Lecture II. The Revolt of the Will against God

On looking back at what I have hitherto said, I feel more than ever the difficulty under which I have been, in laying before you a subject which, if it had been treated in detail, with the exactness which a philosophical or a theological argument would require, must have become entirely impossible in such a popular form. But the treating it in a popular form may perhaps lay my statement open to question and to cavil. Between these two difficulties I can only attempt to give a correct outline. I will therefore remind you briefly of what I have said.¹

I have spoken of the revolt of the intellect from God as one of the chief evils of these latter times; and I instanced in proof of it the rise of Atheism — a negation of the existence of God — which I then said, and say again, is characteristic of these latter days; because the earlier ages of the world were so profusely penetrated with the traditionary belief in a Divine being, that, though they fell into Polytheism, Pantheism, and idolatry, yet into Atheism, as we know it now, they never fell. The other intellectual evils of these times are Deism, or the rejection of revelation; heresy, or the rejection of the Divine voice of the Church, the jealous and ungenerous limitation of the doctrinal authority of the Church, even in those who believe in the revelation of the Faith; and lastly, the practical unbelief of lukewarm and heartless Catholics. These two last being what may be called the premonitory symptoms of rationalistic doubt and of final unbelief.

The next subject before us is the revolt of the will of man from the authority of God. The connection between the two subjects is evident. We never will anything which we have not first thought. There is an action of the intellect preceding every act of the will; for the will that acts without the previous guidance of the intellect is an irrational will. It may be the action of a man, but it is not a human action, because it is not under the guidance of reason. Therefore, before every act of the will, there must be an act of the intellect or reason. The connection between the last and the present subject is this: that if the reason or intellect be rightly directed by the truth, which is the intelligence of God, the will will be directed according to the law of God. But if the intellect be perverted or obscured, then the perversion or the obscurity will descend from the intellect into the will, and the will will be likewise perverted or enfeebled. Now the words which I have taken from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans express this truth. He had already said: ' There is now, therefore, no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh/ but according to the Spirit. * For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath delivered me from the law of sin and death; for what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and of sin, hath condemned sin in the flesh; that the justification of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For they that are according to the flesh, mind the things that are of the flesh; but they that are according to the Spirit, mind the things that are of the Spirit. For the wisdom of the flesh is death: but the wisdom of the Spirit is life and peace. Because the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be. And they who are in the flesh cannot please God.'1 Now the word ' flesh' here means simply mankind, human nature, man as he is without God, man as he is, with the affections, the passions, the intellect, the will, and the three wounds which came by the fall; that is, ignorance in. the intellect, disorder in the passions, and weakness in the will. This is what the Apostle calls the * flesh.' Now, he says the wisdom of the flesh; and in the Latin version in one place it is translated ' the prudence of the flesh;' in another, * the wisdom of the flesh;' and in the original Greek it is the ' mind;' that is to say, the aggregate of affections, passions, and thoughts acting upon the will, disturbing and per- 1 Rom. viii. 1-8.

verting it. Human nature in its fallen state is declared to be an enemy of God, not subject to the law of God. St. Paul says that it cannot be subject to the law of God, for this reason: so long as it is in that state of disorder, it must be intrinsically opposed to the will of God; for it is unholy, and God is holy; it is false, and God is true; it is unjust, and God is just; and therefore, like as a crooked line cannot be a straight line — and if the line can be straightened, its crookedness has ceased to exist, for crookedness can never be straight — so it is with human nature, unless it is changed, renewed, and elevated. In renewal it puts off its former disorder, which cannot be subject to the law of God. The disorder ceases to exist. Now, such was not the state of man when God made him in the beginning. Man was created perfect, both in body and soul. The passions and affections were in perfect subjection to his. will, and his will to the will of God. From the first moment of his creation he was constituted in a state of grace, and the Spirit of God dwelt in him, illuminating him with the knowledge of God, ordering his affections and passions according to the law of God, and subjecting his will to the will of God; so that there was a supernatural unity and harmony in his soul, and his soul was, as it were, the Kingdom of God within him. Such was the state of man in the beginning; and the wisdom of the flesh then had no existence — the wisdom of the Spirit reigned in him, which is both life and peace. When sin entered, and death by sin, then the wisdom of the flesh developed itself; that is, human nature in its fallen state, deprived ^by its own sin of the Spirit of God, became darkened, troubled, disordered, unholy. The unity and harmony which existed before, the dominion of the soul over itself, was shattered and destroyed. The rebellion of the passions and affections against the soul at once arose. As soon as the will of man revolted against the will of God, the passions and affections in him, which till then had been subject to him, revolted. He was punished for his revolt against God by an internal revolt against himself.

