The Divinity of the Christian Religion

RELIGION

“* The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, the poor have the Gospel preached to them, and blessed is he that shall not be scandalized in Me”? - (Matt. xi. 5-6).

Ir is no longer by giving sight to the blind, by making the lame walk, by cleansing the leper, or by raising the dead, that Jesus Christ sets the seal of authority upon His mission, and makes known to men His Divinity. These things were done by Him during the days of His mortal life, and He continued to work them in His holy Church as long as they were necessary for the grounding, the settling, and the establishing of the new-born Faith. But these sensible miracles which were worked by the Eternal Son of God upon special individuals and during only a limited space of time, were but the sacred signs and foreshadowings of other and greater miracles, mystic, spiritual, which have no limit either of time or sense, and in their operation are confined to no one individual, to no one period, since they concern alike all men and all ages.

In truth, it is not only the blind, the lame, the leprous, who, taken as individuals, demand of the Son of God the healing touch, the all-powerful succour of His beneficent hand. Rather is it the whole human race which, taken in its entirety, has neither eyes to see nor ears to hear the things that belong to its peace; it has lost the knowledge of God and can no longer catch the faintest whisper of the Divine voice. The human race is the cripple, lame and stumbling, who, having no guiding and sustaining rule of life and conduct, cannot walk straight or firmly, but is continually losing his footing and falling down by the way. Yes; and moreover, the human race is at once the leper and the dead, who, having none to extricate him from the mire of sin, can neither purify himself from his stains nor escape corruption. Jesus Christ restored to this deaf man his hearing, to this blind man his sight; He did so when He founded the Faith. Jesus Christ made this halting, stumbling cripple walk, when He gave to man as a staff and prop the guiding rule of precept and commandment. Jesus Christ cleansed this leper and raised to life this dead man, when He established in His holy Church the remission of sins. These are the three great miracles by which Jesus Christ manifests to us His Divinity.

Whoever makes known to men sovereign and all-powerful truth, infallible justice, boundless mercy, manifests at the same time Divinity. Now the Eternal Son of God manifests to us in His own Person sovereign truth by the establishment of the Faith, infallible justice by His rule of life and conduct, measureless mercy by the remission of sins; He therefore reveals to us His Divinity. But if we would complete the explanation of our text, we are compelled to add that all this which proves the Divinity _ of Jesus Christ proves at one and the same time our ingratitude. Blessed is he that shall not be scandalized in Me. All His miracles are a scandal to us; all His graces become to us a stumbling block. It was His will that all the truths of our holy Faith should be lofty, sublime; that the way marked out for us by His commandments should be plain and direct, straight as the flight of an arrow, neither turning to the right nor to the left; that in the remission of sins the appointed means of remission should be simple and easy. All this was done for our benefit: this majestic loftiness, to elevate our souls; this directness of the road, to lead us straight to Heaven; this facility in the ordering of the remission of sins, to invite us to penance. But we are so depraved that these things become an offence, a scandal to us. The sublimity of the truths of the Faith only makes us rise up in rebellion against the authority of Jesus Christ; the sharply defined and unwavering directness of the rule of conduct which He gives us in His commandments and precepts, leads us to complain of its rigour; and the facility of obtaining His pardon only disposes us more and more to abuse His Divine patience.

CHRISTIAN TRUTH.

Truth is a Queen, dwelling in herself and in the radiance of her own pure light; and she is therefore herself her own throne, her own majesty, her own supreme felicity. Yet, in spite of this, she has, for the good of men, consented, nay, even desired, to reign over them; and Jesus Christ came into the world to establish this empire by the Faith which

He preached to us. And, if we want to be convinced by the evidence of our own senses that the truth of this Faith was and is established indeed as a queen upon her throne, and as a queen invested with all-powerful dignity and authority, here is one assured sign and proof. Without ever considering herself compelled to allege any reason for her actions, and without ever being reduced to borrowing outside assistance or support; by her own authority, by her own strength, she has done what she would, and has reigned in the world.*

Christian Truth, as I have said, has never sought any support from human reasoning, but, being assured in herself of her supreme authority and of her celestial origin, she has spoken, and required to be believed; she has pronounced her oracles, and exacted submission.:

She has preached a Trinity, that greatest of all mysteries, inaccessible in its sublimity; she has proclaimed the marvel of a God-Man, a God annihilated on the Cross, that fathomless abyss of degradation. How has she proved what she has thus preached and proclaimed? what reason has she given to justify these astounding, these overwhelming declarations? None, except that reason itself must yield to her since it was born her subject. This is her language; listen to what she tells us: The Lord hath said it; and again: So it is, because I have spoken the word, saith the Lord (Jer. xxxiv. 5). What indeed could human reason oppose to that? Almighty God has at His disposal means whereby He can make Himself

