Section II. The Holy Ghost

We are going to dare to mount up into the eternal life of God, to see what we may be able to see regarding the Holy Ghost, the Third Person of the Undivided Trinity. We must leave far behind us all the ideas and images of earth. Our enquiry must itself be an act of worship, and its end be more holiness and fresh love. We must be content sometimes with words, which seem to have but little meaning, the little meaning being not in the thing signifying, but in their way of signifying it, with momentary glimpses of bright things, which are almost immediately withdrawn again with reverent guesses with truths half seen with pictures, which though seen, rather puzzle us than represent anything intelligible. Are we willing to hazard such an enterprise? Let us see.

I. The effects upon the soul of investigating any portion of the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

The unwoiidliness which the enquiry gives.¹
Because the images and ideas are all unearthly.
Because we know the intense and transcendental truth of it all.
Because it helps towards either self-oblivion or self-contempt.
There is a reality in everything about God-so that we cannot come in contact with Him without something happening to us: a child amid tools and machines, metals and precious stones, of which he does not know the names or uses, or to whom the names are only hard words, yet has grown in mind by what he has seen: how much more then with the things of God!
From this reality it comes to pass that some substantial effect is wrought by this in our souls.
Our faith is enriched, and also invigorated by the exercise.
A celestial standard of beauty, as yet beyond the grasp of our own thoughts, is infused into our souls.
The powers of the soul probably gain new capabilities by contact with God.
We unconsciously gain, and hereafter find out, a better understanding of the mysteries around us, e.g. creation, the permission of evil, the variety of graces in men, the exclusiveness of truth, God s seemingly arbitrary ways with His creatures, and other problems, of which each individual mind has one or more peculiar to itself, haunting and distressing it by its distorted shapes and exaggerated shadows.
The knowledge we obtain by such enquiries gradually dawns into a clearer and quieter view of God.
Love outgrows knowledge, and comes from the enquiry, even when there are so few appreciable results: this is partly because of
The reality of God.
The standard of beauty infused into us.
Our own personal concern with the mystery in question.
It is always to be remembered that it is our own eternal home which we are looking at.

II. The object of our present enquiry is the Holy Ghost: Who is He?

True and eternal God.
One only however of the Three Divine Persons.
The last of the Three in order, but All coequal.
Of Whom many marvellous distinctive things have been revealed.
Who manifests a peculiar love of ourselves, proper to Himself, and shown in His own way.
Who has been mixed up secretly with all our lives since childhood.
Who is actually dwelling in us at this moment in a peculiar manner, over and above the omnipresence of God quite different from the dwelling of the Blessed Sacrament within us, yet only to be paralleled by that.

III. The life of God.

It is the same this hour that it ever was: as it never had any beginning, so it has had no past history but it is one simple act never begun, never finished, never in process from a beginning, never on its progress towards an end, never left incomplete.
All acts in God are necessary: else God would not be perfect, there would be some thing in Him which need not have been there, which He could do without, and this it would be blasphemy to say. Inside Himself, God has no liberty: to the grandeur of His simplicity liberty would be a feebleness and an imperfection.
Unity of Essence: this unity is so un speakable that the word is below the meaning; all closest unities are but fur-off shadows of it: it consists
In singularity.
In indivisibility.
In simplicity.
In identity.
In plenitude.
Trinity of Persons.
The Unbegotten Father.
By His knowledge of Himself and all things begetting the Word.
And these Two, as one principle, by their love of each other and of all things, breathing forth the Holy Spirit.
And the Holy Spirit returning upon the

Two, and being their junction, expression, joy, term, and love.

All coequal, coeternal, consubstantial: one substance as described above.
No sort of inequality; only priority of order and emanation.
Yet with the most extraordinary distinct nesses as Persons.
This is the completion of the life of God, which causes it to result
In the most stationary immutability.
In the most vital activity.
In the most indefinable simplicity of act.
In the most profound peaceful separateness, yet universality.
All combining in the most unimaginable abvsmal beatitude.

IV. The Procession of the Holy Ghost.

His Procession is not from the Divine Essence viewed as apart from the Two Per sons, but from the Two Persons as subsisting.
He proceeds from the Two Persons, as one principle.
He proceeds by the way of the will, as the Son by the way of the understanding: hence the Procession is not a generation.
To use a human word, the method is by respiration: and therefore is
From the interior.
From the ardour of love.
Perpetually, by the, so to call it, identical reciprocity of the love of the Father and the Son.
Refreshing as it were the inward heat, the necessity in God of this refreshment, if we may dare so to speak.
From the triple love of the Father and the

Son.

Appreciation.
Benevolence.
Complacency.
The love of us and of all creatures, entered into the love hy which He proceeded, not necessarily, but as a matter of fact, (per accidens et concomitanter J.
This Procession is eternal, and is eternally going on every moment, as part of God s life, like the hreathing of a living man.
Yet He who thus proceeds is in all respects coequal, coeternal, and consubstantial with Those from whom He proceeds.

V. Certain eminences of the Holy Ghost.

What He does for the Person of the Father.
Gives Him an exercise for His unbegotten fecundity.
Gives Him an expression for His love of the Son.
Is as it were the terminal ocean to Him as fountain of deity.
What He does for the person of the Son.
Gives Him an exercise for the fecundity the Father communicated to Him.
Gives Him an expression for His love of the Father.
Illustrates the distinctness of His Person from that of the Father.
Is the occasion to Him of the grandeur of being, with the Father, the principle of a Divine Person.
What He does equally for Both of Them.
Unspeakably sanctifies Them by the exercise of love.²
Returns to Them Both as an impulse;
And is reflected by Them;
And draws an eternally beautiful life out of Them.
By a procession which is to Them, as well as to Him, an infinite beatitude.
He is the bond or chain or kiss of the

Father and the Son.

For they have no plurality as the principle of Him, but one simple sovereign unity.
They have but one relation to the Holy Spirit, not Each of Them a separate relation,
And He has but one relation to Them.
The Father could not be this bond; for the Son and the Holy Ghost have different relations to Him.
Nor the Son for the same reason; because the Father and the Holy Ghost have different relations to Him.
Unutterable strength of this uncreated Bond, who is a Person.
The life of God is completed in it not held together by it; for that would imply composition, which is impossible.
He is the term of the interior productions and necessary acts in God.
The last Person produced, as if God would mix with creatures unless He had a term, a term to His infinite life!
The only Person not Himself producing, but returning backwards rather.
His knowledge of Himself essential and speculative, not productive.
The same is true also of His will.
Note then that the fulness of God and the repose of God is not in knowledge but in love: the Holy Ghost is the uncreated sabbath of the life of God!

YI. He is the jubilee of the Father and the Son.

