Chapter V. In What Way God Repays Our Love

Signore, volete dare per quello, che facciamo per voi, piu di quello che potete fare; e non potendo voi fare voi medesimo, restate solamente soddisfatto con dare voi rnedesimo: stupendo caso! che il Creatore non ritrovi in tutta la sua onnipotenza, cosa, che possa fare in aggradimento di qualsivoglia cosa, che fa un giusto per suo amorc. Nieremberg.

When angels offer the prayers of men with incense in their golden thuribles, there are none which rise up before the throne of God with a sweeter or more acceptable fragrance than the murmurs and complaints of loving souls, because God is not loved sufficiently. Everywhere on earth, where the true love of God is to be found, there is also this peaceful and blessed unhappiness along with it. In many a cloister, by the sea shore, or on the mountain top, in the still forest or the crowded city, there are many who in the retirement of their cell, or before the Blessed Sacrament, are sighing with the sweet grief of love, because men love God so coldly and so unworthily. There are many amid the distractions of the world, and who appear to be walking only in its ways, who have no heavier weight upon their hearts than the neglect, abandonment, and unrequited love of God. Through the long cold night, or during the noisy day, incessantly as from a tranquil holy purgatory, the sounds of this plaintive sorrow, this blessedly unhappy love, rise up into the ear of God. Some tremble with horror of the sins which are daily committed against His holy law. Some are saddened because those who by their faith know God so well, love Him with such carelessness and pusillanimity. Some, who are wont to make His resplendent attributes the objects of their daily contemplation, murmur because they see nowhere on the earth, not even among the saints, anything worthy to be called love of so great and infinite a goodness. Others with meek petulance expostulate with God, because He hides Himself, and docs not constrain souls to love llim by open manifestations of His surpassing beauty: while others mourn over their own cold hearts, and pine to love God better than they do. There are even innocent children who weep because they feel, what as yet they can hardly know, that men are leaving so cruelly unrequited the burning love of God. All these sighs and tears, all these complaints and expostulations, all this heavy-hearted silence and wounded bleeding love, — all is rising up hourly to the Majesty on high, not unmingled with the sharper sounds of active penance and expiatory mortifications. It is at once intercession and thanksgiving and petition and satisfaction, and our Heavenly Father loves the sweet violence which this beautiful sorrow is doing to Him.

Meanwhile God Himself vouchsafes to appear contented, and even more than contented with the poverty of our love. He seems to be satisfied with that in us, which is very far from satisfying ourselves. Whether it is that His clear view of our exceeding nothingness stimulates His compassion to make allowances for us which we have no right to make for ourselves, or whether to the incomprehensible affection of a Creator there is some inestimable value in the least and lowest offering of the creature's love, so it is, that His magnificence repays our love with rewards of the most overwhelming grandeur, while at the same time His justice and wisdom contrive that these immense rewards should be in exact and varyingproportion with our merits. He alone seems to be above the feeling of that which His servants feel so deeply, their own coldness and ingratitude to Him. Yet we know that none can measure so unerringly the hatefulness of our iniquity; none can estimate so truly the glorious abundance of strong celestial grace which is hourly conferred upon us; none can know Him as He knows Himself, and therefore none can abhor sin as He abhors it, or comprehend, as He comprehends it, the insult of our lukewarm love. Does it not even come to ourselves sometimes in prayer, when we have been dwelling long upon some one beautiful attribute of the Divine Nature, to ask ourselves in amazement, how it is that God can possibly forgive sin, and forgiving it, can look so completely as if He had forgotten it as well, and even seem to esteem us more when we rise from a shameful fall, than if we had stood upright in His grace and our integrity all the while? And yet our best notions of God are unspeakably unworthy of Him. When we get views of His perfections wThich thrill through us like a new life, and throw open to our minds grand vast worlds of truth and wonder, these rays of light are full of dust and dimness, and do not approach to the real beauty of the Creator. Thus it is that we cannot take a step in this land of divine love, but mysteries start up around us far more hard to solve than the deepest difficulties of scholastic theology. We are getting new graces every day, crowning our correspondence to the grace we had before. We are continually drinking fresh draughts of immortal life in the Sacraments which we are allowed to repeat and renew day after day. But we are so accustomed to all this, that we can scarcely realize the miracles of compassion and love, of which we are incessantly the objects. All this continuance of grace is a manifestation to us of God's contentment with us. Not that lie would not have us better than we are, and is not always stimulating us to higher things. But He takes gladly what we let 1G v

