CORNELL 
 
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Cornell University Library 
 
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 Nova et vetera : 
 
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Cornell University 
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NOVA ET VETERA 
 
 INFORMAL MEDITATIONS 
 
 FOR TIMES OF SPIRITUAL DRYNESS. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE TYRRELL, S.J. 
 
 SECOND /impression. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
 
 1898 
 
 t ,v 
 / 
 
908094 
 
 mibil ®betat : 
 
 Carolus Blount, 
 
 Censor Defufatus. 
 
 Jniprimatur : 
 
 4- HERBERTUS CARD. VAUGHAN, 
 
 Anhiep. Westmon. 
 
 [All rights reserved. 1 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 There is less apology needed than might perhaps 
 appear at first sight for offering to the public a book 
 which is hardly more than a record of private 
 musings. Doubtless it contains little or nothing 
 that has not been said before, and said better ; yet 
 in many cases the truths are said in the writer's 
 own way; and so far he can claim to bring forth 
 from his treasury old things and new — old, because 
 truth is eternal ; new, because its expression is 
 infinitely variable. To give a new edge to truths 
 and truisms blunted by use, it is not needful that 
 they should be clothed in language either gorgeous 
 or elegant ; but only that their expression should 
 be such as we are not accustomed to ; such, as to 
 make us stop and listen. Since, then, each indi- 
 vidual has his own individual language and accen- 
 tuation, it is always helpful to hear from others 
 truths which, formulated in our own way, pass 
 through our ears without friction and therefore 
 escape our attention. For this reason, it does not 
 seem altogether presumptuous or unreasonable to 
 flood the market with meditatioD books, provided 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 the authors can claim personality of manner, and 
 disclaim all pretence at novelty in point of matter. 
 A new gospel is not worth listening to ; while to 
 say the old things in the old words is tiresome. 
 
 These meditations are called "informal," because 
 the author has presented simply the substance of 
 the thought in each case without the formalities 
 of preludes, acts of the will, practical suggestions, 
 colloquies, and the like, which can be easily supplied 
 by those who are helped by method, and which 
 others will gladly dispense with. As regards the 
 work of the practical understanding and the will, 
 it is plainly more in accordance with the mind of 
 St. Ignatius Loyola that it should be the spon- 
 taneous outcome of our own reflection, rather than 
 an explicit suggestion from without. Hence the 
 points for meditation should rather address them- 
 selves to the receptive understanding and intellectual 
 memory. It may well seem to some that these 
 meditations are often abstruse and philosophical, 
 rather than devotional; but here again it may be 
 said that the error is on the safer side. For certain 
 minds it often happens that the points of popular 
 meditation books do not offer sufficient matter for 
 the mind to lay hold of; and without some such 
 purchase for the intellect the attention soon wanders 
 for sheer lack of interest. Most of these thoughts 
 are within the compass of even the least reflective, 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 and the few that may seem more difficult will find 
 a key in familiarity with those that are easier. 
 
 St. Ignatius was instinctively an opponent of the 
 theory which, on a misunderstanding of a Gospel 
 maxim, divorces intelligence from will in the work of 
 sanctification. " Sanctify them in Thy truth," was 
 our Saviour's prayer for His disciples, "Thy word 
 is truth." Holiness that rests on any other basis 
 cannot hold out against the tempest and the flood. 
 God's sayings kept and pondered in the heart, the 
 utterances of reason and of revelation, of common 
 sense and of Catholic faith, these are the daily 
 bread and manna of the soul : " The words that 
 I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life." 
 The wisdom which is hid from the wise and prudent 
 and revealed to little ones, is nevertheless real 
 wisdom ; and does not leave them as it finds them 
 in their ignorance and littleness, but gives them 
 understanding and a quick-minded intuition as 
 unerring as instinct. Nor is there any connection 
 between sanctity and stupidity. Divine love is 
 but an opening of the spiritual eyes to beauties 
 hitherto unsuspected. As hereafter, so also even 
 on earth, man is perfected by vision. No doubt 
 this highest intellectual perfection is compatible 
 with great deficiencies in the lower wisdom which 
 wins the admiration of the world ; but it is, 
 nevertheless, the truest and only essential enlighten- 
 
vl PREFACE. 
 
 ment. A clear understanding is a great grace, for 
 it will go more than half-way to kindle love in the 
 will ; whereas good-will without understanding is 
 a lion let loose. If the intellect needs the control 
 of faith, faith is perfected and served by intellect. 
 Therefore let no man sunder what God has joined 
 together. 
 
 As for the disorder in which these thoughts are 
 presented, it may be said that no particular advan- 
 tage was to be gained by a logical classification. 
 Had there been any pretence at following the 
 seasons of the Church, or at a complete treatment 
 of ascetical theology, a little violence might have 
 been used with improvement. But they have been 
 recorded as they occurred from time to time, 
 spontaneously, and unsought for, in no way as parts 
 of a whole. It would be vain to look for order 
 where none can possibly exist ; and their very dis- 
 order is more in keeping with their purpose. For 
 in hours of dryness and weariness, we naturally 
 turn from the monotony of method to seek relief 
 and variety in the unexpected, as one might 
 occasionally fly from the geometrical precision of 
 a Dutch garden to the freedom of some pathless 
 wilderness. Where the Latin has been quoted, the 
 appended translation is often free and unauthorized. 
 The same reflections and thoughts are no doubt 
 repeated over and over again; yet always with 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 sufficient variety in the setting to give them another 
 chance of striking home. Nor, as compared with 
 other meditation books, have we much reason to fear 
 the charge of vain repetition ; though it must freely 
 be admitted that there is one leading thought or 
 another which runs as a strain through the whole 
 collection, and binds them together with a unity of 
 spirit or ethos. The spirit of devotion to the Sacred 
 Heart, the idea of the Benignitas et Humanitas Dei 
 Salvatoris nostri, is one which it is the work of the 
 Society of Jesus to evolve into greater clearness 
 and distinctness, purging it from all admixture of 
 foreign elements inconsistent with its unity and 
 purity. Prior to the Jansenist controversy, there 
 lived side by side in the minds and writings of many 
 holy persons principles of piety and asceticism really, 
 though unobservedly, antagonistic to one another. 
 It was that controversy which first called for their 
 careful scrutiny and assortment ; and showed that 
 many of them were logically based on a mis- 
 apprehension of the relation of nature to grace, 
 and on the false supposition of an entire and fatal 
 divorce between them. The clear expression of the 
 mind of Catholic Christianity as to Jansenistic 
 principles was but the signal, so to say, for the 
 eradication of the tares. The work of their detec- 
 tion and severance from the wheat, lurking as they 
 do in the most unsuspected quarters, is a delicate 
 
vii! PREFACS. 
 
 and tedious operation still far from its completion. 
 For in the other extreme, there is current outside 
 the Church a low humanistic conception of Christ, 
 which uses and thereby renders suspect the very 
 words and phrases of Catholic truth. We have, 
 therefore, to steer a difficult course. Still, much 
 as these meditations and reflections insist on the 
 humanness of Christ and His Church, no one will 
 be likely to find fault with them as neglecting to 
 give due emphasis to the Divinity of our Saviour 
 and to the mystical aspect of the Catholic Church. 
 
 "And how am I to use this book?" one may 
 ask ; " in what order shall I take the meditations ? " 
 In any order whatever. They only pretend to 
 furnish raw material for thought, and in no way 
 to prescribe method or order. Those who desire 
 to have the preludes, colloquies, acts of the practical 
 understanding and of the will, fixed for them, will 
 find plenty of excellent books more suited to their 
 needs than this, which is directed to another need. 
 For they aim rather at guiding the stream of our 
 thoughts and affections in an orderly way and to a 
 definite end ; whereas it is the purpose of this little 
 book to set the stream flowing where, for one reason 
 or another, it has run dry. 
 
 G.T. 
 
 March 7, 1897. 
 
NOVA ET VETERA. 
 I. 
 
 REMEMBERING CHRIST. 
 Jesu dulcis memoria, dans vera cordi gaudia. 
 
 " Sweet is the remembrance of Jesus, giving true 
 joy to the heart." Love or charity is that joy 
 which the heart derives from the contemplation of 
 what is lovely or fair. There is no substantial 
 difference between the beatitude of the saints on 
 earth and in Heaven. This joy is to see God as 
 He is — videhimus eum sicuti est; a contemplation of 
 God under the aspect of His goodness, beauty, and 
 truth. We may truly say that charity is knowledge, 
 the gustus or appreciation of the lovableness and 
 beauty of Christ. He is the Summum Bonum — 
 " the Sovereign Excellence ; " that Fulcrum, quod 
 visum placet — "that Beauty whose Vision is joy." 
 Though not to all, but only to the little ones, does 
 He reveal Himself. Natural wit or science cannot 
 reveal Him. He must reveal Himself. There is the 
 dry, barren knowledge of a violet which the soulless 
 botanist can attain to : and there is the joy-inspiring 
 sense of its beauty which the child or the poet 
 
 B 
 
THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST. 
 
 experiences. It is the lingering memory, the con- 
 templative pondering on the beauties of the Spouse 
 that sets the soul aglow with passionate love. Such 
 remembrance is " sweet " to those who taste Him 
 with a mind taught by the Holy Spirit " to relish 
 what is right." Gustate et videte — " Taste and see." 
 Dans vera cordi gaudia. There is the false joy of 
 pride and self-satisfaction arising from continual 
 self - remembrance and self- contemplation, — the 
 "fool's paradise," in which we dream our dream 
 and hold it true; and there is a bitter sadness 
 where there is a full sense of one's own smallness, 
 and life's unmeaningness. And there is the true 
 joy which springs from the remembrance of Him 
 whose infinite fulness is the complement of our 
 infinite emptiness ; who made us nothing in our- 
 selves that we might be everything in Him. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST. 
 Sed super mel et omnia, ejus dulcis praesentia. 
 
 "But sweeter than honey, His presence." If 
 there is sweetness in the merely imagined or remem- 
 bered presence of the Beloved, much more in the 
 Real Presence. But what is the special gain of 
 presence, seeing that His beauty and lovableness 
 may absolutely be contemplated by memory as well 
 as by sight ? This seems ultimate and incapable of 
 analysis ; unless it be that beauty, like all possibles, 
 is altogether ordered to realization — good to be 
 actualized or realized ; good, if only it were ; and it 
 
THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST. 
 
 pleases, as possible, only with a derivative and depen- 
 dent pleasure. Yet this does not touch the case 
 where the beauty is known, not merely as a possible, 
 but as actual, though absent. Is it not that its 
 actuality, which is its crown, must also be contem- 
 plated and not merely remembered or inferred ; or 
 is it that a sense of physical nearness satisfies the 
 unitive appetite of love, which desires oneness in 
 every possible order, and that locaHzed beings seek 
 local presence ? Qui amat intelligit — " He who loves 
 knows." Bernard never asked why ; but spoke as 
 every lover has spoken, and felt as every lover has 
 felt, and as God the Lover of all, when He says : 
 " My delight is to he with the children of men." 
 " Father, I will that those whom Thou hast given 
 Me should be with Me;" or when He was made 
 Flesh and pitched His tent among us in the 
 mysteries of the Incarnation and the Eucharist, 
 and became Emmanuel — God with us; or pledged 
 Himself to dwell in our very heart and flesh, together 
 with the Father and the Holy Spirit : " We will 
 come and make our abode with Him." Cor meum et 
 caro mea exultaverunt in Deum vivum — " My heart 
 and my flesh rejoiced in the Living God." In the 
 contemplation, therefore, first of His beauty and 
 goodness, then of His Real Presence, our soul finds 
 its highest joy, and is most perfectly united to Him 
 by charity. 
 
THE PENITENTS HOPE 
 
 III. 
 
 THE penitent's HOPE. 
 Jesu, spes poenitentibus. 
 
 "Jesu, hope of the penitent." The "friend of 
 publicans and sinners " drawing all to Himself; . 
 veiling His justice in the cloud of mercy, sent 
 for the salvation of the lost, to call, not the just, 
 but sinners ; in no wise casting out those who 
 come to Him burdened and labouring; the Lamb 
 of God taking upon Himself the sins of the world. 
 Sinners feel no need of hope and encouragement, 
 except so far as they are penitent, sorrowful, fearful, 
 and downcast : to such the Baptist, that great 
 minister of penance, cries out : Ecce, Agnus Dei, ecce 
 qui tollit peccatum mundi — " Behold the Lamb of God, 
 who taketh away the sins of the world." 
 
 IV. 
 
 CHRIST AND THE SUPPLIANT. 
 Quam pius es petentibus. 
 
 " How pitiful to those that pray " " More 
 willing to hear than we to pray, and wont to give 
 more than either we ask or deserve; " pitiful to all 
 who ask, even when they ask unseasonably or ask 
 amiss, and He denies their request. Pitiful, when 
 He seems silent and austere and suffers us to 
 clamour after Him in vain, that we asking more 
 largely, He may give more liberally. Pitiful, when 
 in our folly we ask, not for the Bread of Life, or 
 
THE TREASURE SOUGHT. 
 
 the Fish, but for a stone or a scorpion. Pitiful, when 
 He refuses to promise us an unearned seat in His 
 Kingdom ; but pledges us instead a share in His 
 chalice and His baptism of blood. Pitiful, as 
 He would have us be, when He says, " Give to 
 him who asketh of thee, and from him that would 
 borrow of thee turn thou not away." " Freely ye 
 have received, freely give," " good measure, pressed 
 down, shaken together, and running over." 
 
 THE TREASURE SOUGHT. 
 Quam bonus te quserentibus. 
 
 " How good to those who look for Thee." Many 
 seek His gifts and graces; few seek Himself, the 
 Grace of graces. " What reward wilt thou have ? " 
 He asks of Aquinas. " None, but Thyself, Lord." 
 Dilectus mens mihi et ego illi — " My beloved for me, 
 and I for Him." He has promised that none shall 
 seek vainly Him who came to seek and to save them. 
 Quarite et invenietis — " Seek and ye shall find." But 
 how? "If with all your hearts you seek Me, ye 
 shall surely find Me ; " i.e., if we seek Him as the 
 necessary and all-sufficient Good ; or as the Magi 
 sought Him, not for their own sakes, but for His ; 
 not to get, but to give ; not to be honoured by Him, 
 but to adore Him. Quam bonus ! How good to 
 the half-fearful disciples who followed Him shyly, 
 when He turned round to encourage them : " What 
 seek ye?" -'Master," they say, "where dwellest 
 Thou ? " It was He they sought. Venite et videte — 
 
THE TREASURE FOUND. 
 
 "Come and see;" and they abode with Him that day. 
 How good to her who sought His Sacred Body in 
 the early morning before it was yet day, for " they 
 that seek Him early shall find Him." " Woman, 
 why weepest thou, whom seekest thou ? " " They 
 have taken away my Lord, and I know not where 
 they have laid Him." "Maria!" " Rabboni." 
 Quam bonus te qucerentibus. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE TREASURE FOUND. 
 Sed quid invenientibus ? 
 
 "But what art Thou to those that find?" 
 Invent, quern diligit anima mea, tenebo nee dimittam 
 — " I have found Him whom my soul loveth, I will 
 hold Him and will not let Him go." Qui invenit me, 
 invenit vitam — " He that findeth Me, findeth hfe." 
 This is that treasure hid in the field which when 
 a man hath found, pm gaudio illius, vadit et vendit 
 omnia—" for joy thereof he goeth and selleth all." 
 It is hid to all eyes — oculus nan vidit — "for eye hath 
 not seen it " — save to those which God has opened : 
 Aperi oculos meos et considerabo mirabilia de lege tua — 
 " Open my eyes and I shall see the wonders of Thy 
 law." For our eyes are holden so that we are blind 
 to our treasure when it is often close to our hand. 
 We walk with Him in the way, and converse with 
 Him, and gaze in His face, and all the while beheve 
 Him far away. We seek the living among the 
 dead. 
 
CHRIST'S VISITS. 
 
 VII. 
 
 CHRIST'S VISITS. 
 
 Quando cor nostrum visitas, 
 Tunc lucet ei Veritas, 
 Mundi vilescit vanitas, 
 Et intus fervet caritas. 
 
 " When Thou dost visit our heart." Christ, " the 
 Shepherd and Bishop of our souls," makes His 
 periodic visitation of our hearts in times of light 
 and consolation. It is not always visitation-time, 
 yet the effects of each visitation are to carry us on 
 to the next. So Ignatius bids us remember that 
 we may not waste such precious moments basking 
 in the sunshine which is given us, not for present 
 enjoyment, but for future use. As of old, God from 
 time to time "visited His people" through His 
 prophets, so He comes to our soul from time to 
 time. Tunc lucet ei Veritas — " Then Thy truth shines 
 therein." This is the first effect of His visitation. 
 Scrutabitur Jerusalem lucernis, illuminabit abscondita 
 tenehrarum, et revelabit consilia cordium — " He will 
 search out Jerusalem with torches, and bring to 
 light the hidden things of darkness, and will reveal 
 the secrets of hearts." He lightens the darkest 
 corners of our heart ; shows us our most secret 
 motives ; holds up to us a truthful mirror from 
 which we cannot turn our gaze ; humiliating though 
 the contemplation be. For we need now and then 
 to be disillusioned about ourselves, to be purged 
 from the poison of self-contentment by the bitter 
 hyssop of self-knowledge. Mundi vilescit vanitas — 
 
THE SOUL, AS A VINE. 
 
 "The empty world grows contemptible." This is 
 the second effect of Divine visitation ; in the dim 
 light many a shadow seems real and substantial ; a 
 painted Jezebel looks young and fair. But daylight 
 discloses the hollowness and unreality of such beliefs. 
 Living in the world, we cannot so withstand the 
 effect of universal example as not gradually to 
 become more impressed with its importance; less 
 alive to the unseen, true, and only realities. The 
 same inward light that shows us ourself, shows us 
 the world as it is, not as it seems. Et intus fervet 
 caritas — " And love glows within." But all would 
 be to no end did it not also show us the King in 
 His beauty and lovableness. Indeed, He, so seen, 
 is the light in which self and the world are revealed 
 in their ghastly nothingness. It would be a deso- 
 lating and bitter knowledge did it stop short of this, 
 which sweetens and consoles. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE SOUL, AS A VINE. 
 Repleti fructu justitiae. 
 
 " Being filled with the fruits of justice which are 
 through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God."^ 
 The fruits of justice are "love, joy, peace, ' &c. 
 They are the outcome of grace or justice turned to 
 good account, not stopping short with the foliage 
 of good words and pious conversation — " Though 
 I speak with tongues of angels and have not 
 charity," &c.; " Let us not love in word or in tongue 
 » PhiUpp. i 
 
FAITH AND PRACTICE. 
 
 [only], but in deed." Nor again, stopping short at 
 the blossom of good desires and velleities, which are, 
 so to say, good works in promise, and inchoatively. 
 " Through Jesus Christ ." He is the gardener of the 
 Householder who has taken my soul as a wild vine 
 and set it in the richest soil and sunniest corner of 
 His vineyard, and watered it with the dews of actual 
 graces from above, and from below with the streams 
 of living water beside which it is planted ; and has 
 digged round the roots by sorrows and humiliations 
 designed to soften and loosen the affections ; and 
 has pruned and trained the branches in lateribus 
 domus sues — " over the walls of his house," "to the 
 praise and glory of God," i.e., of the Householder 
 and Lord of the vineyard ; that He may glory in 
 this tree which by its fertility does credit to Him 
 and His care ; that He may not be disgraced by 
 it and say, " Cut it down, why cumbereth it the 
 ground ? " 
 
 IX. 
 
 FAITH AND PRACTICE. 
 Qui autem faclt veritatem venit ad lucem. 
 
 Faith, in those who have faith, does not vary 
 directly with evidence, but, as Aquinas teaches,* 
 according to the Divine lumen fidei whereby the 
 believableness stands out more brightly and clearly 
 to one than to another. Even in the natural order, 
 given equal knowledge of the proximate future, one 
 man's foresight is clearer, stronger, more efficacious 
 than another's. Children and savages are little 
 > C. Gent. iii. 38. 
 
to THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 
 
 affected by what they know mentally ; but much, by 
 what they see or imagine vividly, i.e., they fall short of 
 human strength and dignity in this respect. In an 
 age and country of faith the imagination is much 
 helped by externals and by the publicity of religion, 
 which is sensibly felt on all sides. Even when 
 practice is dropped, faith will remain in an 
 individual so environed ; for it is not tempted by 
 opposition, it is supported by the imagination, and 
 costs nothing. But here and now it is all other- 
 wise, and faith does not long survive charity. Even 
 for ourselves the impossibility of picturing the other 
 world when once we find that our childish imaginings 
 were but symbolic, makes it very unreal and so fai 
 ineffectual as a stimulus to action. But in proportion 
 as we act up to our knowledge it becomes real to us. 
 We thereby embody it in conduct, as a noumenal 
 cause is bodied in its phenomenal effect. This 
 principle is at the root of the power exerted on us 
 and on our faith by the lives and examples of 
 believers. 
 
 X. 
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 
 Erat Lux Vera quae illuminat omnem hominem. 
 
 " He was in the world, and the world was made 
 by Him, and the world knew Him not " may be 
 well applied to the world of intellect and knowledge, 
 which is the highest creation of the True Light. He 
 is in that world creating and causing all that there 
 is in it of light and truth ; and yet when He comes 
 to it from without as a Teacher, and as the Truth 
 
HELP FROM THE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 taught, it receives Him not : Hie est heres, it says, 
 venite occidamtis eum et hereditas erit nostra — " Here is 
 the Heir : let us slay Him, and the heritage will be 
 our own." Men want to have their reason for their 
 own heritage ; they will not have this Man to reign 
 over them. 
 
 XI. 
 
 HELP FROM THE MOUNTAINS. 
 Levavi oculos meos In monies unde veniet auxilium. 
 
 " I have raised up my eyes to the mountains 
 whence cometh my help " — (i) to the Mount of the 
 Beatitudes for light in the midst of darkness, from 
 Him who is the Way and the Truth, whose " word 
 is a light to my feet and a lamp to my path ; " (2) to 
 the Mount of Thabor, for hope in discouragement ; 
 hope in the " glory that is to be revealed " beside 
 which the sufferings before me are light, momentary, 
 and not worthy to be considered ; for if we suffer 
 with Him, we shall also reign — "it is good for us to 
 be here ; " (3) to the Mount of Olives, in temptation, 
 to the High Priest " touched with feeling for our 
 infirmities," "tempted in all as we are," "tasting 
 the weakness of the flesh," and overcoming it by 
 the willingness of the spirit "resisting even unto 
 blood" in His agony and conflict; (4) to Mount 
 Calvary for pardon and forgiveness when I have 
 fallen ; or when in terror for the sinful past, to the 
 Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world -, 
 (5) to the Mystical Mount Zion whither He has 
 ascended to the right hand of God to plead His 
 wounds for me " ever living to make intercession," 
 
ti HEAVEN AND BARTIt. 
 
 and to shower down in torrents upon the thirsty 
 earth the living water that springs from the five 
 "wells of the Saviour." 
 
 XII. 
 
 HEAVEN AND EARTH. 
 Auxilium meum a domino qui fecit coelum et terram. 
 
 " My help is from the Lord who has made heaven 
 and earth ; " (i) not as though I were nearly self- 
 sufficient, needing but a supplement here and there ; 
 now and then; nor as though God and I were 
 fellow-workers on a footing of equality ; nor as 
 though God, being chief labourer, needed me to aid 
 Him in occasional straits ; but because my helper 
 is my Maker, who works in me every good wish or 
 good deed ; whom of myself I can only hinder, and 
 can help only by not hindering; (2) "Who made 
 heaven and earth," and therefore rules them in all 
 things; from whom all power is derived. "Thou 
 wouldst have no power against Me were it not given 
 thee from on high." By whose sole permission, 
 for whose sole glory all that befalls me is ordained. 
 He has made heaven ; though He is heaven, and He 
 is not made. He has made Himself our heaven by 
 offering Himself to us as our reward — " I will be 
 thy exceeding great reward." He who has given 
 the end, shall He not give the means ? He who 
 has given Himself, " shall He not freely give us all 
 things?" (3) "He has made heaven and earth," 
 heaven first in the order of intention; and earth, 
 whose sole end is to be subservient to Heaven. 
 
DIVINE WATCHFULNESS. 13 
 
 (4) " Heaven is My throne and earth is My footstool." 
 Heaven, the place where He dwells in His fulness, 
 and satiates the Blessed with His presence ; earth, 
 where He is but visible as to His feet, in those who 
 represent Him to us, the last and lowest members 
 of His Mystical Body. Thus when ascending to 
 His throne, He is said to have left the vestiges of 
 His feet on Olivet. And again, in every creature 
 we see some vestige or footprint of the Creator. 
 But m Heaven alone, shall He Himself be seen 
 "as He is." Agam, heaven and earth, throne and 
 footstool, are one, being linked by Him who rests 
 on both- Christ is Jacob's ladder connecting earth 
 and heaven, by which angels ascend and descend, 
 and the commerce, broken off by sin, is renewed. 
 Finally, He has made heaven and earth ; for 
 heaven is the spiritual man, " the second Adam from 
 heaven, heavenly ; " born of the spirit, and spiritual : 
 earth, is the natural man, " the first Adam ; of the 
 earth, earthy;" born of the flesh, and fleshly. 
 Yet, He has made both ; each in its order " very 
 good " and He has wedded them together and said, 
 Crescite et muUiplicamini — " Increase and multiply." 
 
 XIII. 
 
 DIVINE WATCHFULNESS. 
 Non det in commotionem pedem tuum. 
 
 " He will not suffer thy foot to sHp ; " for 
 we are walking, as it were, in dim light over 
 a raging river on stepping - stones ; or picking 
 our steps from tussock to tussock, through a 
 
14 DIVINE WATCHFULNESS. 
 
 treacherous quagmire. And which of us can be 
 ever so continuously watchful over every step as 
 to escape destruction ? There are times when 
 we look back on past hair-breadth escapes, and the 
 seeming chancefulness of our safety ; and feel that 
 perseverance for a day, let alone for a lifetime, is 
 impossible. Then, we must remember that there 
 is another watching our footsteps more anxiously 
 than ourselves, of whom it is said : " He that is thy 
 guardian will not slumber : " i.e., will not for a 
 moment blink, or take His eyes off us : though we 
 should take our eyes off Him, and " slumber and 
 sleep " and forget Him, through fault or through 
 frailty. It is not enough to remember the presence 
 of God if we forget that it is the presence of One 
 whose attention and observation is concentrated on 
 us, scrutans renes et corda — " searching our inmost 
 heart." He is the Watchman who by night watches 
 the Israel of our soul. " Unless the Lord keep the 
 city, the watchman watcheth in vain." He is the 
 nurse and faithful spouse of the soul who sits with 
 us through the long night of our delirium, when 
 others lie dreaming and heedless. He is the Father 
 who watches the footsteps of the wandering prodigal 
 and sees him when yet a long way off. He it is who 
 seems to slumber within us when the frail vessel of 
 our soul is storm-tossed and water-logged, but whom 
 in their fury, no less than in their calm, the winds 
 and seas obey. " Behold, He that keepeth Israel 
 shall neither slumber nor slf-ep." 
 
MAGNIFICAT. ij 
 
 XIV. 
 
 MAGNIFICAT. 
 Ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generationes. 
 
 " For behold from henceforth all generations 
 shall call me Blessed : for He that is mighty hath 
 done great things for me." Mary's humility is not 
 blind to her great gifts, Fecit mihi magna — " He 
 hath done great things for me ; " and beatam me dicent 
 — "they shall call me Blessed." But they were 
 God's doing and the fruits of His blessing. 
 
 She lifts her eyes and looks into future ages and 
 sees every altar, shrine, picture, well ; every church 
 and sanctuary where she, the little maid of Nazareth, 
 shall be set up and worshipped and loved, blessed 
 among women, blessed of all times and nations. 
 She hears Gabriel's Ave re-echoed a million times 
 daily, age after age, " to the last syllable of recorded 
 time; " and then on, into eternity, when the ora pro 
 nobis shall have been forgotten together with the 
 remembrance of sin and sorrow, and the troubled 
 dream of mortal life ; and when saints and angels 
 will mingle Ave, gratia plena into the harmony of 
 their unending Tersanctus. And she hears Salve 
 Regina and Ave maris stella, Regina Cceli and the 
 Litany of Loreto, and Bernard's Memorare, and 
 the undying rhythm of the Holy Rosary, the fifteen 
 Mysteries, and the Seven Sorrows — all this she sees 
 and hears when, inspired by the Holy Ghost, she 
 cries : " Behold from henceforth all generations 
 shall call me Blessed " — Blessed, not as the primal 
 
l6 EXAMPLE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 source, but as the recipient of blessings — " for He 
 that is mighty hath done great things for me and 
 Holy is His Name." Et misericordia ejus a progenie 
 in progenies, timentibus eum — " And His mercy is 
 towards them that fear Him ; " for, the proud and 
 unbelieving who do not fear His wrath, feel no need 
 to cry for mercy. Our very fear is the most effectual 
 appeal for pity; as when a little dog crouches in 
 abject terror at our feet and disarms our anger. 
 
 XV. 
 
 EXAMPLE OF THE SAINTS. 
 Spiritus quidem promptus est, caro autem infirma. 
 
 (Collect for St. Callistus.) " O God, who seest 
 how through weakness we fall away," Apart from 
 our sins of malice, our infirmities tend continually 
 to weaken charity and separate us from God. 
 Spiritus promptus, caro infirma — "The spirit is ready, 
 but the flesh weak." There is nothing sustained in 
 our love, which now and then flames up and forth- 
 with begins to dwindle. Repeated experience of 
 this tends to discourage us by a conviction of our 
 own fickleness. But if we know it, God knows and 
 sees it too, " who remembers that we are but dust ; " 
 "all flesh is grass, and its glory," its fervour, its 
 aspirations, " are as the flowers of the field. The 
 grass withereth, the flower fadeth." 
 
 "Mercifully restore us to our love of Thee." 
 "If we confess our sins," if we frankly acknow- 
 ledge our fault, He will have mercy, and restore us 
 not only to our former love, but to a greater. For 
 
GOD IN MAN. 17 
 
 by such relapses and renewals we progress like the 
 incoming tide. Our hearts are in God's hand ; He 
 alone can make us sorrow for coldness and wish for 
 restoration ; and this very wish is an earnest that 
 He is ready to fulfil it if we do not resist. " By the 
 example of Thy saints." God uses the ministry of 
 creatures for our conversion, which thereby become 
 graces and sacraments in His hands. The love of 
 a Paul, an Augustine, a Bernard, a Francis, may be, 
 through His grace, the means to rouse us to wonder 
 what it was they saw that we do not see ; to long to 
 enter into their peace and serene joy. For this is 
 even natural, as when we see one rapt in the reading 
 of a book whose meaning is to us incomprehensible ; 
 or at least uninteresting. Converte nos Deus Salutaris 
 noster et averts iram tuam a nobis — " Convert us, 
 O God our Saviour, and turn away Thy anger from 
 us." 
 
 XVI. 
 
 GOD IN MAN. 
 Diliges proximum tuum sicut teipsnm. 
 
 If our direct end and happiness is to get to love 
 God, and to unlove all that is distasteful to Him ; 
 the love of our neighbour is but the same thing 
 viewed on another facet. If amare et amari — "to 
 love and to be loved " — expresses the deepest yearn- 
 ing of the human soul, nothing should conduce 
 more to our joy in life than this truest charity. " As 
 thyself" is no equation, but an identity; God does 
 not here implicitly bid us to love ourselves first and 
 then our neighbour equally, but He says : " Die to 
 C 
 
iS GOD IN MAN. 
 
 thyself, forget thyself, and let thy neighbour take 
 the place of self; " Non considerantes quce sua sunt, sed 
 qucB aliomm — " Not considering our own things, but 
 the things of others." When the virgin loves Christ 
 as her Spouse, it does not mean that she has another 
 spouse, but that He is to her as a spouse and 
 infinitely more. Identified with others, we shall 
 "rejoice with them that rejoice and weep with 
 them that weep," as He did who came to minister 
 to others and to give His Life as a ransom for many. 
 " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, therefore hath 
 He sent me to preach the Gospel to the poor, to 
 heal the broken-hearted ; to preach redemption to 
 the captive and deliverance to the slaves, to pro- 
 claim the acceptable year of the Lord." This is to 
 " put on Christ ; " to sanctify ourselves ; to "praise, 
 reverence, and serve God " in our neighbour, and 
 "by so doing to save our souls." Nor does such 
 charity grow without laborious exercise. We must 
 begin by services rendered from a sense of duty and 
 with no sweetness. Then, since all love what they 
 labour for — even as God loves the troublesome souls, 
 or mothers their crippled children, or scrapegrace, 
 thankless sons — love will waken in our heart ; and 
 habit will make easy and pleasant the movements 
 which were stiff and jarring, while the rust of self 
 lay thick on our affections. Such charity means 
 the extirpation of all carnal and sensual and worldly 
 love from the soul ; and the less we distinguish it 
 from the love of Christ our Saviour, the better. 
 When we look on our crucifix we should see through 
 and beyond to the wounds of Christ's Mystical 
 
GODS BOUNTY. 19 
 
 Body; and when we look on human suffering, 
 sorrow, weakness; we should see therein Christ 
 crucified. 
 
 XVII. 
 god's bounty. 
 
 Oculi omnium in te sperant Domine. 
 " The eyes of all look to Thee, O Lord," like 
 the anxious eyes of a dog waiting to be fed by the 
 scraps from his master's table ; yet not presuming 
 to snatch. Et tu das escam illorum in tempore 
 opportuno — " And Thou feedest them at the right 
 time," for the dog does not know the tempus 
 opportunum — "the opportune moment," as his master 
 does, but is continually on the strain not to miss 
 it when it arrives. So we should abide God's 
 own good time, who gives us the hunger no less 
 than the food. Si tardaverit expecta eum — " If He 
 tarry, wait for Him." Aperis tu manum tuam — 
 "Thou openest Thy hand." God's open-handed- 
 ness towards us contrasts with our close-fistedness 
 towards Him and His. " He fills," to overflowing, 
 " the hungry with good things ; " " good measure 
 pressed down running over." He fills every living 
 thing with abundance ; much more those that live 
 the life of grace with the Bread of Life. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 THE PROOF OF GOD'S WORD. 
 Ignitum eloquium tuum vehementer. 
 
 " Thy word is tried exceedingly as in the fire." 
 The true doctrine of life is that which will " console 
 
20 THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF CHRIST. 
 
 US in our lowness" — Hcec me consolata est in humilitate 
 mea, which will go with us " through fire and water 
 and lead us to refreshment." Where is the philosophy, 
 outside that of the Man of Sorrow, which has " good 
 news for the poor," the maimed, the halt, and the 
 blind. HcBc me consolata est in humilitate mea; and, 
 "therefore, Thy servant loveth it." 
 
 XIX. 
 
 THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF CHRIST. 
 Ecce totus mundus post eum abit. 
 
 " Lo, the whole world is going after Him," 
 which is true, not of all men, but " of all sorts and 
 conditions of men ; " old and young; male and 
 female, Jew and Greek, ancient and modern, &c.; 
 every form and variety of humanity finds its 
 aspirations and ideals realized in Him who is 
 " the Man " — par excellence. None other has ever 
 been so "run after:" Speciosus forma prce filiis 
 hominum — " Fair to behold, beyond the sons of 
 men ; " albeit those who run, are weighted with 
 the cross before they can follow Him. And 
 that other greater world which runs not, stands 
 amazed, and says : " Lo, the whole world is gone 
 after Him! " for "darkness has blinded their eyes" 
 to the " King in His beauty." Non est species ei, they 
 say, neque decor, et cum vidimus eum non desideravimus 
 — " He has no beauty nor comeliness. We have 
 seen Him, and see nothing to desire about Him." 
 " But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and 
 ye know all things and need not that any man 
 
GIVING TO THE POOR. 21 
 
 should teach you." He has anointed our eyes that 
 we may see Him "as He is," and healed our fevered 
 palate to " taste and see." His Name is as fragrant 
 spikenard poured out, whose odour iiUs the whole 
 world. Trahe me post te, in odorem curremus unguen- 
 torum tuorum — " Draw me after Thee, that I may 
 run in the wake of Thy unguents." 
 
 XX. 
 
 GIVING TO THE POOR. 
 Abiit tristis, 
 
 " He went away sorrowful." It is as making 
 us selfish and indifferent to those who have not, 
 that possessions are an impediment to salvation. 
 Hence it is not enough to sell all, unless we give 
 all to the poor, and follow Him who is the Friend 
 and Servant of the poor; so that having given 
 them our possessions we should then give them 
 ourselves. Non qucero donum tuum, they say to us 
 by the mouth of the Poor Man, sed te — "I seek 
 not your gifts, but yourself." How hard for those 
 who have riches, talents, influence, friends, precious 
 boxes of spikenard, to enter in the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. The news that all these gifts are not for 
 themselves but for others, sends them away sad ; 
 and sadder as their possessions are greater. Blessed 
 is He of whom it is written : dispersit, dedit pauperibus 
 — " He hath scattered His gifts to the poor," and 
 blessed are those who rise up, leave all, and follow 
 Him; and make a great banquet for Him and for 
 His friends, the publicans and sinners. 
 
ST. ANDREW. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 ST. ANDREW. 
 
 O Bona Crux ! quae decorem ex membris Domini suscepistl. 
 
 " O good Cross, which hast won beauty from the 
 touch of God's limbs." As the garments and 
 belongings of the saints become relics worthy of 
 veneration, so all that Christ used, or even touched, 
 became full of quasi-sacramental virtue: poverty, 
 labour, sorrow, and shame, or in one word, the 
 cross. Qucs decorem ex membris Domini suscepisti. 
 Electa digno stipite, tam sancta membra tangere. We 
 forget that the cross was to the ears of Jew and 
 Greek what the gallows is to ours, a word of 
 infamous association. How lovable then must He 
 be whose love could make so lovable, a thought 
 so unlovely ! Who could make St. Andrew cry 
 out : " O cross, long desired, tenderly loved, cease- 
 lessly sought, and at last made ready for my 
 thirsting soul." " Take me from among men, 
 and restore me to my Master." Such is the 
 aspect of death to the saints. Mori lucrum — 
 " Death is gain." It is true also of that death, 
 "precious in the sight of the Lord," by which the 
 saints die daily, which lifts them up above earth, 
 nearer to Heaven ; takes their erring heart from all 
 base affection, and restores it to its Master who 
 made it for Himself. Each cross or sorrow is a 
 step in Jacob's ladder. And yet when so lifted up 
 they draw all men to themselves, and thereby to 
 Christ ; and being themselves nearer to God, they 
 
NIGHT AND DAY. as 
 
 are truer mediators between God and man. It was 
 the tasting of death and sorrow that made Christ 
 a compassionate and sympathetic High Priest. 
 " May He through Thee receive me, who through 
 Thee redeemed me." Through His Cross alone, 
 and in union with it, do our crosses save us, — all 
 making one mystical body of suffering, whereof 
 Christ's suffering is the head, and our sufferings the 
 members; just as there is a mystical body of prayer 
 and of praise and of grace and of glory, whose head 
 and plenitude is hidden with Christ in God; whose 
 members and branches are still growing day by day 
 towards the fulness of perfection predestined from 
 eternity, " Filling up in our body what is wanting." 
 Peter and Andrew, the two first called, were both 
 crucified. Hcbc est vera fraternitas — "This indeed is 
 the real brotherhood," for the true sheep of Christ 
 are branded with the sign of the Cross, sj'mbolized 
 by the cross in Baptism, traced tam in fronte, quam 
 in corde, on the brow, that we may glory in the 
 shame : on the heart, for it is not suffering, but 
 sufferings loved and borne for His sake that mark 
 us His. 
 
 xxn. 
 
 NIGHT AND DAY, 
 Nox praecessit ; dies autem appropinquavit. 
 
 " The night is past, the day is at hand, let us cast 
 away the works of darkness and put on the armour 
 of light." Night, the time of dreams and unrealities, 
 when we are alone and unobserved of men ; a time 
 of preparation for the day when light shows us 
 
24 NIGHT AND DAY. 
 
 surrounding realities, which before were veiled, and 
 brings us into the converse of men and under their 
 observation. " The things which appear are but 
 temporal," but the hidden realities, which underlie 
 appearances, are eternal. The only solid utility of 
 life's dream, is as a preparation for the dies Domini — 
 "the day of the Lord," which is to bring to light 
 the hidden things of darkness, and to render to 
 every man according to his works ; and " in the 
 brightness of His coming," to dispel all the doubts 
 and darknesses which make human life so full of 
 sadness and mystery. " While the bridegroom 
 tarried they all slumbered and slept." No healthy 
 subject, none but a somnambulist would go abroad 
 in the day in night-clothes. We are therefore to 
 get ready to rise from sleep, to cast aside the works 
 of darkness as a night-garment, and to clothe our- 
 selves as those who "walk in the light even as He 
 is in the light." Our works cover our natural 
 nakedness and characterize us. In them and under 
 them are we seen. All dreams, illusions, ambitions, 
 attachments, which tie us to this unreal life, which 
 make us believe in it, or which arise from our belief 
 in it, are works of darkness. Surge qui dormis — 
 " Rise, sleeper," lest the day come upon you 
 suddenly, " as the lightning that shines from 
 east to west," " as a thief in the night." " But 
 put ye on the Lord Christ," for this is the 
 " armour of light," the garment of those who walk 
 as in the day. " Put ye on," i.e., be so united with 
 Him, transformed into Him, that He may own us to 
 be His, and may not be ashamed of our nakedness 
 
CHRIST, OUR SERVANT. 25 
 
 " before the angels of God." " Put ye on," not a 
 "putting on," or pretence, or material following, 
 but that true " imitation of Christ," which grows 
 from an inward personal love of Him, and sympathy 
 with His ideas and tastes. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 CHRIST, OUR SERVANT. 
 Filius hominis non venit ministrari, sed ministrare. 
 
 "The Son of Man came not to be served," yet 
 Mary and Joseph served Him ; and the devout 
 women, and Martha, and Nicodemus, and others. 
 Yet it was not for this, as for an end, that He came, 
 " Lord and Master " though He was. It is no 
 man's vocation to be served ; and if we are served, 
 it is to free us, not for our own leisure, but for a 
 fuller service of others. He came "to serve;" to 
 kneel and wash the feet of sinful man, to be " an 
 eye to the blind, a foot to the lame," to be a 
 physician, a guide, a shepherd ; and when He had 
 given His labour and all else, at last "to give His 
 Life a ransom for many." If it is great love to die 
 in the service of another, it is far greater directly 
 to give one's life for the life of another. Ecce 
 quomodo dilexit — " Behold how He loved us." 
 
26 THE SECOND COMING. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 THE SECOND COMING. 
 Videbunt Filium hominis venientem in nubibus. 
 
 " Then shall they see the Son of Man coming." 
 He comes in two ways : as Redeemer, as Judge. 
 He comes first in the obscurity and darkness of 
 this life by secret inspirations, knockings, and warn- 
 ings ; not forcing Himself on our wilfully averted 
 gaze, yet found readily by those who watch for 
 Him betimes, " who follow the star " with great 
 joy ; anticipating them, waiting at their door in the 
 dim morning of their conversion. But for many, 
 His voice is first attended to in the final trumpet 
 call ; He is first seen when He flashes forth to 
 Judgment from the East. "Then (and not till 
 then) shall they look upon Him whom they have 
 pierced." Then shall He " come in power," with 
 the ministers of might to force His way and to 
 tread down His enemies with everlasting destruc- 
 tion ; those, namely, who would not admit Him 
 when He came in suppliant meekness to the door 
 of their heart. Then shall He come " in Majesty," 
 He who in the crib and on the Cross and on the 
 altar, has emptied Himself of His glory, so that 
 there is neither form nor comeliness about ■ Him, 
 save to the anointed eyes of faith, or to the eyes 
 of those who have seen Him transfigured even in 
 the day of His earthly humiliation. 
 
THE HOLY NAME. ^^ 
 
 XXV. 
 
 THE HOLY NAME. 
 
 Nil canitur suavius 
 Auditur nil jucundins 
 Nil cogitatur dulcius 
 Quam Jesus, Dei Filius. 
 
 "No smoother song." No rhythm runs more 
 easily or sweetly ; no melody more simply ; no voice 
 so rude or feeble, but finds it within its compass, 
 without strain or effort. In ore mel mirificnm — " A 
 wondrous honey to the lips," says Bernard, echoing 
 David's Quam dulcia faucibus meis eloquia tua, super 
 mel ori meo — " How sweet Thy words to my mouth, 
 more than honey to the taste." From the abundance 
 of a loving heart the mouth of the lover speaks 
 of the beloved, naturally, easily, in season, unaggres- 
 sively, as do the saints ; nothing forced, or stilted, 
 or violent, or tasteless. 
 
 " Nought more gladly heard." To hear of Him 
 gladdens us; it is not a theme which wearies or 
 palls. For when our affection is fixed on another, 
 we lead others to speak of him by a thousand subtle 
 little artifices. In aure duke canticum — "A sweet 
 strain for the ear." Like some sweet, familiar song 
 laden with the purest and best associations, which 
 we ask to hear again and again. Yet it may be 
 that, through the bad taste of the singer, we would 
 rather miss the melody altogether than hear it ill- 
 handled and profaned. 
 
 " No sweeter thought." Cf. Jesu dulcedo cordium. 
 It is the thought that banishes all bitterness, and 
 
28 THE HOLY RELICS. 
 
 uproots every radix amaritudinis ; the cure for pes- 
 simism and cynicism with regard to ourselves and 
 others, which makes us think gently, wisely, and, 
 what comes to the same after all, justly of human 
 nature, with its rents and wounds and weaknesses ; 
 with its wonderful " obediential " capacities to be 
 raised from nothing to everything ; from the mire of 
 bestial degradation "to the right hand of the Majesty 
 on high" crowned with glory and honour, "all things 
 being put in subjection under its feet." The lower, 
 the meaner, the more revolting, seem the depths to 
 which humanity may and does sink ; the better we 
 appreciate the genuflection at the Homo /actus est. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 THE HOLY RELICS. 
 Si quis mihi ministraverit honorificabit eum Pater meus. 
 
 The Holy Relics speak to us of the honour which 
 God Himself pays to His saints : Gloria hcec est 
 omnibus Sanctis ejus — "This is the honour due to 
 all His saints ; " and : " If any man serve Me, him 
 will My Father honour, and We will come and make 
 Our abode with him." The power of God's spirit 
 seems to linger and brood over every fragment or 
 relic of those whose death was " precious in the 
 eyes of the Lord," every hair of whose head was 
 named and numbered. If the King Himself so 
 honours them, can it please Him that His subjects 
 should neglect them so hghtly ? Again, these relics 
 speak to us of the future resurrection and glorifi- 
 cation of those bodies which were the shrines of 
 
THE HOLY RELICS. 29 
 
 grace, and of whose archetype it is said: "Thou wilt 
 not suffer thy Holy One to see corruption," and 
 therefore they remind us of the sacramental sanctity 
 of Christian flesh and blood, never to be violated 
 by any blot of unchastity under pain of sacrilege 
 against the temple of the Holy Spirit. Lastly, 
 they speak to us of the power of Christ which is 
 to raise us from the dead, and to spiritualize our 
 mortal clay, changing the body of our humiliation 
 into the fashion of His glorious Body by that power 
 whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Him- 
 self. For to Him, as man, all power in Heaven 
 and earth, over spirit and matter, is given, by 
 whom, as God, " all things were made," in whom 
 God in the beginning created Heaven and earth. 
 As the winds and seas obey Him, so every power 
 of nature ; even the strongest, the most dreaded, 
 the most inevitable law of decay, destruction, and 
 death. " When He shall have put all things under 
 His feet," every rebel force, physical, spiritual, or 
 moral, then " the last enemy that shall be destroyed 
 is death." O mors ubi victoria tua? mors ubi 
 stimulus tuus ? — " O death, where is thy sting ? " 
 Through Christ its sting of reproach and shame 
 has been taken away, since dying He has sanctified 
 death, and ensured its final overthrow. Beati mortui 
 qui in Domino moriuntur — " Blessed are the dead 
 who die in the Lord." 
 
30 THE SENSE OP SIN. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 THE SENSE OF SIN. 
 De profundis clamavi. 
 
 " From the depths have I cried." Heaven and 
 Hell, i.e. — Holiness, which raises us above the world 
 and above ourselves, and Sin, which pulls us down 
 and ties us to earth — are opposed as height and depth. 
 Tu solus sanctus, tu solus altissimus — " Thou only art 
 holy. Thou only art most high." Here David, out 
 from the depths of his sinfulness, from beneath the 
 " floods and billows that have gone over him," cries 
 up, as to one too far removed to hear with the ears 
 of justice, yet trusting that mercy will be less hard of 
 hearing. " Let Thy ears be attentive," as though it 
 would need some strain to catch so feeble and distant 
 a sound. " Attentive " as their ears who listen with 
 bated breath for a sign from one buried in some mine 
 or cavern whom they seek to rescue. This Sense 
 of our own lowness and distance from God makes 
 our voice carry more surely than if we deemed 
 ourselves within easy talking distance. In vocem 
 deprecationis mece — " To the sound of my depreca- 
 tion." Not supplication, but deprecation; — the 
 prayer for deliverance from the justly merited 
 punishments of God ; from the gathered thunder- 
 storm of wrath ready to break over our head if we 
 do not cry aloud to God to spare us. It is not a 
 cry for pity as to a passer-by ; but a cry to an 
 offended God to save us from Himself: Averte iram 
 tuam a nobis — " Turn from us Thy anger." God's 
 
FEAR OF GOD'S SCRUTINY. 31 
 
 mercy is understood only when we consider the 
 all-destroying force of the indignation which it 
 fetters and restrains ; when we cower beneath the 
 uplifted rod or tremble in the fierce glow of that 
 " consuming fire." 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 FEAR OF god's SCRUTINY. 
 Si iniquitates observaveris Domine, Domine quis sustinebit. 
 
 " If Thou, Lord, wilt search out faults, who 
 can ever be saved ? " " Take this white robe," 
 says the Church to us at our Baptism, "and see 
 that thou carry it spotless before the tribunal of 
 Christ." And yet after all she has done for us — 
 even for the very best of us — after all her teaching, 
 guidance, instruction ; after absolutions, and bless- 
 ings, and Eucharists, and anointings ; the most she 
 can say of us at the end, when the priest turns 
 away from our grave with the final De profundis, is : 
 Si iniquitates observaveris Domine, Domine quis susti- 
 nebit. It is only through God's uncovenanted 
 mercies that there is hope for us at all. " Enter 
 not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord," no, 
 not even on the expressed terms of the New 
 Covenant of mercy, " for in Thy sight shall no 
 man living be justified." A microscope with a 
 strong light will reveal roughnesses and rottennesses 
 where weaker vision sees all smooth and sound. 
 We may well distrust even our seeming innocence 
 and wonder anxiously how our purest actions will 
 appear in the brilliant white light of God's presence: 
 
32 MARYS CROWN. 
 
 Dies Domini revelabit — " God's day will disclose it." 
 In manibus tuis sortes mecB; God meantime holds our 
 lots hidden in His own hand. Were they in the 
 hands of blind chance we might tremble, but in 
 God's hands they are safer than in our own. 
 
 " Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my 
 spirit," the hands that made me and fashioned me ; 
 that have sustained and borne me up ; that were 
 nailed to the cross for me ; that have touched me 
 and healed me ; in which my name is graven never 
 to be obliterated, even were I to be lost for ever. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 MARY'S CROWN. 
 In capite ejus corona stellarum duodecim. 
 
 " On her head a crown of twelve stars," that is, 
 the choir of the twelve Apostles enthroned around 
 Mary in Heaven, as of old they circled her about 
 on the day of the Church's birth at Pentecost. 
 They are, before all others, her crown, as St. Paul 
 says of his spiritual children, " Ye are our joy and 
 our crown." She has borne them in Christ Jesus; 
 they are the choicest trophies of her tears and 
 prayers ; of her sorrows and sufferings. And this, in 
 proportion, is true of every soul, whether called or 
 chosen. Each of us is called to be a star in Mary's 
 crown. Let us not disappoint her of the jewel for 
 which she has paid so great a price. 
 
BLESSED MARGARET MARY. 33 
 
 XXX. 
 
 BLESSED MARGARET MARY. 
 Ubi thesaurus, ibi cor. 
 
 Collect : " O God, who didst wonderfully reveal to 
 Blessed Margaret Mary the unsearchable treasures 
 of Thy Sacred Heart." The grace of seeing the 
 treasures of the Sacred Heart in such a light as 
 will move us strongly, is not within our natural 
 powers, but is a revelation kept from the wise and 
 prudent and given to babes. It means seeing God 
 as our Treasure, or Summum Bonum; seeing our 
 happiness to consist in a personal absorbing love of 
 Him in omnibus d super omnia — "in all and over all," 
 who has so loved us. To " dwell continually in 
 that same Heart " is to be there in thought and 
 affection at all times, and to be " had in everlasting 
 remembrance," by Christ our Lord. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 BLESSED JOHN BAPTIST. 
 Regnum coelorum vim patitur et violenti rapiunt illud. 
 
 "A reed shaken by the wind," is he who is 
 carried hither and thither by the fashions and 
 speculations of the hour ; by the contrary impulses 
 of universal human respect ; or by his subjective 
 feelings, passions, and moods. " Clad in soft 
 raiment," is the delicate, sensitive, enervated, effemi- 
 nate type, so common among the cultured enemies 
 of Christianity, the dilettanti humanist or philc- 
 D 
 
34 HOPE, NOT FRESVMFTIOH. 
 
 sopher, whose taste is revolted by the hard-lined 
 definitions of Catholicism ; its severer doctrines of 
 Divine justice; its practice of mortification. Oppo- 
 site to both types we have the Baptist dominated 
 by a single idea, usque ad mortem — " even unto 
 death," — a man of one love, and one work, and yet 
 withal, so gentle, so humble, so tender, the " friend 
 of the Bridegroom." 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 HOPE, NOT PRESUMPTION. 
 
 Qui Mariam absolvisti 
 Et latronem exaudisti, 
 Mihi quoque spem dedisti. 
 
 Qui Mariam absolvisti — " Thou who didst pardon 
 Mary." While we derive hope from the freeness 
 and fulness of Mary's pardon ; the rich and abundant 
 graces showered upon her ; the height of contem- 
 plative love to which she was raised from out of the 
 mire of sensuality; still we must not forget the 
 intensity of her sorrow ; the profusion of her tears ; 
 the depth of her humility ; the sincerity and finality 
 of her conversion. We must also remember that 
 her sins were sins of frailty, not of malice, or un- 
 mercifulness, or selfishness. Else perhaps she may 
 be an occasion to us of presumption rather than of 
 hope. Et latronem exaudisti — " And didst listen to 
 the thief." Here too there was a free and instan- 
 taneous pardon of one whose whole life, probably, 
 was passed in sin or forgetfulness of God. Hodie : 
 mecum — " To-day : with Me." But then, what 
 humility 1 Nos digna factis recipimus — " We receive 
 
A CRY FOR MERCY. 35 
 
 the due of our deeds." What fear! Nonne et tu 
 times Deum? — " Dost not thou fear God ? " What 
 faith ! Domine, . . . in regnum tuum — " Lord, when 
 Thou comest into Thy Kingdom." What con- 
 fidence ! Memento mei — " Remember me." How 
 many get the grace of dying on the cross beside 
 our Saviour ? Here again there is ground for 
 reasonable hope, but not for presumption or 
 deferring repentance till death. Is there any 
 instance on record of one being saved who trusted 
 to a death-bed repentance ? Mihi quoque spem dedisti 
 — " To me also Thou accordest a hope." If my 
 faith, humility, fear, love, contrition, is so far behind 
 theirs, what hope can I draw from their case ? This 
 — that these graces and the grace of repentance 
 is itself from God, and not refused to those that 
 ask it. For to wish for it, and ask for it, is from 
 God, who thereby shows Himself willing to finish 
 what He has begun. " He that comes to Me, I 
 will in no wise cast out," and " no man comes to 
 Me except the Father draw him." 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 A CRY FOR MERCY. 
 Miserere mei Deus. 
 
 " Have mercy upon me, O God." It is no cry to 
 a pitiful onlooker for dehverance from an evil for 
 which he can feel pity alone ; but a cry to one who 
 is justly wroth with us, and whose hand is raised 
 to strike. Sana animam meam — " Heal my soul," we 
 cry, not as to a physician, but as to a destroyer who 
 
36 A LILY MID THORNS. 
 
 can spare as well as strike, quiapeccavi tihi — "because 
 I have sinned against Thee." Miserere, as coming 
 from the sinner, means parce — " spare us." This 
 conception is obscured by the growing tendency to 
 ascribe all moral evil to infirmity, and to deny malice 
 and responsibility. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 A LILY MID THORNS. 
 Sicut lilium inter spinas sic arnica mea inter iilias. 
 
 " As a lily mid thorns, so my darling among the 
 daughters of men," Mary's soul is a lily from the 
 spotlessness of its purity, the fragrance of its charity, 
 the grace and delicacy of its form. A lily hedged 
 round with thorns, cruel and unsightly. For love 
 of this lily the Son of God has entangled Himself 
 amidst the thorns, mingling with "the sons of men, 
 whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue 
 a sharp sword," that at length, rent and bleeding, 
 He might grasp for Himself, if no other, at least 
 this one full fruit of His Incarnation and Passion. 
 And this in a measure is true of each single soul 
 which by purity and charity, fair and fragrant, bears 
 some distant semblance to the Immaculate, and 
 may, through and with her, be culled and gathered 
 into one bouquet of passion-flowers. It has been 
 sought through thorns and briers, at the cost of 
 piercing pain and copious blood-shedding. And 
 further, if we regard the virtue of loving purity, 
 and pure love as a lily which we ourselves should 
 covet and apprehend, let us be sure that it can be 
 
SOWING IN TEARS. 
 
 37 
 
 reached only by those who will struggle forward to 
 it through the thorns of difficulty, perplexity, and 
 painful mortification: who grasp it with bleeding 
 hands. And those who would preserve it when 
 grasped, must hedge themselves round with thorns, 
 with safeguards and precautions, with the thousand 
 little weapons which, weak in themselves but strong 
 in their multitude, keep the world, the flesh, and 
 the devil at a safe distance. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 SOWING IN TEARS. 
 Qui seminant in lacrymis, in exultatione metent. 
 
 " They that sow in tears shall reap in joy." The 
 Son of Man is the Sower who, at His Incarnation 
 and Nativity, went forth to sow the seed of the Word 
 of God. And He sowed in tears, a Man of Sorrows 
 and acquainted with grief. But at the end of the 
 world He will send forth His angels to gather His 
 elect from the four quarters of the earth, to reap and 
 bind in sheaves the fruit of His tears ; and then He 
 will return Home in joy and triumph, " bearing the 
 sheaves in His bosom " — veniens veniet cum exulta- 
 tione portans manipulos in sinu suo. In whatever 
 work we do for God, whether our own sanctifica- 
 tion or that of our neighbour, this law holds true. 
 We sow in tears, in weakness, in discouragement, 
 in pain, in adversity ; and what our tears might 
 water in vain for ever, God in His own good 
 season, often when hope is at its last gasp, fertilizes, 
 blesses, fructifies with abundant and joyful increase. 
 
38 OVERRULING PROVIDENCE. 
 
 Thus what Blessed Monica sowed mid the rain of 
 her tears, she reaped in the sunshine of great joy. 
 The wounded, hfeless Body which Mary laid in the 
 ground and watered with her tears, she received, 
 glorified, into her bosom with the joy of Easter. 
 The dead in Christ whom we have sown in tears, 
 we shall reap in joy. He who has left father or 
 mother, or lover, for Christ's sake, albeit with tears, 
 shall receive an hundred-fold in this world and in the 
 world to come life everlasting. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 OVERRULING PROVIDENCE. 
 Ipsa me deduxerunt et adduxerunt. 
 
 " Send forth Thy light and truth ; it is they that 
 have led me and brought me to Thy Holy Mount 
 and to Thy Tabernacle." It is they, and not I 
 myself. Whether in the external history of my 
 vocation, or the internal history of my spiritual 
 training, I can do nothing, have done nothing but 
 stand in my own light. It is almost in spite of 
 myself that I find myself where I am, and what I 
 am, such as I am. " All we like sheep have gone 
 astray ; we have turned every one to his own way ; " 
 for we have no power of self-guidance, errantes et 
 vexati — "wandering and harassed." As one who 
 drives sheep through the crowded mazes of a city 
 must run before them and block this way and that; 
 and almost force and frighten them into the right 
 path ; so does the " Shepherd and Bishop of our 
 souls" deal with our waywardness. We can look 
 
GOD WORKS QUIETLY. 39 
 
 back on the past and see how design has ruled 
 everywhere : even when we felt most independent, 
 most self-determining, we were but as clay in the 
 hands of the potter. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 GOD WORKS QUIETLY. 
 Post ignem, sibilus aurae tenuis. 
 
 "God was not in the rushing wind," not in those 
 reformers who force their way on by violence, 
 sweeping all before them by the impetus of their 
 self-will, uprooting rocks in their onward rush. Such 
 winds may be His messengers of wrath, by per- 
 mission rather than by mission — at least, so far as 
 they have slipped the guiding rein, and carry on 
 for self, what was begun for God. And "God was 
 not in the earthquake," in those radicals who are so 
 keen to see the rottennesses of the present system ; 
 so blind to its strength ; who are zealous to pull 
 down the old fabric before they have so much as 
 planned the new ; who trust in logic and legislation 
 rather than in affection and discipline : men who 
 love the excitement of cataclysms, the thrill of a 
 social upheaval, the shock of city crashing to the 
 ground. And "God was not in the fire," in the heat 
 of violent anger and animosity, "breathing forth 
 threatenings and slaughter ; " in the controversial 
 spirit of personal rancour and fierce indignation. 
 Ira interdum movemur et zelum putamus — " Often we 
 are stirred by anger and call it zeal." But at last 
 there came sibilus aurce tenuis — "the whisper of a 
 
40 FAITH, FIRE-TRIED. 
 
 gentle breeze ; " and God was there; whose whisper- 
 ing grace is so weak to all seeming, so easily resisted 
 and turned aside, so quickly outclamoured and 
 drowned by the tumult of passion ; and yet so 
 powerful and subtle in its influence, winding its 
 way quietly round every obstacle ; using every little 
 chink and crevice as a door to the ear of our heart ; 
 stealing in among us " in our midst when we know 
 Him not ; " known to us only when perhaps He has 
 vanished, and we remember " how our hearts burned 
 within us while He yet spake with us on the way.'' 
 We must do His work in His own way, whether it 
 regard ourselves or others ; not rushing forward 
 blindly to our goal ; nor shaking the foundations 
 into ruin ere we have planned the new structure ; 
 nor heating our soul with fierce, blinding indigna- 
 tion against ourself or others ; for God is not in the 
 hurricane; not in the earthquake; not in the fire; 
 but in the whisper of the gentle breeze. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 FAITH, FIRE-TRIEU. 
 Suadeo tibi emere a me aurum ignitum, probatum. 
 •' I urge thee to buy of Me gold, fire-tried and 
 approved." Those vendors who force their wares 
 on us are usually self-interested, looking to their 
 own profit. God persuades us to buy, solely out of 
 love for us ; for He longs to give, yet will not give 
 gmtis or unasked. Hence He persuades us, He 
 makes us want His wares and ask for them. " He 
 is more willing to give, than we to pray," and His 
 
THE NATURE OF SIN. 4T 
 
 first gift is to make us willing to pray. How does 
 He persuade the Laodiceans ? By rebuking them 
 lovingly, quos amo arguo et castigo — " Whom I love I 
 rebuke and chasten ; " by showing them their state 
 of delusion, in which, being poor, blind, and naked, 
 they fancy themselves rich, and clear-sighted, and 
 clad. Bonum mihi quia humiliasti me ut discam justi- 
 ficationes tuas — " It is good for me that Thou hast 
 humbled me that I might learn thy justifications." 
 And what is the Aurum ignitum, this gold tried and 
 approved by fire ? Faith, in its widest sense ; the 
 faith that has been through the fire of temptations 
 and come out pure and purged of its dross. We are, 
 then, to pray not merely for faith, but for the perse- 
 cutions and temptations by which faith is purified ; 
 nay, we are to purchase this tried faith as the reward 
 of merits and good works. Such a faith is God's 
 richest gift. " Lord, increase our faith." 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 THE NATURE OF SIN. 
 
 Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognosco ; et peccatum meum 
 contra me est semper. Tibi soli peccavi et malum coram te feci. 
 
 " For I acknowledge my iniquity." We are 
 willing enough to acknowledge our weakness, but 
 not so willing to acknowledge our wilfulness. " The 
 serpent beguiled me," we say, or "The woman 
 whom Thou gavest me." God knows every excuse 
 and allows for it ; so that we need never excuse 
 ourselves before the all-knowing and all-just. It 
 is our faults we must acknowledge, not our frailties. 
 
42 THE NATURE OF Sm. 
 
 Peccavi nimis mea culpa, mea culpa, mm maxima 
 culpa, i.e., I did wrong and did it wilfully and 
 inexcusably. " If we confess our sins, He is faithful 
 and just, to forgive us our sins." It is not as a 
 declaration or publication that sacramental con- 
 fession is necessary for forgiveness ; but as an 
 acknowledgment of guilt. It is impossible to 
 forgive one, in the strict sense of the term, who 
 excuses himself for the injury he has done us; or 
 who does not acknowledge, at least inwardly, that 
 he is. inexcusable. 
 
 Peccatum meum contra me est semper — " My sin is 
 always before me," i.e., he is haunted and dominated 
 by the thought of his sin. Coepitflere ; he has entered 
 on a life of weeping and penance. This peccavi colours 
 every action, and gives it a reparative value. If our 
 sins are always before us, God " will cast them 
 behind His back; " if we continually remember them, 
 God will forget them : " Their sins and iniquities will 
 I remember no more." If we remember our debts, 
 we shall forget our debtors; if we remember oiir 
 debtors, God will remember our debts. A steady, 
 unbroken gaze on our sinfulness and wilfulness, will 
 provide us with a sombre background against which 
 the mercy and loving kindness of God will shine out 
 more brightly. The more one grows in intimacy 
 with Christ, the deeper is the sense of sin and our 
 regret that, even to some extent unwittingly, we 
 should have offended Him, and must daily and 
 hourly pain Him by our gross ways and ignorant 
 inconsideration. 
 
 Tibi soli peccavi — " Against Thee alone have I 
 
TRANSLATION OF THE HOLY HOUSE. 43 
 
 sinned." Sin is often an injury to our fellows, always 
 an injury to ourselves ; in itself and in its undying 
 effects it is a disturbance and source of further 
 disturbance to that moral order, which is the chief 
 and formal part of the universal order. It is 
 humiliating, degrading, miserable. Yet all these ills 
 vanish in comparison with the principal malice; 
 namely, the injury to God, the contemptuous 
 defiance of One so great, so powerful, so terrible in 
 His wrath ; so infinitely good to all men and to me ; 
 so evidently good in Himself. Malum coram tefeci — 
 " I have wrought evil in Thy presence," i.e., in the 
 very face of God, advertently, knowingly; in the 
 very bosom of God, where He carries me, nourishes 
 and cherishes me. Filios enutrivi et exaltavi et 
 spreverunt me — " I have nurtured and reared up 
 children who have scorned Me." Not in the thought 
 of God's dead, passive presence, but of the all- 
 attentive presence of One, cui omne cor patet, omnis 
 voluntas loquitur et quern nullum latet secretum — "to 
 whom each heart lies open ; each wish is eloquent ; 
 each secret revealed," do we find a continual 
 restraint for good. 
 
 XL. 
 
 TRANSLATION OF THE HOLY HOUSE. 
 Domum tuam decet sanctitudo. 
 
 Consecrated by the mystery of the Word made 
 Flesh ; itself the tabernacle in which He dwelt among 
 us with Mary His Mother and Joseph her spouse, 
 what might not its walls tell us could they but 
 
44 ST. LUCY. 
 
 speak, and echo back to us Gabriel's Ave, and 
 Mary's Fiat and the converse of those thirty years. 
 In a far truer sense, however, was Mary herself the 
 House of God consecrated by the indwelling of the 
 Incarnate; as even we are each of us consecrated 
 by every new access of grace, every Eucharist and 
 sacrament. What has been the converse of our 
 heart as compared with Mary's ? Should we wish it 
 to be revealed ; or to be closed and sealed up for 
 ever in silence ? Ne reminiscans — " Remember not, 
 Lord, our offences." 
 
 XLI. 
 
 ST. LUCY. 
 Domine dilexi decorem domus tuae. 
 
 All are not able or called to minister to the 
 richer adornment of God's visible sanctuaries. It 
 suffices if they do not themselves defile them, and 
 if they honour those whose privilege it is to beautify 
 them. Nor are all able or called to adorn the 
 sanctuary of God's spirit with the grace of virginity, 
 though none shall defile that temple with impunity. 
 It was this love and passion for the beauty of God's 
 spiritual sanctuary (Domine dilexi decorem domus tucE 
 et locum habitationis glorice tuce — " Lord, I have loved 
 the beauty of Thy house and the dwelling-place of 
 Thy glory "), which inspired St. Lucy with a love 
 of virginity, such as compelled her to give away her 
 dowry, and to refuse marriage at the risk of being 
 denounced as a Christian. Is this faith in God's 
 mystical indwelling, this admiration of chastity as 
 
ST. MARTIN. 45 
 
 in itself beautiful and befitting, the root of our care 
 for holy purity, or is it rather with us a matter of 
 blind duty and a fear of mortal sin without any 
 sympathy with the motive of the law that binds us ? 
 
 XLII. 
 
 ST. MARTIN. 
 
 Desiderium habens dissolvi et esse cum Christo ; scio quia 
 manebo et permanebo vobis omnibus ad profectum vestrum. 
 
 " Lord, if I am necessary for Thy people, for 
 their sakes I do not refuse the labour." As he in 
 vision beheld our Lord clothed with the garment 
 bestowed upon one who had begged in His name ; 
 so in the needs, weaknesses, and dangers of Christ's 
 flock he by faith beheld Christ beseeching him not 
 to desert Him but to help Him. Nor does he say 
 "for Thy sake," but "for their sake," loving them 
 not with a derived extrinsic love, but for that which 
 they are in themselves, that which God has made 
 them. " If I am necessary." Which of us is so 
 necessary that God could not effect His purpose 
 without us, or by more efficient instruments ? Yet 
 love starves unless it can minister, and believe itself 
 necessary to the beloved. Wherefore God has 
 taken to Himself a mystical body full of needs ; He 
 has made His extrinsic glory dependent on us, that 
 we might be able to exercise oar love by service. 
 For our sakes He makes us necessary to Himself, 
 willing from each a service that He will take from 
 no other. Non recmo laborem. " Better to be exiled 
 with Thee on earth, than to possess Heaven without 
 
46 The spirit Of gladness. 
 
 Thee," says ^ Kempis; but Martin's place with 
 Christ was already prepared in Heaven. " Better," 
 he seems to say, " to wander with Thee on earth, 
 than even to be with Thee in Heaven, if Thy people 
 have need of me ; " better to be away from our 
 Lord and to be with those whom He loves more 
 than Himself, and to whom He has transferred all 
 that debt of love we owe to Him. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF GLADNESS. 
 
 Gaudete in Domino semper ; et iterum dice, gaudete. Modestia 
 vestra nota sit omnibus hominibus. 
 
 Gaudete in Domino semper — " Rejoice in the Lord 
 always." Severe austerity and gloom, or a tiresome 
 seriousness in those who make profession of greater 
 piety, is a grave scandal to the young and buoyant 
 and healthy-minded, who thus begin to regard 
 Christ's yoke as onerous and depressing. There is 
 no small charity in the gaiety of the saints, in all 
 that makes religious life easier and brighter for 
 others ; just as there is no small scandal or gain to 
 the devil in any outward sadness which has the 
 contrary effect. There is certainly no harm or 
 hypocrisy in suppressing the appearances of inward 
 trouble, heaviness, and depression, which we are in 
 some degree subject to at times. The professional 
 grumbler is often interesting at the moment, but the 
 depressing after-effects more than counterbalance 
 this slight advantage. Our likes and dislikes are 
 much and foolishly intensified by sympathy. What 
 
THE SPIRIT OP GLADNPSS. 4> 
 
 was bearable while we but noticed it ourselves, 
 becomes unbearable when others have noticed it to 
 us. There is of course a criticism which is but the 
 outcome of a just judgment, and neither proceeds 
 from, nor results in, any aversion or bitterness of 
 heart ; and is compatible with the wise, kindly temper 
 of a soul which, conscious of its own frailty, can 
 " make allowance for us all ; " which is surprised at 
 nothing, scandalized, embittered by nothing. Gaudete 
 semper, need not therefore mean that blatant, silly 
 praise of everybody and everything, which well- 
 meaning ignorant people suppose to be a laudable 
 sacrifice of common-sense, truth, and reason in the 
 interests of charity. 
 
 Modestia vestra nota sit omnibus hominibus — " Let 
 your restraint be manifest to all." Our joy is not 
 unrestrained, but tempered by sorrow, and directed 
 by charity. We rule it and are not to be ruled by 
 it. So restrained and clipped, it strikes root deeper, 
 and does not dissipate and expend itself faster than 
 it grows, or lead to the violent reactions of those 
 who give way to wild extravagances of hilarity. It 
 is, therefore, quiet and, one might say, " well-bred," 
 never unkind, or selfish, or inconsiderate; being 
 chiefly for the sake of others, it draws and does not 
 repel. \Ve like to feel that those who rejoice with 
 us in our joy, would be the first to weep with us in 
 our sorrow. 
 
4? ST. STANtSLAVS. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 ST. STANISLAUS. 
 Properavit educere ilium de medio iniquitatum.. 
 
 " God hastened to withdraw him from the 
 midst of iniquity." " Hastened," as it were to 
 the aid of one in imminent danger, ne malitia 
 mutaret animam illius — " lest wickedness should 
 alter his mind." Some would shrink from the 
 suggestion that had Stanislaus lived, his fervour 
 and childlike enthusiasm might have chilled and 
 died away. And yet this is to misunderstand the 
 grace of final perseverance, or death at an opportune 
 moment. For any one to continue long in virtue, 
 without grace, is not possible. Fascinatio enim 
 nugacitatis obscurat bona et inconstantia concupiscentice 
 transvertit sensum sine malitia — "The spell of trifles 
 blinds us to the real good, and our inconstant affec- 
 tions pervert the rectitude of our understanding ; " 
 the judgment is bound to be blinded in no long time 
 by the universal example of worldliness. Strive as 
 we will, we must feel and think with the crowd ; and 
 what to our calm solitary reason is mere nugacitas, 
 or trifling, fascinates our imagination when prized, 
 worshipped, and pursued by millions. And besides 
 this, the fickleness of our affections and emotions 
 forbids us to rely on the long continuance of our 
 firmest resolves and most faultless innocence. Hence, 
 not from any merit, but in His free goodness, quia 
 placens erat Deo anima illius — " for that his soul was 
 dear to God," He snatches that pure soul away from 
 
ST. STANISLAUS. 49 
 
 even the first touch of corruption, that He may have 
 it faultless before Him, without sign of past rents 
 closed up ; without the seams and scars of forgiven 
 sins. Ne malitia mutaret intellectum ejus aut ne fictio 
 deciperet animam illius, 
 
 XLV. 
 