Because He is their term and so completeness and so beatitude.
Because He is Genitoris Genitiquc suavltas y as St. Austin calls Him.
Because love is akin to joy.
Because the seat of jubilation is in the will, and He proceeds by the will.
His procession is itself the endless, everlasting, divinely musical, stately-gleaming, un imaginable jubilation of the Holy Trinity, within Itself, and also in all creations lying in its external omnipresence. VII. He is the fulness of the Father and the Son.
His not producing is not rightly infecundity no infirmity; nay, it is His very personal eminence, and characteristic perfection; for all characteristics of the Divine Persons are perfections.
He is fulness, which is akin to joy.
He is fecund with the high fecundity of falling back upon the Father and the Son, and, as it were, completing Them, and bounding the boundless Trinity.
He is the crown of fecundity, because He is the jubilation of fecundity.

(. He is fecund, because He has drunk in, and possesses in Himself all the power of the Godhead to produce by will; He holds all possible uncreated love, and is the Ocean of the Father s unbegotten Fountain. Such is the Holy Ghost, all beautiful, all holy in His unimaginable Procession, and who is condescending at this moment to be wrapping us all round with His eternal love, longing to lead us willing captives to the shores of His jubilant eternal Sea!

CHAPTER II. THE HOLY GHOST AND CREATURES.

There was a time, or rather there was a time less eternity, when God was all in all; no space, no matter, no created spirit, no life out of God: no place where life could be, no conditions under which life was possible: creation then lay a complete ideal in the mind of God, in the clear soft light of His decrees; a procession, but not an eternal one, a procession which was one day to be. The date came when time should be born, a certain indiscernible point in unsuccessive eternity, and then creation lay outside of God, though in His lap. I. Creation might have been eternal.

The possibility of this throws considerable light on the life of God.
We must beware of thinking that the Divine life had to be completed before Creation could take place; the Generation of the Son, and the Procession of the Holy Ghost, are always going on, posterior to Creation as well as prior to it.
The eternity of Creation is possible.
On God s side, because His power is eternal, and He could at any moment have created.
On the side of creatures themselves.
Because creatures never began to be possible; they were possible from eternity.
Though not capable of being eternal by essence, creatures may be eternal by participation.
On the side of the act of creation itself, because
The action of God is instantaneous.
Such an action on His part, as Creation, would not be the less free, because it was eternal.
Creation, rightly considered, is not a transition from non-being to being, but the production of a whole thing from no presupposed subject.
Yet even if it were but such a transition, non-being need only precede the creature in nature and not in fact.
All this applies more easily to permanent things. Billuart³ thinks it more probably would not apply to successive things; still even this is not certain; for our ideas are so welded now to things as they are, we can hardly put ourselves in a position to judge of such a question.
God doubtless could have made a nonsuccessive creation.
St. Thomas says that without revelation the temporal nature of creation is credible, but not demonstrable.
As a matter of fact, creation is temporal, and that it is so is de fide. II. Creation lying outside of God.
The immeasurable quantity of strange inanimate matter,
Of various composition;
Of magnificent and subtle properties;
Of extreme beauty and variety of form;
Reducible to very considerable simplicity, perhaps to one element and to one force;⁴
Whose inner life seems unattainable;
And is a life of continual protean change.
Indestructible, and now everlasting.
It is as it is, for some deep reason un known to us.
Doubtless bearing on itself the most intimate transcript of His perfections, Who made it.
Life is an especially godlike gift.
To be organic is an approach to life, and is a state doubtless full of divine wonders beyond our sciences.

Life requires peculiar and subtle condi tions, and varying adaptations.
It is also inimitable by any marvels of man.
Countless varieties of life from angels down to zoophytes: and all have feelings, character and consciousness of their own.
It is a secret into whose ultimate recesses it seems as if we could never penetrate.
Yet life is always a happiness: the great est of treasures which most creatures have, if not all: indeed it is the greatest, for a martyr is only one who has the courage to change a lower life for a higher.
It is most plainly an outpouring of God s goodness, even of His beatitude.
Double life, material and spiritual.
Material life.
Ever changing.
The greater portion of it simply mortal.
Yet capable of supernatural operations, in man at least, which immortalise it.
Strange unions of matter and spirit, as in sacraments, and certain mental con ditions.
Glorified life of matter, without any violence done to nature.
Spiritual life.
Immortal, but not intrinsically so.
Its extreme simplicity is an approach towards God.
Its changes their peculiarity, as in angels when they fell.
Horror of spiritual wickedness, because it is seeming to come into such immediate antagonism to God.
Immense capabilities of glory which a spirit has.
All tins creation shaped out of the Divine mind.
God was never an uncreating God.
No change passed over Him, when He realised His idea.
Hence no incompleteness or overlooked minuteness is possible in creation.
It was the work of all God s combined perfections.
The product therefore quite as much of His love as of His wisdom: perhaps more so, inasmuch as His uncreated Love was the Person next to creatures;
And, as we shall see, creation was at least let loose through His love;
And when fallen, brought back neither by Wisdom alone, nor by Love alone, but by both together; and in the case of the individual soul by Love as inclusive of Wisdom.
The Divine Concurrence keeping Creation out of nothingness.
There is nothing in creation to which God has given an independent existence.
God is, as it were, the life underlying, sustaining, and rendering possible our life.
If He were to withdraw His concurrence for one moment, it would all fall back with hideous relapse into nothingness.
The Divine Presence is more intimate to us than even the principle of life.
It is threefold;
By Essence His substance embracing and penetrating all the extremities of the world.
By Presence, eyes, knowledge, light, no darkness.
By Power, the activity and vigour of all activities and vigours, the fountain of forces.
Conservation is the same act as Creation, and indivisible from it.
No effort, no successive attentions, on

God s part, necessary to this calm concurrence.

His own glory is the end of all creation, and of ail possible creations.
God s essential glory is untouched by creation which leaves no mark on it.
He is necessitated by His perfections to seek His own glory in all things: self-love is divine holiness.
We are left free to fulfil this glory,
Either by making our happiness identical with it,
Or by magnifying His perfections through the ill-success of our opposition to them.
But we are necessitated to fulfil it in one of these two ways.
Hence there is no neutrality possible for creatures, with regard to God.
Yet creation is wholly unmingled with God. 1. Impossibility of any such mixture.
On the side of God, because of His completeness, perfection, and unity of substance.
On the side of creation, because of its composition, derivation, and essential dependence.
Concurrence, even with evil actions, is a wonderful display of the agency of God s purity.
Yet extreme awfulness of sin, of which the Divine Concurrence gives such a stupendous view.

