Sermons

JOHN M. KELLY LIBRARY

Donated by

The Redemptorists of
the Toronto Province

from the Library Collection of
Holy Redeemer College, Windsor

University of
St. Michael's College, Toronto

flOLYHEBKHER LIBRARY

PREFACE

The reading public, especially in Ireland, will
readily admit that the world has grown very lone
some since Canon Sheehan died.

The newspaper announcement, "A new work by
Canon Sheehan," always filled us with pleasant
anticipations.

Those pages of polished, elevated thought and
racy humor ; those pictures of national life where
as a critic beautifully remarks, he showed the
power "of twisting the charm of Irish character
out of his paragraphs like the odor of thyme
when it is rolled between the fingers": these, so
far from satisfying, but whetted our appetites for
more.

Hence we have good reason to thank his execu
tor for giving us an opportunity of once more en
joying the society of a man who charmed while
he raised us up.

With the novelist, the essayist, and the poet, we
are already acquainted ; in this volume we meet
him in a character entirely new: Canon Sheehan
the preacher.

The modest pastor of Doneraile would be the
last to claim the title: "orator." Yet his readers
must have observed how often the pent-up tide
of genuine eloquence burst forth and overflowed
his pages.

5

UMW«.

6 PREFACE

Instances of this may be seen in "The Intellec
tuals," page 359, where he makes a whole-hearted
defense of the Gaelic revival and a withering on
slaught on the curses of anglicization, in the sub
lime apostrophe of Geoffrey Austin in "The Tri
umph of Failure," page 333, and the immortal
sermon he puts into the mouth of Doctor Grey.

The same loosened tide frequently breaks
through the surface in the pages now before the
reader.

The public need not be told that his leading
feature was his priestly character and cast of
mind; as a priest alone he speaks here, hence the
unaffected outpouring of his inmost heart.

He never strains after effect or turns aside to
pursue a flight of imagery or a musical cadence;
from first to last his sole concern is to send home
the sacred truth with which he is charged.

From his manuscripts it is evident he carefully
wrote his sermons from the very first, and the
minute exactness and care so characteristic of the
man are evident in every page.

It was a happy accident that sent him for the
first years on the English mission. The presence
of Protestants, converts and critics amongst his
audience made him cautious and laborious, and
helped to bring out all that was best in him.

Yet his early efforts, while smooth and grace
ful, are timid, and want that courage that comes
with conscious mastery of the subject.

The keen analysis of the human heart, the
wealth of knowledge, the fecundity of ideas, and,
more remarkable still, the richness of imagina
tion, lingered tardily in their early growth, but

PREFACE 1

finally came with a rush as he approached middle
life. Hence in making selections for publication
many of his earlier sermons are omitted.

While this book is going through the press it
has been discovered that many more of his ser
mons are scattered through the Homiletic
Monthly; steps will be taken to include the best of
these in the second volume.

In presenting this collection of Canon Shee-
han's sermons to his numerous admirers a debt
of gratitude and a labor of love is discharged by
his devoted friend — the Editor.

M. J. PHELAN, S.J.
St. Francis Xavier's,
Gardiner Street,
Dublin.

CONTENTS

SERMONS ON OUE LORD

PAGE

PREPARING FOR CHRISTMAS 11

CHRISTMAS EVE 21

CHRISTMAS DAY . 28

ON TIME— NEW YEAR'S DAY 43

THE EPIPHANY — CALL OF THE WISE MEN . . . 50

FEAST OF THE HOLY NAME 61

ON THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS 70

PASSION SERMON — GOOD FRIDAY 80

ON THE RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD . . * . . 100

THE FEAST OF THE ASCENSION . 112

SERMONS ON THE BLESSED VIRGIN

THE WOMAN AND CHILD 122

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION . . . ... . . 133

THE MATERNITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN ... . . 143

THE DOLOURS OF MARY 153

THE ASSUMPTION OF OUR LADY 162

SERMONS ON SAINTS

THE CONVERSION OF SAINT AUGUSTINE . . . . 172
FEAST OF SAINT ALPHONSUS LIGUORI'S CENTENARY 198

SAINT JOSEPH 221

A GOLDEN CENTURY 233

ix

x CONTENTS

SERMONS ON MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS

PAGE

CHARITY SERMON 251

ON DEATH 270

HEARING THE WORD OF GOD ....... 282

ON SCANDAL 294

THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY — "FULL OF GRACE

AND TRUTH" 304

ON THE MASS 313

GOSPEL OF THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST —

THE HOLY COMMUNION 322

ON CATHOLIC CEREMONIAL 330

ON BAD BOOKS 342

ON GOOD READING ........... 352

PETER'S PENCE 363

STATE CHURCHES 376

ANNIVERSARY OF THE RESTORATION OF THE HIER
ARCHY (TO ENGLAND) 387

SERMONS ON OUR LORD
preparing tor Cbrfstmas

B mission of the Baptist was a two-fold
one — to announce to the world the advent
of its Redeemer, and to prepare the world to re
ceive Him worthily. He had to announce to the
world that the time of the fulfilment of the an
cient prophecies was at hand; and as the fulfil
ment of those prophecies involved the coming of
the Eternal God among men, to be revealed to
them in the flesh and to dwell among them, it was
becoming that a way should be prepared for Him,
that He might have an easy ingress to the hearts
of men.

The herald of God was a herald of heaven and
not of earth. He had not a single mark of earthly
royalty about him. The credentials of his am
bassadorship were the sanctity of his life and the
supernatural doctrines which he taught.

He announced the approach of a spiritual King,
and in all things he was worthy of that King
whose legate he was. His locusts and wild honey
compare well with the long fasts of our Blessed
Lord; the garments of wild beasts with which he
was clothed were a fitting type of the swaddling-
clothes that swathed the limbs of the Infant Re
deemer; the wilderness, in which he was the voice
of God, was not more desolate than the stable in

which the Eternal Word was born; and the bap-

11

12 SERMONS

tism of penance unto the remission of sins which
he preached is the same doctrine our Divine Lord
so frequently inculcated, and of the practice of
which He has left us a mighty example in that
baptism of Blood which He underwent for the
remission of the sins of the world.

Yet, though the stern teaching of John might
lead one to believe that he was preparing men for
the final judgment rather than for the coming of
the Redeemer of the world, I have no doubt he
felt the same joy at the advent of the long-
expected Messias that the kings and prophets who
foretold that coming would have experienced had
they lived.

He speaks as if it were a stern Judge were com
ing among men instead of a merciful Eedeemer.
He speaks as if he believed that the souls of men
were to be subjected to a searching trial, instead
of which God was about to turn away His eyes
from their sins, until the blood of His Son would
have washed them all, and they could be presented
fair and cleansed in the Father's sight. And yet
John, in the very same breath in which he threat
ened sinners: "Do penance or you will all like
wise perish, " could tell the world that he an
nounced to it tidings of great joy. And although
with that almost angry anxiety with which zealous
souls seek to wean men from their sins, he
exhorted, prayed, <and threatened, we cannot doubt
but that he felt at the prospect of seeing the Lamb
who was to take away the sins of the world the
same pulsations of joy and gladness that are
throbbing in the heart of Christendom at this time.

Why all this sorrow in face of so much joy?

PREPARING FOR CHRISTMAS 13

All this mourning in the face of such a triumph?
Ask the Church of God. She has copied John to
the letter. She tells us, too, that Christmas is a
time of much joy — a day to be remembered to the
end of time with feelings of joy and self -con
gratulation and gratitude to God; she hails the
coming of the Infant Savior with canticles of
praise, and songs of jubilee; she will tell us:
"Rejoice and be glad, O Sion, for great is He who
is in the midst of thee, the holy one of Israel!"
yet she has put us into mourning; we wear the
purple garment of penance, the altars are stripped,
she bids us fast, and now that we are drawing
nearer the great event she makes us redouble our
fasts; nay, the very Eve of Christmas is a day
of fasting and of prayer and of penance. The
world outside is heaping up its creature comforts
for that day, determined to press into that day as
much happiness as the human heart can hold;
men whose hearts are burdened with care and
anxiety look forward with pleasure to that day,
when even their little worldly ambitions, the mo
tive principles of their lives, will cease to affect
them, and they will step down from the treadmill
of life to enjoy a little breathing-time ; that day is
a day of jubilee for the entire world.

Why, then, is the Church of God in mourning?
Is it that the Church has no sympathy with hu
man joy and friendship? Does she look coldly
and with disdain on the ways of men, and their
efforts to satisfy the claims of the human heart
for happiness during the present life, as Heaven
exists only for them in the future? No! but the
reason of these fasts and abstinences and mourn-

14 SERMONS

ings is to be sought in the fact that the mission
of the Church is a spiritual one.

As John anticipated the mission of Jesus, so
does the Church continue it ; as John prepared the
souls of men for the visible coming of our Divine
Lord by preaching to them penance, the Church
prepares the souls of her children for the com
memoration of that visible Advent and the spirit
ual birth of the same Divine Lord in their souls
by forcing penance upon them, and preaching to
them the necessity of prayer.

For it is no earthly event we celebrate: it is
an event that in the eyes of the world looked as
mean and contemptible as can well be imagined;
and all its transcendent glory is derivable from
the spiritual world, and the light of revelation
which shines around it, and which shows us in that
apparently unimportant event a mystery of in
finite significance, and one that is to influence the
eternal spiritual interests of men. That event,
therefore, affects us in no worldly way; it affects
our immortal souls, and therefore our preparation
for Christmas and our celebration of Christmas
must be spiritual, if either one or the other would
be worthy of the mystery of the Incarnate God.
And, therefore, to make of Christmas a mere
carnival of eating and drinking and sensuality is
to degrade the holiest mystery of Grod into a
merely human event; to celebrate the birth of
Christianity and its Divine Founder by pagan
revels.

But I must not be understood to say that the
Church either forbids or discountenances human
enjoyment. No! spiritualized though she be, hu-

PREPARING FOR CHRISTMAS 15

manity has not gone out of her ; and she sees with
pleasure that spiritual joy which animates all
Christian hearts at this time overflow and vent
itself in those expressions of feeling that are con
ventional amongst mankind. Nay, she brings to
our feasts a luxury daintier than any human heart
can furnish, the luxury of kind hearts, sanctified
by Christian sympathy and clear consciences, pur
ified by penance. Kind hearts, which even con
stant exposure to the chilling influences of the
world cannot freeze or harden; hearts that can
appreciate the love of God for men, and soften at
the remembrance of that love as shown in Bethle
hem; and that can show that love by sympathy
with the poor, whom Christ has identified with
Himself. And clear consciences, that owe no debt
to God but gratitude, and none to men but love;
consciences that enjoy that peace which the In
fant God brought upon earth to impart to men of
good-will — peace which the world cannot give,
and of which the world knows nothing.

For the Church understands well, and it is a
truism that needs no proof, that a smiling face is a
ghastly sight when the heart is corroded by care ;
and surely there is no care in this world at all to
be compared with the consciousness that we are
in sin — that we are the enemies of God, and that
it is God 's mercy alone, which is very great while
it lasts, but which may cease at any moment, that
saves us from a fate it is quite appalling to think
of. You would think it an excess of cruelty to ask
a drowning man to sing; but to wish a " Happy
Christmas" to a man in mortal sin is just as bit'
ter mockery.

16 SERMONS

And this is the reason that during Advent the
Church invites her children to penance. Perhaps
if there were not so much sin in the world her
discipline would be different. But as she numbers
among her children the wayward, the obstinate and
the indifferent, and as she would have all, without
exception or distinction, enter into her spirit on
this great feast, the jubilee day of Christianity,
and as that spirit is a spirit of gladness and re
joicing and gratitude to God, and as there can be
no gladness or joy while sin holds possession of
the soul, therefore the Church of God would have
us cleanse ourselves from sin in the Sacrament
of Penance, and by fasting, mortification, and
prayer create within ourselves, by the assistance
of the Holy Spirit, a reason for rejoicing in the
consciousness that we are the friends of God.

This, then, is the order of things as established
by God Himself — to suffer with Christ, to rejoice
with Christ. To be crucified with Christ — that we
rise with Christ. To be conformed to the like
ness of Christ by suffering here, that we may be
conformed to the likeness of Christ in glory here
after. To die unto ourselves that we live unto
God. And so the most fitting preparation for
Christmas, the season of festivity, is Advent, the
season of penance.

But there is a higher and a holier reason still
for preparing for Christmas in a spirit of pen
ance. On that great feast, or at least during the
season, the Church invites all her children to ap
proach the holy table of the Lord. At one time,
in ages more blessed than ours, it was no invita
tion, it was a solemn command, enforced by pain-

PREPARING FOR CHRISTMAS 17

ful penalties. These w'ere the golden ages of
Christianity, ages of strong faith, and deep, heart
felt, personal love, and childlike confidence and
obedience. Ours is an iron age, when the light
of the Holy Spirit of God has died from the minds
of men, and the love of God is dead and cold ; and
so the Church of God is forced to adapt her dis
cipline to the times. And so she no longer im
peratively commands her children to approach the
Holy Communion at Christmas; and yet her re
quest to every true Catholic heart must sound
even more strongly than any command. Besides
there is a command that changes not with times
nor seasons nor the humors and caprices of men :
"Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink His blood, you shall not have life in you."

Now, the Blessed Sacrament is the constant
presence of Bethlehem among us. The likeness
is so remarkable that it must have occurred to
every mind that has given the least thought to the
things of God. The humility of God, assumed to
win our love, is in both the same.

In Bethlehem, He was hidden under the form
of an infant: here He is hidden under the form
of the Host. The stable and the Tabernacle are
much the same in the eyes of the Eternal God.
There He was laid in a manger as if about to be
come the food of beasts: here he is laid in the
ciborium in order to become the food of sinners.
The Star brought the wise men to the cave: the
little lamp indicates His presence here, and it is
wise men only that see it. And wiser still are
they who can appreciate the love that has veiled
the Eternal God under the humble species of His

18 SERMONS

Sacrament, by corresponding with that love, by
worthy and devout communion — by reproducing
Bethlehem in their souls, and permitting the
Eternal God to be born anew in their hearts.
And so, if you would at all celebrate this great
feast of Christmas worthily, you will approach the
Holy Communion. Holy Communion must be the
one great event of the day. Christmas would not
have been if Christ had not been born in Bethle
hem. Christmas will not be Christmas for you if
you turn your backs coldly on the sacrament of
His Love.

But if we are to repeat Bethlehem in our souls,
let it be Bethlehem without its poverty. Jesus
and Mary and Joseph must be there ; and with our
best efforts our souls will be scarcely more worthy
to receive the Eternal God than was the manger
in which He was laid. But then as God will come,
we must receive Him as best we may. If we had
known that cave outside the walls of Bethlehem
before it was consecrated by the birth of our Di
vine Lord; if we had seen its walls of rocks,
jagged and dripping with the cold rains of win
ter, if we had trodden upon its floor, rugged and
damp, and seen the manger with its rough straw,
and the beasts that sheltered themselves there,
and if one of God's angels told us of the event
that would take place there on Christmas night,
would we be Christian, would we be even hu
man, would we not deserve the eternal reproba
tion of men and angels, if, knowing and seeing all
this, we made no preparation to receive the Eter
nal God, and left that cave unsightly and bare and
cold, exposed to the blasts of winter, and ten-

PREPARING FOR CHRISTMAS 19

anted by beasts. Not less guilty will we be if,
knowing our own poverty, we make no prepara
tion to receive worthily the same Eternal God
who comes to our souls in the Holy Communion.
Therefore let us prepare for God a birthplace
that will become His sanctity better than Bethle
hem, and let us dispense with two at least of the
accompaniments of Bethlehem. No coldness, no
frostiness, no indifference, and no beasts — not
even a single venial sin.

This, then, is the second and principal reason
of the austerities and mortifications of Advent,
that God is coming to dwell in us, and it behooves
us to prepare a way for the Lord, to prepare a
fitting dwelling place for Him in our souls. And
how shall we prepare a fit dwelling place for Him,
except by manifesting His Life in our bodies.
And as that Life was essentially a Life of pen
ance and sorrow and suffering, we must neces
sarily be penitential and mortified, and sorrowful
like Him and crucified in our own flesh. Cruci
fied above all to sin.

' i Make straight the paths of the Lord. Every
valley shall be filled. " The deep, low-lying val
leys which sin has hollowed out in our souls, those
deep abysses which bad habits have made in order
that they may hide themselves in them, and give
full play to the worst propensities of our nature;
those deep valleys where the foul lusts, and the
bitter envies, and the secret malignities, and the
other sins which we hide away, and are quite
ashamed to acknowledge, even to ourselves, exist
unchecked, nay, even are fostered and encour
aged; these deep valleys must be filled and

20 SERMONS

cleansed, and everything that is vile in them must
be swept away before we shall have prepared a
fitting dwelling place for God. Surely you will
not invite the Immaculate God to stain Himself by
entering in your souls until those souls be well
garnished and swept of everything foul and un
healthy.

"And every mountain and hill shall be brought
low. ' ' Those high mountains of pride and earthly
ambition, pride in wealth, pride in position, pride
in talents and abilities, must be leveled, cut away
remorselessly, before He, who was meek and hum
ble of heart, shall enter into our souls. Oh,
surely! my dearly beloved, one look at that cave
of Bethlehem, one glance at the Eternal God,
changed by His own humility into the weakest of
His creatures, a little, weeping, trembling, help
less Babe, ought to be quite sufficient to kill all
the pride of the world for evermore.

"And the crooked shall be made straight."
The false, distorted conscience that sees good in
evil, the blind conscience that knows not the mal
ice of sin, nor the sanctity of God, must be recti
fied and enlightened, must be taught to see the
beauty of goodness, and the hideousness of guilt,
the defilement of sin, and the holiness' of God, in
whose sight the slightest sin is an unspeakable
horror.

"And the rough ways must be made plain. "

Cbtistmas Eve

o those who truly love our Divine Lord the
reflection of what He has done for His own
and the Father's glory must be always a source
of pride and consolation. The mighty empire of
Christianity over which He now rules is an ever
lasting memorial of His majesty and power; He
was the founder of that Kingdom, and is its ever
lasting King. He built it with His own hands,
and now presides over it, and His eternal ex
istence, His Immortality, is a sure pledge that His
Kingdom, too, is eternal.

We belong to that Kingdom of Christ; we are
His subjects, or, rather, He has made us sharers
in His royalty and participators in His sover
eignty. And the dignity of our own position
raises in our minds a sense of the dignity of our
Master and Savior, and, contemplating the many
ancient and recent glories of Christianity, we are
not self-glorified by our exaltation, but loving
adorers of Christ, who is the Author and Source
of every happiness we possess.

Now, the establishment of Christ's Kingdom
was a mighty moral revolution. It was accom
plished by the destruction and removal of king
doms and dynasties that seemed more firmly es
tablished than any earthly kingdom in these days.
It supplanted systems of paganism that had been
growing and developing for centuries, and ef-

21

22 SERMONS

f ected in an incredibly short space of time a rev
olution in men's minds — the most swift, the most
miraculous, and the most lasting that can be well
conceived.

There is a history in the simple words of the
Evangelist St. Luke that contains in it more mean
ing, more food for study than all other histories
that have ever been written. " There went out
a decree from Caesar Augustus that the whole
world should be enrolled. And Joseph went up
from Galilee to the City of David which is called
Bethlehem to be enrolled with Mary his es
poused wife." Could there be a vaster distance
in rank, in earthly dignity, in power, in wealth,
than then existed between the persons mentioned
in this text. Augustus and Joseph — Augustus,
Emperor of Emperors, and Joseph the poorest of
his subjects. Augustus, whose name was known
throughout the world ; Joseph who was not known
even in his little village. Augustus, whose merest
caprice was a law, who possessed every luxury
that an Emperor's will could extort or the gold
of his princely city could procure, and Joseph and
Mary begging their way across Judea to satisfy
his ambition. Who but Grod Himself could fore
see that the Child of that poor woman should hold
the imperial scepter of Augustus when He had
conquered Eome, and put Himself not only above
the Emperor but in the place of the very gods
whom the Emperor adored.

At this time, a hundred different lands, occu
pied by as many different races, were brought to
gether under the scepter of the imperial unity.
The rule of Eome had been growing for centuries ;

CHRISTMAS EVE 23

but it was under the hand of Augustus that it had
assumed certain chosen limits, and began to gov
ern subject provinces under one fixed idea. At
this time it extended over Europe, Asia and
Africa. It was limited on the north by the Dan
ube, the Rhine, and the Euxine Sea; it extended
to the east as far as the Euphrates ; on the south
it was bounded by the impassable depth of Africa ;
on the west it had stopped on the brink of the
ocean. And it comprised countries and provinces
inhabited by races each dissimilar to the other
in language, in customs, and each worshiping its
own gods, which were acknowledged and sanc
tioned as national divinity for the several coun
tries within which they were locally established.

If a record were kept of this census which*
Augustus ordered, it would be found that in the
empire of Rome there were established and ac
knowledged by law ten distinct idolatrous systems.
They possessed temples, rites, estates, priests,
and self-government, and their worship was legal.
There were all forms of polytheistic idolatry ; they
adored multitudes of gods. They divided the at
tributes of the One true God, and adored such
attributes under the form of imaginary gods and
goddesses, whose statues were set up in their tem
ples and adored with supreme worship. There
were the gods of Rome, and those of the Hellenic
race ; the Gallic and the Germanic gods ; the Phry
gian ; the Syrian and the Arabian ; the Phoanician,
Libyan, and Egyptian gods. And they were wor
shiped with an intensity of devotion, such that
we can scarcely find a parallel for it in the King
dom of Christ and of Truth. Little images of

24 SERMONS

the gods were everywhere; homage was paid to
them at every table by libations ; every street had
its statues of Mercury and the serpents; in the
Forum there were feasts in honor of the gods;
the shops, taverns, and manufactories had little
altars, en which wine and incense were offered to
them; they put idolatrous emblems on the fore
heads of the dead, on their funeral pyres, on their
tombs. The places of amusement were specially
dedicated to the gods; the theaters had repre
sentations in honor of them, the amphitheater
was consecrated to them, and, as being so, Ter-
tullian called it "the temple of all the demons. "

The whole life of the Eomans was filled with
invocations, prostrations, purifications, and even
in the very smallest concerns, hundreds of gods
had prayer and sacrifices offered to them, and
their votaries were remarkably scrupulous that
not one of their names should be omitted. The
expense of victims to be offered in sacrifice was a
frightful tax upon the State. On the accession
of Caligula, it was reckoned that 160,000 animals,
chiefly oxen, were sacrificed throughout the Eo-
man Empire in token of universal joy. On the
most trifling occasions, the auspices were to be
consulted; the least phenomena in Nature threw
senate and people into a paroxysm of terror —
eclipses, shooting stars, showers of earth or ashes,
mice gnawing the golden vessels in the temple,
bees swarming on a public place, a temple struck
by lightning — such events as these were sufficient
to throw a city and kingdom into the greatest con
sternation.

And this frightful idolatry had moral effects,

CHRISTMAS EVE 25

the most revolting and inhuman that can be im
agined. Vice was deified ; the most revolting pas
sions were first personified by gods and then
adored. The Divine Ruler of the Universe was
worshiped by rites which would sicken with hor
ror the most degraded Christian in our days, and
this not in one city alone but throughout the Bo-
man Empire — throughout a hundred nations and
a hundred million people.

And we were not speaking of a savage, uncul
tured race, but of the people who prided them
selves on possessing the choicest civilization of the
world. And then we wonder at it, wonder at its
palpable contradictions, wonder at its cherished
and commanded immoralities, its debasing, na
tional superstitions, its cruelty and sensuality.
We find the key to the mystery in the words of St.
Paul, and the words of His Divine Master, that
this Kingdom of idolatry was the kingdom which,
since the fall of Adam, the devil had been elab
orating, and which he had now brought to per
fection — the Kingdom of the " ruler of this
world/' the power of darkness; the might of the
enemy who holds the power of death, the an
cient serpent who leads into error the whole world,
"that malignant one in whom the whole world
is lying, the prince of the power of the air, the
spirit who works in the children of disobedience
— who masters the principality, the powers, the
spirits of wickedness in high places/' in a word it
was the kingdom of him whom the passions of
men and their corrupt blindness had made "god
of this world." This manifold idolatry was the
establishment of his kingdom — the enthronement

26 SERMONS

of his godhead over men, the mark of their cap
tivity and prostration before him.

From the time our first parents acknowledged
his empire over them, he had spared no pains
to retain the complete mastery of the race. The
weak sensuousness and pride of Eve, and the sin
ful compliance of Adam, gave him a guarantee
that it needed but little temptation to ensnare
the whole human race.

The corruption that had been engendered in
the hearts of our first parents would be perpet
uated unto all time in the hearts of their chil
dren — there would be the same tendency to re
bellion against God, the same love of carnal
things, the same disgust of spiritual things — the
same proneness to evil — the same contempt of
virtue — and these fatal inheritances would grow
and increase and develop — and the experience of
their bitter fruits would not lessen their power,
and time would favor the growth — and the intel
lects and reasons which they blinded would sanc
tion them. Less and less the memory of God
would grow — men would remember Adam's sin,
but not God's justice — the voice of God would be
unheard; the counsel and warning voices of God
unheeded; the idea of the true God would van
ish — men would no longer obey reason, but the
promptings of passion, and the whole world would
be launched on a career of godlessness and in
famy — and this would be the devil's hour and the
powers of darkness. This is what the enemy of
God foresaw — this is what he labored to accom
plish — and this he did accomplish. But God was
patiently waiting. Oh! how sublime is the pa-

CHRISTMAS EVE 27

tience of God. How calmly He looks on the ways
of men and on the machinations of devils.

From the watchtowers of Heaven He calmly
looks down on this world, tossing to and fro,
moved by the passions of men and the silent but
awful agency of evil spirits; with patience He
hears His Holy Name blasphemed, and His honor
dishonored; He allows men to have their way
and to transform this fair paradise of His into a
howling wilderness where evil spirits riot in wick
edness, and men emulate their devil-worship. He
seems to abandon the world, to leave it to rot of
its own corruption, when suddenly He turns one
spring in the machinery of His Universe, one hid
den, secret spring, and the whole is transformed.
Darkness and wickedness disappear, and the sins
that were covered by night; the evil spirits go
back to their abodes, and man, untroubled by
them, rises to a knowledge of his God and his
own exalted mission and destiny.

Gbristmas

TljfriE have met to celebrate the greatest feast of
the Christian year — to commemorate the
greatest event in the history of our race, the ap
pearance of God clothed in human form upon our
earth.

It was an event of infinite significance to the
world; it was the one event to which the eyes of
the saints of the Old Law were turned — the one
event which they yearned to behold — and died
without beholding, in a kind of despair. And it
is the one event to which the eyes of Christians
will for ever turn in love and admiration — eager
to find fresh wonders in this mystery of mysteries,
and fresh revelations of depth after depth of in
exhaustible, unfathomable love.

I have said that it was an event of infinite sig
nificance, for it was the coming of the Redeemer
of a lost world, the Savior of men from a destiny
it is appalling to think of. It was the appear
ance of Him who was the "desired" of the ever
lasting hills, "whom kings and prophets had
yearned to see, but were not able." It was the
revelation in visible form of God, that Great Be
ing whose relations with our race had been too
wonderful ; the advent in a visible, tangible shape,
so that He could be seen and heard and touched, of
Him, who had created the world, who had pun
ished the world for its sins, who legislated for the

28

CHRISTMAS DAY 29

world, all the time hidden away in the invisibility
of the spirit, and who was now come to show Him
self to the world, and to prove to the world in a
way that could not be gainsaid how He had loved
men with an everlasting love.

When we look into ourselves, as each one must
at some period or other in his life, we are often
at a loss to find what it is that God sees in us that
He cares so tenderly for us. With our frail per
ishable bodies, and our souls so stained with sin
that the image of God is concealed or obliterated,
we think and lose ourselves in thinking, and yet
fail to find what attraction we have for God. Yet
that God loves us, and yearns for our love in re
turn, is a truth that He has put beyond dispute,
a truth that He has proved so that it can never
more be doubted, in this great mystery of His
Incarnation.

That God should pity us, and that He should
therefore reach forth His hand to save us, in
spite of all the provocation men have given Him,
is a mystery of mercy that becomes intelligible
only when we cease to explore it, and consent to
think that it is one of the many unintelligible
things of God.

But this is another mystery more unintelligible
still, unless upon the supposition that God desires
the love of men, that, when He might have saved
the world by a wish or a word, He chose to Work
out that salvation Himself by toil and pain. He
borrowed a human form, disguised Himself in it,
took with Him all His attributes, made Himself
a brother to men, and the best of their brethren,
and strove to win their love as man, that men

30 SERMONS

might not cease to love Him, when He would re
veal Himself to be God. He saw that though sin
had stripped the souls of men of the greatest of
those original gifts with which God had endowed
them, they still retained a love for sinlessness and
innocence.

It was the love for God Himself, for His sanctity
and purity, which He had originally implanted in
the human heart ; but men had forgotten God, and
yet the instinct remained, and so they lavished
that love upon children, the only types of sinless-
ness that could be found upon earth. God saw
this, and He became a child, that men might be
stow upon Him, as a child, that love they would
not give Him as God.

He saw, too, that linked with that love for sin
lessness and purity there was another love, that
never had had for its object God, because God
hitherto had not suffered ; I mean sympathy with
sorrow and misery, the divinest of all divine at
tributes, and, therefore, reflected from God in the
human heart, the most illustrious of all human
virtues — sympathy, always the precursor of love.
He would become the object of that sympathy,
that He might win His way to men's love, and so
He became not only an infant, but an infant, poor,
outcast, despised — the Infant of the Manger — an
infant born amongst beasts in a cave. He saw
that, however fallen and degraded men might be,
there was a chivalrous feeling among them that
respected sanctity in others, a sort of reverential
fear of sinlessness, as an attribute of a Being not
of their world.

And so He sent a little time before Himself the

CHRISTMAS DAY 31

holiest and best of creatures — a Queen in every
virtue, the meekest, most humble, and purest of
maidens, and then He made her His Mother, and
laid Himself an Infant in her arms, well knowing
that the worship of a fallen world would be paid
to her, that the sighs of a despairing world would
be addressed to her, and that she whose interests
were identified with His would turn over and di
rect to Him that love and worship of His crea
tures for which He yearned.

Manly virtue, too, had an attraction for the
world — great strength and great meekness, lofty
sanctity and profound humility, and around all,
and conserving all, immaculate purity — the attri
bute of angels — and He chose for His foster-
father, Joseph, the type of all those virtues, that
when men's eyes would be attracted to him, they
might fall from Joseph upon Himself.

And thus by the agency of His creatures He
would draw all men to Himself, nay, He Himself
became a creature, or at least took upon Himself
a created form, " emptying Himself, taking the
form of a slave, made unto the likeness of men,
and in habit found as man," thus leaving no means
untried that His Infinite Wisdom could suggest,
to secure the happiness of man, asking only the
love of man in return.

This is the secret of the Incarnation; and this,
too, is its mystery, that, knowing as we do how
little man deserved the love of God, and how much
God deserves to be loved by men, it is man that
is careless about the love of God, whom he needs
so much, and God that is anxious to secure the
love of men, whom He does not need at all, and

32 SERMONS

who are, even in their own eyes, a blot upon God 's
creation.

There have heen in this world from time to time
strange groupings of persons and circumstances
that stand out by themselves from history, and
demand exclusively for themselves our attention
and interest.

Adam and Eve as they passed through the gate
of Paradise into the outer world, burdened with
their sin and stooping under the anger of God,
and looking with despair at the miseries they had
brought upon their race.

Cain, as he stood red-handed over the lifeless
body of his brother; Abraham, as he looked into
the face of Isaac, whose life, dearer than his own,
he was about to give to God; Ishmael and Agar,
alone with God in the desert; but neither our
first parents under the just anger of God, nor
Cain, alone with God after his sin, nor Abraham
under trial from God, nor Agar in the desert
abandoned by all but God, can have half the in
terest for us that that little group possesses that
turned away from Bethlehem on that December
night many years ago — that old man and that
young maiden, and that hidden God — and looked
at the dark city, every door in which was shut
against them, and the long road that stretched
into the distance before them, and the prospect,
dismal enough at any time, but most dismal to
them, of spending the night under the stars of
heaven.

It is Saint Joseph that most claims our pity,
for on him all the responsibility fell of providing a
shelter for Jesus and Mary, and it must have been

CHRISTMAS DAY 33

the keenest anguish to him: the sight of their
common desolation, and the consciousness of his
inability to relieve it. And yet we can under
stand that in his humility he felt that he was only
a passive instrument in the hands of God ; whose
destiny was not to cooperate with God's decrees,
but to be God 's agent in accomplishing them ; from
whom, therefore, was required not active assist
ance, so much as patient, silent wonder. And a
life of wonder his must have been from the hour
in which he met Mary, until the angel told him
who she was, and his after life was spent amongst
miracles; he lived among them, saw them until
they grew familiar, and died, with Jesus, the
miracle of humility, holding his head, and Mary,
miracle of grace, praying at his feet.

And so on this night outside the walls of Beth
lehem he wandered what was next in the Divine
mind appointed him to do; and wondered, and
here we join our surprise to his, what fatality at
tached to men, that they can find no room for
God in their world. No one, I think, believes that
the inhospitality of the Bethlemites was culpable,
and that first Christmas night there was a great
influx of strangers, and they who arrived first
had the first claim to be received ; and Mary and
Joseph came amongst the last, and the inn was
full. But is there not some hidden design upon
the part of God, or some dreadful fatality fallen
upon men, that when God, in fulfilment of ir
revocable decrees, was to be born into this world,
no human eye should see Him (I except, of course,
those who were necessary to the mystery), no
human heart should feel for Him, not even the

34 SERMONS

poor, who are usually sympathetic with kindred
misery, were present at His birth ; no human habi
tation offered Him a shelter — the doors were
closed out to the very threshold that He may have
no room to lie there.

His Mother and her husband alone of all the
Nazarenes that came to Bethlehem on that night
were houseless and homeless : they could not even
remain upon the street, that His Mother might
have the comfort of being among men, and that
He Himself, when He opened His eyes upon the
world, might see the faces of those whom He came
to save; but He had to go outside the haunts of
men, whither Joseph led Mary, to be born in the
midst of darkness, under a rock in a field, with
no attendant but the sinless, silent, wondering, ir
rational beasts. "The Word was made Flesh/'
says the Evangelist, "and dwelt amongst us,"—
made flesh in silence and secrecy, born into the
world in silence and secrecy — but not amongst
men; but then He came and dwelt amongst us,
"and we saw His glory, the glory of the only be
gotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, " and
yet the Evangelist does not fail to tell us further
on that though the Incarnate God was full of grace
and truth, he was always a burden to the world.

From the beginning men looked coldly on Him,
as one that should have no part with them, until
at length they grew angry with Him for living,
and they beat half the life out of Him in the Hall
and then hanged Him on a cross outside their
city. Born in a cave outside Bethlehem, died on
a cross outside Jerusalem — surely there was no
room for God in His world. And this was the

CHRISTMAS DAY 35

surprise of Joseph, and it has been the surprise
of every one of the saints of God from Joseph's
time, until now, for it is as true of the world to
day as it was of Bethlehem nineteen centuries ago
—there is no room for God amongst men.

This is the mystery of the Incarnation on the
part of men that men should be unconscious of
the presence of God among them and should scorn
the Divine Love that is squandered upon them.
The rest of the mystery is in God, in the humilia
tion to which He subjected Himself to win the
love of men.

Bethlehem has grown so familiar to us that it
is no longer a mystery; the accidents and sur
roundings of the birth of our Divine Lord have
ceased to possess that meaning for men they
would suggest to one who was made acquainted
with the mystery for the first time, and even the
expressions that we use to explain the mystery —
the vocabulary of Bethlehem, as we might say —
have lost half their meaning for us by constant
use. "Babe of Bethlehem, " * 'Infant-God/'
"Child-Saviour," "Word made flesh, " are fa
miliar words, each one of which is a history of
the greatest wonder this world ever saw; but we
use them without ever thinking of what they
mean.

So too when we say that our Blessed Redeemer
was born in a stable, and laid upon a little straw
in a manger, and breathed upon by the cattle,
we do not realize the extent of these humiliations.
For it is the perversity of our nature that we will
not understand the mystery of the Incarnation,
will not understand that our Divine Lord was

36 SERMONS

really God and really man; and so our reverence
for Him as God is unjustly abated, for we see His
Divinity only through the medium of His man
hood; and, on the other hand, our love for Him
as man, and the sympathy the consideration of His
sufferings creates within us, is diminished by the
consideration that He is God, and that His Di
vinity is proof against suffering. Whereas His
Divinity, so far from lessening His sufferings,
only intensified them, and though God, He de
serves the compassion of the world; and again,
though that Divinity is hidden under the vesture
of manhood, it is not the less worthy of reverence,
than the same Divinity in the Father and the
Spirit.

And so the Divinity of the Babe in Bethlehem
must not prevent us from sympathizing with His
suffering and humiliation ; neither must our sym
pathy and love for Him as an Infant ever lead us
to forget the reverence due to Him as God. In
what, then, does this mystery of the Babe of
Bethlehem consist? What is it in that mystery
that excites our wonder, and then our love? It
is useless to look upon that mystery from this
earth of ours, because we know nothing of what
God is, and, therefore, we cannot understand, can
not fathom the depth of humiliation into which He
sank when He became man. But let us see what
His angels saw upon that night when they filled
the universe with their songs.

They came into existence, and as they enjoyed
from the first moment the full use of intelligence,
their existence from the first moment became a
mystery to them. But that mystery was solved

CHRISTMAS DAY 37

when they fell into their place, and the Vision of
God burst upon their sight.

God the Immense, and even to them the In
comprehensible, the Father, the unbegotten, the
Son, begotten but from eternity, reflected from
the Father's mind, not by a single final act, but
by a successive series of acts which never com
menced and never will end ; the Spirit, proceeding
from the love of the Father and Son. And all
three one, living in the unutterable love they bear
to each other, in a silence that had been unbroken
from eternity. The quick intelligence of the
angels strove to measure the eternity of God.
They themselves were but of yesterday. But
there was no yesterday with God, and then they
discovered that time was a law of their Being, but
not of His. And their minds traveled back, com
passing age after age and cycle after cycle of
years, and when they had grown weary they stood
still, and looked into the past still, expecting to
find the beginning of God close at hand, but it
was remote as ever, and when they tried to span
the distance it was eternity.

And confounded and humiliated they returned,
and looked into the face of God, and humbled
themselves before Him. And again they strove
to measure His immensity. And their quick in
telligence fled to the outer bounds of space, and
they looked beyond, to find some place where God
was not; but space still stretched illimitable be
fore them, and every inch of that space was filled
with the immeasurable immensity of God.

And again they returned confounded and humil
iated, and looked into the face of God, and

38 SERMONS

humbled themselves before Him. Day by day
they saw new worlds, each a wonder in itself,
leap into existence, and fall into a certain orbit
from which it never deviated, as if it were held
there by an Almighty Hand; and though they
knew there could be no cause of these but God,
they saw no action on the part of God, not even
a motion of His Will. But the Father, the Son,
and the 'Spirit, silent and motionless and unspeak
ably happy.

One day they found their own ranks very much
diminished, more than decimated, large gaps were
here and there observable, and they noticed that
these whom they missed were the brightest and
most beautiful of all the Heavenly Court ; and they
looked downwards and saw their Brethren; but,
oh ! how changed, struggling in an omnipotent, in
visible grasp that held them fast in the fire of hell ;
and then they heard of God's attribute of justice
and trembled for themselves. They were soon to
hear of His mercy and His love. They saw Him
create on one of His worlds a soul like them
selves, and He covered it with a thin covering of
clay, and breathed into it life, and made it a free,
intelligent being. And they were horrified to see
that the very first act of that being was to offend
God; and every moment they expected to see the
tragedy of Heaven repeated; and man sent to
fraternize in punishment as he had fraternized in
rebellion with the fallen angels.

But no: man was punished, yet not as he de
served; nay more, certain promises were made
him that sounded unintelligible to the angels-
promises of a Redeemer and of a blessing that

CHRISTMAS DAY 39

would come upon the world through the woman;
and as the days rolled on, they found man ever
hostile to his Maker, and God so terribly just with
the angels, mild and forbearing to men ; and when
centuries had gone by, they saw that the Spirit
of God now again left the Father and the Son,
and went upon earth and spoke to certain holy
men, and they prophesied that God would save
His people, and one of them said that "in the
darkness, in the silence of the night, the Almighty
Word would leap down from His throne, " and
they saw the Holy Spirit touching the lips of an
other with a burning coal, and he said * ' That a vir
gin would conceive and bear a Son, and His Name
should be called Emmanuel, that is, God with us";
and he would be called Holy Counselor, Prince of
Peace, and the Government would be laid upon
His shoulders, and then they began to understand
that a mystery was in preparation, and that
mystery would bind together, in some way to
them unknown, God and man.

But who can tell their surprise when Gabriel
was called before the Throne of God, and then
passed swiftly through the ranks of angels, and
the news ran through Heaven that the Son of God
was about to leave His Father's bosom and be
come man; and then they saw the Spirit swiftly
descending, and in a moment the Son had left
the Father, and the bosom of the Father, filled
with that Son from eternity, was for the first time
vacant, and Heaven in a manner was changed to
earth, for the unchangeable God was changed, and
the household of eternity was broken up. How
those angels as they watched around Mary dur-

40 SERMONS

ing the nine months must have wondered and
wondered again what their God in human form
was likely to be ! ! ! Illimitable God ! And their
wonder at their own existence, at the attributes of
God which surpassed their comprehension, at the
justice of God so swiftly and yet so silently exe
cuted, did not equal their astonishment when they
looked upon that weak, trembling Infant in Mary's
arms, and then heard the voice of the Eternal
Father that bade them fall down and adore that
Infant as God.

It was the first act of Faith the angels had ever
made, for hitherto they had seen God; it was
Vision, but now they had to believe ; and what a de
mand was made upon their Faith — that this little
Infant was the God whom nine months ago they
had worshiped in Heaven, and into whose face
they scarcely dared to look; that these four planks
that made the manger contained the same God,
whose immensity they had tried in vain to meas
ure ; that these weak arms, clasped and unclasped
in utter helplessness were the same that called
the mighty worlds through space as if they were
only toys, and held down with irresistible power
in hell those angels whose strength and power
were a wonder to themselves.

But God gave them a clew to the mystery, for
when they had satisfied their wonder He revealed
to them that it is not justice, nor eternity nor
immensity nor power alone that is the law of His
Being, but love shown in mercy to His creatures,
and in which angels and men have a common share.
And it was then when they understood what a
link it was that bound earth to Heaven and all

CHRISTMAS DAY 41

created things to God, that they broke forth into
that cantata of praise to God and good wishes to
men: " Glory to God in the highest and peace on
earth to men of good will. ' '

In the canticle God Himself could join, for to
bring peace upon earth was the eternal wish of
the Father, and it was the special mission of the
Son, and it was to be accomplished by the special
agency of the Holy Ghost.

And that wish and that desire, even the cold
ness and the darkness of Bethlehem, and the in
difference of the world, could not stifle in the
breast of God. Nor did that Infant Babe, as He
lay there in that manger at Bethlehem and looked
back to His Father's bosom in Heaven^ feel one
pang of sorrow for having left His Father, nor
one wish to return, nor a single doubt but that
His mission would be successful.

Nor has He been disappointed. Even in Beth
lehem He had made conquests, and surely He had
only to look on Mary and Joseph, the first fruits
of His victory, that He might hope well for the
future. And the sweet influence of that Infant
Savior still survives in the world, is still felt,
and must be felt for ever. For ever will His Di
vine mind illuminate those whom He will save;
for ever will His Divine Heart quicken into love
those whom He has chosen for Himself.

You yourselves give a proof of what I say. To
you the influence of the Babe of Bethlehem has
reached. That King of the Manger holds you
captive. From every soul here to-day He has
looked up into His Father's face, and again and
again repeated that His mission on earth is ac-

42 SERMONS

eomplished. For His peace has rested upon you
all : that Holy Peace which like the peace of Beth
lehem is broken only by the whispers of God in
your souls, and may that holy peace and He who
creates it abide with you for ever !

On Ufme— mew gear's

long span of life is passed for each
of us, one of those multitudes of moments
which men call years is at an end, and again it is
my duty to remind you of a few solemn truths,
which, if not periodically meditated upon, very
soon lose their vast solemnity and significance.

Wherever I go, and to whomsoever I speak, I
hear one remark from every lip — ' ' How short this
past year has been?" "I can scarcely credit it."
Christmas and the New Year have stolen upon us,
and taken us by surprise; and I mention this
fact to tell you that your experience of life at
the moment of death will be the same as your ex
perience of each succeeding year at its close, for
from the lips of every dying man, no matter how
prepared for death, no matter how eagerly he ex
pected it, we hear the same opinions of life that
we hear now of the old dying year : ' ' How short !
how fleeting! how swiftly death has come upon
me! how rapidly time and life have passed away
from me ! " I would, therefore, ask your atten
tion this evening to a few thoughts which I shall
put before you on the value and importance of
time, and the best way of utilizing it.

Like Life itself, I consider time one of these
privileges of God, which will be for each of us, and
not only will be, but actually is, the greatest of
all blessings, or the most frightful of all curses.
Like life itself, it was thrust upon us by Almighty

43

44 SERMONS

God, and however disposed to abuse it, we cannot
rid ourselves of it. It is the talent which God
has forced upon our acceptance, and with it the
responsibility of profiting by it — a responsibility
which we may deem very irksome and even refuse
to fulfill, but which we can never decline. It is
ours.

Time flies by us, we live by time, we cannot rid
ourselves of it, nor of the responsibilities which
it entails. If we profit by it, it will be well with
us at the end. If we fail to profit by it, we shall
go before our Judge, not only with empty hands,
holding up a life unfruitful, but also with the
grave sin resting upon our souls, that we have
abused Heaven's greatest gift, that we have had
a glorious inheritance, but have been spendthrifts
and prodigals of that, one moment of which no
gold, no earthly labor, no human sacrifice could
purchase.

Time is that golden river, ever rushing into
eternity, in which we stand, and with which we
are borne. Itself is golden, the sands in its depths
are golden, the very spume and foam of time are
golden. For a moment it rests around us, as if
to give us an opportunity of gathering up its
treasures, the next moment it is gone, and so much
of time is lost; we are nearer to death, but not
nearer to God.

Time is an angel, borne by us on wings of light,
and every moment is a whisper to us asking us
have we any message for the ears of God. The
ears of God are ever open to hear our prayers;
to hear what message of love our hearts send to
Him.

ON TIME— NEW YEAR'S DAY 45

What a pain it must be to Almighty God that
hundreds, that thousands, that millions of these
Divine Ambassadors pass by His throne, after
they have questioned us, and as each passes God
asks: "Is there a word from that soul of praise,
of thanksgiving, a sigh for mercy or a prayer for
help/' and those swift moments answer "None,"
and millions of them answer "None," and are lost
behind the throne of God in eternity. And each
moment, thus past, is irrevocable, and the loss
of a single moment is irreparable.

There is no such thing as retracing our steps.
There is no such thing as recalling lost moments.
It is possible that the sins of years may be wiped
out by a moment's repentance. It is possible that
the one last moment of our lives, profited by, may
atone for years of abuse and loss.

Blessed for ever be the Precious Blood of our
Divine Lord. It buys for us eternity even when
we have squandered time. But yet all that time
is really lost. The stores of merit we might have
accumulated during those years are lost ; we gain
Heaven, but the light with which God crosses us
is faint and dim instead of being intensified into
burning brightness by our merits. Like a man
snatched from a violent death, we tremble and
creep in terror to the feet of God, instead of ris
ing buoyantly, securely, confidently, to that throne
which the Precious Blood has purchased for us,
and which we have adorned with the gold of our
penance and the pearls of our contrite tears.

It is this consideration which makes time to my
mind such a fearful privilege. There is a dread
ful inequality in importance between our good

46 SERMONS

deeds and our bad deeds. Our good deeds will
not of themselves save us. One evil action, or
even an evil thought, may banish us for ever from
God. A good deed does not of itself remit even
a single sin. But one bad action annuls and can
cels a whole life of virtue. With this awful con
sideration before our minds, how is it possible
that men should be so careless about utilizing their
time, so that every moment profited by in time,
may bear golden interest in eternity; and should
be on the other hand so indefatigable in laying up
for themselves measure upon measure of wrath
against the time to come.

The true Christian, who on the one hand sin
cerely loves Almighty God and fears to offend
Him, and on the other hand feels keenly his own
imperfection, his weakness and proneness to sin,
must ardently long for death as an only deliver
ance from himself and that Body of Death which
tempts him to sin. But such a man, so long as
he possesses life will be daily and hourly on his
guard lest he should offend his Maker, and des
pite his repeated falls, he remains in God's friend
ship and love, because his life is a protest against
sin, against the abuse of time, and a declaration
of devotedness to his Maker.

They, therefore, who squander time are the
greatest of spendthrifts. When we hear now and
again of young noblemen of vast properties
squandering their riches upon pleasures, lavish
ing upon the vicious and the worthless the wealth
that, perhaps, has been accumulated by the la
bors of their ancestors for many generations, we

ON TIME—NEW YEAR'S DAY 47

think such extravagance worthy rather of our in
dignation than of our pity. It is a painful thing,
even to outsiders, even to those who have no per
sonal interest in such matters, to see broad,
baronial acres, planted with stately trees, old
as England itself, pass away into the hands of
money-lending, usurious Jews, and the noble man
sion closed, and the chalk of the auctioneer on an
tique furniture and ancestral paintings, and the
name, that has been built up with the blood of
many heroes, passing into oblivion, and the heir
to all those splendors passing into the army as a
private, or into a mercantile establishment as a
clerk. All this is painful.

And yet time is an inheritance that outweighs
all those splendors, and he who squanders time,
gives that inheritance not into the hands of Jews,
but into the hands of devils. It was an inheri
tance purchased for him by the Blood of Jesus
Christ, and the worthless spendthrift passes into
eternity, degraded, poor, condemned by God and
Angels and men.

To-night, therefore, let us examine with care
how we have spent not only the past year but our
lives. Have we valued time? Have we valued
life? What wealth, what treasures, have we laid
up for ourselves in Heaven? How much time
have we given to God? How much to the world?
How much to the service of the devil? Oh! the
very best of us must confess that the world and
the devil have had the lion's share; that it is with
God alone we are grudging and miserly. How
many of us here can honestly say that we have

48 SERMONS

given the whole of the past year to God? How
many that they have given him a half, a quarter,
an eighth?

Let us confess it, that all we have given to God
is ten minutes at morning, ten at night, a half
hour on Sunday, and the rest to ourselves and the
world around us. And yet, if only to-night we
have gained a true feeling of remorse for all our
ill-spent time, if only now we feel that after all
our labors in the burden of the day and the heat,
we are poor because our work was not for God,
then I declare that our sin is great indeed. Re
morse is unprofitable only in hell. It is at all
times bitter. But it is a true teacher. I pity
the man who is self-satisfied in this world, who
is too proud to examine himself, too blind to de
tect his faults, too puffed up by conceit to con
fess that he is human, who lives a life of self-
complacency, and never hears the bitter warnings
of remorse. But there is something truly sub
lime about the soul, that in a good heart, and a
very good heart, is ever striving to be better, is
ever dissatisfied with itself. Such a soul hasv
high ideas about its dignity and vocation, such
a soul is honorable towards God, is humble, and,
therefore, sincere, is perpetually inquiring how
something better is to be done, how God's honor
is to be promoted, how faults are to be avoided —
and such a soul in the sight of God and every
right-thinking man is worth fifty million of those
proud, puffed up, Pharisaical hypocrites who go
about the world satisfied that they are justified,
when in reality God has abandoned them. If,
therefore, to-night we feel remorse for our remiss-

ON TIME—NEW YEAR'S DAY 49

ness during the past year, it proves, at least, that
we are sincere, and to the sincere man all things
are possible. The present is yet in our power
and the future. There are some here to-night be
ginning life, there are some in the prime of man
hood, and a few whose heads are bleached by
years, but there is time still for all, time to expiate
the past, time to secure the future, time for the
great business of all our lives; promoting the
great glory of God.

There is much wisdom in the advice of the
Saint: "Go down to Hell during life that you
may not go there after death." Perhaps time is
properly appreciated truly only by God in Heaven
and the lost souls in Hell. Oh ! if we could only
regard time in the same light in which it is re
garded by those who wail out their ineffectual
remorse in the deaf ears of God, what saints we
might be ! Only a day, only an hour, only a pass
ing minute — they would give a million of worlds
to possess it — but their wishes are vain. Only a
day of those many days that we spend in idling,
in gossiping, in vanity, only a minute in all that
important time that we waste without scruple—
they, if they could possess such a treasure, oh,
how they would profit by it. What love, what con
trition, what fervor would they press into these
moments. How they would hang on the feet of
God, and pour out their whole souls before Him,
and thank Him for all eternity.

Bpipbang— Call of tbe TKHtee /toen

"We have seen His star in the East, and have come to
adore Him."

are celebrating to-day the commencement
of the fulfillment of the second part of the
mission of Christ upon earth, that is, to give peace
to men. The angels of God who sang at His Birth
declared what the mission of Christ was to be, at
the same time that they prayed for its happy re
sults, and so their canticle on that first Christmas
night was a prayer and a prophecy ; a prayer for
the success of the mission of the Infant God ; and
it was a prophecy that that mission should not be
barren of fruit. And they were right. For
Christ, at the first moment of His Incarna
tion, had given more glory to the Father than had
yet been received from all creatures ; and the com
ing of the Wise Men from the East to the Crib
of the Child, their promptitude in obeying the call
of Divine Grace, and their happiness, consequent
as a reward of their obedience, was the fulfillment
of the second part of the mission of Jesus: "to
bring peace to men of good- will on earth. ' '

Before we proceed to make any moral reflec
tions on this great event of the manifestation of
Christ to the Gentiles, we will briefly review one
or two historical questions that are suggested
by the Gospel of the Day. And first, Christ was
born in Bethlehem of Juda, that the prophecy of

50

THE EPIPHANY— CALL OF WISE MEN 51

Micheas might be fulfilled: "And thou, Bethle
hem, Ephrata, art a little one among the thousand
of Juda: out of thee shall He come forth unto
me, that is to be the Euler in Israel : and His going
forth is from the beginning, from the days of
eternity." And it was befitting that as David
was born in Bethlehem, David's successor and the
restorer of his kingdom should also be born there.
The flower that was to ascend from the root of
Jesse was to spring from the same soil.

The Bethlehem that is spoken of here is called
by the Evangelist the Bethlehem of Juda to dis
tinguish it from another Bethlehem that was in
the territory of the tribe of Zebulon. Some man
uscripts read Bethlehem of Judea, but St. Jerome
thinks it a vicious reading, inasmuch as Judea
meant the whole country occupied by the twelve
tribes, and as it is evident the Evangelist in
tended to introduce a distinction this could only
have been done by distinguishing the Bethlehem
of Juda from the Bethlehem of Zebulon.

The Herod that is spoken of here is not the
tetrarch of Galilee, who was surnamed Antipas,
who beheaded John the Baptist and mocked our
Divine Lord; nor is it the Herod that put St.
James to death, and put St. Peter in prison : but
the father of this latter, and the grandfather of
the former. He was called Herod the First, Herod
the Great, Herod Antipater, and he was the first
to whom the Roman people gave the title, "King
of the Jews." He is here called King to dis
tinguish him from Herod the tetrarch, and to
show besides that the scepter had passed from
Juda, and the time for the coming of the Messias

52 SERMONS

had expired according to the prophecy: "The
scepter shall not be taken away from Judah, till
He come that is to be sent, and He shall be the
expectation of nations."

There are various opinions among commenta
tors as to who those wise men were, whence they
came, and how many there were. If it be sup
posed that St. Matthew wrote in Hebrew, and that
this word has not been interpolated by others,
these wise men were conjurors, but as this pro
fession has always been regarded as infamous, and
as St. Matthew here evidently mentions the wise
men in an honorable manner, this interpretation
has been unanimously rejected. If we suppose
that St. Matthew wrote in Greek, we shall find
there are three interpretations of the Greek word
magos, and one of these we shall adopt. It meant
those who were skilled in magic, like the con
jurors that disputed with Moses at the Court of
Pharao. Secondly, it is the name not of a pro
fession nor condition, but of a nation. For
among the five nations that occupied Media,
Epiphanius mentions the Magi as one, and says
that they were the descendants of Abraham and
Cethusa, who, having been banished from their
father's house, came into Magodia, a part of
Arabia, there fixed their habitation, and thence
derived their name. The most common meaning,
however, of the word is that which we translate
it, "wise men," and thus the position of the Magi
among the Persians was analogous to that which
the philosophers held in Greece, the augurs and
Pontiffs in Home, the Brahmins in India, the Chal
deans in Babylonia, the Hierophants in Egypt,

THE EPIPHANY— CALL OF WISE MEN 53

and the Druids in France, England, Ireland, and
all the Western nations.

A still more disputed point is as to whether the
Magi were kings. Bega, one of the Reformers,
ridiculed the idea, and the application to the wise
men of that verse of the Psalmist : ' ' The Kings
of Tharsis and the islands shall offer presents:
the Kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall bring
gifts." But the great weight of testimony in
clines us to the belief that they were kings, not
as we understand the word, but in the sense of
petty princes, such as the ruler in the Gospel of
8t. John, and the friends of Job who came to con
sole him.

The opinion is confirmed by the facts narrated
of them in the Gospel, that they came from the
East, a long journey which men of science de
pendent on their private means could scarcely
undertake; that they came to adore the new-born
king, which kings alone were accustomed to do;
that they brought valuable treasures with them;
that they were not seized nor imprisoned by
Herod, which argues their dignity; that they pro
claimed boldly to Herod the mission upon which
they had come, which they would have scarcely
dared to do if they had not been of equal dignity
with him.

Nor does the reticence of St. Matthew argue
against the supposition; for we find that in the
Book of Job, his friends who came to comfort him
are not called kings, yet they are called kings in
the Book of Tobias. Besides, there was a reason
for St. Matthew calling them "wise men" instead
of kings, inasmuch as he tells us it was by the

54 SERMONS

star they were led, and kings are not generally
supposed to waste much time on the study of the
heavens.

Of the number of the wise men and of the coun
try whence they came, there exists equal uncer
tainty. Many of the early commentators thought
they came from Arabia, interpreting thus the
prophecy of David: "The Kings of Arabia and
of Saba will bring gifts/' Many others say they
were Chaldeans, but the more common opinion
is that they were from Persia, inasmuch as the
word ' ' Magi ' ' is Persian, and the custom of mak
ing long journeys to visit Kings and to offer gifts
is purely Persian, and perhaps exclusively so.

Of the nature of the star which the wise men
saw, it is difficult to determine anything positive :
whether it was one of the planets, freed by God
for a time from its orbit to accomplish its ends,
or whether it was a comet and only the semblance
of a star, or whether it was an angel under the
form of a star, or the Spirit of God Himself, are
matters of opinion each vested with credibility in a
greater or less degree, but of which nothing posi
tive could be defined. And although the wise men
had evidently been expecting some such supernat
ural manifestations of the birth of the Messias,
relying probably upon the prophecy of Balaam:
"I shall see Him, but not now; I shall behold
Him, but not near ; a star shall rise up from Jacob
and a scepter shall spring from Israel, " it is evi
dent that it was by the direct illumination of the
Holy Spirit they hailed the star as a messenger
from the manger of Bethlehem, and promptly and
without hesitation obeyed the call of God.

THE EPIPHANY— CALL OF WISE MEN 55

There is a remarkable difference in the way the
Messias unveiled Himself to the Jews, and the
way He chose to make Himself known to the Gen
tiles. I class the wise men and their countrymen
among Gentiles, for it is usual so to speak of all
who, at the time of the birth of our Divine Lord,
were not in communion with the Jewish people.
And yet they were not Gentiles in the strict sense
of the word, for it is evident that they believed in
the God of the Jews, and retained many Jewish
traditions, especially the prophecies and promises
that were made concerning the birth of the Mes
sias. Now, if we take them as a distinct class, as
I think we may, holding a middle position between
the Jewish people strictly so called and the Gen
tiles of the West, we shall see that our Divine
Lord revealed Himself to these in a way different
from the others. The first among the Jews to
whom He revealed Himself were shepherds; the
first among the Gentiles of the East to whom He
revealed Himself were wise men and Kings; He
did not reveal Himself to the Gentiles of the West
at all at His Birth ; and it is strange that the na
tions of the West are the only ones who have pre
served His teachings, and commemorate His Birth
in the manger. He revealed Himself to the sim
plest and the humblest of the Jews personally:
He revealed Himself to the Scribes and Doctors
of the Law, not personally, but by the faith of the
Gentile wise men. And He revealed Himself to
the Jews by His Power: He revealed Himself to
the Gentiles by Light.

Now, why did our Divine Lord choose "wise
men" to reveal Himself to the Gentiles of the

56 SERMONS

East? It seems to be altogether opposed to His
usual mode of acting. He chose the simplest and
humblest form He could assume at His birth, and
simplicity and humility were the laws of His Life.
His bearing and manner were humble, though they
could not conceal the dignity and majesty of God.
His companions were of the humblest. Why then
did He select the wise and the powerful among
the Eastern Gentiles? He chose humility blended
with power to convert His own chosen people : He
chose faith, with Light superadded, to convert the
Gentiles of the East. St. Matthew, when speak
ing of the revelation that was made to the "wise
men/' merely says that they saw His Star in the
East, and they came to adore Him. St. Luke,
when narrating the revelation to the shepherds,
tells us that an angel of God stood by them, and
the brightness of God shone around them. And
suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of
the heavenly army, praising God, and saying:
" Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace
to men of good will. ' r Here, then, is another sig
nificant fact — the revelation that was made to the
Gentiles was made in all simplicity, the revelation
that was made to the Jewish shepherds was made
with all the splendor and power of Heaven. And
mark the consequences. The shepherds "feared
with a great fear. ' ' The ' ' wise men ' ? on the reap
pearance of the Star rejoiced with exceeding great
joy. The "wise men" entering the house fell
down and adored the Child, and offered their
kingly gifts : there is not a word about the adora
tion of the shepherds.

