A I ulpit (Commentary
ON
Cxatholic 1 caching
A COMPLETE EXPOSITION OF
CATHOLIC DOCTRINE, DISCIPLINE AND CULT
ORIGINAL DISCOURSES
VOL. I THE CREED
NEW YORK
JOSEPH F. WAGNER
iltfiil ©fastat
REMIGIUS LAFORT, S.T.L.
Censor
imprimatur
*JOHN M FARLEY, D.D.
Archbishop of New York
NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 8, 1907
Copyright, 1908, by JOSEPH F. WAGNER, New York
CONTENTS
PAGE I. THE CALL OF ALL MEN TO RELIGION.
By the Right Rev. James Bellord, D.D 7
II. INSUFFICIENCY OF REASON IN MATTERS OF RELIGION.
By the Rev. Timothy P. Holland 16
III. TRUE BELIEF THE WAY TO GOOD LIFE.
By the Right Rev. James Bellord, D.D 25
IV. IS THERE A GOD? IS THERE ONLY ONE GOD?
By the Rev. P. A. Halpin 34
V. THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD.
By the Rev. F. Harvey 41
VI. THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD.
By the Rev. Thomas J. Gerrard 5°
VII. THE HOLY TRINITY.
By the Right Rev. Mgr. Canon John S. Vaughan 58
VIII. OBSCURITY OF RELIGIOUS MYSTERIES.
By the Right Rev. James Bellord, D.D 68
IX. GOD, THE FATHER AND CREATOR.
By the Rev. Thomas J. Gerrard 76
X. THE ANGELS; GOOD AND BAD ANGELS; GUARDIAN ANGELS.
By the Rev. H. G. Hughes 84
XI. THE CREATION OF MAN.
By the Rev. John W. Sullivan 94
XII. THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.
By the Rev. Dr. C. Bruehl 102
XIIL THE SECOND PERSON; TRUE GOD.
By the Rev. H. G. Hughes 1 13
XIV. THE INCARNATION.
By the Rev. Thomas F. Burke, C.S.P 123
XV. THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION.
By the Rev. J. H. Stapleton 132
XVI. CHRIST, THE TRUE MESSIAS.
By the Rev. Bertrand L. Conway, C.S.P 140
XVII. THE PASSION AND DEATH OF OUR LORD.
By the Rev. William Graham 147
XVIII. THE RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION.
By the Rev. William Graham 154
XIX. THE JUDGMENT (SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD).
By the Rev. William Graham 161
XX. THE FRUITS OF THE SACRED PASSION.
By the Rev. William Graham 167
XXI. THE THIRD PERSON; TRUE GOD.
By the Rev. Thomas J. Gerrard 173
XXII. THE CHURCH.
By the Rev. F. Harvey 181
XXIII. THE INCOMPLETENESS OF REVELATION.
By the Right Rev. James Bellord, D.D 189
XXIV. THE UNITY OF TRUE RELIGION; OR, IS ONE RELIGION AS
GOOD AS ANOTHER?
By the Right Rev. James Bellord, D.D 198
XXV. OUT OF THE CHURCH, NO SALVATION. I.
By the Right Rev. James Bellord, D.D 209
XXVI. OUT OF THE CHURCH, NO SALVATION. II.
By the Right Rev. James Bellord, D.D 218
j CONTENTS
PAGE
XXVII. IS THE CHURCH INTOLERANT?
By the Rev. P. A. Halpin 228
XXVIII. THE VISIBLE HEAD OF THE CHURCH; HIS OFFICE.
By the Rev. J. H. Stapleton 235
XXIX. INFALLIBILITY OF THE CHURCH AND OF THE POPE.
By the Rev. H. G. Hughes 243
XXX. THE PRIESTHOOD: ITS THREEFOLD OFFICE.
By the Rev. Thomas J. Gerrard 255
XXXI. THE PROPAGATION AND PRESERVATION OF THE CHURCH.
By the Rev. John Freeland 264
XXXII. SUBMISSION TO RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY.
By the Right Rev. James Bellord, D.D 273
XXXIII. THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS.
By the Rev. Bertrand L. Conway, C.S.P. 283
XXXIV. THE REMISSION OF SINS.
By the Rev. Dr. C. Bruehl aga
XXXV. THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY.
By the Rev. John Freeland 300
XXXVI. IS THERE A HEREAFTER?
By the Right Rev. Mgr. Canon John S. Vaughan 310
XXXVII. HEAVEN.
By the Rev. Bertrand L. Conway, C.S.P * 318
XXXVIII. PURGATORY.
By the Rev. John Freeland 326
XXXIX. HELL.
By the Right Rev. James Bellord, D.D 333
XL. THE DANGER OF DAMNATION.
By the Right Rev. James Bellord, D.D 340
XLI. PREDESTINATION AND REPROBATION.
By the Right Rev. James Bellord, D.D 349
XLII. DOES THE CHURCH TEACH THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS?
By the Rev. P. A. Halpin 357
XLIII. ON MIRACLES.
By the Right Rev. Mgr. Canon John S. Vaughan 365
XLIV. ON THE REFORMATION AND THE INQUISITION.
By the Rev. John Freeland 373
XLV. SECRET SOCIETIES. FORBIDDEN BOOKS.
By the Rev. John W. Sullivan 382
XLVI. SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY.
By the Right Rev. James Bellord, D.D 393
XLVII. SUPERSTITION IN PRACTICES OF FAITH.
By the Rev. Thomas F. Burke, C.S.P 400
XLVIII. THE UNIVERSAL FITNESS OF THE CHURCH.
By the Right Rev. James Bellord, D.D 406
XLIX. THE CHURCH AND MODERN PROGRESS.
By the Right Rev. James ,Bellord, D.D 416
L. HUMAN RESPECT AND PERSECUTION.
By the Rev. H. G. Hughes 425
LL CHRISTIANITY, THE SOURCE OF CIVILIZATION.
By the Right Rev. James Bellord, D.D 433
LII. CATHOLICS, THE SALT OF THE EARTH.
By the Right Rev. James Bellord, D.D 443
LIII. LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH.
By the Rev. P. A. Halpin 450
EDITOR'S NOTE
Encyclical of His Holiness, Pius X, in which he so strongly insists upon Catechising as one of the chief duties of the priesthood, has induced the publication of this Series. Our aim has been to prepare for the priest and for the catechist a storehouse of well-digested thought from which may be drawn inspiration as well as spiritual food.
Here are to be found assembled, carefully and forcefully devel- oped and aptly illustrated and applied, the arguments, sanctioned by the Church and tested by experience, which form necessarily the essential part of the definition and defense of Christian doctrine.
While a carefully prepared plan has been followed through- out, we feel that the attractiveness of the Series, no less than its value, are greatly enhanced by the fact that herein one comes in touch with the efforts of many widely known writers and preachers of our day, thus assuring to the work a great variety of form, literary style, and oratorical methods.
It is expected that these volumes will be found of value not only for ready reference on points of Christian doctrine, but also as mat- ter for spiritual reading in religious houses, and in presenting points for daily meditation, which is well recognized as a practical, if remote, method of preparation for the sacerdotal duty of catechising.
The Series will comprise four volumes, dealing in turn with the Creed, the Commandments, the Means of Grace, and, the Liturgy of the Ecclesiastical Year, and it is hoped that the arrange- ment of matter, as well as the completeness of treatment, will go far to meet the needs of the hour in this field.
AN EXPOSITION AND DEFENSE OF CATHOLIC
TEACHING.
Vol. I. The Creed.
I. THE CALL OF ALL MEN TO RELIGION.
BY THE RIGHT REV. JAMES BELLORD, D.D.
"A certain man made a great supper and invited many. . . . And the lord said . . . compel them to come in, that my house may be filled." — Luke xiv. 16, 23.
SYNOPSIS.— The parable of the supper illustrates the call of all men to religion. Religion an essential want of the soul. This is proved (i) by a consideration of man's make-up, his various faculties, social needs, etc., (2) by the universality of religion.
Objection.— Some men seem to live without religion. This is an abnormal condition and easily accounted for. Example — Ashes in subter- ranean cavities without eyes. The guests were called but would not come.
Reason why men neglect the call, (i) worldliness, (2) external oc- cupations, temporal gifts. Examples — (a) Greeks, (b) Romans. The poor always responsive to the call of God.