III. Creation lying outside, yet in the embrace of God.

What is meant by nature.
That which is due to the shape and capacity of a thing as God designed it.
That which is not out of the reach of its acquisition.
That which is congenial "to it, and can blend with it, without the infusion of any supernatural principle, i.e. with the common concurrence of God.
Natural unions with God.
The union of origin, conservation, and last end, with the Divine Essence.
The union of dependence, filial humility, and accountableness, which seems to draw us to the Father.
The union of the light of reason with the light of the Word, which joins us to the Son.
The union of will and love of God, simply as the Author of nature, which joins us to the Holy Ghost.
The order of grace.
Sanctifying grace a participation of the Divine Nature a quality of the soul or hahit.
Actual grace an impulse of the Divine Will: varieties and powers of it.
Nature cannot merit the first grace, nor can the last grace he merited; so that the world of grace floats separately, as it were, from the world of nature.
Creation was in a state of grace, to angels and men, who alone were capahle of grace.
Unnecessary love of this.
It w r as so both to angels and men.
So that reasonable nature was never tried by its sole self: both trials were of crea tures in a state of grace.
This shows the closeness of the Creator s embrace of creation,
And that we, by sin, did no less than struggle out of His arms.
Unions of grace.
A higher knowledge of God.
Virtues, not only more heroic in degree but different in kind.
The union of merit, through a supernatural principle.
The substantial indwelling of God far be yond concurrence.
The Father more our Father because we have a supernatural real worship.
Greater union with the Son as the foun tain of grace.
Our wills capable of closer union with the Holy Ghost.
The ultimate union of seeing and enjoying God for ever.
The Incarnation of the Second Person.
The Creator still more closely embracing His creation.
Yet it was in the original idea of creation: nay, the fontal idea of it all.
The propriety of the Second Person being incarnate, because of the connection be tween the "Word and creatures.
The Incarnation was efficient by anticipation, both for angels and men.
Yet that previous efficacy, at least so far as men are concerned, is not" to be compared with the change it has now actually wrought on the earth; witness the unopening of Limbus.
Unions because of the Incarnation.
Sacramental Unions.
The unions of grace are now more lofty and more entire.
Mystical unions and likenesses to Jesus.
Unions since the Incarnation differ
In kind. 1. New Mission. 2. Sacra ments. 3. Other uses of matter.
In degree: constantly approaching, and at last emanating in transformation.
In method. 1. Sacred Humanity. 2. Imitation of Jesus. 3. Christian Voca tions.
Union is the special work of the Incarnation, itself the greatest of all created unions.
The indwelling of the Third Person.
Its substantial reality.
By sanctifying grace.
By His gifts. Vasquez says, non ratione augmenti habitus gratice, sed ratione aliorum donorum.
By His impulses, pleadings, and inspira tions,
By His plenary presence in the Church, which is our enclosure.
Unions through Him.
The processes of justification and sanctification the same before Christ as after, so far as they are interior.
Yet in some sense the Holy Ghost was not given until redemption was actually accomplished. He follows the Word in the order of our salvation, as in the order of the Trinity.
All unions with Jesus are completed in Him, and by Him.
His own extraordinary intimacies with the saints.
Even within our souls His posture is the same as it is in the divine life, a peculiar unitive relation to the ^Father and the Son.
The order of glory.
Glory in reality is not an order distinct from grace, only a time and place and fixed ultimate condition of it.
Free will threading its way through the superincumbent weight of spiritual helps and appliances.
In the actual order of Providence nature has no end, no natural end; we cannot see what reasonable nature is to end in; it has to rise out of itself into a supernatural end.
Thus glory becomes the normal state of nature at the last.
The creature is meant to look the Creator in the face this is its glory.
It is then we have the person of the Eternal

Father.

Words of the Apostle St. Philip, Lord! show us the Father, and it is enough.
We must become likenesses of Christ, and we shall be so after the resurrection, and only then shall we be satisfied, and our satisfaction will be in being with the Father.
The Father is to be all in all, when the mediatorial kingdom of Christ comes to an end.
We shall indeed possess the whole Trinity.
The Three Divine Persons will belong to us as an enjoyed possession.
We shall dwell with Them for evermore, intuitively beholding Them as They are.
Creation rose out of the Incarnation, and by the Incarnation the wandering creation is brought home to the Creator.

IV. The Threshold of the Uncreated.

The freedom of all divine acts outside God importance of this truth, that Creation was free.
The oneness of action in all that the Three Divine Persons work outwardly.
The doctrine of Mission, Visible and Invisible.
Temporal, yet representing the processions in the Holy Trinity: the world of grace mirroring the Holy Trinity, momentarily and perpetually, as does the world of matter, though less intelligibly.⁵
Mission threefold in the individual soul.
First Justification.
Each augmentation of grace.
Eternal beatitude.
It is to produce an end, and its end is that a Divine Person should begin to exist in us in a new manner, as in a temple, and that the soul thereby may possess or enjoy God in a new manner so that Mission touches on Leaven, touches on the Beatific Vision.
Imperfect Missions.
Reason s knowledge and love of God, which is not a fresh possession and enjoyment of Him.
Actual graces, which are rather a knocking at the door than an indwelling.
Infallibility of the Pope is rather a moving of the intellect.
The Father is not sent, and the Son is sent only by the Father.
The Son and the Spirit are not sent separately.
But mission is attributed to each separately by appropriation.
The unsent Father is always present in invisible Missions.
The reality of Mission the Persons substantially present.
Horror of heresy as impeding Mission: it is like an imprisoning of God s mercy within Himself, and restricting His liberty in His own creation.
All creation is stamped w r ith the likeness of the Uncreated, probably far beyond our powers of perception,
And this is a Trinitarian likeness.
Yet perhaps each Person has some relation of His own to creatures, though inexpressible, just as relations constitute the Persons in God.
If we begin with the Father, we travel down to the Holy Ghost, and rest in Him as the Threshold of the Created.
If we start with matter and zoophytes, and travel up to the Holy Ghost, we rest in Him as the Threshold of the Uncreated.⁶
Here we get the right view of Him with regard to creatures: there is nothing betiveen the created and the Uncreated; the Uncreated Spirit confines on creation, creation confines on Him.
Thus the shadow of the Uncreated on the created doubles back like the shadows in a mountain lake: the first choir of angels, the Seraphim, representing the near Term of the Godhead, the Holy Ghost; the second choir, the Cherubim, the Word and Wisdom of the Father, which is the Son; and the Thrones in their kingly peace and stability, the Per son of the Father. This explains why devotion to the Eternal Father and devotion to the choir of Thrones coexist by a kind of instinct in so many saints and others, who were probably not conscious of the reason. Yet the personal angels, who stand alone, follow the personal order in the Blessed Trinity: Michael the angel of the Father, Gabriel of the Son, Raphael with his characteristic mixture of pathos and joy, of the Holy Spirit.