Ilia have; and with loving eagerness, not only furnishes us with instant means to serve Him better, but almost anticipates with His rewards our little services. For the recompense full often comes before the deed, and as our gooti works are not sufficiently numerous to gratify His liberality, IJe is crowning all day long a thousand good intentions which He knows will never issue in results. And why? because it is not so much works, as love, for which lie craves. 0 the mystery of the Divine Recompenses! how is it to be unriddled except by the satisfaction of the Precious Blood of Jesus? And then how is that adorablo Blood-shedding itself to be unriddled? If the mystery of a Contented God, with His blessed wrath appeased and His all-holy justice satisfied, can only be explained by the Cross of the Incarnate Word, it is only removing the difficulty one step backward; for then by what is the Cross itself to be explained? Are we not for ever obliged to take refugo in Creation as the grand primal act of love, the fountainhead of all the divine compassions, and to acknowledge that the classes of mysteries, which of all others are the most unfathomable, are those which concern the nature, the degree, and the perfections of Creative Love? 0 beautiful Abysses, in which it is so sweet to lose ourselves, so blissful to go on sounding them to all eternity and never learn the depths, and in musing upon whose precipitous shores a loving heart finds heaven even while on earth! It is a day to date from, when we first come to see, that the very fact of God having created us is in itself a whoic magnificent revelation of eternal love, more safe to lean upon than what we behold, more worthy of our trust than what we know, more utterly our own than any other possession wo can have.

But let us study in detail the way in which God repays that poor and fitful and ungenerous love of which we ourselves are more than half ashamed. Let us enquire when He repays us, with what He repays us, and in what manner He repays us. We shall find fresh motives of love at every step in the enquiry.

First of all, when does He repay us? He does not keep us waiting for our recompenses. We know well that ono additional degree of sanctifying grace is of more price than all the magnificence of the universe. The objects upon which we often fasten our affections or employ our ambition, during long years of concentrated vigilance and persevering toil, are less worthy of our endeavors and less precious in the possession, than one single particle of sanctifying grace. Yet, let us suppose that a momentary temptation has assailed us, and we have resisted it, or that we have lifted up our hearts for an instant in faith and love to God, or that for the sake of Christ we have done some trifling unselfish thing, scarcely has the action escaped us before then and instantly the heavens have opened invisibly, and the force of heaven, the participation of the Divine Nature, the beauty, power, and marvel of sanctifying grace, has passed in viewless flight and with insensible ingress into our soul. There is not the delay of one instant. Moreover these ingresses of grace are beyond number, and yet, if we correspond and persevere, the influence and result of each one of them is simply eternal. Each additional degree of sanctifying grace represents and secures an additional degree of glory in heaven, if only we correspond thereto, and persevere unto the end. At the moment in which we receive each additional degree of sanctifying grace our soul is clothed before God in a new and glorious beauty which a moment ago it had not got.

