Sermon XI. The Powers of the World to Come
" Therefore, if you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God." Colossians, iii, 1.
THE Resurrection of the Son of God was the accomplishment of His work and the perfection of His Person. It was the accomplishment of His work, because it completed His victory over sin and death, and fulfilled the words of the Prophet: " O death, I will be thy death."* It was the perfection of His Person, because in Him first of all our mortality put on immortality, and our manhood was invested with the essential and accidental glory of the kingdom of God. But during these last days the Resurrection of Jesus Christ has been the subject of your continual thoughts. I have no need, therefore, to speak of its history nor of its theology: I would rather to-day
, xiii, 14.
draw out some of its consequences and powers upon ourselves.
The resurrection is neither a sterile fact in the past, nor only an event to come, but a living and active power in the present, penetrating the very substance of our life and being. The resurrection of Jesus already quickens the world. St. Paul uses no rhetorical hyperbole when he says to the Romans: Consepulti enim sumus cum illo " We are buried together with Him by baptism into death, that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life."* Nor when he tells the Christians of Colosse that they were " already risen with Christ."t Nor when He says to the He brews that they had tasted virtutes futuri sceculi "the powers of the world to come."J Nor Jesus, when He said, "I am the resurrection and the life;" not "I will be," but " I am" now in this present time. This, then, is the supernatural fact of our state on which I desire to dwell. I would show that the resurrection is already at work upon us, that we are the "prim/Ufa" the first fruits, or the preludes of the Kingdom of God. We have in us a present participation and an incipient conformitv to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We
2 share it, and it works in us, both in individuals and in the Church.
First, then, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the power by which we rise again from eternal death; and this resurrection is already accomplished. We were by nature born in sin and dead before God. The v whole world was dead, when Jesus died, and rose again, and instituted the Sacrament of Regeneration, in which, by the spiritual resurrection, we w r ere raised from the dead to a new and supernatural life. In out-regeneration we pass from the power of eternal death. We receive the infusion of a new life from God. We were dead, we are risen again. The resurrection has wrought its first work upon us. Jesus risen lives in us, and one by one we rise and live by Him.
But more than this, the powers of the resurrection are inexhaustible. If, after our spiritual resurrection, we sin mortally and die once more, there is again and again the same power to raise the soul to life. The Sacrament of Penance recalls the soul which has died again, to all the amplitude of its vitality, and this power of the resurrection never fails. As even to the end of life there is fear of spiritual death, so also in the Sacrament of Penance there is the gift of a perpetual revival. Life prevails over death, and the exuberant vitality which descends from Jesus risen, overpasses the powers of sin and death. If, after a long life of faith, the just man sins mortally against God, he dies; after long years of faith, obedience, and prayer, after all his good works of charity, self-denial, and mortification, one mortal sin, and all is extinct. Just as a tree laden with autumn fruits, if some un timely lightning strike it, will dry up, leaf, branch, and root, the fruits hang withered on the bough, dead fruits upon a dead tree: so the works of the just. He was as the tree planted by the rivers of water, full of foliage, and bending under its abundance of fruit. In a moment all is dead. Yet even for this there is a revival. The resurrection of Jesus, working penance, fills the root again with a new vitality, the tree lives once more, the leaf is soft with a new moisture, and the fruits revive with their former ripeness. All was dead all is alive again: for the resurrection of Jesus has reentered in the fulness of its life and power. Such is the action of the resurrection upon us even now. By it we live our only true life, the life of grace, the eternal life which is hid with Christ in God. " Blessed and holy is he who hath part in the first re surrection, on him the second death hath no power." Our Divine Lord said to His disciples: " You who have followed me in the regeneration, when the Son
Apoc., xx, 6.
of Man shall sit upon the seat of His majesty, you also shall sit on twelve seats."* He taught them that the resurrection should accomplish what His grace had already begun; that the resurrection is the regeneration completed, as the regeneration is the resurrection begun; that they who are raised from eternal death, by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, shall be raised also from temporal death by the power of God. The Apostle says: " We, who have received the first fruits of the Spirit, are waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body."f The resurrection has accomplished its greater work in us, it will also accomplish the less; for the resurrection of the soul is greater in power and grace than the resurrection of the body. As the life of the soul to the life of the body, so is our baptism to our resurrection.
