Lecture IV. The Spirit of Antichrist

' If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated Me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you! St. John xv. 18, 19.

Mask it as we may, there is an irreconcilable enmity between God and the world. The Christian world may put on the vestments and bear the name of Christianity, but it is the world, after all. Not that there is enmity on God's part against the world; for * God so loved the world as to give His only - begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in Him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting/1 But 'the friendship of this world

1 St. John iii. 16.

is an enemy against God,' as we have already seen, because it is not subject to the law of God, nor can be.

This then is the meaning of our Lord's words when He said to the Apostles, who were becoming daily conscious of the hatred of men against them: ' If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated Me before you.'2 If you had been of the world — servants, friends, flatterers of the world — the world would have loved its own, it would have recognised its own reflection, its own mind, its own livery; but because you are not of the world, but I, by grace and special election, have chosen you out of the world, therefore, for that very reason, because you have My mark, because you bear My name, because, in some degree, you share My likeness; therefore the world hateth you. This enmity is perpetual: it exists at this day, it will exist to the end. Between God and the world there may be an apparent truce; there never can be peace. God is immutable; His perfections cannot change. The world is malicious, and from its malice it will not change; and therefore, as the Apostle says, * What participation

2 St. John xv. 18.

hath justice with injustice? what concord hath Christ with Belial ¥ 3 God, then, when manifest in the flesh, in the person of the eternal Son, was the-object of the world's chief hatred; and the world, after wreaking upon Him all that scorn, derision, insults could effect, nailed Him upon the cross. The shame and the passion of the Incarnate Son of God has been the inheritance of His Church. For what is the Church of Christ but the body of Christ 1 Or, in other words, it is Christ mystical, the mystical person made up, as St. Augustine says, of the divine Head in heaven and of the body spread throughout the world; * one man, one collective person.' The enmity and the hatred which the world bore to Him has descended from generation to generation, as the heirloom of His body. This, then, is Christ. Now what is Antichrist?

In the beginning I disclaimed all intention of entering into the exposition of unfulfilled prophecies. I am speaking of patent facts under our eyes. They are sufficient, because they give us principles and warnings to govern our conduct. Nevertheless, I must say, in passing, that if there * 2 Cor. vi. 14, 15.

be anything evident in the plain words of Holy Scripture, if there be anything explicitly declared by the Christian Fathers, and anything distinctly taught by the theologians of the Church, it is this; that Antichrist, though taken to express a diffused spirit which pervades systems and incorporates itself in various forms in all ages, nevertheless will be, towards the latter days, impersonated in one who shall be the head and the chief of that Antichristian spirit and system, and shall use all his power against the Name and the Church of Jesus Christ. This I now set aside, as being beyond my purpose. I am speaking of the AntiChristian spirit which manifests itself either in individuals or in whole systems, sometimes in whole nations. Just as the electricity which is suspended in the air is breathed unconsciously, so the Antichristian spirit exists in what is called the Christian world in its present fragmentary and divided state. And this is the subject with which to-night I must conclude that which I have endeavoured, but very imperfectly, to say.

I have already drawn out before you the distinction between the world as it was before it had faith in Christ, and as it became when the Christian

Faith was received by the nations which were federated in. what we call Christendom; and lastly, as it is now, since the world, having once been Christian, has for the last three hundred years been ceasing to be so.

Now, the Apostle has given us three marks of this final and Antichristian apostasy from the Faith. The first mark is given by St. John, where he says that ' they went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have remained with us;'4 that is to say, separation or schism, actual and visible departure from the unity of the Church. The second mark is a denial of the Incarnation of the Son of God. St. John says in his second epistle: ' Many seducers are gone out into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a seducer and an antichrist.'5 The third mark is given by St. Jude: ' These are they who separate themselves, sensual men/ which word signifies, in the original, men of natural intellect and natural reason; it does not necessarily mean sensual in the grosser sense, though it leads to it. * These are they who separate themselves, sensual, not having the Spirit,'6 that is, they 4 1 St. John ii. 19. 5 2 St. John 7. 6 St. Jude 19.

reject the Holy Ghost, and the work of the Spirit of God in the world. This third mark is the rejection of the revelation of the day of Pentecost, with all those truths, laws, and authorities, which took their rise from the coming of the Spirit of Truth. These then are the three marks of the world departing from Christianity.