*** As with Socrates, argument is everything and _ personal authority nothing, so with Christ personal authority is all in all and argument altogether unemployed.””—Sm J. R. Srevey.

heard by man, He has also the right to make Himself believed. He can, at His pleasure, by the wonderful illuminating power of His infinite and uncreated light show us the truth, open as the day, revealed in all its transparent clearness: He can also, by His supreme authority, compel us to submit ourselves absolutely to its teaching, even without giving us any understanding, any comprehension of such teaching. And it is worthy of the greatness, the dignity, the

‘majesty of this Eternal Being to reign over all hearts, whether by leading them captive by the Faith or by satisfying them with a clear vision.

Jesus Christ made use of this royal prerogative in the establishment of His Gospel; and as its holy doctrines are founded on no human reasoning, so too, that it might never degenerate from its original perfection, it has always disdained the support of human eloquence. It is indeed true that the holy Apostles, who were its first preachers, brought the pride and haughtiness of the Roman lictors prostrate to the feet of Jesus, and made the judges before whom they were summoned tremble in their tribunals. Paul treats before Felix of justice, of chastity, of the judgment to come. Felix, an unbeliever, trembles; we listen unmoved when the preacher speaks to us of these things. Felix, agitated and alarmed, desires the prisoner to leave him: It is enough, go thy way; when I have a convenient time, I will send for thee (Acts xxiv. 25). It is no longer the accused who asks of his judge a respite, it is the astonished judge who demands it of his criminal. Thus it was that the holy Apostles overthrew idols and converted the people. ** And,” says St. Augustine, ‘* when they had firmly established their life-giving doctrine they left to their

• etl successors the earth illuminated by a light which shone down upon it from Heaven.’’ But all this was not done by the power of eloquence, by the tricks of oratory, by studied rhetoric. It was done by a hidden virtue, an unseen force, persuading or rather capti-_ vating the mind and understanding; by a virtue and power which, coming direct from Heaven, clothes itself in the simplicity of familiar and modest diction, in the language of the people, without thereby losing one atom of its dignity, of its intrinsic value, of itself; like a rapid river which, coming down from the mountains where all its force and impetuosity had their source, flows with unabated vigour and velocity through the undulating, wide-spreading plains.

We may, then, rest assured that our Lord, when He framed and established His holy Gospel, chose for its formation material not only superexcellent and worthy of its Divine originator, but also the most suited to the demands and necessities of our nature. In our erring, groping, perplexed searchings after truth, we want not a philosopher who argues but a God Who settles the question. The method of reasoning is too slow and too uncertain; what we have to seek is too remote, what we have to prove is too indecisive. And yet it is a question of the very first principle, of the whole foundation and groundwork of our life and morals, which must be resolved upon before another step can be taken. We must, then, of necessity believe what some one has to say to us in the matter. The Christian has nothing to seek for, because he finds everything in the Faith. The Christian has nothing to prove, because the Faith decides everything for him, and because Jesus Christ has put before him all essential truths in such a form and in such a manner that even if he is incapable of understanding them, he is none the less prepared to -believe them.

Thus, by one and the same means, God has been honoured, because, being known by us to be just, He has been believed on the bare utterance of His word; and man has been instructed by a very short method, because, without any circuitous course of reasoning, the authority of the Faith led him at once straight and direct to certainty.

Ah! we can surely never grow weary of dwelling with wondering admiration on this theme, on the glorious supremacy of Christian Truth. She came upon earth as a stranger and a foreigner, and for the space of four hundred years met with nothing but hatred and persecution at the hands of men who were blinded by their own prejudices and deaf to the voice of God. And yet, though the whole world rose up in arms against her, she never begged for human aid and protection. She made for herself valiant and dauntless defenders, worthy of her own greatness, who in their passionate devotion to her interests, knowing no better way of furthering them than by confessing her and dying for her, hastened to their death with such eager impatience as to amaze their persecutors, and, in the end, by their quiet submission to the laws which had condemned them, even brought about the revocation of those laws, which were put to shame by the dignity of the sufferers.