The communication of sanctifying grace to the soul is itself a marvellous and mysterious disclosure of the divine magnificence and liberality. It is assuredly most probable, if it is not certain,* that each additional degree of sanctifying grace is given the very instant it is merited by our actions, and is not reserved as an accumulated reward to be bestowed upon us when we enter into glory. But each additional degree of sanctifying grace is not a mere enriching of us with the created gifts of God, but it is a real and new mission to our souls of the Second and Third Persons of the Most Holy Trinity, together with the unsent coming to us and dwelling with us of the Father Himself. It is not only that the Three Divine Persons are always in us by essence, presence, and power; but by sanctifying grace They are in us in a new and special and most real, though deeply mysterious way, and in the case of the particular graces of the sacraments, They are with us for particular ends, effects, and purposes. By an invisible mission this real indwelling of the Divine Persons assumes a new mode of existence at every one of the multitudinous additions and degrees of sanctifying grace, a new mode of existence which it is hardly possible to explain in words, as on the one hand it implies no manner of change or motion in Them, while on the other there is from Them some contact with the soul more personal, more intimate, more real, than that which existed but a moment before. If we are to allow some theologians to say that where the gifts of grace more concern the intellect, there is a mission of the Son, and, where they more concern the will, a mission of the Holy Ghost, yet we cannot hold any mission of the Son which is not also a mission of the Holy Ghost, nor any mission of the Holy Ghost which is not also a mission of the Son, nor any mission of the Two, apart and separate from the coming and indwelling of the Father. If it is hard to

Of Suarez de Boatitudine, Disp. vi. Sect. i. n. 13. Also De Gratia, lib. \x. cap. iii. 23. Dico ergo gradus omnes gratia?, quos Justus per actus remisso oharitatis meretur, statim sine ulla dilatione, nullave spectata dispositione, illi conferri, ac proride justum non solum per omnes hos actus mereri, sed etiam statim iou?equi suae grathe au^mentum. But it is a question.

understand this, it is also extremely beautiful, and ought to fill us with fresh love of God, and a more loving wonder at His bounty towards His creatures. This doctrine of divine mission with each degree of sanctifying grace shows us how sanctifying grace is a substantial and real anticipation of heaven, that even now it is Himself, and not His created gifts only, that God gives to us, and that He is our own God, our own possession, from the very first moment of our justification. Moreover there is something to overawe us with the sense of the divine intimacy with us, and to make us glow with love even in our awe, to reflect that this inexplicable operation, this celestial mansion, in our souls, this new and ever new mission of the Divine Persons, which we cannot explain and can only dimly apprehend, is actually being reflected in us many, many times a day, while we are in a state of grace, and seeking in our actions the glory and the will of God.¹ Nay, so substantially are the Divine Persons present to the soul by. Their invisible mission, that if by impossibility they were not present to us by Their immensity, They would be so by reason of sanctifying grace.f

Kai eari fttv KaQ' LxoaTaoiv IdiKrjv no\vTt\tios b zarrjp, bfi6ms it teal b vibif Kal to npevfia' dAA' t) hot tu>v wiofiacrfiivuv irjftiovpytKri 6c\r]atgf /$>' 0T<ff ncp uv \iyoiro ycviaOai tvXov evipyijiia ph uvtov, irA»)y (3i«i itdarji e/)^cr«t rrjs BcoTtjroi, Kal ti^ vist/t kt'msiv IctIv ovcias airorlAcoyia, none² fitv uanip ti, n\r)v Kal UtK&f //caorcj) npoouiiry jr/uVov, us <5»a rpiuv

Moreover all through life our mere preservation of the gift of faith entitles us always to have the grace of God at hand when it is wanted, preventing and anticipating the rapid and subtle movements of our spiritual enemies; and even when it is not especially wanted, because we are not under the pressure of circumstances or in critical occasions, it is most likely that we are always insensibly receiving grace, except when we sleep; so that we live in a world of grace, and breathe its atmosphere unconsciously, thinking as little of it as of the air we breathe in order to support our natural life. The Creator is as it were bound to assist His puny creatures: but He is not bound, unless by the excess of His own goodness, to be always near us, in the Christian sense of His being nigh unto all them who call upon Him. This nearness is His present and instantaneous reward for our unworthy service of Him. Joy and sorrow have, each of them, their own wants and trials and peculiar laws; and who has not experienced the ready goodness of God in both of them? Life and earth and the world abound with joy, even to running over. Happiness sweeps tho whole earth with its gay illuminations, just as the strong ewift sunshine throws its unimpeded mantle over hill and dale, and land and sea. We are too happy. Our happiness runs away with us. Its superabundance will hardly let us sober ourselves, or steady our views of this transitory world. Joys are thousandfold; we cannot count them; their name is legion; we can hardly class them by their kinds. They run out from beneath the throne of God, and electrify millions of souls the world over at the same moment. Our very life is joy, if we will only be honest enough to

