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Section I. The Divine Attributes

I know not whether deep awe or deep tenderness is more excited in us, when we think of the overwhelming mystery of the Holy Trinity. If thought remains thought, then deep awe; but if thought quickly lights up into prayer, then most exquisite tenderness, and a certain trembling familiarity which is the most piercing joy in life.

We feel

  1. As children born abroad, and told great things of our home, and beginning to travel thither when grown up.

  2. As flying with an angel, yet feeling the farther off from earth, the nearer home. Let us see what we have to do with the Holy Trinity: we feel as if we should lie on our faces, and speak low, when we speak of this adorable transcending Life of the Uncreated and the Eternal. I. First Epoch. The Eternity before Creation.

  3. It is God s immensity which makes Him so intimate to our littleness.

  4. The loneliness of God.

  5. The Companionship of the Divine Persons.

  6. We lying clearly in the knowledge of God from eternity.

  7. We also, our own secret selves, quickening the thrills of His love, before Heaven and earth, matter or spirit, light or angel, space or time existed.

So it was our old home.

II. Second Epoch. Our own lifetime.

  1. Daily life of the Most Holy TrinityGene ration and Procession.

  2. No shadow of mutability has passed over the Divine Majesty because of Creation.

  3. Yet the Sacred Humanity of Jesus is in the midst Mary s throne Angels and souls.

  4. Momentarily the Will of the Three Divine Persons concerns itself for us.

  5. Our place there is fixed preparations made intense interest taken in it.

So it is our present home from which we are absent but for a while.

III. Third Epoch. Our immortality.

  1. The life of the Most Holy Trinity still going on in blissful changeless peace.

  2. Yet we actually beholding it, and drinking our own immortal life out of the vision.

  3. Delight of being exclusively engrossed with God: and God as it ivere exclusively with us.

  4. Whether there be new creations or none, we are still in glorious rest with Him.

So it is our frture, our only, our unspeakably happy home.

My Brethren! all this is but a fragment of our Catechism: but if these things be so, happy predestinated souls! what have we to do with sin, with self, with worldliness?

II. THE SPIRIT OF ADORATION.

Fear remains in saculum steculi, therefore in Heaven: tremunt potestates: so on earth the substance of religion, the successful avoiding of sin, perseverance and perfection, all consist in the genuine spirit of adoration.

I. The Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity: the worship in Heaven.

  1. The angels, hiding their faces with their wings, &c.

  2. Our Blessed Lady: her profound humiliation.

  3. The Sacred Humanity of Jesus, filled with the spirit of adoration.

  4. No familiarity in Heaven with the unveiled ever new majesty of God.

  5. There must be awe, as the mystery is not comprehended, even by Mary.

  6. No intrinsic impossibility of sinning all depends on the Vision, not on us.

  7. Awfulness of the coruscations of the Eternal what words can tell?

  8. Height of celestial joy in this very awe: the

Vision will not harm us: it is our life. II. The spirit of adoration what must it be to us unclean on earth?

  1. Examples of it. 1. Old Testament. 2. Jesus. 3. Mary. 4. Apostles. 5. Dying Saints.

  2. Want of it the reason of so little perseverance in the devout life.

  3. Faults against it.

  4. Criticism of God s ways.

  5. Light speeches, such as we might make ahout Saints.

  6. Even in prayer, 1. want of preparation, 2. posture, 3. petulance.

  7. Ways of practising it.

  8. Bespect for the Name of God; special commandment ahout it.

  9. Fear of His judgments humble views of 1. Death, 2. Judgment, 3. Purgatory, 4. Sin, 5. Security of salvation.

  10. Doing things slowly.

  11. Evils which the neglect of it brings, or rather blessings which the practice brings.

  12. It leads to little talk, and so closes a huge river of sins;

  13. To self-contempt, and so makes the prime law of charity easy.

  14. It moderates and sobers joy which other wise would make us childish and giddy.

  15. The more we realise the dignity and immensity of God, the more we desire Him.

  16. It gives us greater confidence in Him, as reverence always does; we trust what we revere.

The awfulness of making free with God: the Eternal Father, the sacredness of His Majesty. His very goodness causes us to tremble; the infinite blessing of His not passing us over and ignoring us! Sometimes in the stillness of the night, in the hush of prayer, It might so seem as if we might come to die and He forget us. the blessing of being encompassed, girded up, wound round and pressed to Him with His everlasting presence, universal knowledge, and illimitable power! God, our God! how admirable is Thy Name!

DEVOTION TO THE OMNIPOTENCE

I. Characteristics of the Attribute.

  1. The result of all the rest of God s Perfec tions,

  2. And also the means by which they all work and magnify themselves.

  3. Its grandeur shown by its very limits: 1. It cannot do wrong. 2. It cannot give way. 3. It cannot require assistance.

  4. Its peculiar connection with Mercy; See xi.

and xii. chaps, of Wisdom. Its connection with devotion to the Eternal Father, and to the choir of Thrones.

  1. Grandeur of its 1. silence, 2. facility, 8. tranquillity, 4. unobtrusiveness, 5. forbearing tenderness.

II. Spirit the devotion will breed.

  1. Immense increase of faith.

  2. Huge courage.

  3. Indomitable cheerfulness.

  4. Familiarities with God; looking at Omnipotence as our ally.

  5. Kest of soul, through submission; Creation leaning on Omnipotence, and Omnipotence embracing, fondling it as it leans.

III. Miscellaneous.

  1. It is very necessary for the time in which we live.

  2. It makes our way of working more quiet, and also more consistent, less vacillating.

  3. It breeds in us a greater habitual idea of the sovereignty of our most dear God.

  4. It makes us more gentle with others, and more humble in exercising influence.

  5. It impregnates our soul with the savour of eternity.

IV. Attitudes of the Devotion.

  1. Adoring the beauty of the Attribute.

  2. Submitting to it as a master.

  3. Cooperating with it as a fellow- worker.

  4. Looking at it as a fast friend, who will always be interfering for us, when needed.

  5. Regarding it as lending its magnificent self to us to use in our own way. How it fills us with a glorious overwhelming faith in the final victory of right!