Conclusion. — The benefits of religion, (i) to the soul, (2) to the world.
The parable of the supper teaches us great lessons which we may apply to Our Lord's dealings with mankind in His own day and in this of ours. It treats of the call of God to all men ; of the classes who are predisposed respectively to be religious and irreligious ; of the motives that cause men to live without religion and to oppose it.
I. We come across many men in life who seem to be absolutely de- void of the religious sense, and to be incapable of religion. They seem to have no attraction to it, to feel no want of it. These are not a few casual individuals but large classes. Sometimes, even the ma- jority of a community or a nation, or of those who live at a certain time, appear to be affected in this way. The suggestion that arises and is adopted by many is this: that religion is not a thing for all men, but the product of certain external conditions of inherited char- acter, of special education, of a particular stage in the development of civilization. Many would consider that it is a sort of cultivated, or rather uncultured taste, existing in some men and not in others, like having an eye for form and color or an ear for music ; and that it is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy to have it or to be without it. This we shall now take into consideration.
Our text and many others throughout the New Testament bear
8 THE CREED.
witness to the falsehood of these views. Many are called, in fact all are called in one way or other, at one time or other, to the ban- quet of the great King. All men are God's children, made in His image and likeness, the object of His eternal love, destined to thrones of future glory. The means and the strength required for that end are placed in the hands of all, although in different propor- tions. All men have access to truth and a call to holiness and sal- vation. The Son of God did not die for one nation, or for one class, but for all mankind. He wishes all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth ; He wills not the death even of the sinner, but rather that he be converted and live. There is an order and a variety in God's calls. The Jews were called the first, and in the old times had special privileges of knowledge and divine favor beyond all other nations. In the New Testament they received the vocation to the faith before the Gentiles, but not to their exclusion. Individual men are called, sometimes from their infancy, sometimes not till old age. A man may be long in darkness, in invincible ignor- ance of religion, in the valley of the shadow of death. But at last the hour sounds, the summons of Christ makes itself heard to him, the light which enlighteneth every man reveals to him the path to faith and justification, which he may follow if he will.
Religion has no varying and accidental relation to the minds and consciences of mankind. It is one of the essential wants of the soul, answering to its deepest, most spontaneous, and universal cravings. Religion is one of the most prominent facts in the history of hu- manity, in every stage from barbarism up to the highest refinement. Each element in religion meets a corresponding want in human nature.
There is a craving in the human soul for truth, as universal as the craving for bodily nutriment. And so soon as the faculties are re- lieved from the strain caused by want and the struggle for daily food, the mind engages in philosophical and religious speculations, and begins to search for supernatural truth.
There is a conscience in man that bears witness to a higher law of justice and goodness, a law superior to mere expediency, or caprice, or the power which springs from brute force. Though the natural conscience be unable to originate, it never fails to pay the homage of admiration to the great supernatural virtues when they are presented to its gaze ; and thus it acknowledges spontaneously the truth and universal influence of religion.
THE CALL OF ALL MEN TO RELIGION. 9
There is a natural instinct too, anterior to all reasoning, which is satisfied only by the acts and solemnities of religious worship. A law of our being makes us recognize by some inward sense the exist- ence of a supreme, invisible power, and inspires us to express in outward forms our awe and veneration.
The social life of mankind shows that religion is a universal want, and that men have a universal aptitude for it. The progress of our race and its organization, intellectual improvement, submission to authority, the binding of many men into harmony for mutual aid, the restraint of destructive impulses — these objects have never been attained, but with the help of religious truths and religious laws. Religion has been the most important factor in every civilization of ancient and modern times, not only in Judea and in Christendom, but in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, in China, Mexico, and Hindustan.
II. Though all men require the aid of religion, and are all called to it, yet there is the patent fact that many live absolutely without it, disbelieving its revelations of truth, laughing at its laws, owning no duty to God. They do not recognize the services of religion to humanity. They do not feel any want of it, they profess to think it unreasonable, useless, even harmful to the best interests of men. The gospel of our text puts before us certain instances of this fact. The numerousness of such cases is no disproof of the truth that all men need religion and are called to it by God. It is not inconsistent with the general application of that truth, that certain men should remain for a time without being as yet called, or that they should have extin- guished in themselves their natural aptitudes. There are some men in whom certain ordinary faculties are almost extinct. Custom and disuse, or disease, may destroy them. So in the lowest depths of the sea and in the subterranean rivers of great caves, fish are found that have no eyes; they have been reduced to this state through countless generations of ancestors whose eyes have gradually with- ered away through want of use. But they still have the rudiments of eyes, which in the course of time, under ordinary conditions, might become capable of vision. Even those who seem to be without the faculty for religion retain the rudiments of the sense somewhere in their being, and through this remnant grace can work if they are willing, and bring them to the fulness of religion. They are for the time in an unnatural and diseased state, they can not assimilate the natural food of the soul ; but it does not follow that natural food at proper times is unsuitable or injurious to the average man in a
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healthy state, or that those who have fallen away can not recover their normal state.
The diseased condition arises from special causes that interfere with the ordinary operations of the general law, from inherited hab- its, from education or the absence of it, or from earlier sins of which this is the punishment. It may even arise from the natural tenden- cies of one's character, and yet be an unnatural state. There are weak points in every man's character, on the moral side as on others ; these determine his predominant failing, which God permits him to have in order that he may gain merit by struggling against it. Thus as some men will have a predisposition to stealing and others to in- temperance, so will some be led in the direction of irreligion. Through their yielding to temptation, sin of such a kind will become a second nature to them, they will become unconscious of the law, it will be as though the law did not exist or were not adapted to their character ; yet for all that, the laws of honesty, of sobriety, and of religion do not cease to be of universal obligation and of universal fitness. The low code of the society in which one man lives may make no account of thievery, and the equally low code of another society may condone or even respect irreligion; yet neither sin is changed in character, neither is the more entitled to lenient consid- eration, neither is the less an outrage on human nature, which re- quires the supernatural guidance of religion for its perfection.
The irreligion of many men is not due to their not having been called by God, nor yet to their being devoid of the faculty for hear- ing this voice. The guests were invited and would not come. Their condition is voluntary and is not forced upon them by the irresistible nature of things. To every man God gives the opportunity of seeing the truth, and the strength to observe the law. If the sense of reli- gion be dulled or extinct, his intelligence and his conscience are always able to revive it, with the help of God's grace granted to men of good-will. It may indeed happen that for a time a man may labor under an involuntary incapacity for religion, that he may be in the impossibility, for the moment, of finding the truth; his ignorance may be invincible, and his irreligion honest and sincere. But such cases are probably rare. When they do occur, it is either that the moment decreed by God for enlightening and calling such a man has not arrived, or that he has been stricken with judicial blindness for having deliberately refused to follow a sufficient light. It still remains true that God calls every man to religion.
THE CALL OF ALL MEN TO RELIGION. n
III. The parable of the king's supper brings before us one particu- lar class of obstacles which make men neglect religion. We are told they "began all at once to make excuse. The first said to him, I have bought a farm and I must needs go out and see it; I pray thee, hold me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen and I go to try them ; I pray thee, hold me excused. And another said, I have married a wife and therefore I can not come." These are all good objects enough in themselves; they are even duties ; for men must of necessity buy farms and oxen and go to see them, and it is one of their obligations to marry and give in mar- riage. But the very best things are capable of engrossing too much our attention, and of drawing us off from other things of still greater importance, and so of becoming evil to us. So do men's external occupations interfere with the internal and spiritual work that is to be done within them. Those who live in the world must concern themselves about many things; they have domestic duties and civic duties, duties of earning and duties of spending, the duties of self-cultivation, of providing for the future, and of recreation, duties in science, duties in politics. To these they must devote their energies ; it is praiseworthy for them to do so ; it may even be super- natural virtue ; yet in all this there may be sin.
There is moderation to be observed and due order, even in one's most sacred duties. These cease to be duties and become transgres- sions when they come into conflict with higher duties. We are bound to intermit them at times in order to perform our duties to God; and in this there is a sacrifice, not indeed of duties, but of something additional that might be done to advance the interests of ourselves, our family, our country. This is where excess comes in and sin. Many would be willing enough to practise religion if it never conflicted with their inclinations, pleasures, gains. But they will not sacrifice time, or convenience, or luxury, or energy, or gain, for the sake of God. They do not mind following Christ so long as it does not involve leaving anything or taking up His cross ; but if they have a farm to see, or a yoke of oxen to try, or a wife to marry, they esteem these things as far more pressing than the invi- tations of God or the precepts of religion. Their politics, or their business, or their science, things of this world, are far too important to admit the interference of divine laws. If there is any conflict be- tween the two things, it is religion that must yield.
