Sermon XIV. St. Edmund's Heirloom

At St. Edmund's College, on the Festival of St. Edmund of Canterbury, 1871.

ST. EDMUND'S HEIELOOM.

Of His own will hath He begotten us by the word of truth, that we might be some beginning of His creature. ST. JAMES i. 18.

The will of God is the love of God. Pondus voluntatis amor; that which moves the Almighty will is the uncreated charity. The perfect freedom of the Creator and Eedeemer of the world moved in harmony with His perfect love. This is the eternal Fountain of all things: ' Every hest gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with Whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.'1 God's own will is the origin of all the divine operations; His word of truth is the instrument of His power. ' In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... All things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing that was made.'2 The Word of God is the eternal Son, ' by Whom also He made the worlds.' ' And the Word was 1 St. James i. 17. - St. Johni. 1, 3.

DD made flesh.' The Incarnate Son is the author of our regeneration by the Truth, which He is, which also we believe. That is to say, the means of our regeneration is the truth revealed to faith and the grace of the Spirit of God; for ' grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.' St. James also declares the end of our regeneration: that we may be initium aliquod creaturce sues, ' some beginning of His creatures;' or, as the word in the original (airapxfiv) signifies, the first-fruits of His creatures. Christians are therefore the subjects of a special predestination. They are chosen and regenerated to be a manifestation of truth and grace, and to be the first-fruits gathered out of the creation of God.

Under the old law, God gave this commandment to His chosen people: ' When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God will give thee to possess, and hast conquered it, and dwellest in it, thou shalt take the first of all thy fruits, and put them in a basket, and shalt go to the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, that His name may be invocated there. And thou shalt go to the priest that shall be in those days, and say to him: I profess this day before the Lord thy God, that I am come into the land for which He swore to our fathers that He would give it us. And the priest, taking the basket at thy hand, shall set it before the altar of the Lord thy God. And thou shalt speak thus in the sight of the Lord thy God: The Syrian pursued my father, who went down into Egypt, and sojourned there in a very small number, and grew into a nation great and strong, and of an infinite multitude. And the Egyptians afflicted us, and persecuted us, laying on us most grievous burdens. And we cried to the Lord God of our fathers, Who heard us, and looked down upon our afflictions, and labour, and distress, and brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand and a stretched-out arm, with great terror, with signs and wonders; and brought us into this place, and gave us this land, flowing with milk and honey. And therefore now I offer the first-fruits of the land, which the Lord hath given me. And thou shalt leave them in the sight of the Lord thy God, adoring the Lord thy God.'3

The prophet Jeremias says: * Israel is holy to the Lord, the first-fruits of His increase.'4 The first-fruits, that is, the earliest and the best of the vineyards, and olive - yards, and cornfields of the promised land, were symbolical of Israel the chosen people, the elect nation from among the nations of the world. And Israel itself was a type and a prophecy

3 Deut. xxvi. 1-10. 4 Jerem. ii. 3.

of a higher election yet to be revealed, and of a law of first-fruits in the new creation of God. Both in the natural and the supernatural order, the hest of all things belong to the Maker and Head of all; this law runs through all His works.

1. We find it in the beginning of all things. The works of God ascended step by step to their perfection. The six days, in their succession, unfolded each one some new glory of the Divine wisdom. The light and the firmament, the waters and the dry land, the trees and the herbage, the fishes of the sea, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, then man, the apta materia, from the dust of the earth, on which God set the light of His own image. Signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui. The likeness of God, in reason and in will, was impressed on the soul of man. He was made like to' God, that he might be the son and the friend of God, and that he might hold the primacy over all the creatures. He was made a little lower than the angels, because clothed in flesh; he was crowned with glory and honour, because he was resplendent with the image of God; he was set ovjer the works of his Maker's hands, as the vicar or vice-king, the head and primate over all the works of the six days, to know and to name them, to rule and to use them, according to the laws of their Creator and their Lord. The first Adam was, therefore, the crown and perfection of all the works of God — the first-fruits of the creatures.

2. But in this, the first Adam was a type of the Second, in whose image he was made. What the first man was among the lower creatures, the Second is among men — the first-fruits of the first-fruits, the beginning of a new and higher creation. Jesus is the crown of all perfection: ' perfect God, and perfect man; of reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting; equal to the Father according to His Godhead, and less than the Father according to His manhood.' We see Jesus, Who was made a little lower than the angels by the assumption of our manhood, crowned with glory and honour, and set over the works of His hands; for to Him all power in heaven and earth is given. In Him our manhood is deified. Man is still the first-fruits, but the first-fruits are divine. The image of God was manifested, but in unity of person with the divine Original. The glory of the only-begotten Son of God was seen among men, and as the Son of Man. As Adam was the first-fruits of mankind unto death, so Jesus is the first-fruits unto eternal life. He is the ' Root' and the ' Beginning of the creation of God;' that is, the productive principle from which springs the regeneration of mankind and the resurrection from the dead. Therefore St. Paul calls Him ' the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature;' that is, before all creatures were made, from all eternity, the uncreated; ' for in Him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominations, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him and in Him. And He is before all, and by Him all things consist. And He is the Head of the body, the Church, Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead;' because He could not be holden of death, ' that in all things He may hold the primacy.'5 Therefore He is also ' the first-fruits of those that sleep'6 — the Head and Lord of the living and of the dead.