 ST. STANISLAUS. 
 Cani autem sunt sensus hominis, et setas senectutis vita immacnlata. 
 
 " O God, who amongst the other miracles of 
 Thy wisdom didst bestow the grace of matured 
 sanctity upon tender youth." ^ A miracle, because 
 wholly outside the ordinary laws and workings 
 of grace, according to which sanctity increases 
 gradually on the principle : habenti dabitur — " to 
 him, that hath, shall be given " — in proportion, 
 that is, to the use of graces already received. The 
 offer of so great and heroic a love at so early 
 an age, before one could possibly have climbed up 
 to it by the ordinary methods, altogether un- 
 usual. It is most untrue to say that we have all, 
 even remotely, grace to be as St. Stanislaus. Even 
 supposing perfect correspondence from the earliest 
 dawn of reason, few would come anyway near to 
 him in the longest lifetime. That we are only what 
 we are, as compared with what we might be, is no 
 doubt due to our want of perfect correspondence. 
 So, for example, in point of mental excellence : 
 genius, general or particular, is a gift which can be 
 cultivated, or let run wild, or lie idle ; and one with 
 1 Collect for St, Stanislaus. 
 
 r. 
 
50 ST. STANISLAUS. 
 
 less ability may use and cultivate it faithfully to its 
 utmost capacity, yet he has not half so much to 
 educate or draw out of himself as another. 
 
 "Mature sanctity in early youth," ^ suggests a 
 monstrosity rather than a miracle— an old head on 
 young shoulders. Far be such horrors from the 
 God of beauty and proportion. The sense is, that 
 the liberality of God's grace can perfect love, in a 
 moment, beyond all the results of protracted corres- 
 pondence to ordinary graces ; as in the case of her 
 who passed from many sins to much love at one 
 glance from God's mercy. "Thou hast pierced 
 my heart with one glance of Thine eyes." Conversus 
 Dominus respexit Petrum — "The Lord turned and 
 looked on Peter." 
 
 " We may hasten to enter eternal rest." * As the 
 Universal Church hastens to her rest by so much as 
 she hastens to fill up the number of the elect, the fore- 
 ordained measure of fruit to be gathered from the 
 Tree of Life; similarly, each predestined soul can 
 hasten or retard its entrance into rest, as it is eager 
 or remiss in attaining the degree of sanctification 
 requisite for its peculiar predestined place in 
 Heaven. Yet for some the longest life is needed 
 for the completion of their allotted task, being called 
 to a greater fulness of merits. 
 
 > Collect for St. Stanislaus. " Ibid. 
 
ST. STANISLAUS. 51 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 ST. STANISLAUS. 
 Et complexans eos, benedicebat eos. 
 
 " He took them up in His arms and blessed 
 them," can be applied to Stanislaus, not merely as 
 a child in years, but as a child in heart ; gifted with 
 that straightness and singleness of purpose, that 
 absence of guile and duplicity, that faith of mind 
 and pliability of will which facilitate God's mastery 
 over us. Also, with that improvidence as to the 
 future, that concentration on the present, that blind 
 confidence in the power and good-will of others, 
 which characterizes childhood. Wherefore God 
 took him up in His arms and blessed him. Took 
 him up above earth and nearer Heaven, even while 
 yet on earth ! above harm and danger, as a -child 
 who runs in terror to its mother's arms is lifted up 
 to safety, altissimum posuisti refugium tuum, non 
 accedet ad te malum — "Thou hast set Thy refuge 
 very high so that evil cannot come nigh to Thee." 
 Took him up, that He might embrace him and have 
 him nearer to the Divine Heart. Took him up, that 
 he might be carried forward swiftly and not lag 
 behind and get lost, or, hand-led, totter along with 
 slow uncertain steps, like most of us who so try the 
 patience of God and hinder Him in His course. 
 Took him up, as the good shepherd carries the 
 lambs in his bosom, while he can only lead slowly 
 and gently those that are with young. Took him 
 up, finally, to His embrace in Heaven, that he might 
 
52 PERSEVERANCE. 
 
 behold the King in His beauty, not looking upward 
 from below, but face to face, sicuti est. " My father 
 and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord 
 hath taken me up." 
 
 XLVII, 
 
 PERSEVERANCE. 
 Initio cognovi de testimoniis tnis. 
 
 " From the beginning I have known about thy 
 Testimonies." Some have known and loved God 
 from the first ; others, with Augustine, must for ever 
 lament : " Too late have I known Thee ! " Some 
 can say: Spes mea a juventute mea — "Thou art my 
 hope from my youth ; " others : Delicta juventutis 
 mece et ignorantias meas ne memineris — " Remember 
 not the sins of my youth and my ignorance." But 
 all can pray, " unto old age and gray hairs, leave 
 me not, neither forsake me." 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 GOD, OUR FIRST JOY. 
 Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem raeam. 
 
 " I will go unto the altar of God, the joy of 
 my youth." Ci. Dilexisti justitiam . . . propterea 
 unxit te Deus, Deus tuus, oleo IcbUUcb prce con- 
 sortibus tuis — "Thou hast loved justice, wherefore 
 God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness 
 beyond all thy companions." The oil of gladness, 
 that is, the superabundance of Divine love, the 
 refreshing and fertilizing overflow of that river of 
 
ANXIETY. 53 
 
 living water of which it is said: Fluminis impetus 
 Icstificat civitatem Dei. Here was the secret of the 
 joyousness of a Stanislaus and many another,— 
 a fountain of love in the heart " springing up into 
 everlasting life." Even early death can be but a 
 joy to one for whom it is an ascent to the altar of 
 God, the source of all joy, 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 ANXIETY. 
 
 In nihilo solliciti sitis. 
 
 "Anxiety under no circumstances," excludes 
 spiritual as well as temporal anxiety, and must 
 be reconcilable with the precept of vigilance. 
 Solicitude, therefore, is anxiety concerning what 
 is out of our power, after we have used 
 reasonable means for the best ; e.g., anxiety as 
 to not only probable, but as to merely possible 
 temptations ; as to the secrets of the future ; as to 
 extraordinary graces. Here the improvident spirit 
 of childhood is in place. Also, vigilance and care- 
 fulness can be without worry and solicitude, which 
 imply fear as to the results, a distrust of God's 
 fidelity, and that perturbatio timoris — "or timorous 
 agitation," which is so insulting to God, as though 
 He were laying nets and chains for us ; or as if to 
 keep from mortal sin were as difficult as to balance 
 oneself on a tight-rope, where a moment's inadvert- 
 ence may prove fatal. Spiritu principali confirma 
 me — "Confirm me with a princely spirit," with 
 worthy conceptions of God. 
 
54 OUR LADY'S EXPECTATION. 
 
 L. 
 
 OUR lady's expectation. 
 
 Magnlficate Domlnum mecum et exaltemus nomen ejus. 
 
 " Magnify the Lord with me," she says, "and let 
 us extol His Name together." If Elizabeth was filled 
 with the Holy Ghost and the babe in her womb 
 leaped for joy at the advent of Mary, what must have 
 been the inward exultation of Mary at the near advent 
 of Jesus ? As a great joy draws nearer, our desire is 
 agitated and intensified, and we are drawn towards 
 it almost violently and with a sense of pain, seeking 
 relief in fruition. " As the stag gasps for the water- 
 springs, so my soul gasps for Thee, O God; my 
 soul is athirst for God, the Strong, the Living, when 
 shall I come and appear before the face of God ? " 
 So the saints have watched for His coming, "as 
 they that watch for the morning." Expectans expec- 
 tavi Dominum — " I have waited and waited for 
 the Lord," not with dread and awe as for a coming 
 Judge whose sentence is yet doubtful, but with 
 hope and impatience, longing to enter into His 
 rest and to see Him as He is. " I long to die," says 
 St. Paul. As Christ draws near with the day of our 
 death, does our expectation get more impatient ? is 
 it fear or hope that increases ? " The world received 
 Him not,"' but the reception that Mary gave was 
 more than He could have from a thousand worlds 
 — a most abundant reparation and consolation. So 
 those who expect with great longing His Eucharistic 
 advents and receive Him warmly and reverentially, 
 
COD'S PEACE. 55 
 
 console Him for the neglect of those in whose midst 
 He is unknown ; or if known, uncared for. 
 
 LI. 
 god's peace. 
 
 Pax Dei quae exuperat omnem sensum castodiat cord* et intelli* 
 gentias vestras. 
 
 "The peace of God, which passes all under- 
 standing, keep your hearts and minds." Opposite 
 to solicitude and anxiety is this Pax Dei, which is, 
 first of all, a condition for communion with God 
 whose whispers can be heard only in the stillness of 
 
 the soul. 
 
 But when the heart is full of din, 
 And doubt beside the portal waits, 
 They can but listen at the gates, 
 And hear the household jar within. 
 
 Secondly, there is that positive peace which God 
 makes by His Presence, which is God, or which 
 God is ; for as He is subsistent Truth and Beauty, 
 so also, subsistent Peace. Not the peace of lethargy, 
 the slumber of nirvana, but of the highest activity, 
 like the still, motionless, energizing of God, when 
 the soul lays hold of God by clear vision and love, 
 and steadies itself, mind and heart alike. Irrequietum 
 cor nostrum — " Restless is our heart," says Augustine, 
 until God has sunk to its very centre to give it 
 ballast. So with the mind in regard to the chaotic 
 problems of human life and history. With the 
 dawning conception of God ; light, order, and peace 
 are born, to grow and strengthen into perfect day. 
 Custodiat corda et intelligentias vestras. There is 
 
56 CHRIST, OUR SUN. 
 
 the vacant peace of a heart that loves not, and of a 
 mind that never ponders ; and there is the tumult 
 of a heart torn by the conflict of a thousand vain, 
 wild, disordered loves, and of a mind struggling 
 in the brambles of inextricable confusions whose 
 common underground root is unsuspected. And 
 there is the peace of the heart whose many loves 
 are gathered up and converge into one ; and of the 
 mind whose problems fall into one, whose solution is 
 faith in the goodness of God, in spite of all seeming. 
 Qua exuperat omnem sensum — " Which passes all 
 understanding." This is verified primarily of the 
 peace in patria, but also in due measure of that 
 peace in via — " which the world cannot give ; " for 
 of that too, if we are to believe the saints, Nee 
 lingua valet dicere . . . expertus potest credere, holds 
 true : " Tongue cannot tell, experience alone 
 teaches." To those who have never tasted it, its 
 flavour is wholly unimaginable : Gustate et videte — 
 "Taste and see for yourself." As the draw of a 
 powerful magnet fixes the uncertain and fluctuating 
 needle, so the draw that God, once tasted, exerts 
 on the heart, brings all its sprawling, groping 
 desires to converge upon Him steadily. 
 
 LII. 
 
 CHRIST, OUR SUN. 
 
 O sol salutis intimis 
 Jesu refulge cordibus I 
 
 The prayer of the Samoyede sun-worshipper 
 at dawn and sunset is, " When thou risest, I arise ; 
 
ATTACHMENTS. 57 
 
 when thou settest, I also sink." Compare Keble's 
 "Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear; it is not 
 night if Thou be near." So with the soul whose 
 "life is hid with Christ in God, of whom His light 
 and warmth is the very life." It rises when He lifts 
 upon it the light of His countenance, and sinks into 
 sadness when His face is turned away. Surge 
 illuminare Jerusalem, quia venit lumen tuum, quia gloria 
 Domini super te orta est — " Arise and be enlightened, 
 O Jerusalem, for thy Light is come, and the glory 
 of the Lord is risen upon thee." 
 
 LIIL 
 
 . ATTACHMENTS. 
 Funiculus triplex difficile rumpitur. 
 
 In matters moral and spiritual one attends too 
 little to the strength of an accumulation of indi- 
 vidually insignificant and unnoticeable affections. 
 Thus one feels an awe or a strong love in addressing 
 an assembly whose single units affect one in no such 
 way. Nor need we seek any further reason for the 
 difference than the multiplication of slight effects 
 into one accumulative sum total. So with the little 
 attachments which may in the course of time fasten 
 us to a place ; none of itself is inordinate or repre- 
 hensible, or needing to be combated ; each holds us, 
 as it were, by a single hair ; but the cumulus holds 
 us like a hawser. The only cure for such a multiple 
 attachment would be the breaking of each of its 
 constituent fibres. But these are each ordinate, or 
 may even err by defect and not by excess. Therefore 
 
58 THE WEAK CHOSEN. 
 
 the resulting tie is natural, and in no way culpable ; 
 provided one be animo paratus to give the wrench 
 when necessary and to endure the pain. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 THE WEAK CHOSEN. 
 Virtus in infirmitate periicitur. 
 
 Peter, the Rock, the firm one 1 Yet his natural 
 character was warm, impulsive, and therefore un- 
 stable, unreliable. Prudence, self-possession, and 
 a certain emotional temperateness are the usual 
 allies or conditions of steadfastness and constancy. 
 But the work is more evidently divine as it 
 approaches the perfect simplicity of creative energy 
 which draws aliquid ex nihilo sui et subjecti — " some- 
 thing out of nothing." " Hath not God chosen the 
 weak things of this world ? " Suscitans a terra inopem 
 et de stercore erigens pauperem ut collocet eum cum prin- 
 cipibus populi sui — " Lifting the needy from the earth 
 and the poor from the mire, to set him with princes; 
 making the barren fruitful." And all this, that no 
 flesh may glory in His sight. Nor is this in conflict 
 with the truth that grace does not destroy, but 
 perfects and supplements what is good in our 
 natural character. 
 
 LV. 
 
 INCREDULITY. 
 
 Nisi videro . . . non credam. 
 
 In spite of the assigned reason for his scepticism 
 
 based on the insufficiency of the motives, we find 
 
 the actual source of St. Thomas' unwillingness to 
 
INCREDULITY. 59 
 
 believe, in a wounded self-love irritated at the 
 (perhaps unfeelingly displayed) superiority of others 
 who enjoyed a favour which he had missed ; whence 
 an impulse to claim superiority in prudence and 
 caution, and to throw ridicule on their credulity. 
 In this he was aided by the natural rebellion of 
 the imagination against anything hitherto unexperi- 
 enced — a rebellion conquered only by experience 
 which makes us realize what we may perhaps 
 believe firmly enough. If ever any one " wished to 
 believe," it was he ; but this very wish also con- 
 tributed to make him hypercritical rather than 
 credulous. It was too good to be true. So too the 
 other Apostles had received the report of the holy 
 women as deliramenta — "ravings." Our Saviour 
 punishes him by giving him his own way when he 
 would fain not have it ; by distrusting his trust. 
 The very gentleness of the rebuke is incisive and 
 severe, cutting to the very heart, and searching out 
 its secret ulcer ruthlessly, and yet with an intent 
 to heal. " Because thou hast seen Me, thou hast 
 believed" — i.e., not that he could ever have faith 
 in the fact now made visible and apparent, and 
 removed from the realm of faith ; but that his faith 
 in Christ as a Prophet, needed to be experimentally 
 restored and confirmed. Blessed are they who 
 trust Him for His own sake : Scio cui credidi — " I 
 know whom I am trusting ; " and in the spirit of 
 Peter's : Domine ad quern ibimus ? — " Lord, to whom 
 shall we go ? " — even as we trust the word of those 
 whom we love and worship without any experi- 
 mental proof of their veracity. 
 
6o SERVING IN FEAR. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 SERVING IN FEAR. 
 
 Ut sine timore de manu inimicorum nostrorum liberati servia- 
 mus illi. 
 
 "That saved from our enemies we may serve 
 Him without fear." Servite in timore, et exuUate 
 cum tremore — " Serve God in fear and rejoice with 
 trembling." " Work out your own salvation with 
 fear and trembUng." Without fear indeed, so 
 far as the enemies of our soul are concerned; 
 namely, the powers of darkness, whose assaults 
 are restrained and tempered to our strength by 
 the guiding hand of God's supreme providence ; 
 the world, of which it is said, " Fear not, I have 
 overcome the world ; " our own frailty and change- 
 ableness — the most frequent source of anxiety and 
 fear — of which it is written : Non ego, sed gratia 
 Dei mecum — " Not I, but God's grace in me," 
 and Omnia possum in eo qui me confortat — " I can 
 do all in Christ who strengthens me." What we 
 have to fear is, before all, the just judgments of God ; 
 first of all His proximate judgments in the present 
 withdrawal of richer grace ; in the rod of temporal 
 chastisement, trouble and affliction of body and 
 soul ; and secondly, the torments of future punish- 
 ments, temporal or everlasting. Without this fear 
 we can have no true reverential love of God. If we 
 do not feel His majesty and His wrath, we cannot 
 feel His humihty and meekness ; or understand 
 what a love that must be which brings the Almighty 
 
RETURtJING TO GOD. 61 
 
 down so low. That the fear of God's judgments is 
 not only a preamble to love, but its outwork and 
 safeguard, which can never be too strong, is the 
 doctrine of St. Ignatius, in his meditation on Hell. 
 Lastly, there is that fear which is but love under its 
 reverential aspect; which follows it step by step; 
 the craving for union, viewed as a dread of separa- 
 tion ; the same aspiration which can be expressed 
 as : Fac me tuts semper inhcerere mandatis — " Make 
 me ever cling to Thy commandments," or as: A 
 te nunquam separari permittas — " Never let me be 
 separated from Thee." 
 
 LVII. 
 
 RETURNING TO GOD. 
 
 Erravi sicut ovis quae periit : quaere servum tuum, quia mandata 
 tua non sum oblitus. 
 
 " I have strayed like a lost sheep ; seek me, for 
 I remember Thy commandments." Erravi — "I have 
 strayed : " no doubt, by following my own will and 
 judgment in search of seemingly richer and better 
 pasturage ; led on heedlessly from desire to desire, 
 delusion to delusion, till I find myself abandoned 
 wholly to my own guidance, yet knowing not where 
 to turn : threatened not only with hunger and want, 
 but with exposure to the attacks of ravening wolves. 
 Silly as a sheep is, it is better fit to guide and 
 protect itself than is the soul of man self-governed. 
 Dominus regit me et nihil mihi deerit ; in loco pascuce 
 ibi me collocavit — "The Lord shepherds me and I 
 shall lack nothing ; He hath set Me in His pastures." 
 
62 RETURNING TO GOD. 
 
 Qucere servum tuum — " Seek Thy servant." If it 
 can do nothing else, the sheep can at least bleat and 
 cry aloud. But man cannot even, like the prodigal, 
 "come to himself; " cannot feel his spiritual destitu- 
 tion ; cannot send up a single cry for mercy, except 
 aided by God's preventing grace. God must seek us, 
 not only before we seek Him ; but before we can 
 ask Him to seek us; or wish to seek Him. Tu 
 enim prior excitasti me ut qucererem te — " Thou first 
 didst stir me up to seek Thee." Nor is there in us 
 merit, claim, or exigency that sends up a silent 
 appeal to Him ; our only exigency is of punishment ; 
 except it be the fact of our exceeding unworthiness, 
 which will throw out the freedom of God's mercy 
 into clearer view. Miserere mei ; sana animam 
 meam, quia peccavi tibi — " Pity me and heal me just 
 because I have sinned : my sinfulness is my merit." 
 
 Quia mandata tua non sum oblitus — " For I have 
 not forgotten Thy commands." Forgotten they were, 
 with a wilful forgetfulness in the moment, when 
 absorbed in present dreamings, I went astray : 
 
 Such sleepy dulness in that instant weigh'd 
 My senses down, when the true path I left ; 
 
 but not perished and uprooted from memory so as to 
 be beyond recovery. Even this lingering memory of 
 past happiness was the work of grace lurking in my 
 soul and solicitous for my salvation. " Coming to 
 myself," I " remembered the days of old and thought 
 upon the eternal years ; " I remembered " how 
 many hired servants of my Father have bread in 
 abundance and to spare, while I perish here with 
 
PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 63 
 
 hunger;" I remembered the commandments of that 
 loving Wisdom, whose " ways are ways of pleasant- 
 ness and all her paths are peace ; " I remembered 
 how it was with me in the days " when His light 
 was over me and His lamp shone round my head." 
 Yet I remembered, only because I was reminded ; 
 and I was reminded, because He was crying out to 
 me and seeking me, that I might cry to Him to 
 seek me. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH. 
 Rogate quse ad pacem sunt Jerusalem. 
 
 " Pray for the peace of the Church." We must 
 love Holy Church first of all for the sake of her 
 Divine Spouse, " who loved her and washed her in 
 His Blood ; " who came from afar to seek her as His 
 bride ; to toil for her as Jacob for Rachel ; who gave 
 His Heart's Blood for her as He slept on the Cross; 
 whose passionate love for her is the theme of the 
 Canticles — the Divine epithalamium. " Her founda- 
 tions are on the Holy Hills. The Lord loveth the 
 gates of Sion above all the tabernacles of Jacob. 
 Glorious things are spoken of Thee, Thou City of 
 God." We must love her intelligently for her own 
 intrinsic beauty, the King's daughter in comely 
 array. Nigra sum sed formosa . . . idea dilexit me rex 
 — " I am dark but beautiful, wherefore the King 
 hath loved me." Lava ejus sub capite meo et dextra 
 illius amplexabitur me — " His left hand is under my 
 head and His right arm embraceth me." Finally, 
 for our own sake we must love our spiritual mother ; 
 
64 PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 for all that she has been to us, done for us, given us. 
 " If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand 
 forget her skill." Storm-tost as she is, beaten with 
 winds and waves, all but lost at times, it is for us 
 all to pull hard and labour in rowing ; or if we can 
 do nothing else, to cry aloud : Domine, salva nos, 
 perimus — " Lord, save us ; we perish." True it is, 
 that His promise of victory stands firm; but this 
 victory is promised through human labour and 
 prayer; and most blessed are those who shall prove 
 to have had the largest share in the final triumph. 
 A hundantia diligentibus te — " They shall have abund- 
 ance that love Thee." God gives various measures 
 of grace, some more superabundant, others less. 
 Diligentes me diligo — " I love those that love Me," 
 before they love Me, and after; before, that they 
 may love Me ; after, because they love Me — 
 crowning My own work. If He loves those that 
 love Him as represented in the last and least of 
 His members ; much more those to whom He 
 has given grace to love His Mystical Body in 
 its entirety; to say: Domine dilexi decorem domus 
 tuce et locum hahitationis glorice tuce — " Lord, I have 
 loved the beauty of Thy home ; the shrine of Thy ■ 
 glory," or, Zelus domus tuce comedit me — "Zeal for 
 Thy Church hath devoured my heart." Date et 
 dabitur — " Give and ye shall get " is His law, who 
 gives us whence we can give, and the wish to give 
 it. We gain more in praying for others than for 
 ourselves; still more in praying for Holy Church; 
 for which reason this work of charity ranks high for 
 the obtaining of Indulgences. We should widen 
 
HELPING OTHERS 65 
 
 our hearts and interests, and fear nothing more 
 than a narrow self-concentration. The very essence 
 of selfishness lies in forgetting that we are parts o£ 
 a whole, — nemo sibi vivit — " None lives for himself" 
 — that- we are members of one mystical body ; that 
 our work is subordinate, not paramount. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 HELPING OTHERS. 
 Tu aliquando conversus confirma fratres. 
 
 "And thou in thy turn confirm thy brethren." 
 He must stand firm himself who would confirm others 
 — firm as a rock, or if he would share the firmness 
 of the True Rock, he must with one hand hold firm 
 to that Rock and stretch out the other to draw 
 struggling souls out of the surf. And the greater 
 the strain upon him the more firmly will he need 
 to cling; else he will himself be destroyed. He 
 must cling by heroic faith, and hope, and love, who 
 could afford to understand, and feel for, and remedy 
 the doubts and delusions of others without being 
 himself troubled or beclouded ; and to encourage 
 others in the face of despair itself, without himself 
 despairing and losing heart ; and he must himself 
 have found a treasure in the personal love of Christ, 
 who would effectually persuade others to sell all for 
 its sake. And again, his love of God must needs 
 be strong who could afford to pour out upon men 
 that personal love by which alone they can be 
 brought captive to Christ, and yet not suffer his 
 own heart to be torn away from the Rock. Nor 
 F 
 
66 THE TEARS OF JESUS. 
 
 dare we save ourselves by leaving others to their 
 fate, or prudently moderating our pity, or by not 
 attending to their doubts, and fears, and un- 
 happinesses, except so as to leave ourselves a wide 
 margin of safety, an easy grip upon the Rock. Our 
 Rock is a living Rock, who holds to us more than 
 we hold to it. Date et dabitur is the law. The 
 more we dare for His love, the tighter our hand is 
 grasped ; and the speciously prudent servant who 
 hoards his strength is condemned as "wicked and 
 slothful," and loses that which he hath. 
 
 Freely Thou givest, and Thy word is, "freely give." 
 He only who forgets to hoard has learnt to live.^ 
 
 It is not by gathering up our affections to ourselves, 
 by refusing to face doubts and difficulties, that we 
 are to help others, but by strengthening our own 
 grip on the Rock of our Truth, our Strength, our 
 Love, till we grow incorporate with it ; as did he, 
 the weakest of men, who merited to hear, Tu es 
 Petrus — "Thou art the Rock," and Confirma fr aires — 
 " Strengthen thy brothers." 
 
 LX. 
 
 THE TEARS OF JESUS. 
 Et lacrimatus est Jesus. 
 
 " Jesus wept." "Why ? Even the Jews can 
 tell us, "Behold, how He loved him!" "For 
 Jesus loved Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus, their 
 brother " — and this, though by His delay He 
 had suffered him to die, that He might "rouse 
 ' Keble. 
 
THE TEARS OF JESUS. 67 
 
 him again from sleep." There are many wise 
 persons who feel it weakness to compassionate 
 troubles which must come to a speedy end, or soon 
 issue in joy or gain. Our Lord was not so wise 
 here ; nor His Mother, when she wept over the grave 
 that she knew was so soon to yield back her Son, 
 victorious over death. No doubt His love for Mary 
 and Martha wept with the weepers ; but apart from 
 this, there was the sorrow every unspoilt human 
 heart must feel, when the eyes that have looked 
 into ours are dulled and fixed ; and the hands we 
 have clasped are cold and rigid ; and the tongue 
 is still, and the familiar voice silent, and the heart 
 that loved us beats no more. Moreover, it may 
 be truly said that as He willed of set purpose to 
 taste every bitterness that our soul can know, He 
 could not spare Himself this, perhaps the greatest 
 of all, the rending of the heart-strings by death and 
 separation; that He might be "touched with a 
 feeling for our infirmities, tempted in all points as 
 we." Not as though God who made us could not 
 feel for and know our least sorrow, or as though 
 to have experienced our weakness in His assumed 
 Humanity could make His love more delicate in 
 our regard ; but that we might not be bewildered 
 by the mysteries of Godhead ; that we might know 
 and feel that He has known and felt as we do, not 
 only in a higher way, which helps us little ; but in 
 the same way, which helps us much ; that in labour, 
 in weariness, in hunger, and thirst, in grief and 
 separation, in disappointment, in fear, in agony, in 
 death, we might approach with confidence to our 
 
68 NATURAL AFFECTION. 
 
 High Priest who has been in labour from His youth, 
 who sat weary by the well, or slumbered in the 
 storm ; who hungered in the desert, and thirsted 
 on the cross ; who knew grief, and separation, and 
 disappointment, and fear, and agony, and death; 
 who has surely borne our griefs, and carried our 
 sorrows. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 NATURAL AFFECTION. 
 
 Magnus autem factus est fletus omnium, et procumbentes saper 
 coUum Paula, osculabantur eum, dolentes maxime in verbo quod 
 dixerat quoniam amplius faciem ejus non essent visuri. 
 
 "And there was great weeping on all hands; 
 and they fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, sorrow- 
 ing most of all because he had said they should 
 see his face no more." Making all due allowance 
 for differences of national temperament, there is 
 here a large residue of feeling which certain 
 Christian stoics would consider very human, very 
 natural, and therefore very wicked ; and certainly 
 St. Paul seems to have been " consenting unto 
 their deeds." 
 
 LXII. 
 
 HOLY CHURCH, GOD'S HOUSE. 
 Bomine dilexi decorem domus tuse et locum habitationis glorise tuEe. 
 
 " Lord, I have loved the beauty of Thy house ; 
 the dwelling-place of Thy glory," was said by 
 David with reference to the Temple of God's 
 glory which it was his heart's desire to build (Si 
 introiero in tabernaculum domus mece; si ascendero in 
 
HOLY CHURCH, GOD'S HOUSE. 69 
 
 tectum strati mei; si dedero somnum oculis meis et 
 palpebris meis dormitationem et requiem temporibus meis 
 donee inveniam locum Domino, et tabernaculum Deo 
 Jacob — where the vehemence and efficacy of this 
 dilexi is manifested) ; and yet said by him pro- 
 phetically, in the person of Him, the true David, 
 who left the throne of His glory, and vowed a vow 
 that He would not return into His rest, nor give 
 sleep to His eyes, nor slumber to His eyelids, nor 
 relax the strain of His thought, until at the cost 
 of His Heart's blood He had established in His 
 Mystical Body a place for the Lord, a dwelling for 
 the God of Jacob. It is of this His Spouse that 
 our Saviour says, " Lord, I have loved the beauty 
 of Thy house," loved the ideal of it before He went 
 forth to realize it ; and loved the realization, with 
 the joy of sated desire. It is the indwelling of 
 God's glory, the true Schekina, that constitutes 
 that inward beauty of the King's daughter, of which 
 it is said, ideo dilexit me rex — " wherefore the King 
 hath loved me." Hence the Daily Sacrifice seems 
 equivalently to say : Memento Domine David et omnis 
 mansuetudinis ejus — " Remember David and his 
 obedience unto death." It is the pleaded memorial 
 of the meekness, the obedience unto death, of 
 David, i.e., of the Beloved. " This is My beloved 
 Son in whom I am well pleased." 
 
 " I have loved the beauty of Thy house," i.e., of 
 the Holy Catholic Church, the Bride of the Lamb, 
 who is now being prepared and purified for the 
 marriage-feast. Every priest and minister, and in a 
 measure every Christian is, like the Blessed Baptist, 
 
70 OUR LADY, GOD'S HOUSE. 
 
 by office a " paranymph " or " friend of the Bride- 
 groom." Each has a care of the beauty, the spot- 
 lessness, the honour of the Mystical Body that he 
 may present her to Christ immaculate, " not having 
 spot or wrinkle ; " despondi enim vos uni viro virginem 
 castam exhibere Christo. He felt this love who sang, 
 " If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand 
 forget her cunning;" or. Propter Sion non tacebo et 
 iropter Jerusalem non quiescam donee egrediatur ut 
 splendor Justus ejus. Qui reminiscimini Domini, ne tace- 
 atis, et ne detis silentium ei, donee ponat Jerusalem 
 laudem in terra} 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 OUR LADY, god's HOUSE. 
 Hie habitabo, quoniam elegi earn. 
 
 Domini dilexi decorem domus tucz — that house in 
 which the Word was made Flesh ; where first He 
 pitched His tabernacle amongst us ; full of grace, 
 overshadowed by the Holy Ghost ; the mercy-seat ; 
 the Ark of the New Covenant which is Christ. Tota 
 pulcra es Maria et macula non est in te — " Thou art all 
 fair, O Mary, and no spot is in thee." Ideo dilexit 
 me Rex et introduxit me in cubiculum suunt. 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 THE COMMUNITY, GOD's HOUSE. 
 Domine dilexi decorem domus tuse. 
 
 Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum fratres habi- 
 tare in unum — " Lo how good and joyous for 
 > Isaias IxU. 
 
OUR SOVL, GOD'S HOUSE. 71 
 
 brothers to dwell in unity." The beauty of every 
 Christian household or community where God dwells 
 and is gloriiied, is the beauty of peace and charity 
 and mutual reverence, which constrains men to give 
 glory to Christ and say, " See how these Christians 
 love one another." On such an household the Psalm 
 says, God's blessing descends like the dew on 
 Hermon, or like the sacred oil poured upon the 
 head of Aaron, and running down in its abundance 
 over the ephod. " For there the Lord has promised 
 His blessing, and life for evermore." Propter fratres 
 meos et proximos meos loquehar pacem de te; propter 
 domum Domini Dei nostri loquebar pacem tibi. Pax 
 huic domui, et omnibus habitantibus in ea — " For my 
 brethren's and kindred's sake I will wish thee peace ; 
 and for the sake of the Lord's house which is in 
 thee." " Peace to this house and to all that dwell 
 therein." " Let Thy angels dwell in it to keep us in 
 peace, and let Thy blessing be upon us always." 
 — Angeli tui sancti habitent in ea qui nos in pace custo- 
 diant; et benedictio tua sit super nos semper. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 OUR SOUL, god's house. 
 Domiae dilexi decorem domus tuse. 
 
 Applicable first to one's own soul, which is by 
 destiny the house of God, the dwelling of His glory ; 
 which is beautified and adorned by all those virtues 
 of peace and purity and humility which make it a 
 fit nest for the Dove ; and where our passions, 
 affections, emotions, well ordered, yet strong and 
 
72 OUR NEIGHBOUR'S SOUL, GOD'S HOUSE. 
 
 vigorous, make harmonious melody in our heart to 
 the praise of God ; where there is nothing excessive, 
 discordant, ill-attuned; but, variety without con- 
 fusion, unity without poverty or monotony. Such a 
 love begets a consuming zeal which drives forth 
 violently all that could profane the house of 
 prayer and worship, and make it a den of thieves. 
 Applicable also to our body, which is the temple 
 of the engraced soul, of which it is said, 
 "Whoso Jefileth God's Temple him will, God 
 destroy." Chastity is the white robe which beau- 
 tifies and becomes that flesh which is sanctified by a^ 
 thousand titles; by mystic union with the Word 
 made Flesh; by repeated Eucharistic transfor- 
 mations ; by its destiny to a glorification - and 
 spiritualization through His power who will change 
 this body of our humiliation and make it like to 
 His glorious Body. And in due measure, as 
 far as weakness permits, not only chastity, but 
 modesty, cleanliness, and every honourable treat- 
 ment is due to this flesh which God has made His 
 very own, spiritualized, divinized ; nor can it be 
 irreverently dealt with, without irreverence to the 
 mystical, and sacramental, and physical Body of 
 our Lord. Peccat caro, mundat euro ; regnat Deus 
 Dei caro. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 OUR neighbour's soul, god's house. 
 
 Domine dilexi decorem domus tuse. 
 
 Applicable to the souls of others, for whose 
 sanctification true charity is zealous ; and whose 
 
THE TABERNACLE, GOD'S HOUSE. 73 
 
 hurt or scandal is a scandal and hurt to our own 
 soul : " Who is weak and I am not weak ; who 
 is scandalized and I do not burn?" Those who 
 have felt the pang of seeing, in some charge 
 dear to them, the first innocence of childhood 
 •giving way to the first stain of sin, and gradually 
 clouded over and obliterated, may in some weak 
 way realize the sufferings of our Saviour's Heart 
 over souls that are wrested from Him, and in which 
 His Father's image is cast down and defaced and 
 the abomination of desolation set up in the sanctuary 
 of the Indwelling Glory. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 THE TABERNACLE, GOD'S HOUSE. 
 Domine dilexi decorem domus tuae. 
 
 Applicable to the love which saints and holy 
 souls have had for the earthly dwelling-places of 
 the Eucharistic Presence; to whom it was ever 
 joyful news to be summoned into that Presence ; 
 who if compelled to be absent in body have ever 
 been present there in spirit. And as saints have 
 honoured that Presence with the gold of charity, 
 the myrrh of purity, the incense of holy aspirations ; 
 so the wisest of this world have loved to bring their 
 gifts from afar and to cast them at the feet of the 
 Giver of all. 
 
74 HEAVEN, GOD'S HOUSE. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 HEAVEN, god's HOUSE. 
 Domine dilexi decorem domus tuae. 
 
 Applicable to the love of hope and to our longing 
 for the Vision of Peace. Quant dilecta tabernacula — 
 " How longed-for are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of 
 hosts." Quemadmodum desiderat — "As the hart pants 
 for the streams, so my soul for Thee." Defecit in 
 salutare tuum anima mea — " My soul has fainted for 
 Thy salvation, saying, when wilt Thou console me." 
 Deus, Deus meus, ad te de luce vigilo — " O God, my 
 God, I watch for Thee from the dawn." 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 EARTH, god's house. 
 Domine dilexi decorem domus tuae. 
 
 If Heaven is His throne, earth is His footstool, 
 where He is revealed by His traces and footprints. 
 The skies and clouds are telling His glory, and the 
 firmament showing His handiwork ; and all the 
 works of the Lord, sun and moon, land and sea, 
 hills and valleys, and all they contain, "bless the 
 Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever." In 
 Him all things live, move, and are ; and He is in all, 
 though distinct from all, as the mountain from the 
 thick mist that cloaks it, betraying its barest outline 
 and no more. It is no small grace to feel God in 
 nature, pressing on us on all sides, moving in our 
 every pulse, and thinking with our every thought. 
 
LONG-SUFFERING. 75 
 
 " Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory," i.e., per- 
 meated with it, as a crystal with the light which 
 gives it all its beauty. " He is nearer to us than we 
 think," just because we don't think. Yet those who 
 love to ponder the footprints of His glory will at last 
 be constrained to confess, " Surely the Lord was in 
 this place and I knew it not." Custom and wont 
 have held our eyes, so that we know Him not ; or 
 at least heed Him not, as we do not heed the air 
 we breathe ; so that men will deny Him to His very 
 face. He who wrote the Benedicite, or the Laudate 
 Dominum de ccelis, loved the beauty of this earthly 
 house of God, and the dwelling-place of His glory. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 LONG-SUFFERING. 
 Quserens me sedisti lassus. 
 
 "Thou hast sat wearied with searching for me." 
 He has sat down not in despair, but to gather strength 
 to continue His search. While there remains to us 
 the grace of life, it is evidence that He is still seeking 
 us. If death overtake us before we are found, then 
 only does He turn back. In so dealing with us, He 
 gives us a pattern for our conduct to others " not to 
 be weary in well-doing," nor even to give up the most 
 incorrigible, nor to refuse another trial, nor to " cast 
 out those that come to us." For no case can seem to 
 us so hopeless as our own seemed to all, but to Him ; 
 and all our present hope is that He will continue to 
 the end to press His graces upon us regardless of 
 our reiterated refusals. Again. His weariness should 
 
76 HARDNESS OF HEART. 
 
 help us to "bear with the weariness and heaviness 
 we have to encounter in our work, which is always, 
 indirectly at least, the quest of lost or erring souls; 
 or that weariness which we have so justly to endure 
 in seeking Him, from whom we have strayed. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 HARDNESS OF HEART. 
 
 A facie frigoris ejus quis sustinebit. Emittet verbum suum et 
 liqnefaciet ea ; flabit spiritus ejus et flusnt aquas. 
 
 "Who can stand out against His frost? He shall 
 send forth His word and thaw them ; His wind 
 shall blow, and the streams shall run again." When 
 the sun withdraws himself, the waters are frozen 
 into solid ice. We forget that their fluidity depends 
 every moment upon his influence; and that of 
 themselves, they are hard, dark, and cold. When 
 the heart resists grace, time after time, and shuts 
 out the sunshine which struggles in at every open 
 chink, God withdraws Himself, and there follows 
 the ice-age of obccecatio et obduratio — of judicial 
 blindness and hardness. The wish to be better; 
 the feeling of remorse or dissatisfaction ; of the 
 need of God ; every vital spark from which the 
 flame of charity might spring up again is extincL 
 There is no hope except in the free mercy of God^ 
 who will not be angry for ever, and who will turn 
 to us that we may turn to Him ; as the returning 
 sun draws round to itself the averted sunflower. 
 Emittet verbum suum et liquefaciet ea — " He shall 
 speak the word and melt them." It is by "the 
 
BEFORE COMMONtOlt. ft 
 
 word of His power " by some message to the soul 
 from within or without, that the hardness of our 
 heart is relaxed. It was by sending His Word into 
 this ice-bound world of sin that the soil was softened 
 under the influence of the second spring. Jam hems 
 transut imber abiit et recessit. Veritas de terra orta 
 est. Etenim Dominus dabit benignitatem et terra nostra 
 dabit fructwm suum — " Now the winter is gone, the 
 rain is passed and over. Truth has sprung up from 
 the earth. Yea, God shall give His blessing and 
 earth shall yield her fruit." We perceive the light 
 of fire before we feel its warmth. Flabit spiritus ejus 
 et fluent aqua — " His breath shall blow and the 
 rivers shall run again." As under the soft, warm 
 wind the ice and snow are converted into streams 
 and torrents, so the breath of the Paraclete draws 
 tears of compunction from the thawed and penitent 
 heart. Cmversus Dominus respexit Petrum . . . et 
 eoepitflere — "God turned and looked on Peter, and 
 he began to weep." Till He turns and looks upon 
 us, our heart goes from bad to worse, from hardness 
 to hardness. When He turns to us, then we 
 "remember the word which He spake," and the 
 ice is dissolved into tears. 
 
 Lxxn. 
 
 BEFORE COMMUNION. 
 Domine non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum. 
 
 ' My house is full of noise and tumult and worldly 
 comforts and appliances, and the door is shut and 
 barred, and the importunity of the midnight visitor 
 
78 LOVE'S AtiCMBTYPE. 
 
 is hateful to me. Tantum die verba, say but the 
 word and my soul shall be healed. Change the inn 
 to a cave ; shatter the door and ruin the walls, 
 "that the King of Glory may come in." Let 
 Joseph go before to prepare the rude resting-place, 
 and let Mary follow, and in the very midst of my 
 soul bring forth her Firstborn. Mater Divince gratice, 
 ora pro nobis. 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 love's archetype. 
 
 Ego et Pater, Unum sumus. 
 
 " Consubstantial with the Father," not merely 
 similar, not the exact counterpart, reflexion, replica; 
 but the same substance in no way distinct or distin- 
 guishable, held in common by two, as though two 
 men had one body between them and one soul, 
 thinking, willing, acting, not alike, but identically. 
 This is no barren or fruitless dogma to those who 
 have dwelt on the mystery of Love with its craving 
 for union, absorption, identification, and its conflict- 
 ing demand for distinctness, or " otherness," its 
 protest against extinction. It is in the mystery of 
 the Trinity that Love finds that archetype which the 
 pantheist or Buddhist seeks in vain. " That they all 
 may be one as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in 
 Thee." "I in them and Thou in Me, that we all 
 may be perfect in one." For what is it Love wants? 
 To give itself wholly and entirely; and yet to be itself 
 and distinct ; to efface every divergence in thought, 
 will, interest, nature, place, time, and yet to be 
 other, and loved by another, as other. And it seeks, 
 
LOVB-S ARCHBTYPM. 79 
 
 not only to be absorbed and to give, but to absorb 
 and receive; for union or identity is a mutual 
 relation. Yet it seeks not that the other should 
 cease to be other, though all of that other's should 
 cease to be his ; — "All mine is thine, and all thine is 
 mine." " He shall take of mine and give it unto 
 you." Personality is of the very notion of love, on 
 the part of both subject and object ; and union is 
 no less so ; distinctness and yet fusion. It is not, 
 therefore, such a union with God as pant heists or 
 quietists put before us, that we really crave for ; — 
 the union by which a drop is absorbed and dis- 
 persed in the ocean, losing its separateness and 
 individuality ; or by which a wave or ripple on the 
 face of a pond is smoothed out as a disturbance of 
 its former lifeless tranquillity. No doubt there is 
 something that touches a responsive chord within 
 us in such an aspiration as : 
 
 God, in pain and anguish, make me one with Thee 
 One with hill and sky-line, one with surging sea. 
 
 Sick with the sense of our own feebleness, transi- 
 toriness, nothingness, as compared with the quasi- 
 eternity, infinity, inexhaustible beauty, power, and 
 goodness of Nature, there arises some vague longing 
 to be incorporate with the Whole, the All, which 
 our fancy personifies ; a longing to be ourselves 
 the world-soul, and not the soul of a miserable 
 little parasitic frame of humanity. This, rightly 
 analyzed, is no desire for extinction, but for the 
 greatest imaginable fulness of personal existence. 
 Further, so interpreted, this is an aspiration rather 
 
8o LOVE'S ARCHETYPE. 
 
 of the love of desire, than of the love of friendship. 
 It is self-love crying out for its bonum satidtivum, 
 for the boundless, the eternal, the all-beautiful, 
 for the life, and food of life, which its natural 
 exigencies crave for — and yet vainly, being made 
 for God alone, non ad hac natus — for even " heaven 
 and earth shall pass away." "They shall perish, 
 but Thou remainest ; they shall all wax old as 
 doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold 
 them and they shall be changed, but Thou art the 
 self-same and Thy years shall not fail." 
 
 And yet this love of desire is not the strongest or 
 highest craving. More imperative is the demand 
 for friendship or society in beings who can know 
 and reflect. Sine amico non potes bene vivere — 
 "Without a friend thou canst ill live," Amare et 
 amari, is the soul's desire according to Augustine ; 
 to love others, and be loved in return. It is only so 
 far as our imagination in some way personifies 
 Nature (as a whole or in certain manifestations), 
 that we can feel drawn towards her with sentiments 
 of love or worship, aad a desire of self-subjection. 
 Let every conceivable perfection and attribute that 
 we find in Nature, be concentrated eminently in one 
 being, yet until that being is known to be intelligent, 
 self-loving, personal, our love in its regard is but a 
 kind of envy which grasps at those perfections and 
 would have them our own — eternity immensity, 
 might, form, beauty. But in a person there is 
 something we cannot even wish to appropriate, 
 since distinctness is of its very notion ; while at the 
 same time there is an intense desire to surrender 
 
LOVE'S ARCHETYPE. 8i 
 
 all one has to this other, saving only one's distinct- 
 ness, and to receive a like surrender in return, so 
 that all, as far as conceivable, should be in common, 
 should be one possession of two possessors. " All 
 mine is thine and all thine is mine." " Thou in me 
 and I in thee." Then indeed the amicus becomes, 
 not the ego but the alter ego, in so far as all 
 possessions, goods, actions, thoughts, interests, are 
 perfectly common and indistinguishable. 
 
 Personal love seeks to bind to itself a person and 
 not to a thing; and the only conceivable bond is 
 fusion and community of possessions and attributes. 
 It cannot desire fusion of personality, since that 
 which is essentially distinctness is destroyed by fusion 
 So far as friends have the same human nature, like 
 thoughts, loves, cares, and interests and so forth, 
 thus far are they united. It is in the Mystery of 
 the Trinity that we find this union carried to its 
 infinite perfection, where, between Three Persons 
 there is, not a likeness, but a numerical sameness 
 of nature, thought, will, and operation ; and withal, 
 a distinctness of person between the three possessors 
 of this one possession, which in order of origin 
 belongs first to the Father, and is by Him com- 
 municated to the Son, and by both to the Holy 
 Spirit. Our notion of friendship or personal love 
 might seem at first sight to postulate only a dual 
 personality in Divinity; or perhaps, on second 
 thoughts, an indefinitely multiplied personality. 
 For it is only the limited nature of human affection 
 which makes friendship dual in so many cases, 
 though not in all. Jealousy, which brooks no 
 
82 LOVE'S ARCHETYPE. 
 
 rival, rests on the beliet that what is given to 
 another is taken from me, and that love as it 
 is extended, loses in intensity. If love claims a 
 surrender of all, there cannot be two claimants and 
 recipients of that all But if these two claimants 
 are already so united as to have but one possession 
 and interest, then what is surrendered to one is 
 surrendered to both ; and the two are one in the 
 love they give and the love they take This 
 explains why friendship or personal love is not 
 always or necessarily a relation between two, but 
 might exist between any number of persons. It 
 even gives a dim indication as to why an at least 
 triune love is more perfect than a dual love ; and 
 why a triune love, if perfect, should be all-sufficing. 
 For if a friend is the dearest possession, then, in the 
 most perfect act of friendship I communicate ny 
 friend as the chiefest of my goods, my alter ego. So 
 Christ, when He gives us Himself, gives us His 
 Father to be our Father. ' We will come and 
 make our abode with Him ; He gives His Mother 
 as ours. His Spirit as ours." ' Behold thy Mother." 
 " I will ask the Father and He will give you another 
 Paraclete." Again, all love seeks sympathy If I 
 see something beautiful I want another to enjoy it 
 with me ; and this points to a trinity of persons as 
 satisfying the highest ideal of personal love ; the 
 Father loving the Son, in sympathy with the Spirit, 
 the Father and Son loving the Spirit ; and each 
 giving Himself with the othei, and each Person 
 singly loving the other two as one, and rejoicing in 
 their union and friendship. Hence in this notion 
 
UNION WITH GOD. 83 
 
 of perfect identity of the common possession ; of an 
 infinite perfection shared by three perfectly distinct 
 personalities, we find carried as it were to infinity 
 what our vague instincts point to, as the requisites 
 of personal love. In the Hypostatic Union, on the 
 other hand, we have a type of the unitive power of 
 non-personal love. Between the Eternal Word and 
 the Sacred Humanity the relation is not that of 
 person to person ; but of person to thing ; there is no 
 room for amicitia any more than between the soul 
 and the body. We know experimentally that the 
 love of want {amor concupiscentialis) tends to draw the 
 object into a quasi-hypostatic union ; to absorb it ; to 
 make it " mine ; " to eliminate its definition, to erase 
 the lines which bound it and mark it off as "this." 
 " Separateness " is wholly repugnant to this love. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 UNION WITH GOD. 
 Ego in eis, et tu in me ut sint consummati in unum. 
 
 In the natural order our highest union with God 
 is by perfect selt-tradition, by likeness of thought 
 and will and operation, and yet by the maintenance 
 of personal distinctness in its purity. Hence I 
 believe pantheism is opposed to the testimony of 
 our inner consciousness in confounding a craving for 
 union, with craving for absorption. In the order 
 of grace there is not merely a likeness, but a same- 
 ness of being and operation ; a mystical partici- 
 pation of the Divine Nature. As the operations of 
 the Three Persons are from one principle, and are 
 
PERSONAL LOVE. 
 
 one operation, and yet truly the operation of each 
 Person; so analogously the love that God works 
 in us by grace is the operation of the Holy Spirit 
 and ours at the same time. It is we who love 
 and it is the Spirit who loves. As the Eternal 
 Son uses the Sacred Humanity as an instrument 
 whereby to render to the Father the love of a 
 human heart ; so in some way our soul becomes the 
 instrument of the indwelling Spirit. " God has sent 
 His Spirit into our hearts crying, Abba, Father." 
 The cry is at once His and ours. To the Eternal 
 Son we are bound by a double bond — by the 
 indwelling of His Divinity and of His Humanity, 
 the participation of His two-fold Life. " He that 
 eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood, dwelleth 
 in Me and I in Him ; as the living Father hath sent 
 Me, and I live by the Father, so He that eateth Me, 
 the same also shall live by Me." He as the deified 
 Head; we, as the members of one Mystic Body 
 quickened by one indwelling spirit, are joint- 
 holders of a common possession, with one end 
 and perfection to which all aspire and conspire, 
 namely, that communicatio beatitudinis or bonum 
 Divinum, which is the bond of charity. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 PERSONAL LOVE. 
 Hoc est prseceptum meum ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos. 
 
 Personal love, founded on community, likeness, 
 sameness, is not of its own nature acquisitive or 
 grasping. It is founded simply on the recognition 
 
PREPARING GOD'S WAYS. 85 
 
 of a common end or interest, of which the two are 
 the conjoint adequate subject. It does not seek 
 to despoil the other of his goods or excellences ; 
 but at most that the recognition of oneness and the 
 consequent affection should be mutual. In truth 
 the analysis of concupiscential or want-begotten 
 love is far easier than that of personal love. 
 Personal love seems to be ex plenitudine essendi, a 
 certain self-diffusion and overflow; whereas the 
 love of want is ex defeciu essendi, from our empti- 
 ness and indigence. 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 PREPARING god's WAYS. 
 Parate vias Domim. 
 
 " Get ready a way for the Lord." " Every valley 
 shall be exalted." All the depressions and empti- 
 nesses of the heart, must be upraised, filled in, 
 levelled. There is the valley of despondency and 
 discouragement ; of acquiescence in a low state as 
 inevitable ; of affections for all that either drags us 
 down, or excludes that which draws us upwards; 
 in fine, whatever is wanting to the fulness of any 
 virtue, or makes a void or hollow in the soul. 
 "Every mountain and hill shall be made low." 
 Pride is of course the chief barrier in the way of 
 Christ's royal progress ; whether through the world 
 or through any particular soul. Even kings must 
 cast their crowns before Him; must throw open 
 their gates " that the King of Glory may come in." 
 Mountains must sink back into plains to make a 
 
86 PREPARING GOD'S WAYS. 
 
 pathway for Him at whose bidding they rose. 
 Pnde either (o) overrating the extent of our 
 gifts, whether absolutely or relatively, to others, 
 or (;8) overvaluing what we truly have got, or (7) 
 forgetting our position as mere instruments of 
 Divme manifestation, mere recipients of bounty. 
 "The crooked shall be made straight." A short 
 distance may be a weary uncertain journey if the 
 road curves and winds about ; or if it is rough and 
 stonv , or marshy and unsound. Our want of 
 straightness simplicity sincerity, makes Christ's 
 progress to His Kingdom within us almost impos- 
 sible. Where is the man with a " single eye " 
 who follows his conscience in all simplicity ; or 
 if through frailty he slips, freely confesses his 
 fault without twistings and excuses; who hates 
 all compromises all modos vivendi when it is a 
 question of God and his own soul. Quis est hie et 
 laudabimus eum ? fecit enim mirabilia in vita sua — 
 "Who is he; and we shall praise him as a hero." 
 "The rough places shall be made smooth" — a 
 refinement on the foregoing essentials; implying a 
 delicate consideration for our Lord's feelings in little 
 things , a politeness or polish, so to say, which shuns 
 small rudenesses, all that would jolt or jar. There 
 is a rough love of God, often very intense, strong, 
 durable ; the love of many a martyr and confessor ; 
 the love of Peter in his youth {cum junior esset). 
 When we consider the spiritual and moral refine- 
 ment of the saints, let alone that of our Blessed 
 Lord we must acknowledge that as the heavens are 
 above the earth, so are His ways and His thoughts 
 
GODS PACE. 87 
 
 above ours Seen and magnified in the strong light 
 of His holiness, all our smoothness is broken into 
 ridges and ruggedness ; and what is fair and whole- 
 some to our sight, is loathsome and rotten in His. 
 And yet He not only bears with us, but delights to 
 be with us ; not as though He did not feel our 
 offensiveness, but because His love for us finds food 
 and exercise in the very enduring of it : — as we read 
 of some rare human love, which cleaves more 
 tenderly to the object of its passion when stricken 
 down with some hideous disease; a love that 
 " exults as a giant to run its course," and enjoys the 
 encounter and easy overthrow of obstacles ; like his 
 who says, •' For whom I have suffered the loss of all 
 things, and do account them but refuse," or again, 
 " Gladly will I spend and be spent for you, though 
 the more I love you the less^ I be loved " Yet to us 
 the thought of what our love cost Him should be 
 matter of continual and growing compunction, as we 
 get to know His lovableness and, by contrast, our 
 own coarse repulsiveness more and more. Then we 
 understand somewhat how the holv souls revel 
 in the purging fire. 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 god's face. 
 
 Ostende faciem tuam et salvi erimus. 
 
 "Show us Thy face and we shall be saved." 
 " Turn not away Thy face from me lest I be like 
 them that go down into the pit." We must turn 
 our back upon God before He will turn His back 
 
88 GOD'S FACE. 
 
 upon us; but He must turn His face to us, before 
 we can turn our face to Him. The disciples on 
 the road to Emmaus looked in His face, yet 
 they knew Him not till He looked upon them, 
 till He showed them His face, in the breaking 
 of bread. Our eyes are holden, veiled, and mist- 
 clouded, till the sun itself disperses the film and 
 bursts through upon our gaze. The honestas, the 
 decor, the speciositas, of the Son of Man, moves us 
 in no wise until viewed with the eyes of the heart. 
 To see His face, this is charity; this is the beatifying 
 vision already begun. It is the delectare in Domino 
 of David ; the delight of beholding the face of the 
 Beloved. 
 
 For ever fixed in no unfruitful gaze. 
 
 " This is life eternal, to know Thee ; " nor does the 
 Vita cBterna inchoata, the life of charity, herein differ 
 from the life of Beatitude. Love is but the property 
 and effect; whereas knowledge, heart-knowledge, 
 is the substance, the good whose possession delights ; 
 quod visum, placet — "whose vision rejoices us." 
 All true personal love, which rests in the person, 
 and not in some ulterior good to be derived from 
 the person, is of this kind. Its object is bonum 
 honestum; not bonum utile — "beauty, not utility." 
 Contemplation is its proper act and exercise; 
 Elegit bonam partem qucs non auferetur — "She 
 has chosen the good part, which shall not be 
 taken from her." As bodily beauty delights the 
 eye of sense, so the eye of the soul feasts its 
 gaze on the spiritual beauty of Christ, and lingers 
 
GOD'S FACE. Sg 
 
 over every line and point. Jesu dulcis memoria 
 dans vera cordi gaudia, says Bernard, sed super mel 
 et omnia ejus dulcis prcesentia; whether as present 
 to memory only, or to intention ; whether in its 
 image or its very reality, it is the Divine Face which 
 is the cause of inward joy and sweetness. Ostende 
 faciem tuam et salvi erimus : it is the true aspect of 
 God which saves us and quickens us. As art 
 refines our observation and taste, and makes us love 
 nature more tenderly for new beauties, to which our 
 uncultured eye was dim and obtuse : so our soul has 
 to be schooled into the right reading of the Divine 
 beauty which the crowd presses upon, but which 
 few discern or touch. Hence St. Paul always prays 
 that in his children the knowledge of Christ may 
 abound ; " whom to know is to love." Surge arnica 
 mea, speciosa mea et veni, Ostende mihi faciem tuam, 
 sonet vox tua in auribus meis ; quia vox tua dulcis et 
 fades tua decora. Revertere reverters Sunamita, ut 
 intueamur te. 
 
 Ostende faciem tuam et salvi erimus. " When that 
 which is perfect is come, then that which is in part 
 shall be done away." For here we see in a riddle or 
 through a darkened glass ; there, face to face : here, 
 I know in part ; there, I shall know, even as I am 
 known. Ibunt de virtuie in virtutem ; videbitur Deus 
 deorum in Sion. They shall go as it were from 
 vision to vision, from weaker to stronger light, till 
 the last filmy veil is left behind, and they are face 
 £0 face with the sun in his splendour ; videbimus eum 
 sicuti est — " We shall see Him, not as He is said 
 to be, not as He seems to be, but as He is." 
 
go TIMES OP VISITATION. 
 
 " Show US the Father, and it sufficeth us," this is 
 our all-sufficing Good. 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 TIMES OF VISITATION. 
 Vox clamantis in deserto. 
 
 The voice of one calling out in the desert, 
 crying with the loud cry of God's extraordinary 
 graces as contrasted with the persistent whispers 
 of daily promptings. Neglect has deafened us 
 to the latter: grace must now cry with a loud 
 voice, Lazare, veni foras — " Lazarus, come forth ! " 
 " Cry aloud," O Lord, " and spare not ; lift up 
 Thy voice as a trumpet, proclaim to Thy people 
 their iniquities, and their sins to the house of 
 Jacob." " Crying in the desert," through which the 
 King must pass in His royal progress, the desert 
 full of waste places, hills and hollows, windings 
 and turnings — our wild, uncultivated hearts. And 
 crying, " Prepare the way," for the fruit will answer 
 to the preparation, even as seed needs a favourable 
 soil. We must break up the hard, frost-bound 
 earth, and "make broad our furrows," and pray 
 for the God-given rain of penitential tears. And 
 yet as it is He alone that can call us to get ready, 
 so it is by Him alone we can answer the call. The 
 work is " begun, continued, and ended, in Him." 
 
THE CONCERT OF CREATION. 91 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 THE CONCERT OF CREATION, 
 Cum quibus et nostras voces ut admitti jubeas deprecamnr. 
 
 Te Deum laudamus. "I praise Thee, O God," 
 sounds feeble and presumptuous Praise must be 
 in concert, fulness, and harmony, if it is to be at 
 all. Even, " We beseech Thee," " Our Father," is 
 immeasurably more efficacious than " I beseech 
 Thee," " My Father." More efficacious because it 
 is the act of the body whose bond is charitj' or of 
 the individual as bound to that body by charity. 
 It is then, not I who pray but Christ's Mystic 
 Body, or Christ. But it is in praise that we feel 
 our weakness and isolation most of all It is as 
 though a conqueror were hailed by my one feeble 
 voice in a myriad-throated silent multitude. He 
 whose own Heart is full of praise cannot rest till He 
 has communicated the flame of His enthusiasm to 
 all around Him His mission is to send fire on the 
 earth and to see that it be kindled to draw all 
 hearts into sympathy with His own " We praise 
 Thee ; " and in this concentus, not only must all 
 mankind unite, Reges et omnes principes ierrce, juvenes 
 et virgines, senes cum junioribus — " Kings and princes, 
 youths and virgins, old men and boys," but the 
 angels of God ; — Tihi omnes angeli, tibi cherubim et 
 seraphim Laudate eum omnes angeli ejus. Cum 
 quibus et nostras voces ut admitti jubeas deprecamur — 
 and every single creature living or lifeless; — sun, 
 moon, and stars ; winds, seas, storms, mists, dew. 
 
92 THE CONCERT OF CREATION. 
 
 frost, cold, mountains, hills, valleys, streams, rivers, 
 trees, shrubs, harvests, fruit, flowers, fish, reptiles, 
 birds, insects, brutes, cattle, omnis spiritus laudet 
 Dominum. Confiteantur tibi Domine omnia opera tua; 
 all must lend their voice in due measure to perfect 
 that chord of praise which swells up continually to 
 God's ears from the whole as whole; the universe 
 invisible and visible, the heaven and earth of the 
 beginning. " Heaven and earth are full of Thy 
 glory." Filled with this sense of lonely nothingness, 
 insignificance, solitary unmeaningness, a helpless 
 single string in the many-stringed harp of creation, 
 David cries aloud to men and angels, heaven and 
 earth, to the great all : Magnificate Dominum memm 
 — " Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us praise 
 His Name together." This is indeed, 
 
 To know my spirit a note 
 Of this great chorus, one with bird and stream 
 And voiceful mountain — -nay, a string, how jarred 
 And all but broken ! of that lyre of life 
 Whereon himself, the master harp-player. 
 Resolving all its mortal dissonance 
 To one immortal and most perfect strain, 
 Harps without pause, building the world with song.* 
 
 As in harmonized music the varying parts are 
 bound together by their common relation to the 
 melody through which they are related one to 
 another ; so in the concentus of creation it is through 
 man and in reference to man that the voices of all 
 other visible creatures are heard ; and it is as 
 harmonizing with the voice of the Son of Man, 
 
 I W. Watsoa. 
 
THB IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 93 
 
 high above all, that our praises are acceptable. 
 Through Christ and in Christ, God has hypostati- 
 cally assumed this concerted praise of creation and 
 made it a Divine act. Per ipsum et cum ipso et in 
 ipso, est tibi Deo Patri, in unitate Spiritus Sancti 
 omnis honor et gloria. 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 
 Tota pulcra es Maria. 
 
 "Thou, O Mary, art altogether fair," i.e., from 
 the very first instant of existence, with an unbroken, 
 ever-growing fairness. The totality of our aspect in 
 the eyes of God is to be measured, not only by our 
 present state or appearance, but by our whole past, 
 in which before the eternal gaze the present is em- 
 bedded, as in its setting or frame, or as a text in the 
 midst of its commentary. So regarded, of no soul 
 but one can it be said, tota pulcra es, not even of the 
 " greatest born of women." What can be said of 
 me? Even allowing my soul a certain present 
 pulcritudo, yet in the midst of so much past unsight- 
 liness is there enough for the Divine gaze to rest 
 upon with pleasure, or not rather more than enough 
 to make it turn from me in loathing ? Tota facta 
 es — " Thou art all foul." And yet not tota. For as 
 God for the sake often just would have overlooked 
 the corruption of Sodom ; so for the sake of that one 
 present little spark of love which He has kindled 
 in my heart, and which I have not yet extinguished, 
 
^4 tdv^ itt Ttin wttj^-PR&sS. 
 
 He will look upon me with love ; and for love of that 
 little beauty will endure my manifold unsightli- 
 nesses, and " count it as nothing though He should 
 give all His substance for love." For the love of 
 God, is the one and sufficient beauty of the soul, 
 the perfection of its knowledge, the perfection of its 
 will. It is its highest assimilation and likeness to 
 God, who alone fully knows and loves His own 
 goodness. What we love we become. To love the 
 Beautiful is to be beautiful. For love is but a 
 greeting of self in some other disguise, whether it 
 be our love of God or His love of us. 
 
 A ve gratia plena ! Hail, full of love, full of I eauty, 
 tota pulcra es et macula non est in te. There is finitude, 
 but there is no fault. There is finitude, but com- 
 pared with ours it is infinitude, fulness. " Behold, 
 O God, our defender, and look upon the face of Thy 
 Christ." Behold, O Christ, our defender, and look 
 upon the face of Thy Mother, our Mother — tota 
 pulcra, whose love costs Thee no pain, the only rose 
 without a thorn. 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 LOVE IN THE WINE-PRESS. 
 Et domus repleta est odore unguenti. 
 
 Even as vervain must be bruised if it is to 
 yield its full fragrance, so the heart that is full of 
 sweet ointment must be broken that the whole 
 house may be filled with the perfume. This was 
 the inward "contrition" or bruising, typified by 
 the outward act of Magdalene when she broke the 
 
GOD IN THE DARKNESS. dS 
 
 alabaster over the feet of Jesus. Yet every sorrow, 
 however small, will cause love to exhale its sweet 
 odour. 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 GOD IN THE DARKNESS. 
 
 Ignis, grando, nix, glacies, spiritus procellarum, quae faciunt 
 verbum ejus. 
 
 " Fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy gales, which do 
 His bidding." Destruction, temptation, affliction, 
 disease, death, all bear part in the praise of 
 God. Even by sin, though not by the sinner, 
 God is praised. Here heat and cold and wind 
 are considered in their excess and intemperance, 
 as ministers of God's chastising love or con- 
 suming justice. " He makes the winds His 
 messengers, and the flame of fire His minister." 
 ' He rides upon the wings of the wind " — not the 
 heat that warms and cherishes, but that which 
 scorches and burns; not the cold that cools and 
 refreshes, but which chills and deadens; not the 
 breeze that soothes and invigorates, but the gale 
 which uproots and devastates. It is a higher 
 thought, a higher faith and confidence and love, 
 which, with Job, can praise God for His chastise- 
 ments, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken 
 away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." 
 
96 St. STEPttEti. 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 ST. STEPHEN, 
 Plenus gratia et fortitudine faciebat prodigia. 
 
 "Full of grace and fortitude he wrought wonders." 
 Christian fortitude is the courage which braves the 
 extremest dangers, not from any other motive, 
 how laudable soever, but solely for the love of 
 Christ. It is the strength of a " love stronger 
 than death," and which " many waters cannot 
 quench." " Greater love hath no man than this, 
 that a man should lay down his life for his friend " 
 — a love which finds its archetype in God, who, 
 "when we were yet sinners," saw enough in us 
 to die for. Even the weakest and most cowardly 
 creatures, poor nervous feeble birds, become terrible 
 and reckless of their lives for love of their brood. 
 Small wonder if in Stephen and many another, the 
 personal love of Christ has wrought " signs and 
 prodigies ; " boldness of speech in the very teeth of 
 emperors {loquebar de testimoniis tuis in conspectu 
 regum et non confundebar — " I spake of Thy testi- 
 monies before kings and was not ashamed "), and 
 resistance usque ad sanguinem — " even to blood." 
 " I see the heavens opened." Here is the source 
 of that " grace and fortitude " — a clear unclouded 
 view of the world beyond the veil; a faith that rends 
 the heaven and lets our sight rest on the reality and 
 "substance of things hoped for," which dissolves 
 the world around us into a misty dream, a continual 
 " passing away." " And Jesus standing at the right 
 
THE INCARNATION. 97 
 
 hand of God," for this is in epitome the substance 
 of the Christian revelation — the Incarnate, obedient 
 unto death, exalted and crowned with glory and 
 honour, and given a Name which is above every 
 name, the pledge of our exaltation ; for " if we suffer 
 with Him, we shall also reign with Him." If Christ 
 Himself was helped to endure the Cross by the 
 foresight of the joy to follow (proposito sibi gaudio 
 smtinuit crucem), it was fitting that Stephen should 
 be encouraged by a vision of the joy of his Lord 
 into which he was to enter. 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 THE INCARNATION. 
 
 Qui propter nos homines, et propter nostram salntem, descendit 
 de ccelis. 
 
 Had He come as God Incarnate into an unfallen 
 world, He need not have laid aside the finite 
 glories that were His birthright ; He need not 
 have passed through weakness, huraiHation, pain, 
 and death, to the recovery of what was His, had 
 He not been stripped of it by sin. That the 
 Son of Man should have also been a " Man of 
 Sorrows," "emptied of His glory," "obedient to 
 death," this was the effect of mercy, occasioned by 
 sin. Et propter nostram salutem. We need not, 
 however, suppose that antecedent to the forevision 
 of the Fall, an Incarnation had been decreed; but 
 may believe that God, casting about, so to say, in 
 the infinite resources of His Divine intellect and 
 power, for an order of things which should manifest 
 
 H 
 
98 THE INCARNATION. 
 
 His attributes, chose that in which His mercy 
 and generosity would be displayed more fully. He 
 chose, rather than the contrary, that world in which 
 the race, engraced and elevated, would cast away 
 its privileges ; in which iniquity should abound that 
 grace might superabound ; in which His good gifts 
 would be despised, squandered, abused, not merely 
 by some, but by most; in which His richest schemes 
 of mercy would be thwarted by man's perversity; 
 in which He would gladly spend Himself and be 
 spent, though the more He loved, the less He would 
 be loved ; in which, in a word. His labour should 
 be largely in vain. His love largely unreturned. For 
 plainly this is the showing forth of a far more 
 prodigal and wonderful love, a love of the undeserv- 
 ing and unthankful. Had all men used His graces, 
 what should we have known of His tender mercies, 
 fulness of compassion, longsuffering, and great 
 goodness ? We should have known Christ, but 
 not Jesus; the King, but not the Saviour. 
 
 Descendit de ccelis. His whole Incarnate Life 
 was a descent, a coming down from the highest to 
 the level of the lowest and least, sin only excepted. 
 It was a continual self-suppression and elimination 
 oi all that could difference or distance Him from the 
 weakest and most helpless child of Adam. He 
 thought His birthrights of bodily glory, power, 
 impassibility, not things to be grasped at and clung 
 to ; but rather emptied Himself of them all, and put 
 on the likeness of sinful flesh, the garb of a servant, 
 that He might be accessible to all — the friend of 
 publicans and sinners. The Pharisee — a separatist 
 
THE BETTER PART. 99 
 
 by name and profession and practice — stood high 
 on the pedestal of his legal perfection, and thanked 
 God he was not as other men. Christ " exulted in 
 spirit, and gave thanks," that He was as other men, 
 and hid Himself from the wise and prudent, and 
 revealed Himself to little ones. Venite ad me, quia 
 mitis sum et humilis corde. He is altogether approach- 
 able ; not severe, or magisterial, or dictatorial ; not 
 one to stand on His dignity and keep His distance, 
 but always ready to yield, to come down, to accom- 
 modate Himself, being made all things to all men, 
 that by all means He may gain some, if not all. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 THE BETTER PART. 
 
 Maria autem elegit earn optimam partem, quae non auferetur 
 ab ea in aeternum.' 
 
 The application of these words (" Mary hath 
 chosen the best part, which shall never be taken 
 from her "), and of this episode to the feast, is, at 
 first sight, strange. No doubt it means amongst 
 other things that there is a higher and a lower 
 service of God, of which the latter may be inter- 
 rupted by sickness, death, and a thousand con- 
 tingencies ; which of itself is the accidental and 
 separable embodiment of our love, but not its 
 very essence; which is anxious and distracted, 
 and easily corruptible and corrupting. The 
 former is the one thing needful; the quickening 
 principle of the other. It is independent of life, 
 
 1 Communion for the Assumption. 
 
THE BETTER PART. 
 
 or death, or any other creature; uninterrupted, 
 " which shall never be taken from us ; " unfailing, 
 for "charity never faileth." Such was pre-eminently 
 the service of Mary; one prolonged Magnificat 
 continued from time into eternity without respect 
 to life or death. The Magdalene sat at His feet 
 and heard His words; His Mother kept all these 
 sayings and pondered them in her heart and uttered 
 them in her song. The life of praise is the highest 
 life, the final and everlasting life ; and there is no 
 death to that life : " He that liveth and believeth 
 shall never die ; " for the life of praise is the 
 eternal life. Martha flits here and there, comes 
 and goes, but Mary sits, ever fixed in one unbroken 
 gaze ; and passes, unmoved, from life through death 
 into fuller life; as it were, in a dream. Yet this 
 highest life is also the most active and productive, 
 and likest that of God, whose still gaze on the 
 face of His Son is the cause of all movement and 
 production. Fruitfulness is the greatest of graces, 
 for which Mary gives thanks, saying, Beatam me 
 dicent omnes generationes ; all generations shall bless 
 the great Mother of Life ; the womb that bore 
 our Life, and the breasts that fed Him ; that have 
 borne and fed us and "all generations." Great 
 energy works tranquilly ; the most divine and 
 universal causes are likest God in their fruitful rest ; 
 furthest from solicitude and perturbation about many 
 things. Mary knew no travail pangs. Even by the 
 Cross, when with Jesus she tasted all the sorrows 
 of all our race, she stood, motionless — Stabat 
 Mater. It is rather faith and philosophy, than sight 
 
INCONSTANCY. 
 
 and experiment, which assure us that the highest 
 life must also be the most fruitful for others ; 
 that efficiency follows excellence. Those do most, 
 who seem to do nothing; those do nothing, who 
 seem to do most. God and Nature work silently, 
 secretly. The Kingdom of Heaven cometh "without 
 observation." Those who reap and bear home the 
 sheaves get all the credit ; those who plough and 
 sow ; the fostering sun, the rain, the generous soil ; 
 God the all-giver, all-mover, are forgotten. We talk 
 of unknown saints, but what of the unknown pro- 
 genitors of science, and art, and progress, and of 
 all our greatness ? Which of those who have 
 entered into their labours, knows or thanks them ? 
 The effect of the best and greatest work is felt 
 only when its author is untraceable — or rather its 
 authors, for it derives from a confluence of imper- 
 ceptible streamlets. "To be," is more than "to 
 do," and does more. The fruit of Martha's minis- 
 trations might easily be computed ; but the whole 
 world is still filled with the odour of Mary's spike- 
 nard, with the influence of her silent love. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 INCONSTANCY. 
 Pono animam meam pro te. 
 
 "I will lay down my life for thee." We say 
 such things in warm moments of love and friend- 
 ship, and mean them from the depths of our heart ; 
 though in the chill and darkness of depression and 
 failure we deny our friend and desert him. We do 
 
102 THE SEVEN DOLOURS. 
 
 not value present love less, because it is frail and 
 changeable ; nor does God despise the bright flame 
 that now leaps up in my heart because He foresees 
 it will sink and flicker even to extinction for a time 
 or for ever. 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 SEVEN DOLOURS. 
 