But there are now, as then, those who ask: " How do the dead rise again, and with what manner of body do they come?"! If I should say, I know not, my certainty of faith would not be less. But the Apostle has answered for me: " Senseless man, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die first. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body which shall be, but bare grain, as of wheat,34 or of some of the rest. But God giveth it a body as He will: and to every seed its proper body."5
We are surrounded by the power of resurrection. The whole world is full of it. All nature lives and revives by it. I cast a seed into the earth, it springs into a blade, a stalk, an ear, the full corn in the ear. How, I know not; but it is certain, undeniable, self-evident. There is a line of connection, a causality, call it what you will, and let the philosophers of Positive Science say what they may, which links the seed to the blade, and the blade to the grain in the ear. It is of the same substance, it springs from the same principle of vitality, it is the offspring of the seed which w r as sown, it is the seed itself and the harvest is its proper resurrection. So with the body, which we lay not in burial-grounds, but in our " sleeping-places;" for Jesus has changed death to sleep, and our cemeteries are places of a rest which stands re lated to the resurrection as our sleep to waking.
The very same body shall rise again, the same in substance, but not in infirmity. It will rise in its perfection. It was sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it was sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body, rectified in all its powers and restored to all its symmetry, as God in the beginning created man in
His own image, and made our humanity the expression of His own likeness. There shall be no infirmity or deformity in the resurrection of the just. In this world we are halt and maimed, our eyes are glazed with dimness, and our ears are dull of hearing; even our intelligence wears out or is straitened by the narrowness of its instrument, or deadened by the decay of its material power. But in that day there shall be no more disease nor deformity, no insanity of the mind or idiocy of the reason. All the clouds shall be rolled away, and the spirits of the just made perfect shall be clothed in a body in proportion and harmony with their perfection.
And more than this, even the body shall likewise have its glory. The prerogatives of the soul shall overflow upon it, and clothe it with supernatural splendour and endowments. It shall be impassible and immortal, subtle as the light, and glorious as the sun in his strength. For Jesus shall change the body of our humiliation to be like to the body of His glory. Even now already the principle of this immortality is in our mortal body, by the substance of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist, which is the link between the Incarnation of God and the resurrection of the members of His mystical body from the dead.
And with this there is given to us another conformity to the resurrection of Jesus, in the perfect personal identity of all who rise again. " Viclete manus meas et pedes, quia ego Ipse sum" " See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself."6 Not a spirit nor a phantom, nor in another form created in the stead of that which was, but the same Jesus who ate and drank, was weary and wept with you, your Lord, your Brother, your Kinsman, and your Friend. So, too, shall it be with us in all the fulness of our personal consciousness, which links our manhood to our childhood, and identifies what we are with what we were. What is this mystery of personal identity, but the living and lineal sense and intuition, the knowledge of the heart, and the consciousness of the intelligence that we are the same who once were children by our father s side and knelt at our mother s knee who wept and rejoiced with griefs and joys which seem to us now to be a mere imitation of life and its reality. We rest upon our past as the tree rests upon its root. We spring from it, and derive our life and strength, our intellectual powers and the affections of our hearts, from that personal and continuous life, as the tree unfolds itself into stature and symmetry, and into leaf and fruit, by the expansion of its one continuous life, matured by the sun and air. And this consciousness will be to all eternity the same: and in it will be suspended all that we call our character, all that we have received by nature or by grace, all that we have acquired by a life of intellectual and moral action, all that has been impressed on us from without, by bless ings and by chastisements, by joys and by wounds, as the stigmata were still retained by Jesus, in hands, feet, and side, as the tokens of His identity. " It is I myself." Still more than this, because of this personal identity, we shall have the same relation to times, and to places, and to each other. Jesus and Mary will to all eternity be Son and Mother; and this one divine fact reveals to us the eternity of our relations. Andrew and Peter, James and John will be brothers, Martha and Mary sisters for ever. Our relations are a part of our consciousness: we could not put them off without spoiling ourselves of the greater part of our personal identity.
