Sermon XIII. The Resurrection of the Dry Bones

" Son of Man, dost thou think these bones shall live? And I answered, O Lord God, Thou knowest." Ezechiel, xxxvii, 3.

a I WAS," writes the Prophet, " in the midst of the captives by the River Chebar: the heavens were opened, and I saw the vision of God." " And the hand of the Lord was upon me, and brought me forth in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of a plain which was full of bones, and He said to me, Prophesy concerning these bones, and say to them: Ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord: Thus saith the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will send spirit into you, and you shall live; and I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to grow on you, and will cover you with skin: and I will give you spirit, and you shall live. And as I prophesied there was a noise, and behold a commotion, and the bones came together, and each one to its joint. And I saw: and behold the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin was stretched out over them. And He said to me, Prophesy to the spirit, prophesy,

O Son of Man, and say to the spirit: Thus saith the Lord God: Come, spirit from the four winds, and blow upon these slain, and let them live again: And I prophesied: and the spirit came into them, and they lived: and they stood up upon their feet an exceeding great army. And He said to me: Son of Man, all these bones are the house of Israel."

Such was the vision of the Prophet; too mighty and majestic to be exhausted by the resurrection even of a nation. In its primary sense it was accomplished when the children of the captivity, who lay as the dry bones for multitude by the rivers of Babylon, were reconstituted once more in Judah and Jerusalem. The people which had been disintegrated and scattered, and therefore as a nation dead, was once more raised, reorganized, quickened. The hand of God replaced them in their inheritance, the walls of Jerusalem once more arose, and the Temple was rebuilt in a splendour less indeed than the splendour of Solomon s, but to be one day more glorious than the first house by the advent of the Incarnate Word.

And yet this primary fulfilment is altogether inadequate to the majesty and vastness of the prophecy. Its plenary accomplishment shall be in the resurrection of the dead, when all who have died since Adam shall be raised from death by the power of the Incarnate Word.

It is a prophecy of the supernatural order which broods upon the face of this fallen world: of God and of His operations, of God Incarnate and of the action of His Divine power of grace: of the resurrection of the soul and of the body, and of its life both now and in eternity.

The final and plenary fulfilment began to be accomplished in the preaching of Jesus to Israel. Jerusalem had, indeed, been restored from captivity and rebuilt as at the first. The courses of the Priests ministered in the Temple, and the Prophets prophesied in the streets: but it was dead before God. As the Prophet declared, " The prophets prophesied falsehood, and the priests clapped their hands, and my people loved such things."¹ The Holy City was full of sacrilege; the Temple was profaned, and the sanctuary had become a den of thieves. The idolatries of the heathen had secretly defiled the courts of the Lord s house; the commandments of God were of no effect through the traditions of men; and they who were reputed to be just were as whited sepulchres. Jerusalem " had a name to be alive," and was dead." It had become as the valley of the dry bones, very many and very dry. To such a people Jesus prophesied, and His words came with power. There was a noise and a commotion: the bones came together, each one to his place, and the mystical body began to knit itself in one. and the organization of the Church to be revealed. The disciples, one by one, were drawn by a supernatural attraction to the presence of their Lord, and united together in one fellowship: first the twelve apostles, then the seventy- two disciples; the rudiments of the mystical body, organised and compacted together. The words of Jesus were fulfilled: " As the Father raiseth up the dead and giveth life, so the Son also giveth life to whom He will." The sinews came upon the dry bones, and flesh clothed them and the skin covered them, but as yet the life had not entered into them. The Word of God prophesied upon them with His recreating power, but there was vet another work to be accomplished.

" The Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified."f

But on the day of Pentecost He descended in the power of His Godhead with a commotion, a mighty sound, as of a wind coming, and entered into the mystical body, and breathed into it the breath of life. The second Adam arose from the dust of the earth, living and life-giving. The Divine Head of the Church knit to Himself His members,t and the prero-² gatives of the Head became the endowments of the body. It became one with a twofold unity, essential and intrinsic, visible and external, because Jesus, its Head, is one and indivisible. It became indefectible, because Jesus is life eternal. It became infallible, because Jesus is the eternal truth, and its intelligence is perpetually illuminated by His intelligence, and its voice governed by His voice. By this was fulfilled the promise and the prophecy: " My Spirit that is in thee, and my word that I have put into thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed s seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever." The work which He had begun in His own Person Jesus continued by His Mystical Body, through which He went and preached to all the nations of the world. Death reigned all over the earth. The

^j races and families of men lay scattered and broken as bones at the mouth of the pit. The unity of man kind was fractured, and the structure of his perfection was dissolved. The supernatural life had gone out of the soul, and the soul without God was dead. The corruption of spiritual death had generated for four thousand years every form of evil which devours the generations of men. The Holy Ghost, by the Apostle³ of the Gentiles, has drawn the sin and death of the world as the eye of God alone could see it, and the word of God could describe it: " Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness; full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, with out fidelity, without mercy."⁴

