
pain upon them that can by any possibility be
avoided, who takes it for granted that suffering is
1 Kindle the flame of good desire
Till all around be set on fire.

THE GOSPEL OF PAib. l3g

never a good, is never to be endured save by way
of economy as a condition of less eventual suffer
ing. Yet even this end should make the develop
ment of the pain-bearing faculty a far more important
feature of education than it is at the present day.
The whole aim of humanitarians is to lessen the
amount of pain in the world, but in no wise to
teach men to bear pain, much less to value it, to
court it, to be in love with it, as St. Teresa was.
They seek to raise the standard, not of happiness
(which, indeed, they lower), but of comfort; thus
implicitly making comfort, or freedom from hard
ships and bodily sufferings, if not the essence, at
least an essential condition of happiness. They
strive to make men less accustomed to privations
and inconvenience, and therefore more impatient
and intolerant of such as are inevitable, to make the
conditions of contentment ever more manifold and
complex, and therefore more rarely realized, more
easily disturbed.
Nay, the very sympathy extended to suffering,
the tone, so to say, in which it is pitied, makes it
much harder to endure. How often do we not bear
up against trouble until we find ourselves pitied;
how often is it not pity which first suggests to us
the misery of our plight ? Suffering would be
bearable enough were it not for reflection, which
magnifies it and joins its several pangs into one
chain of woe, and brings those that are past and
even those that are future to bear upon the present,
and crushes us with pain of which nine-tenths
belong to the world of ideas. But this phantom

r46 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
grows to a Brocken-spectre when we see it reflected
in the eyes of all around us. Our estimate of good
and evil is largely taken from those with whom we
dwell, and our enjoyment and suffering depend on
that estimate. Thus we marvel at what our fore
fathers put up with in the way of discomfort ; we
admire their patient endurance of various incon
veniences, injustices, oppressions, which to us would
be quite unbearable ; and forgetting that the con
ditions of contentment are far more subjective than
objective, we fancy that our ancestors must have
been as miserable as we should now be in the same
circumstances. Instead of inuring men to the
rough climate of this mortal life, humanitarianism
has accustomed them to wraps and muffles, and
rendered them susceptible to every little change of
temperature — poor, frail, pain-fearing creatures.
Indeed, there are no greater enemies of human
happiness than those who substitute pleasure and
pain for good and evil. Pleasure is coy and will
not be sought directly. She is found by those who
seek her not, and flies, as does their shadow, from
those who hotly pursue her. And pain is terrible
chiefly to those who have learnt to view it as the
ultimate evil. So that in pursuing the one phantom
and flying from the other, they are not only diverted
from the quest of true and solid happiness, but
inevitably fail to secure even that which they
seek. As far as this modern philanthropy understands
itself, it is simply " positivist ; " it is indifferent to
belief in God or in the life to come. It finds its

THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 141
motive largely in a sense of pity springing from the
very decay of faith, pity for human life so short, so full
of misery, so void of hope, and thence it conceives
a desire to sweeten the bitterness of that lot, to
crowd all possible enjoyment into life's brief span,
to exclude all avoidable suffering and sorrow, and in
every other way to minister anodynes and narcotics
which will mitigate the sadness of existence, and
foster the illusion that life, without God, without
immortality, is still a prize worth having. And this
same pity for temporal pain and suffering, as the
evil of evils, is naturally extended to the whole of
sentient creation, to all our fellow-mortals, from
whom we are thought to be divided by no very
certain line ; whence the extravagances of zoophilist
fanaticism, and the growing tenderness for animal
suffering which, though beautiful in itself when
resting on a rational foundation, is altogether
reprehensible when raised to the rank of a supreme
rule of action to the prejudice of higher principles.
The Buddhist has at least an apparent religious
justification for his attitude in the matter, but the
modern positivist (unlike the Catholic Christian)
can offer no basis for his zoophilism save the
tyranny of a sentiment, good in itself, but pampered
into a mania by indiscriminate indulgence, and which
by its very extravagances hurts the cause he would
help. For there is no affection, passion, or instinct,
however natural, or useful, or admirable in due
season and measure, that may be always and every
where indulged without reference and subjection to
the higher rule of reason whose minister it is,

142 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
It is not surprising that those who estimate the
evil of the world in terms of pain and sorrow
should descant in no measured language on the
cruelty of Nature, and should refuse to believe
that behind all there is a personal God who
could prevent all this misery and yet will not.
If He could not, say they, how is He almighty?
If He will not, how is He all-loving? In either
case how is He infinite ; how is He God ? Nor
would the objection be without weight, were
temporal enjoyment the final good of man ; were
there no higher good with which the lower has no
common measure, being, so to say, in a different
plane or category. " If in this life only we have
hope," says St. Paul, " then are we of all men the
most miserable " — a pessimism no less applicable to
life viewed merely in the light of reason ; if the
present enjoyment of sentient creation be indeed
the ultimate good, then it is hard to see the
finger of the All-Mighty, the All- Loving God in such
a result as is evident to our limited view. And
therefore we find many pure, unselfish souls,
bewildered with this disheartening philosophy,
devoting all their energies to a fruitless contest
with the inexorable laws of this seemingly cruel
world, if perchance they may even by a single drop
lessen the vast ocean of misery and pain, seeking no
other happiness than that of procuring the happiness
of others, though scarce knowing what happiness
means. Their instinct of benevolence, ill-instructed
though it be, is from God, the Author of all charity
and unselfish love. In living for the good of others

THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 143

they are at one with the Christian, but in their
estimate of what that good consists in, they are
diametrically opposed to a religion which regards
pain or sorrow, not merely as an inevitable and
regrettable condition of good, to be minimized as
far as possible, but as a positive means to good,
something to be sought out and willingly embraced
in due season and measure ; not merely as a
bitterness incidental to the medicine of life, but as
itself a medicinal bitterness ; — a religion which says :
Blessed are the poor, blessed are the mourners,
blessed are the persecuted, blessed are the dead ;
which commends to us the example, not of one
who was merely a martyr to inevitable violence,
but of one who could have descended from the
Cross, yet would not.
Still, with all its short-sighted horror of suffering,
modern philanthropy is well aware that it is only
through much suffering that its aspirations can be
realized, that it is only at the cost of endless labour
and self-sacrifice that the sum of human misery can
be in any way lessened, or the sum of enjoyment
increased, that if such social and collective felicity
be life, then the law holds good : Aut pati, aut mori—
" Either suffer or perish." Still more evident is it
that if one's individual happiness is found only in
self-forgetful devotion to the vaguely conceived
welfare of others, such devotion involves continual
suffering, and that the life of altruism is a life of
pain. Aut pati, aut mori; if selfishness be death, if
unselfishness be life, we must either suffer or die.
If now we turn from these who lay such

144 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
exaggerated stress on material comfort, and on free
dom from bodily pain and from pain of the merely
sensitive affections and instincts, who reduce all
moral duties to the one universal duty of an unselfish
regard for the almost animal happiness of others ;
and if we turn to those who in all ages, guided
by the mere light of reason, have taken a higher
and nobler view of man's nature and capacities for
happiness, who find the value of life, in whatsoever
things are true, whatsoever things are pure, what
soever things are just, whatsoever things are holy,
whatsoever things are lovable, who scorn to make
pleasure an object of direct pursuit, whose single
aim is objective truth and right, whether it bring
pleasure or pain in its wake, who define good as
that which ought to be and which they desire should
be; not as that which they would like to feel;
who (at least confusedly) recognize the interests of
reason and conscience as the universal interests of
God, to which they but minister as servants and
instruments in His hands ; if we turn to these
and question them, we receive again the same
merciless sentence: Aut pati, aut mori — "Either
suffer or die."
They know well that restraint and suffering is
essential to the formation, the growth, the main
tenance of every virtue — suffering in the mind, in
the will, in the heart, in the affections, in the
senses. For does not the mind rebel against the yoke
not only of faith but of reason ? Does it not play
into the hands of the imagination and of the sentJ-

THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. i45

ments, and betray us at all points? And is not
the natural will a rebel to all obedience and law ?
And are not the affections prone to selfishness and
narrowness, and hostile to the wide spirit of charity
and brotherly love ? And are not the senses and
passions stubborn against the control of temperance
and fortitude, and of all the other virtues included
under these ? Are they not all so many infidels
who have gained possession of God's holy land, that
is, of the sacred territory of the human soul —
infidels, in their blindness to the principles of faith
and reason, in their spirit of boundless self-
assertion at the expense of God's glory and man's
happiness, infidels who are to be, not slain, but
chastised and subdued and pressed into servitude
in the interests of Divine Wisdom, their conqueror ?
Can all this disorder be checked, all these wild
forces be kept in hand, can the sweet yoke and
light burden of Heavenly Wisdom be imposed and
borne without suffering and pain? Aut pati, aut
mori. Life without suffering is impossible ; if truth,
if holiness, if virtue, if friendship, if purity be life,
we must make up our mind either to suffer or to
perish. And this, all the more, when we remember
that there are hours of special combat and fierce
temptation to be prepared for, when the rain
descends and the rushing flood rises and the storm
beats upon the citadel of our soul. For, against
these contingencies we are obliged to strengthen
ourselves in time of peace by frequent exercise, or
ascesis as it is called, by the practice not merely
K

146 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
of restraint but of mortification, by cutting off not
only all that is excessive or unlawful, but also much
that is lawful and permissible. These are the peace-
manceuvres and sham-fights of the spiritual life,
or rather, of the moral life — for we are still in the
realm of natural religion ; Nonne et ethnici hocfaciunt ?
Did not the Pagan stoics teach us to do these
things ? Were they not truly ascetics, passing the
same verdict upon life as St. Teresa : Aut pati, aut
mori — life without suffering is impossible. If we
are to be victorious in the conflict with self, if we
are not to be castaways, we must suffer ; we must
chastise the body and bring it into subjection. If
to stand is to live, if to fall is to perish — Aut pati, aut
mori — we must either suffer or die.
Again, if we turn to the mystics, to the prophets,
poets, and seers of all ages, to those who being
lifted up from the earth have drawn all men unto
themselves, whose eyes have been fixed beyond
human wont on the intolerable brightness of the face
of Truth, who have been caught up to the heavens
and have heard words which it is not lawful for
man to utter, save wrapped close in the shroud of
symbolism ; when we turn to these and ask them
for the law of life, we get only the same sad answer :
Aut pati, aut mori — you must either suffer or die.
" If any man will come after Me," says the Truth,
" let him take up his cross and follow Me ; "
" unless a man forsake all that he hath, he cannot
be My disciple." If light and vision be life, if
blindness and darkness be death — Aut pati, aut mori
—we must either suffer or die.

THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 147
For even the very body itself must be exalted,
purified, and spiritualized by suffering, by fast
and vigil and penance ; it must be subdued,
tranquillized, and, as it were, put to sleep before
it is an apt medium for communication between
this world and the other, before it is attuned to
be a fit instrument of God's Holy Spirit. The
spiritual man understands the deep things of the
spirit because they are spiritually apprehended,
but the animal man never rises beyond the
laboured methods of reason ; he knows nothing
of the instincts of love, of that quick intuition
which leaps to the truth, from crag to crag, and
pinnacle to pinnacle, where others crawl and
clamber and stumble. Dilectus meus, says Truth,
venit mihi saliens super monies — " My beloved comes to
Me leaping across the mountains." " What man can
know the counsels of God, or who can divine His
will ? For the thoughts of men are timid, and their
foresight is uncertain, because the corruptible body
weighs upon the soul, and its earthen tenement
drags down the mind with its many thoughts."
As far as she can by suffering shake herself free
from the embrace of this body of death, so far can
the soul fly to the embrace of Truth, her Spouse,
her Life : Aut pati, aut mori.
And if we inquire of religion in its various forms,
with its doctrine of sin and expiation, we universally
get the same response as from hedonism or stoicism
or mysticism : Aut pati, aut mori — " Either suffer or
die." Without the shedding of blood, without
penance and sackcloth and ashes, there is no re-

148 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
mission of guilt ; the soul that sinneth it shall
either suffer or die. For sin is more than the folly
of self-hurt and self-destruction, more than a
transgression of order. It is an offence against
God the Ordainer ; it is a rebellion of will against
will, of person against person, of the creature
against the Creator ; it is the uprising of a wave
that flings itself in vain pride against the solid rock,
to be thrown back and dashed to pieces for its
pains. Reason can ill-fathom the mystery, but the
instinct of all races has taught them that sin is in
some sense balanced and set right by suffering, and
that without suffering the disease is irremediable
and mortal. Aut pati, aut mori; if sin be death, if
absolution be life, we must either suffer or die.
But in all this we have not yet touched the
secret of St. Teresa's passion for suffering ; for it
is no other than the secret of the lover. Love must
either suffer or die — Aut pati, aut mori; suffering is
its very life and energy. As the ungrateful flame
burns and destroys what it feeds and lives upon,
so love seizes upon the heart and gnaws at it night
and day, and wears and wastes the frail body, and
consumes its strength with labours and sorrows.
And this we see to the full in the Divine Lover,
the Archetype of all lovers, the Man of Sorrows,
acquainted with grief, poor and in labours from His
youth, crushed and crucified and tormented by the
tyranny of love, and brought down to the very dust
of death. The Passion of Christ ! Why Passion ?
The all-devouring passion of God's love for the soul !
Was not suffering the very fuel and sustenance of

THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 14^
that fire — a fire to be fed on the wood of the Cross,
or else to die down and perish— -A ut pati, aut
mori. St. Paul knew well what love meant when
he said to his little ones : " We would have plucked
out our very eyes and given them to you." He had
learnt in the school of the Good Shepherd, who
gave His Body to be torn in pieces for His sheep,
His Blood to be drained out to the last drop:
" Take ye and eat, this is My Body ; take ye and
drink, this is My Blood ; take all that I have, all
that I am — Aut pati, aut mori — I must suffer for you
or else die." Nonne opportuit Christum pati ? If
love must suffer, did it not behove Christ to suffer?
Can we clearly or fully explain this or justify it
in the cold light of reason? Can chill philosophy
tell us why love thirsts for suffering, why it is
straitened till its baptism of blood be accomplished ?
Even if it cannot, what need we care ? Far more
things are true than can be explained, else, there
were little truth to be had. The experience of
mankind cannot only vouch for the fact, but can, so
to say, feel the reasonableness of it, better than it
can say it. Expertus potest credere I Which of the
saints and lovers of Christ has not felt a craving
that suffering alone can appease, or has not felt
that he must simply die if he cannot suffer ? And
does not the history of every pure and noble human
love tell us the same tale ?
Love, then, was the secret of St. Teresa's
passion for suffering ; love ever seeking to express
itself to the full ; making difficulties, where it found
none made to hand, that it might have occasion to

i5o THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
embody itself in strenuous effort, and so relieve the
pressure and tension of its unused energy and
strengthen itself by strong acts oft-repeated. Suffer
ing was the food and fuel for which it hungered:
Aut pati, aut mori, without suffering it must have
died down and perished.
And what was the secret of her love ? For love
is our life, the eternal life of our soul ; and the secret
of loving God is the one thing worth knowing.
Alas ! man can but speak the words of that secret,
God alone can open the understanding; man can
transmit the dead letter, God only can breathe into
it the quickening spirit ; man can plough and sow
and water, God alone can give the increase. It
cometh up we know not how. Let St. John, the
Doctor of Divine Love, the guardian of the mysteries
of the Sacred Heart, be our teacher. "We love
Him," he says, "because He first loved us." It is
when God first reveals Himself to the soul as her
Lover, that she falls at His feet as one dead, pierced
through, as St. Teresa saw herself in vision, with a
fiery dart. Vulnerasti cor meum uno oculorum tuorum
— " Thou hast wounded my heart with one glance
of Thine eyes." One clear gaze upon that mystery,
and the soul is for ever the slave of love. As long
as our mind is filled with some distorted abstract,
half-true notion of the complete self-sufficingness of
God, as long as our puerile imaginings picture Him
as merely benevolent and patronizing in our regard,
as offering us the alms of His benefits, but caring
little whether we accept or decline them ; until we
receive and believe without understanding or recon-

THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 151
ciling it with His self-sufficingness, the mystery of
God's dependence and indigence, love will but
slumber in our heart, as fire in the cold, hard flint
till struck from it by the steel.
But let us once look upon the love-worn face
of the Man of Sorrows, and read in its lines,
its tear-stains and blood-stains, the record of
the ravages of Divine love, pent up and com
pressed within the narrow walls of a finite heart ;
let us but see in Him the Spouse of man's thought
less, thankless soul, coming to us in beggary, poor,
naked, hungry, and thirsty, to be enriched, and
clothed, and fed, and refreshed by our love ; let us
but hear Him as He knocks at our heart's portal
and cries : " Open to Me, My sister, My spouse, for
My hair is drenched with the dew, and My locks
with the night rain ; " let us but realize that in
very deed our God wants us, pines for us, hungers
and thirsts for us, and lo! we have passed from
death unto life, from twilight to noonday, we have
found a key to the seeming extravagances, the
follies, the delirium, the reckless prodigalities of the
saints and of the King of saints, to whom not to
suffer was to die. Were that light to break upon us
only for a moment we could understand, as now we
cannot, the love that burned so fiercely in the heart
of Teresa, a love stronger than death ; bearing all
things, believing all things, hoping all things, endur
ing all things; a love which swept aside every
obstruction in its impetuous course; a love which
for twenty dark years endured the searching sword
of separation from the Beloved, the privation of all

15* THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
consciousness of His presence, of all sensible conso
lation and spiritual joy ; a love whose insupportable
strength at last shattered the too straitened vessel
of her heart, and lending wings to her emancipated
soul, bore it up to its nest in the embrace of God ;
towards the life of painless love matured and made
perfect by suffering.1
1 A further elucidation of the doctrine of pain will be found in
the Appendix

"QUID ERIT NOBIS?"
Ah ! Christ, if there were no hereafter
It still were best to follow Thee ;
Tears are a nobler gift than laughter ;
Who wears Thy yoke, alone is free. — C.K.P.
It may not be altogether useless and unprofitable
for us to see in what sense, if in any, we can accept
the sentiment embodied in these lines, and recon
cile it with the teaching of St. Paul, where he tells
us1 that if our hope in Christ be only for this life,
then are we of all men most to be pitied, and
where he asks, what will it profit him (humanly
speaking) to have fought with wild beasts at
Ephesus if the dead rise not ? " Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die." Let us snatch the
fleeting day as it slips by, let us seize on each
precious " now " and make the most of it, let us
crown ourselves with the perishable roses of life
before they fade, let us, not work, but rejoice and
make merry "while it is yet day," ere the sombre
night of death wrap us in everlasting darkness and
forgetfulness. St. Peter says to our Saviour : " Lo ! we have
left all and followed Thee; we have forsaken all
that makes life valuable to the majority of man-
1 i Cor. xv.

154 "QUID ERIT NOBIS?"
kind, and we have embraced the life of the Cross ;
what therefore shall be our reward ; what shall we
get by it ? " And Jesus answers : " Amen, I say to
you that you who have followed Me, in the Resurrec
tion, when the Son of Man shall sit upon the throne
of His majesty, shall sit on twelve throne's judging
the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one who
shall have left home, or brethren, or sisters, or
father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for
My Name shall receive a hundred-fold in the present
life, with persecutions, and shall possess everlasting
life." At first hearing, this question of St. Peter's seems
to spring from a sentiment altogether opposite to
that which is expressed in the words :
Ah ! Christ, if there were no hereafter,
It still were best to follow Thee ;
and to that which taught Aquinas to answer the
question : " What reward wilt thou have ? " with,
"None other than Thyself, Lord;" and which made
a Kempis cry out : " I had rather be a stranger
upon earth with Thee, than possess Heaven without
Thee. Where Thou art, there is Heaven; " and taught
St. Francis Xavier to sing : " My God, I love Thee,
not because I hope for Heaven thereby ; " and even
which broke from the lips of Peter himself when he
cried, " Lord, though all men should forsake Thee,
yet not I. I will lay down my life for Thee ; I am
ready to go with Thee to prison and to death " — as
though he would say: "Better to fail with Thee,
than to triumph without Thee; Truth is none the

••QUID ERIT NOBIS t" 155
less great even should it never prevail, and the
gloom of Calvary no less glorious than the brightness
ofThabor." And so if we look closely into the matter we
shall find that the very form in which he puts his
seemingly ignoble question, exculpates him from all
ignoble intent. " Lo, we have left all and followed
Thee ; what therefore shall be unto us ? " Evidently
then, when they left all and followed Him, they
were moved by no definite prospect of other gain,
and it is only some considerable time after the event
that human prudence wakes for a moment from its
dream, to seek reason for what has been done
unreasoningly, in defiance of worldly wisdom, in a
sudden burst of Divine enthusiasm. There was no
reasoning or calculating, no quid erit nobis ? when,
at a word, or a glance, they left all and rose up and
followed Him, lured away from home and kindred
and possessions by the spell of His wondrous per
sonality, by the irresistible magnetism which draws
the soul back to the bosom of God, whence it
came. He Himself was that hundred-fold beside
whom all gain se@med but loss, whose possession
secured an immutable peace in the midst of the
bitterest persecution and temptation ; He was that
pearl of great price, cheaply purchased at the sacri
fice of home and brethren and sisters and father and
mother and wife and children and lands. Nor did
they pause to think, as they let go everything to
grasp at that treasure, whether it was to be the
possession of a moment or of eternity. Love does
not reason or reckon, but leaps up to follow

156 "QUID ERIT NOBIS?"

the Beloved blindfold "whithersoever He goeth,"
whether to prison and to death, or to victory and
life. " Where Thou goest," it seems to say, " I will
go ; where Thou lodgest, I will lodge ; where Thou
diest, I will die, and there also will I be buried."
Who has ever heard of any true human love which
tempered its sacrifices according to length of golden
days presumably in store for it ; or which regulated
its fervour on the principles which govern life-
insurance ; or who can believe that St. Peter's
enthusiasm would have been damped in any degree
had the cause of Christ been doomed to failure,
rather than to eternal victory ? Eamus et nos, he
would have said, et moriamur cum illo — " Let us
also go and die with Him." Have not thousands
of heroes counted it gain to face death and defeat
beside a loved leader ; and has any leader ever been
loved as Christ was ?
It was for His own sake that they left all and
followed Him, and not for the sake of aught He
might give them. He Himself was the gift. But later,
when they heard our Saviour saying, " Go, sell what
thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have
treasure in Heaven, and then come and follow Me,"
they wondered what this treasure in Heaven might
be which was promised to those who should do
what they had already done. And what, in effect,
was it, but to be with Christ in His triumph as they
were to be with Him in His defeat ; what, but the
eternal prolongation of the bliss which they had
already entered upon ? It was because they sought
nothing that they were to gain everything ; because

•'QUID ERIT NOBIS?" i5T
in blind obedience to the call of love they left all,.
that they were to find all — a hundred-fold in this-
life, in spite of persecutions, and in the world to
come life everlasting; for in choosing Christ they
chose a treasure infinite and eternal, albeit they
knew it but indistinctly.
" One day in Thy courts," says David, " is better
than a thousand;" one instant of eternal life better
than a century of time ; one kiss from the lips of
God better than unending ages of the tenderest
human affection. And this were true even were it
not equally true that the embrace of the Creator
locks the soul to God's bosom for ever and for ever.
If it is better to have been a man for a few brief
years, than a toad slumbering through a century or
more in the heart of a tree, it is also better to have
lived the highest life of the soul, to have breathed
the atmosphere of Heaven for even one day, than to
have passed a whole lifetime on a base or even on a
lower level, —
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.
How many lives have been ennobled, redeemed from
insignificance by the heroism or the inspiration of a
moment, or of a few moments, which has made
them immortal. How often have the stains of a
worldly or wicked career been wiped out by some
single purgatorial act of sacrificial unselfishness?
Have we not all moments of clear insight or high
aspiration which are more precious to us than
weeks and months of our normal mediocrity? Is

158 "QUID ERIT NOBIS?"
it not by the recognition of this that the Church is
rightly excused from the charge of prodigality and
extravagance when she crowns a momentary act of
pure love or Divine sorrow with the plenitude of
her absolution and indulgence ?
Can we then doubt that if friendship with Christ,
the God-Man, be the highest life of which the soul
of man is capable, it must then be a good beyond
every other good, and one for which every other
should be sacrificed, since we should not attempt to
measure quantitatively, one against another, things
of a wholly different order. As a moment's thought
exceeds a life-time of sensation, so the briefest
experience of Divine friendship outweighs in solid
value all other possible experiences in a lower plane.
Senectus enim venerabilis est non diutuma, nee annorum
numero computata. Cani enim sunt sensus hominis et
cetas senectutis vita immaculata — " Life is measured
by experience, and not by years." One instant of
that immaculate life which the soul lives as it flits
like a moth through the bright, all-consuming,
all-purifying flame of the Divine presence, one
moment of close union with the Eternal, the
" Ancient of Days," and it has lived with a fulness
of life all but Divine, — " made perfect in a little
space, it has accomplished the labour of many
years." We have spoken so far of conscious personal
friendship with Christ, as being the essence of this
higher life whose value were no less supreme, even
were it but of briefest duration ; and of which it
may most truly be said,

'•QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 159
Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at alL
But our concern here is rather with what we might
call the unconscious friendship with Christ of those
who walk with Him by the way, their hearts burning
within them, though their eyes are holden so that
they know Him not; those namely, who, not knowing
Christ, yet to some greater or less extent live the
life of Christ; who, not having the Gospel, are
imbued with the principles and sentiments of the
Gospel, being a Gospel unto themselves; who
perhaps obscurely hear Him and feel Him guiding
them through the voice of conscience — as the unseen
Shepherd and Bishop of their souls, ever walking
with them in the way; in a word, those animce
naturaliter Christiana which the spirit of Christ
fashions to His likeness in all ages and climes.
Can it then be said, speaking of the life and way
of Christ, rather than of Christ Himself,
Ah ! Christ, if there were no hereafter,
It still were best to follow Thee,
it still were best, apart from all distinct recognition
of that Heavenly Friend who is the Way, the Truth,
and the Life, to walk in the narrow way of the Cross,
to hold that truth, to live that life, for its own sake ?
Needless to say, there have been many stoics
and even professed Christians who have maintained
that virtue is its own reward, apart from all its profit
able consequences here or hereafter ; so that if we
assume, as well we may, that Christ gives us the
very highest pattern of virtue, we can compel

i6b "QUID ERIT NOBIS?'

such thinkers at least to admit that to follow Christ
were best even if there were no hereafter. Neverthe
less, there are certain latent fallacies in their funda
mental tenet which make us a little chary of such
allies, — fallacies, however, rather in the analysis and
expression of their sentiment, than in the sentiment
itself, which, rightly apprehended, is the noblest we
are capable of.
There is a certain proud, pharisaic self-sufficiency
that may lead a man to seek virtue, not for virtue's
sake, but for his own sake, in a spirit of acquisitive
ness and self-culture. Virtue may be sought merely
as an adornment of an idolized self, being sub
ordinated to self as a means to an end ; even as the
same type of character seeks learning and artistic
skill, not for love of their inherent excellence, nor
even for their advantageous results, but simply
because self must have the best of everything.
As the pagan cultivated his body by gymnastics
and made it obedient to his will, so by virtue he
sought to secure a mastery over his spiritual faculties,
enabling him to conduct himself skilfully and success
fully through the warfare of life. If he was ashamed
of a shambling gait, he was still more, but in much
the same way, ashamed of intemperance or any
other want of self-control. This was, in one sense,
seeking virtue for its own sake, for its inherent
excellence. Yet in that it made self the best-
loved and ultimate end for whose sake virtue was
loved, it was not really a pure love of virtue as of
something greater than self, to which self should be
submitted as a servant or slave. True, it was no

••QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 161
small wisdom to reckon virtue as the best of acquisi
tions, the highest subjective perfection, to seek it,
not as a means to any other less worthy acquisition,
such as wealth or honour, and, so far, for its own
sake; but it is only when truth and virtue are
recognized in a more or less obscure way as having
some strange, absolute claim over us, some objective
right altogether irrespective of our private interest
or subjective well-being, that they are strictly sought
for their own sake, as ultimate ends to which self is
wholly subordinated.
To the superficial this would seem to be a fallacy
of the imagination, decreeing divine honours to
personified abstractions writ large, leading the poet
to an idolatrous worship of Beauty, the philosopher
and moralist to the worship of Truth and Virtue.
But on closer thinking, we have here but a con
fused recognition of the imperative authority of
Conscience, which tells us that we are by nature
but instruments for the working out of an end
communicated to us in detail in our own reason,
but conceived in its entirety only in the mind of
that subsistent personal Reason whose creatures
we are, and who guides and moves us through
Conscience for the execution of His will — the will,
namely, of the living and subsistent Truth and
Goodness. Hence every good man, however dark
or confused his theology may be, feels a conviction
that the cause of Truth and Right has a claim upon
him to which every private gain and pleasure must
be sacrificed ; that they are universal ends which he
must prefer to all particular ends. He cannot resist
L

t62 "QUID ERIT NOBIS?"
the indistinct impression that in trespassing against
Truth and Right, he is violating not merely a
possible harmony and order, but a harmony and
order actually willed by a will other than his own,
a will with which he therefore comes into a relation
of hostility and conflict.
Wheresoever conscience is awakened even to this
extent, it is .universally confessed that Truth and
Right are to be followed for their own sakes, and
apart from all other considerations of advantage;
although when once we recognize that they are
personal and not mere personifications, then " Truth
for its own sake," means " God for His own sake."
It is sometimes contended that the joy which
springs from the sense of having done right (that is,
interpretatively, from a sense of union with God), and
which is after all a subjective pleasure, however
spiritual and exquisite, is the true and only motive
of such conduct ; and that it is because this pleasure
outbalances all the pleasures of wrong-doing that
some refined natures find virtue the best investment
for yielding good interest in the way of enjoyment.
But, in the first place, it is those who act conscien
tiously as a matter of course and habitually, who
are least sensitive to any particular glow of self-
satisfaction when they do well; as, on the other
hand, it is the oldest and hardest sinners who are
most utterly dead to all sense of uneasiness and
remorse. An act of virtue is one by which we
chose to do what is right because it is right, and
not because it is pleasant ; virtue sought for the
sake of the afterglow is not virtue at all, but the

"QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 163

subtlest self-love. That same sweetness may be
foreseen as a side issue, and may even be desired
secondarily; but as soon as it diverts the soul's
eye from its direct intuition of right for right's sake,
and becomes itself the direct end to which virtue
is but a means, then virtue is dishonoured and its
supreme claims are disallowed.
Besides, human nature is, after all, calumniated
by this quasi-hedomist view of the matter ; and every
really good and virtuous man, and every man in
his really good and virtuous acts, implicitly con
fesses the truth :
Ah ! Christ, if there were no hereafter,
It still were best to follow Thee.
It may even be said that in this, the verdict of
the purer and nobler refinements on Epicureanism
is not different from that of the higher stoicism.
It is possible to take the grosser sense of the maxim,
"" Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," as
a summary of historical Epicureanism ; but in the
abstract this grossness is no essential part or
product of the theory, and is indignantly repudiated
by its most authoritative exponents. " Carpe diem,
live each moment in the best way possible, get all
you can out of it, as though it were your first and
last, make the very most of every atom of time, so
as to live as fully as possible, to taste and experience
all that is really best while it is within your reach."
This is the cardinal principle, rather than any final
view as to the precise nature of the "best" in
question. To regard sensual pleasure, or any lower

164 "QUID ERIT NOBIS?"
sort of enjoyment, as the best and ideal form of
experience, is, theoretically at least, no necessary
part of this philosophy. So far, at all events, there
is an accord between Epicurean and Christian
teachers as to the supreme and in some sense
independent value of each present moment of expe
rience viewed in its isolation. If there be a duty of
looking back to the past and forward to the future,
in order that we may make the very most of the
present, there is also a dreamy, profitless retro
spection, full of vain regrets over what is sealed up
and irremediable, and an impossible or excessive
straining into the future with anxious eyes and
doubting heart, which is altogether contrary to the
virtue of Christian hope. Each little act of the
saint is idealized, at least by the end to which it
is directed ; at every point of his conscious existence
he can, if he will, touch the highest, living the
soul's fullest life, an eternal life, each instant as it
passes. This is the lesson of three lives lived at
Nazareth, and of thousands fashioned to the same
type. The very sorrows and crosses of life, borne rightly,
have a sweetness of their own known to the elect few;
even as what is biting and severe to ordinary taste,
pleases the discriminating palate, or as seeming
discords are harmonious to the trained ear. Surely
none ever tasted life so deeply, so fully, as the
Man of sorrow and tears ; and if there never was
sorrow like unto His sorrow, neither was there
ever a secret joy like unto His joy — the joy of a soul
that loves widely, deeply, and utters its love in

"QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 163
suffering. Take the world as it is, with its sorrow
ing and afflicted millions — what life were so full, so
glorious, so joyful in the midst of sorrow, as the
life of one who should love all with a passionate
devotion, who should seek and find relief in suffering
for all.
Thus, following in His wake whose meat was
to do the Father's will and to perfect His work
while it was yet day ere the night came on, the
saints have made the maxim of carnal prudence
their own in a mystic and spiritual sense : " Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Christ is
that food and Christ is that drink. In expressing
Christ, or the Christian ideal, in every moment of
its activity, the soul lives its highest and most
blessed life; it snatches the passing "now," that
acceptable time, that day of salvation, doing with
its might, in the highest and noblest way, all that
its hand finds to do, working while it is yet day,
ere the night cometh wherein no man can work.1
The real fault of even the most refined form of
Epicureanism seems to be the tendency to luxuriate
in the sensation of satisfaction which accompanies
the highest life, and to pervert this side issue into
an end; to practise self-sacrifice, not for its own
sake, but for the exquisite pleasure consequent on
the thought that we have acted nobly or beautifully.
1 Cf. " ' Live while you live,' the Epicure would say,
And taste the pleasures of the passing day ;
• Live while you live,' the sacred preacher cries,
And give to God each moment as it flies ;
Lord, in my life let both united be,
I live to pleasure if I live to Thee."

166 "QUID ERIT NOBIS?"
As for the modern school of positivism, which
claims Comte as its founder and exponent, it is
avowedly in agreement with the principle for which
we are contending. For all to whom kindness is
the noblest and sweetest use of life, to whom it is
its own reward, are agreed that even if there were
no hereafter, yet of all lives the life of altruism is the
best. Mill and others have hopelessly failed in
their attempt to show that altruism and real
unselfishness are mere refinements of self-seeking;
for in truth the " other-regarding " instinct of our
soul is as irreducible and as primitive as the " self-
regarding," nay, more so. Nature's first care
and deepest implanted impulse is for the specific
and common good, to which the good of the indi
vidual but ministers. That apart from Divine
sanctions, but few would embrace the life of
altruistic self-sacrifice, does not make it less true
that it were the best life to embrace. Few know
where true happiness is to be found. In philosophy,
as in faith, strait is the gate and narrow the way
that leads to life, and few there be that find it for
themselves, if they are not taught and guided. Our
chief quarrel with positivism is that, while rightly
insisting on the promotion of human happiness, it
evades the difficulty of defining that happiness ; or
still worse, it places it in conditions that can never
possibly be realized on earth for the great majority
of mankind. It deludes us with the hopes of some
distant terrestrial paradise as unsubstantial as fairy
land. Christ, on the other hand, tells us with
terrible frankness that there is no escape from the

"QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 167

Cross, and that all we can do is to learn to love it,
and to utilize its hidden healing power. He does
not beguile us with the fond fancy that this earth
will one day cease to bring forth thorns and briers,
but teaches us to plait them into garlands. Ecce
Homo ! Behold the perfect man, the perfect human
life, the life of mighty love uttering itself in the
endurance of pain and sorrow and humiliation !
For we cannot, as Catholics, agree with those
who would commend the Way of the Cross as the
best, simply because it leads to Heaven in a life
after this ; or even because, being the way chosen
by Christ, it derives an extrinsic honourableness
from Him. We hold rather that, taking this finite
world as it is, the Way of the Cross is, in the nature
of things, the most perfect way, the best way, the
way most befitting the highest capacities of the
human mind and heart. It is not the best because
it leads to Heaven, or because Christ chose it ; but
contrariwise, Christ chose it, and God rewards it,
because it is the best. It is par excellence the way
and the truth and the life, by which alone man
comes to the Father and puts on divinity and
immortality. So far as the rewards attached to
the following of Christ are in any sense additional
to its natural consequences, it is because, that life
being the best, God wills to crown it and make it
still better — Habenti dabitur.
To return, then, to St. Paul. Truth, however
seemingly many-membered, as apprehended piece
meal by us, in itself is one and simple. Let a single
article of the Catholic creed be tampered with, and

£68 "QUID ERIT NOBIS?"
the whole fabric crumbles to ruin. The glorious
Resurrection of Christ and His saints from the
dead, is the seal of Divine approval set on the
eternal worthfulness of the Way which He walked,
the Truth which He taught, the Life which He
lived. It is the sign, not the cause, of that worth-
fulness, which, moreover, needs this Divine affirma
tion and sanction for the sake of the many whose
eyes are too weak to discern the secret beauty
revealed to the chosen disciples of the Cross. Nay,
even the faith of these is ever apt to fail, is ever
failing, in a world to which Christ is a fool and
His Cross folly; and in hours of darkness and
weakness — When our light is low,
When the blood creeps and the nerves prick
And tingle ; and the heart is sick
And all the wheels of being slow —
in such hours we need a Divine assurance that our
faith is not vain ; that we are not mere dreamers,
in love with the fictions of our own fancy, as we
might be tempted to think were it not that our
trembling soul is steadied by the solid fact of the
resurrection, which assures us that God judges as
we judge, and that our reason is true to the Divine
Reason when we say :
Ah ! Christ, if there were no hereafter,
It still were best to follow Thee.
Tears are a nobler gift than laughter ;
Who wears Thy yoke alone were free.

THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
Locum refrigerii, lucis, et pads.
" A place of refreshment, of light, and of peace."
Canon of the Mass.
I.
Amongst the other outworks and safeguards of
Divine charity, we must number a longing and
desire for Heaven. Heaven is counted among
those four " last things " which are to be the theme
of deep and continual meditation. As we should
pray for an abiding fear of Hell, so also should we
pray for an ardent desire of Heaven, lest at any time
our love of God having grown cold and feeble, we
should need the assistance of a motive appealing
directly to our rational self-regard. For though
Heaven consists substantially and principally in the
love of God, wherein our soul reaches its highest
perfection and happiness, yet this desire for our
own happiness remains strong and intact even when
we have ceased to identify our happiness with the
possession of God. Charity is a purely unselfish,
" unselfing " virtue, whose object is God and God's
glory, whose motive is God's inherent goodness
and beauty ; but holy hope is self-regarding — wisely,
rightly, supernaturally — it looks to our own perfec
tion and happiness, which, as wc have said, is rightly

170 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
to be found in Divine charity. Charity then is the
object of Christian hope; or, as we say, "grace
here and glory hereafter" — grace being the seed,.
and glory the full-blown flower of Divine love. Our
happiness lies in unselfish love, in forgetting our
selves and living in God, and in our fellow-man.
Hence, true, wise self-regard bids us cease to regard
ourselves, or rather to take a truer and wiser view
of ourselves, to recognize that we are made, not
for ourselves, but to be members of God and of one:
another ; for a collective life, love, praise, and joy.
Thus when our love of God is growing cold, it is
well for us to appeal to our rational self-love ; ta
remind ourselves that His ways are ways of pleasant
ness and all His paths are peace ; that, eventually,
the yoke of the Cross is easy and the burden
light compared with the galling yoke of sin ; that
the steep and narrow way of unselfishness leads to-
fuller life and joy; while the broad, easy, down-hill,
selfish road ends in destruction, death, and misery.
For when we have ceased to love, we can still
remember the joy that we found in loving, and long
to be able to love once more.
And if even on earth we find our substantial
peace and joy in the love and friendship of God, in
unselfish service and devotion to His mystical
members, we may well find a strong motive for
perseverance in the prospect of the marvellous
amplification which that charity will receive when it
breaks through the sod into the light and sunshine
of eternity and unfolds its latent treasure of leaf
and flower, of colour, form, and fragrance.

THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 171
We assume as a first principle that man was
made to praise God, and that this life of praise is
here but rudimentary or germinal ; that our present
mortal state is essentially embryonic, — a time of
development and growth ; a time of trial and
combat. Man's life on earth is a warfare. Warfare
is essentially a transitional state, being eventually a
means to secure a fuller peace. All evolution and
•growth is attended with great pain and suffering.
Nature herself is said to be groaning and travailing,
expecting her deliverance. This is the Christian
view of the present life — a view abundantly denied
by the world and by the worldly. Man was created,
not for this world, but for the next ; just as the
grub does not exist for its present larval con
dition of life, but for its final life of winged
liberty. This in no way countenances the heresy which
denies all value to our natural and temporal
existence, as though it had no reference to the next
world or were not altogether subordinated and
directed to it. At the other extreme, we have the
base view of utilitarian Christianity, which believes,
indeed, in the life to come, yet subordinates it
to the present life, as though it were merely a
sanction, a bribe, or a threat to secure such
conduct as conduces to social and individual welfare
and prosperity in the present world ; thus making,.
so to say, eternity a useful appendix to time, instead
of the condition in which the soul dwells even
already. This is a view well according with the
Erastian form of Christianity fairly prevalent in this

172 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
Protestant country, where the Church is regarded as
a function of the State, subservient to social and
political ends, its work being to secure those public
virtues indispensable to commercial success and to
civic tranquillity and health. This it is to effect by
godly doctrine, and by an insistence on that almost
pagan aspect of the Deity which views Him as a
" State-God," as a God concerned, not principally
with the sanctification of individuals, but with the
national greatness and prosperity. Such is, of
course, the teaching of Hobbes and the British
philosophers of the Protestant era, who subordinate
the individual to the State, as though the State
could have any other raison d'etre but the perfection
of its members distributively and individually. It
is altogether in harmony with such a thought to
regard Heaven and Hell and the life to come, as
mere sanctions to secure good conduct in the
present life, as means to that end ; in a word, to
invert the true order of things.
It is because we live in such an atmosphere of
unbelief and misbelief that we ourselves come to be
so listless about Heaven ; or even to think it some
thing spiritually imperfect to dwell much upon the
theme, lest we should be reproached with holding a
"reward-and-punishment" Christianity; a reproach
which Erastianism has, not unreasonably, earned,
and which unfortunately is extended to Catholic
Christianity by those who are as ignorant of that
religion as South Sea islanders.
We are also to some extent affected by the
purist or quietist fallacies of certain Catholic

THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 173
writers, or by our false understanding of the senti
ments of others who have written and spoken truly
enough of the self-forgetful nature of perfect love.
We think that, because hope and fear are in some
sense cast out by perfect love, that we should not
concern ourselves much about them, but should
regard them as transient phases of our spiritual
evolution, as "the things of a child," to be put
away by those who have reached manhood's
maturity. Yet, in very truth, both hope and fear are so
indissolubly connected with love that they all grow
pari passu. Fear, as we have elsewhere said, is the
very fibre and backbone of reverential love, being
begotten of a sense of God's greatness, justice,
power, indignation, and other "masculine" attri
butes, which very attributes are components of His
lovableness, since what wins our love is the thought
that one so great should love one so little, that
one so high should stoop so low, that one so
great should be so merciful, that so strong and
invincible an indignation should be chained down in
the bonds of a love yet stronger and more invincible.
And thus in the saints the measure of love has
always been the measure of fear, — albeit their fear is
no longer servile when it has given birth to love and
when love is matured so as no longer to need the
aid of servile fear, but to be itself an all-sufficient
spring of action. It is not fear but, as Aquinas
says, the servility of fear which is cast out by
perfect love.
And so with holy hope, as far as it too is in

174 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.

some sense servile and self-regarding; bound and
not free ; narrow and not universal. This servility
of hope is cast out by perfect love; though hope
itself grows pace for pace with love. It is the
rational desire of our own highest happiness and
of our spiritual development that makes us seek
to become unselfish and full of self-forgetting charity.
We come to recognize that our own happiness
must never be the direct object of our quest;
that it is by resigning it, by ceasing to seek for
it, nay, by sacrificing it, that we best secure it.
" He that seeketh his life shall lose it ; he that
loseth his life shall save it." Happiness comes to
us as a side issue of a nobler end, and surprises us
by its presence just when we have at last succeeded
in putting it out of our heads as an object of con
sideration. Even then, if we dwell on it, caress it,
foster it, and try to retain it, it eludes us like our
own shadow ; so coy is happiness, the child of self-
forgetting love.
Their hope is undoubtedly the keenest and
strongest who have tasted the peace of God which
passes all understanding, who have known the
happiness of unselfish love, — if by hope we mean
placing our whole happiness, our heart's supreme
treasure, in God. Hope and fear alike are strongest
when love is strongest. The more we realize the
loveliness of God the more must we long for Him,
that is, long to love Him more.
The qnietist view falsely supposes that all self-
regard is selfishness in the bad sense. But, in truth,
these two fundamental, self-regarding impulses of

THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 175
hope and fear, even in their imperfect or servile
form, are not only blameless but laudable. The
tendency towards self-good, self-evolution, and
private interest is a force which, unlimited and
unrestrained, would tend to lawlessness and evil;
but governed by a higher law and love to which it
subserves, it is altogether right and helpful. Nature
never intended it to be a free force ; but one essenti
ally destined to subjection and bondage to a higher
force. Under the guidance of God the self-seeking
instinct of the individual brute-animal is subservient
and conducive to a wider interest, namely, the good
of the species, which is God's more principal care.
And this is no less true of man's spiritual self-seeking
instinct. Thus, for example, there is no positive
selfishness in the conduct of one who is occupied
wholly with fitting himself and his family to fill
creditably their due station in society, albeit he does
not explicitly think of or intend the general social
good thence resulting. But if, in the pursuit ot
wealth and culture he implicitly or explicitly excludes
the desire to benefit society, if he injures others by
injustice or cruelty, or if he otherwise impedes their
due prosperity, he is positively selfish and formally
hurtful to the common welfare. If, on the other
hand, he explicitly adverts to the bearing of his own
on the public advantage, if he intends the latter so
principally that he would freely forego his private
gain for the sake of the general welfare, then he
is positively unselfish, and uses his natural self-
regarding impulse for that very end for which it was
given him, and in the way in which it was intended

176 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
to be used, that is, to facilitate the fulfilment of his
first and highest duty — his duty to God and to
God's interest in human society. Thus, too, we
say that all the virtues subordinate to charity, such
as mercifulness, temperance, purity, and the rest,
are not useless because charity includes the aim of
all others ; but their work is to facilitate the designs
of charity, who governs them all as her ministers.
Hope and fear, therefore, are the ministers of
Divine love, governing us in its absence or during
its minority ; serving it when it is present.
There is another form of self-regard which, far
from being selfish, is pure unselfishness, namely, the
self-regard of him who has died to himself, who has
put on a wider self, who has merged his being and
life, his sorrow and joy, his interests, his hopes, his
fears in those of Christ and of the children of Christ,
his fellow-members in Christ's Mystical Body. For
it is the self-regard of one who really and adequately
knows himself — what he is by nature and by God's
intention ; who knows that he is not for himself but
for others ; that he is God's instrument before all
else — intended primarily for God and God's Kingdom,
and that he is to secure his own happiness in the
universal happiness which he shares. But plainly it
is only by a violent non-natural use of language
that we can call this, " self-regard," while to call it
selfishness were absurd. This deepest appetite of
our spirit which demands a Divine and universal
happiness for its food, is indeed within us. It is-
ours, and yet it is ours precisely in virtue of our
essential subordination to God as instruments of

THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 177

His universal purpose, and as moved by His will,
even as the members are guided by the head to an
end of which they have no consciousness. Man,
indeed, being intelligent, comes gradually to under
stand the whence and whither of his extra-regarding
instincts ; he comes to recognize them as the will of
God working in him, and to throw himself freely
into sympathy with them and to obey them as
Divine behests conveyed to him by the voice of
conscience. It is then only that man knows himself,
recognizes his true self, and no longer lives for that
false, separate self, but for the self which is merged
into God. II.
St. Paul tells us that the saints of God when on
earth were as strangers and pilgrims, having here
no abiding city, looking for "the City that hath
foundations," no mere encampment in the desert,
but Jerusalem, the city of peace, founded on the
everlasting hills, immovable as the Eternal Rock,
"whose builder and maker is God." They were as
one in a foreign country on some brief business,
where the faces, the language, the ways are strange,
uncongenial, repugnant ; whose heart is elsewhere,
who impatiently counts the days and hours
which must pass before he can gather his effects
together and hurry to that goal of his desires called
home. " Strangers and pilgrims ; " strangers to all
around them, awkward and out of place, as one
of noble and refined nature whose lot has cast
him with the vulgar and semi-barbarous, who,
M

[78 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
notwithstanding, have their own curious code of
nonour and etiquette, or what corresponds to such.
" Pilgrims," moreover, for they never stay their
homeward march for a moment, seeing in this life
the ladder that leads them upward step by step to
the face of God, to their Patria — the dwelling of
their Father who is in Heaven.
And if we speak of this Patria in terms of place;
as a pilgrimage from earth to Heaven ; or in terms
of time, as a passing from the present to the future
life, we but figure forth the process by which the
soul is transformed from the death of nothingness
whence it was drawn, into the fulness of life in the
bosom of the Father whither it is drawn. For il
our Father is in Heaven, our Heaven is also in the
Father ; nay, our Father is Heaven. We speak
indifferently of our entry into God's Kingdom,1 or ol
the advent of God's Kingdom into us ; for in sub
stance Heaven is the absolute domination of Divine
love over the soul whose eyes, first opened in this
dim cavern of time, have been taught to bear the
growing brightness until at last they have dared to
fix their steadfast gaze upon the very source of all
light — the True Light which enlighteneth every man
that cometh into the world.
In each of its free acts the soul tries, then and
there, to realize itself, to enter into that beatitude

1 Cf. " Licet gaudium aeternae beatitudinis in cor hominis intret,
maluit tamen Dominus ei dicere : Intra in gaudium ; ut mystice
innuatur, quod gaudium illud non solum in eo sit intra, sed undique
ilium circumdans et absorbens et ipsum velut abyssus infinita
submergens." (St. Bernardine of Siena, Serm. de St. Joseph.)