THE DELIGHT OF THE INCOMPREHENSIBILITY OF GOD.

I. Delight of it to Himself.

  1. Like the Generation of the Son, it is a kind of jubilant consciousness of all His perfec tions.

  2. It is the outspreading of His peace.

  3. It is the vastness of His liberty, which is the most mysterious of all things in God.

  4. It gratifies His secrecy; S. Austin calls Him Ens secretissimum.

  5. Sole prerogative of being able to comprehend Himself!

  6. Yet not a loneliness. The Three Persons comprehend the Divine Nature and Essence.

  7. Joy in the Sacred Humanity as a visible proof of the Divine Incomprehensibility: in communicable even to It. His omnipotence cannot make Him comprehensible.

  8. The secret regions of God probably most full of jubilee to Himself, as incommunicable because too high to communicate yet this is of course a human way of speaking.

  9. Each attribute has eminences inconceivable; besides that, there are unsuspected incommunicable perfections.

  10. The wonder of His simplicity amidst all this, intense jubilee to Him because of His unity.

II. Delight to us.

  1. To our love, that He will always be above our comprehension, and all comprehension.

  2. It ardently quickens our desires to know and to explore Him.

  3. It helps us to measure eternity we can hardly believe in the inexhaustible.

  4. It helps us to realise the unsearchable riches of His mercy, which His Incomprehensibility confers upon Him.

  5. It wins and weans us from all created beauty.

  6. It gives us such intense intellectual peace: silence of objections, freedom from temptations.

7". Joy of faith: the unknown things of God leave something like faith in heaven even.

  1. Room for vastness of worship and love: our best idea of God is His Incomprehensibility.

  2. Delight that we can wonderfully comprehend so much and desire to love more that we may comprehend more. Delight of saints in hidden ways of God and Incomprehensibility of judgments. (S. Paul, Romans xi.) Oar Lord also " hid from wise and prudent."

  3. But we can love Him as incomprehensible, though not know His Incomprehensibility. III. What is Incomprehensibility?

  4. God is incomprehensible by the very force of being God.

  5. Lights of nature, grace, and glory.

  6. The blessed see some things they cannot comprehend; and some they do not see at all; yet God is seen totus sed non totaliler.

  7. The least things in God are incomprehensible.

  8. S. Teresa s peculiar devotion to it.1

IY. The shadow of His Incomprehensibility is our own reward, " eye has not seen, nor ear heard," &c.

Y.

THE PREPARATIONS OF THE DIYINE

WORKS.t

I. In reality, how fearful a thing it is to think that to be Christians we must be like God! He so high, and we so low! He with such perfections, we with such miseries! Let us2 see how God works, e.g. in the Birth of Christ. So unlike what we should have ex pected is real majesty.

  1. He waits with patience.

  2. The world was left in sin for four thousand years.

  3. Yet how He must have yearned to redeem it: how different our precipitate zeal.

  4. He will have Mary His creature to anticipate the time: how much we have to do with God s works.

  5. He works with modesty, and a sort of Divine

Bashfulness: and this for all He is God.

  1. He seeks silence and obscurity: e.g. the Immaculate Conception, and the Annunciation.

  2. Few words, and no praise: so all the cir cumstances of the Nativity.

  3. He puts things out and leaves men to thwart them, as if He were regardless of success.

  4. He works with a spirit of Divine Love.

  5. He ignores the world, and takes it neither into His counsels nor His calculations.

  6. All for love; His own glory, the merits of Jesus, the favours of Mary all mean our salvation.

  7. There is a sort of poetry about all the cir cumstances of His works, because of their excessive sweetness, and heavenly pathos: not only to win our hearts, but because He is God, as if He could not help being beautiful and sweet and touching.

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i II. So we also should work.

  1. In our daily duties and occupations.

  2. In all the affairs of our spiritual life.

  3. Yet instead, eagerness, self-trust, and human respect are our three principles of human life; its body is self-trust, its soul is human respect, its spirit eagerness.

Look at Mary and Joseph all to-day. 1. Journeying on. 2. Bethlehem. 3. The Cave, how quiet, modest, retiring, and uneager; yet the world had not seen Jesus yet. It was without Him. Think of the world without Jesus in all its relations. But so it is with Mary; still by nature, she is more still by grace; still by grace, she is more still now that she bears the Foun tain of Grace and the Lord of Glory. It is just like the Annunciation; the magnificence of Mary is her tranquillity.

VI. THE MERCY OF GOD.

The thought of God the sunshine of the world study of His character and attributes His personality. I. What mercy is, especially in God.

  1. Mercy in a human sense involves our suffering ourselves or our liability to suffer the same or like or some sufferings.

  2. Mystery of it in God Who 1. can suffer nothing, 2. is infinitely just, 3. omnipotent, and 4. omniscient.

  3. Divine gifts to men 1. from justice, 2. from liberality, 3. from goodness.

  4. Distinction between goodness and mercy in God.

II. Works and Manifestations of Divine Mercy.

  1. Attributes of God, as seen by the blessed, or by Saints in extasy, beautiful, satisfying the immortal spirit.

  2. Out of mercy came the mysterious work of creation creatures out of nothing, mercy separating them from the mass of possible things.

  3. Manner of creation He made angels and men in a supernatural state of grace.

  4. Gift of immortality, hindering them from falling back into the abyss of nothingness, which theologians call a perpetual redemption.

