Sermon X. The Disciples of the Holy Ghost

At St. Edmund's College, on the Feast of St. Edmund of Canterbury, 1865.

You have the unction from the Holy One, and know all things.

These words are like those of St. Paul to the Philippians: ' Omnia possum in eo qui me confortat.' 1 1 can do all things in Him who strengtheneth me.'1 That is, Christ is the Fountain of all light and of all strength. He illuminates the soul to know all things relating to God and to His kingdom; He strengthens the soul to do all things whatsoever that knowledge demands. Within the circle of the divine revelation and of the kingdom of God, all knowledge and power are "bestowed hy our divine Lord upon His disciples. St. John here says: You have an unction or anointing from the Holy One; that is, the Holy Ghost Himself, Who dwells in you as your light. St. Paul says, all things are possible through Him who dwells in us as our strength.

This Unction, which was first poured upon the 1 Phil. iv. 15.

divine Head of the Church, has descended upon the whole mystical Body, and upon every memher of the same; upon each in his own order and measure — upon the Pontiffs with a perpetual divine assistance; upon the Episcopate diffused throughout the world, sustaining it in the light of truth; upon the Church in its Councils, preserving it from all error; upon the faithful of every tongue, who cannot err in believing, because the Church cannot err in teaching. In them the unction of the Spirit of truth becomes the universal illumination, which pervades the whole body with a consciousness of the revelation of God. Therefore St. John here says: ' The unction which you have received from Him, let it abide in you. And you have no need that any one should teach you.' That is to say, you have no need of human teachers, scribe or pharisee, disputer or philosopher; for you have a Teacher who is divine, and He teaches you of all things, not by fragmentary and partial doctrines, but by the whole revelation of faith. For He * is truth, and is no lie;' no intermixture or shade of falsehood can mingle in His illumination or His utterance. The Church, then, is infallible; and the faithful, so long as they believe its teaching, cannot err. The same Spirit which preserves the Church from error conforms the intelligence and the will of the faithful to its teaching. They know all things, because they receive the whole revelation by faith. In holy Baptism they receive the three graces which unite the soul with God — faith, hope, and charity; and with them sanctifying grace, and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. Even in the unconscious infant all these are present, just as the power of reason and will are present in the soul. By these they are assimilated and conformed to the mind of the Spirit. So soon as consciousness opens, and the moral and intellectual activity of the soul begins, these graces and gifts begin to conform the soul to the infallible voice of truth. In proportion as we correspond with these lights and motions of grace, we are replenished with a fuller knowledge, and strengthened with a greater power. Even the natural powers of reason and will are elevated and unfolded with greater perfection, in proportion as we correspond with this supernatural grace of our baptism. A faithful use of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost elevates the soul to a double perfection, both in the order of nature and in the order of grace.

Now of this truth we have an evident example in St. Edmund. His intelligence was evidently by nature capacious and penetrating, but much more so by grace. It was to his supernatural illumination that we may trace the suhtilty and beauty of his mind, and to the intense spirit of piety which sanctified his will that we may trace his illumination. St. Edmund is an example of the power of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost in elevating and perfecting the intelligence of man. Now it is to this point in his life that I would draw your thoughts. You already know his history. It is to you a daily meditation — a living, domestic tradition. I need not, therefore, describe his life, nor even enter into the detail of his character. You already know the purity of his youth; his filial love to his mother, from whom he derived his first impressions of God and His kingdom; the piety and sweetness of his character as a pastor; his inflexible fidelity in resisting the usurpations of the royal power upon the liberties of the Church. All these, I say, are as household words to you. St. Edmund is your patron and your father, whose life is your example, and whose prayers are your strength. I will therefore take one only point in the beautiful outline of his life; and that is, the union of piety with his studies. We will contemplate him as the pattern for Catholic students for the service of the altar.

And this I will do for a twofold reason: the one, because this topic is most pertinent to the times in which we live; the other, because it has a pointed application to you.

