Chapter II. The Necessity of the Precious Blood

Ir is very difficult to feel as we ought to do about eternal things. We are surrounded by the sights and sounds of this short earthly life. We judge of things, if not by appearances, at least by their earthly importance. We cannot disentangle ourselves from the impressions which earth makes upon us. We are forced to measure things by a standard which we know to be untrue, but which we are so accustomed to that we cannot even think by any other standard. Eternity is simply a word to us; and it is exceedingly hard to make it more than a word. Thus, when we try to bring home to vurselves or to others the immense importance of eternal things, and the extreme triviality of all temporal things which are not simply made to minister to eternal things, we find ourselves in a difficulty. If we speak of them in common words, we convey false ideas. If we use high-sounding language and deal in superlatives, a sense of unreality comes upon ourselves, and still more upon our hearers; and we seem to be exaggerating, even when what we say is far below the mark. ‘Time alone enables us in some degree to realize the importance of eternal things. A striking expression may rouse our attention. But eternal things, in order to be fruitful and practical, must ae -* ' ts oe eee grow into us by frequent prayer and long familiarity. Even then we fall far short of the mark. Even then we get false ideas, and, becoming used to them, are unable to substitute true ones in their place. It is almost impossible for us truly to realize the fact that lifelong pain or exuberant health, ample riches or bitter poverty, unintermitting success or incessant failure, are matters of perfect unimportance and of absolute indifference, except so far as they concern the salvation of our souls. We recognise the impossibility by seeing how men who talk and believe rightly fall far short both of their faith and their words, even when they are acting up to the highest standard in their power. Weare placed in the same difficulty now, when we want to realize truly the necessity of the Precious Blood. It is more necessary than we can say or think. What would come — of being without it is inconceivable by us. When — we have said that, we have said all we can say. So, as time alone will make it familiar to us, we must say it in many different ways, and look at it from many different points of view, and repeat it to ourselves as if we were learning a lesson. This will enable us to gain time, and will answer better than big words or unusual metaphors.

The most recollected saint and the most thoughtful theologian, do what they will, live in the world © all day without being able to realize how much, and in what ways, they are indebted to God, receiving from him, living upon him, using him, and immersed in him, nor how indispensable he is to us. So is it in the spiritual world with Jesus. It is a wonder that he ever came among us. Yet he

Tee OMS. pny sae dee | aed bd behind 1 a » is simply indispensable to us. We could in no wise do without him. We want him-at every turn, at every moment. It is the wisdom of life, as well as its joy, to be always feeling this great need of Jesus. A true Christian feels that he could no more live for an hour without Jesus, than he could live for an hour without air or under the water. There is something delightful in this sense of utter dependence upon Jesus. It is our only rest, our only liberty in the world. It is the bondage of our imperfection that we cannot be directly and actually thinking of Jesus all day and night. Yet it is astonishing how near we may come to this. Our very sleep at last becomes subject to the thought of Jesus, and saturated with it. It is part of the gladness of growing older, not only that we are thereby drawing nearer to our first sight of him, but that we feel our dependence upon him more and more. We have learned more about him. We have had a longer and more varied experience of him. Our love of him has become more of a passion, which, by a little effort, promises at some not very distant day to be dominant and supreme. The love of Jesus never can be an ungrowing love. It must grow, if it does not die out. In our physical life, as we grow older, we become more sensible to cold and wind, to changes of place and to alterations of the weather. So, as we grow older in our spiritual life, we become more sensitive to the presence of Jesus, to the necessity of him, and to his indispensable sweetness. A constantly increasing sensible love of our dearest Lord is the safest mark of our growth in holiness, and the oie 5% most tranquillizing prophecy of our final perseverance. | What would the world be without Jesus? We may perhaps have sometimes made pictures to ourselves of the day of judgment. We may have imagined the storms above and the earthquakes underneath, the sun and the moon darkened, and the stars falling from heaven, the fire raging over the face of the earth, men crying to the mountains and rocks to fall upon them and hide them, and in the masses of the eastern clouds Jesus coming to judge the world. We think it appropriate to add to the picture every feature of physical tumult and desolation, every wildest unchaining of the elements, although doubtless the catastrophe of that. day of horrors will follow the grand uniformity of a natural law, even amidst the impetuosity of its convulsions. Yet the misery and confusion of earth at that day will have less of real horror in it than the earth without Jesus would have, even though the sun were shining, and the flowers blooming, and the birds singing. An earth without hope or _ happiness, without love or peace, the past a burden, the present a weariness, the future a shapeless terror,—such would the earth be, if by impossibility there were no Jesus. Indeed, it is only in such @ general way that we can conceive what the world would be without him. We can make no picture to ourselves of the real horror. His Five Wounds are pleading forever at the Right Hand of the Father. They are holding back the divine indignation. They are satisfying the divine justice. They are moving the divine compassion. Even temporal blessings come from them. They are bridling the whed earthquake and the storm, the pestilence and the famine, and a thousand other temporal consequences of sin, which we do not know of, or so much as suspect. Besides this, Jesus is bound up with our innermost lives. He is more to us than the blood in our veins. We know that he is indispensable to us; but we do not dream how indispensable he is.

There is not a circumstance of life, in which we could do without Jesus. When sorrow comes upon us, how should we bear it without him? What feature of consolation is there about the commonest human grief, which is not ministered by faith, or hope, or love? We cannot exaggerate the utter moral destitution of a fallen world without redeeming grace. With the apostate angels that destitution is simply an eternal hell. Let the child of a few weeks lie like a gathered lily, white, cold, faded, dead, before the eyes of the fond mother who bore it but a while ago; and how blank is the woe in her heart, if the waters of baptism have not passed upon it! Yet what are those waters, but the Blood of Jesus? Now she can sit and think, and be thankful even while she is weeping, and there can be smiles through her tears, which, like the rainbows, are signs of God’s covenant with his people; for she has volumes of sweet things to think, and bright visions in her mind, and the sounds of angelic musie in her soul’s ear; and these things are not fancies, but faiths, knowledges, infallible assurances. Even if her child were unbaptized, dismal as the thought is that it can never see God, its eternal destiny is for the sake of Jesus shorn of all the sensible pains and horrors which else would have befallen it. It owes the natural blessedness, which it will one day enjoy, to the merits of our dearest Lord. It is better even for the babes that are not his, that he himself was once the Babe of Bethlehem.

Sorrow without Christ is not to be endured. Such a lot would be worse than that of the beasts — of the field, because the possession of reason would be an additional unhappiness. The same is true of sickness and of pain. What is the meaning of pain, except the purification of our soul? Who could bear it for years, if there were no significance in it, no future for it, no real work which it was actually occupied in doing? Here also the possession of reason would act to our disadvantage; for it would render the patience of beasts impossible to us. The long, pining, languishing sick-bed, with its interminable nights and days, its wakeful memories, its keen susceptibilities, its crowded and protracted inward biography, its. burdensome epochs of monotony,—what would this be, if we knew not the Son of God, if Jesus never had been man, if his grace of enddrance had not actually gone out of his Heart into ours that we might love even while we murmured, and believe most in mercy when it was showing itself least merciful?