3. And what Jesus is among.men, His Church is in the world — the first-fruits of the nations. It is the regeneration, present and working, in this dying world. The promise: ' You who have followed Me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the seat of His majesty, you also shall sit on twelve seats, judging the twelve tribes of Israel'7 — is already fulfilled in the mystical Body. The command, ' Go and baptise all nations,' implanted a new life in

5 Col. i. 15-18. 6 1 Cor. xv. 20.

7 St. Matthew xix. 28.

the world. Wheresoever the waters which issue from the sanctuary came, all things lived. The power of the resurrection entered into the dry bones, and they knit together, and were clothed with a new humanity, and stood upon their feet. The spiritual resurrection was accomplished in them, and the earnest of the resurrection of the body was given to them. Baptism is the first-fruits of the resurrection, and the resurrection is the harvest-home of baptism. Therefore it is true of the mystical Body, and of every living member: ' Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: in these the second death hath no power.'8 And that, because the first-fruits from the dead is the life-giving Head of the Church: and because He has promised to it in Peter: ' Upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.' In the midst of this death-stricken world, the Church is full of life. As the fleece of Gedeon was drenched with the dew of heaven, while all the ground about it was dry, so the Church is fresh with the waters of life in the midst of the valley of dry bones. Ever fresh, ever fruitful, its leaf shall not wither; its four notes cannot be hid; its supernatural endowments cannot be stayed or bound. Verbum Dei non est alligation. 8 Apoc. xx. 6.

The word of God, in all the liberty of its divine power, bears witness, in the midst of the false philosophies, corrupt religions, heretical perversions, to the truth as it is in Jesus. In the midst of the rankness of this world; of the races and people who have never yet known the true God; of the nations and kingdoms who are apostate from His service and His sovereignty, the one holy Catholic Church stands in its unity of immutable truth, of supernatural sanctity, of inflexible authority, as a creation not of man; independent of man; in contact with the world, but not of the world; imperishable and indestructible; always suffering, never overcome; the first-fruits of the truth, grace, and power of God. Out of the visible unity of the Church are continually passing the multitudes of the regenerate, who fall asleep with the sign of faith. They go onward to the Church beyond the grave, to wait for the vision of God, or to speed into His presence. These all, whether militant, or suffering, or triumphant, both in grace and in glory, are first-fruits to God and to the Lamb.

4. In this we further see the dignity of Christians. They are called to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the children of light, sons of God, first-fruits of mankind and of grace. St. Paul says: ' Every creature groaneth and travaileth in pain, even till now; and not only it, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit:'9 that is to say, we have received the first-fruits of His power, the chief and the choicest gifts, the special and peculiar dispensation of grace whereby the Holy Ghost dwells in us as His temple, and by the law of the Spirit of life has made us free from the law of sin and death. Christians are called to be the ripe and chosen fruits of mankind; and that, not only in the natural order, and by the faculties and powers of nature, but also in the supernatural order of faith, hope, and charity, of sanctifying grace, of the seven gifts, of the twelve fruits of the Holy Ghost, of the eight beatitudes, which are the rays that shine from the Face of Jesus Christ. Christians are called to reflect His light and His likeness upon the world; to be witnesses to Him by being like Him. What the world by its wisdom could not do; what the civilisation, and culture, and refinement, and philosophy of the heathen world could not accomplish, the word of truth and the new birth of the Spirit has done. The purity, chastity, humility, generosity, sincerity, meekness, mercifulness, long-suffering, charity, justice, equity of the mind which was in Jesus has elevated not individuals only, but

9 Romans viii. 22, 23.

families, races, and nations — the high and low, learned and simple, the old and the young — to a dignity and a perfection which the world without Christ never could attain, nor so much as conceive. * Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely:'10 these are the growth of Christianity, and Christians are the first-fruits of this new creation.

See, then, your dignity as Catholics, that is, as Christians perfect and complete in faith. It consists in three things. First, in your election. You were predestinated of His own will to be horn again by the word of truth: ' For whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren; and whom He predestinated, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified'11 — that is, upon you He has put the glory of the adoption; the glory to be the sons of God; and if sons, then heirs — heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. This election took effect upon you when you knew it not. You were passive under it. As our divine Lord has said: ' You have not chosen Me; but I have chosen you, and have appointed you, 10 Phil. iv. 8. » Komans viii. 29, 30.

that you should go and should bring forth fruit.' And again: ' If you had been of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.'12

This election to regeneration, to faith, to sonship, to grace, has lifted you above all the races and nations of the world. We can find for it no motive and no reason, except the will — that is, the love — of God. Why He should have chosen us rather than others, who can say? In this we can but adore the depth of the riches and of the wisdom of God.

