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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

NOVA ET VETERA.

NOVA ET VETERA

INFORMAL MEDITATIONS.

GEORGE TYRRELL, S.J.

FOURTH EDITION.

' VETERA NOVIS PERFICERE ET AUGERE." [LeO XIII.)

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1902

IRlbfl ©bstat: Carolus Blount,

Censor Deputatus.

imprimatur :

HERBERTUS CARD. VAUGHAN,
Archiep. Westmon.

[All rights reserved.]

PREFACE.

There is less apology needed than might perhaps
appear at first sight for offering to the public a book
which is hardly more than a record of private
musings. Doubtless it contains little or nothing
that has not been said before, and said better ; yet
in many cases the truths are said in the writer's
own way; and so far he can claim to bring forth
from his treasury old things and new — old, because
truth is eternal ; new, because its expression is
infinitely variable. To give a new edge to truths
and truisms blunted by use, it is not needful that
they should be clothed in language either gorgeous
or elegant ; but only that their expression should
be such as we are not accustomed to ; such, as to
make us stop and listen. Since, then, each indi
vidual has his own individual language and accen
tuation, it is always helpful to hear from others
truths which, formulated in our own way, pass
through our ears without friction and therefore
escape our attention. For this reason, it does not
seem altogether presumptuous or unreasonable to
flood the market with meditation books, provided

iv PREFACE.
the authors can claim personality of manner, and
disclaim all pretence at novelty in point of matter.
A new gospel is not worth listening to ; while to
say the old things in the old words is tiresome.
These meditations are called "informal," because
the author has presented simply the substance of
the thought in each case without the formalities
of preludes, acts of the will, practical suggestions;
colloquies, and the like, which can be easily supplied
by those who are helped by method, and which
others will gladly dispense with. As regards the
work of the practical understanding and the will,
it is plainly more in accordance with the mind of
St. Ignatius Loyola that it should be the spon
taneous outcome of our own reflection, rather than
an explicit suggestion from without. Hence the
points for meditation should rather address them
selves to the receptive understanding and intellectual
memory. It may well seem to some that these
meditations are often abstruse and philosophical,
rather than devotional ; but here again it may be
said that the error is on the safer side. For certain
minds it often happens that the points of popular
meditation books do not offer sufficient matter for
the mind to lay hold of; and without some such
purchase for the intellect the attention soon wanders
for sheer lack of interest. Most of these thoughts
are within the compass of even the least reflective,

PREFACE.

and the few that may seem more difficult will find
a key in familiarity with those that are easier.
St. Ignatius was instinctively an opponent of the
theory which, on a misunderstanding of a Gospel
maxim, divorces intelligence from will in the work of
sanctification. " Sanctify them in Thy truth," was
our Saviour's prayer for His disciples, " Thy word
is truth." Holiness that rests on any other basis
cannot hold out against the tempest and the flood.
God's sayings kept and pondered in the heart, the
utterances of reason and of revelation, of common
sense and of Catholic faith, these are the daily
bread and manna of the soul : " The words that
I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life."
The wisdom which is hid from the wise and prudent
and revealed to little ones, is nevertheless real
wisdom ; and does not leave them as it finds them
in their ignorance and littleness, but gives them
understanding and a quick-minded intuition as
unerring as instinct. Nor is there any connection
between sanctity and stupidity. Divine love is
but an opening of the spiritual eyes to beauties
hitherto unsuspected. As hereafter, so also even
on earth, man is perfected by vision. No doubt
this highest intellectual perfection is compatible
with great deficiencies in the lower wisdom which
wins the admiration of the world ; but it is,
nevertheless, the truest and only essential enlighten-

vi PREFACE.

ment. A clear understanding is a great grace, for
it will go more than half-way to kindle love in the
will ; whereas good-will without understanding is
a lion let loose. If the intellect needs the control
of faith, faith is perfected and served by intellect.
Therefore let no man sunder what God has joined
together. As for the disorder in which these thoughts are
presented, it may be said that no particular advan
tage was to be gained by a logical classification.
Had there been any pretence at following the
seasons of the Church, or at a complete treatment
of ascetical theology, a little violence might have
been used with improvement. But they have been
recorded as they occurred from time to time,
spontaneously and unsought for, in no way as parts
of a whole. It would be vain to look for order
where none can possibly exist ; and their very dis
order is more in keeping with their purpose. For
in hours of dryness and weariness, we naturally
turn from the monotony of method to seek relief
and variety in the unexpected, as one might
occasionally fly from the geometrical precision of
a Dutch garden to the freedom of some pathless
wilderness. Where the Latin has been quoted, the
appended translation is often free and unauthorized.
The same reflections and thoughts are no doubt
repeated over and over again ; yet always with

PREFACE.

sufficient variety in the setting to give them another
chance of striking home. Nor, as compared with
other meditation books, have we much reason to fear
the charge of vain repetition ; though it must freely
be admitted that there is one leading thought or
another which runs as a strain through the whole
collection, and binds them together with a unity of
spirit or ethos. The spirit of devotion to the Sacred
Heart, the idea of the Benignitas et Humanitas Dei
Salvatoris nostri, is one which it is the work of the
Society of Jesus to evolve into greater clearness
and distinctness, purging it from all admixture of
foreign elements inconsistent with its unity and
purity. Prior to the Jansenist controversy, there
lived side by side in the minds and writings of many
holy persons principles of piety and asceticism really,
though unobservedly, antagonistic to one another.
It was that controversy which first called for their
careful scrutiny and assortment ; and showed that
many of them were logically based on a mis
apprehension of the relation of nature to grace,
and on the false supposition of an entire and fatal
divorce between them. The clear expression of the
;mind of Catholic Christianity as to Jansenistic
principles was but the signal, so to say, for the
eradication of the tares. The work of their detec
tion and severance from the wheat, lurking as they
do in the most unsuspected quarters, is a delicate

viii PREFACE.
and tedious operation still far from its completion.
For in the other extreme, there is current outside
the Church a low humanistic conception of Christ,.
which uses and thereby renders suspect the very
words and phrases of Catholic truth. We have,
therefore, to steer a difficult course. Still, much
as these meditations and reflections insist on the
humanness of Christ and His Church, no one will
be likely to find fault with them as neglecting to
give due emphasis to the Divinity of our Saviour
and to the mystical aspect of Catholic Christianity.
"And how am I to use this book?" one may
ask ; " in what order shall I take the meditations ? "
In any order whatever. They only pretend to
furnish raw material for thought, and in no way
to prescribe method or order. Those who desire
to have the preludes, colloquies, acts of the practical
understanding and of the will, fixed for them, will
find plenty of excellent books more suited to their
needs than this, which is directed to another need.
For they aim rather at guiding the stream of our
thoughts and affections in an orderly way and to a
definite end ; whereas it is the purpose of this little
book to set the stream flowing where, for one reason
or another, it has run dry.
G-T.
March 7, 1897.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

In revising this Third Edition, the author is sensible
how many of the paragraphs might be recast and
even eliminated with advantage to the book as a
whole. But as considerations of expense make this
unadvisable and confine the corrections to such
details as can be altered without sacrificing the
plates, it may be well to explain that these frag
mentary meditations were not originally compiled
for public but for private use, and owing to circum
stances which need not be specified, were sent to
press with all their sins and imperfections on their
head. Otherwise the inaccuracy of so many of
the quotations, and the almost total absence of
references, would deserve even severer reprehension
than has been already meted out by my otherwise
very indulgent critics.
G. T.
Manresa, August 11, 1899.

NOVA ET VETERA.

I.
REMEMBERING CHRIST.
Jesu dulcis memoria, dans vera cordi gaudia.
" Sweet is the remembrance of Jesus, giving true
joy to the heart." Love or charity is that joy
which the heart derives from the contemplation of
what is lovely or fair. There is no substantial
difference between the beatitude of the saints on
earth and in Heaven. This joy is to see God as
He is — Videbimus eum sicuti est; a contemplation of
God under the aspect of His goodness, beauty, and.
truth. We may truly say that charity is knowledge,
the taste or appreciation of the lovableness and
beauty of Christ. He is the Summum Bonum —
" the Sovereign Excellence ; " that Fulcrum, quod
visum placet — "that Beauty whose Vision is joy."
Yet not to all, but only to the little ones, does
He reveal Himself. Natural wit or science cannot
reveal Him. He must reveal Himself. There is the
Jry, barren knowledge of a violet which any soulless
botanist can attain to : and there is the joy-inspiring
sense of its beauty which the child or the poet
B

THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST.

experiences. It is the lingering memory, the con
templative pondering of the beauties of the Spouse
that sets the soul aglow with passionate love. Such
remembrance is " sweet " to those who taste Him
with a mind taught by the Holy Spirit "to relish
what is right." Gustate et videte — "Taste and see."
Dans vera cordi gaudia — There is the false joy of
pride and self-satisfaction arising from continual
self- remembrance and self- contemplation, — the
" fool's paradise," in which we dream our dream
and hold it true; and there is a bitter sadness
where there is a full sense of one's own smallness,
and life's unmeaningness ; and there is the true
joy which springs from the remembrance of Him
whose infinite fulness is the complement of our
infinite emptiness ; who made us nothing in our
selves that we might be everything in Him.
II.
THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST.
Sed super mel et omnia, ejus dulcis praesentia.
" But sweeter than honey, His presence." If
there is sweetness in the merely imagined or remem
bered presence of the Beloved, much more in the
Real Presence. But what is the special advantage
of presence, seeing that His beauty and lovableness
may absolutely be contemplated by memory as well
as by sight ? This seems ultimate and incapable of
analysis ; unless it be that beauty, like all ideals,
is valued in view of realization — good to be
actualized or realized ; good, if only it were ; and

THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST.

as possible, it pleases, only with a conditional and
dependent pleasure. Yet this does not touch the
case where the beauty is known, not merely to be
possible, but to be actual, though absent. Is it not
that its actuality, which is its crown, must also be
contemplated and not merely remembered or
inferred ; or is it that a sense of physical nearness
satisfies the unitive appetite of love, which desires
oneness in every possible order, and that localized
beings seek local presence ? Qui amat intelligit —
" He who loves knows." Bernard never asked why ;
but spoke as every lover has spoken, and felt as
every lover has felt, and as God the Lover of all,
when He says : " My delight is to be with the
children of men." " Father, I will that those whom
Thou hast given Me should be with Me;" or when
He was made Flesh and pitched His tent among
us in the mysteries of the Incarnation and the
Eucharist, and became Emmanuel — God with us ;
or pledged Himself to dwell in our very heart and
flesh, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit :
" We will come and make our abode with Him."
In the contemplation, therefore, first of His beauty
and goodness, then of His Real Presence, our soul
finds its highest joy, and is most perfectly united to
Him by charity.

THE PENITENTS HOPE.

III.
THE PENITENT'S HOPE.
Jesu, spes poenitentibus.
"Jesu, hope of the penitent" — "Friend of
publicans and sinners" drawing all to Thyself;
veiling Thy justice in the cloud of mercy, sent
for the salvation of the lost, to call, not the just,
but sinners ; in no wise casting out those who
come to Thee burdened and labouring ; Lamb
of God taking upon Thyself the sins of the world.
Sinners feel no need of hope and encouragement,
except so far as they are penitent, sorrowful, fearful,
and downcast : to such the Baptist, that great
preacher of penance, cries out : Ecce, Agnus Dei, ecce
qui tollit peccatum mundi — " Behold the Lamb of God,
who taketh away the sin of the world."
IV.
CHRIST AND THE SUPPLIANT.
Quam pius es petentibus.
" How pitiful to those that pray." " More
willing to hear than we to pray, and wont to give
more than either we ask or deserve ; " pitiful to all
who ask, even when because they ask unseasonably
or ask amiss, He denies their request. Pitiful, when
He seems silent and austere and suffers us to
clamour after Him in vain, that we asking more
largely, He may give more liberally. Pitiful, when
in our folly we ask, not for the Bread of Life, or

THE TREASURE SOUGHT.

the Fish, but for a stone or a scorpion. Pitiful, when
He refuses to promise us an unearned seat in His
Kingdom ; but pledges us instead a share in His
chalice and in His baptism of blood. Pitiful, as
He would have us be, when He says, " Give to
him that asketh of thee, and from him that would
borrow of thee turn thou not away." " Freely ye
have received, freely give," " good measure, pressed
down, shaken together, and running over."
V.
THE TREASURE SOUGHT.
Quam bonus te quserentibus.
" How good to those who look for Thee." Many
seek His gifts and graces ; few seek Himself, the
Grace of graces. " What reward wilt thou have ? "
He asks of Aquinas. " None, but Thyself, Lord."
Dilectus mens mihi et ego Mi — " My beloved is mine
and I am His." He has promised that none shall
seek vainly Him who came to seek and to save them.
Qucerite et invenietis — " Seek and ye shall find." But
how ? " If with all your hearts you seek Me, ye
shall surely find Me ; " i.e., if we seek Him as the
necessary and all-sufficient Good ; or as the Magi
sought Him, not for their own sakes, but for His ;
not to get, but to give ; not to be honoured by Him,
but to adore Him. Quam bonus ! How good to
the half-fearful disciples who followed Him shyly,
when He turned round to encourage them : " What
seek ye?" "Master," they say, "where dwellest
Thou ? " It was He they sought. Venite et videte—

THE TREASURE FOUND.

" Come and see ;" and they abode with Him that day.
How good to her who sought His Sacred Body in
the early morning before it was yet day, for " they
that seek Him early shall find Him." " Woman,
why weepest thou, whom seekest thou?" "They
have taken away my Lord, and I know not where
they have laid Him." "Maria!" "Rabboni."
Quam bonus te qucerentibus. VI.
THE TREASURE FOUND.
Sed quid invenientibus ?
"But what art Thou to those that find?"
Inveni, quern diligit anima mea, tenebo nee dimittam
— " I have found Him whom my soul loveth, I will
hold Him and will not let Him go." Qui invenit me,
invenit vitam — " He that findeth Me, findeth life."
This is that treasure hid in the field which when
a man hath found, prcz gaudio illius, vadit et vendit
omnia — "for joy thereof he goeth and selleth all."
It is hid to all eyes — oculus non vidit — "for eye hath
not seen it " — save to those which God has opened :
Aperi oculos meos et considerabo mirabilia de lege tua —
" Open my eyes and I shall see the wonders of Thy
law." For our eyes are holden so that we are blind
to our treasure when it is often close to our hand.
We walk with Him in the way, and converse with
Him, and gaze in His face, and all the while believe
Him far away. We seek the living among the
dead.

CHRIST'S VISITS.

VII.
CHRIST'S VISITS.
Quando cor nostrum visitas,
Tunc lucet ei Veritas,
Mundi vilescit vanitas,
Et intus fervet caritas.
" When Thou dost visit our hearts." Christ,
" the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls," makes
His periodic visitation of our hearts in times of light
and consolation. It is not always visitation-time,
yet the effects of each visitation are to carry us on
to 'the next. So Ignatius bids us remember that
we may not waste such precious moments basking
in the sunshine which is given us, not for present
enjoyment, but for future use. As of old, God from
time to time, "visited His people" through His
prophets, so He comes to our soul from time to
time. 2. Tunc lucet ei Veritas — " Then Thy truth shines
therein." This is the first effect of His visitation.
Scrutabitur Jerusalem lucernis, illuminabit abscondita
tenebrarum, et revelabit consilia cordium — " He will
search out Jerusalem with torches, and bring to
light the hidden things of darkness, and will reveal
the secrets of hearts." He lightens the darkest
corners of our heart ; shows us our most secret
motives ; holds up to us a truthful mirror from
which we cannot turn our gaze — humiliating though
the contemplation be. For we need now and then
to be disillusioned about ourselves, to be purged
from the poison of self-contentment by the bitter
hyssop of self-knowledge. 3. Mundi vilescit vanitas —

THE SOUL, AS A VINE.

"The empty world grows contemptible." This is
the second effect of Divine visitation. In the dim
light many a shadow seems real and substantial ; a
painted Jezebel looks young and fair. But daylight
discloses the hollowness and unreality of such beliefs.
Living in the world, we cannot so withstand the
effect of universal example as not gradually to
become more impressed with its importance ; less
alive to the unseen, true, and only realities. The
same inward light that shows us ourself, shows us
the world as it is, not as it seems. <{.Et intus fervet
caritas — " And love glows within." For all would
be to no end did it not also show us the King in
His beauty and lovableness. Indeed, He, so seen,
is the light in which self and the world are revealed
in their ghastly nothingness. It would be a deso
lating and bitter knowledge did it stop short of this,
which sweetens and consoles. VIII.
THE SOUL, AS A VINE.
Repleti fructu justitias.
" Being filled with the fruits of justice which are
through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God."1
The fruits of justice are "love, joy, peace," &c.
They are the outcome of grace or justice turned to
good account, not stopping short with the foliage
of good words and pious conversation — " Though
I speak with tongues of angels and have not
charity," &c; " Let us not love in word or in tongue
1 Philipp. i.

FAITH AND PRACTICE.

[only], but in deed." Nor again, stopping short at
the blossom of good desires and velleities, which are,
so to say, good works in promise, or in the bud.
" Through Jesus Christ ." He is the gardener of the
Householder who has taken my soul as a wild vine
and set it in the richest soil and sunniest corner of
His vineyard, and watered it with the dews of actual
graces from above, and from below with the streams
of living water beside which it is planted ; and has
digged round the roots by sorrows and humiliations
designed to soften and loosen the affections ; and
has pruned and trained the branches in lateribus
domus suce — "over the walls of his house," "to the
praise and glory of God," i.e., of the Householder
and Lord of the vineyard ; that He may glory in
this tree which by its fertility does credit to- Him
and His care ; that He may not be disgraced by
it and say, " Cut it down, why cumbereth it the
ground ? " IX.
FAITH AND PRACTICE.
Qui autem facit veritatem venit ad lucem.
Faith, in those who have faith, does not vary
directly with evidence, but, as Aquinas teaches,1
according to the Divine lumen fidei whereby the
believableness stands out more brightly and clearly
to one than to another. Even in the natural order,
given equal knowledge of the proximate future, one
man's foresight is clearer, stronger, more efficacious
than another's. Children and savages are little
1 C. Gent. iii. 38.

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD.

affected by what they know mentally ; but much, by
what they see or imagine vividly, i.e., they fall short of
human strength and dignity in this respect. In an
age and country of faith the imagination is much
helped by externals and by the publicity of religion,
which is sensibly felt on all sides. Even when
practice is dropped, faith will remain in an
individual so environed ; for it is not tempted by
opposition, but is supported by the imagination, and
costs nothing. But here and now it is all other
wise, and faith does not long survive charity. Even
for ourselves the impossibility of picturing the other
world when once we find that our childish imaginings
were but symbolic, makes it very unreal and so far
ineffectual as a stimulus to action. But in proportion
as we act up to our knowledge it becomes real to us.
We therefore embody it in conduct, as a secret
cause is bodied in its manifest effect. This
principle is at the root of the power exerted on us
and on our faith by the lives and examples of
believers. X.
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD.
Erat Lux Vera quae illuminat omnem hominem.
"" He was in the world, and the world- was made
by Him, and the world knew Him not " may be
well applied to the world of intellect and knowledge,
which is the highest creation of the True Light. He
is in that world creating and causing all that there
is in it of light and truth ; and yet when He comes
to it from without as a Teacher, and as the Truth

HELP FROM THE MOUNTAINS.

taught, it receives Him not : Hie est heres, it says,
venite occidamus eum et hereditas erit nostra — " Here is
the Heir : let us slay Him, and the heritage will be
our own." Men want to have their reason for their
own heritage ; they will not have this Man to reign
over them. XI.
HELP FROM THE MOUNTAINS.
Levavi oculos meos in montes unde veniet auxilium.
" I have raised up my eyes to the mountains
whence cometh my help " — (i) to the Mount of the
Beatitudes for light in the midst of darkness, from
Him who is the Way and the Truth, whose " word
is a light to my feet and a lamp to my path ; " (2) to
the Mount of Thabor, for hope in discouragement ;
hope in the " glory that is to be revealed " beside
which the sufferings before me are light, momentary,
and not worthy to be considered ; for if we suffer
with Him, we shall also reign — "it is good for us to
be here ; " (3) to the Mount of Olives, in temptation,
to the High Priest "touched with feeling for our
infirmities," " tempted in all as we are," " tasting
the weakness of the flesh," and overcoming it by
the willingness of the spirit "resisting even unto
blood" in His agony and conflict; (4) to Mount
Calvary for pardon and forgiveness when I have
fallen ; or when in terror for the sinful past, to the
Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world ;
(5) to the Mystical Mount Zion whither He has
ascended to the right hand of God to plead His
wounds for me " ever living to make intercession,"

HEAVEN AND EARTH.

and to shower down in torrents upon the thirsty
earth the living water that springs from the five
" wells of the Saviour." XII.
HEAVEN AND EARTH.
Auxilium meum a Domino qui fecit coelum et terram.
" My help is from the Lord who has made heaven
and earth ; " (i) not as though I were nearly self-
sufficient, needing but a supplement here and there ,
now and then ; nor as though God and I were
fellow- workers on a footing of equality ; nor as
though God, being chief labourer, needed me to aid
Him in occasional straits ; but because my helper
is my Maker, who works in me every good wish or
good deed ; whom of myself I can only hinder, and
can help only by not hindering; (2) "Who made
heaven and earth," and therefore rules them in all
things; from whom all power is derived, "Thou
wouldst have no power against Me were it not given
thee from on high." By whose sole permission,
for whose sole glory all that befalls me is ordained.
He has made heaven ; though He is heaven, and He
is not made. He has made Himself our heaven by
offering Himself to us as our reward — " I will be
thy exceeding great reward." He who has given
the end, shall He not give the means ? He who
has given Himself, " shall He not freely give us all
things?" (3) "He has made heaven and earth,"
heaven first in the order of design ; and earth,
whose sole end is to be subservient to Heaven.

DIVINE WATCHFULNESS. 13
(4) " Heaven is My throne and earth is My footstool."
Heaven, the place where He dwells in His fulness,
and satiates the Blessed with His presence ; earth,
where He is but visible as to His feet, in those who
represent Him to us, the last and lowest members
of His Mystical Body. Thus when ascending to
His throne, He is said to have left the vestiges of
His feet on Olivet. And again, in every creature
we see some vestige or footprint of the Creator.
But in Heaven alone, shall He Himself be seen
"as He is." Again, heaven and earth, throne and
footstool, are one, being linked by Him who rests
on both. Christ is Jacob's ladder connecting earth
and heaven, by which angels ascend and descend,
and the commerce, broken off by sin, is renewed.
Finally, He has made heaven and earth ; for
heaven is the spiritual man, " the second Adam from
heaven, heavenly ; " born of the spirit, and spiritual :
earth, is the natural man, " the first Adam ; of the
earth, earthy ; " born of the flesh, and fleshly.
Yet, He has made both ; each in its order " very
good " and He has wedded them together and said,
Crescite et multiplicamini — " Increase and multiply."
XIII.
DIVINE WATCHFULNESS.
Non det in commotionem pedem tuum.
"He will not suffer thy foot to slip;" for
we are walking, as it were, in dim light over
a raging river on stepping - stones ; or picking
our steps from tussock to tussock, through a

i4 DIVINE WATCHFULNESS.
treacherous quagmire. And which of us can be
ever so continuously watchful over every step as
to escape destruction ? There are times when
we look back on past hair-breadth escapes, and the
seeming chancefulness of our safety ; and feel that
perseverance for a day, let alone for a lifetime, is
impossible. Then, we must remember that there
is another watching our footsteps more anxiously
than ourselves, of whom it is said : " He that is thy
guardian will not slumber : " i.e., will not for a
moment blink, or take His eyes off us : though we
should take our eyes off Him, and " slumber and
sleep " and forget Him, through fault or through
frailty. It is not enough to remember the presence
of God if we forget that it is the presence of One
whose attention and observation is concentrated on
us, scrutans renes et corda — " searching our inmost
heart." He is the Watchman who by night watches
the Israel of our soul. " Unless the Lord keep the
city, the watchman watcheth in vain." He is the
nurse and faithful spouse of the soul who sits with
us through the long night of our delirium, when
others lie dreaming and heedless. He is the Father
who watches the footsteps of the wandering prodigal
and sees him when yet a long way off. He it is who
seems to slumber within us when the frail vessel of
our soul is storm-tossed and water-logged, but whom
in their fury, no less than in their calm, the winds
and seas obey. " Behold, He that keepeth Israel
shall neither slumber nor sl^ep."

MAGNIFICAT.

XIV.
MAGNIFICAT.
Ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generationes.
" For behold from henceforth all generations
shall call me Blessed : for He that is mighty hath
done great things for me." Mary's humility is not
blind to her great gifts, Fecit mihi magna — " He
hath done great things for me ; " and beatam me dicent
— "men shall call me Blessed." But they were
God's doing and the fruits of His blessing.
She lifts her eyes and looks into future ages and
sees every altar, shrine, picture, well ; every church
and sanctuary where she, the little maid of Nazareth,
shall be set up and worshipped and loved, blessed
among women, blessed of all times and nations.
She hears Gabriel's Ave re-echoed a million times
daily, age after age, " to the last syllable of recorded
time; " and then on, into eternity, when the ora pro
nobis shall have been forgotten together with the
remembrance of sin and sorrow, and the troubled
dream of mortal life ; and when saints and angels
will mingle Ave, gratia plena with the harmony of
their unending Tersanctus. And she hears Salve
Regina and Ave maris stella, Regina Cceli and the
Litany of Loreto, and Bernard's Memorare, and
the undying rhythm of the Holy Rosary, the fifteen
Mysteries, and the Seven Sorrows — all this she sees
and hears when, inspired by the Holy Ghost, she
cries: "Behold from henceforth all generations
shall call me Blessed " — Blessed, not as the primal

1 6 EXAMPLE OF THE SAINTS.
source, but as the recipient of blessings — " for He
that is mighty hath done great things for me and
Holy is His Name." Et misericordia ejus a progenie
in progenies, timentibus eum — " And His mercy is
towards them that fear Him ; " for, the proud and
unbelieving who do not fear His wrath, feel no need
to cry for mercy. Our very fear is the most effectual
appeal for pity ; as when a little dog crouches in
abject terror at our feet and disarms our anger.
XV.
EXAMPLE OF THE SAINTS.
Spiritus quidem promptus est, caro autem infirma.
(Collect for St. Callistus.) i." O God, who seest
how through weakness we fall away." Apart from
our sins of malice, our infirmities tend continually
to weaken charity and separate us from God.
Spiritus promptus, caro infirma — "The spirit is ready,
but the flesh weak." There is nothing sustained in
our love, which now and then flames up and forth
with begins to dwindle. Repeated experience of
this tends to discourage us by a conviction of our
own fickleness. But if we know it, God knows and
sees it too, " who remembers that we are but dust ; "
" all flesh is grass, and its glory," its fervour, its
aspirations, " are as the flowers of the field. The
grass withereth, the flower fadeth."
2. "Mercifully restore us to our love of Thee."
"If we confess our sins," if we frankly acknow
ledge our fault, He will have mercy, and restore us
not only to our former love, but to a greater. For

GOV IN MAN. 17

by such relapses and renewals we progress like the
incoming tide. Our hearts are in God's hand ; He
alone can make us sorrow for coldness and wish for
restoration; and this very wish is an earnest that
He is ready to fulfil it if we "do not resist. 3-" By the
example of Thy saints." God uses the ministry of
creatures for our conversion, which thereby become
graces and sacraments in His hands. The love of
a Paul, an Augustine, a Bernard, a Francis, may be,
through His grace, the means to rouse us to wonder
what it was they saw that we do not see ; to long to
enter into their peace and serene joy. For this is
even natural, as when we see one rapt in the reading
of a book whose meaning is to us incomprehensible j
or at least uninteresting. Converte nos Deus Salutaris.
noster et averte tram tuam a nobis — " Convert us,
O God our Saviour, and turn away Thy anger from
us." XVI.
GOD IN MAN.
Diliges proximum tuum sicut teipsum.
If our direct end and happiness is to get to love
God, and to unlove all that is distasteful to Him ;
the love of our neighbour is but the same thing
viewed on another facet. If amare et amari — " to-
love and to be loved " — expresses the deepest yearn
ing of the human soul, nothing should conduce
more to our joy in life than this truest charity. " As
thyself" is no equation, but an identity; God does
not here implicitly bid us to love ourselves first, and
then our neighbour equally, but He says : " Die to
c

18 GOD IN MAN.

thyself, forget thyself, and let thy neighbour take
the place of self; " Non quae sua considerantes sunt, sed
qua aliorum — " Not considering our own things, but
the things of others." When the virgin loves Christ
as her Spouse, it does not mean that she has another
spouse, but that He is to her as a spouse and
infinitely more. Identified with others, we shall
"" rejoice with them that rejoice and weep with
them that weep," as He did who came to minister
to others and to give His Life as a ransom for many,
— " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, therefore
hath He sent me to preach the Gospel to the poor,
to heal the broken-hearted ; to preach redemption to
the captive and deliverance to the slaves, to pro
claim the acceptable year of the Lord." This is to
¦" put on Christ ; " to sanctify ourselves ; to " praise,
reverence, and serve God " in our neighbour, and
" by so doing to save our souls." Nor does such
charity grow without laborious exercise. We must
begin by services rendered from a sense of duty and
with no sweetness. Then, since all love what they
labour for — even as God loves the troublesome souls,
or mothers their crippled children, or scapegrace,
thankless sons — love will waken in our heart ; and
-habit will make easy and pleasant the movements
which were stiff and jarring while the rust of self
lay thick on our affections. Such charity means
the extirpation of all carnal and sensual and worldly
love from the soul ; and the less we distinguish it
from the love of Christ our Saviour, the better.
When we look on our crucifix we should see through
and beyond to the wounds of Christ's Mystical

GOD'S BOUNTY. 19

Body; and when we look on human suffering,
sorrow, weakness , we should see therein Christ
crucified. XVII.
GOD'S BOUNTY.
Oculi omnium in te sperant Domine.
" The eyes of all look to Thee, O Lord," like
the anxious eyes of a dog waiting to be fed by the
scraps from his master's table ; yet not presuming
to snatch. z.Et tu das escam illorum in tempore
cpportuno — "And Thou feedest them at the right
time," for the dog does not know the tempus
cpportunum — "the opportune moment," as his master
does, but is continually on the strain not to miss
it when it arrives. So we should abide God's
own good time, who gives us the hunger no less
than the food. Si tardaverit expecta eum — " If He
tarry, wait for Him." $.Aperis tu manum tuam —
"Thou openest Thy hand." God's open-handed-
ness towards us contrasts with our close-fistedness
towards Him and His. " He fills," to overflowing,
"the hungry with good things;" "good measure
pressed down running over." He fills every living
thing with abundance ; much more those that live
the life of grace, with the Bread of Life.
XVIII.
THE PROOF OF GOD'S WORD.
Ignitum eloquium tuum vehementer.
" Thy word is tried exceedingly as in the fire."
The true doctrine of life is that which will " console

20 THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF CHRIST.
us in our lowness " — Hcec me consolata est in humilitate
mea; which will go with us "through fire and water
and lead us to refreshment." Where is the philo
sophy, outside that of the Man of Sorrow, which
has "good news for the poor," the maimed, the
halt, and the blind. H<zc me consolata est in humilitate
mea; and, "therefore, Thy servant loveth it."
XIX.
THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF CHRIST.
Ecce totus mundus post eum abit.
" Lo, the whole world is going after Him,"
which is true, not of all men, but " of all sorts and
conditions of men ; " old and young, male and
female, Jew and Greek, ancient and modern, &c. ;
every form and variety of humanity finds its
aspirations and ideals realized in Him who is
" the Man " — par excellence. None other has ever
been so " run after : " Speciosus forma pro. filiis
hominum — " Fair to behold, beyond the sons of
men ; " albeit those who run, are weighted with
the cross before they can follow Him. And
that other greater world which runs not, stands
amazed, and says: " Lo, the whole world is gone
after Him ! " for " darkness has blinded their eyes "
to the " King in His beauty." Non est species ei, they
say, neque decor, et vidimus eum et non erat aspectus
— "He has no beauty nor comeliness. We have
seen Him, and see nothing to desire about Him."'
" But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and
ye know all things and need not that any man

GIVING TO THE POOR.

should teach you." He has anointed our eyes that
-we may "see Him as He is," and healed our fevered
palate to "taste and see." His Name is as fragrant
spikenard poured out, whose odour fills the whole
¦world. Trahe me post te, in odor em curremus unguen-
iorum tuorum — " Draw me after Thee, that I may
run in the wake of Thy unguents." XX.
GIVING TO THE POOR.
Abiit tristis.
" He went away sorrowful." It is as making
¦us selfish and indifferent to those who have not,
that possessions are an impediment to salvation.
Hence it is not enough to sell all, unless we give
all to the poor, and follow Him who is the Friend
and Servant of the poor; so that having given
them our possessions we should then give them
•ourselves. Non qucero donum tuum, they say to us
by the mouth of the Poor Man, sed te — "I seek
not your gifts, but yourself." How hard for those
¦who have riches, talents, influence, friends, precious
^boxes of spikenard, to enter in the Kingdom of
Heaven. The news that all these gifts are not for
themselves but for others, sends them away sad ;
and sadder as their possessions are greater. Blessed
is He of whom it is written : dispersit, dedit pauperibus
— " He hath scattered His gifts to the poor," and
blessed are those who rise up, leave all, and follow
Him; and make a great banquet for Him and for
"His friends, the publicans and sinners.

ST. ANDREW.

XXI.
ST. ANDREW.
O Bona Crux ! quae decorem ex membris Domini suscepisti.
" O good Cross, which hast won beauty from the
touch of God's limbs." As the garments and
belongings of the saints become relics worthy of
veneration, so all that Christ used, or even touched,.
became full of quasi-sacramental virtue: poverty,
labour, sorrow, and shame, or in one word, the
cross — Quce decorem ex membris Domini suscepisti f
Electa digno stipite, tam sancta membra tangere. We
forget that the cross was to the ears of Jew and
Greek what the gallows is to ours, a word of
infamous association. How lovable then must He
be whose love could make so lovable, a thought
so unlovely; Who could make St. Andrew cry
out : " O cross, long desired, tenderly loved, cease
lessly sought, and at last made ready for my
thirsting soul." " Take me from among men,.
and restore me to my Master." Such is the
aspect of death to the saints. Mori lucrum —
" Death is gain." It is true also of that death,.
"precious in the sight of the Lord," by which the
saints die daily, which lifts them up above earth,.
nearer to Heaven ; takes their erring heart from all;
base affection, arid restores it to its Master who
made it for Himself. Each cross or sorrow is a
step in Jacob's ladder. And yet when so lifted up>
they draw all men to themselves, and thereby to
Christ ; and being themselves nearer to God, they

NIGHT AND DAY. 2$

are truer mediators between God and man. It was
the tasting of death and sorrow that made Christ
a compassionate and sympathetic High Priest.
" May He through Thee receive me, who through
Thee redeemed me." Through His Cross alone,
and in union with it, do our crosses save us, — all
making one mystical body of suffering, whereof
Christ's suffering is the head, and our sufferings the
members ; just as there is a mystical body of prayer
and of praise and of grace and of glory, whose head
and plenitude is hidden with Christ in God ; whose
members and branches are still growing day by day
towards the fulness of perfection predestined from
eternity, " Filling up in our body what is wanting."
Peter and Andrew, the two first called, were both
crucified. Hcec est vera fraternitas — "This indeed is
the real brotherhood," for the true sheep of Christ
are branded with the sign of the Cross, symbolized
by the cross in Baptism, traced tam in fronte, quam
in corde, on the brow, that we may glory in the
shame : on the heart, for it is not suffering, but
sufferings loved and borne for His sake that mark
us His. XXII.
NIGHT AND DAY.
Nox prsecessit ; dies autem appropinquavlt.
" The night is past, the day is at hand, let us cast
away the works of darkness and put on the armour
of light." Night, the time of dreams and unrealities,
when we are alone and unobserved of men ; a time
of preparation for the day when light shows us

24 NIGHT AND DAY.

surrounding realities, which before were veiled, and
brings us into the converse of men and under their
observation. "The things which appear are but
temporal," but the hidden realities, which underlie
appearances, are eternal. The only solid utility of
life's dream, is as a preparation for the dies Domini —
"the day of the Lord," which is to bring to light
the hidden things of darkness, and to render to
every man according to his works ; and " in the
brightness of His coming," to dispel all the doubts
and darknesses which make human life so full of
sadness and mystery. " While the bridegroom
tarried they all slumbered and slept." No healthy
subject, none but a somnambulist would go abroad
in the day in night-clothes. We are therefore to
get ready to rise from sleep, to cast aside the works
of darkness as a night-garment, and to clothe our
selves as those who "walk in the light even as He
is in the light." Our works cover our natural
nakedness and characterize us. In them and under
them are we seen. All dreams, illusions, ambitions,
attachments, which tie us to this unreal life, which
make us believe in it, or which arise from our belief
in it, are works of darkness. Surge qui dormis —
" Rise, sleeper," lest the day come upon you
suddenly, " as the lightning that shines from
east to west," "as a thief in the night." "But
put ye on the Lord Christ," for this is the
" armour of light," the garment of those who walk
as in the day. " Put ye on," i.e., be so united with
Him, transformed into Him, that He may own us to
be His, and may not be ashamed of our nakedness

CHRIST, OUR SERVANT. 25
''before the angels of God." "Put ye on," not a
"putting on," or pretence, or material following,
but that true "imitation of Christ," which grows
from an inward personal love of Him, and sympathy
with His ideas and tastes. XXIII.
CHRIST, OUR SERVANT.
Filius hominis non venit ministrari, sed ministrare.
" The Son of Man came not to be served," yet
Mary and Joseph served Him ; and the devout
women, and Martha, and Nicodemus, and others.
Yet it was not for this, as for an end, that He came,
" Lord and Master " though He was. It is no
man's vocation to be served ; and if we are served,
it is to free us, not for our own leisure, but for a
fuller service of others. He came " to serve ; " to
kneel and wash the feet of sinful man, to be " an
eye to the blind, a foot to the lame," to be a
physician, a guide, a shepherd ; and when He had
given His labour and all else, at last " to give His
Life a ransom for many." If it is great love to die
in the service of another, it is far greater directly
to give one's life for the life of another. Ecce
quomodo dilexit — " Behold how He loved us."

26 THE SECOND COMING.

XXIV.
THE SECOND COMING.
Videbunt Filium hominis venientem in nubibus.
" Then shall they see the Son of Man coming.""
He comes in two ways : as Redeemer, as Judge,
He comes first in the obscurity and darkness of
this life by secret inspirations, knockings, and warn
ings; not forcing Himself on our wilfully averted
gaze, yet found readily by those who watch for
Him betimes, " who follow the star " with great
joy ; anticipating them, waiting at their door in the
dim morning of their conversion. But for many,
His voice is first attended to in the final trumpet
call ; He is first seen when He flashes forth to
Judgment from the East. "Then (and not till
then) shall they look upon Him whom they have
pierced." Then shall He " come in power," with
the ministers of might to force His way and to
tread down His enemies with everlasting destruc
tion ; those, namely, who would not admit Him
when He came in suppliant meekness to the door
of their heart. Then shall He come " in Majesty,"
He who in the crib and on the Cross and on the
altar, has emptied Himself of His glory, so that
there is neither form nor comeliness about Him,
save to the anointed eyes of faith, or to the eyes
of those who have seen Him transfigured even in
the day of His earthly humib'ation.

THE HOLY NAME. 27

XXV.
THE HOLY NAME.
Nil canitur suavius
Auditur nil jucundius
Nil cogitatur dulcius
Quam Jesus, Dei Filius.
"No smoother song." No rhythm runs more
easily or sweetly ; no melody more simply ; no voice
so rude or feeble, but finds it within its compass,
without strain or effort. In ore mel mirificum — " A
wondrous honey to the lips," says Bernard, echoing
David's Quam dulcia faucibus meis eloquia tua, super
mel ori meo — " How sweet Thy words to my mouth,
more than honey to the taste." From the abundance
of a loving heart the mouth of the lover speaks.
of the beloved, naturally, easily, in season, unaggres-
sively, as do the saints ; nothing forced, or stilted,
or violent, or tasteless.
" Nought more gladly heard." To hear of Him
gladdens us; it is not a theme which wearies or
palls. For when our affection is fixed on another,
we lead others to speak of him by a thousand subtle
little artifices. In aure duke canticum — "A sweet
strain for the ear." Like some sweet, familiar song
laden with the purest and best associations, which
we ask to hear again and again. Yet it may be
that, through the bad taste of the singer, we would
rather miss the melody altogether than hear it ill-
handled and profaned.
" No sweeter thought." — Jesu dulcedo cordium.
It is the thought that banishes all bitterness, and

28 THE HOLY RELICS.
uproots every radix amaritudinis ; the cure for pes
simism and cynicism with regard to ourselves and
others, which makes us think gently, wisely, and,
what comes to the same after all, justly of human
nature, with its rents and wounds and weaknesses ;
with its wonderful " obediential " capacities to be
raised from nothing to everything ; from the mire of
bestial degradation "to the right hand of the Majesty
on high" crowned with glory and honour, "all things
being put in subjection under its feet." The lower,
the meaner, the more revolting, seem the depths to
which humanity may and does sink ; the better we
appreciate the genuflection at the Homo f actus est.
XXVI.
THE HOLY RELICS.
Si quis mihi ministraverit honorificabit eum Pater meus.
The Holy Relics speak to us of the honour which
•God Himself pays to His saints : Gloria hcec est
¦omnibus Sanctis ejus — "This is the honour due to
all His saints ; " and : " If any man serve Me, him
will My Father honour, and We will come and make
Our abode with him." The power of God's spirit
•seems to linger and brood over every fragment or
relic of those whose death was " precious in the
eyes of the Lord," every hair of whose head was
named and numbered. If the King Himself so
honours them, can it please Him that His subjects
should neglect them so lightly ? Again, these relics
speak to us of the future resurrection and glorifi
cation of those bodies which were the shrines of

THE HOLY RELICS. 29.
grace, and of whose archetype it is said: "Thou wilt
not suffer thy Holy One to see corruption," and
therefore they remind us of the sacramental sanctity
of Christian flesh and blood, never to be violated
by any blot of unchastity under pain of sacrilege
against the temple of the Holy Spirit. Lastly,
they speak to us of the power of Christ which is
to raise us from the dead, and to spiritualize our
mortal clay, changing the body of our humiliation
into the fashion of His glorious Body by that power
whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Him
self. For to Him, as man, all power in Heaven
and earth, over spirit and matter, is given, by
whom, as God, "all things were made," in whom
God in the beginning created Heaven and earth.
As the winds and seas obey Him, so every power
of nature ; even the strongest, the most dreaded,
the most inevitable law of decay, destruction, and
death "When He shall have put all things under
His feet," every rebel force, physical, spiritual, or
moral, then " the last enemy that shall be destroyed
is death." 0 mors ubi victoria tua ? 0 mors ubi
stimulus tuus ? — " O death, where is thy sting ? "
Through Christ its sting of reproach and shame
has been taken away, since dying He has sanctified
death, and ensured its final overthrow. Beati mortui
qui in Domino moriuntur — " Blessed are the dead
who die in the Lord."

30 THE SENSE OF SIN.
XXVII.
THE SENSE OF SIN.
De profundis clamavi.
" From the depths have I cried." Heaven and
Hell, i.e. — Holiness, which raises us above the world
and above ourselves, and Sin, which pulls us down
and ties us to earth — are opposed as height and depth.
Tu solus sanctus, tu solus altissimus — " Thou only art
holy, Thou only art most high." Here David, out
from the depths of his sinfulness, from beneath the
"floods and billows that have gone over him," cries
up, as to one too far removed to hear with the ears
of justice, yet trusting that mercy will be less hard of
hearing. " Let Thy ears be attentive," as though it
would need some strain to catch so feeble and distant
a sound. "Attentive " as their ears who listen with
bated breath for a sign from one buried in some mine
or cavern whom they seek to rescue. This sense
of our own lowness and distance from God makes
our voice carry more surely than if we deemed
ourselves within easy talking distance. In vocem
deprecationis mece — "To the sound of my depreca
tion." Not supplication, but deprecation; — the
prayer for deliverance from the justly merited
punishments of God; from the gathered thunder
storm of wrath ready to break over our head if we
do not cry aloud to God to spare us. It is not a
cry for pity as to a passer-by; but a cry to an
offended God to save us from Himself: Averte iram
tuam a nobis — " Turn from us Thy anger." God's

FEAR OF GOD'S SCRUTINY. 31
mercy is understood only when we consider the
all-destroying force of the indignation which it
fetters and restrains ; when we cower beneath the
uplifted rod or tremble in the fierce glow of that
" consuming fire." XXVIII.
FEAR OF GOD'S SCRUTINY.
Si iniquitates observaveris Domine, Domine quis sustinebit.
" If Thou, Lord, wilt search out faults, who
can ever be saved ? " " Take this white robe,"
says the Church to us at our Baptism, "and see
that thou carry it spotless before the tribunal of
Christ." And yet after all she has done for us —
even for the very best of us — after all her teaching,
guidance, instruction ; after absolutions, and bless
ings, and Eucharists, and anointings ; the most she
can say of us at the end, when the priest turns
away from our grave with the final De profundis, is :
Si iniquitates observaveris Domine, Domine quis susti
nebit. It is only through God's uncovenanted
mercies that there is hope for us at all. " Enter
not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord," no,
not even on the expressed terms of the New
Covenant of mercy, "for in Thy sight shall no
man living be justified." A microscope with a
strong light will reveal roughnesses and rottennesses
where weaker vision sees all smooth and sound.
We may well distrust even our seeming innocence
and wonder anxiously how our purest actions will
appear in the brilliant white light of God's presence:

32 MARY'S CROWN.

Dies Domini revelabit — " God's day will disclose it."
In manibus tuis sortes mece; God meantime holds our
lots hidden in His own hand. Were they in the
hands of blind chance we might tremble, but in
God's hands they are safer than in our own.
" Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my
spirit," the hands that made me and fashioned me ;
that have sustained and borne me up ; that were
nailed to the cross for me ; that have touched me
and healed me ; in which my name is graven never
to be obliterated, even were I to be lost for ever.
XXIX.
MARY'S CROWN.
In capite ejus corona stellarum duodecim.
" On her head a crown of twelve stars," that is,
the choir of the twelve Apostles enthroned around
Mary iri Heaven, as of old they circled her about
on the day of the Church's birth at Pentecost.
They are, before all others, her crown, as St. Paul
says of his spiritual children, " Ye are our joy and
our crown." She has borne them in Christ Jesus ;
they are the choicest trophies of her tears and
prayers ; of her sorrows and sufferings. And this, in
proportion, is true of every soul, whether called or
chosen. Each of us is called to be a star in Mary's
crown. Let us not disappoint her of the jewel for
which she has paid so great a price.

BLESSED MARGARET MARY. 33
XXX.
BLESSED MARGARET MARY.
Ubi thesaurus, ibi cor.
Collect : " O God, who didst wonderfully reveal to
Blessed Margaret Mary the unsearchable treasures
of Thy Sacred Heart." The grace of seeing the
treasures of the Sacred Heart in such a light as
will move us strongly, is not within our natural
powers, but is a revelation kept from the wise and
prudent and given to babes. It means seeing God
as our Treasure, or Summum Bonum; seeing our
happiness to consist in a personal absorbing love of
Him in omnibus et super omnia — " in all and over all,"
who has so loved us. To " dwell continually in
that same Heart " is to be there in thought and
affection at all times, and to be " had in everlasting
remembrance," by Christ our Lord.
XXXI.
BLESSED JOHN BAPTIST.
Regnum coelorum vim patitur et violenti rapiunt illud.
"A reed shaken by the wind," is he who is
carried hither and thither by the fashions and
speculations of the hour ; by the contrary impulses
of indiscriminate human respect ; or by his sub
jective feelings, passions, and moods. " Clad in soft
raiment," is the delicate, sensitive, enervated, effemi
nate type, so common among the cultured enemies
of Christianity, the dilettante humanist or philoj_.
D

34 HOPE, NOT PRESUMPTION.
sopher, whose taste is revolted by the hard-lined
definitions of Catholicism; its severer doctrines of
Divine justice; its practice of mortification. Oppo
site to both types we have the Baptist dominated
by a single idea, usque ad mortem — " even unto
death," — a man of one love, and one work, and yet
withal, so gentle, so humble, so tender, the " friend
•of the Bridegroom." XXXII.
HOPE, NOT PRESUMPTION.
Qui Mariam absolvisti
Et latronem exaudisti,
Mihi quoque spem dedisti.
Qui Mariam absolvisti — " Thou who didst pardon
Mary." While we derive hope from the freeness
and fulness of Mary's pardon; the rich and abundant
graces showered upon her; the height of contem
plative love to which she was raised from out of the
mire of sensuality; still we must not forget the
intensity of her sorrow ; the profusion of her tears ;
the depth of her humility ; the sincerity and finality
of her conversion. We must also remember that
her sins were sins of frailty, not of malice, or un-
mercifulness, or selfishness. Else perhaps she may
be an occasion to us of presumption rather than of
hope. Et latronem exaudisti — " And didst listen to
the thief." Here too there was a free and instan
taneous pardon of one whose whole life, probably,
was passed in sin or forgetfulness of God. Hodie :
•mecum — " To-day : with Me." But then, what
humility! Nos digna factis recipimus — " We receive

A CRY FOR MERCY. 35
the due of our deeds." What fear ! Nonne et tu
times Deum? — " Dost not thou fear God ? " What
faith ! Domine, . . . in regnum tuum — " Lord, when
Thou comest into Thy Kingdom." What con
fidence ! Memento mei — " Remember me." How
many get the grace of dying on the cross beside
our Saviour ? Here again there is ground for
reasonable hope, but not for presumption or
¦deferring repentance till death. Is there any
instance on record of one being saved who trusted
to a death-bed repentance ? Mihi quoque spem dedisti
— " To me also Thou accordest a hope." If my
faith, humility, fear, love, contrition, is so far behind
theirs, what hope can I draw from their case ? This
— that these graces and the grace of repentance
is itself from God, and not refused to those that
ask it. For to wish for it, and ask for it, is from
Cod, who thereby shows Himself willing to finish
what He has begun. " He that comes to Me, I
will in no wise cast out," and "no man comes to
Me except the Father draw him."
XXXIII.
A CRY FOR MERCY.
Miserere mei Deus.
" Have mercy upon me, O God." It is no cry to
a pitiful onlooker for deliverance from an evil for
which he can feel pity alone ; but a cry to one who
is justly wroth with us, and whose hand is raised
to strike. Sana animam meam — " Heal my soul," we
cry, not as to a physician, but as to a destroyer who

36 A LILY MID THORNS.
can spare as well as strike, quiapeccavi tibi — "because
I have sinned against Thee." Miserere, as coming-
from the sinner, means parce — " spare us." This
conception is obscured by the growing tendency to
ascribe all moral evil to infirmity, and to deny malice
and responsibility.
XXXIV.
A LILY MID THORNS.
Sicut lilium inter spinas sic arnica mea inter filias.
" As a lily mid thorns, so my darling among the
daughters of men." Mary's soul is a lily from the
spotlessness of its purity, the fragrance of its charity,
the grace and delicacy of its form. A lily hedged
round with thorns, cruel and unsightly. For love
of this lily the Son of God has entangled Himself
amidst the thorns, mingling with " the sons of men,
whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue
a sharp sword," that at length, rent and bleeding,
He might grasp for Himself, if no other, at least
this one full fruit of His Incarnation and Passion-
And this in a measure is true of each single soul
which by purity and charity, fair and fragrant, bears
some distant semblance to the Immaculate, and
may, through and with her, be culled and gathered
into one bouquet of passion-flowers. It has been
sought through thorns and briers, at the cost of
piercing pain and copious blood-shedding. And
further, if we regard the virtue of loving purity
and pure love, as a lily which we ourselves should
covet and apprehend, let us be sure that it can be

SOWING IN TEARS.

37

areached only by those who will struggle forward to
it through the thorns of difficulty, perplexity, and
painful mortification: who grasp it with bleeding
lands. And those who would preserve it when
;grasped, must hedge themselves round with thorns,
with safeguards and precautions, with the thousand
little weapons which, weak in themselves but strong
in their multitude, keep the world, the flesh, and
the devil at a safe distance.
XXXV.
SOWING IN TEARS.
Qui seminant in lacrymis, in exultatione metent.
" They that sow in tears shall reap in joy." The
Son of Man is the Sower who, at His Incarnation
and Nativity, went forth to sow the seed of the Word
of God. And He sowed in tears, a Man of Sorrows
and acquainted with grief. But at the end of the
world He will send forth His angels to gather His
elect from the four quarters of the earth, to reap and
hind in sheaves the fruit of His tears ; and then He
will return Home in joy and triumph, " bearing the
^sheaves in His bosom " — veniens veniet cum exulta
tione portans manipulos in sinu suo. In whatever
work we do for God, whether our own sanctifica-
;tion or that of our neighbour, this law holds true.
We sow in tears, in weakness, in discouragement,
in pain, in adversity; and what our tears might
water in vain for ever, God in His own good
rseason, often when hope is at its last gasp, fertilizes,
.blesses, fructifies with abundant and joyful increase.

38 OVERRULING PROVIDENCE.
Thus what Blessed Monica sowed mid the rain of
her tears, she reaped in the sunshine of great joy-
The wounded, lifeless Body which Mary laid in the
ground and watered with her tears, she received,
glorified, into her bosom with the joy of Easter,
The dead in Christ whom we have sown in tears,
we shall reap in joy. He who has left father or
mother, or lover, for Christ's sake, albeit with tears,
shall receive an hundred-fold in this world and in the
world to come life everlasting.
XXXVI.
OVERRULING PROVIDENCE.
Ipsa me deduxerunt et adduxerunt.
" Send forth Thy light and truth ; it is they that
have led me and brought me to Thy Holy Mount
and to Thy Tabernacle." It is they, and not I
myself. Whether in the external history of my
vocation, or the internal history of my spiritual
training, I can do nothing, have done nothing but
stand in my own light. It is almost in spite of
myself that I find myself where I am, and what I
am, such as I am. " All we like sheep have gone
astray ; we have turned every one to his own way ; "
for we have no power of self-guidance, errantes et
vexati — "wandering and harassed." As one who-
drives sheep through the crowded mazes of a city
must run before them and block this way and that ;.
and almost force and frighten them into the right
path; so does the "Shepherd and Bishop of our
souls" deal with our waywardness. We can look-

GOD WORKS QUIETLY. 39
back on the past and see how design has ruled
everywhere : even when we felt most independent,
most self-determining, we were but as clay in the
hands of the potter. XXXVII.
GOD WORKS QUIETLY.
Post ignem, sibilus aurae tenuis.
"God was not in the rushing wind," not in those
reformers who force their way on by violence,
sweeping all before them by the impetus of their
self-will, uprooting rocks in their onward rush. Such
winds may be His messengers of wrath, by per
mission rather than by mission — at least, so far as
they have slipped the guiding rein, and carry on
for self, what was begun for God. And "God was
not in the earthquake," in those radicals who are so
keen to see the rottennesses of the present system ;
so blind to its strength ; who are zealous to pull
down the old fabric before they have so much as
planned the new ; who trust in logic and legislation
rather than in affection and discipline : men who
love the excitement of cataclysms, the thrill of a
social upheaval, the shock of city crashing to the
ground. And "God was not in the fire," in the heat
of violent anger and animosity, "breathing forth
threatenings and slaughter ; " in the controversial
spirit of personal rancour and fierce indignation.
Ira interdum movemur et zelum putamus — " Often we
are stirred by anger and call it zeal." But at last
there came sibilus aurce tenuis — "the whisper of a

40 FAITH, FIRE-TRIED.
gentle breeze ; " and God was there; whose whisper
ing grace is so weak to all seeming, so easily resisted
and turned aside, so quickly outclamoured and
drowned by the tumult of passion ; and yet so
powerful and subtle in its influence, winding its
way quietly round every obstacle ; using every little
chink and crevice as a door to the ear of our heart ;
stealing in among us " in our midst when we know
Him not ; " known to us only when perhaps He has
vanished, and we remember " how our hearts burned
within us while He yet spake with us on the way."
We must do His work in His own way, whether it
regard ourselves or others ; not rushing forward
blindly to our goal ; nor shaking the foundations
into ruin ere we have planned the new structure ;
nor heating our soul with fierce, blinding indigna
tion against ourself or others ; for God is not in the
hurricane ; not in the earthquake ; not in the fire ;
but in the whisper of the gentle breeze.
XXXVIII.
FAITH, FIRE-TRIED.
Suadeo tibi emere a me aurum ignitum, probatum.
" I urge thee to buy of Me gold, fire-tried and
approved." Those vendors who force their wares
on us are usually self-interested, looking to their
own profit. God persuades us to buy, solely out of
love for us ; for He longs to give, yet will not give
gratis or unasked. Hence He persuades us, He
makes us want His wares and ask for them. " He
is more willing to give, than we to pray," and His

THE NATURE OF SIN. 41
ifirst gift is to make us willing to pray. How does
He persuade the Laodiceans ? By rebuking them
lovingly, quos amo arguo et castigo — " Whom I love I
rebuke and chasten ; " by showing them their state
of delusion, in which, being poor, blind, and naked,
they fancy themselves rich, and clear-sighted, and
clad. Bonum mihi quia humiliasti me ut discam justi-
ficationes tuas — " It is good for me that Thou hast
humbled me that I might learn thy justifications."
And what is the A urum ignitum, this gold tried and
approved by fire ? Faith, in its widest sense ; the
faith that has been through the fire of temptations
and come out pure and purged of its dross. We are,
then, to pray not merely for faith, but for the perse
cutions and temptations by which faith is purified ;
nay, we are to purchase this tried faith as the reward
of merits and good works. Such a faith, is God's
richest gift. " Lord, increase our faith."
XXXIX.
THE NATURE OF SIN.
Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognosco ; et peccatum meum
contra me est semper. Tibi soli peccavi et malum coram te feci.
" For I acknowledge my iniquity." We are
willing enough to acknowledge our weakness, but
not so willing to acknowledge our wilfulness. " The
serpent beguiled me," we say, or "The woman
whom Thou gavest me." God knows ever}' excuse
and allows for it ; so that we need never excuse
¦ourselves before the all-knowing and all-just. It
is our faults we must acknowledge, not our frailties.

42 THE NATURE OF SIN.
Peccavi nimis mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima
culpa, i.e., I did wrong and did it wilfully and
inexcusably. " If we confess our sins, He is faithful
and just, to jbrgive us our sins." It is not as a
declaration or publication that sacramental con
fession is necessary for forgiveness ; but as an
acknowledgment of guilt. It is impossible to
forgive one, in the strict sense of the term, who
excuses himself for the injury he has done us; or
who does not acknowledge, at least inwardly, that
he is inexcusable.
Peccatum meum contra me est semper — " My sin is
always before me," i.e., he is haunted and dominated
by the thought of his sin. Ccepit flere ; he has entered
on a life of weeping and penance. This peccavi colours
every action, and gives it a reparative value. If our
sins are. always before us, God "will- cast them
behind His back; " if we continually remember them,
God will forget them : " Their sins and iniquities will
I remember no more." If we remember our debts,
we shall forget our debtors ; if we remember our
debtors, God will remember our debts. A steady,
unbroken gaze on our sinfulness and wilfulness, will
provide us with a sombre background against which
the mercy and loving kindness of God will shine out
more brightly. The more one grows in intimacy
with Christ, the deeper is the sense of sin and our
regret that, even to some extent unwittingly, we
should have offended Him, and must daily and
hourly pain Him by our gross ways and selfish
inconsideration. Tibi soli peccavi — "Against Thee alone have I

TRANSLATION OF THE HOLY HOUSE. 43
sinned." Sin is often an injury to our fellows, always
an injury to ourselves ; in itself and in its undying
effects it is a disturbance and source of further
disturbance to that moral order, which is the chief
and formal part of the universal order. It is
humiliating, degrading, miserable. Yet all these ills
vanish in comparison with the principal malice;
namely, the injury to God, the contemptuous
defiance of One so great, so powerful, so terrible in
His wrath ; so infinitely good to all men and to me ;
so evidently good in Himself. Malum coram te feci —
" I have wrought evil in Thy presence," i.e., in the
very face of God, advertently, knowingly ; in the
very bosom of God, where He carries me, nourishes
and cherishes me. Filios enutrivi et exaltavi et
spreverunt me — " I have nurtured and reared up
children who have scorned Me." Not in the thought
of God's dead, passive presence, but of the all-
attentive presence of One, cui omne cor patet, omnis
voluntas loquitur et quern nullum latet secretum — "to
whom each heart lies open ; each wish is eloquent ;
each secret revealed," do we find a continual
restraint for good.
XL.
TRANSLATION OF THE HOLY HOUSE.
Domum tuam decet sanctitudo.
Consecrated by the mystery of the Word made
Flesh; itself the tabernacle in which He dwelt among
us with Mary His Mother and Joseph her spouse,
what might not its walls tell us could they but

44 ST. LUCY.

speak, and echo back to us Gabriel's Ave, and
Mary's Fiat and the converse of those thirty years.
In a far truer sense, however, was Mary herself the
House of God consecrated by the indwelling of the
Incarnate; as even we are each of us consecrated
by every new access of grace, every Eucharist and
sacrament. What has been the converse of our
heart as compared with Mary's ? Should we wish it
to be revealed ; or to be closed and sealed up for
ever in silence ? Ne reminiscaris — " Remember not,
Lord, our offences." XLI.
ST. LUCY.
Domine dilexi decorem domus tuae.
All are not able or called to minister to the
richer adornment of God's visible sanctuaries. It
suffices if they do not themselves defile them, and
if they honour those whose privilege it is to beautify
them. Nor are all able or called to adorn the
sanctuary of God's spirit with the grace of virginity,
though none shall defile that temple with impunity.
It was this love and passion for the beauty of God's
spiritual sanctuary (Domine dilexi decorem domus tuce
et locum habitationis gloria tuce — " Lord, I have loved
the beauty of Thy house and the dwelling-place of
Thy glory "), which inspired St. Lucy with a love
of virginity, such as compelled her to give away her
dowry, and to refuse marriage at the risk of being
denounced as a Christian. Is this faith in God's
mystical indwelling, this admiration of chastity as

ST. MARTIN. 45

in itself beautiful and befitting, the root of our care
for holy purity, or is it rather with us a matter of
blind duty and a fear of mortal sin without any
sympathy with the motive of the law that binds us ?
XLII.
ST. MARTIN.
Desiderium babens dissolvi et esse cum Christo ; scio quia
manebo et permanebo vobis omnibus ad profectum vestrum.
" Lord, if I am necessary for Thy people, for
their sakes I do not refuse the labour." As he in
vision beheld our Lord clothed with the garment
bestowed upon one who had begged in His name ;
so in the needs, weaknesses, and dangers of Christ's
flock he by faith beheld Christ beseeching him not
to desert Him but to help Him. Nor does he say
"for Thy sake," but "for their sake," loving them
not with a derived extrinsic love, but for that which
they are in themselves, that which God has made
them. 2." If I am necessary." Which of us is so
necessary that God could not effect His purpose
without us, or by more efficient instruments ? Yet
love starves unless it can minister, and believe itself
necessary to the beloved. Wherefore God has
taken to Himself a mystical body full of needs ; He
has made His extrinsic glory dependent on us, that
we might be able to exercise our love by service.
For our sakes He makes us necessary to Himself,
willing from each a service that He will take from
no other. $.Non recuso laborem. " Better to be exiled
with Thee on earth, than to possess Heaven without

46 THE SPIRIT OF GLADNESS.
Thee," says a Kempis ; but Martin's place with
Christ was already prepared in Heaven. " Better,"
he seems to say, "to wander with Thee on earth,
than even to be with Thee in Heaven, if Thy people
have need of me ; " better to be away from our
Lord and to be with those whom He loves more
than Himself, and to whom He has transferred all
that debt of loVe we owe to Him.
XLIII.
THE SPIRIT OF GLADNESS.
Gaudete in Domino semper ; et iterum dico, gaudete. Modestia
vestra nota sit omnibus hominibus.
Gaudete in Domino semper — " Rejoice in the Lord
always." Severe austerity and gloom, or a tiresome
seriousness in those who make profession of greater
piety, is a grave scandal to the young and buoyant
and healthy-minded, who thus begin to regard
Christ's yoke as onerous and depressing. There is
no small charity in the gaiety of the saints, in all
that makes religious life easier and brighter for
others ; just as there is no small scandal or gain to
the devil in any outward sadness which has the
contrary effect. There is certainly no harm or
hypocrisy in suppressing the appearances of inward
trouble, heaviness, and depression, which we are in
some degree subject to at times. The professional
grumbler is often interesting at the moment, but the
depressing after-effects more than counterbalance
this slight advantage. Our likes and dislikes are
much and foolishly intensified by sympathy. What

THE SPIRIT OF GLADNESS. 47
was bearable while we but noticed it ourselves,
becomes unbearable when others have noticed it to
us. There is of course a criticism which is but the
outcome of a just judgment, and neither proceeds
from, nor results in, any aversion or bitterness of
heart ; and is compatible with the wise, kindly temper
of a soul which, conscious of its own frailty, can
" make allowance for us all ; " which is surprised at
nothing, scandalized, embittered by nothing. Gaudete
semper, need not therefore mean that blatant, silly
praise of everybody and everything, which well-
meaning ignorant people suppose to be a laudable
sacrifice of common-sense, truth, and reason in the
interests of charity.
Modestia vestra nota sit omnibus hominibus — " Let
your restraint be manifest to all." Our joy is not
unrestrained, but tempered by sorrow, and directed
by charity. We rule it and are not to be ruled by
it. So restrained and clipped, it strikes root deeper,
and does not dissipate and expend itself faster than
it grows, or lead to the violent reactions of those
who give way to wild extravagances of hilarity. It
is, therefore, quiet and, one might say, "well-bred,"
never unkind, or selfish, or inconsiderate; being
chiefly for the sake of others, it draws and does not
repel. We like to feel that those who rejoice with
us in our joy, would be the first to weep with us in
our sorrow.

4S ST. STANISLAUS.

XLIV.
ST. STANISLAUS.
Properavit educere ilium de medio iniquitatum.
"God hastened to withdraw him from the
midst of iniquity." Hastened, as it were to
the aid of one in imminent danger, ne malitict
mutaret animam illius — " lest wickedness should
alter his mind." Some would shrink from the
suggestion that had Stanislaus lived, his fervour
and childlike enthusiasm might have chilled and
died away. And yet this is to misunderstand the-
grace of final perseverance, or death at an opportune
moment. For any one to continue long in virtue,
without grace, is not possible. Fascinatio enim
nugacitatis obscurat bona et inconstantia concupiscentice~
transvertit sensum sine malitia — " The spell of trifles
blinds us to the real good, and our inconstant affec
tions pervert the rectitude of our understanding ; "
the judgment is bound to be blinded in no long time
by the universal example of worldliness. Strive as
we will, we must feel and think with the crowd ; and
what to our calm solitary reason is mere nugacitas,
or trifling, fascinates our imagination when prized,
worshipped, and pursued by millions. And besides
this, the fickleness of our affections and emotions
forbids us to rely on the long continuance of our
firmest resolves and most faultless innocence. Hence,
not from any merit, but in His free goodness, quia
placens erat Deo anima illius — " for that his soul was
dear to God," He snatches that pure soul away from

ST. STANISLAUS. 49

even the first touch of corruption, that He may have
it faultless before Him, without sign of past rents
closed up ; without the seams and scars of forgiven
sins. Ne malitia mutaret intellectum ejus aut ne fictio
deciperet animam illius.
XLV.
ST. STANISLAUS.
Cani autem sunt sensus hominis, et aatas senectutis vita immaculata
" O God, who amongst the other miracles of
Thy wisdom didst bestow the grace of matured
sanctity upon tender youth."1 A miracle, because
wholly outside the ordinary laws and workings
of grace, according to which sanctity increases
gradually on the principle : habenti dabitur — " to
him, that hath, shall be given " — in proportion,
that is, to the use of graces already received. The
offer of so great and heroic a love at so early
an age, before one could possibly have climbed up
to it by the ordinary methods, was altogether un
usual. It is most untrue to say that we all have,
even remotely, grace to be as St. Stanislaus. Even
supposing perfect correspondence from the earliest
dawn of reason, few would come anyway near to
him in the longest lifetime. That we are only what
we are, as compared with what we might be, is no
doubt due to our want of perfect correspondence.
So, for example, in point of mental excellence :
genius, general or particular, is a gift which can be
cultivated, or let run wild, or lie idle ; and one with
1 Collect for St. Stanislaus.
E

5o ST. STANISLAUS.

less ability may use and cultivate it faithfully to its
utmost capacity, yet he has not half so much to
educate or draw out of himself as another.
"Mature sanctity in early youth,"1 suggests a
monstrosity rather than a miracle — an old head on
young shoulders. Far be such horrors from the
God of beauty and proportion. The sense is, that
the liberality of God's grace can perfect love, in a
moment, beyond all the results of protracted corres
pondence to ordinary graces ; as in the case of her
who passed from many sins to much love at one
glance from God's mercy — "Thou hast pierced
my heart with one glance of Thine eyes." Conversus
Dominus respexit Petrum — " The Lord turned and
looked on Peter."
" We may hasten to enter eternal rest."2 As the
Universal Church hastens to her rest insomuch as
she hastens to fill up the number of the elect, the fore
ordained measure of fruit to be gathered from the
Tree of Life ; similarly, each predestined soul can
hasten or retard its entrance into rest, as it is eager
or remiss in attaining the degree of sanctification
requisite for its peculiar predestined place in
Heaven. Yet for some the longest life is needed
for the completion of their allotted task, they being
called to a greater fulness of merits.
1 Collect for St. Stanislaus. 2 /j^

ST. STANISLAUS. 51

XLVI.
ST. STANISLAUS.
Et complexans eos, benedicebat eos.
" He took them up in His arms and blessed
them," can be applied to Stanislaus, not merely as
a child in years, but as a child in heart, gifted with
that straightness and singleness of purpose, that
absence of guile and duplicity, that faith of mind
and pliability of will which facilitate God's mastery
over us. Also, with that improvidence as to the
future, that concentration on the present, that blind
confidence in the power and good-will of others,
which characterizes childhood. Wherefore God
took him up in His arms and blessed him. Took
him up above earth and nearer Heaven, even while
yet on earth! above harm and danger, as a child
who runs in terror to its mother's arms is lifted up
to safety, altissimum posuisti vefugium tuum, non
accedet ad te malum — "Thou hast set Thy refuge
very high so that evil cannot come nigh to Thee."
Took him up, that He might embrace him and have
him nearer to the Divine Heart. Took him up, that
he might be carried forward swiftly and not lag
behind and get lost, or, hand-led, totter along with
slow uncertain steps, like most of us who so try the
patience of God and hinder Him in His course.
Took him up, as the good shepherd carries the
lambs in his bosom, while he can only lead slowly
and gently those that are with young. Took him
up, finally, to His embrace in Heaven, that he might

52 PERSEVERANCE.
behold the King in His beauty, not looking upward
from below, but face to face, sicuti est. " My father
and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord
hath taken me up." XLVII.
PERSEVERANCE.
Initio cognovi de testimoniis tuis.
" From the beginning I have known about thy
Testimonies." Some have known and loved God
from the first ; others, with Augustine, must for ever
lament : " Too late have I known Thee ! " Some
can say: Spes mea a juventute mea — "Thou art my
hope from my youth;" others: Delicta juventutis
mece et ignorantias meas ne memineris — " Remember
not the sins of my youth and my ignorance." But
all can pray, " unto old age and gray hairs, leave
me not, neither forsake me."
XLVIII.
GOD, OUR FIRST JOY.
Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.
" I will go unto the altar of God, the joy of
my youth." Cf. Dilexisti justitiam . . . propter ea
unxit te Deus, Deus tuus, oleo latitia prce con-
sortibus tuis — "Thou hast loved justice, wherefore
God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness
beyond all thy companions." The oil of gladness,
that is, the superabundance of Divine love, the
refreshing and fertilizing overflow of that river of

ANXIETY.