In the counsels of Almighty God and in His designs for the Truth, it was decreed that the kings of the earth should have no share in the establishment of that Truth, nay, that she should be in fact established in spite of them; but that in course of time — they should be first her disciples and later on her defenders. When He laid the foundations of His holy Church He did not call the princes and the rulers of this world into it. But as soon as those foundations were firmly laid and immutably established, as soon as the stately edifice had risen in all its fair proportions to the zenith of its glory, it pleased the Divine Architect to summon them. Now, O ye kings, come (Ps. ii. 10). He called them, then, not from necessity, but by grace. The establishment of the Truth therefore did not in any way depend upon their assistance, nor was the Empire of the Truth raised to its glorious dignity by the power of the sceptre: and if Jesus Christ had appointed kings to be the defenders of His Gospel, He has done it to confer an honour, not as a matter of necessity; to show that He honours their authority and will uphold their power. And still, too, His holy Truth continues always to support herself and to preserve her own independence. Thus, when princes defend the Faith, it is, in fact, rather the Faith which defends them; when they protect religion, it is rather religion which protects them and is the support of their throne. It is therefore very evident that the Truth makes use of men but does not depend upon them, as may be most clearly seen throughout the whole course of her history. When I say her history, I speak of the history of the Church, for that of the reign of Truth and of the Church are one and the same. The world has threatened, Truth has remained unflinching, firm; the world has brought all its machinery of subterfuge and trickery and subtle flattery to bear upon the Truth, she has never swerved from her straight direct course. Heretics have wrangled, the Truth has remained unsullied, pure. Schisms have rent the body of the Church, the Truth has remained whole and entire. Many have been seduced, the weak have been troubled, even the strong have been shaken in their allegiance; an Osius, an Origen, a Tertullian, and, alas! no small number of those who had seemed to be the support of the Church, have fallen away, to the great scandal of their fellow Christians: yet the Truth has always remained, steadfast, immutable. Can there, then, be anything more imperious, more majestic, more self-reliant than Truth? Does she not stand unmoved, unchanging, in spite of all that the malice of her enemies can bring to bear upon her; in spite of their threats and their caresses, of their deceitful gifts and their murderous proscriptions; in spite of schisms and heresies, of all temptations and scandals, and, more than all, in spite of the defection of her faithless children and the terrible downfall of even those who had seemed to be her pulars of strength?

Considering all this, we may well ask if there is a single living soul who ought not to yield submission to an authority so immovably, so gloriously established. And truly it is a marvellous thing in this nation, perhaps the most Christian in the world, to meet with men who dare to set themselves in open opposition to the Gospel. Will it be.always so? I ask myself in sad amazement. Must I day after day and year after year be brought into contact with the profane, the licentious, slaves to their own despicable passions and yet presuming to criticise and censure the counsels of the Eternal God? Men who, although they live steeped in materialism, yet venture to decide upon questions of the most exalted nature and the most vital importance! Men who, in the words of St. Jude, blaspheme whatever things they know not;

po ote ee dle 8 A and what things soever they naturally know, like — dumb beasts, in these they are corrupted (Jude i. 10). Men twice dead, says the same Apostle; dead, because they have lost charity, and dead, because they have plucked up by the roots the tree of Faith which had been planted in their souls. O God! must I for ever come in contact with such as these? must I see them triumphing in their wickedness, and poisoning the minds of others by their profanity and their light jesting treatment of sacred things?

Let me appeal to you, who are indeed learned and well instructed on many subjects, and who are eager and vehement in your discussions of religious questions. If you must deal with what is so far above and beyond the grasp of your vaunted but finite.

intellect, I ask you at least to bring to the consideration of such matters the seriousness and the respect which their importance demands. Do not dare to question the decrees of the Eternal God or to pry into the secrets of His mysterious dealings in either the works of nature or of grace with flippant raillery, half-veiled contempt, even disdainful ridicule. Do not imagine yourselves to be the only really reliable authorities in the world, thoroughly well-informed, clear-sighted, profound thinkers. Well, if it is so, and since you desire (it seems) to penetrate into the hidden things of God, show us what you can do; come forward boldly. Begin by solving for us the enigmas of nature; choose whichever of them you please: those that are remote or those that lie close at hand, those that are at your feet or those that are far above your head. What! something arrests you! in whatever direction you turn your reason becomes twisted and contorted, or goes astray, or succumbs utterly! And yet you will not suffer the Faith to prescribe for you what you ought to believe! Blind, disappointed, yet still disdainful, you refuse to be guided, you will not accept a helping hand! Poor traveller, you have lost your way, and in your folly and presumption you still think that you know the road and need no guide. What would you have us do? must we leave you to yourself? But there are so many turnings and windings, some that will lead you to the very brink of a precipice down which in the gathering darkness you may easily fall. Do you really desire to have all the Divine truths of the holy Faith made clear to your understanding? But think for a moment where you are; remember that those side-paths which you chose to take, all led downwards and away from the Light, into a dark and shadowy region where no ray of sun or moon can penetrate. Your reason has no power to pierce this gloom; its weakness, its folly, its incapacity, now stare you in the face. Then, while you are waiting until the Eternal God in His own good time condescends to show you what He is, why will you not permit the Faith to come to your succour and to teach you at least what you ought to believe about Him?