It is most pertinent to this present day; because in St. Edmund we see the union of all science, sacred and secular, as one whole, derived from one fountain, and in perfect harmony and subordination to one supreme truth. This, which is the true basis of Catholic science, and the true method of Catholic study, is especially assailed in this age. All the energy and animosity of men without faith, and sometimes even of men with more faith than perspicacity, is in activity to detach the sciences of the world and of society from the revelation of God. All the axes and hammers, the levers and wedges are in full play, to rend off the physical and political sciences from God, the Author of society and of all things. And this leads to the separation of the head and the heart, and sets the highest elements of man's nature in schism and opposition against each other, desecrating the intellect, and darkening the affections. Against this, St. Edmund is a direct and luminous witness. What is this disintegration and dissolution of the unity of truth, and this internal confusion of our nature, but the first assault of the enemy of truth? ' Omnis spiritus qui solvit Jesum non est ex Deo; — every spirit that dissolveth Jesus is not of God.' And these words are emphatically verified in the spirit of rationalistic criticism, which dissolves the hierarchy of sciences, the unity of the faith, the honds of the mystical Body, and lastly, the Incarnation of God.

The other reason for speaking of him as a student is its direct application to yourselves, whether you be destined for the world or for the altar. A large part of St. Edmund's life as a student was spent in secular studies, and as a layman. As such, he appeals to one class among you. The later and higher part of his academical career was in sacred study, as an ecclesiastic. As such, he appeals to you who are or will one day he priests.

Now in the whole of his example there is a perfect unity. Even as a layman, his habits of piety were such as would befit a student for the priesthood; and yet they were such as a secular student could habitually practise. I do not, indeed, say that you can copy him to the letter; but all may follow the spirit of his example, and, in the main, even the detail.

We read, then, that while he was yet a youth studying at Paris, it was his habit to go for the midnight office to the church of St. Mery; and when the office was done, to spend the rest of the night before the altar of our Lady; then to hear Mass at daybreak; then to go to the schools before he had broken his fast. In the afternoon he returned for Vespers; then went to visit the poor and sick. He ate once a day; he studied with an image of our Immaculate Mother, surrounded by the mysteries of redemption, before him. Layman as he was, he recited daily the Divine Office, with a salutation of the five sacred wounds, and a meditation on the Passion. All this while he was studying the secular sciences, and chiefly mathematics. Here, then, is a pattern, far off, indeed, in perfection, to you who are destined for the world.

In the midst of this life of piety and study came the event which changed the current of his life. One night, as he was studying mathematics with diagrams before him, he fell into sleep or ecstasy, in which he saw his holy Mother standing over him. She pointed to the figures upon his paper, and said, (My son, what are these?' She then traced upon the page three circles, in which Edmund recognised the three divine Persons in the Godhead. From that time he renounced the secular sciences for theology, and with that elevation of aim, he advanced still onward and upward in the practice and spirit of piety. Such was his private life as a student; and it was to this converse with God that he owed the spirituality, intensity, and subtilty of intellect which is visible even in the little which remains to us of his writing, and is traditionally recorded in his life.

St. Edmund, then, is a pattern to Catholic students, and a proof of the intellectual development and elevation which is attained by the practice of piety, and by the sanctification of study by union with God.

In his Speculum Ecdesice, St. Edmund draws out the nature and diversity of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, and their office in the perfection of the soul. What he taught he exemplified, and his life is the illustration of his doctrine. It may be truly said, that it is by the use of these seven gifts that the saints and servants of God differ from other men. The three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and sanctifying grace, are universal, and essential to all who are justified. But, though the just all manifest the presence of these graces, they may show very variously, unequally, and often very little, of the operations of these seven gifts. It is especially as they are exercised and unfolded that the soul is elevated to a higher illumination and perfection. Now, these gifts are defined by theologians to be spiritual powers, or faculties, by which the soul corresponds with grace. They enable the soul to put forth its own powers, and to unite itself with the operations of the Holy Spirit. They have therefore been likened to the sails of a ship, which, when spread, catch the wind; and in proportion as they are unfolded, the soul is borne onwards, powerfully and speedily, by the Spirit of God. They are distinguished into two kinds — those which perfect the will, and those which perfect the intellect. The gifts which perfect the will are three — holy fear, piety, and fortitude; those that perfect the intellect are four — science and counsel, understanding and wisdom; and these again are distinguished into two kinds: those which perfect the practical intellect — namely science and counsel; and those which perfect the speculative intellect, or understanding and wisdom.

