Chapter II. The Sacred Heart God's Way of Love

No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. S. JOHN i.18.

' No man hath seen God at any time.' Therefore the fool said in his heart, ' There is no God;' for that which cannot be seen, to the fool does not exist. But if there be a truth certain to the reason, it is the existence of God. I am certain of my own existence because I am conscious of it. I need not reason about it; I make no syllogism; my existence is not a conclusion from premises. I know the existence of the natural world because my senses assure me of it, and I need no further evidence. My intellect tells me of the existence of God because it is a necessity of my reason to believe that, as the Apostle writes, ' Every house is built by some man. He that created all things is God.'1 And I could as soon believe that this cathedral in which 1 Heb. iii. 4.

we are gathered together was reared by fortuitous action, or piled itself up by a spontaneous volition of its own, as that the world that we see had no Maker; and I am confirmed in this necessity of my reason by the fact that the whole race of mankind has believed in the existence of God. Men may have multiplied their gods; but that proves all the more. They may have distorted their conceptions of God, they may have depraved them, they may have weakened them almost to the verge of extinction; but there is not to be found a nation or a race in the whole family of mankind that has not had an idea of God to deprave; that is, a tradition of His existence. I say this, not to prove the existence of God by counting the number of votes, either of nations or of men; but I adduce it to prove the existence of a necessity of the reason, of a rational law by which an intelligent being is coerced by the very action of his intelligence to believe in the existence of God. Moreover, I find in myself, and I trace in the whole history of man, a consciousness of the distinction of right from wrong — a belief that there is a law of right, and that to transgress it is wrong; and as there is the notion of the law, so there is the notion of the lawgiver. And therefore I say once more that if there be anything certain to the reason, it is that God exists, and that God is the Maker of all things and the Judge of all men. That being so, I affirm that it is most fitting that God should become incarnate; that there is no incongruity, nothing incoherent, nothing unworthy of the Divine Nature, in the Incarnation of God.

It is my purpose to speak upon four points. The first will be what I have just said: the fitness of the Incarnation; that is to say, that it is most consistent with the wisdom and the glory of God that His Son should become incarnate. Secondly, I purpose to show that what is called dogma is at the same time devotion; and that they who imagine that dogma is indevotional or hinders devotion simply show that they do not comprehend what dogma is, and, I may say, what is truth itself. Thirdly, we shall have to speak of the five ways of knowing the Sacred Heart. And lastly, we shall speak of the presence of Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, and of the character of His Sacred Heart therein to us.

Now inasmuch as some have said that for God to be made man has unfitness in itself, I aifirm that the Incarnation is in a high degree fitting, and in harmony with the Divine Nature, and therefore most convenient, that is to say, in strict agreement with the nature of God and of man. And further, I purpose to show that it is most for the glory of God, and that if God had not been incarnate one great manifestation of His glory would not have been given; that in the Incarnation God has both glorified Himself and deified our humanity, and that He has made us partakers of His glory and of a Divine Nature by making us members of Christ; and that therefore to that essential glory which He had from all eternity — namely, the mutual knowledge and love of the Ever-blessed Trinity — He has added the highest accidental glory, in the greatest possible knowledge and love and adoration on the part of His creatures. This, then, in outline is that of which I wish to speak.