To such a world Jesus went forth in the person of His Apostles. " Going, therefore, teach ye all nations: and behold I am with you all clays even to the consummation of the world. "f It was as the water which the Prophet Ezechiel saw in vision, coming out of the sanctuary of God. At firstathread of water, then a shallow to the ankles, then to the knees, afterwards to the middle, and then for depth a river to swim in: and wheresoever the waters went all things had Iife4 So the Word and the Spirit upon the dry bones of the heathen world shed a divine power, and, as they prophesied, there was a commotion and a noise. The paganism and the philosophies of the world were swept away as the dust of death, and the souls of men, as the bones of the grave, began to stir with a new life, and⁵ to knit themselves together, and to put on the form and symmetry of a supernatural perfection. Nations and races from the sunrise and from the sunset received the prophecy of life, and were incorporated into the mystical Body of Jesus and received a new life from His pierced side. Thepower of theresurrectionand of the world to come fell upon mankind, and there arose the great army of the living God, which enveloped even the Empire of the Caesars, forasmuch as it filled both heaven and earth. u Ye are come," as the apostle told them, "unto Mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem."⁶ Heaven and earth were laid together, and Jesus took possession of all power in heaven and earth. The words He spoke to Nathaniel were fulfilled: "Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, thou believest, greater things than these thou shalt see. Amen, amen, I say to you, you shall see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man."| As St. Augustine says, how shall the angels ascend and descend upon the Son of Man? How shall He be both in heaven and earth? By His mystical Body, which is Himself, the Head and members, one in life, in organization, in presence, and in action: the supernatural order uniting heaven and earth: and the holy angels encompassing and ministering to Him and to us, as they who were seen by the Patriarch in vision, ascending and descending the mystical ladder which arose from the earth into the presence of God. Such is the new creation of God which we celebrate to-day. St. Michael is the captain of the armies in heaven, who, with the great army of the Church on earth, goes forth in the power of the resurrection, triumphant over sin and death, conquering and to conquer.

The Apostle tells the Hebrews that they had been made partakers of the " powers of the world to come" -that is, that the power of the resurrection was already upon them, that Jesus had raised them from the dead: that by their regeneration they had u passed from death to life." And this reviving and life-giving virtue has gone forth from Him through His Mystical Body and from the person of His Vicar in every age. The whole history of Christendom is a prolonged ful filment of the vision of the dry bones: new races knit together into the unity of the Mystical Body and quickened by supernatural life, old races revived and raised to life again. The source of these divine opera tions is the line of the Sovereign Pontiffs, the Vicars of the Incarnate Word. On a theme so well known, and on a day like this, I should do ill to dwell. It is enough to remind you that Britain was once as deeply buried in spiritual death as Central Africa is now. Our fore fathers offered human sacrifices and sold their offspring into slavery, when from the side of St. Eleutherius an evangelist came to breathe the breath of life into the dead. Britain arose with a mighty resurrection and stood upon its feet, full of the life of the Church of God from the four winds of heaven. It is a dim period of Christian history, veiled afar off in the distance, but the records of the Church attest the presence of the British Hierarchy in its great councils, and its union with the Holy See.

Then came a profound mystery of the divine will. A people from over the sea fell upon Christian Britain and crushed it to the dust: slew its priesthood, over threw its altars, and extinguished all but the name of Christian. The whole land became once more as the plain of the dry bones, very many and very dry. The vision of the prophet was rolled backward. Death reigned again over the woods and wilds of Britain.

It was at such a time that the spirit of prophecy once more went forth from the Son of God; and from the side of His Vicar there was seen to go forth a procession of disciples led by an evangelist bearing the word of life. From the presence of Gregory, first and greatest of the name, Augustine went forth. He came as the living among the dead. On the shores of Kent, with the cross of redemption and the symbols of our Lord s passion borne be fore him, he preached to the dry bones: and, as he prophesied, there was again a commotion and a noise: and the bones came together to their place, and the beautiful organization of the Mystical Body was again compacted, and sinews, and flesh, and skin came upon it as at the first, and the spirit from the four winds, the life of the universal Church, entered in, and our Saxon fathers stood upon their feet, a great army of disciples, confessors, saints, and mar tyrs, living before the throne of God. It would detain us too long to delineate the vast and divine resurrection by which the whole face of Saxon England lived and moved once more with supernatural life, and was knit in all its members and articulations with the symmetry and unity of the Church of Jesus Christ. All this I must pass by, for another example urges itself upon our thoughts to-day.