Next, you have received the full and perfect illumination of faith. The whole revelation of God is yours; not a fragment, nor a broken tradition of truth, but the whole undiminished light in its full outline and radiance, as it was revealed. You did not discover this light; it shone upon you. You have not constructed your faith piece by piece, and truth by truth; you inherited it as the heirloom of the children of God.

And, lastly, you have been shaped and formed from your baptism, without knowing it, to the likeness of Jesus Christ. As the potter lays the clay upon the wheel, and as it turns, shapes it with his 12 St. John xv. 16, 19.

hand, so from your earliest consciousness the grace of baptism, which you unconsciously received, has been elicited and shaped by the guidance of the Church, the counsels and charity of pastors, the Sacraments of grace, the Providence which has ordered all your life. These three things are gifts of God preventing the conscious action of your intelligence and will — ripening you in the life of grace, and preparing you for your life of faith on earth, and for your reward before the eternal throne. Who, then, has made you to differ from others but the Father of lights, by Whose will you are what you are?

Such are Christians in the world; and such ought, above all, to be the Catholics of England. They have been preserved by a singular election of grace. While the whole nation fell away from the unity of the faith, or were driven by bitter and relentless persecution from the land, a handful, few in number and hid out of sight, was preserved. The Kne of the faith has never been broken; its light has never been diminished; the whole revelation of God, the whole word of truth by which we are born again, has been preserved inviolate. The Catholic Church in England, pure in its faith, theology, discipline, devotions, hierarchy, priesthood, jurisdiction, is not only perfect as it was before the havoc of three hundred years ago, not only identical, line for line, truth for truth, feature for feature, with the faith of St. Augustine of Canterbury — which was the faith of St. Gregory and of the Catholic world at that time — but it has advanced in perfection and in the unfolding of its spiritual life with the growth of the Catholic Church to this day.

And while the Church in England has been rising again in all the fulness and completeness of its faith, the Christianity of England has been steadily declining. The old religious tradition has been dying out. Worldliness, indifference, materialism, are spreading fast. Nevertheless in what remains, I am thankful to know how much Christian belief, Christian morality, personal goodness, piety, generosity, justice, zeal, self-denial, uprightness of conscience, and fidelity to duty, may still be found. God knows I would rather believe it to be more than to be less. It is a profound sorrow to believe that the palmer-worm and the canker-worm have been eating away the Christianity of England, and that the vineyard which once was so luxuriant in leaf and fruit is now half barren and bare. I have a heartfelt and continual sorrow for the divisions and desolations of England; for the wreck which, year by year, has been made before our eyes in all that remained of the surviving Christianity of our civil state; for the unbelief, rationalism, scepticism, distress, and despair which pervades our private life, and is extinguishing the faith and the hope of multitudes.

In the midst of all this stands the Catholic Church, immutable and stedfast in truth, encompassed by a flood of errors. The speedy downward stream of unbelief has no power over it. All is running to seed around it, but its fruit never withers. It holds, teaches, and believes the Creed of Nicaea and of Constantinople, of Lyons and Lateran, of Trent and of the Vatican, without wavering, or explaining away of jot or tittle.

And it is not only in its internal and intellectual unity that it stands in contrast with the fragmentary, conflicting, and dissolving religions of England. In the midst of the disunion, the disintegration, the crumbling away of religious systems, its visible unity stands out definite and changeless. The voice of its authority is firm, just, and temperate; and the answer of obedience is prompt, glad, and complete. Why are we not torn and divided by ritualisms and appeals, parties and protests against bishops? We are men and Englishmen, and not Saints. We have a fund of contention in us on all things outside the sanctuary — sometimes even for things not far from it. But it all passes away. And the holy Mass goes on the same to-day as yesterday; and to-morrow it will be as to-day. Why is this, hut that the light and instinct of faith is mightier than all human wills, and we gladly submit all private opinions and claims to an authority we know to be divine? Surely this ' multitude of peace' is a supernatural inheritance, and of unspeakable price.