If you look back over the last three hundred years, you will see that whole nations have departed from the visible unity of the Church. They have come to deny that any visible unity was ever instituted; they deny their separation by denying the law. ' Where there is no law, there is no transgression,'7 the Apostle says; and it is necessary to deny the law of unity in order to justify the separation. Springing up from those bodies separated from the unity of the Church has come, first, Socinianism or Unitarianism, as it is commonly called — rejection of the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, of the Godhead of the Incarnate Son, of the work of the Holy Spirit of God, first in His Divine authority, perpetually and infallibly guiding and speaking through the Church; next, in His operation through the Holy Sacraments; and 7 Kom. iv. 15.

thirdly, His workings of grace in the individual soul. How extensively, both in speculation and in practice, these truths are at this time rejected by many who retain the name of Christians, you well know. And once more, if you look at nations in which these departures from truth are to be found, you will find that the whole course of legislation for the last three hundred years has been, as I have already pointed out, a perpetual departure from the laws of Christianity. Forasmuch, then, as men are interminably and irreconcilably divided, it is impossible that the legislature can touch upon matters of Christianity or of religion without conflicting with the private convictions or the private opinions of some men or somebodies of men; and therefore the civil powers of the world in despair have taken refuge in the policy of eliminating and excluding altogether from the public laws of the land all reference to anything but those fundamental moral axioms which are to be found not only in Christianity, but, almost without exception, in the order of nature.

There is to be found in such individuals as I have been describing, in such nations and in such governments, a worldly character, which partakes of the Antichristian spirit. These may seem to be harsh and severe terms, but * he that is not with Me, is against Me.'8 They are the words of Jesus Christ Himself. There is no neutrality in matters of faith; and the tendency of all peoples, nations, and governments that have ceased to legislate positively in a Christian sense, is to legislate at last in a sense that is, first beside, then contrary to, Christianity.

What I have now to do is to draw out the particular points in which the Antichristian spirit is to be found working in society, and therefore round about us.

1. The first illustration I will give is this: the impatience of all revealed authority, as entering in any degree into the control of the thoughts or the will of men, or into the action of government. There is a disposition in public opinion, and in public men, and in the masses, to say: * Politics have nothing to do with religion.' This I have answered before; and I am going on to show one more application of this false maxim. It is commonly said, that what is

8 St. Matt. xii. 30.

called ' dogma' is a limitation of the liberty of the human reason; that it is degrading to a rational being to allow his intellect to be limited by dogmatic Christianity; that liberty of thought, liberty of discovery, the progress of advancing truth, apply equally to Christianity, if it be true, as to all other kinds of truth; and therefore a man, when he allows his intellect to be subjected by dogma, has allowed himself to be brought into an intellectual bondage. Well, now, let me test the accuracy and the value of this supposed axiom. The science of astronomy has been a traditional science for I know not how many generations of men. It has been perpetually advancing, expanding, testing, completing its discoveries, and demonstrating the truth of its theories and its inductions. Now, every single astronomical truth imposes a limit upon the intellect of man. When once the truth has been demonstrated there is no further question about it. The intellect of man is thenceforward limited in respect of that truth. He cannot any longer contradict it without losing his dignity as a man of science — I might say, as a rational creature. It appears, therefore, that the certainty of every scientific truth imposes a certain limitation upon the intellect; and yet scientific men tell us that, in proportion as science is expanded by new discoveries and new demonstrations, the field of knowledge is increased. Well, then, I ask, in the name of common justice and of common sense, why may I not apply this to revelation? If the possession of a scientific truth, with its complete scientific accuracy, be not a limitation, and is therefore no degradation of the human intellect, but an elevation and an expansion of its range, why should the defined and precise doctrines of revelation be a bondage against which the intellect of man ought to rebel? On the contrary, I affirm that every revealed doctrine is a limitation imposed upon the field of error. The regions in which men may err become narrower, because the boundaries of truth are pushed farther, and the field of truth is enlarged. The liberty of the human intellect is therefore greater, because it is in possession of a greater inheritance of certainty. And yet, if there be one superstition which at the present day is undermining more than any other the faith of men, it is the notion that belief in the positive dogma of Christianity is a slavish limitation of the intellectual freedom of man.