Now this rebellion of the soul is healed by the redemption of the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. In the regeneration of the soul by the Sacrament of holy Baptism, the Spirit of God is once more communicated to the nature of man.

God makes the soul His dwelling-place; the order and harmony of the soul begins to be renewed in Him. The wisdom of the Spirit is the mind of one who, being under the guidance and government of the Spirit of God, has subjected his intellect to the truth of God, and his will to the will of God. He is therefore in friendship with Him. St. John and St. James both say that the friendship of this world is enmity against God, because there is an essential enmity between the state of fallen man and God. But when, by regeneration, the will of man is restored to union with God, friendship with God is restored to man. This, then, is the meaning of the Apostle's words. Now, let us make application of them. A rock of crystal resolves itself into a multitude of crystals, every one of which bears the type of the whole. The primitive form pervades the whole block. In like manner, every regenerate soul restored to friendship and union with God, by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, is compacted in the Body of Christ: * unto whom coming,' as St. Peter says, ' be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house.'2 And as every 2 1 St. Peter ii. 4, 5.

stone is shaped and squared and fashioned and fitted to the place that it is to occupy, so every Christian soul, built up into the unity of the Church of Jesus Christ, grows into a temple in which God dwells by His Spirit. In this kingdom the will of God is supreme, and the Holy Spirit perpetually dwells, pervading the Church with sanctity. The Church incorporates the will of God, and makes it visible among men. The sins of individuals notwithstanding, the Church is conformed by its interior subjection to the will of God, because it is a spiritual society made up of individuals, called from all races and languages, compacted and built together in indissoluble unity, as they subject themselves, one by one, to the wisdom of the Spirit, Who dwells in the Church for ever. But the Church has a twofold mission. The first part of its work — the highest and the noblest — is the salvation of individual souls, as I have described. But it has another: the second part of the mission of the Church to the world is the sanctification of the civil society of the world, that is, of the households and families of men; then of peoples, nations, states, legislatures, kingdoms, empires, and the whole civil order of mankind.

The Church has had three periods. The first was the period of three hundred years, while it was accomplishing its spiritual mission for the conversion and salvation of individuals, under persecution. The second period began with the cessation of persecution in the conversion of the first emperor, by whom, it may be said, the civil power of the world first paid homage to the Church of God. From that date down to the sixteenth century, the civil society of the world was pervaded by the Christian law, by Christian faith, by Christian unity, by Christian worship. The laws of God became the laws of Christian nations; the laws of the Church were transcribed into the statutes of Christian people; and the civil and spiritual authorities of the world were united together in peace and harmony. There never was a period in history when the world, as such, was so conformed to the will of God as in that period, from the cessation of the last persecution until the sixteenth century. Do not misunderstand me to say that the world had the note of sanctity. No; sanctity is the note of the Church alone. But even the world then acknowledged God and His revelation, the unity of His worship, the unity of His Church, the supreme authority of faith, and of its laws. Even the world — the kingdoms and empires of the world — acknowledged these things; and that was a time when, howsoever the passions and affections of man rebelled, yet the public order of society was Christian, and the wisdom of the flesh was, at least so far as public laws could reach, in subjection to the wisdom of the Spirit. I know that the history of those times is full of outrages, horrors, violence, and the worst of crimes; nevertheless, I reaffirm what I have said, that in those ages the world was Christian and society was Christian. We have now entered into the third period of the history of the Church. From the sixteenth century downwards to the present time there has been an undoing of that work which the Church, for the previous fourteen hundred years, had been accomplishing; there has been a pulling down of the whole fabric; a disintegration of the Christian society; an erasing of Christian laws from the statute-books of nations; a breaking-up of the unity of faith, worship, and communion; a rejection of the spiritual authority of the Church over men. I am not now entering into any examination of this, which will fall more naturally under our next subject; but I am compelled in outline to state it, in order to bring out the subject which is now before us.