  5. Mercy to mankind, going beyond mercy to angels 1. Fall. 2. Incarnation. 3. Iteration of Sacrament of Penance.

  6. Mercy to sinners

  7. Meekness does not let His anger break out, is not disgusted.

  8. Patience waits for sinners, dissembles, tires out our passions by longsuffering.

  9. Benignity always ready to receive; no number of sins, or kind, repel Him, yet think what sin is.

  10. Clemency citra condignum in hell. 7. Mercy to the good, whom St. Paul calls ves sels of mercy.

  11. Anyhow greater than to sinners.

  12. Ways 1. Adoption. 2. Protection against evil spirits. 3. Affability. 4. Punish ments in this life. 5. Magnificence of gifts, consolations, and augmentations of grace.

  13. Unspeakableness of Heaven and beatific vision at last.

III. Special adoration of God s Mercy.

  1. Picture of mercy 1. In hell. 2. In heaven. 3. The whole being of Purgatoiy. 4. Spread like the waters of an ocean over earth. 5. Gloriousness of it in God Himself, in the depths of the Unspeakable Godhead.

  2. Mary a vessel gleaming full of mercy, without judgment, that men might fall in love with its beauty and adore it in her it is apart, not as in the Sacred Heart of Jesus; her consequent devotion to this attribute.

  3. So take the hint from this, and daily get her to worship the mercy of God and bless it for us.

Spirits gazing on the Divine attribute of mercy unreckoned centuries of eternity goby still it seems ever new, ever wonderful, ever fresh, as the dilated spirit drinks in the view. Will the time ever come, when we, imprisoned here amid the weariness of life, the captives of our own offensive littleness, the victims of pain, age and want, shall be ourselves a beauty, a bright spot, a notable magnificence, thus, in the full blaze of the golden heavens, worshipping with the strong thrills of an immortal extasy the mercy of the Holy and Everlasting God, the Simple and Undivided Trinity?

VII. GOD WHO IS KICH IN MERCY.3

We want many things of God: we shall never cease to want many things of Him; when we possess Him in the incredible happiness of our grand eternity, though we shall possess Him, we shall still want Him. If He were to speak to me now, and I had to say the one thing, only one, which I most wanted of Him", could I hesitate in my answer for one moment? Father! I want mercy. If I think of the past I want mercy; of the present, mercy; of the future, mercy; of eternity, mercy. St. Paul, prisoner at Rome, writes to the Ephesians, and calls God God who is rick in mercy: this name of God is exceedingly sweet; it sings in my ear like an angel s Bong: beautiful things came out of that marvel lous mind of St. Paul s: none ever more beautiful than this God who is rich in mercy.

I. What it is for God to be rich. To be rich is to have superfluity, more than we want. God more than He wants! What a thought!

  1. The immensity of His treasures.

  2. The variety of them.

  3. Their delightfulness to creatures. Can God possibly create two things more insatiable than the spirit of an angel and the soul of a man?

  4. His liberality.

  5. But in mercy, St. Paul hints, eminently, unspeakably, unimaginably rich.

II. The inside of the treasury of God.

  1. Creation what a vastness it is, what an outpouring it was!

  2. Grace, its beauty and abundance.

  3. Mary with her sorrows, joys, glories, and dear offices.

  4. Jesus, with His immensities of Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Calvary.

  5. The unsearchable magnificence of His own ever blessed Self.

III. Mercy sweetening life.

  1. Are we in trouble about our past life? Hark, how sweet that apostolic voice! Listen, it is an angel singing, Eich in mercy!

  2. Trouble about present vileness? The very wild flowers from the earth breathe forth the words, the silence tingles into a sound, and articulates, Rich in mercy. It is like one of those beams of God which sometimes fall athwart the darkness of our prayer.

  3. Trouble about those we love, whom we have long.prayed for, and who seem past prayer? Eich in mercy! Blessed be St. Paul for that lucky word, or rather, Blessed be the Holy Ghost for that tender inspiration!

  4. Trouble about our dead, whose faults come pertinaciously to mind? Rich in mercy!

  5. A death to die, and a judgment to go through? These are panics such as to be almost unbelievable yet they are infallible: Rich in mercy. Yes! in a torture of believing love, we cry, it is the utterance of our human faith, Rich in mercy!

IV. We often talk of a thing we know till it strikes us that we do not know it. Familiarity has a way of making things strange to us. What is mercy? What an unanswerable question! but let us try to answer it.

  1. It is all the wants of the creature satisfied in one.

  2. It is all his difficulties answered and turned into revelations.

  3. It is all the sweetnesses of God put into one.

  4. It is the beautifulness of God to us: 1. Power become gentle. 2. Wisdom dissolved into kindness. 3. Magnificence made tender. 4. Justice grown indulgent. 5, Love s delight in us, fidelity to us, inability to do without us.

  5. Oh no! mercy is far more than all this; look up into God, wait awhile till your eyes get accustomed to the blaze, look up to His highest heights, gaze into His deepest depths there now, yon see mercy. Oh, how unutterably beautiful! and you may read the new name God gave to mercy and when He gave it the songs of the angels thundered round the throne as they had never done before Thou shalt call His Name Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins. All this is incredible: it is incredible; but faith manages to believe many incredible things. If all this be true, what becomes of the justice and sanctity of God? I do not know, I cannot think, I must not question. Sin is encouraged? I hope not; but if men take scandal with the justice of God, no wonder they take scandal with the mercy of God: for it is more excessive, more unexpected, more out of place, more unaccountable. God must see to it. God must provide. I grant it is a difficulty, a miracle, a secret, a mystery; but to faith one phrase, which St. Peter invented, and which I will put alongside of that word of St. Paul s on which I have been commenting, one phrase unlocks the whole, answers the whole, illuminates the whole, the whole Church is sounding it today as through a silver trumpet; The Precious Blood!

THE MERCIES OF GOD.

f

Each one s life is a miracle of mercies; like the lives of the Old Testament Saints and pa triarchs.