The Saxons of Britain had risen to the life of God, while the Saxons of their fatherland were still in the shadow of the valley of death, scattered as bones in the mouth of the grave. They were mighty in power; they had overflooded the plains and the forests of Germany. All that was eastward of the Rhine was heathen: again and again they had passed its stream and ravaged the Christianity of Gaul. Again and again they had met the Christian chivalry of France in the shock of war with a terrible power and success. It was the last great onslaught of paganism upon the name of Jesus; the last throes of death in the grasp of life. Again and again Charlemagne overthrew their hosts, which streamed westward like nations in arms. He could beat them down and crush them with his mace of iron, but he could not raise them from death to life: he could drive them from field to field, from forest to forest, from fastness to fastness, but he could not touch the springs of their will, nor turn their hearts to the living God. All his power was spent, and they remained twice dead, crushed in war and without God in the world. But He who orders all things surely and sweetly in the secrets of His will, had prepared one mightier than Charlemagne for this work of giving life. In the cloisters of Saxon Eng land was an unknown monk, to whom God had given the mission to prophesy to the dry bones of the Saxon race. From the silence of his cell he had been called to the presence of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and from the side of Gregory the Second, Winfrid, or Boniface, w r ent into the fields of the dead in heathen Germany. What all the chivalry of Charlemagne could not do, the word of a solitary monk accomplished. The heads which would not bow to the axe of the conqueror were meekly bowed for the baptism of life. He came and spoke to them with the accents of their own mother tongue, and with the love of a kinsman and a brother, and the heart of the rude nations melted before him, and their weapons fell from their grasp. For a virtue went forth from him, and the springs of the will were sweetly and mightily touched. The word of God had wrought within them, and by the spirit from the four winds the slain lived a^ain and stood o upon their feet full of the power of God and of the Lamb. Whithersoever he went, life went before him. Friesland and Thuringia, Bavaria and Saxony, moved under the accents of his voice: and a new order arose in a beautiful symmetry, knit and compacted in the organization of the Mystical Body. The Spirit of God breathed life from him, and where his footsteps were impressed all things lived The love of God burned in his countenance and in his words, and set the fields and the forests of Germany on fire with the love of Jesus. But this theme, sweet and beautiful as it is, would lead us too far away; and yet it is a natural prelude to the thoughts which are now in your minds. We are met to-day to inaugurate in England a Church of the German people. It is a domestic festival; for England and Germany are but two names for one family of men. The great Saxon race has an indissoluble unity. Spread where it may, its type is in effaceable; mingled as it may be with other elements, that type predominates, and the members of the great Teutonic family act and react upon each other. England and Germany are united in their origin, their history and their destinies. For good and also for ill they have all things common. They have given and received in a wonderful interchange of gifts with a profound reciprocity and with a profound responsibility.

Let me, briefly as I may, and as I needs must, sum up the balance of the past and mark out the destiny of the future.

Germany has bestowed upon England its very existence. We are bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh. All we have in the natural order, except such partial and later intermixtures as are tributary to the great stream of our natural life, we have from our Saxon fathers, who from the Elbe and the Vistula swept and peopled the plains of England. All the material of our national greatness the natural character of our race, its calmness, firmness, passive endurance, broad if tardy intelligence, inflexibility if obstinacy of will, its fearlessness in danger, its world- wide enterprise, its greatness in misfortune, its repose in prosperity, all these are drawn from the blood which covered the northern plains of Germany with its teeming life.

And with this individual character, Germany be stowed on England its love of home: its domestic order of parental and of fraternal duty, the law and life of the family: and with this the germs of our civil state, and the first tracing of the polity which expresses the national character and is the offspring of it.

The English race is essentially Anglo-Saxon: in all the world, under every sky, in all circumstances, however new, the impress of the Teutonic people is ineffaceably upon the individual, upon the family, and upon the political society. To this may be as cribed in the natural order the greatness of England.

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These qualities of the race, and all that they have achieved upon every land and sea, are the offspring, the foliage, and the fruitage, of the parent stock deep set in the soil of Germany.

But if England is a debtor to Germany in the order of nature, much more is Germany a debtor to England in the order of grace. From England it received its regeneration, and there fore its existence in the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. From England it received the gift of life and the inheritance of the kingdomof God. England bestowed on Germany its Christianity and Catholicity, and all that has elevated it to the super-

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES. 42Q natural life. Its Hierarchy was built up by English men. St. Wilbrord, St. Boniface, St. Winnibald, St. Willibald, laid its foundations. The sees of Utrecht and Mentz and Paderborn are the witness of their apostolate. The first martyrs and saints of Ger many were Englishmen. The chief patrons of the Teutonic race, whose names are upon the cities and sanctuaries of Germany, are of our blood and speech. All the wonderful fertility of Catholic Germany is as the vintage and the harvest sown by the tears and blood of England. If we have received much from Germany, we have repaid it again with usury.

