Chapter 2. Salvation by Grace
VTe are confident of this very thing, that He Who hath -egun tht good work in you will perfect the same unto the day of Christ Jesus. PHILTPPIANS i. 6.
The greater part of men live as if they had no souls. Of pains and ailments in the body they are keenly conscious: they know at once when they are suffering. But in their souls they may be as lepers white as snow, without the least consciousness of their misery. They live worldly, earthly, sensual lives, without the faintest perception of any spiritual taint or spiritual disease; and they are no more conscious of the existence of their soul than they are of the circulation of their biood. Of those too who are more or less conscious that they have a soul at stake, and that it may be saved yr lost eternally, even of these the greater part live as if God did not dwell in them. They are unconscious of the Divine presence: I do not mean in the world round about them, because it Js^an axiom of thejiurnan reason, that (rod is everywhere; and the men of this world, except skeptics, who have put their eyes out, will always profess that God is omnipresent. I am not, however, speaking of this external presence of God— J (88)
am speaking now of the internal presence of God the Holy Ghost working in the soul. Even the;? who are Christians in faith and in spiritual light, who are conscious, and are continually saying that they have a soul at stake, even they, too, live without a habitual daily sense that they are never alone: that as the soul is in the body, so God is in the soul. Now this is the truth which 1 have endeavored to bring out. "We have seen what is the twofold office of the Holy Ghost — the one part of His work is His universal sanctifying presence in the soul of man; the other, His perpetual presence in the mystical Body of Christ. I then drew, as a general conclusion from these truths, that we are in a supernatural state, that God the Holy Ghost dwells in us one by one; that we therefore ought to worship, to adore, to love, to serve the Holy Spirit of God Who abides in us, and makes our soul His dwelling-place. This is the true nature of the grace of God; but it is to be feared that many who are perpetually telling us that we are saved only by grace little know what grace is. The word grace signifies the free and gratuitous operation of God, but it does not adequately bring out His immediate presence. What I will therefore try to lo is to translate the word into its full meaning.
The full meaning of grace is this: the Divine presence and operation of God the Holy Ghost in the soul of man. Where He works He is. We must not forget His presence in His operation, or reduce it to tho notion of an agency, or an influence, or, as our unbelievers would say, a force. Gracu is of a twofold kind: it is created and uncreated. The created grace is a quality which is infused into the soul. Faith, hope, and charity are qualities poured into our hearts. But the uncreated grace of God is God Himself inhabiting the soul, the Fountain of all other gifts. Therefore, as I have said before, we are in a supernatural state: unless, indeed, we are reprobates, unless we are in mortal sin, for then the Holy Ghost no longer dwells in us. If by any mortal sins of the flesh or of the spirit we have driven the Holy Ghost from our hearts, then, indeed, we are not in a state of grace; nevertheless, we are still m a supernatural state. We are born again, we are regenerate, we are sons of God; we shall be outcast sons of God to all eternity, even in the outer darkness. Even though we be spiritually dead, we are yet in a supernatural state, because we still have faith in us, and we have also hope; but because we have not o.harity, and therefore have not the sanctifying grace of the Holy Ghost, for that cause we are spiritually dead. They who are in the supernatural state, and living a life of grace, are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and the objects of His special love. He perpetually pervades their intellect with the light of faith, and then their heart by the working of charity, arid their will by the inspiration of His own; and from this springs the growth and ripeness of faith, hope, and charity which we receive in GUI Baptism.
Such, then, is the full and adequate meaning of gj ace; and in this sense we must still use the word, because it is the familiar and technical term which pervades our theology: and is to be found also in the New Testament. But we must carefully distinguish its many senses Theology distinguishes the grace, or the working of the Holy Spirit, into these three kinds. There
IB what is called preventing grace; tnat is, God going before us by His operations in every good thing we do. Just as a guide carries a light to show us our path, so the Spirit of God enlightens us, and leads us in the way of life. But, secondly, it is not enough to lead, unless He help, us to follow the light. Those whom He leads He also strengthens. He goes with them, and gives them the concurrent assistance of His own power. This is His co-operating grace. And, thirdly, He makes perfect that which He has begun, according to the words of the Apostle, who says: " We are confident of this very thing, that He Who has begun the good work in you will perfect the same unto the day of Jesua Christ." There are, therefore, three kinds of grace — the preventing grace, which goes before us; the accompanying or co-operating grace, which helps us in our way; and the perfecting grace, which accomplishes and crowns the work of God in us. But these are only three modes of the operation of a Divine Person present in ns. I will endeavor, then, to draw this out, not speculatively, but practically: for the guidance of our daily life.