It would be too long to enter into detail. It will be enough to describe these in outline. The will is perfected first by holy fear. ' Initium sapientise timor Domini.' ' The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.' The fear of the Lord is the first: wisdom is the last of the seven gifts. Holy fear casts out sin and leads on to piety; that is, the filial fear, the love of sons to a father, which is even in the blessed. It is piety which corresponds with ' the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.' And to this are united fortitude, courage, endurance of penances, of the cross, of shame, suffering, and, if need be, even unto blood striving against sin. These three, then, perfect the will.

The two which perfect the practical intellect are science, or the light by which the reason sees God in all things, and all things in God. St. Edmund, in his Mirror of the Church, says that there are four planes or fields in which God is reflected; two within, reason and revelation, or the light of nature in the intelligence, and the illumination of the Holy Ghost elevating the intelligence by a supernatural light. Two also without, the creation, and the Church, or, in other words, the world of nature, which is the first creation whereon the traces and outlines of God's being, presence, and image are inscribed in characters of goodness, wisdom, and power; and the second creation, or the mystical Body of the Incarnate Word, in which the image of the invisible God is revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. It was this gift of science which enlightened St. Edmund to see God in all these four reflections of His Presence, and to behold all these lights distinct but undivided as one.

The gift of counsel is the' spirit of equity, discernment, moral intuition of the higher and more perfect laws of obligation, generosity, sanctity, and conformity to the mind of the Spirit.

The gift of understanding is that whereby the truths of the natural and of the supernatural order are rightly apprehended, both in their definition and in their principles. Intelligence is described as the power, intus legendi, of reading the inner sense and reason of things, not the face of the world only, but its laws; not the letter of Scriptures only, but its sense; not the verbal traditions of theology only, but its unity and harmony, the relation of truth with truth, and the procession of one truth from another.

Lastly, the gift of wisdom elevates the light of understanding by a supernatural perception of the sweetness of truth. Sapientia is sapere, to taste and to know by another sense. The Psalmist says, * Taste and see that the Lord is sweet.' This is wisdom, or a light of the Holy Spirit, whereby divine things are at the same time seen and tasted. Such is the highest state of the soul on earth, the foretaste of the beatific vision.

Now of the first three gifts, all the martyrs, confessors, saints, penitents, and servants of God in any kind and degree, are examples. Fear, piety, and fortitude are the beginning, the middle, and end of their perfection and perseverance.

Of the last four we may take special examples from the saints and doctors of the Church.

Of the gift of science, St. Gregory the Great and St. Ambrose may be taken as examples. The moral beauty of the first creation, or of the new, of the world, and of the Church, shines through all their pages.

Of the gift of counsel, St. Antoninus, the pater consiliorum, and St. Alphonsus, are illustrations. In them the moral theology of the Church rises from commandments to precepts, and from precepts to the counsels and science of perfection.

Of the gift of understanding, St. Anselm and St. Thomas are witnesses. In them the intellectual science of faith and the dogmatic theology of the Church resides with a surpassing and singular order, clearness, fulness, and harmony.

Of the gift of wisdom, or the union of truth and sweetness, of light and love, St. Bonaventura and St. Edmund are luminous examples.

It is certain that all these exercised all the seven gifts in some measure, but not all equally; and it was this preeminent exercise of one over the others which gave to each a special and characteristic perfection.

So is it in the life of every true Catholic student.

From whatsoever cause in nature or in grace, in the constitution of his mind, or by the special inspiration of God, some will correspond more fully and adequately with one rather than with another of these seven gifts; and from this arises the diversity of theologians and doctors in the Church, dogmatic, moral, mystical, and ascetic, evangelists, teachers, and guides in the way of perfection.