In poverty and hardship, in the accesses of temptation, in the intemperate ardors of youth or the cynical fatigue of age, in the successive failures of our plans, in the disappointments of our affections, in every crisis and revolution of life, Jesus. seems so necessary to us that it appears as if he grew more necessary every year, and were more wanted to-day than he was yesterday, and would be still more urgently wanted on the morrow. But, if he is thus indispensable in life, how much more will he be indispensable in death! Who could dare to die without him? What would death be, if he had not so strangely and so graciously died himself? Yet what is death compared with judgment? Surely most of all he will be wanted then. Wanted! Oh, it is something more than a want, when so unspeakable a ruin is inevitably before us! Want is a poor word to use, when the alternative is everlasting woe. Dearest Lord! the light of the sun and the air of heaven are not so needful to us as thou art; and our happiness, not merely our greatest, but our only, happiness, is in this dear necessity! Nobody is without Jesus in the world. Even the lost in hell are suffering less than they should have suffered, because of the ubiquity of his powerful Blood. Yet there are some nations who are so far without him, as to have no saving knowledge of him. Alas! there are still heathen lands in this fair world. There are tribes and nations who worship stocks and stones, who make gods of the unseen devils, who tremble before the powers of nature as if they were at once almighty and malicious, or who live in perpetual fear of the souls of the dead. There are some, whose sweetest social relations are embittered by the terrors and panics of their own false religions; and the innocent sunshine of delightful climates is not

-unfrequently polluted by human sacrifices. Yet shese people dwell in some of the loveliest portions of man’s inheritance. Amidst the savage sylvan sublimities of the Rocky Mountains, on the eastern declivities of the magnificent Andes, in the glorious gorges of the Himalayas, in the flowery coral-islands of the Pacific, or in those natural Edens laved by the warm seas of the Indian archipelago, human life is made inhuman by the horrors of a false religion. Let us take a picture from the banks of the Quango, in the interior of Africa. In speaking of the people, Dr. Livingstone says, “I have often thought, in travelling through their land, that it presents pictures of beauty which angels might enjoy. How often have I beheld, in still mornings, scenes the very essence of beauty, and all bathed in a quiet air of delicious warmth! Yet the occasional soft motion imparted a pleasing sensation of coolness as of a fan. Green grassy meadows, the cattle feeding, the goats browsing, the kids skipping, the groups of herdboys with miniature bows, ‘arrows, and spears; the women wending their way to the river with watering-pots poised jauntily on their heads; men sewing under the shady banians; and old gray-headed fathers sitting on the ground, with staff in hand, listening to the morning gossip, while others carry trees or branches to repair their hedges; and all this, flooded with the bright African sunshine, and the birds singing among the branches before the heat of the day has become intense, form pictures which can never be forgotten.”* Nevertheless, he — tells us that they cannot “enjoy their luxurious a:

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2 oe SS ME Ry acrete re pees¹ climate,” so completely and habitually do they fancy themselves to be in the remorseless power of the disembodied souls. Around our daily path, on the other hand, are strewn the memorials and blessings of Jesus. There is the morning Maas, and the evening Benediction. Three times a day the Angelus brings afresh its sweet tidings of the Incarnation. Our early meditation has left a picture of Jesus on our souls to last the livelong day. Our beads have to be told, and they too tell of Jesus. When we sink to rest at night, his own commendation of his Soul upon the Cross prompts the words which come most natural to our lips. Think of those poor heathen, wandering savior-less over their beautiful lands:—what if we were like to them? And what perchance would they have been if they had had but half our grace? There are many who call themselves after the name of Christ, who are yet outside the Church of Christ. Theirs is in every way a woeful lot. To be so near Jesus, and yet not to be of his blessed fold,—to be within reach of his unsearchable riches, and yet to miss of them, to be so blessed by his neighborhood, and yet not to be savingly united to him,—this is indeed a desolation. Their creed is words: it is not life. They know not the redeeming grace of Jesus rightly. They understand not the mysterious dispositions of his Sacred Heart. They disesteem his hidden Sacraments. They know God only wrongly and partially. Their knowledge is neither light nor love. Every thing about Jesus, the merest accessory of his Church, the faintest vestige of his benediction, the very shadow of his likeness, is of such surpassing importance, that for the least of these things the whole world would be but a paltry price to pay. The gift of being in the true Church is the greatest of all God’s gifts which can be given out of heaven. We cannot exaggerate its value. It is the pearl beyond price. Hence also the woefulness of being out of the Church is not to be told in words. I doubt if it is even to be compassed in thought. What, then, if we had so far lost Jesus, as to be out of his Church? Unbearable thought! yet not without some sweetness, as it makes us feel more keenly how indispensable he is to us, and what a merciful good-fortune he has given us to enjoy.

But even inside the Church there are wandering Cains, impenitent sinners who have gone out from the presence of God and wilfully abide there. ‘They have lived years in sin, and the chains of sinful habits are heavy upon them. They have resisted grace a thousand times, and it looks as if the divine inspirations were weary of whispering to hearts so deaf. Nothing seems to rouse them. ‘They never advert to God at all. Their conversion must be a perfect miracle. They are obdurate. They are living portions of hell moving up and down the earth. It is only by God’s mercy, and through the merits of Jesus, that we are any better than these obdurate sinners. Yet we rightly thank God, even while we tremble at the possibility, that he has prevented our falling into such a state. What thenif we were like to these? What if we were numbered among the hardened and impenitent? Whatif we were now even what we ourselves may have been in past years, before the strong arm of the Sacraments was held out to us, and we had the grace to lay hold of it and let it draw us safely to the shore? Yetif we were any of these, heathens, or heretics, or obdurate sinners, we should still be far better off than if there were no Jesus in the world; for all these classes of men are blessed by Jesus, are visited by his grace continually, and are for his sake surrounded by hopeful possibilities of which they themselves are not aware. How unspeakably dreadful then our life would be without Jesus, when to be a heathen or a heretic is a misery so terrible! |

But surely we have said enough to show the necessity of Jesus. Let us look at the world - without his Precious Blood. In the early ages of the earth, while the primitive traditions of Eden were still fresh and strong, and when God was from time to time manifesting himself in supernatural ways, the world drifted so rapidly from God that its sins began to assume a colossal magnitude. There was a complete confusion of all moral laws and duties. There was such an audacity in wickedness, that men openly braved God and threatened to besiege heaven. He sent strange judgments upon them, but they would not be converted. Scripture represents to us very forcibly by a human expression the terrific nature of their iniquity. It says that the Eternal repented of having done what he had eternally decreed to do, repented of having made man. At length the divine justice opened the floodgates of heaven, and destroyed all the dwellers upon earth, except eight persons; as if the issue of evil could not otherwise be staunched. This isa divine manifestation to us of the nature and character of evil. It multiplies itself. It tends to be gigantic, and to get from under control. It is always growing toward an open rebellion against the majesty of God. Everywhere on the earth the Precious Blood is warring down this evil in detail. Here it is obliterating it: here it is cutting off its past growths, or making its future growth slower or of less dimensions. There it is ciluting it with grace, or rendering it sterile, or wounding and weakening it, or making it cowardly and cautious. Upon all exhibitions of evil the action of the Precious Blood is incessant. At no time and in no place is it altogether inoperative. Let us see what the world would be like, if the Precious Blood withdrew from this ceaseless war with evil. |