The reason of all this seems to me to be found

THE EPIPHANY— CALL OF WISE MEN 57

in the pride and obstinacy of the Jewish people,
and in the humility and faith, although that faith
was blind, of the Eastern Gentiles. There seems
to me to be a very remarkable contrast between
the demeanor of the Jews towards our Divine
Lord and the demeanor of other less-favored peo
ple. On the part of the Jews there is anger, hate,
cunning, dissimulation, and all the other externals
of mortified pride. On the part of the Gentiles
there is reverence, respect and humility. Take
the instance of the sinful Samaritan woman.
When accused by our Divine Lord, she answered :
"Sir, I perceive thou art a Prophet, " When He
spoke to the Scribes and Pharisees: "Let him
among you that is without sin cast the first stone
at her," they slunk away one by one, and He re
mained alone with the sinner. Again when He
spoke of the fountain of living water to the Sa
maritan, she answered: "Lord, give me this water
that I may not thirst ; ' ' when He spoke of the liv
ing Bread that came down from Heaven the Jews
answered: "How can this man give us His flesh
to eat." Witness, too, the beautiful humility of
the woman of Canaan: "It is not good to take
the bread of the children and cast it to the dogs."
But she said: "Yea, Lord: for the whelps alse
eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their
masters." "Oh! woman," said Jesus, "great is
thy faith." To a people of which such as these
are types there was no need of miracles to in
crease their faith, but there was need of light to
show them in what they were to believe, and,
therefore, where the Jews needed miracles to
convince them, the Gentiles asked only an author-

58 SERMONS

ity to teach them. But as that authority was not
to have the power of working miracles, it must
have been an authority already recognized by the
people.

Christ and his disciples preached and then con
firmed their teachings by miracles. They who
were to preach Christ to the Gentiles were not
to have the power of working miracles, and their
authority to teach the truth about what they had
seen must have been already recognized by the
people. And, therefore, they were selected, whose
honor and whose truth are beyond question, and
in whom their countrymen could have the fullest
confidence.

It was well known that the time of the coming
of the Messias was at hand : they had counted the
weeks of days that Daniel had foretold: with the
prophecy of Micheas in their hands they looked
for the sign that the Redeemer had come : the star
appeared, and the Spirit of God singled out from
all that Eastern people wise men and kings — on
whose truth the people might rely — for accuracy
of information about the Infant Messias.

But they appear to us, too, under another as
pect. We have seen why wise men were sum
moned to testify about the Messias. But Jesus,
too, was a King: and the wise men were Kings.
And He was King of the Jews. And He would
be acknowledged as such. Babe in a manger:
yea, but King in a manger, too : His humility was
not to lessen His Majesty. As His faithful serv
ant, Benedict XV, will call himself, and with no
mock humility either, "Servant of the Servants of
God, and at the same time will have the world

THE EPIPHANY— CALL OF WISE MEN 59

acknowledge him " Vicar of Jesus Christ/' so the
Divine Master in all the humility of Bethlehem
would yet have himself acknowledged "King of
the Jews." Now, who was to acknowledge Him
King. The Scribes and High Priests'? No : their
pride was so hateful to Him that He would have
the Gentiles preach Him to them. The shepherds f
No : for they would not dare to tell Herod that his
kingdom was at an end, nor dare to ask the proud
Jewish priests to recognize in that little Babe of
Bethlehem the Messias they had long expected.
And, therefore, to have His Divinity and Royalty
acknowledged, God had to select the Eastern Gen
tiles, to endow them with faith to see Him, and
courage to profess their faith in Him.

They are a model to us : and theirs is a grace
which we need — courage to profess our faith. To
leave their own country to find Christ — to go into
a hostile land among hostile strangers to find
Christ — to be stared at and wondered at as if in
quest of some unknown thing — to brave all the
anger and hatred of the priests, whose pride was
wounded because the revelation was not made to
them — to tell Herod that his kingdom was at an
end — to seek for the new-born King in an obscure
village, and to suffer no diminution of faith
when they saw the humility of Him they came to
adore — surely this was the very perfection of
faith. But is it a type of faith that is no longer
possible? No! my dearly beloved. We can
match it in our own days.

We can find even here among ourselves many
and many who need not blush to see their faith
compared with the faith of these wise men. Many

60 SERMONS

and many whose privations and hardships in seek
ing after their King exceed even the hardships of
the kings in the long and painful journey they un
dertook, many who like the wise men broke family
ties and set out at the call of faith to find their
King, and passed through the unknown hostile
cities of other religions, and braved the anger of
those in power, and questioned their priests and
got no answer, and yet followed the light of faith,
as the wise men followed the star, until it stood
over where the Child was, and they entered the
lowly roof of the Catholic Church, and there they
found the Child and its Mother. Nor are they
scandalized at the humility of the Catholic Church,
but still, with beautiful faith, they fall down and
adore Him whom they have found, and offer Him
the rich treasury of their hearts. All honor to
them. Or, rather, may He who has given them
their faith reward it in large measure, until in the
sleep of death the angel comes to show them the
way into their Heavenly Country.

jfeast of tbe tools

E Church has set apart this, the second Sun
day after Epiphany, as a day when the faith
ful might be called upon to honor in a special man
ner the Holy Name of Jesus.

This is the name that was given to our Divine
Lord by the Angel before He was conceived, and
that which was afterwards bestowed upon Him in
a more formal manner on the day upon which He
was circumcised. But as the circumcision was an
event in itself, and as the Holy Name has a power
in itself and an interest for us altogether inde
pendent of its association with the Circumcision,
it was scarcely fitting to blend the two under one
commemoration; and this is the reason that the
Church of God has set apart this day for the spe
cial honor she wishes to have paid to the Name of
Her Divine Spouse and our Divine Master.

And with peculiar gracefulness she has chosen
as the Lesson for this day's feast the history as
narrated in the acts of the Apostles of the brilliant
defense and profession of his faith which St. Peter
made when with St. John he was summoned before
the Sanhedrim. It was the day succeeding that
on which by the Holy Name of Jesus he had re
stored to health the lame man who sat at the gate
of the temple that was called Beautiful; and
turned away from himself the praises of the peo
ple, attributing the miracle to faith in the name of

61

62 SERMONS

Him whom they had killed, whom God had raised
from the dead, and of whom they were witnesses.

And the priests, the Sadducees, had arrested
them, being grieved that they taught the people,
and on the following day Peter and John were
summoned to confront the same tribunal which
their Divine Master had confronted before in the
days of His Passion. But time had changed the
accusers and the accused. It was no longer Annas
and Caiphas, haughty, self-confident, derisive, and
defiant, but Annas and Caiphas, half-fearing to
meet face to face His disciples, whom, as the
events of the preceding day had shown, He had
invested with His power and authority. And it
was no longer Peter, driven by fear to the shadow
of a pillar, and trembling when asked if he was
a disciple of Jesus, and swearing that he knew
Him not; but Peter strengthened by the Holy
Ghost to be the fearless advocate of Christ, the
fearless professor of Christ's enemies, the fear
less exponent of the faith of the infant Church,
and animated with the zeal which contrition only
can give, to repair the momentary infidelity in
Pilate's hall by the strongest and fullest declara
tions of lasting faith and fervor. Such was his
spirit when, having been asked by his judges:
< 'By what power, or by what name have you done
this?" he answered that it was by the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom "you have
crucified, whom God raised from the dead ; neither
is there salvation under any other name, for there
is no other name given to men whereby we must
be saved."

Such is the name, so appropriate in itself, and

FEAST OF THE HOLY NAME 63

so dear to us, by which the Incarnate Son of God
was made known to men.

The love and reverence of His Holy Ones and
Prophets, who had foreseen His coming, had
fashioned for Him names suited to their concep
tions of His attributes and mission. "Behold,"
said Isaias, "a virgin shall conceive and bear a
son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel. ' ' x
"For a child is born to us, and a Son is given to
us," continues the same Evangelist-Prophet, "and
the government is upon his shoulder; and his
name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, God
the Mighty ; the Father of the World to come, the
Prince of Peace. ' ' 2

These so glorious titles were not by any means
irrelevant to the mission on which the Son of God
was to come. Nay, their appropriateness was
second only to that of the still more illustrious
Name by which He was familiarly known. How
could it be otherwise, when it was the Spirit of
Truth that touched the lips of Isaias with hallowed
fire, and the hearts of all with the still holier fire
of His Love, and gave to each a language befitting
the high Gospel He was commissioned to preach
to men!

But He was awaiting the fullness of time to re
veal that the Son of the Father 's love was coming
on a higher, holier, sublimer mission than was yet
spoken of; that He was coming to recover that
which was lost, to bring to life that which was
dead, to raise a fallen world, to save a perishing
people.

And it was only when the Son of God was leav-

i Is. vii— 14. 2 Is. ix— 6.

64 SERMONS

ing His Heavenly throne to dwell amongst men,
that the Angel caught the name of His Sacred
Mission from the lips of the Holy Ghost. And
Gabriel came on his holy embassy, and he told the
Word to Mary. "Thou shalt conceive and bring
forth a Son, and thou shalt call His name. Jesus. "
And when the time was come, Mary, in all things
obedient to the voice of God, took her Infant to
the temple; and then, while the rude knife of cir
cumcision was cutting His sacred flesh, and the
first drops of His sacred blood fell upon the pave
ment, He was called by the High Priest, Jesus,
Healer, Savior.

How well He acquitted Himself of His High
Mission, how well every action of His life cor
responded with the title He bore, how He hath re
deemed His people from their iniquities, and made
them unto God a Kingdom, we have learned from
the words of His Evangelists. And, therefore it
is that the Sacred Name has become so familiar
and dear to us.

It summons up before us the Son of God, as He
walked among men, His mild face beaming with
pity, and His great heart glowing with love ; we
see Him restoring heaven's light to the blind,
heaven's music to the deaf, and sweet human
speech to the dumb. We see Him in hours, dark
and sad and bitter to Him, but ah ! how profitable
to us! stretched in His bath of blood in Geth-
semane, fainting against the pillar of Pilate, and
looming out white and ghastly from the darkness
of Calvary. And we know that all His sufferings
and sorrows were borne for us! and therefore it
is that His Sacred Name, with all its sad yet hal-

FEAST OF THE HOLY NAME 65

lowed reminiscences, has become so veiy dear to
us.

It is the sweetest word that is given to human
lips to utter ; it is the solace of the living, and the
hope of the dying; it is the one Word wherewith
the holy soul, surcharged with tenderness and
love, can give expression to its ecstatic emotions ;
and in It, the poor sinner finds in the depths of his
despair and degradation and misery the highest
hope and confidence and courage. It animates the
weak, it strengthens the strong, it comforts the
sorrowful, it multiplies sevenfold the joys of
God's elect: it bids the sinner hope, the just
rejoice.

The pious soul, glowing like the faces of the
seraphs, after a morning spent in Communion,
sacramental and spiritual, with its God, takes
leave of Jesus, with his sweet Name upon her lips :
and every moment of that happy day the memory
of the Blessed Presence she enjoyed haunts her
like a happy dream, and she sees Jesus every
where, in the light of the firmament, in the flowers
that bedeck the earth, in the stars that are sown
broadcast in the Heavens.

On the other hand, when all other means have
failed to win back to God's grace the hardened,
impenitent sinner, when expostulations, and rea
sonings, and beseechings are in vain, and the poor
soul is turning away with its burden of sin, to
walk the ways of darkness again, the Priest of
God recurs to the Sacred Name of Jesus, and with
it and its sacred memories he conjures the poor,
lost soul to quit its evil ways, and return to the
Love and the Life that is offered it ; and the appeal

66 SERMONS

is very seldom made in vain. Hell has no terrors
to fright the sinner, heaven no joys to allure him;
death is despised, and Judgment ignored ; but with
all his iniquities the sinner has a human heart,
and his memory reverts at the mention of the
Sacred Name to all the stories of the Life of
Jesus; and he sees Him a trembling Babe, and
the mild man going about doing good to all, and
in the agony of Gethsemane, and on the cross on
Calvary, and his heart is touched; and unknown
to himself, unknown to all but God, he worships
Jesus for His attributes, and he sympathizes with
Jesus in His Sufferings; and God's hand is
reached to him, and God 's grace lifts him from the
depths out of which he has cried: and then his
conversion is completed, and there is joy in
Heaven.

The sacred name of Jesus is the watchword of
Christianity. Deeply as the saints and God's
elect love It, as deeply do the world and the devils
hate It, as they hated Him who bore It. "If the
world hates you," said Our Lord to His disciples,
"know you that it has hated me before you."

But the Church delights to honor the Name of
her Sacred Spouse. It is written in our temples :
It is borne aloft in our most solemn processions
under the crucified figure of Him who bore it : It
is wafted with the swell of the organ around the
aisles of our cathedrals, whilst every head is bent,
and every tongue is mute: It is the name under
which is enrolled many a noble brigade in the
great army of Christ : many an artist hand, guided
by a loving heart, has adorned It with all the em
bellishments experience could suggest or genius

FEAST OF THE HOLY NAME 67

devise; and the art of the highest sculptor as of
the poorest artisan is called into requisition to en
grave on the marble mausoleum or on the rude
stone cross that Name in which are concentrated
all the strong faith, and the abiding hope, and the
deep, unutterable love of the departed Christian.

That this most blessed Name should be re
spected and venerated by us, that it should be
spoken by us with affection, and heard by us in
reverence, is a conviction that helps in the mind
of every Catholic, and finds a faithful exponent
in their every word and action.

The doctors of the Jewish covenant, when tran
scribing the histories of their ancestors, or the
wisdom of their sages, or the visions of their
prophets, laid down their pens, and covered their
faces in awe, when the word " Jehovah " appeared,
so salutary was the terror with which that great
name, heard amid the thunders of Sinai and seen
in the pillar of flame, had invested itself.

Believe me, the Name of Jesus, now so sweet
and familiar to us, is no less terrible. "At the
name of Jesus," says the Holy Scripture, "every
knee shall bend of those that are in Heaven, on
earth, and in Hell/' so that, when the Sacred
Name is uttered, by the lips of a saint in his ec
stasy, or of a scoffer in his frenzy, the Seven
Spirits that stand before the throne of the Eter
nal, the Angels, the Archangels, the Principali
ties and Powers, the Thrones and Dominations,
the Cherubim and Seraphim — all the host of
Heaven, like a great wave of light, rocks and
sways in deepest adoration, confessing the maj
esty of the Redeemer of men.

68 SERMONS

At the same time, their fallen brethren are
forced by Divine omnipotence to worship the mys
tery of God, incarnate 1 in human flesh — that mys
tery which conferred so high an honor on man's
nature that Lucifer and his host refused to com
prehend it, and so rebelled and were lost. Yet
this great and awful Name, which the lips of
saints are not worthy to pronounce, is familiar
and homely to us. Nay, Jesus Himself wishes
that it should be ever on our lips, and ever written
on our hearts : and the Holy Church, which has in
herited all His love for men, has enriched it with
many most precious indulgences, thus appealing to
our very selfishness to worship the Sacred Name,
if, perchance, at any time our reverence for it
should abate, or our love for it grow cold.

In all circumstances, in all times, in all places,
this Blessed Name will be our greatest consolation
and support. But there are two occasions, im
portant beyond all others, when it will be our
surest and easiest defense — the hour of tempta
tion and the hour of death. The hour of tempta
tion: for, apart altogether from the reflections it
suggests to the mind of every Christian, and the
consequent influence it exerts in determining his
actions, it has a force, a power, an innate strength,
which is omnipotent to repel temptation.

United with the name of the mother whom He
loved (and who will dare to separate Jesus from
Mary), let this blessed Name be the companion of
your loneliness, the soother of your sorrow, your
hope in sin, your joy in grace, your shield in temp
tation, your song in victory. In your death-hour,

i Revealed.

FEAST OF THE HOLY NAME 69

He whom you invoked so frequently during life
will not be absent from your pillow. And the
Church, ever jealous of the welfare of her little
ones, lest they should be deprived of the least of
God's graces, grants a Plenary Indulgence to the
dying Catholic, who, being unable to obtain the
ministrations of a Priest, pronounces the Sacred
Name with contrition and love. The same grace
is extended to him if he should be speechless, pro
vided that he thinks of Jesus with sorrow and
affection, that thus he may pass through the
portal of Death, spotless, unstained, and wing his
flight to Heaven, untouched by the penal fires of
Purgatory.

tbe Sacrefc Ibeart of Jesus

7flQIE celebrate to-day, my Brethren, the latest
development of that love for Her Divine
Spouse which is the richest inheritance of the
Catholic Church.

We know, for Catholic Theology teaches it as
certain, that we owe to the three Persons of the
Most Holy Trinity equal gratitude, equal love,
for the priceless blessings of -Redemption : but for
the proximate agent of that redemption, for Him
who was our flesh, and suffered in it, and took it
up to Heaven, and invested it there by its per
petual hypostatic union with power and majesty
equal to that of the Father and the Holy Ghost,
we have a feeling which we can scarcely define.

It is not the awful reverence and filial love with
which we regard the Father, nor the vague, half-
fearing, half -wondering respect which we feel for
the Holy Spirit, but it is a consciousness that be
tween us and our Incarnate God there is knit for
evermore an eternal bond of brotherhood; that
He is our possession ; that by assuming our nature
he has exiled Himself from Heaven ; that He is no
longer exclusively a God of hosts and armies, but
the hidden God, the God of Israel, the Savior.

And with this Divine Mystery of the Incarna
tion and the sacramental presence of her Divine
Spouse in the cognate mystery of the Eucharist
ever before her eyes, the Church of Christ has
made the Person of our Divine Redeemer the spe-

70

ON THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS 71

cial and constant object of the adoration of her
faithful.

She never tires of putting before us the Sacred
Humanity, that holds the Divinity and all its at
tributes as it were in annihilation ; she puts it be
fore us, as the trembling Babe, as the Divine Man,
going about doing good to all, in all the ghastly
horrors of His Passion, and in all the new-born
glories of His resurrection. She shows us, and
the sight has grown familiar, those Divine Hands
that were for ever lifted up in prayer to the Eter
nal Father, or dispensing blessings to men: we
know the blessed feet, that walked the sands of
Judea and the waters of Galilee, that were washed
by the tears of Magdalen and wiped with her hair :
she will have us put our hands, like Thomas, into
the wounds of His hands and feet and side, but
not like Thomas, with incredulity, but with the
faith that He Himself will give us, a faith that
will merit for us the beatitude: "Blessed are
they that have not seen and have believed. ' '

And she has brought us to-day around her altars
to tell us again of that mysterious Love which God
entertains for men, and to expose for our worship
and adoration the fountain of that love, the depth
of which the Father and the Spirit alone can
fathom — the Sacred Heart of Jesus. And she
bids us to sit at her feet, and under the guidance
of the Divine Spirit she will teach us, with that
theological precision which is her peculiar charac
teristic, the nature and the limits of that devotion
which she will have implanted in the hearts of her
faithful.

And first of all she tells us that the object of our

72 SERMONS

reverent worship is no visionary symbol, or
shadowy figure, but the real, living, pulsing Heart
of our Divine Lord, the living chalice of the Pre
cious Blood, the same Sacred Heart that from the
first instant of its existence sent up its piteous
pleadings to the Father for mercy upon men — the
same Sacred Heart that was ever full to bursting
of sympathy with human sorrow — the same Sacred
Heart that dictated the gentle words and the kind
deeds of our Beloved Lord — the same Sacred
Heart that was crushed in Gethsemane under a
weight of sorrow, to which not all the sorrow of
all the reprobate for eternity is comparable — the
same Sacred Heart that never hardened under all
the contumely and the insult and the outrage ; the
same Sacred Heart that was desecrated even in
death and that made even that desecration an
expiation for sin — the same Sacred Heart that
beats in the breast of the glorified Humanity of
Jesus, at the right hand of His Father — the same
Sacred Heart that throbs under the fingers of the
Priest at the Consecration in the great Eucharis-
tic Sacrifice.

And she tells us that she has taken the Sacred
Heart of Jesus, united with His Humanity and
Divinity, as the special object of our worship to
day, for she is mindful that among the many other
words of our Divine Lord upon earth, was one
that was to remind her children to all time that
they had a model of highest virtues to imitate — a
model of that meekness which Isaias had foretold
— a model of that humility which Isaias did not
foretell, for Isaias could not have comprehended

ON THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS 73

it — the meekness and humility of the Sacred
Heart: "Learn, of me, because I am meek and
humble of heart. " And she has learned that in
all ages, and in all climes, the heart has been re
garded as the center and source of all great affec
tions, and she wishes to commemorate in a special
manner the love of Him "who having loved His
own who were in the world loved them to the end. ' '

And she looks around the great festivals of the
year, and she remembers that at the Nativity she
is so overpowered by the humiliations of our Di
vine Lord that she does not think of His Love, and
during Holy Week the shadows of Calvary are
around her, and awe-stricken at the horrible im
piety of men she does not think of the Love of
their Victim; and on Easter Sunday she exults in
His glory, and in her great joy she forgets the
past, with its tale of Love ; and on Ascension Day
she looks up to Heaven, and is happy to think and
think only of the joy of our Divine Lord on meet
ing His Heavenly Father, and even on Corpus
Christi triumph and exultation are the feelings of
the hour.

But to-day, even while the memory of that great
feast still lingers with us, the Church has called
us together to commemorate the love of God for
us. That was the Feast of our love for Jesus:
this is the Feast of His love for us. Still we must
not confound the object of this devotion with the
motive. It is the love of our Divine Lord that we
commemorate; but it is the Heart of our Divine
Lord that we worship : the Heart, that symbolizes
the love. Again, though not confounding, neither

74 SERMONS

must we separate the object and motive of this
devotion, but both combine and form the material
and formal object of our adoration.

Lastly, the Church teaches us that the worship
she asks us to pay to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
is the same worship that we pay to the person of
Jesus — the same worship that we pay to the
Father and the Holy Ghost — that though our de
votion is specially directed to the Sacred Heart,
we by no means exclude the rest of the Sacred
Humanity !

This arises from what is called the Hypostatic
Union — the union of the two natures of Jesus
Christ, the divine and human in one person. That
person is the Person of the Word made Flesh: it
is therefore Divine. Hence, Mary is the Mother
of God for she is the Mother of that Divine Per
son. Hence the hands and feet of our Blessed
Lord are Divine. They are the hands and feet of
God. Hence is His Sacred Heart Divine.

Hence does it merit Divine honor. Divine in its
Hypostatic Union. Divine in its hatred of sin-
Divine in the reparation it has paid, and still pays,
to the Father — Divine in its sorrows and suffer
ings — Divine most of all in its love and mercy
for men. In its love for the holy and the just
— in its greater love for the unjust and the
sinner.

Who shall measure it or sound its depths? It
is like looking up into the blue sky. Infinite azure
everywhere, but the mind that attempts to measure
its height is sure to lose itself. So it is with the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. Love, benevolence, char
ity, kindness everywhere; but "the breadth and

ON THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS 75

the length and the height and the depth, " neither
St. Thomas, with his giant intellect, nor the sera
phic intelligence of the highest angel, nor the all
but infinite mind of Mary, can measure.

Let us take a proof in the case of sinners. Let
us start with this premise, that there is one thing,
and only one, that can measure itself with God, one
thing, and only one, that requires the infinity of
God to hate it as it deserves, and that is sin. Now
open the page of Holy Writ :

" Simon, I have somewhat to say to thee."

"Master, say it!"

"Dost thou see this woman? I entered into thy
house ; thou gavest me no water for my feet, but
she with tears hath washed my feet and with her
hairs hath wiped them. Thou gavest me no kiss :
but she since she came in hath not ceased to kiss
my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint :
but she with ointment hath anointed my feet.
Wherefore, I say to thee, many sins are forgiven
her because she hath loved much." And he said
to her : ' ' Thy sins are forgiven thee. Thy faith
hath made thee safe: go in peace. "• —Luke, vii.
44-50.

Think of the infinite hatred of God for sin.
Think, then, who was this woman f and then admit
that if ever the mercy of God was taxed it was
here, and here it was not found wanting.

Take again the sequel of this scene — the tableau
on Calvary, the strangest sight God's angels ever
witnessed. Jesus the virgin, Mary the virgin,
John the virgin, and Magdalen, the Sinner by ex
cellence. There in the midst of the only real
nobility the earth ever saw, a nobility lent by

76 SERMONS

Heaven for a time to Earth to bless it with its
presence, and to hallow it with its memory, there
in the center of the dignitaries of Heaven, was the
outcast, she that had been the caterer for Hell, she,
whose work in time was bearing fearful fruit in
eternity in the hot tears of the damned she had
sent there. And was there mercy for her? Were
there no cries of vengeance from the poor lost
souls to echo around the Cross of Christ, and steel
the heart of Jesus against compassion and shut up
the fountain of mercy? Perhaps so. But the dy
ing eyes saw only the tears of the sinner : the dying
God heard only the sighs that were going up to
Him from a heart that was crushed by the omnipo
tence of His Love, and the intensity of its sorrow.
And when about to yield up His pure soul into the
hands of His Father, He looked on Magdalen, the
first fruits of His great atonement, and told His
Father that His work on earth was consummated.
And when the soldier came around His Cross, and
opened His Sacred Heart with his spear, not a
tint, not a pin's-point, of Blood fell upon the spot
less Mary, or the virginal John, but it descended
in a healing flood on the head of the weeping sin
ner, and in the baptism of the Blood of Jesus, and
in the baptism of her own tears, the soul of the
sinner was doubly regenerated.

More than virgin in her penitent love, more than
martyr in her passionate woe, I do believe that she
is as near the Sacred Heart in Heaven to-day as
she was when she knelt at the foot of the cross on
Calvary, and if I have spoken hard things of her,
she knows that I have done so with no irreverence,
but only to preach the grandeur of her contrition,

ON THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS 77

and the infinite love of the Sacred Heart that ac
cepted it.

But what do I sayf The strangest sight God's
angels ever witnessed ! If there were not another
in these our own days to keep them for ever astare
with astonishment! They, who remember the
day, the memory of which shall never die in
heaven, when their bright brother angels admitted
the momentary sin, and the swift retributive jus
tice of God caught them up, and bound them in the
dismal depths of Hell for ever — how can they, with
that fearful lesson written in characters of fire be
fore them, look out upon this world, and see the
darkness and the death-shadow over it, and the
sins of men beneath, and reconcile the justice of
God towards angels, and His infinite mercy to
men?

They do not know, perhaps, that in that dark
ness and death-shadow the Eternal Father dis
cerns here and there the Little Lamp that denotes
the Sacramental Presence of His Son ; that in the
darkness and death-shadow He sees the hands of
His Divine Son uplifted to ward off His Justice;
that out of the darkness and the death-shadow He
hears the throbbings of the Sacred Heart, throb-
bings that would ransom a million of worlds : and
He thinks of Calvary and is patient yet a little
while.

For ever thinking of men — men never think of
Him. When the morning sun shines upon the
earth, when the red glare of noon falls upon the
world outside, when the shadows of evening fall
and the twilight deepens into night and the stars
come out in the heavens, and there is sleep upon

78 SERMONS

the world, thinking, in the solitude of His prison
on the altar of you and me, when you and I are
not thinking of Him. Thinking of the holy souls,
that clustered around Him at the morning Mass,
thinking of every fervent Communion, of every
devout meditation, of every warm aspiration, of
every act of reparation and love, and thinking of
the surprise and joy of those holy souls when they
come to Heaven and find that though no word was
spoken to them from the silent tabernacle, no re
sponse given to their prayers, that no word or
thought of theirs has faded from the memory of
Jesus, but that He has treasured them up in His
Sacred Heart, with the more than commensurate
reward He has attached to each.

Thinking, too, of the tepid soul, that once per
haps loved him dearly, but has since gone hunting
butterfly vanities through the world. Thinking
with pain of how that poor soul came in, and bent
the knee, and muttered a prayer, and went hunting
butterfly vanities again. Thinking most of all of
the weary, way-worn sinner, with the lightnings of
the Father's anger flickering around his head, and
the "welcome" already on the lips of the devils
beneath ! Thinking by what sweet allurements of
His grace He will wean away that poor soul from
sin and sorrow, and bring him, as He brought
Magdalen, a weeping penitent to His feet. Think
ing, too of the other sheep, who are not of this
fold, and how He will bring them too into His fold.
And there shall be but one sheepf old and Himself
the Shepherd. Thinking for ever of men: men
never thinking of Him! How the angels of
Heaven pity us ! ! !

0,V THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS 79

My Beloved, a duty devolves upon us to-day,
and for us lives the duty of Reparation to the
Sacred Heart! Eeparation for our own sins;
reparation for the sins of the world ; for the scoff-
ings, the revilings, the iniquities, of a world that
would crucify God to-day, as it crucified Him of
old. Reparation, most of all for the deadly, black,
and blighting sin that tore this fair land l from
the sweet yoke of Christ, and gave it up to its
three centuries of iniquity. To take away from
the face of Boniface, our patron, who, for the love
of the Sacred Heart, that we worship to-day, went
out from his country and from his father's house
into a distant land, and there sealed his faith with
his blood ; to take from his face the blush, and the
shame and the sorrow when he looks over this fair
land, once trodden by the feet of saints, now given
up to its temples of fruitless prayer, and the devil-
worship of its streets.

Great and good men speak hopefully of a second
spring, a new Resurrection. Indeed, God does
seem to be drawing aside slowly his curse from
the land, in the fact that England has taken almost
the lead of the world in propagating this Devotion
to the Sacred Heart, we discern no transitory
gleam of hope, but the splendid promise of a large,
all-atoning future. Perhaps the day will come
when we shall lend our saints to other lands, as we
lent Boniface of old. However that may be, for
the wishes of those great and good men, we pray
a happy consummation! And may our prayers,
however feeble, be not unheard in Heaven ! ! !

i England.

passion Sermon— 6oofc

Why then is thy apparel red, and thy garments like
theirs that tread the Winepress?

I have trodden the Winepress alone; and of the gen
tiles there was not a man with me. Isaias 63. 2.

INGE more the course of time has brought
around this holiest Season of the year; and
once again have you assembled to hear the tale
of Man's infinite perversity and God's infinite
mercy. It ought not be a pleasant tale for us to
meditate upon. It reveals too truly man's great
folly and blindness and wickedness. It is the his
tory of his greatest crime — the darkest and most
terrible deed ever accomplished. Yet we do not
turn aside from it, nor avoid its contemplation.
We do not shut it from our eyes in horror ; or try
to cloak it up carefully so that it shall trouble us
no more. Nay, we seek it out, try to keep it ever
before our minds, study it, meditate upon it, and
read with pious care every revelation made to the
Saints, every detail of Christ's passion and death,
as narrated in the Sacred Gospels, or has come
down to us from the vision of the Saints.

The gibbet on which Christ hung has become our
sign and promise of redemption and mercy. Once
a shameful and hideous thing, which the eye of
man never beheld but in horror, it is now become
the symbol of our highest hopes, the blessed mark
to which our eyes ever turn with confidence and

80

PASSION SERMON—GOOD FRIDAY 81

love. We mark ourselves with it morning and
noon and night. We lift it on the highest pin
nacles of our Churches. It is the first sign made
over the infant ; it is the last sign presented to the
eyes of the dying. Nay, even after death, when
the clay has closed down for ever on the remains
of the departed Christian, his friends lift over
those dead remains the figure of the gibbet on
which Christ died, to prove that the Cross con
quers death and is a promise of a glorious im
mortality.

Why is that shameful sign our conquering sym
bol ; why is that dark and terrible tragedy of Cal
vary, with all its horrors, such a favorite study
for us? Why do you come here to listen to it
again? Is cruelty, and pride, blows and scourg-
ings, the plaiting of thorns for torture, and the
waving of whips that cut and draw blood, and the
driving of nails through shrinking flesh, and the
fever of thirst, and the tearing of the heart with a
lance — are these such pleasant subjects that
women and even children are come here to-night to
hear of them for the hundredth time? Or is there
something in this mournful tale, which has a spe
cial interest for us? Something that makes this
terrible tragedy our own? There is, for in that
tragedy, you and I were actors, and you and I
have profited by it to this extent, that through
these awful sufferings endured by Christ, we have
escaped being actors in another tragedy, the scene
of which is placed in the nether darkness; the
instruments are the terrible fire created by the
breath of an angry God, the agents of which are
devils and the worm that dies not, the scenery of

82 SERMONS

which is that smoke that ascends from the ever
lasting furnace and the end of which is — never.
And as the passion and death of Christ are dear to
us, and terrible as they are, we turn to them for
comfort and strength.

If a friend dies far away from us, and we could
not hear his last words, nor close his dying eyes,
but we have heard that he spoke of us to the end,
and left us all he had, and saved us from terrible
ruin, we should be very hard if we would not like
to hear of these last moments. Now, that friend
is Christ — and of His last moments I speak : All
that I have said, has been done for each of us.

I do not propose this evening to go through all
the stages of the passion of Our Blessed Lord. I
am going simply to take, as it were, three pic
tures from that passion, and show them to you,
and tell you what they signify.

It is right in a great city in the East, famous
for its history and its splendors. Sleep has come
down upon the eyes of men, except on a small
group of the wicked, who, with a white-faced
traitor in the midst, are plotting evil against the
innocent. Outside the city there runs a brook,
called Kedron, and beyond the brook, on the slop
ing declivity of a hill, there is a wood of small,
stunted, bushy trees. The figures of four men
cross this brook, and without a word sink into the
midnight darkness of the plantation. Not a word
do they speak, and when their footsteps have died
off the fallen leaves there is deeper silence than
before. An hour goes by; and now we hear the
low, painful sobbing of some one in agony — the

PASSION SERMON— GOOD FRIDAY 83

sad moaning of a human voice, uttering its sor
row and pain. It is the voice of a man; and it
comes not from physical suffering; for men do not
cry out with bodily pain. It is the voice of a man ;
and there is terrible agony in His heart, if we are
to judge by the broken sounds that reach us.
Suddenly there is a cry which makes the birds
jump from the trees, and makes the waters of the
brook curdle with horror; and echoing over hill
and valley in a scream of awful agony we hear the
words from the darkness of the garden, "Father,
if possible let this Chalice pass from me"!

We enter the garden, and behold there is but
One there. In a corner, kneeling down on the
wet grass and leaves, with His body thrown for
ward, and His hair falling down around Him, and
His head bent down upon the ground, is a man.
He is in agony. From Him that cry has come.
We see His whole frame trembling with pain.
He lifts His face towards us; and what a face!
White as the whitest marble, cold as the face of
the dead, but there are red streaks across the
forehead and beneath the eyes, and those eyes look
at us with a sorrow and pain such as man never
experienced before. We come near and touch
Him. His garments are cold and wet ; in the light
of the stars we see and our hands are blood. We
stoop and gather the grass and leaves that were
beneath Him. They, too, are wet. We again
bring our hands to the light of the stars, and be
hold our hands are covered with blood. What
terrible work is this? Who is this man, whose cry
of agony we have heard, and whose blood has

84 SERMONS

watered the soil of this garden? Why, therefore,
is thy apparel red, and thy vesture as of those who
tread the winepress! And the answer comes
again in the words of Scripture : ' ' The winepress
I have trodden alone, and of the gentiles there is
not a man with Me."

No, Lord ! Alone in Thine agony in the garden
—alone, with Thy angry Father — alone with the
awful burden of man's iniquities pressing Thee to
the earth — not one of Thy angels near Thee, till
Thy struggles are nearly over; not one of Thy
disciples to comfort Thee — unmindful of Thee,
they are sunk in sleep.

But what is the meaning of Thine agony!
What terrible vision has come to Thee that threw
Thee groveling on the earth, and forced Thy blood
through the pores of Thy flesh, and made Thy lips
utter that prayer to Him, Thy Father, who hath
loved Thee with an everlasting love! Ah! terri
ble indeed was Thy vision : Man and his iniquities !

From Adam and his wife, living in their shame,
as they pass the portals of Paradise, down to the
last man who shall stand on this earth, till the fire
of God consume him, the human race has passed
before the eyes of Christ. He stands on the
bridge that spans the two eternities and that sad
procession wends along before His eyes. With
laughter in their eyes and on their lips, behold the
long array of this world's children. Nation after
nation, race after race, the old and the young, the
rich in his purple, the beggar in his rags, the lusty
and strong with their heads lifted to Heaven in
their pride, the beggar and the cripple with their
eyes bent to earth in their sorrow — and the name

PASSION SERMON— GOOD FRIDAY 85

of Christ is on many lips — but hardly a face in
that mighty multitude is turned towards Him but
with scorn.

Far worse : from the hearts and lips and hands
of those multitudes sins come forth as numerous
as the sands of the sea, as the flies that float
in the air in summer. Sins, deadly in their
malice, hideous in their nature. Sins that make
the heart of Christ sick with sorrow. Sins too
loathsome to be spoken of, sins too terrible to
be named. Committed in the glare of noonday,
under the eyes of God — committed in the darkness
of night, through which it was hoped the eye of
God could not pierce. Committed in the tranquil
fields, and making Nature shudder. Committed
in the noisy cities, whose fetid atmosphere is
choked with sin, and daily sends up its hateful
exhalations before the throne of His Father. Sins
of the old who ought to have passed the season of
sin, and sins of the young and tender for whom
the heart of Christ is pierced with a special
anguish !

But this is not the worst. Christ saw those sins
from Heaven before ; but there was no dire agony,
no sweat of blood. All ! but now He stands in flesh
and blood in the world 's thoroughfare, and, horror
of horrors to His gentle soul, there is not a sin
committed by that vast multitude that now does
not detach itself and cling to Him. As some hide
ous reptiles, creeping from their covering, would
enfold themselves around the limbs of a sleeping
man, and stifle him with their foul stenches, and
drive their poisoned fangs into his flesh, and coil
round and round with their strong folds and

86 SERMONS

squeeze him to death, so the sins of men coiled
around the heart of Christ, and stifled Him.

And not a friend near ! Judas plotting his trea
son. Peter, James and John asleep, and, looking
up towards Heaven, Jesus beheld in the rift a
thundercloud, the face of His Father in anger,
the love of His Eternal Father quenched, the Holy
Spirit standing by in his sorrow, until His great,
loving Heart could no longer bear it, and He flung
Himself down on His face on the ground and the
agonizing cry came from His lips: Father, let
this Chalice pass from Me.

Now it is no longer night, but the glare of the
noontide sun falls hot and fierce on the streets of
the city. In a large open space there is a palace,
very white and beautiful, with pillars and porti
coes, and broad, marble steps sloping down to the
street. A standard floats overhead, for it is the
palace of the Roman Governor. A vast mass of
people surges and sways in that street, and their
eyes are turned upwards to the doors and win
dows, whilst, mute and silent as statues, the sol
diers of the guard stare down upon them.

It is a strange multitude. The men, with the
dark, Jewish type of feature, with arms folded and
determined faces, are still. The dusky Jewish
women are in a high state of excitement, and jests
and jeers and laughter pass freely amongst them.
Here and there amongst the multitude, distin
guishable by their white garments and the strange
letters on their breasts, are the priests of the syna
gogues, their eager faces lighted up by excitement,
as they move hither and thither and whisper a

PASSION SERMON— GOOD FRIDAY 87

word here and a word there, and argue and reason,
and make the men's faces darker and the women's
laughter more loud. And here, alas, are little
children, whose tiny voices are hardly heard ; and
it is well, for they are saying things that make
their angels weep.

Suddenly, a deep hush falls upon the mighty
multitude, and every face is turned upwards to
the balcony of Pilate's palace. For Pilate is there
—pale and trembling, fearful of that crowd — fear
ful still more of One, whom he has just condemned
to be scourged. A deeper hush falls upon the
crowd, and forth from a door in the marble wall
two soldiers come, and between them is a white
figure, who faints and stumbles, then stands erect,
and looks down with eyes of meekness and sor
row on those who are thirsting for His life. And
now there arises a shout from that angry mob that
makes Pilate grow paler, and startles the Eoman
soldiers themselves. A long, fierce hiss of anger,
then a scream of execration that rises up into a
torrent of awful blasphemies. The faces of the
men are distorted with passion as they cry and
curse; the arms of women bare to the shoulders
are stretched out with clenched fists, whilst their
lips pour forth a stream of fierce imprecations
against that white, silent figure in the balcony ; ah !
and the little children lift their tiny trebles and
imitate the fiendish conduct of their fathers and
mothers, whilst the priests, now that the moment
of their vengeance has come, stimulate and excite
the already fierce passions of the mob, until noth
ing seems able to restrain or oppose. Then Pilate

88 SERMONS

rises up and with shaking hand points to his meek
prisoner, and half in derision, half in sorrow, ex
claims : ' ' Behold the Man. ' '

We will accept his invitation and look closer.
Ah ! it is just the same face we saw a little while
ago in the garden of Gethsemane — just the same
face stained with blood — but then the blood came
from excess of agony — now it comes from the
hands of men ; for see around His white forehead,
and circling His brown hair, that is now matted
and thick, there is a rough wreath of prickly
brambles, and the thorns have gone in through the
temples, and at every movement of the head a tiny
stream of blood trickles down His cheeks or blinds
His eyes. And His face is bruised and livid, for
the hands have fallen heavily upon them. And a
reed is resting upon His shoulders, supported by a
rope that holds hrs wrists together. But they
have changed His own red garment for the white
vesture of a fool; and we can imagine how they
have mocked Him and spat upon Him, for last
night and the night before, He never lay down His
head in rest, but sat in the hall of Pilate, and the
soldiers made merry over Him and used Him as
an imbecile with rough jests and cruel blows.

But is not this the very man whom all Israel
for the three years was going wild about? Is not
this the man who was called by the people their
Messias, their King, their Prophet ? A f ew days
ago did we not see this same people flinging their
garments before Him in the street, and swinging
palms in their hands and shouting Hosannas in
His praise? And was not all this glory only what
He deserved for the mighty work of mercy and

PASSION SERMON— GOOD FRIDAY 89

goodness He wrought amongst them, spending
Himself in their service, and never bestowing a
thought upon Himself? From that day when He
came down to the Jordan, and St. John in the
midst of his exhortation to the people stopped sud
denly, as if he had seen the majesty of the God
head itself, and cried out : ' i Behold the Lamb of
God"; down to yesterday when he touched the
servant of the High Priest and healed him, have
we not been hearing of the wonders of His mercy
and the greatness of His power? Was not this He
from whose lips ever flowed words of compassion
ate tenderness, and from whose hands streams of
mercy into body and soul? Was not this He who
laid down His weary body to rest on the stones
by the highway when fatigued by His labors
amongst men ?

Why have they scourged that sacred body?
Did we not often see that gentle face, beaming with
sweetness and mildness when the poor came
around Him, and the sick were laid at His feet to
be healed. Why have they pierced that head with
thorns, and bruised that face with blows? Did we
not often listen to Him in wonder and amazement,
as sacred words flowed from His lips, and lessons
of the highest wisdom sank deep into our hearts ?
Why have they clothed Him now in the garments
of a fool, and mocked Him as one bereft of reason ?
And those hands now tied so firmly, with the ropes
cutting the flesh — are not those the hands that
were laid on the little children, when mothers
brought their babes to be blessed — are not these
the hands that touched the eyes of the blind and
they saw and the ears of the deaf and they heard —

90 SERMONS

that held the hand of the young man, who lay upon
his bier cold and still till, wakened by this voice,
he woke from the dream of death and was restored
to his mother — the same that were lifted before
the tomb of Lazarus and he came forth — the same
that held the daughter of the High Priest, and
raised her from the couch where she lay dead —
the same that were lifted over the head of Magda
len when the shackles of sin fell from her for ever?
And why have they tied Him as a felon and
criminal, and paraded Him before Heaven and
earth as a fool? But further still, is not this He
who stood with Moses and Elias on the Mount of
Transfiguration, and His face shone like the sun
and His garments were white as snow and the
voice of the Eternal Father was heard from the
clouds : "This is My Beloved Son in Whom I am
well pleased ! > '

Stop! soldiers! Stop! Pilate! Stop! priests
and people ! There is some terrible mistake here !
This is not a criminal! This is no felon! This
is no fool! I see the Heavens opened, and the
angels of God bending down from their thrones,
and on their faces is wrath and fury and in their
hands are sharp swords; and only that some in
visible power is staying them, they would descend
in an avalanche of fire and sweep the whole of you
—Pilate and priests and people — into hell. Yes !
Ecce Homo! Behold the man! has reached
Heaven, and God's battalions are looking out over
the bastions of Paradise, and that meek prisoner
whom you hold is their Master and their God.
Yes, "Ecce Homo" has gone down into hell, and
the devils are leaping and laughing in their mirth ;

PASSION SERMON— GOOD FRIDAY 91

and all evil things are wild with joy, because the
Holy One is in the hands of His enemies, and the
hearts of men are bent on His destruction.

Stop ! Pilate, for a moment ! Last night in her
dreams your wife was troubled — strange visions
came before her in which this pale prisoner had a
part, and she told you this morning : * ' Have noth
ing to do with this just man" — stop for a moment
—one fatal sentence, and you wash your hands for
the ages of eternity, and pass through your fingers
all the waters of the ocean, but the blood will cling
to you to the end. Stop! Priests. For many a
long year have kings and prophets desired to see
what you now see, and were not able. In the
silence of their hearts, and in the loneliness of
mountains, clothed with skins and fed by ravens,
persecuted by men even unto death — the holy
prophets of your race, whose words you treasure,
and whose memories you love, strained their eyes
through the mists of centuries to catch one glimpse
of the promised Deliverer ! And behold the man !
Behold, He is before you ! Unroll the long scrolls
of your histories, and search your historical books
and the dreams of your prophets, examine again
the mysteries concealed therein, and the strange
puzzles of your texts — then lift your eyes from the
holy page and behold Him to whom every text is
pointing — Behold the Man ! Renew your morning
and evening oblations from your victim at the
altar, and let your incense go up before God morn
ing and night. You know it is all a figure and
symbol of Whom — Behold the Man! Open your
eyes, ye priests, shake off the felon of pride — and
acknowledge your God and Messias in this man.

92 SERMONS

And you, ye people ! If the memory of mighty
miracles, which God alone could work — if the mem
ory of words of wisdom, which God alone could
speak — if the memory of the day when you sought
to make him King, as some more stupendous mani
festation of His Divine Power broke upon your
eyes — if these things will not come back to you
now — at least remember the infinite kindness, the
boundless mercy, the unspeakable charity of this
man before you. Speak for Him, some one who
has experienced His mercy. Speak for Him, ye
blind, who now behold Him — speak for Him, ye
palsied, whose limbs have been strengthened by
Him — speak for Him, ye dead, who were sum
moned back to life by His voice. In vain! In
vain ! Miracles and power, infinite goodness and
unspeakable love, memories of benefits received,
of favors granted — every good and generous
thought is sacrificed and flung to the winds — and
in an awful chorus of blasphemy and ingratitude
that maddened multitude first invoke a fearful
curse upon themselves: "His Blood be upon us
and on our children." And then a sentence on
their Maker: "Away with Him! Away with
Him! Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" and the
demons are wild with delight, and the angels close
their wings and hide their burning faces.

And promptly, without delay, as if they feared
they should repent, that mad multitude rises up,
and hastens to the third and last scene of this
awful tragedy. They had hurried Him up the
mountain, and when He fainted and fell, they
drove him quicker with brutal blows. Sweat
poured from His face and blood from His wounds,

PASSION SERMON— GOOD FRIDAY 93

but they heeded not, and some holy women, with
eyes blind from weeping, stooped over Him, and
wiped His forehead, and told Him how they pitied
Him. But the mob swept Him onwards and up
wards, and now He stands on the bare hillside of
Calvary, and looks around on the city, the Temple,
and the people, before he ascends the gibbet on
which He is to die. Then at a sign from His exe
cutioners He lays Himself gently on the Cross;
and then with awful agony, and shrinking of the
flesh, He is fastened to it, lifted on high, and looks
out once more from His Throne of suffering on
the world for which He is going to die.

The soldiers have stolen His garments, and are
rattling the dice to see who shall win them; the
priests are gathered together in a group, and look,
still with terror, on Him, whom they have slain;
the people are scattered here and there waiting
and watching their victim till they hear He is dead.

Close by the Cross is Magdalen, and the other
Mary and John, and closer still is she who is
dearer to Him than all the world beside — His own
great Mother. They are all silent — their grief is
too terrible for tears; for they know how their
Master is suffering. Magdalen presses her fore
head against His feet — they are hot and burning
with fever, and there is fever in His brain and in
His hands, and hot fever in the wild pulsations of
His Sacred Heart. The Mother is afraid to look
up into the face of her Son. She has heard Him
speak, and commit her to the care of St. John, and
her heart is broken with anguish. For now all the
many years of their love came before her.

She remembered the look that was in His eyes

94 SERMONS

when they opened upon her in the stable on that
night when the angels sang and the shepherds
came and adored. She remembered how He
nestled close to her in their flight under the stars
while the screams of murdered children and the
wailing of women struck her ears. She remem
bered how she watched Him as He grew up a
graceful and gentle boy ; and how proud she was
when the eyes of other mothers followed Him and
they whispered to each other that He was Mary's
child. She remembered the long, quiet, sunny
days at Nazareth when He worked by the side of
Joseph and made His preparation in solitude for
His mighty mission — and when at last He went
forth from His humble home, and gradually at
first, and then every day, reports came to the
Mother of the marvelous doings of her child, and
how the blessings of the poor followed Him, and
women cried : ' ' Blessed was the mother that bore
Him" — and now it has all come to this — and here
He is, torn and bleeding and agonized — and she,
His own Mother, cannot help Him. She can only
lean her head against the hard wood of the Cross
and silently weep. The hours wear on. Sud
denly, soldiers and priests and people are startled
by a wild, mournful cry from the lips of Jesus — a
cry such as one heard two nights ago from the
Garden of Gethsemane — a cry of pity and terror —
a cry of desolation and anguish. Lifting His head
from His breast, and fixing His dying eyes upon
Heaven, where the black night is already gather
ing, Jesus cries: "My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me?" What terrible words are
these — God forsaken by God ! The Son forsaken

PASSION SERMON—GOOD FRIDAY 95

by the Father! The passion of men — the anger
of demons raged against Him — the sins of the
world clothing Him from head to heel — the angels
kept back lest they should fly to His succor, and
the Father abandoning Him in His agony and in
the death that is now approaching ! And like the
sad cry heard by some abandoned creature on the
streets of a strange city by night — like the piteous
appeal of a contrite child to the father who is de
termined to punish him — like the trembling sup
plication of a creature who is brought face to face
with an appalling death — came that cry from the
lips of Jesus : "My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken Me?" All the majesty and serene dig
nity of the Godhead are now laid aside. All the
quiet majesty with which He bore His scourging
and faced the angry mob and answered His ac
cusers, has left Him. All the grace with which
even up to the last moment He spoke, bidding the
women not to weep — telling the contrite thief he
would be with Him that day in Paradise — are
gone, and instead of a soul suffering in silent
majesty an awful death, we behold the terrible
spectacle of a God dying in horror and pain — cry
ing for pity — complaining of His dereliction-
questioning His Father for a reason why all this
horror should seize Him — why He alone should be
forsaken. Around the bedsides of the worst of
men there is at least some semblance of God's
pity — but Jesus is dying without one glance of
compassion from Heaven — "My God, why hast
thou forsaken me I ' '

Struck with horror, with hearts more deeply
agonized than before, the women are silent.

96 SERMONS

There is here some dread mystery of the Godhead
which they cannot pierce — some secret terror in
the heart of Christ which they cannot fathom. A
few moments of silence. Then a low murmur
from His lips — "It is finished" — and looking up
they behold His head fallen on His breast. It is
all over now. Jesus is dead. The pain and the
anguish are no more. Silent are the lips that
dripped mercy — still is the great heart that beat
with compassion for humanity. The malice of
men has done its worst and God has died by their
Lands. And behold ! Nature is shuddering at the
crime. The sun that was shining brilliantly in the
heavens has drawn in his light and a darkness as
deep as that which fell on Egypt gathers around
Calvary and Jerusalem. The earth is trembling
and fearing in agony, and strange voices are heard
in the air. Terror-stricken with the consciousness
of their crime, this mad people run wildly down
the mountain, and through the gates of the city
and into the streets. People come out to the doors
of their houses with pale and anxious faces, ask
ing what has happened, and before their eyes
walking through the streets are the sheeted ghosts
of men and women long dead — for the graves have
been flung open by some power — and wrapping
their winding-sheets around them, the skeleton
forms of the departed have risen up to carry
terror into the homes from which long since they
were borne. In the forests the beasts creep to
shelter or cluster together for protection, and
deeper and deeper grows the darkness, and every
moment more distinct grow the forms of the spec
ters that are crowding the streets, and conscience-

PASSION SERMON— GOOD FRIDAY 97

stricken men, who a moment ago were shouting
in derision on the mountain, now murmur with
white lips, "this was a just man!" and Pilate in
his palace is trembling with dread, though the
brave Eoman guards are around him : and last of
all some one who has gone into the Temple to pray
has announced that the veil which hung before the
holy of holies, and which no one dare lift but the
High Priest, is rent from top to bottom, and the
place where the Most High used to dwell, where
the Ark of the Law was kept, and the white cloud
rested by day, and the fiery pillar by night, was
thrown open to the gaze of the multitude, for the
glory of the Most High had departed, and the
curse was already beginning to fall on the people.

All the while, but growing colder and more rigid
in -death every moment, the dead body of Christ
hangs loosely on His Cross ; and whilst the Virgin
Mother and the holy women stand helplessly be
fore it, let us, each sinful soul for itself, approach
that white figure of Christ, and ask ourselves what
it does all mean for us? Holy Faith teaches us
that for each sinful soul was this terrible atone
ment offered — that for the sins of each Christ suf
fered — that our souls were present to His eyes
through each and every bitter hour of His agony
and passion. As surely as He saw the faces of
the mob, who were driving Him to death, the face
of Pilate who condemned Him, the faces of the
priests who hated Him to the end, so surely He
saw your soul and mine, hating Him too, alas!
mocking Him, crying for His crucifixion, crying in
derision at His agony and death.

And if in meditating on these terrible scenes

98 SERMONS

we despise the traitor who sold his Master, and
pity the Apostle who denied Him, and grow angry
with the people who clamored for His death, and
detest the judge who in his cowardice sentenced
Him, and the priests who plotted His destruction,
let us spare a little of these angry thoughts for
ourselves, for we have a share in it all, and we
have been guilty of the blood of Christ, and have
betrayed and denied Him, and sentenced Him, and
plotted His destruction, and reveled in His suffer
ings, and only repented them when the darkness
came down, and the strength of G-od was mani
fested.

For as often as we turned to listen to the voice
of passion, as often as we yielded to the seduc
tions of the world, as often as vanity or pride took
away our affections from Jesus Christ, so often
we denied Him, so often we had a hand in His
death. Ah ! surely if there be any generosity left
us, if our hearts are not hard as granite and as
cold as the steel that pierced the heart of Christ,
this brief meditation will make a change in our
lives for the future.

Let us put down the idols we have erected in the
inmost shrine of our hearts, and put up in their
places the figure of the Crucified. After all what
friend is equal to this friend! Who has done for
us what Christ has done! From eternal banish
ment from the thrones of light, from eternal dwell
ing in the abodes of darkness, from the fire that
scorches, from the worm that bites, from com
panionship with devils, from the seething pitch
and the sulphurous smoke, and the despair that

PASSION SERMON—GOOD FRIDAY 99

never dies and the eternity that never ends, the
blood of Christ has redeemed us.

By the memory of that blood poured out so
lavishly for our sake, by the stripe of the scourg
ing, by the agony of the thorn, by the faintness
and weariness, the loneliness and desolation of
Christ, I conjure you to make this meditation on
Christ's passion the study of your lives.

If ever again your passions disturb you, think
that you are tempted to crucify Christ — if ever
again you are tempted to be cold and indifferent in
His service, think of the weak apostle who denied
Him. And if you are tempted to murmur or com
plain of the cross which the love of God has sent
you, fix your eyes on Him — " whose garment is
red, and whose raiment as of those who tread the
winepress." You are not called upon to take
up the Cross alone — you are not invited to tread
the winepress alone. The Christ of Calvary is
with you. He holds your hands, He guides your
steps, He lifts your Cross to relieve you of its
pain.

ON THE RESURRECTION OF
OUR LORD

Cbrfst's IResurrection,— Ube TTtiumpb of

dearly beloved, one of the greatest of
French pulpit orators has made the remark,
that, whereas over the graves of the greatest poten
tates nothing can be written but "Here lieth," or
"Here reposeth his mortal remains, " no such
epitaph could be written of the Crucified Christ.

All the eulogiums, all the adulations that follow
men even after death, all the praises written upon
their tombstones resolve themselves into this,
"Here lieth," "Here reposeth, " or rather, "Here
was deposited," because nothing is now distin
guishable, dust has mingled with dust, and it
would take more than human knowledge to discern
the dust that was always dust from the dust that
once was human.

Nothing similar, however, can be said of Christ ;
it is not a dumb stone that speaks to us of Him,
but a living Angel of Light, and he speaks not to
apprise us of the death or the burial, or the sepul
chral sleep, but of a great and a glorious resurrec
tion : "Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth who was cruci
fied ; He is risen ; He is not here ; behold the place
where they laid Him. " Passive during life, death
restored to Him the activity of Omnipotence ; He

100

CHRIST'S RESURRECTION 101

was obedient unto death; but death restored His
independence. During His life upon earth, His
Divinity was concealed, or at least, it was second
ary to the humility of His Humanity; He had a
mission to accomplish, and now and again He made
use of His Divinity to further His own and His
Father's interests; but though all His actions re
vealed Him to be God, He did not live as God but
as man, and the attributes of His Divinity were
held in abeyance.

Thus He suffered and thus He died, "led like a
sheep to the slaughter, dumb as a lamb before his
shearer"; but in death, the dominion of His hu
manity ceased, and His Divinity assumed its own
place, and all His Divine attributes resumed their
functions, and thus the grave could not hold
Christ; least of all should He suffer dissolution
like man ; but the Divinity of Christ, having, now
assumed dominion, glorified the body of Christ,
and united body and soul in a union never again
to be broken.

That He might suffer, He was abandoned by
God — but having died, there was no need of
further humiliation; but at once the glory of the
Divinity became manifest, and the soul of Christ
came back from the abode of the expectant saints
and took with it the instrument of its shame and
glory and of our Redemption, the dead body in the
tomb, and entered into it, and arose with it, having
first made it glorious, impassible and immortal.

The debt of the Father's justice was paid, and
all His old love that He bore to the Son from eter
nity returned; His anger was quenched in the
streams of the blood of His Son, and as on account

102 SERMONS

of Christ's obedience even unto death was given
Him a name which is above every other name, so
for the same humiliation is given Him a glory
which had never been reached by man, the glory of
conquering death, and remaining incorruptible.
"Thou shalt not give," says the Psalmist, "Thy
Holy One to see corruption. ' '

This great miracle of the Resurrection has al
ways been regarded by the Catholic Church as the
greatest of the miracles of our Divine Lord.
Apart from its consequences, it proves more
clearly than any other miracle the Divinity of
our Lord, and, therefore, it confirms every other
miracle, confirms His teaching, puts the prophe
cies of our Lord beyond dispute, and establishes
beyond all possibility of doubt, the Divinity
of His mission, and the Divinity of His Per
son. The Resurrection was not only the crown
ing glory of His life, the reward of all His suf
ferings, the consolation of all His humiliations;
it was the confirmation of His miracles, of
His doctrines, of His prophecies — in a word, of
His truth. Without the Resurrection, the life of
Christ would have been incomplete. To eyes of
Faith, His Divinity was always apparent; even
their reason, had it not been blinded by prejudice,
would have enabled the Jews to recognize the
Divinity of Christ ; but the Resurrection, in itself
an incontestable proof of Christ's Divinity, so
amply confirms and ratifies every other miracle,
that we may say that God's omnipotence was ex
hausted to satisfy the incredulous minds of men
that God really was amongst them, that He had
died for them, and saved them.

CHRIST'S RESURRECTION 103

It is, therefore, a great miracle to us to confirm
our Faith, and it is also, as St. Augustine remarks,
a great example to animate our hope. It is the
foundation of our Faith; because it is upon that
one miracle Christianity is built; it is the source
too, of all Christian morals, because it proves the
future resurrection of men from the dead; it,
therefore, establishes the truth, that there is a
future existence.

Now, it is this future existence that makes life
and the duties of life so solemn and awful for us ;
for our existence in eternity shall be happy or
miserable, according as our lives upon earth are
holy or unholy; take away that future life, and
you take from men all responsibility, you destroy
the very notion of virtue. You give the vicious
unlimited power to work evil; you take from the
virtuous all their consolation and all their hope.

If, as St. Paul says, we do not rise again, if our
hopes are to be confined to this world, then, indeed,
we are the most wretched of men. For whatever
we do is of no avail. Prayer is profitless, for
there is nothing to pray for. To what purpose do
we watch, and fast, and mortify ourselves, if there
were no reward, no risen God to welcome us as
His Disciples, for that we bore our crosses faith
fully for Him. Therefore, it is in our final Resur
rection that all our hopes are laid, and the Eesur-
rection of our Lord on this great solemn feast of
Easter is the pledge of the Resurrection, and the
future life of every soul which He saved. "In
every business or action, " says St. Chrysostom,
"the hope of a future result is the motive which
actuates us; for he who ploweth, ploweth that he

104 SERMONS

may reap; and he who fighteth, %hteth that he
may conquer. Take from man the hope of resur
rection, and there is no longer piety or virtue. "

The Resurrection of Our Divine Lord, is, there
fore, the surest pledge of our resurrection. His
Eesurrection from the Dead by the intrinsic power
of His Divinity is proof of the possession of a
complete, unlimited, uncircumscribed Omnipo
tence. If therefore, as St. Augustine remarks, He
could raise Himself to life, why may He not raise
others. If He could raise Himself from the dead
clothed in the very flesh in which He was crucified
and died, why not may we, by the same omnipo
tence, be restored to life in those same bodies in
which we are clothed during life? "If," as the
same holy doctor continues, "when He came upon
earth, He had assumed as the Manichaean heretics
supposed, not a real body, but an ideal and vision
ary body, or if, when He arose from the dead, He
had left in the sepulcher the body in which He
died and assumed a body of a different substance,
our resurrection might be questioned, though such
questions would be nugatory and unmeaning.
But it cannot for a moment be suffered impossible
that His Omnipotence should effect in us what it
effected in Himself."