 Omnis enim figura ejus amorem spiral et ad redamandum pro- 
 vocat ; caput inclinatum ; manus expansse, pectus apertum. 
 
 " His whole form breathes out love and pro- 
 vokes love in return ; the head bowed down ; the 
 hands outstretched ; the heart laid bare." (i) Caput 
 inclinatum. Apart from the very beauty of posture 
 which makes the crucifix a noble theme of art, 
 there is an exhaustless wealth of beauty which we 
 read into it in the light of faith. It is an eye-word 
 which ever clothes itself with richer and fuller 
 meaning, so that at one glance we take in more 
 food for mind and heart than the ear could receive 
 in an hour. The head inclined speaks to us of 
 the infinite gentleness and condescension of Him 
 who bows down to listen to our cries and prayers : 
 Memento mei, Domine, dum veneris in regnum tuum. 
 Inclina, Domine, aurem tuam et exaudi me. Fiant 
 aures tucB intendentes, in vocem deprecationis mece — 
 of a tender pity that in the midst of torments is 
 self-forgetful and intent only on the sorrows of those 
 who stand by the foot of His Cross ; of obedience 
 to the Divine love continued from birth till bowing 
 His Head He gave up the ghost. Amorem spirat et 
 ad redamandum provocat. It all breathes love and 
 
GOD'S ATTRIBUTES. 103 
 
 invites to love, to a love that drags us down and 
 takes all the stiffness and pride out of us ; which is 
 at the feet of all, girt about for their service, which 
 is wistful and watchful for the needs and sorrows of 
 others. (2) Manus expanses, speaking to us of the 
 width and comprehensiveness of His love, inviting 
 all, embracing all ; pardoning, tolerating, overlooking 
 offences. This is easy to say, but hard to believe ; 
 and because the invitation is only half believed, it is 
 little heeded : Expandi manus nieas tota die ad i>ot>ulum 
 incredulum — He is ever stretching out His hands 
 to those who cannot believe that He means it. 
 (3) Pectus apertum. If His Heart, laid bare to our 
 eyes, and cleft and broken with grief, does not 
 breathe love and provoke a return, we may put our 
 crucifix aside and pray God to create a new heart 
 in us and renew us with a right spirit ; or turn to 
 Mary for grace to read the crucifix with her eyes : 
 Fac me tecum pie flere, crucifixo condolere. 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 god's attributes. 
 
 Considerate lilia agri. 
 
 We shall never get to love God by meditating 
 on His attributes, unless we are first trained to love 
 those attributes in their finite manifestations. Men 
 cannot love or praise God for His mercy or liberality, 
 or truth or justice, who are not lovers of these things 
 already. If I do not know what love is in its highest 
 manifestations, in father, mother, brother, friend, 
 lover, it is vain to tell me that God loves as all 
 
104 THE GRACE OF LONG LIFE. 
 
 these and infinitely more. Infinity is at best a 
 negative notion, and affects our imagination and our 
 heart but little. It is all important that the co-factor§ 
 it multiplies should be as full and rich and concrete 
 as possible. Considerate lilia agri, says Christ. A 
 man must be taught to see a glory in their array 
 greater that of Solomon, before that "delighted 
 with their beauty," he " can know that their Lord 
 is more beautiful by far; for it is the begetter of 
 all beauty that hath made them all." ^ 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 THE GRACE OF LONG LIFE. 
 Ut sis longaevus super terram. 
 
 " That thou mayest live long upon the earth." 
 It is almost a truism to say that we never elect 
 twice on precisely the same premises, and that any 
 given individuated choice once made is made for 
 ever. For even were the two elections to follow 
 each other without interval, there would in the 
 second case be the new circumstance of having 
 chosen just before. Furthermore, the basis of 
 knowledge and experience on which we choose is 
 widening every hour of our life and giving more 
 deliberateness and importance to our choice. We 
 put little confidence in the piety of children; and 
 we have good hope for their reformation if they are 
 vicious; for we know on how slight and partial a 
 view of good and evil their decision rests, how 
 imperfectly they reckon the cost on either side. 
 • Wisdom xiii. 
 
GOD, OUR HAPPINESS. toj 
 
 Beatus vir qui suffert tentationem ; for, ceteris paribus, 
 it is a more honourable salvation to have been tried 
 long anc* variously, and at that last and fullest review 
 of the whole question, which is flashed through our 
 mind in the moment of death, to have chosen God, 
 than if in early childhood we had been rapt away 
 lest malice and deceit should alter our first good 
 purposes. Tanquam aurum in fornace prohavit eos 
 et invenit eos dignos se. 
 
 XC. 
 
 GOD, OUR HAPPINESS. 
 Salus tua sum ego. 
 
 For one who has the faith, the greatest happiness 
 and substantial peace of his soul is the grace and 
 favour of God. This sounds unreal; because we 
 do not notice or attend to permanent and habitual 
 comforts. To tell a ma,n that he enjoys the air he 
 breathes more than music he hears, sounds non- 
 sense ; but deprive him of both, and which will he 
 ask for first ? Unconscious as we are of the 
 presence of grace when we have got it, and alto- 
 gether miserable as we may be at the same time 
 about other things ; let us but lose it, or think we 
 have lost it, and what other happiness can console 
 us, or what other misery concern us ? We mostly 
 love God far more than we think; and it is only 
 real or fancied separation that first opens our eyes 
 to the extent to which He is entwined and woven 
 into our life. 
 
io6 TREE OP KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 XCI. 
 
 TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 At ubi venit plenitudo temporis misit Deus Filium suum. 
 
 " When the fulness of time had come God sent 
 His Son." It is natural to expect that our reason 
 should carry us but a little way in the knowledge of 
 good and evil, since " good " has reference to the 
 end, and He alone knows the bearing of each action 
 for good and evil, whose wisdom reaches from end 
 to end. We may see a little way ahead to proximate 
 ends ; and we may see clearly how certain actions 
 can never possibly be conducive to any good end. 
 But God's gaze stretches infinitely beyond all this ; 
 to the last consequence in time of the least of our 
 thoughts. Surely He alone can tell us what is good 
 and evil ; and here, if anywhere, we are as children 
 and need revelation and faith. This was the casm 
 belli between God and Adam. Would he obey 
 blindly, leaving the reasons to God, or would he 
 aspire to be as God, knowing good and evil for 
 himself, measuring things by his own little span? 
 But not satisfied to know that the fruit was for- 
 bidden without also knowing the reason of the 
 prohibition, he put faith to the test of experiment. 
 God had said that to eat was to die. Adam would 
 taste and see for himself. From that moment he was 
 left largely to his own dim light to find out good and 
 evil by bitter experience, and through devious and 
 uncertain processes of ethical evolution. He became 
 in a sense as God, deciding for himself; no longer 
 
GOD, ABOVE ALL 107 
 
 taught by faith as a little child. But it was the 
 sorry independence of the prodigal son, provoking 
 the Divine irony : " Man hath become as one of us, 
 knowing good and evil." Driven from the light of 
 Paradise, he wandered from darkness to darkness 
 into the deepest sloughs of moral degradation, till 
 in pity, God gave him the light of the Decalogue, 
 embodying little more than what sound reason ought 
 to have found out long before. After which he had 
 to learn the humiliating truth that to know what is 
 right, is but a cause of greater condemnation, if there 
 be not the motive power of personal love to make 
 us wish to do right. In God alone are light and 
 love identical. Men and angels were made to be 
 governed by a love outside them. And so when 
 "the fulness of time had come," and man had 
 reached the depth of his humiliation, " God sent 
 forth His Son, born of a woman," to be our light 
 and our love. 
 
 XCII. 
 
 GOD, ABOVE ALL. 
 Diliges Dominum ex toto corde tuo. 
 
 To love God above all things else, taken col- 
 lectively, is needful for salvation, but compatible 
 with all manner of venial sin. To love Him with 
 our whole heart, and alone, is perfection and 
 beatitude. He is loved alone when all else is 
 loved only in Him and for Him as He loves it 
 Himself. This, far from lessening the extension or 
 intension of our natural affections, increases both, 
 indefinitely, and in a higher plane. In proportion 
 
io8 GOD'S DOINGS INSCRUTABLE. 
 
 as this reference of all to Him, from being habitual 
 and implicit, becomes naturally explicit and actual, 
 does one approximate towards the life of vision. It 
 is in Purgatory that this perfect chastening of the 
 affections is attained and the soul thereby proxi- 
 mately disposed for its final elevation. When we 
 say that man's task in life is to get to love God, 
 we do not speak of substantial love (super omnia), 
 which is requisite, due, and possible from the 
 outset ; but of perfect love, toio corde, which is not 
 the precept, but the finis precepH, the end which the 
 precept aims at. 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 god's doings inscrutable. 
 
 Quam Investigabiles vias ejus. 
 
 "For My ways are not as your ways, nor My 
 thoughts as your thoughts" — and yet our ways 
 seem at times so clearly the best, the only prudent 
 ways; and our thoughts self-evidently good and 
 high. Is all chaos, and is there no guide to what 
 is absolutely and objectively right and true ? Is God 
 so unknowable as to be beyond all our calculations ? 
 May black be white with Him, and white black? 
 " As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are 
 My ways higher than your ways." The higher does 
 not deny, but includes the lower. What is impru- 
 dent can never be prudent, what is false never true. 
 But what is truly prudent to limited foresight and 
 for the conditions seen, may be infinitely short- 
 sighted for eyes reaching from end to end and 
 disposing of all things sweetly. Wherefore if God's 
 
GROWTH IN GRACE. 109 
 
 plans are other than mine, it is not that mine are 
 bad, but that His are better. If, as they say in the 
 schools, He does not answer My prayer formally. 
 He answers it eminently; for He is even "more 
 willing to hear than we to pray, and is wont to give 
 more than we ask or merit." " Put yourself in His 
 place," is the advice we give to one who is at a loss 
 to understand the conduct of another. When our 
 imagination and reason can lift us into God's place, 
 then, and only then, can we expect to understand 
 His ways. The presumption that our predictions and 
 calculations of His movements are right is simply 
 infinitesimal ; and yet pious credulity, noting only its 
 successful guesses, forgetting its countless blunders, 
 goes on posing as God's secretary and confidential 
 agent. "How incomprehensible are His judgments, 
 and His ways past finding out. Who hath known 
 the Lord's meaning, or who hath been His adviser, 
 or who first gave Him anything, and he shall be 
 rewarded ? " A stronger faith and better taught 
 is that which is led blindfolded and does not see, 
 nor ask to see how God works all things round to 
 the good of those who love Him. 
 
 XCIV. 
 
 GROWTH IN GRACE. 
 Filioli mei quos iterum parturio donee Christus formetur in vobis. 
 
 " My children, with whom I am in travail anew, 
 until Christ be formed in you." Under one aspect, 
 spiritual birth, or regeneration, or, as Protestants 
 would call it, conversion, consists in the develop- 
 
GROWTH It} GRACE. 
 
 ment and fiUing-in of an idea, the idea of Christ. 
 Our childish conception is but notional, a mere 
 framework or skeleton, waiting to be clothed with 
 flesh and nerves, and to become a living reality. 
 " This is life, that they should know Thee." When 
 Christ is thus fully conceived and formed in our 
 minds, our heart is at once subdued to Him (Tibi 
 se cor meum totum subjicit ; quia te contemplans totum 
 deficit), and we become "enthusiasts," men possessed 
 by God, dominated by an Idea which lives and 
 speaks and loves back. And to generate this idea 
 in the minds of men is the painful and laborious 
 task of the Apostle. First of all it must be the form 
 and clothing of his own mind; and then he must 
 prepare the mind of others to receive it ; he must 
 raise them gradually from height to height, till at 
 last they are proximately disposed for the full truth. 
 And when it is expressed and brought forth, it still 
 needs careful watching lest it be corrupted, or 
 perverted, before it has hardened into the substance 
 of the formed mind. It is because he has begotten 
 in them the very form and fashion of his own soul 
 that St. Paul calls his converts, filioli ; for the sons 
 are sharers of the father's nature and orm. So our 
 Saviour: Ecce ego etfilii quos dedit mihi Dominus. 
 
SHORT LIFE A GRACE. in 
 
 xcv. 
 
 SHORT LIFE A GRACE. 
 Consummatus in brevi, explevit tempora multa. 
 That a short life may be a great grace, far from 
 being opposed to, is altogether consonant with the 
 view which makes length of days a grace. For it 
 is not a privilege to be cut off soon, except it be 
 " lest deceit should ensnare his soul " — which is at 
 best a negative grace ; or else because life, though 
 short in days, is full and long in spiritual experience 
 and insight. Human life is the hfe of the spirit, not 
 of the animal ; it is measured not by years, but by 
 the amount of spiritual activity. Cani sunt sensus 
 hominis, it is thought, and not grey hair that 
 entitles old age to veneration. Explevit tempora 
 multa — the wares of the world have been passed 
 over in rapid review, tried in the balance, one 
 after another, and found wanting. And God has 
 revealed His beauties in as fast a succession and 
 has grown in lovableness, taking root in the heart 
 and shooting up into an overshadowing tree, like 
 the Prophet's gourd, in a brief night {Sub umbra 
 illius quern desideraveram sedi). The writer of 
 Ecclesiastes is intent on this theme, tasting ever 
 more deeply of life's chalice, and forced to cry 
 out after each brackish draught, Mi-cha-el ! Who 
 is like God? All is vanity, save to love God. 
 Happy is the man who remembers his Creator in 
 the days of his youth, albeit, that the God of 
 our childish choice, the world of our childish re- 
 
iia NATURE SAVED /N GRACE. 
 
 Iiunciation, are at best but shadowy ideas waiting 
 for their body and fulness ; but happier he who at 
 the close of long years, perhaps after many wander- 
 ings and follies, knowing well the weight of every 
 word, can say : What is like God ? Happiest of all 
 he who can say : " Thou hast been my God from 
 my youth, and unto old age and grey hairs, forsake 
 me not, O Lord my God I " 
 
 XCVI. 
 
 NATURE SAVED IN GRACE. 
 Remittuntur ei peccata multa, quoniam dilexit muUum. 
 
 " Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath 
 loved much," and her sins were many, just because 
 she loved much — too much. It is usually the same 
 gift which damns or saves us, according as it is ill 
 or well used. Like every grace, it is in resurrec- 
 tionem and in ruinam. Mary's gift was a power of 
 passionate love. Her love of the Master was not 
 another love succeeding the old; but the old love 
 cleansed, restrained, lifted up, intensified. Mihi 
 quoqtie spent dedisti. Everywhere it is the same; 
 good and evil ; better and worse ; best and worst, 
 treading on one another's heels. Greater force, if 
 it swerves, means great ruin. 
 
 XCVII. 
 
 THE MINUTENESS OF GOD'S LOVE. 
 Capilli capitis vestri omnes numerati sunt, nolite timere. 
 
 " The hairs of your head are all counted. Don't 
 be afraid." As the miser to whom every farthing 
 
SEPARATION THE PROOF OF LOVE. 113 
 
 is as dear as his own miserable soul, gloats over 
 each and says, " Mine, mine, all mine," so in God's 
 no less incomprehensible, hungering love, every 
 several hair of our head is known, weighed, 
 numbered, and hoarded up as avariciously, as the 
 foolish lover treasures next his heart the very 
 straws trodden by his mistress' feet. NoUte timere. 
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 SEPARATION THE PROOF OF LOVE. 
 Veni separare hominem. 
 
 As love makes for the most perfect attainable 
 oneness, so separation is the mortification of love — 
 not its death, but its discipline and mortification. 
 Its death perhaps, if it be worthless; and always 
 the death of what is worthless or impure in it ; 
 therefore it is the purgation of imperfect love ; the 
 death of false love ; the exercise and renewal of true 
 love. Et tui ipsitis animam gladius pertransibit ; for even 
 Mary's love had to know the sword of separation. 
 Our Saviour came to kindle love upon earth, as 
 it had never been kindled before, between man and 
 man, and between man and God ; yet He came 
 to send, not peace, but a sword; not union, but 
 division and separatioQr 
 
114 UNANIMITr. 
 
 XCIX. 
 
 UNANIMITY. 
 
 Idem sapiatis, nnanimes ; id ipsum sentientes. Nihil per con- 
 tentionem, neque per inanem gloriam. 
 
 " Let us all think and say the same thing," must 
 not be understood of a wooden, unintelligent uni- 
 formity imposed from outside ; but of the natural 
 offspring of that unifying charity which should bind 
 all members of the same body together; whether 
 that body be the race, or the Church, or some closer 
 corporation within the Church. Individualism bids 
 us not to care a fig what others say or think, to 
 "live and let live." So long as others do not 
 interfere with us, let them do and believe as they 
 please: Quid ad nos; ipsi viderint. Toleration, as 
 at present misunderstood, means the indifference 
 of systematic egoism. But unifying charity instinc- 
 tively, and often consciously, endeavours to break 
 down every wall of partition which severs soul from 
 soul by diversity of belief or sentiment. The con- 
 troversial spirit, or proselytizing instinct, is but a 
 perversion of the deepest appetite of the rational 
 soul, and points to the essential solidarity of the 
 race. Union, in belief and thought, is the founda- 
 tion of agreement in sentiment ; which, in turn, is 
 the only lasting basis of union and co-operation in 
 action. Hence the stress laid on unity of faith by 
 Christ and His Church. And the same principle is 
 implied by the insistence on obedience of judgment 
 as a condition of obedience in will and execution. 
 
UNANIMITY. 115 
 
 Yet were all this to be understood of mere assentatio, 
 it would mean the death, instead of the keenest life 
 of the soul ; the uniformity of blind traditionalism, 
 the superstitious transmission of dead formulae from 
 mouth to mouth, and mind to mind. Whereas 
 the keen, healthy appetite for being in intelligent 
 sympathy with every other mind, spurs us on to the 
 most intense activity of thought, that we may get 
 to understand ourselves and to understand others. 
 When we hear a statement which sounds strange 
 to us, we are not indifferent, but sharply interested 
 to know how the speaker understands it ; what he 
 has to say for it ; whether we can in any way accept 
 it, or interpret it benignly ; or whether we have not 
 after all been wrong ourselves ; and if not, whether 
 we can get the speaker to see where he is wrong and 
 to accept what we believe right ; or whether we can 
 at least use the same words as he, though in a dif- 
 ferent sense; or hold the same truth, differing only in 
 our expression of it. And it is only when agreement 
 is evidently impossible that with great reluctance 
 we agree to differ as a dernier ressort, regarding our 
 disagreement as a misfortune in itself, and apart 
 from all ulterior consequences. Such a union is 
 necessarily of slow growth, even between individuals, 
 not to say among masses of men ; but it is none the 
 less that goal for which our radical social instinct is 
 making through devious ways. Nor is discussion ; 
 conducted in obedience to this spirit of unifying 
 love, in any way hostile to peace and concord ; or 
 to be confounded with agressive controversy and 
 intolerance. For far from emphasizing or fostering 
 
ii6 UNANIMITY. 
 
 divergencies, it is as loath as possible to admit their 
 existence, and hopes against hope that they may be 
 more apparent than real. The controversial spirit 
 is also begotten of a perverted desire for union in 
 opinion and sentiment, but is egoistic, narrow, 
 intolerant, unyielding; forcing others into agreement 
 with itself; giving nothing, exacting everything ; 
 dogmatic, indocile ; harsh and impatient ; exaggerat- 
 ing differences; condemning, ridiculing, despising; 
 indignant, not grieved. Yet as the perversion of 
 what is good, it is better than the pseudo-tolerance 
 of individualism — that growth of a cold, systematic 
 selfishness and independence which suffers every 
 man to go his own way, caring nothing whether it 
 be to Heaven or to Hell. Nowhere, perhaps, has 
 the true spirit been more happily embodied than in 
 the proem to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius : 
 "It is presupposed that every good Christian will 
 be more ready to agree with his neighbour's state- 
 ment than to condemn it ; and if he cannot see his 
 way to it, let him inquire of him in what sense he 
 takes it ; and then if he means what is wrong, he is 
 to be set right gently; and if that is not enough, 
 one must try to get him round by every reasonable 
 means." It is one thing to go about the world 
 getting others to agree with oneself; another, to 
 get them to agree with the truth. The contro- 
 versialist prefers self to truth. 
 
STIGMATA OF ST. FRANCIS. fi7 
 
 c. 
 
 STIGMATA OF ST. FRANCIS. 
 
 Domine, quinque talenta tradidisti mihi ; ecce alia quinque snper- 
 lucratus sum. 
 
 " Lord, Thou gavest me five talents ; see, here 
 are five more ! " Our wounds and sorrows are of 
 all the talents committed to us the most precious. 
 Lifted by them above the earth to the side of Christ 
 crucified, we may draw all men unto ourselves, and 
 through ourselves to God. Few saints in the 
 calendar draw so widely as the loving St. Francis 
 Assisi, with his wounded hands and feet and heart, 
 and his gentle, sensitive spirit formed for the acutest 
 suffering and compassion. 
 
 CI. 
 
 THE LIFE OF PRAISE. 
 Homo creatus est ut laudet. 
 
 " Man was created to praise." A life of praise 
 ought not to be a very sad or gruesome prospect. It 
 means a life devoted to the study of what is highest 
 and most beautiful, a life of ever-growing apprecia- 
 tion and love, as our taste becomes formed and 
 refined and sensitive to more exquisite and subtle 
 beauties than before. It is a life by consequence of 
 absorbing enthusiasm ; for no one is content to love 
 alone, but must drag every one up to his own level 
 and into sympathy with himself. A saint who is 
 not a propagandist is unthinkable. Genitori, Geniio- 
 que, laus etjubilatio, this is the whole duty of man upgn 
 
Ii8 OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS. 
 
 earth as in Heaven. Laudamus te, benedicimus te, 
 adoramtis te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi propter 
 magnam gloriam tuam. Surely not a wholly un- 
 attractive vocation, or a very disagreeable task! 
 There is something that we have got to understand 
 and love, and praise, and get others to praise. 
 
 CII. 
 
 OTHER people's BUSINESS. 
 Et viso illo, prseterivit. 
 
 "And when he saw him, he passed on." No 
 doubt this good priest would have done something 
 for the wounded man had he been in his district, 
 but the interference would perhaps be keenly 
 resented by the parish priest. The levite not being 
 in Holy Orders would by no means trespass on the 
 special preserves and privileges of the priesthood. 
 But this outlandish Samaritan knows nothing about 
 rights and privileges and jurisdiction and prescrip- 
 tion, and, on the mere title of common humanity, 
 thrusts himself into other people's concerns instead 
 of minding his own business. Vade tu etfac similiter; 
 — though similiter requires true parity of circum- 
 stances. It is well to mind one's own business; 
 yet not so as to forget St. Paul's words : " Con- 
 sidering, not each his own concerns, but the 
 concerns of others," 
 
RATIONAL PIETY. lig 
 
 cm. 
 
 RATIONAL PIETY. 
 Sanctifica eos in veritate ; sermo tuus Veritas. 
 
 " Sanctify them in Thy truth, Thy word is truth." 
 Sanctification which does not rest upon clear, simple, 
 solid truth, cannot hold out against the tempest and 
 the flood. Every plantation which truth has not 
 planted, shall be torn up by the roots. Sermo tuus 
 Veritas, i.e., God's utterances, through reason and 
 revelation — common sense and Catholic faith ; 
 intelledus qucerens fidem, fides qucerens intellectum, are 
 the rocks about which the roots of sanctity must 
 wrap themselves. Of two evils, better to have the 
 foundation without the superstructure, than the 
 loftiest pile unfounded or ill-founded — the loftier, 
 the worse. Some well-meaning persons think it a 
 profanation to bring to ascetic teaching the touch- 
 stone of reason and consistency ; or to suppose for 
 an instant that the maxims of holy people can ever 
 embody pernicious and soul-destroying fallacies. 
 Ignatius of Loyola thought far otherwise. A man 
 may be an admirable artist, though an execrable 
 art-critic ; and conversely. 
 
 CIV. 
 
 THE SACRED HEART. 
 Benignitas et humanitas apparuit Salvatoris nostri Dei. 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that in some special 
 way it has been intrusted to the Church of our day 
 
120 RESTRAINT, THE CONDITION OF GROWTH. 
 
 to develope, by the ordinary tedious processes, the 
 idea of the human-heartedness of God. Her bitter 
 conflict with Jansenism and her zeal in promoting 
 the devotion to the Sacred Heart are from one and 
 the same seed of fire. There is yet much straw 
 and stubble to burn up, much dross to purge away, 
 before the pure, fine gold can be separated and 
 secured. The impurities of rigorism and maniche- 
 ism, which cling like parasites to the truth, cannot 
 be shaken off in a moment ; and the most earnest 
 apostles of the benignitas et humanitas of our Saviour, 
 will at times commit themselves to utterances at 
 discord with their gospel, so that we find the anti- 
 Jansenist often tinged with Jansenism. But all this 
 is strictly in accord with those necessary laws which 
 govern the conception and birth of truth. It is 
 only after many, but ever-lessening oscillations 
 between vicious extremes, that the needle at last 
 comes to rest and points true to the pole. 
 
 CV. 
 
 RESTRAINT, THE CONDITION OF GROWTH. 
 
 Omnis autem disciplina in praesenti quidem videtur non esse 
 gaudii sed moeroris ; postea autem fructum pac^tissimum reddet. 
 
 " I came that they might have life, and might 
 have it more abundantly;" — for if self-abnegation, 
 restraint, mortification, is the condition on which 
 we follow Christ, it is only because without them 
 we cannot enter into that fuller life of the intellect, 
 heart, and affections, by which we recover a 
 hundred-fold in the present, whatever we seem to 
 
SILENT PRAYER. 
 
 sacrifice. Only through Him can the human 
 faculties receive their full expansion and develop- 
 ment. Without the cross the downward path to 
 selfishness and cruelty is only too easy. Our power 
 of loving is lost by reckless dissipation, and the 
 mind loosed from the rock of faith, drifts out into 
 the darkness. Nonne Deo subjeda erit anima mea. 
 Shall not my soul, therefore, be subjected to God ? 
 
 CVI. 
 
 SILENT PRAYER. 
 Scit enim Pater vester quid opus sit vobis antequam petatis eum. 
 
 " He feedeth the young ravens that call upon 
 Him," and "the lion-whelps roaring for their prey, 
 begging their food from God, ... all wait for Thee 
 that Thou mayest give them meat in due season." 
 If the blind, natural cravings which He Himself has 
 implanted; if the brute cries of pain and hunger 
 ascend up as a prayer in the ears of God ; shall not 
 the very needs of man's soul be eloquent without 
 words, before Him " to whom all hearts are opened, 
 all desires known, and from whom no secrets are 
 hid," and from whom alone come all our good 
 desires and prayers. " Lord, Thou knowest my 
 desire," says David, "and my groaning is not hid 
 from Thee." " Your Heavenly Father knoweth that 
 ye have need of these things." Doubtless the 
 externation of our prayers and desires is natural, 
 and is expected from us so far as possible. But 
 it is not always possible; and then it is well to 
 remember that every God-given desire of our heart, 
 
THE FOLLY OF DIVINE LOVE. 
 
 however latent and remote from present conscious- 
 ness, still more every felt need and hunger of spirit, 
 rises like the incense of an unceasing prayer before 
 God's mercy-seat, "the Spirit Itself helping oui 
 infirmities, making intercession for us with groanings 
 that cannot be uttered." 
 
 CVII, 
 
 THE FOLLY OF DIVINE LOVE. 
 Neqiie mittatis margaritas vestras ante porcos. 
 
 By love, St. Ignatius tells us, a man gives himself 
 so far as it is possible; and in seeking to be re-loved 
 he seeks that another shall make to him a like self- 
 offering. Thus love is unitive in that it tends to 
 obliterate the lines which divide me and thee, mine 
 and thine : " all mine is thine and all thine is mine." 
 But love is of itself indifferent till we know the 
 nature of the lover, or, what is correlative, the 
 motive of his love. A self-offering is valued 
 according to our estimate of the self which is 
 offered. That God has so loved us, and given 
 Himself to us, will move us just so far as we have 
 learnt to realize what He is in Himself who 
 has done so much for us. Wisdom and self-respect 
 forbid us to reveal in its fulness an affection we 
 may feel for another ; but tell us rather to deal it 
 out gradually as it is valued and asked for ; lest we 
 seem to force a return, which is gratitude rather 
 than love — a puzzled sense of obligation for a costly 
 gift hardly understood or cared for. But God's 
 love of the soul is too passionate to be so politic- 
 
NO WASTE OF GOOD DESIRES. 123 
 
 He flings Himself at our feet, a pearl before swine ; 
 and we receive His protestations of love with 
 embarrassment or indifference — perhaps even a 
 certain sense of annoyance : " What have we to 
 do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth ? Art Thou 
 come here to torment us ? " We prefer to live 
 among the tombs. 
 
 CVIII. 
 
 NO WASTE OF GOOD DESIRES. 
 Quod egredietur de ore meo non revertetur ad me vacnnm. 
 
 Every drop which the sun's heat draws up from 
 the earth, falls back to earth in fertiHzing rain, yet 
 not necessarily, if ever, on the same spot. God's 
 winds carry it hither and thither, resolved into 
 vapour, broken up, dispersed in a thousand direc- 
 tions. Yet sooner or later it returns whence it 
 came. And so of every good desire or prayer or 
 effort elicited from our heart by that love which is 
 the one secret cause of all good. It is an energy 
 set free that can never be ultimately lost or destroyed. 
 It may fail of the end to which we direct it, but only 
 because it cannot fail of that higher and wider end 
 to which it is directed by an all-seeing eye, an 
 omnipotent and unerring hand. 
 
 CIX. 
 
 PEACE. 
 Et in terra pax. 
 "And on earth peace." Internal peace of soul 
 is undoubtedly the very finish of sanctification, and 
 
124 PEACE. 
 
 the final fruit of the Incarnation. " Let not your 
 heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." " Peace 
 I leave with you, My peace I give unto you." 
 Martha's unrestful solicitude is rebuked : and the 
 peace of Mary commended. Ignatius tells us that 
 in men of good-will, all disturbance of heart is 
 from some evil source. Peace is not only com- 
 patible with the sword, with tribulation, temptation, 
 and external conflict, but needs these as conditions 
 of its exercise. Else it is latent. It is therefore 
 self-possession ; the being master of one's soul in 
 the midst of suffering, and anxiety. It is not the 
 peace of inactivity or death ; but of a strong govern- 
 ment holding a mighty people in sway. Who does 
 not know the awful power of the statesman or 
 general who keeps calm, self-possessed, recollected, 
 when all around are panic-stricken, clamorous, 
 distracted ; who moves quietly, noiselessly, surely, 
 to his end, with the momentum of weight rather 
 than of speed. It is the imperturbable calm 
 begotten by the sense of power and security, even 
 Hke the everlasting "peace of God which passeth 
 all understanding ; " the calm of an intellect stilled 
 by faith, where doubts and difficulties are but as 
 cloud-shadows flitting across the unruffled surface 
 of its placid depths; the calm of affections and 
 passions not deadened, but strengthened by the 
 domination of Divine Love : the calm of a con- 
 science clear as the purest crystal; the calm of 
 outward bearing and conduct where every move- 
 ment has been brought into subjection to the law 
 within. Peace is therefore the child of true magna- 
 nimity. 
 
ONE BREAD AND ONE BODY. 145 
 
 ex. 
 
 ONE BREAD AND ONE BODY. 
 
 Unus panis, unum corpus multi sumus, omnes qui de ano pane 
 participamus. 
 
 " For we being many, are one Bread and one 
 Body, all who eat of that Bread." To eat at the 
 same table and of the same dish, to break bread 
 with another is, especially in the East, a pledge and 
 symbol of brotherhood, of a common parentage and 
 source of life. In the Eucharistic Communion it is 
 no symbol, but an ultra-reality. Two brothers do 
 not live by the same life in so high a sense as 
 two souls who Hve by the indwelling of one and the 
 same Christ, one and the same Spirit in both. The 
 symbol indeed is broken and divided that it may 
 be distributed among many; but those many are 
 united and merged into one another by assimilation 
 to the one indivisible Reality; the one Bread and 
 one Body. We being many, draw to ourselves the 
 symbol and absorb it. The Reality, being one, 
 draws us to Itself and absorbs us. There is no 
 embrace of souls so close or so loving as that 
 whereby both are melted into the soul of Christ; 
 no kiss of peace more infinitely tender — or else more 
 infinitely treacherous. Let a man prove himself, 
 and so let him eat ; lest, not discerning the mystical 
 union of Christ's Body, he eat to his own damnation 
 with hatred in his heart. 
 
125 FAITH. 
 
 CXI. 
 
 FAITH. 
 Super hanc petram sedificabo ecclesiam meam. 
 
 Jacob laid his weary head to rest on a pillow of 
 stone and beheld Heaven's secrets in a vision ; for 
 God was in that place though he knew it not. And 
 he called it Beth-el, the house of God. It is on the 
 hard and seemingly comfortless rock of faith that 
 our thought-wearied intellect must repose, if we are 
 to wake inwardly to the vision of angels ascending 
 and descending upon the Son of Man, that ladder 
 which restores commerce between heaven and 
 earth and whose foot rests in Bethel, the Church 
 of God. 
 
 CXII. 
 god's vengeance. 
 
 Donee ponam inimicos tuos scabellum pedum tuorum. 
 
 " Till I make Thy enemies Thy footstool." God 
 triumphs over His enemies by the power of love, 
 which turns them into friends, and servants of the 
 servants of God ; ministering to His wounded feet ; 
 supporting and giving rest to His little ones — to 
 His lowliest members; beneath the feet of all by 
 the voluntary abjection of enslaving love. " From 
 the moment she entered she hath not ceased to kiss 
 My feet." 
 
GOD'S GARMENT. lay 
 
 CXIII. 
 
 god's garment. 
 
 Si tetigero tantum vestijnentum ejus salva ero. 
 
 Heaven and earth " shall wax old as doth a 
 garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them." 
 For they are the very garments of God ; not His 
 substance ; no part of Him, as pantheism would 
 have it. Yet there is nothing more nearly enters 
 into our personality, than our garments; so 
 nearly are they related to us. Who does not feel 
 humbled by rude and shabby attire ; and exalted by 
 that which is becoming? Our garments hide us, 
 but they also reveal us, as our words do. They are 
 a language in themselves, a self-utterance. They 
 reveal our very outline and movements; and are 
 instinct with our life. So everywhere Scripture 
 represents Nature as the garment of God ; as the 
 guise in which He has chosen to walk and talk with 
 man upon earth. It is God who shines in the sun, 
 moon, and stars ; who rages in the storm ; who 
 consumes in the fire ; who thunders from the clouds ; 
 who clothes Himself in glorious apparel ; girds 
 Himself with strength ; robes Himself in light ; veils 
 Himself in the clouds. " Hast thou an arm like 
 God ; or can'st thou thunder with a voice like His ; 
 compass thyself with beauty, and be lifted up on 
 high, and be glorious as He, and put on the garments 
 of splendour ? " Nature, then, is the garment of God ; 
 and by the light of natural reason, and the impulse 
 of the natural heart, man can draw near from behind. 
 
w8 BLESSED MAKGARET MAttlT. 
 
 and touch with trembling hope the fringe of His 
 vesture, and be healed of his infirmities. But grace 
 calls such men of good-will to behold the very face 
 of God, and to fall at His feet, glorying in their 
 infirmities. 
 
 CXIV. 
 
 BLESSED MARGARET MARY. 
 
 Simile est regnum coelorum homini quaerenti bonas margaritas 
 et inventa una pretiosa (Margarita), vendidit omnia qu£ habuit et 
 comparavit earn. 
 
 "The Kingdom of Heaven is like to a man 
 seeking goodly pearls, and having found one of 
 great price, he sold all that he had and bought it." 
 Blessed Margaret stands as representative of the 
 human soul (Psyche) which God sought through all 
 the long days of creation, as the goal to be reached 
 through many labours. When He had breathed the 
 immortal spirit into its prepared habitation of clay, 
 God rested from His labour. Invent quern diligit 
 anima mea. He had found what He could love, and 
 what could love Him in return. Again when that 
 pearl of great price was lost. He sought it afresh 
 where it lay hidden away in the dust. He sold all 
 that He had ; He emptied Himself of His glory ; 
 and having given all He had, it only remained that 
 He should give Himself; and so He took the very 
 Heart of His bosom, and gave that too. " Behold 
 this Heart which has so loved man." 
 
tHE HOLY HOUSE. 129 
 
 cxv. 
 
 THE aOLV HOUSE. 
 Adorabimus in loco ubi steterunt pedes ejns. 
 
 "We shall adore in the place where His feet 
 have stood." Were we to adore in every place 
 where we find God's footprints, our life would be 
 as continuously one of adoration as theirs, "who 
 always behold the face of the Father." But we 
 need to school ourselves into the habit of observing 
 the vestiges of God in all around us. He is in our 
 midst and we know Him not. 
 
 CXVI. 
 
 OUR TIMES. 
 Loquere ad cor populi hujus. 
 
 "Speak to the heart of this people." Cor ad 
 cor loquitur — " It is the heart that speaks to the 
 heart." We must speak from the abundance of 
 our own heart if we are to reach the hearts of 
 others. Else we may enlighten or interest, but 
 we cannot move. To speak to the heart of this 
 generation we must know its heart, how it thinks 
 and how it loves, its lights and its shadows, its 
 depths and its shallows, its strength and its 
 weakness, its greatness and its smallness. And 
 where it is most wanting, there our own hearts 
 must be most full, great, deep, strong, enlightened. 
 To know it, we must observe it, and study it. It is not 
 enough to know truth; we must know error as well— 
 
130 ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST. 
 
 the pathology of human mind. We come to the 
 task mostly as a physician who has never seen 
 the human frame, or its morbid state, except in a 
 diagram. He talks learnedly of what he has never 
 seen, never handled, never felt; and no one listens 
 to him. 
 
 CXVII. 
 
 ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST. 
 Discipulus ille quem diligebat Jesus. 
 
 "The disciple whom Jesus loved, who also 
 leaned upon His breast at supper." Even were 
 the first designation not distinctive, but common, 
 the second cannot be so explained ; and since 
 they are here connected, it follows that quem 
 diligebat Jesus, is true of St. John in a peculiar 
 sense, not common to all — as indeed the definite 
 article everywhere seems to imply. Were the 
 epithet self-concealing, St. John would have said, 
 " another disciple," or " one of those whom 
 Jesus loved." We can hardly doubt that amongst 
 other reasons, St. John's privilege of special close- 
 ness to the Sacred Humanity was the reward ot 
 special chastity and purity of soul, as in the case 
 of the one hundred and forty-four thousand 
 virgins who follow the Lamb whithersoever He 
 goeth. Yet there are also good grounds for 
 thinking that in this case, as certainly in the case of 
 Lazarus, our Saviour makes His own, and thereby 
 sanctifies, the relation of human and natural friend- 
 ship — one which is capable of indefinite elevation on 
 the one hand, or corruption on the other; and 
 
ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST. 131 
 
 which, though in some respects less sacred and 
 divine of its nature than the relations consequent 
 on parental, filial, fraternal, or conjugal love; yet 
 in point of its freedom and the purity of its founda- 
 tion may often be a truer image of the Divine 
 passion for the human soul, or of that one love by 
 which the Three Divine Persons are knit together. 
 
 That our Saviour should have loved the twelve 
 equally is a preposterous supposition, quite adverse 
 to the whole doctrine of God's freedom in distribut- 
 ing His graces. " Is thine eye evil because I am 
 good," i.e., Am I to complain because God is more 
 generous to others, and to forget that He has been 
 generous to me beyond all desert ? What He loves 
 in us are His own gifts and likenesses; and these 
 He imparts alike in no two cases ; so that He loves 
 no two alike. It is only from an idea that fraternal 
 love is wholly extrinsic, that the unnatural and 
 unworkable notion could have arisen, that Christian 
 perfection bids us regard all with strict equahty of 
 aifection. For indeed if, in each case, we love not our 
 neighbour at all, but God only of whom he is the 
 mere representative, the fetich, the arbitrary symbol, 
 then it is always one and the same act of love ; and 
 it is indifferent whether God bids us love a stock 
 or a stone, or a brute or a man. God wants us not 
 only to love Him, but also to love what He loves, 
 and for the same reason that He loves it ; to love 
 in sympathy with Him, as far as we can at all see 
 with His eyes. What He loves in each is His 
 own image, which indeed is common to all, in so 
 far as all have reasonable souls; and His own 
 
132 ILLIBERAL JUDGMENTS. 
 
 likeness, in so far as many have supernatural grace 
 as well. But over and above this, He imparts 
 His image and likeness with endless diversity in 
 both orders, by natural and supernatural gifts. To 
 see God in others is to ascribe all that is good in 
 them to this Divine indwelling, which is more in 
 some, in others less. They are lovable because God 
 loves them and " has done great things for them ; " 
 more for some ; less for others ; much for all. 
 
 St. John was the apostle of love, because, beyond 
 others, he understood the love of God. It was his 
 to reveal the majesty and glory of the Eternal Word; 
 and thus to find in His greatness a measure of His 
 meekness and lowly condescension, and of the force 
 of that love which could compel one so high to 
 stoop so low. Even the human beauty of Christ's 
 love perishes with a merely humanistic view of His 
 being. 
 
 cxvni. 
 
 ILLIBERAL JUDGMENTS. 
 Quid est homo, ut immaculatus sit? 
 
 There is nothing more illiberal than the way in 
 which we allow our likes and dislikes to be ruled 
 by the principle, Malum ex quocunqm defectu — "Good, 
 demands every perfection ; bad, but a single defect ; " 
 so that ten good points in a character are blotted out 
 of sight by a single fault, or even less than a fault. 
 We seem to take a man's goodness as a matter of 
 course, and no thanks to him ; as the mere negation 
 of blameworthiness. It' may be partly that we 
 notice what is peculiar and rivet our attention on 
 
GOD AT OUR MERCY. 133 
 
 it ; whereas what we find in every one is too ordinary 
 to strike us; just as the ordinary benefits and 
 blessings of daily life, in themselves very great, and 
 in number beyond reckoning, escape our observation 
 and elicit no gratitude. It is the function of the 
 best poetry and art to re-sensitize our attention, and 
 to teach us to observe the beauties of those ordinary 
 things and persons which are continually before our 
 irresponsive, use-worn gaze. It is the function of 
 charity to open our eyes to the image of God in 
 others ; to reveal them to us as they are in His 
 eyes, finite and faulty, needing like ourselves much 
 patient compassion ; and yet full of goodness, if not 
 in act, at least in capacity. 
 
 CXIX. 
 
 GOD AT OUR MERCY. 
 Factus sum sicut homo sine adjutorio. 
 
 The Infant Saviour at the breast of His Mother 
 or in the arms of St. Joseph tells us how God comes 
 to us in weakness; throws Himself upon our mercy; 
 makes Himself needy and dependent that our love 
 may have room to exercise itself in His regard. In 
 every grace which He offers us, He exposes His 
 honour to the insult of refusal; in the Eucharist 
 and other sacraments, to profanation and sacrilege ; 
 in His Church and in His "little ones," to perse- 
 cution, neglect, and contempt. He trusts Himself 
 into the hands of Judas, no less than into those of 
 Joseph. 
 
134 CONDITIONS OF PRAYER. 
 
 cxx. 
 
 CONDITIONS OF PRAYER. 
 
 Nihil solliciti sitis, sed in omni oratione et obsecratione cum 
 gratiarum actione petitiones vestras innotescant apud Deum. 
 
 " Be distressed for nothing, but in all prayer 
 and entreaty, with thanksgiving, let your requests be 
 made known to God." Here are all the requisites 
 of successful prayer — " Ye ask and ye receive not, 
 because ye ask not aright." First, we are to ask 
 " without anxiety ; " not but that we are to care 
 about having what we ask for. We must want it 
 intensely, and the more the better; else how can 
 we pray with fervour? The prayers that our 
 Saviour heard and blessed were like His own, 
 " strong crying and tears unto Him that was able 
 to save Him," in His agony and conflict with the 
 horror of death. It was no listless, half-hearted 
 cry that was uttered by the Syrophoenician woman ; 
 or by the blind man at Jericho ; or by the Centurion; 
 or by the leper ; or by Mary and Martha. Anxiety 
 means fear as to the result. We are forbidden to 
 fear, when we have done all in our power, i.e., when 
 we have used all reasonable means ; and foremost 
 amongst them is strong, earnest prayer, by which we 
 draw down from Heaven rain to fertilize what we 
 have sown in the way of efforts, which else were 
 sown in vain. Even were our judgment at fault, 
 yet when this happens in good faith after our best 
 reasonable efforts, we have no ground for anxiety as 
 though such error had not happened with God's 
 
CONDITIONS OP PRAYER. 135 
 
 permission, and could not be woven into His design 
 for our good. Far from energetic effort and impor- 
 tunate prayer betokening anxiety, it is rather anxiety 
 which unnerves, disheartens, and causes apathy and 
 diffidence in the long run. It is no small faith that 
 can go on praying in spite of reiterated repulses; 
 that is lashed into energy by opposition, instead of 
 being discouraged. It is faith of the credo quia 
 impossihile type ; hope, which hopes for the hopeless, 
 because it is hopeless. Prayer is one of the engines 
 by which the Kingdom of Heaven is to be stormed. 
 God loves the violence that storms at Him and will 
 take no refusal — 
 
 Fervent love 
 And lively hope with violence assail 
 The Kingdom of the Heavens, and overcome 
 The will of the Most High ; not in such sort 
 As man prevails o'er man but conquers it 
 Because 'tis willing to be conquered — stiU 
 Though conquered, by its mercy conquering.* 
 
 The will to pray is always from God, and it is a 
 pledge of His willingness to hear if we but pray 
 aright — that is, with confidence and pertinacity. 
 Never yet has a prayer fallen to the ground that went 
 up from a desirous heart. It may be after many 
 days that the bread cast on the water returns ; but 
 in God's scheme there is no destruction of force; 
 every good effort, every good wish is fruitful in 
 the event. Cum gratiarum actione — " With thanks- 
 giving." This is the last condition for successful 
 impetration; inseparable from hope and the sense 
 * Gary's Dante, Par. xx. 
 
136 LAZARVS RESVSCITATVS. 
 
 of dependence on God alone. To acknowledge that 
 all we have received in the past is from God, is to 
 proclaim that we look to Him alone for the future. 
 
 CXXI. 
 
 LAZARUS RESUSCITATUS. 
 Domine, si fuisses hie, frater meus non fuisset mortuus. 
 
 " Lord, hadst Thou been here, my brother had 
 not died." Here is the great lesson of hope. As 
 long as there was a spark of life, there were natural 
 reasons, however slight, for hoping that that spark 
 might be fanned to a flame; and so our Saviour 
 lingers that this last spark might be extinguished, 
 nay, till putrefaction had set in, that " the glory of 
 God might be revealed," that He, and He alone, 
 might be manifest as the Resurrection and the Life. 
 " Now Jesus loved Mary and Martha ; " and so, like 
 a true lover. He tries their hope and confidence to 
 the very extreme. 
 
 cxxn. 
 
 CONSERVATION OF SPIRITUAL ENERGY. 
 
 Mitte panetn tuum super transeuntes aquas, quia post tempora 
 multa invenies ilium. 
 
 " Cast thy bread upon the water, and after many 
 days thou shalt find it," i.e., alms wasted on the 
 most worthless and undeserving, will in the end 
 return with interest into the bosom of the giver, 
 " good measure, pressed down, shaken together and 
 running over." There is no waste of matter or 
 force in physical nature, except to our seeming ; all 
 is collected up again to the minutest fragment and 
 
CONSERVATION OF SPIRITUAL ENERGY. 137 
 
 stored away in her treasury for future use. So in 
 God's supernatural or moral Providence no good 
 desire was ever in vain or fruitless. It is like the 
 Divine Word which shall not return empty, but 
 shall, accomplish all whereunto it was sent. If our 
 prayers or well-intended efforts seem misdirected 
 and fruitless in the present ; yet their force is 
 indestructible, and after many days the wasted bread 
 shall be recovered again. If it delay, wait for it, 
 for coming it shall come, and will not tarry. 
 
 The only remedy to the pessimism engendered, 
 not by the wickedness and weakness of the world, 
 but by the present disappointing results of a scheme 
 of salvation professing to be divine, and by the 
 unsatisfactoriness of a solution purporting to be 
 from God, is to be found in this virtue of expectant 
 hope. The bright side of Christianity is all in the 
 future ; its dark phase in the present. Expecto 
 resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam futuri sceculi. 
 Redemption and light is in fieri, not in facto esse — 
 only in process of becoming. We are in this respect, 
 like the Old Testament saints, " saluting the promises 
 from afar." Our eyes have seen the day-star rising 
 in the east, "setting forth as a bridegroom from 
 his chamber ; " but He has yet to run His course, 
 before all His enemies shall be under His feet. There 
 is really no human or natural basis for even a 
 modified optimism ; nothing but a Credo quia, 
 impossibile. Hope is the light that shines in the 
 tearful eyes of the saints ; like the first glimmer of 
 dawn reflected in eyes that " watch for the 
 morning." Deus, Dem mens, ad te de luce vigilo. 
 
138 MARY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 CXXIII. 
 
 MARY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine. 
 
 As in the beginning it was the Spirit that brooded 
 over the abyss, and brought form out of the form- 
 less, order from confusion, life from death, light from 
 darkness ; so in the beginning of the new heaven 
 and earth, the same Spirit — Digitus PaterncB dexterce 
 — " Finger of the Father's right hand," was instru- 
 mental in realizingthe Incarnate Word conceived and 
 uttered by the Eternal Father : Dixitque Deus : Fiat 
 Lux, et facta est Lux — "God said : Let there be Light, 
 and Light was." And as It began, so It continues 
 to develope the seed sown, " which is the Word of 
 God ; " and to work out day by day, and in each 
 single soul, the Mystic Christ, i.e., Christ and the 
 Church, " unto the stature of the perfect man." To 
 judge of this new creation, we need to go forward to 
 the end and look back upon it with God's eyes: 
 "Viditque Deus cunda quce fecerat ; et erant valde bona. 
 Igitur perfecti sunt cceli et terra et omnis ornatus eorum 
 — " And God saw all that He had made ; and it was 
 very good. And so the heavens and the earth and 
 all their furniture were perfected." In the finished 
 Christ the labour of the Holy Spirit will come to an 
 end. " The Spirit of God shall come to rest upon 
 Him." Of that finished work it is said, " This is My 
 beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." " I saw 
 the heavens opened and the Spirit of God in the 
 form of a Dove descending and resting upon Him," 
 
GOD MADE MAN. 139 
 
 i.e., as a dove in its finished nest. "And God 
 rested the seventh day from all His labour that He 
 had wrought." 
 
 Ex Maria Virgine. As Mary was co-principle 
 with the Holy Spirit "in the beginning" of the New 
 Creation, so also is she in the process of its evolution 
 and its consummation. Her office throughout is the 
 same : ancilla Domini — " God's handmaiden." The 
 Holy Ghost is ever coming upon her, and the power 
 of the Highest overshadowing her, and that Holy 
 Thing which is called the Son of God, the Mystic 
 Christ, being born of her. She is mother and the 
 nurse of redeemed humanity ; she is ever standing 
 with helpless man in her arms, and her foot upon the 
 serpent's head ; Michael and his angels fighting for 
 the "Woman and her Child," against the dragon 
 and his angels. 
 
 CXXIV. 
 
 GOD MADE MAN. 
 Et Homo factus est. 
 
 Here we adore the humiHty of God, the mystery 
 of the Divine descent, which is measured by its 
 terms whence and whither. The term whence — 
 the majesty of God — is lost in the infinite heights 
 beyond the furthest travel of our thought ; the 
 term whither reveals new depths the more it is 
 investigated. Quid est homo quod memor es ejus aut 
 filius hominis quoniam apponis erga eum cor fuum 
 — " What is man that Thou shouldst remember 
 him, or the Son of Man that Thou shouldst 
 set Thy Heart on Him ? " To this we may seek 
 
140 SEEING IS BELIEVING. 
 
 an answer by the consideration of St. Ignatius in 
 his " Exercise on our own sins," i.e., by considering 
 the physical insignificance of any man compared 
 with the whole race, and with the world he dwells 
 in, which is daily dwarfed by widening views of the 
 material universe. But still more striking is the 
 deepening knowledge of human weakness and 
 wickedness, of what man can be and often is. That 
 God should have allied Himself with something so 
 detestable and loathsome, and should have found 
 a jewel in such mire, gives an ever-growing meaning 
 to the genuflection we make at Homo foetus est. 
 
 cxxv. 
 
 SEEING IS BELIEVING. 
 Affer manum tuam et mitte in latus meum, et noli esse incredulus. 
 
 " Reach hither thy hand and thrust it into My 
 side, and be not faithless but believing." Modicm 
 fidei quare dubitasti ? Why do you doubt My love, 
 My wisdom, My power ? Is it because, unless you 
 see signs and wonders, you think that My arm is 
 shortened ? and unless you see the solution of every 
 problem, the exit of every event, you think that 
 My devices are exhausted ? or unless you actually 
 behold and touch the wound love has inflicted on 
 Me, you deem that My love is spent and cooled ? 
 " Reach hither thy hand and thrust it into My side, 
 and be not faithless but believing." Palpate et videte 
 — " Handle Me and see." 
 
WORDLESS PRAYERS. 141 
 
 CXXVI. 
 
 WORDLESS PRAYERS. 
 
 Desiderium pauperum exaudivit Dominus, prseparationem cordis 
 eorum exaudivit auris tua. 
 
 "The Lord has heard the desire of the poor; 
 Thine ear has caught what his heart was making 
 ready to say." We are anxious in praying to find 
 words adequate and fitted to our thoughts and 
 desires; but how needlessly! This is an anthro- 
 pomorphic fallacy which figures God as needing 
 information. True, He may require some exter- 
 nation or utterance, for our sakes. Yet what matters 
 it whether the words be those of the Pater and 
 Ave; or a striking of the breast, or any act, even 
 internal, which says, "Lord, Thou knowest my 
 desire, and my groaning is not hid from Thee " ? 
 He hears our very wish, the very state of a ready 
 heart : Cui omne cor patet et omnis voluntas loquitur 
 — " For to Him every heart lies open, every wish is 
 eloquent ; " — even our most deeply buried, barely 
 subconscious, or interpretative intentions. 
 
 CXXVIL 
 
 HOLY INNOCENTS. 
 Princeps pads. 
 
 "The Prince of peace." He comes to send, not 
 peace, but a sword — a sword for Rachael's heart, 
 for His own Mother's heart ; a sword for the 
 helpless and innocent ; to break many a heart, that 
 the thoughts of many a heart may be revealed. 
 
Ui ST. TttOMAS Of CANtERnURY. 
 
 Peace therefore is the issue, or last event; but 
 strife is the road to it. There are those who 
 calumniate our Lord as indifferent to all this heart- 
 breaking which salvation involves from the neces- 
 sity of the case. Comprehending the measureless 
 glory and joy to come, He must be — some would 
 think — insensible to sorrows which, compared with 
 that joy, are infinitesimal. But compared with 
 our littleness and weakness, He knows that they 
 are overwhelming and crushing. Sicut pater castigat 
 — " He chastises as a Father." He does not 
 afflict us willingly ; what He could spare us, He has 
 spared us, and has borne it Himself; the slight 
 remainder that we must bear, afflicts Him more 
 than it afflicts us. " If one member suffers, all the 
 other members suffer with it," but most of all, the 
 Head. He who gives us our tenderest feehngs, 
 feels more tenderly for them and with them, than 
 any fellow-mortal, however sympathetic. He can 
 console and compensate as none other ; nor is any 
 pain so shght, not even that of the humblest sentient 
 creature that crawls upon the earth, that He should 
 be indifferent to it. 
 
 cxxvni. 
 
 ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY. 
 Reddite quae Caesaris sunt Caesari, et quae sunt Dei, Deo. 
 
 In Henry II. we have a good example of how the 
 lust of power can lead a man from God to the love of 
 riches and honours ; thence to the stiffness and in- 
 flexibility of pride; and thence to all sin, even 
 sacrilegious murder. Also, we may notice how secular 
 
ST. THOMAS OP CANTSR^ORY. 14} 
 
 governments are always trying to make the Church 
 their tool ; to subject her to their own ends as supple- 
 mentary to the police ; forgetting that her power 
 over men, which they desire to utilize, falls with her 
 independence of temporal control. This conflict is 
 carried on no less in the microcosm, the little world 
 of our soul, where nature first endeavours craftily to 
 make such concordats with the spirit as to bring it 
 gradually into complete subordination, and eventually 
 to destroy it. But here, too, nature overreaches itself. 
 Like k Becket, our sense of our other-world dignity 
 as Christians should make us firm and even in- 
 dignant against the encroachments of the secular 
 power, rights of investiture, royal " placets," and 
 the rest; ready to resist usque ad sanguinem, every 
 curtailment of " the liberty of the sons of God," 
 with a non possumm, or a non serviam, or a Reddite 
 CcBsari qua sunt Ccesaris, et quce Dei sunt Deo — 
 " Caesar's to Caesar, and God's to God." Also, 
 opposed to the growth of pride and stiff-necked in- 
 flexibility of Henry, we have the process of gradual 
 humiliation in k Becket, who, under God's chastise- 
 ment, passes from the loss of honour and riches, 
 to disillusionment, and contempt of the same ; and 
 so to humility and perfect flexibility in the hands 
 of God ; and thence to the very highest sacrifice of 
 heroic virtue. 
 
144 EARTH'S RENEWAL. 
 
 CXXIX. 
 
 earth's renewal. 
 
 Rorate coeli desuper, et nubes pluant justum : aperiatur terra et 
 germinet Salvatorem. 
 
 " Shed your dews from above, O ye heavens- 
 and let the clouds rain down the Just One ; let the 
 earth break and the Saviour bud forth." Heaven 
 and earth co-operate in the birth of the New Spring; 
 the Spirit coming down like the dew upon Mary, 
 a daughter of earth, from whose fertilized womb 
 appears the first harbinger of the world's renewal, 
 "as a tender plant and as a root out of the dry 
 ground." Emitte Spiritum tuum et creabimtur, et 
 renovabis faciem terrce — " Send forth Thy Spirit and 
 they shall be created, and Thou shalt renew the face 
 of the earth." Jam hiems transiit — already the winter 
 is past, the winter of earth's sin and darkness and 
 frosty hardness ; the dead, stubborn, fruitless soil is 
 loosened and quickened by the soft, warm rain; "the 
 fig-tree hath put forth her blossoms, and the voice 
 of the turtle-dove is heard in the land." The winter 
 was past in that moment when the earth opened and 
 the Saviour budded forth ; but the spring had only 
 begun, and summer was yet in the distance; and 
 autumn, with its harvest-homes and golden store, 
 still further off. But from dawn to sunset, from the 
 beginning to the fulness of the renewal, there are 
 the same two co-operant principles of life — the dew 
 from heaven and the fruitful earth ; the Spirit and 
 the Virgin-Mother of Divine grace, — the second Eve, 
 
EARTH'S RENEWAL. I45 
 
 Mother of all living. In every act of sanctification, 
 whether it be first conversion, or increase of grace, 
 Christ is born again of Mary and the Spirit, t.e., 
 His image and likeness, how distant and defective 
 soever, is multiplied in those to whom He has given 
 " power to become the sons of God : " Ejm divini- 
 tatis esse consortes qui humanitatis nostra fieri dignatus 
 est particeps — " To be consorts of His Godhead who 
 deigned to be a sharer of our manhood." And so 
 that first "tender shoot" of salvation sends forth 
 from its root new fibres, and spreads secretly 
 underground, till the whole face of the earth is 
 renewed and covered with what seems to surface- 
 sight a multitude of single growths, but what pene- 
 trating faith knows to be " one body and one 
 spirit," one living, many-branched whole, one mystic 
 Christ, the fruit of Mary's womb. 
 
 Rorate cceli desuper — " Shed your dew from on 
 high, O heavens." The Divinity rests upon the 
 Sacred Humanity, as the dew upon the leaves and in 
 the flower-cups ; not mingled with it, nor absorbed, 
 yet giving it a glory and brilliancy which is not its 
 own, but from on high, — Desuper. There alone 
 does it rest, firmly and for ever, in such sort that 
 the jewels and their setting are but one Holy Thing 
 (illud Sanctum quod ex te nascetur). On all others the 
 diamond fringe hangs trembling — a rude touch, and 
 ichabod — " the glory is departed." 
 
 K 
 
146 FEAR NOT. 
 
 cxxx. 
 
 FEAR NOT. 
 Et timuerunt timore magno. 
 
 " And they (the Shepherds) were sore afraid." 
 Such is the natural effect on man of any revelation 
 of an unknown, uncertain power, until he has 
 received assurance that its possessor is well-disposed 
 towards him, and will use it for his help and not 
 for his hurt. Then fear gives way to confidence. 
 Before the Incarnation had made God's love visible 
 and tangible, men would not, perhaps could not, 
 believe in it, or trust Him. If they trembled and 
 were sore afraid at the brightness of His angels, 
 much less could they endure His very face and 
 presence, and live. " Speak thou unto us ; but let 
 not the Lord speak to us, lest we die." But now, 
 it is not Moses, but God Himself who speaks to us 
 with human words and broken utterances ; who 
 touches us with a human hand ; upon whose human 
 face our eyes may rest undazzled. Quod fuit ah 
 initio ; quod audivimus ; quod vidimus oculis nostris, 
 quod perspeximus et manus nostrce contrectaverunt de 
 Verbo Vitce — " We have seen ; we have heard ; we 
 have handled That which was from the beginning 
 —The Word of Life." 
 
 " Fear not, for behold, I bring you glad tidings." 
 This was the new evangel, that the dispensation 
 of fear should give place to that of love, that man 
 should be fearless not only before the angels, but 
 before the God and King of Angels, in whose sight 
 
FEAR NOT. 147 
 
 the angels tremble and veil their faces. Not that 
 they should think less of the power and majesty of 
 God, but that they should have an irresistible assur- 
 ance that that power is for their help and not for 
 their hurt ; that it is wielded by mercy and love ; 
 that His thoughts towards us are not of affliction 
 but of peace. 
 
 " This shall be a sign." This is the symbol of 
 the Gospel spirit that banishes fear or purifies it 
 into reverential love and chaste familiarity. " You 
 shall find the Babe," for He comes not in mature 
 manhood as the first Adam, but as one born of 
 woman, in the humiliation of infancy, dependent 
 on others for food, shelter, clothing, and protection 
 — He who " feeds the young ravens which cry unto 
 Him" and "shelters us under the shadow of His 
 wing," and " clothes the grass of the field," and " is 
 the protector of all them that call upon Him." This 
 He suffers, that He may become one of us in every- 
 thing, and eliminate every line of separation, sin 
 only excepted, which could hinder our free and 
 ready access to our Emmanuel {i.e., God, one of 
 ourselves) — " wrapped in swaddling-clothes," i.e., 
 tied hand and foot, so as to be able neither to fight 
 nor to flee ; " entirely at the mercy of His creatures. 
 " Laid in a manger," i.e., passive, to be taken and 
 put here or there, "like a dead body or an old 
 man's staff." "In a manger;" in that which by 
 its nature was never intended, and could never be 
 fitted to be the resting-place of the " Son of Man ; " 
 but " not having where to lay His Head," He must 
 perforce seek shelter in our rough hearts rather than 
 
148 FEAR NOT. 
 
 be altogether unloved and left out in the cold,. If 
 there is nothing else in that place, there is at least 
 room for Him. 
 
 Keble notices that the angel choirs were silent 
 till they heard the sign, and then it was that their 
 praises broke out like a pent-up flood : 
 
 But when they heard the sign where Christ should be 
 In sudden light they shone and heavenly harmony, 
 
 i.e., it is the revelation of " omnipotence in bonds ; " 
 of the tyranny of infinite love over infinite majesty, 
 that banishes fear and gives birth to peace on earth, 
 wherein and whence God is glorified in the heights. 
 " Fear not, for . . . there is born to you this day 
 a Saviour " and not a Judge, i.e., a Judge reluctantly 
 and in the last extremity ; a Saviour primarily and 
 by preference ; " longsuffering and slow to anger ; " 
 putting off the evil day, age after age ; hoping against 
 hope that man may turn to Him ; one who, in a 
 sense, mourns over loved lost souls for ever and 
 ever. "O Absalom, my son, my son; would God 
 that I had died for thee," and " How often would 
 I have gathered thee under My wing and thou 
 wouldst not," and "O that thou hadst known and 
 in this thy day, the things of thy peace." It is in 
 the Eucharist that this mystery of condescension 
 culminates — the Babe, wrapped in swaddling-clothes, 
 laid in a manger. Hoc erit signum vobis. Here is the 
 sign of God's good-will that banishes fear. 
 
CONTROVERSY. 149 
 
 CXXXI. 
 
 CONTROVERSY. 
 Fortis ut mors, dilectio. 
 
 " Love as invincible as death." Diligite inimicos 
 vestros — " Love your enemies." The shortest road to 
 victory over the enemies of God is that of personal 
 kindness ; and as regards their opinions, a sympathy 
 not of approbation, but of comprehension ; a glad 
 insistence on points of agreement, a calm steadfast- 
 ness against error — free from all heat, bitterness, and 
 personal estrangement. Rationes modeste afferantur eo 
 animo ut sims veritati sit locus non ut in ea re superiores 
 videantur — " Let the reasons be adduced quietly with 
 a mind to truth, and not to victory; " says St. Ignatius 
 Loyola. Nothing, could be further removed from the 
 narrow, sectarian, unchristian spirit of controversy, 
 such as disgraces the pages of many Church-papers, 
 periodicals, controversial tracts and treatises. Nescitis 
 cujus spiritus estis — " Ye know not whose school ye are 
 of," Christ would say to such as would bid fire 
 come down from heaven to destroy their enemies, 
 and the enemies of God. He who had come " not 
 to destroy men's souls, but to save them," bade 
 another fire come down upon His enemies, the 
 Pentecostal fire, which He came to send upon earth, 
 and was straitened till it was kindled ; that love which 
 even the heathen Akbar saw to be " the net of truth 
 and the noose of God." 
 
 And was not Allah called 
 In old Irdn, the Sun of Love. And Love 
 The net of Truth ? 
 
150 HOPE. 
 
 CXXXII. 
 
 HOPE. 
 Etiamsi occiderit me in ipso sperabo. 
 
 Perhaps in the rapid narration of Job's many 
 afflictions we are apt to miss the lesson of his 
 protracted longsuffering, and to regard his successive 
 blows collectively as one. We should space them 
 out, and consider how, after the first, he gradually 
 reconciled himself to God's will, and was full of 
 confidence that He who had afflicted would presently 
 heal and console him ; and lo ! instead of consola- 
 tion, comes another blow harder and seemingly less 
 deserved than the first. Will he still hope ? will he 
 still say to his friends, " Wait, and see the deliver- 
 ance of God " ? And so although, time after time, his 
 hopes of speedy deliverance are frustrated, we find 
 him as hopeful as ever, even though death, which 
 to the Oriental mind is the culmination of evil, stares 
 him in the face. " Though He slay me," i.e., though 
 He cut off my last hope, "yet will I hope in Him," 
 — hoping, because it is hopeless. 
 
 CXXXIII. 
 
 HELL, A MYSTERY. 
 
 Justice, the founder of my fabric moved ; 
 To rear me was the task of Power divine, 
 Supremest Wisdom and primeval Love.i 
 
 Power, Wisdom, and Love are appropriated to 
 
 the Three Divine Persons, and yet, taken essentially, 
 
 • Gary's Dante, Hell, iii. 
 
HELL. A MYSTERY. 151 
 
 are almost integrating parts of our notion of perfec- 
 tion. Power alone : or Wisdom alone, or Love 
 alone is wanting and worthless. Wisdom with 
 Power, but without Love, were attributes of a Demon. 
 Love with Power and without Wisdom, were futile 
 and mischievous ; Love and Wisdom without Power, 
 were ineffectual and helpless. May we say that the 
 Three Divine Persons, or personal and relative 
 perfections, are in some analogous way very com- 
 plementary one of another ; or rather, must we not 
 say so ? Hell, as Dante boldly affirms, is a monument 
 not only of the power and the wisdom but of the 
 love of God, i.e., of that same Spirit which brought 
 day out of darkness, and order out of ruin and 
 confusion. Gimtizia mosse 'I mio alto fattore, he says: 
 justice was the motive, iniquity the occasion ; but 
 given the occasion, not only justice, but wisdom 
 and love demanded it. We must not regard Hell 
 as an arbitrary, but as a strictly necessary conse- 
 quence of sin ; or, at the most, determined in some 
 way by the free-will of God, as to the particular 
 mode of punishment. To understand the justice, 
 wisdom, or love, which made Hell, is most certainly 
 beyond our present ken. To our Hmited view. Hell, 
 as we conceive it, may seem unjust, unwise, un- 
 loving; and attempts to justify it from reason, 
 valid or invalid, may sometimes only irritate and 
 disgust us. There is a certain presumption in the 
 notion of any man seeing in his fellow-sinner such 
 an abyss of iniquity, as could demand eternal and 
 immeasurable torments; nor do I envy the man, 
 intellectually or morally, who could find repose in 
 
15* HELL, A MYSTERY. 
 
 any rationalistic explanation of so great a mystery. 
 Here, if anywhere, we must fall back upon the 
 very notion of faith, as an heroic clinging to God 
 in spite of crushing difficulties ; in spite of all that 
 may appear most contrary to our rooted conviction 
 as to His goodness and mercy. It is just the way 
 we ourselves should try the faith of one to whom we 
 had already given abundant proof of our good-will ; 
 or as, for example, God tried the faith of the 
 Israelites in the desert time after time — hiding 
 Himself from them for a moment, to see if perchance 
 even yet they had learnt to trust Him. "He who 
 made the eye, shall He Himself not see ? " and He 
 that made the human heart, and bore a human 
 heart, with all its tenderness and compassion, and 
 fierce indignation against cruel injustice, shall He 
 not be fair, and just, and kind, and tender ? He 
 who makes my very soul revolt against my own 
 silly understanding of the doctrine of Hell and 
 predestiny ; shall He not prove true, and just, and 
 wise, and loving, beyond my wildest dreams of 
 goodness ? Eventually I shall surely see how all 
 that was revealed was true ; but so far short of the 
 whole truth as to make my present judgment on it 
 worthless and vain. I am content therefore to wait 
 patiently and trustfully as for the answer to a 
 riddle, which now puzzles me hopelessly because I 
 am on the wrong track for its solution ; the more I 
 reason, the faster I stick in the mire. When I hear 
 the answer I shall laugh and say, " Of course ! 
 How could it be otherwise ? " 
 
ETERNITY OF HELL. 153 
 
 But soon as in this Heaven his doubting eyes 
 Were opened, Gregory at his error smiled.* 
 
 We should insist much on the latitude of Hell 
 and its " many mansions." Hell, in the case of 
 unbaptized infants, means the privation of a super- 
 natural bliss which the soul never dreamt of, and in 
 some sense does not care about or miss. For many 
 doubtless it means much more ; but as to these, it 
 is as certain that Hell involves neither cruelty nor 
 injustice, as that there is a Hell. If Hell, as I 
 conceive it, is cruel or unjust, it is as certain as 
 faith that I misconceive it. 
 
 CXXXIV. 
 
 ETERNITY OF HELL. 
 Tanquam vas figuli con&ingentur. 
 
 When the potter casts aside some fair piece of 
 his handiwork as flawed and worthless, it falls to 
 the ground, and is shattered in an instant. In that 
 same instant its destruction is completed and 
 perfect ; nor is it more destroyed for that its frag- 
 ments lie there a year or a century, or an eternity. 
 One vessel indeed may be flung aside with more 
 passionate disdain and may be more completely 
 shattered than another; but in regard to the 
 irreparability and finality of their doom all are 
 alike.* We necessarily but falsely imagine eternity 
 
 ' Gary's Dante, Par. xxviii. 
 
 ' "Duratio poenae respondet duration! culpse, non quidem ex 
 parte actus, sed ex parte maculae, qu4 durante manet reatus poenas; 
 sed acerbitas .poenae respondet gravitati culpa. Culpa autem quae 
 
154 ETERNITY OF HELL. 
 
 as time without end ; whereas it is not more false 
 to compare it to an indivisible second. When 
 we leave the material order, we pass into a 
 spiritual and timeless world, and the state in which 
 we are then found is of its own nature final and 
 unchanging; it is the end of a process, of our 
 spiritual and moral fieri or evolution. It is in the 
 state itself, and not in its duration, that the results 
 of that process are summed up. It is in the kind 
 and intensity of the pain, and not in its length 
 that we are to look for the adjustment between 
 delict and penalty. (So Aquinas, Summa, I. -II. 87, 
 artt. 3, 4.) The work of retribution is as complete 
 in the first instant as after the lapse of ages. For 
 in truth, there no first instant, no lapse of ages in 
 the " now " of eternity ; in that duration which is 
 said to be tola simul. Else, as has been objected, 
 the justice of God would be eternally unsatisfied ; 
 the balance of the moral order never set right. 
 The impossibility of a redemption from Hell 
 would doubtless be evident to us did we understand 
 what is meant by man's final state, that, namely, 
 in which the process of his moral evolution ends, 
 the completion of that dictio or self-utterance to 
 which his spiritual life may be compared ; and 
 which when once said, can never be unsaid or 
 revoked, 
 
 est irreparabilis de se habet quod perpetuo duret ; et ideo debetur ei 
 poena aeterna. Non autem ex parte conversionis habet infinitatem, 
 et ideo non debetur ei ex h^c parte poena infinita secundum quan- 
 titatem." (Aquinas, Sum. I.-II. 87. 4. ad. 3.) 
 
THE FEAR OF HELL. 155 
 
 cxxxv. 
 
 THE FEAR OF HELL. 
 Perfecta caritas foras mittit timorem. 
 
 Perfect love casts out fear ; but while love is yet 
 a tender sickly plant growing to maturity, it needs 
 the prop of fear. And even though the support of 
 fear is no longer needed when love is self-staying, 
 yet in the scorching noon of temptation, love may 
 flag and grow weary in well-doing, and drooping 
 earthward may be saved from destruction by fear. 
 