It is plain that some millions of sins in a day ~ are hindered by the Precious Blood; and this is not merely a hindering of so many individual sins, but it is an immense check upon the momentum of sin. It is alsuv a weakening of habits of sin, and a diminution of tne consequences of sin. If then, the action of the Precious Blood | were withdrawn from tne world, sins would not only increase incaleulaoly in number, but the tyranny of sin would be fearfully augmented, and it would spread among a greater number of people. It would wax so bold tuat no one would be secure from the sins of others. It would be a constant warfare, or an intolesable vigilance, to preserve property and rights. alsehood would become so universal as almost to dissolve society; and the —

/ 4 on eee nee ier homes of domestic life woula ke turned into the wards either of a prison or a madhouse. We cannot be in the company of an atrocious criminal without some feeling of uneasiness and fear. We should not like to be lefé alone with him, even if his chains were not unfastened. But without the Precious Blood, such men would abound in the world. They might even become the majority. We know of ourselves, from glimpses God has once or twice given us in life, what incredible possibilities of wickedness we have in our souls. Civilization increases these possibilities. HEducation multiplies and magnifies our powers of sin-ning. Refinement adds a fresh malignity. Men would thus become more diabolically and unmixedly bad, until at last earth would be a hell on this side of the grave. There would also doubtless be new kinds of sins and worse kinds. Education would provide the novelty, and refinement would carry it into the region of the unnatural. All highly-refined and luxurious developments of heathenism have fearfully illustrated this truth. A wicked barbarian is like a beast. His savage passions are violent but intermitting, and _ his necessities of sin do not appear to grow. Their circle is limited. But a highly-educated sinner, without the restraints of religion, is like a demon. His sins are less confined to himself. They involve others in their misery. They require others to be offered as it were in sacrifice to them. Moreover, education, considered simply as an _ intellectual cultivation, propagates sin, and makes it more universal.

The increase of sin, without the prospects which the faith lays open to us, must lead to an increase of despair, and to an increase of it upon a gigantic scale. With despair must come rage, madness, violence, tumult, and bloodshed. Yet from what quarter could we expect relief in this tremendous suffering? We should be imprisoned in our own planet. The blue sky above us would be but a dungeon-roof.. The greensward beneath our feet would truly be the slab of our future tomb. Without the Precious Blood there is no intercourse between heaven\and earth. Prayer would be useless. Our hapless lot would be irremediable. ‘It has always seemed to me that it will be one of the terrible things in hell, that there are no motives for patience there. We cannot make the best of it. Why should we endure it? Endurance is an effort for a time; but this woe is eternal. Perhaps vicissitudes of agony might be a kind of field for patience. But there — are no such vicissitudes. Why should we endure, then? Simply because we must; and yet in eternal things this is not a sort of necessity which supplies a reasonable ground for patience. So in this imaginary world of rampant sin there would be no motives for patience. For death would be our only seeming relief; and that is only seeming, for death is any thing but an eternal sleep. Our impatience would become frenzy; and, if our constitutions were strong enough to prevent the frenzy from issuing in downright madness, it would grow into hatred of God, which is perhaps already less uncommon than we suppose.

An earth, from off which all sense of justice had

_ verished, would indeed be the most disconsolate

Pa Sa a of homes. The antediluvian earth exhibits only a tendency that way; and the same is true of the worst forms of heathenism. ‘The Precious Blood was always there. Unnamed, unknown, and unsuspected, the Blood of Jesus has alleviated every manifestation of evil which there has ever been, just as it is alleviating at this hour the punishments of hell. What would be our own individual case on svch a blighted earth as this? All our struggles to be better would be simply hopeless. There would be no reason why we should not give ourselves up to that kind of enjoyment which our corruption does substantially find in sin. The gratification of our appetites is something; and that lies on one side, whilé on the other side there is absolutely nothing. But we should have the worm of conscience already, even — though the flames of hell might yet be some years distant. T'o feel that we are fools, and yet lack the strength to be wiser,—is not this precisely the maddening thing in madness? Yet 1t would be our normal state under the reproaches of conscience, in a world where there was no Precious Blood. Whatever relics of moral good we might retain about us would add most sensibly to our wretchedness. Good people, if there were any, would be, as St. Paul speaks, of all men the most miserable: for they would be drawn away from the enjoyment of this world, or have their enjoyment of it abated by a sense of guilt and shame; and there would be no other world to aim at or to work for. To lessen the intensity of our hell without abridging its eternity would hardly be a cogent motive, when the temptations of sm

E 6* and the allurements of sense are so vivid and so strong.

What sort of love could there be, when we could have no respect? Even if flesh and blood made us love each other, what a separation death would be! We should commit our dead to the ground without a hope. Husband and wife would part with the fearfullest certainties of a reunion more terrible than their separation. Mothers would long to look upon their little ones in the arms of death, because their lot would be less woeful than if they lived to offend God with their developed reason and intelligent will. The sweetest feelings of our nature would become unnatural, and the most honorable ties be dishonored. Our best instincts would lead us into our worst dangers. Our hearts would have to learn to beat another way, in order to avoid the dismal consequences which our affections would bring upon ourselves and others. But it is needless to go further into these harrowing details. The world of the heart, without the Precious Blood, and | with an intellectual knowledge of God and his punishments of sin, is too fearful a picture to be drawn with minute fidelity.

But how would it fare with the poor in such a world? They are God’s chosen portion upon earth. He chose poverty himself, when he came to us. He has left the poor in his place, and they are never to fail from the earth, but to be his repre-.

sentatives there until the doom. But, if it were not for the Precious Blood, would any one love ~ them? Would an¥one have a devotion to them, and dedicate his life to merciful ingenuitics to

Le at alleviate their lot? If the stream of almsgiving is so insufficient now, what would it»be then? There would be no softening of the heart by grace; there would be no admission of the obligation to give away in alms a definite portion of our incomes; there would be no desire to expirate sin by munificence to the needy for the love — of God. The gospel makes men’s hearts large; and yet even under the gospel the fountain of almsgiving flows scantily and uncertainly. There would be no religious orders devoting themselves with skilful concentration to different acts of spiritual and corporal mercy. Vocation is a blossom to be found only in the gardens of the Precious _ Blood. But all this is only negative, only an absence of God. Matters would go much further in such a world as we are imagining.