There is perhaps no more beautiful page in the history of Christianity than the period of Saxon England and Catholic Saxony in the freshness of their conversion to the faith. The childlike simplicity and robust manhood of the race were elevated by the Christian faith and the Catholic unity. Both princes and people were conspicuous for sanctity and for fidelity to the Vicar of Christ.

So far the union of these two families of the Saxon race has been for mutual good. But there is another account to be reckoned up. They are as indissoluble also for evil as for good: and their affinity is so close, that as the one is, so the other will be. The Norman Conquest sowed the seeds of an arrogant nationalism:

and the medieval empire of Germany developed the anti-christianCassarism, which never ceased to contend with the Vicars of Jesus Christ. And these two kindred evils grew strong by mutual sympathy, and de veloped into the erastianism of the sixteenth century, the prolific source of the anti-catholic movements, which have troubled and threatened Christendom from that time to the present hour. England and Germany were ripe for evil. " By one man sin entered the world, and death by sin." Among a multitude of evil doers, it may be said that Photius has desolated the East, and Luther the West. A bad preeminence in schism and heresy invests them with the sin and the shame of the two greatest breaches in the unity of the Church of God, the two widest inundations of spiritual death. Germany was first in the transgression, but England welcomed the example. The rebellion of Luther against the divine voice of the Church of God was eagerly followed by Cranmer and his fellows. The desolation of the sanctuaries of Ger many was followed by the sacrilege of England. We were apt scholars in profanation, and ready disciples in unbelief. The soil was rank for the seed which was cast upon it. And from that hour England and Ger many have gone steadily on side by side, in the work⁷ of destruction. The proud nationalism, the unbounded popular egotism of England, has joined with the rationalism and pantheism of Germany, in its warfare against the Catholic and Christian society of the world. They have waged a perpetual strife against the whole supernatural order, against the foundation of the faith and the organization of the Mystical Body. u Every spirit which dissolveth Jesus is not of God," * and since the foundation of Christian Europe, no powers have de veloped a hostility so formal and so unrelenting to the reign of the Incarnate Word over the nations of the world. While Lutheranism was unfolding itself into its legitimate rationalism, Anglicanism generated its proper infidelity. And the two have united in producingtheatheisticphilosophy of Germany, which now is reacting upon England. It is well known that the English Freethinkers of the last century pushed still farther the German unbelief. The chief of the Ger man rationalistic philosophers learned English, that he might read the infidelity of Hume. Such has been their mutual commerce of evil in the region of belief: If we would see what is the offspring of England and Germany in the region of the social and political order, we may take as example the United States of America at this moment. There we see the Anglo-⁸

Saxon race spoiled of the Christian and Catholic elements which made it supernaturally great. For material force and energy of will, the world has never seen anything to surpass it: but for abandonment of God and of the divine will, no nation has ever ventured so far. The people once so childlike in docility to the faith and Church of God, has now become by a bad preeminence the leaven of revolution and of rationalism in all the nations of the world. The dispersion of the Anglo-Saxon race is wider than the dispersion of Israel. Its imperial sway is wider than the dominion of any race known to history. If it were faithful to the grace of its regeneration, it might be at this hour the evangelist of the world; but, faithless as it is to the Church of Jesus Christ, it is the world wide antagonist of His Vicar upon earth, and the prelude of the anti-christian power of the latter days.

But of this, time forbids me to say more: and I must return to the celebration of to-day. It begins under a happy augury.

It was to-day, some twelve years ago, that the Vicar of Christ gave back to the scattered members of the Church in England the perfect symmetry of the Catholic Hierarchy: to-day Pius the Ninth enthroned in the See of Westminster a Metropolitan, as of old St. Gregory enthroned St. Augustine in the See of Canterbury. The Church in England once more arose and stood upon its feet, organized by the word of God, and quickened by the spirit from the four winds. Steadily, surely, irresistibly, it is expanding its presence, filling up the perfection of its symmetry, and revealing its supernatural life.

To-day also there is with us, as the representative of Germany, the prelate of an ancient See, a son of St. Boniface, to unite with us in a renewed alliance of catholic love and zeal. He comes surrounded by the pastors of many churches to join with us in this labour for the children of our common race in London.

Another pledge, too, of this union must be recorded. The prelates and pastors of Germany, who met a few weeks ago in their yearly assembly, instituted a collection of alms to be devoted to the spiritual help of their brethren in London and Paris. Let us not be behind hand in this labour of charity. As they have been forward and generous, we must be no less. You will not be wanting, but I trust prompt and abundant in your offerings for the completion and maintenance of this Church, to which the charity and piety of Ger many has already largely contributed. And in this union of alms and of prayer we are obeying the appeal of St. Boniface, who, when he was in the midst of his apostolic labours, wrote to all bishops and pastors, monks and nuns, and to all the faithful in England, to aid him with their intercessions.

