Lecture V. The Sovereignty of the Church Derived from its Divine Head

'Because tJiou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed.9 St. John xx. 29.

On the night of the first day of the week, when our Lord rose from the dead, He came, the doors being shut, and appeared suddenly in the midst of His disciples. Thomas was not with them; either through fear, or from doubt, or from human infirmity, he had parted from the Apostles. He lost, therefore, the manifestation of our Divine Master, when He came to assure His Apostles of His resurrection from the dead. He lost, also, the communication of the royalties of the kingdom of God, which Jesus conveyed to His disciples in the words: 4 As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.'

He lost his share in the power of the keys, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, which was conferred when our Lord breathed upon His Apostles, and said: ' Receive ye the Holy Ghost;' and ' whosesoever sins ye shall retain, they are retained.'1.Such was the loss incurred by Thomas through his transient unbelief.

He also exposed himself to two great dangers: to the blindness of incredulity, and to the sin of obstinacy. For, when the disciples told him: ' We have seen the Lord,' he answered: * Unless I put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hands into His side, I will not believe.' He had the presumption to prescribe the kind and degree of evidence upon which alone he would believe. Nevertheless, such is the tenderness and condescension of our Divine Lord, that, on the first day of the following week, and again at night, when the Apostles were gathered together, and Thomas with them, He came once more. The air seemed to give up His bodily presence. At once, by Divine intuition, and before a word was spoken, fixing His eyes on Thomas, He said: •* Put forth thou thy finger: put it into the print 1 St. John xx. 22, 23.

of the nails, and thrust thy hand into My side; and be not incredulous, but faithful.' And Thomas answered: ' My Lord and my God.' And Jesus answered him: ' Because thou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed;' — a benediction shall be on thee; but a greater benediction shall be on them who, with docility and generosity of faith, shall hereafter, without seeing, believe in Me.

This benediction has descended upon us, and upon all who to the end shall believe in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. I have already spoken of the mystery and of the effects of the resurrection of our Divine Saviour, of the reassumption of His deified humanity, which is the pledge and productive principle — that is, the cause — of our rising again to immortality of life. Thus far I have spoken of the rising of His natural body, which is now at the right hand of God, in the proper stature and dimensions of His person. I will now take up again another part of the subject, on which I then touched only in passing — I mean, the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ now, in this world, and in this mortal state, in His mystical Body, which is the Church. object will be to show that the powers of the resurrection, ' The powers of the world to come,' as St. Paul writes to the Hebrews,2 are at this moment present and in action in the mystical Body of Christ, that is, in the visible Church on earth.

Saint Augustine, answering the cavils and pretensions of the Donatists in Africa, who, separating themselves from the unity of the Universal Church, claimed to be the Catholic Church, argued as follows: ' The Body of Christ is spread throughout all nations: you are shut up and confined in Africa. The true Body of Christ is universal; we see the Body, and we believe in the Head. The Body and the Head are one, united in one mystical Person. The Apostles saw the Head; but they did not see the Body, which was afterwards to be revealed. Seeing the Head, they believed in the future, that is, in the universality of the Body, which should one day be spread throughout the world. They then saw the Divine Head, they believed in the universality of the Church which should be. We now see the universality of the Church, and believe in the Divine Head enthroned in heaven.' * Hebrews vi. 5.

As the Head and the Body make up one mystical Person, so the prerogatives and sovereignty of that Head are communicated to the Body. As in the one person of Jesus Christ the prerogatives and perfections of the Godhead were attributed to Him as man, and as the sufferings and the passion of the manhood were attributed also to Him as God, by reason of the unity of the Person, so it may be said of the Head and the Body of the Church.

1. Our Divine Lord declared that He is the Resurrection; and because He is the Resurrection, His Body upon earth has in it the principle of immortality. Though temporal death, that is, the separation of body and soul, must pass upon all the members of the Church, there is in the mystical Body of Christ the principle of the resurrection and of immortality. The sentence of death includes not only the separation of the soul from the body, but also the eternal separation of the body and the soul from God. But this can never take place in the Body of Christ. All the individual members of the mystical Body of Christ upon earth will pay the penalty of temporal death; they will die, and be buried in the earth.