Even in countries professing to be Christian, and at least in possession of the knowledge of the gospel, the poor grow to be an intolerable burden to the rich. They have to be supported by compulsory taxes; and they are in other ways a continual subject of irritated and impatient legislation. Nevertheless, it is due to the Precious Blood that the principle of supporting them is acknowledged. From what we read in heathen history,—even the history of nations renowned for political wisdom, for philosophical speculation, and for literary and artistic refinement,—it would not be extravagant for us to conclude that, if the circumstances of a country were such as to make the numbers of the poor dangerous to the rich, the rich would not scruple to destroy them, while it was yet in their power todoso. Just as men have had in Franve and England to war down bears and wolves, so would the rich war down the poor, whose clamorous misery and excited despair should threaten — them in the enjoyment of their power and their possessions. The numbers of the poor would be thinned by murder, until it should be safe for their masters to reduce them into slavery. The survivors would lead the lives of convicts or of beasts. History, I repeat, shows us that this is by no means an extravagant supposition. |

Such would be the condition of the world without the Precious Blood. As generations succeeded each other, original sin would go on developing those inexhaustible malignant powers which come from the almost infinite character of evil. Sin would work earth into hell. Men would become devils, devils to others and to themselves. Every thing which makes life tolerable, which counteracts any evil, which softens any harshness, which sweetens any bitterness, which causes the machinery of society to work smoothly, or which consoles any sadness,—is simply due to the Precious Blood of Jesus, in heathen as well as Christian lands. It changes the whole position of an offending creation to its Creator. It changes, if we may dare in such a matter to speak of change, the aspect of God’s immutable perfections toward his human children. It does not work merely in a spiritual sphere. It is not only prolific in temporal blessings, but it is the veritable cause of all temporal blessings whatsoever. We are all of us every moment sensibly enjoying the benignant influence of the Precious Blood.. Yet who thinks of all this? Why is the goodness of God so hidden, so imperceptible, so unsuspected? Perhaps because it is so universal and so excessive, that we should hardly be free agents if it pressed sensibly upon us always. God’s goodness is at once the most public of all his attributes, and at the same time the most secret. Has life a sweeter task than to seek it, and to find it out?

Men would be far more happy, if they separated religion less violently from other things. It is both unwise and unloving to put religion into a place by itself, and mark it off with an untrue distinctness from what we call worldly and unspiritual things. Of course there is a distinction, and a most. important one, between them; yet it is easy to make this distinction too rigid and to carry it - too far. Thus we often attribute to nature what is only due to grace; and we put out of sight the manner and degree in which the blessed mystery of the Incarnation affects all created things. But this mistake is forever robbing us of hundreds of motives for loving Jesus. We know how unspeakably much we owe to him; but we do not see that it is not much we owe him, but all, simply and absolutely all. We pass through times and places in life, hardly recognising how the sweetness of Jesus is sweetening the air around us and penetrating natural things with supernatural blessings.

Hence it comes to pass that men make too much of natural goodness. They think too highly of human progress. They exaggerate the moralizing powers of civilization and refinement, which, apart from grace, are simply tyrannies of the few over the many, or of the public over the individual soul,

Meanwhile they underrate the corrupting capabilities of sin, and attribute to unassisted nature many © excellences which it only catches, as it were by infection, from the proximity of grace, or by con-— tagion, from the touch of the Church. Even in religious or ecclesiastical matters they incline to _ measure progress, or test vigor, by other standards rather than that of holiness. These men will consider the foregoing picture of the world without the Precious Blood as overdrawn and too darkly shaded. They do not believe in the intense malignity of man when drifted from God, and still less are they inclined to grant that cultivation and refinement only intensify still further this malignity. They admit the superior excellence of Christian charity; but they also think highly of natural philanthropy. But has this philanthropy ever been found where the indirect influences of the true religion, whether Jewish or Christian, had not penetrated? We may admire the Greeks for their exquisite refinement, and the Romans for the wisdom of their political moderation. Yet look at the position of children, of servants, of slaves, and — of the poor, under both those systems, and see if, while extreme refinement only pushed sin to an extremity of foulness, the same exquisite culture did not also lead to a social cruelty and an individual selfishness which made life unbearable to — the masses. Philanthropy is but a theft from the — gospel, or rather a shadow, not a substance, and as — unhelpful as shadows are wont to be. Neverthalass: let us take this philanthropy at its word, and see © what the world would be like, with philanthropy”; instead of the Precious Blood.:

We will take the world as it is, with its present evils. What amount of alleviation can philanthropy bring, supposing there could, be such a thing without the example and atmosphere of the gospel? In the first place, what could it do for poverty? It would be dismayed by the number of the poor and appalled by the variety and exigency of their needs. All manner of intractable questions would rise up, for the solving of which its philosophy could furnish it with no simple principles. Men would have their own work to do, and their own business to attend to. It is not conceivable that mere philanthropy should make the administration of alms and the ministering to the poor a separate profession; and - selfdevotion upon any large scale is not to be thought of except as a corollary of the doctrine of the Cross. Thus, while the alms to be distributed would necessarily be limited, and the claims almost illimitable, there would be no means of proportioning relief. Unseen poverty is for the most part a worthier thing than the poverty which is seen: but who would with patient kindness and instinctive delicacy track shamefaced poverty to its obscure retirements? The loudest beggars would get most, the modest least. The highest virtue aimed at in the distribution of alms, and it is truly a high one, would be justice. Thus it would come to pass that those who by sin or folly had brought poverty upon themselves would obtain no relief at all: and so charity would cease to have any power to raise men above their past lives, or elevate them in the scale of moral worth. Eccentricity is a common accompaniment of misery; and that which is eccentric would hardly recommend itself to philanthropy, even if it did not seem to be a proof of insincerity. Christian charity can only sustain its equanimity by fixing its eyes upon a higher object than the misery which it relieves. What is not done for God in > this matter is done but uncertainly as well as scantily, and soon wearies of the unlovely and exacting poor. It is only the similitude of Jesus which beautifies poverty. Works of mercy are not attractive to hearts untouched by love. Moreover, no slight amount of the beneficence of Christian charity resides in its irregularity. Coming from the impulses of love, it has an ebb and flow which make it like the seeming unevenness and inequalities of outward providence; and this, which reason would account as a defect, turns out in practice a more real blessing than the formal equality and periodical punctuality of a merely conscientious and justice-loving benevolence. PhiJanthropy must have a sphere, a round, a beat. It must of necessity have in it somewhat of the political economist, and somewhat of the policeman. It must never allow individual sympathies to draw off its attention to the public welfare. Its genius must be legislative, rather than impulsive. Sudden misfortunes, a bad harvest, a commercial crisis, a sickly winter,—these things would sadly interfere with the calculations of philanthropy. If the amount of self-sacrifice is so small, when we have the example of our Lord, and the doctrine that alms redeem souls, and the actual obligation under pain of sin to set aside a portion of our incomes for the poor, what would it be if all these motives were withdrawn?