Once more, it is said that the revealed morality of Christianity is a limitation of the freedom of the human will. I must ask your forbearance for speaking of such a topic to you; for I ought to suppose that there is no one here so darkened, I must say, in heart as well as in understanding as to think that Christian morality, by limiting the actions and even the thoughts, and regulating the freedom of the will, imposes upon them a bondage unworthy of men. Nevertheless, there are some who cry out against the laws of morality which are taught by the Church of Jesus Christ, as being an interference with human liberty. Now, what does the morality of the Christian law forbid? First, all things that are unjust. Surely no man will plead for a liberty to act unjustly. Secondly, all things that are hurtful to himself or to his neighbour. A man will not plead for liberty to do hurt to his neighbour. Will he plead for liberty to do hurt to himself? to commit suicide, for instance — that is, for the liberty of self-murder? Lastly, it forbids the commission of those things that are mortal before God, of acts that are deadly in their consequences. In the name of reason I would ask you, is there any limit imposed upon the liberty of men in taking from them the freedom to drink poison, and laying upon them the bondage of living on food? And yet the laws of the Church impose no other limitation on any man. Nevertheless, the spirit of insubordinate intellect and insubordinate will, fbstered by schism and by unbelief, is spreading fast at this day; and men are crying out against the authority of revelation as a yoke and a bondage.

And it is further said, that revelation has nothing to do with the civil authority of the world. I hope that I have already given reason enough for affirming that the civil authority of the world, if it be not founded upon revelation, is, nevertheless, so guided, confirmed, and strengthened by it, that it cannot long subsist without it. If it lose the support and guidance of revelation, it soon falls into the natural order, with all the penalties of dissolution. Now, what limit does revelation impose upon the civil power 1 It limits authority, in those that bear it, to the execution of justice and mercy; it forbids tyranny and despotism. It limits the freedom of subjects by the law of conscience, to obedience and submission; and it teaches man to observe the equal rights of other men and the duties which he owes to his fellows. It teaches to all men the sacred law which lies at the base of all just legislation: * Do to others as you would have men do to you.' These are the primary laws of justice and of charity. I ask whether these are limitations hostile to the freedom or to the prosperity of states? In one word, the only conservative spirit, a phrase we hear even to weariness — that which alone upholds, confirms, and renders indissoluble the civil society of mankind — is Christianity, or the revelation and the laws of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, if there be anything which the public opinion of most countries, separated from the unity of the Church — and, I am sorry to say, the public opinion of some countries which profess still to be within that unity — resents, it is the entrance of the laws of revelation into the sphere of their legislature. I shall not say too much by adding, that there exists a widespread animosity against the one only Church which will not accept of royal or legislative supremacy. There is in the world one Church which has never accepted of royal supremacy in faith or morals. It has never accepted Acts of Parliament or legislative enactments as superior to its own canonical legislation and to its own spiritual executive. Now, I believe, that is the only Church against which public animosity and even private hostility is levelled in any marked degree. All other bodies are treated as national, domestic, and innocuous. They are not to be feared. If they have a will of their own, they have no power to exert it. But the Church which absolutely refuses the supremacy of all civil powers is looked upon at once as aggression, invasion, and a menace to the supreme authority of public opinion, and, it may be, of princes.

2. Why is this? In one word, because the enmity which assails revelation falls upon it chiefly as incorporated in the Church. It exists there as in a definite, visible, palpable form. In the sphere of intellect men cannot lay their hands on revelation. It is, like the light of day, impalpable. In the order and the sphere of ideas it is intangible altogether; but, embodied in the Church, it becomes a visible and palpable impersonation, standing in the place of its Divine Head, on whom men laid their hands while He was within arm's length. But now, at the right hand of God, He is beyond their reach. His body, however, is here; and therefore He cried out to Saul on the way to Damascus,

'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Mef — that is to say, His Church upon earth is Himself. The same spirit, therefore, which was directed against Him while He was within the reach of men is now directed against His Church, which is still palpable and within their grasp. It incorporates dogma, it enforces discipline, it wields authority, it legislates, it decrees, it inflicts censures, it sits in judgment upon the conduct of men, of private persons, of professors, of nations, of princes. Come what may, it will not be silent. Let men threaten as they will, it still speaks as the Prince of the Apostles, who said: l If it be just in the sight of God to hear you rather than God, judge ye.'9