And from this arises another grace of the resurrection of Jesus. The home we have loved and lost shall be found once more, the same as it was before, save only that it shall be changeless and eternal. u We will not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are asleep, that you be not sorrowful, even as others who have no hope. For if we believe that
Jesus died and rose again, even so them who have slept through Jesus will God bring with Him. 1 Our perfect personal identity will bring with it a perfect mutual recognition, and this perfect recognition will renew the personal relations of all that have constituted our home on earth. All the bonds of kindred will be there, but transfigured with the charity of the king dom of God. The love of father, mother, brother, sister, parent, child, will then attain its true perfection, and exist eternally. Home will once more be. Our father s house, the vision of childhood, again after this life of change, found again in all its sweetness and
O * t- 3 beauty, far beyond even the dream of early joy which follows us to the end of life. The memory of the past is but dim and faint, compared to the reality which is yet to come. From that eternal home none shall any more go out, and the sweetness and the beauty shall never pass or change. It shall be immutable as the vision of God. Poor world! for whom, after this life ended, there is no eternal home. u If in this life only we had hope in Christ, we should be of all men most miserable." Your home is past, its rooftree is fallen, its walls have crumbled piecemeal, the fretting leprosy has eaten away its stones, and the place of your childhood is the home of strangers, and7 knows YOU no more. If you die out of the love of t/ i/
God, and out of the grace of the resurrection to eternal life, there is no home for you in eternity: all you have loved will be either gone into the realms of light where you cannot be, or into the dark world where God shall be no more seen. The undying personal identity and the perfect mutual recognition will be not home, but anguish, u where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." But to those who rise to life eternal will come the renewal of the bonds of friendship, often more tender, more generous, more tenacious than the affections of kindred. All the love based upon the maturity and union of answering minds, of wills and intelligences grown to an almost inseparable harmony and unity of operation, shall then return. But, above all, the bonds of spiritual kindred and friendship the love of pastors for their flocks, and spiritual teachers for their children in grace shall then be perfected. The apostles of the nations shall then recognize their posterity, and " they who have turned many to justice" shall rejoice in the glory of their children.
I do not know that the beauty of this glory in the kingdom of the resurrection was ever more vividly before my eyes than this morning in the Holy Mass To-day, as you know better than I, we commemorate the Translation of St. Vincent of Paul. Around the silver shrine, where the great apostle of active charity lay reposing in view, I saw his spiritual sons and daughters, a twofold crown of glory and of joy, assembled to celebrate his power in the glory of the saints. Surely in the kingdom of the resurrection he will know each one who has sprung from the lineage of his charity on earth. He will know them by name, by countenance, by history, and by character, in all the fulness and detail of their life: and they, too, of every age and people and tongue, will recognize, with an intimate personal knowledge and love, their great Founder and Father in God. For then " we shall know even as also we are known," not by the narrow perceptions and partial recognitions of those who have lived in the same times and inhabited the same dwelling, but with the intuitions of the light of glory and the comprehension of the vision of God.
But the time warns me to draw to an end. There yet remains one great glory more, the fulness and the complement of all. The vision of faith, which is in the children of the resurrection, leads on to the vision of God in His glory. The beatific vision already be longs in reversion and in right to those who see God by faith, and the light of faith is the prelude of the light of glory.
St. Bernardine of Sienna has distinguished the joys and rewards of the resurrection into four great gifts of God. First, the Aurea, or essential glory of the soul, which consists in the illumination of the intelligence by the uncreated truth, and the replenishment of the heart by the union of the Holy Ghost with the spirit of just men made perfect. Next, the Aureola, or the lesser and special glory of Martyrs, Doctors, and Vir gins, the circlet of light, the visible manifestation of their singular and invisible perfection. Then comes the Palma, or the palm branch of victory, borne by the martyrs who have ascended from their conflict to the peace and the dominion of the kingdom of God. And among the martyrs are not only those who have laid down their lives, but they, too, who have borne a martyr s will; and they also who, in the shadows of a hidden and domestic life, accomplish what St. Ber nard calls the * martjria domestica et quotidian a," the slow and perpetual sacrifice of self for the love of Jesus.
Lastly, there comes the Fructus, or the fruit of our labours, the special and proportionate reward of all acts done for Jesus Christ. Not a cup of cold water shall lose its reward; not an intention, howsoever secret and never accomplished, but shall receive its overpayment of eternal joy.
Such is the essential and accidental glory, of which they who are risen with Christ have the foretaste and the pledge already in the heart. Such is the power of the resurrection upon every soul born again through baptism.
And if such is its influence upon every individual member of Christ, it has a wider and deeper influence of grace; for the collective assembly of those who live hy the influx of the life of Jesus constitutes the soul of the Church, the anima Ecclesice, as St. Augustine teaches, in which all the elect of all nations and all ages are made partakers of the supernatural life of faith and charity. And this universal life is incorporated and revealed in a compact and organized body, which is the visible Church of Jesus Christ, from whom descends the divine prerogative of life imperishable, indestructible, inexhaustible, diffusive, ever reviving, the sole fountain of life in a dead world. The nations of the world were dead, when the divine command was given: " Going, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them." They were dead in sin and in alienation from God, when the life of Jesus risen from the dead went forth to raise them to a new and supernatural state.