His power is unchangeable, and the same power
that brought back His soul from Limbo, and re
united it with His body and endowed that body
with the surpassing qualities of subtility, impassi
bility, and immortality, can gather our dust, too,
from the graves, and build them again into habita
tions for our souls, palaces or prisons according
as our souls shall have merited eternal bliss or

CHRIST'S RESURRECTION 105

eternal misery. "Behold," says Saint Paul, "I
tell you a mystery. We shall all, indeed, rise
again; but we shall not all be changed in a mo
ment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last
trumpet ; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead
shall rise again incorruptible. And we shall be
changed." We shall be changed; but not in sub
stance, for the Omnipotent Hand of God will reach
into the depths of the sea, and the recesses of the
earth, and gather together the slime that was once
humanity, and sift it, and separate it into person
alities, and glorify it to make it worthy of the
soul, summoned from Heaven, or doubly degrade
it to be a prison for the damned soul more loath
some than hell itself.

"How shall God thus reform the body of our
lowliness?" "According to the operation,
whereby also He is able to subdue all things to
Himself." There can be no doubt then, of the
power of God to accomplish this miracle in us.
There is still less doubt that such is God's inten
tion. For as St. Leo remarks on the Ascension of
Our Lord, it is necessary that where the head is,
there too, the members should be. Now, Christ
ascended into Heaven in His Sacred glorified Hu
manity to open heaven to men ; for the same rea
son he triumphed over Death, and broke down the
barriers that we, too, might triumph over Death,
and rise again to life. He requires His followers
during life to lead such lives as He led; He re
quires them to be crucified to themselves, to die to
themselves — to lose their life that they may gain
it. He could not make such a demand if He had
not an appropriate reward, and no reward can be

106 SERMONS

appropriated in which the body, which has borne
all the sufferings, has not a share.

He glorified His Own Sacred Humanity, and
took it up to Heaven, and put it at the right hand
of the Eternal Father, because His sufferings and
Death have been a source of infinite glory to God,
and because His Sacred Humanity was the instru
ment of God's glory, because it was the subject of
all suffering. When, therefore, He requires that
we, too, shall suffer in the flesh, He means that we
shall be rewarded even in those bodies by which we
shall have suffered, which can only be done by rais
ing those bodies from the dead, and endowing
them with immortality.

This is the great argument of St. Paul, who
writes most strongly and most hopefully of the
resurrection of the dead; for he holds that be
tween us and our Divine Master there is estab
lished a close and intimate bond of union, so that
our eternities shall be like unto His, an eternity of
happiness, body and soul, if our lives bear a like
ness to His Life, our wills for ever conformed to
the will of Our Father, and our bodies brought
under complete subjection to our wills. "If there
be no resurrection from the dead, Christ is not
risen again. And if Christ be not risen again,
then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also
vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of
God; because we have given testimony against
God, that he hath raised up Christ, whom He hath
not raised up, if the dead do not rise again. For
if the dead do not rise again, neither is Christ
risen again. And if Christ be not risen again,
your faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins.

CHRIST'S RESURRECTION 107

Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ are
perished. If in this life only we have hope in
Christ, we are of all men most miserable/'

He goes on to say that Christ is the " first
fruits " of them that sleep, and in another place
he calls Christ, the "first-born" among the dead.
Both these expressions suppose that those whom
He has saved will rise like Himself; for why is
Christ the "first fruits," but because others are
to follow? And why is Christ called "first-born"
if not because others are to be born after Him by
a resurrection into a new life.

But not only does our Lord's Eesurrection prove
His omnipotence to restore us to life, arid His
will that we should rise like Him, but it is also
the model of our Eesurrection. In all things, our
Eesurrection will be like unto His, for, as St. Paul
says, "He will reform the body of our lowliness,
made like to the body of His glory." He rose
from the tomb incorruptible, immortal, impassi
ble, glorious, even more glorious than He appeared
to the Apostles in His transfiguration. He will
restore to us at our Eesurrection the bodies which
at death we yield up to Him ; but changed, trans
formed, glorified, immortal. "So also," says St.
Paul, "is the resurrection from the dead. It is
sown in corruption; it shall rise in incorruption.
It is sown in dishonor ; it shall rise in glory. It
is sown in weakness ; it shall rise in power. It is
sown a natural body; it shall rise a spiritual
body." Whatever is great and striking and sub
lime in the Eesurrection of Christ, our Resurrec
tions shall equally possess; remaining material,
our bodies shall be invested with all the properties

108 SERMONS

of Spirits, "made like to the body of the glory of
Christ, " clothed in light, conquering Death,
crowned with everlasting splendor.

This is our hope and our reward, as it has been
the hope and reward of the saints and just from
all time. "I know," said Holy Job, in the depth
of his affliction, "that my Redeemer liveth, and
on the last day I shall rise out of the earth, and I
shall be clothed again in my flesh, and I shall see
my God. Whom I myself shall see, and my eyes
shall behold, and not another; this my hope is
laid up in my bosom. ' ' And St. Paul, when writ
ing to the Thessalonians, bade them be of hope
concerning their friends who were dead. "We
will not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning
them that are asleep, that you be not sorrowful,
even as others who have no hope. For if we be
lieve that Jesus died and rose again, even so them
who have slept through Jesus will God bring with
Him." And again and again, in that wonderful
discourse in which Our Lord promises to give
Himself as Eucharistic food, He says that He will
raise up His own on the last day, that He will give
them eternal life.

"This is the will of the Father who sent me:
that of all He hath given to me I should lose
nothing, but should raise it up again on the last
day. And this is the will of the Father who sent
me: that every one who seeth the Son, and be-
lieveth in Him, may have life everlasting, and 1
will raise him up on the last day. ' '

"No man can come to me, except the Father
who hath sent me, draw him, and I will raise him
up on the last day." "He that eateth My Flesh

CHRIST'S RESURRECTION 109

and drinketh My Blood, hath everlasting life, and
I will raise him up on the last day. ' '

This, then, is the reward promised by Christ
to those who serve Him worthily. It is a triumph
over sin, and a triumph over death. It is a tri
umph over sin, because it will be the restoration
to humanity of that perfection of body and mind
that belonged to man before his fall. However
we encourage our vanity, or lean upon our pride,
we cannot conceal from ourselves the humiliating
fact that we are in a degraded condition of mind
and body, that we are not what God intended us
to be, that our nature has suffered a deterioration,
and that of ourselves w^e cannot improve it.

We lost a great deal by original sin, but we
were left this unhappy consciousness of our deg
radation. We are blind in intellect, and we know
it, know that for ever we are ' ' stumbling in dark
ness — walking in dark places like dead men."
We feel deeply every one of us the slavery in
which we are to this weak, corrupt, sinful, rebel
lious flesh of ours. There is no high-minded man
that does not feel keenly the humiliation of his
soul, that for ever aspires to fly to God and to
be at rest, but is bound down to earth by those
earthly bonds that are so tyrannical and hateful
but yet so powerful. And all this the effect of
sin. But when the Omnipotent love of God shall
restore us those bodies in the Resurrection all that
humiliation and tyranny will be at an end. For
the intellect will be as unclouded as that of an
Angel, and the body purified of its concupiscences.
And then, and not till then, the empire of sin and
the effects of sin shall be at an end.

110 SERMONS

Death, too, shall relinquish all his victories, by
relinquishing his claim over us. It is the great
est punishment of sin, and nature shrinks, and no
natural strength of mind can help one to bear the
thought of it with composure.

It is a terrible thing to go into the grave and
to be lost to the world. But the hope of Resurrec
tion takes from Death its sting and its victory.
Now, it is not at all terrible to go into the grave
when we know we shall again spring from the
grave, glorified and purified. It is not at all ter
rible to be lost to this world for a time, that we
may be re-united to a happier and better world
of Beings for Eternity.

But all this implies a condition. It was be
cause Christ was crucified He arose. We shall
not rise unless we, too, be crucified with Him.
Our restoration is a tedious process. It requires
three agents: death, the instrument of God, the
Omnipotence of God to raise us from the dead,
and we, who are to crucify ourselves, as the exe
cutioners crucified Christ. We shall not rise
glorious and immortal, unless we die ; we shall not
rise, unless God's omnipotence raises us; neither
shall we rise unless we are crucified by mortifica
tion, as Christ was crucified upon the Cross. And
the greater our trials, the greater will be our
glory.

We know that even on the glorified body of
Christ, His five wounds show with surpassing
splendor, and every stripe of His scourging was
changed into a bar of glorious light. And the
punctures of the thorns emitted rays, like to the
horns of light which shone on the head of Moses

CHRIST'S RESURRECTION 111

when he descended from Sinai. So shall it be
with us — every fast, every mortification, every
victory over our stubborn wills, and the perversity
of our pride, will increase the splendor of our
Resurrection. You will say, perhaps, that surely
the season of penance is past and this is the time
of rejoicing. But, remember, this is the feast of
Christ, not ours, this is the Easter of Him who
was Crucified, and who actually died ; but our pas
sion yet continues, and will continue until our
agony of death. Rejoice, if you will, that Christ
is risen ; but do not forget that yet you are tread
ing the hill of Calvary, and as every step on that
painful journey hastened the death of Jesus, by
the loss of blood and the agony it cost Him, so
may our daily journey to death through life hasten
our death to self and to the world, that God's
omnipotence may not find in us anything unpuri-
fied by mortification, but everything to facilitate
our resurrection in the likeness of the body of
the glory of Christ.

jfeast of tbe Bscensfon

expostulation, addressed by the angels to
the Apostles, appears at first sight some
what strange. "Men of Galilee, why stand you
looking up to Heaven !" Nothing can be con
ceived more natural or praiseworthy than the ac
tion of the Apostles. Their Divine Master, Who
had just spoken to them and blessed them, had
been lifted up from amongst them, until a cloud
intervened and hid Him away from their sight.

Whether we consider the character of our Di
vine Lord Himself, or His relations to His dis
ciples, this disappearance of their Divine Master
could not but have been regarded as a serious af
fliction. He, who had left them was One whom
to know was to love, whose kindness and amia
bility had bound the disciples inseparably to Him,
whose omnipotence was so concealed by humility
that whilst they never forgot that He was God,
yet always loved Him as a friend and a brother;
the holiness of whose life had imbued them with
reverential fear of Him, and the excess of whose
charity has so often perplexed them. He, who
had for three years filled so large a portion of
their lives, was taken from them, and they were
not to see Him again until death. What wonder
that they gaze into the Heaven in which He was
lost to them. And yet the angels asked, "Ye men
of Galilee, why stand you looking up to Heaven ! ' '

Furthermore, it must be remembered, that He

112

THE FEAST OF THE ASCENSION 113

Who had just vanished from them was one Whom
they not only loved as a Master, but One also on
whom they depended for happiness in this world
and Salvation in eternity ; for Him they had sacri
ficed everything. " Behold/' said Saint Peter,
"we have left all, and followed thee!" Each had
forsaken his customary duties at the call of
Christ; literally fulfilled the precept of abandon
ing father and mother, brother and sister and
wife, to become the disciple of Jesus, to follow
Him whither He went, to share His privations,
to be the partners of His sorrows, and all this was
done in the simple, confiding faith that their Mas
ter had a reward for each in the glories of an
other life to which the sorrows of this one were
not to be compared. Whilst He was with them
they had a security of this reward.

But now He had left them, and that reward was
not forthcoming. Nay, worse, they had cast in
their lot with Jesus ; they were the disciples of one
whom the world had rejected. They were bound
to teach His doctrines, to continue His practices,
to inculcate the same morality, to preach things
utterly distasteful to the world ; and they had the
same prospect before them of being treated as He
had been: outraged, scoffed at, despised: and
bounding and finishing this dismal prospect there
was the cross, the rack, the executioner's sword,
the wild beasts, and then, perhaps, a despised and
execrated memory after death. Gazing upon all
these things from that hill of Olivet, they gave a
proof of the truth of that saying in the Imitation
of Christ, "When Jesus is with us, everything is
well; when Jesus is absent, everything is ill."

114 SERMONS

Whilst their Divine Master was with them
everything was well; they had no fear, no appre
hension; they could despise the world and brave
the anger of the world with Him and for His
sake. But now that their Divine Master had gone,
they felt that they were orphaned, deserted, and
in their helplessness they looked into Heaven. A
little time ago He had told them this, and sorrow
had filled their hearts ; and if the bare prediction
could thus affect them, much more the reality, and,
therefore, they stood irresolute on the hillside of
Olivet. And if ever looks are prayers, and
prayers do violence to heaven, it was then, when
in a feeling of utter helplessness they looked up
wards where Jesus had become invisible to them,
hoping against hope that He would return again.
And yet the angels ask them, " Why stand ye look
ing up towards heaven, " as if the departure of
Jesus were an event of no importance — one that
should not be allowed to disturb their minds, or
to interrupt the ordinary duties of life.

Dearly beloved, the Angels did not rebuke the
Apostles for their love for their Divine Master,
nor for the wish of seeing Him again, but they
rebuked them for the want of a simple, confiding
faith in God. They rebuked them not so much
for the wish of self-protection as for their diffi
dence in God's protection. They rebuked them
because they did not place sufficient reliance upon
the word of Christ, and were not satisfied with
a promise, but demanded His presence. They re
buked them because they could not bear the ab
sence of God for a time in order to do the will
of God. Because instead of promptly undertak-

THE FEAST OF THE ASCENSION 115

ing the mission given them by their Divine Mas
ter, they looked for a helper from Heaven. Be
cause instead of depending upon the promise of
their Divine Master, and relying upon His invis
ible assistance they sought a visible sign of God's
protection, and His constant presence with them.
And thus instead of commencing their mission
with hope and courage, and the firm trust that God
would not forsake them, they stood upon Olivet,
hesitating, irresolute, vainly hoping that their Di
vine Master would descend again amongst them,
or would send some visible supernatural guide that
would make the work of converting the world easy,
and they could share in the triumph and the honor
and the reward, without being exposed to peril or
discomfort. In truth, they had as yet rather un
christian views of the life of a Christian, and
hence the rebuke of the angels.

We must remember that Pentecost had not come
yet. They were now in the interval between the
departure of Christ and the coming of the Para
clete. And they had neither the presence of their
Divine Master to animate them, nor the grace of
the Holy Ghost to strengthen them. In a sense,
it was the most trying time of their lives. Hith
erto they had not been without their Divine Guide,
and after Pentecost the Holy Ghost would never
be absent from them or their successors. But
now they had to live upon a promise. They were,
therefore, just as they had been when Jesus had
met them, rude and uncultured, and their faith
still unconfirmed and wavering, and their hopes
inconstant, and their charity rather the rude, nat
ural affection of generous minds for goodness

116 SERMONS

than the supernatural love which the Paraclete
afterwards inspired. In truth, it was the first
time that the exercise of faith and hope and char
ity was demanded of them.

For hitherto they had seen, and there was no
room for disbelief ; now they could see no longer,
and God demanded faith of them. Hitherto they
had possessed the one good for which they were
created, and they had nothing else to hope for.
But Jesus had left them, and they were filled with
vague yearnings after security and happiness,
and God demanded of them that they should con
fide in Him. Hitherto they had loved one whose
presence had inspired affection; now it was de
manded of them that they should love an Invisible
God — this was the exercise of their charity. And
as yet they had not had the supernatural assist
ance or illumination of the Holy Spirit.

This, therefore, was a severe test of their faith,
and if there were a mild rebuke in the words of
the Angels, there was also a lesson in Christianity.

This way of reprimand was one of the many
ways in which our Divine Lord conveyed his in
structions to His disciples. This want of confi
dence in Him He had rebuked before when He said
to them, "Why are ye fearful, O ye of little
faith?" And when they seemed to hesitate in
their belief about His promise of giving them His
flesh to eat, He said to them, "Will ye, too, go
away?" and in His agony He asked them "Could
you not watch one hour with Me?" Now His
Angels are speaking in like manner, "Why look
you up towards heaven?" as if they would say,
"0 ye of little faith! do ye not believe that God

THE FEAST OF THE ASCENSION 117

is with you, even though visibly removed from
amongst you? And instead of useless repinings
after His presence and visible protection, why
do you not rather busy yourselves about His work,
confiding in God that He will reward your gener
osity in sacrificing your own interests to repay
further His? Do you not know that this Jesus,
who is taken up from you into heaven, still lives,
watching invisibly over you and your work, and
will live, until at the end of all things He shall
come as you have now seen Him ascend into
heaven?"

This want of faith in the Apostles is one of
those imperfections that it is hard to distinguish
from virtue. Humanly speaking, we should say
that the action of the Apostles is just what should
be expected; it argues a great love for their Di
vine Master, and if they had been unaffected by
His Ascension, we should have but poor opinions
of their gratitude and affection. That which we
censure in them as a fault, is, nevertheless, a vir
tue we should wish to see more widely practiced
in the world of to-day.

This want of confidence in God made them look
to God for help ; though their faith was somewhat
staggered by the disappearance of their Divine
Master, still they had faith enough to know that
their only support was God, and they did not for
a moment think of turning away from God to seek
consolation elsewhere.

Nowadays, men place no reliance upon God at
all, nor do they even believe that God can assist
them. They never seek supernatural guidance or
assistance, but when in need of consolation or sup-

118 SERMONS

port they look to creatures for that which can be
found in God alone. This infidelity, in the sense
of ignoring God's assistance and support, is the
prevalent vice of the world to-day, and compared
with this, the conduct of the unconfirmed Apostles
is eminently praiseworthy. But there is a faith
more exalted than either — the faith that is re
quired of a perfect Christian.

I am not speaking of faith now in the sense of
believing revealed truths. I am not speaking of
faith as the assent of the intellect to doctrines
which are wrapped in mystery. I am speaking
of faith in the sense of confidence in God's pro
tecting love. What then do I mean by perfect
faith in God I I mean the absolute security which
every Christian ought to possess of that truth of
Saint Paul, "that in God, we live and move and
have our being"; that we are surrounded on all
sides by God, and that in God we possess an om
nipotent and most loving defender of soul and
body. By this faith in God I mean the absolute
reliance upon His goodness to supply all our
wants, and to relieve all our necessities — a re
liance that never wavers, never doubts, never sus
pects, but is always firm and constant and un
yielding.

What is this faith in God! It is to know and
to believe firmly, and to shape all our actions,
thoughts, and desires according to his knowledge
and His belief, that we are in the hands of a merci
ful God; that the meanest of us, if any of God's
creatures can be called mean, is an object of in
finite interest in His eyes, that He watches over us
with unceasing care, preserving us from the thou-

THE FEAST OF THE ASCENSION 119

sand dangers to which we are exposed, guiding us
securely along the rugged ways that lead to Him
self, ever ready with His thousand graces to as
sist us in our difficulties, and to ensure for us that
salvation which He purchased for us at so dear a
price. This is the virtue most clearly and di
rectly opposed to the avowed infidelity of those
outside the Church, and even to the practical in
fidelity of some within the Church.

For this perfect confidence in God rests upon
the firmest conviction of Divine faith in God's ex
istence. This virtue is far more perfect than the
wavering faith of the Apostles. For it enables us
to live in such perfect assurance of God's pro
tection, that we do not ask it in time of tempta
tion and trouble, but assume it as something that
cannot be refused, and make use of it as something
always ready at hand.

Least of all do we require visible signs from
Heaven of its protection — or the voice of God to
comfort us or daily miracles to prove God's un
bounded love towards us. The Apostles dreaded
to face the world without the visible presence of
their Divine Master. They were overpowered by
the thought of the mighty mission that had been
given to them, and calculating only their own nat
ural powers, they were filled with apprehension
at their own unfitness for this gigantic work, and,
therefore, they stood upon Olivet gazing ineffec
tually into Heaven instead of at once setting about
the work of their Divine Master, in the firm belief
that He was yet with them, that His Omnipotence
was still around them — that it was His work they
were doing — His will they were accomplishing —

120 SERMONS

and that God would betray Himself if ever He
abandoned them, and withdrew His protection
from them. This faith they possessed after
Pentecost, and thus in their succeeding history we
read of no doubts or hesitation whatsoever — no
looking up into Heaven, straining their eyes after
a Second Advent ; but they proclaimed boldly the
truth of their Divine Master to the world, with
out thinking even of the end. No angels are now
sent to reprimand them, but they are deputed to
quicken the low faith of the world.

And if we would go back for a moment into the
age of the patriarchs, we shall find many examples
of such perfect confiding faith as that of which I
speak. Notably in the instance of him, whose re
pentance brought him nearer to God than, per
haps, steadfast virtue could have done. Every
line of his majestic psalms is eloquent of trust in
God, and this because evidently the existence of
God is not to him a bare abstract truth, but a
fact which is as real as his own existence.

1 ' The Lord ruleth me, and I shall want nothing.
He hath set me in a place of pasture and though I
should walk in the midst of the shadow of death I
will fear no evils for Thou art with me.

6 i The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom
shall I fear ; the Lord is the protector of my life,
of whom shall I be afraid. If armies in camp
should stand together against me, my heart shall
not fear.

"Our God is our refuge and our strength; a
helper in troubles which have found us exceed
ingly. Therefore, we will not fear when the earth

THE FEAST OF THE ASCENSION 121

shall be troubled, and the mountains shall be re
moved into the heart of the sea."

And whence did he get this faith? From his
strong belief in God's existence, which we might
almost say he felt, so firm was his conviction.

If we examine ourselves we shall find that we
often err in this particular. If we find ourselves
slothful about our salvation, we may be sure it
arises from our imperfect faith in God's exist
ence. If, on the other hand, we are inclined to
yield to despondency, it arises likewise from im
perfect faith in God. We, like the Apostles, have
been sent upon a mighty mission, It is not to
found a Church — but to save our souls. And if
it is not as important a work as that which was
given to the Apostles, it is, at least, as important
for each individual. And as dangers and per
plexities of every kind stared them in the face,
so we, too, may expect to find many things to dis
quiet, alarm and discourage us. Critical circum
stances will arise in which, like the Apostles, we
would wish to see our Blessed Lord visibly, for
we feel we cannot rely upon ourselves. Now and
again we shall be placed in some dilemma in which
we cannot trust to our own judgments, but feel
most keenly the need of a counselor.

SERMONS ON THE BLESSED VIRGIN
Ube TKHoman an& Gbilt>

is always a difficulty in treating of su
pernatural things. However we may have
tried to bring it home to our understandings, and
to master it in all its details, there is always a
consciousness that we have failed. And even
when we have called to our assistance the word of
God, and the Fathers of the Church, to enable
ourselves to comprehend fully our subject under
study, there always remains an uneasy feeling
that we have mastered, not the subject itself, but
our ideas of it; and that our words have merely
gone to express our own sense, but have been ut
terly inadequate to describe that supernatural
truth to the minds of others.

In a certain sense, this is more true of the
mystery of the Immaculate Mother of God than
of any other mystery of Christian Kevelation.
Because in approaching all other mysteries we
acknowledge them to be mysteries, and confess
our own inability to comprehend them; but in
speaking of God's Mother we grow, through fa
miliarity, perhaps, into the mistake of believing
that we are speaking of a subject that comes
within the range of human knowledge. And it is
only when we have recognized the truth that if
the Incarnate God be the greatest of all mysteries,

122

THE WOMAN AND CHILD 123

the Mother of the Incarnate God must participate
in that mystery, that we shelter ourselves under
our humility, leaving to God the knowledge of His
mysteries, and retaining only our wonder and ad
miration for Him and them.

This mystic character has been given to the
Mother of God by her close relations with her
Divine Son. The Incarnation of our Lord Jesus
Christ conferred upon His Mother a dignity pro
portioned to His humiliation. He humbled Him
self, and she was exalted in the humiliation. He
became Man, and she became the Mother of God.
The deeper He descended the higher she ascended.
He emptied Himself of His glory, and clothed her
with it. He laid aside all His supernatural pow
ers and qualities, and descended upon earth to
mingle amongst men, and behold ! He raised His
Mother at the same time from her place amongst
men, and endowed her with supernatural powers
and supernatural graces.

He robbed earth of a great deal that He may
make a larger compensation to earth — taking from
earth a Mother, and giving it a Son ; taking from
earth its purest and holiest daughter, from men
their best beloved sister, and giving Himself in
return, infinitely purer, infinitely holier than she,
and yearning to be better-beloved through her and
for her sake. And thus Jesus met His Mother
half-way between heaven and earth, she raised to
meet Him and He descending to meet her, thus
Mother and Child were united, and there, united
and inseparable, they live for ever in the Chris
tian fancy.

The mystery of the Mother and Child, there-

124 SERMONS

fore, remains the great mystery of Christian Rev
elation. It is one great central mystery upon
which the others converge. And they who try to
separate the Mother from the Child are con
sciously or unconsciously undermining the truth
of His Incarnation. They are counteracting the
designs of God's Providence and undoing the very
work upon which God has been laboring for
eternity.

Among those who are capable of comprehend
ing this subject, there is nowadays but a very nar
row field for discussion of the privileges of the
great Mother of God. It would be difficult in our
days to find any one who would have the hardi
hood of asserting that the Angel Gabriel might
have been sent to any other Hebrew woman as to
Mary, or that the maternity of the Blessed Virgin
was a mere instrumentality which conferred no
privileges upon her, needed not the special prep
aration of the Spirit, and left no dignity or un
surpassed holiness.

There are few who do not recognize that there
is a close connection between the functions as
signed to her and the grace conferred upon her,
and though not often spoken of in Scripture, they
who understand its spirit, and that there is a
meaning in its silence as well as in its utterances,
acknowledge that the Word of God assigns to her
the very place which is given to her in the Litanies
of the Church, Queen of Patriarchs, of Prophets,
of Apostles, of all Saints, surpassed in holiness
only by the Author of all Sanctity Himself.

This gives us larger ideas of the dignity of the
Mother of God, but they fall far short of the

THE WOMAN AND CHILD 125

reality. Because here we are tracing her dignity
only to the moment of Incarnation, whereas Mary
filled the mind of God years before creation, and
entered largely into the designs of God in fash
ioning His universe and perfecting it.

In the schools of theology there has always been
taught a very sublime doctrine concerning the In
carnation ; and although it is not a denned dogma
of faith, it has always found many advocates, both
because it affords a simple answer to the sophisms
of science, and because it gives us a better knowl
edge of the benevolence of God. It is this: that
the Fall of Man is not entirely the cause of the
Incarnation, that our Divine Lord would have be
come man, even though man had never fallen.
The Fall of Man imparted to the Incarnation its
expiatory character, but God would have become
man if there had been no sin to be expiated; and
He could have become man not for the redemption
of one race of men, living on a single planet, but
for the exaltation of the entire universe. Accord
ing to this opinion, then, the Incarnation entered
into the original design of God about His Crea
tion. The Incarnation was not an afterthought
suggested by the sin of Adam. It was not a pen
alty demanded by the justice of God for original
sin. And it was not at all the primary design of
God that His Son should come upon earth as a
Victim.

These accidents were added to the Incarnation
by the sin of Adam. But it was the design of
God from eternity, that His §on should assume a
created form and live as a creature not primarily
to redeem the race of men upon earth, but to

126 SERMONS

bind the Universe more closely to its Creator.

The Incarnation, therefore, formed part of the
original designs of God in framing His universe ;
and without the Incarnation creation would be in
complete. It would be finite, and at a distance
from its maker; His blind instrument, fulfilling
His will, not voluntarily, but through the compul
sion of His omnipotence — a gorgeous temple,
worthy of the majesty of God, and admirably
fitted to sound His praises — but without a priest,
and without worshipers.

But how was God to unite Himself to creation?
By assuming the nature of man. For creation is
two-fold — spiritual and material. If God as
sumed the nature of an angel, the material part
of His creation would still be separated from Him.
By assuming the Nature of Man, He linked Him-
sel to creation's spiritual and material elements.
For the Body of Man is the highest type of ma
terial nature, and the soul of man is the lowest
in the scale of Spiritual natures. And therefore
God assumed the Body and the Soul of Man, for
in man's nature the two creations met, the
spiritual nature in its descending, and material
creation in its ascent.

Thus in the Incarnation creation would find a
king to rule it in equity, a priest to direct its wor
ship and to offer its adorations. This was the
enigma of Heaven, this was the test of the angels.
Faith — the humiliation of God, whom they had
never seen but in the splendors of His Majesty,
to a hypostatic union with the humble human ma
terial. Creation — "The word was made flesh, "
as St. John says, was the test of the spirits.

THE WOMAN AND CHILD 127

Those who turned aside and refused their supreme
worship to their God in that lowly form perished.
Those who received the Revelation received at the
same time the reward of their obedience — con
firmation in glory, and indefectibility in grace.

And thus we enumerate the three mighty ef
fects, of Incarnation : to fallen man it restored his
birthright, to the angels of Heaven it gave eternal
security in grace, and to the material creation it
has given a relation to God unseen by us, until
that which of us is material shall be spiritualized
in the Resurrection of the Dead. Here, then, we
have three great truths.

That the union of the Creator with His crea
tion by means of the Incarnation is the ultimate
end and perfection of creation, and therefore the
primary idea in the mind of God. The Fall of
Man determined that Incarnation should be com
pleted by Redemption, and therefore is our Di
vine Lord called the "Lamb slain from the begin
ning of the world." The second truth is that the
universe has been created for our Divine Lord —
it is His temple, His tabernacle. All things led
up to Him and are perfected in Him. He is the
completion of that which without Him were for
ever incomplete. He is the keystone of the arch
of the Universe, and He is its Pontiff and its King.

And thirdly, the Son, the Second Person of the
Most Holy Trinity, was chosen to unite creation
to its Maker because He is the first-born of every
creature. He is the uncreated image of God, as
the souls of men are its created images. God's
eternal idea of Himself. His living, uncreated
likeness, not a creature, but the type in origin of

128 SERMONS

all creatures, was chosen by Infinite Wisdom to
unite with Himself His created brethren upon
earth. This made St. John declare that "all
things were made by Him, and without Him was
made nothing that was made. ' ' And again in the
Canon of the Mass the Church declares that "by
Him, and with Him, and in Him is to Thee, God
the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all
honor and glory. "

Now, from all this it is evident that the In
carnation of His Divine Son filled the mind of
God from eternity. But it is also clear that this
stupendous miracle could not have been conceived
by God independently of the mode in which it
was to be performed, and that mode was the Di
vine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin. Simul
taneously, therefore, that is from eternity, these
two ideas existed in the mind of the Eternal
Father, the Incarnation of His Son and the Ma
ternity of the Mother — in other words, Jesus and
Mary.

It is impossible that they could have been sep
arated — the one idea could not be present with
out the other. For if the Redeemer was first in
the Divine intention, as One through whom all
things should be made, His Mother was conceived
with Him in the mind of God, because it was
through her He was to become Incarnate. And if
Mary was present to the minds of Micheas and
Isaias, when the prophecy was made ' ' That a vir
gin should conceive and bring forth a son, and
His Name should be called Emmanuel, " we can
only conclude that from eternity she existed in
the mind of God, from whom those Prophets ob-

THE WOMAN AND CHILD 129

tained an insight into the futnre, but to whom
there was no future, no past, but a vast unmeas
ured present.

Hence does the church apply to the Mother of
God these words spoken by Uncreated Wisdom:
"I came out of the mouth of the Most High, the
first-born before all creatures. From the begin
ning and before the world was I created. The
Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways,
before He made anything from the beginning.
I was set up from eternity, and of old before
the world was made. The depths were not as yet
and I was already conceived. ' '

If we master this one idea we shall find in it the
key of many mysteries. It affords us at once a
powerful confirmation, if there were need, of the
dogma of the Immaculate Conception. For ac
cording to this doctrine, the second Eve was prior
to the first, not in order of time, but in the con
ception of God.

She was not only highest in dignity, but she
was the first in the divine intention, the first in
God's design of the work of creation. And thus
existing before Eve, she could not be subject to
the penalty of the sin of Eve ; or, rather, this prior
existence before the mind of God gave her a kind
of right that she should be exempted from the pen
alty which every child of Adam contracts. Of
course the principal cause of her exemption was
the merits of her Divine Son, who redeemed her
by anticipation. But she had a right to those
merits, founded upon the fact that she had existed
in the mind of God from eternity, and the acci
dental circumstance of her creation in time could

130 SERMONS

not violate that right of immunity from Original
Sin.

Again, according to this theory, Mary is the
link between Heaven and earth: for through the
Incarnation the union of God with His creation
was effected, and Mary was the instrument of the
Incarnation.

Now, what does this expression mean, and what
are its necessary consequences! If the Incarna
tion be the union of God and His Universe, that
is, the finite with the Infinite, the Creator with His
creatures — it is clear that the Creator would
choose for that union the highest of His creatures
— the one who, remaining a creature, yet ap
proached nearest to His own infinite perfections.

It involved infinite humiliation upon the part of
God to become man at all ; but having issued His
eternal decree to that effect, and that decree be
ing thus irrevocable, it was due to the majesty
of the Son that His communication with creatures
should be effected in a way befitting His dignity.

If it had pleased the Eternal Father this could
have been done in many ways. He could have
fashioned a body for His Son from the slime of
the earth, as he had done for Adam ; or He could
have given Him a celestial or visionary body, as
some heretics supposed; but He had determined
that as the Son was born of the Father from eter
nity, He should be born of a mother in time. It
only remained for His infinite wisdom to devise
and His omnipotence to create a mother befitting
the Eternal Word. And such a mother is Mary.

One thing, therefore, and one thing alone,
bounds and limits her dignity and excellence.

THE WOMAN AND CHILD 131

She is a creature and finite. Eefuse to her those
excellences that belong exclusively to God, but
she possesses every excellence that can consist
with the character of a creature.

And all this she owes to her close relation with
God, her Son. Look where you will into the eter
nity of the past, or into the eternity of the fu
ture, that Sign shines out clearly and distinctly,
the Mother and Child.

From eternity, and of old before the earth was
made, that sign was present to the mind of God.
When the foundations of the earth were laid, God
blessed His universe for the sake of the Woman
and Child. When the earth was cursed by the sin
of man, that curse was alleviated by a promise of
future blessedness that wTas to be given to the
world by the Woman and her Child.

As time went by, and the hour for the fulfill
ment of the promise came nearer, the sign grew
more distinct ; and she, that in the original prom
ise was "the seed of the woman, " now became
"the Virgin that was to be conceived without
sin." The first glimpse we catch of her in the
Holy Scriptures is with her Child, for it is the
moment of the Annunciation, and she has paid the
memorable vow of obedience to God, which is re
warded by the fulfillment of the eternal promises.
Wherever Jesus moves in the pages of Holy Writ,
Mary is ever at His side, from Bethlehem to Cal
vary. ' ' There stood by the Cross of Jesus Mary,
His Mother/' And as a holy writer has re
marked, you can no more imagine Mary coming
down from Calvary that hour, than a priest de
scending from the altar in the midst of the Holy

132 SERMONS

Sacrifice. Again, the sign appears in the Vision
of John, and at last is fixed in Heaven before the
mind of the Universal Church, the Mother still
inseparable from her Child, guarding her Child,
and blessing the world.

We live in the hope that one day we, too, shall
behold that blessed sign, when our reverence for
Him as God and for her as His Mother will be
blended with love for Him as Redeemer and for
her as Protector. Mary has had a distinguished
history, and holds the first place amongst the chil
dren of God. May she add new luster to her glory
by her dealings with us, and increase for eternity
the number of her worshipers in heaven by now
adopting us as her clients upon earth.

Immaculate Conception

"Fear not, thou shalt not die ; not for thee but for these
has the law been made." — Esther xv. 12-13.

E assistance which God renders His immor
tal Church, illuminating the minds of Her
teachers with His wisdom and inspiring the faith
ful with a spirit of docile piety and implicit be
lief, is in nothing more evident than in the prog
ress and development of devotion to the Blessed
Mother of God.

The vision of the woman clothed with the sun,
with the stars around her head, and the moon be
neath her feet, is to us Catholics, thank God, noth
ing mysterious or apocalyptic. We see in it but
Mary, the Mother of God, and our Mother — the
solitary boast and only perfection of our fallen
nature.

Woman, yet more than angel ; human, yet raised
to a perfection it is not given to any other crea
ture to attain ; created and finite, but in the world
of grace omnipotent — such is Mary, and as such
do we reverence her, mingling our reverence with
tenderest affection and unfailing confidence. And
the Church of God, enlightened by His Holy
Spirit, has at all times recognized in this Virgin
attributes more than human, more than angelic-
perfection nearer to God 's infinite perfection than
the united perfections of all the saints and angels
that have ever been, or ever shall be, created.

133

134 SERMONS

It is of one of those high privileges, the privilege
of Immaculate Conception, that I speak to yon this
evening.

It was decreed by God at the fall of our first
parents that as their posterity would have in
herited a right to eternal happiness if God's com
mands had not been disobeyed, so, too, they should
inherit the taint of sin with which their parents
had defiled themselves at the suggestion of the
tempter. Therefore, every child is born into this
world with the stain of sin upon its soul — an
enemy to its Creator, a slave to the powers of
darkness — with no right to Heaven, that was shut
against it by sin.

The law is universal. The greatest saints have
not been privileged with exemption. God's jus
tice will not remit the stern punishment until every
soul shall have paid the penalty attached to that
one original transgression. Once and once only
did he create a soul that was never, even for an
instant, defiled with the slightest sin — once and
once only did he create a soul that was as pure
at the instant of conception as it is now in Heaven
— once and once only did he relax the stern judg
ment on our race and clothe a soul with original
justice and sanctity and innocence and grace sup-
erabounding with attributes of ineffable grandeur
— a soul on which the least shadow of sin never
for an instant rested — a soul to which the Al
mighty could ever turn to gaze upon with pleas
ure when weary of the deformity which sin had
stamped upon mankind.

It was the time when the fullness of years hav
ing come that the Son was to leave His Father's

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 135

bosom and take flesh amongst men to redeem
them. The Most Holy Trinity had to design and
create and send into the world the soul of her
who was destined to be Mother of the Incarnate
Son.

For centuries God had not created a soul in
grace; He fashioned and formed them, and sent
them into the world, but with the seal of sin and
eternal death upon them — in the power of His
enemy before they had left His omnipotent hands.
But now the old time was for an instant to come
back again, when the Almighty could look upon
His work and say that it was good, and that it
did not repent Him that He made it.

Nay more. The angels are very beautiful, but
they fell; but now was to be created a woman,
brighter than the brightest angel, and with holi
ness and innocence, which Adam could not hope
to attain, and she shall not fall, but be full of
grace, and confirmed in grace from the first mo
ment of her conception. Again, Adam, however
great, had no higher destiny than we; the angels,
however fair, had to worship God afar off; but
she that was now to be created was destined to
be in closest union with her Creator for all eter
nity, to be Mother of Him before whom the angels
are not found pure, whose tabernacle is the sun,
and who bows the heavens beneath His feet ; she
was to possess the glorious privilege of Divine
Maternity, while her pure virginity remained in
tact; she was to be the sanctuary in which the
Most High should ever dwell, she was to have for
her Son the Creator and Father of all things, and
she was to cooperate with the Almighty in the

136 SERMONS

great work of human redemption by giving birth
to the long-expected Messias.

And the Father, putting forth His omnipotent
power, and the Son, exhausting the treasures of
His love, and the Holy Ghost, breathing on their
counsels his ineffable wisdom, the Soul of Mary
sprang into existence, from the hands of the Holy
Trinity "coming forth as the morning rising, fair
as the moon, bright as the sun, shining in the tem
ple of God, as the morning star in the midst of a
cloud."1 Thus was Mary conceived, the fairest
soul that ever came from the hands of God, en
dowed by the Holy Spirit with his choicest gifts,
most prudent, most chaste, undefiled, inviolate.

And God wondered at His own handiwork, and
the Angels adored their Queen in speechless awe
at her surpassing beauty, and Hell trembled at
the Conception of a woman that was destined to
destroy the power of its Prince. Conceived Im
maculate—fulfilling the promise of the Psalmist:
"The Most High hath sanctified His Tabernacle. ' '
"Fear not, thou shalt not die, not for thee, but for
these has the law been made." "The hand of the
Lord hath strengthened thee, therefore wilt thou
be blessed for ever."

Well might Mary explain : "Come ye, and hear
what great things the Lord has done for my soul."
"The Lord possessed me in the beginning of my
ways, before He made anything from the begin
ning : I was set up from eternity, and of old before
the earth was made : the depths were not as yet,
and I was already Conceived." Conceived Im
maculate — fairer than unfallen Eve — our second

iCant. c. vi., v. 9.

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 137

Mother that retrieved through her Son the fall of
the first, and freed us in her own person from the
taint upon our race that man was necessarily the
slave of Sin and the enemy of his Maker. Con
ceived Immaculate — to be the source of joy to
millions of unborn Catholics that were to be
proud to acknowledge the high privilege of their
Queen. Conceived .Immaculate, and not priding
herself on her purity to despise us impure, but
constituting herself by reason of her very sinless-
ness our advocate with God — the defense of our
virtue and the apologist for our crimes — our
shield on the one hand from the fiery darts of the
evil one, and on the other from the anger of the
Living God.

We enjoy the privilege of being the first genera
tion of the Children of God that has been called
upon by the authoritative voice of His Church to
accept the dogma of the Immaculate Conception as
part of the great body of Catholic faith.

It has been the lot of many of us to behold the
teaching Church of Christ, her Doctors, her Pon
tiffs, her Apostles, and the Vicar of Christ him
self, declare after lengthened deliberation and in
solemn Councils, that this was a truth evermore to
be believed by every Catholic, that the Mother of
God, in view of her privilege of Divine maternity,
was by a special grace preserved from incurring
Original Sin. And we have seen the faithful of
the Church of Christ, in whose hearts that doc
trine had ever been piously believed, accept with
acclamations of joy and triumph the verdict of
their pastors, and cry out with a unanimity as re
markable as that of the Ephesians when the priv-

138 SERMONS

ilege of Mary's Divine Maternity was vindicated:
"Blessed for ever be the Immaculate Conception
of the Virgin Mother of God!"

And herein is discernible the workings of that
spirit of harmony, of that nice sense of discrim
ination of what is congruous or unbefitting in the
worship of God and His holy ones, which is a spe
cial characteristic of the Catholic Church.

In other communions we have nothing but chaos
and wild confusion, doctrine clashing with doc
trine and creed with creed. But in the Catholic
Church everything moves in uniform harmony.
Interpreting the will of God, as God Himself has
appointed, she builds up altars here and there to
the princes of His household, and leaves the wide
infinity for God Himself. She looks with pleas
ure at her faithful worshiping around those al
tars, well knowing that in honoring and reverenc
ing the virtues of the saints, we but honor and rev
erence the attributes of God as manifested in these,
His servants, and seeing with eyes of inspiration
that the incense of praise and prayer that circles
for a moment around the altars of the saints finds
its last resting-place around the throne of God
Himself.

In nothing is this spirit of harmony more ob
servable than in the belief in the doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception, which always existed in
the Church.

It was this instinct, inspired by the Holy Ghost,
that made the Saints of God from apostolic times
vindicate this privilege for their Mother; it was
this sense of what was befitting the majesty of the
Kedeemer that made Saint Ambrose declare Mary

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 139

"a Virgin untouched by the slightest stain of
sin"; that made Saint Augustine say, that when
speaking of sin there should be no question of
Mary, and it was the same inspiration that heaped
upon Mary from the pens and lips of her devoted
servants such titles as "Ever Blessed," " Daugh
ter of God," "Born of God," "Only Daughter of
Life," "Tabernacle of the Most High," "Immac
ulate Child of God," "Gate of Grace," "The New
Heaven," "The Sweet Ointment," "The Founda
tion of all Divine Grace." And it was this same
teaching of the Holy Spirit — that it was befitting
that Mary, who was to be Mother of God, Mother
of the Messias, and mediatrix between her Son
and sinners, should not be conceived in sin — it was
this same teaching that led the Church of Christ,
Her pastors and His Vicar to declare the Immac
ulate Conception an Article of Catholic belief.

He taught them, to be sure, and they teach us,
that these was a law so general that it might be
called universal, the law that entailed upon every
child of Adam the penalty of his father's sin; but
he taught them, too, that there was another law,
equally universal, and, what is more, immutable—
a law sanctioned by the words of the Redeemer
Himself, ' ' that a bad tree cannot bring forth good
fruit. ' ' How then could Mary — in the hypothesis,
that even for the sake of argument I am afraid
to make, namely, that she was conceived in sin —
bring forth Jesus the sinless? How could Mary,
defiled with original guilt, bring forth Him before
whom the angels are not found pure? How could
Mary with concupiscences, like other creatures, of
weakened will and darkened intellect, bring forth

140 SERMONS

Him who is all-seeing and whose every will is a
work! Therefore, if Jesus is sinless, and pure,
and perfect, She from whom He sprang must have
been pure, and sinless, and perfect — not, indeed,
with a perfection equal to that of the Divinity, but
with a perfection which no other creature has ever
attained.

Again, Mary was to be Mother of the Redeemer.
She it was that was to crush the serpent's head;
it was for her heel the Devil was to lie in wait;
this was the Woman between whom and the
tempter God Himself had placed everlasting en
mity. And was it befitting that she through
whom the Deliverer should come should herself be
a slave! That she, whose hatred of sin and Hell
should be so intense and perpetual, should ac
tually be under the power of both ! And how can
it be believed that God should design that there
should be a never-ending war between the Mother
of His Son and the powers of darkness, and at the
same time frustrate this design by placing her in
their power.

She was to repair the fall of our First Mother,
Eve. "Thou alone, 0 blessed Mother of God,"
cries a distinguished Saint, "who didst bring
forth the Eedeemer and Savior of all, thou alone
hast repaired the sin of Eve. " " Through thee the
condemnation of our race through Adam has been
revoked, and Man has been reconciled with his
Maker." And who shall say that Mary, who re
stored the integrity of our race, was less perfect
than Eve who destroyed it? Yet Eve was created
in a state of original justice and sanctity and in-

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 141

nocence, and Mary, forsooth, was conceived in
Original Sin.

Lastly, Mary was to be evermore Mediator be
tween God and man. She was to occupy a posi
tion infinitely inferior to that of her Divine Son,
but above men and angels and the highest choirs
of spirits in Heaven — alone and unapproachable.
From her high position she was to distribute God's
graces and favors to men. She was to be the
almoner of Heaven. God reserved to Himself His
Justice and Power ; but He clothed Mary with His
Mercy. And to her were the eyes of sinners for
ever to be turned ; to her were they to fly for pro
tection; she was to be their refuge and asylum,
and a terror to the powers of Hell. And when
she lifted up her pure hands to her Divine Son,
think you that He could allow His enemies to sneer
at His Mother for that she was once in their
power: " Physician, heal thyself!" No, my
Brethren ! He redeemed His Mother by His Pre
cious Blood as He redeemed us, with this very
great difference : that He redeemed us by deliver
ing us from Sin and from the Eternal Death which
it entailed ; He redeemed His Mother by meriting
for her by anticipation the singular privilege of
preservation from Original Sin. So does the
Catholic Church teach, and so do we believe.

We look up to Heaven, marveling at this won
der of God's creation; and trying to imagine what
God Himself must be when this, His creature, is
found so fair. Her image falls to earth an image
of beauty and holiness, that speaks eloquently of
the power of God's grace, and under its shadow we

142 SERMONS

walk, and they who need it are healed. And in
the sight of angels, fallen and unf alien, we are
disposed to think better things of our humanity,
which the Son of God espoused when he had per
fected it in the person of His Immaculate Mother !

flDaternfts of tbe Blesses

' ' He that is mighty hath done great things to me, and
holy is His Name."— Luke 1-49.

is quite surprising, almost, indeed, a scan
dal to men, the quiet way in which God per
forms some of His most marvelous works. With
a Divine scorn of ostentation and pride, and all
human formality, His great omnipotence evokes
creation from nothing, and fashions existing
things as it wills with a word, very often without
even the medium of a word, but only with a wish.

Simplicity is the soul of God's creation. And
as God is simple in the way He chooses to work,
so too is He simple in the instruments He em
ploys. It is quite true that He never selects for
a work, but what He has already well adapted for
it by His wonder-working graces ; but men cannot
see the mighty processes of justification and sanc-
tification, wherewith He fits the humblest souls
for the highest missions, and so when God, pass
ing by the proud and mighty ones of the world,
stoops into the very lowest depths, and studies, as
it seems, to select what is humble and obscure, the
world is offended, and because it cannot see with
God's eyes, it refuses to submit to God's dispensa
tions.

In nothing is this more true than of the way in
which God worked out the greatest mystery of
His Creation — the mystery of His own Divine Son

143

144 SERMONS

"figure of His substance, and splendor of His
glory/' true God of true God, Light of Light, hid
den, concealed, annihilated, we might almost say,
in the form of one of His own creatures.

A quiet chamber in the humblest house of the
humblest village of a conquered nation, was the
scene of the Incarnation of the Son of God, and
the humblest maiden in the humblest village was,
almost before she knew it, the Mother of the Most
High.

In the silence of noon-day, Mary is kneeling at
her orisons, unconscious of her own existence,
thinking only of God. A figure of light stands be
side her ; speaks to her in language she has never
heard before, language to her quite unintelligible,
sounding to her deep humility like words of mock
ery, for she is self -annihilated, and swallowed up
in the great abyss of her love for God. "Hail,
full of Grace!" sounds startling to a mind just
filled with the ideas of how poor and weak and
lowly she was before God! "The Lord is with
Thee"; she had been thinking of Him as of one
very far away, as of one, perhaps, that had never
since the moment of her birth cast a thought or a
look upon her, and she was quite content to wor
ship, and to love Him, unseen of Him and un
noticed. ' l Blessed art thou amongst women ? " ! ! !
She had been thinking, who was the happy maiden
that was selected by the Most High to be the
Mother of His Son ; thinking how she would honor
her, but not envy her, never dreaming that from
eternity she had been selected by the Most Holy
Trinity for the high honor, and that to fit her for
the high position the Spirit of God had been with

MATERNITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN 145

her from the first instant of her conception, had
been personally united to her, had kept at a dis
tance from her the powers of sin and darkness,
had averted from her everything that could mar
the exquisite beauty of her soul, had been daily
infusing new graces, had been daily evolving from
her soul fresh loveliness, had been daily flinging
around her heavenly radiances, whilst all the time
He let her rest in the deep abysses of humility,
more than Saint or Angel, yet all unconscious
of her sanctity. "Blessed amongst women? "
Blessed amongst all God's creatures He might
well have said, for the purity of that young Virgin
outrivaled the purity of Heaven's brightest angel,
and compared with her love for God, the loves of
the Seraphim was cold. "Who, having heard was
troubled at his saying, and thought within herself
what manner of salutation this should be. ' '

And the Angel went on to say how God had de
termined to work out His mighty design. She
might have understood His words, or she might
not have understood them. But she had no will
of her own, her will was the Will of God, and so,
she spoke her fiat: "Be it done unto me accord
ing to thy word," and the mightiest mystery of
God's great love, the mystery that was a scandal
to Lucifer and his fellows, the mystery whose
depths eternity will not reveal, the mystery that
will hold us speechless for ever before the throne
of God, was accomplished. The figure of light
disappeared, the little chamber assumed its
wonted appearance ; there remained only the child-
mother, bathed in tears, but the God of the Uni
verse was in her bosom.

146 SERMONS

To comprehend the greatness of the dignity to
which Mary was thus raised, it would be necessary
to measure the greatness of God Himself. It was
the closest union that could subsist between the
Uncreated and a creature, and the very fact of this
union, independently of the preparation that must
have been made for it, raises Mary above all other
creatures, to a level, infinitely inferior to God,
but unapproachable to men and angels.

For if to be close to God is to partake of His
sanctity, what must not the holiness of Mary be,
who was united to God in the closest bonds of
union, who gave Him that body that was to be
torn and mangled for the sins of the world, who
held Him in her arms and nursed Him in His in
fancy, who followed Him step by step in the weary
journey of His life, who rejoiced in His joys, and
sympathized with a Mother's sympathy in His
sufferings, who walked in His blood-stained foot
steps up the great steep hill of Calvary, who stood
fainting and weak in her mighty sorrow under
the Cross, when the light had died out of Crea
tion, and she was stared at by the blackness of
despair, who held the dead body of Jesus in her
arms, and buried all His hopes with Him in the
sepulcher, who caught the first glance of his beat
ified countenance when He arose from the tomb,
and the iast accents of His blessing when He as
cended into Heaven, who died out of the very ex
cess of her desire to be reunited with her Son in
Heaven, who for all eternity can never lose the
privilege of Divine maternity, whose union with
God shall never cease, but only be strengthened
and cemented by the great eternal years, to whom,

MATERNITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN 147

following the example of her Divine Son the eyes
of Catholics shall ever turn with reverent admira
tion and heartfelt pride, that God should have so
honored our nature, and with a childlike confi
dence that springs from the assurance that, if
Jesus be our brother, we, like Jesus, have filial
claims on Mary.

Though it is possible to God to form a creature
more perfect than His Mother Mary, for with all
her great privileges she was still but a creature,
and finite, and the power of God is infinite, still
it would be in a certain sense impossible for God
to raise her to a higher dignity.

The attributes of God are infinite; they are,
therefore, incommunicable. A creature is abso
lutely incapable of possessing them; be that crea
ture ever so high and holy and exalted, it must
for ever remain a creature, and, therefore, it must
be for ever infinitely inferior to God. Therefore,
it is that between God and the Blessed Virgin
there is an infinity that can never be spanned.
Her holiness and wisdom and purity, compared
with the holiness and wisdom and purity of God,
are no more than a day compared to eternity, or a
sand in the hour-glass to the mighty worlds of this
universe.

But whilst freely admitting this, we also teach
that we cannot by any possibility conceive how
God can exalt a creature more than He exalted
Mary by making her His Mother. She occupies a
sphere peculiarly her own. Her majesty and dig
nity do not even approach the majesty and dig
nity of God: but neither are they approached or
approachable by any other creature.

148 SERMONS

Therefore, it is that the saints of the Church
have not hesitated to declare that the dignity of
Mary is infinite in its kind. St. Bernardine says :
"That the state to which God exalted Mary, in
making her His Mother, was the highest state that
could be conferred on a pure creature : so that He
could not have exalted her more." And St. Al
bert the Great declares, "that in bestowing on
Mary the maternity of God, God gave her the high
est gift of which a pure creature is capable." Of
course in saying this, the Saints do not pretend to
limit the infinite power of God, an idea abhorrent
to every Catholic mind; they only declare the in
capacity of creatures to receive a greater privilege
than this of Mary's Divine maternity. Such is
Catholic truth, holding, as it always does, the
golden mean between the heresies. With all the
Church's devotion to Mary, she dare not, cannot,
trench upon the glory of God; neither will she,
heresy scream itself hoarse, abate by even one de
gree the dignity of that Virgin whom it is our
pride to honor.

Though it would sound a strange, rather start
ling, doctrine to Protestant ears that, in very
truth, our reverence and love for the Blessed
Virgin Mary arise simply from the reverence and
love we have for God Himself, yet, if we analyze
our devotion to Mary, its origin and its nature,
we shall find that this is the case.

The Catholic idea of God is not the idea of One
who lives somewhere away in space, vague and
shadowy, who takes little or no interest in His
creatures, to whom therefore, no corresponding
interest is due from His creatures, but it is the

MATERNITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN 149

idea of One, "in whom we live and move and are,"
who mingles with us in our daily life, who is
deeply interested in our welfare ; for whom, there
fore, we entertain a deep and personal love,
blended with holy awe and filial reverence. This
being so, nothing that has the slightest connection
with God can be to us uninteresting. Heaven is
only Heaven to us, because the smile of God is
there ; Hell is only Hell because the frown of God
for ever rests upon it, and its fires have been en
kindled by His anger. Wherever the presence of
God is, we view that place as consecrated ground ;
whatever the hand of God has touched is to us for-
evermore holy.

Herein is found a key for those Catholic doc
trines that are so enigmatical to Protestants, rev
erence for the relics of God's holy ones, reverence
for pictures of Christ and His Saints, reverence
for the Saints themselves. It is all our reverence
for God, reflected upon these His creatures, and
reflected from these His creatures back again upon
God.

Therefore, it is that we do not scruple to honor
the Saints; therefore, it is that we honor the
Mother whom God Himself so honored. If Mary
had not been chosen to be Mother of God, she
might have grown up like any other Jewish
maiden, and Catholics would honor her as they
honor other holy women.

But she is the Mother of God, and therefore, we
pay her an honor proportionate to her dignity.
We cannot make any difference between Mary and
the Mother of God. We cannot regard the Blessed
Virgin abstracting altogether from this her high-

150 SERMONS

est prerogative. It is her crown, her glory ; she
cannot lose it, and certainly it is not Catholics that
will ever try to rob her of it. It is true that after
almost nineteen hundred years' experience, after
repeated proofs of Mary's more than maternal
sympathy for us, knowing as we do the care she
takes of her clients, and the innumerable graces
she obtains for them by her intercession with her
Son, it is quite true, that our love for Mary has in
it something personal, that we are fond of regard
ing her as our Mother as well as the Mother of
God; but even this filial reverence on our part is
traceable to her privilege of Divine Maternity, for
it is by reason of that same privilege that she can
plead for us so powerfully and efficaciously with
her Son. Like Esther, Mary has been raised to a
very high dignity; like Esther, she has used all
her influence in her high position on behalf of her
people. God forbid that her people should ever
forget her.

Therefore, it is that the Church of God has
always regarded with reverence and affection this
realization of an ideal that the omniscience of God
alone could conceive, and the omnipotence of God
alone could create. Therefore, it is that devotion
to Jesus Christ is invariably followed by devotion
to His Immaculate Mother. Therefore, it is that
the Saints of God have not hesitated to say that
the measure of our devotion to the Blessed Virgin
is also the measure of our sanctity. We cannot
separate the Son from the Mother. And I would
give very little indeed for the Christianity of the
man, who, looking upon a picture of the Madonna

MATERNITY OF TEE BLESSED VIRGIN 151

and Child, could realize to himself the fact that
that Infant is God, and yet gaze with cold indiffer
ence on the face of the Mother who holds Him.

It is a lamentable, to us very painful, fact that
the only known type of men professing to be Chris
tians that can be found to do so is the English
Protestant. Proud and haughty men, even na
tions, whose prosperity made the sweet yoke of
Christ feel galling, have now and again fallen
away from that Church which is the only guide of
men to Heaven ; but never have they forgotten to
take with them in their exile, the memory of the
Infant of God and His Immaculate Mother.

There is not a house in Kussia to-day that has
not its picture of the Immaculate Mother. Even
the Bedouins of the Arabian deserts will save
your life, and restore your purse, if you only ask
them in the name of Miriam. It was only a few
days ago that I read in Mr. Kingslake 's i ' History
of the Crimean War," that the Russian soldiers
struck down in the battles of the Alma and Bala
clava, begged quarter for the sake of Mary, think
ing, as Mr. Kiugslake observes, "that however
Christian sects may differ from one another, the
name of Mary at least would be dear to all. ' '

Even Rationalists fully admit the beauty of her
who is the peculiar creation of Christianity, and
her powerful influence to restrain men from evil,
and to help them in the path of perfection. * ' The
world, " as says Mr. Lecky, "is governed by its
ideals; and seldom or never has there been one
which has exercised a more profound, and on the
whole, a more salutary influence than the Concep-

152 SERMONS

tion of the Virgin. All that was best in Europe
clustered around it, and it is the origin of many
of the purest elements of our civilization. "

It was reserved for the chivalry of Protestant
ism to rob Christianity of this its highest, finest
ideal ; it was reserved for cold, prosaic Protestant
ism, that tries to measure God by syllogisms, ig
norant that its every syllogism is a sophism, to
take from the world her that is the world's life
and sweetness and hope. And in the Protestant
ism of the present day we trace the fulfillment of
this great truth, that they who begin by declining
to honor the Mother, are sure to end by blasphem
ing the Son.

The undying instincts of Christianity to honor
the Mother of Christ, had been smothered re
morselessly for three hundred years. To-day it
is beginning to assert itself. From the walls of
Protestant Churches that have stared blankly on
the people for three centuries the mild face of the
Madonna is again beaming. It has lost nothing
of its kindness during its long banishment. In
this fact is visible a gleam of hope for the future.
Indeed, if those poor Eitualists would only give
up burlesquing the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and
making a mockery of the Sacraments, I would have
hopes that their devotion to Our Lady, cold and
weak though it be, would bring them back event
ually to the bosom of the Church. For this is a
truth which I hold with all the certainty of faith,
that never yet did the Mother of God leave a
single petition, however feeble, unanswered, or a
single favor unrequited.

Ube Colours of

1 ' To what shall I compare thee ? or to what shall I liken
thee, 0 daughter of Jerusalem ? to what shall I equal thee,
that I may comfort thee, 0 Virgin daughter of Sion ? for
great as the sea is thy destruction ; who shall heal thee ? ' '
— Jer. 11-13.

are invited to-day by the Church to com
memorate the sorrows of our Blessed
Mother Mary, and to learn from them the very
stern, and at the same time, very consoling,
truths which they teach. It is one of the many
things in God 's dealing with us, that seems so very
mysterious, that He should have made suffering
a condition of Sanctity, and that our novitiate on
earth in preparation for our profession in Heaven
should be sadly embittered either by chastise
ments which He sends immediately from Himself,
or by sorrows we ourselves induce, or by troubles
which men, as instruments in the hands of His
Providence, inflict upon us.

It is a strange truth, not the less true because
it is strange, that to wish to be the friend or child
of God is to wish to suffer. We cannot get near
Him without being afflicted, and the nearer we ap
proach the more intense do the sufferings be
come. God cannot lay His hand upon us without
pressing very heavily, and when we turn our faces
away from the world, and look up to Him, He
will very soon wet them with our tears.

It is His way of dealing with His saints; the

153

154 SERMONS

reasons of it are hidden away from our sight in
the depths of His wisdom ; we know and can trace
them all to the greatness of His love; we know
that His punishing us does not argue in Him want
of love for us ; nay, He Himself has told us that
"whom He loves He chastises "; and so we are
quite content to take cognizance of the fact, with
out scrutinizing it or God's motives too closely.

This, then, may be stated as a general law, that
as our Divine Lord was a man of suffering ; that as
sorrow was the one characteristic of His life on
earth, containing and concealing every other fea
ture, so every other creature that has ever come
nigh unto Him has been stamped into the like
ness of His sorrow, and that no creature shall
ever come nigh unto Him unless it be scarred with
the scars of suffering, and thus marked with the
sign of the Lamb.