But enough; this vice of irreverent curiosity regarding the mysteries of religion is neither the most common nor perhaps the most reprehensible to be met with nowadays in what is called the educated class. Instead of being too eager to understand all mysteries, too presumptuous in trying to apprehend them by the light of reason, there are, alas! many who are absolutely indifferent about the things unseen in the midst of which they live, who care not whether there are mysteries or not; who do not know what they believe or disbelieve, ready to grant anything you will, so long as you let them please themselves and lead the life they like. By such men the freethinker will be discredited, not for an abhorrence of his mode of thought, but because they regard everything with indifference, except pleasures and business. Let us see if I can influence such men as these by representing to them the incorruptible beauty of Christian morality.

CuristrAN MORALITY.

Thanks to the Divine Mercy, those who in their presumption are continually disputing as to the truth.

of the Faith never refuse the palm to Christianity as regards its code of morality, and are agreed as to the purity and perfection of our morals. Indeed those two things are inseparable. Two suns are no more needed by religion than by nature; and whoever is sent to us by God to enlighten us as to our morality, will at the same time give us the certain knowledge of those Divine things that are the necessary foundation of a good life. We may justly say that the Son of God gives us even a stronger proof of His Divinity by guiding and directing the daily lives of men into the right way than by giving strength to the palsied and making the lame to walk. Assuredly He must be more than man, Who in the midst of so much error in a world swayed by a thousand contradicting passions and strange disordered imaginaomer iat pare tions, could thus unravel the tangled skein of good and evil, and lay down an exact rule of life and morals. To reform the human race in this manner is to endow man with the higher life; it is a second creation, nobler in a measure than the first. Whoever had conceived and brought about this reformation, so vital in its importance to the whole human race, must have had, to aid and direct Him, the very same wisdom which in the beginning formed man from the dust of the earth. In fine, this new creation is a work so stupendous that if God Himself had not effected it He must have envied its author.*

Philosophy had indeed made vain attempts to improve the existing state of things, and I do not for a moment deny that from the wreck of all that had been noble and beautiful in the human intellect she rescued some fragments worthy of admiration, and laid down some rules excellent to a certain extent for the improvement of morals and manners; but were I to try to enumerate all her mistakes, shortcomings, errors of judgment, and all the proofs of her general inefficiency, time would fail me.t Let us then render individual homage to that infallible equity which

• ** Christ is the highest ideal ever presented to man, and the Christian religion holds within it the purest individual morals and the most comprehensive social truth ever seen or ever known in the world.’’—Pavut BourceEt.

‘© Tf the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Christ are those of a God.’—Rovussgav, Emile.

• ‘* The points of resemblance between the Gospel teaching concerning renunciation and the Stoic doctrines are so striking and so marked that impious men have dared to regard the latter as the original, and the former as the copy. This harmony proceeds from the very foundation of our reason, and occurs not only in the doctrines of the deepest thinkers among the ancients, but also in those of the most powerful modern philosophers, even when they are avowed enemies of our Faith. Philosophy is certainly one of rules and guides us in the Gospel; and that we may do so with an understanding mind, as well as with an adoring heart, let us try to form some idea of what Christian Morality really is.

It begins at the very fountain-head, operating upon man in the first moments of his existence. Having united us to God by the indissoluble bond of the purest and tenderest love, it claims for Him and gives to Him the whole man, root and branches and fruits, that is to say, nature, faculties, and operations. For, knowing that the Name of God is the name of a Father, it indeed demands from us love; but, in consideration of our weakness, it prepares us to bestow that love by first inspiring us with holy fear. Being firmly resolved to bind us to God by every possible tie, it teaches us that we must at all times and under all circumstances revere His authority, believe His word, depend on His power, confide in His goodness, fear His judgments, rely upon His wisdom, hope for His promised eternity of happiness.

the sources of truth, but this source is inadequate, vague, often disturbed and intermittent. Judaism, on the other hand, is something supernatural, proceeding directly from God, and its resemblances with the Gospel are far more numerous and striking; in fact, there is identity—the only difference is in the degree of light that they respectively diffuse.”°—Mcr. H. Bono, The Beatitudes.

**'The morality and the philosophy of Paganism, as contrasted with the splendour of revealed truth and the holiness of Christian life, are but as moonlight is to sunlight.”—Deran F, W. Farrar, Seekers after God.