Multitudes of these members will die also spiritually, and will never see eternal life, because they will have been separated from God in this world by apostasy or by mortal sin. They who have been in the unity of the Church, but have apostatised from it, are cut off from God; they who, whether they be in the Church or not, commit mortal sin, are thereby separated from God, and, if they so die, will be separated eternally. Nevertheless, there always has been, and always will be, in the one Church of God, which is the Body of Christ, a line, a chain, a fellowship of those who believe and are united vitally and by the Holy Ghost to their Divine Head in heaven. In them, therefore, life and immortality and the pledge of the resurrection always abide. This is what is called the indefectibility of the Church, or, in the words of the promise of our Divine Lord, i The gates of hell shall not prevail against it;' it shall never succumb to the powers of sin and death. As the Apostle Paul writes: 'There is now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh. For the law of the Spirit of life, in Christ Jesus, hath delivered me from the law of sin and of death.'3 Therefore the Church of God is indefectible. It partakes of the property of its Head; it has an imperishable life, and the pledge of immortality.

2. Secondly, because the Head of the Church is Holy, the Body is holy. Now, the Head of the Church is the Son of God, and therefore He has the uncreated sanctity of God. In His Incarnation He was anointed with the Holy Ghost, that is, with the fulness of sanctifying grace; and He is the Head or Fountain from whom sanctity descends upon all His members. As the unction on the head of the high-priest descended to the hem of his garment, so does the sanctity of the Son of God descend through all the members of His Body; that is to say, we are made the members of His Body by regeneration, through the Sacrament of Baptism, by water and the Holy Ghost; we are sanctified in living union with Him by the holy Sacraments and the indwelling of the Spirit of Grace.

There is, then, a sanctity pervading the whole Church; and yet how much of sin attaches to it; how many sinners are within its unity. Our Lord

3 Rom. viii. 1, 2.

has told us to expect both good fish and bad in the one net, and both tares and wheat in the one field. Such is the mixture of good and evil in the visible Church. Some are scandalised at it, not knowing the Scriptures, nor believing the Word of God. They think to form to themselves a Church which shall be pure before the last day, and now in this mortal state cleansed from every stain; a thing contrary to the word of prophecy and the parables of our Divine Lord. The mixture of good and evil is permitted in the turbulent sea of this world; but they shall be separated on the eternal shore. And yet though there be an evil mixture in the visible Church of Christ — bad Christians, bad Catholics, men whose lives are a scandal and a shame — nevertheless, the sanctity of the Church is never tainted.

The Body of Christ is the dwelling-place of the Holy Ghost, the Sanctifier. It is the Body of a Divine Head; and in that Body are the Sacraments, or channels of sanctity, immutable and undefiled. In that Body are the works of the Holy Ghost, the fruits of sanctity; and they are, first, innocent souls who have preserved their baptismal grace, and have grown up from the waters of baptisrn as the willows by the watercourses, straight and vigorous; or penitent souls, once broken like the bruised reed, raised up again by penance, and restored to the life of God. These are the twofold operations of the Holy Ghost, working through the Church. St. John is the type of the one, St. Mary Magdalen of the other; and this supernatural grace is verified throughout all ages in the unity of the Church; and the sanctity of the Church manifests itself perpetually in the innocent and the penitent, who are the fruits of sanctity.

3. And further: when Pilate asked of our Divine Lord, 'What is truth?' He answered not a word; but when He taught His disciples, He said, 6 1 am the Truth;' that is, 'The Truth— it is I.' For God is Truth, and Jesus is God. The truth is revealed in Jesus Christ; and to know Him, His mind, and His will, is to know the truth of God. The revelation of Christianity is the knowledge of God in Jesus Christ. To know the mind of Jesus Christ is to know the doctrines of the faith. To know the will of Jesus Christ is to know His laws and His Church. Dogma is the clear, definite, mental perception, and the precise, logical, scientific expression in words, of those eternal, immutable, and Divine truths which are revealed to us. For people to say, ' I believe in truth, but I do not believe in dogma,' is like saying, (I believe in substances, but only when they cast no shadows.' Every substance casts its shadow, and every truth leaves its definite impression upon the reason of man; and the enunciation of that definite impression is dogma.