53

living water of which it is said : Fluminis impetus
Icetificat civitatem Dei. Here was the secret of the
joyousness of a Stanislaus and many another, —
a fountain of love in the heart " springing up into
everlasting life." Even early death can be but a
joy to one for whom it is an ascent to the altar of
God, the source of all joy.
XLIX.
ANXIETY.
In nihilo solliciti sitis.
"Anxiety under no circumstances," excludes
spiritual as well as temporal anxiety, and must
be reconcilable with the precept of vigilance.
Solicitude, therefore, is anxiety concerning what
is out of our power, after we have used
reasonable means for the best ; e.g., anxiety as
to not only probable, but as to merely possible
temptations ; as to the secrets of the future ; as to
extraordinary graces. Here the improvident spirit
of childhood is in place. Also, vigilance and care
fulness can be without worry and solicitude, which
imply fear as to the results, a distrust of God's
fidelity, and that perturbatio timoris — "or timorous
agitation," which is so insulting to God, as though
He were laying nets and chains for us ; or as if to
keep from mortal sin were as difficult as to balance
oneself on a tight-rope, where a moment's inadvert
ence may prove fatal. Spiritu principals confirma
me — " Confirm me with a princely spirit," with
worthy conceptions of God.

54 OUR LADY'S EXPECTATION .

OUR LADY'S EXPECTATION.
Magnificate Dominum mecum et exaltemus nomen ejus.
" Magnify the Lord with me," she says, "and let
us extol His Name together." If Elizabeth was filled
with the Holy Ghost and the babe in her womb
leaped for joy at the advent of Mary, what must have
been the inward exultation of Mary at the near advent
of Jesus ? As a great joy draws nearer, our desire is
agitated and intensified, and we are drawn towards
it almost violently and with a sense of pain, seeking
relief in fruition. " As the stag gasps for the water-
springs, so my soul gasps for Thee, O God; my
soul is athirst for God, the Strong, the Living, when
shall I come and appear before the face of God ? "
So the saints have watched for His coming, "as
they that watch for the morning." Expectans expec-
tavi Dominum — " I have waited and waited for
the Lord," not with dread and awe as for a coming
Judge whose sentence is yet doubtful, but with
hope and impatience, longing to enter into His
rest and to see Him as He is. " I long to die," says
St. Paul. As Christ draws near with the day of our
death, does our expectation get more impatient ? is
it fear or hope that increases ? " The world received
Him not,"' but the reception that Mary gave was
more than He could have from a thousand worlds
— a most abundant reparation and consolation. So
those who expect with great longing His Eucharistic
advents and receive Him warmly and reverentially,

GOD'S PEACE. 55

console Him for the neglect of those in whose midst
He is unknown ; or if known, uncared for.
LI.
GOD'S PEACE.
Pax Dei quae exuperat omnem sensum custodiat corda et intelll-
gentias vestras.
"The peace of God, which passes all under
standing, keep your hearts and minds." Opposite
to solicitude and anxiety is this Pax Dei, which is,
first of all, a condition for communion with God
whose whispers can be heard only in the stillness of
the soul. But when the heart is full of din,
And doubt beside the portal waits,
They can but listen at the gates,
And hear the household jar within.
Secondly, there is that positive peace which God
makes by His Presence, which is God, or which
God is ; for as He is subsistent Truth and Beauty,
so also, subsistent Peace. Not the peace of lethargy,
the slumber of nirvana, but of the highest activity,
like the still, motionless, energizing of God, when
the soul lays hold of God by clear vision and love,
and steadies itself, mind and heart alike. Irrequietum
cor nostrum — " Restless is our heart," says Augustine,
until God has sunk to its very centre to give it
ballast. So with the mind in regard to the chaotic
problems of human life and history. With the
dawning conception of God, light, order, and peace
are born, to grow and strengthen into perfect day.
Custodiat corda et intelligentias vestras. There is

56 CHRIST, OUR SUN.
the vacant peace of a heart that loves not, and of a
mind that never ponders ; and there is the tumult
of a heart torn by the conflict of a thousand vain,
wild, disordered loves, and of a mind struggling
in the brambles of inextricable confusions whose
common underground root is unsuspected. And
there is the peace of the heart whose many loves
are gathered up and converge into one ; and of the
mind whose problems fall into one, whose solution is
faith in the goodness of God, in spite of all seeming.
Qucz exuperat omnem sensum — " Which passes all
understanding." This is verified primarily of the
peace in patria, but also in due measure of that
peace in via — "which the world cannot give;" for
of that too, if we are to believe the saints, Nee
lingua valet dicere . . . expertus potest credere, holds
true : " Tongue cannot tell, experience alone
teaches." To those who have never tasted it, its
flavour is wholly unimaginable : Gustate et videte —
" Taste and see for yourself." As the draw of a
powerful magnet fixes the uncertain and fluctuating
needle, so the draw that God, once tasted, exerts
on the heart, brings all its sprawling, groping
desires to converge upon Him steadily.
LII.
CHRIST, OUR SUN.
O sol salutis intimis
Jesu refulge cordibus 1
The prayer of the Samoyede sun-worshipper
at dawn and sunset is, " When thou risest, I arise ;

ATTACHMENTS. 57

when thou settest, I also sink." Compare Keble's
" Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear ; it is not
night if Thou be near." So with the soul whose
" life is hid with Christ in God," of whom His light
and warmth is the very life. It rises when He lifts
upon it the light of His countenance, and sinks into
sadness when His face is turned away. Surge
illuminare Jerusalem, quia venit lumen tuum, quia gloria
Domini super te orta est — " Arise and be enlightened,
O Jerusalem, for thy Light is come, and the glory
of the Lord is risen upon thee."
LIII.
ATTACHMENTS.
Funiculus triplex difficile rumpitur.
In matters moral and spiritual one attends too
little to the strength of an accumulation of indi
vidually insignificant and unnoticeable affections.
Thus one feels an awe or a strong love in addressing
an assembly whose single units affect one in no such
way. Nor need we seek any further reason for the
difference than the multiplication of slight effects
into one accumulative sum total. So with the little
attachments which may in the course of time fasten
us to a place ; none of itself is inordinate or repre
hensible, or needing to be combated ; each holds us,
as it were, by a single hair ; but the cumulus holds
us like a hawser. The only cure for such a multiple
attachment would be the breaking of each of its
constituent fibres. But these are each ordinate, or
may even err by defect and not by excess. Therefore

58 THE WEAK CHOSEN.
the resulting tie is natural, and in no way culpable ;
provided one be fully resolved to give the wrench
when necessary and to endure the pain.
LIV.
THE WEAK CHOSEN.
Virtus in infirmitate perficitur.
Peter, the Rock, the firm one ! Yet his natural
character was warm, impulsive, and therefore un
stable, unreliable. Prudence, self-possession, and
a certain emotional temperateness are the usual
allies or conditions of steadfastness and constancy.
But the work is more evidently divine as it
approaches the perfect simplicity of creative energy
which .draws aliquid ex nihilo sui et subjecti — "some
thing out of nothing." " Hath not God chosen the
weak things of this world ? " Suscitans a terra inopem
et de stercore erigens pauper em ut collocet eum cum prin-
cipibus populi sui — " Lifting the needy from the earth
and the poor from the mire, to set him with princes;
making the barren fruitful." And all this, that no
flesh may glory in His sight. Nor is this in conflict
with the truth that grace does not destroy, but
perfects and supplements what is good in our
natural character.
LV.
INCREDULITY.
Nisi videro . . . non credam.
In spite of the assigned reason for his scepticism
based on the insufficiency of the motives, we find
the actual source of St. Thomas' unwillingness to

INCREDULITY. S9

believe, in a wounded self-love irritated at the
(perhaps unfeelingly displayed) advantage of others
who enjoyed a favour which he had missed ; whence
an impulse to claim superiority in prudence and
caution, and to throw ridicule on their credulity.
In this he was aided by the natural rebellion of
the imagination against anything hitherto unexperi
enced — a rebellion conquered only by experience
which makes us realize what we may perhaps
believe firmly enough. If ever any one "wished to
believe," it was he; but this very wish also con
tributed to make him hypercritical rather than
credulous. "It was too good to be true. So too the
other Apostles had received the report of the holy
women as deliramenta — "ravings." Our Saviour
punishes him by giving him his own way when he
would fain not have it ; by distrusting his trust.
The very gentleness of the rebuke is incisive and
severe, cutting to the heart's quick and searching out
its secret ulcer ruthlessly, and yet with an intent
to heal. " Because thou hast seen Me, thou hast
believed " — i.e., not that he could ever have faith
in the fact now made visible and apparent, and
removed from the realm of faith ; but that his faith
in Christ as a Prophet, needed to be experimentally
restored and confirmed. Blessed are they who
trust 'Him for His own sake : Scio cui credidi — " I
know whom I am trusting ; " and in the spirit of
Peter's : Domine ad quern ibimus ? — " Lord, to whom
shall we go ? " — even as we trust the word of those
whom we love and worship without any experi
mental proof of their veracity.

60 SERVING IN FEAR.

LVI.
SERVING IN FEAR.
Ut sine timore de manu inimicorum nostrorum liberati servia-
mus illi.
"That saved from our enemies we may serve
Him without fear." Servite in timore, et exultate
cum tremore — " Serve God in fear and rejoice with
trembling." "Work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling." Without fear indeed, so
far as the enemies of our. soul are concerned ;
namely, the powers of darkness, whose assaults
are restrained and tempered to our strength by
the guiding hand of God's supreme providence ;
the world, of which it is said, " Fear not, I have
overcome the world ; " our own frailty and change-
ableness — the most frequent source of anxiety and
fear — of which it is written : Non ego, sed gratia
Dei mecum — "Not I, but God's grace in me,"
and Omnia possum in eo qui me confortat — " I can
do all in Christ who strengthens me." What we
have to fear is, before all, the just judgments of God ;
first of all His proximate judgments in the present
withdrawal of richer grace ; in the rod of temporal
chastisement, trouble and affliction of body and
soul ; and secondly, the torments of future punish
ments, temporal or everlasting. Without this fear
we can have no true reverential love of God. If we
do not feel His majesty and His wrath, we cannot
feel His humility and meekness ; or understand
what a love that must be which brings the Almighty

RETURNING TO GOD. 61
down so low. That the fear of God's judgments is
not only a preamble to love, but its outwork and
safeguard, which can never be too strong, is the
doctrine of St. Ignatius, in his meditation on Hell.
Lastly, there is that fear which is but love under its
reverential aspect; which follows it step by step;
the craving for union, viewed as a dread of separa
tion ; the same aspiration which can be expressed
as : Fac me tuis semper inhcerere mandatis — " Make
me ever cling to Thy commandments," or as : A
te nunquam separari permittas — " Never let me be
separated from Thee." LVII.
RETURNING TO GOD.
Erravi sicut ovis quae periit : quasre servum tuum, quia mandata
tua non sum oblitus.
" I have strayed like a lost sheep ; seek me, for
I remember Thy commandments." Erravi — " I have
strayed : " no doubt, by following my own will and
judgment in search of seemingly richer and better
pasturage ; led on heedlessly from desire to desire,
delusion to delusion, till I find myself abandoned
wholly to my own guidance, yet knowing not where
to turn : threatened not only with hunger and want,
but with exposure to the attacks of ravening wolves.
Silly as a sheep is, it is better fit to guide and
protect itself than is the soul of man self-governed.
Dominus regit me et nihil mihideerit; in loco pascua
ibi me collocavit — "The Lord shepherds me and I
shall lack nothing ; He hath set Me in His pastures."

02 RETURNING TO GOD.
Qucere servum tuum — " Seek Thy servant." If it
can dp nothing else, the sheep can at least bleat and
cry aloud. But man cannot even, like the prodigal,
" come to himself; " cannot feel his spiritual destitu
tion ; cannot send up a single cry for mercy, except
aided by God's preventing grace. God must seek us,
not only before we seek Him ; but before we can
ask Him to seek us; or wish to seek Him. Tu
enim prior excitasti me ut qucererem te — "Thou first
didst stir me up to seek Thee." Nor is there in us
merit, claim, or exigency that sends up a silent
appeal to Him ; our only exigency is of punishment ;
except it be the fact of our exceeding unworthiness,
which will throw out the freedom of God's mercy
into clearer view. Miserere mei; sana animam
meam, quia peccavi tibi — " Pity me and heal me just
because I have sinned : my sinfulness is my merit."
Quia mandata tua non sum oblitus — " For I have
not forgotten Thy commands." Forgotten they were,
with a wilful forgetfulness in the moment, when
absorbed in present dreamings, I went astray :
Such sleepy dulness in that instant weigh'd
My senses down, when the true path I left ;
but not perished and uprooted from memory so as to
be beyond recovery. Even this lingering memory of
past happiness was the work of grace lurking in my
soul and solicitous for my salvation. " Coming to
myself," I " remembered the days of old and thought
upon the eternal years ; " I remembered " how
many hired servants of my Father have bread in
abundance and to spare, while I perish here with

PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH. 63
hunger ; " I remembered the commandments of that
loving Wisdom, whose " ways are ways of pleasant
ness and all her paths are peace ; " I remembered
how it was with me in the days " when His light
was over me and His lamp shone round my head."
Yet I remembered, only because I was reminded ;
and I was reminded, because He was crying out to
me and seeking me, that I might cry to Him to
seek me. LVIII.
PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH.
Rogate quae ad pacem sunt Jerusalem.
" Pray for the peace of the Church." We must
love Holy Church first of all for the sake of her
Divine Spouse, " who loved her and washed her in
His Blood ; " who came from afar to seek her as His
bride ; to toil for her as Jacob for Rachel ; who gave
His Heart's Blood for her as He slept on the Cross;
whose passionate love for her is the theme of the
Canticles— the Divine epithalamium. " Her founda
tions are on the Holy Hills. The Lord loveth the
gates of Sion above all the tabernacles of Jacob.
Glorious things are spoken of Thee, Thou City of
God." We must love her intelligently for her own
intrinsic beauty, the King's daughter in comely
array. Nigra sum sed formosa . . . ideo dilexit me rex
— " I am dark but beautiful, wherefore the King
hath loved me." Lava ejus sub capite meo et dextra
illius amplexabitur me—" His left hand is under my
head and His right arm embraceth me." Finally,
for our own sake we must love our spiritual mother ;

64 PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH.
for all that she has been to us, done for us, given us.
" If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, may my right hand
forget her skill." Storm-tost as she is, beaten with
winds and waves, all but lost at times, it is for us
all to pull hard and labour in rowing ; or if we can
do nothing else, to cry aloud : Domine, salva nos,
perimus — " Lord, save us ; we perish." True it is,
that His promise of victory stands firm ; but this
victory is promised through human labour and
prayer ; and most blessed are those who shall prove
to have had the largest share in the final triumph.
Abundantia diligentibus te — "They shall have abund
ance that love Thee." God gives various measures
of grace, some more superabundant, others less.
Diligentes me diligo — " I love those that love Me,"
before they love Me, and after; before, that they
may love Me ; after, because they love Me —
crowning My own work. If He loves those that
love Him as represented in the last and least of
His members ; much more those to whom He
has given grace to love His Mystical Body in
its entirety; to say: Domine dilexi decorem domus
tuce et locum habitationis gloria tua — " Lord, I have
loved the beauty of Thy home ; the shrine of Thy
glory," or, Zelus domus tua comedit me — "Zeal for
Thy Church hath devoured my heart." Date et
dabitur — " Give and ye shall get " is His law, who
gives us whence we can give, and the wish to give
it. We gain more in praying for others than for
ourselves ; still more in praying for Holy Church ;
for which reason this work of charity ranks high for
the' obtaining of Indulgences. We should widen

HELPING OTHERS 65
our hearts and interests, and fear nothing more
than a narrow self-concentration. The very essence
of selfishness lies in forgetting that we are parts of
a whole, — nemo sibi vivit — "None lives for himself"
— that we are members of one mystical body ; that
our work is subordinate, not paramount.
LIX.
HELPING OTHERS.
Tu aliquando conversus confirma fratres.
"And thou in thy turn confirm thy brethren."
He must stand firm himself who would confirm others
— firm as a rock, or if he would share the firmness
of the True Rock, he must with one hand hold firm
to that Rock and stretch out the other to draw
struggling souls out of the surf. And the greater
the strain upon him the more firmly will he need
to cling ; else he will himself be destroyed. He
must cling by heroic faith, and hope, and love, who
could afford to understand, and feel for, and remedy
the doubts and delusions of others without being
himself troubled or beclouded; and to encourage
others in the face of despair itself, without himself
despairing and losing heart; and he must himself
have found a treasure in the personal love of Christ,
who would effectually persuade others to sell all for
its sake. And again, his love of God must needs
be strong who could afford to pour out upon men
that personal love by which alone they can be
brought captive to Christ, and yet not suffer his
own heart to be torn away from the Rock. Nor
F

66 THE TEARS OF JESUS.
dare we save ourselves by leaving others to their
fate, or prudently moderating our pity, or by not
attending to their doubts, and fears, and un-
happinesses, except so as to leave ourselves a wide
margin of safety, an easy grip upon the Rock. Our
Rock is a living Rock, who holds to us more than
we hold to it. Date et dabitur is the law. The
more we dare for His love, the tighter our hand is
grasped ; and the speciously prudent servant who
hoards his strength is condemned as "wicked and
slothful," and loses that which he hath.
Freely Thou givest, and Thy word is, "freely give.1'
He only who forgets to hoard has learnt to live.1
It is not by gathering up our affections to ourselves,
by refusing to face doubts and difficulties, that we
are to help others, but by strengthening our own
grip on the Rock of our Truth, our Strength, our
Love, till we grow incorporate with it ; as did he,
the weakest of men, who merited to hear, Tu es
Petrus — "Thou art the Rock," and Confirma fratres —
" Strengthen thy brothers."
LX.
THE TEARS OF JESUS.
Et lacrimatus est Jesus.
" Jesus wept." Why ? Even the Jews can
tell us, " Behold, how He loved him ! " " For
Jesus loved Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus, their
brother " — and this, though by His delay He
had suffered him to die, that He might "rouse
1 Keble.

THE TEARS OF JESUS. 67

him again from sleep." There are many wise
persons who feel it weakness to compassionate
troubles which must come to a speedy end, or soon
issue in joy or gain. Our Lord was not so wise
here ; nor His Mother, when she wept over the grave
that she knew was so soon to yield back her Son,
victorious over death. No doubt in His love for Mary
and Martha He wept with the weepers ; but apart
from this, there was the sorrow every unspoilt human
heart must feel, when the eyes that have looked
into ours are dulled and fixed ; and the hands we
have clasped are cold and rigid ; and the tongue
is still, and the familiar voice silent, and the heart
that loved us beats no more. Moreover, it may
be truly said that as He willed of set purpose to
taste every bitterness that our soul can know, He
could not spare Himself this, perhaps the greatest
•of all, the rending of the heart-strings by death and
separation ; that He might be " touched with a
feeling for our infirmities, tempted in all points as
we." Not as though God who made us could not
feel for and know our least sorrow, or as though
to have experienced our weakness in His assumed
Humanity could make His love more delicate in
•our regard ; but that we might not be bewildered
.by the mysteries of Godhead ; that we might know
and feel that He has known and felt as we do, not
only in a higher way, which helps us little ; but in
the same way, which helps us much ; that in labour,
in weariness, in hunger, and thirst, in grief and
separation, in disappointment, in fear, in agony, in
¦death, we might approach with confidence to our

68 NATURAL AFFECTION.
High Priest who has been in labour from His youth,
who sat weary by the well, or slumbered in the
storm ; who hungered in the desert, and thirsted
on the cross ; who knew grief, and separation, and
disappointment, and fear, and agony, and death j.
who has surely borne our griefs, and carried our
sorrows. LXI.
NATURAL AFFECTION.
Magnus autem factus est fletus omnium, et procumbentes super
collum Pauli, osculabantur eum, dolentes maxime in verbo quod
dixerat quoniam amplius faciem ejus non essent visuri
" And there was great weeping on all hands ;.
and they fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, sorrow
ing most of all because he had said they should
see his face no more." Making all due allowance
for differences of national temperament, there is
here a large residue of feeling which certain
Christian stoics would consider very human, very
natural, and therefore very wicked ; and certainly
St. Paul seems to have been " consenting unto
their deeds." LXII.
HOLY CHURCH, GOD'S HOUSE.
Domine dilexi decorem domus tuae et locum habitationis gloriae tuae.
" Lord, I have loved the beauty of Thy house ^
the dwelling-place of Thy glory," was said by
David with reference to the Temple of God's
glory which it was his heart's desire to build (Si
introiero in tabernaculum domus mea; si ascendero in

HOLY CHURCH. GOD'S HOUSE. 69
ledum strati mei; si dedero somnum ocidis meis et
palpebris meis dormitationem et requiem temporibus meis
donee inveniam locum Domino, et tabernaculum Deo
Jacob — where the vehemence and efficacy of this
dilexi is manifested) ; and yet said by him pro
phetically, in the person of Him, the true David,
who left the throne of His glory, and vowed a vow
that He would not return into His rest, nor give
sleep to His eyes, nor slumber to His eyelids, nor
relax the strain of His thought, until at the cost
•of His Heart's blood He had established in His
Mystical Body a place for the Lord, a dwelling for
the God of Jacob. It is of this His Spouse that
cur Saviour says, " Lord, I have loved the beauty
¦of Thy house," loved the ideal of it before He went
forth to realize it ; and loved the realization, with
the joy of sated desire. It is the indwelling of
God's glory, the true Schekina, that constitutes
that inward beauty of the King's daughter, of which
it is said, ideo dilexit me rex — " wherefore the King
hath loved me." Hence the Daily Sacrifice seems
equivalently to say : Memento Domine David et omnis
mansuetudinis ejus — " Remember David and his
obedience unto death." It is the pleaded memorial
of the meekness, the obedience unto death, of
David, i.e., of the Beloved. " This is My beloved
Son in whom I am well pleased."
" I have loved the beauty of Thy house," i.e., of
the Holy Catholic Church, the Bride of the Lamb,
who is now being prepared and purified for the
marriage-feast. Every priest and minister, and in a
measure every Christian is, like the Blessed Baptist,

OUR LADY, GOD'S HOUSE.

by office a "paranymph" or "friend of the Bride
groom." Each has a care of the beauty, the spot-
lessness, the honour of the Mystical Body that he-
may present her to Christ immaculate, "not having
spot or wrinkle ; " Despondi enim vos %ini viro virginem-
castam exhibere Christo. He felt this love who sang,.
" If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand
forget her cunning;" or, Propter Sion non tacebo et
propter Jerusalem non quiescam donee egrediatur ut
splendor Justus ejus. Qui reminiscimini Domini, ne tace-
atis, et ne detis silentium ei, donee ponat Jerusalem
laudem hi terra.1 LXIII.
OUR LADY, GOD'S HOUSE.
Hie habitabo, quoniam elegi earn.
Domini dilexi decorem domus tua — that house in
which the Word was made Flesh ; where first He
pitched His tabernacle amongst us ; full' of grace,.
overshadowed by the Holy Ghost ; the mercy-seat ;.
the Ark of the New Covenant which is Christ. Tota
pidcra es Maria et macula non est in te — " Thou art all
fair, O Mary, and no spot is in thee." Ideo dilexit
me Rex et introduxit me in cubiculum suum.
LXIV.
THE FAMILY, GOD'S HOUSE.
Domine dilexi decorum domus tuse.
Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum fratres habi-
tare in unum — " Lo how good and joyous for
1 Isaias lxii.

OUR SOUL, GOD'S HOUSE. 7i
brothers to dwell in unity." The beauty of every
Christian household or community where God dwells
and is glorified, is the beauty of peace and charity
and mutual reverence, which constrains men to give
glory to Christ and say, " See how these Christians
love one another." On such an household the Psalm
says, God's blessing descends like the dew on
Hermon, or like the sacred oil poured upon the
head of Aaron, and running down in its abundance
over the ephod. " For there the Lord has promised
His blessing, and life for evermore." Propter fratres
meos et proximos meos loquebar pacem de te ; propter
domum Domini Dei nostri quasivi bonum tibi. Pax
huic domui, et omnibus habitantibus in ea — " For my
brethren's and kindred's sake I will wish thee peace ;
and for the sake of the Lord's house which is in
thee." " Peace to this house and to all that dwell
therein." " Let Thy angels dwell in it to keep us in
peace, and let Thy blessing be upon us always."
— Angeli tui sancti habitent in ea qui nos in pace cusio-
diant; et benedictio tua sit super nos semper.
LXV.
OUR SOUL, GOD'S HOUSE.
Domine dilexi decorem domus tuae.
Applicable first to one's own soul, which is by
destiny the house of God, the dwelling of His glory ;
which is beautified and adorned by all those virtues
of peace and purity and humility which make it a
fit nest for the Dove ; and where our passions,
affections, emotions, well ordered, yet strong and

72 OUR NEIGHBOUR'S SOUL, GOD'S HOUSE.
vigorous, make harmonious melody in our heart to
the praise of God ; where there is nothing excessive,
discordant, ill-attuned ; but, variety without con
fusion, unity without poverty or monotony. Such a
love begets a consuming zeal which drives forth
violently all that could profane the house of
prayer and worship, and make it a den of thieves.
Applicable also to our body, which is the temple
of the engraced soul, of which it is said,
" Whoso defileth God's Temple him will God
destroy." Chastity is the white robe which beau
tifies and becomes that flesh which is sanctified by a
thousand titles; by mystic union with the Word
made Flesh ; by repeated Eucharistic transfor
mations ; by its destiny to a glorification and
spiritualization through His power who will change
this body of our humiliation and make it like to
His glorious Body. And in due measure, as
far as weakness permits, not only chastity, but
modesty, cleanliness, and every honourable treat
ment is due to this flesh which God has made His
very own, spiritualized, divinized ; nor can it be
irreverently dealt with, without irreverence to the
mystical, and sacramental, and physical Body of
our Lord. Peccat caro, mundat caro ; regnat Deus
Dei caro.
LXVI.
OUR NEIGHBOUR'S SOUL, GOD'S HOUSE.
Domine dilexi decorem domus tus.
Applicable to the souls of others, for whose
sanctification true charity is zealous ; and whose

THE TABERNACLE, GOD'S HOUSE. 73
hurt or scandal is a scandal and hurt to our own
soul: "Who is weak and I am not weak; who
is scandalized and I do not burn ? " Those who
have felt the pang of seeing, in some charge
dear to them, the first innocence of childhood
giving way to the first stain of sin, and gradually
clouded over and obliterated, may in some weak
way realize the sufferings of our Saviour's Heart
over souls that are wrested from Him, and in which
His Father's image is torn down and defaced and
the abomination of desolation set up in the sanctuary
of the Indwelling Glory. LXVII.
THE TABERNACLE, GOD'S HOUSE.
Domine dilexi decorem domus tuas.
Applicable to the love which saints and holy
souls have had for the earthly dwelling-places of
the Eucharistic Presence; to whom it was ever
joyful news to be summoned into that Presence ;
who if compelled to be absent in body have ever
been present there in spirit. And as saints have
honoured that Presence with the gold of charity,
the myrrh of purity, the incense of holy aspirations ;
so the wisest of this world have loved to bring their
gifts from afar and to cast them at the feet of the
Giver of all.

74 HEAVEN, GOD'S HOUSE.

LXVIII.
HEAVEN, GOD'S HOUSE.
Domine dilexi decorem domus tuae.
Applicable to the love of hope and to our longing
for the Vision of Peace. Quam dilecta tabernacula —
" How longed-for are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of
hosts." Quemadmodum desiderat — "As the hart pants
for the streams, so my soul for Thee." Defecit in
salutare tuum anima mea — " My soul has fainted for
Thy salvation, saying, when wilt Thou console me."'
Deus, Deus meus, ad te de luce vigilo — " O God, my
God, I watch for Thee from the dawn."
LXIX.
EARTH, GOD'S HOUSE.
Domine dilexi decorem domus tuae.
If Heaven is His throne, earth is His footstool,
where He is revealed by His traces and footprints.
The skies and clouds are telling His glory, and the
firmament showing His handiwork ; and all the
works of the Lord, sun and moon, land and sea,
hills and valleys, and all they contain, " bless the
Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever." In
Him all things live, move, and are; and He is in all,
though distinct from all, as the mountain from the
thick mist that cloaks it, betraying its barest outline
and no more. It is no small grace to feel God in
nature, pressing on us on all sides, moving in our
every pulse, and thinking with our every thought.

LONG-SUFFERING. 75

" Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory," i.e., per
meated with it, as a crystal with the light which
gives it all its beauty. " He is nearer to us than we
think," just because we do not think. Yet those who
love to ponder the footprints of His glory will at last
be constrained to confess, " Surely the Lord was in
this place and I knew it not." Custom and wont
have held our eyes, so that we know Him not ; or
at least heed Him not, as we do not heed the air
we breathe; so that men will deny Him to His very
face. He who wrote the Benedicite, or the Laudate
Dominum de ccelis, loved the beauty of this earthly
house of God, and the dwelling-place of His glory.
LXX.
LONG-SUFFERING.
Quaerens me sedisti lassus.
"Thou hast sat wearied with searching for me."
He has sat down not in despair, but to gather strength
to continue His search. While there remains to us
the grace of life, it is evidence that He is still seeking
us. If death overtake us before we are found, then
only does He turn back. In so dealing with us, He
gives us a pattern for our conduct to others " not to
be weary in well-doing," nor even to give up the most
incorrigible, nor to refuse another trial, nor to " cast
out those that come to us." For no case can seem to
us so hopeless as our own seemed to all, but to Him ;
and all our present hope is that He will continue to
the end to press His graces upon us regardless of
our reiterated refusals. Again. His weariness should

76 HARDNESS OF HEART.
help us to bear with the weariness and heaviness
we have to encounter in our work, which is always,
indirectly at least, the quest of lost or erring souls ;
or that weariness which we have so justly to endure
in seeking Him, from whom we have strayed.
LXXI.
HARDNESS OF HEART.
A facie frigoris ejus quis sustinebit. Emittet verbum suum et
liquefaciet ea ; flabit spiritus ejus et fluent aquae.
"Who can stand out against His frost? He shall
send forth His word and thaw them ; His wind
shall blow, and the streams shall run again." When
the sun withdraws himself, the waters are frozen
into solid ice. We forget that their fluidity depends
every moment upon his influence ; and that of
themselves, they are hard, dark, and cold. When
the heart resists grace, time after time, and shuts
out the sunshine which struggles in at every open
chink, God withdraws Himself, and there follows
the ice-age of obcacatio et obduratio — of judicial
blindness and hardness. The wish to be better ;
the feeling of remorse or dissatisfaction ; of the
need of God ; every vital spark from which the
flame of charity might spring up again is extinct.
There is no hope except in the free mercy of God,
who will not be angry for ever, and who will turn
to us that we may turn to Him ; as the returning
sun draws round to itself the averted sunflower.
Emittet verbum suum et liquefaciet ea — " He shall
speak the word and melt them." It is by "the

BEFORE COMMUNION. 77
word of His power," by some message to the soul
from within or without, that the hardness of our
heart is relaxed. It was by sending His Word into
this ice-bound world of sin that the soil was softened
under the influence of the second spring. Jam hiems
transiit imber abiit et recessit. Veritas de terra orta
est. Etenim Dominus dabit benignitatem et terra nostra
dabit fructum suum — " Now the winter is gone, the
rain is passed and over. Truth has sprung up from
the earth. Yea, God shall give His blessing and
earth shall yield her fruit." We perceive the light
of fire before we feel its warmth. Flabit spiritus ejus
et fluent aqua — " His breath shall blow and the
rivers shall run again." As under the soft, warm
wind the ice and snow are converted into streams
and torrents, so the breath of the Paraclete draws
tears of compunction from the thawed and penitent
heart. Conversus Dominus respexit Petrum . . . et
ccepit flere — "God turned and looked on Peter, and
he began to weep." Till He turns and looks upon
us, our heart goes from bad to worse, from hardness
to hardness. When He turns to us, then we
" remember the word which He spake," and the
ice is dissolved into tears. LXXII.
BEFORE COMMUNION.
Domine non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum.
My house is full of noise and tumult and worldly
comforts and appliances, and the door is shut and
barred, and the importunity of the midnight visitor

78 LOVE'S ARCHETYPE.
is hateful to me. Tantum die verbo, say but the
word and my soul shall be healed. Change the inn
to a cave ; shatter the door and ruin the walls,
" that the King of Glory may come in." Let
Joseph go before to prepare the rude resting-place,
and let Mary follow, and in the very midst of my
soul bring forth her Firstborn. Mater Divines graticz,
or a pro nobis. LXXIII.
LOVE'S ARCHETYPE.
Ego et Pater, Unum sumus.
" Consubstantial with the Father," not merely
similar, not the exact counterpart, reflexion, replica ;
but the same substance in no way distinct or distin
guishable, held in common by two, as though two
men had one body between them and one soul,
thinking, willing, acting, not alike, but identically.
This is no barren or fruitless dogma to those who
have dwelt on the mystery of Love with its craving
for union, absorption, identification, and its conflict
ing demand for distinctness, or " otherness," its
protest against extinction. It is in the mystery of
the Trinity that Love finds that archetype which the
pantheist or Buddhist seeks in vain. " That they all
may be one as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in
Thee." " I in them and Thou in Me, that we all
may be perfect in one." For what is it Love wants ?
To give itself wholly and entirely; and yet to be itself
and distinct ; to efface every divergence in thought,
will, interest, nature, place, time, and yet to be
other, and loved by another, as other. And it seeks,

LOVE'S ARCHETYPE. 79
not only to be absorbed and to give, but to absorb
and receive ; for union or identity is a mutual
relation. Yet it seeks not that the other should
cease to be other, though all of that other's should
cease to be his ; — "All mine is thine, and all thine is
mine." " He shall take of mine and give it unto
you." Personality is of the very notion of love, on
the part of both subject and object ; and union is
no less so; distinctness and yet fusion. It is not,
therefore, such a union with God as pantheists or
quietists put before us, that we really crave for ; —
the union by which a drop is absorbed and dis
persed in the ocean, losing its separateness and
individuality ; or by which a wave or ripple on the
face of a pond is smoothed out as a disturbance of
its former lifeless tranquillity. No doubt there is
something that touches a responsive chord within
us in such an aspiration as :
God, in pain and anguish, make me one with Thee
One with hill and sky-line, one with surging sea.
Sick with the sense of our own feebleness, transi-
toriness, nothingness, as compared with the quasi-
eternity, infinity, inexhaustible beauty, power, and
goodness of Nature, there arises some vague longing
to be incorporate with the Whole, the All, which
our fancy personifies ; a longing to be ourselves
the world-soul, and not the soul of a miserable
little parasitic frame of humanity. This, rightly
analyzed, is no desire for extinction, but for the
greatest imaginable fulness of personal existence.
Further, so interpreted, this is an aspiration rather

8o LOVE'S ARCHETYPE.
of the love of desire, than of the love of friendship.
it is self-love crying out for its bonum satiativum,
for the boundless, the eternal, the all-beautiful,
for the life, and food of life, which its natural
exigencies crave for — and yet vainly, being made
for God alone, non ad hac natus — for even " heaven
and earth shall pass away." " They shall perish,
but Thou remainest ; they shall all wax old as
doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold
them and they shall be changed, but Thou art the
self-same and Thy years shall not fail."
And yet this love of desire is not the strongest or
highest craving. More imperative is the demand
for friendship or society in beings who can know
and reflect. Sine amico non potes bene vivere —
"Without a friend thou canst ill live." Amare et
amari, is the soul's desire according to Augustine ;
to love others, and be loved in return. It is only so
far as our imagination in some way personifies
Nature (as a whole or in certain manifestations),
that we can feel drawn towards her with sentiments
of love or worship, and a desire of self-subjection.
Let every conceivable perfection and attribute that
we find in Nature, be concentrated eminently in one
being, yet until that being is known to be intelligent,
self-loving, personal, our love in its regard is but a
kind of envy which grasps at those perfections and
would have them our own — eternity immensity,
might, form, beauty. But in a person there is
something we cannot even wish to appropriate,
since distinctness is of its very notion ; while at the
;jame time there is an intense desire to surrender

LOVE'S ARCHETYPE. 81

all one has to this other, saving only one's distinct
ness, and to receive a like surrender in return, so
that all, as far as conceivable, should be in common,
should be one possession of two possessors. " All
mine is thine and all thine is mine." " Thou in me
and I in thee." Then indeed the amicus becomes,
not the ego but the alter ego, in so far as all
possessions, goods, actions, thoughts, interests, are
perfectly common and indistinguishable.
Personal love seeks to bind to itself a person and
not to a thing; and the only conceivable bond is
fusion and community of possessions and attributes.
It cannot desire fusion of personality, since that
which is essentially distinctness is destroyed by fusion
So far as friends have the same human nature, like
thoughts, loves, cares, and interests and so forth,
thus far are they united. It is in the Mystery of
the Trinity that we find this union carried to its
infinite perfection, where, between Three Persons
there is, not a likeness, but a numerical sameness
of nature, thought, will, and operation ; and withal,
a distinctness of person between the three possessors
of this one possession, which in order of origin
belongs first to the Father, and is by Him com
municated to the Son, and by both to the Holy
Spirit. Our notion of friendship or personal love
might seem at first sight to postulate only a dual
personality in Divinity; or perhaps, on second
thoughts, an indefinitely multiplied personality.
For it is only the limited nature of human affection
which makes friendship dual in so many cases,
though not in all. Jealousy, which brooks no

82 LOVE'S ARCHETYPE.
rival, rests on the beliet that what is given to
another is taken from me, and that love as it
is extended, loses in intensity. If love claims a
surrender of all, there cannot be two claimants and
recipients of that all. But if these two claimants
are already so united as to have but one possession
and interest, then what is surrendered to one is
surrendered to both ; and the two are one in the
love they give and the love they take. This
explains why friendship or personal love is not
always or necessarily a relation between two, but
might exist between any number of persons. It
even gives a dim indication as to why an at least
triune love is more perfect than a dual love ; and
why a triune love, if perfect, should be all-sufficing.
For if a friend is the dearest possession, then, in the
most perfect act of friendship I communicate -ny
friend as the chiefest of my goods, my alter ego. So
Christ, when He gives us Himself, gives us His
Father to be our Father. " We will come and
make our abode with Him ; He gives His Mother
as ours, His Spirit as ours." " Behold thy Mother."
" I will ask the Father and He will give you another
Paraclete." Again, all love seeks sympathy. If I
see something beautiful I want another to enjoy it
with me ; and this points to a trinity of persons as
satisfying the highest ideal of personal love; the
Father loving the Son, in sympathy with the Spirit,
the Father and Son loving the Spirit ; and each
giving Himself with the othei, and each Person
singly loving the other two as one, and rejoicing in
their union and friendship. Hence in this notion

UNION WITH GOD. 83
of perfect identity of the common possession ; of an
infinite perfection shared by three perfectly distinct
personalities, we find carried as it were to infinity
what our vague instincts point to, as the requisites
of personal love. In the Hypostatic Union, on the
other hand, we have a type of the unitive power of
non-personal love. Between the Eternal Word and
the Sacred Humanity the relation is not that of
person to person; but of person to thing; there is no
room for amicitia any more than between the soul
and the body. We know experimentally that the
love of want (amor concupiscentialis) tends to draw the
object into a quasi-hypostatic union ; to absorb it ; to
make it " mine ; " to eliminate its definition, to erase
the lines which bound it and mark it off as "this."
"" Separateness " is wholly repugnant to this love.
LXXIV.
UNION WITH GOD.
Ego in eis, et tu in me ut sint consummati in unum.
In the natural order our highest union with God
is by perfect self-tradition, by likeness of thought
and will and operation, and yet by the maintenance
of personal distinctness in its purity. Hence I
believe pantheism is opposed to the testimony of
cur inner consciousness in confounding a craving for
union, with 1 craving for absorption. In the order
of grace there is not merely a likeness, but a same
ness of being and operation ; a mystical partici
pation of the Divine Nature. As the operations of
the Three Persons are from one principle, and are

84 PERSONAL LOVE.

one operation, and yet truly the operation of each
Person ; so analogously the love that God works
in us by grace is the operation of the Holy Spirit
and ours at the same time. It is we who love
and it is the Spirit who loves. As the Eternal
Son uses the Sacred Humanity as an instrument
whereby to render to the Father the love of a
human heart ; so in some way our soul becomes the
instrument of the indwelling Spirit. " God has sent
His Spirit into our hearts crying, Abba, Father."
The cry is at once His and ours. To the Eternal
Son we are bound by a double bond — by the
indwelling of His Divinity and of His Humanity,
the participation of His two-fold Life. " He that
eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood, dwelleth
in Me and I in Him ; as the living Father hath sent
Me, and I live by the Father, so He that eateth Me,
the same also shall live by Me." He as the deified
Head ; we, as the members of one Mystic Body
quickened by one indwelling spirit, are joint-
holders of a common possession, with one end
and perfection to which all aspire and conspire,
namely, that communicatio beatitudinis or bonum
Divinum, which is the bond of charity.
LXXV.
PERSONAL LOVE.
Hoc est prasceptum meum ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos.
Personal love, founded on community, likeness,
sameness, is not of its own nature acquisitive or
grasping. It is founded simply on the recognition

PREPARING GOD'S WAYS. 85
of a common end or interest, of which the two are
the conjoint adequate subject. It does not seek
to despoil the other of his goods or excellences ;
but at most that the recognition of oneness and the
consequent affection should be mutual. In truth
the analysis of concupiscential or want-begotten
love is far easier than that of personal love.
Personal love seems to be ex plenitudine essendi, a
certain self-diffusion and overflow ; whereas the
love of want is ex defectu essendi, from our empti
ness and indigence.
LXXVI.
PREPARING GOD'S WAYS.
Parate vias Domini.
" Get ready a way for the Lord." " Every valley
shall be exalted." All the depressions and empti
nesses of the heart, must be upraised, filled in,
levelled. There is the valley of despondency and
discouragement ; of acquiescence in a low state as
inevitable ; of affection for all that either drags us
down, or excludes that which draws us upwards;
in fine, whatever is wanting to the fulness of any
virtue, or makes a void or hollow in the sou1.
2. " Every mountain and hill shall be made low.''
Pride is of course the chief barrier in the way of
Christ's royal progress ; whether through the world
cr through any particular soul. Even kings must
cast their crowns before Him ; must throw open
their gates " that the King of Glory may come in."
Mountains must sink back into plains to make a

86 PREPARING GOD'S WAYS.
pathway for Him at whose bidding they rose.
Pride lies in (a) overrating the extent of our
gifts, whether absolutely, or relatively, to others,
or (/3) overvaluing what we truly have got, or (7)
forgetting our position as mere instruments of
Divine manifestation, mere recipients of bounty.
3. " The crooked shall be made straight." A short
distance may be a weary, uncertain journey if the
road curves and winds about ; or if it is rough and
stony; or marshy and unsound. Our want of
straightness, simplicity, sincerity, makes Christ's
progress to His Kingdom within us almost impos
sible. Where is the man with a " single eye "
who follows his conscience in all simplicity; or
if through frailty he slips, freely confesses his
fault without twistings and excuses; who hates
all compromises, all modos vivendi when it is a
question of God and his own soul. Quis est hie ef
laudabimus eum ? fecit enim mirabilia in vita sua —
"Who is he; and we shall praise him as a hero."
4. " The rough places shall be made smooth " — a
refinement on the foregoing essentials ; implying a
delicate consideration for our Lord's feelings in little
things ; a politeness or polish, so to say, which shuns
small rudenesses, all that would jolt or jar. There
is a rough love of God, often very intense, strong,
durable ; the love of many a martyr and confessor ;
the love of Peter in his youth (cum junior esset).
When we consider the spiritual and moral refine
ment of the saints, let alone that of our Blessed
Lord ; we must acknowledge that as the heavens are
above the earth, so are His ways and His thoughts

GOD'S FACE- 87

above ours Seen and magnified in the strong light
of His holiness, all our smoothness is broken into
ridges and ruggedness ; and what is fair and whole
some to our sight, is loathsome and rotten in His.
And yet He not only bears with us, but delights to
be with us ; not as though He did not feel our
offensiveness, but because His love for us finds food
and exercise in the very enduring of it : — as we read
of some rare human love, which cleaves more
tenderly to the object of its passion when stricken
down with some hideous disease; a love that
" exults as a giant to run its course," and enjoys the
encounter and hard overthrow of obstacles ; like his
who says, " For whom I have suffered the loss of all
things, and do account them but refuse," or again,
" Gladly will I spend and be spent for you, though
the more I love you the less I be loved " Yet to us
the thought of what our love cost Him should be
matter of continual and growing compunction, as we
get to know His lovableness and, by contrast, our
own coarse repulsiveness more and more. Then we
understand somewhat how the holv souls revel
in the purging fire. LXXVII.
GOD'S FACE.
Ostende faciem tuam et salvi erimus.
"Show us Thy face and we shall be saved."
" Turn not away Thy face from me lest I be like
them that go down into the pit." We must turn
our back upon God before He will turn His back

GOD'S FACE.

upon us ; but He must turn His face to us, before
we can turn our face to Him. The disciples on
the road to Emmaus looked in His face, yet
they knew Him not till He looked upon them,
till He showed them His face, in the breaking
of bread. Our eyes are holden, veiled, and mist-
clouded, till the sun itself disperses the film and
bursts through upon our gaze. The beauty, the
comeliness, the grace, of the Son of Man, moves us
in no wise until viewed with the eyes of the heart.
To see His face, this is charity ; this is the beatifying
vision already begun. It is the delectare in Domino
of David ; the delight of beholding the face of the
Beloved. For ever fixed in no unfruitful gaze.
" This is life eternal, to know Thee; " nor does the
Vita atema inchoata, the life of charity, herein differ
from the life of Beatitude. Love is but the property
and effect; whereas knowledge, heart-knowledge,
is the substance, the good whose possession delights,
whose vision rejoices us (quod visum placet). All
true personal love, which rests in the person, and
not in some ulterior good to be derived from
the person, is of this kind. Its object is bonum
honestum; not bonum utile — "beauty, not utility."
Contemplation is its proper act and exercise ;
Elegit bonum partem quce non auferetur — " She
has chosen the good part, which shall not be
taken from her." As bodily beauty delights the
eye of sense, so the eye of the soul feasts its
gaze on the spiritual beauty of Christ, and lingers

GOD'S FACE. 89

over every line and point. Jesu dulcis memoria
dans vera cordi gaudia, says Bernard, sed super mel
et omnia ejus dulcis prasentia; whether as present
to memory only, or to intuition ; whether in its
image or its very reality, it is the Divine Face which
is the cause of inward joy and sweetness. Ostende
faciem tuam et salvi erimus : it is the true aspect of
God which saves us and quickens us. As art
refines our observation and taste, and makes us love
Nature more tenderly for new beauties, to which our
uncultured eye was dim and obtuse : so our soul has
to be schooled into the right reading of the Divine
Beauty which the crowd presses upon, but which
few discern or touch. Hence St. Paul always prays
that in his children the knowledge of Christ may
abound ; " whom to know is to love." Surge arnica
mea, speciosa mea et veni. Ostende mihi faciem tuam,
sonet vox tua in auribus meis; quia vox tua dulcis et
fades tua decora. Revertere revertere Sunamita, ut
intueamur te.
Ostende faciem tuam et salvi erimus. " When that
which is perfect is come, then that which is in part
shall be done away." For here we see in a riddle or
through a darkened glass ; there, face to face : here,
I know in part ; there, I shall know, even as I am
known. Ibunt de virtute in virtutem; videbitur Deus
deorum in Sion — They shall go as it were from
vision to vision, from weaker to stronger light, till
the last filmy veil is left behind, and they are face
to face with the sun in his splendour ; videbimus eum
sicuti est — " We shall see Him, not as He is said
to be, not as He seems to be, but as He is."

go TIMES OF VISITATION.
" Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us," this is
our all-sufficing Good. LXXVIII.
TIMES OF VISITATION.
Vox clamantis in deserto.
The voice of one calling out in the desert,
crying with the loud cry of God's extraordinary
graces as contrasted with the persistent whispers
of daily promptings. Neglect has deafened us
to the latter : grace must now cry with a loud
voice, Lazare, veni foras — " Lazarus, come forth ! "
" Cry aloud," O Lord, " and spare not ; lift up
Thy voice as a trumpet, proclaim to Thy people
their iniquities, and their sins to the house of
Jacob." " Crying in the desert," through which the
King must pass in His royal progress, the desert
full of waste places, hills and hollows, windings
and turnings — our wild, uncultivated hearts. And
crying, " Prepare the way," for the fruit will answer
to the preparation, even as seed needs a favourable
soil. We must break up the hard, frost-bound
earth, and " make broad our furrows," and pray
for the God-given rain of penitential tears. And
yet as it is He alone that can call us to get ready,
so it is by Him alone we can answer the call. The
work is "begun, continued, and ended, in Him."

THE CONCERT OF CREATION. 91
LXXIX.
THE CONCERT OF CREATION.
Cum quibus et nostras voces ut admitti jubeas deprecamur.
Te Deum laudamus. "I praise Thee, O God,"
sounds feeble and presumptuou.c Praise must be
in concert, fulness, and harmony, if it is to be at
all. Even, " We beseech Thee," " Our Father," is
immeasurably more efficacious than " I beseech
Thee," " My Father." More efficacious because it
is the act of that Body whose bond is charity or of
the individual as bound to that Body by charity.
It is then, not I who pray but Christ's Mystic
Body, or Christ. But it is in praise that we feel
our weakness and isolation most of all It is as
though a conqueror were hailed by my one feeble
voice in a myriad-throated silent multitude. He
whose own Heart is full of praise cannot rest till He
has communicated the flame of His enthusiasm to
all around Him His mission is to send fire on the
earth and to see that it be kindled to draw all
hearts int«- sympathy with His own. " We praise
Thee ; " and in this concentus, not only must all
mankind unite, Reges et omnes principes terra, juvenes
et virgines, senes cum junioribus — " Kings and princes,
youths and virgins, old men and boys," but the
angels of God ; — Tibi omnes angeli, tibi cherubim et
seraphim Laudate eum omnes angeli ejus. Cum
quibus et nostras voces ut admitti jubeas deprecamur —
and every single creature living or lifeless; — sun,
moon, and stars ; winds, seas, storms, mists, dew,

92 THE CONCERT OF CREATION.
frost, cold, mountains, hills, valleys, streams, rivers,
trees, shrubs, harvests, fruit, flowers, fish, reptiles,
birds, insects, brutes, cattle, omnis spiritus laudet
Dominum. Confiteantur tibi Domine omnia opera tua;
all must lend their voice in due measure to perfect
that chord of praise which swells up continually to
God's ears from the whole as whole; the universe
invisible and visible, the heaven and earth of the
beginning. " Heaven and earth are full of Thy
glory." Filled with this sense of lonely nothingness,
insignificance, solitary unmeaningness, a helpless
single string in the many-stringed harp of creation,
David cries aloud to men and angels, heaven and
earth, to the great all : Magnificate Dominum mccum
— " Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us praise
His Name together." This is indeed,
To know my spirit a note
Of this great chorus, one with bird and stream
And voiceful mountain — nay, a string, how jarred
And all but broken ! of that lyre of life
Whereon himself, the master harp-player,
Resolving all its mortal dissonance
To one immortal and most perfect strain,
Harps without pause, building the world with song.1
As in harmonized music the varying parts are
bound together by their common relation to the
melody through which they are related one to
another ; so in the concentus of creation it is through
man and in reference to man that the voices of all
other visible creatures are heard ; and it is as
harmonizing with the voice of the Son of Man,
1 W. Watson.

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 93
high above all, that our praises are acceptable.
Through Christ and in Christ, God has hypostati-
cally assumed this concerted praise of creation and
made it a Divine act. Per ipsum et cum ipso et in
ipso, est tibi Deo Patri, in unitate Spiritus Sancti
omnis honor et gloria.

LXXX.
THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION.
Tota pulcra es Maria.
"Thou, O Mary, art altogether fair," i.e., from
the very first instant of existence, with an unbroken,
ever-growing fairness. The totality of our aspect in
the eyes of God is to be measured, not only by our
present state or appearance, but by our whole past,
in which before the eternal gaze the present is em
bedded, as in its setting or frame, or as a text in the
midst of its commentary. So regarded, of no soul
but one can it be said, tota pulcra es, not even of the
"greatest born of women." What can be said of
me ? Even allowing my soul a certain present
pulcritudo, yet in the midst of so much past unsight-
liness is there enough for the Divine gaze to rest
upon with pleasure, or not rather more than enough
to make it turn from me in loathing? Tota fceda
es — " Thou art all foul." And yet not tota. For as
God for the sake often just would have overlooked
the corruption of Sodom ; so for the sake of that one
present little spark of love which He has kindled
in my heart, and which I have not yet extinguished,

94 LOVE IN THE WINE-PRESS.

He will look upon me with love ; and for love of that
little beauty will endure my manifold unsightli-
nesses, and " count it as nothing though He should
give all His substance for love." For the love of
God, is the one and sufficient beauty of the soul,
the perfection of its knowledge, the perfection of its
will. It is its highest assimilation and likeness to
God, who alone fully knows and loves His own
goodness. What we love we become. To love the
Beautiful is to be beautiful. For love is but a
greeting of self in some other disguise, whether it
be our love of God or His love of us.
Ave gratia plena ! Hail, full of love, full of beauty,
tota pidcra es et macula non est in te. There is finitude,
but there is no fault. There is finitude, but com
pared with ours it is infinitude, fulness. " Behold,
O God, our defender, and look upon the face of Thy
Christ." Behold, O Christ, our defender, and look
upon the face of Thy Mother, our Mother — tota
pulcra, whose love costs Thee no pain, the only rose
without a thorn.
LXXXI.
LOVE IN THE WINE-PRESS.
Et domus repleta est odore unguenti.
Even as vervain must be bruised if it is to
yield its full fragrance, so the heart that is full of
sweet ointment must be broken that the whole
house may be filled with the perfume. This was
the inward "contrition" or bruising, typified by
the outward act of Magdalene when she broke the

GOD IN THE DARKNESS. 95
alabaster over the feet of Jesus. Yet every sorrow,
however small, will cause love to exhale its sweet
odour. LXXXII.
God in the darkness.
Ignis, grando, nix, glacies, spiritus procellarum, quas faciunt
verbum ejus.
" Fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy gales, which do
His bidding." Destruction, temptation, affliction,
disease, death, all bear part in the praise of
God. Even by sin, though not by the sinner,
God is praised. Here heat and cold and wind
are considered in their excess and intemperance,
as ministers of God's chastising love or con
suming justice. " He makes the winds His
messengers, and the flame of fire His minister."
'¦ He rides upon the wings of the wind " — not the
heat that warms and cherishes, but that which
scorches and burns ; not the cold that cools and
refreshes, but which chills and deadens ; not the
breeze that soothes and invigorates, but the gale
which uproots and devastates. It is a higher
thought, a higher faith and confidence and love,
which, with Job, can praise God for His chastise
ments, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken
away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

96 ST. STEPHEN.

LXXXIII.
ST. STEPHEN.
Plenus gratia et fortitudine faciebat prodigia.
" Full of grace and fortitude he wrought wonders."
Christian fortitude is that courage which braves the
extremest dangers, not from any other motive,
how laudable soever, but solely for the love of
Christ. It is the strength of a " love stronger
than death," and which " many waters cannot
drown." " Greater love hath no man than this,
that a man should lay down his life for his friend "
— a love which finds its archetype in God, who,
"when we were yet sinners," saw enough in us
to die for. Even the weakest and most cowardly
creatures, poor nervous feeble birds, become terrible
and reckless of their lives for love of their brood.
Small wonder if in Stephen and many another, the
personal love of Christ has wrought " signs and
prodigies ;" boldness of spech in the very teeth of
emperors (loquebar de testimoniis tuis in conspectu
regum et non confundebar — " I spake of Thy testi
monies before kings and was not ashamed "), and
resistance usque ad sanguinem — " even to blood."
2. " I see the heavens opened." Here is the source
of that " grace and fortitude " — a clear unclouded
view of the world beyond the veil ; a faith that rends
the heaven and lets our sight rest on the reality and
"substance of things hoped for," which dissolves
the world around us into a misty dream, a continual
"passing away." 3. " And Jesus standing at the right

THE INCARNATION. 97
hand of God," for this is in epitome the substance
of the Christian revelation — the Incarnate, obedient
unto death, exalted and crowned with glory and
honour, and given a Name which is above every
name, the pledge of our exaltation ; for " if we suffer
with Him, we shall also reign with Him." If Christ
Himself was helped to endure the Cross by the
foresight of the joy to follow (proposito sibi gaudio
sustinuit crucem), it was fitting that Stephen should
be encouraged by a vision of the joy of his Lord
into which he was to enter.
LXXXIV.
THE INCARNATION.
Qui propter nos homines, et propter nostram salutem, descendit
de ccelis. Had He come as God Incarnate into an unfallen
world, He need not have laid aside the finite
glories that were His birthright ; He need not
have passed through weakness, humiliation, pain,
and death, to the recovery of what was His, had
He not been stripped of it by sin. That the
Son of Man should have also been a " Man of
Sorrows," "emptied of His glory," "obedient to
death," this was the effect of mercy, occasioned by
sin. z.Et propter nostram salutem. We need not,
however, suppose that antecedent to the forevision
of the Fall, an Incarnation had been decreed ; but
may believe that God, casting about, so to say, in
the infinite resources of His Divine intellect and
power, for an order of things which should manifest
H

¦98 THE INCARNATION.
His attributes, chose that in which His mercy
and generosity would be displayed more fully. He
chose, rather than the contrary, that world in which
the race, engraced and elevated, would cast away
its privileges ; in which iniquity should abound that
grace might superabound ; in which His good gifts
would be despised, squandered, abused, not merely
by some, but by most; in which His richest schemes
of mercy would be thwarted by man's perversity ;
in which He would gladly spend Himself and be
spent, though the more He loved, the less He would
be loved ; in which, in a word, His labour should
be largely in vain, His love largely unreturned. For
plainly this is the showing forth of a far more
prodigal and wonderful love, a love of the undeserv
ing and unthankful. Had all men used His graces,
what should we have known of His tender mercies,
fulness of compassion, longsuffering, and great
¦goodness ? We should have known Christ, but
not Jesus ; the King, but not the Saviour.
3- Descendit de ccelis. His whole Incarnate Life
was a descent, a coming down from the highest to
the level of the lowest and least, sin only excepted.
It was a continual self-suppression and elimination
cl all that could difference or distance Him from the
weakest and most helpless child of Adam. He
•thought His birthrights of bodily glory, power,
impassibility, not things to be grasped at and clung
to ; but rather emptied Himself of them all, and put
on the likeness of sinful flesh, the garb of a servant,
that He might be accessible to all — the friend of
publicans and sinners. The Pharisee — a separatist

THE BETTER PART. 99
by name and profession and practice — stood high
on the pedestal of his legal perfection, and thanked
¦God he was not as other men. Christ " exulted in
spirit, and gave thanks," that He was as other men,
and hid Himself from the wise and prudent, and
revealed Himself to little' ones — Venite ad me, quia
mitis sum et humilis corde. He is altogether approach
able ; not severe, or magisterial, or dictatorial ; not
one to stand on His dignity and keep His distance,
but always ready to yield, to come down, to accom
modate Himself, being made all things to all men,
that by all means He may gain some, if not all.
LXXXV.
THE BETTER PART.
Maria autem elegit earn optimam partem, quae non auferetur
ab ea in aeternum.1
The application of these words (" Mary hath
chosen the best part, which shall never be taken
from her"), and of this episode to this feast, is, at
first sight, strange. No doubt it means amongst
other things that there is a higher and a lower
¦service of God, of which the latter may be inter
rupted by sickness, death, and a thousand con
tingencies ; which of itself is the accidental and
separable embodiment of our love, but not its
very essence; which is anxious and distracted,
and easily corruptible and corrupting. The
former is the one thing needful; the quickening
principle of the other. It is independent of life,
1 Communion for the Assumption.

THE BETTER PART.

or death, or any other creature; uninterrupted,
" which shall never be taken from us ; " unfailing,
for "charity never faileth." Such was pre-eminently
the service of Mary; one prolonged Magnificat
continued from time into eternity without respect
to life or death. The Magdalene sat at His feet
and heard His words; His Mother kept all these
sayings and pondered them in her heart and uttered
them in her song. The life of praise is the highest
life, the final and everlasting life ; and there is no
death to that life : " He that liveth and believeth
shall never die ; " for the life of praise is the
eternal life. Martha flits here and there, comes
and goes, but Mary sits, ever fixed in one unbroken
gaze ; and passes, unmoved, from life through death
into fuller life ; as it were, in a dream. Yet this
highest life is also the most active and productive,
and likest that of God, whose still gaze on the
face of His Son is the cause of all movement and
production. Fruitfulness is the greatest of graces,
for which Mary gives thanks, saying, Beatam me
dicent omnes generationes ; all generations shall bless
the great Mother of Life ; the womb that bore
our Life, and the breasts that fed Him ; that have
borne and fed us and "all generations." Great
energy works tranquilly ; the most divine and
universal causes are likest God in their fruitful rest ;
furthest from solicitude and perturbation about many
things. Mary knew no travail pangs. Even by the
Cross, when with Jesus she tasted all the sorrows
of all our race, she stood, motionless — Stabat
Mater. It is rather faith and philosophy, than sight

INCONSTANCY,

and experiment, which assure us that the highest
life must also be the most fruitful for others ;
the efficiency follows excellence. Those do most,
who seem to do nothing; those do nothing, who
seem to do most. God and Nature work silently,
secretly. The Kingdom of Heaven cometh " without
observation." Those who reap and bear home the
sheaves get all the credit ; those who plough and
sow ; the fostering sun, the rain, the generous soil ;
God the all-giver, all-mover, are forgotten. We talk
of unknown saints, but what of the unknown pro
genitors of science, and art, and progress, and of
all our greatness? Which of those who have
entered into their labours, knows or thanks them ?
The effect of the best and greatest work is felt
only when its author is untraceable — or rather its
authors, for it derives from a confluence of imper
ceptible streamlets. "To be," is more than "to
do," and does more. The fruit of Martha's minis
trations might easily be computed ; but the whole
world is still filled with the odour of Mary's spike
nard, with the influence of her silent love.
LXXXVI.
INCONSTANCY.
Animam meam pro te, ponam.
" I will lay down my life for thee." We say
such things in warm moments of love and friend
ship, and mean them from the depths of our heart ;
though in the chill and darkness of depression and
failure we deny our friend and desert him. We do

THE SEVEN DOLOURS.

not value present love less, because it is frail and
changeable ; nor does God despise the bright flame
that now leaps up in my heart because He foresees
it will sink and flicker even to extinction for a time
or for ever.
LXXXVI I.
SEVEN DOLOURS.
Omnis enim figura ejus amorem spirat et ad redamandum pro-
vocat ; caput inclinatum ; manus expansse, pectus apertum.
" His whole form breathes out love and pro
vokes love in return ; the head bowed down ; the
hands outstretched ; the heart laid bare." (i) Caput
inclinatum. Apart from the very beauty of posture
which makes the crucifix a noble theme of artr
there is an exhaustless wealth of beauty which we
read into it in the light of faith. It is an eye-word
which ever clothes itself with richer and fuller
meaning, so that at one glance we take in more
food for mind and heart than the ear could receive
in an hour. The head inclined speaks to us of
the infinite gentleness and condescension of Him
who bows down to listen to our cries and prayers :
Memento mei, Domine, dum veneris in regnum tuum.
Inclina, Domine, aurem tuam et exaudi me. Fiant
aures tuce intendentes, in vocem deprecationis mea —
of a tender pity that in the midst of torments is
self-forgetful and intent only on the sorrows of those
who stand by the foot of His Cross ; of obedience
to the Divine love continued from birth till bowing
His Head He gave up the ghost. Amorem spirat et
ad redamandum provocat. It all breathes love and

GOD'S ATTRIBUTES. ioj
invites to love, to a love that drags us down and
takes all the stiffness and pride out of us ; which is
at the feet of all, girt about for their service, which
is wistful and watchful for the needs and sorrows of
others. (2) Manus expansa, speaking to us of the
width and comprehensiveness of His love, inviting
all, embracing all ; pardoning, tolerating, overlooking
offences. This is easy to say, but hard to believe ;
and because the invitation is only half believed, it is
little heeded : Expandi manus meas tota die ad populum
incredulum — He is ever stretching out His hands
to those who cannot believe that He means it.
(3) Pectus apertum. If His Heart, laid bare to our
eyes, and cleft and broken with grief, does not
breathe love and provoke a return, we may put our
crucifix aside and pray God to create a new heart
in us and renew us with a right spirit ; or turn to
Mary for grace to read the crucifix with her eyes .-
Fac me tecum pie flere, crucifixo condolere.
LXXXVIII.
GOD'S ATTRIBUTES.
Considerate lilia agri.
We shall never get to love God by meditating
on His attributes, unless we are first trained to love
those attributes in their finite manifestations. Men
cannot love or praise God for His mercy or liberality,
or truth or justice, who are not lovers of these things
already. If I do not know what love is in its highest
manifestations, in father, mother, brother, friend,
lover, it is vain to tell me that God loves as all

T04 THE GRACE OF LONG LIFE.
these and infinitely more. Infinity is at best a
negative notion, and affects our imagination and our
heart but little. It is all important that the co-factors
it multiplies should be as full and rich and concrete
as possible. Considerate lilia agri, says Christ. A
man must be taught to see a glory in their array
greater than that of Solomon, before that " delighted
with their beauty," he "can know that their Lord
is more beautiful by far ; for it is the begetter of
all beauty that hath made them all."1
LXXXIX.
THE GRACE OF LONG LIFE.
Ut sis longaevus super terram.
" That thou mayest live long upon the earth."
It is almost a truism to say that we never elect
twice under precisely the same conditions, and that
any given individual choice once made is made for
ever. For even were the two elections to follow
each other without interval, there would in the
second case be the new circumstance of having
chosen just before. Furthermore, the basis of
knowledge and experience on which we choose is
widening every hour of our life and giving more
deliberateness and importance to our choice. We
put little confidence in the piety of children ; and
we have good hope for their reformation if they are
vicious ; for we know on how slight and partial a
view of good and evil their decision rests, how
imperfectly they reckon the cost on either side.
1 Wisdom xiii.

GOD, OUR HAPPINESS. 105
Blessed the man who is tempted, for ceteris paribus,
it is a more honourable salvation to have been tried
long and variously, and at that last and fullest review
of the whole question, which is flashed through our
mind in the moment of death, to have chosen God,
than if in early childhood we had been rapt away
lest malice and deceit should alter our first good
purposes. Tanquam aurum in fornace probavit eos
,et invenit eos dignos se.