Hence arose Christendom the resurrection in a world whose life was extinct. All the earth lay as the Valley of Dry Bones in the prophet s vision. u Fili homines putasne vivent ossa isti? Et dixi, Domine Deus tu nosti."8 And the Spirit of the Lord, the mighty wind, descended from the guestchamber, on the day of Pentecost, and entered into t/ the dry bones, into all races and languages on the face of the earth, and they were knit together in power and symmetry and perfection, and they stood upon their feet full of life and of energy.
Hence, too, arises the ever-renewing elasticity, the perpetual reviving of the Church, after its ceaseless persecutions. For three hundred years, the world in all its power hurled ten persecutions like mountains upon its head. For three hundred years, its Pontiffs rose calm and majestic through the storm. The un dying life multiplied, the line of the Vicars of Jesus still renewed itself. One passed to his rest, and an other was found sitting in his seat: again and again, without breach or delay, the successor of St. Peter ascended a throne stained with blood. Such is the history of the Church, always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifest in its imperishable vitality. It is the condition of its existence upon Earth in every age, not of old only, but always. Our fathers, and we also, have seen it in these latter days. For three hundred years the undying life of the Church has been revealed in England. It has been cut down to the earth, its very roots seemed to be plucked up, and yet it lives with a rising and expanding life. Its Hierarchy was destroyed, its Priesthood scattered or slain, its altars overthrown, its faithful cut off to a remnant, driven into hiding-places, or tormented into apostacy. The Church was all but extinct, a remnant lingered on, a mere handful, without organization, or conscious unity, or mutual support.
And now the old life is clothed in a new Hierarchy, and the order, symmetry, and majesty of the Apostolic power manifests itself again, and its influences are diffused throughout the whole of England. It has again drawn its lines over the land and claimed the o obedience of its people. Those three hundred years have passed over it as a wind which is no more. It lives not again, for it never died, but it lives on with a life not of this world, nor of the will of man, but of God.
But there is no need to go so far for an example of the irresistible revival of the Church. The most luminous and supernatural manifestation of its imperishable vitality is to be seen in France. A more utter extinction of the Church was perhaps never seen, even in the persecution of the first ages, than in the first great revolution, nor a more ample and majestic resurrection. At the end of the last century the ancient and splendid Church of France was smitten at its four corners as by the wind from the wilderness, and in a moment ceased to be. A sharp and sudden storm passed over it, and it was not. Its bishops, priests, religious, faithful were exiled, or tormented, or slain. Some fifteen thousand martyrs and confessors bore witness to the fidelity of France and for the name of Jesus, a mighty army whose blood and inter cessions have prevailed with God. They now have risen again, and reign in greater majesty than before. The Church of France is a miracle of supernatural grace: no human hand has raised or multiplied its life, and made its latter end greater and more abundant than its beginning. Its Divine Head, risen and immortal, glorifies Himself in the manifestation of His power as the Life and Resurrection of the world.
But I have no need to dwell on this to you. Such things are your familiar thoughts. I am drawn to them by the subject entrusted to me to-day, which is, to ask your alms in support of the English Mission in Paris.
Forgive me if I seem to speak too personally. Believing that in the large number here before me there must be many of many nations, it may perhaps be permitted to me to give expression to my own personal convictions.
The two governing laws of our minds are our religion and our country. In the supernatural order, we have one dominant and all-controllino- character, which rules, moulds, and disposes all our life, and that is devotion to the Vicar of Jesus Christ: in the natural order, the highest and deepest dictate of our hearts is the love of our country and people. St. Thomas teaches us that this love of our own is a part of charity. Forgive me, therefore, if I say, that I shall die as I was bora, to the last drop of my blood an Englishman: I do not mean by the narrow insular egotism of national pride, but by the love and fidelity of a son to my land and people. And for this reason it is that I have always desired, as the two greatest benedictions to England, first, its conversion to the faith, and next, its cordial and friendly alliance with the great people of France.