I would ask, then, what is it that has been going on for the last three hundred years? A revolt of the will -of man from the will of God, as expressed and embodied in the whole work of the Church for the previous fourteen hundred years. When, three hundred years ago, individuals one by one revolted from the authority of the Church, they laid the first seeds of the revolutions which, in these later ages, have separated whole nations from the unity of the Faith. Individuals began the work in the sphere of private judgment, or of their private conscience before God. But that which begins in the private conscience of men one by one, becomes little by little the collective and public opinion of a people, and is at last forced upon governments and legislatures, and changes the public laws in conformity to itself. Now, for the last three hundred years, there has been a continual expunging of the law of Christianity, of the faith and the doctrines of Christianity, from the laws of Christian peoples; so that I may say that at this moment there does not remain one single people that has not separated itself formally from its old relations of unity with the Christian Church. Many, as in the north and west of Europe, have formally separated themselves altogether from the unity of the Catholic Church. Other nations, that remain at least united in faith and in outward worship, nevertheless have broken all bonds and relations with it, except in the bare retaining of dogma and of spiritual discipline. And now this revolt against the will of God, as expressed and embodied by His providence in the work of the fourteen centuries preceding, has received its momentary completion. The people most favoured among Christian nations, as having in the midst of them the throne of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, have revolted, and with a sacrilegious and violent invasion have usurped the city of Rome which, from the beginning of Christianity, has been the centre and the head of the Christian Church, and, ever since persecution ceased, has been the visible throne from which the Vicars of Christ have reigned, by faith and the Divine law, over the nations of the world.

1. The first mark, then, of these times is lawlessness. This revolt of the will from God is signally manifested in the rejection of that order of Christian civilisation which the Divine providence has built up in the whole past history of Christendom. St. Paul, in his Epistle to Timothy, says: ' In the last days, shall come on dangerous times. Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, incontinent, traitors, stubborn, puffed-up, and lovers of pleasures more than of God.'3 ' Evil men and seducers shall grow worse and worse, erring,'4 and driving the world into error. Now these words are a prophecy of the latter times of the world; and if these be not the latter times, they have at least the marks already upon them. St. Paul also, writing to the Thessalonians, and speaking again of the latter times, says that * the man of sin/ ' that wicked one, shall be revealed.'5 Now, I shall not enter into the question of who that wicked one may be; but we can distinctly understand why St. Paul calls him that wicked one. The word in the original is, 'that lawless' one, that is, one who will not recognise any law but his own will, who will pull down and destroy the work of God. Now, if 3 2 Tim. iii. 1-4. * Ibid. 13. * 2 Thess. ii. 3, 8.

there be any one thing which is a more powerful solvent of the Christian world than another, it is lawlessness, the rejection of law, the rebellion of the human will, the human will making a law to itself, that is, each individual becoming his own legislator, and each legislator making laws at variance with the wills of others, causing perpetual change, universal discord, isolation of man from man, and because isolation, therefore conflict endless and suicidal.

Now, we hear, day by day, the glorification of revolutions. And what are revolutions? They are the violent disintegration of that order which is based upon authority and obedience; or, in other words, they are the extinction of the idea of law and of obligation, the overthrow of the supremacy of law, of the duties of the human conscience and of the human will to law: first to the law -of God, for that is the sole foundation and basis of all authority, and then to the civil and political laws of society, which spring from that Divine law and are sanctioned by it. The first and broadest mark that is upon these days, then, is lawlessness.

I should be anticipating what I have to say hereafter if I were to take for example any particular people or any particular nation; but I think no man that has read, be it ever so little, of the modern books upon what is called * democracy,' of its gradual and steady advance, its perpetual and irresistible development, in countries separated indeed from us by a wide sea, but closely allied to us by all that acts and reacts upon peoples of the same origin, will misunderstand my meaning. This lawlessness shows itself in these three ways: First, in individuals; that is to say, men have ceased to govern their conduct with reference to the laws of God and His Church. Many have so completely ceased to do this, that any one who does so is marked as fanatical or bigoted or a believer. We have come to the days when in some countries the man who professes faith is marked for reproach as a clerical, or soft-headed, or a reactionist. Even in our own country this is true. You may not meet it, perhaps, in the society in which you live; a certain refinement represses it. But there are classes more outspoken, where the truth is told more baldly. Fifty years ago, if a man did not believe in Christianity he held his peace, not only out of respect for others, but out of respect for himself. Now, men have no shame to profess infidelity. Then, the masses professed to be what their fathers were. Now, when, out of some hundreds of working men, one was known to go to church, his companions gave him a nickname, and that name was the most sacred Name that was ever heard on earth. The laws of that Divine Person cannot be vivid in the minds of those who could so disclaim their share in Him.