God is both the author and the perfecter of our salvation. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. But though our salvation begins in Him, is carried on by Him, and is accomplished by Him, nevertheless our will is actively at work in it from the beginning to the end. There is but one grace in which our will has no part, and that grace is the first. The first grace which God gives to us in Baptism He gives to us when we are un conscious in our mother's arms; in this there is no action of our will: but in all the otboi workings of His grace through all c IT life our will must bear a pail. And therefore, as I have already said, there will be no soul lost eternally that is not lost bj want of co-operation of its own will; and there is no soul that will be saved eternally that has not co-operated with the grace of God in working out its salvation. God, then, begins everything in us, even our natural existence. He created us out of nothing. He foreknew us from all eternity. "We were once a thought in the mind of God. It was the love of God which willed to create us; and His power following His will called us into existence out of the boundless multitude of possible creatures, leaving more than the mind of man can imagine non-existent still. This wonderful work of God's love to us, calling us into existence, was a preventing grace of His sovereign love, wisdom, and goodness towards us. In like manner, God accomplished our redemption before ever we were, before ever we came into being, because He willed His own Son to be incarnate; and the Incarnate Son shed His Precious Blood for us when eternally He willed to die. When we came into existence, God, having foreknown and predestinated us to grace, called us to Holy Baptism; and out of the millions and hundreds of millions of men en the face of the earth we were called to be born again through the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. Our Baptism was a predestination. This, then, was a grace bestowed upon us without any will of our own. And if those who are baptized abide in their baptismal innocence, the grace of God is always beforehand with their will, through, their whole life, in childhood boyhood, youth, and manhood, to the end: it always precedes thei •; the} always follow it, and their salvation is made sure by tlieir fidelity in obedience to this preventing grace. The presence of the Holy Ghost, given to then? in the unconscious state of infancy, hs6 continually led them in the path of salvation; they have obeyed it; and therefore the faith, piety, charity, and purity of hose that keep their baptismal grace are the fruits of a Personal Love and Power preceding every operation of their own will. God began the good work in them. and so long as they put no bar across His work, He haa been perfecting it in them. In those who grow up in their baptismal innocence there is also an unconsciousness of evil. They are ignorant of a multitude of things which the men of the world think it wisdom to know. But that knowledge is a canker and a stain: it may even be the destruction of the soul. Moreover, those who keep their baptismal innocence are not only unconscious of evil, they are even unconscious of anj good in themselves, because, in proportion as they art humble and united with God, ia that proportion they are sanctified, and, in proportion as they are sanctified, they ascribe all good to God alone, and nothing to themselves. "Well, as it is with those who grow up in their first innocence, so it is in those who are converted. They also are brought back from their sins by the preventing grace of God. Those who have fallen away, it may be, even from the Christian faith, or those who have violated the law of God, those who have left the house of their Heavenly Father — wandering out into the far country, and have wasted the grace of their Baptism in an evil life — when they return to God, what is it that brings them back again? It may be the case with some who hear me, who have come back to God after all their miseries, or who were born out of the light of the truth, and have now entered into the full illumination of faith. You can perhaps remember what your past life was once: now it is altogether changed. What wrought that change in you? From what source came the first light in your reason which showed you where you were, and by what dangers you were encompassed? From what hand came that first sting in your conscience that made you fear to look at yourself, and desire to hide yourself from the eye of God? From what will came that impulse in your heart which made you say: " I had rather die at the foot of the Cross; I had rather fall down on my face in the brightness of God's presence, though all the stains and wounds of my soul will be revealed to me in an intolerable light — rather this than die as I am. I will arise and go to my Father: I will go into the confessional: I will go and tell the worst against myself: I will keep nothing back: I will anticipate the day of Judgment: everything that will be told against me by the accuser then shall be told by my own lips now." Dear brethren, what brought you to that resolution 1 Perhaps it was some word that you heard in a sermon — some preacher spoke and touched your heart, so that you could never rest afterwards; some book that you picked up, as you say, by chance — a mere sentence in a page of it went to your heart, and you had never any peace till you had gone to accuse yourself in a true eonfession; or it may be some great sickness struck you down, and, in the danger of impending death, you saw yourself as God saw you; or perhaps it was.the death of some one dear to you that opened your eyes. You thoght it was these chances or accidents, or earthly things, that made the change in you. No; God was working by these things: He was behind the veil. These were but the instruments He made use of: He \ras hiding Himself behind them; and through them He was working the grace of conversion in your soul. It was " the finger of God touching the heart." * It was His doing: a personal action of the love of God and of the Holy Ghost upon your intellect, and upon your conscience, and upon your heart, and upon your will. Through the whole of our spiritual life, whether innocent or penitent, this work of salvation springs from God. It is His grace preventing even our first thoughts of good.
