Chapter III. The Empire of the Precious Blood

Tue life of God is very vast. It is a thing to be thought rather than to be spoken of, nay, to be seen in the mind rather than to be thought. It is very vast. It seems to grow vaster every day. We kneel down before it in our prayers, as a man might kneel to pray on a great sea-shore. God lies before us as an ocean of infinite life. We kneel upon the shore. But behind us rolls the same great ocean. Suddenly it is at our right hand and on our left. We look upward, but the sky is gone. An ocean rolls where there was sky when we first knelt down to pray. The boundless waters stretch above us like a living canopy. The shore on which we kneel gives way. It is no shore. We are kneeling on the waters. The same eternal ocean rolls beneath us. We are hemmed in on every side by this ever-blessed ocean of infinite being. How full it is of burning life, how masterful, how soundless, how unchangeable!

The life of God is very vast. I feel it overawing me more and more, as I go on thinking of it. God is very simple. He is simply God. He is to be adored in his simplicity. His perfections are himself, and he is simply all his perfections. His perfections are not manifold. They are but one. He is himself his only perfection. His attributes are our ways of looking at him, of speaking of him, of worshipping him. His perfections are not separate from each other, nor from himself. We cannot comprehend so simple a simplicity. We.

have not purity of understanding sufficient to apprehend so infinitely pure an idea. It is on this account that we take the idea of God to pieces in our own minds, and contemplate and love and worship him from a thousand- points of view. We have no other way of dealing with the incomprehensible. Speaking then of the divine perfections in this sense, it appears to me that none of his attributes call forth so much worship in my heart as his life. His life amazes me; and yet it melts me with love. He seems to me least like an infinitely perfect creature, when I contemplate him as life; and when he is least like an infinitely perfect creature, he is most like the indescribable God. That view of him is less distinct than many others; but it appears to my mind more true on that very account.

The life of God is very vast. This is the thought which comes to me when I put before myself the " empire of the Precious Blood. The life of God is blessedness in his own self. It is the joy of his unity, the fact of his simplicity. Once he was without creatures; and the calm jubilee of his immutable life went on. There could be no impulses in that which had had no beginning. His life started from no point, and reached to no— point; therefore it could have no momentum: that is a created idea. He was imperturbable bliss. What can be more self-collected than immensity? His infinite tenderness comes from his being imperturbable, though at first sight there seems to be contradiction between the two. When he was without creatures, they were not a want to him. His unbeginning life was unspeakably centred in himself, and so went on. He became, what he had not been before, a Creator. But no change passed upon him. All his acts had been in himself before: now he acted outside himself. But no change passed upon him. Hitherto all his acts, which were the Generation of the Son and the Procession of the Holy Ghost, had been necessary: now his creative acts were free. Still no change passed upon him. Still the calm jubilee of the unbeginning life went on. As it was before creation, so it was after it, a jubilant life of unutterable simplicity. These are things we can only learn by loving. Without love they are merely hard words. God worked, and then God rested. Yet creation had been no interruption of his everlasting rest. Nevertheless, that Sabbath of God, of which Scripture tells us, is a wonderful mystery, and one full of repose to toiling, seeking, straining creatures. What was that seventh day’s rest? ‘To the untoiling Creator preservation is as much an effort as creation, and quite as great a mystery. But even creation, the evoking of being out of nothing, was not suspended. Human souls are forever being created, created out of nothing. Perhaps new species of animals may be so also. What then was his rest? Perhaps it is only another name for that expansive love, which as it were arrested itself to bless its beautiful creation out of its extreme contentment and ineffable complacency. G 9

Still the vast life of God goes on. He was free to create; and he made his creation free. Perhaps those two things have much to do with each other. -He made himself an empire outside himself, and crowned himself over it, the kingliest of kings. God is very royal. Royalty is the seal which is set on all his perfections, and by which we see how they are one. He enfranchised his empire, and then began to reign. Still there was no change. His free people dethroned him. Oftentimes now in the depths of prayer the love of his saints beholds him sitting in dust and ashes an uncrowned king, as it were piteously. But all this is embraced within his vast life without a shadow of change. It was part of the eternal idea of creation, that one of the Divine Persons should assume a created nature. The Second Person did so. He has carried it to heaven, and placed it in the bosom of the Holy Trinity for endless worship. This has displaced nothing. The vast life goes on. No pulse beats in it. No succession belongs to it. No novelty happens to it. The Precious Blood of the Son’s Human Nature would have been a pure beauty, a pure treasure of God, an unimaginable created life, if there had been no sins. But there was sin, and the destiny of the Precious Blood was changed. But there was no change in the divine life. The Precious Blood became the ransom for sin. The Precious Blood had to conquer back to God his revolted empire. It had to crown him again, and to be his imperial vicegerent. What stupendous mutabilities are these! Yet there is no change in the vast life of God. Its very vastness makes it incapable of change. It has no ex-yous Ass: 2: - Oe Tg a eee ae a a a ae periences. It goes through nothing., It cannot begin, or end, or suffer. It works while it rests; and it rests while it works; and it neither works nor rests, but simply lives, simply is. O adorable life of God! blessed a thousand thousand times be thou in the darkness of thy glory, in the incomprehensible sweetness of thy mystery!

To us the Precious Blood is inseparable from the life of God. It is the Blood of the Creator, the agent of redemption, the power of sanctification. Moreover, to our eyes it is a token of something which we should call a change in God, if we did not know that there could not be change in him. It seems to give God a past, to recover for him something which he had lost, to be a second thought, to remedy a failure, to be a new ornament in the Divinity, a created joy in the very centre of the uncreated jubilee. The empire of the Precious Blood is due to its position in the history and economy of creation, or, in other words, to its relation to the adorable life of God. It seems to explain the eternity before creation, inasmuch as it reveals to us the eternal thoughts of God, his compassionate designs, his primal decrees, and his merciful persistence in carrying out his designs of love. It makes visible much that in its own nature was invisible. It casts a light backward, even upon the uttermost recesses of that old eternity. Just as some actions disciose more of a man’s character than other actions, so the Precious Blood is in itself a most extensive and peculiarly vivid revelation of the character of God. The fact of his redeeming us, and, still more, the way in which he has redeemed us, discloses to us his reason for creating us; and when we get some view, however transient and indistinct, of his reason for creating us, we seem to look into the life he leads as God. The light is so light that it is darkness; but the darkness is knowledge, and the knowledge love.

We are to speak of the empire of the Precious Blood. But we must first see in what its royal rights are founded. The Precious Blood ministers to all the perfections of God. It is the one grand satisfaction of his justice. It is one of the most excellent inventions of his wisdom. It is the principal feeder of his glory. It is the repose of his purity. It is the delight of his mercy. It is the participation of his power. It is the display of his magnificence. It is the covenant of his patience. It is the reparation of his honor. It is the tranquillity of his anger. It is the imitation of his fruitfulness. It is the adornment of his sanctity. It is the expression of his love. But, above all, it ministers to the dominion of God. It is a conqueror and conquers for him. It invades the kingdom of darkness, and sweeps whole regions with its glorious light. It humbles the rebellious, and brings home the exiles, and reclaims the aliens. It pacifies; it builds up; it gives laws; it restores old things; it inaugurates new things. It grants amnesties; and dispenses pardons; and it wonderfully administers the kingdom it has wonderfully reconquered. It is the crown, the sceptre, and the throne of God’s invisible dominion..

I said its rights were founded in its relation to the life of God; and its relation has to do especially with that which is kingly and paternal in the character of the Creator The dominion of God is part of his invisible beauty; but the Precious Blood is the scarlet mantle of his eternal royalty. God became a king by becoming a Creator. It was thus he gained an empire over which his insatiable love might rule. We are obliged to speak of creation as if it were a gain to Him who has all fulness in himself. He created because of his perfections, because he was God, because he was the infinitely blessed God that he is. ‘Temporal things came into existence because there were eternal things. Time is a growth of the ungrowing eternity. Nature is very beautiful, whether we think of angelic or of human nature. Created nature is a shadow of the Uncreated Nature, so real and so bright that we cannot think of it without exceeding reverence. Yet God created neither angels nor men in a state of nature. This is, to my mind, the most wonderful and the most suggestive thing which we know about God. He would have no reasonable nature, even from the very first, which should not be partaker of his Divine Nature. This is the very meaning of a state of grace. He as it were clung to his creation while he let it go. He would not leave it to breathe for one instant in a merely natural state. The very act of creation was full of the fondness of maternal jealousy. It was, to speak in a human way, as if he feared that it would wander from him, and that his attractions would be too mighty for the littleness of finite beings. He made it free; yet he embraced it so that it should be next to impossible it g* should leave him. He gave it liberty, yet almost overpowered its liberty with caresses the very moment that he gave it. Oh, that Majesty of God, which seems clothed with such worshipful tranquillity in the eternity before creation, how passionate, how yearning, how mother-like, how full of inventions and excesses, it appears in the act of creation!

God lost nothing by the fall of angels or of men. Yet, in our way of thinking, how great must have been the loss to a love which had longed so passionately to keep his creation with him! It was. gone now. That mysterious gift of liberty had been too strong for that other mysterious tenderness of creating us in a state of grace. There was nothing of failure, or of disappointment, or of frustrate love, in all this. But how there was not we cannot tell. We know that the vast life of God went on the same in its unshadowed, unimpeded gladness. Yet to our ignorance it seems as if the Creator would have to begin all over again, as if he would have to pause, to collect himself, to hold a council of his attributes, and either to retire into himself or begin afresh. None of these things are compatible with his everlasting majesty. They are only our ways of express?~ g those divine things which are unspeakable. But what is before us? By an excess of tenderness, which only grows more amazing the longer we think of it, God had cloistered his creation in the supernatural state of grace. The cloister was broken. Almost the first use of angelic and human freedom had been sacrilege. What will God do? Creative love has no mutabilities. Mercy itself shall find out a way to satisfy justice, rather than that this dear creation shall be lost. Time shall not be a grave in which eternal ideas shall be buried. The lost shall be found; the fallen shall be raised; the ruined shall be redeemed. The original idea of creation shall be reinstated, without the gift of freedom being withdrawn. The everlasting scheme of divine love shall be inaugurated again in all the plenitude of divine power, with all the splendor of divine wisdom, only illustrated now even more than before with the flames of divine love. The act shall be the act of God, the act equally of all the Three Divine Persons. Yet it shall be appropriated to One of Them, to the Second Person. The instrument shall be a created thing, not created only for the purpose, for it would have been even if sin had not been; but it shall be a created thing whose value shall be simply infinite, because of its belonging to an Uncreated Person. It was the Precious Blood.