If, then, the use of these seven gifts he the source of light and wisdom to the soul, the loss of them is the cause of folly, and of intellectual darkness. St. Paul says of the heathens, who, 'when they knew God, did not glorify Him' as God, ' or give thanks,' that ' they became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened.' An intellectual emptiness and darkness fell judicially upon them. ' Professing themselves to be wise, they be-came fools.'2 Intellectual pride was punished by intellectual degradation. ' They liked not to retain God in their knowledge.' Their hearts were at enmity with Him, and their intellect turned away from the light; because there was neither piety nor holy fear in them, therefore science and counsel, understanding and wisdom, departed from them. What was true then, is true always. It was true in the

2 Komans i. 21, 22.

Y times of twilight, it is true in the noontide of revelation. How can we otherwise account for the atrocities of the French philosophers in the last century, but hy the sensuality which quenched the light of the Spirit of God? The perception of God in His creatures was extinguished hy the spirit of impiety and of mockery. Kousseau and Voltaire are normal examples of the darkness which falls upon intellect, howsoever subtil and cultivated, when it is sensual. The same, too, is to be seen at this day in the anti-catholic philosophy and anti-catholic politics of our time. They are anti-catholic because they are antichristian. The revolution which is undermining the Continent is essentially infidel, if not atheistic; and it has penetrated widely into our literature, especially into public opinion. The enmity of the will against the Church and truth of God has generated the most extravagant illusions and falsehoods in minds which are both clear and capable in the things of this world.

Another example of this may be taken in two writers of our own times. One is the author of the Positive Philosophy, in which not only God and His operations find no place, but law, cause, effect, and the like are rejected as figments of the brain, or metaphysical superstitions. The sum of philosophy is to note facts and phenomena, without any interpretation of the reason; that is, sense is supreme and sole. Whatsoever we can see, taste, weigh, touch, and test by chemistry — that is the matter of philosophy; hut the reason may not predicate anything as to the relations in which facts and phenomena stand to each other. Of all causes which are to be eliminated as superstitions, the first cause is the worst of all. Atheism is the normal state of man, and the perfection of science. This may be philosophy in the eyes of its disciples. To us it is reason stunted, human nature cut down to a pollard, sense without intelligence: and therefore irrational.

Another form of this is in a well-known book on modern civilisation, in which society is described as the necessary sum of necessary agents, without either the free will of man or the moral government of God. Such is the world of the old creation, and the new, in the eyes of those who proceed by their own lights, in opposition to the gifts of the Holy Ghost. To them the Church has no light, no revelation, no divine image, the world no reflection of its Maker, the reason no radiance of God; the world, with all its glory and beauty, has no divine intelligence shining through it; no tracings of the divine hand, no agencies of the divine will. It is beautiful but vacant, like the fair countenance of an idiot — the most mournful and unintelligent of all the works of God, or, rather, the most humbling and melancholy obscuration of the perfections of our nature, and of the reflections of the divine. Such is the world, with all its aspects of wisdom, goodness, and power, to eyes and intelligences which have forfeited the gifts of science and of wisdom.

And farther: as the loss of these seven gifts leads to intellectual darkness, so the obstructing of their activity leads to a proportionate loss of light.

To those who are within the full light of faith, it seems inexplicable how men of capable and cultivated minds should fail to perceive its divine certainty. The condition of England at this moment is an example. The so-called Keformation has so obscured and deadened the consciousness of the presence and operations of the Holy Spirit in the Church and in the soul, and has so extinguished the sense of the supernatural order, that the majority of baptised persons seem to be unconscious of their baptismal grace. They have hardly so much as heard of the seven gifts. Except in the Catholic Catechism, and books of devotion, the enumeration and the names of them are hardly to be found. It is not wonderful, therefore, that few pray for them or correspond with them.