If the men of the nineteenth century would be a little more consecutive — or, if that is asking too much, a little more patient — they would not be scared by the word ' dogma.' The Church of Jesus Christ possesses the truth; it possesses His mind, it knows it always, it enunciates it clearly, and can never err in its enunciation. It is in possession of His revelation; and it applies that revelation, as the test of truth, to the opinions, the teachings, and the errors of men. As the leprosy disappeared from the body of Naaman, and as the scales fell from the eyes of the blind, so, when the truth of the revelation is brought in contact with error, straightway error is detected, and is healed.

In the Church no error has ever established itself. In these eighteen hundred years, during which the restless activity of the human intellect has been perpetually devising for itself new modes of conception and of expression — thereby perpetually either going beyond the truth or falling short of it, thus producing heresies — never yet in the Catholic Church has a heresy been able to establish itself or to effect a lodgment. Always and invariably has it been expelled. As a morbid humour of the body is expelled by the vigour of life, so everything contrary to the perfect life of the body and the perfect purity of truth has been sooner or later cast out — so completely eliminated, that not a taint remains behind. The Church is in all ages what it was in the beginning — the witness, judge, and teacher of the whole revelation of God.

It bears witness to the truth it has received. It is the judge, applying that revelation as a test to the teachings of men, condemning the errors, and accepting what is true. It is the teacher, not as scribes and Pharisees, by quotations and criticisms and contradictions among themselves, but by the voice of authority — as one having power. As it is written of our Divine Master, ' the people heard Him gladly;' and for this reason, that ' He taught as one having power — that is, authority — and not as the scribes.' And what is this but that which men rail at, the infallibility of the Church? That is, the Church does not err. Individuals may err, as individuals may die; but the Church can not err, as the Church cannot die. Why does not the Church err? Because it is the Body of a Divine Head; and that Divine Head is Truth. It is the dwelling-place of the Spirit of Truth, who, inhabiting the Body, always sustains it in the knowledge and enunciation of truth.

4. Again — for I do not purpose to enter into this argument in detail; I am merely touching on points of it for a purpose that will hereafter appear — there is another property of our Divine Lord, which is also communicated to His Body. Christ is One. The Godhead and the manhood are united in the Unity of the One Person of the Eternal Son, and the Godhead and the manhood are indissolubly united for all eternity. Christ cannot be divided; and as the Head is indivisible, so is the Body; and the Unity of the Body excludes the possibility of division. Fragmentary portions may be broken off from it, as fragments and boulders may roll from a mountain side, but the mountain remains immovable and indivisible in its perfect identity. So is it with the Universal Church. Its unity both within and without cannot be dissolved.

Of the external unity of the Church, some people speak as if they thought it were a constitution, or the result of legislation. The outward and visible unity of the Church is the result of its inward unity, which is invisible; and no external unity could exist — or, if it, for a time, could be put together, would endure — unless it spring from an internal unity, which in itself is imperishable. For what is the cause of the visible and outward unity of the Catholic Church? The unity of faith, the unity of doctrine, the unity of intellect, the fusion, I may say, of the lights of the supernatural illumination, as the sun's rays all mingle together in the splendour of the noonday light. So all the intelligences of the Church, throughout its whole expanse, and throughout all its eighteen hundred years of duration, are all united and concentrated in the belief of one truth and of one faith, which comes from a Divine voice. And because the intellects of men are thus indissolubly one, therefore their hearts are one: having one truth, they have one charity; and their hearts being one, they have one will; and therefore in the unity of the Church of God, there is an internal unity so vital and creative, that it impresses itself upon its external structure. Thus the visible unity is the outward expression of that internal unity from which it springs. But from what source is this unity derived? It conies from the Person of its Head. He is the one and only source of all truth; the one and only source of all jurisdiction and of all authority; and that jurisdiction and authority spreads itself throughout the whole circle of His Universal Church, from the sunrise to the sunset. It follows therefore as a direct consequence, that as Christ is not divided, so neither is His Church divided. There can be divisions from it, but divisions in the Church of Christ or in any part of it are impossible. He Himself has said: ''Every kingdom divided against itself shall be made desolate: and every city or house divided against.itself shall not stand;'4 and this affirms that its unity is indivisible; as St. Bede says, with 4 St. Matt. xii. 25.

a terse simplicity: 'The kingdom of God is not divided, because the kingdom of God can never fall.'