There is, further, a deliberate and legal departure from the Divine law which lies at the very foundation of social life. Christian matrimony is a Sacrament, and creates an indissoluble bond which death alone can loose. Such was the law of England, not only till three hundred years ago, but until fifteen years ago, though by Acts of Parliament it was violated; that is, by privileges, or private laws for private cases, persons were protected from the penalties of the law. The law of Christendom was the law of England down to fifteen years ago, and the bond of marriage was indissoluble. But the indissoluble bond of marriage is the foundation of the domestic life of Christendom. It was out of that principle of authority and order that Christendom arose in its unity and purity, in the midst of the unimaginable evils of the heathen world. And in these days a blow has.been struck at this first principle of Christian homes, which are the foundation of political society.

Moreover, in the whole civil and political order there has risen up in the last century a formal rebellion against authority. About eighty years ago was published to the world a new gospel for the political order of men. It has been called * the Principles of '89.' Read it for yourselves, and you will find it full of what is called * the rights of man.' But there are two things of which you will find nothing. First, you will find nothing there about the rights of God; and surely they ought to have precedence; and, secondly, you will find nothing there about the duties of man; but surely men have duties. When men rise for their rights, forgetting to say a word about their duties, they are already in rebellion. But again I am anticipating what belongs to our next subject. I cannot, however, fail to notice, in order to make this point clear, that we now are hearing of the rights of women; and if there can be a sign of a society inverted, and of the moral order of the world reversed, it is the putting of woman out of her proper sphere — the domestic life — where she is sovereign, and the putting her in that sphere where she ought never to set her foot — the public life of nations. To put man and woman upon an equality is not to elevate woman, but to degrade her. I trust that the womanhood of England — to say nothing of the Christian conscience which yet remains — will resist, by a stern moral refusal, the immodesty which would thrust women from their private life of dignity and supremacy into the public conflicts of men. This, again, is a part of the lawlessness of these days, and shows a decline of the finer instincts of womanhood, and a loss of that decisive Christian conscience which can distinguish not only between what is right and wrong, but between what is dignified and what is undignified both for women and for men. This clamour about women's rights may be taken as one of the most subtle and most certain marks of a lawlessness of mind which is now invading society. This, then, is the first example I will give of lawlessness in general.

2. And, secondly, this lawlessness is invading the domestic and private life of men in the form of luxury; and perhaps there is no country which is in greater danger from this cause than ours. We are the wealthiest people in the world. The personal and the national wealth of England is something incomparable in the history of mankind. I must, however, bear witness — and it is full of consolation to know it — that there is still to be found a common good sense, a firm resisting manliness, in the English character — and it prevails also in the characters of some of the women of England — a determination not to be softened and pampered. Men refuse to be made effeminate, and women to be self-indulgent. There is, then, something to resist it; and I hope, for that reason, that the pestilence of luxury may not prevail over us. But we are in danger lest our superabundant wealth should create a material civilisation, so advanced, so refined, and carried out with such extraordinary subtlety of invention, that it will need a very strong and firm will not to be softened by it. There is no doubt that, in dress, in pleasures, and in amusements, there is an invasion of luxury in our higher society which is very dangerous, and for this reason: when people have allowed themselves to go up to the brink of all that is lawful, it is very easy to trespass, and to go over the line that is forbidden. The line between what is lawful and unlawful in such minds is very faint and shadowy; and those who are always walking on the brink of the precipice, will not be long before they go over. The Apostle, speaking of wo-men, says: ' She that liveth in pleasures, is dead while she is living.'6 The taint of mortality is upon a refined and luxurious life, though on the outside, like the whited sepulchre, it seems unspotted. There is no doubt that the precept of the Apostle is very necessary in our day and in our country. He says: 'All things are lawful to me, but all things are not expedient.'7 I know I have the liberty; I may do a multitude of things with perfect safety of conscience; but I know this — that it might be an example for others, which would be dangerous to them, and it might also be a danger to myself. At all events, it is more generous, it is more in conformity with the example set me by my Divine Lord and Master, to deny myself in many things that are lawful. Apply this to dress, to pleasures, to amusements, to the expenditure you make on yourself, to your domestic and pri- 6 1 Tim. v. 6. T 1 Cor. vi. 12.

vate life, and you will find a wide field for its application.