THE LIFE EVERLASTING. -79
which it dimly conceives, and by the desire of which
it is moved and governed continually. It is as a
caged bird whose every fruitless struggle and effort
aims at perfect liberty, and cries out: "Who will
give me the wings of a dove ? then would I fly away
and be at rest ; " for it is this dream of rest
which is the motive of all our action, and labour,
and strife. No two conceive quite the same notion
of rest for their souls. Many conceive it altogether
amiss ; others, with Augustine, look only to God,
and cry : " Our heart is restless, Lord, till it rest in
Thee ; " but all alike are dominated in every free act
by some such End or Ideal or Final Rest struggling
to be born in them — be it true rest or false : be it
Heaven or Hell. All are striving to pass from time
to eternity; from restlessness to repose; from a state
of change to an unchanging state; from their
pilgrimage to their home ; from the tent-city of
nomads to the " city that hath foundations." Our
free actions may be likened to the blows of some
engine of war which beat and beat against a fortress
gate till one of them at last realizes what all the
rest, of their very nature and purpose, tended to
realize, or which any of them might have realized.
So each free act by itself is governed and informed
or at least checked by the latent presence in the soul
of an ideal of rest, of happiness, of home, which it
abortively tries to realize, but which some last act
will alone succeed in realizing. On the direction
of that last act after which we pass into our time
less, changeless state, all depends.
The saints, then, on earth have ever echoed the

180 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
appiration of St. Paul : Cupio dissolvi — " I long to be
dissolved and to be with Christ," to be uncaged and
fly away and be at rest. The first instinct of love
is to seek the closer company of the Beloved, to
enjoy His sweet converse, to lean on His breast at
supper, to sit at His feet and hear His words.
And as love grows, this instinct becomes more
urgent and imperious, more painful and galling
when thwarted ; and yet the very strength of
unselfish love nerves the soul to endure the bitter
ness of separation in the interests of the Beloved.
If for his own sake Paul longed to be released and to
be with Christ, yet for the sake of Christ and Christ's
little ones he was content to remain, and to remain
for ever, were it needful for their confirmation and
consolation.1 And this was the love of the glorious
St. Martin when he prayed, " Lord, if I am needed
for Thy people, I do not begrudge the labour ; " and
of the Blessed Mother herself, who willingly lingered
in exile after her Son's ascension that she might be
to the infant Church all that she had been to Him.
Coarctor e duobus — St. Paul is on the rack between
these two desires which are born and grow and
strengthen together; between the claims of the
individual member and those of the whole body;
between supernatural self- regarding tendencies, and
the demands of charity and unselfish love which in
certain adjuncts require the repression and morti
fication of the former. Thus in our time of
pilgrimage — dum peregrinamur a Domino — the tension
and the pain is, or should be, ever on the increase,
1 Philipp. i. 23 — 25.

THE LIFE EVERLASTING. ifci
according as the conflicting desires — the desire to
stay and the desire to go — grow stronger. " But
when that which is perfect is come, then that which
is in part shall be done away," the interests of both
tendencies shall coincide, "and there shall be no
more sorrow," no more coarctatio e duobus.
Further, this very " longing to depart and be with
Christ" is of itself blind and self-defeating, and
a more clear-sighted self-regard will be prudent to
see that the interests of hope and charity are in truth
identical, and that the self-restraint and self-denial
involved in the submission of the single member to
the whole Body, is really for its eventual and more
lasting well-being. He whose love leads him to
mortify the present " longing to depart " strengthens
and deepens that longing with every new exercise of
love, and strains more tightly the tension of that
bond which at the instant of release will draw him
to the bosom of God, to the embrace of Christ :
O days and hours your work is this,
To hold me from my proper place,
A little while from his embrace,
For fuller gain of after- bliss.
No will or appetite, however high or holy, can be
obeyed blindly and without limit, save only the will
and love of God. Every other wish and interest
must be stayed, and questioned, and examined by
that sovereign rule and law in subjection to which
it eventually finds its most solid gain. Else its
rebellious impetuosity is self-defeating, and a series
of ever-weakening present ecstasies ends in a total
enfeeblement and degradation of the impulse.

182 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
Never, therefore, may the desire to be with Christ,
viewed as our own personal rest and separate gain,
be supreme and unqualified. It must always be
subordinate to love, whose minister and child it is :
" Father, if it be possible — yet not my will but Thy
will be done." But as an accelerating and secondary
motive it can never be too strong. Thus it is in all
true, pure, reverential human love, which is ever
willing to bear pain, even the pain of separation —
the greatest of all pains, the last and hardest
sacrifice. It is no pure or unselfish love which
basks in the presence of a spouse or child, in the
warm glow of domestic affection, when their true
interest, as well as the will of God, demands that
heart-strings should be rent on both sides and the
keen sword of separation endured unflinchingly. It
is the stronger and nobler love which both nerves to
the sacrifice, and sacrifices most ; which suffers most
acutely, and yet most readily.
It is in conformity with all that has been said
that we read how our Divine Saviour, "for the joy
that was set before Him, endured the Cross and
despised the shame." Not as though this personal,
and in some sense private joy and glory, were the
leading or principal motive of His endurance. Thai
motive was the love of the Father, of the Father's
will and the Father's Kingdom. Yet so far as the
Cross and the shame were grievous to the weakness
of the flesh, their burden was lightened or counter
poised by the prospect of a more than compensating
joy and glory. So it is St. Paul balances the light
and momentary afflictions of this life against the

THE LIFE EVERLASTING. i83
great weight of eternal glory in the future, and finds
the former in comparison not worthy of considera
tion. It is the " What doth it profit ? " motive in
another form — not the highest motive, but subsidiary
to the highest ; not love, but the prop and fence of
love. And he tells us how this saint and that
suffered various torments and privations " looking to
the reward" — Adspiciebat enim in remunerationem ; i.e.,
not disdaining to enlist the services of prudent and
supernatural self-regard in the cause of love — thus
counteracting the weakness of the shrinking flesh.
And, after all, what is this reward that Christ
and His saints looked forward to ? Surely no selfish
or isolated joy ; but the joy of one who lives for
others, and in others, and makes their happiness his
own ; who finds — though he does not seek — his own
reward in the attainment of his unselfish ends. It
is not his own paltry share in the booty, but the
glory and triumph of his country that animates the
loyal soldier to bravery. That is the joy that he
sets before -him. He knows that even his own
personal share in the general triumph, the mere
gratification of his passionate patriotism, will more
than repay the toils and wounds and perils of the
present moment. Similarly, he who is wise enough
to see that in unselfishness and self-forgetfulness lies
the shortest road to private happiness, knows well
that in losing his life he is saving it ; and though
private happiness is not his direct aim, yet with the
assured expectation of it he can quiet the rebellious
clamours of short-sighted self-love.
Such was the joy that Christ set before Himself;

184 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.

the joy of the Father, the joy of the whole body of
the redeemed, of His Blessed Mother, of all the
angels and saints ; that common joy whereof He
was the cause, and wherein, as Head of the Mystic
Body, He was to be chief participant ; that Gaudium
Domini into which the saints enter, as members
enter into the life of the head.
How impossible, then, for them not to long and
cry out for that consummation of all their desires ;
for that full and perfect possession of God, or rather
possession by God, which is the very substance of
Heaven — all accessory and accidental joy being but
the setting of that " Pearl of great price," the
Kingdom of God in the heart. " Oh, how lovable
are Thy dwellings, Thou Lord of hosts," cries
David ; " my soul hath a desire and longing to enter
into the courts of the Lord ; my heart and my flesh
rejoice in the living God. . . . Blessed are they that
dwell in Thy house." And why blessed ? " They
will be always praising Thee," always entering into
the life and joy and praise of their Lord; always
fulfilling the end for which their soul was created
and designed by Love. And again : " One day in
Thy courts is better than a thousand ; " the now of
eternal "being," better than ages of imperfection
and " becoming ; " the joy of a single instant of that
rest, than the accumulated joys of an endless
pilgrimage. And, " As the hart longs for the water-
springs, so longs my soul after Thee, O God. My
soul is athirst for God the strong, the mighty ; when
shall I come and appear before the face of my
God?"

THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 185
We, on the other hand, know little of these
longings. Far from feeling ourselves strangers and
pilgrims on earth, we find ourselves only too much
at home in this world ; our surroundings are by no
means very uncongenial ; and if at times death
seems welcome, it is rather in its negative aspect
as an end of ills we know, than as an entrance into
a life which has but feeble attraction for us
This may be partly due to the dimness of our
faith, which must almost necessarily languish in an
age and country where it has lost the support of
public acknowledgment and profession, where we
feel that perhaps the majority of the cultured and
educated question the very existence of a future life,
or at most regard it as a tenable hypothesis, but in
no way to be used as the governing principle of
individual and social conduct. Partly it is to be
ascribed to our own spiritual state and to the neglect
of meditation on the mysteries of our holy religion.
While in every other department of knowledge our
interest leads us from stage to stage, from the pueri
lities of our first conceptions to a greater maturity
of comprehension; here we remain content with
the notions gathered in our childhood, which are
no more suitable for our adult mind than is milk
diet for strong men. We go through life with some
child's dream of Heaven, as of a cloud-built city
radiant with gold and colour and gleaming jewels,
peopled with bright-winged beings, and with those
whom we have loved here on earth ; where God,
too, has His throne of state and receives a service
of sweet song, of fragrant incense, of ceremonious

The life everlasting.

adoration. Nor do I say that our sensile imagi
nation can ever rise beyond such gaudy symbolism
when it endeavours to picture the unpicturable, and
to make visible the invisible. Nor yet are we free
to deny that with the risen and glorified body, there
will be also a " new heaven and a new earth," in
which this sensible and physical order of existence
will endure in some spiritualized and transfigured
condition as an instrument of Divine praise. But
riper thought should teach us to see in these things
only the outward symbols and accessories of the
substantial joy of Heaven, which consists in the
possession of God, in the Communion of the Saints;
a joy which we begin to taste even here when the
charity of God is diffused in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost. Our reason working on our gathering self-
experience should convince us that it is only in
personal love, self-annihilating, adoring, unchanging,
eternal, that our heart can find rest and happiness ;
and that Heaven is Heaven just because it offers us
this. For what is Heaven but Eternal Life, an
entering into the Life of the Eternal, through the
unitive virtue of love. It is to see face to face that
Beauty, the very hint of which, known as we here
know it, by the rumour of faith or by the fringes of
its garment, can kindle a love which devours the
heart of the saints. If to hear of it can so dominate
and subdue the soul, what must it be to behold it ?
Nor let us forget what our faith teaches us as to
our supernatural elevation to a destiny such as no
introspection would ever remotely suggest. Reason
done might possibly verify the assertion that we were

THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 187
made to find happiness in some very close know
ledge and love of God, shared in common with all
the souls of the just made perfect. But faith tells
us that by grace we are re-created for a more intimate
union with the Divinity ; not merely to know and
love and rejoice in the same Divine Good wherein
God rejoices, but in some sort to apprehend it with
the same kind of act wherewith He apprehends it —
an act which we call knowledge for want of a better
name, just as at times we speak of understanding as
seeing. It is principally by reason of this conformity
to God in the mode of our knowledge and love and
joy that we are said to enter into that life of the
Eternal, " which eye hath not seen nor ear heard
nor heart conceived."
And though in itself the Godhead is the same,
whether it be viewed with the eye of the natural
intellect or with the grace-anointed vision of the
saints, yet the aspect it presents to the beholder, the
impress it creates in him, the love it enkindles, is
all other. Indeed, even in the order of natural
vision, no two see quite the same beauty or are
incited by it to a precisely similar affection. Still
less can we compare the supernatural love and joy
of the blessed with that of nature " unelevated."
And if we turn to the object of this vision and
love, it is that same object of Divine self-praise
wherein God rejoices and wherein all His saints
rejoice, their joy and praise being, so to say, a
created and finite reverberation of the uncreated and
Infinite. It is found principally in the intrinsic
glory and beauty of the Divinity Itself, and second-

188 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
arily, in such communications of His glory as He
has imparted to His saints, whom He has gathered
round Him as a not unworthy crown of love's
triumph — even as the Sun rays itself round with a
halo of brightness. In all this He rejoices as the
Sun in its own splendour. And each of the blessed
rejoices with Him in this collective glory — self-
forgetful, save so far as the glory of each is an
element in the glory of all And if to none of those
blessed souls that glory is manifest as it can be only
to the mind of the Infinite, and if to no two of
them under the same aspect, yet there is a certain
harmony in their knowledge and love and praise;
each filling and complementing what is wanting to
the other; each an essential part in a perfect mosaic ;
each necessary to the effect of the whole ; all collec
tively making one mirror wherein God sees and
loves Himself anew, one complex chord of ever
lasting praise ; many eyes, yet but one vision ; many
hearts, yet but one love ; many voices and tongues,
yet but one song. in.
If, however, our feeble mind soon wearies of the
strain, when it would try to form some conception
of that Eternal joy, that joy of the Eternal, which
eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor heart conceived ;
if we can never form any real image to ourselves of
what Heaven is, we can at least find rest and repose
in the thought of what it is not. " God shall
wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there
shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying

THE LIFE EVERLASTING.

nor any more pain, ... for the former things are
passed away." And again : "They shall not hunger
nor thirst any more ; nor shall the sun nor the heat
beat upon them ; for the Lamb in their midst shall
be their Shepherd, and shall lead them to the living
water-springs." And once more : " Blessed are the
dead who die in the Lord, for they shall rest from
their labours."
When we look upon this ruin of a world, such
as sin and its consequences have left it, we are still
able to figure some image to ourselves of that
Paradise which God intended to be the vestibule
of Heaven, the place of man's light exile and easy
probation. We can in some way conjecture what
this earthly life would be were there no sin or selfish
ness, "no more death, nor crying, nor grief, nor
pain," no fruitless spiritual longings, no darkness
of ignorance and error, no wearisome toiling with
sweat of the brow for the bare necessities of life.
Even the poor relics of this ruin, how fair they are !
how we treasure them up as the art-lover does the
stray fragments of some noble sculpture whose lines
tell the tale of the beauty that belonged to the whole !
How lovely still is the face of nature; how sweet
her myriad voices ! And man, with all his vileness
and weakness, how lovable in spite of it, nay,
because of it ! If God Himself delights to be with
the children of men, if " our Maker is our husband "
and lover, is it wonderful that we should be tempted
to cling to one another —
As if our heaven and home were here.

190 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
And chief among the factors of our earthly happi
ness, that which binds together, preserves, purifies,
strengthens the rest, is God Himself dwelling in us
and in all around us, revealed to us in His works,
communing with us in our inmost heart and con
science, imparting His light to our mind, His
warmth to our heart, filling with peace and glad
ness those souls who willingly seek for Him with
open ear and eye, and who most surely find Him
far nearer than they ever dreamt. Take sin and its
consequences away, and earth were indeed such a
Paradise as might make us to cry out : " It is good
for us to be here ! " Yet it would be but the vestibule
of Heaven ; the shadow of the substance.
At times it may seem to us that we desire nothing
but rest, the mere cessation of toil and pain, of
sorrow and temptation, the mere " not-being " of
annihilation. Millions profess with their lips that
to desire is to suffer ; that to be, is to desire ; that
it is alone by not-being that we can escape from
suffering ; that our wisest desire is to cease to desire
and to cease to be ; to be merged once more into
the calm bosom of that nothingness whose surface
is by some malign cause rippled for a moment and
disturbed by our individuality and existence.
They do not discern that desire is woven of a
double strand, namely, the love of an absent object,
together with a sense of need, — the former pleasur
able, the latter painful; or that desire makes not
only for the cessation of the sense of pain, but
principally for the fulfilment of love in the joy of
possession and attainment, i

THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 191
If we desire the absence of pain, it is not this
mere negation which attracts us. We cannot be
attracted by nothing. The full object of our hope
is our conscious, existing self in a state of freedom
from pain. Even the unbelieving suicide is deluded
by the imagination that he will be conscious of his
deliverance from suffering, though his intellect may
reject the doctrine of immortality. We cannot then
arouse in ourselves a longing for Heaven by the mere
prospect of negative rest, of no more death nor sorrow
nor pain, but only by the prospect of a life immeasur
ably fuller and more lovable than this life would be
were it once more transfigured into Paradise, and
every weed and bramble of sin plucked up and
destroyed. Even our present narrow, humble mode
of existence is at times very sweet to us, when the
removal of some passing bitterness has made us
realize the blessing which before we unconsciously
enjoyed. If, then, in its lower phases, a painless
life can be so longed for, how much more the highest
plenitude of being of which we are capable ?
Lastly, Heaven is described in our liturgy as " a
place of refreshment and of light and of peace ; "
which again must be understood as telling us both
what it is not, and what it is. In this world God tries
His saints in the fire of tribulation, temptation, per
secution, even as gold is tried in the furnace. The
noon-day sun scorches them, and the heat stifles
and oppresses them. They are athirst with their
battles and labours, with loss of blood. But there
"the Lamb that is in their midst shall shepherd
them, and lead them by the living water-springs,"

»92 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
by that " pure river of the water of life, clear as
crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of
the Lamb."
Here they are led blindfold by the hand of faith,
or if they see aught, it is by the flickering, uncertain
light of reason ; their eyes are wearied and dim,
straining through the gloom, and watching for the
morning which seems so long in coming. God's
ways are so puzzling, so mysterious, so incalculable,
fooling our presumption the moment we pretend to
have discovered their law. Here we can but cry out
in our humility : " How incomprehensible are His
judgments and His ways past finding out." But
there the weary mind will at last repose in the full
clear light of truth, and the doubts and difficulties
will be forgotten, as the cloudlets that flecked the
sky of a day long past. And if there is laughter in
Heaven, it will be at the guesses and conjectures
and vain theorizings of our child-life on earth, as now
we laugh at the fancies of our early years. There
" the city shall need no sun nor moon to enlighten
it," no created or reflected light; "for the bright
ness of God hath illumined it and the Lamb is the
Light thereof."
Here there is unending war: war with oneself,
with the world, with the powers of darkness : Militia
vita hominis super terram. " Never art thou secure
in this life," says a Kempis, " but while thou livest
thou wilt need thy spiritual armour ; for thou art
in the midst of enemies, and art assailed on the right
hand and on the left." But there, there shall be
peace at last : Pax solida ; pax imperturbabilis et

THE LIFE EVERLASTING.

593

secura; pax intus et foris; pax ex omnis parti firma —
" Solid peace, unshaken and unshakable, firm on
every side, within and without."
"A place of refreshment, of light, and of peace"
— and why ? Because it is the place of God, who is
at once our Rest and Refreshment, our Light, our
Peace ; because it is the home of our Father who is
in Heaven, and who is Himself our Heaven : Ubi tu,
ibi cesium, atque ibi mors et infernus ubi tu non es —
"Where God is, there is Heaven. Where God is
not, there is Death and Hell."
And so we return to the starting-point, to
the First Principle and Foundation, to the truth
that man is created, not for earth, but for Heaven ;
not for time, but for Eternity ; not for himself, but
for Another ; not for the creature, but for the Creator.
"Thou hast made us for Thyself," says Augustine.
"Thou hast made us" — God, our first Beginning.
"For Thyself "—God, our last End.
"And our heart can find no rest till it rest in
Thee."

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE
Erunt sicut angeli Dei in ccelo.
" They shall be as the angels of God in Heaven." —
St. Matt. xxii. 30.
It may be safely asserted that Catholic Christianity
has developed the idea of the virtue of purity and
emphasized its importance, to a degree previously
unknown to the world, and hardly now known
outside the limit of the Church's influence. Within
those limits, no doubt, are included many non-
Catholic Christians, and perhaps many whose
Christianity has been puzzled out of them, but
who still retain a practical veneration for its
moral ideas and are unconsciously imbued with
its instincts. No doubt the intensity of the stress which the
Church lays upon this virtue finds its justification
in some of the deepest mysteries of faith. For
granted that impurity is a violation of the natural
dignity of man, it follows that every addition to
man's spiritual elevation increases the malice of
any act of defilement or profanation. Thus when
St. Paul says : " Lie not one to another, for ye are
members one of another," he does not mean to
give the ethical reason against lying, but he supposes

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 195
the malice of falsehood to be admitted on all hands,
and adds a supernatural reason which makes it
more odious among those who are united by special
ties of fidelity as members of one mystical body.
In like manner, Christian doctrine takes for granted
that the law of reason condemns all impurity, and
then adds to the prohibition of reason other motives
and sanctions drawn from revelation alone.
Still it must be confessed that, as in other
matters of natural religion and morals, so more
especially in this, revelation has helped reason by
way of suggestion. A passage in some foreign
language may be utterly beyond our comprehension
and seem to us hopelessly tangled and faulty, and
yet a glance at a translation puts everything in its
right place and proves the confusion to have been
purely subjective. So the revelation of natural
truths enables us to see them by the light of reason
— paradoxical as it may sound ; or, if we saw them
at all before, to see them now more clearly, to hold
to them more firmly, and to penetrate to their further
consequences. Besides, what would with difficulty
have been within the grasp of the talented, leisured,
industrious few, is now by revelation made " current
coin " and the abiding heritage of all.
If then, remaining within the purely ethical
order, we seem in some points to find but a frail
support for the bold teaching and instincts of the
Catholic Church in this matter of purity, it need not
surprise us, since we find a like difficulty in justifying
many of our other natural moral instincts and
beliefs which we hold to none the less firmly, knowing

ig6 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
well that more things are reasonable than reason can
analyze or set out in form.
Yet there is hardly any point of the Catholic
doctrine of purity, which mere reason does not to
some extent bear out, while in no point can it be
shown to be contrary to reason.
Before, however, examining the rational founda
tions upon which this body of teaching rests, we
may give a brief glance at the buttresses and supports
it receives from faith and revelation.
If the very inclinations of sensuality, which are
natural to man regarded physiologically, are in the
present order a fruit of original sin, then whatever
natural unseemliness or disorder there may be in
them is augmented and aggravated in so far as they
are doubly against the Divine will. We suppose,
for the present, that man advances from imperfec
tion to perfection, and that since he rightly strives
to obtain complete control over his passions, he
cannot fail to regard their insubordination as a
misfortune, as a moral disorder or disease — some
thing to be eradicated and overcome, something
which lowers him to the " ape and tiger " level.
Remaining merely in the natural order, our
lack of perfect self-control in this matter is against
our final dignity, i.e., against the ideal which reason
bids us strive to realize. But according to Catholic
doctrine, Adam was created with perfect and preter
natural self-control in this matter — starting, so to
say, at the goal of nature's utmost endeavour. This
was, of course, an altogether preternatural endow
ment, as much so as was the infusion of that know

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 197

ledge and culture towards wi ich he would otherwise
have climbed laboriously and never so effectually.
That the race in its representative and head forfeited
this preternatural gift by sin, makes that a penal
privation which otherwise had been only a natural
negation. Sensuality is, therefore, not only contrary
to man's natural " final " perfection, but also to what
God intended him to be in the present order. He
raised us to better things, above our nature, and our
present humiliation is culpable, not indeed through the
fault of the individual, but through the fault of the
race. This makes all insubordination of the passions
irregular by a new title, that is, as a disturbance, not
only of the natural, but of the supernatural order.
The passions being at least indirectly under our
free control, their irregularity is not merely a physical,
but a moral infirmity. The cardinal virtues of Tem
perance and Fortitude are in some way defective
until they have extended from the higher will into
the emotional faculties which it is their office to
control. However inculpable, the insubordination
of the lower to the higher will partakes of the nature
of vice, and is a disposition towards evil. As far
(and no further) as the behaviour of our passions is
not determined by necess?ry causes, but is deter
minable by our free choice, just so far is their rebel
lion a vice, whether culpable or inculpable, whether
resulting from negligence or preceding it. Sensuality
is, in the present order, not merely a penalty, like
sickness or death, but an ethical blemish which
cannot be acquiesced in without fault.
Again, the Catholic doctrine of grace, which is

198 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
declared either to be or to involve a real mystical
indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the soul, and
thereby in the body of the unfallen Christian, makes
every defilement of that temple in some sense sacri
legious. " Know you not," says St. Paul, " that your
members are the temple of the Holy Ghost who
is in you ? " " Whoso defileth God's temple, him
will God destroy." As in the building of Solomon's
temple, reverence for the sanctuary that was to be.
forbade the noise of axe or hammer, and required
the stones to be cut elsewhere, and thence taken
and set silently in their destined places, so the
tumult of unruly passions, even where blameless, is
unfitting in the sanctuary of a far higher indwelling,
in the soul which is a consort of the Divine Nature ;
which lives and breathes with a Divine Life. It was
this sense of fitness which secured for Adam the gift
of perfect self-control or " integrity " (as it is called) ;
and if it has not been restored to us by redemption,
it is only because our redemption is as yet but
imperfect, and remains to be perfected at the resur
rection in the glorification of the "body of our
humiliation." " Behold, now are we the sons of
God," i.e., in some true but inchoative sense, " but it
doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we know
that when He shall appear we shall be like Him."1
If the sanctity of this spiritual temple is in some
sense marred by even involuntary irregularity in the
passions, much more real is its violation when the
will approves and rests in such an unbefitting state
of things, or encourages it, or brings it about.
1 I St. John iii. 3.

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 199

Another aspect of the sacredness of the Christian's
body is presented in the doctrine of Christ's
Mystical Body, of which we are members. Our
union with Him, and with one another, is not
merely the moral union of any body-corporate, but
a real though mystical union : " One Body and One
Spirit." As the act of the member is ascribed to
the whole body, so the sinful actions of Christians
bring a sort of extrinsic disgrace upon Christ and
His Saints, upon the family to which they belong
by a tie far closer than blood. Further, as subject
to the Head, the member is not sui juris, is not its
own, but Christ's. Hence St. Paul argues, " Shall I
take the members of Christ and make them members
of an harlot ? God forbid ! "
Closely allied with the same mystery is the
dogma concerning Christ's Eucharistic or Sacra
mental Body, by every participation whereof, the
body and soul of the Christian are mystically trans
muted and in some sense made conspecific with the
glorified Body and Soul of God Incarnate. So
much so that by each sacramental Communion our
body acquires, if not a physical, at least a moral
exigency of deliverance from perpetual corruption.
For it shares in some degree His sanctity of whom
it is written : " Thou wilt not leave My Soul in
Hell, nor wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see
corruption." This belief in the future destiny of matter in
general, and of the Christian's body in particular,
to a share in the final glory of creation to which it
has ministered, both in the order of nature and of

200 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
grace, is at the root of Catholic reverence for the
remains of the dead, for the relics of the saints, and
for bodily purity and integrity.
Finally, the union of the Divinity, as it were by
intermarriage, to the human family has raised our
race, as a whole, above the dignity of the highest
angelic orders, — even as the low-born can be lifted
above their social superiors by union with a prince
of the blood-royal. " He never took to Himself
the angels, but He took the seed of Abraham."
Although this union is not so close as that which
binds together the members of His Mystical Body,
still it is a moral tie such as holds one tribe or
people together by community of blood. The Son
of God is reckoned in the census of humanity, but
not in that of the angels, who count it an honour to
minister to the fellow-mortals of the Incarnate God.
Hence the King of men is a fortiori the King of the
angels, and Mary is the angels' queen, and Gabriel
her minister and messenger. All this imparts a
new dignity to every man as such, and adds a new
indignity to every impurity, voluntary or even in
voluntary. All these motives, which are at the root of the
intense stress which the Church lays upon the virtue
of purity, rest on revealed dogma. They are non
existent for those who do not accept these dogmas,
i.e., not only for non-Christians, but to a great
extent for non-Catholic Christians, amongst whom
as much of Catholic feeling as survives is to be
ascribed to sentiments which linger on after their
reasonable basis is gone.

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.

Yet throughout we have been supposing that,
viewed merely in the light of reason, impurity is an
indignity, a violation of man's spiritual nature. This
given, then whatever adds to man's dignity, aggra
vates the offence. Let us, then, see what sound
reason tells us on the point.
By a certain world-old philosophy which has
gone under various names in various times and
places, purity has been assailed on ostensibly
speculative grounds. The difficulty of the virtue
has at all times driven men to invent and to
embrace a theory which will square with their
inclination and practice ; for no man likes to admit
openly to others that he lives in defiance of reason,
nor will he care, as a rule, to admit it to himself.
Sometimes this philosophy strives to show that
purity is at most a social virtue, a matter of con
vention and custom ; and this doctrine is more
dangerous when with it is held that other which
regards society itself as in no sense natural or
demanded by reason, but the artificial creation of
formal compact or tolerated custom. At other
times it proclaims more boldly that purity is a
moral impossibility, that it is a violation of nature,
against our first instincts, and in no way obligatory.
We have a growing school of modern " after-
Christians," as they have been called, which raves
against all restraint of concupiscence as a supersti
tion of priestcraft.
" Modesty was only made for those who have
no beauty. It is an invention of the modern world ;
the child of the Christian contempt for form and

202 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
matter. . . . 0 purity, plant of bitterness, born on a
blood-soaked soil, and whose degenerate and sickly
blossom expands with difficulty in the dank shade
of cloisters, under a chill baptismal rain ; rose
without scent, and spiked all round with thorns!
. . . The ancient world knew thee not, O sterile
flower ! ... In that vigorous and healthy society
they would have spurned thee under foot dis
dainfully ! "
The writer is modern,1 but his sentiment is as
ancient as the Fall. It is but the utterance of that
paganism which is latent, like a seed of death,
in every human heart, and only awaits favourable
climate and environment to germinate and fructify.
From the very first the appeal is couched in the
same specious form. The fruit is fair to the eye,
pleasant to taste, gratifying to curiosity, evidently
devised by nature for our enjoyment ; and the doubt
arises, "Hath God said ye shall surely die ? " And
then comes the conclusion, "Ye shall not surely
die." " The voice of Nature," we are told, " is the voice
of God. In other animals we see how promiscuous
obedience to their impulses leads to no disastrous
results. Society and the family are violent and
artificial institutions, and can bind our conduct
only so far as they can force it. Outside that limit
there is complete moral liberty. Further, is it not
more evident daily that the distance between man
and brute is one of degree, not of kind— a tenet
which justifies to some extent his claim for equal
1 Thebphile Gautier.

the angelic virtue. 203
liberty." No doubt evolutionary Utilitarianism would
prohibit any excesses that might lead to the
deterioration of the human type in future ages ;
but such a sanction would avail little, under pressure
of temptation, with the majority, who care nothing
for the state of posterity at so remotely distant a
period, especially when the effect of a single excess
is so infinitesimally insignificant in the result.
That all grosser hedonistic reasoning is based
on a low and inadequate view of human nature, is
abundantly plain. If man differs from the brute
only in the higher and more effectual development
of his senses, we must allow that the final happiness
to which those senses minister is of a like kind with
theirs. If, on the other hand, we hold that evolu
tionist philosophy has not lessened human dignity,
but has only raised- that of non-human animals,
conceding to them a germinal intellect, reason, con
science, then the same reasons which will presently
force us to condemn sensuality in man, v/ill equally
compel us to condemn it in them, — unless we agree
with a speaker at the Anglican Church Congress in
1896, who explains that sin in its essence is
simply an anachronism, i.e., the abnormal survival
of a habit which was laudable in our savage
or brutal ancestors, but which is old-fashioned and
out of date in modern man. Evolutionists and
zoophilists cannot play fast and loose with common
sense in these matters. If we credit brutes with
moral virtues, we must blame them for their vices,
or else frankly come forward as determinists, and
deny imputability all round. This latter would be to

2o4 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
deny virtue and vice in any sense hitherto accepted
by the world ; for who would call strength, health,
beauty, or temperament, virtues, or their contraries
vices ?
We can accept only that anthropology according
to which man is of two distinct elements ; one,
higher and spiritual, the other, lower and animal —
the lower being obviously ministerial and organic to
the higher ; not, however, merely an instrument, but
also a secondary partner in a common interest.
Against the view, favoured by dualist religions,
which regards the body as the prison-house of a
fallen spirit, or as the creation of some malign
power hostile to light and truth, something to be
detested and destroyed, the simple philosophy of
the Church (which is that of common sense and
common language) shows us that the senses feed the
intellect and supply it with the raw fabric of its
ideas; that through them alone is the soul put en
rapport with that revelation of truth which God's
finger has traced on the face of nature ; that man's
passions and emotions are, as it were, so much rough
material to be hewn and shaped into conformity
with the pattern of reason, with the ideal that nature
hints at and strives with trembling hand to realize.
Of themselves, these impulses are blind erratic forces
in some ways, but they can be trained to run in
harness, and to bear man onward to his self-chosen
mark, instead of running off with him.
But man has his period of unreasoning infancy,
and throughout life there are innumerable daily
crises and intervals where reason is either in

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 205
abeyance, or only free to attend to one of a crowd
of simultaneous urgencies. Then it is that instincts
and habits, natural or acquired, play an important
part in his life, even as they play the entire part in
the life of unreasoning animals.
Still instincts and habits, like all general legis
lation, fail in particulars, though their average result
is good. These failures man can supplement by the
adapting power of reason and by the free modifi
cation of his tastes and habits. And this more
especially when such impulses urge him towards
his animal and bodily interests, to the disregard of
his higher and adequately conceived good. Man,
alone of animals, knows himself reflexly, knows
his own double nature, his final perfection, his
Creator and Owner. He alone can enter into
conscious sympathy with the plans of his Maker.
Other creatures are evolved; man is self-evolving,
free to co-operate or to resist. It is the very nature
of his probation to see whether he will choose to
act as man, bringing out fully all that specifies him
and distances him from the brute. ^ His final per
fection is intellectual and moral before all things.
Animal nature is fully evolved on the completion of
adolescence, but man's spiritual nature is unde
veloped for years, and at best only partially advanced
towards an ever-receding goal of possible perfection.
In a certain wide sense of the word we might
say that the distinctive perfection or virtue of a
human being, man or woman, is courage : that it
is in a man what physical strength or brute force
is in a horse or a lion. Courage is moral strength

206 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
or will-force, a power of resisting the continual
straining of pleasure and pain against the law of
the Divine will, and against the claims of conscience.
Those who lack this power are quickly dehumanized
and degraded, being enslaved to sensuality or to vain
glory, or to some other tyranny. Many counterfeits
pass for courage, as, for example, a certain insensi
bility to bodily pains and pleasures on the part of
those whose nerves are coarse-fibred and whose
imagination is dull and sluggish; or a natural in
difference to the praise and censure of others on the
part of those who are solitary and self-centered and
deficient in that desire for the esteem and affection of
others which, however hurtful when abused, is one of
the noblest and most helpful of the instincts God has
planted in our hearts. Again, there are some whose
affections are feeble by nature, and still more
enfeebled by habitual selfishness, and who are conse
quently free from the temptation of any violent love
or hatred or grief or fear. If, through mere insensi
bility of these kinds, men seem to endure great pains
or humiliations or sorrows or else to forego great
pleasures and honours and joys, this is but a counter
feit courage. Nor again is it courage when one goes
out to meet danger full of self-confidence and with
a moral certainty of victory and escape, as when
Goliath came forth against David; nor when through
thoughtlessness or excitement or inexperience, one
under-estimates the risk to be encountered. There
is but little courage in hot blood, unless we are
to credit wild bulls with courage, nor does all
that passes for bravery on the battlefield deserve to

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 207
be confounded with that rare moral force which it
would be a miracle to find widely distributed in such
a chance assortment of men. "To fear nothing,"
says a recent writer, " and face danger, is the
courage of a noble animal ; to be afraid yet to go
through to the end, is the courage of a man."1
At times men will face present pain simply in
order to escape far greater pain of the same kind ;
they will allow a tooth to be drawn or a limb to be
cut off, counting it good economy of suffering in the
long run. This may be excellent good sense, and
akin to courage, but it is not true courage. A poor
timid bird will often turn desperate and fight for its
life with what might seem to be courage, but is only
the very pressure of extreme fright. The miser will
go far beyond many a saint in his austerities and
self-denials, not because he is master of himself, but
because he is the slave of avarice ; and the courtier
will brook many an indignity and bitter humiliation,
not because he is master of his resentment, but
because he is the slave of ambition. And so in a
thousand ways men who are by no means insensible
to suffering will deliberately endure pain and con
tempt and annoyance in order to avoid what they
consider greater evils, or to secure greater advan
tages. Their action in so doing is usually prudent
and justifiable, and has certain elements of true
courage in it, since it is governed by foresight and
reason, and not merely by the pressure of present
feeling. But courage in the true sense requires that
we should endure or abstain, not for any kind of
1 Man. By Lilian Quiller Couch.

208 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.

motive whatever, but for the sake of that highest
spiritual good to which alone our subjection as
reasonable beings is due or permissible ; for the sake,
that is, of principle, of truth and right and justice,
of God's cause ; or still better, for the sake of God
Himself, explicitly known and loved and reverenced.
Non passio, says Augustine, sed causa facit martyrem —
"It is not suffering, but suffering for a good cause,
that makes a martyr."
It is in such suffering that man fully realizes
himself and attains the summit of his glory; as
indeed we see in the great Archetype of humanity
to whom Pilate, unconsciously prophetic, pointed as
He stood before the multitude, scourged, mocked,
and rejected for the cause of God, and said Ecce
Homo — " Behold the Man ! " He truly was not
insensible to pain, contempt, or grief, whose body
and soul were framed and devised by Divine Wisdom
to be the instruments of that suffering which was to
redeem the world, and who went forth to His Passion
" knowing all things that were to come upon Him,"
and yet was silent as a sheep before its shearers —
calm with seeming apathy, as if He were deaf, hard,
and senseless — " so that the governor wondered
exceedingly." As it behoved Him to suffer and so to enter into
His glory, so it is in the act of suffering for God,
or for God's cause, that every man reaches his
best and enters into his glory as man. Because
Christ was strong to suffer and to die, therefore were
all things put under His feet ; and so far as we are
filled with a like strength are we invincible against

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 209

those who shrink from pain as the worst of evils.
Hence it is said that the blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the Church, and she, who knows the secret
of the Crucifix, will ever have among her children
those whose faith in the unseen good, will "overcome
the world " by suffering.
The Church, taught by Christ, bids us acquiesce
in the truth that this world is not our home, but our
school; that it is designed to school us in that
which is best among our capacities, namely, in
courage, in an heroic endurance of suffering for
the sake of God and God's cause. For in this our
very highest capability is exerted and strengthened
and perfected.
Hence it follows that manhood is most pro
perly manifested in the mastery of impulse. We
stigmatize one who is deficient in self-mastery as
weak, or wanting in that moral strength which is
to man what bone and sinew are to the mere
animal. The vituperatives "effeminate," "childish,"
"savage," "brutal," all confess the same conception
of man's nature, and of God's intention. God is
therefore at once the author and moving force of
our animal impulses, and of the dictate of reason
which bids us control them. He supplies us with
the task, and with the instruments by which it is
to be accomplished. It would be indeed a difficulty
were He the author of two contrary tendencies,
unless, as is the case, He willed one to prevail, and
made provision for its prevalence. Nor is He
strictly the author, but rather the permitter, of the
contrariety; nor does He will the useful force of
0

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.

passion to be wasted and extinguished, but to be
used and applied in due place and season.
It is, then, precisely as being unworthy of true
manhood, and of our nature adequately regarded,
that we feel moral shame over any exhibition of
imperfect self-control where such control is due and
possible. We blush to be detected in cowardice,
greediness, meanness, selfishness, curiosity. Pro
fligates who brag most shamelessly of their vices,
always represent them as proofs of their bravery,
manliness, independence of superstition, of religious
fear, of human respect, but never like to allow their
sheer weakness and inability to conquer them.
The shame that we feel at our subjection to
purely involuntary animal needs and infirmities,
which neither are, nor can be under our control, is
in no sense " moral " shame as of something whose
deformity is imputable. And the same is to be said
of our shame about merely conventional disgraces,
like poverty, ill-birth, breaches of etiquette. Unruly
passions, on the other hand, even if not a self-
chosen or a self-permitted deformity, are a remedi
able defect which may not be complacently tolerated.
Now, what is true of all controllable impulses is
more emphatically true of that which is chief among
them, in so far as it concerns that animal function
whose results are of the greatest moment both to
individual and to social life — namely, the multiplying
of human beings, the bringing of new personalities
on to the stage of human life. If it is a momentous
thing for any man to usurp the authority of God,
and by the crime of murder to cut short the allotted

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.

space of a human life, surely the " to be or not to
be" of unborn personalities is a question of great
consequence, where it behoves man, with whom its
decision rests, to be fully master of himself. If it
is bestial that he should be so enslaved by greedi
ness as to endanger his own health, what can be
said of his slavery to an appetite fraught with so much
more consequence to others ? In this matter to be
determined, like a brute, by pleasure alone, is surely
the most extreme irregularity, and to approve and
consent to such irregularity is, in the light of mere
reason, the gravest immorality. Proportional, then,
to the gravity of the end is man's obligation of
holding this instinct well in hand.
Still, according to the insistence she places on
the preservation of the species, Nature (i.e., God in
nature) has made this instinct the strongest of all.
Hence, while the mastery of it is most necessary,
it is also most difficult, and this it is that makes
chastity the very crown and seal of perfected man
hood. The usual effects, physical and moral, of sensual
indulgence on individuals and on society at large,
are sufficient indication of the sentence which
outraged nature passes on such vice, nor need we
amplify so disagreeable a topic. When man once
makes carnal pleasure an end in itself, reason enables
him to devise and organize a thousand ways of
procuring and multiplying it which are inaccessible
to unreasoning animals. He sinks not merely to their
level, but indefinitely lower.
The physical and moral degradation which

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.

results, not indeed from any one act, but from single
acts multiplied like plague-spots, is enough of itseli
to warrant a precept of nature against any exception
to their universal prohibition ; thus adding a grave
extrinsic malice to the already grave intrinsic malice
of any single act.
In fine, the root-malice of impurity, viewed in
the mere light of reason, lies in the fact that
God has given us a certain very imperative
instinct, for a certain clear purpose of the most
vitally momentous consequence. He intends to
prove and perfect us as reasonable beings in this
matter, as in many others, that we may freely choose
to resist this impulse where it is contrary to His
declared purpose, and use it where He wills us to
use it, and in the same way as He wills it. That
He wills no use of it outside wedlock is a further
question, and does not belong to the present dis
cussion, which is general.
Any impulse to do what is irregular is itself
irregular, and cannot be approved or encouraged
by reason. If murder is wrong, I may not en
courage a tendency to murder. If I may not take
my neighbour's property, I may not wilfully long
for it. So every impulse towards sensual satisfaction
which would be unlawful, is itself naturally un
lawful. Man is under a natural obligation of tending
towards the perfect control of every controllable
impulse; hence even inculpable rebellions should
displease him as being opposed to his final perfection,
i.e., to that ideal which he should aim it. They
are not matter for blame, but for regret; but to

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 213
approve them or not to regret them would be
blameworthy. My temper may be quite beyond
my present control, so that I am free of all self-
reproach ; but I may not acquiesce in this state of
things as long as there is room for further self-
mastery. Thus, reason is in sympathy with the
Church's high esteem of what we might call effectual
purity, as opposed to that which merely exists in
firm will and purpose ; as well as with her more
adequate view of human nature and human virtue, —
each composed of two elements, internal and external,
soul and body, neither perfect without the other,
yet the soul absolutely self-standing, self-sufficing,
while the body apart from it is wholly valueless.
Temperance in will and purpose is compatible
with dipsomania; fortitude with physical nervous
ness and timidity— although they lack their proper
embodiment and expression, since they have not
realized that effect which of their own nature they
tend to realize in normal circumstances. Again,
there is a mere placidity of physical temperament
that simulates peacefulness, an insensibility which
passes as continence, a general negation of passion
which looks like self- conquest ; but these are
nothing worth : virtues in no sense of the word.
The full and perfect virtue is that which is measured
and duly conceived by reason, enforced by the will,
and gradually conformed to by the passions. It is
normally the result of industry.
The efforts of the will may be partly or wholly
ineffectual, owing to obstinacy of the natural tem
perament ; and in this case the defect is not morally

214 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
imputable or blamable, but only regrettable; one
may not be glad of it, for it is an infirmity dis
honouring our human dignity, a matter of humili
ation, a defacing of God's image. Given, in two
cases, equal internal virtue, the addition of the
external virtue in one adds a certain moral dignity
or ornament which the other has not. To have it
in the one case, to lack it in the other, may not be
imputable, either as merit nor as demerit ; although
to have it may be a means of merit, and to lack it,
a safeguard of humility and therefore indirectly a
means of greater merit.
So with regard to that perfect immunity, not
merely from voluntary faults against chastity, but
even from all natural irregularities which the Church
bids us pray for. It is not a matter of merit so
much as of spiritual dignity. We should regret
(not blame ourselves for) every want of that perfect
self-control which is the final dignity after which
reason should strive, and the want of which is
contrary to God's first intention with respect to
the children of Adam and the brethren of Christ
We should regret it out of reverence to God's image
which it is our duty to educe and perfect in ourselves ;
out of reverence to this nature which the Eternal
has wedded to Himself in unity of Person ; out of
reverence to that Eucharistic Flesh and Blood which
we feed on ; out of reverence to our own flesh and
blood rendered conspecific with it by reiterated
Communions and destined to a like glorification ; out
of reverence to the indwelling Spirit whose temples
we are ; out of reverence to the Mystical Body of

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 215
which we are members, and to Christ its Head, and
to Mary and to all the saints our fellow-members,
who share our honour or dishonour.
Hence, cceteris paribus, the Church prefers, not
as more meritorious, but as spiritually more exalted,
the condition of those who are thus exempt. Not
that she prizes physical impotence or defect of
passion, as possessing any beauty in the spiritual
or moral order, but rather full passions and warm
affections controlled and conquered by an over
mastering passion of Divine love. This mastery of
the strong man by the stronger is in the case of
some saints the result of a suddenly infused strength
of charity; in most, it is of slower growth. We
should indeed do ill to conceive it as a privation
of any strength or fulness of vitality, an emascu
lation of character in any sense. Mere immunity,
without a will firm enough to resist all rebellion,
would be only material purity; but where the
immunity is due to a continual overmastering of
the lower impulses by the higher, too firm and
strong to be sensible of any difficulty or resistance,
we are in the presence of heroic and almost super
human virtue.
Closely connected with this high estimate of
effectual purity is the value the Church sets on
celibacy and virginity. It is no mere economical
or prudential motive that binds her priesthood to
chastity, but a sense of the spiritual dignity befitting
those who minister at the altar of the Virgin-born
and dispense the Bread of Angels to others. It is
strange how any school of Christianity can fail

2i6 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
to see the high esteem set upon bodily virginity by
our Saviour, and how those who were closest to
Him were graced by this ornament : His Mother,
His precursor, His foster-father, His bosom friend,
His heavenly bodyguard. Apart from this mystical
reason, there is also a reason which is eminently
practical, namely, the unfitness of a married clergy
to preach to others a continence and self-restraint
which they have little or no occasion to practise
themselves. " Keep up ! Don't give in ! " they seem
to cry to the many who are struggling in billows,
while they themselves are enjoying the comparative
security of a life-boat. With her eyes wide open
to all the sin and sacrilege that celibacy has
occasioned and may yet occasion, the Church insists
upon it for the sake of a greater good which im
measurably outbalances all that evil, for the sake
of the encouragement of those millions upon whom
restraint is for one reason or another incumbent,
whether for a time or continually, — and that, often
in the very years when it is most difficult. Again,
she knows well that the man who fights, even
though he fall from time to time, gives more glory
to God than he who sits at home. She knows that
marriage does not create purity or the power of
restraint where it did not exist before, and that to
the impure and incontinent its liberty is rarely
sufficient, while the transgression of its restraints
is a far deadlier sin than a celibate is capable of.
Reason tells us that if the unruliness of any
controllable appetite is a grave disorder, far more
is the unruliness of sensual desire, so momentous in

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 217
its consequences. Even the first impulse to so
..grave a disorder cannot be regarded as a slight
irregularity. This, again, bears out Catholic teach
ing to the effect that, given full advertence and
self-control, no fault in this matter is light, although
there are various degrees of gravity. Here the
severity of the Church's teaching seems at first sight
excessive ; for indeed it comes to this, that any
deliberate and direct concession to sensual incli
nation, however slight, whether in thought or deed,
is grievously sinful. It must, however, be fully
deliberate, a condition which supposes perfect
advertence both to what is being done or thought
about, and to the gravely sinful character of such
thoughts or actions; and also, perfect self-control,
so that the thought or act is in no way automatic
or involuntary. These conditions are, of course,
very frequently absent in the first beginnings of
sensual rebellion. Again, the concession must be
direct, that is, it must have sensual gratification for
its motive, and not some other necessary end which
would perhaps justify the toleration under protest of
an involuntary gratification.
But the practical wisdom of the Church's severity
in regarding the slightest direct and deliberate con
cession as grievous, is evident when we reflect that
here, as in some other matters, a slight concession,
far from mitigating irregular desire, increases it;
and if the first impulse is not resisted, it is inde
finitely less likely that the second will be. In fact
it is like starting a boulder rolling down a hill,
which becomes more hopelessly unmanageable at

218 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
every bound. It is the failure to realize this law,
or to accept it in faith from the experience and
wisdom of the Church, that lies at the root of so
much difficulty in this matter.
Here indeed the rule is the same for all, for
those who walk by the commandments or by the
counsels. But when it is a question of justifiable
occasions of involuntary gratification, there is a
wide range between the maximum and the minimum
of liberty, which leaves room for many refinements
of purity that are of counsel and not of command.
There is on the one side a point after which the
pretended justification is quite inadequate to the
resulting irregularity of which it is the occasion
or indirect cause ; on the other, a point beyond
which abstinence from lawful occasions would inter
fere with plain duties or with greater good. As
the counsel of evangelical poverty is : " If thou
wilt be perfect, sell all;" that is: Do not ask
how much, but how little may you keep ; so the
counsel of purity is, that we should inquire rather
how far we may reasonably avoid lawful occasions,
than how far we are free to encounter them.
Both these limits, maximum and minimum, are
relative and not absolute; that is, the tempera
ment, circumstances, antecedents, state of life, of
each individual determine for him to what length
he can go one way or the other without a violation
of conscience or an infringement of duty. In
practice there can be little doubt as to which is
the easier, the safer and more generous course to
adopt ; or which the Church everywhere encourages

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 219
and approves, so long as counsel is not confounded
with precept to the hurt of conscience and the
eventual injury of simple purity.
Last of all, reason goes further, and tells us
that if we have any strong Vicious propensity
whose satisfaction is unavoidably occasioned in the
fulfilment of some imperative duty, we should regard
the circumstance with a certain regret, on account of
the gratification of a mortal enemy. For example,
as a magistrate one may have to condemn his mortal
foe, and thus to gratify his natural vindictiveness ;
or one prone to drunkenness may be ordered spirits
by his doctor. If there is sincere good-will in either
case, the purely involuntary gratification of these
lower propensities will be a matter of regret to the
higher part of our nature. These evil tendencies
are our spiritual foes whom we desire to starve out ;
and therefore if, in spite of ourselves, we are con
strained to feed them in any way and so put off the
date of their extermination, we shall hardly be
pleased. Thus even in the subtlest points we find reason
running parallel with the instincts and intuitions
of the Catholic religion touching the angelic virtue,
and confessing that God is just, and His judgments
are right : Justus es, Domine, et rectum judicium tuum.