From all this then we may learn two great truths of the supernatural order; the one, that the action of man without God is death, and spreads death upon the earth; the other, that the action of man with God is life, and gives life to man. Man can destroy, but God alone can raise to life again. In proportion as England and Germany have put forth their powers without faith in God and obedience to His Church, they have spread spiritual death among the nations of the world. In proportion as they labour in God and with God, they will restore again the dry bones to life. Of this St. Boniface is a luminous example. The source of all his power over men was his sanctity, and the source of his sanctity was his union with God. From his earliest childhood he had walked with God. All his intelligence was illuminated with the light of God, all his heart was filled and enlarged with the love of God, all his will was elevated and inspired by the will of God. He had become a temple and a sanctuary of the Holy Ghost: and therefore his words breathed life. The silent example of men possessed by the Holy Ghost has a power over the souls of men which nothingcansimulate. Itisadivineprerogative by which they quicken and raise, form and perfect the soul. All things give way before them, all antagonists yield themselves, all barriers melt away: for the omnipotence of God is with them and works by them: and nothing is be yond their strength, for with God all things are possible. And with sanctity came another gift which springs from it the love of souls. The calm and the sweetness of the cloisters at Exeter and Nutscell could not bind the soul of Winfrid to the home of his childhood. There was stirring within him a power from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the mightiest and the most unresting of all the motives which impel the soul of man. God had implanted in him the love of souls. The vision of his kinsmen according to the flesh, his Saxon brethren, lying dead in the wilds and forests of his fatherland, was always before him. His soul had no rest. God had shown mercy upon him, and he was their debtor. The. dry bones of his race lay scattered far and wide in spiritual death. He thirsted to prophesy to them: to call upon them to rise in the name of the Lord and to summon the spirit of life from the four winds to enter into the Saxon people. This it was which drove him forth with the intensity of a supernatural force. All alone he went forth, in a majestic self-reliance, poised upon God, into the midst of a heathen land. Life was not dear to him, and death was sweet for the souls for whom Christ died.

There was yet a third source of supernatural power whichreplenished the soul of St. Boniface afiiialand loving union with the Holy See. To him the will of the Vicar of Jesus Christ was the law of his life. Three times he went to Rome, that is, at every great epoch and event of his life, to derive from the Vicar of our Lord the light and power needed for his apostolic mission. It was at his second visit to the tomb of the apostle, that St. Boniface made a solemn consecration of himself to St. Peter. On the feast of St. Andrew, in the year A.D. 725, he wrote, and signed, and with his own hand, placed upon the body that is above the tomb of the Apostle, the following profession and vow: "In the name of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ,... I, Boniface, by the grace of God, bishop, promise to thee, Blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, and to thy successor Blessed Pope Gregory, and to his successors, by the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Undivided Trinity, and by thy holy body, that I will maintain all fidelity and purity of the Holy Catholic Faith; and in the unity of the same faith, by God s help I will persevere, in which all the salvation of Christians is contained: in no way, and by no persuasion, will I consent to any thing contrary to the unity of the only universal Church; but, as I have said, I will render in all things a faithful and pure conformity of obedience to thee, and to the good of thy Church, to whom, by the Lord God, the power of binding and loosing was com mitted, and to thy successors. And if I shall know of any bishops who violate the ancient statutes of the fathers, with them I will hold neither communion nor commerce, but I will hinder them, if I can; if not, I will denounce them to my apostolic Lord. And if, which God forbid, I in anyway shall attempt anything contrary to this profession, I shall be guilty in the eternal judgment, and shall incur the punishment of Ananias and Sapphira, who dared to defraud thee." On such a life the crown of martyrdom descended as its proper end. This martyr s will which forced him from the cloisters of Exeter, carried him forth again from his archiepiscopal throne at Meiitz. He could not rest while souls were yet to be saved. Like the Good Shepherd, he left his flock in the fold, to find the sheep that were lost. Though full of years, and of the glories of an apostolic life, he could not endure even the peace w 7 hich closes an aged pastor s life. He chose his successor, and descended from his archiepiscopal see, that he might once more go forth into the plain of the dry bones. God was calling him to his glory, and to his reward. The time of his dissolution was near at hand.⁹

It was at Dockum, on the eve of Whit-Sunday, to which he had a special devotion, that he had prepared to give confirmation to the newly baptised. A tent was raised as a sanctuary, and all was prepared for the sacred offices, when a band of heathens rushed upon him. He would suffer no hand to be lifted in defence, but with an inflexible courage and a supernatural joy, he gave himself as a sacrifice for the souls of his children. After his death a volume was found sprinkled with his blood. It was the book of the Canons of the Holy Catholic and Roman Church, which he received from the Vicar of Christ, when on the tomb of the Apostles he promised the pure fidelity of his heart and life.