3. Once more. The lawlessness of our times is to be found in our profuse worldliness. What is the world but the aggregate of that wisdom of the flesh, which is declared to be an enemy of God 1 The world always was and always will be at variance with the sanctity, the purity, the justice of God; and therefore St. John says: 'Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world.'8 And the world is upon us all who live in it: its sun shines upon us, we breathe its atmosphere, we are in contact with it, we eat its food, we converse with it all the day long, and happy are we if we are not tainted by it. Now for the forms in which the world presents itself to us. First, in its ambitions. You perhaps will think that ambition belongs only to public life. There is ambition everywhere, ambition in domestic life; in some 8 1 St. John ii. 15, 16.

form or other, ambition in every one. The desire to strain upward and to strain onward, to possess more, to be more, to rise, to get into another place, on another level, on another elevation, to outstrip neighbours, to be more than they — what is this but ambition? We recognise it and call it by its name, when it is in great and noble examples, and we are ashamed of it when it has manifested itself in the pettiness of our own private life; but it is ambition still. And this ambition of the world corrupts the hearts of multitudes, because, where this ambition is, a multitude of passions spring up round about it — envies, jealousies, rivalries, contentions, bickerings, rash judgments, detraction of neighbours, depreciations, running down those who are competing with us and perhaps outstripping us. All this is the lawlessness of the heart. Its passions are not subject to the law of God, neither, unless it be changed, can be. These must be cast out as so many unclean spirits, before the heart can be subject to the law of God. Another form of worldliness cleaves to the material interests of men; such as rivalries in business, in trade, in commerce, in the haste to get rich, in the ravenous buying and selling and bargaining, in the market, on the stock-exchange, in the bank, in the counting-house; overreaching of neighbours, gambling speculations, enterprises of doubtful integrity, in which the conscience is strained and honour sacrificed; hardness to those who labour, undue profits made out of the flesh and blood of those who are scantily paid for toil, and then, it may be, fraudulent actions with public ruin, and all coming from what cause 1 From the love of money — from that of which the Holy Ghost thus speaks: l The desire of money is the root of all evils; which some coveting after have erred from the faith, and have entangled themselves in many sorrows.'9 Such is the end of lawlessness— the passions, not under the government of holy fear and of justice, tempted all day long by the spirit of gain, in the hope of laying up and of being rich in this world; forgetting the warning: * They that will become rich, fall into temptation, and into the snare of the devil, and into many unprofitable and hurtful desires, which drown men into destruction and perdition.'10 Now, is there any country in the world — except, it may be, a country which has sprung from our own lineage — 9 1 Tim. vi. 10. w ibid. 9.

in which what I have been describing is to be found more dominant and more ruinous than in our own?

And there is still another form of worldliness, which also is a form of lawlessness; that is, the concealing of the law of God and the taking of the laws of the world instead; or, in other words, the fear and worship of the world. The flattery, the adulation, the sycophancy, with which people will wait upon the world to catch its favour, to be admitted into society, to sit at the tables of rich men, to be known as the acquaintance of those who bear titled names, the mean fawning obsequiousness of those who wait upon the world — where this is in a man's heart, he is not the disciple of Jesus Christ. Our Lord Himself has warned us: * How can you believe, who receive glory one from another, and the glory which is from God alone, you do not seekf u The worship of the world, and the bondage of the world, the fear of losing its favour, or the fear of incurring its ridicule, degrades millions of men who were created to the image of God, and as men, if not as Christians, ought to be ashamed of such meanness. Surely, St. John v. 44.

if the law of God were in them, as a living and constraining principle governing their conscience, it would elevate them above the world and all its works.