Let us consider bodily pain, and the agency of philanthropy in alleviating it. An immense amount of the world’s misery consists in bodily pain. There are few things more hard to bear. It is one of our unrealities that we write and speak lightly of it. We think it grand to do so. We think to show our manliness. But the truth is, there are few men who could not bear a breaking heart better than an aching limb. There are many points of view from which bodily pain is less easy to bear than mental anguish. It is less intelligible. It appeals less to our reason. If the consolations of moral wisdom are of no great cogency to hearts in sorrow, they are of none at all to those whose nerves are racked with pain. Mental sutfering has its peculiar extremities. To the few probably they exceed the extremities of bodily agony; but in the majority of cases they are less intolerable; and in all cases most intolerable when they have succeeded in deranging the bodily health and so adding that suffering to their own. Moreover, the excesses of mental anguish, while they visit chiefly the rarer and more sensitive minds, are always of brief duration: whereas it is fearful to think of the heights to which bodily torture can rise, and of the time extreme torment can last without producing either insensibility or death. But what can philanthropy do for bodily pain? Every one whose lot it is to lead a life of pain knows too well how little medical science avails to alleviate this particular kind of human suffering. It may do much in the way of prevention. Who knows?

For the pain we might have had, but have not had, is an unknown region. Let us give medical science the benefit of our ignorance. But, as to the pains which we have actually suffered, how often have they refused to abate one tittle of their severity at the bidding of science! When they have done so, how slowly have they yielded to the power of remedies, and how often have the remedies themselves brought new pains along with them! The pains which the human frame has to bear from various ailments are terrible in their number, their variety, and the horror which attaches to many of them: over this empire, which original sin has created, how feeble and how limited is the jurisdiction of medical science! Yet what could philanthropy do for bodily pain, except surround it with medical appliances and with physical comforts? Let us not underrate the consolation of the large-minded wisdom, the benevolent common sense, and the peculiar priestly kindness of an intelligent physician. It is very great. Neither let us pretend to make light of the alleviations of an airy room, of a soft bed, of well-prepared food, of a low voice and a noiseless step, and of those attentions which are beforehand with our irritability by divining our wants at the right moment. Nevertheless, when the daily pressure of bodily pain goes on for weeks and months, when all life which is not illness is but a vacillating convalescence, what adequate or abiding consolation can we find, except in supernatural things, in the motives of the faith, in union with Jesus, in that secret experimental knowledge of God which makes us at times find chastisement so sweet?

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Pal Wiad Fry Fiat

It is the characteristic of mental suffering to be for the most part beyond the reach of philanthropy. Every heart knows its own bitterness. That part of a mental sorrow, which can be expressed, is generally the part which rankles least. The suffering of it depends mainly on feelings which belong to individual character, feelings which can hardly be stated, and which, if stated, could not be appreciated, even if they were not altogether misunderstood. Who has not often wondered at the almost invariable irritation produced in unhappy persons by set and formal soothing? There is a pity in the tone of voice which wounds rather than heals. The very composure of features aggravates us by making us feel more vividly the reality of our grief. We have long since exhausted for ourselves all the available topics of consolation. Not in gradual procession, but all at once like a lightning’s flash, all the motives and wisdoms, which occupy my unsuffering friend an hour to enumerate, were laid hold of, fathomed, and dismissed by my heart, which suffering had awakened to a speed and power of sensitiveness quite incredible. Job is not the only person who has been more provoked by his comforters than by his miseries. Even the daily wear and tear of our hearts in common life cannot be reached by outward consolation, unless that consolation comes from above and is divine. Philanthropy, with the best intentions, can never get inside the heart. There are sufferings there too deep for any thing but religion either to reach or to appreciate; and such sufferings are neither exceptional nor uncommon. There are few men who have not more than one of them. If we take away the great sorrow upon Calvary, how dark and how unbearable a mystery does all sorrow become! Kindness is sweet, even to the sorrowing, because of its intentions: it is not valuable because of its efficacy, except when it is the graceful minister of the Precious Blood. |

I reckon failure to be the most universal unhappiness on earth. Almost everybody and every thing are failures,—failures in their own estimation, even if they are not so in the estimation of others. Those optimists who always think themselves successful are few in number, and they for the most part fail in this at least, namely, that they cannot persuade the rest of the world of their success. Philanthropy can plainly do nothing here, even if it were inclined to try. But philanthropy is a branch of moral philosophy, and would turn away in disdain from an unhappiness which it could prove to be unreasonable, even while it acknowledged it to be universal. It is simply true that few men are successful; and of those few it is rare to find any who are satisfied with their own success. The multitude of men live with a vexatious sense that the promise of their lives remains unfulfilled. Hither outward circumstances have been against them, or they have been misappreciated, or they have got out of their grooves unknowingly, or they have been the victims of injustice. What must all life be but a feverish disappointment, if there be no eternity in view? ‘The religious man is the only successful man. Nothing fails with him. Every shaft reaches the mark, if the mark be God. He has wasted no energies. Every hope has been fulfilled beyond his expectations. Every effort has been even disproportionately rewarded. Every, means has turned out marvellously to be an end, because it had God in it, who is our single end. In piety, every battle is a victory, simply because it is a battle. The completest defeats have somewhat of triumph in them; for it is a positive triumph to have stood up and fought for God atall. In short, no life is a failure which is lived for God; and all lives are failures which are lived for any other end. If it is part of any man’s disposition to be peculiarly and morbidly sensitive to failure, he must regard it as an additional motive to be religious. Piety is the only invariable, satisfactory, genuine success.

If philanthropy turns out to be so unhelpful a thing in the difficulties of life, will it be more helpful at the bed of death? Death is the failure of nature. There is no help then, except in the supernatural. Philanthropy cannot help us to die ourselves; nor can it take away our sorrow for the deaths of others. Without religion death is a problem and a terror. It is only by the light of faith that we see it to be a punishment commuted by divine love into a crown and areward. The sense of guilt, the uneasiness in darkness, the. shrinking from the unknown, the shapeless shadows of an unexplored world, the new panic of the soul, the sensible momentary falling off into an abyss, the inevitable helplessness, the frightening transition from a state of change to one of endless fixedness,—how is philanthropy to meet such difficulties as these? Truly, in the atinosphere of death all lights go out except the lamp of faith.