But, as I have already said, the grace of God cooperates with us or works with us. I cannot make this clearer than by putting before you what I cannot doubt most of you have seen. You have seen a lock in a river; and you have watched how, when the lock is shut, the water rises against the gate. It presses with its full weight against the gate until a hand — it may be the hand of a child, with such facility it is accomplished— opens the gate of the lock; at once the flood pours in, the level of the water rises, the stream runs strong, and carries forward those that float upon it, almost without effort of their own. The grace of God, that is, the power of the Holy Ghost, is always pressing against our will, always in contact with our heart, moving us onward towards God, impelling us to good. And this pressure of the Holy Ghost against om *Conc. Trid. sees. vi. cap. v.: "Tangente Deo corhomims."
will waits only for our will to open: " Behold, I etand at the gate and knock. If any man shall hear My voice and open the door, I will go in to him and sup with him, and he with Me."* The Holy Spirit of God is waiting at the door all the day long: in every action we do He is pressing upon our will to make us do good, and when we are doing good to make us do better. But He waits for our will to correspond. He never forces it. The will must be willing. If we only open the gate, the full tide of His grace will flow in, and uniting itself with all our powers, will elevate our personal will above itself, strengthen it with supernatural force, and carry it onward with facility and speed. Now, this co-operation of the Spirit of God in us is followed also by an increase of grace. Those that believe, if they follow the light of faith, become stronger and more illuminated in faith; those that hope, and act in hope, become confirmed and matured into confidence; those that live in charity, and exercise tho graces of charity, become fruitful in all its works, and in that measure, sanctified with the love of God and their neighbor. So it is with humility, and piety, and self-denial, and generosity, and with all the graces of the Christian character. In proportion as you willingly accept and use the help of the Spirit of God in the duties and works to which yon are prompted by these several graces, these graces themselves will be increased and multiplied, enlarged and deepened. And, lastly, the Holy Spirit of God, dwelling in the souls of the faithful, deals with us as we deal with children. When you teach a child to read, your mature intelligence * Apoc. iii. 30.
guides the intelligence of the child. Yv»nr intelligence elevates the child's intelligence. What the child cannot understand you explain; and the intelligence of the child rises up to yours. As a lesser flame rises up and mingles with a greater, so the intelligence of the child is elevated, and its light i, enlarged, by your intelligence presiding over it. If you teach a child to write, you lay your hand upon its hand and guide it in the formation of the letters. If y u attempt to teach a child anything, you supply attention. You give it self-control; a fixedness of will; you keep the mind of the child steady and intent upon what it is doing. Unless your mature will assists the weak will of the child, even the intelligence of the child will not unfold its native power. If the child will not attend, or if the child will uot work with you by a will to understand, mnch more if the child withdraws its hand from youi guidance, it can learn nothing. It must co-operate with you even to begin, and it must work with you tc advance; and as it works together with you, in that measure it advances in knowledge. So it is with the soul. The Holy Spirit of God illuminates us, and if we rt ceive that illumination, we receive from Him larger measure s of light; but the condition on which wo are illuminated is, that we co-operate with the light we already have The way in which we learn the science of God, in all its greatest principles, and all its least details, it by following the working of the Spirit of God in our hearts. The whole, then, of cur sanctification is a personal action of God dwelling in our soul, and unfolding the intelligence and the will to a conformity with His own
- And, lastly, Saint Augustine says that u God crowns His own work in us;"1 that is to say, the work of our sanctification and salvation is of God from first to last, from the beginning to the end. God crowns it when He makes it perfect. He puts the crown upon the head of His own work in us when He sustains us to a holy death. Unless God Himself makes our salvation perfect, we shall never be saved; unless we have the gift of perseverance, we shall never endnre to the end. And this gift of perseverance is the crown of our sanctification. It is not in our own power to stand for one day, much less to hold out to the last. Perseverance is a gift of God. It comes from His sovereign grace, and He gives it to those who co-operate with Him; and on them He bestows it as a free grace of His love. You know that if we were to shoot a thousand arrows at a mark, every arrow might hit that mark; it is physically possible. There is nothing to hinder such a feat. But we know with a perfect certainty that out of that thousand arrows many will never strike the mark. They will fall short, or go beyond, or swerve on either side. And why? Because that which is physically possible is defeated by some infirmity, either of the eye, or of the hand, or of our posture, or of our poise and balance, or something in the bow or in the string, or it is a current in the wind, or some undetected flaw in the circumstances of the action. Any one of these will divert the arrow's flight. So if is in all oar moral life. That which we may do is often not done. It fails through our own defects. God indeed gives us sufficient grace to fulfill what is necessary for our salvation: and though it is possible for us never to fail, it is perfectly certain that in many things we shall fail. If, then, there were not a special grace of God watching over and taking up His work in us, it would fall from our hands. Through our weakness it never would be made perfect.