One of the ways, in which God chiefly makes | himself known to us, is by his choices. Choice reveals character; and, when we know the character and excellence of him who chooses, the choice enables us both to understand and appreciate the object chosen. Thus, when God chooses the weak things of the world to confound the strong, and the foolish things to confound the wise, he makes a very broad revelation to us of his character. He discloses principles of action quite alien from those of creatures, and never adopted by them except from supernatural motives and in conscious imitation of him. We know also that the things in question are in themselves weak and foolish, because he chose them on that account. In the same way, when he chooses persons for some great and high end, his very choice endows them with gifts proportionate to their work and dignity. We have often no other means of judging except his choice. It is thus that we measure the immense holiness of the Apostles. It is thus that we learn the incomparable sanctity of the Baptist. It is by comparing God’s choice of him with the office he was to fill, that we come to see the glory and the grandeur of St. Joseph, and to contemplate with reverent awe the heights of a holiness to which such familiarity with God was permitted. We are astonished. that familiarity should be the characteristic of devotion to a saint so high; and yet we perceive that it must be naturally the special grace of a.devotion to one who outdid all others in the spirit of adoration because he outstripped all others in tender familiarities with God. It is thus also that we gain some idea of the beauty and splendor of St. Michael, one of the foremost jewels in the crown of God’s glorious creation. Thus, also, the choice of God is the only measure by which we can approach to any knowledge of his Immaculate Mother. As her office was inconceivable either by angel or by saint, unless it had been revealed, so also is the immensity of her holiness. The choice of God lights up vast tracts of her magnificence, and shows us also how much there is left for us to learn and to enjoy in heaven. The grandeur of her office is infinite, as St. Thomas says, and the omnipotence of God could not create a grander office: what then must be the infinity of her grace? It is God who chose her, the God of numberless perfections, of illimitable power, and of lavish munificence. His choice tells us that the mighty empress of heaven was adorned with the utmost participation of the divine splendor of which a creature was capable. What regalia must they be which come out of the inexhaustible treasures of God, and which are chosen for her whom he chose eternally to be his blessed Mother? So, finally, we get our idea of the worth of the Precious Blood by seeing the end for which the Creator chose it. It is an idea which cannot be put into words, or be estimated by human figures. If we may dare so to speak, God chose it as the auxiliary by which he would save himself in the day of battle with the powers of darkness, when the battle was going against him, and when he vouchsafed to appear as if put to his last resource. I know not how else to state that choice of his, and the circumstances under which he made it, which cover with such dazzling splendor the redeeming Blood of Jesus. It had to save a falling creation, which God had hindered his own omnipotence from saving, because he had conferred upon it the gift of freedom.

It is hard to breathe in heights like these. We have climbed the mountains of God’s primal decrees, and have penetrated to those first fountains of creation which lie far up in the solitude of eternity. Itis difficult to breathe in such places, amid such lonely sublimities, in such divine wildernesses, where the features are so unlike those of earthly scenery. Let us then rest a while, and think of our own poor selves. Of what avail to us is all this magnificent election of the Precious Blood, its astonishing relation to the immutable life of God, its intrinsic dignity in the plans of the Creator, and the fearfulness of its resplendent beauty as the sole successful auxiliary of the God of Hosts, unless it is the one joy of our lives that we ourselves -are its happy conquest? What use is it tous that it looks as if it had rescued the Creator from failure, if it does not ransom us from sin? What does it matter to us that it makes wonderful harmony between God’s seemingly opposite decrees, if it does not make sweet peace between our heavenly Father and ourselves? The Precious Blood saved God an empire; and he has given it that empire for its own. It is the one thing needful for ourselves, that we should belong to its empire and be happy beneath its rule. One sin forgiven, one sinful habit brought into subjection, one ruling passion uniformly tamed, one worldliness courageously kept down, —these are more to us than the theological glories of the Precious Blood. Indeed, these glories are chiefly glorious to us, in that they tell us more and more of our dear God, that they widen our minds and deepen our hearts to make more room for him, and that they heat the furnace of our love seven times hotter than it was before. Theology would be a science to be specially impatient with, if it rested only in speculation. To my mind it is the best fuel of devotion, the best fuel of divine love. It catches fire quickest; it makes least smoke; it burns longest; and it throws out most. heat while it is burning. It is the best fuel of love, until the soul is raised to high degrees of..

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how needful it was still, God infuses theological science even into the ignorant and youthful. If a science tells of God, yet does not make the listener’s heart burn within bim, it must follow either that the science is no true theology, or that the heart which listens unmoved is stupid and depraved. Ina simple and loving heart theology burns like a sacred fire.

But, if this is the relation of the Precious Blood to Creation, in what relation does it stand toward the Incarnation? This also we must consider. The Incarnation of One of the Three Divine Persons was part of the original idea of Creation. It expresses in God the same mysterious and adorable. yearning which was manifested in his creating angels and men in a state of grace. If there had been no sin, still the Second Person of the Holy Trinity would have been man. Jesus Christ was eternally predestinated to be King of angels and of men, the sovereign of all creation in right of his created nature, even if there had been no fall, and no redemption. I am repeating what I have said before; but I must do so in order to be clear. As God in his Divine Nature was the Sovereign Lord of all creation, so Jesus in his Created Nature was to be the King of kings and Lord of lords. He would have come and lived among us. He would have been born of the same blessed and most dear Mother. But his Bethlehem and his Nazareth and his Jerusalem would have been very different. He would have had no Egypt and no Calvary. He might perchance have dwelt longer

“with us than Three-and-Thirty years. But all the while, wherever he was, he would have been radiant as on the summit of Mount Thabor, the beauty and the glory streaming out from him incessantly. He would have had no Passion, no Resurrection; and perhaps he would not have ascended till the Day of Doom. He would have had the same Sacred Heart, the same Precious Blood. His Blood would have been a living joy to him, a beauty and a joy to all creation. Perhaps his Blood would still have been the wine of immortality to his elect. It might have been still the Blood of the Hucharist. There might have been the Sacrament without the Sacrifice. It might have been the chalice of his espousals with the soul. As some theologians say there might have been Communion before the Incarnation for the saints of the old covenant, if God had so willed, much more might it have been so with the impassible and glorious Incarnation, had there been no sin. The Precious Blood might still have been the sacramental fountain of eternal life. But it would not have had the office of ransoming the world from sin. Sin came; and by its coming it did to the Sacred Humanity of the Incarnate Word what it also did to the uncreated Majesty of God. It deprived it of its kingdom. It laid waste its empire. It miserably uncrowned it. It left him only the unfallen tribes of angels to rule over. It threatened to frustrate the Incarnation, and to take the chiefest jewel out of his Mother’s diadem, the jewel of her sinlessness. As sin had dared to impede divine love in the matter of Creation, so did it dare to hinder divine love in the matter of the Incarnation. In one case it tried to infringe the eternal dominion»of God; in the other case it strove to destroy the kingship of his created nature. As with Creation, so with the Incarnation, it was the Precious Blood which saved the kingdom. A change, as we are obliged to call it, came over its destinies. It should be created passible, and not impassible. It should be endowed with a suffering life. It should flow out of a suffering Heart, and should sustain a suffering Body. It should be selected by the Holy Trinity, for reasons inscrutable to us, inscrutable perhaps because we know so little about life, to be the solitary ransom for sin. If we knew the secret of life, we might perhaps know many new things about the Precious Blood. The wisdom of,.God beheld innumerable fitnesses in this mysterious choice. We can adore them, even though we do not know them. Thus the Precious Blood was to conquer back his kingdom for Jesus, and to secure the jewel of sinlessness for his Mother’s diadem. Thus Jesus owed to his Precious Blood his kingdom and his Mother. Yet this Blood, what is it but the own life of Jesus? Thus was sin frustrated without the creature’s liberty being forfeited. Thus did darkness war against light; and what came of it was, that, through the Precious Blood, the original idea of Creation was even beautified, without any change in the Unchangeable. These are the relations of the Precious Blood to Creation and the Incarnation. These are its titles to royalty,—that it reinstated the dominion of God, and that it restored the kingdom of Jesus.

Let us pause fora moment to make an act of

. loving reparation to the immutability of God. We 10 have had to speak of him with the infirmity of human words, as if his plans had failed, or his counsels had been altered. But we must not let any such idea rest on our minds. How it is that he did not change we cannot see: but we know that he did not; and we adore his blissful immutability. God changes his works without changing his counsels, says St. Augustine. But the change is in creatures, notin him. Time cannot change him, because he is eternal; nor place, because he is immense. He cannot change within himself, bevause he is perfect. He cannot be changed by any thing outside him, because he is almighty. His life is absolute repose, beatitude, simplicity: and m all this there van be no change. The very necessity, which compels us to speak of God as if he changed, only brings home to us more forcibly the perfection of his tranquillity. Let us then boldly offer to his love these ignorant words; and, while they enable us to understand somewhat of the peculiar office and grandeur of the Precious Blood, let us lovingly adore that unchangeableness of God, which has lain for all eternity more unwrinkled than a summer sea, and will lie to all eternity, with almost infinite worlds round about it, and yet have neither current, stream, or pulse, or tide, or wave, with no abyss to hold it and with no shore to bound it, with no shadow from without, and no throbbing from within.

Now that we have endeavored to show the place, which the Precious Blood holds in the counsels of God, with reference both to Creation and the Incarnation, let us, before we advance any further, see how the Holy Scriptures speak of it,

THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. I1I11 and how completely their language is in harmony with our theology. We will content ourselves with putting the texts together, as we find from experience that many persons, when a special devotion to the Precious Blood is urged upon them, were not at all aware of the stress which the inspired writings lay upon it, but have rather regarded it as merely a convenient figurative expression to sum up and represent the mysteries of redemption.

Then Jesus said to them: Amen, Amen, I say unto you: Except you eat the Flesh of the Son of man, and drink his Blood, you shall not have lifein you. He that eateth my Flesh, and drinketh my Blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. For my Flesh is meat indeed, and my Blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my Flesh, and drinketh my Blood, abideth in me, and 1 in him. In him, says St. Paul, it hath well pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell, and through him to reconcile all things unto himself, making peace through the Blood of his cross, both as to the things on earth, and the things that are in heaven. Christ, being come an high-priest of the good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hand, neither by the blood of goats, or of calves, but by his own Blood, entered once into the Holies, having obtained eternal redemption. For, if the blood of goats and of oxen, and the ashes of an heifer being sprinkled, sanctify such as are defiled, to the cleansing of the flesh, how much more shall the Blood of Christ, who by the Holy Ghost offered himself unspotted unto God, cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God? Neither was the first testament dedicated without blood; and almost all things, according to the law, are cleansed with blood; and without shedding of blood there is no remission. It is necessary therefore that the patterns of heavenly things should be cleansed with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. We have, therefore, brethren, a confidence in the entering into the Holies by the Blood of Christ, a new and living way which he hath dedicated for us through the veil, that is to say, his Flesh. We are come to the sprinkling of Blood, which speaketh better than that of Abel. The bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the Holies by the high-priest for sin, are burned without the camp: wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people by his own Blood, suffered without the gate. St. Peter speaks of us as elect, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, unto the sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the Blood of Jesus Christ. St.John says, The Blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. This is he that came by water and Blood: not by water only, but by water and Blood: and it is the Spirit which testifieth, that Christ is the truth; and there are Three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these Three are One; and there are three that give testimony on earth, the spirit, and the water, and the Blood; and these three are one. The Ancients in the Apocalypse sung a new canticle, saying: Thou art worthy, O Lord, to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: because thot wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God in thy Blood, out of every tribe, and tongue, and people and nation, and hast made us to our God a kingdom and priests, and we shall reign on the earth. Ana one of the Ancients answered and said to me: These that are clothed in white robes, who are they? and whence came they? And I said to him, My lord, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they who are come out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God; and the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, shall rule them. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying: Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ; because the accuser of our brethren is cast forth, who accused them before our God day and night; and they overcame him by the Blood of the Lamb. And I saw heaven opened, and behold! a white horse: and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True; and with justice doth he judge and fight; and his eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many diadems; and he had a name written, which no man knoweth but himself; and he was clothed with a garment sprinkled with Blood; and his name is called The Word of God: und the armies that are in heaven followed him on white horses, clothed in fine linen white and clean; and he shall rule: and he hath on his garment and on his thigh written, King of kings and Lord of lords. Again St. Paul says, The chalice of benediction, which we bless, is it not the communion of i 10# the Blood of Christ? Now in Christ Jesus, you, who sometime were afar off, are made nigh by the Blood of Christ. St: Peter says, We know that we were redeemed with the Precious Blood of Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled, fore-known indeed before the foundation of the world, but manifested in the last times. St. Paul also speaks of the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the great pastor of the sheep, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Blood of the everlasting testament. To the clergy of Ephesus St. Paul speaks of the bishops who rule the church of God, | which he hath purchased with his own Blood. To the Romans he speaks of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation, through faith in his Blood, to the showing of his justice, for the remission of former sins, through the forbearance of God. Christ died for us: much more therefore, being now justified by his Blood, shall we be saved from wrath through him. He speaks to the Ephesians of our being predestinated unto the praise of the glory of God’s grace, in which he hath graced us in his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption through his Blood, the remission of sins, according to the riches of his grace. Similarly to the Colossians he speaks of the Father having delivered us from the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption through his Blood,...that in all things he may hold the primacy. St. John in the preface of the Apocalypse delivers his message as from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the first-begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth, who hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own Blood, and hath made us a kingdom, and priests to God and his Father, to him be glory and empire for ever and ever! Amen.¹ | He who desires to attain to a deep and fervent devotion to the Precious Blood cannot do so more readily than by taking the foregoing texts of the Holy Scriptures for the subjects of his meditations. They will carry him, and very gently, far down into the mind of God. They will infuse into him a more tender and a more ardent love of the Person of the Eternal Word, while they will also increase his reverence for the Sacred Humanity. They, like all Scripture words, will bring forth fruit a thousandfold in his heart. Meanwhile, with reference to our present train of thought, the reader will observe how frequently and in what a striking way the mention of the Precious Blood is coupled by the Holy Ghost with the idea of kingdom, empire, and primacy, how carefully the eternal determination and _ foreknowledge of the Precious Blood is kept in sight, how it is put forward as the making of an offering, the restoring of his creatures, to God, and, finally, how it is to St. Peter, our Lord’s Vicar upon earth, that we owe the title of Precious as applied to his Master’s Blood. I cannot but believe that many men will feel their devotion to the Precious Blood increased as a special devotion when they see the wonderful teaching of the Bible on the subject brought into one view.