Nay, more than this: the nature of regeneration, of the three theological virtues, even of grace itself, is little realised, and hardly understood. A universal unconsciousness of anything hut the powers of nature has spread over England, and a great ohscurity has risen between it and the unseen world. The objects of faith are dim, and therefore the definition of them, that is, the doctrines or dogmas which express them, are proportionately inexact and confused. Compare with the intellectual haze and mistiness of even learned Anglican writers, the intensity and reality of St. Edmund's meditations on God and the creation of man; or the most elaborate writings of the highest and best authors of the last three hundred years, such as Hooker or Jeremy Taylor, with the luminous precision of St. Thomas or of Suarez. I know of no other way of accounting for the possibility of Protestantism, but by supposing that the office of the Holy Ghost had been obscured. The theory which supposes His infallible voice to be suspended, is so far rendered imaginable by the obscurities and contradictions of those who teach it.

To many it seems impossible to extend the plea of invincible ignorance to men who, with full cultivation, abundant leisure, possession of all kinds of opportunities, contact with Catholics, Catholic books of every period, Fathers, schoolmen, theologians, yet remain in the fragmentary belief of Anglicanism. It seems impossible that they should read antiquity and the Councils, especially the Council of Trent, and that they should continue to deny the authority of the Catholic Church, and claim to interpret its doctrines in opposition to its world- wide voice. And yet it is easy to see, that if the gifts of the Holy Ghost be obstructed, the light of the soul is clouded, and men may see grotesque and unreal forms in everything around them; as travellers, when the sun is down, see all things in distortion, without distance and without truth. From this comes all manner of material heresy, — not formal indeed, we may trust, — in a great multitude, who are led like sheep, but nevertheless the matter is heretical. This is true not of the unlearned only, but of the most cultivated. Indeed, in them it seems as if the more they study, the farther they become involved in the processes of their own private judgment. Every approximation even to the doctrines of the Catholic Church strengthens, because it depends upon, the exercise of private judgment; so that none are so far off as many that seem to be near. They are near only in the accident of particular opinions; but afar off by the whole principle, procedure, and spirit of their minds. The gifts of holy fear and of piety would make them docile, and afraid to go alone; the gifts of science and of intellect would have shown them the unity, harmony, and coherence of truth. It would become its own evidence; for clearness and precision are qualities of truth, and proofs of its divine certainty.

God has made submission to His Church a condition of knowing His truth; and without correspondence with the gifts of the Holy Ghost there will be no submission. The most extensive and multifarious study of Scripture, Fathers, Councils, theologians, without the living guidance of the Church and the oral traditions of its theology, will not make a disciple of Jesus Christ. We must be critics or disciples; both we cannot be; and before we can be disciples, we must cease to play the critic. The critical spirit is the antagonist of the seven gifts in all their array, from holy fear to wisdom.

And this leads me back to the truth with which I began. It is tne faithful use of these gifts of the Holy Spirit which makes men to be the true disciples of Jesus. By disciple is to be understood not a learner only, but a learner who is subject to discipline. Jesus made His Apostles to be disciples before He sent them forth as doctors. They surrendered their whole will and their whole intelligence to Him, to be trained and illuminated by His teaching and His grace. What He did for them, the Church does for us. Doctor es fidelium, Ecclesice discipuli. The doctors of the faithful are the disciples of the Church, because the unction which is upon it teaches them of all things. They first learn to correspond with its divine voice; and by the seven gifts of the Spirit they are inwardly conformed, both in will and in intelligence, to 'the mind which was in Christ Jesus.' They learn to believe as the Church believes, and to teach as the Church teaches. They are in perfect harmony with the living instincts of the Church, with the mind of its Councils, and the voice of its Pontiffs.

Now this habit of mind, which I will call the Catholic spirit, has five signs or rules, which will be found in a true Catholic student.

1. The first sign is a loving submission to the Church; not a bare submission, which may be exacted by a cold intellectual necessity, or by a servile fear of judgment, but a loving submission, a joyful and thankful obedience to the Church as a divine guide; and a generous and unreserved conformity of our whole nature and mind, intellectual and spiritual, to its guidance and direction. This is impossible to those who look upon the Church as a human society, the creation of legislatures, the ward of royal supremacies. But to all who know it to be the Body of Christ, inhabited by the Holy Ghost, illuminated and guided by His light and voice, the Church is an object of faith and love, the tabernacle of God among men, the nearest approach to the beatific vision and union of the soul with God. Such minds will not be content with a bare submission of outward obedience, or of silence, but will render an inward assent and affiance of the heart. They will obey not only the dogma of faith delivered by Councils, but the whole spirit and mind whicn pervades the discipline, worship, and devotions of the Church. They will feel that to submit by constraint is no submission of the will; to submit coldly is not the submission of disciples or of sons. It would be the submission of fear or of reason — not of love; but the submission of love includes both, and springs from the gift of wisdom, which not only sees but tastes the truth.