And, farther, there is on every side a restless, turbulent swaying to and fro of minds, like the waves of a troubled sea. From every part we hear one cry: 'What is truth? Where is it to be found? By what test can it be known? Is there nowhere any certainty about doctrines, about revelation, about Scripture, about Christianity, about the distinctions of right and wrong, about the freedom of the will, about the nature of the soul, about the existence of God?' The whole idea of certainty is obscured, the principle of certainty is rejected, the possibility of certainty is denied. Not only truths of the supernatural, but of the natural order are held as doubtful, or set aside as impossible of proof. This plague of doubt is spreading steadily through multitudes who hold fast by Christianity, but are daily becoming conscious of the illogical and incoherent basis on which the Reformation has placed them. In these last twenty years, more in number than I can count who remain, and probahly always will remain, out of the true fold, have told me of the pain and burden of doubt and of uncertainty which continually weighs upon them. Others again, and they too are many, whom I remember full of Christian belief in days gone by, now believe nothing. Doubt has done its work upon them. It has stolen away their faith, and left them without Christ and without God in the world.

Such is our modern England. And who has made you to differ? Why are you calm and certain in your faith, and not in faith only, but in philosophy, in the truths not of the supernatural order alone, but of the natural order likewise? It is not intellectual superiority, or power, or culture; far from it. Quoniam litteraturam non cognovi, introibo in potentias Domini. Though we may have but a slender literary culture, we have entered into the powers of the Lord. The divine tradition of the faith is under our feet as a foundation of immovable truth; the divine voice of the Church is the guide of our reason, confirming it with a certainty therefore divine, not only in the truths of revelation, but also in the truths of nature. We are indeed unintelligible to the men of the nineteenth century.

We are dogmatic, impracticable, one-sided, unconciliating, irreconcilable; for between faith and doubt, certainty and scepticism, there can be not only no understanding, but not even a truce. The sceptics have had their day; and, what is worse, the sophists are coming. An honest doubter is to be pitied; but a sophist is an enemy of human society. The philosophy of contradictions and of paradox is the lowest state of the human reason. To be in doubt, but to be in earnest, is to be respectable; but to trifle with both truth and error is a treason against the intelligence and the dignity of man. Such, however, is the world in which we live, sheltered from its taint by the Catholic tradition of faith and certainty.

You, then, ought indeed to be the first-fruits of Christian fidelity and Christian maturity in England. The memory of martys and confessors from whom you are descended, and of the great deeds and great sufferings of your Catholic lineage, or of the grace, not less than miraculous, which has brought you out of darkness into this marvellous light, and out of the turbulent sea of doubt to the immovable solidity of the Church of God — all this ought to inspire you with an ardent zeal to be not in word and in name, but in deed and in truth, the first-fruits of faith in this land.

EE

But what I say to you as Catholics, I say also to you still more as Catholic students. While England was Catholic, it formed many a school of Christian science and cultivation: above all, it created two which were called the eyes or the lights of England — the Universities of Oxford and of Cambridge. They were Catholic in faith, in science, in philosophy, in literature, in discipline, in morals. They were the first-fruits of the intellectual culture of Catholic England. Our Patron and Father St. Edmund, having been formed in the University of Paris, introduced the study of Aristotle into Oxford. He laid the foundation of the mental science which came down as an unbroken tradition until the other day. The Catholic University of Paris, infected and corrupted by secular and royal influences, was swept away by the atheistic revolution of the last century. The University of France has taken its place, claiming for the state the intellectual supremacy and guidance of men which belongs to the divine commission of the Church. The intellectual and moral condition of France bears witness to the deadly evils of this fatal change. In England, the downward movement has been slower, but it is now racing in speed. Three hundred years ago, Oxford rejected the faith and the theology of St. Edmund, but retained the philosophy he had taught.

It still blazoned its sacred legend: Dominus illuminatio me a. Aristotle was studied as the philosopher of the. natural order; and Christianity, broken indeed, but still honoured, was taught as a revelation of the supernatural: But that exists no longer. St. Edmund's faith went first, and was replaced by a mutilated creed. St. Edmund's mental science is now gone, and is replaced by a philosophy of which its promoters acknowledge, that no student can master it without doubting of the foundations of faith. That which was given for the confirmation of faith is now the gangrene which eats all faith away.13

And if such be the intellectual state, what is the moral? High and friendly authorities have told us, that in every hundred students, seventy so pass through Oxford that they cannot be said to be students: that is to say, the moral discipline fails to obtain from them such industry and conscientious study as to educate their minds. This relaxation is not so much in the intellect as in the will; and the will is relaxed, because the collegiate and personal discipline and moral guidance of the students is feeble or powerless. What wonder, then, if the other day the ancient Commemoration of the University was so dishonoured by uproar, that it must either cease

" See Note at p. 425.

to be, or migrate to some shelter from its own subjects? To all who cherish the old memories of Oxford, as bearing the first-fruits of the youth and the culture of England, these things are profoundly sad. They are indications of a decline which will make itself felt hereafter. Our national character is losing its grave dignity. The great school of respect for authority and for the rights of other men is the Catholic Church. Its Universities had a tradition of gravity and self-restraint, of dignity and order, which long survived the faith from which they sprung. But these too are going, if not already gone. St. Edmund would not find in Oxford the vestige of the University he loved. In the midst of its mediaeval splendours, the intellectual and moral anarchy of the nineteenth century has made its home.

