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Sermon II. Dogmatic Authority Supernatural and Infallible

" What man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him? So the things also that are of God, no man knoweth but the Spirit of God." 1 Cor., ii, 1 1.

In these words of the apostle the Holy Ghost re veals to us His own mysterious work in the Church of God. He draws a parallel between the depth and secrecy of the mind of man, and the inscrutable abysses of the mind of God. As the mind of man is hidden and impenetrable, shrouded in itself, so that no man can read or divine his inmost thoughts, so the mind of God is veiled in its own immensity: it has no counsellor, assessor, or witness. As the individual consciousness alone knows the thoughts of each man s heart, so none but the Spirit of God can know the thoughts of God.

But God has revealed His mind to us. " We have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit that is of God, that we may know the things that are given us from God."

When the Holy Ghost, on the day of Pentecost, descended upon the Apostles, the mind of God was unfolded to them. They became the witnesses of the mysteries which are hid in God: they were partakers of His thoughts, and depositories of His intentions. Then arose within them the living consciousness of the Truth, which has descended lineally in the mystical body to this hour; the divine tradition of the light of Pentecost, in which all the revelation of God hangs suspended in its symmetry and perfection. For what is the Church but the apostolic college prolonged and expanded in its organization and unity throughout the world, wherein the mind of the spirit has descended to us by the perpetual indwelling of the Holy Ghost? He preserves what He has revealed, and perpetually pro poses to the world the truth which in the beginning He shed abroad upon the intelligence of man. The Church, then, is not a name of multitude, but of a supernatural unity, the Head and the Body. Christ mystical, of which the Holy Ghost is the life, soul, and mind. The Church is, as St. Augustine says, " una qusedam persona," " unus perfectus vir;" or, as the Apostle says, " the spiritual man, who judgeth all things, and himself is judged of no man." It is the fountain and the channel of light to the world: the ex positor of the law, and the interpreter of the Truth of God. The law of God expounded and applied in its fulness and minuteness to the souls of men -within the sphere of its jurisdiction, constitutes the wonderful science of law which the legislation of the Church is perpetually elaborating. The Truth of God, inter preted by the Holy Spirit, and disposed in order and harmony, constitutes the highest science of which the reason of man is capable that is Theology, of which both the author and the object is God. But the Legislator and the Interpreter of these divine sciences is the Spirit of God, from whom Truth and lav both alike proceed.

Such thoughts as these are seasonable at a time o like this. All things around us draw our minds this way. The solemn invocations of the Holy Ghost are still lingering in our ears. A synod of the Church in England, the representative of the spiritual sway of Calcyth, Finchal, Oxford, Herudford, London and Westminster is gathered here. It is a Council of Westminster once more. We see here the evidence of the undying life and ever renewing power of the Church of God, calmly legislating from age to age: re storing, re-creating what time or the sin of man has destroyed, as the exuberant life of nature perpetually re-ascends, full and ready to clothe a^ain with fertility the bare earth which has been scathed and torn.

For more than a thousand years the Church in England has witnessed for the same changeless Faith,

Through all vicissitudes of time and state, through sun or storm, it has spoken with one unfaltering voice. What it taught by St. Augustine it teaches now. The history of St. Bede is the transcript of the Church of God in England at this hour, and the Church of this hour is the history of St. Bede, breathing and living still. There we see the same living reverence and dutiful submission to the successor of St. Peter, the same Divine Sacrifice upon the altar, the same Sacrament of Penance, the same affectionate intercession for the souls purifying in the fire of God s love, above all, the same invocation of the saints, the same loving worship of the Mother of God.

A thousand years passed away, and the same Hierarchy stood in witness and in suffering for the same mind of the Spirit. In the face of princes and the powers of this world, in despite of mockery and slander, of tortures and of martyrdom, the Catholic Hierarchy of England witnessed, till by violence it was swept away from the earth.

Three centuries again are gone and the same truths are still living and fresh in the heart of the changeless Church. They are before us at this moment: the same dutiful and loving obedience binds this Council to the o

Apostolic See: morning by morning the Holy Sacrifice is offered up in this place by half a hundred priests: but yesterday we commended the souls of the departed with loving memory to the mercies of God: the invocation of His saints rises daily from our solemnities: above all, the name and the prerogatives of the Mother of God are cherished with the o devotion and fervent love of sons.