2. A second sign is devotion to the Saints. Next to the infallible voice of the Church, there is no guidance so certain as the doctrine of the Saints. Theologians boldly say, that what the Saints unite in teaching is undoubtedly true. ' The consent of the Saints is the sense of the Holy Spirit.' Whatsoever they unanimously teach must he either from the infallible guidance of the Church, or from the illumination of the Holy Ghost, or from the operation of His seven gifts, which in perfecting their reason and their will upon the same forms and laws of truth conform them to each other. There are ahout holy minds lights and instincts which transcend our ordinary level. They see, even in this world, truths which are heyond our reach. How much more the Saints, in whom the spirit of sanctity abides in the largest measure. St. Philip used to counsel his penitents, in choosing books, to take those whose authors had S. before their names. In them we may find not only the dogma of faith, but instincts, discernments, intuitions in matters both near to the faith and remote from it, which are most salutary for our guidance. The gift of piety will conform us to the mind of the Saints, because it is the mind of the Spirit.

3. A third sign is deference to theologians. Upon the lowest ground it may be affirmed, that when the theologians of the Church agree, no individual without temerity can oppose them. As a mere intellectual tradition, the consentient judgment of the learned must prevail over the opinion of any individual. There must be a strange self-sufficiency and vain-glory in any one who revises and corrects their discernment. And this upon the mere basis of intellectual culture and acuteness.

But there is a further reason still. The theologians of the Church, if not all canonised Saints, though many are this also, at least have used their natural gifts and powers with great diligence and fidelity, and with a more than ordinary correspondence with the Holy Spirit. They are, as a hody, an eminent example of the gifts of knowledge and counsel, wisdom and understanding; and their works of speculative and practical theology, of dogmatic, moral, and mystical science, are the direct fruit of those four gifts. They have a claim, then, to our deference, not only on the ground of intellectual superiority, confirmed by an unanimity in some things and a wide consent in others, but also as doctors of the faithful, in whom a higher intellectual cultivation was elevated by a larger illumination. Their judgments and decisions cannot indeed make matter of faith, but they certainly make matter, of moral certainty. No one who sets himself against their united voice can be cleared of self-sufficiency and of rashness. The gift of counsel would restrain a Catholic student from contradicting the theologians of the Church.

4. A fourth sign of docility is a fear and suspicion of novelty. Tertullian says, ' From the order itself it is manifest that what is first in tradition is from the Lord and true: what is afterwards brought in is foreign and false.'3 The identity and immutability of truth is the basis of the advancing maturity of conception and of expression which pervades the doctrines of faith and the science of theology. But in all this there is nothing new. The same old truths are defined with new precision. The terminology may be new, the truth is as old as the revelation of faith. The Church presents to the faithful non nova sed nove — not new doctrines but new exactness of definition. Wheresoever, then, new doctrines are introduced, as by Luther and Jansenius; or new interpretations of Scripture, as by Calvin or Erasmus; or new principles in philosophy, as by Descartes and many moderns, a Catholic student will beware. He will know that the smallest curve may, if produced, lead to a wide deflection; that a single philosophical error will import a series of errors into the doctrine of faith; that one false premiss in the science of God is like one erroneous figure in a long calculation; and that new propositions, though they be attractive by their completeness or plausibility, may carry disorder through whole treatises of theology. He will take his stand upon the