The too exclusive pursuit of laudable objects has thus been the
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means of turning many minds against religion. The preoccupations of real duties, rights, liberties and legitimate worldly interests, have made many men deaf to the calls of God to truth and virtue. The Jews in their misplaced zeal for their religion rejected the Saviour of the world as a blasphemer. The Greeks with their learning, refinement, and independent research after truth, could not brook the plain preaching of St. Paul, and the stern lessons of the Cross of Christ. Rome, with its wide imperial sway, its authority, its justice, its well-ordered peace, its records of splendid virtues, could not bend to the humiliations and the unselfishness of Christianity. The science of this day, with all its great services to mankind, goes out of its way and makes war on religion for maintaining that the words of God must not be called in question. The commercial world can not accept a moral code which says, Thou shalt not steal. The great and prosperous will not recognize the brotherhood of mankind and the existence of natural rights in the poor.
One and the same excuse is made for irreligion in all these cases. Religion with its strict rule of belief, its claim for obedience and self- sacrifice, is declared to be inconsistent with a man's duties, or with his prosperity, or to be unsuited to the conditions of modern life, and to the superior intelligence and lofty character of the present century. The truth is that each age and each class places itself out of harmony with religion in its own particular way, and then excuses itself by alleging that it is naturally unadapted to what it calls the antiquated forms of religion.
The highest gifts of God are open to abuse, there may be sinful excess in carrying out divinely appointed duties. Those things which God grants us to help our salvation may become obstacles to it, not indeed in themselves, but through our perverse use of them. Civil liberty, wealth, power, knowledge, refinement, each of these contains in itself the seed of danger, the germ of revolt against the law of religion. Each of these gifts of God may in its own way be used as a weapon against Him. And not only so, but there is a proportion between His gifts and the misuse of them ; there is some equality be- tween the amount we can do as God's friends for Him, and the amount which we can do against Him as His enemies. As we re- ceive more numerous advantages from God, so are the opportunities of misusing them multiplied ; as we are raised higher by God, so is the character of our opposition to Him changed; we have nobler weapons to use against Him, and this, to the eyes of men, makes our
THE CALL OF ALL MEN TO RELIGION. 13
revolt seem more respectable and even more noble. The irreligion of the simple uneducated man takes the form of grossness and bru- tality ; the irreligion of the cultivated atheist takes the form of scien- tific criticism, delicate ridicule, supercilious contempt. That does not mean to say that cultivation and knowledge are of necessity antag- onistic to religion, but only that these gifts of God have fallen into hands unworthy of them, and have been turned to evil uses. Such men have greater opportunities for serving God and glorifying re- ligion, but at the same time they have greater temptations to misuse them, and a liability to greater punishment.
As men will for the most part make a bad use of the gifts they receive from God, so it follows that as a general rule we shall find the possession of temporal advantages to be associated with enmity to religion and neglect of its precepts. And it will seem as if there was an invariable, and so a natural, opposition between religion and those interests, pleasures and duties that belong to our worldly life. Hence the opposition between riches and our spirit- ual welfare. Wealth is one of the natural goods of life, and one of the great instruments of religious works, especially the works of cor- poral mercy. Riches are not evil in themselves, but only the trusting in riches. But so generally does the trusting in riches follow on the possession of riches, that Our Lord is able to say of the rich as a class that they can hardly enter into the kingdom of God. What He says of wealth is true of all other advantages when men trust in them. Mental acuteness and power may be as effective as riches in exciting pride in oneself, contempt of brethren, independence as against God; so they will operate to turn many men from religion, and they will appear as if naturally antagonistic to it. Men who set their hearts upon their material or their intellectual excellence be- come careless as to the possession of God, blinded to spiritual things, and in a sense incapable of religion ; but yet it is true that God has invited them to His banquet, that they could have fitted themselves for it. but that they preferred to go after their farms, and their oxen, and their marriage festivities. God then passes His sentence on them : "I say to you that none of those men who were invited, shall taste of my supper."
IV. Then the master of the house sends out for the poor, the feeble, the blind and the lame, and His table is filled with guests. It was fortunate for them that they had no farms, or oxen, or domestic affairs to keep them from the banquet. They were unfortunate in a
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worldly sense, but they found ample compensation. Here is the blessedness of the poor, and the simple, and the suffering, and the ignorant. God does not overwhelm any class with advantages, nor yet with disadvantages ; all are favored in some respects, some in one way, some in another. It would be hard if the chief spiritual ad- vantages went to those who were already possessed of material su- premacy and mental supremacy. It can not be that any men receive some exceptional advantage, without at the same time incurring the drawbacks that belong to that advantage. The poor and the lowly are cut off not merely from the enjoyments that belong to riches and position, but from many opportunities of working for God, and from the chance of making great sacrifices for Him. They can do but little and leave but little for Him, but they are exempt from the anxieties, the temptations, the self -sufficiency, the preoccupations of other men. Religion finds fewer obstacles to its action in their souls. It seems as if they were more adapted to religion and religion to them; as if they were more visibly called than others.
Hence one of the notes and one of the reproaches of religion. In the first ages Christianity was esteemed the creed of slaves and out- casts by the lordly pagans of the empire. In later times the Catholic Church has been held contemptible for being the creed of the poor and the ignorant, the creed of women and children, and not the creed of the arrogant and the independent, the successful politician, and the speculator in millions. It is actually despised because it fulfils the prophecy of Jesus Christ, "The poor shall have the gospel preached to them;" because it is adapted to the needs of the savage and can train him to civilization; because it is the treasure of the poor, and gives him consciousness of his dignity, and affords the only comfort that can help him to bear the wrongs of civilization.
The call to religion is for all men ; not only for those who are in the highways and byways, not only for the poor, but for the rich and prosperous, for the owners of farms and the buyers of oxen. While the Church is the Church of the poor, she has shown herself to be adapted to all the needs of the rich and the learned. If many of these have disobeyed the call of God it is nothing against the suitable- ness of religion for all, it only proves that certain ones were unwor- thy of possessing it. There is no discredit to religion. She is honored equally by the homage of some and by the opposition of others. It is her glory equally that she fills the hungry with goofl
THE CALL OF ALL MEN TO RELIGION. 15
things, and the rich she sends empty away. She gives God thanks equally for concealing His great things from the wise and prudent and for revealing them to the humble.
The Catholic religion is for all men, all nations, all times. All require it, though they will not acknowledge the need. Each has his wants, his aching pains, his dangers. Religion has the remedy for all evils whether private or public, those of individuals, and those of society, and those of humanity. For it is the communication of God to men, God's truths, God's laws, God's blessings. There is none who can dispense with these and be happy ; there is none but re- quires the remedies, the lessons, the comforts that the Church can give; there is none who is without the vocation to her fold, none without the light to lead him there some time or other. One thing alone is required, viz. : to leave all to follow the truth and the light ; this few will do ; but such as do so will receive a thousand-fold even in this life and in the world to come life everlasting.
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II. INSUFFICIENCY OF REASON IN MATTERS OF
RELIGION.
BY THE REV. TIMOTHY P. HOLLAND.
SYNOPSIS.— I. Free-thinkers reject revelation, deny need of any, appeal to natural religion as the only religion, which, they claim, reason suffices to teach us.
II. We admit natural religion, basis of supernatural religion. It lies within the province of reason. This does not exclude possibility of a more perfect religion. That depends on sufficiency of reason to teach it.
III. In its present condition, human race can not live up to natural religion without more light than reason.
IV. It is too vague. It does not afford sufficient enthusiasm. History shows that in fact men have made a failure without revelation. Revelation no detriment to dignity of reason, but supplements and per- fects it.
One of the most common and most fatal errors about religion current in the society in which our lot is cast is the error of free- thinkers.