He came upon earth, and His coming was the
signal for the death of many thousands, Holy In
nocents, that had never seen Him, nor known Him,
but had the good fortune to be born about the
same time, and thus to be ushered through short,
quick suffering into an eternity of happiness, un
seen by human eyes, unheard of by human ears,
undreamt by the human heart. Again, nearly all
of His Apostles died violent deaths, Peter and
his brother on a cross, Paul by the sword, James
under showers of stones, Bartholomew under the
flaying knife ; John did not die violently, but he
had suffered all the tortures of martyrdom in the
boiling cauldron, and on the island of Patmos.
And if we could see the inner lives of those saints
we would find that their sufferings were not par-

THE DOLOURS OF MARY 1§5

tial and instantaneous, but that a great dark cloud
of sorrow overhung their whole lives, and that it
was only by passing through it that they emerged
into the inaccessible light of Heaven.

It is not surprising then, that as our Blessed
Mother was most highly favored of God, so, too,
she, of all creatures, should be most deeply af
flicted by Him. That as she was always nighest
unto Jesus, as she, too, had the largest share in
His sufferings, her whole life being wound up in
His, it necessarily followed, that everything that
touched Him, touched her also, His thoughts were
her thoughts, His wish was her will, never was she
dissociated from Him, and, therefore, she had
more than a mother's share in all His sorrows.

She was with Him in the stable, and if His great
infinite mind was awake in the form of the slum
bering Child, and keenly alive in all its helpless
ness to the misery with which it was surrounded,
was not the Mother's heart, too, sensitive of the
sufferings of her Infant, and was not she, as a
creature, still more deeply humbled and con
founded that on the first night of His sojourn upon
earth, she, so exalted, so richly endowed, to whom
such mighty things had been done, had no better
place to lay the Creator of the Universe. And
from that hour, indeed, long before it, until the
hour which saw her reunited with her Son in
Heaven, her life was one long sorrow.

Every instant came to her laden with anguish
and bitterness. She knew the mission upon which
her Divine Son had come upon earth. It was
revealed in part to her by the Angel, when he said
that the name of the Child should be Jesus. It

156 SERMONS

was revealed to her fully by Simeon when he told
her that "the child was raised for the fall and the
resurrection of many in Israel, and that her own
soul a sword should pierce that out of many hearts
thoughts might be revealed. " Now it was the
knowledge of the sufferings of Jesus, combined
with her exquisite sensitiveness to suffering, and
to His sufferings most of all, that constituted all
her dolours.

Ignorance is often the greatest preservative of
happiness, we cannot suffer from that of which we
know nothing; from how many miseries does not
God deliver us by shutting out the future from
our view ? If it were revealed to us in our young
years, that we should have to pass through all the
difficulties and stern trials, and many martyrdoms
of manhood; if to us in the vigor of life, all the
sorrows of old age were shown so as to be per
fectly understood and felt — all its imbecility and
helplessness and dotage, its restlessness, its queru-
lousness, and how we should be a burden to others,
and how the young would laugh at the follies of
our second childhood, and our friends would say,
"Oh! Death would be a relief to him," when they
really mean "Death would be a great relief to
themselves, " how wretched would not our lives be.
But God, pitying our weakness, makes the future
dark to us, and so the sorrows of life come to
us in installments, one by one, and we easily glide
over them by His assistance, and go our ways
cheerfully, not seeing the many others that are
bearing down on us, thick and fast, from the great
hands of His Providence.

But He did not deal so with our Blessed Mother.

THE DOLOURS OF MARY 157

All the sorrows of her life were concentrated into
each instant of it. Every recollection was laden
with sorrow. And because she was gifted by God
with a terrible prevision of Calvary, every present
act, and every anticipation of the future was the
source of intense suffering. Calvary was for ever
before her eyes, and though it is true that God
alone can measure the sufferings of Our Divine
Lord during His Passion, we know, that for her
own greater glory in Heaven, He intensified her
sufferings upon earth by holding for ever before
her the vision of the cross, and revealing to her at
the same time the sufferings of her Divine Son in
their terrible reality.

He threw around the Cross a supernatural light,
that showed in their dread significance the horrors
of the sufferings of an Infinite Being; He gave her
to understand, so far as her limited comprehen
sion would allow, what is meant by the death of a
God; revealed to her with terrible distinctness
that the Divinity of her Son, so far from lessen
ing the greatness of His sufferings, was the cause
of their infinite significance and their infinite in
tensity, and this picture with all its horrors stand
ing out in bold relief He kept before her eyes dur
ing her whole life — the anticipation of Calvary for
the thirty-three years of the life of Jesus was
worse than Calvary in His Mother's heart. Cal
vary depicted in its minutest detail was for ever
before her eyes. The presence of her Divine Son
kept it there. Every look at Him was a reminder
of it. Every look of His mild majestic face sum
moned the ever-present vision of that same face
haggard, blood-stained, pale, as it was destined to

158 SERMONS

be on Calvary. Every sound of His voice, speak
ing from the depths of His great loving Heart, was
to the Mother ever a reminder of the terrible cry
of anguish which Jesus would utter when utterly
crushed beneath the weight of His Father's ven
geance, and unable to find even in His Divinity a
support.

In very truth it may be said that Mary walked
all her life in the shadow of Calvary. It deepened
all her many minor sorrows, it made her joys suf
ferings ; it darkened all her life ; as a mother she
mourned the cruel death of her Son ; she was hor
ror stricken at the view of the indignities to
which her Creator would be subjected; as the fel
low-creature and sister of men she deplored the
blindness that would not recognize the proofs of
her Son's Divinity, and the obduracy that repaid
the benevolence of her Son with a crime of the
blackest ingratitude.

And all this time with every succeeding vision,
her love for Jesus was increasing, the nearer they
drew to Calvary the dearer was Jesus to His
Mother, the nearer the time of parting approached,
the more did Mary feel that she could not bear to
be separated from her Son, and it was her sorrow,
crown of sorrow, that her habitual vision of her
Son's sufferings did not dull the anguish of their
reality, but increased her sensibility by increasing
her love.

Hence there is no exaggeration in the assertion
of the Saints that Mary suffered more than all the
martyrs that have ever bled for Christ. For great
though the sufferings of the martyrs were, they
will not bear comparison with hers, inasmuch as

THE DOLOURS OF MARY 159

her sufferings were proportioned to her greatness,
and as the dignity of Mother of God was greater
than the united dignities of all saints and angels,
so were her sorrows greater than all their united
sorrows.

Again, that which is to all the martyrs of Christ
the greatest consolation under their trials, was to
Mary the very source of all her suffering. We
know that however cruelly the martyrs were
treated, whatever torments they had to endure,
however human physical strength yielded under
the inhuman barbarity of their tormentors, they
could always afford to smile at their tormentors,
for there was always with them a presence that
soothed their sufferings, that tempered the heat of
the fires, and made the hard rack easy, and
changed all their sufferings into joy, the presence
of their Divine Master, and the consciousness that
it was for Him they suffered, that in their suffer
ing they were made somewhat like unto Him.

But it was this very presence of her Divine Son
that was the chief cause of Mary's sorrows. It
was for Him she suffered. The sight of Him, the
bare fancy of whose presence would mitigate, and
altogether annihilate, the sufferings of the mar
tyrs, was her most cruel torture. And then she
had no assistance from Him. The saints of the
Church were unanimous in declaring that Mary's
sufferings were to purely human strength unen
durable. That she could not have lived under
them did not God assist her. St. Anselm says,
"Whatever cruelty was inflicted on the martyrs
was light, or rather it was nothing compared to
the cruelty of Mary's passion." St. Bernardine

160 SERMONS

of Siena says, "that so great was the sorrow of
the Blessed Virgin, that if it was subdivided and
parceled out among all creatures capable of suffer
ing, they would perish instantly." And it was re
vealed to St. Bridget that if Our Lord had not
miraculously supported His Mother, it would not
have been possible for her to live through her
martyrdom. But the support He gave her was
devoid of consolation. He strengthened her that
she might suffer the more. He endowed her with
a supernatural life, and yet kept within her what
would be the cause of instantaneous death if even
for a moment He withdrew His extraordinary con
serving power.

Hers was a living death, but it was to be her
probation for the deathless life she enjoys in
Heaven. She suffered that she might be crowned.
Her sorrows were proportioned to her holiness
and dignity, and her holiness and dignity are
measured by her sorrow.

She is the Woman clothed with the sun, because
she was the Woman that stood in the thickest folds
of the blackness that enveloped her Son on Cal
vary. She is nearest to her Divine Son in Heaven
because she was nearest to Him in all His suffer
ings upon earth. ' i Man of Sorrows ' ' Isaias called
Him ; ' ' Mother of Sorrows ' ' the Church calls her.
And it is under that aspect the Church asks to-day
for our devotion.

And as to every Catholic mind, Calvary will be
ever dearer than Tabor, dearer than Heaven itself,
so too will Mary under the aspect of "Mother of
Sorrows" be dearer than Mary even in the joy of
her Assumption. Let the angels of Heaven keep

THE DOLOURS OF MARY 161

to themselves, if they will, the glorified humanity
of Jesus, with the five great wounds shining like
suns, and the Woman by His side with the stars
around her head, and the moon beneath her feet,
but leave to us the bleak hillside of Calvary, with
the crucified humanity of Jesus, and the five
wounds streaming with the Blood that saved us,
and the Mother beneath seemingly so calm, and
silent and patient, but seen by the Eternal Father
to be brokenhearted in her childlessness, with a
grief, to which even tears would be a mockery.
For here have we not the Vision of God more beau
tiful than even Heaven can reveal it ; and here we
have Mary, surpassing in her Crucifixion the glory
of her Conception, her Nativity, her Annunciation,
her Assumption. And what favor to-day shall
we ask from God but this, to send us what afflic
tions He pleases, that crushed by the strength of
His great love, we may yearn in the depths of our
sorrow to prove the strength that His love im
parts, when we know, that in our sorrow we have
the companionship of Jesus and Mary.

ZTbe Essumptton ot ©ur

"Arise, 0 Lord, into Thy resting place, Thou and the
Ark which Thou hast sanctified. ' ' — Ps. cxxxi.

years of silent waiting, fifteen years of
exile from Jesus, fifteen years of yearnings
and heart sickness, such as they say mothers only
know, and Mary is on her death-bed, and about to
be re-united with her Son. Fifteen years she
spent without Him before the great morning of the
Annunciation, and fifteen years has spent without
Him, since the day when she strained her eyes to
catch one last glimpse of His beatified counte
nance, as the cloud of Olivet enveloped Him and
hid Him away from her sight.

Mary 7s life was one long dolour ; a life of active
suffering while Jesus was with her; for the
prophecy of Simeon was for ever ringing in her
ears, and Calvary was every moment drawing
nearer ; its dark shadow with the three crosses for
ever loomed over the quiet home of Nazareth. A
life of passive suffering, now that the great trag
edy was finished; but a passive suffering more
keen, more desolating, more agonizing, for the
light of her life had gone out.

The anticipations of the sufferings of Jesus, the
awful realization of those anticipations on Cal
vary, sadly embittered the life of Mary ; but then
Jesus was with her, and His presence sweetened
all the sorrows ; during the last fifteen years there

162

THE ASSUMPTION OF OUR LADY 163

was no active pain, no terrible real sorrows, such
as had racked her soul during the life of Jesus on
earth; but now Jesus is gone it is night; the Sun
has been taken from her universe ; life is a blank ;
all the sorrow of life is concentrated here ; she has
settled down into that quiet, silent, patient grief
that sees no hope but in the grave. I do believe
that Mary alone of all creatures could understand
that saying of St. Thomas a Kempis: "To be
without Jesus is a grievous hell, to be with Jesus
a sweet paradise."

However, her sorrows are now about to end.
She is on her death-bed. The Apostles have been
summoned by some spiritual telegraphy to Jerusa
lem — some sort of shuddering instinct that per
vaded the Church that she who was its soul, its
life, since Jesus died, was now about to rejoin
Jesus in Heaven.

A quiet chamber, simple in its appointments as
was the little chamber of Nazareth. An old man
stands at the foot of the little bed whereon reposes
the dying Queen; and as he catches a last glance
of the dying eyes, there are tears upon his cheeks,
for there come to him reminiscences of the eyes of
Jesus, and of that awful glance that pierced his
own soul on that night of horrors in Pilate's hall.
A man, in the prime of life, stands with an expres
sion on his features something like to that which
they wore fifteen years ago on Calvary ; he lost a
brother in Jesus then; he is losing a mother in
Mary now: it is John, alone thought worthy by
Jesus to be the adopted virginal son and protector
of the Virgin of Virgins ; near the head of the dy
ing Queen there is pillowed another head — pil-

164 SERMONS

lowed as it was fifteen years ago, on the blood
stained, nail-pierced feet of Jesus as he hung upon
the Cross. It is the woman that stole into the
dining room of Simon the Pharisee, and washed
with her tears, and dried with her hair, the feet
of Him who sat there. She is whispering a mes
sage to the Mother for the Son — an assurance that
Jesus does not need — that Magdalen has been loyal
to Him.

Around the room are scattered groups of mild,
earnest men, waiting with a kind of pious curiosity
not unmixed with sorrow, to see what kind of
death the Mother of their Master will die. They
were not on Calvary, "the shepherd was struck,
and the sheep were dispersed, " but they heard
from Magdalen and John of the burning words
which Jesus spoke, and they saw from afar the
horrors amid which the great tragedy was con
summated ; they expect some other heavenly dem
onstration at the death of the Mother; perhaps
they expect to catch another glimpse of Jesus when
He comes to take His Mother to Heaven.

But what is Mary thinking of all this time?
They say that at the hour of death the mind is
empowered to cast one great retrospective glance
over its life, and that glance comprehends every
thought, every word, every action, in their minut
est details.

If it be so, what a strange panorama was that
which passed before the eyes of Mary. The quiet
days in the temple, the little room of Nazareth
lighted up by the presence of an angel, the few
words that were spoken, and the mighty ineffable
mystery that was accomplished that evening on

THE ASSUMPTION OF OUR LADY 165

the hills of Judea, when Elizabeth came to meet
her, and saluted her as the Mother of God, and
she herself in the exuberance of her gratitude,
broke out under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost,
into the sublime strains of the Magnificat; the
horror that filled her soul when Simeon revealed
to her at what a terrible cost she had become the
Mother of Him that was to be crucified for His
people, the desolation and the sorrow of the three
days that she was separated from Jesus; every
painful circumstance connected with the flight to
Egypt — the hurried preparation, the cries of the
children, the wailing of the mothers, the silent,
weary journey on the desert, the strange Egyptian
faces in Heliopolis; that day in Cana, when to
please her, Jesus anticipated His time and broke
through the eternal decree; the three years' mis
sionary life, and the crowning sorrow on Calvary.
Yes ! Jesus dying in pain, and His Mother dying
in peace. Jesus dying friendless, forsaken; and
Mary dying surrounded by the princes of the
Church; the dying eyes of Jesus see only the faces
of an infuriated mob, distorted with passion and
eloquent of the hate they bear him ; the dying eyes
of the Mother see tender, reverent faces, wet with
the tears that show how they loved her ; the ears
of the dying Jesus hear only the execrations of
the multitude, and "Vah! Vah! come down from
the Cross, and we will believe in Thee"; the ears
of the dying Mother are open to sounds of heav
enly rejoicing, and she learns that it is a gala day
in Heaven, and that all the rejoicings are for her;
over the cross of Jesus, the terrible face of the
Father is bending in His anger, until the dying

166 SERMONS

Son is forced to expostulate, "Why hast Thou for
saken me?" Over the couch of the Mother is
bending the most Holy Trinity, the Father whose
omnipotence created her, the Spirit, whose love
espoused her, the Son, her own Divine Son — she
thinks she remembers those features — but it oc
curs to her that in all this there must be something
wrong; that it scarcely befits the Mother to die as
a Queen, and the Son to die as a criminal; the
Creature to die in peace, and the Creator to die
writhing in agony. But then Jesus will have it
so ; the life of His Mother has been one long mar
tyrdom on His account. Her end at least shall
be in peace.

No earthly thought mars her anticipated vision
of Heaven, no earthly affection makes her parting
from earth feel bitter; she has been in the world,
but she has not been of the world ; she has walked
over the earth without touching it; human affec
tions she has had, but they have been centered in
God ; her every thought has been of God ; her every
wish has been to please God ; her every desire has
been a desire of closer union with God. Her last
thoughts, perhaps, linger over Nazareth and Beth
lehem, Jerusalem and Calvary, all places hallowed
by the presence of Jesus, but if the presence of
God, with all His attributes shrouded in human
flesh, could lend a light to those places, and make
the memory even of gloomy Calvary so dear, what
must not Heaven be, where the same God reveals
Himself in all the plenitude of His perfections.

No memories of sins long-buried, sins of youth,
sins of riper years, rise up around her bed like
accusing angels. Her life has been sinless ; there

THE ASSUMPTION OF OUR LADY 167

is not one stain of earth upon her soul; there is
not one word, or thought or action of her life of
which she could repent. Her will has ever been
in perfect conformity with the Will of God; pa
tiently and thankfully she has always submitted
to His dispensations, even when He decreed to
plunge her in seas of Sorrow in which His omnipo
tence alone could have sustained her, and out of
which His omnipotence alone could have rescued
her. Therefore, for her judgment had no terrors ;
for her salvation is no uncertainty.

Judgment? She was judged long years ago,
years even before her birth, when the Most Holy
Trinity destined her to be the Mother of the Son,
and to fit her for that high privilege, declared that
she should be exempt from the taint upon our race,
that Sin and Hell should have no dominion over
her, and commissioned the Holy Spirit to be her
custodian, to preserve this temple of the Lord un-
defiled, to keep this Ark of the Covenant ever
sanctified. Faithfully did the Spirit discharge
that commission ; and, therefore, there is no judg
ment of Mary on her death-bed. For the Father
does not judge His own decrees, neither does the
Father judge the works of the Spirit.

With no tie upon earth, with her only hope in
Heaven ; with no remorse for time, with no fears
for eternity, dying out of pure love for God, as
suredly the death of Mary is a happy one. Here
upon earth are tears of sorrow, the only really
eloquent testimony of worth appreciated, and
Heaven is wild with joy at the prospect of her
coming.

Amid songs of heavenly mirth and paeans of

168 SERMONS

heavenly triumph, Jesus now unweaves with ten
der, reverent hands the bands that are binding
His Mother to earth. Once was He helpless in her
arms, now is she helpless in His, and now does
He repay with the interest which God alone can
give, all the tenderness, and reverence and love,
that were lavished upon Him in Bethlehem, in
Nazareth, and when He lay, cold and stiff and
lifeless in His Mother's lap on Calvary.

Slowly and with gentle respect does He free the
soul from its prison, and there — Peter, John and
Magdalen, guard with jealous eyes this treasure,
it has enshrined the noblest soul that ever came
from My Father's hands; watch it with reverent
care; in three days again We shall require it to
grace the mansions of My Father's House for
eternity, and " Arise, make haste, my love, my
dove, my beautiful one, and come ; for the winter
is past and gone ; come from Libanus my spouse,
come from Libanus come and thou shalt be
crowned," and Jesus takes the soul of His
Mother to Heaven, and the Apostles are weeping
around the dead body of their Queen.

Before we follow the soul of our Mother to
Heaven, let us make one reflection, while we stand
in her dead sacred presence. I have spoken of
her death as peaceful ; but then it was Death. The
passage of her soul to Heaven was unaccompa
nied by any of the horrors in which death usually
reveals itself. But still it was Death. And that
solemn fact alone suggests a whole world of
thoughts. For when I look upon the cold, mute,
impassive features of the Mother of God, when I
view that sacred body that gave to God the flesh

THE ASSUMPTION OF OUR LADY 169

wherewith He saved the world, lifeless, helpless,
inanimate, as is the body of the meanest sinner
upon earth, and when I think of that other dead,
sacred body on Calvary, the eyes of the all-seeing
God blind, the hands of the all-powerful God help
less, Jesus dead, Mary dead, I begin to think that
the justice of God is that one of His attributes of
which you and I have the very faintest idea. Oh !
if that one primal sin, the apple-bite in Paradise,
entailed this dreadful penalty upon our race, and
if the justice of God is so inexorable, that it will
not remit the punishment even for Mary, even for
Jesus, what will be the dealings of that same jus
tice with us whose sins are —

"Countless in their hideous sum,
God-mocking in God 's open Sight,
And strong to strike His knowledge dumb."

Of the glory of the Mother of God in Heaven it
is difficult to form even an idea; yet by com
parison we may leurn it by approximation. If
"Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, if it hath not
entered into the heart of man to conceive what
God has prepared for those who love him," what
must not Heaven be to Her whose love for God
surpassed in intensity the loves of all men and
angels. If the measure of our merit upon earth
shall be the measure of our happiness in Heaven,
who shall presume to set bounds to the happiness
of Her, whose least action was meritorious, for it
was directed to the greater glory of God? If the
happiness of Heaven is proportioned to the plen
itude wherewith the Beatific Vision is revealed,
what must not the happiness of Mary be, for as-

170 SERMONS

suredly God will hide very little of His perfec
tions from His Mother? If the purity of our lives
here below will give us a clearer vision of God's
infinite attributes in Heaven, if the sanctity of
our own Souls will be the medium through which
we shall view God for ever, how vivid must not
Mary's perception of God be — Mary — whose soul
is whiter than the faces of the Seraphs?

Other saints have had characteristic virtues.
Mary is the personification of every virtue. Her
faith, which was scarcely less than Vision, was
not greater than her Hope, which was absolute
certainty, while her Charity for God was the mov
ing principle of her life, and the proximate cause
of her death. Her obedience was perfect, for her
will was identified with the will of God; her pa
tience under suffering was superhuman ; her pov
erty was perfect — only think of the stable, and her
dependence upon John during the later years of
her life. In a word, Mary spoke her vows in the
Temple. They were the first notes of a life-hymn,
whose music sounded strangely pleasing in the
ears of God; it drew Him down from Heaven; it
will hold Him spell-bound for eternity, and in say
ing all this I am but paraphrasing the words of
Gabriel, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with
thee."

They say that it was the foreknowledge of the
dignity to which God would raise our nature by
assuming it in the Incarnation that so scandalized
Lucifer and his fellows that they rebelled and were
lost. I think that if he could see Mary to-day near
the same Sacred Humanity of Jesus in Heaven his
angelic pride would be doubly offended. Angelic

THE ASSUMPTION OF OUR LADY 171

natures in Heaven; lost Angelic natures in Hell;
human nature upon Earth ; but human nature, too,
most highly honored in Heaven. Angelic natures
confirmed in glory in Heaven; Angelic natures
hopelessly lost in Hell. Men struggling between
both on earth.

But two human hands ever uplifted before the
face of God in Heaven, and a face upturned to
Him, on which He cannot look without emotion.
Neither can we, my beloved, look upon it without
hope. If I had only a certainty that those hands
were ever uplifted for me in Heaven, or that the
voice of the Mother ever pleaded for me with her
Son, I should not envy the angels their confirmed
glory, or the security of their bliss. Eeign on!
great Queen ! draw thy bright mantle around thee !
fix the star-diadem on thy head! Eoyalty, even
though it be the Eoyalty of Heaven, shall be to
thee no sinecure ! Thou hast us and a whole world
yet to save !

SERMONS ON SAINTS
Ube Conversion of St, Huausttne

those who will not, or cannot, understand,
the supernatural work of the Church of God,
there appears to be a dull uniformity in the lives
of our Catholic Saints, which to them is inexpres
sibly repulsive. To them the saying of St. Paul
"that there is but one spirit, but different opera
tions of the same spirit, " is unintelligible. Nor
can they bring themselves to believe that the sanc-
tification of a soul is a work of infinite design, and
that that design varies in beauty and originality
according to the nature of the soul itself, or the
mission it is sent to accomplish amongst men.
Here the Spirit breathes, and behold a zeal that
sets a continent on fire — on the Soul the Spirit
descends, and behold a charity that searches out
and consumes all grosser things like fire, and like
a flame, points steadily upward — and here, behold
again the white vestal lamp of purity, lighted and
kept alive by the same Divine breath.

In this saint, the moral and spiritual elements
are so expanded and developed, that the operation
of the intellect appears to be suspended, and here
again you pause in unconscious suspense to decide
whether the moral and spiritual beauty or the in-

i Preached at the Augustine Church, Cork, 1887.
172

THE CONVERSION OF ST. AUGUSTINE 173

tellectual grandeur reflects more glory on the
Giver of both.

To this latter class most certainly belongs the
great Saint, whose name is so familiar to those
who worship within these walls — a saint whose
love for God lifted him almost to the level of that
beloved disciple who saw the city of God in the
Heavens, as Augustine saw the City of God upon
earth — a Saint who to-day, after fourteen cen
turies which have blotted out the names of all his
contemporaries except those who have shared his
immortality through his writings, is teacher,
prophet, arid intellectual guide to leaders of
thought throughout the universities of the world
—aye, even to framers of laws and sovereigns of
men, whose word makes or mars the happiness of
nations.

And here, at least, no complaint can be made
of that which the world calls monotonous and slug
gish tameness, which we call the calm unbroken
peace which is the reward of high sanctity, for the
life of St. Augustine is marked by such striking
events, and his great soul passed through such ex
tremes of passion and doubt, that the pious soul
can draw inspiration from his holiness, the phi
losopher or divine fresh wisdom from his learn-
ning, and the student of humanity will feel fresh
interest in the stragglings of a soul to disenthrall
itself from the fierce promptings of passion, and
the seductions of intellectual pride. For Augus
tine was a convert; from a sinner he became a
Saint, from a doubter and denier he became a be
liever and a teacher; and it is to commemorate
this marvelous and touching change, wrought in

174 SERMONS

such strange and simple ways by the omnipotence
of grace, that we are met to-night.

And first we must distinctly understand that his
conversion was twofold, yet simultaneous — a
moral conversion and an intellectual enlighten
ment — perhaps the only example of it that you
will find in the history of the Church, for be it
known that the striking conversion of great in
tellects, such as those of which we are witnesses
in a neighboring country, is generally interpreted
as a recognition by the Holy Spirit of the holy
lives and the noble striving after light which have
marked the careers of these converts. They were
then simply lifted from the twilights of the val
leys to the full splendors that shine in the Holy
Mountain, and the natural virtues which they prac
ticed were elevated to the rank of Supernatural
excellences by the Divine power of Faith. But
with Augustine, there was not only intellectual
blindness to be relieved, but moral depravity to
be corrected, and his conversion is all the more
glorious inasmuch as the scales fell from his eyes,
and shackles of fleshly love from his limbs at the
same moment, and his noble nature was lifted into
the serene region of faith and purity by one and
the same operation.

It is not at all difficult to understand how this
young rhetorician, African by birth, Eoman by
education, drifted into those criminal excesses,
which he afterwards so fittingly deplored.

A hot, ardent nature, into which the tropical
sun had stricken its fires, lay absolutely at the
mercy of those fierce passions which please and

THE CONVERSION OF ST. AUGUSTINE 175

pain, but whose torture far more than transcends
the transient delights which they bring.

Religion, with its sweet, soothing influences was
unknown to him. Those radiant visions that after
wards haunted him with their pure ethereal splen
dor until they lifted him from the slough of sin
were yet far off.

At home the example of a Christian mother was
more than overshadowed by the example of a
Pagan father, who almost reveled in the iniqui
ties of his child, and whose passion, blunted by
age, seemed to be newly whetted in the contempla
tion of similar passions that daily evinced them
selves in his boy. Then, too, sacramental grace
was absent from his soul, for by a series of acci
dents, the Sacrament of Baptism, which he was
about to receive in a dangerous illness, was de
ferred, and he grew to manhood with the great
original stain infecting his whole character, and
changing even his good impulses into criminal
issues and results.

With such sad equipments, he was thrown into
a world that just then was reaching its perfection
of inquity, for the hosts of darkness were mar
shaling their forces for the last conflict with vic
torious Christianity. Young, ardent, impetuous,
Augustine was thrown into the midst of the dissi
pation and vice of that city, which, whilst Rome
was being gradually changed into a city of sanc
tity, borrowed its worst vices, and made itself the
home of the lascivious worships, and flung open
its temples to the deities whose names were pollu
tion, and set itself in angry antagonism to that

176 SERMONS

religion of sacrifice and purity, that already had
lifted its conquering standard on the seven hills
of its ancient rival, Home.

It is rather difficult for us to understand the ex
cesses to which men yielded themselves freely in
these Pagan cities. They were demoniac rather
than human. A Christian preacher dare not
speak of them in detail, nor can the imagination
dwell on them without sin. We have some pic
ture left us of the licentiousness and sensuality,
the festivals of blood, and the orgies of unutter
able lust that characterized ancient Home. Yet
Carthage was another and more wicked Eome.
The civilization of the latter had penetrated to the
conquered province, and under a warmer sun, had
given birth to vice, which even to accomplished
Eome was unknown.

A carnival of vice in the streets — vice deified in
the temples — vice incarnated on the stage — poets
consecrating their divine talent, and orators de
voting their sacred gifts to the embellishment of
vice — such was the moral condition of a city which
in the just judgments of the Eternal is to-day but
a name, whilst its great rival, with justice claims
the proud title of Eternal.

Into Carthage thus seething in sin, young
Augustine was plunged ; and in a short time, as he
himself pathetically tells us, he was ashamed,
when he heard his companions boasting of fla
gitious action, that he was less guilty than they;
and so, at the early age of nineteen, a victim of
two deadly vices, ambition and sensuality, his
father dead, his mother weeping and praying,
young Augustine commenced to tread the wine-

THE CONVERSION OF ST. AUGUSTINE 177

press of the sorrow that is begotten of sin, not
knowing that he had any higher destiny than to
become famous in the schools or law courts — not
knowing that there were higher and loftier de
lights than are to be found in the pursuits of sin.

And so he wasted the most blessed gift of God
— the years of youth and the strength of budding
manhood, in a little study and much pleasure —
dreams of fame and desires that raged and could
not be quenched — to rest in a carnal and sensual
paradise, and not a thought of the immortal soul,
nor of the God in whom yet he believed, nor of
the eternity in which he was laying up for himself
treasures of wrath against the day that was to
come.

It was just at this time, too, that he embraced
the Manichsean heresy — one of the most singular
inventions of human folly that ever claimed the
credence of men.

If one did not know the infinite capacity for
folly that lies latent in the human mind, we would
be surprised to hear that such a great intellect,
like that of Augustine, not only embraced this
folly, but became for nine years its most able and
zealous professor. But the secret was that these
Manichsean doctrines were very flattering to his
pride, and very favorable to the indulgence of
those passions that consumed him.

Their falsehood and sophistry afforded him
ample ground for exhibiting all the logical power
and rich eloquence of which he was even then a
master. The severe doctrines of Christianity left
no room for conceits and sophisms which he could
build at pleasure around the loose and ill-defined

178 SERMONS

errors which now he professed, and he hated not
only the austere religion, every syllable of whose
doctrines and discipline upbraided and made him
ashamed, but he disliked the simplicity of the
Scriptures, nor would he believe that the wisdom
of the Eternal was revealed in language that would
not be tolerated in the Grammar school at Garth-
age. "He cried aloud for wisdom, and wisdom
fled far from him; for he would not put his feet
into her fetters, nor his neck into her chains. "

But it must not be supposed for a moment that
Augustine drifted helplessly along with the cur
rent of iniquity without a struggle. A great soul,
like his, does not yield itself to such abasement
without protest. The higher faculties of the soul
not yet destroyed, declared against this animal
ism, and the great intellect was striving with all its
might against the darkness which enveloped it.

I know nothing more pitiable than the spectacle
of a fine soul struggling vainly against its lower
nature, if it be not the spectacle of a lofty mind,
striving vainly to break through its spiritual dark
ness, and emerge into the light.

To know what is right, and yet be unable to do
it.

To hate what is wrong, and yet be unable to
avoid it.

To lift oneself bravely out of the slime and
then to fall back helplessly — to fight against over
whelming passion, and then to yield shamefully,
and, after a moment of fierce delight, to tear and
rend oneself with a remorse that is hopeless and
a despair that is helpless — surely this is the sad
dest of fates. Yet it finds its parallel in the spec-

THE CONVERSION OF ST. AUGUSTINE 179

tacle of a soul, holding its hands for ever before
its eyes to peer into the darkness and search its
way into the light, yet evermore turning away
despairingly to a gloom that is all the deeper be
cause enlightened by sudden gleams of fitful
splendor.

In each sense, such was now the condition of
Augustine 's soul. Love and light ! love and light !
Such was the Eternal cry of Augustine 's life and
heart. Love for an object so high and sublime
that the intellect should never weary in contempla
tion of its transcendent excellence — love for an
object so perfect that the conscience should never
scruple its warmest attachment, love so strong
that every fiber of the heart should cling to the
loved object, so that Death itself could not break,
nor time diminish, the strength of its affection.
Love so vast that the soul should ever wander
through its happy realms without exhaustion, and
there find its happy rest and fruition — and behold
in answer to this high demand there was only the
love of a perishing creature, and the low levels of
sin and death.

There was some ideal beauty for ever before
him, beckoning to him, attracting him, almost
maddening him with the impossibility of reaching
it: and behold! when he stretched his hands to
wards it, it was a phantom, and he touched only
the one void of wisdom, the riddle of Solomon,
"sitting upon a stool -at the door, and saying come
and eat willingly the bread that is hidden, and
drink of the sweet stolen water. " And light, light
to understand himself and the dread environ
ments of nature! Who was he! What was this

180 SERMONS

awful mystery of life in which the unseen God had
placed him! What was the secret of the grave?
Who were those beings around him with the masks
for ever on their faces, and the veils over their
hearts? Fear and Good and Evil, Eight and
Wrong. Who hath stated their limits, who hath
defined their natures? Would he ever see clearly?
Would he ever know certainly? Would this rest
less intellect ever repose in the serene contempla
tion of truth so perfect that it admitted no shadow
of doubt or denial?

Yet to all this impatient questioning came as
answer only the last words of a dying Grecian phi
losophy, the devilry of imported Roman worship,
the well coined phrases that slipped from the lips
of sophists or poets.

And with all this hunger on his heart, this wild
unrest in his intellect, Augustine went round from
law court to lecture room, from temple to theater,
and the young Carthaginians worshiped and en
vied him, and asked one another — "Were you
present at the lecture of Augustine Aurelius to
day ?" or "Did you hear the dispute between
Augustine and Faustus?" "Why, he tore the
thread-bare garments of the old Manichaean to
pieces ! ' ' But he kept the veil drawn tightly over
his heart. God alone saw its workings.

So it is with all of us. Well it is for us that the
eye that searches us is the eye of a Father and a
Friend. All the time, however, two powerful in
fluences were at work to bring this erring soul into
its true mission. That Divine Being, whose pres
ence made cool and pleasant the flames that
scorched the bodies of His martyrs, whose love, to

THE CONVERSION OF ST. AUGUSTINE 181

the eyes of enraptured virgins, made sweet and
easy the absolute sacrifice they made, whose cross
in after times was the sacred book whence doctors
drew their inspirations, was watching and waiting
for the Soul of him, who was destined to become a
' * vessel of election. y ' For although Augustine did
not as yet quite understand the full meaning and
beauty of Christian truth, he had always cherished
the most extraordinary reverence for its Divine
Founder, and the name of Jesus Christ was to him
a symbol of everything that was high and holy.

He declares in his Confessions that though he
felt himself strongly influenced by the writings of
Cicero, one thing particularly displeased him in
the works of that great author, that he found not
there the name of Christ ; and "whatsoever wanted
this name," he said, "however learned soever or
polite or instructive it might be, did not perfectly
take with me." And this sweet influence was in
sensibly drawing him away from his Pagan beliefs
and practices, giving him new and larger views of
that wisdom after which he thirsted, silently up
braiding him for his follies and excesses, for ever
contrasting the grandeur of humility with the
meanness of pride — the dignity of purity with the
shame of unbridled concupiscence.

What a contrast between the simple majesty of
Christ and the proud folly of philosophers — be
tween His words weighty with solemn meaning,
and their utterances, weak and inflated — His ex
ample so lofty and perfect, and their lives, so se
cretly degraded and imperfect.

And how that Divine figure haunted him, not
with terror and fear, but with the same benign

182 SERMONS

influences that rained on the soul of Magdalen or
St. John. Wherever he went that apparition was
before him, chiding him, attracting him, making
him angry with himself, and dissatisfied with the
world; and he would make the most valiant efforts
to overcome the temptations that were around
him, and then sink back into despair again, for
the time fixed in the Eternal decrees for his con
version had not yet come — the gold was yet to be
more tried and purified by fire before it could
receive the impress of its King.

And day by day — night after night, prayers
were ascending before God's throne for him,
prayers that wearied and did violence to Heaven
by their strength and persistence.

There is something altogether supernatural in
a mother's love. It is the strongest reminder we
have of God's boundless mercy. It is so weak,
yet so powerful: so patient and so persistent; it
has such a superb contempt for the logic of facts,
and the sequence of sin and punishment, it is so
ready to turn vice into virtue, and to accept the
faintest turning from sin as the promise of high
perfection, it is so faithful, so perfect, so unself
ish, so true, that next after a saint's love for God,
it is the best thing our earth can show. And if
ever this beautiful love existed in human soul, it
surely was in hers, whose name is for ever insep
arably united with that of St. Augustine — -his
sainted mother — Monica.

How she watched over him in his childhood and
boyhood, how she strove by her example and teach
ing to destroy the evil effects of her husband's
example on the child, how deeply she suffered as

THE CONVERSION OF ST. AUGUSTINE 183

the first reports of her son's perversity came to
her ears, how fervently she prayed that his heart
might be touched and renewed with penance — all
this St. Augustine himself tells us, adding to the
story the high appreciation he always had of his
Mother's unselfish devotion.

And a certain remorse was added to the
mother's prayers, for she remembered that she,
too, had sinned by ambition, and, perhaps, had
sacrificed the purity of her child to those am
bitious longings of future fame which she had
shared with him. If she had only known how
Augustine would be tempted, if she could only
have foreseen the dangers that are strewn in the
path of the young, and the pitfalls that are dug
for them at every footstep — well, it is useless to be
regretting a past that cannot be recalled, and after
all Heaven is merciful, and she has seen a certain
vision in which she had been told that the mighty
gulf between her and Augustine shall yet be
bridged, and he shall yet stand side by side with
her, and they shall kneel together, and their
prayers shall mingle, and the merits of the
Mighty sacrifice shall be shared between them,
and he will be her almoner, and the peace of the
future shall wipe out the memory of the past.

Suddenly she is told that Augustine, tired of
Carthage, is about to depart for Rome, and her
hopes are shattered, for she believes that now he
shall be lost to her and God for ever. And yet
this step of quitting Carthage, even though accom
plished in secrecy (Augustine having slipped away
from his mother in the night time) was the first
great step towards his conversion.

184 SERMONS

For, having opened his school at Borne after
recovering from a violent fever, he was so dis
gusted with the conduct of the students, and their
habits of deception and dishonesty, that he ap
plied for a chair of rhetoric in the City of Milan,
and there was rejoined by his mother. Now in
this city was "a man of God chosen," like Ananias
of Damascus, to teach and illumine the great dark
ened intellect that was sent to him.

n

Attracted by the fame of St. Ambrose as a
preacher, Augustine went to hear him ; and having
heard him, and admired his eloquence, the deep
truths which he preached, and against which
Augustine would have closed his ears, gradually
sank into his mind, and gave the first great shock
to those prejudices which he had conceived against
Catholicity. For like all those who rage against
the truth, he little understood it, and he found
"that it was not against the Catholic religion he
had barked, but against -a chimera, invented by its
enemies. ' ' And then, Sunday after Sunday, when
St. Ambrose ascended his pulpit, he saw beneath
him the widow and her child — she, calm, prayer
ful, patient, and the young professor, whose lec
tures half the youth of Milan were attending, mod
est, humble exteriorly, listening eagerly to the ex
position of Christian truth, but pride, pride, pride
for ever stiffening his neck, and steeling his heart
against that first great act of long abasement by
which he was to enter the portals of God's
Church.

Irreligion and immorality, these twin giants

THE CONVERSION OF ST. AUGUSTINE 185

that ever work in unison guarded the gates of his
heart. If one yielded for a moment, the other was
all the more alert. If the powerful eloquence of
St. Ambrose shattered every argument that in the
secrecy of his heart Augustine fashioned against
Catholicity, here was the sad companion of his
guilt to protest against his embracing that religion
which glorifies purity and virginity — and if ever,
and alas! it was rarely, his soul, lying under its
base subjection, clamored to be free from the deg
radation of vice — here was the vain philosophy
that captivated him, and made him ashamed of the
simplicity of the Gospel, and that doctrine of hu
mility that is always the stumbling block of intel
lectual pride.

What hope was there for him at all? Here on
the one side was the heresy which he not only be
lieved but professed, pride, that waxed stronger
with every fear of success, the strength of man
hood allied with the strength of sin, and above all,
this illicit love which was coiled round his heart
like a serpent, and on the other, only the prayer
of his Mother and the Sunday Sermon of St. Am
brose. But I am wrong! There was One also
with him, and He ' i who bade the winds and waves
be still," was now, at least, going to calm the
tumult of this mighty mind. And in His own sim
ple Divine way He chose as His Ministers — a
Pagan and a child.

Alipius, a dear bosom friend of Augustine, was
a young pagan who, in the midst of all infamy, had
always worshiped purity, and knowing the ter
rible torture that Augustine suffered, he used rea
son with him, preaching to him, extolling the beau-

186 SERMONS

ties of virtue, painting in darkest colors the hor
rors of the hateful vice.

Maddened by his own helplessness, tortured by
his passionate desire to be free, Augustine would
listen patiently, and then rush into solitude, cry
ing, ' ' Leave me, leave me ! not yet ! not yet ! ' '

And his friend would stare and wonder at him,
and be silent in the face of such anguish. Then
there would come to the soul of Augustine a celes
tial vision of chastity, clothed in white light, with
a glittering band of children round her, pure,
ethereal, divine, and she would point to her chil
dren and say: " Behold what these are doing —
why canst thou not do it? They the unlearned —
you the accomplished; they so weak in nature —
you clothed in the strength of your manhood ; they
so frail — you so powerful ! ' ' and the vision would
vanish, and leave him in an agony of shame and
sorrow.

Then one day, a traveler came and told of a
wonderful sight he had seen — a desert peopled
with men who led the lives of angels, who sacri
ficed not only all sinful love — but all human affec
tion, young men, calmly saying farewell to their
affianced, and passing out from the gay city to the
silent sands, and the brides that were to be to
morrow, espousing themselves in mystical union
to the Lamb, leaving all things to follow Him.
And Augustine, not able to contain his emotion,
fled again into his garden and cried: "What are
we doing! Did you not hear? The ignorant, the
unlearned, carry the Kingdom of Heaven by
storm, and we, with our boasted science, grovel on
the earth! Is it not a shame that we have not

THE CONVERSION OF ST. AUGUSTINE 187

the courage to imitate them!" Noble words
Augustine ! At last ! at last !

And he flings himself in anguish under a figtree,
and he, the philosopher, the orator, the professor,
sobs as if his heart would break with uncontrollable
grief. And he hears the voioe of a child in a
neighboring garden singing its play-song ; but his
ears have never heard that childish melody before.
He listens, and catches the singular refrain.
"Tolle, Lege! Tolle, Lege— Take up and read!"
Who ever heard a child utter such strange words
before. But, perhaps, who knows the words might
be a heavenly message to himself. And trembling
with some strange emotion he takes up a book
lying on the grass before him, and opening it by
chance he reads, "Let us walk honestly as in the
day ; not in rioting and drunkenness ; not in cham
bering and impurities ; not in contention and envy,
but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not
provision for the flesh in its concupiscence. ' '

And suddenly, as when in tropical climes the
sunshafts break upon the darkness, and chase the
shadows from valley and mountain, a great wave
of light flooded his soul, and a strength and a
sweetness descended upon him, and the tears of
anguish still wet upon his cheeks are chased by
tears of joy, such as angels shed when the wan
derers are gathered into the fold. Paul had
spoken to Augustine; the convert of Damascus to
the convert of Milan; and the latter wondered at
himself, and the mighty change that had been
wrought in him — was he really the Augustine who
only yesterday saw doubts and difficulties in Cath
olic truth? Was he really the slave, who used to

188 SERMONS

litter that pitiful prayer — ."Give me continence, 0
Lord, but not yet!"

Why, surely Catholicity is not only the perfect
revelation of the Lord, but it is the culmination
of that very philosophy which is shadowed in
Plato, and, therefore, it is a religion for not only
babes and sucklings — but it is strong meat for the
mightiest of the kings of thought, at whose feet
he had sat and studied. And as for chastity, if
every fiber of his heart shall be torn asunder, and
tears of blood shall be shed, he will no longer be
shamed by children, but consecrate by an inviolate
vow body and soul alike to the service of Him
who hath loved him with an everlasting love.

in

"0 Lord, I am Thy servant, and the Son of Thy
Handmaid; Thou hast broken my bonds asunder;
to Thee will I offer a sacrifice of praise." Such
are the opening words of the 5th Book of the Con
fessions. Emancipated, saved, as Daniel from the
lions, as the children from the furnace, as David
from his sin, he must sing a canticle of gratitude
to His Deliverer, and lay upon the altar a sacri
fice of prayer and praise. And surely if ever a
human oblation could be an atonement to the Most
High for sin it was the noble offering that Augus
tine now made. He laid his heart and intellect on
the altar of the Lord. Purity filled the one ; faith
exalted the other. He had found the Beauty ever
ancient, ever new, after which his soul had
thirsted ; and, except the inspired melodies of the
Psalmist, Convert, too, like Augustine, there is no
record of human speech so beautiful, so exalted,

THE CONVERSION OF ST. AUGUSTINE 189

so sublime, as those soliloquies and meditations in
which he poured forth the ecstasies of his soul to
wards the great invisible Being, whom, unknown,
he had worshiped and loved. I don't know if
there be any record that the veil of the Unseen
was lifted for Augustine, as for St. Paul and St.
John. But I find it difficult to understand that
anything less than the vision of the Eternal, could
have inspired a human soul with such seraphic
love, as that which clearly burned in the heart of
our saint, and winged every word that he spoke
or wrote, with celestial fire.

And yet, somehow we are more attracted by the
oblation of his intellect, than by the sacrifice of his
heart, and by the stupendous work that intellect
accomplished when the light of Divine Faith was
shed upon it.

The history of the Church is full of examples
of mighty winds that were barren and fruitless till
the sunshine of Faith fell upon them ; but St. Aug
ustine stands for ever in most brilliant testimony
of the power of purity and faith to bring forth
the flower and the fruit of graceful eloquence and
solid wisdom, which the Church of God treasures
even more than corporeal relics, and which even
an unbelieving world would not willingly let
perish.

And the singular fact remains, that although St.
Augustine spent the best years of his life in
heresy, when his mental power was fresh and
vigorous, the world has not preserved one single
line that he then wrote, one utterance from plat
form or forum, yet guards most jealously the
riper products of his genius, for without faith

190 SERMONS

what is human wisdom or what is the " tinkling
cymbal" of human eloquence compared with the
trumpet tones of a voice, resonant with Divine
power, and vibrating with the consciousness of
truth and importance of its utterances!-

And so, as Augustine the licentious student, is
completely forgotten, and would to-day be un
known to men, were it not for his own most truth
ful and most pathetic "Confessions," so Augus
tine the orator and professor, is completely hidden
by the glories that surround his name as a Doctor
and a Saint, for as the eagle of the mountains,
born and reared in a cage, is utterly unable to feel
or exercise its strength, and beats its wings feebly,
and is blinded by the faintest ray of light, and be
gins to love its captive degradation, but once free,
it beats the air and feels fresh strength with every
new pulsation of its wings, and soars at last into
the Empyrean, and plunges fearlessly into fright
ful abysses, and poises itself over the roaring tor
rent and looks steadily on the face of the sun itself,
so the soul of our saint, prisoned in the den of
irreligion and vice, was utterly powerless to ex
ercise its moral and mental energies, but once
emancipated, free, it rose into the very highest
spheres of thought, and plunged into the deepest
and darkest problems of existence, and lifted it
self into spheres of inaccessible light, and gazed
steadily on the mystery that shrouds the majesty
of the Eternal. Nothing was too great, and noth
ing too small for this searching intellect. It swept
calmly over all these vexed questions that torture
the souls of men — time and space, freewill and
Divine foresight; the existence of evil and a

THE CONVERSION OF ST. AUGUSTINE 191

benevolent and all wise Providence; the inspira
tion of Scripture — the eternity of world — all
passed in review before him, and he knew what
the loftiest intellects had said about them, and
then touched and transfigured them by the magic
of his own great mind.

No one has ever told the world the limits of hu
man knowledge, and the infinity of Divine Faith
in clearer language than he. Plato told him all
about God, told him even of the Word, Only-Be
gotten, who reposed for ever on the bosom of the
Father, led him to the very boundary of the Chris
tian Eevelation, but stopped there — there was the
gulf that could not be bridged over — there was the
gulf across which for thirty years he strained his
eyes in vain for a way whereby he could pass or a
guide who would take him by the hand and lead
him — until at last he saw in Christ the "Word
made Flesh, " and came to the knowledge of God
through Him who was "the Way, the Truth, and
the Life. ' ' And that knowledge once attained, be
hold everything underwent a transformation in
his eyes.

The Scriptures, which he had derided for their
simplicity, suddenly unfolded their sacred majesty
in word and meaning, the philosophy he had
adored became the dark obscured parchment scroll
on which, invisible but to Christian eyes, the name
of God was written, and Nature unfolded her
thousand charms to him, and with her thousand
voices echoed the peaceful exultation that filled
his heart. And now, like the great saint of Assisi
in later times, he began to love his life and the
world, whose every aspect and accident revealed

192 SERMONS

the gentle presence of its King. In the colors that
blend and mingle on the bosom of the great deep
he saw the love of God ever considerate for his
fretful and wayward child, and in a slender fila
ment that binds together the glossy plumage of
the dove he recognized the hand of Omnipotence
that has fashioned the burning souls of the
Seraphs.

IV

I have passed over, by design, the valuable
services rendered by St. Augustine to the Church
in his controversies with the heretics of his own
age, such as the Donatists and Pelagians, for, al
though it must always be remembered that his
writings about the Church's dogmas or discipline
were and are of supreme importance, I prefer to
linger on those wider issues where he comes di
rectly into conflict with modern thought.

For, whereas the whole tendency of modern
thought is to dissociate philosophy and religion,
it was his constant task, as it is his highest glory
to have united them. And it would be quite im
possible to exaggerate his splendid services, not
only to the Church, but to religion, in this great
department of theological science.

His works are a storehouse of information and
reasoning, from which every succeeding genera
tion has borrowed material for defense or attack.
One by one the great Christian thinkers have ap
proached him, and bowing before his lofty genius,
have taken from his hands, the material from
which they have constructed works, that make
their names memorable amongst men. And these,

THE CONVERSION OF ST. AUGUSTINE 193

not only Catholic writers, but such men as Paley,
Chalmers, Butler, MacCulloch, who, each in turn,
wrote on Natural Religion, and showed the Revela
tion of God, not in Scripture alone, but in nature
herself. From St. Ambrose, his own master,
down to the great statesmen who to-day hold a
high and unique place in literature as in politics,
every great illuminative intellect has been in
debted to our saint, and if he had no other answer
to that eternal impeachment, that our Church is
opposed to reason and inquiry, the name of St.
Augustine alone ought to be accepted as a suffi
cient refutation.

We are familiar with the derision and scorn
which men try to pour on what they are pleased
to consider a decaying faith, with neither virile
thought nor fanatical enthusiasm to preserve it.
We are grown quite accustomed to the cry: "Your
torch is extinguished; your day is over; behold we
light it anew at the fire of reason and, like the
athletes in the lamp race of the Athenians, we
shall pass that pure fire from hand to hand to the
end of time."

Our answer is clear — Yes ! and defiant ! * * Take
your tiny lamp of reason and search the abysses."
Make your minds a blank from which all precon
ceived or traditionary ideas are blotted out, and
go find the truth. We make you a present of all
that human ingenuity has devised to help you in
your research: the figments of philosophers, the
dreams of visionaries, even the solid discoveries in
natural science. Take years of research and labor
in your own individual meditation, and in the dust
and mold of the world 's libraries. Call aloud to

194 SERMONS

your gods to hearken to your cries, and rain down
light from high Olympus. And when you are old
and your hair is gray and your hands tremble,
come to us who in the day of your strength you
derided ! That powerful objection of yours, which
you launched so airily and confidently against
Christianity, behold here it is, anticipated and an
swered, fifteen centuries ago by Augustine. And
that brilliant fancy, which leaped up like an in
spiration, when your brain was dull from much
thought, and the midnight oil was burning low!
Why, it passed the lips of St. Augustine in his
long conversation with Monica and Alipius near
the sea at Ostia, or in those numberless homilies
at Hippo, when clustered around his episcopal
chair, men wondered and women wept.

There is something sublime in the spectacle of
this great mind, stretching far back into the past,
and appropriating all the wisdom of the East and
of Greece, and then reaching down the long cen
turies to our time, and coloring the thoughts of
men, who cannot fail to admire his commanding
genius, although they will not accept his authority
for their faith.

There is nothing local or contracted about his
genius. He spoke and wrote for the world, and
unto all time ; and, perhaps, the best proof of the
importance that the world attaches to his pro
nouncements is that there is no author the authen
ticity of whose works and the meaning of whose
words is so much questioned. Where he can be

THE CONVERSION OF ST. AUGUSTINE 195

quoted, there is no longer controversy. He is one
of the supreme judges in the great court where
questions of supreme importance are debated, and
issues of the mightiest moment are decided, and
from his judgment there is no appeal.

One of the fiercest controversies that has ever
raged in the Church turned altogether on the ques
tion whether certain propositions were to be found
in his writings ; and a sect of heretics has built up
one of its fundamental doctrines on a single text
from his Scriptural comments where his works
are distorted, and his meaning misapprehended.
And yet this great mind bowed in humble submis
sion to the Mother and Mistress of the Faithful,
and submits his works to her judgment, to be cor
rected or even suspended from publication, if she
thinks that in any way they can favor error or un
belief. Nay, even the Holy Gospels, which were
to him as the bread of Life, and which bear on the
very surface indication of their supernatural ori
gin, he will not accept but from her hands.

And she with her great discernment, places her
hand on his works, and gives them to the world
with her mighty imprimatur. And every succeed
ing Pontiff who is compelled by the circumstances
of his age to note the peculiar and evershifting
errors that are put before the world disguised un
der the name of philosophy, points to Augustine,
and his great pupil, Aquinas, as the exponents of
her philosophical creed. And well she may. For
in the supposition that she had not the great Eter
nal promises, which are the support of her prerog
atives, and the credentials of her lofty mission,

196 SERMONS

she might shelter herself behind the works of St.
Augustine, and there consider her position im
pregnable.

Such is our answer to the world ! But to those
of our own household — those weaklings in the
faith, whose beliefs are shaken by every flippant
jester, or by a padded article in a review, and who
think, alas! that they are then only wise when
they commence to doubt, we say in all charity and
pity: " These things, too, passed through the
mind of St. Augustine ; he saw their falsehood, set
them aside, and was at peace !"

VI

I have drawn for you now the shadows and the
lights that mark the life and character of our
saint, and if I have drawn the shadows too darkly
or deeply, it is that the lights may be seen more
fully and clearly. I make no apology for detain
ing you too long on the life of him, who is your
Patron, and whose name to myself has been a
name of magic from my youth. Just for a mo
ment, however, I will take you back to one calm
scene immediately after his conversion, when his
mother and he now poured forth their souls freely
after the long years of spiritual separation.
There is a famous picture by Scheffer familiar to
you all in photography and engravings. It rep
resents that famous evening at Ostia when Monica
and Augustine quietly talked over one of those
sublime problems that always occupied his mind.
Mother and son are seated together — the mother's
hands folded in her lap, and her child's hands
clasped between them. On the worn features of

THE CONVERSION OF ST. AUGUSTINE 197

the Mother, and the well-chiseled intellectual fea
tures of the son, is peace, deep peace — peace which
the world never gives. But insensible to the beau
ties of nature around them in that land where
every landscape is a sublime picture, the eyes of
mother and son are fixed on the skies. Behind
the blue dome of immensity is that Being, whose
love had surrounded them, whose mercy had ex
alted them, seeing only the tears of the mother
and forgetting the iniquities of the child. From
the faces of our saints and from the contemplation
of their lives, we, too, must look on high. To
Him who is on High, whose humility has exalted
and given Him the Name which is above all Names,
our thoughts must soar, our love be directed, our
affections centered, if we hope to enjoy the peace
of Augustine and Monica here, and call the for
mer our Father and our friend, in the presence
of His Master and Friend in the sinless bliss, the
perfect peace, the calm joys of our Heavenly
Home.

jfeast of St, Hlpbonsus Xiguorf's Gente*

is an empire in the midst of the em
pires of the world, and its laws are not
framed by flesh and blood, and its praises are not
on the lips of men, and its glory is not that which
perishes when the grave has closed and the epi
taph is written. It is conterminous with the em
pires of the earth, for it is throned on all the
dwellingplaces of men; yet it reaches out unto
eternity, and Angels are its subjects, and Arch
angels its ministers. As subtle as the spirit of
air, it envelopes this material world, and pene
trates into high places, and into the lowliest ; and
the world has raged against it, and sought to de
stroy it, yet it abides in its strength, and even
time will not touch it, for it is sealed with the seal
of Immortality.

Strange and mysterious are its teachings and
its laws, making little of earth and the desires of
men, and for ever preaching another world around
us, above us, within us, inhabited by spirits, whose
transcendent strength and beauty shall be ours, if
we learn to despise the trappings of earthly pride,
and the desires of a nature that is grown corrupt,
and try to lift ourselves even to the full stature
of the perfection which was ours before we fell.

i Preached in the Redemptorist Church, Limerick, July, 1887.

198

ST. ALPHONSUS LIGUORI'S CENTENARY 199

And the subjects of that empire, whilst toiling,
like ordinary men, live half their lives in that same
world of spirits, and speak to visions that faith
creates, and take ideal types of sanctity for
models, and dream of great white thrones in the
clouds, where yet they shall dwell, and pray, to
unseen beings for strength in peril, and for hope
when they faint, and believe that power descends
upon them from the skies, and that dark spirits
vanish into the nether Hell when the legions of
Heaven sweep from the clouds at the voice, or at
the command, of prayer.

And this empire, too, has its heroes, those who
had keener faith and insight into all the awful mys
teries that exist around us, who made themselves
more like the angels by becoming less like to men,
who labored to extend the dominion of Jesus
Christ — on Whom the spirit of God was more fully
poured out, and who were to their fellowmen as
pillars of fire in a darkened land, and as voices
crying in the wilderness. Such, beyond doubt,
was the wonderful saint, who after a laborious and
fruitful life, passed, just a hundred years ago,
into his rest and reward, and whose name is fa
miliar to you, as the Father of your Spiritual
Fathers, who call themselves by his name, who
followr his guidance, obey the discipline he es
tablished, and on whom the mantle of his great
spirit — the spirit of zeal and prayer, and work for
Christ — has fallen.

In the Empire of the Church of which I have
spoken, there are two purifying and ennobling
elements, which are the lot of all humanity, but
which, when duly consecrated, are the means given

200 SERMONS

us by God, to repair the sad wounds of our fallen
humanity, and make us worthy of our angelic des
tiny. To fallen Adam it was said : ' i In the sweat
of thy brow shalt thou labor"; the second Adam
said: "If any man will be my disciple, let him
take up his cross.'* To work and to suffer is the
common lot of men. To work and to suffer, and
thereby to lift oneself above the earth — this is the
making of saints. And I think we shall come to a
full understanding of the character of St. Al-
phonsus if we consider his life under this two
fold aspect — if we study the marvelous deeds he
accomplished. Still more the martyrdom he en
dured, with the fortitude of the early saints, at
the hands of men and even at the hands of God.

ii

It was a happy day for St. Alphonsus and the
Church, that day, when puffed up with a vain con
ceit of his great intellectual powers, he was sud
denly plunged into an agony of shame, made
ashamed before his legal brethren and a vast as
semblage of his countrymen — shame of defeat
where he was most assured of victory — deeper
shame, for he appeared to the world merely as
a casuist and a quibbler, who, for the sake of a
momentary triumph, had sacrificed justice and
truth.

For a whole month he labored at his desk, pil
ing up argument after argument, until the fair
fabric rose before him clear, perfect, and flawless,
and he had counted on the applause of his friends
and the discomfiture of his enemies — and behold
the fair fabric has dissolved at a single word, and

ST. ALPHONSUS LIGUORI'S CENTENARY 201

he leaves the Court a shamed and humbled man,
and the bitter cry of Solomon rises from his heart :
i ' Vanity of vanities and all is vanity. ' '

Not all ! Alphonsus ! Not all ! Lo ! here at hand
is work that shall not perish ; lo ! here at hand is
spiritual and intellectual labor that shall not fail
of its fruit and its reward ! Lo ! here is toil, not
the poor gain of wealth, which the rust will con
sume and thieves will steal, not the weaving of
vain cobwebs of passing glory, which the hand of
Death will brush aside, but treasures that will last
for your enjoyment during the long years of eter
nity and glory that cannot fade, for it emanates
from Him "Who is the splendor of eternal light
and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty!"
For here round about in this Neapolitan land, are
souls sick unto death with weariness and sin.
The burden of life presses heavily upon them.
Under the sweltering sun they labor, and seek
their reward in the black bread and the squalid
den which they call home, and sometimes they seek
a shelter beneath the walls of their village church,
and mutter a few prayers which have lost their
meaning for them, and lift eyes of despair to the
rude crosses, which tell them, too, of suffering,
but have lost their sweet symbolism of mercy and
love.

For religion is dead or decaying amongst these
rude people, and the Divine story of Infinite Love
and patience has lost its life-giving power and
strength, and has become even as an empty legend,
and even the Madonna, the ever-present, ever-lov
ing Madonna, seems to have left the earth, and
taken with her her purity and gentleness and holi-

202 SERMONS

ness, for they no longer revere her virtues, though
they have not lost all faith in her power.