I. The multitude of God s mercies.

  1. God is not distracted by the numbers of His creatures.

  2. The continual outpouring of His mercies upon them.

  3. What a mercy from God must be like; think then of their multitude.

II. The variety of God s mercies, like vernal and autumnal woods.

  1. Diiferent to different persons.

  2. No two of the same person s mercies are the same.

  3. Varieties, slow and sudden, unasked and long prayed for, silent and loud, direct and indirect, secret and public.

III. The way in which He does them.

  1. As if laying Himself under an obligation instead of conferring one.

  2. For the purpose of gaining our love.

  3. In such a way as to make us feel more free with Him instead of less free.

IV. The way they are mingled with sorrows.

  1. They come before sorrows to make us better able to bear them.

  2. The sorrow is always less raw than it seemed as if it inevitably must be.

  3. They follow like the rain when the light ning has come; then be on the watch for His mercies, as the flower which the hot sun has caused to droop, when the rain comes, lifts up its coloured eye to heaven, and breathes sweet odours on the air.

V. Their perseverance.

  1. They do not cease because of our ingratitude and sin.

  2. They do not wear out like human kind nesses.

  3. They multiply as we grow older.

VI. Their sweetness.

  1. Special sweetness in the circumstances and adaptations of each.

  2. Timely sweetness always in season only God s kindness is always seasonable human kindness is often harsh for want of this.

  3. Extra sweetness, more than needed or pro mised, or than is natural; every mercy of God is a very supernatural thing.

VII. Conclusion.

  1. What a picture of God it gives us! He so loves thanks.

  2. Also what a picture of ourselves, yet what a joy to have such a God as ours.

  3. Yet all this is only a shadow of the mercies of heaven.

Yet earth s mercies end in heaven s mercies. How many secret mercies of each one of you is but the beginning of a gladness and a glory that shall be eternal. let us go home and think of our good God, and weep secret tears of joy over the beauty and the pleasantness, over the patience and the plenty, over the freedom and the kindliness, of our Father s exceeding goodness.

IX. THE DIVINE FORBEARANCE.

The immensity of the Majesty of God, and so the dreadfulness of offending Him, and the un speakable wonder of His being so patient and still under it all. London at this hour.

I. God s forbearance generally.

  1. With individuals, nations, and. the world.

  2. His silence.

  3. His continuance of blessings, and so seeming approval.

  4. His forbearance lasting even through a quiet deathbed.

  5. Then the awakening.

II. His forbearance with our own selves; which none but we can know, for none else kno.v the depth of our own badness.

  1. The graces heaped upon us.

  2. Our relapses and fresh rebellions.

  3. Continual hourly new forgivenesses.

  4. Negligence in His service.

  5. Poorness and ungenerosity of it. III. Our present state.

  6. We on earth many less guilty in hell.

  7. God s present love of us.

  8. The reason of this because He sees us in Christ.

  9. Our resolutions for holiness.

  10. Present practice for the rest of Lent Devotion to the Passion.

Shut out the world from our hearts, even while working for the world with our hands catch His voice hear the dropping of His Precious Blood His low sighs, not so much of suffering as of love by Easter we may kiss His wounded Feet.

GOD S PATIENCE WITH US.

I. His slowness to anger.

  1. Number of our offences. 1 2. Increase of graces.

  2. Delay of punishment.

  3. Gentleness of punishment.

  4. Even when punishing He often is not angry.

II. His disinterested sweetness in His disappoint ments with us.

  1. As if His glory was nothing to Him.

  2. What He cannot get in one way He tries to get in another.

  3. If He fails He will not give it up.

  4. He acts as if He had made a mistake in asking too much.

  5. He does not make things decisive, as if He said, Well, now try this Cross, my child.

III. His incredible allowances, and the interpre tations of His wisdom.

  1. His knowledge of us as our Creator, fountain of millions of mercies, which would seem foolish to the sharp-eyed blindness of the world.

  2. He sees no fault when we often see much.

  3. What He sees in secret all goes to extenuate our faults.

  4. He sees how much are stupidities well meant.

  5. He sets such a value upon efforts. No mother is so blind as the all-seeing God.

IV. His marvellous indulgence.

  1. Evil weighs less heavy in His scales than in those of man,

  2. While good weighs far more heavily.

V. His own astonishing placability.

And all this because He is the Father of our Lord Jesus-Christ.

"KNOWEST THOU NOT THAT THE

BENIGNITY OF GOD LEADETH THEE

TO PENANCE?"

Is there any one present who does not wish to change his life? However good, he must be in a sad delusion. At this present moment where should we be, if we had our due? In eternal punishment, for sin, and through the absence of grace to which we have had no title. If we could always think this thought, how changed our lives would be!

I. The benignity of God is what has saved us and it is the characteristic of His benignity always to be leading us to penance.

  1. At last it overcomes our hardness, by its very patience and forbearance.

  2. Were there less benignity, penance ever being accepted would be simply incredible.

  3. It makes the penance not only possible, but even sweet, by supernatural aids.

  4. Think of the punishment of resisting such a benignity, and the reward of obeying it.

  5. It is because it is benignity that it presses penance, because it knows we cannot be saved without it.

So then penance is necessary to salvation look at it as we will.

II. Practice.

  1. Have we ever done worthy penance for our sins?

  2. Anything like worthy penance?

  3. Any penance at all?

  4. Are we going to do any?

  5. What steps are we going to take?

III. That I leave to yourselves: only I would urge upon you the three grand helps, and not helps only, but facilities also, of penance.

  1. Continual remembrance of our sins.

  2. Continual remembrance of His Passion.

  3. Continual remembrance of an undoubting faith in Hell. The devil s worst and most fatal preparation for the coming of Antichrist is the weakening of men s belief in eternal punishment. Were they the last words I might ever say to you, nothing should I wish to say to you with more emphasis than this, that next to the thought of the Precious Blood, there is no thought in all your faith more precious or more needful for you than the thought of Eternal Punishment.*

Fourth Sunday in Lnt, 1863. This was the last occasion hut one on which Father Faber preached.