These things I have said to awaken in you another motive of thankfulness. You are here under the patronage, and, I may say, in the home of St. Edmund. You have his faith, his theology, his mental science, his secular studies, his devotions, his discipline of spiritual perfection; the same sacraments, the same litanies and prayers, the same loving adoration of the Passion of our Kedeemer, the same filial piety to the Blessed Mother of God. If the Oxford of St. Edmund exists on earth, it is here. The Catholie Church, which created Oxford, has reproduced it in this place. The germ is small, indeed, but it is perfect in its type. In England at this time there are some twelve or fourteen colleges or schools, which in the last hundred years the Church has created. They are all of one and the same type, transmitting whole and perfect the tradition of Catholic faith and Catholic culture, reproducing what St. Edmund studied and practised at Paris and at Oxford. If these first-fruits of the poverty and fidelity of the Catholic Church, now dispersed all over England, were congregated in one place, there would he no unworthy picture of the Oxford which St. Edmund knew.

All these treasures' of our Catholic inheritance God has preserved and renewed to us; and upon this firm base are built up the studies and the sciences which from age to age the Christian progress of reason and culture has attained. We are ever moving onward in natural and human knowledge, ever immutable in the science of God. You therefore, as Catholics and as Catholic students, have a twofold motive for thanksgiving and for fidelity.

You have also a twofold duty.

1. The first is, to offer to God the first-fruits of your natural gifts. You owe to Him the best faculties of your intellect, and the best energies of your will.

These were given to you to be given back to His service; and that, not grudgingly nor with reserves, but with all your sincerity and all your strength. You owe to Him the industry of your boyhood, and the fresh vigour of your youth. Idleness, self-indulgence, squandering of time, waste of your mental and moral powers, are unworthy of those who are called to the perfect light of faith, and formed by the discipline of His grace to be the first-fruits of His Church.

Kemember that laborare est orare. Your studies are a part of your service to God. You are studying for Him. An idle youth is like a mildewed ear in the harvest-field. Be punctual to the hours of the day. Be prompt at the sound of the bell. Put your whole strength into what you are about. Languid studies, roving eyes, wandering thoughts, tasks done in haste, careless learning speciously covered over, these things are infidelities to the Spirit of Grace. We study as much with our will as with our intellect, and with our conscience as much as with our will. The good and faithful servant traded to the utmost with his lord's money. Whether you be destined for the world or for the altar, St. Edmund is your example. Even as a layman, he spent half his time in prayer. When he exchanged the secular for the sacred sciences, he sought his illumination more from God than from books. But he is a household name and image and tradition with you. His boyhood, youth, and manhood, his unsullied purity, his filial piety to the mother who formed him for God, his zeal and tenderness as a priest, his invincible fortitude as a Bishop of the Church of God: all these are before you as your light, encouragement, and strength.

2. You owe also to God the first-fruits of your grace. Some will give to Him the fresh and radiant offering of their baptismal innocence; others will offer the humility and self- chastisement of penance; or the fortitude and hardness of good soldiers of Jesus Christ; or the love and fervour of self-sacrifice in a life of labour for souls. Give yourselves to Him who gave Himself for you. Be generous, and He will not be outdone in generosity. He will add to you grace for grace, and sanctify you wholly. And when the great harvest-home is gathered upon the eternal hills, He will offer you before the Throne as the first-fruits of His most precious Blood.

I HOPE that I have not used a word in this sermon respecting the University of Oxford which cannot be justified by abundant evidence, beyond the reach of all objection. The present state of Oxford, both for its own sake, and for the sake of the country at large, cannot fail to be a cause of sorrow and anxiety, in which, for manifold reasons, I heartily share. The authorities on which I have relied are, Dr. Pattison, the Rector of Lincoln College, in his Suggestions on Academical Organisation, with especial reference to Oxford; and Mr. Goldwin Smith, in his Reorganisation of the University of Oxford, together with the evidence of Mr. Appleton and Canon Liddon, before the Lords' Committee on University Tests, in February last.

The Rector of Lincoln states, that fully seventy per cent of the so-called * students' at Oxford are in no sense, even in profession, students at all. He adds, that the degrees gained by such men denote no grade of intellectual cultivation. He describes them as ' the wealthy, luxurious, indolent, and uninterested tenants of college rooms.' ' If any proof could convince the advocates of intramural residence of the futility of college discipline, such a proof might be found in the mastery which the athletic furor has established over all minds in this place. So entirely are the tutors beaten by it, that to cover the disgrace of defeat, they are obliged to affect to patronise and encourage the evil. I know, therefore, that on this head I must look for no sympathy from college tutors.... They [i. e. cricket, boating, and athletics] have ceased to be amusements: they are organised into a system of serious occupation. What we call incapacity in young men is often no more than an incapacity of attention to learning, because the mind is preoccupied with a more urgent and all-absorbing call upon its energies. As soon as the summer weather sets in, the colleges are disorganised. Study, even the pretence of it, is at an end. Play is thenceforward the only thought. They are playing all day, preparing for it, or refreshing themselves after its fatigues.' P. 316.