1. And first I will begin by affirming this evident truth, that by the Incarnation God has placed Himself within the range of the human intelligence, and thereby has enabled man to know Him with a fulness and a precision which was not possible before. What was the range of the knowledge of the first man in Paradise it is not easy for us to say. That he had a knowledge by supernatural light, that he knew God, and that by the light of faith he saw God — not as a whole (that is impossible, for God is infinite), but in His perfections — is certain. As we who see the firmament see the whole heavens, though they extend beyond our sight — for we see the heavenly bodies, and in seeing them we form a conception of all that we cannot see— so Adam, by supernatural light and by the supernatural intelligence which came with it, knew God. But this was clouded by his sin; and we, in the state in which we are, even with the light of faith, are darkened by his fall. Our weakened intelligence limits our knowledge of God. The conception of God in His infinitude and His eternity and His boundless perfections transcends our faculties and overwhelms our intelligence. And therefore, in order to make the knowledge of Himself easier and more intimate to us, God became incarnate. He came into the midst of mankind in the dimensions of our manhood. He enabled us to comprehend His infinite presence by a presence which is finite. He was verily and truly and personally present by the manhood which He assumed; and that manhood was of the same dimensions and stature as ours. They who looked upon the face of Jesus Christ saw God. And further, in manifesting that finite presence of the Infinite God He also manifested the infinite perfections of God in the finite perfections of His deified manhood. The sanctity and the love and the truth and the mercy of Jesus were the very same divine attributes and perfections as the sanctity, mercy, justice, and truth of God. And further, there was a finite image of God visible to man which was the very and true manifestation of the infinite image of God. The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, is the Brightness of His Father's glory, the Figure of His substance, the express Image of the invisible God. These are three titles given to Him by the Holy Ghost. And the Infinite Image of God, the Eternal and Uncreated Intelligence of God — that is, the Son of God — took upon Himself our humanity, which was also created to God's image and likeness. The Infinite Image of God clothed in our humanity united both the original and the likeness in one Person; and thereby the conception of God became to man more intimate, more facile, more intelligible, more within the sphere of the human reason. And whereas before, the nations of the world who had lost the true knowledge of the invisible God had formed to themselves both mental and material idols — that is, local, finite, and human conceptions of God — God abolished them by taking our humanity upon Himself, manifesting Himself to sense and to reason by a finite presence; and by that presence of His deified humanity He destroyed, as by the flood of light which when the sun rises fills the world, all false images and false conceptions of the infinite God fashioned for itself by the darkened heart of man. The words therefore of the Apostle are strictly true in this: * God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.'2 The Sacred Countenance of the incarnate Son of God arose upon the world as the Sun of the New Creation, the Mirror of God; and all those who saw Him saw God. Therefore He said: * Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? He that seeth Me seeth the Father also;'3 for 'I and the Father are one.'4 And so it came to pass that God, who from the creation was present in all things in a divine manner — for He was present by His essence, which sustains the being of all created things; He was with them also by His sovereignty, which impresses a law upon all things, and by His power, which preserves all His works — to this threefold manner of presence added a fourth, that is, by Incarnation. The Creator came into the midst of His creatures as if He were one 2 2 Cor. iv. 6. 3 S. John xiv. 9, 10. « Ib. x. 30.

of them. He took upon Himself our humanity; and He thereby became visible and palpable. As afterwards He met the unbelief of Thomas, so in the Incarnation He meets the folly of the fool, who, because ' no man hath seen God at any time,' said there is no God. He came and He showed Himself; so that man, by the report of his own senses to his own rational intelligence, should know, by a new and more explicit testimony, and that the testimony of reason, that there is a God.

2. Then, once more,.by the Incarnation God placed Himself in like manner within the range of our hearts. There is nothing in the whole history of the world more fearful than the corruption of the heart of man under false conceptions of God. Heathenism is man without God, and for that reason corrupted. There is not a passion or a vice of human nature which was not deified by the pagan world. The very adorations which they paid to the monstrous gods of their own conception were, like their idols, horrible and not to be described. Therefore God, for the purification and sanctification of the human heart, placed Himself within the sphere of our affections: He has made it easy to know Him, and therefore easy to love Him. He revealed Himself of old to Prophets, to Patriarchs, and to His own people.

The personal nature of God was known and understood by the line of the faithful at all times, and especially by the family of Israel, to whom God gave a large and abundant revelation of Himself in His divine personality by His incomprehensible Name, ' I am who am.' The power, the love, the mercy of God — all these great moral attributes were revealed to them. But that He might make them more intimate with the heart of God, He took for Himself a nature like our own; He came as a man into the midst of men; He came to gaze upon men with a human countenance, to speak to men with a human voice, to love men with a human heart, that men might see, united in His Person, the Creator and the creature, the Infinite and the finite, the Divine and the human, that is, in the hypostatic union of manhood with God. In Him was revealed the fountain of all the gifts of grace: the fountain of life which in eternity was in the bosom of God, on the eternal Hills. The Eiver of life came down through the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and from Him has spread to all nations. ' The Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us; and we saw His glory, the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.' He reveafed thereby the divine characteristics of love, pity, compassion, mercy, tenderness, long-suffering, and generosity. The Word made flesh bore upon Him the whole impress and delineation of God. The eternal character of God shone through the transparent perfections of His human character. It was the human interpretation of the divine nature. And what was the character so revealed? In one word, it was ' God is charity.' The essence of God is charity, and the essence of God is Himself. God is charity; and that Charity was incarnate, and that Charity came and was passible among men. He came to weep over the sins of men, to weep at the grave of the dead, to weep over the sins of Jerusalem, to suffer, to hunger, to thirst, to be in agony, and to be crucified. What, then, is our conception of the Divine Nature through the Incarnation? Love, sorrowing, suffering, and dying for us. It is not possible for the eternal perfections of the love of God to be more intelligible than God has made them by the Incarnation of His Son. ' No man hath seen God,' indeed, ' at any time; but the Only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,' and Who was made man for us, to suffer and to sorrow and to die, 'hath declared Him.'