"THE BKUISED EEED HE SHALL NOT BREAK, AND SMOKING FLAX HE SHALL

NOT QUENCH."

Many things in life are questionable: but this at least is unquestionable: here we are all agreed.

I. If there be one thing more certain than another it is that we must not go into the eternal fires of hell; this is beyond controversy.

  1. No difficulties in religion are to be thought of in comparison of this necessity.

  2. No sacrifices are too great to be made to ensure this.

  3. No length of efforts is too long to be sustained in order to escape this appalling doom.

Hence we must take religion as we find it; we must accept God on His own terms.

II. The many beautiful descriptions of God and of our Saviour in the Bible; none seems to me so beautiful as that one in Isaias xlii. The bruised reed He shall not break, and smoking flax He shall not quench.

  1. Observe that the Father says of our Lord s Sacred Heart, My soul delighteth in Him: I have given My spirit upon Him: then afterwards, The bruised reed He shall not break, and smoking flax He shall not quench.

  2. Then our Lord in St. Matthew xii. Hurt at their wanting to stop His doing good on the Sabbath; tells those that He heals not to make Him known and the Evangelist quotes Isaias and says our Lord did this to fulfil that prophecy.

  3. The beauty of the Three Years Ministry comes from this: the woman at the well; the woman taken in adultery; the great clear shining love of the great apostles, even that prince of divine lovers, that model of heavenly enthusiasts, St. Peter, once it was only smoking flax; that conflagration of love, which has set the Church on fire for centu ries, the Heart of Magdalen, once it was only smoking flax; that furnace in which millions of hearts are for ever being molten, the heart of Paul, once it was flax that smoked so little and so feebly that it needed the Eye of God to see that it smoked at.all. III. The ways in which this is true of God.

  4. The immense value He sets on the slightest smouldering of piety and love in our souls; how He nurses beginnings; how He coaxes fears and entices relapses; we read of no feast days among the angels, but those to celebrate the return of sinners to their Father and their God.

  5. In falls the huge allowances He makes; Jesus even gave scandal by it; slow to anger, swift to pardon; long in leaving, instantaneous in coming back; nay, effort is always victory in His sense, even when it is defeat.

  6. He sees good where we do not see it; it is greater to Him than it even looks to us, and He makes more of it; St. Teresa even says that often what seem faults to us are not faults at all to Him. Comfort of this. Surely without offending against humility we may trust we have some bruised purposes, ah, sadly bruised, of good, some smoking flax, to the eyes of Jesus visible, of divine love! Now, look at ourselves, at the kindest amongst us, how different we are: we go about life doing just the reverse, breaking the bruised, quenching the smoking; our very love is ungainly and un loving, and our charity such a poor miserable shadow of what it is in God; we are so clumsy, so awkward, so harsh, so dry, so stiff, so pedantic, so unaccommodating, so humiliatingly untender and ungraceful.

And what a miracle the opposite is in God! how the vastness of His immensity can leave us so at ease and at large! the terrific extremity of His power can be so smooth, so soft, so light the frightening exactions of His spotless holiness BO kindly, so forbearing, so easily contented, so sweetly unimperious. what an incredible God! what must heaven be simply as the place where God s goodness has its own unhindered and eternal way. See how beautiful this is the extreme indulgence of an earthly mother has to come out of the very foolishness of her love! the far more extreme indulgence of our Heavenly Father would be impossible to anything but the boundless wisdom of a God. Ah Lord! with such a God as Thee it will not be hard to save our souls.

XIII. GOD OUR FATHER.

I. The heauty and consolation of this idea.

  1. It destroys the sense of loneliness in the world;

  2. Gives a new and consoling view to afflictions and chastisements;

  3. Makes the sense of weakness more endurahle;

  4. Enables us to trust God for problems we cannot solve.

  5. Sense of relationship with all our fellow-men.

II. How it enters into all spiritual actions.

  1. In sin.

  2. In sacraments.

  3. In aiming at perfection.

  4. In temptations.

  5. In suffering.

III. How God is our Father, and proves Himself so.

  1. In the ordinary events and course of life.

  2. In protection from evils which we shall only know at the day of doom.

  3. In answers to prayer.

  4. In doing good to those we love.

  5. In forbearance, and the continuance of grace.

IV. How He is our Father.

  1. Not nominally, but really.

  2. This comes out of creation.

  3. Marvellous sensible love.

  4. Identity of interests. 8. Reflection of Self.

  5. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  6. He has made Himself still more our Father by covenant; and He effects what He pro mises.

  7. Additional ties of grace and glory.

Happy sunshine of this thought 1. more trust in Him; 2. more freedom with Him; 3. more generosity towards Him.

XIV.

THE JOY OF BEING THE PROPERTY

There is one wish ruling over all mankind, and it is a wish which is never in any single instance gratified; each man wishes to be his own master. It is a boy s beatific vision, and it remains the grown-up man s ruling passion to the last. But the fact is, life is a service; the only question is, whom we will serve?

I. What it is to become the property of our own selves.

  1. Habits of sin which imperiously rule us even to pain and to death.

  2. Misery of many wants, which gnaw us if we do not satisfy them.

  3. Continual mortification of not getting our own way.

  4. The few ruling passions so as often to upset reason.

  5. There is not a vestige of liberty left to us.

II. The property of the world.

  1. Success is a perpetual struggle what absence of repose.

  2. Unbearable tyranny of human respect.

  3. False promises of worldly pleasures.

  4. Total want of sympathy, and kindliness in the world.

  5. Way in which all about us, reputation, privacy, time, passes from under our own jurisdiction.

Moreover these two services make us in effect the property of Satan.