XC.
GOD, OUR HAPPINESS.
Salus tua sum ego.
For one who has the faith, the greatest happiness
and substantial peace of his soul is the grace and
favour of God. This sounds unreal; because we
do not notice or attend to permanent and habitual
comforts. To tell a man that he enjoys the air he
breathes more than music he hears, sounds non
sense ; but deprive him of both, and which will he
ask for first ? Unconscious as we are of the
presence of grace when we have got it, and alto
gether miserable as we may be at the same time
about other things ; let us but lose it, or think we
have lost it, and what other happiness can console
us, or what other misery concern us ? We mostly
love God far more than we think; and it is only
real or fancied separation that first opens our eyes
to the extent to which He is entwined and woven
into our life.

106 TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.

XCI.
TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.
At ubi venit plenitudo temporis misit Deus Filium suum.
" When the fulness of time had come God sent
His Son." It is natural to expect that our reason
should carry us but a little way in the knowledge of
good and evil, since "good" has reference to the
end, and He alone knows the bearing of each action
for good and evil, whose wisdom reaches from end
to end. We may see a little way ahead to proximate
ends ; and we may see clearly how certain actions
can never possibly be conducive to any good end.
But God's gaze stretches infinitely beyond all this ;
to the last consequence in time of the least of our
thoughts. Surely He alone can tell us what is good
and evil ; and here, if anywhere, we are as children
and need revelation and faith. This was the casus
belli between God and Adam. Would he obey
blindly, leaving the reasons to God, or would he
aspire to be as God, knowing good and evil for
himself, measuring things by his own little span ?
But not satisfied to know that the fruit was for
bidden without also knowing the reason of the
prohibition, he put faith to the test of experiment-
God had said that to eat was to die. Adam would
taste and see for himself. From that moment he was
left largely to his own dim light to find out good and
evil by bitter experience, and through devious and
uncertain processes of ethical evolution. He became
in a sense as God, deciding for himself; no longer

GOD, ABOVE ALL 107
taught by faith as a little child. But it was the
sorry independence of the prodigal son, provoking
the Divine irony: " Man hath become as one of us,
knowing good and evil." Driven from the light of
Paradise, he wandered from darkness to darkness
into the deepest sloughs of moral degradation, till
in pity, God gave him the light of the Decalogue,
embodying little more than what sound reason ought
to have found out long before. After which he had
to learn the humiliating truth that to know what is
right, is but a cause of greater condemnation, if there
be not the motive power of personal love to make
us wish to do right. In God alone are light and
love identical. Men and angels were made to be
governed by a love outside them. And so when
"the fulness of time had come," and man had
reached the depth of his humiliation, " God sent
forth His Son, born of a woman," to be ourLight
and our Love, XCII.
GOD, ABOVE ALL.
Diliges Dominum ex toto corde tuo.
To love God above all things else, taken col
lectively, is needful for salvation, but compatible
with all manner of venial sin. To love Him with
our whole heart, and alone, is perfection and
beatitude. He is loved alone when all else is
loved only in Him and for Him as He loves it
Himself. This, far from lessening the extension or
intension of our natural affections, increases both,
indefinitely, and in a higher plane. In proportion

108 GOD'S DOINGS INSCRUTABLE.
as this reference of all to Him, from being habitual
and implicit, becomes naturally explicit and actual,
does one approximate towards the life of vision. It
is in Purgatory that this perfect chastening of the
affections is attained and the soul thereby proxi
mately disposed for its final elevation. When we
say that man's task in life is to get to love God, we
do not speak of substantial love (super omnia), which
is requisite, due, and possible from the outset ; but
of perfect love (toto corde), which is not the precept,
but the finis precepti, the end which the precept
aims at. XCIII.
GOD'S DOINGS INSCRUTABLE.
Quam investigabiles viae ejus.
" For My ways are not as your ways, nor My
thoughts as your thoughts " — and yet our ways
seem at times so clearly the best, the only prudent
ways ; and our thoughts, so self-evidently good and
high. Is all chaos, and is there no guide to what
is absolutely and objectively right and true ? Is God
so unknowable as to be beyond all our calculations ?
May black be white with Him, and white black ?
" As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are
My ways higher than your ways." The higher does
not deny, but includes the lower. What is impru
dent can never be prudent, what is false never true.
But what is truly prudent to limited foresight and
for the conditions seen, may be infinitely short
sighted for eyes reaching from end to end and
disposing of all things sweetly. Wherefore if God's

GROWTH IN GRACE. 109
plans are other than mine, it is not that mine are
bad, but that His are better. If, as they say in the
schools, He does not answer My prayer formally,
He answers it eminently ; for He is even " more
willing to hear than we to pray, and is wont to give
more than we ask or merit." " Put yourself in His
place," is the advice we give to one who is at a loss
to understand the conduct of another. When our
imagination and reason can lift us into God's place,
then, and only then, can we expect to understand
His ways. The presumption that our predictions and
calculations of His movements are right is simply
infinitesimal; and yet pious credulity, noting only its
successful guesses, forgetting its countless blunders,
goes on posing as God's secretary and confidential
agent. "How incomprehensible are His judgments,
and His ways past finding out. Who hath known
the Lord's meaning, or who hath been His adviser,
or who first gave Him anything, and he shall be
rewarded ? " A stronger faith and better taught
is that which is led blindfolded and does not see,
nor ask to see how God works all things round to
the good of those who love Him.
XCIV.
GROWTH IN GRACE.
Filioli mei quos iterum parturio donee Christus formetur in vobis
" My children, with whom I am in travail anew,
until Christ be formed in you." Under one aspect,
spiritual birth, or regeneration, or, as Protestants
would call it, conversion, consists in the develop-

GROWTH IN GRACE.

ment and filling-in of an idea, the idea of Christ.
Our childish conception is but notional, a mere
framework or skeleton, waiting to be clothed with
flesh and nerves, and to become a living reality.
" This is life, that they should know Thee." When
Christ is thus fully conceived and formed in our
minds, our heart is at once subdued to Him (Tibi
se cor meum totum subjicit ; quia te contemplans totum
deficit), and we become "enthusiasts," men possessed
by God, dominated by an Idea which lives and
speaks and loves back. And to generate this idea
in the minds of men is the painful and laborious
task of the Apostle. First of all it must be the form
and clothing of his own mind ; and then he must
prepare the mind of others to receive it ; he must
raise them gradually from height to height, till at
last they are proximately disposed for the full truth.
And when it is expressed and brought forth, it still
needs careful watching lest it be corrupted, or
perverted, before it has hardened into the substance
of the formed mind. It is because he has begotten
in them the very form and fashion of his own soul
that St. Paul calls his converts, filioli ; for the sons
are sharers of the father's nature and form. So our
Saviour : Ecce ego et filii quos dedit mihi Dominus.

SHORT LIFE A GRACE.

XCV.
SHORT LIFE A GRACE.
Consummatus in brevi, explevit tempora multa.
That a short life may be a great grace, far from
being opposed to, is altogether consonant with the
view which makes length of days a grace. For it
is not a privilege to be cut off soon, except it be
"lest deceit should ensnare his soul" — which is at
best a negative grace ; or else because life, though
short in days, is full and long in spiritual experience
and insight. Human life is the life of the spirit, not
of the animal ; it is measured not by years, but by
the amount of spiritual activity. Cani sunt sensus
hominis, it is thought, and not grey hair that
entitles old age to veneration. 2. Explevit tempora
multa — the wares of the world have been passed
over in rapid review, tried in the balance, one
after another, and found wanting. And God has
revealed His beauties in as fast a succession and
has grown in lovableness, taking root in the heart
and shooting up into an overshadowing tree, like
the Prophet's gourd, in a brief night (Sub umbra
illius quern desideraveram sedi). The writer of
Ecclesiastes is intent on this theme, tasting ever
more deeply of life's chalice, and forced to cry
out after each brackish draught thereof. Who
is like God ? All is vanity, save to love God.
Happy is the man who remembers his Creator in
the days of his youth, albeit, that the God of
our childish choice, the world of our childish re-

NATURE SAVED IN GRACE.

nunciation, are at best but shadowy ideas waiting"
for their body and fulness ; but happier he who at
the close of long years, perhaps after many wander
ings and follies, knowing well the weight of every
word, can say : What is like God ? Happiest of all
he who can say : " Thou hast been my God from
my youth, and unto old age and grey hairs, forsake
me not, O Lord my God ! "
XCVI.
NATURE SAVED IN GRACE.
Remittuntur ei peccata multa, quoniam dilexit multum.
" Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath
loved much," and her sins were many, just because
she loved much — too much. It is usually the same
gifts which damns or saves us, according as it is ill
or well used. Like every grace, it is in resurrec-
tionem and in ruinam. Mary's gift was a power of
passionate love. Her love of the Master was not
another love succeeding the old ; but the old love
cleansed, restrained, lifted up, intensified. Nature
is saved in grace. Everywhere it is the same ; good
and evil; better and worse; best and worst, treading
on one another's heels. Greater force, if it swerves,
means great ruin. XCVII.
THE MINUTENESS OF GOD'S LOVE.
Capilli capitis vestri omnes numerati sunt, nolite timere.
" The hairs of your head are all counted. Do not
be afraid." As the miser to whom every farthing;

SEPARATION THE PROOF OF LOVE. 113
is as dear as his own miserable soul, gloats over
each and says, " Mine, mine, all mine," so in God's
no less incomprehensible, hungering love, every
several hair of our head is known, weighed,
numbered, and hoarded up as avariciously, as the
foolish lover treasures next his heart the very
straws trodden by his mistress' feet. Nolite timere,
XCVIII.
SEPARATION THE PROOF OF LOVE.
Veni separare hominem.
As love makes for the most perfect attainable
oneness, so separation is the mortification of love —
not its death, but its discipline and mortification.
Its death perhaps, if it be worthless; and always
the death of what is worthless or impure in it ;
therefore it is the purgation of imperfect love ; the
death of false love ; the exercise and renewal of true
love. Et tui ipsius animam gladius pertransibit ; for even
Mary's love had to know the sword of separation.
Our Saviour came to kindle love upon earth, as
it had never been kindled before, between man and
man, and between man and God ; yet He came
to send, not peace, but a sword ; not union, but
division and separation.

a i4 UNANIMITY.

XCIX.
UNANIMITY.
Idem sapiatis, unanimes ; id ipsum sentientes. Nihil per con-
¦tentionem, neque per inanem gloriam.
" Let us all think and say the same thing," must
not be understood of a wooden, unintelligent uni
formity imposed from outside ; but of the natural
offspring of that unifying charity which should bind
all members of the same body together; whether
that body be the race, or the Church, or some closer
corporation within the Church. Individualism bids
us not to care a fig what others say or think, to
" live and let live." So long as others do not
interfere with us, let them do and believe as they
please : Quid ad nos ; ipsi viderint. Toleration, as
at present misunderstood, means the indifference
of systematic egoism. But unifying charity instinc
tively, and often consciously, endeavours to break
down every wall of partition which severs soul from
soul by diversity of belief or sentiment. The con
troversial spirit, or proselytizing instinct, is but a
perversion of the deepest appetite of the rational
soul, and points to the essential solidarity of the
:race. Union, in belief and thought, is the founda
tion of agreement in sentiment ; which, in turn, is
the only lasting basis of union and co-operation in
action. Hence the stress laid on unity of faith by
Christ and His Church. And the same principle is
implied by the insistence on obedience of judgment
as a condition of obedience in will and execution.

UNANIMITY. 115

Yet were all this to be understood of verbal com
pliancy, it would mean the death, instead of the
keenest life of the soul ; the uniformity of blind
traditionalism, the superstitious transmission of dead
formulae from mouth to mouth, and mind to mind.
Whereas the keen, healthy appetite for being in intel
ligent sympathy with every other mind, spurs us on to
the most intense activity of thought, that we may get
to understand ourselves and to understand others.
When we hear a statement which sounds strange
to us, we are not indifferent, but sharply interested
to know how the speaker understands it ; what he
has to say for it ; whether we can in any way accept
it, or interpret it benignly ; or whether we have not
after all been wrong ourselves ; and if not, whether
we can get the speaker to see where he is wrong and
to accept what we believe right ; or whether we can
at least use the same words as he, though in a dif
ferent sense; or hold the same truth, differing only in
our expression of it. And it is only when agreement
is evidently impossible that with great reluctance
we agree to differ as a dernier ressort, regarding our
disagreement as a misfortune in itself, and apart
from all ulterior consequences. Such a union is
necessarily of slow growth, even between individuals,
not to say among masses of men ; but it is none the
less that goal for which our radical social instinct is
making through devious ways. Nor is discussion ;
conducted in obedience to this spirit of unifying
love, in any way hostile to peace and concord ; or
to be confounded with aggressive controversy and
intolerance. For far from emphasizing or fostering

n6 UNANIMITY.

divergencies, it is as loth as possible to admit their
existence, and hopes against hope that they may be
more apparent than real. The controversial spirit
is also begotten of a perverted desire for union in
opinion and sentiment, but is egoistic, narrow,
intolerant, unyielding ; forcing others into agreement
with itself; giving nothing, exacting everything;
dogmatic, indocile ; harsh and impatient ; exaggerat
ing differences; condemning, ridiculing, despising;
indignant, not grieved. Yet as the perversion of
what is good, it is better than the pseudo-tolerance
of individualism — that growth of a cold, systematic
selfishness and independence which suffers every
man to go his own way, caring nothing whether it
be to Heaven or to Hell. Nowhere, perhaps, has
the true spirit been more happily embodied than in
the proem to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius :
" It is presupposed that every good Christian will
be more ready to agree with his neighbour's state
ment than to condemn it ; and if he cannot see his
way to this, let him inquire of him in what sense he
takes it ; and then if he means what is wrong, he is
to be set right gently ; and if that is not enough,
one must try to get him round by every reasonable
means." It is one thing to go about the world
getting others to agree with oneself; another, to
get them to agree with the truth. The contro
versialist prefers self to truth.

STIGMATA OF ST. FRANCIS. 117

c.
STIGMATA OF ST. FRANCIS.
Domine, quinque talenta tradidisti mihi ; ecce alia quinque super-
lucratus sum.
"Lord, Thou gavest me five talents; see, here
are five more ! " Our wounds and sorrows are of
all the talents committed to us the most precious.
Lifted by them above the earth to the side of Christ
crucified, we may draw all men unto ourselves, and
through ourselves to God. Few saints in the
calendar draw so widely as the loving St. Francis
Assisi, with his wounded hands and feet and heart,
and his gentle, sensitive spirit formed for the acutest
suffering and compassion.
CI.
THE LIFE OF PRAISE.
Homo creatus est ut laudet.
" Man was created to praise." A life of praise
ought not to be a very sad or gruesome prospect. It
means a life devoted to the study of what is highest
and most beautiful, a life of ever-growing apprecia
tion and love, as our taste becomes formed and
refined and sensitive to more exquisite and subtle
beauties than before. It is a life by consequence of
absorbing enthusiasm ; for no one is content to love
alone, but must drag every one up to his own level
and into sympathy with himself. A saint who is
not a propagandist is unthinkable. Genitori, Genito-
que, laus etjubilatio, this is the whole duty of man upon

118 OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS.
earth as in Heaven. Laudamus te, benedicimus te,
adoramus te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi propter
magnam gloriam tuam. Surely not a wholly un
attractive vocation, or a very disagreeable task !
There is something that we have got to understand
and love, and praise, and get others to praise.
CII.
OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS.
Et viso illo, praeterivit.
"And when he saw him, he passed on." No
doubt this good priest would have done something
for the wounded man had he been in his district,
but the interference would perhaps be keenly
resented by the parish priest. The levite not being
in Holy Orders would by no means trespass on the
special preserves and privileges of the priesthood.
But this outlandish Samaritan knows nothing about
rights and privileges and jurisdiction and prescrip
tion, and, on the mere title of common humanity,
thrusts himself into other people's concerns instead
of minding his own business. Vade tuetfac similiter;
— though similiter requires true parity of circum
stances. It is well to mind one's own business ;
yet not so as to forget St. Paul's words : " Con
sidering, not each his own concerns, but the
concerns of others."

RATIONAL PIETY. lie,
cm.
RATIONAL PIETY.
Sanctifica eos in veritate ; sermo tuus Veritas.
" Sanctify them in Thy truth, Thy word is truth."
Sanctification which does not rest upon clear, simple,
solid truth, cannot hold out against the tempest and
the flood. Every plantation which truth has not
planted, shall be torn up by the roots. Sermo tuus
Veritas, i.e., God's utterances, through reason and
revelation — common sense and Catholic faith ,
intellectus quarens fidem, fides quarens intellectum, are
the rocks about which the roots of sanctity must
wrap themselves. Of two evils, better to have the
foundation without the superstructure, than the
loftiest pile unfounded or ill-founded — the loftier,
the worse. Some well-meaning persons think it a
profanation to bring to ascetic teaching the touch
stone of reason and consistency ; or to suppose for
an instant that the maxims of holy people can ever
embody pernicious and soul-destroying fallacies.
Ignatius of Loyola thought far otherwise. A man
may be an admirable artist, though an execrable
art-critic ; and conversely. CIV.
THE SACRED HEART.
Benignitas et humanitas apparuit Salvatoris nostri Dei.
It can hardly be doubted that in some special
way it has been intrusted to the Church of our day

120 RESTRAINT, THE CONDITION OF GROWTH.
to develope, by the ordinary tedious processes, the
idea of the human-heartedness of God. Her bitter
conflict with Jansenism and her zeal in promoting
the devotion to the Sacred Heart are from one and
the same seed of fire. There is yet much straw
and stubble to burn up, much dross to purge away,
before the pure, fine gold can be separated and
secured. The impurities of rigorism and maniche-
ism, which cling like parasites to the truth, cannot
be shaken off in a moment ; and the most earnest
apostles of the benignitas et humanitas of our Saviour,
will at times commit themselves to utterances at
discord with their gospel, so that we find the anti-
Jansenist often tinged with Jansenism. But all this
is strictly in accord with those necessary laws which
govern the conception and birth of truth. It is
only after many, but ever-lessening oscillations
between vicious extremes, that the needle at last
comes to rest and points true to the pole.
CV.
RESTRAINT, THE CONDITION OF GROWTH.
Omnis autem disciplina in praesenti quidem videtur non esse
gaudii sed moeroris ; postea autem fructum pacatissimum reddet.
" I came that they might have life, and might
have it more abundantly;" — for if self-abnegation,
restraint, mortification, is the condition on which
we follow Christ, it is only because without them
we cannot enter into that fuller life of the intellect,
heart, and affections, by which we recover a
hundred-fold in the present, whatever we seem to

SILENT PRAYER.

sacrifice. Only through Him can the human
faculties receive their full expansion and develop
ment. Without the cross the downward path to
selfishness and cruelty is only too easy. Our power
of loving is lost by reckless dissipation, and the
mind loosed from the rock of faith, drifts out into
the darkness. Nonne Deo subjecta erit anima mea.
Shall not my soul, therefore, be subjected to God ?
CVI.
SILENT PRAYER.
Scit enim Pater vester quid opus sit vobis antequam petatis eum.
"He feedeth the young ravens that call upon
Him," and "the lion-whelps roaring for their prey,
begging their food from God, ... all wait for Thee
that Thou mayest give them meat in due season."
If the blind, natural cravings which He Himself has
implanted ; if the brute cries of pain and hunger
ascend up as a prayer in the ears of God ; shall not
the very needs of man's soul be eloquent without
words, before Him "to whom all hearts are opened,
all desires known, and from whom no secrets are
hid," and from whom alone come all our good
desires and prayers. " Lord, Thou knowest my
desire," says David, "and my groaning is not hid
from Thee." " Your Heavenly Father knoweth that
ye have need of these things." Doubtless the
' externation ' of our prayers and desires is natural,
and is expected from us so far as possible. But
it is not always possible ; and then it is well to
remember that every God-given desire of our heart,

THE FOLLY OF DIVINE LOVE.

however latent and remote from present conscious
ness, still more every felt need and hunger of spirit,
rises like the incense of an unceasing prayer before
God's mercy-seat, "the Spirit Itself helping oui
infirmities, making intercession for us with groanings
that cannot be uttered." CVII.
THE FOLLY OF DIVINE LOVE.
Neque mittatis margaritas vestras ante porcos.
By love, St. Ignatius tells us, a man gives himself
so far as it is possible; and in seeking to be re-loved
he seeks that another shall make to him a like self-
offering. Thus love is unitive in that it tends to
obliterate the lines which divide me and thee, mine
and thine: "all mine is thine and all thine is mine."
But love is of itself indifferent till we know the
nature of the lover, or, what is correlative, the
motive of his love. A self-offering is valued
according to our estimate of the self which is
offered. That God has so loved us, and given
Himself to us, will move us just so far as we have
learnt to realize what He is in Himself who
has done so much for us. Wisdom and self-respect
forbid us to reveal in its fulness an affection we
may feel for another ; but tell us rather to deal it
out gradually as it is valued and asked for ; lest we
seem to force a return, which is gratitude rather
than love — a puzzled sense of obligation for a costly
gift hardly understood or cared for. But God's
love of the soul is too passionate to be so politic-

NO WASTE OF GOOD DESIRES. 123
He flings Himself at our feet, a pearl before swine ;
and we receive His protestations of love with
embarrassment or indifference — perhaps even a
certain sense of annoyance : " What have we to
do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth ? Art Thou
come here to torment us ? " We prefer to live
among the tombs. CVIII.
NO WASTE OF GOOD DESIRES.
Quod egredietur de ore meo non revertetur ad me vacuum.
Every drop which the sun's heat draws up from
the earth, falls back to earth in fertilizing rain, yet
not necessarily, if ever, on the same spot. God's
winds carry it hither and thither, resolved into
vapour, broken up, dispersed in a thousand direc
tions. Yet sooner or later it returns whence it
came. And so of every good desire or prayer or
effort elicited from our heart by that love which is
the one secret cause of all good. It is an energy
set free that can never be ultimately lost or destroyed.
It may fail of the end to which we direct it, but only
because it cannot fail of that higher and wider end
to which it is directed by an all-seeing eye, an
omnipotent and unerring hand.
CIX.
PEACE.
Et in terra pax.
"And on earth peace." Internal peace of soul
is undoubtedly the very finish of sanctification, and

124 PEACE.
the final fruit of the Incarnation. " Let not your
heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." " Peace
I leave with you, My peace I give unto you."
Martha's unrestful solicitude is rebuked : and the
peace of Mary commended. S.Ignatius tells us that
in men of good-will, all disturbance of heart is
from some evil source. Peace is not only com
patible with the sword, with tribulation, temptation,
and external conflict, but needs these as conditions
of its exercise. Else it is latent. It is therefore
self-possession ; the being master of one's soul in
the midst of suffering, and anxiety. It is not the
peace of inactivity or death ; but of a strong govern
ment holding a mighty people in sway. Who does
not know the awful power of the statesman or
general who keeps calm, self-possessed, recollected,
when all around are panic-stricken, clamorous,
distracted ; who moves quietly, noiselessly, surely,
to his end, with the momentum of weight rather
than of speed. It is the imperturbable calm
begotten by the sense of power and security, even
like the everlasting "peace of God which passeth
all understanding; " the calm of an intellect stilled
by faith, where doubts and difficulties are but as
cloud-shadows flitting across the unruffled surface
of its placid depths; the calm of affections and
passions not deadened, but strengthened by the
domination of Divine Love : the calm of a con
science clear as the purest crystal; the calm of
outward bearing and conduct where every move
ment has been brought into subjection to the law
within. Peace is therefore the child of true magna
nimity.

ONE BREAD AND ONE BODY. 125
ex.
ONE BREAD AND ONE BODY.
Unus panis, unum corpus multi sumus, omnes qui de uno pane
participamus. " For we being many, are one Bread and one
Body, all who eat of that Bread." To eat at the
same table and off the same dish, to break bread
with another is, especially in the East, a pledge and
symbol of brotherhood, of a common parentage and
source of life. In the Eucharistic Communion it is
no symbol, but an ultra-reality. Two brothers do
not live by the same life in so high a sense as
two souls who live by the indwelling of one and the
same Christ, one and the same Spirit in both. The
symbol indeed is broken and divided that it may
be distributed among many; but those many are
united and merged into one another by assimilation
to the one indivisible Reality ; the one Bread and
one Body. We being many, draw to ourselves the
symbol and absorb it. The Reality, being one,
draws us to Itself and absorbs us. There is no
embrace of souls so close or so loving as that
whereby both are melted into the soul of Christ ;
no kiss of peace more infinitely tender — or else more
infinitely treacherous. Let a man prove himself,
aad so let him eat ; lest, not discerning the mystical
union of Christ's Body, he eat to his own damnation
with hatred in his heart.

126 FAITH. CXI.
FAITH.
Super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam.
Jacob laid his weary head to rest on a pillow of
stone and beheld Heaven's secrets in a vision ; for
God was in that place though he knew it not. And
he called it Beth-el, the house of God. It is on the
hard and seemingly comfortless rock of faith that
our thought-wearied intellect must repose, if we are
to wake inwardly to the vision of angels ascending
and descending upon the Son of Man, that ladder
which restores commerce between heaven and
earth and whose foot rests in Bethel, the Church
of God.
CXTI.
GOD'S VENGEANCE.
Donee ponam inimicos tuos scabellum pedum tuorum.
"Till I make Thy enemies Thy footstool." God
triumphs over His enemies by the power of love,
which turns them into friends, and servants of the
servants of God ; ministering to His wounded feet ;
supporting and giving rest to His little ones — to
His lowliest members ; beneath the feet of all by
the voluntary abjection of enslaving love. " From
the moment she entered she hath not ceased to kiss
My feet."

GOD'S GARMENT. 127

CXIII.
GOD'S GARMENT.
Si tetigero tantum vestimentum ejus salva ero.
Heaven and earth " shall wax old as doth a
garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them."
For they are the very garments of God ; not His
substance ; no part of Him, as pantheism would
have it. Yet there is nothing more nearly enters
into our personality, than our garments; so
nearly are they related 'to us. Who does not feel
humbled by rude and shabby attire ; and exalted by
that which is becoming? Our garments hide us,
but they also reveal us, as our words do. They are
a language in themselves, a self-utterance. They
reveal our very outline and movements ; and are
instinct with our life. So everywhere Scripture
represents Nature as the garment of God ; as the
guise in which He has chosen to walk and talk with
man upon earth. It is God who shines in the sun,
moon, and stars ; who rages in the storm ; who
consumes in the fire ; who thunders from the clouds ;
who clothes Himself in glorious apparel ; girds
Himself with strength ; robes Himself in light ; veils
Himself in the clouds. " Hast thou an arm like
God ; or can'st thou thunder with a voice like His ;
compass thyself with beauty, and be lifted up on
high, and be glorious as He, and put on the garments
of splendour ? " Nature, then, is the garment of God ;
and by the light of natural reason, and the impulse
of the natural heart, man can draw near from behind,

128 BLESSED MARGARET MARY.
and touched with trembling hope the fringe of His
vesture, and be healed of his infirmities. But grace
calls such men of good-will to behold the very face
of God, and to fall at His feet, glorying in their
infirmities.
CXIV.
BLESSED MARGARET MARY.
Simile est regnum ccelorum homini quaerenti bonas margaritas
et inventa una pretiosa (Margarita), vendidit omnia quae habuit et
comparavit earn.
"The Kingdom of Heaven is like to a man
seeking goodly pearls, and having found one of
great price, he sold all that he had and bought it."
Blessed Margaret stands as representative of the
Soul of Man which God sought through all the
long days of creation, as a prize to be reached
through many labours. When He had breathed the
immortal spirit into its prepared habitation of clay,
God rested from His labour. Inveni quern diligit
anima mea. He had found what He could love, and
what could love Him in return. Again when that
pearl of great price was lost, He sought it afresh
where it lay hidden away in the dust. He sold all
that He had; He emptied Himself of His glory;
and having given all He had, it only remained that
He should give Himself; and so He took the very
Heart of His bosom, and gave that too. " Behold
this Heart which has so loved man."

THE HOLY HOUSE. 129
CXV.
THE HOLY HOUSE.
Adorabimus in loco ubi steterunt pedes ejus.
"We shall adore in the place where His feet
have stood." Were we to adore in every place
where we find God's footprints, our life would be
as continuously one of adoration as theirs, "who
always behold the face of the Father." But we
need to school ourselves into the habit of observing
the vestiges of God in all around us. He is in our
midst and we know Him not.
CXVI.
OUR TIMES.
Loquere ad cor populi hujus.
" Speak to the heart of this people." Cor ad
cor loquitur — " It is the heart that speaks to the
heart." We must speak from the abundance of
our own heart if we are to reach the hearts of
others. Else we may enlighten or interest, but
we cannot move. To speak to the heart of this
generation we must know its heart, how it thinks
and how it loves, its lights and its shadows, its
depths and its shallows, its strength and its
weakness, its greatness and its smallness. And
where it is most wanting, there our own hearts
must be most full, great, deep, strong, enlightened.
To know it, we must observe it, and study it. It is not
enough to know truth; we must know error as well —
T

130 ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST.
the pathology of human mind. We come to the
task mostly as a physician who has never seen
the human frame, or its morbid state, except in a
diagram. He talks learnedly of what he has never
seen, never handled, never felt; and no one listens
to him. CXVII.
ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST.
Discipulus ille quem diligebat Jesus.
"The disciple whom Jesus loved, who also
leaned upon His breast at supper." Even were
the first designation not distinctive, but common,
the second cannot be so explained ; and since
they are here connected, it follows that quem
diligebat Jesus, is true of St. John in a peculiar
sense, not common to all — as indeed the definite
article everywhere seems to imply. Were the
•epithet self-concealing, St. John would have said,
" another disciple," or " one of those whom
Jesus loved." We can hardly doubt that amongst
other reasons, St. John's privilege of special close
ness to the Sacred Humanity was the reward ot
special chastity and purity of soul, as in the case
of the one hundred and forty-four thousand
virgins who follow the Lamb whithersoever He
goeth. Yet there are also good grounds for
thinking that in this case, as certainly in the case of
Lazarus, our Saviour makes His own, and thereby
sanctifies, the relation of human and natural friend
ship — one which is capable of indefinite elevation on
the one hand, or corruption on the other; and

ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST. 131
which, though in some respects less sacred and
divine in its nature than the relations consequent
on parental, filial, fraternal, or conjugal love ; yet
in point of its freedom and the purity of its founda
tion may often be a truer image of the Divine
passion for the human soul, or of that one love by
which the Three Divine Persons are knit together.
That our Saviour should have loved the twelve
equally is a preposterous supposition, quite adverse
to the whole doctrine of God's freedom in distribut
ing His graces. " Is thine eye evil because I am
good," i.e., Am I to complain because God is more
generous to others, and to forget that He has been
generous to me beyond all desert ? What He loves
in us are His own gifts and likenesses ; and these
He imparts alike in no two cases ; so that He loves
no two alike. It is only from an idea that fraternal
love is wholly extrinsic, that the unnatural and
unworkable notion could have arisen that Christian
perfection bids us regard all with strict equality of
affection. For indeed if, in each case, we love not our
neighbour at all, but God only of whom he is the
mere representative, the fetich, the arbitrary symbol,
then it is always one and the same act of love ; and
it is indifferent whether God bids us love a stock
or a stone, or a brute or a man. God wants us not
only to love Him, but also to love what He loves,
and for the same reason that He loves it ; to love
in sympathy with Him, as far as we can at all see
with His eyes. What He loves in each is His
own image, which indeed is common to all, in so
far as all have reasonable souls; and His own

132 ILLIBERAL JUDGMENTS.
likeness, in so far as many have supernatural grace
as well. But over and above this, He imparts
His image and likeness with endless diversity in
both orders, by natural and supernatural gifts. To
see God in others is to ascribe all that is good in
them to this Divine indwelling, which is more in
some, in others less. They are lovable because God
loves them and " has done great things for them ; "
more for some ; less for others ; much for all.
St. John was the apostle of love, because, beyond
others, he understood the love of God. It was his
to reveal the majesty and glory of the Eternal Word ;
and thus to find in His greatness a measure of His
meekness and lowly condescension, and of the force
of that love which could compel one so high to
stoop so low. Even the human beauty of Christ's
love perishes with a merely humanistic view of His
being. CXVIII.
ILLIBERAL JUDGMENTS.
Quid est homo, ut immaculatus sit ?
There is nothing more illiberal than the way in
winch we allow our likes and dislikes to be ruled
by the principle, Malum ex quocunque defectu — "Good,
implies every perfection ; bad, but a single defect;"
so that ten good points in a character are blotted out
of sight by a single fault, or even less than a fault.
We seem to take a man's goodness as a matter of
course, and no thanks to him ; as the mere negation
of blameworthiness. It may be partly that we
notice what is peculiar and rivet our attention on

GOD AT OUR MERCY. 133
it; whereas what we find in every one is too ordinary
to strike us ; just as the ordinary benefits and
blessings of daily life, in themselves very great, and
in number beyond reckoning, escape our observation
and elicit no gratitude. It is the function of the
best poetry and art to re-sensitize our attention, and
to teach us to observe the beauties of those ordinary
things and persons which are continually before our
irresponsive, use-worn gaze. It is the function of
charity to open our eyes to the image of God in
others ; to reveal them to us as they are in His
eyes, finite and faulty, needing like ourselves much
patient compassion ; and yet full of goodness, if not
in act, at least in capacity.
CXIX.
GOD AT OUR MERCY.
Factus sum sicut homo sine adjutorio.
The Infant Saviour at the breast of His Mother
or in the arms of St. Joseph tells us how God comes
to us in weakness; throws Himself upon our mercy;
makes Himself needy and dependent that our love
may have room to exercise itself in His regard. In
every grace which He offers us, He exposes His
honour to the insult of refusal ; in the Eucharist
and other sacraments, to profanation and sacrilege ;
in His Church and in His "little ones," to perse
cution, neglect, and contempt. He trusts Himself
into the hands of Judas, no less than into those of
Joseph.

134 CONDITIONS OF PRAYER.

CXX.

CONDITIONS OF PRAYER.

Nihil solliciti sitis, sed in omni oratione et obsecratione euro
gratiarum actione petitiones vestras innotescant apud Deum.
" Be anxious for nothing, but in all prayer
and entreaty, with thanksgiving, let your requests be
made known to God." Here are all the requisites
of successful prayer — " Ye ask and ye receive not,
because ye ask not aright." First, we are to ask
" without anxiety ; " not but that we are to care
about having what we ask for. We must want it
intensely, and the more the better ; else how can
we pray with fervour? The prayers that our
Saviour heard and blessed were like His own,
" strong crying and tears unto Him that was able
to save Him," in His agony and conflict with the
horror of death. It was no listless, half-hearted
cry that was uttered by the Syrophcenician woman ;
or by the blind man at Jericho; or by the Centurion;
or by the leper ; or by Mary and Martha. Anxiety
means fear as to the result. We are forbidden to
fear, when we have done all in our power, i.e., when
we have used all reasonable means ; and foremost
amongst them is strong, earnest prayer, by which we
draw down from Heaven rain to fertilize what we
have sown in the way of efforts, which else were
sown in vain. Even were our judgment at fault,
yet when this happens in good faith after our best
reasonable efforts, we have no ground for anxiety as
though such error had not happened with God's

CONDITIONS OF PRAYER. 135
permission, and could not be wrought into His
design for our good. Far from energetic effort and
importunate prayer betokening anxiety, it is rather
anxiety which unnerves, disheartens, and causes
apathy and diffidence in the long run. It is no
small faith that can go on praying in spite of
reiterated repulses ; that is lashed into energy by
opposition, instead of being discouraged. It is faith
of the credo quia impossibile type : hope, which hopes
for the hopeless, because it is hopeless. Prayer is
one of the engines by which the Kingdom of Heaven
is to be stormed. God loves the violence that storms
at Him and will take no refusal —
Fervent love
And lively hope with violence assail
The Kingdom of the Heavens, and overcome
The will of the Most High ; not in such sort
As man prevails o'er man, but conquers it
Because 'tis willing to be conquered — still
Though conquered, by its mercy conquering.1
The will to pray is always from God, and it is a
pledge of His willingness to hear if we but pray
aright — that is, with confidence and pertinacity.
Never yet has a prayer fallen to the ground that went
up from a desirous heart. It may be after many
days that the bread cast on the water returns ; but
in God's scheme there is no destruction of force ;
every good effort, every good wish is fruitful in
the event. Cum gratiarum actione — " With thanks
giving." This is the last condition for successful
impetration ; inseparable from hope and the sense
1 Cary's Dante, Par. xx.

136 LAZARUS RESUSCITATUS.
of dependence on God alone. To acknowledge that
all we have received in the past is from God, is to
proclaim that we look to Him alone for the future.
CXXI.
LAZARUS RESUSCITATUS.
Domine, si fuisses hie, frater meus non fuisset mortuus.
" Lord, hadst Thou been here, my brother had
not died." Here is the great lesson of hope. As
long as there was a spark of life, there were natural
reasons, however slight, for hoping that that spark
might be fanned to a flame ; and so our Saviour
lingers that this last spark might be extinguished,
nay, till putrefaction had set in, that " the glory of
God might be revealed," that He, and He alone,
might be manifest as the Resurrection and the Life.
" Now Jesus loved Mary and Martha ; " and so, like
a true lover, He tries their hope and confidence to
the very extreme.
CXXII.
CONSERVATION OF SPIRITUAL ENERGY.
Mitte panem tuum super transeuntes aquas, quia post tempora
multa invenies ilium.
" Cast thy bread upon the water, and after many
days thou shalt find it," i.e., alms wasted on the
most worthless and undeserving, will in the end
return with interest into the bosom of the giver,
" good measure, pressed down, shaken together and
running over." There is no waste of matter or
force in physical Nature, except to our seeming ; all
is collected up again to the minutest fragment and

CONSERVATION OF SPIRITUAL ENERGY. 137
stored away in her treasury for future use. So in
God's supernatural or moral Providence no good
desire was ever in vain or fruitless. It is like the
Divine Word which shall not return empty, but
shall accomplish all whereunto it was sent. If our
prayers or well-intended efforts seem misdirected
and fruitless in the present ; yet their force is
indestructible, and after many days the wasted bread
shall be recovered again. If it delay, wait for it,
for surely it shall come, and will not tarry.
The only remedy to the pessimism engendered,
not by the wickedness and weakness of the world,
but by the present disappointing results of a scheme
of salvation professing to be divine, and by the
unsatisfactoriness of a solution purporting to be
from God, is to be found in this virtue of expectant
hope. The bright side of Christianity is all in the
future ; its dark phase in the present. Expecto
resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam futuri saculi.
Redemption and light is in fieri, not in facto esse —
only in process of becoming. We are in this respect,
like the Old Testament saints, " saluting the promises
from afar." Our eyes have seen the day-star rising
in the east, " setting forth as a bridegroom from
his chamber;" but He has yet to run His course,
before all. His enemies shall be under His feet. There
is really no human or natural basis for even a
modified optimism ; nothing but a Credo quia
impossibile. Hope is the light that shines in the
tearful eyes of the saints ; like the first glimmer of
dawn reflected in eyes that " watch for the
morning." Deus, Deus meus, ad te de luce vigilo.

I38 MARY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT.
CXXIII.
MARY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT.
Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine.
As in the beginning it was the Spirit that brooded
over the abyss, and brought form out of the form
less, order from confusion, life from death, light from
darkness ; so in the beginning of the new heaven
and earth, the same Spirit — Digitus Paternce dexterce
— " Finger of the Father's right hand," was instru
mental in realizing the Incarnate Word conceived and
uttered by the Eternal Father : Dixitque Deus : Fiat
Lux, et facta est Lux — "God said : Let there be Light,
and Light was." And as It began, so It continues
to develope the seed sown, " which is the Word of
God ; " and to work out day by day, and in each
single soul, the Mystic Christ, i.e., Christ and the
Church, " unto the stature of the perfect man." To
judge of this new creation, we need to go forward to
the end and look back upon it with God's eyes :
"Viditque Deus cuncta qua fecerat ; et erant valde bona.
Igitur perfecti sunt cceli et terra et omnis ornatus eorum
— " And God saw all that He had made ; and it was
very good. And so the heavens and the earth and
all their furniture were perfected." In the finished
Christ the labour of the Holy Spirit will come to an
end. " The Spirit of God shall come to rest upon
Him." Of that finished work it is said, " This is My
beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." " I saw
the heavens opened and the Spirit of God in the
form of a Dove descending and resting upon Him,'"

GOD MADE MAN. 139

i.e., as a dove in its finished nest. "And God
rested the seventh day from all His labour that He
had wrought."
Ex Maria Virgine. As Mary was co-principle
with the Holy Spirit "in the beginning" of the New
Creation, so also is she in the process of its evolution
and its consummation. Her office throughout is the
same: ancilla Domini — " God's handmaiden." The
Holy Ghost is ever coming upon her, and the power
of the Highest overshadowing her, and that Holy
Thing which is called the Son of God, the Mystic
Christ, being born of her. She is mother and the
nurse of redeemed humanity ; she is ever standing
with helpless man in her arms, and her foot upon the
serpent's head ; Michael and his angels fighting for
the " Woman and her Child," against the dragon
and his angels.
CXXIV.
GOD MADE MAN.
Et Homo factus est.
Here we adore the humility of God, the mystery
of the Divine descent, which is measured by its
terms whence and whither. The term whence —
the majesty of God — is lost in the infinite heights
beyond the furthest travel of our thought ; the
term whither reveals new depths the more it is
investigated. Quid est homo quod memor es ejus aut
filius hominis quoniam apponis erga eum cor tuum
— "What is man that Thou shouldst remember
him, or the Son of Man that Thou shouldst
set Thy Heart on Him ? " To this we may seek

140 SEEING IS BELIEVING.
an answer by the consideration of St. Ignatius in
his " Exercise on our own sins," i.e., by considering
the physical insignificance of any man compared
with the whole race, and with the world he dwells
in, which is daily dwarfed by widening views of the
material universe. But still more striking is the
deepening knowledge of human weakness and
wickedness, of what man can be and often is. That
God should have allied Himself with something so
detestable and loathsome, and should have found
a jewel in such mire, gives an ever-growing meaning
to the genuflection we make at Homo factus est.
cxxv.
SEEING IS BELIEVING.
Affer manum tuam et mitte in latus meum, et noli esse incredulus.
" Reach hither thy hand and thrust it into My
side, and be not faithless but believing." Modica
fidei quare dubitasti ? Why do you doubt My love,
My wisdom, My power ? Is it because, unless you
see signs and wonders, you think that My arm is
shortened ? and unless you see the solution of every
problem, the exit of every event, you think that
My devices are exhausted ? or unless you actually
behold and touch the wound love has inflicted on
Me, you deem that My love is spent and cooled ?
" Reach hither thy hand and thrust it into My side,
and be not faithless but believing." Palpate et videte
—" Handle Me and see."

WORDLESS PRAYERS. 141

CXXVI.
WORDLESS PRAYERS.
Desiderium pauperum exaudivit Dominus, praeparationem cordis
eorum exaudivit auris tua.
"The Lord has heard the desire of the poor;
Thine ear has caught what his heart was making
ready to say." We are anxious in praying to find
words adequate and fitted to our thoughts and
desires ; but how needlessly ! This is an anthro
pomorphic fallacy which figures God as needing
information. True, He may require some exter-
nation or utterance, for our sakes. Yet what matters
it whether the words be those of the Pater and
Ave; or a striking of the breast, or any act, even
internal, which says, "Lord, Thou knowest my
desire, and my groaning is not hid from Thee " ?
He hears our very wish, the very state of a ready
heart : Cui omne cor patet et omnis voluntas loquitur
— " For to Him every heart lies open, every wish is
eloquent ; " — even our most deeply buried, barely
subconscious, or interpretative intentions.
CXXVII.
HOLY INNOCENTS.
Princeps pacis.
"The Prince of peace." He comes to send, not
peace, but a sword — a sword for Rachael's heart,
for His own Mother's heart ; a sword for the
helpless and innocent ; to break many a heart, that
the thoughts of many a heart may be revealed.

142 ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY.
Peace therefore is the issue, or last event ; but
strife is the road to it. There are those who
calumniate our Lord as indifferent to all this heart
breaking which salvation involves from the neces
sity of the case. Comprehending the measureless
glory and joy to come, He must be — some would
think — insensible to sorrows which, compared with
that joy, are infinitesimal. But compared with
our littleness and weakness, He knows that they
are overwhelming and crushing. Sicut pater castigat
— " He chastises as a Father." He does not
afflict us willingly ; what He could spare us, He has
spared us, and has borne it Himself; the slight
remainder that we must bear, afflicts Him more
than it afflicts us. " If one member suffers, all the
other members suffer with it," but most of all, the
Head. He who gives us our tenderest feelings,
feels more tenderly for them and with them, than
any fellow-mortal, however sympathetic. He can
console and compensate as none other; nor is any
pain so slight, not even that of the humblest sentient
creature that crawls upon the earth, that He should
be indifferent to it. CXXVIII.
ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY.
Reddite quae Caesaris sunt Caesari, et quae sunt Dei, Deo.
In Henry II. we have a good example of how the
lust of power can lead a man from God to the love of
riches and honours ; thence to the stiffness and in
flexibility of pride; and thence to all sin, even
sacrilegious murder. Also, we may notice how secular

ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY. 143
governments are always trying to make the Church
their tool ; to subject her to their own ends as supple
mentary to the police ; forgetting that her power
over men, which they desire to utilize, falls with her
independence of temporal control. This conflict is
carried on no less in the microcosm, the little world
of our soul, where nature first endeavours craftily to
make such concordats with the spirit as to bring it
gradually into complete subordination, and eventually
to destroy it. But here, too, nature overreaches itself.
Like a Becket, our sense of our other-world dignity
as Christians should make us firm and even in
dignant against the encroachments of the secular
power, rights of investiture, royal "placets," and
the rest ; ready to resist usque ad sanguinem, every
curtailment of " the liberty of the sons of God,"
with a non possumus, or a non serviam, or a Reddite
Casari qua sunt Casaris, et qua Dei sunt Deo —
" Caesar's to Caesar, and God's to God." Also,
opposed to the growth of pride and stiff-necked in
flexibility of Henry, we have the process of gradual
humiliation in a Becket, who, under God's chastise
ment, passes from the loss of honour and riches,
to disillusionment, and contempt of the same ; and
so to humility and perfect flexibility in the hands
of God ; and thence to the very highest sacrifice of
heroic virtue.

144 EARTH'S RENEWAL.

CXXIX.
earth's renewal.
Rorate cceli desuper, et nubes pluant justum : aperiatur terra et
germinet Salvatorem.
" Shed your dews from above, O ye heavens^
and let the clouds rain down the Just One ; let the
earth break and the Saviour bud forth." Heaven
and earth co-operate in the birth of the New Spring;
the Spirit coming down like the dew upon Mary,
a daughter of earth, from whose fertilized womb
appears the first harbinger of the world's renewal,
"as a tender plant and as a root out of the dry
ground." Emitte Spiritual tuum et creabuntur, et
renovabis faciem terra — "Send forth Thy Spirit and
they shall be created, and Thou shalt renew the face
of the earth." Jam hiems iransiit — already the winter
is past, the winter of earth's sin and darkness and
frosty hardness ; the dead, stubborn, fruitless soil is
loosened and quickened by the soft, warm rain; "the
fig-tree hath put forth her blossoms, and the voice
of the turtle-dove is heard in the land." The winter
was past in that moment when the earth opened and
the Saviour budded forth ; but the spring had only
begun, and summer was yet in the distance ; and
autumn, with its harvest-homes and golden store,
still further off. But from dawn to sunset, from the
beginning to the fulness of the renewal, there are
the same two co-operant principles of life — the dew
from heaven and the fruitful earth ; the Spirit and
fhe Virgin-Mother of Divine grace, — the second Eve,

EARTH'S RENEWAL. 145
Mother of all living. In every act of sanctification,
whether it be first conversion, or increase of grace,
Christ is born again of Mary and the Spirit, i.e.,
His image and likeness, how distant and defective
soever, is multiplied in those to whom He has given
" power to become the sons of God : " Ejus divini-
tatis esse consortes qui humanitatis nostra fieri dignatus
tst particeps — " To be consorts of His Godhead who
deigned to be a sharer of our manhood." And SO'
that first "tender shoot" of salvation sends forth
from its root new fibres, and spreads secretly
underground, till the whole face of the earth is
renewed and covered with what seems to surface-
sight a multitude of single growths, but what pene
trating faith knows to be " one body and one
spirit," one living, many-branched whole, one mystic
Christ, the fruit of Mary's womb.
Rorate cceli desuper — " Shed your dew from on
high, O heavens." The Divinity rests upon the
Sacred Humanity, as the dew upon the leaves and in
the flower-cups ; not mingled with it, nor absorbed,
yet giving it a glory and brilliancy which is not its
own, but from on high, — Desuper. There alone
does it rest, firmly and for ever, in such sort that
the jewels and their setting are but one Holy Thing
(illud Sanctum quod ex te nascetur). On all others the
diamond fringe hangs trembling — a rude touch, and
ichabod — •" the glory is departed."

146 FEAR NOT.

CXXX.
FEAR NOT.
Et timuerunt timore magno.
" And they (the Shepherds) were sore afraid."
Such is the natural effect on man of any revelation
of an unknown, uncertain power, until he has
received assurance that its possessor is well-disposed
towards him, and will use it for his help and not
for his hurt. Then fear gives way to confidence.
Before the Incarnation had made God's love visible
and tangible, men would not, perhaps could not,
believe in it, or trust Him. If they trembled and
were sore afraid at the brightness of His angels,
much less could they endure His very face and
presence, and live. " Speak thou unto us ; but let
not the Lord speak to us, lest we die." But now,
it is not Moses, but God Himself who speaks to us
with human words and broken utterances ; who
touches us with a human hand ; upon whose human
face our eyes may rest undazzled. Quod fuit ab
initio; quod audivimus ; quod vidimus oculis nostris,
quod perspeximus et manus nostra contrectaverunt de
Verbo Vita — " We have seen ; we have heard ; we
have handled That which was from the beginning
—The Word of Life."
" Fear not, for behold, I bring you glad tidings."
This was the new evangel, that the dispensation
of fear should give place to that of love, that man
should be fearless not only before the angels, but
before the God and King of Angels, in whose sight

FEAR NOT. 147

the angels tremble and veil their faces. Not that
they should think less of the power and majesty of
¦God, but that they should have an irresistible assur
ance that that power is for their help and not for
their hurt ; that it is wielded by mercy and love ;
that His thoughts towards us are not of affliction
but of peace.
" This shall be a sign." This is the symbol of
the Gospel spirit that banishes fear or purifies it
into reverential love and chaste familiarity. "You
shall find the Babe," for He comes not in mature
manhood as the first Adam, but as one born of
woman, in the humiliation of infancy, dependent
on others for food, shelter, clothing, and protection
— He who " feeds the young ravens which cry unto
Him " and " shelters us under the shadow of His
wing," and " clothes the grass of the field," and " is
the protector of all them that call upon Him." This
He suffers, that He may become one of us in every
thing, and eliminate every line of separation, sin
only excepted, which could hinder our free and
ready access to our Emmanuel (i.e., God, one of
ourselves) — "wrapped in swaddling-clothes," i.e.,
tied hand and foot, so as to be able neither to fight
nor to flee ; " entirely at the mercy of His creatures.
"" Laid in a manger," i.e., passive, to be taken and
put -here or there, "like a dead body or an old
man's staff." "In a manger;" in that which by
its nature was never intended, and could never be
fitted to be the resting-place of the " Son of Man ; "
but " not having where to lay His Head," He must
perforce seek shelter in our rough hearts rather than

148 FEAR NOT.

be altogether unloved and left out in the cold. If
there is nothing else in that place, there is at least
room for Him.
Keble notices that the angel choirs were silent
till they heard the sign, and then it was that their
praises broke out like a pent-up flood :
But when they heard the sign where Christ should be
In sudden light they shone and heavenly harmony,
i.e., it is the revelation of "omnipotence in bonds; "
of the tyranny of infinite love over infinite majesty,
that banishes fear and gives birth to peace on earth,
wherein and whence God is glorified in the heights.
" Fear not, for . . . there is born to you this day
a Saviour" and not a Judge, i.e., a Judge reluctantly
and in the last extremity ; a Saviour primarily and
by preference ; " longsuffering and slow to anger;"
putting off the evil day, age after age ; hoping against
hope that man may turn to Him ; one who, in a
sense, mourns over loved lost souls for ever and
ever. " O Absalom, my son, my son ; would God
that I had died for thee," and " How often would
I have gathered thee under My wing and thou
wouldst not," and "O that thou hadst known and
in this thy day, the things of thy peace." It is in
the Eucharist that this mystery of condescension
culminates — the Babe, wrapped in swaddling-clothes*
laid in a manger. Hoc erit signum vobis. Here is the
sign of God's good-will that banishes fear.

CONTROVERSY. 149

CXXXI.
CONTROVERSY.
Fortis ut mors, dilectio.
" Love as invincible as death." Diligite inimicos
¦vestros — " Love your enemies." The shortest road to
victory over the enemies of God is that of personal
kindness ; and as regards their opinions, a sympathy
not of approbation, but of comprehension ; a glad
insistence on points of agreement, a calm steadfast
ness against error — free from all heat, bitterness, and
personal estrangement. Rationes modeste ajferantur eo
Miimo ut suus veritati sit locus non ut in ea re superiores
-videantur — " Let the reasons be adduced quietly with
a mind to truth, and not to victory ; " says St. Ignatius
Loyola. Nothing, could be further removed from the
narrow, sectarian, unchristian spirit of controversy,
such as disgraces the pages of many Church-papers,
periodicals, controversial tracts and treatises. Nescitis
cujus spiritus estis — " Ye know not whose school ye are
of," Christ would say to such as would bid fire
come down from heaven to destroy their enemies,
and the enemies of God. He who had come " not
to destroy men's souls, but to save them," bade
another fire come down upon His enemies, the
pentecostal fire, which He came to send upon earth,
and was straitened till it was kindled; that love which
even the heathen Akbar saw to be " the net of truth
and the noose of God." And was not Allah called
In old Iran, the Sun of Love. And Love
The net of Truth?

150 HOPE.
CXXXII. hope.
Etiamsi Occident me in ipso sperabo.
Perhaps in the rapid narration of Job's many
afflictions we are apt to miss the lesson of his
protracted longsuffering, and to regard his successive
blows collectively as one. We should space them
out, and consider how, after the first, he gradually
reconciled himself to God's will, and was full of
confidence that He who had afflicted would presently
heal and console him ; and lo ! instead of consola
tion, comes another blow harder and seemingly less
deserved than the first. Will he still hope ? will he
still say to his friends, " Wait, and see the deliver
ance of God " ? And so although, time after time, his
hopes of speedy deliverance are frustrated, we find
him as hopeful as ever, even though death, which
to the Oriental mind is the culmination of evil, stares
him in the face. "Though He slay me," i.e., though
He cut off my last hope, "yet will I hope in Him,'"
— hoping, because it is hopeless.
CXXXIII.
HELL, A MYSTERY.
Justice, the founder of my fabric moved ;
To rear me was the task of Power divine,
Supremest Wisdom and primeval Love.1
Power, Wisdom, and Love are appropriated to
the Three Divine Persons, and yet, taken essentially,
1 Cary's Dante, Hell, iii.

HELL, A MYSTERY. i5t
are almost integrating parts of our notion of perfec
tion. Power alone : or Wisdom alone, or Love
alone is wanting and worthless. Wisdom with
Power, but without Love, were attributes of a Demon.
Love with Power and without Wisdom, were futile
and mischievous ; Love and Wisdom without Power,
were ineffectual and helpless. May we say that the
Three Divine Persons, or personal and relative
perfections, are in some analogous way very com
plementary one of another ; or rather, must we not
say so ? Hell, as Dante boldly affirms, is a monument
not only of the power and the wisdom but of the
love of God, i.e., of that same Spirit which brought
day out of darkness, and order out of ruin and
confusion. Giustizia mosse 'I mio alto fattore, he says :
justice was the motive, iniquity the occasion ; but
given the occasion, not only justice, but wisdom
and love demanded it. We must not regard Hell
as an arbitrary, but as a strictly necessary conse
quence of sin ; or, at the most, determined in some
way by the free-will of God, as to the particular
mode of punishment. To understand the justice,
wisdom, or love, which made Hell, is most certainly
beyond our present ken. To our limited view, Hell,
as we conceive it, may seem unjust, unwise, un
loving; and attempts to justify it from reason,
valid or invalid, may sometimes only irritate and
disgust us. There is a certain presumption in the
notion of any man seeing in his fellow-sinner such
an abyss of iniquity, as could demand eternal and
immeasurable torments ; nor do I envy the man,
intellectually or morally, who could find repose in

15? HELL, A MYSTERY.
any rationalistic explanation of so great a mystery.
Here, if anywhere, we must fall back upon the
very notion of faith, as an heroic clinging to God
in spite of crushing difficulties ; in spite of all that
may appear most contrary to our rooted conviction
as to His goodness and mercy. It is just the way
we ourselves should try the faith of one to whom we
had already given abundant proof of our good-will ;
or as, for example, God tried the faith of the
Israelites in the desert time after time — hiding
Himself from them for a moment, to see if perchance
even yet they had learnt to trust Him. "He who
made the eye, shall He Himself not see ? " and He
that made the human heart, and bore a human
heart, with all its tenderness and compassion, and
fierce indignation against cruel injustice, shall He
not be fair, and just, and kind, and tender ? He
who makes my very soul revolt against my own
silly understanding of the doctrine of Hell and
predestiny ; shall He not prove true, and just, and
wise, and loving, beyond my wildest dreams of
goodness ? Eventually I shall surely see how all
that was revealed was true ; but so far short of the
whole truth as to make my present judgment on it
worthless and vain. I am content therefore to wait
patiently and trustfully as for the answer to a
riddle, which now puzzles me hopelessly because I
am on the wrong track for its solution ; the more I
reason, the faster I stick in the mire. When I hear
the answer I shall laugh and say, " Of course !
How could it be otherwise ? "

ETERNITY OF HELL. 153
But soon as in this Heaven his doubting eyes
Were opened, Gregory at his error smiled.1
We should insist much on the latitude of Hell
and its " many mansions." Hell, in the case of
unbaptized infants, means the privation of a super
natural bliss which the soul never dreamt of, and in
some sense does not care about or miss. For many
doubtless it means much more ; but as to these, it
is as certain that Hell involves neither cruelty nor
injustice, as that there is a Hell. If Hell, as I
conceive it, is cruel or unjust, it is as certain as
faith that I misconceive it.
CXXXIV.
ETERNITY OF HELL.
Tanquam vas figuli confringentur.
When the potter casts aside some fair piece of
his handiwork as flawed and worthless, it falls to
the ground, and is shattered in an instant. In that
same instant its destruction is completed and
perfect ; nor is it more destroyed for that its frag
ments lie there a year or a century, or an eternity.
One vessel indeed may be flung aside with more
passionate disdain and may be more completely
shattered than another; but in regard to the
irreparability and finality of their doom all are
alike.2 We necessarily but falsely imagine eternity
1 Cary's Dante, Par. xxviii.
2 " Duratio pcenas respondet durationi culpas, non quidem ex
parte actus, sed ex parte maculae, qua durante manet reatus poenae;
sed acerbitas poena? respondet gravitati culpae. Culpa autem quae

154 ETERNITY OF HELL.
as time without end ; whereas it is not more false
to compare it to an indivisible second. When
we leave the material order, we pass into a
spiritual and timeless world, and the state in which
we are then found is of its own nature final and
unchanging; it is the end of a process, of our
spiritual and moral fieri or evolution. It is in the
state itself, and not in its duration, that the results
of that process are summed up. It is in the kind
and intensity of the pain, and not in its length
that we are to look for the adjustment between
delict and penalty. (So Aquinas, Summa, I. -II. 87,
artt. 3, 4.) The work of retribution is as complete
in the first instant as after the lapse of ages. For
in truth, there no first instant, no lapse of ages in
the " now " of eternity ; in that duration which is
said to be tota simul. Else, as has been objected,
the justice of God would be eternally unsatisfied ;
the balance of the moral order never set right.
The impossibility of a redemption from Hell
would doubtless be evident to us did we understand
what is meant by man's final state, that, namely,
in which the process of his moral evolution ends,
the completion of that dictio or self-utterance to
which his spiritual life may be compared ; and
which when once said, can never be unsaid or
revoked.est irreparabilis de se habet quod perpetuo duret ; et ideo debetur ei
poena aeterna, Non autem ex parte conversionis habet infinitatem,
et ideo non debetur ei ex hac parte poena infinita secundum quan-
titatem." (Aquinas, Sum. I.-II. 87. 4. ad. 3.)

THE FEAR OF HELL. 155

cxxxv.
THE FEAR OF HELL.
Perfecta caritas foras mittit timorem.
Perfect love casts out fear ; but while love is yet
a tender sickly plant growing to maturity, it needs
the prop of fear. And even though the support of
fear is no longer needed when love is self-staying,
yet in the scorching noon of temptation, love may
flag and grow weary in well-doing, and drooping
earthward may be saved from destruction by fear.
Normally the fear of God is the beginning of
wisdom, i.e., of perfect love. It is a prudent and
supernatural self-regard which first wakes the soul
to a sense of its own misery ; which urges it to arise
from its state of stagnation, and which brings it at
last to the embrace of its Father, and to a love
which is altogether pure and " extra-regarding."
St. Augustine likens this self-regarding fear to the
needle which enters the texture, not to remain itself,
but to draw the thread after it. Yet in truth this simi
litude is defective ; for though when love is perfect
and mature it needs not to be supplemented by fear,
yet fear remains as it were in abeyance and inopera
tive, though ready to operate if love should grow
cold. It is then no longer called servile or slavish ;
so that perfect love casts out, not fear indeed, but
the servility of fear. For indeed it cannot but be
that the saints who ponder most deeply the great
ness and goodness and justice of God, should be
most possessed by a sense of the terrors of His

156 THE FEAR OF HELL.
punishments ; whereas the fearlessness of hardened
sinners is notorious. But where such hardness has
not yet supervened, even a dim-sighted, feeble fear
will stir the sinner to seek safety in obedience to
God's law, whose first and sovereign precept' is love ;
and thus it is that it draws love after it. The fear
that we now speak of has for its object, not precisely
the loss of God, which is indeed the supreme calamity
of the soul from a self-regarding point of view ; but
rather the positive pains consequent on, and con
nected with such loss. Suffering in any faculty or
appetite is caused not by the absence of its proper
perfecting object, but by the presence of one which
is violent and contrary to its nature and inclination ;
which is corruptive of it. Difficult as it is to
determine the mode of that punishment which is
called " eternal death," we must hold firmly that the
unchanging final state of the soul which dies in
actual sin is one of violence ; and that as each faculty
has its own proper repugnant or corruptive ; so the
whole soul. The prospect of losing God is a
deterrent only for those who love God, and in
proportion to their love. As a sanction it is
weakest where it is most needed. Therefore it is in
the positive pains of eternity that a sanction is
provided for the many, i.e., for average, untaught
human nature whose task of getting to love God is
yet far from accomplished, A self-regarding dread
of Hell is therefore a great outwork and safeguard
of Divine love wherever it is kindled ; and where
love it is extinct, it is the normal prerequisite of its
recovery. Fear is a thing, therefore, to foster

WHOM TO FEAR. 157

continually ; and the absence of which points to a
dimness of faith and a shallowness of judgment not
compatible with solid devotion.
CXXXVI.
WHOM TO FEAR.
Timete eum, qui potest et animam et corpus perdere in gehennam.
In weighing the words of our Saviour relative to
eternal punishment, we must remember that they
are words of God Himself, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite
Love and Mercy, Infinite Power, who created man
for unspeakable bliss, and yet who created Hell " for
the devil and his angels " and for all their adherents.
They are the words of the " Friend of publicans and
sinners," " meek and lowly of heart ; " who forgave
the Magdalene, the adulteress, the penitent thief; of
one so moderate, calm, temperate in all His state
ment ; so devoid of rhetorical flourish and exaggera
tion. They are the words of Him who was made
Man and died on the Cross to save us from Hell.
Ad quem ibimus? — "To whom shall we go," save to
Him who has the words of eternal life and the
words of eternal death ? And what does He say ?
" I say to you, My friends ; be not afraid of them
that kill the body, and after that, have no more that
they can do ; but I will show you whom you shall fear.
Fear ye Him who, after He hath killed, hath power
to cast into Hell. Yea, I say to you, fear Him."1
And elsewhere : " Rather, fear Him who can destroy
both body and soul in Hell."2 Here we notice that
1 St. Luke xii. 4. « St. Matt. x. 28.

158 WHOM TO FEAR.

He enjoins fear of Hell as an urgent duty, and
enforces His utterance by three-fold repetition; that
He urges this duty on His friends, those who are in
His grace and love, whose love has cast out the
servility of fear, but not its substance ; that He bids
them regard all sufferings and privations, and the
torments of martyrdom as not worth considering in
comparison with the pains of Hell ; that not only
the soul, but the body also, is to enter into a violent
unchanging state of destruction or corruption called
" everlasting death." Elsewhere we learn, as the
just enter into unchanging life, light, and perfection,
so the wicked enter into "everlasting fire prepared
for the devil and his angels." The fire spoken of
is some destructive agency which acts on spiritual
beings as the fire we are familiar with does upon
the substance of the body — in some analogous way,
dissolvent and disruptive.
In St. Matt. ix. 42 — 47, our Saviour says that we
are to cut off the right hand or foot, to pluck out the
right eye, rather than they should cause us to stumble
into Hell, where the worm dieth not and the fire is
not quenched. The "right hand" stands for that
which is our means of work and subsistence and
defence ; our fortune, ability, influence, credit, occu
pation, trade. If it be an occasion of sin, we are to
"cut it off" — a sudden, painful process, needing
heroic courage — and to " cast it from us " — an ener
getic and complete severance, no paltering delays,
lingering regrets, backward glancings. And why?
" It is profitable for thee " — an appeal to our
supernatural self-regard ; as when He says : " What

WHOM TO FEAR. 159

does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and
lose his own soul ? " And what makes it a profitable
sacrifice, a good bargain, to go through life maimed,
helpless, beggared ? Hell-fire, " where the worm
dieth not and the fire is not quenched ; " where the
state of absolute corruption of soul and body is final,
unchanging, unprogressive. And similarly as to the
right foot. Better to be lamed in the race of life ;
to be outstripped and forgotten in the rush of
competition, than stumble into that abyss of evil —
the only absolute misfortune. And better, finally, to
pluck out the right eye ; that which is dearest to our
tenderest affections, dearer than life itself, father or
mother, or son or daughter, or lover or friend, rather
than that it should cause us to see amiss and to turn
aside from the straight path that leads to life eternal.
" He that loves father or mother more than Me is
not worthy of Me."
" This is a hard saying. Who can bear it ? "
Many of His disciples hearing it go back and walk
with Him no more. From the beginning it has
ever been so. Disbelief in Hell was the first heresy :
" Ye shall not surely die." At all times it is the
policy of the spirit of error to divorce the sense of
God's mercy, from the sense of His justice, and to
present as incompatible, what are but two aspects
of one and the same Infinite Love. That they are
so, we cannot see, but we can believe ; and we can
see why we cannot see, and why we can believe.
" Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the
words of eternal life."

160 UNCLOUDED SIGHT.
CXXXVII.
UNCLOUDED SIGHT.
Si oculus tuus fuerit simplex, totum corpus tuum lucidum erit.
" If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be
full of light." The "conscience argument " like
its ally, the " sesthetic argument " for Catholicity,
appeals only to those whose sense of right and
moral beauty is clear. If I find a key that fits an
infinitely complicated lock, I cannot in prudence
doubt that it is (directly or indirectly) the work of
the locksmith. Catholicity is the key that fits in thus
exactly with the complicated wards of the highly
developed conscience and moral sense, and that
opens out the secrets of the human heart. It is
therefore evidently from Him who makes and
perfects the conscience and the heart. But when
the still, clear waters of the lake become turbid and
ruffled ; when the heart is full of bitterness, rancour,
or pride, weighed earthwards, tempted, depressed ;-
then our sight is clouded to the truth ; Christ no
longer speaks clearly to us, nor is there remedy save
in the prudence which tells us to wait patiently till
the day break and the shadows flee away. Experi
ence teaches us at least to recognize our transitory
states as such ; to distinguish the normal from the
abnormal, the healthy from the morbid.