5. There is one more point, to which all I have said directly leads. Our Lord has delegated to His Church a share of His sovereignty; and the supernatural properties which He has c'ommunicated to His Body constitute that sovereignty. He said to His Apostles: ' You who have followed Me, in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit on the seat of His majesty, you also shall sit on twelve seats, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.'5

This does not mean only in the heavenly state hereafter. The regeneration is now in the world; working always from the time our Lord said: * Go, and baptise all nations.' Then was begun the regeneration of mankind. The Son of God now sits on the throne of His glory, and the Apostles sit upon their thrones on earth. Peter still sits upon the chief throne of the Universal Church. This prophecy and promise are being fulfilled now upon earth, in the midst of us. We are a part of its fulfilment; for the twelve tribes of Israel are the mystical tribes of the faithful 5 St. Matt. xix. 28.

throughout the whole world, the true seed promised to Abraham.

Again, our Lord said: 'I appoint to you, as My Father hath appointed to Me, a kingdom;'6 and in the Apocalypse: ' The kingdom of this world is become our Lord's and His Christ's.'7 That is to say, there is a delegated sovereignty upon earth, derived from the Son of God, representing His person, and invested with His prerogatives of immortality, sanctity, infallibility, unity, and, therefore, of Divine authority. Sovereignty is the supremacy of these supernatural endowments over the whole natural course and order of this world. And the throne of this sovereignty is the Church, by which Christ reigns among men.

The sovereignty, then, of our Lord Jesus Christ, sitting at the right hand of God, to whom ' all power in heaven and on earth' is given, consists not only in His sovereignty over individual souls. He has, as we have seen, a sovereignty over the intellect by faith, and over the heart by love, and over the will by obedience; but His is a sovereignty which extends itself to families and to a St. Luke xxii. 29. 7 Apoc. xi. 15.

households: it guides the authority of parents, it directs the obedience of children, it inspires the charity of brethren. Christian households have our Divine Lord as their head; and not only households, but peoples: for what are they but the aggregate of families? they make states, they therefore constitute governments. Governments make laws, and rulers execute laws. But who is the Head and Fountain of their power? From whom is derived the authority and direction for the civil government over mankind? From Him who is the Lord and Redeemer of men, who is also the Head even of the natural order, or, as we call it, of political society. He is the supreme ruler and chief; and by Him kings reign, and princes decree judgment.

The Son of God is the Head of all power in heaven and in earth, both of the spiritual and of the political or civil order of the world; and when the sovereignty or kingship of Jesus Christ began to work throughout the nations of the world, what were its effects? First of all, as I have said before,8 slavery was steadily extinguished. The greatest tyranny of man over man, the claim of 8 See Lect. iii. p. 76.

K man. to hold man as a chattel, and to have possession in the flesh and blood of a fellow- creature, this greatest debasement of man by man, was extinguished by ' the freedom wherewith Christ hath made us free.'9 Next: woman was raised again to her true dignity. Woman, who had been the toy, the tool, and the prey of man, was elevated and made to be, conjointly with man, the head over the families and households of Christendom. Thirdly, wars, which before had been sanguinary and brutal beyond all that imagination can conceive, were restrained by laws of mercy and by arbitrations of justice. Once more, — the criminal code, whereby the life of man was taken, for the protection of society, was cruel and unrelenting, until, under the action of the sovereignty of Jesus Christ and the legislation of the Church, it was mitigated and tempered from age to age. Again, a quality, unknown before Christianity came on earth, save only in Israel, and there only in part — unknown altogether in the heathen world — was infused into the hearts of men; that is, charity — a tenderness, and a human sympathy of man for man. It 9 Gal. iv. 31.