 Normally the fear of God is the beginning of 
 wisdom, i.e., of perfect love. It is a prudent and 
 supernatural self-regard which first wakes the soul 
 to a sense of its own misery ; which urges it to arise 
 from its state of stagnation, and which brings it at 
 last to the embrace of its Father, and to a love 
 which is altogether pure and "extra-regarding." 
 St. Augustine Hkens this self-regarding fear to the 
 needle which enters the texture, not to remain itself, 
 but to draw the thread after it. Yet in truth this simi- 
 litude is defective ; for though when love is perfect 
 and mature it needs not to be supplemented by fear, 
 yet fear remains as it were in abeyance and inopera- 
 tive, though ready to operate if love should grow 
 cold. It is then no longer called servile or slavish ; 
 so that perfect love casts out, not fear indeed, but 
 the servility of fear. For indeed it cannot but be 
 that the saints who ponder most deeply the great- 
 ness and goodness and justice of God, should be 
 most possessed by a sense of the terrors of His 
 
156 THE FEAR OF BELL. 
 
 punishments ; whereas the fearlessness of hardened 
 sinners is notorious. Yet where such hardness has 
 not yet supervened, even a dim-sighted, feeble fear 
 will stir the sinner to seek safety in obedience to 
 God's law, whose first and sovereign precept is love ; 
 and thus it is that it draws love after it. The fear 
 that we now speak of has for its object, not precisely 
 the loss of God, which is indeed the supreme calamity 
 of the soul from a self-regarding point of view ; but 
 rather the positive pains consequent on, and con- 
 nected with such loss. Suffering in any faculty or 
 appetite is caused not by the absence of its proper 
 perfecting object, but by the presence of one which 
 is violent and contrary to its nature and inclination ; 
 which is corruptive of it. Difficult as it is to 
 determine the mode of that punishment which is 
 called " eternal death," we must hold firmly that the 
 unchanging final state of the soul which dies in 
 actual sin is one of violence ; and that as each faculty 
 has its own proper repugnant or corruptive ; so the 
 whole soul. The prospect of losing God is a 
 deterrent only for those who love God, and in 
 proportion to their love. As a sanction it is 
 weakest where it is most needed. Therefore it is in 
 the positive pains of eternity that a sanction is 
 provided for the many i.e , for average, untaught 
 human nature whose task of getting to love God is 
 yet far from accomplished, A self-regarding dread 
 of Hell is therefore a great outwork and safeguard 
 of Divine love wherever it is kindled ; and where 
 love it is extinct, it is the normal prerequisite of its 
 recovery. Fear is a thing, therefore, to foster 
 
WHOM TO FEAR. 157 
 
 continually ; and the absence of which points to a 
 dimness of faith and a shallowness of judgment not 
 compatible with solid devotion. 
 
 CXXXVI. 
 
 WHOM TO FEAR. 
 Timete eum, qui potest et animam et corpus perdere in gehennam. 
 
 In weighing the words of our Saviour relative to 
 eternal punishment, we must remember that they 
 are words of God Himself, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite 
 Love and Mercy, Infinite Power, who created man 
 for unspeakable bliss, and yet who created Hell " for 
 the devil and his angels " and for all their adherents. 
 They are the words of the " Friend of publicans and 
 sinners," " meek and lowly of heart ; " who forgave 
 the Magdalene, the adulteress, the penitent thief; of 
 one so moderate, calm, temperate in all His state- 
 ment ; so devoid of rhetorical flourish and exaggera- 
 tion. They are the words of Him who was made 
 Man and died on the Cross to save us from Hell. 
 Ad quern ibimus ? — "To whom shall we go," save to 
 Him who has the words of eternal life and the 
 words of eternal death ? And what does He say ? 
 
 " I say to you, My friends ; be not afraid of them 
 that kill the body, and after that, have no more that 
 they can do ; but I will show you whom you shall fear. 
 Fear ye Him who, after He hath killed, hath power 
 to cast into Hell. Yea, I say to you, fear Him."^ 
 And elsewhere : " Rather, fear Him who can destroy 
 both body and soul in Hell."^ Here we notice that 
 
 > St. Luke xii. 4. * St. Matt. x. 28. 
 
158 WHOM TO FEAR. 
 
 He enjoins fear of Hell as an urgent duty, and 
 enforces His utterance by three-fold repetition ; that 
 He urges this duty on His friends, those who are in 
 His grace and love, whose love has cast out the 
 servility of fear, but not its substance ; that He bids 
 them regard all sufferings and privations, and the 
 torments of martyrdom as not worth considering in 
 comparison with the pains of Hell ; that not only 
 the soul, but the body also, is to enter into a violent 
 unchanging state of destruction or corruption called 
 " everlasting death." Elsewhere we learn, as the 
 just enter into unchanging life, light, and perfection, 
 so the wicked enter into " everlasting fire prepared 
 for the devil and his angels." The fire spoken of 
 is some destructive agency which acts on spiritual 
 beings as the fire we are familiar with does upon 
 the substance of the body — in some analogous way, 
 dissolvent and disruptive. 
 
 In St. Matt. ix. 42 — 47, our Saviour says that we 
 are to cut off the right hand or foot, to pluck out the 
 right eye, rather than they should cause us to stumble 
 into Hell, where the worm dieth not and the fire is 
 not quenched. The " right hand " stands for that 
 which is our means of work and subsistence and 
 defence ; our fortune, ability, influence, credit, occu- 
 pation, trade. If it is an occasion of sin, we are to 
 "cut it off" — a sudden, painful process, needing 
 heroic courage — and to " cast it from us " — an ener- 
 getic and complete severance, no paltering delays, 
 lingering regrets, backward glancings. And why? 
 "It is profitable for thee" — an appeal to our 
 supernatural self-regard ; as when He says : " What 
 
WHOM TO FBAR. 1S9 
 
 does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and 
 lose his own soul ? " And what makes it a profitable 
 sacrifice, a good bargain, to go through life maimed, 
 helpless, beggared ? Hell-fire, " where the worm 
 dieth not and the fire is not quenched ; " where the 
 state of absolute corruption of soul and body is final, 
 unchanging, unprogressive. And similarly as to the 
 right foot. Better to be lamed in the race of life ; 
 to be outstripped and forgotten in the rush of 
 competition, than stumble into that abyss of evil — 
 the only absolute misfortune. And better, finally, to 
 pluck out the right eye ; that which is dearest to our 
 tenderest affections, dearer than life itself, father or 
 mother, or son or daughter, or lover or friend, rather 
 than that it should cause us to see amiss and to turn 
 aside from the straight path that leads to life eternal. 
 " He that loves father or mother more than Me is 
 not worthy of Me." 
 
 " This is a hard saying. Who can bear it ? " 
 Many of His disciples hearing it go back and walk 
 with Him no more. From the beginning it has 
 ever been so. Disbelief in Hell was the first heresy : 
 "Ye shall not surely die." At all times it is the 
 policy of the spirit of error to divorce the sense of 
 God's mercy, from the sense of His justice, and to 
 present as incompatible, what are but two aspects 
 of one and the same Infinite Love. That they are 
 so, we cannot see, but we can believe ; and we can 
 see why we cannot see, and why we can believe. 
 " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the 
 words of eternal life." 
 
i6o VNCLOVDED SIGHT. 
 
 CXXXVII. 
 
 UNCLOUDED SIGHT. 
 Si oculus tuus fuerit simplex, totum corpus tuum lucidum erit. 
 
 " If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be 
 full of light." The "conscience argument" and 
 its ally, the "aesthetic argument" for Catholicity, 
 appeals only to those whose sense of right and 
 moral beauty is clear. If I find a key that fits an 
 infinitely complicated lock, t cannot in prudence 
 doubt that it is (directly or indirectly) the work of 
 the locksmith. Catholicity is the key that fits in thus 
 exactly with the complicated wards of the highly 
 developed conscience and moral sense, and that 
 opens out the secrets of the human heart. It is 
 therefore evidently from Him who makes and 
 perfects the conscience and the heart. But when 
 the still, clear waters of the lake become turbid and 
 ruffled ; when the heart is full of bitterness, rancour, 
 or pride, weighed earthwards, tempted, depressed; 
 then our sight is clouded to the truth ; Christ no 
 longer speaks clearly to us, nor is there remedy save 
 in the prudence which tells us to wait patiently till 
 the day break and the shadows flee away. Experi- 
 ence teaches us at least to recognize our transitory 
 states as such ; to distinguish the normal from the 
 abnormal, the healthy from the morbid. 
 
OUR GRIEVANCES. i6i 
 
 CXXXVIII. 
 
 OUR GRIEVANCES. 
 Intra lua vulnera absconde me. 
 
 " Within Tiiy Wounds hide me." The cure for 
 self-concentration and all morbid dwelling on our 
 own wounds, our own grievances, injuries, sorrows, 
 temptations, scruples, is to fly from ourselves and 
 hide away in the wounds of Christ's Mystical Body; 
 to concentrate all on the sorrows, wrongs, and trials 
 of others, to minister to them, pouring in oil and 
 wine. Thus losing ourselves we shall find ourselves, 
 et sanitas tua citius orietur — and we shall be healed 
 the sooner ; for the more we dwell upon His 
 wounds, the more He will dwell upon ours. 
 
 CXXXIX. 
 
 MAN-WORSHIP. 
 
 Illic (in cedris Libani) passeres nidificabunt. Monies excels! 
 cervis. 
 
 "In the cedars of Lebanon the sparrows shall 
 
 nest." " The very finest tree in the whole forest, 
 
 with the straightest stem, and the strongest arms, 
 
 and the thickest foliage, wherein you choose to 
 
 build . . . may be marked, for what you know, and 
 
 may be down with a crash erelong."^ A warning 
 
 against giving to the greatest saints, lights, and 
 
 pillars of the Church that blind confidence and 
 
 implicit faith of which God is so jealous. It is the 
 
 error of little and weak souls {passeres) to fly to 
 
 * Vanity Fair. 
 
 L 
 
162 NATURAL tClNDNSSS. 
 
 the cedar instead of to the mountain. " I saw 
 Lucifer as lightning fall from Heaven." " How art 
 thou fallen, O Lucifer, son of the morning." Melius 
 est confidere in Domino quam sperare in principibus — 
 " Better to trust in God than to trust in princes " — 
 and therefore the stronger and wiser souls take 
 refuge in the Rock alone, nor are they surprised, 
 however grieved, at the crash of the cedar, knowing 
 how its strong heart can be secretly rotted away by 
 pride, while its ou+ward seeming is unchanged, 
 
 CXL. 
 
 NATURAL KINDNESS. 
 Domine, quando te vidimus esurientem ? 
 
 "Lord, when saw we Thee hungry, and fed 
 Thee ? " The just seem to have been as unconscious 
 as the unjust, of the identification of Christ and the 
 needy. If they had seen Christ in the person of 
 the poor, they would not ask, "When saw we 
 Thee ? " It is as much a revelation to them as it 
 was to Saul when he heard the words: "Why 
 persecutest thou Me ? ... I am Jesus, whom thou 
 persecutest." They acted from what some would 
 contemptuously call "natural motives" of kindli- 
 ness and human sympathy; even as Abraham 
 when he " entertained angels unawares," and not as 
 angels. Do we forget that natural kindness is a 
 God-given instinct ; that it is God within us crying 
 out to us, and to whom we may either hearken or 
 turn a deaf ear ? Perhaps our best and purest acts 
 are those we do most directly, most instinctively, 
 
CHANGEABLENESS. 163 
 
 with least self-consciousness and self-praise. Whence 
 comes this devil's doctrine which gives us a God of 
 nature, and a God of grace at enmity with one 
 another ? Many millions who have never heard the 
 name of Christ, will hear : " I was hungry and you 
 fed Me;" and they will say: "Who art Thou, 
 Lord ? " and He will say, " I am Jesus." 
 
 CXLI. 
 
 CHANGEABLENESS. 
 Charitas nunquam excidit. 
 
 " Love never falls away." Fickleness and in- 
 constancy is a defect of will, and supposes an 
 unchanged judgment as to the facts. It is the shilly- 
 shallying disposition which makes one incapable 
 of decision, or of adhesion to decisions once made. 
 But if our knowledge progresses, our resolutions 
 and affections may reasonably be modified in 
 accordance with them without our incurring a 
 charge of inconstancy. Thus, when we are young, 
 and our intellectual horizon is altering every day, 
 it is rational to expect frequent changes in our 
 affections and tastes. We outgrow those whom 
 perhaps once we revered and looked up to and 
 admired ; we come to comprehend, and then to 
 transcend them ; and though we love them still, it 
 is rather for what they were to us, than for what 
 they are to us. This is not inconstancy, but pro- 
 gress. Here and there, there may be one who so 
 transcends us, as ever to reveal new aspects and 
 depths of mind and character, and who improves 
 
i64 WERCY Atfb TRUtn. 
 
 indefinitely on acquaintance. Quis est ille, et lauda- 
 bimus eum ? If it is not so with our Saviour, it is 
 because we do not study Him more and more, but 
 try vainly to subsist our mature aiTections on the 
 imperfect and crude idea of our childhood or youth. 
 The idea or aspect of Christ which fires my love 
 to-day, will not appeal to my maturer mind of a 
 year or even a month hence. There is not, and 
 ought not to be an end of my education in this 
 matter ; for I have come into this world for no 
 other work than to learn how to know and praise 
 God. 
 
 CXLII. 
 
 MERCY AND TRUTH. 
 Misericordia et Veritas obviaverant sibi. 
 
 " Mercy and truth have met together," that is, 
 they met together in our Saviour ; and in us, so far 
 as we are like-minded with Him. In us sinners 
 truth, pure and unadulterated, is often hostile to 
 mercy and tenderness ; for the simple truth is not 
 always the whole truth, " and a truth that is half the 
 truth, is ever the blackest of lies." To tell out our 
 measure of the truth would many a time be treason 
 against charity. Also, mercy at times may be 
 hostile to truth ; for there is a blind, lying, pseudo- 
 charity, too weak to bear the truth, and therefore 
 compelled to blink it ; too narrow to love, in spite 
 of defects and stains, and therefore ready to lie to 
 itself and to others. It is only in their highest 
 perfection, in their production or expansion to 
 infinity, that they meet and coincide. The whole 
 
JUSTICE AND PEACE. 165 
 
 " truth as it is in Christ," includes all the hidden 
 motives ; the excuses of blindness, surprise, weak- 
 ness, imperfect consent ; the subsequent sorrow. 
 It also throws back the light on us who judge ; bids 
 us look at ourselves, our need of great mercy, and 
 makes us cast down the stone with a neque ego te 
 condemnabo — " Neither do I condemn thee." And 
 again, perfect pity and mercy is that which can pity 
 even when there is no excuse ; which can take a 
 man at his average, and love him for any little 
 percentage of good there is about him, and still 
 more, for the good and happiness he is yet capable 
 of. Mercy, in Christ the Saviour, has met Truth 
 in Christ the Judge ; for Truth in its fulness is the 
 friend of Mercy. 
 
 CXLIII. 
 
 JUSTICE AND PEACE. 
 Justitia et pax osculatse sunt. 
 
 "Justice and peace have kissed one another." 
 To embrace is more than to meet. It is a sign of 
 absence and estrangement ended, or of broken 
 friendship restored. Justice bids us seek our due, 
 and render to others theirs ; an eye for an eye, a 
 tooth for a tooth, quid pro quo. Justice, untempered 
 and supreme, is fatal to peace. Peace, if dishonour- 
 able, the peace of the wicked, which is no peace, is 
 fatal to justice. It was in the Incarnation and 
 Redemption that God's wisdom devised a recon- 
 ciliation between His love of justice and His love 
 of peace, and that He might not forgive gratis with 
 hurt to justice, He paid the debt Himself. Justice, 
 
i66 FEAST OF THE HOLY LANCE AND NAILS. 
 
 the rights of God, or of our neighbour, are the only 
 limits of that meekness which should characterize 
 the peace-making " children of God." 
 
 "Truth has sprung from the earth, and justice 
 has looked down from Heaven " — not that these 
 predications hold exclusively of either subject, since 
 it is equally true that Justice sprang from the earth, 
 that is, took flesh in Mary's womb and grew to 
 perfect Manhood ; and that Truth looked down 
 from Heaven, and, seeing our misery, came down 
 and " dwelt among us." " The Son of Man, who 
 came down from Heaven ; " here the double nature, 
 origin, and sonship, is asserted of Him who " sprang 
 forth from the earth " and " looked down from 
 Heaven." 
 
 CXLIV. 
 
 FEAST OF THE HOLY LANCE AND NAILS. 
 Durum est tibi contra stimulum calcitrare. 
 
 " His hands have made me and fashioned me ; " 
 His hands have ever been stretched out to bless 
 me, feed me, heal me. upraise me, support me ; and 
 I have resisted Him, fought against Him like a 
 peevish child against the loving hands that dress 
 or tend it. I have taken those hands, that might 
 have struck me into Hell, and have bent them back 
 upon the Cross, and nailed them there, rigid and 
 helpless, that I might free myself from His pestering 
 love. And yet in vain, for I have but opened two 
 fountains of mercy, and love is victorious still, and 
 I have but graven my name in His hands for ever. 
 Quam speciosi pedes ! — How fair are the feet of Hira 
 
VICARIOUS SUFFERING. 167 
 
 who brings glad tidings of peace, soiled though 
 they be, cut and way-worn ; the feet of the Good 
 Shepherd, as He returns bearing the lost sheep in 
 His bosom ; the feet where penitent love sits, and 
 ministers with tears and spikenard. I thought to 
 fetter these feet with nails, and so to escape the 
 pursuit of love, and I have but lent them wings. 
 "What have I to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of 
 Nazareth ? Art Thou come to torment me before 
 my time ? " So do we resist vainly the spell of 
 grace. Durum est tibi contra stimulum calcitrare — 
 " It is hard for thee to kick against the goad." 
 
 The Sacred Heart was the central spring of all 
 His actions, the recipient of all His sufferings. 
 Here, as in their source, were all the riches of His 
 goodness gathered up and treasured, as streams in 
 the ocean ; and in piercing this cistern of living 
 waters by our ingratitude, we have only succeeded 
 in letting loose upon ourselves a deluge of grace 
 and mercy. 
 
 CXLV. 
 
 VICARIOUS SUFFERING. 
 Vere languores nostros ipse tulit, et dolores nostros ipse portavit 
 
 The unity of a family makes the honour or 
 disgrace of one shared and felt by all. As the 
 mother loves her son far more than herself, and 
 more truly than he loves himself, his dishonour or 
 his sorrow is felt far more keenly and heavily by 
 her. Now Christ the Second Adam has welded the 
 whole race into one family, whereof He is the Head, 
 and a Head who loves each member with a love 
 
I68 INTUITIVE VISION. 
 
 infinitely " passing the love of women." Thus the 
 disgrace of our sins, our sorrows, fears, temptations, 
 in some cases our eternal loss, though not His 
 personally, were more than His by reason of our 
 corporate union with Him, and of the boundlessness 
 of His tender love. In this sense He has borne 
 our sins and carried our sorrows, and been " afflicted 
 in all our afflictions." 
 
 CXLVI, 
 
 INTUITIVE VISION. 
 Deum videbunt. 
 
 "They shall see God." Purity of heart is rather 
 the condition than the cause of spiritual discern- 
 ment. In the pure heart God's face is mirrored 
 without cloudiness or distortion. But it is the mind 
 that gazes into that mirror and reads its secrets. 
 Many hearts have been as pure as those of Augus- 
 tine, or Aquinas, yet have lacked their insight. 
 Many minds may have been as keen, and yet fruit- 
 less, through the distortion of the medium. To say 
 that every saint is a sage is untrue a priori, and still 
 more by experience. Instance the Cur6 d'Ars, than 
 whom none had a purer heart, or was favoured with 
 more frequent and brilliant flashes of Divine light ; 
 yet here and there his reason, not naturally acute, 
 allows him to adopt unquestioningly certain tradi- 
 tional rigorisms and spiritual fallacies quite alien 
 to the teaching of his inspirations. For they who 
 intuitively, or by inspiration, apprehend those Divine 
 truths to which others climb laboriously by slow 
 
INTELLIGENT LOVE. 169 
 
 reasoning and weary elimination of errors, are 
 rather likely to be wrong, when they proceed to give 
 reasons for what they got without reason, and to 
 entangle themselves in fallacies. To them applies 
 the old monition : " Give your opinion, but don't 
 give your reasons." 
 
 CXLVII. 
 
 INTELLIGENT LOVE. 
 Da mihi tnum amorem et gratiam nam hsec mihi sufflcit. 
 
 " Give me Thy love and Thy grace, for this is 
 enough for me." An intelligent love of God is 
 indeed all-sufficing. But it involves more than the 
 love of a Deity enthroned far away beyond this 
 earth. It must be the love of an all-pervading God, 
 ex quo, per quern, in quo omnia, a recognition of His 
 immediate causation, indwelling, presence, wherever 
 there is any vestige of the good, the beautiful, or 
 the true. It is a universal recta sapere, the perfec- 
 tion of " taste " in its deepest, highest, widest sense. 
 As far as one fails to appreciate any created or 
 finite goodness in nature, in art, in human character, 
 so far is he out of sympathy with God — negatively, 
 no doubt, but none the less truly. Religion and 
 revelation reveal God to us in His most mysterious 
 and lovable attributes, and secure that love which 
 is needful for salvation ; but religion, if it supple- 
 ments and " informs " nature, does not destroy or 
 supplant it ; and the " natural revelation " should 
 not be neglected, seeing that, as part of the present 
 order, it is a grace. To the discerning, every 
 purification and elevation of the natural taste, every 
 
170 PEACEABLENESS. 
 
 new appreciation of hitherto unappreciated excel- 
 lence, is a step upwards, a new remove from the 
 wisdom that is from beneath, towards the wisdom 
 which is from above, which is chaste, peaceable, 
 modest, easy to be persuaded, consenting to the 
 good, full of mercy and good fruits. 
 
 It is by this fellowship of " taste," that in the 
 natural order we work out, evolve, and perfect our 
 radical participation of the Divine Nature, and 
 become, metaphorically, sons of God in the image 
 and likeness of their Father. 
 
 CXLVIII. 
 
 PEACEABLENESS. 
 
 Si fieri potest, quod ex vobis est, cum omnibus hominibus pacem 
 habentes. 
 
 " As far as lieth in you live peaceably with all 
 men," i.e., see that the fault is not on your side. 
 There are those whose contentious and quarrelsome 
 spirit makes it impossible to be at peace with them, 
 since peace is a mutual relation. Again, there are 
 crises where peace would be dishonourable to God, 
 and a wrong to our neighbour. But apart from 
 these limitations, the precept holds. It needs, 
 however, a wide, comprehensive mind, an experi- 
 ence of human nature, a certain penetration of 
 character, and, above all, a diligent, industrious love 
 of peace to carry it into effect. Contentiousness, a 
 desire of fighting about trifles, a lust for petty 
 victories and superiorities, is the direct antithesis of 
 magnanimity, or Christian big-mindedness. 
 
ATTRACTIVENESS. 171 
 
 CXLIX. 
 
 ATTRACTIVENESS. 
 Si exaltatus fuero a terra, omnia traham ad meipsum. 
 
 " If I be exalted from the earth I will draw all 
 men to Myself." There is doubtless an exaltation 
 of soul which comes from suffering and from the 
 cross, which " draws " men by a spell. An uncru- 
 cified Saviour had never exercised such a strange 
 spell over the heart of man. This is indeed the 
 mark of a genuine spiritual advance and approxi- 
 mation to the cross, that others are more drawn to 
 us, and we to them. It is not the senseless self- 
 annihilation of the fakir or dervish which attracts, 
 but that which results necessarily from a loving 
 devotion to the service of others; the self-sacrifice 
 of the Good Shepherd who gives His life, not for 
 nothing — as it were despising God's good gift — 
 but for the sheep. It is from the foot of the 
 Cross that Mary attracts us to herself most 
 powerfully. The Cross of Christ is the very centre 
 and nucleus of attraction, and each one as he nears 
 it becomes himself magnetized with its mysterious 
 influence. There is a pseudo-austerity and spiritual 
 exaltation that lifts us above our fellow-sinners, and 
 makes them shrink from us in awe. But the more 
 we compare ourselves with God, the wider and 
 deeper our grasp of His fulness, the more infini- 
 tesimal does the difference between saint and 
 sinner, or sinner and sinner, appear. 
 
172 FREQUENT COMMUNION. 
 
 CL. 
 
 FREQUENT COMMUNION. 
 Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie. 
 
 As to the objection against frequent, or daily 
 Communion, drawn from the danger of over- 
 famiharity, it ought also to tell against frequent 
 visits to the Blessed Sacrament, and frequent 
 attendance at Mass. A'Kempis notes how differently 
 men would behave were Mass celebrated in but one 
 place and once yearly, like the Jewish Pasch. 
 Familiarity, as such, is no sin, nor obstacle to grace. 
 A child is familiar, perhaps not too respectful, with 
 its mother, whom it sees daily and hourly, but is 
 abashed before a stranger, whom it neither knows 
 nor cares for. Nor is this bashfulness identical with 
 reverence ; nor yet is true reverence incompatible 
 with perfect ease and familiarity. Again, it is rightly 
 said that our Lord veils His glory under the Eucha- 
 ristic species, even as He veiled His Godhead in 
 the likeness of sinful flesh, precisely to secure this 
 facility of access. Did we at all fully realize what 
 Communion is, we should never dare to approach it. 
 The early Church (as the Eastern Church does still) 
 communicated infants and the unconscious ; and in 
 truth we are all infants and unconscious in this 
 regard. We come because we are told, and receive 
 we know not what, and we know not why, except 
 that it is our daily and familiar bread, not a luxury, 
 but a plain necessity ; it is the medicine of our 
 constant and chronic infirmities, the ordinary, and 
 
WOkTHY FiiAtSS tyi 
 
 not the extraordinary remedy of our spiritual ills. 
 It is a mistake to look for extraordinary effects from 
 ordinary means ; their effect is conservative, preser- 
 vative, or if progressive, it is only by the slow, 
 insensible increments of ordinary growth. 
 
 CLI. 
 
 WORTHY PRAISE. 
 Ut digne laudare mereamur. 
 
 " That we may worthily praise Thee." One may 
 sound the praises of God loudly enough, and beau- 
 tifully enough to charm the ears and subdue the 
 hearts of men, and to lead them to praise Him and 
 love Him, and yet lack that inward consecration of 
 purity and holiness and gentleness without which one 
 is a profane and unworthy instrument for so sacred 
 a strain. " Who art thou that thou shouldst take 
 My law," or My praise, " upon thy lips ? " " Lord, 
 I am a man of unclean lips, but munda cor meum ei 
 labia mea qui labia Isaice prophetce calculo mundasti 
 ignito — ' cleanse my heart and lips as Thou didst 
 cleanse the lips of Isaias the Prophet.' " 
 
 CLII. 
 
 RESTRAINT. 
 Modestia vestra nota sit omnibus hominibus. 
 
 " Let your self-restraint appear to all." In an 
 applied and fanciful sense this may be usefully 
 understood of that self-restraint which is so pleasing 
 in good art. Whether in oratory, or poetry, or 
 
i'74 COSMIC nNTttVSlASM. 
 
 painting, or conversation, the impression of a 
 restrained fulness, of power kept back, and but 
 hinted at in the work before us, always pleases ; 
 while the idea of a complete exhaustion of resources, 
 still more that of a strain wringing out the last 
 drops of energy, is distressing in the extreme. How 
 agreeable a flatterer he is who lets his compliments 
 seem to leak out by accident, and instantly checks 
 the leakage by some brusquerie. How persuasive a 
 speaker he is who gives a notion of overmastering 
 feeling kept back for the most part, but now and 
 then victorious, whose eloquence seems to break 
 from him, and not to be wrought up deliberately. 
 This manifestation of self-restraint includes the 
 notion of seeming ease in production, and goes 
 beyond it, as though the difficulty were to hold 
 back, and not to do far better. In art, if this is 
 not true and natural, it must at least be simulated, 
 on the principle, ars est artem celare. Else we shall 
 have effusiveness and vulgarity. 
 
 CLIII. 
 
 COSMIC ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 Primogenitus omnis creaturae in ipso condita sunt universa in 
 coelis et in terra. 
 
 From the Positivists we hear of the enthusiasm 
 of humanity; from the Evolutionists, of cosmic 
 enthusiasm — something, I presume, more wide- 
 reaching and universal. Vague, intangible thoughts, 
 yet they bear witness to a tendency of the human 
 mind which the Catholic religion alone can rightly 
 
COsMiC ENTHUSIASM. 1^5 
 
 explain and satisfy. They imply a revolt against a 
 narrow egoism and self-isolation which is really the 
 logical issue of modern philosophical negations ; a 
 self-assertion of that irresistible instinctive impulse 
 towards universal good which is in every man just 
 because he is essentially part of the organic whole, 
 and moved by the Author of that whole, not merely 
 to his own isolated good, but more principally and 
 fundamentally to the end and good of the entire 
 body of humanity. This movement, although con- 
 sciously recognized, cannot be rationally accounted 
 for so long as each views himself as the centre of 
 all. There is no logical path from this narrow 
 egoism to altruism. Such altruism is only egoism 
 grimacing. But when we conceive the ego aright, 
 we see that such egoism is but another name for 
 altruism, '^he two above-named enthusiasms, as con- 
 ceived by their advocates, are far too intangible and 
 unreal to move any one to action, except perhaps 
 some positivist philosopher in a moment of exalted 
 confusion, when, roused by the common instinct of 
 benevolence, he analyzes it into cosmic zeal. The 
 only workable enthusiasm which addresses itself to 
 the human imagination and the human heart, is the 
 enthusiastic personal love of the Incarnate God, 
 the Author of the cosmos, the pleroma of creation, 
 the anakephalaiosis — " summing-up," of humanity. 
 To know Him under these philosophical and mys- 
 terious aspects, is but for the few ; yet as our love 
 of Him grows more intelligent, so it becomes more 
 extended to all that is bound up with Him, namely, 
 that cosmic glory which is to be realized in the 
 
lyb HUMAN tlESPECr. 
 
 liberation and exaltation of humanity to life and 
 incorruption, through its union with the Divinity. 
 This is that " one far-off Divine event to which the 
 whole creation moves," and for which " all creation 
 groaneth and travaileth, expecting its deliverance." 
 
 CLIV. 
 
 HUMAN RESPECT. 
 Tradetur gentibus ad illudendum et flagellandum et crucifigendum. 
 
 " He shall be delivered to be derided, scourged, 
 and crucified." Our Saviour counts derision among 
 His sufferings, no less than scourging and crucify- 
 ing. It means that He keenly felt the mockery and 
 jests of the ignorant canaille; as well, no doubt, as 
 the false and absurd accusations on which He was 
 condemned. Wiseacres tell us that it is folly to 
 care what men say or think about us, for we are 
 not better for being praised, nor worse for being 
 blamed. Truly we are not more praiseworthy or 
 blameworthy. But it is better to be praiseworthy 
 and praised, than praiseworthy alone. The good 
 opinion, the praise and love of our fellow-mortals, 
 even of the meanest, is a possession to desire, a 
 part of our happiness. This is because man is not 
 alone, nor made for solitary and unsympathetic 
 happiness, but for a common joy shared by all. 
 God intends that we should live and desire to live 
 in one another, in the thoughts and affections of 
 others ; that we should be mutually attractive, draw- 
 ing and being drawn, first to one another, and then, 
 in our unity, to God, our common centre and point 
 
RETROSPECTION. 177 
 
 of rest. It is, therefore, a fundamental, God-given 
 instinct of charity which makes us value the good 
 opinion and love of the least of our fellows. Like 
 every other desire, it may become inordinate and 
 interfere with higher good ; but it is no part of 
 humility to be self-sufficing, thick-skinned, indif- 
 ferent (i.e., insensible) to what others will say of us. 
 For this reason our Saviour was deeply pained by 
 the display of contempt and dislike even in the 
 , most ignorant and despicable rabble. Still more 
 rightly may we feel acutely the dislike or contempt 
 of those whose judgments we value highly. We 
 should dread the justly-merited contempt of the 
 high-minded and noble, as in some sort a reflex of 
 God's own mind. It is said of Dante : " He feared 
 nothing so much as the censure of noble minds." 
 
 CLV. 
 
 RETROSPECTION. 
 Scies postea. 
 
 "What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou 
 shalt know hereafter." It is superstitious folly to 
 attempt to divine the future ; or so clearly to under- 
 stand the present as to read the intentions of God's 
 inscrutable Providence. But it is a fruitful matter 
 of contemplation to look back, and see what came 
 from what ; how what we knew not at the time we 
 knew afterwards; how the most perplexing turns 
 led us straightest after all and brought us nearer to 
 God ; how our wisest suggestions or predictions, 
 had they been realized, would have been disastrous ; 
 M 
 
iyi GOD'S VICTORY. 
 
 and thus we shall learn to avoid the presumption 
 of impertinent prediction, and also to hope for good 
 out of all, without troubling as to how it is to come 
 about. " Lord, what Thou dost I know not now, 
 but I shall know hereafter." 
 
 CLVI. 
 
 god's victory. 
 
 Quia te contemplans totum deficit. 
 
 "To Thee my heart surrenders, fainting as it 
 gazes on Thee." This is the end of God's weary 
 conflict with the soul through the dark night of life. 
 He cannot bless Jacob until with the touch of grace 
 He has maimed and thrown him. When our soul, 
 as the day breaks, at last sees God full in the face; 
 when its narrow and crude conceptions have been 
 exploded one by one; when through blunders and 
 errors it has at last stumbled on the truth, and 
 caught the face of the Father, Lover, King, and 
 Spouse, then its subjection is perfected, its task is 
 done, and it is ripe for Heaven. Many of us wear 
 out God's patience with our inattention and wilful 
 stupidity, until He leaves us and sits down weary. 
 Quarens me sedisti lassus. 
 
 CLVn. 
 
 UNEQUAL AFFECTION. 
 Amice, non facio tibi injuriam. 
 
 Two copies of the same beautiful picture ; two 
 roses ; two anythings precisely similar, do not excite 
 
UNEQUAL AFFECTION'. 179 
 
 more love than one. But two beautiful objects, in 
 no way similar, elicit more love from the soul than 
 either singly. Here, what is given to one is not 
 taken from the other. Given two friends wholly 
 dissimilar, I do not love one less because I love the 
 other. Thus the love of a child, a parent, a friend, 
 a brother, are so wholly different in their motive as 
 to leave no room for jealousy. If, however, two 
 friends could be precisely alike they would be loved 
 with one love, though perhaps neither so intensely 
 as if he had the scarcity value of being the only 
 one of his kind. This is the force of Dilectus mem 
 unicus — " My Beloved is but one," and of Hie est 
 Filius meus unigenitus — "This is My only-begotten 
 Son." 
 
 Christ had His favourites, Peter, James, and 
 John. "He took with Him the three." "Of 
 course," said the rest, "always Peter and James 
 and John ! " To such jealousy He would say : 
 " Friend, I do thee no wrong. May I not do what 
 I like with My own ? " He loves most those whom 
 He has made most lovable ; that is, those who love 
 Him most ; for he is most lovable whose soul is 
 likest to God by agreement in thought and likings, 
 in a word, who loves God most, for the love of God 
 is the beauty of the soul. We, too, have a hke 
 liberty, nay, a duty, of loving most whom God loves 
 most, for whom He has done great things, from 
 whom He expects great things, and towards whom 
 He Himself — so far as our love is reasonable and 
 pure — has drawn us strongly. Charity requires 
 then that we should not hurt others by an undue 
 
i8o SELF-CONFIDENCE. 
 
 show of preference for some; but for a certain 
 show of preference we have this warrant of Christ's 
 example. These three He favours in two ways : 
 by a fuller and more special admittance to His 
 secrets ; by a more liberal share of the load of His 
 , sorrow, a deeper draught of His bitter chalice. 
 We are willing enough to sit at His right hand and 
 at His left, as favourites in His Kingdom, but the 
 condition, Poiesfis bibere ? stands in the way, and 
 cools our ambition of preference. Even in the 
 natural order God's richer love is shown in gifts 
 which mean greater suffering as well as greater bliss. 
 Sorrow and joy, height and danger, light and dark- 
 ness, cross and crown, all go hand in hand. 
 
 CLVIII. 
 
 SELF-CONFIDENCE. 
 Dicunt ei : Possumus. 
 
 " They say to Him : We can." Like all beginners, 
 they are full of confidence in their present fervour : 
 Tecum paratus sum et in carcerem et in mortem ire — 
 " I am ready to go with Thee to prison and to 
 death." It is by many a bitter fall that we learn 
 to be thoroughly disappointed in ourselves, and, if 
 we escape the danger of sullen discouragement, to 
 believe thoroughly in grace : Sine me nihil potestis — 
 "Ye can do nothing without Me." Then we 
 confess : " Lord, though none should forsake Thee, 
 yet would L" Our Saviour does not harshly rebuke 
 this childlike presumption, but looks ahead to the 
 
SINS AGAINST LIGHT. i8i 
 
 time when humility will fulfil the vows made in 
 pride. He does not say, " You can," but " You 
 shall indeed drink of My chalice." 
 
 CLIX. 
 
 SINS AGAINST LIGHT. 
 Qui ambulat in tenebris, nescit quo vadat. 
 
 "He that walketh in the dark, knoweth not 
 whither he goeth." In some ways — not in all — it 
 seems less an insult to God to sin full in the light, 
 than to befool ourselves culpably into some excuse 
 beforehand. Certainly we do ourselves a graver 
 moral harm, and make recovery more difficult by 
 the stultifying of our reason. For reason and truth 
 is the root of moral recovery. He who sins in the 
 light, knows and acknowledges his fault in the very 
 committal of it. He of the " second class of men," 
 tortures his mind into the belief that he is doing 
 God's will. Were it not better to say openly : " I 
 know the will of God, but I prefer my own," than 
 to sin against truth as well as against goodness ? 
 
 CLX. 
 
 DESPERATION. 
 Abiens laqueo se suspendit. 
 
 It is erroneous to say that Calvinism would 
 warrant one's living recklessly. For there are 
 many mansions both in Heaven and Hell. If I 
 knew for certain that I were to be lost, faith tells 
 me that every mortal sin sinks me deeper in Hell 
 
i82 FROM NATURE TO GOD. 
 
 for ever; as in like manner, were I certain of 
 salvation, every good action is a new Heaven 
 inherited. It were worth fighting hard and suffer- 
 ing long, merely to lighten the load of my damna- 
 tion. Hence recklessness is never reasonable. But 
 that laziness and impatience of the yoke, which is 
 the secret motive of so much desperation, feeds 
 entirely on this fallacy, which suggests that as soon 
 as we cross the line of mortal sin, all reason for 
 restraint is gone for the time being. Hence we 
 often observe that a fall is followed by several in 
 quick succession. 
 
 CLXl. 
 
 FROM NATURE TO GOD. 
 
 Qui non diligit fratrem suum quern videt, Deum quem non videt 
 quomodo potest diligere ? 
 
 " If a man love not his brother whom he hath 
 seen, how can he love God whom he hath not 
 seen," i.e., if a man is void of natural affection, 
 how can he pretend to supernatural? If he has 
 not laid the foundation, how can he raise the super- 
 structure ? If he has not that which is first, how 
 can he have that which comes after ? Can he scale 
 heaven without a ladder ? Can he support the ladder 
 in the air, and not on the earth ? If he does not 
 know what it is to love as a child, as a brother, as 
 a parent, a husband, a master, a friend, how can he 
 pretend to that love which contains all these loves 
 eminently — the love of Him who is father, spouse, 
 friend, brother, child, all in one. The love of God 
 postulates that all these relationships should appeal 
 
INTERTWINED DESTINIES. 183 
 
 to US and mave us ; if they do not do so in those 
 near to us, it is evident that they do not do so in 
 God. If human fatherhood means nothing to me, 
 I shall not be moved by the fatherhood of God, 
 which I can only know as the natural relation 
 intensified ; and so of the rest. Every new kind 
 of natural love teaches us a new way of loving God, 
 md a new aspect of God's love for us. 
 
 Father Thou art to me and mother dear 
 And sister too, kind husband of my heart. 
 
 CLXII. 
 
 INTERTWINED DESTINIES. 
 Confirma fratres. 
 
 "Strengthen thy brethren." In keeping with 
 God's universal economy, this commission, which 
 is given to all, is especially given to him who stood 
 most in need of confirmation — strong in love, if you 
 will, but impulsive, weak, and faltering. He was 
 best fitted to save others who knew best by bitter 
 experience that unassisted he could not so much as 
 save himself, whose sole reliance was in that oravi 
 pro te, ne deficiat fides tua — " I have prayed for thee, 
 that thy faith fail not." 
 
 It seems strange that one should be more 
 animated to keep straight for love of the souls of 
 others than for the love of God, yet indeed it is 
 but the love of God cloaked in another form. The 
 firm and intense feeling that the fate of another is 
 mingled with one's own; that if I am unfaithful 
 another will be weakened, for whose soul I shall 
 
t84 INTERTWINED DESTINIES. 
 
 answer — all this is hard to analyze. It is not, 
 however, strange that the love of our brother 
 whom we have seen should at once derive from 
 and yet be far more intense than the love of God 
 whom we have not seen. For it is not pure 
 " separated " perfections that move us, but partici- 
 pated. In their purity we cannot apprehend them 
 save by analogy. Hence I love that which is 
 beautiful because of its beauty ; yet far more 
 intensely than I love beauty in general. 
 
 Perhaps the above sentiment of intertwining 
 destinies is part of that God-given instinct which 
 governs all men as parts of whole moving to a 
 common beatitude. Nemo sibi vivit — " No one lives 
 for himself," i.e., was intended to live for himself. 
 
 This notion is most foreign to modern indivi- 
 duahsm, yet in principle.it is essentially Catholic, 
 and necessary to the dogmas of original or corporate 
 sin, and of the Atonement. We believe that God 
 would have spared Sodom for the sake of ten 
 just men; that a Religious Order has a certain 
 corporate merit which is affected by the conduct of 
 single members; that in some sense the sins or 
 merits of a father reflect upon his children, or, at 
 least, that his piety can win for them many extra 
 graces which else they would not receive ; and that 
 there are other bonds of union, such as friendships 
 of all sorts, relations of superiority and subjection, 
 of priest and penitent, of teacher and taught, which 
 entail a like intertwining of fates, is plain enough 
 a priori and a posteriori. When such a bond exists* 
 each can help the. other by his own fidelity to grace, 
 
GLEAMS IN DARKNESS. 185 
 
 can bring a blessing upon him ; and if perhaps we 
 may not say that contrary conduct would produce a 
 contrary effect, at least it deprives another of help 
 that may have been needful for his salvation, and 
 certainly was needed for his greater perfection. 
 
 CLXIII. 
 
 GLEAMS IN DARKNESS. 
 Mane nobiscum, Domine, quoniam advesperascit. 
 
 " Stay with us, for night is falling." Remain 
 with us, for the darkness is coming on ; that dark- 
 ness and black night which recurs in our soul, if 
 not as regularly, yet as surely as that night which 
 inevitably follows on the day. He is with us, then, 
 and we may hear His voice, though we can see His 
 face but dimly, if at all; nor can we discern His 
 movements. And yet at such times, perchance in 
 the Breaking of Bread, He flashes in upon our sou 
 in a way that we never knew in the time of light — 
 a sudden recognition. Dominus est — " It is the 
 Lord ! " and then He vanishes, leaving us in dark- 
 ness, but in peace and joy. 
 
 CLXIV. 
 
 RESOLUTIONS. 
 Simile est regnum coelorum fermento. 
 
 Philosophers rule the world more than states- 
 men or soldiers. Thoughts elaborated in an easy 
 chair have been the ferment of revolutions in after- 
 generations. So separate are cause and effect that 
 
l86 MANY-SIDEDNESS. 
 
 few see the connection ; and philosophy is regarded 
 as a harmless pastime. Thus too we ourselves are 
 governed by our ideas, notions, and theories. No 
 revolution was ever conceived and realized in a 
 moment. The conception precedes the birth by 
 years. Our own moral theories and resolves seem 
 equally ineffectual when judged by their immediate 
 consequences ; but our actions of to-day are really 
 the fruit of theories and resolves of long ago, which 
 in their day seemed just as ineffectual. Those who 
 make radical resolutions and expect to keep them at 
 once, are as foolish as those who believe that such 
 resolutions are useless. Thought is the slow- 
 working leaven of conduct. 
 
 CLXV. 
 
 MANY-SIDEDNESS. 
 Omnibus omnia factus sum ut omnes facerem salvos. 
 
 Many-sidedness is not duplicity. The obsequious 
 man, the assentator, agrees with everybody about 
 everything, and acts to suit his company. The many- 
 sided man is of so wide a mind that he can see an 
 element of truth to agree with in most statements ; 
 he is of such broad sympathy that there are few phases 
 of the heart and emotions with which he cannot 
 feel; he so approaches the full Humanity of the 
 God- Man that there is scarce any type of character 
 whose goodness he does not embody. In a word, 
 he has a phase or side corresponding to every 
 character ; and which is not assumed, but is really 
 his own. As the polygon may indefinitely approxi- 
 
THE ALTAR. 187 
 
 mate to the circle, yet never be coincident ; so even 
 the most catholic-hearted and catholic-minded of 
 God's saints must fall short of His sympathy and 
 comprehension who alone can say, Homo sum, et 
 nihil humanum a me alienum duco. 
 
 CLXVL 
 
 THE ALTAR. 
 
 Et turtur (invenit) nidum sibi, ubi ponat puUos suos, altaria tua 
 Domine virtutum, 
 
 " The turtle-dove hath found her a nest where she 
 may lay her little ones — even Thine altar, O Lord of 
 hosts ! " The turtur here is the Holy Spirit shedding 
 abroad Divine charity in our hearts, prompting us 
 to love others and to help them, making within 
 us a continual, wordless intercession for their infir- 
 mities — gemitibus inennarrabilibus ; and the pulli are 
 our little ones, the pusillus grex that God has in one 
 way or another given into our charge, and for which 
 we must render account : those who are unfledged, 
 who cannot fly of themselves, or even feed them- 
 selves. Where then shall we house them and lay 
 them for safety ; where shall we find food for them, 
 and protection and warmth ? A Itaria tua, Domine 
 virtutum. We build them a nest in the corner of 
 the tabernacle and leave them there. 
 
i88 THE BODY OF OUR HUMILIATION. 
 
 CLXVII. 
 
 THE BODY OF OUR HUMILIATION. 
 
 Qui reformabit corpus humilitatis nostra2 configuratum corpori 
 claritatis su3e. 
 
 " Who will reform this body of our humiliation, 
 conforming it to the body of His glory." Even in this 
 life we may dare to hope and pray to be delivered from 
 the humiliations of our animal body, by some little 
 degree of configuration to His glorious Body. We 
 may ask it out of reverence to His sacred Eucharistic 
 Body which we handle, or at least feed upon ; that 
 Body which was tabernacled in the womb of a 
 Virgin and nursed at her breast ; which St. Joseph 
 nursed in virgin arms, and clothed and carried and 
 gazed on ; the Body of Him whom the virgin 
 Baptist heralded ; on whose Heart the virgin 
 St. John reclined ; whose heavenly bodyguard are 
 the hundred and forty-four thousand virgins ; whose 
 altars on earth are served by virgin priests. And 
 yet it may be that His grace and love is enough for 
 us ; and that without the humiliations of the body 
 our pride would endanger our love. Bonum est mihi 
 quia humiliasti me ut discam justificationes tuas. Pritts- 
 qtmm humiliarer ego deliqui — " It is good for me that 
 Thou hast humbled me." Nothing keeps us closer 
 to God than the fear of being separated from Him ; 
 and this sense of continual danger, so trying and 
 harassing, is needful for us. And there are those 
 who have to help others and feel for others, and 
 who need to have felt all, that they may pity all. 
 
WHO TOUCHED ME? 189 
 
 And there are those to whom God gives His revela- 
 tions in abundance, and to w^hom, lest they should 
 be puffed up, He sends the messenger of Satan to 
 buffet them, that their infirmity may be the instru- 
 ment of His might. For these and other reasons 
 He endures an indignity in the temple of the Holy 
 Spirit, preferring the greater and more substantial 
 glory, to that which is accidental and non-necessary 
 — a spiritual luxury or refinement, a gratia gratis 
 data, but not necessarily gratum faciens. 
 
 CLxvni. 
 
 WHO TOUCHED ME ? 
 Quis tetigit me ? 
 
 " Who touched Me ? " She touches His garment 
 from behind, stealthily and secretly, full of natural 
 shame which forbids her to cry out for help before 
 a mixed crowd, and to make known her humiliating 
 ailment. Why. does not the All-knowing, All-pitying 
 spare her shame ? Why does He constrain her to 
 come and fall down at His feet before all, and tell 
 Him the whole truth ? Because she touched Him, 
 touched His Heart. We can imagine the look, the tone 
 which turned " Who touched Me ? " into a tender 
 call to a closer embrace, clearer recognition, higher 
 faith ; the call of the Shepherd to the timorous, 
 startled sheep ; the call of the Spouse to His 
 darling : " Thou hast wounded My Heart, My sister. 
 My spouse ; thou hast wounded My Heart with one 
 glance of thine eyes. . . . Arise, My darling. My 
 fair one, and come ; My dove, hidden in the clefts 
 
igo GOD, ISr HOMAH AFFECTION. 
 
 of the rock and the crannies in the wall; come, 
 show Me thy face, and let thy voice sound in My 
 ears ; for sweet is thy voice and beauteous thy face. 
 Come back, come back, O Sulamitess ; come back, 
 come back, that we may gaze upon th§e ! " " And 
 when she saw that she could not be hid," crushed 
 down by the power of self-abasing, self-pulverizing 
 love, what was shame before became a joy and 
 alleviation. No bar between us and those we love ; 
 we must tell them " the whole truth ; " we cannot 
 endure to be loved on false pretences, any more 
 than to be honoured on account of an imagined 
 excellence which we have not got. 
 
 CLXIX. 
 
 GOD, IN HUMAN AFFECTION. 
 Ecce, quern amas infirmatur. 
 
 " Lo, he whom Thou lovest is sick." We should 
 imitate this delicate art of persuasion. Those whom 
 we love, whose infirmities are a grief to us, are 
 loved still more deeply by Him who has moved us 
 to love them and pity them, using our heart as His 
 instrument. So Augustine, considering how as soon 
 as he was born, God had prepared for him the milk in 
 his mother's breasts, and had given to her the desire 
 to impart it, and to him the instinct to draw and 
 receive it, gives thanks to God as the principal 
 cause, more than to mother or nurse who were but 
 instruments of the Divine Love. So it is God who 
 has procured and prepared for us all pure and 
 orderly affection of which we are the object. Our 
 
SEBMtNG AbANbOi^MEiiT. i^i 
 
 friends are but the instruments whereby God Him- 
 self loves us — at least in the natural order. So, too, 
 all true excellence in them which excites our love is 
 a partial aspect of the Divine Beauty which they 
 mirror. It is God in them that we love, it is God 
 who loves us in them. Whom I love purely and 
 rightly, God loves; whom I pity, God pities. 
 Hence I can say of such, Ecce, quern amas infirmatur. 
 
 CLXX. 
 
 SEEMING ABANDONMENT. 
 Lazarus mortuus est; et gaudeo. 
 
 " This infirmity is not unto death, but that the 
 glory of God may be revealed. ... I am glad for 
 your sakes that I was not there," i.e., our Lord will 
 allow His dearest friends to be the victims of 
 infirmity, to be tempted, and even to fall : for the 
 glory of God in their resurrection ; for the help of 
 others ; for their own greater eventual gain. Not 
 that He tempts any or fails in sufficient grace; 
 but that, knowing their infirmity, He stays away, 
 withholds extraordinary and effectual graces, and 
 suffers that to happen over which He Himself 
 weeps in sympathy. Strange mystery of grace ! 
 yet even reason can see how so seemingly perverse 
 a course may be the straightest path of a love, wider 
 and deeper than we can understand. Could we 
 witness His grief over such falls, we might well 
 say, " Behold how He loved him ! " and we might 
 puzzle ourselves with the thought : " Could not He 
 who opened the eyes of the bUnd have caused that 
 
194 run MEDIATORIAL OFFICE. 
 
 this man should not die ? " little dreaming of God's 
 nobler intent. Let us rather say with the sorrowing 
 sister, not in complaint, but in wondering submission 
 and unshaken confidence : " Lord, hadst Thou been 
 here, my brother had not died; but now I know 
 whatsoever Thou asketh of God He will give it 
 Thee." 
 
 CLXXL 
 
 THE MEDIATORIAL OFFICE. 
 Anima Christ!, sanctilica me. 
 
 " Soul of Christ, sanctify me." Sanctification oi 
 the Christian soul is conformity to the Human Soul 
 of Christ — a " putting on Christ ; " a conformity of 
 thought, will, affection, passion, imagination. Chiefly 
 it lies in a likeness of understanding and of will or 
 affection ; in seeing things as Christ sees them : 
 feeling, tasting, loving according to His feeling, love, 
 taste. And this principally with regard to God and 
 to man ; between whom Christ, by reason of His 
 perfect knowledge and ardent love of both sides, is 
 the great Mediator and Peace-maker. Those who 
 would share his mediatorial office must strive to 
 know God and man, more and more deeply; nor 
 that, under any merely speculative aspect, but under 
 those aspects which most beget love. He was made 
 Man. that He might know what was in man, and be 
 touched with a feeling for our infirmities : that, 
 knowing all. He might excuse all and pardon all. 
 
 As in virtue of His true Humanity He knows 
 human nature experimentally, so by His Divinity 
 He knows the Divine Nature experimentally, as no 
 
THE MEDIATORIAL OFFICE. 193 
 
 merely human priest can ever do. Taught by the 
 Holy Ghost, we can at least ever draw nearer to 
 this double sympathy of the God-Man, and so fit 
 ourselves better to share His mediatorial office. 
 God can and does use the corrupt priest in the 
 ministry of reconciliation, in Mass and in absolution, 
 but it is only as one uses a dead instrument, to be 
 cast aside and destroyed as soon as it has served its 
 purpose. For more delicate work He uses those 
 instruments which adapt themselves best to His 
 guiding hand, which work with the least friction. 
 Nor is it only by prayer and sacraments that God 
 sanctifies and purges the soul, but by all natural and 
 intelligible means as well : by the ministry of the 
 Word, the Logos, in its widest sense, By the 
 instrumentality of the human heart and mind. He 
 speaks to the heart and mind. The sacramental 
 character is to the priest what the vow is to the 
 monk. He who has not besides, the mind and 
 heart of a priest, is as a monk with the vows, 
 but without the virtues of chastity, obedience, and 
 poverty. 
 
 We must, then, observe in our Saviour (i) His 
 deep knowledge and comprehension of the nature, 
 the mind, the love of His Eternal Father, (2) His 
 sympathy with the Divine interests and the Divine 
 will, (3) His comprehensive and experimental know- 
 ledge of sinful man, and (4) His consequent sympathy 
 with the interests of humanity. 
 
 (i) "O Just Father," He says, "the world has 
 not known Thee," has not known or believed in 
 Thy fatherhood, in Thy paternal love, " but I have 
 N 
 
ig^ THE MEDIATORIAL OFFICE. 
 
 known Thee." " No man hath seen God at any 
 time but the Only-Begotten, who is in the bosom of 
 the Father," who is eternally being born in the very 
 heart and focus of Divine love, " He hath declared 
 Him," revealed the unknown. This was the great 
 work of our Saviour's Ministry, of which He says : 
 " I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me 
 to do, and now I come to Thee." " I have mani- 
 fested Thy Name," I have made known Thy true 
 nature. Thy fatherhood, " to the men whom Thou 
 gavest Me." " For this came I into the world, 
 that I might bear witness of the truth," I, "the 
 Word made Flesh," Eternal Truth translated 
 into human language — the Father's Logos and 
 image. " He that hath seen Me," he that hath 
 looked on the crucifix, " hath seen the Father," so 
 long dreaded, distrusted, unloved, misrepresented, 
 slandered. In this we must follow Him after our 
 fashion; studying and pondering the character of 
 the All-Father as displayed to us in nature and in 
 revelation — two chapters of one book. We must 
 know Him, not speculatively, but appreciatively, by 
 tasting and feeling, and seeing with the inward 
 senses His sweetness, graciousness, and beauty. 
 We must know Him, not with hearsay knowledge, 
 but with the familiarity that comes of continued 
 converse ; we must live in sinu Patris — " in the 
 bosom of the Father," if we would declare Him to 
 others and bring others into sympathy with our own 
 love of Him. 
 
 (2) From the knowledge and love of the Father 
 grew that hunger for justice, that thirst for the glory 
 
THE MEDIATORIAL OFFICE. 195 
 
 of God which found utterance in the words, " My 
 meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and 
 to perfect His work ; " "I have a baptism to be 
 baptized with ; how I am straitened till it be accom- 
 plished." Zelus domus tucB comedit me — " Zeal for 
 Thy house has devoured Me." Here is "the great 
 High Priest " and archetype of every priest ; sanctus, 
 innocens, impollutus, segregaius a peccatoribus et excel- 
 sior coelis f actus ; lifted up above all and yet drawing 
 all to Himself; mitis et humilis, speciosus forma, et 
 adspectusummeamabilis; exalted, yet lowly; crucified, 
 yet not austere or repellant ; " segregate " and yet 
 mingling with publicans and sinners ; mingling the 
 very substance of His Body, Blood, Soul, and 
 Divinity with their weakness and corruption, as 
 the sunlight which fills, illumines, beautifies the 
 crystal; sinking all limits and differences so that 
 He is hardly felt among us, so much is He one 
 of ourselves, and His life interwoven with ours: 
 " There is one in the midst of you whom ye know 
 not." And yet segregatus and unlike us, because 
 sanctus, innocens, impollutus, excelsior coelis factus; as a 
 hidden leaven changing the mass of humanity, un- 
 holy, guilty, defiled, earthly, into His own nature : 
 sanctifying, forgiving, cleansing, raising ; and withal 
 secretly, imperceptibly, " not with observation." 
 
 (3) As God, and the Maker, Mover, Quickener 
 of every living creature, animal and spiritual. He 
 knows " what is in man." Yet to know it experi- 
 mentally it was needful He should become Man, for 
 now we approach Him, not as one who knows the 
 human heart speculatively, but as one who has felt. 
 
igS THE MEDIATORIAL OFFICE. 
 
 This was the end of His mortal hfe of labour, sorrow, 
 temptation, suffering. For our sakes He sanctified 
 Himself as a victim and was baptized with blood. 
 As one who descends into the slums to study and 
 understand and ameliorate the life of the oppressed 
 masses, so the Eternal Son took on Him the likeness 
 not only of flesh, but of sinful flesh, abandoning His 
 birthright of bodily glory, and in the form of a slave 
 and sinner became the friend of publicans and 
 sinners. Though perfect in obedience and all virtues. 
 He willed to go through the discipline of learning 
 and acquiring ; to take the laborious paths that we 
 must tread; to be "perfected by suffering," to 
 " learn obedience " in His Passion. He would not 
 use any one of His privileges or powers in His own 
 behalf. The Son of God hungers, yet He will not 
 turn stones into bread, but waits till the angels come 
 at the will of His Father. He is as one who cannot 
 bear to be in a better condition than those whom 
 He loves and who are in want and poverty. So far 
 as His privileges or gifts raise Him above them and 
 separate Him from them, He hates those gifts and 
 would gladly be stript of them, and would become 
 anathema for His brethren's sake. He is not able to 
 contain Himself, but, leaping from His throne and 
 casting away the baubles of royalty, He flies to their 
 embrace : " I am Joseph your brother." 
 
 The priest's vocation demands that he should 
 strive earnestly to know the human mind and 
 heart in all its phases. Here, if anywhere, know- 
 ledge is power. We can lead and manage others 
 iust so far as we discern their character, and no 
 
THE MEDIATORIAL OFFICE. 197 
 
 further. As far as we fail to get on with any 
 one, so far we do not read him aright. Some seem 
 to have a natural gift of discernment — many- 
 sided men with a strong, sympathetic affection ; 
 but we all have a root of it within us which we can 
 develop. As a fact, we are too self-engrossed to 
 observe others or to interest ourselves in the study 
 of man — man's highest study, if we except the study 
 of God, of which it is the most efficient instrument. 
 For example, the contentious man is so keen in 
 defence of his own ideas and in refuting those of 
 others, that he never knows the mind of others ; 
 whereas the more others find us in agreement with 
 them, the more they will open out. As with ideas, so 
 with tastes. Sympathy lays bare the soul of others ; 
 and confidence draws confidence. Poverty of 
 imagination, which makes us incapable of putting 
 ourself in the place of others, is another obstacle 
 to this study. Savage natures are for this reason 
 brutal, cruel, wholly unsympathetic ; while the over- 
 cultured and imaginative are so sensitive as to 
 shrink from the thought of the suffering around them, 
 unless they are really kind and loving, as well as 
 sensitive. We don't listen to others, or look at 
 others, or think about others, because all our 
 faculties of observation are centred on self If 
 another tells us the history of some illness of his, we 
 are either bored and heedless, or else bursting to 
 break in and cap all he says, by instances from the 
 history of our own interesting ailments. And so 
 everywhere. No doubt that true self-observation and 
 self-knowledge which poisons self-love is the greatest 
 
igS THE MEDIATORIAL OFFICE. 
 
 aid to the knowledge of others. Here, at least in 
 ourself we have one sample of humanity submitted 
 to our inspection ; here alone we can look intuitively 
 into a human mind and will and heart. Here we can 
 learn how often to know all, is to pardon all — Tout 
 savoir c'est tout pardonner. Blessed is the man of the 
 widest internal experience, if he will but use it, 
 digest it, ponder it, apply it; who has been 
 darkened, troubled, tempted, fallen, raised, en- 
 lightened, pacified, time after time; year after year; 
 who knows every movement of the soul not by 
 hearsay, or conjecture, but by experience. 
 
 (4) And from this profound and comprehensive 
 knowledge of humanity, with its actual depths and 
 its possible heights, there grows up a pitying love in 
 the hearts of those who, like the spirits of the dead, 
 "watch with God the rolling hours; with larger, 
 other, eyes than ours, to make allowance for us all." 
 We need not fear those who look us through and 
 through, so much as those who look just below the 
 fair-seeming surface. This last is the half-penetration 
 which breeds cynicism in him who knows little of 
 God, little of himself, and therefore little of his 
 fellow-men. The Christian cynic is a square-circle. 
 But every true Christian is indeed a priest, a 
 mediator, a vicar of Him who could with one arm 
 reach to the height of Heaven and with the other to 
 the depths of Hell ; who could embrace and draw 
 together in a kiss of peace the Creator and the 
 creature. In the bosom of the Father and in the 
 bosom of Mary, He lived with the life of God and 
 with the life of man ; and thought with the mind of 
 
ST. JOSEPH. 199 
 
 God and with the mind of man ; and loved with the 
 love of God and with the love of man. 
 
 CLXXIL 
 
 ST. JOSEPH. 
 
 Quis, putas, est fidelis servus quem constituit Dominus super 
 familiam suam ? 
 
 "Who, think you, is that faithful servant 
 whom the Lord hath set over His family ? " The 
 character of St. Joseph as conceived by the 
 faithful is almost entirely constructed a priori. 
 With the developing conception of the Divine 
 Child and His Mother, the conception of the 
 Spouse's and foster-father's dignity has grown pari 
 passu. Still the occupant of the office, unlike Christ, 
 or Peter or Paul, or John Baptist or John the Divine, 
 is historically almost a blank, little more than a 
 name. Holy Church therefore asks herself : who or 
 of what sort must have been that faithful servant 
 whom the Lord set over the household of Nazareth ? 
 She assigns to him all the characteristics becoming 
 the pure and loving spouse of God's Mother, of the 
 nursing father and protector of the Sacred Humanity. 
 She blesses him : Cui datum est, Deum quem multi 
 voluerunt videre et non viderunt, audire et non audierunt, 
 non solum videre et audire sed portare, deosculari, vestire 
 et custodire — "To whom it was given, not only to 
 see and to hear, but to carry and fondle and clothe 
 and protect that God whom many kings and 
 prophets longed to see and saw not, longed to hear 
 and heard not." She bids her royal priesthood learn 
 
MEDIATION. 
 
 from him the pure and reverent handling of the 
 Sacred Flesh of God ; and to commend the keeping 
 of their chastity to him to whose keeping the 
 innocence of Christ and His Mother was entrusted, 
 that they too may minister to Jesus and Mary with 
 chaste hearts and holy hands. Thus the idea of his 
 office and official virtues and prerogatives steadily 
 developed into this helpful form, although his per- 
 sonality to some extent lies hidden for ever. 
 
 CLXXIII. 
 
 MEDIATION. 
 
 Videbitis angelos Dei ascendentes et descendentes supra Filium 
 Hominis. 
 
 " Angels of God ascending and descending upon 
 the Son of Man " — not ascending from Him and 
 coming down to Him, as it were, ministering to 
 Him ; but using Him as Jacob's ladder by which 
 Heaven and Earth, sundered by sin, are linked 
 together again and bridged over, and commerce 
 resumed. Descending with messages and ministries 
 of peace on earth to men of good-will ; ascending 
 with the interest on graces well used, with glory to 
 God in the highest. He is such a ladder who so 
 bridges over the gulf between God and a sinful 
 soul, that the angels may pass and repass as of 
 old before the bridge was broken. Beati pacifici — 
 " Blessed are the peace-makers." 
 
ST. JOSEPH. 
 
 CLXXIV. 
 
 ST. JOSEPH. 
 Qui deducis velut ovem Joseph.' 
 
 " Who guidest Joseph as a sheep." St. Joseph 
 is eminently docile and leadable ; like a sheep 
 following the shepherd who goes before. He pauses 
 at times, timid and in doubt : till the shepherd 
 "calls him by his name: " "Joseph, son of David, 
 fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife." The 
 sheep follows blindly, it knows not where nor why ; 
 it does not interpret, foresee, prophesy. " Rise and 
 flee," says the shepherd, suddenly, without previous 
 intimation or hint, in the dead of night. And 
 following his shepherd's call he rose and fled. Nor 
 is he told for how long a stay he is to prepare 
 himself; but only usque dum dicam tibi, i.e., till the 
 next call. " Keep Thou my feet. I do not ask to 
 see the distant scene; one step enough for me." 
 Here it is that one so often breaks down, impatient 
 of suspense and uncertainty ; diffident of God's all- 
 controlling goodness. We must have some glimpse 
 forward, whether by presentiments, prognostications, 
 dreams, coincidences, or more commonly by a vain 
 attempt to see God's future plans written on the 
 face of the present. For all such matters as are 
 beyond human foresight and control, we must be 
 like St. Joseph, improvident as a sheep, and as 
 faithful and ready at a call. To him we may apply : 
 Dominus pascit me et nihil mihi deerit. In loco pascuce 
 1 Introit for the Patronage of St. Joseph. 
 
202 OVR OWN NAME. 
 
 ibi me collocavit. Super aquas refectionis educavit me ; 
 animam meant convertit. . . . Nam etsi ambulavero in 
 medio umhrce mortis non timebit cor meum ; quoniam tu 
 mecum es ; virga tua et baculus tuus ipsa me consolata 
 sunt — " Our Lord shepherds me, and I shall want 
 for nothing. He hath set me in the place of 
 pasture ; and hath led me by refreshing streams and 
 hath restored my failing life. For though I should 
 walk overshadowed by death, my heart will not fear, 
 for Thou art with me ; and Thy very rod is my con- 
 solation." As in life, so in death's dark shadow, he 
 is led on by the Good Shepherd, out into the light 
 again, a light that knows no shadow ; to pastures 
 and waters of refreshment, to the bread of angels, 
 and the clear crystal river of the water of life. Qui 
 regis Israel intende ; qui deducis velut ovem Joseph. 
 
 CLXXV. 
 
 OUR OWN NAME. 
 Proprias oves vocat nominatim. 
 
 " He calleth them all by their names." This 
 expresses a minuteness of personal knowledge got 
 by close intimacy and observation. What more 
 indistinguishable to an outsider than one sheep 
 from another ? One's own name to those that 
 know us is a summary of all they know about us. 
 It is an idea whose content is ever growing and 
 modifying. What must it mean on the lips of God, 
 my Shepherd, whose eyes have never been turned 
 an instant from the scrutiny of my inmost soul; 
 before whom my future life, my eternal destiny, is 
 
THE SMOKING FLAX. 203 
 
 already, as it were, a fact of the past ? It is this 
 awful knowledge of its full meaning that makes our 
 name so potent a spell in God's mouth, which 
 makes His call irresistible. Those who know us can 
 so far rule and control us. How can we, then, resist 
 Him, when He calls us by our name ? " Jesus saith 
 to her : Mary. And she turneth and saith to Him : 
 My Master." 
 
 CLXXVI. 
 
 THE SMOKING FLAX. 
 
 Arundinem quassatam non confringet, et linum fumigans non 
 extinguet. 
 
 God would have spared all Sodom for the sake 
 of ten just, and He spares many a sinner for the 
 sake of some little seed of good not yet dead, some 
 last smouldering spark that may yet be blown into 
 a flame. We contrariwise condemn wholesale for 
 one defect, pressing rigidly the principle. Malum ex 
 quocunque defectu; not even taking a man on his 
 average. We root up the little wheat with the 
 tares, or it may be even we root up far more wheat 
 than tares. So in dealing with systems, enterprises, 
 movements, we have no idea of sparing to the last ; 
 no faith in the self-righting, self- developing power 
 of the good and true ; in the self-dissipating tendency 
 of the false and bad. It were diviner to imitate 
 God, who fans and fosters the expiring sparks of 
 light and love wherever He finds them ; who " will 
 not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking 
 flax." 
 
204 THE TREE AND ITS FRUIT. 
 
 CLXXVII. 
 
 THE TREE AND ITS FRUIT. 
 Numquid coUigunt de spinis uvas, aut de tribulis ficus ? 
 
 " Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from 
 thistles ? " " Whatever of dignity, whatever of 
 strength we have within us, will dignify and will 
 make strong the labours of our hands ; whatever 
 littleness degrades our spirit, will lessen them and 
 drag them down ; whatever noble fire is in our 
 hearts, will burn also in our work ; whatever purity 
 is ours, will chasten and exalt it. For as we are, 
 so our work is; and what we sow in our lives, that 
 beyond a doubt we shall reap, for good or for ill, 
 in the strengthening or defacing of whatever gifts 
 have fallen to our lot." ^ 
 
 CLXXVIII. 
 
 THE CIRCUMCISION. 
 Deus Filium suum mittens, in similitudinem camis peccati. 
 
 " God sending His Son in the likeness of sinful 
 flesh." He came not only in the likeness of flesh, but 
 in the likeness of sinful flesh, with all the outward 
 seemmg of a sinner, sin only excepted ; circumcised 
 as one subservient to concupiscence ; presented and 
 redeemed as one whose life was forfeit by sin, and as 
 defiling rather than engracing the Mother that bore 
 Him ; baptized with the baptism of repentance, 
 living under the bondage of the law in the " form 
 » Sir F. Leighton. 
 
NATURAL AFFECTIONS. zoj 
 
 of a servant," rather than in the freedom of the 
 sons of God ; esteemed as one " stricken, smitten 
 of God and afflicted." And all this that He might 
 suppress whatever could distance Him from those 
 whom He was not ashamed to call " brethren," his 
 friends, the publicans and sinners ; that He might 
 be "as other men are," "even as this publican;" 
 in no way a Pharisee or separatist ; becoming all 
 things to all men that by all means He might gain 
 some. 
 
 CLXXIX. 
 
 NATURAL AFFECTIONS. 
 
 Quicunque enira fecerit voluntatem Patris mei, ipse meus frater, 
 et soror, et mater est. 
 
 " He that doth the will of My Father, ... the 
 same is My mother, My sister, and My brother." 
 Words which show, not how little an apostle should 
 care for his mother, his sister, and his brother, but 
 how tenderly he should love those who do the will 
 of His Father in Heaven, those who have one 
 enthusiasm with himself, idem velle, idem nolle. 
 The love a man has for his wife, his child, his 
 mother, his friend, are all different in kind and 
 motived differently. They do not exclude or take 
 from one another. Rather, so far as any one of 
 them is noble and full, it raises the tone of the 
 affections in general. So the love of his God is a 
 distinct affection crowning and perfecMng the rest, 
 but not draining their strength as it might do were 
 love homogeneous. It is true that in some sense 
 the love of God contains superexcellently the motive 
 
Visioii Aiib LoV^. 
 
 and perfection of every other love, yet it does not 
 contain it formally. If then the apostolic vocation 
 ever requires us to forsake all, it is to be understood 
 as to the external service of God, just as a man 
 must leave his father and mother and cleave to his 
 wife, so far as his new duties are incompatible with 
 his former duties. Christ did not leave His Mother 
 in affection, when He left her in fact for the business 
 of His Heavenly Father. We must never suppose 
 that Christian sanctity lessens or warps any ordinate 
 natural perfection of the heart or mind. 
 
 CLXXX. 
 
 VISION AND LOVE. 
 Videns eum cecidit ad pedes ejus. 
 
 We are told continually to love God, to set our 
 affections on things above. Yet few teachers ever 
 state or face the difficulty that love is not directly 
 under our free control. In both the natural and 
 supernatural order it is God's gift to a large extent. 
 Spiritus ubi vult spirat — " The spirit breathes where it 
 chooses;" and all we can directly do is to avoid 
 putting impediments in its way, or else to secure 
 the conditions of its presence. As tastes can 
 be trained, so the affections. It were the part 
 of a more skilled teacher to lead us to see God 
 in so fair a light as might kindle our love more 
 brightly. Videbimus eum sicuti est; seeing God as 
 He is, or as He sees Himself, is the cause of loving 
 Him as He loves Himself. Charity is knowledge; 
 not any knowledge, but "real" as opposed to 
 
PkOM EARTH to tiEAVJSli. i&f 
 
 " notional ; " the knowledge of intimacy and appre- 
 ciation. The same beauty is presented to the eyes 
 of the poet and to the eyes of the sot, yet to the 
 former it speaks a thousand things, to the latter, 
 not one word. 
 
 A primrose on the river's brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him 
 And nothing more. 
 
 The dry cold light of the lower intellect, how keen 
 soever, can never reveal to us "the King in His 
 beauty." This is wisdom's part. As the just alone 
 can appreciate and understand the beauty of justice, 
 and the merciful that of mercy, and the heroic that 
 of heroism ; so in general it is only those who are 
 in sympathy with goodness who can discern and 
 appreciate goodness. Thus does the moral character 
 determine our power of apprehension. 
 
 CLXXXI. 
 
 FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN. 
 Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua. 
 
 " Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory." The 
 Ascensio mentis in Deum, must be through creatures ; 
 from broken lights to their source. " They come 
 as broken lights from Thee, but Thou, O Lord, art 
 more than they." David uses this method when, 
 in his Psalms, he leads us from creature to creature, 
 and bids us praise the Divinity whose power, 
 wisdom, and love, each shadows forth. We have in 
 this life no other view of the Divine attributes save 
 in their effects. God must be sought, known, loved 
 
2o8 FilOM EARTH TO HEAVESt. 
 
 in His works, or nowhere. Hence it is primary to 
 teach men to read those works aright, to " taste " 
 them, and see how gracious must be their Maker. 
 As to the works of physical nature, it is partly to 
 science and partly to art that the duty of teaching 
 men to observe and to admire belongs ; while to 
 ethics belongs the office of forming the moral taste 
 by which we are drawn io love that word which God 
 speaks to us in the human souls of the great and 
 the good ; and above all in the Sacred Soul of 
 the Incarnate, that inexhaustible treasure of moral 
 beauty. Our power of loving grows as our sense 
 of the beautiful is deepened, widened, purified, and 
 refined ; and this in turn depends primarily on our 
 moral purity and appreciativeness. Which then 
 comes first ? i.e., if it is only the good, who have an 
 eye for goodness, and if it is only those who love 
 goodness who are good, where do we begin ? 
 Perhaps the case is analogous to that of advance in 
 truth. We start life with a few natural principles 
 and necessary experiences by means of which we 
 are in a position to acquire more if we use them 
 properly. Every new truth and experience thus 
 gained gives us a new perceptivity, i.e., makes us 
 sensitive and responsive to reasoning and evidence 
 that otherwise would not have appealed to us. 
 Similarly we start with a certain inborn potential 
 sense of goodness and beauty which is strengthened 
 and expanded by exercise, by every internal or 
 external act, until we become sensitive to goodness 
 and beauty lurking everywhere. 
 