There are of course many ways in which the Precious Blood establishes the empire of Jesus. We may illustrate the matter sufficiently for our purpose by selecting three of them, Conversion, Sanctification, and the Building up of the Church. We shall have to speak more at length of Conversion in the next chapter. We shall treat therefore very briefly at present of these three things, and chiefly from one point of view, namely, the contrast and comparison between them and the act of Creation.

We have then to remember that it is the office of the Precious Blood to reconquer for God an empire which sin has wrested from him, and to govern and administer this empire in proportion as it reconquers it. Its royal rights, while they are the gratuitous appointments of God and flow from his eternal choice, are also based on the double relation of the Precious Blood to Creation and the Incarnation. Its relation to Creation makes it the rightful representative of the Dominion of God. Its relation to the Incarnation makes it the natural vicegerent of the saya a: of the Sacred Humanity.

To us fallen creatures Conversion is the most interesting divine act of which we are able to take intimate cognizance. It is an act going on in the world at all moments, and which must happen to every one of us, either in the waters of baptism or out of them, if we are to be saved.

Moreover, it is an act which may be repeated several times in each individual soul... It is to our supernatural being what Creation is to our natural being. The one calls us out of nothingness into life; the other out of darkness into light. The one makes us citizens of earth; the other citizens of heaven. By the one we are entitled to preservation, and all the numerous means, appliances, and consequences of life; by the other we have a right to claim sanctification, and all the numerous means, appliances, and consequences of grace. The creation of our souls was the work of an instant. God willed the existence of our souls, and exactly of such souls as he had foreseen and chosen to be our peculiar selves from all eternity. There was no process. He willed, and it was done. Where there had been nothingness, there was now a human soul, a soul beautiful in its indestructible simplicity, beautiful in its complicated life. The sum of existences had been swelled by one; and that one had now to fulfil a strange, difficult, varied, romantic, destiny which would go on to be eternal. Conversion, on the other hand, is a process, and often a very long one. Sometimes whole years of life go to its preparation. Ten thousand circumstances, sweetly constrained by the paternal tenderness of God, gradually converge upon some predetermined hour and minute. Misfortunes are sent to prepare the ground, to plough it up with rude troubles, to soften it with silent weeping, or to break it to pieces through the kindly action of the frost. Happiness comes from God like an angel, to exorcise evil spirits from the mind, the temper, or the heart, and to clear the way for more supernatural operations. Accident, or seeming accident, also has its function in this work. Chance books, chance conversations, chance meetings, frequently accelerate the process, and not seldom hurry it at once to its conclusion. If only we could see them, we should discover that the graces which precede conversion are, for number, variety, strangeness, unexpectedness, and kindliness, among the most wonderful works of God and the most touching ingenuities of his love. Yet, while the process of Conversion contrasts with Creation in that it is — a process at all, it also resembles it in being really instantaneous. The actual justification of a sinner is the work of an instant. We see this in the baptism of infants. But also in grown-up people the transition from the enmity of God to his friendship, from a state of sin to a state of grace, takes place in a moment. One moment, and if the soul left the body it must perish eternally; another moment, and if sudden death came salvation would be secure. The change from the formless abyss of nothingness to the fresh, complete soul, is not more instantaneous than the justification of a sinner. What has gone before has been merely preparatory. It might weigh in judgment as ground for abating the severity of punishment; but it could not avail to alter that state of the soul which death has rendered fixed, certain, and irrevocable. |

God condescends to put himself before us as_ effecting Creation by a word. He spoke, and it was done. Let light be, and light was. Thus. Creation is effected by the most simple of all | agencies, namely, by a single means, and that means, not a work, but a mere word. The Precious Blood, on the other hand, effects its creations in Conversion by a multiplicity of means, of means which are often repeated, often varied, ofter. intensified, often newly invented for fresh cases, and often quite peculiar to the individual case. There is nothing in the world which the Precious Blood cannot make a means of grace. Even sin, though it cannot be a means of grace, can be constrained to do the ministries of grace, just as Satan is made the reluctant bondsman of the elect, and is forced to jewel their crowns with the very temptations he has devised for their destruction. Nevertheless in this respect also Conversion is like Creation. It is like it in its choice of means, though not like it in its simplicity. For the Precious Blood also chooses words for its instruments, as if in honor of that Eternal Word whose human life it is. The Sacraments are its ordinary modes of action, as we shall see later on; and words are the forms of the Sacraments, without which their peculiar miracles of grace cannot be wrought. Divine words are the chosen instruments of production in the supernatural as well as in the natural world.

It is one of the glories of the act of Creation, that there is no semblance of effort about it. It is the free act of God, but it is hardly an act in the sense in which we commonly use the word. It is an act in a much higher sense, a simpler and yet a more efficacious sense. It is an act without effort, without succession, without processes. It is an act such as befits the perfections of the Most High. His power did not rise up, as it.were, to do it, nor his wisdom deliberate about it, nor his love grow to it. Nothing went out of him to the act, nor was the tranquillity of his life quickened by it. Conversion, on the contrary, has all the look of effort about it. Nay, effort is not the word: I should rather have said agony. The Precious Blood working its way out of our Blessed Lord’s Body in the sweat of Gethsemane, the slow, painful oozings from the Crown of thorns, the rude violence of the sprinkling at the Scourging, the distillation of the Blood along the streets of Jerusalem and up the slope of Calvary 3 the soaking of his clinging raiment, the four wells dug by the cruel nails ebbing and flowing with the pulses of his feeble life, the violation of the silent sanctuary of his Dead Heart, to seek for the few drops of that precious treasure that might be left, —all these are parts of the effort of Conversion. Neither is there less look of effort in the Conversion of each single soul: more with some, and less with others. In most instances the Precious Blood seems to return to the charge again and again. Here it fails, there it succeeds. Now its’

success is hardly perceptible, now it is manifest, striking, and decisive. The Precious Blood tries to convert every one, just as it was shed for every one. Multitudes remain unconverted, and are never won back to the kingdom of God. - With them the battle has gone against grace. Even in defeat the Precious Blood triumphs. It gains glory for God; but it is in ways which in this life we cannot even put ourselves into a position to eh eles ae ee) eee ae eel) Oe understand. It can boast also of decisive victories, of great strokes of grace, of hearts carried by storm, of saints made at once out of one heroic deed. But these are not the common cases. With most hearts it strives, and pleads, and toils; then it seems to intermit its labors, as if it were fatigued; it retires from the heart as if in despair Once more it returns to its task, and occupies itself with incredible patience in minutest details, often working under ground and in circuitous ways. Not seldom it retires again, as if now completely baffied; and finally, when least expected, it leaps upon its prey from afar, and triumphs as much by the suddenness, as by the impetuosity, of the onslaught.

Look at that soul, almost the richest booty it ever won in war, the soul of St. Paul. What long years there were of religious antecedents, what a blind generosity of misdirected zeal, what a fidelity to unhelpful ordinances, what a preparation for humility in the cruel persecution of the faithful, what a prelude to apostolic fervor in that furious partisanship of the conscientious pharisee, what an insensible drawing nigh to the Gospel through the very perfection of his Judaism! Then follow St. Stephen’s prayers, and things are coming to the best with Saul when they are at their very worst. Yet Stephen’s prayers are not so much attacking him as circumventing him. Then the heavens open at noonday, and the glorified Redeemer overwhelms him with sudden light, and blinds him, and flings him to the ground; and the blood of Stephen, which had cried aloud to the

Blood of Jesus, is sweetly avenged by the heart of ul

Paul being cleansed by that atoning Blood, and sent out unto all nations to be the especial preacher of that Blood which had.so glorified itself in his Conversion. Yet, while there is such a seeming contrast between Creation and Conversion in this ~ matter of effort, there is also a close comparison between them. ‘There is in reality no effort in the operation of the Precious Blood. It only needed to let itself be shed. It only needs now to let itself be outpoured. Its touch is health, life, resurrection, immortality, and glory. Its sole touch is its sole work. It never touches but it changes. It needs but to touch once in order to make its spiritual change complete. If it seems to add, to repeat, to re-touch, to deepen, to broaden, to improve on itself, all that comes from another part of its character. Itis no sign of want of power, no necessary expenditure of artistic labor, no demand of experience, no consequence of more mature reflection.