People of their mind are against all Churches and church-going. They are too wise in their own conceit to need any instruction in religious matters. They are the self-appointed liberators of human thought from the tyranny of creeds and dogmas. Human under- standing alone, they say, is able to find out the truth. They abjure all authority, all prescribed forms of religion. No outside help, no special light from above is possible or necessary; so-called revela- tion is an imposture debasing the dignity of human reason. Chris- tianity is necessary neither for the guidance of the individual nor of society. "Believe in God and follow your common sense" is the only dogma of this naturalism. They point triumphantly to individuals of known integrity, so far as natural virtue goes, who profess no religious faith, and say, "Here are men who reject your religious teaching and who live better lives than many of you church-goers." They appeal to a universal natural religion, the re- ligion of reason, and claim that reason tells a man all he needs to know about religion, that man is sufficient for himself. It is a doctrine attractive to superficial minds because so flattering to human vanity. It is the legitimate progeny of Protestantism which
INSUFFICIENCY OF REASON. 17
began by rejecting the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, and now has come to rejecting Jesus Christ Himself.
There is some grain of truth in every error. Every false doc- trine is a perversion, a deformity, an exaggeration of some truth. Let us see first what truth may be at bottom of this falsehood.
In the first place free-thinkers are the pretentious guardians of "natural religion." Is there such a thing as natural religion?
When we speak of religion we mean that tie, that bond of duty, which binds us to God. It may be called the sum of those moral obligations of man toward God. That God is our Creator, Supreme Master, Benefactor and Judge obliges us to pay Him the homage of adoration, obedience, gratitude, love, fear, etc. Now when we speak of religion we mean this body of relations between ourselves and almighty God.
Natural religion is distinguished from supernatural religion. The natural is the ordinary, the original ; the supernatural is that which is added to the original and ordinary and is above it. The religion which is natural is the bond of duty man owes to God by the original constitution of things, viz., creation. That God is man's maker and owner requires a certain behavior of man toward God. A supernatural religion would mean something more, something added to the original arrangement, some improvement on the natural, ordinary relations with God. By nature, by the fact of creation simply we are creatures ; our place is in the servants' hall, we are bound to serve Him who made us and owns us. By super- natural grace, by a new and gratuitous gift of God, by a favor we had no right to expect, God, through His only begotten Son, has given us adoption, so that we are no longer merely servants, but friends, sons, and if sons heirs also, coheirs of Jesus Christ. We are called up from the servants' hall to enjoy the intimacy of the family circle. This was not to be expected. This was a free and most gracious condescension, this is not the ordinary, natural thing, but beyond it — supernatural. Our behavior now must be corre- spondingly improved. There are new ties binding us to God our Father. There are new and more delicate relations between us. The old allegiance is not dissolved. We owe him all that we did in the natural, original order of things and much more. This new order of things, this new attitude toward God, this new bond of obligation to God, is supernatural religion. There is, therefore, a religion, a bond, a compact between God and man which is
X8 THE CREED.
natural, which is prior to and which underlies supernatural religion. It is the groundwork, the foundation of all religion. Supernatural religion is in no way at variance with it. It does not destroy it or dispense with it, but perfects it and builds upon it a nobler man- sion. Christ, the messenger of this new covenant, said of the natural law, "I come not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it; not one jot or tittle of the law shall pass away till all be fulfilled." The first effect of grace is to restore and strengthen natural virtue, just as a man who comes to build a house upon a foundation does not destroy that foundation but strengthens the parts that have decayed.
To perceive these natural relations with God, to understand our duties toward Him in the natural order is within the province of human understanding. Reason is a light put into man by the author of nature to show it to him and to enable him to live by it. There is nothing in natural religion strictly above pure reason to grasp. There is nothing in its demands which are not heartily in accord with the sentiments of sane reason.
We go this far with free-thinkers therefore, that there is a uni- versal natural religion which appeals to reason. To live up to it is our reasonable service. It is the most natural, the most reasonable, thing in the world. It is absolutely essential to human dignity and self-respect to pay to God the homage we owe Him as our Creator, our sovereign master, our constant benefactor. In other words, for a man to be religious is most natural ; not to be religious is most unnatural.
This, however, is not to deny the possibility or the need of a supernatural religion. Because there is a natural order of behavior toward God arising from creation does not make it impossible for God to bestow another gift upon us requiring more perfect behavior on our part. The necessity of satisfying the demands of natural religion does not exclude the possibility or the necessity of a revealed religion. It may be that man is unable with his natural powers to fulfil it, in which case he would need help. In that case he would be most unreasonable and most negligent of natural justice did he neglect to search for a light from God to help him. He would be guilty of contempt of natural religious duties if he did not seek the necessary aid to fulfil them.
Where we separate from our adversaries is not on the question of the existence of natural religion, but on this question: I* man
INSUFFICIENCY OF REASON. 19
able to know it, is it within his reach to know what it requires of him so clearly and firmly as to enable him to be faithful to it?
We are ready to admit that a few rare specimens of mankind, in whom nature was more happily compounded, have been able with- out the teachings of faith to reach remarkable perfection in natural virtue. The "good emperor," Marcus Aurelius, a truly noble- minded man, is pointed out as a pagan saint because of his self- mastery, his love of wisdom and his zeal for virtue; Epictetus, the patient blind slave, by his spirit of resignation to the ills of life, and Seneca, the philosopher, tutor of the Emperor Nero, who in the midst of corruption and licentiousness lived an abstemious and frugal life devoted to search of true wisdom. Such men, though uncertain of many of the most fundamental truths and failing in many natural virtues, bear yet splendid testimony that reason highly developed is a light which can discover many things relative to the mystery of human life.
We admit, too, that reason gives some light, however poor, to everybody. St. Paul reproaches the men of his time for not know- ing the Creator : "The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are inex- cusable. . . ."
Admitting that a small minority of men under specially favorable circumstances may attain a fair knowledge of natural religion, ad- mitting that the rank and file of men can know faintly the most elementary truths, we maintain against rationalists and free-thinkers this — that the common run of men, or better, that the human race in its present condition, can not without revelation or some extra help know the truths of natural religion, can not know how to live rightly, that men can not know these things easily enough or with sufficient certitude to be able to live up to them. That is, that, taking human nature at its real worth, not exaggerating its sufficiency, it can not get along without external help. That it is not sufficient unto itself. That without more light than human understanding can furnish it can not fulfil vows to God or regulate human life rightly. That it will make a failure of life, and will fail to rise to the natural dignity of human nature, will fail to accomplish the natural end of existence.
Nor does this stultify the Creator, as implying that He left man without adequate means to attain the end assigned him. "When
20 THE CREED.
God made man he made him right." His reason was sufficient once, but He is not now in his original integrity. "There hath passed away a glory from the earth." Man has gone down from the holy city of Jerusalem to the Jericho of ungodliness; he has fallen among robbers; he has been stripped of his goods and left wounded and half dead by the wayside. And while we have said that natural religion lies within the reach of reason, that does not mean that every man, however poorly developed his intellect, how- ever rebellious his passions, is able with steady eye to perceive it. It does not mean that the most of men are actually capable of read- ing in things the natural moral law. It means simply that reason at its best is not unequal to the task of discovering the truths of natural religion. To say that a certain feat of strength is not be- yond human power is not to say that every human being is equal to it, or that the most of men are, but that the best efforts of man can accomplish it.
As for individuals being able to guide themselves — how many of the great mass of men actually do any thinking for themselves on the great truths of existence? "With most people imitation, tradition and education are everything. Our beliefs are for the most part caused and determined by the community in which we happen to be born and bred, but are not based on any reasoning of ours either implicit or explicit" (Tyrrell). It is authority that moves us to believe. We believe what we are taught; we reason very little for ourselves. Nearly all our religious beliefs and moral truths come to us from others ; very few have the leisure, the incli- nation or the industry to study out for themselves the truths of religion. To say that every man is a law unto himself, that he has only to follow what his own reason spells out for him and needs no guidance, no authority to teach him, is childish ignorance of men.
Nor could the collective wisdom of the race, the sum of knowledge which the whole race is able to accumulate as the findings of human reason suffice to guide men in the great art of living rightly.