A GREAT MYSTERY

" A help, meet for him."
We are told in the Book of Genesis that God
created man and fashioned him to His own image
and likeness, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life ; that He created him to have dominion
over all the other creatures on the face of the earth,
to use them in the carrying out of his own work
and end ; that in this especially man differed from
the brute animals, that by reason of his power of
thinking and choosing, he had dominion not only
over them, but over himself, over his feelings, his
passions, his instincts ; he was not to be swayed
by them, or carried along helplessly and thrown,
as an unskilled rider by a spirited horse, but
to make them serve him and carry him wherever
and however, as long, and as far as he should judge
right. And if in respect to his passions and appetites
he is in authority, with respect to God he is
under authority, God saying to him, as he to
his passions, " ' Go,' and he goeth ; ' come,' and he
cometh; 'do this,' and he doth it." Man was
created to be God's absolute slave and servant, to
do God's will and God's work and nothing else, and

A GREAT MYSTERY

therein to find his perfection; while every other
creature then created, was created to be man's.
absolute slave and servant, to help him in the per
formance of this work. What, then, was this work ?
To prepare himself here in order to live hereafter
with God for ever, to see Him face to face; to know
as God knows, to love as God loves ; to be happy
with God's own happiness.
Fresh from God's moulding hand, man looked
round upon creation, upon the innumerable helps
that God's bounty had provided for him, sun and
moon and stars, earth and ocean, mountains andN
valleys, springs and streams, glades, meadows and
forests, trees and flowers, beasts, birds and fishes,
all praising God in chorus, "telling His glory,
showing His handiwork," speaking of His goodness,
wisdom, and power; helping man to know Him,
and, knowing, to love Him with his whole heart,
and whole mind, and whole soul, and whole strength.
And yet, gazing round upon all these helps, man
felt helpless, for there was no help found meet for
him ; there were dumb slaves in abundance, but no
companion ; servants by necessity, and not by
choice. "All things were put under his feet," but
he had no partner to share his dominion and
sovereignty. He had the power of speech, but none
to speak to ; the power of thought, but none to think
with ; a human heart, but no human object for its
affections; helps, therefore, in abundance, but no
help meet for him. Surely it was not good for him
to be alone, neither for body nor for spirit. As his
body, so neither could his soul increase or fructify

A GREAT MYSTERY.

in his helpless and solitary state. And yet God
created him alone that he might, as it were,
feel and experience his neediness, that he might
value and reverence the crowning gift of creation,
the highest and noblest that God had yet in store
for him, the only help that was meet for him, that
could deliver him from solitude midst the teeming
life and endless stir of the natural world.
Yes, God had withheld the good wine till the last.
And whence is He to fashion this help for man ?
Not as Adam was fashioned from the rude dust of
the earth, but from man himself, " bone of his bone
and flesh of his flesh," taken from his very substance,
in a sense his child, his offspring; bound to him
with all the ties that bind child to parent, and with
others not less close and tender. And so, when
Adam had sought in vain a help meet for him, God
created woman and brought her to him ; and man
said, " ' This is now bone of my bone, flesh of my
flesh; she shall be called woman, for that she is
taken out of man : ' for this cause shall a man leave
his father and mother and cleave to his wife,
and they shall be two in one." Two in one : one
perfect being made of two parts. Neither complete
without the other, bodily or spiritually. If, as the
religion of Mahomet teaches, woman's end were but
to help man in the work of perpetuating the race,
then indeed she need not have been spiritually
man's equal; God need not, as the Mahometans
suppose He did not, have endowed her with an
immortal soul. He might have created her to be
man's abject slave, in no sense his human equal.

A GREAT MYSTERY. 223
But man's work, man's end, is not merely animal,
is not merely to live and multiply. Our mind
refuses to rest in the thought that one gene
ration exists principally for the sake of the next;
and not primarily for its own sake. Man's chief
and only essential duty, end, and work is to praise,
reverence, and serve the Lord his God, and thereby
to save his soul; and it is principally to help him
in this spiritual work that woman was created,
and matrimony instituted. In this she could not
help him, were she not destined with him for a
like end ; were she not capable herself of praising,
reverencing, and serving God, and had she not a
soul to save.
How, then, does she help him in this work?
As a wife principally, and then as a mother.
It is needless to point out how imperfect a man's
spiritual education must be, if he lives a life of
complete solitude ; how many possible virtues must
lie dormant and inactive, or simply wither away
for want of exercise. There are recorded cases of
children who have been lost in woods and forests,
and have grown up in the company of wild beasts,
far removed from all human intercourse. And when
they were discovered, they were found to be dumb,
savage, and unreasoning, like the animals among
which they had lived. Now the marriage-bond is
the elementary bond with respect to human society,
and community of life. It is the first, the natural,
the universal and most absolute of all partnerships,
by which two become one. All other bonds and
ties shadow some aspect of this, more or less

g24 A GREAT MYSTERY.
imperfectly. The husband and wife are constant
companions, life-long friends. They have not one
or two common interests only, but a thousand;
and there is hardly a single virtue which is not
needed, which must not be practised and strength
ened, if they are to fulfil their duty by one another
— patience, meekness, justice, prudence, fortitude,
self-restraint, generosity, in a word, all manner of
unselfishness. Nor is it only as the closest and most intimate of
his companions and friends of his heart that the
wife helps towards the husband's spiritual develop
ment ; but as being in some sense his moral com
plement, even as she is his physical complement —
the two dividing the one perfect human character
between them, one abounding where the other is
deficient ; one strong where the other is weak ;
each soul fitting into the other, supplying its defects,
filling its emptinesses, making with it one perfect
image and likeness of the ideal humanity as conceived
in the mind of God. Only in the one perfect
Exemplar, only in the soul of Christ were all
virtues, graces, and perfections, fully developed,
perfectly balanced and adjusted, justice and mercy,
strength and gentleness, truth and caution, courage
and discretion, energy and patience, generosity and
prudence, liberty and restraint. He alone was
"beautiful above the children of men," for all
beauty lies in justness of proportion and delicacy
of temper. But other men, if they are strong, they are often
rough ; if they are just, they are harsh ; if they are

A GREAT MYSTERY. 225
courageous, they are rash ; if energetic, impatient ;
if generous, extravagant. Women, on the other
hand, if they are gentle, merciful, prudent, patient,
if they abound in tact, delicacy, spiritual-minded-
ness ; they fail more easily in the rougher, sterner,
and more primitive virtues. It is only in man and
woman, taken together, that we have the fulness
and perfection of human graces and virtues; not
merely the diamond in the rough, but set and cut
and polished till all its brightness gleams out to
perfection. We all recognize this when we speak
disapprovingly of a man as womanish or effeminate,
not because he possesses the special virtues of
womanhood — chastity, gentleness, patience, tact,
unselfishness, which would be to his greater honour
and not to his discredit, but because he lacks the
special virtues of manhood. And so a virago or
masculine woman is not a mulier fortis, a brave, just,
courageous, truth-loving woman, but one who fails
in the graces that are the peculiar ornament of
womanhood. Again, as mother of his children, she helps man,
not only in conceiving, bearing, nursing, and tending
their bodies ; but in perfecting the image of God in
their souls, which is as much part of their natural
perfection as the growth and maturing of their
bodies. Her child is not fully born until it begins
to be born to God, to learn from her lips to love
and worship its Maker ; nor is it weaned till it has
learned in some way to walk alone and without her
assistance in the way of God's commandments.
And for this end God has made woman more
p

226 A GREAT MYSTERY.
spiritual-minded, more apt in the things of God,
that she might be as naturally adapted for the
nursing, rearing, and formation of the young soul
as she is for that of the body.
And so we see that it is precisely because woman
has a soul to save, that she is a help fit and worthy
of man ; a help in the great work of saving the soul
first of her husband and then of his children ; and
that marriage, as God intended it, is not merely a
carnal union, but principally a joining of souls;
that its end is not to replenish and overpopulate
the earth with animals more canino,1 but to fill
Heaven with saints ; to multiply bodies for the
sake of souls. And so far we have not been
speaking of marriage as a sacrament instituted by
Christ ; but as ordained by God in the beginning,
when he created man and sought out " a help meet
for him " in the great work which he had to do, to
praise, reverence, and serve God, and so to save his
soul.

II.
"This is a great sacrament: I speak as to Christ and the
Church."— Ephes. v.
" Every good and perfect gift," says St. James,
" is from above and comes down from the Father of
Lights ; " that is to say, whatever there is good and
perfect in God's works, whether in the kingdom of
nature or in the kingdom of grace is a shadow, a
type, an imperfect semblance, of that infinite good-
1 St. Augustine, De bon. viduit.

A GREAT MYSTERY. 227

ness and perfection, which is God Himself. " From
Him," says St. Paul, " all fatherhood in Heaven and
earth is named and derived." The Eternal Father
hood, the Eternal Sonship, the Eternal Generation
is the only good and perfect Fatherhood, and
Sonship, and Generation ; of which the natural
and human are but distant, finite, immeasurably
feeble and faulty imitations and figures ; like all
other creatures — frail steps by which our earthly
mind can raise itself up some little way towards the
infinite and everlasting archetypes. Similarly, if we
wish to contemplate the heavenly type, the per
fection, the ideal of marriage, we must raise up
our hearts and gaze upon the great mystery of
Christ and the Church.
A sacrament, as we learn, is made up of the
outward sign and the inward grace signified and
conveyed. If the grace were signified, but not
conveyed, we should have no true and efficacious
sacrament of the Gospel ; no real, though mystical,
application of one of the manifold fruits of the
Precious Blood to our souls. In the beginning,
matrimony, as ordained by God, was a sign, as it
is now, of the union between Christ and His Church;
of that which was to be the ideal of the relation
subsisting between man and wife ; but until it was
made a sacrament of the Church, the marriage
contract was not a means but only a sign of grace ;
it did not convey power to the man and wife to
realize and carry out that ideal, to imitate in their
conduct towards one another the intercourse between
Christ and His Spouse the Church. For as the

228 A GREAT MYSTERY.
Holy Eucharist helps us to mature and perfect,
detail after detail, the image of Christ which the
Holy Ghost prints on our soul in Baptism, by which
Christ is born in us ; as it helps us to grow up to
the stature of the perfect man in Christ, so the
Sacrament of Holy Matrimony produces in the soul
of the husband a special likeness to Christ as Head
and Husband of the Church ; and in the soul of the
wife a special likeness to the Church, as the Bride
of the Lamb ; and effects between both a mystical
and supernatural union in the order of grace, over
and above the moral and physical union of mere
natural, non-Christian marriage — a union whose
type is given us in the fiat " they shall be two in
one flesh," whose archetype is the sameness, the
oneness of Christ and His Mystical Body. And
therefore, with St. Paul for our guide, let us look to
Christ and the Church, that we may know better
what the Christian husband and wife ought to be
one to another ; what the Sacrament of Matrimony
alone can make them — and that, on the condition
of its being well and worthily received, and co
operated with, and followed up.
" Let women be subject to their husbands as to
the Lord ; for the husband is the head of the wife,
as Christ is the Head of the Church ; for He is the
Saviour of the body. But the Church is subjected
to Christ ; and women likewise to their husbands in
everything. And let husbands love their wives,
even as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself
up for her, that He might sanctify her, having
purified her with the washing of water in the word,

A GREAT MYSTERY. 229
that He Himself might present her to Himself a
glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any
such thing ; but that she might be holy and blame
less. So ought men to love their own wives even
as their own bodies; for he that loveth his wife
loveth himself. No man ever yet hated his own
flesh, but nourishes it and cares for it, even as
Christ does the Church ; for we are members of
His body. For this cause shall a man leave his
father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and
they shall be two in one flesh. This is a great
sacrament (but I speak as to Christ and the
Church). But let every one of you in particular
love each his own wife even as himself; and the
wife, in such sort that she fear her husband."
First of all, then, Christ is the Head of the
Church, which is His Body ; and we ourselves are
the various parts and members and organs, of which
that Mystical Body is made up„ And although the
body is subject to the head, and serves the head,
and is ruled by the head, yet the head and body
are not two distinct beings, but parts of one and
the same being — each part necessary for the other ;
both necessary for the whole being. So Christ is
greater than the Church, which ministers to Him,
which is ruled by Him, which is His instrument
and servant ; yet He and His Church are not two
distinct beings, but parts of one mystical whole,
which we sometimes find spoken of indistinctly as
Christ and sometimes as the Church. As the head
needs the body, and the heart, and the limbs, and
as it works and acts through their instrumentality ;

23o A GREAT MYSTERY.
so Christ needs the members of His Body, the
Church, and works and acts through them. And
again, as the body severed from the head is lifeless,
sightless, motionless, and quickly falls to pieces by
decay; so the Church severed from Christ would
perish at once ; the light of her infallible teaching
would be extinguished ; her sacraments would be
empty outward signs, without life-giving power, her
discipline and organization would fall to pieces,
and her members would be severed and dis
persed like dust before the wind. The head does
not regard the body as distinct from itself, but as
making with itself one personality. It does not rule
the body selfishly, as though the two had diverse
interests which might come into conflict, but as
having only one common interest ; and, for a like
reason, the body does not obey the head grudgingly
or of necessity, but gladly and willingly. So with
Christ and the Church there is but one nature, one
end, one desire, one operation.
Once more, it is one and the same spirit or
soul which quickens the head and the body; it
is the same vital spark which warms them both;.
the same blood which flows continually backward.
and forward from the one to the other ; and
likewise it is one and the same Holy Ghost,.
who dwells in His fulness in the God-Man and
who was poured out by Him upon the Church at
Pentecost flowing down from the Head to the
furthest members of the body. It is the same
Blood which courses through the veins and Sacred
Heart of our Saviour, and which fills the chalices of

A GREAT MYSTERY. 231
the Church's daily Sacrifice, and which washes
away the stains of sin in the Sacraments of Baptism
and Penance. It is the fire of one and the same
Divine charity which burns, with its all-but-infinite
intensity and ardour, in Christ our Head, and
feebly but truly in us His members ; for it is kindled
and fanned by the inspiration of one single Spirit.
" No man ever yet hated his own body," says our
teacher, St. Paul, " but nourishes it and cherishes
it, even as Christ does the Church." How tenderly
Christ cares for this Body of His ; how marvellously
He nourishes it with the food of His own Sacred
Flesh ; how He refreshes its thirst and washes its
soil with His own most Precious Blood. Surely we
are bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh ; taken
out of His sacred side, when He slept the deep
sleep on the Cross of Calvary, and built up, into a
"help meet for Him ; " surely, as far as was possible,
He has left His Eternal Father, He has left His
home in Heaven, He has left His Blessed Mother
in tears for our sake, " for us men and for our
salvation," that He might cleave to His Church, to
His Spouse; for He was enamoured of us poor
sinners, and His delight was to be with the sons of
men. It was the custom in the East, as we see in the
story of Esther and Assuerus, that the monarch's
bride, before she was presented to him for marriage,
should undergo a long and tedious course of
ceremonial preparation and purification, involving
various ritual anointings and washings. It is to
this St. Paul makes allusion when he tells us how

232 A GREAT MYSTERY.

nobly and unselfishly Christ loved the Church, as
though some great and glorious prince, enamoured
of a poor, humble village maid, were to disguise
himself meanly and to serve her, and to labour and
suffer and bleed for her, that he might thus win hei
love and raise her up to share his throne, his honour,
and his kingdom. So Christ loved the Church.
He did not send for her imperiously, but came to
her meek and lowly, came veiled in her own human
guise, came to seek and to save that which was lost.
He "gave Himself up for her," as the Shepherd who
gives His life for the perishing sheep, "that He
might sanctify her" with His sanctifying Spirit.
Nor does He leave it to His ministering angels to
prepare and purify her for His embrace ; but He
Himself (avrb? eavrS), the King of Glory, must wash
and purify her with the water and blood that gushed
from His love-pierced Heart. And this labour of
love is going on day by day, as we, the members of
His Body the Church, are being purified and sanc
tified and prepared for the marriage of the Lamb,
when He Himself and no other will present to
Himself the Bride whom He has sought and
purchased, cleansed and purified, and made into
a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or
other sign of her natural mortality and corruption;
but altogether " holy and blameless."
Was there ever a love-myth or romance that
would not read cold and colourless beside this
revelation of God's own passionate love and devo
tion towards His chosen Spouse, a cloud-wrapped
love shrouded in types and figures, which shoots

A GREAT MYSTERY. 233
out a chance ray from the folds of its dark
mantle — a hint and no more of the dazzling
glory behind.
" Behold thou art fair, O My love I1
Behold thou art fair !
Thine eyes are the eyes of a dove ;
As a lily among thorns,
So is My beloved among the daughters.
Arise ! Make haste, My love, My fair one,
and come.
Thou art all fair, O My love,
And there is no spot in thee.
Thou hast wounded My heart, My sister, My
spouse,
With one glance of thine eyes.
One is My love ; My faultless is but one.
Who is she that cometh forth as the rising
morn,
Fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible
as an army set in array ?
Who is this that cometh up from the desert,
Flowing with delights and leaning on her
Beloved.
Put Me as a seal upon thy heart,
As a seal upon thy arm ;
For love is strong as death.
Many waters cannot quench it,
Neither can the floods drown it ;
If a man should give all the substance of his
house for love,
He shall despise it as nothing."
1 Canticles, passim.

234 A GREAT MYSTERY.
And the Bride of the Lamb, the Church, His blessed
Spouse, makes answer :
" I am dark but comely, O ye daughters of
Jerusalem,
As the tents of Kedar,
As the hangings of Solomon.
Do not consider that I am brown
Or that the sun hath altered my colour ;
For it is because the sons of my mother
have fought against me,
And have made me keeper in the vineyard.
Show me, O Thou whom my soul loveth,
Where thou feedest Thy flock, where Thou
liest in the mid-day,
Lest I begin to wander after the flocks of
Thy companions.
As the apple-tree among the trees of the
wood,
So is my Beloved among the sons.
I sat down under His shadow whom l
desired,
And His fruit was sweet to my palate.
Stay me with flowers, compass me about.
with apples,
For I languish with love.
His left hand is under my head and His
right hand shall embrace me.
My Beloved is mine, and I am His
Who feedeth His flocks among the anemones,.
Till the day break and the shadows flee
away."

A GREAT MYSTERY. 235.

It is, therefore, according to St. Paul, as an
adumbration and prefiguring of the oneness of
Christ and His Church that marriage was first
instituted as a great sacrament or sign ; a " mystery,"
or inarticulate hint, as the word means.
But as the sacrifice of the Old Law fell short of
that of the New ; so does the marriage of the Old
Law fall short of the sacramental marriage of
Christians. The Mosaic sacrifices looked forward
to Calvary, the Eucharist looks back upon it ; they
obscurely, as to an unknown future ; It distinctly, as
to a well-defined past. They proclaimed the need
of a victim ; It supplies it. They signified ; It fulfils
and effects. So of Christian Matrimony ; it figures
the espousals of Christ and the Church, not as
a thing that has yet to be, but as a thing which
is already virtually accomplished ; not as a thing
altogether hidden and conjecturable ; but as a
thing to some extent revealed and more clearly
delineated. It not merely points to Christ and the
Church as to the heavenly archetype and ideal of
the matrimonial relationship, but effectually confers
grace whereby the earthly is conformed to the
heavenly, and becomes its created expression and
utterance. Or, to illustrate the same idea again, God in the
beginning gave man corn and grape, bread aud
wine. And from the beginning bread was a "great
sacrament," a sign of God who is the life and
support of man's soul and heart ; a sign of the yet
undreamt-of mysterious Bread which came down
from Heaven to give life to the world, and was laid

236 A GREAT MYSTERY.
in the manger, in the House of Bread ; a sign of the
gathering together of the corn of God's elect from
the four quarters of the earth into one bread and
one body ; a sign of the Christian antitype, the
Eucharistic Bread of Life, which was given us by
the Bread of Life — Himself by Himself, — " He gave
Himself with His own hands." Yet who could have
read this great mystery, this sacramental meaning
in God's good gift ; who but God Himself or His
prophets, to whom His secrets were in part revealed ?
But to us it was revealed in its fulness when Christ
took the bread of our natural life and changed it
into the Bread of supernatural life, and said, "Take,
eat, this is My Body." Similarly he took the
marriage of nature and changed it into the marriage
of grace ; and to the contract, which was already
an outward sign, He attached the inward grace
which it signified; and to the manifold natural
bonds he added a supernatural bond higher and
holier and more insoluble, saying, "Whom God
hath joined together, let no man put asunder"
It is God who ties soul to soul by this mysterious
communication of supernatural grace, of which
neither alone is the complete recipient, but both
together, each having need of the other, each having
power over the other ; and even if ever the law of
nations could permit the breach of the moral and
physical bond, tied by the parties themselves, it can
never give a right or power to sever the bond of
grace, which they have tied, not in their own
person, but only as ministers of the sacrament, as
mere instruments in the hands of God, the principal

A GREAT MYSTERY. 237

author. Divorce from this perfected marriage bond
is as the sin of schism — a rending asunder of the
Mystical Body of Christ.
Christian sacramental marriage, therefore, confers
grace on man and wife to set forth more and more
perfectly in their conduct with one another the
wedded life of Christ and the Church. The two
together are to be one body and one spirit ; not one
body only, but one spirit, one life ; and man's life is
not mere animation, but intelligence. Still more,
he has a supernatural life of grace ; and in this the
two are to be one, as in what is highest and best in
both. Short of this we have a merely human,
natural, unsacramental union ; short of this again,
there is a less than human and purely animal
marriage, which is not even an empty sign of grace.
For if the natural man has a two-fold nature and
work, animal and spiritual, the baptized has a third
and supernatural life and function, the life of grace,
to be developed and perfected and exercised in the
practice of supernatural virtues. And it is in this
third and highest work that he is to seek a help
meet for him in the Christian wife, in the mother of
Christian children.
As one being, man and wife have one and the
same supernatural and spiritual interest. The head
does not use and rule the body as distinct from
itself; nor is the supremacy and authority of the
husband over the wife to be compared to that of
parents over their offspring, who are subjected to
them as totally distinct personalities. He must not
sacrifice or postpone his wife's bodily welfare to his

.23S A GREAT MYSTERY.
own. The head is well when the body is well ; and
when the head suffers, the body suffers with it. The
head must think for the body and the body must
labour for the head, each living for the other as for
itself. Husband and wife each must live for the
other as for themselves ; for the spirit first, and then
for the body; as Christ's first care is for the
Church's sanctification, and then for her temporal
peace. Still there is a true, natural, and willing
subjection of the body to the head ; and the Church
sits ever at the feet of Christ, to learn His will and
to hear His words ; and so too the wife's oneness
with her husband does not free her from a willing
submission to him — a yoke which is for her liberty
and honour and not for her degradation, and which
only galls so far as it is unlawfully resisted.
Once more the head and body are inseparable,
save by death ; Christ and His Church are eternally
united; for He is the King immortal, "of whose
Kingdom there shall be no end." He is the mediator
of an everlasting covenant or marriage-contract
between Himself and His Church, a contract sealed
with the Blood of the New and Eternal Testament.
So man and wife whom the God of grace joins
together by a supernatural tie in the Christian
sacrament, no man may put asunder. It is for God
alone, the Author of life and Lord of death, to
sever by the sword of death the band which the
breath of His Spirit has fastened. There is no
power on earth which can undo what is done by
Christian marriage ; and all pretence at such power
is founded in blindness, ignorance, or blasphemous

A GREAT MYSTERY. 239
denial of Christ and His Church. Moreover, one
head and one body, and no more. Two heads and
one body; two bodies and one head, were a
monstrous violation of nature. Christ has one
Church and only one, " One is My dove, My fault
less one ; " and the Church has but one Christ, one
Life-giver, one Law-giver. And the Christian sacra
ment forbids and nullifies absolutely, what the law
of nature forbids all but absolutely, the simultaneous
union of one man with more than one woman ; so
that adultery, which was always a sin of deadliest
dye, is in a Christian a sacrilege also — a profanation
of a great sacrament.
Again, the Church, the Virgin Spouse of Christ,
through the overshadowing power of His Holy
Spirit, is the joyful mother of His children, " Who
maketh a barren woman to keep house, a joyful
mother of children." "Then shalt thou see, and
abound," is foresaid of the Church, " and thou shalt
say, Who hath begotten me these?" "Thy sons shall
come from afar, and thy daughters shall rise up at
thy side." And of Christ it is said : " Thy wife as a
fruitful vine, on the sides of thy house. Thy children
as olive plants, round about thy table." It is of the
new birth in the font of Baptism that wondering
Nicodemus asks, " Can a man when he is old enter
into his mother's womb and be born again ; " and
he receives for his answer : " Amen, I say to you,
except a man be born again of water and the Spirit
he cannot enter the Kingdom of God."
The Christian parents are not merely imitators,
but in some sense co-operators in this fertility of the

840 A GREAT MYSTERY.
Church. They, together with the ministers of baptism,
are the means by which the Church increases and
multiplies and replenishes the earth and subdues it.
They should, therefore, be conscious and intelligent
agents of Christ in this matter. The Christian mother
should remember that her child is not full-born
until it is born to grace; that the fruit of her
maternity is not the child of wrath, but the child of
grace ; and that the care, nurture, and education of
her offspring has for its principal aim the formation
of their early consciousness to the knowledge, love,
and grace of God — not merely their natural spiritual
perfection, not merely their intellectual and moral
development, but their engracement and supernatural
sanctification. Such being the type, the ideal of Christian
marriage, what shall we say of the reality as we see
it around us in this de-Christianized country, where
Catholics find it so hard, so impossible to keep
mind or heart free from the infectious pestilence of
unbelief, misbelief, and moral corruption ; a country
where the true idea of a sacrament of any sort has
been lost to the people at large for three centuries ;
where the nature of the Church and of her mystical
union with Christ is wholly unknown; where the
Catholic teaching concerning purity and chastity is
simply ridiculed as Manichean in theory and impos
sible in practice ; where the law of the land sanctions
an adulterous remarriage of those who have been
divorced, and permits marriages which in the
Church's eyes are incestuous, null, and void ; whose
religion despises virginity and celibacy, and holds

A GREAT MYSTERY. 241
but lightly to the perpetuity or unity of Christian
marriage. Surely it is only too evident that Protestantism
has done its work thoroughly ; that it has first
rationalized the notion of marriage and robbed it of
all its mystical and spiritual import ; then secularized
what was a sacrament of the Gospel, and betrayed
it into the hands of Csesar ; and by these means has
finally succeeded in degrading and profaning an
institution on whose elevation and purity the whole
fabric of true civilization depends. Even if those
other causes which in some Catholic countries have
retarded the Christian idealization of marriage, have
co-operated with the principles of Protestantism
and hastened their development in this country,
still the development is none the less legitimate.

in.1
It only remains to add a few words on the
subject of the intellect and moral equality of man
and woman as bearing on the Catholic conception of
domestic society. Here, while we have to guard on
the one hand against the false principles on which
the modern movement in favour of the intellectual
and social emancipation of woman is based, and the
excesses to which it is carried, yet on the other
there is a danger lest we suppose the Church to
be altogether hostile to certain conclusions because
1 This is condensed from an article which appeared in the
American Catholic Quarterly, July, 1897.

242 A GREAT MYSTERY.
she is hostile to the premisses from which they are
drawn, or to the spirit in which they are enforced.
In this, as in other matters, we must distinguish
between the practice and sentiments of certain
Catholics and the principles and teaching of the
Catholic religion ; we may not conclude that the
condition of woman in any Catholic country or at any
particular epoch is the product of Catholic principles
unless we can clearly trace the connection. For the
leaven of an idea works its way slowly. The Church
will tolerate much, and will connive at many inevit
able evils attendant on imperfect stages of social
development, if only she can secure the essentials of
religion. She "has many things to say" to the
semi-pagan and semi-barbarian, but they " cannot
bear them yet." The natural growth of subjective
truth cannot be hurried, else it will have no deep
root ; and this is as true of the collective, as of the
individual mind.
It need hardly be stated that the two principles
of self-sufficient individualism and rationalism are
essentially uncatholic and anti-catholic. Although
the Church abhors the socialist extreme which
enslaves the unit to the multitude, making society
an end in itself and not a means to the good of its
several members, yet she holds firmly to the truth
that it is only in and through society — domestic,
civil, or ecclesiastical— that personality can be duly
developed. In the mystical body of Christ she
finds the archetype of all society, whose unity she
accordingly concludes to be rather that of a living
organism than that of an artificial aggregate of

A GREAT MYSTERY. 243
independent units bound to one another by the
force of self-interest. Nemo sibi vivit — " None for
himself," is the law of the former association ; "Each
for himself" is the law of the latter. Together with
this conception of society as a natural organism
goes the doctrine of the right of authority and the
duty of obedience. If the subjection of members to
the head, of parts to the whole, is demanded by
nature, it is therefore commanded by that Personal
Power in and above nature. Hence obedience to
lawful authority becomes a duty to God, and the
right of that authority is, in some sense, Divine. On
the other hand, if all society originates in a free
contract, whereof the motive is self-interest ; if no
unit cares for the universal good except so far as it
is a means to his own isolated advantage, then the
submission is really to self-imposed restrictions, and
eventually one obeys oneself ; which is only a wrong
way of saying he follows his own will, and not
the will of another. In a word, with the artificial or
contract-theory of society, the very notion of obedi
ence must vanish.
As, in the Catholic view, the family is the
simplest social unit, so the conjugal association is
the simplest and germinal form of the family. In
that society of two, as in all society, tbe distinction
between head and body, ruler and ruled, is essential,
because where a conflict of wills in morally indifferent
matters is possible, social life requires a power of
determining and ending such controversy; a right
of decision on the one hand and a duty of acquies
cence on the other. We say "morally indifferent

244 A GREAT MYSTERY.
matters," for where it is a question of right and
wrong and of God's law, the decision of a higher
court has already been given. This right of social
superiority in the conjugal society the Catholic
religion has always attributed to the husband She
has regarded it as the postulate of nature, and there
fore as the command of God. She finds it confirmed
by revelation in the account of the primitive and
Divine institution of marriage, and further, in the
restoration of that institution by Christ to more
than its pristine dignity ; in its elevation to the rank
of a sacrament signifying and effecting a relation
between husband and wife analogous to that which
subsists between Christ the Head, and the Church,
His body, the archetype of all social organism.
" As the Church is subject to Christ, so let women
be to their husbands in all things ; " for " the
husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the
head of the Church." Obedience in all matters
pertaining to that little society, and when nothing
is ordered contrary to any higher authority, is the
wife's duty ; and to command in such matters and
under such limits is the husband's right. And it is
not, as contract -theories conceive it, a right which
the unmarried woman possesses over herself and
which in marriage she gives over to her husband,
as she might give over her fortune ; but one which
springs into existence for the first time together
with the contract. As I cannot obey myself, so
neither can I command or force myself; and, not
having that power myself, I cannot give it to
another. But I can posit the conditions on which

A GREAT MYSTERY. M5

he receives it from the very nature of things ; that
is, from God. In every free promise I put myself
in another's power; yet the power exercised over
me is not and was not mine, but it is the binding
power of truth, or of that Lawgiver who forbids me
to lie and commands me to fulfil my words. In
this sense, all lawful authority is Divine, even as
truth is.
It is, however, important to notice the distinction
between social or official superiority and personal —
a distinction ever insisted on by the Church in the
interests of liberty. Just as, in her ministers and
priests, she bids us discern between the man and
his ecclesiastical office, and assures us that the
personal unfitness of the minister in no way affects
the validity of his ministrations, so, in the question
of jurisdiction, ecclesiastical, civil, or domestic, she
admonishes those in office not to credit themselves
with personal superiority, or to govern, as it were,
in right of possessing greater wisdom, or holiness,
or ability than their subjects ; nor to imagine that
an appointment necessarily carries with it an infal
lible guarantee of aptitude, present, past, or future.
Thus Ignatius of Loyola, who expresses the common
doctrine of the Church in a form peculiarly distress
ing to the pseudo-liberal mind, says, in his well-
known Letter on Obedience : " For indeed it is not
as though he were endued and enriched with
prudence or benevolence or other divine gifts, of
whatever kind, that a superior is to be obeyed, but
only on this account that he holds the place of God,
and exercises His authority, who says : ' He that

246 A GREAT MYSTERY.

heareth you, heareth Me.'" The tyranny of indi
vidualism in government is altogether opposed to
Catholic theory; and we cannot conclude at once
that, because the husband has authority over the
wife, therefore the man is superior to the woman ;
but, at most, that there is in the man, as such, a
certain aptitude for that particular office which is
not found in the woman. Let it suffice, by .way of
illustration of our last remark, to refer to the
Catholic veneration for the Holy Family of Naza
reth, where St. Joseph, as the husband of Mary, held
the office of superior over one who, in the Church's
estimation, was almost immeasurably his better in
light and wisdom and divine grace. Official superi
ority, therefore, does not involve personal superiority,
any more than personal superiority in one point or
more, means superiority in all.
Still less is it in keeping with the Catholic con
ception that, the subjection of the wife should be
slavish, or the government of the husband despotic.
For matrimony is a true " society," and the wife is
soda, and not serva; that is to say, she is, as a
person, both intellectually and morally her husband's
companion and friend, and the end of their associa
tion is not the repression, but the fuller development
of her personality. And this is the Church's ideal
of government everywhere, in home and state, so
far as men are sufficiently imbued with unselfish
and social instincts to profit by it. The law and
the spirit of fear is for the infancy of races ; the
Gospel and the spirit of love for their maturity.
Where the less ideal state of domestic society

A GREAT MYSTERY. 247
prevails, the Church may tolerate it as expedient or
necessary under the circumstances, but she is never
satisfied with it.
Now all this is wholly unintelligible if we accept
the contract-theory of society in general and extend
it to the matrimonial bond. There is, in that view,
as little assignable reason why the wife's place in
the association should be one of inferiority, as why,
in a partnership of any two free individuals for a
common advantage, one should preside over the
other ; and where there is no authority there is no
place for obedience.
Thus an American advocate of Woman's Rights,
in a chapter headed Obey,1 tells us how he protested
one day to a clergyman against the " unrighteous
pledge to obey," used in the Protestant marriage
service :
" ' I hope,' I said, ' to live to see that word
expunged from the Episcopal service, as it has been
from that of the Methodists.'
" ' Why ? ' he asked. ' Is it because you know
they will not obey, whatever their promise ? '
" ' Because they ought not,' I said.
" ' Well,' said he, after a few moments' reflection,
and looking up frankly, ' I do not think they ought.' "
The writer goes on to say : " Whoever is pledged
to obey is technically and literally a slave, no matter
how many roses surround his chains " — from which
we must conclude that soldiers and sailors, civil
servants and all subjects are slaves, or else that they
are perfectly free, morally and physically, to do as
1 Common Sense About Women, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

248' A GREAT MYSTERY.
they like in everything. Finally he says : '' Make
the marriage-tie as close as Church or State can
make it, but let it be equal and impartial. That it
may be so, the word obey must be abandoned or
made reciprocal." The idea of "reciprocal obedi
ence " is hard to grasp, but, as far as we understand
it, it does not augur well for domestic peace. But,
in truth, all obedience is td a superior ; and just so
far as there is equality, obedience is impossible. In
fact, on equalitarian principles the matrimonial
relation is essentially different from what it is con
ceived to be, not only by Christianity, but by the
hitherto unsophisticated reason of mankind. There
are still, even for the equalitarian, certain prudential
motives which make monogamy desirable and divorce
undesirable within given limits, but those limits are
soon reached.
It is absurd and futile for would-be orthodox
writers to contend against the inevitable weakening
of the marriage-bond, which is the necessary result
of certain false social principles, unless they are
prepared to repudiate those principles altogether.
If all authority, civil and ecclesiastical, is only by
delegation from the people, with whom it rests
inalienably; if they not only designate its holder,
but create its binding force; if it represents only
their preponderating wishes and appetites, and not
their judgment of what is eternally and divinely
right and just, — whether they judge for themselves
or choose others to judge for them; if it is merely
self-interest that binds the members of society to
one another; if obedience is only an indirect

A GREAT MYSTERY. 249
following of one's own will, subjected to that
of another freely and revocably; then the self-
interested association of man and woman must
be conceived in the same way, and the word
" obey " either expunged from the Protestant
marriage-service or explained away. Indeed, we
must freely admit that the most advanced and
extravagant ideas of woman's position are but the
logical outcome, a necessary product of equali-
tarianism. That philosophy tends to deny any
difference between the sexes that is not strictly
physiological. It refuses to admit that, morally and
intellectually, they are complementary one of another;
that the perfect humanity, the complete mind and
character is divided between them; that human
parentage includes the mental and moral forma
tion of the offspring, to which both parents are
instrumental and necessary each in their own way.
Beyond the limits of physiology it regards all
differences and inequalities as artificial and iniqui
tous, and it tends logically to the eventual abolition
of matrimony in any recognizable sense of the
term. And now we may inquire in what, precisely,
consists that inequality which, in domestic society,
gives the husband headship over the wife. Those
who make no distinction between what is and what
must be, between what must be and what ought to
be, will freely grant that in the state of rude savagery
the wife depends for protection on the superior
physical force and liberty of the husband, and that
such dependence puts the reins into his hands. But

2so A GREAT MYSTERY.
as social evolution relieves her of this dependence
more and more, it may be asked, What basis remains
for the old relationship ? If woman is not intel
lectually and morally inferior and dependent, why
should she be the one to submit?
Now it is most necessary to observe that
" superior " is here a relative term, implying
some end to be secured. The end in question
is the government of the domestic society, the
government of the members only in matters
pertaining to their common good, and in no
others. For example, when we agree that in the
savage state the man is more fit to govern the
house or wigwam than the woman, we mean that he
is superior in fighting power, being physically less
encumbered. We do not mean that even physio
logically he is a superior being all round, but that,
having some attributes which she has not, he can
secure an end which she cannot — just as, in many
matters, she is superior in virtue of capacities which
he has not.
If, then, woman's subjection in more developed
domestic society is founded on a certain intellectual
or moral inferiority, it does not mean that she is in
all points intellectually or morally inferior to man, but
only other than man ; it does not mean that she is
less fit for high intellectual or moral attainments,
but only less free for government, less often endowed,
with all the qualities, positive and negative, required
for that trust. Whether those qualities are of all
others the most admirable and enviable may be
questioned. Widespread intellectualism is not a con-

A GREAT MYSTERY. 251
dition favourable to social tranquillity and progress ;
far more important are the stolid, practical qualifi
cations to which the Teutonic races owe their steady
progressiveness, and the absence of which makes
free government almost unworkable in more fervid
nations. Where idealism, imagination, and emotion
prevail very widely, they are fatal to that stability
which is needed for social order and growth. It was
not without a touch of humour that Plato looked
forward to the rule of philosophers as an ideal
government; nor should we choose a civil pre
sident on account of the fervour of his piety or
the sublimity of his political conceptions, although
allowing these gifts to be far superior to an insight
into the theory of taxation. What, then, is this
peculiar characteristic which naturally fits man for
the headship in domestic society ? Aquinas tells
us : " There are two kinds of subjection, servile,
and domestic or civil. The latter is the kind of
subjection whereby the woman is by nature subject
to the man, because of the greater rational discretion
which man naturally possesses."
The whole human character in its adequate
perfection is put into commission between the two
sexes. Morally and intellectually, no less than
physiologically, they are complementary; and that
not merely as companions or associates, but as
parents and educators of their offspring. It is on
this natural and necessary diversity of mental and
moral character that matrimonial society is founded.
But when we reflect on the qualities needed for
direction and government, chief among them seems

252 A GREAT MYSTERY.

to be that discretio rationis, or reasoning discern
ment of which Aquinas speaks— a power of taking
a cold, impartial, abstract view of things; a gift
immensely useful, if not very attractive. Not, of
course, that every man possesses this pre-eminently,
but that he does so normally in so far as the mascu
line character is duly developed in him. Where, on
the other hand, it is the wife who excels in this
talent, there usually results a disturbance of due
domestic harmony, or else a complete inversion of
che matrimonial relationships, which confirms the
theory of Aquinas very satisfactorily. It is not,
however, the actual possession of this reasoning
discernment that constitutes or measures the
husband's right to govern, any more than the
authority of any other ruler depends on his
aptitude. The presumption of such aptitude is the
implicit condition of his designation, but the desig
nation is not invalidated by the falseness of the
presumption. The scope of marital government, as we have
already said, is confined to matters concerning the
common domestic good, and the subjection of the
wife is not servile, but social : " for the servant
knoweth not what his master doeth," but the wife
is governed in domestic matters, not despotically,
without reference to her views and inclinations,
but politically, as a person, and with the greatest
deference to those views and inclinations which is
compatible with the common good. Nemo sibi vivit —
" None for himself," is, as we have said, the ideal of
all Christian society. The husband is not made for

A GREAT MYSTERY. 253

the wife, nor the wife for the husband, but each for
the twain.
It will be already evident that there is nothing
in the Catholic view favouring a belief in the general
intellectual or moral inferiority of woman ; and how
perfectly in accord with the mind of Christianity
is her highest development in both respects will
presently appear. Of course, we make a distinction
between necessary and actual inferiority. The former
may be repudiated very plausibly, the latter cannot.
As we have said, the division of labour and of
domestic cares which was needed in rude social
states, and which is now, and perhaps always will
be, needed among the unleisured classes, requires
for the majority of young girls a training which will
fit them for their probable after-work; a training
which concentrates the mind on small, practical
details, and which tends, apart from precautionary
measures, to produce narrowness, except so far as
religion raises the mind to greater and more universal
conceptions. Indeed, the very existence of the
movement for woman's intellectual emancipation is
a confession of an actual and widespread inferiority.
Again, it may be taken for granted that the un
natural will never so far prevail, but that the majority
of married women will always be involved in the
cares of maternity. This, as a heavy tax not only
on the time but on the physical energy necessary for
severe intellectual work, will put them at a serious
disadvantage. In a word, equality of opportunity,
which is essential to fair competition, can never be
accorded to that same majority, owing to conditions

254 A GREAT MYSTERY.

fixed, not by custom, nor by male tyranny, but by
nature. But those who would contend for an altogether
essential inferiority of intellect on the part of women
have a very difficult thesis to prove, for the simple
reason that all their instances are met either by
denying equality of opportunity, or by the contention
that diversity of intellectual gifts is not the same as
inferiority. In proportion as equal opportunities
are given from the first, we see everywhere a
practical refutation of their view.
How much the Catholic religion, which exalts a
Woman to the highest place in creation, favours
and furthers her intellectual and moral development
and ignores any such essential difference, is plain
from a retrospect of the past. Let me quote the
results of an admirable article in the Catholic World
for June, 1875, none the less appropriate because
written in reply to Mr. Gladstone's taunt to the
effect that the conquests of the Catholic Church in
England were " chiefly among women," and there
fore of no account. After noting the homage done
to woman's intellectual power by the religions of
Greece and Rome in the worship of a woman as
the goddess of wisdom, and patroness of just and
humane warfare ; in the cultus of Vesta, of the
Muses, of the Fates, of the Graces, and in the
honouring of such names as Rhea, Alcestis, Ariadne,
Alcyone, and so forth, the article goes on to notice
her place in the Old Testament, as exemplified in
the prophetesses and wives of the patriarchs ; in
Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah, Ruth,

A GREAT MYSTERY. 255

Esther, and many others. Then we are reminded
how it was among women that Christ found His
most numerous, apt, and constant disciples when
on earth, thus coming under the lash of Mr. Glad
stone's sarcasm. St. Paul speaks of the women who
laboured with him in the Gospel. Timothy learnt
the Scriptures from Lois and Eunice. St. Thecla1
was skilled in profane and sacred science and philo
sophy, and excelled in the various branches of
polite literature. St. Apollonia preached the faith
at Alexandria, and converted many by her eloquence.
St. Catharine devoted herself to the study of philo
sophy, especially that of Plato, and confuted the
ablest Pagan philosophers of her day. She is
honoured as the patroness of learning and eloquence
and of scholastic theology, and art represents her as
the Christian Urania. After remarking that "the
increasing demand which we have on every side for
a more substantial and scholarly training of the sex
does not look forward to that which they never had,
but backward to what they have lost or abandoned,"
the writer reminds us how it was St. Macrina who
taught SS. Basil and Gregory; how SS. Cosmas and
Damian were instructed by Theodora. " Even as
early as the second century," writes a distinguished
scholar, " the zeal of religious women for letters
provoked the satire of the enemies of Christianity."
St. Fulgentius was educated by his mother, who
made him learn Homer and Menander by heart.
St. Paula stimulated St. Jerome to some of his
greatest writings, and St. Eustochium was a faultless
1 St. Paul's disciple.

256 A GREAT MYSTERY.
Hebrew scholar. St. Chrysostom dedicated seventeen
of his letters to St. Olympias; and St Marcella's
acquirements won her the title of the " glory of the
Roman ladies " The convents of England in the
seventh and eighth centuries vied with the monaste
ries in letters. St. Gertrude was skilled in Greek, and
it was a woman who introduced the study of Greek
into the monastery of St, Gall. St. Hilda was con
sulted on theology by Bishops assembled in council.
Queen Editha, wife of St. Edward the Confessor,
taught grammar and logic. St. Boniface was the
teacher of a brilliant constellation of literary
women.1 We are told of women who were familiar
with the Greek and Latin Fathers ; of an abbess
who wrote an encyclopssdia of all the science of her
day ; of a nun whose Latin poems and stanzas were
the marvel of the learned , of the injunction of the
Council of Cloveshoe (747) that abbesses should
diligently provide for the education of their nuns ;
of the labours of Lioba in conjunction with St. Boni
face ; of a convent school whose course included
Latin and Greek, Aristotle's philosophy, and the
liberal arts; of women in the Papal University of
Bologna eminent in canon law, medicine, mathe
matics, art, literature ; of Prosperzia de' Rossi, who
taught sculpture there ; of Elena Cornaro, a doctor
at Milan ; of Plautilla Brizio, the architect of the
chapel of St. Benedict at Rome. In the eighteenth
century we find women taking their degrees in juris
prudence and philosophy at the Papal Universities.
In 1758 we have Anna Mazzolina professing anatomy
1 " Valde eruditae in liberali scientja."

A GREAT MYSTERY. 257
at Bologna, and Maria Agnese appointed by the
Pope to the chair of mathematics. Novella d'Andrea
taught, canon law for ten years at Bologna, and a
woman succeeded Cardinal Mezzofanti as professor
of Greek. Still more abundant and overwhelming
is the evidence for woman's moral and spiritual
equality with man in the Church's esteem. If forti
tude is in question, we have SS. Thecla, Perpetua,
Felicity, Agnes, Lucy, Agatha, Cecilia, Apollonia,
Catharine, and innumerable hosts of women who
faced the torments of martyrdom. If men have
forsaken their homes for the Gospel's sake in their
thousands, women have done so in their tens of
thousands, though for them the wrench, as a rule, is
far more violent and painful. In self-denial, in
austerity, in patient endurance, in silence, in un
selfish devotion to Christ's poor, in all that is rightly
supposed to demand the highest degree of courageous
self-mastery, they have shown themselves, if not
superior, at least fully equal to the other sex.
If the number of men saints exceeds that of
women, it must be recollected that the canonized
represent but a handful of the saints, and chiefly
those whose sanctity was notorious and before the
public gaze; a fact which lessens the chances for
the official recognition of female sanctity. For the
same reason it is observable how far more frequent
is the canonization of bishops than of simple priests,
although no one would suppose that saintly priests
were less numerous than saintly bishops, considering
the numerical proportion of one order to the other.
Again, it may be plausibly contended that sanctity
R

258 A GREAT MYSTERY.
in men is more evidently miraculous and out of the
common than in women, who, in a sense, are
naturally devout and spiritual-minded.
It would be tiresome to enumerate the religious
orders and congregations founded and ruled by
women. Indeed, the extent to which the Church
has entrusted women with jurisdiction and right of
government would seem opposed to the doctrine of
Aquinas, referred to above, were it not that this juris
diction was very rarely exercised over communities
of men, and was usually dependent on higher authority
vested in bishops or prelates.
In the light of all this, it is impossible to deny
that where the Church has her way, and is not
trammelled by local prejudices, she desires the
fullest possible mental and moral development of
women compatible with the discharge of the social
duties required by nature and God's law. Here,
as elsewhere, the natural organization of society
forbids, and will always forbid, absolute equality
of opportunity. But it is the aim of sane progress
to eliminate all unjust and unreasonable inequa
lities, and to secure the least possible waste of
those spiritual energies in which the true power
and wealth of every society consists. Nor must we
suppose that it is only in the leisured and unmarried
that the Catholic religion desires culture. The
Church knows far too well the power and influence
of the wife and mother not to see that their elevation
means the elevation of both husband and children,
and that eventually it is they who give the moral
tone to the whole community. Woman is naturally

A GREAT MYSTERY. 259
the guardian of the spiritual wealth of the family,
and for that trust, especially in these days, mere
piety, which is not also educated and intelligent, is
of little avail. The first formation of the mind is
from the mother, and the impressions which she
leaves are indelible. It may truly be said that
whatever the Christian religion has done for the
elevation of public morals, it has done through the
instrumentality of women. A brief study of Mr.
Devas's admirable little book on Family Life will
confirm what perhaps no one with any knowledge of
human history will dispute, and will prove that where
woman is debased and basely thought of, there, in
proportion, public morality is at a low ebb.
We must not credit the Catholic religion with
the sentiments of certain recluses of the desert who,
under the bias of Oriental influence, consider a fierce
contempt for women to be a great point of virtue ;
who insist much on the priority of Eve's share in
our racial disaster, forgetting that theology regards
it as quite insignificant compared with that of
Adam, and more than abundantly counterbalanced
by the part of Mary in our redemption ; who look
upon all the immorality in the world as an evil
brought upon man by that creature which God made
to be a "help meet for him"— a little touch ot
Manicheism, such as induces some to regard wine
as essentially demoniacal because men choose to
drink too much of it. A moment's reflection will
show that it is in the reverence for and not in the
contempt of woman that purity must look for its
only reliable safeguard ; and it is with this in her

260 A GREAT MYSTERY.
mind that the Church counsels a devotion to the
Virgin Mother in the interests of that virtue.
In conclusion, if we contrast the Catholic ideal
of womanhood with that of modern irreligion — one
the fair fruit of sound reason enlightened by Catholic
faith, the other the base issue of crude equalitari-
anism and sense-philosophy — there is little difficulty
in seeing that the former conception is strong and
full of energies yet to be developed, while the latter
contains within itself the principle of its own decay
and death. The downfall of the family, the pro
fanation of marriage, means the downfall and
profanation of woman. Whether she likes to allow
it or not, it is only in virtue of a waning survival
of that chivalrous spirit which Christianity created
and fostered, that the "new woman," as she is
called, is able to elbow her way to the front as she
does. If man is ever rebarbarized by the withdrawal
of the softening influence of home, if woman becomes
nothing more to him than a competitor in the general
struggle for wealth, she will eventually be forced
down to that degradation which has always been
her lot under the reign of pure selfishness and brute
force. If it is her greater unselfishness which has
caused her so much suffering in the past, it has also
been the cause of her great power for good. Self
ishness is brute force; unselfishness a spiritual
force. She can never compete with man if the
contest is to be one of brute force. It is the Catholic
Church who has raised her, and, through her, has
raised the world, though both processes are still
struggling but slowly towards completion,

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.