The absence of contrivance is another splendor of the divine act of Creation. No plan was laid. No gradual train of thought reached the grand conclusion. No provisions were made, no preparations finished, no materials collected. There were no preliminaries. There was no change in — the Ever-blessed Agent. Without any prelude, and yet with a tranquillity which admitted not of suddenness, God created. There was no model for him to go by. There was no law to constrain nim. -He had never done a free act before. This was his first. Yet it affected not his immutability. From all eternity the Son was being born of the Father; from all eternity the Holy Ghost was proceeding from the Father andthe Son. But q

SS Ste, these were necessary actions. They were the in. ward life of God. Creation was a free act, an act which he was free to do, or to leave undone, with out altering his perfections. He acted. He created. The consequences are stupendous. They are endless. They are beyond the comprehension of the highest angels. With all these consequences God himself is most mysteriously mixed up. There is his concurrence with all created actions and movements, the intricacies of his never-halting providence, the Incarnation, the Divine Mother, the Fall, the Precious Blood, the Church, the Sacraments, the Economy of grace, the Doom, the Wail of bell, the Jubilee of heaven. Yet he acted out of his adorable simplicity. He put himself in no attitude to create. He made no movement. He contrived nothing. He spoke, but his utterance broke not the everlasting silence; and at his voiceless word all was done. There is no calm in the universe like the calmness of the act by which the whole universe was created. There was not a stir in the life of God when a million times ten million angels sprang into beautiful existence, and a million times ten million material worlds leaped up like fires out of a void abyss, where a moment before neither abyss nor void had been. Thus there was no history in the act of Creation, whereas in each Conversion there is a marvellous, orderly, yet entangled history. There is a look of contrivance about the Precious Blood. It was to be got from Mary’s heart. Her heart was to be hindered, bya strange miracle of anticipation, through the very virtue of the unformed Precious Blood itself, from coming under the law of sin. It had to pass into the life of Jesus, and to multiply in his veins to the ~ full supply of manhood. The methods by which it was to be shed were all to be contrived, with times, places, quantities, and circumstances befitting them. It had to be looked after during the triduo of the Passion, and its restoration to the Body of our dearest Lord contrived. After all this, further contrivance was needed concerning the methods of applying it to the souls of men. Its impetuosity had to be in order. Its prodigality had to submit to law. What an immensity of divine contrivance went to all this machinery! Yet in itself the Precious Blood operates with as little contrivance as effort. In the matter of contrivance, as in the matter of effort, Conversion emulates the simplicity of Creation. The brief word of a Sacrament is enough to work its huge miracle upon the unresisting soul of the infant at the Font. Nay, with the most obdurate smner it can by its first grace accomplish the entire work of sanctity, and raise him into a saint at once without any of the sweet insidious contrivances with which the gentleness of redeeming love so often surrounds the operation of the Precious Blood. Conversion can be masterful as well as tender.

He that is eternal grows not weary. Eternity itself is endless, unbeginning rest. Eternity before Creation is but the name of the life of God. But the Eternal rested after Creation. He had an unimaginable sabbath, in which he rested from the works that he had made. There is no sabbath ~ yet for the Precious Blood. Its creative work upon the earth is incessant, increasing as the multitudes of the tribes of men increase. There is no end to its activity, day and night. It starts each epoch and each century with renewed ardor and redoubled vigor. It becomes more abundant and more energetic in the Church on earth, in proportion as the Church becomes more populous in heaven. Yet it has a sabbath too, even while it toils. It rests in the glorified Heart of Jesus in heaven. It rests upon that mediatorial throne whereon the Sacred Humanity has been exalted. The souls of the righteous worship it on high with everlasting lauds; and the angels, prostrate in adoration, sing canticles in its honor all through the nightless day of that radiant land above. It rests in Jesus. It is his life, his love, his jubilee, and his repose. This is its sabbath-life in heaven, while its industry is so divinely vigorous and fertile upon earth. But the sabbath of Creation is also a time of working, while it is a time of rest. Not only is the continuous preservation of all things and the fulfilling of all created things with the divine concurrence an almost illimitable extension and on-going of creation, but new souls of men are literally created out of nothing every moment of time. Yet still, in some mysterious sense, God’s sabbath is unbroken. Thus Conversion, like Creation, has its sabbath, even while it works. When the Grand Doom has come and gone, who can tell into what a sabbath the rest of our dearest Lord ‘shall deepen?

If Conversion is the conquest of the empire of the Precious Blood, Sanctification is its government of that which it has conquered. Sanctification is to Conversion what Cosmogony is to Creation. It is the dividing up, and dispensing, and setting in order, and adorning, what has already been created out of nothing. Or, again, it is to the work of justification what, in natural things, the preservation of life is to the evolving of life out of nothing. It was the Holy Ghost who fashioned the Precious Blood out of the immaculate blood of Mary. He was the Fashioner of the Sacred Humanity. To him that work is specially appropriated. He also is especially, and by appropriate office, our Sanctifier. It was to him that Jesus left his Church. What our Lord himself had been during the Three-and-Thirty Years, the Holy Ghost began to be in some peculiar manner from the day of Pentecost. Jesus himself has returned to abide in his Church in the Blessed Sacrament; but he abides in it as it were beneath the administration of the Holy Ghost, which he himself appointed. The Precious Blood, which the Holy Spirit fashioned, is now the same Spirit’s instrument in the great work of sanctification. As that Blood was the love of the Son’s Sacred Humanity, by which he offered his atonement to the Father, so is it the love of his Sacred Humanity, by which with sweetest affectionate ministries he subserves the sanctifying office of the Holy Ghost. By the Precious Blood the Son himself became Redeemer, while by the same dear

• Blood reparation was made to the Father’s honor as Creator, and to the Holy Spirit’s tender love as the Sanctifier of creation. He who in the Holy Trinity was produced and not producing became fertile by the Precious Blood.

Was there ever any such fertility as that of the Holy Ghost? The leaves of the trees, the blades of the grass, the matted entanglement of tropical herbs in the moist forest, the countless shoals of the living inhabitants of ocean, the swarms of insects which in hot regions blacken the sun for miles as if they were sand-storms,—these are but types of the fecundity of the Holy Ghost in the operations of grace. We never can do justice to the magnitude of the world of angels. The poor child, who has no notion of money but in pence, would be bewildered if he were called upon to deal with gold and to count his gold by millions. So we in earthly things are accustomed to dimensions, and to numbers, on so dwarfish a scale, that even our exaggerations will not raise our ideas to the true magnitudes and multitudes of the world of angels. The countless myriads of individual spirits, the countless graces which are strewn all over the breadth of their capacious natures, the colossal size of those graces as compared with those of human souls, the inconceivable rapidity, delicacy, and subtlety of the operations of grace in such gigantic intelligences and such fiery affections,— these considerations, if well weighed, may give us some idea of the fruitfulness of the most dear sanctifying Spirit. Every one of those graces was merited for the angels by the Precious Blood. Converting grace they never had; for they never needed a conversion; and to those who fell no conversion was allowed. If we think also of the multitude of souls, the sum of successive generations from Adam to the uncertain Doom, if we try to bring before ourselves the variety of vocations in the world, the strictly peculiar needs of each single soul and the distinctive characteristic shape of the holiness of each single soul, then the multiplicity of the processes of grace prolonged perhaps over half a century or more, we shall see that the arithmetic of even human graces is amazing. Through the instrumentality of the Precious Blood, the Holy Ghost is everywhere and always making all things productive of sanctity in some measure and degree. Sanctification may be called the production of heavenly beauty in the world. It is the filling of nature with the supernatural. It is the transforming of the human or angelic into the divine. It is the engraving of the image of God upon every piece and parcel of the rational creation. It is the brightening and the beautifying of creation. It is the empire of light stealing upon the realm of darkness, swiftly, slowly, variously, with beams and splendors, with transformations and effects, more marvellous than those of any lovely dawn upon the mountains and forests of the earth. It is the especial and appropriate office of the Holy Ghost, with the universal and invariable and inseparable agency of the Precious Blood. Thus, every process of Sanctification, while it is an outpouring of exquisite love upon creatures, is also a passage of mutual love between Jesus and the Holy Ghost. Our Lord’s words in the Gospéis indicate to us something of the unspeakable jealous -love of the Sacred Humanity for the Eternal Spirit Our dearest Savior, whose very office and occupation it was to forgive sin, was unlike himself when he excepted from this amnesty the sin against the Holy Ghost: unlike himself, yet true to some depth of holiness and love within himself. On the other hand, it was to be the office of the Paraclete to bring Jesus to mind, to fill the memory with the sweet words he had said, to keep the Thirty-Three Years alive on earth forever, to be forever testifying of Jesus, and forever completing and adoring the work which he had come on earth todo. Thus, as in theology the Holy Ghost is named the Kiss “of the Father and the Son, the Son and the Holy Ghost kiss Each Other in the Precious Blood. All Sanctification is the love of the Holy Ghost for the Sacred Humanity; and every operation of the Precious Blood is a tender adoration of the Holy Ghost by the Created Nature of our blessed Lord.

But we should soon sink out of our depths in mysteries like these. We will pass on to the third of the principal ways in which the Precious Blood reconquers for God the empire of his own creation, and establishes the kingdom of Christ,—the Building up of the Church. To continue our comparison with Creation,—as Conversion represents the act of Creation, and Sanctification the work of Cosmogony, so the Building up of the Church is parallel to those changes in the face of Creation made by the lapse of time and the agency of the natural laws of the universe. The alterations of the bed of ocean, the deposits of mighty rivers, the crumbling of the rocks, the devastations of the earthquake and volcano, the elevation and subsidence of the earth, the spreading of the sandy deserts, the mutations of climate from other and less normal catastrophes,—all these things have altered the face of the earth, made it more habitable, and by deciding its physical geography have gone far to decide its history and to locate the centres of its civilization. So-is it with the spiritual earth through the vicissitudes of the Church. The Church is the work of the Precious Blood. It was made by it, cleansed by it, adorned by it, propagated by it, and kept glorious by it. The Church is that portion of creation purchased by the Precious Blood out of alien possession, recovered from unjust holding, redeemed from slavery, conquered from enemies. The salvation of individual souls is dependent upon the Church. Hence the Building up of the Church is one of the grandest works of the Precious Blood. The conversion of nations, the history of doctrine, the holding of councils, the spread of the episcopate, the influence of the ecclesiastical upon the civil law, the freedom of the Holy See, the papal monarchy of past ages, the concordats of the present day, the filial subordination of catholic governments,—all these things alter the face of the spiritual world. Every one of them is a vast fountain of God’s glory, an immense harvest of souls, a prolific source of human happiness, and the antidote to a thousand evils. Above all thingsy the honor, the freedom, and the empire of the Holy See are the works of the Precious Blood. The Church is the Body of Christ; and nowhere are the lineaments of our dearest Lord, his beauty, his persuasiveness, his strange commingling of gladness and of woe, so faithfully expressed as in the Head of his Church. Hence it is that the joyousness of the saints ebbs and flows with the vicissitudes of the Holy See. Hence it is that the most secret mystics are affected by the fortunes of distant Rome, like the wells that dry and fill again in hidden sympathy with an earthquake in some remote quarter of the world.

In guiet times good men can love the Vicar of Christ, and look at him as their venerable father and monarch, ruling over all the best affections of their hearts, with a loyalty which the hereditary sovereigns of the earth can never obtain, and which is a far more heavenly thing than a patriot’s love of the land which gave him birth. But when the clouds gather round the Sacred City, when the pressure of self-seeking potentates again begins to crucify our Lord afresh in the person of his Vicar, when the coils of diplomacy twist themselves round Peter’s throne, when wellnigh all the world, schism, heresy, unbelief, ambition, injustice, and catholic states world-tainted, league together against the Lord’s Anointed, then to the saints the face of Christ’s Vicar becomes like the countenance of his Lord. It grows more majestic in abjection. The anguish on it is divine. It is more worshipful than ever, at the very moment when it is calling out our tenderest love and our keenest sympathies. This too is a time rife in victories to the Precious Blood. Rome is saved, and man has not saved it. They were bearing the papacy out to burial, and lo! a glorious resurrection! When deliverance was furthest off, then it came.