OUR GRIEVANCES. 161

CXXXVIII.
OUR GRIEVANCES.
Intra tua vulnera absconde me.
" Within Thy Wounds hide me." The cure for
self-concentration and all morbid dwelling on our
own wounds, our own grievances, injuries, sorrows,
temptations, scruples, is to fly from ourselves and
hide away in the wounds of Christ's Mystical Body;
to concentrate all on the sorrows, wrongs, and trials
of others, to minister to them, pouring in oil and
wine. Thus losing ourselves we shall find ourselves,
et sanitas tua citius orietur — and we shall be healed
the sooner; for the more we dwell upon His
wounds, the more He will dwell upon ours.
CXXXIX.
MAN-WORSHIP.
Illic (in cedris Libani) passeres nidificabunt. Montes excelsr
cervis. "In the cedars of Lebanon the sparrows shall
nest." " The very finest tree in the whole forest,
with the straightest stem, and the strongest arms,
and the thickest foliage, wherein you choose to-
build . . . may be marked, for what you know, and
may be down with a crash erelong."1 A warning
against giving to the greatest saints, lights, and
pillars of the Church that blind confidence and
implicit faith of which God is so jealous. It is the
error of little and weak souls (passeres) to fly to
1 Vanity Fair.
L

1 62 NATURAL KINDNESS.
the cedar instead of to the mountain. " I saw
Lucifer as lightning fall from Heaven." " How art
thou fallen, O Lucifer, son of the morning." Melius
est confidere in Domino quam sperare in principibus —
" Better to trust in God than to trust in princes " —
and therefore the stronger and wiser souls take
refuge in the Rock alone, nor are they surprised,
however grieved, at the crash of the cedar, knowing
how its strong heart can be secretly rotted away by
pride, while its outward seeming is unchanged.
CXL.
NATURAL KINDNESS.
Domine, quando te vidimus esurientem ?
" Lord, when saw we Thee hungry, and fed
Thee ? " The just seem to have been as unconscious
as the unjust, of the identification of Christ with the
needy. If they had seen Christ in the person of
the poor, they would not ask, " When saw we
Thee ? " It is as much a revelation to them as it
was to Saul when he heard the words : " Why
persecutest thou Me ? . . . I am Jesus, whom thou
persecutest." They acted from what some would
contemptuously call " natural motives " of kindli
ness and human sympathy; even as Abraham
when he "entertained angels unawares," and not as
angels. Do we forget that natural kindness is a
God-given instinct ; that it is God within us crying
out to us, and to whom we may either hearken or
turn a deaf ear ? Perhaps our best and purest acts
are those we do most directly, most instinctively,

CHANGEABLENESS. 163
with least self-consciousness and self-praise. Whence
comes this devil's doctrine which gives us a God of
nature, and a God of grace at enmity with one
another ? Many millions who have never heard the
name of Christ, will hear : " I was hungry and you
fed Me ; " and they will say : " Who art Thou,
Lord ? " and He will say, " I am Jesus."
CXLI.
CHANGEABLENESS.
Charitas nunquam excidit.
" Love never falls away." Fickleness and in
constancy is a defect of will, and supposes an
unchanged judgment as to the facts. It is the shilly
shallying disposition which makes one incapable
of decision, or of adhesion to decisions once made.
But if our knowledge progresses, our resolutions
and affections may reasonably be modified in
accordance with them without our incurring a
charge of inconstancy. Thus, when we are young,
and our intellectual horizon is altering every day,
it is rational to expect frequent changes in our
affections and tastes. We outgrow those whom
perhaps once we revered and looked up to and
admired; we come to comprehend, and then to
transcend them ; and though we love them still, it
is rather for what they were to us, than for what
they are to us. This is not inconstancy, but pro
gress. Here and there, there may be one who so
transcends us, as ever to reveal new aspects and
depths of mind and character, and who improves

164 MERCY AND TRUTH.
indefinitely on acquaintance. Quis est Me, et lauda-
bimus eum ? If it is not so with our Saviour, it is
because we do not study Him more and more, but
try vainly to subsist our mature affections on the
imperfect and crude idea of our childhood or youth.
The idea or aspect of Christ which fires our love
to-day, will not appeal to our maturer mind of a
year or even a month hence. There is not, and
ought not to be an end of our education in this
matter; for we have come into this world for no
other work than to learn how to know and praise
God. CXLII.
MERCY AND TRUTH.
Misericordia et Veritas obviaverunt sibi.
" Mercy and truth have met together," that is,
they met together in our Saviour ; and in us, so far
as we are like-minded with Him. In us sinners
truth, pure and unadulterated, is often hostile to
mercy and tenderness ; for the simple truth is not
always the whole truth, and a truth that is half the
truth, is often the blackest of lies. To tell out our
measure of the truth would many a tims be treason
against charity. Also, mercy at times may be
hostile to truth ; for there is a blind, lying, pseudo-
charity, too weak to bear the truth, and therefore
compelled to blink it ; too narrow to love, in spite
of defects and stains, and therefore ready to lie to
itself and to others. It is only in their highest
perfection, in their production or expansion to
infinity, that they meet and coincide. The whole

JUSTICE AND PEACE. 165
" truth as it is in Christ," includes all the hidden
motives ; the excuses of blindness, surprise, weak
ness, imperfect consent ; the subsequent sorrow.
It also throws back the light on us who judge ; bids
us look at ourselves, our need of great mercy, and
makes us cast down the stone with a neque ego te
condemnabo — " Neither do I condemn thee." And
again, perfect pity and mercy is that which can pity
even when there is no excuse ; which can take a
man at his average, and love him for any little
percentage of good there is about him, and still
more, for the good and happiness he is yet capable
of. Mercy, in Christ the Saviour, has met Truth
in Christ the Judge ; for Truth in its fulness is the
friend of Mercy. CXLIII.
JUSTICE AND PEACE.
Justitia et pax osculatas sunt.
"Justice and peace have kissed one another."
To embrace is more than to meet. It is a sign of
absence and estrangement ended, or of broken
friendship restored. Justice bids us seek our due,
and render to others theirs ; an eye for an eye, a
tooth for a tooth, quid pro quo. Justice, untempered
and supreme, is fatal to peace. Peace, if dishonour
able, the peace of the wicked, which is no peace, is
fatal to justice. It was in the Incarnation and
Redemption that God's wisdom devised a recon
ciliation between His love of justice and His love
of peace, and that He might not forgive gratis with
hurt to justice, He paid the debt Himself. Justice,

1 66 FEAST OF THE HOLY LANCE AND NAILS.
the rights of God, or of our neighbour, are the only
limits of that meekness which should characterize
the peace-making "children of God."
" Truth has sprung from the earth, and justice
has looked down from Heaven " — not that these
predications hold exclusively of either subject, since
it is equally true that Justice sprang from the earth,
that is, took flesh in Mary's womb and grew to
perfect Manhood ; and that Truth looked down
from Heaven, and, seeing our misery, came down
and " dwelt among us." " The Son of Man, whc
came down from Heaven ; " here the double nature,
origin, and sonship, is asserted of Him who " sprang
forth from the earth " and " looked down from
Heaven."
CXLIV.
FEAST OF THE HOLY LANCE AND NAILS.
Durum est tibi contra stimulum calcitrare.
" His hands have made me and fashioned me ; "
His hands have ever been stretched out to bless
me, feed me, heal me, upraise me, support me ; and
I have resisted Him, fought against Him like a
peevish child against the loving hands that dress
or tend it. I have taken those hands, that might
have struck me into Hell, and have bent them back
upon the Cross, and nailed them there, rigid and
helpless, that I might free myself from His pestering
love. And yet in vain, for I have but opened two
fountains of mercy, and love is victorious still, and
I have but graven my name in His hands for ever.
Quam speciosi pedes I — How fair are the feet of Him

VICARIOUS SUFFERING. 167
who brings glad tidings of peace, soiled though
they be, cut and way-worn ; the feet of the Good
Shepherd, as He returns bearing the lost sheep in
His bosom ; the feet where penitent love sits, and
ministers with tears and spikenard. I thought to
fetter these feet with nails, and so to escape the
pursuit of love, and I have but lent them wings.
"What have I to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of
Nazareth ? Art Thou come to torment me before
my time ? " So do we resist vainly the spell of
grace. Durum est tibi contra stimulum calcitrare —
" It is hard for thee to kick against the goad."
The Sacred Heart was the central spring of all
His actions, the recipient of all His sufferings.
Here, as in their source, were all the riches of His
goodness gathered up and treasured, as streams in
the ocean ; and in piercing this cistern of living
waters by our ingratitude, we have only succeeded
in letting loose upon ourselves a deluge of grace
and mercy.
CXLV.
VICARIOUS SUFFERING.
Vere languores nostros ipse tulit, et dolores nostros ipse portavit
The unity of a family makes the honour or
disgrace of one shared and felt by all. As the
mother loves her son far more than herself, and
more truly than he loves himself, his dishonour or
his sorrow is felt far more keenly and heavily by
her. Now Christ the Second Adam has welded the
whole race into one family, whereof He is the Head,
and a Head who loves each member with a love

168 INTUITIVE VISION.
infinitely " passing the love of women." Thus the
disgrace of our sins, our sorrows, fears, temptations,
in some cases our eternal loss, though not His
personally, were more than His by reason of our
corporate union with Him, and of the boundlessness
of His tender love. In this sense He has borne
our sins and carried our sorrows, and been " afflicted
in all our afflictions."
CXLVI.
INTUITIVE VISION.
Deum videbunt.
"They shall see God." Purity of heart is rather
the condition than the cause of spiritual discern
ment. In the pure heart God's face is mirrored
without cloudiness or distortion. But it is the mind
that gazes into that mirror and reads its secrets.
Many hearts have been as pure as those of Augus
tine, or Aquinas, yet have lacked their insight.
Many minds may have been as keen, and yet fruit
less, through the distortion of the medium. To say
that every saint is a sage is untrue a priori, and still
more by experience. Instance the Cure d'Ars, than
whom none had a purer heart, or was favoured with
more frequent and brilliant flashes of Divine light ;
yet here and there his reason, not naturally acute,
allows him to adopt unquestioningly certain tradi
tional rigorisms and spiritual fallacies quite alien
to the teacliing of his inspirations. For they who
intuitively, or by inspiration, apprehend those Divine
truths to which others climb laboriously by slow

INTELLIGENT LOVE. 169
reasoning and weary elimination of errors, are
rather likely to be wrong, when they proceed to give
reasons for what they got without reason, and to
entangle themselves in fallacies. To them applies
the old monition : " Give your .opinion, but don't
give your reasons." CXLVII.
INTELLIGENT LOVE.
Da mihi tuum amorem et gratiam nam haec mihi sufficit.
" Give me Thy love and Thy grace, for this is
enough for me." An intelligent love of God is
indeed all-sufficing. But it involves more than the
love of a Deity enthroned far away beyond this
earth. It must be the love of an all-pervading God,
ex quo, per quem, in quo omnia, a recognition of His
immediate causation, indwelling, presence, wherever
there is any vestige of the good, the beautiful, or
the true. It is a universal recta sapere, the perfec
tion of " taste " in its deepest, highest, widest sense.
As far as one fails to appreciate any created or
finite goodness in nature, in art, in human character,
so far is he out of sympathy with God — negatively,
no doubt, but none the less truly. Religion and
revelation reveal God to us in His most mysterious
and lovable attributes, and secure that love which
is needful for salvation ; but religion, if it supple
ments and " informs " nature, does not destroy or
supplant it; and the "natural revelation" should
not be neglected, seeing that, as part of the present
order, it is a grace. To the discerning, every
purification and elevation of the natural taste, every

170 PEACEABLENESS.
new appreciation of hitherto unappreciated excel
lence, is a step upwards, a new remove from the
wisdom that is from beneath, towards the wisdom
which is from above, which is chaste, peaceable,
modest, easy to be persuaded, consenting to the
good, full of mercy and good fruits.
It is by this fellowship of "taste," that in the
natural order we work out, evolve, and perfect our
radical participation of the Divine Nature, and
become, metaphorically, sons of God in the image
and likeness of their Father.
CXLVIII.
PEACEABLENESS.
Si fieri potest, quod ex vobis est, cum omnibus hominibus pacem.
habentes. " As far as lieth in you live peaceably with all
men," i.e., see that the fault is not on your side.
There are those whose contentious and quarrelsome
spirit makes it impossible to be at peace with them,
since peace is a mutual relation. Again, there are
crises where peace would be dishonourable to God,
and a wrong to our neighbour. But apart from
these limitations, the precept holds. It needs,
however, a wide, comprehensive mind, an experi
ence of human nature, a certain penetration of
character, and, above all, a diligent, industrious love
of peace to carry it into effect. Contentiousness, a
desire of fighting about trifles, a lust for petty
victories and superiorities, is the direct antithesis of
magnanimity, or Christian big-mindedness.

ATTRACTIVENESS. 171
CXLIX.
ATTRACTIVENESS.
Si exaltatus fuero a terra, omnia traham ad meipsum.
" If I be exalted from the earth I will draw all
men to Myself." There is doubtless an exaltation
of soul which comes from suffering and from the
cross, which " draws " men by a spell. An uncru-
cified Saviour had never exercised such a strange
spell over the heart of man. This is indeed the
mark of a genuine spiritual advance and approxi
mation to the cross, that others are more drawn to
us, and we to them. It is not the senseless self-
annihilation of the fakir or dervish which attracts,
but that which results necessarily from a loving
devotion to the service of others; the self-sacrifice
of the Good Shepherd who gives His life, not for
nothing — as it were despising God's good gift —
but for the sheep. It is from the foot of the
Cross that Mary attracts us to herself most
powerfully. The Cross of Christ is the very centre
and nucleus of attraction, and each one as he nears
it becomes himself magnetized with its mysterious
influence. There is a pseudo-austerity and spiritual
exaltation that lifts us above our fellow-sinners, and
makes them shrink from us in awe. But the more
we compare ourselves with God, the wider and
deeper our grasp of His fulness, the more infini
tesimal does the difference between saint and
sinner, or sinner and sinner, appear.

FREQUENT COMMUNION.

CL.
FREQUENT COMMUNION.
Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie.
As to the objection against frequent, or daily
Communion, drawn from the danger of over-
familiarity, it ought also to tell against frequent
visits to the Blessed Sacrament, and frequent
attendance at Mass. A'Kempis notes how differently
men would behave were Mass celebrated in but one
place and once yearly, like the Jewish Pasch.
Familiarity, as such, is no sin, nor obstacle to grace.
A child is familiar, perhaps not too respectful, with
its mother, whom it sees daily and hourly, but is
abashed before a stranger, whom it neither knows
nor cares for. Nor is this bashfulness identical with
reverence ; nor yet is true reverence incompatible
with perfect ease and familiarity. Again, it is rightly
said that our Lord veils His glory under the Eucha-
ristic species, even as He veiled His Godhead in
the likeness of sinful flesh, precisely to secure this
facility of access. Did we at all fully realize what
Communion is, we should never dare to approach it.
The early Church (as the Eastern Church does still)
communicated infants and the unconscious ; and in
truth we are all infants and unconscious in this
regard. We come because we are told, and receive
we know not what, and we know not why, except
that it is our daily and familiar bread, not a luxury,
but a plain necessity ; it is the medicine of our
constant and chronic infirmities, the ordinary, and

WORTHY PRAISE 173

not the extraordinary remedy of our spiritual ills.
It is a mistake to look for extraordinary effects from
ordinary means ; their effect is conservative, preser
vative, or if progressive, it is only by the slow,
insensible increments of ordinary growth.
CLI.
WORTHY PRAISE.
Ut digne laudare mereamur.
" That we may worthily praise Thee." One may
sound the praises of God loudly enough, and beau
tifully enough to charm the ears and subdue the
hearts of men, and to lead them to praise Him and
love Him, and yet lack that inward consecration of
purity and holiness and gentleness without which one
is a profane and unworthy instrument for so sacred
a strain. " Who art thou that thou shouldst take
My law," or My praise, " upon thy lips ? " " Lord,
I am a man of unclean lips, but munda cor meum et
labia mea qui labia Isaia propheta calculo mundasti
ignito — ' cleanse my heart and lips as Thou didst
cleanse the lips of Isaias the Prophet.' "
CLII.
RESTRAINT.
Modestia vestra nota sit omnibus hominibus.
" Let your self-restraint appear to all." In an
applied and fanciful sense this may be usefully
understood of that self-restraint which is so pleasing
in good art. Whether in oratory, or poetry, or

174 COSMIC ENTHUSIASM.
painting, or conversation, the impression of a
restrained fulness, of power kept back, and but
hinted at in the work before us, always pleases ;
while the idea of a complete exhaustion of resources,
still more that of a strain wringing out the last
drops of energy, is distressing in the extreme. How
agreeable a flatterer he is who lets his compliments
seem to leak out by accident, and instantly checks
the leakage by some brusquerie. How persuasive a
speaker he is who gives a notion of overmastering
feeling kept back for the most part, but now and
then victorious, whose eloquence seems to break
from him, and not to be wrought up deliberately.
This manifestation of self-restraint includes the
notion of seeming ease in production, and goes
beyond it, as though the difficulty were to hold
back, and not to do far better. In art, if this is
not true and natural, it must at least be simulated,
on the principle, ars est artem celare. Else we shall
have effusiveness and vulgarity. CLIII.
COSMIC ENTHUSIASM.
Primogenitus omnis creaturas in ipso condita sunt universa in
ccelis et in terra.
From the Positivists we hear of the enthusiasm
of humanity; from the Evolutionists, of cosmic
enthusiasm — something, I presume, more wide-
reaching and universal. Vague, intangible thoughts,
yet they bear witness to a tendency of the human
mind which the Catholic religion alone can rightly

COSMIC ENTHUSIASM. 175
explain and satisfy. They imply a revolt against a
narrow egoism and self-isolation which is really the
logical issue of modern philosophical negations ; a
self-assertion of that irresistible instinctive impulse
towards universal good which is in every man just
because he is essentially part of the organic whole,
and moved by the Author of that whole, not merely
to his own isolated good, but more principally and
fundamentally to the end and good of the entire
body of humanity. This movement, although con
sciously recognized, cannot be rationally accounted
for so long as each views himself as the centre of
all. There is no logical path from this narrow
egoism to altruism. Such altruism is only egoism
grimacing. But when we conceive the ego aright,
we see that such egoism is but another name for
altruism. The two above-named enthusiasms, as con
ceived by their advocates, are far too intangible and
unreal to move any one to action, except perhaps
some positivist philosopher in a moment of exalted
confusion, when, roused by the common instinct of
benevolence, he analyzes it into cosmic zeal. The
only workable enthusiasm which addresses itself to
the human imagination and the human heart, is the
enthusiastic personal love of the Incarnate God,
the Author of the cosmos, the pleroma of creation,
the anakephalaiosis — " summing-up," of humanity.
To know Him under these philosophical and mys
terious aspects, is but for the few ; yet as our love
of Him grows more intelligent, so it becomes more
extended to all that is bound up with Him, namely,
that cosmic glory which is to be realized in the

176 HUMAN RESPECT.

liberation and exaltation of humanity to life and
incorruption, through its union with the Divinity.
This is that " one far-off Divine event to which the
whole creation moves," and for which " all creation
groaneth and travaileth, expecting its deliverance."
CLIV.
HUMAN RESPECT.
Tradetur gentibus ad illudendum et flagellandum et crucifigendum.
" He shall be delivered to be derided, scourged,
and crucified." Our Saviour counts derision among
His sufferings, no less than scourging and crucify
ing. It means that He keenly felt the mockery and
jests of the ignorant canaille; as well, no doubt, as
the false and absurd accusations on which He was
condemned. Wiseacres tell us that it is folly to
care what men say or think about us, for we are
not better for being praised, nor worse for being
blamed. Truly we are not more praiseworthy or
blameworthy. But it is better to be praiseworthy
and praised, than praiseworthy alone. The good
opinion, the praise and love of our fellow-mortals,
even of the meanest, is a possession to desire, a
part of our happiness. This is because man is not
alone, nor made for solitary and unsympathetic
happiness, but for a common joy shared by all.
God intends that we should live and desire to live
in one another, in the thoughts and affections of
others ; that we should be mutually attractive, draw
ing and being drawn, first to one another, and then,
in our unity, to God, our common centre and point

RETROSPECTION. 177
of rest. It is, therefore, a fundamental, God-given
instinct of charity which makes us value the good
opinion and love of the least of our fellows. Like
every other desire, it may become inordinate and
interfere with higher good ; but it is no part of
humility to be self-sufficing, thick-skinned, indif
ferent (i.e., insensible) to what others will say of us.
For this reason our Saviour was deeply pained by
the display of contempt and dislike even in the
most ignorant and despicable rabble. Still more
rightly may we feel acutely the dislike or contempt
of those whose judgments we value highly. We
should dread the justly-merited contempt of the
high-minded and noble, as in some sort a reflex of
God's own mind. It is said of Dante : " He feared
nothing so much as the censure of noble minds."
CLV.
RETROSPECTION.
Scies postea.
"What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou
shalt know hereafter." It is superstitious folly to
attempt to divine the future ; or so clearly to under
stand the present as to read the intentions of God's
inscrutable Providence. But it is a fruitful matter
of contemplation to look back, and see what came
from what ; how what we knew not at the time we
knew afterwards ; how the most perplexing turns
led us straightest after all and brought us nearer to<
God ; how our wisest suggestions or predictions,
had they been realized, would have been disastrous ;
M

178 GOD'S VICTORY.

and thus we shall learn to avoid the presumption
of impertinent prediction, and also to hope for good
out of all, without troubling as to how it is to come
about. " Lord, what Thou dost I know not now,
but I shall know hereafter."
CLVI.
god's victory.
Quia te contemplans totum deficit.
"To Thee my heart surrenders, fainting as it
gazes on Thee." This is the end of God's weary
conflict with the soul through the dark night of life.
He cannot bless Jacob until with the touch of grace
He has maimed and thrown him. When our soul,
as the day breaks, at last sees God full in the face ;
when its narrow and crude conceptions have been
exploded one by one ; when through blunders and
errors it has at last stumbled on the truth, and
caught the face of the Father, Lover, King, and
Spouse, then its subjection is perfected, its task is
done, and it is ripe for Heaven. Many of us wear
out God's patience with our inattention and wilful
stupidity, until He leaves us and sits down weary.
Quarens me sedisti lassus.
CLVII.
UNEQUAL AFFECTION.
Amice, non facio tibi injuriam.
Two copies of the same beautiful picture ; two
roses ; two anythings precisely similar, do not excite

UNEQUAL AFFECTION. 179
more love than one. But two beautiful objects, in
no way similar, elicit more love from the soul than
either singly. Here, what is given to one is not
taken from the other. Given two friends wholly
dissimilar, I do not love one less because I love the
other. Thus the love of a child, a parent, a friend,
a brother, are so wholly different in their motive as
to leave no room for jealousy. If, however, two
friends could be precisely alike they would be loved
with one love, though perhaps neither so intensely
as if he had the scarcity value of being the only
one of his kind. This is the force of Dilectus meus
unicus — " My Beloved is but one," and of Hie est
Filius meus unigenitus — " This is My only-begotten
Son." Christ had His favourites, Peter, James, and
John. "He took with Him the three." "Of
course," said the rest, " always Peter and James
and John ! " To such jealousy He would say :
" Friend, I do thee no wrong. May I not do what
I like with My own ? " He loves most those whom
He has made most lovable ; that is, those who love
Him most ; for he is most lovable whose soul is
likest to God by agreement in thought and likings,
in a word, who loves God most, for the love of God
is the beauty of the soul. We, too, have a like
liberty, nay, a duty, of loving most whom God loves
most, for whom He has done great things, from
whom He expects great things, and towards whom
He Himself — so far as our love is reasonable and
pure — has drawn us strongly. Charity requires
then that we should not hurt others by an undue

180 SELF-CONFIDENCE.

show of preference for some ; but for a certain
show of preference we have this warrant of Christ's
example. These three He favours in two ways :
by a fuller and more special admittance to His
secrets ; by a more liberal share of the load of His
sorrow, a deeper draught of His bitter chalice.
We are willing enough to sit at His right hand and
at His left, as favourites in His Kingdom, but the
condition, Potestis bibere ? stands in the way, and
cools our ambition of preference. Even in the
natural order God's richer love is shown in gifts
which mean greater suffering as well as greater bliss.
Sorrow and joy, height and danger, light and dark
ness, cross and crown, all go hand in hand.

CLVIII.
SELF-CONFIDENCE. Dicunt ei : Possumus.
" They say to Him : We can." Like all beginners,
they are full of confidence in their present fervour :
Tecum paratus sum et in carcerem et in mortem ire —
" I am ready to go with Thee to prison and to
death." It is by many a bitter fall that we learn
to be thoroughly disappointed in ourselves, and, if
we escape the danger of sullen discouragement, to
believe thoroughly in grace : Sine me nihil potestis —
"Ye can do nothing without Me." Then we
confess : " Lord, though none should forsake Thee,
yet would I." Our Saviour does not harshly rebuke
this childlike presumption, but looks ahead to the

SINS AGAINST LIGHT. 181
time when humility will fulfil the vows made in
pride. He does not say, "You can," but "You
shall indeed drink of My chalice."
CLIX.
SINS AGAINST LIGHT.
Qui ambulat in tenebris, nescit quo vadat.
" He that walketh in the dark, knoweth not
whither he goeth." In some ways — not in all — it
seems less an insult to God to sin full in the light,
than to befool ourselves culpably into some excuse
beforehand. Certainly we do ourselves a graver
moral harm, and make recovery more difficult by
the stultifying of our reason. For reason and truth
is the root of moral recovery. He who sins in the
light, knows and acknowledges his fault in the very
committal of it. He of the "second class of men,"
tortures his mind into the belief that he is doing
God's will. Were it not better to say openly: "I
know the will of God, but I prefer my own," than
to sin against truth as well as against goodness ?
CLX.
DESPERATION.
Abiens laqueo se suspendit.
It is erroneous to say that Calvinism would
warrant one's living recklessly. For there are
many mansions both in Heaven and Hell. If I
knew for certain that I were to be lost, faith tells
me that every mortal sin sinks me deeper in Hell

182 FROM NATURE TO GOD.
for ever; as in like manner, were I certain of
salvation, every good action is a new Heaven
inherited. It were worth fighting hard and suffer
ing long, merely to lighten the load of my damna
tion. Hence recklessness is never reasonable. But
that laziness and impatience of the yoke, which is
the secret motive of so much desperation, feeds
entirely on this fallacy, which suggests that as soon
as we cross the line of mortal sin, all reason for
restraint is gone for the time being. Hence we
often observe that a fall is followed by several in
quick succession.
CLXI.
FROM NATURE TO GOD.
Qui non diligit fratrem suum quem videt, Deum quem non videt
quomodo potest diligere ?
" If a man love not his brother whom he hath
seen, how can he love God whom he hath not
seen," i.e., if a man is void of natural affection,
how can he pretend to supernatural ? If he have
not laid the foundation, how can he raise the super
structure ? If hehave not that which is first, how
can he have that which comes after ? Can he scale
heaven without a ladder ? Can he support the ladder
in the air, and not on the earth ? If he does not
know what it is to love as a child, as a brother, as
a parent, a husband, a master, a friend, how can he
pretend to that love which contains all these loves
eminently — the love of Him who is father, spouse,
friend, brother, child, all in one. The love of God
postulates that all these relationships should appeal

INTERTWINED DESTINIES. 183
to us and move us ; if they do not do so in those
near to us, it is evident that they do not do so in
God. If human fatherhood means nothing to me,
I shall not be moved by the fatherhood of God,
which I can only know as the natural relation
intensified ; and so of the rest. Every new kind
of natural love teaches us a new way of loving God,
and a new aspect of God's love for us.
Father Thou art to me and mother dear
And sister too, kind husband of my heart.
CLXII.
INTERTWINED DESTINIES.
Confirma fratres.
" Strengthen thy brethren." In keeping with
God's universal economy, this commission, which
is given to all, is especially given to him who stood
most in need of confirmation — strong in love, if you
will, but impulsive, weak, and faltering. He was
best fitted to save others who knew best by bitter
experience that unassisted he could not so much as
save himself; whose sole reliance was in that oravi
pro te, ne deficiat fides tua — " I have prayed for thee,
that thy faith fail not."
It seems strange that one should be more
animated to keep straight for love of the souls of
others than for the love of God, yet indeed it is
but the love of God cloaked in another form. The
firm and intense feeling that the fate of another is
mingled with one's own ; that if I am unfaithful
another will be weakened, for whose soul I shall

184 INTERTWINED DESTINIES.
answer — all this is hard to analyze. It is not,
however, strange that the love of our brother
whom we have seen should at once derive from
and yet be far more intense than the love of God
whom we have not seen. For it is not pure
" separated " perfections that move us, but partici
pated. In their purity we cannot apprehend them
save by analogy. Hence I love that which is
beautiful because of its beauty ; yet far more
intensely than I love beauty in general.
Perhaps the above sentiment of intertwining
destinies is part of that God-given instinct which
governs all men as parts of whole moving to a
common beatitude. Nemo sibi vivit — " No one lives
for himself," i.e., was intended to live for himself.
This notion is most foreign to modern indivi
dualism, yet in principle it is essentially Catholic,
and necessary to the dogmas of original or corporate
sin, and of the Atonement. We believe that God
would have spared Sodom for the sake of ten
just men ; that a Religious Order has a certain
corporate merit which is affected by the conduct of
single members; that in some sense the sins or
merits of a father reflect upon his children, or, at
least, that his piety can win for them many extra
graces which else they would not receive ; and that
there are other bonds of union, such as friendships
of all sorts, relations of superiority and subjection,
of priest and penitent, of teacher and taught, which
entail a like intertwining of fates, is plain enough
a priori and a posteriori. When such a bond exists,
each can help the other by his own fidelity to grace,

GLEAMS IN DARKNESS. 185
can bring a blessing upon him ; and if perhaps we
may not say that contrary conduct would produce a
contrary effect, at least it deprives another of help
that may have been needful for his salvation, and
certainly was needed for his greater perfection.
CLXIII.
GLEAMS IN DARKNESS.
Mane nobiscum, Domine, quoniam advesperascit.
" Stay with us, for night is falling." Remain
with us, for the darkness is coming on ; that dark
ness and black night which recurs in our soul, if
not as regularly, yet as surely as that night which
inevitably follows on the day. He is with us then,
and we may hear His voice, though we can see His
face but dimly, if at all; nor can we discern His
movements. And yet at such times, perchance in
the Breaking of Bread, He flashes in upon our soul
in a way that we never knew in the time of light —
a sudden recognition: Dominus est — " It is the
Lord ! " and then He vanishes, leaving us in dark
ness, but in peace and joy.
CLXIV.
RESOLUTIONS.
Simile est regnum coelorum fermento.
Philosophers rule the world more than states
men or soldiers. Thoughts elaborated in an easy
chair have been the ferment of revolutions in after-
generations. So separate are cause and effect that

186 MANY-SIDEDNESS.

few see the connection ; and philosophy is regarded
as a harmless pastime. Thus too we ourselves are
governed by our ideas, notions, and theories. No
revolution was ever conceived and realized in a
moment. The conception precedes the birth by
years. Our own moral theories and resolves seem
equally ineffectual when judged by their immediate
consequences ; but our actions of to-day are really
the fruit of theories and resolves of long ago, which
in their day seemed just as ineffectual. Those who
make radical resolutions and expect to keep them at
once, are as foolish as those who believe that such
resolutions are useless. Thought is the slow-
working leaven of conduct.
CLXV.
MANY-SIDEDNESS.
Omnibus omnia factus sum ut omnes facerem salvos.
Many-sidedness is not duplicity. The obsequious
man, the assentator, agrees with everybody about
everything, and acts to suit his company. The many-
sided man is of so wide a mind that he can see an
element of truth to agree with in most statements ;
he is of such broad sympathy that there are few phases
of the heart and emotions with which he cannot
feel; he so approaches the full Humanity of the
God-Man that there is scarce any type of character
whose goodness he does not embody. In a word,
he has a phase or side corresponding to every
character ; and which is not assumed, but is really
his own. As the polygon may indefinitely approxi-

THE ALTAR. 187

mate to the circle, yet never be coincident ; so even
the most catholic-hearted and -catholic-minded of
God's saints must fall short of His sympathy and
comprehension who alone can say, Homo sum, et
nihil humanum a me alienum duco.
CLXVI.
THE ALTAR.
Et turtur (invenit) nidum sibi, ubi ponat pullos suos, altaria tua
Domine virtutum.
" The turtle-dove hath found her a nest where she
may lay her little ones — even Thine altar, O Lord of
hosts !" The turtur here is the Holy Spirit shedding
abroad Divine charity in our hearts, prompting us
to love others and to help them, making within
us a continual, wordless intercession for their infir
mities — gemitibus inennarrabilibus ; and the pulli are
our little ones, the pusillus grex that God has in one
way or another given into our charge, and for which
we must render account : those who are unfledged,
who cannot fly of themselves, or even feed them
selves. Where then shall we house them and lay
them for safety ; where shall we find food for them,
and protection and warmth ? A Itaria tua, Domine
virtutum. We build them a nest in the corner of
the tabernacle and leave them there.

188 THE BODY OF OUR HUMILIATION.
CLXVII.
THE BODY OF OUR HUMILIATION.
Qui reformabit corpus humilitatis nostra; confjguratum corpori
claritatis suae.
" Who will reform this body of our humiliation,
conforming it to the body of His glory." Even in this
life we may dare to hope and pray to be delivered from
the humiliations of our animal body, by some little
degree of configuration to His glorious Body. We
may ask it out of reverence to His sacred Eucharistic
Body which we handle, or at least feed upon ; that
Body which was tabernacled in the womb of a
Virgin and nursed at her breast ; which St. Joseph
nursed in virgin arms, and clothed and carried and
gazed on ; the Body of Him whom the virgin
Baptist heralded ; on whose Heart the virgin
St. John reclined ; whose heavenly bodyguard are
the hundred and forty-four thousand virgins ; whose
altars on earth are served by virgin priests. And
yet it may be that His grace and love is enough for
us ; and that without the humiliations of the body
our pride would endanger our love. Bonum est mihi
quia humiliasti me ut discam justificationes tuas. Prius-
quam humiliarer ego deliqui — " It is good for me that
Thou hast humbled me." Nothing keeps us closer
to God than the fear of being separated from Him ;
and this sense of continual danger, so trying and
harassing, is needful for us. And there are those
who have to help others and feel for others, and
who need to have felt all, that they may pity all.

WHO TOUCHED ME? 189
And there are those to whom God gives His revela
tions in abundance, and to whom, lest they should
be puffed up, He sends the messenger of Satan to
buffet them, that their infirmity may be the instru
ment of His might. For these and other reasons
He endures an indignity in the temple of the Holy
Spirit, preferring the greater and more substantial
glory, to that which is accidental and non-necessary
— a spiritual luxury or refinement, a gratia gratis
data, but not necessarily gratum faciens.
CLXVIII.
WHO TOUCHED ME ?
Quis tetigit me ?
" Who touched Me ? " She touches His garment
from behind, stealthily and secretly, full of natural
shame which forbids her to cry out for help before
a mixed crowd, and to make known her humiliating
ailment. Why does not the All-knowing, All-pitying
spare her shame ? Why does He constrain her to
come and fall down at His feet before all, and tell
Him the whole truth ? Because she touched Him,
touched His Heart. We can imagine the look, the tone
which turned " Who touched Me ? " into a tender
call to a closer embrace, clearer recognition, higher
faith ; the call of the Shepherd to the timorous,
startled sheep ; the call of the Spouse to His
darling : " Thou hast wounded My Heart, My sister,
My spouse ; thou hast wounded My Heart with one
glance of thine eyes. . . . Arise, My darling, My
fair one, and come ; My dove, hidden in the clefts

igo GOD, IN HUMAN AFFECTION.
of the rock and the crannies in the wall ; come,
show Me thy face, and let thy voice sound in My
ears ; for sweet is thy voice and beauteous thy face.
Come back, come back, O Sulamitess ; come back,
come back, that we may gaze upon thee ! " "And
when she saw that she could not be hid," crushed
down by the power of self-abasing, self-pulverizing
love, what was shame before became a joy and
alleviation. No bar between us and those we love ;
we must tell them "the whole truth;" we cannot
endure to be loved on false pretences, any more
than to be honoured on account of an imagined
excellence which we have not got.
CLXIX.
GOD, IN HUMAN AFFECTION.
Ecce, quem amas infirmatur.
" Lo, he whom Thou lovest is sick." We should
imitate this delicate art of persuasion. Those whom
we love, whose infirmities are a grief to us, are
loved still more deeply by Him who has moved us
to love them and pity them, using our heart as His
instrument. So Augustine, considering how as soon
as he was born, God had prepared for him the milk in
his mother's breasts, and had given to her the desire
to impart it, and to him the instinct to draw and
receive it, gives thanks to God as the principal
cause, more than to mother or nurse who were but
instruments of the Divine Love. So it is God who
has procured and prepared for us all pure and
orderly affection of which we are the object. Our

SEEMING ABANDONMENT. 191
friends are but the instruments whereby God Him
self loves us — at least in the natural order. So, too,
all true excellence in them which excites our love is
a partial aspect of the Divine Beauty which they
mirror. It is God in them that we love, it is God
who loves us in them. Whom I love purely and
rightly, God loves ; whom I pity, God pities.
Hence I can say of such, Ecce, quem amas infirmatur.
CLXX.
SEEMING ABANDONMENT.
Lazarus mortuus est; et gaudeo.
" This infirmity is not unto death, but that the
glory of God may be revealed. ... I am glad for
your sakes that I was not there," i.e., our Lord will
allow His dearest friends to be the victims of
infirmity, to be tempted, and even to fall : for the
glory of God in their resurrection ; for the help of
others ; for their own greater eventual gain. Not
that He tempts any or fails in sufficient grace ;
but that, knowing their infirmity, He stays away,
withholds extraordinary and effectual graces, and
suffers that to happen over which He Himself
weeps in sympathy. Strange mystery of grace !
yet even reason can see how so seemingly perverse
a course may be the straightest path of a love, wider
and deeper than we can understand. Could we
witness His grief over such falls, we might well
say, " Behold how He loved him ! " and we might
puzzle ourselves with the thought : " Could not He
who opened the eyes of the blind have caused that

t92 THE MEDIATORIAL OFFICE.
this man should not die ? " little dreaming of God's
nobler intent. Let us rather say with the sorrowing
sister, not in complaint, but in wondering submission
and unshaken confidence : " Lord, hadst Thou been
here, my brother had not died ; but now I know
whatsoever Thou asketh of God He will give it
Thee."
CLXXI.
THE MEDIATORIAL OFFICE.
Anima Christi, sanctifica me.
" Soul of Christ, sanctify me." Sanctification of
the Christian soul is conformity to the Human Soul
of Christ — a "putting on Christ;" a conformity of
thought, will, affection, passion, imagination. Chiefly
it lies in a likeness of understanding and of will or
affection ; in seeing things as Christ sees them :
feeling, tasting, loving according to His feeling, love,
taste. And this principally with regard to God and
to man ; between whom Christ, by reason of His
perfect knowledge and ardent love of both sides, is
the great Mediator and Peace-maker. Those who
would share his mediatorial office must strive to
know God and man, more and more deeply; nor
that, under any merely speculative aspect, but under
those aspects which most beget love. He was made
Man that He might know what was in man, and be
touched with a feeling for our infirmities : that,
knowing all, He might excuse all and pardon all.
As in virtue of His true Humanity He knows
human nature experimentally, so by His Divinity
He knows the Divine Nature experimentally, as no

THE MEDIATORIAL OFFICE. 193
merely human priest can ever do. Taught by the
Holy Ghost, we can at least ever draw nearer to
this double sympathy of the God-Man, and so fit
ourselves better to share His mediatorial office.
God can and does use the corrupt priest in the
ministry of reconciliation, in Mass and in absolution,
but it is only as one uses a dead instrument, to be
cast aside and destroyed as soon as it has served its
purpose. For more delicate work He uses those
instruments which adapt themselves best to His
guiding hand, which work with the least friction.
Nor is it only by prayer and sacraments that God
sanctifies and purges the soul, but by all natural and
intelligible means as well: by the ministry of the
Word, the Logos, in its widest sense. By the
instrumentality of the human heart and mind, He
speaks to the heart and mind. The sacramental
character is to the priest what the vow is to the
monk. He who has not besides, the mind and
heart of a priest, is as a monk with the vows,
but without the virtues of chastity, obedience, and
poverty. We must, then, observe in our Saviour (1) His
deep knowledge and comprehension of the nature,
the mind, the love of His Eternal Father, (2) His
sympathy with the Divine interests and the Divine
will, (3) His comprehensive and experimental know
ledge of sinful man, and (4) His consequent sympathy
with the interests of humanity.
(1) "O Just Father," He says, "the world has
not known Thee," has not known or believed in
Thy fatherhood, in Thy paternal love, " but I have
N

191 THE MEDIATORIAL OFFICK.
known Thee." " No man hath seen God at any
time but the Only-Begotten, who is in the bosom of
the Father," who is eternally being born in the very
heart and focus of Divine love, " He hath declared
Him," revealed the unknown. This was the great
work of our Saviour's Ministry, of which He says :
" I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me
to do, and now I come to Thee." " I have mani
fested Thy Name," I have made known Thy true
nature, Thy fatherhood, " to the men whom Thou
gavest Me." " For this came I into the world,
that I might bear witness of the truth," I, "the
Word made Flesh," Eternal Truth translated
into human language— the Father's Logos and
image. " He that hath seen Me," he that hath
looked on the crucifix, " hath seen the Father," so
long dreaded, distrusted, unloved, misrepresented,
slandered. In this we must follow Him after our
fashion ; studying and pondering the character of
the All-Father as displayed to us in nature and in
revelation — two chapters of one book. We must
know Him, not speculatively, but appreciatively, by
tasting and feeling, and seeing with the inward
senses His sweetness, graciousness, and beauty.
We must know Him, not with hearsay knowledge,
but with the familiarity that comes of continued
converse ; we must live in sinu Patris — " in the
bosom of the Father," if we would declare Him to
others and bring others into sympathy with our own
love of Him.
(2) From the knowledge and love of the Father
grew that hunger for justice, that thirst for the glory

THE MEDIATORIAL OFFICE. 195
of God which found utterance in the words, " My
meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and
to perfect His work;" "I have a baptism to be
baptized with ; how I am straitened till it be accom
plished." Zelus domus tua comedit me — " Zeal for
Thy house has devoured Me." Here is " the great
High Priest " and archetype of every priest ; sanctus,
innocens, impollutus, segregatus a peccaioribus et excel
sior ccelis factus ; lifted up above all and yet drawing
all to Himself; mitis et humilis, speciosus forma, et
udspectu summe amabilis ; exalted, yet lowly; crucified,
yet not austere or repellant ; " segregate " and yet
mingling with publicans and sinners ; mingling the
very substance of His Body, Blood, Soul, and
Divinity with their weakness and corruption, as
the sunlight which fills, illumines, beautifies the
crystal ; sinking all limits and differences so that
He is hardly felt among us, so much is He one
of ourselves, and His life interwoven with ours :
¦" There is one in the midst of you whom ye know
<not." And yet segregatus and unlike us, because
sanctus, innocens, impollutus, excelsior ccelis factus ; as a
hidden leaven changing the mass of humanity, un
holy, guilty, defiled, earthly, into His own nature :
sanctifying, forgiving, cleansing, raising ; and withal
secretly, imperceptibly, "not with observation."
(3) As God, and the Maker, Mover, Quickener
cf every living creature, animal and spiritual, He
knows "what is in man." Yet to know it experi
mentally it was needful He should become Man, for
now we approach Him, not as one who knows the
human heart speculatively, but as one who has felt.

196 THE MEDIATORIAL OFFICE.
This was the end of His mortal life of labour, sorrow,
temptation, suffering. For our sakes He sanctified
Himself as a victim and was baptized with blood.
As one who descends into the slums to study and
understand and ameliorate the life of the oppressed
masses, so the Eternal Son took on Him the likeness
not only of flesh, but of sinful flesh, abandoning His
birthright of bodily glory, and in the form of a slave
and sinner became the friend of publicans and
sinners. Though perfect in obedience and all virtues,
He willed to go through the discipline of learning
and acquiring ; to take the laborious paths that we
must tread ; to be " perfected by suffering," to
"learn obedience" in His Passion. He would not
use any one of His privileges or powers in His own
behalf. The Son of God hungers, yet He will not
turn stones into bread, but waits till the angels come
at the will of His Father. He is as one who cannot
bear to be in a better condition than those whom
He loves and who are in want and poverty. So far
as His privileges or gifts raise Him above them and
separate Him from them, He hates those gifts and
would gladly be stript of them, and would become
anathema for His brethren's sake. He is not able to
contain Himself, but, leaping from His throne and
casting away the baubles of royalty, He flies to their
embrace : " I am Joseph your brother."
The priest's vocation demands that he should
strive earnestly to know the human mind and
heart in all its phases. Here, if anywhere, know
ledge is power. We can lead and manage others
iust so far as we discern their character, and no

THE MEDIATORIAL OFFICE. ig7
further. As far as we fail to get on with any
one, so far we do not read him aright. Some seem
to have a natural gift of discernment — many-
sided men with a strong, sympathetic affection ;
but we all have a root of it within us which we can
develop. As a fact, we are too self-engrossed to
observe others or to interest ourselves in the study
of man — man's highest study, if we except the study
of God, of which it is the most efficient instrument.
For example, the contentious man is so keen in
defence of his own ideas and in refuting those of
others, that he never knows the mind of others ;
whereas the more others find us in agreement with
them, the more they will open out. As with ideas, so
with tastes. Sympathy lays bare the soul of others ;
and confidence draws confidence. Poverty of
imagination, which makes us incapable of putting
ourself in the place of others, is another obstacle
to this study. Savage natures are for this reason
brutal, cruel, wholly unsympathetic ; while the over-
cultured and imaginative are so sensitive as to
shrink from the thought of the suffering around them,
unless they are really kind and loving, as well as
sensitive. We don't listen to others, or look at
others, or think about others, because all our
faculties of observation are centred on self If
another tells us the history of some illness of his, we
are either bored and heedless, or else bursting to
break in and cap all he says, by instances from the
history of our own interesting ailments. And so
everywhere. No doubt that true self-observation and
self-knowledge which poisons self-love is the greatest

THE MEDIATORIAL OFFICE.

aid to the knowledge of others. Here, at least in>
ourself we have one sample of humanity submitted
to our inspection ; here alone we can look intuitively
into a human mind and will and heart. Here we can
learn how often to know all, is to pardon all — Tout
savoir c'est tout par donner. Blessed is the man of the
widest internal experience, if he will but use it,.
digest it, ponder it, apply it; who has been
darkened, troubled, tempted, fallen, raised, en
lightened, pacified, time after time; year after year;
who knows every movement of the soul not by
hearsay, or conjecture, but by experience.
(4) And from this profound and comprehensive
knowledge of humanity, with its actual depths and
its possible heights, there grows up a pitying love in
the hearts of those who, like the spirits of the dead,
"watch with God the rolling hours; with larger,
other, eyes than ours, to make allowance for us all."'
We need not fear those who look us through and
through, so much as those who look just below the
fair-seeming surface. This last is the half-penetration
which breeds cynicism in him who knows little of
God, little of himself, and therefore little of his
fellow-men. The Christian cynic is a square-circle.
But every true Christian is indeed a priest, a
mediator, a vicar of Him who could with one arm
reach to the height of Heaven and with the other to
the depths of Hell ; who could embrace and draw
together in a kiss of peace the Creator and the
creature. In the bosom of the Father and in the
bosom of Mary, He lived with the life of God and
with the life of man ; and thought with the mind of

ST. JOSEPH. 199.

God and with the mind of man ; and loved with the-
love of God and with the love of man.
CLXXII.
ST. JOSEPH.
Quis, putas, est fidelis servus quem constituit Dominus super
familiam suam ?
"Who, think you, is that faithful servant
whom the Lord hath set over His family ? " The
character of St. Joseph as conceived by the
faithful is almost entirely constructed a priori.
With the developing conception of the Divine
Child and His Mother, the conception of the
Spouse's and foster-father's dignity has grown pari
passu. Still the occupant of the office, unlike Christ,
or Peter or Paul, or John Baptist or John the Divine,
is historically almost a blank, little more than a
name. Holy Church therefore asks herself : who or
of what sort must have been that faithful servant
whom the Lord set over the household of Nazareth ?•
She assigns to him all the characteristics becoming
the pure and loving spouse of God's Mother, of the.
nursing father and protector of the Sacred Humanity.
She blesses him : Cui datum est, Deum quem multi
voluerunt videre et non viderunt, audire et non audierunt,
non solum videre et audire sed p ortare, deosculari, vestire
et custodire — "To whom it was given, not only to
see and to hear, but to carry and fondle and clothe
and protect that God whom many kings and
prophets longed to see and saw not, longed to hear
and heard not." She bids her royal priesthood learn

MEDIATION.

from him the pure and reverent handling of the
Sacred Flesh of God ; and to commend the keeping
of their chastity to him to whose keeping the
innocence of Christ and His Mother was entrusted,
that they too may minister to Jesus and Mary with
chaste hearts and holy hands. Thus the idea of his
office and official virtues and prerogatives steadily
developed into this helpful form, although his per
sonality to some extent lies hidden for ever.
CLXXIII.
MEDIATION.
Videbitis angelos Dei ascendentes et descendentes supra Filium
Hominis. " Angels of God ascending and descending upon
the Son of Man " — not ascending from Him and
coming down to Him, as it were, ministering to
Him ; but using Him as Jacob's ladder by which
Heaven and Earth, sundered by sin, are linked
together again and bridged over, and commerce
resumed. Descending with messages and ministries
of peace on earth to men of good-will ; ascending
with the interest on graces well used, with glory to
God in the highest. He is such a ladder who so
bridges over the gulf between God and a sinful
soul, that the angels may pass and repass as of
old before the bridge was broken. Beati pacifici —
" Blessed are the peace-makers."

ST. JOSEPH.

CLXXIV.
ST. JOSEPH.
Qui deducis velut ovem Joseph.1
" Who guidest Joseph as a sheep." St. Joseph
is eminently docile and leadable ; like a sheep
following the shepherd who goes before. He pauses
at times, timid and in doubt : till the shepherd
"calls him by his name: " "Joseph, son of David,
fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife." The
sheep follows blindly, it knows not where nor why ;
it does not interpret, foresee, prophesy. " Rise and
flee," says the shepherd, suddenly, without previous
intimation or hint, in the dead of night. And
following his shepherd's call he rose and fled. Nor
is he told for how long a stay he is to prepare
himself; but only usque dum dicam tibi, i.e., till the
next call. " Keep Thou my feet. I do not ask to
see the distant scene ; one step enough for me."
Here it is that one so often breaks down, impatient
of suspense and uncertainty ; diffident of God's all-
controlling goodness. We must have some glimpse
forward, whether by presentiments, prognostications,
dreams, coincidences, or more commonly by a vain
attempt to see God's future plans written on the
face of the present. For all such matters as are
beyond human foresight and control, we must be
like St. Joseph, improvident as a sheep, and as
faithful and ready at a call. To him we may apply :
Dominus pascit me et nihil mihi deerit. In loco pascua
1 Introit for the Patronage of St. Joseph.

OUR OWN NAME.

ibi me collocavit. Super aquas refectionis educavit me ;
animam meam convertit. . . . Nam etsi ambulavero in
medio umbra mortis non timebit cor meum ; quoniam tu
mecum es ; virga tua et baculus tuus ipsa me consolata
sunt — " Our Lord shepherds me, and I shall want
for nothing. He hath set me in the place of
pasture ; and hath led me by refreshing streams and
hath restored my failing life. For though I should
walk overshadowed by death, my heart will not fear,
for Thou art with me ; and Thy very rod is my con
solation." As in life, so in death's dark shadow, he
is led on by the Good Shepherd, out into the light
again, a light that knows no shadow ; to pastures
and waters of refreshment, to the bread of angels,
and the clear crystal river of the water of life. Qui
regis Israel intende ; qui deducis velut ovem Joseph.
CLXXV.
OUR OWN NAME.
Proprias oves vocat nominatim.
" He calleth them all by their names." This-
expresses a minuteness of personal knowledge got
by close intimacy and observation. What more
indistinguishable to an outsider than one sheep
from another ? One's own name to those that
know us is a summary of all they know about us.
It is an idea whose content is ever growing and
modifying. What must it mean on the lips of God,
my Shepherd, whose eyes have never been turned
an instant from the scrutiny of my inmost soul ;
before whom my future life, my eternal destiny, is

THE SMOKING FLAX. 203
already, as it were, a fact of the past ? It is this
awful knowledge of its full meaning that makes our
name so potent a spell in God's mouth, which
makes His call irresistible. Those who know us can
so far rule and control us. How can we, then, resist
Him, when He calls us by our name ? "Jesus saith
to her : Mary. And she turneth and saith to Him :
My Master."
CLXXVI.
THE SMOKING FLAX.
Arundinem quassatam non confringet, et linum fumigans non
extinguet. God would have spared all Sodom for the sake
of ten just, and He spares many a sinner for the
sake of some little seed of good not yet dead, some
last smouldering spark that may yet be blown into
a flame. We contrariwise condemn wholesale for
one defect, pressing rigidly the principle, Malum ex
quocunque defectu ; not even taking a man on his
average. We root up the little wheat with the
tares, or it may be even we root up far more wheat
than tares. So in dealing with systems, enterprises,
movements, we have no idea of sparing to the last ;
no faith in the self-righting, self-developing power
of the good and true ; in the self-dissipating tendency
of the false and bad. It were diviner to imitate
God, who fans and fosters the expiring sparks of
light and love wherever He finds them ; who " will
not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking
flax."

204 THE TREE AND ITS FRUIT.
CLXXVII.
THE TREE AND ITS FRUIT.
Numquid colligunt de spinis uvas, aut de tribulis ficus ?
" Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from
thistles?" "Whatever of dignity, whatever of
strength we have within us, will dignify and will
make strong the labours of our hands ; whatever
littleness degrades our spirit, will lessen them and
drag them down ; whatever noble fire is in our
hearts, will burn also in our work ; whatever purity
is ours, will chasten and exalt it. For as we are,
so our work is ; and what we sow in our lives, that
beyond a doubt we shall reap, for good or for ill,
in the strengthening or defacing of whatever gifts
have fallen to our lot."1
CLXXVIII.
THE CIRCUMCISION.
Deus Filium suum mittens, in similitudinem carnis peccati.
" God sending His Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh." He came not only in the likeness of flesh, but
in the likeness of sinful flesh, with all the outward
seeming of a sinner, sin only excepted ; circumcised
as one subservient to concupiscence ; presented and
redeemed as one whose life was forfeit by sin, and as
defiling rather than engracing the Mother that bore
Him ; baptized with the baptism of repentance,
living under the bondage of the law in the " form
1 Sir F. Leighton.

NATURAL AFFECTIONS. 205
of a servant," rather than in the freedom of the
sons of God ; esteemed as one " stricken, smitten
of God and afflicted." And all this that He might
suppress whatever could distance Him from those
whom He was not ashamed to call "brethren," his
friends, the publicans and sinners ; that He might
be "as other men are," "even as this publican;"
in no way a Pharisee or separatist ; becoming all
things to all men that by all means He might gain
some.
CLXXIX.
NATURAL AFFECTIONS.
Quicunque enim fecerit voluntatem Patris mei, ipse meus frater,
et soror, et mater est.
" He that doth the will of My Father, ... the
same is My mother, My sister, and My brother."
Words which show, not how little an apostle should
care for his mother, his sister, and his brother, but
how tenderly he should love those who do the will
of His Father in Heaven, those who have one
enthusiasm with himself, idem velle, idem nolle.
The love a man has for his wife, his child, his
mother, his friend, are all different in kind and
motived differently. They do not exclude or take
from one another. Rather, so far as any one of
them is noble and full, it raises the tone of the
affections in general. So the love of his God is a
distinct affection crowning and perfecting the rest,
but not draining their strength as it might do were
love homogeneous. It is true that in some sense
the love of God contains superexcellently the motive

206 VISION AND LOVE.
and perfection of every other love, yet it does not
contain it formally. If then the apostolic vocation
ever requires us to forsake all, it is to be understood
as to the external service of God, just as a man
must leave his father and mother and cleave to his
wife, so far as his new duties are incompatible with
his former duties. Christ did not leave His Mother
in affection, when He left her in fact for the business
of His Heavenly Father. We must never suppose
that Christian sanctity lessens or warps any ordinate
natural perfection of the heart or mind.
CLXXX.
VISION AND LOVE.
Videns eum cecidit ad pedes ejus.
We are told continually to love God, to set our
affections on things above. Yet few teachers ever
state or face the difficulty that love is not directly
under our free control. In both the natural and
supernatural order it is God's gift to a large extent.
Spiritus ubi vult spirat — " The spirit breathes where it
chooses ; " and all we can directly do is to avoid
putting impediments in its way, or else to secure
the conditions of its presence. As tastes can
be trained, so the affections. It were the part
of a more skilled teacher to lead us to see God
in so fair a light as might kindle our love more
brightly. Videbimus eum sicuti est; seeing God as
He is, or as He sees Himself, is the cause of loving
Him as He loves Himself. Charity is knowledge ;
not any knowledge, but " real " as opposed to

FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN.

207

" notional ; " the knowledge of intimacy and appre
ciation. The same beauty is presented to the eyes
of the poet and to the eyes of the sot, yet to the
former it speaks a thousand things, to the latter,
not one word. A primrose on the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him
And it was nothing more.
The dry cold light of the lower intellect, how keen
soever, can never reveal to us " the King in His
beauty." This is wisdom's part. As the just alone
can appreciate and understand the beauty of justice,
and the merciful that of mercy, and the heroic that
of heroism ; so in general it is only those who are
in sympathy with goodness who can discern and
appreciate goodness. Thus does the moral character
determine our power of apprehension.
CLXXXI.
FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN.
Pleni sunt cceli et terra gloria tua.
" Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory." The
Ascensio mentis in Deum, must be through creatures;
from broken lights to their source. " They come
as broken lights from Thee, but Thou, O Lord, art
more than they." David uses this method when,
in his Psalms, he leads us from creature to creature,
and bids us praise the Divinity whose power,
wisdom, and love, each shadows forth. We have in
this life no other view of the Divine attributes save
in their effects. God must be sought, known, loved

208 FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN.
in His works, or nowhere. Hence it is primary to
teach men to read those works aright, to " taste "
them, and see how gracious must be their Maker.
As to the works of physical nature, it is partly to
science and partly to art that the duty of teaching
men to observe and to admire belongs ; while to
ethics belongs the office of forming the moral taste
by which we are drawn to love that word which God
speaks to us in the human souls of the great and
the good ; and above all in the Sacred Soul of
the Incarnate, that inexhaustible treasure of moral
beauty. Our power of loving grows as our sense
of the beautiful is deepened, widened, purified, and
refined ; and this in turn depends primarily on our
moral purity and appreciativeness. Which then
comes first ? i.e., if it is only the good, who have an
eye for goodness, and if it is only those who love
goodness who are good, where do we begin ?
Perhaps the case is analogous to that of advance in
truth. We start life with a few natural principles
and necessary experiences by means of which we
are in a position to acquire more if we use them
properly. Every new truth and experience thus
gained gives us a new perceptivity, i.e., makes us
sensitive and responsive to reasoning and evidence
that otherwise would not have appealed to us.
Similarly we start with a certain inborn potential
sense of goodness and beauty which is strengthened
and expanded by exercise, by every internal or
external act, until we become sensitive to goodness
and beauty lurking everywhere.

GOD IN THE STORM. 209

CLXXXII.
GOD IN THE STORM.
Ventus et mare obediunt ei.
"The wind and sea obey Him." Without
weakening our belief in the efficacy of prayer to
determine and modify the ordinary flux of causes
and effects, we may insist very profitably on the
identity of God and of Natura naturans. For it is
dangerous as well as false to view God as it were
in conflict with the forces of nature, or to forget
that when He stilled the waves it was but as when
one who speaks refrains from speaking; or who
labours refrains from labouring. It is He who rains,
and thunders, and storms ; and it is He who at His
own will, is at peace and rest. Vox Domini super
aquas Deus majestatis intonuit. . . . Vox Domini con-
fringentis cedros. . . . inter cidentis flammam ignis. . . .
concutientis desertum. We are wont to think that
when things run their natural course undisturbed,
God is dormant, or heedless, or impotent, as though
outside our own will there were any other origin
ating force in creation than His will.
CLXXXIII. EPIPHANY.
Invenietis cum quaesieritis me in toto corde vestro.
" If with all your hearts you seek Me, you shall
surely find Me." The whole-hearted desire for light
will make the seeker scan the skies night after night
0

EPIPHANY.

for the sign of its coming ; it will make his vision
keen to catch the first glimmer, while others, like
Herod or the priests, will be listless and dead, and
will slumber on right into the heart of the day.
First graces as a rule are small and hardly noticeable
save to those " who watch for the morning." The
Wise Men follow the clue, promptly, diligently, per-
severingly. Promptly, like Matthew, who arose and
left his money-table ; like the Apostles, who left
their half-mended nets and their father. How
many lose the light by procrastination ! If we take
our eyes from the star for one instant we may never
finds its locus again. Diligently, i.e., as one who
loves, and therefore is ready for suffering and
sacrifice, who is paratus omnia respuere propter dilectum
— " ready to contemn everything for the beloved."
They leave home and occupation, perhaps reputa
tion ; they enter on a tedious uncertain journey ;
they have no eye whatever to temporal or selfish
gain ; they are ready to make rich offerings of their
best, and, by adoration and homage, to offer them
selves, their service, and labour to the new-born
King. Such souls as these God would draw out of
the darkness of Hell itself, could they be found
there. Perseveringly : Usque dum veniens staret supra
ubi erat puer. To begin well and zealously is
common enough, but how few survive the death of
novelty or the monotonous day by day routine
of journeying, or the encounter of perils and
oppositions unforeseen and even foreseen ; or the
sudden and unaccountable withdrawals of special
guidance !

ADORATION.

Such souls following the first glimmer of faith,
are led through the windings, as it were, of a dark
subterranean labyrinth, from light to light, strength
to strength, into the full brightness of noonday to
appear before the face of the God of gods in Sion,
usque dum veniens staret supra ubi erat puer. Intrantes
domum, i.e., entering the Divine household as sons
by adoption : Jam non estis hospites et advena sed estis
cives sanctorum et domestici Dei — " Now ye are no
longer guests and strangers, but fellow-citizens with
the Saints and of the household of God." Invenerunt
puerum et matrem ejus — "They find the Child and His
Mother." Those who seek shall find, and finding
Christ find all. Qui me invenerit inveniet vitam et
hauriet salutem a Domino — and that "all" includes
Mary — puerum et matrem ejus, for who shall separate
them, the " Woman and her Child " ? " Neither life
nor death, nor any other creature."
CLXXXIV. ADORATION.
Procidentes adoraverunt eum.
" Falling down they adored Him." Falling
down, an expression of lowliness and comparative
nothingness ; a fainting, or deliquium, in the con
templation of that which overwhelms and subdues.
When the Queen of Sheba beheld the glory of
Solomon, "her heart died within her;" and
Aquinas cries out, Cor meum te contemplans totum
deficit — " My heart faints as I gaze on thee."
High as was their repute for wisdom and learning,

OBLATION.

these Magi fall down to adore a speechless, and
seemingly mindless, Infant as the Incarnate Wisdom
and Light of the World. Great as was their wealth
and barbaric magnificence, they adore this child of
poverty as the Giver of all, ex quo omnia per quem
omnia. Powerful and influential as they were in
their own land, they deemed it prudent to leave
their concerns in order to do homage to a helpless
unprotected babe, and to cast their crowns before
His feet as King of kings and Lord of lords. It
was a veritable Sume Domine et suscipe — " Take,
O Lord, and receive."
CLXXXV. OBLATION.
Apertis thesauris obtulerunt ei munera,
"Opening their stores they made Him presents."
A treasure is what we keep close, under lock and
key ; something hidden away, something men do
not suspect us of possessing. Its value is some
times relative and personal to ourselves alone ;
sometimes relative to the common estimation of
some class of men larger or smaller ; but never
relatively to God. Gold has its value because men
find it hard to procure ; but God can create it at
will, for with Him to will is to have. Or because it
is beautiful ; but God is subsistent Beauty. Or
because it is useful ; but God needs it not. Myrrh
is anti-corruptive, but God is a Spirit. Incense is
fragrant, but what is it to the fragrance of Mary's
soul, whose name was as ointment poured out. Yet

THE EVANGELICAL COUNSELS. 213
to the Magi these things were treasures, and they
had carried them from afar and had opened them
out and given generously.
Gladly Thou givest, dearest Lord,
Gladly Thy gift should be restored ;
Freely Thou givest, and Thy word
Is ; Freely give.
He only, who forgets to hoard,
Has learnt to live.1
Gifts, says Loyola, are the utterance of love ;
valued for the love they betoken, but not for them
selves, Non queer 0 donum tuum sed te — " I seek not
thy gift, but thyself." It is only in a soul, that a
soul can rest ; its appetite is not for a thing, but for
a person, amare et amari — "to love and be loved,"
as Augustine says. It was these three faithful,
loyal, loving hearts, and not their gifts, that were
to the love-seeking, disconsolate Heart of God, at
once gold and frankincense and myrrh ; rare,
fragrant, incorruptible. The indwelling Spirit of
Love works this alchemy with poor flesh and blood,
and turns our dross into gold, our corruption into
sweetness. Cor mundum crea in me Deus — " Create
a clean heart in me, O God."
CLXXXVI.
THE EVANGELICAL COUNSELS.
Aurum, thus, myrrham.
" Gold, frankincense, and myrrh." Gold. A
symbol of the first religious vow, sc. poverty.
1 Keble.

214 THE EVANGELICAL COUNSELS.
Our gifts, like those of the Magi, are reparative.
We are of one spirit with the Wise Men who sought
Him from afar, when " His own received Him
not." The world has turned aside to gold-
worship, to get and to hold ; to hold back from
God and from His poor; to hold back the wealth
which He has given us that we might have where
with to give. " How hardly shall they that trust
in riches enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." Not
only for love of the lot which He consecrated by
making it His own, but in a spirit of reparation,
we give Him all that we have or might have had,
and strew our garments in His path, and follow
Him naked and emptied of all. Ecce nos reliquimus
omnia et secuti sumus te — " Lo, we have left all and
followed Thee." The spirit of economy shelters
itself at times under the title of poverty, because
both materially agree in doing with as little as
possible; but. in motive they are extreme contraries;
the miser spares that he may have more ; he adores
money so as to forsake all else for its sake. Poverty
despises money and flings it about recklessly like
the dross that it is. Yet not all recklessly ; for the
counsel is not merely, "Go sell all," but "give to
the poor ; " find out those who are in need of
whatever you abound in — talents, or wealth, or
cheerfulness, or influence, and give liberally, with
no thought for the morrow.
Myrrh. God lovingly provides us with many
pleasures which touch us through our senses, and
which He designs as a condiment to the solid food
of reasonable life, a medicine for weariness. Men

THE EVANGELICAL COUNSELS 215,
live on the medicine and poison themselves ; and
fall into disease, death, and corruption. Chastity,
with its attendant virtues of self-restraint, modesty,
temperance, is the great antiseptic, the myrrh that
embalms our carnal nature, and keeps it pure till
God touches it into new life and immortality.
Here too the offering of religious is reparative ; for
Christ's love they give up what is lawful, seeing so
many unwilling to give up what is unlawful.
Incense. It is easier to forsake lands and
possessions, husband or wife, child or parent, than
one's own will. Et fortasse laboriosum non est homini
relinquere sua, sed valde laboriosum est relinquere semet-
ipsum. Minus est quippe negare quod habet, valde autem
multum est negare quod est.1 This is the soul of all
acceptable sacrifice, as it was of the sacrifice of
Him who was obedient unto death. It gives it its
fragrance, like the incense that was laid upon the
show-bread. Of the obedience of Calvary it is
written : " Let my prayer be set forth in Thy sight
as incense, and the lifting up of my hands be as
an evening sacrifice." Never was the world so
mad after false liberty, independence, self-guidance ;
never was greater need of reparation by the practice
and love of obedience for its own sake, and for His
who for our sakes chose rather to be subject than
to command. 1 St. Gregory.

216 GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, AND MYRRH.

CLXXXVII.
GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, AND MYRRH.
Ecclesiae tuas, quaesumus Domine, dona propitius intuere; quibus
non jam aurum thus et myrrha profertur, sed quod eisdem mune-
ribus declaratur, immolatur, et sumitur, Jesus Christus Filius tuus
Dominus noster.1
"Look favourably, O Lord, on the gifts of Thy
Church, wherein we offer not unto Thee gold,
frankincense, and myrrh, but where that which
they signify is sacrificed and received, Jesus Christ,
Thy Son." Christ is the Gold of Divine Wisdom, that
thesaurus inestimabilis quo qui usi sunt facti sunt amici
Dei propter dona disciplina commendati. He is the
treasure hidden in the field, the gold of divinity
wrapped in the earth of humanity, "which when a
man hath found he goeth and selleth all that he
hath and buyeth that field." Again He is fine gold
tried in the fierce fire of His Passion, and purified
from the sins of all mankind which He bore in His
own person, as Head of the mystical body, answer
able for the deeds of its members. He is the wealth
of the Eternal Father, His alms to us poor mendi
cants ; for " God so loved the world that He gave
His Only-Begotten." He gave, that we might have
something to give ; that we might be able to present
an offering through which, and with which the other
wise worthless offering of ourselves and our all is
acceptable. This is that treasure which the Church
of Humanity lays on God's altars day by day.
Christ is the frankincense. He is that Prayer which
1 Secret for the Epiphany.