All these things lead on to another thought. The first act of this Council was to prepare letters of thanks giving to the Supreme Pontiff, in humble acknowledgment of the Dogmatic Bull, by which, in these last months a doctrine of faith has been promulgated to the whole Church throughout the world. It has been declared that the " doctrine which teaches that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the first instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of Almighty God in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin, was revealed by God." It does not say that it is true, it offers no logical or historical proofs of its truth; it declares that it is revealed: that it was contained in the Revelation of the Day of Pentecost. And we receive it, not upon argument or criticism, but upon the witness of the Church, which is the sole witness of the mind of God, for, " The things that are of God no man knoweth but the Spirit of God."1

Never since the great Council of Ephesus, which invested the Blessed Virgin with the august title of Mother of God, has so vivid and universal a joy broken forth from the heart of the Catholic Church. The publication of this dogma has given form and articulation to the thoughts and desires of the faithful throughout the world. The decree of Ephesus enunciated the dignity of her Divine Maternity, the definition of Pius the Ninth enunciated the singular privilege of her Sanctitication; and these two complete the full orb of her splendour in the kingdom of God.

But it would not be seemly or in season, and, there fore, it is not my intention, to dwell upon the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. I adduce it now only as an example of the perpetual office of the Church in discerning and declaring the limits and the contents of the original revelation. I might indeed illustrate this office by the history of other doctrines of the Faith. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity, for in stance, of the Incarnation of the Son of God, of original sin, and of grace, all of them, in various de grees, some more some less, exhibit the wonderful and unerring operations of the Holy Spirit presiding over the teaching and theology of the Church. AH alike are contained in the original revelation of the day of Pentecost; all alike have had their period of simple belief, of conflict, of analysis, of progression, and of final definition.

Of these, however, I will not speak, but rather of this last exercise of the divine office of the Church, because it more emphatically unfolds the perpetuity and presence of a Divine Teacher in the midst of us in these latter days: and also, because in itself the definition of the Immaculate Conception is an eminent example of the office of the Church as the interpreter of the mind of God.

I will not venture, Right Reverend Fathers and Brethren, to offer in your presence the specific evi dences of this doctrine of faith. You know them far better than I. Neither will I offer proof of a dogma which has been uttered by the voice of a Teacher who is Divine. The utterance itself is the evidence of the truth declared. All I purpose to do is to trace the outline of its history, as exhibiting the perpetuity, the progressiveness, the perfection of the office of the Holy Ghost.

  1. The belief that Mary, Mother of God, was sanctified with a sanctification preeminent above all crea tures, lay deep in the consciousness of the Church from the beginning, The mind of the mystical Body

O O tf v teemed with the illumination which descended from her Divine Son. Silently, and with the love of childlike faith, the Church on earth for a thousand years gathered together all the forms of beauty, splendour, grace, and sweetness to express the peculiar sanctity and singular prerogatives of the Virgin Mother. Not only the imaginative and mystic East, but the rude and fervent West, the ardent and glowing South, and the cold and passive North, all alike conspired to invest her with titles of loving worship. She was placed by unanimous and spontaneous suffrage above all the creatures of God. She was the spotless one, and her sanctity was expressed by the same word in which they spoke of the spotless sacrifice upon the altar, the spotless Church of Christ, the spotless assembly of the Saints before the throne of God.2 Again, she was declared to be free from sin, and from all contact with sin.f Or, again, as sanctified above all the creatures of God: J above all, that is, not only above all fallen, but who never fell; above the elect angels, above cherubim and seraphim, above all the court of Heaven.

And once more: As the second Eve she was all that the first Eve was, and of a higher dignity, inasmuch as in all things she is greater: she was the restorer of3 the fall of the first woman: the Mother of God: the Mother of all who live eternally.4

Both in the east and in the west, for a thousand years, she was so called " Blessed" by the voice of the disciples of her Son.

Then came two hundred years of intellectual conflict. The childlike and loving faith, which, from the begin ning, had cherished her spotless and preeminent sanctification, had to undergo the sharp process of test and separation. This simple belief was analyzed: and the analysis gave up two theories; one of an immaculate nativity, the other of an immaculate conception. And what was the difference between these two scholastic analyses? Did either call in question the preeminent sanctification of the Blessed Virgin? By no means. Both equally affirmed it. Both alike affirmed the Mother of God to be without sin. All were alike agreed that the Blessed Mother of God was without any sin, actual or original, also that she was born without original sin: all were equally agreed that she was sanctified by a personal and singular privilege above andbeyond all the saints of God. In what, then, did they differ, in what did either fall short of the truth as now declared? One analysis fully affirmed it.