But these great historical triumphs are not the only victories of the Precious Blood in evil days. It wins many in the secrets of hearts. The spirit of the age is forever tainting the minds and hearts of the elect. There are few who do not end by going with the multitude, few who are not imposed upon by the pompous elation of science, by the juvenile pronouncements of an improved literature, by the complacent self-glorifications of temporal prosperity, and by the pretensions to an unparalleled grandeur which each generation makes as it struts out upon the stage of life. It is fine to innovate: it is refreshing to be audacious: it isa cheap victory to attack: it is comfortable to be on the same side with the loud-voiced world around us. Few men have clearly ascertained their own principles. They admit into their inconsequent minds wandering ideas of the times, without seeing that they are in reality hostile to the holy things which occupy the sanctuary of their hearts. Hence they get upon the wrong side, specially in middle life. It is not youth so much as middle life that falls in this way. While the generosity of youth makes early life to err in questions of deyree, the same generosity keeps it incorrupt in questions of kind. It is the egotistical self-importance of middle life, which makes apostates, reformers, and malcontents. It is then that * men get upon the wrong side. They fight under wrong banners. ‘They frustrate the promise of their better years. They become out of harmony with the Church. From that hour their lives are failures. They grow querulous and contentious, peevish and captious, bitter and sour. Their old age is extremely solitary; and it is a great grace of God if they do not die on the wrong side, they who seem to have been raised up to be the very foremost champions of the right. Now it is bad times which open men’s eyes. They see then how the spirit of the age has been nigh to deceiving them, how they mistook its loudness for wisdom, and how near they were to losing thé simplicity of their devotion in the unhelpfulness of an intellectual demonstration, which has passed away, and has done as little, and is remembered as much, as the popular novel of a season. Many are the victories of disenchantment which the Precious Blood gains in times like those. Souls, that are won back to the old ways and the antique fashions, may yet be saints, whose promises of holiness must soon have been withered, cankered, or dispersed in the vanity of modern attempts and innovations.

Nay, though we may be unable to see it, we cannot doubt that there are triumphs of the Pre-- cious Blood in the spread of heresies, in the schism of kingdoms, and in similar catastrophes of the Church. Souls seem to perish, and it is hard to bear. But the life of the Church is very vast, and is ruled by immense laws; and when her Spouse comes at the end, the Precious Blood must needs present her to him “a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.”² We must remember always, therefore, that the Church is the empire of the Precious Blood, and that that Blood will be the law of its life, and will govern it, not‘at all in the world’s way, not at all in the spirit of an age, but altogether after its own spirit and altogether in its own way. Souls soon lose themselves who chafe because the Church is not wise with a worldly wisdom.

But we should have a very imperfect notion of the empire of the Precious Blood if we did not take into account the chief methods by which it. does its work. We have seen some of the principal ways in which’it spreads its empire; let us now see the means by which it spreads it. These means are the Sacraments.

It is difficult to describe the Sacraments. If an angel were to bear us from this globe which we inhabit, and carry us to some distant star, which God may have adorned as a dwelling-place for some other species of reasonable creatures, we should be struck with the novelty and peculiarity of the scenery around us. Some of its features might remind us of the scenery of earth, although with characteristic differences; while other features would be entirely new, entirely unlike any thing we had ever seen before, either in color, form, or composition. This is very much the effect produced upon us when we come to learn the catholic doctrine about the Sacraments. It introduces us into a new world. It gives us new ideas. It is more than a discovery; for it amounts to a revelation. The Sacraments are part of the new world introduced into creation by the Incarnation of the Eternal Word, and therefore are an essential part of creation as it was eternally preordained by God.- Yet they are quite distinct from any other province in creation. The Sacraments of the Old law were but shadows of the Sacraments of the Gospel. The Sacraments of the New Law are created things which have been devised and fabricated by our Blessed Lord himself. The Eucharist was foreshadowed by the Paschal Lamb: the Sacrament of Order by the sonsecration of priests; and Penance by the legal eres eee ee Se

‘purifications of the tabernacle. There was no shadow of Confirmation, because it is the Sacrament of the fulness of grace, and so can belong only to the Gospel dispensation. Neither was there any shadow of Extreme Unction, because it is the immediate preparation for the entrance of the soul into glory; and there was no entrance into glory for any human soul till Jesus had risen and ascended. Neither could Matrimony be a Sacrament under the Old Law, because the Word had not yet actually wedded our human nature; and the sacramentality of Marriage consists in its being the figure of those transcendent nuptials of the Sacred Humanity.

What then shall we call these Sacraments? They are not persons, yet they seem to be scarcely things: I mean that they seem to be something more than things. We want another word for them, another name, and cannot find one. They are powers, lives, shrines, marvels, divine hiding-places, centres of heavenly power, supernatural magnificences, engraftings of heaven upon earth, fountains of grace, mysterious efficacies, marriages of matter and spirit, beautiful complications of God and man. Each Sacrament is a species by itself. Hach has some specialty, which is at once its excellence and its mystery. The pre-eminence of Baptism consists in its remission of original sin and of the pains due toit. The pre-eminence of Confirmation resides in the vastness of the succors of actual grace which it brings with it, as we see in the fortitude which it conferred upon the Apostles, and which the Eucharist had not conferred

The Sacrament of Penance can claim the privilege of being the most necessary of all Sacraments to those who have been baptized, and of the capability of reiterated remission of mortal sin, which Baptism cannot claim. Extreme Une. tion excels Penance in the greater copiousness of its graces. The excellence of Order consists ‘n its placing men in the singularly sublime state of being domestic ministers of Christ. Matrimony has a glory of its own in its signification of the union of our Lord with the Church. The preeminence of the Eucharist resides, as St. Thomas says, in the very substance of the Sacrament, seeing that it is as it were the Sacrament of all the other Sacraments, the centre of them, the cause of them, the end of them, and the harmony of them. All are because of it, and are subordinate to its amazing supremacy.

These Sacraments were designed by our Lord himself, and were instituted by him with varying degrees of detail as to matter and form in various Sacraments; and yet, saving their substance, he has given his Church very extensive power over them, because they are so intimately connected with its unity. We see the exercise of this power in the bread of the Eucharist, in the impediments of Marriage, and in the varieties of Order in the Latin and Greek Churches. The Sacraments are institutions which illustrate at once the magnificence of God’s dominion over his creation, and also the capability of creatures to be elevated by him to astonishing sublimities far beyond the merit and due of nature; and this elevability of

THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BL(DD. 13”

creatures is one of the most glorious manifesta tions of the liberty of God.*

• There are certain differences of opinion in theology which seem to keep quiet in their own subject-matter, and not to control other opinions in separate departments of theology. But there are, on the contrary, opinions, often of seemingly little or merely local importance, which draw along with them a man’s whole theology. Among these, hardly any is more remarkable than the opinion we may form on the subject of what theology calls ‘‘potentia obedientialis.” I mention this here, because in the exposition of the doctrine of the Sacraments given in the text, I have taken pains to use no expressions which shall be unfair to those who hold the moral operation, and not the physical operation, of the Sacraments. Amicus has beautifully shown that both the theories equally, though differently, magnify the grandeur of the Sacraments. If the physical theory attributes to them a more marvellous operation on the recipient, the moral theory attributes to them a more mysterious action upon God himself. I wish to observe also that, although there is a manifest sympathy between the Scotist doctrine of the Sacraments and the Scotist doctrine of potentia obedientialis, the connection is not necessary. It is a matter of sympathy rather than of logic. A man who holds the moral theory of the operation of the Sacraments lies under the same obligation of explaining his potentia obedientialis as one who holds the physical theory. This Amicus has candidly pointed out. The doctrine of potentia obedientialis is to me the part of Scotus’s system which is most hard to receive. St. Thomas’s doctrine of potentia opens out a view of creation much more deep and philosophical, from this point of view, while, when we come to look at creation from the point of view of the Incarnation, Scotus seems to be much more deep and philosophical than St. Thomas. Perhaps the views of the later scholastics on potentia obedientialis are still more philosophical. I would venture to recommend a syecial study of this question to students of theology, as one which particularly gives unity and consistency to the multitude of a man’s theological tenets

The Sacraments are not mere signs of grace, but causes of it. They cause grace in us physically by the omnipotence of God which exists in them as if it were their own proper virtue and energy; for the omnipotence of God exists so specially in the Sacraments that if, by impossibility, God were not omnipresent, he would nevertheless be present in the Sacraments. The Sacraments cause grace physically, just as our Lord’s Blood, shed long ago, cleanses us from our sins physically, not morally only, and just as his Resurrection and Ascension cause our resurrection and ascension physically, by an energy and a force which God has appropriated to them.³ The Sa-

See Ripalda, De Ente Supernaturali, lib. ii. and especially Disputations 40 and 41. Haunoldus, Controversiz Theologice, lib. iv. tract ii. cap. 1, controversia 2. Amicus, the latter part of Disp. iv., de Causalitate Sacramentorum, and all Disp. v., de Potentia Ubedientiali, and Disp. vi., Que entia et ad quos effectus elevari possint. Viva, the whole of Disp. ii., de Causalitate Sacramentorum; and the other great theologians in loco. But in connection should be read also in the different writers de Angelis the trearment of tne question, An creatio communicari possit creature obedientialiter, and its cognate questions, which are to be found under the de principio productivo Angelorum: or, in some theologians, under de Deo, especially de Dei cognoscibilitate, or de Beatitudine, or de Hominis creatione, or de Opificio sex dierum. I would especially mention the De Deo of Francis de Lugo, Disp. vii., De ente supernaturali in communi, and Disp. viii., De variis divisionibus entis supernaturalis: and likewise the 10th and 11th Disputations in Arriaga de Sacramentis. There are also some interesting things in the huge work of Castaldus the Dominican, de Potestate Angelica, and in Arviaga’s Physics.

SN ih ae AR 4 Seta ht aK en Se Ba SAz! PRs craments also cause grace in us, morally, by representing to the Father the merits of Christ’s Passion actually accomplished, and so doing a sort of holy and irresistible violence to God, and thereby procuring for us more abundant, and at the same time very special, succors of grace. Both these methods of causing grace bring vividly before us the unspeakable majesty of the Sacraments, and enable us to estimate the grandeur of the merits of our dearest Lord; but perhaps of the two methods the honor of Jesus is most concerned in the Sacraments causing grace physically, because it is more intimate to him so to cause it,⁴ and in many other respects more divine and more excellent. But these are questions too difficult for us to enter upon here. It is enough to say with St. Chrysostom that the way in which the Sacraments confer grace is above the power of an angel to tell, or with St. Gregory Nyssen that the grace of Baptism transcends human understanding. Such language could hardly be used of the merely moral efficacy of of Viva; but the theological discussion of the question has been avoided as unfit for the popular character of this Treatise.

the Sacraments; and, as Viva observes, if the fires of Purgatory and Hell act upon the soul physically in real and marvellous ways, it is at least congruous to suppose that the instruments of the Divine Mercy shall enjoy the same privileges as the instruments or the Divine Justice. But the Sacraments not only confer sanctifying grace and infuse habits of virtue, both physically and morally: they also confer a certain special sacramental grace, which is peculiar and distinct in each Sacrament. It is difficult to explain this sacramental grace; but it seems to be a special power to obtain from God, by a certain right founded upon his decrees, particular assistances and kinds of grace in order to the fulfilment of each Sacrament. Moreover, it belongs to the grace of the Sacraments that certain of them impress what is called a character, or seal, or — signet, on the soul. The nature of this character is involved in mystery; but the most probable interpretation of it is that which describes it as a natural similitude of the Soul of Jesus, likening. our souls to his, and imparting hiddenly to our souls a resemblance of his, hidden in this life, but to be divulged with exceeding glory hereafter. This is a beautiful thought, and fills us fu'l of a peculiar love for the dear Human Soul of Jesus. Lastly, the grace of Sacraments suspended or dormant has a marvellous power of revival, which enhances the mystery and the magnificence of these strange and unparalleled works of God.