GOD m THE STORM. 209 
 
 CLXXXII. 
 
 GOD IN THE STORM. 
 Ventus et mare obediunt ei. 
 
 "The wind and sea obey Him." Without 
 weakening our belief in the efficacy of prayer to 
 determine and modify the ordinary flux of causes 
 and effects, we may insist very profitably on the 
 identity of God and of Natura naturans. For it is 
 dangerous as well as false to view God as it were 
 in conflict with the forces of nature, or to forget 
 that when He stilled the waves it was but as when 
 one who speaks refrains from speaking; or who 
 labours refrains from labouring. It is He who rains, 
 and thunders, and storms ; and it is He who at His 
 own will, is at peace and rest. Vox Domini super 
 aquas Deus majestatis intonuit. . . . Vox Domini con- 
 fringeniis cedros. . . . intercidentis flammam ignis. . . . 
 concutientis desertum. We are wont to think that 
 when things run their natural course undisturbed, 
 God is dormant, or heedless, or impotent, as though 
 outside our own will there were any other origin- 
 ating force in creation than His will. 
 
 CLXXXII I. 
 
 EPIPHANY. 
 Invenietis cum qusesieritis me in toto corde vestro. 
 
 " If with all your hearts you seek Me, you shall 
 surely find Me." The whole-hearted desire for light 
 will make the seeker scan the skies night after night 
 O 
 
2X0 SPIPHANY. 
 
 for the sign of its coming ; it will make his vision 
 keen to catch the first glimmer, while others, like 
 Herod or the priests, will be listless and dead, and 
 will slumber on right into the heart of the day. 
 First graces as a rule are small and hardly noticeable 
 save to those " who watch for the morning." The 
 Wise Men follow the clue, promptly, diligently, per- 
 severingly. Promptly, like Matthew, who arose and 
 left his money-table; Hke the Apostles, who left 
 their half-mended nets and their father. How 
 many lose the light by procrastination ! If we take 
 our eyes from the star for one instant we may never 
 finds its locus again. Diligently, i.e., as one who 
 loves, and therefore is ready for suffering and 
 sacrifice, who is paratus omnia respuere propter dilectmn 
 — " ready to contemn everything for the beloved." 
 They leave home and occupation, perhaps reputa- 
 tion ; they enter on a tedious uncertain journey ; 
 they have no eye whatever to temporal or selfish 
 gain ; they are ready to make rich offerings of their 
 best, and, by adoration and homage, to offer them- 
 selves, their service, and labour to the new-born 
 King. Such souls as these God would draw out of 
 the darkness of Hell itself, could they be found 
 there. Perseveringly : Usque dum veniens staret supra 
 ubi erat puer. To begin well and zealously is 
 common enough, but how few survive the death of 
 novelty or the monotonous day by day routine 
 of journeying, or the encounter of perils and 
 oppositions unforeseen and even foreseen; or the 
 sudden and unaccountable withdrawals of special 
 guidance 1 
 
ADORATION. 
 
 Such souls following the first glimmer of faith, 
 are led through the windings, as it were, of a dark 
 subterranean labyrinth, from light to light, strength 
 to strength, into the full brightness of noonday to 
 appear before the face of the God of gods in Sion, 
 usque dum veniens staret supra ubi erat puer. Intrantes 
 domum, i.e., entering the Divine household as sons 
 by adoption : Jam non estis hospites et advenee sed estis 
 cives sanctorum et domestici Dei — " Now ye are no 
 longer guests and strangers, but fellow-citizens with 
 the Saints and of the household of God." Invenerunt 
 puerum et matrem ejus — "They find the Child and His 
 Mother." Those who seek shall find, and finding 
 Christ find all. Qui me invenerit inveniet vitam et 
 hauriet salutem a Domino — and that " all " includes 
 Mary — puerum et matrem ejus, for who shall separate 
 them, the " Woman and her Child " ? " Neither life 
 nor death, nor any other creature." 
 
 CLXXXIV. 
 
 ADORATION. 
 Procidentes adoraverunt enm. 
 
 "Falling down they adored Him." Falling 
 down, an expression of lowliness and comparative 
 nothingness ; a fainting, or deliquium, in the con- 
 templation of that which overwhelms and subdues. 
 When the Queen of Sheba beheld the glory of 
 Solomon, " her heart died within her ; " and 
 Aquinas cries out. Cor meum te contemplans totum 
 deficit — " My heart faints as I gaze on thee." 
 High as was their repute for wisdom and learning, 
 
4t4 OBLATIOH. 
 
 these Magi fall down to adore a speechless, and 
 seemingly mindless, Infant as the Incarnate Wisdom 
 and Light of the World. Great as was their wealth 
 and barbaric magnificence, they adore this child of 
 poverty as the Giver of all, ex quo omnia per quern 
 omnia. Powerful and influential as they were in 
 their own land, they deemed it prudent to leave 
 their concerns in order to do homage to a helpless 
 unprotected babe, and to cast their crowns before 
 His feet as King of kings and Lord of lords. It 
 was a veritable Sume Domme. et suscipe — " Take, 
 O Lord, and receive." 
 
 CLXXXV. 
 
 OBLATION. 
 Apertis thesauris obtulerunt ei munera. 
 
 "Opening their stores they made Him presents." 
 A treasure is what we keep close, under lock and 
 key; something hidden away, something men do 
 not suspect us of possessing. Its value is some- 
 times relative and personal to ourselves alone; 
 sometimes relatively to the common estimation of 
 some class of men larger or smaller; but never 
 relatively to God. Gold has its value because men 
 find it hard to procure ; but God can create it at 
 will, for with Him to will is to have. Or because it 
 is beautiful ; but God is subsistent Beauty. Or 
 because it is useful ; but God needs it not. Myrrh 
 is anti-corruptive, but God is a Spirit. Incense is 
 fragrant, but what is it to the fragrance of Mary's 
 soul, whose name was as ointment poured out. Yet 
 
THE EVANGELICAL COUNSELS. 213 
 
 to the Magi these things were treasures, and they 
 had carried them from afar and had opened them 
 out and given generously. 
 
 Gladly Thou givest, dearest Lord, 
 Gladly Thy gift should be restored ; 
 Freely Thou givest, and Thy word 
 
 Is ; Freely give. 
 He only, who forgets to hoard. 
 
 Has learnt to live.* 
 
 Gifts, says Loyola, are the utterance of love ; 
 valued for the love they betoken, but not for them- 
 selves, Non queer donwm tuum sed te — " I seek not 
 thy gift, but thyself." It is only in a soul, that a 
 soul can rest ; its appetite is not for a thing, but for 
 a person, amare et amari — "to love and be loved," 
 as Augustine says. It was these three faithful, 
 loyal, loving hearts, and not their gifts, that were 
 to the love-seeking, disconsolate Heart of God, at 
 once gold and frankincense and myrrh ; rare, 
 fragrant, incorruptible. The indwelling Spirit of 
 Love works this alchemy with poor flesh and blood, 
 and turns our dross into gold, our corruption into 
 sweetness. Cor mundum crea in me Deus — " Create 
 a clean heart in me, O God." 
 
 CLXXXVI. 
 
 THE EVANGELICAL COUNSELS. 
 Aurum, thus, myrrham. 
 
 "Gold, frankincense, and myrrh." Gold. A 
 symbol of the first religious vow, sc. poverty. 
 » Keble. 
 
JI4 THE EVANGELICAL COUNSELS. 
 
 Our gifts, like those of the Magi, are reparative. 
 We are of one spirit with the Wise Men who sought 
 Him from afar, when " His own received Him 
 not." The vvorld has turned aside to gold- 
 worship, to get and to hold ; to hold back from 
 God and from His poor ; to hold back the wealth 
 which He has given us that we might have where- 
 with to give. " How hardly shall they that trust 
 in riches enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." Not 
 only for love of the lot which He consecrated by 
 making it His own, but in a spirit of reparation, 
 we give Him all that we have or might have had, 
 and strew our garments in His path, and follow 
 Him naked and emptied of all. Ecce nos reliquimus 
 omnia et secuti sumus te — " Lo, we have left all and 
 followed Thee." The spirit of economy shelters 
 itself at times under the title of poverty, because 
 they materially agree in doing with as little as 
 possible; but. in motive they are extreme contraries; 
 the miser spares that he may have more ; he adores 
 money so as to forsake all else for its sake. Poverty 
 despises money and flings it about recklessly like 
 the dross that it is. Yet not all recklessly ; for the 
 counsel is not merely, "Go sell all," but "give to 
 the poor ; " find out those who are in need of 
 whatever you abound in — talents, or wealth, or 
 cheerfulness, or influence, and give liberally, with 
 no thought for the morrow. 
 
 Myrrh. God lovingly provides us with many 
 pleasures which touch us through our senses, and 
 which He designs as a condiment to the solid food 
 pf reasonable life, a medicine for weariness, Men 
 
THE EVANGELICAL COUNSELS 215 
 
 live on the medicine and poison themselves; and 
 fall into disease, death, and corruption. Chastity, 
 with its attendant virtues of self-restraint, modesty, 
 temperance, is the great antiseptic, the myrrh that 
 embalms our carnal nature, and keeps it pure till 
 God touches it into new life and immortahty. 
 Here too the offering of religious is reparative ; for 
 Christ's love they give up what is lawful, seeing so 
 many unwilling to give up what is unlawful. 
 
 Incense. It is easier to forsake lands and 
 possessions, husband or wife, child or parent, than 
 one's own will. Et fortasse laboriosum non est homini 
 relinquere sua, sed valde laboriosum est relinquere semet- 
 ipsum. Minus est quippe negare quod habet, valde autem 
 multum est negare quod est?- This is the soul of all 
 acceptable sacrifice, as it was of the sacrifice of 
 Him who was obedient unto death. It gives it its 
 fragrance, like the incense that was laid upon the 
 show-bread. Of the obedience of Calvary it is 
 written : " Let my prayer be set forth in Thy sight 
 as incense, and the lifting up of my hands be as 
 an evening sacrifice," Never was the world so 
 mad after false liberty, independence, self-guidance ; 
 never was greater need of reparation by the practice 
 and love of obedience for its own sake, and for His 
 who for our sakes chose rather to be subject than 
 to command. 
 
 » St. Gregory. 
 
2l6 COLD, FRANKINCENSE, AND MYRRH. 
 
 CLXXXVII. 
 
 GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, AND MYRRH. 
 
 Ecclesiae tuae, qusesumus Domine, dona propitius intuere ; quibus 
 non jam aurum thus et myrrha profertur, sed quod eisdem mune- 
 ribus declaratur, immolatur, et sumitur, Jesus Christus Filius tuus 
 Dominus noster.^ 
 
 " Look favourably, O Lord, on the gifts of Thy 
 Church, wherein we offer not unto Thee gold, 
 frankincense, and myrrh, but where that which 
 they signify is sacrificed and received, Jesus Christ, 
 Thy Son." Christ is the Gold of Divine Wisdom, that 
 thesaurus inestimabilis quo qui usi sunt facti sunt amid 
 Dei propter dona disciplines commendati. He is the 
 treasure hidden in the field, the gold of divinity 
 wrapped in the earth of humanity, " which when a 
 man hath found he goeth and selleth all that he 
 hath and buyeth that field." Again He is fine gold 
 tried in the fierce fire of His Passion, and purified 
 from the sins of all mankind which He bore in His 
 own person, as Head of the mystical body, answer- 
 able for the Jeeds of its members. He is the wealth 
 of the Eternal Father, His alms to us poor mendi- 
 cants ; for " God so loved the world that He gave 
 His Only-Begotten." He gave, that we might have 
 something to give ; that we might be able to present 
 an offering through which, and with which the other- 
 wise worthless offering of ourself and our all is 
 acceptable. This is that treasure which the Church 
 of Humanity lays on God's altars day by day. 
 Christ is the frankincense. He is that Prayer which 
 * Secret for the Epiphany. 
 
GOD'S PLANS UNSEARCHABLE. aiy 
 
 is set forth in God's sight as incense, and the 
 lifting up of whose hands on Calvary is as an 
 evening sacrifice, winning pardon for the sins of 
 the day that is past, and protection from the perils 
 of the instant night. It was for the priest to offer 
 incense, Fungi sacerdotio . . . et offerre illi incensum 
 dignum in odorem suavitatis ; but in the archetype. 
 Priest and Offering are one. As He is the Lamb, 
 so is He the Bread, and the First-Fruits, and the 
 Incense ascending for an odour of sweetness, an 
 emblem of acceptable prayer ; and of that priestly 
 intercession which is continued unbroken in Heaven 
 and re-echoed by every Mass on earth. — Christ is the 
 Myrrh, the author of incorruption and sweetness, 
 " I am the Resurrection and the Life;" the "Healer 
 of the Nations," the physician of soul and body. 
 When Christ is mingled with art, letters, science, 
 philosophy, ethics, politics, corruption vanishes; 
 when He is driven away, putrescence follows. 
 
 CLXXXVHL 
 
 god's plans unsearchable. 
 
 Surge in instanti et fuge. 
 
 " Rise at once and fly." If the guiding star had 
 not failed the Magi, apparently without rhyme or 
 reason, they need not have inquired the where- 
 abouts of Christ, and Herod would have heard 
 nothing to excite his jealousy; and the infants would 
 not have been slaughtered, nor the flight into Egypt 
 been necessary. How ignorant and presumptuous 
 to divine and predict the ends to which God's Pro- 
 
2i8 GOD'S PLANS UNSEARCHABLE. 
 
 vidence is working ; beyond affirming that all is in 
 His hands and that all makes for good in the last 
 event and issue, how or when, who can say, unless 
 he has been "God's counsellor from the beginning"? 
 Many pious people are addicted to a certain sort of 
 sanctified necromancy, and see omens everywhere, 
 and can foretell precisely, in spite of countless 
 failures experienced, what will come out of what. 
 In instanti — " Rise at once." Just as we should have 
 managed the star better; so here we should have 
 given St. Joseph timely warning a day or so before- 
 hand. And why not ? Why this suddenness ? 
 Perhaps because the anticipation of trouble only 
 increases trouble ; perhaps because St. Joseph's will 
 was so well balanced and indifferent that such warn- 
 ing was superfluous. But in truth we are not told, 
 and can but guess idly. Such sudden calls are 
 frequent in God's dealings with great saints ; while 
 we ordinary souls are led by ordinary paths. " Get 
 thee up out of thy country and thy kindred," was 
 the call by which Abraham was wrenched from the 
 surroundings of home and turned into a wandering 
 exile ; even as here, St. Joseph's tranquil, unsuspect- 
 ing slumber is rudely changed for the bustle and 
 anxiety of sudden flight into the darkness. Such, for 
 many, is the summons of death, coming as a thief in 
 the night : Ecce sponsus venit. Beatus ille servm quern 
 cum venerit dominus ejus et puhaverit januam invenerii 
 vigilantem — " Lo, the bridegroom cometh. Blessed 
 is that servant who is found waiting when his Master 
 knocks." 
 
OUR CHARGE. 21^ 
 
 CLXXXIX. 
 
 OUR CHARGE. 
 Accipe puerum et matrem ejns. 
 
 "Take the Boy and His Mother." They are 
 treated Hke inanimate creatures with no will or move- 
 ment of their own ; committed absolutely to the 
 hands of one whose wisdom was to theirs as the light 
 of a star to that of the moon or the sun. So Jesus 
 and Mary are in some way committed to the care of 
 each one of us ; their honour, their safety is largely 
 in our hands ; they are made dependent on us for 
 much love and affection, which we can yield them 
 ourselves, gain them from others, or deny and 
 hinder. In the persons of their children they are 
 still more closely committed to us ; and God only 
 can tell how the sanctification of thousands may be 
 bound up with and dependent on our own. In the 
 sacraments again, in the gift of His Spirit and of His 
 graces, He puts Himself at our mercy, and makes 
 the success of His Cross and Passion dependent on 
 us. Accipe puerum et matrem ejus. Let us take as 
 an awful trust from God the Divine Child and 
 His Blessed Mother — the trust of St. Joseph and 
 St. Michael. 
 
 Those to whom the care of "the Child and 
 His Mother " is entrusted are not always called to 
 open fight and resistance. Their "care" often means 
 flight and retirement to the solitude and obscurity 
 of Egypt, where their labour for Jesus and Mary 
 is of an ordinary and unheroic kind ; preparatory, it 
 
220 THE COST OF OUR PRODUCTION. 
 
 may be, to sterner championship later on. Usque 
 dum dicam tibi. For ever, if necessary; but in all 
 cases without anxiety or care or thought for the 
 morrow. 
 
 cxc. 
 
 THE COST OF OUR PRODUCTION. 
 Recordare Jesu pie quod sum causa tuae viae. 
 
 "Remember, good Jesu, what I have cost you. 
 Think what a troublesome child I have been 
 and am ; all the annoyance I have given ; and if 
 labour is the foundation of the right of property, 
 think of all the labour you have put into me, 
 however poor be the results. Think how deeply 
 I am yours." The very hardness and crabbedness 
 of the material used, gives a value to a carving 
 artistically hideous, which in more tractable matter 
 would be inexcusable. We forgive in mother-o'- 
 pearl what in metal were unpardonable. God may 
 be more glorified in the little — perhaps in the 
 nothing — that He gets out of some, than in the 
 hundred-fold he gets out of others. He will not 
 throw away lightly what He has laboured at so 
 long. The way that mere resistance and difficulty 
 fires our energy and determination is not mere 
 perversity, but has its roots in the nature of love, 
 and finds its archetype in God. 
 
tHREE HARDSHIPS. 22I 
 
 CXCI. 
 
 THREE HARDSHIPS. 
 Fuge in Egyptum et esto ibi usque dum dicam tibi. 
 
 " Fly to Egypt, and stay there till I bid thee." 
 Fuge — "fly" — "a hard word" to those whose first 
 impulse is to stand and resist, especially where they 
 are sure of success, and clear as to the benefit 
 of the immediate issues. To the cowardly and 
 timorous the message is often, " Stand, therefore, 
 having your loins girt about." 
 
 In Egyptum — " To Egypt " — from home and 
 friends into an alien land, uncongenial in every way. 
 A type of that world which is our " house of 
 bondage," from which God has delivered us with 
 a mighty hand and an outstretched arm ; and to 
 which He bids return as freed-men, to be there, as 
 the Holy Family in Egypt, in it, not of it. Non 
 rogo ut tollas eos de mundo — " I ask not that Thou 
 shouldst take them out of the world." Why ? 
 Because, Vos estis sal terra, vos estis lux mundi — 
 " Ye are the salt of the earth, the light of the world." 
 Yet the salt must be mingled with the world, as the 
 leaven with the dough. 
 
 Usque dum dicam tibi — " Till I bid thee." We 
 like to know how long disagreeables are going to 
 last, that we may have the relief of hope, or else 
 make up our mind for the worst. Suspense is a 
 heavy cross, which they bear best who trust God 
 most blindly, and take no thought for the morrow. 
 
424 THE SSNSE dF SEC'ORIT'^. 
 
 CXCII. 
 
 THE SENSE OF SECURITY. 
 Nolite itaque amittere confidentiam vestram. 
 
 " Do not, therefore, lose your confidence." It 
 is hard to conceive a man who is in any sense 
 devoted to his profession or occupation, or to some 
 cause with which his substantial happiness is bound 
 up, throwing the whole thing up for some momen- 
 tary gratification, how intense soever. It would 
 surely be the result of no slight deliberation carried 
 on for days or weeks. So it is morally impossible 
 for one who lives habitually for God and God's 
 service, who is, as St. Thomas says, dedicated to 
 God, to apostatize or sin mortally in a moment 
 under any pressure of temptation, however great — 
 there is not sufficient time for the deliberation 
 proportioned to such a change. For "full delibe- 
 ration " is relative to the importance of the step 
 taken ; indefinitely less being requisite for a venial 
 than for a mortal sin. No doubt, the fatal step is 
 always the act of a moment, but then it is a moment 
 which closes a period of absolute coldness and 
 indifference to the service of God; of wavering 
 allegiance ; during which the wish to keep even 
 from mortal sin has been growing weaker and 
 weaker. There is but one step over the brink of 
 the precipice ; but there is many a step before one 
 gets to the brink. Some speak as though a soul in 
 grace lived on the brink habitually. 
 
GROWTH A MYSTERlr. 443 
 
 CXCIII. 
 GROWTH A MYSTERY. 
 
 Quis autem vestrum cogitans potest adjicere ad staturara suam 
 cubitum unum ? 
 
 " Which of you can add one cubit to his 
 stature, by his own devices ? " The Kingdom of 
 Heaven is as though a man should sow seed and 
 rise by day and rest by night, and it cometh up 
 he knoweth not how. So of the growth of faith 
 and charity in each man's heart. At most we 
 can secure negative conditions. We can remove 
 stones and weeds and all that hinders God's 
 work. But the process of growth is a mystery, 
 and all positive directions and prescriptions fail. 
 God gives as He chooses, enough to all, more to 
 some ; and when and how He chooses. This law 
 holds even in the natural order to a large extent. 
 Who can force the understanding or the affection 
 in their growth, or do more than prune and correct ? 
 We rise and rest, and rest and rise, and it cometh 
 up we know not how. 
 
 CXCIV. 
 
 WHERE IS THY BROTHER? 
 
 Quos dedisti mihi custodivi, et nemo ex eis periit nisi filius 
 perditionis. 
 
 "Those whom Thou gavest Me I have kept 
 and not one is lost." There is not a soul that has 
 not in some measure received a similar trust from 
 God, or on whose labour or prayer or co-operation 
 
2i4 a&ROb. 
 
 with grace the salvation and sanctification of certain 
 others has not been made dependent ; souls of which 
 we shall have to say one day to God : " They were 
 Thine and Thou gavest them to me." Shall we be 
 able to say also : " I have kept those whom Thou 
 gavest me, and not one is lost save the son of 
 perdition," i.e., save those who were lost or injured 
 by their own fault alone, and not through any fault 
 of mine. Some, of course, are given to us in a 
 more intimate and explicit manner than others; 
 committed to our charge ; commended to our 
 prayers ; thrown into converse with us. But these 
 are few compared with the many whom perhaps 
 we have never seen or heard of. Vce soli : Woe to 
 him who appears alone before God, or if not alone, 
 yet with but a few stragglers of his neglected flock ; 
 who answers the question : " Where is thy brother ? " 
 with : " Am I my brother's keeper ? " Ecce ego, 
 says the Good Shepherd, et pueri mei quos dedit mihi 
 dominus — " Behold me and my children whom God 
 has given me " — " of those whom Thou hast given 
 me, not one is lost." 
 
 CXCV. 
 
 HEROD. 
 Turbatus est et omnis Jerosolyma cum eo. 
 
 " Herod was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with 
 him." To " men of good-will " the tidings of the 
 Messias' Birth was an evangel, "good news" of 
 peace. When the Magi saw the star, gavisi sunt 
 gatidio magna valde — "they rejoiced exceedingly;" 
 
MEEKNESS. 225 
 
 but Herod is disturbed, harassed, and agitated. So 
 according to the disposition of the soul, the approach 
 of grace, the call to higher things is for some a drop 
 of water falling on a sponge, which receives it noise- 
 lessly, unresistingly, and drinks it in ; for others it 
 is the same drop falling noisily on the resisting, 
 impenetrable rock. Herod clings rigidly to his 
 possessions and dignities with a will resolute to 
 hold out against God Himself if need be. "And 
 all Jerusalem with him," i.e., official Jerusalem, 
 which hung upon his favour obsequiously. Ut et 
 ego veniens adorem eum — "When you have found 
 Him, tell me, that I may come and adore Him." 
 Here he shows himself the true child of the 
 Father of Lies. In his dealings with pure, single- 
 hearted souls, he must deceive them, if at all, under 
 semblance of good. True heavenly wisdom, like 
 that of the Magi, is unworldly, unsuspicious, 
 "thinketh no evil;" it goes like a lamb into the 
 midst of wolves, trusting in the promise: Angelis 
 suis mandavit de te — " He has given His angels 
 charge of thee " — a promise verified in this case. 
 
 CXCVI. 
 
 MEEKNESS. 
 Obsecro vos per mansuetudinem et modestiam Cbristi. 
 
 " I entreat you by the meekness of Christ. 
 Meekness is more than the mere control of the 
 passion of anger. That the instinct of justice should 
 be approved, checked, and governed by reason, is a 
 matter of precept. He who fails in this, and follows 
 P 
 
226 MEEKNESS. 
 
 his instinct blindfold, is " overcome of evil." " Be 
 not overcome by evil," but, on the contrary, " over- 
 come evil by good." For this is the highest and 
 noblest triumph. Just vengeance in due place and 
 season is a remedy for wrong, a victory over evil ; 
 but it is the least glorious victory. Hence even God 
 falls back upon it as a last resort, deferring, age 
 after age, the final judgment ; willing that, if possible, 
 none should perish, but that all should come to 
 repentance ; that every rebel will should be self- 
 humbled, rather than coerced reluctantly ; that evil 
 should be conquered by good, rather than by evil. 
 It is His glory to bring good out of evil ; and when 
 we have most reason to despair before His just 
 anger, to turn round upon us and overwhelm us 
 with love ; running forth to meet us when yet a long 
 way off; falling on our neck and kissing us, receiving 
 us home to the dignity of sonship, seating us at the 
 Eucharistic Feast in the Kingdom of God. This is 
 a Divine victory, that the rebel heart should be 
 humbled and broken by love rather than by fear; 
 that it should yield freely and not on compulsion. 
 " If then thy enemy hunger, feed him, ... for in so 
 doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head." 
 So " when we were yet enemies, Christ died for the 
 ungodly." Man's Maker looked down upon the 
 sinful multitudes of Adam's race, harassed and 
 scattered as sheep without a shepherd, and moved 
 with compassion, forgetful of just anger. He said: 
 " Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat ? " 
 Bread in the desert there was none to be found, 
 only " the husks that the swine did eat ; " and so 
 
LIFE'S LAST LESSON. 227 
 
 " He gave them Bread from Heaven " — Bread pre- 
 pared and perfected on Calvary ; and said : " Take, 
 eat, this is My Body which is broken for you ; this. 
 My Blood which is shed for you." Felix Culpa 
 qucB talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem ! — " O 
 blessed evil overwhelmed by so great a good 1 " 
 Had there been no sin, what should we have known 
 of the free, generous mercies of God, who heaps 
 coals of fire on our head, the fire of charity, of the 
 multiform gifts and graces of His Holy Spirit. 
 
 CXCVII. 
 
 life's last lesson. 
 
 Domine, ad quern ibimus ? 
 
 " Lord, to whom shall we go ? " Life's last 
 lesson ; the final result of our spiritual education 
 We are led on step by step from lower to higher, 
 " seeking rest and iinding none." As our tastes get 
 refined our sufferings increase ; as we become more 
 enchanted of the ideal, we grow more disenchanted 
 with the real : so that, for many, life seems one huge 
 bitter disappointment, which gradually evolves itself 
 like a mist rising from the earth, slowly thickening 
 into impenetrable darkness. And yet is it not all in 
 perfect harmony with the purpose of life as revealed 
 by Christ ? that purpose being to teach man to know 
 himself and to know God ; to know that his spiritual 
 hunger is not for the true, the good, the beautiful, 
 or for the more true; but for the living, subsistent 
 Truth, Goodness, Beauty. And this he learns pro 
 more suo, almost experimentally. " Taste and see." 
 
228 LIFE A DREAM. 
 
 He has to taste each proffered finite happiness and 
 find that its flavour quickly cloys, and but whets 
 the appetite for something better; and this again 
 in its turn sends him to look still higher. He who 
 is true to his higher self and refuses to lower his 
 ideals for the sake of avoiding the pain of conscious 
 discord, will indeed suffer ; but with a purgative and 
 salutary suffering. If standing in the midst of his 
 shattered idols he has learnt to say : Domine, ad quern 
 ibimus? he has at once reached the lowest depth 
 and the loftiest height.^ 
 
 CXCVIII. 
 
 LIFE A DREAM. 
 
 Moram autem faciente sponso dormitaverunt omnes et dormi- 
 enint. 
 
 " While the Bridegroom tarried they all slum- 
 bered and slept." We should not look on life as we 
 know it, and as it appears to us, as if it were a 
 reality, something substantial and propter se; or 
 forget that in a true sense it is but a shadow of an 
 unknown substance ; a vague hint of a truth yet to 
 be revealed, a dream in a night from which we are 
 not yet wakened. What wonder if it is discon- 
 nected, bizarre, fantastic, mutable, and dream-like 
 in every way ! We know as much of the good which 
 God is bringing out of evil, as a child who cries under 
 the doctor's knife knows the purport of its suffering. 
 Apart from all revelation, the chances of our seeing 
 
 ' For all this see St. Augustuie, Confess, x. c. vi. " Non dubia sed 
 , . . responsio eorum species eorum." 
 
CONVERSION. 229 
 
 the right explanation of life's problems are just 
 infinitesimal, the certainty that we do not, all but 
 absolute. That on such an inadequate view we 
 should be dogmatic pessimists is ridiculous: whereas, 
 by analogy, we can see clearly why the most bene- 
 ficent and wisest scheme, viewed imperfectly, must 
 appear faulty and unsatisfactory. 
 
 CXCIX. 
 
 CONVERSION. 
 
 Erravi sicut ovis quae periit quaere servum tuum quia mandata 
 tua non sum oblitus. 
 
 " I have strayed like a lost sheep. Seek me, for 
 I do not forget Thy commandments." For silliness, 
 if for nothing else, our soul is well likened to a 
 sheep ; the silliness which makes us follow those 
 nearest to us blindly for better or for worse ; the 
 silliness which draws us away into danger on pretext 
 of good, in search of better pasturage than that 
 which our Shepherd judges fit for us. Dominm 
 regit me et nihil mihi deerit in loco pascuce ibi me 
 collocavit. Lost and bewildered the sheep cries out, 
 bleating for its shepherd and for its fellows ; but the 
 wandering soul, separated from Christ and the body 
 of His flock, cannot so much as cry out or wish to 
 be saved until Christ comes to seek it : Libera nos 
 jam invocanies te ; libera etiam eos qui nondum te 
 invocant, ut invocent te et liberes eos — " Save us who 
 call upon Thee. Save also those who as yet do 
 not call upon Thee, that they may call upon Thee, 
 
130 CONVERSION. 
 
 and Thou mayst save them."^ The faintest wish 
 to be better, the feeblest troubling about our 
 spiritual state, is the first distant echo of the 
 Shepherd's voice " calling us by our name." It is 
 an earnest that He has begun to seek us, and will 
 not rest till He has found us and borne us home on 
 His shoulder rejoicing. 
 
 Quia mandata tua non sum ohlitus — " Because I 
 have not forgotten Thy commandments." For 
 already Thou hast begun to seek me. That the 
 knowledge of Thy commandments should once 
 have been given me ; that it should remain in 
 the treasury of my memory; that it should be 
 drawn forth thence into the light of actual con- 
 sideration ; that it should move me to the love of 
 that forgotten wisdom "whose ways were ways of 
 pleasantness, and all whose paths were peace," and 
 to a remembrance of the "plenty and to spare," 
 which the very slaves in my Father's house are 
 enjoying while I perish with hunger — all this is 
 " preventive " grace ; the call of the Shepherd 
 seeking me. Or again, we may take it as the 
 plea of one who has strayed, as David did, rather 
 through surprise and frailty than through malice or 
 a slow-growing indifference ; who habitually loves 
 God's law, Quomodo dilexi legem tuam Domine, tola 
 die meditatio mea est; or who at least has in him 
 the first root of recovery in an unwavering faith ; 
 " For though he has sinned," the Church pleads in 
 her prayer for the dying, " he hath not denied the 
 Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." 
 Aug. Conf. i. 10. 
 
THE NAME OF GOD. 231 
 
 cc. 
 
 THE NAME OF GOD. 
 Serva Pater in nomine tuo quos dedisti mihi. 
 
 " Father, keep in Thy Name those whom Thou 
 hast given Me." His finished work was the decla- 
 ration of that Name or Nature ; to reveal God as 
 Father, " My Father and your Father," " the 
 Father Himself loveth you ; " to be Himself, as 
 Man, a created word or expression of the Divine 
 goodness, love, and pity, " He that hath seen Me, 
 hath seen the Father ; " to drive from men's minds 
 all harsh, cruel, narrow, unworthy conceptions of 
 their God and Maker. " I have manifested Thy 
 Name to the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the 
 world," to those who were chosen to be guardians 
 of this fuller and truer revelation. " Keep them in 
 Thy Name," let them not depart from this saving 
 knowledge, for their own sakes and the sake of 
 "those who through their word shall believe in Me." 
 
 " While I was with them , I kept them in Thy 
 Name." He was with us in order to show us the 
 Father — that "unknown God whom ye ignorantly 
 worship," to show Him forth in His most perfect 
 created image, in the Sacred Humanity, in the soul 
 and heart, in the birth and life and converse and 
 death of the Son of Mary. "And now I am no longer 
 in the world, but these are in the world, and I come 
 to Thee." He fears to leave them orphaned of His 
 guidance and help. Like St. Paul, He is divided 
 between two desires, to be with God and to be with 
 
232 THE NAME OF GOD. 
 
 his children. So He prays : " Keep them in Thy 
 Name ; " and the answer to that prayer is alluded 
 to in the words, " I will not leave you orphans, I 
 will come to you ; " and " Satan hath desired to 
 have you . . . but I have prayed for thee . . . and 
 thou in turn confirm thy brethren." The Holy 
 Spirit abiding with the Church of Peter, is Christ, 
 still on earth, keeping us in the name and true 
 knowledge of the Father. 
 
 It is for us to keep in God's Name those whom 
 He has given us ; to fight against the Devil and his 
 angels, who through the mouths of their agents, 
 willing or unwilling, bad or good, conscious or 
 unconscious, have been calumniators of God's good- 
 ness from the beginning. It is their special delight 
 to play upon the natural bent of those good people 
 who are inclined to strictness and rigorism, and to 
 drive them over the borders of reason and faith; 
 and in the minds of all, to raise up phantoms of the 
 imagination, gross, anthropomorphic caricatures, 
 and perversions of the truth, so that the Name of 
 God may be a name of terror or depression, or 
 dreary monotony. Be it ours to see that that Name 
 is written in gold on the hearts and affections of 
 men ; and that no breath of heretical rigorism may 
 ever tarnish its brightness. Serva eos in nomine tuo 
 quos dedisti mihi. 
 
FORGIVING AND FORGETTING. 233 
 
 CCI. 
 
 FORGIVING AND FORGETTING. 
 Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis. 
 
 " Turn away Thy face from my sins." We turn 
 away from what pains us, from the defects and 
 faults of those we love. Indeed, this is all the 
 difference between charitable and uncharitable 
 criticism, that the latter dwells not reluctantly but 
 with a certain satisfaction on the blemishes of one 
 whom we dislike ; being anxious to draw others into 
 sympathy with our dislike. When God has forgiven 
 He would fain forget, were it possible to do so. He 
 " casts our sins behind His back," saying, " Their 
 sins and their iniquities I will remember no more." 
 He is to us afterwards, all that He was before, and 
 even more. But the condition of this full-hearted 
 forgiveness is first, that we should turn our eyes upon 
 our own sins : Peccatum meum contra me est semper — 
 " My sin is ever before me ; " not with scrupulosity, 
 or sad diffidence, but as on the scars whose healing is 
 a standing testimony both to God's infinite pity and 
 power, and to our own weakness, misery, and malice. 
 Pride turns our eyes away from our own sins, and 
 on to the frailties of others weaker than ourselves, 
 and hates to contemplate the more perfect types 
 which condemn us. Another condition is to forget, as 
 far as possible, the wrongs others may have done us ; 
 or at least not willingly to recollect and brood over 
 them with morbid satisfaction ; and in general not 
 to dwell on the seamy side of men's characters, but, 
 
2H GOD'S IMMANENCE. 
 
 without blind optimism, to lean towards the larger, 
 gentler, kindlier view. Omnes iniquitates meas dele — 
 " Blot out all my iniquities." God writes His law 
 upon the eternal rock ; our transgressions He writes 
 upon the sand, whence they may be easily effaced 
 by the rain of contrite tears, or the breath of our 
 sighing. Men would harshly condemn us to the 
 utmost penalty of the law ; but He who made man 
 and "knows what is in man," writes His indictment 
 on the dust ; and if we do not condemn others. He 
 will say, " Neither do I condemn thee ; go, sin no 
 more." 
 
 ecu. 
 
 god's immanence. 
 
 In quo vivimus et movemur et sumus, 
 
 " In Him we live and move and are." All 
 movement and change of which our senses are 
 cognizant has free-will for its ultimate present cause; 
 that is to say, whatever of this nature does not 
 proceed from the free-will of man proceeds from 
 the free-will of God. This we say and know, but 
 hardly realize. If we meet men going here and 
 there as it seems independently on separate quests, 
 it has little interest for us; but far otherwise, did 
 we know that, perhaps without mutual recognition, 
 they were all messengers of one master, working 
 out some one end through their instrumentality. 
 So we gaze stupidly into the world, forgetting the 
 common Mover of all the stir and movement we 
 see ; forgetting that all is " toil co-operant to an 
 end." The cloud that flits across the sky, the 
 
GOD'S IMMANENCE. 135 
 
 sunbeam which strikes through it, the bird that 
 flutters about and chirps, the fly wandering aim- 
 lessly on the window-pane, (and since even free 
 acts do not escape His providence) the loiterer 
 on the roadside, the labourer in the field, the 
 children at their play, each and all at the same 
 instant are unconsciously working out a common 
 result in accordance with a plan conceived from 
 eternity. There is no casual coincidence in the 
 present collocation of all these appearances and 
 facts, disconnected and independent as they seem 
 to us ; for before God every pulsation of a gnat's 
 wing is a link in the chain of history on which, it 
 may be, the fate of an empire depends. In nothing 
 perhaps are we more dependent on what seems 
 chance than in the current of our thoughts. Nothing 
 is too trifling to divert them from one channel into 
 another: a sound, a scent, a flash, a feeling, and 
 an associated image or impression is called up 
 before us and starts us off on a new line. And yet 
 how much depends on the direction of our thought ! 
 How much we do every day, and how much we 
 omit to do in consequence ; and how much depends 
 on our doing or not doing ! The greatest events in 
 our own life, the greatest events in history, could 
 each be shown to have been determined in some 
 points of its antecedents by less than a breath, or a 
 passing shadow. 
 
 It is no small gain to be able to see God 
 "labouring" continually within us and without us, 
 with a wisdom which reaches from end to end, 
 disposing of all things sweetly ; to see in every 
 
236 PENITENCE. 
 
 incident and accident of each hour the hand of God, 
 and to remember that each is a grace directed to 
 our salvation. As far as the thread of our own Hfe 
 is concerned, we can follow it with the assurance 
 that every other thread by which it is crossed or 
 intertwined is not only designed for the working 
 out of the final plan or pattern, but also for the 
 finish of this detailed part which concerns our own 
 soul. 
 
 Surely there was more reason, not to say more 
 faith, in the barbarians who said, " He shines," 
 " He thunders," " He rains," than in us who 
 intercalate such a chain of passive momenta between 
 natural effects and their originating free active cause, 
 as to weary us before we arrive at it. Thus we 
 come to view the working of Nature as passive and 
 mechanical ; to put God outside it as a directing 
 and occasionally interrupting cause ; to forget that 
 His free-will is the first and immediate mover in all. 
 
 ccni. 
 
 PENITENCE. 
 Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo et mundabor. 
 
 " Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall 
 be clean." Sprinkling the people with the blood of 
 the Covenant signifies the application to each, of the 
 benefits of that Covenant purchased by the blood of 
 the sacrificed victim. So we are sprinkled with 
 Christ's blood whensoever His blood-bought grace 
 or forgiveness is applied to the cleansing of our 
 soul. Lavabis mc — " Thou shalt wash me : " an act 
 
Penitence. 237 
 
 of mercy and piety. " Thou gavest Me no water to 
 wash My feet." Super nivem dealbabor — " I shall be 
 whiter than snow," whiter than whiteness, for purity 
 of soul is positive and susceptive of indefinite inten- 
 tion. Auditui meo dabis gaudium et IcEtitiam — " Thou 
 shalt grant me to hear joy and gladness," that glad 
 hearing that fell on Magdalen's ears : " Thy sins are 
 forgiven thee ; " or which greeted the paralytic, 
 "Arise and walk;" or the adulteress, " Neither shall 
 I condemn thee;" or the robber, "To-day shalt 
 thou be with Me in Paradise." 
 
 Et exultabunt ossa humiliata — "And the strength 
 that was humbled shall exult." Our humbled self- 
 reliance turned to reliance on grace, is changed 
 from seeming strength and very weakness, to 
 seeming weakness and very strength. " When I am 
 weak then am I strong." The picture is that of the 
 quiet gladness of convalescence, born of a sense of 
 slowly returning strength after prostration and 
 weakness, where every movement is fresh, novel, 
 and joyous, every exercise of our new life a delight 
 — as " a strong man exults to run a race," for the 
 mere pleasure of outpoured energy ; or as the lame 
 man followed the Apostles, "walking and leaping 
 and praising God." Et nunc resumptis viribus post 
 tempestatem, reconvalesce in luce miserationum mearum — 
 " And now that the storm is over, take heart, and 
 grow strong again in the daylight of My tender 
 
 Imitation, 
 
238 ONE GOD. 
 
 CCIV. 
 
 ONE GOD. 
 Unus Deus et Pater omninm. 
 
 "One God and Father of all." It has been 
 said scoffingly, that man has made for himself 
 a God in his own image and likeness, "in the 
 image and likeness of man created he Him." If 
 we put " conceived " for " created," nothing could 
 be truer, nothing else could be true. Our highest 
 conception of God must be a piecing together of 
 the choicest materials from our store of experience. 
 In that store our best treasures are examples of 
 humanity in its noblest phases. Above these we 
 cannot go in the proper conceiving or realizing of 
 spiritual and moral excellence. We know there 
 is a higher, but we do not know that higher; that is, 
 we cannot mentally picture it or realize it, or be 
 emotionally stirred by it. The purely spiritual will 
 which follows reason can be guided in its choice by 
 the intellectual notion of the infinite, but the feelings 
 as a rule are not enlisted in its service. 
 
 It is a natural consequence of this, that according 
 to the width of our experience and the depth of our 
 appreciation of what is good and best everywhere, 
 especially in human character, will be the realistic 
 conception we form of God and the consequent love 
 specified by that conception. No two of these 
 conceptions are ever wholly the same, while the 
 conceptions of different ages and countries differ 
 widely according to the "image and likeness of 
 
ONE GOD. 239 
 
 man," in those ages and countries. Still, as under 
 all variations of race there is a constant humanity, 
 so there is an unchanging element in man's notion 
 of Divinity as being the Fulness of Beauty and 
 Goodness, whatever be his notion of the good and 
 )>eautiful. Nor is one aspect false, because another 
 is fuller. Clough writes : 
 
 Yet oh, when crushed and dead 
 The sympathies of outward things have fled, 
 Remember that which lives and cannot die, 
 Ours may not be one home, nor ever will, 
 
 Nor yet one land or sky. 
 But brother, brother, we have one God still. 
 
 But how largely this must be modified by the 
 previous thought is evident. There are those whose 
 concept of God contains so little that is true, and 
 so much alloy of extraneous and unworthy matter, 
 that we can hardly feel that we worship the same 
 God at all. Perhaps the closest union of mind and 
 heart is approached by those who advance hand in 
 hand, growing daily to a clearer light and more 
 perfect love of God ; for it is an agreement in truth 
 and taste about that in which all other truths and 
 tastes find their adequate object and satisfaction. 
 So far as two have one God, i.e., conceive God in 
 the same way, there is a spiritual bond between 
 them that can be largely independent of place and 
 time. Yet it must be the knowledge and love of 
 a Person in whom both live and move and think and 
 feel and are ; who holds each by the hand across 
 all stretches of space and time, and hnks them 
 together. 
 
240 DARKNESS. 
 
 CCV. 
 
 DARKNESS. 
 Memor fui nocte Nominis tui Domine. 
 
 " In the night I remembered Thy Name, 
 Lord." In the daytime the measureless universe, 
 the "kingdoms of infinity" are hid from us, and 
 earth with its coloured variety seems everything. At 
 night earth is dark and its beauty lost to us, yet 
 we become conscious of the infinite hanging over 
 us if we but look upward and think. So in the 
 daylight of temporal consolation and prosperity, 
 earth is all to us and Heaven is hid, but in darkness 
 and temptation we find ourselves forsaken and 
 alone, the day gone like a dream, nothing to be seen 
 unless we raise our eyes to the infinite whose glory 
 is hinted to us in those bright stars which, if they 
 do not enlighten our path, at least assure us that 
 there is light if we but wait for it. 
 
 CCVI. 
 
 SHUT OUT. 
 Amen, dico vobis, Nescio vos. 
 
 " Amen, I say unto you, I know you not." " One 
 knocked at the beloved's door, and a voice asked 
 from within, ' Who is there ? ' and he answered, ' It 
 is I.' Then the voice said, 'This house will not 
 hold me and thee.' And the door was not opened. 
 Then went the lover into the desert, and fasted and 
 prayed in solitude. And after a year he returned 
 
SURVIVALS OF GRACE. 241 
 
 and knocked again at the door. And again the 
 voice asked, 'Who is there?' and he said, 'It is 
 thyself.' And the door was opened to him."^ 
 
 We cannot get admittance into the penetralia of 
 God's Heart, until we have put off self and put on 
 Christ — seeing as He sees, loving as He loves. Till 
 this conformity is perfect, the lines of our personal 
 demarcation are not yet obliterated. His ways are 
 not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts ; the 
 two Egos, created and uncreated, are morally distinct 
 and opposed. But when love has broken down 
 every barrier, the only distinctness is psychological, 
 metaphysical ; while in affection there is that moral, 
 union by which I becomes thyself. " I in them and 
 Thou in Me, that we may be perfect in one." This- 
 union is the fruit of prayer and fasting in the soli- 
 tude of our mortal life. Fasting, which withdraws 
 our affections from lower things ; prayer, which 
 fixes them on higher ; solitude, which disencumbers 
 one for this all-important discipline. Then shall we 
 call upon Him and He will hear us, then shall we 
 knock at His Heart and it shall be opened to us. 
 
 CCVH. 
 
 SURVIVALS OF GRACE. 
 
 Super flumina Babylonis illic sedimus et flevimus cum recor- 
 Jaremur Sion. 
 
 " By the rivers of Babylon there we sat and 
 wept, as we thought upon Sion." As life lingers 
 long in the boughs and branches of a tree after 
 ' Persian Apologue. 
 
 g 
 
242 COLLECTIVE PRAYER. 
 
 they have been severed from the root and source 
 of renewal, so it seems that the love of the things 
 of God survives the love of God, for whose sake 
 they were first lovable. The old associations 
 of happiness still cling about them ; they have 
 come to be loved, in some sort, for themselves, 
 just as the house loved as the home of some dear 
 friend retains the fragrance of friendship long after 
 that friend is departed or turned away. The 
 emotional habits cannot be destroyed in an instant 
 and may long survive the ideas and purposes that 
 occasioned their growth. The beauty of the Sacred 
 Humanity, of the Mystical Spouse, of the Virgin 
 Mother, is not less because we are personally 
 estranged from God. These lingering natural loves 
 are, under God, a grace to lure us back. So the 
 fallen prophet could not resist the surviving love 
 for God and the cause of God which lingered in 
 his heart. He could not bring his sinful lips to 
 utter a curse on Israel, but broke out into praise 
 and blessing : " How goodly are thy tents, O Israel. 
 . . . Let my soul die the death of the just, and let 
 my last end be as his." Yet he died in the ranks 
 of God's enemies, fighting against Israel ! 
 
 CCVIII. 
 
 COLLECTIVE PKAYER. 
 Sic ergo vos orabitis : Pater noster. 
 
 "Thus therefore shall ye pray: Our Father." 
 Christ would have no solitary prayer, but bids us 
 link all souls of men with our own, as He does on 
 
COLLECTIVE PRAYER. 243 
 
 His Cross, and come as one undivided person 
 before Our Father. 
 
 What I do 
 And what I dream includes thee, as the wine 
 Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue 
 God for myself, He hears that name of thine 
 And sees within my eyes the tears of two. 
 
 Though personally many, and to our eyes dis- 
 connected, yet before God all souls are one thing, 
 i.e., elements of an organic whole, each a distinct 
 note in the great chord of everlasting praise whose 
 richness of symphony is impoverished if even one 
 be missing. Singly we are dear to God, but in- 
 definitely more dear in union with others. And so 
 in prayer we are heard more readily when we come 
 to Him grouped round with "those whom He has 
 given us," than when we come alone. Hence the 
 superior efficacy and dignity of public prayer and 
 worship. Where two or three are gathered together 
 in His Name, Christ is with the assembly in a 
 different and closer way than He is with each singly. 
 For this reason the faithful, who are all grouped 
 into one mystical body — the Church, love to group 
 themselves still more specially into subordinate 
 gatherings, into Orders and Congregations, and 
 confraternities ; knowing well that whatever ties 
 men closer to one another, ties them closer to God. 
 
244 ST. PHILIP. 
 
 CCIX. 
 
 ST. PHILIP, 
 
 Jesus dixit ad Philippum : Unde ememus panes ut manducent isti ?' 
 
 "Whence shall we buy bread that these may 
 eat ? " If we knew nothing more of St. Philip than 
 this one incident, it would be a key to the whole 
 man. He is the apostohc-hearted man in quick 
 sympathy with Christ's pity for the starving multi- 
 tudes in the desert ; earnest for their relief, and yet 
 aghast at the scantiness and nothingness of his own 
 abilities and resources. The command is distinct : 
 " Give ye them to eat ; " and its very impossibility 
 is a call upon his faith and blind confidence in Him 
 "who knew what He Himself was about to do." 
 Two hundred pennyworth would not suffice even 
 were it at hand ; nor will all the accumulated ability 
 and efforts of all the apostolic men in Christendom 
 avail for the feeding of the multitudes except our 
 little be put with faith into His almighty creative 
 hands, and miraculously multiplied and distributed.. 
 Then, let us glory in the results if we can. 
 
 ccx. 
 
 GOD, OUR LOVER. 
 Dilectus meus mihi et ego illi. 
 
 " My beloved is mine and I am his." It has 
 been said above that the various lovable relations 
 in God are best appreciated by those who have 
 known and tasted their purest counterparts on 
 
GOD, OUR LOVER. 245 
 
 earth : his paternity by parents, his friendship by 
 friends, his brotherhood by brothers, his spouse-ship 
 by spouses. In illustration of this, it may be noted 
 how far more fully and truly the following noble 
 utterances of human love might ascend from the 
 heart of man to the Master and Spouse of man's 
 heart : 
 
 I lived with visions for my company 
 
 years ago, , 
 And found them gentle mates, nor thou:^nt to know 
 A sweeter music than they played to me, 
 But soon their trailing purple was not free 
 Of this world's dust. .... 
 
 Then Thou Thyself did'st come to be, 
 Beloved, what they seemed. Their shining fronts, 
 Their songs, their splendours, . . , 
 
 Met in Thee, and from out Thee overcame 
 My soul with satisfaction for all wants — 
 Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame. 
 
 AlsO! 
 
 And looking on myself I seemed not one 
 
 For such man's love ! More like an out-of-tune 
 
 Worn viol, a good singer would be wroth 
 
 To spoil his song with ; and which, snatched in haste, 
 
 Is laid down at the first ill-sounding note. 
 
 I did not wrong myself so, but I placect 
 
 A wrong on Thee. For perfect strains may float, 
 
 'Neath master-hands, from instruments defaced. 
 
 Also; 
 
 I think of Thee I My thoughts so twine and bud 
 About Thee as wild vines about a tree. . . 
 
 Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood 
 I will not have my thoughts instead of Thee 
 Who art dearer and better 1 Rather, instantly 
 Renew Thy presence. . . • • 
 
246 MARY OUR TEACHER. 
 
 Because in this deep joy to see and hear Thee 
 And breathe within Thy shadow a new air, 
 I do not think of Thee — I am too near Thee. 
 
 St. Theresa at times seems to have realized this 
 last line. The whole sentiment is that of St. Bernard, 
 whose love was fashioned on the type of the Spouse 
 in the Canticles : 
 
 Jesu, dulcis memoria, 
 Dans vera cordi gaudia, 
 Sed super ntel et omnia, 
 Ejus dulcis prcBsentia. 
 i.e., 
 
 I will not have my thoughts instead of Thee. 
 
 And perhaps St. Augustine would have said : 
 
 Open Thine heart wide 
 And fold within the wet wings of Thy dove. 
 
 CCXI. 
 
 MARY, OUR TEACHER. 
 Venite filii audite me ; timorem Domini docebo vos. 
 
 "Come, my children, hsten to me, and I will 
 teach you the fear of the Lord." So says Mary to 
 her children. She is ready and waiting, she calls 
 us ; but it is for us to come or not to come. We 
 come by meditation, by odd moments of reflection ; 
 Vacate et videte — by the leisure that is always at hand 
 for a tranquillized heart. Audite me — " Listen to me.'* 
 We can sit at her feet and hear without listening 
 or attending; like children with their roving eyes 
 and restless fingers. And she must needs be very 
 patient with us and sigh over our inattention ; and 
 
FAIR LOVE. 247 
 
 repeat the same thing over and over again to deaf 
 ears: "Have ye not known, have ye not heard, 
 hath it not been told you from the beginning ? " 
 Look up to Heaven, dear Lady, and sigh, and touch 
 our ears, and say to us, Ephphetha ! Be opened ! 
 Timorem Domini docebo vos — " I will teach you the 
 fear of God." This is Mary's lesson ; that fear born 
 of a sense of the dread majesty of God, which is' 
 the beginning of wisdom, the strength and backbone 
 of perfect love ; the love of One whose greatness and 
 power and justice is the infinite, and only adequate 
 measure of His humility, meekness, and mercy. If 
 we would have a silent lesson in this love, Ecce 
 ancilla Domini ! — " Behold ! the Handmaid of the 
 Lord ! " let us kneel with her children at her knee 
 and look up into her face : " For ever fi::ed in no 
 unfruitful gaze." 
 
 ccxn. 
 
 FAIR LOVE. 
 Ego Mater pulcrse dilectionis. 
 
 " I am the Mother of Fair Love." The same 
 difference exists between Catholic and Puritan 
 worship, whether we look at the outward and 
 visible, or the inward and spiritual. We worship 
 God in the beauty of holiness and set Him forth 
 radiant and attractive with all that speaks to human 
 affection. They strip Him of all that they conceive 
 to savour of the " natural " and accursed, and leave 
 Him incomprehensible and unlovable, because un- 
 knowable; repulsive, because inhuman. Our God 
 is altogether human and lovable speciosus fflrma. 
 
248 FAIR LOVE. 
 
 prce film hominum. " He that hath seen Me hath 
 seen the Father " — so truly is the Sacred Humanity 
 the image and analogue of the Divinity — inade- 
 quately, of course, but so far as it goes, most truly. 
 We can say nothing of the Man-Christ that makes 
 Him lovable, approachable, adorable, gentle, that 
 is not true a thousand times more of the. Father. 
 And even w^ere the Father no more than we know 
 the Saviour to be, what more should we need ? 
 Would it not suffice us ? There is a true dilectio 
 which is not pulcra ; which apprehends God substan- 
 tially as the supreme good and rest of the soul ; but 
 which is not delicately appreciative of the beauty 
 of holiness — an utilitarian, serviceable, solid piety — 
 excellent so far as it goes, necessary for all, and 
 the essential basis and recipient of that polish and. 
 grace by which it is transformed into pulcrO, dilectio. 
 And there is a dilectio which is not merely unattrac- 
 tive, through lack of this finish and refinement; 
 but which is rough, uncouth, repulsive to others — 
 " Holy horrors" with their stilted, rigid pietarianism, 
 a scandal to the young and buoyant-hearted, repell- 
 ing them from God; walking slanders on that "easy 
 yoke and light burden ; " well-meaning, no doubt, 
 and therefore saving themselves ; but as far as 
 others are concerned, soul-destroyers, who were 
 better cast into the sea with a mill-stone round 
 their neck than that they should scandalize one of 
 these little ones that believe in Him. " Suffer the 
 little ones to come unto Me, and forbid them not," 
 was the sentence pronounced on the well-meaning 
 but forbidding piety of certain disciples. 
 
MOTHER OF MERCY. 249 
 
 There are some Saints who shone bright with 
 this "fair love," such as Bernard, and Francis, and 
 Philip, and Francis of Sales ; who drew to them- 
 selves thousands whom a sterner sanctity would 
 have repelled. Bashful children nestled by their 
 side, and the timid birds of the air were lured to 
 ithem. But Mary is the very Mother of this bright 
 attractiveness ; clad with the sun, borne up by the 
 moon, circled with stars, she is all fair, iota pulcra, 
 and not a dark or gloomy spot about her ; macula 
 Mon est in te. And she is the Mother of Fair Love 
 in our souls, for " we are her offspring," and she 
 fashions our spiritual being with labour and prayers 
 and tears ; and when she has given birth to the 
 iirst spark of fair love within us, she still nurses it, 
 -fosters it, mothers it into the more perfect likeness 
 of Fair Love Incarnate, the blessed fruit of her 
 ■womb, Jesus. 
 
 ccxin. 
 
 MOTHER OF MERCY. 
 Mater misericordiae. 
 
 " Mother of .±he pitying heart." She could pity 
 all, because she had tasted human sorrow in its 
 bitterest forms, if not in all its forms ; the sorrow 
 of forebodings of sorrow, the sorrow of labour, of 
 €xile, of perplexity, of separation, of helplessness, of 
 martyring grief, of blank desolation. Sorrow must 
 .sour or sweeten us, as we take it. It is God's 
 intent that it should teach us pity. 
 
 Many have a tender pity for Mary's seven 
 sorrows, and they do well. Yet to such she would 
 
250 MARY, OUR LIFE. 
 
 say: "Weep not for me, but weep for your- 
 selves." It is for her children and in them that 
 she is pierced with a thousand swords of sorrow. 
 From the foot of the cross she looked out into 
 the future and back upon the past on all the 
 sorrows of her children, and made them all her 
 own and heaped them up with the dying agonies 
 of her First-born, and took them all into her world- 
 wide heart of pity; she, the great Mother of 
 humanity. Mater misericordicz. 
 
 CCXIV. 
 
 MARY, OUR LIFE. 
 Vita, dulcedo et spes nostra. 
 
 Our Life. Living, means self-moving, self- 
 evolving as opposed to what is dead, passive, moved 
 from without, pushed along in spite of itself. 
 Spiritual life is spontaneous or nothing; for it lies- 
 in love and willingness, and both exclude coercion 
 of any sort. Life may be in us to some degree, yet 
 one limb paralyzed, another weak. If we need to 
 be chafed, spurred on, frightened on in any matter, 
 it means, so far, a low vitality, a poor circulation. 
 Amans volat, currit, et Icetatur, . . . fatigatus non 
 lassattir, arctatus non coavctatur . . . sed sicut vivax 
 flamma et ardens facula sursum erumpit — "The lover 
 flies, runs, rejoices; unwearied by weariness, un- 
 repressed by repression, leaping up like a living^ 
 flame or a glowing torch." Here love and vitality 
 are identified in their manifestations. This is the 
 life of grace whereof Mary was full, gratia, plena; 
 
MARY, OUR SWEETNESS. 25V 
 
 which she receives as a reservoir from its fountain ; 
 which she dispenses in streams to the four quarters 
 of the barren earth, restoring it gradually to the 
 fertility of Paradise, Emissiones tuce Paradisus. She 
 is the second Eve, Mother of all living; Mother 
 of the life of the engraced soul and of the glorified 
 body. In the Resurrection she will be hailed as 
 I\[other by restored humanity, Mother of body and 
 soul. 
 
 CCXV. 
 
 MARY, OUR SWEETNESS. 
 Vita, dulcedo et spes nostra. 
 
 Our Sweetness. " Taste and see," for as the 
 fruit which to Eve seemed sweet proved bitter 
 death, so much that seems sad and bitter if but 
 tasted is found sweeter than honey — dulciora super 
 mel et favum. Nigra sum sed formosa — "I am dark, 
 but beautiful." Mary has a shadow of grief shrouding 
 the beauty which is within. To the gross and carnal 
 mind, non est ei species neque decor — there is no form 
 or comeliness or sweetness about her. It is a taste 
 which grows with increasing discernment ; a matter 
 of supernatural culture. As she herself grows sweet 
 to us, she will sweeten all that is most bitter to us ; 
 the chalice of the Passion, which we must taste, 
 and of which she has drunk so deeply. It is she, 
 our Mother, who stretches it out to us as the healing' 
 medicine of our souls. As she stood by His Cross, 
 sweetening His chalice, so she will stand by ours. 
 Never are we so near to her as when we are near 
 the Cross. And when we come to the dregs, to the- 
 
-252 OUR CRY TO MARY 
 
 bitterness of death itself, she will change our " Why 
 hast Thou forsaken me," into " Father, into Thy 
 hands I commend my spirit." " O death, where is 
 thy sting ? " Even in daily littleness she will 
 isweeten our bitterness of heart and of manner and 
 ■of speech, and pluck out of our soul every radix 
 junaritudinis, every seed of cynicism and disappoint- 
 ment and sourness. Life taken ill turns to acid and 
 jmelancholy; taken wisely, its very hyssop purifies, 
 tnellows, sweetens us. Vita, dulcedo, spes nostra, 
 ■salve ! 
 
 CCXVI. 
 
 OUR CRY TO MARY. 
 Ad te clamamus. 
 
 " To thee do we cry," even as a lamb bleating 
 in search of the ewe, or a child crying for its 
 ■mother in the dark, because they fear to be alone, 
 and unprotected against the unknown vague terrors 
 with which darkness and solitude are haunted. 
 To our Mother we may say: "Though I walk 
 •through the vale of death's shadow, I will fear no 
 «vil, for thou art with me." Also, the child cries 
 because its mother is dear for her own sake, some- 
 thing it wants to have near at hand, and therefore 
 well worth crying after. Also because it wants 
 food and warmth, and a thousand things which 
 it is hers to provide. Mary is simply mobbed with 
 a houseful of troublesome children climbing about 
 her, hanging on to her skirts, clamouring and 
 crying, one for this, one for that; mostly selfish. 
 
OUR EXILE. 253; 
 
 insatiable, unthankful, certain that they can get 
 what they want if they cry loud enough and long, 
 enough. 
 
 CCXVII. 
 
 OUR EXILE. 
 Exules filii Evse. 
 
 " Exiled children of Eve." Mary, with her Divine- 
 Son, shared our exile from Paradise, not of necessity, 
 but from free sympathy, divesting themselves of the 
 heritage of the sinless children of God ; bearing the 
 burden of sinful flesh, torn by the thorns and briers 
 of the accursed soil; feeling themselves outcasts, 
 exiles, wanderers, in a way that we, born to it, and 
 cleaving to it by corrupt affection, never feel our- 
 selves; and all this, that they might bind us fast to 
 themselves by love, and lead us after them to brave 
 the piercing smart of the cherub's flaming sword 
 which guards the gate of Paradise ; the anguish and 
 cutting grief inseparable from an ardent love ; the 
 sword of Mary's sorrows, the lance of the Sacred 
 Side. For it is only through much tribulation, 
 through fire and sword, that we can follow them, 
 and so re-enter Paradise. 
 
 CCXVIII. 
 
 OUR ADVOCATE. 
 Advocata nostra. 
 
 " Our Advocate." We call an advocate to our 
 defence because he knows the technicalities and 
 ways of the court, the windings and tortuosities of 
 
-254 EYES OF PITY. 
 
 the law, as we cannot. He is well practised in such 
 .cases. He has a persuasive tongue, and can make 
 black seem white, and twice two five. Mary knows 
 God's ways, the windings of the Divine Heart ; she 
 has the persuasiveness and tact of a mother and of 
 a woman. Let us leave it all to her, however 
 crookedly she seems to go about it, and keep in the 
 background and hold our tongue. But she is a 
 truer advocate in that she pleads not for glory, nor 
 for a fee, but for love of both sides, and a longing to 
 find a modus vivendi and reconciliation, to show that 
 justice and mercy may meet and kiss one another. 
 And from the poor — and we are all poor — she will 
 exact no fee but love — provided they themselves are 
 -quick to advocate the cause of others in distress. 
 
 CCXIX. 
 
 EYES OF PITY. 
 lUos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte. 
 
 "Turn thy pitying eyes upon us." To look 
 -away is a sign of displeasure, as from something 
 loathsome ; or of contempt, as from something 
 hateful; or of indifference, as from something of 
 no interest. We pretend not to see a troublesome 
 beggar; but he insists on being seen. Aspice in me, 
 he says, et miserere mei — " Look upon me and pity 
 me." God is only pretending not to hear, that He 
 may get us to cry out louder and become more 
 -obstinate and fixed in our purpose ; and Mary is 
 full of like artifices — all women are. 
 
 But Mary's eyes are everlastingly rivetted on the 
 
MARY'S WELCOME. 255 
 
 blessed face of God. Is she to turn them thence 
 upon such as we are : from light to darkness ; from 
 power to weakness ; from beauty to sickly deformity? 
 It is in Him that she sees us; for we are in Him, 
 with all our vileness ; in the centre of His unbroken 
 thought, in the core of His undying love; and He is 
 in us as the soul of our soul and hfe of our life. She 
 cannot but look on us when she looks on Him ; she 
 cannot but look on Him when she looks on us. 
 And seeing Him in us, and viewing our wounds and 
 weaknesses as His, the eyes she fixes upon us are 
 eyes of mercy, the Mother's eyes that washed the 
 bleeding Body of the Crucified with a flood of tears. 
 Could we but turn merciful eyes upon our fellow- 
 mortals, and see Christ in all, and all in Christ; 
 could we but view them as Mary views them, with a 
 larger, kindlier gaze, our cry to her would never be 
 in vain. Has she not good reason to be deaf, to 
 turn away and " look on us no more 1 " 
 
 ccxx. 
 
 MARY'S WELCOME. 
 
 Et Jesum benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exiliura 
 ostende. 
 
 "And after our exile show unto us Jesus, the 
 blessed fruit of thy womb." Nothing frets us more 
 in our keenest moments of enjoyment than the 
 absence of some dear one who would "enter into 
 our joy " and double it, casting back to us the reflex 
 of our own gladness, as mirror answers and re- 
 answers to mirror. Thus every new soul that reaches 
 
256 MARVS WELCOME. 
 
 the Vision of God augments the bliss of all the rest ; ^ 
 and if there could be fretfulness or impatience in 
 Heaven, it would be in Mary's tranquil heart, so' 
 does she long to have each and all of her children 
 in sympathy with her ecstasy. Magnificafe Dominnm 
 mecum — " Magnify the Lord with me," she cries ta 
 them, et exaltemus nomen ejus in idipsum — "and let 
 us praise His name together." As one who shows 
 some beauty to another, and rejoices in his joy, so 
 will she hurry us by the hand into the presence of 
 the Blessed Fruit of her womb, Jesus, watching our 
 eyes as they brighten with that same joy with which 
 her own soul is replenished. 
 
 "Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy womb." How 
 proud and eager the mother is to show her babe to 
 every one ; how greedy of praise on its behalf! 
 Shall not Mary have a mother's pride in the Blessed 
 Fruit of her womb, the pride of authorship, in some 
 sort ? Under God, did she not conceive and fashion 
 those sacred limbs day by day ; is He not bone of 
 her bone, and flesh of her flesh ; her very Child, 
 albeit her very God ? " From their fruits ye shall 
 know them." May not this tree be proud of its 
 fruit, without trespassing on His right who made 
 the tree and fertilized it ? Fecit mihi magna — " He- 
 has done much for me ; " for He fitted the tree to 
 the fruit. His name is none the less holy — sanctum 
 nomen ejus — because hers is blessed for ever — Ex hoc 
 beatam me dicent — " From this time all shall call me 
 blessed." Ex hoc, i.e., for all eternity Ave, Ave, Ave 
 shall mingle without discord, rather in sweetest 
 
 * Cf. " Ecco chi crescera li nostri amori." {Paradiso. v.) 
 
SELF-STUDY. 257 
 
 concord, with Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus — each hymn 
 gaining in meaning and melody from the other. 
 
 " After this our exile." For everything has 
 its after save one alone ; darkness and brightness, ' 
 sorrow and joy, labour and rest. Yet the bright 
 and joyous and restful, if they come and go, will 
 one day come not to go. Post hiemem cestas, post 
 nodem redit dies, post tempestatem tranquillitas magna — 
 God is the Summer, the Day, the Calm, that has no 
 after. 
 
 What it is to be welcomed home by a mother 
 after a long absence ; an absence full of peril, un- 
 certainty, anxiety! In the welcome with which 
 Mary received her risen Son from the dead, we see 
 what is in store for us. " This, my Son, was dead 
 and is alive ! was lost and is found." clemens ! 
 pia ! dulcis Virgo Maria ! 
 
 CCXXI. 
 
 SELF-STUDY. 
 Pravum est cor omnium et inscrutabile ; quis cognoscet illud ? 
 
 " The heart of man is perverse and unsearchable; 
 who shall fathom it ? " To live in the objective 
 world, i.e., in the Non-Ego, does not mean material- 
 mindedness, or a life engrossed with persons and 
 causes ; but is compatible with a life of pure con- 
 templation. In other words, a contemplative life 
 is not a life of self-contemplation. There is a 
 due self-reserve which excludes self from the inward 
 monologue of the soul, whether as direct subject or 
 as ultimate point of reference for every other interest 
 
 R 
 
2S8 STAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 There is also an excessive self-reserve, gotten some- 
 times of a semi-consciousness of some deep-seated 
 rottenness, which we shrink from adverting to 
 explicitly lest we should destroy our present pre- 
 carious peace. We are like one who suspects or even 
 knows the growth of a tumour, yet dares not to 
 look; so different from the hypochondriac, whose 
 fear keeps him always searching and imagining. 
 We must not suppose that diary-keepers have no 
 self-reserve, or " know themselves " better than 
 others do. They nearly always write for an 
 imaginary reader. Not one in a million v/ould dare 
 to write himself down on paper, I do not say as he 
 is, but even as, underneath all varnish, his con- 
 science records him. Perhaps it is more for one's 
 peace, as a rule, to live in the objective and leave 
 the dark and pathless subjective world to God's 
 mercy and, almost, to chance. The verdict on 
 ourself will astonish us even more than the verdict 
 on others, when the last shall be first and the first 
 last; and the straight shall be crooked and the 
 crooked straight : when our strength shall be 
 revealed as weakness; our weakness as strength; 
 the mountains as valleys ; the valleys as mountains. 
 Let us therefore "judge nothing before the time," 
 least of all ourselves. 
 
 CCXXII. 
 
 STAR OF THE SEA. 
 Ave, Maris Stella. 
 
 " Hail, Star of the Sea ! " A star is not seen 
 nor searched for in the daytime, but in the dark 
 
BOVNTIFULNESS. 259 
 
 uncertainty of night. It is trouble that brings 
 out the brightness of Heaven and cloaks the 
 world from our sight and affection. Mary is the 
 star of the evening of life and life's hopes ; the 
 star of the morning that follows life's darkness. 
 Radiant, high, heavenly, something beautiful to 
 behold for its own sake, apart from all uses : 
 sicut rosa inter spinas — "as a rose mid thorns," 
 a diamond set in a field of ebon blackness. But 
 on the trackless sea the star is a guide : and Mary 
 is our star. It is not by principles and rules 
 and ethical reasonings, but by personal devotion 
 and loving imitation that Christ and His saints 
 guide " the little flock." They all shine as stars in 
 the firmament of heaven, but Mary is of the first 
 magnitude. Darkness adds to the terror of the 
 storm at sea ; but morning allays our fears : and 
 the morning star wakes our languishing hope. 
 
 CCXXIII. 
 
 BOUNTIFULNESS. 
 Dei Mater Alma. 
 
 " Bounteous Mother." Bountiful to her Divine 
 Son; bountiful to us. Giving herself, her labours, 
 her sufferings, " full measure, pressed down, shaken 
 together, running over," with that true spirit of 
 poverty that hates economy, parsimony, thrift ; the 
 thriftless generosity of the saints who have flung 
 money about like dross, and torn the clothes from 
 their own back ; who have " dispersed and given to 
 the poor ; " and followed Christ in nakedness, with 
 
26o VIRGINITY. 
 
 no thought for the morrow. Non omnibus datum est 
 — " It is not given to all ; " but when there is this 
 spirit of bounty, the treasury fills faster than it is 
 emptied, the cruse never runs dry. Gratia plena — 
 Mary is full of grace — as full as ever, rather fuller, 
 for all the torrents of grace she has poured upon this 
 wasteful desert. If we do not hoard our money, we 
 hoard our services, our discoveries, our knowledge, 
 our means of helping others, perhaps with a seeming 
 of prudential self-regard and care for God's glory. 
 
 CCXXIV. 
 
 VIRGINITY. 
 Atque Semper Virgo. 
 
 " Always " — ante partum, in partu, post partum — 
 as was befitting the sanctuary of the Incarnation. 
 For ourselves, semper virgo may be taken ex parte 
 ante, or only ex parte post — always, from the first ; 
 or always, from a certain date onwards. The first is 
 a singular grace to be trusted only to the truly 
 humble : too dangerously beautiful an ornament for 
 ordinary human vanity. The second is the grace of 
 those who, having risen, go forward to the end 
 without stumbling. The former alone follow the 
 Lamb everywhere, and sing the unknown song of 
 those who never knew evil experimentally. Yet 
 Magdalene may sit close at His feet with her broken 
 box of spikenard. 
 
GATE OF HEAVEN. *6l 
 
 ccxxv. 
 
 GATE OF HEAVEN. 
 Felix coeli porta. 
 
 " Blessed Gate of Heaven." We do not stop at 
 the gate, but go through it into the house. Every 
 creature of God is a gate of Heaven, opening out to 
 us some vista of that Infinite Perfection of which it 
 reflects some gleam or sparkle. But Mary is a very 
 universe in herself of the artistic triumphs of nature 
 and grace ; no side postern, but a wide and stately 
 entrance, opening direct upon the throne of God. 
 We may indeed pause, and wonder at the beauty of 
 this gate ; at the Divine workmanship ; at its wealth 
 of device and symbolism ; and so prepare ourselves 
 for the inner glory of which even such an approach 
 is not worthy. But we may not rest, even in the 
 very crown of creation, but we must pass through, 
 upward and onward, to Him before whose feet even 
 Mary must cast down her crown to receive it again. 
 
 Diligit Dominus portas Sion — " The Lord loveth 
 the gates of Sion." He loves all His creatures so 
 far as they reflect Him, and reveal Him and lead up 
 to Him, so far as they are gates of glory, windows 
 of Heaven. Above and beyond all mere creatures is 
 the " Door of the Sheepfold " the Sacred Humanity, 
 through which man passes in and God passes out ; 
 God's word to man ; man's word to God. But of 
 mere creatures Mary is par excellence the Gate; 
 God's fullest created word. 
 