Now the gift of perseverance is twofold. First, it is a duty on our part; and next, it is a gift on God'a part. It is a duty on our part, as our Lord has said: " Ho that endureth to the end the same shall be saved;"2 meaning to say, that no man shall be saved who does not so endure. The duty of perseverance on our part is made up of three things: of fidelity in following the Spirit of God; of fervor, that is exactness, regularity, punctuality in the discharge of our duties towards God and our neighbor; and lastly, oi delicacy of conscience, so that our ear is prompt to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, and our eye is quick to see what He requires of us. When the conscience is delicate and sensitive, we listen, hear, and respond. When its sight is open and clear, we watch for the tokens, and rise up quicldy at the guidance of the Holy Spirit. They who have fidelity, fervor, and delicacy of conscience will surely persevere, because God will bestow upon them the gift of perseverance, the sovereign and crowning grace added over and above all the other graces He has bestowed. The gift of perseverance also, I may say, consists of three things, which are these: First of all, a watchful providence guarding us round about. We do not know the dangers that surround us day and night We do not know how many fiery shafts of the wicked one have been cast at us in our most unguarded moments. They have been warded off from us by a shield unseen. We shall never know till we are in the light of eternity, before the Throne of God, over how many pitfalls and gulfs where there was no bridge to bear us, through what perils ready to fall upon us, we have passed safely, and unconsciously, because the Spirit of God was our Guide. To be shielded on either side and to be protected from all sin is that which we pray for every day in the words: " Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" Our Heavenly Father fulfills that petition, and He guards us from ten thousand dangers of which we are not aware. Next, He leads us in a path that is safe, in the path of which the Prophet Isaias speaks when he says: " There shall be a path and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness: the unclean shall n< >t pass over it; and this shall be unto you a straight way, so that fools shall not err therein."* God will lead all who are faithful in that safe path of holiness. And, lastly, just as we keep a lamp -alight by careful watching, and by pouring in fresh oil when the wick begins to burn dim, so the Holy Ghost lovingly and tenderly watches over the state of our hearts. When He sees there is spiritual decay, and that the light is declining, tha* our charity is less, or that our piety is faint, He pou-s in larger measures of His grace, whereby the spiritual life within us is kept vigorous and strong, and its decays are continually repaired. They who have this gift of holy * Isaias xxxv 8.
perseverance are thereby kept to the end. Our salvation, therefore, depends upon a chain of grace, link within link. The first grace was the grace given to ua in Baptism, when we were unconscious; the last grace is that which is bestowed upon us out of the sovereign love of God, keeping us to the end. God Himself hold the first grace and the last in His own hand; and that golden chain of mercy is let down within our reach. We must hold fast by it; and we must hold fast by every link as it passes through our hands, cooperating with every grace as He gives it to us — if not with the grace of obedience and sanctity, then at least with the grace of sorrow and contrition; and so persevering, God will accomplish the work He began in us until the day of Jesus Christ.