But our clearest idea of the Sacraments is that which we gain from Hugh St. Victor and the elder theologians. They are the making visible of invisible grace. In them the Precious Blood has clothed itself in visible forms. In the matter and form of the Sacraments it has put on its priestly vestments, of unearthly fashion, and of manifold significance. Indeed, the grace of the Sacraments is the very physical grace which was in the Soul of Jesus, replicated, as theology speaks, that is, repeated again and again in us, and repeated in us by means of the Precious Blood. Many theologians have held that all the grace, which is in any of us, was first, physically, really, and locally, in the Soul of Christ; so that our grace is, most literally and most affectingly, a derivation from the abundance - of his grace. How near does this exquisite doctrine seem to bring us to our dearest Lord!⁵ Do the forms, the fashions, and varieties of these sevenfold sacramental garments, in which the Precious Blood clothes itself, tell us of its mys-teries, its nature, or its character? ‘Doubtless they have deep meaning, and are symbolical of its genius; but we are unable to decipher them. They are hieroglyphics of some hidden wisdom of God. But we see so much as this: that the Sacraments are the actions of Christ. He instituted them as Man; and thus they are the going-on of the Thirty-Three Years upon earth. This is the clearest and the truest view of these marvellous portions of creation. Let us now see if we have not learned enough of their theology to meditate practically upon them in connection with our subject.

The Sacraments are then, as we see, in a very special sense the vases of the Precious Blood. They are the means by which the Precious Blood is ordinarily applied to the souls of men. They are the most characteristic features in the economy of grace. They are the most striking memorials of the love of Jesus; and a knowledge of them is most necessary to a right understanding of redemption. This is not the place for entering further upon the doctrine and definition of the Sacraments. My readers are doubtless sufficiently familiar with the teaching of the Church upona subject of such constant practical importance, and what has been said in the foregoing pages will enable them to call to.mind at least its most prominent features. But it is very needful for our present subject that we should make some reflec-. tions upon the Sacraments, rather in the way of meditation than of doctrine. We cannot do justice to the Precious Blood of our dearest Lord, unless we have a true spiritual discernment, a loving admiration, and an immense esteem of the grandeur, riches, and sweetness of the Sacraments. In an ascetical point of view, I hardly know any thing upon which I should lay greater stress in these days, than a fervent devotion to the Sacraments.

The Sacraments are the inventions of God himself. No creature could have devised them. I do not believe that without revelation the most magnifieent intelligence of the angels could have imagined such a thing as a Sacrament. It is a peculiar idea of God. It represents a combination of his most wonderful perfections. It conveys to us in itself quite a distinctive notion of God. We already know God as the unbeginning God. We know him also as the God of nature and as the God of grace. These are two different disclosures of him to us. So the knowledge of him as the God who devised the Sacraments is another disclosure of him. It adds many new ideas of him to the other ideas of him which we possessed before. Weshould in some respects have thought differently of God, if there had been no Sacraments, from what we think now. This is a great deal to say. It confers upon the Sacraments a most singular dignity, or rather it expresses in an intelligible manner that singular dignity which belongs to them. Moreover, God not only invented them, but he invented them for the most magnificent of purposes. He invented them, that by their means especially he might impart his Divine Nature to created natures, that he might justify sinners, that he might sanctify souls, that he might unite to himself the race whose nature he had condescended to single out and assume to himself. If tbey are his own invention, they must be works of unspeakable excellence; for the least of his works is excellent: but, if they were meant also for purposes so dear to him and of such an exalted character, who shall be able rightly to imagine the excellence of these Sacraments? Furthermore, they are very peculiar inventions. ‘They do not follow the laws of nature. They even superadd to the laws of grace. They are things apart, almost belonging to an order of theirown. They are apparently without parallel in all creation. I know of nothing else to which I could liken them. They come out of some depth in the unfathomable wisdom of God, which does not seem to have given out any other specimens of itself. They are emanations of some abyss of his magnificence, which has only opened once, to give them forth, and then has closed, and rested. As matter and spirit, as nature and grace, are samples of God’s beauty, tokens of ineffable realities in him, manifestations of his invisible treasures, so likewise are the Sacraments. They invest God with a new light in our minds. They are some of his eternal ideas, the more imperiously demanding our devout study, because we have no others like them, no others which we can use as similitudes or as terms of comparison. My knowledge of God is not only increased in degree, but it is extended in kind, by my knowledge of a Sacrament.

Strictly speaking, we do not call the Sacraments miraculous. They have laws of their own. So perhaps have miracles. But the laws of the Sacraments are revealed to us. Their action follows rules, and is, under fitting circumstances, invariable. Their order and immutability are two of their most striking features; and this distinguishes them from miracles. They are processes; and in this also they are unlike what we popularly term miracles. But so far as they are wonder-working, so far as their results call forth our astonishment, so far as their effects are beyond the power of nature, so far as their completeness and their instantaneousness are concerned, so far as the revolumake are beyond the strength of common grace, so far as their success is in their secret divinity,— 80 far we may Call their operation miraculous. It is certainly in the highest degree mysterious. Their use of matter seems to point to a philosophy of matter and spirit far deeper than any which has yet been taught. It awakens trains of thought which carry us rapidly into speculations which are too high for us, yet which give us now and then unsystematic glances into the secrets of creation. The forms of the Sacraments betoken a myste- | rious grandeur in language, reminding us of God’s peculiar way of working by efficacious words, a characteristic which doubtless is connected in some - hidden manner with the Eternal Generation of the Word. The invisible sacerdotal power which is necessary to the validity of so many of the Sacraments is another of their splendors, while the Sacraments which do not need it imply that latent priesthood which abides in all Christians, and which is an emanation of our Savior’s own priesthood “after the order of Melchisedec.” The jurisdiction required for the administration of so many of the Sacraments, and especially for valid absolution, is a participation in those regal powers which belong to the kingdom of Christ, to the Church in its character of a monarchy. The power of the Church itself to limit the validity of a Sacrament, as in the case of reserved sins in Confession, and of impediments in Matrimony, is another feature in the Sacraments, which enhances their mysterious character, while it exalts that lordship of the Sacred Humanity of Jesus which has been so coK 13 piously imparted to the Church. All these things are points for meditation, which cannot fail to fill the soul with reverence and love, and to unite it more closely with God, by making us feel how the natural is hemmed in with the divine, and with what awful reality we are always lying in the arms of God, with our liberty held up, secured, and at once imprisoned and set at large, by all this exuberance of supernatural interventions.

The grace of the Sacraments is another subject — for pious wonder. The special grace of each Sacrament, peculiar to itself and accomplishing a peculiar end, is a marvel in itself. Just as the sun brings out the blossoms, and paints their variegated leaves in parti-colored patterns, though the whole leaf is supplied with the same sap through the same veins, so does the Sun of justice work in the special graces of the Sacraments. How he determines them to such various effects is a secret hidden from us. The Sacraments have probably spiritual laws of their own, which are neither gratuitous nor arbitrary, but founded in some intrinsic fitness of things, which results from the character of God. The special grace of each Sacrament seems to be almost a visible approach of God to the individual soul, to accomplish some particular end, or con- — firm some definite vocation, or interfere in some distinct crisis. It is not his usual way of working. Itis not merely a general augmentation of sanctifying grace, an infusion of livelier faith, of keener hope, or of more burning charity. It is something more intimate between God and the soul, more personal, more full of reference to the individual case. Again, we must not omit to-reflect on the inexhaustibleness of the grace of the Sacraments. It takes an immense heroism like ~ martyrdom to come near to the grace of a Sacrament. Even martyrdom does not supersede Baptism or Confession, if they can be had. No one can tell how much grace lies in a single Sacrament. In a single Communion lies all grace; for in it is the Author and Fountain of all grace; and, if the theological opinion be true, that there is no grace in any of his members which has not actually been first in our Lord himself, then all the grace of all the world lies in one Communion, to be unsealed and enjoyed by the degree of fervor which we bring. The saints have said that a single Communion was enough to make a saint. Who can tell if any created soul has ever yet drained any single Sacrament of the whole amount of grace which was contained in it simply by virtue of its being aSacrament? I should be inclined to think, from manifold analogies both of nature and of grace, that no Sacrament had ever been duly emptied of its grace, not even in the Communions of our Blessed Lady.

No Sacrament is content to confine itself to the conferring of its special grace. There is aiways an exuberance about it, giving more than is asked, doing more than is promised, reaching further than was expected. This is a characteristic of all God’s works. His magnificence is confined in every one of them, and is forever bursting its bounds, and carrying light, and beauty, and fertility, and blessing, far beyond the shrine in which it had been localized. But the Perfection of God, which above all others the Sacraments appear to represunt, is

MARY. «a. aN

, COLLEGE LIBRARY his magnificence. They belong to this Attribute — in a very special and peculiar way. Hence there — is about them a redundancy of grace, a prodigality of power, a profuseness and lavishness of benediction, which go beyond the ordinary laws of the world of grace. Moreover, besides this exuberance, there is an agility about the Sacraments which is most worthy of note. Sometimes, if need be, one will do the work of another. Those, which have no office to communicate first grace and justify the sinner, will do so under certain circumstances. Communion will forgive. Extreme Unction will absolve: not ordinarily, but when there is necessity for it, and the fitting dispositions. We cannot think without surprise of this power of transforming themselves, and of passing into each other and supplying for each other, which within certain limits the Sacraments possess. Furthermore, the rivers of grace in the Sacraments never run dry. Consider the multitude of Sacraments administered daily in the Church. Picture to yourself the wonderfulness of grace and its supernatural excellence, and then imagine the quantity of it drawn out of the eternal fountains for the well-being of the world. It is an overwhelming thought. Grace is not only more abundant in the Sacraments, and more nimble, but it is also more sure, more invariable, more victorious. It is also more patient. Grace waits longer inside the Sacraments, than out of them. They seem to detain it, to hold heaven down upon earth with a sweet force, and so to multiply the occasions and prolong the opportunities of men. Z

The character, which some of the Sacraments _ confer, also belongs to their grace. It is a revelation to us of the divine impetuosity and energy of the Sacraments. Amid the ardors of heaven, and in the dazzling splendors of the Beatific Vision, the mystic signets, the inexplicable characters of the Sacraments, three in number, as if adumbrating the Three Divine Persons, shine forth as distinct beauties, and brighten through eternity. The character of Baptism is as it were the finger-mark of the Eternal Father on the soul. The character of Order glistens like the unfailing unction of the priesthood of the Eternal Son. The character of Confirmation is the deep mark, which the fires of the Holy Ghost burned in, the pressure of his tremendous fortitude, which was laid upon us, and yet we perished not, so tenderly and so gently did he touch us. In the wild fury of the tempestuous fires of hell the same characters glow terribly. They are indestructible even there, fiery shames, intolerable disgraces, distinct fountains of special agony forever and forever.