" If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments ; if
thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven : and come,
follow Me."— St.Matt. xix. 17, 21.
As there is a growing disposition on the part of
some to speak dispar? gingly of what is called the
"religious state" as though it were something
merely adventitious to the Catholic religion ; some
thing useful and perhaps necessary for past ages but
rather out of place in our own times; a desirable
ornament when not procured at too extravagant a
cost ; it may not be amiss to say a few words on
the nature of this institution, its place in the Church
and its relation to the Christian religion. As intel
ligent Catholics, such knowledge ought to interest us
for its own sake ; but living as we do among non-
Catholics who are continually crying down the life
of perfection and the practice of the Evangelical
Counsels, it is doubly necessary that we should
have a firm grasp of the truth both for their sake
and for our own, to silence if not to convince them,
and to satisfy ourselves. And be it noticed that our
present scope is to defend, not religious orders in
the concrete, nor monasticism, but the religious
state in general, that is, the profession of the three

262 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
Evangelical Counsels, — whether independently, or
in a society with others ; whether in the world, or
in the cloister, or in the hermitage. The religious
state is a permanent and essential feature of Catholic
Christianity; whereas the particular orders or insti
tutions into which religious have at various times
enrolled themselves for corporate action in the
Church's service, are contingent and transitory,
varying with the necessities of the age and locality :
"They have their day and cease to be." But the
religious state lives with the life of the Church, of
which it is an essential manifestation.
St. Paul boasts — and he is a great boaster — that
the world is crucified to him and he to the world •
and " God forbid," says he, " that I should boast in
anything save only in the Cross of Christ." The
Cross has become so outwardly honoured since
those days ; such an object of worship and adora
tion ; so rayed round with secular glory from the
labours of poet and painter, that his words do
not sound so mad in our ears as they did in
the ears of those who looked on crucifixion as we
do on hanging or penal servitude, and who felt as
little reverence for the Cross as we do for the
gallows or the tread-mill. To get the full flavour
of his sentiment we should have to put the word
gallows instead of cross, and hanged instead of
crucified. His meaning is that, as far as we are
permeated with the spirit of the Gospel, so far
shall we feel an ever-growing contempt for the
life and conduct and aims of the spirit of worldli-
ness wheresoever manifested : in Catholics or non-

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 263
Catholics ; in Christians or non-Christians ; in its
professed votaries or in its professed enemies. It is
not the world but worldliness which is hateful to
God — a subtle leaven of unbelief and selfish egoism
lurking in all our hearts ; and breaking out like a
plague over the millions of humanity. And as our
contempt of worldliness increases, so too will our
reverence for the " Evangelical Counsels " and the
religious state increase. For just as the Church of
Christ took the hated giobet and lifted it above her
altars, and taught men to bow down and worship
what the world spat upon and trampled under foot ;
so by the existence of her religious she continually
sets the world at defiance ; and teaches men to love
and honour and — when it is God's will — to embrace
what the world hates and despises and flies from, —
namely, poverty, self-restraint, mortification, obedi
ence, submission, humility.
Our Divine Saviour is rightly said to have
sanctified and exalted and imparted a sort of sacra
mental dignity to whatever He touched, or used, or
made in any way His own. It is the instinct of
love to choose the lot, to imitate the ways of those
we love. " Lord," says Peter, " I will go with Thee
to prison and to death." It was the purpose of God
to govern and reform the world, not by theories and
philosophies, out by this imitative power of personal
love ; to draw men's hearts to Himself so that it
should be their chief glory and joy to live as He
lived, choosing and loving the lot which He chose
and loved; walking in the paths trodden by His
blessed feet.

264 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
But the world into which He came was a world
where riches, wealth, possessions were worshipped
and idolized to the ruin of souls and the dishonour
of God. " Idolized," because they were sought as an
end in themselves ; or sought in a spirit of selfish
individualism, not for the common good, but for
the exclusive good of the unit; where accordingly
wealth was acquired by fraud and oppression of the
poor; where the labourer was despised by the
capitalist as the vanquished by the conqueror. For
it was not only the little world of Judea two thou
sand years ago, but the great world of all the nations
and ages that He came to heal. It was in answer
to the cry which to-day goes up to the ears of God
from the oppressed millions of humanity no less
than to the cries and groanings of past ages that
He has come down as Emmanuel — God, one of
ourselves ; Jesus, the Carpenter of Nazareth.
To poor and rich alike the love of wealth is
the most fruitful source of misery, spiritual and
temporal. Superabundance on the one hand is a snare to
the rich, making them feel independent of God in
so many ways, like the fool who said, " Soul,
take thy ease; thou hast much riches laid up."
Furthermore, it is the key to endless pleasures and
enjoyments the appetite for which, when unduly
indulged, grows insatiable and tyrannical ; and
breeds that sensuality which blinds the understand
ing to every spiritual conception and makes the
heart cruel and selfish. It is no less the passport
to vain honour and to influence, which also come

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 265
quickly to be desired as ends in themselves with
a spiritual hunger less degrading but really more
soul-destroying than the craving for luxuries and
enjoyments. The mere possession of superabundant
wealth is no sin in itself, no injustice, as socialists
pretend it must necessarily be ; but it is a continual
occasion, almost a proximate occasion, of such
tendencies and temptations as we have just spoken
of. For it is all but impossible for ordinary souls
to possess wealth and yet not to love it ; and " the
love of money is the root of all evil." How few
are they who not only believe but who realize that
their wealth is given them by God only for the
common good; and that if they are allowed certain
superfluities and enjoyments as the fruit of their
own or their parents' industry, it is only because
the common good requires that there should be such
reasonable differences, and that there should be a
stimulus. to industry; and because social unity re
quires that we should share often both good and evil,
wealth and poverty, reward and penalty for which
we are not personally responsible. Hence it is not
against the poor but for the poor that the rich hold
their wealth; insomuch as the poor are members
of the same body. It is in the power of doing good
that the true privilege of wealth and position lies.1
"Let him that sitteth at meat be as him that
serveth," says our Saviour, who was at once Lord
of lords and Slave of slaves. To rule is to be great,
because to serve is to be great ; to have is happiness,
1 " He wished to reign," says Wilhelm Meister, speaking of
Hamlet, " only that good men might be good without obstruction."

466 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
because to give is happiness. " It is more blessed
to give than to receive." And besides all this, it
is the tendency of superabundant riches to ruin the
spiritual independence of man by making him the
slave of imaginary necessities. History everywhere
testifies to the social and national decay consequent
on the selfish accumulation and selfish use of wealth.
We must not find fault with productive expenditure;
nor even with such as promotes the moral, intel
lectual, and physical development of individuals.
For society is helped and strengthened by the multi
plication of healthy, intelligent, and moral citizens.
We are not Vandals or Puritans to deny the
refining pleasures of fine art to those who can
afford them ; nor are we so narrow-minded as not
to see that there is such a thing as useful leisure ;
and that the existence of a leisured class is not
necessarily a source of corruption, but might be and
ought to be a helpful factor in the general well-
being. It is against the enervating effects of luxury
that we protest ; against the indulgence of sensu
ality; against the squandering of possibilities of
happiness and of true utilities, to no purpose or to
an evil purpose.
Again : to the poor, no less than to the rich, the
love of wealth is a source of misery. For not all
who are poor in fact, are poor in spirit; and
grasping avarice is confined to no class of society.
No doubt where there is real insufficiency and desti
tution it is impossible — apart from miracles of grace
— but that the heart must be eaten up with cares,
or hardened with despair. On such poverty, the

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 267
fruitful mother of vice, our Saviour has pronounced
no blessing; but only a curse on those who are
responsible for it. But it is often the comfortable
poor who are most enslaved to a desire of accu
mulating ; to a thrift that has become an end
itself, instead of reasonable means to a reasonable
end. It was therefore needful for us that our Saviour
by embracing poverty should make that state of life
more honourable and more lovable to His followers.
He knew that it was as difficult for a rich man to
use his riches unselfishly as for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle ; He knew that for the
majority it was far better, safer, happier to be
actually poor, to have less rather than more, and
to be content with that less. And that they might
be not only content but better pleased with that
lot, He made it His own. To the anti-social,
selfish spirit of worldliness nothing is more hateful
than poverty ; none are more contemptible than the
poor ; and so, to condemn and defy the world and
to show His contempt for its judgment, our God
came among us as a poor man, labouring for His
daily bread in the sweat of His brow. He embraced
poverty and thereby made it something divine —
Holy Poverty, the Bride of Christ :
With Christ she climbed the cross of woe,
When even Mary stayed below.1
He shared it with His Blessed Mother, with
St. Joseph, with His Apostles, and with His closest
1 Dante, Paradiso, ai.

268 The way of The counsels'.
friends. To them He says, speaking of that per
fection which is counselled though not commanded :
" If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast
and give to the poor . . . and come and follow
Me," the Son of Man who have not where to lay My
head. And let us notice in passing that the spirit
of poverty is not a spirit of economy or parsimony ;
not a spirit of keeping, but of giving. It sells all,
in order to give to the poor; after His example,
"who, though He was rich, yet for our sake He
became poor," and " emptied Himself of His glory."
It is the spirit of devotion, self-sacrifice, self-forget-
fulness ; the very antithesis and antidote of the love
of acquisition. Again : it was not well possible for our Saviour
to choose any but the harder lot and the lot of the
majority. Which of us could bear to go well-clad
or to feast sumptuously, or to make merry, if one
most near and dear to us were in destitution and
pain and poverty? Even though we could in no
way by self-privation relieve his misery, yet love
and sympathy would make the inequality intolerable
to us, and we should be restless and miserable till
we were on the same level as he. True, common-
sense has no justification of such a sentiment ; but
there is something in us, thank God, much diviner
than common sense ; something that is a spark
from that fire that burns in the Human Heart of
God Incarnate. It was not merely to guide us,
to encourage us, to feel with us and for us, that our
great High Priest was tempted and tried with all
our temptations and trials ; but because love is

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 269
miserable until it shares the sorrows of the beloved ;
it feels itself false and disloyal if it enjoys any
advantage in solitude. Pauperes semper habetis vobis-
cum ; He knew there would always be poor while the
world lasted ; and, furthermore, that the poor would
always be in the majority. For, whatever econo
mists dream to the contrary, the rich will be few
and the poor will be many. But our Saviour was
necessarily with the majority; for the few are for
the many and not the many for the few ; the rich
are for the poor and not the poor for the rich ; the
gifted for the needy and not the needy for the gifted.
Again : He had come on a mission of repara
tion to make atonement for the sins of the world.
He saw, as none other saw, the torrents of iniquity
and corruption that streamed from this one source
of avarice or the selfish love of wealth ; and there
fore, despising what the world loved and loving
what the world despised, He willingly and freely
chose to be poor rather than to be rich.
And the Church, His Spouse, has faithfully
guarded His doctrine in this matter of poverty ; and
she proclaims it not only by word of mouth, but
by the continual object-lesson given by the pro
fessors of voluntary poverty. She allows and en
courages her children, if only they are called thereto
by God, to make obligatory on themselves by vow
what is of counsel and free to all ; to seal a contract
with poverty and to make her their bride as she
was the bride of Christ.
Let us pause to notice that the sacredness of the
marriage tie and the specific distinctiveness of

270 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
conjugal love depends on the bond being irrevocable
at will and perpetual. So he who gives himself to
poverty irrevocably, who locks the fetter and casts
away the key, loves her with a devotion far higher in
kind and degree than he who embraces her at will or
takes her on trial or with the possibility of a divorce
in view. And so of religious vows in general. It is
excellent to practise continence or obedience; but
far more excellent to vow oneself to the practice.
The very idea of a vow is somewhat discordant
with many of the dominant notions and sentiments
of modern life. Any voluntary sacrifice of liberty
is looked upon with suspicion as savouring of
fanaticism. But this suspicion is at root akin to
that which looks askance at every form of asceticism
or self-imposed mortification on the grounds that
what God has given us to enjoy He cannot desire
or intend us to forego — a fallacy which destroys not
only mortification, but all self-restraint and morality.
It is no violation of our liberty to be bound by the
law of God to do right instead of wrong ; nor is it
a violation of our liberty when by a self-imposed
law we bind ourselves to do better instead of well.
Nothing curtails our liberty but what restricts our
power of doing well or doing better. There is no
such prejudice against the notion of a vow where
the service of God is not in question. History and
romance and poetry abound with instances of heroic
self-devotion to noble causes and enterprises sealed
by vow, which elicit unqualified admiration from all
who do not wish to be thought void of right senti
ment. Who will find fault with the hero pf a recent

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 271
fancy sketch of considerable merit,1 who vowed his
life and labour to the task of bridging a mountain
torrent which had for years exacted its toll of
human life ? We are told how " he toiled day after
day, and the pains of loneliness and poverty were
ever with him ; but the pain which had brought the
man's vow to birth spurred him on and helped him
to that endurance which is always heroism." And
then we read how later he awoke to the existence
of life's pleasures and of his own latent capacities
for enjoying them which his vow had doomed to
death ; how he " had mingled with his fellow-men —
with women too ; he had seen their pleasures, their
hopes, their loves, their happy lives, and he craved
the same ; " . . . how his humanity " revolted against
the self-appointed dreariness of his existence " when
" in one hour he realized that hope and love were
not for him. He had vowed a vow that swallowed
up all gentler obligations ; which demanded all his
strength, all his days. ... He had paid out the
grandest years of his life for an impulsive whim,
and what had he gained ? Was he obliged to yield
his own life — the life he could never live again . . .
for the sake of a few lives in a far-off corner of the
land, a few pangs in hearts which had quite for
gotten him ? " But ever the thought of his vow
comes to the assistance of his better self. He lives
till the necessary wealth is realized at great sacrifice;
he returns to his country after years ; and on the
threshold of home he himself falls a victim to the
same cruel torrent whose foe he had sworn himself,
1 Man. By L. Q. Couch-

272 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
and ere he sinks overcome, his last gaze rests on
the bridge of his dreams, built easily long before by
the wealth of others.
Few perhaps will care to withhold their praise
from such an act of heroic self-devotion, even
though in the issue it was fruitless of the results
it aimed at so nobly and at such cost. But when
it is a question of devotion to the service of God,
to the salvation not of a few lives, but of many
souls, to the maintenance of the cardinal principles
of the Gospel and of the Eternal Life here and
hereafter, then and then only are men alarmed for
the interests of liberty and fearful of the encroach
ments of fanaticism. It has never been suggested
that there was aught of servility in the profession
of knighthood in the days of chivalry, when men
bound themselves With such vows as is a shame
A man should not be bound by, yet the which
No man can keep.
Even though it be allowed that
The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself,
And being snapped,
We run more counter to the soul thereof
Than had we never sworn,
yet the fact that a profession is high and difficult,
and that therefore a greater percentage of those who
make it must fall short, and falling from a greater
height make greater havoc, in no way argues against
its lawfulness or rightfulness, unless we are prepared
to carry the principle of dishonourable safeness to

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 273
the repudiation of Christianity itself and of the
baptismal vows.
It is then in sympathy with the intentions and
motives of Jesus Christ that souls here and there
are drawn to the profession of poverty; loving it
first of all for His sake, that is, because He loved it
and made it His own ; and then, more intelligently
entering into His mind, they love it for the sake of
mankind because it is the harder lot and the lot
of the many, and because they see that the love
of riches is the source of all kinds of social misery
and injustice ; and therefore they give themselves to
the preaching of poverty by their life and example,
giving up freely the wealth, or the opportunities of
wealth, they might otherwise have lawfully enjoyed.
And finally, in a spirit of reparation for all the dis
honour done to God by the worship of money, they
do not merely accept the poverty that may be laid
upon them in the course of Providence contentedly
and cheerfully, but they freely make themselves poor
for ever.
But against all this doctrine economists urge
that the love of money, the desire to procure
comforts and to raise the standard of enjoyments,
is the root of all good, that is, of all progress and
increase of national wealth which eventually redounds
to the relief of destitution and poverty. Christ says :
"Sell all and give to the poor." He desires that
poverty should be relieved. He regards it therefore
as an evil. He insists strongly and frequently on
this duty. Plainly, to find the causes of poverty
and to remove them is the truest and most universal

274 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
kind of charity. May it not be said, they urge, that
He is preoccupied rather with the evil of super
abundant riches, that is, of capitalism, than with
the excellence of poverty; that it is only freedom
from those particular evils which makes poverty
preferable, in spite of other evils of its own.
To this there is but one answer. It is most true
that where there is no love of money or of comforts
there will be industrial stagnation, much poverty,
and widespread destitution, and it would be wrong
and mischievous to allow that Christianity is in any
way hostile to true and rational progress ; or that
the real interests of this world and the next were
incompatible. The world is one thing and worldliness another.
The latter is an enemy of the interests of Christianity;
but it is also an enemy of the interests of the world.
For though Christianity seeks first the Kingdom of
heaven, it seeks ipso facto the advent of that Kingdom
upon earth ; and that God's will may be done on
earth, in the individual, in the family, in the State,
in things temporal as it is in things eternal, " as it
is in heaven." Truth, justice, equity, charity, hap
piness, liberty, fraternity — what are these but the
will of God ? And what are they but the rational
ends of progress, the truest interests of this world
which God so loved that He gave His only Son to
die for it ? " What God has joined together let no
man put asunder." This world and the next are
related as body and soul. The body is subordinate
to the soul ; but it is not its enemy, not even its
slave, but its companion, its helper, its friend.

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 275

Both, we believe, are to be glorified together ; and
we also believe that in some undreamt-of way the
kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms
of God and of His Christ ; and that a renewed and
purified heaven and earth will supervene upon
the old.
It is absurd and narrow-minded to regard
modern progress and civilization as being the pure
result either of Christian or of anti-Christian prin
ciples and tendencies. It is a mixed product con
taining much good and much evil inextricably
intertwined, as are the roots of wheat and tares in
the Master's field. All that is really good in it is
the fruit of the eternal and necessary principles of
the Gospel ; all that is evil is from the selfish spirit
of worldliness. Were it possible to root out the
tares, the wheat would grow more freely and fruit
fully. What chokes and retards civilization is the
same weed of worldliness which strangles the Gospel
and forbids its full development and expansion.
What do socialists and individualists revile one
another with, except with the disregard of Gospel
principles; with avarice, with luxury, with injustice,
with tyranny ?
Many glib talkers are zealous to prove that the
Church's influence must be altogether in the interests
of progress and civilization; but they never pause
to define the nature of true progress and civilization,
or to question whether what passes for such really
deserves the name. That we live in an age of com
mercial and industrial progress cannot be denied;
but it must not be assumed that the best and truest

276 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS
wealth is material, or that the multiplication of
comforts and conveniences is the measure of culture.
We cannot determine the nature and direction of
true progress till we are agreed about the nature of
man, the purpose of human life, the character and
conditions of true happiness. If this world is the
best we have to hope for ; if it is our brief home ; if
pain, sorrow, and affliction are unmitigated evils ;.
if our only wisdom is to gather, multiply, and hoard
whatever little enjoyment can be crowded into a few
years, then, indeed, it cannot be denied that the
current notion of progress and civilization is satis
factory. But if this life is chiefly a school of suffering
in which man is taught to master himself and ta
endure all things for the love of truth and principle
and right, for the love, that is, of God and God's
cause ; if sorrow, pain, and affliction are evils only
under certain conditions, but are as often, or more
often, the very food and medicine of our spiritual
and moral development; if conscience, and faith,.
and divine love, if purity, unselfishness, patience,
meekness, compassion be the highest exercise of
man's highest faculties, then indeed the civilization
which the Church could encourage and sympathize
with would be very different from the frankly godless
and animal civilization of our times.
We do not deny that amid the prevalence of
grosser principles and motives, the " Power that
makes for Righteousness" strives unceasingly to
assert itself and to mitigate the shameless impetus
of the rush for comforts. But in proportion as sl
tendency is downward rather than upward and ideal,.

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 277
it is strong, and universal and persistent ; so that
from the very nature of things an ideal civilization
is something indefinitely far away, and, therefore,
although the Church is not only the ally but in
some sense the mother of true civilization, and
of whatever good there is in the present civili
zation, yet historically speaking she has always
been, and will always be, at war with that which
calls itself civilization and progress, but is not. She
can never acquiesce in the view that as selfishness
is, so it ought to be the dominant motive of human
conduct, upon which alone we can calculate, with
scientific certainty. She will not purchase the
stability of civilization by contenting herself with
aims that are safe and facile because they are low.
She prefers to fail for ever rather than lower her
standards one inch. For she knows " How far high
failure overleaps the bound of low successes."
Let it be granted then that if the Gospel forbids
us to seek more than bare sufficiency of food and
raiment ; or to make provision for the future ; or to
compete with others in the race of life ; if its ideal
is a life in the desert apart from all human interest ;
if it inculcates mortification of every sense and every
affection as an end in itself in the spirit of Buddhistic
pessimism ; if it teaches us to despise the great
drama of human history as an unmeaning " tale told
by an idiot" — as though He who cares for the
individual life cared naught for the life of cities and
nations — if all this be the essential tendency of
Christianity, then indeed it is the enemy of civiliza
tion and progress. But this is an ignorant travesty

278 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
of the Gospel which has never been accepted by
the Catholic Church, however favoured by certain
heresies which have arisen within her and broken off
from her. We are forbidden to seek temporal things
first, that is as the profane and worldly-minded seek
them, who regard them as ends and not as means ;
we are forbidden — not foresight and prudence — but
anxiety and fretfulness in these matters; we are
forbidden to advance ourselves at the expense and
to the injury of others; to seek our own good at the
sacrifice of the common good; we are forbidden
even in temporal matters to seek the lower in pre
ference to higher necessities and enjoyments; to
indulge in senseless display and luxurious, wasteful
sensuality ; we are forbidden all that degrades and
enervates the individual and thereby weakens society;
we are forbidden such aggrandizement as causes
atrophy and anemia in the lower members of the
body-social, and hypertrophy and plethora in the
higher — a double cause of social decay and death.
But nowhere does the Gospel -teach us to despise
any good creature of God's which used in due
measure and season promotes human happiness and
leads us to serve and praise Him better than before.
If a corrupt and luxurious civilization deadens and
debases the soul; yet it cannot be denied that of
itself civilization tends to the development of man's
spiritual faculties, and thereby renders him a more
fitting instrument of the Divine praise. Even know
ledge has deservedly come into certain disrepute in
an age where it is worshipped merely as eventually
productive of multiplied comforts. But this perver-

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 279
sion does not make it less true that knowledge feeds
and ministers to wisdom ; and that extended know
ledge is one of the principal fruits of civilization.
Civilization is a good thing ; one of God's helps to
salvation ; it is therefore a grace to be sought and
laboured for. Starvation, destitution, suffering are
not ends in themselves,, and if, when endured or
embraced in obedience to God's will, they are means
to the very highest end, yet charity bids us impera
tively relieve them in others, however gladly we
might put up with them ourselves. Fight these
miseries how we will, yet the very nature of things
will always secure their prevalence, for we are but as
children building sand walls against the tide.
But there is, thank God, an unselfish love of
riches that can more than supply all that energy
which is requisite for progress and civilization. As
it is, when a man works for his family he usually
works harder than for himself alone. But it is the
tendency of Christian charity to throw down the
barriers of family and clan, and without lessening
the measure of our love for our immediate kin, or
destroying its due gradation, to allow our affec
tions to stretch indefinitely to the furthest limit of
humanity. Indeed the extent to which the wavelets
circle out depends on the force of the central dis
turbance; and it is the deepest love that spreads
most widely with least diminution of intensity. Our
Blessed Saviour, whose love reached to every son of
Adam, past, present, and future, loved His Mother
and special friends with an intensity proportioned
to the same infinite reach of His world-wide love.

280 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
Is there not enough evidence in the past and present,
of the existence of nobler and wider hearts which
have preferred the general good to their own; of
men who have, like the Good Shepherd, laid down
their life for their flock ; is there not enough heroic
unselfishness even now in the world to bid us hope
that what family-love can do, a love of humanity
fed by Christian faith and hope and charity may
effect one day more abundantly ? As the false philo
sophies of pagandom prepared the world to receive
the truths after which they were vainly groping;
so the pseudo-humanitarianism of our day seems
to be making possible a fuller declaration of the
Christian doctrine of fraternity and love than would
have been listened to last century.
Therefore as a man who understands that to rule
is to serve, may ambition rule simply out of love of the
many and a desire to serve them ; so a man may
ambition wealth just because it increases his power
of doing good, of perfecting himself and those who
are connected with him in due gradation from the
nearest to the furthest, within a sphere which is
increased by every accession to his riches.
In no sense, therefore, is the love of personal
poverty hostile to civilization. It is compatible
with the love of riches ; provided this be an unselfish
love. Plainly it is compatible with a keen desire to
get money in order to give to the poor. " Let him
that stole," says St. Paul, "steal no more; but rather
let him labour, working with his hands, that he may
have wherewith to give to him that is in need ; " 1
' Ephes. iv.

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 281
let him no longer seek wealth selfishly at the expense
of others, but let him for the love of others get all
he can by honest endeavour in order to make himself
useful and not hurtful to society. All wealth that is
reasonably and unselfishly used is for the general
good and redounds to the relief of the poor. Yet,
as has been said, it is easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
use his wealth unselfishly. With God it is possible ;
-and Christianity has multiplied and will yet multiply
these miracles of grace. Still we are far off from
the ideal; and the poor if not the destitute will be
with us always. The love of the poor will lead us
not only to individual, but to corporate and social
efforts for their relief. It will urge us to study the
laws of economics, to seek out the causes and
remedies of want and suffering. And the love of
poverty, what is it after all but the love of the poor —
that compassion for the weaker members of the
body-social which should counteract the corruptive
tendency of competition.
By embracing the state of the poor, the Religious
of the Catholic Church keep before the world His
example who was poor Himself and has chosen the
poor to be His representatives ; and they choose
what He chose, they love what He loved — not
blindly, for love of being like Him exteriorly ; but
^intelligently, for the same reasons as He; being
.like Him in their mind and in their heart.

282 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.

II.
" No man could say the canticle but those hundred and
forty-four thousand who were purchased from the earth, for
they are virgins. These follow the Lamb whithersoever He
goeth." — Apoc xiv. 3, 4
The second great vice of the world is sensual
licence and impurity. We need scarcely enlarge on
so unsavoury a theme. Commenting on the words *
" Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the
sin of the world," some have thought that this
sin of the world is nothing else but impurity
Be that as it may, it is certain that it has at
all times been the commonest form of sin ; and
that those who pass through life untouched by its
contamination are few and far between. We
know, moreover, that it is the gravest and most
persistent of social evils ; the chiefest hindrance to
collective happiness , It is not only the conditions
of civilization but the exigencies of Nature herself
that demand restraint in this most difficult matter,
and that, for most men, and at most times. It is
not our intention here to explain this apparent
anomaly, but simply to take it as we find it.
Look at it how we will, we see that restraint is
one of the necessities of human life, as much as
labour, or sorrow, or death.
It is the harder lot and the lot of the many ; and
He who would have His friends feel for that lot and
make it their own, came among us, not as an
example of conjugal perfection, but as a virgin, born
of a Virgin ; His foster-father, a virgin ; His herald,

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 283

a virgin; the friend of His bosom, a virgin; His
heavenly body-guard, virgins — virgins not in mind
only, but in body. It was that He might sanctify
and exalt virginity that He embraced it and gave it
to His choicest friends to embrace ; so that a weak
and impure world might be strengthened to honour
and reverence virginity ; to see in it the very crown
of human dignity, the absolute mastery of the spirit
over the most imperious exactions of the flesh ; to
emulate it and approach as near to it as possible by
perfect chastity and spotlessness according to each
one's state of life ; or even to embrace it, if called
thereto, as a higher and holier state than that of
matrimony. For it is higher and holier to serve
the many than to serve the few; to forsake home
and kindred for the Gospel and the Kingdom of God
on earth, and thereby to find a hundred-fold even in
the present life.
Here, as in the case of poverty, Christ took what
was bitter and sweetened it by making it His own.
For the love of being like Christ and His Mother
and His friends, thousands in every age have
embraced freely and gladly that hardship which is
imposed upon so many whether they will it or no.
And still more do they resemble Him when they do
so for like motives, amongst which, though not
principal, is " compassion for the multitude." With
what face can the wealthy preach contentment to
the poor? and with what face could the Church
preach continence to the world, did she not practise
it in the persons of her priests and religious ?
A married clergy may preach chastity by word of

284 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
mouth, but not by the most effectual method of
preaching. By marriage a man does not overcome
in the conflict, but simply withdraws from it.
Plainly the mere fact of marriage does not infuse
the difficult virtue of chastity into one who was
previously unchaste. Indeed, there is some fear
that even matrimonial chastity will prove too severe
a yoke for such a one. One who was a coward
while the battle raged does not instantly become
brave because peace is proclaimed. He may talk
more valiantly, even as a father, forgetful of his own
unmarried days, may treat the delinquencies of his
son with the austerity of a Stoic.
Always and everywhere, even in the most
corrupted ages the Church has preached an
object-lesson to the world by the existence of
her voluntary celibates of both sexes, who by vow
have wedded themselves to the conflict for life.
Were it not for such examples men might well say
that the yoke of chastity was impossible, as many do
say, who like to think that the abuses of certain
times and places prevail everywhere among professed
celibates, only better concealed. On the other hand,
it is no less falsely said that they who fly to religion
or to the altar are as cowards who flee from the
danger to safety; rather they stand firm, that
learning the tactics of the enemy they may be able
to help others; and, having suffered themselves,
pity the sufferings of others. God, says St. Paul,
" comforts us in all our tribulations, that we may be
able to comfort them who are in any trouble with
the same comfort wherewith we ourselves are com-

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 285
forted of God." Nay, more, if we may believe the
mystics, they " fulfil the law of Christ " by bearing
the burden of others ; even as the Ransomers of old
who as free hostages embraced the captivity which
would have endangered the faith of their weaker
brethren. They do not escape temptation, but they
face it and bear it. And, moreover, it is in a spirit
of reparation to God's injured honour that they
willingly forego what is lawful in order to make
atonement, in union with Christ, for the lawless
indulgence and sensuality of others, and to turn
away God's anger from many a sinful city or state,
as the ten just men needed for the salvation of
Sodom. The more we understand the social and practical
importance of an idea, the more shall we be convinced
that, apart from all Christian and supernatural con
siderations whatever, the mere existence of voluntary
celibates and voluntary mendicants is of incalculable
importance ; that as a living object-lesson they drive
home truths simply and effectually, in a way which
no amount of verbal insistence could succeed in
doing. Hence, as we saw before, the spirit of
worldliness is socially destructive, while the Catholic
and eternal principles of the Gospel are conservative
and progressive.

286 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.

III.
'* He came to Nazareth and was subject to them."
St. Luke ii. 51.
Once more ; Christ came into the world where
unqualified independence, self- direction, self-govern
ment were worshipped as ends in themselves ; where
obedience was viewed as at best a necessary evil —
the less of it, the better. He knew that each member
of the body was healthier, happier, and more useful in
its own place ; in subjection to the superior members
and to the head ; in concord and agreement with its
fellow-members ; that independence, separation, iso
lation, meant death ; death for the intellect, for the
heart and affections ; for all that belongs to man
as a rational and free agent. Neither in home or in
city, in Church or m State could there be progress or
happiness without order, harmony, and subjection.
He knew also the strength of man's self-assertive
instincts, — useful and needful when restrained and
pressed into the service of higher instincts and
principles, but destructive of social life when suffered
to run riot in the form of lawless, self-regarding
ambition, grasping at the reins of government for
purposes of self-aggrandizement and self-glorifica
tion ; caring for private gain, not for the common
good. It is one and the same anti-social spirit
which manifests itself as tyranny in the ruler and as
insubordination in the subject — omnes queer entes quce
sua sunt et non quce sunt Jesu Christi — seeking them
selves and not the community; and in seeking

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 287
themselves, losing themselves; even as they who
lose themselves and suppress their egoism find them
selves again.
For it is in proportion to the perfection of
the social organism that the individual can enjoy
perfect liberty and full mental and moral develop
ment. "He that seeketh his life shall lose it ; but
he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it." It
was, then, the spirit of obedience that needed to be
cultivated ; obedience inspired by charity, that is,
by love of the common good, of the interests of Jesus
Christ ; the spirit that obeys no created will, but
only the will of Him who has care for the whole.
It is in obeying rather than in ruling that the
majority of mankind are tempted by the anti-social,
self-assertive spirit; and though the temptation is
far stronger in the case of those who rule, yet
it was to lighten the lot of the many that our
Saviour came, not merely to point out the expe
diency and necessity of obedience by word of
mouth, but to teach us to love obeying for His sake ;
to prefer, should it be God's will, to obey rather
than to rule; to sacrifice more liberty rather
than less to the common good ; to look on pre
eminence and authority as in some sense the less
Divine and sanctified lot.
In the same spirit and for the same motives the
religious of the Catholic Church have by their free
and perpetual self-devotion to a life of obedience,
maintained in all ages the true social principle so
needed for the healing of the nations. They
have furnished an object-lesson in the doctrine

288 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS
of obedience as ever taught by the Christian
Religion. Doubtless the ideal society would be one in
which the common good and greatest interest of all
would demand the fullest development of each,
securing to the several members all the conditions
requisite for the perfect realization of all their latent
capacities ; one in which charity would entail no
suffering or sacrifice. But such a society is to be
found only in the Heavenly Jerusalem, never upon
the earth, — though it is a standard of approximation.
All human society, secular or ecclesiastical, entails
sacrifice and self-repression upon its members ; nor
has any individual just cause of complaint if in
many ways his liberties are restricted, his talent
injured and left idle, his capacities squandered,
sometimes through force of inevitable circumstances,
sometimes through the blunderings or the faults of
those in command, sometimes through the selfish
ness and blindness of his fellow-members. All these
inconveniences are inseparable from our finite corf"-
ditions ; and by submitting to these, out of deference
to the common advantage and public peace, a man
realizes what is best and noblest among all his
capacities. Not but that he may and should vindicate
himself by all constitutional methods, and never
submit to any violation of his conscience ; but that,
when all things point to the duty of self-repression,
he should yield himself courageously. It is this law-
loving self-denial, which is the strength of armies
and nations, and of the Church of Christ, whereas
it is the decay of this principle and the confusion of

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 289
licence with liberty which is rotting every European
state to-day.
These, then, are the three counsels of the Gospel;
the three nails, as some will have it, whereby Religious
are fastened to the Cross of Christ, and held up to
the derision of this foolish, near-sighted world.
" Near-sighted," for, as we have said, all true
progress and enlightenment which the world has so
far seen is traceable to the prevalence of these three
great principles, to the silent preaching of which
Religious devote themselves in life-long sacrifice ;
while all the failure and defeat which progress has
met with is due to their neglect.
We can hardly expect those outside the Church
of the Saints to enter into the secrets of the saints,
or to understand how, in the eyes of every true
Catholic, poverty, chastity, and obedience are looked
upon as the better part, the luckier lot ; as beautiful
and lovable for their own sake ; for the sake of
Christ and His saints who embraced them ; for the
sake of the multitudes of mankind to whom the
harder lot has fallen. Still less can we expect
them to enter into the more mystical and esoteric
principles which, apart from all other reasons,
would make the way of the Counsels the better
way. Yet even outsiders have recently discovered
that religious vows and even religious Orders
are exceedingly useful and economical institutions ;
that it is desirable to have people banded together
and organized for the prosecution of certain philan
thropic and charitable purposes, who should be
T

290 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
content to receive for themselves only strict neces
saries from a common fund, and not look for any
salary or remuneration. So far voluntary poverty is
an excellent thing. Likewise a married clergy is
rather an expensive institution, and one absorbing
in family cares a large fraction of the available
clerical energy of the country. And as for obedience,
of course some must obey, just as some must be
poor and weakly and unfortunate. For what would
become of the Government, the army, the navy, the
family, without obedience ? And who does not
see that the masses should be kept in subjection,
and that ideas of liberty and equality are fraught
with danger to public security ? Use, economy,
convenience, — these are the non-Catholic standards
and tests. Not poverty for poverty's sake; nor
chastity for chastity's sake; nor obedience for
obedience' sake; not out of reverential love of the
lot which Christ and His saints have made their
own and embraced and sanctified; not for any
sympathy with Christ's love of humanity, for whose
well-being, here and hereafter, these three counsels
are so needful ; not for any scorn and contempt of
the spirit of worldliness which nailed Christ to the
Cross, and crucifies His little ones daily by the
million, — the mortal enemy of God and of humanity ;
but for narrow, economical, mercantile reasons such
as appeal to souls from which all that is ideal,
spiritual, catholic, eternal, has been driven by three
centuries of egoism in religion, in politics, in philo
sophy, and in morality.

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 291
IV.
" Mary hath chosen the best part." — St. Luke x. 43.
Whatever toleration the world may have learnt
for the religious profession, it is only in so far as
it secures conditions favourable to a life of active
usefulness and practical charity. For the higher
life of contemplation it has rarely a good word to
say. St. Simeon on his pillar, the hermits of the
Thebaid are its classical examples of perverted
piety and of the early defection of Christianity from
the philanthropic and utilitarian spirit of its Founder.
Ut quid perditio hcec ? Why this waste of energy and
time which might be turned to good account and
given to the poor ? How is society or how is the
Church the better of such an existence ? or how is
it compatible with the very conception of charity,
which means association, co - operation, mutual
service ?
Here again, though particular orders and insti
tutions are contingent and transitory, yet the
greater excellence of the contemplative life, viewed
in the abstract, is a constant and unchangeable part
of the Church's teaching. For, indeed, the eternal
life of Heaven is a life of contemplation and praise ;
and man touches his highest here on earth when
for some brief moment he anticipates Heaven
and dwells in loving wonder on the features of
Divine Truth. All the labour of man done under
the sun is directed to some few spells of restful
contemplation and enjoyment, which make life

292 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
worth the living; even the pleasures and amuse
ments of the most degraded and perverse are found
in the last analysis to consist in gazing upon or
witnessing something that interests the mind or the
imagination ; but only when our taste is schooled to
delight in the beholding of God and of things
Divine do we attain the end of our creation. As
each single soul must be stifled to death if from
time to time it does not rise to the surface for a
breath of the upper atmosphere ; so it is needful for
the corporate life of the Church and of the com
munity that there should be those who, being fitted
by natural gifts and supernatural grace, are set apart
for the direct cultus and service of truth, and for the
exercise of Divine praise ; whose office is to keep
the sacred lamp burning while others immersed in
active charity slumber and sleep for very weariness
and heaviness of the eyes. Strange that an acute
thinker of our day,1 one keenly alive to the organic
conception of society, should not have seen that the
division of labour involved in separation of con
templative from active life is a consequence of
that very conception. St. Simeon Stylites in the
desert, was as actively a member of the Christian
community as St. Paul. By the perfection of each
part the whole is perfected, and he who recognizes
himself as part of a whole often serves the whole
best by being rather than by doing. If in no other
way, at least in proclaiming by his very existence.
that man's last end, his highest work here and
hereafter, is eternal rest, the love of truth, the
1 Dr. E. Caird, Master of Balliol.

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 293
contemplation and praise of God, a work which
produces nothing, which is worth doing for its own
sake, and for whose sake alone all other work is
profitable, — were it only to keep this idea alive in an
insane world of aimless rush and unrest, the pro
fessed contemplative in these days would be in one
sense the most valuable and useful member of
society. Obviously the contemplative life, even more than
the religious life, is an exceedingly rare vocation,
demanding many natural gifts of no common sort
as a basis for grace to work upon ; while the needs
of the Church in a given locality or age might
plainly require the sacrifice of these aptitudes to
more urgent calls of duty. There is a common
fallacy about equality which has done much harm
to the Church by supposing that because all are
equally called to be perfect in their own line, there
fore all are called to and capable of equal perfection.
It is as untrue to say every one can be a saint or
a religious or a contemplative, as to say he can be
a hero or poet or a genius. The Church is always
warring, by her legislation, with the indiscretion of
those whose haste and inexperience would hurry
them to profess willingness for prison and death
when they are not capable of following even from
afar, and still more with the indiscretion of those
who, for one foolish reason or another, would play
the part of the Holy Ghost to others in the matter
of vocation. Yet, while readily admitting the call
to be rarer than is supposed in practice, we cannot
but justify the judgment of the Catholic Church in

294 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
her esteem for the profession of the Evangelical
Counsels, as well as for the higher life of con
templation. It is not then to new social systems that we can
trust for the remedy of those evils which weigh upon
the public conscience of these times. It is to the
character of the people before all else. Doubtless
this in its turn is conditioned by environments ; and
it may well be questioned if under the existing social
organization any universal amelioration through
religious influence is possible. Still whenever such
favourable conditions are secured it is religion and
religion alone — nay, the Catholic religion alone, that
will be able to effect and maintain that elevated
moral tone which is essential for all veritable
progress. It is by her continual insistence on the
three Evangelical Counsels, illustrated and brought
home to the public mind by the lives and examples
of her Religious that she will keep alive that flame
of charity kindled by Him who is at once the " Light
of the nations and the Glory of His people Israel."

THE DIVINE PRECEPT.
" Whoso loveth not God how loveth he his neighbour as
himself, since neither doth he love himself? "
" How then doth Christ love us but to the end that we
may be able to reign with Christ ? To this same end let us
love one another." — St. Augustine, Tract 83, in Joan.
" My Beloved is as a bundle of myrrh." Our Divine
Saviour is that same " Beloved," laid in our bosom
to heal the corruption of" our affections ; to purify
the gold of human love from all its dross and defile
ment ; He comes to lay His Heart against ours, and
to heal them ; not to freeze them or still them into
death, but to calm and regulate their wild wayward
pulsations, to teach them a rhythm from Heaven ;
from the Heart of God Himself. This was His
precept, the summary of His doctrine ; not that we
should merely love one another — that was com
manded from the beginning, when the human heart
was first moulded — but that our love should be after
the pattern of His, Sicut dilexi vos — " As I have
loved you." It was a method and manner of loving
He came to teach us ; a devoted, a passionate love,
yet restrained, severe, and seeming cruel ; a suffering
and a dying love, which could find no exercise, no
expression, no relief, but in pain ; not merely in
serviceable and useful pain, but- at times in pain for

296 THE DIVINE PRECEPT.
the mere sake of expression ; because pain is the
very language of love, which even God Himself had
to speak before He could persuade our hearts.
Seeing the oceans of sin that deluge the world
through the perversions of human affections, men
might well be excused for thinking that the love of
God and of creatures were incompatible and antago
nistic, except so far as the latter were loved not
spontaneously, or for themselves, but only from a
sense of duty to God. Yet our Lord will have no
such safe charity, but bids us at His word launch
out into the deep, and face the peril inseparable
from our lot. Et Verbum caro factum est, — Divine
love took flesh and embodied itself in a throbbing
human heart, that we might learn what our affec
tions may rise to, by the infusion of the Holy Spirit.
The object of His love is man, not the soul, but the
whole man, body and soul, the whole nature which
He assumed, in which He suffered, in which He was
transfigured and glorified. And He loves us, not
for any merely extrinsic reason, but for the very
lovableness which is inherent in us, which He
Himself has given us ; for every participation of His
own Divine excellence and beauty. When we think
how infinitesimal this is, we might wonder how His
love is so great ; but we no longer wonder when we
remember that the infinite force with which each
particle of created goodness is drawn back to the
Creator's bosom as to its origin and end, is the
force of God's self-love. Even when we see what
God sees, we cannot see it in the way He sees it,
nor therefore love it in the way He loves it. Greater

THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 297
minds and hearts are penetrated and rapt away by
what to others seems ordinary, perhaps " common
and unclean," and each one feels that his soul's inner
growth is shown in a keener appreciation of the un
noticed goodness that lies round him on every side.
The vulgar can see no beauty except in perpetual
novelties and sensational surprises ; they must go
abroad ; while the trained eye and delicate affection
see delights everywhere without end. Therefore
God's love of finite goodness is infinite ; though not
in every way, as is His love of His own infinite
goodness. He delights infinitely in those beauties
of mind and heart and form which stir our feeble
affections to their roots ; and, moreover, He who
looks into the darkest corners of the soul often sees
there a thousand lovablenesses hidden from us. Nor
in any two are these beauties combined in the same
assortment or proportion, that they should be
classed together and loved under some universal
kind. He knows His sheep individually, and calls
each by its name — that is, He draws it to Himself
in its own individual way, and no two in the same
way. The Father Himself loves us by the very neces
sity of His nature. He was free to create us, to
give us more or less lovableness ; but having made
us lovable, He is not free to do other than love us ;
for He must love His least image as necessarily as
He loves Himself. And the Incarnate Son, whose
human will and heart is dominated by that same
infinite love, and thrills in the most perfect and
intelligent sympathy therewith, loves not merely

298 THE DIVINE PRECEPI .
what the Father loves, blindly, extrinsically, but
loves it for the same reason, looking on us with the
same eyes, with an understanding, sympathetic love.
Sicut dilexi vos, — This is how He loved us, this is
how we are to love one another, according to His
precept, and His commandment is not grievous.
Many speak as though the Divine love of our
neighbour differed from the natural, in that the
former is wholly extrinsic and relative, the latter
intrinsic and absolute. God has bid us (they say)
to despise and put aside that love whose motive is
inherent lovableness, and to foster that only which
has no reference to intrinsic qualities. God might
have ordered us to love so many stones, for some
mysterious reason or other, connected with His
service; and we should have been bound to love
them (or rather, to act as if we loved them, for real
love essentially supposes intrinsic attractiveness in
its object). And were He capriciously to change His
mind, and order us to love stocks instead of stones,
we ought to have no difficulty in at once transferring
to them whatever exterior courtesies we had pre
viously been bestowing on the stones. "No difficulty,"
because there was no real personal affection to
uproot, whose only possible soil is inherent lovable
ness. This is what they call "spiritual," as opposed
to "carnal," or "natural " love. To love our parents
" spiritually," means, with them, to disregard the
natural instinct of filial affection, and to pay them
only such service and duty as we are bound to give
to any stock or stone that God has told us to love ;
not because it is what " nature " prompts us to do,

THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 2g9

but because God has ordered it for some reason of
His own. This, they say, is what is meant by loving
God alone, and all things else only for His sake.
We are to look on them simply as fetiches, as
arbitrary tokens, withdrawing from them any love
they might absorb into themselves that we may
transfer it all to their Creator, and so loving them
for His sake that, without any change in them, we
should be equally ready to hate them for His sake,
should He tell us so to do. " Whatsoever you did to
the least of these you did it unto Me," is interpreted
to mean that fraternal charity is purely relative, a
fiction as far as our brethren are concerned ; that
God is its sole object, just as the obeisance made to
the Queen's empty throne is accepted as personal to
herself. The meaning, however, is not so much : Forget
them, and think of Me, as : Forget Me, and think
of them ; as is plain from the wondering reply of
the just : Lord, when saw we Thee hungry, and
fed Thee ? It is the same spirit which is embodied
in the command, " Weep not for Me, but weep for
yourselves and for your children."
We do not say that this doctrine of extrinsic
charity has ever been so explicitly formulated as
we have formulated it here. But holy men and
even canonized saints have at times unconsciously
implied its principles, both in practice and in
precept. Nor is this scandalous or wonderful,
to any one who understands rightly the tedious
process by which the golden grains of truth are
sundered and sifted from the chaff of errors

3oo THE DIVINE PRECEPT.
and fallacies. Still less, when we find these
same holy men just as often implying in precept,
and far more in practice, principles diametrically
¦opposite and inconsistent with those we complain
of. For it is only when they are explicitly separated
and stated that principles can be judged and com
pared. Not one of the Saints was ever sanctified
or sanctified others in consequence of the incorrect
principles, but in spite of them. As a matter of
fact we find that all the greater Saints were men of
large and tender affections, who drew others to
them by the cords of Adam ; who, however imper
fectly they may have analyzed and formulated their
love, loved truly and directly by the very instinct of
the Holy Ghost. For a Saint is not necessarily a
philosopher, any more than a philosopher is a Saint.
Nor is it wonderful that in so subtle a matter
much inaccuracy should creep in ; for the very words
in which the erroneous theory is embodied, are the
words of Christ and of His Apostles, and of such a
master of spiritual things as St. Ignatius of Loyola.
Evidently they are ambiguous words ; but heaven
and earth are not more distant and opposed than
the two meanings of which they are susceptible.
One is by implication the doctrine of the dualism of
Zoroaster, and of the Gnostics and Manicheans,
which in its open form has ever been regarded as
the most pestilential error, but which, as the
parasitic corruption of a truth, has ever and again
subtly interwoven itself with the ascetic teachings
of saints and doctors, and has sprung up from time
to time to choke the good seed and impede its

THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 301
fruitfulness and vigour. The other is the Catholic
teaching of reason and revelation, the canon by
which all other teaching must at length stand or
fall. Dualism gives us practically two gods ; a
principle of good and a principle of evil. Spirit, it
tells us, is the work of God ; matter is the work of
the devil. The conflict between these two, ending
in the victory of spirit and the subjugation of matter,
constitutes the drama of creation. This is only the
perversion of a great truth, a perversion slight in itself,
but portentous in its consequences. We too hold that
the subjugation of matter to spirit and of spirit to
God is the consummation towards which all things
move. But matter, no less than spirit, is God's
dear creature ; and as spirit is not destroyed, but
perfected and elevated by its subjection to divinity;
so matter is transfigured, glorified, and exalted by
its impregnation with spirit. God's conflict with
matter and spirit is not that of an enemy, but of a
parent with a wayward child whom he chastens in
love — Quern diligit, castigat. Evil spirits and evil
men play their part in this work of evolution and
purgation, but only under the permission and direc
tion of God's most wise and loving, though
mysterious, providence. Seeing how large a part
the subjugation of the flesh to the spirit plays in
Christian asceticism, and how the great bulk of
men's more patent sins are due to the insubordina
tion of the animal passions, it is a natural exaggera
tion of the truth to suppose that the interests of
the body are wholly and always hostile to those of
the soul ; that spirituality requires the death of the

302 THE DIVINE PRECEPT.

senses and emotions; and that because the pre
eminence of mind over matter is good, therefore it
may be with advantage carried to infinity. This
seems to be Plato's view, who regards the body
simply as the prison-house of the soul, a mere
impediment to its expansion, a hindrance altogether,
a help in no sense ; though it must be confessed
that he credits the pure spirit with an emotional
fervour and passionateness which an acuter analysis
recognizes to be dependent on the senses. How
great an influence Plato had with St. Augustine and
other Christian writers, and St. Augustine, in his
turn, upon the Western Church is notorious. Still
Aristotle, as interpreted by Aquinas, supplies a
salutary antidote to whatever insidious poison may
have been imbibed in regard to this matter. His
doctrine is altogether in sympathy with the mysteries
of Christian revelation touching the origin, office,
redemption, and glorification of the body. It is not
in the extinction of the feelings and passions and
instincts, but in their culture and restraint that
man's spirit reaches its fullest development. As
body and soul are complementary principles of our
substantial nature, so senses and intelligence, imagi
nation and reason, feeling and volition, are co-
principles of our perfect operation ; the one material,
the other formal; the one embodying, the other
embodied ; neither perfect, except so far as duly
proportioned to the other. Evil is not matter, or
anything absolute, but a discord, a disproportion ;
and to secure concord and proportion is the aim of
Catholic and Christian asceticism, so far as it is

THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 303
identified with moral training and perfection. But,
as we have said above, it is easy to misunderstand
and pervert the true principle of mortification so as
to fall into implicit gnosticism. Christianity insists
on chastity, honours celibacy, approves fasting and
bodily penance. Gnosticism does the same, but on
a different assumption, and does much more besides,
dishonouring the body, forbidding marriage and the
use of animal food. And in a sense the erroneous
principle is simpler and more easily apprehended
and embraced than the truth, which is a nice
balance between the two extremes of an exaggerated
spiritualism on the one hand and of gross sensuality
on the other — the latter being the inevitable reaction
and final issue of the former.
For this reason the Church's watchful guidance
is continually needed to keep her children's feet in
the narrow track of truth, deviating neither to right
or left ; or rather, since the deviations are incessant,
it is her office to recall us now from one excess, now
from another. Hence she is credited by her enemies
with the most opposite vices ; at one time she is the
friend of publicans and sinners, eating and drinking,
a glutton and a wine-bibber ; at another, she comes
before the world fasting, and "behold she has a
devil." Besides this natural misunderstanding of the
relation of body to spirit, a kindred source of the
error we are combating is found in the miscon
ception of the relation of nature to grace. This
error is a perversion, not of a natural truth, but of a
dogma of revelation. No Christian can believe that

304 THE DIVINE PRECEPT.
the devil created human nature, but many believe
wrongly that he has so perverted and corrupted the
essence of humanity, that God has practically made
him a present of it ; that as a cracked reed can only
give forth a harsh and broken note, so every action
and operation, every thought and desire and impulse
proceeding from our fallen nature jars upon God's
ears, is hateful and discordant to Him, as reminding
Him of the ruin of His fair handiwork. This is
Lutheranism and Jansenism ; and so far as the
writings of St. Augustine or even of St. Paul present
obscurities " which the unwary and unstable wrest
to their own damnation," it happens that at all
times there have been unauthorized Catholic teachers
who have implicitly, by precept or practice, admitted
a similarly false conception of the nature of original
sin ; and who have allowed it to tinge their ascetical
theories so that "natural" and "wicked" have come
to be synonymous in their language. "If we love
from natural motives, such love," they say, " must be
wicked. God has no pleasure in the moral perfection
even of a Socrates, but regards such unbaptized
virtue with disgust."
Here, as the truth is subtler, its perversion
is the more easy. Human nature in its essence
has suffered no deterioration through original sin.
It is still the image and likeness of God, and He,
seeing Himself mirrored therein, pronounces it
"very good;" and since it is He who works in its
every movement, and causes it to think truth and to-
love goodness, and to do righteousness, that which
He works in us and through us as free instruments.

THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 305
is also "very good," and "shall in no wise lose its
reward." Yet it does not receive the same reward
as when our soul and its faculties are permeated,
transfigured, and elevated by supernatural light and
grace ; which, without destroying or removing our
natural goodness, shines through it like the sunlight
through stained glass, giving it a glory and radiance
which is in it, but not from it. Grace is not another
soul over and above our natural soul ; but it is a
new radiance given to the soul by a new indwelling
of God. We have not one set of actions which are
natural and another which are supernatural ; but
when the soul is supernaturalized, its faculties and
operations, as it were, its leaves and blossoms, are
characterized like the root from which they spring.
Grace is given us not to destroy but to fulfil, to
perfect nature in its own order and to add to it a
perfection of the Divine order. Supernatural love
presupposes perfect natural love as its subject and
basis. It breathes into it the breath of divinity and
makes it instinct with eternal life. It is not too bold
to say that grace is for nature, and not nature for
grace ; for every subject or substance is the final cause
of its own properties and endowments ; clothes for
the body, and not the body for clothes. Grace is given
to us for the healing and perfection of our nature,
in order that our natural intelligence and our natural
affections may be raised to a perceptible preter
natural excellence and infused with an imperceptible
supernatural dignity and merit. Natural love is the
raw material which grace works upon or is wrought
upon. Crush natural love, and grace must remain idle,
u

306 THE DIVINE PRECEPT.
Here, again, it is evident how fatal a false
dualism must be to ascetical doctrine. And yet the
fallacy as before is an easy one; for the natural
mind, and will, and heart are perfected by the
gentle restraint of grace, and reach their culmina
tion through obedience to law and at the cost of
" many tribulations ; " and from this fact we are
prone to conclude hastily that what needs to be
conquered, needs to be slain. Some confusion
moreover is due to the double sense attaching to
the word " natural." Besides the ordinary and
scientific sense there is a specialized use of the
word, in which it signifies, not merely what is not
transfigured by grace, but that which, owing to its
positive deformity and unreasonableness, is incapable
of being so transfigured. " Natural " love in this
sense — or " carnal love," as it is sometimes called —
is really " unnatural " if we use " natural " in the
proper sense of reasonable. It is love which is
selfish, disorderly, unrestrained ; bestowed on some
unfitting object, or on some fitting object in some
unfitting way.
It is plain, then, that we need not be surprised
if many good and holy men have been wanting in
clearness of perception and precision of expression
in regard to this obscure matter, where so much
caution is required to steer straight between the
Scylla and Charybdis. " Love me, love my dog,"
sounds a very straightforward and easy principle,
yet it can mean two very different things. It may
mean that, however much I may naturally and
justifiably detest my friend's pet, I cannot con-

THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 307
sistently with his friendship ill-treat or abuse it, and
may even be bound to bestow upon it the outward
signs of an affection which I do not feel. This is
mere extrinsic love, whose motive is no excellence I
see in the dog ; but only the excellence I see in my
friend. Yet a deeper friendship will make me wish
to go further; to enter into complete sympathy with
my friend's tastes and inclinations ; so that I shall
try to love what he loves with him, seeing in it what
he sees. I may not be able to do so altogether,
and so far my friendship is imperfect (supposing his
taste correct) and my soul is out of harmony or not
in the fullest harmony with his. Similarly, when
we speak of loving others for God's sake, we may
mean one of two utterly different things. We may
mean loving them with a merely extrinsic love
whose sole motive is God's own intrinsic goodness ;
or we may mean loving them in sympathy with
God, seeing them as far as we can with His eyes
and loving them for what we see in them. There
can be no doubt whatever as to which is the true
conception, that, namely, which means the most
perfect, and intelligent, and sympathetic love of
God. We can never hope to see in others all that
lovableness which He sees ; or that our heart shall
be drawn towards the little we do see with a force
not infinitely less than that of the Divine Heart ;
but the measure of our approach is the exact
measure of our growth in the love of God.
The more we understand and love God, the
more shall we enter into sympathy with His love of
men ; and the more we get to understand and love

308 THE DIVINE PRECEPT.
men, the sooner shall we be able to enter into the
mind of God. For all true and spiritual friendship
is founded on and requires community of tastes, the
appreciation and love of the same things. God,
hungering and thirsting for our affection, knows
well how slowly that affection must be won ; how
our taste must be gradually formed and raised until
it can find delight in the Divine beauty, which is
the common object of knowledge and ecstatic love
whereby God and His saints are bound together in
a single life of joy and praise — even as two friends
may, in some common object of loving adoration,
be tied together heart to heart. Were there one
whose capacity we doubted not, and for whose fuller
love we craved, with what care should we not
lead him into completer sympathy with ourselves,
bridging over the distance between us. So it is
that God leads us to Himself through creatures;
step by step purifying and raising our love ; giving
it an ever-increasing breadth, and depth, and height,
till at last we love nothing in creatures but what is
truly lovable and Divine ; and are, therefore, in
proximate readiness to love Divinity itself, not to
the exclusion of others, but indefinitely above them
all. Then, indeed, what we love in them is Him ;
not His substance, but His image. Nor is our love
of the image a merely relative love whose sole
motive is the excellence of the thing imaged ; as
though the image were but an arbitrary sign ; but it
is an intrinsic love founded on the real and inherent
beauty of the image; it is a love distinct from,

THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 309
though subordinate to, the love of the archetype to
Which it leads us.
And what we love in Him is them ; for we
have no proper concept of God, but only a con
cept built up from creatures, amongst which
man is principal, as the microcosm, the epitome
of creation. All the Divine perfections that
draw our love to God are those that we have
gradually learnt to love first in our fellow-men —
justice, truth, purity, gentleness, mercy, and the
rest. As far as we are blind to these excellences
in our neighbour, as far as we steel our hearts
against their attraction, so far is the Divine beauty
hidden from our eyes and impotent over our
affections ; we may hear and we may assent to the
truth that God is good, and gracious, and holy, and
just, but these words kindle no fire of enthusiasm or
devotion within us ; for our affections are dwarfed
and stunted for want of food and exercise ; we have
no heart to give ; we have crushed our love of man,
and have not found the love of God ; we are unloved
and unlovable ; unloving and unable to love. Nor
can we ever know, or at least realize, God's
passionate love for us if we ourselves have never
felt the hungering affection of the mother for the
child, of friend for friend, or some one of the nobler
forms of suppliant, self-denying love and devotion.
Else what does it avail to tell me that God's love for
me is that of father, mother, friend, and spouse, all
in one and carried to infinity ? Or to tell me that I
should aspire to love Him back as father, mother,
friend, and spouse, if I have never given any one of

3io THE DIVINE PRECEPT.
these affections play ; never developed and purified
my power of loving ? In brief, it is through man
alone that we can know or love God as long as we
see Him only through a glass darkly, and before we
are face to face with Him.
To love our neighbour as Christ loves us, means,
therefore, to love him as far as possible in sympathy
with God ; loving him for what is really best and
divinest in him ; seeking to bring out more fully the
hidden image of God in his soul. It means the
perfecting of our instinctive affections ; recognizing
in them the impulse of the Divine will drawing men
first to one another, and through one another to
Itself, as the Supreme Lover and centre of all
attraction. It means restraint and sacrifice and the
sword of separation, for Sine dolore non vivitur in
amore — "the life of love is a life of sorrow." It is
the love of Abraham for Isaac ; the love of Christ
for His Mother; the love which is ready to stab and
thrust and slay; which shrinks from no present
pain for the sake of after bliss. It is the love of
St. Paul for his children, heedless of present ingra
titude and misunderstanding; spending itself gladly,
"though the more I love }'ou the less I be loved."
And it will show itself in ceaseless toil and labour
for the beloved ; in endless endeavour to communi
cate with him our choicest treasure ; to gel him to
see what we see and to love what we love ; to break
down every wall of separation or unsympathy that
stands between soul and soul ; to find ever richer
treasures ourselves that we may have more to share,
more costly and precious fuel to feed love's flame ;

THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 311
to learn new arts and sciences that we may impart
them to the beloved ; to wean our hearts from all
that is spurious, untrue, lest we hurt so much as a
hair of his head, every one of which is numbered
and dear to us ; to find in God alone that pearl of
great price, that common Friend who is the bond
of all friendship, in whom all other pure and noble
sympathies are united.
This is how Christ has loved us ; and His
precept is that we should so love one another, or
rather labour so to love one another ; for it is the
work of our life to educate ourselves out of our
selfishness and sensuality and to learn the lovable
ness of God's children. If we can study God only
in His works, man is the epitome and summary of
His works ; and it is there we must seek Him and
love Him. Omnes in eo, et eum in omnibus — " All
in Him and Him in all." The second great precept
is not different from the first, but only another
expression of it.
Whether we consider our Saviour's human love
of His Blessed Mother, of the Baptist, of His
Apostles, of His own people, of His betrayer, of His
murderers and enemies, we see everywhere the
characteristics we have described above. It was
no mere extrinsic love indifferent to the inherent
lovableness of its immediate object, and therefore
equal towards all. He loved all equally in the sense
that He loved each, so far as each was beloved by
His Father and made lovable. But God's gifts are
manifold, in no two cases "the same. He has no
unjust preferences; but He loved His Mother

ji2 THE DIVINE PRECEPT.
immeasurably beyond all; and His Apostles who
were "with Him in His temptations" beyond His
other disciples; and Peter, and James, and John
more than the other Apostles ; and John of these,
with the peculiar love of special friendship. And
He loved Lazarus and his sisters, but especially
Mary. Plainly His love was not merely extrinsic,
but was motived by what He saw in each ; and
since His estimate was perfectly true and just, and
His affections pure and noble, His human love was
in the most perfect sympathy and accord with His
Divine love. And how very naturally His love
manifested itself is also clear. He wept over the
grave of Lazarus ; He wept over His beloved city
of Jerusalem ; He sought at times to be apart with
His friends ; He revealed to them His special
secrets ; He sought their sympathy and their
prayers ; He was grieved by their coldness and
slowness to believe in His love ; by their cowardice
and treachery. Altogether, if His love for them was
Divine and supernatural, it was at the same time
thoroughly natural and human, and therefore Quod
Deus conjunxit, homo non separet — " What God hath
united let no man put asunder."
Yet if it was deep and tender " beyond the love
of women," it was not soft or selfish, but austere and
restrained ; a love that could rebuke, and chasten,
and hold aloof with a severity proportioned to its
tenderness. How abrupt with His Blessed Mother
at times ; how seemingly cold and indifferent ; how
ruthless with Peter ; how cruel in the very tender
ness of His reproaches ! None could sit at His

The divine precept. 313
right hand or lean upon His bosom, who had not
drunk deep of His chalice and been baptized with
His baptism and pierced through and through with
the dividing sword of sorrow.
And if it is the part of love to give itself, to
empty itself out to the last drop of blood ; to
humble itself to the dust, who ever loved as He ?
" Greater love hath no man than this that a man
lay down his life for his friends;" only a God-Man
can go beyond this and say, " Take and eat : this is
My Body. Drink ye all of this, for this is My
Blood." Yet it is only the same natural longing
carried to a greater extreme, — usque in finem ; it is
the passionate craving of all true love, divinized and
lifted above the clouds. Nay, it is rather God's
Love made flesh and dwelling among us ; Divine,
yet altogether human. And this is His precept,
that as He has loved us so we also should love
one another; for if a man love not his brother
whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he
hath not seen ?

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.

• O sacrum convivium in quo Christus sumitur J
Recolitur memoria passionis ejus ;
Mens impletur gratia ;
Et futurse gloria? nobis pignus datur.'
St. Thomas Aquinas.
In these words the Blessed Eucharist is offered to
our consideration, first, as a sacrificial banquet ;
that is, as being at once a sacrifice and a banquet ;
then, as a memorial or commemorative feast ;
finally, in its effects as a means of grace in the
present, and a pledge of glory in the future.
Let us then first dwell upon it under its sacrificial
aspect. God is a spirit, and they that adore Him must
adore Him in spirit and in truth. Man, on the
other hand, is not spirit alone, but spirit and body,
and therefore his adoration, internal and external,
private and public, is an embodied adoration. He
is bound by the necessity of his double nature to
picture God to himself, and to speak of Him after
a human fashion ; to conceive Him in his own
image and likeness. And God who has made man,
and knows whereof he is made and remembers

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 315
that he is but dust, not only permits it and
tolerates it, but wills it to be so. Had He wanted
us different, He would have made us different.
And so He wills that we should utter our prayers
and praises with voice and tongue, as though He
heard with mortal ears and could not read the
secrets of the heart ; that we should lift up our eyes
to Him, as though He were seated in the clouds
far above us ; that we should kneel and prostrate
ourselves as at the feet of a mortal monarch ; that
we should hold up our joined hands, as it were
begging release from our fetters — in a word, that we
should embody our inward worship in outward
signs and symbols, and speak of spirit in the
terms of sense, of the infinite in the language
of the finite. Nor is there in these practices,
as some foolishly think, any real ignorance or
superstition, so long as the inadequate and
merely symbolic character of such utterances is
adverted to.
Still more needful are such symbolic manifesta
tions where men meet together for the public
worship of God, and where their internal concord
in thought and desire can be expressed and secured
only by means of outward expression.
Chief among those rites whereby in all times
and places men have embodied their worship, is
the. offering of sacrifice, in which food is brought
and laid as a gift on God's table, as a sign of
praise and adoration, of gratitude for favours
received, of sorrow for sins committed, as tbe price
of protection and assistance and grace As the

316 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
word is now understood, sacrifice is said exclusively
of an offering made to the one supreme God in
attestation of His supremacy and oneness ; so that
it can be offered to no other being, however great,
without the guilt of idolatry and blasphemy. But
if we look back to early times for the derivation of
the rite, we find apparently that food-offerings
were made by way of tribute and homage to the
father or patriarch or monarch, to symbolize
such a relation between the offerer and receiver
as exists between children and their father, from
whom they derive their life and support and food ;
who spring from one body, eat of one bread,
drink of one cup, dwell in one house, look to one
heritage. We see that it was directed to the
confirmation of the rights of sonship where they
already existed ; or to their renewal, when broken
off by trespass ; or to the creation of an adoptive
sonship, where no such tie had existed before. It
was, therefore, the sign or seal or outward formality
of a solemn contract, or covenant, whereby the
rights and duties of fatherhood on one side, and of
sonship on the other, were created, renewed, or
ratified. And accordingly, when men needed to
enter into relation with God, the universal Father,
to be received as His adopted sons, to be allowed
to sit at His household table and eat of His meat,
it was in keeping with our necessity of conceiving
Divine things humanwise, that we should bring
food-offerings to Him, and solemnize our covenant
with Him, according to the rites and conventions of
similar human contracts.

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 317

That the offerer should partake of the victim
after it has been accepted is the natural, though
not necessary sequel of sacrifice. It is a com
plementary act to which the act of sacrifice is
in some sort directed. To accept the offering,
is to admit the offerer to the rights of sonship,
whereof the sign and evidence is a seat at the
household table, a share in the household meal.
Thus, when the prodigal is restored to the forfeited
rights of sonship, a banquet is prepared for him by
his father, as we read in the parable. The food
which one offers as a supplicant and servant or
slave, he receives back as a child from the hand
of his father.
That this is the earliest notion of sacrifice and
communion, seems fairly evident from a careful
study of the sacrifices of the Gentiles and of the
pre-Levitical sacrifices, recorded in Holy Scripture.
Those of the Mosaic law are too complicated with
prophetic symbolism to permit the root-idea to
stand out in all its clearness and definition. We find
God rebuking the Israelites for offering food liba
tions to false gods instead of to Him ; and St. Paul
sums up the whole matter briefly, where he says :
" I speak as to the initiated ; judge ye what I say :
The Cup of Blessing which we bless, is it not the
communion of the Blood of Christ ? the Bread
which we break, is it not the communion of the Body
of Christ ? Look at Israel after the flesh. Are not
they that eat of the sacrifice partakers of the altar ?
I would not have you to be partakers with devils.
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup

318 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
of devils ; you cannot share the table of the Lord
and the table of devils."1
Whether, then, we speak of Gentile sacrifice, or
Jewish sacrifice, or Christian sacrifice ; of the altar
of devils, or of Jehovah ; the notion of sacrifice, of
food-offering and libation, is one and the same —
it is a solemn covenant-feast, an expression of
absolute subjection and submission on the one side,
and a pledge of protection and fatherhood on the
other. The former is symbolized by the offering,
the latter by the communion which follows accept
ance, — "They shall be My people and I will be
their God." Thus our Saviour says, expressing the
fruit of His own sacrifice : "I ascend to My Father
and to your Father; to My God and to your God."
But like every outward expression or symbol, a
sacrifice may be true or false according as the
inward homage it signifies is present or absent.
Self-oblation and subjection is the soul and quick
ening principle, without which the sacrifice which
symbolizes and embodies it, is worthless or worse
than worthless before God — for we insult Him with
a spotted and blemished victim instead of honouring
Him with an odour of sweetness. Of such lying
sacrifices God says : " Shall I eat the flesh of bulls
or drink the blood of goats ? " and : " Obedience is
1 " Ut prudentibus loquor. vos ipsi judicate quod dico. Calix
benedictionis cui benedicimus nonne communicatio sanguinis
Christi est ? et panem quem frangimus nonne participatio corporis
Domini est ? . . Videte Israel secundum carnem ! nonne qui edunt
hostias participes sunt altaris ? . . Nolo autem vos socios fieri
dEemoniorum ; non potestis mensas Domini participes esse et mensae
dsemoniorum." (i Cor. x. 15, seq.)

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 319

better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat
of rams;" and David: " If Thou hadst desired
sacrifice I would have given it Thee, but Thou
delightest not in burnt offerings." Not that God
here rejects the form of worship which He Himself
had approved and enjoined ; but He reminds us
that the form is not the reality, the sign is not the
thing signified, the body of sacrifice is not the spirit
of sacrifice. Thus, gathering up our results so far, we see
that sacrifice is an offering of food made to Almighty
God to testify our submission and subjection to
Him as to the Author and Giver of all ; to express
our desire to be received or retained among the
number of His children, to sit at His table, and to
share His meat. It expresses our love and reverence
for His glory and majesty, our thankfulness for all
His goodness towards us, our consequent sorrow if
we have offended one so good in Himself and
praiseworthy, one so good to us and thankworthy.
It is an earnest of our desire to repair the wrong
we have done singly and collectively — for as an act
of public and social worship, it is an offering for the
sins of the people, for the sins of the world. We
implore by it all those helps and graces needful for
ourselves singly and collectively, for the spread of
His Kingdom, for the extension of His glory. And
God in accepting it, and in inviting us to partake if
we will, thereby signs and ratifies the covenant
between us, and engages to be to us a Father, if we
will be to Him true children.
And all that is contained in this notion of

320 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
sacrifice we find verified in a higher, more excellent,
and truer way, in the great sacrifice of the Christian
Church, which is the full and adequate expression
of that worship which the sacrifices of Jew and
pagan strove vainly to utter in lisping, stammering
accents, Lex habens umbram futurorum bonorum —
" the law being but the shadow of good things to
come : " the substance being Christ. For the
praise and gratitude and contrition of every soul
that ever lived, the perfect self-oblation of the whole
race, could never satisfy what is due to God in the
way of love and worship ; much less could such
internal dispositions embody themselves in an
offering adequate to their expression. Therefore,
that the human race might be able to offer Him an
acceptable and adequate sacrifice, God gave His
only Son to be the second Adam, that all who
received Him and were incorporated with Him,
might through and with Him offer a supreme and
sufficient worship in spirit and in truth. He alone,
who in virtue of His Divinity was eternally in the
bosom of the Father, could comprehend the infinite
lovableness of God; could measure the depth and
height and length and breadth of His mercies
towards the children of men ; could fathom the
abyss of the malice of sin, knowing each several sin
of every son of Adam; could sorrow for it, as if
it were His own by imputation ; and could make
amends for it so ample as to blot it out of the
Divine memory, as some faint discord is drowned
in a great burst of harmony; He alone could
intercede with infallible wisdom and efficacy for the

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 321

glory of God, for His Kingdom and His will
upon earth ; for the needs of mankind — spiritual
and temporal ; for the averting of Divine anger ;
for help in temptation and deliverance from evil.
And being the Son of God by nature, and also the
Son of man, He alone was the fitting Mediator of
that New and Eternal Covenant between God and
man, whereby the human race under Him as their
Head was adopted as the son of God and entitled
to a place at the banquet of Eternal Life — a
Covenant sealed with the sacrifice of His Body and
the libation of His Blood — His Blood of the New
and Eternal Testament. Moreover, if the inner
submission and self-oblation of all men and angels
together could never equal the infinite adoration
due to God, or atone for the indignity offered to
Him by a single wilful insult or rebellion ; not so
the self-submission of one who in point of personal
dignity was equal to the Father and of the same
nature — His beloved Son in whom He was well
pleased. Nor was the sacrificial offering, wherein
that worship was embodied, something of mere
conventional worth, an inadequate symbol of
the supersensible reality, but, Priest and Victim
in one, He offered that same priceless self, the Body
and the Blood of the Incarnate Son of God as a
true food-offering, on Calvary and on the altar.
As a true food-offering, for He is the very Bread
of Life, not such manna as Israel ate in the
desert, but the true Bread from Heaven; the
bread of grace, of the spiritual life, nay, of the
Divine life.
v

322 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
Now, plainly, God, who is the Giver and. Pre
server of that Divine vitality, stands as little in
need of this spiritual and heavenly food as He does
of bodily food. " If I were hungry," He seems to
say, " I would not tell thee ; for mine are the cattle
on a thousand hills ; " for " the earth is the Lord's
and the fulness thereof." Yet though He was rich,
for our sakes God has become poor and needy and
dependent. He knows well that love is starved
where it finds no indigence, nothing to bear, or to
give, or to suffer ; that it seeks rather to minister
than to be ministered to ; to give than to receive.
And so He has framed Himself round, as it were,
with a halo of created glory in the creatures which
He has made and loved ; and His love makes their
interests and needs His own, so that in the order
of nature no less than in that of grace He seems to
say : " Inasmuch as ye did it to the least of these
My brethren ye did it unto Me." And therefore
He who needed nothing in Himself, in the person of
poor fallen humanity hungered and fainted for the
Bread of Life. " God so loved the world " that its
miseries were His own ; " so loved the world that
He gave His only-begotten Son " for it. Far be it
from us to picture an angry God reluctantly dis
suaded from vengeance through the intervention of
a more placable Son. There is but one nature and
love and will in the two. " I and My Father are
one ; " " He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father; " " The Father Himself loveth you." Let
us rather enter into the eternal council of mercy
and hear the Father's compassionate demand,

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 323
"Whence shall we buy bread in the desert that
these may eat ? " and the answer of the Son of His
Love, Ecce ego, mitte me — " Lo, here am I ; send
Me," the true Manna, the Bread that giveth life to
the world. Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldst not,
then said I : Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God ; to
be obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.
And now what was this " will " that He came to
do ; of which He says : " My meat is to do the will
of Him that sent Me, and to perfect His work " ?
What was this work that was perfected when He
bowed His head and said : Consummatum est — " It is
perfected " ? What was the commandment of the
Father which He came to obey and fulfil ? Even
that commandment whereof He was the great
teacher and example ; of which He says, " A new
commandment give I unto you ; even that which
you had from the beginning." "This is My precept
that you love one another in the same manner as I
have loved you." And in what manner ? Even
unto death. Christ was made for us obedient to
the new and eternal precept of fraternal love, " unto
death, even to the death of the Cross." The Good
Shepherd layeth down His life for His sheep. It
was, then, in obedience to that precept that having
loved His own who were in the world He loved
them to the uttermost, and took bread and brake
and blessed and gave to them, saying : Take ye and
eat, this is My Body which is given for you ; and
the cup, saying: Drink, this is My Blood of the
New and Eternal Covenant of Love ; love between
man and God, love between man and man. And

324 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.

just as when for God's sake one gives alms to the
poor one gives it to God; so in the same act
whereby Christ offers Himself to us for food in
obedience to the Father's precept of love, He first
offers Himself to the Father, and in so doing offers
an infinite sacrifice of praise, thanks, expiation, and
prayer. And of this act of sovereign worship we are
made sharers and fellow-offerers as often as we
gather round the altar to hear Mass and, as it were,
to lay our hands upon the head of the victim and to
make His offering our own. For as the act of the
lips or the heart is not the act of those organs alone,
but of the whole body to which they belong ; so the
praise and worship of Christ our Head ; the words
of His lips, the love of His Heart are not His alone,
but ours also, as often as by hearing Mass we make
ourselves one body with the priest, His vicar and
representative. Little as our self-oblation is worth
apart from His, yet if in union with it we offer
ourselves up at Mass a living sacrifice to obey, if
need be, the precept of love even to death, our offer
ing is merged into one with His, and His with ours.
And though our knowledge of sin be childish and
our grief for God's dishonour feeble, and our efforts
at reparation ineffectual, yet if we heap them
together with this infinite sacrifice of expiation and
satisfaction, they will not be rejected or despised.
For it is only in harmony with His praise and
thanksgiving that ours have any meaning or value
in the ears of God. In His Heart is gathered up
all the love and joy of creation, of angels and of

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 323
men, and thence welling upwards to His lips, finds
utterance in one burst of Eucharistic praise, of
which the Church sings : " It is truly meet and
right, that we should always and everywhere render
thanks to Thee, Holy Lord, Almighty Father,
Everlasting God." And how ? " Through Christ
our Lord," " through whom the angels praise Thy
majesty, Dominations adore, and Powers tremble ;
. . . with whose voices we supplicate that ours may
be mingled in one song : Holy Holy, Holy," and
again : " Through Him and with Him and in Him
is to Thee, O God the Father, in union with the
Holy Ghost, all honour and glory for ever and for
ever. Amen." II.
" O sacrum convivium in quo Christus sumitur."
We have already dwelt on the Blessed Eucharist
regarded as a sacrifice. We have roughly traced
the notion of sacrifice from its first beginnings to
its full development and realization in the perfect
sacrifice of the Christian Church. We have seen that
a food-offering made by way of homage and tribute
was a symbol and expression of dependence and
subjection such as exists between the children and
the father of the household to whom they owe their
existence and preservation, to whom they loo'k for
their heritage; and that this offering was directed
to the strengthening of the family tie where it
already existed ; to the renewal of it where it had
been sundered by sin ; to the creation of it where it

326 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
had not existed before. We have seen that when
offered to God, the Father and Creator of all, it was
a confession of our absolute dependence on Him as
the Author and Preserver, not only of our natural,
but of our supernatural life, the life of grace,
" eternal life " — as the Scriptures call it ; that it was
a creation, or else a renewal, or else a confirmation
of our claim to be called the sons of God by
adoption, and to take our seat at His table with His
sons and with the Eternal Son of His love ; to eat
the bread of angels. Finally, we have seen that as
no man could offer any sacrifice adequate to the
majesty of God, the Eternal Son, first-born of every
creature, came down as Manna from Heaven, the
living Bread of the soul, the Food of Immortality —
and in obedience to the Father's eternal precept of
love, loved us even unto death, and gave Himself to
be our food, saying: " Take and eat, This is My Body,"
and that in that same act whereby in obedience to
the Father He offers Himself to us for food day by
day on a thousand altars, He first offers Himself a
true food-offering and sacrifice to the Father. And
of this great sacrifice of praise and thanks and
prayer and expiation, we are fellow-offerers and
sharers as often as, by assisting at Mass, we make
one body under Christ our head. For the action of
the head is not of the head alone, but of the whole
body in subjection to it.
Let us now dwell on the Holy Eucharist viewed
more strictly as a sacramental communion, as a
convivium in quo Christus sumitur. For though sacri
fice and communion are closely connected — the latter

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 327
being the complement and, in some sense, the end
of the former — yet they are separable and often
separated ; as we see, for example, in many of the
Levitical sacrifices, which were not partaken of by
the offerers, for symbolic and prophetic reasons.
It is only so far as the sacrifice is accepted, that the
offerer has a claim to partake of it ; and the right
thus purchased need not be exercised here and now.
Those who sit down as convivce, or guests, at the
sacrificial banquet are fed as children at the hands
of the same father, who, as he has given them their
life, so also fosters and increases it. They derive
their life and nourishment from a common source ;
they spring from one body, they eat of one bread,
they drink of one cup, they dwell in one house, they
look forward to share one inheritance. And so of
the Eucharistic feast. The chalice which we bless
is it not the communion or sharing of the Blood of
Christ ? the Bread which we break is it not the
sharing of the Body of Christ ? For we, being
many, are one bread and one body, as many as are
partakers of that Bread. We being many, distinct
and separate units, are one bread, for even as the
grains of corn are ground up into flour and welded
together in the dough and hardened together in the
oven ; so in this mystery of love and charity all that
separates man from man, tends to be obliterated,
all the dividing lines are erased under the amal
gamating force of love, which seeks to give all and to
receive all ; to absorb and to be absorbed, staying
only at the limit of personal distinctness.
" We being many in one bread, as many as are

328 The mystefy of faith.
partakers of that bread." We are one bread,
because we live by one bread, deriving our life from
the same principle. What bread is this ? "lam
the Bread of Life." It is not because He gives
Himself under the semblance of bread that He calls
Himself the Bread of Life ; but conversely, because
He is the True, the Spiritual, the Heavenly Bread,
the stay of eternal life, therefore He gives Himself
under that defective semblance to signify that truth.
Yet how imperfect is the symbolism ! Of those
who live from one loaf or who drink from one cup,
no two receive the same identical part, but similar
parts, once united, now divided. Nor are they
transformed into the nature of the bread they
receive, but rather it is transformed into their
nature. And so of the sacramental symbols or
outward appearances, no two receive the same part
from the hand of Christ ; and it is " one bread "
only so far as it is one in kind and received from
the same hand. But the underlying reality, the
True Bread of Eternal Life, Christ who is received,
is not multiplied or divided, but remaining in
Himself one and the same, yesterday, to-day, and
for ever ; removed from all limiting conditions
of time and place, is communicated to all; nay,
rather, draws all to Himself, as to a common centre;
changes all into Himself — all, that is, all who receive
Him worthily at any place or in any time. For our
convivce, or fellow-guests, are not only those who
kneel beside us to receive Him here and now ; but
all those who in any difference of place or time
have received Him or shall receive Him. This

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 329
Sacred Banquet, though set forth on innumerable
altars and prolonged age after age to the end of the
world, is morally one single feast in which we
"communicate with, as well as commemorate" the
Glorious and Ever Blessed Virgin Mary, the Blessed
Apostles and Martyrs, and all the Saints. In Christ
time and place are gathered up as into their cause —
the centre from which they radiate ; at the creative
words of blessing, Earth breaks up ; Time drops away
In flows Heaven with its new day
Of endless life.
The substance of His Sacred Body being present
after the manner of a spirit, is present to each
receiver, as our soul is present to each part of our
body ; not part to part, but wholly to each part ;
not multiplied with the parts, but one and the same
in all. For the substance of the bread in each host
is not transformed into a different Christ, as though
His Sacred Body were multiplied in place and time.
He is not changed into it ; but it is changed into
Him. The appearance is multiplied and divided ;
but the reality is one and the self-same. Nor is
that Eternal Bread changed into us, but we are
changed into Him ; united with Him ; and thereby
changed into and united to one another ; being all
merged into the same reality. We are all "one
bread and one body."
Of this mysterious union we can speak only in
the figures and images of revelation itself. "As the
living Father hath sent Me and as I live by the

336 THE MYSTEFY OF FAITH.
Father, so he that eateth Me the same also shall live
by Me." It is from the Father that the Eternal Son
originates and, in some sense, derives His Divine
being, and nature, and life. One and the same
identical life is possessed by both, but with an order
of dependence such that one is called Father and
Begetter, the other Son and Begotten, and while
we may say that the Son lives by the Father, we
may not say that the Father lives by the Son. The
Son is the Image and Likeness of the Father,
but the Father is not the Image and Likeness of
the Son. The creatures which proceed from God,
need to be preserved and watched over by His
providence, to be fed by His fatherly bounty and
care ; but that Eternal Life, communicated to the
Son is unfailing, unchanging, needing no conserva
tion or feeding. So that one and the same eternal
act is both generation, and conservation, and
sustenance in a simple and ineffable sense. The
Father is at once the Giver and the Bread of that
life which is communicated to the Son. " As the
Living Father," the Father who is Eternal, " hath
sent Me," hath uttered Me His Eternal Word, hath
sent Me forth proceeding from Him ; " and as I live
by the Father," who is the Giver and Sustainer and
Bread of My uncreated life ; " so he that eateth Me
the same shall live by Me." " So," i.e., plainly, not
in the same way, but in some analogous way of
which the mystery of the Trinity is the archetype.
Christ lives in us and we live by Him so far as He
communicates His nature to us, and assimilates us
to Himself, conforming our mind more and more to

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 33I

the pattern of His ; bringing all our sympathies and
affections into accordance with those of His own
Divine Heart. For this is the way in which spiritual
union manifests itself; eliminating all distance and
diversity and opposition of thought and sentiment.
As the Eternal Father and Son have but one
identical nature, operation, thought, and love ; so
Christ and the sanctified soul have, not indeed
identical, but altogether similar thoughts and
affections. This is the manner in which our sacramental
union with Christ manifests itself; though what it is
in itself is veiled in mystery. We can only say that
a new life-principle is infused into us ; and that as
the life of sense differs from that of mere growth,
and the life of reason from that of sense, so
Eternal Life — which is a participation of Divine
Life, differs from that of reason. We can also
assert that, unlike the life of reason, though it is in
us it is not of us ; even as the warmth we receive
from the fire differs from that which is generated
within us and by us. Hence it is ascribed to a
principle which is in us yet distinct from us ; which
is said to dwell in us ; which, like a guest, can come
and go without prejudice to our natural faculties
and attributes. Christ, the Bread of Life, is the
Fire which warms us and illuminates us with the
life of grace ; and is so far said to dwell in us, and
to make His abode with us. "He that eateth My
Flesh dwelleth in Me and I in him." " I in them
[Father] and Thou in Me, that they may be made
perfect in one."

332 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
" Perfect in one," for in proportion as we are all
drawn into union with the same Divine substance,
we are united one to another ; and as the minds of
men become more conformed to the pattern of
Christ's mind, and their affections and sentiments
are corrected by the same standard, the barriers to
perfect sympathy and fraternity are broken down,
and " we being many are one bread and one body,
as many as are partakers of that bread ; " and the
four quarters of the earth are knit together — as
Peter saw them in his vision of the Catholicity of
his Church — into one brotherhood in Christ under
our Father in Heaven. Many shall come from the
East and from the West and shall sit down to eat
bread in the Kingdom of God with Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob.
Hcec est vera paternitas I This is, indeed, the true
brotherhood, whereof the brotherhood of nature, of
our common descent from Adam, is but the dim
figure and suggestion. What tie of affection is it
between men to descend from a common ancestor,
five or six generations back ; what, from one
distant from us by thousands of years ? But at the
altar of the Catholic Church, all nations meet
together at the table of the Father of their Eternal
and Divine Life, and eat of the same spiritual meat
and drink of the same spiritual drink. At that table
there is no distinction between Jew or Greek,
Barbarian or Scythian, bond or free, male or female ;
there is no respect to riches, or talents, or birth, or
colour; there is no distinction of classes and masses;
but Christ is all and in all. There they alone are

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 333

great who are great in His eyes and receive most
abundantly of His fulness. He fills the hungry
with good things and sends the rich empty away.
A man may be great in talent yet poor in posses
sions ; great in learning but little in birth ; great in
influence, little in virtue. But he who is great in
the court of God is alone absolutely and truly great.
At that table men are ranked as they are in the
eyes of God, the mighty are put down from their
seat and the lowly are exalted ; to the former He
says: "Give this man room," to the latter, "Friend,
come up higher."
It is the mission of the Catholic Church to
direct, and foster, and supernaturalize that pro
gressive evolution, whereby the whole human family
tends to knit itself into one brotherhood and society.
False philosophies have fought skilfully and per
sistently against her, backed up by the Gates of
Hell. They have taken the most sacred ideas of
the Gospel, and under specious perversions, have
used them in the interests of servitude, tyranny, and
oppression. They have associated so much that is
odious with their canting use of these sacred words,
they have put forward such crafty counterfeits, that
there is danger lest the wheat be rooted up with
tares, and that in rejecting the perversion and dis
tortion of the truth we reject the truth itself.
The history of the Christian era has been the
history of the development of the dogma of the
Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all men
in Christ ; of the liberty of the sons of God, of their
equality, not merely as men, but as the sons of God

334 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
in destiny or in fact, of the slow vindication of
inalienable rights founded on this equality. So far as
the movement has been directed by Catholic dogma
it has prospered ; so far as sophistical and counter
feit notions of liberty and fraternity have intruded
themselves, it has been impeded. But the chief
factor in its progress has been this " Sacred Banquet
wherein Christ is received " — 0 sacrum convivium in
quo Christus sumitur, where high and low, rich and
poor, master and servant, emperor and beggar, have
knelt, side by side, century after century, in their
common nothingness before Him who in obedience
to the Father's precept of Fraternal Love gives
Himself for all and to all indiscriminately ; and who
says : " I have given you an example," that, " as I
have loved you, so ye also should love one another;"
where, we being many are one bread and one
body, as many as partake of that Bread: of the
Bread of Life. III.
" Recolitur memoria passionis ejus."
Having previously dealt with the Blessed
Eucharist as a sacrifice, we considered it in the
light of a sacramental communion, whereby we
being many were made one bread and one body in
virtue of a mystic transformation into one and the
same Bread of Life. We saw that this incom
prehensible union — this infusion of Eternal Life —
tended to bear fruit outwardly and manifest itself in
a continual conforming of our hearts and intelji-

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 335
gences to the human heart and mind of the
Incarnate God Himself; that hereby our nature
and life became so saturated with His, that we
could truly say, " Now I live, yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me ; " as He Himself has taught us when
He tells us, " As I live by the Father, so he that
eateth Me shall live by Me." We saw that the
great end of this convivium or banquet was to draw
the four quarters of the earth into one, to knit them
together into one great brotherhood in Christ under
God, the universal Father and Food-giver in the
order of nature and of grace..
We must now revert to the sacrificial aspect of
the mystery, and consider it, not merely as a true
sacrifice, but more particularly as a memorial
sacrifice or feast of commemoration. We know
that, year by year, the Israelites offered the paschal
lamb in thankful remembrance of their deliverance
from the destroyer, through the blood of the first
paschal lamb. Each annual offering was in itself
as truly a sacrifice as the first; yet it was also a
commemoration, which the first was not. It was a
relative as well as an absolute sacrifice. It was not,
however, merely the commemoration of a sacrifice,
as it were a dramatic and fictitious reproduction of
it, but a sacrifice of commemoration. So the Holy
Eucharist is not merely a symbol or fictitious
representation of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary, but
is itself at once a sacrifice and a commemoration of
a sacrifice. We commemorate the event by repeating
it, renewing it — just as we sometimes commemorate
a first meeting with a friend by meeting again on

336 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.

the anniversary ; or as we like to retrace the walks
of some happier days, not in memory alone, but in
fact. So our Saviour loves to renew Calvary as far
as possible; to give Himself again and again; to
enjoy as nearly as possible that ecstasy of love and
pain once more.
Were it merely a calling to mind of a past event,
and not a real renewing of it, then indeed a
Passion play, or a crucifix, or the reading of the
Gospel would be a far more effectual provision than
the breaking of bread and the pouring out of wine.
But, as we have seen, Christ truly and indeed gives
Himself to us in every Eucharist to be our food ;
and in offering Himself to us, first offers Himself as
a food-offering or sacrifice to the Eternal Father.
It is a commemoration of Calvary because He does
here really, though sacramentally, what He did
there visibly and sensibly — He gives Himself to be
the Bread of Life. In both He gives Himself; and
gives Himself as food : as the Bread of God. For
there are two means whereby grace or Eternal Life
is conveyed to the soul — prayer and the sacraments ;
two ways in which we apprehend Christ, the Bread
of Life. Of this non-sacramental feeding He says,
" He that cometh to Me shall never hunger ; he that
believeth in Me shall never thirst." To come to
Christ, to believe in Him, to submit to Him, to
receive Him, is the condition whereby we feed upon
Him outside the sacraments. " As many as received
Him to them gave He power to become the sons of
God ; to them that believe in His name." It is
not in asserting this, but in denying the sacramental

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 337
reception of Christ, that heretics have gone astray.
God has not tied His grace to the sacraments, and
as there is a baptism of desire, so there is a spiritual
communion. Yet where access to the sacraments is
possible, none may with impunity despise such easy
and abundant sources of grace, or vaunt a morf*
spiritual religion than that instituted by Christ.
Christ crucified is indeed the food of the soul,
the cause of its growth and of its development in
intelligence and in love. As God, He is the life of
the soul, Ego sum Veritas et Vita; as God-Man, He is
the Bread of Life, the means of life. For the mind
and heart need gradual preparation for the full
face-to-face revelation of God. It is the function
of the Word made Flesh to show us the Father,
step by step, leading us from light to light, and love
to love, till we are prepared to attain our spiritual
maturity in the possession of the Source of all light
and love. Thus the soul is fed and fashioned in the
dark womb of time, ere it is born into the day of
eternity. As a book feeds the mind and forms it,
so the fact of the Incarnation and Death of Christ
is an inexhaustible store of spiritual food, whereby
we go on from strength to strength, till we appear
before God's face in Sion.
What Christ does in the sacramental sacrifice of
the altar, that He did in the visible sacrifice, which
began with His Incarnation and ended with the
shedding of His Blood on Calvary; and that He
will continue to do for all eternity :
Se nascens dedit socium
Convescens in edulium
W

338 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
Se moriens in pretium
Se regnans dat in premium.
Dedit se : He gave Himself for us — usque ad mortem
— even unto death. In the same sense, every new
gift of Himself in the sacrament is a reminder of
that past self-giving, of the life-sacrifice ending on
Calvary; it is a pledge of that future self-giving
referred to in the words, Se regnans dat in prcemium.
And of the absoluteness of this self-giving, of the
utterness of this' devotion, bread is a more eloquent
symbol than any other kind of food. For the
animals or fruits that we use for food have, in
themselves, and apart from such use, sufficient
reason for their independent existence ; but bread is
something wholly and entirely consecrated and
devoted to the service of man, and destined to no
other end. Wherefore God spoke to us better of
the love He bore us, and which we should bear
one another, when He gave His Body and Blood
neath the semblances, not of corn and grape, but of
bread and wine.
But more than this; in the very form and manner
in which Christ gives Himself to us in the Eucharist,
His Death on Calvary is set forth and expressed
and thereby called to mind. St. Paul tells us that
in the celebration of these mysteries we show forth
the Lord's Death till He come. It is not merely a
commemoration of Christ, but more particularly of
Christ slain. It was in the severance of His Body
and Blood on Calvary that His obedience to the
precept of love culminated, and His life-sacrifice
was completed in loving us unto death. And it is of

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 339
this extremity of love that the Mass is a memorial
— a reminder to us, and a reminder, if we may so
say, to the Eternal Father. Therefore under one
species He has given us His Body sacramentally
separated from His Blood, the " body of the Pasch "
"as it were of a Lamb slain;" and He has said,
"This is My Body which shall be given for you, do
this for a commemoration of Me." And then that
we might consider His Death under another aspect,
as fulfilling another prophetic type, after supper He
took the cup and gave us His outpoured Blood,
sacramentally separated from His Body, saying,
"This is My Blood of the New and Eternal
Covenant " — referring to the sealing of the ancient
Covenant by the sprinkling of sacrificial blood. For
the Old Law which conditioned the contract between
Israel and God was now fulfilled and absorbed in
the New Law of that Fraternal Love, which is
"the fulfilling of the Law."
Each part of the sacrament then is, according to
the Gospel, a commemoration of His Death. But
though they seem very independent of one another
according to the account there given us, where
a considerable interval of time seems to have
separated the offering of the Sacred Body from
that of the Precious Blood, yet the Church has
always joined the two as forming together in one
sacrifice a fuller and more perfect memorial of the
Death of Christ. For the destruction of any unity
is brought home to us more forcibly when we see all
its severed fragments together, than when we see
any one of them singly. But however essential the

340 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
two-fold presentment of Christ's Death may be for
the integrity of the commemorative sacrifice, yet
the Church has never insisted on the necessity of
two-fold reception for the validity of sacramental
communion, and in the West has had reason to
insist on its non-necessity. For though bread and
wine answer symbolically to the severed Body and
Blood of the slain Christ, and therefore perfect the
symbolism of the commemorative sacrifice, and
though the nutrition of the body symbolizes that of
the spirit, yet the distinction between food and
drink has no application to spiritual sustenance
which may be conceived equally under either meta
phor ; and as there is no distinct grace signified, so
neither is any distinct grace conferred — the hunger
and thirst of the soul being but two aspects of the
same thing. Thus Christ says : " He that cometh to
Me shall never hunger ; he that believeth in Me shall
never thirst," where "coming" and "believing"
answer to eating and drinking, and yet mean one
and the same thing. Also He blesses those who
hunger and thirst after justice; where hunger and
thirst are but two figures for one and the same
spiritual craving. So, the grace signified and con
veyed by either sacrament being one and the same,
one receives no more from both than from one ; just
as one receives no more from two Hosts than from
one. The Mass is therefore a commemorating of
Christ's Death, that is, of the extremity of His love.
And the end or object of this commemoration is
thanksgiving. It is the essence of gratitude to

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH 341
remember the love bestowed upon us ; to keep it
always in mind, to linger on the thought and draw
from it new delight, to stimulate our wavering
trust, to feed our flagging love As an absolute and
independent sacrifice the Mass may be offered in
gratitude for any or every favour ; but as a comme
morative sacrifice it was instituted as an Eucharist
or Benediction whereby we bless and thank God,
who gave us His only-begotten Son to be the Bread
of Life. As at the Pasch it was customary to
rehearse the long history of God's ancient mercies
to Israel, culminating in the deliverance from Egypt,
and in the institution of the feast itself, so in our
Eucharist we commemorate our deliverance through
the Death of Christ, preceded by the inauguration
of the new Pasch ; we lovingly record how " on the
day before He suffered He took bread and broke
and said : This is My Body which shall be given for
you. Do this for a memorial of Me."
In what sense can we say then that the Blessed
Eucharist is the same sacrifice as Calvary ? Plainly
He who offers is the same and what He offers is the
same — namely, His Body to be the bread of our
soul. Yet here it is eaten sacramentally, there by
faith ; as the mode of eating, so the mode of offering
is different. There He was slain once and for all ;
here He becomes sacramentally present again and
again, upon our altars. Yet we may not suppose
that Christ left this earth with His sacrifice
unfinished, and needing to be completed through
the centuries of the Church's history. As far as the
sacramental giving of Himself was concerned, He

342 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
gave Himself at the Last Supper in virtue of the
consecrating words once and for all. It is in virtue
of that act and those words that every Eucharist is
offered. Every host and chalice was before His
mind at that moment. It is the distributing of the
effects of that act which stretches to difference of
place and time — even as a grant of royal bounty
which is given in one word may take months before
its effects are realized in every corner of the kingdom.
Each hand which receives it, receives it from the
King, as though he gave it then and there. And
so every Eucharistic self-offering of Christ was
included in that total self-offering which began with
His conception and ended on Calvary. It is but
a part of that gift of Himself which He gave at the
Last Supper ; the part that was put aside and
reserved for us here and now, for you and for me.
And though as a commemoration each Eucharist
represents, expresses, and re-enacts Calvary, yet
absolutely it is a different self-offering, or at least a
different part of the entire giving of Himself from
birth to death. It is, then, a renewal of the memory
of His Passion — recolitur memoria Passionis ejus — not
a renewal of the Passion itself. Being raised from
the dead, He dieth no more.
And what is the Passion of Christ, if not the
history of such a passion of love as the heart of
man has never mastered — the passion of God for
the soul of man, His Spouse, His Beloved ; for her
who will not believe in His love, but repels it and
sins against it. That God should count man His
friend and die for him, were mystery enough ; but

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 343
that we, being yet enemies, Christ should die for us
to make us His friends, that He should not only
shed His Blood for us, but for the remission of our
sins against Himself, is a measure of love past all
measure. The word " passion " means suffering ; and even
when we speak of the passions of the soul we imply
that we are to some extent passive and helpless
under their influence ; they seize hold of us, if we let
them, and trouble us and shake our physical frame
to its foundations, even as if we were possessed by
an alien spirit for the time being. So it is with
anger, or fear, or joy, or love, when they get the
mastery over us. When we speak of the Passion of
Christ we commonly understand the pains inflicted
upon Him by His enemies — the blows and scourg-
ings and wounds, the insults and indignities, the
vinegar and gall. We forget too readily that all
His Passion was self-inflicted. "Thou wouldst not
have any power against Me," He says to Pilate,
" were it not given thee from on high ; " and :
" I have power to lay down My life and to take it
up again — no man taketh it from Me."
What is this Spirit that has mastered Him, and
possessed Him, and driven Him on to death?
What is it that has worn Him away, and tortured
Him; and rent Him with scourges and nails and
thorns ; and parched Him with thirst ; and broken
His Heart ; and deluged the earth with His Blood,
if not the power of that love wherewith He loved us
in obedience to the New and Eternal Precept of the
New and Eternal Covenant, wherewith the Father

344 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
Himself hath loved us, and hath willed that we
should love one another ? This is the passion, the
love which we commemorate ; this is the theme of
our Eucharistic praise ; this is the love which we
pledge ourselves and strengthen ourselves to imitate
as often as we, being many, are made one bread
and one body by partaking of that one Bread. Let
a man prove himself, therefore ; and so, let him eat.

IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
" Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
" Or what's heaven for ? " Browning.
An idealist, as here understood, is a man of ideals.
An ideal is more than an idea, in two ways at least ;
for it stands in some sense for the archetype from
•which things are copied, and to which they ought
to be conformed, rather than for a mental image
derived from things as they are. The proper locus
-of ideals is the Divine mind ; if they are in our
mind, it is thence we have borrowed them, and not
directly from experience. Again, an ideal is an
object of love no less than of thought. It is some
thing whose contemplation rests, satisfies, delights
the mind ; and which the will longs to realize, and
make actual, wherever it should be realized and
made actual. For practical purposes of discussion,
it will be sufficient to say that "Idealism" is the
conception and the love of what ought to be; or^
better still, it is the love of ideals, the aspiring after
perfection. There are high ideals and low ideals, according
to the cast of various minds, and their greater or
less power of transcending experience and of rising
towards the spiritual and divine. And there are

346 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
right and wrong ideals, according as the conception
is or is not duly founded in the nature of things-
A high ideal may be chimerical and impossible. It
may involve contradictions and absurdities, not
apparent to our limited view. " Not all that is
high is holy," says a Kempis, " nor is every desire
pure." That a man should live in unbroken,
conscious union with God here on earth, may be
ideal, but it is not possible or desirable in the
concrete. It is the state of angels and disembodied
spirits, but not of flesh-clad mortals. A society of
free agents in which every member should perform
his part faultlessly and perfectly, and in which no
energy or talent should be wasted or misapplied,
becomes more and more chimerical in proportion to
the number of its members, the complexity of its
organization, the multitude and difficulty of its aims.
Still, the "ideal" in such cases is not without its
use, provided it be recognized rather as determining
the direction of our efforts than as fixing a possible
goal. It is a term to approximate to indefinitely
without ever hoping to attain. Whereas were one
to aim not merely at the perfect subjection of the
flesh to the spirit, of the imagination to the reason,
of the emotions to the will, but at the complete
elimination of the lower in the interest of the
higher, such an ideal would be positively false and
wrong, since human perfection lies in an adjustment
and harmony of the two. And the same is to be
said of the relation of Nature to Grace, and of the
State to the Church, and of the members to the
head ; where a false idealism is very possible, very

IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 347
frequent, very pernicious, fruitful in all manner
of fanaticism, and followed usually by a reaction
towards the opposite extreme.
A man may have an ideal for himself and for his
neighbour; for individuals, and for associations of
individuals. With the first dawn of reason, conscience sets
before us some more or less vague and imperfect
notion of what we ourselves ought to be ; and the
unspoilt heart stirs itself to desire and realize this
ideal. In some ways it is as yet a crude and
childish ideal ; especially as regards the remote
future; even as the child's view of the world is
hazy, imaginative, and even grotesque as to all
outside the narrowest field of clear vision. It knows
what it is to be a good child to-day ; but it has no
idea what it is to be a good youth or a good man.
Conscience does not bewilder us with more light
than we need for present emergencies ; or terrify us
with burdens we cannot bear now. Sufficient to
the day is the evil thereof. When we follow its
light faithfully it leads us ever nearer to its source,
and therefore into clearer light. The ideal of the
conscientious man grows each day fuller, higher,
and more clearly defined, whereas he who violates
conscience, even if, from a desire to justify
himself, he does not, as usually happens, wilfully
pervert his moral judgment, at least ceases to
love, desire, and seek for further light. He knows
perhaps what he ought to be, and what he is not ;
but he has lost all love of his ideal. The light
remains in his mind, but it is powerless to kindle

348 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
his will ; and since a man is what he wills, such a
one is no longer an idealist.
As regards others, it is easier to retain one's
idealism, even as it is easier to lay burdens on other
men's shoulders than to touch them with one's own
finger. It is pleasant to prescribe a regime for
another, especially if we have power and authority
to force it upon him. An ideal is not realized and
born into the world without pain and travail ; but
when the pain is to be borne by another, and not
by ourselves, the fear of it does not warp our
judgment nor thwart our will. When our neighbour
fails of his ideal, or rather of our ideal in his regard,
we are not so tempted to justify him at the expense
of truth, as we are to justify ourselves. Hence it
comes to pass that one who is by no means an
idealist in his own regard, may, like many a
reformer, be enthusiastically ideal in relation to
others, and may exhibit an apparently heroic
unselfishness and benevolence in seeking for others
those blessings on which he himself does not seem
to place very much value.
It may be, indeed, that retaining a very clear
idea of what people and institutions ought to be, a
man is simply too selfish, too indolent, too unsocial,
to care very much whether this ideal be realized or
not ; it may be that through sourness, disappoint
ment in self, or like motives, he may envy and
grudge to others any excellence that he himself has
not attained. But such a man is not an idealist,
because, as has been said, his will is not kindled by
his ideals.

IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 349.
When under the notion of a man's ideal, we
comprehend all that he thinks ought to be, not only
in himself, but in the whole moral world (where
alone " ought " has its full meaning), it is plain that
his ideal must, as long as he lives, be subject to a
continual process of modification, either for better
or for worse, or even for both under different
respects. It is no less plain that, however men's
ideals may agree as to certain simpler matters of
detail, the chance of their agreement grows smaller
as the matters become more numerous and com
plicated ; so that in the comprehensive sense of the
word used above, no two men can have the same
ideal. They may agree as to the general end of
human life, as to the general nature of human
perfection, individual and social, but they will differ
when the picture is to be filled in in detail. Still
more will they differ as to the means through which
the end is to be effected, seeing that many divergent
paths may converge to the same centre. Wisdom,
therefore, no less than charity, demands great
liberality and toleration in regard to such differ
ences. There cannot be much divergence of opinion as
to the requirements of an ideal turnspit, but the
necessary qualifications of a perfect cook are matter
for endless dispute. And so, as we ascend upwards
from the simpler to the more complex, from the
shoeblack to the monarch, from the family to the
Church or State, our ideals become more disputable
as well as harder to realize.
Whence come our ideals ? They are evidently-

350 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
not directly derived from those actualities and facts
with which they are always contrasted in our
thought. Yet they are undoubtedly suggested by
facts. It is as when we guess the mind of one
who stammers or expresses himself very imperfectly,
and put his thought into exact language. God is
everywhere striving to express the ideals of His
Divine mind through creatures, and if the limita
tions of the physical world necessarily impede their
full utterance, still more does the pervertible free
will of man mar the worthy expression of God's
moral attributes in human life. Yet there is always
some hint of the Divine intention from which we
can build up our ideal, as we can complete a curve
if we know the law of its formation. There is
nothing in nature perfectly straight or perfectly
circular, yet I have a clear and true notion of a
straight line and of a circle. From the perfection
of one feature, or one limb, or one characteristic, I
can put together a notion of perfect beauty and
grace and character, just as the palaeontologist can
ideally reconstruct an animal from the inspection of
a single bone or tooth. Were every member in a
society or a state to fulfil his office as faultlessly as
a certain few do, we should be presented with an
ideal society. Indeed, our notion of God Himself
is in some sense an ideal built on our experience of
limited and finite perfections. In fine, we may
say that all our ideals are from God, who strives
unceasingly to express Himself in our soul and as it
were to reproduce the conceptions of His infinite
mind in our finite mind • who, through the defective,

IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 351

stammering language of creatures and of human
conduct, hints and suggests to our understanding
that perfection which He has created us to attain.
And it is because in a measure He depends on
our free co-operation for the realizing of His ideals
and intentions with regard to human life, that He
makes us thus sharers in His aspirations, treating
us not as servants, but as friends.
Idealism is the motive power of all progress.
It is the want of something better just dangling
within our reach, which lures us on to exert our
selves, only to find, when we have attained it, that
the satisfaction of one want gives birth to another,
and that of receding horizons there is no end. In
economics this " raising the standard of comfort " is
a necessary factor of progress in " comfort-produc
tion," which, in a materialistic and gross-minded
age, is the ideal of national felicity. But whatever
the true ideal be, it is through dissatisfaction with
the present and the conception of a possible better
ment that improvement is inaugurated. Christianity
bids men be content with a comparatively low
standard of physical comfort and of animal enjoy
ment, with the simple sufficiencies of health and
strength, that their energies may be free for worthier
ends. It strives to make them dissatisfied with the
baser aesthetic, moral, and spiritual ideals, and to
raise their aspirations indefinitely towards the best,
and towards God. But in all cases alike, it is the
idealists who draw the laggard multitude after them
onward or upward, even as a man is slowly but surely
drawn after his own ideal, so long as he holds to it.

352 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
It is most important by all possible means to
kindle and foster, both in ourselves and in others,.
this fire of idealism which is the source of all
spiritual energy ; and so much the more because
the world, the flesh, and the devil conspire in a
thousand ways to damp and extinguish it. " Blessed
are they that hunger and thirst after justice," is as
great a paradox as any of the beatitudes, it is as
diametrically opposed to the maxims of the world
as the blessing on poverty, or meekness, or purity.
The world solemnly warns us against idealism by
precept and example, and brings all its forces to the
work of lowering our ideals, blighting our hopeful
ness, perplexing our faith, till the last spark of
enthusiasm has been smothered in the ashes of
despair. Fruamur bonis quce sunt, it says. " Enjoy
what you have, and while you have it. Don't be
ideal ; take life as you find it ; take yourself as you
find yourself; believe me, I have had experience.
I too have had my youth with its golden dreams
and hopes ; I too have chased the rainbow. Now
profit by me, and don't make yourself miserable
by chafing against the inevitable. Be average, if
you like, but don't be ideal."
What and who is this world whom we thus
personify, but the multitude of men which we come
in contact with taken collectively, with its average
opinions, views, sentiments, dispositions, modes of
action ? Everything about it is necessarily average
and not ideal. It acts upon us by the force of
universal and perpetual example ; or if it formulates
its principles, its only accredited spokesmen are

IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 333
those who represent the average mind and morality.
It is only by the presence of a few idealists here
and there, sprinkled through the multitude, that
the average is slightly and slowly raised, or at least
saved from sinking continually. They are the salt
of the earth, and the leaven of the mass. The ideal
and the average are deadly enemies, each trying to
destroy the other, though working by different
methods. A thousand idealists yield at last to the
pressure of example and are dragged down to the
level of the average, for one who resists and raises
the average by an infinitesimal fraction of a millimetre.
And what is true of the big world is true of every
little world or society ; the idealists are the few and
the unideal are the many, and between the two a
certain antagonism is inevitable.
In our tender years, when we are almost entirely
dependent on example and tradition for the forma
tion of our mind and character, it fortunately
happens that our ideals are very elementary and
imperfect, and our powers of discernment feeble ; so
that we are able to look on our seniors with a
wondering worship as embodying and surpassing
our highest notions of wisdom, goodness, and
power; but day by day, as experience and reason
assert their sway and we begin to observe and
criticize, the support on which we lean fails us
inch by inch, until it comes home to us with dis
agreeable clearness that if we are to stand high we
must so far be ready to stand with a few or even
alone, and that the more we depend on general
example the lower we shall have to fix our ideal
x

354 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
It was a shock to us, and a rude withdrawal of a
trusted support, to find that those who were so
rigorous in precept, so severe in chastisement, conid
be themselves so lamentably deficient in practice.
One by one our idols fell flat on their faces never to
rise again. New ones came to take their places for
a time, but only for a time. Layer by layer the
weakness and wickedness of the respectable average
world was uncovered and exposed to our view ; and
what we first regarded as painful exceptions came
to be recognized as general rules.
In the face of this gradual awakening, the con
sequence is frequently an abandonment of our early
ideals and an acceptance of the standards of the
majority. For this we are prepared in most cases
by the failure to realize in ourselves that which
conscience set before us as attainable. At first we
rushed at the task with all the confidence of ignor
ance and inexperience. We thought that to know
was to will ; that to will once was to will for ever :
that fervour was always at our command. We
knew nothing of the slow growth of laboriously
formed habits, of the irregularities of passion, of the
obscurations of the moral judgment, of the protean
diversities of temptation, of the burdensome mono
tony of perseverance. And so we flung ourselves on
the task, to be flung back again and again, baffled,
discouraged, puzzled, sceptical, bitter. While we
still retained our belief in the majority, and regarded
our own case as one of exceptional weakness and
depravity, we were humbled in our own esteem by
our failures and stimulated to be, and to do, what so

IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 355
many others seemed to be and to do. But when
our eyes were opened to the fact that in our weak
ness we were with the many and not with the few,
this wholesome rebuke and encouragement was
withdrawn, and we were left to fall back largely on
the authority and sanctions of conscience and faith.
If, however, these highest and most imperish
able motives were absent or undeveloped, if the
habits and opinions of others had secretly been our
one rule of conduct all along, then we were rather
relieved than distressed to find ourselves compassed
by so great a cloud of witnesses to the expediency
of an average rather than an ideal standard. We
stifled our conscience with a Securus judicat orbis
terrarum, we accepted the world as the best practical
commentator on the Gospel, and we agreed that
however excellent truth, sincerity, honour, purity,
unselfishness, meekness, humility might be in the
abstract, yet there were necessary limitations in
practical life, and that one should not be extreme,
fanatical, or ideal. Thus we were restored to good
humour with ourselves and with our neighbour, and
found a certain negative peace, not in the satisfac
tion, but in the extinction of our earlier aspirations.
This is precisely the scandal of which it is said,
" Woe to the world because of scandals ! It must
needs be that scandals come ; but woe to him by
whom they come." That the world should be
average is in some sort a necessity ; and also that it
should by the force of its example exert a downward
drag on idealism. Under this aspect it is the enemy
of the better, and the enemy of God, and to be at

356 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
peace with it is to be at war with God ; for it is to
cease to struggle upwards and onwards ; it is to let
go and drift down stream. It is the old story of
the conflict between the flesh and the spirit ;
between death and life ; between nature and grace.
In all cases alike, without resistance and conflict
there is no life or growth ; and the same lower
forces which rightly managed are serviceable and
helpful, become a cause of scandal and destruction
when they are yielded to and obeyed. Those who
resist the downward drag of the world and stand
out against it, are strengthened and raised in the
very exercise of resistance. If we can swim, the
water will support us ; if not, it will drown us.
It is, therefore, no easy or common thing to carry
our idealism through so many dangers unimpaired ;
so that our judgment shall not falter or recede from
its high thoughts or our will relax the firmness of
its purpose, for all the temptations that urge us to
accommodate ourselves to things as they are, rather
than to strive to accommodate things to our notion
of what they ought to be.
But useful and essential as idealism is, it is not
without its dangers. Of these we may notice first
a tendency to a false optimism with regard to our
selves and to other things. For where we are hah
conscious of a distressing want of uniformity between
facts and ideals, we may either remedy the evil by
mending the facts, or we may get rid of the distress-
by ignoring or forgetting them. A sanguine, indolent
disposition will be apt to believe too readily that its
ideals have been realized, and to take a complacent

IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 357
view of things. It will refuse to face disagreeable
truths, or to risk any shock which would rudely
wake it from sweet dreams to sour realities. We
often find Church history or the lives of saints
written in this soothing a priori strain, taking for
granted that what ought to have been, must have
been. But prejudicial as optimism may be to the truth,
it is never nearly so prejudicial as pessimism, the
child of narrowness and impatience of judgment.
Our ideals are sometimes absolutely and intrin
sically chimerical ; sometimes chimerical under
existing conditions and circumstances. We often
want hills without valleys ; shade without sunshine ;
or else we want to run before we can walk ; to be
strong without exercise ; virtuous without tempta
tion ; to know without learning ; to reap without
sowing. Above all, we are impatient and will
not wait for the slow processes of growth and
development. From all this comes a readiness to condemn
rashly and freely and universally, in the case of
those who hold fast to their ideals and yet are too
much in earnest to wish to be deceived as to facts
or to live in a fool's paradise. In their anxiety to
be sincere they are unjust; and wishing to be
impartial, they fly from one extreme of unfairness to
another. It is easier and simpler to pronounce
things utterly rotten, than to sift and measure the
true proportion of good and evil ; it is easier and
simpler to impute the evil to free and deliberate
fault, than to discern the fractional part which

358 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
free-will plays from that which is played by neces
sary conditions and inevitable limitations ; it is
easier and simpler to say tha,t things are hopeless
and to do nothing, than to find out remedies and to
apply them. Hence, also, a crude belief in violent
and radical remedies, in wholesale pulling down and
destroying, as a needful preliminary to constructing^
and a disbelief in gradual and noiseless reformations
effected by observing and co-operating with those
forces in nature and man which are ever making for
right. When this temper of mind passes into the
will, it shows itself in the form of cynicism, bitter
ness, uncharitableness in regard both to ourselves
and to others, and in a sour habit of destructive
criticism, which is ever blind, one-sided, and
untruthful. This embitterment is one of the commonest
parasites of idealism ; for such as is our love of that
which ought to be, such will be our disdainful anger
and impatience with that which is, so far as they
are opposed one to another; unless, indeed, we
are partakers of a higher wisdom and a more
excellent way.
Of this way Christ is our example in His
relations to Israel, His chosen people, and to
Jerusalem, His chosen city — the people and the
city He had set apart to satisfy a Divine ideal.
The Sacred Scriptures are one unbroken record of
the resistance, active and passive, offered by that stiff-
necked nation to God's loving designs for its glory
and triumph. " Stiff-necked and uncircumcised of
heart and ear," says St. Stephen, "you are always

IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 359
fighting against the Holy Ghost ; as your fathers
did, so do you. Which of the prophets have
you not persecuted as your fathers did ? " God's
spirit and ideal was always striving to realize itself
in Israel, and striving in vain. In prophets and
saints and men of good-will it found unimpeded
utterance, and broke forth in warning, rebuke, and
exhortation. But time after time the irritated pride
of the mediocre, average multitude rose up in wrath
against the idealist and silenced him for ever. Last
of all, coming to them in His own Person, Christ
was received with distrust and hostility, as an
enemy of existing traditions ; and was cast out and
crucified. Surely if ever one had a right to be
bitter and pessimistic it was He. Yet His love for
His chosen people seemed to suffer no diminution
from first to last. " O Jerusalem, that killest the
prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee,
how oft would I have gathered thee as a hen gathers
her chickens under her wing, but you would not ! "
These are the words of sorrow and disappointment,
if you will, but not of bitterness ; of grief, indeed,
but of a grief born of love. Again, little as our
Saviour could sympathize with the spirit and the
tactics of the rulers of Israel, fierce as was His
indignation against individuals and cliques, yet in
no way was His loyal reverence to the law diminished
in consequence of the unworthiness of its adminis
trators or the perversity of its interpreters. Nay, it
was for His fidelity to the letter and spirit of the
law that He died excommunicate.
As He stood over the city and wept at the tragic

36o IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
contrast between its present glory and its impending
ruin, when not one stone should be left upon
another, His thought was rather of that spiritual
ruin whereof the temporal was but the symbol ; He
wept, as so many of His servants and prophets had
wept, over a shattered ideal. We may well pause
and ask ourselves what there was in Jerusalem as it
then was, that the Heart of Christ still clung to.
Was it merely the ideal Jerusalem that He loved
and longed for; or was the existing perversion of
that ideal still dear to Him ? And the question has
more interest for us when we reflect that Jerusalem
is the type, not only of the Catholic Church, but of
every human soul which is by destiny a city of
peace, a spouse of Christ, a temple of the Living
God. For each soul God has His cherished ideal ;
an ideal in all cases (save one or two) more or less
disappointed ; in many, shattered beyond redemp
tion ; and yet while life endures, and until the instant
in which the soul steps by its last choice into its
unchanging condition, His love clings to it, follows
it, weeps and laments over it, and cries, " Oh, that
thou hadst known and hadst harkened," and, " How
oft would I have gathered thee, but thou wouldst
not ! "
In spite, then, of all her errors, sins, perversities,.
apostasies, it was no abstract Jerusalem, but the
concrete assembly of the sons of Israel, which was
so dear to God and to His prophets. He loved her
as being the offspring and growing embodiment of
an ideal, as tending in virtue of her nature and
constitution towards the fulfilment of that ideal,

IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 361

even as the soul which animates the child in the
womb strives to assert itself and clothe itself with
the matured body of perfect manhood. A thousand
circumstances may impede the work of develop
ment ; but while there is life the imprisoned ideal is
there, striving to become real. Nay, rather, it -£5
the perfect realization in its infancy and weakness.
So it was with Jerusalem, the City of the Great
King, the dwelling-place of His Name ; so it is
with the Holy Catholic Church ; so it is with
the soul of every man. God loves the present
reality for what it is and for what it tends to be and
is capable of being. And the contrast between its
present lowliness and imperfection and that final
glory and greatness towards which it is borne by
the force of its nature, rouses a tender pity in the
Divine Heart, together with a fierce indignation
against those rebel wills of ours which thwart so fair
a growth. Besides this, Jerusalem was (and is) dear to Christ
for the sake of the fruits it had already produced,
for the sake of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and
Joseph ; for the sake of Moses and the saints and
the prophets ; for the sake of legions of her children
whose names are unrecorded ; for the sake of the
continual incense of prayer, praise, and sacrifice
which had ascended from her altars through so
many centuries. Even had there been no vestige
of such fruit, what time our Lord wept over the
city • had she been then altogether a barren fig-tree,
yet it was the same tree which in other seasons had
yielded so rich a harvest, and which, in virtue of

363 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
the vital principle within her, might yield a more
abundant harvest still.
It was for these reasons that He loved and
reverenced that fallen Jerusalem as His Mother ;
that He obeyed her law to the letter; that He
clung to her until she consummated her wickedness
by casting Him off. And in like manner He clings
to the human soul in general, and to each soul in
particular, until the treasure is wrenched with
violence from His wearied grasp. Long after we
have despaired of ourselves, and after the saints and
angels, nay, after the Mother of God herself has
despaired of us, He, " faithful and true," clings to
us still, hoping while a spark of life is left.
Since, then, He is the sovereign and holiest rule
of all right judgment and affection, it is in viewing
things with His eyes that we shall find clear insight
and peace of mind. From Him we learn to hold
unfalteringly to our best and highest ideals of what
things ought to be, and yet not to be embittered
by the sad contrast often presented by things as
they are.
In the light of His example let us ask ourselves
what, for instance, would be the right attitude of
mind for one living in the midst of the most extreme
ecclesiastical corruption, such as may have prevailed
here and there at the time of the sixteenth century
revolt, or such as does now and then prevail where
the usurpations and interferences of the secular
power sever the local Church from free and
healthful connection with the main body of Catholic
Christendom, and impede the full effects of her

IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 363
discipline. Let us, for the sake of argument, make
things about as bad as they can be — and that is
very bad.
The fact that the tainted and rotten members,
who are the principal agents of this corruption,
should break away from ecclesiastical unity, and
seek an independence favourable to their love of
licence, that they should sell themselves to the
secular power of Egypt for the sake of the flesh-
pots, the leeks and the garlic, is altogether natural
and reasonable. But a revolt led by such men
could not live long for lack of that species veri and
plausibility which can be lent to it only by the
accession of seemingly good and moral men of strict
and regular life, who have turned in disgust from
patent wickedness in high places, and have joined
themselves to what seems to them a movement of
reform. More often, indeed, the reform movement
is actually initiated by these men, and from these
motives ; and when so initiated, is at once utilized
by the baser sort for their own baser ends. On the
other hand, the corruption, which to many is a cause
of ruin and scandal, is an occasion of strength and
resurrection to not a few whose faith is proved and
whose love and hope are deepened by holding out
against the downward drag of universal example.
Hence, as the richest flowers often grow from the
foulest refuse, so the greatest saints have shone out
in the darkest nights of the Church's history.
What, then, should be the attitude of mind of a
good Catholic Christian under such painful circum
stances as we are imagining ? Is he bound in any

364 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
sense to love, reverence, and obey the concrete
Church in which he finds himself ? or will it suffice
that he retain a love and reverence for the ideal,
giving birth and strength to a hatred and detestation
of the contrasted reality? There can be but one
answer. Terrible as is the evil and perversion, yet
that which is thus perverted and degraded is by
organic continuity a part of the body founded by
Jesus Christ, a branch of that tree which He
planted, and watered with His Blood. While it
keeps the Catholic faith, and is as yet unsevered
from the centre of unity, it retains its vital principle
and root of recovery, even as does the most degraded
and fallen Catholic who still clings to the faith of
his baptism. It has that in its very nature which
tends, in due conditions, to the realization of the
Divine ideal of the Spouse of Christ. It is part of
the same body of which Christ is the Head, and of
which Mary, with all the apostles, martyrs, con
fessors, virgins, and holy souls on earth and in
Heaven, are members. That wild beasts have
preyed upon it and devoured it may fill us with just
indignation against those through whose fault such
corruption has come about ; but for the body itself
our sentiments should only be those of Christ when
He wept over Jerusalem — sentiments of sorrow and
anguish, born of an unalterable love and affection.
Where one has both the power and Divine com
mission to act, and to apply remedies, one is bound
to move heaven and earth in the cause of God ; but
where one is powerless or unauthorized one can but
stand by helpless with Mary at the side of the

IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 365
Cross and pray. Bonum est prcestolari cum silentio
salutare Dei — " It is good to wait in silence for the
salvation of God." Ten thousand are strong enough
to draw the sword with Simon Peter, and to rush
into the midst of Christ's enemies hacking and
hewing right and left, for one who has the strength
to wait and be silent. Doubtless there is a silence
and an expectation, which only means apathy or
indifference, or timidity, where there is nothing to
suppress and therefore no self-suppression ; or there
is the silence of the fatalist. But apart from such
cases it is the weak man who gives way to violence
in speech and action ; whose first impulse is revolu
tion, rebellion, secession ; it is the strong man who
keeps silence and waits and hopes and obeys. They
that take the sword, be it the sword of the tongue
or the sword of steel, perish by the sword ; violence
defeats itself; but the meek possess the earth
because they are the really strong, and because
they husband those energies which the passionate
squander in fruitless impulsiveness. Theirs is the
violence which takes the Kingdom of Heaven by
storm. Secession, when it is not a work of malice, is the
child of crude thought and moral cowardice. It is
to fly from a temptation which it is our duty to face
and to conquer ; the temptation of scandal, of seeing
ourselves deprived of the support of public example
and edification, and left in comparative isolation as
idealists and dreamers. It is the act of a soldier
who deserts, lest he should be involved in the defeat
of his regiment which he foresees, or share the

366 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
suspicion of having failed in his duty ; or is it the
act of a son who denies and disowns the mother
that bore him, lest he should be partaker in her
disgrace ? It is, therefore, shirking the conse
quences of our contract of membership, which
requires that we should be willing to share evil
things no less than good things in common with
others ; and which holds, like the marriage-bond*
"for richer, for poorer; for better, for worse; in
sickness, or in health ; till death us do part."
Little as we may like it, we are of necessity social
beings, and our life and lot is bound up with the
life and lot of others, whose burdens we have to
bear even as they have to bear ours. We may
secede from the Church because of scandals, lest we
should be rated according to the average of its
public, but we cannot secede from our membership
with the human family, or disown our ineffably
close brotherhood with the erring multitudes of our
Father's children. If we isolate ourselves from the
multitudes, we isolate ourselves from God.
But if the weak no less than the wicked fall
away in such crises, the strong stand firm and by
resistance become stronger ; and the love that holds
them back strikes root yet deeper in their hearts ;
even as true affection is called forth in its highest
form by the afflictions, needs, sorrows, and sins of
those we love. However their hands be tied through
lack of the ability or the authority to correct others,
they know well that the perfection of the multitude
depends chiefly on the perfection of its component
units, and that no change of regimen, no legislation

IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 367

will bring any remedy unless there be virtue and
probity in those who administer it and in those
who submit to it. Until each member is imbued
with the true ideal of the whole, at least in outline,
and is zealous for its realization in preference to all
isolated and private interests, there will always be
the disorders and diseases that spring from selfish
ness and pride. This, therefore, is the first and
most essential work — the intellectual and moral
betterment of individuals one by one — a work
effected often quietly and noiselessly; at first very
slowly, one here and there ; then with geometrically
increasing rapidity as each torch becomes a new
centre for the dissemination of light and heat ; and
the whole face and tone of a community is changed,
we know not how. For it is with growth as with
decay; more depends on individuals than on
systems ; and men are led by their affections rather
than by principles ; by example and fashion rather
than by theories and views.
This being so, there is no question as to the
immediate task which it is in every true reformer's
power to apply himself to vigorously, namely, the
task of self-reformation ; and this not in an exclusive,
self-regarding spirit, as though, in despair of the
republic, one had cynically resolved to live for one's
own highest good, and let the world go its way ; but
in a spirit of true, universal apostolic charity, clearly
recognizing that this is the nearest, the surest, the
most imperative way to help others ; and subordinat
ing one's own self-care as a means to that nobler
and greater end. " First, keep yourself in peace,

368 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
and then you will be able to bring peace to others ;:
first be zealous about yourself, and then you will
have some right to be zealous about your neighbour 'r
— Tene te primo in pace et tunc poteris alios pacificare.
Habe primo zelum super teipsum et tunc juste zelare-
poteris etiam proximum tuum. This is indeed no easy
task, and the very attempt will teach a man to be
more patient with others. " If you cannot make
yourself what you fain would be, how can you force
others to be as you would have them ? " No man
is fit to teach others with any effect who has not
learnt what he is teaching by experience. He can
give directions learnt from a book, he can deal in
phrases, but phrases they are and nothing more.
We do not deny the utility of such repeating-
machines, which is precisely the utility of a book :
but it is nothing comparable to the animating
influence of one who has himself first tried and
failed ; and then tried and succeeded. This is the
secret of a Kempis' Imitation or of Augustine's
Confessions, and of the words of saints as contrasted
with the words of scribes.
Speaking now in general of the way in which we
should meet such difficulties and seeming scandals,
whether universal or local, whether in the Church
or in the State, or in particular institutions sub
ordinated to the one or to the other, the first-
question we are bound to ask ourselves is : Are
things really as bad as they seem ? Before we
attempt to solve the problem, let us be quite
sure that it exists. There is such a thing as
subjective colouring; and to the jaundiced eye all

IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 369
things are yellow. It cannot be denied that the
prophetic regime and mode of life, with its austerity
and solitude, its introspection and reflection, its
concentration on one only aspect of things, may
tend to dehumanize and pervert the judgment ;
and prophets, whether of the study or of the cell,
would often keep their spiritual vision all the keener
and clearer for an occasional day in the country.
Like round numbers, or sweeping statements and
generalities, extreme views, whether optimist or
pessimist, are much simpler ; when we have neither
the ability, nor the justice, nor the patience requisite
for exact measurements, it saves a deal of trouble
to include all things under a general anathema.
Moreover, the appeal to sensation is not without its
attraction. Mediocrity is uninteresting to contem
plate, but extremes are thrilling. Again, it is just
possible that the particular ideal which we are
pleased to regard as the sole measure of what ought
to be, may be but one of many alternatives, all
equally good. It may be indifferent whether a
man carries out his chief end in life as a doctor,
or a lawyer, or as a merchant; and so of a
government, or an institution, or an order, there
may be paths indifferently converging to the same
centre. All is not lost because the end is reached
by some path I had not fixed on or dreamt of.
Often our pessimistic estimate of facts has no
other reason than this, that our own ideas have
not been preferred to others equally good or
better. A Tory will never allow that the country
is prospering under a Radical Government; nor
V

370 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE
will a Radical Opposition be more generous in its
turn. If, however, there is still a heavy residue of evils
that refuse to be resolved into phantasms of the
imagination, the next question is as to what pro
portion of them is due to wilful malice, and what to
inevitable circumstances and limitations over which
even the Almighty has no control. Without weaken
ing our belief in the existence of free-will, our self-
experience and our experience of life tends ever to
narrow the sphere in which free-will has action, and
to make us see that the ocean of apparent iniquity
which deluges the world owes far less to sin, far
more to circumstances, than we had ever thought.
Our early judgments are as a rule narrow and
severe ; and they become gentler and wider in exact
proportion to our experience and reflection.
It would be well, for this reason, to consider that
the end which a society or institution proposes to
itself is sometimes very high and very complex,
depending on a great number of individuals being
each ideal in his own department ; and on the
exact balance of a very delicate organization, easily
disturbed by the defection of even one member.
A society for the manufacture of match-boxes or
broom-sticks can be very easily organized. The
gifts needed for membership are common and well-
nigh universal. The stimulus to co-operation and
labour is tangible, and one that appeals to the
universal instinct of acquisition. Little marvel if
such a society prospers ; if it abounds in individuals
who arrive at the highest degree of skill in their

IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 371

profession ; if all the members co-operate cordially
each for his own interest ; or if there is little
diversity of judgment as to the best mode of
production. If we turn, for example, to the Army, or the
Navy, or the Civil Service, the end in view is much
more complex, especially in the last. Still, the
killing of men and the battering of ships — the proxi
mate end of the first two — is a fairly simple end,
however intricate the machinery brought to bear
upon it. The gifts required for such a service are
not so very rare. The motives in most cases are
simply worldly advancement and a good position ;
and were these insufficient to secure faithful service,
the sanction of very tangible penalties is at hand to
supplement their weakness. Nor has the Govern
ment to go begging for recruits, but has only to pick
and choose the best from the eager crowds that are
pressing into its service from all quarters of the
empire. With these we may contrast the high and
difficult end which the Church (to take the extremest
example) sets before her, a work to be wrought
upon the minds and hearts of men, of her own
subjects and of those to whom they minister. Even
were she only occupied with the secular education
of youth, how difficult and complex are the problems
suggested by that task, how far from solution, even
in these days of pretended enlightenment ; and how
few are the men with the requisite learning, how
still fewer those with the more requisite skill to
form the minds of the young ! But if in addition to
this she aims at the moral and spiritual education

372 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
of all, young and old, and at other ends even more
public and universal, the difficulty becomes indefi
nitely greater. What sort of men ought not they to
be who would minister to the very highest good and
happiness of humanity ; what almost impossible
combinations of gifts and graces are needed ! How
scarce even the raw material fit to be shaped for
such purposes ! how easily spoilt in the shaping !
And then the motives which draw men to work for
religion or spiritual ends, if they are higher, yet
being invisible, supernatural, distant, they appeal
to a smaller number, and to those, comparatively
feebly. We must take men as we find them. It is
only in our exceptional states of vivid faith and
spiritual exaltation that the supernatural tells on us
effectively and intensely, whereas temporal self-
interest, the love of gain and reputation, act upon
all men at all times. Men of the world have at all
times found cheap and abundant material for caustic
satire in the ludicrous contrast between the profes
sion and practice of those who aim at higher and
more spiritual standards. They forget how easy it
is to be consistent in sliding downhill ; how hard, in
clambering up. When there is no struggle, there is
no cause for weariness and failure ; nor need he fear
a fall who lies flat on the earth. As the height
aspired to is more exalted, so will the percentage of
those who fail in their attempt to reach it be
greater ; and the failure itself be more lamentable
and disastrous. Many a fallen priest would- have
made a respectable layman, or at least would never
have fallen so low ; and the rottenness of a Catholic

IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 373
country is worse perhaps than that of a Protestant.
For in these cases the forces disorganized are
stronger, and the light sinned against, clearer.
The success of a religious society like the Church
depends ultimately on the extent to which its several
members are imbued with and possessed by the
spirit and enthusiasm of its founder, and this spirit
is difficult to enkindle, and more difficult to sustain.
We have Gospel-warrant for saying that the children
of the world are wiser, more watchful, more energetic
in their interests than the children of God. In a
way it must be so with mortal man ; with this
mixture of spiritual and animal, where the lower
element is so often preponderant. The higher
element in us is the feebler, and our whole task in
life is to develop it laboriously and slowly. It is
easy to be enthusiastic and successful in the things
of the body ; but hard in things of the soul. Just
then as our self-experience convicts us of being
subject to this law of sin in our own individual life,
so we should expect to find it in the world around
us. God's work will be done slothfully, meanly,
unsuccessfully, while temporal interests will be
sharply looked to. Those who enter the active
service of the Church are not chosen by competitive
examination from a crush of eager candidates ; they
have no salary which can be forfeited ; nor can they
be coerced to their duty by physical force or fear.
All depends on spiritual fervour and intelligent
spontaneity. Often, moreover, the public from which
in particular localities the Church has to draw her
recruits, is a very small one, and yet the work to be

574 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
done is extensive and diversified. The harvest is
great, b.it the labourers are few. It therefore becomes
necessar 7 to accept as labourers many who are very
imperfectly qualified for the work, for sheer lack of
hands. Finally, so far as the Church's work brings her
into relation with the world, the rapid changes in
her environment may demand continual adaptations
and modifications, which are hard to effect con
sistently with the ancient traditions of a world-wide
and necessarily centralized institution which moves
slowly because of its very bulk.
These and a thousand similar reasons ought to
convince us that much of our dissatisfaction is rather
with circumstances than with persons; in a word,
our quarrel is with Almighty God, and with the
finite nature of things.
If, after eliminating what is due to these im
personal causes, we still find matter for blame and
censure, it remains for us to ask whether there may
not be much excuse for such wilful faults as we
seem to have detected; humanum est errare, and
perhaps a little self-knowledge would dispose us not
to be altogether surprised, if here and there others
misuse the liberty that we ourselves so often misuse.
If we ever expected, we never had a right to
expect to find an ideal state of things in this world.
The Church of the Saints is one in which men
profess to tend to sanctity, not to have attained it.
We are not scandalized at the inefficiency of a
hospital because we find that all the occupants of
the beds are more or less sick and disabled. We

Idealism, Its Use and abuse. 375
only require that they should for the most part be
on the road to recovery ; or at least under medical
treatment. This world is not the place where we are to look
for the ideal. Here and there little glimpses of it
are given us to whet our appetite for higher things,
and to lead us from dissatisfaction to dissatisfaction,
and thence to a desire for the great archetype of all
ideals, in whom at last and alone the Real and the
Ideal are identified

DISCOURAGEMENT.
" Great is the facile conqueror,
Yet haply he who wounded sore,
Breathless, unhorsed, all covered o'er
With blood and sweat,
Sinks foiled, but fighting evermore
Is greater yet." Watson.
The young and the inebriate, according to
Aquinas, have it in common that they abound in
hope ; that is, so far as hope is classed among the
emotions or passions enumerated by Aristotle. The
reason in both cases is to be found in their inability
to estimate the difficulties to be encountered, and
the limits of their own powers and resources — an
ignorance due to inexperience in the one case, to
alcoholic influence in the other. Obviously this is
to be accounted foolhardiness rather than courage —
the body and semblance of hope without its soul
i i/± and substance. For hope -as-a virtue of the intelli
gence, and spiritual will is no blind optimism, but a
confidence that faces the cruelest facts, unmoved,
undismayed. Ultimately it is grounded in an
unshaken faith as to the eventual victory of truth
over error, of right over wrong, of good (that is, 01
God) over evil. Its noblest opportunity is when
the manner of that victory is most obscure and the

Discouragement. 377

odds against it most overwhelming. So far as its
object is the triumph of God in our own soul, a
triumph which depends upon the grace of God and
upon our own co-operation therewith, hope excludes
certainty; for though God is faithful, our will is
incalculably mutable, as we have learnt by past
experience. Yet hope requires that we should
consider our salvation, not merely possible, but as
most probable — nay, practically, though not intellec
tually, certain ; and that the consciousness that we
are "working out our salvation with fear and
trembling" should itself allay tnat deeper fear which
drives peace from the heart. We cannot be as
certain of salvation as we are of to-morrow's
sunrise ; but it is not enough to hope for it only as
for to-morrow's sunrise, which may be or may not
be — who can tell ? Rather, it should be as we hope
for summer and autumn in due season, with a hope
which ignores the scarce appreciable possibility of
disappointment. But on what is such hope grounded, since God's
fidelity to His promise of needful grace is abso
lutely certain — a matter of faith rather than hope ;
while our own co-operation depends on the freaks
of a will whose past history should incline us rather
towards despair ?
It is, however, from a closer study of our past
that we draw sustenance for hope, since there
we see how in all His dealings with us God is not
only just and faithful, but better than His word,
giving more and far more than He had promised.
Day by day uncovenanted graces have been rained

378 DISCOURAGEMENT.
upon us, and it is chiefly through them that we are
what we are ; " it is the mercy of God that we have
not been consumed " and cast away for our sins.
And though we know not the measure or the law
of these quickening showers, we know that in some
sense they are without measure; that it is only
those who wilfully presume upon them that forfeit
the right to hope in them ; while the very hoping
in them, without presumption, almost merits and
demands them.
If hope's counterfeit is easy when we are young,
when we still think *that to know right is to will
right ; and that to will once is to will for ever ;
hope's reality is hard when we are older, when we
have learnt the wide difference between these things,
when time after time we have been beaten back
almost to the very starting-point, and when the
distant hills of our early ideals look further and
more inaccessible than ever; still more, when
from knowledge of ourselves and of others this
defeat of our hopes is felt to be the result of almost
natural causes, whether working in our own nature
or in the nature of things around us. " Was not
ignorance," we ask, " the ignorance of an untaught
mind, stranger to the notion of law, confident in the
omnipotence of free-will, the parent of our crude
hopes ? Is it not ruthless knowledge, bitter experi
ence, that has strangled them? " Our first repent
ances and recoveries are easy and hopeful, for we
know not how sin has injured us and poisoned oui
will; our next, more difficult, less hopeful; and so
of the successive efforts, until at last the strongest

DISCOURAGEMENT. 379
stimulus can elicit from us no more than some
sluggish response like faint stirring of a life flicker
ing out.
Then it is that the lethargy of discouragement
supervenes ; and if a process of rapid decay does
not follow at once, if the soul remains in statu quo,
sulky and sullen, it is only because lethargy is not
death ; because the discouragement is not absolute ;
because there is still, unperceived save by God, a
feeble pulse of hope which fights against death and
despair. This lethargy and state of supine inaction is
often falsely confounded with that tepidity or half-
heartedness which characterizes those caitiff souls
which Heaven cannot stomach and even Hell
disgorges. But the lukewarm, from the very little
ness of his heart and paltriness of his ideals, is all
self-satisfied ; he winks inwardly for that he has
made a sharp bargain with Heaven and has skirted
the edge of Hell without slipping in. Discourage
ment, on the other hand, is never self-satisfied ; it is
the parasite of idealism. " Woman, why weepest
thou ? whom seekest thou ? They have taken away
my Lord, and Iknow not where they have laid Him."
The discouraged soul sits weeping and disconsolate
by the empty tomb of its hopes, bearing in its hand
the evidence of its good-will in the idle spikenard
and aloes ready for service and worship. It weeps
for what it loves, for what it deems itself to have
lost, and its comforter is never far, though hard to
see through blinding tears.
But although discouragement or despondency

380 DISCOURAGEMENT.
has none of malice and offence of tepidity, and
although it implies good desires and high aspira
tions, still it is in itself something evil, the base
progeny of truth and lie. It is known by its fruit —
remissness and heavy listlessness, and perhaps a
certain desperation and recklessness from which
ruin may quickly result. Like a viper whose bite
is death, it cannot be shaken off too soon.
Largely it is the child of ignorance ; ignorance,
that is, of the common psychological laws which
govern the formation of the human mind and will.
Homo es et non angelus, says a Kempis — " Thou art
a man, not an angel ; " yet we are ever impatient
and wrathful with the limitations of this poor soul
of ours, in which the highest of the animal order
weds with the very lowest of the spiritual order.
There are forms of sense-life so low that we can
scarce distinguish them from vegetation ; and so we
might fancy God's angels puzzled for clear evidence
of man's spirituality, yet because we can know very
little and that with great labour, our wounded vanity
spurns all knowledge with a Quid est Veritas ? and
because virtue is slow and difficult of growth we
lose patience with it and throw the task aside in
anger. We cry out upon God : " Why hast Thou
made me thus ? "
Some conjecture, not unreasonably, that as the
angelic intelligence, unencumbered by bodily con
ditions which would tie its movement down to time
and space, is full-formed and enlightened in the
first instant of its being ; so, too, and for the same
reason, its moral self-formation is effected, once and

DISCOURAGEMENT. 381
for all in the first exercise of its free choice. There
is not, as with us, room for after-thought and
repentance. Light breaks upon us slowly, and God
presents Himself to our choice and love under a
thousand partial aspects before our trial is ended
and death seals our changeless doom. But in the
angels, seemingly, virtue is not the fruit of repeated
acts and elections and trials, but of one full
exhaustive choice, one fearful purgatorial instant,
one fiery trial in which self-love is to be wrenched
out by the roots and burnt up in the flame of Divine
charity. But because we would be angels and not men,
because we expect more of ourselves than God
expects of us, because our pride revolts against the
necessary limitations of humanity, we fall into
sullen discouragement and since we cannot be all,
and do all, and have all, we will be nothing, and do
nothing, and have nothing, but will sit with knees
relaxed and idly hanging hands.
Humiliating as it may be, yet we must accept
the fact that it is the nature of man to learn through
blundering, through making every possible mistake
before the right method is discovered. We know
it, whether as teachers or learners, in the acquisition
of any art, or skill, or science, where we graduate
our exercises so as to deal first with one then with
another of the innumerable ways of going wrong.
Again, we do not think it enough to have over
come the same difficulty once, but we repeat and
repeat, till conquest has become a habit, and
only then do we turn our attention to some other

382 DISCOURAGEMENT.
enemy. By practice alone can any sort of skill be
created, maintained, and increased ; and so it is
with that moral skill we call virtue. It seems to
some that they are deluding themselves, that they
cannot be sincere in their resolves, because they
are morally certain that they will fall again. In
other words, they think a habit can be created by
one act. Supernaturally it might be so, were the
act one of intense and fervid love melting and
moulding the soul in an instant — such a purgatorial
act as that by which the angels fix their unchanging
state ; but ordinarily and naturally it is not so ; and
as one learning to draw, or to write, or to play,
desires in all sincerity to succeed and not to blunder,
and yet is morally certain that blunder he will and
must, and that many and many a time ; so it is
with regard to the uprooting of any evil habit or
the acquisition of any good habit. We are not
insincere because we are certain we shall fall again,
if only at the present moment we do not want to
fall and lament the prospective fall, and are resolved
not to cease endeavouring in spite of a thousand
falls. For this is what perseverance means for us
mortals — not an unbroken record of victories, but a
dogged purpose of going on though we should
stumble at every step ; and of this it is said,
that " he that shall persevere to the end shall be
saved." This very saying contains a thought which on
the whole makes for encouragement rather than
discouragement, and is well worth developing. For
it implies that in His judgment of qs God looks not

DISCOURAGEMENT. 383
to the success, but to the endeavour ; not to what we
have attained, but what we would attain. The
Samaritans would have nothing to do with our Lord
because " His face was set as though He would go
to Jerusalem ; " not because He was in Jerusalem,
but because He was as good as there, for He was
there in will and purpose and firm resolve. And
the world, in like manner, counts those lost to its
own cause, and won to God's, whose face is set to
go to Jerusalem, the city of peace. In this, as in
many other things, the world's instinct and intuition
is right, for God, too, takes the will for the deed.
We are what we will. He who sincerely wills (that
is, loves) purity and patience, or faith, or any other
virtue, already possesses it as to its most essential
and inward part ; for all human virtue is primarily
of the will. That it should pass beyond the will
and embody itself in our outward conduct, in those
faculties subject to the will ; that we should be pure
and brave and patient, not merely in sincere resolve,
but also effectually in our words and actions, belongs
to the integrity of the virtue ; it is the body of the
virtue, but not its soul. The soul is the principle
of life, which slowly draws to itself apt matter from
the environment and weaves it gradually and
laboriously into a body meet for its own service
and self-manifestation. The soul can live without
the body, but the body without the soul is dead.
And so it is with the soul and body of virtue ; with
the purpose and the attainment.
In this we are not countenancing " indifferentism "
in morals, or approving the maxim, that it matters

384 DISCOURAGEMENT.
not what we do so long as we mean well. Because
it matters less, it does not cease to matter very
greatly ; nor can any one who thinks it matters
little be really said to "mean well." To "mean
well" is to be sincerely resolved to procure the
entire reformation and perfection of our conduct, so
that the "body" of our spiritual and moral life shall
be the exactest possible expression of the " soul."
To mean the truth and yet to lie in ignorance is far
better than to mean a lie and yet blunder upon the
truth. But no one sincerely means the truth who
speaks at random on the supposition that a material
lie is of no consequence whatever.
Again, when we say God takes the will for the
deed, we are not speaking of mere "velleity," but of
what is called " efficacious " will, not because it
actually effects its desire, or succeeds in its purpose,
but because the failure is through no lack of will.
A close. prisoner may have a most efficacious will
to escape. Stone walls and iron bars prevent his
will from taking effect ; but let these be removed,
and the impeded force of his resolve at once becomes
effectual. A "velleity" is not a resolve that actually
exists in the soul, but one which would exist were it
not excluded by some incompatible resolve. I want
to possess a certain book, but I am not willing to
pay the price, though I could do so. In short, I like
the book but I prefer the money ; and the resolve to
keep my money excludes the resolve to get the
book. I do not actually will to have it, but I would
will to have it, were it not for this other will.
Similarly a man may will patience or purity and

DISCOURAGEMENT. 385
fail to realize it, either because he could pay the
price but is unwilling, or because, being quite ready
to pay the price, he has not got it to pay, but must
toil and labeur and economize, and perhaps die,
before he can effect his purpose. The former will
is mere "velleity" — a will that might be, but is not —
the latter is that "efficacious" will which God accepts
for the deed.
Yet even the " velleity," though insufficient, is
good ; it is a spark of heavenly fire which can be
fanned into a flame ; or it is the light which God
holds to the lamp of our heart that it may catch
fire and make that light its own. But it is not
enough to sit down with exiled Israel by the waters
of Babylon and to remember Jerusalem in the midst
of our tears ; it is not enough to sit with the prodigal
in rags and misery dreaming of the home we have
lost through our folly and madness ; we must arise
and go ; we must set our faces firmly towards
Jerusalem, resolved to tread the weary way, albeit
stumbling at every step, or even perishing on the
road with our vow unaccomplished. This is an
"efficacious" will, though outwardly it were to effect
nothing, but were to fall back dead in the very
effort to arise. In that instant watchful Love would
be at our side from afar to bear us home in triumph
to the "haven of our desire." Thus it was that
Christ went forth, "knowing all things that were to
come upon Him," to pass through Passion and
Death to the bosom of the Father, to the haven of
His desire, with His face set towards that Heavenly
Jerusalem. Posui faciem meam, He says, quasi petram

386 DISCOURAGEMENT.
durissimam — " I have set my face as it were a hard
rock, firmly, immutably resolved to go through to
the bitter end.
Man, says the Holy Ghost, looks at the outside
of an action, considers the appearance ¦ God looks
at the heart, at the substance and soul of the act at
the set of the will. Nor is this said to man's blame,
since the surface is all his faculties enable him to
take cognizance of; but it is to warn him off God's
preserves, to remind him that he knows nothing or
as good as nothing of the reality of his neighbour's
conduct, that is, of the motive and merit. In our
judgment of human conduct, of the relative merits
and goodness of men, we must be agnostics and
positivists ; we must keep ourselves to the obser
vation and record of what appears, and relegate
motives and merits to the region of the unknown
and unknowable. Much as God cares for the recti
tude of our outward conduct, yet the "goodness"
of men as such, that which makes a man good,
is simply and only the goodness of his will.
As he may be a good statesman or soldier or
scholar or citizen without being a good man ;
so, too, he may possess natural or acquired moral
perfections without being really a good man, or
as good as another who lacks all such ethical
adornments. The penitent in the first instant of
his sorrow when, with all his vices and evil habits
still clinging to him like rags, he rises and sets his
face towards Jerusalem, may be before God a better
man than one whose moral propriety is the fruit of
happy temperament, of careful education, of easy

DISCOURAGEMENT. 387
and graceful surroundings, of immunity from tempta
tion. These facilities and natural graces are of
course compatible with the highest heroism of good
will, but they must not be confounded with it. The
cripple may be able to stand without his crutch, but
it is hard to tell till it is taken away. Here at least
we can say : " Behold we know not anything." We
see two men struggling for life in the angry surf,
one sure of victory, the other of defeat ; yet who
shall say that the will to live is stronger in the
former than in the latter; or that it may not be
precisely the reverse. And so God looks on ship
wrecked humanity struggling for salvation against
lust and anger and sloth and weakness and all the
powers of evil, and where we see defeat He often
sees victory, for the will that is the least effectual is
sometimes the most " efficacious " and earnest.
We are safe in saying : " This man has fallen ten
times, the other a hundred times." But God may
know that the former fell at every temptation on
every occasion ; while the latter resisted a thousand
temptations for the hundred he yielded to. Not
till we enter into the secret of a man's will, not till
we know all the antecedents of his life, the precise
measure of his knowledge and understanding, the
exact condition of every nerve and muscle, the lie
and correlation of all the cells of his brain, the
composition and heat of his blood, in fine, the
infinity of conditions under which he acts, can we
venture in our criticism of his action beyond a
"positivist" statement of what is external and
apparent. Human society rightly demands that we

388 DISCOURAGEMENT.
should compare and treat men as good or evil in
the light of their outward behaviour, and legislates
to secure the outward act while careless about
good-will save as a means to that end ; but we must
remember that this is after all a " legal " estimate
belonging to the forum externum of public opinion,
and is no guide to the ranking of guests at God's
table, where good-will is everything. " When thou
art invited," says Christ, " sit down in the lowest
place ; " that is, be on the safe side and rank
yourself last before God, since you have absolutely
no certain grounds for a more flattering supposition.
" It will do you no harm," says a Kempis, " to place
yourself last of all. It will harm you much to
prefer yourself even to the least."
By introspection we can in some measure know
ourselves absolutely, but not relatively as compared
with others. We can be certain of much infidelity
to grace, of repeated falls and backslidings, of
habitual half-heartedness, of great need of God's
indulgent patience and mercy ; but when we would
contrast ourselves favourably with Sodom and
Gomorrah, or Tyre and Sidon, let us withhold our
judgment, on the Divine assurance that it will be
more tolerable for them in the Day of Judgment
than for Corozain and Bethsaida and Capharnaum ;
and let us forbear to "judge before the time." The
only thing that God has told us of the issue of that
day should seal our lips: "The last," He says,
"shall be first, and the first last; " all our conjectures
and anticipations shall be confounded and set at
naught.