IzoardaiuiV vpixoi uv icui 16iku>s fKiiarj], roAurcA/jwj i^o^3(^l?^cu0, iuvrt)v. Ivcpyei roiyapovv b irarnp, a\Xi 61 viov Iv irvfvfJiaTt, ivtpyli Ka\ b lids, aX' wi dvvaftig rdv narpbs, ii- avrou tc ical cv uvtlo voovficvos *a0' iirap^tv 16ik>)v' cvtpyu Kai to irvivpLa, irvcvpa yap cori tov Tzarpii, a Tov viov, ri voAvnovpywdv. — & Cyrilli Ahxandr. de S. Ti < iitit. dialog, vi.

acknowledge it to God and to ourselves. The unhappiest man on earth has from sunrise to sunset more satisfaction than unhappiness. It is seldom he would even give up his own self and take another, still less forfeit the pleasure of living altogether. What a Creator must ours be, in whose world merely to live is a stronger joy than any misery, however unparalleled, which can befall us! And how marvellously God multiplies His graces upon us in our jjy, opening our hearts to love Him more generously, enlightening our minds to see Him more clearly, quickening our gratitude, giving us a surprising elasticity in our spiritual exercises, and taking away the dangerous alluring beauty of earth's idols by the very strength of the gladsome, disenchanting light which He throws upon them. But, above all, in joy we full often receive a double portion of that dear grace, which is well-nigh all our salvation, the grace of true contrition; for there is no contrition, which, for strength, vividness, and endurance, is like the contrition of a joyous man.

Sorrow too, when borne even with ordinary patience, has its own rewards from God at once, rewards both of nature and of grace. What can be more beautiful than the way in which He calculates our weakness, and then measures out our sorrows, and then rains vehement storms of grace upon our fainting wills! But we only see this now and then, and in dusty indistinct perspective. In eternity we shall behold our past life in God, and what a thrilling revelation it will be! But is not this undeniably true of ourselves, so far as we have gone in life, that wo have had far less sorrow and pain than we are quite conscious we could bear, that our powers of bearing have been sensibly augmented while the cross was on us, that we can lookback upon chapters of our past life about which we distinctly feel that with our present grace we could not live them over again, that tho fruits of sorrow have always been tenfold brighter in the issue than the darkness was ever deepened in the process, and finally that in the retrospect the very sorrows themselves have been fall of joys, exotic joys whose large leaves and waxen blossoms and long-lasting perfumes show that they were grown in heaven and not on earth? Yet these are only the present rewards of grief, the earthly blessings of those who mourn! But look into the wonderful faces of those rings of saints who encompass the throne on high; feed your soul on the grave intellectual beauty which is depicted there, the winning look of blameless purity, the impassioned intensity of their celestial love. "With most of them it was sorrow that chastened them into that transcendent loveliness, sorrow that piloted them to that happy shore, sorrow that put those jewelled crowns upon their heads, sorrow, keen and deep and long, that unveiled for them the ever-beaming countenance of God! 0 magnificent Creator! where hast Thou left room for our disinterested love, when everywhere it seems as though Thou hadst made our interests take precedence of Thine own?