I willingly pass over graver moral subjects, on which Dr. Pattison and Mr. Goldwin Smith enlarge. The latter says: ' To revive the faculty of theology, though of the utmost importance in what may be truly called a fearful crisis of religious faith, would at the same time be most difficult. Anglicanism, as I have said before, has developed no theology in the proper sense of the term... The difficulty would cease, if either the world would consent to receive back the authoritative theology of Suarez and the other Catholic Doctors, or decide that theological inquiry shall be free.'

The Rector of Lincoln also says: ' The faculty of theology must be considered in abeyance at present. There is indeed a scientific theology, and in the Christian records of the early and later ages the amplest material for various learning and critical investigation. But theology has not yet begun to exist as a science among us.' P. 319.

As to the results of the Oxford system of study on those who may be regarded as students, Dr. Pattison says: ' As mental training, it is surely most unsound. It cannot be called philosophical. It is rhetoric expended upon philosophical subjects. It is the reappearance in education of the ffotpiffrixri of the schools of Greece, condemned by all the wise.... In the schools of Oxford is now taught in perfection the art of writing leading articles.' P. 295. Again, he says: ' For my own part, I think the fears of the Catholic party, whether within or without the national Establishment, are substantially well-founded.'.... * To the Catholic youth, the conclusions he is taught come recommended by the " authority" of the teachers, and of the Church. To our students, the conclusions taught come recommended for adoption by the authority of fashion, or the current turn of thinking living philosophical minds, and of the prevailing philosophical literature.' He goes on to say: nevertheless, that they do not sufficiently require of the student to place himself in a position of absolute scepticism about everything. But he affirms that the Examination must 'come into conflict with any system which proposes to provide a priori conclusions in any branch of knowledge relating to the nature of man and society. Any system or corporation which supposes itself to be in possession of such propositions, may propose them to its pupils as true, and require their acceptance on the authority of the teacher. The Eoman Catholic Church does suppose and profess this.' P. 300.

Mr. Appleton, hefore the Lords' Committee, spoke as follows. After saying that there are, at any given moment, in the University ' three hundred men who are brought under the influence of the philosophy of modern times, which might, and which does,' as he thinks, ' materially undermine all existing beliefs,' adds: ' I think it quite impossible for any man to throw himself into the system of education for the final classical school at Oxford, at the present time, as so much knowledge, but really to assimilate it — I mean not only to study it ab extra — without having the whole edifice of belief shaken to the very foundation.' Qu. 490. — 'He returns to a new construction of belief after he has gone through the period of criticism and scepticism/ ' I should say Hegel's Philosophy of History is read as carefully as Aristotle.' 1 At this moment there are lectures being given, or about to be, in Oxford, on Hegel's Logic, which is one of the most revolutionary instruments that has ever been invented.' Qu. 506. — ' As a matter of fact, a man who has criticised all ideas for several years, and then is called upon to sign a test, and state his bond-fide adhesion to certain propositions, is led naturally to avert his mind from any consideration of those questions at all, because they now involve a contradiction; and by instinctively making both terms of the contradiction vague, he is able to reconcile them better. There is no set purpose in all this; it takes place almost unconsciously.' Qu. 524. — ' I believe the upsetting of his beliefs, and the entire loosening of them from all their moorings, is an inevitable consequence of the system of education which now exists in Oxford.' Qu. 527. — Being asked, 'Do you attribute this tone of thought, which has risen up so prominently in Oxford, to the study of Aristotle V he answers: 1 Scarcely at all. It arises mainly from a closer connection between England and the Continent. It is really a wave of thought which has come over from Germany.' Qu. 561.

It is therefore not surprising to read: ' No theology of any school is much read at Oxford. The study has been entirely uprooted by the action of tests.' Qu. 559.

We may sum up this evidence with the personal testimony of Canon Liddon, who said: ' Cases have come within my own experience of men who have come up from school as Christians, and have been earnest Christians up to the time of beginning to read philosophy for the final school, but who, during the year and a half or two years employed in this study, have surrendered, first their Christianity, and next their belief in God, and have left the University not believing in a Supreme Being.' Qu. 706.

The intellectual and moral agencies which caused the mournful anarchy of the last Oxford Commemoration are here abundantly revealed. It is time that all to whom our national name and fame and character are dear should return upon their steps, et antiquam exquirere Matrem.

The Holy See and the Bishops of England have warned all Catholic parents, that to send their sons to Oxford and Cambridge is to expose them to the loss of their faith. The parents who so act are guilty of grave sin before God.