“The paramount virtue of religion is, that it has lighted up morality; that it has supplied the emotion and inspiration needful for carrying the sage along the narrow way perfectly, for carrying the ordinary man along it at all. Even the religions with most dross in them have had something of this virtue; but the Christian pie manifests it with unexampled splendour.”—Marrarw

RNOLD,;

In order that we should render to Him that reasonable homage and adoration which are His due, Christian Morality teaches us that we are ourselves His victims; this is why it obliges us to tame our rebellious passions and to mortify our senses, which in so insidious a manner lead our reason astray. To effect this it takes extraordinary precautions. It is careful to extinguish the tiniest spark, however deep down in our hearts, which might in time kindle a great fire. It stifles anger lest it should develop into implacable hatred. It does not wait to take away the dagger from the child till the little one has done itself a mortal injury, but snatches it from him at the first scratch. It even restrains the eyes, as an avenue to the heart which must be so jealously guarded. Nothing indeed is forgotten which can subject the body to the soul, and the whole soul to God; and that is our sacrifice.

We have to consider under whom, and with whom, we live. We live under the dominion of God; we live in the society of men. Second then to the primary obligation of loving God, our Sovereign Lord and Master, more than ourselves, comes the duty of loving as ourselves our neighbour in whose society we live. There we see brotherly love established under the protection of Almighty God, holy, inviolable, a thing so consecrated by Him that selfishness and unkindness can have no part in it; there, almsgiving, that treasury of graces; there, that forgiveness of injuries which secures for ourselves the forgiveness of God; there, the mercy which is better than sacrifice, and that reconciliation with our offended brother which is the necessary preparation for our approach to the Altar, There, in that society in which all men are brothers, each one loving the other as himself, we learn to whom we owe respect, to whom obedience, to whom service, to whom protection, to whom help, to whom condescension, to whom kindly warnings and advice; and we see and acknowledge that we are bound to do justice to all, and to injure no one any more than we would injure ourselves.

Let us pass on now to what Jesus Christ instituted for the ordering of family life. He did not content Himself with leaving marriage in its original state as regards honour and dignity; He raised it to a far higher plane, making it a sacrament and a mystical type of His own pure and indissoluble union with His Church. In this way He consecrated the origin of our existence. He abolished polygamy which at one time He had permitted as a means of increasing the human race, and divorce which He had permitted because of the hardness of men’s hearts. He no longer allowed human love to wander at large, spending itself on many objects; He re-established it in its original state, making this love reign as a king over two hearts bound firmly to each other, so that, in consequence of such a union and the dominion of such a ruler, the most perfect, undisturbed concord should exist among the members of every Christian family. After having thus restored things to their original condition, it became from henceforth His Divine will that this holiest of all human alliances should be at the same time the most enduring and the firmest, and that the marriage tie should be indissoluble, not only through the strength and sacredness of the promises exchanged by husband and wife, but also because of the natural obligation imposed upon them to bring up wisely and well the children

~ 1 ee born of that union.* Thus our Divine Lord gave to the marriage of the faithful a sacred and reverend dignity, making it do honour to nature, strengthen human weakness, safeguard temperance, and bridle sensuality.

What shall I say of those holy laws which make children submissive and parents kind; powerful incentives to virtue, and compassionate in their condemnation of vice; laws which repress licence without discouraging the offender? What shall I say of those admirable precepts which make masters just and servants well-disposed, God Himself in His fatherly kindness having pledged Himself to keep a strict account of all their faithful services? Masters, remember that you have a Master in Heaven; servants, do service as to God, for your reward is certain (Col. iii. 24). Who has more firmly secured the authority of princes, of magistrates, and of all lawful superiors than Jesus Christ? He makes the obedience that is due to them a religious duty. He has Himself set up in the consciences of men a throne for their earthly sovereigns and rulers, whose authority He takes under His own protection, making their persons sacred. That is why Tertullian, addressing the mini-

<* The family is now, more than ever, the first element and the last rampart of society.. Whilst, in general society, everything

• becomes more and more mobile, personal, and transient, it is in domestic life that the demand for permanency, and the feeling of the necessity of sacrificing the present to the future, are indestructible. It is in domestic life that the ideas and the virtues which form a counterpoise to the excessive and ungoverned movement excited in the great centres of civilisation are formed. It is in the bosom of domestic life, and under its influences, that private, the basis of public, morality is most securely maintained.

‘© The assistance of another and a higher spirit is also needed. It is peculiar to religion that she penetrates more deeply than the domestic or the political spirit can do into the human soul.”— Guizor, Democracy in France.

sters of an Emperor, and owning that the duties of their office expose them to a great deal of envy and hatred, adds: ‘‘ But now you have fewer enemies to contend with, on account of the immense increase in the number of Christians.’? At the same time He reminds princes that the sword is given to them only to be drawn against rebels and enemies, that their authority and power must only be exercised in chastising evil-doers and in lightening the burden of the oppressed.