The other fell short by a point of time, a moment when she was included in the fall. And from that day, throughout the last six hundred years, the suffrage of the Pastors and Doctors of the Church has been all but unanimous. The great majority has taught that she was immaculate in her conception, a few only in comparison that she was immaculate in her nativity.

Of the universities, which are the schools of the Church, every one taught and bound its members to teach that she was conceived without stain of original sin. All the religious orders, the great families of St. Benedict and of St. Francis, in all their branches and offsets, the sons of St. Ignatius, and all who, to the universal illumination of the Catholic Church, added the yet deeper light of the interior and mystical life: all, with one sole exception, taught that Mary, by a preeminent sanctification peculiar to herself, as St. Bonaventure, the seraphic doctor of the schools, whom we to-day commemorate, expresses it, was conceived without original sin. The sons of St. Dominic will not be backward to rejoice in the fact that of theirown teachers, all the greatest names, with one exception, vast indeed in itself, but still alone in this, and a great majority of their theologians, taught the immaculate conception. It may be said, then, not that the order of St. Dominic, but that certain theologians of that order, defended the Immaculate Nativity. The order as such, by the majority of its voices, united its suffrage long ago to the unanimous testimony of all other religious bodies.

Whence came this universal, all-pervading, vivid, and harmonious belief of the sinlessness of the Mother of God, but from the Spirit of God, which, knowing the things of God, had revealed them to His Church? It lay deep among the lights of Pentecost, and de scended from age to age in the perpetual living consciousness of the Church.

  1. But what thus lay deep in the illuminated heart of the Mystical Body broke forth also in the form which most surely indicates the light of faith, the solemn festivals of the Church. Simple faith is both keen of sight and prompt in expression: conscious of its joys, but unconscious of the need of intellectual definitions. The mysteries of the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and of Pentecost were celebrated year by year in feasts of universal joy, long before they received the sharp dogmatic expression which conflict with heresy impressed upon them. So too the Immaculate Conception. All the privileges of her sinless perfection lay hid, and all were apprehended by childlike love, and loving contemplation beneath the feast of her Sanctification, which, for fourteen hundred years and more the Church of God has yearly celebrated.

  2. Moreover, again and again this universal consciousness has struggled, as it were, for utterance. It has hung upon the lips of the Church. Again and again the Councils of the Church all but pronounced the words. The Council of Ephesus, when it invested the Blessed Virgin with the title of Mother of God, did in truth ascribe to her person a sanctification proportionate to the dignity of her divine maternity. And surely the least and the initial grace of such a sanctity is to be free from sin. To be sinless is but a negation of unholiness, to be holy implies the presence of a supernatural sanctity. And this she possessed in a measure proportionate to her dignity: but her dignity transcends all that creature ever bore. The Council of Chalcedon in exalting the Son exalted also the Mother. It was impossible to speak worthily of the Son of God without speaking of her singular glory.

In the Third Council of Constantinople, and the Second of Nicsea, the dignity and the sanctity, singular and sole, of the Mother of God were declared by Doc tors and by Saints. Through all the successive defini tions of the Church, as the doctrine of the Incarnation has been unfolded in its theology, her preeminent dignity has come forth with a greater light of evidence and splendour.

So also in the western world. The Councils of Frankfort and of Toledo declare her to be spotless: the Council of Basle, in terms as express as those of the dogmatic Bull of Pius the Ninth, declares her to be conceived without stain of sin. " We define and declare that the doctrine which asserts that the glorious Virgin Mary, Mother of God... was always free from every original and actual fault, and was holy and immaculate, is to be approved, held, and embraced by all Catholics as pious and as consonant with the worship of the Church, the Catholic faith, right reason, and the Sacred Scriptures.5

And if the Council of Basle be not general, yet it represents the mind of the Episcopate of the Universal Church. Whatever differences of word or of conception may have existed among Theologians, the Episcopate has never been divided. It has uniformly on every occasion favoured, fostered, and promoted the pious belief that the Mother of our Lord was con ceived without sin.

And in the Episcopate, most conspicuously its chief and head has ever encouraged this belief. Three and thirty Pontiffs, in more than seventy constitutions and rescripts, now laid up in the archives of the Church, have promoted and given an impulse to this doctrine of the Faith.