AARON, the true, 8.

Abel, 9, 369.

Absolution, facility of, 217.

Adam, the first, 404; the Second, 9, 369, 405.

Agnes, feast of St., 303.

Agony of death, 105.

Aidan, St., 234, 256.

Alban, abbey of St., 127.

All-Hallows College, 355.

Alphonsus, St., a witness for God, 202; his freedom from sin, 203; his innocence, his mother, 205; his hatred of sin, 206; his zeal against sin, his custody of the senses, 208; his writings, 209; ordinations of, 211; his seminary, 213; his love of sinners, 215; his Moral Theology, 217; on bad books, 219; on the occasions of sin, 221; his power over souls, 223; enmity of the world against, 225.

Amain, 223.

Ambrose, St., 320.

America, 151.

Anglicanism, 149, 255, 326.

Anselm, St., 132.

Antoninus, St., 320.

Apocalypse, 31.

Apostles, 8, 10, 120, 201, 242, 327.

Aquinas, St. Thomas, 325.

Arianism, 176.

Aristotle, 419.

Armenian Church, 118.

Assistance, divine, 247.

Atheism, 323.

Augustin, St., of Canterbury, 413.

Augustin, St., of Hippo, 119, 205,

Authority, 249. Avranches, 152.

BAPTISM, 11, 248, 311, 407, 411. Barbary, 49, 98. Beatitudes, the eight, 409. Becanceld, Council of, 130. Bede, St., 186, 238. Belief, duty of, 24. Berghamsted, Council of, 130. Bishops of the Church, 12, 18,

153. Blood, the Precious, 25, 78, 113,

122, 208, 216, 252, 366. Body of Christ, 9. Bonard, Pere, 374. Boniface, St., 383, 392. Books, bad, 219. Boulogne, Dean of, 144.

Calvary, 101, 122, 189, 245. Calvin, 332.

Cambridge, University of, 418. Canterbury, St. Augustin of, 413; St. Thomas of, 123.

FF

Cardinals, 41.

Certainty, 415.

Charity, Sisters of, 46, 50, 55, 75,

86, 101. Charlemagne, capitularies of, 128.

Charles Borromeo, St., 63, 162, 198, 213, 226, 337.

Chatillon, 49.

Christendom, 39, 48, 88, 121, 135, 146, 151.

Christianity of England, 372, 413.

Church, the Spirit of God in the, 5; presence of the Spirit in, 7; the illumination of, 9; infallible voice of, 11, 18, 31, 33, 72, 164, 173, 191, 233, 247, 310, 325; test of the presence of, 13; Home the centre of, 15, 273; separation from, 17; Jesus speaking in, 19; divine doctrines of, 20; hatred of, 22; duty of obedience to, 24, 327; five liberties of, 126; beauty of, 233; faith required by, 241.

Clarendon, Constitutions of, 137, 141, 143.

Claver, St. Peter, 395.

Clement XIV., Pope, 224.

Cletus, Pope St., 14.

Comprehension, 178.

Comte, philosophy of, 322.

Conception, the Immaculate, 19, 29.

Concordats, 41.

Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul, 72.

Consciousness, 177.

Conversion of the heathen, 347, 386.

Corea, 376.

Corpus Christi, feast of, 163.

Councils, 133, 247, 327, 328; of Constantinople, 414; of Florence, 187; of Nicaea, 414; of Lateran, 414; of Lyons, 414;

of Trent, 21, 23, 42, 51, 179, 326; of the Vatican, 414.

Critical spirit, 327.

Cromwell, 30.

Croyland, Roger of, 145.

Cuthbert, St., 256.

Daniel, words of, 111. Decline of Christianity, 413. Deference to theologians, 330. Devotion to the Saints, 328. Disciples of Jesus, 327. Distinctions, national, 39. Divorce, 150. Docetae, 173. Docility, signs of, 328. Doctrines of the Church, 20. Dogma, immutability of, 187. Doric", Pere, 376. Doubt, 416. Drunkenness, 372. Duty of belief, 24.

Edmund of Canterbury, St., intelligence of, 311; his purity, union of all science in, 313; as a layman, 314; habits of, 315; vision of, 315; writings of, 316; his gift of science, 318; his truth and sweetness, 320; his love of Scripture, 337; rapture of, 339; introduced the study of Aristotle into Oxford, 418.

Education, Catholic, 290.

Emmaus, 179.

England, corrupt civilisation of, 351; responsibility of, 371; religious disunion of, 27; in closer relations with the Holy See, 118; the liberties of the Church violated by her kings, 136; spiritual destitution of, 150; the faith spreading in, 194; conversion of, 274, 284;

the hierarchy in, 280; her traffic in slavery, 388; the Catholics of, 412; the Universities of, 418.