Well, I have shown you a picture, in miniature but drawn from life and faithful, of the immortal beauty of Christian Morality. It is, I confess, a severe style of beauty; but no wonder, because it is absolutely pure. It is regular; it must be so, because it is religious. But could any ethics be more holy? could any economy be more admirable, any polity more just? Only an enemy to the human race, careless about its welfare or absolutely hostile to its interests, could possibly set himself in opposition to such beneficent laws.* Only men who, in the words of Salvian, ‘‘ would rather declaim against moral precepts than make war against vice ’’; only such men, I say, could repudiate and despise Christian Morality.

<« The Christian religion, of all religions that ever existed, is the most humane, the most favourable to liberty and to the arts and sciences. Nothing is more divine than its morality; nothing more lovely and sublime than its tenets, its doctrine, and its worship.”—CHATEAUBRIAND, The Genius of Christianity.

“‘ Brunetiére attempted to show how much the positivism of Auguste Comte was akin to Catholicism. He endeavoured to prove that modern thought contained in itself, without suspecting it, the seed of Catholicism. On one occasion, in the course of a discussion with a Socialist, he went so far as to infer the identity of the social aspirations of Catholicism and the aspirations of the Socialists for a general reform of the world.”—The Catholic Encyclopedia.

LNG

For my own part, I give myself heart and soul to this splendid institution. The morality alone of the Faith would make me accept it. I believe wholly and entirely in the Teacher Who has taught me so well how to live. The Faith proves morality to me; morality proves the Faith to me. The truths of the Faith and the teaching of morality are things so closely connected and so sacredly bound to each other, that it is impossible to separate them. Jesus Christ founded morality upon the Faith; and after His having raised the splendid edifice to such a noble height, shall I dare to tell so wise an Architect that He laid its foundations badly? No; rather, seeing the beauty, the perfection, the fair proportions, the graceful symmetry of what He condescends to show me, shall I not feel assured, and rest entirely happy in the assurance, that the same Infinite Wisdom has planned and disposed all that He conceals from me?

And now, sinful and ignorant men, what have you to say against this Christian Morality? How does it injure you? what portion of it do you want to get rid of? You are beset with difficulties; is it reason that dictates them? Ah! I can read your thoughts only too well; I know the language of your heart. You are asking for liberty. Ah! say no more. I understand you perfectly. The liberty which you crave is in truth slavery, captivity, a miserable bondage of heart and soul. Ah! let that poor heart be set free; let it be restored to that God to Whom it belongs by right, and Who so earnestly, so perseveringly, so authoritatively demands its restoration. Consider for a moment. Is it common justice, is it reasonable or seemly, that the law should be pared and pruned and twisted in order to favour your passions? Rather, should not everything in your passions that is contrary to the law be cut down, thrown aside, destroyed? If not, the state of things will be such as that of which the Prophet Habacue is speaking when he says that the Law is torn to pieces (Habac. i. 4). There lives not the man so wholly and entirely debased but that sin in some one form or other is distasteful to him. Take for instance an individual who is naturally liberal and _ freehanded: you may inveigh as loudly as you please against robbery and rapine, he will agree with every word you speak and with all your opinions on the subject. But he is proud, ambitious, vindictive; you must allow him to return evil for evil, to plot, to intrigue, to involve friends and enemies alike in any venture, however dangerous, which may advance his own interests. Thus the whole law will be mutilated, and we shall see (as the great St. Hilary says, speaking on another subject) ‘‘as great a variety in doctrine as in morals, and as many sorts of faith as of tastes and inclinations.”’

Suffer yourselves, then, to be guided by these holy and perfect laws, make them your rule of life and conduct. And do not tell me that it is too perfect arule; that you can never satisfy its demands, never reach such a pinnacle of excellence as it points out to you in the far distance. Ah! that is always the plea of the slothful and half-hearted. They see a thousand obstacles in their way; everything appears to them impossible; and when there is really nothing to fear, they are beset by imaginary terrors, a prey to innumerable anticipations of evil. The slothful man saith: There is a lion in the way, and a lioness