Look at death, which is a simple punishment! Can a created intelligence conceive of anything more terrible than to fall into the hands of God for the single solitary purpose of being punished? And we might have thought that death would be like this, being the first-born child of sin, from which not even the Immaculate Mother might be exempt. Yet how should we have miscalculated the love of God! The deaths of His servants are among the most valued jewels of His crown. They arc among the best possessions which He holds in right of His creative love. We know but little of the sights and sounds, the tastes and touches, of that last dark passage. There is a shroud of seeming dishonor as well as mystery thrown around that dread event. But we know that in it men live whole lives in one short hour, and accumulate experiences which puss our understanding both for number, rapidity and truth. We know that grand act has peculiar needs, peculiar distresses, and that the invisible and visible world forget their boundaries at the death-bed, and war together in dread conflict, of which for the most part the dying eye is the sole spectator. If we think long on death, we shall como to wonder how it is that any one can die calmly; the interests at stake are so terrific, the moment so decisive, the horrors so thickly strewn, the natural helplessness so complete. A whole world is sensibly sinking and giving way under us, and there is nothing but blackness, space, and the arms of God. Who can dare to fall through without a shudder? Yet when are God's graces and indulgences more numerous, more triumphant, more accessible, than in that dreadful hour? Grace makes a very sunset of what to nature is the most impenetrable darkness, and the plaintive strains of the Miserere merge in spite of our humility into songs of triumph; for the walls between the dying soul and the heavenly Jerusalem are so nearly fretted through, that the loud alleluias mingle with and distract the contrite love whose eyes are closing on the Crucifix. The creature's change is very dear to the Creator. Precious in the sight of the Lord are the deaths of His Saints. Listen to this beautiful story from the revelations of St. Gertrude. She heard the preacher in a sermon urge most strongly the absolute obligation of dying persons to love God supremely and to repent of their sins with true contrition founded on the motive of love. She thought it a hard saying, and exaggeratedly stated, and she murmured within herself that if so pure a love were needed, few indeed died well, and a cloud came over her mind as she thought of this. But God Himself vouchsafed to speak to her, and dispel her trouble. He said that in that last conflict, if the dying were persons who had ever tried to please Him and to live good lives, He disclosed Himself to them as so infinitely beautiful and desirable, that love of Him penetrated into the innermost recesses of their souls, so that they made acts of true contrition from the very force of their love of Him: which propension of Mine, He vouchsafed to add, thus to visit them in that moment of death, I wish My elect to know, and 1 desire it to be preached and proclaimed that among My other mercies this also may have a special place in men's remembrance.³ Let us then tell each other this sweet doctrine, that our hearts may burn more and more with love of so compassionate a God.

Now all these are present rewards, ways in which God repays on earth our love of Him. They are but samples of what is incessant, abundant, superfluous, all through life. Every one's mercies are so great that they are, to him at least, rightly viewed, strange, wonderful, and unexpected. God tries our faith, and seems to delight in trying it, by the very reduplication of His benefits. But after all, this life is not the time of His recompenses. He does not profess to give us our wages here. He warns us not to expect them. Is it then that His love is so great, that He cannot help Himself, and that his Nature is under the blessed necessity of loving and of giving? Or is it that these mercies are only the casual drops which are spilled from the overflowing cup prepared for us in heaven? Oh! even the most desolate of men may be so sure of his His paternal love, that they may remember that eternity can be no long way off, and will repay the waiting.

But if the promptitude of His payment is in itself a proof of the greatness of God's love, still more strongly is that consoling fact brought out when we consider with what He pays us. The blessings of nature, the gifts of grace, the rewards of glory, — who is sufficient to declare the number, the beauty, the greatness, and the wonder of these things?

There are three vast kingdoms, three magnificent creations, for so they might be called, which are simple expressions of the vastness of the Creator's love. They cannot enrich Him. They are not needed to His bliss. They add nothing to what He possessed already. His mercy contrives to reap some little harvest of accidental glory from them, but it is at the expense of endless outrage, not only of His justice, but even to His compassion. They are the product of His love of the creature, our property rather than His, almost more our dominion even than His own.