  1. And thus the Church, in its passive infallibility, its universal consciousness, expressed in every form of word and witness, by liturgies and offices, by homilies and by feasts, has manifested the truth, that Mary is above all creatures, and all alone in the exaltation of her unshared and singular prerogatives of Maternity and Sanctification. And, furthermore, whensoever the Church, in its authoritative form, or by its active infallibility, has approached this mystery of revelation, it has uniformly favoured it, and taken it almost upon its lips.

What then has been lacking long ago to declare the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God to be a doctrine of the original revelation? Nothing but the formal definition andfinal proposition of theChurch. And this too has now been granted. The Supreme Pontiff, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of St. Peter, sitting in the Apostolic Chair; the pillar of supernatural illumination; the immoveable centre of universal tradition; the Heir of the promise,, "I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not," has now pronounced to all the Church under Heaven that this doctrine was u revealed of God." And in the act of declaring this o to the world he was surrounded by the whole Episcopate under Heaven, partly in person, partly by representation. And what is the Episcopate, with its chief, but the pastoral ministry ordained, anointed, and as sisted by the Holy Ghost, the standing synod of the whole Church, the Church itself, which for long years had been supplicating of the Supreme Pontiff that a formal definition might be impressed upon a truth which was already and universally believed.

  1. And now to make an end, what is all this perpetual and progressive unfolding of the inward sense and consciousness of the Church, but the perpetual and progressive operation of the Holy Spirit of Truth working mightily and sweetly throughout the Body of Christ; eliciting, shaping, and perfecting the ideal conception and the verbal expression of the original intuition of Faith. It is the Spirit of God unfolding the mind of God; freely and gently acting upon the intelligence of the mystical Body: not overbearing its operations, but perfecting its perceptions and its powers, as grace elevates and perfects the will, until it had adequately apprehended and, with unerring precision, expressed the mode of the Sanctification of the Mother of God.:

And such, from first to last, is the work of the Holy Ghost, searching and showing to us the deep things of God; for He alone is the Giver of all illumination. On the day of Pentecost, when He descended upon the Church, He filled it to overflow with the reve lation of God. All was at once made known: the science of God descended from the mind of God and from His inaccessible light; absolute in its principles, perfect in its certainty, definite in its outline. It was a science, and the Queen of Sciences, of which the same Spirit of God is the Architect and the Disposer, the Interpreter and the Expositor: assisting the mind of the Church, which, as one continuous and universal intelligence unites the whole Body of Christ in every age and in every land, to penetrate, to analyze, to apprehend, to harmonize, and to define the doctrines of the orio-inal revelation. It is likewise the Holy Ghost o * who, from age to age, guides the Church in the choice selection and consideration of the very words in which to express the doctrines of Faith. It is He who chooses also the times and the seasons when such definitions shall be made. It was He who determined that the consubstantiality of the Son should be defined at Nicaea in the fourth century, and His own personality at Constantinople in the fifth. It is He who ordained the time for the defining of original sin, and the doctrines of grace, touching and retouching them from the fifth century to the sixteenth and seventeenth. And now in these latter days, for pur poses known to Himself, and yet hardly hidden from us, He has brought to a close the long and profound analysis by which the Church has apprehended the full mystery of the spotless sanctification of the mother of God, and traced it to its source in the power of grace, that is in the singular privilege of immaculate conception.

It is, therefore, the Holy Ghost who has promulgated this definition. The Church, through its Visible Head has spoken, but the utterance is the voice of the Spirit of God. a For what man knoweth the things of a man but the spirit of a man which is in him? So the things also which are of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit that is of God, that we may know the things that are given to us of God. Which things also we speak not in the learned words of human wisdom, but in the doctrine of the Spirit: comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the sensual man perceiveth not the things that are of the Spirit of God, for it is foolishness to him who cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined. But the spiritual man judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no man."6 The Universal Church of God is this spiritual man, the sole Divine Witness and Teacher upon Earth: the only Guardian, the only Judge of the Revelation of God.

And now in its own time this truth, old in itself, new onlv in its definition, has been declared. It is t/ precious to us as a Dogma most needful in these latter times, when, according to the prophecy of our Lord, faith is faint, and love is cold. It comes to re animate and to rekindle our devotions to the Mother of God, much more to her Divine Son, for whose sake she is dear to us. If it be possible to grow in love to Jesus without growing by the same act in love to His blessed Mother, it is certainly impossible by reason of all natural and supernatural perfection, to grow in love to her without a greater growth in love to our Divine Redeemer and Lord, through whom alone we have relation to her.