DIVINITY OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION i61 in the road (Prov. xxvi. 18). The slothful man saith: There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the midst of the streets (Prov. xxii. 18). Yes, the slothful are always finding difficulties in their path, and they never try to overcome one. Indeed I must ask you who object that the Gospel law is too perfect and beyond the reach of human effort, whether you have tried to practise it. Show me what steps you have taken in that direction, tell me what attempts you have made to succeed. Why do you not at least begin something, before complaining of your weakness and incapacity? The second step, ycu say, is impossible: certainly it must be so if you have never taken the first. Begin to walk, start on your journey, and then advance by degrees, a step at a time if you please. Things will get easier as you go on, the rough road will grow smoother and more level as it stretches out before you. But you complain before you have attempted anything: you tell us that you are weary of the journey, when you actually have not even stirred from your place; that you are weighed down by the burden of labour, which you positively have not yet begun to take in hand! This is worse than childish and ridiculous; it is absolutely intolerable. Besides, how can we ever dare to say that our Divine Lord has laid upon us a burden beyond our strength, when, in His tender consideration for our weakness, He offers us so much help, grants us so many loopholes of escape from danger, and, not content with holding us back by His precepts on the very brink of the precipice, even after we have fallen down it, stretches forth a hand to liit us out? He remits our sins through the Sacrament of His pardoning love.

CuRIST’s FORGIVENESS.

And now, almost with fear and trembling, I take up the theme of that same pardoning love, of the infinite tenderness and compassion of our Divine Saviour. I say, with fear and trembling; not (God forbid!) because there is any difficulty in proving its inexhaustible bounty, its unfailing certainty. No; even the most stammering, the least eloquent tongue could find words to speak, however inadequately, on such a subject. For what is there more simple, more easy of attainment, and at the same time more vast, more limitless, than this Divine goodness, which not only receives those who seek it and gives itself wholly and entirely to those who embrace it, but even calls back those who are wandering away from it, and always opens a way of return for those who have actually abandoned it? But men know this well enough; they only know it too much to their detriment. It is not well to proclaim upon the housetops a truth so momentous but so terribly abused by the world at large. No; it must be whispered softly to sinners bowed down under the burden of their offences; to the conscience-stricken, the brokenhearted, the despairing. We must. seek out in the busy, jostling crowd of careless, pleasure-seeking, sinful men and women some poor desolate soul and say this in his ear, so that no other hears it: God forgives infinitely, boundlessly. But it would be giving the rein to licence, were we to set before the eyes of proud sinners a picture of this goodness which knows no limit, and it would be multiplying crime to preach those Divine mercies which are countless.

And yet, it is not just or right that the hardheartedness and ingratitude of men should rob the loving-kindness of the Saviour of those praises which are His due. Let us then raise our voices and proclaim aloud that His mercy is infinite. Man was doomed to die in his sins; Jesus Christ died instead of him. It is written of the sinner, that his blood must be upon his own head; but the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ covers and protects him. Sinners, stained as you are with a thousand crimes, seek no longer to wash them away in the blood of slain beasts. It would indeed be a vain and hopeless attempt, for not all the flocks that range upon the mountains could make a hecatomb powerful enough to expiate one single sin, nor can man’s life be redeemed by the sacrifice of brute beasts. But see! upon the Cross Jesus Christ offers Himself, a Man for men, an innocent Man for the guilty, a God-Man for mere mortals. We see, then, in the price paid for our redemption, not only the element of equality, but something far above and beyond that. That which is offered is infinite; and in order that He Who offers it may be of equal dignity, He Who is Himself the Victim has willed also to be the Priest. Therefore, sinners, never lose hope. Jesus Christ died once; but the fruit of His death is everlasting: Jesus Christ died once; but, as the great Apostle St. Paul tells us, He is always living, to make intercession for us (Heb. vii. 25). There is, then, infinite mercy for us in Heaven; but, that it may be applied to us on earth, it is wholly and entirely communicated to the holy Church in the sacrament of Penance. For, listen to the words in which its institution is framed: Whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth shall be bound also in Heaven, and whatsoever thow shalt loose upon earth shall be M loosed also in Heaven (Matt. xvi. 19). Here you see indeed mercy which has no limit. In this respect the © sacrament of Penance differs from that of Baptism. Baptism can be received but once; it cannot be repeated. The gates of Penance stand always open. Come ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times: the power of the Church is never exhausted. These words of Jesus Christ have in them an everlasting, an abiding truth: Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them (John xx. 23). In this declaration I find no term prescribed, no number fixed, no measure determined. We must then recognise in it infinite mercy. The fountain of holy Baptism is called in the Scriptures (according to one interpretation) @ sealed fountain (Cant. iv. 22). In it you are washed and cleansed once and for all; then it is shut up, sealed; there is no return to it for you. But we have in the Church another fountain, of which the Prophet Zacharias speaks thus: In that day there shall be a fountain open to the House of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for the washing of the sinner (Zach. xiii. 1). This fountain of Penance is not only for all, but it is always open; and open, without distinction or reservation, to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to all the children of the Church. It receives sinners at all hours, in all moments. The leper, the unclean, can come when and how he will, again and again, to cleanse himself in this fountain which the merciful Saviour keeps always open for him.