And now, brethren, from all that I have said certain truths of a very practical kind directly flow. The first is this, that the work of our salvation, which the Holy Ghost is accomplishing in us, can never fail on God's part. The whole creation and the life of all created things is sustained by the presence and the providence of God. The ruin and wreck of all things come not from God, but from man. So in our spiritual life God is always pouring into our hearts more and more of His grace. If we do not bar and hinder His operations in us, He will accomplish His own work. It is we alone who hinder it. It is we alone who can wreck it. God never forsakes those whom He has once called. He may at last judicially reject them; but only after long patience, an ample trial, a judicial process, and an inevitable judgment. As He rejected Pharao for his impenitence, as it may be He rejected Ananias 3 and Sapphira, as He rejected Judas, so He may reject us. If we harden ourselves against His grace by sins of the flesh, or, what is more subtile and more stealthy, by sina of the spirit, which are even more deadly, because more Satanic, and harder to be cured, then, indeed, God may reject us judicially; but God never forsakes anybody, as the holy Council of Trent teaches, who does not forsake him first.* " The gifts and the calling of God are without repentance."! His will is to save us; and He never changes that will. We may defeat the purpose of His mercy; but then the failure comes from us, and not from Him. This is the first truth.
The second is, that though our salvation will not fail on God's part, it may fail on ours; and if it does fail, it will fail by our own will. In this there is bott something very fearful and something very consoling It is very fearful to think that we have it in our powei to destroy the whole work of God in our souls; but it is very consoling to know that if our will is upright and faithful, nothing can destroy that work: even the gates rf hell cannot destroy it. All the legions of the Evil One have no power over a Christian child who is faithful to its baptismal grace. A Christian child in its baptismal innocence is as safe as the child who was in the arms of our Divine Saviour.
The danger, then, from our own will is this. It is our will that determines our whole destiny. You know, brethren, the difference between the features of your face and your countenance. God made your features, but you made your countenance. Your features were His work, and He gives to every man His own natural face * Cone. Trid. seas. vi. cap. xi. f Rom. zi 29.
— all different from each other, and yet all jf one type, But the countenances of men are far more diverse even than their features. Some men have a lofty countenance, some have a lowering countenance, or a worldly or ostentatious vain-glorious countenance, or a scornful countenance, or a cunning and dissembling countenance. We know men by their look. We read men by looking at their faces — not at their features, their eyes or lips, because God made these; but at a certain cast and motion, and shape and expression, which their features have acquired. It is this that we call the countenance. And what makes this countenance? The inward and mental habits; the constant pressure of the mind, the perpetual repetition of its acts. You can detect at once a vainglorious, or conceited, or foolish person. It is stamped on their countenance. You can see at once on the faces of the cunning, the deep, the dissembling, certain corresponding lines traced on the face as legibly as if they were written. Well, now, as it is with the countenance so it is with the character. God gave us our intellect, our heart, and our will; but our character is something different from the will, the heart, and the intellect. The character is that intellectual and moral texture into which all our life long we have been weaving up the inward life that is in us. It is the result of the habitual or prevailing use we have been making of our intellect, heart, and will. We are always at work like the weaver at a loom; the shuttle is always going, and the woof ie always growing. So we are always forming a character for ourselves.
It is plain matter-of-fact truth that everybody grow* ip in a certain character; some are good, some bad, gome excellent, and some unendurable. Every character is formed by ha-bits. If a man is habitually proud, or vain, or false, and the like, he forms for himself a character like in kind. It is the permanent bias formed by continually acting in a particular way; and this act/- ing in a particular way comes from the continual indulgence of thoughts and wishes of a particular tendency. The loom is invisible within, and the shuttle is ever going in the heart; but it is the will that throws it to and fro. The character shows itself outwardly, but it is wrought within. Every habit is a chain of acts, and every one of those acts was a free act of the will. There was a time when a man had never committed the sin which first became habitual, and then formed his abiding character. For instance, some pec pie are habitually false. "We sometimes meet with rner whose word we can never take, and for this reason They have lost the perception of truth and falsehood The distinction is effaced from their minds. They do not know when they are speaking truly and when they are speaking falsely. The habit of paltering, and distinguishing, and concealing, and putting forward the edge of a truth instead of showing boldly the full face of it, at last leads men into an insincerity so habitual, that they really do not know when they speak the truth or not. They bring this state upon themselves. But there was a time when those same men had never told a lie. The first they told wa& perhaps with only half an act of the will; but gradually they grew to do it deliberately, then they added lie to lie with a full deliberation, then with a frequency which formed a habit; and when it became habitual to them, then it became un
3onscious. Or take another example: men who, perhaps, had never tasted anything in their lives that could turn their brain have at last acquired a habit of habitual drunkenness. Xow, dear brethren, do not suppose by the words habitual drunkenness I mean only that sort of gross reeling intoxication by which men openly in the light of day shame themselves in the street. I wish there were no other habits of intoxication than these. There are men and women who live a refined life, and in the full light of society, undetected, who habitually cloud their understanding, and habitually undermine the moral powers of their will, by the use of stimulants. This evil is growing in these days on every side. It is making a havoc of men, of women, and, through the folly of parents, even of young children. I must openly say, that, in this, the imprudence, the folly, the weak indulgence of parents, their want of vigilance over their sons and daughters — I am speaking, remember, of the upper classes — is such, that they seem to me to be blind or infatuated.