It is precious also as the last gem in the crown, the last jewel which makes perfect the mystical diadem of her prerogatives. She is, as St. John writes, " clothed with the sun," and, as St. Bernard interprets, " immersed in God." The divine glory has not lightly touched her, as the lips of the Prophet were cleansed: nor even as the seraphim who are kindled at the foun tain of the Divine presence, but she is clothed with God, and as far as a creature can endure she is filled with God.7 She is united with Him more intimately than any other creature, for above the Divine Maternity there is nothing but the Hypostatic union of the Incarnate Son. And now upon the head of her who is so arrayed the Holy Ghost Himself has placed the crown of her twelve prerogatives, fastened and perfected by this last and highest of the glories of her person.

It is not, however, only as an increase of her accidental glory that this definition is precious to us, but it is precious as a Dogma. For what is a Dogma but a revelation of the mind of God, a law of human thought in things divine, an utterance of the Holy Ghost. Every such definite truth descends upon us as a light from Heaven. It is a new and pro founder insight into the intelligence of God, an enlarged knowledge of " the things of God." To the Church every dogma is a heavenly treasure, dear and priceless, living and giving life. Out of the unity of the one true Church the lingering remains of the divine science, the few surviving outlines of Dogma, stand as a wintry tree, dead, fruitless, and bare. Men turn from them as dry, formal, and fragmentary. And yet even in death there is a beauty and a symmetry in the spreading branch which lifts its naked sprays against the glowing sky. It neither lives nor gives life, and yet is graceful even in decay: even in fragments it is still the broken structure of truth, which once had vitality and fruit, and gave shadow and food to man. But in the Church of God Dogma is the source of an exuberant life. The Dogmatic Theology of the Faith rises and expands itself as the tree of life, majestic as the Cedar of Libanus, fruitful as the Palm, fragrant as the Balsam, full of vitality, expansion and symmetry, from its root to its branches, from its branches to its outmost spray. Even the syllables of its sacred language shed abroad the illumination of truth, the mo tives of obedience, the fervour of devotion. Dogma has a sacramental power of its own. All we need to do is to lift up the supernatural light before the reason and the hearts of men, and, as the sun on high acts by its own nature, the source of it pours forth an universal influence of vitality and fruitfulness, of splendour and of beauty.

And yet it is not chiefly as a treasure of Faith that this Dogma is precious to us, but above all as an interposition of the perpetual and divine authority of the Holy Ghost, who is always teaching through the Church. In the midst of the conflicts and storms of these last times, when men are tossed to and fro in doubt and fear, from uncertainty to unbelief, a Divine Voice has descended and made its articulate speech to be heard throughout the world. Even they who know not the meaning of the voice have heard the sound. Many things make this most timely and just, because of the especial heresy of these latter days. " The spirit manifestly saith, that in the last times some shall depart from the Faith, giving heed to spirits of error and doctrines of devils."8 And what is the chief and master heresy of the last three hundred years, but a denial of the perpetual office of the Holy Ghost. The great outbreak of the human reason against the revelation of God, which three centuries ago withered the West of Europe, did not take its spring, but only its pretext, from a denial of some particular truths of the Catholic Faith. The Reformation did not follow from a denial of Transubstantiation, or Purgatory, or In vocation of Saints, and the like, but from a rebellion against the authority of the Church of God as a Teacher, and a denial of the perpetual office of the Holy Ghost, as the Guide of the Mystical Body of Christ. Professing to believe in the office of the

Holy Spirit as the Sanctifier and Illuminator of indi viduals, it refused to submit to Him as the Illuminator and Guide of the Body. That which is conditional and depends upon the will of man it professed still to believe: that which is absolute and depends only on the will of God it rejected. And what was this but to deny the presence of a Divine Teacher upon Earth, to make way for the licence of human reason? This led at once to a rejection of the supernatural character and office of the Church, and subjected all its doctrines to the examination and criticism of man. The supernatural order passed away from the races which are scathed by the Reformation; and the hu man reason became not only critic and judge, but measure and fountain of all truth to itself. Dogma is the divine opposite to the Reformation in its root, with all its branches and consequences.