The conversion of England is indeed a dream of hope; but, like the vision of the valley of Dry Bones, it may be accomplished. If you ask me: " Can these dry bones live?" I can only answer: God knoweth. With God all things are easy. Though for three hundred years the cold has bound all the tides of spiritual life, and the winter has been like iron upon the ground, yet one drop of the fire which fell on the day of Pentecost would unbind all and renew the face of the earth. " Emittet verbum suurn et liquefaciet ea: flabit spiritus ejus et fluent aquae." The rigours of our spiritual death would be dissolved, and a new life would burst forth on every side. But it is no question of what God can do, but of what is likelv to be done.
if
If I must judge by the signs which are visible, I dare not speak too sanguinely. Three hundred years of organised schism and inveterate heresy have so profoundly alienated the intelligence and the will of the English people, that the conversion of England, as it is often understood, is a dream indeed. Historv has tf hardly an example of any people so far fallen from the faith, and so organised in its hostility to the Church of God, returning again to the unity of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, Lombardy and Spain were Arian for centuries, and returned once more; and as with them, so it may be with England. But of this no man can calculate the probability. We may, however, trace the present indications, and appreciate the visible ten dencies of events. And there are two movements now in progress the result of which would change the face of England. On the one side there is a process of dissolution, ever advancing, steadily, surely, and without a check. Protestantism is running its natural career. The Established Religion has lost much, and is losing every day more and more of its intellectual and moral hold upon the English people. Its incoherences, contradictions, internal repulsions, endless contentions, are doing their work with an unrelenting certainty. The Reformation is devouring itself, and all its many forms of contradiction are resolving themselves into rationalism and simple unbelief. All forms of fragmentary Christianity around the Church of God are passing away, like mists before the noon day sun; and the Church alone is arising, expanding, unfolding its powers and its influences, with a stead fast growth and a universal progress. Its Hierarchy and its Dioceses are completing their organization; its Priests and Religious are multiplying beyond all hope. The influx of the power of the universal Church, like the sea in a tidal river, is pressing in upon England. There can be no other end of this twofold operation, than that, at some time hereafter, perhaps at no distant day, the Catholic Church in England will stand sole and alone, as she stands amono; the nations of the world, the only witness for Jesus, and the only foun tain of eternal life, the living among the dead.
I shall not claim too much, if I say, that such a day would be a day of benediction for England and for the world. If the mighty, world-wide empire of Great Britain were Christian and Catholic in its influence and action upon the world, with all its irresistible energy of will, its daring enterprise, and its force of character, it would, like the Apostle of the Gentiles, with a special power and mission of God, " preach the faith which it now impugns." If, however, this may not be, the next event to desire is the close and friendly alliance of England with the great Catholic people of France. Bear with me if I say, that I do not see the glory of France in its dynasties of a thou sand years, nor in its fiery legions, nor in the splen dour of its military deeds. All these are great and noble, but there are greater things than these. The true glory of France is in her supremacy among the familv of Catholic nations; in her mission and office as the guardian of the Church and the light of the world; in her heroic office as the champion of the faith, as the restorer of the Sees of St. Cyprian and St. Augustine, as the protector of the Christians of Syria, as the pioneer of the cross among the nations of the East. It is the Catholic authority of France, not only geographically in all the world, but morally upon the whole Catholic society, that constitutes her chief dignity among the nations. She is, and ever has been, notwithstanding her momentary obscurations, the most resplendent light among the Catholic peoples. To her has been committed the office of sustaining, in the sphere of the political and material order, the great laws, principles, and ideas which generated in the beginning, and still maintain, the constitution of Christian Europe.
The glories of an empire of conquest are pale beside the glories of a supremacy in the Catholic society of the world. It is a little thing to fill the earth with fleets and armies, to found colonies and reign over oriental races, compared with the mission of arbiter and guardian of the earthly fortunes of the Church of God. To such an office, since the fall of the Roman empire, France has been called; a great and noble destiny, more glorious than all its achievements in the annals of combat and of victory. No; France has a nobler and a grander glory. It is not her chivalry, but her charity, which makes her truly great. It is the Church of St. Denis and St. IrenaBus, St. Hilary and St. Martin; the majesty of her Hierarchy; the multitude of her Priesthood; the fertility of her Religious; the fidelity of her Laity; the zeal of her Mis sionaries, who penetrate the world, and one by one, in a majestic solitude and with inflexible courage, seek the crown of martyrdom, as her soldiers on the field of battle seek the crown of victory. It is a glory to a people when her priests are soldiers and her soldiers are priests when her pastors know no fear, and her soldiers are not ashamed to confess their faith. O great people and Church of France! rightly named the eldest sons and daughters of the Church of God in this I see your true glory, and with such a France I desire my country to be for ever united. At least you will forgive me if I say that to you is committed a Mission to the whole world, and that the true greatness of France and England is in the supernatural order, within which alone is true greatness, out of which is false glory and certain downfall. This is the alliance I desire and pray to see, not such as is based upon transient and incoherent social theories, but upon the unity of the faith and Church of God, the unity of those days of old when France and England badalrnost one speech, and in faith were altogether of one heart.