But we have spoken of the actual miseries of life, and the condition we should be in, if we took the consolations of philanthropy instead of those of the Precious Blood. This however is in reality not a fair view of the case. Great as the actual miseries of life are, the Precious Blood is continually making them very much less than they otherwise would be. It diminishes poverty by multiplying alms. It lessens the evil of pain, and - to some extent even its amount, by the grace of patience and the appliances of the supernatural life; not to speak of miraculous operations, occur-ring perhaps hourly upon the earth, through the touch of relics, crosses, and other sacred objects. The amount of temporal evil which would otherwise have come upon the earth, but is daily absorbed by the Sacrament of penance and by the virtue of penance, must be enormous. In the case of mental suffering, besides the many indirect alleviations brought to it by the Precious Blood, we must remember the vast world of horrors arising from unabsolved consciences, horrors which the Sacraments are annihilating daily. Failure is indeed the rule of human enterprise, and. success is the exception. Yet there are numberless counterbalancing blessings won by the interest of the Mother of God, by the intercession of the saints, by the intervention of angels, by the Sacrifice of the Mass, and by the sacramental residence of Jesus upon earth, which would not exist but for the Precious Blood. Finally, as to death, whatever light is cast upon it is from the Blood of

Jesus. Were it not for Jesus, the dark hour would be darkened with an Egyptian darkness. It has something of the glory of a sunset round it now, and the glory is the refulgence of the Saviour’s Blood. But, in this world, manner is often a more substantial thing than matter. We often care less for the thing done than for the manner in which it is done, less for the gift than for the way in which the gift is given. Now let us picture to ourselves an imaginary philanthropic city. Its palaces shall be hospitals, hospitals for every form of disease which is known to medical science. Its business shall not be politics, but the administration of benevolent societies. Its rich population shall divide and subdivide itself into endless committees, each of which shall make some human misery its specialty. Its intellect shall be occupied in devising schemes of philanthropy, in inventing new methods and fresh organizations, and in bringing to perfection the police, the order, the comfort, the accommodation, the pliability, of existing beneficent institutions. The strangest successes shall be attained with the blind, the deaf and dumb, and the insane. Moreover, in this city, which the world has never seen, the philanthropy shall be the most genial and good-humoured of all the philanthropies which the world has had the good fortune to see. Yet who that has ever seen the most estimable, easy-going, and conscientious board of Poor-Law guardians can doubt but that, on the whole, considerable dryness, stiffness, woodenness, theoretical pugnacity, benevolent pertinaciousness, vexatious generalizations, and irritable surprise at the unmanageable prejudiced poor, would characterize this philanthropic city? Misery cannot be relieved on rules of distributive justice. Masses will not organize themselves under theories. Hearts will not attain happiness through clear convictions that they ought to be happy. Individual misery has an inveterate habit of dictating its own consolations. The most open- - hearted benefactors would be met by suspicion. A needy man can outwit most committees. Ma- -chinery for men gets soon choked up by multitudes, and for the most part blows up and maims its excellent inventors. There are few who can handle a large army; yet that is easy work compared to the question of the management of the poor. Moreover, when the best men have done their best, there always remains that instinct in the poor, which makes them see only enemies in the rich; and that instinct is too strong for the collective wisdom of all the philanthropists i in the world.

Iam far from saying that Christian charity is perfect, or that the duties of catholic mercy, whether monastic or secular, leave nothing to be desired. Everywhere the scantiness of the alms of the rich is the standing grievance of the priest. Everywhere the breadth and activity of human misery are baffling and outrunning the speed and generosity of charity. Nevertheless, I verily believe that one convent of Sisters of Charity, or one house of St. Camillus, would do more actual, more successful work, in a huge European capital, than would be done in the whole of such a philanthropic city as we have been imagining. Out of bates, Gal aes the love of Jesus comes the love of so Land, _ od it is just the love of souls which effects that m marvellous of all Christian transformations, the change of philanthropy into charity. Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the side of Jacob’s well, or with the Magdalen in the pharisee’s house, inspires a spirit totally different from that which animates the most benevolent philosopher. It is a spirit of supernatural love, a spirit of imitation of Jesus, a spirit of gentle eagerness and affectionate sacrifice, which gives to the exercise of charity a winning sweetness and a nameless: charm which are entirely its own. The love of individual sou!s is purely a Christian thing. No language can describe it to those who do not feel it. If men see it, and do not sympathize with it, they so mistake it that they call it proselytism. They attribute to the basest motives that which comes precisely from the very highest. Indeed, from a political or philosophical point of view those things which are the most Christlike in charity are the very things which men condemn as mischievous, if not immoral. In their view harm is done by treating men as individuals, not — as masses. Alms are squandered. Unworthy objects get them. The misery which punishes vice is the object of love, as well as that which comes of innocent misfortune. Charity cares too little about being deceived: it is too impulsive, too irregular, too enthusiastic; above all, it does not make the tranquillity and well-being of the state its sole or primary object. Evidently, then, the manners and gestures of charity in action are wholly different from those of philanthropy in ¥ action. The one succeeds with men, and the other does not; and the success of charity is owing to the spirit which it imbibes from the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ.

Here are many words to prove a simple thing, | and a thing which needed no proving. JBut it. brings home to us more forcibly and more in detail the necessity of the Precious Blood. But, after all, the grand necessity of it is the necessity of having our sins forgiven, the necessity of loving above all created things our most dear God and Father. Let us think fora moment. The depth of summer silence is all around. Those tall chestnuts stand up, muffled down to the feet with their heavy mantles of dark foliage, of which not a leaf is stirring. There is no sound of water, no song of bird, no rustling of any creature in the grass. Those banks of white cloud have no perceptible movement. ‘The silence has only been broken for a moment, when the clock struck from the hidden church in the elm-girdled field, and the sound was so softened and stifled with leaves that it seemed almost like some cry natural to the woodland. We_ do not close our eyes. Yet the quiet of the scene has carried us beyond itself. What are time and © earth, beauty and peace, tous? What is any thing to us, if our sins be not forgiven? Is not that our one want? Does not all our happiness come of that one want being satisfied? The thought of its being unsatisfied is not to be endured. Time, so quiet and stationary as this summer noontide, makes us think of eternity, and gives us a shadowy idea of it. But the thought of eternity is not to be faced, if our sins be not forgiven. But an eternal ruin—is that a possible thing? Possible! yes, inevitable, if our sins be not forgiven. The loss of another’s soul is a hideous thing to contemplate. It broadens as we look at it, until our head gets confused, and God is obscured. Itisa possibility we turn away from: what then can we do with the fact? We think of the sorrows and the joys of a soul, of the beautiful significance of its life, of its manifold loveliness and generosity, and of all the good that glittered like broken erystals amidst its evil. How many persons loved it! How many lives of others it sweetened and brightened! How attractive often in its good-humored carelessness about its duty! God loved it: it was the idea of his love, an eternal idea. It - came into the world with his love about it like a glory. It swam in the light of his love, as the world swims in radiance day and night. It kas gone into darkness. It is a ruin, a wreck, a failure, an eternal misery. Sin! What is sin, that it should do all this? Why was there any sin? Why is sin’sin at all? We turn to the majesty of God to learn. Instinctively we lift up our eyes to that noonday sun, and it only blinds us. Sin is sin, because God is God. There is no getting any further in that direction. That soul, some soul, is lost. What we think cannot be put into words. But our own soul! That soul which is ourself! Can we by any amount of violence think of it aslost? No! our own perdition is absolutely unthinkable. Hope disables us from thinking it. But we know that it is possible. We sometimes feel the possible verging into the probable. We know how it can be lost, and perceive actual dangers. We know how alone it can avoid being lost; and in that direction matters do not look satisfactory. But it must not be lost: it shall not be lost: it cannot be lost. The thought of such a thing is madness. See, then, the tremendous necessity of the Precious Blood. Those heartless chestnut-trees! how they stand stooping over the uncut meadows, brooding in the sunshine, as if there were no problems in the world, no uneasiness in hearts! They make us angry. It is their very stillness which has driven us on these thoughts. It is their very beauty which makes the idea of eternal wretchedness somewhat more intolerable. Yet let us be just to them: they have also driven somewhat further into our souls the understanding of that unutterable necessity of the