All this Alphonsus saw with the instinct, or
rather, the inspiration of a Saint, and here was the
work for which now he had to exchange the gown
of the lawyer, and the exciting triumphs of legal
acumen and eloquence! But he saw more! It
were at best a pitiful sight — that of this multitude
of human beings, passing from life to death
through labors unrewarded, except with the solace
that comes from sin; but there was eternity!
eternity before them, and would it not be work,
the most sublime that human hand ever touched, to
fit those souls for Heaven — to save those souls
from Hell.

For mind you, dearly beloved, those Saints of
God are no visionaries, as the world too freely
supposes. Alphonsus did not take his conception
of Hell from poetic dreamers, who fill its gloomy
mansions with angelic intelligences, who deliver
pompous speeches against the Most High, nor did
he follow the idea of his own countrymen and
create puppets of the imagination that the world
might see with pleasant curiosity. He saw Hell as
the fire — eternal — inextinguishable — kindled by
the breath of the Most High — with the smoke
thereof going up for ever and ever, and the worm
never dying: and day by day falling from the
streets of the sunny city into the awful abyss ; he
saw souls, which were present to the blood
stained eyes of Christ, in Gethsemane, and the
dying eyes of Christ on Calvary.

And he heard the voice of God calling him to
save that mighty multitude, and straightway he

ST. ALPHONSUS LIGUORI'S CENTENARY 203

went down into the cities, he went out into the
plains, and the poor and ignorant came to him,
hungry for the bread of life, and thirsting for the
waters that spring from the living fountain. How
he accomplished his mighty mission from that 23rd
of October, 1723, when he assumed the ecclesiasti
cal dress, down to that day, when amidst his breth
ren, and like His Master, in agony, he gave up his
pure soul to God — the Bull of his Canonization
tells us. "No toil, no trouble," says Gregory
XVI., "were spared by him to recall men steeped
in vice and wickedness to the loving embraces of
God." In summer and winter, in mighty cities
and lonely hamlets, in the pulpit, speaking from
the depths of his great heart the eternal truths, in
the confessional surrounding his trembling peni
tents with an atmosphere of love, to-day among
the lazzaroni, who slept their useless lives away
on the quays of Naples, to-morrow amongst the
unlettered peasants of the hills, with no thought of
rest-or relaxation, but of spending and being spent
in the service of his Maker — such was his life of
noble work and noble sacrifice.

He made a vow — a difficult one, except to a great
Saint — and he kept it. "He would never lose a
moment of time that could be given to God's serv
ice. ' ' Now, work of any kind is elevating and en
nobling. Be it ever so menial, ever so humble, it
has an effect of consecration on the soul. But this
work of St. Alphonsus! Not so much a servant,
as a co-operator with Christ; lifting the fallen,
succoring the weak, healing the bruised, bringing
back to the ever present cross that crowns every
hill in that land of faith its message of ever endur-

204 SERMONS

ing mercy to those who had forgotten its mystery
and meaning. Sixty years is a long span of life !
Sixty years and sixty times sixty is but a moment !
Which is true? Both true. Sixty years of labor
for things that perish — what is it, but the an
guished dream of a moment; what means it, but
laurels that fade, and a name that is written on
water? But sixty years for God, such as Alphon-
sus gave — ah! it is a long span of life, for it
reaches in effect out into eternity.

And who, that has not seen the archives of
Heaven, can tell what mighty and enduring work
was accomplished during these years by Alphon-
sus. If, as St. Augustine says, the raising of one
soul from sin to peace is more than the creation
of a world, what value shall we set on the countless
Souls that were gained to Christ by the ministry
of our Saint! As simple priest, as founder of a
mighty order, as Bishop, as doctor, who shall cal
culate the victories of grace, the sweetness poured
upon sorrow, the calm that succeeded despair, on
the millions of souls that came under his influence.
You may know, dear brethren, at least any of you
that has sung from his heart that hymn of glad
ness that comes after repentance, you may con
jecture what peace flowed over the sad earth from
his ministry, but the glory that he gave the Most
High shall never be known by angels or men till
the day of reckoning when the trumpet shall sound,
and the seals be broken, and the books shall be
opened in the Valley of the Judgment.

ST. ALPHONSUS LIGUORI'S CENTENARY 205

in

But St. Alphonsus would also perpetuate his
work amongst them. He would pass away in time,
but the struggle was a never-ending one, and why
should he not secure that, ever in the field, labor
ing for Christ Jesus, should be a band of Mission
aries, filled with his spirit, penetrated by his faith,
and whose motto should be his own: "He hath
sent me to preach to the poor, to heal the bruised
of heart. " "But were there not already in the
Church, ' ' some critic would ask, i t several religious
Communities, which St. Alphonsus could join, and
to winch he might transfer his marvelous zeal and
love for souls f " Well, those who speak thus do
not understand at all the workings of the Holy
Spirit in the Catholic Church; they do not know
that the spiritual wants of men take different
shapes at different times, and that the assaults
made by the ever active, ever watchful enemy are
directed against the Church in so many various
forms, as to argue at once their supernatural
origin and Satanic ingenuity.

It is no secret that St. Dominic was raised up by
God to counteract the Albigensian heresy, that St.
Ignatius was specially selected to stem the awful
torrent of irreligion and immorality that flowed
from the German Kef ormation ; and surely the ec
clesiastical historian is not all mistaken who de
clares that St. Alphonsus got a special mission to
neutralize the awful far-reaching destructive con
sequences that arose from the Voltairian crusade
against religion, and the less apparent, yet not at
all insignificant, results of the spread of Jansenist
doctrine in France and Italy.

206 SERMONS

For what was the one object of Voltaire's exist
ence ? What did he aim at in his writings I What
did he try to destroy by those awful powers of
satire and ridicule, with which God, for His own
wise end, had invested him? Why, he makes no
secret of it ! He tells the world plainly that there
is one whose worship galls him, whose name is
hateful to him, whose doctrines he detests, and
whose religion he will destroy, and that is the same
Lord Jesus, whose love had captivated the soul of
St. Alphonsus, before whom, in His adorable
Sacrament, he spent many hours of unutterable
bliss, whose Name he is determined to write on the
hearts of men, and the fire of whose love he will
fling broadcast over the earth, through these new
missionaries he has adopted ; until the sophism and
the satire of infidels will fall heedless on souls that
shall be lifted by faith above reason, and by Love
even above faith, almost unto the perfect vision
of their God.

But, you will say, why, one would think that
these infidels would be met more rationally by
clever doctors in the Universities and academies
of the Church. What have poor peasants to do
with these dangerous teachings 1 or how can simple
missionaries deal with controversies that are so
complicated that the very highest intelligences are
lost in them? Yes! but St. Alphonsus knew that
these dangerous doctrines would filter down from
the high places to their lowliest; that in an in
credibly short space of time, the most unlettered
peasant would hear of and grasp at doctrines that
are so flattering to human passion, and with re
gard to the means St. Alphonsus employed, by far

ST. ALPHONSUS LIGUORI'S CENTENARY 207

the best antidote against irreligion is a personal
love for Jesus Christ — the same that armed inno
cent virgins in Rome against the arguments of
philosophers and the fierce arguments of the fire
and the beast — the same that touched the heart of
St. Paul and made him eloquent before the Greeks
at Athens — the same that in every age, is more
than match for subtlety of argument and charm of
eloquence on the lips when the heart is cold and
silent.

And, therefore, St. Alphonsus, with his own
great wisdom, interpreting rightly the words of
Christ: "I came to cast fire upon the earth, and
what will I, but that it be kindled? " strove, first of
all, to create in his own soul a passionate love for
his Divine Master, then that love he would com
municate to his brethren in the order he estab
lished, thence it would flow freely on souls that
would quicken into life under its blessed influence ;
and he enshrined that great passion of his life in
two little works that will be read in the Churches
of France, long after the fiendish works of Vol
taire are forgotten — "The Visits to the Blessed
Sacrament " and the "Love of Our Lord Jesus
Christ. "

Inspired by the same Divine Love, he entered
into that controversy that for seventy years agi
tated the great College of the Sorbonne, exposed
Catholic and Christian doctrines to the ridicule of
the unbelievers, created a kind of suppressed an
tagonism between the Church of France and the
center of Catholic union, and was only finally
swept away at the last great general Council of
the Vatican.

208 SERMONS

With the theology of this Jansenist controversy
we have nothing to do. But its whole spirit was so
fatal to Christian piety, so opposed to Christian
mercy and love, that our Saint threw the whole
passion of his soul, and all the resources of his
splendid intellect and his vast learning into the
contest.

The Jansenist doctrines were gloomy, dark, de
spondent, despairful, They made salvation an im
possibility to some, they made it a chance, a mere
chance, to those who were the elect. They nullified
all the Gospel promises, and those Divine invita
tions to repentance, those guarantees of mercy,
which you have so often heard with hope, they put
them aside, and represented mankind as moving on
under a Divine curse to inevitable destruction.

When condemned by the Church, their worst ef
fects had passed away, they left in the Church of
France a spirit of severity and ungentleness, a
spirit of terror and fear, that produced lamentable
results amongst the people, and made the Confes
sional a tribunal of unbending justice, and not of
surpassing mercy. St. Alphonsus wrote against
the evil, and directed his remonstrances first to the
laity, then to the priesthood of the world. And
although when writing against Deists and Ma
terialists he showed wonderful learning and great
reasoning power, yet he preferred, as I have said,
to meet that evil by increasing the love of Jesus
Christ. It was the Jansenist dispute that brought
forth all his marvelous talents as theologian and
controversialist, and produced works that will
last as long as the Church itself, and which have
earned for him the title of Doctor. He addressed

ST. ALPHONSUS LIGUORI'8 CENTENARY 209

the laity in a little treatise on ascetic theology that
is familiar to you — his treatise on Prayer, and he
drew up for the priesthood a series of definite de
cisions on all practical questions concerning
morals, which he embodied in a work that is as
familiar as the Bible to priests — his Moral
Theology.

IV

Now, I should like to linger for a moment on this
particular point, for it appears to me that, next
after the foundation of the Kedemptorist Order,
this was the great work of his life. There is in the
Catholic Church an institution that assumes and
commands such power, that has such lofty and
sublime pretensions, that is so complicated in its
workings, yet so perfect, and that rules so uni
versally throughout the world that, if I had no
other proof of the Church's divine origin, I would
accept that institution as a final and satisfactory
argument. I speak of the Confessional. The idea
of the Confessional must have come from God.
Man, with all his pride, could never have attempted
to assume the power of the priest in Confessional,
if God Himself did not communicate it. Think of
it, dear brethren. It is the government of human
souls. It is the right to have laid bare before you
the awful secrets of the human heart. It is the
right to go down into and probe and examine those
sacred depths of the human conscience which the
eye of God alone can pierce. It is the privilege of
drawing aside the veil, which every poor human
being draws down so tightly over his secrets that
no friend can be so dear as ever to touch it ! But

210 SERMONS

with this privilege comes a frightful responsibil
ity. Not alone the responsibility of keeping those
secrets inviolate — that is easy enough — but the
responsibility of guiding these souls through dark
and intricate ways into the ways of sweetness and
light, for of all the strange mysteries that come
under human cognizance, the most mysterious is
the ^ human heart. Its feelings, its thoughts, its
desires, its waywardness, its meanness, its nobil
ity, its grandeur, are inexplicable except to Him
who made it.

Every day in your local hospitals people stand
eager and watchful around a couch where a patient
is lying, over whom is the surgeon and his knife.
Life or death depends on the success of the opera
tion. A single tremor of the hand, a slight mis
direction of the mind, will be fatal. Will any
surgeon assume the responsibility but one who has
steadied nerves by physical exercise and his intel
lect by careful study! But every day, and in
every Catholic Church operations more delicate,
because more spiritual, have to be performed, and
do you not think that they who are commissioned
to touch the delicate nerves of the human soul,
ought to have strength and knowledge for their
mysterious work? Every day throughout the
churches of the world, whenever a priest flings the
purple stole around his neck, he has to witness
sad tragedies where he alone can bring relief, he
has to hear the suppressed sob from lips that never
tremble before the world, and to see tears fall
from eyes that at all other times are proudly dry.
And do you not think that he requires a scientific
training to guide the unwary, to console the

ST. ALPHONSUS LIGUORI'S CENTENARY 211

wretched, to bind the bruised and to lift the fallen?
Now, the " guide, philosopher, friend," of the
Catholic priesthood throughout the world is St.
Alphonsus Liguori.

It is no exaggeration to state that in all doubts
and difficulties, and they are many and frequent,
there is not a priest in the world that does not fly
to our Saint for light and guidance; and there is
not a single penitent throughout the world, of all
the vast numbers who throng the confessional of
Christendom, who is not guided by his wisdom,
and directed by his knowledge. What Plato is in
ancient philosophy; what Thomas Aquinas is in
Christian philosophy; what Bellarmine is in
dogma; that St. Alphonsus is in the practical de
partment of ethical and moral science. He has so
completely appropriated that department to him
self, that none of his predecessors in the same de
partment is ever quoted, and all his successors in
the same science are simply his pupils and com
mentators.

And if a priest were to leave your shores in the
morning, and were to go forth in the scriptural
sense, without scrip or staff or shoe, he must at
least, in his most abject poverty, take three books
with him — his breviary, his missal, and the moral
theology of St. Alphonsus — the first to sing the
praises of his God, the second to celebrate the
eternal Sacrifice, the third, to guide to the foot
stool of God in Heaven whatever souls may be en
trusted to him, for well might he say with the
Psalmist : ' ' Thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a
light to my footsteps. "

But what is the spirit of this great work? Need

212 SERMONS

I say that it is the direct conversion of everything
Jansenistic or severe? The spirit of Christlike
mercy is shed over it. In this and the supplemen
tal works he wrote for Confessors — the priest is
father, physician, counselor; Judge — yes! but not
so much to condemn as to absolve. And here we
meet with what I call the miracle of his life — his
profound knowledge of the human heart, and his
complete mastery of every branch of theological
and scriptural science, and his intimate acquaint
ance with, the Fathers and the Doctors of the
Church ! I have said the workings of the human
heart are infinite ; and I am aware that there may
be possibilities of greatness or of wickedness that
have not as yet been developed. But as far as
our knowledge goes, there is not a chord in the
heart or conscience of men that St. Alphonsus has
not touched, and heard therefrom the harsh dis
cord of passion, or the harmonies of celestial vir
tues. He knows everything that man can say or
think or do ! From the rapt ecstasies of a saint,
who lives half in heaven, down to the slimy abysses
of a poor soul who is tied up by his f ellowmen as a
brute who would injure and destroy — nothing was
concealed from him. From the earnest, passionate
struggle that a soul in the beginning makes
against temptation to the sad compliance and de
spair — from the scrupulous anxieties of a timid
soul who is ever fearful of sin to the cool refine
ment of villainy of those who live to make sin a
science — all was familiar to him. He is never sur
prised at anything. Like a cool physician he holds
his hand on the pulse of humanity, and is always
ready with a clear dogmatic opinion. He ascends

ST. ALPHONSUS LIOUOBP8 CENTENARY 213

with the ease of a spirit, from a contemplation of
the most loathsome things, to a meditation on the
most sublime ; he knows how to touch the most aw
ful diseases of the human soul without suffering
himself or his pupils to catch the slightest defile
ment. The Divine Law, the Natural Law, Human
Law — he is perfectly acquainted with all, and tells
you where they unite, where they combine, where
they conflict, and with all his great charity, he
never suffers the slightest departure from what is
just and righteous — he will not allow man to de
tract from the glory that is due to God — nor from
the justice he owes to his brother. In a word, we
may apply to the directive theology of St. Alphon-
sus the words of Holy Writ, and say that in his
direction of souls: " Mercy and truth have met;
justice and peace have kissed."

And then his marvelous learning! Where did
he find time to read these books ? If I except St.
Augustine and a modern English writer, I do not
know any one who can use the Holy Scriptures
like St. Alphonsus! and apparently he has read
through a whole library of theology and asceticism.
I see the holy man, rising with the dawn, and with
the dawn in his confessional ; I know he gives two
hours each day to the preparation, celebration and
thanksgiving of Mass ; I know he spends hours be
fore the Blessed Sacrament in silent prayer ; I see
him directing the affairs of a great Order, and
journeying from Scala to Nocera, thence to Ilicito
and Caposele, visiting the communities that are

214 SERMONS

under his spiritual guidance ; I know that bishops
consult him in their difficulties, and numberless
submit to him cases of conscience — then half the
year he is out on his mission, preaching without
cessation ; exhorting, receiving and absolving sin
ners — and to crown all, the Holy Father makes him
a Bishop, and doubles his labors and his cares —
and now he has to govern 200 or 300 priests, visit
every parish and every religious community, con
firm and ordain, go down to his seminary and
regulate its discipline and its studies — and with all
this, he actually is able to read more closely than
any student in his seminary, than any Professor
in his college.

Take alone the Index to that little volume of
prayer of which I have spoken, and just read the
names of the theologians he has consulted. It
would take a month of hard labor for an ordinary
priest to verify those quotations alone. Where
did he get this power, that is not knowledge so
much as inspiration? I think I know the secret.
" Where is your library? " said St. Thomas to St.
Bonaventure, "you who have written so much?"
And the Saint pointed to his Crucifix. And I am
pretty certain that the library of St. Alphonsus
was the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.

Before that mysterious Source of light and
grace he spent many hours of the day. He com
menced no arduous work without first committing
it to the protection of the Sacred Heart: and
whenever he experienced those doubts that will
come to all merely human intelligences he sought
the counsel of Him Who was the "light of the
world. ' ' And as grace supplemented human

ST. ALPHONSUS LIGUORI'S CENTENARY 215

strength, light from on High supplemented the
weakness of human perceptions.

But had he any other source of strength? Yes !
and I dare not, I cannot forget it ! That sublime
vision that struck the eyes of St. John in Patmos
with its splendor, the "woman clothed with the
sun," had also shed the light of her beauty and her
brightness on our Saint, and kindled a love within
him, which broke forth in praise that to a worldly
or impious mind would seem extravagant.

To his pure and lofty mind, the awful grandeur
of Mary's sanctity was a perpetual source of won
derment, and he dwelt on it with that intense plea
sure and enthusiasm with which saints always re
gard whatever is a glory of God's handiwork. It
lifted him above earth to perceive that one of God's
human creatures could be made capable of such
splendor of virtue and power as the Mother of
God possessed, and failing human speech to paint
her spiritual beauty he had recourse to the word
of the Divinity, and enlisted on her behalf the
psalmist and the inspired anthem of the Canticle
of Canticles to praise and exalt her and pour from
his overflowing heart the happiness and joy that
filled it for God's wonderful dealings with his
handmaid.

And once possessed of these sublime ideas he
cannot rest until the world adopts them, and sends
up to Mary's throne in Heaven the incense of its
praise and veneration. And he appeals to the
selfishness of the human heart to love her, for she
has power beyond angels to save and protect ; and
the lightnings of God's anger cannot smite those
who rest under the shadow of her protection. To

216 SERMONS

all things of darkness and evil she is the resistless
foe, clad in the awful strength of her purity. She
keeps far from her, and from those she protects,
all things of slime and sin ; the very thought of her
alone chases impure suggestions, the very whisper
of her name shatters the strength of spirits that
are denied; the slightest homage ensures her en
during protection; and he exhausts all the re
sources of his own eloquent language to persuade
men of her dignity and her privileges, of her
mercy and her power. And for himself — well, he
is amply rewarded in being her servant and her
preacher; and he reflects very often with ever-
increasing consolation: "They that work by me
shall not sin ; they that preach me shall have life
everlasting. ' 9

VI

Yet, great as was his influence, priceless his work
for God, we should hesitate to name him saint if
there were not something else to crown his sanc
tity. Power is to be reverenced, but "power is
made perfect in infirmity, " and it belongs to St.
Alphonsus as a right, as a privilege, that he should
suffer. And he did.

I do not for a moment pretend to have gauged
the depths of this great soul so perfectly that I can
say with any certainty how much he endured, for
in any case, the keenest sufferings are those which
are not expressed to the eyes of men, and great
saints have the talent of keeping their secret sor
rows for the eye of God alone. But we can form
an approximate idea of what even saints endure
by considering what exactly we should feel in simi-

ST. ALPHONSUS LIOUOEPS CENTENARY 217

lar circumstances, making always allowance for the
fact, that if great Saints have great graces, they
at the same time have souls whose very grandeur
makes them more sensible to pain than ordinary
beings — for the more lofty they are the more re
fined — the more refined the more sensitive to those
tortures that come from men, from the hand of
God, and, perhaps, still more frequently from
themselves.

If we had no historical facts to prove it, we
might fairly conjecture that St. Alphonsus was
bitterly opposed in everything that he undertook
for the glory of God, and the service of religion.
For, it is a fact that admits of no exception, that
never yet has a good work been attempted, with
out being, in its very inception, violently thwarted
and opposed. Nay, there never has been a work of
any real worth attempted that has not been op
posed by the wise and the good. The work of
St. Alphonsus was no exception.

He had no sooner, at the special request of a
holy Bishop, and the still more earnest request of
a holy nun, laid the foundation of his great Order,
than immediately a storm was raised around him,
terrific in its intensity, and promising, alas, to be
duly successful in its attempts at destruction.

St. Alphonsus was called a fanatic, an enthusi
ast, a visionary, and a self-seeker. All the old
objections against the establishment of regular
orders were paraded before him. Still he perse
vered. Then his brethren grew troublesome.
Merely evangelizing the poor ! What a paltry ob
ject! Would he not establish colleges? Would
he not extend their sphere of labor and diversify

218 SERMONS

it by embracing several objects? No! was the
answer! "He hath sent me to preach to the
poor ! " " Then we shall leave ! ' ' And they did ;
fell away from his side, like the Apostles of old,
scandalized because of his humility, not knowing
of what spirit they were. And with two compan
ions alone, the saint commenced his mighty work.

I pass over the long years of his labors for
Christ, merely saying that during these years
"thou shalt labor !" "thou shalt suffer !" was his
lot, and come to the end just to see how God per
fected his work.

St. Alphonsus had been Bishop and had laid
aside his miter and staff, and was looking forward
to some peaceful years, when hot and heavy from
the hand of God, sorrow fell upon him. He was
struck by disease, agonizing, chronic disease,
which bent him together in throes of suffering, so
that he could not look upon the ' ' sweet heavens, ' '
hardly lift his eyes to the faces of his fellowmen.

Sharp upon this came mental anguish — a trial
so bitter that they alone who have passed through
its agonies can realize it. A feeling of despair
came over him — an intense fear that his life was
misspent, and that the fire and the worm alone
remained as his reward. Would he ever see God's
face but in anger 1 Had he done God's work care
lessly? Those souls, those thousand souls that
had passed through his hands to be prepared for
eternity — where were they? Suppose that one
soul even was lost through indiscretion, could he
ever look on the face of Jesus Christ? And after
all were these years wasted? Was all his work a
heap of ashes, corroded by earthly vanity? Did

8T. ALPHONSUS LIGUORI'S CENTENARY 219

not self, self, enter into everything? And if it
should be so, great God ! is he never to see the face
of Him, whom behind his Sacramental veils he
had so passionately worshiped and loved? Is he
never to touch the hands of Christ, never to hear
that voice, that is sweeter than honey of the honey
comb? And Mary, Mary, the Queen and Empress
of his soul, whose face hallowed his dreams, whose
presence his waking moments, is he never to see
her, but to go down into the pit amongst all those
things he feared and loathed, and be compelled to
blaspheme those whom he loved with all the pas
sionate earnestness of a pure heart?

I do not want to deprecate the sufferings of the
martyrs, but I had rather pass through the fire
fifty times, and be ground by the teeth of wild
beasts, than endure one day ?s martyrdom when the
face of God is clouded in the heavens, and the
peace of God is broken in the heart.

And thus he died. In the tortures of physical
pain, in the agony of acute despair, under the
frowns of men — what more was there to make him
like Him who died, in the tortures of crucifixion—
with the cry on his lips: "My God! why hast
Thou forsaken me ? ' ' and with the cry in the ears :
"Vah, if Thou art the Son of God save Thyself,
and we will believe in Thee."

Of course, after his death, all things righted
themselves. The Order was united and strength
ened and spread itself over the civilized earth-
decree after decree has come forth, sanctioning his
works, and finally making him a Doctor of the
Church; the sunshine of God is streaming after
the storm ; but let us not forget that it was in the

220 SERMONS

storm he died, as the darkness came down on Cal
vary and the lightning flashed when his great Mas
ter declared that his work, too, was accomplished.

Saint Josepb

Preached during the Forty Hours' Adoration.

o solemn is the Presence in which we stand
there is one idea uppermost in the minds of
all, that silence is the only fitting form of worship.
It is not every day that our Divine Lord breaks
the monotony of His hidden sacramental life to
come before us face to face, not for the passing
moment of Benediction, but for long hours of the
day and night.

And upon such occasions, realizing more deeply
than usual the hidden but awful Presence of our
Divine Lord, looking upon Him, who is "all in all"
to us for time and for eternity, it seems almost ir
reverent to break the solemn silence even by ver
bal prayers; there is but one worship worthy of
such an occasion, the silent meditation of minds,
impressed by a deep sense of the majesty of God's
Presence and the silent homage of hearts, over
flowing with gratitude and love.

And yet we cannot conceive how our Blessed
Lord would be displeased when He knows that the
silence is broken only to speak of the most won
derful invention of His love ; and that the atten
tion of His worshiping children is drawn away
from Him for a moment only that it might after
wards be fixed more steadily upon Him.

To-day, too, we have to notice a coincidence that
221

222 SERMONS

illustrates in a singular manner the spirit of the
Catholic Church, and one of the many unspeakable
designs of God. I will not call it an accident, and
I do not think it was a purely human thought that
selected the Feast of Saint Joseph for the first
most solemn act of worship that we pay to our
Sacramental God.

But in whatever way the idea originated, it was
a happy one ; and it exemplifies a truth often ex
emplified in the history of the Church, that as
Saint Joseph, when upon earth, was the foster-
father and guardian of God's most precious trea
sures, Jesus and Mary, so in Heaven he continues
His watchful protection over Jesus hidden in the
Blessed Sacrament, and over the Church of God,
the type of Mary.

This evening, therefore, our Divine Lord will
share His praises with His foster-father. And we
will worship our Divine Lord, as we would have
worshiped Him during His Sacred Infancy upon
earth, in the arms of him who has been well called
the type of the Eternal Father.

As the life of Saint Joseph was a hidden life
upon earth, so devotion to Saint Joseph, deep and
ardent though it always has been, has been hidden
in the Church for centuries. It was reserved for
Pius IX. — Pius, the priest of the Sacred Heart,
and the preacher of Mary's privileges — to bring
Saint Joseph more prominently before the faith
ful, thus re-uniting, as it were, to the eyes of the
faithful, the Sacred Trinity upon earth. The
Holy Family of the house of Nazareth : Jesus and
Mary and Joseph.

In the Apostolic Decree, which constituted Saint

SAINT JOSEPH 223

Joseph patron of the Universal Church, it is
stated, "that the Church has always most highly
honored and praised the most blessed Joseph, next
to his Spouse, the Virgin Mother of God, and has
besought his intercession in time of trouble. "

The development of doctrine and devotion in the
Church, however, was necessarily very slow. For
centuries the whole attention of the Church was
directed to maintaining the true doctrines about
the Incarnation. This was the fundamental truth
of Christianity, and this was the most frequently
and violently attacked. The God-Man, given by
His own love, and the charity of the Father, to the
Church, was the precious treasure upon which,
during the early years of her existence, all her at
tention was lavished.

All the marvelous mysteries wound around that
central mystery of the Incarnation had to be ex
plained; and all the attacks, open and insidious,
that sought to detract from the truth of that mys
tery and the honor of God had to be repelled. By
degrees, when those controversies on the Incarna
tion had subsided, and the Church had a breathing-
time, without for ever forgetting her Spouse, the
Son, she directed her attention to the Mother; and
by degrees, thinking them over first in her own
deep mind, she put before her faithful truth after
truth, and dogma after dogma about the Mother—
her royal dignity, her Divine Maternity, her rich
prerogatives, until, in our own age, she reached
the primary truth of all, that the Mother had never
known sin, and the reality of her position was
recognized — a Virgin and sinless. "And thus,"
as a holy priest has written, "the adoration of

224 SERMONS

Jesus and the devotion to Mary took their places
immovably in the sense of the faithful, and in the
practical system of the Church, one shedding light
upon the other, and both instructing, illuminating,
nourishing, and sanctifying the people."

The claims of the all-Holy Son and His virginal
Mother being satisfied, the Church was able to
turn her attention to the guardian of both, the
father of the household at Nazareth.

We have said that the Church is a type of Mary,
and there can be no doubt that Mary is a teacher
of the Church. When, therefore, the truth of her
Son's Incarnation was placed beyond doubt, and
any honor paid to Saint Joseph could not prejudice
the Divine origin of her Child, the Church of God
learned from her teacher's lips the dignity and the
holiness of God, and gathered from her heart deep
feelings of love and gratitude to Him.

Mary's Divine Maternity protected and con
firmed the truth of our Divine Lord 's origin : but
by a wise decree the Church did not publicly preach
the dignity of Saint Joseph until the truth of the
Incarnation was put beyond the cavils of heretics,
lest the presence of Joseph might prejudice the ex
clusive right of the Eternal Father to the Pater
nity of the Son.

Devotion to an earthly father, even though he
were only foster-father, might have given the ene
mies of Jesus Christ a pretense for denying His
eternal generation from the Father; we must not,
therefore, be surprised to find that public devotion
to Saint Joseph was not established in the Church
as early as devotion to the Blessed Virgin, because
the honor of our Divine Lord is to be maintained

SAINT JOSEPH 225

whoever should suffer; and, whereas Mary's Di
vine Motherhood was the surest protection of the
honor of the Son, devotion to Saint Joseph would
have been seized upon by captious heretics as a
proof that the Church was regardless of that first
truth of the Incarnation, that Christ had no earthly
father — as Saint Athanasius declares: "Born of
the Father before all ages, born of a Mother in
time."

But, although the Church's devotion to Saint
Joseph was not explicitly declared until the thir
teenth century there can be no doubt that his
claims to the reverence of the faithful were fully
acknowledged even in the earliest ages.

It is to the East that common opinion traces the
origin of the devotion to Saint Joseph. Before
Saint Athanasius, in the fourth century, sent mis
sionaries into Abyssinia to instruct the Copts in
the rites of the Church of Alexandria, the sojourn
of the Holy Family in Egypt was commemorated
in Abyssinia, and a special festival was kept in
honor of Saint Joseph. So, too, amongst the
Christians of Syria, so ancient is the devotion,
there is no record of its introduction amongst
them. There can be no doubt, too, that in the
Greek Church the devotion is of great antiquity,
as may be gathered from their hymns, and the
custom that everywhere prevailed in Greece of
calling children by the name of Joseph.

The history of the introduction of devotion to
Saint Joseph into the West in instructive.

Father Faber is of opinion that the devotion
sprang up in the West itself — in the South of
France. "It rose," he says, "from a Conf rater-

226 SERMONS

nity in the white city of Avignon, and was cradled
by the swift Ehone, that river of martyr memories
that runs by Lyons and Aries, and flows into the
same sea that laves the shores of Palestine. The
land which the contemplative Magdalen had conse
crated by her hermit life, and where the songs of
Martha's school of virgins had been heard prais
ing God, and where Lazarus had worn a miter in
stead of a grave-cloth: it was there that he, who
was so marvelously Mary and Martha combined,
first received the glory of his devotion."

There can be no doubt now, however, that the
great majority of ecclesistical writers trace the
devotion to the East, and attribute its introduction
into Europe to the Carmelite Order. And with
the introduction of this devotion into the East
came another devotion to the most Blessed Sacra
ment of the Altar ; and from this, it has been re
marked that it was Mary brought Joseph before
the world, and Joseph brought Jesus ; the children
of Our Lady of Mount Carmel introduced into
Europe devotion to Saint Joseph, and devotion to
Saint Joseph was followed by devotion to the
Blessed Sacrament.

This was the order of events : In 1208, Blessed
Juliana had her wonderful vision, which moved
Urban IV. in 1264, to establish the Feast of the
Blessed Sacrament ; in 1215 the Fourth Council of
Lateran declared that in the Holy Eucharist "the
bread is transubstantiated into the body of Christ,
and the wine into His blood, by Divine Power. ' '

Honorius III. ascended the pontifical throne in
1216, and during his pontificate the Carmelites
passed into Europe, introducing devotion to Saint

SAINT JOSEPH 227

Joseph, and Honorius III. was commanded by
Our Blessed Lady, in a vision, to recognize and
solemnly to approve them.

And half a century had not gone by when the
solemn office and feast of the Blessed Sacrament
were established and devotion to Our Divine Lord
and His earthly guardian had spread through the
Universal Western Church.

A century later the greatest doctors of the
Church exerted all their learning and eloquence to
propagate this devotion to Saint Joseph. Albertus
Magnus, the teacher of Saint Thomas, composed
an office in his honor. Before his time another
Dominican, Brother Bartholomew of Trent, had
written his biography.

In 1416, whilst the Council of Constance was
sitting, and the legates of the Holy See, twenty
Cardinals, two hundred bishops, and all the doc
tors and theologians of the Church were earnestly
debating the best means to stem the torrent of
corruption that was devastating the Church, Ger-
son, the Chancellor of the University of Paris, ap
peared before the fathers, and suggested devotion
to Saint Joseph as the only — and the most effect
ual — remedy for the evil, because, he argued, as
Saint Joseph was the guardian of Christ, so is he
the guardian of the mystical body of Christ, and
he, whom Christ obeyed on earth, still retains an
authority of affection over Christ in Heaven, and
thus his wishes, like the wishes of Mary, are com
mands, and his intercession is all-powerful.

His words were received as the words of one who
had a mission from Heaven, and as devotion to
Saint Joseph spread in the Church, the troubles of

228 SERMONS

the Church, one by one, disappeared : for less than
a year, perfect peace was restored: the distrac
tions of schisms and discussions ceased: and,
under the mild patronage of Saint Joseph, the
ever-suffering Church had its history of persecu
tion broken by a momentary peace which she sel
dom, and only at rare intervals, enjoys.

Time went on; and now it was not a passing
schism, but the most fearful heresy that desolated
the Church : it was not a spark of hell-fire, but an
eruption ; but devotion to Saint Joseph lived and
was fostered in the Church by the greatest of his
devoted clients, Saint Teresa; and when the na
tions of Europe rejected Christ by refuting His
Church, the Child and His foster-father passed
away into heathen lands, and as at the passing of
the Child in His father's arms into Egypt, the
idols trembled and fell, so heathenism disappeared
where Jesus and Joseph were preached by their
priests, and whole kingdoms were evangelized and
won over to God.

' ' The contemplative, ' ' says Father Faber, ' ' took
up the devotion, and fed upon it : the active laid
hold of it, and nursed the sick, and fed the hungry
in its name. The working people fastened upon
it: for both the Saint and the devotion were of
them. The young were drawn to it, and it made
them pure ; the aged rested on it, for it made them
peaceful. Saint Sulpice took it up, and it became
the spirit of the secular clergy ; and when the great
Society of Jesus had taken refuge in the Sacred
Heart, and the Fathers of the Sacred Heart were
keeping their lamps burning ready for the resur
rection of the Society, devotion to Saint Joseph

SAINT JOSEPH 229

was their stay and consolation, and they cast the
seed of a new devotion to the Heart of Joseph
which will one day flourish and abound.

"So it gathered into itself orders and congrega
tions and high and low, young and old, ecclesiasti
cal and lay, schools and confraternities, hospitals,
orphanages, and penitentiaries, everywhere hold
ing up Jesus, everywhere hand in hand with Mary,
everywhere the refreshing shadow of the Eternal
Father.

"Then when it had filled Europe with its odor,
it went over the Atlantic, plunged into the damp
umbrage of the backwoods, embraced all Canada,
became a mighty missionary power, and tens of
thousands of savages filled the forests and the
rolling prairies at sun-down with hymns to Saint
Joseph, the praises of the Foster-Father of Our
Lord."

Such is a brief outline of the history of this won
derful devotion. And such is the way that God
has chosen to recompense the protector of Jesus
and Mary!! The hidden life of Nazareth is
changed for the glory of Heaven, and the worship
of God's Church upon earth. The meek and lowly
Joseph is Patron of the Universal Church.

So deep was his humility upon earth that he
seems to us to have been no more than the uncon
scious agent of the miracles of Heaven: and he
little knew that for the fulfillment of the high func
tions God had entrusted to him his soul had been
filled with transcendent virtue: and that in after
ages learned doctors of the Church would study
eagerly his life and his character, knowing well
that in both they would discover traces of the

230 SERMONS

spiritual omnipotent work of the Holy Spirit.

He must have been completely unconscious of
his sanctity during life : and now we have saints
far advanced in the spiritual life sitting at his
feet to learn sanctity, for they know that he who
on earth and in Heaven is nearest to Christ is
likest unto Christ, and that to be like unto Joseph
is also to be like unto Jesus.

Who was more humble? more hidden than the
carpenter of Nazareth! Yet behold the great wis
dom of the Church does not separate him in glory
from those with whom he was associated in misery.
But throughout the Church devotion to Saint
Joseph is spreading, laying hold of all hearts, and
subduing them, not the hearts of the young, or the
poor and the lowly, whose life is like to his, but
even saints, as I have said, are happy to bring
themselves under his sweet influence, and mighty
schemes for the sanctification of souls are placed
under his protection, and difficult problems are
submitted to him for solution, and grave doctors
have often appealed to the Foster-Father of Jesus
for guidance and assistance.

Among many other traits of character, it is
recorded of a great living theologian that, often
times when burdened with anxious care, he has
been seen to lay his head on the feet of Saint
Joseph, as if appealing to the protector of our
Divine Lord for light and strength to guard the
mystic body of Christ, as Joseph guarded Jesus
from His enemies on earth.

And whom shall we take for our model, if not
Pius IX? And who is the patron saint of Pius?
Saint Joseph. A little time ago, a great artist

SAINT JOSEPH 231

was in Eome. He received an order from the
Vatican to paint a portrait of the Pope, and a
picture of the proclamation of the Dogma of the
Immaculate Conception.

When an outline of the painting had been made,
he took it to the Vatican for the Pope's approba
tion. Skillful though he was, he had great diffi
culty in grouping round the Heavenly Throne the
many choirs of saints and angels. Throwing a
quick glance over the sketch the Holy Father de
tected an omission. "And Saint Joseph, " said
he, "where is he?" "I will put him there," said
the artist, pointing to a group, lost in clouds of
light and glory. "Not so," said the Holy Father,
' ' but, ' ' laying his finger on the side of our Divine
Lord, "you will put him there, for that is his place
in Heaven."

We have been often told that the best way to
honor a saint is to imitate the virtues of the saints.
I do not know which of Saint Joseph's virtues I
should put before you for imitation ; but I think it
will be appropriate for us to-night to imitate
rather the life of Joseph, and to take upon our
selves that responsibility laid by the Eternal
Father on Saint Joseph. That is, guardianship of
our Divine Lord.

Now in an especial manner Saint Joseph was the
guardian of the Divine Infancy. It is only as a
child that we ever see Jesus by the side of Joseph
— only as an infant does He lie in the arms of
Joseph. Now the Blessed Sacrament is the most
perfect type of the Infancy of our Lord ; for it is
in the Blessed Sacrament that Jesus leads that
retired, hidden and helpless life that He led as a

232 SERMONS

Child in Nazareth. Here, then, is this Church
transformed into Nazareth, Jesus, as hidden and
helpless as there, and we, the Josephs and the
Marys, the watchers and protectors of our hidden
God.

With what love and reverence did not Joseph
guard his treasure. How grateful he felt to God
for the great privilege that was extended to him !
How often did he look into himself, asking his hu
mility why he had been chosen out of thousands !
With what looks of tender love did he not gaze
upon the face of the Divine Child.

And this untiringly. From the moment he saw
Jesus lying in the arms of His Mother in Bethle
hem till Jesus closed his eyes on earth, and opened
them to the 'Beatific Vision in Heaven, never did
Joseph relax his care, never for an instant did his
love grow cold, never did his interest wane, never
did his reverence for Jesus abate.

These must be our feelings, too, in the day and
in the watches of the night. The same treasure is
confided to us, that was confided to Joseph. Let
our love be as great, let our diligence be as unre
mitting ! It was the life-long labor of Joseph, and
he did not weary of it, because it was a labor of
love to him. The years of infancy, the years of
boyhood, the years of riper life went by! but
Joseph was unwearied.

H (Soften Century1

And we asked the ancients and said: "Who hath
given you authority to build this house and to repair
these walls ? ' ' And they answered us saying : ' ' We are
the servants of the God of heaven and earth ; and we are
building a temple that was built these many years ago,
and which a great king of Israel built and set up." —
Esdras V., 10. 11.

a preacher in the Eternal City speaks of
the never-ceasing flow of the river of time he
says not "as the years go by," but "as the cen
turies go by," thus marking vast periods of time
as alone worthy to be computed in that great
world-metropolis, whose existence seems to be
commensurate with the existence of time itself.
Somehow, in this ancient land of ours, on which
time and the hand of man seem to have made but
little impression, there is also a temptation to
measure out the progress of the hours in larger
strips and sections than is the wont of historians ;
and so to-day we stand and pause, closing a cen
tury of such work as annalist has never recorded ;
work, which will find no place in the archives of
statesmen and kings; work, which no statist can
compute, which no economist can measure, but
work which is written on scrolls that will outlast
the final fires, in which all meaner history will be
scorched and shriveled, when man and his boast-

i Preached at the centenary of the Presentation Convent, Kil
kenny, Sept. 25, 1900.

233

234 SERMONS

ings will have passed away, and eternal silence will
have come down upon this planet — the little the
ater of his pomps and follies. Yes, dearly-be
loved, a century has gone by, since this Convent
was founded by two young Irish girls, who braved
the penalism of the wrath of men to do what they
knew was God's Will. A century has gone, com
pressing within its pages the Act of Union that has
split hopelessly asunder the two races, and given a
hopeless and insoluble problem to statesmen for
all time ; the tremendous cataclysm of the Napole
onic wars that tore Europe asunder for fifteen
years ; the Declaration of American Independence,
and the steady march of a mighty nation to free
dom and empire ; hysterical revolutions in France ;
the robbery of the Papal States ; the civil war in
America ; and all the material splendors that have
accompanied the triumphal chariot of modern
progress. But all these pages of blood will have
disappeared when, like certain records, written in
invisible ink, the hidden history of this and similar
communities will gleam forth under the fires of
the Last Judgment, and the light that shall stream
forth from the face of Him, who, Man Himself, is
appointed the final Judge of the living and the
dead.

Why, then, do we anticipate that mighty and
unerring judgment by dragging forth into the light
the hidden splendors of a century of self-sacrifice
and enduring work? Why parade before the eyes
of men, who wonder, and gape, and forget, the
secrets that should be known only to the King
Himself? Ah, if a little pomp, and pride, and
flattery were the object of to-day's celebration I

A GOLDEN CENTURY 235

should not be here. But I am here, most willingly
and joyfully, to ask you to pause and stand still for
a moment ; and cast your eyes backward over these
hundred years of toil and labor and suffering;
that seeing all this you may glorify your Father
who is in heaven, that you may bend down and
adore that Divine Original, who, even in this hide
ous and barren century, is able to produce in hun
dreds of pious and plastic souls His own Sacred
Image; that you may love your Mother Church
that can always bring forth generation after gen
eration of gifted and holy children ; and that you
may know, and it is a lesson that needs remember
ing in these unhallowed days, that the Spirit of
God is neither dead nor sleepeth ; but that to-day,
as on the day of Pentecost, He comes with His
sevenfold gifts to animate and vivify, strengthen
and illuminate those whom He has chosen for His
mighty work.

Listen to the brief history. The details are few.
Because they are so few, they are sublime and
pathetic beyond expression. Just before the time
that this poor land of ours was thrown into the
convulsions of '98; and when, in a neighboring
county, the people, maddened by persecution, were
silently preparing to show the world another of its
sublime examples of unparalleled heroism, a
Spanish gentleman, a descendant of those exiles
whom misrule had expelled from their own coun
try, was laying silently the foundations of a noble
and enduring work. Mr. Hoyne (his name should
be written in letters of gold, came to the Bishop
of Ossory, Dr. Lanigan, and placed in his hands
a large sum of money for the purpose of promoting

236 SERMONS

education amongst the female children of Kil
kenny. But the most worthless thing in the world
is gold when you have to lock it up in coffers and
cannot submit it to the divine alchemy of religion.
And the good bishop was embarrassed. Just
then, however, God came to his assistance through
the heroism of a young girl. A Miss McLoughlin
came to the bishop and offered herself and her
life, as helpers in the glorious work that had been
so faintly suggested. She was accepted. And
then, as is usual in this land of enthusiasm and
sacrifice, the divine contagion spread. And in a
few days, Miss Catherine Meighan joined her sis
ter postulant, and declared herself ready for the
sacrifice. Both are now sleeping outside in the
convent cemetery; for seventy or eighty years
they have lain with folded arms under the shadow
of their mighty work.

It is strange that my voice should be calling
out their names here in this great Cathedral, call
ing them out from the silence of eternity, and bid
ding you to love and reverence them. If I dared
to speak here to you of the world's heroes of that
time, if I dared to preach a panegyric on Bona
parte or Wellington, on Pitt or Castlereagh, you
would rise up and protest against it as a profana
tion and a sacrilege. But, through the gloom and
sorrow of a century of Irish history, and through
the sealed sepulchers of the dead, I can call on
the sanctified spirits of Sister Mary Joseph and
Sister Mary de Sales, and I can send their hal
lowed names echoing around this Cathedral to
evoke a corresponding echo in your heart, and you
will say : It is right ! It is right ! It is the meed

A GOLDEN CENTURY 237

of a deserving immortality of honor and reverence
to the secret sanctity and the noble work of two
consecrated lives. Aye! and perhaps my feeble
voice may be heard in the halls of eternity, and
that the mighty spirits who worship before the
throne of the Most High will seize on another of
the mighty motives that for ever elicit their out
burst of adoration and praise: "Thou art won
derful, 0 Lord, in Thy saints. M

At this time that noble woman, Nano Nagle, had
founded her convents in Cork, and thither the
young postulants went ; and there, after the term
of their probation, they pronounced their vows on
June 25th, 1800, and thence they were at once
summoned to take up the work of their Order and
the work of God in their native diocese. It was
no easy task. The penal laws were in full force.
The bishop could not, dare not, purchase a house
as a Convent. And again a Catholic layman, came
to his assistance, Mr. Michael Murphy, a Dublin
merchant, at once came forward, and, braving all
penalties and disabilities, purchased the house in
James Street which formed the nucleus of the
Presentation Convent of to-day. Imagine now
these two young girls setting out from the holy
seclusion of their mother-house in Cork, and trav
eling day and night on one of the coaches that
plied between Cork and Dublin in these far-off
times. But they had to put aside the glorious
habit they had just assumed — their bridal dress
that marked their espousals with Christ, and they
had to put on again, probably with laughter and
weeping, for such is our Irish character, the secu
lar dress which they had thought was abandoned

238 SERMONS

for ever. But the habit does not make the monk :
and these two holy ones did try, in all the distrac
tions of that novel journey, to keep the secret of
the King. And so at the inns and halting-places,
in the frosty night and the heat of the day, sur
rounded by a motley crowd of the curious and the
irreverent, they strove to keep their rule and to
say their daily office, and to keep themselves alto
gether unspotted from the world around them.
And on this day, September 25th, 1800, exactly
one hundred years ago — a memorable day in the
annals of your city, so full of memories — they
stepped from the coach and buried themselves once
more in the seclusion of their convent, there to
fulfill, by prayer and deed, the solemn vows they
had made to the Most High.

But that secular habit was irksome — they
yearned for the distinctive dress of their sacred
order and character. And then, after much de
liberation and prayer, and probably with some
trembling and affright, these two lawless and un
disciplined religious did a desperate thing. They
put off the garments of the world they had dis
owned and despised and put on the garments of
Christ. Yes! history records it. Verily and in
deed, like so many of their fellow-countrymen from
time to time in the long, chequered history of Ire
land, these two young nuns did, in the seclusion of
the cloister, put on the religious habit again. It
was an open act of rebellion — a defiance of the
omnipotence of the State. "What?" some one
exclaims. "Do you mean to tell us that people
were not allowed to dress as they pleased even in
their own homes I ' ' Quite so ! it was a penal of-

A GOLDEN CENTURY 239

fense. They might have dressed as charlatans
and mountebanks in all the colors of the rainbow ;
but British law said that they should not clothe
themselves in veil or habit or choir-cloak; and if
they dared disobey they subjected themselves to
hideous penalties. It seems a little thing in the
far perspective of history ; but, you must know, it
was a perilous thing then. And it was an act of
heroism, quite fit to place side by side with that of
the martyrs who refused to put the pinch of in
cense into the thuribles that smoked before the
marble gods of ancient Eome, or the virgin who
told the wondering praetors : "I am the spouse of
Jesus Christ ; with His ring hath He espoused me,
and I know no other than Him. ' ' And we may be
sure that for many months these young sisters
trembled in the midst of their heroism, and started
at every knock at the convent gates, not knowing
but that the officers of the law were waiting to drag
them, as rebels and traitors, before the tribunals
of the land. I believe that hideous law is even yet
on the statute books of England. And then com
menced the career of hidden work and usefulness,
of pieties unrecorded and charity unblazoned,
which has been continued with ever-increasing
fruitfulness even to our time. Yes, the mustard
seed has now grown to a mighty tree, whose
branches overshadow half the earth, but it was a
mustard seed hidden with some fear and doubt in
the rich soil of a faithful and devoted people. The
schools were opened. Sixty pupils attended.
They came in their rags and poverty, with bare
feet and hungry mouths ; but hungering even more
in their hearts, where the living spark of Faith

240 SERMONS

burned brightly, for the instruction and knowledge
that would lead them more closely to God. They
came with round, wondering, wistful eyes, to stare
at these new angels of mercy who had suddenly
dropped in their midst. And they told the won
derful story to others, and they came; and to
others, and they came. And the seed grew, and
the numbers became so great that additional build
ings had to be procured ; and the material convent
developed into what it is to-day, and has sent out
no less than eleven offshoots, which in turn have
taken root and thriven. During the lifetime of
the foundress, who died in 1838, no less than sixty-
six postulants were admitted. Some passed out
and founded filiations in other places, which in
turn sent back their spiritual daughters to the
mother-house; some labored into old age; some
died in the very first flower and bloom of a sancti
fied youth. The very first sister that was pro
fessed in this house died the second year of her
Profession. Such is God's will! "The one shall
be taken; and another left." One shall be called
to her reward at once, exchanging her profession
veil for the coif of death, and that again for the
crown of immortality; another has to labor for
many years, and fight with ignorance, and sin, and
suffering; another must bear with shattered
health, and broken nerves, during the long years
of her pilgrimage ; and again, another must bear
the burdens of administration, and the heavy load
of serious responsibilities. Happy are they who
die young, and fly to the peace that sleeps in the
bosom of God ! Ay ! rather happy are they, who
never think of the reward, but are content to do

A GOLDEN CENTURY 241

God 's will in the storm and sunshine ; and whose
life-motto is: God's will be done on earth, as the
Angels and Saints do it in Heaven !

But, before we send back to the peace of eternity
these two choice souls, Sister Mary Joseph and
Sister Mary de Sales, one other fact in the history
of the infant Institute is worth recording. We
have seen how those two young architects were un
willing to labor but in their own working-dress;
and that they did actually defy the omnipotence of
England to secure that privilege. It is consoling
to know that they were not obliged to push their
rebellion further ; for they did get a license to live,
and even to open a school. The historical docu
ment is still extant, signed by Dr. Hamilton, Prot
estant Bishop of Ossory, and in it we read that
" permission is graciously given to a certain Isa
bella McLoughlin to open and keep a school in
James Street for the sole use of Papist chil
dren. " Hear it, ye heavens, and give ear, 0
earth. The profession vows, solemnly signed in
Cork Presentation Convent, and binding Isabella
McLoughlin, in the name of Christ, to feed the
hungry, to clothe the naked, and to instruct the
ignorant, had to be vised and countersigned by the
Protestant Bishop of Ossory. Was there ever
such a comedy? Only one thing remains to com
plete it. I do not read, as I have read in the case
of some of my own predecessors, that security was
required for their good behavior ; and that one was
obliged in a fine of £50 to guarantee their good
conduct, is a sign that men were waking up a little
from the hideous nightmare of bigotry and perse
cution. Did I say a comedy? Yes, but a divine

242 SERMONS

comedy, with its Heaven, and Purgatory and Hell.
No wonder that Irish history is strictly interdicted
in Irish schools ! If circumstances like these were
recorded the very stones in the walls would cry
out.

And now who shall calculate the vast, silent
work wrought by this humble community during
these hundred years? For, mark you, work like
this must be calculated on the lines of geometrical
progression. It is work that cannot stand still,
but goes on fructifying a hundred-fold. How
many beautiful Christian households sprang from
these schools when young girls went forth in all
the fervor of faith and piety, and established in
your own midst those Christian families whose
love and religion reigned side by side, and where
the flower and the fruit of Catholic teaching
were shown forth in the strong faithful husband
and the tender and devoted children! How the
soul of that great Frenchman, Chateaubriand,
would exult over the realization of this Christian
ideal; for what he deemed but a possibility has
been here brought forth as a bright reality con
summated with all the perfection of Christian
workmanship! How many children passed from
those schools in the middle of our century — passed
out over the ocean to America, Australia, Eng
land, dispossessed of all things except the price
less pearl of Divine Faith enshrined in the caskets
of bodies that were never polluted by the impuri
ties of the world! And how they throve and
spread themselves abroad over the new lands, in
the hearts of mighty cities, on the huts of lonely
prairies, in the great lumber sheds of Canada, on

A GOLDEN CENTURY 243

the cities of the Pacific slope, and there, sur
rounded by every temptation that could imperil
their virtue or their faith, they kept alive the living
spark, as the Israelites burned the sacred fire in
the days of the Captivity ; and through the divine
medium of lives of consecrated virginity, or
through the less divine privileges of Christian ma
ternity, passed on the sacred spark to generation
after generation of the world-builders and world-
teachers of the Irish race. Yes ; forth from these
schools went child after child, heirs of the mighty
mission, inheritors of the monastic vocation of the
Irish race.

Nuns for the Orders of Mercy and the Presenta
tion, with lives devoted to education of the poor
and the nursing of the sick; Trappist Nuns, who
bury themselves in their convents and propitiate
the anger of God on a sinful world by fasting, and
austerities, and prayers; Carmelites, who main
tain by their fervor the sacred traditions of four
thousand years; Nuns of the Sacred Heart, who
give themselves to the laborious training of girl
hood and womanhood — all, all, spring from the
Divine fecundity of the great Mother Church of
Christian peoples, went forth from this seclusion —
all, with one purpose in their lives, to promote
God's glory; all with one hope in their hearts, to
be deemed worthy to work and suffer; all, with
one sacred aspiration, that their work might be
blessed of God ; and all with one supreme source of
strength and light: the everlasting presence and
the never-failing love of Jesus Christ. And to
day many a child of the Presentation Convent of
Kilkenny will turn her face, bathed with tears of

244 SERMONS

gratitude and love, towards this, the home of early
associations. From the cell of the Trappist and
the choir-stall of the Carmelite, from the school
and from the bedside of the sick, from every place
that is a theater of suffering and love, many a
tear-brimmed eye will turn ; and many a Sister re
volving in her mind the events of the past, will see
in the hallowed light of memory faces that have
long since paled in death to be renewed in the
larger beauty of Heaven, and will recall every little
word and caress, every encouragement and ad
monition, that made smooth the rugged ways of
life. And perhaps it is no violent strain on the
imagination to suppose that to-day also from Eng
lish manufacturing cities as well as from lonely
villages of Ireland, from stately homes in New
York or Chicago, and even from the great cities
that are springing up beneath the Southern Cross,
many a child of this Convent turns in fancy to the
place and preceptress of her youth : and perhaps
tells her little children that there is a certain island
in the winter seas the home of saints and heroes ;
that though always wrapped in mists and misery,
the face of God is always shining there ; and that
there is one spot more endeared than the rest by
the hallowed associations of childhood, and that is
the schoolroom and the chapel, and the play
ground, where the morning of life, all sunshine and
no shadow, was spent.

And even outsiders join in our chorus of jubila
tion to-day, and from the mother-house in Cork,
whence this great institution sprang, and from all
the sister-foundations in the kingdom, comes a
chorus of congratulation on the past, greetings

A GOLDEN CENTURY 245

for the present, and large, prophetic hopes for
the future! The future! Ah me, how much is
embodied in that dread word ! And what a mercy
it is that we do not see the tremendous evolutions
that lie before us in a century which will probably
be marked by excessive energies uncontrolled by
restraining moral force. We, too, have to work in
the dark as to results, our labors unlighted save
by that Lamp of all righteousness and justice — the
will of God. Yet we are justified in trying to fore
cast that future by watching the elements that are
shifting around us, agitated by soulless energies,
and potential for good or ill, according to their
direction and limitation.

Already in our schools new schemes are in pi*og-
ress for the development of our children's minds
— schemes that seem to imply the discovery that
the human intellect may be not only a museum for
dried-up facts, but also a grinding and moving
factor in the development of other physical and
mental faculties. The artistic and other powers
hitherto latent are about to be developed, and edu
cation is taking a wider, a more liberal, and a more
rational scope. With all this we must be in per
fect sympathy, as with everything that makes for
human progress and enlightenment, and for the
raising of the standard of human comfort and
happiness. And our sympathies must be all the
more keen because these new ideas seem to be
directed towards the solution of that stupendous
problem which dwarfs all other problems at pres
ent in Ireland — namely, the conservation of our
race here in our own motherland, and, with it, the
preservation of all the sacred religious and na-

246 SERMONS

tional traditions that have come down to us
through seven centuries of martyrdom and
heroism.

With all the departmental labors, therefore, of
educationalists, statists, statesmen, and others that
are directed to the amelioration of the young and
rising generation, we are in cordial and perfect
sympathy. Yet, we must never forget that we,
too, priests, nuns, and laity, have a department
which is exclusively our own, and in which we may
work without hindrance or interference from ex
ternal sources. That work is to maintain the
moral and religious ideals that have ever been be
fore our race. By all means let us make our young
people as plastic and cunning with eye and hand
as we can. There is no inconsistency between
faultless manual workmanship and a high moral
character. That is. proved by the bygone history
of our people, who wrought in cell and church the
most beautiful things in gold and copper and scroll
and manuscript, and then praised God for the gift.
And it would be the perfection and consummation
of all education, mental and manual, if our chil
dren's minds could be lifted up to see that while
performing work that is exquisite in detail and
conception they were only imitative of that su
perior wisdom that is manifested in the instinct
of the humblest insect as well as in the conserva
tion of the worlds of space.

Yes, man, too, is a plastic animal, and is in
miniature a reflection of the mind of Omniscience
itself. But there is something more. He is also
a moral being, and if he is akin to the lower crea
tion by reason and instinct he is the brother of the

A GOLDEN CENTURY 247

immortals by moral and religions aspirations.
And he is only a poor, unformed, half -developed
thing if he is wanting in moral and religious force.
Hence the success of the future must be measured
by more than material progress. It is thus we
have calculated the success of the past. If I were
to ask any Sister of this great convent, past or
present, whether the little children, confided by
the Most High to her care, were successful in life,
what answer should I receive! Would any Sister
look me in the face and say: "Yes, our children
have been great successes in life ; one married a
multimillionaire in New York, but she apostatized
and lost her religion with her name, and her chil
dren are non-Catholic to-day; another passed on
to the stage and became a celebrity, but we never
speak of her; and yet another reached to opulence
and honor, but she has come to despise her people
and her faith' 't Would not these good Sisters
rather say: "Yes, Father, our children have suc
ceeded in life ; here in Kilkenny they are the happy
wives of Catholic shopkeepers, decent artisans,
and simple, faithful, honest laborers, and their
little children fill our schools to-day, and here are
the same faces, the same bright intelligence, and
the same Irish hearts that we knew of yore ; or, our
girls have passed into the mercantile establish
ments of Dublin, into the postal and telegraph de
partments, but every one of them is as good, as
virtuous, and as pious as when they left our con
vent school; and others, called higher, are to-day
filling Irish convents with holy and devoted sub
jects; and many are teaching in England, and
many have gone out after the exiled race, and are

248 SERMONS

keeping alive the faith of St. Patrick from Labra
dor to California, and from the golden gates to the
spacious cities of Australia "? Yes, that is what
we expect to hear.

Let the future, therefore, be guided by the past
— the future with all its tremendous possibilities
and all its personal problems for body and soul.
Vast issues are before us — social, political, and
religious ; but it is no exaggeration to say that the
problem of raising up even to a higher place the
womanhood of our race, our glory and our help,
is the greatest of all. In other lands the influence
of woman has evaporated. Why? Because she
has sacrificed her dignity, and stepped down from
her lofty position. Here her influence is stronger
than ever, because here is the strength of purity,
its chastening and controlling influence is ac
knowledged and felt. And, therefore, they who
have in their hands the formation of the character
of our womanhood hold in their hands the destinies
of the race. Behold, therefore, Sisters of the
Presentation Convent, Kilkenny; behold your
honor and your responsibilities. To you, for a
hundred years, has been confided the moral and
intellectual cultivation of the womanhood of this
ancient city. To-day, looking back over that cen
tury of toil and suffering, we can say, with all the
candor of criticism, as well as all the warmth of
affection, well done ! There is not one in this vast
congregation, from your revered Bishop, your
father and your friend, down to the humblest man
or woman, who is not prepared to verify and en
dorse every word that I have spoken in your
praise, and the verdict of your people is that su-

A GOLDEN CENTURY 249

preme verdict which was passed by His people to
Him who is our Exemplar and Divine Model!
"They have done all things well."