Such, then, are the conditions by which we may give life to souls dead in sin. By these, and by no others, can we prevail, by sanctity, by love of souls, by union with the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and by a martyr s will, though we be never called to the martyr s crown or conflict.

There remains but one word more. The celebration of to-day is marked by a singular fact, not borrowed from distant history, but from our own time and the context of our common life.

Seventy years ago, when this Church was first built, it was opened as a place of worship for a dissenting sect, now hardly existing. There was present then a boy of ten years old, a kinsman of him who preached that day. The preacher congratulated his hearers that the darkness of Popery was vanishing away before the advancing light of the Gospel, That boy is again here to-day, a man of eighty years, and not only here, but of the household of faith. In the interval of time he has been baptized by the Holv Ghost, and illuminated with the knowledge of t/ O the Son of God. He has learned to know that what the world calls Popery is the true faith of the Incarnate Word. He is here to-day as a Catholic to witness a second opening of this Church to be a sanctuary of the living God.

Within the term of one such life what events are compressed. One extreme of it rests upon the year when London was tormented and degraded by the No Popery riots, when the infuriated populace streamed through the streets to sack and burn the Catholic Churches, when the Catholic Bishop was sought for, as St. Boniface by the heathen, to take his life; the other extreme rests upon this day, when the Church comes forth in all its power and freedom. In the interval what events are to be found? The Emancipation and the resurrection of the whole Catholic people of this Empire as from the grave, the abolition of penal laws, and their restoration to the social and political life of this English race. Next, the organization of the Catholic Hierarchy, with all the exuberant life which goes out of it on every side. Who could then have foreseen such manifestations of the power from on high? And if one life has seen such things, what may not some of you yet live to see? There may be some here to-day who shall be witnesses of a change, which if I were to attempt to describe, you would think me beside myself. There are agencies and powers in full operation, the effects of which as yet are not perceived. But two things are already manifest; the one, that all fragmentary forms of Christianity are falling piecemeal, and resolving themselves into dust. The touch of death has been laid upon them, and they are obeying the law of their own nature. They spring from man, and, as all human things, they contain the principles of their own dissolution. The other, that the Church of God is expanding with a steadfast and majestic advance, multiplying itself on every side, and prevailing over the reason and the hearts of men. The word of God and the Soirit from the ends of the world have entered into

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England with all the weight and power of an irresistible tide. It is like the encroachments of the sea. And as all antagonists dissolve and pass away, leaving the earth strewn with fragments of their lifeless forms, the Church of God stands alone, the living and life-giving among the dead. When and how these things shall be, we know not, but I also may sav, in the words of our Divine Redeemer:

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" There be some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the kingdom of God coming in power."¹⁰

Achitophel, his supposed counsel in regard to Ireland, 252; his counsels confounded, 411. Agnes, St., her festival in Rome, 343; ceremony of blessing two lambs in her church, 344. Alacoque, B. Margaret Mary, 160. Alphonsus, St., 298. Ambrose, St., 354. Anglicanism, its nature and tendencies, 47, 48, 431; incoherence of, 8; parent of sects, 57- Anselm, St., 160, 353. Apostles, the mission of, 229,292; equal except in jurisdiction,

352; Peter the Head of, 348-9.

Archbishop, title and jurisdiction of, how obtained, 350. Arianism, its spread, 26.

Arnold, Dr., head of the modern rationalistic school in England, 49. Atheism, advance of, 25.

Augustine, St., Bishop of Hippo, 118, 233, 238, 240, 374. Augustine, St., Apostle of England, 215, 423. Avitus, St., 351.

Bede, St., 120.

Benedict, St., 227, 288, 298, 302.

Benedictines, Order of, its spread, 302; its Saints and Popes, 303, its history in England, 291. Bernard, St., 135, 160, 233. Bernardine of Sienna, St., 160, 373. Bonaventure, St., 126, 143, 160.

Boniface, St., Apostle of Germany, his mission, 425; accomplished more than Charlemagne, 426; his sanctity, 434, his love of souls, 435; his devotion to the Holy See, 436; his vow, 436; his martyrdom, 438.

Calvinism, in the Anglican Establishment, 43.

Camillus, St., 298.

Canonization of Saints, nature of, 393; a judicial sentence, 393; evidence for, 393; three stages of, 393; belongs to the supernatural order, 395; declares the supremacy of sanctity, 400; the preciousness of faith and the liberty of the Church, 401.