V. The Holy Ghost the end of creatures.

Creatures come down to the brink of His sweet- watered sea and pass in.
The powers and affections of the Sacred Heart of Jesus return into Him.
The Immaculate Heart of Mary, with the holiness of Joseph, the Baptist, the Apostles, and the hierarchy of the Incarnation pass into Him.
The love of the Seraphim, the science of the Cheruhim, the peace of the Thrones, the empire of the Dominations, the energy of the Virtues, the force of the Powers, the dignity of the Principalities, the defence of the Arch angels, the charity of the Angels, all pass into Him.
So do all hearts of men that are grace- touched and virtue-loving.
To flow down into Him is the beautifulness of life.
Yet we are not lost in Him, but find there the eternal distinctness of eternal life.

VI. The History of the Holy Ghost.

Eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son, which He is doing while we are speaking.
Joining in the predestination of Jesus and Mary.
Brooding over Creation.
Immense nameless communications of grace to the angels, through the Seraphim His own clioir: some think all the three first choirs receive light immediately, not mediately.
Intense love of the Sacred Humanity of Jesus.
Inspiring patriarchs with desires and prayers to hasten His coming.
The poet of the prophecies describing the life and passion of Jesus beforehand.
In the heart of David dictating the psalms.
Sanctifying Mary, David s daughter, and His own Spouse.
Preparing, creating, or fashioning the Body of Jesus, by overshadowing Mary.
His share in the Magnificat.
Sanctifying St. Joseph.⁷
Given immeasurably to Jesus.
Descending at the Baptism of Jesus.
Driving Him into the wilderness, and then commissioning Him to preach.
His love of the apostles.
His passing with the breath of Christ into them, which was an adumbration of His eternal Procession by spiration.
Meeting Jesus in the Ascension Cloud.
Descent on Mary and the Apostles at Pentecost.f r 20. Dwelling in and building up the Infant t

J- Giry says it was revealed that the Holy Ghost rested on Mary in one flame, and thence separated off into tongues. Vies des Saints, vol. I. p. 145.

Church, almost visible, so manifest was His agency.⁸

Punishing Ananias and Sapphira, visible sample of many like invisible providences, or at least indiscernible interferences, so suitable to our Lord s words about the sin against Him.
Welcoming Mary His Spouse at her Assumption, and joining in her Coronation.
Inspiring the epistles.
Giving St. John the Apocalypse.
Acting in the Church now as executor of Jesus, tutor of the Saints, and teacher of Mary His Spouse, t

Such is a sketch of God s huge creation, and the action of the Holy Ghost in it, and His position with reference to it. It is equally peculiar with His place in the Divine Life of the Holy Trinity.

Visible descents were frequent in the primitive church, because the sins of Christians had not interposed obstacles between them and the effusions of the Holy Spirit. Mistica Ciudad, Lib. vii. cap. xiii. No. 226.

For Office of Holy Ghost in Purgatory, v. Finetti sopra il Purgatorio, cap 28.⁹

CHAPTER III. THE HOLY GHOST AND JESUS.

As creation sprang out of the Incarnation, and the Incarnation embraces and is the reason of creation, the relation between the Holy Ghost and creation leads necessarily to His relation to Jesus: it is in Their mutual relation to creation that we must now bring them together. I. The History of Creation.

The Predestination of Jesus.
Eternal in the Divine Mind.
It was for the same reason as we may suppose creation at all, viz. love: only it was the cause of the rest of creation, the nucleus round which creation gathered.
It was the first externation of the goodness of God.
The Date of Creation.
It took place at a fixed and foreordained time;
A moment which had a vast reasonableness, unrevealed, and beyond our powers of discovery.
We may be sure it had to do with the predestination of Jesus.
The Angels.
The eldest-born of God s creatures.
Of a different nature from that which was predestined for the Word.
All their graces were from Him, and because of Him Incarnate, though not in the shape of redemption.
The Creation of matter.
Original matter out of nothing: one atom could fill the universe.¹⁰
Gradual cosmogony was perhaps meant as a visible bible to the angels, full of types and prophecies of Jesus, and loud hymns of material forces which their intelligence could translate.
Perhaps the angels took part in the cosmogony; certainly in the custody and administration of the finished world.
The Trial of the Angels.
I am inclined to place this after the creation of matter, at least of primary matter; else their trial would be -less significant, regarding the material nature of Jesus.
The presentation of Jesus to their intel lects and wills, the Word clad in an inferior nature, to be so worshipped.
Ample grace was given, yet one third fell, and fell irrevocably.
The epochs of the material world.
Science would lead us to infer that they have been of enormous duration.
The glory of God in the evolutions of matter, inorganic, organic, and animated in the lawfulness of uniformity, or the restrained and balanced fury of catastro phes.
Glory to Him from the activity and contemplation of the angels; for though the idea of the predestinated Jesus was not yet fulfilled, their interest in the material world centred round Him as their Incarnate King; it brought them into an affectionate relation with matter.
Preparation for Jesus.
Sin changes His manner of coming.
All history of patriarchs and Jews a preparation for Him.
Pagan history, with its outworn and out wearing mythologies and philosophies, partially a preparation, but also a working out of the proposition of His necessity, from the rampant growth of all corruption, and the tyranny of decadence in all its shapes.
He comes.
Mary s Immaculate Conception, and fifteen years.
The Thirty-three Years, with all their mysteries, living on still as it were in the hearts of men.
The Passion-death the only terms of redemption with the Father.
The Church.
This is the living and real continuation of the Incarnation.
The earthly dwelling of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament till the day of doom.
The Church is as it were a part of heaven in exile upon earth.
The place of the Holy Ghost in the Church.
To carry on the work of Jesus: in pope, theology, sacraments, priesthoods the Holy Oils are breathed into in order to consecrate them.
To fill it with the precise spirit of Jesus, and to fill it ahundantly: this spirit of Jesus is the practical exorcism of the world and its spirit from the Church.
It is a sort of Palestine to Him, the sphere of His activity, His dispensation, so to speak. II. The devotion of Jesus to the Holy Ghost.
He begins teaching Nicodemus ahout Him, and in connection with the special Christian gift of regeneration.
He establishes His apostolate by the impart ing of the Holy Ghost.
He declares sin against Him to be unlike sin against Himself, and some sin unpardon able, as if by the terror of this to defend His affectionate familiarities from profane liberties.
He knew the beautifulness of His own visible presence, yet said it was expedient He should go away, in order that the Holy Ghost should come; so Jesus seems in a certain sense to abandon the field to Him.
He left His own work incomplete, for tho

Holy Ghost to finish; He did little more than make a beginning, so far as His ministry went.

He made the office of the Holy Ghost one of love to Himself to bring to mind all that He (Jesus) had said.
He let Himself be immensely sanctified by Him.
He possessed Him without measure. III. The devotion of the Holy Ghost to Jesus.
His Conception, which is especially appro priated to the Holy Ghost.¹¹
This devotion disclosed at our Lord s baptism and transfiguration.
His munificence to the Mother of Jesus.
No one can profess our Lord s Divinity but by the Holy Spirit.f
He defends His Person, Natures, Sacramental Presence, and Mother from heresies in all ages.
He steps in in confirmation to strengthen the wavering loyalty of Christ s soldiers.
In ordination He, as it were, multiplies the sphere of Jesus, as Jesus by the Incarnation had already enlarged the sphere of the Holy Ghost.
His way of leading the apostles into all truth was by bringing to their minds all the words of Jesus.
The saints, who are the handiwork of the

Holy Ghost, are but multiplied likenesses of Jesus.