GOD'S PLANS UNSEARCHABLE. 317
is set forth in God's sight as incense, and the
lifting up of whose hands on Calvary is as an
evening sacrifice, winning pardon for the sins of
the day that is past, and protection from the perils
of the instant night. It was for the priest to offer
incense, Fungi sacerdotio . . . et offerre Mi incensum
dignum in odorem suavitatis ; but in the archetype,
Priest and Offering are one. As He is the Lamb,
so is He the Bread, and the First-Fruits, and the
Incense ascending for an odour of sweetness, an
emblem of acceptable prayer; and of that priestly
intercession which is continued unbroken in Heaven
and re-echoed by every Mass on earth. — Christ is the
Myrrh, the author of incorruption and sweetness,
" I am the Resurrection and the Life;" the "Healer
of the Nations," the physician of soul and body.
When Christ is mingled with art, letters, science,
philosophy, ethics, politics, corruption vanishes ;
when He is driven away, putrescence follows.
CLXXXVIII.
GOD'S PLANS UNSEARCHABLE.
Surge in instanti et fuge.
" Rise at once and fly." If the guiding star had
not failed the Magi, apparently without assignable
reason, they need not have inquired the where
abouts of Christ, and Herod would have heard
nothing to excite his jealousy; and the infants would
not have been slaughtered, nor the flight into Egypt
been necessary. How ignorant and presumptuous
to divine and predict the ends to which God's Pro-

218 GOD'S PLANS UNSEARCHABLE.
vidence is working ; beyond affirming that all is in
His hands and that all makes for good in the last
event and issue, how or when, who can say, unless
he has been "God's counsellor from the beginning"?
Many pious people are addicted to a certain sort of
sanctified necromancy, and see omens everywhere,
and can foretell precisely, in spite of countless
failures experienced, what will come out of what,
In instanti — " Rise at once." Just as we should have
managed the star better; so here we should have
given St. Joseph timely warning a day or so before
hand. And why not ? Why this suddenness ?
Perhaps because the anticipation of trouble only
increases trouble ; perhaps because St. Joseph's will
was so well balanced and indifferent that such warn
ing was superfluous. But in truth we are not told,
and can but guess idly. Such sudden calls are
frequent in God's dealings with great saints; while
we ordinary souls are led by ordinary paths. " Get
thee up out of thy country and thy kindred," was
the call by which Abraham was wrenched from the
surroundings of home and turned into a wandering
exile ; even as here, St. Joseph's tranquil, unsuspect
ing slumber is rudely changed for the bustle and
anxiety of sudden flight into the darkness. Such, for
many, is the summons of death, coming as a thief in
the night : Ecce sponsus venit. Beatus Me servus quem
cum venerit dominus ejus et pulsaverit januam invenerit
vigilantem — " Lo, the bridegroom cometh. Blessed
is that servant who is found waiting when his Master
knocks."

OUR CHARGE. 219

CLXXXIX.
OUR CHARGE.
Accipe puerum et matrem ejus.
"Take the Boy and His Mother." They are
treated like inanimate creatures with no will or move
ment of their own ; committed absolutely to the
hands of one whose wisdom was to theirs as the light
of a star to that of the moon or the sun. So Jesus
and Mary are in some way committed to the care of
each one of us ; their honour, their safety is largely
in our hands ; they are made dependent on us for
much love and affection, which we can yield them
ourselves, gain them from others, or deny and
hinder. In the persons of their children they are
still more closely committed to us ; and God only
can tell how the sanctification of thousands may be
bound up with and dependent on our own. In the
sacraments again, in the gift of His Spirit and of His
graces, He puts Himself at our mercy, and makes
the success of His Cross and Passion dependent on
us. Accipe puerum et matrem ejus. Let us take as
an awful trust from God the Divine Child and
His Blessed Mother — the trust of St. Joseph and
St. Michael.
Those to whom the care of "the Child and
His Mother" is entrusted are not always called to
open fight and resistance. Their "care" often means
flight and retirement to the solitude and obscurity
of Egypt, where their labour for Jesus and Mary
is of an ordinary and unheroic kind ; preparatory, it

THE COST OF OUR PRODUCTION.

may be, to sterner championship later on. Usque
dum dicam tibi. For ever, if necessary; but in all
cases without anxiety or care or thought for the
morrow.
cxc.
THE COST OF OUR PRODUCTION.
Recordare Jesu pie quod sum causa tuae viae.
" Remember, good Jesu, what I have cost you.
Think what a troublesome child I have been
and am ; all the annoyance I have given ; and if
labour is the foundation of the right of property,
think of all the labour you have put into me,
however poor be the results. Think how deeply
I am yours." The very hardness and crabbedness
of the material used, gives a value to a carving
artistically hideous, which in more tractable matter
would be inexcusable. We forgive in mother-o'-
pearl what in metal were unpardonable. God may
be more glorified in the little — perhaps in the
nothing — that He gets out of some, than in the
hundred-fold he gets out of others. He will not
throw away lightly what He has laboured at so
long. That opposition, resistance and difficulty
fire our energy and determination is not mere
perversity, but has its roots in the nature of love,
and finds its archetype in God.

THREE HARDSHIPS.

CXCI.
THREE HARDSHIPS.
Fuge in Egyptum et esto ibi usque dum dicam tibi.
" Fly to Egypt, and stay there till I bid thee."
Fuge — " fly " — " a hard word " to those whose first
impulse is to stand and resist, especially where they
are sure of success, and clear as to the benefit
of the immediate issue. To the cowardly and
timorous the message is often, " Stand, therefore,
having your loins girt about."
In Egyptum — " To Egypt " — from home and
friends into an alien land, uncongenial in every way.
A type of that world which is our " house of
bondage," from which God has delivered us with
a mighty hand and an outstretched arm ; and to
which He bids return as freed-men, to be there, as
the Holy Family in Egypt, in it, not of it. Non
rogo ut tollas eos de mundo — " I ask not that Thou
shouldst take them out of the world." Why?
Because, Vos estis sal terra, vos estis lux mundi —
" Ye are the salt of the earth, the light of the world."
Yet the salt must be mingled with the world, as the
leaven with the dough.
Usque dum dicam tibi — " Till I bid thee." We
like to know how long disagreeables are going to
last, that we may have the relief of hope, or else
make up our mind for the worst. Suspense is a
heavy cross, which they bear best who trust God
most blindly, and take no thought for the morrow.

THE SENSE OF SECURITY.

CXCII.
THE SENSE OF SECURITY.
Nolite itaque amittere confidentiam vestram.
" Do not, therefore, lose your confidence." It
is hard to conceive a man who is in any sense
devoted to his profession or occupation, or to some
cause with which his substantial happiness is bound
up, throwing the whole thing up for some momen
tary gratification, how intense soever. It would
surely be the result of no slight deliberation carried
on for days or weeks. So it is morally impossible
for one who lives habitually for God and God's
service, who is, as St. Thomas says, dedicated to
God, to apostatize or sin mortally in a moment
under any pressure of temptation, however great —
there is not sufficient time for the deliberation
proportioned to such a change. For "full delibe
ration " is relative to the importance of the step
taken ; indefinitely less being requisite for a venial
than for a mortal sin. No doubt, the fatal step is
always the act of a moment, but then it is a moment
which closes a period of absolute coldness and
indifference to the service of God ; of wavering
allegiance ; during which the wish to keep even
from mortal sin has been growing weaker and
weaker. There is but one step over the brink of
the precipice ; but there is many a step before one
gets to the brink. Some speak as though a soul in
grace lived on the brink habitually.

GROWTH A MYSTERY. 223

CXCIII.
GROWTH A MYSTERY.
Quis autem vestrum cogitans potest adjicere ad staturam suam
cubitum unum ?
" Which of you can add one cubit to his
stature, by his own devices ? " The Kingdom of
Heaven is as though a man should sow seed and
rise by day and rest by night, and it cometh up
he knoweth not how. So of the growth of faith
and charity in each man's heart. At most we
can secure negative conditions. We can remove
stones and weeds and all that hinders God's
work. But the process of growth is a mystery,
and all positive directions and prescriptions fail.
God gives as He chooses, enough to all, more to
some ; and when and how He chooses. This law
holds even in the natural order to a large extent.
Who can force the understanding or the affection
in their growth, or do more than prune and correct ?
We rise and rest, and rest and rise, and it cometh
up we know not how.
CXCIV.
WHERE IS THY BROTHER?
Quos dedisti mihi custodivi, et nemo ex eis periit nisi filius
perditionis. "Those whom Thou gavest Me I have kept
and not one is lost." There is not a soul that has
not in some measure received a similar trust from
God, or on whose labour or prayer or co-operation

224 HEROD.

with grace the salvation and sanctification of certain
others has not been made dependent ; souls of which
we shall have to say one day to God : " They were
Thine and Thou gavest them to me." Shall we be
able to say also : " I have kept those whom Thou
gavest me, and not one is lost save the son of
perdition," i.e., save those who were lost or injured
by their own fault alone, and not through any fault
of mine. Some, of course, are given to us in a
more intimate and explicit manner than others;
committed to our charge ; commended to our
prayers ; thrown into converse with us. But these
are few compared with the many whom perhaps
we have never seen or heard of. Va soli : Woe to
him who appears alone before God, or if not alone,
yet with but a few stragglers of his neglected flock ;
who answers the question : " Where is thy brother ? "
with : " Am I my brother's keeper ? " Ecce ego,
says the Good Shepherd, et pueri mei quos dedit mihi
Dominus — " Behold me and my children whom God
has given me " — " of those whom Thou hast given
me, not one is lost."
CXCV. HEROD.
Turbatus est et omnis Jerosolyma cum eo.
" Herod was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with
him." To " men of good-will " the tidings of the
Messias' Birth was an evangel, "good news" of
peace. When the Magi saw the star, gavisi sunt
gaudio magno valde — "they rejoiced exceedingly;"

MEEKNESS. 225
but Herod is disturbed, harassed, and agitated. So
according to the disposition of the soul, the approach
of grace, the call to higher things is for some a drop
of water falling on a sponge, which receives it noise
lessly, unresistingly, and drinks it in ; for others it
is the same drop falling noisily on the resisting,
impenetrable rock. Herod clings rigidly to his
possessions and dignities with a will resolute to
hold out against God Himself if need be. "And
all Jerusalem with him," i.e., official Jerusalem,
which hung upon his favour obsequiously. Ut et
ego veniens adorem eum — " When you have found
Him, tell me, that I may come and adore Him."
Here he shows himself the true child of the
Father of Lies. In his dealings with pure, single-
hearted souls, he must deceive them, if at all, under
semblance of good. True heavenly wisdom, like
that of the Magi, is unworldly, unsuspicious,
" thinketh no evil ; " it goes like a lamb into the
midst of wolves, trusting in the promise: Angelis
suis mandavit de te — " He has given His angels
charge of thee " — a promise verified in this case.

CXCVI.
MEEKNESS.
Obsecro vos per mansuetudinem et modestiam Christi.
" I entreat you by the meekness of Christ.
Meekness is more than the mere control of the
passion of anger. That the instinct of justice should
be approved, checked, and governed by reason, is a
matter of precept. He who fails in this, and follows
p

226 MEEKNESS.

his instinct blindfold, is " overcome of evil." " Be
not overcome by evil," but, on the contrary, " over
come evil by good." For this is the highest and
noblest triumph. Just vengeance in due place and
season is a remedy for wrong, a victory over evil ;
but it is the least glorious victory. Hence even God
falls back upon it as a last resort, deferring, age
after age, the final judgment; willing that, if possible,
none should perish, but that all should come to
repentance ; that every rebel will should be self-
humbled, rather than coerced reluctantly ; that evil
should be conquered by good, rather than by evil.
It is His glory to bring good out of evil ; and when
we have most reason to despair before His just
anger, to turn round upon us and overwhelm us
with love ; running forth to meet us when yet a long
way off; falling on our neck and kissing us, receiving
us home to the dignity of sonship, seating us at the
Eucharistic Feast in the Kingdom of God. This is
a Divine victory, that the rebel heart should be
humbled and broken by love rather than by fear;
that it should yield freely and not on compulsion.
" If then thy enemy hunger, feed him, ... for in so
doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head."
So " when we were yet enemies, Christ died for the
ungodly." Man's Maker looked down upon the
sinful multitudes of Adam's race, harassed and
scattered as sheep without a shepherd, and moved
with compassion, forgetful of just anger, He said:
" Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat ? "
Bread in the desert there was none to be found,
only " the husks that the swine did eat ; " and so

LIFE'S LAST LESSON. 227
" He gave them Bread from Heaven " — Bread pre
pared and perfected on Calvary ; and said : " Take,
eat, this is My Body which is broken for you ; this,
My Blood which is shed for you." 0 Felix Culpa
qua talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem ! — " O
blessed evil overwhelmed by so great a good ! "
Had there been no sin, what should we have known
of the free, generous mercies of God, who heaps
coals of fire on our head, the fire of charity, of the
multiform gifts and graces of His Holy Spirit.
CXCVII.
LIFE'S LAST LESSON.
Domine, ad quem ibimus ?
"Lord, to whom shall we go?" Life's last
lesson ; the final result of our spiritual education.
We are led on step by step from lower to higher,
" seeking rest and finding none." As our tastes get
refined our sufferings increase ; as we become more
enchanted of the ideal, we grow more disenchanted
with the real : so that, for many, life seems one huge
bitter disappointment, which gradually evolves itself
like a mist rising from the earth, slowly thickening
into impenetrable darkness. And yet is it not all in
perfect harmony with the purpose of life as revealed
by Christ ? that purpose being to teach man to know
himself and to know God ; to know that his spiritual
hunger is not for the true, the good, the beautiful,
or for the more true; but for the living, subsistent
Truth, Goodness, Beauty. And this he learns pro
more suo, almost experimentally. " Taste and sec."

228 LIFE A DREAM.

He has to taste each proffered finite happiness and
find that its flavour quickly cloys, and but whets
the appetite for something better ; and this again
in its turn sends him to look still higher. He who
is true to his higher self and refuses to lower his
ideals for the sake of avoiding the pain of conscious
discord, will indeed suffer; but with a purgative and
salutary suffering. If standing in the midst of his
shattered idols he has learnt to say : Domine, ad quem
ibimus ? he has at once reached the lowest depth
and the loftiest height.1

CXCVIII.
LIFE A DREAM.
Moram autem faciente sponso dormitaverunt omnes et dormi-
erunt. " While the Bridegroom tarried they all slum
bered and slept." We should not look on life as we
know it, and as it appears to us, as if it were a
reality, something substantial and propter se ; or
forget that in a true sense it is but a shadow of an
unknown substance ; a vague hint of a truth yet to
be revealed, a dream in a night from which we are
not yet wakened. What wonder if it is discon
nected, bizarre, fantastic, mutable, and dream-like
in every way ! We know as much of the good which
God is bringing out of evil, as a child who cries under
the doctor's knife knows the purport of its suffering.
Apart from all revelation, the chances of our seeing
1 For all this see St. Augustine, Confess, x. c. vi. " Non dubia sed
, . . responsio eorum species eorum.''

CONVERSION. 229

the right explanation of life's problems are just
infinitesimal, the certainty that we do not, all but
absolute. That on such an inadequate view we
should be dogmatic pessimists is ridiculous: whereas,
by analogy, we can see clearly why the most bene
ficent and wisest scheme, viewed imperfectly, must
appear faulty and unsatisfactory.

CXCIX.
CONVERSION.
Erravi sicut ovis quae periit quaere servum tuum quia mandata
tua non sum oblitus.
" I have strayed like a lost sheep. Seek me, for
I do not forget Thy commandments." For silliness,
if for nothing else, our soul is well likened to a
sheep; the silliness which makes us follow those
nearest to us blindly for better or for worse ; the
silliness which draws us away into danger on pretext
of good, in search of better pasturage than that
which our Shepherd judges fit for us. Dominus
regit me et nihil mihi deerit in loco pascua ibi me
collocavit. Lost and bewildered the sheep cries out,
bleating for its shepherd and for its fellows ; but the
wandering soul, separated from Christ and the body
of His flock, cannot so much as cry out or wish to
be saved until Christ comes to seek it : Libera nos
jam invocantes te ; libera etiam eos qui nondum te
invocant, ut invocent te et liberes eos — " Save us who
call upon Thee. Save also those who as yet do
not call upon Thee, that they may call upon Thee,

230 CONVERSION.

and Thou mayst save them." * The faintest wish
to be better, the feeblest troubling about our
spiritual state, is the first distant echo of the
Shepherd's voice " calling us by our name." It is
an earnest that He has begun to seek us, and will
not rest till He has found us and borne us home on
His shoulder rejoicing.
Quia mandate/, tua non sum oblitus — " Because I
have not forgotten Thy commandments." For
already Thou hast begun to seek me. That the
knowledge of Thy commandments should once
have been given me ; that it should remain in
the treasury of my memory; that it should be
drawn forth thence into the light of actual con
sideration ; that it should move me to the love of
that forgotten wisdom "whose ways were ways of
pleasantness, and all whose paths were peace," and
to a remembrance of the "plenty and to spare,"
which the very slaves in my Father's house are
enjoying while I perish with hunger — all this is
" preventive " grace ; the call of the Shepherd
seeking me. Or again, we may take it as the
plea of one who has strayed, as David did, rather
through surprise and frailty than through malice or
a slow-growing indifference ; who habitually loves
God's law, Quomodo dilexi legem tuam Domine, tota
die meditatio mea est; or who at least has in him
the first root of recovery in an unwavering faith ;
" For though he has sinned," the Church pleads in
her prayer for the dying, " he hath not denied the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
Aug. Conf. i. 10.

THE NAME OF GOD. 23!
cc.
THE NAME OF GOD.
Serva Pater in nomine tuo quos dedisti mihi.
" Father, keep in Thy Name those whom Thou
hast given Me." His finished work was the decla
ration of that Name or Nature ; to reveal God as
Father, " My Father and your Father," " the
Father Himself loveth you ; " to be Himself, as
Man, a created word or expression of the Divine
goodness, love, and pity, " He that hath seen Me,
hath seen the Father ; " to drive from men's minds
all harsh, cruel, narrow, unworthy conceptions of
their God and Maker. " I have manifested Thy
Name to the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the
world," to those who were chosen to be guardians
of this fuller and truer revelation. " Keep them in
Thy Name," let them not depart from this saving
knowledge, for their own sakes and the sake of
"those who through their word shall believe in Me."
"While I was with them I kept them in Thy
Name." He was with us in order to show us the
Father — that "unknown God whom ye ignorantly
worship," to show Him forth in His most perfect
created image, in the Sacred Humanity, in the soul
and heart, in the birth and life and converse and
death of the Son of Mary. "And now I am no longer
in the world, but these are in the world, and I come
to Thee." He fears to leave them orphaned of His
guidance and help. Like St. Paul, He is divided
between two desires, to be with God and to be with

232 THE NAME OF GOD.
his children. So He prays : " Keep them in Thy
Name ; " and the answer to that prayer is alluded
to in the words, " I will not leave you orphans, I
will come to you ; " and " Satan hath desired to
have you . . . but I have prayed for thee . . . and
thou in turn confirm thy brethren." The Holy
Spirit abiding with the Church of Peter, is Christ,
still on earth, keeping us in the name and true
knowledge of the Father.
It is for us to keep in God's Name those whom
He has given us ; to fight against the Devil and his
angels, who through the mouths of their agents,
willing or unwilling, bad or good, conscious or
unconscious, have been calumniators of God's good
ness from the beginning. It is their special delight
to play upon the natural bent of those good people
who are inclined to strictness and rigorism, and to
drive them over the borders of reason and faith ;
and in the minds of all, to raise up phantoms of the
imagination, gross, anthropomorphic caricatures,
and perversions of the truth, so that the Name of
God may be a name of terror or depression, or
dreary monotony. Be it ours to see that that Name
is written in gold on the hearts and affections of
men ; and that no breath of heretical rigorism may
ever tarnish its brightness. Serva eos in nomine tuo
quos dedisti mihi.

FORGIVING AND FORGETTING. 233
CCI.
FORGIVING AND FORGETTING.
Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis.
"Turn away Thy face from my sins." We tur
away from what pains us, from the defects and
faults of those we love. Indeed, this is all the
difference between charitable and uncharitable
criticism, that the latter dwells not reluctantly but
with a certain satisfaction on the blemishes of one
whom we dislike ; being anxious to draw others into
sympathy with our dislike. When God has forgiven
He would fain forget, were it possible to do so. He
" casts our sins behind His back," saying, " Their
sins and their iniquities I will remember no more.'
He is to us afterwards, all that He was before, and
even more. But the condition of this full-hearted
forgiveness is first, that we should turn our eyes upon
our own sins : Peccatum meum contra me est semper —
" My sin is ever before me ; " not with scrupulosity,
or sad diffidence, but as on the scars whose healing is
a standing testimony both to God's infinite pity and
power, and to our own weakness, misery, and malice.
Pride turns our eyes away from our own sins, and
on to the frailties of others weaker than ourselves,
and hates to contemplate the more perfect types
which condemn us. Another condition is to forget, as
far as possible, the wrongs others may have done us ;
or at least not willingly to recollect and brood over
them with morbid satisfaction ; and in general not
to dwell on the seamy side of men's characters, but,

234 GOD'S IMMANENCE.
without blind optimism, to lean towards the larger,
gentler, kindlier view. Omnes iniquitates meas dele —
"Blot out all my iniquities." God writes His law
upon the eternal rock ; our transgressions He writes
upon the sand, whence they may be easily effaced
by the rain of contrite tears, or the breath of our
sighing. Men would harshly condemn us to the
utmost penalty of the law ; but He who made man
and "knows what is in man," writes His indictment
on the dust ; and if we do not condemn others, He
will say, " Neither do I condemn thee ; go, sin no
more." CCII.
GOD'S IMMANENCE.
In quo vivimus et movemur et sumus.
" In Him we live and move and are." All
movement and change of which our senses are
cognizant has free-will for its ultimate present cause;
that is to say, whatever of this nature does not
proceed from the free-will of man proceeds from
the free-will of God. This we say and know, but
hardly realize. If we meet men going here and
there as it seems independently on separate quests,
it has little interest for us ; but far otherwise, did
we know that, perhaps without mutual recognition,
they were all messengers of one master, working
out some one end through their instrumentality.
So we gaze stupidly into the world, forgetting the
common Mover of all the stir and movement we
see ; forgetting that all is " toil co-operant to an
end." The cloud that flits across the sky, the

GOD'S IMMANENCE. 235
sunbeam which strikes through it, the bird that
flutters about and chirps, the fly wandering aim
lessly on the window-pane, (and since even free
acts do not escape His providence) the loiterer
on the roadside, the labourer in the field, the
children at their play, each and all at the same
instant are unconsciously working out a common
result in accordance with a plan conceived from
eternity. There is no casual coincidence in the
present collocation of all these appearances and
facts, disconnected and independent as they seem
to us ; for before God every pulsation of a gnat's
wing is a link in the chain of history on which, it
may be, the fate of an empire depends. In nothing
perhaps are we more dependent on what seems
chance than in the current of our thoughts. Nothing
is too trifling to divert them from one channel into
another : a sound, a scent, a flash, a feeling, and
an associated image or impression is called up
before us and starts us off on a new line. And yet
how much depends on the direction of our thought !
How much we do every day, and how much we
omit to do in consequence ; and how much depends
on our doing or not doing ! The greatest events in
our own life, the greatest events in history, could
each be shown to have been determined in some
points of its antecedents by less than a breath, or a
passing shadow.
It is no small gain to be able to see God
"labouring" continually within us and without us,
with a wisdom which reaches from end to end,
disposing of all things sweetly ; to see in every

23O PENITENCE.

incident and accident of each hour the hand of God,
a ud to remember that each is a grace directed to
our salvation. As far as the thread of our own life
is concerned, we can follow it with the assurance
that every other thread by which it is crossed or
intertwined is not only designed for the working
out of the final plan or pattern, but also for the
finish of this detailed part which concerns our own
soul. Surely there was more reason, not to say more
faith, in the barbarians who said, " He shines,"
" He thunders," " He rains," than in us who
intercalate such a chain of passive momenta between
natural effects and their originating free active cause,
as to weary us before we arrive at it. Thus we
come to view the working of Nature as passive and
mechanical ; to put God outside it as a directing
and occasionally interrupting cause ; to forget that
His free-will is the first and immediate mover in all.
CCIII.
PENITENCE.
Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo et mundabor.
" Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall
be clean." Sprinkling the people with the blood of
the Covenant signifies the application to each, of the
benefits of that Covenant purchased by the blood of
the sacrificed victim. So we are sprinkled with
Christ's blood whensoever His blood-bought grace
or forgiveness is applied to the cleansing of our
soul. Lavabis me — " Thou shalt wash me;" an act

PENITENCE. 237

of mercy and pity. " Thou gavest Me no water to
wash My feet." Super nivem dealbabor — •" I shall be
whiter than snow," whiter than whiteness, for purity
of soul is positive and susceptive of indefinite inten
tion. Auditui meo dabis gaudium et latitiam — "Thou
shalt grant me to hear joy and gladness," that glad
hearing that fell on Magdalen's ears : " Thy sins are
forgiven thee ; " or which greeted the paralytic,
"Arise and walk;" or the adulteress, "Neither shall
I condemn thee ; " or the robber, " To-day shalt
thou be with Me in Paradise."
Et exultabunt ossa humiliata — ¦" And the strength
that was humbled shall exult." Our humbled self-
reliance turned to reliance on grace, is changed
from seeming strength and very weakness, to
seeming weakness and very strength. " When I am
weak then am I strong." The picture is that of the
quiet gladness of convalescence, born of a sense of
slowly returning strength after prostration and
weakness, where every movement is fresh, novel,
and joyous, every exercise of our new life a delight
— as " a strong man exults to run a race," for the
mere pleasure of outpoured energy ; or as the lame
man followed the Apostles, " walking and leaping
and praising God." Et nunc resumptis viribus post
tempestatem, reconvalesce in luce miserationum mearum —
" And now that the storm is over, take heart, and
grow strong again in the sunlight of My tender
1 Imitation,

23^ ONE GOD.

CCIV.
ONE GOD.
Unus Deus et Pater omnium.
"One God and Father of all." It has been
said scoffingly, that man has made for himself
a God in his own image and likeness, "in the
image and likeness of man created he Him." If
we put "conceived" for "created," nothing could
be truer, nothing else could be true. Our highest
conception of God must be a piecing together of
the choicest materials from our store of experience.
In that store our best treasures are examples of
humanity in its noblest phases. Above these we
cannot go in the proper conceiving or realizing of
spiritual and moral excellence. We know there
is a higher, but we do not know that higher; that is,
we cannot mentally picture it or realize it, or be
emotionally stirred by it. The purely spiritual will
which follows reason can be guided in its choice by
the intellectual notion of the infinite, but the feelings
as a rule are not enlisted in its service.
It is a natural consequence of this, that according
to the width of our experience and the depth of our
appreciation of what is good and best everywhere,
especially in human character, will be the realistic
conception we form of God and the consequent love
elicited by that conception. No two of these
conceptions are ever wholly the same, while the
conceptions of different ages and countries differ
widely according to the " image and likeness of

ONE GOD. 239

man," in those ages and countries. Still, as under
all variations of race there is a constant humanity,
so there is an unchanging element in man's notion
of Divinity as being the Fulness of Beauty and
Goodness, whatever be his notion of the good and
lieautiful. Nor is one aspect false, because another
is fuller. Clough writes :
Yet oh, when crushed and dead
The sympathies of outward things have fled,
Remember that which lives and cannot die,
Ours may not be one home, nor ever will,
Nor yet one land or sky.
But brother, brother, we have one God still.
But how largely this must be modified by the
previous thought is evident. There are those whose
concept of God contains so little that is true, and
so much alloy of extraneous and unworthy matter,
that we can hardly feel that we worship the same
God at all. Perhaps the closest union of mind and
heart is approached by those who advance hand in
hand, growing daily to a clearer light and more
perfect love of God ; for it is an agreement in truth
and taste about that in which all other truths and
tastes find their adequate object and satisfaction.
So far as two have one God, i.e., conceive God in
the same way, there is a spiritual bond between
them that can be largely independent of place and
time. Yet it must be the knowledge and love of
a Person in whom both live and move and think and
feel and are; who holds each by the hand across
all stretches of space and time, and links them
together.

240 DARKNESS.

ccv.
DARKNESS.
Memor fui nocte Nominis tui Domine.
" In the night I remembered Thy Name, 0
Lord." In the daytime the measureless universe,
the " kingdoms of infinity " are hid from us, and
eartn with its coloured variety seems everything. At
night earth is dark and its beauty lost to us, yet
we become conscious of the infinite hanging over
us if we but look upward and think. So in the
daylight of temporal consolation and prosperity,
earth is all to us and Heaven is hid, but in darkness
and temptation we find ourselves forsaken and
alone, the day gone like a dream, nothing to be seen
unless we raise our eyes to the infinite whose glory
is hinted to us in those bright stars which, if they
do not enlighten our path, at least assure us that
there is light if we but wait for it.
CCVI.
SHUT OUT.
Amen, dico vobis, Nescio vos.
"Amen, I say unto you, I know you not." " One
knocked at the beloved's door, and a voice asked
from within, ' Who is there ? ' and he answered, ' It
is I.' Then the voice said, 'This house will not
hold me and thee.' And the door was not opened.
Then went the lover into the desert, and fasted and
prayed in solitude. And after a year he returned

SURVIVALS OF GRACE. 241
and knocked again at the door. And again the
voice asked, 'Who is there?' and he said, 'It is
thyself.' And the door was opened to him."1
We cannot get admittance into the penetralia of
God's Heart, until we have put off self and put on
Christ — seeing as He sees, loving as He loves. Till
this conformity is perfect, the lines of our personal
demarcation are not yet obliterated, His ways are
not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts ; the
two Egos, created and uncreated, are morally distinct
and opposed. But when love has broken down
every barrier, the only distinctness is psychological,
metaphysical ; while in affection there is that moral
union by which I becomes thyself. " I in them and
Thou in Me, that we may be perfect in one." This
union is the fruit of prayer and fasting in the soli
tude of our mortal life. Fasting, which withdraws
our affections from lower things ; prayer, which
fixes them on higher ; solitude, which disencumbers
one for this all-important discipline. Then shall we
call upon Him and He will hear us, then shall we
knock at His Heart and it shall be opened to us.
CCVII.
SURVIVALS OF GRACE.
Super flumina Babylonis illic sedimus et flevimus cum recor-
iaremur Sion.
" By the rivers of Babylon there we sat and
wept, as we thought upon Sion." As life lingers
long in the boughs and branches of a tree after
1 Persian Apologue.

COLLECTIVE PRAYER.

they have been severed from the root and source
of renewal, so it seems that the love of the things
of God survives the love of God, for whose sake
they were first lovable. The old associations
of happiness still cling about them ; they have
come to be loved, in some sort, for themselves,
just as the house loved as the home of some dear
friend retains the fragrance of friendship long after
that friend is departed or turned away. The
emotional habits cannot be destroyed in an instant
and may long survive the ideas and purposes that
occasioned their growth. The beauty of the Sacred
Humanity, of the Mystical Spouse, of the Virgin
Mother, is not less because we are personally
estranged from God. These lingering natural loves
are, under God, a grace to lure us back. So the
fallen prophet could not resist the surviving love
for God and the cause of God which lingered in
his heart. He could not bring his sinful lips to
utter a curse on Israel, but broke out into praise
and blessing : " How goodly are thy tents, O Israel.
. . . Let my soul die the death of the just, and let
my last end be as his." Yet he died in the ranks
of God's enemies, fighting against Israel !
CCVIII.
COLLECTIVE PRAYER.
Sic ergo vos orabitis : Pater noster.
"Thus therefore shall ye pray: Our Father."
Christ would have no solitary prayer, but bids us
link all souls of men with our own, as He does on

COLLECTIVE PRAYER. 243
His Cross, and come as one undivided person
before Our Father. What I do
And what I dream includes thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.
Though personally many, and to our eyes dis
connected, yet before God all souls are one thing,
i.e., elements of an organic whole, each a distinct
note in the great chord of everlasting praise whose
richness of symphony is impoverished if even one
be missing. Singly we are dear to God, but in
definitely more dear in union with others. And so
in prayer we are heard more readily when we come
to Him grouped round with "those whom He has
given us," than when we come alone. Hence the
superior efficacy and dignity of public prayer and
worship. Where two or three are gathered together
in His Name, Christ is with the assembly in a
different and closer way than He is with each singly.
For this reason the faithful, who are all grouped
into one mystical body — the Church, love to group
themselves still more specially into subordinate
gatherings, into Orders and Congregations, and
confraternities ; knowing well that whatever ties
men closer to one another, ties them closer to God.

244 ST. PHILIP.

CCIX.
ST. PHILIP.
Jesus dixit ad Philippum : Unde ememus panes ut manducent isti ?
. " Whence shall we buy bread that these may
eat ? " If we knew nothing more of St. Philip than
this one incident, it would be a key to the whole
man. He is the apostolic-hearted man in quick
sympathy with Christ's pity for the starving multi
tudes in the desert ; earnest for their relief, and yet
aghast at the scantiness and nothingness of his own
abilities and resources. The command is distinct :
" Give ye them to eat ; " and its very impossibility
is a call upon his faith and blind confidence in Him
" who knew what He Himself was about to do."
Two hundred pennyworth would not suffice even
were it at hand ; nor will all the accumulated ability
and efforts of all the apostolic men in Christendom
avail for the feeding of the multitudes except our
little be put with faith into His almighty creative
hands, and miraculously multiplied and distributed.
Then, let us glory in the results if we can.
CCX.
GOD, OUR LOVER.
Dilectus meus mihi et ego illi.
" My beloved is mine and I am his." It has
been said above that the various lovable relations
in God are best appreciated by those who have
known and tasted their purest counterparts on

GOD, OUR LOVER. 245

earth : his paternity by parents, his friendship by
friends, his brotherhood by brothers, his spouse-ship
by spouses. In illustration of this, it may be noted
how far more fully and truly the following noble
utterances of human love might ascend from the
heart of man to the Master and Spouse of man's
heart :
I lived with visions for my company years ago,
And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know
A sweeter music than they played to me,
But soon their trailing purple was not free
Of this world's dust. ....
Then Thou Thyself did'st come to be,
Beloved, what they seemed. Their shining fronts,
Their songs, their splendours, . . .
Met in Thee, and from out Thee overcame
My soul with satisfaction for all wants —
Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

Also:

And looking on myself I seemed not one
For such man's love ! More like an out-of-tune
Worn viol, a good singer would be wroth
To spoil his song with ; and which, snatched in haste,
Is laid down at the first ill-sounding note.
I did not wrong myself so, but I placed
A wrong on Thee. For perfect strains may float,
'Neath master-hands, from instruments defaced.

Also :

I think of Thee ! My thoughts so twine and bud
About Thee as wild vines about a tree. .
Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood
I will not have my thoughts instead of Thee
Who art dearer and better I Rather, instantly
Renew Thy presence. ....

£46 MARY OUR TEACHER.
Because in this deep joy to see and hear Thee
And breathe within Thy shadow a new air,
I do not think of Thee — I am too near Thee.
St. Theresa at times seems to have realized this
last line. The whole sentiment is that of St. Bernard,
whose love was fashioned on the type of the Spouse
in the Canticles :
Jesu, dulcis memoria,
Dans vera cordi gaudia,
Sed super mel et omnia,
Ejus dulcis prcesentia.
i.e., I will not have my thoughts instead of Thee.
And perhaps St. Augustine would have said :
Open Thine heart wide
And fold within the wet wings of Thy dove.

CCXI.
MARY, OUR TEACHER.
Venite filii audite me ; timorem Domini docebo vos.
" Come, my children, listen to me, and I will
teach you the fear of the Lord." So says Mary to
her children. She is ready and waiting, she calls
us ; but it is for us to come or not to come. We
come by meditation, by odd moments of reflection ;
Vacate et videte — by the leisure that is always at hand
for a tranquillized heart. Audite me — " Listen to me."
We can sit at her feet and hear without listening
or attending; like children with their roving eyes
and restless fingers. And she must needs.be very
patient with us and sigh over our inattention , and

FAIR LOVE. 247

repeat the same thing over and over again to deaf
ears : " Have ye not known, have ye not heard,
hath it not been told you from the beginning ? "
Look up to Heaven, dear Lady, and sigh, and touch
our ears, and say to us, Ephphetha ! Be opened !
Timor em Domini docebo vos — " I will teach you the
fear of God." This is Mary's lesson : that fear born
of a sense of the dread majesty of God, which is
the beginning of wisdom, the strength and backbone
of perfect love; the love of One whose greatness and
power and justice is the infinite and only adequate
measure of His humility, meekness, and mercy. If
we would have a silent lesson in this love, Ecce
ancilla Domini — " Behold ! the Handmaid of the
Lord ! " let us kneel with her children at her knee
and look up into her face : " For ever fixed in no
unfruitful gaze." CCXII.
FAIR LOVE.
Ego Mater pulchraa dilectionis.
" I am the Mother of Fair Love." The same
difference exists between Catholic and Puritan
worship, whether we look at the outward and
visible, or the inward and spiritual. We worship
God in the beauty of holiness and set Him forth
radiant and attractive with all that speaks to human
affection. They strip Him of all that they conceive
to savour of the " natural " and accursed, and leave
Him incomprehensible and unlovable, because un
knowable ; repulsive, because inhuman. Our God
is altogether human and lovable Speciosus forma

248 FAIR. LOVE.

pra filiis hominum. " He that hath seen Me hath
seen the Father " — so truly is the Sacred Humanity
the image and analogue of the Divinity — inade
quately, of course, but so far as it goes, most truly.
We can say nothing of the Man-Christ that makes
Him lovable, approachable, adorable, gentle, that
is not true a thousand times more of the Father.
And even were the Father no more than we know
the Saviour to be, what more should we need ?
Would it not suffice us ? There is a true dilectio
which is not pulcra ; which apprehends God substan
tially as the supreme good and rest of the soul ; but
which is not delicately appreciative of the beauty
of holiness — an utilitarian, serviceable, solid piety —
excellent so far as it goes, necessary for all, and
the essential basis and recipient of that polish and
grace by which it is transformed into pulcra dilectio.
And there is a dilectio which is not merely unattrac
tive, through lack of this finish and refinement ;
but which is rough, uncouth, repulsive to others —
" Holy horrors " with their stilted, rigid pietarianism,
a scandal to the young and buoyant-hearted, repell
ing them from God; walking slanders on that "easy
yoke and light burden ; " well-meaning, no doubt,
and therefore saving themselves; but as far as
others are concerned, soul-destroyers, who were
better cast into the sea with a mill-stone round
their neck than that they should scandalize one of
these little ones that believe in Him. " Suffer the
little ones to come unto Me, and forbid them not,"
was the sentence pronounced on the well-meaning
but forbidding piety of certain disciples.

Mother of mercy. 249
There are some saints who shone bright with
this " fair love," such as Bernard, and Francis, and
Philip, and Francis of Sales ; who drew to them
selves thousands whom a sterner sanctity would
have repelled. Bashful children nestled by their
side, and the timid birds of the air were lured to
them. But Mary is the very Mother of this bright
attractiveness ; clad with the sun, borne up by the
moon, circled with stars, she is all fair, tota pulcra,
and not a dark or gloomy spot about her ; macula
non est in te. And she is the Mother of Fair Love
in our souls, for "we are her offspring," and she
fashions our spiritual being with labour and prayers
and tears ; and when she has given birth to the
first spark of fair love within us, she still nurses it,
fosters it, mothers it into the more perfect likeness
of Fair Love Incarnate, the blessed fruit of her
womb, Jesus. CCXIII.
MOTHER OF MERCY.
Mater misericordiaa.
" Mother of the pitying heart." She could pity
all, because she had tasted human sorrow in its
bitterest forms, if not in all its forms ; the sorrow
of forebodings of sorrow, the sorrow of labour, of
exile, of perplexity, of separation, of helplessness, of
martyring grief, of blank desolation. Sorrow must
sour or sweeten us, as we take it. It is God's
intent that it should teach us pity.
Many have a tender pity for Mary's seven
sorrows, and they do well. Yet to such she would

250 MARY, OUR LIFE.

say : " Weep not for me, but weep for your
selves." It is for her children and in them that
she is pierced with a thousand swords of sorrow.
From the foot of the cross she looked out into
the future and back upon the past on all the
sorrows of her children, and made them all her
own and heaped them up with the dying agonies
of her First-born, and took them all into her world
wide heart of pity; she, the great Mother of
humanity, Mater misericordice.
CCXIV.
MARY, OUR LIFE.
Vita, dulcedo et spes nostra.
Our Life. Living, means self-moving, self-
evolving as opposed to what is dead, passive, moved
from without, pushed along in spite of itself.
Spiritual life is spontaneous or nothing ; for it lies
in love and willingness, and both exclude coercion
of any sort. Life may be in us to some degree, yet
one limb paralyzed, another weak. If we need to
be chafed, spurred on, frightened on in any matter,
it means, so far, a low vitality, a poor circulation.
A mans volat, currit, et latatur, . . . fatigatus non
lassatur, arctatus non coarctatur . . . sed sicut vivax
fiamma et ardens f acuta sursum erumpit — " The lover
flies, runs, rejoices ; unwearied by weariness, un-
repressed by repression, leaping up like a living
flame or a glowing torch." Here love and vitality
are identified in their manifestations. This is the
life of grace whereof Mary was full, Gratia plena;

Mary, our sweetness. 251
which she receives as a reservoir from its fountain ;
which she dispenses in streams to the four quarters
of the barren earth, restoring it gradually to the
fertility of Paradise, Emissiones tua Paradisus. She
is the second Eve, Mother of all living; Mother
of the life of the engraced soul and of the glorified
body. In the Resurrection she will be hailed as
Mother by restored humanity, Mother of body and
soul.
CCXV.
MARY, OUR SWEETNESS.
Vita, dulcedo et spes nostra.
Our Sweetness. " Taste and see," for as the
fruit which to Eve seemed sweet proved bitter
death, so much that seems sad and bitter if but
tasted is found sweeter than honey — dulciora super
meletfavum. Nigra sum sed formosa — "I am dark,
but beautiful." Mary has a shadow of grief shrouding
the beauty which is within. To the gross and carnal
mind, non est ei species neque decor — there is no form
or comliness or sweetness about her. It is a taste
which grows with increasing discernment ; a matter
of supernatural culture. As she herself grows sweet
to us, she will sweeten all that is most bitter to us ;
the chalice of the Passion, which we must taste,
and of which she has drunk so deeply. It is she,
our Mother, who stretches it out to us as the healing
medicine of our souls. As she stood by His Cross,
sweetening His chalice, so she will stand by ours.
Never are we so near to her as when we are near
the Cross. And when we come to the dregs, to the

254 our Cry to Mary
bitterness of death itself, she will change our " Why
hast Thou forsaken me," into " Father, into Thy
hands I commend my spirit." " O death, where is
thy sting ? " Even in daily littleness she will
sweeten our bitterness of heart and of manner and
of speech, and pluck out of our soul every radix
amaritudinis, every seed of cynicism and disappoint
ment and sourness. Life taken ill turns to acid and
melancholy; taken wisely, its very hyssop purifies,
mellows, sweetens us. Vita, dulcedo, spes nostra,
salve !
CCXVI.
OUR CRY TO MARY.
Ad te clamamus.
"To thee do we cry," even as a lamb bleating
in search of the ewe, or a child crying for its
mother in the dark, because they fear to be alone,
and unprotected against the unknown vague terrors
with which darkness and solitude are haunted.
To our Mother we may say: "Though I walk
through the vale of death's shadow, I will fear no
evil, for thou art with me." Also, the child cries
because its mother is dear for her own sake, some
thing it wants to have near at hand, and therefore
well worth crying after. Also because it wants
food and warmth, and a thousand things which
it is hers to provide. Mary is simply mobbed with
a houseful of troublesome children climbing about
her, hanging on to her skirts, clamouring and
crying, one for this, one for that ; mostly selfish,

OUR EXILE. 253

insatiable, unthankful, certain that they can get
what they want if they cry loud enough and long
enough. CCXVII.
OUR EXILE.
Exules filii Evae.
" Exiled children of Eve." Mary, with her Divine
Son, shared our exile from Paradise, not of necessity,
but from free sympathy, divesting themselves of the
heritage of the sinless children of God ; bearing the
burden of sinful flesh, torn by the thorns and briers
of the accursed soil; feeling themselves outcasts,
exiles, wanderers, in a way that we, born to it, and
cleaving to it by corrupt affection, never feel our
selves ; and all this, that they might bind us fast to
themselves by love, and lead us after them to brave
the piercing smart of the cherub's flaming sword
which guards the gate of Paradise ; the anguish and
cutting grief inseparable from an ardent love ; the
sword of Mary's sorrows, the lance of the Sacred
Side. For it is only through much tribulation,
through fire and sword, that we can follow them,
and so re-enter Paradise.
CCXVIII.
OUR ADVOCATE.
Advocata nostra.
"Our Advocate." We call an advocate to our
defence because he knows the technicalities and
ways of the court, the windings and tortuosities of

*54 EYES OF PITY.

the law, as we cannot. He is well practised in such
cases. He has a persuasive tongue, and can make
black seem white, and twice two five. Mary knows
God's ways, the windings of the Divine Heart ; she
has the persuasiveness and tact of a mother and of
a woman. Let us leave it all to her, however
crookedly she seems to go about it, and keep in the
background and hold our tongue. But she is a
truer advocate in that she pleads not for glory, nor
for a fee, but for love of both sides, and a longing to
find a modus vivendi and reconciliation, to show that
justice and mercy may meet and kiss one another.
And from the poor — and we are all poor — she will
exact no fee but love — provided they themselves are
quick to advocate the cause of others in distress.
CCXIX.
EYES OF PITY.
Illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte.
"Turn thy pitying eyes upon us." To look
away is a sign of displeasure, as from something
loathsome ; or of contempt, as from something
hateful ; or of indifference, as from something of
no interest. We pretend not to see a troublesome
beggar; but he insists on being seen. Aspice in me,
he says, et miserere mei — " Look upon me and pity
me." God is only pretending not to hear, that He
may get us to cry out louder and become more
obstinate and fixed in our purpose ; and Mary is
full of like artifices — all women are.
But Mary's eyes are everlastingly rivetted on the

MARY'S WELCOME. 255
blessed face of God. Is she to turn them thence
upon such as we are : from light to darkness ; from
power to weakness ; from beauty to sickly deformity ?
It is in Him that she sees us ; for we are in Him,
with all our vileness ; in the centre of His unbroken
thought, in the core of His undying love ; and He is
in us as the soul of our soul and life of our life. She
cannot but look on us when she looks on Him ; she
cannot but look on Him when she looks on us.
And seeing Him in us, and viewing our wounds and
weaknesses as His, the eyes she fixes upon us are
eyes of mercy, the Mother's eyes that washed the
bleeding Body of the Crucified with a flood of tears.
Could we but turn merciful eyes upon our fellow-
mortals, and see Christ in all, and all in Christ ;
could we but view them as Mary views them, with a
larger, kindlier gaze, our cry to her would never be
in vain. Has she not good reason to be deaf, to
turn away and " look on us no more 1 "
CCXX.
MARY'S WELCOME.
Et Jesum benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exilium
ostende. "And after our exile show unto us Jesus, the
blessed fruit of thy womb." Nothing frets us more
in our keenest moments of enjoyment than the
absence of some dear one who would " enter into
our joy " and double it, casting back to us the reflex
of our own gladness, as mirror answers and re-
answers to mirror. Thus every new soul that reaches

256 MARY'S WELCOME.
the Vision of God augments the bliss of all the rest ;2
and if there could be fretfulness or impatience in
Heaven, it would be in Mary's tranquil heart, so
does she long to have each and all of her children
in sympathy with her ecstasy. Magnificate Dominum
mecum — " Magnify the Lord with me," she cries to
them, et exaltemus nomen ejus in idipsum — "and let
us praise His name together." As one who shows
some beauty to another, and rejoices in his joy, so
will she hurry us by the hand into the presence of
the Blessed Fruit of her womb, Jesus, watching our
eyes as they brighten with that same joy with which
her own soul is replenished.
"Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy womb." How
proud and eager the mother is to show her babe tc
every one; how greedy of praise on its behalf!
Shall not Mary have a mother's pride in the Blessed
Fruit of her womb, the pride of authorship, in some
sort ? Under God, did she not conceive and fashion
those sacred limbs day by day ; is He not bone of
her bone, and flesh of her flesh ; her very Child,
albeit her very God ? " From their fruits ye shall
know them." May not this tree be proud of its
fruit, without trespassing on His right who made
the tree and fertilized it ? Fecit mihi magna — " He
has done much for me ; " for He fitted the tree to
the fruit. His name is none the less holy- Sanctum
nomen ejus — because hers is blessed for ever — Ex hoc
beatam me dicent — " From this time all shall call me
blessed." Ex hoc, i.e., for all eternity Ave, Ave, Ave
shall mingle without discord, rather in sweetest
1 Cf. " Ecco chi crescera li nostri amori." (Paradiso. v.)

SELF-STUDY. 257

concord, with Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus — each hymn
gaining in meaning and melody from the other.
" After this our exile." For everything has
its after save one alone ; darkness and brightness,
sorrow and joy, labour and rest. Yet the bright
and joyous and restful, if they come and go, will
one day come not to go. Post hiemem <zstas, post
noctem redit dies, post tempestatem tranquillitas magna —
God is the Summer, the Day, the Calm, that has no
after. What it is to be welcomed home by a mother
after a long absence ; an absence full of peril, un
certainty, anxiety ! In the welcome with which
Mary received her risen Son from the dead, we see
what is in store for us. " This, my Son, was dead
and is alive ! was lost and is found." 0 clemens !
O pia ! 0 dulcis Virs.o Maria !
CCXXI.
SELF-STUDY.
Pravum est cor omnium et inscrutabile ; quis cognoscet illud ?
" The heart of man is perverse and unsearchable;
who shall fathom it ?. " To live in the objective
world, i.e., in the Non-Ego, does not mean material-
mindedness, or a life engrossed with persons and
causes ; but is compatible with a life of pure con
templation. In other words, a contemplative life
is not a life of self-contemplation. There is a
due self-reserve which excludes self from the inward
monologue of the soul, whether as direct subject or
as ultimate point of reference for every other interest
R

258 STAR OF THE SEA.
There is also an excessive self-reserve, gotten some
times of a semi-consciousness of some deep-seated
rottenness, which we shrink from adverting to
explicitly lest we should destroy our present pre
carious peace. We are like one who suspects or even
knows the growth of a tumour, yet dares not to
look; so different from the hypochondriac, whose
fear keeps him always searching and imagining.
We must not suppose that diary-keepers have no
self-reserve, or "know themselves" better than
others do. They nearly always write for an
imaginary reader. Not one in a million would dare
to write himself down on paper, I do not say as he
is, but even as, underneath all varnish, his con
science records him. Perhaps it is more for one's
peace, as a rule, to live in the objective and leave
the dark and pathless subjective world to God's
mercy and, almost, to chance. The verdict on
ourself will astonish us even more than the verdict
on others, when the last shall be first and the first
last ; and the straight shall be crooked and the
crooked straight : when our strength shall be
revealed as weakness ; our weakness as strength ;
the mountains as valleys ; the valleys as mountains.
Let us therefore "judge nothing before the time,"
least of all ourselves.
CCXXII.
STAR OF THE SEA.
Ave, Maris Stella.
" Hail, Star of the Sea ! " A star is not seen
nor searched for in the daytime, but in the dark

BOUNTIFULNESS. 259

uncertainty of night. It is trouble that brings
out the brightness of Heaven and cloaks the
world from our sight and affection. Mary is the
star of the evening of life and life's hopes ; the
star of the morning that follows life's darkness.
Radiant, high, heavenly, something beautiful to
behold for its own sake, apart from all uses :
sicut rosa inter spinas — " as a rose mid thorns,"
a diamond set in a field of ebon blackness. But
on the trackless sea the star is a guide : and Mary
is our star. It is not by principles and rules
and ethical reasonings, but by personal devotion
and loving imitation that Christ and His saints
guide "the little flock." They all shine as stars in
the firmament of heaven, but Mary is of the first
magnitude. Darkness adds to the terror of the
storm at sea ; but morning allays our fears : and
the morning star wakes our languishing hope.
CCXXIII.
BOUNTIFULNESS. Dei Mater Alma.
" Bounteous Mother." Bountiful to her Divine
Son ; bountiful to us. Giving herself, her labours,
her sufferings, " full measure, pressed down, shaken
together, running over," with that true spirit of
poverty that hates economy, parsimony, thrift ; the
thriftless generosity of the saints who have flung
money about like dross, and torn the clothes from
their own back ; who have " dispersed and given to
the poor;" and followed Christ in nakedness, with

260 VIRGINITY.

no thought for the morrow. Non omnibus datum est
— " It is not given to all ; " but when there is this
spirit of bounty, the treasury fills faster than it is
emptied, the cruse never runs dry. Gratia plena —
Mary is full of grace — as full as ever, rather fuller,
for all the torrents of grace she has poured upon this
wasteful desert. If we do not hoard our money, we
hoard our services, our discoveries, our knowledge,
our means of helping others, perhaps with a seeming
of prudential self-regard and care for God's glory.
CCXXIV.
VIRGINITY.
Atque Semper Virgo.
" Always " — ante partum, in partu, post partum —
as was befitting the sanctuary of the Incarnation.
For ourselves, semper virgo may be taken ex parte
ante, or only ex parte post — always, from the first ;
or always, from a certain date onwards. The first is
a singular grace to be trusted only to the truly
humble : too dangerously beautiful an ornament for
ordinary human vanity. The second is the grace of
those who, having risen, go forward to the end
without stumbling. The former alone follow the
Lamb everywhere, and sing the unknown song of
those who never knew evil experimentally. Yet
Magdalene may sit close at His feet with her broken
box of spikenard.

GATE OF HEAVEN. 261

CCXXV.
GATE OF HEAVEN.
Felix cceli porta.
" Blessed Gate of Heaven." We do not stop at
the gate, but go through it into the house. Every
creature of God is a gate of Heaven, opening out to
us some vista of that Infinite Perfection of which it
reflects some gleam or sparkle. But Mary is a very
universe in herself of the artistic triumphs of nature
and grace ; no side postern, but a wide and stately
entrance, opening direct upon the throne of God.
We may indeed pause, and wonder at the beauty of
this gate ; at the Divine workmanship ; at its wealth
of device and symbolism ; and so prepare ourselves
for the inner glory of which even such an approach
is not worthy. But we may not rest, even in the
very crown of creation, but we must pass through,
upward and onward, to Him before whose feet even
Mary must cast down her crown to receive it again.
Diligit Dominus portas Sion — " The Lord loveth
the gates of Sion." He loves all His creatures so
far as they reflect Him, and reveal Him and lead up
to Him, so far as they are gates of glory, windows
of Heaven. Above and beyond all mere creatures is
the " Door of the Sheepfold " the Sacred Humanity,
through which man passes in and God passes out ;
God's word to man ; man's word to God. But of
mere creatures Mary is par excellence the Gate ;
God's fullest created word.
Felix. Blessed in being a blessing to others.

262 THE CROSSES OF OTHERS.
For this is the greatest of graces, as it is a closer
likeness to that Supreme Self-Diffusing Good.
Blessed, in making the way to God — of itself hard,
narrow, and ill-formed — easy, wide, and manifest to
human blindness and frailty, " giving light to them
that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, guiding
their feet into the way of peace."
CCXXVI.
THE CROSSES OF OTHERS.
Nemo sine onere, nemo sine cruce.
"None without burden, none without cross."
To look at the burdens as they are known out
wardly, God might seem strangely unequal in
dispensing crosses ; but this seems less clear when
we know all that lies within, and when we consider
the burden relatively to the back that has to bear
it. Children are crushed to earth with toy-crosses.
What measure can we possibly apply to the enjoy
ment or suffering of others ? Certainly not the
occasion which gives birth to it ; certainly not
external manifestations of it ; not even the energy
put forth to secure joy, to ward off suffering. " The
heart knoweth its own bitterness," and God, the
heart's Maker and Mover. No one else.
CCXXVII.
INTUITION.
Revelasti ea parvulis.
"Thou hast revealed them to little ones."
Our clearest moments of insight are often those

A JEALOUS GOD. 26 j

when, through weakness and weariness, our mind
is least under control, when concentration and
voluntary attention is least possible ; when reason
slumbers, but intellectual vision is still awake and
alert. It looks as though intellect were a clear
pond which when least ruffled reflects heaven more
deeply and truly ; receiving passively in a moment
what reason, with its bustling activity, misses after
hours or years of searching. Reason is to the
mirror of the mind what the motor muscles are to
the eye. They do not see or give light, but bring
light and vision together. But the listless gaze
takes in the whole as whole, while attentive scrutiny
accumulates a host of unconnected details. God
spoke to His " seers " of old in such moments of
spiritual rapture and abstraction, when, under the
influence of music, or other tranquillizing agencies,
the mind was stilled to a burnished sea of silver.
It is generally observed that the moment of passage
from sleep to waking, or from waking to sleep, is
one of brighter intuition ; that children and simple
folk divine many truths which sophisticated minds
muddle over vainly ; and that truth, like happiness,
is coy, and flies from those who seek her directly
or too anxiously. CCXXVIII.
A JEALOUS GOD.
Deposuit potentes de sede.
"He hath dethroned the mighty and raised
up the lowly." ^Eschylus was sent to unteach
that low conception of God which figures Him

264 THE GRACE OF UTTERANCE.
as envious of man's bliss and prosperity. It is
not prosperity, but the pride and independence
which prosperity breeds, the insolence of elation,
that brings curses in its train. He but antici
pated ; Deposuit potentes de sede, et exaltavit humiles.
The oldest calumny against God is that of envy;
" God knoweth that in the day ye shall eat
thereof ye shall be as gods." The devil must paint
God in his own colours, in his own form ; as
thirsting for pre-eminence and fearing eclipse. Like
any successful slander, it has a shadow of truth about
it. " I the Lord thy God am a jealous God ; "
jealous for our happiness, which can be found only
in the love of Him ; and which is imperilled by being
based on any good less stable ; jealous, since in some
mysterious way He, the self-sufficing, has become
dependent on our love and hungers for it all, and
will not give that glory to another. Perhaps the
recognition of calamity as, not merely the penalty
of pride, but as a positive means to the higher
beatitudes, is more distinctively Christian. Beati
pauperes is an advance on Vce divitibus.
CCXXIX.
THE GRACE OF UTTERANCE.
Domine, labia mea aperies et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam.
"Lord, Thou shalt open my lips, and my
mouth shall give forth Thy praise." How dis
appointing it is to bring some one to share
our enthusiasm about a landscape or poem or
work of art, and to find that he lags behind our

THE GRACE OF UTTERANCE. 265
own eager interest, that the words of sympathy are
but formal, faint, perishing in the birth ! This is the
aggravation, which Augustine describes 1 at his own
inability to make others see God and His Kingdom
as he himself saw Him. The defect here is largely
due to one's impotence in expression ; and not only
to the untrained and unprepared condition of the
mind we would speak to. This he observes some
where, commenting on Domine, labia mea aperies, et os
meum annuntiabit laudem tuam. It were the art of
arts, the poetry of poetries, to set forth God as
David, or Isaias ; Augustine or Bernard. No doubt
the recipient mind, too, has its impassable limits
which no training can stretch.
" May God make this world to you, my child, as
beautiful as it has been to me." So William Blake,
in his poverty and old age, to a little child. This is
analogous to the prayer and longing of Divine charity
in the heart of those who have seen God's beauty
revealed in the higher and more beautiful realms of
grace. They long for sympathy, they are restless
to make others partners of their joy, to carry them
with them and make them see as they see, feel as
they feel. "May God make Himself to you as
beautiful as He has been to me," is the embodiment
of their love, the term of their endeavour.
1 Doc. Christ, i. 29.

266 ENLIGHTENMENT.

CCXXX.
ENLIGHTENMENT.
Deus lux est et in eo tenebrae non sunt ullae.
" God is Light, and in Him darkness there is
none." That we must civilize before we can
Christianize is a proposition which shocks certain
well-meaning persons. It also seems out of harmony
with facts. It is, however, only a less usual form of
the truth that the Ascensio mentis in Deum is per scalam
creaturarum — it is by the ladder of creation that the
mind climbs up to God. As regards the knowledge
of God all are here agreed. Only so far as I know
what wisdom, power, goodness are in creatures, can
I ascribe these attributes, magnified to infinity, to
the Fountain of Being. Other faculties and a wider
knowledge of creation would enlarge and fill in my
ideas of the Divinity. Although in outline the con
ception of the Divinity is the same for all intelligent
monotheists, yet in point of colouring and detail no
two men wholly agree. But man's development is
not merely in his conception of God ; but still more
in his affection towards God, which, however, is
largely conditioned by certain conceptions. To
purify his affection and to acquire a "taste" for
God is the end of man's temporal probation. This
process is no less dependent on the use of creatures,
which are the instruments of our education. Specu
lative knowledge in general and " taste " are not
convariants. It is a sensitive perception of goodness
and beauty and a schooling of the appetites, affec-

ENLIGHTENMENT. 267
tions, and emotions into responsiveness to such
pure stimulus that constitutes moral progress ; the
recta sapere, relish of right. We must be trained to
discern and relish the lovableness of finite sharings
of the Divine goodness, before we can raise our
affection to their source. He who does not love
order, peace, harmony, gentleness, generosity, justice,
truthfulness, restraint, and all beautiful and noble
qualities as revealed in creatures, how can he be
moved to love God for the sake of such attributes
in their infinitude ? How can they appeal to him ?
" If he love not his brother whom he hath seen, how
can he love God whom he hath not seen ? " If these
qualities fail to affect him when they are visibly
present, how shall their distant archetypes, known
only by inference or faith, stir his heart's love ?
According as our "relish of the right" is more
or less cultivated shall we be disposed towards the
subsistent Rightness. The most barbarous and
crude ideals find the realization of whatever good
they contain in God and in Christ ; but what gods
and what Christs are these — the magnified images of
their worshippers ? One may have, and often has,
the condition without the effect ; but never the effect
without the condition. Civilization and culture may
be pagan or agnostic ; but Christianity is never
stably founded in barbarism and darkness. If facts
seem ever to have been adverse, it was either that
the darkness of those times was really light ; or the
light of that religion really darkness. For " God is
light, and in Him is no darkness at all."

263 ECONOMY OF TRUTH.
CCXXXI.
ECONOMY OF TRUTH.
Ut det illis in tempore tritici mensuram.1
"That he may give them corn in due measure
and season." He is the true doctor or teacher who
follows God's own economy ; who is a faithful and
foresighted dispenser of truth, i.e., of the corn of the
souls ; who metes it out with regard to times and
persons and capacities ; who considers the Zeitgeist,
and the psychological climate of the country. Such
is the Church herself, the teacher of all times and
nations. She has yet " many things to tell us, but
we cannot bear them now."
" How can we sing the Lord's song in the land
of strangers ? " i.e., to those whose tongue, whose
conceptions, whose sympathies are foreign to our
own. What do they know of Sion or the songs of
Sion, that we should waste our breath upon them ?
By Babylon's waters we may sit and weep, when
we remember the City of God ; but to hymn its
glories in the hearing of the profane would be to
cast pearls before swine to be trampled underfoot.
"As for our harps, we hanged them up on the
willows that were therein." The like economy may
be observed with regard to all that we hold in any
way sacred or dear : the economy of silence in terra
aliena. 1 Mass of Holy Doctors.

NOVELTIES. 269

CCXXXII.
NOVELTIES.
Omnis scriba doctus in regno caelorum similis est homini patri-
familias qui profert de thesauro suo nova et vetera.
" Every scribe skilled in the Kingdom of Heaven
is like to a householder who brings forth from his
treasure old things." Many seem to think there is
here a full stop, but there is not. So far as he
brings truth from his treasure he brings forth what
is old ; rather, what is not new, for it is eternal,
neither old nor new. Yet truth may be new to us,
though old in itself; as the New World was there
long before Columbus found it. And even the oldest,
tritest truisms, can be clothed anew according to
the current fashion of the hour, so as to be hardly
recognizable. He who despises either the old or
the new is no scriba doctus in regno ccelorum ; he
knows but one half of that kingdom, its " con
servative " aspect, or its "liberal" aspect.
" Who bringeth forth from His treasure old
things and new," i.e., old and new are not criteria of
truth, of the treasures of Divine wisdom. A thing
is not true because old, or false because new, or
false because it is old, or true because it is new.
Yet in the practice of controversy all these propo
sitions are denied repeatedly.

270 STEADFAST PEACE.

CCXXXIII.
STEADFAST PEACE.
Funda nos in pace.
" 'Stablish us in peace." Peace of soul may be
founded on the sands or on the rock; nor can one
tell which while calm endures. It was when the
windy tempest of affliction blew and the rain
descended and the floods came and the storm beat
against her on Calvary, that Mary stood- Stabat
juxta crucem — like Mount Sion, the City of Peace :
Sicut Mons Sion non commovebitur in aternum. What
trifles upset us and cast us into the blues ; what
trifles elate and excite us ! Doubtless this surface
agitation is compatible with calm in the depths ;
but it is not a good symptom. What is it 'stablishes
the rocks and mountains, but their weight ?
Levity or lightness is the symbol of unsteadiness.
And what is weight, but a strong draw to the
centre? Funda nos in pace, i.e., enlarge our heart,
that it may be drawn more forcibly, more irresistibly
to God, our Centre.
CCXXXIV."MEMORARE."
Auxilium Christianorum.
" Help of Christians." " It is not good that
man should be alone," says God; "I will make
him a helpmeet for him." And so He made Mary,
a helpmeet for Humanity, — mother rather than

"MEMORARE." 271

bride. It is not good for a foolish, wayward child
to be alone. His mother must take him up in her
arms, cover him with her mantle, nurse him at her
breast, and tread his enemy under her foot. Only
in Mary's arms is Humanity safe to slumber and
be at rest. And as of the race, so of individuals.
But to help others is the condition sine qua non
of being helped by God and His Mother. It is also
the measure. It is vain otherwise to reiterate our
invocations : Deus in adjutorium meum intende ; ad
adjuvandum me festina — " O God, incline to my aid ;
haste to my help." "You shall cry unto Me, but
I will not hear, you shall call, but I will not answer."
We are ready enough with our Memorare ; but
perhaps our Lady might answer : " Remember, my
child, that it is a thing unheard of, that those
who had recourse to thy aid, sought thy help, or
implored thy intercession, were assisted. The
confidence which inspires you to approach me is
baseless and delusive. I am deaf to your petition
and will neither hear nor answer it." For Mary
and all the saints are bound by the inexorable law
of the kingdom of grace, and that law is the law of
Christ: Date et dabitur. Alter alterius onera portate
el sic adimplebitis legem Christi — " Give and it will be
given you. Bear one another's burdens, and so
fulfil the law of Christ."

272 ST. AUGUSTINE,

ccxxxv.
ST. AUGUSTINE.
Agnos in sinu levabit, foetas ipse portabit.
He carrieth the weakly in His arms, and gently
leadeth those that are with young. Some are too
weak to walk at all or to guide themselves, and if
God does not carry them they must perish. Others
need his gentlest leading because they are burdened
with others whom they are bringing forth to Christ.
Of all souls these are the dearest to Him. Less
encumbered, their strength would enable them to
leap and run, but for His sake they are content
to move slowly and laboriously, as those who
carry some frail burden. He will not let such be
left behind, but will slacken His pace to theirs. He
will not hurry nor drag them on roughly. Such
are souls of "distinction," men like Augustine,
whom God foresees pregnant with the spiritual life
of millions.
CCXXXVI.
INTERCESSION.
Amice, commoda mihi tres panes, quoniam amicus meus venit
de via ad me.
" Friend, lend me three loaves, for my friend
has come to me and I have nothing to give him."
And will God, can God be deaf to us when we
importune Him in behalf of our friends in their
sudden necessities ? We have nothing to give
them, no bread for their hunger. They come to

SIMPLICITY. 273

us in the darkness of night, houseless and helpless ;
they cast themselves upon our love. We must
rise and open and welcome them, whencesoever
or whenever they come. We must go out in the
chill night and knock and beg and borrow at the
gate of Heaven, where the, "Giver of all," reposes
with His children in the rest of eternity. To be
importuned by a friend for a friend, is such music
in His ears, that He will not answer us lest we
should desist. Not till He is sated with the melody
of our pleading love, will He rise and give bread
in abundance — -not three loaves, but food for a
multitude if need be. "Much more will your
Heavenly Father give." Lord, my friend hath
come to me on his journey and I have naught to
give him. Lend me bread. Panem nostrum quotidia-
num commoda nobis hodie. It shall be all returned.
Returned ? Is it not for Thyself, Lord ?
CCXXXVII. SIMPLICITY.
Vitam praesta puram.
" Grant a pure life " — a life dominated by one
single, simple love, consecrated habitually to God,
so as to serve Him even as we breathe the air,
unconsciously, without knowing it. " Lord, when
saw we Thee hungry and fed Thee ? " We often
love God best when we are least conscious of it ;
our whole spirit is saturated by His influence, as a
crystal with light. Inchoative love expresses itself
in definite acts and services, consciously rendered,
s

274 SACRAMENTAL ONION.
but the formed habit of perfect love is only felt when
something discordant presents itself, as the atmos
phere is felt only when it is fouled or disturbed.
Our habitual love of our parents or brethren is not
conscious till separation or death, or some other
crisis, puts it to the test. The purest love is the
least reflex, the simplest ; and love is life. " Grant
a pure life."
CCXXXVHI.
SACRAMENTAL UNION.
Corpus Tuum quod sumpsi, et Sanguis quem potavi, adhaereat
visceribus meis.
" Let Thy Body which I have taken, and Thy
Blood which I have drunk, cleave to my heart."
May it cleave to our affections, which are the inmost
receptacle of the heart into which Christ is received
to be assimilated and worked into the very fibre of
our soul ; His thoughts and feelings and ways and
tastes intertwining with ours, as the vine with the
elm, till none can tell which is which, or where one
begins and the other ends, till their separation
becomes a moral impossibility.