DISCOURAGEMENT. 389
But will not God judge men by their works, and
not by their aspirations and wishes ? Is not Hell
paved with good intentions? With inefficacious
intentions, yes ; with " velleities " never brought to
the birth, never shaped into resolutions and deter
minations. The works of man, like his nature, are
compounded of inward and outward ; and the
inward is principal. It is by the acts or works of
our will we are saved and judged ; nor do outward
acts or works count for aught save as quickened by
the inward act ; while the latter can subsist alone,
where the former are impeded or distorted.
God, therefore, looks to what a man would be
at, to the direction in which his face is set, to the
sincerity of his endeavours and struggles ; and not
to where he is on the road, or to the extent of his
success. In all this there is contained both warning and
encouragement ; warning against any disposition
to usurp God's prerogative of judging men's hearts
by comparing them with ourselves or with one
another in regard to the internal goodness of their
will ; encouragement against a too depressing view
of ourselves or of the world at large. Deluged as
the world is with every kind of moral disorder and
irregularity of conduct, deplorable as such a state
of things is to those who have God's Kingdom and
glory at heart, yet it may well be that the worst
evil of all, the internal evil of the will, is in no way
coextensive with that outward material evil which is
apparent. Again, in estimating the effect of the sacraments

390 blSCOURAGEMENT.
and means of grace upon ourselves and others, we
are often surprised to see so little fruit just because
we do not know what to look for. It is in the
maintenance and increase of good desires and
purposes that grace is directly perceptible, and not
always in the effectual and speedy correction of
outward conduct. If we find ourselves as resolved
as ever, and more so, to go on fighting and correcting
ourselves; if our faults displease us even more
vehemently, then, even though they resist our
efforts time after time, we are really progressing, or
at least we are not going back. Nay, even though
instead of making head against the current we are
carried down stream, it may be because the current
is stronger, and not because we are struggling less.
Had we not gone on struggling where should we be
now ; how much worse should we be than we
actually are ?
He, then, that shall persevere to the end shall be
saved, he whose face is ever set towards the goal,
who if the fixed eye of his intention blink an
instant through frailty or heaviness, recovers himself
promptly, without discouragement to begin again.
Perseverance does not imply one vehement act
of resolve followed by an unbroken record of steady
progress ; it is not so that habits are formed ; but
by alternations and oscillatory movements, as when
the tide creeps slowly in with rhythmic ebb and
flow till all the sand is covered ; or as when a fire
is fed with fuel and blazes up and then burns low
and must be fed anew; or as when a little dog
follows his master, now lagging behind to be

DISCOURAGEMENT. 391
whistled to heel, now running ahead to be recalled
again, and at last reaches home having travelled the
distance many times over. There is a like ebb and
flow in the tide of our spiritual progress ; there are
times of renewal and fervour followed by times of
chill and slackness ; now we are lingering behind
our Divine Master, now racing ahead ; discouraged
one moment, overconfident the next. Yet if we but
persevere, we shall in the long run reach home,
breathless and weary through our own folly, with
graces innumerable wasted and squandered, but
through the mercy of God — safe.
It is this humiliating but natural inconstancy of
the human will that we have to recognize calmly
and reckon with. "Were man but constant,"
could he but fix and perpetuate his nobler moods
by a single act of will, " he were perfect." It is
only by slowly inducing good habits that we can
counteract this natural limitation, and cause a sort
of artificial constancy, and this can only be effected
through perseverance, of which discouragement is the
great enemy. Discouragement is always surprised
and resentful as the law of our moral growth makes
itself felt in repeated failures and blunders. It
makes new resolves only as long as it can do so
with a belief that there is never to be another
relapse ; and when self-experience makes this belief
no longer possible, it ceases to resolve. It does not
know that perseverance means a dogged purpose of
beginning again and again until a habit is formed.
" Forgetting the things that are behind, and
hastening to those which are before, I press forward

igi DISCOURAGEMENT.
to the mark," says St. Paul. A child's first effort
to rise and walk is followed instantly by a fall, and
this by a few brief tears; and then the fall is
forgotten and the effort repeated. Were the child
capable of memory and of a false prudence, it would
never try again, but taught by Nature's wisdom it
learns after many falls to stand, to walk, to run
about ; and so if after a brief act of sorrow we profit
by our experience and rise at once to begin again,
our falls will do us good instead of harm, and we
shall learn, not only to walk, but to run in the way
of God's commandments.
Nor does any wise, loving mother stand by and
watch the efforts of her little one with such tender
ness and carefulness as God watches us as we
struggle and fall again and again — ever at hand to
raise us up and console us and encourage us to
begin afresh. What folly and mistaken kindness
it would be were the mother never to allow her
babe to risk the pain of a fall, but to carry it always
in her bosom. God knows that there is no other
way for us to learn but by experience, that pain and
failure instruct and stimulate us. It is not when
the pupil's hand is held and guided by the teacher
and kept faithful to the headline that he learns and
progresses, but when he is left at liberty to struggle
alone. Doubtless there is an excess of liberty that
tempts us beyond what we are able, and calls for
more strength and skill than is yet even latent in
us ; but it is the part of the wise educator to
graduate his lessons, to see that we get enough
liberty to help us and not enough to harm us. So

DISCOURAGEMENT. 393
it is that God schools us by carefully adjusted trials
and temptations and failures, that we may learn to
become self-guiding, self-supporting, with that right
independence which is the special dignity of free,
intelligent creatures, masters of their own destiny —
saving always the assistance of Divine grace, which
is to us food, light, and air. In the order of grace
as of nature, all evolution is the work of difficulty
and opposition, — a truth verified by the common
observation that the greatest saints have arisen in
the corruptest ages. It is by temptation that God
draws out all that is best in us, according to a law
which may well be as necessary as the Divine
Nature itself.
But in truth we have no business to look for so
steady and even a progress as some of the foregoing
illustrations might seem to imply. For there are
disturbing conditions in ourselves and outside us
which make it difficult to judge our advance save
by the state of our interior will. It is only in the
will-habit that we have a right to look for smooth,
steady progress, and even there it is very difficult to
gauge it. Were all the objective and subjective
conditions precisely the same, we might reasonably
expect to see a steady improvement in our outward
conduct; but except in the very simplest matters
this is never the case. It is not usually more
difficult one day than another to say grace at meals
or to perform some little exterior devotion ; but it is
not at all the same with regard to patience or keeping
one's temper ; for here much depends on the state
of our nerves, on our weariness or freshness, our

394 discouragement.
power of attention and self-control, and still more
on the quite incalculable frequency of the occasions
of victory or failure that may present themselves,
so that often our seeming worst days are really our
best, and vice versa; and when, as far as outward
conduct goes, we are apparently relapsing, it is often
then that the inward acts are most multiplied and
the will-habit most strengthened and the advance
most real. It is, in fact, almost as rash to judge
ourselves by our outward conduct as it is to judge
others. We may, indeed, judge ourselves by the
attitude and set of our will, but of this we must not
too readily take our conduct as an index. " Know
thyself" is doubtless a precept of the highest
wisdom ; but as there is no folly like fancied self-
knowledge, so perhaps he is the wisest of all who
knows that he does not know himself, but has learnt
to say with St. Peter : " Lord, Thou knowest all
things." Again, we must remember that habits are formed
rapidly or slowly according as they favour or oppose
our natural bent. It does not follow that because
an evil habit is contracted in a month that it can be
cured in a month ; nor because a good habit has
been formed after years that it cannot be uprooted
in a week. Also, of good habits, some are more
opposed to our inclination than others, and therefore
take longer to form.
Once more, if we are really faithfully struggling
after better things, it cannot but be that our
standard of perfection and holiness will insensibly
be raised higher and higher as we come to know

DISCOURAGEMENT. 395

more of the spirit of Christ and His saints ; while
at the same time a growing self-knowledge reveals
to us a thousand weaknesses which we were uncon
scious of when we first addressed ourselves to the
closer service of God. Hence we necessarily will
seem to be much further from our ideals than when
we first set out to reach them ; though, in truth, we
are far nearer in virtue of a truer conception, a
deeper and older love of the Divine will, a profounder
knowledge, a dislike of our own shortcomings. The
beginner in every art, and the novice in the art of
Divine love, flushed with his first successes, is far
better pleased with himself than the skilled pro
ficient ; he is far nearer in imagination to the
attainment of his ambitions. It should also be
remembered that a plant at first shoots up quickly
while all its energies are concentrated on the pro
duction of a single stalk, but more slowly when they
are dissipated among the many branches which it
afterwards puts forth, until a stage is reached when
growth is imperceptible ; or again, that a stream
runs rapidly and forcibly while its waters are
confined to one narrow channel, but loiters as it
spreads out and shows a wider front. At first our
efforts and attention are bestowed on the simpler
and more fundamental requirements of the spiritual
life, but later on we find new tasks branching out
before us on the right hand and the left. We
cannot then expect to advance as rapidly in twenty
simultaneous undertakings as in one.
From all these considerations it seems to follow,
that the perseverance or constancy which we have

396 DISCOURAGEMENT.
to aim at is a certain constancy of the will, a
purpose of never giving up through discouragement,
but of going on with a sort of spider-like persistency,
patiently and promptly beginning again as often as
the silken thread we have spun is snapped by one
mishap or another. God will look less to the length
we have accomplished than to the length we have
designed to accomplish; nor will these painful,
reiterated beginnings go unrewarded, unless faith
and hope and courage and clinging love are without
value in His eyes. " Cest qu'en aucune chose,
peut-etre," says Guizot, " il n'est donne a I'homme
d'arriver au but; sa gloire est d'y marcher." " He
that shall persevere to the end," whom the hour of
death shall find still struggling to gain the height,
albeit beginning at the base for the thousandth
time, he "shall be saved," and God in one purga
torial pang will perfect the unfinished task and
will bring the storm-tossed, weary soul "to the
haven of its desire."

THE MYSTICAL BODY.
" For as the body is one, and hath many members ; and
all the members of the body whereas they are many, yet are
one body, so also is Christ. And the eye cannot say to the
hand : I need not thy help ; nor again the head to the feet :
I have no need of you." — r Cor. xii. 12, 21.
The prominence given to the notion of the Church
is notoriously characteristic of Catholic and his
torical Christianity, and distinguishes it from those
many schools and Christian congregations which
are called Churches in a widely different sense,
and which professedly repudiate the Catholic's
conception of the Church as they do his conception
of priesthood and sacrifice, albeit retaining the
terms with a modified signification.
It is not possible to define one idea truly, that
is, to draw a line round it, without excluding false
definitions ; or to prove one position without
disproving the contradictory. Still our present
purpose is not to plead a cause, as it were, in
the presence of inquirers or of opponents, but for
our own pleasure and contemplation to set out in
order our thoughts on so vast and complex a
theme ; to advance ourselves some little way
towards a better apprehension of the " idea " of
the Church, an idea which no one mind can hope

398 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
to embrace in its entirety. We comprehend and
exhaust nothing that is not simply the creature
of our own brain — abstractions, forms, figures,
generalizations ; but when we come to concrete
realities, to the works of God's hands., we know
nothing, not the simple atomic creature, through
and through, but at most, from this corner and
from that ; now under one aspect, now under
another. If it is so of the dust of the earth, still
more is it so of man made indeed from the dust,
yet a world in himself were he but mere animal, a
fathomless universe since he is also spiritual, and
" little lower than the angels." Who then shall
weigh and measure and sum up in vain words the
" idea " of Him who is at once God and man, or the
idea of that mystic Body, human and divine, earthly
and heavenly, His Bride, the Catholic Church ?
Were she but a society of man's making, a mere
constitution and government imposed upon the
Christian people that "all things might be done
decently and in order," then indeed man's mind
could quickly reach from end to end of its own
creation ; there would be nothing harder or more
mysterious in the idea of the Church, than of any
other polity ecclesiastical or civil ; there would be
no room for growth or progress in our knowledge
of her nature. We might expect our forefathers
who had framed that polity to have grasped the
conception, not only as clearly, but more clearly
than ourselves. But in the study of God's works
natural and supernatural, we never near the end;
our knowledge ever puts forth new branches, which

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 399
in their turn branch out again, and these again, till
we are lost and bewildered at the mazes which
eternity alone will give us leisure to traverse. In
these matters, in the study of realities, we can grow
wiser than our elders, taught by the accumulated
wisdom and experience of ages, transmitted from
generation to generation.
Every Christian body or society, by the very
fact that it is a body, admits the existence and
the need of a Church in some sense of the word ;
nor is it ever disputed that Christ Himself approved,
counselled, and commanded the association of His
followers into some sort of external society ; though
the nature and meaning of that command is
interpreted differently. The point in which the
Catholic interpretation differs so markedly from
all others, is the mediatorial character which it
ascribes to the Church as an institution through
which, and through which alone, the soul can be
united to God. The good Catholic thinks and
speaks of the Church as his spiritual Mother from
whom his soul derives its supernatural life, by whom
it is fed, nourished, healed, chastened, corrected,
whom he is bound to love, reverence, and obey.
Her name is ever on his lips and in his heart.
We should think it strange to hear a Nonconformist
speaking of " Holy Mother Church," for he has no
thought which answers to the phrase, though he
too believes in a Church otherwise conceived. It
is precisely this exaltation of the Church to the
side of Christ, her identification with Christ, that
he quarrels with, the ascription to her of that

400 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
mediatorial office which is the prerogative of Him
alone, of whom it is said: "There is one God and
one Mediator between God and man, the man
Christ Jesus."
But what is mediatorship ? For indeed it is
very doubtful if even those who vindicate it so
earnestly for our Blessed Lord as His exclusive
prerogative are altogether clear on the point.
Evidently it is some kind of " going between "
God and man, a drawing together of those who
were sundered and estranged. As God-Man, Christ
has the interests of God and of man at heart ; and
in Him creation and the Creator are linked in one
personality. He is thus by nature fitted as none
other for the office of go-between or mediator, and
for the effecting of that union or atonement which
is its end.
But it is just here when we try to deter
mine the nature of that union, and the mode
of its production, that two totally different con
ceptions of mediation present themselves; so that
while all Christians call Christ their mediator,
Catholics alone use the word in a sense which forbids
its application to any other than to Him ; whereas
others, relying upon the text just quoted, refuse to
apply it to creatures in a sense in which it may
nevertheless be most rightly applied to them. For
indeed every creature that helps us in any way to
know or love or serve God better, is to be numbered
among the means of salvation, and so far mediates
between the soul and God. We do not see God
face to face yet, but must climb up to His throne

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 401
from His footstool, to Heaven from earth, by means
of the ladder of creation which bridges the other
wise impassable gulf. Still more, our fellow-men
here on earth, in so far as they help us, instruct us,
train us, pray for us, and are in a thousand ways
instrumental in our salvation, are truly mediators
between our souls and God, and not only occasion*
but to some extent effect, that union by a ministry
of reconciliation. It is not then wonderful that
Catholics who believe that " the effectual fervent
prayer of a just man availeth much," should ascribe
a still greater efficacy to the prayers of the saints in
Heaven, and speak of them as " mediators " and
" intercessors." But such mediation as this is only a form of
ministry or service. The thing or person who
ministers or serves is thereby, or at least therein,
subordinated to the person served. " Who is
greater, he that sitteth at meat or he that serveth ? "
Christ came into our midst as one that served, and
abased Himself at our feet in the abject humility
of love ; and this manner of mediation he not only
allowed to all His disciples, but enjoined upon
them : " I have given you an example ... If I,
your Lord and Master, wash your feet, much more
ought ye to wash one another's feet." So far as
Christ came to enlighten us by word and example,
to minister help to our souls and bodies, to promote
effectively our union with God, He Was truly a
mediator, and the first of mediators, but not the
sole mediator, not the sole means of our salva
tion. AA

402 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
But besides this ministerial mediation, there is
another which for lack of a better term we might
call "magisterial;" for in the exercise thereof the
mediator is not abased, but exalted above him
in whose behalf he mediates; he does not simply
effect and produce direct union of the soul with God,
and then stand aside having finished his service of
mercy; but he is himself the link through which
the soul is bound to God, standing as it were
between the soul and God. He is not as a gardener
who grafts the branch into the stock, and thereby
gives it life, but He is Himself the stock into which
the graft is set and through which it draws life
from mother earth, one and the same life quickening
both. " I am the vine," says Christ, " and you are
the branches."
When Catholics say that Christ is the one and
only mediator between God and man, that through
Him alone we have access to the Father, that He
alone is the door of the sheepfold, that no man
cometh to the Father but by Him, they are speaking
of this "magisterial" mediation, often so dimly
understood outside the Church. They mean that
no mere creature however holy or exalted can
be directly and immediately united to God so as
to be a sharer of the divine life and beatitude ; but
must first be united to Christ so as to make with
Him one thing, one body, one moral personality,
which " one''thing," is united to God and receives
His quickening grace. They mean to deny any
separate or independent union with God, apart
from Him who is the one channel of eternal life.

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 403
But where faith in the Divinity of Christ is
clouded, and the purport of the Incarnation ill
taught and ill apprehended, there is a danger of
altogether ignoring this " magisterial " mediation
of Christ, of regarding Him as merely the first of
prophets, teachers, philanthropists, martyrs; by
reason of His Divinity, infinite in dignity, infinite
in power and wisdom, but still exercising only the
same sort of ministerial mediation as they, though
on a vastly extended scale. But salvation through
Christ means salvation by incorporation with
Christ, the sharing with Him of a gift of which
we are incapable in our isolation ; a gift which is
indivisible, too great for our single soul to grasp
or contain, except so far as, in union with Christ
and with hands locked in His, it is strengthened to
bear the burden.
No one will quarrel with us perhaps for con
ceiving the Church as a mediator in the ministerial
sense of the term ; for whether she be of human or
Divine origin, she is evidently, under God, one of
the principal means for the salvation of souls, in
that she carries on the ministry of Christ, dis
seminates His teaching, applies the fruits of His
Passion to the healing of the nations. When the
Nonconformist repudiates sacerdotalism, it is not
because it involves such mediation as this; for he
himself is tolerant of such intervention on the part
of his own ministers. Indeed he tolerates far more
than any Catholic would endure; for he leaves it
to the mood and caprice of his pastor, to determine
on each occasion the substance of the public prayers,

4o4 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
so that those present are willing to be represented
before God as sad or joyful, as penitential or
triumphant, as needing these graces rather than
others, all according to the passing phases of the
minister's own soul, and are ready to say Amen to
whatever may come into his head. Also they are
willing to listen patiently to his private interpreta
tion of the word of God, and to accept it unless it
manifestly disagrees with their own ; they to a
large extent trust him and allow their minds to be
formed by him in doctrinal and religious questions.
In a word, he is not merely their delegate before
God, but their representative ; his mediation is not
passive, as his who repeats by rote the words
entrusted to him by another; but rather active as
of one to whom we commit our will and judgment.1
The Catholic priest, on the other hand, is but the
Church's delegate. Every word that he utters at
the altar, nay, every little gesture and intonation
is prescribed for him by the Christian republic not
merely of to-day, but of the ages past ; and even
though the setting be his own, yet the doctrine that
he sets forth in the pulpit is not his own but that
1 Cf. the plea for "Common Prayer" quoted by Walton's
" Piscator " :
But he that unto others leads the way
In public prayer,
Should do it so
As all that hear may know
They need not fear
To tune their hearts unto his tongue and say,
Amen ; not doubt they were betrayed
To blaspheme when they meant to have prayed.
(Compleat Angler.}

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 405
of the Church who has sent him, whose mouthpiece
he is. Were he a reprobate or an unbeliever, he
might be guilty of sacrilege in preaching and
praying, but not of insincerity or hypocrisy, since
he is understood to speak not in his own name but
in the Church's. The very vestments in which she
blots out his personality when he approaches the
altar, are an indication of her desire that in his
official work he should put off himself and should
put on the Church. We do not for a moment deny
that the individual will break through and assert
himself in spite of all precautions; that he, and
still more his followers and admirers, will often put
the man before the priest. But wherever this
tendency prevails, whether in the popular preacher
or the popular confessor; in the ministry of the
word or in that of the sacraments ; whether by
the intrusion of merely personal views and opinions
into priestly teaching and direction, or by the sub
stitution of personal tastes and fancies in place of
the established liturgical observances of the Church,
it is always felt to be uncatholic, an alien element
hostile to that liberty from individual tyranny which
the Church secures for her children.
It is not then the notion of instrumental or
ministerial mediatorship which the Nonconformist
objects to associating with his conception of the
Church ; but rather that of a mediatorship such as
we have already declared to be the exclusive pre
rogative of Christ. " Exclusive," because for the
Catholic, Christ and the Church are not two, but
one, as head and body are one, as husband and

406 THE MYSTICAL BODY.

wife are one, two in one flesh. The vine is not all
stem, nor all branches, but stem and branches-
together ; and the Church is not all Head, nor aU
members, but the two together are one Christ and
one Church, one mediator between God and man ;.
for she is the fulness, the complement, the extension
of Christ, as the branches are the extension of the
vine. Thus all that we said of Christ's magisterial
mediation ¦ is to be understood of Christ in His
fulness, Christ and His Church ; through the Church
alone we have access to the Father ; no man comes
to the Father but through her. She is the imme
diate, the only adequate recipient of that grace
which flows into each single soul that is united to
her ; she, too, is the recipient of that Eternal Life
hereafter, which single souls share . only because
they are built into her fabric. We are not united to
God singly and independently as rays which converge
to a common centre and yet do not touch one
another on the road, but we are first knit together
into one living organic body under the Man Christ
as our Head, and then with Him and through Him
united to the very Godhead, whose life and beati
tude flows down to the least and furthest member
of that living thing.
The happiness which the Christian looks forward
to hereafter is not that of his own personal triumph
over evil, of his own satisfaction in the realization
of his highest and best capacities ; but it is that
of the triumph of God's cause for which he has
lived and laboured, recognizing himself as but an

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 407
instrument directed by reason and conscience to
ends greater than personal, and but dimly conceived
by himself; it is, by consequence, the happiness
of the triumph of all those who with himself are
sharers in the victory wrought by the right hand of
God. The very terminology which speaks of the
"Church militant" and the "Church triumphant"
tells us of a collective and corporate joy. He is no
true knight who fights but for his own skin, who
triumphs only because he leaves the conflict scath-
less and rich with his own share of the booty ; but
rather he, whose solitary joy is all swallowed up and
forgotten in the common joy of his prince and his
country and his fellow-knights. For as the soul
is not received and possessed by any one part or
member of the organism but only by the whole;
so that to which God gives Himself and unites
Himself in glory, is no one soul, but all souls
clustered round Christ into one living body. Nor
is it a " common " beatitude, a "common " treasure,
in the sense that all enjoy the same, albeit inde
pendently, as they do who gather round the same
fire, each feeling its warmth neither more nor less
for that many or few feel it together; but it is
"common" because it is a rejoicing in the joy of
others, and is therefore greater as there are more
to participate in it.
For such a happiness and salvation as this,
incorporation is plainly an absolute necessity;
" outside the Church or outside Christ there is no
salvation," becomes a truism as soon as we under
stand the nature of the salvation in question.

408 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
It must be admitted that this mediatorial con
ception of the Church, this notion of corporate
sanctification and salvation is not only subtle and
strange to modern minds of the prevalent type,
but also manifestly uncongenial to some of the
governing ideas which gave birth to Protestantism
in the sixteenth century, — ideas which had from
the very first been lurking here and there in the
pages of many a saintly mystic and illuminist more
happy in the enjoyment of Divine union than in
his analysis and exposition of that state and its
conditions. " I and my God," " My Beloved is mine
and I am His " — these, as the spontaneous self-
utterances of contemplative love, cannot be mis
understood ; but curious speculation may give them
an "excluding" sense savouring of a certain pride
and independence, of an indifference, nay, even a
sort of contempt for others, whom nevertheless God
has identified with Himself, and apart from whom
He cannot and will not be approached. To go to
God alone, to deal with Him immediately, to be
taught by Him privately and directly, to link our
selves with no other when we draw near to Him,
to stand or fall by ourselves, to account our fellow-
Christians in this matter as simply among those
creatures which are subordinated to us as helps and
ministers, but in no wise as making one body with
us ; to view them as co-operators for a gain
"common" in a sense, but of which each takes
his share, nor gains in the gain of another, this is
the leading notion of what we might call a false
individualism in religion.

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 409
False as a fact, not because the idea is intrin
sically absurd in any way. God most certainly
might have created each soul to be a sepa
rate little world, a church in itself, to be taught
and sanctified and saved independently, and not
merely as part of a body ; and there is much prima
facie evidence to favour such a supposition. Even
the Catholic religion teaches that each soul is the
Church in epitome; that the first and absolutely
indispensable care of each man must be for his own
sanctification, which he may not sacrifice or injure,
however slightly, were it for the salvation of the
whole race. Nor is the Protestant conception
essentially selfish and egoistic, however inadequate
and defective. For it regards all souls as destined
to be united hereafter in God as rays are united in
their common centre, while here on earth they are
bound together by the ties of friendship and equality
as those engaged in the same profession or pursuit,
whose interest and pleasure it is to help one another;
or as fellow-travellers on the road making for the
same country, where, however, each has his own
home and private interest, which will not suffer
were all his companions to drop by the way. Yet
the Church, in contrast to the Catholic view, is
conceived simply as the aggregation of souls, as a
multitude of units in no way organized or inter
dependent, nor is a love of the common good to
which each member ministers best by its own
perfection, the motive which makes self-care and self-
culture a supreme duty, but rather an implicit con
viction that it is only the surplus and overflow of

410 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
our rational self-love that is due to our neighbour,
since each man is regarded as a world and a church
in himself, not in an analogical and defective sense,
but in the fullest and most literal. It is the unit,
and not, as with Catholics, the body, which is the
archetype and exemplar.
When we say that our salvation not merely
depends upon, but even consists formally in our
incorporation into the Church, it is plain that we
are speaking primarily of the invisible Church, and
only in a. conditional and qualified manner of the
visible Church, which is but the sacrament and out
ward instrument of the former — a distinction which
will occupy us later on. Speaking roughly, we might
say that the Catholic idea of the Church is social in
the good sense, while the Protestant is individualist
in the bad sense. In the truest sense these notions
are in no way antagonistic, for the ideal society is
an organism whose every member works most fruit
fully for the common good by securing its own
fullest development ; where there is no conflict
between public and private interest; where mutual-
help and co-operation begets the only true liberty,
which consists not in sterile isolation, but in the
abundance of the means and opportunities for self-
realization and the turning to account of every
talent and energy ; where the initiative and move
ment is from below, from the healthy vitality of the
members themselves, needing but to be directed and
guided by the head. It is no artificial product
planned by theorists and imposed by force or fraud
on a free people in the name of liberty, aiming at an.

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 4n

impossible equality by reducing all to the condition
of slavery, but the spontaneous growth of healthy
social life freed from all morbid conditions.
Doubtless this ideal is at best a term of approxi
mation never to be fully realized except in the
Church triumphant ; but it is ever preached, and to
some degree realized, in the visible and militant
Church, whose constitution is, as St. Paul teaches,
that of a living body, not that of social contract.
The very idea of the Church is a protest against
the false individualism of the Reformation on the
one hand, and against the false socialism of its
reaction on the other. It is interesting to note how
the following piece of otherwise very admirable
criticism is vitiated by a failure to recognize the
fact that if a certain individualism is un-catholic, a
crude collectivism is no less so.
" Palestrina's music," writes H. E. Krehbiel,
" must not be listened to with the notion in mind of
dramatic expression such as we almost instinctively
feel to-day. Palestrina does not seek to proclaim
the varying sentiment which underlies his texts.
That leads to individual interpretation, and is
foreign to the habits of Churchmen in the old con
ception, when the individual was completely resolved
in the organization. He aimed to exalt the mystery
of the service, not to bring it down to popular
comprehension and make it a personal utterance.
For such a design in music we must wait till after
the Reformation, when the ancient mysticism began
to fall back before the demands of reason, when the
idea of the sole and sufficient mediation of the

412 THE MYSTICAL ttUDY.
Church lost some of its power in the face of
the growing conviction of the intimate personal
relationship between man and his Creator. Now
idealism had to yield some of its dominion to
realism, and a more rugged art grew up in place of
that which had been so wonderfully sublimated by
mysticism. " It is in Bach, who came in a century after
Palestrina, that we find the most eloquent musical
proclamation of the new regime . . .
" Palestrina's art is Roman ; the spirit of rest-
fulness, of celestial calm, of supernatural revelation
and supernal beauty broods over it. Bach's is
Gothic — rugged, massive, upward-striving, human.
In Palestrina's music, the voice that speaks is the
voice of angels ; in Bach's, it is the voice of men.
" Bach is the publisher of the truest, tenderest,
deepest, and most individual religious feeling. His
music is peculiarly a hymning of the religious
sentiment of modern Germany, where salvation is
to be wrought out with fear and trembling by each
individual through faith and works, rather than
the agency of even a divinely-constituted Church.
... As the Church fell into the background, and
the individual came to the fore, religious music took
on the dramatic character which we find in the
Passion music of Bach."
The critic is acute enough to feel that the idea of
Catholicism and that of Protestantism are in some
sense mutually exclusive ; that the opposition can be
roughly described to be such as exists between
socialism and individualism ; also, that this difference

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 413,
and opposition permeates everywhere, not only
through doctrine, discipline, and ecclesiastical con
stitution, but even through liturgy, music, painting,
and literature. But he is wrong in assuming that
because the Reformation cast aside the social and
corporate element of the Catholic conception of
the Church, retaining only the individualist element
by which it was balanced, and which it balanced in
return, therefore the individual was, so to say, dis
covered by Protestantism, having been " in the old
conception " " completely resolved in the organi
zation." The Church never for a moment in any
way accepted Plato's notion of the State (civil or
ecclesiastic, matters not) as of a distinct personality
or entity for whose sake the component members
existed collectively and individually. Nay, it was the
Catholic idea which gave slow and difficult birth to
belief in the absolute and ineffaceable value of the
individual, a belief fed and fostered by the appli
cation of the several sacraments to each several
soul, by the extinction of all artificial inequality,
and the recognition of perfect spiritual equality
among all those, from the Emperor to the lazar,
who feed at God's common board on the Bread of
Angels. It is a curious comment also on the
observation that Protestantism put man for the first
time into " intimate personal relationship with his
Creator," that while Protestants mostly speak of "the
Saviour," and " the Lord," Catholics invariably say,
"our Saviour," and "our Lord," and surely a glance
at the devotions and prayers of Catholics in any
age or country will show at once how absolutely

414 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
unfounded is the notion that the Church's mediation
hinders immediate commerce between God and the
individual. Not such indeed is the mediation of the Church ;
she is not a barrier or a blind between the soul and
her Maker. For though the quickening spirit can
touch the parts and members only on condition of
their incorporation with the body, separate from
which they are dead; yet the body does not stand
between them and the" spirit, as though it absorbed
without transmitting the vital flame. And so it is
only through the Church, as making part of the
Church, that the soul can come into direct contact
with God our Father ; it is only through the Mystic
Vine that the sap of sanctifying grace can flow into
our souls. Again, need we say, we speak of the
invisible Church, the Communion of Saints, in which
none is incorporated save by living faith ; since no
one can be so ignorant as to suppose that mere
outward communion with the visible Church is
sufficient for salvation, however necessary it may
be in certain cases.
In fine, we may maintain fearlessly that Gothic
architecture is every bit as Catholic as Roman, and
Bach's style of music as Palestrina's. Both schools
embody and set forth one aspect of the Catholic
conception, each being complementary of the other.
The exigencies and tastes of particular localities
and times may call for an emphasis, now on this
aspect, now on the other. Obviously the public and
collective worship of the Church of its own nature
demands the repression of individualism in liturgical

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 415
observance, music, and other vehicles of expression.
There is an impertinence which we instinctively
resent in any attempt on the part of the individual
to obtrude his private interpretations, sentiments,
and emotions upon us by unauthorized vagaries and
emphases of his own. He is but the mouthpiece of
the Universal Church and of the traditions of
centuries ; let him deliver the message entrusted to
him without comments or embellishments of his
own. Originality is well in other spheres, but in
the choir or the sanctuary it is the worst form of
vulgarity. To conclude the present matter, it is in this
conception of the Church as mediating between
God and the soul, as a mystical body in union with
which alone salvation is possible, as the mother in
whose womb we are conceived, on whose breasts
we hang, that we find the reason of the prominence
given to the Church in the mind and on the lips of
Catholic Christians. Much even as we venerate
Mary, the great Mother of God and man, yet even
she is but a type and figure, but a part and member
of this still greater Mother of us all — the Jerusalem
from on high, our Holy Mother the Church.

11.
"The Church of the first-born who are written in the
Heavens." — Hebrews xii. 23.
When we assert that salvation may be said in
some sense to consist in being incorporated with
the Church, we are not speaking of the visible, but

416 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
of the invisible Church. With the former we are
incorporated by mere profession of faith and obe
dience, although we be spiritually dead ; with the
latter we are incorporated only by divine charity.
Let us now consider more closely this distinction
between the invisible and the visible Church, and
determine more accurately the relation of these two
societies one to another.
We not uncommonly speak of them as the
" Body " and the " Soul " of the Church, implying
at least some kind of resemblance between their
mutual relation and that of the components of our
double nature. Of these components the soul is
invisible, immortal, incorruptible, self-sustaining,
principal ; the body is visible, transitory, corruptible,
dependent ; it is the instrument and minister of the
soul, its symbol and sacrament. For this reason
we may apply the word "body" to the visible
Church on earth, which shall end with time, which
retains corrupt members in its communion, as tares
amid the wheat ; which is the outward symbol and
sacrament of the invisible Church whose organ
and instrument it is. And by contrast, this in
visible Church of saints and angels may be called
the " soul." But every metaphor is imperfect.
Soul and body are at once distinct and in a sense
co-extensive ; whereas the invisible and visible
Church are neither, some members being common
to both, others belonging only to one. The saints
in Heaven and legions of just men on earth do not
belong to the visible Church or come under its
external jurisdiction; while thousands of those that

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 417
do have neither part nor lot with the saints in light.
Again, speaking strictly, each of these societies
has (like every society) a soul and body of its own.
The saints in Heaven and all the just on earth,
Catholic or non-Catholic, Christian or non-Christian,
are invisibly bound together by the indwelling of
the same Holy Spirit of Charity " which is the bond
of peace," the cement which seals into one the
stones of the Heavenly Salem — " one body and
one spirit." And on earth the members of the
visible Church are visibly united by the bond of
obedience to that same Spirit viewed as the source
of ecclesiastical authority and sacramental grace —
" one body and one spirit."
However convenient, therefore, it may be to
speak of the invisible and visible Churches as the
soul and body of the Church, it is not without
danger of confusion.
What, then, is the invisible Church ?
It is that communion or society of saints and
angels in Heaven and of just men on earth, of all
nations and of all ages, of which St. Paul says:
" But you have come nigh to Mount Sion and to
the city of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem,
and to the company of many thousands of angels,
and to the Church of the first-born who are written
in the heavens, and to God the Judge of all, and
to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus
the Mediator."
While, therefore, the members of the visible
Church are upon earth, those of the invisible are
both in Heaven and on earth — on earth, a handful ;
BB

4i8 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
in Heaven, as the sands on the sea-shore.
That portion which is in Heaven is formed and
perfected — has passed into its changeless condition ;
while the portion on earth is in process of formation,
not yet accepted, shaped, or perfected. Here the
stones of Solomon's temple are hewn and fashioned
with many a rough blow and sharp incision ; there
they are noiselessly laid each in its peculiar and
predestined place in the living structure.
Scalpri salubris ictibus
Et tunsione plurima,
Fabri polita malleo,
Hanc saxa molem construunt,
Aptisque juncta nexibus
Locantur in fastigio.1
We must not imagine that the visible Church
is the same as 4he Church militant, and the in
visible the same as the Church triumphant. For
all upon earth who are engaged in God's cause
belong to the militant Church, be they inside or
outside the visible Church, while the triumphant
Church comprehends only that portion of the
invisible Church which is in Heaven.
In Heaven the invisible Church consists of the
spirits of the just made perfect in love, purged
seven-fold in the fire of suffering and great tribula
tion, developed into full correspondence with that
1 By kindly chisel deftly formed,
With showers of battering blows bestormed,
Squared by the hand which Heaven hath skilled
These polished blocks the fabric build
And fastly jointed there unite
To crown the rising summit's height.

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 4ig
Divine plan and pattern thought out and loved by
God from all eternity, and then by Him infused
slowly and laboriously into the often reluctant mind
and conscience, into the heart and affections of each
saint ; a light that haunted the soul when it would
cower in the darkness ; a fire that leaped up after
every futile quenching; a tormenting thought that
would not rest unlistened-to and unloved. And
though there dwells in the saints but one and the
same spirit, yet there is an infinite and most orderly
diversity of gifts and manifestations, even as the
same vital spark displays itself diversely in the
multitudinous members of our body — as sight in
the eye, as hearing in the ear, as motion in the
limbs, as thought in the mind, as love in the heart,
yet " one and the same spirit." In the gathering
together of the saints we have not merely an endless
chain of repetitions of the same idea or type — as it
were so many beads threaded on a string, or a
bundle of innumerable fagots each the exact counter
part of its fellows ; but rather a mighty and complex
organism, a vast mosaic of souls of every conceivable
pattern and complexion of sanctity, no two indeed
alike, albeit each indispensable for the perfection
of the entire design, each with its own place that
no other can fill, each with its own song of praise
that no other can sing, and yet which blends in a
chord of universal praise that would be thinned
and impoverished by its silence. As all creation
collectively makes one full utterance of the Divine
Goodness of which each several creature is but a
word or syllable, so in the communion of saints

420 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
the full idea of sanctity, the flower of human excel
lence wedded with Divine, is unfolded and expanded
in all its parts to the glory and praise of God, and
gives forth its fragrance in odorem suavitatis. There
first shall we understand what God meant when He
created man ; not this man nor that, but man ;
there shall we see that governing idea which was
forcing itself into reality and fact, through all the
long, weary centuries of our miserable history ; and
seeing it we shall cry out : Justus es, Domine, et
rectum judicium tuum — God was right after all.
There at last Christ shall be unfolded and
made plain in that mystical body which is well
called His pleroma, His fulness or extension. His
Sacred Humanity while on earth, with its brief span
of thirty years, could not within the narrow limits
of a single experience reveal to us more than a
fraction of the latent potentialities of His deified
soul. He was but as the seed whose power and
meaning lies hid till it has germinated, flowered,
fructified, and multiplied from generation to genera
tion. From Him all sanctity flows as from its
source, whether we trace the stream from Calvary
backward to the beginning or forward to the end
of time. " I live," says the Christian, " yet not I,
but Christ liveth in me," for sanctity is simply the
prevalence in us of a " power that makes for right
eousness," of a will that is not our own — in us, but
not of us — ever pressing against the will of our
egoism and self-centred love in the interests of a
love which is God-centred and unselfish. It is the
constant action upon us of God, who is, moreover,

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 421
an Incarnate God ; it is to our soul what gravitation
is to our body, a force ever drawing us to our true
centre and rest ; so ever-abiding and persistent that
we have come to confound it with the very constitu
tion of our spiritual being. Yet were the earth
suddenly annihilated from under our feet we should
have no sense of weight ; and were God to with
draw from us we should have no wish to do good,
no love of the truth, no sense of right or wrong.
The tree is known by its fruits, and Christ is
known by His deeds ; not merely by the deeds of His
earthly life, but by all that He has done and shall do
in His saints from the beginning to the end. His
spirit, in order to display its full content and signifi
cance, needs to be applied to every condition of
human life, so that we may see Christ under every
aspect ; in every nationality and language, in every
stage of development, social and individual, in Jew
and Greek, in Barbarian and Scythian, in bond and
free, in wealth and poverty, in prosperity and adver
sity, in health and sickness, in youth and age,
in simplicity and culture, in weakness and strength ;
that we may see the leaven of the Kingdom of God
in all its workings, in its actions and reactions under
every possible variety of conditions, favourable and
unfavourable, and may enter more fully into the
mind and heart of Him whose life is thus manifested
in His mystical body. " I saw a great multitude,"
says St. John, " which no man could number, of all
nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing
before the throne and in the sight of the Lamb ; "
for so it shall be in that day when the number of

422 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
the elect shall be filled up, and the last stone of the
mystical temple shall be laid in its predestined place,
and the last piece set to the perfect mosaic ; when
the body of Christ shall have reached its fulness,
and the idea of Christian sanctity shall have attained
its complete expansion ; and the potentialities of the
human soul shall have been revealed to the utmost ;
when the long-sought chord of created and uncreated
praise shall have been struck at last, and time and
the things of time shall be needed no more.
ill.
" In every nation he that feareth Him and worketh justice,
is acceptable to Him." — Acts x. 35.
We have now to ask ourselves : Who are the
members on earth of the Invisible Church ? And
the first answer is simple enough, namely : All those
in whose hearts charity is diffused by the Holy
Ghost ; all those who give God and God's cause the
first, if not always the only place in their affections ;
all those who prefer right and truth and duty to
father, mother, spouse, children, brethren, kinsfolk,
home, and lands; all those who accept not only
with their mind, but with their heart and will, that
it profits a man nothing if he gain the whole world
to the hurt of his own soul. They may not yet have
learnt to love nothing else but in connection with
God and in sympathy with the Divine mind and
will; they have undoubtedly yet to be tried and
perfected through many tribulations, either here or
in Purgatory— for nothing defiled has ever entered

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 423

Heaven or reached the beatifying stage of love but
at the cost of purifying pain. Still, as long as God
weighs down all other treasures heaped together in
tbe balance of their affections, so long do they keep
their vital connection with the Mystical Body un-
severed; but when singly or collectively creatures
are preferred to Him in that same act they become
as severed limbs ; for nothing corrupt can enter into
or remain in the Kingdom of Heaven.
But "without faith it is impossible to please
God," it is impossible to possess charity, to cling to
truth and goodness above all things and at every
sacrifice. We cannot therefore suppose that the
invisible Church on earth extends beyond the limits
of the visible except so far as faith so extends. Faith
is commonly and rightly explained to be a firm will
or resolution to hold fast to truths taught us by God
without discussing them or questioning them by any
kind of practical doubt. We hold to them with that
firmness which God's word merits ; and we do so in
obedience to God's command ; not because we have
necessarily sat in judgment either on the truths
revealed or on God's claims as a witness; but
simply because we recognize God's right to command
the mind which He has made. Without such faith
we cannot please God ; for even where reason
reaches the simple truths of religion and morality,
its grasp is too feeble and its gaze too unsteady to
prevent our mind being perverted in the hour of
temptation and yielding to the fallacies of self-love,
pride, and sensuality, or listening to the voice of
worldly and carnal wisdom, or ceding to the

424 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
influence of universal example. In that hour we
have no strength alone; Vce soli: we must lean
upon God and hear His voice and not our own;
loyal obedience to Him will stand us in good stead
when we are perhaps blinded by passion to our
truest and highest self-interest. As hope lends us
God's strength in the hour of weakness, so faith
lends us God's light in the hour of darkness when
our own lamp has gone out or flickers to extinction.
It is for this reason that theologians insist on some
kind of divine speaking or revelation as a condition
for faith, thus strictly interpreting, Fides ex auditu —
" Faith comes by hearing." For faith is essentially
trust in another whose wisdom and knowledge supple
ments what is defective in our own. However clearly
we may learn the same religious truths from reflection
upon the phenomena of conscience or of physical
nature, yet we are so far resting only upon ourselves,
and our own reason and observation — a support that
will prove insufficient in the time of trouble. We
are trusting to the arm of flesh, and not to the arm
of God ; flesh and blood has revealed it to us, but
not our Father who is in Heaven. Faith, hope,
and love alike put God for self, and bind us to Him,
and deliver us from the weakness of isolation.
There is nothing arbitrary in making faith a
condition for salvation or at least of supernatural
salvation. It is altogether natural and even
necessary. Every wise moralist knows that we
cannot lead a good life unless we resolve to stand
firm in the hour of temptation and darkness, by
those truths which we saw clearly in the hour of

THE MYSTICAL BODY.

4^5

calm and light, but which now we do not see
clearly and are disposed to question; in other
words, unless we are resolved not to rationalize
or doubt, but to hold on blindly to what we do not
now see, substituting a will-certainty for a mind-
certainty. This is faith, not in another, but in our
own better self ; yet in principle it is the same. If
indeed we yield to the pressure of temptation and
reopen the question, we only offend against our own
better judgment — a fallible authority at best, though
surely more trustworthy than the j udgment of passion.
In proportion as the spiritual truths by which we
must live are subtle and mysterious, we need still
greater support to supplement our wavering reason^
while for those that are strictly supernatural and out
of reason's ken, God's support is an absolute
necessity. Here, to doubt is to offend not against
fallible authority, but against the authority of God,
and the will-certainty must be measured to that
standard ; it must be an unqualified adhesion of
the whole soul to God's word as such.
There can be no faith therefore where God is
not felt to have spoken and to have commanded
our obedient assent to the things that belong to
our peace, to the great fundamental truths that
there is a God, whose we are, and before whom
we continually stand ; who is the Rewarder and the
Reward of them that seek Him, to whom we must
render an account and pay the last farthing of our
debt of reverence and service. There can be no
faith, no pleasing of God, where the idle speculative
questioning of these truths, implicitly admitted in

426 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
every act of conscience, is not recognized as
immoral, as sinful, as a trespass not only against
conscience itself, but against the revealed will of
God ; or where, with the full consciousness of being
unduly excited or depressed, or otherwise biassed
and unbalanced, one makes a resolve or chooses an
opinion in accordance with such bias.
Yet if the soul is to listen not to itself but to
God, if it is to cling to His word when its own
word falters, it is needful that God should really
speak to the soul, and should be apprehended
distinctly as so speaking. For speech, in this
stricter sense, it is not enough that the speaker
betray his mind in words or signs, or even by
direct " thought-transference" with the secret design
that the perceiver shall take his meaning, as when
one leaves a book open for another to read without
bidding him read it, or showing any sign of a
will that he should do so. To speak is not only
to express one's mind, but also to express one's will
that the hearer should listen. God utters His mind
in creation and in our conscience, and designs these
books for our instruction ; but only so far as He
also signifies that this message is expressly directed
to us can He be said to speak to us ; He rather
soliloquizes in our presence ; He speaks in us, or
outside us, but not to us.
And what sort of sign is it that changes the
voice of reason and of nature into a supernatural
revelation ; and by which God enters into personal
relation with the soul and becomes her friend, her
teacher, her support ?