Human reason alone is able to delineate only the dim outlines of religion. Its light is too dim. It gives twilight glimpses of the Creator too fugitive and indefinite to light the way. It gives the broad principles of duty, but its light is not strong enough to dis- cover the detailed application of these. It makes us feel in a gen- eral way the necessity of doing God's will, but it does not declare what that will is and how to do it. "The choices of life are definite
INSUFFICIENCY OF REASON. at
things, and the rule to guide our choice must also be definite. It can tell us that all vice is to be shunned, but it does not tell us whether this or that particular thing is a vice. Natural religion is a religion of dreams, its doctrines are vague as dreams ; like dreams their features are forever changing. It can never rule men; ft has never ruled them. It excites more longings in men than it can satisfy. It ever cries for more. It is an alluring voice heard far off through the fog calling to them, 'Follow me/ but it leaves them in the fog to pick their own way out toward it over rocks and streams and pitfalls which they can but half distinguish, among which they may be killed or crippled and are almost certain to grow bewildered" (Mallock).
This vagueness strips religion of all enthusiasm. It is too uncer- tain to be urgent. Religion is sacrifice — "not my will but thine be done." But men are not going to make sacrifices for shadows or specters. God is the spring of action. The cold call of duty is weak against the selfishness of our nature. The personality of God is too remote. The Incarnation by bringing God close to us has transformed duty into the pleadings of infinite love and warmed men's hearts with love and enthusiasm. Reason leaves men in a darkness, a coldness, a lassitude, a lethargy rightly described by the author of Revelation, "the darkness of the shadow of the valley of death."
The right way to find out how well men can shift for themselves in matters of the soul without external help is to see how they actually have behaved without it. If we can find a people for a long time without the light of true revelation, the success that was theirs is an indication of the possibilities of natural guidance.
Our adversaries point out to us good virtuous men all around us who do not believe in revealed truth, and they say, These are as enlightened and more virtuous than many Christian believers. They are as just, as temperate, as kind and as benevolent. It is true there are such people among us, whose lives are a reproach to many a Catholic in many ways ; but this proves nothing against the useful- ness or need of revelation. These people are actually, though per- haps unconsciously, molded in their beliefs by truths revealed. There is a whole body of beliefs and doctrines the common stock of society which one might think to be these findings of natural reason, but which in reality are but the traditions of a society that has been for centuries in the main a Christian society. Every
33 THE CREED.
man's thought is colored by the environments in which he lives. No man living in Christian society, unless his mind has been de- bauched by immoral living, can strip himself of the legacy of truth which is his by heredity, of the customs and general tone of the society in which he lives. It is not fair, then, to take an unbeliever from the midst of Christian influences as an example of what man would be without the aid of a revealed religion, for such a one is not without its aid, and though he may not be conscious of it, many of the principles of life which he possesses are his, thanks to a Christian social influence, and he would never have attained to them by his own individual powers of discernment. "Noble-minded disciples of naturalism are parasites of a believing society and would die without it" (Balfour).
Let us go back to the pagan world before the time when paganism began to be influenced by contact with the Gospel. Let us take the very best of these peoples, the Greeks and Romans, who were most highly cultured and boasted the wisdom of their philosophers. In- deed, even here we are not sure we are eliminating all revelation. The Jews, scattered as they were throughout the world, doubtless acted in some degree as a corrective to the perverted notions of the pagans. And we are not sure but God may have vouchsafed some kind of light to these children of darkness, which was authenticated.
Yet in spite of these possible helps, in what a deplorable muddle do we find men concerning the truths of natural religion !
To begin with, they had most deformed notions about the nature of God. Polytheism, dualism and idolatry flourished universally; stars, plants, animals, wooden and metal idols were adored as gods, as is still the case among barbarous tribes. Sanctity or purity was not an attribute of these gods. The most revolting vices and crimes were attributed to them — pride, envy, jealousy, murder, incest, rape. Every human passion was deified and served as a patron to those addicted to such a vice.
Such being the notions concerning the being of the Deity, natur- ally the notions of the worship pleasing to it were equally distorted. Human sacrifices were offered to placate the gods and most ob- scene orgies were perpetrated in their honor, the gods not being worthy of pure love, but hideous beings to be placated. No one ever thought of loving them. "Who ever thought of giving thanks to the gods that he was a good man?" said Cicero. "It were absurd," said Aristotle, "for any one to say he loved Jupiter."
INSUFFICIENCY OP 'REASON. *«j'
Likewise distorted and debased was the idea of the dignity of man. Charity was little known in the sense in which we know it. The reason for this was that the corner-stone truth that gives value to dignity in man was ignored, viz., the immortality of the soul.
The Stoic school taught that souls, being substantially an evapora- tion of blood, continued to exist a certain time after death in a separate state of being, especially in the case of wise men, but could only exist till the next general conflagration of the world.
Cicero hesitated. After writing a book on the immortality of the soul he writes: "I have evolved this book, but I know not while I read it how to assent to it. When I put down the book and begin to think on the immortality of souls, all this assent falls to the ground."
Virgil, Ovid and Horace sought protection against the comfort- less thought of an inevitable descent into the gloomy night of the nether world and into an eternal sleep? in the enjoyment of the present moment.
"There is nothing after death, and death is nothing; you will then be with the unborn," was the common saying.
The tombstones over the dead frequently referred to the transi- toriness of everything human, but always for the sole purpose of enforcing the moral that as much enjoyment as possible should be won and, as it were, pressed out of the fleeting moments.
"What I have eaten and drunk, that I take with me," says one of them ; "what I have left behind me, that have I forfeited."
From such false principles concerning God and man, it is not difficult to conjecture what depraved rules of morals were deduced. The myths of all kinds of immoral escapades on the part of the gods were made the excuse for similar crimes in men. The base- ness and degradation of pagans is depicted in the Epistle to the Romans, in these words: "They changed the glory of the incor- ruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man and to birds and fourfooted beasts and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies. They changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator . . . for this cause also God gave them up unto vile affections. . . . Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things that are not convenient, being filled with all unrighteousness,
,4 THE CREED.
fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud boasters, inventors of evil things, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful."
Such was the revolting condition of the pagan world under the sole guidance of what free-thinkers proclaim the only guide — natural reason. Without the light of revelation to guide them these are the follies men fell into. They changed the likeness of God into the image of a creature ; they lost the dignity of man and floundered in the filth of immorality. The various forms of religion — whose number was legion — were all the devices of man. But the fact that the world so universally believed them to be revealed shows that men felt the need of a light from above. They consulted oracles, they examined the entrails of victims to know the will of the gods. They in many ways attested what their philosophers taught, that the great enigmas of life can only be solved by the aid of a special light from heaven ; that a light superior to that of rea- son is necessary to answer its own demands. If the cults he prac- tised did not actually give the help needed they show that man realizes how insufficient he is for himself, and it was but reasonable to lift his eyes to heaven for help.
These free-thinkers would lead us back into the degradation of paganism. They would take away from us the "excellent light of the Gospel," which shows us the way and the truth, following which we shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. They would extinguish that fire of divine love, of zeal, for the com- mands of God our Creator, which Jesus Christ came to kindle upon earth. They would reopen the graves of the horrid lusts of pagan- ism and let them loose upon men.
Is their motive true zeal for the right use of reason, true love for the real dignity of man, or are these free-thinkers not rather of a piece with those pagans of whom the Epistle to the Romans speaks ?
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness . . . unto vile affections ... to that which is against nature. . . . And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not becoming."
TRUE BELIEF THE WAY TO GOOD LIFE. 25
III. TRUE BELIEF THE WAY TO GOOD LIFE.
BY THE RIGHT REV. JAMES BELLORD, D.D.
"Without faith it is impossible to please God." — Heb. xi. 6.
SYNOPSIS. — Faith necessary for good life. Good life necessary for faith. The relation bet-ween the two. The world's estimate of the necessity of faith, St. Paul's answer to that estimate. Great difference in the life of one animated by faith and one not animated. Faith gives supernatural quality to man's life, and even ennobles the natural in man. Many virtues inculcated by faith. The religious motive the only one that leads men to good lives. The testimony of experience as to the value of faith. Faith rejected by many. The evil effects of the absence of faith.
I. Faith and works — true belief and good life — these are two things absolutely necessary for the spiritual perfection of man and for his salvation. They are the two wings by which man rises towards God. Each one in itself is good and necessary; either, by itself, is absolutely insufficient. Faith alone will not save our souls ; goodness of life by itself will not save us. Faith is exalted by the apostle as an essential element of holiness, yet if it have not charity, that is, the love of God expressed in good life, or the keeping of the commandments, it is but an empty sound — a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. On the other hand a man may have all human ex- cellence, yet without faith it is impossible that he should please God.