CCXXXIX.
FORGETFUL HEARERS.
Ne obliviscaris verborum quae viderunt oculi tui.
" Let not my heart forget what mine eye hath
seen." We pray for light, and cry out, Domine, ut
videam. — " Lord, may I see," and when we get it, we

COLLECTIVE PRAISE. 275
neither feed nor trim nor fend the flame. The devil
comes and takes away the seed out of our hearts ;
rather, from beside it, for it has not half an inch
of earth over it. Light is to be fostered and fed.
It is truly a seed ; something with indefinitely fruitful
contents ; not given for a moment's admiration,
like a shooting star, but for use, like a lamp. " Thy
word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."
It is a thing to carry and keep, not to leave behind
after its first use. Here Mary is our teacher, who
kept all God's sayings, and pondered them in her
heart.
CCXL.
COLLECTIVE PRAISE.
Iter para tutum, ut videntes Jesum, semper collastemur.
" Secure us a safe journey, that we may ever
rejoice together in the vision of Jesus." The end of
a pure life and a safe journey is the vision of God,
Vita aterna, ut cognoscant Te Deum verum, et quem
misisti Jesum Christum.
Collatemur, i.e., a sympathetic rejoicing in a common
good ; the joy of that whole mystical body whereof
we are members ; of one living organism which sees
itself with a million eyes, yet with but one vision ;
loves itself with a million hearts, yet with but one
love ; where the blessedness of the whole is more
desired by each part than its own share in that
blessedness. Collatemur, i.e., in one song of many
parts, like Dante's heavenly eagle, which poured
forth from its one throat the collective praises of the
countless souls whereof it was composed —

»76 COLLECTIVE PR A I SI

Methought I heard
The murmuring of a river, that doth fall
From rock to rock transpicuous ; making known
The richness of its spring-head ; and as sound
Of cittern, at the fret-board, or of pipe
Is, at the wind-hole, modulate and tuned ;
Thus up the neck, as it were hollow, rose
That murmuring of the eagle, and forthwith
Voice there assumed, and thence along the beak
Issued in form of words such as my heart
Did look for ; on whose tables I inscribed them.1
I saw, and heard an utterance from the beak
Whereof the outward words said " I " and " Mine,"
Albeit the inward thought was "We" and " Our."2
Even so the joy of every member of the mystic
Christ is diffused throughout the whole, from the
heart, into which it is all poured back again, as into
a very ocean of joy, in the sound of whose swell its
tributary streams are silenced. It is of this joint
praise that the Church sings in her Prefaces :
Collaudare, benedicere, et predicare ; and cum quibus et
nostras voces, ut admitti jubeas deprecamur. He is less
than man, or more than God, who would care to sit
at a banquet alone — "a brute, or else a god," says
Aristotle, who himself never guessed that even
God's self-sufficingness could not make solitude
happy, or that the essential beatitude of God
required the friendship of Three, or that love in a
personal subject must rest, not in abstract truth or
goodness, but in a personal object, i.e., must be a
fellowship in joy and praise.
1 Cary's Dante, Par. xx. s Ibid. Par. xix,

THE SECRET OF POWER. 277
CCXLI.
THE SECRET OF POWER.
Dedisti et potestatem omnis carnis.
" Thou hast given Him power over all flesh,
that He should give eternal life." It was by taking
flesh that the Eternal Son acquired power over all
flesh ; and we, just so far as we are human, have
power more or less over all flesh. Human character,
in the fulness of its possibilities, or as it is in the
Divine ideal, is only participated in various aspects,
shades, and degrees, by individuals. It is by stealing
an attribute, or quality, in its higher perfection from
this quarter and that ; by running through the history
of earth's greatest, that we can to some extent
piece together the full humanity realized in Christ,
who alone had power over all flesh ; not over only
this or that class, or temperament, or disposition.
CCXLII.
god's glory.
Sive ergo manducatis sive bibitis sive aliud quid facitis, omnia in
gloriam Dei facite.
" Whether ye eat or drink or do anything
else, do it all to the glory of God." The imma
nence of God in all goodness and righteous
ness, His permeating presence, will become more
habitually sensible by active obedience to the
Divine instincts of our reason. It is God who gives
us the perception and love of right in every depart-

278 THE CHALICE.

irrent, however trivial soever ; but being free instru
ments, we can choose the less perfect or the base —
being deaf, so to say, to grace. For beyond the
limits of obligation, the region of supererogation
in ethical, ascetical, and moral refinements,
stretches almost out of our sight. The artist, or
poet, or musician, should recognize that " the best "
is the most Divine ; it is the cause of God. As
Nature, with all her limitations, strives blindly to
realize the Divine ideas as perfectly as possible (i.e.,
the Ideal), so should art do, consciously and freely.
Not only in fine art, but in the useful arts, and in
all practical matters, the best is the most Divine,
the most God-pleasing. It is God uttered, rather,
uttering Himself, most freely and graciously. For it
is He who works in us and through us to His own
praise and glory. At best, we are poor instruments,
monochord, trichord, at most, decachord ; but we
make ourselves still worse. CCXLIII.
THE CHALICE.
Calix meus inebrians quam prasclarus est.
" My overflowing chalice, how glorious it is ! "
The Chalice speaks to us by a better symbolism than
the Host of the extravagance and prodigality of
Divine love. It is the very outpouring of the Sacred
Heart. To shed one's blood for one's country, for
one's friend, to pour out one's life, is the proper act
and embodiment of love in its extremity, and
delirium. It is as feeding her little ones with her

MILK FOR BABES. 279

heart's blood that the pelican symbolizes the Divine
Love. Love is truly an inebriety, however purism
may fear the figure. It is reckless and improvi
dent, "giving and not counting the cost, fighting
and not heeding the wounds." It is doubtless the
inebriating character of wine that made it, more
than any other cup, an apt symbol and sacrament
of the Sacred Blood, " that wine which maketh glad
the heart of a man." For love is like a fire which
begets love : and it is God's love, poured out to the
last drop, and squandered upon us, that, once com
prehended, inebriates us, communicates to us the
Divine passion, or enthusiasm. For if every lover
seems little better than a fool or a drunkard to those
for whom love is a mystery, is it wonderful if God's
extravagances should seem mere inebriety to our
cold, narrow hearts ?
CCXLIV.
MILK FOR BABES.
Perfectorum autem est solidus cibus.
" Solid food for matured minds." A child who
had no one to instruct him might be reasonably
alarmed at the loss of his milk-teeth, as if it were a
sign of premature decay. Normally, in our first stage
of spiritual growth we are simply breast-fed, wholly
dependent on others for our beliefs and bents ; then,
when reason first wakes (that is, spiritual reason,
for each kind of reason develops independently to
some extent, one quite dormant, while another is
active and mature), we begin to be self-feeding,

280 CAUSE OF OUR JOY.
leaving the milk of babes for solid food ; and we
imagine that this is a final state till, to our dismay,
our milk-teeth drop out one by one, and we seem to
collapse into infantine helplessness. Our first inde
pendent theories and schemes of spirituality are
provisionally useful, no doubt, but they must give
way one by one, to be replaced by those that
are sounder, better rooted in fact and experience,
and our wisdom-teeth are the last to appear. They
say some never cut them. This is the law of
progress in every science ; both for the individual
and for the race. It should not surprise us to find
it prevailing in the science of the saints.
CCXLV.
CAUSE OF OUR JOY.
Causa nostras laetitiae.
" Cause of our joy." As Aaron's rod that budded,
so is the country in full spring glory compared with
the black waste of two months before. And all this
life and beauty is the response of bountiful mother-
earth to the call of Heaven, to the softening rain
and the fostering sunshine. We may well contrast
what is, with what would have been, had not Mary
responded to Heaven's call; had not the Holy
Ghost come upon her and the power of the Highest
overshadowed her ; had not the heavens shed their
dew from on high and rained down justice from
the clouds, and loosened the closed earth and let
salvation bud forth. All this Paradise which the
Church has made on earth, with its wealth of

GOD'S INDWELLING. 281
flower and fruit, its fragrances, its songs, its rich
rivers, is from the fiat of our Alma Mater — "Our
Bounteous Mother ! " Virgo concipiet et pariet. She
is in very deed, Causa nostra Icetitice — the cause of
our spring gladness.
Magnificate Dominum mecum et simul exaltemus
nomen ejus. She invites us to cast all our personal
graces and favours together into one great heap
with hers and those of her Divine Son and of all
the saints ; to forget all distinction of " mine and
thine," and, as one soul, to join her in her Magnificat
anima mea Dominum.
CCXLVI.
GOD'S INDWELLING.
Si quis diligit me, Pater meus diliget eum ; et ad eum veniemus
et mansionem apud eum faciemus.
" If any man love Me, My Father will love
him ; and we will come to him and make our
abode with him." After all, Patmore has said
nothing stronger than this ; if anything can be
censured as too strong, in the face of such extra
vagances of Divine passion as the Eucharist reveals.
" Spiritual " is such a chill, ghostly word with us,
that we forget that the superhuman spirit includes
all and more than our complexus of body and soul.
Man's spirit is a broken-winged, lame affair apart
from its framework; soul and body are more truly
parts of a whole, than man and wife ; one indeed is
principal, but each helpless without the other, fruit
less, lonely. Superhuman spirits are all and more

2K2 GOD'S INDWELLING.
than body and soul together. God's love is a
passionate, feeling love in an eminent sense ; not a
mere intellectual valuation, as abstract theodicy
would represent it.
" If any man keep My word, My Father will
love him," for, so far, there will be in him the image
of the Filius Dilectus, of the Only-Begotten, whose
aspect draws from the Father that sigh of sated
love, which is the Holy Spirit. The "word" of
Christ is " spirit and life ; " it is the living impress
of His mind on our mind, and of His heart on our
heart. It is " kept " by those who are studious, not
to lose, but to foster and develop it : " putting on
Christ " ever more closely. In them the Father
sees once more His reflex, and is drawn to those,
whom He draws, that they may draw Him still
more. " And we will come to him." We, Father, Son,
and Spirit. Such is the spell, the fascination our
poor, feeble spirit, when once it is magnetized by
love, can exercise over the Immovable, Immutable,
Self-sufficing Three, who are to each other all in all.
Trahe me post te — " Draw Me after thee," He says to
her — et in odorem curremus unguentorum tuorum — ¦
" and we will follow in the fragrance of thy un
guents," as a bee is drawn by a flower, and follows
its fragrance like a silken clue. Dum esset Rex in
accubitu suo nardus mea dedit odorem suavitatis —
" While the King was reclining, my spikenard
breathed forth its sweet odour." God was at rest
from all eternity until He made the soul of man,
and then His repose was gone ; the odour of its

GOD'S INDWELLING. 283
sweetness roused Him from that slumber, and He
came forth — tamquam sponsus procedens de thalamo suo ;
exultavit ut gigas ad currendam viam — " as a bride
groom from his chamber, rejoicing as a giant to
run his course." Not even its darkness and dis
figurement could conceal from His piercing gaze
that ineffaceable presentment of Himself, however
begrimed by sin. Nigra sum sed formosa, foul in
fact, but fair in capacity, ideo dilexit me Rex, where
fore the King is enamoured of me ; as
Should a high King, leaving his arduous throne,
Sue from her hedge a little gipsy maid,
For far-off royal ancestry bewrayed
By some wild beauties, to herself unknown.
If these " wild beauties," traces of royal ancestry,
our unknown possibilities and capacities — " some
power of growing king-like " — exert such a charm
over the King of souls, much more will the fairness
of the soul win Him when she has already learnt
the manners of the Court of Heaven when, like
Esther, purified, anointed, and clad in queenly tire,
formosa valde et incredibili pulcritudine — " fair and
graceful beyond belief," she is brought into His
presence. " And we will make our abode with him," and
be at home with him ; with no wish, no intention of
ever departing; holding quiet, familiar intercourse ;
insensible, because so habitual ; sinking into the
heart as water into a sponge ; settling down softly
as a dove into its warm nest. Hcec est sedes mea in
saculum saculi ; hie habitabo quoniam elegi earn — " This

284 MORE THAN A BROTHER.
is My resting-place for ever and ever. Here will I
dwell ; because I have elected it."
CCXLVII.
MORE THAN A BROTHER.
Ecce rogavi te et audire me noluisti ; rogavi Deum meum et
audivit me.1
" I asked thee to hear me, and thou wouldst not;
I asked my God, and He heard me." God is more
sympathetic than any saint, even than the tenderest
of them all. There is one that cleaveth closer than
a brother. Pater meus et mater mea dereliquerunt me,
Dominus autem assumpsit me — " My father and my
mother have forsaken me, but our Lord has taken
me up." CCXLVIII.
THE FINDING IN THE TEMPLE.
Et ipsi non intellexerunt verbum quod locutus est ad eos.
(i) " His parents knew it not," and " they
understood not the saying." We think we have
a right to understand God's doings, to see some
coming issue, spiritual or otherwise ; not content
with the assurance that all is co-operant to final
good, we fancy that we can follow the workings of
Divine wisdom. Far nobler is the faith that believes,
but does not ask to see. If Mary and Joseph were
treated with seeming inconsiderateness, if they
received enigmatical explanations which they, with
their spiritual insight, could not understand, are we
1 Scholastica to Benedict. See Brev. Rom.

A CLEAN HEART. 285
to be impatient because God's " wisdom is inscrut
able and His ways past finding out " ?
(2) God does not willingly afflict them, but " is
a Father who pities," while He chastens. Although
He knows it is for our eventual good, yet He feels
for our present sorrow. Are we not too philoso
phical as regards the sufferings of others, and wont
to excuse our indifference on the score that it will
do them good in the end? Did Mary feel the
sword of compassion less keenly because she foresaw
the future glory of Easter as the issue of Calvary ?
(3) How could they fail to find who "sought
Him with their whole heart" and sought Him in
His Temple ? If He strikes unwillingly, how
willingly He heals ! " I have forsaken thee for a
little moment, but in great mercy will I gather thee."
" Heaviness may endure for a night, but joy cometh
in the morning." And so after three days absence,
He returns with them, hand in hand, to Nazareth,
to console them for many years.
CCXLIX.
A CLEAN HEART.
Cor mundum crea in me, Deus.
"Create in me a clean heart, O God." Create,
i.e., Aliquid ex nihilo sui et subjecti. A clean heart is.
altogether the free gift of God ; for we cannot have
unless we ask, or ask unless we desire, or desire
unless we are moved. We can resist of ourselves ;
in not resisting we are said to co-operate, as a
beggar who does not refuse an alms may be said to

WATER AND WINE.

co-operate in his own enrichment. Yet he can only
credit himself with not being a fool, but remaining
sane as God made him. Our power is wholly
destructive, or rather our weakness. Our whole
strength and constructiveness come from God as
principal cause.
Putting aside all theological perplexities con
nected with it by curious and idle minds, there is
great spiritual strength in St. Augustine's doctrine,
that nothing is entirely our own but our sins. Every
good wish, hope, regret, every natural virtue, facility,
propensity; every higher taste; every happy accident
of birth, constitution, temperament, education,
circumstances ; all my labour, endeavour, success,
perseverance — all this is in me, but not of me ;
God's doing, not mine — not I, but the grace of God
in me. My sole " originality " is my negligence,
resistance, sinfulness. If I have any faith, or any
hope, any love of God or of my fellow-man, I am
sure it is none of my doing; the work has nothing
of my stamp about it. But show me meanness, or
weakness, or selfishness, or pride, and at once I can
say, " That is mine ; my effigy and superscription."
Casari qua Casaris sunt, qua Dei Deo — " Caesar's
to Caesar, God's to God."
CCL.
WATER AND WINE.
Nuptial facts sunt in Cana.
" And there was a marriage at Cana."
(i) Between the austerity of the Baptist and the

WATER AND WINE. 287
''Humanity" of our Saviour there is no real incom
patibility or difference of principle. John in the
desert, girt with his leathern girdle, clad in rough
hair-cloth, fed on locusts and honey, solitary, far
removed from human life and joys and cares ; and
Christ at the marriage-feast, eating and drinking
like others, attractive to all, "friend of publicans
and sinners," charged with gluttony and wine-
bibbing — both are animated by one principle, one
spirit, one wisdom, who is justified in all her true
children, who, however seemingly diverse, on closer
scrutiny show the features of their common mother.
She is manifested in the darkness no less than in
the light ; she knows that there is a time for
penance and weeping, and a time for praise and
rejoicing. And the Church, filled with the same
wisdom, manifests, in due place and season, a like
unity and variety of conduct, and merits from the
captious world the reproaches of both Christ and
of His forerunner; the sensual and frivolous are
scandalized at her severity; the pharisaic and
rigorous at her "humanity" and indulgence tc
human weakness ; the former find her too heavenly ;
the latter, too earthly.
(2) Christ has not come to destroy human nature,
but to fulfil, to perfect, to elevate. He promises it
" an hundred-fold in this life, and in the world to
come life everlasting ; " and it is through the cross
of self-abnegation that this hundred-fold present
perfection is to be secured, even as the fruitfulness
of the vine is increased by pruning and training.
He who knows what is in man, and needs not that

288 WATER AND WINE.
any should tell Him, being Himself Man, and
" holding nothing human indifferent " — He knows
that pleasures and enjoyments are in some degree
as needful for us as the air we breathe or the food
we eat ; and this is true even of the merely animal
relaxations of the senses and the body, still more of
the pleasures of perception, of thought, of affection.
All these He touched, used, sanctified, and blessed,
that they might be to us sacraments and graces
unto life eternal. Thus at the very opening of His
Ministry to man we find Him with His Blessed
Mother and His disciples, sanctifying by His pre
sence the marriage-feast of Cana — not merely
tolerating, but by miraculous intervention furthering
and approving harmless mirth and conviviality.
(3) Et Mater Jesu erat ibi — " and the Mother
of Jesus was there." She was there formally, as
His Mother and the Mother of His ; to care
for His interests and for theirs ; to mediate
between the two ; watching with an anxious eye
that nothing might be wanting to complete the
happiness of those around her; that the cup of
their joy might be full to brim and running over ;
in readiness, by the side of her Divine Son, to
whisper in His ear, and tell Him all their needs :
Vinum non habent — " They have no wine." And she
was there in the interests of Jesus, that all might
be according to His will ; that nature might have
no blemish unfitting it to be a receptacle of grace ;
that the water might be pure and fresh and un-
defiled, nor unworthy to be divinely changed to
wine ; that the mirth and gladness might be so

WATER AND WINE. 2S9
chastened by reason as to be apt matter for super
natural merit ; that the marriage itself might be a
fit emblem of the union of Christ and His Church,
and a means of grace to both bridegroom and bride
for perseverance in the same sacred relationship.
Mater Jesu erat ibi. This is Mary's mediatorial
office ; she turns to Jesus with, Vinum non habent —
" They have no wine," and to us with, " Whatsoever
He shall say unto you, that do ye."
(4) And so everywhere it is by the presence of
Mary that life's feast is hallowed, and Jesus and
His disciples brought into it as welcome guests. It
is through the presence of Mary that Christian art
and literature have been spiritualized, retaining all'.
that was truly beautiful in pagandom, and purging
out all that was " earthly, sensuous, devilish."
Where Jesus and Mary, the Woman and her Child,
have found entrance, all impurity has fled away
like a mist before the sun ; and where the door has
been shut in their face, corruption, decay, dishonour,
death, have slowly eaten their way in. Where they
are not, wine is but water ; the noblest efforts are
cramped and paralyzed, shut up in the limits of
the finite and the realistic. What was made "to
gladden the heart of man " proves vapid or even
poisonous if aught be there which would bring a
blush on the cheek of the Virgin Mother of Jesus.
Let them but enter, and the cave becomes a royal
palace; water turns to wine: the weakness of man's
puny conceptions is strengthened, ennobled, sub
stantially transformed by the infusion of the Divine
elements of faith and purity.

290 WATER AND WINE.
(5) " Seek ye first the Kingdom of God " does
not forbid our seeking in due turn and measure
those things which "the Gentiles seek;" but only
our seeking them as the Gentiles seek them, i.e.,
first, as the chiefest good. "Your Heavenly Father
knoweth that you have need of these things ; " and
even if He who made us, with all our senses,
passions, affections, and desires ; who moves in our
every movement, and thinks in our every thought —
even if He could possibly forget these natural needs
of ours, there is our Incarnate Lord pleading for us
with His all-human Heart, beating in unison with
our own, throb for throb ; and if, again, even He
could forget us, there is Mary ever at the side next
His Heart, to lean over and whisper in His ear :
"Vinum non habent — 'They have no wine.' Their
heart is sad, their spirits drooping ; they are lonely,
afflicted, poor, distressed, neglected — vinum non
habent." And there are ministering angels ready at
her beck and call to perform the will of her Divine
Son. (6) We "have need of all these things," of health
and sufficiency, of friends and companions, of the
bright sunshine and the flowers and the birds,
woods and rivers, mountains and valleys ; of all
that speaks to us of the goodness, kindness, beauty,
and grace of divinity ; of all that will help us to bear
up against the sadness inseparable from our mortal
state, to sweeten our bitterness, and smooth our
roughness. All are graces, good gifts helpful to
life eternal, to be sought, not before nor counter to
God's Kingdom, but in order to it. He who taught

MARY'S FIAT. 291

us to pray, Sanctificetur nomen tuum; adveniat regnum
tuum ; fiat voluntas tua, bids us to go on : Panem
nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie.
CCLI.
MARY'S fiat.
Quella, ch' ad aprir l'alto amor volse la chiave.1
" She who turned the key which unlocked the
deep love," i.e., as Eve stretched forth her hand at
Satan's bidding and unlocked the flood-gates of sin,
sorrow, and death, so Mary at Gabriel's word, by
her fiat mihi, opens "the windows of Heaven and
the fountains of the great deep," and deluges the
world with the cleansing flood of Divine love, till
then, pent up and longing to burst forth, longing
to "rend the heavens and come down" in torrents
upon the earth.
In Mary with her Babe at her breast ; in Mary
broken-hearted by the Cross of her Son ; in Mary
clasping her risen Jesus ; in Mary reigning by His
side in Heaven, we see the great all-Mother of
humanity, a conception dimly shadowed in the
dark gropings of the pagan mind, in Cybele and Gara
and many another, but fully realized in the one
true religion of humanity where, "taught by God,"
the huir»n soul can express its deepest yearnings,
and recognize them as implanted by Him who can
satisfy them beyond what eye hath seen, ear heard,
or heart conceived. Those childish dreams of un
taught sinful humanity, mingled with much that
1 Purgatorio, x.

292 MARY'S FIAT.

was fair and noble, more that was foul and de
grading; but in the reality which the Catholic
religion gives us, in the great Mother of God and
of man, we find verified the eternal principle that,
whatever is really beautiful is also either true or
less than the truth. It is Humanity that she bears
in her womb, suckles at her breast, tends and
nurtures and protects. It is Humanity that she
holds in her arms, and about which she casts her
sheltering mantle, as she stands, Queen of the
whole earth, with her foot upon the destroyer's
head. It is by the Cross of Crucified Humanity
that she stands weeping ; it is risen and glorified
Humanity that she welcomes from the dead ; and
it is with ascended Humanity that she reigns for
evermore. " Show thyself a Mother." Prove it in the deed
and event, for title and office is not enough. " Let
us not love in word and in tongue [alone] but in
deed and in truth." She has already proved her
motherhood in affection when, knowing what it
would cost to be the mother of suffering humanity,
she said, Fiat mihi, and presented her heart to the
sword, and took her stand underneath our cross.
For the sinful children of her adoption she sacrificed
the sinless and Divine fruit of her womb, seeing that
to us He had transferred all His rights, making her
debt of love to Him, payable to us. And to each of
us singly she has shown herself in fact, what she is
in title, no less evidently than she whose mother
hood was indicated by Solomon's judgment. The
pretended mother's affection is inordinate to the

ST. PAUL. 293

prejudice of justice, and eventually cruel and selfish,
like all unruly love. It is, therefore, for a con
tinuance of maternal protection that we ask, and
which we ask in vain unless we endeavour to fulfil
its correlative condition : Monstra te esse filium —
" Show thyself a child." Is there any trace of our
mother in our features ? Anything to show for all
the trouble she has taken about us, for all the
affection she has wasted on us ? Who would
suspect that we hailed Christ as brother ? Or that
we recognized in every fellow-man the son of our
common mother ? CCLII.
ST. PAUL.
Saule, Saule, quid me persequeris ?
" Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute Me ? "
It is a prominent feature in St. Paul to identify
Christ and Christ's. As he persecuted Christ in
His little ones, so they are the recipients of his
penitential love and passionate devotion. Like
Magdalene, it is upon the feet of Christ he expends
his tears, his spikenard, the service of all God has
given him ; for the Head has made all his debts
of love, pity, and reparation payable to the feet.
There is the place for penitents to sit.
Paul does not turn from a life of immorality to
a life of morality, by a sort of ethical conversion.
Morally he was as correct as any good Pharisee
could be. But he turns from personal hatred of our
Saviour to personal love : and this is the essence of
Christian sanctification. It is de facto a morally

294 PRAISE AND THANKS.
perfect life, but formally it is a life of love which
never thinks of reason or of the rules of right living ;
but as the brutes live blindly according to Divine
reason, so the love of Christ carries all morality
with it instinctively. CCLIII.
PRAISE AND THANKS.
Bonum est confiteri Domino et psallere nomini tuo Altissime.
" It is good to give thanks to God and to praise
His name." Two distinct duties, praise and thanks
giving : thanksgiving for what God is to me; praise
for what He is to Himself.
Ad annuntiandum mane misericordiam tuam — "To
tell Thy mercy in the morning," i.e., in the early
morning of life or of spiritual life, when all is bright
and fair and full of hope, before the shadows have
fallen and experience has tempered our sanguine
expectations ; or else, in the morning of repentance
which follows the night of sin, when the light of
grace dawns upon us once more ; or, generally, in
all times of special favour, consolation, and blessing.
It is good at such times to see in all our joy only
God's mercy and free forgiveness, and to say, Unde
hoc mihi ? — to " announce it " to ourselves and
before God in the silence of our heart.
Et veritatem tuam per noctem — " And Thy truth
in the night." It is a good thing to praise the
justice of God in times of darkness, temptation, and
calamity; when His ways are hidden, perplexing,
obscure; to say, "Just is the Lord and terrible,"
" It is the Lord ; let Him do as seemeth good to

ALL MEN LOVABLE. 295
Him." For if He afflicts, it is in truth and justice
—He, Who made the darkness and the light,
And dwells, not in the light alone,
But in the darkness and the cloud.
CCLIV.
ALL MEN LOVABLE.
Ut diligatis invicem sicut ego dilexi vos.
"That you should love one another as I have
loved you." Although in individuals the capacity for
happiness, in spite of a certain specific agreement,
differs both in kind and degree, yet each does possess
radically a capability of being indefinitely happier
than he is. This happiness-capacity is what appeals
to that purest kindness, or amor benevolentia, which
takes delight in the contemplation of happiness for
its own sake, as an end in itself; which loves a man
rather for what he can be, than for what he is.
The " happiness " in question is the true happiness
of a spiritual creature, and in the last analysis
means its final perfection or spiritual beauty. This
love, therefore, is not inspired by the present excel
lence or lovableness of our neighbour, but by his
perfectibility, as the sculptor loves the rude block
for what he knows it may become under his chisel,
or as God loves chaos in the physical or the spiritual
or the supernatural order, and broods over it and
says, " Let there be light." Because we are poten
tially lovable, God loves us, and makes us actually
lovable. In all cases He loves His own ideal, which
He purposes to realize in us.

296 LAZARUS.

It is greater skill which deals with more difficult
and stubborn matter, and detects a possible beauty
latent in that which is crabbed and deformed. This
skill carried to infinity exists in the Divine Artist
who from nothing can draw forth all things " by that
power wherewith He can subdue all things unto
Himself." And as we love most what costs us most,
so God's special love is for His specially difficult
subjects in whose perfection He is most glorified.
In their case what He loves is not merely the
possibility of such faith, such happiness; but of such
faith in one by nature so sceptical and narrow-
minded ; such hope in one so pusillanimous and
despondent ; such love in one so weakly selfish ; such
light in one so bewildered, confused, and darkened ;
Nam virtus in infirmitate perficitur. Our charity,
therefore, is more akin to God's when we love
others, not because they are lovable, but in order
that they may become lovable.
CCLV.
LAZARUS.
Nemo illi dabat.
"And no man gave unto him" (sc, to the
beggar Lazarus). Christ's suffering and poverty
had no interest for the Jews. He lay at their
doorstep, covered with sores, unknown, despised,
neglected, hungering in vain for the crumbs of their
faith, love, and kind compassion. Their temporal
ambition, their legalist self-sufficiency, their world-
liness caused them to forget God and His needs;

LAZARUS. 297

even as we, when all goes well with us in body and
soul, cease to enter into His passion and poverty,
or that of His members.
Canes veniebant — "The dogs came." Our very
animal nature, with its wants and pains, should
create in us a sympathy for the bodily wants of
others, were not its impulse of pity so perverted
and destroyed by reflex selfishness that even the
dumb beasts put us to shame in the matter. Sed et
lamia nudaverunt mammam; lactaverunt catulos suos;
filia populi mei crudelis quasi struthio in deserto — " Yea,
the sea-monsters have bared the breast and given
suck to their young ; but My people is as cruel
as the ostrich in the desert." The very Gentiles
and pagans (canes), Pilate and the Centurion,
had more pity for our Saviour than the Jews ;
and it was the Samaritan who bound up his
wounds and poured in oil and wine, when priest
and levite passed him by. Some who have far
less claim on Him than we have, take more pity
upon Him ; and the compassion which pagans,
agnostics, and even bad Christians have for the
temporal infirmities, pains, and sorrows of their
fellow-men, shames us who profess to see in these
afflictions the very wounds of Christ's Mystical
Body. " The poor man died and was carried by the
angels into Abraham's bosom." Christ, the true
Lazarus, the " poor man," ascends into Heaven to
Abraham's bosom, the bosom of the Eternal Father
from which He came forth. And in Him all His
poor and needy members have been carried up, cum

298 LAZARUS.
Lazaro quondam paupere,1 to the bosom of Abraham,
to be comforted, while the merciless are tormented.
Even on earth, wherever the Spirit of Christ has
made itself felt, the poor, the afflicted, the suffering,
have been raised up from the mire to share such
honour as the Cross itself receives from time to
time from the great of this world. The Maundy
was not a fruitless ceremony in the ages of faith.
But the spirit of paganism is altogether inhuman —
dead even to brute-instincts of pity.
Goethe tells us that "before the Queen's
[Marie Antoinette's] arrival the very rational regu
lation had been made, that no deformed persons,
no cripples or disgusting invalids should show
themselves on her route."2 If there is not more
religion, there is at least more humanity in our
own century, and no European potentate in
these days would risk his popularity by such a
"rational regulation." The King Himself never
seemed so glorious to enlightened eyes as when
thronged with the blind, the lame, the lepers, and
the afflicted of all sorts, pressing upon Him to touch
him, et virtus ex Mo exibat et sanabat omnes. Perhaps
godless humanitarianism with all its follies may,
like the pagan philosophies of old, attune men's
ears to the fuller music of the Gospel, and prepare
the way for an intelligent return to Christ on the
part of those who have left Him in ignorance,
because they never knew Him.
1 Burial Service. s Goethe's Autobiography.

OUR LATENT CAPACITIES. 299
CCLVI.
OUR LATENT CAPACITIES.
Ut resuscites gratiam Dei quae est in te.
" Stir up the grace that is in you." Dante
compares Nature to an artist, C'ha Vabito dell'
arte, e man che trema,1 who has in his mind the
true pattern of the Divine idea, but whose hand
shakes in the delineation of the same : so that,
Ideate poi piu e men trainee,2 the perfect type (which
art tries to bring out), is never fully realized in
Nature, but shines more or less imperfectly through
the veil of matter. It is for fine art to seize and
apprehend from these shadowings the ideal they
derive from, and to bring it out into clearer light, as
when one takes a deep and obscure author and in
terprets and illustrates him. So man's own task of
self-evolution, moral and intellectual, is but a work
of fine art, to which he is constrained by his Maker.
It is the apprehending and bringing out, each in
himself, of that ideal hinted at in his own character,
circumstances, gifts, and opportunities — seeing what
God expects of him and fulfilling that expectation.
Indeed, all human co-operation with God's designs
for society, for humanity at large, is art in the
truest sense — the correction of Nature's trembling
1 Resembling thus the artist in her work,
Whose faltering hand is faithless to his skill.
(Cary's Dante, Paradiso, xiii.)
s . . . More or less it shows
Th' ideal stamp imprest. . . .

300 FEEDING THE HUNGRY.
lines to the true pattern which we perceive she is
trying to imitate. CCLVII.
FEEDING THE HUNGRY.
Esurivi et dedistis mihi manducare.
" I was hungry and you gave Me to eat." God
not only gives all living things their being, but
" opens His hand and fills them with plenteousness,"
preserving that life as lovingly as He gave it. Do I
reflect how from my first breath God has prepared
and given me every morsel that has crossed my lips ;
putting milk, as Augustine notes,1 in my mother's
breast, giving her the desire to impart it, and me
the power to draw it, ere I knew what food was, or
that I needed food ; caring for me thus tenderly,
ere I knew Him or could know Him ; and this,
in order that I might live to know Him, and,
knowing His love, to love Him. What then shall
I say of the food He has prepared for my soul,
" filling my mouth with good things so that my
youth is renewed like the eagle's ; " of the Living
Bread, the flesh of the Incarnate, the Corn of
God ground and crushed on Calvary ? He, who
feeds all, and has so fed even me, His thankless
and perfidious creature, He it is who comes to me
hungry and thirsty in the person of His minimi,
His little ones, dependent on my compassion,
desirous to be fed with the crumbs from my table,
which is loaded with His own bounty. Sitio — " I
thirst," He cries to me from His Cross ; Da mihi
1 Conf. i.

FEEDING THE HUNGRY. 301
bibere — " Give Me to drink," from the well-side ;
Ubi est triticum et vinum — " Where is the wheat and
the wine ? " from the starving multitudes, the par vuli
in plateis.1 If they are to follow Him into the desert,
there to be fed with the Word of Life, they must
have, in due measure, the meat that perishes. We
cannot hope to evangelize the multitudes until we
feed them, still less if we show ourselves indifferent
to their temporal needs and welfare. It may be,
but it can hardly be, that he who is callous to the
miseries of the body and of the natural affections,
is full of pity for supernatural ills. " If a man love
not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love
God whom he seeth not ? " If he is insensible to
the natural and visible, how shall he be sensitive to
the invisible and eternal ?
" Come ye blessed," He will say to those who
fed Him, " come and sit down with Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God." The
Eucharist on earth is after all but the foreshadow
ing of that Eternal Banquet which celebrates the
marriage-supper of the Lamb. And if to those who
fed Him not, He will say, Ite maledicti — " Go, ye
accursed," what will be their doom who have
robbed the poor of their wages, or sweated them
and ground them down to a starvation wage ? Or
still more, what of those heresiarchs and others
who have robbed them of the Bread of eternal life,
of the Word of God and of the sacraments ? Nor
is the crime confined to the persecutors of religion,
but is intensified in its ministers, who through
1 Thren.

302 CLOTHING THE NAKED.
negligence, culpable ignorance, avarice, sloth, have
starved the flocks committed to their care.
CCLVIII.
CLOTHING THE NAKED.
Nudus fui et operuistis me.
" I was naked and you clothed Me." It were no
despicable matter for gratitude that God has clothed
housed, and warmed me all my life through ; still it
is our convention that He is not to be thanked for
such benefits as air and light, which, being shared by
all, are no mark of special regard ; or which, being
showered upon us continuously, mark no point where,
more than at another, the debt of gratitude falls due.
That God should have clothed the spiritual
nakedness of mere humanity with the garment of
grace was a sufficient mystery of love ; still more
that in Baptism He should restore that white robe
forfeited by ancestral sin ; but most of all that, after
we have rent and soiled and cast off this fair garment,
He should restore it to us, not once, but again and
again in holy Penance ; that after our mad outbreaks
He should bring us to sit at His feet " clothed and
in our right mind ; " that finding us by the wayside
wounded and stripped of our garments, He should
treat our fault as though it were our misfortune, and
should draw nigh to us in compassion ; that He
should replace the befouled rags and tatters of the
returning prodigal with the best robe, the ring and
the sandals, the insignia of sonship.
I was naked and He clothed me. His garments

HARBOURING STRANGERS. 303
were torn from Him that my sins and spiritual
wounds might be covered and healed. In Christ,
as He hangs naked on His Cross, I see the naked
ness of the members of His Mystic Body in whom
He cries out to me, cold and shivering and shame-
fast. Do I cover and clothe Him in return,
excusing and hiding the faults of others ; or do I, by
detraction, strip the garments from His bleeding
back and shame Him before others ; or still worse,
by calumny or calumnious exaggeration do I, with
my own hand inflict such wounds or aggravate
them ?
Venite benedicti — " Come ye Blessed," He will
say to those who have clothed Him. He will
" cover the multitude of their sins " " in the sight
of His holy angels," and will " clothe them with the
stole of glory ; " and they shall not be ashamed of
the record of sins that are long blotted out by
works of mercy, or of wounds that gleam like rubies,
bright witnesses of the mercy pledged to the merciful.
CCLIX.
HARBOURING STRANGERS.
Hospes eram et collegistis me.
" I was a stranger and you brought Me in."
We were strangers to God by nature, yet by grace
He called us to adoptive sonship, to the household
of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.
We were strangers and worse, by our racial fall,
and yet again He did not wait till we knocked, but
came forth to seek us in the desert and to " open

304 HARBOURING STRANGERS.
the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers ; " to pour
out on us the Spirit which works within our every
good wish, which emboldens us to knock and to
seek and to cry out : Abba, Father ! And if the
Jews were, by vocation, the due recipients of the
Gospel Church, it was to us Gentiles, strangers and
aliens from Israel, that it was absolutely decreed.
We were strangers, yet He brought us within that
great enclosure and home of mercy. And He has
sought me, who by so many sins have so often
estranged myself, and brought me in again and again,
wishing that I should be at home with Him, one of
His household, His familiars, not a servant, but a
friend and confidant," for the servant knoweth not
what his master doth." Quid retribuam ? What
return shall I make when He comes to me as a
stranger in all those from whom I am separated or
alienated in any way whatsoever ; by difference of
temperament, character, tastes, sympathies, opinions,
beliefs, education, birth, and so forth ; who are
likely to feel strange with me or ill at ease, and wish
to be back in their old surroundings. Do I
emphasize differences, or do I merge them ? am I
sympathetic or antipathetic ? am I affable in the old
scholastic sense, i.e., one who can be spoken to easily,
who is approachable, unstarched ; a man to whom
(as Newman says somewhere) you could speak in
your shirt-sleeves ; or am I stiff, patronizing, vulgar ?
There is no harder cross than loneliness and isolation,
the sense of being out in the cold, not wanted,
perhaps to some extent " boycotted ; " and there is no
greater charity than that which lightens it.

VISITING THE SICK. 305
Venite benedicti. "Strangers and pilgrims on
earth," though they be, those who harbour the
stranger, shall before all others feel at home in
Heaven. Mary will be ready with her motherly
welcome, nor will they feel shy or strange when she
leads them by the hand to show to them the blessed
fruit of her womb, Jesus — no stranger to them.
Ite maledicti. They who have shut the door in the
face of the stranger shall be driven into eternal
banishment ; to wander, like Cain, as vagabonds,
through the dark night of chaos, in that " outer
darkness " made deeper by the glimpses of the
interior light ; colder, by contrast with the house
hold glow which they have forfeited for ever.
" Depart from Me, I never knew you," that is :
"you are strangers to Me, and strangers you shall be
for ever."
CCLX.
VISITING THE SICK.
Infirmus fui et visitastis me.
" I was sick and you visited Me." Every hour
of good health that we have ever enjoyed was of
God's kindness and preservation. He is our chief
physician and healer. If ever we have recovered
from illness, it was He who gave the physician his
skill, and the drugs their virtue, and who ordered
all these means to our recovery and, in our bodily
nature, worked with them to bring about our cure.
If others felt for us and sympathized with us, it was
He, who felt for us more, who filled them with the
milk of human kindness — He, who has made human
n

306 VISITING THE SICK.
hearts the instruments and conveyers of His own
loving compassion. " He who made the eye, shall
He not see ? " He who formed men for pity, shall
He not pity ? Pity for bodily ills is not the highest
component of charity, but it is essential and in a
way, the first, the most fundamental in order of
genesis. Christ came to redeem the whole man,
soul and body ; soul principally, yet body first ;
in order to the soul. Circuibat benefaciendo —
" He went about doing good," refers primarily
to His works of bodily healing. And in His
Church He observes a like economy, " knowing
whereof we are made, remembering that we are
but dust ; " insisting before all else on the corporal
works of mercy; on the anointing of His mystical
body with the spikenard destined otherwise for
selfish luxury. Are we then grateful to God for
our bodily health and vigour, or has it made us
hard and unsympathetic for the weakly; slow to
believe in their sufferings ; quick to condemn them
as pusillanimous, hypochondriacal ? Or if we have
had the grace of sickness and infirmity, has it taught
us and mellowed us, as it ought ; or has it simply
been received as a grievance to be shaken off as
soon as possible ?
Moreover, and far more, is God the physician
of souls " who forgiveth all thy sin, who healeth
all thy diseases," "by whose stripes we were healed;"
who drew near in pity and bound up our wounds,
pouring in the wine of His Passion-blood, the oil
of blood-bought grace. Think, too, how He has
nursed us through our sickness of soul, our noisome

VISITING THE SICK. 307
diseases ; with what patient watchings night and
day through our hours of unconsciousness or delirium
when we knew Him not, or mistook Him, or hated
and resisted Him. And even when it was not His
will to heal us of our bodily or spiritual ills, at least
He visited us and consoled us with the assurance
that He afflicted us, not willingly, but lothely, as
a father who chastises the son of his love.
I was sick and He visited me. Quid retribuam ?
He comes to me sick and infirm in the person of
those who are ailing in body ; or who are labouring
under spiritual weaknesses and vices. He does not
ask me to heal Him ; for that is not always in my
power ; but simply to visit Him ; to part the burden
cf His sufferings by compassion ; to dispel the sense
of weariness and loneliness — often more oppressive
than pain itself. Still more does He crave my
ministry and consolation in His spiritual ailments,
in His ignorance of things human and divine, His
weakness, waywardness, viciousness. He who has
borne with my stupidity, and forced His light
through my wilfully closed eyelids, and sought me
out when I fled from Him, and kissed my ulcerous
sores into health. And am I to be unfeeling, fasti
dious, impatient, austere, rigorous, with 1x13' fellow-
servant ? Even if we may not extend to the wilfully
vicious the sympathy of approbation, we should at
least feel the sympathy of comprehension, of a
knowledge of the human heart and its pathology,
which should forbid us to wonder or be astonished
at any depth to which man can sink, as though we
ourselves were not borne up, in spite of ourselves,

308 VISITING PRISONERS.
by the invisible arms of demerited mercy. Much
more do sins of frailty claim our tender forbearance,
under penalty of being subjected to the like our
selves. Venite benedicti — "Come, ye Blessed." Die anima-
mea; solus tua sum ego. He will say to my soul,
" I am thy health." Sana me Domine et ,sanaborr
salvum me fac et salvus ero — " Do thou heal me,
Lord, and I shall indeed be healed." Then only
shall soul and body enter into a state of perfect and
unbroken, unbreakable health through close union
with Him who is the fountain of their being, preser
vation, growth, and health.
CCLXI.
VISITING PRISONERS.
In carcere eram et venistis ad me.
"I was in prison and you came unto Me."
Here first He deals with an affliction which is
due to the sufferer's own fault. Also, as in the case
of the sick, with one which it is not always in our
power to remove or cure, but at most to alleviate
by practical pity.
We were in prison, in the bondage of Egypt, and
He came to us, the true Moses, and led us out with
a mighty hand and an outstretched arm ; and
through the blood of the Passover brought us into
freedom and sonship. He came to us, He taber
nacled with us, He was not ashamed to share our
nature, non horruisti virginis utero ; nay, He did not
shrink from the likeness of sinful flesh, laying aside

VISITING PRISONERS. 309
the bodily glory and immortality which was the con
natural birthright of the Incarnate, and mingling
with sinners as one of themselves ; tempted in all
points as we ; chastised, though personally sinless,
beyond all others. Have we not as children, and at
all times, felt a loyal love towards those who came to
us and stood by us when we were in disgrace ; who
went bail for us ? And now it is God that comes
to us and takes us up, when the mother that bore
us has abandoned us, despaired of us, forgotten us.
Pater meus et mater mea dereliquerunt me, Dominus
autem assumpsit me. What love was hers whom He
championed against the self-righteous world ; sham
ing her accusers out of His presence till she was
left with Him alone to hear : " Neither will I con
demn thee; go, sin no more;" thus making Himself
a partaker in her disgrace, and heedless of His own
repute ! So, in general, has He everywhere cast
in His lot with those whom the world despises, the
poor, the weak, the ignorant, the sinful. He has
come to us in this prison-house of a world ; into the
prison of Mary's womb ; into the prison of flesh
and blood ; into the prison of the grave and of
Hell ; into the prison of the sacred species and of
the tabernacle of the altar.
Quid retribuam ? What return shall I make
when I find Him in prison, in disgrace, forsaken,
outcast, exiled, when I meet Him in the person
of those who are under a cloud through their own
fault ?
" Come to Me," He says, " all you that labour,
and are burdened, and I will refresh you ; " and

310 VISITING PRISONERS.
relying on these words we often try to come and
cannot ; we seek and find not ; we knock and the
door remains closed. And why ? Because we do
not come to Him where He is to be found. Where,
then, is He to be found ? " Lo ! " He says, " I am
with you all days, even to the end of the world."
He is with us in His Vicar to teach us; in the
sacraments, to heal and strengthen us ; in the
Eucharist, to be worshipped and adored by us ; in
His brethren, to be pitied and loved and served by
as. Pauperes semper habetis vobiscum; the poor ye
have always with you. There He is to be found —
in our midst, and we know Him not. " Have you
not known, have you not heard, hath it not been
told you from the beginning ? " Have we not known
and heard that " new commandment," which was
from the beginning, — new, because like truth or
God, it ages not: the commandment "that you love
one another as I have loved you." It is in the
prisoners that we are to find Him and to come to
Him ; in the sick, and the naked, and the stranger,
and the hungry, and the thirsty. Else, in that day,
when we shall so want to come to Him, He will not
say to us: "Come;" but: "Go," for "I was in
prison and you came not unto Me;" "I know you
not," for " I was a stranger and you brought Me
not in." " Go now in outer darkness. Go into
everlasting hunger and thirst and cold and naked
ness ; for I was hungry, thirsty, cold and naked,
and you had no pity for Me."

FROM GOD'S FEET TO HIS FACE. 311
CCLXII.
FROM GOD'S FEET TO HIS FACE.
Ostende faciem tuam et salvi erimus.
" Show us Thy face and we shall be safe." Here
we see but His footprints ; His feet ; the members
of the mystic Christ, but not the head. The
members we have always with us, and can do good
to them when we will. Let us so serve His feet
that we shall one day see His face. Mary rose from
the anointing of His feet to the anointing of His
head. While we see but His feet we are not yet
safe. We may turn away in disgust ; for they are
soiled, cut, and bleeding. But when once we see
His face we are safe for ever: Ostende faciem tuam et
salvi erimus. This is life eternal, when the veiling
clouds of created heaven and earth shall be rolled
away from before the face of the sun. Signatum est
super nos lumen vultus tui Domine, dedisti latitiam in
corde meo — " The light of Thy face is sealed upon
us ; Thou hast gladdened My heart."
CCLXIII.
SHEEP OUTSIDE THE FOLD.
Nolite timere ; scio enim quod Jesum quseritis.
" Fear not ; for I know you seek Jesus."
May we not say this of all those outside the
Church who are in good faith, who seek Him where
He is not to be found, in graves and the abodes of
death, instead of among the living ; who know but

312 GIFTS THAT COST.

a dead Christ, a past Christ, a human Christ, and
yet love what they know and as far as they know ;
and hasten in the early morning to do honour to
His sacred ashes ? If their little light kindles so
much love, can we doubt but that sooner or later
He will manifest Himself to them in His risen
glory, were it even at their last breath ? All genuine
goodness is not only ex Deo, but also in Deum ; it
derives from Truth and leads to Truth. For such
let us have no fear. Nolite timere : Jesum quaritis.
CCLXIV.
GIFTS THAT COST.
Pie Pelicane Jesu Domine.
God often likens His Divine affection for our
weakness and feebleness to that of the mother bird,
who gathers her brood under her wing for warmth
and protection. Yet since Nature's best symbols
are defective, legend tries to give us a better one in
the pelican, which not merely feeds its nestlings
with its life-blood ; but draws that stream from self-
inflicted wounds. Many will give ; but few will
suffer in order to give. " Greater love hath no man
than this," that he should pour out his blood for
his friend ; and yet it is but a miserable echo of
the passionate cry of the Divine Lover, which forced
the Blood from His veins. Calix meus inebrians, quam
praclarus est I

GOD'S LOVE NOT BLIND. 313
CCLXV.
GOD'S LOVE NOT BLIND.
Dico tibi Petre quia in hac nocte ter me negabis.
" I tell thee, Peter, that this very night thou
shalt deny Me thrice." If God should for an
instant raise the veil of the future and show us
one whom now we love and venerate and toil for
and all but idolize, fallen, degraded, hateful, and
estranged from us for ever, we should understand
better the tenderness of the Divine love which is so
often shadowed and saddened, but never chilled by
the clouds beyond our horizon. He loves us and
labours for us no less although He knows that His
love and labour will be in vain, although He sees
" within the green, the moulder'd tree." Tantus
labor non sit cassus.
CCLXVI.
VANITY AND PRIDE.
Quid habes quod non accepisti ?
" What hast thou that thou hast not received ;
and if thou hast received, why boast as if thou
hadst not ? " The malice lies, not in glorying in
God's gifts ; but in forgetting that they are gifts.
St. Paul glories in his graces and labours and
successes ; but he says : Non ego sed gratia Dei mecum
— "Not I, but Christ in me." The " thorn in the
flesh " was left with him as a continual reminder of
the products of his originality. That was his own
entirely. Mary says : Fecit mihi magna — " He has

314 THE HOLY SPIRIT.
done great things for me." She knew and con
fessed herself Blessed among women ; she knew the
measure of her greatness far better than we know
it. Yet gratitude and humility are the only emotions
stirred by this knowledge. How much pleasanter
and more humble is the frankness of vanity than the
prudery of self-depreciation. It is no harm to think
that God has given us more than He has done, just
as it is no harm for a beggar to be enraptured with
the magnificence of some shabby garment he has
received ; for he has perhaps never seen anything
better. But however little we think our talents, it
is great harm to credit ourselves with the origination
of them. Indeed, it is the implicit supposition that
we are answerable for them that makes pseudo-
modesty shy of claiming too much. A man ought
to speak as simply of his mental and moral gifts as
of his stature or complexion or weight. Even were
they the greatest on earth, their greatness is but
relative to something very small.
CCLXVII.
THE HOLY SPIRIT.
Veni, Sancte Spiritus.
" Come, Holy Ghost." It is the taming effect of
passionate love which makes God Himself mansuetus,
meek and ready at our beck and call. We can say
to Him, "Go," and He goeth ; "Come," and He
cometh; "Do this," and He doeth it. "Behold,
I am in your midst as one who serveth," He con
fesses. The priest's power over Him is simply

THE HOLY SPIRIT. 315
dominative ; often tyrannical. Yet all can bind Him,
banish Him, determine His movements largely.
Ecce Rex tuus venit tibi mansuetus — " Lo, thy King
comes to thee submissive" — Come augel al richiamo,
like a hawk to the whistle, free by nature and
made to soar ; but drawn to earth by an invisible
chain. (1) " Holy Spirit," i.e., the sigh of satisfied love
with which the Father looks upon His image in the
face of the Eternal Son : " He shall see of the travail
of His Soul and shall be satisfied." "This is My
beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." And as
mirror answers mirror, so that love and satisfaction
and sigh returns upon itself from the Son to the
Father and back to the Son, intertwining with itself
and weaving a new personality — the Spirit of Love.
(2) Spirit, i.e., the quickening principle — Domi
num et vivificantem — bringing life from death. Emitte
Spiritum tuum et creabuntur, et renovabis faciem terra —
" Thou shalt send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall
be created, and Thou shalt renew the face of the
earth," turning winter into spring. " The words
that I speak they are spirit and they are life."
"The spirit quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing."
" What is born of the flesh is flesh ; what is born
of the spirit is spirit." The flesh is corrupt nature
giving birth to works of corruption, whose wages is
death. The Spirit is the Paraclete dwelling in our
heart and will, making us both receive and love the
"words which I speak unto you," and giving birth
to the works of grace, whose reward is Eternal
Life — a greater Gift in the same order ; as we read :

316 FATHER OF THE POOR.
" If thou knewest the Gift of God," namely, the
Living Water or the Holy Ghost, or Eternal Life,
or the Spirit which quickens our profitless flesh.
(3) Spirit, i.e., the formal principle; turning chaos
into cosmos. The principle of all beauty, which is
nothing else than a throwing off of the bonds and
restrictions of what is gross and material, and a
putting on of that which is heavenly, divine,
spiritual. Lava quod est sordidum, riga quod est
aridum, fove quod est frigidum, flecte quod est rigidum.
Sordid, dry, cold, rigid, are all attributes of gross
matter, opposite diametrically to the characteristics
of spiritual beauty, and of that Spirit who is sub
sistent Beauty. CCLXVIII.
FATHER OF THE POOR.
Veni Pater pauperum.
"Father of the poor." We consider ourselves
absolved from further obligations if we relieve the
distressed ; but feel no way bound to enter into
personal relationship with them or to create a
permanent tie. We give our money, but not
ourselves. This is not enough. Non quaro donum
tuum sed te, God says to us in the person of His
poor — I seek, not your gift, but your self. " I was
a father to the orphan," says Job. It is no true
charity which does not spring from an inward
friendship of some sort. In becoming " our Father"
God shows us what charity means : " Behold, what
manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us

LIGHT OF HEARTS. 317
that we should be and be called sons of God." He
gave us Himself; and became ours — our Father.
CCLXIX.
LIGHT OF HEARTS.
Veni lumen cordium.
(1) " Light of the heart." There is a heart-light
and a head-light, the former instinctive, leaping to
the truth by sympathy with the truth ; Qui facit
veritatem venit ad lumen; the latter a thin line of
light which, followed laboriously and per sever ingly,
leads us out of the labyrinth of error.
(2) " Light of the heart." There is a darkness
and gloom of the affections no less than of the
intellect. Every lower affection stands out like a
dark cloud in contrast with those that are higher.
One alone — the love of God — is absolutely light
under all circumstances, and from it the rest borrow
their tints.
CCLXX.
THE BEST COMFORTER.
Consolator optime.
"Best of all Consolers." Not the only one, but
the best of all. God is the Deus totius consolationis —
the God of all consolation ; and it is He who moves
others to compassionate us, making them the in
struments of His own pity and love. If we could
but hear His voice in theirs, their words would be
to us as a Divine message. Apart from Him what
do they avail ? Quando Jesus intus non loquitur,

3i 8 THE BEST COMFORTER.

consolatio vilis est ; si autem Jesus unum tantum verbum
loquitur magna consolatio sentitur — "When Jesus
speaks not within us, all comfort is worthless ;
but if Jesus speaks, were it only one word,
great is our consolation." How dead, formal,
commonplace everything sounds unless we can
feel that it is heaven-sent, from the Mover of all
hearts ! And if we would be good consolers our
pattern is this Consolator optime with His quiet,
peaceful, tactful ways : who fits Himself into our
thought and mood as water enters into the pores
of a sponge ; not contradicting, rebuking, or mini
mizing a grief which, small in itself, is great to our
littleness and weakness. He first makes Himself
one with us, and then insensibly makes us one with
Himself. Optime not only because love and pity
is best in its source, but because He alone knows
every cranny and winding, every little nerve-fibre
and capillary of our soul. Consolation addresses
the affections principally ; the mind secondarily.
For it is the mere offering of sympathy and love
which salves the wound of sorrow, always and
necessarily. If words can also guide the suffering
mind skilfully away from its theme of bitterness, if
they can correct the magnifying illusions of passion ;
if they can quicken hope for the future, gratitude
for the past and for much that is left in the present,
such words are golden. But there was much wisdom
and taste in the unwisest of consolers when they
"sat with Job on the earth seven days and seven
nights, and no one spake to him a word ; for they
saw that his grief was exceeding great."

OUR GUEST. 319

CCLXXI.
OUR GUEST.
Dulcis hospes anima?.
"Sweet Guest of the soul." A guest is one whom
we entertain to the best of our ability, and treat
punctiliously with all due ceremony and politeness.
One, moreover, who is not born in the house, and
from whom we are alien by blood ; who is not tied
to the house, but comes if allowed or invited ; and
goes, when he finds he is no longer welcome. God's
Holy Spirit is a stranger ; and yet in will and love
He is ours by ties closer than blood. He comes
knocking and begging for entertainment. " Behold
I stand at the door and knock ; if any man open I
will come in and sup with him," "Make ready; for
I must eat the pasch at thy house." He does not
stand on ceremony, or exact unreasonable attend
ance, or give unnecessary trouble ; and He is slow
to take offence, bearing with rudeness almost to the
verge of insult ; for His nobleness allows for our
rusticity and vulgarity. Surely He is a dulcis hospes
even to the least loving entertainers, dulcis, suavis,
et mitis; much more when He sees our poor efforts
to make Him feel at home in our filthy houses ; or
when, at least, we apologize with a Domine, non sum
dignus : Lord, I am not fit to receive Thee in my
house.

320 FEARFULNESS.

CCLXXII.
FEARFULNESS.
Timui te quia homo austerus es
" I feared thee, for that thou wert an austere
man." Many " safe " people may be damned for
their mean conceptions of Almighty God. "Thou
wicked servant ; " He will say to them. Fear is a
contracting influence. What is done out of fear
is done propter aliud, as a means to an end, and is
therefore strictly measured to the end. What is
done out of love is done propter se, for its own sake,
and therefore the more liberally the better. Love
is an expansive influence. Excessive fear for one's
own safety blinds one's eyes to a real danger, and
so defeats itself. "Boldness is prudence" very
often ; and he who watches the clouds will never
reap. " Out of thy own mouth will I condemn
thee," i.e., on thine own principles. For even fear
should make us tremble to keep our talent rusting
in the earth, when the command is : " Trade ! "
Those who abstain from doing good for fear of
doing harm ; for fear of vanity, of inordinate affec
tion, of dissipation, of the thousand certain venial
sins, and risks of mortal sins inseparable from the
service of others; such "prudent" souls may expect
a like commendation, Serve nequam ! — " Thou wicked
servant." One is safer fighting for God in the thick
of the fire, than skulking in the background for fear
of wasting powder.
"And let them advance," says St. Ignatius

SATAN'S TACTICS. 321
Loyola, "in a spirit of love; not with the agitation
of fear." Conscientiousness is not timidity. One
who knows his heart is right with God, who
can say honestly, Tu scis quia amo te, has no
tormenting fear ; but goes on straight. When we
mistrust the sincerity of our love, we begin to
analyze and test our every act. A skilful cyclist
never thinks of falling, a beginner thinks of nothing
else. The former is a figure of true conscientious
ness, which is never self-conscious. " Lord, when
saw we Thee hungry and fed Thee?" It never
needs to purify its intention ; hardly knows what
an intention is. Talium est regnum ccelorum. Of
such child-like, direct, simple lovers is the Kingdom
of Heaven. CCLXXIII.
SATAN'S TACTICS.
Satanas expetivit vos.
" Satan has sought you out." The adversary
seeks out and selects with care and economy.
Percutiam pastorem et dispergentur oves gregis — " I will
smite the shepherd and then the sheep will be
scattered." It is against those who are likely to help
others largely, that he plots most insidiously and
perseveringly, since their fall is a multiple gain, a
seed of indefinite good destroyed. We see this in
the history of so many reformers who began well
and ended ill. He has sought you, i.e., the apostles
and founders of the Church. Truly he is to such
an hostis malignus — " a malicious enemy," rarely
assaulting violently or showing his hand, but
V

322 RANSOM.

thwarting good every way, by imprudence, im
patience, self-willed obstinacy, indiscreet intensity,
overwork, multifariousness, discouragement. Look
around and you will see everywhere good men
standing in their own light, crippled through their
own folly, and impeding others.
CCLXXIV. RANSOM.
Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.
" Lead us not into temptation." Even in our
temptations and victories we are bound together
in God's sight, " If one member suffers, the rest
suffer with it." "Who is weak, and I am not
weak ? who is scandalized and I do not burn ? " I
cannot resist a temptation against faith, or purity,
or hope, or charity, without strengthening those
virtues in all who are bound up with me in any
way, nor can I yield without robbing them of a
grace. The Ransomers offered themselves as sub
stitutes for those Christian captives whose faith
might yield to pressure beyond the average power
of resistance ; and mystics have taken upon them
selves, under Divine guidance, the burden of temp
tations under which weaker souls might have
sunk. It is but a corollary of the " Law of
Christ:" Alter alterius onera portate — "Bear ye one
another's burdens." "Blessed is the man that
endureth temptation," for he is eo ipso an endless
cause of graces to others. So on this principle we
are told to pray : Ne respicias peccata mea sed fidem

GOD IN EVERY SOLACE. 323
Ecclesia Tua Sancta — " Look not to my sins, but
to the faith of thy Church."
CCLXXV.
GOD IN EVERY SOLACE.
Qui consolatur humiles, consolatus est nos Deus in adventu Titi.
" God who comforts the lowly, comforted us in
the arrival of Titus." Notice how St. Paul regards
all human consolers as instruments of the " God of
all consolation." He it is who " prepares the heart,"
and draws men to love one another, and loves us
in their love, and loves them in ours. Of the two
it is more important to see God as the All-mover,
than as the All-maker and Sustainer, for thus we
realize how continually active He is in our regard.
Most of all do we live in His presence if we feel
Him as Mover of hearts, of our own and others'.
Omnes in eo, et eum in omnibus amando, says Ignatius.
How hard when misunderstood ! how easy when
understood. CCLXXVI.
VARIOUS TONGUES.
Loquebantur Apostoli variis Unguis magnalia Dei.
"The Apostles spoke with many tongues the
great things of God." Their theme was, the
magnalia Dei, the great things and mysteries of
God's love, everything that could enslave men's
hearts to the unknown and much misrepresented
God. Variis Unguis prout Spiritus dabat eis eloqui —
" With various tongues, as the Spirit gave them

324 WISDOM AND UTTERANCE.
utterance." This is the apostolic vocation, to be
able to speak to each heart in its own language,
"all things to all." This is a discernment which
God's Spirit gives — the true and only eloquence.
Many-sided and many-tongued, and yet single-
hearted and sincere. What is the tongue of fire
but the language of love, love of God and of men ;
a strong desire to make men see God aright and be
happy in that sight ? Where there is a will there
is a way. This love, like a subtle flame, will find
its way to the heart through some crack or crevice ;
it will hit on the right word, the happy mood or
manner; it will even be patient and discreet, and
will hold back for greater eventual advantage, but it
will never rest. "Parthians, Medes, Elamites,
inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia,
Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphilia, Egypt,
the parts of Lybia about Cyrene, Jews, Proselytes,
Cretes, and Arabians." What a medley of tongues!
and yet what is it compared with the number of
heart-languages we must know if we would make
known the magnalia Dei to all sorts and conditions
of men.
CCLXXVII.
WISDOM AND UTTERANCE.
Dabo vobis os et sapientiam, cui non poterunt resistere adversarii
vestri. "I will give you utterance and wisdom which
your enemies cannot resist." Both are gifts and
fruits of the Gift, Os no less than' Sapientia. Neither
is any use for the Apostle without the other. Os,
or expression, is not the bare statement of truth,

ART AND HOLINESS. 325
nor is wisdom the bare apprehension of dogmas.
Wisdom is a comprehensive, loving intelligence of
God and man. Expression is the happy and
beautiful utterance of the truth, and of our love of
it. The study of expression, rightly understood, is
as imperative on the Apostle as the study of wisdom.
If both are studied in the orator's or advocate's
spirit, the result is "pulpit oratory," "sacred
eloquence." If studied with a single view to the
end, the result is unstudied. A little love does
more than years of study, if only there be some
mother-wit to steer it. It lights up the mind and
loosens the tongue. Most men are clever and
eloquent about what they love, if it were only a
sport or a vice. CCLXXVIII.
ART AND HOLINESS.
Quorum si specie delectati deos putaverunt, sciant quanto his
Dominator eorum speciosior est.
" If delighted by their beauty they hold these
things as Divine, let them know that their Ruler
is still more beautiful ; for it is the Author of all
beauty who has made these things." Justice,
according to Aristotle, if it be produced to infinity
or to perfection, must involve fortitude and temper
ance ; and fortitude in its perfection is justice
and temperance ; and so of all virtues, which are
but facets of one virtue or honestas. In like manner,
the love of God's beauty, when pure and perfect,
means the love of His holiness ; and the ardent love
of His holiness, entrains the love of His beauty.

326 ART AND HOLINESS.
From all quarters souls are drawn to this Centre,
which is Beauty and Holiness indistinctly, and as
they approach nearer, they become more like one
another. The prophets, especially David and Isaias,
discern beauty in holiness; the poets, holiness in
beauty. Their paths differ, their end is one. The
philosopher sees holiness and beauty in truth.
Still the love of what is aesthetically beautiful does
not necessarily lead to the love of God, unless God
be explicitly recognized as its source. This explicit
recognition is a philosophic conception to which
artistic souls of even the highest order may be blind.
Also, God is many-sided, and to recognize Him only
as the Archetype and First Lover of the aesthetically
beautiful, makes Him lovable under that aspect
alone. If the eye has never been opened to moral
beauty in creatures, if the taste for the noble and
pure in human conduct has never been formed or
developed, the soul will be blind to that aspect of
the Divine loveliness which leads to holiness of life.
Hence we find the love of aesthetic beauty compatible
with the absence of all personal love of God, or of
personal love of the Divine holiness. And also
we find a love of moral beauty compatible (as in
pagans), with an absence of all personal love of
God, or of personal love of the Divine beauty. But
they are not few whose eye has been opened wide
to the beautiful in every realm, and to the one
source from which it flows in diverging streams,
and to which those streams converge and return.
In some sense Deo gratias ought to rise more
readily to our lips, in the presence of the beauty of

BENDING AND BREAKING. 327
art, than before that of nature. This, no doubt, to
some extent, because good art interprets nature, and
points out her lovableness, and leads the way in
praise. But also, and chiefly, perhaps, because the
soul perceiving and loving nature's beauty, is a far
more beautiful work of God, than any which we find
in physical nature. Nature's jewels receive a
thousand-fold brilliancy from this spiritual setting in
the mind and heart of man ; a faint reflex of the
radiancy which belongs to their archetypes, as they
lie embedded in the Eternal Thought and Love of
God. As seen through the medium of the Divine
Essence they are divinized ; so, seen through that
of created intelligence, they are spiritualized.
CCLXXIX.
BENDING AND BREAKING.
Flecte quod est rigidum.
" Bend the rigid." The transition from the
right line to any curve is by infinitesimal gradations
which elude the subtlest mind and can only be
expressed in approximations. So God's workings
upon the heart and will. The change is there, but
how it comes about we cannot tell. We can only
say, "This I know, whereas I was blind, now I
see." In our dealings with others, we might well
emulate this gentle and insensible method of work
ing, bending and not breaking. Our precipitation
and abruptness often mars a good work.