But here, alas! we -see our own faithlessness and ingratitude; here we find indulgence multiplying crime, and the well-spring of infinite mercy becoming the source of profanation and sacrilege. What words of mine could ever be forcible enough to deplore the acts of sacrilege which poison the waters of Penance? Tertullian, speaking of holy Baptism, exclaims: ‘‘ O happy Baptismal water, happy and blest, which can never be the sport of sinners! ’’ It is the bath of Penance, always open to sinners, always ready to receive those who return to it; it is this bath of mercy which is exposed to contempt from the very facility of its beneficence, whose waters, contrary to their nature, stain, when they would cleanse, the souls of men, because the ease with which those men can plunge into these pure waters again and again, makes them, without fear, again and again defile their consciences. Who would not grieve over so strange and terrible an abuse of so inestimable a benefit, an abuse growing out of the very generosity of the love which bestows it? What can I do, what steps can I take, to stop the profanation of misguided perverse men who run their vessel upon a rock instead of guiding it into a harbour of safety? Sinners are very ready to tell us that nothing but repentance is needed to enable them to approach this fountain of graces. It is in vain that we say to those who trust so blindly in future repentance: ‘ Will you not consider that God has indeed promised pardon to repentance, but that He has never promised to give the time needed for the awakening of that dormant emotion in the soul of the sinner?’ Unhappily this reasoning, convincing though you would think it must be, produces no effect, so often has it been repeated. We speak again, although we know that it is to deaf ears. Children of Jesus Christ, who have wandered so far from Him, consider your blindness: you are actually making the mercy of God a means of hardening your hearts more and more. This is the sin against the Holy Ghost, against the grace of the remission of sins. God has nothing more that He could have done to draw you back from sin. You have put His mercy to its last test. What more could He do than call you, wait for you, stretch forth His arms to you, offer you His forgiveness? But all this only makes you bolder and more venturesome in your wickedness. What then must He do? Since His mercy is exhausted and, as it were, over-ridden by your malice, is there anything left for Him to do but to abandon you to His vengeance? Well, are you so determined to lose your soul? are you so mad, so senseless, as to risk an eternity of happiness for a few years of pleasure that pales if you hold it ever so firmly and which often even slips from your grasp and leaves nothing but misery behind? I entreat you to get rid of this monstrous idea of sinning as much and as often as you please, that you - may afterwards repent. Be astonished, heaven and earth, at such madness as this (Jer. ii. 12). Blind, deluded mortals are not afraid of sinning because they hope one day to be sorry for what they have done amiss. What folly! what madness! I have often read in the Sacred Scriptures that Almighty God sends upon sinners a kind of confusion and bewilderment, a sort of spiritual vertigo; but I see it clearly in your case! Rouse yourselves, open the eyes of your mind to the terrible danger which threatens you. This sorrow which you desire to feel one day, this repentance which you hope to experience at some future time, are purely imaginary, mere shadows, shams and unrealities. Do not deceive yourselves; it is no such easy matter to repent. The whole soul must be shaken to its very foundations;

se all our evil inclinations must be torn up by the roots; we must wage an implacable war against our most darling vices, our frailties, our miserable inconsistencies; we must, so to speak, wrench away ourselves from ourselves. If you were proposing to yourselves such a repentance as this, that would indeed be to put a wholesome and a powerful restraint upon your sins. But the repentance which you are expecting is nothing but a counterfeit, the sorrow which (you say) you hope to experience is a chimera and an illusion; and you may well fear lest the God thus despised and mocked, the avenger of His profaned sacraments, should, as a just punishment of your strange perversion of the nature of Penance, send you, not the peccavi of a David, not the bitter tears of a Peter, not the heart-rending sorrow of a Magdalene, but the self-interested regret of a Saul, the despairing misery of a Judas, the unfruitful repentance of an Antiochus; you may well fear lest you should perish miserably in your false contrition, in your impenitent penitence.

Let us, then, resolve so to live that the remission of sins may never be for us a scandal. Let us put things, things of such vital importance, to their right uses. Let penance be penance, a remedy and not a poison. Let hope be hope, a resource for weakness, not a prop for presumption. Let sorrow be sorrow; let repentance be repentance, that is to say, an atonement for past sins, not a foundation for future ones. So shall we, by the pathway of Penance, reach that blessed place where there is neither repentance nor any more sorrow, but a calm that knows no storm, a peace that has no ending.

VIIl