3. And then, once more, God was made man in order to create in the minds of men a consciousness, lost by sin, of the love of God to them. Throughout the whole world, outside the people of -Israel, every conception of God was terrible and full of fear. The worship of God was the propitiation of wayward, irresistible, and avenging powers. The thought of a God who is love, pity, compassion, purity, and holiness indeed, but full of mercy, was a conception not to be found except in revelation. The highest conception of God was imperfect until the Incarnation. Then it received its fulness, when God made man was manifest, and manifested in Himself the character of God. A consciousness was then awakened in the hearts of men that God loves man, and that there is no love, of which the human heart can form a conception, such as is the love of God for fervour, for tenderness, for generosity. There is no love that can be believed by the heart of man like the love of God. And because the love of an invisible, inscrutable, spiritual, and Eternal Being was hard for the heart of man to conceive, God therefore manifested Himself in our humanity, that is, He came to assure us of His love as a kinsman speaking to kinsmen. He took not upon Him the nature of angels, because He did not come to redeem angels; but He took upon Him the nature of man, because He came to redeem mankind. If He had taken upon Himself the nature of angels, He could not have suffered as man; and if He had come in the form of an angel He would not have been onr kinsman, for we are not of the kindred of angels. ' He took upon Himself,' therefore, as the Apostle says, ' to be a partaker of flesh and blood, that through death He might destroy him who hath the empire of death.' He came in our humanity as our kinsman, and He spoke to us as a kinsman; and we know, if in a foreign land we meet with one of our own race, one of our own people, how our hearts warm to him in the midst of strangers. A secret but sure attraction draws us to him as if he were more than friend. What, then, was the effect of the Incarnation when God came into the midst of men; when He manifested Himself as the Kinsman of men; and when He came, not only as the Kinsman, but as the Brother, as one who had the same Father — one too who had the same Mother, for He took our humanity of her substance? He came too as one who had the same home, and could say, * In My Father's house there are many mansions: I go to prepare a place for you.' And He came, not only as a brother, but as a friend, — for all kinsmen are not brothers, and all brothers are not friends. He came as a friend, as one who had the same will with us, in so far as our will is right — that is to say, so far as our will is towards that which is for our happiness and our salvation; and He proved all this by dying for us. He came as our Saviour, as our Kedeemer from death and from sin, from which doom we could not save ourselves. And why was all this? That by all these things He might draw our hearts upwards into the love of God: that from the love of kinsman to the love of brother, from the love of brother to the love of friend, from the love of friend to the love of Saviour, from the love of Saviour to the love of God, He might draw all hearts to Himself, and with them ascend into heaven; so that the words of the Apostle are true to the very letter, ' Therefore if you be risen with Christ seek the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth. For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.'6 He was raising up the heart of man little by little, that by the consciousness of the love of God He might make men to love God. All this manifestation of personal love was a divine means of winning back again the hearts of men. God has an infinite power of command; but even the power of command in God Himself cannot make man love Him. The infinite power of the word of God is such that when He said, ' Let there be light/ there was light. At His word all • Col. iii. 1-3.