Canonization of the Martyrs of Japan, 396, 407; may begin a new order of things, 407.

Catholic, see Church.

Catholics in England, their endurance, 102, 107; their emancipation, 47, 439; their influence, 71.

Certainty, Divine, necessity of, 3; formal cause of, 17.

Charles Borromeo, St., born 1538, entered active life, 1563, died 1585, 315; greatness of his mission, 315; his direction of the Council of Trent, 316; his minuteness and industry, 318; institutions founded by, 319; his Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, 320; his Congregation of Oblates, 321; his influence on the Laity, 322; his defence of the liberties of the Church, 323; his conduct during the plague of Milan, 325; his sweetness, 326; compassion, 327; tenderness, 327; universal charity, 306; his prayer, 329; devotion to the Passion, 330; his last illness and death, 331, 332; a pattern to the Clergy, 334; to the Laity, 335-6; summary of his character, 337.

Christendom, three periods in its history, 32; its life from God, 374; history of, 422.

Christianity, Ancient, misrepresentation of, 177; vicissitudes of in

England, 27.

Church, the, typified in the Old Law, 15; the Mystical Body of Christ, 150, 419; its soul, 374; illuminated by the Holy Ghost, 11, 14, 118, 207, 230; organ of the Holy Ghost, 12, 16, 19, 21,

137, 241; office of the Holy Ghost in, 12, 13, 20, 231-237; Holy Ghost the life of, 243; its unity, 22, 94, J18; its unity in diversity, 297; its sanctity, 400; its universality, 97: its apostolicity, 118; its visibility, 4, 21, 241; its infallibility, 231; active and passive, 130,292; its indefectibility, 20, 119, 222, 374: its incorruptibility, 56, 95, 99; its discernment supernatural, 6, 395; not on probation, but the instrument of probation, 21, 239, 242; mystical earthen vessel, 241; the house of wisdom, 150; its Divine order denied by English policy, 66.

Church, Catholic, the, its testimony, 109; changeless in faith, J20; the guarantee of Divine tradition, 3; its defining power, 122, 133; in perpetual conflict, 98, 101, 144, 178, 182, 403; sovereignty of, 156, 272, 280; its hierarchy, 194; its imperishable vitality, 375; its liberty of action, 401-2; its strength in weakness, 228; its present spread, 219; city on a mountain, 241; its multiform action, 304; does nothing in vain, 346; vigilant care of, in its usages, 345; its supernatural charity, 293; its fruitfulness, 96, 294; unites together secular and religious, 291, 305: pervaded by the love of Jesus Christ, 91, 158; the author s reasons for submitting to, 3, 7-

Church, Catholic, in England, idea of, partly effaced, 38, 40, 65; and difficult to restore, 58; hostility to, greater than in America, 41, 42; its restoration, 108, 111, 142, 145, 287, 376; its future, 75,78,81, 112, 168, 379,440.

Civilization, Christian, the offspring of faith, 31; Anti-Catholic, essentially natural, 32.

Colenso, Dr., his book on the Pentateuch essentially rationalistic, 55; shows the impotency of the Anglican Church, 142.

" Consensus Sanctorum omnium sensus Spiritus Sancti est," 6.

Conversions in England to the Catholic Church, from every class, 68, 77, 81.

Councils, in England, 119; of Africa, 153; seven of Milan, 167.

Council, of Aries, 57; of Basle, 129; third of Constantinople, 128; of Ephesus, 122, 128, 151; of Florence, 151, 153; of Frankfort, 129; ofLateran, 151, 153; of Milan, 167, 317; first of Nice,

151; second of Nice, 128; of Orange, 153; of Sardica, 27; of Toledo, 129, 153, 167; of Trent, 152; of Vienne, 153; of West-minster, 168.

Cousin, Germain, the blessed, 400.

Cyprian, St., 26, 177, 264, 348.

De Maistre, 78.

De Tocqueville, 30.

Divine certainty, 3; commission, 2.

Dogma of faith, a revelation of the mind of God, 135, 137; its power, 136; the basis of theology, 295. Dominic, St., 227, 298. Donatism, 26.

Edmuiid, St., of Canterbury, 30.

Edward, St., the Confessor, 29.