In the kingdom of nature there are three vast provinces or separate worlds, which are full of the most exquisite enjoyment to the creature, and we speak only of enjoyments, which, if through our frailty they are dangerous as stealing our hearts from God, are yet altogether without reproach of sin. The physical world is full of God's rewards. Life is itself a joy. But what shall we say of the abounding sense of health and vigor, which they who enjoy it the most abundantly can hardly value at its legitimate price? Yet to one, whose head is always aching, whose limbs have always in them some lurking pain, and whose languor and feebleness is all day long playing the traitor to the activity of his mind or the energy of his will, the sense of health, when it comes, is almost like a miracle. There is the surpassing beauty of scenery, the grandeur of the mountains, the sublimity of the sea, the variety of fertile landscape, the rain, the wind, the sunshine, and the storm. Every sense is an avenue of perpetual pleasure, which, if we will, can raise the mind to God, and inflame our hearts with love. If we except the irregularities which sin has introduced into the physical world, and which manifestly form no part of the system, the whole of it is simple pleasure and enjoyment, an emanation from the everlasting and inexhaustible gladness of the Most High.

But the pleasures of the intellectual world are yet more wonderful. Can any pleasure be more exquisite than the sensible exercise of our mental faculties? The variety, the multitude, the depth, the rapidity, the interweaving of our thoughts, are full of boundless enjoyment, leading us through realms and realms of truth and beauty, and charming us at every turn with some enchanting discovery. Through some minds the pure delight of poetry thrills, with feelings of the most indescribable nature. "With others, the sweet, skilful strains of music wind into the uttermost recesses of their souls, with a beauty which is sometimes so gifted, as almost to win back the reason that has already deserted its throne. To others, form and color, painting, statuary, and architecture, are like copious fountains of power and enjoyment, streaming into them abundantly forever. With many, the labor of composition is only a pain because of the very excess of the pleasure, which is more than they can bear. The investigation of truth is only at times weary and irksome, because our tyrant minds are demanding of the body what it cannot give. No more can be said of the pleasures of the intellectual world, than that they are marvellous shadows of the incomprehensible joys of God Himself.

If the moral world seems to afford a less variety of enjoyment than the intellectual, it far transcends it in the vividness and power of its enjoyments. The will is an inexhaustible mine of joys, which our nature seems to prize beyond all others. Our affections are complicated instruments of the most amazing and unexpected and diversified pleasures, which possess our whole nature, and fulfil it with satisfaction, in a way which no other pleasures do. Human love sits upon a throne above all other human joys, and there is no one who ever dreams of questioning its rights or of abating its prerogatives. Indeed, the joy of love is too great for life. It breaks its bounds, runs riot, and makes wild work even with the strong framework of society and the destiny of kingdoms. It fills every depth in our nature and then runs over, deluging mind and mean Himself. Abasement is impossible to Him. Nothing can sully His incomparable purity. Nothing can He do which is not infinitely worthy of Him, worthy of His power, His wisdom, and His goodness. And therefore this triumph, this feast of angels, over one sinner that does penance, is altogether worthy of the adorable majesty of the eternally blessed God! 0 who would not weep over the wonders of creative love, mystery after mystery, at every turn giving out fresh treasures of tenderness, compassion, and magnificence?

Watch that soul which is now just entering heaven. Can anything be more amazing than the caresses which God is lavishing upon it? Heaven itself has almost grown brighter by its entrance, and the anthems of the redeemed have sounded forth with a more full sonorous melody. Mary on her throne has been filled with joy, while an exulting thrill of sympathy ran through all the angelic multitudes. And why do they rejoice? Because there is a new joy for God, another glory for His complacency to rest on. It is the salvation of that soul which has just entered heaven. Some fifty years of the full use of reason it lived on earth. The world was its delight, wealth almost its idol. It drank its fill of various pleasures, and thought not of His goodness out of which they come. Many times the divine law came across that man's path, and when it did, he straightway, and with little reflection, transgressed it. He loved luxury, denied himself nothing, and was not over-bountiful to the poor. He was surrounded by comforts, as a city is compassed by its walls. He had sorrows and troubles, who has not? But they were light and infrequent. The world smiled upon its votary. He was popular with his fellows. He had all that his indolent ambit-ion cared to have; and, best of all, he was blessed with almost unbroken health. There was at last almost the weariness of satiety about his undeviatingly prosperous x