IV. The Holy Ghost and Mary.

Mary is inextricably bound up with Jesus, from His predestination downwards.
She stood in separate relations to each of the Three Divine Persons.
Her relation to the Holy Ghost was that of Spouse: what does that imply?
That as He was the term of God, the In carnation took place through His overshadowing Mary.
That He fashioned the Sacred Humanity of Jesus.
That He did this with her consent.
He overshadowed her at the Incarnation as it were to shield her, and keep her alive in that mystery, just as she was miraculously kept alive beneath the Cross.
Her different sanctifications were great in describable operations of His.
His descent on her at Pentecost, as if more with her now that she was childless.
As Spouse, she rightfully occupied His position in the earthly Trinity.

V. The Holy Ghost and the Incarnation.

His connection with the Sacred Humanity, both Soul and Body: Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from the Jordan, and was led (driven out, Mark i. 12) by the Spirit into the desert. Luke iv. 1.
It seemed as if the Incarnation, as it were, let Him loose, and gave Him space.
This would be a personal reason for His having so much to do with the preliminaries and preparations of it.
Pentecost was His advent, as it were, with His new Mary; and the apostles were almost as much His as they were our Lord s.¹²
He has the same end as Jesus, the exaltation of the Father; for He is the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry Abba, Father; just as the Father sent Him in the Name of Jesus. John xiv. 26.

VI. The Holy Trinity.

All these things were done in the utmost unity by the Holy Ghost and by Jesus.
The Sacred Humanity belonging, and infinitely dear to all the Three Persons.
The Holy Trinity absolutely One in its action in all these things;
Yet variously representing its distinctness of Persons.
Nevertheless those representations are but appropriations.
In Mission now One comes forward, now Another: One manifests Himself in the effect, visible or invisible, where all are really present.
Yet by far the greatest amount of Mission is appropriated to the Holy Ghost.
The Father is not sent, but present, and operating concomitantly with the Others.
Impossibility of our clearly understanding this: but so it is in all disclosures of the life and action of God, whose unimaginable simplicity falsifies every word we say.

VII. On what we may reverently conceive the devotion of Jesus to the Holy Ghost was based.

On His love, as a Divine Person Himself, for the Person of the Holy Ghost.
On the worship which in His Human Nature He paid to the Holy Ghost.
On gratitude, as it were, for His Sacred Humanity being especially fashioned by the Holy Ghost.:
On His immense love of holiness, and de light in the operations of grace.
On His love of Him as the Spouse of His Mother.
On His choice of Him as His successor in the Church.
On the peculiar sympathy between His Human Nature and the Divine Nature of the Holy Ghost.
Because of the love of His Human Nature for the Holy Ghost in consequence of its exceeding holiness, which was the work of that Divine Person, and an unparalleled communication of the Divine Nature by sanctifying grace to a created Nature, similar to that in some measure which His own Divine Person communicated to His assumed Nature.
Because of the substantial indwelling of the Holy Ghost in His Human Nature by Mission, the most magnificent of all Hia Missions: so that He dwelt in Jesus eternally by the beautiful mystery of Circuminsession, and temporally by Mission. Love of the Holy Ghost is therefore a prominent feature of the spirit of Jesus. Unless we also have a very special love for Him, we are not yet thoroughly penetrated with the spirit of Jesus.

CHAPTER IV. THE HOLY GHOST AND THE SOUL.

The multitude of souls which there are in the world their variety and varying circumstances: there is not one with whom the Holy Ghost has not had most numerous, complicated, and persevering relations, if they have come to man s estate.

I. His names are illustrations of His work in the individual soul.

Spirit.
This represents the method of His uncreated origin.
It also expresses His office in the soul.
He is in the soul the initiative, representative, and ally of all immaterial interests.
The hiddenness of His work is in fact an excellence of its spirituality.
His method of operation is peculiarly subtle, delicate, and spiritual.
Love.
He is Himself uncreated Love;
And also the fountain of all holy created love.
He is wedded indissolubly to a state of grace, which is a state of love.
He never comes to us without augmenting our love, and our love is never augmenting without His coming to us substantially.
He breeds in us especially a love of Jesus.
Paraclete.
This is expressive of the tenderness of His office towards us: St. Athanasius notes that the word does not occur in the Old Testament.
Comforter, inwardly comforting us especially
In the uncertainty of our salvation: the wonder that this is bearable: He makes it so.
In temptation: we occasionally see how powerless we are of ourselves.
In exile from God, continued for so many years of mortal life.
Advocate,¹³ which is comforting us outwardly, by getting us aid: mystery of a Divine Person being called an Advocate.
Both these offices flow from His love.
The last is the same office as that of the Sacred Humanity and the Five Wounds in heaven: only the Wounds are silent, the Spirit has unutterable plaints.
Gift.
All good gifts are from Him;
Yet all from the Father.
Because He is Himself the gift of the Father and the Son.
He also gives Himself.
And with Himself gives Them.

II. His most ordinary operations in the soul are those of grace.

Sanctifying grace is the foundation of every thing; and it is His Mission.
His indwelling in the soul substantially by grace.
By each augmentation of grace He dwells there in a different manner from what He ever did before.
Then there are the inward pleadings and struggles of actual grace.
So that one while He looks like natural conscience, another while like Guardian Angel.
His share in the sacraments: ordination consecration illapsus.
What we call the interior life is the life we lead with Him in our souls.

III. His gifts, which are still higher operations.

He has some very special gifts, seven in number, with which He works in souls: they are marvellous tools, undreamed possibilities of grandeur of soul, unsurpassed forms of beauty, working miracles with our natures without doing violence to them; by them we touch, and taste, and relish, what we know by faith.
They are infused habits, enabling us to graceful promptitude in the service of God, on which His actual impulses play as on sweet-voiced keys of music: the divine germs of all real human heroicity, foundation of all high principles, mine of all supernatural in stincts, freeing us from the slavery of crea tures, and giving us liberty. Isaias arranges them in their mutual connections and at tractions.¹⁴ They also have occult connec tions with the fruits of the Holy Ghost, and our Lord s Beatitudes.
Wisdom to see the causes and fitnesses, and taste the savour, of divine things: the fruit and beatitude
Fruit. Faith.
Beatitude. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Understanding to penetrate more intimately into the truths of faith: how much is supernatural in the operations of a Christian intellect!
Fruit. Faith.
Beatitude. Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God.
Science to judge correctly of human things, according to God s view and the principles of grace.
Fruit. Faith.
Beatitude. Blessed are they that mourn:

for they shall be comforted. 6. Counsel to direct the actions of faith: grace for details, is my own view of it.