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 427

Were I in dire need of a very precise sum of
money, and were I on the same day to find more or
less the required amount, I should have no solid
reason to think that it had been left in my way by
design; but were I to find the exact sum to the
very farthing, I could hardly resist the inference
that it was intended for me by some one who knew
my need, or if none knew it, by God who is over all.
The exact correspondence of the sum to my need
would change a " find " into a gift ; it would equiva-
lently address the money to me and mark it with
my name.
It is peculiar to God, whose own the soul is, to
call her by her most secret name known to Him
alone. This was the reason of Christ's spell over
Nathaniel, over the woman of Samaria, over all
whom He has called. "Whence knowest thou me?"
they say, or, " Sir, I perceive Thou art a prophet."
And so it is that God brings a truth home to
a man, and changes it from a dead to a living
word, when by its preternatural opportuneness, its
altogether providential and otherwise unaccount
able correspondence to his complex spiritual
needs, it proves itself to be a message from One
who knows him through and through, in all his
individuality. This waking up to the recognition of God's voice
whether in conscience or in nature, or in the inspired
word, this sense of its being directed to ourselves is
well exemplified in what we so often read in saints'
lives, where some text lighted on by chance, some
naturally derived thought or suggestion presents

.428 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
itself irresistibly as a Divine message and is listened
to as such. Who does not remember St. Augustine's
Tolle et lege, the words of a child at play ; or how
St. Anthony, as the Breviary says, took as said to
himself (tamquam ea sibi dicta essent), the words heard
on entering a church : " Go sell all and follow Me."
And besides innumerable instances in hagiography
there is perhaps no religious-minded person who
has not had some such experience real or fancied.
And if those who habitually seek such signs, forcing
God's hand, as it were, and not waiting for the time
of His free visitation, will be often deluded ; and if
even those who do not seek them may often doubt
as to what is coincidence and what is design, yet
there are many instances where there is no room
for prudent or justifiable doubt.
However simple, frequent, and universal these
Divine utterances may be, in obedience to which
the soul which " hears from the Father," learns and
comes to Christ, yet they can be no more claimed
as a strict exigency of our nature, than any other
preternatural and personal intervention of Provi
dence ; they, and the faith they generate, are " the
gift of God."
It is not hard to believe that the fundamental
religious truths touching God the Rewarder which
are written in the secret of conscience and over
the face of Nature are brought home, not once in
a lifetime, but over and over again to every soul,
as a Divine message from without, claiming an
obedient voluntary assent, a will-certainty stronger
than death. God speaks in divers manners ; but to

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 429
all who are to be judged as to faith, speak He must
in some form or other.
"No difficulty," says Aquinas, "follows from
the position that one brought up in the woods among
the wild beasts should be bound to certain explicit
beliefs; for it is incumbent on Divine Providence
to provide each soul with all necessary conditions
for salvation, unless some hindrance is offered on
the soul's part. For were one so brought up, to
follow the lead of natural reason in the pursuit of
good and the avoidance of evil, it is to be held for
a perfect certainty (certissimum tenendum est), that
God would either reveal all necessary beliefs to him
by an internal inspiration, or He would send some
one to preach the faith to him, as He sent Peter
to Cornelius."1 In other words, where the fuller revelation is
denied, where the light of the Gospel never
penetrates, yet the internal revelation of the funda
mental and germinal truths of all religion will surely
never be wanting ; one need not ascend into Heaven
to bring it down, nor descend into Hell to bring it
up, for the word is ever nigh to each human heart,
ever whispering into the soul's ear, ever knocking
at the gate of its love.
Wheresoever then and whensoever there is found
a man who listens obediently and humbly to the voice
of conscience ; who bows to its sovereign authority as
to a power above him and distinct from him, who
admits its unqualified claims, not only in theory but
in practice, there we may be sure that God, however
1 De Veritate, xiv. a. ii. ad 1.

430 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
dimly recognized, has spoken and has been listened
to; since without faith it is impossible to please
God, impossible to live that life of sacrifice and
conflict which obedience to conscience entails.
This surely is the meaning of Peter's vision of all
manner of living creatures brought together in one
vessel knit at the four corners; a figure of all
nations, of all sorts and conditions of men, from the
four winds of heaven, and from the dawn of our
race till its consummation, all cleansed by God
through the Blood of Christ, all subjected to Peter
as the Vicar of Christ ; even as was Cornelius whose
prayers and alms, ascending for a memorial in the
sight of God, were emblematic of the sacrifice of
justice offered daily by that large portion of the
invisible Church on earth, which stretches north,
south, east, and west, beyond the limits of the
visible. " In very deed," says Peter, interpreting
the vision, " I perceive that God is not a respecter
of persons ; but in every nation, he that feareth
Him and worketh justice, is accepted of Him."

IV.
"The House of God, which is the Church of the Uving
God, the pillar and ground of the truth." — i Timothy iii. 15.
But if all this, which is matterrather of opinion
than of authoritative teaching, be admissible, it may
seem that we are letting in the heresy of moral and
dogmatic indifferentism, unless we also hold fast to
the truth that no one who professes indifferentism
is in good faith. A man who avowedly does not

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 431
care whether what he does is right or wrong so long
as he believes it right, who professes not to care
about breaking God's law so long as he does so
unintentionally, is plainly an immoral man, and has
no sympathy with justice for justice' sake, no wish
to be like-minded with God. Similarly he who
protests that it is indifferent what a man thinks or
believes so long as he believes it sincerely, is an
untruthful man, altogether insincere in his very
profession of sincerity. It is preposterous to
maintain that because conscious wrong-doing and
error is a worse evil, therefore that which is uncon
scious is no evil. Good faith requires us to love
truth and right not only where we recognize it, but
everywhere and universally; and that we should
give no sleep to our eyes till we have found out
what is true and right. None, therefore, can be
counted a member of the invisible Church who
through any fault or negligence of his own remains
outside the communion of the visible Church.
What, then, do we understand by the visible
Church? It is the visible union of the faithful,
under one visible head or government ; understand
ing by the faithful those who with their lips and
outward conduct subject themselves to the teaching
and laws of the Church, in short, those who would
be numbered in a census of Catholics. It is as
definite an institution as the Roman or the British
Empire, notorious in the history of the world for
the last two thousand years. What need to define
that which we have only to point to ?
Here, too, we have an articulated organized

432 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
body, calling itself the mystical body of Christ,
claiming in some measure His mediatorial office,
making incorporation with itself a condition of
salvation, and yet differing from the invisible Church
in that it is wholly on earth, and nowise in Heaven ;
that its perpetuity is to the end of time but not to
all eternity; that it numbers sinners as well as
saints among its members, as a net containing good
fish and worthless, or a field of wheat and tares;
that it passes like a wave along the river of time,
continually renewing its matter, while preserving its
form, as succeeding generations creep up noiselessly
and pass by.
Are these, then, two Churches, two mystical
Bodies, two spouses of Christ, or are they one ?
We have already seen to what extent they can
be said to be related as soul and body, and where
that metaphor falls short. For while neither soul
nor body alone is a complete nature, each of these
Churches is a complete society with a distinct con
stitution and bond of union. Yet this distinctness
does not prevent one being wholly dependent upon
and subordinate to the other, just as particular
departments of a complex government are subjected
to it, though distinctly organized ; or as a religious
order which exists only to serve the Church is, as a
society, quite distinct from it. Though not pre
cisely related as soul and body, yet we may say that
the invisible and visible Church are two parts of
one nature ; that they are like the inner word of
the mind and the outer word of the lips, distinct
yet most intimately connected as symbol and reality,

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 433
as sacrament and grace signified ; that the visible
Church is vicarious and the invisible is principal;
that the one is the instrument of the other, as the
hand is the instrument of the body, or even as the
body is the instrument, the symbol, the sacrament,
the expression of the soul.
The Church is the extension and body of Christ
her Head, who is both God and Man, two natures
in one person, the human being the organ and finite
manifestation and sacrament of the Divine, effecting
What it signifies, making uS, by its touch, partakers
of His Divinity, who vouchsafed to become a sharer
of our humanity. And so the invisible Church is
the extension of His Divinity, as the visible Church
is of His sacred humanity, both being united in the
personal unity of their head, and being related to
one another as the two natures are in Him ; the
human being entirely organic and subordinate to
the service and manifestation and communication of
the divine.
The visible Church is pre-eminently a great
sacrament and type, whose organization, whose
indissoluble unity, whose perpetuity signifies dimly
that of the Heavenly Church and archetype ; even
as the semblance of the Eucharistic bread signifies
the Body of Christ. Moreover, incorporation and
membership with the visible Church not only
symbolizes but in due conditions effects that incor
poration with the invisible, in which our salvation
consists. Not, however, unconditionally or exclu
sively ; for what is true of all particular sacraments
holds here in like manner. God indeed has not tied
cc

434 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
His grace to the sacraments, and as there is a
baptism and communion of desire for those who for
one reason or another are inculpably cut off from
the rites of the Church, so there is a membership of
desire through which (though not without which)
the graces of actual membership can be secured.
Again, the sacraments may be not merely fruitless,
but spiritually destructive to those who use them
profanely ; and similarly outward membership with
the Church may be to many a cause of more
grievous condemnation than that of Tyre and Si'don,
or of Sodom and Gomorrah.
As of old, before Christ's advent, God worked in
the souls of men unsacramentally, yet not without
dependence on, and reference to, the coming
Mediator and the sacraments, so now more freely
does He lavish His saving grace broadcast wherever
the Church is locally or intellectually inaccessible,
though not without reference to the Church from
whose treasury and for whose sake, as it were, every
grace is conferred. Not indeed that all rudimentary
faith is destined or intended by God to reach on
earth its last development in the full light of Catholic
belief; but that it is a seed, of its own nature
tending to that development when duly environed ;
it is the true religion in germ.
Since God has wedded into the human family
and has become one of ourselves, the whole race,
whether touched by the waters of baptism or left
in the darkness of nature, has been raised to a
supernatural dignity and favour quite independent
of the internal dignity of sanctifying grace. As one

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 435

of God's "poor relations" the most degraded
savage, the "least of His brethren," has a dis
tinction denied to the angels. If for ten just men
God would have spared Sodom, what mercy will
not the presence of the God-Man, of the Catholic
Church and her sacraments, win for all humanity,
for those even who trample them underfoot and
revile them ? For the Church is in the world as a
tree that is rooted in the earth and whose secret
fibres spread far and wide. God cannot draw the
Church to Himself, but He must,, in some sense,
draw the whole world with her. She will not loose
her grip : " If thou wilt not forgive them," she says,
"then blot me out of the book of life."
But if those who do not know the visible Church
can be saved without being actually incorporated
with her and bound to her laws, it might seem that
such knowledge profits nothing, except to make
salvation more difficult for those to whom the
obligation is revealed. This is an objection which
might be urged against all the sacraments, against
every additional means of light and grace. The
instructed catechumen must seek water and a
minister in order to be regenerated ; whereas the
pagan can be born again of the Holy Ghost in the
fountain of his own tears. But plainly we must
distinguish between the amply sufficient grace for
salvation which God in His fidelity offers to all,
and that superabundant grace which in His gene
rosity He offers to millions, though not to all.
Contrition in every case forgives our sins in the
very moment we propose to seek absolution ; but

436 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
in the sacrament God overwhelms us with the
grace of remission, He puts upon us the best robe,
and a ring on our finger, and shoes on our feet,
and banquets us, and rejoices over us with His
angels. To every soul God supplies the daily bread
of good thoughts and good desires, but in the
Eucharist he satiates the hungry with the Bread
of Angels, and causes the chalice of the thirsty to
overflow and inebriate. To all in every religion
He reveals Himself as God the rewarder of them
that seek Him, but in the Catholic revelation these
"broken lights" are gathered up and intensified
into one steady ray of pure truth ; and the corn that
is meted in simple sufficiency to some is given to
us in full measure, pressed down, shaken together,
and running over.
Moreover, the sacraments are said to work their
effect ex opere operato, i.e., theirs is an effect produced
in us by an external agency, not by ourselves;
although as a condition they demand a certain
receptivity, a certain disposition of the soil which
multiplies the yield thirty, sixty, or a hundred-fold.
That their effect is not directly, but only indirectly
ex opere operantis and measured by our own industry,
may seem to be but little advantage or gain; yet
it is no small gain that instead of our waiting on
God, as it were for the troubling of the waters, God
should wait upon us, ready to serve us with His
graces as often as we choose to approach the
sacraments and dispose ourselves to receive them.
Herein God has opened for us the fountains of
salvation, that we may approach and draw living

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 437
water when we will: "Whosoever will, let him
come and drink freely."
Dare we then, even on these prudential grounds,
and putting aside all question of the sovereign and
universal authority of the Church over every soul
upon earth, and of her commission to compel men
to enter into her fold so far as Divine jurisdiction
can compel them ; dare we then refuse such a
proffer of spiritual wealth, dare we hope even for
the bare sufficiencies of salvation if we wilfully
neglect this call to higher things ?
Once more whether we regard ourselves as
isolated units, or as members of the body, our
union with the visible Church enables us both to
get more and to give more than would be otherwise
at all possible. For viewing the Church ministerially,
as even Nonconformists view her, it is evident that
by her ministration and government, and by the
co-operation of our fellow-members, we are enlight
ened, guided, helped, prayed for, encouraged, and
secure all the advantages which the individual gains
in a society and loses in isolation, and are, there
fore, able to serve and praise God with a fuller
personal service. We profit by the accumulated
experience of multitudes transmitted and added to
from generation to generation; we are the inheritors
of all that is meant by the Catholic tradition so far
as we are capable of appropriating it. There is
all the difference that exists between genius which
has to teach itself everything from the beginning,
and that which enters into the labours of others
and starts where they have left off.

THE MYSTICAL BODY.

Still more as members of a living body do we
participate in those special blessings and graces
which God bestows on the Church collectively,
seeing as He does the image of the Blessed Trinity,
the Many in One, set forth in the society as it can
never be set forth in the unit ; " How good and
pleasing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity
... for there the Lord hath promised His blessing
and life for evermore." And as happens analogously
in the kingdoms of this world, there are benefits
accruing to the faithful collectively in which even the
wickedest and most unworthy members partake in
such sort that their membership is to them a source
of many graces otherwise denied them. Further
there is a collective praise and service which we
can give to God or participate in giving as parts
and factors of a joint result, and which is wholly
out of the power of those who praise and serve God
singly and in isolation. The very same melody
receives a new meaning and richness when sung in
concert with others. And there is a collective
prayer where many are gathered together as one,
in His Name, a prayer which the Holy Ghost offers
by the lips of the Universal Church in her liturgy,
whose fruit is applied to our soul as often as we
join in it or unite our intention with it.
All these considerations, and others that might
be adduced, make it evident that membership with
the visible Church is the condition and occasion of
innumerable helps and graces otherwise inaccessible;
and that to neglect wilfully such an offer of greater
salvation would be an act, not only of rebellion

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 439
against Divine authority, but also of presumption,
meriting the forfeiture of all other but the most
ordinary and barely sufficient means.
v.
" For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not
of yourselves, for it is the gift of God." — Ephes. ii. 8.
We may now inquire for our own sakes rather
than for theirs, how it comes to pass that so many
of our fellow-Christians, who are to all appearances
in perfect good faith, feel themselves in no way
obliged to submit themselves to the Catholic Church :
for we are bound in all justice — not to speak of
charity — to find every excuse for them before we
dare to condemn in our minds those whom perhaps
God acquits as more faithful to their little light,
than we to our abundance.
Why we ourselves believe is not a question
whose discussion can interest us much more than
a discussion of our own identity. We may dispute
and deny the proofs usually alleged, but our belief
is not shaken because our analysis of its origin is
unsuccessful. A dogma is simply the skeleton of
a living concrete reality which it but outlines and
formulates; and the same might be said of the
array of reasons we put forth for our recognition
of the Church's claims. Our faith in her is the
effect of an impression produced on our mind and
heart by her whole concrete reality. We can never
make another see what we see, or feel what we feel,
by any verbal description however elaborate and

44a the Mystical body.
detailed. To the Catholic born and bred, the
claim of any other body to represent and continue
the work of Christ is unthinkable ; to the convert —
if he has really grasped the point at issue — it is a
dream sincerely accepted for truth, until set side
by side with the facts of daylight when one wakens.
For this very cause we are often indifferent,
unsympathetic and harsh in our controversy; we
are careless in our reasons, as the consciousness of
certainty always makes men, we are inaccurate and
slovenly in our answers, or else we are simply
impatient of all discussion, feeling the hopeless
inadequacy of language in the matter ; we ourselves
see, touch, and taste, but to convey that experience
to others seems simply an interminable task.
First of all let us remember that in the expression
of his reasons for not believing, the non-Catholic
is as much embarrassed by this inadequacy of logic
and languages as we are. His assigned reasons
are at best the merest skeleton of that subjective
impression about the Church by which he is really
influenced in his heart. Very often they are not even
so much; they have really no connection with it
whatever, if they do not actually belie it. We may
refute every reason he can put forth without touch
ing the one true reason which he does not know
how to disentangle or express.
It would betray a lamentable ignorance of the
principles governing Divine election and favour, not
to say of patent and notorious facts, to suppose that
our seeing what so many are blind to is due in any
degree to superior intellectual acumen or to more

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 44*
extensive information and erudition on our part ;
or even to our superior fidelity to grace and light.
Though the Church has always had intellect and
learning on her side in greater or less degree, she
has never had a monopoly, and there is undoubtedly
more arrayed against her than is with her. God
has chosen the foolish and weak to confound the
wise and strong ; and it is so far as we are content
to throw in our lot with that majority that we
receive or retain the gift of faith. Nor are there
many of us who have not been far more unfaithful
to grace and light than some whom God has left
outside the fold of Peter. Our faith is obviously
matter for thanksgiving but not for boasting; it is
not of works but of the gift of God.
But if the Church is conspicuous as a city set on
a hill, how are they excusable who fail to see it ?
Truly the Church is conspicuous and the features
that distinguish her are broadly marked and recog
nizable by all. Were they subtle, microscopic,
elusive, ambiguous; did they depend for their
existence on niceties of history and exegesis and
criticism ; were it needful to be versed in the
theology of valid orders, or to be competent to
judge the precise requirements of unity, catholicity,
sanctity, apostolicity — conceptions which theologians
discuss and elaborate interminably — then indeed the
trumpet might be said to give an uncertain sound.
But we know it is not so, and that the evidence of
the Church is like the evidence of the sun to those
that have eyes. But eyes they must have, and here
we come to the solution of our problem. For if

442 The mystical body.
we search for some object, and are not clear as to
the nature and appearance of what we are searching
for, it may confront us time after time and be
passed over; not because its characteristics are
obscure, but because we do not know what to look
for. And so it is that the distinctive characteristics
of the Catholic Church are manifest to all, friends
and foes alike, but the latter find in them evidence
of her falsehood, while the former find in them
evidence of her truth.
For example, it is natural that every great
organization for universal and spiritual ends should
be brought to the birth by preaching ; for it is the
embodiment and organ of an idea, and this idea
must be first preached to the ear, received in the
mind, and embraced by the affections of many,
before it can take shape in an institution or society.
So it was with the Christian Church. It is not,
therefore, wonderful that millions who have been
educated to believe that the Catholic Church
pretends to be the unchanged representative of the
Church as seen in the pages of the New Testament,
— a Church whose worship consisted of simple
eucharistic suppers, of informal, and even disorderly
prayings and prophesyings, of continual open-air
preaching and exhortation; a Church as yet soft
and formless, innocent of all definition in disci
pline or dogma or ritual, altogether in its general
exterior aspect far more like Methodism, or the
Salvation Army, than anything else; — it is not
wonderful that looking about for such a Church
as this they should fail to recognize it in the

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 443
Catholic Church, with her elaborate ecclesiastico-
political organization, her complex and definite liturgy
and canon law and dogma, her world-wide extension
and authoritative government. They seek a tender
sapling, and they find a gnarled, weather-beaten
oak ; they seek a babe in its crib, and they find a
man on his cross.
We, on the other hand, seek a body that
claims to carry on the work of Him who came
to teach not the few but the millions, not the
learned but the rude; to teach them, not the
science of earth or the philosophy of man, but
the wisdom of God and the mysteries of Heaven ;
and who, therefore, of necessity taught, not as the
scribes by reasonings and discussion, but with
authority as God, claiming the obedience of the
mind, not its patronage ; the assent of faith, not the
critical approval of reason.
Looking for such a Church, our own eyes,
and friend and foe alike lead us to Rome. Her
exclusiveness and dogmatism is at once conspicuous
and altogether distinctive. It is to us the mark or
characteristic of Christ, to others of anti-Christ.
But all alike allow that it is notorious and peculiar
to Rome alone. Other bodies claim to have the
true interpretation of Christianity ; for such a claim
is their raison d'etre. But there is some modesty
in their claim ; they do not pretend to be infallibly
right ; they are open to conviction ; they allow
outsiders a right to their opinion. But Rome alone
claims living infallibility, to be not only true, but
certainly true, and alone true.

444 THE MYSTICAL BODY.

For this reason all antagonists join hands against
her; whoever else is right she is infallibly wrong.
She is the Ishmael of Christendom ; a sign spoken
against by all. And while this very concursus of
opprobrium is for so many a conclusive proof of her
imposture, it is for us the very impress of the
stigmata of Christ.
But perhaps the commonest error is that which
leads men to look for such a congregation of saints
as we find in existence during the first days of the
Church's infancy ; before the tares had yet begun
to make themselves noticeable to any great extent ;
to seek for the characteristics of the invisible
Church in the visible. They forget, if they ever
knew, that though the one Spirit which dwells in,
quickens, and unites the members of the visible
Church, as the source of its doctrinal light and of
its sacramental grace, is unfailing and imperishable,
yet it is as treasure stored in earthen and corruptible
vessels ; it is as leaven buried in an unleavened mass,
slowly and with difficulty asserting its influence ;
and transforming into its own nature alien matter
which cannot be leavened if separated from the
mass. Christ surely was explicit enough on
this point, to take away all surprise at the
weakness or wickedness of the members of the
visible Church of whatever degree or dignity. He
came as the friend of publicans and sinners, to call,
not the just, but sinners to repentance. We are
not shocked to find the inmates of a hospital ailing
and weakly ; and the Church is little better than a
hospital for sick and wounded souls, in whose midst

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 445
Christ sits down daily to meat. In this she
emulates the patience as she shares the reproach of
her Master. Those who come to her she will in no
wise cast out ; and if ever she excommunicates, it
is only lest the disease spread from one to many,
or else for the chastisement and ultimate healing of
the sinner himself. While there is life there is
hope. However dead and fruitless, yet until it is
severed from the vine, the branch may yet be
quickened; "although he hath sinned yet he hath
not denied the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost."1 Much schism has originated in pharisaic scandal
and a perverse application of the argument from
fruits; and many still are kept outside the fold
because they are offended that the following of the
Church is so like the following which gathered
round her Master when the righteous stood apart
and drew close their garments from defiling contact.
Let us then be sure that if men of intelligence,
learning, and good faith, hold aloof from us, it is
simply because that of the countless aspects under
which Christ and His Church can be viewed, they
have not yet caught that one in which their resem
blance or rather identity is so unmistakable. It is
ever so with the seeing of likeness between face
and face, what is missed by one is self-evident to
another. Out of thousands there is some one angle
to be taken, and the light breaks upon us irre
sistibly. We might call it chance were it not rather
the free gift of God — donum Dei est.
> Commendation of the Dying.

446 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
Faith is the work of a massive impression pro
duced by a concrete personality. We recognize, we
believe, we trust, we love not in obedience to
arguments and reasonings ; but to a perception
which wakes a response in every corner of our soul.
We follow the Church for the same kind of reason
that Peter of Galilee followed Christ. Had he
been asked his reasons he would wisely have said :
" Come and see ; " and yet many who came, saw
not, for their eyes were dim.
Perceptions whole like that he sought
To clothe, reject so pure a work of thought
As language ; thought may take perceptions place
But hardly coexist in any case,
Being its mere presentment, — of the whole
By parts ; the simultaneous and the sole,
By the successive and the many.1
No man has ever yet uttered the whole, the real
reason of his belief or of his unbelief. Therein he
is alone with God, "to his own Maker he standeth
or falleth." " Whatever be the happy arrangement
of theses," writes a French Jesuit, a, propos of
Huysman's En Route, "according to which the
theologian studies the preambles of faith, and plans
a route for that abstract soul which he syllogizes
about, the subject upon whom the touch of Divine
grace is working makes little account of these
scientific tactics. He is drawn by the cords of
Love and by that bait which suits his particular
appetite if he will but yield himself to follow ; and
the efficacity which the co-operation of his obedient
will lends to grace, suffices to sanctify and justify
1 R. Browning, Sordello

THE MYSTICAL BODY. 447
him without inquiring for a moment whether or not
he has numbered his steps in strict agreement with
the theses or making sure that he has fallen into the
Church's motherly arms according to all the pre
scribed rules."1 And by way of illustration the
critic quotes, without approving in every detail,
the words in which the hero gives expression to
some of the features of the Church by which he was
most strongly drawn back to her bosom :
" Is it not then strange this invariable weakness
on the part of defunct heresies ? All of them from
the very first have had the flesh enlisted in their
service. Logically and naturally they should have
triumphed for they pretended to allow men and
women to follow their passions without condem
nation, and even, in the case of Gnostics, with
profit to their sanctity, doing honour to God by the
vilest excesses.
" And what has become of them ? They have
all gone to the bottom, while the Church, so rigid
in this matter, is still to the fore, whole and entire.
She commands the body to submit and the soul to
suffer, and, contrary to all likelihood, human nature
listens to her and sweeps aside as so much filth, the
seductive pleasures which present themselves for
acceptance." And again :
" Is not this vitality which the Church preserves,
in spite of the unfathomable stupidity of her
children, something quite decisive? She has
survived the alarming folly of her clergy (Quoi qu'on
1 J. Pacheu, S.J., De Dante a Verlaine.

448 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
pense, says the critic, de cette assertion incivile et
outree, elle a sa valeur), she has not even been slain
by the blunders and witlessness cf her defenders !
That is truly wonderful ! "
Temper the irony, and this is only what St. Paul
confesses and glories in when he says : " See your
vocation, brethren, that there are not many wise
according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many
noble ; but the foolish things of the world hath God
chosen that He may confound the wise ; and the
weak things of the world hath God chosen that He
may confound the strong; and the base things of
the world and the things that are contemptible hath
God chosen and the things that are not, that He
might bring to nought things that are."1

* I Cor. i. 26 — 2k.

APPENDIX.
NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN."
It may not be amiss to state a little more clearly
the Christian doctrine of pain, which holds a position
midway between two erroneous views. According
to the hedonist and the stoic, pain is never in itself
a means or cause of good, be that good pleasure
or virtue. In this limited finite existence of ours,
however, it is inseparably annexed to the means
by which happiness is reached. In other words,
bitterness, we are told, is never in itself medicinal,
but being attached to other properties which are
medicinal, it must be endured by those who desire
health for themselves ; it must be inflicted by those
who desire health for others. Thus, if these
thinkers profess any sort of Christianity, they regard
Christ's mission of redemption as a mission pri
marily for the relief of suffering. If He calls on us
to take up our cross and follow Him to Calvary
and hang beside Him there, it is not because suffer
ing is useful, but because it is inevitable if we would
eventually minimize suffering for ourselves and for
others. And therefore, though suffering is useless,
sufferance is good, i.e., being able to face suffering
and fight it with a view to its extinction. Christ,
in their view, is the exemplar philanthropist, who
PP

450 APPENDIX.

found joy in suffering, for the end that others
might not suffer, who bore their burdens and
griefs and sorrows, and imposed a like altruism on
His disciples, as the Great Precept of the New
Law. He bids the rich give to the poor, and those
that have to those that have not. He promises life
to those who devote themselves to the relief of pain
and suffering, who feed the hungry, and clothe the
naked, and minister to the needy. If this, then,
be the true spirit of Christ, is it not evident that
though it is good for us to be able and willing to
suffer when necessary, yet the necessity of suffering
is itself something to be deplored, something
abnormal, irregular, the fruit of sin and disorder ;
that it is like the rust of a key which simply makes
it difficult to turn it in the lock, and in no possible
way helps to that effect ; that suffering makes the
food and medicine of life bitter, but is not itself
nourishing or medicinal ; that it is the great obstacle
to holiness and goodness, and that were it not for
the difficulty and pain to be encountered, the whole
world would be virtuous and happy ?
There is so much plausibility in this presentment
of Christianity as to deceive at times even those
whose spiritual instincts are truer than their reason
ing, and who in attempting to formulate their religion
do it scant justice.
Certain, indeed, it is that pain is never an
ultimate end ; that God never delights in suffering,
even when He Himself inflicts it or wills it to be
inflicted ; that in some equivalent way, His love
for the leas^ of His creatures makes their pains His

NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 451

own, even as the father may suffer more than the
child whom he chastises, yet shrinks not from doing
what is for the child's greater good.
True it is also, that Christ went about relieving
pain and sorrow, and that He requires like com
passion from all His disciples; that He is the
physician of the body no less than of the soul;
that He cares for the temporal as well as for the
eternal ; for the State as well as for the Church ;
for the multitudes as well as for individuals. This
aspect of Christianity is only too often ignored by
those who would divorce grace and nature, Heaven
and earth, Christianity and civilization, and set
them at enmity one with another. No man need
pretend to love God who has no pity for the
hungry. This is true, but it is not the whole truth.
" Seek ye first God's Kingdom and its justice." This
justice is the only supreme and unqualified good, by
which all else is to be measured and estimated.
Other things are to be sought or avoided according
as they help or hinder the one thing needful.
Nothing is absolute evil for man but what violates
his humanity, the higher life of his reason. Were
he mere animal, then pain would be an unquali
fied misfortune, and in no possible way a good
or cause of good ; though possibly it might be
a condition of good. But belonging as he also
does to the order of the Eternal and Absolute,
and finding his highest perfection and happiness
in the love of truth and right, of God and of
God's cause— a love which is exerted, and thereby

452 APPENDIX.

strengthened, in suffering and self-denial, — temporal
and transitory crosses are evil only in a relative and
conditional sense, i.e., just so far as they hinder his
higher and eternal life. But they may as often,
perhaps more often, be not merely the condition
but the very cause and direct means of his advance
in the Kingdom of God and its justice ; not merely
something tolerated as inseparably annexed to the
means, but themselves the means, — the very bitter
ness itself, and not merely the bitter thing, being
medicinal. In a word, suffering is in itself good
and useful, though not an ultimate and final good.
The pain of the lance does the patient no good,
and so perhaps we employ narcotics. But the pain
of the lash does the criminal good, nor has philan
thropy so far insisted on administering chloroform
to him. It seems, then, that " Humanitarianism " makes
what is commonly understood as philanthropy the
chief end of Christ's teaching and example; whereas
Catholicity looks upon it as necessary indeed, but
as secondary and subordinate. Where pain is an
inseparable condition, still more where it is a direct
cause and means of greater good, it must be
embraced, not under protest, but with the love due
to that which in itself is good and useful; which,
though repugnant to feeling, is welcome to reason
and faith.
No doubt there is a superstitious pain-worship
connected with dualist religions, which, as they
acknowledge an ultimate principle of evil, so also
do they view pain as pleasing for its own sake to

NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 453
a cruel deity; or rather, because it tends to the
destruction of the animal body, and of separate
personal existence, which are regarded as of evil
origin. Christian asceticism rests on no such
foundation, but maintains that pain itself purifies
the heart, as fire purifies gold.
For the heart is purified by detachment. Its
purity is its perfect liberty from all that impedes its
complete subjection to the Divine love, and reason,
and will. Such subjection requires that it should be
able to endure the pain of leaving what it likes, of
embracing what it abhors — a power which may be
possessed to an indefinite degree. Apart from
supernatural intervention, the strength of Divine
love in the soul, like every other habit, is increased
by every act in advance of previous acts in point of
intensity; by lesser acts it is sustained up to a
corresponding point of capacity, but no further. It
is not by the removal but by the graduated increase
of obstacles that Divine love is exercised and
strengthened; not by the extinction but by the
mastery of rebellious feeling. Every new victory
of Divine love over such rebellion is a new degree
of liberty acquired, a further purification from
hampering affections, another tie to earth and the
lower life loosened.
As resistance draws out physical exertion and
strengthens our muscles, so pain increases our
moral strength, which is prized, not because to be
able to endure pain is useful (that were a vicious
circle), but because our perfection lies in loving
God with our whole heart and strength, and

45-4 APPENDiX.

drawing out every inch of our capacity in that
respect. Normally, it is only by pain that this can
be effected.1 A life of pleasure unbroken by pain is
in the moral order like a life of absolute bodily
inactivity. It is the explicit teaching of Christianity
that a man is sent into this world for no other end
but to perfect himself in the love of God and of
every form and aspect of Divine goodness ; and if
that love can be perfected and uttered only through
labour and pain and suffering, it is hard to see why
this life should be very much pleasanter than Purga
tory, where the process which death finds imperfect
is taken up and finished according to somewhat the
same method. There is, indeed, true joy and peace
mid the purgatorial pangs ; and if there is any
solid joy and peace on earth it is that which the
saints have known in the midst of their many
tribulations, and which the world could neither
give nor take away. To say that life is but an
1 Needless to say we speak of the natural order of things such
as prevails now in consequence of the forfeiture of the preternatural
through Adam's fall, and would have prevailed always had man
not been created in Paradise. Even there man was not to be
spiritually perfected, he could not make grace his own until it was,
so to say, burnt into his soul by that mysterious temptation to
which he, with all his advantages and helps, succumbed. We may
be sure that the trial on which the destiny of the whole human
race depended was one which could be borne only at the cost of
great suffering, — since temptation implies suffering whether in
the way of abstinence or of endurance. Thus the law of sanctifi
cation through suffering seems to be saved everywhere. As to the
process by which the soul of the baptized infant is developed
intellectually and morally and makes manifest the graces latent in
it, we know too little to be Certain that even here we have aF
exception,

NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 455
inchoative purgatory may sound pessimistic to the
thoughtless, but, in truth, it is very kindest optimism,
the one answer that fits the riddle. Not, indeed,
that there is any continuance of probation or increase
of grace after death, but that the seeds of love here
sown are there watered and matured, and spread
their shoots and fibres to every corner of our
spiritual being ; it is a work, not of development as
here on earth, but of simple evolution.
If once we accept the probation theory of life, it
ought no longer to surprise us to find that the soul
is so often on the rack, that every circumstance
and condition of its existence is devised either to
unite it more closely to God or else to separate it
from God, — the latter purposes being seemingly
contrary but really subordinate to the former,
insomuch as the greater the force of the strain that
would drag us away from God, i.e., from faith, or
hope, or charity, or justice, or purity, or truth, or
any form of Divine goodness, the more firmly do we
need to cling to Him and the stronger grows our
grasp, if we are but faithful in clinging.
If the practice of Divine love were not painful, it
would never take root or grow. No doubt it is the
very idea of virtue that good actions should become
easy ; yet this is only because the habit of enduring
pain has become deep-seated. "Easy" is not "pain
less." The pain is felt as much as ever, but the
feeling is disregarded and promptly defied, owing to
the strength of the counter-motive. Just as the
strong man delights to exert his strength in order
both to give expression to it, and to maintain and

456 Appendix.

increase it, so the love of God, when it is strong,
delights to give expression to itself, to exercise and
perfect itself. The giant will not be satisfied to
beat the air, but looks for something that will resist
him, and if he finds no obstacle will make one ; and
the lover will not be satisfied with unresisting, easy
tasks, but looks for something painful and hard ;
and if he finds it not to hand will devise it for
himself. The Christian ascetic naturally, instinc
tively, reasonably (always supposing it be not to the
hurt of greater good) takes to self-sought austerities
simply and only to express, and incidentally therein
to strengthen, his love of God, his sorrow for sin.
In this he but co-operates in the dispensation
whereby God Himself uses pain and suffering
directly as a means for the spiritual formation of
His saints.
In the mere fact of practising and inculcating
fast and vigil, Christ our Saviour has allowed and
taught asceticism ; nor is there any difference in
kind between His fast in the desert and the
severest self-inflicted austerities of Catholic saints.
It is quite immaterial whether we afflict ourselves
by hunger, or thirst, or wakefulness, or scourge,
or haircloth, if once we pass the boundary of mere
temperance and uphold the lawfulness and the duty
of fasting. Christ's primary mission with respect to the
sufferings and sorrows of life was, not to relieve
them, but to teach men to bear them, to value
them, to thank God for them. There are two
ways of dealing with difficulties and trials — by

NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 457
changing ourselves or by changing our surround
ings ; by running away from hardships or by
adapting ourselves to them and nerving ourselves
to bear them. There is no question as to which is
the wisest course. If we fly from one cross it is
only to fall into the arms of another. Go where
we will we carry ourselves with us, the source of
most of our trouble. Until we change ourselves, no
change of circumstances will avail. Imaginatio locorum
et mutatio multos fefellit, says a Kempis — many have
been deluded by the imaginary advantages of a
change. Men are constantly laying the blame of their
own faults on their surroundings; ever fancying that
they would be perfectly happy in some other place ;
ever keen-eyed to their present grievances and
prospective advantages ; ever blind to their present
advantages and prospective grievances ; always loth
to face the inevitable truth, that life is a warfare
upon earth ; that it is essentially a cross which must
be borne, whether willingly or unwillingly; that
"there is no other way to life and to true internal
peace but the way of the Holy Cross and of daily
mortification. Walk where you will, seek what you
will ; yet you will find no higher way above, no safer
way below than the way of the Holy Cross. Arrange
and order everything after your own likings and
fancies, and yet you will always find something that
you have to suffer, whether willingly or unwillingly,
and thus you will always find the Cross. You will
have to put up either with bodily pain or with
spiritual troubles. At one time you will feel
abandoned by God ; at another you will be tried by

45& APPENDIX.

your neighbour; and, what is worse, you will often be
troublesome to yourself. Nor yet can you be released
or relieved by any remedy or comfort, but needs
must bear it as long as God wills. . . . Run where
you will, you cannot escape, for wherever you go you
carry yourself along with you, and so everywhere
you will always find yourself. Turn where you will,
above or below, within or without, yet in every
corner you will find the Cross ; and everywhere you
will need to exercise patience if you want to possess
inward peace and deserve an everlasting crown. If
you carry the Cross willingly, it will carry you ; if
you carry it unwillingly, you make a burden for
yourself and weight yourself still more ; and yet,
bear it you must. If you cast off one cross you will
surely find another, and perhaps a heavier one. Do
you imagine you are going to escape what no man
ever yet escaped ? . . . You are sore mistaken if
you expect anything else but to suffer trials, for the
whole of this earthly life is full of miseries and hedged
round with crosses. Make up your mind that you
will have to endure many adversities and all sorts of
inconveniences in this wretched life, for so it will
be with you wherever you are, and so you will surely
find it wherever you lie hid. . . . When you shall
have got so far that tribulation is sweet to you and
savours of Christ, then indeed it will be well with
you, and you will have discovered paradise upon
earth. As long as suffering is an evil in your eyes,
and you try to run away from it, so long will you
be unhappy ; and whithersoever you fly, the need of
further flight will still follow you. But if you settle

M6TE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAlti." 459
down to the inevitable, namely, to suffering and
dying, things will quickly mend and you will find
peace. . . . Had there been anything better or more
useful for men's souls than suffering, surely Christ
would have taught it by word and example! . . .
And, therefore, let this be the final conclusion of all
our study and investigation, that it is of necessity
through many tribulations that we are to enter the
Kingdom of God."1
In short, the Gospel has no belief in the perfecti
bility of human life here on earth. If suffering be
the true, unmitigated evil, then Christianity is
frankly pessimistic. Suffer we must on our cross,
whether on the right hand of Christ or on the
left; whether with faith, patience, and humility,
or with unbelief, blasphemy, and proud indigna
tion. Nor can there be any question as to who
suffers more, he who makes the Cross not merely
a basis of certain hope, but even an exercise
and expression of present love, or he who finds
in it not even the medicine, but the very poison
of life. We have already insisted that the good which
positivism seeks to realize for humanity is not the
ultimate good; nor is the evil it would mitigate
a real, final evil. But we may go further with
some plausibility, and urge that its aim is not only
mistaken, but impossible ; that it cheers us with
hopes which can never be realized, that as every
drop which the sun absorbs from the ocean comes
back to it again sooner or later, so the efforts of
1 Imitation, ii. 12.

4oo Appendix.

philanthropy to drain the sea of man's sorrows are
futile and unavailing.
It is vain for us to kick against the goad of
suffering, for thereby we only feel it the more. We
are comforted by promises of a golden age, or an
age of gold, when poverty shall be no more. Yet
He perchance knew the nature of human society
better who said : " The poor you shall always have
with you," and in so saying He may have enounced,
not merely a fact of the future, but an iron law of
life. If so, then as long as the world lasts
the poor will always be in the majority and the
destitute will be not a few. Indeed, it seems that
the pursuit of social wealth is like the pursuit of
truth — at every step a new and wider horizon opens
out on our view. To solve ten problems is to
suggest a hundred not dreamt of before ; and so,
to raise the standard of comfort and enjoyment is
to multiply men's needs and make the conditions of
their temporal happiness more difficult to realize.
Let the wealth of the country increase as it will,
yet the amount of discontent and suffering caused
by poverty will be relatively much the same in one
age as in another. The capacities for pleasure and
for pain grow pari passu, and therefore the increase
of social wealth does not lessen poverty, but only
changes the standard. For poverty is something
to a great extent relative. While society lasts there
will always be inequality in possessions. As fast as
we draw outsiders within the circle of economic
comfort, others will be ready to take their place.
For the more bread there is, the more mouths will

NOTE TO THE ••GOSPEL OF PAIN." 461

there be to eat it ; and if competitors multiply, the
number of those weaklings is multiplied who are
pushed to the wall in the struggle, and whose lot is
poverty, if not destitution.
The stimulus to all progress is discontent with
existing conditions, that is, misery of some kind or
another; and therefore those who make material
progress an end in itself, who fix no final point
beyond which comfort may not go and where pro
gress must cease, make discontent the normal lot
of mankind. Doubtless I shall be told that if we are to seek
such "want-begotten rest," if we are to lower our
standard of comfort to the minimum, in the first
place we shall be relatively no happier, since with
the contraction of our needs the means of satisfying
them will proportionately dwindle down ; and then,
that we shall simply sacrifice the fulness of a life
where all our capacities for enjoyment are developed
to the utmost, for a lower and feebler vitality which
suffers less, only because it lives less and enjoys
less ; that if our doctrine were carried to its extreme
conclusion, we should (as Buddhism does) aim at
the extinction of all desire and being.
This objection is valid if we accept the tenets
of that hedonism which consciously or unconsciously
pervades the thought of our day. For if indeed
enjoyment be our highest good, then the only
practical, though perhaps insoluble, question is as
to whether pleasure or pain preponderates in this
mortal life. If pleasure, then life should be sought
in its greatest possible fulness; if pain, then life

462 APPENDIX.

should be shunned, stifled, extinguished. The ancient
East has learnt to take the bitter view ; the sanguine
West, with the buoyancy of comparative youth and
inexperience, can still find hope in life apart from
God. If, therefore, pleasure were the last good, and
pain the last ill, it might well be questioned whether
the joys that culture and civilization bring to the
majority are not more than cancelled by the
attendant sorrows, and whether stagnation, numb
ness and sensibility were not the better wisdom,
and Nirvana our best hope.
None perhaps ever entered more fully, more
purely into the be3t that the highest culture can
offer, than he who spoke not only in his own name,
but in the name of that unique civilization he repre
sented when he said : " For I believe that if one
had to compare that night in which he slept so
soundly as not to be troubled by any dream what
soever, with all the other nights and days of his
whole life, and had to confess how many days or
nights he had passed more pleasantly and sweetly,
I believe that neither the king on his throne, nor
the beggar at his gate, could count many such."1
If, however, we deny that enjoyment is the chief
good, or more than a subordinate condition of our
highest and truest life, to be used or left as reason
shall dictate ; if we perceive that when sought for
its own sake it becomes a tyrannical and insatiable
greed, a source of chronic discontent and misery ;
that it tends to absorb all the interest and energy
Apol. Socratis.

NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 463

which would otherwise go to the quest of God, and
of divine good, then it is no longer a concession to
pessimism or Buddhism to advocate a simplifying
of the conditions of life in the interests of a truer
and nobler culture. Christianity has no quarrel
with civilization or culture as such, but only with
a false civilization which would usurp the place
which belongs to the Kingdom of God and its
justice. It not only allows but enjoins the further
ance of all arts that minister to life, so long as
due order be observed, and the lower be restrained
by the higher, and nothing be sought without
measure or restraint, save that which is highest of
all. It defers to the claims of the body, of the
passions and affections, of the aesthetic faculty and
the imagination, yet always with the knowledge
that restraint is the only antiseptic, and that when
Nature breaks loose from the yoke of Grace, the
liberty she seeks proves to be bondage, degradation,
corruption. But it is in justice, and in the inner Kingdom
of God that we are to place our imperishable
treasure of happiness, which no suffering in other
respects can touch save superficially, leaving the
soul's depths in imperturbable calm. This happi
ness, like the air and sunshine, is within the
reach of all; and the supply being unlimited,
there is no struggle of competition, no necessary
poverty or destitution. In the spiritual soul, with
its capacities for light and love, men possess
an often unsuspected treasure of happiness,
an instrument from which skilled fingers can at

464 APPENDIX.

pleasure draw sweetest music. Christ tells us that
our bliss depends more upon what we are, than upon
our circumstances; that these latter receive their
form and meaning from the soul ; that the eye sees
what it brings with it, the power of seeing ; that it
is more blessed to play an indifferent part nobly
than to play a noble part indifferently; that the
Kingdom is within us, and consists in that deep-
down, unbroken peace of the heart which the world
can neither give nor take away.
We are not then enemies to material progress
because we refuse to recognize it as an end in itself;
or because we forbid men to build all their hopes
upon it, and throw all their energies into it; or
because we refuse to believe that on the whole it
can ever seriously alter the relative proportions of
pain and pleasure in this world. On the contrary,
as nature in general is saved and perfected by its
subjection to grace and heavenly wisdom, so within
the many kingdoms of nature each lower realm is
best saved by subjection to that above it ; nor can
any civilization escape corruption when the lower
life is sought luxuriously and extravagantly at the
expense of the higher; when the bulk of social
wealth goes, not to the necessities, but to the
superfluities of the body, while the soul is left
languishing. And if the predictions of a future terrestrial
paradise consequent on the growth and distribution
of wealth are somewhat shortsighted, the same must
be said of those which point to the coming extermina
tion of disease and the prolongation of life through

NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 465
the progressive improvement of medical science.
For if the art of healing finds new remedies and
methods, it only means that many weaklings are
born, and many survive whom Nature with rough
kindness would have withheld or eliminated from
the number of the living ; and thus the proportion
of those who can exist comfortably under improved
medical science to those whose life is a burden
to them, is about the same as before.
As for the far greater amount of human grief and
sorrow which owes its birth to sin and selfishness,
temptation and perverse free-will, it is hard to see
how the most sanguine philanthropist can persuade
himself that any diminution has been realized or is
to be hoped for; and while death remains (as for
such faithless thinkers it must remain) " the King of
Terrors," the extinction of all they live for, and a
sword of sorrow to loving survivors, it is vain to
indulge in dreams of an earthly paradise from which
all pain and sorrow is to be weeded out, and where
comfort, if not luxury, shall be the unbroken lot of
all. In flying from the Cross, humanity, with out
stretched arms, is flying from its own shadow.
Man is born for travail, as the sparks fly upwards.
His life upon earth is a warfare; not a peaceful
paradise. Cur quceris quietem,, says a Kempis, cum
natus sis ad laborem—" What business have you
to expect rest, since you were born for labour and
conflict ? " Man that is born of woman hath but a
short time to live, and is full of misery. This is
"the iron law" of our nature, shirk it how we
will,— Fwrai expellas tamen usque recurret. Against this
EE

466 APPENDIX.

tide of suffering, Christian, neo-Christian, and non-
Christian philanthropy, each in obedience to the
deepest and noblest instincts of the soul, casts up
barriers of sand, to retard its advance here and
there, or to break the force of its waves for a short
hour or so. Nor herein is the Christian inconsistent,
seeing as he does in these temporal needs and
sorrows a true, though by no means unmitigated
evil ; one to be resisted, but not absolutely and
unconditionally. Yet it is not in the efforts and fruits of such
philanthropy, not in the increased care for the
poor and sick, that we are to look for the meaning
of the Gospel proclamation, Pauperes evangelizantur
— " Good news for the poor." Blessed are the poor,
the mourners, the sick, the oppressed, the persecuted 1
Blessed indeed, because their Deliverer has come.
But what manner of deliverance is Christ's ? Is it
that the poor are to grow rich ; the sick strong ; the
mourners gay and light-hearted ; the oppressed
victorious ? In that case He should rather have said:
Blessed are the rich, the prosperous, the gay. Yet
though He bade His followers sell all and give to tha
poor, though He went about healing the sick, raising
the dead, consoling the mourners, — as it were,
robbing them of their blessing, yet He says, Blessed
are you poor ; and He chose their lot for Himself and
for His Mother. Seeing that He had said it was
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter Heaven, He might well
have given us an example of that more difficult
sanctity, by coming among us as a rich man. But

NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 467
His Heart was with the majority, to sweeten their
lot. The rich, the great, and the learned live, so to
say, on the crumbs that fall from the table God has
spread for the poor and simple, — on the overflow
of the Gospel graces. They get into Heaven by
holding on to the skirts of the poor, and by making
of them friends at court for themselves. Therefore
our Saviour came rather to show the poor how to
use their poverty, than to show the rich how to use
their riches ; to minister to the many, to sanctify
their lot, to consecrate their ragged garments by
wearing them Himself.
Who then is the true philanthropist ? Is it he
who, by the very manner in which he sympathizes
with sorrow, and labours for its extinction, practi
cally inculcates his own belief that it is an unmiti
gated evil ; who dreams fondly and bids others
dream of a future paradise on earth, who believes in
the perfectibility, not only of the soul, but of the
conditions of a comfortable and enjoyable existence ?
Or is it He who "knew what was in man," who
knew that poverty, sorrow, suffering, and temptation
would always and inevitably be the lot of the
majority; who knew that there was wisdom and
love veiled under God's seeming harsh dispensation,
and who came not to change it, but to explain it ;
to touch the dark clouds with golden light ; not to
uproot the thorns which sin had sown, but to teach
our bleeding fingers to weave them into a crown
of glory for our own brow. A human comforter
would stay us with false hopes of impossible amelio
ration ; God shows us that poverty is wealth, and

468 APPENDIX.
sorrow is joy, and death is life. He comes to us
with His Cross on His shoulder and says : " Follow
Me, I am the way;" He has taught us, if not to
love, at least to adore the Cross ; to carry it, if not
joyfully, at least patiently.
There is no false kindness, but there is true and
tender love in the hard, stern sayings of the Gospel.
" Good news for the poor ; " not that poverty is at
an end, but that it can be turned into gold. And so
of every sorrow and trial and temptation.
Pseudo-Christian philanthropy would take Christ
down from the Cross. It forgets that He hung
there by His own free-will ; not in our stead, but
that we might have courage to hang beside
Him, for without the Cross there is no life.
In cruce vita, says a Kempis, in cruce salus —
"Only in the Cross is life and salvation to be
found." 0 Crux, Ave! Spes unica! Can it be doubted
but that this was the secret of the conquest of the
world by Christianity? For what is strength but
courage ? and what is courage, when all is told, but
the power of bearing pain, both moral and physical ?
And what force can resist a people whom love
teaches, not merely to endure pain, but to seek it
and to revel in it ? The blood of the martyrs could
not fail to be the seed of the Church ; nor while the
true doctrine of the Cross is preserved in the
Church — as it must ever be preserved however at
times neglected and forgotten, — need we fear for the
eventual victory of Christianity over a feeble-minded
world which grows daily more terrified at pain and
suffering. Doubtless the children of the Church are

NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 469.
at times largely infected with the world's sentiments
in the matter, dainty members of a thorn-crowned
Head — and so far the Church is feeble ; but never
while she clings to Christ crucified and His saints ;
never while she lifts the Cross for our adoration,
and hails it : Spes unica — " our only hope," can the
secret of her invincible strength be wholly forgotten :
In hoc signo vinces — In this sign she must conquer.

ROEHAMPTON :
PRINTED BY JOHN GRIFFIN