But the England of to-day is not Catholic England. It has faltered and fallen in its destiny. On you then rests a double burden of responsibility. You are debt ors to the Church of God, and to the Catholic societv throughout the world. Your fidelity under God is its strength, your hesitation would be its weakness.
I have then a duty to do to-day: it is to invite vou to contract the alliance of charity, and to seal it by an act of Christian generosity. I am bid to ask your alms for the English Mission in Paris, for the support of a Pastor to seek out the multitudes who speak the En-lish tongue in this city.
Now a long residence in Rome has taught me how much there is to be done for foreigners residing abroad. For along time almost all, and often alarge number for ever, know no other language than their own: or at best they learn the language of the country so imperfectly as to render the ministry of the Church, except for the grace of the Sacraments, even on a death bed, almost useless. Next, there is always a multitude of children for whom schools are absolutely necessary. Again, there are mixed marriages, by means of which many lose their faith, and their children are brought up without religion. Further, their is a great number who abandon the practice of their religion, fall into in difference, and perhaps far worse, and hide themselves from the Pastors of the Church in the secrecy of a foreign population, lost sheep, who all the more need the search and vigilant eye of a Pastor, because they not only wander, but wilfully avoid him. Great as is the charity, zeal, prudence, and discretion of the Pastors of the country, none but one of their own race and speech can with sufficient efficacy search them out. Moreover, there is need of a visible witness and invitation, a known centre to which, in times of visitation and of grace, they may be able at once to come, know not how this can be without a Church specially set apart for the English population in Paris, with Pastor and schools attached to it. This alone would be the witness, invitation and centre, speaking by its own presence, and attracting by its perpetual influence. For this I ask your alms to-day, and not to-day only, but hereafter, by a steady, organized, and persevering effort, until the work is done. But I said that I would invite you to an alliance, and an alliance demands a reciprocity. For which reason, at my own peril, for I have no commission to do it, and yet not at any peril, because I know the will and mind of the great Cardinal Archbishop, by whose side it is my happiness to stand, I would invite you to-day to join with us in the founding and raising of two Churches, one for the English population in Paris, and another for the French population in London. All the reasons I have given for this work in Paris apply with a far greater force to London. Of the English population in Paris only a minority are Catholics: of the French population in London, the whole multitude of between twenty and thirty thousand are the children of Catholic France. There exists for them nothing but a small and distant chapel, capable of holding a few hundreds only. It is far removed from the centres of industry where vour countrymen are congregated together. Zealous and excellent as the priests of that chapel are, it is morally and physically impossible for them to be pastors of thirty thousand souls, scattered, hidden, and lost in our vast Protestant population of two million souls. My own experience in the confessional has taught me, year by year, what is the loss of souls always accomplishing itself; loss of children, who are educated as Protestants; loss of the young, who grow up as unbelievers; loss of the old, who die without Sacraments. What is this spiritual havoc only they who sit in the tribunal of Penance can know; and even they know only in a little measure: the whole account of this terrible reckoning can never be known until the day of judgment.
For this then let us unite to-day. We, on our part will leave nothing undone to raise a worthy church in London for this great work of Catholic charity. You will, I am confident, not be wanting on your part, to rival and to outstrip us in this labour of love in Paris. Let this be the rivalry between our nations, to see which shall show the most love for souls, and do the most for the kingdom of God.
This is a worthy contest for two great people such as ours: all beside is of the earth, and will soon be foro-otten. " Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth." In a little while all the splendour of empire will be gone, as the light of yesterday, and all the majesty of power and prowess, and all the pageantry and pride of life, will be in the dust of death. One only thing will endure, the Church of Him Who is " the Resurrection and the Life."9
XII.
WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.
PREACHED IN THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY OF THE ANGELS,
BAYSWATER, AT THE IMPARTING OF THE PAPAL
BENEDICTION AND INDULGENCE.
Footnotes
Chapter 12 of 14