328 GOD OF MY HEART.

CCLXXX.
GOD OF MY HEART.
Defecit caro mea et cor meum. Deus, Deus cordis mei, et pars
mea in aeternum.
" My heart and my flesh faileth. God, is the
God of my heart and my portion for ever." The
flesh, that is, the weakness of our sensitive nature,
often shrinks and fails while the heart is yet sound
and unmoved. Spiritus quidem promptus caro autem
infirma — "The spirit is willing, but the flesh weak ; "
but at times the heart too fails and grows cold
and apathetic, and we have to fall back on the
merely spiritual will, unassisted by the sympathy of
the emotions. Ccepit tadere et mcestus esse — " He
began to be weary and sad." It is hard to do what
we have no heart in, for heart is courage (cceur). As
our nature is constituted, will, without enthusiasm,
can scarcely keep us up to the mark, much less carry
us beyond it. Deus, Deus cordis mei. He is God of
my love — what the sun is to the flower it unseals
and expands, and draws after it. Love is courage,
mihil fortius amore — nothing stronger. Again, it is
God alone who can change and mould my heart
when it has steeled itself against all other impres
sions, and grown callous to the stimulus of faith and
reason. Cor regis in manu Dei — " The king's heart
is in God's hand." Again, relying on His power
and promise I can take heart and courage ; Viriliter
age, confortetur cor tuum et sustine Dominum.
Et pars mea in aternum — "And my portion for

DAVID'S CRY. 329

ever." As the Levite was portionless among the
children of Israel, so the priest of Christ finds
spouse and child, father and mother, and all else in
the Mystical Bride. In its purity, there is no
human love so fair, so deep, so high, as that which
the priest bears towards the sheep and the lambs.
It is that affectus Divinus of the Good Shepherd
Himself, blent with a crushing sense of the awful
contrast between the office and the office-bearer.
As the type is high and difficult, so the impression
is mostly blurred and blotched, and perhaps only
here and there a Cure d'Ars finds every affection of
his heart drawn out and strained to the full, but
all may feel at odd moments that which ought to
be habitual. If one realized what a priest should
be, no one would ever get ordained. God has to
be content with such rubbish as He gets.
CCLXXXI.
DAVID'S CRY.
Ego dixi, Domine; miserere mei; sana animam meam, quia
peccavi tibi.
" I said, Lord, spare me ; heal my soul, for I have
sinned against Thee." Ego dixi. There are in every
life such epoch-marking sayings, internal eclaircisse-
ments; flashes that break out into words and fiats, like
the creative fiats of God. They are but the locutiones
Dei; the whisperings of the Holy Spirit echoed
by the heart, and flung out in the speech they fashion
for themselves. Ego dixi, nunc ccepi. Ego dixi, omnis
homo mendax. Ego dixi, custodiam vias meas — " I

33° DAVID'S CRY.

must begin at once;" " I must not rely upon men;"
" I must be on my guard." All these are David's
"lights." And now he cries : Domine, miserere mei —
" Lord, spare me." A sudden light as to his deep
sinfulness; his need, not merely of pity (who does
not need that ?) but of forgiveness ; a sense of an
uplifted rod, and a shrinking from the all-consuming
anger of God. Peccavi nimis ; mea maxima culpa; a
sense of friendship broken ; of love treacherously
wounded : of a separation worse than death. Deus
propitius esto mihi peccatori. Sana animam meam. To
have sinned against God, is to have rent the soul like
a plant from its root in God's Heart ; to have left it
torn, and bleeding to death. As far as lies in me, I
have also rent the root and left that Heart wherein I
grew, lacerated and bleeding from a freshly-opened
wound. Yet it is thither I must turn, as to my
physician for cure and comfort, to be taken up and
re-engrafted and bound closely to it, till every trace
of the rupture is obliterated. Sana me, Domine, et
sanabor ! So, "wounded and half dead," I cry to the
Good Samaritan, as He passes by the way ; and He
comes, compassionate, to bind me up, pouring in oil
and wine. Sana me, Domine. So I cry from the very
tomb and from the stench of my corruption ; and He
comes and stands over the ruins of His loved one,
and weeps and cries, Veni for as ! Solvite et dimittite.
Quia peccavi tibi. Tibi ! what a plea for pity ! We
should not go to those whom we have injured for help.
But rather we should say: Heal me, for at least I
have done you no harm. Does it not mean rather:
To none other would I dare turn for pardon after such

CARNAL AFFECTIONS. 331
offence ; but it is against Thee, the all-pardoning, I
have sinned. Or is it that sin is our especial title to
His mercy, who is the friend of publicans and sinners ;
sent to the sick, not to the whole ; to the lost sheep
of Israel ? Or does it mean that this is the gravest
of wounds, the bitterest death, the most pitiable of
all miseries, the one misery, to have sinned against
Thee, the all-loving life of our soul, to have been torn
from that root : and so God's pity must forget His
wrong in the sight of our extreme wretchedness ?
CCLXXXII.
CARNAL AFFECTIONS.
Omnem carnalem affectum erga sanguine junctos exuant eumque
in spiritualem convertant.
" Let them put off all carnal affection towards
their kindred," says Loyola, "and convert it into
spiritual." The purification, as opposed to the
eradication of our natural affections, is here pre
scribed. It is a " conversion " which means the
passage of the same matter from one form to
another ; the mode of love, and not the affection
itself, is to be altered. What was defective, the
element of weakness, selfishness, and corruption, is
to be purged out ; and it is to be changed into the
noblest and deepest and divinest form of natural love
such as fits the Christian ; a love that will suffer
separation, that will not shrink from paining the
belcve 1 ; firm, enduring, spiritual, tender. Parental,
filial, fraternal, conjugal love, present an infinite
variety of types ; from what is low and all but

332 NEGLECTED CALLS.
animal, up to the love of Christ and Mary, and John
and Lazarus, and Magdalene. In the Recit d'un
Sceur, we have beautiful types of intense, yet wholly
spiritualized natural affections ; deep-hearted, tender,
binding souls closer to one another, and thereb)
closer to God. No " natural " affection is carnal ;
if by "natural," we mean what befits the nobleness
of humanity; and by "carnal" that which is selfish
and evanescent.
CCLXXXIII.
NEGLECTED CALLS.
Amice, ascende superius.
" Friend, move up higher." When God gives
grace for a higher ascent in any virtue, in purity or
charity or humility, He refuses us all help and co
operation for anything else. " This, or nothing,"
He seems to say. Some experience sudden lapses
of strength where they were strong before. God
wants them to come up higher. Their seat is taken
away and put nearer to His. If they try to sit
down where they are, they must take the conse
quences. Others lower down may hold their seats
in security. Theirs is higher up or nowhere.
CCLXXXIV.
HUMAN FRAILTY.
Simon dormis ? Sic non potuisti una hora vigilare mecum !
" Simon, are you asleep ? And so you could
not watch with Me even for an hour." A deeper,
wider knowledge of our own weakness will make

HOLY COMMUNION. 333
us gentle towards ingratitude and save us from
cynicism and bitterness. Is there any limit to our
own thanklessness ? Our Lord teaches us a lesson
here, when His only rebuke to His Apostles is
to excuse them : Caro autem infirma — " Flesh is
weak." Spiritus quidem promptus ; the will is sincere
enough, but memory is feeble ; impressions soon
die away ; absence obliterates as effectively as
death ; other cares and interests crowd the narrow
ness of our heart. The ingratitude of mere
forgetfulness and inconsideration seems to me
the most excusable thing in the world ; and the
meanness of those who are always looking for
gratitude, and measuring their receipts with their
expenditure, is much more reprehensible. " Give,
expecting nothing in return," is the Divine counsel
and the Divine practice ; and blessed are they that
expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed.
CCLXXXV.
HOLY COMMUNION.
Panem de coelo praestitisti eis.
" Thou gavest them bread from Heaven." Israel
clamours for the comforts of captivity, the flesh-
pots of Egypt, and God gives them beyond all
they desire or deserve — manna from heaven; the
food of angels, of God's free children. Ecce panis
angelorum, factus cibus viatorum ; vere panis filiorum.
Our soul at times hankers for the seeming ease of
past slavery ; our imagination throws a halo round
its seeming sweets, and blinds us to its bitterness

334 HOLY COMMUNION.
and degradation. Things visible seem alone to be
real ; things invisible, unreal, shadowy, intangible.
Anima nostra jam nauseat super cibo isto levissimo ;
our soul revolts against this ethereal, supernatural
diet. We crave for what is coarse, strong, pungent ;
"we remember the fish that we ate in Egypt free-
cost ; the cucumbers come to our mind, and the
melons and the leeks and the onions and the
garlic." But against the delirium of materialism,
reason and faith assure us that love is the life of
the soul ; and as the food is, such is the life. If
God be the food and fuel of our love, then our
every natural love is divinized and intensified. If
we feed on the bread of angels, our whole appetite
is healed and rectified ; if on the husks of swine,
our relish for everything higher is destroyed. He
who has once tasted and discerned the distinctive
flavour of this manna will recognize it as that which
in some degree or other gives relish to every other
food of the purified affections.
Omne delectamentum in se habentem — Containing
in itself, as has been said, all the lovableness of
every lovable creature, as the sun is warmer than
aught which his rays warm. Yet not all taste that
sweetness, and to some whose palate is disordered
it tastes bitter. Its sacramental effect is to sweeten
our whole tone and banish all sourness and cynicism,
to kill every creeping "root of bitterness."

THE BREAD OF THE POOR. 335
CCLXXXVI.
THE BREAD OF THE POOR.
Edent pauperes et saturabuntur.
(1) " The poor shall eat and shall be satisfied."
God is no Dives to let Lazarus hunger for the
crumbs of His table; but brings him to sit in
wedding-garments at His right hand ; serves him
(transiens ministrabit) and gives him to the full
of all that He has, giving Himself who is all —
saiurabuntur ; they shall be satisfied.. It is for
the poor this Banquet is primarily prepared —
pauperes evangelisantur. Their title is their poverty,
misery, rags, diseases, sores. The rich are there
on sufferance, and so long only as they recognize
that their wealth is begged and borrowed. No
room for the Pharisee, the self-righteous ! Room
for the publicans and harlots ! Esurientes implevit
bonis, et divites dimisit inanes — " He hath filled the
hungry, and sent away the full."
(2) Et laudabunt Dominum qui requirunt Mum —
"And they shall praise the Lord who seek Him."
Those who seek must find, and those who find must
praise. (3) Vivent corda eorum in saculum saculi — " Their
hearts shall live for ever and ever." For he that
eateth hath eternal life, the life of the heart, which
is love, personal, intimate : the love of an unfailing
friend, "one that sticketh closer than a brother."
Sine amico non potes bene vivere. The heart that
loves no one is dead : " a handful of dust."

336 ANGELS' FOOD.

CCLXXXVI I.
ANGELS' FOOD.
Panem coeli dedit eis ; panem angelorum manducavit homo.
" He gave them bread from heaven, and man
did eat angels' food." Angels' food, i.e., the food of
the pure. Neque nubent, neque nubentur, sed erunt
sicut angeli Dei — " They neither marry nor are
given in mairiage, but are as the angels of God."
It is the food of the illuminated : for the pure
shall see God, as clear water images the sun.
Angeli eorum semper vident faciem Patris. The angels
behold the face of God, not inferentially, but in
tuitively. Christ is the bread of angels, i.e., on
whom the angels feed their love ; who sates their
longing for truth, Himself their Truth and their
Life. Again, He is the bread of angels, namely,
the bread that makes us as angels, us, so carnal,
dim-sighted, gross-minded, in every way unangelic.
Here lies the mystery of Divine pity : Ecce panis
angelorum, factus cibus viatorum ; vere panis filiorum
non mittendus canibus — " Lord, it is not meet to take
the children's bread and to cast it to the dogs." Yet
what does God care about proprieties and meetness
when the souls of sinners are in question ? He has
no sense of dignity or stand-off self-respect, but runs
forward, with all the weakness of passionate love,
to meet us in our rags and filth, while we are yet a
long way off ; and weeps, and kisses us, and clothes
and crowns us, and banquets us, and goes on like
one beside himself for ecstasy and joy. "And in

ANGELS' FOOD. 337

the pursuit of his love the custom of mankind allows
him [the lover] to do many strange things. . . . He
may pray and entreat, and supplicate and swear, and
be a servant of servants, and lie on a mat at the
door."1 All these "strange things" does the Divine
Lover, yet one more strange than all :
O res mirabilis ! manducat Dominum
Pauper servus et humilis !
" O marvel ! that the poor and lowly slave should
feed upon his Lord ! " These last words are of one
whom the bread of angels made angelic ; singular
for the virginal purity of his heart, for the clear
depth of his calm, intellectual gaze ; who seemed
even on earth to " behold the face " of Truth, not
climbing and crawling by laborious inference,
but leaping by intuition from summit to summit,
sure-footed as an antelope, saliens super montes —
" leaping along the mountain crags," by the inspi
ration of Divine love — that best of enlighteners,
which reveals the Father even to those children
whose angels behold His face. They are true
words from the same true heart that conceived the
Verbum supermini, the Pange lingua, the Adoro Te,
and the Lauda Sion.2, It is the same Angel who has
1 Plato, Sym.
2 Sc, St. Thomas Aquinas, of whom one has said: " Unam
canendi materiam sumpsit Doctor Angelicus; eamdemque divinitatis
atque excellentias plenissimam, adeo angelicam, ab ipsis angelis
celebratam ac adoratam. Est venerabilis sacramenti laudator
Thomas summus, quem non sine numinis affiatu cecinisse credas ;
nee mireris, sanctum poetam postquam hoc unum carminis thema
spiritale, et pene celeste tam pra:clare, nee dicam unice, absolvent,
prorsus in posterum obticuisse. Peperit semel, sed leonem."
VV

338 THE JOY OF OUR YOUTH.
given us the Office and the Mass of the Blessed
Eucharist ; who is the Church's chosen exponent
and guardian of the doctrine of this central mystery;
to whom Christ Himself, unable to contain His
love, broke out from the silent crucifix : " Well hast
thou written of Me. What reward do you ask ? "
and he : " Thyself, Lord :
Ut te revelata cernens facie,
Visu sim beatus tuae glorias."
CCLXXXVIII.
THE JOY OF OUR YOUTH.
Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.
" I will go unto the altar of God, who rejoiceth
my youth"; "who filleth thy mouth with good
things so that thy youth is renewed like the
eagle's"; innocence and freshness is restored ; and
the leprous, sinful flesh comes fair and soft as the
flesh of a little child.1 All food to some extent
revives us, repairs the ravages of time, and puts us
back towards our younger self; not towards the
youth of immaturity and weakness, but towards that
of full freshness and vigour. The Bread of Life
restores us not merely to the immature, negative
innocence of Baptism, but to the lost strength of
riper days and to greater ; to that positive innocence
and simplicity which is the last goal of our endea
vour. " Ye must become as little children ; " not
by going back, but by going forward ; not by
"becoming little children," but "as little children,"
1 4 Kings v. 14.

THE JOY OF OUR YOUTH. 339
who are lovable for what they are not, rather than
what they are; for what they know not, than for
what they know ; for what they may be, and yet will
not be; for the pathetic contrast between the
promise and the fruit. It is merely as a symbol of
the spiritual that childhood is put before us to
imitate. As soon as reason wakes, negative sim
plicity gives place to positive egoism; directness to
self-consciousness and complexity; and it is only
the successful watchfulness and restraint of years
that at last purifies and simplifies and induces that
mature childhood so dear to God.
" God, who gives joy to my youth." The joy
especially of hope, which is large in the young :
untaught, unembittered by the disappointments and
failures of life. Hope which rests on so negative
a basis as ignorance cannot stand out many years.
But the hope which characterizes the youth of
mature grace is founded in knowledge and faith
and intelligent confidence — the virtue most needed
for those souls who see more deeply into the rotten
ness of human affairs, who feel more keenly the
disappointments of life — which, after all, has been
designed by God to raise great aspirations and dis
appoint them. It is a glorious virtue, not in narrow
souls who can afford to be optimist because they
see little and feel less, but in those who without faith
would be cast in the lowest abyss of pessimistic
despair ; as, e.g., Job, wildered with perplexity ;
condemned to distrust and unbelief by every current
platitude and moral nostrum, and yet holding firm
to the rock that seemed to totter and yield and sink

340 THE JOY OF OUR YOUTH.
with him. "Though He should slay me," i.e.,
though He should do even more than He has done
to give the lie to my every preconceived idea of Him,
"yet will I hope in Him." Or Dante, of whom
Beatrice says :
La chiesa militante alcun figliuolo
Non ha con piu speranza.1
And yet in whom would despair have been more
excusable ? It was his insight into the Divine Name
and Nature that saved him.
Ma quei la distillo nel mio cor pria
Che fu sommo cantor del sommo Duce.
" Sperino in Te " nell' alta Teodia
Dice " color che sanno '1 nome Tuo "
E chi nol sa s'egli ha la fede mia ? 2
This is that joy of which it is written, "Ye shall
weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; ye
shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned
into joy ; and your joy no man taketh from you."
" God, who rejoices my youth." The sportive-
ness of youth is nature's effort to relax the pressure
of superabundant vital energy, by "an alleviating
discharge" or catharsis. Amor currit et non fatigatur ;
vult esse sursum. There are saints so full of the
energy of Divine love that they do not know what
to do with their strength ; crosses are their play-
1 Among her sons, not one more full of hope
Hath the Church Militant. (Dante, Paradise, xxv.)
3 He first infused this hope into my heart
Who sang in highest strains the Highest's praise.
"Let all men hope in Thee," His anthem runs,
" That understand Thy Name," and who is he
That holds our creed 3'et does not understand ? (Ibid.)

Waiting in silence. 341
things; as they were His who with the Cross on
His shoulder, " exulted as a giant to run His
course ; " rejoiced in the feat of strength as a relief
for a surcharged Heart. A certain gaiety is the
characteristic of childhood or kittenhood, the mere
animal gaiety of inconsideration, of a fool's paradise.
But the gaiety of one who sees and tastes the
bitterness of life ; which is founded on faith that
stands above the storm and looks down on it, is no
less than the gloss and finish of heroic hope. There
is the laughter of Democritus, and the laughter
of the angels ; of contemptuous cynicism and
of sympathetic, tolerant, Christian magnanimity.
These childlike beauties are always decaying and
aging — faith, lowliness, blind confidence, light-
hearted hopefulness. They need renewing day by
day. " Can a man when he is old enter into his
mother's womb and be born again ? " asks Nico-
demus. Yet in the order of grace there is a
" second spring " which sometimes supervenes upon
a dead winter ere the year of life closes.
CCLXXXIX.
WAITING IN SILENCE.
Bonum est praestolari cum silentio salutare Del.
" It is good to wait for God's salvation in
silence," and to keep calm while others shriek and
lose their heads. It is great worship when one who
sees deeply and widely into the causes of evil and
sees no issue or hope, yet has unwavering faith and
expectancy that God can call from putrefaction to

342 PUBLIC WORSHIP.
life. With the shallow optimist whose confidence
springs from his ignorance of the true extent of evil
and from a lazy love of smooth beliefs, it is good
and wholesome to play the pessimist. For his hope
is a bastard hope. There can be no true hope till
there is danger of despair. But to him who is in
danger of pessimism, not from cynical sympathy
with it, but from weakness of faith, we must preach
the true optimism : Quare tristis es, anima mea? etquare
sonturbas me ? Spera in Deo, quoniam adhuc confitebor
Mi : salutare vultus mei, et Deus meus.
" In silence : " the silence not merely of the
tongue, but of the reason and of the heart ; that
oriental tranquillity which should characterize an
intelligent belief in Providence even more than a
belief in fate and necessity. Scripture is full of this
patience and quiet of hope. Expecta Dominum;
Expectans expectavi : Sustinuit anima mea in verbo ejus
"Wait on the Lord; rest in Him; trust Him" —
the attitude of those who watch for the morning,
knowing that it is surely coming, and that fretting
will not hasten it.
ccxc.
PUBLIC WORSHIP.
Vota mea Domino reddam in conspectu omnis populi ejus ; in
atriis domus Domini, in medio tui Jerusalem.
" I will pay my vows to the Lord in the sight of
all His people; in the courts of the house of the
Lord, even in thy midst, O Jerusalem." According
as we feel our own language, our mental imagery
and expression, to be absolutely inadequate to

SELF-CONTEMPT. 343

embody our due reverence and homage to the
Host, so ought we love a High Mass or a Corpus
Christi pageant, which is the Church's nobler
(though feeble) utterance of that conception. We
love the poet who shows us what we wanted to
say, and who says it for us as we could never
say it. Holy Church is here our poet. Confiteantur
tibi populi Deus, confiteantur tibi populi omnes —
" Let all peoples give thanks to Thee, O God."
There is something satisfying and stirring in
every public confession of God — a joy one misses
largely in irreligious countries. One has felt it
seeing the streets cleared and lined with kneeling
crowds on either side, while a feeble old man passed
along, bearing under a canopy a white wafer in a
crystal case ; or, as at Kreuzberg, when crowds ot
strong men gather round the Stations with out
stretched arms and pray aloud to the poor Gallilean
carpenter of two thousand years ago. It is in such
moments one feels the heroism and glory of faith
by which man rises above the apparent and visible,
and lays hold of the real and unseen substance ol
things. It is essentially the victory of reason and
spirit over sense and imagination.
CCXCI.
SELF-CONTEMPT.
Domine, non est exaltatum cor meum.
" Lord, my heart is not lifted up ; I am not high-
minded." As all pride is some form of smallness and
narrowness, so humility is a part of magnanimity,

344 CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM.
little as it appears in the picture of Aristotle's
"magnanimous man." So far as humility means
self-contempt, it is plain that only the narrowest
view of the world, and a comparison of ourselves
with the smallest of standards, could support an
arrogant self-estimate in any department. So far
as it means veneration and respect for others, it
means a generous, broad-minded love of humanity,
which is only possible to those who rise up to God's
standpoint and enter into sympathy with His Divine
affection. Else self-contempt were compatible with
cynicism and bitterness, which is always narrow
and feeble. The self-contempt of humility is not
even bitter towards self, but patient and good-
humoured, and never surprised at anything.
CCXCII.
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM.
Nisi granum frumenti cadens in terram mortuum fuerit ipsum
solum manet.
" Unless the grain die, it abides alone ; if it die,
it will bear fruit." There is a two-fold way of
looking on life even from a Christian point of view.
Either we may regard the disappointments, failures,
vexations, and crosses, as incidental and secondary ;
as a bitter tonic which gives flavour to the sweets ;
as stimuli to greater exertion and progress ; as the
mere growing-pains of the world's happiness. Or else
we may look on the world as in some sense designed
to disappoint, by raising our aspirations to what it
can never give. This is to make it simply an instru-

CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 345
ment of man's moral development before all things.
It cannot be doubted that sorrow and labour and
the cross in every form draw out the deepest and
noblest chords from the soul ; or, that as a certain
law of duality makes the knowledge of evil and
deformity a necessary foil for our knowledge of
goodness and beauty; so to have tasted sorrow
seems a required predisposition for our apprecia
tion of the contrary joy. " It behoved Christ to
suffer, and thus to enter into His glory," may
really be a psychological law for humanity in the
natural order: it may be necessarily through many
tribulations that we have to enter God's Kingdom.
In this view, if aught succeeds or goes well for a time,
it is but to give us breathing-space to gather strength
for more endurance ; or to give us a fore-glimpse of
that eventual prevalence of truth and right for which
we hope against hope. In a certain limited sense
this view of life might be called pessimistic, in that
it regards the bright spots as incidental and sub
ordinate to the vast sombre expanse which forms
the groundwork of life — mere oases in a desert.
Still faith and hope line all this clouding with gold,
so that optimism more truly describes the position ;
though it is not the optimism which flecks an
Italian sky with a fleecy cloudlet here and there to
throw out the depth of its blue.

346 TOLERANCE.

CCXCIII.
TOLERANCE.
Sit potius universalis quidam amor qui partes omnes etsi inter se
dissidentes in Domino amplectatur.
" Let there be rather a world-wide love which
embraces in the Lord all parties, however discordant
amongst themselves." This is Ignatian in the best
sense. He does not require apathetic indifference,
or an extinction of natural propensions, but the
inclusion of all that is good in them in something
higher and nobler ; as contraries are said to meet in
their common cause. He does not say : " embrace
no cause," but " embrace all ; " — not that one can
embrace contrary parties as parties ; but as a father
may love both his children who are at enmity with
one another. For there is a perverted truth in every
error; and a distorted sense of justice at the
bottom of every conflict.
CCXCIV.
DIMENSIONS OF CHARITY.
Ut possitis comprehendere cum omnibus Sanctis, quae sit latitudo,
et longitudo, et sublimitas, et profundum, et scire supereminentem
caritatem Christi.
"That with all the saints you may be able to
comprehend what is the breadth, and the length, and
the height, and the depth, and to understand the
surpassing charity of Christ." The comprehension
of infinite dimensions is past the -finite mind ; nor
is it possible to know by its causes, that which is

blMENSIONS OF CHARITY. 347

uncaused and is itself the cause of all. Yet it is in
proportion to their progress in this endless study
that saints have been sanctified and " filled with the
fulness of God." For charity is gotten of charity,
as flame from flame : Diligwius eum quia prior dilexit
nos. It is primarily a matter of intellectual vision —
a seeing God under a certain aspect.
"That you may be able to comprehend with all
the saints." If we but touch the hem of His
garment we shall he healed. Although even Mary
herself cannot do more than lay hold of the fringes
of God's garment of glory, yet the straining into the
abysses above, below, around us, lifts us out of our
littleness, and thus elevates and humbles us — for we
are never so small as when we are proud ; never so
great as when we are humble. As man's progress
in knowledge lies in fathoming his own ignorance ;
so his greatness consists in knowing a greatness
which dwarfs him to nonentity in his own regard.
To know God's power or wisdom or beauty or
justice may excite admiration, awe, a certain
enthusiasm such as we may feel for an heroic soul
to whom we are personally unknown ; but it is as
loving us, that He becomes the object of our love:
Dilexit me — He loved me.
These dimensions of the Divine love are the
proper object of all meditation and preaching.
Every other theme is subordinate to this ; depend
ent on this. It is no use to thunder forth anathema
against those who do not love God, if we fail to point
out to them, and teach them His lovableness. We
may perhaps feel it ourselves, like many a massive

348 DIMENSIONS OF CHARITY.
impression of which we can give no analysis. But
for others, a certain power of exposition is wanted,
even though an enthusiasm to some extent com
municates itself irrationally.
" What is the breadth." A shallow love must of
necessity be narrow; width is a sequel of depth.
The wide-spreading branches of the cedar must
rise from a root far down underground. Else width
will mean weakness. God is that Universalis amor
qui partes omnes licet sibi invicem contrarias amplectitur.
— " Universal love which embraces all parts, however
at discord among themselves ; " i.e., every particle of
His creation, each in due proportion ; not blinded to
the lesser goodness by the glitter of the greater, as
we are ; nor overlooking twenty good points for the
sake of one defect or blemish, as we do ; contrari
wise sparing Sodom for the sake of ten just men,
suffering much cockle for the sake of a little wheat ;
much error for a latent grain of truth, for a little
leaven hidden in the mass. Again, it is wide and
universal, in the collective sense ; viewing all
together as parts of a whole ; loving the universal
and collective good as something diviner than the
elements of which it consists ; yet not abstractly, as
we do, when we try to comprehend particulars in one
whole ; but concretely and with no diminution of
particular interest. In some sense each single soul
is the centre of the infinite sphere of God's love ; all
things radiate to it, and make a world for it, a world
of creature-helps ; as though God had no other
thought or care.
If love is life — as it certainly is — how much life

DIMENSIONS OF CHARITY. 349
does not the narrowness of our affections cut us off
from ! What abundant fuel of happiness is lying
waste all about us while we shiver with cold ? Viam
mandatorum tuorum cucurri cum dilatasti cor meum —
" I have run in the way of Thy commandments
since Thou hast enlarged my heart." If God would
come into our hearts He must needs break them
or stretch them, as when new wine is poured into
old bottles.
A narrow, trickling stream is turned aside and
impeded by every little stone ; but the wide, rushing
flood sweeps over them or bears them away in its
tumultuous energy. Our feeble love is stayed,
repelled, distorted by every little trifling offence or
defect, over which we trip and stumble and hurt
ourselves. We are disunited, lonely, embittered,
until our little streams lose themselves in the
mighty torrent of God's all-forgiving, all-conquer
ing, passionate love of humanity. Then are we
gods and not men; "knowing good and evil" —
knowing the great problem or riddle of creation ;
how seeming evil is solid good. Ego dixi : Dii estis;
quibus verbum Dei factum est.
" What is the length." It is a love which endures
for ever ; and its endurance is but another outcome
of its depth and strength. We are forgetful and
changeable and therefore fickle ; what suits our
present humour and taste may, without defect on its
own part, become indifferent or even odious to us.
What God loves in us, He loves " with an everlasting
love" from eternity to eternity. But more evidently
does this endurance show itself in the form of long-

350 DIMENSIONS OF CHARITY.
suffering patience, and constant service. He is so
slow to give us up and turn away from us ; so per
sistent in heaping grace upon grace ; whereas we
soon get "weary in well-doing;" disgusted by in
gratitude ; disheartened by futility. Our shallow
affections are easily stirred ; they spring up in a day
and in the time of trial wither away. We think our
love is imperishable ; that separation would be un
bearable ; that we can never love another. Feeling
and imagination obscure our judgment and hide the
root and reason from our view ; on which reasonable
root endurance depends. But "who shall separate us
from the love of Christ ? " from Him " who sticketh
closer than a brother ; " who says, that though a
mother should forget her babe He will never forget
us ; that no man shall pluck from His arms those
whom the Father has given Him; that when we
pass through the waterfloods He will be with us ?
" Neither life nor death . . . nor any other creature "
is the persuasion of St. Paul.
There is nothing more beautiful in the romance
of human love than constancy, long-tried and
tempted and yet victorious over time ; whether it
be the constancy of friend, or spouse, or parent.
All this beauty of endurance finds its archetype in
God's love, and must lead us up to a better
knowledge of it ; for it is itself a participation of the
divine. "What is the height." There is a low love, and
a higher love, and a sublime love, according to the
nature of that good which we want to secure for the
beloved, This again depends upon the light in which

DIMENSIONS OF CHARITY. 351
we view him ; what it is we love in him — his personal
beauty, his mind, his heart. To love, is to will to
another some happiness of which he is capable. God
sees in us the obediential power "to become the sons
of God," sharers of the Divine Nature and operation
and happiness. The good He wills for us is one
which " eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor heart
conceived." There is sometimes a touch of this
sublimity in the purer types of human affection,
where the lover is severe and rigorous to the
beloved, denying the lower and lesser solaces of the
present, in the interest of a " fuller gain of after-
bliss." So, " whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth ;
and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth."
There is nothing weak, soft, indulgent, in the love
of the Father for His " Beloved Son," or for Mary,
or for all the saints gathered with her round the foot
of the Cross.
" What is the depth." Depth is not quite the
same as intensity. A shallow love, like a fire of
shavings, will burn fiercely while it lasts; but yet
there is little oil in the lamp of the heart. Nor is it
the same as strength : though a deeper love is less
easily rooted up. It speaks to us rather of latency
and potentiality ; of something not yet revealed ;
whose soundings have so far been essayed in vain.
It speaks not so much of the firmness and durability
of what has been revealed to us, as of the endless
possibility of further revelations. Our eye can
carry us to the bottom of a stream, but never to
that of mid-ocean. " Oh, the depth of the riches
of God's wisdom and knowledge." It is a thesaurus

352 MEEKNESS.

absconditus. Oculus non vidit, absque te Domine, qua
parasti diligentibus te — The hidden treasure unseen
by all eyes save God's. To love one deeply is to
love him more than he thinks ; more, perhaps, than
we think ourselves. Perhaps the root is lost in
obscurity. These unknown depths are the founda
tion of our hope for those richer graces which are
the " uncovenanted mercies of God."
ccxcv.
MEEKNESS.
Beati mites quia ipsi possidebunt terrain.
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess
the earth." The reward or beatitude attached to
patience and gentleness is in some sense immediate
and temporal ; namely, victory even on earth. This
beatitude is the obverse of, "They that take the
sword shall perish by the sword." Violence begets
violence; opposition raises opposition; and these
are fruitful again to the third and fourth generation;
and the end is defeat and loss ; or victory at a cost
out of all proportion to the original good aimed at.
If severity is ever justified it is never as a means
of bending the rebellious will, but as a tribute to
vindictive justice or for the sake of others; or else
it is a severity manifestly dictated and informed by
love. Who can say that he was ever persuaded or
bettered by a sarcastic, bitter, or angry word ?

INTELLIGENT CHARITY. 353
CCXCVI.
INTELLIGENT CHARITY.
Beatus qui intelligit super egenum et pauperem.
" Blessed is he who understands about the poor
and needy." Charity must be neither a cool, calcu
lating sense of duty, nor yet a blind spasm of
benevolence ; but an intelligent impulse ; something
springing, not from the brain, but from the living
heart, yet guided and approved by faith and reason.
We do not go to the physician who loves us per
sonally in preference to a stranger of greater skill ;
for lore may intend well, but without skill it may do
harm rather than good ; and that, in proportion to
its strength. Often under occasional pressure of
emotion we may do feats of unselfishness ; but we
begrudge the trouble of consideration and constant
watchfulness concerning the needs of others, which
is needful if charity is to be a ruling habit of life,
our chief occupation and business ; wherein we
should seek to become ever more skilled and
efficient : Non considerantes qua sua sunt sed qua
aliorum — " Not pondering our own interests but
others'." So our Saviour, who, if He dealt differently
and discriminatingly with different sicknesses of
body, displays a still nicer care and particular con
sideration in the handling of souls where no two are
alike in the eyes of the Good Shepherd, who calls
His sheep — indistinguishable to a stranger — each by
its name. How strange it sounds to say that the
criticism and study of individual characters is an
x

354 OMNIPOTENCE.

essential of real, intelligent charity, which needs to
know others and their needs and propensions ; to
know what will hurt, and what will heal and help ;
so that becoming all to all, we may in every way
do our best for "the greatest happiness of the
greatest number." This is intelligent charity — no
blind, rule-of-thumb, same-to-everybody, wooden
amiability. We cannot love or please God without
studying His nature and His will ; and so, neither
our neighbour, who after all, is God's substitute.
CCXCVII.
OMNIPOTENCE.
Fortis ut mors dilectio.
" Love is strong as death." When one sees what
a frightful power for good or for evil love is, when
one sees the irresistible force of charity and kind
ness, which seem to atone for all other deficiencies
and cover a multitude of sins, one also sees in some
dim way how Infinite Love is identical with Omni
potence. Deus est caritas — " Qod is love." When
a sinner defies and hates God, he fights a losing
battle ; but when he begins to love Him, he grows
strong and wrests the sword from God's hand and
at last leads Him captive in chains. Of course it is
really God who thus binds Himself through the
instrumentality of a poor, sinful, weak human heart,
to which He loves to be in captivity. Sagitta tua
acuta, says David, of the God of love, in cordibus
inimicorum regis; populi sub te cadent; the King's
enemies fall, slain with darts of love, in thousands.

GOD'S VOICE IN REASON. 355
They fall enemies, and rise lovers. Be such the
weapons of our warfare ; spiritual, not carnal.
CCXCVIII.
GOD'S VOICE IN REASON.
Audiam quid loquatur in me Dominus Deus.
" I will listen to what God says in me." We
find converse with God one-sided work and hard to
sustain. Yet is this not due to the anthropomorphic
form of our imaginations ? Is He not always speak
ing to us ; not exactly in His works, which is a
metaphorical speech ; but more formally in our
own every true thought and good wish ? Erat lux
vera qua illuminat omnem hominem venientem in hunc
mundum — He is the true light of every mind ; the
First Sayer of our every true word ; the First Thinker
of our every true thought : and He is also in every
true thought and good desire that is communicated
to us from and through other souls, by word or
writing? Is not this the only way in which we
have a right to expect Him to speak? Were He
to thunder in the clouds and form words, would it
not still be but using a creature as an instrument ?
What difference is it whether the instrument is my
own soul or that of another ? Nor need we confound
this natural speech with revelation and prophecy,
except in affirming that they are equally speech.
For revelation, whether given to our own mind
directly or through that of another, is miraculous
and marked as such ; the natural sequence of
thought-phenomena is broken through, and the

356 GOD'S VOICE IN REASON.
mind seems to follow a coherent train of ideas
suggested, as it were, by the speech of another,
though really by some mysterious quasi-instinctive
internal impulse ; something analogous to those
phenomena which are supposed to prove double
personality in one soul. Still, if God's action on the
mind in the natural order does not satisfy the
strictest definition of speech, yet He speaks no less
truly than one who teaches us to teach ourselves by
-easoning and guiding our steps aright, and supply
ing the conditions needful that truth may come
home to us with its own authority. And is not the
authority of Truth and of God identical ? As in
the dictate of conscience, so in that of reason, we
should recognize the voice of a person who is sub
sistent Rightness and Truth. This is the secret,
perhaps, of Augustine's colloquial method of reason
ing. What reason says to him, God says to him ;
and he answers to his own reasonings as to the voice
of God. Through the defect of the instrument or
medium, the message is often garbled and perverted,
nor can it at all times be accepted as Divine. Yet
whatever truth there is in it is God's own Word,
conveyed to the soul. Thus as God is always
serving us and labouring for us in Nature, and we do
not recognize it, so He is continually speaking to
our inmost heart, and we take the words as from
no-whence or as from ourselves. "There stands
one in the midst of you whom ye know not." " He
was in the world and the world was made by Him,
and the world knew Him not." No doubt it is a
surprise and a light when, after having found much

THE FULNESS OF FAITH. 337
help and guidance from some written treatise,
without ever concerning ourself about the author,
we learn that he wrote it for us and sent it to us.
It was truly his speech all along ; but only now
do we refer it to him as such. Deus docuisti me a
juventute mea — " O God, it was Thou who wert
teaching me from my youth upwards."
CCXCIX.
THE FULNESS OF FAITH.
Baptisantes eos in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
" Baptizing them in the Name of (i.e., into the
creed or confession of faith in) the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost." Baptism is a sign of disciple-
ship with a prophet or revealer. The Baptism of
Christ means discipleship in the fulness of revelation.
It is the Sacrament of Faith or illumination. The
Trinity is the full development of the imperfect faith
of Judaism. It includes the Incarnation as part of
a whole. It reveals God as a Father ; as generating
a coequal Son who has given us power to become
sons by adoption and to dare to say Pater noster.
It reveals the Son made Flesh in order to " show us
the Father," to speak the deep things of eternity in
human language and imagery. The " power " by
which we become sons of God is the Spirit of
Adoption, won for us by the Passion, Resurrection,
and Ascension of our Sacrifice, and poured down
upon the body of the Church as her quickening
soul. Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Passiontide,
Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, all are epitomised in

j58 DEATH.
Trinity Sunday. This is that rich faith which gives
an inexhaustible significance to creation and life,
which gathers the " manifold of phenomena " into
a connected whole ; without which we must grope
in darkness and the shadow of death. Unitarians
may live for the glory of God ; we live for the glory
of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
CCC.
DEATH.
Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur, ut requiescant a labori-
bus suis, et opera illorum sequuntur illos.
" Blessed are the dead." This might be called
the ninth beatitude, were it not rather the eight in
epitome. If poverty, meekness, purity, peace,
sorrow ; if all the world flies from as saddening
or wearying, is pronounced blessed, or beatifying by
the lips of truth, it is but the fulness of the same
dispensation which takes the sting from death, the
" King of Terrors," and says," Happy are the dead."
Yet it is not said without restriction. As it is not
the poor, but the poor in spirit ; so neither is it
the dead, but the dead who die in the Lord, who
are blessed. " In the Lord " is symbolized and
explained by the death of St. Joseph in the arms of
Jesus and Mary. Our life is our interest. For those
whose highest interest is in the Divine good, in
sympathy with God and His saints, with Jesus and
Mary, death is no breach of life, but the estuary
where the river of time widens silently into the sea
of eternity.

DEATH. 35g
Yet to us onlookers the body is the theatre and
whole expression-medium of spiritual vitality, which
therefore seems abruptly extinct in the moment of
death. And death being the negation of life, those
whose life was intense, many-sided, full of active
interests die more, than do the languid, apathetic
and narrow-lived. Their death is a shock to the
imagination ; visi sunt oculis insipientium mori ; Mi
autem sunt in pace ; but for them it is no shock or
breach of continuity. The sun shines on serenely
for all that the passing clouds cut us off from his
influence. It is not the spirit that leaves the body ;
but the body whose grasp on its quickening
principle gives way.
" That they may rest from their labours." There
are times when the merely negative aspects of death
seem so attractive as to explain the adherence of
millions to that religious system, which seeks beati
tude in perfect extinction or re-absorption into that
All, from which, it says, we are differenced out by
desire, and by the wish to exist and to enjoy. Is
there not something that satisfies in the stillness of
a dark night ; or of a lifeless desert ; or of a frozen,
motionless sea — as it might be, in the beginning of
that final state of congealment into which, according
to some modern physicists, all things are cooling.
Socrates seemed to find more attraction in sound,
dreamless slumber than in all the days of his intense
vitality put together. Yet it is only because we
fallaciously conceive ourselves conscious of the relief
from labour that the mere desisting can attract us
positively. To be conscious of no conflict or strife

360 DEATH.
with Nature ; but only of perfect harmony with her
universal process, is indeed a consciousness of
rest ; but it is the rest of a distinct personality in the
active contemplation and enjoyment of deliverance
from a narrower to a fuller and more unfettered
existence. Only verbally, and through a fallacy
of the imagination, can a man ever suppose that
he desires extinction. For every desire is for well-
being or better-being ; and therefore for being. It
is the cessation of pain, weariness, and sorrow, and
not the cessation of existence, that we are so keen
for at times when our gaze is concentrated rather on
our present miseries than on our future hopes ;
when our thought is rather on what we would fly
from than whither we would fly — on earth rather
than on heaven.
" That they may rest from their labours." Not
such rest as God often provides for us here — a
momentary pause, to sit down and breathe and begin
again ; moments of light between darkness and
darkness ; brief lulls in the storms of temptation ;
rifts in the clouds of depression ; snatches of success
amid failure ; of pleasant surprise amid continual
disappointments — moments whose function is to
suggest the eternal Sabbatismus " that remains for the
people of God," and to animate us with faith and
hope to struggle on, until seeming defeat is crowned
with victory. Eternal rest is the rest of the Eternal ;
as eternal life is the life of the Eternal. It is the
repose of the Divine activity; the sleep of infinite
energizing ; the stillness of the all-mover. It is the
rest of " the Only-begotten, who is in the bosom of

DEATH. 36r

the Father," as it might be, an infant slumbering on
its mother's breast, and yet "all things were made
by Him and without Him nothing was made. That
which was made, in Him was light . . . and the
light shone in darkness " (so, with Augustine and
Aquinas). How tranquil and unmoved in itself;
yet how swift, how potent, how multiform in its
activity is that Source of light. All things in Him
were light ; and God said, " Let there be light, and
light was." Ipse dixit, et facta sunt. And His very
" saying " is eternal ; involving no breach of the
everlasting silence.
"That they may rest from their labours." As
eternal life, so also eternal rest enters into the
saints, even here on earth with every new access
of sanctifying grace. In the midst of all their
struggles and labours for their own souls and the
souls of others, their heart sleeps like a tranquil lake.
While others rise before dawn, after brief slumber,
and hurry fretfully through joyless days to restless
nights, " He giveth His beloved ones sleep." Faith
is the oil that smooths the ruffled waters of fear and
fretful anxiety. " Let not your heart be troubled,
neither let it be afraid ; ye believe in God ; believe also
in Me ; " — faith, which realizes the invisible, and
resolves visible realities into dreams. "I sleep," says
the soul to her beloved, "but my heart waketh." All
the activity of outward life is but slumber ; while the
restful gaze of the loving, tranquillized heart is a
wakefulness akin to His of whom it is said : " Thy
keeper will not slumber ; lo, He that keepeth Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep."

.362 FAILURE.

CCCI.
FAILURE.
Justum deduxit Dominus per vias rectas et complevit labores illius.
" God has guided the just man and has brought
his labours to perfection." No good enterprise for
God's glory ever comes to naught, however it may
seem to be interrupted and frustrated. When the
learner is weary and discouraged, the master-hand
takes the poor unfinished scrawl, and turns out of
it something wonderful and beyond expectation.
Indeed we can never see more than the beginning
of even what seem our most finished and successful
works. It is proverbial that the most useful men in
many departments have died long before they were
felt; and often in full conviction of their utter failure.
Augustine, to his own seeming, lived for the Church
at Hippo, which collapsed for ever almost imme
diately. But in God's design he lived for the
universal Church and for all ages.
" I Paul, a prisoner for the Lord." God who
has chosen him and fitted him for so glorious an
apostolate, binds him hand and foot in prison, where
his talents and energy must lie idle. Yet it is to
his imprisonment we owe some of his most helpful
epistles. Who can compare the good they have
wrought and will yet work in the Church, with the
effects his liberty might have produced, or say
whether his idleness was loss or gain to the Kingdom
of Christ ? Again, the will and desire to do good
is never inefficacious, but is an indestructible force

SS. PETER AND PAUL. 363

which will not return to the First Cause till it has
effected that whereto it was sent. " But the power
of Christ is not bound."
Dante's Commedia was the cry of a disappointed
and banished man. Had his life been a success
according to his own ideas, should we ever have
heard of him ? And so of St. Severinus and his De
Consolatione. Was it not the very failure of Christ
and His martyrs that completed and crowned their
labours ? CCCII.
SS. PETER AND PAUL.
Gloriosi principes terrae, quomodo in vita sua dilexerunt se, ita
in morte non sunt separati.
" Glorious princes of the earth. As they loved
one another in life, so in death they were not
divided." To estimate the glory of their princedom
we must look around us, and backwards and forwards;
we must view them going hand in hand to martyr
dom; we must see them reigning with unbroken
sway in the long line of their successors ; we must
see them on one throne judging the tribes of Israel.
We must look at the influence which the See of Peter
and Paul has had so far in the world's history, as
the centre of light and stability, as the guardian of
morals, the protector of liberty ; how it has battled
against the powers of Hell within and without ;
against error and corruption ; how it has always
come out victorious when men least expected,
through the faith of Peter. We must consider its
wonderful moral strength at present in the extremity

364 SS. PETER AND PAUL.
of its temporal weakness ; its sway not only over the
faithful, but over those that sit in darkness and the
shadow of death. If Leo has influence it is so far as
he feels himself to be Peter and Paul, and lives his
office. And shall we dare to read the future of
Holy Church, perhaps yet, as De Maistre suggests,
in her infancy ? Does not the face of the heavens
bid us hope for a far more literal fulfilment of
prophecy ; that " the earth shall be full of the know
ledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea ; "
and that His glory shall be revealed and all flesh
shall see it together? We know when a flower is
unfolded and full-blown. Is it not evident that
the conception of the Catholic Church, of Catholic
truth and Catholic holiness is capable of yet greater
expansion; that it has not yet exhaled its sweetest
fragrance ; or donned its firmest and brightest
colours ; that the Apostolate of Peter and Paul is
far from ended, that their words have not yet gone
into all lands, nor their voices reached to the ends
of the earth? Gloriosi principes terra — " Glorious
princes of the earth," for they are but the vicars of
Him who is King of kings, Lord of lords, to whom
it is said, " Ask of Me and I will give thee the
Nations for thy heritage;" and "of His Kingdom
there shall be no end ; " and again, Principatus
super humerum ejus, His princely power lies hidden
in the Cross that weights His shoulder, that key of
Heaven which He bequeathed to Peter. And this
same Cross has been the weapon of Peter's triumph,
Mites terram possidebunt; even in this world the
meek triumph. While Satan assailed the Church

SS. PETER AND PAUL. 363
from without by persecution, she but struck root
deeper for every blast ; and then it was he tried to
persuade Peter to take the sword that he might
perish by it. So far as the Church has triumphed
it has been out of weakness and by faith. God
lifted Peter out of the dust, and Paul out of the
mire, that He might set them with the princes of
His people, with Michael, and Gabriel, and the great
ones of the Heavenly Court.
"They loved one another in life and in death
they were not divided." Different in antecedents, in
temperament, in education, they were knit together
by the common object of their supremest and deepest
love, so that all other divergencies seemed infinitely
trivial and superficial. We have all indeed "one
Lord, one faith, one baptism," but how differently
apprehended and appreciated ; how little real, com
municable interest in these as compared with other
matters ; how little spontaneous exchange of ideas ;
how few ideas to exchange — old, hammered-out plati
tudes that lie in our minds as they entered them,
and rattle about there like coins in a cash-box — no
part of our mind or interest ; dead formulae and not
living truths. If interest be life, and if eternal life
beto know the one true God and Jesus Christ; that
is, to get a truer estimate of God, a deeper insight
into the Incarnate Word, there should be no love
such as that of two souls advancing day by day in
sympathetic knowledge and love of things divine.
What other high or noble interest is not here
formally included and ineffably transcended ?
Et in morte non sunt separati — "And in death

366 FELLOWSHIP IN SUFFERING.
they were not divided." What greater grace could
friendship ask than that thou — the man of one mind
with myself, my guide, my familiar, with whom I
ate the food of sweetness and walked together with
thee in the house of God — shouldst leave this world
with me hand in hand ; and ford the angry waters
with me ; and with me touch the shore in the
early morning, and fall down at His feet whom
we have known here through a glass darkly, but
then shall know face to face? What completer
merging of soul with soul can be thought of than
that which faith begins here and perfects hereafter?
Non sunt separati : they were spared the slight pang
of even a brief interruption of their spiritual
harmony. But even when this divine seal of
approval is withheld, death has little or no sting
for the noblest love. Caritas nunquam excidit —
" Charity never dies." The substantial bond is
strengthened and not weakened, though its mani
festation is deferred. Mors absorpta est in victoria;
fortis ut mors dilectio — "Death is swallowed up in
victory ; for love is as strong as death " — nay,
stronger. CCCIII.
FELLOWSHIP IN SUFFERING.
Quos eadem fides et passio vere fecit esse germanos.
"Whom the same faith and the same sorrow
made brothers indeed." *¦ Brotherhood in the
Catholic faith, where there is real faith, is far
deeper than appears. Though disunited in all else,
» SS. John and Paul.

CHRIST'S HERITAGE. 367-
Catholics will hold together, usque ad mortem, when
faith is in question. The substantial tie of natural
brotherhood is compatible with much surface dis
agreement among the members of a family. But
community of conviction or judgment in any point
is often closer than any other kind of fraternity;
still more, where both are sufferers for the same
cause or conviction, whether it be the suffering ot
persecution or that suffering inseparable from firm
belief in ideals which are in strong contrast with
realities. The love of those who have fought for
the same cause is sometimes tenderer and deeper,
if they have fought and failed : if they have shared
defeat in common. Eadem fides is much, but eadem
passio is far more. This it is that crowns the love
and brotherhood of Christ and all His saints and
martyrs.
CCCIV.
CHRIST'S HERITAGE.
Pro nostra et totius mundi salute.
" For our own salvation and for that of the
whole world." These and similar words in the
Mass are like a stream of cool air let into a close
room. They lift us for an instant out of our narrow
personal groove, and set us on a high mountain and
show us all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory
thereof. And we hear the voice of the tempter
saying to Christ and to His Church : " All these will
I give if Thou wilt fall down and worship me."
Non tali auxilio ! Vade retro ! — not on such terms ;
not at the cost of the smallest lie or the compromise

368 EXPECTANCY.
of a single principle ; but by His arm and help who
says, Postula a me et dabo tibi gentes hareditatem tuam
et possessionem tuam terminos terra — " Ask of Me and
I will give thee the nations and the whole earth for
thy heritage." Every Mass is a reiterated postulatio
or asking for this blood-bought heritage of the
Catholic or world-wide Church.

CCCV.
EXPECTANCY.
Ecce sicut oculi servorum in manibus dominorum suorum ita
oculi nostri ad Dominum Deum nostrum donee misereatur nostri.
" Even as the eyes of a servant to the hand of
his master, or of a maiden to the hand of her
mistress, so our eyes turn to our God till He
have mercy upon us " — with the eager, anxious look
of a well-mannered dog waiting for scraps from the
table, now hopeful and alert at some sign of move
ment ; now disappointed and despondent because
nothing has come of it. God sometimes seems
cruel in toying with our agony of hunger, desire,
and uncertainty ; but it is the cruelty of Him who
restrains his love that it may leap out with greater
force — 0 mulier, magna est fides tua! — "O woman,
great is thy faith ! " — who holds back, to whet our
desire, so that being asked more He may give more.
Et tu das Mis escam — " And Thou givest them food."
To each living creature its own food, according to
its proper nature and kind of life — trees and flowers,
birds, beasts, and fishes — to natural man, the food

EXPECTANCY. 369

of the mind, in the works of creation, the book of
Nature ; that food which kindles and sustains the
fire of love which is the life of the soul ; to super
natural man, the food of supernatural life, "the daily
Manna of the soul," Him, whose words are " spirit
and life." To each particular soul its individual
and characteristic food, suited to its own nature
and necessities. In tempore opportuno, i.e.. as the
necessity arises, but not in advance. Our daily
bread is doled out to us on asking toties quoties.
Nor always at the time when we think we want it,
but in tempore opportuno, when it is really best for
us. Children cry for food out of mere petulance,
between meals and at all manner of absurd times ;
and for the most absurd and unwholesome things.
Aperis tu manum tuam et imples omne animal bene-
dictione— " Thou openest Thy hand and fillest all
with plenteousness." God is not grasping or close-
fisted, but altogether magnificus, doing everything
on a grand and liberal scale. He fills our desires
to overflowing, being " more ready to hear than we
to pray; and wont to give more than we ask or
desire." It is the fault of the narrowness of our
desires that the results are so poor. Aperi os tuum,
et implebo Mud — " Open thy mouth, and I will fill
it." There is the condition. He will not force the
food through our closed teeth. Every desire comes
from Him, and every enlargement of desire ; but it
is ours to foster it or to quench it. To be generous
to God is not to give to Him — for what can we
give ? — but to take from Him liberally ; not to*
refuse His liberality or to thwart His love ; but to
Y

370 THE VISITATION.

open both hands at once, to stoop down and " drink
of the torrent in the way."
CCCVI.
THE VISITATION.
Maria abiit in montana cum festinatione.
" Mary arose in haste and went into the hill-
country." She bore within her the full object of
her joy and love and praise. What more did she
need ? Dilectus meus mihi, et ego Mi qui pascitur inter
lilia — " My Beloved is mine and I am His." Why
did she not rest alone or retire to the desert to be
alone with her Beloved, to bury herself in prayer
and contemplative ecstasy, and to forget the world ?
But Gabriel has hardly vanished before she rises
in haste to pass over the rough hills of Judea in
search of human sympathy, of one like-minded
whom God had called to bear a part in the mystery
of the Incarnation ; that they may rejoice together,
heart calling to heart, in their common love. The
joy and praise of each of the blessed is intensified
by that of every other, and by the enthusiasm of the
collective multitudes. " Lo, one who will intensify
our love," is the cry of the blessed on every new
arrival. Mary's Magnificat was far sweeter in the
cars of God for being echoed by St. Elizabeth and
St. John Baptist, and drew much increase of fervent
inspiration from their sympathy which it would
have lacked in solitude. Retirement from the un
sympathetic may at times be in the interest of God's
glory ; but retirement from the sympathetic never.

LIBERALITY. 371

So eager is love for sympathy, that it will labour
ceaselessly to create it where it does not exist. The
communion of saints is not indeed of the essence
but of the integrity and normal fulness of their
beatitude. Our feeble love and praise needs all the
help it can get, and borrows the hearts and tongues
of others to supply the deficiency of its own. What
does it all mean except that it is God who in us and
all creatures, as by an instrument, loves and praises
Himself; that it is the voice of all creation which is
seeking for utterance through every narrow outlet,
and never able to disburden itself to the full.
CCCVII.
LIBERALITY.
Si multum tibi fuerit, abundanter tribue ; si exiguum libenter
impertiri stude.
"If thou hast much, give plentifully; if thou
hast little, do thy diligence gladly to give of that
little."1 God gives only that we may give. Our
very life is giving, self-diffusion. " Increase and
multiply " is imperative for all ; if not in one form,
then in another. Lauda sterilis et qua non paris —
" Give praise, thou that art sterile." But why ?
Because more are the children of the sterile than of
the fertile. The priest and apostle leaves a less
for a greater self-diffusion. Ecce ego et filios quos
dedit mihi Dominus — " Behold me and the children
God has given me," he says ; and Quis mihi genuit
hos — who hath brought me forth these? It is the
1 Tobias iv. 9.

372 LONGSUFFERING.
very spirit of poverty to give grandly, extravagantly,
and " not to count the cost ; " to be improvident and
reckless when God is the recipient of our alms. "Go,
sell all that thou hast, and give," it says ; whatever
that "all" be : the labour of our head, or our hands,
or our heart. It is by giving all that we get more
to give. Whatever we hoard or reserve is prey for
moth, or rust, or robbery.
" If thou hast little." Those who have little
are apt to think themselves exempt ; and that
because they are not in a position to do much or
to succeed ; therefore they are not bound to try or
to do anything. There is danger to such lest the
spirit of giving die in them. The "widow's mite"'
shows us that the greatness of the gift is measured
by the diligence and gladness of the giver, Hilarem
datorem diligit Deus.
CCCVIII.
LONGSUFFERING.
Arundinem quassatum non confringet.
" He will not break the bruised reed, nor quench
the smoking flax," i.e., He will not cast us off or
condemn us as worthless for all our feebleness and
coldness so long as He can discern in us the
remotest capacity for strength and love ; and this
He can discern where it eludes every other eye.
Whatever waning strength, whatever smouldering
spark is there, is proof of His inbiding presence and
love, which clings to the soul as tenaciously as the
soul does to the body. For while there is life there

HELPING GOD. 373

is hope. One defect diverts our eye from a thousand
amiabilities. Ours is the owl's eye, or the bat's, that
finds rest in darkness, and is pained by brightness.
The eagle eye of God and His Saints is diverted
from a thousand darknesses to the last expiring
spark of grace by which He is fascinated as by the
face of His own image. A verte faciem tuam a peccatis
meis. A spice et respice in faciem Christi tui — Turn
Thy face from my sins, and look upon the face of
Thy Christ. For the sins that are in me are my
very own, my sole originalities ; while the good that
is in me is Christ. Nunc vivo — jam non ego sed,
Christus in me vivit — " Now I live — not I, but Christ
lives in me."
CCCIX.
HELPING GOD.
Tu ad me venis !
" Thou comest to me ! " " I have need to be
baptized of Thee, and Thou comest to me ! " He
whom we need everywhere ; on whom we are
absolutely dependent ; to whom we must come for
everything ; comes to us, needy, dependent, in the
poverty of love ; sick for our worthless love, craving
and hungering and languishing for it. When He
chose to be our Lover it could not be otherwise :
Tu venis ad me ! We cannot love those who are
indifferent to our love and have no need of it. In
Creation, in the Incarnation, in the Eucharist, in
His Mystic Body, in humanity He has become
needy and dependent on our love. " I have need
of thee," He says to us. Date et dabitur — Give and

374 THE INTERNAL LAW
it shall be given you, pity for pity, gift for gift,
service for service, and love for love.
Cujus corrigiam calceamenti non sum dignus solvere
— " Whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to loose."
The greatest of the sainted prophets, canonized by
the words of the Word, counts himself unworthy
of the least service to the feet of Christ, to whom
it is the angels' privilege to minister ; to whom God
Himself is enslaved by love : Transiens ministrabit Mis
— Going among them He will serve them, He their
Lord and Master washes their feet: Ego Dominus
ct magister lavi vobis pedes. And yet penitents are
permitted to serve those feet with their tears and
spikenard day by day ; and to minister to the little
ones of Christ not a cup of cold water, but the well
of water springing up to everlasting life.
CCCX.
THE INTERNAL LAW.
Legem meam in corde eorum scribam.
" I will write My law in their hearts." God has
written the law of nature in our understanding,
which of itself is as hard and cold as the rocks of
Sinai. It tells us of duties and sanctions with some
dim hint of a personal legislator behind all, who
exacts these dues and enforces these sanctions. It
is when the personal lovingness and lovableness of
God is revealed to us that His law is written in our
hearts, and we begin to say : " How have I loved
Thy law, O Lord ; " and at the same time that law
is condensed into the one universal law of love,

THE INTERNAL LAW. 375
which St. Ignatius calls the interna caritatis et amoris
illius lex quam Spiritus Sanctus inscribere et in cordibus
imprimere solet — an instinct rather than a rule. As-
long as our formal aim is ethical rectitude and legal
propriety we are as a child who laboriously copies a
head-line, stroke by stroke, with many a blot and
quaver ; who proceeds non in spiritu amoris sed cum
perturbatione timoris — not in the spirit of love, but
with the perturbation of fear — concentrated on the
letter, forgetful of the sense. The finished writer
hardly knows that he is writing, or that he is writing
correctly. His spirit clothes itself spontaneously
in the outer sign. A man may easier forget the
spirit in the letter; than the letter in the spirit.
None who has the spirit can despise the letter ; but
only hold it subordinate.
"Who follows Me," says Christ, "walks not in
darkness," but is as one who follows a bright light.
For human nature, the only practical guide to conduct
is personal love. All ethical theorizing about beati
tude as a motive, and reasonableness as a norm of
right conduct, is mere air-beating. Its one use is
that God may be "justified in His sayings, and be
victorious when criticized" — ut justificeris in sermo-
nibus tuis, et vincas cum judicaris ; and that every
tongue should confess God : the tongue of philo
sophy and science and art, as well as the tongue of
faith and of healthy instinct. As reason is the
norm of rational conscience, so Christ is the norm
of Christian conscience : via, Veritas, et vita — the
way and the end ; the method and the motive.
And what Socrates remarks of conscience is also

376 THE INTERNAL LAW.
true of the guidance of Christ's example ; it is
chiefly negative and prohibitive. It is far easier
to be sure what Christ would not do under given
circumstances than to be sure what He would do.
It is only by uncertain analogies that the life of a
Nazarene carpenter of two thousand years ago,
endowed with unthinkable supernatural prerogatives,
with a mission of universal redeemer of humanity,
can be positively applied as a pattern to the very
unsupernatural man and woman of decadent civili
zation. " Thy Word is a light to nvy feet and a lamp to
my way." All that David says of God's written
Word and testimonies and laws and justifications
and statutes, may be understood eminently and
prophetically of the Eternal and Incarnate Word,
who is the Way, the Word, the Testimony, the
Covenant, and Law, and Justification. " Blessed
are the spotless in the Way, who walk in the Law
of the Lord. . . . Oh, that my ways were made
straight for the keeping of Thy Justice. ... In
my heart have I hid Thy Word, that I may not
sin against Thee. ... I am a pilgrim on earth,
hide not Thy Commandment from me. . . . Thy
Testimony is my meditation. . . . My soul hath
slumbered from weariness ; hath cleaved to the
dust : quicken me, strengthen me after Thy Word.
. . . Incline my heart to Thy Testimony. . . .
Take not even the Word of Truth from my lips. . . .
I will speak of Thy Testimony in the face of kings
and shall not be afraid. ... I have lifted up my
hands to Thy Commandments, which I have loved.

BAD COMMUNIONS. 377
... I was mindful of Thy Eternal Judgments and
was consoled. . . . My heart fainted for those
sinners who have left Thy Law." And so through
out. CCCXI.
BAD COMMUNIONS.
Excolentes culicem, camelum deglutientes.
" Straining out gnats ; swallowing camels."
True scrupulosity ! We are terrified by the idea
of communicating because of some foul thought
that has pursued us, or some outburst of sudden
passion, or because we are full of distractions and
worries, as though this refreshment were not
primarily intended for the tempted, the weak, and
the weary. But if it is only some chronic dislike ;
some little unkindness, some coldness and incon-
sideration, we approach confidently without any
apprehension of being choked; and then we are
surprised that the habitual results of our Com
munions are slight and imperceptible. Venial sins
against fraternal union are the likest to mortal,
and stop the channels of further grace all but
entirely. To "discern the Lord's Body" is to
discern that "we being many are one bread and
one body, for we are all partakers of that Body."
It was in this that the Corinthians1 were sacrilegious
communicants ; for that they were divided, even in
their Eucharists and love-feasts, into clans and
cliques, rich and poor, high and low. They did
not wait for one another, but each feasted by him-
1 1 Cor. xi.

378 BAD COMMUNIONS.
self and with his special friends; despising the unity
of the Church of God and shaming the poor by
leaving them out in the cold.
Qui intingit manum mecum in paropside, hie me
tradet — " He who dips his hand with Me in the sop
shall betray Me ; " so says our Lord to every one
who professes to be true to Him as He lies veiled
in the Host, and yet is a traitor to Him as He lies
veiled in His brethren, in His little ones. " Whereto-
art thou come?" He seems to say; "Dost thou
betray the Son of Man with a kiss ? " for " If
a man say ' I love God ' and love not his brother,
he is a liar."
Or else : " Friend, how earnest thou in hither not
having a wedding garment ? " — which garment all-
interpret to be charity ; but not all advert to the fact
that it is charity considered formally as touching our
neighbour. It is the garment which makes us all
alike, and is substituted for that wherein we are
all unlike. It is our common enthusiasm for the same
Good which likens and binds us to It, and thereby
likens and binds us to one another. He who
welcomes publicans and sinners, who compels the
blind and the maimed and the halt to enter in and
sit " with the princes of His people," says of the
unkind and uncharitable : " Bind him hand and foot
and cast him into outer darkness."

UNCOVENANTED MERCIES. 379
CCCXII.
UNCOVENANTED MERCIES.
Spiritus ubi vult spirat.
" The Spirit breathes where it chooses." This is
what the theological mind is sometimes inclined to
resent, for there can be no science of that which
cannot be tied down to law and reduced to formulae.
Where does God's Spirit breathe ? Wherever it
chooses. Whence comes it ? We know not.
Whither does it go ? Who can tell ? Grace refuses
to be known in itself or in its causes, except within
the narrowest limits. It comes where and when it
is least expected. "No one can say, The Lord
Jesus," i.e., can hail Him as Lord " except by the
Holy Ghost ; " and since " of ourselves we are not
sufficient to think any good," we must recognize
grace or its beginnings in every good desire. God
is true to His covenanted mercies ; and those with
whom He has covenanted would be presumptuous
to rely on what is not covenanted. If He agrees
with us for a penny we shall receive a penny. But
is our eye to be evil because He is good ; because
He chooses to give to the last as to us ; because
being just and generous to us, He is more generous
to others ; or because the heretic and the heathen
shall often take precedence of the Catholic ; or the
layman of the priest; or the secular of the religious;
or the penitent of the perfect ? There is no excuse
for those who neglect God's covenanted mercies.
"Those who believe not shall be damned," is

3S0 THE END OF MAN.
certainly the law for those to whom belief is offered.
As to others, we leave them with confidence to the
justice and goodness of God, who has not revealed
to us the laws of His dealings with them. Shall
not the Judge of all the earth do right ? This only
we know, that truth is reached by fidelity to the
truth in every order, natural and supernatural ; and
those who are faithful in a little are rewarded above
those who are faithless in much. " Many shall come
from the East and West " of whom it will be said :
" I have not found such faith in Israel."
CCCXIII.
THE END OF MAN.
Homo creatus est ut laudet.
" Man was created to praise." Praise is the
utterance of love, and love is the joy of the intellect
in the vision of goodness. Spero videre bona
Domini in terra viventium — " I hope to gaze upon
the goodness of the Lord in the Land of Life."
Utterance, is the proper act of an intelligence,
the expression of the truth and of one's joy in the
truth. What the lark does by instinct, the intellect
does freely and intelligently, pouring itself out in
" useless " utterance ; because it is full and must
unburden itself. Secondarily, such faculty of
utterance is for the good of others, that the glad
ness may be not only uttered but imparted and
multiplied. Primarily it is propter se — "for its own
sake." The sun would shine as brightly were there
no worlds around for it to warm or quicken. " I

THE END OF MAN. 381
only pipe," says the poet, " because I must ; and
sing but as the linnets sing." Associated praise is
easier, intenser, more harmonic, less painfully con
scious of its own feebleness — all the difference between
cheering with a crowd, and cheering alone, or
cheering 'mid a hooting crowd. But to give every
expression in our power to the joy that is within us
is as imperative an instinct of the rational soul of
man, as it is of the sensitive soul of the song-bird.
All the truest art the world has seen, has been
stimulated if not purely and wholly, yet at least
principally by this instinct of self-expression for
its own sake ; the desire to embody what we
see and feel in words or actions or images, or
lines or colours or marble or music — each according
to that medium of expression in which he is
skilled. The desire for sympathy, is an accessory
motive which does not tarnish the purity of the
former; but rather intensifies it. For utterance
tends naturally, though not necessarily, to draw
other souls into accord with our own. But the
direct quest of praise and success is as debasing as
the quest of money. The purest poetry is that in
which the writer seeks simply to please himself; to
produce the image of his soul ; to disburden himself
of the "word" he has conceived. Yet if he look to
communicating his joy to others ; or invite them
to share his gladness; his act is more full, more
intense, more unegoistic. But the true poet in every
department, is he who, like God diffuses his good
ness from its very superabundance ; to whom, the
thing well done or well said, is a joy for its own

382 HUMAN FICKLENESS.
Sake : " Thou art My Son ; to-day have I begotten
Thee ; " " My Beloved Son in whom I am well
pleased." CCCXIV.
HUMAN FICKLENESS.
Non se credebat eis Jesus.
"Jesus did not trust Himself to them," for " He
knew what was in man," and how those who are
with us to-day are against us to-morrow ; and that
he who leans his whole weight on aught else but
God, leans upon a broken reed. Nor was He bitter
or cynical through the recognition of this truth ; for
if He knew that the flesh was weak, He also knew
that the spirit was willing ; and that our Hosannas
are not insincere at the time, because they are soon
to be changed to Crucifige. He values every atom
of our feeble, fickle love as far as it goes, but does
not for a moment overvalue it. We are utterly
surprised and shocked, if we find that our friends are
not always loyal to us ; or if they are inconstant
and unreliable. Yet such defects are quite com
patible with very true and tender love, as a . little
self-knowledge would show us. In a sense Peter
loved our Lord most dearly in the very moment
when he denied Him. The present affection he had
testified to in his boasting was most real. He erred
in speaking for the future, forgetting the mutability
of our feeling.

TRANSFORMING LIGHTS. 383
CCCXV.
TRANSFORMING LIGHTS.
Nonne hie est qui sedebat et mendicabat ?
" Is not this he that used to sit by the way
side and beg?" God finds the soul sitting by the
wayside, in the attitude of hopelessness, while
others come up and pass by on their road to
salvation and leave it behind, lonely and desolate.
He finds it in beggary and rags, asking for the
husks of swine, ignorant of the treasures of Christ,
and of the Bread of Angels. He strikes His light
into our dead eyes, and lo ! we are the same and
not the same ; like, and yet unlike ; for grace takes
the fashion of the vessel into which it is poured.
We sat ; but now we walk and run ; we begged ;
but now we are rich. How this change is brought
about in most cases we know not, but " this we
know : that, whereas we were blind, now we see ; "
and to know that we see is to be certain.
" That Man called Jesus made clay and anointed
my eyes." It is only through the Sacred Humanity
of our Lord that we can see the Divinity. He who
formed Adam from the slime of the earth, formed
for Himself a body by the Holy Ghost from the
Virgin Mary. He is the unction of our dead eyes ;
the Word of the Father lisped in mortal language :
"He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."
" No man hath seen God at any time ; the Only-
Begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, He
hath declared Him."