4. One more example of this subtle worldliness may be found where it is least suspected. It has invaded not only society, it has also invaded religion; it has entered into the sanctuary. In the beginning, Christians worshipped God in catacombs at the peril of their lives; they offered the Holy Sacrifice in vaults of the earth, in damp dark caverns with altars of rough-hewn stone, and with lamps which hardly gave light; in hardness, and in austerity, and in poverty. There was the spirit of martyrdom in those days. Afterwards, when the peace of the Church began, the world turned to shine upon it, and the Church then worshipped God in basilicas in the noonday sun. Once, as the Fathers said, its vessels were wood and its priests were gold. Now, its vessels at least were of gold. Heresies and schisms sprung up in the midst of splendour; men fled into the deserts, and set up once more altars of stone and crucifixes of wood, that they might worship God in the severity and sanctity of spirit and of truth. External splendour of worship is good, but internal truth and reality in the worship of God is better. It is right, indeed, and according both to the Divine law and to the pattern of God's own appointment, that the noblest and the best gifts of human skill and of human wealth should be consecrated to His honour. The Christian Church, as soon as it was able to follow the example of the saints of the Old Law, offered its costliest and best to the worship of God. The murmuring and declaiming that we hear about the simplicity of worship has in it the spirit of him who cast up for how much the ointment might have been sold; not that he cared for the poor. This carping against the Catholic Church for the splendour of its worship covers a disposition to carp against the truth. No, the Church of God by its history bears witness that the service of God in spirit and in truth requires no external splendour. It accepts, indeed, all that the art of man can do in architecture, in painting, in sculpture, in music, because all these come from God and ought to be consecrated to God. The warning of the Lord by the prophet rings in the ears of Christians: * Is it time for you to dwell in ceiled houses, and this house lie desolate T 12 It is true of us also that the wealth spent upon the private dwellings of men exceeds ten thousandfold that which is spent upon the honour and worship of God. The Church, therefore, both consecrates all things to God's service, and also sustains the same spirit of austere interior worship as in the beginning; and the Church has in all ages, by its chief Orders, kept up its testimony that the worship of God, in spirit and in truth, does not need external splendour. St. Francis laid down as the law for his children — the most numerous family in the Catholic Church — that upon the altar there should be candlesticks of wood, and that the vestments of the priest should have no silk. You will not misunderstand me, then, when I say that the spirit of the world will often enter into the splendour of the sanctuary, and that the sounds which fill the ear, and the beauty which fills the eye, may take away the heart and the mind. Unless there be the spirit of prayer and union with our Divine Lord in the heart, men may come and go without worshipping God in spirit and in truth. This is one of our most subtle 12 Aggaeus i. 4.

dangers. Satan knows well how to pass off the intellectual simulation of religious opinion for Divine faith; how to pass off imaginative dream-ings about the perfections of saints for practical obedience; how to fill men's imaginations with ideas of asceticism while their lives are self-indulgent; and to make even the splendours, sweetness, beauty, and majesty of Catholic worship a fascination of the sense and a distraction of the soul. The tempter is always busy, and nowhere changes himself into an angel of light so easily as in church. Now, I ask, have you been enough on your guard against this? The Catholic Church, lavish as it is in all splendours, because all things are due to Him who is the Giver of all, has sure and deep correctives to recall its children from the mere fascinations of sense by the eye, or the ear, or the imagination, to the presence of God. Where Jesus is present in the Blessed Sacrament, no splendour can easily withdraw the mind from Him; or if any become lukewarm, there is a prompt and strong remedy in the confessional. They who live in spirit and in truth will adore in spirit and in truth, as well in the majesty of a basilica as in the austerity of a catacomb. The interior spirit vivifies all exterior forms. Ceremonies are a mere mask to the unbelieving and the undevout. They are the folds of the Divine Presence, the countenance of the unseen Majesty, to those that believe and love. 5. The last and the only other point on which I will speak is one which threatens us all, and that is, compromise. The days in which we live are not days of firmness. People who still retain a belief in revelation nevertheless hear so much against dogma, that they are often tempted to use the same language, and to disclaim dogmatism. They hear so much said against asceticism, that they try to show their freedom from it by a liberty which is dangerous. But religion without dogma is not Christianity, and religion without asceticism is not the religion by which we can be saved. The religion of Jesus Christ began in the preaching of John: * Do penance; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'13 There can be no repentance without the mortification of the senses. The times in which we live are perhaps, of all times since the beginning of the Church, the least ascetic. The luxury, the worldliness, the superabundance of all that is grand and beautiful even in the external 13 St. Matt. iii. 2.