Fruit.

A. Some say none, because its own operation is its fruit.

B. On my view, goodness.

Beatitude. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

rj t pi e ty_softness to God and to others; giving right instincts.

Fruit. Benignity and joy.
Beatitude. Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land.
Fortitude to suffer, to dare, and to persevere in daring; also to protect us against ourselves.
Fruits. Longanimity and patience.
Beatitude. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for justice: for they shall have their fill.
Fear to repress our pride and forwardness, and to give us the gift of adoration: in the edifice of the spiritual life, this is the foun dation.
Fruits. Modesty, temperance, and chastity.
Beatitude. Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
These gifts, grand thought! can grow, and do grow with our fervour and charity: yet there is sometimes, as in tepid priests and mere up-to-the-mark religious a mere physical growth of them without any corresponding actual growth, or any proportionate elicit ing of them in acts of perfection.*
They are very delicate and are almost instantly tied up by the thinnest ligatures of venial sin.
Also they insist on being our masters: we must abandon ourselves to them, and give them their fling.

IV. The fruits of the Holy Ghost, such as are specially named so in Scripture, are the re sults of the maturity of grace.

They are certain holy actions performed
With agility.
With promptitude.
With sweetness.
There is a maturity about them, which is a fourth quality, distinguishing them even more than the other three from common virtuous actions.
They very peculiarly fill the soul with God: this also probably results from their maturity.
They represent the Holy Ghost Himself and His divine life.
Fruits: Charity because He is the love of the Father and the Son.

. * Lallemant (English edition) p. 148.

Joy because He is the jubilee of the Father and the Son.
Peace because He is the bond of the Father and the Son.

N.B. These three fruits are the fountains of all the rest: the remaining nine of the twelve are more or less concerned with these three, and more or less subordinate to them.

Patience moderates excess of sadness, and secures joy.
Meekness allays anger, which disturbs charity, joy, and peace.
Goodness an energetic inclination to bene fit others, which is joyous charity.
Benignity the doing of this cordially and genially: geniality is an emanation of the Holy Ghost.:
Longanimity against weariness and fatigue, which hold charity, joy, and peace under pressure and in duluess.
Faith a facility in believing, without repugnance or dulness.
Modesty gracefulness of body, manners, and speech, so as to be the outward beauty of charity, joy and peace.
Temperance --refraining bodily appetites and inordinations by mortification, so as to protect the rights of our spiritual nature, and make room for charity, joy and peace.
Chastity the virtue of purity: a kind of return to innocence, or preservation of it so as to make the soul a fair temple of charity, joy and peace. V. His ways, familiarities, and excesses.
Gratuitous gifts, not necessarily sanctifying the receiver, but art of the Holy Ghost s love of the Church.¹⁵
Word of wisdom knowledge of eternal things, so as to talk of them persuasively.
Word of science intuitive gift of counsel about moral and human things.
Faith eloquence and clearness to teach and make plain the hard mysteries of the faith.
Healing to cure diseases and heal wounds.
Virtues miracles unconnected with the human body.
Prophecy seeing or making public things future or things absent.
Discernment of spirits seeing into hearts and judging of operations in souls.
Tongues to speak them or to hear them.
Interpretation of tongues to explain diffi culties in Scripture, or hard words in theo logy, or the tongues which others speak.
All these were in Christ habitually; and of our Lady, Novatus says,t Dico satis credibile esse Beatce Virgini a primo suae conceptionis momenta omnes gratias gratis datas per modum habitus a Deo fuisse collatas. Suaderi potest ex nonnullis.

Scripturae locis, et rationibus: but it was not so with any of the saints; they possessed them only transiently. 2. His inspirations.

Their frequency, like a man talking softly to us all the day long, even in crowds.
Their delicacy, like muffled notes of music, or thin leafy whispers of a breeze, or an unseen lark up in white air so short, enigmatic, fragmentary.
Habit of listening for them this shapes our whole life afresh, and gives it a supernatural posture and attitude.
They multiply by listening, like a bird in a wood who is answered by another, or as sounds come in quiet places when we listen; so we are ever hearing celestial music, broken now and then by higEer surges of wind, when the world and life are stormy.
All perfection consists in docility to them: the faults of the saints come from want of this; it is the subject matter of their faults, as disobedience to the commandments is the subject matter of positive sins.
His caresses.
Sweetnesses in prayer, suffering, and spiritual occupations: a shred of His jubilee.
Surprises tears, smiles, holy fear, sudden familiarity with God, momentary contacts and senses of His presence.
Sudden leaps in the road to perfection* out of the common laws of slow acquisition, as when all the species of evil thoughts were suddenly destroyed in the mind of St. Ignatius at Manresa.
Special attractions in the spiritual life, and the whole doctrine of vocation; vocation is His caress; to go against it is to refuse His kiss.
Special and peculiar graces, one or more of which distinguish nearly every man, such as keeping recollected, and the like.
Locutions, out loud or in the heart, common to all the saints.
Violent conversions, unlike the gentleness of unresisted grace: sometimes also He is violent with the saints, and on the whole masterfulness, like the strong wind at Pentecost, is a characteristic of Him.
Curious states of some holy souls, as if free will were almost gone: St. Gertrude could only say what our Lord wished her to say others could only pray as He wished others could not hear when worldly things were talked of; but in all these and similar states the spirit of Jesus is the predominant thing which the Holy Ghost pro duces.
Unions with some one attribute of God-or one mystery of Jesus or Mary or the Blessed Sacrament.
Familiarities with simple souls, the Dove nestling in human wills for ever, with a predilection like that of Jesus: instances from Siniscalchi; St. Gregory, St. Philip, &c. Look at a building full of strange machinery-so is the soul with all this machinery of the Holy

Ghost.

CHAPTER V.

DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST.

We have seen now Who the Holy Ghost is, and what He has done, and what He does in our own souls; we now come to the practical question of the devotion we ought to have for Him. I. What devotion to One of the Divine Persons means.

Each Person is equal altogether to the other Two: simple adoration is due to Him, as to the One God.
Indeed one Person cannot be worshipped without All being so: so that even when directed to One it falls upon All.
Such devotion as we pay to Mary, angels, and saints, is impossible; although, as with those inferior devotions, our devotion to Divine Persons rests both on the imitable and the admirable: God is almost more imitable than the Saints, because of His inimitable simplicity.
We have a knowledge of the different Per sons, and the peculiarities of Their relative subsistence, putting out of view Their absolute Essence.
On this knowledge certain feelings rise, which are distinctive.
Devotion to One of the Divine Persons is therefore the simple worship of God, into which these distinctive feelings enter; and these feelings direct the acts of the mind and heart peculiarly to One of the Persons, as if specifying, or giving a species to, the worship.
Thus it is devotion in the highest sense of devotion: it is adoration of the Divine Es sence, not so much limited to One Person hy being directed to Him, but with the feelings excited by the characteristics of One Person rather than the other Two added to it, which makes it a very special act of worship of the other Two, as the Three Divine Persons are Their own mutual love, and joy, and self-sufficiency.