3 De Prescript, contra Haeret. c. xxxi.

sacred terminology and scientific tradition of the Church in its schools; and will not be tempted to depart from them for any novelties, howsoever alluring. This caution is all the more needful for days in which we hear, not from Protestants only, but even from some Catholics, that the scholastic philosophy and theology are antiquated, unfit for modern thought, and must be replaced by new methods and a new criticism of history and of antiquity, in order to lay the basis of science and to generate faith. 5. The fifth and last sign I will mention is mistrust of self. A Catholic student will be confident wheresoever the Church has spoken, or the consent of Saints or of theologians goes before him; but when he is left to himself he will have a wholesome mistrust of his own opinions: Aliqua scire, et de aliis prudenter dubitare — to know some things, and to doubt prudently about the rest, is the spirit of docility. And assuredly no man who knows himself will confide in his own light. We have only to remember how often we have been wrong; how often, with all the means of knowledge about us, we have been ignorant or unable to see the truth; how our most confident opinions at one time have turned out to be visibly untrue at another; how little we have ever read, how much less we have studied, how much less again we have mastered; how fragmentary and incoherent is our best knowledge of many things; how vast and complex is truth, both in the natural and supernatural order; how un-illuminated we are, compared with the Saints; how ignorant, compared with the doctors of the Church; how narrow and darkened our individual mind is, compared with the mind of the Spirit, that is, of the Church, which for these eighteen hundred years has ' reached mightily from end to end, sweetly disposing all things.' It is impossible for any man to realise these things without becoming less and less in his own eyes, and learning a thorough mistrust of his own powers and knowledge. Strange inversion of truth and of the moral instincts! Confidence in our own light is a virtue out of the Catholic unity, but a vice within it. It is the maximum of certainty to those who have no divine and infallible teacher; it is the minimum to those who are guided by the Church of God. As the Greeks said: ' If we cannot sail, we must row;' if we have no divine guidance by the Spirit which breathes through the Church, we must painfully toil onward by the stretch and reliance of our own strength.

These, then, are the signs of the true disciples of the Holy Spirit: loving submission to the Church; devotion to the Saints; deference to theologians; fear and suspicion of novelty; mistrust of self. Sucli men are led by the Spirit of God, and are His sons indeed. ' As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God;' and it is by His seven gifts that He leads those who correspond with His operations onwards and upwards to perfection.

This, then, is the operation of the gifts of the Holy Ghost upon the intellect and the will. But that this operation be effectual, it is necessary that both the intellect and the will correspond to it. And for this, certain acts and habits of the soul are required. The first of them is a humble and sincere cleansing of the conscience by good confession. e The light of the body is the eye; if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be lightsome.' That is, the light of the soul is the conscience. If the conscience be pure, the whole soul shall be full of light. * The clean in heart shall see God.' A heart darkened by any impurity hides the vision of God from itself.

Next is mental prayer, or the realisation of the objects of faith by the intellectual vision. This visible world is so loud and intrusive, that the world unseen is visionary and powerless over men. The objects of faith need to be realised before they can be appreciated, and appreciated before their active influence upon us can have a constraining power. The world unseen, by habitual meditation passes into our consciousness. We live and act upon the motives of the invisible world, as the men of this world live and act upon its earthly maxims. God and His heavenly court, the communion of Saints, the state of the departed, become certain, and if I may use the word, become sensible, to faith.

A third means whereby the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the heart are unfolded into activity is the study of holy Scripture. Forasmuch as the books of Holy Writ have God for their author, there is an affinity between His gifts in the soul and His inspirations in the written word. The Scripture is the fruit and the record of those seven gifts, iji their amplest and profoundest manifestation. The Prophets, Apostles, Evangelists, Martyrs, and Saints of the Old and New Laws afford luminous examples of every one of these endowments of the Spirit of God, both in the intellect and the will, and that in the most perfect degree and maturity. The holy Scripture, therefore, speaks with a divine voice to the soul. Every part of it is the word of God; and every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God elicits a response from a soul in which the same Spirit dwells. The living oracle of the Church and the silent utterances of Scripture are alike the voice of God; all else is subordinate.