This Divine liberty of speech, which began in the lips of the Son of God Himself, passed to His Apostles, and from them has passed to His Church. It has spoken freely throughout all ages, and throughout all the world. The prerogatives of the Church are especially offensive to the world. Our Lord said to the chief of the Apostles, and through him to them all, and through them to their successors to the end of the world: ' I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; 9 Acts iv. 19.

and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.'10 We do not explain away these words. We teach them as we received them from our Divine Master. They mean that what the authority of His Church binds on earth, is by Him ratified in heaven; that there is a twofold and concurrent action, which in effect is identical, between the authority of the Church on earth, and the authority of its Divine Head in heaven. And therefore, when the Apostle said: * If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema maranatha,' he pronounced a judicial sentence which had its effect, though it was not yet seen to follow, as when our Divine Master said to the barren fig-tree, 4 May no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever,'11 and the fig-tree withered away; and as when Peter rebuked Ananias and Sapphira, his sentence was straightway executed. We may not see, indeed, these palpable and immediate results; but we know with Divine certainty that the effects of excommunication will surely follow. In the Epistle to the Corinthians the Apostle, writing 10 St. Matt. xvi. 19. " Ibid. xxi. 19.

of the incestuous man, said: ' I, indeed absent in body, but present in spirit, have already judged, as though I were present, him who hath so done: in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered together with my spirit, with the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.'12 These are not empty threats; they are judicial pronouncements of a Divine authority. Will any one tell me that this power has ceased in the world? Read the history of sacrilege against the Holy See; or read, if you will, the history of sacrilege written by a well-known writer of the Church of England two hundred years ago, who believed this Christian law, and verified it in the history of those who, three hundred years back, committed or partook of sacrilege in England. Search through history, and find me an example of sacrilege which has not sooner or later met its doom. There is a God who judgeth the earth; and He judges it through those laws which He incorporated in the authority of His Church. He executes His judgments by His 12 1 Cor. v. 3-5.

own Divine providence, when and how He wills. Now against that which I have said, there is a spirit of hostility and contempt, at least assumed. I say assumed contempt; because, under the appearance of derision, there is a sharpness in the tone which shows the animosity of fear.

3. There is yet another kind of Antichristian. enmity, which finds its way into the hearts of many who would be startled and wounded if they were told that their spirit is Antichristian. If there be a subject against which public writers, public speakers, and public talkers are perpetually declaiming, it is what is called the religious life — the life of monks and of nuns. The whole literature of countries that are not Catholic is full of all manner of tales, calumnies, slanders, fables, fictions, absurdities, on the subject of monks and nuns. Now, why should men trouble themselves so much about it? Why cannot they leave peaceful people to use their own liberty 1 No man or woman is compelled to be monk or nun; and if by perversion of light, if by idiotcy, as the world calls it, any should be found who desire to live the life of monk or nun, why should public opinion trouble itself so much about the matter? Men may become Mormons; they may settle down at Salt Lake; they may join any sect; they may adopt any practices which do not bring them under the hands of the police, and the public opinion of this country does not trouble itself about them. What, then, is the reason why it troubles itself about the religious life? Because it is a life of perfection; because it is a life which is a rebuke to the world, a direct and diametrical contradiction of the axioms and maxims by which the world governs itself. The world is therefore conscious of the rebuke, and uneasy under that consciousness. When the Son of God came into the world, all men turned against Him except the few whom He called to be His disciples. Even a heathen philosopher has recorded this belief: that if a perfectly just man were ever to be seen on earth, he would be out of place and a wonder; or, as we may say, a monster amongst men. And why I Because, in the universal injustice of mankind, he would stand alone, and his life would be a rebuke. In Holy Scripture this is described, as it were, with a pencil of light. In the Book of Wisdom, the men of this world say: ' Let us lie in wait for the just; because he is not for our turn, and lie is contrary to our doings, and upbraideth us with transgressions of the law, and divulgeth against us the sins of our way of life... he abstaineth from our ways as from filthiness, and he preferreth the latter end of the just... he calleth himself the son of God... he is grievous unto us even to behold.'13 The finger of the Holy Spirit has here traced the real analysis of this animosity against the religious life. Some years ago I remember reading a paper upon 'The Extinct Virtues,' and what were they? Obedience, chastity, voluntary poverty. If so, then, the eight beatitudes are extinct. I do not suppose the world would accept this. They would count me a severe and an unjust accuser if I were to say that disorder, unchastity, and the love of riches are the ascendent virtues of modern society. But if obedience, chastity, and voluntary poverty are extinct, their opposites must be in the ascendent. Of this I am sure: that the prevalent spirit amongst men at this day is to feel a secret hostility against a life which surpasses their own; and therefore it is that we hear these tales, fables, slanders, fictions about monks and nuns; and that i' Wisd. ii. 12-16.