 Felix. Blessed in being a blessing to others^ 
 
262 THE CROSSES OF OTHERS. 
 
 For this is the greatest of graces, as it is a closer 
 likeness to that Supreme Self-Diffusing Good. 
 Blessed, in making the way to God — of itself hard, 
 narrow, and ill-formed — easy, wide, and manifest to 
 human blindness and frailty, " giving Hght to them 
 that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, guiding 
 their feet into the way of peace." 
 
 CCXXVI. 
 
 THE CROSSES OF OTHERS. 
 Nemo sine onere, nemo sine cruce. 
 
 "None without burden, none without cross." 
 To look at the burdens as they are known out- 
 wardly, God might seem strangely unequal in 
 dispensing crosses ; but this seems less clear when 
 we know all that lies within, and when we consider 
 the burden relatively to the back that has to bear 
 it. Children are crushed to earth with toy-crosses. 
 What measure can we possibly apply to the enjoy- 
 ment or suffering of others? Certainly not the 
 occasion which gives birth to it ; certainly not 
 external manifestations of it; not even the energy 
 put forth to secure joy, to ward off suffering. " The 
 heart knoweth its own bitterness," and God, the 
 heart's Maker and Mover. No one else. 
 
 CCXXVI I. 
 
 INTUITION. 
 Revelasti ea parvulis. 
 
 "Thou hast revealed them to little ones." 
 Gur clearest moments of insight are often those 
 
A JEALOVS GOD. 263 
 
 when, through weakness and weariness, our mind 
 is least under control, when concentrs^tion and 
 voluntary attention is least possible ; when reason 
 slumbers, but intellectual vision is still awake and 
 alert. It looks as though intellect were a clear 
 pond which when least ruffled reflects heaven more 
 deeply and truly ; receiving passively in a moment 
 what reason, with its bustling activity, misses after 
 hours or years of searching. Reason is to the 
 mirror of the mind what the motor muscles are to 
 the eye. They do not see or give light, but bring 
 light and vision together. But the Hstless gaze 
 takes in the whole as whole, while attentive scrutiny 
 accumulates a host of unconnected details. God 
 spoke to His " seers " of old in such moments of 
 spiritual rapture and abstraction, when, under the 
 influence of music, or other tranquiUizing agencies, 
 the mind was stilled to a burnished sea of silver. 
 It is generally observed that the moment of passage 
 from sleep to waking, or from waking to sleep, is 
 one of brighter intuition ; that children and simple 
 folk divine many truths that sophisticated minds 
 muddle over vainly ; and that truth, like happiness, 
 is coy, and flies from those who seek her directly 
 or too anxiously. 
 
 CCXXVIII. 
 
 A JEALOUS GOD. 
 Deposuit potentes de sede. 
 
 "He hath dethroned the mighty and raised 
 up the lowly." iEschylus was sent to unteach 
 that low conception of God which figures Him 
 
,264 THE GRACE OF UTTERANCE. 
 
 as envious of man's bliss and prosperity. , It is 
 not prosperity, but the pride- and independence 
 
 '_ which prosperity breeds, the insolence of elation, 
 that brings curses in its train. He but antici- 
 pated ; Deposuit poientes de sede, et exaltavit humiles. 
 The oldest calumny against God is that of envy; 
 " God knoweth that . in the day ye shall eat 
 thereof ye shall be as gods." The devil must paint 
 God in his own colours, green and black; as 
 thirsting for pre-eminence and fearing eclipse. Like 
 any successful slander, it has a shadow of truth about 
 it. " I the Lord thy God am a jealous God ; " 
 jealous for our happiness, which can be found only 
 in the love of Him ; and which is imperilled by being 
 based on any good less stable ; jealous, since in some 
 mysterious way He, the self-sufficing, has become 
 
 , dependent on our love and hungers for it all, and 
 will not give that glory to another. Perhaps the 
 recognition of calamity as, not merely the penalty 
 of pride, but as a positive means to the higher 
 beatitudes, is more distinctively Christian. Beaii 
 
 ,pauperes is an advance on Vcedivitibus. 
 
 CCXXIX. 
 
 THE GRACE OF UTTERANCE. 
 Domine, labia mea aperies, et os metim annuntiabit laudem tuam. 
 
 "Lord, Thou shalt open my lips, and my 
 mouth shali give forth Thy praise." How dis- 
 "appointing it is to bring some one to share 
 oux enthusiasm about , a landscape, or. poem or 
 work of art, and fo; find that he lags ibehjnd, our 
 
THE GRACE OF UTTESANCE. '. '265 
 
 own eager interest, that the words of sympathy are 
 but formal, faint, perishing in the birth ! This is the 
 aggravation, which Augustine describes ^ at his own 
 inability to make others see God and His Kingdom 
 as he himself saw Him. The defect here is largely 
 due to one's impotence in expression ; and not only 
 to the untrained and unprepared condition of the 
 mind we would speak to. This he observes some- 
 where, commenting on Domine, labia, ntea aperies, et as 
 metim annuntiabit laudem tuam. It were the art of 
 arts, the poetry of poetries, to set forth God as 
 David, or Isaias ; Augustine or Bernard. No doubt 
 the recipient mind, too, has its impassable limits 
 which no training can stretch. 
 
 " May God make this world to you, my child, as 
 beautiful as it has been to me." So William Blake, 
 in his poverty and old age, to a little child. This is 
 analogous to the prayer and longing of Divine charity 
 in the heart of those who have seen God's beauty 
 revealed in the higher and more beautiful realms of 
 grace. They long for sympathy, they are restless 
 to make others partners of their joy, to carry them 
 with them and make them see as they see, feel as 
 they feel. " May God make Himself to you as 
 beautiful as He has been to me," is the embodiment 
 of their love, the term of their endeavour. 
 
 1 Doc. Christ, i. 29. 
 
s66 ENLIGHTENMENT. 
 
 ccxxx. 
 
 ENLIGHTENMENT. 
 Deus lux est et in eo tenebrae non sunt uUae. 
 
 " God is Light, and in Him darkness there is 
 none." That we must civilize before we can 
 Christianize is a proposition which shocks certain 
 well-meaning persons. It also seems out of harmony 
 with facts. It is, however, only a less usual form of 
 the truth that the Ascensio mentis in Deum is per scalam 
 creaturarum — it is by the ladder of creation that the 
 mind climbs up to God. As regards the knowledge 
 of God all are here agreed. Only so far as I know 
 what wisdom, power, goodness are in creatures, can 
 I ascribe these attributes, magnified to infinity, to 
 the Fountain of Being. Other faculties and a wider 
 knowledge of creation would enlarge and fill in my 
 ideas of the Divinity. Although in outline the con- 
 ception of the Divinity is the same for all intelligent 
 monotheists, yet in point of colouring and detail no 
 two men wholly agree. But man's development is 
 not merely in his conception of God ; but still more 
 in his aifection towards God, which, however, is 
 largely conditioned by certain conceptions. To 
 purify his- affection and to acquire a "taste" for 
 God is the end of man's temporal probation. This 
 process is no less dependent on the use of creatures, 
 which are the instruments of our education. Specu- 
 lative knowledge in general and "taste" are not 
 convariants. It is a sensitive perception of goodness 
 and beauty and a schooling of the appetites, affec- 
 
ENLIGHTENMENT. 267 
 
 tions, and emotions into responsiveness to such 
 pure stimulus that constitutes moral progress ; the- 
 recta sapere, relish of right. We mu?t be trained to- 
 discern and relish the lovableness of finite sharings- 
 of the Divine goodness, before we can raise our 
 affection to their source. He who does not love 
 order, peace, harmony, gentleness, generosity, justice, 
 truthfulness, restraint, and all beautiful and noble 
 qualities as revealed in creatures, how can he be 
 moved to love God for the sake of such attributes 
 in their infinitude ? How can they appeal to him ? 
 " If he love not his brother whom he hath seen, how 
 can he love God whom he hath not seen ? " If these 
 qualities fail to affect him when they are visibly 
 present, how shall their distant archetypes, known 
 only by inference or faith, stir his heart's love ? 
 
 According as our " relish of the right " is more 
 or less cultivated shall we be disposed towards the 
 subsistent Rightness. The most barbarous and 
 crude ideals find the realization of whatever good 
 they contain in God and in Christ ; but what gods 
 and what Christs are these — the magnified images of 
 their worshippers ? One may have, and often has, 
 the condition without the effect ; but never the effect 
 without the condition. Civilization and culture may 
 be pagan or agnostic; but Christianity is never 
 stably founded in barbarism and darkness. If facts^ 
 seem ever to have been adverse, it was either that 
 the darkness of those times was really light ; or the 
 light of that religion really darkness. For " God is 
 light, and in Him is no darkness at all." 
 
i68 ECONOMY OF TRUTH. 
 
 CCXXXI. 
 
 ■ ECONOMY OF TRUTH. 
 Ut det illis in tempore tritici mensuram.* 
 
 " That he may give them corn in due measure 
 rand season." He is the true doctor or teacher who 
 follows God's own economy ; who is a faithful and 
 foresighted dispenser of truth, i.e., of the corn of the 
 souls; who metes it out with regard to times and 
 persons and capacities ; who considers the Zeitgeist, 
 and the psychological climate of the country. Sucli 
 is the Church herself, the teacher of all times and 
 nations. She has yet " many things to tell us, but 
 ■we cannot bear them now." 
 
 " How can we sing the Lord's song in the land 
 ■oi strangers ? " i.e., to those whose tongue, whose 
 conceptions, whose sympathies are foreign to our 
 own. What do they know of Sion or the songs of 
 Sion, that we should waste our breath upon them ? 
 By Babylon's waters we may sit and weep, when 
 ■we remember the City of God; but to hymn its 
 glories in the hearing of the profane would be to 
 cast pearls before swine to be trampled underfoot. 
 ^'As for our harps, we hanged them up on the 
 willows that were therein." The like economy may 
 be observed with regard to all that we hold in any 
 way sacred or dear : the economy of silence in terra 
 aliena. 
 
 * Mass of Holy Doctors. 
 
NOVELTIES. 269^ 
 
 CCXXXII. 
 
 NOVELTIES. 
 
 Omnis scriba doctas in regno ccelorum similis est homini patri- 
 familias qui profert de thesauro suo nova et Vetera. 
 
 " Every scribe skilled in the Kingdom of Heaven 
 is like to a householder who brings forth from his- 
 treasure old things." Many seem to think there is 
 here a full stop, but there is not. So far as he 
 brings truth from his treasure he brings forth what 
 is old ; rather, what is not new, for it is eternal,, 
 neither old nor new. Yet truth may be new to us,. 
 though old in itself; as the New World was there 
 long before Columbus found it. And even the oldest, 
 tritest truisms, can be clothed anew according to 
 the current fashion of the hour, so as to be hardly 
 recognizable. He who despises either the old or 
 the new is no scriba doctus in regno ccelorum; he 
 knows but one half of that kingdom, its "con- 
 servative " aspect, or its " liberal ", aspect. 
 
 "Who bringeth forth from His treasure old 
 things and new," i.e., old and new are not criteria of 
 truth, of the treasures of Divine wisdom. A thing 
 is not true because old, or false because new, or 
 false because it is old, or true because it is new,. 
 Yet in the practice of controversy all these propo- 
 sitions are denied repeatedly. 
 
s^o STEADFAST PEACE. 
 
 CCXXXIII. 
 
 STEADFAST PEACE. 
 
 Funda nos in pace. 
 
 " 'Stablish us in peace." Peace of soul may be 
 founded on the sands or on the rock ; nor can one 
 tell which while calm endures. It was when the 
 windy tempest of affliction blew and the rain 
 descended and the floods came and the storm beat 
 against her on Calvary, that Mary stood — stabat 
 juxta crucem — like Mount Sion, the City of Peace: 
 Sicut Mons Sion non commovebitur in csternum. What 
 trifles upset us and cast us into the blues ; what 
 trifles elate and excite us ! Doubtless this surface 
 agitation is compatible with calm in the depths; 
 but it is not a good symptom. What is it 'stablishes 
 the rocks and mountains, but their weight ? 
 Levity or lightness is the symbol of unsteadiness. 
 And what is weight, but a strong draw to the 
 centre? Funda nos in pace, i.e., enlarge our heart, 
 that it may be drawn more forcibly, more irresistibly 
 to God, our Centre. 
 
 CCXXXIV. 
 
 "memorare." 
 
 Auxilium Christianornm. 
 
 "Help of Christians." "It is not good that 
 man should be alone," says God ; " I will make 
 him a helpmeet for him." And so He made Mary, 
 .a helpmeet for Humanity, — mother rather than 
 
"MEMORARE." 271 
 
 bride. It is not good for a foolish, wayward child 
 to be alone. His mother must take him up in her 
 arms, cover him with her mantle, nurse him at her 
 breast, and tread his enemy under her foot. Only 
 in Mary's arms is Humanity safe to slumber and 
 be at rest. And as of the race, so of individuals. 
 But to help others is the condition sine qua non 
 of being helped by God and His Mother. It is also 
 the measure. It is vain otherwise to reiterate our 
 invocations : Detis in adjutorium meum intende ; ad 
 adjuvandum me festina — " O God, incline to my aid ; 
 haste to my help." " You shall cry unto Me, but 
 I will not hear, you shall call, but I will not answer." 
 We are ready enough with our Memorare; but 
 perhaps our Lady might answer: "Remember, my 
 child, that it is a thing unheard of, that those 
 who had recourse to thy aid, sought thy help, or 
 implored thy intercession, were assisted. The 
 confidence which inspires you to approach me is 
 baseless and delusive. I am deaf to your petition 
 and will neither hear nor answer it." For Mary 
 and all the saints are bound by the inexorable law 
 of the kingdom of grace, and that law is the law of 
 Christ: Date et dabitur. Alter alterius oner a portate 
 et sic adimplebitis legem Christi — " Give and it will be 
 given you. Bear one another's burdens, and so 
 fulfil the law of Christ." 
 
378 ST. AUGUSTINE, 
 
 ccxxxv. 
 
 ST. AUGUSTINE. 
 Agnos in sinu leyabit, foetas ipse portabit. 
 
 He carrieth the weakly in His arms, and gently, 
 leadeth those that are with young. Some are too 
 weak to walk at all or to guide themselves, and if 
 God does not carry them they must perish. Others 
 need his gentlest leading because they are burdened 
 with others whom they are bringing forth to Christ. 
 Of all souls these are the dearest to Him. Less 
 encumbered, their strength would enable them to 
 leap and run, but for His sake they are content 
 to move slowly and laboriously, as those who 
 carry some frail burden. He will not let such be 
 left behind, but will slacken His pace to theirs. He 
 will not hurry nor drag them on roughly. Such 
 are souls of "distinction," men like Augustine, 
 whom God foresees pregnant with the spiritual life 
 of millions. 
 
 CCXXXVI. 
 
 INTERCESSION. , 
 
 Amice, commoda mihi tres panes, quoniam amicus mens venit , 
 de via ad me. 
 
 " Friend, lend me three loaves, for my friend , 
 has come to me and I have nothing to give him." 
 And will God, can God be deaf to us when we 
 importune Him in behalf of our friends in their 
 sudden necessities ? We have nothing to give 
 them, no bread for their hunger. They come to 
 
SIMPLICITY. 273 
 
 US in the darkness of night, houseless and helpless ; 
 they cast themselves upon our love. We must 
 rise and open and welcome then, whencesoever 
 or whenever they come. We must go out in the 
 chill night and knock and beg and borrow at the 
 gate of Heaven, where the "Giver of all," reposes 
 with His children in the rest of eternity. To be 
 importuned by a friend for a friend, is such music 
 in His ears, that He will not answer us lest we 
 should desist. Not till He is sated with the melody 
 of our pleading love, will He rise and give bread 
 in abundance — not three loaves, but food for a 
 multitude if need be. "Much more will your 
 Heavenly Father give." Lord, my friend hath 
 come to me on his journey and I have naught to 
 give him. Lend me bread. Panem nostrum quotidia- 
 num commoda nobis hodie. It shall be all returned. 
 Returned ? Is it not for Thyself, Lord ? 
 
 CCXXXVII. 
 
 SIMPLICITY. 
 
 Vitam praesta puram. 
 
 "Grant a pure life" — a life dominated by one 
 
 single, simple love, consecrated habitually to God, 
 
 so as to serve Him even as we breathe the air, 
 
 unconsciously, without knowing it. " Lord, when 
 
 saw we Thee hungry and fed Thee ? " We often 
 
 love God best when we are least conscious of it ; 
 
 our whole spirit is saturated by His influence, as a 
 
 crystal with light. Inchoative love expresses itself 
 
 in definite acts and services, consciously rendered, 
 
 s 
 
274 SACRAMENTAL UNION. 
 
 but the formed habit of perfect love is only felt when 
 something discordant presents itself, as the atmos- 
 phere is felt only when it is fouled or disturbed. 
 Our habitual love of our parents or brethren is not 
 conscious till separation or death, or some other 
 crisis, puts it to the test. The purest love is the 
 least reflex, the simplest ; and love is life. " Grant 
 a pure life." 
 
 CCXXXVIII. 
 
 SACRAMENTAL UNION. 
 
 Corpus Tuum quod sumpsi, et Sanguis quern potavi, adhsereat 
 visceribus meis. 
 
 " Let Thy Body which I have taken, and Thy 
 Blood which I have drunk, cleave to my heart." 
 May it cleave to our affections, which are the inmost 
 receptacle of the heart into which Christ is received 
 to be assimilated and worked into the very fibre of 
 our soul ; His thoughts and feelings and ways and 
 tastes intertwining with ours, as the vine with the 
 elm, till none can tell which is which, or where one 
 begins and the other ends, till their separation 
 becomes a moral impossibility. 
 
 CCXXXIX. 
 
 FORGETFUL HEARERS. 
 
 Ne obliviscaris verborum quae viderunt oculi tui. 
 
 " Let not my heart forget what mine eye hath 
 seen." We pray for light, and cry out. Domino, ut 
 mde.nm — " Lord, may I see," and when we get it, we 
 
COLLECTIVE PRAISE. 275 
 
 neither feed nor trim nor fend the flame. The devil 
 comes and takes away the seed out of our hearts ; 
 rather, from beside it, for it has not half an inch 
 of earth over it. Light is to be fostered and fed. 
 It is truly a seed; something with indefinitely fruitful 
 contents ; not given for a moment's admiration, 
 like a shooting star, but for use, like a lamp. " Thy 
 word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." 
 It is a thing to carry and keep, not to leave behind 
 after its first use. Here Mary is our teacher, who 
 kept all God's sayings, and pondered them in her 
 heart. 
 
 CCXL. 
 
 COLLECTIVE PRAISE. 
 Iter para tutum, ut videntes Jesum, semper coUaetemur. 
 
 " Secure us a safe journey, that we may ever 
 rejoice together in the vision of Jesus." The end of 
 a pure hfe and a safe journey is the vision of God, 
 Vita cBterna, ut cognoscant Te Deum verum, et quern 
 misisti Jesum Christum. 
 
 CollcBtemur, i.e., a sympathetic rejoicing in a common 
 good ; the joy of that whole mystical body whereof 
 we are members ; of one living organism which sees 
 itself with a million eyes, yet with but one vision; 
 loves itself with a million hearts, yet with but one 
 love ; where the blessedness of the whole is more 
 desired by each part than its own share in that 
 blessedness. CoUcstemur, i.e., in one song of many 
 parts, like Dante's heavenly eagle, which poured 
 forth from its one throat the collective praises of the 
 countless souls whereof it was composed — 
 
276 COLLECTIVE PRAISE. 
 
 Methought I heard 
 The murmuring of a river, that doth fall 
 From rock to rock transpicuous ; making known 
 The richness of its spring-head ; and as sound 
 Of cittern, at the fret-board, or of pipe 
 Is, at the wind-hole, modulate and tuned ; 
 Thus up the neck, as it were hollow, rose 
 That murmuring of the eagle, and forthwith 
 Voice there assumed, and thence along the beak 
 Issued in form of words such as my heart 
 Did look for ; on whose tables I inscribed them.* 
 
 I saw, and heard an utterance from the beak 
 Whereof the outward words said " I " and " Mine,'" 
 Albeit the inward thought was "We" and "Our."* 
 
 Even so the joy of every member of the mystic 
 Christ is diffused throughout the whole, from the 
 heart, into which it is all poured back again, as into 
 a very ocean of joy, in the sound of whose swell its 
 tributary streams are silenced. It is of this joint 
 praise that the Church sings in her Prefaces : 
 Collaudare, benedicere, et predicare ; and cum quibus et 
 nostras voces, tit admitti jubeas deprecamur. He is less 
 than man, or more than God, who would care to sit 
 at a banquet alone — " a brute, or else a god," says 
 Aristotle, who himself never guessed that even 
 God's self-sufiicingness would not make solitude 
 happy, or that the essential beatitude of God 
 required the friendship of Three, or that love in a 
 personal subject must rest, not in abstract truth or 
 goodness, but in a personal object, i.e., must be a 
 fellowship in joy and praise. 
 
 1 Gary's Dante, Pay. xx. * Ibid. Par. xix. 
 
THE SECRET OF POWER. 277 
 
 CCXLI. 
 
 THE SECRET OF POWER. 
 Dedisti et potestatem omnis carnis. 
 
 " Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, 
 that He should give eternal life." It was by taking 
 flesh that the Eternal Son acquired power over all 
 flesh; and we, just so far as we are human, have 
 power more or less over all flesh. Human character, 
 in the fulness of its possibilities, or as it is in the 
 Divine ideal, is only participated in various aspects, 
 shades, and degrees, by individuals. It is by stealing 
 an attribute, or quality, in its higher perfection from 
 this quarter and that ; by running through the history 
 of earth's greatest, that we can to some extent 
 piece together the full humanity realized in Christ, 
 who alone had power over all flesh ; not over only 
 this or that class, or temperament, or disposition. 
 
 CCXLII. 
 
 god's glory. 
 
 Sive ergo manducatis sive bibitis sive aliud quid facitis, omnia in 
 gloriam Dei facite. 
 
 " Whether ye eat or drink or do anything 
 else, do it all to the glory of God." The imma- 
 nence of God in all goodness and righteous- 
 ness, His permeating presence, will become more 
 habitually sensible by active obedience to the 
 Divine instincts of our reason. It is God who gives 
 us the perception and love of right in every depart- 
 
278 THE CHALICE. 
 
 ir.-2nt, however trivial soever ; but being free instru- 
 ments, we can choose the less perfect or the base — 
 being deaf, so to say, to grace. For beyond the 
 limits of obligation, the region of supererogation 
 in ethical, ascetical, and moral refinements, 
 stretches almost out of our sight. The artist, or 
 poet, or musician, should recognize that " the best " 
 is the most Divine ; it is the cause of God. As 
 Nature, with all her limitations, strives blindly to 
 realize the Divine ideas as perfectly as possible {i.e., 
 the Ideal), so should art do, consciously and freely. 
 Not only in fine art, but in the useful arts, and in 
 all practical matters, the best is the most Divine, 
 the most God-pleasing, It is God uttered, rather, 
 uttering Himself, most freely and graciously. For it 
 is He who works in us and through us to His own 
 praise and glory. At best, we are poor instruments, 
 monochord, trichord, at most, decachord ; but we 
 make ourselves still worse. 
 
 CCXLIII. 
 
 THE CHALICE. 
 Calix meus inebrians quam preeclarus est. 
 
 "My overflowing chalice, how glorious it is!" 
 The Chalice speaks to us by a better symbolism than 
 the Host of the extravagance and prodigality of 
 Divine love. It is the very outpouring of the Sacred 
 Heart. To shed one's blood for one's country, for 
 one's friend, to pour out one's life, is the proper act 
 and embodiment of love in its extremity, and 
 delirium. It is as feeding her little ones with her 
 
MILK FOR BABES. 
 
 279 
 
 heart's blood that the pelican symbolizes the Divine 
 Love. Love is truly an inebriety, however purism 
 may fear the figure. It is reckless and improvi- 
 dent, "giving and not counting the cost, fighting 
 and not heeding the wounds." It is doubtless the 
 inebriating character of wine that made it, more 
 than any other cup, an apt symbol and sacrament 
 of the Sacred Blood, "that wine which maketh glad 
 the heart of a man." For love is like a fire which 
 begets love : and it is God's love, poured out to the 
 last drop, and squandered upon us, that, once com- 
 prehended, inebriates us, communicates to us the 
 Divine passion, or enthusiasm. For if every lover 
 seems little better than a fool or a drunkard to those 
 for whom love is a mystery, is it wonderful if God's 
 extravagances should seem mere inebriety to our 
 cold, narrow hearts ? 
 
 CCXLIV. 
 
 MILK FOR EABES. 
 Perfectorum autem est solidus cibus. 
 
 " Solid food for matured minds." A child who 
 had no one to instruct him might be reasonably 
 alarmed at the loss of his milk-teeth, as if it were a 
 sign of premature decay. Normally, in our first stage 
 of spiritual growth we are simply breast-fed, wholly 
 dependent on others for our beliefs and bents ; then, 
 when reason first wakes (that is, spiritual reason, 
 for each kind of reason develops independently to 
 some extent, one quite dormant, while another is 
 active and mature), we begin to be self-feeding. 
 
28o CAUSE OF OUR JOY. 
 
 leaving the milk of babes for solid food ; and we 
 imagine that this is a final state till, to our dismay, 
 our milk-teeth drop out one by one, and we seem to 
 collapse into infantine helplessness. Our first inde- 
 pendent theories and schemes of spirituality are 
 provisionally useful, no doubt, but they must give 
 way one by one, to be replaced by those that 
 are sounder, better rooted in fact and experience, 
 and our wisdom-teeth are the last to appear. They 
 say some never cut them. This is the law of 
 progress in every science ; both for the individual 
 and for the race. It should not surprise us to find 
 it prevailing in the science of the saints. 
 
 CCXLV. 
 
 CAUSE OF OUR JOY. 
 Causa nostras liEtitise. 
 
 " Cause of our joy." As Aaron's rod that budded, 
 so is the country in full spring glory compared with 
 the black waste of two months before. And all this 
 life and beauty is the response of bountiful mother- 
 earth to the call of Heaven, to the softening rain 
 and the fostering sunshine. We may well contrast 
 what is, with what would have been, had not Mary 
 responded to Heaven's call ; had not the Holjr 
 Ghost come upon her and the power of the Highest 
 overshadowed her ; had not the heavens shed their 
 dew from on high and rained down justice from', 
 the clouds, and loosened the closed earth and let 
 salvation bud forth. All this Paradise which the 
 Church has made on earth, with its wealth of 
 
GOD'S INDWELLING. 2»i 
 
 ■flower and fruit, its fragrances, its songs, its rich 
 :river&, is from the fiat of our Alma Mater — "Our 
 Bounteous Mother ! " Virgo concipiet et parict. She 
 lis im very deed, Causa nostrtz IcBlitia — the cause of 
 <©iir -spring gladness. 
 
 Magnificate Dominum mecum et simtil exaltemus 
 ',nomen ejus. She invites us to cast all our personal 
 /graces and favours together into one great heap 
 with hers and those of her Divine Son and of all 
 the saints ; to forget all distinction of " mine and 
 thine," and, as one soul, to join her in hev Magnificat 
 ,anima mea Dominion. 
 
 CCXLVI. 
 
 god's INDVi^ELLING. 
 
 Si quis diligit me, Pater meus diliget eum ; et ad eum veniemus 
 ■ et mansionem apud eum faciemus. 
 
 " If any man love Me, My Father will love 
 'him ; and we will come to him and make our 
 abode with him." After all, Patmore has said 
 -nothing stronger than this ; if anything can be 
 ■censured as too strong, in the face of such extra- 
 vagances of Divine passion as the Eucharist reveals. 
 ■*' Spiritual " is such a chill, ghostly word with us, 
 "that we forget that the superhuman spirit includes 
 all and more than our complexus of body and soul. 
 Man's spirit is a broken-winged, lame affair apart 
 from its framework ; soul and body are more truly 
 parts of a whole, than man and wife ; one indeed is 
 principal, but each helpless without the other, fruit- 
 less, lonely. Superhuman spirits are all and more 
 
283 GOD'S INDWELLING. 
 
 than body and soul together. God's love is a 
 passionate, feeling love in an eminent sense ; not a 
 mere intellectual valuation, as abstract theodicy- 
 would represent it. 
 
 " If any man keep My word. My Father will 
 love him," for, so far, there will be in him the image 
 of the Filius Dilectus, of the Only-Begotten, whose 
 aspect draws from the Father that sigh of sated 
 love, which is the Holy Spirit. The " word "' of 
 Christ is " spirit and life ; " it is the living impress 
 of His mind on our mind, and of His heart on our 
 heart. It is " kept " by those who are studious, not 
 to lose, but to foster and develop it : " putting on 
 Christ " ever more closely. In them the Father 
 sees once more His reilex, and is drawn to those, 
 whom He draws, that they may draw Him still 
 more. 
 
 " And we will come to him." We, Father, Son,, 
 and Spirit. Such is the spell, the fascination our 
 poor, feeble spirit, when once it is magnetized by 
 love, can exercise over the Immovable, Immutable,. 
 Self-sufficing Three, who are to each other all in alL 
 Trahe me post te — " Draw Me after thee," He says toi 
 her — et in odorein curremus ungucntonun tuorum — - 
 " and we will follow in the fragrance of thy un- 
 guents," as a bee is drawn by a flower, and follows 
 its fragrance like a silken clue. Dum esset Rex in. 
 accubitu suo nardus mea dedit odorcm siiavitatis — 
 " While the King Wd.s reclining, my spikenard- 
 breathed forth its sweet odour." God was at rest 
 from all eternity until He made the soul of man,, 
 and then His repose was gone ; the odour of its; 
 
GOD'S INDWELLING. 283 
 
 sweetness roused Him from that slumber, and He 
 came forth — tamquam sponsus procedms de thalamosuo ; 
 exultavit ut gigas ad currendam viani — " as a bride- 
 groom from his chamber, rejoicmg as a giant to 
 run his course." Not even its darkness and dis- 
 figurement could conceal from His piercing gaze 
 that ineffaceable presentment of Himself, however 
 begrimed by sin. Nigra sum sed formosa, foul in 
 fact, but fair in capacity, ideo dilexit me Rex, where- 
 fore the King is enamoured of me ; as 
 
 Should a high King, leaving his arduous throne, 
 
 Sue from her hedge a little gipsy maid. 
 
 For far-off royal ancestry bewrayed 
 
 By some wild beauties, to herself unknown. 
 
 If these " wild beauties," traces of royal ancestry, 
 our unknown possibilities and capacities — " some 
 power of growing king-like " — exert such a charm 
 over the King of souls, much more will the fairness 
 of the soul win Him when she has already learnt 
 the manners of the Court of Heaven when, like 
 Esther, purified, anointed, and clad in queenly tire, 
 formosa valde et incredibili pulcritudine — " fair and 
 graceful beyond belief," she is brought nto His 
 presence. 
 
 " And we will make our abode with him," and 
 be at home with him ; with no wish, no intention of 
 ever departing; holding quiet, familiar intercourse ; 
 insensible, because so habitual ; sinking into the 
 heart as water into a sponge ; settling down softly 
 as a dove into its warm nest. Hcbc est sedes mea in 
 sceculum scsculi ; hie habitabo quoniam elegi earn —"This 
 
284 MORE THAN A BROTHER. 
 
 is My resting-place for ever and ever. Here will I 
 dwell ; because I have elected it." 
 
 CCXLVII. 
 
 MORE THAN A BROTHER. 
 
 Ecce rogavi te et audire me noluisti ; rogavi Deum meum et 
 audivit me.' 
 
 " I asked thee to hear me, and thou wouldst not; 
 I asked my God, and He heard me." God is more 
 sympathetic than any saint, even than the tenderest 
 of them all. There is one that cleaveth closer than 
 a brother. Pater meus et mater mea dereliquerunt me, 
 Dominus autem assumpsit me — " My father and my 
 mother have forsaken me, but our Lord has taken 
 me up." 
 
 CCXLVIII. 
 
 THE FINDING IN THE TEMPLE. 
 Et ipsi non intellexerunt verbum quod locutus est ad eos. 
 
 (i) " His parents knew it not," and " they 
 understood not the saying." We think we have 
 a right to understand God's doings, to see some 
 coming issue, spiritual or otherwise ; not content 
 with the assurance that all is co-operant to final 
 good, we fancy that we can follow the workings of 
 Divine wisdom. Far nobler is the faith that believes, 
 but does not ask to see. If Mary and Joseph were 
 treated with seeming inconsiderateness, if they 
 received enigmatical explanations which they, with 
 their spiritual insight, could not understand, are we 
 ' Scholastica to Benedict. See Brev. Rom. 
 
A CLEAN HEART. 2S5 
 
 to be impatient because God's " wisdom is inscrut- 
 able and His ways past finding out " ? 
 
 (2) God does not willingly afflict them, but " is 
 a Father who pities," while He chastens. Although 
 He knows it is for our eventual good, yet He feels 
 for our present sorrow. Are we not too philoso- 
 phical as regards the sufferings of others, and wont 
 to excuse our indifference on the score that it will 
 do them good in the end? Did Mary feel the 
 sword of compassion less keenly because she foresaw 
 the future glory of Easter as the issue of Calvary ? 
 
 (3) How could they fail to find who "sought 
 Him with their whole heart" and sought Him in 
 His Temple ? If He strikes unwillingly, how 
 willingly He heals ! " I have forsaken thee for a 
 little moment, but in great mercy will I gather thee." 
 " Heaviness may endure for a night, but joy cometh 
 in the morning." And so after three days absence. 
 He returns with them, hand in hand, to Nazareth, 
 to console them for many years. 
 
 CCXLIX. 
 
 A CLEAN HEART. 
 Cor mundura crea in me, Deus. 
 " Create in me a clean heart, O God." Create,. 
 i.e., Aliqtiid ex nihilo stii et subjecti. A clean heart is- 
 altogether the free gift of God ; for we cannot have 
 unless we ask, or ask unless we desire, or desire 
 unless we are moved. We can resist of ourselves ;. 
 in not resisting we are said to co-operate, as a 
 beggar who does not refuse an alms may be said to- 
 
■286 WATER AND WINE. 
 
 co-operate in his own enrichment. Yet he can only 
 credit himself with not being a fool, but remaining 
 sane as God made him. Our power is wholly 
 destructive, or rather our weakness. Our whole 
 strength and constructiveness come from God as 
 principal cause. 
 
 Putting aside all theological perplexities con- 
 nected with it by curious and idle minds, there is 
 great spiritual strength in St. Augustine's doctrine, 
 that nothing is entirely our own but our sins. Every 
 good wish, hope, regret, every natural virtue, facility, 
 propensity; every higher taste; every happy accident 
 of birth, constitution, temperament, education, 
 circumstances ; all my labour, endeavour, success, 
 perseverance — all this is in me, but not of me ; 
 God's doing, not mine — not I, but the grace of God 
 in me. My sole " originality " is my negligence, 
 resistance, sinfulness. If I have any faith, or any 
 hope, any love of God or of my fellow-man, I am 
 sure it is none of my doing ; the work has nothing 
 of my stamp about it. But show me meanness, or 
 v/eakness, or selfishness, or pride, and at once I can 
 say, " That is mine ; my effigy and superscription." 
 CcEsari qucR Ccesaris sunt, quce Dei Deo — " Csesar's 
 to Caesar, God's to God." 
 
 CCL. 
 
 V^^ATER AND WINE. 
 Nuptiae factae sunt in Cana. 
 
 " And there was a marriage at Cana." 
 
 ^i) Between the austerity of the Baptist and the 
 
WATER AND WINE. 287 
 
 " Humanity " of our Saviour there is no real incom- 
 patibility or difference of principle. John in the 
 desert, girt with his leathern girdle, clad in rough 
 hair-cloth, fed on locusts and honey, solitary, far 
 removed from human life and joys and cares ; and 
 Christ at the marriage-feast, eating and drinking 
 like others, attractive to all, " friend of publicans 
 and sinners," charged with gluttony and wine- 
 bibbing — both are animated by one principle, one 
 spirit, one wisdom, who is justified in all her true 
 children, who, however seemingly diverse, on closer 
 scrutiny show the features of their common mother. 
 She is manifested in the darkness no less than in 
 the light ; she knows that there is a time for 
 penance and weeping, and a time for praise and 
 rejoicing. And the Church, filled with the same 
 wisdom, manifests, in due place and season, a like 
 unity and variety of conduct, and merits from the 
 captious world the reproaches of both Christ and 
 of His forerunner; the sensual and frivolous are 
 scandalized at her severity; the pharisaic and 
 rigorous at her "humanity" and indulgence to 
 human weakness ; the former find her too heavenly ; 
 the latter, too earthly. 
 
 (2) Christ has not come to destroy human nature, 
 but to fulfil, to perfect, to elevate. He promises it 
 " an hundred-fold in this life, and in the world to 
 come life everlasting ; " and it is through the cross 
 of self-abnegation that this hundred-fold present 
 perfection is to be secured, even as the fruitfulness 
 of the vine is increased by pruning and training. 
 He who knows what is in man, and needs not that 
 
28S WATER AND WINE. 
 
 any should tell Him, being Himself Man, and 
 '• holding nothing human indifferent " — He knows 
 that pleasures and enjoyments are in some degree 
 as needful for us as the air we breathe or the food 
 we eat ; and this is true even of the merely animal 
 relaxations of the senses and the body, still more of 
 the pleasures of perception, of thought, of affection. 
 All these He touched, used, sanctified, and blessed, 
 that they might be to us sacraments and graces 
 unto life eternal. Thus at the very opening of His 
 Ministry to man we find Him with His Blessed 
 Mother and His disciples, sanctifying by His pre- 
 sence the marriage-feast of Cana — not merely 
 tolerating, but by miraculous intervention furthering 
 and approving harmless mirth and conviviality. 
 
 (3) Et Mater Jesu erat ibi — "and the Mother 
 of Jesus was there." She was there formally, as 
 His Mother and the Mother of His; to care 
 for His interests and for theirs ; to mediate 
 between the two; watching with an anxious eye 
 that nothing might be wanting to complete the 
 happiness of those around her; that the cup of 
 their joy might be full to brim and running over ; 
 in readiness, by the side of her Divine , Son, to 
 whisper in His ear, and tell Him all their needs : 
 Vinum non habent — " They have no wine." And she 
 was there in the interests of Jesus, that all might 
 be according to His will ; that nature might have 
 no blemish unfitting it to be a receptacle of grace ; 
 that the water might be pure and fresh and un- 
 defiled, nor unworthy to be divinely changed to 
 wine; that the mirth and gladness might be so 
 
WATER AND WINE. 289 
 
 chastened by reason as to be apt matter for super- 
 natural merit ; that the marriage itself might be a 
 fit emblem of the union of Christ and His Church, 
 and a means of grace to both bridegroom and bride 
 for perseverance in the same sacred relationship. 
 Mater Jesu erat ihi. This is Mary's mediatorial 
 office ; she turns to Jesus with, Vinum non habent — 
 " They have no wine," and to us with, " Whatsoever 
 He shall say unto you, that do ye." 
 
 (4) And so everywhere it is by the presence of 
 Mary that life's feast is hallowed, and Jesus and 
 His disciples brought into it as welcome guests. It 
 is through the presence of Mary that Christian art 
 and literature have been spiritualized, retaining all 
 that was truly beautiful in pagandom, and purging 
 out all that was " earthly, sensuous, devilish." 
 Where Jesus and Mary, the Woman and her Child, 
 have found entrance, all impurity has fled away 
 like a mist before the sun ; and where the door has 
 been shut in their face, corruption, decay, dishonour, 
 death, have slowly eaten their way in. Where they 
 are not, wine is but water ; the noblest efforts are 
 cramped and paralyzed, shut up in the limits of 
 the finite and the realistic. What was made " to 
 gladden the heart of man" proves vapid or even 
 poisonous if aught be there which would bring a 
 blush on the cheek of the Virgin Mother of Jesus. 
 Let them but enter, and the cave becomes a royal 
 palace ; water turns to wine : the weakness of man's 
 puny conceptions is strengthened, ennobled, sub- 
 stantially transformed by the infusic n of the Divine 
 elements of faith and purity. 
 
290 WATER AND WINE. 
 
 (5) " Seek ye first the Kingdom of God " does 
 not forbid our seeking in due turn and measure 
 those things which " the Gentiles seek ; " but only 
 our seeking them as the Gentiles seek them, i.e., 
 first, as the chiefest good. "Your Heavenly Father 
 knoweth that you have need of these things ; " and 
 even if He who made us, with all our senses, 
 passions, affections, and desires ; who moves in our 
 every movement, and thinks in our every thought — 
 even if He could possibly forget these natural needs 
 of ours, there is our Incarnate Lord pleading for us 
 with His all-human Heart, beating in unison with 
 our own, throb for throb ; and if, again, even He 
 could forget us, there is Mary ever at the side next 
 His Heart, to lean over and whisper in His ear : 
 "Vinum non habent — 'They have no wine.' Their 
 heart is sad, their spirits drooping ; they are lonely, 
 afflicted, poor, distressed, neglected — vinum non 
 habent." And there are ministering angels ready at 
 her beck and call to perform the will of her Divine 
 Son. 
 
 (6) We " have need of all these things," of health 
 and sufficiency, of friends and companions, of the 
 bright sunshine and the flowers and the birds, 
 woods and rivers, mountains and valleys ; of all 
 that speaks to us of the goodness, kindness, beauty,. 
 and grace of divinity ; of all that will help us to bear 
 up against the sadness inseparable from our mortal 
 state, to sweeten our bitterness, and smooth our 
 roughness. All are graces, good gifts helpful to 
 life eternal, to be sought, not before nor counter to 
 God's Kingdom, but in order to it. He who taughi 
 
MARY'S FIAT. 291 
 
 US to pray, Sanctificeiur nomen tuum; adveniat regnum 
 tiium ; flat voluntas tua, bids us to go on: Panem 
 nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie. 
 
 CCLI. 
 Mary's fiat. 
 
 Quella, ch' ad aprir I'alto amor volse la chiave.* 
 
 " She who turned the key which unlocked the 
 deep love," i.e., as Eve stretched forth her hand at 
 Satan's bidding and unlocked the flood-gates of sin, 
 sorrow, and death, so Mary at Gabriel's word, by 
 hex fiat mihi, opens "the windows of Heaven and 
 the fountains of the great deep," and deluges the 
 world with the cleansing flood of Divine love, till 
 then, pent up and longing to burst forth, longing 
 to "rend the heavens and come down" in torrents 
 upon the earth. 
 
 In Mary with her Babe at her breast ; in Mary 
 broken-hearted by the Cross of her Son ; in Mary 
 clasping her risen Jesus ; in Mary reigning by His 
 side in Heaven, we see the great all-Mother ot 
 humanity, a conception dimly shadowed in the 
 dark gropings of the pagan mind, in Cybele and Gara 
 and many another, but fully realized in the one 
 true religion of humanity where, "taught by God,' 
 the human soul can express its deepest yearnings, 
 and recognize them as implanted by Him who can 
 satisfy them beyond what eye hath seen, ear heard 
 or heart conceived. Those childish dreams of un 
 taught sinful humanity, mingled with much that 
 ^ Purgatoyio, *. 
 
292 MARY'S FIAT. 
 
 was fair and noble, more that was foul and de- 
 grading; but in the reality which the Catholic 
 religion gives us, in the great Mother of God and 
 of man, we find verified the eternal principle that 
 whatever is really beautiful is also either true or 
 less than the truth. It is Humanity that she bears, 
 in her womb, suckles at her breast, tends and 
 nurtures and protects. It is Humanity that she 
 holds in her arms, and about which she casts her 
 sheltering mantle, as she stands. Queen of the 
 whole earth, with her foot upon the destroyer's 
 head. It is by the Cross of Crucified Humanity 
 that she stands weeping; it is risen and glorified 
 Humanity that she welcomes from the dead ; and 
 it is with ascended Humanity that she reigns for 
 evermore. 
 
 " Show thyself a Mother." Prove it in the deed 
 and event, for title and office is not enough. " Let 
 • us not love in word and in tongue [alone] but in 
 deed and in truth." She has already proved her 
 motherhood in affection when, knowing what it 
 would cost to be the mother of suffering humanity, 
 she said. Fiat mihi, and presented her heart to the 
 sword, and took her stand underneath our cross. 
 For the sinful children of her adoption she sacrificed 
 the sinless and Divine fruit of her womb, seeing that 
 to us He had transferred all His rights, making her 
 debt of love to Him, payable to us. And to each of 
 us singly she has shown herself in fact, what she is 
 in title, no less evidently than she whose mother- 
 hood was indicated by Solomon's judgment. The 
 pretended mother's affection is inordinate to the 
 
ST. PAUL. 393 
 
 prejudice of justice, and eventually cruel and selfish, 
 like all unruly love. It is, therefore, for a con- 
 tinuance of maternal protection that we ask, and 
 which we ask in vain unless we endeavour to fulfil 
 its correlative condition : Monstra te esse fihum — 
 " Show thyself a child." Is there any trace of our 
 mother in our features ? Anything to show for all 
 the trouble she has taken about us, for all the 
 affection she has wasted on us? Who would 
 suspect that we hailed Christ as brother ? Or that 
 we recognized in every fellow-man the son of our 
 common mother ? 
 
 CCLII. 
 
 ST. PAUL. 
 Saule, Saule, quid me persequeris ? 
 
 '' Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute Me ? " 
 It is a prominent feature in St. Paul to identify 
 Christ and Christ's. As he persecuted Christ in 
 His little ones, so they are the recipients of his 
 penitential love and passionate devotion. Like 
 Magdalene, it is upon the feet of Christ he expends 
 his tears, his spikenard, the service of all God has 
 given him ; for the Head has made all his debts 
 of love, pity, and reparation payable to the feet. 
 There is the place for penitents to sit. 
 
 Paul does not turn from a life of immorality to 
 a life of morality, by a sort of ethical conversion. 
 Morally he was as correct as any good Pharisee 
 could be. But he turns from personal hatred of our 
 Saviour to personal love : and this is the essence of 
 Christian sanctification. It is de facto a morally 
 
294- PRAISE, AND THANKS. 
 
 perfect life,, but formally it is a life of love which 
 never thinks of reason or of the rules of right living ; 
 but as the brutes live blindly according to Divine 
 reason, so the love of Christ carries all morality 
 with it instinctively. 
 
 CCLIII. 
 
 PRAISE AND THANKS. 
 Bonum est confiteri Domino et psallere nomini tuo Altissime. 
 
 " It is good to give thanks to God and to praise 
 His name." Two distinct duties, praise and thanks- 
 giving : thanksgiving for what God is to me ; praise 
 for what He is to Himself. 
 
 Ad annuntiandimi mane misericordiam tuain — "To 
 tell Thy mercy in the morning," i.e., in the early 
 morning of life or of spiritual life, when all is bright 
 and fair and full of hope, before the shadows have 
 fallen and experience has tempered our sanguine 
 expectations ; or else, in the morning of repentance 
 which follows the night of sin, when the light of 
 grace dawns upon us once more ; or, generally, in 
 all times of special favour, consolation, and blessing. 
 It is good at such times to see in all our joy only 
 God's mercy and free forgiveness, and to say, Uiide 
 hoc mihi? — to "announce it" to ourselves and 
 before God in the silence of our heart. 
 
 Et veritatem tuam per nodeni — " And Thy truth 
 in the night." It is a good thing to praise the 
 justice of God in times of darkness, temptation, and 
 calamity; when His ways are hidden, perplexing, 
 obscure; to say, "Just is the Lord and terrible," 
 " It is the Lord ; let Him do as seemeth good to 
 
ALL MEN LOVABLE. 295 
 
 Him." For if He afflicts, it is in truth and justice 
 
 —He, 
 
 Who made the darkness and the light, 
 And dwells, not in the light alone, 
 But in the darkness and the cloud. 
 
 CCLIV. 
 
 ALL MEN LOVABLE. 
 Ut diligatis invicera sicut ego dilexi vos. 
 
 "That you should love one another as I have 
 loved you." Although in individuals the capacity for 
 happiness, in spite of a certain specific agreement, 
 differs both in kind and degree, yet each does possess 
 radically a capability of being indefinitely happier 
 than he is. This happiness-capacity is what appeals 
 to that purest kindness, or amor benevolentice, which 
 takes delight in the contemplation of happiness for 
 its own sake, as an end in itself; which loves a man 
 rather for what he can be, than for. what he is. 
 The " happiness " in question is the true happiness 
 of a spiritual creature, and in the last analysis 
 means its final perfection or spiritual beauty. This 
 love, therefore, is not inspired by the present excel- 
 lence or lovableness of our neighbour, but by his 
 perfectibility, as the sculptor loves the rude block 
 for what he knows it may become under his chisel, 
 or as God loves chaos in the physical or the spiritual 
 or the supernatural order, and broods over it and 
 says, " Let there be light." Because we are poten- 
 tially lovable, God loves us, and makes us actually 
 lovable. In all cases He loves His own ideal, which 
 He purposes to realize in us. 
 
2g5 LAZARUS. 
 
 It is greater skill which deals with more difficult 
 and stubborn matter, and detects a possible beauty 
 latent in that which is crabbed and deformed. This 
 skill carried to infinity exists in the Divine Artist 
 who from nothing can draw forth all things " by that 
 power wherewith He can subdue all things unto • 
 Himself." And as we love most what costs us most, 
 so God's special love is for His specially difficult 
 subjects in whose perfection He is most glorified. 
 In their case what He loves is not merely the 
 possibility of such faith, such happiness; but of such 
 faith in one by nature so sceptical and narrow- 
 minded ; such hope in one so pusillanimous and 
 despondent ; such love in one so weakly selfish ; such 
 light in one so bewildered, confused, and darkened ; 
 Nam virtus in infirmiiate perficitur. Our charity, 
 therefore, is more akin to God's when we love 
 others, not because they are lovable, but in order 
 that they may. become lovable. 
 
 CCLV. 
 
 LAZARUS. 
 Nemo illi dabat. 
 
 " And no man gave unto him " (sc, to the 
 beggar Lazarus). Christ's suffering and poverty 
 had no interest for the Jews. He lay at their 
 doorstep, covered with sores, unknown, despised, 
 neglected, hungering in vain for the crumbs of their 
 faith, love, and kind compassion. Their temporal 
 ambition, their legalist self-sufficiency, their world- 
 liness caused them to forget God and His needs ; 
 
LAZARUS. 297 
 
 even as we, when all goes well with us in body and 
 soul, cease to enter into His passion and poverty, 
 or that of His members. 
 
 Canes veniebant — "The dogs came." Our very 
 animal nature, with its wants and pains, should 
 create in us a sympathy for the bodily wants of 
 others, were not its impulse of pity so perverted 
 and destroyed by reflex selfishness that even the 
 dumb beasts put us to shame in the matter. Sed et 
 lamicB nudaverunt mamntam; lactaverunt catulos suos; 
 filia populi met crudelis quasi struthio in deserto — " Yea, 
 the sea-monsters have bared the breast and given 
 suck to their young ; but My people is as cruel 
 as the ostrich in the desert." The very Gentiles 
 and pagans (canes), Pilate and the Centurion, 
 had more pity for our Saviour than the Jews; 
 and it was the Samaritan who bound up his 
 wounds and poured in oil and wine, when priest 
 and levite passed him by. Some who have far 
 less claim on Him than we have, take more pity 
 upon Him ; and the compassion which pagans, 
 agnostics, and even bad Christians have for the 
 temporal infirmities, pains, and sorrows of their 
 fellow-men, shames us who profess to see in these 
 afflictions the very wounds of Christ's Mystical 
 Body. 
 
 "The poor man died and was carried by the 
 angels into Abraham's bosom." Christ, the true 
 Lazarus, the " poor man," ascends into Heaven to 
 Abraham's bosom, the bosom of the Eternal Father 
 from which He came forth. And in Him all His 
 poor and needy members have been carried up, cum 
 
298 LAZARUS. 
 
 Lazaro quondam paupere} to the bosom of Abraham, 
 to be comforted, while the merciless are tormented. 
 Even on earth, wherever the Spirit of Christ has 
 made itself felt, the poor, the afflicted, the suffering, 
 have been raised up from the mire to share such 
 honour as the Cross itself receives from time to 
 time from the great of this world. The Maundy 
 was not a fruitless ceremony in the ages of faith. 
 But the spirit of paganism is altogether inhuman — 
 dead even to brute-instincts of pity. 
 
 Goethe tells us that " before the Queen's 
 [Marie Antoinette's] arrival the very rational regu- 
 lation had been made, that no deformed persons, 
 no cripples or disgusting invalids should show 
 themselves on her route." ^ If there is not more 
 religion, there is at least more humanity in our 
 own century, and no European potentate in 
 these days would risk his popularity by such a 
 "rational regulation." The King Himself never 
 seemed so glorious to enlightened eyes as when 
 thronged with the blind, the lame, the lepers, and 
 the afflicted of all sorts, pressing upon Him to touch 
 him, et virtus ex illo exibat et sanabat omnes. Perhaps 
 godless humanitarianism with all its follies may, 
 like the pagan philosophies of old, attune men's 
 ears to the fuller music of the Gospel, and prepare 
 the way for an intelligent return to Christ on the 
 part of those who have left Him in ignorance, 
 because they never knew Him. 
 
 ' Burial Service. * Goethe's Atiiobiogmphy. 
 
OUR LATENT CAPACITIES. 2gg> 
 
 CCLVI. 
 
 OUR LATENT CAPACITIES. 
 Ut resuscites gratiam Dei quae est in te. 
 
 " Stir up the grace that is in you." Dante 
 compares Nature to an artist, C'ha I'ahito deW 
 arte, e man che trema,^ who has in his mind the 
 true pattern of the Divine idea, but whose hand 
 shakes in the dehneation of the same : so that. 
 Ideate poi phi e men trainee,^ the perfect type (which 
 art tries to bring out), is never fully realized in 
 Nature, but shines more or less imperfectly through 
 the veil of matter. It is for fine art to seize and 
 apprehend from these shadowings the ideal they 
 derive from, and to bring it out into clearer light, as 
 when one takes a deep but obscure author and in- 
 terprets and illustrates him. So man's own task of 
 self-evolution, moral and intellectual, is but a work 
 of fine art, to which he is constrained by his Maker.. 
 It is the apprehending and bringing out, each in 
 himself, of that ideal hinted at in his own character, 
 circumstances, gifts, and opportunities — seeing what 
 God expects of him and fulfilling that expectation. 
 Indeed, all human co-operation with God's designs' 
 for society, for humanity at large, is art in the 
 truest sense — the correction of Nature's trembling 
 
 ' Resembling thus the artist in her work, 
 Whose faltering hand is faithless to his skill. 
 
 (Gary's Dante, Paradiso, xiii.). 
 > . . . More or less it shows 
 Th' ideal stamp imprest. 
 
300 FEEDING THE HUNGRY. 
 
 lines to the true pattern which we perceive she is 
 .aiming at. 
 
 CCLVII. 
 
 FEEDING THE HUNGRY. 
 Esurivi et dedistis mihi mandacare. 
 
 " I was hungry and you gave Me to eat." God 
 •not only gives all living things their being, but 
 •" opens His hand and fills them with plenteousness," 
 preserving that life as lovingly as He gave it. Do we 
 reflect how from our first breath God has prepared 
 and given us every morsel that has crossed our lips ; 
 putting milk, as Augustine notes,^ in my mother's 
 ■breast, giving her the desire to impart it, and me 
 the power to draw it, ere I knew what food was, or 
 that I needed food ; caring for me thus tenderly, 
 ere I knew Him or could know Him ; and this, 
 in order that I might live to know Him, and, 
 knowing His love, to love Him. What then shall 
 I say of the food He has prepared for my soul, 
 "filling my mouth with good things so that my 
 jouth is renewed like the eagle's ; " of the Living 
 Bread, the flesh of the Incarnate, the corn of 
 ■God ground and crushed on Calvary? He, who 
 feeds all, and who has so fed even me, His thankless 
 .and perfidious creature, He it is who comes to me 
 hungry and thirsty in the person of His minimi, 
 His little ones, dependent on my compassion, 
 desirous to be fed with the crumbs from my table, 
 which is loaded with His own bounty. Sitio — " I 
 ihirst," He cries to me from His Cross; Da mihi 
 » Conf. i. 
 
FEEDING THE HUNGRY. 3or 
 
 bibere — " Give Me to drink," from the well-side ; 
 ubi est triticum et vinum — " Where is the wheat and 
 the wine ? " from the starving multitudes, the parvuli 
 in plateis?- If they are to follow Him mto the desert^ 
 there to be fed with the Word of Life, they must 
 have, in due measure, the meat that perishes. We 
 cannot hope to evangelize the multitudes until we 
 feed them, still less if we show ourselves indifferent 
 to their temporal needs and welfare. It may be,, 
 but it can hardly be, that he who is callous to the 
 miseries of the body and of the natural affections, 
 is full of pity for supernatural ills. " If a man love 
 not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love 
 God whom he seeth not ? " If he is insensible to- 
 the natural and visible, how shall he be sensitive to 
 the invisible and eternal ? 
 
 " Come ye blessed," He will say to those who' 
 fed Him, " come and sit down with Abraham and 
 Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God." The 
 Eucharist on earth is after all but the foreshadow- 
 ing of that Eternal Banquet which celebrates the 
 marriage-supper of the Lamb. And if to those who 
 fed Him not, He will say, Ite maledicti — " Go, ye 
 accursed," what will be their doom who have 
 robbed the poor of their wages, or sweated them 
 and ground them down to a starvation wage ? Or 
 still more, what of those heresiarchs and others 
 who have robbed them of the Bread of eternal life, 
 of the Word of God and of the sacraments. Nor 
 is the crime confined to the persecutors of religion,. 
 but is intensified in its ministers, who througb 
 » Thren. 
 
302 CLOTHING THE NAKED. 
 
 negligence, culpable ignorance, avarice, sloth, have 
 starved the flocks committed to their care. 
 
 CCLVIII. 
 
 CLOTHING THE NAKED. 
 Nudus fui et operuistis me. 
 
 " I was naked and you clothed Me." It were no 
 ■despicable matter for gratitude that God has clothed 
 housed, and warmed me all my life through ; still it 
 is our convention that He is not to be thanked for 
 such benefits as air and light, which, being shared by 
 all, are no mark of special regard ; or which, being 
 showered upon us continuously, mark no point where, 
 more than at another, the debt of gratitude falls due. 
 
 That God should have clothed the spiritual 
 nakedness of mere humanity with the garment of 
 grace was a sufficient mystery of love ; still more 
 that in Baptism He should restore that white robe 
 forfeited by ancestral sin ; but most of all that, after 
 we have rent and soiled and cast off this fair garment. 
 He should restore it to us, not once, but again and 
 again in holy Penance ; that after our mad outbreaks 
 He should bring us to sit at His feet " clothed and 
 in our right mind ; " that finding us by the wayside 
 wounded and stripped of our garments. He should 
 treat our fault as though it were our misfortune, and 
 should draw nigh to us in compassion; that He 
 should replace the befouled rags and tatters of the 
 returning prodigal with the best robe, the ring and 
 the sandals, the insignia of sonship. 
 
 I was naked and He clothed me. His garments 
 
HARBOURING STRANGERS. 303 
 
 were torn from Him that my sins and spiritual 
 wounds might be covered and healed. In Christ, 
 as He hangs naked on His Cross, I see the naked- 
 ness of the members of His Mystic Body in whom 
 He cries out to me, cold and shivering and shame- 
 fast. Do I , cover and clothe Him in return, 
 excusing and hiding the faults of others ; or do I, by 
 detraction, strip the garments from His bleeding 
 back and shame Him before others ; or still worse, 
 by calumny or calumnious exaggeration do I, with 
 my own hand inihct such wounds or aggravate 
 them ? 
 
 Venite benedicti — " Come ye Blessed," He will 
 say to those who have clothed Him. He will 
 "cover the multitude of their sins" "in the sight 
 of His holy angels," and will " clothe them with the 
 stole of glory;" and they shall not be ashamed of 
 the record of sins that are long blotted out by 
 works of mercy, or of wounds that gleam like rubies, 
 bright witnesses of the mercy pledged to the merciful. 
 
 CCLIX. 
 
 HARBOURING STRANGERS. 
 Hospes eram et collegistis me. 
 
 " I was a stranger and you brought Me in." 
 We were strangers to God by nature, yet by grace 
 He called us to adoptive sonship, to the household 
 of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. 
 We were strangers and worse, by our racial fall, 
 and yet again He did not wait till we knocked, but 
 came forth to seek us in the desert and to " open 
 
304 HARBOURING STRANGERS. 
 
 the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers;" to pour 
 out on us the Spirit which works within our every 
 good wish, which emboldens us to knock and to 
 seek and to cry out : Abba, Father ! And if the 
 Jews were, by vocation, the due recipients of the 
 Gospel Church, it was to us Gentiles, strangers and 
 aliens from Israel, that it was absolutely decreed. 
 We were strangers, yet He brought us within that 
 great enclosure and home of mercy. And He has 
 sought me, who by so many sins have so often 
 estranged myself, and brought me in again and again, 
 wishing that I should be at home with Him, one of 
 His household. His familiars, not a servant, but a 
 friend and confidant," for the servant knoweth not 
 what his master doth." Quid retribuam? What 
 return shall I make when He comes to me as a 
 stranger in all those from whom I am separated or 
 alienated in any way whatsoever ; by difference of 
 temperament, character, tastes, sympathies, opinions, 
 beliefs, education, birth, and so forth; who are 
 likely to feel strange with me or ill at ease, and wish 
 to be back in their old surroundings. Do I 
 emphasize differences, or do I merge them ? am I 
 sympathetic or antipathetic ? am I affable in the old 
 scholastic sense, i.e., one who can be spoken to easily,^ 
 who is approachable, unstarched ; a man to whom 
 (as Newman says somewhere) you could speak in 
 your shirt-sleeves ; or am I stiff, patronizing, vulgar ? 
 There is no harder cross than loneliness and isolation,, 
 the sense of being out in the cold, not wanted,, 
 perhaps to some extent " boycotted ; " and there is no 
 greater charity than that which lightens it. 
 
VISITING THE SICK. 305 
 
 Venite benedidi. " Strangers and pilgrims on 
 earth," though they be, those who harbour the 
 stranger, shall before all others feel at home in 
 Heaven. Mary will be ready with her motherly 
 welcome, nor will they feel shy or strange when she 
 leads them by the hand to show to them the blessed 
 fruit of her womb, Jesus — no stranger to them. 
 lie maledicti. They who have shut the door in the 
 face of the stranger shall be driven into eternal 
 banishment ; to wander, like Cain, as vagabonds, 
 through the dark night of chaos, in that "outer 
 darkness " made deeper by the glimpses of the 
 interior light ; colder, by contrast with the house- 
 hold glow which they have forfeited for ever. 
 " Depart from Me, I never knew you," that is : 
 "you are strangers to Me, and strangers you shall be 
 for ever." 
 
 CCLX. 
 
 VISITING THE SICK. 
 Iniirmus fui et visitastis me. 
 
 " I was sick and you visited Me." Every hour 
 of good health that we have ever enjoyed was of 
 God's kindness and preservation. He is our chief 
 physician and healer. If ever we have recovered 
 from illness, it was He who gave the physician his 
 skill, and the drugs their virtue, and who ordered 
 all these means to our recovery and, in our bodily 
 nature, worked with them to bring about our cure. 
 If others felt for us and sympathized with us, it was 
 He, who felt for us more, who filled them with the 
 milk of human kindness — He, who has made human 
 
3o6 VISITING THE SICK. 
 
 hearts the instruments and conveyors of His own 
 loving compassion. " He who made the eye, shall 
 He not see ? " He who formed men for pity, shall 
 He not pity ? Pity for bodily ills is not the highest 
 component of charity, but it is essential and in a 
 -way, the first, the most fundamental in order of 
 genesis. Christ came to redeem the whole man, 
 soul and body ; soul principally, yet body first ; 
 in order to the soul. Circuibat benefaciendo — 
 " He went about doing good," refers primarily 
 to His works of bodily healing. And in His 
 Church He observes a like economy, "knowing 
 whereof we are made, remembering that we are 
 but dust ; " insisting before all else on the corporal 
 works of mercy ; on the anointing of His mystical 
 body with the spikenard destined otherwise for 
 selfish luxury. Are we then grateful to God for 
 our bodily health and vigour, or has it made us 
 hard and unsympathetic for the weakly ; slow to 
 believe in their sufferings ; quick to condemn them 
 as pusillanimous, hypochondriacal ? Or if vfe have 
 had the grace of sickness and infirmity, has it taught 
 us and mellowed us, as it ought ; or has it simply 
 been received as a grievance to be shaken off as 
 soon as possible ? 
 
 Moreover, and far more, is God the physician 
 of souls "who forgiveth all thy sin, who healeth 
 all thy diseases," "by whose stripes we were healed ; " 
 who drew near in pity and bound up our wounds, 
 pouring in the wine of His Passion-blood, the oil 
 of blood-bought grace. Think, too, how He has 
 nursed us through our sickness of soul, our noisome 
 
VISITING THE SICK. 307 
 
 diseases; with what patient watchings night and 
 day through our hours of unconsciousness or dehrium 
 when we knew Him not, or mistook Him, or hated 
 and resisted Him. And even when it was not His 
 will to heal us of our bodily or spiritual ills, at least 
 He visited us and consoled us with the assurance 
 that He afflicted us, not willingly, but loathely, as 
 a father who chastises the son of his love. 
 
 I was sick and He visited me. Quid retribiiam? 
 He comes to me sick and infirm in the person of 
 those who are ailing in body ; or who are labouring 
 under spiritual weaknesses and vices. He does not 
 ask me to heal Him; for that is not always in my 
 power ; but simply to visit Him ; to part the burden 
 of His sufferings by compassion ; to dispel the sense 
 of weariness and loneliness — often more oppressive 
 than pain itself. Still more does He crave my 
 ministry and consolation in His spiritual ailments, 
 in His ignorance of things human and divine. His 
 weakness, waywardness, viciousness. He who has 
 borne with my stupidity, and forced His light 
 through my wilfully closed eyelids, and sought me 
 out when I fled from Him, and kissed my ulcerous 
 sores into health. And am I to be unfeeling, fasti- 
 dious, impatient, austere, rigorous, with my fellow- 
 servant ? Even if we may not extend to the wilfully 
 vicious the sympathy of approbation, we should at 
 least feel the sympathy of comprehension, of a 
 knowledge of the human heart and its pathology, 
 which should forbid us to wonder or be astonished 
 at any depth to which man can sink, as though we 
 ourselves were not borne up, in spite of ourselves, 
 
3o8 VISITING PRISONERS. 
 
 by the invisible arms of demerited mercy. Much 
 more do sins of frailty claim our tender forbearance, 
 under penalty of being subjected to the like our- 
 selves. 
 
 Venite benedidi — " Come, ye Blessed." Die animce 
 mece; salus tua sum ego. He will say to my soul, 
 " I am thy health." Sana me Domine et sanabor, 
 salvtim me fac et salvus ero — " Do thou heal me. 
 Lord, and I shall indeed be healed." Then only 
 shall soul and body enter into a state of perfect and 
 unbroken, unbreakable health through close union 
 with Him who is the fountain of their being, preser- 
 vation, growth, and health. 
 
 CCLXI. 
 
 VISITING PRISONERS. 
 In carcere eram et venistis ad me. 
 
 " I was in prison and you came unto Me." 
 Here first He deals with an affliction which is 
 due to the sufferer's own fault. Also, as in the case 
 of the sick, with one which it is not always in our 
 power to remove or cure, but at most to alleviate 
 by practical pity. 
 
 We were in prison, in the bondage of Egypt, and 
 He came to us, the true Moses, and led us out with 
 a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; and 
 through the blood of the Passover brought us into 
 freedom and sonship. He came to us. He taber- 
 nacled with us, He was not ashamed to share our 
 nature, non horruisti virginis utero ; nay. He did not 
 shrink from the likeness of sinful flesh, laying aside 
 
VISITING PRISONERS. 309 
 
 the bodily glory and immortality which was the con- 
 natural birthright of the Incarnate, and mingling 
 with sinners as one of themselves ; tempted in all 
 points as we ; chastised, though personally sinless, 
 beyond all others. Have we not as children, and at 
 all times, felt a loyal love towards those who came to 
 us and stood by us when we were in disgrace ; who 
 went bail for us ? And now it is God that comes 
 to us and takes us up, when the mother that bore 
 us has abandoned us, despaired of us, forgotten us. 
 Pater meus et mater mea dereliquerunt me, Dominus 
 autein assumpsit me. What love was hers whom He 
 championed against the self-righteous world ; sham- 
 ing her accusers out of His presence till she was 
 left with Him alone to hear : " Neither will I con- 
 demn thee; go, sin no more;" thus making Himself 
 a partaker in her disgrace, and heedless of His own 
 repute ! So, in general, has He everywhere cast 
 in His lot with those whom the world despises, the 
 poor, the weak, the ignorant, the sinful. He has 
 come to us in this prison-house of a world ; into the 
 prison of Mary's womb ; into the prison of flesh 
 and blood ; into the prison of the grave and of 
 Hell ; into the prison of the sacred species and of 
 the tabernacle of the altar. 
 
 Quid retribuam ? What return shall I make 
 when I find Him in prison, in disgrace, forsaken, 
 outcast, exiled, when I meet Him in the person 
 of those who are under a cloud through their own 
 fault ? 
 
 " Come to Me," He says, " all you that labour, 
 and are burdened, and I will refresh you ; " and 
 
3IO VISITING PRISONERS. 
 
 relying on these words we often try to come and 
 cannot ; we seek and find not ; we knock and the 
 door remains closed. And why ? Because we do 
 not come to Him where He is to be found. Where, 
 then, is He to be found ? " Lo ! " He says, " I am 
 with you all days, even to the end of the world." 
 He is with us in His Vicar to teach us ; in the 
 sacraments, to heal and strengthen us; in the 
 Eucharist, to be worshipped and adored by us ; in 
 His brethren, to be pitied and loved and served by 
 us. Pauperes semper habetis vohiscum; the poor ye 
 have always with you. There He is to be found — 
 in our midst, and we know Him not. " Have you 
 not known, have you not heard, hath it not been 
 told you from the beginning ?" Have we not known 
 and heard that " new commandment," which was 
 from the beginning, — new, because like truth or 
 God, it ages not: the commandment "that you love 
 one another as I have loved you." It is in the 
 prisoners that we are to find Him and to come to 
 Him ; in the sick, and the naked, and the stranger, 
 and the hungry, and the thirsty. Else, in that day, 
 when we shall so want to come to Him, He will not 
 say to us : " Come ; " but : " Go," for " I was in 
 prison and you came not unto Me;" "I know you 
 not," for " I was a stranger and you brought Me 
 not in." " Go now in outer darkness. Go into 
 everlasting hunger and thirst and cold and naked- 
 ness; for I was hungry, thirsty, cold and naked, 
 and you had no pity for Me." 
 
FliOM GOD'S FEET TO HIS FACE. 311 
 
 CCLXIL 
 
 tHoM god's feet to his face. 
 
 Ostende faciem tuara et salvi erimus. 
 
 " Show us Thy face and we shall be safe," Here 
 we see but His footprints ; His feet ; the members 
 of the mystic Christ, but not the head. The 
 members we have always with us, and can do good 
 to them when we will. Let us so serve His feet 
 that we shall one day see His face. Mary rose from 
 the anointing of His feet to the anointing of His 
 head. While we see but His feet we are not yet 
 safe. We may turn away in disgust ; for they are 
 soiled, cut, and bleeding. But when once we see 
 His face we are safe for ever : Ostende faciem tuam et 
 salvi erimus. This is life eternal, when the veiling 
 clouds of created heaven and earth shall be rolled 
 away from before the face of the sun. Signatum est 
 super nos lumen vultus tui Domine, dedisti Icetitiam in 
 corde meo — " The light of Thy face is sealed upon 
 us ; Thou hast gladdened My heart." 
 
 ccLxni. 
 
 SHEEP OUTSIDE THE FOLD. 
 Nolite tiraere ; scio enira quod Jesum quEeritis. 
 
 " Fear not ; for I know you seek Jesus." 
 May we not say this of all those outside the 
 Church who are in good faith, who seek Him where 
 He is not to be found, in graves and the abodes of 
 death, instead of among the living ; who know but 
 
3ia GIFTS THAT COST. 
 
 a dead Christ, a past Christ, a human Christ, and 
 yet love what they know and as far as they know ; 
 and hasten in the early morning to do honour to 
 His sacred ashes ? If their little light kindles so 
 much love, can we doubt but that sooner or later 
 He will manifest Himself to them in His risen 
 glory, were it even at their last breath ? All genuine 
 goodness is not only ex Deo, but also in Deum ; it 
 derives from Truth and leads to Truth. For such 
 let us have no fear. Nolite timere : Jesum quceritis. 
 
 CCLXIV. 
 
 GIFTS THAT COST. 
 Pie Pelicane Jesu Domine. 
 
 God often likens His Divine affection for our 
 weakness and feebleness to that of the mother bird, 
 who gathers her brood under her wing for warmth 
 and protection. Yet since Nature's best symbols 
 are defective, legend tries to give us a better one in 
 the pelican, which not merely feeds its nestlings 
 with its life-blood ; but draws that stream from self- 
 inflicted wounds. Many will give; but few will 
 suffer in order to give. " Greater love hath no man 
 than this," that he should pour out his blood for 
 his friend ; and yet it is but a miserable echo of 
 the passionate cry of the Divine Lover, which forced 
 the Blood from His veins. Calix mens inebrians, quant 
 prcsclq,rug est / 
 
GOD'S LOVE NOT BLIND. 313 
 
 CCLXV. 
 god's love not blind. 
 
 Dico tibi Petre quia in hac nocte ter me negabis. 
 
 " I tell thee, Peter, that this very night thou 
 shalt deny Me thrice." If God should for an 
 instant raise the veil of the future and show us 
 one whom now we love and venerate and toil for 
 and all but idolize, fallen, degraded, hateful, and 
 estranged from us for ever, we should understand 
 better the tenderness of the Divine love which is so 
 often shadowed and saddened, but never chilled by 
 the clouds beyond our horizon. He loves us and 
 labours for us no less although He knows that His 
 love and labour will be in vain, although He sees 
 "within the green, the moulder'd tree." Tanttis 
 labor non sit cassus. 
 
 CCLXVI. 
 
 VANITY AND PRIDE. 
 Quid habes quod non accepisti ? 
 
 " What hast thou that thou hast not received ; 
 and if thou hast received, why boast as if thou 
 hadst not ? " The malice lies, not in glorying in 
 God's gifts ; but in forgetting that they are gifts. 
 St. Paul glories in his graces and labours and 
 successes ; but he says : Non ego sed gratia Dei mecum 
 — "Not I, but Christ in me." The " thorn in the 
 flesh " was left with him as a continual reminder of 
 the products of his originality. That was his own 
 entirely. Mary says : Fecit mihi magna — " He has 
 
314 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 done great things for me." She knew and con- 
 fessed herself Blessed among women ; she knew the 
 measure of her greatness far better than we know 
 it. Yet gratitude and humility are the only emotions 
 stirred by this knowledge. How much pleasanter 
 and more humble is the frankness of vanity than the 
 prudery of self-depreciation. It is no harm to think 
 that God has given us more than He has done, just 
 as it is no harm for a beggar to be enraptured with 
 the magnificence of some shabby garment he has 
 received ; for he has perhaps never seen anything 
 better. But however little we think our talents, it 
 is great harm to credit ourselves with the origination 
 of them. Indeed, it is the implicit supposition that 
 we are answerable for them that makes pseudo- 
 modesty shy of claiming too much. A man ought 
 to speak as simply of his mental and moral gifts as 
 of his stature or complexion or weight. Even were 
 they the greatest on earth, their greatness is but 
 relative to something very small. 
 