2GG IN WHAT WAY GOD REPAYS OUR LOVE.

fortune. Disease came, and his old joys ceased to be joys at all. He had nothing then to tempt him from God, but everything to draw him nearer to Him. Fear also, with the belief of hell, wrought strongly upon him; and by the help of priest and sacrament, together with the grace of a very moderate sorrow, he put together in some ten days the dregs of half a century spent in the service of the devil and the world; and he has now gone through a very circuitous path in purgatory to heaven to offer God this refuse of his probation. And heaven keeps feast for this! And the great Creator takes almost with avidity the leavings of the world, counting for chivalry the querulous helpless of a sin-enfeebled soul. There is not one word of reproach, one look of discontent. Coupled with his extraordinary mindfulness of minutest services, God is seemingly forgetful how all good is but His own grace. Moreover He is as it were blind to the fact that the man was after all doing what was best for himself, and when he could hardly help himself, and even then with amazingly little of self-indignation or of righteous zeal. See! His arms are round that deathbed penitent. He is telling Him the secrets of His love. He is scaling for him with a Father's kiss the eternity of his beatitude. That man will lie for ever bathed in the beautiful light of the Godhead!

Is this credible? Should we dare to believe it, if it were not of faith? 0 wonderful, wonderful God! of whom each hour is telling us something new, making premature perpetual heaven in our hearts! It is an old history, that love makes the Creator seem to put Himself below His own creatures: it is an old history, yet it surprises us almost to tears each morning as we wake. So here we come to a Servant-God, like the Incarnate Servant-Saviour, Jesus Christ. And yet there are men to whom God is a difficulty 1 There are men who think hard thoughts of Him, whose only trial of us is in the prodigious excesses of His love, which wearies and outstrips at times the slowness of our faith. 0 Heavenly Father! it is the greatness of Thy goodness which bewilders our humility by mocking our knowledge of ourselves; and that is the only difficulty we find in Thee. 0 let it grow still more difficult, still more beyond our grasp, for therein is our eternal life!

What then is the conclusion to which we come about this repaying of our love by God? It is simply this. In tho first place. He has made His glory coincide with our interests. Secondly, from a privilege He lowers love into a precept, and this one act is a complete revelation of Himself. Thirdly, He so puts our interests into His, that it is hard to look at His interests only, without falling into heresy. Do these conclusions solve the five questions we have been asking? No! but they lead to the one answer of all tho five, only that, ending as we began, the answer is itself a mystery. St. John states it; no one can explain it; earth would be hell without it; purgatory is paradise because of it; we shall live upon it in heaven, yet never learn all that is in it; — God is love!

Footnotes

1. Billuart de Trinitat, vi. 4. ↩

2. There is no province of theology where language proves itself less adequate to the task of expressing doctrine, than that which concerns the relation of the Divine Ifr-sons to created things. For on the one hand theology is clear as to the reality of such relations, and on the other hand it is equally clear as to the axiom that the external works of the Holy Trinity are indivisible. There is a beauty, which we can only half see, about these relations, which to judge from the explanations of theologians, baffles words, or as soon as it is put into words seems dangerous to dogma. See Schwetz. Theol. Dogma, i. 361. The following passage from S. Cyril, of Alexandria, is the more remarkable as coming from a post-Nicene father: — ↩

3. Ap. Pennequin. Isagoge ad Aniorcm Diviuum, p. 43. ↩