is a fact, too well known to dwell upon, that in the heathen world not a hospital was to be found. Even in its most advanced civilisation, before Christianity, the sick died without mercy. Another effect of Christianity in the civil order of the world is mutual respect, — the respect of inferiors for the superior, of the subject for authority, the respect of authority for the subject, of the higher for the lower, of equal for equal, and of all men for those around and even below 'them; because all alike bear the image of Jesus Christ; because all alike were redeemed in the Blood of the same Saviour; because all alike were the temples of the Holy Ghost; because they all alike received the same Precious Body and Blood of Jesus Christ at the Altar. The poor servant that did the bidding of a Christian master, it may be that morning had been to the Altar, and had been made a tabernacle of the Son of God. And this participation by all alike of the same Precious Body and Blood of Jesus Christ infused throughout society a mutual respect, which is the foundation of all justice and equity, charity and mercy. And from all these sprang up the commonwealth of Christian men,, not only of individuals and of households, but of nations, states, and empires, which we call Christendom. From this Divine root was produced the civilisation and progress of mankind; which to be such must be Christian, and can be accomplished only by the Son of God, and by His sovereignty alone. I can but touch, and that briefly, on this subject, of which I spoke before, and broke off then as I needs must now. I can do no more than sketch the mere outline of certain great truths, which nevertheless will, I hope, be of use in putting you on your guard against the silver sounds which are chimed and chanted in our ears every morning about civilisation, progress, advancement, dignity, and I know not what; as if the ' Golden Age' were before us, into which we are all advancing, while — as I will show hereafter — the world is rejecting the sovereignty of Jesus Christ.

My purpose, then, in pointing out that the Church on earth partakes of the properties and prerogatives of its Divine Head, and, therefore, of His sovereignty, is to draw two plain conclusions.

The first is this: That civilisation can be perfect only when it is Christian; that civilisation, or the culture and ripening of the civil and political society of man, is never perfect, and can never be perfect, unless elevated by union with the laws of Christianity under the sovereignty of the Son of God.

The civil and domestic society of man in the order of nature existed before Christianity came on earth. This also is God's work, and in this order there may be a natural civilisation. Let anybody, who desires to know what was the civilisation of man before Christianity, read any work on the literature and the morals of Rome and Athens. And if you desire the name or title of a book on this subject, I will say read a book on The Formation of Christendom, lately published among us; or, if you wish something more detailed and extensive, read a work called The Gentile and the Jeiu, by a well-known professor of history in Germany. A rankness of corruption, intellectual and moral, is depicted in the pages of the latter book, which no Christian heart could conceive. Such was civilisation without Christianity.

When the supernatural society of the Church descended upon the natural society of the world, the order of nature was elevated by regeneration, by baptism, by grace, by faith, by light, and by guidance. Then there was a union between those two societies, natural and supernatural; or, as men commonly say, ' Church and State.' That is to say, they mutually recognised each other as creations of God in different spheres, mutually recognised each other's office, mutually respected each other's functions, and, being united together, they co-operated for the welfare of man tinder one and the same Head, one and the same Sovereign. When the civil order of the world acknowledged Jesus Christ as its true Head and Sovereign, then civilisation was Christian, and then there was progress. Progress signifies an advance in the order of perfection, both internal in states, and external with their neighbours. This includes intellectual cultivation, knowledge, both scientific and spiritual; justice — that is, just laws, and just administration of laws; and lastly, the arts and the fruits of peace in industries of every kind of human skill and toil. This progress, I assert, was steadily advancing, so long as the world was Christian. This is our first conclusion.

And the second is self-evident: That what is called modern civilisation, is civilisation without

Christianity. I believe, indeed, that the men, or at least many of them, who use these words do not know what they imply, and would reject it if they saw it. But civilisation without the sovereignty of Jesus Christ, is the rejection of the Christian order under which the progress of the world has hitherto steadily advanced.

In order to make this as clear as I can, and in as few^ words, let me remind you that there are three causes which have broken up the Christian civilisation of Europe and of the world.