But such a verdict entails continued work and
sacrifice. Keep, then, ever before you and your
sacred charges the supreme ideals of our creed
and race. You have to discredit the Gospel of the
world. Teach the Gospel of Christ. You have to
warn against perverted ideas and degrading con
ceptions of girlhood and womanhood. Hold aloft
the high examples of our great saints. Let Agnes
and Perpetua, Eose and Scholastics, our own
Brigid and Dympna and Ita, be the models of the
young generation that is to be molded by you.
And, above all, let the supreme example of our
Holy Mother, after whose dedication to the service
of the Temple your Order has been named, be ever
before the minds of your little children. And let
them know that there is a dignity in life quite
independent of circumstances ; that it is better to
be than to have ; that in simplicity and purity, in
meekness and chastity, lie the supreme consola
tions of life. That without God life is a burden
and earth a hell. When another century shall
have rolled by, God alone, to Whom the farthest
future is as the present knows how your Order and
your work will stand. One thing is certain — that
we shall be gathered into eternity, and in its
luminous depths we shall know what estimate the
Supreme mind will have placed upon our work.
May the final and irrevocable judgment on your
life-labor be a confirmation of that which has
passed to-day on the century of work you have ac
complished. May we all hear with bowed heads

260 8SRMON8

and throbbing hearts from the lips of the All-Per
fect: "Yes, your life-work is over, and its toil
and sacrifice have been accepted, for it is well
done." May we be able to say, in the words of
my text, when challenged to answer in whose name,
and by whose authority, we wrought: "We are
the servants of the God of Heaven and earth. It
is in His Name and by His authority we have built
this Temple and repaired the walls of the City of
God."

SERMONS ON MISCELLANEOUS
SUBJECTS

Cbartts Sermon

. Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these
my least brethren, you did it to me. " Math. xxv. — 40.

words are the keynote of Christian char
ity. They contain in simplest form the doc
trine of the Church about the nature, the object,
and the motives of the highest of Christian vir
tues. They elevate merely human benevolence
into a supernatural virtue with God for its ob
ject and eternity for its reward. They raise a
capricious or passing sentiment into a well-rea
soned and well-founded connection that manifests
itself in a steadfast and abiding sympathy with all
that suffers and is sorrowful. And they contain
the strongest condemnation of a system of thought
that prevails very largely in our age, and that
would break the golden links that bind God to His
poor in charity and mercy, and bind the poor to
God in hope and love.

Carry out the words of my text, and what pic
ture do they present? Christ, the Eternal King,
on His great white throne in the clouds, with
strong angels for His ministers, and the awful
power of Nature as His agents, and a Heaven for
those that love Him, and the worm and the fire for
those who hate Him — claiming a brotherhood with

251

252 8ERMON8

whom? The lost and outcast children of our race
— the conquered, who have gone down in dismal
failure on the battle of life, who, clothed in shame
and dishonor before men, and consumed by dis
ease, creep along to eternity through the dark
places of the earth, for whom I am pleading to
day.

Such is the picture which presents itself to
Christian eyes.

Take away the poor, and your worship of Christ,
though it be ecstatic as that of Francis or Cath
erine, will be barren and unacceptable to Him.
Take away Christ, and let your sympathy for the
poor be merely human benevolence, and it will be
neither worthy in its object, elevated in its mo
tives, catholic in its sympathies, but capricious,
changeful, passing from sympathy to hardness of
heart. For, alas ! when unchastened and unpuri-
fied, the human heart leans as easily to cruelty as
to charity, to loathing as to love.

And yet there have been men who would build
a wall of separation between Christ and His poor ;
who under very specious arguments would com
mit the poor to the tender mercies of a hard and
selfish world, and destroy their faith in a good and
merciful God; who would take away from them
the hope of immortality, which to them, even more
than the bread that perisheth, is the staff of a
weary life; who maintain with their lips the
brotherhood of man and deny the Fatherhood of
God — who, in a word, try to tear the gentle form
of Charity from the side of her elder sister, the
wisdom of the Eternal God, revealed to men in
the name and under the guise of Eeligion, and

CHARITY SERMON 253

send her out on her sacred mission under the
doubtful guidance of a science that deifies self
and a philosophy that preaches pride.

And every day the new doctrine, under specious
names and pretexts, is more widely accepted by
the world, almost every novel and romance written
in our century has advocated it, the most power
ful writers of our age have embodied it in their
works, sermons in defense of it have been, and
are, preached in pulpits that are supposed to be
strictly Christian, and you will recognize it when
I tell you that it has been raised to the dignity of
a religion in our age, and passes under the name
of the Religion of Humanity.

"What have we to do," say they, "with your
creeds and churches and confessions of faith!
Too long have the minds of men been racked by
disputes about dogmas, which no one can under
stand, and controversies about purely intellectual
beliefs, which, right or wrong, have no influence
for good on the destinies of our race. Leave
those vexed questions to scholastic disputants who
have no better employment, and face the sad
truths, which the eye is pained with seeing. You
and your race are moving around from the black
ness of one eternity to that of another. From
nothing you came : to nothing you are descending.
It is a mournful procession. The rich in the
trappings of pride and the poor in the livery of
sorrow; the strong, lifting their faces to heaven
in the exuberance of life, the sickly, craving for
their rest in the bosom of earth — but all moving
steadily on to the gulf where the future shall
reveal no more to them than the past does to us.

254 SERMONS

We admit that it is all very terrible, and that we
take away from the world its fairest hopes and
most blessed promises. But we must accept our
fate. And, meanwhile, our highest duty is to one
another. We take a leaf from the book of Chris
tianity and say, feed the hungry, clothe the naked,
lift the fallen, succor the wretched — but we prom
ise you no reward in an eternity that does not ex
ist — neither a Heaven as the guerdon of your love,
nor a Hell as a retribution of your neglect. ' '

It must be admitted that all this is specious, par
ticularly where the argument seems to rise above
the morality of our Christian dispensation, and ap
peals to our unselfishness to seek no reward and
fear no punishment. But you see it proceeds on
the assumption that man is perfect. Sublime
charity such as this and complete self-denial could
only be expected from a race that had lifted itself
from the imperfections of mortals, and clothed
itself with the attributes of angels. Until vir
tue comes to us as easy as vice, until we feel from
ourselves that it is more blessed to give than to
receive, until men admit, like St. Francis, the
beauty of poverty, and the loathsomeness of riches,
we cannot see the application of this doctrine.

But if our existences are all to end in common
ruin and annihilation, and this short span of life
is all that is given us, we shall crowd into it all
the happiness we may, and let those whose fate
it is to be poor and to suffer bear their sad lot as
best they may. Their troubles will end as speed
ily as our pleasures. We hope that they will have
philosophy enough to be patient as their suffer
ings are so temporary. Our motto shall be:

CHARITY SERMON 255

"Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we
cjie."

But the humanitarian again says : "All that is
true ; but unhappily it is the result of your teach
ing. It is your doctrine of Heaven and Hell that
has made men selfish. Give us an opportunity of
upholding our teachings to the world, of preach
ing the independence and sublimity of our race,
and of appealing to the higher instincts that you
have destroyed; and in a little time the face of
the world will be changed ; cruelty, rapine, injus
tice, in a word, ' man's inhumanity to man,' will
be forgotten, and the world will become so human
ized that society will know nothing of the hideous
social and political evils that now affect it, but
gradually grow into a blessed republic of civiliza
tion, refinement — of contentment and happiness. ' '

Yes! but was not this religion of humanity
preached long before the pure revelations of Chris
tianity? Was there a Greece, whose philosophers
are your masters, teaching a high morality, that
almost touches the sublimity of Christianity; and
where, if not in Greece, that worshiped the per
fection of the human form, and the grandeur of
human intellect, was your doctrine of the excel
lence of human nature preached! Yet! was not
its wisest man condemned to a violent death, and
its most upright citizens to banishment, and was
there not a system of helotry in Greece worse than
the barbarism of the slave traders on the coast
of Africa; and amongst the best and bravest of
the Greeks was it not the custom to fling out the
weakly and deformed and leave them as a prey to
the wild beasts by night f And in Borne was there

256 SERMONS

not a high civilization, as its ruins testify? Yet
who has not heard of the captives that were lashed
to the chariots of Roman conquerors, and the holo
causts of human victims offered to their gods, and
Roman mistresses who punished their slaves by
stabbing them, and the Roman amphitheaters,
where the sight of blood drove the people to
frenzy, and the lust for human sacrifice became so
great that no praetor or emperor dare refuse the
cries of the populace for " bread and blood."

And if you tell me that all that has been changed,
and changed for ever, that broader and more lib
eral views have taken possession of men's minds,
that savage cruelty is no longer possible either in
public or private life, let me remind you that if
such be the case, you owe it, directly or indirectly,
to the influence of the Christianity you affect to
despise.

Nineteen centuries of holy teaching have left
their impress in the human heart. You cannot
undo the work of the ages in a single day. Rev
olutions are of slow birth; and though we must
say that almost preternatural power is at work to
undermine Christian charity, its morality has en
tered so largely into the present composition of
human affairs that it will take more potent in
fluences than modern infidelity can supply entirely
to eradicate it.

But where men have broken from the Church,
it is quite clear that their return to barbarism has
begun; and the religion of Humanity is but the
dangerous slide by which they will descend into the
abysses. Repudiating all doctrine they cannot
consistently maintain a code of morality ; and even

CHARITY SERMON 257

the very virtue they preach is but a poor and spur
ious imitation of the divine charity of the Church.
It rests on no foundation, either of reason or re
ligion. It is a charity of policy, as when men give
largess to the poor in the hope that, like the bread
on the running water, it will return after many
days. It is a charity of Fashion, as when Vincent
de Paul made the fine ladies of the French Court
put aside their finery, and, clothing themselves in
the sable habit of mourning, go down into the by
streets of Paris, thus averting, at least for a time,
that awful " truth clothed in hellfire," which came
as a terrible retribution later. Or it may be a
charity of fine taste, just as ritualism is a religion
of taste; and good people who have no domestic
employment put on the dress of a hospital nurse,
or of a Sister of Charity, and amuse themselves
for a little while in the pleasant fancy that they
are doing good. Or lastly, and worst of all, it
may be utilitarian charity, which would let the
masses live or die as they pleased, which would
contentedly let strong men weep, and women fade
away, and sucklings perish, were it not that these
strong men may be inclined to something else
than weeping, and that those who have ears to
hear recognize the far-off rumblings of a storm,
that has burst before this in a rain of blood.

Eecognizing the inevitable collision between pov
erty and wealth, labor, wages and capital, con
sumption and production, our utilitarians clamor
loudly for bread for the poor. They shall not
perish.

In an age of science and progress, when the com
forts of the world are daily increased by the

258 SERMONS

bountiful goodness of Mother Earth, by the cheap
ness of manufactured goods, by the facility for
transport of tropical luxuries to our cold climate
— when ordinary men live better than kings of
old, it is intolerable that men should want bread,
the smallest thing that man can give to man. I
have been hearing all this for twenty years; yet
what is the practical outcome? The discontent
increases; the relation of classes are strained to
their utmost tension ; the rich cry for more law and
the poor for more bread in louder and more agon
ized accents than ever.

But I shall be told there is some great mistake
here. Has not modern philanthropy, grasping
every appliance that modern progress can afford,
not only created the science of political economy
in the interests of the proletariat, but devised a
system of poor laws that are perfect and flawless
in theory, and covered the land with mendicity in
stitutions, workhouses, hospitals, etc., all built with
architectural style, and governed by constitutions
that would put Lycurgus to shame? Yes! but
somehow the people for whose benefit these insti
tutions are devised prefer the unscientific squalor
of their homes; and somehow, too, poverty, and
vice, and sickness seem to thrive in the light of the
nineteenth century as much as in the darkness of
the Middle Ages.

But is there not something, besides philan
thropy, in all these modern devices for the check
of vice and the prevention of poverty? Apart al
together from the pleasure of speculating on the
misfortunes of others, and inventing theories,
which cost nothing, and being considered very

CHARITY SERMON 259

learned and scientific, is it not a fact that our civ
ilization is so highly wrought that it will not tol
erate poverty — not because of the misery of the
poor, but on account of the fastidiousness of the
rich? Is it not a fact that we have become so
refined by habit and education that the sight of
poverty is a mortification which a voluptuous
world cannot bear? Fine eyes that are accus
tomed to rest on dainty pictures and statues, and
must even be feasted on landscapes in distant
climes, will not bear the sight of deformed fea
tures or twisted limbs. Fine hands that play with
gold and silver, and toy with jewels, will not soil
themselves by touching the sordid rags of the poor.
And the slime of the lane and the squalor of the
by-street will be studiously shunned by those
whose homes are palaces of beauty, and light, and
perfume. You may be sure that when Lazarus
was obliged to sit and wait at the gate of the rich
man it was not so much the importunity of his
prayers as the sight of his sores that Dives
dreaded. And to-day if the governments of the
world seek to gather the poor from the public
streets, and to hide the maimed and the decrepit
in hospitals, it is not so much to shelter them as to
save the senses of the rich. Do you want a proof
of this? Go to the streets of any of our modern
cities — the streets where Vanity Fair is for ever
being held. A beggar asks for alms. He is in
stantly hustled by the strong hand of the law into
prison, lest the sight of him should pain or worry
the pleasure seekers. But the same street may be
the harem and the home of the moral lepers who
bear the sign of Satan on their forehead, and carry

260 SERMONS

the wages of sin in their hands, and the well-bred
and virtuous, high-toned, fastidious world will not
utter a single protest.

We turn aside from this Pharisaical heresy to
contemplate the high sublimity of Christian teach
ing. And we go straight to the fountain head for
a knowledge that never would have dawned on the
human mind if God Himself had not taught it.
And His teaching is, that man, whom we have
seen in the eyes of unbelievers a ruined and
hunted creature, driven by blind fate from noth
ingness to nothingness, is in reality the child of
God, the masterpiece of omnipotence, drawn by
God from the darkness of eternity to be immortal
in realms of light. And around this darling child,
and above him, and on every side of him, the love
of his Father is shown. For him the Heavens are
daily painted in fresh colors, and the earth is a
revelation of new beauties, which change and blend
and mingle lest they should weary him. And if
we have any doubt about his earthly wants, be
hold the brown sparrows that nestle under the
eaves — who feeds them? And who hath clothed
with splendor as of Solomon the lilies that hide
in the valleys! "Thou hast made man a little
lower than the angels," said David. "They are
made equal to angels," said Christ, "because they
are the children of God, being the children of the
Resurrection. " And He came down from Heaven
Himself and assumed a human form, that human
nature might be lifted up and for ever associated
with the Divine. God became man — that man
might live with God: the Maker became a Man
that the slave might live with the Maker.

CHARITY SERMON 261

But amongst all the children of God, so His Di
vine Son tells us, there is a class who are specially
dear to Him. He hath established amongst men
a strange mystery, the "Mystery of pain and suf
fering, " and He hath placed amongst us an Angel
called His Angel of Sorrow. And that angel hath
built a sanctuary in our midst ; and through it it is
needful that all should pass, if they would be puri
fied of earthly dross, and made worthy of the high
beatitude of Heaven. Of the spiritual results of
the ministration of this high angel, He Himself
will be the only Judge; but without unfolding to
us the meaning of the Mystery, He asks us to ac
knowledge that sorrow lends to its victim some of
the holiness and beauty of Heaven — a nameless
peace — a nameless dignity that challenges our ad
miration and commands our reverence and love.
For this reason He Himself became the Man of
Sorrows ; and so, Jesus in Heaven we worship and
fear — Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament we worship
and love; but for Jesus, haggard and pale and
bloodstained in Gethsemane, and for Jesus, torn
and soiled and dying on Calvary, we have a feel
ing, not so much of fear; nor yet of worship, but
of deepest reverence, and holiest awe, and tender-
est human sympathy.

Mary, our Mother, too, is at all times very beau
tiful to us — beautiful as the tender maiden, con
secrating her young virginity to God in the Tem
ple — beautiful as the Virgin Mother, bending over
her babe at Bethlehem — beautiful in her mother's
pride, when men threw their garments at the feet
of Christ and shouted Hosannas to their King-
but beautiful most of all in that awful hour, when

262 SERMONS

she passed through the Sanctuary of the Angel
of Sorrow, on Calvary, when the dead walked
around her and the darkness hung above her — a
darkness relieved only by the white body of her
dead Son. The sanctity of death had then inten
sified the love of Mary for Jesus ; and the sanctity
of sorrow hath made for all time Mary very dear
to us.

And so the companions of the life-pilgrimage
of Christ were those on whom sorrow hath fallen.
Have you not read how He called back to life the
widow's son and the ruler's daughter; how the
blind shouted at Him from the wayside, and He
touched and healed them, and the palsied stretched
towards Him their trembling hands, and in His
grasp they grew strong and firm. He waited by
the well for the sinful Samaritan, and He came in
His omnipotence to the lame man who lay by the
holy well and expected only the advent of an angel.
Sightless eyes were turned towards Him and they
saw Him; dumb lips tried to cry to Him, and
found speech — nay, when the outcasts who slept
amongst the tombs by night, and ate their bread
in charnel-houses by day, came forth in their aw
ful misery, and shouted to Him, and stretched to
wards Him the white horror of leprous limbs, He
only saw the sanctity left by the Angel of Sorrow,
and cleansed them and sent them on their way in
peace.

But there was one class around whom all His
love, deep as the sea, boundless as space, was
thrown. There was one class to whom the Angel
of Sorrow was no passing visitant, bearing for a
moment an angry commission from Heaven, to

CHARITY SERMON 263

strike suddenly and strongly, and then to heal
and depart ; but to whom He is the faithful com
panion of their life 's pilgrimage, steadfast as their
Angel Guardian — with them in labor, and with
them in leisure — with them when waking, and with
them in sleep — with them in youth, and not tiring
of their old age — with them when they are in the
state of grace, and with them (but, ah! how bitter
the companionship) when they have forsaken their
only hope, and lost God's friendship and love —
ever mingling tears with their bread, and their
drink with weeping — bending over their cradles to
foreshadow their sufferings, and bending over
their deathbeds, perhaps, to prolong their agony.

You know whom I mean. You know the sunken
faces for whom hunger is for ever running a race
with death: you know well the ragged raiment,
the sport of every passing wind; you know the
forms ever bent downwards, as if in private en
treaty to Mother Earth not to refuse them a last
resting-place. They are the "little ones" so very
dear to Christ — His poor.

It was not in the high academical halls, or sen
ate houses, or even temples, it was not to the great
or gifted, that Christ unfolded the secrets of that
sublime philosophy, which was so bold that none
but God could have preached it ; but it was on the
highways, and in the dusty streets, and on lonely
mountains, and by the barren seashore, and His
audience were the poor, the maimed and the lame,
and the blind and the beggar, who clung to Him,
and lifted towards Him their wistful faces, and
drank every word of that wisdom that lifts them
from the lowest to the highest places amongst

264 SERMONS

men. For the gospel taught by Christ is this —
that our highest reverence is due, not any longer
to wealth or power or strength, physical or in
tellectual, but to poverty and to weakness and to
suffering.

Did not He, the God of this universe, adopt, ele
vate, and sanctify the state of poverty, did He not
choose a stable for His birthplace, with the beasts
of the field for His nurses, and a scaffold for His
deathbed with malefactors for His companions;
and the lowliest of virgins to be His Mother, and
the poorest of artisans to be His reputed father,
and rude, weak, illiterate fishermen to be the
bearers of His Name, and His mission to the world.
No palatial residence has He. "The foxes have
their holes, and the birds of Heaven their nests;
but the Son of Man has not whereon to lay His
head." No purple or fine linen — but one seam
less garment which His Mother wove. No sump
tuous repasts; a little honey and fried fish were
to Him and His disciples a luxury. And in His
last agony, when the fever of suffering wrung
from Him those words, -I thirst," there was no
friend near to give the dying God one drop of
water.

The world apparently has not changed very
much since then. To the world of that time the
Son of God was a "worm and no man," the re
proach of men, and the outcast of the people. To
the world of to-day, the poor, as we have seen, are
very much the same. To the world of that time
its Eedeemer was "despised, and the most abject
of men, a man of sorrow and acquainted with in
firmity: one cursed of God, and afflicted"; and the

CHARITY SERMON 265

world, in its selfishness, is very eager to attribute
the afflictions of the poor to God's anger, and not
to His love. Cursed by God and afflicted. Af
flicted! very true, indeed! "Cursed by God!"
Not by any means! Nay, rather let us add one
other beatitude to the eight, and say: "Blessed
are the poor of God, for they are most like to His
Son Christ Jesus!"

This likeness of special sanctity between Him
self and His poor, our Eedeemer invariably recog
nized. We do not read that by any harsh word
or imperious gesture He ever repelled the child
of sorrow. It is true that to all He was uni
formly mild, "the bruised reed He would not
break, and the smoking flax He would not quench,"
but in His dealings with the poor He seemed to
have exhausted all the treasures of His charity,
so reverentially and tenderly and benignantly did
He treat them. He had but one answer to their
plaintive prayers: "What will you that I do unto
you," and but one word of farewell: "Go in
peace ' ' ; and identifying Himself with them to all
time He left them as a most precious legacy to
His faithful, with a solemn reminder, which to
many will sound a threat, but in which you will
recognize the promise of a blessing: "What
ever you do to the least of my little ones, that you
do unto Me"; and He has declared that kindness
for the poor will be the final test of our fitness to
be admitted as children of Him, whose mercy is
over all His works.

Such is the sublime spectacle which Christian
charity presents to us ; such is the divine philos
ophy, beside which human systems of benevolence

266 SERMONS

are dwarfed and discredited. But when we look
on the face of this "Christus Consolator," this
God-man, who has become weak for our sakes, we
are tempted to ask: "Is all this a reality? Has
the world really seen such a spectacle? or is it
only some myth, that sprang from the mind of a
saint in ecstasy, some shadowy vision that crossed
the eyes of the hermit of Patmos, when blended by
the effulgence of Heaven V9 It is a reality, for
behold here in the end of the nineteenth century,
here in your city of white terraces, is the very same
spectacle reproduced. For the stateliest build
ings in your city are temples of charity, with the
sign of Christ's redemption crowning them, and
the victims of the Angel of Sorrow are within, but
their Master, "Christus Consolator," is with them,
and with them are their and His brethren preach
ing and practicing the sublime doctrines which He
taught eighteen hundred years ago.

Even in your streets is seen that respect for
sorrow, which was His highest teaching. The
blind man, with his eyes upturned to the light that
never enters them, gropes his way through your
streets, and in the most crowded thoroughfares
men, however intent on business, will make way
for him. It is the reverence due to the afflicted
one. In some gay scene, when the laugh and the
song and the jest are heard, the black weeds of
mourning are suddenly seen, and every tongue is
hushed in reverential awe. For the sanctity of
death and the sanctity of grief are here.

Here in your city, in the mercenary iron age,
when the thirst for gold is drying up the best in
stincts of human nature, here is a band of lay-mis-

CHARITY SERMON 267

sioners, apostles of charity, who every week close
their ledgers, go down from their country-houses,
and carry to the poor and distressed bread for
perishing bodies and peace for despairing souls.
No stars or garters have they, but the Cross of
Him "who loved us with an everlasting love."
No great titles conferred by earthly princes for
deeds of blood or triumphs of diplomacy. But
they bear the name of the simple priest to whose
cassock starving children clung, and who bore the
shame and pain of the galleys to restore a convict
to his mother. Their deeds of charity are not
heralded with trumpets, but the angels of God ac
company them. They know no science but the
science that love teaches ; and they leave statistics
to the Eecording Spirits, who will mark them in
the Book of Life.

To fill their hands with gifts for Christ's suffer
ing brethren, to enable them to carry out success
fully their ministrations, is the object of our ap
peal to-day. It is not given to all to carry out the
injunction of the Apostle, "to visit the fatherless
and the widow "; but it is the province and duty
of all to see that none of our brethren perish for
want of the bread that sustaineth life.

I make the appeal to you not on statistical or
scientific grounds. I hope I do not desire to de
preciate your culture or advancement, when I say
that possibly the theories of Bentham or Mill are
mysteries to you, that probably you have never
even heard of the name of Eicardo ; that the l ' dis
mal science " of political economy is a sealed
science to you, but you understand me very well
when I tell you that I appeal to you in the name

268 SERMONS

of Christ, and tell you that your charity shall be
given to Him, and mentioned by Him, and re
warded by Him. "What you give to the least of
My brethren, that you give unto Me." And
surely, dear Lord, we want no motive for charity
but to show that the request comes from Thee!
We do not want to hear at our doors the cry of
the starving, or see the white faces that turn to us
for bread. We do not want Thy preacher to paint
for us the agony of strong men, bound by fiery
bands on their fever beds, nor the pale women who
try to still the cries of their children for food by
the dreadful logic which proves to them that they
are not hungry, nor foreheads seared with misery,
and faces scarred by disease. Thy own Name is
enough. It is as honey in our mouths, and Thy
presence is the sunshine of our lives. All that we
have is from Thee. And from Thee do we ex
pect everything in this world and in eternity.
For we are frail and poor and subject to sorrow.
The years that are gliding towards us may be
burthened with grief for us. Thy Angel before
this has crossed our threshold, and darkened it
when departing. He has taken from us one of
Thy creatures, whose love was a part of our life,
and left the chambers of our hearts dark and
empty, which the idols of our affections made
bright. And to-day as of old, Thy feet are wet
with the tears of women that weep: and strong
men, in the pauses of their agony, are fain to
creep to Thy temples in the twilight, and lay the
burthen of their sorrow near Thy Cross. And
so besides the triple relationship of birth, re
demption, and destiny, we claim a brotherhood of

CHARITY SERMON 269

sorrow with Thee and Thy poor. For the peace
we shall give to them, we ask for the strength to
be patient when the day of Thy visitation shall
come, for the bread that we bestow on them, we
ask for the food that will support us, like the
prophet, in our journey to Thy Holy Mountain,
and for the alms we shall give, give us the riches
of Thy mercy, and the bounty of Thy love. And
so the burthen of life shall press lighter on us all,
and our bliss in eternity be made sweeter by our
memory of common suffering and our mutual
love.

SJeatb

are very few real philosophers in the
world: very few that have the courage to
look boldly on certain truths, that are very ter
rifying, very unpleasant, but which cannot lose
their truth nor their reality. The vast majority
of men, quite content with the present, do not
care to look into the future and if by chance, they
are put face to face with one of those unpleasant
truths, they shut their eyes to it, and put it away
in the distance, where it looks less terrible and
real. One of these truths, so well deserving of
attention, is Death; that each one of us, at his
own appointed time, shall die.

We are so accustomed to the habit of living, if
I may so speak, that it is very difficult to imagine
this. Life is so natural to us that we cannot be
lieve it ever shall cease. Life sits so easily upon
us; we breathe so freely; we are so unconscious
that there is any effort required to live ; soul and
body harmonize so well together, that we cannot
by any possibility bring ourselves to think that
life shall cease, that there will be a time, perhaps
it is close at hand, when this breath that now comes
so freely will be thick and hard, and then will come
no more : that there will be a time when we shall
need an effort to live, and when that struggle
will be unavailing, when body and soul that now
harmonize so well together will be violently

270

ON DEATH 271

wrenched asunder, the soul to go we know not
where, the body to remain behind and crumble
into a little dust.

Yet there is no truth more prominently put be
fore us. The thought that we shall die is sug
gested to us at every step we take. It is the one
sermon that Nature is for ever preaching at us.
The lesson is taught us as effectually as if a black
bag were for ever borne before us with a skull and
cross-bones upon it, and "Memento Mori/' "Be-
member thou shalt die," written upon it.

We read that lesson every hour in the face of
Nature, we read it in the cemeteries that are scat
tered thickly around and in the midst of the city.
We read it on the faces of our friends, we read
it in ourselves. We are in the midst of death.
Death is around us, above us, everywhere. Life
itself is Death. We know it, and yet very few
believe that they shall die. This day, Sunday, that
was born this morning is dying. A few hours,
and it will have passed away, with all the other
dead days, to be remembered with the dead Past.
This year that was born a few months ago is dy
ing. You remember some months ago, how you
watched in daily expectation to see the leafless
branches put forth their leaves. They did, and
the leaves grew and developed, but they are all
now dead — trampled yellow and lifeless on the
miry road, or lying on the dead leaves of other
years in the depths of the woods, and the trees
are stripped again and bare as if they had never
worn a bud. Every day one or more mournful
processions winds through the streets of your city.
However gay you are, it suggests for the time

272 SERMONS

some solemn thought. A few black coaches, a
weeping woman, perhaps some children that are
puzzled to know what it all means: but you do
not think about them : you think only that there is
" something " hidden away under pall and plume,
and that those women and children are going to
hide that " something, ' ' outside the city, deep un
der ground, that men's eyes may not look upon it
any more.

Within us, too, death is busy. Every day we
die, not only because every day we approach
nearer the ends of our lives, but because every
day there is going on within us a decay that is a
kind of slow death. Every breath we breathe
makes a demand upon our vital powers, and de
creases their strength : every exertion we make is
so much strength that is spent ; we are tired, hun
gry, thirsty — it is a slow death, a decay that is
going on within us, and we have recourse to such
artificial means as sleep, food, and drink, to stop
that decay, and renew our exhausted powers.

There are few of us, too, that have not a friend
in the world of spirits. A friend that lived and
breathed and walked amongst men, but some one
day he grew deaf and dumb and lifeless, and men
removed him from among them — and he became
invisible to us, and it was all explained by saying
that he was dead. And thus this sermon upon
death is for ever dinned into our ears ; yet how few
have an active faith or belief in it — how very few
live as if they were to die.

Nevertheless, however little men think of it, it
is the most important act of our lives. Upon that
one act a whole eternity hinges. Every act of our

ON DEATH 273

lives leads up to it. Death is such a solemn,
dreadful thing, it is wrapped in so much mystery,
that the wonder is how men can ever cease to think
of it. How can the thought ever die from the
minds of men, that they will all be called upon to
make a change, of whose nature no man knows
anything, whose consequences we ourselves must
determine.

In a very short time, I will have to leave the
world of men. I, who think no pains too great to
win the esteem of men, will be withdrawn from
their midst, and hurried away from amongst them
and hidden. I shall no longer hear the human
voice, nor see a human face, or touch a human
hand, and the world will go on just as if I had
never existed. Perhaps, if I have friends, for a
little time my name will linger on their lips, but
that, too, will be very soon forgotten. There will
be for a day or two a passion of tears and some
sorrow : but both will speedily evaporate : and how
ever passionate the weeping be, it is not for me.

The purest grief is the purest selfishness. It is
not for me my friends are weeping. If any one
ask them they will say, ' i Yes ! he is happy : he is in
Heaven, " and to spare themselves they will be
lieve it, and canonize me summarily in order to
spare themselves the trouble of asking God to
have mercy upon me. They ignore all Catholic
truths, they will persuade themselves that I with
my many imperfections have been admitted before
the all-pure God without having been touched by
the purifying flames of Purgatory : that belief that
I am a saint exonerates them from the obligation
of ever thinking about me. They are not weep-

274 SERMONS

ing for me, they are weeping for having lost me.
Their way of life has been rudely broken into:
the little attachment to me has been rudely sev
ered: they miss my companionship: there is a
feeling of loneliness: and they weep, for weep
ing is a luxury; to be regarded as objects of sym
pathy is a luxury.

To go to your grave on a Sunday and lay
souvenirs of undying flowers upon it is a luxury ;
but whether you are in Heaven or Hell or plunged
in the terrible but saving fires of Purgatory is a
matter of perfect indifference to your friends.
"Have pity on me, at least you my friends, for
the hand of the Lord hath touched me." Poor
Soul! You are ungrateful and troublesome!
Have not your friends gone into mourning for you,
and is there not a yellow chaplet on the cross
above your grave?

And all the time that likeness to me in clay that
was carried out and buried has gone through its
stages of decomposition. It has put out its green
mold, and the green mold has become a tangled
heap of living, writhing worms, and the worms
have eaten and been eaten, leaving me a skele
ton, and the skeleton lay crumbled into dust, and
if you dig into that grave, where a little time hence
they laid me, you will see only the same red mold
that you saw on the surface — nothing to dis
tinguish it — nothing that can be identified, noth
ing to prove that I was ever laid there.

But let us go back to the death-bed, and through
the eyes of the dying man let us look at those
solemn truths that are very vague and unimpres
sive to us, and were once very vague and unim-

ON DEATH 275

pressive to him, but which he now sees in all their
terrible reality and significance.

It is strange that it is only on our death-beds
we see things as they really are. During life we
live in a region of romance and imagination, but
at the hour of Death a light is let in upon our
souls, a glimmering of eternity, and there is re
vealed to us for the first time the meaning of
Life and Death, and Time and Eternity, and
Heaven and Hell and Sin. To one walking in
the darkness of midnight every object is indis
tinct and shadowy, and the only lights we see are
deceptive, flickering over fens and morasses; the
dawn appears, and gives to things an outline and
a color for pleasure or for pain, and the wandering
lights have vanished and we tremble to think into
what a terrible death they would have lured us
had we followed them.

Life is that midnight darkness, and Death is the
dawn of eternity, and before that dawn all the
specters of the night disappear, and in that dawn
are revealed the truths of God and Eternity, and
all the voices of the night die hushed, and the
words, wealth and fame and honor, cease to have
a meaning; and from the heart of every dying
man as well as from the heart of that all-wise
king that became a fool is wrung that bitter ver
dict on all things human, l ' Vanity of vanities, and
all is vanity."

Here is one that moves in the highest circles of
society; he is honored, flattered, caressed: he has
every pleasure that wealth can buy, every advan
tage that wealth can afford: his name is in the
mouths of men, he prides himself upon his wealth :

276 SERMONS

he thinks no pains too great to secure and preserve
his good fame. He is seized with a mortal illness :
in a moment his estimate of all those things is
changed: his wealth lies useless around him — all
the gold of California will not buy for him one
instant of time. Honor! Well, it is true that
there is an obscure paragraph in an obscure coun
try paper, intimating with many other things that
he is ill, and perhaps a friend inquires and then
hastens about his buying and selling; but the
world goes on as usual, and the living stream
passes and repasses his door, giving no more
thought to the honored man that is dying than
to the poor pauper that is breathing his last on
the little straw in the parish workhouse.

Poor, naked, companionless, alone, honored by
men, and very likely dishonored of God, he stands
at the door of eternity. Thus far he has been
accompanied by his flattering friends : they remind
him of what a respectable career he has run — he
is afraid it will not be appreciated in eternity:
they speak to him words of hope and bid him re
member his many virtues. He cannot remember,
and perhaps in his despair he tells them fiercely
that they lie ; and the last that he sees of them is
when he is gliding under the portal of Death, and
they retreat with his money and a sigh of relief,
and he stands helpless and alone under the angry,
searching eye of God.

But on the little straw in the parish workhouse
lies another whose life has been very different.
Let us see what the light of his death-bed, the
dawn of his eternity, reveals to him. Poor, neg
lected, shunned, despised, the outcast of civiliza-

ON DEATH 277

tion — the sands of his life have run out ; and what
does life appear to him to have been : the sport of
the one long sorrow, one long affliction — but it is
all past. Never did the eye of man rest on him
but in scorn. What matters it? He will see men
no more. Never were men's lips moved about
him but in contempt. Well, the pain was bitter
at the time, but it was transitory, like everything
human, and he has long since ceased to think of
it. He remembers how when he passed through
the streets, men shunned him, and drew their im
maculate garments tighter around them, lest they
should be contaminated by him, as he went by
shivering in his rags. All that, too, is passed, and
he thinks of One that he has sometimes heard of,
in WThose eyes poverty is no crime, and if that
poverty has been borne well, borne out of submis
sion to the Divine Will, borne with pleasure and
pride, because it was the state which Jesus Christ
chose on earth: and if all those censures and re
proaches of the world have been incurred out of
obedience to God's law, through contempt of the
world, in the light of eternity all those afflictions
will appear to have been merciful dispensations
on the part of God, and that now is fulfilled for
him the promise of the Beatitude: "Blessed are
they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are they that suffer persecutions for jus
tice sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. ' '

But there is one thing of which even saints
know little, until the moment of death, and that is
sin. There are many in the world, thank God, in
whom grace combined with the habit of meditation
on divine truths has produced such a holy sensi-

278 SERMONS

bility that the very name of sin is to them an in
expressible horror. They shudder at the very
thought of it; and to say that they would die a
thousand deaths rather than offend Almighty God
is but a feeble way to express their intense loath
ing and detestation of anything bearing the ap
pearance of sin. But even to these, sin is not
revealed in all its horrors until the moment of
death. It is only when they are about to come
face to face with the all-holy, all-pure God, that
they understand what it is to have offended him.

The many acts of their lives that appeared to
them not only blameless, but praiseworthy, are
now seen to have been worthless, and perhaps sin
ful. Those prayers which they flattered them
selves were perfect, and that could not fail to call
down God's grace, are now seen to have been full
of imperfections — either the object of their
prayers was unworthy of a Christian, or the mo
tives were sinful, or their confidence was weak and
wavering. The many confessions, too, are remem
bered only to suggest doubts as to whether absolu
tion was ever validly received. The many com
munions are remembered to create the bitterest
remorse at the thought, how feebly were the prep
arations made to receive Our Divine Lord, how
languid and cold and indifferent was the recep
tion of Him, how hasty and almost irreverent
were the thanksgivings after communion and how
tiresome was felt to be the presence of that God,
whom it is our hope to enjoy for eternity.

Yet if the remembrance of those sins, which per
haps are only venial, is so bitter to the dying saint,
what a perfect hell of remorse must not the re-

ON DEATH 279

membrance of sin be to the dying sinner. You go
about the world now: your load of sins lies easy
upon you : you had very little scruple about com
mitting, and you think they are forgotten, and that
the Past has buried its own dead. Not one of
them is forgotten even by ourselves, and at the
hour of death your memory will recall them — the
least as well as the greatest, you will then under
stand their fearful enormity, and foreseeing the
punishment that each one of them brings with it,
you will have on your death-bed a foretaste of that
punishment of Hell, the full horrors of which you
are soon to experience.

They lie very lightly upon you now ; you scarcely
feel their weight : perhaps you even think that bad
habit a pleasant companion : but you will have no
need of an accusing angel at the bars of Divine
Justice ; every one of your sins will stand out re
vealed to you, to devils and angels, in all its
hideousness, and your greatest punishment for
eternity will be that you can never rid yourself of
them never divorce yourself from them — they will
abide with you to increase your remorse, to sug
gest to you the hopelessness of pardon, to bid you
for ever despair, to bring upon you the taunts of
demons, for they will be the badge of your eternal
shame, and the source of eternal sorrow.

Yet it is now in your power to divorce yourself
from them finally — to banish them that they may
never more return. And which of the two is
easier? To accuse yourself of those sins now in
the presence of God who is disposed to be merci
ful to you, and in the presence of God's minister,
who, you know, has no feeling for you, however

280 SERMONS

black your sins may be, but one of Christian sym
pathy and charity — or to wait till your death-bed,
when there is no more hope for you, when the sea
son of mercy is past and God's justice is abonit
to smite you, and perhaps there will be no priest by
to whisper to you one word of consolation, and
alleviate the misery of your despair. No one
knows better than I what God's mercy is — how
inexhaustible — how long-suffering — but I tell you
emphatically there is no mercy for a soul that
trifles with God's mercy, and makes it an excuse
to continue in sin. A happy death-bed never yet
succeeded a life of sin, and to any one conscious
to himself to-night of mortal sin there can be but
one advice given: "Do not trust God, even till
to-morrow."

We have just seen, then, that life is a shadow:
that death is the only reality for a Christian —
that, therefore, a happy death ought to be the ob
ject of all our hopes, our desires, and, most of all,
of our prayers. For a happy death is the pure,
gratuitous gift of God : we cannot merit it ; a life
however holy is no absolute security of a holy
death.

That great final grace is the pure gift of God's
mercy : and like every other gift it is only given to
fervent, persevering prayer, and when you recol
lect that a happy death is everything, that if we
die in God's grace, everything is gained; if we
die in enmity with Him everything is lost : surely
there is no need to exhort you to weary Heaven
with prayer, that God would preserve you during
life in His grace, and take you out of life, while
you are yet in His friendship.

ON DEATH 281

We have friends, too, in Heaven whom it would
be well to interest in our favor. This earth saw
two deaths: one of them was supremely happy,
the other supremely sorrowful. The eyes of the
chaste, sinless Joseph were closed by the hands of
Jesus, and Mary was kneeling at his side. His
death was supremely happy; he is, therefore, the
patron of a happy death-bed. I may add that a
saint has told that the efficacy of his intercession
is only second to that of Mary.

The other death was supremely sorrowful ; and
the same sword that pierced Jesus pierced the
Mother of Sorrows that stood by the foot of the
Cross. Mary, the Mother of Sorrows, is again
the patron of a happy death.

I said a little time ago that not one of our sins
is forgotten on our death-bed. For our consola
tion let it be said that the same is true of our
prayers. Every prayer to Mary buys its own
grace, but grace is invisible to us. It will not be
so at the hour of death. And when the cross, the
emblem of our crucified hope and salvation, is put
into our hands, she that stood at the foot of the
Cross will be there, to show us how each little
prayer to her, each rosary even carelessly said,
each communion offered in her honor, is accom
panied by a corresponding grace. And there, too,
in the hands of our Mother will be the final crown
ing grace of a happy death, if we ask it of her
faithfully and perseveringly during life.

Hearing tbe TOorfc of <3o&

E experience of each one of us confirms the
truth of the parable which the Church puts
before us as our meditation for this day l : that
the all-powerful Word of God, preached through
out the world, is, speaking comparatively, barren
of fruit. The Word of God, that in the world of
Nature has only to be spoken and it is obeyed, the
Word that called worlds out of nothing, is unpro
ductive, unfruitful, unprofitable, when it has for
its subject the hearts and minds of men.

And its barrenness is not to be attributed to the
fact that it is sparsely scattered through the world,
for the Word of God was never preached so widely
as in our days, there are few in the world to whom
the Divine message has not been brought ; and in
Christendom preaching is an institution, it is one
of the many offices of the priesthood, the pulpit
is a necessary part of every Christian church, and
there are few that cannot say that they have heard
over and over again the truths of Christianity
preached, the precepts of Christian morality in
culcated, the laws of God and of His Church ex
plained. " Whence comes it then (as Saint Chry-
sostom asks) that the Word of God, in itself so
fruitful and divine, should be so feeble and ineffec
tual in the Christian world?" Whence comes it
that the sublime truths which Christ preached,

1 Sexagesima Sunday.

282

HEARING THE WORD OF GOD 283

and which are in our days repeated by His minis
ters, so powerless to make men good Christians?
Why is it that Catholics who have every oppor
tunity of learning the truths of their holy religion
are yet only half -instructed? Why is it that the
truth spoken day after day from pulpit and altar
is only half believed? Or if it be believed, where
is the fruit? Is there less sin in the world, be
cause again and again the degradation of sin and
the injury sin does to God have been pointed out
by those who have learned the one truth by ex
perience, and have been taught the other by the
Holy Spirit of God ? Is the love of the God grow
ing daily amongst Catholics because again and
again they have been told that God, and God alone,
is worthy of love? Are the tales about Heaven
which we tell believed? How many, then, have
forsaken the world to follow Christ, whose pres
ence and whose love is Heaven? Is the truth that
there is a hell believed? How many are there
whom the thought of hell restrains from sin? Is
it believed that God is just, and that His justice
may strike at any moment? Why then do bad
Catholics tempt God to exercise His justice by
striking them into hell? Or is it not rather true
that, though the world accepts our ministry, and
believes us to be ambassadors of God, the message
which we bring is not received, the truths which
we preach are not believed? W"e might turn to
God as the prophet of old and say: "Who hath
believed our report? All the day long have I
spread my hands to a people that believeth not and
contradicteth me?"

Now, this inordination cannot be attributed to

284 SERMONS

the Word of God itself, for the truths of God are
always the same, and they always possess the same
intrinsic power of moving men's minds to grace,
for the same reason it is to no purpose that we ac
cuse the ministers of God; for, in whatever way
they speak, they must needs speak the truth, and
the truth, however spoken, is powerful for good,
if it only be received with proper dispositions.
If, therefore, in those latter days there are few
visible fruits of this ministry of preaching, we
must trace the failure, as our Divine Lord traces it
in to-day's Gospel, to the soil in which the seed is
sown, or the different dispositions in which men
receive the religious truths that are preached to
them.

Our Divine Lord, then, enumerates the several
classes which abuse the Word of God, and the only
class to whom the Word of God is profitable. We
may express His distinction in this way.

There are those who hear the Word, and do not
believe it ; there are those who hear the Word and
believe it, but do not keep it; and those, on whom
in another place Christ has invoked a blessing, who
hear the Word of God, and believe it, and keep it,
and bring forth fruit in season. It is only of the
first of those classes I shall speak to-day. And
you will have noticed that I have said the first class
comprises those who hear the word, but I did not
say who hear the Word of God, for the Word
which they hear is the Word of man, and therefore
they do not believe it.

We are the creatures of habit, and one of its
worst effects upon us is that it dulls our appre
hension of spiritual things, and leads us to con-

HEARING TEE WORD OF GOD 285

found the things that are of God with the things
that are of men. The tendency of our corrupt
nature is to look downwards, and unless by the
constant practice of meditation we keep our minds
and hearts fixed on God and Heaven they must
soon become engrossed in creatures. And at the
same time we grow into the unconscious habit of
ignoring the spiritual elements of religion, and
regarding only that which is gross and material.

This is especially true in regard to preaching:
the habit of hearing sermons makes us gradually
forget what sermons are, what they are intended
to be, what they are intended to do, in other words,
we care not about the truths of a sermon, the end
and object of the sermon, nor the application of
these truths to ourselves. We regard only such
accessories to a sermon, as he who preaches, or the
language in which he preaches; we forget alto
gether that it is the Word of God, and that its only
object is our edification.

We form ideas of sermons purely human ; we do
not beg the grace of the Holy Spirit to understand
His words aright ; we do not beg His assistance to
form resolutions adapted to our state; we come
prepared to scoff, to criticize, to measure and
weigh the words of the preacher as the words of
man; and the only fruit of the sermon which we
bear away with us is the judgment we have formed
as to merit or demerit, in a purely human light,
of the sermon we have heard. We hear, but we do
not believe. And so the* Christian pulpit is
scarcely more to us than the political platform,
and the mouthpiece of the Spirit of God is de
graded into a pulpit orator.

286 SERMONS

Now, such a habit of thinking and acting dis
honors God and injures ourselves. It dishonors
God, for if God be jealous of anything it is of His
graces, and His graces are despised by those who
neglect the means of grace which He offers. Such
a means is the preaching of the Word of God.

What the Sacraments are to the just, preaching
is to the unjust. As the Sacraments are to the
just a means of perceiving God's grace, so the
Word of God to the sinner is an invitation to pen
ance. If, therefore, instead of regarding it as
the call of God's mercy to save his soul, or a fore
warning of the justice of God, he thinks it only the
Word of man, who is obliged at certain periods to
enunciate certain propositions; if instead of tak
ing to himself the admonitions which God in His
mercy addresses to him by the lips of His servant,
he weighs the words of the preacher lightly, and
pays so much respect as is due to the words of
men, and no more ; if instead of humbly and thank
fully accepting the message of mercy from Heaven
that calls him to penance, he stifles the grace of
God, and reasons against his reason that after all
these words are only the words of man, then as
suredly he is dishonoring God by refusing to ac
knowledge the presence of God, or the appeal that
God makes to him.

Upon the other hand, if to sinners the preaching
of the Word of God is a call to grace, to the just
the preaching of the Word of God is second only to
prayer and the Sacraments as a means of perceiv
ing grace and persevering in it. It is a constant
appeal to them not to forget God, it is a constant
reminder of the insecurity of their position, it is a

HEARING THE WORD OF GOD 287

constant exhortation to perseverance. The Word
of God is intended by God to quicken their faith, to
revive their hope, to increase their charity. It is
the spoken invitation of Christ to His banquet, and
to the prelude to the banquet, the Sacrament of
Penance. "If I wash thee not, thou shalt have no
part with me."

Do they not then dishonor Christ who will not
recognize the language of Christ, but study only
the rhetoric of His servant: not thinking of
promptly accepting the invitation of Christ, or the
warning of Christ, or the comfort of the words of
Christ, but only considering how the herald of
Christ comports himself, and whether he has an
easy address.

What would you think of the reverence of a
Catholic who, whilst the Blessed Sacrament was
exposed on the altar, thinks only of the flowers and
the lights, and the dress of the ministers, or the
perfume of the incense and the voices of the choir?
What would you think of a Catholic who is will
fully distracted when about to receive Holy Com
munion! Further still, what would you think of a
Catholic who deliberately makes a sacrilegious
communion? Now, Saint Augustine does not hesi
tate to compare the man who fails to recognize in
the words of the preacher the words of the Holy
Ghost to the man who makes an unworthy com
munion by not discerning the Body and Blood of
the Lord under the species of bread and wine.
The comparison is striking; and to us, who have
fallen into the evil habit of thinking lightly of the
words we hear, it appears almost extravagant.
But you will find upon reflection that the irrever-

288 SERMONS

ence you do to the Word of God by taking it for
the word of man is nearly equal to the irreverence
you do to the Body and Blood of our Divine Lord
by not discerning the presence of both under the
species of bread and wine.

The poor, human language which we utter, or
the person of him who speaks, are no more to the
Wisdom that is spoken than the appearance of
bread and wine to the reality of the Body and
Blood of Christ. Surely there is no Catholic that
would treat the Blessed Sacrament as mere ma
terial bread ! There is no Catholic that would not
shudder at the thought of treating with the slight
est irreverence the holiest mystery of Christian
ity. And yet if you think the opinion of Saint
Augustine worthy of being weighed, you will bring
as preparation for hearing the Word of God with
fruit something of the reverence with which you
approach the Holy Communion, and the spiritual
discernment of the words and wisdom of the Holy
Spirit, however it be spoken by men.

In the second place, such reverence is absolutely
necessary if we care to profit by the instructions
which we hear. If a sermon or discourse be heard
as the Word of man it will operate as the Word of
man, if it be heard as the Word of God it will oper
ate by the grace of the Holy Ghost. It would be
inconsistent for us to expect the illumination of
the Holy Spirit of God and his grace to form reso
lutions and to put them into practice at the very
time we profaned His Sacred Word by mistaking
His Wisdom for human wisdom and sitting in
judgment on His servant.
If, therefore, we study the words of God's minis-

HEARING THE WORD OF GOD 289

ters as the words of men, then we shall reap from
them such fruit as the words of men are wont to
produce: we shall be amused or entertained, in
structed, we may be worked up into a momentary
enthusiasm, but it is utterly unavailing for salva
tion. If all the eloquence of the Bar or the Senate
could be used on the side of Jesus Christ, to plead
His cause and the cause of His Father, it would
not save a single soul, or even help a single soul to
make a supernatural resolution, if it were not dic
tated by the Holy Ghost, or at least received as the
supernatural wisdom of the Holy Spirit. We re
ceive according to the measure of our belief. The
Spirit of God metes out His grace to us in propor
tion to our faith. If, therefore, we take the serv
ant of the Holy Ghost as our preceptor, we must
be content with such assistance as the servant
gives ; if we pass by the servant and forget the per
sonality of the servant, and go straight for in
struction to the Holy Spirit, then we shall re
ceive guidance and assistance proportioned to our
faith.

We have two singular instances of this in the
Scriptures — one in the Old Testament, one in the
New. The propet Ezechiel has received a com
mission from God to carry a two-fold promise to
the people — a promise of justice if they do not
repent, a promise of mercy if they turn to the
Lord. The prophet spoke, and the people heard
him, and they were pleased with the eloquence
with which he spoke. But where were the fruits?
Where was the penance for sin? Where the cries
of mercy to God not to suffer His anger to fall
upon them? There were no spiritual fruits, no

290 SERMONS

grace imparted, and why? "Thou son of man,"
said the Lord to His prophet, i l the children of thy
people talk of the e by the walls, and in the doors
of the houses, and they speak one to another, each
man to his neighbor, saying: Come, and let us
hear what is the word that cometh forth from the
Lord.

"And they come to thee as if a people were com
ing in, and my people sit before thee, and hear thy
words, and do them not : for they turn them into a
song of their mouth, and their heart goeth after
their covetousness.

"And thou art to them as a musical song, that
is sung with a sweet and agreeable voice : and they
hear thy words and do them not."

Why was the mission of the prophet fruitless?
Because the people did not recognize his mission ;
their thoughts did not ascend beyond the man that
spoke to them; they accepted his words, but not
as the words of God, and so they "turned them/'
as was natural they should do, "into a song of
their mouth": but their hearts were not changed,
"they still went after covetousness."

The other instance of the fruitlessness of elo
quence, unaided by the grace of the Holy Spirit,
is narrated in the acts of the Apostles. Paul and
Barnabas enter Lycaonia, and preach to the people
the Grospel which they have learned. A miracle
is wrought, and the blind people rush to the con
clusion that the Apostles are gods. "And they
called Barnabas ' Jupiter, ' and Paul ' Mercury ' be
cause he was the chief speaker." And though
they would worship the Apostles as gods, there is
not a single conversion effected. A miracle is

HEARING THE WORD OF GOD 291

wrought, and eloquence, like the eloquence of Saint
Paul, is expended in vain. They were astonished
at the miracle, they were charmed by the eloquence,
they were not persuaded of the truth of Chris
tianity by either. They did not recognize the
heavenly mission of the Apostles : they were enter
tained, and they paid the entertainers by their
applause. That which was spoken was the Word
of God — the fault was not here ; they who preached
were the inspired servants of heaven, gifted with
Divine eloquence, and free from all thoughts of
vanity — the fault was not there ; but the soil was
barren : it could not receive the seed of the Word
of God, much less bring forth fruit — there was the
cause of the failure.

If, therefore, you would reap spiritual profit
from the Word of God which you hear, you must
come with hearts prepared by prayer, and with
the desire to know more of God, that thus you may
be enabled to love God better. You must, there
fore, be careful not to mix up ideas of the world
with ideas of God, not to confound spiritual with
temporal things.

We bring too much of the world with us into the
presence of God; unfortunately the reverse can
not be said, that we carry with us too much of
God when we are obliged to renew our intercourse
with the world. We have no strong supernatural
vision to detect holiness in things that are holy,
and to look beyond material helps to worship, dis
cerning their spiritual meaning. We are like to
those who come out of dark cellars into the broad
noonday sunlight. They cannot see the sun, for
they have brought darkness with them in their

292 SERMONS

eyes; and they look to where the sun is without
being blinded, for they see only motes of darkness.
And we come into the presence of God, but we do
not see God, for we have brought with us thoughts
and feelings of earth, and to minds thus darkened
God is ever invisible, and knowing where God is
we look towards Him, expecting to see and under
stand Him, but the world for ever intercepts our
vision of Him. And, therefore, as the sunlight
gives neither pleasure nor pain to the blind, the
truths of God are neither a consolation to us,
neither do they cause us uneasiness on account of
our inability to perceive them.

They who have got into that unhappy state of
spiritual blindness have great reason to tremble
for themselves. When the words of the ministers
of God, however spoken or however delivered,
have ceased to affect us, or affect us only as the
truths of men, not as the wisdom of God, when we
can listen with stolid indifference to the terrible
truths of Christianity, then we have much reason
to fear that God is judging us as He judged
Pharaoh. "Thou shalt speak all that I command
thee," said the Lord to Moses, "and Pharaoh shall
not hearken to thee, but I will harden his heart. "
And the Scripture is careful to tell us that God
kept His threat; as often as Moses speaks the
heart of the king is hardened.

God, I hope, has preserved us from such a judg
ment, but let us not tempt God. But let us come
into His presence with knowledge, and let that
knowledge produce humility. We shall thus re
ceive what we hear with fruit. For we shall then
possess discretion enough to separate the straw

HEARING THE WORD OF GOD 293

and the chaff from the grain — that is, the minister
of God and the words which he speaks from the
golden words of wisdom of God. And with such
dispositions as these God will not fail to prepare
our souls a fitting soil for the seed of His Word,
that with good and perfect hearts we may receive
His Word and keep and bring forth fruit in pa
tience. "So shall my word be that goeth forth
from my mouth: it shall not return to me void,
but shall accomplish that which I please " (Is. lv.).

©n Scantml

" Every man of the house of Israel that sets up the
stumbling-block of his iniquity before his face I will set
my face against him and make him an example. "-
Zach. c. xiv.

the angels of God who fell from their
high estate should feel for the stern judge
that condemned them a relentless hatred is
scarcely a matter of surprise, if we consider the
sin of which they were guilty, and the awful pun
ishment it entailed.

Pride, like a subtle poison, had entered into
every fiber of their natures, and leaving the vigor
of their natural powers untouched, it perverted
every noble faculty of their being, changing their
beauty into hideousness, their love into hatred,
robbing them of the inheritance of Heaven, and
endowing them with a heritage of Eevenge.

Nor do we wonder that their anger should be re
flected from God upon men, when we consider that
man has been raised to supply the place which they
lost — that splendid promises have been made him,
that a birthright to Heaven has been given him,
that when he had lost that birthright by sin, there
was no swift, fierce, retributive justice to punish
him, as it had punished them — that, whereas God
has never been to them anything but an inexorable
judge, God has never been to men anything but a
most merciful Master.

294

ON SCANDAL 295

Nor is it a matter of surprise that their hatred
of God and of us should be exhibited in their great
perpetual struggle to rob God of glory by robbing
men of their souls. But that man himself, man,
so highly favored, man, the ally of Heaven, man,
who has a common destiny with angels, man, whose
nature God so honored in His Incarnation, that
man should league with Hell to destroy the soul of
his fellowman is a refinement of malice, the very
idea of which, when it first crossed the minds of
the devils, must have startled them by its daring
originality. There is in this sin a depth of malign
ity, a fiendish viciousness, that might well make
us hesitate to acknowledge its existence if it were
not, unhappily, brought under our daily observa
tion in the sin of scandal.

Let us see the nature of this dreadful sin, and its
effects :

Scandal, or, as it has been well-called, soul-mur
der, is defined to be "a word or deed, in itself sin
ful, or at least indifferent, which is, or might be,
to our neighbor an occasion of sin." Hence Ter-
tullian says that scandal does not arise from a
good work, but from an evil work, for good words
scandalize no one unless the evil-minded. I have
said " which is, or might be, an occasion of sin,"
from which it is apparent that scandal might be
given even though our neighbor, by God's grace,
has strength to resist the force of evil example.
And on the other hand there are persons in the
world so weak-minded or so malicious that they
will take scandal where none is given, and find
even in the good works of pious people something
at variance with God's law, something, therefore,

296 SERMONS

that will palliate their own transgressions, and
afford them a pretext for sinning again.

Such was the scandal which the Pharisees took,
or pretended to take, from the merciful dealings
of our Divine Lord with the poor outcasts and
sinners of Jerusalem, and a salutary lesson does
our Divine Lord teach us by the fact that to pre
vent as much as possible even the scandal that
arose from the malice of the Pharisees, he con
formed to all the prescriptions of the Jewish Law,
and though King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, He
bade Peter to take the coin from the fish's mouth
to pay a tribute to Caesar "lest," said he, "we
scandalize these."

Scandal may be either directly intended, or only
foreseen and permitted. Of the former kind,
which is appropriately termed diabolical, I do not
wish to say anything, for I presume that there is
no Catholic, however otherwise worthless and sin
ful he may be, so utterly lost and depraved as to
wish to second the efforts of the enemy of God by
directly inducing others to sin, and thus insuring
their eternal reprobation. But it very often hap
pens that good Catholics, who have an intense hor
ror of offending Almighty God, and who would
prefer to die a thousand deaths and suffer all the
torments of martyrdom rather than scandalize the
least of God's little ones, are very often by their
own carelessness and indifference and neglect the
cause of scandal to many.

It is one of those many apparent truths which
we through habit forget or ignore, that each one of
us exercises on his neighbors a very direct and

ON SCANDAL 297

visible and important influence. The least one
amongst us has it in his power to edify or to
scandalize. We do not live isolated or separated
one from the other; we are members of one com
munity, one family. Let no man think he lives
for himself alone ; let no man dream of wrapping
himself up in his virtue and saving his own soul
without exercising any influence for good or ill
upon his fellowmen. However much he shrinks
into himself, and tries to conceal his sanctity from
men, it will betray itself unconsciously, and he will
become a shining light before men ; and the world
will see his good works, and glorify his Father
who is in Heaven. Let no man dream of walking
the ways of the world alone ; he will not be com-
panionless in his career of vice and misery. If he
will cut himself off from God, he will drag others
with him in his fall, as Lucifer drew with him two-
thirds of the Host of Heaven; and though he hid
himself in the depths of the earth to sin in secret,
he will be to others a rock of scandal, and a stum
bling-block of offense.

It may be true that he wishes to pass unnoticed,
unobserved; it may be true that, however lost to
God and Heaven himself, he does not dream of
involving others in his ruin ; he does not speak to
men, and he wishes the eyes of men to be averted
from him, he wishes to be allowed to descend into
Hell alone ; but he wishes an impossibility, and by
his example he is a more eloquent preacher of sin
than if he stood in the market-square and pub
lished his infamy to the world. "Who does not
know," says St. Augustine, "that example is more

298 SERMONS

powerful than precept. ' ' Infallible is that saying
of St. Leo : ' ' Example is the most telling and per
suasive eloquence. ' '

We read in the life of one of the Saints of the
Church that one day he asked a novice to go with
him to preach a sermon in the streets of Eome.
They went through the principal thoroughfares in
silence and with the decorum and modesty that
befitted disciples of Jesus Christ, and to the
novice 's surprise they returned to their monastery
without having spoken a word. He asked his su
perior why he had not preached as he had intended.
"We have preached, my son," said he, "and
preached well by our example. ' '

You don't find many walking sermons like that
in the streets nowadays. Unconsciously, it ap
pears, we study one another closely. It is not a
very charitable thing, nor a very Christian thing
to do.

You see a man for the first time; he is photo
graphed immediately upon your mind; and the
image will never be obliterated. You hear his
voice ; and his words, however long forgotten, will
still live in your memory. There is a theory
amongst scientists that the physical world is a vast
sounding-gallery, a vast picture gallery, and a
huge system of telegraphy. That no sound or
sight or thought is ever lost. However fanciful
it may seem, this is true in the spiritual world.
One word lightly spoken may be, very often has
been, the cause of the damnation of millions of
souls. A father, in presence of his children, gives
utterance to a light jest; he does not intend it for
their ears, and it passes and is forgotten ; and to

ON SCANDAL 299

the end of Iris life, perhaps, he is serenely uncon
scious that his child's eyes were fixed upon him all
the time with an intelligence that would have
struck him dead with horror if he had understood
it; he has dropped a poisonous seed into the soul
of his child; it will bear bitter fruit in time, bit
terer still in eternity.