creation sprang into existence; the command of God went forth, and it was done. But the command of God from the beginning has heen saying, ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart;' and we have not obeyed. Man will not do what God commands; and no commandment can bend or win the will of man. And why? Because the heart of man is cold, because the heart of man is hard with love of self, and because in the heart of man there is a free will which is averted from God. All the commandments of God are not enough to make us love Him, and that because nothing but a flame will kindle flame; a stream of water will not kindle fire, but a spark will kindle a conflagration, because it is of the same nature. A loving heart alone therefore can kindle love, and Love was incarnate in order to kindle love in man. The Charity of God was made man, that our hearts might be made to burn with the love of God. Our Lord has declared it: ' I am come to send fire upon the earth; and what do I desire but that it should be kindled?' He knew that, as love alone can kindle love, love alone can feed and sustain love. If we kindle a fire, unless we tend and feed it, soon or late it will die out. So is it with the love of God. If God should kindle the love of Himself in our hearts, He must keep it alive. Unless He sustain and feed it by a perpetual reviving of the motives of love, our selfishness would soon leave off to love Him. And this He has done for ever through the Sacred Heart of His Incarnate Son. As love alone can kindle love and alone can feed and sustain it, so love alone can make love perfect. Nothing but the Divine Love made Man, and thereby united with us, and, more than this, dwelling in us, can bring our love to perfection. But ' God is charity; and he that abideth in charity abideth in God, and God in him;'6 and in every Communion of the Precious Body and Blood of Jesus Christ you receive the Sacred Heart, that is, you receive the Incarnate Love of God into your heart.

4. And further: God has provided in the Incarnation a fourth way of presence in the world. He thereby has opened a way by which the consciousness of His presence may be perpetually sustained in all those who have hearts to believe. Why is it that men who call themselves Christians wander to and fro, so cold, so careless, and so forgetful of God? It is because they have not a recollection, nor even a consciousness of His presence. If they lived and moved in the presence of God as they do in the light of the noonday sun, if they were as

6 1 S. John iv. 16. F bb THE SACRED HEART GOD S WAY OF LOVE.

conscious of their relation to God and God's relation to them as they are of the relations they bear to those that are about them in life, then their whole being and their work here would be governed by that sense. But it is not so with us. Therefore that He might bring this home with all the intimate force of a constant remembrance, He constituted Himself to be the Head of the Body of which we are members. In so far as we are united to Him, the Head of that Body is present in us. He is in the whole Church, and in every member of it. In the measure in which we are united to Him, in that measure the consciousness and the recollection of His presence will be continually sustained in us. If at any time it be not so, the fault is ours. But that same consciousness of His presence as God and Man, and as Head of the Church in all its members, is always and everywhere sustained by the perpetual presence of the Most Holy Eucharist. The visible Church upon earth is, I may say, the Tabernacle in which abides the Incarnate Word present upon every altar. The Church is one wide sanctuary, it is the guestchamber spread in all the world, in which Jesus gave this last commandment of His love. The visible Church in the world hangs as a canopy over that Sacred Presence; and every altar in the Catholic unity is but one altar, as the Most Holy Sacrament upon every altar is but one Sacrament, one mystery of the ' Y/ord made flesh,' dwelling for ever in the midst of us. The consciousness of His presence is made thereby intimate and perpetual and universal. Therefore, in all our daily life it ought to be with us. When you arise in the morning, you rise up disciples of Jesus Christ. Let it be the first thing you do, to kneel down at His feet. Go out to your daily life from His very side. As the Apostles, when they left their Master to do His bidding in Judea and in Galilee, so do you likewise. Day by day you leave the presence of Jesus Christ to go into your path in life, whatever it may be, and in. that path of life He is with you everywhere. He is with you in the throng of men, in the solitude of your home, in your silent work, and in the midst of your busiest hours. If you are unconscious of His presence, He is there none the less. If you forget Him, you deprive yourselves of the strength and peace of knowing that you are never alone, and that He is ever with you.

Here, then, I have given sufficient reason to justify what I said: that the Incarnation has spread the knowledge of God into the sphere of our intelligence and into the range of our affections; that it has created in us a consciousness of the love of God to us; that it has awakened the love of man to God; and that it has created and perpetuated a sense of His presence with us in a way ineffable, because divine. It is indeed a love exceeding all that our heart can conceive; it is the greatest exercise of the omnipotence of God in the revelation of Himself. If that be so, then the conclusion from what I have said is this: that the Sacred Heart is a volume of light, in which the knowledge and the love of God are written within and without. When Jesus said, 'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,' He meant to say, ' Everything is contained in Me;' * No man cometh unto the Father but by Me;'7 there is no other path or gate. In Him ' are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge;'8 that is to say, no man can know God truly except by Jesus Christ; no man can truly know the True God except by the light of faith; no man can have the light of faith except by the grace of the- Holy Ghost, Who comes to us through Jesus Christ: and by that light of faith we come to the Father, through the merits of the Incarnate Son. There is no other way to life. No man can come to God by any 7 S. John xiv. 6. 8 Col. ii. 3."