To these reflections on the grace of the Sacraments we must not fail to add a due consideration of the doctrine of intention. What things can be more purely divine than these Sacraments? Yet see how sensible they are to human touch! It is as if the very delicacy of their divine fabric made them more liable to human impressions. They are jealous of their powers. They do not need our active co-operation, so much as our permission. They require obstacles to be removed, but not assistance to be conferred. They work, as we say in theology, by the force of their own work, not by the energy of the recipient. This is their peculiarity. It is this which distinguishes them from other means of grace. They have reason to be jealous of so magnificent a distinction. Yet, in spite of all this, they are so sensitive to the touch of our fervor, that they unlock fresh and fresh graces according as we press them, as if in their love and their likeness to God they were delighted to be pressed, to be solicited, and to be importuned. They are also so delicate and so susceptible that they are at the mercy of our intentions. The very thought of this makes us tremble. We could almost wish it were not so. To be so fragile, while they are so exceedingly strong, is not this a surprise and a perplexity, not seldom too a sorrow and a dread? It seems to show that they are purely things of heaven, exotics | upon earth, or weapons of omnipotence becoming brittle when they are plunged suddenly among human actions. Baptism can justify the child whose reason has not dawned. Extreme Unction can deal with the relics of sin in a sinner who lies insensible. Such independent power have these masterful Sacraments. Yet are they in bondage to our intention. They must be human acts, if they are to be divine ones also. They are not mere charms, or spells, or sleight of hand. They have magic about them, but it is only that magic of incredible love in which God has clothed them with such resplendent beauty. Nothing, as I think, demonstrates the divinity of the Sacraments more evidently than this exquisite sensitiveness to — human touch.

Now look out upon the great laboring world, the world of human actions and endurances It is not possible to measure the influence which is being exercised upon the world at this moment by the Sacraments. They are penetrating the great mass of mankind like the network of veins and arteries in a living body. They are being the causes of millions of actions, and they are hindering the consequences of millions of other actions. They are weaving good, and unweaving evil, incessantly. The roots of great events, which grow up and tower in history, are perhaps fixed in some secret Sacrament or other. The silent and orderly revolutions of the Church are often moulded in them. Society would hardly credit to what an extent it is held together by them. The influence of a single reception of a Sacrament may be handed down for generations; and the making of the destinies of thousands may be in its hands. At this instant by far the greatest amount of earth’s intercourse with heaven is carried on, directly or indirectly, through the Sacraments. There is a vast wild world of sorrow upon earth. But over great regions of it the Sacraments are distilling dews of heavenly peace. In the underground scenery of hidden hearts they are at work, turning wells of bitterness into springs of freshness and of life. They are drying the widow’s tears, raising up unexpected benefactors for the orphan, nerving the pusillanimous, softening the desperate, rousing the torpid, crowning those who strive, and doing all things for those who die. As the animals came trooping to Adam to be named, so mortal sorrows are coming in herds at all hours to the Sacraments to receive the blessing of the second Adam. Somewhere or other at this moment a

Communion may be giving a vocation to some youthful apostle who in after-years shall carry the Gospel to populous tribes in the Asian uplands, or throughout the newly-opened river-system of neglected Africa. Crowds in heaven shall owe their endless bliss to that one Communion.

But the world of human joys is not much less vast than the world of human sorrows; and the Sacraments are there also, purifying, elevating, sanctifying, multiplying, supernaturalizing multitudes of these blameless delights. Yet there isa difference between their action upon sorrows and their action upon joys. They make no sorrows. They cause no mourning. They create no darkness. Whereas they are forever creating gladnesses. Splendors flash from them as they move, and their splendors are all jubilees. They are’ fountains of happiness to all the earth. They cover even the monotonous sands of life with verdure, and make the desert bloom, and crown the hard rocks with flowers, and beautify with their softness the sternest solitudes. Who can tell what songs of human goodness are being sung this hour in the ear of God, because of the joyous inspirations of the Sacraments? Of a truth human joy is a beautiful thing, a very worship of the Creator. Out of himself there is no beauty like it, unless it be the jubilee of angels. But the joys which the Sacraments have sanctified, and, still more, the joys which the Sacraments have gendered, who ean tell how sweet they are to the complacency of our heavenly Father?

It is to be thought of, also, how the Sacraments embrace and compass human life in their mysterious number seven. Man’s life is a pathetic thing. There is no dulness in any biography of earth. Each life has many turns. Within the soul common vicissitudes are not without romance. Supernatural things greatly increase the romance of life. Even calmness and uniformity are like sunset skies, full of noiseless plays of light, and scarce perceptible shiftings of gold-red clouds, which change the splendor we know not how. Yet is there in all human lives a like recurrence of like vicissitudes. It is this which blends them into one, although they are so various. It is like the burden of the song, which chimes in with equal fitness whether the verse be one of gladness or of sorrow. The things that are common to all - men are more touching than those which happen only to some. They are fountains of deeper feeling. They are more touching because they are more natural. They are diviner visitations, because they are more general. It is these things upon which the Sacraments fasten with their instincts of love. The times, the vocations, the states, the crises of human life, these are all clasped together by the seven-fold band of Sacraments. If we think of all these things, we shall own that it is no exaggeration to say that their mere existence makes all creation different from what it would have been without them. »

But who can speak worthily of the Sacraments? The Eucharist gives us a measure of their grandeur; and is it not an immeasurable measure? Would that men would study more the science of the Sacraments! Devotion would be greatly increased thereby. The peculiar hatred, with which the author of heresy pursues what may be called the sacramental principle in our holy faith, is a token | to us of the stress which we ourselves ought to lay upon it. Hardly anywhere is theology more deep than in the matter of the Sacraments. They give us more intimate glimpses of God than almost any thing else, and especially of the ways of God, those ways by which we seem to know him, to recognise him, and to realize him. We should know much less of the capabilities of human actions, their limit and their reach, the point at which grace is grafted on them, and their comportment under the pressure of divine things, if it were not for our knowledge of the Sacraments.

~—S:

That human actions can be the matter of a Sacra- — ment is surely a truth full of philosophical import as well as of theological significance. The union of freedom with sustaining and impelling grace,— where is it so marvellously illustrated as in a Sacrament?

Moreover, a devotion to the Sacraments is very needful for the times in which we live. The spirit of the age must necessarily affect both our theology and our asceticism. Under its depressing constraints we shall be tempted to sacrifice the supernatural to the natural, the passive to the — active, and the infused to the acquired. Theology will be allured to merge into metaphysics. Devotion will be considered a vocation, priests a caste, and theology a private professional training. The substance of the old Condemned Propositions about spiritual direction will be adroitly renewed. Men will sneer at perfection in the world. Education will be bidden to throw off what it will be sila s-taught to consider the last relics of its monastic trammels. Men will chafe at the condemnation of books, and indeed at all acts of intellectual authority on the part of the Church. The study of dogmatics will be discouraged. The whole theory of Condemned Propositions will be disliked. A discontent with the existing Church, or at least a want of cordial forward sympathy with it, will grow up, while the wickedness of “the respectful silence” of Jansenism will be renewed. The sovereignty of the Chureh, the pope’s temporal power, and the hallowed truths enshrined in canon law, will provoke impatience as obstinate things which will not die although their hour of _ death has come. The mystical side of the Gospel will become more distasteful while it grows less intelligible. Heroism will have to rank lower than the ordinary attainments of conscientious piety. The privileges of the Church will be less esteemed, and heresy less hated. The Sacraments will count almost for nothing in a man’s system. The influence of the Incarnation will be far less recognised and acknowledged in the world; and a modern mixture of Judaism and Pelagianism will take possession of many minds, to the grievous disadvantage of Christian perfection. Such is the spirit which will try to waylay souls on their road to Calvary or to Thabor. Such was not the temper or genius of the saints. Such, by the blessing of God, will not be ours, if we foster in ourselves a deep, a tender, and an intelligent devotion to the Sacraments. I repeat, as I said before, that, in an ascetical point of view, I hardly know any thing upon which I should lay greater stress in these days, than a fervent devotion to the Sa — craments. 4 Now, theseSacraments are simply the machinery _ of the Precious Blood. They are the means by ~ which it first conquers, and then keeps what it © has conquered. They are, under ordinary cireumstances, the conduits by which it is conveyed to the souls for whom it was shed. ‘hey are God's system for dispensing it. We should have not only an inadequate but an absolutely wrong notion of the empire of the Precious Blood, if we did not see it as working and circulating through the Sacraments. They are the grand features of its Empire. They are its method of government, which expresses its character and suits its disposition. It is the Sacraments which hinder it from being a past historical expiation for sin. By them it is always truly flowing in the Church. Nay, by them it is forever being shed afresh within the Church. Possibly, there might have been Sacraments even if man had needed no redemption. But it seems as if there would hardly have been Sacraments if there had been no Incarnation. The Sacraments, while they express a most wonderful part of the Divine Mind, seem also to imply the Precious Blood. They might have carried the glorious life of the Incarnate Word into the lives of his fellow-men in mysterious comminglings and engraft-ings, even if there had been no fall. But, if there had been no Precious Blood, we cannot conceive of the Sacraments. The nuptials of matter and spirit might have been celebrated in other ways, yet not in these particular ways which now make up our ~ idea of Sacraments. Anyhow, according to the —

THE EMPIRE OF THE PRECIOUS BuGOD. 15)

economy of redemption, the Sacraments form the system by which the Precious Blood traverses the whole Church, gifts it with unity, and informs it with supernatural energy and life. We cannot, even in thought, disjoin the Sacraments from the Precious Blood, or the Precious Blood from the — Sacraments, without changing in our minds the order and establishment of God.

But we have not spoken sufficiently of the vastness of the empire of the Precious Blood. Let us look for a moment at its extremes. On the one hand, it includes the first-fruits of creation, and on the other hand, the refuse of creation. The first-fruits of creation are those flowers whom our Lord gathers in the pure fragrance of their first blooming. They are the souls of infants, in whom as yet reason has not dawned, but whom the water of Baptism, our Savior’s Precious Blood, has justified and crowned. These are the successors of the Holy Innocents, those first Christians who, baptized in blood, went to adorn with their infancy the Church Triumphant, first in Abraham’s Bosom, and then in the heaven of heavens,—the first martyrs, whose blood was at once the prophecy and the prey of the Precious Blood of Jesus, which had already preluded its shedding in the mystery of the Circumcision. Those, who form the refuse of creation, are they whom God has cast off forever. They lie in outer darkness. Their exile is eternal. “Yet even there we find the energy of the Precious Blood. Inconceivable as are the severities of hell, they are less than rigorous justice would exact. They are so, precisely because of the. Precious

Blood. Before the days of Peter Lombard the generality of theologians held that, as time went on, there were some mitigations of the fierce punishments of hell. They sank after a while to a lower level. There were expiations which _were only temporal and not eternal. There were condonations within certain limits. Peter Lombard, as St. Thomas himself says, innovated upon this teaching, and St. Thomas followed in his steps. In recent times Emery of St. Sulpice revived the older traditions, but without making much impression upon the schools. Suffice it to say that, if, independent of all hell being below the rigor of justice because of the Precious Blood, there were any such mitigations as the elder theologians believed, they also came without a doubt from the empire of the Precious Blood. To it alone can they be due, if they exist at all.