III. The property of God. " I belong to God what is all else to me!" Blessing of this in difference to us; most unhappiness is from want of indifference.

  1. We belong to Him by all titles; but He will have us give ourselves to Him of ourselves.

  2. In His service every hardship has its own reward, every sorrow its special consolation.

  3. In sorrow the sweetness,

  4. As coming from our Father.

  5. As deeply compassionated by Him.

  6. As eternally rewarded.

  7. In joy,

  8. That it is pleasing to God.

  9. Of a heavenly character, and

  10. Leaves the soul at rest.

  11. In work,

  12. It is for God.

  13. No fretfulness about success.

  14. Full of spirit and courage.

  15. In weariness,

  16. Sweet sense of fatigue for God.

  17. How He rests us with beautiful soft thoughts and visitations.

  18. He is no taskmaster.

  19. In death,

  20. Full of solemnity but not of terror.

  21. A beginning, not an end.

  22. Tremulous joy of increasing nearness to God.

And then He takes His property back again, dearest of Masters, and we go to Him, and then and not before, and there and not elsewhere we are at rest; for His bosom is the weary man s own house his very own delightful home!

s

XV. GOD S LOVE OF SINGLE SOULS.

A soul of mediocrity: its unexciting comnaonplaceness to us.

I. God s view of it.

  1. Intense interest simply because it is a soul.

  2. Eternal choice of it, and mysterious preference of it to other possible souls.

  3. Desire to have its eternal companionship, as if an augmentation of His glory.

  4. A certain peculiar glory destined for it.

  5. It represents some definite peculiar beauty and excellence in God Himself.

II. His behaviour to it.

  1. Every single perfection exercised for it, and livelily interested in it.

  2. The yearning character of His immense love for it.

  3. The way in which He interests all other creatures in it.

  4. His separate devotion to that one soul.

  5. The devices and condescensions with which He makes love to it.

III. The Three Persons. 1. The Eternal Father

  1. Is stirred in all the abysses* of His Paternity;

  2. Would give His Son a second time for its salvation;

  3. Receives it, as a returning prodigal, again and again.

  4. The Eternal Son.

  5. The immensity of His wisdom makes Him love it all the more.

  6. Ready to be crucified a second time for that one soul alone.

  7. Continual communication of Himself to it in grace and sacraments.

  8. The Eternal Spirit.

  9. His immense Will bent on that one soul.

  10. His faithful, pathetic pleadings with it, as if almost there might be some unhappiness in God.

  11. How tenderly His omnipotence handles that single soul.

So it is as if the Holy Trinity could not bear to part with the creature who had been an eternal idea in His mind, an eternal love in His affections.

And all this is for my one soul my soul just as it is now my soul just as I know it to be! Surely, I must either lose my faith, or die of love.

XV T L

THE STRANGENESS OF GOD S LOVE

FOR US.

Many persons go about the world without in the least seeming to see anything strange or preternatural in life; nay, none of us realise how much is involved in common things and everyday ex pressions. God s love of us we take it for granted let us look into it.

I. How do we know God loves us?

  1. It is not our own loveliness.

  2. Nor the state of the world, with sickness, death, &c.

  3. We find a difficulty in religion, from the facility of sin, chance of hell, &c.

  4. Yet there is something in t>ur nature which refuses to let us believe in the possibility of the Creator not loving His creatures.

II. Why does He love us?

  1. Not for our merit s sake.

  2. Not for any dignity or intrinsic worth we have.

  3. Because of His own adorable perfection of infinite love.

III. What kind of a love does He love us with?

  1. The very absence of all worth on our part shows that His love is a wonderful thing, quite different from human love.

  2. His love of us as our Creator.

  3. His love of us as our Eedeemer.

  4. All the imaginable kinds of human love together approach not to this.

IV. What a support to us this consideration is!

  1. He will accept our least services.

  2. It is not easy to weary and exhaust His love.

  3. Past "blessings and graces are a sort of guarantee for future ones.

  4. There must be a loving meaning in all adversity and suffering.

  5. How wonderful must be that state in which these two wonders, the two loves of Creator and Kedeemer, are satisfied and fulfilled in the Creature s glory.

Importance to ourselves and acceptableness to God in our having a most vivid faith and a bold trust in God s love of us: it is quite a sign of predestination to feel as if we could not be lost, for all we are the miserable perverse sinners that we are. No! God is for us who shall be against us?

XVII.

"BE NOT DECEIVED GOD IS NOT MOCKED."

How the Bible is always startling us! We children of men are deeply fallen, but are we come to this that we dare to mock God? It seems incredible. We children of men are indeed far gone in folly: but are we come to such downright madness as this, that we mock God? Yet an apostle thinks it needful to warn us against it. There are few things in the Holy Scriptures stranger than this.

I. To mock God.

  1. The scene in Herod s courtyard: what if His Divinity had burst forth!

  2. God in His Majesty, amidst the burning angels, and the vast fires of heaven.

  3. God with the inexorable pressure of His just hand in hell.

  4. But even in hell no one dares to mock.

  5. To mock God! unspeakable, unimaginable wildness! I never heard even of madness that did it. Yet an apostle thinks it a sin we are not unlikely to fall into.

II. Who mocks God? I fear there is no one of us who has not at some time mocked Him. What if we are mocking Him now? as in Herod s court. What it is to promise to God.