we have books like La Eeligieuse and Le Mau-dit; or romances about the acts of ex-Benedictine nuns at Naples, and suchlike; or that which is the gospel of a multitude of people — though it has been exposed a hundred times over as a stupid self-refuting imposture, condemned and exposed by positive local proof and distinct documentary evidence — the history of ' Maria Monk.' Nevertheless, this abomination is printed and reprinted, and bought and sold, because there is a gross morbid taste to which it panders, and a diseased hatred which it gratifies. It is not only against the life of perfection, but against every reflection of God, wheresoever it may be seen, that this Antichristian animosity directs itself. And there are two things which, perhaps, are more hated, more intensely and more bitterly attacked, than any others.

The first is the confessional, because in it the priest sits in the name of God, hearing all things in His stead, with his lips closed, and ready to shed his blood rather than break that seal. He holds a power which was given him in the Apostles on that night when our Divine Lord breathed upon them, and said, * Receive ye the Holy. Ghost; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.'14 He sits there invested with that authority, a witness to the day of judgment; and the self-accusation of men is the prelude and the preparation for the last day. The world, if it could, would pull the Last Judge off His throne; but, because He is beyond the reach of its arm, they pull the priest out of the confessional.

The other thing against which the enmity of men is directed, is the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. The Sacrament of the Altar is the manifestation of the Divine presence; it is the incorporation of the Divine love, sanctity, and power; and against these things the Antichristian revolt hurls itself as the chief object of its hatred: as but the other day, if our tidings speak the truth, the Blessed Sacrament was sacrilegiously mocked and scattered in the midst of blaspheming men and weeping women.

4. There is yet another object of this animosity, ' What I said last leads on immediately to the priesthood. Englishmen have heard from childhood so much about priestcraft, and about being priest-rid-

14 St. John xx. 22, 23.

den, and about bad priests, that they grow up with a belief that a priest is a noxious creature, a sort of fera natura, something specially venomous, antisocial, perilous to the commonwealth of men. What is the priesthood? The priesthood is a body of men, instituted by our Saviour, into which any man of you, if he has the will and the fitness, may freely enter to-morrow. It is not a caste; it is not Freemasonry; it is not a secret society of moral assassins, nor a close corporation of tyrannous men. It is open to all; it has no secrets but the sins of those that repent. It is the most democratic of all the governments on earth: the sons of peasants and of ploughmen are at this day standing at our altars and sitting upon the throne of Apostles. The Holy Council of Trent lays upon the conscience of bishops, in founding their seminaries, to replenish them rather with the children of the poorer classes. The priesthood, therefore, is so open to every man, that if there be a secret craft, a priestcraft, to be learnt, let him come and learn it; he has only to blame himself if he does not know all about us. We have no mysteries, or ciphers, or masonic signs. The priesthood and the theology which makes the priest are open to everybody; it is not like secret societies, which hide themselves from the light and labour underground. The priesthood is in noonday, standing at the altar, and everybody may know what it is; and yet we hear of 1 sacerdotalism' as if it were the Black Death or a plague of Egypt, or a pestilence which walks in darkness. In the public newspapers men are warned, and hopes are expressed that the world at last may be saved from (sacerdotalism.' In the fourth chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, we read these words: ' He led captivity captive, He gave gifts to men,' ' and He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and other some evangelists, and other some pastors and doctors (or teachers), for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.'15 Here is the priesthood: a body of men chosen first by our Lord, illuminated, trained, and conformed to Himself, to be the guardians and the transmitters of the truths which He revealed to them, and of the laws which He gave into their custody. They were charged afterwards to deliver the same to others whom they should select, 15 Eph. iv. 8, 11, 12.