II. By what means we arrive at devotion to the Holy Ghost..

It is founded, first of all, on our knowledge of His peculiar place in the Divine Life.
Next on His action in and upon creation, as shown in its history.
Next on His connection with Jesus.
Next on His work and method in the individual soul.
We must make an idea of Him as we do of Jesus. Our devotion to our Blessed Lord is based upon our idea of Him; we should have had a devotion to Him if we had only known that He was our Incarnate Redeemer: but, having the four Gospels, our idea of

Him is more characteristic, intimate, and de tailed, and our idea of Him is drawn from them. So must we from Scripture, theology, lives of saints, and our own experience, make an idea of the Holy Ghost.

We must ascertain
What He is like.
What He has done.
What He does.
How He does it.
Our own concern with Him, His work, aud His method.

We must then correct our idea hy the analogy of faith.

This enquiry, and this correction, have heen the occupations of the preceding lectures; so we may now huild up our devotion, simply recapitulating what we have said. It is important to remember that any probable opinion is sufficient to form a principle and foundation for a devotion.¹⁶

IIT. The likenesses of the Holy Ghost. 1. He has three kinds of likenesses.

Likeness to the Father, from whom He has received the Father s own likeness.
Likeness to Jesus
From whom He has received the likeness of the Son s Divine Nature.
To whose Human Nature He has Himself given the likeness of His Divine

Nature. 8. Likeness to Mary and the Saints, which is wholly from Himself, and a reflection of Himself. 2. His actual likenesses,

To the Father.
In His habit of pleading with men, as if He were their equal, as with Cain, Joh, Jonas, and the Jews.
In His non-incarnation.
In His repairing His ruined projects, like a spider its web, as the Fall, vocation of the Jews, Jewish kingdom, &c. and so with each soul.
In His jealousy; in this He is less like the Son than like the Father.
In His sensitiveness; being so easily grieved.
To Jesus.
In His gentleness.
In His patience, and His power of waiting; though here, as we shall see here after, there is a difference; but in the forbearance the likeness is complete.
In His minuteness of love.
In His prodigality He is spendthrift of His inspirations, as the Son was of His Precious Blood. the waste of inspira tions! yet each one of them, rightly considered, is more wonderful than the grandest book ever written, or the finest work of art ever designed, let alone executed. 5. In unity of spirit with Jesus.
To Mary.
She has borrowed all from Him, and so reflects Him.
In her love of Jesus.
In her share in the Incarnation.
In her union of the deepest pathos with the highest joy ever found in a creature.
In her intercessory office.
In the way she teaches Jesus, leads to Him, magnifies Him, glorifies Him, hides herself behind Him, so that He may be the more seen.
As in long years people grow like each other by living together, so with Mary and her Spouse the Holy Ghost, in her successive sanctifications: she had be come so much more like Jesus upon Calvary, that the Holy Ghost founded on that another indescribable sanctification at Pentecost.
To Angels.
In invisibility of offices.
In fidelity of unwearied ministrations.
In joyousness, yet pitifulness for men; as St. Kaphael, His own angel, so sets forth with all his joy a romance of sympathy with the sorrows of human life.
In the exhibition which they are of countless variety of His graces.
In their end, which is to glorify Jesus their King. 5. To the Saints.

They are His portrait of Himself: they are saints because He is the Holy Spirit; His gifts in them, His fruits in them this is their sanctity. They are His Bible; just as the Old Testament reveals the Father, and the New Testament the Son, so the saints of the Church reveal the Holy Ghost. 3. The likenesses of His created symbols.

Wind.
Represents His invisibility, with visible effects.
His seeming waywardness, as He lists: i.e. no law discernible, but some law deep laid in His uncreated love, working up from beneath the depths of His predestination.
His vehemence, as at Pentecost the rushing wind; so the Church in some ages of the world has been visibly shaken by this wind.
Dove.
The quiet pacific method of His common action.
His brooding character, as at creation over chaos.
His plaintive pathos, like that shy hidden voice of the deep woodland life, that woos and complains, and puts a soul into the summer woods, overruling, yet not by loudness, all other songs of birds.
Fire.
His being the love of the Father and the Son.
His intensity; consuming, refining, transmuting all things, especially all created attachments.
His masterfulness: He will reign alone.
Bright Cloud, as at Transfiguration and

Ascension.

Light, yet a light that hides a privacy of glorious light is Thine breeds love of concealment in others: all sanctity is shy.
Jesus hides in Him, and is borne about on Him as on a car.
Silent procession of clouds, varying shapes, melting off and reappearing, hanging about heights, fantastic muta tions in blue sky, making light beautiful: all these phenomena are images of Him.
Shadow, as with Mary.
A shadow from creation s garish light.
A shadow which fertilizes, and pre serves the dampness, like a wood on the edge of the sandy wilderness.
A shadow which cools nature s heats, and inspires a joyous awe as of God s neighbourhood.

IV. His peculiarities as exhibited in His action in creation, and the way in which they each and all correspond to what is distinctive about Him in the Divine Life.

Something so very human about Him, rather than angelic: at least as He reveals Himself to men.
As if, like the Eternal "Word, He was more drawn to our nature.
The Scriptures specially attribute creature-like feelings to Him.
Grief plaints Abba, Father intercession likeness of dove. This answers to His being next to creatures as the Term of the Godhead.
His likeness, in His action in creation, to the Father and the Son, as above drawn out. This answers to His Procession from Them Both, as one principle.
His tenderness and love, which we have already seen. This answers to His proceeding from the Father and the Son by the way of the will, and not by the way of the under standing.
Joy put forward especially in Scripture as among His most prominent fruits and constant effects. This answers to His being the Jubilee of the Father and the Son.

The disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost. Acts xiii. 52.

The kingdom of God is not meat and drink:

but justice, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Born. xiv. 17.

The fruit of the Spirit is chanty, joy, peace, &c. Gal. v. 22.

Receiving the word in much tribulation, with joy of the Holy Ghost. 1 Thess. i. 6. 5. Thus, His created symbols answer to His uncreated relative subsistence. V. The spirit of devotion to Him; it is as to Jesus in the Passion, not Jesus Risen.