  1. Those that promise to Him and do not per form perhaps hardly mean to perform when they promise.

  2. Those who perform carelessly and indifferently.

  3. Those who do not even take the trouble to promise, like not answering a man when he speaks to you.

  4. Those who delay, trusting to future repentance.

  5. Those who do some things for God, and leave other things undone, as if they were His judges and superiors.

III. Playing a part with God is a mockery of Him.

  1. Shirking examination of conscience and self, for fear of discovering things to change.

  2. Indefinitely adjourning correspondence to grace.

  3. Bargaining with God for reserves.

  4. Praying for what we seriously do not wish. Thy will be done, &c.

  5. Trying to outwit Him to have hoth worlds to make Him equal to others, not sovereign, &c.

Oh, it makes one desperate to see how men go on with God. Do you not see that He is not in the least the God your conduct makes Him out to be? Do you not perceive that everything is mockery of God which is not the fear of Him, the day-long, the lifelong fear of His most holy and overwhelming Majesty? You you who have not the courage to throw God off altogether, but are serving Him with half a heart you who pray at times, who come to church, who give an occasional alms, but to whom fashion, pleasure, frivolity, expensiveness, amusement, are far more sensibly sweet than God do you imagine God does not see through you? Do you imagine you will succeed? Do you suppose you will surprise God, and slip into heaven by a stratagem? Fools! Fools! Do you not see the enormity of the impertinence, which even your very religion is to His unspeakable truthfulness, to His inexorable sanctity? incredible audacity of human nature, audacious in its levity, audacious in its insincerity! How a cruel, a very cruel, but strictly just eternity will swallow up souls by millions, because they would neither face this honest truth, nor live upon it that every thing is mockery of God except a downright genuine conversion of the heart!

XVIII. GOD SO LITTLE LOVED.

I. Some things are so serious that we say we cannot allow them, to go on any longer; and then it is amazing what the power of our wills can do. Now here is a very serious matter God being so little loved. Can we look on this with indifference?

  1. The honour of God being so little loved.

  2. His immense majesty.

  3. His own incomparable goodness to us.

  4. What must happen to those who do not love Him?

  5. What danger those are in who love Him so little.

  6. All the miseries of this life are because of God not being loved.

  7. Hell is also filling hourly.

  8. And all the while the love of God seems really growing less and less.

II. Do we mean to say that we are indifferent to all this? No.

  1. Are we doing anything to hinder it?

  2. Does it give us any real sorrow or uneasiness?

  3. Was life then meant for other things to he attended to, and this to he neglected?

  4. Is religion a private luxury a simple sofa of sweet soft thoughts for conscience to lie down upon and take its ease?

  5. Love is work God must have work from us real thorough work.

  6. We can at least hegin with ourselves and increase our own love of Him,

  7. And we must hegin at once, today, this morning;

  8. And we must begin manfully and in earnest. We want conversion nothing short of it look at the past; it will never do.

III. But we cannot stop at self. Is our piety to go to sleep while the world is perishing?

  1. Are all these souls to perish and we not to lift an arm?

  2. But what can we do? Oh! rather what can we not do?

  3. Prayer is pretty well omnipotent, and we can all do that.

  4. But have we ever set ourselves to pray down the sins of London?

  5. But I must have something more than prayer God s cause is in fearful case I must have great things.

  6. Can you not send a child to school, or bring a sinner to the sacraments?

  7. Or give more ahundant alms to good works?

  8. Driven to a holy despair hy the awful scenes of dead and dying souls around you, what sacrifices are you making for Him who sacri ficed Himself upon the cross for you?

Look the crucifix in the face, and answer these questions, not to me, but to Him.

XIX. MOKE FOE GOD.*

My brethren, I wish you would b e more for God than you are!

We have been among the mountains latelv. the dark mountains of the Passion, and the illuminated heights of the Resurrection: now let ns look at ourselves, at our own height, our place before God, our union with Him, our practice of virtues, our correspondence to grace. I. Easter questions.

  1. Will this do? Is it safe, just as it is? Is it satisfactory?4

  2. Is it capable of being improved? 8. If so, of what sort of improvement?

  3. Have we actually set about this work?

  4. If not, why not? For what reason have we delayed? Have we decided not to improve?

II. More for God,

  1. Do you not need to be so f

  2. Is God satisfied?

  3. Could you die as you are?

  4. Do you look forward to never being more than you are? If you do, you will not even be saved.

  5. Do you not ivisli to be so?

  6. The marvellous contentment of it.

  7. The safety of it.

  8. The immense recompense.

  9. Yet is it not easy?

  10. More for God if it were but a little more.

  11. More for God if it were but gradually more.

  12. And even were it hard, would it not be worth while?

III. All for God.

  1. This surely is the sweet and the glorious thing.5

  2. The wonder that we can be anything else. It is the common sense of life.

  3. This alone makes life bright, and death delightful, and eternity so replenished with glory.

  4. Yet, alas! liow little we are for God how insignificant His place in our lives.

  5. Then I will be contented to ask you to be more for God, somewhat more than now. Nay, I will ask you only this. By His Cross and Passion, and by His glorious Resurrection, to resolve now to be more for God than you are. At least deliberate about it at least seriously entertain the idea.

For your own sake, for God s sake, I cannot bear that you should be so little for God as you are. I do not ask you to be all for God, only to be more for God, more for God than you are. I ask no more than this, because I think I should get no more. Is it want of faith in you or want of love for you? 0, not want of love for you, but it is want of faith in you. Ought I to be ashamed of this want of faith, or ought you to be ashamed? Anyhow, of one thing I am ashamed: I am ashamed to look a thousand Christians in the face at Easter, and yet not dare to ask them to be all for God. But I dare not, and therefore I do not. But will you try to be a little more for Him than you are?

WILL YOU COME TO GOD NOW?

I. Years have passed, and each year God called you. He urged you, He begged, He prayed, He entreated, He made great promises. But you would not. The world, youth, riches, honours, above all things, pleasures, were tempting. God was put off. Will you come to God now? If we would not then, why should we now?

  1. Because we have lived longer, and we cannot help learning more and more that the salvation of the soul is our grand and only work. Will you come to God now?