The two things are necessary to salvation ; and also they are neces- sary each to the existence of the other, (i) Faith is the principle, the source, the motive of good life. Good life in its highest expres- sion is impossible without faith. (2) Faith, on the other hand, though not exactly impossible without good life, is dead and useless without it. Good works are often the source and origin of faith ; they are the evidence of its life and vigor ; they are the nutrition and sup- port of faith. (3) The two things together constitute true religion ; they embrace the whole spiritual life of man ; they give him here rest and peace, they bring him hereafter to eternal life. We shall con- sider to-day the fact that faith is essential to good life.
II. This is a truth that we need carefully to consider and maintain and act upon ; for it is a truth that has been almost totally lost sight of by a great multitude of men. The opposite of this truth has be-
,6 THE CREED.
come almost a maxim of human life outside the Catholic Church ; it is continually expressed in different forms. Thus we hear it said: "It does not matter what a man believes so long as he does his duty to his fellowmen." And there is something of this kind : "His faith is good whose life is in the right." And again : "God will not con- demn any man for a mere matter of opinion ;" a statement which in itself is quite true, only it is so used as to convey a most pernicious falsehood; for revealed truths are not mere opinions. The fact is that the great virtue of faith has dropped out of men's comprehension entirely ; the word remains, but the ideas it expresses are lost. Faith implies a body of truth revealed by God, an accurate knowledge of that truth by men, and a firm adherence of the intellect to it, as being the highest certainty; it is the first duty of religion to ascer- tain and embrace this truth. Such is the notion of faith that has pre- vailed from the days of Moses to the days of the apostles, and down to our times in the largest united religious body, the Catholic Church. During the last couple of centuries or so, a number of sects have sprung up, who have lost the idea of faith, of certainty, of duty in the matter of belief, and who know of nothing higher than mere religious opinion, or persuasion, or taste. Of course if faith is noth- ing more than this or that man's temporary liking for this or that doctrine, it is a matter of the smallest consequence. Beginning with this false principle it naturally follows that men will attach all im- portance to morality and none to true belief; and that in their un- certainty as to the relations of man with God, they will neglect these, and think more of the relations of man to his fellowmen. Then they come to think that there is no such thing as absolute religious truth ; they do not take any trouble in seeking it ; and when they do com- mence to see such truth, they have no conception of their rigorous obligation to follow it up and to embrace it.
III. The answer to all this is contained in the words of St. Paul : "Without faith, it is impossible to please God." Without faith there is no really good life — no life such as God accounts good in view of a supernatural reward. Without faith all human goodness is un- real, deceptive, and useless, except in the natural order. Without faith it is impossible for our ideas, our aims, our actions to rise to that elevation and assume that divine character which God requires in them. The character of actions depends on the being who does them, and upon his ideas and intentions. An irrational animal eats greedily, seizes on all it can without regard to ownership, injures
TRUE BELIEF THE WAY TO GOOD LIFE. 27
the one who approaches it for its own good; these actions are not immoral, dishonest, ungrateful; they do not evidence a depraved character, or excite the contempt we should feel for a man who did such things. The man's intelligence and sense of a moral law cause the same acts, when done by him, to bear a very different aspect. So when a man lives for himself alone, his economies, or his expenditure, or his toil, have a very different character from what they would have if he were laboring for the support of others dependent on him. In like manner he who believes in God, who loves God with all his heart, and seeks to please Him and attain to future perfection in Him, may have the same occupation in life as a man who believes in and loves nothing beyond himself and this world. The lives and ac- tions of these two men may coincide to a great extent, there may be little difference visible to one who sees only certain parts of their lives; yet in their intentions and motives, and in the estimation of God, there will be an infinite distance between the acts of the one and the same acts of the other. Even the same acts of virtue will be different in them : in the one man they are natural and of this world, proceeding only from temperament or policy; in the other they are characterized by his faith and by his love of God, and are done under the influence of grace ; they are supernatural and divine.
It is in this sense that good life is impossible without faith. It is not to be said that all the actions of a man without faith are sins. It is not to be said that his life is devoid of all goodness, or that he will receive no recompense from God. On the contrary, there is more or less natural good in every man, all are capable of doing some good deeds, some men of exceptional endowments or opportunities may lead lives useful to others and admired by all, they may be a model even to those who have the faith. This we have no wish to deny. We admit also that in the external manifestations of goodness there may be cases where there will be little to choose between the man with faith and the man without faith. What we say is this, that the goodness in each case proceeds from a different principle, and is of a different character. In the one instance it is supernatural, it earns an eternal reward ; in the other, it is merely natural in origin and in aim, its reward is a merely natural and temporal one, and so far it is unreal.
A little later we shall see that this kind of good life is not uncon- nected with faith. It indirectly originates in faith, and it often becomes the source of it, and so proves the second of our pro-
2g l THE CREED.
positions : that good life conduces to true belief. Good life alone does not lead directly to heaven, but it puts men on the way to those graces which will ultimately bring them there.
IV. We go now a step further, and we say, that faith is not only necessary in order to give our actions that supernatural quality which makes them pleasing to God, but also faith is necessary to enable men to perform the highest class of good actions and lead lives of high excellence. We may occasionally find men of great goodness who have not the faith, or at least have not a complete knowledge of religious truths; but their highest goodness is not so complete, so high, so consistent, or so common, as that goodness which is in- spired by true Christianity. It is exceptional and rare, it is partial and variable, it is defective generally in some important parts. There are whole classes of exalted virtues which are not only beyond the reach, but beyond the conception of those who have not the faith of Christ. Such for instance are chastity, courageous endurance of the trials of life, heroic self-sacrifice, the surrender of one's own will, possessions, comforts, life itself, for the love of God and one's brethren, confidence in God with peace and contentment that surpass- eth all knowledge. Such again are mortification and rigor towards self, patience under calumny and injury, the forgiveness of injuries, prayer and absorption in God. These and many other such things are spoken of by the world as noble, but impracticable, ideals ; the close imitation of Our Lord Jesus Christ as commanded in the New Testa- ment is regarded, even by some who profess to be Christians and to believe the Sacred Scriptures, as injudicious and obsolete. Yet such virtues are of common, every-day occurrence, not only in the cloister, but in every nation, community, family even, where the Catholic system is received in its entirety. Even the testimony of our enemies is most abundant as to the extraordinary self-devotion of priests and missionaries, the purity of Catholic districts, the in- dustry, the simple lives, the tranquil happiness of truly Catholic popu- lations, the indefinable charm which the Catholic religion develops in its faithful children. And all this is the fruit of true belief with its concomitant. Faith is first, and from it are derived the grace of God, the indwelling of His spirit, the Sacraments, the examples, the devotions, the feelings, that form the perfect Christian character.
The highest results in the way of good life are attainable only under the influence of true and complete belief in divine truths. Strong belief in a religion, whether incomplete and true as in the
TRUE BELIEF THE WAY TO GOOD LIFE. 29
case of the Jews of old, or incomplete and false as in the case of Paganism, Mohammedanism, and Protestantism, has produced greater effects on men's lives than any other motive outside religion. It has engendered by turns a ruthless fanaticism, a violent though temporary enthusiasm, great organizing and subduing forces, great devotion, courage, generosity. Nay, further, there have been a few exceptional cases in those religions of men who, if regarded in some aspects only, and not scrutinized too closely, might almost seem worthy to rank among the Catholic saints. So great is the power of the religious idea even in its lowest manifestations. But the noblest type of good living, the really God-like character, is the creation only of that Church to which the true and complete revelation of Christ was committed. Under the Catholic system, and nowhere else, we find virtue the most superhuman, yet of ordinary occurrence ; influence most powerful yet never tyrannical, absolute devotion without any unreal and transient enthusiasm, austerity without fanaticism, profound unworldliness united with the fullest human sympathy, burning zeal but with no touch of bigotry, strength that is not violence, calm that is not apathy. Nowhere else do we find full- ness of belief, and consistency of doctrines, and perfect certainty; nowhere else do we find so many and so exalted Christian lives.