Precious Blood. How precious is every drop of that dear Blood! How far more wonderful than all that the natural world contains is each one of those miracles which — it is working by thousands every day! How would creation be enriched by one drop of it, seeing that infinite creations could not attain to the value of | it! and how would the history of creation be glorified by one manifestation of its omnipotent mercy! What are we to think, then, of its prodigality? Yet this prodigality is not a mere magnificence of divine love. It is not simply a divine © romance. It would indeed be adorable if it were ~ only so. But to my mind it is even yet more divine that this prodigality should itself be an | absolute necessity, and, therefore, in the majeueay: calmness and equability of the divine counsels, oa a prodigality at all.

We have thought of the world without the Precious Blood; let us think of it now with only partial or intermitting access to its saving fountains.

Man fell, and God’s justice was blameless in his fall. God’s mercy strove to hinder man from falling, and yet he fell. God did every thing for man, short of destroying his liberty. The very act of creation was a magnificence of mercy. But the creation of man, not in a state of nature, but in a state of grace, was a glorious love, which could proceed only from a grandeur as inexhaustible as that of God. Man fell, and God was justified. Adam’s descendants might have found therselves hanging over the dread abyss of eternal woe. They might have felt in themselves a violent propension to evil which only just stopped short of an actual necessity. The prospect before them would have been terrible, and yet they would not have one intelligent word to say against it. If their minds were not darkened, they would have seen that not the justice only, but even the love of God stood unblemished in the matter. Nevertheless, how unbearable the prospect! Earth would be almost worse than hell, because it would be hell without the miserable peace of its irrevocable certainty. It would be worse, in the same way that a hopeless struggle is worse than the death which follows. Truly there might still be hope, but then it would be such a hopeless hope! Now let us ‘suppose that God in the immensity of his com- _ passion should tell men, in this extremity of wretchedness, that he would assume their nature, die for them upon the cross, and purchase for them by his Precious Blood the inestimable grace of baptism. They should have another trial given to them. They, who had blamed Adam, should have a chance of their own. They should be regenerated, spiritually born again by the most stupendous of miracles. They should be justified, and sanctified in their justification. The guilt of original sin should be altogether remitted to them. Not a shadow of it should remain. Even their liability to temporal punishment for that sin in purgatory should ‘be remitted. God’s justice should be satisfied in full. But the grace of baptism is far more than this. It restores us to a supernatural standing. It makes us God’s adopted children. It does not merely rescue us from hell, and leave us to spend an eternity of mere natural blessedness by the streams and among the fruit-trees of some terrestrial paradise. It entitles us to possess and enjoy God forever. Moreover, this Sacrament stores our souls with most mysterious graces. lt infuses celestial habits into us, and endows us with those unfathomable wonders, the gifts of the Holy Ghost. No miracle can be more complete, or more instantaneous, or more gratultous, than the grace of baptism.

This, then, should be the work of the Blood of God; and no more than this. Yet would it not seem to men to be an outpouring of the most superabounding love? Would it not open to the wisest of men new depths in the character of God, and be a new revelation of unsuspected goodness ‘inhim? The most ardent and expansive of the angelic intelligences might have contemplated God for ages and ages, and yet their unassisted science would never have dreamed of such a mystery as the Incarnation, of such a redemption as the price of the Precious Blood. Yet does it not make us tremble to think of no more grace after baptism? Munificent as is that justifying grace, an invention only possible to a goodness which is simply infinite, what, with our experience of ourselves and our knowledge of others, would be our dismay if that one glorious access to the Precious Blood were the only one allowed to us! Surely a more frequent access to it, while it is on God’s side a marvellous extension of a gratuitous indulgence, is on our side nothing less than an imperious necessity. Blessed be the inexhaustible compassions of the Most High, we have incessant access to the Precious Blood. Our seeking of our own interest is made to be the glory of God. Our eager supply of our own needs is counted as an act of sweetest love to him, the more sweet the more eager it shall be. Yet it is difficult to bring this gracious truth home to ourselves, unless we put imaginary cases of a more restricted use of the Precious Blood. It would be a great thing to be forgiven once more after baptism; whereas we are being endlessly forgiven, and with as much facility the thousandth time as we were the first. No greater amount of attrition is needed to make our thousandth absolution valid than was required for our first. It would be a huge mercy if almost all sins were capable — of absolution, but some few were reserved as unpardonable after baptism. Even this would seem to the angels a wonderful stretch of the divine forbearance. What then must it be to have no sins, and no reiteration of sins, exempted from the jurisdiction of that dear ransom of our souls? At first sight it looks as if such an inveterate compassion lowered the character of God and impaired the lustre of his exceeding sanctity. In _ this matter, as in others, God must be loved in order to be understood. It is the heart which must illuminate the head. Accustomed as we are to the free participation of the Blood of Jesus, how terrible seems the idea of men going about the world, visible portions of hell, because they have committed some sin exempted from absolution! To have met Cain upon his passionate wanderings over the unpeopled earth would have been less terrible; since we are not forbidden to have hope for him. But here, again, this incessant pardoning, this repetition of absolution, this endless sprinkling of our souls with the Precious Blood,—is it not a necessity to our happiness, a necessity to our salvation? Astonishing as is the prodigality of the Blood of Jesus, could any conceivable restriction have been endured? It would have been something more than a diminution of our privileges: it would have been a bar to our salvation.

But let us suppose no sins were exempted from the pardon of the Precious Blood, but only that that price of our redemption was hard to get. God might have willed that it should only be obtained in Jerusalem, and that distant nations must seek it by long and painful pilgrimage. Of a truth, it would be glad tidings to a sinner, that at the eastern end of the Mediterranean there was a mysterious guarded well, which contained some of our Savior’s Blood, the touch of which forgave sin to those who possessed certain inward dispositions, but only forgave it on the spot, in Jerusalem itself. Most willingly would the children of the faith undergo the toilsome pilgrimage, rather than endure the miserable weight of sin. Yet what would happen to the sick, who were too weak to go, o1 to the aged, who had delayed too long, or to the dying, who have nothing before them but despair? How would it fare with the sorely-tempted poor, if absolution cost so dear? Shall the rich, or the young, or the robust, only be forgiven? What misery and disturbance also would be there in the social relations of life, while multitudes were evermore impulsively pouring themselves out of their homes in caravans of pilgrimage! Or what an intolerable inhumanity would prisons be, if the law of man could secure the eternal as well as the temporal ruin of its offenders! Still, even this single well at Jerusalem would be a mercy of God so great, that it would be incredible, un. imaginable, unless it were revealed. Or, again, we might have to gain access to the Blood of our Redeemer by going through considerable bodily pain, or passing some severe ordeals. No one could complain of this. It would be a mercy beyond the uttermost mercies of human law. Oh, does it not make us weep to think then of our own carelessness, and backwardness, and dilatory, lukewarm indifference to that most dear Blood which we can have always and everywhere!? We have come to slight God’s mercies because his amazing goodness has made them to be so common. We have not even to seek the Blood of Jesus. It comes to us: it pleads with us: it entreats us to accept it: it complains; it waits; it Q* knocks; it cries out to us: it all-but furces itself upon our acceptance. |