whom they, in turn, should illuminate and train to the same likeness, thereby 'transmitting to the end of the world, undiminished, the custody of Divine truth which was delivered to their charge. This, then, is the priesthood; and there is no doubt that it must be an object of special animosity; and for the very reason with which I began: 'If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated Me before you.' This was said to the first priests. ' If you had been of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.'16 They are witnesses of the truth, and they have power to deliver it; and they have power to deliver it, because they have a Divine certainty of the truth they deliver; and they have a Divine certainty of that truth, because they are the disciples of the Church which is divinely guided, before they become the teachers of the faithful. To them is committed the power of applying that truth to men — that is, of guiding their thoughts and consciences, and of distinguishing truth from falsehood in matters of faith, of judging the actions of men, 16 St. John xv. 18, 19.

of distinguishing between right and wrong in questions of the Divine law, and of pronouncing upon them censure, if need be; giving or withholding absolution by their sentence before God. I do not wonder, therefore, that there should be an animosity in those that do not love the Master, from whose side the priesthood springs; and I do not wonder that a bad priest — if he can be found — is the hero and the saint of the world. And it never happens that an unhappy priest, either by loss of faith or by loss of fidelity, falls from his sacred state, but he is straightway glorified as a theologian, preacher, doctor, and I know not what besides. The world receives him as its own, and because he is its own, loves him.

5. Lastly, there is one person upon whom this Antichristian spirit concentrates itself, as the lightning on the conductor. There is one person upon earth who is the pinnacle of the temple, which is always the first to be struck. It is the Vicar of Jesus Christ; and that for the most obvious of reasons. There is no man on earth so near to Jesus Christ as His own Vicar. Two hundred and fifty-seven links, and we arrive at the Person of the Son of God. Two hundred and fifty-seven Pon-

K tiffs, and we are in the presence of the Master whom His Vicar represents. That chain runs through the ages of Christian history, and connects us with the day when, on the coasts of Decapolis, Jesus said to Peter, ' Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.' No man therefore brings us so near to the Person of the Son of God as His Vicar upon earth, and no man is to be made so like to Him in suffering for His sake. The first nine-and-twenty Pontiffs were crowned with martyrdom. Five-and-forty times, since then, the Pontiffs have either been driven out of Rome by violence, or by violence have been hindered from setting their foot in it. Their lives have been lives of wandering, like those the Apostle describes in the Epistle to the Hebrews: ' Of whom the world was not worthy; wandering in deserts, in mountains, and in dens, and in caves of the earth.'17 Their whole life has been a life of the Cross, and that because they bear the office, and stand in the place, of their Divine Master. The Evangelists write of Jesus, and those that were with Him; as in the Book of Acts it is Peter, and

" Heb. xi, 38.

those that were with him. He had taken his Master's place. And to Peter were given the two great prerogatives which constituted the plenitude of his Master's office. To him first, and to him alone, before all the others, though in the presence \ofthe others, was given the power of the keys. To him, and to him alone, and in the presence of the others, was given also the charge of the universal flock: 'Feed My sheep.' To him, and to him alone, exclusively, were spoken the words, ' Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he might sift you as wheat' (that is, all the Apostles); ' but I have prayed for thee' — in the singular number: for thee, Peter — 'that thy faith fail not; and thou being once converted, confirm thy brethren;'18 and therefore the plenitude of jurisdiction, and the plenitude of truth, with the promise of Divine assistance to preserve him in that truth, was given to Peter, and in Peter to his successors.

Compare together Rome and Constantinople. Rome, at all times assailed by a warfare so manifold that the world has hurled upon it every weapon that man could forge or direct;

" St. Luke xxii. 31, 32.

Constantinople, tinder imperial protection, fostered and endowed, sank into schism, and is in bondage to the false prophet. Home suffering, but free; free and royal; royal and reigning over the Christian world. Make another contrast. Poor Ireland, with its unbroken tradition of immaculate Catholic Faith. Poor Ireland — what preserved it three hundred years ago, and during three hundred years of suffering for the Faith? Fidelity, to the Vicar of Jesus Christ, fidelity to Kome, fidelity to the changeless See of Peter. The arch of the Faith is kept fast by that keystone, which the world would fain strike out if it could, but never has prevailed to do so; and Ireland has been sustained by it: and to this day among the nations of the Christian world there is not to be found a people so instinct with faith and so governed by Christian morality as the people of Ireland. Driven abroad into all the nations of the world, into the colonies of the British Empire, into the great northern continent of America — wheresoever they go they carry with them their faith, and sow it broadcast in works of a magnitude and generosity which we here, in the midst of all our wealth, cannot attempt to imitate. Compare with poor Ire-land imperial and prosperous England. The picture would be too sad; and, as I have said before, I refrain from all that could needlessly wound any that are not of my flock. You know the past divisions and estrangements, the animosities which, I hope, are now slackened, the contentions which, 1 trust, are now at an end. - But what a history has been the religious history of England for the last three hundred years! What is its religious state now 1 What will be its future? The majestic cathedrals of England, the noble abbeys, the churches of ten thousand parishes, the lofty structures of our ancient towns, the sweeter, if humbler, churches in our green hamlets, and in our woodlands, and on our solitary downs show that Faith had penetrated everywhere through the English people, and that the people were profoundly Christian. I have been reading lately the books of piety written here in England some two hundred years before what men call the Reformation, in which, if the tracing of the Spirit of God in the human heart, transcribing itself upon the page, can anywhere be found, it is in the revelations of Divine love and the interior consciousness of the soul which are left to us by our ancestors. Are Eng-