There are saints in heaven. They are thé heights of the Church of Christ. There are newly-converted sinners upon earth. These are the lowest depths in the happy land of redeeming grace. But the light upon those mountain-tops is the glory of the Precious Blood, and the sunshine in those valleys is the kindness of the selfsame Blood. There are sufferers in purgatory, dwelling in a mysterious region of pain and quietude, of patience and of love. They live beneath the earth, yet are upon their road to heaven. Their land is vast and popuous. It is a territory won from hell by the Precious Blood, and its pains made uneternal. It is a detention, not an exile,—a detention which is a marvellous artifice of mercy, one of the many compassionate devices of the Precious Blood

There are sufferings on earth, sufferings by which hearts are cleansed, sins swiftly expiated, merits rapidly accumulated: sufferings in which grace comes, sufferings which are likenesses of Jesus, sufferings which are secret loves of God. These earthly sufferings also the Precious Blood alleviates, illuminates, sanctifies, crowns, glorifies, and knows how to render so delectable that they who have drunk deep of the Precious Blood get a strange new nature, and thirst for more suffering still, Thus both these extremities of suffering, beneath the earth and on it, belong to the empire of the Precious Blood. If we look outside ourselves, we’see everywhere the empire of the Precious Blood stretching away in interminable vista. The whole Church is its legitimate inheritance. Her jurisdiction is the law and order of the Precious Blood. The priesthood is its army of officials. The catholic hierarchy is its venerable administration. The lofty tiara, that most sovereign thing on earth, gleams with it like the polar star of nations. The Blessed Sacrament, multiplied a hundred thousand times, is its own adorable self, its Heart-fountain, and its Five Free Wells, worshipful in its union with the Godhead, the beautiful amazing Created Life of the Uncreated Word. If we look within ourselves, there is still the selfsame empire of the Precious Blood. There is the character of Baptism, its still inexhausted grace, its titles unforfeited or re-conferred, its infused habits, its heroic Spirit-gifts. There are the footprints of so many Absolutions, the abiding fragrance of such reiterated Communions, perhaps the character of Order and its fearful powers, perhaps the mysterious traces of Extreme Unction, certainly the signet of the Holy Ghost in Confirmation, and nameless graces, nameless vestiges where Divine Feet have gone, and where Divine Virtue still resides. There also is that most innermost sanctuary of the soul, which so few reach on this side of the grave, the secret cabinet where the Holy Trinity dwells blessedly, in the very centre of our nature, up from whose secret recesses joys shall one day break and flow, such as we never dreamed of, such as would look to us now far beyond the possibilities of our nature. All this, outside us or within us, is the empire of the Precious Blood.

But it is only in heaven that its supremacy is tranquil and complete. We must mount thither in spirit, where we hope one day to mount in all the jubilee of an incredible reality, if we would see in its full grandeur the royalty of the Precious Blood. Countless saints are there, various in the splendors of their holiness. They are all kings now, who once were serfs, but were redeemed by the Precious Blood. They are the children of many generations, the natives of many lands. They were of all degrees on earth, and in their fortunes the diversity was endless. But they were all bought by the same Blood, and all own the lordship of that Blood in heaven. When they sing their songs of praise, songs of a human sweetness which the angels greatly love, they sing of the Lamb slain and of the triumphs of his Blood. When their potent intercessions win hourly graces for their clients who are still struggling upon earth, it is their desire to spread the empire of the Precious Blood, which throws such loyal intensity into thei prayers. Shall they forget their Ransom, whose freedom is their endless joy?

Cast your eye over that outspread ocean, whose shores lie so faintly and far off in the almost infinite distance. It gleams like restless silver, quivering with one life and yet such multitudinous life. It flashes in the light with intolerable magnificence. Its unity is numberless. Its life is purest light. Into the bosom of its vastness the glory of God shines down, and the universe is illuminated with its refulgence. It is an ocean of life. Who can count the sum of being that is there? Who but God can fathom its unsearchable eaverns? What created eye but is dazzled with the blazing splendor of its capacious surface? It breaks upon its shores in mighty waves; and yet there is no sound. Grand storms of voiceless praise hang over it forever, storms of ecstatic lightning without any roll of thunder, whose very silence thrills the souls of the human saints, and is one of their celestial joys,—that deep stillness of unsounding worship. ‘This is the world of angels. There too the Precious Blood reigns supreme. The angels have needed noransom. Amid their almost countless graces there is no redeeming grace. But there is not a grace in all that sea of grace which was not merited for them by the Precious Blood. They too owe all they are, and all they have, to its blissful royalty. They too sing anthems in its praise, though not the same anthems as the Redeemed. Jesus is Head of Angels as well as men; and it is as Man that he is Head of angels. Thus the whole of that marvellous world of glorious intelligence, profound yladness, gigantic power, hoe 14* and beautiful holiness, is a province of the empire of the Precious Blood.

Who can doubt its sweet constraints over the immaculate heart of Mary? She is queen of heaven and earth. Far and wide her empire stretches. Its boundaries are scarce distinguishable from those of the Precious Blood itself: so closely and so peacefully do the two sovereignties intertwine.

Mary holds sway over the Precious Blood. It | does her bidding, and she commands with a mother’s right. Yet she too is a subject of the Precious Blood, and rejoices in her subjection. Out of her very heart that Blood first came; and out of that Blood came also her Immaculate Conception. It was the very office of her Divine Ma- - ternity to minister that Blood; and it was that Blood which from all eternity had merited for her the Divine Maternity. It was the Precious Blood which made her suffer; but it*was the Precious Blood also which turned her suffering into dignities and crowns. She owes all to the Precious Blood, to whom the Precious Blood owes its very self. Yet the river is greater than its fountain.

’ The Precious Blood is greater than Mary; nay, it is greater by a whole infinity, because the waters of the Godhead have assumed its uncommingled stream unto themselves. Mary sits upon her throne to magnify the Precious Blood. Her power is used for the propagation of its empire. Her prayers dispense its grace. Her holiness, which enchants all heaven, is the monument and trophy of that victorious Blood. Shall it rule also over the Divine Perfections? Behold that inexorable justice, which an infinite

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LS eae ae oL holiness stands by as assessor! Can endless worlds of mere creatures satisfy those claims, or appease that adorable wrath? Yet the Precious Blood has done it. A mercy that is limitless, and a jus- _ tice that is insatiable,—will not sin set these attributes at strife? Who shall be peace-maker in such unspeakable debate? The Precious Blood! Justice and mercy have met together, and have kissed each other in the Precious Blood. How shall the decrees of the Creator comport with the continued liberty of the fallen creature? The Precious Blood, heavenliest of inventions! has found out a way. The unchangeableness of God shall condescend to wait upon the mutabilities of the fickle creature, and yet its own repose be all the more glorified the while; for this too shall be one of the secrets of the Precious Blood. If greater good comes out of evil, it is through the alchemy of the Precious Blood. If all the Divine Perfections combine in some resplendent work of the Most Holy Trinity, whether it be Creation, Redemption, or the Blessed Sacrament, it is the Precious Blood in which the combination has been made, and which the attributes of God delight to magnify, while it with its adoring ministries is magnifying them. If any of the Divine Perfections will come down from heaven, and walk amidst the nations of men, and give light and scatter peace and healing as it goes, it first puts on the vesture of the Precious Blood, in order that it may not slay but make alive. Justice is occupied in crowning saints. Mercy is forever traversing its empire as if in pure delight at its immensity. Holiness is adorning its infinite purity with the little sanctities of feeble and imperfect souls. Immutability is hourly adapting itself to the changeful needs of innumerable hearts. Omnipotence is putting itself at the disposal of created weakness, as if it were some generous beast of burden serving a master whom it could so easily destroy. Eternity is busy commuting time into itself. Love changes its eternal name, and only calls itself by the name of the Precious Blood. All these marvels belong to the empire of the Blood of Jesus. The peace of God is all activity to do the work of that dear Blood. The self-sufficiency of God is toiling as if nothing could suffice it, except the salvation of its creatures. All this is the sovereignty of the Precious Blood. Nay, the dread sovereignty of the Everlasting King seems to be forever passing into the created Kingship of the Precious Blood. Inside the Unity of God, within the life of the Threefold Majesty, even there we find the tokens of the Precious Blood; even there it seems to rule. The Son, who has assumed it, owns the gladness of its love. The Holy Ghost, who fashioned it at first, and now works with it his sanctifying work, broods dovelike with complacency upon its deeps. The Eternal Father chose it as the one thing to appease him; for he too owns thé mastery of its exceeding beauty. It seems, if with becoming reverence we may say so, to have widened his Fatherhood. It has added fresh treasures to those inexhaustible treasures which he had in his Eternal Son. But these are thoughts for silence rather than for words. May his infinite Majesty pardon the freedoms which the ignorance of our love has been taking with his perfections! It is of his own goodness that we cannot ae loving, even while we tremble.

There is one corner of Sbonkion; where the empire of the Precious Blood is not what we would have it be. It is our own hearts. Yet is it not our one work to subject ourselves to it in all things? We desire to have no instincts, but the instincts of the Precious Blood. We wish to esteem nothing, but as the Precious Blood esteems it. It desires nothing so much as to be loved. We desire nothing so much as to love it. Why then is it that our weakness and our want of courage so sadly keep our grace in check? Alas! we are inverting the right order of things. We are ruling the Precious Blood by limiting its empire. It longs to rule over us; it longs with a masterful sweetness. The day shall come, when its longing shall be satisfied. Neither shall it be a distant day. For we will begin this very day to love and serve our dearest Lord as we have never loved and served him heretofore. Always and in all things shall his Blood rule and guide us. Its rule is blessedness even upon earth. It shall rule, not our spiritual life only, but all our temporal circumstances. It shall rule our love of those we love, and it shall make our love of them a doing to them spiritual good. How shall we die unless at that moment the Precious Blood is reigning in’our hearts? If it rules us not then, we are lost forever. But how shall we better secure its empire at our deaths, than by establishing it over our lives? The past will not do. Jesus must be more victorious in our | souls, more a conqueror, and more a king. Oh that the Precious Blood might so work in our al a hearts that life should seem to have only one possible gladness, the gladness of having Jesus to reign over us as King! Oh Grace! Grace! would that we were altogether conquered! But we will be of good cheer; for the time is coming when we shall be completely and eternally vanquished by ~ victorions love.

Footnotes

1. St. John vi. 54, 56. Col. i. 20. Heb. ii. 14; ix. 7; x. ios a eee xin, LI. J] Pet.i, 2. 1 John:i.. 7; v.. 6.& Apoc. v. 9; vii. 14; xii. 11; xix.138. 1Cor. x. 16. Eph. ii..13. 1 Pet. i. 19. Heb. xiii. 20. Acts xx. 28. Rom. iii 25: v. 9. Eph.i. 7. Col. i. 14. Apoe. i. 5. ↩

2. Eph. v. 27. 12 ↩

3. Viva Pars., vii. Disp. ii. q. 2. ↩

4. Sicut Caro Christi habuit virtutem instrumentalem ad faciendum miracula propter conjunctionem ad Verbum, ita Sacramenta per conjunctionem ad Christum crucifixum et passum. S. Thomas, Quodlibet. 12, art. 14. Theology suggests three ways in which the Sacraments may confer grace physically,—per virtutem obedientialem cum concursu omnipotentiw, per qualitatem supernaturalem intrinsecam, per omnipotentiam specialiter inexistentem. In the text the third method has been adopted, in harmony with the views ↩

5. Some eminent theologians have even held that of two Communions of equal fervor, one by a layman, and one by a priest, the priest’s Communion would merit more, because of his conjunction with our Blessed-Lord as his domestic minister. In like manner the special efficacy of our Lady’s prayers is attributed precisely to her conjunction with our Lord as his Mother. ↩