Therefore it is that the Saints have exhibited such a profound love and veneration for the written word. St. Edmund was wont to kiss the pages of the book when he opened it and when he closed it. St. Charles used to read holy Scripture with bare head and on his knees. They recognised in it the presence and the voice of the Spirit of God; by it they conversed with Him, and by converse with Him they were elevated to a singular degree of interior conformity to the mind of the Spirit. To you all, as Christians and as Catholics, especially in this land and in these days, a true and exact knowledge of Scripture is of great moment; and if to all, how much more to those of you who are to be the teachers of others, the preachers of salvation, the interpreters of the faith, the witnesses of the revelation of God. To you, who first receive the full illumination of the Catholic Church, and grow up in the faith as the root of your spiritual consciousness, the page of Scripture is open and full of light. You read it, not by the broken lights of private judgment, or the wavering lights of the private spirit, but. in the full and steadfast illumination of the day of Pentecost, in the midst of which it was written. Study, therefore, the text of the sacred books with the closest application of all your natural intelligence, and a faithful correspondence with the z supernatural gifts of the Spirit of Truth, whose disciples you are. He is your theologian and your guide in the science of God. Kead the sacred text as the records of His teaching, the brief but harmonious outlines of the world-wide enunciation of the faith. To you, all is unity, symmetry, and order; as light, which, streaming from a single point, diffuses itself in an equable and perfect radiance.

The fourth and last means of which I will speak is habitual prayer for light, to the Holy Spirit of truth. Be devout to the third Person of the Holy Trinity. To know Him, His presence, personality, and power, His twofold office in the Church and in our own soul, is the condition of the perfect illumination of the intellect. Without this, the intellect may be cultivated, but it will be cold and dim. The errors, low views, fragmentary opinions, distorted judgments, partial statements, ill-sounding propositions, shallow appreciations, of men endowed with great natural gifts, are to be traced to an inadequate realisation of the office of the Holy Spirit, and of His relation to their intellect and their will. Their theology is like themselves. A student who is united by the gift of piety to the light of the Holy Spirit will be implicitly a theologian. The degree of his explicit knowledge will still depend on natural gifts, and their due cultivation; and yet there is an infused theology in docile hearts which is seldom at fault, and often transcends the cultivation of the intellectual. Before and after your studies, ask light from your divine Teacher. Then, with the page before you, preserve a consciousness of your dependence upon Him.

St. Edmund was one day waiting in the schools at Paris for the coming of his scholars. He was about to expound to them the mystery of the Holy Trinity. While they tarried, he fell into a slumber or a rapture; and he saw a Dove descending towards him. It bore in its beak the sacred Host, and laid it on his lips. When he returned to himself, he began his lecture, and all who heard him wondered at the words of sweetness and of light which proceeded out of his mouth. It was this which gave to all he spoke its energy and power. The few brief writings which remain to us are full of the unction and the fire of the Spirit of God. We can understand, from the few words which remain to us, how the hearts of men thrilled as they heard him. What more simple, yet what more intense, than such words as these: ' If you are saved, every hair of your head shall be glorified;' or again, * If the whole world were full of fine dust, the atoms would be beyond number; and yet your soul is a thousand times more capacious than the world, and is filled with the mercies of God beyond the number of all created things.' He spoke out of the consciousness of his own soul, which had lived from childhood in intimate communion with God. It was the reality of this spiritual experience which gave him power over the hearts of men. He spoke what he knew by an interior sense deeper than the intellect, more refined than all learned cultivation.

Such must be your preparation for the work of your life. You are called to be pastors of the flock, and you must go before the sheep committed to you, in all things; in the science of God and of the Saints, in the unction of grace and truth, in sanctity of life, in wisdom and the power of the Spirit. You are set to be fishers of men, and you must take them by the net in the sea, and by the hook let down in silence, in patient toil, and the science of charity. You are sent forth as reapers into the harvest - field, to bear the burden of the day and the heat, and to gather maniples of souls with joy for the eternal garner. To you is made the promise of the prophet: ' They that are learned'

— not in the learning of this world, but in the science of God — ' shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that instruct many to justice, as stars for all eternity.'4

X,¹

Footnotes

1. Dan. xii. 3. ↩