A friend, at least one that is supposed or that
supposes himself to be a friend, has read a very
interesting book — one of those many interesting
books that Hell has sown broadcast over the world
— apparently very harmless, with apparently deep
philosophy running through it, and apparently
high morality inculcated in it — altogether a book
or journal highly recommendable. He is a littera
teur; he wishes to show his friend the charms of
literature ; to show him a world of which he had no
previous consciousness. Yes ! and he does so with
a vengeance; he has taken him by the hand, and
led him into the vestibule of Hell, and there is no
doubt but that he will grope his way into the
interior.

It is needless to recapitulate all the ways by
which scandal may be given. To repeat the defini
tion, whoever speaks a word, or performs an act,
that is of itself calculated to lead another into sin
is guilty of scandal. The man that takes God's
name in vain is a scandal-giver ; the man that stays
away from Mass on Sunday, and helps others to
stay away, is a scandal-giver of the worst type;
the man that lounges at Mass on Sunday, and
shows by his every look and gesture that he is
utterly ignorant of the nature of the great, ador
able sacrifice that is being celebrated on the altar,

300 SERMONS

is a scandal-giver; the man that takes his friend,
or rather his enemy, into one of those taverns,
where, as it has been well said, ruin, disease, and
infamy are sold by the bottle, is a scandal-giver;
the man who by bad or unbecoming language, the
man who lends a bad or indifferent book or news
paper, is a scandal-giver; and remember that a
scandal cannot be venial; every scandal is of its
nature a mortal sin, and it has double or manifold
malice according to the number of persons that are
scandalized.

It is needless to speak at length to you of the
awful nature of this sin. Our dear Lord who
alone thoroughly understood its effects speaks of
it in terms of unmeasured denunciation. "It is
impossible, " he says, "that scandal should not
come, but woe be to him by whom scandal cometh.
He that shall scandalize one of those little ones
that believe in me, it were better for him that a
millstone were tied around his neck, and he were
cast into the depths of the sea. " And St. Bernard
says, "If the Lord gave His blood as the price of
the redemption of souls, does he not suffer a far
greater persecution from him who by evil exam
ple destroys the souls which Christ redeemed than
he suffered from the soldiers who shed his blood?''

And if we examine for one moment the deadly
effects of this sin of scandal we shall find it diffi
cult to express the horror with which it must in
spire every Catholic mind.

To give scandal means simply to aid and abet
the enemies of God and our enemies in carrying
out their designs for our own destruction, and it
means to counteract, as far as is in our power,

ON SCANDAL 301

the merciful designs that God has for our salva
tion. The scandal-giver is the agent of Hell upon
earth; and the bitterest enemy of God and his
fellow-creatures. I should be sorry, indeed, to
limit the boundless mercy offered, but I think that
if there is any sin unforgivable, it is the sin of
scandal. God may freely pardon and forget sins
committed against his own honor ; but when these
sins are likewise the means of tearing from His
bosom the souls that He loves so dearly and that
are become doubly dear to Him inasmuch as each
has been purchased by the blood and life of His
'Son, it will be a stretch of mercy, indeed, if He
can take up to Heaven and endow with eternal
glory and happiness that scandal-giver, that soul-
murderer, whose life has been spent in robbing
Heaven and God of glory, and robbing his f ellow-
men of the happiness that was their right by birth,
and that was repurchased for them by the blood of
Jesus Christ.

They say that in Heaven all unpleasant memories
are wiped out and there is happiness and glory
unalloyed ; but I find it difficult to understand how
that man can walk around the courts of Heaven
when he knows that the victim of his scandal is
bound on the hot floor of Hell ; how God can hold
him in the embraces of His love when He knows
that the soul lost by his scandal is held in the grasp
of devils; how he can approach Jesus Christ, to
kiss the wounds in His hands and feet, while he
feels that he has neutralized all the sufferings of
Calvary, and trampled on the blood that was shed
then, inasmuch as he has been the cause of the
damnation of one of those souls for which Christ

302 SERMONS

died ; how can he face the Father, whose image in
that soul he has so fearfully disfigured ; how can
he face the Son, when he remembers those words :
"See that you despise not one of those little ones;
for I say to you their angels in Heaven for ever
see the face of my Father who is in Heaven ' ' ; how
can he face the Holy Ghost, whose efforts to save
that soul he has baffled by his scandal; how can
he look upon the face of the Mother of God, whose
intercession and protection he rendered unavail
able by his evil example ; how can he mingle in the
society of saints, whilst he bears upon him the
brand of fratricide ; how can he listen to or take
the slightest pleasure in the harmony of Heaven,
whilst his ears are filled with the despairing cries
of that poor, damned soul, with damnation flying
up for ever against him before the Throne of God,
and he has to bear the silent, reproachful anger of
Heaven, and, what is worse, the applause of Hell?
Oh ! our life on earth is a very solemn, terrible
thing. We all know that it is no May Day game
to have to work out our own salvation: that it
behoves us to do it with fear and trembling, know
ing that the alternative of Hell or Heaven is a
fearful one. But when to this we add that we have
not only our own souls to save, but the souls, too,
of our fellow-creatures ; that each one of us exerts
on the soul of his neighbor a direct, immediate, and
permanent influence; that every soul with whom
we come in contact is tottering on the brink of
Hell, and a breath may save them or a breath de
stroy — when we realize all this, we must conclude
that no caution on the part of a Catholic can be
excessive. "Place, O Lord, a guard upon my

ON SCANDAL 303

mouth, and a gate of prudence before my lips, that
I may not offend with my tongue. Deliver me
from blood, 0 God ! Thou God of my salvation ! ' '
"It were better for him," said our dear Lord,
"that he should sink into the depths of the sea,
under the weight of a millstone!" Better than
what? Better than to sink into Hell, with a dead,
damned soul tied around its neck !

THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY
"ffull of Grace anfc Urutb"

closing words of the Gospel of St. John,
which are read nearly every day at Mass,
fitly express the Divine mission and character of
Christ.

The sin of Adam brought three great curses
from Heaven. The second Adam brought three
great blessings which either revoked or counter
acted these curses. The first of the evils of
Adam's sin was that God withdrew from the world.
Into the mouth of God Himself His servant puts
the words: — "My delights are to be with the chil
dren of men. ' ' And there cannot be a doubt that
whilst man was still unf alien, and the earth still
uncursed, the Almighty Creator held intercourse
with man; certainly as close as the present com
munion of His angels with Him. But when man
rose up and defied his Maker, God departed from
His world, broke and dissolved the sweet com
munion which He held with His creatures, and de
parting in bitterness and anger left behind a curse,
and did not show His face again, but when He
spoke it was in thunders and lightnings to give
laws not of mercy and love but of strong justice,
and His accents were no longer accents of sweet
ness, but full of vengeance and Divine fury. This
was the first great curse — the banishment of God
from the world.

304

"FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH" 305

•

The second effect of sin was — the loss of the
knowledge of God. Whilst man was yet the friend
of God, God spoke to man, and infused into his
soul a Divine knowledge. What a teacher, dearly
beloved! The Divine Spirit, that afterwards
touched the lips of Isaias and raised John to
Heaven from his isle of banishment that he might
see with his own eyes the truth of the things that
were revealed to him. And what a pupil! Man
in all the primitive excellence of our great nature
—with a mind capable of grasping the infinite,
seeing all things truthfully mirrored in the mind
of God. And with a soul, the sublimity of whose
aspirations was only equaled by the breadth and
grasp of the great intellect that governed it with
unquestioned power. That voice of God filled the
mind of man with knowledge, the Divine knowl
edge of faith. Hearing God, he had an intuitive
knowledge of God and the Divine Nature of God,
in all its magnificent perfection.

But when God withdrew from intercourse with
man in sorrow and anger, the light and the knowl
edge disappeared with Him. And then there was
no life, no light, no truth amongst men — the intel
lectual and moral atmosphere was darkened, and
to that enfeebled, blinded intellect all was as dark
as the blackness of midnight. This is what Isaias
complained of when he explained — " There is no
truth, no knowledge of God in the land." And
the Lord Himself declared to the Jewish people :
"My people have been silent, because they have no
knowledge. Cursing, lying and corruption over
flow the land. Blood has touched blood, because
there is no truth, no knowledge, in the land."

306 SERMONS

The third great evil was the loss of Divine
Grace. This, of the three, was by far the most
terrible. For unless that were recovered, man's
losses would be eternal. If God had withdrawn,
still at the hour of death, man would see God. If
man lost the knowledge of <God, at death he would
recover it ; but these favors were conditional, for if
man died without having recovered Divine Grace,
he would lose God Himself, and the knowledge of
God for eternity.

If man had only kept Divine Grace, he might
have borne with the absence of God and the de
privation of His great knowledge. That grace
would have kept him holy in purity, and in the gift
of a strong, abiding, vigorous, efficacious command
over every passion, over every inclination, and
have given empire to the soul over the body, and
all other graces of God to the heart of man and
the soul of man.

But by sin he lost everything — even the greatest
misery of the consequences of sin: the wavering
of the mind, the hardening of the heart, the re
bellion of the passions might have been tolerable
with Divine Grace — for then he could assure him
self that he was still the child of God, dear in His
Father's eyes, and watched over with a Father's
love, even in his misery. But sin deprived him
of that last consolation, and left him in a state of
utter spiritual poverty and distress — abandoned
by God, deprived of that knowledge which was his
life, and with the painful consciousness of pos
sessing only the inheritance of his sin, which made
him hideous in the sight of God and unbearable
even to himself.

"FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH" 307

Now let us consider the reparation which Our
Divine Lord effected. We find that He brought
with Him precisely the three things which man
kind had forfeited. Almighty God left the earth
filled with anger against man and with the awful
curse upon his lips. He departed in wrath, He
left the poor trembling sinner horror stricken at
His curse. Heaven and earth took up that curse,
arid leagued themselves with God their Maker
against man the rebel.

That curse permeated nature, changed all its
blessings into misfortunes, and left man alone in
his misery and sin, Heaven estranged from him,
and the forces of Nature hostile to him. And what
a contrast between this departure of Almighty
God and His second coming. He left with a curse ;
He came with a blessing. He left in anger, He re
turned in peace. How terrific was His with
drawal ! How sweet and loving His advent !

And why did He come? The angels told the
world at His Birth — to give " glory in the highest
to God and on earth peace to men of good-will."
And His after life showed how well He fulfilled
that mission. Mark the very first word that fell
from His blessed lips. He took the people up into
the mountain ; and for the first time since the fall
of Adam, God, visibly seen, spoke to the world.
And what were the first words He spoke?
"Blessed are the poor." By those words He re
voked the great primal curse. He blessed poverty
—He put a premium upon suffering of every kind.
Now, what is poverty and suffering? The effects
of sin. By therefore pronouncing a blessing upon
its results, He took the sting from sin and from

308 SERMONS

death. He lifted from men's souls and from Na
ture the awful malediction of Heaven, and whilst
He left the suffering and the poverty to teach men
what it is to forget God, He blessed those who bore
them in humility and patience, as taking part in
the great sacrifice of atonement which He Him
self was so soon to offer.

And thus in the advent of His Sacred Human
ity, He brought back to earth the first blessing it
had lost — the privilege gift of God's Sacred pres
ence. God the Avenger had departed — God the
Kegenerator had come. Departing from Paradise
He left a curse. "In thy sweat thou shalt eat thy
bread, ' ' and now, our Eedeemer, for all the hard-
worked, sorrowful sons of Adam has the everlast
ing welcome and the everlasting promise : ' ' Come
to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-burdened,
and I will refresh you. ' '

Moreover, He brought back with Him what man
has also lost by sin — the truth — the knowledge of
truth. Oh ! here was an incalculable loss, and here
was it again never to be sufficiently valued. The
blind man, with his soul caged in a prison of dark
ness, enjoys supreme felicity compared with the
man whose life is in endless search after Divine
Truth. I know no state more unhappy than that
of the man who, filled with a desire after Divine
Knowledge, and having no means of distinguish
ing the truly Divine from the counterfeit Divine, is
for ever picking up pebbles thinking them pearls,
and then flinging them from him in disappointment
and disgust. Such a man, his intellect narrowed
by each succeeding disappointment, will inevitably
fall either into a state of idolatry, or, if he can

"FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH" 309

exist without worshiping, into a state of doubt
about everything. Such was the condition of the
world at Christ 's coming. The knowledge of all
Divine Truths had steadily faded from the minds
of men until, at the birth of Christ, men 's concep
tion of God and His attributes were as uncouth
and rude as those of any untutored savages of the
present day. Then Jesus came, speaking as God,
declaring Himself to be God, and that His mis
sion was to teach truth.

He came not to judge, but to save, nor to take
silent notes of man's weakness, and to scan all his
imperfections, but to take from men's eyes their
blindness and from their hearts all hardness. To
make anxiety about truth a thing of the past; to
give to pious inquirers a ready means of knowing
the truth for which they are seeking, that humanity
might not any longer have a creed to seek, but
simply the truth to embrace ; and embracing that
truth find in it the freedom which is its invariable
companion. "You shall know the truth, and the
truth shall make you free. "

But the most terrible of all our losses was the
loss of Divine grace, and this also Christ brought
from Heaven to purify, strengthen, regenerate the
souls of men. Thus He came not only to enlighten
the minds of men by His heavenly wisdom, but,
perhaps, still more to purify their souls by the
action of divine grace. In that last sentence,
therefore, of the evangelist, the Only-Begotten of
the Father, full of grace and truth, we have com
prised the whole economy of human salvation—
that is, the restoration to the world of that which
it had lost in Adam's sin, God, the knowledge of

310 SERMONS

Divine truth, and the possession of Divine grace.

But one thing is clearly evident : that regenera
tion of mankind to be perfect must be continual,
for the tendency of our nature is downwards.
Mankind is constantly retrograding, and it needs
all the Divine power to withstand the tendency
of men's hearts and minds to utter ruin and irre-
ligion. The word of Christ, therefore, must needs
be perpetuated. His mission will only be consum
mated at the consummation of all things.

If that only begotten Son of the Father, full
of grace and truth, again left the world, again the
world would relapse into the darkness, which the
rays of the Sun of Justice alone can pierce and
illumine.

But what do I say? The world would relapse.
Why, the world has relapsed. A distinguished
priest has called this nineteenth century the Sodom
of all the centuries, and the term is not misapplied.
The shadow of death is slowly creeping over the
world, because God now is not withdrawing from
the world, but the world is banishing Him. The
signs of the times are very portentous ; gradually
the world is drifting into a condition to which, in
the history of Christianity, to find a parallel it will
be necessary to go back to the days of Pagan
Borne.

Under the title of the "worship of the beauti
ful, " a new religion is being introduced, or rather
an old religion is being revised — the old religion
of luxury, of sensuality, of cruelty, avarice and
self-seeking that made the Rome of the emperors a
wonder of iniquity to the world. The souls of men
are estranged from their Maker, and needing some-

"FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH" 311

thing to worship, they have turned from the
Creator to the creation of human genius, and it is
no longer Christ is worshiped, but the latest
poem, the brilliant pictures, the finely turned
statue ; and that Infinite Beauty, whom the whole
soul of an Augustine worshiped with bitter tears
for not having known It sooner, is superseded by
the work of His creature's hands.

The very words of Christianity are abolished;
in this frightful age men speak of a work of art
with as much enthusiasm as a Francis would speak
of the infinite perfection of God or the happiness
of Heaven.

So far for the educated classes ! But what shall
I say of the poor and the uneducated? Struggling
from day to day to earn their bread, snatching an
hour from labor to devote it to horrible excesses,
smoking and drinking away God's own blessed
Sabbath — with every human feeling and every
divine aspiration beaten out of them by the hard
treatment and cruel dishonesty of their fellowmen
— they live on, wearing out in sorrow the life that
is a curse and a burden to them without God, and
having no hope in this world or the next.

Ninety-nine per cent, of the working-classes in
this country are born, live and die without the
knowledge that they have God-given souls, re
deemed by God and created for Him. Their whole
religion is summarized in the profession — "I be
lieve in God, if there be a God." And they only
speak of that awful creation of God's justice — the
fire of Hell — as an imaginary place to which they
would like to condemn the vast majority of their
fellow-creatures.

312 SERMONS

Where is God? Where is the Divine Truth that
Christ promised should set the world free, where
are the Divine graces that were to be showered so
liberally on human souls, making them to fructify
and blossom in all meek submission to Almighty
God, and all kindly feelings to their fellowmen?

The cause is not far to seek, nor have I any
hesitation in declaring it. It is to be found in the
fact that men have rejected Christ. That they re
fuse to accept Himself, His truth, His grace, as
He Himself wished them to be accepted, in His
Church and by the ministration of His Church.
There was only one Church in which Christ prom
ised to be present. "Behold I am with you all
days even to the world's consummation. " There
is only one Church which professes to possess Him.
There is only one Church that declares that before
Christ left this world, He substantiated Himself
in the Blessed Eucharist, and that as truly as He
changed water into wine at the marriage feast
in Galilee He changes bread into His Sacred Flesh
and wine into His Sacred Blood at the moment of
Consecration in the ever Adorable Sacrifice. "I
will not leave you orphans/' "I am with you all
days even to the world's consummation." That
Church they knew not, hence their misery.

On tbe

"From the rising of the sun to the going down, my
name is great among the Gentiles ; and in every place
there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean
oblation." — Malachias I. ii.

B of the saddest things in our spiritual life
is that our familiar acquaintance with the
great truths of our Holy Faith very often leads
us to forget their sanctity and their excellence.
Unhappily we are so constituted that our habit of
regarding holy things with familiarity very often
destroys within us that reverence and respect with
which they are wont to inspire us, and the infinite
benefits that can be derived from them lose half
their value in our eyes because they are so easily
attainable. And then a little reflection, it may be
a word spoken by chance, or some good book,
awakens and revives within us that deep, instinc
tive reverence for holy things which seems to be
born with Catholics, and to grow with their growth,
and to strengthen with their years ; and we very
often see persons that only a moment before
treated sacred things, I won't say lightly, but yet
not with all the respect they deserved, draw back
suddenly, and are filled with shame and fear to
think that they were so near to God, almost touch
ing Him, irreverentially, and with indifference.

Of nothing is this more true than of that most
sacred, holy, sublime Act of Eeligion, the essence
of everything good and beautiful in the Church of

313

314 SERMONS

God, the condensation of all its sanctity, the source
of all its grace, the center of all its goodness, the
one grand central object of its magnificent and
deeply mystic ceremonial, its life, its essence, its
strength : I mean the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
It has been well called the Sun of Christianity.
Without it Christianity would be an impossibility,
with it Christianity becomes the sublimest reality.
It is the cause of the undying life of the Catholic
Church; it is the source of all its vigor and
strength; after the life of the Church for almost
nineteen hundred years it still possesses as in the
beginning an active principle of self-preservation,
a means of renewing its ever-ancient youth in the
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

It is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, "the clean
oblation offered up to God from the rising to the
setting of the sun," that diffuses through the
Catholic Church the energy, the warmth, the life
that characterizes it; if we could enter into the
inner life of the Church, we would be astonished at
the mighty, supernatural work that is being ef
fected there ; we would be dumb with surprise if
God could let us see for a moment into what beau
tiful temples of Divine Love the Grace of the Holy
Spirit has transformed many a humble, obscure,
hidden soul. Think of all the sanctity of the
deserts of old that God peopled with saints ; think
of all the collected sanctity of the cloistered, conse
crated lives, when the triple vows of poverty,
purity, and most of all obedience, transform every
meanest action or word or thought into a rich,
Heaven-pleasing, meritorious work: we would be
forced to ask ourselves to what great source shall

ON THE MASS 315

we trace these wonders of silent, hidden love? what
is the center of this angelic life, so quiet and yet so
like to Heaven! what is the vital principle of this
life, so uncongenial to everything evil, so fertile of
good? what is the great action of the day around
which all the others cluster, and from which all the
others derive their merit? It is the Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass, in which these holy spouses of the
lamb united the Sacrifice of themselves to the
Sacrifice of the great Victim on the Altar, and thus
renewed the consecration of themselves to His
Eternal love and service.

And to what shall we trace the languor, the cold
ness, the lifelessness, the torpor, of all other re
ligions, if not to the absence of this great sacrifice ?
for religion without sacrifice is an impossibility.
Sacrifice is the soul of religion, and mere external
worship without sacrifice cannot be otherwise than
displeasing in the eyes of God. This is a truth
that has been understood in every system of re
ligion that has existed since the beginning of the
world, and though the awful darkening of the hu
man intellect that was superinduced by original
sin prevented men from understanding the nature
of the Divine Being to whom sacrifice should be
offered, and therefore the quality of sacrifice that
would please Him, and although their sacrifices
were therefore for the most part loathsome in
God's eyes, the very fact of their offering sacrifice
at all proves that they at least understood in what
the essence of religion consists, and that they pos
sessed an instinct that led them to acknowledge
God's supreme dominion over all things, and the
total dependence of all things upon Him.

316 SERMONS

The sacrifices of the Jews were pleasing to God,
because God Himself prescribed them ; and yet St.
Paul calls them weak and needy elements, because
they were shadowy and defective, and merely typi
cal of the One great Sacrifice of Justice, that was
to replace them, and was to be Catholic and Eter
nal. "But Christ, being come, an High Priest of
the good things to come, by a greater and more
perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is
not of this creation ; neither by the blood of goats,
or of calves, but by His own blood, entered once
into the Holies, having obtained eternal redemp
tion. For if the blood of goats and of oxen sanc
tify such as are defiled to the cleansing of the
flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ,
who, by the Holy Ghost offered Himself unspotted
unto God, cleanse our conscience from dead works
to serve the living God!"

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, therefore, is the
one great sacrifice which all the others duly typi
fied and prefigured. It alone is holy, it alone is
perfect, it alone is complete.

It is most holy, because Christ the High Priest
is holy, Christ the Victim is holy, God to whom it
is offered is holy. It is most perfect, because by
it the supremacy of the Father is most fully and
perfectly acknowledged and the dependence of all
creatures upon Him most fully and explicitly con
fessed. It is complete, for no Sacrifice can be
greater than the Sacrifice of an Infinite Being to
an Infinite Being ; it offers the most ample repara
tion for sin, it satisfies all the claims of Divine jus
tice, and it is the source of infinite merit.

Now, in what does the essence of the Holy Sacri-

ON THE MASS 317

fice of the Mass consist 1 In this, that it is an act
of religion in which we offer to God as to the Su
preme Lord, the Body and Blood of His own Di
vine Son in an unbloody manner. Hence it follows
that, as the Council of Trent expressly declares, it
cannot be offered to saints or angels, however high
or holy, but to God alone. Christ offered under
the species of bread and wine His own sacred
Body and Blood to God the Father, and under the
same symbols He gave Himself to His Apostles,
whom then He consecrated Priests of the New
Testament, and he commanded them and their suc
cessors to offer up the self -same sacrifice: "Do
this in commemoration of me."

Although He was about to offer Himself to God
the Father once, through the intervention of Death
upon the Altar of the Cross that He might effect
the eternal redemption of men : because, however,
by death, His priesthood was not to expire, at the
last supper, on the night on which He was be
trayed, that He might leave to His beloved spouse,
the Church, a visible sacrifice such as the nature
of men required — a sacrifice, too, by which the
great bloody sacrifice of Calvary might be com
memorated, declaring Himself a priest for ever
according to the Order of Melchisedech, He offered
up His Divine Body and Blood under the species
of bread and wine to the Father.

And that same sacrifice He every day renews,
wherever and whensoever His minister can be
found, through whose words He may be summoned
again from Heaven, to hide Himself under the
species of humble elements, and again He offered
to His Eternal Father a victim of propitiation and

318 SERMONS

most august Mediator for the sins of the world.
"The Lord hath sworn, and He will not repent,
thou art a Priest for ever." By so much is Jesus
made a surety of a better testament. "And the
others indeed, were made many priests, because
by reason of death they were not suffered to con
tinue. But this, for that he continueth for ever
hath an everlasting priesthood : whereby he is able
also to save for ever them that come to God by
Him: always living to make intercession for us.
For it was fitting that we should have such a High
Priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from
sinners, and made higher than the heavens. ' '

Therefore, Christ is the great High Priest of the
Sacrifice of the Mass: He offers that sacrifice
through the Priest at the Altar as through an in
ferior Minister ; lastly the Church unites with both,
and offers the Sacrifice, not as Priest through a
minister, but as the people through the Priest.
When, therefore, you come to the Holy Sacrifice of
the Mass, do not come because you are compelled
by the positive precept of the Church to attend, do
not come as spectators, to be prayed for or amused,
but come with this consciousness, that you have a
part in the Holy Sacrifice, that you are united with
the priest at the Altar, and with the great invisible
High Priest, Christ Jesus, in offering to the Eter
nal God the sacrifice of a most august Victim.

The priest at the altar is the public minister of
the Church, but the priest of the altar is not alone :
you who assist cooperate with him in offering the
great sacrifice ; he speaks in your name and in the
name of the Church ; he asks you to pray that your
sacrifice and his may be acceptable to God the

ON THE MASS 319

Father Almighty; you, as it were, hold up his
hands to support the elements of the sacrifice, with
him you address God the Father, and with him
you participate, in a measure proportioned to your
dispositions in the infinite merits of this all-aton
ing sacrifice.

But if our Divine Lord is High Priest, so is He
also Victim. Yes, the same Christ that once lay
a weak, helpless babe on the straw in the little
stable at Bethlehem is laid by the hand of the priest
on the Corporal as weak and helpless as at Bethle
hem, and under the still humbler disguise of Bread.
In truth the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a daily
repetition of the Incarnation, just as it is a daily
repetition of the great sacrifice of Calvary. And
in very truth, quite unconsciously it appears, the
accidents and surroundings of Bethlehem are the
accidents and surroundings of the great sacrifice
of the Mass.

The only difference is that very often our Divine
Lord undergoes more humiliations as He lies on
the Altar than when He lay in the stable. He is
more passive, more helpless. To His infinity, of
course, it mattered very little whether He should
veil all His glories under the form of an infant or
under the form of a little bread, because both are
created things, and absolutely nothing when com
pared with His great uncreated infinity ; but to our
humble eyes it appears that the humility of our
Divine Lord in the Mass is greater than His hu
mility in the manger. Again, He had the worship
of Mary and Joseph at Bethlehem, and I am sure
that one act of worship of Mary more than com
pensated Him for all His degradation, for she

320 SERMONS

whose word drew Him from Heaven, ought to be
able to console Him for all the sorrow and hu
miliation of His exile upon earth, but in the Mass
He has but the poor, limited, feeble worship of a
sinful priest.

And also at the present day it is not difficult to
carry the comparison to another particular. For
just as there hung over the cradle of the infant-
God the fury of Herod, who, in his depraved blind
ness, mistook the mission of Jesus Christ on earth,
and trembled for his little earthly dominion, so,
too, our potentates of the present would if it were
possible take Jesus away from His universe : trem
bling for their puny, transient authority, which
neither Jesus nor His Church has ambition to pos
sess, so long as they retain dominion, by Divine
grace, over the hearts and minds of men.

It is, therefore, the same Jesus, that lived here
below upon earth, and was seen by men and
touched, and was transfigured on Thabor, and
crucified on Calvary, that is present at the Conse
cration in the great Eucharistic sacrifice. We
know it well ; we can repeat in clear, accurate lan
guage what the exact theology of the Church
teaches ; and when the little bell gives notice that
the great awful moment has arrived, we bend our
heads in mute reverent worship, to adore our
Creator, whom we know to be present. One mo
ment, and the priest having lifted his eyes to
Heaven, bends in the trembling silence over the
altar. He holds in his hands a little bread, and
before him on the Corporal is a little wine in the
chalice. At the same moment, Jesus Christ is in
Heaven, rapt up in the love of the Father and the

ON THE MASS 321

Holy Ghost, and below His feet, bending in pro-
foundest worship before Him, with their faces
veiled in awe of His Majesty, are countless legions
of angels. He has all the attributes of the God
head about Him; His omnipotence is conserving
the Universe, His all-seeing eye is looking down
into the depths of every human and angelic mind
in His creation, His inexorable justice is holding
fast in the flames of Hell the souls of those who
refused His love. His sanctity repels from Him,
even though His mercy and love attracts, those
poor souls in Purgatory, who have not yet wiped
from them those stains they contracted on earth:
when in an instant, in obedience to the whisper of
that priest at the altar, that same infinite God has
drawn in all His infinite attributes, has sunk down
from Heaven, and laid Himself with all His power
upon the fingers of His creature, the weak, trem
bling priest at the altar. His angels have followed
Him from Heaven ; they are here just as certainly
as their brother angels are before the throne of
God ; they are here, trembling as they tremble be
fore the unveiled Majesty of God in Heaven; they
are here worshiping Him in awful silence with
their eyes riveted upon Him as He lies there help
less upon the Corporal or is taken up by the hands
of the priest ; they are here, and though it is not
for the first or second or the thousandth time, they
marvel just as much at the ineffable condescension
of God ; they praise His goodness, and try to think
what it is in men that can so attract their God
from Heaven, as when eighteen hundred years
ago they clustered around the crib at Bethlehem
and sang their first Gloria in excelsis.

GOSPEL OF THE SECOND SUNDAY
AFTER PENTECOST

Ube Dois Communion

) a reflecting mind the greatest wonder of
the many wonders that surround God's ex
istence and His attributes is the love which He
bears for men.

It is quite true that, considered in themselves,
His Unity of Essence, His Trinity of Persons, His
Immensity harmonizing with His Simplicity, His
Omniscience, His Power, are awfully mysterious
and incomprehensible : but we regard these mys
teries as something intrinsic to God Himself —
and therefore not so much to be wondered at ; but
when this awful Being goes outside Himself, and
comes among us, making us to feel His presence,
we are dumb with astonishment and terror.

That He should have cast a thought upon our
existence was a favor and a mercy; but what did
He see in us that, enamored of our existence, He
should leave the bosom of the Eternal Father, and
the love of the Father and the Holy Ghost, and the
joys of Heaven and the worship of His angels, to
come amongst us, and assume our nature with all
its inheritance of sorrow, and our iniquities with
all their inheritance of His Father's anger, and to
crown it all by lifting up that same nature and
setting it down for eternity at the right hand of

322

THE HOLY COMMUNION 323

the Eternal Father, with co-equal majesty and
power. God, the infinite, the immense, filling and
pervading all space — man, puny man, on this His
little planet, which is but an atom in the universe ;
God the Eternal — man, with not even the promise
of a day; God the Omniscient — man, that knows
nothing, not even his own insignificance; God so
holy and pure — man, so impious and impure ; God
so calmly wise — man so boisterously foolish : such
were the two beings between whom an indissoluble
union was to be cemented.

The Almighty looked out over His Universe—
everywhere beauty and harmony met His eyes:
from every quarter were the upturned eyes of mil
lions of bright angels riveted upon Him with un
speakable love; He saw but one nature that was
degraded — one on which those same angels never
looked but with pity — one on which His Father
never looked but with eyes of anger; and lo! He
left glory and sanctity and love behind Him and
passed through His cohorts of loving angels, and
sank down, and wedded Himself to that same
nature, which looked so pitiable when viewed from
Heaven.

You and I have learned with sorrow and grief
and amazement the treatment which men gave
their Divine Guest : there remains on record the
sad chronicle of the bufferings and the stripes,
and the thorny crown, and the mock scepter, and
the fooPs robes, wherewith men in their blind
madness outraged Him who loved them; and you
and I would have thought that surely the patience
of God would not brook this sacrilegious ingrati
tude; that now He must arise in His hot anger,

324 SERMONS

and with one word sweep miscreant men and
devils, and even His angels, into annihilation, and
go back to His Eternal Father and wrap Himself
up in His glory, as He did of old when there was
no creature angel to flaunt his pride in His face,
and no puny creature man to outrage and insult
Him.

But no! our loving Jesus has but wiped away
the spittle from His eyes to look on us with greater
love, and He has kept His five most precious
wounds not to reproach us with them as the work
of our sin, but to show how He loved us. And in
the low depth of His degradation He has found a
lower still. For He has seen something in men, I
know not what, that has wonderfully attracted Him
in such a way that He has begun to look upon
earth as His home, and Heaven an exile ; and He
will not be separated from us.

He loves the quiet tabernacle and the homely
altar better than the splendors of His celestial
Kingdom, and the worship of his poor servants,
and their listless, languid, tepid devotion and their
world-distracted meditations are preferable in His
eyes to the burning love of His Seraphim, and the
thrilling songs of His Cherubim, and the grand
chorus of Hosannas and Alleluias that evermore
echo through the vaults of Heaven. But still
lower must we go, if we would at all comprehend
His love.

He has concentrated by a sort of Divine in
genuity all His miracles of love into one grandeur-
passing miracle — Creation is not half enough for
Him, no, nor Incarnation — no, nor even the lavish
effusions of His precious Blood upon us — no, nor,

THE HOLY COMMUNION 325

even His Presence in the Blessed Sacrament ; but
He will come out from His prison of love, and
bring with Him His wealth of graces, and bring
with Him the merits of His sufferings and death
and Precious Blood, and unite Himself corporally
and really to His poor servant at the altar rails,
and remain with him and be consumed by him, and
change that poor sinner in a sense into Himself,
and leave him only when He has imparted His
choicest graces and benedictions, and made him
in the eyes of His Father an object of Divine com
placency, and in the eyes of His angels an object
of admiration and envy.

A certain man made a great supper, and invited
many. A great supper! Very great indeed!
And the viands are no less than the Body and
Blood of the Eternal God — the bread of angels,
the humanity of Jesus with His Divinity unfolded.
The Son of Mary — the chaste flesh which He got
from hers, and the immaculate Divine Soul which
He brought from Heaven. A great supper — a
banquet, which the omnipotence of God and His
Love alone could furnish.

And He has invited many ! By which He means
all. All without exception or reservation. He
invited the just to come clothed with their sanctity,
and adorned with all the graces with which years
spent in the practice of virtue has endowed them.
He invited sinners to come, clothed in the nuptial
robe, which the priest of Jesus will fling around
him in the sacrament of Penance. He invites the
rich to come, and He will open to them treasures
which neither rust nor moth can consume— the
treasures of His Divine grace. He invites the

326 SERMONS

poor to come, for He is their Brother, and He
knows that the poor have no consolation on earth
and no hope in Heaven but Himself. He invites
the aged to come, for He will be their Viaticum for
the great journey to eternity on which they must
soon enter. He invites with a special invitation
and special love the young, His little ones that
are so dear to Him, to come with their fresh hearts,
which are pure with the purity which He gave them
in Baptism — hearts that know no evil and that
never will know it, if they will only be loyal to
Jesus. He, invites all : it is a great banquet and
the supper:room is large.

And strange enough, His invitation has taken
the form of a command. Yes, for once is the gen
tle Jesus imperative. For once does He lay aside
His mild words and gentle expostulations, and as
it were assuming all the prophetical majesty of His
Godhead and speaking as the Author and Dispen
ser of all grace, the Giver of every good gift, He
declares in emphatic terms, in words which cannot
be gainsaid, in decretorial language, the least iota
of which shall not pass, though the Heavens and
the earth be moved : " Unless you eat the flesh of
the Son of Man and drink His blood you shall not
have life in you. ' '

Side by side with those other grand sentences,
which Jesus pronounced upon earth, and upon
which the grand fabric of Christian doctrine is
built, side by side with such sentences as these:
"Unless a man be born again of water and the
Holy Ghost he cannot enter the Kingdom of
Heaven. " "Thou art Peter," etc., "This is My
Body." Side by side with these we find this de-

THE HOLY COMMUNION 327

cree, this prophecy, " Unless you eat the flesh of
the Son of Man and drink His blood you shall not
have life in you."

And in this there is nothing harsh, nothing that
does not well accord with the merciful disposition
of the Redeemer. Nay, it is only from the ex
uberance of His love for us that He makes this
reception of Himself in the Holy Communion so
absolutely necessary.

Assuredly He had no need of us ; and assuredly
we have very much need of Him. And it is be
cause He knows our poverty and weakness, that
He has compassion on us, and He would enrich us
with His graces ; but He knows, too, our coldness
and indifference to Himself, our apathy and care
lessness about everything that affects our salva
tion, and therefore He will save us in spite of our
selves, by laying upon us His injunction to eat His
Flesh and drink His Blood. And then, as if He
had almost repented of having spoken at all so
strongly to us, He comes with larger promises,
great gifts, gifts not fading or perishable, but
gifts that will bear fruit through eternity, and He
tells us :

51. I am the living Bread, which came down
from Heaven.

52. If any man eat of this Bread, he shall live
for ever, and the Bread that I will give you is my
flesh for the Life of the world.

55. He that eateth my Flesh and drinketh my
Blood hath everlasting Life : and I will raise him
on the last day.

56. For my Flesh is meat indeed, and my Blood
is drink indeed.

328 SERMONS

57. He that eateth my Flesh and drinketh my
Blood abideth in me, and I in him.

58. 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.

59. This is the Bread which came down from
Heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna, and
are dead. He that eateth this Bread, shall live for
ever.1

Here are splendid promises ! Here are rich re
wards ! Whosoever receives Jesus worthily in the
Holy Communion shall live for ever- ! Whosoever
eateth the Flesh and drinketh the Blood of Christ
hath eternal life, and his Master will lift him up
on the last day. Whosoever eateth His Flesh
and drinketh His Blood abideth in Jesus, and
Jesus in Him ! Whosoever eateth the Flesh and
drinketh the Blood of Qhrist shall live in Jesus,
and live for ever !

And if we for a moment throw a glance behind
us, and run our eyes along the head roll of saints
that have illustrated the Church of God by their
virtues, we shall find that these promises of our
Divine Lord were not empty words, but that each
one of all His glorious children is indebted for his
or her sanctity to the frequent reception of the
Holy Communion. They were men such as we are,
and they had temptations to resist, they had diffi
culties to overcome, they had trials to surmount,
such as we do not even dream of. Take up the life
of one of God's saints. You read there of the
practice of heroic virtues, you read of fearful mor
tifications, you read of long fasts and vigils, you

1 John c. vi.

THE HOLY COMMUNION 329

read of whole nights spent in prayer, and amidst
all his difficulties and trials you see him go for
ward with indomitable perseverance to the end.
Whence has he derived all his strength? How has
he gained victories over hell and himself? — vic
tories, compared with which the -greatest conquests
of the greatest conquerors of earth are but the
successes of children! The secret is here. They
got their strength from our Divine Lord in the
Holy Communion. Where did the martyrs of the
early Church get strength to pronounce their faith
firmly in defiance of the threats of tyrants?
Whence did they get strength to face all the terrors
and tortures which the ingenuity of their enemies
could invent? Whence did young boys and tender
maidens get strength to face the wild beasts in
the Eoman arenas, to leap joyfully in the midst of
flames, to suffer all the tortures of the rack, to
endure insult, ignominy, disgrace, banishment, and
death, for the sake of Jesus Christ? Whence but
from the Divine Master, for whom they were suf
fering, and who daily gave them Himself in the
Holy Communion?

Why are we such laggards in the Race of Salva
tion, so cowardly in presence of temptation?

The reason is evident. We feed on the husks
of swine, and they on the bread of angels.

Catboltc Ceremonial

*|[ DO not care very often to take up Protestant
objections against the truths of the Catholic
Church, because I know from my short experience
that they are generally the result of gross igno
rance arising from a defective education, and be
cause, in the second place, it seems to be an utterly
hopeless task to dissipate that ignorance by any
human means.

There is one human imperfection, and it is ir-
radicable in proportion as it is ridiculous, and
that is the presumption of ignorance. I have
heard of a Suarez, after a life of studious labor,
declare his incompetence to deal with the great
mysteries of Kevelation, I have heard of a Thomas
Aquinas, perhaps the greatest intellect ever given
by God to this world, humbling himself before the
image of his Crucified Master, and asking God's
pardon for having attempted even an explanation
of Christian mystery. I have heard of St. Jer
ome, who spent his life in studying God's Holy
Word, and at the close confessed how unable he
was to penetrate behind their awful and signifi
cant obscurity, and I have heard, too, of pulpit
coxcombs, who have dismissed in a few flippant
words the very weightiest truths of Christianity,
and I have heard, to my intense disgust, bible-
readers, old and young, explaining with the ut-

330

ON CATHOLIC CEREMONIAL 331

most ease texts of Scripture, of the true meaning
of which they knew as much as they did of As
syrian hieroglyphics, or the inscriptions in the
Catacombs.

I do not know of anything so melancholy as the
education which is forced upon Protestant chil
dren in our days. I do not think there is a single
unpleasant feature in the human character that
that education is not calculated to develop. To
be frivolous, flippant and foolish, to be rude and
irreverent to what they cannot understand, to
laugh in self-conceited ignorance at holy mys
teries, which their forefathers reverenced — these
are but a few of the results that naturally and
logically arise from a system, the pride and boast
of which is that it gives to the individual mind
the right of believing what it pleases.

To the educated Catholic mind, disciplined in
holy obedience from its childhood — taught to be
lieve that there are things in heaven and earth
superior to itself, and taught to feel that the
noblest act a man can perform is to kneel in rev
erence to his superior, such a condition of unre
strained liberty — the liberty of savages — is a sub
ject of sorrow, and another feeling not so Chris
tian as sorrow and that is, contempt.

It is well, however, once and again to explain
Catholic doctrine, and to examine into the deep
philosophy of Catholic practice that we may see
how rational and consistent is the whole system
of Catholic doctrine and worship.

It is an objection advanced by Protestants, and
refuted by them at the same time, that the Cath
olic method of worshiping God is sensuous. It

332 SERMONS

is the worship of the senses, not of the intellect.
It is external and unreal, and not internal and sin
cere. It is unworthy of God and not satislactory
to the demands of the human heart. It is a mere
worship of empty ceremonial, calculated to attract
the attention of foolish, imaginative people; it is
not the pure worship in spirit and in truth which
since the abolition of the Jewish ceremonial law,
is alone pleasing and acceptable in the sight of
God.

Such is the objection advanced by ultra-Protes
tants against Catholic worship, and it is backed up
by two or three texts of Scripture, of which, as
usual, a spurious and absurd interpretation is
given. The one sufficient and satisfactory answer
to this objection is, that our Lord Himself and His
Apostles used a ceremonial, that from the very
earliest ages, the worship of the Church has been
a worship of ceremony, that the very confession,
drawn up by the Eeformers themselves, advocate
the use of ceremonial in worship, and finally that
ceremonial is the natural outcome and result of a
sincere faith, and that the lack of ceremonial is
at the same time the cause and result of unbe
lief, and the surest indication that faith is dead,
and charity grown cold.

It is scarcely necessary for me to say that
Catholics do not attach the slightest spiritual
efficacy to ceremonies in themselves. There is no
Catholic so ill-instructed as not to know that it
does not affect the validity of the Holy Sacrifice
whether the priest wears a white or red vestment,
that he could validly baptize without a stole, and
validly absolve without a surplice. And that the

,V CATHOLIC CEREMONIAL 333

ceremonies of the Church, speaking generally, are
simply intended for the maintenance of that re
spect and decorum that are due to the celebration
of such august mysteries.

We find our Divine Lord using ceremonies for
this purpose during His blessed life. In giving
sight to the man born blind, he did not as on other
occasions, make use alone of His Omnipotent
word, but He spat upon the ground, and made clay
of the spittle and spread the clay upon his eyes,
and said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloe."
He went and washed and came seeing. Again
when Magdalen came to Him, He allowed her to
use a most touching ceremony, and yet we know
that He attached the grace of justification not to
that ceremony, but to the deep contrition of her
heart. The healing qualities of the pool of Beth-
esda were made dependent on the moving of the
waters by an angel. And in the institution of the
great Sacrament of Baptism, the Ceremony of
washing with water was attached as an essential
element in the Sacrament, not that the grace of the
Sacrament could not be conferred, had Our Divine
Lord so wished it, without that ceremony, but it
was His Divine disposition of things.

We are told in the Gospel of St. Mark that the
Apostles cast out many devils, and anointed with
oil many that were sick and healed them. To as
sert, therefore, that ceremonies were altogether
abolished by the coming of Christ — nay, that it is
sinful to use them, is to assert what is plainly con
tradicted by the example and practice of Christ
and His Apostles.

That the use of ceremonies always prevailed

334 SERMONS

in the Church even from the earliest times is tes
tified by all ecclesiastical writers, notably by St.
Augustine, by Tertullian, by Justin, who expressly
mentions fasting, prayer, immersion in baptism—
"the kiss of peace, " "the thank-offerings, " the
distribution of the Holy Eucharist. And, in fact,
so clear is the necessity of ceremonial, and so
Scriptural its use, that even it is sanctioned and
established in the Confessions of the Reformers
themselves.

Then, in the Helvetic Confession it is declared
that the Churches of Christ always used their lib
erties in rites and ceremonies, and in the Augustan
and Saxon Confession it is dogmatically declared
that they sin who violate ceremonies to the scan
dal of others, and who despise them through pride
since they subvert the order of discipline and right
rule, and disturb the tranquility of the State.

From which it was clearly evident that the ob
jections to the rites of the Church arose from a
few factious opponents, who were blinded by the
arch-enemy to believe that the farther they got
from Popery, the nearer they were to God.

That a religion of ceremonial is the natural out
come of a true faith, and a sincere love for God
is a truth that no one can deny who understands
the workings of the human heart. Protestantism
in idea is a very grand conception, reduced to
fact, it is a miserable failure. Its very principle
was to improve in a human manner a Divine work.
It made a pretense of a vocation to bring back to
a state of perfection a work — a religion that, al
though instituted by God, and promised His Di
vine assistance, was yet unable to sustain itself,

ON CATHOLIC CEREMONIAL 335

or to be sustained by God. ' ' The work of God has
failed/' said the Reformer, "and we men are
called upon to improve it. What God cannot do
that we shall do. ' '

And they began by stigmatizing the existing
God-ordained system of worship as corrupt and
puerile, and they attempted to substitute in its
stead a higher and more spiritual form of wor
ship, as they supposed, and they called it "the
worship in spirit and in truth." They swept
away the altars at which their forefathers for a
thousand years had worshiped. They clothed
their ministers in an uncouth and awkward vest
ment, they emptied the niches of the statues of
saints, they blotted out or otherwise mutilated the
frescoes in the churches, and in a spirit of savage
barbarism, of which a Vandal would have been
ashamed, they drew the whitewash brush over
paintings and illuminations, and left the houses of
the Most High God pictures of blank, staring des
olation, and rivaling the impiety of Balthasar.

They took the gold and silver vessels of the Tem
ple to grace their episcopal or other sideboards,
and whilst they vied with each other in increasing
the superb splendor of their mansions, the house
of God was shut up and neglected, as if Chris
tianity had become a bankrupt institution, and it
was opened for a few hours on a Sunday morning
to reveal to the worshiper of the new religion, a
bare, hollow, deserted and desecrated house, from
which the Most High God had evidently departed,
and which wore the appearance of a sepulcher and
not of a consecrated temple.

As Catholics, we have to thank God that such a

336 SERMONS

state of things is past and for ever. As the Bishop
of Salford lately said in his pastoral, "the actions
even of those who are outside the Church cannot
be a matter of indifference or inconvenience to us.
However separated from us by a difference in
dogma, we know that there is One who has an
equal interest in Protestants as well as in our
selves — One whose Sacred Heart is ever yearning
to establish the one sheepf old over which He may
preside in triumph and in peace. Whatever af
fects our Lord Jesus Christ must affect us, and,
therefore, the well-being of our Protestant breth
ren must be a matter of the deepest interest to us.
It is, therefore, with heartfelt pleasure we recog
nize the efforts of a body of men in the Establish
ment to restore the worship of God in their public
churches. "

It is a great gain that that slovenly system of
carrying out public service should be discarded for
ever; that there is now a decency and decorum in
worshiping God that never existed before. And
though, of course, it is but a poor imitation of
Catholic worship, it is also an unconscious admis
sion that the consistent, uniform worship of the
Catholic Church is that which is approved by God,
and best calculated for the wants of men. There
is no danger of my being misunderstood. I be
lieve that with all their great sincerity, the end
these men propose to themselves, is unattainable.
I believe it to be an absolute impossibility to
Catholicize England without Borne. But I do not
regard, nor does any sensible person regard, Eit-
ualism as a religion, distinct in itself. It is sim-

ON CATHOLIC CEREMONIAL 337

ply the transition of the Church of England to
wards Catholicity. It is the effort of a nation
rising from three centuries of darkness and torpor
to a state of life and light.

And this noise and tumult that we hear, even
those invectives against the Catholic Church, are
simply the cries of a people that have lain long un
der the incubus of Protestantism, and have been
touched by the hand of God, and are slowly awak
ening to a consciousness of that true life, of which
Our Blessed Master is the author and preserver.

I take their example to prove my point. Why
were ritual and ceremonial, banished at the Re-
formation, restored and why has England re
turned to ceremonial? Because amongst them the
doctrines of Catholicity are being revived. From
which we derive the general principle that where
there is doctrine, there is ceremonial. When doc
trines disappear, rites and ceremonies vanish. If
I believe a doctrine with my whole soul, then I
must use a ceremonial. If I believe the doctrine
of the Blessed Eucharist, whenever I pass and re-
pass the Tabernacle, I am forced upon my knees to
pay that homage of Supreme worship to my hid
den God. If I believe in the Crucifixion of Our
Divine Lord what is there more natural than that
I should make that Sacred Sign of the Cross from
which I derive all that grace and all that hope that
makes life bearable, and robs death of all its ter
rors. At the Reformation dogma was banished;
the doctrines reduced to an infinitesimal, perhaps ;
and therefore the spider wrote in cobwebs on
whitewashed walls the history of the Kef ormation.

338 SERMONS

But you will say, surely, lighted candles, flowers,
incense, these are not worthy of the supreme God.
They are puerile and childish.

The answer is a simple one. No ! they are not
worthy, but neither is the worship of the highest
seraph in Heaven worthy of Him. They are sim
ply the worship of human hearts. It is the best
we can give Him, and He will not refuse to re
ceive them. They are simply the expression of
what we feel. They are the exponents of our
thoughts.

Every flower upon that Altar is a prayer ; every
candle is a sacrifice. That is, they are the lan
guage in which we express the worship of our
hearts. They serve us in place of words. They
are like the gifts of the Wise Men to the Child in
the stable. Human and poor compared to the
Majesty of Him to whom they are offered; but
He does not disdain them. The Word made Flesh
has descended to a common level with us, and is
quite content to accept the little we can offer Him,
provided it be done in a heart, and a very good
heart.

If you call it puerile, we thank you for the word.
Puerile, that is, adapted for children. Has not
Our Divine Master taught us to call the God who
is in Heaven Our Father, and has He not said in
words of deep and solemn meaning: "Amen, I
say unto you, unless you be converted and become
like unto these, you cannot enter the Kingdom of
Heaven. ' '

I repeat it, therefore, where there is no faith,
there is no ceremonial. When men really believe,
they must express their belief. A purely intel-

ON CATHOLIC CEREMONIAL 339

lectual faith, wrapped up in the mind, unseen and
unknown, never yet existed. It might be adapted
to angelic, but not to human intelligence. And
what was the result of this newly established wor
ship in spirit and in truth! The loss of faith, be
cause we find that when ceremonial was banished,
men began by degrees to lose a clear perception
of what they had believed, and the truths of Chris
tianity were pared down and minimized until they
reached the level of absolute Deism.

And a loss of devotion! Who ever dreamt of
devotion in a Protestant church, with its bare
walls, its gaunt pulpit, the Ten Commandments
carved upon Tombstones in the background, the
tedious essay called a sermon, and the organ dron
ing to the old Puritan anthems f In itself it was,
perhaps, unobjectionable; but it was not Christian
worship, and it did not satisfy the piety of the peo
ple. It was a grand design, but above human
strength. And, therefore, a wretched failure.

The argument was a plausible one enough, but
it refuted itself, or rather the common sense of
mankind rose up against it, and condemned it. A
few melancholy Puritanical churchwardens may
cling for a time to the "beautiful simplicity " of
Protestant worship, but the world is turning to the
majestic ceremonial of Catholicity, the true ex
ponent of true worship — Catholicity with its grand
majestic ceremonies, fit for the Court of the King
of Heaven, and its grand music adapted to every
phase of human feeling from the jubilant gloria
to the melancholy and terror of the i t Miserere. ' '

Thus we find that men are progressing back
wards. The stubborn obstinacy of Protestantism

340 SERMONS

is slowly yielding to a consciousness of its awful
failure, and stealthily borrowing from Catholicity
the doctrines and ceremonies it had so utterly re
pudiated. Men are beginning to perceive that
apart altogether from the Divine Authority of the
Catholic Church, it possesses an experience and a
human wisdom that is in itself infallible.

If we consider that it has been, since the time of
its Divine Founder, growing with the growth of
centuries and hoarding up their experiences, even
when they had passed into Eternity — that it alone
remains of all the institutions that were existent
at the death of Christ — that during those nineteen
centuries its friends have been laboring for it, and
its very enemies instructing it — that it alone is
truly the heir of all the ages, inheriting their wis
dom, and the wealth of knowledge they had ac
cumulated; when we consider all this we shall at
once recognize the folly of individuals who rise up
to teach the Mistress of the World in that very
science wherein she is most proficient — the art of
arts — the science of souls.

What would be thought of a Patagonian savage,
or South Sea Islander, who would venture to re
form the British Constitution, who would dictate
to Mr. Disraeli on the Eastern Question or the
State Ceremonial? Yet such, and infinitely
greater is the absurdity of those who would teach
the Church of God what truth is, or attempt to
impose its ceremonial by abolishing it. They
should know that every truth is built on the firm
est foundations and fenced round with logic so
closely that it must remain for ever untouched and
unshaken; and that she, with the blessing of

ON CATHOLIC CEREMONIAL 341

Heaven, will continue to fulfill her mighty destiny,
continually rejecting what is untruthful and un
worthy of Heaven, but constantly assimilating to
herself whatever is chosen of God, and made by
His grace worthy of Him.

JBoofes

earnest and thinking man of the pres
ent day looks to the Catholic Church as the
only power that can cope with the many most
grievous evils of social life. These evils have
arisen from the world 's abandonment of God and
the Church; and though many years must neces
sarily elapse before men will unanimously confess
their inability to repair the ruins which they have
made, the truth is forcing itself surely, though
slowly, upon the minds of men, and even they, who
are most reluctant to believe it, are compelled to
admit it.

Thus for example, it is seen, that in this very
country,1 all the vast temperance organizations
are powerless against the evil of drink, and it has
lately been shown by a holy and learned priest,
that as the Catholic Church alone has been com
missioned to do battle against the world and the
devil, so she alone has the Divine strength and
power to resist the evils of the one and of the
other.

But there is one evil, which has injured God
and His Church more than any other, against
which the efforts even of the Church must be al
ways partly unavailing, and which it is specially
needful to be guarded against, as it is probably the
most attractive, the most subtle, and the most suc-

i England.
342

ON BAD BOOKS 343

cessful means by which the arch enemy can propa
gate sin in the world. I mean bad books, bad lit
erature of any kind.

I do not exaggerate the evil influence of corrupt
literature when I say that it is the most powerful
enemy of God, and the most powerful ally of His
enemy.

It has been the chief agent in this awful Rev
olution, the effects of which are now visible in the
demoralization of all society, and if the present
reign of sin and infidelity in the world is to have
any stability, it will owe it entirely to the perse
verance with which bad men will continue to issue
from the Press the experiences and suggestions of
their own depraved minds.

It will always remain an open question, whether
the invention of printing was a boon or a curse
to mankind. Up to the present moment, how
ever, it may be safely averred that its evil effects
have more than neutralized its good effects.

The France of to-day is infidel. What has made
it so? Bad literature. You may pass from end
to end of France, and you will not find a single
book in a single bookstall that you can touch with
out fear of committing mortal sin.

The writings of the infidels of the last century
and of this are printed and published in every
form and variety, they are published in cheap edi
tions, in leaflets, as well as in morocco, blazoned
with gold, and there is not a village or hamlet in
France that is not inundated with them. Dramas,
comedies, tragedies, works on philosophy, moral
or natural poems — in every way in which a lesson
can be taught, faith destroyed, and morality in-

344 SERMONS

jured, the infidels of France are doing their devil
ish work, and with a success that is known only to
themselves.

Again in Germany, outside the Catholic Church,
every one that can read is a transcendental phi
losopher, in other words, an atheist ; and this, too,
is attributable to the pernicious writings of a few
dreamers, who have substituted shadows of their
own making for the shadowy Christianity that was
left by the Reformers.

In America the venality and corruption of the
Press is proverbial; and coming home to our
own country, we find, in spite of English tradi
tions, and the strong hold which Christianity and
Christian morality have upon the minds of Eng
lishmen, that infidelity is as unblushingly advo
cated, and immorality as openly countenanced
and suggested, as in the worst cities on the conti
nent.

It is not at all a pleasant task thus to stir up the
sink of the world's iniquity. It might be better,
perhaps, to let it rest, especially where, as in Eng
land, it seems to be concealed under healthy veg
etation ; but I regret to say that it is strongly to
be suspected that there are many Catholics to
whom corrupt literature is not altogether un
known, and I speak to show them the danger of its
attractiveness, as well as their unfaithfulness to
God in countenancing the efforts of those whose
vocation is to blot Him out of the minds and hearts
of men.

We find then that evil thoughts and suggestions
are diffused through the world through the news
paper literature of the day, the periodical maga-

ON BAD BOOKS 345

zines and novels of every shade and type of irre
ligious professions.

There is a high class of literature too, that is
more subtle and mischievous than either of these,
I mean poetic literature ; but as it is not capable
of such very large development as the other
classes, and as every one knows what is hurtful
and what is harmless in it, I shall not include it,
though I by no means intend to exclude it in any
censures I shall make.

With regard then to newspaper literature, I
wish to caution some of my hearers against those
penny fly-sheets that are sent about the country
week after week, to pander to the sensationalism
and sensuality of the multitudes.

Whatever freaks human weakness or human
wickedness may have indulged in during the week
are sure to find place in the columns of these jour
nals; and you have a ghastly list of all the sui
cides, executions, and worst of all, the scandals
that crop up week after week, sad indications
enough that all our rigid respectability only covers
a state of national depravity that is simply
appalling.

With regard to the better conducted class of
newspapers in this country (if there be, indeed,
degrees of comparison between them) they are one
and all characterized by a hatred and insane fear
of everything Catholic. Now as all these journals
have very high pretensions, they speak in very de
cided, dogmatic tones. They occupy a very high
position, their editors and staffs of writers are
men of high literary abilities ; they pretend to have
means of obtaining precise information on every

346 SERMONS

possible subject, and their modes of dealing with
Catholic subjects especially, is so overbearing that
there may be weak minded Catholics who will be
induced, not, indeed, to doubt of matters of faith,
but to yield to the temptation of becoming
"literal"

Now, the habit of sending articles to press with
out the names of authors (which prevails in Eng
land) tends very much to increase the importance
of these articles. Indeed, to most of the unin
itiated, the editor of a newspaper is so awful and
mysterious an individual as can well be imagined,
and his utterances are only less than infallible. It
is no exaggeration to state that the National
Church of this Country has been almost super
seded by the Press as a public teacher.

Men do not seek opinions nowadays from the
pulpit, but from the paper. As a distinguished
writer remarked many years ago, "the Church is
now relegated to the Organ-loft and to psalm-
singing; its place as public teacher, moralist,
etc.," is assumed by the Press.

The Press, therefore, in our age, wields a tre
mendous power, and unhappily that power is used
in the cause of evil, and not in the cause of God.

As I must be brief, I would remind Catholics of
a few things it would be well to remember. The
editor of any newspaper is 'an individual of flesh
and blood, whose opinion is not worth more than
that of any other man; that he writes, not to
preach the truth, but to earn his livelihood ; that,
therefore, he shapes his opinions according to the
opinions of the party he represents; that, there
fore, his is the most servile of all professions;

ON BAD BOOKS 347

that, in treating of Catholic subjects, the ignor
ance of newspaper writers is only equaled by their
ingenuity in framing falsehoods, and their fluency
in calumniating.

That the paper must please the people, or the
people will not buy the paper; that, therefore, as
the public still demand the periodical joke, the
periodical lie, the periodical misrepresentation of
Catholic faith and Catholic practice, the paper
must insert them ; and that, therefore, on all Cath
olic subjects, they are utterly untrustworthy — ig
norant of our doctrines, of our practice, misrep
resenting our principles and moral maxims, scur
rilous, false, and libelous.

With regard to the literature of magazines and
novels, it is impossible to give absolute advice;
but if I had my choice I would absolutely con
demn them; for the subjects of which they treat,
for the men and women who write them, and for
the fatal effects they have on young and inex
perienced minds. For the subjects of which they
treat. There are two classes of novel-writers —
they who write for money, and they who write
because they must write.

They who write for money, must please the edi
tor and the public — the taste of the public is de
praved, and, therefore, this class of literature is
bad and corrupt. Vice is openly recommended, or
so nicely gilded that it looks attractive, the vilest
passions of a corrupt nature are shown in the light
of amiable follies; these novels have but one end
and aim — to destroy Christian morality, and,
therefore, their one subject is sin.

Have you ever noticed how carefully the name

348 SERMONS

of God is excluded from every novel of the pres
ent day? It is never mentioned except as an
oath. Have you ever seen the beautiful Christian
virtues of patience and purity and self-sacrifice
and humility recommended? No! but anything
that is low and vile and groveling and sensual.
The purest writer of fiction in this or any other
century — Charles Dickens — is now laughed at by
every sensible man, for every second page of his
novels is a tribute to the animal pleasures of eat
ing and drinking.

A still greater condemnation must be passed
upon those who write because they must write.

These are the demigods of literature, the men
who have made for themselves everlasting reputa
tion. Now, what do I mean by men who write be
cause they must write? I will explain to you in
the words of Father Hecker: "What else," he
says, "is the great mass of our modern popular
literature but an examen of conscience, publicly
made by the author, before his readers and the
whole world? And so deeply are his vices rooted
in his heart, that not satisfied with presenting
them under the attractive disguise of imagery,
they must be spread out to cater to the tastes of
his readers, in all their filthy and disgusting de
tails. Why, no one whose conscience is not
blinded by sin, can take up a volume of the popu
lar literature of our times, and read a page of it,
without detecting some inordinate passion or
deadly sin, rankling in the heart of its author."
In France, from the time of Rousseau's confes
sions, in which he makes no attempt to conceal,
but rather glories in his criminalities and base-

ON BAD BOOKS 349

ness, down to George Sand, the popular literature
is one gross attack upon social virtue and moral
ity, and upon all that is held holy, sacred and
divine.