  2. Because, if it was always dangerous to delay, it always grows more dangerous. Will you come to God now?

  3. Because we have enjoyed our share of the world, and it is at least God s turn now. Will you come to God now?

  4. Because, when we see others who serve God, and think it all over, we suspect we magnified both the difficulties and the dulness of being religious. Will you come to God now?

  5. Because the world, we must confess, has disappointed us. Will you come to God now?

  6. Nay more, it has been an exceedingly heavy yoke upon us. Will you come to God now?

  7. Because death is advancing very rapidly. Will you come to God now?

  8. Because we cannot face the eternal tortures, and repentance grows harder by delay. Will you come to God now?

  9. Because there is an irresistible sweetness in God s very invitation. Will you coine to God now?

II. Practical Keflections.

  1. God is waiting to forgive, eager to forgive.

  2. His salvation is abundant, complete, and full of delightful pleasantness.

  3. Our past sins will be all obliterated.

  4. We shall get ample supplies of grace for the future.

  5. Peace, rest, brightness will gather round our remaining years: and all these things will be the greater, the younger we are when we give ourselves to God.

. ^ Can there be a heaven upon earth, a joy that is more than a match for any sorrow? yes! it is the joy of those who have trusted God s goodness, the blessedness 0f those who have found peace and pardon in Jesus Christ.

XXI. A TASTE FOR GOD.

We are apt to exaggerate the change which death makes in ourselves, because it makes so tremendous a change in our position. We must not confound these two things: as the tree falls, so shall it lie.

I. What will cause our joy in Heaven?

  1. It is a life of prayer, praise, vision, and contemplation.

  2. To an evil spirit or impenitent soul it would be the sheerest monotonous misery.

  3. God, and only God, is the direct bliss of heaven.

  4. He is also the joyousness of the indirect joys in heaven.

  5. So the best we can take to heaven is a taste for God and the things of God; our real tastes are not the best prophecies of our predestination.

II. What are our tastes now?

  1. Distinguish between our tastes and our frail ties; as a miser may be led into expenses by love of pleasure.

  2. Are prayer, sermons, services distinctly plea sures to us?

  3. Have we a taste for God, and the things of God?

  4. How is our taste for God, alongside of our taste for the world?

  5. Scripture moreover assures that the two are incompatible.

III. A taste for God is a magnificent grace; it is such a security to us; such a thing to rest upon; such a proof to us that we are drawn into a supernatural world. In what it con sists.

  1. Sweetness in the thought of God.

  2. The thought of God quietly making itself the centre, and righting itself after struggles. We have disturbances, but gravitate back to God when they are past.

  3. Resting in God, even when there is no sensible sweetness.

  4. Contentment, coming of this rest.

  5. Something inward which is beyond words.

  6. It does not in itself secure holiness, but it goes far towards doing so.

  7. It is a gift of God, yet I incline to think it can be acquired.

IV. How it is to be cultivated and dealt with.

  1. It must be taken care of, and defended against dangers.

  2. And even augmented by our own efforts.

  3. We must not presume on it, as if of itself it would kill worldliness like some antidote.

  4. We must not be afraid of its manifest encroachments towards sovereignty.

  5. Its growth is in a life of prayer.

  6. Its health is in sweet patient lovingness to all around us.

  7. To ourselves it is our life, the budding of our eternity: not a sight or hearing, or an odour, or even a taste, though we call it so: it is a touch of God, yet not a touch outside us, but a touch on our souls within us, and BO causing a taste; a touch in the dark, which often makes us lie still, and thrill with love.

XXII. OUR HOME IN GOD.

In the Bosom of the Most High God, amid the astounding marvels of the Most Holy Trinity, amid the boundless silences and the uncreated fires of the illimitable majesty of God there is our home there is to be our life there are our interests, our tastes, and our occupations for all eternity! What an incredible faith, incredible even from the very exceedingness of its simplicity. "What grave, broad thoughts it suggests to us, and yet such homely, plain practical truths! The grandeur of the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity makes us children all at once. I. Description of our Home.

  1. Multitudinous Majesty of God, outlying be yond all spaces, full of countless ever-flashing life.

  2. The ravishing loveliness and eternal surprises of His Attributes.

  3. The adorable grandeur and sweetness of the Three Persons.

  4. The immensity of the revelations of the Vision: and yet,

  5. The jubilee of the Incomprehensibility of God.

II. The life we lead in that Home.

  1. Beauty beyond all imaginable beauty.

  2. Interestingness, fascination, and absorption. 8. Joy that would break the hearts of all the men who ever have been created is not as one drop to our joy in the Bosom of God.

  3. Magnificence of the love with which we can love there.

  4. But overwhelming extasy of the love with which we are loved.

III. The life we are now living is at once nothing, and yet all in all to that life.

Practical Conclusions.

  1. Are our present tastes and interests fitting us for it?

  2. Are our present occupations congenial to it, and practising for it?

  3. How immensely we must be changed even to bear, let alone enjoy, that other life!

  4. How obviously our spiritual life must be our one care here!

  5. What is it we want? what is it we must cultivate? A desire for God!

My Brethren! is it well with our souls? How shall we know? Each passing year does the sense of exile grow upon us, the feeling that earth is not our home? Do we become less interested in worldly things, and more weary of them, yet with an active, practical, charitable weariness? Does a kind of Christian discontent spread more and more over our souls, and yet grow more peaceful, as we grow more discontented? All this is well but it must pass into something higher, something deeper, something sweeter into a hunger and a thirst for God!

PART FIRST.

Footnotes

  1. Le cose difficili da intendersi mi cagionano divozione, e quanto piu sono incapibili, tanto maggior divozione provo verso di esse. JSentenziario, p 58, sent. 937. ↩

  2. Christmas Eve. ↩

  3. Feast of the Precious Blood, 1860. ↩

  4. Low Sunday, 1SG1. ↩

  5. Eccles. xliii. 32. ↩

Chapter 2 of 18