LIBRARY ST..YJ&Y'S COLLEGE lishmen never any more to return to the unity of the Faith? Are we never again to worship at one altar 1 Are Englishmen to be united in everything but faith, and in faith to be for ever divided? God forbid! I rejoice to know that the English people believe profoundly in God; that, as yet, the plague of Atheism has not made its havoc amongst them. They believe, too, in Christianity as a Divine revelation, and therefore they believe in Jesus Christ their Saviour; and 'no man can say, the Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Ghost,'19 and * every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God.'20 They believe, too, that Holy Scripture is the written word of God. It is true, there are to be found here and there rationalists and critics and sceptics and shallow heads, who may have rejected the written word of God: but these are not the English people. They hold it fast as their birthright. I rejoice to know it. Ay, more than this; they have declared themselves in these last years, and will all the more inflexibly declare themselves, to be Christians, being sharply warned and taught by what is now before our eyes. They will demand that their

»» 1 Cor. xii. 3. 20 1 St. John iv. 2.

children too shall be brought up as Christians. I rejoice to know all this. May God strengthen those things that remain! May He preserve them where they exist, and revive them where they are declining! May He once more unite what is divided, in the charity of truth!

Let us now sum up what has been said of the foui great evils of the day. First, we have seen that one jreat evil of this day is the revolt of the intellect:rom God. I pointed out to you how that revolt mani?ested itself in Atheism, in Deism, in heresy, in the timinishing and explaining away of Christian doctrne, and in practical unbelief. Secondly, I showed you the revolt of the will from the law of Gol. I traced it out in the lawlessness which is characteristic of these later days, in the worldworshp which is a moral apostasy from God, in the lumry which is eating out the heart of morals, in the sensuous piety which paralyses and taints even he devout, and in the softness and self-indulgeice which makes us unworthy of the Cross. Thirdy, I endeavoured to sketch out the revolt of soiety from the authority of God. I pointed out t.at civil society is a Divine creation in the order of nature; that God elevated and consecrated the order of nature and of politics by instituting His Church in the world, and by uniting the authority of civil government with the Christian authority of the Church. I traced out also the rebellion, the divorce, the separation, which has taken place between these two divine creations— the State, as it is called, and the Church — and as a consequence, the desecration of the civil power, the stripping of the civil society of the world of its Christian character, and the reducing it once more to the mere state of nature In those ages when society was Christian, the jublic opinion, public laws, public axioms, the influence all around, sustained the individual, raised him upwards, and supported him in his highe* life. Now it is society that drags the individual (own; Christianity lingers in individuals, but i has departed from society. And, lastly, I ha^e endeavoured to draw out what the Antich]

spirit is. It is the spirit of the world, whict has separated itself altogether from the Churc' and from Christianity, or retains only a fragmentary Christianity, and is, sometimes consciously, tome-times unconsciously, penetrated by the Antihristian enmity. I have marked also the special stiaii objects against which this spirit directs itself: Revelation, the Catholic and Roman Church, the life of perfection, the priesthood, and the Vicar of Jesus Christ.