 CCLXVII. 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 Veni, Sancte Spiritus. 
 
 " Come, Holy Ghost." It is the taming effect of 
 passionate love which makes God IrLimsQli mansnetus, 
 meek and ready at our beck and call. We can say 
 to Him, "Go," and He goeth; "Come," and He 
 Cometh; "Do this," and He doeth it. "Behold, 
 I am in your midst as one who serveth," He con- 
 fesses. The priest's power over Him is simply 
 
THE FIOLY SPIRIT. 315 
 
 dominative ; often t)'rannical. Yet all can bind Him, 
 banish Him, determine His mo%'ements largely. 
 Ecce Rex tuus venit tibi mansuetus — " Lo, thy King 
 comes to thee submissive" — Come augel al richiamo, 
 like a hawk to the whistle, free by nature and 
 made to soar ; but drawn to earth by an invisible 
 chain. 
 
 (i) " Holy Spirit," i.e., the sigh of satisfied love 
 with which the Father looks upon His image in the 
 face of the Eternal Son : " He shall see of the travail 
 of His Soul and shall be satisfied." " This is My 
 beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." And as 
 mirror answers mirror, so that love and satisfaction 
 and sigh returns upon itself from the Son to the 
 Father and back to the Son, intertwining with itself 
 and weaving a new personality — the Spirit of Love. 
 
 (2) Spirit, i.e., the quickening principle — Domi- 
 num et vivificantem — bringing life from death. Emitte 
 spiritum tuum et creabzmtur, et renovabis faciern terrcs — 
 " Thou shalt send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall 
 be created, and Thou shalt renew the face of the 
 earth," turning winter into spring. "The words, 
 that I speak they are spirit and they are life." 
 " The spirit quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing." 
 " What is born of the flesh is flesh ; what is born 
 of the spirit is spirit." The flesh is corrupt nature 
 giving birth to works of corruption, whose wages is 
 death. The Spirit is the Paraclete dwelling in our 
 heart and will, making us both receive and love the 
 "words which I speak unto you," and giving birth 
 to the works of grace, whose reward is Eternal 
 Life — a greater Gift in the same order ; as we read : 
 
■<l6 FATHER OF THF. POOR. 
 
 " If thou knewest the Gift of God," namely, the 
 Living Water or the Holy Ghost, or Eternal Life, 
 or the Spirit which quickens our profitless flesh, 
 
 (3) Spirit, i.e., the formal principle; turning chaos 
 into cosmos. The principle of all beauty, which is 
 nothing else than a throwing off of the bonds and 
 restrictions of what is gross and material, and a 
 putting on of that which is heavenly, divine, 
 spiritual. Lava quod est sordidum, riga quod est 
 aridum, fove quod est frigidum, flecte quod est rigidum. 
 Sordid, dry, cold, rigid, are all attributes of gross 
 matter, opposite diametrically to the characteristics 
 jof spiritual beauty, and of that Spirit who is sub- 
 sistent Beauty. 
 
 CCLXVIIL 
 
 FATHER OF THE POOR. 
 Veni Pater pauperum. 
 
 " Father of the poor." We consider ourselves 
 absolved from further obligations if we relieve the 
 distressed; but feel no way bound to enter into 
 personal relationship with them or to create a 
 permanent tie. We give our money, but not 
 .ourselves. This is not enough. Nan qucsro donum 
 iuum sed te, God says to us in the person of His 
 poor — I seek, not your gift, but your self. " I was 
 XI father to the orphan," says Job. It is no true 
 .charity which does not spring from an inward 
 friendship of some sort. In becoming " our Father" 
 God shows us what charity means : " Behold, what 
 ■manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us 
 
LIGHT OF HEARTS. 317 
 
 that we should be and be called sons of God." He 
 gave us Himself; and became ours — our Father. 
 
 CCLXIX. 
 
 LIGHT OF HEARTS. 
 Veni lumen cordiutn. 
 
 (i) " Light of the heart." There is a heart-light 
 and a head-light, the former instinctive, leaping to 
 the truth by sympathy with the truth ; Qui facit 
 veritatem venit ad lumen; the latter a thin line of 
 light which, followed laboriously and perseveringly, 
 leads us out of the labyrinth of error. 
 
 (2) " Light of the heart." There is a darkness 
 and gloom of the affections no less than of the 
 intellect. Every lower affection stands out like a 
 dark cloud in contrast with those that are higher. 
 One alone — the love of God — is absolutely light 
 under all circumstances, and from it the rest borrow 
 their tints. 
 
 CCLXX. 
 
 THE BEST COMFORTER. 
 Consolator optime. 
 
 " Best of all Consolers." Not the only one, but 
 the best of all. God is the Deus totius consolaiionis — 
 the God of all consolation ; and it is He who moves 
 others to compassionate us, making them the in- 
 struments of His own pity and love. If we could 
 but hear His voice in theirs, their words would be 
 to us as a Divine message. Apart from Him what 
 do they avail ? Quando Jesus intus nan loquitur, 
 
3i8 THE BEST COMFORTER. 
 
 £onsolaUo vilis est; si autem J-esus unum tantum verhum 
 loquitur magna consolatio sentitur — " When Jesus 
 rspeaks not within us, all comfort is worthless; 
 but if Jesus speaks, were it only one word, 
 great is our consolation." How dead, formal, 
 commonplace everything sounds unless we can 
 feel that it is heaven-sent, from the Mover of all 
 hearts ! And if we would be good consolers our 
 pattern is this Consolator optime with His quiet, 
 peaceful, tactful ways : who fits Himself into our 
 -thought and mood as water enters into the pores 
 of a sponge ; not contradicting, rebuking, or mini- 
 mizing a grief which, small in itself, is great to our 
 littleness and weakness. He first makes Himself 
 one with us, and then insensibly makes us one with 
 Himself. Optime not only because love and pity 
 is best in its source, but because He alone knows 
 every cranny and winding, every little nerve-fibre 
 and capillary of our soul. Consolation addresses 
 the affections principally; the mind secondarily. 
 For it is the mere offering of sympathy and love 
 which salves the wound of sorrow, always and 
 necessarily. If words can also guide the suffering 
 mind skilfully away from its theme of bitterness, if 
 they can correct the magnifying illusions of passion; 
 if they can quicken hope for the future, gratitude 
 for the past and for much that is left in the present, 
 such words are golden. But there was much wisdom 
 and taste in the unwisest of consolers when they 
 " sat with Job on the earth seven days and seven 
 nights, and no one spake to him a word ; for they 
 saw that his grief was exceeding great." 
 
OUR GUEST. 319 
 
 CCLXXI. 
 
 OUR GUEST. 
 Dulcis hospes animae. 
 
 "Sweet Guest of the soul." A guest is one whom 
 ■we entertain to the best of our ability, and treat 
 punctiliously with all due ceremony and politeness. 
 One, moreover, who is not born in the house, and 
 from whom we are alien by blood ; who is not tied 
 to the house, but comes if allowed or invited ; and 
 goes, when he finds he is no longer welcome. God's 
 Holy Spirit is a stranger ; and yet in will and love 
 He is ours by ties closer than blood. He comes 
 knocking and begging for entertainment. " Behold 
 I stand at the door and knock ; if any man open I 
 will come in and sup with him," "make ready; for 
 I must eat the pasch at thy house." He does not 
 stand on ceremony, or exact unreasonable attend- 
 ance, or give unnecessary trouble ; and He is slow 
 to take offence, bearing with rudeness almost to the 
 verge of insult ; for His nobleness allows for our 
 rusticity and vulgarity. Surely He is a dulcis hospes 
 ■even to the least loving entertainers, dulcis, suavis, 
 £t mitis ; much more when He sees our poor efforts 
 to make Him feel at home in our filthy houses ; or 
 when, at least, we apologize with a Domine, non sum 
 dignus : Lord, I am not fit to receive Thee in my 
 house. 
 
320 FEARLESSNESS. 
 
 CCLXXII. 
 
 FEARFULNESS. 
 Timui te quia homo austerus es. 
 
 "I feared thee, for that thou wert an austere 
 man." Many " safe " people will be damned for 
 their mean conceptions of Almighty God. "Thou 
 wicked servant ; " He will say to them. Fear is a 
 contracting influence. What is done out of fear is 
 done propter aliud, as a means to an end, and is 
 therefore strictly measured to the end. What is 
 done out of love is done propter se, for its own sake, 
 and therefore the more liberally the better. Love 
 is an expansive influence. Excessive fear for one's 
 own safety blinds one's eyes to a real danger, and 
 so defeats itself. "Boldness is prudence" very 
 often; and he who watches the clouds will never 
 reap. " Out of thy own mouth will I condemn 
 thee," i.e., on thine own principles. For even fear 
 should make us tremble to keep our talent rusting 
 in the earth, when the command is, Negatiamini ! 
 Those who abstain from doing good for fear of 
 doing harm ; for fear of vanity, of inordinate affec- 
 tion, of dissipation, of the thousand certain venial 
 sins, and risks of mortal sins inseparable from the 
 service of others ; such " prudent " souls may expect 
 a like commendation. Serve nequam! — "Thou wicked 
 servant." One is safer fighting for God in the thick 
 of the fire, than skulking in the background for fear 
 of wasting powder. 
 
 " And let them advance," says St. Ignatius 
 
SATAN'S TACTICS. 321 
 
 Loyola, "in a spirit of love; not with the agitation 
 of fear." Conscientiousness is not timidity. One 
 who knows his heart is right with God, who 
 can say honestly, Tu scis quia amo te, has no 
 tormenting fear; but goes on straight. When we 
 mistrust the sincerity of our love, we begin to 
 analyze and test our every act. A skilful cyclist 
 never thinks of falling, a beginner thinks of nothing 
 else. The former is a figure of true conscientious- 
 ness, which is never self-conscious. " Lord, when 
 saw we Thee hungry and fed Thee?" It never 
 needs to purify its intention ; hardly knows what 
 an intention is. Talium est regnum cwlorum. Or 
 such child-like, direct, simple lovers is the Kingdom 
 of Heaven. 
 
 CCLXXIIL 
 
 s Itan's tactics. 
 
 Satanas expetivit vos. 
 
 "Satan has sought you out." The adversary 
 seeks out and selects with care and economy. 
 Percutiam pastor em et dispergentur oves gregis — " I will 
 smite the shepherd and then the sheep will be 
 scattered." It is against those who are likely to help 
 others largely, that he plots most insidiously and 
 perseveringly, since their fall is a multiple gain, a 
 seed of indefinite good destroyed. We see this in 
 the history of so many reformers who began well 
 and ended ill. He has sought you, i.e., the apostles 
 and founders of the Church. Truly he is to such 
 an hostis malignus — "a malicious enemy," rarely 
 assaulting violently or showing his hand, but 
 
 V 
 
RANSOM. 
 
 thwarting good every way, by imprudence, im- 
 patience, self-willed obstinacy, indiscreet intensity, 
 overwork, multifariousness, discouragement. Look 
 around and you will see everywhere good men 
 standing in their own light, crippled through their 
 own folly, and impeding others. 
 
 CCLXXIV. 
 
 RANSOM. 
 Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. 
 
 "Lead us not into temptation." Even in our 
 temptations and victories we are bound together 
 in God's sight, " If one member suffers, the rest 
 suffer with it." " Who is weak, and I am not 
 weak ? who is scandalized and I do not burn ? " I 
 cannot resist a temptation against faith, or purity, 
 or hope, or charity, without strengthening those 
 virtues in all who are bound up with me in any 
 way, nor can I yield without robbing them of a 
 grace. The Ransomers offered themselves as sub- 
 stitutes for those Christian captives whose faith 
 might yield to pressure beyond the average power 
 of resistance ; and mystics have taken upon them- 
 selves, under Divine guidance, the burden of temp- 
 tations under which weaker souls might have 
 sunk. It is but a corollary of the " Law of 
 Christ : " Alter alterius onera portate — " Bear ye one 
 another's, burdens." "Blessed is the man that 
 endureth temptation," for he is eo ipso an endless 
 cause of graces to others. So on this principle we 
 are told to pray. Ne respicias peccata mea sed fidem 
 
GOD IN EVERY SOLACE. 323 
 
 ecclesia tuee sandce eamque — " Look not to my sins, 
 but to the faith of thy Church." 
 
 CCLXXV. 
 
 GOD IN EVERY SOLACE. 
 Qxx\ consoiatur humiles, consolatus est nos Deus in adventu Titi. 
 " God who comforts the lowly, comforted us in 
 the arrival of Titus." Notice how St. Paul regards 
 all human consolers as instruments of the " God of 
 all consolation." He it is who "prepares the heart," 
 and draws men to love one another, and loves us 
 in their love, and loves them in ours. Of the two 
 it is more important to see God as the All-mover, 
 than as the All-maker and Sustainer, for thus we 
 realize how continually active He is in our regard. 
 Most of all do we live in His presence if we feel 
 Him as Mover of hearts, of our own and others. 
 Omnes in eo, et eum in omnibus amando, says Ignatius. 
 How hard when misunderstood ! how easy when 
 understood 1 
 
 CCLXXVI. 
 
 VARIOUS TONGUES. 
 Loquebantur Apostoli variis Unguis magnalia Del. 
 
 "The Apostles spoke with many tongues the 
 great things of God." Their theme was, the 
 magnalia Dei, the great things and mysteries of 
 God's love, everything that could enslave men's 
 hearts to the " unknown " and much misrepresented 
 God. Variis Unguis prout Spiritus dabat eis eloqui— 
 " With various tongues, as the Spirit gave them 
 
324 WISDOM AND UTTERANCE. 
 
 utterance." This is the apostolic vocation, to be 
 able to speak to each heart in its own language, 
 "all things to all." This is a discernment which 
 God's Spirit gives, the true and only eloquence. 
 Many-sided and many-tongued, and yet single- 
 hearted and sincere. What is the tongue of fire 
 but the language of love, love of God and of men ; 
 a strong desire to make men see God aright and be 
 happy in that sight ? Where there is a will there 
 is a way. This love, like a subtle flame, will find 
 its way to the heart through some crack or crevice ; 
 it will hit on the right word, the happy mood or 
 manner; it will even be patient and discreet, and 
 will hold back for greater eventual advantage, but it 
 will never rest. " Parthians, Medes, Elamites, 
 inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, 
 Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Paraphilia, Egypt, 
 the parts of Lybia about Gyrene, Jews, Proselytes, 
 Cretes, and Arabians." What a medley of tongues ! 
 and yet what is it compared with the number of 
 heart-languages we must know if we would make 
 known the magnalia Dei to all sorts and conditions 
 of men. 
 
 CGLXXVII. 
 
 WISDOM AND UTTERANCE. 
 
 Dabo vobis os et sapientiam, cui non poterunt resistere adversarii 
 vestri. 
 
 " I will give you utterance and wisdom which 
 
 your enemies cannot resist." Both are gifts and 
 
 fruits of the Gift, os no less than sapientia. Neither 
 
 is any use for the Apostle without the other. Os, 
 
 or expression, is not the bare statement of truth. 
 
ART AND HOLINESS. 325 
 
 nor is wisdom the bare apprehension of dogmas. 
 Wisdom is a comprehensive, loving intelligence of 
 God and man. Expression is the happy and 
 beautiful utterance of the truth, and of our love of 
 it. The study of expression, rightly understood, is 
 as imperative on the Apostle as the study of wisdom. 
 If both are studied in the orator's or advocate's 
 spirit, the result is "pulpit oratory," "sacred 
 eloquence." If studied with a single view to the 
 end, the result is unstudied. A little love does 
 more than years of study, if only there be some 
 mother-wit to steer it. It lights up the mind and 
 loosens the tongue. Most men are clever and 
 eloquent about what they love, if it were only a 
 sport or a vice. 
 
 CCLXXVIII. 
 
 ART AND HOLINESS. 
 
 Quorum si specie delectati deos putaverunt, sciant quanto his 
 Dominator eorum speciosior est. 
 
 " If delighted by their beauty they hold these 
 things as Divine, let them know that their Ruler 
 is still more beautiful; for it is the Author of all 
 beauty who has made these things." Justice, 
 according to Aristotle, if it be produced to infinity 
 or to perfection, must involve fortitude and temper- 
 ance ; and fortitude in its perfection is justice 
 and temperance ; and so of all virtues, which are 
 but facets of one virtue or honestas. In like manner, 
 the love of God's beauty, when pure and perfect, 
 means the love of His holiness ; and the ardent love 
 of His holiness, entrains the love of His beauty. 
 
3a6 ART AND HOLINESS. 
 
 From all quarters souls are drawn to this Centre, 
 which is Beauty and Holiness indistinctly, and as 
 they approach nearer, they become more like one 
 another. The prophets, especially David and Isaias, 
 discern beauty in holiness; the poets, holiness in 
 beauty. Their paths differ, their end is one. The 
 philosopher sees holiness and beauty in truth. 
 
 Still the love of what is sesthetically beautiful does 
 not necessarily lead to the love of God, unless God 
 is explicitly recognized as its source. This explicit 
 recognition is a philosophic conception to which 
 artistic souls of even the highest order may be blind. 
 Also, God is many-sided, and to recognize Him only 
 as the Archetype and First Lover of the aesthetically 
 beautiful, makes Him lovable under that aspect 
 alone. If the eye has never been opened to moral 
 beauty in creatures, if the taste for the noble and 
 pure in human conduct has never been formed or 
 developed, the soul will be blind to that aspect of 
 the Divine loveliness which leads to holiness of life. 
 Hence we find the love of zesthetic beauty compatible 
 with the absence of all personal love of God, or ol 
 personal love of the Divine holiness. And also 
 we find a love of moral beauty compatible (as in 
 pagans), with an absence of all personal love of 
 God, or of personal love of the Divine beauty. But 
 they are not few whose eye has been opened wide 
 to the beautiful in every realm, and to the one 
 source from which it flows in diverging streams, 
 and to which those streams converge and return. 
 
 In some sense Deo gratias ought to rise more 
 readily in our heart, in the presence of the beauty of 
 
BENDING AND BREAKING. 327 
 
 art, than before that of nature. This, no doubt, to 
 some extent, because good art interprets nature, and 
 points out her lovableness, and leads the way in 
 praise. But also, and chiefly, perhaps, because the 
 soul perceiving and loving nature's beauty, is a far 
 more beautiful work of God, than any which we find 
 in physical nature. Nature's jewels receive a 
 thousand-fold brilliancy from this spiritual setting in 
 the mind and heart of man ; a faint reflex of the 
 radiancy which belongs to their archetypes, as they 
 lie embedded in the Eternal Thought and Love of 
 God. As seen through the medium of the Divine 
 Essence they are divinized ; so, seen through that 
 of created intelligence, they are spiritualized. 
 
 CCLXXIX. 
 
 BENDING AND BREAKING. 
 Flecte quod est rigidum. 
 
 "Bend the rigid." The transition from the 
 right line to any curve is by infinitesimal gradations 
 which elude the subtlest mind and can only be 
 expressed in approximations. So God's workings 
 upon the heart and will. The change is there, but 
 how it comes about we cannot tell. We can only 
 say, "This I know, whereas I was Wind, now I 
 see." In our dealings with others, we might well 
 emulate this gentle and insensible method of work- 
 ing, bending and not breaking. Our precipitation 
 and abruptness often mars a good work. 
 
328 GOD OF MY HEART. 
 
 CCLXXX. 
 
 GOD OF MY HEART. 
 
 Defecit caro mea et cor meum. Deus, Deus cordis mei, et pars 
 mea in seternum. 
 
 "My heart and my flesh faileth. God, is the 
 God of my heart and my portion for ever." The 
 flesh, that is, the weakness of our sensitive nature, 
 often shrinks and fails while the heart is yet sound 
 and unmoved. Spiritus quidem promptus caro autem 
 infirma — " The spirit is willing, but the flesh weak ; " 
 but at times the heart too fails and grows cold 
 and apathetic, and we have to fall back on the 
 merely spiritual will, unassisted by the sympathy of 
 the emotions. Ccepit tceAere et mcestus esse — " He 
 began to be weary and sad." It is hard to do what 
 we have no heart in, for heart is courage (cosur). As 
 our nature is constituted, will, without enthusiasm, 
 can scarcely keep us up to the mark, much less carry 
 us beyond it. Deus, Deus cordis mei. He is God of 
 my love — what the sun is to the flower it unseals 
 and expands, and draws after it. Love is courage, 
 mihil fortius amore — nothing stronger. Again, it is 
 God alone who can change and inflect my heart 
 when it has steeled itself against all other impres- 
 sions, and grown callous to the stimulus of faith and 
 reason. Cor regis in manu Dei — " The king's heart 
 is in God's hand." Again, relying on His power 
 and promise I can take heart and courage ; viriliter 
 age, confortetur cor tuum et sustine Dominum. 
 
 Et pars mea in ceternum — " And my portion for 
 
DAVWS CRY. 329 
 
 ever." As the Levite was portionless among the 
 children of Israel, so the priest of Christ finds 
 spouse and child, father and mother, and all else in 
 the Mystical Bride. In its purity, there is no 
 human love so fair, so deep, so high, as that which 
 the priest bears towards the sheep and the lambs. 
 It is that affedus Divinus of the Good Shepherd 
 Himself, blent with a crushing sense of the awful 
 contrast between the office and the office-bearer. 
 As the type is high and difficult, so the impression 
 is mostly blurred and blotched, and perhaps only 
 here and there a Cur6 d'Ars finds every affection of 
 his heart drawn out and strained to the full, but 
 most of us feel at odd moments that which ought to 
 be habitual. If one realized what a priest should 
 be, no one would ever get ordained. God has to 
 be content with such rubbish as He gets. 
 
 CCLXXXI. 
 
 David's cry. 
 
 Ego dixi, Domine; miserere mei ; sana animam meam, quia 
 peccavi tibi. 
 
 " I said. Lord, spare me ; hoal my soul, for I have 
 sinned against Thee." Ego dixi. There are in every 
 life such epoch-marking dictiones, internal eclaircisse- 
 ments; flashes that break out into words and fiats, like 
 the creative ^a<s of God. They are but the locutiones 
 Dei; the whisperings of the Holy Spirit echoed 
 by the heart, and flung out in the speech they fashion 
 for themselves. Ego dixi, nunc capi. Ego dixi, omnis 
 homo mendax. Ego dixi, custadiam vias meas — " I 
 
330 DAVID'S CRY. 
 
 must begin at once;" "I must not rely upon men;" 
 " I must be on my guard." All these are David's 
 "lights." And now he cries: Domine, miserere mei — 
 " Lord, spare me." A sudden light as to his deep 
 sinfulness ; his need, not merely of pity (who does 
 not need that ?) but of forgiveness ; a sense of an 
 uplifted rod, and a shrinking from the all-consuming 
 anger of God. Peccavi nimis ; mea maxima culpa ; a 
 sense of friendship broken; of love treacherously 
 wounded : of a separation worse than death. Deiis 
 propitius esto mihi peccatori. Sana animam meant. To 
 have sinned against God, is to have rent the soul like 
 a plant from its root in God's Heart ; to have left it 
 torn, and bleeding to death. As far as lies in me, I 
 have also rent the root and left that Heart wherein I 
 grew, lacerated and bleeding from a freshly-opened 
 wound. Yet it is thither I must turn, as to my 
 physician for cure and comfort, to be taken up and 
 re-engrafted and bound closely to it, till every trace 
 of the rupture is obliterated. Sana me, Domine, et 
 sanabor ! So, "wounded and half dead," I cry to the 
 Good Samaritan, as He passes by the way ; and He 
 comes, compassionate, to bind me up, pouring in oil 
 and wine. Sana me, Domine. So I cry from the very 
 tomb and from the stench of my corruption ; and He 
 comes and stands over the ruins of His loved one, 
 and weeps and cries, Veni foras ! Solvite et dimittite. 
 Quia peccavi tibi. Tibi ! what a plea for pity ! We 
 should not go to those whom we have injured for help. 
 Contrariwise we should say : Heal me, for at least I 
 have done you no harm. Does it not mean rather; 
 To none other would I dare turn for pardon after such 
 
CARNAL AFFECTIONS. 331 
 
 offence ; but it is against Thee, the all-pardoning, I 
 have sinned. Or is it that sin is our especial title tO' 
 His mercy, who is the friend of publicans and sinners ; 
 sent to the sick, not to the whole ; to the lost sheep 
 of Israel ? Or does it mean that this is the gravest 
 of wounds, the bitterest death, the most pitiable of 
 all miseries, the one misery, to have sinned against 
 Thee, the all-loving life of our soul, to have been torn 
 from that root : and so God's pity must forget His 
 wrong in the sight of our extreme wretchedness ? 
 
 CCLXXXII. 
 
 CARNAL AFFECTIONS. 
 
 Omnem carnalem affectum erga sanguine junctos exuant eumque 
 in spiritualem convertant. 
 
 " Let them put off all carnal affection towards 
 their kindred," says Loyola, "and convert it into 
 spiritual." The purification, as opposed to the 
 eradication of our natural affections, is here pre- 
 scribed. It is a " conversion " which means the 
 passage of the same matter from one form to 
 another ; the mode of love, and not the affectioa 
 itself, is to be altered. What was defective, the 
 element of weakness, selfishness, and corruption, is- 
 to be purged out ; and it is to be changed into the 
 noblest and deepest and divinest form of natural love 
 such as fits the Christian ; a love that will suffer 
 separation, that will not shrink from paining the 
 belcve 1 ; firm, enduring, spiritual, tender. Parental,, 
 filial, fraternal, conjugal love, present an infinite 
 variety of types; from what is low and all but 
 
332 NEGLECTED CALLS. 
 
 animal, up to the love of Christ and Mary, and John 
 and Lazarus, and Magdalene. In the Recti d'un 
 Sceur, we have beautiful types of intense, yet wholly 
 ■spiritualized natural affections ; deep-hearted, tender, 
 binding souls closer to one another, and thereby 
 •closer to God. No "natural" affection is carnal; 
 if by " natural," we mean what befits the nobleness 
 of humanity ; and by " carnal " that which is selfish 
 and evanescent. 
 
 CCLXXXIII. 
 
 NEGLECTED CALLS. 
 Arnica, ascende superius. 
 
 " Friend, move up higher." When God gives 
 grace for a higher ascent in any virtue, in purity or 
 charity or humility. He refuses us all help and co- 
 operation for anything else. "This, or nothing," 
 He seems to say. Some experience sudden lapses 
 of strength where they were strong before. God 
 wants them to come up higher. Their seat is taken 
 away and put nearer to His. If they try to sit 
 down where they are, they must take the conse- 
 quences. Others lower down may hold their seats 
 in security. Theirs is higher up or nowhere. 
 
 CCLXXXIV. 
 
 HUMAN FRAILTY. 
 Simon dermis ? Sic non potuistis una hora vigilare mecum ! 
 
 " Simon, are you asleep ? And so you could 
 not watch with Me even ■ for an hour." A deeper, 
 wider knowledge of our own weakness will make 
 
HOLY COMMUNION. 335 
 
 US gentle towards ingratitude and save us from 
 cynicisn; and bitterness. Is there any limit to our 
 own thanklessness ? Our Lord teaches us a lesson 
 here, when His only rebuke to His Apostles is- 
 to excuse them : Caro autem infirma — " Flesh is- 
 weak." Spiritus quidem promptus ; the will is sincere 
 enough, but memory is feeble; impressions soon 
 die away; absence obhterates as effectively as- 
 death ; other cares and interests crowd the narrow- 
 ness of our heart. The ingratitude of mere 
 forgetfulness and inconsideration seems to me 
 the most excusable thing in the world ; and the 
 meanness of those who are always looking for 
 gratitude, and measuring their receipts with their 
 expenditure, is much more reprehensible. " Give,, 
 expecting nothing in return," is the Divine counsel 
 and the Divine practice ; and blessed are they that 
 expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed. 
 
 CCLXXXV. 
 
 HOLY COMMUNION. 
 Panem de coelo praestitisti eis. 
 
 " Thou gavest them bread from Heaven." Israel 
 clamours for the comforts of captivity, the ilesh- 
 pots of Egypt, and God gives them beyond all 
 they desire or deserve — manna from heaven; the 
 food of angels, of God's free children. Ecce pants 
 angelorum, facUis cibus viatorum; vere panis filiorum. 
 Our soul at times hankers for the seeming ease of 
 past slavery ; our imagination throws a halo round 
 its seeming sweets, and blinds us to its bitterness 
 
-334 HOLY COMMUNION. 
 
 and degradation. Things visible seem alone to be 
 real ; things invisible, unreal, shadowy, intangible. 
 Anima nostra jam nauseat super cibo isto levissimo; 
 our soul revolts against this ethereal, supernatural 
 -diet. We crave for what is coarse, strong, pungent ; 
 " we remember the fish that we ate in Egypt free- 
 cost ; the cucumbers come to our mind, and the 
 melons and the leeks and the onions and the 
 garlic." But against the dehrium of positivism, 
 reason and faith assure us that love is the life of 
 the soul; and as the food is, such is the life. If 
 God be the food and fuel of our love, then our 
 every natural love is divinized and intensified. If 
 we feed on the bread of angels, our whole appetite 
 is healed and rectified ; if on the husks of swine, 
 • our relish for everything higher is destroyed. He 
 who has once tasted and discerned the distinctive 
 flavour of this manna will recognize it as that which 
 in some degree or other gives relish to every other 
 food of the purified affections. 
 
 Omne delectamentum in se habenfem. — Containing 
 in itself, as has been said, all the lovableness of 
 every lovable creature, as the sun is warmer than 
 aught which his rays warm. Yet not all taste that 
 sweetness, and to some whose palate is disordered 
 it tastes bitter. Its sacramental effect is to sweeten 
 . our whole tone and banish all sourness and cynicism, 
 to kill every creeping "root of bitterness." 
 
THE BREAD OF THE POOR. 335 
 
 CCLXXXVI. 
 
 THE BREAD OF THE POOR. 
 Edent pauperes et saturabuntur. 
 
 (i) " The poor shall eat and shall be satisfied." 
 God is no Dives to let Lazarus hunger for the 
 crumbs of His table; but brings him to sit in 
 wedding-garments at His right hand; serves him 
 (transiens ministrabit) and gives him to the full 
 of all that He has, giving Himself who is all — 
 saturabuntur; they shall be satisfied. It is for 
 the poor this Banquet is primarily prepared — 
 pauperes evangelisantur. Their title is their poverty, 
 misery, rags, diseases, sores. The rich are there 
 on sufferance, and so long only as they recognize 
 that their wealth is begged and borrowed. No 
 room for the Pharisee, the self-righteous ! Room 
 for the publicans and harlots ! Esurientes implevit 
 bonis, et divites dimisit inanes — " He hath filled the 
 hungry, and sent away the full." 
 
 (2) Et laudabunt Dominum qui requirunt ilium — 
 "And they shall praise the Lord who seek Him." 
 Those who seek must find, and those who find must 
 praise. 
 
 (3) Vivent corda eorum in sceculum sceculi — " Their 
 hearts shall live for ever and ever." For he that 
 €ateth hath eternal life, the life of the heart, which 
 is love, personal, intimate : the love of an unfaiHng 
 friend, " one that sticketh closer than a brother." 
 Sine amico non potes bene vivere. The heart that 
 loves no one is dead : " a handful of dust." 
 
336 ANGELS' FOOD. 
 
 CCLXXXVII. 
 
 angels' food. 
 
 Panem coeli dedit eis ; panem angelorum manducavit homo. 
 
 " He gave them bread from heaven, and man 
 did eat angels' food." Angels' food, i.e., the food of 
 the pure. Neque nubent, neque nubeniur, sed erunt 
 sicut angeli Dei — " They neither marry nor are 
 given in marriage, but are as the angels of God." 
 It is the food of the illuminated : for the pure 
 shall see God, as clear water images the sun. 
 Angeli eorum semper vident faciem Patris. The angels 
 behold the face of God, not inferentially, but in- 
 tuitively. Christ is the bread of angels, i.e., on 
 whom the angels feed their love ; who sates their 
 longing for truth. Himself their Truth and their 
 Life. Again, He is the bread of angels, namely, 
 the bread that makes us as angels, us, so carnal, 
 dim-sighted, gross-minded, in every way unangelic. 
 Here lies the mystery of Divine pity: Ecce panis 
 angelorum, /actus cibus viatorum ; vere panis filiorum 
 non mittendus canibus — " Lord, it is not meet to take 
 the children's bread and to cast it to the dogs." Yet 
 what does God care about proprieties and meetness 
 when the souls of sinners are in question ? He has 
 no sense of dignity or stand-off self-respect, but runs 
 forward, with all the weakness of passionate love, 
 to meet us in our rags and filth, while we are yet a 
 long way off ; and weeps, and kisses us, and clothes 
 and crowns us, and banquets us, and goes on like 
 one beside himself for ecstasy and joy. "And in 
 
ANGELS' FOOD. 337 
 
 the pursuit of his love the custom of mankind allows 
 him [the lover] to do many strange things. ... He 
 may pray and entreat, and supplicate and swear, and 
 be a servant of servants, and lie on a mat at the 
 door."^ All these "strange things" does the Divine 
 Lover, yet one more strange than all : 
 
 O res mirabilis ! manducat Dominum 
 Pauper servus at humilis ! 
 
 " O marvel ! that the poor and lowly slave should 
 feed upon his Lord 1 " These last words are of one 
 whom the bread of angels made angelic ; singular 
 for the virginal purity of his heart, for the clear 
 depth of his calm, intellectual gaze; who seemed 
 even on earth to " behold the face " of Truth, not 
 climbing and crawling by laborious inference, 
 but leaping by intuition from summit to summit, 
 sure-footed as an antelope, saliens super monies — 
 " leaping along the mountain crags," by the inspi- 
 ration of Divine love — that best of enlighteners, 
 which reveals the Father even to those parvuli 
 whose angels behold His face. They are true 
 words from the same true heart that conceived the 
 Verbum supernum, the Pange lingua, the Adoro Te, 
 and the Lauda Sion? It is the same Angel who has 
 
 ' Plato, Sym. 
 
 " Sc, St. Thomas Aquinas, of whom one has said: "Unam 
 canendi materiam sumpsit Doctor Angelicus; eamdemque divinitatis 
 atque excellentiae plenissimam, adeo angelicam, ab ipsis angelis 
 celebratam ac adoratam. Est venerabilis sacramenti laudator 
 Thomas summus, quem non sine numinis afflatu cecinisse credas ; 
 nee mireris, sanctum poetam postquam hoc unum carminis thema 
 spiritale, et pene celeste tam praeclare, nee dicam unice, absolverit, 
 prorsus in posterum obticuisse. Peperit semel, sed leonem." 
 W 
 
338 THE JOY OF OUR YOUTH. 
 
 given us the Office and the Mass of the Blessed 
 Eucharist; who is the Church's chosen exponent 
 and guardian of the doctrine of this central mystery; 
 to whom Christ Himself, unable to contain His 
 love, broke out from the silent cruciiix : " Well hast 
 thou written of Me. What reward do you ask ? " 
 and he : " Thyself, Lord : 
 
 Ut te revelata cernens facie, 
 Visu sim beatus tuas glorias." 
 
 CCLXXXVIII. 
 
 THE JOY OF OUR YOUTH. 
 Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui Ijetificat juventutem meam. 
 
 " I will go unto the altar of God, who rejoiceth 
 my youth ; " " who filleth thy mouth with good 
 things so that thy youth is renewed like the 
 eagle's ; " innocence and freshness is restored ; and 
 the leprous, sinful flesh comes fair and soft as the 
 flesh of a little child.^ All food to some extent 
 revives us, repairs the ravages of time, and puts us 
 back towards our younger self; not towards the 
 youth of immaturity and weakness, but towards that 
 of full freshness and vigour. The Bread of Life 
 restores us not merely to the immature, negative 
 innocence of Baptism, but to the lost strength of 
 riper days and to greater ; to that positive innocence 
 and simplicity which is the last goal of our endea- 
 vour. " Ye must become as little children ; " not 
 by going back, but by going forward; not by 
 "becoming little children," but "as little children," 
 
 ^ 4 Kings V. 14. 
 
THE JOY OF OUR YOUTH. 339 
 
 who are lovable for what they are not, rather than 
 what they are; for what they know not, than for 
 what they know ; for what they may be, and yet will 
 not be; for the pathetic contrast between the 
 promise and the fruit. It is merely as a symbol of 
 the spiritual that childhood is put before us to 
 imitate. As soon as reason wakes, negative sim- 
 plicity gives place to positive egoism and involution, 
 self-consciousness, complex vanity, and it is only 
 the successful watchfulness and restraint of years 
 that at last purifies and simplifies and induces that 
 mature childhood so dear to God. 
 
 " God, who gives joy to my youth." The joy 
 especially of hope, which is large in the young: 
 untaught, unembittered by the disappointments and 
 failures of life. Hope which rests on so negative 
 a basis as ignorance cannot stand out many years. 
 But the hope which characterizes the youth of 
 mature grace is founded in knowledge and faith 
 and intelligent confidence — the virtue most needed 
 for those souls who see more deeply into the rotten- 
 ness of human affairs, who feel more keenly the 
 disappointments of life — which, after all, has been 
 designed by God to raise great aspirations and dis- 
 appoint them. It is a glorious virtue, not in narrow 
 souls who can afford to be optimist because they 
 ■see little and feel less, but in those who without faith 
 would be cast in the lowest abyss of pessimistic 
 despair; as, e.g., Job, wildered with perplexity; 
 ■condemned to distrust and unbelief by every current 
 platitude and moral nostrum, and yet holding firm 
 to the rock that seemed to totter and yield and sink 
 
340 THE JOY OF OUR YOUTH. 
 
 with him. "Though He should slay me," i.e., 
 though He should do even more than He has done 
 to give the lie to my every preconceived idea of Him, 
 "yet will I hope in Him." Or Dante, of whom 
 Beatrice says : 
 
 La chiesa militante alcun figliuolo 
 Non ha con piu speranza.^ 
 
 And yet in whom would despair have been more 
 excusable ? It was his insight into the Divine Name 
 and Nature that saved him. 
 
 Ma quei la distillo nel mio cor pria 
 Che fu sommo cantor del sommo Duce. 
 " Sperino in Te " nell' alta Teodia 
 Dice " color che sanno '1 nome Tuo " 
 E chi nol sa s'egli ha la fede mia ? ^ 
 
 This is that joy of which it is written, "Ye shall 
 weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; ye 
 shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned 
 into joy ; and your joy no man taketh from you." 
 
 " God, who rejoices my youth." The sportive- 
 ness of youth is nature's effort to relax the pressure 
 of superabundant vital energy, by "an alleviating 
 discharge" or catharsis. Amor currit et non fatigatiir ; 
 vult esse sursum. There are saints so full of the 
 energy of Divine love that they do not know what 
 to do with their strength; crosses are their play- 
 
 * Among her sons, not one more full of hope 
 Hath the Church Militant. (Dante, Paradise, xxv.) 
 
 ' He first infused this hope into my heart 
 Who sang in highest strains the Highest's praise. 
 "Let all men hope in Thee," His anthem runs, 
 "That understand Thy Name," and who is he 
 That understands not, vet hath faith like mine ? (Ibii.) 
 
WAITING IN SILENCE. 341 
 
 things ; as they were His who with the Cross on 
 His shoulder, " exulted as a giant to run His 
 course ; " rejoiced in the feat of strength as a relief 
 for a surcharged Heart. A certain gaiety is the 
 characteristic of childhood or kittenhood, the mere 
 animal gaiety of inconsideration, of a fool's paradise. 
 But the gaiety of one who sees and tastes the 
 bitterness of life ; which is founded on faith that 
 stands above the storm and looks down on it, is no 
 less than the gloss and finish of heroic hope. There 
 is the laughter of Democritus, and the laughter 
 of the angels ; of contemptuous cynicism and 
 of sympathetic, tolerant, Christian magnanimity. 
 These childlike beauties are always decaying and 
 aging — faith, lowliness, blind confidence, light- 
 hearted hopefulness. They need renewing day by 
 day. " Can a man when he is old enter into his 
 mother's womb and be born again ? " asks Nico- 
 demus. Yet in the order of grace there is a 
 " second spring " which sometimes supervenes upon 
 a dead winter ere the year of life closes. 
 
 CCLXXXIX. 
 
 WAITING IN SILENCE. 
 Bonum est przestolari cum silentio salutare Dei. 
 
 " It is good to wait for God's salvation in 
 silence," and to keep calm while others shriek and 
 lose their heads. It is great worship when one who 
 sees deeply and widely into the causes of evil and 
 sees no issue or hope, yet has unwavering faith and 
 expectancy that God can call from putrefaction to 
 
342 PUBLIC WORSHIP. 
 
 life. With the shallow optimist whose confidence 
 springs from his ignorance of the true extent of evil 
 and from a lazy love of smooth beliefs, it is good 
 and wholesome to play the pessimist. For his hope 
 is a bastard hope. There can be no true hope till 
 there is danger of despair. But to him who is in 
 danger of pessimism, not from cynical sympathy 
 with it, but from weakness of faith, we must preach 
 the true optimism : Quare tristis es, anima mea ? et quare 
 conturbas me ? Spera in Deo, quoniam adhuc confitebor 
 illi : salutare vultus met, et Deus meus. 
 
 " In silence : " the silence not merely of the 
 tongue, but of the reason and of the heart ; that 
 oriental tranquillity which should characterize an 
 intelligent belief in Providence even more than a 
 belief in fate and necessity. Scripture is full of this 
 patience and quiet of hope. Expecta Dominum; 
 Expectans expectavi : Sustinuit anima mea in verba ejus 
 "Wait on the Lord; rest in Him; trust Him" — 
 the attitude of those who watch for the morning, 
 knowing that it is surely coming, and that fretting 
 will not hasten it. 
 
 ccxc. 
 
 PUBLIC WORSHIP. 
 
 Vota mea Domino reddam in conspectu omnis populi ejus ; id 
 atriis domus Domini, in medio tui Jerusalem. 
 
 " I will pay my vows to the Lord in the sight of 
 all His people; in the courts of the house of the 
 Lord, even in thy midst, O Jerusalem." According 
 as we feel our own language, our mental imagery 
 and expression, to be absolutely inadequate to 
 
SELF-CONTEMPT. 343 
 
 embody our due reverence and homage to the 
 Host, so ought we love a High Mass or a Corpus 
 Christi pageant, which is the Church's nobler 
 (though feeble) utterance of that conception. We 
 love the poet who shows us what we wanted to 
 say, and who says it for us as we could never 
 say it. Holy Church is here our poet. Confiteantur 
 tibi populi Deus, confiteantur tihi populi omnes — 
 " Let all peoples give thanks to Thee, O God." 
 There is something satisfying and stirring in 
 every public confession of God — a joy one misses 
 largely in irreligious countries. One has felt it 
 seeing the streets cleared and lined with kneeling 
 crowds on either side, while a feeble old man passed 
 along, bearing under a canopy a white wafer in a 
 crystal case ; or, as at Kreuzberg, when crowds or 
 strong men gather round the Stations with out- 
 stretched arms and pray aloud to the poor GalHlean 
 carpenter of two thousand years ago. It is in such 
 moments one feels the heroism and glory of faith 
 by which man rises above the apparent and visible, 
 and lays hold of the real and unseen substance ol 
 things. It is essentially the victory of reason and 
 spirit over sense and imagination. 
 
 CCXCI. 
 
 SELF-CONTEMPT. 
 Domine, non est exaltatum cor meum. 
 
 " Lord, my heart is not lifted up ; I am not high- 
 minded." As all pride is some form of smallness and 
 narrowness, so humihty is a part of magnanimity, 
 
344 CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 little as it appears in the picture of Aristotle's 
 "magnanimous man." So far as humility means 
 self-contempt, it is plain that only the narrowest 
 view of the world, and a comparison of ourselves 
 with the smallest of standards, could support an 
 arrogant self-estimate in any department. So far 
 as it means veneration and respect for others, it 
 means a generous, broad-minded love of humanity, 
 which is only possible to those who rise up to God's 
 standpoint and enter into sympathy with His Divine 
 affection. Else self-contempt were compatible with 
 cynicism and bitterness, which is always narrow 
 and feeble. The self-contempt of humility is not 
 even bitter towards self, but patient and good- 
 humoured, and never surprised at anything. 
 
 CCXCII. 
 
 CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 
 
 Nisi granum frumenti cadens in terram mortuum fuerit ipsum 
 solum manet. 
 
 " Unless the grain die, it abides alone ; if it die, 
 it will bear fruit." There is a two-fold way of 
 looking on life even from a Christian point of view. 
 Either we may regard the disappointments, failures, 
 vexations, and crosses, as incidental and secondary ; 
 as a bitter tonic which gives flavour to the sweets ; 
 as stimuli to greater exertion and progress ; as the 
 mere growing-pains of the world's happiness. Or else 
 we may look on the world as in some sense designed 
 to disappoint, by raising our aspirations to what it 
 can never give. This is to make it simply an instru- 
 
CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 343 
 
 ment of man's moral development before all things. 
 It cannot be doubted that sorrow and labour and 
 the cross in every form draw out the deepest and 
 noblest chords from the soul; or, that as a certain 
 law of duality makes the knowledge of evil and 
 deformity a necessary foil for our knowledge of 
 goodness and beauty; so to have tasted sorrow 
 seems a required predisposition for our apprecia- 
 tion of the contrary joy. " It behoved Christ to 
 suffer, and thus to enter into His glory," may 
 really be a psychological law for humanity in the 
 natural order : it may be necessarily through many 
 tribulations that we have to enter God's Kingdom. 
 In this view, if aught succeeds or goes well for a time, 
 it is but to give us breathing-space to gather strength 
 for more endurance ; or to give us a fore-glimpse of 
 that eventual prevalence of truth and right for which 
 we hope against hope. In a certain limited sense 
 this view of life might be called pessimistic, in that 
 it regards the bright spots as incidental and sub- 
 ordinate to the vast sombre hue which forms the 
 groundwork of life — mere oases in a desert. Still 
 faith and hope line all this clouding with gold, so 
 that optimism more truly describes the position ; 
 though it is not the optimism which flecks an 
 Italian sky with a fleecy cloudlet here and there to 
 throw out the depth of its blue. 
 
346 TOLERANCE. 
 
 CCXCIII. 
 
 TOLERANCE, 
 
 Sit potius universalis quidam amor qui partes omnes etsi inter S&-. 
 dissidentes in Domino amplectatur. 
 
 " Let there be rather a world-wide love which 
 embraces in the Lord all parties, however discordant 
 amongst themselves." This is Ignatian in the best, 
 sense. He does not require apathetic indifference, 
 or an extinction of natural propensions, but the- 
 inclusion of all that is good in them in something- 
 higher and nobler ; as contraries are said to meet in^ 
 their common cause. He does not say : " embrace 
 no cause," but "embrace all;" — not that one can. 
 embrace contrary parties as parties ; but as a father 
 may love both his children who are at enmity with. 
 one another. For there is a perverted truth in every 
 error; and a distorted sense of justice at the- 
 bottom of every conflict. 
 
 CCXCIV. 
 
 DIMENSIONS OF CHARITY. 
 
 Ut possitis comprehendere cum omnibus Sanctis, quse sit latitude,, 
 et longitude, et sublimitas, at profundum, et scire supereminentem. 
 caritatem Christi. 
 
 "That with all the saints you may be able to 
 comprehend what is the breadth, and the length, and 
 the height, and the depth, and to understand the. 
 surpassing charity of Christ." The comprehension. 
 of infinite dimensions is past the finite mind ; nor- 
 is it possible to knew by its causes, that which is; 
 
DIMENSIONS OF CHARITY. 347- 
 
 uncaused and is itself the cause of all. Yet it is in 
 proportion to their progress in this endless study 
 that saints have been sanctified and " filled with the 
 fulness of God." For charity is gotten of charity, 
 as flame from flame : Diligimus eum quia prior dilexit 
 nos. It is primarily a matter of intellectual vision — 
 a seeing God under a certain aspect. 
 
 " That you may be able to comprehend with all 
 the saints." " If I but touch the hem of His 
 garment I shall be healed." Although even Mary 
 herself cannot do more than lay hold of the fringes 
 of God's garment of glory, yet the straining into the 
 abysses above, below, around us, lifts us out of our 
 littleness, and thus elevates and humbles us — for we 
 are never so small as when we are proud ; never sa 
 great as when we are humble. As man's progress 
 in knowledge lies in fathoming his own ignorance ; 
 so his greatness consists in knowing a greatness 
 which dwarfs him to nonentity in his own regard. 
 
 To know God's power or wisdom or beauty or 
 justice may excite admiration, awe, a certain 
 enthusiasm such as we may feel for an heroic soul 
 to whom we are personally unknown ; but it is as 
 loving us, that He becomes the object of our love : 
 Dilexit me — He loved me. 
 
 These dimensions of the Divine love are the 
 proper object ol all meditation and preaching. 
 Every other theme is subordinate to this ; depend- 
 ent on this. It is no use to thunder forth anathema 
 against those who do not love God, if we fail to point 
 out to them, and teach them His lovableness. We 
 may perhaps feel it ourselves, like many a massive 
 
348 DIMENSIONS OF CHARITY. 
 
 impression of which we can give no analysis. But 
 for others, a certain power of exposition is wanted, 
 even though an enthusiasm to some extent com- 
 municates itself irrationally. 
 
 " What is the breadth." A shallow love must of 
 necessity be narrow; width is a sequel of depth. 
 The wide-spreading branches of the cedar must 
 rise from a root far down underground. Else width 
 will mean weakness. God is that Universalis amor 
 qui partes omnes licet sihi invicem contrarias amplectitur. 
 — " Universal love which embraces all parts, however 
 at discord among themselves ; " i.e., every particle of 
 His creation, each in due proportion ; not blinded to 
 the lesser goodness by the glitter of the greater, as 
 we are ; nor overlooking twenty good points for the 
 sake of one defect or blemish, as we do ; contrari- 
 wise sparing Sodom for the sake of ten just men, 
 suffering much cockle for the sake of a little wheat ; 
 much error for a latent grain of truth, for a little 
 leaven hidden in the mass. Again, it is wide and 
 universal, in the collective sense ; viewing all 
 together as parts of a whole ; loving the universal 
 and collective good as something diviner than the 
 elements of which it consists ; yet not abstractly, as 
 we do, when we try to comprehend particulars in one 
 whole ; but concretely and with no diminution of 
 particular interest. In some sense each single soul 
 is the centre of the infinite sphere of God's love ; all 
 things radiate to it, and make a world for it, a world 
 of creature-helps ; as though God had no other 
 thought or care. 
 
 If love is life — as it certainly is — how much life 
 
DIMENSIONS OF CHARITY. 349 
 
 does not the narrowness of our affections cut us off 
 from ! What abundant fuel of happiness is lying 
 waste all about us while we shiver with cold ? Viam 
 mandatorum tuonim cucurri cum dilatasti cor meum — 
 " I have run in the way of Thy commandments 
 since Thou hast enlarged my heart." If God would 
 come into our hearts He must needs break them 
 or stretch them, as when new wine is poured into 
 old bottles. 
 
 A narrow, trickling stream is turned aside and 
 impeded by every little stone ; but the wide, rushing 
 flood sweeps over them or bears them away in its 
 tumultuous energy. Our feeble love is stayed, 
 repelled, distorted by every little trifling offence or 
 defect, over which we trip and stumble and hurt 
 ourselves. We are disunited, lonely, embittered, 
 until our little streams lose themselves in the 
 mighty torrent of God's all-forgiving, all-conquer- 
 ing, passionate love of humanity. Then are we 
 gods and not men ; " knowing good and evil " — 
 knowing the great problem or riddle of creation ; 
 how seeming evil is solid good. Ego dixi : Dii estis; 
 quibus verbum Dei factum est. 
 
 " What is the length." It is a love which endures 
 for ever ; and its endurance is but another outcome 
 of its depth and strength. We are forgetful and 
 changeable and therefore fickle ; what suits our 
 present humour and taste may, without defect on its 
 own part, become indifferent or even odious to us. 
 What God loves in us. He loves "with an everlasting, 
 love" from eternity to eternity. But more evidently 
 does this endurance show itself in the form of long- 
 
3SO DIMENSIONS OF CHARITY. 
 
 suffering patience, and constant service. He is so 
 slow to give us up and turn away from us ; so per- 
 sistent in heaping grace upon grace ; whereas we 
 soon get "weary in well-doing;" disgusted by in- 
 gratitude ; disheartened by futility. Our shallow 
 affections are easily stirred ; they spring up in a day 
 and in the time of trial wither away. We think our 
 love is imperishable ; that separation would be un- 
 bearaWe ; that we can never love another. Feeling 
 and imagination obscure our judgment and hide the 
 root and reason from our view ; on which reasonable 
 root endurance depends. But "who shall separate us 
 from the love of Christ ? " from Him " who sticketh 
 ■closer than a brother ; " who says, that though a 
 mother should forget her babe He will never forget 
 us ; that no man shall pluck from His arms those 
 -whom the Father has given Him; that when we 
 pass through the waterfloods He will be with us ? 
 "" Neither life nor death . . . nor any other creature " 
 is the persuasion of St. Paul. 
 
 There is nothing more beautiful in the romance 
 of human love than constancy, long-tried and 
 tempted and yet victorious over time ; whether it 
 be the constancy of friend, or spouse, or parent. 
 All this beauty of endurance finds its archetype in 
 God's love, and must lead us up to a better 
 knowledge of it ; for it is itself a participation of the 
 ■divine. 
 
 "What is the height." There is a low love, and 
 a higher love, and a sublime love, according to the 
 nature of that good which we want to secure for the 
 beloved. This again depends upon the light in which 
 
DIMENSIONS OF CHARITY. 351 
 
 Tve view him ; what it is we love in him — his personal 
 beauty, his mind, his heart. To love, is to will to 
 another some happiness of which he is capable. God 
 sees in us the obediential power "to become the sons 
 of God," sharers of the Divine Nature and operation 
 and happiness. The good He wills for us is one 
 ■which " eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor heart 
 conceived." There is sometimes a touch of this 
 sublimity in the purer types of human affection, 
 ■where the lover is severe and rigorous to the 
 beloved, denying the lower and lesser solaces of the 
 present, in the interest of a " fuller gain of after- 
 bliss." So, " whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth ; 
 and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." 
 There is nothing weak, soft, indulgent, in the love 
 of the Father for His " Beloved Son," or for Mary, 
 or for all the saints gathered with her round the foot 
 of the Cross. 
 
 " What is the depth." Depth is not quite the 
 same as intensity. A shallow love, hke a fire oi 
 shavings, will burn fiercely while it lasts ; although 
 there is httle oil in the lamp of the heart. Nor is it 
 the same as strength : though a deeper love is less 
 easily rooted up. It speaks to us rather of latency 
 and potentiahty ; of something not yet revealed ; 
 whose soundings have so far been essayed in vain. 
 It speaks not so much of the firmness and durabihty 
 of what has been revealed to us, as of the endless 
 possibility of further revelations. Our eye can 
 carry us to the bottom of a stream, but never to 
 that of mid-ocean. " Oh, the depth of the riches 
 of God's wisdom and knowledge." It is a thesaurus 
 
352 MEEKNESS. 
 
 absconditus. Oculus non vidit, absque te Dontine, quce- 
 parasti diligentibus te — The hidden treasure unseen 
 by all eyes save God's. To love one deeply is tO' 
 love him more than he thinks ; more, perhaps, than 
 we think ourselves. Perhaps the root is lost in 
 obscurity. These unknown depths are the founda- 
 tion of our hope for those richer graces which are 
 the " uncovenanted mercies of God." 
 
 CCXCV. 
 
 MEEKNESS. 
 Beat! mites quia ipsi possidebunt terram. 
 
 " Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess; 
 the earth." The reward or beatitude attached tO' 
 patience and gentleness is in some sense immediate 
 and temporal ; namely, victory even on earth. This, 
 beatitude is the obverse of, "They that take the 
 sword shall perish by the sword." Violence begets 
 violence ; opposition raises opposition ; and these 
 are fruitful again to the third and fourth generation; 
 and the end is defeat and loss ; or victory at a cost 
 out of all proportion to the original good aimed at. 
 If severity is ever justified it is never as a means 
 of bending the rebellious will, but as a tribute to 
 vindictive justice or for the sake of others ; or else 
 it is a severity manifestly dictated and informed by 
 love. Who can say that he was ever persuaded or 
 bettered by a sarcastic, bitter, or angry word ? 
 
INTELLIGENT CHARITY. 353 
 
 CCXCVI. 
 
 INTELLIGENT CHARITY. 
 Beatus qui intelligit super egenum et pauperem. 
 
 " Blessed is he who understands about the poor 
 and needy." Charity must be neither a cool, calcu- 
 lating sense of duty, nor yet a blind spasm of 
 benevolence ; but an intelligent impulse ; something 
 springing, not from the brain, but from the living 
 heart, yet guided and approved by faith and reason. 
 We do not go to the physician who loves us per- 
 sonally in preference to a stranger of greater skill ; 
 for love may intend well, but without skill it may do 
 harm rather than good ; and that, in proportion to 
 its strength. Often under occasional pressure of 
 emotion we may do feats of unselfishness ; but we 
 begrudge the trouble of consideration, and constant 
 watchfulness concerning the needs of others, which 
 is needful if charity is to be a ruling habit of life, 
 our chief occupation and business ; wherein we 
 should seek to become ever more skilled and 
 efficient: Non considerantes quce sua, sunt sed quce 
 aliorum — " Not pondering our own interests but 
 others." So our Saviour, who, if He dealt differently 
 and discriminatingly with different sicknesses of 
 body, displays a still nicer care and particular con- 
 sideration in the handling of souls where no two are 
 alike in the eyes of the Good Shepherd, who calls 
 His sheep — indistinguishable to a stranger — each by 
 his name. How strange it sounds to say that the 
 criticism and study of individual characters is an 
 
 X 
 
354 OMNIPOTENCE. 
 
 essential of real, intelligent charity, which needs to 
 know others and their needs and propensions; to 
 know what will hurt, and what will heal and help ; 
 so that becoming all to all, we may in every way 
 do our best for "the greatest happiness of the 
 greatest number." This- is intelligent charity — no 
 blind, rule-of-thumb, same-to-everybody, wooden 
 amiability. We cannot love or please God without 
 studying His nature and His will ; and so, neither 
 our neighbour, who after all, is God's substitute. 
 
 CCXCVII. 
 
 OMNIPOTENCE. 
 Fortis ut mors dilectio. 
 
 " Love is strong as death." When one sees what 
 a frightful power for good or for evil love is, when 
 one sees the irresistible force of charity and kind- 
 ness, which seem to atone for all other deficiencies 
 and cover a multitude of sins, one also sees in some 
 dim way how Infinite Love is identical with Omni- 
 potence. Dem est caritas — " God is love." When 
 a sinner defies and hates God, he fights a losing 
 battle ; but when he begins to love Him, he grows 
 strong and wrests the sword from God's hand and 
 at last leads Him captive in chains. Of course it is 
 really God who thus binds Himself through the 
 instrumentality of a poor, sinful, weak human heart, 
 to which He loves to be in captivity. Sagittcs tiice 
 acutce, says David, of the God of love, in cordibus 
 inimicorum regis; populi sub te cadent; the King's 
 enemies fall, slain with darts of love, in thousands. 
 
GOD'S VOICE IN REASON. 355 
 
 They fall enemies, and rise lovers. Be such the 
 weapons of our warfare ; spiritual, not carnal. 
 
 CCXCVIII. 
 god's voice in reason. 
 
 Audiam quid loquatur in me Dominus Delias 
 
 "I will listen to what God says in me." We 
 find converse with God one-sided work and hard to 
 sustain. Yet is this not due to the anthropomorphic 
 form of our imaginations ? Is He not always speak- 
 ing to us; not exactly in His works, which is a 
 metaphorical speech ; but more formally in our 
 own every true thought and good wish ? Erat lux 
 vera qucs illuminat omnem hominem venientem in hunc 
 mundum — He is the true light of every mind ; the 
 First Sayer of our every true word ; the First Thinker 
 of our every true thought : and He is also in every 
 true thought and good desire that is communicated 
 to us from and through other souls, by word or 
 writing? Is not this the only way in which we 
 have a right to expect Him to speak? Were He 
 to thunder in the clouds and form words, would it 
 not still be but using a creature as an instrument ? 
 What difference is it whether the instrument is my 
 own soul or that of another ? Nor need we confound 
 this natural speech with revelation and prophecy, 
 except in affirming that they are equally speech. 
 For revelation, whether given to our own mind 
 directly or through that of another, is miraculous 
 and marked as such ; the natural sequence of 
 thought-phenomena is broken through, and the 
 
356 CODS VOICE IN REASOif. 
 
 mind seems to follow a coherent train of ideas 
 suggested, as it were, by the speech of another, 
 though really by some mysterious quasi-instinctive 
 internal impulse ; something analogous to those 
 phenomena which are supposed to prove double 
 personality in one soul. Still, if God's action on the 
 mind in the natural order does not satisfy the 
 strictest definition of speech, yet He speaks no less 
 truly than one who teaches us to teach ourselves by 
 "easoning and guiding our steps aright, and supply- 
 ing the conditions needful that truth may come 
 home to us with its own authority. And is not the 
 authority of Truth and of God identical? As in 
 the dictate of conscience, so in that of reason, we 
 should recognize the voice of a person who is sub- 
 sistent Rightness and Truth. This is the secret, 
 perhaps, of Augustine's colloquial method of reason- 
 ing. What reason says to him, God says to him ; 
 and he answers to his own reasonings as to the voice 
 of God. Through the defect of the instrument or 
 medium, the message is often garbled and perverted, 
 nor can it at all times be accepted as Divine. Yet 
 whatever truth there is in it is God's own Word, 
 conveyed to the soul. Thus as God is always 
 serving us and labouring for us in Nature, and we do 
 not recognize it, so He is continually speaking to 
 our inmost heart, and we take the words as from 
 no-whence or as from ourselves. "There stands 
 one in the midst of you whom ye know not." " He 
 was in the world and the world was made by Him, 
 and the world knew Him not." No doubt it is a 
 surprise and a light when, after having found much 
 
THE FULNESS OF FAITH. 357 
 
 help and guidance from some written treatise, 
 without ever concerning ourself about the author, 
 we learn that he wrote it for us and sent it to us. 
 It was truly his speech all along; but only now 
 do we refer it to him as such. Deus docuisti me a 
 juventute mea — "O God, it was Thou who wert 
 teaching me from my youth upwards." 
 
 CCXCIX. 
 
 THE FULNESS OF FAITH. 
 Baptisantes eos in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. 
 
 " Baptizing them in the Name of (i.e., into the 
 creed or confession of faith in) the Father, the Son, 
 and the Holy Ghost." Baptism is a sign of disciple- 
 ship with a prophet or revealer. The Baptism of 
 Christ means discipleship in the fulness of revelation. 
 It is the Sacrament of Faith or illumination. The 
 Trinity is the full development of the imperfect faith 
 of Judaism. It includes the Incarnation as part of 
 a whole. It reveals God as a Father ; as generating 
 a coequal Son who has given us power to become 
 sons by adoption and to dare to say Pater noster. 
 It reveals the Son made Flesh in order to " show us 
 •the Father," to speak the deep things of eternity in 
 human language and imagery. The " power " by 
 which we become sons of God is the Spirit of 
 Adoption, won for us by the Passion, Resurrection, 
 and Ascension of our Sacrifice, and poured down 
 upon the body of the Church as her quickening 
 soul. Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Passiontide, 
 Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, all are epilogized in 
 
358 DEATH. 
 
 Trinity Sunday. This is that rich faith which gives 
 an inexhaustible significance to creation and life, 
 which gathers the " manifold of phenomena " into 
 a connected whole ; without which we must grope 
 in darkness and the shadow of death. Unitarians 
 may live for the glory of God ; we live for the glory 
 of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. 
 
 ccc. 
 
 DEATH. 
 
 Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur, ut requiescant a labori- 
 bus sais, et opera illorum sequuntur illos. 
 
 " Blessed are the dead." This might be called 
 .the ninth beatitude, were it not rather the eight in 
 epitome. If poverty, meekness, purity, peace, 
 sorrow ; if all the world flies from as saddening 
 or wearying, is pronounced blessed, or beatifying by 
 the lips of truth, it is but the fulness of the same 
 dispensation which takes the sting from death, the 
 " King of Terrors," and says," Happy are the dead." 
 Yet it is not said without restriction. As it is not 
 the poor, but the poor in spirit ; so neither is it 
 the dead, but the dead who die in the Lord, who 
 are blessed. "In the Lord" is symbolized and 
 explained by the death of St. Joseph in the arms of 
 Jesus and Mary. Our life is our interest. For those 
 whose highest interest is in the Divine good, in 
 sympathy with God and His saints, with Jesus and 
 Mary, death is no breach of life, but the estuary 
 where the river of time widens silently into the sea 
 of eternity. 
 
DEATH. 359 
 
 Yet to US onlookers the body is the theatre and 
 whole expression-medium of spiritual vitality, which 
 therefore seems abruptly extinct in the moment of 
 death. And death being the negation of life, those 
 whose life was intense, many-sided, full of active 
 interests die more, than do the languid, apathetic 
 and narrow-lived. Their death is a shock to the 
 imagination ; visi sunt oculis insipientium mori ; illi 
 autem sunt in pace ; but for them it is no shock or 
 breach of continuity. The sun shines on serenely 
 for all that the passing clouds cut us off from his 
 influence. It is not the spirit that leaves the body ; 
 but the body whose grasp on its quickening 
 principle gives way. 
 
 " That they may rest from their labours." There 
 are times when the merely negative aspects of death 
 seem so attractive as to explain the adherence of 
 millions to that religious system, which seeks beati- 
 tude in perfect extinction or re-absorption into that 
 All from which, it says, we are differenced out by 
 desire, and by the wish to exist and to enjoy. Is 
 there not something that satisfies in the stillness of 
 a dark night ; or of a lifeless desert ; or of a frozen, 
 motionless sea — as it might be in the beginning of 
 that final state of congealment into which, according 
 to some modern physicists, all things are cooling. 
 Socrates seemed to find more attraction in sound, 
 dreamless slumber than in all the days of his intense 
 vitality put together. Yet it is only because we 
 fallaciously conceive ourselves conscious of the relief 
 from labour that the mere desisting can attract us 
 positively. To be conscious of no conflict or strife 
 
360 DEATH. 
 
 with Nature ; but only of perfect harmony with her 
 universal process, is indeed a consciousness of 
 rest ; but it is the rest of a distinct personality in the 
 active contemplation and enjoyment of deliverance 
 from a narrower to a fuller and more unfettered 
 existence. Only verbally, and through a fallacy of the 
 imagination, did a man ever suppose that he 
 desired extinction. For every desire is for well- 
 being or better-being ; and therefore for being. It 
 is the cessation of pain, weariness, and sorrow, and 
 not the cessation of existence, that we are so keen 
 •for at times when our gaze is concentrated rather on 
 our present miseries than on our future hopes ; 
 when our thought is rather on what we would fly 
 from than whither we would fly — "to fly away and 
 be at rest." 
 
 " That they may rest from their labours." Not 
 such rest as God often provides for us here — -a 
 momentary pause, to sit down and breathe and begin 
 again ; moments of light between darkness and 
 darkness ; brief lulls in the storms of temptation ; 
 rifts in the clouds of depression ; snatches of success 
 amid failure ; of pleasant surprise amid continual 
 disappointments — moments whose function is to 
 suggest the eternal Sabbatismus " that remains for the 
 people of God," and to animate us with faith and 
 hope to struggle on, until seeming defeat is crowned 
 with victory. Eternal rest is the rest of the Eternal ; 
 as eternal life is the life of the Eternal. It is the 
 repose of the Divine activity ; the sleep of infinite 
 energizing ; the stillness of the all-mover. It is the 
 rest of " the Only-Begotten, who is in the bosom of 
 
DEATH. 361 
 
 ■the Father," as it might be, an infant slumbering on 
 its mother's breast, and yet " all things were made 
 by Him and without Him nothing was made. That 
 -which was made, in Him was light . . . and the 
 light shone in darkness " (so, with Augustine and 
 Aquinas). How tranquil and unmoved in itself; 
 yet how swift, how potent, how multiform in its 
 activity is that Source of light. AH things in Him 
 -were light; and God said, " Let there be light, and 
 light was." Ipse dixit, et facta sunt. And His very 
 "saying" is eternal ; involving no breach of the 
 everlasting silence. 
 
 "That they may rest from their labours." As 
 «ternal life, so also eternal rest enters into the 
 saints, even here on earth with every new access 
 •of sanctifying grace. In the midst of all their 
 struggles and labours for their own souls and the 
 souls of others, their heart sleeps like a tranquil lake. 
 While others rise before dawn, after brief slumber, 
 and hurry fretfully through joyless days to restless 
 nights, " He giveth His beloved ones sleep." Faith 
 is the oil that smooths the ruffled waters of fear and 
 fretful anxiety. " Let not your heart be troubled, 
 neither let it be afraid ; ye believe in God ; believe also 
 in Me ; " — faith, which realizes the invisible and 
 resolves visible realities into dreams. "I sleep," says 
 ■the soul to her beloved, "but my heart waketh." All 
 the activity of outward life is but slumber ; while the 
 restful gaze of the loving, tranquillized heart is a 
 "wakefulness akin to His of whom it is said : " Thy 
 keeper will not slumber ; lo. He that keepeth Israel 
 ■will neither slumber nor sleep." 
 
362 FAILURE. 
 
 CCCI. 
 
 FAILURE. 
 Justum deduxit t)ominus per vias rectas et complevit labores illiu& 
 
 " God has guided the just man and has brought 
 his labours to perfection." No good enterprise for 
 God's glory ever comes to naught, however it may 
 seem to be interrupted and frustrated. When the 
 learner is weary and discouraged, the master-hand 
 takes the poor unfinished scrawl, and turns out of 
 it something wonderful and beyond expectation. 
 Indeed we can never see more than the beginning 
 of even what seem our most finished and successful 
 works. It is proverbial that the most useful men in 
 many departments have died long befoire they were 
 felt ; and often in full conviction of their utter failure. 
 Augustine, to his own seeming, lived for the Church 
 at Hippo, which collapsed for ever almost imme- 
 diately. But in God's design he lived for the 
 universal Church and for all ages. 
 
 " I Paul, a prisoner for the Lord." God who 
 has chosen him and fitted him for so glorious an 
 apostolate, binds him hand and foot in prison, where 
 his talents and energy must lie idle. Yet it is to 
 his imprisonment we owe some of his m,ost iielpful 
 epistles. Who can compajre the good they have 
 wrought and will yet work in the Church, with the 
 effects his liberty might have produced, and say 
 whether his idleness was loss or gain to the Kingdom 
 of Christ ? Again, the will and desire to do good 
 is never inefficacious, but is an indestructible force 
 
SS. PETER AND PAUL. 365 
 
 which will not return to the First Cause till it has 
 effected that whereto it was sent. " But the power 
 of Christ is not bound." 
 
 Dante's Commedia was the cry of a disappointed 
 and banished man. Had his life been a success 
 according to his own ideas, should we ever have 
 heard of him ? And so of St. Severinus and his De 
 Consolatione. Was it not the very failure of Christ 
 and His martyrs that completed and crowned their 
 labours ? 
 
 CCCII. 
 
 SS. PETER AND PAUL. 
 
 Gloriosi principes terrae, quomodo in vita sua dilexerunt se, itar 
 in morte non sunt separati. 
 
 " Glorious princes of the earth. As they loved 
 one another in life, so in death they were not 
 divided." To estimate the glory of their princedom 
 we must look around us, and backwards and forwards; 
 we must view them going hand in hand to martyr- 
 dom ; we must see them reigning with unbroken 
 sway in the long line of their successors ; we must 
 see them on one throne judging the tribes of Israel. 
 We must look at the influence which the See of Peter 
 and Paul has had so far in the world's history, as 
 the centre of light and stability, as the guardian of 
 morals, the protector of liberty ; how it has battled 
 against the powers of Hell within and without; 
 against error and corruption; how it has always- 
 come out victorious when men least expected, 
 through the faith of Peter. We must consider its 
 wonderful moral strength at present in the extremity 
 
364 SS. PETER AND PAUL. 
 
 of its temporal weakness ; its sway not only over the 
 faithful, but over those that sit in darkness and the 
 shadow of death. If Leo has influence it is so far as 
 lie feels himself to be Peter and Paul, and lives his 
 office. And shall we dare to read the future of 
 Holy Church, yet, it may be, as De Maistre suggests, 
 in her infancy ? Does not the face of the heavens 
 bid us hope a closer and more literal fulfilment of 
 prophecy ; that " the earth shall be full of the know- 
 ledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea ; " 
 and that His glory shall be revealed and all flesh 
 shall see it together. We know when a flower is 
 unfolded and full-blown. Is it not evident that 
 the conception of the Catholic Church, of Catholic 
 truth and Catholic holiness is capable of yet greater 
 expansion; that it has not yet exhaled its sweetest 
 fragrance ; or donned its firmest and brightest 
 colours; that the Apostolate of Peter and Paul is 
 far from ended, that their words have not yet gone 
 into all lands, nor their voices reached to the ends 
 of the earth. Gloriosi principes terrce — " Glorious 
 princes of the earth," for they are but the vicars of 
 Him who is King of kings, Lord of lords, to whom 
 it is said, "Ask of Me and I will give thee the 
 Nations for thy heritage ; " and " of His Kingdom 
 there shall be no limit ; " and again, Principatus 
 super humerum ejus, His princely power lies hidden 
 in the Cross that weights His shoulder, that key of 
 Heaven which He bequeathed to Peter. And this 
 same Cross has been the weapon of Peter's triumph, 
 Mites terram possidebunt j even in this world the 
 tneek triumph. While Satan assailed the Church 
 
SS. PETER AND PAUL. 365 
 
 from without by persecution, she but struck root 
 deeper for every blast ; and then it was he tried tO' 
 persuade Peter to take the sword that he might- 
 perish by it. So far as the Church has triumphed. 
 it has been out of weakness and by faith. God 
 lifted Peter out of the dust, and Paul out of the 
 mire, that He might set them with the princes of 
 His people, with Michael, and Gabriel, and the great 
 ones of the Heavenly Court. 
 
 "They loved one another in life and in death 
 they were not divided." Different in antecedents, in 
 temperament, in education, they were knit together 
 by the common object of their supremest and deepest 
 love, so that all other divergencies seemed infinitely 
 trivial and superficial. We have all indeed "one 
 Lord, one faith, one baptism," but how differently 
 apprehended and appreciated ; how little real, com- 
 municable interest in these as compared with other 
 matters ; how little spontaneous exchange of ideas ; 
 how few ideas to exchange — old, hammered-out plati- 
 tudes that lie in our minds as they entered them, 
 and rattle about there like coins in a cash-box — no 
 part of our mind or interest ; dead formulae and not 
 hving truths. If interest is life, and if eternal life 
 is to know the one true God and Jesus Christ ; that 
 is, to get a truer estimate of God, a deeper insight 
 into the Incarnate Word, there should be no love 
 such as that of two souls advancing day by day in 
 sympathetic knowledge and love of things divine. 
 What other high or noble interest is not here 
 formally included and ineffably transcended ? 
 