Another reason which makes this exercise of Divine authority most timely at this moment, is the intellectual state of the age in which we live. The Reformation has carried its legitimate results into the regions of science, and we are now told that the o human mind has had its three periods, namely, the theological or superstitious, the metaphysical, which is almost equally credulous, and now the positive or perfectand scientific state. And this perfection consists in limiting science to the objects of sight and sense, to fact arid to phenomena; excluding from the sphere of science such elements of uncertainty as cause and law, and God, and the like, which are assumptions or superstitions, rendering science uncertain so far as thev are allowed to enter within its realm. It would t/ seem indeed as if the judgment of Elymas, the magician, had fallen upon this age: as if this generation, so subtle, skilful, and far-seeing in the sciences of nature, gifted with such wondrous instruments of discernment and appreciation, were sightless only for the higher, deeper, and diviner fields of truth. The men of this generation can trace the path of the planets, weigh the bulk of the moon, measure the girth of the world; they can make light their pencil, and electricity their messenger, and discover metals in the- sun. But the sun itself, in its noonday splendour, the glory of the Divine Presence; the world-wide light of the universal Church, which, with its illumination, fills the whole Earth, they cannot see. It is as if the hand of the Lord were upon them, and a mist and darkness upon their sight, and their eyes, not seeing even the sun, were judicially blinded.9

And all this is true of our own land, dear to us by so many charities; for England now, like Rome Pagan of old, has become " Sentina gentium" the pool into which the evils of all the earth find a way. Already twice England has risen in conflict against the Church of God; and twice it has seemed to men to be victorious: but twice in the sight of God and His Holy Angels it has fallen lower and lower in spiritual darkness. Once three hundred years ago, when by its proud and cruel persecution it dissolved the unity of the mystical Body, and profaned the mystery of the Sacramental Presence of Jesus, quenching the lights which burn before the altar, and denying His adorable sacrifice. Stripped and spoiled of its divine inheritance, it still endeavoured to wear the aspect of a Hierarchy and to celebrate Sacramental mysteries. But this was a transient semblance. A hunded years again passed by, and England tried a fall once more with the changeless Church of God. Anglican Protestantism became Latitudinarian Protestantism: the shadows of doctrine fled away, and dogma became a by-word.

And now once more there are signs abroad of a third, and it may be a last conflict sorer still. There are tokens all around of secret changes which have reached almost to the crisis of their production.

There are five signs of future evil manifest upon our state.

Never before were the masses of our people so without God in the world: never was spiritual famine so wide- spread and so blank. Millions in our towns and cities have no consciousness of the supernatural. The life of this world is their all.

Never before were the schisms and heresies which have been generated by the first great heresy and schism so manifold and dominant. The Church of the Anglican Reformation has given up well nigh half its people to the endless separations, which have exhausted its vitality.

Never before were the internal and diametrical contradictions among its teachers and guides so ripe and unrelenting: never the confusion and uncertainty, the mistrust and weariness of heart so wide spread and oppressive among its people.

Never was its own impotence to rule, its incapacity to teach, so proved and manifest. It cannot judge, it cannot decide: it may not legislate: it dares not to solve its own perplexities: it has not mind or courage to define its own doctrine. There is no voice to be heard: no divine certainty, no divine guide in the seat of its councils.*

And lastly, never was there a time when the public opinion, the supreme infallibility which guides and teaches in England, was so absolute in its will. It is bearing all before it down the stream to a deeper indifference to all positive revelation. Struggle as they may, all must go down as the current runs. No human will can stay its course, no human intelligence avert its vehement descent.

Rationalistic Protestantism is the natural end and term of all that moves around us. In the midst of this confusion and disorder the Divine Voice is heard once more as of old, speaking with command, filling the whole world with its thrilling words. Even here in England it is heard on every side. Here, where the forms of human authority are vanishing away, and all fragmentary systems are dissolving, in the midst there is to be seen arising again the whole structure of the Faith, the Divine Science in all its symmetry, harmony, and stature. It is revealing itself to the intelligence of men whether they will or no, with the penetrating energy of light, as resistless and as silent.10

All intermediate systems are being winnowed away, and the field which lies between the Church of God and the power of this world is being cleared for the last conflict. This is our call and our work: to build up once more the Science of God in the heart of this people. And for this end, Fathers and Brethren, you have toiled and suffered long. God, in His w r ise and almighty providence, has reorganized in beauty and perfection the outward form of His Church in Eng land. And now, under the outward array of order and discipline, the inward and spiritual science of Faith is reascending. The science of God is our strength. u Dominus illuminatio mea et salus mea." Fora holy Priesthood must command the world, and a Priesthood skilled in the Science of the Saints must govern the intelligence of mankind. To this end your care is above all directed, to train up a succession of Priests, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith; in the discipline of sanctity, learning their theology less from books than, as the Saint of this Festival declared of himself, at the foot of the crucifix. And yet with so severe and exact a study of the sacred dogma of Faith, that even the least formula, the minutest syllable of its authoritative terminology shall be counted as a precious trust.