The general conclusion from all that I have said is this: there is no hope for man or for society but in returning to God. There is no other hope. There is nothing but God on which the soul can rest, on which society can stand. The most perfect legislation, the most refined human laws, the most acute human philosophy, political economy, benevolence, and beneficence in all its forms, all the social sciences of which we hear so much — all these are powerless without God. The most finished time-piece, in which every minute articulation is complete and perfect, cannot strike one note or measure one moment unless a living hand communicate to it the fund of motion which it afterwards exhausts. The mightiest machine which will lift a hammer of surpassing weight, break bars of iron, or cut them as if they were the branches of the fir-tree, the most wonderful structures of mechanical skill, are nothing until the momentum is given, and that momentum must be sought elsewhere. Mechanics can do nothing without dynamical powers; and these dynamical powers, for men and for society, are to be found in God alone. They can be found only in Him to whose image man is made; they can be found nowhere but in His truth, which is the key of the human intellect, and in His grace, which is the only hand that can touch the heart in man; and if this be so, they can be found only in Christianity. Neither adults nor children can be touched by the laws of states, except externally. The state may control the external actions of men — it can imprison, it can fine, it can inflict capital punishment; but it cannot convert the sinner, nor change the will, nor illuminate the intellect, nor guide the conscience, nor shape a character. It cannot educate a child. All this is internal, not external; it is not mechanism; it belongs to the living powers of the soul; and God alone, by truth and grace, can accomplish this work in man.

I implore you, in God's name, and all the more because of the events, full of sorrow and of shame to Christian men, which have crowded so thick upon us in these last months, I may say in this last week, that, with all your heart and will, and all the weight of your soul, you cast yourselves on

God. He alone can save. Use all your influence with those around you, in your homes, your households, your friendships; and if you have public influence, public trust, public authority, strive that all who bear responsibility shall cast themselves on God, as the only hope for society and for the people. Do you want to see what man without God can do 1 Read the history of the last eighty years in Paris. You have there one simple phenomenon— generation rising after generation without God in the world. And why 1 Because without Christian education. First, an atheistical revolution; next, an empire penetrated through and through with a mocking philosophy and a reckless indifferentism; afterwards came Governments, changed in name and in form, but not in practice nor in spirit. The Church, trammelled by protection, its spiritual action faint and para-lysed, could not penetrate the masses of the people, nor form the rising youth. It laboured fervently; its sons fought nobly for Christian freedom; thousands were saved; but for eighty years the mass of men has grown up without God and without Christ in the world. My whole soul pities them. These outbursts of horror, strife, outrage, sacrilege, bloodshed, are the harvest reaped from the rank soil in which such seed was cast. All this is true. But how did souls created to the image of God grow up in such a state? They were robbed: robbed before they were born, robbed of their inheritance, and reared up in an education without Christianity. Let this be a warning to ourselves. We are on the turn of the tide. A few active, busy, confident, and eloquent men were a year ago carrying us away with theories of state education without religion. We were told that a child might be taught to read and to write and to spell and to sum without Christianity. Who denies it 1 But what does this make of them f To what would they grow up *? The formation of the will and heart and character, the formation of a man, is education, and not the reading and the writing and the spelling and the summing. For fifteen hundred years, Christians served God and loved man, before as yet they received this cultivation; and we, because we have it profusely, we are forgetting the deeper and diviner lessons. The tradition of Christian education in England is as yet unbroken. It is threatened now for the first time. In God's name, stand fast, and save it. I can add no more. Do not be afraid, if you find yourselves in the minority. 4 Wo to you when men shall bless you!'21 You must be censured if you are the disciples of Jesus Christ. The world that hated Him will not love you. ' The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord.'22 ' If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household ¥ And therefore, if you have the mark of the world's hatred upon you, accept it; press it to your bosom. It is the token that you are the disciples of the true and only Master. If you have the world's favour and sunshine, look to yourselves. There is a dark future before the world. What it may be, God alone knows. The Church will have to suffer; but there is a light upon it, and that light can never fade. We are in evil times, marked deeply by the four great evils of which I have spoken. Around us are ' evil men and seducers, who grow worse and worse, erring, and driving into error.'23 ' Many shall come in My name,' our Lord has said, 21 St. Luke vi. 26. » St. Matt. x. 24, 25. » 2 Tim. iii. 14.

' and seduce many;' and because of their iniquity the love and the charity of the many shall wax cold. Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be wars and pestilences in many places. But the end is not yet. This is only the beginning of troubles. Keep close to the footsteps of the Master who spoke those words; and, when these signs are in the sky and upon the earth, remember that He also said, * When these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption is at hand.'24

24 St. Luke xxi. 28.