A spirit of tearful tenderness and pathos.
A spirit of familiarity, from His intimacy, and the colloquial nature of His inspirations.
A spirit of docility for He is master.
A spirit of detachment, because He is the end of creatures: to us God begins with Him.
A spirit of holy fear, because, 1. Of what Jesus says of Him. 2. Of what we ourselves know of Him.
A spirit of simplicity, as simple souls are His own obvious attraction and devotion.
A spirit of truthfulness and reality: e. g. Ananias and Sapphira.
A spirit of hatred of heresy, as it is a sin especially against Him.
A spirit of humility: He exhibits something in God s tenderness so like what would be humility in creatures: there is nothing in the Divine Nature on which God could base humility so He bases a sweet semblance of it upon our necessities, and sorrows, and even our transgressions.

VI. The effects of devotion to Him upon the soul.

It brings us, as it were, into the life of God.
It makes us gradually at home in the mystery of the.Holy Trinity, which is our eternal home.
It breeds in us the real spirit of Jesus.
It makes us interior, yet outlooking, just in the right proportions.
It increases His gifts and multiplies His fruits in us.
Its most direct effects are to give us facility in believing, and promptitude in serving God.
A spirit of the most irrepressible joy, and exclusive rejoicing in unworldly things.

VII. Examples of it.

The apostles, in councils, epistles, &c.
St. Gregory the Great with the dove at his ear.
Blessed Crispin of Viterbo.
St. Philip s miraculous heart.
It ought to be the spirit of the Oratory.
Because of its Founder.
Its occupations preaching, confession, prayer: endless reliance on the Holy Ghost.
Spirit of joy and brightness: sunniness it accounts for St. Philip s.
The institute has charity instead of vow.
Kevelation to the Ven. Serafina di Dio.¹⁷

VIII. How this devotion concerns us, seen by a contrast between hearts with the Holy Ghost, and hearts without Him.f

To have, or not to have Him, makes all the difference of the beauty and reality of this life;
And all the destiny of the life to come.
It means whether we belong to Jesus or not.
Amid angels the difference is that between Michael and Satan.
Among men, between Peter and Judas.
On the quantity of Him, or intimacy with Him, or docility to Him, lies based all the huge difference between saints and common believers.
To be without Him is to have been by our own fault created for nothing, or worse than nothing, to have missed the end of our creation, to be a part of everlasting darkness, of everlasting unlovingness.

IX. Contrasts between the Holy Ghost and Jesus.

We are speaking of peculiarities, not opposi tions, in order to clear our view and base our devotion.
He is with us now, like a Second Jesus, only without Body, Eyes, and Voice.¹⁸
All life the world over, all Christian life is now like the thirty-three years in Palestine, teaching, healing, heing beautiful, as the Son was then: or rather it is the three years Ministry prolonged to the Doom not the Infancy or Passion; this is remarkable, as devotion to Him is in spirit so similar to devotion to the Passion: Jesus Himself continues the Infancy and Passion by means of the Mass and the Blessed Sacrament, while the Holy Ghost continues the Ministry, but continues it in the spirit of Jesus, with peculiarities.
His presence such as to make it expedient Christ should go.
Seeming contrasts, or say rather, individual features of the Holy Ghost by the side of Jesus.
He speaks more is less taciturn.
More pathetic: it is we ourselves who mostly put pathos into the actions of Jesus when we preach: in the narrative of the Gospels there is a peculiar, almost unpathetic brightness and simplicity.
He takes the initiative more.
He is more touchy and sensitive, if we may venture on such words.
He seems, with all His devotion to sin ners, to have a greater devotion to saints: whereas this was less brought out in our Lord.
He seems to make more haste; St.

Ambrose s nescit tarda inolimina Spiritus

Sancti gratia. 1. He punishes more, as if His justice were more purely divine.

There is ever before me a dim vision of the beauty of the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the eternally proceeding Love of the Father and the Son. I have tried to image Him, as the dove or tongues of fire; then as the sound of the mountain-wind high up, while the woods and lakes lay unruffled in the vales; then as a wondrous shoreless uncreated Sea of love. But I was discontented. Then I tried to picture His Divine Person, not like the Ancient of Days in Daniel, as the Father, nor like the Lamb slain, as the Incarnate Son, but as a distinct Person veiled in light, and the white resplendency of shadow-casting clouds. But it was not enough. Then I pictured Him as if He were the viewless air, which I breathed, which was my life, as if the air were He, going into me and coming out, and He a Divine Person, sweetly envious of the Son, sweetly coveting the Sacred Humanity which He Himself had fashioned, and coming into the world on beautifullest mission, seeking to be as near in carnate as He could be without an actual incarnation; and it was so near that He seemed almost human, though unincarnate. And this was the clearest view I ever could see of that Divine Person.

May He forgive what I have written of Him, and accept it, and bear with me a little longer, till

I have drawn my last breath in Him, and breathed it forth again as my first breath of another life, a fresh son newly born at the Feet of the Eternal Father!

St. Mary s, Sydenham. The Annunciation. 1857.

The five following chapters are the sketch of a proposed Treatise. ↩
Bail, Tlieologie Affective, 2me. Traite, Med. xii. ↩
Be Opere Sex Dierum. Dissert 1, art. vi. ↩
See Smee s Monogenesis of Physical Forces, and per contra Faraday s Conservation of Forces. ↩
See " Creator and Creature," p. 170. " Blessed Sacrament," p. 277, &c. ↩
Holy Ghost nearest to creatures Henricus de Balbis in Thomas of Jesus. De Orat. Div. lib. iv. cap. ix. p. 389-90, Svo. ed. ↩
The Holy Ghost was Himself the conjugal love of Joseph and Mary, and so the Bond of the Earthly Trinity as of the Heavenly. Baffaello Maria Vita di S. Giuseppe p. 48. v. Bethlehem p. 433. ↩
For the Holy Ghost after Pentecost compared with the Holy Ghost before, see Thomas of Jesus, De Orat..Div. lib. iv. cap. viii. ↩
For the story of the Holy Ghost electing the Archbishops of Ravenna, beautifully told, see Tufo. Hist, de Teatini, cap. 88. p. 335. ↩
Smee s Monogenesis. ↩
Billuart v. 340. t 1 Cor. xii. 3. ↩
The operations in the "fond de Tame" in high mystical states are a miraculous union of the Holy Ghost parallel to what the Second Person does in the Blessed Sacrament. Barban9on, Secrets Sou-tiers chap. 13, p. 325. ↩
Corn, a Lapide in Roin. viii. 26. ↩
Lallemant (English edition) pp. 142, 143. ↩
Tempesti, i. 379. t Cap. xix. qu. xiv. ↩
Lallemant (English edition) p. 180. ↩
V. note at the end of the chapter, p. 114. ↩
The devotion of the Cure of Ars to the Holy Ghost; Spirit of the Cure of Ars, p. 47. See also lives of Grignon de Montfort, Liebermann, and Desplaces, founder of the Seminaire du St. Esprit. St. Gertrude s visions concerning the Holy Ghost are given in her life, lib. iv. cap. 40. ↩

Chapter 3 of 18

Section II. The Holy Ghost

Footnotes