There are at this time even young women whc habitually drink as much as would ntoxicate a man; God only knows the lives of misery and the deaths of stupor or of madness to which they are advancing. JNTow there was a time when they had never so much as tasted intoxicating drink. There was a time when, with a certain fear, a shrinking, a consciousness of doing a wrong or doubtful act, they began to taste, and then to drink, at first sparingly, then freely, until gradually growing confident and bold, and the temptation acquiring a great fascination, and the taste being vitiated, a craving has been excited, and the delusion of a fancied need has come upon them. They have gone on little by little, so insensibly, that they have not became ware, until a bondage has been created which, unlesp God by an almost miraculous grace shall set them free, they will never break. What I have given in those two examples of a habit insensibly formed I might give in everything else. It applies equally to anger, jealousy, prodigality, profuseness, running into debt, and others I need not name. I will only take one more example, and that shall be the sin of sloth. There is nothing which grows so insensibly on souls in their spiritual life, and it is mortal as the chill which in northern regions comes upon the traveler before he is aware. We are told that the fatal cold creeps on almost with a sense of pleasure, until it numbs the whole tide of life, and death takes possession before the victim is aware. So it is with spiritual sloth. It begins by little omissions, little neglects, little slacknesses, until at last the careless man gets bolder. His conscience grows easy even in making great omissions of duty, first once in a way, hen a second, then a third, and then more frequently, until these omissions knit themselves into a habit. And yet all the while every one of these actions was quite as much an act of the free will as it would be for me at this moment to cease to speak. If I ceased to speak, it would be because that I have determined in my mind to speak no longer. You would not say that this was an act of omission. It would be the deliberate act oi my will; so are all those acts out of which the most dangerous habits are formed. As I have said, even an act of omission is an act of the will. If you were to cast yourself down on the ground, it would be an ae of your will; if you were to refuse to get up, it would * equally so. To lie there would be, in one sense, an act of omission; but that act of omission is a result at the time of the will not to use the power you have to get up. So people who begin to neglect their prayers, their confessions, their Communions, their self-examination, the Holy Mass, the presence and love of God, are all along committing distinct acts of the will. These are not negative things, they are positive acts; and, if we so begin as I have said, those acts will knit themselves together into a chain. Saint Augustine said, t'peaking of himself in his youth, while he was in the habits of sin, that they bound him like a fetter. He says: " I was bound by a chain which I had made for myself. No other man made it. I was bound meaferrea volimtate, by the chain of my own iron will." What but this is eternal death? What is the eternal loss of God 2 It is the final state of a soul which has lost its hold on God here by its own wilful acts. Bound in " ropes of darkness," as Saint Peter says, when the time of grace is over, and the day of probation is gone down, and judgment is passed, the soul that has deprived itself of God in this world is cast out of the sight of God hereafter, and confirmed in the intensity of its variance, and in its enmity against God, WTiom it can never see, because it has bound its own eyes with the bandage of wilful blindness, and all its powers with the iron fetters of its own deliberate will. Therefore we can never fail of our salvation except by our own free will; and our will never fails except through our own fault.