If envy could be a holy thing, I would say I envy those who from their youth have grown up as the palm trees in the house of God, nurtured unconsciously in the living traditions of Divine Faith, and expanding with even growth into the ripe and perfect knowledge of the Faith. But it is enough, nay, beyond all words, too great a grace to be permitted afar off to see, and even so late to share this glorious inheritance of the Church of God.

What conflict and what issue may be in store, who can foretell? Seventy years, from the day when St. Augustine first set foot on Saxon England, ran out, and the seven kingdoms had submitted to the Faith. Fifty years ago the Church in France was swept away by a flood of fire; and now it is renewed in strength, ampler in majesty, preeminent in the world. God can do great things for us, and He will, but when and how it is His alone to know. Of one thing, at least, we are sure. The sorrows and pangs, the heart breaking and the agony, the tears and the blood, which your forefathers, our confessors and martyrs, have shed upon this soil are not in vain. They have ascended up, and are not forgotten before the Most High. There will come a noble reaping from so sharp a seed time: and the keenness of the tillage will bring an exuberant harvest in the autumn of our time.

God has a work to be done in England, and He will do it. He has called us to share it with Him, and to work for Him. What He has in store for you who can tell? Perhaps there is no palm laid up for you. And yet who knows, for even palms are won in these still days of ours. Year by year, in this common place, every-day time of our life, Martyrs have been ascending to the presence of the Lord. But if not this, then at least the white array of confessors: and the reward of souls plucked from the burning, illuminated, healed, and saved through your zeal and charity. If this may be your portion, it is enough: and great shall be your recompense in Heaven.

Footnotes

  1. Dogmatica definitio Pii P. P. IX., vi, Idus Decembris, MDCCCLIV. ↩

  2. Soil. ap.tupoG,aaKi\og,a/j.iavTO,7rava(ji(iJiJ,oG,ayia,ayvr),Kada.pd, etc. See De Im. Deiparae Conceptione Passaglia, Tom. i, s. 2. ↩

  3. Epist. Sophron. in vi Synod. " Sancta et omni contagione iinmaculata." Suarez, in part. 3, S. Thomce, Quest., xxvii. J Ibid. Ibid. ↩

  4. S. Just. Martyr., Dial, cum Tryphone, s. 100, Ed. Ben. S. Iren. Contra Haereses, Lib. iii, cap. 22. S. Cyril Hier., Cat. xiii. ↩

  5. " Doctrinara illam Disserentem gloriosam Virginem Dei genitricem Mariam, praeveniente et operante Divini Numinis gratia singulari, numquam actualiter subjacuisse original! peccato; sed immunem semper fuisse ab omni originali et actuali culpa, sanctamque et immaculatam; tamquam piara et consonam cultui ecclesiastico, fidei Catholicae, rectse rationi, et sacrse Scripturse, ab omnibus Catholicis approbandam fore, tenendam et amplectendam, diffinimus et declaramus, nullique de cetero licitum esse in contrarium praedicare seu docere." Concil. Basil. Sess. xxxvi. ↩

  6. 1 Cor., ii, 11-15. ↩

  7. " Jure ergo Maria sole perhibetur araicta, quae profundissimam divinae sapientiae, ultra quam credi valeat, penetrare abyssum; ut quantum sine personal! unione creatures conditio patitur, luci illi inaccessibili videatur immersa. Illo nimirum igne Prophetee labia purgantur, illo igne Seraphim accenduntur. Longe vero aliter Maria meruit, non vero summatim tangi, sed operiri magis undique et circumfundi, et tamquam ipso igne concludi." *5. Bern. Sermo de Duodecim PrcBrogativis J3. V. Maria. Op..., Tom. iii., col. 1013, ↩

  8. 1 JVm., iv, I. ↩

  9. Acts, xiii, 11. ↩

  10. This was written in 1855, when as yet the Essays and Re views, and Colenso on the Pentateuch, and all that has sprung from them, were as yet below the horizon. ↩

Chapter 3 of 14