merits of his own, but solely and only through the merits of the Incarnate Son. No man can come to the Father except hy the light of the teaching of Jesus Christ, and no man can come to Jesus Christ except the Father, who hath sent Him, shall draw him.9 Therefore, He is the Way, and the only way to the Father. And when He said, ' I am the gate; by Me, if any man shall enter in, he shall be saved, and he shall go in and go out and find pasture,'10 He meant precisely this: it is only through His merits, through His teaching, through His grace, and therefore through His Sacred Heart, that we can come to the Father. But He said not only ' I am the Way,' He said also 'I am the Truth.'' All the truth of God is summed up in the Incarnation. We shall see this more fully hereafter. It is enough at this time to say that 'in Jesus,' as the Apostle said, ' dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead corporally;'n that is, the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the most glorious throne of God; for where the Son is, there is the Father and the Holy Ghost — the Son Incarnate, the Father not Incarnate, nor the Holy Ghost Incarnate, but all three consubstantial in one Godhead. But being consubstantial, wheresoever is the Person of the Son, there is the Person of the

9 S. John vi. 44. " Ib. x. 9. » Col. ii. 9.

Father and there the Person of the Holy Ghost. And the Sacred Heart is therefore the throne of the Ever-blessed Trinity. It is the most glorious Kingdom of God the Father, in which He reigns over that Divine Heart — human like ours — with the most perfect sway of His Wisdom and His Love, receiving from it in return the most perfect obedience of which a human heart is capable. And so also the Sacred Heart is the holiest and the highest sanctuary of the Son. The sanctuary where He dwells in the Blessed Sacrament is the type of that sanctuary of the Sacred Heart in which He personally dwells by incarnation. And the Heart of Jesus is also the mightiest instrument of the Holy Ghost, whereby He draws souls to salvation, whereby He reveals the mysteries of the Ever-blessed Trinity, whereby He accomplishes the works of grace in the world. And as He is 'the Way' and 'the Truth/ so He is ' the Life ' — eternal life even now to those in whom He dwells.

And, lastly, to sum all up in a word. As the Incarnation is God's Book of Life, the knowledge of His Sacred Heart is the interpretation and the unfolding of that Book. The whole mystery of God and of man, and the relations of God and man in grace and in glory, are all written in the Sacred

Heart. They that know the Sacred Heart know God; they that love the Sacred Heart love God; and they that are made like to the Sacred Heart are made like to God. It is the compendium of the whole science of God, of the whole way of salvation, of the whole gospel of eternal life.

And, therefore, to repeat what I said in the beginning, the Incarnation has a fitness and a convenience in the ways of God to man, and an adaptation to the nature and to the needs of man; to his intelligence, to his heart, and to his will. God had already, I may say, spoken by His presence through His whole inanimate creation; for God is manifested by all His works. His power and His divinity are known ' by the things which are made.' But this was not enough to make Himself palpable to sense, intelligible as an object of the intellect, and intimate as an object of love to the heart. What yet remained possible? If He had assumed the nature of angels, it would not have been enough; there would still have been a gulf between Him and us. He therefore assumed our humanity. He could come no nearer. He could not make Himself more intelligible than by a human voice and a human form. He could not make Himself the object of human love more intimately than by loving us with a human heart. Therefore, instead of incongruity — as the wise men of this world, who will not believe, so proudly and so wildly say — the Incarnation is the most luminous revelation of the perfect wisdom of God. He who knows what is in man, and who knows His own perfection, glorified Himself above measure in that His Son was incarnate for our sakes..This, then, is the declaration we have received from Him: ' God is light' — that is, Truth and Purity — * and in Him there is no darkness. If we say we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness' — that is, commit sin — ' we lie, and do not the truth; but if we walk in the light ' — that is, in purity and truth — ' as He is in the light, then we have fellowship one with another, and the Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.'12

'2 1 S. John i. 5-7.

in.