In the fifteenth century, the study and cultivation of classical literature excited in the minds of the leading men of European countries a sort of admiration, which I may call a worship, of the models of pagan antiquity, of its philosophy and its policy, of its patriots, and of its public morality. That which is styled the Renaissance, or the New Birth of the Christian world, profoundly infected the men of that day. This antichristian reaction has spread down to the present time. People were deceived into thinking that the Renaissance was the measure of all that is cultivated and civilised. This was the first step, as I will show, to the rejection of Christian civilisation.

It introduced paganism into books, into language, into art, into education. On the testimony of multitudes of men, in which I bear my own part, the education of Christian nations has been based and formed upon what is called classical literature. The examples, maxims, principles, the deeds, the crimes, personal, private, and public, even to the assassination of princes and revolt of peoples, glorified in classical literature, have been taken in unconsciously by boys in their early education for these three hundred years. In Italy and France this is already bearing its fruit.

Next came a period, of which I have no wish to speak controversially, but I must speak clearly. It called itself the Keformation. This will be found to be a second step towards the rejection of Christian civilisation.

The first work of this Reformation was to shatter the unity of faith: to render impossible the unity of worship, to excite individuals to withdraw their obedience from the one Church of Jesus Christ, to tempt families and households withdraw their obedience from the truth; then states, peoples, and governments. Finally, governments set up, in the place of the one and undivided religion, I know not how many forms of Christianity established by law. Into this I will not farther enter. The work of disintegration was begun; the unity of faith and worship among the nations was shattered. Then national religions and their sub-divisions rendered unity impossible. So far as the Reformation extended itself, it carried religious conflict throughout the Christian society of men.

Thirdly. I have already spoken of what are called the principles of 1789. I will not say more of them now, than to add that they are the legitimate application of the principles of the Reformation to States. They are Lutheranism in politics, and they have done for the civil order that which the Reformation did for the ecclesiastical. The Reformation broke up the religious unity, and the principles of 1789 broke up the political unity, of Christian Europe. From that day a perpetual dissolution, crumbling, and decay in the foundations of society has undermined every country where these principles have taken root.

One main cause of it is this, that those principles were not a development or a progressive expansion of the existing traditional institutions of Europe. They began with destruction, by cutting through the roots, by pulling down the tree. It was a work of ruin, and in place of Christian civilisation were substituted principles that were directly subversive of it.

Two plain conclusions follow from what has just been said.

First. That the differentia of modern civilisation is the exclusion from the political order of religious unity in faith, worship, and education; the separation of Church from State, and State from Church. It is the separation of the civil and political order of the world from Christianity, and from the sovereignty of its Divine Head.

The second conclusion is this; that what is called progress, in this kind of civilisation, is not progress, but regress; it is not going onward, but backward. As the Renaissance of which I spoke was a return to the political state of the world before Christ, and because before Christ, necessarily ivithout Christ, so the civilisation which springs from it is a civilisation which goes its own way without regard to the faith or the laws of Jesus Christ: that is to say, it is a return into the state of the world before Christ. I deny to this the name of Progress. It is a going backward, not onward. It is a relapse into the civilisation of Paganism.

Let us take an example of the day. We are hearing all day long of that which is called the Religious Difficulty: the poor children of our streets cannot be educated together — and why? Because of the religious difficulty. And legislators meet, night after night, to debate the religious difficulty, and know not what to do for the education of the poor, because of the religious difficulty. What is the religious difficulty? Where was the religious difficulty before the unity of the Faith was shattered? What has caused the religious difficulty? The shattering of the Faith, and the shattering of the Unity of the Church. But who did these things? and what has reduced ITS to secular education without Christianity? The religious difficulty, and they who made it. Tell me, is this progress? I should as soon call the turning off from the straight sea-line homeward, into an ocean full of rocks and shoals, a homeward voyage. It is not progress, it is regress; it is error, deviation, wandering: and the further and faster men go in this direction, the further and faster they are leaving the sovereignty of Jesus Christ.

We are told what great things modern civilisation has done. It has abolished penal laws. But who made them? I thank no man for abolishing penal laws against the Catholic Faith. I accuse those who enacted them, and set up the tyranny and persecution under which the Faith has suffered. I accuse the forefathers of those, who, happily for themselves, by the working of a higher and nobler spirit, have undone the deeds of their forefathers. I am not grateful, except for the kindly feeling of those who may be moved in sympathy to do it. But I recognise nothing noble in this. I recognise nothing in the man who has done me a wrong, and then retracts the wrong, but that he has at last done that which was right. To be just is simple duty. To thank men for doing a duty implies a doubt of their integrity.