V. But we may go further still and say, that without faith, the nat- ural man can not develop the capacities that are within him; and that even the merely human, natural, and worldly virtues will wither up and die, unless they are nourished by the knowledge of super- natural truth. Without faith it is impossible to lead such good lives as will please God even in that lower degree in which a natural life may be said to please God. The fall of the human race impaired the natural as well as the supernatural powers of men ; and it is, as an almost universal rule, beyond the power of the man unaided by faith to attain to that ideal of goodness which worldly men consider possible and desirable. Even that standard, though it is lowered by the omission of all that is exalted and difficult in Christianity, is still too high for the average unbeliever. A considerable number may have attained to a high degree of respectable life without faith, but only because they have inherited an exceptional character refined and cultivated through generations of believing ancestors, or be- cause they have had educational advantages which can never become common to the bulk of men.
Apart from religious motives there are not many influences to
3o THE CREED.
make men practise the self-restraint necessary for good life. Com- paratively few are endowed naturally with a noble or lofty character ; few also are influenced by that merely human but still high law of noblesse oblige. Those who have been imbued with a strict sense of honor, or with pride in the reputation of their family, or who have been disciplined by the study of art or science or literature, or who have lived in good society, acquire many admirable natural virtues. But these privileges belong only to a few, and their influence on the character is merely superficial.
Something more than natural and worldly inducements are re- quired to make men practise those kinds of goodness which the world values, and which are necessary for the comfort of others and convenience of human society. Even those virtues are difficult and rare. Honesty, truthfulness, benevolence, disinterestedness, devotion to the general weal, good-nature, civility — these are not so easy as to come naturally to every man who has no faith. But unscrupulous- ness, hardness, selfishness, spite, vindictiveness, self-indulgence — these are what come easiest to men who have not known the disci- pline, the restraints, the hopes, and the aids of religious belief. What is there outside religion to induce a man to do that which is difficult rather than what is easy, to do violence to his inclinations rather than to gratify them, to prefer the interests of another man, another country, another age, to his own? The great motive-forces out- side religion are power, possessions, and pleasure; the pursuit of these does not require the assistance of the natural virtues, the en- joyment of them does not conduce to the growth of virtue. No force is able to cope with selfishness and its train of destructive vices except the modest but all-conquering power of faith animated by charity.
It is all very well for unbelievers, and for those bewildered by the contradictions of heresy to say, that deeds are more important than opinions, and that belief or unbelief matters little if only a man's life is good. Where can they find widespread and consistent good- ness of life except in conjunction with faith? Take any simple, pious, believing community of former or present times — people who believe in God present and ruling them, as though they saw Him with their bodily eyes, who obey His law and strive to save their souls. Such a people may be cultivated or comparatively ignorant, comfortable in circumstances or struggling against poverty, but there you will find a virtuous people, free from crime, contented
TRUE BELIEF THE WAY TO GOOD LIFE. 31
and peaceful, needing few laws, no police, no jails. Look at any country where faith is on the decline and religion is dying out, and there you will also note the extinction of natural vir- tues, a growing brutality of manners, an alarming increase of im- morality, violence and fraud. The greater knowledge and power that civilization has begotten only serve to organize crime on a larger scale and to render law powerless. The slow and clumsy advances of legislation are unable to keep pace with the quick ingenuity of crime, which so is enabled to work destruction almost with impunity.
The effect of faith in developing the ordinary civic virtues is noted by Tertullian in the early ages of Christianity. Although persecuted by the civil power, and alienated from the general life of their fel- low citizens, the new Christians were distinguished for their fidelity to their public duties. Although calumniated and despised, it was recognized by the pagans that Christians were the bravest soldiers of the empire, and that as the faith spread, the public revenues raised by the tax-collectors steadily increased. So it is always. The habits of mind that supernatural belief produces are precisely those which conduce most to civil order; such as peaceableness, respect for au- thority, beneficence to all men, obedience and self-sacrifice.
VI. Hitherto we have been considering the absence of faith or the imperfection of faith in a general way, without taking account of its being deliberate or not. A few remarks may be made as to those cases where men deliberately reject the truth, or fail to inquire into it when they feel the impulse to do so.
This sort of thing is not very uncommon. Truth is often unwel- come and brings tribulation, especially when we find ourselves in the midst of men who are committed to its opposite. It is more to our worldly interest, and it is far easier, to go with the multitude than to oppose them. This is particularly true as regards religious belief ; our blessed Lord foretold it to all those who desire to be His followers : "In the world you shall have tribulation. Blessed are you when men shall persecute and calumniate you." It is only to be expected that many should shrink from sacrificing their interests and incurring odium, and should prefer the secret sin of insincerity, which disgraces them only before God and their own conscience. There are many who know the truth but will not embrace it for fear of consequences; they may lose their position, the means of support, their home, public esteem, the love of their relatives and friends; they will have to meet coldness, suspicion, hatred, poverty ; and their
3 2 THE CREED.
courage is not equal to the sacrifice. There are others who have a glimpse of the truth, and who know that if they inquire further they will find it; but they dread the knowledge, they wish to remain in ignorance and avoid the conflict between conscience and interest. They will not pursue the inquiry that will change their doubt about truth into certainty; and they delude themselves with the idea that they may safely shut their eyes to the light so long as it is dim and distant, and that a deliberately chosen ignorance will save them both from the temporal disadvantages of embracing the truth and from the spiritual penalties of rejecting it. The sin in either case is much the same. Such persons are sometimes tempted to think that they can counterbalance the disobedience in one matter by additional fer- vor in others. They have sinned against faith, but they will be more diligent in works of charity. They have refused to serve God in that religion which He has pointed out to them; but they will worship Him with more fervor and regularity in that form out of which He is calling them. This supposed service of God is disobedience and sin. Of what avail is it all? What is the use of their prayers and good works ? The apostle answers : "Without faith it is impossible to please God." The service of the intellect, the submission to the obedience of faith, is the highest offering we can make to God. To withhold that is to take back for ourselves the best part of the sac- rifice, it is to commit that "robbery in the holocaust" which God detests. The violation of the one commandment makes a man guilty of all. One grave sin is a completed decisive severance of the soul from God, and all other good works are devoid of the super- natural impulse, are dead and useless.
VII. The natural effect of the Catholic faith is to give birth to a good life. There is a logical force, a consistency in that faith, which satisfies the most exacting intellect; there is a most certain assur- ance produced by it, so that Catholics are ready to stake their all upon it. In no other form of religion can we find such multitudes who are ready to sacrifice present and visible interests for the sake of the future and unseen. This security enables men to accept a lofty and difficult law. As faith gives the Catholic a more adequate con- ception of God, so it makes it easier for him to love God. God is not to him an abstraction, as to so many other men, but He is a living personality, really present, in actual communication with men. Hence springs that love of God which is the most powerful and most lasting of all forces in this world.
TRUE BELIEF THE WAY TO GOOD LIFE. 33
Faith leads on to other aids of good life. It sets forth the example of Our Lord Jesus Christ, His most blessed mother, and His saints. Faith places at our disposal the solemnities of worship and the seven Sacraments, with all their numerous effects on the intellect and imag- ination, on the body, the mind, the heart; and above all with the out-pouring of grace and of the Holy Spirit into us. Holiness of life is the due and natural effect of all these influences.
But faith is very far from having these effects universally. There must of necessity be many who receive the grace of God in vain, in whom His efficacy is quenched, whose obstinacy prevails even against the Omnipotent. For such there is no excuse. They are the worst enemies of God; His severest anger and punishment are for them. So potent an influence as faith must have great consequences and can not fail of its full effect. But it has two alternative effects. The first and proper one is holiness of life. But if it is prevented violently from this action, it still is not nullified; it is not made simply as though it had never been ; but it bursts forth with another and destructive force upon the sinner who has misused it. It be- comes a curse to him and a sentence of condemnation. His faith supplies him with the materials of infidelity, and he falls to a lower depth of irreligion. He has so outraged the power of observing the higher law of holiness, that not enough remains to help him to ob- serve the lower precepts of mere natural morality. The higher he has been, the lower he falls ; and his degraded life, which seems to argue incapacity in the Catholic faith to command his intellect and rule his passions, only proves the power of that faith, in that such deep destruction follows, where it is not allowed to find its natural outlet in sanctifying the lives of men.
34 THE CREED.
IV. IS THERE A GOD? IS THERE ONLY ONE GOD?
BY THE REV. P. A. HALPIN.