 Et in morte non sunt separati — "And in death 
 
366 FELLOWSHIP IN SUFFERING. 
 
 they were not divided." What greater grace could 
 friendship ask than that thou — the man of one mind 
 •with mysfelf, my guide, my fatniliar, with whom I 
 ate the food of sweetness and walked together with 
 ■thee in the house of God — shouldst leave this world 
 with me hand in hand ; and ford the angry waters 
 with me; and with me touch the shore in the 
 •early morning, and fall down at His feet whom 
 we have known here through a glass darkly, but 
 rthen shall know face to face. What completer 
 merging of soul with soul can be thought of than 
 that which faith begins here and perfects hereafter. 
 Non stmt separati : they were spared the slight pang 
 of even a brief interruption of their spiritual 
 harmony. But even when this divine seal of 
 -approval is withheld, death has little or no sting 
 for the noblest love. Carttas nunquam excidit — 
 "Charity never dies." The substantial bond is 
 •strengthened and not weakened, though its mani- 
 festation is deferred. Mors ahsorpta, est in victoria; 
 fortis ut mors dilectio — " Death is swallowed up in 
 victory ; for love is as strong as death " — nay, 
 -stronger. 
 
 CCCIII. 
 
 FELLOWSHIP IN SUFFERING. 
 Quos eadem fides et passio vere fecit esse germanos. 
 
 "Whom the same faith and the same sorrow 
 
 ■made brothers indeed."^ Brotherhood in the 
 
 Catholic faith, where there is real faith, is far 
 
 •deeper than appears. Though disunited in all else, 
 
 » SS. John and Paul. 
 
CIIRISTS HERITAGE. 367 
 
 Catholics will hold together, usqtie ad mortem, when 
 faith is in question. The substantial tie of natural 
 brotherhodd is compatible with much surface dis- 
 agreement among the members of a family. But 
 community of conviction or judgment in any point 
 is often closer than any other kind of fraternity; 
 still more, where both are sufferers for the same 
 cause or conviction, whether it be the suffering ol 
 persecution or that suffering inseparable from firm 
 belief in ideals which are in strong contrast with 
 realities. The love of those who have fought for 
 the same cause is sometimes tenderer and deeper, 
 if they have fought and failed : if they have shared 
 defeat in common. Eadem fides is much, but eadem 
 passio is far more. This it is that crowns the love 
 and brotherhood of Christ and all His saints and 
 martyrs. 
 
 CCCIV. 
 
 CHRIST'S HERITAGE. 
 Pro nostra et totius mundi salute. 
 
 " For our own salvation and for that of the 
 whole world." These and similar words in the 
 Mass are like a stream of cool air let into a close 
 room. They lift us for an instant out of our narrow 
 personal groove, and set us on a high mountain and 
 show us all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory 
 thereof. And we hear the voice of the tempter 
 saying to Christ and to His Church : " All these will 
 I give if Thou wilt fall down and worship me." 
 Non tali auxilio ! Vade retro ! — not on such terms ; 
 not at the cost of the smallest lie or the compromise 
 
368 EXPECTANCY. 
 
 of a single principle ; but by His arm and help who 
 says, Posttda a me et dabo tibi gentes hcereditatem tuam 
 et possessionem tuam terminos terra — " Ask of Me and 
 I will give thee the nations and the whole earth for 
 thy heritage." Every Mass is a reiterated ^osfw^a^/o- 
 or asking for this blood-bought heritage of the: 
 Catholic or world-wide Church. 
 
 CCCV. 
 
 EXPECTANCY. 
 
 Ecce sicut oculi servorum in manibus dominoTum suorum ita 
 oculi nostri ad Dominum Deum nostrum donee misereatur nostri. 
 
 " Even as the eyes of a servant to the hand of 
 his master, or of a maiden to the hand of her 
 mistress, so our eyes on the Lord our God till He 
 have mercy upon us" — with the eager, anxious look 
 of a well-mannered dog waiting for scraps from the 
 table, now hopeful and alert at some sign of move- 
 ment; now disappointed and despondent because 
 nothing has come of it. God sometimes seems 
 cruel in toying with our agony of hunger, desire, 
 and uncertainty ; but it is the cruelty of Him who' 
 restrains his love that it may leap out with greater 
 force — mulier, magna est fides tua ! — " O woman, 
 great is thy faith ! " — who holds back, to whet our 
 desire, so that being asked more He may give more.. 
 Et tu das illis escam — " And Thou givest them food." 
 To each living creature its own food, according to 
 its proper nature and kiijd of life — trees and flowers, 
 birds, beasts, and fishes — to natural man, the food 
 
EXPECTANCY. 369 
 
 of the mind, in the works of creation, the book of 
 Nature; that food which kindles and sustains the 
 fire of love which is the life of the soul ; to super- 
 natural man, the food of supernatural life,. " the daily 
 Manna of the soul," Him, whose words are " spirit 
 and life." To each particular soul its individual 
 and characteristic food, suited to its own nature 
 and necessities. In tempore opportuno, i.e., as the 
 necessity arises, but not in advance. Our daily 
 bread is doled out to us on asking toties quoties. 
 Nor always at the time when we think we want it, 
 but in tempore opportuno, when it is really best for 
 us. Children cry for food out of mere petulance, 
 between meals and at all manner of absurd times ; 
 and for the most absurd and unwholesome things. 
 Aperies tu manum tuam et imples omne animal bene- 
 dictione — "Thou openest Thy hand and fillest alL 
 with plenteousness." God is not grasping or close- 
 fisted, but altogether magnificus, doing everything 
 on a grand and liberal scale. He fills our desires 
 to overflowing, being " more ready to hear than we 
 to pray; and wont to give more than we ask or 
 desire." It is the fault of the narrowness of our 
 desires that the results are so poor. Aperi os tuum, 
 et implebo illud — " Open thy mouth, and I will fill 
 it." There is the condition. He will not force the 
 food through our closed teeth. Every desire comes 
 from Him, and every enlargement of desire ; but it 
 is ours to foster it or to quench it. To be generous 
 to God is not to give to Him — for what can we 
 give ? — but to take from Him liberally ; not to 
 refuse His hberality or to thwart His love ; but to 
 
 Y 
 
370 iHE VISIT A TION. 
 
 open both hands at once, to stoop down and " dtink 
 bf the torrent in the way." 
 
 CCCVI. 
 
 THE VISITATION. 
 Maria abiit in montana cum festinatione. 
 
 " Mary arose in haste and went into the hill- 
 country." She bore within her the full object of 
 her joy and love and praise. What more did she 
 need ? Dilectus mens mihi, et ego illi qui pascitur inter 
 lilia — " My Beloved for me, and I for Him." Why 
 did she not rest alone or retire to the desert to be 
 alone with her Beloved, to bury herself in prayer 
 and contemplative ecstasy, and to forget the world ? 
 But Gabriel has hardly vanished before she rises 
 in haste to pass over the rough hills of Judea in 
 search of human sympathy, bf one like-minded 
 whom God had called to bear a part in the mystery 
 of the Incarnation ; that they may rejoice together, 
 heart calling to heart, in their common love. The 
 joy and praise of each of the blessed is intensified 
 by that of every other, and by the enthusiasm of the 
 collective multitudes. " Lo, one who will intensify 
 our love," is the cry of the blessed on every new 
 arrival. Mary's Magnificat was far sweeter in the 
 ears of God for being echoed by St. Elizabeth and 
 St. John Baptist, and drew much increase of fervent 
 inspiration from their sympathy which it would 
 have lacked in sohtude. Retirement from the un- 
 sympathetic may at times be in the interest of God's 
 glory ; but retirement from the sympathetic never. 
 
LIBERALITY. 371 
 
 So eager is love for sympathy, that it will labour 
 ceaselessly to create it where it does not exist. The 
 communion of saints is not indeed of the essence 
 but of the integrity and normal fulness of their 
 beatitude. Our feeble love and praise needs all the 
 help it can get, and borrows the hearts and tongues 
 of others to supply the deficiency of its own. What 
 does it all mean except that it is God who in us and 
 all creatures, as by an instrument, loves and praises 
 Himself; that it is the voice of all creation which is 
 seeking for utterance through every narrow outlet, 
 and never able to disburden itself to the full. 
 
 CCCVII. 
 
 LIBERALITY. 
 
 Si multum tibi fuerit, abundanter tribue ; si exiguum libenter 
 
 impertiri stude. 
 
 " If thou hast much, give plentifully ; if thou 
 hast little, do thy diligence gladly to give of that 
 little."^ God gives only that we may give. Our 
 very life is giving, self- diffusion. "Increase and 
 multiply " is imperative for all ; if not in one form, 
 then in another. Lauda sterilis et quce non parts — 
 "Give praise, thou that art sterile." But why? 
 Because more are the children of the sterile than of 
 the fertile. The priest and apostle leaves a less 
 for a greater self-diffusion. Ecce ego et filios quos 
 dedit mihi Dominus — " Behold me and the children 
 God has given me," he says; and quis mihi genuit 
 hos — who hath brought me forth these? It is the 
 1 Tobias iv. g. 
 
37? LQNGSUFFERING. 
 
 very Spirit of poverty to give grandly, extravagantly, 
 and "not to count the cost;" to be improvident and 
 reckless when God is the recipient of bur alms. "Go, 
 sell :all that thou hast, and give," it says ; whatever 
 that "all" be: the labour of our head, or our hands, 
 or our heart. It is by giving all that we get more 
 to give. Whatever we hoard or reserve is prey for 
 moth, or rust, or robbery. 
 
 " If thou hast little." Those who have Httle 
 are apt to think themselves exempt ; and that 
 because they are not in a position to do much or 
 to succeed ; therefore they are not bound to try or 
 to do anything. There is danger to such lest the 
 spirit of giving die in them. The " widow's mite " 
 shows us that the greatness of the gift is measured 
 by the diligence and gladness of the giver, Hilarem 
 datorem diligit Deus. 
 
 CCCVIII. 
 
 LONGSUFFERING. 
 Arundinem quassatum non confringet. 
 
 " He will not break the bruised reed, nor quench 
 the smoking flax," i.e., He will not cast us off or 
 condemn us as worthless for all our feebleness and 
 coldness so long as He can discern in us the 
 remotest capacity for strength and love; and this 
 He can discern where it eludes every other eye. 
 Whatever waning strength, whatever smouldering 
 spark is there, is proof of His inbiding presence and 
 love, which clings to the soul as tenaciously as the 
 soul does to the body. For while there is life there 
 
HELPING GOD. 373 
 
 is hope. One defect diverts our eye from a thousand 
 amiabilities. It is the owl's eye, or the bat's, that 
 finds rest in darkness, and is pained by brightness. 
 The eagle eye of God and his Saints is diverted 
 from a thousand darknesses to the last expiring 
 spark of grace by which He is fascinated as by the 
 face of His own image. Avertefaciem tuamapeccatis 
 meis. A spice et respice in faciem Christi tui — Turn 
 Thy face from my sins, and look upon the face ot 
 Thy Christ. For the sins that are in me are my 
 very own, my sole originalities ; while the good that 
 is in me is Christ. Nunc vivo — jam non ego sed, 
 Chrisius in me vivit — " Now I live — not I, but Christ 
 lives in me.' 
 
 CCCIX. 
 
 HELPING GOD. 
 
 Tu ad me venis ! 
 
 " Thou comest to me ! " "I have need to be 
 baptized of Thee, and Thou comest to me ! " He 
 whom we need everywhere; on whom we are 
 absolutely dependent ; to whom we must come for 
 everything; comes to us, needy, dependent, in the 
 poverty of love ; sick for our worthless love, craving 
 and hungering and languishing for it. When He 
 chose to be our Lover it could not be otherwise : 
 Tu venis ad me! We cannot love those who are 
 indifferent to our love and have no need of it. In 
 Creation, in the Incarnation, in the Eucharist, in 
 His Mystic Body, in humanity He has become 
 needy and dependent on our love. " I have need 
 of thee," He says to us. Date et dabitur — Give and 
 
374 THE INTERNAL LA W 
 
 it shall be given you, pity for pity, gift for gift, 
 service for service, and love for love, 
 
 Cujus dorrigiam calceamenti non sum dignus solvere 
 — "Whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to loose." 
 The greatest of the sainted prophets, canonized by 
 the words' of the Word, counts himself unworthy 
 of the least service to the feet of Christ, to whom 
 it is the angels' privilege to minister; to whom. God 
 Himself is enslaved by love : Transiens ministrabit Hits 
 — Going among them He will serve them, He their 
 Lord and Master washes their feet. Ego Dominus 
 ct magister lavi vobis pedes. And yet penitents are 
 permitted to serve those feet with their tears and 
 spikenard day by day ; and to minister to the little 
 ones of Christ not a cup of cold water, but the well 
 of water springing up to everlasting life. 
 
 cccx. 
 
 THE INTERNAL LAW. 
 Legem meatn in corde eorum scribara. 
 
 " I will write My law in their hearts." God has 
 written the law of nature in our understanding, 
 which of itself is as hard and cold as the rocks of 
 Sinai. It tells us of duties and sanctions with some 
 dim hint of a personal legislator behind all, who 
 exacts these dues and enforces these sanctions. It 
 is when the personal lovingness and lovableness of 
 God is revealed to us that His law is written in our 
 hearts, and we begin to say : " How have I loved 
 Thy law, O Lord; " and at the same time that law 
 is condensed into the one universal law of lovcj 
 
THE INTERNAL LAW. 375 
 
 which St. Ignatius calls the interna caritatis et amoris 
 illitis lex quam spiritus sanctus inscribere etincordibus 
 imprimere solet^a.n instinct rather than a rule. As 
 long as our formal aim is ethical rectitude and legal 
 propriety we are as a child who laboriously copies a 
 head-line, stroke by stroke, with many a blot and 
 quaver ; who proceeds non in spiritu amoris sed cum 
 perturbatione timoris — not in the spirit of love, but 
 with the perturbation of fear — concentrated on the 
 letter, forgetful of the sense. The finished writer 
 hardly knows that he is writing, or that he is writing 
 correctly. His spirit clothes itself spontaneously 
 in the outer sign. A man may easier forget the 
 spirit in the letter; than the letter in the spirit. 
 None who has the spirit can despise the letter ; but 
 only holds it subordinate. 
 
 "Who follows Me," says Christ, "walks not in 
 darkness," but is as one who follows a bright light. 
 For human nature, the only practical guide to conduct 
 is personal love. All ethical theorizing about beati- 
 tude as a motive, and reasonableness as a norm ot 
 right conduct, is mere air-beating. Its one use is 
 that God may be "justified in .His sayings, and be 
 ■victorious when criticized " — ut justificeris in sermo- 
 nibus tuis, et vincas cum judicaris ; and that every 
 tongue should confess God : the tongue of philo- 
 sophy and science and art, as well as the tongue ol 
 faith and of healthy instinct. As reason is the 
 norm of rational conscience, so Christ is the norm 
 of Christian conscience: via, Veritas, ct vita — the 
 way and the end; the method and the motive. 
 And what Socrates remarks of conscience is also 
 
376 THE INTERNAL LAW. 
 
 itrue of the guidance of Christ's example; it is 
 chiefly negative and prohibitive. It is far easier 
 to be sure what Christ would not do under given 
 circumstances than to be sure what He would do. 
 It is only by uncertain analogies that the life of a 
 Nazarene carpenter of two thousand years ago, 
 possessed of unthinkable supernatural prerogatives, 
 with a mission of universal redeemer of humanity, 
 can be positively applied as a pattern to the very 
 unsupernatural man and woman of decadent civili- 
 zation. 
 
 " Thy Word is a light to my feet and a lamp to 
 my way." All that David says of God's written 
 Word and testimonies and laws and justifications 
 and statutes, may be understood eminently and 
 prophetically of the Eternal and Incarnate Word, 
 who is the Way, the Word, the Testimony, the 
 Covenant, and Law, and Justification. " Blessed 
 are the spotless in the Way, who walk in the Law 
 of the Lord. . . . Oh, that my ways were made 
 straight for the keeping of Thy Justice. ... In 
 my heart have I hid Thy Word, that I may not 
 sin against Thee. ... I am a pilgrim on earth, 
 hide not Thy Commandment from me. . . . Thy 
 Testimony is my meditation. . . , My soul hath 
 slumbered from weariness; hath cleaved to the 
 dust: quicken me, strengthen me after Thy Word. 
 . . . Incline my heart to Thy Testimony. . . . 
 Take not even the Word of Truth, from my lips. . . . 
 I will speak of Thy Testimony in the face of kings 
 and shall not be afraid. ... I 'have lifted up my 
 hands to Thy Commandments,, which I . have loved. 
 
BAD COMMUNIONS. 377 
 
 ... I was mindful of Thy Eternal Judgments and 
 was consoled. . . . My heart fainted for those 
 sinners who have left Thy Law." And so through- 
 out. 
 
 CCCXI. 
 
 BAD COMMUNIONS. 
 Excolentes culicem, camelum deglutientes, 
 
 " Straining out gnats ; swallowing camels." 
 True scrupulosity ! We are terrified by the idea 
 of communicating because of some foul thought 
 that has pursued us, or some outburst of sudden 
 passion, or because we are full of distractions and 
 worries, as though this refreshment were not 
 primarily intended for the tempted, the weak, and 
 the weary. But if it is only some chronic dislike ; 
 some little unkindness, some coldness and incon- 
 sideration, we approach confidently without any 
 apprehension of being choked; and then we are 
 surprised that the habitual results of our Com- 
 munions are slight and imperceptible. Venial sins 
 against fraternal union are the nearest to mortal, 
 and stop the channels of further grace all but 
 entirely. To "discern the Lord's Body" is to 
 discern that "we being many are one bread and 
 one body, for we are all partakers of that Body." 
 It was in this that the Corinthians ^ were sacrilegious 
 communicants ; for that they were divided, even in 
 their Eucharists and love-feasts, into clans and 
 cliques, rich and poor, high and low. They did 
 not wait for one another, but each feasted by him- 
 
 1 I Cor. xi. 
 
378 BAD COMMUNIONS. 
 
 self and with his special friends; despising the unity 
 of the. Church of God and shaming the poor by 
 -leaving them out ih the cold. 
 
 Qui intingit manum mecum in paropside, hie me 
 tradet — " He who dips his hand with Me in the sop 
 shall betray Me ; " so says our Lord to every one 
 who professes to be true to Him as He lies veiled 
 in the Host, and yet is a traitor to Him as He lies 
 veiled in His brethren, in His little ones. " Whereto 
 art thou come?" He seems to say; "Dost thou 
 betray the Son of Man with a kiss ? " for " If 
 a man say ' I love God ' and love not his brother, 
 he is a liar." 
 
 Or else : " Friend, how camest thou in hither not 
 having a wedding garment?" — which garment all 
 interpret to be charity ; but not all advert to the fact 
 that it is charity considered formally as touching our 
 neighbour. It is the garment which makes us all 
 alike, and is substituted for that wherein we are 
 all unlike. It is our common enthusiasm for the same 
 Good which likens and binds us to It, and thereby 
 likens and binds us to one Another. He who 
 welcomes publicans and sinners, who compels the 
 blind and the maimed and the halt to enter in and 
 sit " with the princes of His people," says of the 
 unkind and uncharitable : " Bind him hand and foot 
 and cast him into outer darkness." 
 
UNCOVBNANTED MERCIES. ^-jy 
 
 CCCXII, 
 
 UNCOVENANTED MERCIES. 
 Spiritus ubi vult spirat. 
 
 " The Spirit breathes where it chooses." This is 
 what the theological mind is sometimes inclined tc 
 resent, for there can be no science of that which 
 cannot be tied down to law and reduced to formulae^ 
 -Where does God's Spirit breathe ? Wherever it 
 chooses. Whence comes it ? We know not. 
 Whither does it go ? Who can tell ? Grace refuses 
 to be known in itself or in its causes, except within 
 the narrowest limits. It comes where and when it 
 is least expected. " No one can say, The Lord 
 Jesus," i.e., can hail Him as Lord " except by the 
 Holy Ghost ; " and since " of ourselves we are not 
 sufficient to think any good," we must recognize 
 grace or its beginnings in every good desire. God 
 is true to His covenanted mercies ; and those with 
 whom He has covenanted would be presumptuous- 
 to rely on what is not covenanted. If He agrees 
 with, us for a penny we shall receive a penny. But 
 is our eye to be evil because He is good ; because 
 He. chooses to give to the last as to us; because 
 being just and generous to us. He is more generous 
 to others; or because the heretic and the heathen 
 shall often; take precedence of the Catholic; or the 
 layman of the priest ; or the secular of the religious; 
 or the penitent of the perfect. There is no excuse 
 for those who neglect God's covenanted mercies. 
 "Those who beheve not shall be damned," is 
 
38o THE END OF MAN. 
 
 ■certainly the law for those to whom belief is offered. 
 As to others, we leave them with confidence to the 
 justice and goodness of God, who has not revealed 
 to us the laws of His dealings with them. Shall 
 not the Judge of all the earth do right ? This only 
 Ave know, that truth is reached by fidelity to the 
 truth in every order, natural and supernatural ; and 
 those who are faithful in a little are rewarded above 
 -those who are faithless in much. " Many shall come 
 from the East and West " of whom it will be said : 
 ■" I have not found such faith in Israel." 
 
 CCCXIII. 
 
 THE END OF MAN. 
 Homo creatus est ut laudet, 
 
 " Man was created to praise." Praise is the 
 utterance of love, and love is the joy of the intellect 
 in the vision of goodness. Spero videre bona 
 Domini in terra viventium — " I hope to gaze upon 
 the goodness of the Lord in the Land of Life." 
 Utterance, is the proper act of an intelligence, 
 the expression of the truth and of one's joy in the 
 truth. What the lark does by instinct ; the intellect 
 does freely and intelligently, pouring itself out in 
 ■" useless " utterance ; because it is full and must 
 unburden itself. Secondarily, such faculty of 
 utterance is for the good of others, that the glad- 
 ness may be not only uttered but imparted and 
 multiplied. Primarily it is propter se — "for its own 
 sake." The sun would shine as brightly were there 
 no worlds around for it to warm or quicken. " I 
 
THE END OF MAN. 381 
 
 only pipe," says the poet, " because I must ; and 
 sing but as the linnets sing." Associated praise is 
 easier, intenser, more harmonic, less painfully con- 
 scious of its own feebleness — all the difference between 
 cheering with a crowd, and cheering alone, or 
 cheering 'mid a hooting crowd. But to give every 
 expression in our power to the joy that is within us 
 is as imperative an instinct of the rational soul of 
 man, as it is of the sensitive soul of the song-bird- 
 All the truest art the world has seen, has been 
 stimulated if not purely and wholly, yet at least 
 principally by this instinct of self-expression for 
 its own sake ; the desire to embody what we 
 see and feel in words or actions or images, or 
 lines or colours or marble or music — each according 
 to that medium of expression in which he is- 
 skilled. The desire for sympathy, is an accessory 
 motive which does not tarnish the purity of the 
 former ; but rather intensifies it. For utterance 
 tends naturally, though not necessarily, to draw 
 other souls into accord with our own. But the 
 direct quest of praise and success is as debasing as- 
 the quest of money. The purest poetry is that in 
 which the writer seeks simply to please himself; to 
 produce the image of his soul ; to disburden himself 
 of the " word " he has conceived. Yet if he looks to 
 communicating his joy to others ; or invites them 
 to share his gladness ; his act is more full, more 
 intense, more unegoistic. But the true poet in every 
 department, is he who, Hke God diffuses his good- 
 ness from its very superabundance ; to whom, the 
 thing well done or well said, is a joy for its own. 
 
-382 HUMAN FICKLENESS. 
 
 sake : " Thou art. My Son ; to-day have I begotten 
 Thee ; " " My Beloved Son in whom I am well 
 pleased." 
 
 CCCXIV. 
 
 HUMAN FICKLENESS. 
 Non se credebat eis Jesus. 
 
 " Jesus did not trust Himself to them," for " He 
 knew what was in man," and how those who are 
 Avith us to-day are against us to-morrow ; and that 
 he who leans his whole weight on aught else but 
 God, leans upon a broken reed. Nor was He bitter 
 -or cynical through the recognition of this truth ; for 
 if He knew that the flesh was weak, He also knew 
 that the spirit was willing ; and that our Hosannas 
 are not insincere at the time, because they are soon 
 to be changed to Crucifige. He values every atom 
 of our feeble, fickle love as far as it goes, but does 
 not for a moment overvalue it. We are utterly 
 surprised and shocked, if we find that our friends are 
 not always loyal to us; or if they are inconstant 
 and unreliable. Yet such defects are quite com- 
 patible with very true and tender love, as a little 
 self-knowledge would show us. In a sense Peter 
 loved our Lord most dearly in the very moment 
 when he denied Him. The present affection he had 
 testified to in his boasting was most real. He erred 
 in speaking for the future, forgetting the mutability 
 •of our feeling 
 
TRANSFORMING LIGHTS. 383 
 
 cccxv. 
 
 TRANSFORMING LIGHTS. 
 Nonne hie est qui sedebat et mendicabat ? 
 
 " Is not this he that used to sit by the way- 
 side and beg ?" God finds the soul sitting by the 
 wayside, in the attitude of hopelessness, while 
 others come up and pass by on their road to 
 salvation and leave it behind, lonely and desolate. 
 He finds it in beggary and rags, asking for the 
 husks of swine, ignorant of the treasures of Christ, 
 and of the Bread' of Angels. He strikes His light 
 into our dead eyes, and lo ! we are the same and 
 not the same ; like, and yet unlike ; for grace takes 
 the fashion of the vessel into which it is poured. 
 We sat ; but now we walk and run ; we begged ; 
 but now we are rich. How this change is brought 
 about in most cases we know not, but " this we 
 know : that, whereas we were blind, now we see ; " 
 and to know that we see is to be certain. 
 
 "That Man called Jesus made clay and anointed 
 my eyes." It is only through the Sacred Humanity 
 of our Lord that we can see the Divinity. He who 
 formed Adam from the slime of the earth, formed 
 for Himself a body by the Holy Ghost and the 
 Virgin Mary. He is the unction of our dead eyes ; 
 the Word of the Father lisped in mortal language : 
 "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." 
 "No man hath seen God at any time; the Only- 
 Begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, He 
 hath declared Him." 
 
384 THE ALL-SEEING. 
 
 cccxvi. 
 
 THE ALL-SEEING. 
 Eloquia oris mei et meditatio cordis mei in conspectn tuo semper,. 
 Domine adjutor meus et redemptor meus. 
 
 " The words of my mouth and the thoughts of 
 my heart are ever in Thy sight, O Lord, my helper 
 and redeemer." Our words and imaginings pass 
 through our hps and our heart, and leave no more 
 trace in memory than a ship in the waters. We live 
 just in the present and the penumbra of the dark 
 past. But to God all is present. We are in His 
 sight what we should be in our own were our whole 
 past and future crowded into our present clear con- 
 sciousness, and this because He is our " Helper" in 
 our every thought and word and act — even in those 
 which turn His help to His own dishonour, and with 
 regard to which He is both Adjtttor meus et Redemptor 
 meus — " My Helper and my Redeemer." 
 
 CCCXVII. 
 
 OUR DOUBLE THIRST. 
 Si quis sitit veniat ad me et bibet. 
 
 " If any thirst, let him come to Me and drink.'" 
 Amare et amari is the double thirst of man's insa- 
 tiable soul, or the double aspect of its single thirst. 
 There is a great power of loving latent in the 
 narrowest heart, and capable of indefinite expansion, 
 though often choked and well-nigh extinguished by 
 indulged selfishness. When once this thirst is. 
 
OUR DOUBLE THIRST. 385 
 
 wakened in us we become weary of our narrow 
 egoism, and seek to go out of ourselves and live 
 for others, to find an ooject that will stay the 
 strange craving which is like a hungry wolf within 
 us — an appetite not our own, and of which we can 
 give no account, which is in truth God, the First 
 Cause, the Last End, working in us, even as He 
 works for the general good in the instincts of senseless 
 Nature, urging all things to Himself, calling His 
 children home. So He uses the human heart as an 
 instrument whereby to love Himself, and long for 
 Himself, and praise Himself; and to love and 
 praise all else in Him and for Him ; to love those 
 whom He loves and as He loves them. And at 
 first this voice is strange to us; its accents indis- 
 tinguishable. We fancy it is some echo of our own 
 voice; some confused egoism mistaking its own 
 reflex for altruism. But as its meaning and purpose 
 becomes more evident and unmistakable, so it is. 
 seen to be no expression of our own hmited wants, 
 but of the will of the all-loving God, which is sealed 
 on the very substance of our spiritual nature ; who 
 has made us first for Himself and for others, and 
 secondarily for our own sakes. Nothing, then, can 
 stay this craving but that full object towards which 
 it drives us — God, and all things in their true 
 relation to God ; the Bonum Divinum, or Divine end 
 in creation ; not my own solitary end, which is an 
 abstraction and perhaps a contradiction, but that 
 universal end of which God has made me to be an 
 instrument. In no single person or creature can I 
 find rest if I regard him in violent isolation from 
 z 
 
386 OUR DOUBLE THIRST. 
 
 God and his fellow-creatures ; nor is he ever lovable 
 in the same way or to the same degree when thus 
 perversely exalted into an end. Love in its child- 
 hood and weakness is narrow and exclusive, easily 
 corrupted into "a conspiracy of two against the 
 universe." In its maturity it is all-embracing, yet 
 without loss of fulness and depth, approximating 
 towards the perfection of Divine charity, with which 
 it has a common centre of radiation. Si quis sitit 
 veniat ad me — He who wants something to love 
 which will draw out, expand, and strengthen all his 
 capabilities of loving, let him love Me and Mine. 
 And he who is athirst with an intense desire ot 
 being loved by one whose love is deep, penetrating, 
 lasting, and exalted, let him come to Me and drink 
 his fill. The fondest human love can never sate 
 him, unless he wilfully blinds himself to its limita- 
 tions, forgetting how short, inconstant, undiscern- 
 ing it is at the best. And how little do we find 
 of such love in many cases ; how lonely and unloved 
 we are outside the narrowest circle, while our hearts 
 crave to be universally lov«d, and shrink from the 
 censure and dislike of the meanest of our fellow- 
 men, thus showing that we were created to receive 
 universal love. If those who are called from lower 
 to higher, from caring for wife or husband to 
 caring for Christ and His Kingdom, ever seem to 
 violate this Divine instinct which bids us love 
 and be loved ; if they are ever lonely, unloving 
 and unloved, self-centred, narrow, it is so far only 
 as they fail to understand and realize their vocation 
 to a higher love which holds in itself every other, as 
 
THE GLORY OF THE SUM OF THINGS. 387 
 
 the light of the sun holds every lesser light. If in 
 Christ and Christ's Httle ones they do not find 
 father and mother and child, and spouse and 
 brethren ; if they do not pour out upon them and 
 receive from them a hundred-fold that affection 
 which they might have had in a narrow sphere of 
 a single household, they are indeed " of all men the 
 most miserable." Dominus pars hcereditatis mem et 
 calicis mei ; tu es qui restitues hcereditatem meam mihi 
 — "The Lord is the portion of my heritage and 
 cup. It is Thou who wilt restore my inheritance to 
 me." To love and be loved is man's heritage and 
 birthright ; if for God's love we seem to forsake it, 
 it is only seeming. He is bound to restitution and 
 heavy interest. 
 
 CCCXVIII. 
 
 THE GLORY OF THE SUM OF THINGS. 
 Viditque Deus cuncta quae fecerat, et ecce bonum valde. 
 "God viewed all together what He had made, 
 and lo! it was very good." We can but see His 
 works singly and partially, and can say of each, so 
 far as it is, and so far as we can see or understand 
 it, honum est. Could we be, like Paul, rapt up to the 
 throne of God, and from that height survey the 
 ■entire kingdom of His works unitedly and con- 
 nectedly, we should see that the excellence of all 
 {cuncta) was something indefinitely more glorious 
 than the sum of their single excellences. Of this 
 universal order and end we can have only the 
 remotest, analogical conjecture; as from a few brief 
 passages we can see that a dramatist has consum- 
 
388 JERUSALEM. 
 
 mate power and a sense of unity and order, although 
 we have no notion as to the gist of the piece in 
 question. Any complex unity viewed partially must 
 necessarily seem out of joint, unmeaning, and 
 crooked. 
 
 CCCXIX. 
 
 JERUSAI^EM. 
 Videns civitatem flevit super illam. 
 
 "And seeing the city, He wept over it." "Seeing." 
 Tears, the children of grief; and grief, the offspring 
 of love ; and all, the fruit of vision. " Seeing," as 
 God only sees, to whom past and future are the 
 setting of the present, who sees " within the gieen 
 the moulder'd tree, and towers fall'n as soon as 
 built ; " who, as He saw the walls of Sion rise stone 
 upon stone, the glory of the earth, saw in the same 
 gaze her glory trampled in the dust, her walls cast 
 down to the ground, so that not a stone was left upon 
 a stone. If tragedy is that which begins in joy and 
 hope, and ends in misery and despair, God well 
 may weep, to whose view is presented the continual 
 tragedy of souls destined to glory and doomed to 
 shame and destruction ; each a veritable " city of 
 God " founded on the eternal rock, girded with 
 tower and fortress, gleaming with gold and marble, 
 hallowed by the sanctuary of the Divine presence, 
 consecrated to His praise and glory ; and all ending 
 in everlasting ruin and shame. Nor does He weep as 
 the unconcerned spectator of a tragedy might weep, 
 but as a mother over the child of her travail and 
 tears and hopes ; as David over Absalom ; rather. 
 
JERUSALEM. 389 
 
 as God over His creature, as the Redeemer over the 
 ransomed soul, for there is no tie so tender or in 
 any way comparable. If the rivers of the nether 
 world are fed with the gathered tears of time, where 
 is the ocean which receives the tears of eternity 
 shed over the everlasting ruins of Love's dearest 
 designs ; over souls whom God had set upon a hill 
 to be witnesses to His name amidst idolaters and 
 pagans; whom He had called to help others and 
 make known his Name and Nature and Truth, 
 and " they would not " ? 
 
 " Her foundations are upon the hills of holiness. 
 The Lord loveth the gates of Sion beyond all the 
 dweUings of Israel. Glorious things are spoken of 
 thee, O thou City of God!" thou city of David 
 and of the Prophets, who have loved thee as a 
 bride and wept for thee and prayed for thee : 
 who have given God no rest day and night that 
 He might make thee a joy to the whole earth: 
 Civitas perfecti decoris, gaudium universe terra. And 
 yet this "child of many tears" must perish by her 
 own wilful, persevering resistance, victorious over a 
 thousand graces. In the history of Jerusalem we 
 see the history of every fallen soul — fallen a thousand 
 times and raised as often, and only cast off in the 
 extreme where further grace would violate free 
 choice. We have to kick and struggle hard and 
 long before God's patience is exhausted, and He 
 sets us down from His arms to run our own way to 
 destruction. 
 
 "Hadst thou but known the things of thy 
 peace." In these days we deny that men are 
 
390 JERUSALEM. 
 
 responsible for tbeir beliefs and unbeliefs; that 
 there is such a thing as wilful blindness of heart ; 
 wilful stupidity. If one acts according to his light 
 we ask no more, forgetting that he may be shutting 
 his eyes to the light. Yet our Lord's teaching is 
 only that of daily experience and common sense. 
 The affections are the eye-lids and motor-muscles of 
 the intellect or spiritual eye ; opening or closing it, 
 turning it towards one point and away from another. 
 Our imagination, passions, emotions, are far less 
 under our free control than our judgments and 
 opinions. Any one who knows the world knows 
 that the cleverest reasons count for nothing with 
 those who are indisposed to accept the conclusions. 
 They will be either ignored or distorted. Where 
 our treasure is, there will our heart and mind be. 
 A millionaire is in theory anti-socialist ; an under- 
 paid labourer is a socialist ; each accepts the 
 theory that best secures him his treasure. Israel 
 was ever blinded by dreams of wealth and ambi- 
 tion, and secular power and glory — a carnal-minded, 
 hard-hearted, stiff-necked people ; their treasure was 
 not in God and in His truth, and when He came 
 " He had no form or comeliness " for them ; and 
 when " they saw Him they saw naught about Him 
 that they should desire Him." 
 
 And the punishment is a natural consequence, 
 namely, the inability to use the faculty which we 
 pervert or leave unexercised ; the eye is dimmed, 
 the ear dulled, the conscience seared, the heart 
 petrified. Nesciunt quid faciunt — We know not what 
 we are doing, and God is crucified in our wilful 
 
THE ETERNAL YEARS. 391 
 
 ignorance ; we rush self-blinded into crime upon 
 crime. It is the worst of God's punishments when 
 He leaves us alone to run our own course, till the 
 things that belong to our peace are hidden from our 
 eyes ; till from obscurity and confusion of mind we 
 come to a strong conviction and settled belief in a lie. 
 
 CCCXX. 
 
 THE ETERNAL YEARS. 
 Antiquus dierum. 
 
 '* The Ancient of Days." There is sometimes a 
 strange beauty of expression in those who have 
 lived much, seen much, "thought much, and suffered 
 much, and who have " kept themselves unspotted 
 from the world." Pondering their own experiences 
 and the recorded experiences of others in their heart, 
 they have by sympathy borne the sorrow and tasted 
 the joys of the whole race, and the record, not of a 
 single life, but of ages, is written on their features. 
 When St. John beheld the beauty of the Ancient of 
 Days, of Alpha and Omega, for whom there is no 
 yesterday nor to-morrow, but only an ever-present 
 " now ; " before whose eyes all time is spread out 
 with its colours, lights, and shadows ; whose spotless 
 Heart has answered every throb of every heart 
 created ; he " fell at His feet as one dead." 
 
392 MID-LIFE. 
 
 CCCXXI. 
 
 MID-LIFE. 
 
 Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita 
 Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura. 
 
 " In the midway of this our mortal life, I found 
 me in a gloomy wood astray." It was at the point 
 of mid-life, that the poet found himself involved in 
 the deepest obscurity, mental and moral ; tempted 
 to despair of himself and of Church and State; 
 to turn and flee back into the dark and pathless 
 thicket ; to abandon all hopes of the sun-clad 
 heights. It takes half our life to make us realize 
 and acquiesce in the truth, that this world is 
 designed to disappoint, to raise our aspirations 
 higher and higher, yet never to satisfy them ; that 
 in disappointing us and making us turn elsewhere, it 
 fulfils its design most admirably. We have to 
 descend from the silva oscura — the gloomy wood, to 
 the very depths of Hell, before we can again behold 
 the stars ; or dispose ourselves to ascend to them, or 
 subject ourselves to the Love that moves them. This 
 crisis of life is a dangerous time to those who do not 
 understand it, or have not some Lucy or Beatrice or 
 Virgil interested in their guidance. One stands 
 tottering on the narrow ledge that divides the 
 deepest faith and hope and love, from the deepest 
 agnosticism, pessimism, cynicism. Prior to this 
 our inner life is but embryonic, formative, and 
 uterine. Now it is that we are brought to the 
 birth ; either to begin to live, or to be strangled in 
 
THE FEET OF CHRIST. 393 
 
 the process ; either a rivider le stelle, or a rovinare in 
 basso loco ; to see the stars once more ; or to plunge 
 back into the dark wood. 
 
 CCCXXII. 
 
 THE FEET OF CHRIST. 
 Ex quo intravit, non cessavit osculari pedes meos. 
 
 " Since her entrance, she has not ceased to kiss 
 My feet." Taking the feet of Christ as the lowest, 
 most earthly, least heavenly members of His Mystic 
 Body, Mary Magdalene teaches us in symbol our 
 conduct as penitents towards penitents. Our Saviour 
 had washed her from her sins in His Blood; she in 
 return washes His earth-soiled members with her 
 tears. For her, He had laid aside His glory and 
 sacrificed all ; and she devotes to their service the 
 best He had given her, the beauty and the wealth 
 that had been till then devoted to sin and selfishness; 
 she dries them with her hair, and anoints them with 
 her precious spikenard. He runs to meet the 
 penitent, yet a long way off, and receives her with 
 the kiss of peace as most dear to Him ; and she 
 ministers to His feet not merely with a relative 
 affection— loving them only for His sake, not seeing 
 in them the lovableness which He sees — but with 
 a direct personal love, and with the kisses of 
 passionate devotion. He anoints her with the 
 unction of sanctifying grace — very precious ; bought 
 at the price of God's blood-shedding — and heals the 
 wounds of her soul, and makes her all fragrant with 
 the oil of gladness ; and she, after she has cleansed 
 
394 LIFE FROM DEATH. 
 
 the soil from His feet with her tears ; after the old 
 life has been obliterated, superinfuses that spiritualis 
 unciio the new and eternal life of grace, by whose 
 fragrance God is ravished and drawn to the soul, as 
 a bee to the ilower, as it is written, in odorem unguen- 
 torum tuorum currimus. And many sins were forgiven 
 her because of her much love to those same feet ; 
 for he 'ihat shall convert a sinner shall cover a multi- 
 tude of sins ; and what is done to the last and least 
 of His brethren, to those who have least likeness to 
 Him, is done to Him. 
 
 CCCXXIII. 
 
 LIFE FROM DEATH. 
 Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi sseculi. 
 
 " I await the Resurrection of the dead, and the 
 life of the world to come." Faith is the substance 
 of things hoped for, the evidence of things not 
 seen ; and thus the last article of our creed in 
 order of synthesis, is the first in order of analysis. 
 It was this expectation of the future life, far 
 more dimly apprehended than by us, the " looking 
 for the reward," "for a city whose builder and 
 founder is God," that nerved the Old World 
 saints to subdue kingdoms, work righteousness, 
 and the rest ; ^ to live as strangers and pilgrims 
 on earth. Still more in the fuller light of Christian 
 revelation have martyrs, virgins, confessors, re- 
 formers, labourers, sufferers, lifted up their eyes to 
 the hills of eternity, those far-off mountains whose 
 * Hebrews xi. 
 
HABITS. 395 
 
 peaks are bright with the coming day, and from 
 whence come our help and our hope. In looking^ 
 for the resurrection of our mortal dust, for the 
 re-gathering and re-quickening of dry bones and 
 scattered fragments, we are pushing the madness 
 of hope to its extremity; of hope in lost causes, 
 disappointed ideals, frustrated designs ; of hope in 
 Him who is the Resurrection and the Life and 
 brought Lazarus from his grave. He who can say 
 " I hope," or rather, " I wait, as for a distant but 
 certain event, for the resurrection of the dead," can 
 never despair, however dark and puzzling God's, 
 ways may seem to him. 
 
 CCCXXIV. 
 
 HABITS. 
 Qui perseveraverit usque in finem, hie salvus erit. 
 
 " He that shall persevere to the end shall be 
 saved." Though it is true that habits are formed 
 and uprooted by the same process, namely, by a 
 persevering repetition of acts; still if the habit is. 
 accordant to inclination it is quickly formed and 
 very slowly uprooted. Contrariwise, if it is adverse 
 to inchnation, it is hard to form and easy to lose. 
 In the forming of difficult habits and the uprooting 
 of easy habits, perseverance does not mean infalli- 
 bility and constancy, but is compatible with the 
 absolutely certain prevision of many lapses and 
 failures. It is the resolution to do one's best, and 
 after each lapse to begin again with great faith in 
 the psychological law by which the falls become 
 
395 PETER'S SHIP. 
 
 ■fewer and more wide apart, till at last the intervals 
 are measured by years, or even by a life-time. The 
 ignorance of this law is a source of great dis- 
 couragement and settled despair. Men are simply 
 astonished to find that they cannot change a habit 
 by one strong resolution; and after two or three 
 attempts, give up in bewilderment. Yet even on 
 natural psychological principles it is not strange 
 that it should take four or five years to eradicate 
 all the germs of a disease contracted in a month or 
 Jess. 
 
 CCCXXV. 
 
 Peter's ship. 
 
 ita ut pene mergerentur. 
 
 "So that they were on the point of sinking," 
 We much misunderstand the difference between the 
 promise of assistance and the promise of inspiration. 
 •Christ never told us that the Church was to be spotless 
 and sinless in all her members ; or that they would 
 be individually free from a thousand errors in faith 
 and morals. In saying that the gates of Hell should 
 never prevail, He implied that they would ever 
 strive and at times all but prevail. Peter's ship is 
 always tempest-tost; often all but overwhelmed. 
 Yet we are surprised to see how nearly on various 
 occasions Rome has committed herself to error ; 
 how nearly unity has been destroyed and the other 
 notes obliterated ; how frightfully close she has been 
 to utter destruction. "Assistance" means the 
 minimum of interference with the natural process 
 of evolution, and God's wisdom is more glorified 
 
THE AGONY. 397- 
 
 thereby, than by a dispensation of miraculous- 
 cataclysms. For the most part, and up to the 
 last extremity, our Lord slumbering, leaves winds 
 and waves to themselves to rage as they will. What 
 we do see is exactly what we should expect to see 
 did we understand the promise aright. " Satan 
 has greatly desired to have us," and he is cease- 
 less in his machinations, working sometimes from- 
 outside ; but always and most successfully from 
 within as a corrupting influence. Evil men are 
 his rough, every-day tools; but his most delicate 
 and deadly work is done through the instrumentality 
 of the good, through the blindnesses and stupidities- 
 of those who mean well. Wherever he sees good 
 work on foot he at once lends a hand, that eventually 
 he may take the lead. Yet " He that watcheth over 
 Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep; " for in Him 
 there is neither sleeping nor waking nor vicissitude 
 of any kind, who makes and rules all things by one 
 restful, unbroken gaze upon the face of the Word 
 in His bosom. Satan is suffered for a little while 
 that he may in spite of himself work out the glory 
 of God, sifting the wheat — grain from chaff; light 
 from darkness ; truth from lie ; reality from sham. 
 
 CCCXXVI. 
 
 THE AGONY. 
 Non sicut ego volo, sed sicut tu. 
 
 " Not as I will, but as Thou wilt." It is hard' 
 not to imagine that a neutralized force is extinct 
 and non-existent, however great it may be. Perfect 
 
398 THE AGONY 
 
 «elf-mastery may easily be interpreted as apathy; 
 and the absolute submission of our Saviour's human 
 will to His Divine will is conceived in effect as 
 -though that human will were paralyzed or wholly 
 absent. God alone and our own heart knows the 
 existence of many affections within us, which are 
 kept in abeyance only by the continual pressure of 
 ■counter-motives against which they strain as the 
 seemingly inert water does against the sides of the 
 containing vessel. There is in every finite spirit, 
 and therefore in the human spirit of our Saviour, 
 a fundamental self-regarding tendency, which is 
 given in order that it may be ruled by and serve 
 a no less fundamental extra-regarding tendency — 
 the impulse of reason and conscience and of that 
 Divine love, which looks to the interests of universal 
 order, to the common good, to the glory and 
 Kingdom of God. Uncurbed by this latter, the 
 self-assertive impulse is the source of sin and dis- 
 order ; and when it is habitually rebellious it is a 
 vice, a "law of sin" resisting the law of mind and 
 reason. But when it is well and abundantly over- 
 mastered by the higher law and kept in its place, 
 it is altogether good and useful ; nor is its pressure 
 against the curb to be accounted rebellion, since 
 it is in conformity with the very nature of the finite 
 will. For the finite spirit is not made to stand 
 alone by itself; but to form part of one living 
 organism in union with God, the " Father of 
 spirits," and with all the "spirits of the just, made 
 perfect." The part exists primarily for the whole, and 
 for itself, only in order to the whole. Divine charity 
 
THE AGONY. 399 
 
 bids US love and long for God's Kingdom and glory 
 in which our own salvation is included, far more than 
 for our own salvation, considered exclusively as a 
 mere fraction of that glory. If self-charity is a first 
 duty, it means that our first duty towards the whole, 
 that is, towards the Kingdom of God, is to perfect 
 ourselves in our own particular place and function 
 therein. For as each part is more perfect, so will 
 the whole be ; and our utility to others depends upon 
 what we are in ourselves. But the ruling motive 
 is always charity, the love of God's glory, of the 
 common good, of the universal beatitude. The 
 fundamental self-regarding instinct is given, not to 
 rule us, but to be ruled by us in the interests of 
 reason and charity. It is a force put at our dis- 
 posal ; and the stronger it is, the greater our power 
 for good or evil, according to the use we make of it. 
 In our Saviour its force was in direct proportion to 
 the love of His Sacred Heart. Never for a moment 
 could it cause the grasp of reason and Divine love 
 to tremble or relax. But in Lucifer and the fallen 
 angels we see the havoc and destruction wrought 
 by this force of individualism when it breaks from 
 the restraint of the social law of love, hurling, so 
 to say, the planet from its orbit to its own destruc- 
 tion, and to the dismemberment of the system to 
 which it belonged. In His Agony, our Saviour 
 teaches us that it is only at the cost of bitter self- 
 conflict that we can enter into the life of love ; that 
 we must lose our isolated, selfish life before we can 
 find it a hundred-fold by entering into the life of 
 God and of our fellow-members in His Kingdom. 
 
400 THE AGONY. 
 
 For, indeed, if we are to enter into the joy of our 
 Lord, that is, into that corporate rejoicing of God 
 and His Elect, we must first enter into our Saviour's 
 Agony, when, going out of Himself, He entered 
 into every human soul and made all its sorrows and 
 infirmities His own. There are times when we axe 
 tempted to shut out the thought of the evils and 
 sufferings around us ; to be a world in ourselves and 
 for ourselves ; for why should we harrow ourselves 
 with ills past curing, or past our curing ? Yet this 
 suggestion is from the lower, self-regarding will. 
 For the higher will, the will of reason and of God 
 working in our reason, tells us that we must live out 
 of ourselves and in others ; and therefore that it is 
 our duty to suffer with others, and to feel the pain 
 of our helplessness. God, at most, lifts some little 
 corner of the veil which hides that awful vision of 
 sin and sorrow from our eyes ; but our Saviour, in 
 His Passion, had to face it all, and to feel it all 
 distinctly and in detail ; and if a mother would 
 shrink from gazing on the torn and mangled corpse 
 of her only son, what must it have cost Him whose 
 love for each soul surpasses indefinitely the united 
 love of all mothers, to behold and drink in, all the 
 miseries of the teeming millions of humanity ? 
 Hence He prays in an agony : " Not My will, but 
 Thine." And if, on the one hand, we must not for 
 a moment admit any moral disorder in this fearful 
 straining of the lower against the higher will in 
 our Saviour's spiritual soul, seeing that the higher 
 was perfectly and infallibly master ; yet, on the 
 other, we must remember that His pain was in 
 
SCOURGED FOR OUR INIQUITY. 401 
 
 proportion to the intensity of the impact with which 
 the lower will dashed itself fruitlessly against the 
 untrembling rock of His love for us. For it is not 
 he who yields to temptation, or even who is in~ 
 danger of yielding, that suffers most, but he rather 
 who holds out and endures. 
 
 CCCXXVII. 
 
 SCOURGED FOR OUR INIQUITY. 
 
 Disciplina pacis nostrae super eum, et livore ejus sanati sumus ; 
 et posuit Dominus in eo iniquitatem omnium nostrum. 
 
 " The chastisement of our peace was upon Him ; 
 and by His bruises we are healed, and the Lord 
 hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." It is a 
 necessary condition of our spiritual incorporation 
 with others by nature, knowledge, and sympathy, 
 that the chastisement of their crimes should often 
 fall upon us who are innocent ; and that the member 
 which receives the stroke should not always be the 
 member which merited it. A false individualism is 
 scandalized by the doctrine of original sin, of the 
 visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children, 
 of vicarious suffering and atonement. Certainly 
 their quarrel is not only with the God of Christians, 
 but with the Author of Nature. For there, too, the 
 law is, that some labour and others enter into their 
 labours ; some sow, and others reap ; and this alike 
 for better or for worse. Reason, when more closely 
 interrogated, sanctions our speaking of the " human 
 family" as of a close community whereof no member 
 suffers or rejoices, but the rest suffer or rejoice with 
 AA 
 
402 SCOURGED FOR OUR INIQUITY. 
 
 it. And if the force of the Christian and CathoHc 
 idea has broken many of the old bonds that held 
 tribes and nations together, it has only been to 
 replace them with more comprehensive and world- 
 wide ties. It is not that the family or national tie 
 is thought less of, but that the tie of Christian and 
 human brotherhood is thought more of; not that 
 father and mother are loved less, but that Christ 
 and mankind are loved more ; for " he that loves 
 father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of 
 Me." The more we enter into Christ's mind in 
 this matter, the greater will be our share by way of 
 sympathy in the sufferings of mankind ; and the more 
 reasonable will it seem to us that we should bear 
 the chastisement of the sins of others. Everywhere, 
 both in the natural and supernatural dispensations, in 
 the necessary laws of society, and in the economy of 
 original sin and vicarious atonement, we are taught 
 that none lives for himself, none is self-sufficing, 
 none without his burden ; that each is his brother's 
 keeper, and is to help him to bear his burden. 
 If the world were not full of sorrow and sin ; if it 
 were a terrestrial paradise where each had all he 
 needed, and depended on no one, how could men's 
 hearts and minds have ever been knit together into 
 one ? Compassion, the divinest thing about us, 
 would have lain dormant in the depths of our heart 
 like a pearl buried in the ocean ; whereas now it 
 shines even in the darkest and most seemingly God- 
 forsaken souls. 
 
 It is then in harmony with this conception of 
 the solidarity of mankind that God should make 
 
OVR LADY'S CORONATION. 403 
 
 His sun to shine upon the evil and the good, tliat 
 He should send His rain upon the just and the 
 unjust; that wheat and tares should be treated in 
 the present somewhat indiscriminately, with no fine 
 sifting of personal merits ; that none should be able 
 to escape the consequences of the deeds of others — 
 good and bad — or to prevent the fates of thousands 
 being intertwined with his own. And if the innocent 
 suffer for the guilty, the guilty, too, are spared and 
 blest for the innocent. The just are the salt of 
 the earth, for any ten of whom God would spare 
 ten thousand sinners, for one saint glorifies God 
 more than a thousand sinners dishonour Him. In 
 fine, if we look forward to a share in the common 
 or general joy of Christ and His saints, we must 
 now share in the common or general sorrow, bearing 
 one another's burdens, and so fulfilling the law of 
 Christ, who was scourged for our transgressions. 
 
 cccxxvni. 
 
 OUR lady's coronation. 
 
 Domine mna tua fecit quinque mnas. Et huic ait : Et esto tu 
 super quinque civitates. 
 
 " Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds. 
 And he said to him : Be thou also ruler over five 
 cities." High places in God's Kingdom reward the 
 fidelity of His servants. Not as though domination 
 were to be ambitioned as the spirit of self-assertion 
 ambitions it ; but rather as He ambitioned it who 
 said : " Let him that is greatest among you be as 
 the least ; and him that sitteth at meat as he who 
 
404 OUR LADY'S CORONATION 
 
 serveth ; " who was Himself exalted above all others, 
 and given a Name over every name because He 
 humbled Himself for the love of mankind, and 
 served us even unto death. It is the higher and 
 more central members of the organism which are 
 in a position to render the widest and most effectual 
 service. But since their power for evil is com- 
 mensurate with their power for good, they must 
 first prove their unselfishness and charity in the 
 " little things " of this life — in modico fidelis. For 
 power or any other talent is like wealth, which is 
 given us solely for the common good ; which if it is 
 to be first expended on our own physical, moral, 
 or intellectual perfection, or on that of our more 
 immediate belongings, yet even this is only because 
 it is for the general happiness that each should 
 render himself as efficient and helpful a member of 
 society as is compatible with the discharge of plain 
 duties towards others. In keeping with this con- 
 ception of power, the Vicar of Christ calls himself, 
 Servus servorum Dei — "the servant of God's ser- 
 vants ; " being exalted, not for his own advantage, 
 but for the advantage of mankind. And if Christ 
 crowns those saints who on earth have lived not 
 for themselves but for others, and if He makes 
 them rulers and dispensers of the treasures of His 
 Kingdom and potent intercessors with His Divine 
 Majesty, will not she whose service and suffering 
 and self-abasement exceeded that of all other crea- 
 tures, reign supreme as Queen of the City of God ? 
 
ASCETICISM. 405 
 
 CCCXXIX 
 
 ASCETICISM. 
 Si quis vult post me venire, abneget semetipsum. 
 
 " If any man will come after Me, let him deny 
 himself." Needless to say that Christian as opposed 
 to Manichean or dualistic asceticism, sprmgs from 
 the root of charity, or from the love of God's 
 Kingdom and glory. Antagonistic to this spirit 01 
 universal love is the spirit of self-centred love : 
 which is the spirit of disorder, false independence, 
 and sin. Natural reason and conscience convey 
 to us the will of God, who is subsistent Reason, 
 whose interest and aim is universal good and right 
 order ; and they impel us to live for a whole whereo 
 we are but parts, and for a good whereof our 
 particular good is but a fraction. When enlightened 
 by Catholic faith, the voice of conscience is none 
 other than the voice of Christ, who lives in us and 
 impels us to live for the Father's glory, and to find 
 our greatest good in the final "joy of our Lord" 
 and of His Mystical Body. " I live," says St. Paul, 
 "yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." And it is 
 only so far as the selfish life wanes, that the soul 
 can become the instrument of that higher and more 
 universal life. If we are to live to Christ, we must 
 die to self; if we are to assert Him and His truth 
 in our conduct, we must deny self, and all the lying 
 principles of selfishness and individualism. Christian 
 mortification and asceticism aims at the suppression 
 of self-assertion, both bodily and spiritual, not 
 
406 THE MASS. 
 
 merely when it is in actual conflict with the law 
 of reason, order, and charity, but at all times, in 
 order to secure the habitual disposition and the 
 ready obedience of the flesh to the spirit, i.e., of 
 blind nature to reason and to God. No social 
 reforms, no laws or systems, will remedy the present 
 evils of civilization until the doctrine of the Cross 
 and the duty of self-denial and mortification have 
 been accepted by all classes. All our miseries are 
 traceable to the spirit of selfish individualism 
 which unbelief has canonized, and with which 
 even believers are impregnated, so that the Church 
 herself is well-nigh paralyzed — omnes quce sua sunt 
 quceruni ; non qucs Jesu Christi — all seek their own 
 advantage or praise, and not the interests of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 CCCXXX. 
 
 THE MASS. 
 Desiderio desideravi. 
 
 " I have greatly longed to eat this Pasch with you 
 before I suffer." Every single Mass is nothing more 
 nor less than a renewal of that great paroxysm of 
 our Saviour's passionate love for the soul ; another 
 outbreak of the anguish \\'hich says desiderio desi- 
 deravi. When shall we understand this or believe it ? 
 " He that loves," says a Kempis, "knows the strong 
 cry of the lover." Let us, if we have ever loved child 
 or mother or friend or spouse, try and recall the 
 " hunger and thirst," the craving for nearness and 
 converse which love means, its restlessness and 
 burning energy. And let us add to all this whatever 
 
THE MASS. 407 
 
 we have read or heard of ardent, devoted passion. 
 And let us cast all these longings into one love 
 which holds in solution all that is- best in each of 
 them ; and let us multiply its fervour seven times, 
 and that, seven times again, till our head reels 
 before the prospect of infinity stretching away 
 beyond our utmost horizon ; and then let us bring 
 this infinite force of love and compress it into the 
 finite compass of a human heart, bursting and 
 breaking out under the strain on every side ; and 
 perhaps we shall have some dim notion of what 
 goes on when day by day He comes hungering and 
 thirsting for our love and breaks bread and says, 
 "Take and eat, this is My Body which is given for 
 you." Take all that I have, all that I am, make Me 
 yours, dispose of Me according to your good will 
 and pleasure ; do with Me what you like. I am 
 your slave, at your mercy to use or abuse ; crushed 
 and humbled by hunger, ready for the very husks 
 of the swine, the scraps and leavings of your love. 
 Love I must have or perish. Give Me any sort of 
 love and this is enough for Me, though I would fain 
 have more. This is My Body that I gave to be 
 torn to shreds for you, and would give a thousand 
 times a day if necessary to be crucified again for 
 you, the Body that I took for you, in hopes I might 
 get you to love Me. And this is My Blood, My 
 Heart's Blood that I poured out for you and for 
 all your sns that they might not come between us; 
 the blood of the new and eternal covenant of love 
 and friendship ; of the contract between the soul and 
 its Divine lover and spouse ; new because it is ever 
 
■408 THE MASS. 
 
 Strange and incredible to narrow hearts and dim 
 eyes; eternal because it is from the begmnmg as 
 old as God Himself, as old as the embrace of the 
 Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; 
 before the morning stars were created and the sons 
 of God shouted for joy — ex utero ante luciferum. 
 The "mystery of faith," for it is not the "how" 
 of transubstantiation that will scandalize any mind 
 of mediocre modesty ; but the mystery of the Divine 
 indigence and dependence ; how the self-sufficing 
 can be famishing with want; parched and athirst 
 with the fever of love — and love of what ? Of 
 Himself, after all; and yet not a selfish love, for 
 it is the source of all pure and unselfish love. All 
 right and orderly love is but some mode or mani- 
 festation of that impulse whereby God having in 
 some sense gone out of Himself, returns to Himself; 
 whereby the sparks are drawn back to the fire ; and 
 the rain-drops to the ocean ; and the many, to the 
 parent " One ; " and " the soul to God that gave 
 it." " I speak as a man," not as though God were 
 frangible, in any such literal sense, but because 
 these things, so far as they are helpful and beautiful, 
 are less and not more than the truth. Wherever 
 He finds Himself in His substance or in His image 
 there He loves Himself with the force of His infinite 
 love, and draws to Himself what is of Himself and 
 yet not Himself. It is this love, this drawing, 
 which manifests itself in every appetite and longing, 
 natural or superinduced, and which is the perverted 
 body and substance even of every sinful desire. In 
 some sort it may be conceived as if in the created 
 
THE MASS. 409 
 
 universe God the Head had fashioned unto Himself 
 a body of which He is the animating breath, the Hfe 
 and the love; moving every sense and member to 
 His own end, wherein each singly finds its rest and 
 final satisfaction. It is not my hand that serves 
 me, but I who by my hand serve my self; nor does 
 the foot serve the hand ; but I, through the foot 
 serve the hand for my self's sake, of which self the 
 hand is part. Again, this is but the rude figure 
 of human speech, failing of the truth, painting 
 the pure, living light of the sun with dead 
 chalkings called white, only because there is 
 something blacker. It is not I who love God, but 
 God who loves Himself through me ; it is not my 
 brother who loves me, but God who loves me 
 through him ; and loves Himself in me. And so 
 the need God has of my love is the manifestation 
 of the need He has of Himself, that absolute, 
 all-forcing necessity; whereof all finite loves are 
 faint shadowings. And if I but knew the meaning 
 of my spiritual instincts, if I could but see the term 
 they are groping at, as He sees it who implanted 
 them, I should see that my love, however weak 
 and feeble in degree, has for its only satisfying 
 object the All-good, the All-beautiful, the All-true ; 
 God and all that is God's, with God and under God, 
 each in due place and order. This is indeed the 
 Mysterium Fidei, the incredible mystery of God's 
 passion for the immortal soul ; that passion which 
 breaks out into wild conflagrations and extravagant 
 paroxysms day by day while we kneel by, hard and 
 cold, and hear words and see bread and wine, and 
 
410 THE MASS. 
 
 half-believe, and half-wonder what it all means, as 
 new-born babes opening their eyes strangely on the 
 world which is one day to be all to them, but which 
 as yet is nothing. Ddsiderio desideravi ; if we have 
 no desire ourselves, let us at least not stand in the 
 way of His. 
 
 " He loved them even unto the end." The 
 Eucharist was pre-eminently a leave-taking, a parting 
 gift of our Saviour to His friends. It was also a 
 parting lesson in the New Law ; a parting injunc- 
 tion of the Great Precept, renewed day by day in 
 the Mass. Greater love hath no man than this, that 
 he lay down his life for his friends. " Behold I have 
 given you an example," He says, " the Good Shep- 
 herd giveth His life for His sheep. Feed My sheep. 
 Do to one another as I have done to you." This is the 
 archetype of that self-giving love of others, which so 
 far as it can or may, says to the least of Christ's 
 brethren : Take, eat, this is my body which is given 
 for you ; this is my blood which is shed for you ; 
 this is my life, my health, my best energy, my heart, 
 my love which is devoted and given over to you. 
 In hoc cognovimus caritatem Dei, quoniam ilk pro nobis 
 animam posuit, et nos debemus pro fratribits animas 
 ponere. Herein have we known the love of God, 
 since He laid down His Hfe for us; and we also 
 ought to lay down our lives for our brethren. 
 
 THE END. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Adoration 211. 
 Advocate, Our 253. 
 Agony, The 397. 
 All men lovable 295. 
 All-seeing, The 384. 
 Altar, The 187. 
 Andrew, St. 22. 
 Angels' Food 336. 
 Anxiety 53. 
 Art and Holiness 325. 
 Asceticism 405. 
 Attachments 57. 
 Attractiveness 171. 
 Attractiveness of Christ 20. 
 Augustine, St. 272. 
 
 Christ our Sun 56. 
 Christ's Heritage 367. 
 Christ's Visits 7. 
 Church, Prayer for the 63. 
 Circumcision, The 204. 
 Clean Heart, A 285. 
 Clothing the Naked 302. 
 Collective Praise 275. 
 Collective Prayer 242. 
 Communion, Before 77. 
 Community, God's House, The 70. 
 Concert of Creation, The 91. 
 Conditions of Prayer 1 34. 
 Conservation of Spiritual Energy 
 136. 
 
4" 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Economy of Truth 268. 
 End of Man 380. 
 Enlightenment 266. 
 Epiphany 209. 
 Eternal Years, The 39 1. 
 Eternity of Hell 153. 
 Evangelical Counsels 213. 
 Example of the Saints 16. 
 Exile, Our 253 
 Expectancy 368. 
 Expectation of B.V.M. 54. 
 Eyes of Pity, The 254. 
 
 Failure 362. 
 
 Fair Love 247. 
 
 Faith 126. 
 
 Faith and Practice 9. 
 
 Faith fire-tried 40. 
 
 Father of the Poor 316. 
 
 Fearfulness 320. 
 
 Fear not 146 
 
 Fear of God's scrutiny 31. 
 
 Fear of Hell 155. 
 
 Feast of Lance and Nails l65. 
 
 Feeding the hungry 300. 
 
 Feet of Christ, The 393. 
 
 Fellowship in Suffering 366. 
 
 Finding in the Temple 284. 
 
 Folly of Divine Love 122. 
 
 Forgetful Hearers 
 
 Forgiving and Forgetting 233. 
 
 Francis, St. 117. 
 
 Frequent Communion 172. 
 
 From Earth to Heaven 207. 
 
 From God's Feet to His Face 311. 
 
 From Nature to God 182. 
 
 Fulness of Faith 357. 
 
 Gate of Heaven 261. 
 Gifts that cost 312. 
 Giving to the Poor 21. 
 Gladness, Spirit of 46. 
 Gleams in Darkness 1S5. 
 
 God above all 107. 
 
 God at our mercy 133. 
 
 God in every solace 323. 
 
 God in human affection 190. 
 
 God m Man 17. 
 
 God in the darkness 95. 
 
 God in the storm 209. 
 
 God made Man 139. 
 
 God of my heart 328. 
 
 God our first Joy 52. 
 
 God our Happiness 105. 
 
 God our Love 244. 
 
 God's attributes 103. 
 
 God's bounty 19. 
 
 God's doings inscrutable 108. 
 
 God's Face 87. 
 
 God's Feet to His Face, From 311 
 
 God's Garment 127. 
 
 God's Glory 277 
 
 God's Immanence 234. 
 
 God's Indwelling 281. 
 
 God's Love, not blind 313. 
 
 God's Peace 55, 
 
 God's Plans unsearchable 217. 
 
 God's Vengeance 126. 
 
 God's Victory 178. 
 
 God's Voice in Reason 355. 
 
 God works quietly 39. 
 
 Gold, Frankincense, Myrrh 216. 
 
 Grace of long life 104. 
 
 Grace of utterance 264. 
 
 Growth a Mystery 223. 
 
 Growth in Grace 109. 
 
 Habits 395. 
 
 Harbouring Strangers 303. 
 Hardness of Heart 76. 
 Heaven and Earth 12. 
 Heaven God's House 74. 
 Hell a Mystery 150. 
 Help from the Mountains II. 
 Helping God 373. 
 Helping others 61;. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 413 
 
 Herod 224. 
 
 Holy Church God's House 69. 
 
 Holy Communion 333. 
 
 Holy House of Loreto 43, 129. 
 
 Holy Innocents 141. 
 
 Holy Name 27. 
 
 Holy Relics 28. 
 
 Holy Spirit 314. 
 
 Hope 150. 
 
 Hope not Presumption 34. 
 
 Human Fickleness 382. 
 
 Human Frailty 332. 
 
 Illiberal Judgments 132, 
 Immaculate Conception 93. 
 Incarnation, The 97. 
 Inconstancy loi. 
 Incredulity 58. 
 Intelligent Charity 353. 
 Intelligent Love 169. 
 Intercession 272. 
 Internal Law 374. 
 Intertwined destinies 183. 
 Intuition 262. 
 Intuitive vision 168. 
 
 Jealous God, A 263. 
 
 Jerusalem 388. 
 
 John, St., the Baptist 33. 
 
 John, St., the Evangelist 130. 
 
 Joseph, St. 199, 201. 
 
 Joy of our Youth 338. 
 
 Justice and Peace 165. 
 
 Lance and Nails 166. 
 
 Intent Capacities 299. 
 
 Lazarus 296. 
 
 Lazarus resuscitattis 136. 
 
 Liberality 371. 
 
 Life a Dream 228. 
 
 Life from Death 394. 
 Life's last Lesson 226. 
 Life of Praise 117. 
 Light of Hearts 317. 
 Light of the World 10. 
 Lily amid Thorns 36. 
 Long Life, Grace of 104. 
 Longsuffering 75, 372. 
 Love in the Wine-press 94. 
 Love's archetype 78. 
 Lucy, St. 44. 
 
 Magnificat 15. 
 
 Man-worship 161. 
 
 Many-sidedness 186. 
 
 Margaret Mary, Blessed 33, 128. 
 
 Martin,. St. 45. 
 
 Mary and the Holy Spirit 138. 
 
 Mary our Life 250. 
 
 Mary our Sweetness 251. 
 
 Mary our Teacher 246. 
 
 Mary's Crown 32. 
 
 Mary's Fiat 29 1. 
 
 Mary's Welcome 255. 
 
 Mass, The 406. 
 
 Mediation 200. 
 
 Mediatorial Office 192. 
 
 Meekness 225, 352. 
 
 Memorare 270. 
 
 Mercy and Truth 164. 
 
 Mid-life 302. 
 
 Milk for Babes 279. 
 
 Minuteness of God's Love 112. 
 
 More than a Brother 284. 
 
 Mother of Mercy 248. 
 
 Name of God 231. 
 Name, Our own 212. 
 Natural Affections 68, 205. 
 Natural Kindness 162. 
 Nature of Sin 41. 
 
414 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Nature saved in Grace II2. 
 Nature to God, From 182. 
 Neglected Calls 332. 
 Night and Day 23. 
 Novelties 269. 
 No waste of good Desires 1 23. 
 
 Oblation 212. 
 
 Omnipotence 354. 
 
 One Bread and one Body 125. 
 
 One God 238. 
 
 Other People's Business 118. 
 
 Our Advocate 253. 
 
 Our Charge 219. 
 
 Our Cry to Mary 252. 
 
 Our Double Thirst 384. 
 
 Our Exile 253. 
 
 Our Grievances 161. 
 
 Our Guest 319. 
 
 Our Lady, God's House 71. 
 
 Our Lady's Coronation 403. 
 
 Our Lady's Expectation 54. 
 
 Our I-atent Capacities 299. 
 
 Our Neighbour's Soul 72. 
 
 Our own Name 202. 
 
 Our Soul God's House 71. 
 
 Our Times 129. 
 
 Overruling Providence 38. 
 
 Paul, St. 293. 
 Peace 123. 
 Peaceableness 170. 
 Peace, God's 55. 
 Penitence 236. 
 Penitent's Hope, The 4. 
 Perseverance 52. 
 Personal Love 84. 
 Peter and Paul 363. 
 Peter's Ship 396. 
 Philip, St. 244. 
 Praise and Thanks 294, 
 Prayer, Collective 242. 
 Prayer for the Church 63. 
 
 Preparing God's Ways 85. 
 Presence of Christ 2. 
 Proof of God's Word 19. 
 Public Worship 342. 
 
 Ransom 322. 
 
 Rational Piety 119. 
 
 Relics, Holy 28. 
 
 Remembering Christ I. 
 
 Resolutions 185. 
 
 Restraint 173. 
 
 Restraint the condition of Growth 
 
 120. 
 Retrospection 177. 
 Returning to God 61. 
 
 Sacramental Union 274. 
 Sacred Heart 119. 
 Satan's Tactics 321. 
 Scourged for our Iniquity 40I. 
 Second Coming 26. 
 Secret of Power 277. 
 Seeing is Believing 140. 
 Seeming Abandonment 191. 
 Self-confidence 180. 
 Self-contempt 343. 
 Self-study 257. 
 Sense of Security 222. 
 Sense of Sin 30. 
 Separation 113. 
 Serving in Fear 60. 
 Seven Dolours 102. 
 Sheep outside the Fold 311. 
 Short Life a Grace III, 
 Shut out 241. 
 Silent Prayer 121. 
 Simplicity 273. 
 Sins against Light 181. 
 Smoking Flax 203. 
 Soul, The, as a Vine 8. 
 Sowing in Tears 37. 
 Spirit of Gladness 46. 
 Stanislaus, St., 48, 49, 51. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 415 
 
 Star of the Sea 250. 
 Steadfast Peace 270. 
 Stephen, St. 96. 
 Stigmata of St. Francis 117. 
 
 Tabernacle God's House 73. 
 
 Tears of Jesus 66. 
 
 Thomas, St. , of Canterbury 142. 
 
 Three Hardships 221. 
 
 Times of Visitation 90. 
 
 Tolerance 346. 
 
 Transforming Lights 383. 
 
 Treasure found. The 6. 
 
 Treasure lost. The 5. 
 
 Tlree (The) and Fruit 204. 
 
 Tree of Knowledge 106. 
 
 Unanimity 114. 
 Unclouded Sight i6o. 
 Uncovenanted Mercies 379. 
 Unequal Affection 179. 
 Union with God 83. 
 Utterance, Grace of 264. 
 
 Vanity and Pride 313. 
 Various Tongues 323. 
 Vicarious Suffering 167, 
 Vine, Our Soul as a 8. 
 Virginity 260. 
 Vision and Love 206. 
 Visitation, The 370. 
 Visiting Prisoners 308. 
 Visiting the Sick 305. 
 Visits, Christ's 7. 
 
 Waiting in Silence 341. 
 Watchfulness, Divine 13. 
 Water and Wine 286. 
 Weak chosen. The 58. 
 Where is thy brother ? 223, 
 Whom to fear 157. 
 Who touched Me? 189. 
 Wisdom and Utterance 324. 
 Wordless Prayers 141. 
 Worthy Praise 1731