But all this mysterious condescension of God is not the needless outburst of an excessive love. Alas for our shame that we should have to say it! it is a downright necessity for our salvation. Look at the innumerable confessionals of the Church, at the hundreds of daily death-beds, at the countless retreats of suffering poverty. Is the seeking for the Precious Blood what it ought to be’ Nay, do men’s hearts soften at its tender, eloquent pleading? Have not sinners to be constrained to come to Jesus? and even of those who are constrained to come to him, how many are there who will not let him save them? ‘One saint speaks of souls flocking daily to perdition like the flakes of a snow-storm, blinding from their multitude. Another tells us of visions, in which she saw souls trooping constantly into the gates of hell, like the rabble of autumnal leaves swept into thick eddies by the wind. Yet not a soul gets there before whom the Precious Blood has not stood again and again, like the angel before Balaam’s ass, and tried to drive it back. If, then, when all access is so easy, and when persuasion mounts almost to compulsion, souls are so backward in having recourse to the Precious Blood, what would be the case if any of these imaginary difficulties of ours were allowed to come in the way? Alas! so it is, that it is necessary to salvation that our salvation should be easy.

Let us tease ourselves with one more imaginary case, and then we will have done. To many persons the great burden of life is the secret of predestination; and most men have at times felt the uncertainty of salvation as a weight upon their spirits. To a good man, whatever increases this uncertainty is a grave misfortune. Without a private revelation, no one can at any time say absolutely that he is in a-state of grace, not even. although he may just have received absolution in the est -dispasitions in his power. Nevertheless he feels a moral certainty about it, which for all practical purposes is as good as an assurance. We are not then always absolutely certain that the Precious Blood has been applied to our souls in absolution. But whence is it that we derive that moral certainty which is our consolation and our rest? From the fact that, when properly received, the operation of the Precious Blood is infallible. What an unhappiness it would be, if this were not so! The power of the Blood of Jesus is never doubtful, its work never incom. plete. Moreover, God has gathered up its virtue in a very special way into certain Sacraments. Iie has made its application almost visible. He has tied its miracles as it were to time, and place, and matter, and form, so as to bring us as near to acertainty of our being in a state of grace as is compatible with his laws and our own best interests. If we could be no more sure that we had validly received absolution in confession, than we can be sure we have ever made an act of perfect contrition, we should be in a sad plight, and go through our spiritual exercises and our inward trials in a very downcast and melancholy way. Our state would be, at least in that one respect,. something like the state of those outside the

Church, who are not living members of Christ, nor partakers in his saving jurisdiction in the Sacrament of penance. Ifthe Precious Blood had been shed, and yet we had no priesthood, no Sacraments, no jurisdiction, no sacramentals, no mystical life of the visible unity of the Church,— life, so it seems, would be almost intolerable. This is the condition of those outside the Church; and certainly as we grow older, as our experience widens, as our knowledge of ourselves deepens, as our acquaintance with mankind increases, the less hopeful do our ideas become regarding the salvation of those outside the Roman Church. We make the most we can of the uncovenanted mercies of God, of the invisible soul of the Church, of the doctrine of invincible ignorance, of the easiness of making acts of contrition, and of the visible moral goodness among men; and yet what are these but straws in our own estimation, if our own chances of salvation had to lean their weight upon them? They wear out, or they break down. They are fearfully counterweighted by other considerations. We have to draw on our imaginations in order to fill up the picture. They are but theories at best, theories unhelpful except to console those who are forward to be deceived for the sake of those they love,—theories often very fatal by keeping our charity in check and interfering with that restlessness of converting love in season and out of season, and that impetuous agony of prayer, upon which God may have made the salvation of our friends depend. Alas! the more familiar we ourselves become with the operations of grace, the further we advance into the spiritual life, the more we meditate on the character of God, and taste in contemplation the savor of his holiness, the more to our eyes does grace magnify itself inside the Church, and the more dense and forlorn becomes. the darkness which is spread over those outside. Yet not indeed to this state,—God forbid!—but to a painful partial resemblance of it, should we be brought, if God’s tender considerate love had not as it were localized the Precious Blood in his stupendous Sacraments. Truly the Sacraments are an invention of love, yet are they not also as truly a necessity of our salvation, not only as applying the Precious Blood to our souls, but as enabling faith to ascertain its application? Would not the divine assurance of our salvation be a very heaven begun on earth? Yet the Sacraments are the nearest approach to such a sweet assurance as the love of our heavenly Father saw to be expedient for the multitude of his children.

The Precious Blood, then, is the greatest, the most undeniable, of our necessities. There is no true life without it. Yet, and it very much concerns us to bring this home to ourselves, all creation could not merit it. Necessary as it is, it is in no way due to us. Itisnotaright. God’s love toward us had been a romance already. It was wonderful what he had done to us. It is almost incredible even now when we think of it. We know the unspeakable tenderness of our Creator, how placable he is, how soft of heart, how prone to forgive, how easy to be persuaded. We know that the needs of his creatures plead with him more eloquently than we can tell. Yet no necessities could have claimed the Precious Blood, no merits could have won it, no prayers could have obtained it. Im truth, no created intelligence of angel or of man could have imagined it.

Were heaven to be filled with saints in endless millions, as holy as St. Joseph, the Baptist, or the Apostles, and were their holiness allowed to merit, not in millions of ages could their united merits have esrned one drop of the Precious Blood. If all those starry spirits in the godlike realm of angels had consented to sink their grandeurs in the penalties of hell for thousands of revolving epochs, or even had they consented to be annihilated in sacrifice to the justice of God, never could they have merited the Precious blood. If all the merits, graces, gifts, and powers of our dearest Mother had been possible without the Precious Blood, they might have ascended as sweet incense before God forever, and yet in no possible duration of time could they have merited the Precious Biood. Not all these together, saints, angels, and Mary, with all their glorious holiness, growing yet _ more glorious in endless ages, could have bought one drop of Precious blood, or merited that mystery of the Incarnation whose wonderful redeeming power resides in the Precious Blood. Oh, how this thought overwhelms my heart with joy,—to have to rest upon the free sovereignty of God instead of my own wretched littleness, to be always thus thrown upon the gratuitous magnificence of God, to be forever and forever owing all, and such an ail, to Jesus! Merciful God! this is the joy of earth which is nearest to a joy of heaven!

Footnotes

1. Travels, p- 441. ↩