I am told also, I know not what, of the advantages of progress, of electric telegraphs, railways, and the prohibition of intramural burial. Do men desire to make so grave a subject as this to be contemptible?

This, then, is the truth: The world under the constant action of Christianity and the sovereignty of Divine law was advancing in civilisation and making true progress, until a blight fell upon it. The disorders and anarchies of three hundred years ago came to check and to overthrow the course of its advance. Christianity would have abolished all social evils with greater speed and certainty, if its onward course had not been stayed. As for the abolition of old tyrannies, it was this very departure from Christianity which caused them. There never could have been State Churches to be disestablished, if dominant heresies and schisms had not first established them.

We have not yet seen to what modern civilisation is on its way. It is making progress, it is true; but what will it progress to? To the utter and entire rejection of Christianity; to the abolition of the 'religious difficulty' from legislation, from education, and from domestic life; to the relegating and banishing of religion from all public life to the individual conscience and private life of man. Civilisation before Christianity was bad enough: but civilisation which is apostate from Christianity, is worse than all. Before it became

Christian, civilisation persecuted Christianity with the blind brute force of the heathen; but apostate civilisation will know how to persecute with refined and cunning procedure, which nothing but a knowledge of Christianity could have given.

Look into the words and deeds — I will not say of the first French Revolution — that hideous masquerade of Feasts of the Supreme Being and worship of reason, with the abominable personifications of that worship — I will not go so far back: what did we read yesterday? A man at the head of the movement in Paris — and yet a moderate — who has separated himself from the leaders of the extreme Revolution, wrote such words as these: * Why should not the churches be robbed 1 Why should not the treasures of Notre Dame be taken? How were they obtained? By teaching people to believe in heaven and hell. It is money obtained under false pretences; there is no heaven and no hell; Frenchmen have ceased to believe in them/ That is not yet the last word of civilisation without Christianity; but to that, and more, it has already come.

There is as yet a time of stillness and indifference. Liberalism is a twilight state in which all errors are softened: in which no persecution for religion will be countenanced. It is the stillness before the storm. There is a time coming when nothing will be persecuted but truth: and if you possess the truth, you will share it.

We were told yesterday, again: ' As for the temporal power of the Pope' — that is, as we have seen, the public recognition of the sovereignty of Jesus Christ over both orders, civil and spiritual, the union of pontiff and king in one person, as pontiff and king are united in the Divine Head whom he represents — we were told, ' This strange anomaly has gone down in the tide of advancing civilisation and progress.' There is, indeed, a tide rising on every side; and a wiser than the writer of those words has said: i As in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage, and they knew not till the flood came and took them all away/ So assuredly this rising tide of civilisation and progress will carry away the blind apostles who are now preaching it.

There remains in England, and I thank God to know it, much of the Christian and Catholic tradition of our civil order still unbroken. The foundations of our civil state were laid in times before regenerations and reformations and the worship of pagan life and its examples had turned the heads of men. The foundations of our civil order date back a thousand years. Our monarchy, popular freedom, open tribunals, maxims of just judgment, and the broad base upon which the public order of England reposes, were solidly and peacefully compacted, before modern civilisation and modern progress had its name or being. There is in England a« belief in Christianity as a Divine revelation, and in the written Word of God as part of it, and a recognition of the duty of public worship, and a respect for the first day of the week, sacred to our Lord's Resurrection; and above all, there is that which English-men love, and which even the poor and the working men last year publicly testified to be their desire — Christian education for their children. They desire that they be educated, indeed, but as Christians. The voice of the people of England has been decisively heard on this, and I bless God for it. I speak not only to you who are of my flock, but to all who hear me, though they be not of my flock — I would to God they were.

Hold fast to those Catholic traditions of our land; they are more precious than life itself. Hold fast to them, and hand them on as the true and only inheritance of Christian civilisation, and of progress to mankind.