3S4 THE ALL-SEEING.

CCCXVI.
THE ALL-SEEING.
Eloquia oris mei et meditatio cordis mei in conspectu tuo semper,
Domine adjutor meus et redemptor meus.
" The words of my mouth and the thoughts of
my heart are ever in Thy sight, O Lord, my helper
and redeemer." Our words and imaginings pass
through our lips and our heart, and leave no more
trace in memory than a ship in the waters. We live
just in the present and the penumbra of the dark
past. But to God all is present. We are in His
sight what we should be in our own were our whole
past and future crowded into our present clear con
sciousness, and this because He is our " Helper" in
our every thought and word and act — even in those
which turn His help to. His own dishonour, and with
regard to which He is both Adjutor meus et Redemptor
meus — " My Helper and my Redeemer."
CCCXVII.
OUR DOUBLE THIRST.
Si quis sitit veniat ad me et bibet.
" If any thirst, let him come to Me and drink."
Amare et amari is the double thirst of man's insa
tiable soul, or the double aspect of its single thirst.
There is a great power of loving latent in the
narrowest heart, and capable of indefinite expansion,
though often choked and well-nigh extinguished by
indulged selfishness. When once this thirst is

OUR DOUBLE THIRST. 385
wakened in us we become weary of our narrow
egoism, and seek to go out of ourselves and live
for others, to find an object that will stay the
strange craving which is like a hungry wolf within
us — an appetite not our own, and of which we can
give no account, which is in truth God, the First
Cause, the Last End, working in us, even as He
works for the general good in the instincts of senseless
Nature, urging all things to Himself, calling His
children home. So He uses the human heart as an
instrument whereby to love Himself, and long for
Himself, and praise Himself; and to love and
praise all else in Him and for Him ; to love those
whom He loves and as He loves them. And at
first this voice is strange to us ; its accents indis
tinguishable. We fancy it is some echo of our own
voice ; some confused egoism mistaking its own
reflex for altruism. But as its meaning and purpose
becomes more evident and unmistakable, so it is
seen to be no expression of our own limited wants,
but of the will of the all-loving God, which is sealed
on the very substance of our spiritual nature ; who
has made us first for Himself and for others, and
secondarily for our own sakes. Nothing, then, can
stay this craving but that full object towards which
it drives us — God, and all things in their true
relation to God ; the Bonum Divinum, or Divine end
in creation ; not my own solitary end, which is an
abstraction and perhaps a contradiction, but that
universal end of which God has made me to be an
instrument. In no single person or creature can I
find rest if I regard him in violent isolation from
z

386 OUR DOUBLE THIRST.
God and his fellow-creatures ; nor is he ever lovable
in the same way or to the same degree when thus
perversely exalted into an end. Love in its child
hood and weakness is narrow and exclusive, easily
corrupted into "a conspiracy of two against the
universe." In its maturity it is all-embracing, yet
without loss of fulness and depth, approximating
towards the perfection of Divine charity, with which
it has a common centre of radiation. Si quis sitit
veniat ad me — He who wants something to love
which will draw out, expand, and strengthen all his
capabilities of loving, let him love Me and Mine.
And he who is athirst with an intense desire of
being loved by one whose love is deep, penetrating,
lasting, and exalted, let him come to Me and drink
his fill. The fondest human love can never sate
him, unless he wilfully blind himself to its limita
tions, forgetting how short, inconstant, undiscern-
ing it is at the best. And how little do we find
of such love in many cases ; how lonely and unloved
we are outside the narrowest circle, while our hearts
crave to be universally loved, and shrink from the
censure and dislike of the meanest of our fellow-
men, thus showing that we were created to receive
universal love. If those who are called from lower
to higher, from caring for wife or husband to
caring for Christ and His Kingdom, ever seem to
violate this Divine instinct which bids us love
and be loved ; if they are ever lonely, unloving
and unloved, self-centred, narrow, it is so far only
as they fail to understand and realize their vocation
to a higher love which holds in itself every other, as

THE GLORY OF THE SUM OF THINGS. 387
the light of the sun holds every lesser light. If in
Christ and Christ's little ones they do not find
father and mother and child, and spouse and
brethren ; if they do not pour out upon them and
receive from them a hundred-fold that affection
which they might have had in a narrow sphere of
a single household, they are indeed " of all men the
most miserable." Dominus pars hareditatis mea et
calicis mei ; tu es qui restitues hareditatem meam mihi
— "The Lord is the portion of my heritage and
cup. It is Thou who wilt restore my inheritance to
me." To love and be loved is man's heritage and
birthright ; if for God's love we seem to forsake it,
it is only seeming. He is bound to restitution and
heavy interest. CCCXVIII.
THE GLORY OF THE SUM OF THINGS.
Viditque Deus cuncta quae fecerat, et ecce bonum valde.
"God viewed all together what He had made,
and lo ! it was very good." We can but see His
works singly and partially, and can say of each, so
far as it is, and so far as we can see or understand
it, bonum est. Could we be, like Paul, rapt up to the
throne of God, and from that height survey the
entire kingdom of His works unitedly and con
nectedly, we should see that the excellence of all
(cuncta) was something indefinitely more glorious
than the sum of their single excellences. Of this
universal order and end we can have only the
remotest, analogical conjecture ; as from a few brief
passages we can see that a dramatint has consum-

388 JERUSALEM.

mate power and a sense of unity and order, although
we have no notion as to the gist of the piece in
question. Any complex unity viewed partially must
necessarily seem out of joint, unmeaning, and
crooked. CCCXIX.
JERUSALEM.
Videns civitatem flevit super illam.
" And seeing the city, He wept over it." " Seeing."
Tears, the children of grief; and grief, the offspring
of love ; and all, the fruit of vision. " Seeing," as
God only sees, to whom past and future are the
setting of the present, who sees " within the green
the moulder'd tree, and towers fall'n as soon as
built ; " who, as He saw the walls of Sion rise stone
upon stone, the glory of the earth, saw in the same
gaze her glory trampled in the dust, her walls cast
down to the ground, so that not a stone was left upon
a stone. If tragedy is that which begins in joy and
hope, and ends in misery and despair, God well
may weep, to whose view is presented the continual
tragedy of souls destined to glory and doomed to
shame and destruction ; each a veritable " city of
God " founded on the eternal rock, girded with
tower and fortress, gleaming with gold and marble,
hallowed by the sanctuary of the Divine presence,
consecrated to His praise and glory ; and all ending
in everlasting ruin and shame. Nor does He weep as
the unconcerned spectator of a tragedy might weep,
but as a mother over the child of her travail and
tears and hopes ; as David over Absalom ; rather,

JERUSALEM. 389

as God over His creature, as the Redeemer over the
ransomed soul, for there is no tie so tender or in
any way comparable. If the rivers of the nether
world are fed with the gathered tears of time, where
is the ocean which receives the tears of eternity
shed over the everlasting ruins of Love's dearest
designs ; over souls whom God had set upon a hill
to be witnesses to His name amidst idolaters and
pagans; whom He had called to help others and
make known his Name and Nature and Truth,
but " they would not " ?
" Her foundations are upon the hills of holiness.
The Lord loveth the gates of Sion beyond all the
dwellings of Israel. Glorious things are spoken of
thee, O thou City of God ! " thou city of David
and of the Prophets, who have loved thee as a
bride and wept for thee and prayed for thee :
who have given God no rest day and night that
He might make thee a joy to the whole earth :
Civitas perfecti decoris, gaudium universa terra. And
yet this "child of many tears" must perish by her
own wilful, persevering resistance, victorious over a
thousand graces. In the history of Jerusalem we
see the history of every fallen soul — fallen a thousand
times and raised as often, and only cast off in the
extreme where further grace would violate free
choice. We have to kick and struggle hard and
long before God's patience is exhausted, and He
sets us down from His arms to run our own way to
destruction. " Hadst thou but known the things of thy
peace." In these days we deny that men are

396 JERUSALEM.

responsible for their beliefs and unbeliefs ; that
there is such a thing as wilful blindness of heart ;
wilful stupidity. If one acts according to his light
we ask no more, forgetting that he may be shutting
his eyes to the light. Yet our Lord's teaching is
only that of daily experience and common sense.
The affections are the eye-lids and motor-muscles of
the intellect or spiritual eye ; opening or closing it,
turning it towards one point and away from another.
Our imagination, passions, emotions, are far less
under our free control than our judgments and
opinions. Any one who knows the world knows
that the cleverest reasons count for nothing with
those who are indisposed to accept the conclusions.
They will be either ignored or distorted. Where
our treasure is, there will our heart and mind be.
A millionaire is in theory anti-socialist ; an under
paid labourer is a socialist ; each accepts the
theory that best secures him his treasure. Israel
was ever blinded by dreams of wealth and ambi
tion, and secular power and glory — a carnal-minded,
hard-hearted, stiff-necked people ; their treasure was
not in God and in His truth, and when He came
" He had no form or comeliness " for them ; and
when they saw Him they saw naught about Him
that they should desire Him.
And the punishment is a natural consequence,
namely, the inability to use the faculty which we
pervert or leave unexercised ; the eye is dimmed,
the ear dulled, the conscience seared, the heart
petrified. Nesciunt quid faciunt — We know not what
we are doing, and God is crucified in our wilful

THE ETERNAL YEARS. 391
ignorance ; we rush self-blinded into crime upon
crime. It is the worst of God's punishments when
He leaves us alone to run our own course, till the
things that belong to our peace are hidden from our
eyes ; till from obscurity and confusion of mind we
come to a strong conviction and settled belief in a lie.
cccxx.
THE ETERNAL YEARS.
Antiquus dierum.
"The Ancient of Days." There is sometimes a
strange beauty of expression in those who have
lived much, seen much, thought much, and suffered
much, and who have " kept themselves unspotted
from the world." Pondering their own experiences
and the recorded experiences of others in their heart,
they have by sympathy borne the sorrow and tasted
the joys of the whole race, and the record, not of a
single life, but of ages, is written on their features.
When St. John beheld the beauty of the Ancient of
Days, of Alpha and Omega, for whom there is no
yesterday nor to-morrow, but only an ever-present
"now;" before whose eyes all time is spread out
with its colours, lights, and shadows ; whose spotless
Heart has answered every throb of every heart
created ; he " fell at His feet as one dead."

392 MID-LIFE.

CCCXXI. MID-LIFE.
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura.
" In the midway of this our mortal life, I found
rne in a gloomy wood astray." It was at the point
of mid-life, that the poet found himself involved in
the deepest obscurity, mental and moral ; tempted
to despair of himself and of Church and State;
to turn and flee back into the dark and pathless
thicket ; to abandon all hopes of the sun-clad
heights. It takes half our life to make us realize
and acquiesce in the truth, that this world is
designed to disappoint, to raise our aspirations
higher and higher, yet never to satisfy them ; that
in disappointing us and making us turn elsewhere, it
fulfils its design most admirably. We have to
descend from the selva oscura — the gloomy wood, to
the very depths of Hell, before we can again behold
the stars; or dispose ourselves to ascend to them, or
subject ourselves to the Love that moves them. This
crisis of life is a dangerous time to those who do not
understand it, or have not some Lucy or Beatrice or
Virgil interested in their guidance. One stands
tottering on the narrow ledge that divides the
deepest faith and hope and love, from the deepest
agnosticism, pessimism, cynicism. Prior to this
our inner life is but embryonic, formative, and
uterine. Now it is that we are brought to the
birth ; either to begin to live, or to be strangled in

THE FEET OF CHRIST. 393
the process ; either a rivider le stelle, or a rovinare in
basso loco ; to see the stars once more ; or to plunge
back into the dark wood.
CCCXXII.
THE FEET OF CHRIST.
Ex quo intravit, non cessavit osculari pedes meos.
" Since her entrance, she has not ceased to kiss
My feet." Taking the feet of Christ as the lowest,
most earthly, least heavenly members of His Mystic
Body, Mary Magdalene teaches us in symbol our
conduct as penitents towards penitents. Our Saviour
had washed her from her sins in His Blood; she in
return washes His earth-soiled members with her
tears. For her, He had laid aside His glory and
sacrificed all ; and she devotes to their service the
best He had given her, the beauty and the wealth
that had been till then devoted to sin and selfishness;
she dries them with her hair, and anoints them with
her precious spikenard. He runs to meet the
penitent, yet a long way off, and receives her with
the kiss of peace as most dear to Him ; and she
ministers to His feet not merely with a relative
affection— loving them only for His sake, not seeing
in them the lovableness which He sees — but with
a direct personal love, and with the kisses of
passionate devotion. He anoints her with the
unction of sanctifying grace — very precious ; bought
at the price of God's blood-shedding — and heals the
wounds of her soul, and makes her all fragrant with
the oil of gladness ; and she, after she has cleansed

394 LIFE FROM DEATH.
the soil from His feet with her tears ; after the old
life has been obliterated, superinfuses that spiritualis
unciio the new and eternal life of grace, by whose
fragrance God is ravished and drawn to the soul, as
a bee to the flower, as it is written, in odorem unguen-
torum tuorum currimus. And many sins were forgiven
her because of her much love to those same feet ;
for he that shall convert a sinner shall cover a multi
tude of sins ; and what is done to the last and least
of His brethren, to those who have least likeness to
Him, is done to Him. CCCXXIII.
LIFE FROM DEATH.
Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi sasculi.
" I await the Resurrection of the dead, and the
life of the world to come." Faith is the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen ; and thus the last article of our creed in
order of synthesis, is the first in order of analysis.
It was this expectation of the future life, far
more dimly apprehended than by us, the " looking
for the reward," "for a city whose builder and
founder is God," that nerved the old - world
saints to subdue kingdoms, work righteousness,
and the rest;1 to live as strangers and pilgrims
on earth. Still more in the fuller light of Christian
revelation have martyrs, virgins, confessors, re
formers, labourers, sufferers, lifted up their eyes to
the hills of eternity, those far-off mountains whose
1 Hebrews xi.

HABITS. 395
peaks are bright with the coming day, and from
whence come our help and our hope. In looking
for the resurrection of our mortal dust, for the
re-gathering and re-quickening of dry bones and
scattered fragments, we are pushing the madness
of hope to its extremity; of hope in lost causes,
disappointed ideals, frustrated designs; of hope in
Him who is the Resurrection and the Life and
brought Lazarus from his grave. He who can say
" I hope," or rather, " I wait, as for a distant but
certain event, for the resurrection of the dead," can
never despair, however dark and puzzling God's
ways may seem to him.
CCCXXIV. HABITS.
Qui perseveraverit usque in finem, hie salvus erit.
" He that shall persevere to the end shall be
saved." Though it is true that habits are formed
and uprooted by the same process, namely, by a
persevering repetition of acts ; still if the habit be
accordant to inclination it is quickly formed and
very slowly uprooted. Contrariwise, if it be adverse
to inclination, it is hard to form and easy to lose.
In the forming of difficult habits and the uprooting
of easy habits, perseverance does not mean infalli
bility and constancy, but is compatible with the
absolutely certain prevision of many lapses and
failures. It is the resolution to do one's best, and
after each lapse to begin again with great faith in
the psychological law by which the falls become

396 PETER'S SHIP.

fewer and more wide apart, till at last the intervals
are measured by years, or even by a life-time. The
ignorance of this law is a source of great dis
couragement and settled despair. Men are simply
astonished to find that they cannot change a habit
by one strong resolution ; and after two or three
attempts, give up in bewilderment. Yet even on
natural psychological principles it is not strange
that it should take four or five years to eradicate
all the germs of a disease contracted in a month or
less.
CCCXXV.
Peter's ship.
Ita ut pene mergerentur.
" So that they were on the point of sinking."
We much misunderstand the difference between the
promise of assistance and the promise of inspiration.
Christ never told us that the Church was to be spotless
and sinless in all her members; or that they should
be individually free from a thousand errors in faith
and morals. In saying that the gates of Hell should
never prevail, He implied that they should ever
strive and at times all but prevail. Peter's ship is
always tempest-tost; often all but overwhelmed.
Yet we are surprised to see how nearly on various
occasions Rome has committed herself to error ;
how nearly unity has been destroyed and the other
notes obliterated ; how frightfully close she has been
to utter destruction. "Assistance" means the
minimum of interference with the natural process
of evolution, and God's wisdom is more glorified

THE AGONY. 397

thereby, than by a dispensation of miraculous
cataclysms. For the most part, and up to the
last extremity, our Lord, slumbering, leaves winds
and waves to themselves to rage as they will. What
we do see is exactly what we should expect to see
did we understand the promise aright. " Satan
has greatly desired to have us," and he is cease
less in his machinations, working sometimes from
outside; but always and most successfully from
within as a corrupting influence. Evil men are
his rough, every-day tools ; but his most delicate
and deadly work is done through the instrumentality
of the good, through the blindnesses and stupidities
of those who mean well. Wherever he sees good
work on foot he at once lends a hand, that eventually
he may take the lead. Yet " He that watcheth over
Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep; " for in Him
there is neither sleeping nor waking nor vicissitude
of any kind, who makes and rules all things by one
restful, unbroken gaze upon the face of the Word
in His bosom. Satan is suffered for a little while
that he may in spite of himself work out the glory
of God, sifting the wheat — grain from chaff; light
from darkness ; truth from lie ; reality from sham.
CCCXXVI.
THE AGONY.
Non sicut ego volo, sed sicut tu.
" Not as I will, but as Thou wilt." It is hard
not to imagine that a neutralized force is extinct
and non-existent, however great it may be. Perfect

398 THE AGONY

self-mastery may easily be interpreted as apathy;
and the absolute submission of our Saviour's human
will to His Divine will is conceived in effect as
though that human will were paralyzed or wholly
absent. God alone and our own heart knows the
existence of many affections within us, which are
kept in abeyance only by the continual pressure of
counter-motives against which they strain as the
seemingly inert water does against the sides of the
containing vessel. There is in every finite spirit,
and therefore in the human spirit of our Saviour,
a fundamental self-regarding tendency, which is
given in order that it may be ruled by and serve
a no less fundamental extra-regarding tendency —
the impulse of reason and conscience and of that
Divine love, which looks to the interests of universal
order, to the common good, to the glory arid
Kingdom of God. Uncurbed by this latter, the
self-assertive impulse is the source of sin and dis
order ; and when it is habitually rebellious it is a
vice, a "law of sin " resisting the law of mind and
reason. But when it is well and abundantly over
mastered by the higher law and kept in its place,
it is altogether good and useful ; nor is its pressure
against the curb to be accounted rebellion, since
it is in conformity with the very nature of the finite
will. For the finite spirit is not made to stand
alone by itself; but to form part of one living
organism in union with God, the " Father of
spirits," and with all the "spirits of the just, made
perfect." The part exists primarily for the whole, and
for itself, only in order to the whole. Divine charity

THE AGONY. 399

bids us love and long for God's Kingdom and glory
in which our own salvation is included, far more than
for our own salvation, considered exclusively as a
mere fraction of that glory. If self-charity is a first
duty, it means that our first duty towards the whole,
that is, towards the Kingdom of God, is to perfect
ourselves in our own particular place and function
therein. For as each part is more perfect, so will
the whole be ; and our utility to others depends upon
what we are in ourselves. But the ruling motive
is always charity, the love of God's glory, of the
common good, of the universal beatitude. The
fundamental self-regarding instinct is given, not to
rule us, but to be ruled by us in the interests of
reason and charity. It is a force put at our dis
posal ; and the stronger it is, the greater our power
for good or evil, according to the use we make of it.
In our Saviour its force was in direct proportion to
the love of His Sacred Heart. Never for a moment
could it cause the grasp of reason and Divine love
to tremble or relax. But in Lucifer and the fallen
angels we see the havoc and destruction wrought
by this force of individualism when it breaks from
the restraint of the social law of love, hurling, so
to say, the planet from its orbit to its own destruc
tion, and to the dismemberment of the system to
which it belonged. In His Agony, our Saviour
teaches us that it is only at the cost of bitter self-
conflict that we can enter into the life of love ; that
we must lose our isolated, selfish life before we can
find it a hundred-fold by entering into the life of
God and of our fellow-members in His Kingdom.

400 THE AGONY.
For, indeed, if we are to enter into the joy of our
Lord, that is, into that corporate rejoicing of God
and His Elect, we must first enter into our Saviour's
Agony, when, going out of Himself, He entered
into every human soul and made all its sorrows and
infirmities His own. There are times when we are
tempted to shut out the thought of the evils and
sufferings around us ; to be a world in ourselves and
for ourselves ; for why should we harrow ourselves
with ills past curing, or past our curing ? Yet this
suggestion is from the lower, self-regarding will.
For the higher will, the will of reason and of God
working in our reason, tells us that we must live out
of ourselves and in others ; and therefore that it is
our duty to suffer with others, and to feel the pain
of our helplessness. God, at most, lifts some little
corner of the veil which hides that awful vision of
sin and sorrow from our eyes ; but our Saviour, in
His Passion, had to face it all, and to feel it all
distinctly and in detail ; and if a mother would
shrink from gazing on the torn and mangled corpse
of her only son, what must it have cost Him whose
love for each soul surpasses indefinitely the united
love of all mothers, to behold and drink in, all the
miseries of the teeming millions of humanity ?
Hence He prays in an agony : " Not My will, but
Thine." And if, on the one hand, we must not for
a moment admit any moral disorder in this fearful
straining of the lower against the higher will in
our Saviour's spiritual soul, seeing that the higher
was perfectly and infallibly master ; yet, on the
other, we must remember that His pain was in

SCOURGED FOR OUR INIQUITY. 4oj
proportion to the intensity of the impact with which
the lower will dashed itself fruitlessly against the
untrembling rock of His love for us. For it is not
he who yields to temptation, or even who is in
danger of yielding, that suffers most, but he rather
who holds out and endures.

CCCXXVII.
SCOURGED FOR OUR INIQUITY.
Disciplina pacis nostras super eum, et livore ejus sanati sumus;
et posuit Dominus in eo iniquitatem omnium nostrum.
" The chastisement of our peace was upon Him ;
and by His bruises we are healed, and the Lord
hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." It is a
necessary condition of our spiritual incorporation
with others by nature, knowledge, and sympathy,
that the chastisement of their crimes should often
fall upon us who are innocent ; and that the member
which receives the stroke should not always be the
member which merited it. A false individualism is
scandalized by the doctrine of original sin, of the
visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children,
of vicarious suffering and atonement. Certainly
their quarrel is not only with the God of Christians,
but with the Author of Nature. For there, too, the
law is, that some labour and others enter into their
labours ; some sow, and others reap ; and this alike
for better or for worse. Reason, when more closely
interrogated, sanctions our speaking of the " human
family" as of a close community whereof no member
suffers or rejoices, but the rest suffer or rejoice with
AA

402 SCOURGED FOR OUR INIQUITY.
it. And if the force of the Christian and Catholic
idea has broken many of the old bonds that held
tribes and nations together, it has only been to
replace them with more comprehensive and world
wide ties. It is not that the family or national tie
is thought less of, but that the tie of Christian and
human brotherhood is thought more of; not that
father and mother are loved less, but that Christ
and mankind are loved more; for "he that loves
father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of
Me." The more we enter into Christ's mind in
this matter, the greater will be our share by way of
sympathy in the sufferings of mankind; and the more
reasonable will it seem to us that we should bear
the chastisement of the sins of others. Everywhere,
both in the natural and supernatural dispensations, in
the necessary laws of society, and in the economy of
original sin and vicarious atonement, we are taught
that none lives for himself, none is self-sufficing,
none without his burden ; that each is his brother's
keeper, and is to help him to bear his burden.
If the world were not full of sorrow and sin ; if it
were a terrestrial paradise where each had all he
needed, and depended on no one, how could men's
hearts and minds have ever been knit together into
one ? Compassion, the divinest thing about us,
would have lain dormant in the depths of our heart
like a pearl buried in the ocean ; whereas now it
shines even in the darkest and most seemingly God
forsaken souls.
It is then in harmony with this conception of
the solidarity of mankind that God should make

OUR LADY'S CORONATION. 403
His sun to shine upon the evil and the good, that
He should send His rain upon the just and the
unjust ; that wheat and tares should be treated in
the present somewhat indiscriminately, with no fine
sifting of personal merits ; that none should be able
to escape the consequences of the deeds of others —
good and bad — or to prevent the fates of thousands
being intertwined with his own. And if the innocent
suffer for the guilty, the guilty, too, are spared and
blest for the innocent. The just are the salt of
the earth, for any ten of whom God would spare
ten thousand sinners, for one saint glorifies God
more than a thousand sinners dishonour Him. In
fine, if we look forward to a share in the common
or general joy of Christ and His saints, we must
now share in the common or general sorrow, bearing
one another's burdens, and so fulfilling the law of
Christ, who was scourged for our transgressions.
CCCXXVIII.
our lady's coronation.
Domine mna tua fecit quinque mnas. Et huic ait ; Et esto tu
super quinque civitates.
" Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds.
And he said to him : Be thou also ruler over five
cities." High places in God's Kingdom reward the
fidelity of His servants. Not as though domination
were to be ambitioned as the spirit of self-assertion
ambitions it ; but rather as He ambitioned it who
said : " Let him that is greatest among you be as
the least ; and him that sitteth at meat as he who

404 OUR LADY'S CORONATION
serveth ; " who was Himself exalted above all others,
and given a Name over every name because He
humbled Himself for the love of mankind, and
served us even unto death. It is the higher and
more central members of the organism which are
in a position to render the widest and most effectual
service. But since their power for evil is com
mensurate with their power for good, they must
first prove their unselfishness and charity in the
" little things " of this life — in modico fidelis. For
power or any other talent is like wealth, which is
given us solely for the common good ; which if it is
to be first expended on our own physical, moral,
or intellectual perfection, or on that of our more
immediate belongings, yet even this is only because
it is for the general happiness that each should
render himself as efficient and helpful a member of
society as is compatible with the discharge of plain
duties towards others. In keeping with this con
ception of power, the Vicar of Christ calls himself,
Servus servorum Dei — "the servant of God's ser
vants;" being exalted, not for his own advantage,
but for the advantage of mankind. And if Christ
crowns those saints who on earth have lived not
for themselves but for others, and if He makes
them rulers and dispensers of the treasures of His
Kingdom and potent intercessors with His Divine
Majesty, will not she whose service and suffering
and self-abasement exceeded that of all other crea
tures, reign supreme as Queen of the City of God ?

ASCETICISM. 465

CCCXXIX
asceticism.
Si quis vult post me venire, abneget semetipsum.
" If any man will come after Me, let him deny
himself." Needless to say that Christian as opposed
to Manichean or duahstic asceticism, springs from
the root of charity, or from the love of God's
Kingdom and glory. Antagonistic to this spirit 01
universal love is the spirit of self-centred love :
which is the spirit of disorder, false independence,
and sin. Natural reason and conscience convey
to us the will of God, who is subsistent Reason,
whose interest and aim is universal good and right
order ; and they impel us to live for a whole whereo
we are but parts, and for a good whereof our
particular good is but a fraction. When enlightened
by Catholic faith, the voice of conscience is none
other than the voice of Christ, who lives in us and
impels us to live for the Father's glory, and to find
our greatest good in the final "joy of our Lord"
and of His Mystical Body. ^ I live," says St. Paul,
"yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." And it is
only so far as the selfish life wanes, that the soul
can become the instrument of that higher and more
universal life. If we are to live to Christ, we must
die to self; if we are to assert Him and His truth
in our conduct, we must deny self, and all the lying
principles of selfishness and individualism. Christian
mortification and asceticism aims at the suppression
of self-assertion, both bodily and spiritual, not

4o6 THE MASS.

merely when it is in actual conflict with the law
of reason, order, and charity, but at all times, in
order to secure the habitual disposition and the
ready obedience of the flesh to the spirit, i.e., of
blind nature to reason and to God. No social
reforms, no laws or systems, will remedy the present
evils of civilization until the doctrine of the Cross
and the duty of self-denial and mortification have
been accepted by all classes. All our miseries are
traceable to the spirit of selfish individualism
which unbelief has canonized, and with which
even believers are impregnated, so that the Church
herself is well-nigh paralyzed — omnes qua sua sunt
quarunt ; non qua Jesu Christi — all seek their own
advantage or praise, and not the interests of Jesus
Christ.
CCCXXX. THE MASS.
Desiderio desideravi.
" I have greatly longed to eat this Pasch with you
before I suffer." Every single Mass is nothing more
nor less than a renewal of that great paroxysm of
our Saviour's passionate love for the soul ; another
outbreak of the anguish which says desiderio desi
deravi. When shall we understand this or believe it ?
" He that loves," says a Kempis, "knows the strong
cry of the lover." Let us, if we have ever loved child
or mother or friend or spouse, try and recall the
"hunger and thirst," the craving for nearness and
converse which love means, its restlessness and
burning energy. And let us add to all this whatever

fHE MASS. 407

we have read or heard of ardent, devoted passion.
And let us cast all these longings into one love
which holds in solution all that is best in each of
them ; and let us multiply its fervour seven times,
and that, seven times again, till our head reels
before the prospect of infinity stretching away
beyond our utmost horizon ; and then let us bring
this infinite force of love and compress it into the
finite compass of a human heart, bursting and
breaking out under the strain on every side ; and
perhaps we shall have some dim notion of what
goes on when day by day He comes hungering and
thirsting for our love and breaks bread and says,
" Take and eat, this is My Body which is given for
you." Take all that I have, all that I am, make Me
yours, dispose of Me according to your good will
and pleasure ; do with Me what you like. I am
your slave, at your mercy to use or abuse ; crushed
and humbled by hunger, ready for the very husks
of the swine, the scraps and leavings of your love.
Love I must have or perish. Give Me any sort of
love and this is enough for Me, though I would fain
have more. This is My Body that I gave to be
torn to shreds for you, and would give a thousand
times a day if necessary to be crucified again for
you, the Body that I took for you, in hopes I might
get you to love Me. And this is My Blood, My
Heart's Blood that I poured out for you and for
all your sins that they might not come between us ;
the blood of the new and eternal covenant of love
and friendship ; of the contract between the soul and
its Divine lover and spouse ; new because it is ever

408 THE MASS.

strange and incredible to .narrow hearts and dim
eyes ; eternal because it is from the beginning as
old as God Himself, as old as the embrace of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost ;
before the morning stars were created and the sons
of God shouted for joy — ex utero ante luciferum.
The "mystery of faith," for it is not the "how"
of transubstantiation that will scandalize any mind
of mediocre modesty ; but the mystery of the Divine
indigence and dependence ; how the self-sufficing
can be famishing with want ; parched and athirst
with the fever of love — and love of what ? Of
Himself, after all ; and yet not a selfish love, for
it is the source of all pure and unselfish love. All
right and orderly love is but some mode or mani
festation of that impulse whereby God having in
some sense gone out of Himself, returns to Himself;
whereby the sparks are drawn back to the fire ; and
the rain-drops to the ocean ; and the many, to the
parent " One ; " and " the soul to God that gave
it." " I speak as a man," not as though God were
frangible, in any such literal sense, but because
these things, so far as they are helpful and beautiful,
are less and not more than the truth. Wherever
He finds Himself in His substance or in His image
there He loves Himself with the force of His infinite
love, and draws to Himself what is of Himself and
yet not Himself. It is this love, this drawing,
which manifests itself in every appetite and longing,
natural or superinduced, and which is the perverted
body and substance even of every sinful desire. In
some sort it may be conceived as if in the created

The mAss. 469

universe God the Head had fashioned unto Himself
a body of which He is the animating breath, the life
and the love ; moving every sense and member to
His own end, wherein each singly finds its rest and
final satisfaction. It is not my hand that serves
me, but I who by my hand serve my self; nor does
the foot serve the hand ; but I, through the foot
serve the hand for my self's sake, of which self the
hand is part. Again, this is but the rude figure
of human speech, failing of the truth, painting
the pure, living light of the sun with dead
chalkings called white only because there is
something blacker. It is not I who love God, but
God who loves Himself through me ; it is not my
brother who loves me, but God who - loves me
through him; and loves Himself in me. And so
the need God has of my love is the manifestation
of the need He has of Himself, that absolute,
all-forcing necessity; whereof all finite loves are
faint shadowings. And if I but knew the meaning
of my spiritual instincts, if I could but see the term
they are groping at, as He sees it who implanted
them, I should see that my love, however weak
and feeble in degree, has for its only satisfying
object the All-good, the All-beautiful, the All-true;
God and all that is God's, with God and under God,
each in due place and order. This is indeed the
Mysterium Fidei, the incredible mystery of God's
passion for the immortal soul ; that passion which
breaks out into wild conflagrations and extravagant
paroxysms day by day while we kneel by, hard and
cold, and hear words and see bread and wine, and

416 The MasS.

half-believe, and half-wonder what it all means, as
new-born babes opening their eyes strangely on the
world which is one day to be all to them, but which
as yet is nothing. Desiderio desideravi; if we have
no desire ourselves, let us at least not stand in the
way of His.
" He loved them even unto the end." The
Eucharist was pre-eminently a leave-taking, a parting
gift of our Saviour to His friends. It was also a
parting lesson in the New Law; a parting injunc
tion of the Great Precept, renewed day by day in
the Mass. Greater love hath no man than this, that
he lay down his life for his friends. " Behold I have
given you an example," He says, "the Good Shep
herd giveth His life for His sheep. Feed My sheep.
Do to one another as I have done to you." This is the
archetype of that self-giving love of others, which so
far as it can or may, says to the least of Christ's
brethren : Take, eat, this is my body which is given
for you ; this is my blood which is shed for you ;
this is my life, my health, my best energy, my heart,
my love which is devoted and given over to you.
In hoc cognovimus caritatem Dei, quoniam Me pro nobis
animam posuit, et nos debemus pro fratribus animas
ponere. Herein have we known the love of God,
since He laid down His life for us ; and we also
ought to lay down our lives for our brethren.
THE end.

INDEX.

Adoration 211.
Advocate, Our 253.
Agony, The 397.
All men lovable 295.
All-seeing, The 384.
Altar, The 187.
Andrew, St. 22.
Angels' Food 336.
Anxiety 53.
Art and Holiness 325.
Asceticism 405.
Attachments 57.
Attractiveness 171.
Attractiveness of Christ 20.
Augustine, St. 272.
Bad Communions 377.
Before Communion 77.
Bending and Breaking 327,
Best Comforter, The 317.
Better part, The 99.
Body of our humiliation, The 188.
Bountifulness 259.
Bread of the Poor 335.
Carnal Affections 331.
Cause of our Joy 280.
Chalice, The 278.
Changeableness 163.
Christ and the Suppliant 4.
Christian Optimism 344.
Christ our Servant 25.

Christ our Sun 56.
Christ's Heritage 367.
Christ's Visits 7.
Church, Prayer for the 63.
Circumcision, The 204.
Clean Heart, A 285.
Clothing the Naked 302.
Collective Praise 275.
Collective Prayer 242.
Communion, Before 77.
Community, God's House, The 70.
Concert of Creation, The 91.
Conditions of Prayer 1 34.
Conservation of Spiritual Energy
136-
Controversy 149.
Conversion 229.
Cosmic Enthusiasm 174.
Cost of our production 220.
Crosses of others, The 262.
Cry for Mercy, A 25.
Cry to Mary, Our 252.
Darkness 240.
David's Cry 329.
Death 358.
Desperation 181.
Dimensions of Charity 347,
Divine Watchfulness 1 3.
Earth, God's House 74.
Earth to Heaven, From 207,
Earth's renewal 144.

4i2

Index.

Economy of Truth 268.
End of Man 380.
Enlightenment 266.
Epiphany 209.
Eternal Years, The 391.
Eternity of Hell 153.
Evangelical Counsels 213.
Example of the Saints 16.
Exile, Our 253
Expectancy 368.
Expectation of B.V.M. 54.
Eyes of Pity, The 254.
Failure 362.
Fair Love 247.
Faith 126.
Faith and Practice 9.
Faith fire-tried 40.
Father of the Poor 316,
Fearfulness 320.
Fear not 146
Fear of God's scrutiny 3 1 .
Fear of Hell 155.
Feast of Lance and Nails 166.
Feeding the hungry 300.
Feet of Christ, The 393.
Fellowship in Suffering 366.
Finding in the Temple 284.
Folly of Divine Love 122.
Forgetful Hearers
Forgiving and Forgetting 233.
Francis, St. 117.
Frequent Communion 172.
From Earth to Heaven 207.
From God's Feet to His Face 31 1.
From Nature to God 182.
Fulness of Faith 357.
Gate of Heaven 261.
Gifts that cost 312.
Giving to the Poor 21.
Gladness, Spirit of 46.
Glsams in Darkness 185.

God above all 107.
God at our mercy 133.
God in every solace 323.
God in human affection 190.
God in Man 17-
God in the darkness 95.
God in the storm 209.
God made Man 139.
God of my heart 328.
God our first Joy 52.
God our Happiness 105.
God our Love 244.
God's attributes 103.
God's bounty 19.
God's doings inscrutable 108.
God's Face 87.
God's Feet to His Face, From 31 1
God's Garment 127.
God's Glory 277
God's Immanence 234.
God's Indwelling 281
God's Love, not blind 313.
God's Peace 55.
God's Plans unsearchable 217.
God's Vengeance 126.
God's Victory 1 78.
God's Voice in Reason 355.
God works quietly 39.
Gold, Frankincense, Myrrh 216.
Grace of long life 104.
Grace of utterance 264.
Growth a Mystery 223.
Growth in Grace 109.
Habits 395.
Harbouring Strangers 303.
Hardness of Heart 76.
Heaven and Earth 12.
Heaven God's House 74.
Hell a Mystery 150.
Help from the Mountains 1 1,
Helping God 373.
Helping others 65,

INDEX.

4'3

Herod 224.
Holy Church God's House 69.
Holy Communion 333.
Holy House of Loreto 43, 129.
Holy Innocents 141.
Holy Name 27.
Holy Relics 28.
Holy Spirit 314.
Hope 150.
Hope not Presumption 34.
Human Fickleness 382.
Human Frailty 332.

Illiberal Judgments 132.
Immaculate Conception 93.
Incarnation, The 97.
Inconstancy 101.
Incredulity 58.
Intelligent Charity 353.
Intelligent Love 169.
Intercession 272.
Internal Law 374.
Intertwined destinies 183.
Intuition 262.
Intuitive vision 16S.

Jealous God, A 263.
Jerusalem 388.
John, St., the Baptist 33.
John, St., the Evangelist 130.
Joseph, St. 199, 201.
Joy of our Youth 338.
Justice and Peace 165.

Lance and Nails 166.
Latent Capacities 299.
Lazarus 296.
Lazarus resuscitatus 136.
Liberality 371.
Life a Dream 228.

Life from Death 394.
Life's last Lesson 226.
Life of Praise 117,
Light of Hearts 317.
Light of the World 10.
Lily amid Thorns 36.
Long Life, Grace of 104.
Longsuffering 75, 372.
Love in the Wine-press 94.
Love's archetype 78.
Lucy, St. 44.

Magnificat 15.
Man-worship 161.
Many-sidedness 186.
Margaret Mary, Blessed 33, 128.
Martin, St. 45.
Mary and the Holy Spirit 138.
Mary our Life 250.
Mary our Sweetness 251.
Mary our Teacher 246.
Mary's Crown 32.
Mary's Fiat 291.
Mary's Welcome 255-
Mass, The 406.
Mediation 200.
Mediatorial Office 192.
Meekness 225, 352.
Memorare 270.
Mercy and Truth 164.
Mid-life 302.
Milk for Babes 279.
Minuteness of God's Love 112.
More than a Brother 2S4.
Mother of Mercy 248.

Name of God 231.
Name, Our own 212.
Natural Affections 68, 205.
Natural Kindness 162.
Nature of Sin 41.

414

INDEX.

Nature saved in Grace 112.
Nature to God, From 182.
Neglected Calls 332.
Night and Day 23.
Novelties 269.
No waste of good Desires 123.
Oblation 212.
Omnipotence 334.
One Bread and one Body 123.
One God 238.
Other People's Business 118.
Our Advocate 253.
Our Charge 219.
Our Cry to Mary 252.
Our Double Thirst 384.
Our .Exile 253.
Our Grievances 161.
Our Guest 319.
Our Lady, God's House 71.
Our Lady's Coronation 403.
Our Lady's Expectation 54.
Our Latent Capacities 299.
Our Neighbour's Soul 72.
Our own Name 202.
Our Soul God's House 71.
Our Times 129.
Overruling Providence 38.
Paul, St. 293.
Peace 123.
Peaceableness 170.
Peace, God's 55.
Penitence 236.
Penitent's Hope, The 4.
Perseverance 52.
Personal Love 84.
Peter and Paul 363.
Peter's Ship 396.
Philip, St. 244.
Praise and Thanks 294.
Prayer, Collective 242.
Prayer for the Church 63.

Preparing God's Ways 85.
Presence of Christ 2.
Proof of God's Word 19.
Public Worship 342.
Ransom 322.
Rational Piety 119.
Relics, Holy 28.
Remembering Christ I.
Resolutions 185.
Restraint 173.
Restraint the condition of Growth
120.
Retrospection 177.
Returning to God 61.
Sacramental Union 274,
Sacred Heart 119.
Satan's Tactics 321.
Scourged for our Iniquity 401.
Second Coming 26.
Secret of Power 277,
Seeing is Believing 140.
Seeming Abandonment 191.
Self-confidence 180.
Self-contempt 343.
Self-study 257.
Sense of Security 222.
Sense of Sin 30.
Separation 113.
Serving in Fear 60.
Seven Dolours 102.
Sheep outside the Fold 311,
Short Life a Grace 1 1 1".
Shut out 241.
Silent Prayer 121.
Simplicity 273.
Sins against Light 181.
Smoking Flax 203.
Soul, The, as a Vine 8.
Sowing in Tears 37.
Spirit of Gladness 46.
Stanislaus, St., 48, 49, 51.

INDEX.

4'5

Star of the Sea 250.
Steadfast Peace 270.
Stephen, St. 96.
Stigmata of St. Francis 117.
Tabernacle God's House 73-
Tears of Jesus 66.
Thomas, St., of Canterbury 142.
Three Hardships 221.
Times of Visitation 90.
Tolerance 346.
Transforming Lights 383.
Treasure found, The 6.
Treasure lost, The 5.
Tree (The) and Fruit 204.
Tree of Knowledge 106.
Unanimity 114.
Unclouded Sight 1 60.
Uncovenanted Mercies 379.
Unequal Affection 179.
Union with God 83.
Utterance, Grace of 264.

Vanity and Pride 313.
Various Tongues 323.
Vicarious Suffering 167.
Vine, Our Soul as a 8.
Virginity 260.
Vision and Love 206.
Visitation, The 370.
Visiting Prisoners 308.
Visiting the Sick 305.
Visits, Christ's 7.

Waiting in Silence 341.
Watchfulness, Divine 13.
Water and Wine 286.
Weak chosen, The 58.
Where is thy brother ? 223,
Whom to fear 157.
Who touched Me ? 189.
Wisdom and Utterance 324.
Wordless Prayers 141.
Worthy Praise 173,

ROEHAMI'TON I
VlUVTEli BY JOHK GRIFFIN.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

THE FAITH OF THE MILLIONS.
FIRST AND SECOND SERIES.
SECOND EDITION.
Crown 8vo. 5s. net, each Volume.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
' ' All are infused with that breadth of view which has nothing latitu-
dinarian about it, but is entirely free from the narrowness and pettiness, as
well as from the inability to appreciate the position of those from whom we
differ, which unfortunately characterize many well-intentioned writers. . . .
It must suffice to commend these studies of The Faith of the Millions
(which, it may be noted, has the Cardinal's imprimatur) to the notice of
all who value thought and intelligence of a high order, expressed in language
worthy of its subjects." — Catholic Book Notes.
" Father Tyrrell is the very ideal of Roman controversialists. . . . His
methods of argument are very attractive." — Spectator.
"Except to sectaries afraid of falling under the spell of Jesuitism, or
those cowardly reasoners who dread to see ' the other side ' in its full strength,
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' ' For though it is not a work which will be read by millions, it is, never
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so far as it is the needs of mankind at large that are at once its motive and
its end. And it is for this reason that the controversial spirit is almost
entirely absent, with its tendency to divide men into two camps, and speak
from one side to the other. The writer seems, for the most part, to have
no desire to prove others wrong or himself right, but simply to represent
each side as it actually is, with its strength and its weakness, trusting thus
to the final prevalence of truth over error." — Weekly Register.
' ' His style is eminently readable ; he appeals to the cultured intellect ¦
the pressing problems of the day engage his attention, and his manifest
intention throughout every page from cover to cover is to reveal to the
prejudiced the soundness of the philosophy inspired by faith, and that the
Catholic Faith." — Catholic Times.
" There is nothing of compromise from beginning to end, no giving
away of spiritual essentials to meet temporary difficulties ; and yet there is
real sympathy with genuine perplexities, and a frank treatment of undeni
able problems. ... On the whole the spirit that prevails in these essays,
too numerous and varied for individual mention, is that of the mediator'
who endeavours to bridge over the gulf of separation between the Church
and all that is best in the opposite camp. The attitude is firm and free
from all faint-hearted compromise, but at the same time open and sympa
thetic. It is such a temper of mind as is fostered by the close study of
St. Thomas, whose Summa is, as we read in the first article, 'a monument
of that comprehensive sympathy which hails every truth, from whatever
source, as the gift of God.' " — Tablet.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

HARD SAYINGS
A SELECTION OF MEDITATIONS AND STUDIES
FOURTH IMPRESSION.
Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
" Father T3'rrell has already made himself the reputation of being one of
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Nova et Vetera, will eagerly turn to this volume, and will not be dis
appointed." — Tablet, Feb. 4, 1899.
"It is truly a memorable work, and it will live in the interest of all
thoughtful men." — Catholic Book Notes.
" When we actually meet with such a writer, we may greet him with no
stinted welcome. Those who already know Father Tyrrell's Nova et Vetera
will need no better introduction to his new book of Hard Sayings." —
Weekly Register.
"It is a splendid devotional treatise, the subject being handled with
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ability." — Catholic Times, Nov. 18, 1898.
' ' The essays on conscience and sin, and the sermon preached in honour
of St. Teresa and entitled ' the gospel of pain,' are good examples of
Father Tyrrell's method and character of thought. One cannot read them
without being impressed by the sincerity of his religious devotion, and the
delicacy and truth of insight and observation which they often show." —
Guardian, Feb. 1, 1899.
" There is little of distinctive or aggressive Romanism in this book, and
there is very much indeed that might be helpful both to Anglo-Catholics
and Nonconformists. The book is not one to be hastily read — on the
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LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

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CARDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS.
Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman during his
Life In the English Church. With a brief Autobiography. Edited, at
Cardinal Newman's request, by Anne Mozley. 2 vols. Cr. 8vo. 7s.
Parochial and Plain Sermons. Edited by Rev. w. J. Copeland, b.d.,
late Rector of Farnham, Essex. 8 vols. Sold separately. Crown
8vo. 3s. 6d. each.
Contents of Vol. I.: — Holiness necessary for Future Blessedness — The Immortality
of the Soul— Knowledge of God's Will without Obedience— Secret Faults— Self-Denial the
Test of Religious Earnestness — The Spiritual Mind — Sins of Ignorance and Weakness —
God's Commandments not Grievous — The Religious Use of Excited Feelings— Profession
without Practice — Profession without Hypocrisy — Profession without Ostentation —
Promising without Doing — Religious Emotion — Religious Faith Rational — The Christian
Mysteries — The Self- Wise Inquirer — Obedience the Remedy for Religious Perplexity — Times
of Private Prayer— Forms of Private Prayer— The Resurrection of the Body— Witnesses of
the Resurrection— Christian Reverence— The Religion of the Day— Scripture a Record of
Human Sorrow — Christian Manhood.
Contents of Vol. II. :— The World's Benefactors — Faith without Sight— The Incar
nation—Martyrdom—Love of Relations and Friends— The Mind of Little Children-
Ceremonies of the Church— The Glory of the Christian Church— St. Paul's Conversion
viewed in Reference to his Office— Secrecy and Suddenness of Divine Visitations— Divine
Decrees— The Reverence Due to the Blessed Virgin Mary— Christ, a Quickening Spirit-
Saving Knowledge— Self-Contemplation — Religious Cowardice— The Gospel Witnesses-
Mysteries in Religion— The Indwelling Spirit— The Kingdom of the Saints— The Gospel,
a TruBt Committed to us — Tolerance of Religious Error— Rebuking Sin— The Christian
Ministry— Human Responsibility— Guilelessness— The Danger of Riches— The Powers of
Nature— The Danger of Accomplishments— Christian Zeal— Use of Saints' Days.

A SELECT LIST OF WORKS

CARDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS.
Parochial and Plain Sermons. — Continued.
Contents of Vol. III. : — Abraham and Lot — Wilfulness of Israel in Rejecting Samuel
—Saul — Early Years of David— Jeroboam — Faith and Obedience — Christian Repentance —
Contracted Views in Religion — A Particular Providence as revealed in the Gospel — Tears
of Christ at the Grave of Lazarus — Bodily Suffering — The Humiliation of the Eternal Son
—Jewish Zeal a Pattern to Christians — Submission to Church Authority — Contest between
Truth and Falsehood in the Church— The Church Visible and Invisible— The Visible
Church an Encouragement to Faith — The Gift of the Spirit — Regenerating Baptism— Infant
Baptism — The Daily Service — The Good Part of Mary — Religious Worship a Remedy for
Excitements — Intercession — The Intermediate State.
Contents of Vol IV. : — The Strictness of the Law of Christ— Obedience without Love,
as instanced in the Character of Balaam— Moral Consequences of Single Sins — Acceptance
of Religious Privileges Compulsory — Reliance on Religious Observances — The Individuality
of the Soul — Chastisement amid Mercy — Peace and Joy amid Chastisement — The State of
Grace — The Visible Church for the Sake of the Elect — The Communion of Saints — The
Church a Home for the Lonely — The Invisible World — The Greatness and Littleness of
Human Life — Moral Effects of Communion with God— Christ Hidden from the World —
Christ Manifested in Remembrance — The Gainsaying of Korah — The Mysteriousness of
our Present Being— The Ventures of Faith — Faith and Love— Watching— Keeping Fast
and Festival.
Contents of Vol. V. : — Worship, a Preparation for Christ's Coming — Reverence, a
Belief in God's Presence — Unreal Words — Shrinking from Christ's Coming — Equanimity-
Remembrance of Past Mercies — The Mystery of Godliness — The State of Innocence —
Christian Sympathy — 'Righteousness not of us, but in us — The Law of the Spirit — The New
Works of the Gospel — The State of Salvation — Transgressions and Infirmities — Sins of
Infirmity — Sincerity and Hypocrisy — The Testimony of Conscience — Many called, Few
chosen — Present Blessings — Endurance, the Christian's Portion — Affliction, a School of
Comfort— The Thought of God, the Stay of the Soul— Love, the One Thing Needful— The
Power of the Will.
Contents of Vol. VI.: — Fasting, a Source of Trial — Life, the Season of Repentance-
Apostolic Abstinence, a Pattern for Christians— Christ's Privations, a Meditation for Chris
tians — Christ the Son of God made Man — The Incarnate Son, a Sufferer and Sacrifice —
The Cross of Christ the Measure of the World — Difficulty of realising Sacred Privileges —
The Gospel Sign Addressed to Faith — The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church —
The Eucharistic Presence — Faith the Title for Justification — Judaism of the Present Day
—The Fellowship of the Apostles — Rising with Christ — Warfare the Condition of Victory
— Waiting for Christ — Subjection of the Reason and Feelings to the Revealed Word —
The Gospel Palaces — The Visible Temple — Offerings for the Sanctuary — The Weapons
of Saints — Faith Without Demonstration — The Mystery of the Holy Trinity — Peace in
Believing, Contents of Vol. VII. : — The Lapse of Time — Religion, a Weariness to the Natural
Man — The World our Enemy — The Praise of Men — Temporal Advantages — The Season of
Epiphany— The Duty of Self-Denial— The Yoke of Christ— Moses the Type of Christ— The
Crucifixion — Attendance on Holy Communion — The Gospel Feast — Love of Religion, a new
Nature — Religion Pleasant to the Religious— Mental Prayer— Infant Baptism— The Unity
of the Church — Steadfastness in the Old Paths,
Contents of Vol. VIII. : — Reverence in Worship— Divine Calls— The Trial of Saul—
The Call of David — Curiosity, a Temptation to Sin — Miracles no Remedy for Unbelief —
Josiah, a Pattern for the Ignorant — Inward Witness to the Truth of the Gospel — Jeremiah,
a Lesson for the Disappointed — Endurance of the World's Censure — Doing Glory to God
in Pursuits of the World — Vanity of Human Glory — Truth Hidden when not Sought after
—Obedience to God the Way to Faith in Christ — Sudden Conversions — The Shepherd of
our Souls — Religious Joy — Ignorance of Evil.
Sermons Preached on Various Occasions. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Contents : — Intellect the Instrument of Religious Training — The Religion of the
Pharisee and the Religion of Mankind — Waiting for Christ — The Secret Power of Divine
Grace — Dispositions for Faith — Omnipotence in Bonds — St. Paul's Characteristic Gift—
St. Paul's Gift of Sympathy— Christ upon the Waters— The Second Spring — Order, the
Witness and Instrument of Unity — The Mission of St. Philip Neri — The Tree beside the
Waters— In the World but not of the World— The Pope and the Revolution.

PUBLISHED BY LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.

CARDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS.
Selection, Adapted to the Seasons of the Ecclesiastical Year,
from the ' Parochial and Plain Sermons '. Edited by the Rev. W.
J. Copeland, B.D. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Contents: — Advent: Serf-Denial the Test of Religious Earnestness— Divine Calls—
The Ventures of Faith — Watching. Christmas Day : Religious Joy. New Year's Sunday :
The Lapse of Time. Epiphany : Remembrance of Past Mercies — Equanimity — The
Immortality of the Soul — Christian Manhood — Sincerity and Hypocrisy — Christian
Sympathy. Septuagesima : Present Blessings. Sexagesima: Endurance, the Christian's
Portion. Quinquagesima : Love, the One Thing Needful. Lent : The Individuality of the
Soul — Life, the Season of Repentance — Bodily Suffering — Tears of Christ at the Grave of
Lazarus — Christ's Privations, a Meditation for Christians — The Cross of Christ the Measure
of the World. Good Friday : The Crucifixion. Easter Day : Keeping Fast and Festival.
Easter Tide : Witnesses of the Resurrection — A Particular Providence as revealed in the
Gospel — Christ Manifested in Remembrance — The Invisible World — Waiting for Christ.
Ascension: Warfare the Condition of Victory. Sunday after Ascension: Rising with
Christ. Whitsun Day : The Weapons of Saints. Trinity Sunday : The Mysteriousness
of our Present Being. Sundays after Trinity : Holiness Necessary for Future Blessedness
— The Religious Use of Excited Feelings — The Self-Wise Inquirer — Scripture a Record of
Human Sorrow— The' Danger of Riches — Obedience without Love, as instanced in the
Character of Balaam — Moral Consequences of Single Sins— The Greatness and Littleness
of Human Life — Moral Effects of Communion with God— The Thought of God the Stay of
the Soul— The Power of the Will— The Gospel Palaces— Religion a Weariness to the
Natural Man — The World our Enemy— The Praise of Men— Religion Pleasant to the
Religious — Mental Prayer— Curiosity a Temptation to Sin— Miracles no Remedy for Un
belief—Jeremiah, a Lesson for the Disappointed— The Shepherd of our Souls— Doing Glory
to God in Pursuits of the World.
Sermons Bearing upon Subjects of the Day. Edited by the Rev.
W. J. Copeland, B.D., late Rector of Farnham, Essex. Crown
8vo. 3s. 6d.
Contents :— The Work of the Christian— Saintliness not Forfeited by the Penitent—
Our Lord's Last Supper and His First— Dangers to the Penitent— The Three Offices of
Christ— Faith and Experience— Faith unto the World— The Church and the World— In
dulgence in Religious Privileges— Connection between Personal and Public Improvement
—Christian Nobleness— Joshua a Type of Christ and His Followers— Elisha a Type of
Christ and His -Followers— The Christian Church a Continuation of the Jewish— The
Principles of Continuity between the Jewish and Christian Churches — The Christian
Church an Imperial Power— Sanctity the Token of the Christian Empire— Condition of the
Members of the Christian Empire— The Apostolic Christian— Wisdom and Innocence-
Invisible Presence of Christ— Outward and Inward Notes of the Church— Grounds for
Steadfastness in our Religious Profession— Elijah-the Prophet-of the Latter Days— Feast
ing in Captivity— The Partinglof Friends.
Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford,
between a.d. 1826 and 1843. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Contents :— The Philosophical Temper, first enjoined by the Gospel— The Influence of
Natural and Revealed Religion respectively— Evangelical Sanctity the Perfection of
Natural Virtue— The Usurpations of Reason— Personal Influence, the Means of Propagating
the Truth— On Justice as a Principle of Divine Governance— Contest between Faith
and' Sight-Human Responsibility, as independent of ; Circumstances-Wdfulness, the Sin
of Saul-Faith and Reason, contrasted as Habits of Mind-The Nature of Faith in Relation
to Reason— Love, the Safeguard of Faith against Superstition— Implicit and Explicit
Reason-Wisdom, as contrasted with Faith and with Bigotry-The Theory of Develop
ments in Religious Doctrine.

A SELECT LIST OF WORKS

CARDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS.
Apologia pro Vita Sua. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Verses on Various Occasions. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Contents :— The Salvation of the Hearer the Motive of the Preacher— Neglect of Divine
Calls and Warnings— Men not Angles— The Priests of the Gospel— Purity and Love—
Saintliness the Standard of Christian Principle— God's Will the End of Life— Perseverance
in Grace — Nature and Grace — Illuminating Grace — Faith and Private Judgment — Faith
and Doubt — Prospects of the Catholic Missioner — Mysteries of Nature and of Grace — The
Mystery of Divine Condescension — The Infinitude of Divine Attributes — Mental Sufferings
of our Lord in His Passion— The Glories of Mary for the Sake of Her Son— On the Fitness
of the Glories of Mary.
Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Contents : — Faith considered as the Instrumental Cause of Justification — Love con
sidered as the Formal Cause of Justification — Primary Sense of the term 'Justification ' —
Secondary Senses of the term ' Justification ' — Misuse of the term ' Just ' or ' Righteous ' —
The Gift of Righteousness — The Characteristics of the Gift of Righteousness — Righteous
ness viewed as a Gift and as a Quality — Righteousness the Fruit of our Lord's Resurrection
—The Office of Justifying Faith— The Nature of Justifying Faith— Faith viewed relatively
to Rites and Works — On Preaching the Gospel — Appendix.
On the Development of Christian Doctrine. Crown 8vo 3s. 6d.
The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated. I. in Nine Dis
courses delivered to the Catholics of Dublin ; II. In Occasional
Lectures and Essays addressed to the members of the Catholic
University. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Two Essays on Miracles. 1. Of Scripture. 2. Of Ecclesiastical
History. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Discussions and Arguments. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
1. How to accomplish it. 2. The Antichrist of the Fathers. 3. Scrip
ture and the Creed. 4. Tamworth Reading-room. 5. Who's to Blame ?
6. An Argument for Christianity.
Essays, Critical and Historical. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 7s.
1. Poetry. 2. Rationalism. 3. Apostolic Tradition. 4. De la Men-
nais. 5. Palmer on Faith and Unity. 6. St. Ignatius. 7. Prospects of
the Anglican Church. 8. The Anglo-American Church. 9. Countess of
Huntingdon. 10. Catholicity of the Anglican Church. 11. The Anti
christ of Protestants. 12. Milman's Christianity. 13. Reformation of
the XI. Century. 14. Private Judgment. r5. Davison. 16. Keble.
Historical Sketches. 3 vols. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. each.
1. The Turks. 2. Cicero. 3. Apollonius. 4. Primitive Christianity.
5. Church of the Fathers. 6. St. Chrysostom. 7. Theodoret. 8. St.
Benedict. 9. Benedictine Schools. 10. Universities, n. Northmen and
Normans, ja. MedigevaJ Oxford. 13. Convocation of Canterbury.

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CARDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS.
The Arians of the Fourth Century. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Select Treatises of St. Athanasius in Controversy with the
Arians. Freely translated. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 7s.
Theological Tracts. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
1. Dissertatiunculae. 2. On the Text of the Seven Epistles of St.
Ignatius. 3. Doctrinal Causes of Arianism. 4. Apollinarianism. 5. St.
Cyril's Formula. 6. Ordo de Tempore. 7. Douay Version of Scriptures.
The Via Media of the Anglican Church. 2 Vols. Crown 8vo.
3s. 6d. each.
Vol. I. Prophetical Office of the Church.
Vol. II. Occasional Letters and Tracts.
Certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching Con
sidered. 2 vols.
Vol. I. Twelve Lectures. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Vol. II. Letters to Dr. Pusey concerning the Blessed Virgin, and to
the Duke of Norfolk in defence of the Pope and Council
Crown 8vo. 3 s. 6d.
Present Position of Catholics in England. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Loss and Gain. The Story of a Convert. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Callista. A Tale of the Third Century. Crown 8vo. 3 s. 6d.
The Dream of Gerontius. i6mo, sewed, 6d. ; cloth, is. net.
Meditations and Devotions. Part I. Meditations for the Month of
May. Novena of St. Philip. Part II. The Stations of the Cross.
Meditations and Intercessions for Good Friday. Litanies, etc.
Part III. Meditations on Christian Doctrine. Conclusion. Oblong
Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

BATIFFOL.— History of the Roman Breviary. By Pierre Batif-
fol, Litt.D. Translated by Atwell M. Y. Baylay, M.A., Vicar
of Thurgarton, Notts. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.
BOSSUET.— Devotion to the Blessed Virgin : being the Substance
of all the Sermons for Mary's Feasts throughout the Year. By
Jacques-Bemgne Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux. Condensed, Arranged
and Translated by F. M. Capes. With an Introduction by the Rev.
William T. Gordon, Priest of the London Oratory. Cr. 8vo. 3s. net.
The Sermon on the Mount. By jacques-Benigne Bossuet,
Bishop of Meaux. Translated, with a short Introduction, by F. M.
Capes, from the " Meditations on the Gospels". Fcp. 8vo. 2s. 6d. net.

A SELECT LIST OF WORKS

Breviarium Bothanum sive Portiforium secundum Usum Ecclesiae
cujusdam in Scotia. Printed from a MS. of the Fifteenth Century
in the Possession of John Marquess of Bute, K.T. 4to. 42s. net.
BROWN— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts. By Abbie
Farwell Brown. Illustrated by Fanny Y. Cory. Crown 8vo.
4s. 6d. net.
CARSON— Works by the Rev. W. R. Carson :
An Eucharistic Eirenicon. With an Introduction by the Right
Honourable the Viscount Halifax. 8vo, sewed, is. 6d. net.
Reunion Essays. With an Appendix on the non-infallible force of the
Bull Apost. Curce in condemnation of the Holy Orders of the Church
of England. Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d. net.
Catholic Church (The) from Within. With a Preface by His Eminence
Cardinal Vaughan, Archbishop of Westminster. Crown 8vo.
6s. 6d. net.
DAVIES— A History of England for Catholic Schools. By E.
Wyatt Davies, M.A. With 14 Maps. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
DOBREE. — Stories on the Rosary. By Louisa Emily Dobr&e. Parts
I. and II. Crown 8vo. Each is. 6d.
DRANE— A Memoir of Mother Francis Raphael O.S.D. (Augusta
Theodosia Drane), some time Prioress Provincial of the Congregation
of Dominican Sisters of S. Catherine of Siena, Stone. With some of
her Spiritual Notes and Letters. Edited by Rev. Father Bertrand
Wilberforce, O.P. With Portrait. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.
The History of St. Dominic Founder of the Friar Preachers.
By Augusta Theodosia Drane. With 32 Illustrations. 8vo. 15s.
The History of St. Catherine of Siena and her Companions.
With a Translation of her Treatise on Consummate Perfection. By
Augusta Theodosia Drane. With 10 Illustrations. 2 vols. 8vo. 15s.
FOUARD.-THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHURCH. A Series of
Histories of the First Century. By the Abbe Constant Fouard,
Honorary Cathedral Canon, Professor of the Faculty of Theology
at Rouen, etc., etc. Translated by George F. X. Griffith.
The Christ, The Son of God. A Life of Our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ. With an Introduction by Cardinal Manning. With
3 Maps. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 14s.
Saint Peter and the First Years of Christianity. With 3 Maps.
Crown 8vo. gs.
St. Paul and His Missions. With 2 Maps. Crown 8vo. gs.
The Last Years of St. Paul. With 5 Maps and Plans. Cr. 8vo.
gs.
St. John and His Work. [In preparation.

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Horse Beatse Marise Virginis ; or, Primers of Sarum and York Uses.
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With an Introduction by Edgar Hoskins, M.A., sometime Rector
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Large Paper Copies. 30s. net.
Ordinale Conventus Vallis Caulium : the Rule of the Monastic Order
of Val-des-Choux, in Burgundy. From the Original MSS. preserved
in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris ; the Archives of Moulins-sur-
Allier, etc. With an Introduction by W. De Gray Birch, LL.D.,
F.S.A. With 4 Photographic Facsimiles. 8vo. 20s. net.
ST. VINCENT DE PAUL— History of St. Vincent de Paul,
Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (Vincentians), and of the
Sisters of Charity. By Monseigneur Bougaud, Bishop of Laval.
Translated from the Second French Edition by the Rev. Joseph
Brady, CM. With an Introduction by His Eminence Cardinal
Vaughan, Archbishop of Westminster. With 2 Portraits. 2 vols.
8vo. 16s. net.
Roads to Rome : being Personal Records of some of the more recent
Converts to the Catholic Faith. With an Introduction by His
Eminence Cardinal Vaughan, Archbishop of Westminster. Com
piled and Edited by the Author of " Ten Years in Anglican Orders ".
Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
*** Among the Contributors are Lord Brampton (Sir Henry Hawkins); Sir Henry
Bellingham.Bart. ; Dr. Edward Berdoe ; Monsignor Croke Robinson ; The Bishop of Clifton ;
The Rev. Bede Camm, O.S.B.; Miss Adeline Sergeant; The Bishop of Emmaus; C. Kegan
Paul, Esq. ; The Rev. W. 0. Sutcliffe ; and the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle.
SANDERS.— Fenelon : His Friends and His Enemies, 1651-1715. By
E. K. Sanders. With Portrait. 8vo. 10s. 6d. net.
SHEEHAN.— Luke Delmege- A Novel. By P. A. Sheehan, d.d.,
Parish Priest, Doneraile, Co. Cork, Author of " My New Curate ".
Crown 8vo. 6s.
TYRRELL. — Works by George Tyrrell, S.J. :
The Faith of the Millions : Essays. First and Second Series.
Crown 8vo. 5s. net each.
First Series: Introduction — 1. A more Excellent Way — 2. Wiseman: his Aims and
Methods — 3. The Prospects of Reunion — 4. " Liberal " Catholicism — 5. " Rationalism in
Religion "—6. Sabatier on the Vitality of Dogmas— 7. Authority and Evolution, the Life
of Catholic Dogma— 8. " The Mind of the Church "—9. The Use of Scholasticism— 10. The
Relation of Theology to Devotion— 11. What is Mysticism ?— 12. The True and the False
Mysticism. Second Series : 13. Juliana of Norwich— 14. Poet and Mystic— 15. Two Estimates of
Catholic Life— 16. A Life of De Lamennais— 17. Lippo, the Man and the Artist— 18. Through
Art to Faith— ig. Tracts for the Million— 20. An Apostle of Naturalism— 21. " The Making
of Religion "—22. Adaptibility as a Proof of Religion— 23. Idealism in Straits.

A SELECT LIST OF WORKS.

TYRRELL.— Works by George Tyrrell, S.J. (continued).
Nova et Vetera : Informal Meditations. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
Hard Sayings: a Selection of Meditations and Studies. Cr. 8vo. 5s. net.
WARD. — One Poor Scruple : a Novel. By Mrs. Wilfrid Ward.
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WARD.— Problems and Persons. By Wilfrid Ward.
Contents : — The Time-Spirit of the Nineteenth Century— The Rigidity of Rome — Un
changing Dogma and Changeful Man — Balfour's ' The Foundations of Belief — Candour
in Biography — Tennyson — Thomas Henry Huxley — Two Mottoes of Cardinal Newman —
Newman and Renan — Some Aspects of the Life-work of Cardinal Wiseman — The Life of
Mrs. Augustus Craven.
WISEMAN— The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman. By
Wilfrid Ward. With 3 Portraits. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 10s. net.
STONYHURST PHILOSOPHICAL SERIES.
Edited by RICHARD F. CLARKE, S.J.
Psychology : Empirical and Rational. By Michael Maher, s.J.
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Logic. By Richard F. Clarke, S.J., D.D. Crown 8vo. 5s.
First Principles of Knowledge. By John Rickaby, s.J. Third
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Moral Philosophy (Ethics and Natural Law). By Joseph
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General Metaphysics. By John Rickaby, S.J. Crown 8vo. 5s.
Natural Theology. By Bernard Boedder, S.J. Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d.
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ENGLISH MANUALS OF CATHOLIC THEOLOGY.
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0/9/03.

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