Episcopate of the Church, 12, 18, 153.

Erasmus, 332.

Eternity, 178, 367.

Eucharist, the holy, 20, 163, 168, 172, 181.

Ezekiel, the prophet, 57.

FAITH, supremacy of, 290; infallibility of, 169; required by the Church, 241.

Fear of God, 317.

First-fruits, 402.

Florence, Council of, 187.

Formalism, 224.

Fruits of the Holy Ghost, 409.

France, nomination of bishoprics in, 41; the rich and poor in, 43; the Eevolution in, 45; seminaries in, 51; the martyrs of, 55; the glory of, 56, 353; baptisms of blood in, 87; the University of, 418.

Francis, St., poverty of, 45.

Gethsemani, 80, 189.

Gedeon, 407.

Gifts of the Holy Ghost, 316.

Glory, accidental, 38, 55.

Glories of Mary, 225.

God, the Spirit of, 3, 9, 18, 402, 409; the Word of, 5, 23, 32, 163, 166, 401; the Church of, 10, 16, 417, 423; the Saints of, 29,408; consciousness of, 177; the truth of, 238; authority of, 249; revelation of, 313; image «bf, 76, 365, 404; will of, 401.

Grace, the Pilgrimage of, 192.

Greek schism, 187.

Gregory, St., 247, 413. Guide, infaUible, 6.

HATEED of sin, 206. Heart of Jesus, 68, 345. Heirlooms of the children of God,

Henry II. of England, 126. Heresy, errors bordering on, 187. Heretics, madness of, 243. Holiness, way of, 12. Hypostatic union, 10.

IGNATIUS, St., 30, 63, 384. Illumination, 9, 411. Immaculate Conception, the, 19,

Image of God, 76, 365. Immutability of dogma, 187. Incarnation, the, 5; fulness of, 8. Index Expurgatorius, 220. Infallibility, active and passive,

246; of faith, 169. Instinct, 247. Intellect, 335. Iremeus, St., 131. Isaias, 4. Israel, 3, 233.

JANSENISM, 224, 332. Jeremias, 403. Jerusalem, 3, 31, 232, 242. Jesus, Society of, 46, 48, 75. Job, 220.

John Nepomuc, St., 123. Joseph, St., 207. Josephism, 149. Judge of the faith, 249. Judgment, private, 28.

KEYS, power of the, 134. Kingdom of God, 8, 14. Knowledge of God, 368.

LATEEAN Council, 414.

Laurence, St., 123.

Law of Christendom, 135.

Laxity, 224.

Liberties of the Church, 126.

Light, prayer for, 338.

Linus, St., 14.

Love of souls, 70.

Lukewarmness, 205, 213.

Luther, 332.

Lyons, Council of, 414.

Martyrdom, desire of, 73.

Martyrs of Paris, 374.

Maiy, glories of, 225; home of,

273. Mary Magdalen, St., of Pazzi,

Matrimony, Christian, 150. Mental prayer, 335. Milan, 162. Mistrust of self, 333.

Nationalism, 39, 118, 149.

Nations, consent of, 243.

Nazareth, 5, 20.

Nehemias, 263.

Negroes, conversion of, 386; slavery of, 388; despised and persecuted, 387; sufferings of, 389; reparation owed to, 391.

Nicsea, Council of, 414.

Nicodemus, 169.

Nineveh, 93.

Northampton, St. Thomas at, 142.

Novelty, fear of, 331, 335.

OBEDIENCE, duty of, 24. Oblation, perfect, 396. Olier, 41, 53.

Order, the supernatural, 324. Oxford, University of, 418, 420, 423 n.

Paris, Missionary College of, 374.

Paul, St., 24, 182, 309, 321, 408.

Paulinus, St., 186.

Pentecost, day of, 7, 9, 18, 201,

225, 244, 337. Peter Claver, St., 395. Peter, St., first of the Apostles,

13, 17, 170, 407. Penance, sweetness of, 217. ' Pharisees, 21. Philip Neri, St., 330. Philosophy, 177, 323. Pilgrimage of Grace, 192. Pius IX., 16, 266, 269, 280, 287. Poland, 162.

Pontiffs, the Sovereign, 17, 247. Pontigny, St. Thomas at, 143. Prayer, mental, 335. Priesthood, 50.

Reason, 170.

Reformation, the, 147, 154, 324,

416. Responsibility, of England, 371;

of the rich, 85. Right and wrong, 415. Rigourism, 217. Roger of Croyland, 145. Rome, centre of the Universal

Church, 14; liberty of appeal to, 135; love of, 273, 290. Rosalie, Soeur, 75. Rousseau, 322.

SACRAMENT, the Blessed, the Incarnation perpetually present, 163; the centre of divine facts and operations, 165; a true and personal presence, 167; the centre of divine worship, 168; known by faith, 170; our food, 172; known by a supernatural