Let us sum up what has been said. Saint Paul rrites: " We are confident cf thia very thing, that
God, Who has begun the good work, will perfect the same to the day of Jesus Christ." Carry away with you this lesson of confidence in God. Confidence means hope resting on His goodness; trust reposing on His love. Cast your whole weight upon it: throw the whole burden of your soul upon God. He loves you, He created you. He redeemed you, He has chosen you, He has called you to His grace, He has been working in you from your Baptism to this hour. If you wish to know why you may confide in God's love to you not only in the general sense of confidence, because He has mercy upon all, but why you may confide in God's love to you personally and by name, and one by one — lay to heart these motives of trust and gratitude. Eemember what you were once. How many who hear me can recollect the time when, through sin, they were dead before God; when they were, as I said in the beginning, " like the leper white as snow;" when they were walking for years in darkness, without the knowledge of God, turning theii back upon His light, in bondage to manifold sins. Remember who and what it was that brought you back to life. Your resurrection from that state of spiritual death was as much a miracle of God's supernatural power as the raising of Lazarus from the grave. God had mercy and love to you. He raisec you from death, and loosed you from your winding-sheet of habitual sin. Confide in Him, therefore, for the future. You did not then know what He was doing for you. You know it now. It is the pledge of what He will do for you hereafter. He Who has begun that good work, if you do not thwart it, will make it perfect. Again, see what you are at this moment. I trust that you who hear me are living the life of grace, in union with God, in prayer, in self-knowledge, in habitual confession, and in communion in the Body arid Blood of Jesus Christ. I will not doubt that you are in full friendship with the Sacred Heart of our Divine Lord through the working of His grace in your hearts. If so, what brought you to this state? Who brought on the spring after the winter, and the summer after the spring? "Who made you to be what you are now? It was not yourselves. It was the love and the grace of the Holy Spirit working in you; chiefly when you knew it not. Think also what you may be hereafter. You may be for ever cast away. You may fall again into that spiritual death from which God has once raised you. You may fall away from Him. Unless you be faithful, I must almost say you will. On the other hand, you may be saints. You may persevere to the end. Yow may grow in the light of faith all the days of your life, until upon your death bed you will perhaps see the first rays of the presence of God. You may grow in the confidence of hope, until the calmness, and the sweetness, and the brightness shed abroad in your soul shall be a foretaste of the eternal bliss of God. All this is within your reach: God has begun it in you. He will accomplish it, if you will work together with Him to the end.
Therefore, dear brethren, walk before God in holy fear. We so intimately depend upon His grace, that if we are not faithful we may in a moment fall from it. Have a holy fear of consciously doing anything that will grieve Him: a holy fear of going anywhere, en 3* termg into any engagements, amusements, societies, friendships, intimacies, which can come between God ind your soul. Have a holy fear of everything which hinders the growth of the work of God in you. Ask for a great humility. " He that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall.* Remember what you are now. Remember what you have been. Look at the scars, and seams, and wounds which your past life has left on you. Remember what God sees in you at this moment. Remember that the best things you ever did in your life in His sight are nothing worth, that you are unprofitable servants. Remember, alsc, that you are the creatures of His hands; and as creatures you ought to glorify Him, as the sun by its brightness, and the f ruit-tree by its fruit in due season. But what Light and what fruit has He had from you? Be therefore humble in the sight of God. But be joyful at the thought of His infinite mercies. They have been round about you like the waves of the sea all your life, %nd to this hour. Praise Him for His manifold gifts. Do not only pray for what you want, but give Hun thanks for what you have received. Praise Him as you will in eternity; for our whole eternity will be praise. There will be prayer no longer. When all are filled with God, what more will there be to ask? We shall praise God for ever; and praise is to know Him, to love Him, to look up into His face, to contemplate His beauty, to rejoice in Him for His great glory, to pray Him to glorify Himself more and more in all the world, to hallow His own Name, to hasten His king* dom, to hasten the time when men shall do His will (^ * 1 Cor x. 13.
earth as it is done in heaven; above all, that these things may be made perfect in you. The grace of the Holy Ghost is in you. And grace is better than life, as the soul is precious above the body, and eternity above time. Every truth of faith is a light that comes from God; every spark of charity comes from the fire of the Holy Ghost. Grace is the finger of God upon the soul* It is also a participation of the Divine nature. It is the presence of the Sanctifier in us. You are His temples, and His dwelling-place. Be holy therefore in body and in spirit. It is but a little time, and the veil which is between you and Him will part asunder and vanish away. You see Him now by the vision of faith; in a little while you will see Him by the vision of glory; and then you will be like Him, " for we ahull see mm as He is."*
• I 8 John ilL 1
Footnotes
Chapter 3 of 18