F worship of the Church, may help to lead men away. The fault indeed is theirs. They can turn anything into temptation; everything will be a snare if they will not correct it by a spirit of obedience to the law of God. Now, there are many marks of this shallow mind among us First, there is little mortification of the intellect: the intellect ranges without check and without limit; men read every book that comes to hand, every newspaper they find on the table. They do not ask whether it is for the Faith, or against the Faith; is it heretical, or is it sound; is it pure, or is it impure. They begin without discrimination; they read on without fear; they find the book to be heretical, erroneous, scandalous, licentious, and yet they do not burn it; they do not even put it down. The Catholic Church strictly and wisely prohibits the reading of any books that are written by those who have fallen from the Faith, or teach a false doctrine, or impugn the Faith, or defend errors. And that for this plain and sound reason: the Church knows very well that it is not one in a thousand who is able to unravel the subtlety of infidel objections. How many of you have gone through for yourselves the evidence upon which the authenticity, genuineness, and inspiration of the Book of Daniel rests 1 Have you verified the canon of the Old and New Testament? or have you mastered the philosophical refutation of Atheism? Would you advise your children to read sceptical criticisms of Holy Scripture, or the arguments of Deists? If not, why read them yourselves? You know perfectly well that the human mind is capable of creating many difficulties of which it is incapable of finding a solution. The most crude and ignorant mind is capable of taking in what can be said against truth. Destruction is easy; construction needs time, industry, and care. To gather evidence, or to ascertain the traditions of the Church, needs learning and labour, of which only they are capable whose life is given to it.

This indiscriminate and fearless reading is intellectual license; but if the intellect be not mortified, where will be the mortification of the will? Look at society, as it is called. What signs are there of mortification of the will amongst us? When do men willingly forego anything which is for their interest or their pleasure? When do they leave anything undone simply for conscience, or do anything contrary to their interest for the sake of Jesus Christ *? I am afraid that it is the individual and the unit that does these things. But is this religion without the Cross the religion of Jesus Christ *? Let us put it to the test. Take the Holy Scriptures in your hands, read them as they stand, do not explain them away: they are the word of God. Do not say it only means this, or it only means that. It means what it says — what God has written — and nothing else. Now hear what is written: ' How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God I It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.'14 Again, our Lord has said: 'Woe to you that are rich; for you have received your consolation.'15 Again, He said: ' Enter ye in at the narrow gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many they are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life; and few there are that find it.'16 And once more, when a man asked Him: Are they few that are saved? He said: ' Strive to enter in by the narrow gate; for many, I say to " St. Mark x. 23, 25. 1S St. Luke vi. 24. '• St. Matt. vii. 13, 14.

you, shall seek to enter, and shall not be able. But when the master of the house shall be gone in, and shall shut to the door, you shall begin to stand without, and knock at the door, saying, Lord, open to us: and he answering shall say to you, I know you not, whence you are.'17 Once more, He says: ' Whosoever doth not carry his cross and come after Me, cannot be My disciple.'18

These are the warnings of our Lord and Saviour. Take the crucifix in your hand, and ask yourselves whether this is the religion of the soft, easy, worldly, luxurious days in which we live; whether the crucifix does not teach you a lesson of mortification, of self-denial, of crucifixion of the flesh, with its affections and lusts, as the Apostle says; or as our Divine Lord Himself has said: i If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee. If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee; for it is better to enter into life having one eye and one hand, than having two eyes and two hands to be cast into hell-fire/ These are the words of God, of Jesus, our merciful, loving, compassionate Lord. They are not the words of severe and heartless men. They are the words

17 St. Luke xiii. 24, 25. 18 Ib. xiv. 27.

of Divine pity, warning us that * the wisdom of the flesh is death,' because the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy against God, and cannot be subject to the law of God.

Let us, then, be on our guard against these things, which, in their subtlety and strength, have power over us all. If we had one foot in heaven, and were to leave off mortifying ourselves, we should fall from grace.

Footnotes

1. The wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be.9 Romans viii. 7. ↩