The number of infidel and licentious books, writ
ten by English authors, and read by English peo
ple presents no flattering picture of the boasted
progress of the English nation in civilization.

How many crimes would have been unknown to
society if such men as Goethe, Schiller, Rousseau,
Byron, Shelley, Bulwer had sought relief for their
consciences in the divine Sacrament of Penance,
instead of flooding society with the details of their
secret vices and miseries, and thus feeding men's
passions until they ripen into crime. . . . They
rid their hearts of the passions and miseries of
which they are filled by infecting the innocent and
unsuspecting; they gain to their own minds a so-
called peace and freedom, by corrupting the pure
and the virtuous.

You see then why these men must write. The
burden of their sins is too heavy upon them; and
they must unload it ; they must tell their infamies
to some one ; they do not know what Sacramental
Confession is, and, therefore, they confess to the
world. Now, as there can be nothing more beau
tiful or more sublime than the sight of a sinner
contritely confessing his sins to God through his
Minister, neither is there anything so disgusting
and loathsome as the spectacle of a man parading
with pride his secret abominations and filthinesses
before the world. And it is this that. must be
said of almost every poet and novelist of the
present day.

350 SERMONS

All that, of course, is painful and tragical
enough, but it has also a comical side, too, for
these men, whose mission is to de-christianize the
world, tell us, with all gravity, that their mission
is divine, and their admirers and imitators hold
up their hands in wonder and call them the high
priests, the prophets, the sages of the 19th
century.

Lastly, novel-reading is condemnable because
they bring the young and the incautious into, per
haps, the most fatal habit that can be contracted,
that dreamy, sleepy, sentimental, imaginative
frame of mind, that utterly unfits them for the
real practical business of life and predisposes to
mortal sin.

Novel-reading has somewhat the same effects as
opium. Novel-readers like opium-eaters, live in
a world of dreams. They fancy, feed upon their
fancies, live by fancy and the consequence is they
become dissatisfied with their condition in life,
they perform their duties mechanically, they ac
quire a love of dress and finery.

All the lessons of early life vanish before the
new lessons of the novel. The world is painted in
false colors, the ambition of the young is directed
not to the love of God, or to promoting the love of
Jesus Christ, but to figure before the world, and
to catch the applause of the world; in a word —
the mind is utterly demoralized and, with such
principles, sin is easy, nay, it is not at all impos
sible that the novel-reader may not enter upon a
course of sin through a sense of duty and on
principle.

Let me repeat then, what I have said. Avoid

ON BAD BOOKS 351

the novels of the day because they are godless;
the devil's imprimatur is upon most of them. Be
cause they treat of subjects with which a pure-
minded Catholic ought not to be acquainted. Be
cause the writers of them are depraved mercenary
wretches, who hate God, and whose avowed mis
sion is to inaugurate a reign of infidelity and
viciousness, and because the effects of novel read
ing are most pernicious and hurtful. It weakens
the mind, degrades the mind ; it preaches the wor
ship of creatures, it subverts Christian princi
ples, implants pagan principles, and leads inevi
tably to a shameful idolatry of vice.

It is specially painful to a priest to go into the
house of the poor, and to find the Young Lady's
Journal, The Family Herald, the Halfpenny Jour
nal, the London Reader on the same shelf, but
much better cared for, than the Garden of the Soul,
and the Imitation of Christ. It is very suggestive,
indeed, and what a melancholy coincidence it is
that we have sometimes seen the pictures from
Mary's daughter's Journal wreathed round as in
a frame with the Kosary and Scapulars of her
Mother.1

1 This sermon was preached in Exeter when Canon Sheehan
was young in the ministry and could have no foreshadowing that
he was destined afterwards to stand in the front rank as a novel-
writer himself. However, there is no contradiction between his
preaching and practice, for he makes clear the class of corrupt
writers that was before his mind. Those "mercenary writers who
hate God" are not to be confounded with authors like himself
whose spiritualized pages of elevated and inspiring thought have
led many a soul nearer to God. — ED.

<8n 6006

7THE last evening I spoke to you of the danger
' of reading habitually the current literature
of the present age. I intend to speak this evening
of the great profit that is to be derived from the
study of good books.

In our days, every one reads. A great many
persons spend their lives in reading. If there
be one luxury which rich and poor alike enjoy it
is the luxury of reading. Now if this were a mere
amusement, which pleased for the moment, but
left no serious effects behind, one might pass it by
lightly, and without comment. But it is not an
amusement, but a serious work; and it is not only
a luxury, but a necessity for the moral and intel
lectual formation of men's souls.

Whether this be conceded or denied, one thing
at least cannot be denied, that books have a most
powerful influence upon men 's characters for good
or evil. Nothing builds up a character so easily,
and yet so permanently, as a course of reading.
If the world of to-day is full of frivolous men and
women, it is because their minds have been fed
from infancy upon vain and frivolous reading; if
the world is full of men and women who are for
ever misconceiving, misinterpreting, misunder
standing the eternal truths of God, it is because
they have been trained into that obliquity of in
tellect by those bookmakers and pamphlets, whose

352

ON GOOD READING 353

falsehood and error is concealed by a pleasing
style, and a show of sincerity.

On the other hand, if we find amongst ourselves
those, who evidently realize that they are the
brethren of the saints of God in Heaven, who are
striving, however imperfectly, to live up to their
vocations as Christians, who in childlike simplicity
and obedience are trying to follow the precepts of
Him who left the world little children as models
of Himself, it is because they have learned these
sublime principles from pious books, and have had
from Heaven the grace to practice them.

It is not difficult to understand this. We learn
more easily and more readily from a teacher of
our own selection, than from a teacher who is se
lected for us by others. Now, the book which we
read is the teacher whom we have selected, unless,
when we read books in a spirit of criticism, it may
be said we read them to adopt their principles.
This is especially true of a course of reading.

If we dislike the principles of books, we cer
tainly shall not read them. If, therefore, we per
severe in reading them, there is proof that we
approve of the principles they advocate, and,
therefore, we must necessarily adopt them. If our
tastes lead us to read certain classes of books, it
may be safely presumed that there is nothing in
them which we detest or disapprove of ; and, there
fore, there can be no clearer indication of a man's
character than those silent, but eloquent teachers,
whom he has chosen for himself.

It is, therefore, impossible to exaggerate the im
portance of a careful selection of readings; and
it is for this reason that the last evening I con-

354 SERMONS

demned the reading not only of bad and positively
immoral books, but 'also the habit of reading works
of a light or worldly character. If we keep this
principle, too, in mind, that " books are teachers"
it will not be difficult to lay down the regulations
and restrictions which every Catholic is bound to
observe.

* 'Books are teachers." Now what is it that
every Catholic is bound first of all to learn? Not
only the principles of his faith and of Christian
morality, but everything that can give him fuller
and clearer ideas of Him who is the end of his
being and the source of all his happiness.

God has given us minds to know Him; we are
bound, therefore, to educate our minds into such a
knowledge of God as His Wisdom allows and our
faculties can reach.

This is a duty; but a duty inspired by God in
such a way that we call it a natural aspiration.
The cry of every soul that has ever come into this
world is for more light ; there is no one that does
not wish, if it were God's will, to penetrate the
many mysteries that He has veiled away from
us.

And there can be no nobler or worthier occupa
tion than to study what God has chosen to reveal
to us of Himself, and of our destiny, that we may
make ourselves worthy of Him, and of the Heaven
He has destined for us. How shall we attain that
knowledge ? By studying the Revelations He has
given us — the words of the prophets and seers of
old — the words of the Evangelists in the New
Law, above all, the words that flowed from the lips
of the Incarnate Word, those words of honeyed

ON GOOD READING 355

Wisdom that have brought sweet peace to the
hearts of men in every age.

Books are teachers ! God has given us minds to
know Him ! And God has given us hearts to love
Him. And the more we know of God the more
shall we know of His mercy and goodness. But
the heart of man is wayward, and the path to
Heaven is difficult and intricate ; and in spiritual
matters we have all a marvelous talent for deceiv
ing ourselves.

For many too it is useless to meditate on God's
attributes; they are those who are altogether
averse to mysticism of any kind, they have need
of sensible things to lead them to God. If you
would captivate their intellects, you must show
them some work of the Most High, illustrative of
His Wisdom, His Power, His Providence ; if you
would captivate their wills, you must show them
not the beauty of virtue in the abstract — but virtue
attained to, practiced by men. If you would per
suade them that virtue is possible, you must show
them that virtue has really been practiced, if you
would show them how beautiful is a life of virtue,
you must give them pictures of men and women,
whom lives of virtue transformed into likenesses
of Him, "who was begotten before the morning
stars amid the brightness of the saints."

Here, then, is a fourfold instruction for Cath
olics — God and His mysteries, the Catholic Faith
and its mysteries — the asceticism of the Church,
that is, the series of rules, of counsels, of warn
ings, that have been gathered from Holy Writ,
and the writings of Doctors, and the experiences
of Saints, and which ought to be prized highly,

356 SERMONS

because it is the collective wisdom of all ages, and
lastly, there is the instruction which is a daily
need, that is, to be instructed unto fervor in the
services of God especially by the examples of
others.

No one can deny that this fourfold instruction is
an absolute necessity. Every Catholic must know
God and His mysteries as far as he is capable of
understanding them. Otherwise, he is an atheist.
It is not enough to believe in God; we must know
that in which we believe. Implicit faith is not
enough ; explicit knowledge is necessary as far as
it is attainable.

And how shall we attain it ! By reading God or
His spirit in His broad book of Nature; and by
studying God revealed in the flesh in the Revela
tions which He has made. Of the former now I do
not speak. But I wish to recommend to you again
a diligent and careful study of the Holy Scriptures,
especially of the Gospels and the Epistles of the
New Testament ; I do not tell you to go to them
for your doctrines. You receive the Holy Scrip
tures from the hands of the Church. It is because
of the authority of the Church you accept them as
authentic and believe them to be inspired. The
loving voice of the Church has formulated your
doctrines as she was authorized to do by Christ.

In approaching, therefore, the Holy Scriptures,
you do so, not to gather dogmas from them, but to
study the life of Christ, and the virtues that illus
trated that life, to drink in the wisdom that flowed
from His lips, to discern His Divine character in
His every word and every movement — above all,
to try to understand the mystery of God's love,

ON GOOD BEADING 357

shown in the life of Christ so humble in its begin
ning, so tragical at its close.

The children of the Church are eager to hear
instructions from their priests ; they crowd around
their preachers to learn wisdom from them. How
many of them know that there was but one ser
mon worthy of the name ever preached : that which
was spoken by Christ on the Mount, the most ten
der, the most loving, the most truthful words ever
spoken.

The learned amongst us are eager to understand
systems of philosophy, and there is only one phi
losophy worth knowing — the philosophy whose
founder was Christ, whose emblem is the Cross,
whose motto is : "Deny thyself, take up thy cross
and follow me," and whose maxims are to be
found in every word that came from the lips of
Jesus.

Your poets and novelists are very cunning in
devising touching scenes, pretty little episodes,
wonderful examples of the exercise of natural vir
tues; but was there ever seen in history or de
mised in fiction any thing half so touching as Peter's
pardon and Magdalen's repentance?

Do you want a pure type of womanhood?
Where can you find it if you pass by Mary, the
Virgin Mother of God? Do you want a pure type
of manhood? Where can you find it if you pass
by John, whom Jesus loved above all the sons of
men?

I am sure I ask God pardon for comparing the
words of His Son with the words of men, His
heavenly philosophy with the idle dreams of the
foolish, His chosen friends, Mary and John,

358 SERMONS

with such types of manhood and womanhood as
the world now gives us; but you force me into
making this hateful comparison, for do I not see
you following every other Master but Jesus;
ashamed to confess that you belong to the school
of the Cross, and taking for your models the
heroes of your novels instead of the sainted com
panions of Christ.

This, then, is the first course of spiritual read
ing I would prescribe for you. The life of Christ,
the actions of Christ, the words of Christ, as nar
rated in the Holy Gospels, and next after this the
Epistles of St. Paul, the first Doctor of the Church,
which contain the clearest possible expositions of
the economy of redemption, and breathe the most
tender love for our Divine Master. You shall
need no more to know God thoroughly; and but
little more to love God perfectly, that is, if you
are sensible of the claims of Divine beauty and
Divine goodness, manifested in Christ, and elo
quently explained by His apostle.

Again, every Catholic ought to know not only
the mysteries of our holy faith, but all Catholic
theology concerning those mysteries. It is to be
regretted that Catholics should be so indifferent
to the theology of the Church.

This indifference springs from a principle which
in itself is good, but is carried to extreme conse
quences. The Catholic argues: "I believe the
doctrines of the Church, because the Church de
fines them, and the Church must teach truth, or
Christianity is a lie. ' ' Perfectly true. But when
a Catholic proceeds to say: "Therefore there is
no necessity for inquiring ; if I do inquire I show a

ON GOOD READING 359

want of faith, ' ' such a deduction is perfectly irra
tional, and is not at all respectful to the Church in
which we believe.

Reason, as has been shown again and again, is
not opposed to Faith; Eeason is the handmaiden
of Faith. Eeason cannot discover the truths of
Faith ; but Eeason can explain and illustrate them.
Therefore, where Faith is firm and secure, Eea
son must aid and assist Faith. And therefore,
the closer are your enquiries into the doctrines of
the Catholic Church the greater your Faith will
become, the deeper will become your love and at
tachment to the Church — the more grateful will
you be to God for ever that He has brought you
into the living light of truth, when the powers of
Eeason are strengthened and intensified by the
power of Divine Faith.

Theology has been called the " Queen of
Sciences"; no wonder, it is the science of God.
Every other science and art is enrolled when min
istering to the science of Theology. The art of
painting is most sublime when exercised upon sa
cred subjects. The art of the sculptor is never
more nobly employed than in raising from marble
Christ and His saints. The finest buildings in the
world are the Catholic basilicas of the world;
the finest paintings in the world are illustrations
of Sacred History ; the finest music has been writ
ten for Church choirs.

Every science is consecrated when it ministers
to the Science of Theology. And yet what do we
find? That the queen of all the sciences is the
most neglected. If we have leisure, we study
rhetoric and poetry and painting and the rest, but

360 SERMONS

the science of God ! Oh ! that is only for priests !
No, it is not for priests. It was not for priests
alone that the Fathers of the Church have left
us the magnificent results of their labors ! It was
not for priests alone that Jerome and Augustine
wrote, and Chrysostom preached ! It was not for
priests that St. Thomas studied his crucifix, and
left us the product of his study in the most mag
nificent treatises ever written or published. It
was not to priests nor for priests that Bossuet,
Lacordaire and Fenelon preached — it is not for
priests that Pius IX. has issued his Encyclicals
and his Syllabus. It was not for priests; it was
for the Church.

And what is the Church but the people. And
yet the sublimest of all studies is the most neg
lected ; the treasures of thought, accumulated dur
ing centuries with much pain and labor, lie un
used and unproductive; there is no curiosity
amongst Catholics to know the theology of the
Church. And yet, what a magnificent series of
subjects does not the theology of the Church em
brace. Treatise after treatise on everything that
concerns man and relates to God from Human
Acts to the Trinity.

God, the attributes of God, the Angels, the
worlds beyond the grave, Heaven and Purgatory
and Hell, the soul of man, the operations of Di
vine grace, the Incarnation, the moral duties of
men, the Church of God — that alone is a study for
a lifetime.

The Church of God — the wonder of the world —
whose history is the history of Europe — whose
organization, as its enemies confess, is the most

ON GOOD READING 361

perfect that the world has ever witnessed — the
foundress of civilization — the nurse of the arts
and sciences — the teacher of Doctors — the mother
of Saints — here is a subject well worthy of atten
tive study. Here is a work worthy of the hands of
the Creator — which Divine wisdom alone could
create and preserve. And here is a picture of the
Divine attributes, for the Unity of the Church is
the reflection on earth of the Unity of the God
head, as the Sanctity of the Church of the Sanctity
of God, and the indestructibility of the Church of
God's eternity.

But you will say all this is beyond our reach.
All this belongs to the professional knowledge of
the priest; and it is contained in books to which
we have no access. No ! dearly-beloved, Catholic
theology is within the reach of all. It has been
popularized and adapted to the capacities of all in
our own days; and at this present time there is
not a single subject upon which Catholics may not
obtain the fullest and clearest information from
books written in the English language.

For example, you wish to study the Catholic
theology on the Holy Eucharist! There are
Cardinal Wiseman 's lectures on the Holy Euchar
ist — Fr. Dalgairns on Holy Communion, Fr. Faber
on the Blessed Sacrament. There are a host of
other books; but in these three you have concen
trated the whole Catholic doctrine on this impor
tant subject.

Again, you wish to study the Catholic doctrine
of Grace : you will find in Cardinal Manning's "In
ternal Mission of the Holy Ghost, " everything
you need on the subject. You choose the Incarna-

362 SERMONS

tion: there is Cardinal Manning's latest work,
"The Glories of the Sacred Heart"; an exhaus
tive treatise on the subject. And as in our days
the Church is the great subject of controversy,
there is no lack of works, written by approved
Catholic authors.

In fact, take up a Catholic catalogue and you can
see for yourselves that a standard work on Cath
olic theology is as easily procurable as the latest
new novel or magazine. I hope the day is not far
distant when the first names our eyes shall fall
upon when we enter the Catholic's house will be
the venerated names of Manning, and Wiseman,
and Newman, and Faber; and the others whom
Catholic respect and love will immortalize. Then
we shall look for increased fervor in faith, and
increased love in devotion — a more perfect knowl
edge of God, and, therefore, a more perfect love
for God. Holiness does not depend upon intel
lect; and the growth of a single soul in holiness
is of infinitely more importance than the advance
ment of sciences, and success in any earthly study.

But an accurate knowledge of our holy religion
is a marvelous aid to sanctity. It leads to a more
intelligent devotion, a truer loyalty to the Church,
and to the Holy See, a more perfect love of Jesus
and His Maiden-Mother, and His Saints. We
shall never attain but to a most imperfect knowl
edge of God — even the revelation that will be
given us in Heaven will only reveal our incapacity
and our ignorance — but we may be sure that the
path which is traced out for us by these holy men
just mentioned is in the direction of Heaven, and
if we follow it we shall not go astray from God.

Peter's pence1

*lf]sr the notices issued by the Catholic Bishops
of England, inviting the faithful to com
memorate on last Sunday the Restoration of the
Hierarchy, a request was inserted that the atten
tion of the people should be called to the fact that
our Holy Father is at present altogether depend
ent on the charity of the Catholic world.

The glaring systematic robbery that was per
petrated by Victor Emmanuel, and sanctioned by
the silence or secretly instigated by the Euro
pean Powers, is an event of such recent date that
there is no necessity of recalling it to your minds,
and we could not forget it even if we were dis
posed, for the work then commenced has not yet
been finished.

Every day reports reach our ears of Church
property confiscated, of religious houses seques
trated, and religious communities dispersed, of
large foundations for the relief of the poor finding
their way into the State Treasury, and moneys
intended by the donors to be expended in honoring
God or relieving the needy, expended on the wine
bills of Garibaldi and the tinsel grandeur of the
plebeian Court of Sardinia.

And those patriotic brigands, not content with
having robbed the Patrimony of Peter from Our
Holy Father, add insult to injury, on the princi-

i Preached in Exeter.
363

364 SERMONS

pie that we hate those whom we have wronged,
and here in England every day our ears are pained
with hearing, and our eyes sore with seeing, the
foul abuses that are leveled by Press and Pulpit
against him who is the only representative on
earth of Christian moral force, and who never
ceases to lift up his voice against the brute Pagan
force that is the only gospel the world will ac
knowledge at the present day.

In this dull unparliamentary season, editorial
minds are relieved by the consideration, that in
the absence of an European war, an Irish rebel
lion, an Eastern difficulty, or some other fitting
subject of comment, there is an infallible Pope to
be sneered at and satirized; every special corre
spondent in the fashionable watering place or the
continental city in dearth of local news, sends a
stale anecdote about "an infallible Pope," and it
is sure to be relished; every pulpit orator, when
other ideas fail him, falls back upon "the infallible
Pope," serves him up in torrents of blood, and is
sure of pleasing the intellectual palate of his au
dience ; every tea-table in the country is enlivened
by dull solemn jokes about the "infallible Pope";
and thus Englishmen are fed by a constant stream
of cynicism, so that it is no wonder that at the very
word "Pope" or "Catholic" their blood would
turn into gall.

When our dear Lord was giving to His Disciples
their commission to convert the world, there fell
from His lips the remarkable words: "If the
world hate you, know ye that it hath hated me be
fore you. If you had been of the world, the world
would love its own ; but because you are not of the

PETER'S PENCE 365

world, but I have chosen you out of the world,
therefore, the world hateth you. The servant is
not greater than his master ; if the world has per
secuted me, it will also persecute you," and the
life of His Church from that hour to the present
has been a daily fulfillment of that remarkable
prophecy.

Between the Church of God and the world there
must be hostility that will never cease, but with
the destruction of the latter, and because the world
has always physical human force on its side, and
the Church, without being aggressive, can only
maintain a passive resistance, the Church must al
ways suffer. It cannot injure, it cannot retaliate ;
the struggle is one-sided — the world seeking the
destruction of the Church — the Church seeking the
salvation of the world.

The Church works in harmony with the world,
seconds the efforts of the world to promote human
knowledge and human happiness ; the world is not
content; it will rob the church of Christianity; the
Church cannot yield, it opposes to the world the in
vincible strength of God, it resists, and its resist
ance must be successful ; but its resistance involves
the bitterest suffering. That is its mission; that
is its history.

Her glory is ever to fight, to suffer, to right the wrong,
Nay, but she aims not at glory, no lover of glory she;
Give her the glory of going on, and for ever to be.

The hatred of the world to the Church is purely
instinctive, and it has been aggravated by its fre
quent defects. In our days it has been directed,
not against the Church as a body, but against the

366 SERMONS

Head of the Church. The whole brunt of the at
tack, that was formerly directed against the
Church as a body, is now borne by Pius IX. He is
the object of the concentrated hatred of the world.
It is not the Catholic religion that the world is
trying to destroy, it is Piux IX., and though it is
true that in former persecutions, the Popes had
to bear the largest share, and even when the
Church was persecuted in foreign countries,
through sympathy they had to bear all the
suffering.

It is the special crown of Piux IX. that he has
been made most like of all to His Divine Master,
in that the hatred of the world for God has taken
the shape of a personal enmity to himself. Many,
too, of the Popes either commenced their Pontifi
cates happily, or ended them in peace; but the
reign of Pius has been a reign of trouble, and
there is no reason for hoping that his troubles will
cease but with the grave. The last words of Greg
ory VII. were: "I have loved righteousness, and
hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile " and Pius
IX. will have something very similar to say.

After having been successively Archbishop of
Spoleto and Bishop of Imola, Pius IX. was elected
Pope on the 17th June, 1846. With characteristic
vigor he set about reforming certain irregularities
that had crept into the administration of State af
fairs. He saw what modern society required, and
he adapted himself to its requirements, so long
as no sacrifice of principle was involved. When
ever he detected an abuse, it was rectified ; he went
into all the hospitals, the prisons, the Ecclesiasti
cal and Civil Courts, everywhere he introduced

PETER'S PENCE 367

reformations that he deemed necessary, and en
listed the sympathies of the world.

But the great act of the first years of his Pontifi
cate was the general amnesty that he extended to
the political criminals of Home. At the time, the
prisons in Eome were full of prisoners, who, with
more or less degrees of guilt, were suffering the
penalty of having conspired against the well-being
of the State. Some of these were revolutionists
of the worst type, and many of them were ungrate
ful enough afterwards to join the armies of the
usurpers, and help to dethrone the Supreme Pon
tiff to whom they owed their liberties, and, per
haps, their lives. However, the general amnesty
was given, and the offenders were merely required
to sign a declaration by which each one pledged
himself on his word of honor "not to abuse this
act of the sovereign clemency of his lawful sover
eign, and to fulfill in future all the duties of a loyal
subject."

It is well known that Pius foresaw that his
clemency wrould be abused, and though on the pub
lication of the amnesty the wildest enthusiasm
prevailed in Eome, on the 15th November, 1848,
the Pope's Prime Minister, Count Eossi, was as
sassinated at the door of the Quirinal Palace, and
on the 24th, the Holy Father was obliged to fly
from Eome. A triumvirate was set up, and the
world boasted, as it had often boasted before, that
the power of the Papacy was broken; that Eome
was no longer the Eome of the Popes. But on the
12th of April, 1850, the Pope was restored.

He immediately set about repairing the effects
of the disastrous reign of the Triumvirs, and for

368 SERMONS

nine years he ruled the States of the Church with
mild judiciousness, and truly paternal care ; and
during his reign the world had to witness the cu
riosity of an absolute monarchy where the people
enjoyed more real substantial liberty than under
the freest and most liberal Eepublic; and the
stranger spectacle of an absolute monarch, living
in the most majestic palace in the world, uncon
trolled by any constitution, governed only by his
own conscience, whose personal expenses never ex
ceeded one half crown a day.

The revenue of the Holy Father never exceeded
£120,000 a year, and out of that the following ex
penses were defrayed: — The support of the Holy
Father himself, the College of Cardinals, the ec
clesiastical congregations, the offices of the secre
taries of State, the diplomatic body, religious cere
monies, maintenance of the Government palaces,
the museums and libraries connected with them,
and the pensions of the Papal Court, besides the
many casual expenses incidental to such a govern
ment.

A mistake prevails in most countries that the
administration of State affairs was committed to
the exclusive care of ecclesiastics. The fact was
that the proportion of ecclesiastics to laymen, tak
ing into consideration every department of public
administration, was never greater than one ecclesi
astic to eighty laymen ; and so burdensome was the
government of these laymen felt to be by the
people, that petitions were sent into Pius IX. by
several of the cities of Italy, notably Ferrar,
Camenad, Orvieto and Fereno, praying that Pre
lates might be appointed, for that the people of

PETER'S PENCE 369

those cities would not pay obedience or respect to
those lay delegates.

But during these nine years of comparative
peace and tranquillity, the enemies of God and of
religion were plotting the subversion of the Pope 's
authority. Cavour, the crafty minister of the Sar
dinian King, in collusion with the Italian revolu
tionists, had laid out a plan for the " unification of
Italy/' as it was called, and I regret to say that the
French Emperor, though ostensibly the defender
of the Holy See, either abetted Cavour in his
infamous designs or, at least, connived at them.

Four different attacks were made upon the
States of the Church. The first in 1859, when the
Sardinian Government took possession of all the
northern part of the Pope's dominions. The sec
ond was a direct and open invasion in 1860, by
which the enemies of the Holy See took possession
of the Marches and Umbria. The Emperors of
France and Austria then declared that if the
States of the Church were invaded by Piedmont,
they would resist the invasion by force. They did
not keep their promises. In 1861, Cavour died,
and it is a remarkable fact that in 1876 his name
and race and family are extinct. In 1862, Gari
baldi, without any authority from the Italian Gov
ernment, attacked the States of the Church, but
was defeated and wounded at Aspromonte. In
1864 an express convention was entered into by the
Sardinian Government, by which it bound itself
never to invade the dominions of the Pope, and to
put down all revolutionary attempts. On the
strength of this Convention the French troops
were withdrawn from Eome in 1866.

370 SERMONS

In 1869, the Italians, openly violating that agree
ment, secretly sent Garibaldi with Sardinian
troops to attack the Papal States, and so glaring
was this treachery that the French Government
had to interfere, and in union with the Papal
Zouaves, under the command of Charette, they
defeated the revolutionists in the battle of Men-
tona.

In the autumn of 1870 the last attack of Victor
Emmanuel's Government was made upon the
States of the Church. On the 2nd of August in that
year, the French Foreign Minister announced to
the Government of Florence that Napoleon would
withdraw his troops from Civita Vecchia, relying
on the declaration made by the Cabinet of
Florence, which had given a guarantee not to at
tack, and in case of need to defend against all ag
gression the Pontifical territory. Tov this the
Prime Minister of Emmanuel replied: "The
King's Government, in all that concerns itself, will
comply exactly with all the obligations resulting
to it from the stipulations of 1864. ' ' Accordingly,
on the 6th of August the French quitted Italy.
Even after they had left, the Government of Victor
Emmanuel continued to make professions of
friendship, and as late as the 24th of August in
that year, the chief Minister declared that "Even
if there were no convention, the Eoman States
ought to be respected in virtue of the common law
of nations."

Only four days later a proposal was made to the
Holy Father and conditions offered which he could
never accept ; fifteen days later, Victor Emmanuel
wrote to the Holy Father the famous letter which

PETER'S PENCE 371

has been well called the Kiss of Judas. It com
mences "Most Holy Father, with the affection of
a son, with the faith of a Catholic, with the senti
ments of an Italian, I address myself again to the
heart of your Holiness, " and then the letter goes
on to propose that the Sardinian troops should be
allowed to enter Kome to guard the Pope against
revolution and to maintain the order of the State.

The letter was handed by the Ambassador to the
Holy Father, and in the presence of his Cardinals,
the Pope went through every particular of the
letter, exposed its falsehood, and to every propo
sition that was made he answered emphatically,
1 ' Never! He would make no terms with revolu
tion or robbery, but he would resist their demands
to the last."

That was September llth, 1870, and on that
same day the announcement appeared in the Of
ficial Gazette of Florence — "The King, upon the
proposition of the Council of Ministers, has this
day issued his commands to the army to enter the
Koman provinces "; so 16,000 men thoroughly
equipped and provided, entered the States of the
Church, and reached the walls of Rome on the
19th of September.

The Holy Father had given orders to General
Kansber, that resistance should be made only long
enough to show that violence had been used. At a
moment, he said, when the whole of Europe is
mourning over the numerous victims of the war
now in progress between France and Germany,
never let it be said that the Vicar of Christ, how
ever unjustly assailed, had to give his consent to
a great shedding of blood. Our cause is the cause

372 SERMONS

of God, and we put our whole defense into His
hands.

At 5 o 'clock on the morning of the 20th Septem
ber, fire was opened on the walls of Rome. At 7
the Pope said his usual Mass in the private Chapel
of the Vatican, and after the Holy Sacrifice, the
Litany of the Blessed Virgin was sung. At half
past ten, when the breach had been made in the
walls, the Papal troops, in compliance with the
wish of the Holy Father, ceased firing, and Eome
had capitulated. The Zouaves met at the Vatican,
crying like children because they were not allowed
to fight, received the Papal Blessing, and laid down
their arms. Ten days later the Roman people
were asked to declare whether or not they chose to
be annexed to Victor Emmanuel's Kingdom. Vic
tor Emmanuel himself, though repeatedly urged
by his ministers to take up his residence in Rome,
and though to provide a suitable residence for him
they have confiscated the Quirinal Palace, and the
Pope's private property, has never been able to
do more than pay a flying visit to the City of the
Popes.

"We^will guarantee you," said his ministers,
' before all the governments of Europe. " " Yes, ' '
replied he, "but who will guarantee me before the
devil V9

Of the struggle which Pius is still maintaining
against the world it is not needful to say much.
One would have thought that having stripped him
of all his temporal possessions, his enemies would
have allowed him the consolations of peace. But
no! they gloat over his misfortunes, and try by
their exultation to conceal their uneasiness.

PETER'S PENCE 373

Pius IX. was never so formidable to the world
as he is to-day. The Prisoner of the Vatican is
the cause of more disquietude to the world than
the sovereign of Eome, and there is not a states
man in any European Cabinet at the present mo
ment that does not look to Pius as the great de
termining agent of the future of Europe. It is the
knowledge that he wields this power that has
raised the whole world in arms against him. They
robbed him of his temporal sovereignty; it only
showed them that he was richer than they dreamed
of in the love and affection of his children through
out the world. They are trying to-day to rob him
of his spiritual sovereignty. They are trying by
every human invention and every appliance af
forded them by Hell to undo the work of Jesus
Christ; to take from His Vicar the supremacy
that long ago was given to the fisherman of
Galilee ; the right of teaching the world and gov
erning those who are taught according to the.
principles of the Gospel. "Give to Caesar the
things that are Caesar 's ; to God the things that are
God 's, ' ' said Our Divine Lord. ' ' Give to Caesar, ' '
says the world, recalling the words of Jesus
Christ, "the things that are Caesar 's ; but give, too,
to Caesar the things that are God's."

Statesmen will become Churchmen and Theo
logians. The Prime Minister of Germany must
have the right of determining who are or who are
not fit to rule the flock of Jesus Christ. He must
have the right of determining who have or who
have not vocations to the Priesthood. Nay, more,
he must have the right of determining who are or
who are not fit to receive absolution. A priest

374 SERMONS

was imprisoned the other day for having refused
absolution to the Mayor of a certain city. So that
Bismarck, in addition to his ordinary duties, has
added the extraordinary duties of Pope, consult
ing theologian, and Father Confessor General of
the whole of Germany.

The representative of Jesus Christ can never
allow such a usurpation. They threaten him, and
he answers : — ' l Fear not those that kill the body,
but cannot touch the soul," but "fear Him that
can thrust body and soul together into hell. ' '

They laugh at him as a dethroned and deposed
sovereign; he says that he is still a sovereign in
the hearts of his faithful Catholic people, and
thinks that it is one thing to batter down the walls
of Rome with cannon, quite another thing to be
siege the hearts of his Catholic children through
the world.

They have gone so far even as to taunt him with
the poverty which they themselves have caused,
and out of the proceeds of their plunder they reach
him a pittance. He declines, and the whole Catho
lic world has risen up spontaneously to lay its
offerings at his feet.

The Catholic Bishops have taken the celebration
of the Restoration of the Hierarchy as a fitting
occasion to put before the faithful the claims which
the Holy Father has upon their affections. Be
sides the general interest which his position, as
well as his many personal virtues, has exerted
among the Catholics of the world, he has special
claims on the gratitude of England. He has done
more for the Catholic Church in England than any
other Pope, and he has always manifested the

PETER'S PENCE 375

deepest interest in the English people. I have put
these claims before you not as an appeal, but
simply as a suggestion of the ways and means of
presenting your offerings to the Holy Father. I
know nothing, I ask only the reverent sympathy
which we owe to 'the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and
given the love and affection which the sufferings
of Pius IX., and his nobility demand, to find the
means of testifying them is a problem very easy of '
solution.

State Cburcbes

if we had not, dearly beloved, the strong
testimony of Scripture, and the Catholic un
broken tradition of nineteen centuries to establish
the truth of our doctrine, our own unassisted rea
son would teach us that the exigencies of such a
Church as Christ founded demanded a head, a
center, and source whence Christianity would de
rive its inerrancy and infallibility. And as Robes
pierre, the demon of the French Revolution, de
clared, as he contemplated the wreck and ruin
which infidelity had made: — "If there were not a
God it would be necessary to invent one," so the
world is now beginning to see that if Christ had
not appointed an infallible Chief to reign over His
Church, Christians, sooner or later, would have
been obliged to supply the defect of themselves.

I do not know any more palpable absurdity than
the theory of National Churches. Perhaps the
very strongest note of the Divinity of the Church
is its Catholicity; because it was the primary in
tention of our Divine Lord in founding His
Church, that it should be spread throughout all
nations — that His Gospel should be carried to
every people, Jew or Gentile, bond or free; that
it should break down in its mighty course all con
ventional distinctions of country, race or creed,
and leaven the whole human race, irrespective of

376

STATE CHURCHES 377

these vain and arbitrary conditions which the
pride and folly of men had invented.

And whilst thus pervading the world, converting
and sanctifying it, it was to remain perfectly dis
tinct — a spiritual substance vivifying the world
and quickening it, but perfectly distinct from it-
subject to its own laws, mindful of its duties. It
was to be to the world what the soul of man is to
the body of man. And as the soul of man though
connected with the body is yet perfectly distinct
from it, and obeys its own laws — a Kingdom
within a Kingdom, so the Church was to live in the
world, quickening the world, but independent of it.

Above all, not subject to the distinctions of na
tionality or race, but one and Catholic, indivisible.
The Church cannot be divided. And the theory
that each particular limb in the human frame is
animated by a distinct soul is matched in absurd
ity by the theory that each particular country or
nationality has its own Church. It is sacrificing
Christianity to nationality. It is putting Caesar
before Christ. It is a denial of the Church's
Catholicity. It is a remodeling on a human sys
tem of the Church which Christ divinely estab
lished. It is a concession of victory to the world.
It is a returning to the old Pagan ideal of State
supremacy.

And whenever such a deplorable schism takes
place ; whenever a state or nation cuts itself away
from the visible unity of the Catholic Church,
whenever it denies the spiritual supremacy of
Christ's Vicar, and declares as the Jews declared
of old: "We will have no King but Caesar," the
words of St. Augustine are literally fulfilled, and

SERMONS

Spirit of God withdraws, takes with Him His
[Serving power, and leaves that State Church
with its purely human elements to decay visibly
before the eyes of the world. "When the body is
whole," said the great Bishop of Hippo, "the
spirit dwells in the whole. But if any member is
amputated, does the Spirit follow that severed
member. No! The Spirit remains in the body."

The Holy Spirit was upon the Catholic Church
when it was all contained in a narrow chamber in
Jerusalem ; the Spirit of God is on the Church to
day — the two hundred and sixty-four million
Catholics whose chief is the successor of Peter —
and if again it pleased God to reduce the Church
to the small dimensions of the Church of Pentecost
or the Church of the Catacombs ; nay, more, if the
only representatives of the Catholic Church were
the Bishops of Eome, and the single priest who is
his chaplain, the Spirit of God would be with them,
and nowhere in the world besides.

Of this great truth we have three singular proofs
in contemporaneous history. Within the last few
centuries three Churches have tried to break from
the unity of the Catholic Church. Two, to their
own destruction, have been successful; the third
was saved by the interposition of Almighty God.

The Greek and Anglican Churches have suc
ceeded in tearing themselves from the body of the
Catholic Church, and both have experienced, and
still experience, the bitter chastisement of schism,
and the scourge of revolt, that is, complete and
abject bondage to the masters they have chosen
for themselves. They shook off the sweet yoke of
Christ, and held out their hands to be shackled by

STATE CHURCHES 379

State despotism. Because the bribe was golden
they thought it only a bracelet, but they have
found it to be manacles, which are riveted on them
for ever.

In Russia, and wherever the Greek Church
exists, the Tsar is the sole lord and supreme in
terpreter of their faith, their only prophet, their
only pontiff. It was organized and subjected to
State influence by Peter the Great, who avowed his
intention of having a purely Slavonic religion to
be the buttress of his supreme spiritual and tem
poral sovereignty. And the unhappy people
found, to their cost, that schism meant slavery,
and the moment they turned away their eyes from
the Father of Christianity, they found themselves
in the grasp of a despot, their faith and themselves
to be made thenceforward the tools of his ambition
and lust of power. The consequences are soon
evident.

Faith and morality have decayed and died ; the
word of the Emperor is omnipotent, even when it
is opposed to the word of God and the Gospel of
Jesus Christ. Their faith, as we read every day
in the papers, is simply fetish worship, and the
morality of their priesthood is at so low an ebb,
that the correspondent of the Standard, a little
time ago, turned from them in disgust and abhor
rence, and plainly enough expressed it in the letter
to his editor.

"It would be easy," says a distinguished writer,
' ' and it has been done a thousand times, to multi
ply proofs of the complete annihilation, or rather,
of the absolute subjection of the whole ecclesiasti
cal order in its relation with the civil authority in

380 SERMONS

Eussia. From the pretended Holy Synod, which
is servile when it is silent, and still more servile
when it speaks, to the last of the village popes,
and the miserable convents of men and women,
in which wretched beings languish without piety,
fervor, or charity, dismal asylums of ignorance
and vice, everywhere will be found the same result
produced by the same cause — the subordination,
or rather the total effacement of the religious ele
ment, under the absorbing rule of the civil power. "
The Emperor despises and spurns bishops and
clergy, and they in turn cringe and fawn upon the
Emperor. Without appealing to past history in
the Eussian Church, which reads like a history of
Eome under the Emperor, we are told how Nicho
las, in our own time has insulted, persecuted, and
trampled under foot the bishops and prelates of
the Greek Church. How, on one occasion he ban
ished to Siberia an old bishop of 80 years because
he could not reach Petersburg in the snows of
winter. He as supreme pontiff fixed the time for
the Easter Communion, he declared legal the mar
riage of a pagan and a Mussulman, refused to
permit bishops to print their sermons, and pref
aced and confirmed every act of supreme pontifical
authority by the words, "in conformity with the
most high will of his Majesty. " And his nobles
have followed his example. "The minister of the
altar, the servant of God, is ranked by them with
the lowest menials. He is permitted by the more
gracious of them to come to their house on Sunday,
and get drunk with the servants. And if by any
chance he should offend them by any exercise of
his sacerdotal functions, he is sent far away from

STATE CHURCHES 381

his family to do penance on bread and water in a
convent, or even degraded, and delivered in that
character to the secular power, which means the
knout, the galleys, or Siberia. "

All this is shocking to Christian ears, but the
just punishment of Almighty God for rebellion.
They have left their father's house, and exchanged
its freedom and its security for the persecution
and the contempt of men, who are irresponsible
in the eyes of the world, and acknowledge no God
but their own hateful passions.

To say that there has been a perfect parallel to
this in the judgment with which God visited the
people of England, is but to speak the truth for
which every Christian blushes.

It is a useless task, and an unpleasant one, to
dwell on the darkest pages in English history, and
I need only speak of the corrupt, venal, infamous
bishops of Elizabeth's reign, to show you that
when the nation denied the supremacy of the Pope,
it denied, at the same time, the whole truth of
Christianity. In this respect, the Greek Church
has been more fortunate than the Established.

For though the Greek Church has lost the prin
ciples of faith, and although it holds its doctrines
simply at the wish of the Eussian Emperors, still
it has had the good fortune to preserve most Cath
olic traditionary doctrines, whereas in the English
Establishment the most fundamental dogmas of
Christianity have been denied, and avowed atheists
are admitted to Communion, and to equal rights
with the more orthodox members.

The very first act of the English Eef ormers was
to sweep away altar, priest, and the ever adorable

382 SERMONS

Sacrifice of the Mass, and then one by one every
other Catholic doctrine was denied, until, in the
last century, Christianity was practically abol
ished, and every symbol of it was so clearly ob
literated, that a stranger passing through the
country would be forced to believe that Christian
ity had never been preached here.

And that wretched subservience exists even in
our time. It is true that an effort is being made
to reinstate the worship of Christ, but its pro
moters fail to see that until their Church is emanci
pated, Christianity can never flourish.

For example, it was only some years ago that
the Gorham Judgment was pronounced, that Judg
ment which permitted Anglican Clergymen to deny
Baptismal Eegeneration. A weak protest was
made at the time, and one of the Bishops intro
duced a Bill to Parliament to test the Bishops'
exclusive judgment in matters of doctrine ; but that
Bill was rejected, as we are told, "with an over
whelming rejection, not only of opposition but of
arguments. So utter was its defeat that it has
never been heard of since. No one has ever ven
tured to introduce anything like it. The vice of
the whole situation was so visible and so hopeless,
that it has been left without an attempt to cure it. "

Just imagine, in a Christian country, men sup
posed to be Christian Bishops, pleading before a
half infidel Parliament for liberty to teach ; imag
ine that half infidel Parliament rejecting that pro
posal contemptuously, and the Bishops submitting
tamely, as if the most vital question of Christian
ity were not at stake.

Again and again those Bishops have met in Con-

STATE CHURCHES 383

vocation, but they have never uttered a single
protest either against the Gorham Judgment, or
the usurped jurisdiction of the State.

Then the Christian law of marriage was abol
ished by Act of Parliament, and polygamy was al
lowed by Bishop Colenso to the Christians of
Natal. Then came the Essays and Revieivs, one
of whose Editors was raised to the Episcopal
Bench, those essays which denied the truth of
miracles, the prophecies concerning the Messias,
the descent of all men from Adam, the fall of man
and original sin, the Divine command to sacrifice
Isaac, the Incarnation of our Lord and Savior,
salvation through the blood of Christ, the Person
ality of the Holy Spirit, special and supernatural
inspiration.

Convocation condemned the Essays and Re
views. But what is the effect? Not a single
clergyman is prevented or can be prevented, from
teaching this rank infidelity, for immediately after
Convocation had uttered this condemnation, the
Lord Chancellor declared in the House of Lords
that Convocation possessed no such jurisdiction,
and that the whole of it had been taken away and
annexed to the Crown. And thus the Crown
claims, and the claim is admitted, though unwill
ingly, supreme jurisdiction not only in temporali
ties, but in spiritualities. In other words, the
Church is a mere creation of the State — a political
engine, which, perhaps, serves to consolidate more
or less the British Empire, but does not even claim
to teach the doctrines of Christianity, but what
ever is defined for it by the Crown.

There is one other Church which was threatened

384 SERMONS

with a like fate, but God mercifully spared it, and
sent it a chastisement to cure its proclivity to
schism. Owing- to pernicious Gallican maxims the
Church of France was fast drifting towards heresy
at the end of the last century. Its members were
engaged in paring down and minimizing the pre
rogatives of the Papacy, and attributing more and
more spiritual jurisdiction to the State. It would
only have required such an ambitious sovereign
as Henry VIII., or Nicholas, to absorb all spiritual
power and assume complete spiritual jurisdiction,
when God's mercy was shown in the great French
Eevolution, which swept away altar and throne,
and abolished the worship of God at the same time
that it destroyed a dynasty of 1000 years.

Then, the eyes of the Bishops and clergy of
France were opened to the truth that they had
been building upon sand, and in their fearful dis
tress they turned their eyes to that spot whence
alone Christianity derives its stability, which
Revolution and the mightiest social earthquake
cannot shake much less destroy — Eome. And
since that hour France has not only been faithful,
but has been most devoted to the Holy See, and it
was due in great measure to the perseverance and
energy of the French Bishops that those Gallican
principles, which for two centuries have been a
constant source of annoyance to the Church, were
declared heretical, and, therefore, untenable.

From those notable examples it is perfectly safe
to conclude that for any Christian Church there is
but one of two alternatives to choose, the ac
knowledgment of the supremacy of Christ's Vicar,

STATE CHURCHES 385

or abject submission to the State, and with that
submission the loss of all Christian doctrine.

It is simply impossible for any Church separated
from the rest of Christianity to maintain its inde
pendence of the State.

Before the days of Reformation there was no
truth more clearly and practically understood than
this, and whenever the Church had to complain of
State encroachment, it appealed to the Chief Pas
tor, the Supreme Pontiff, and confided in him for
protection. Such was the case in England when
Henry threatened the liberties of the Church.
Thomas, who then gat in the chair at Canterbury,
opposed the King's unjust demands, and when
harassed and persecuted, he appealed to Rome,
and finally went to Rome, and laid his cause at the
feet of the Pope.

And though Thomas at length was sacrificed, the
Church was saved, and its freedom respected.
And the tyrant felt the influence of the spiritual
Power that rules the world, and was willing to bow
before it, and beg its mercy by repentance. And
from that time the Church retained its freedom,
until another tyrant arose and found more pliant
Bishops than Thomas, and the curse fell upon the
Church, and it withered.

Let us examine the contrast. Let us put side
by side with this weak subserviency, and the final
death and decay of Christianity, the example of
that glorious Church whose foundations are deep
in eternity.

That Catholic Church, too, has been tried.
Princes have been jealous of its power, and king-

386 SERMONS

doms have dashed themselves against it only to
feel its power and their own weakness. It has
been threatened, bribed, persecuted, all in vain.
There is scarcely a nation in the world that has
not tried to subject it to human control but has
been baffled and defeated by it.

The skill of diplomacy, the threats of those in
high authority, the power of armies have all been
in vain. The Church of God is now untrammeled
and unfettered by State despotism, and never
shrinks from asserting, even with the blood of her
children, her mission to teach the world, and,
therefore, her destiny to be superior to the world.

And what is the result? Heresies have arisen.
There has been a long line of heresies, but the
Church has remained steadfast and resplendent,
without change or shadow of change, ever the
same, and perfect in its light as at the beginning.
The errors of the human intellect have never fast
ened upon the supernatural intelligence of the
mystical Body but every successive error has been
expelled by the vital and vigorous action of the
infallible mind and voice of the Church of God.

All its dogmas of faith remain to this hour in
corrupt, because incorruptible, and, therefore,
primitive, and immutable. The errors of men
have been cast forth as human which are developed
in the human system but cannot co-exist with the
principle of life and health.

Bnni\>ersar£ of tbe iRestoratfon of tbe Diet- _
arcbs (to

have been asked to commemorate to-day one
of the most memorable events in the History
of England, and in the history of the Catholic
Church, and to express in the way best pleasing
to Him our sense of thankfulness to Almighty God
for the signal mercy He has bestowed upon us and
our country, and the signal triumph He has given
to His Church — I mean the reestablishment of the
Church in this country in the reestablishment of
the Hierarchy.

It is an event in itself altogether unique ; we seek
in vain in the history of the Church an event
parallel to it. That England, the first nation of
the civilized world — England that has done so
much to promote the advancement of science —
England, that has had such a large share in re
claiming the world from barbarism, should have
to be treated by the Church of God as a missionary
country in the middle of the nineteenth century is
a fact of intense significance — a fact, that to a
falsely educated mind suggests feelings of sorrow
and humiliation, but a fact in which every rightly-
balanced Catholic mind will discern the workings
of God's right hand.

The -rejection of the Catholic faith by England
three hundred years ago ; the conversion of Eng-

i Preached in Exeter.
387

388 SERMONS

land to the Catholic faith to-day, is simply the evo
lution of a design of God's Providence to promote
the welfare, and to further the propagation of His
Church on earth, to confound the pride and hypoc
risy of men, and to exemplify the great truth that
that which seems foolishness to the world is the
highest wisdom of God.

The relations of England to the Church have
been peculiar; she has ever been to the Church
wayward, imperious, perverse, self-willed. The
Church has undergone more vicissitudes in this
country, and suffered severer trials than in any
other ; yet in her better hours it cannot be denied,
England has made more than ample reparation for
her willfulness; and this fact holds out to us a
hope, that her three centuries of rebellion are now
about to be atoned for by a perpetual union with
the Church established by Christ upon earth, and
that the nation at large, following the example of
its best and most gifted children, will learn the
uselessness of resistance to Heaven's will, inter
preted by the authoritative voice of the Church on
earth.

There is but one period in English history to
which the English Catholic mind can revert with
pleasure. He might call it the era of sanctity;
for it was the time when the English Church was
fertile in saints. The power which the Catholic
Church at all times wields of converting men, not
only from Paganism to Christianity, but from bar
barism to civilization, of organizing society, of
welding and consolidating into one form consist
ent whole elements apparently discordant and
repellent, was strikingly exemplified in her ac-

RESTORATION OF THE HIERARCHY 389

tion upon the Anglo-Saxon races of England.

Augustine and his monks came amongst the
people, introduced the elements of civilization at
the same time that they taught the rudiments of
Christianity, established a monarchy, a Parlia
ment that has since developed into the noblest and
freest constitution in the world, took an active part
in State affairs, thus insuring prosperity for the
temporal interests of the State, whilst the spiritual
life of the people was a daily growth of holiness,
and Ood was worshiped by a simple, confiding
faith, a deep-abiding hope, and a fervent, disinter
ested love, unknown in these degenerate days.

The Norman element was introduced, and with
it the pagan pride that cannot brook control of any
kind — the same pride that all times seeks to sub
vert the authority of Christianity and is the main
cause of the great perpetual conflict which the
Church has for ever waged, and must for ever
wage, with the world. The Church, fulfilling her
Divine Mission, had to side with the weak and
oppressed against the strength of the persecutor;
and though a compromise was effected with the
new lords of England, and Churchmen took an
active part in the administration of State affairs,
there was no sympathy between the English
Church and the proud Norman Conquerors, and to
this, the first apparent breach between Church and
State, we can trace the antipathy that has always
existed, and which resulted in the total separation
of England from the Catholic communion, and the
State monopoly of all the Church privileges.

To every English Catholic mind, I suppose, the
last three hundred years of our history is that por-

390 SERMONS

tion which it would most willingly forget; and
though, as I have already said, God has evidently
made use of the persecution to which His Church
has been subjected as the means of her greater
purification, it must always be a matter of regret
that England was not chosen for a higher mission
than that which was given to the Eome of the
Caesars.

We turn over with sorrow the pages of our his
tory that are stained with the blood of martyrs,
and on reaching the beginning of the present cen
tury, and reviewing the state of the Catholic
Church in England at the period, we must admit
that she fulfilled her mission of extermination to
the letter, and that the violence of her persecution
of the Church was superhuman, and would have
been successful, were it not opposed by the higher
superhuman power that has promised, and that'
maintains the Church's indestructibility.

In the beginning of the present century the
Catholic faith in England was all but extinct.
Catholics labored under a depression which they
had not known before ; their members1 were con
tinually diminishing, their strength was daily de
creasing. They labored under heavy disabilities ;
the penal laws were in full force; their religion
was proscribed, and the practices of religion for
bidden more sternly than in former years, and
numbers of the landed aristocracy, who up to the
very last moment had remained faithful to the re
ligion of their fathers, out of pure weariness, con
formed to the establishedAChurch, at the very time
that God had determined to put an end to persecu-

RESTORATION OF THE HIERARCHY 391

tion, to give His Church a little breathing time, and
work out her emancipation.

It was the Church's darkest hour preceding the
dawn that has since broadened into perfect day.
The small and scattered flock received at long in
tervals the consolations of religion from the pro
scribed priests who flitted about from city to city
in the garb of menials : the Holy Sacrifice was cele
brated hurriedly in the garret of a mansion, or
some deserted outhouse in the back streets of a
city; the old Episcopal Sees, worthily presided
over in happier days by saints, were now filled by
laymen, who derived the Apostolical succession
through Queen Elizabeth, and traced their Orders
to the imposition of her hands.

No further persecution seemed necessary;
Catholicity seemed to be dying from sheer exhaus
tion, when suddenly the great reaction, caused by
the horror of the world at the excesses of the
French Revolution reached England and Ireland,
and with the reaction came a purified spirit of
liberty, that could love order and hate intolerance.

Venerable members of the House of Commons,
whose minds did not keep pace with the times, but
busied themselves with old-world visions, and
seventeenth century traditions, were horrified
when an Irish Catholic refused to take the Oath of
Blasphemy that was tendered to him, when about
to take his seat in Parliament, and they muttered
strangely about the degeneracy of the age, and
predicted sad days for England, when that same
Irish Catholic, demanded in the name of a nation,
and wrung from an unwilling Parliament and a

392 SERMONS

bigoted king, the measure of Catholic Emancipa
tion.

Then the vitality of the Catholic Church became
apparent. The pressure was taken away, and she
sprang up with an elastic vigor, proportioned to
the depth of her depression before. Churches
were everywhere raised by her loving, generous
people, who more than atoned for the sins of their
country by their earnestness to promote the cause
of God and His Church. Catholics whose exist
ence and whose faith was never suspected before
now, came forward to fill the Churches. Convents
and monasteries were built, and the spirit of as
ceticism and self-sacrifice which lives wherever the
Church breathes, soon filled them to overflowing.
Colleges and schools were built, and formed cen
ters of Catholic influence over the land.

Gradually the mists of prejudice cleared away
from the minds of Englishmen, and, amazed at its
recuperative power, they condescended to examine
the tenets of the Catholic Church, and ended by
being admitted into her communion. The Trac-
tarian movement was daily sending into the fold
of Christ men of highly cultured minds, and deep
religious feeling. It was in truth the second
spring.

But something was felt to be wanting. Quiet,
patient souls, religious economists, as we might
call them, who did not know what a gain it is to
risk everything for Jesus Christ, were quite con
tent to let matters run an easy course; but there
were men throughout the land, full of holy zeal
and ambition, who felt that the progress of Ca
tholicity was retarded by the imperfect organiza-

RESTORATION OF THE HIERARCHY 393

tion of the Church in England, and that the time
was come for the restoration of Catholic govern
ment and discipline.

All this time, events in England were being
studied by Eome with daily increasing interest;
and Pius IX., who has been to England another
Gregory, by one of those sudden impulses that
^ seem to defy human prudence, because they are
caused by the workings of the Spirit of God, de
termined to restore the Hierarchy to England.
For this purpose he established thirteen Sees, and
for Metropolitan he chose Nicholas Wiseman, hav
ing first raised him to the dignity of Cardinal.

Religious feeling at the time was running very
high in England. The whole Established Church
was agitated by the question of Eoyal supremacy,
first boldly raised by the Tractarians. For cen
turies, ever since Henry had constituted himself
head of the English Church, it had been under
stood that all jurisdiction was vested in the Head
of the State, and that the Crown was its ultimate
Court of Appeal in all matters religious or other.

A few^bold spirits, who were on the high road
to Rome, had courage to deny this primary prin
ciple of Protestantism, and the question was
warmly controverted between the High Church
school, and what was called the Erastian party.
The High Church party contended that the State
had no authority in religious matters, and to claim
supremacy was to usurp all Episcopal authority.
The Erastians, more tenacious of their traditions,
and more consistent, maintained that the authority
of the Crown was the ultimate judge of all Ec
clesiastical appeals.

394 SERMONS

While matters were in the critical state, and the
Press, as is usual on such occasions, was every day
growing more violently learned, and the Pulpits
were ringing with declamation, and episcopal lay
men were priding themselves on their newly ac
quired jurisdiction, and the State authorities were
trying in vain to conjure up the ghost of Henry or
Elizabeth, there was visible a more dreadful ap
parition than either, a Cardinal of the Catholic
Church with thirteen Suffragan Bishops, and they
brought their credentials from the Vicar of Jesus
Christ, and the seal that was upon them was the
seal of the fisherman. Each took his allotted
place, and set about his work with calm earnest
ness.

For a moment the Protestant world was dumb
with amazement; and then came a vehement out
burst. Invective after invective was poured from
the Press and from the pulpit; every weapon of
language was used, or intended to be used, with
deadly effect — Parliament was as agitated as when
Cromwell and his Eoundheads appeared to dismiss
it peremptorily; the editors of the daily news
papers grew learned and prophetic, and rang re
peated changes on every adjective of abuse in the
English vocabulary ; petitions for the annihilation
of the Catholic bishops were sent from every
Board of Guardians and Town Council in the
Country ; the Episcopal laymen of the Established
Church issued charge after charge to their clergy,
and every clerical inanity clamored about Papal
insolence and Papal aggression.

A repetition of the Gordon riots was threatened ;
the more nervous amongst his friends advised

RESTORATION OF THE HIERARCHY 395

Cardinal Wiseman to go abroad, and it is said
that one more nervous than the next, finding that
all expostulations were useless, presented his
Eminence with a coat of mail, and one of Colt's
patent revolvers.

Even amongst Catholics, many were found to
anticipate deplorable consequences. The restora
tion of the Episcopate to England was supposed
to have been a very rash measure ; at most it would
be temporary, for it could not abide the fearful
storm that had been raised against it, and it would
be better, they thought, to yield to the prejudices
of the English people, than to face them openly and
disarm them.

The experience of twenty-five years has proved
these apprehensions to have been unfounded and
visionary; and though centuries must elapse be
fore the importance of the work shall be rightly
understood, we acknowledge the work to have been
purely Providential.

Its success even in a quarter of a century has
more than exceeded the hopes that were enter
tained of it. The Catholic Church in England now
possesses a principle of unity and harmony that
it did not possess under the old regime; its power
of developing and extending itself was then un
known, and unused; large outlying districts that
could not be brought under the superintendence of
Vicars Apostolic, were subjected to the immedi
ate jurisdiction of the newly appointed Bishops;
ecclesiastical discipline, hitherto a dead letter, was
now rigidly enforced; districts were divided into
dioceses ; cathedrals were built ; diocesan chapters
established; the prelates openly exercised their

396 SERMONS

prerogatives ; it was the Catholic Church stripped,
of course, of its privileges, but exercising all its
faculties with fullest freedom.

As a solitary instance of the immense influence
which the establishment of the Hierarchy exer
cised, we find that in 1862 in the diocese of West
minster the increase in the numbers of priests and
religious establishments exceeds the return of the
whole Vicariate of London in 1850 ; that whereas
in 1850 there were 168 priests in the whole Vicari
ate of London, in 1862 there were 184 priests in
the diocese of Westminster alone ; in 1850, in the
Vicariate of London, comprising the present dio
cese of Westminster and Southwark there were 19
houses of Religious ; in 1862 in the diocese of West
minster alone there were 40; the increase in the
number of priests in England between the years
1840 and '50, that is, during the years that pre
ceded the establishment of the Hierarchy, was
246; the increase between the twelve years that
immediately succeeded was 427.

Let these figures give us but a faint idea of the
vast development of the Catholic Church in Eng
land under the government of its bishops. In the
time that was chosen to reunite England with
Christendom, in the men that were selected to ac
complish the reunion, in the state of English feel
ing at the time, we behold a blending of circum
stances most happily adapted for the success of the
great movement; and the design itself, and its
execution, we attribute to the direct interposition
of Providence.

Of the power and influence of the Catholic
Church in England to-day, it is impossible to form

RESTORATION OF THE HIERARCHY 397

an estimate. To judge by the alarms that are
every day raised, we may reasonably say that her
influence is felt in quarters unknown to Catholics
themselves. Though steadily pursuing her great
vocation to preach the gospel to the poor, she is
daily winning over men of the highest learning and
culture. Following the habit of the age, they yield
themselves up, and are borne along passively by
the current of modern thought, until at length the
alternative stares them in the face, to drop anchor
in the safe haven of Catholic truth, or drift out
helplessly on unknown seas of doubt and infidelity.

England in the past had a destiny ignoble but
useful to fulfill, and she fulfilled it. England has
a mission yet to accomplish, not less useful, but
more noble, and she will accomplish it. One thing
is certain : that never again will she need a restora
tion of her Episcopate. The time of her probation
and trial is passed, and she is now about to enjoy
the fruition of the freedom of the children of God.

"I will close thy scar, and will heal thee of thy
wounds, " said the Lord, "Because they have called
thee, 0 Sion, an outcast ; this is she that hath none
to seek her."

BX 1756 .S43 1920 SMC

Sheehan, Patrick

Augustine, 1852-1913
Sermons /

AXA-6587 (mcsk)