England, its first conversion, 216; Saxon, its Catholic unity, 28, 217; once of one life and faith, 353; a debtor to Germany in the order of nature, 428; to Ireland in the order of grace, 26; Nor man, its nationality, 29, 218; changes in the religious history of, 27, 43-49; its faith lost, 218; its people innocent of the " Reformation," 276; its master heresy, 56; wasted by perpetual internal schisms, 36, 141; relations of its different classes to the Catholic Church, 67-77; its common people in good faith, 79, ] 92; its four collisions with the Holy See, 59, 140; importance of the last thirty years of its religious history, 61; its great influence, 112, 167, 381; may assist the Church like ancient Rome, ] 13; isolation of, 35, 79, 64; on an inclined plane, 25; essentially latitudinarian and anti-sacramental, 45; departing further from Christianity, 59, 62,67, 71, 81, 380; like Pagan Rome, "sentiria gentium," 140; like Babylon, 193; the head of Protestantism; 167; its policy destructive to Christian society, 63, 65, 80, 282; five signs of future evil in, 141; last and greatest danger of, 80; two greatest blessings to, 378; means of its conversion to the faith, 68, 74, 82; love and fidelity of the author to, 378.

Episcopacy, Anglican opinions on, 39, 40.

Episcopate of France, its unity and firmness, 353.

Establishment, Anglican, its two tendencies, 45; essentially rationalistic, 54; its minor heresies, 55; its helplessness, 58; its inefficiency, 104, 141, 330; contrasted with the Catholic Church, 56.

Essays and Reviews," summary of their principles, 49-51; judgment of the Court of Arches upon, 52.

Faith, its rarity, 201; its grounds, 5; hindrances to, 112; above the senses and reason, 205; attestations to, 204, 209, 211; its expansion, 136; always the same in substance, 120; kingdom of, its three Divine gifts, 203; the Author s progress towards, 2, 3, 5; its blessedness, 200, 211; prelude to the Beatific Vision, 372.

France, Episcopate of, 353; Catholic Church restored to, 377; her true glory, what, 381; her missionaries, 382.

Francis, St., of Assisi, 298.

Francis, St., Xavier, 160.

Francis, St., of Sales, 397.

Franciscans, Order of, 397.

Germany, gave Saxon England its existence, 427-8; converted to

Christianity by St. Boniface, 425; a debtor to England in the the order of grace, 428.

God, loves simplicity and sincerity, 213; always gives grace, 214. Gregory I, St., won England to the Faith, 76, 214; his work still exists, 219; state of Europe at his death, 274; quoted on the

See of Rome, 351. Gregory, St., of Nazianzum, 233.

Henry VIII., type of the Norman period of England, 30, 218. Hierarchy, the Catholic; principle of its harmony, what, 351; its gradations, 351; the condition of the action of the Church, 294;

restored to England, 111, 221.

Hierarchy, the Anglican, feeble, vacillating, and subservient to the world, 353.

Hoadly, 45.

Holy Ghost, His titles, 233; His personal Advent at Pentecost, 10, 234; illuminated individuals in the Old Law, but the Church in the New, 11, 14, 118, 207, 230; the Church His organ, 12, 16, 19, 21, 137, 241; reveals the mind of God, 118, 131, 133; His testimony to the intellect, 209; in the heart, 210; in the Church, 241; source of life, 243; of infallibility, 231; of fruitfulness, 231; of unity, 22, 118.

Holy Ghost, office of, follows that of the Father and the Son, 8; the perpetuation of that of the Son, 12; purchased by our Lord, 11; never to cease, 13, 20, 232; obscured by Anglican writers, 8; denied by the " Reformation," 24, 138; two modes of denial of, 243; in the Church, 231-237; necessary to Christianity, 24; leads to the Catholic Church, 9; in the Church, absolute, 240; in individuals, conditional, 237-

Holy Scripture, part of the Divine Tradition, 5.

Hooker, 40.

Identity, personal, preserved after the Resurrection, 369. Ignatius, St., his vocation, 183; education, 184; his strong will,

185: humility, 185; simplicity, 185; common sense, 186; his influence in England, 188. Immaculate Conception of the B. Virgin Mary, a dogma of faith,

121; compared with other doctrines, 122; its history, 124;

universally believed and taught, 125-130: old in itself, new in definition, 134; illustrates the denning office of the Church, 122;

the glory of the nineteenth century, 165. Individualism in religion, great characteristic of England, 72. Infallibility, of the Church, fountain of, 5; twofold, passive and active, 292; springs from the presence of the Holy Ghost and the Divine headship of Christ, 4. Innocent III, 151. Ireland, the ancient home of faith and of the Saints, 249; her trials,

Footnotes

1. Jeremias, v, 31. ↩

2. St. John, v, 21. f St. John, vii, 39. J Ephes., iv, 16. ↩

3. Isaias, lix, 21. ↩

4. Rom., i, 29, 30, 31. f St. Matth., xxviii, 19, 20. ↩

5. Ezech., xlvii, 3, 4, 5. ↩

6. tieb., xii, 22. t St. John, i, 50, 51. ↩

7. Romans, v, 12. ↩

8. I St. John, iv, 3. ↩

9. St. Bonifacii Opera, vol. ii, 9. ↩

10. St. Murk, viii, 39. ↩