SYNOPSIS.— I. The significance of the question. It implies something shocking and untrue,
II. God's existence is a fact which appeals to our reason, as is attested by the universal consent of mankind, universal in space and time, which consent is based on reason, -which affirms the relation between effect and cause.
HI. & IV. Scripture teaches it and so does the Church.
V. That there is only one God flows from the nature of an infinite Being.
These two questions are identical in the sense that the second follows indisputably from the first. Whoso admits one Supreme Being must grant that two first and highest entities are inadmissi- ble. For the sake of clearness the significance of the questions will be emphasized and a reply will be given in the terms of reason and revelation.
I. The Question. It may be skeptical or querulous, or blasphemous. Has any human being made this query seriously? It is said in Scripture, "The fool said in his heart: there is no God" (Ps. lii). The denial of God's existence is, to say the least, startling. No one ever hears it without a shock. It seems to blot out sun and stars and everything bright in the world. It leaves behind it a gaping chasm as it creates before it unfathomable gloom. Perhaps honesty of declaration, if pushed to its most accurate expression, would re- veal that in no man's mind has there been absolute negation of the existence of God. The averment' of the prophet may be admitted in the sense that the one who would make such a declaration is for the moment under the spell of some strong feeling which par- alyzes his intellect and places him in the category of the mo- mentarily insane. Only the Searcher of Hearts knows whether the one who utters the phrase which obliterates God is speaking the settled conviction of his mind or is giving vent to a doubt, or under the pressure of some weighty woe asks in his despair, Is there a God, or is so debased that he wishes for himself every license, and therefore would overthrow God in his frenzied railings, overthrow
IS THERE A GOD? 35
God and His law and be unto himself his own law and fiis own god.
The question might be put to all the atheists who have figured in history or have lived since the beginning, whether, while they denied with their lips, they believed in their hearts or were convinced in their minds that such was the fact. What would an honest answer tell us? Many, very, very many, who have studied this matter, are of the opinion that the answer of this horde of unbelievers, if honest, would be that somewhere or other in their nature there was heard a voice which could not be quelled and which gave the lie to all their spoken or written denials. It must be remembered that bravado is rampant everywhere and that there is no boldness so fierce as that of those who have invaded, with ruthless spirit, with mind iconoclastic, the sacred precincts of religious truth. Some have doubted this primal verity for a time, and at last shaken it off as something pestilential. Their name is legion and the history of Christianity is full of distinguished individuals for whom skepticism was a nightmare, clouding mind and corrupting heart, until on some blessed day, or rather in some blessed moment, the dawn broke and the specter fled and God was there. The spirit of impa- tience in trial, so frequent in life's struggles, and to which we are all so prone when harassed by care, or baffled in our efforts or our ambition, when loved ones suffer or are taken from us, tor- tures us sometimes into expressions or thoughts skeptical in their nature. Such expressions it would be unfair to stigmatize as blas- phemous or skeptical. They are rather the outpouring of wonder- ment as to the ways of Divine Providence than a denial of His existence. They are murmurings merely upspringing from wounded and sore hearts.
The more closely one looks into the matter the more one is in- clined to admit that the opinion negative of the Divinity has its source rather in license of living, or pride of intellect begetting blas- phemy. There is no doubt that there are those who live as if God was not, and their mental attitude is one of wilful oblivion and their atheism is more practical than theoretical. Taking the question to be an affirmation we can not but pronounce it horrible, blasphe- mous, ignominious. Not in all the languages of the world is there an averment so universally revolting. We fear that to utter it there is required an effrontery and a corruption which can proceed only from a mind given over to pride or from a heart abandoned
36 THE CREED.
to every wicked desire and perhaps to the most grasping greed and the most abominable lusts. The voice that speaks it is the voice of one dead to the strongest instincts of nature, of one who sets himself in opposition to his whole environment. Every tongue — the tongue of man, all the tongues of earth, sea and sky — pro- claims the existence of God. The tongue of the atheist alone emits the only discordant note in this grand chorus of creatures hymning the praises of the omnipotent Creator of the universe. "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy face? If I take my wings early in the morning and dwell in the utter- most parts of the sea, even there also shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me" (Ps. xxxviii). What sphere, what land, or what depth or what height shall the atheist and the scoffer inhabit to be screened from the face of God ?
To state that God does not exist is to state a colossal falsehood which is branded both by reason and revelation.
II. Reason can not admit it, because it finds nowhere in all the attacks of unbelief a single solid argument in its favor, while it everywhere discovers proofs which corroborate the contradictory assertion. One grows weary of defending the glorious truths of Christianity against enemies who advance no new difficulties, but persistently repeat those which have been urged since the begin- ning. Let us just as defiantly deny the atheistic proposition as it is boldly put forth. Let us ask them to prove there is no God. Have they ever proved it? Have they ever, with all their ingenuity, framed an argument of which the propositions are undeniable and from which the conclusion, God does not exist, is inevitable? All they have alleged amounts merely to a slender "perhaps" hanging on the gossamer thread of unreasonable doubt. Have they ever propagated their irreligion, that is, so propagated it as to plant in minds a conviction immovable or to touch hearts with a persua- sion which remains in spite of threats, persecution and death?
Until more forcible proofs are forthcoming the belief in God's existence will be an inalienable possession in the domain of thought. This is only a negative reply, but positive answers are not wanting.
God is a word we have used since our childhood. Not only we have heard and used it, but it had moreover a meaning for us. Perhaps we grasped its meaning more readily than the significa- tion of anything else proposed to us. What does this fact prove? It proves that the idea of a Supreme Being is natural to the human
IS THERE A GOD? 37
soul, that this voice of nature is sincere and unalterable. "An opinion," says a pagan philosopher, "which has in its favor the positive testimony of the human race can not but be true." "What all men," writes another eminent heathen, "hold instinctively as true, is a truth of nature." When God is glorified, it is the voice of nature which speaks and when God's existence is impugned, man's nature is outraged and the denial is imputed as something foreign and unnatural. The universal voice of nature can not be mistaken. The universal tongue never utters a lie. This instinctive belief grows with our development. If it fades during the storm of passion it breaks out like a blaze at the hour of death. Like a rain- bow it reaches from our cradle to our grave and life would be dark without it. This is fact. Have atheists such a fact in their reper- toire of sophistries ? There is one process of reason which seems to be at the bottom of this universal acclamation of mankind. It must not be supposed that we admit for a moment that what is proclaimed by general consent is the outcome of a blind instinct. It is not so. Man is eminently a rational being. When all men combine in ut- tering one declaration, that declaration has its basis on reason.
All say that there is a God because it is impossible to explain the beings and the energies with which nature abounds, without calling into requisition a cause productive of this wonderful display of activity. That cause must be superior to everything that it brings into being and must possess all the perceptible attributes in this striking collection of acting and living things, in a higher degree than that in which they have been communicated. Effect always calls for cause and in the present instance demands a cause supreme and independent, a producer producing but unproduced, a first being, a supreme ordainer. Man viewing the marvelous panorama of existence leaps with a single and easy bound to the existence of an uncaused Artificer, to a wise Arranger, to an all-powerful Maker, in a word, to one whose nature corresponds with what is universally understood by the term God.
There are other proofs deducible from the logical working of human reason. There is conscience, which seems to attest that there is a law to which all human legislation is subject, which in its larger principles can neither be ignored nor evaded, and which sup- poses a Lawgiver who is His own law and has no peer and whose sanction is secure and sacred beyond the power of human language to express. No ! God has not left Himself without testimony. All
38 THE CREED.
the arguments may be reduced to, and in point of fact are included in, that very elementary truth that every effect implies a cause and the long chain of effects and causes eventually ends and begins with God.
In the course of a single sermon it is impossible to discuss all the proofs founded on reason alone; nay, it is hardly possible to present one single argument with anything like thoroughness.
III. But reason alone is not our only guide in this momentous question. There is the direct revelation from God, whether we take it from Holy Writ or from the mouth of the infallible Church. What has been the teaching of Scripture? Countless are the pas- sages which illustrate this fundamental truth and illumine any sincere thinker in an honest search after the things of God. The inspired writings proclaim not only that God is, but that He is spiritual and simple, and one in His very essence. That He con- tains in His immensity which is the plenitude of being, which is an ocean of being, shoreless, with depth unfathomable and height un- scalable and breadth immeasurable. That He is infinite and eternal, immutable and inscrutable as well as incomprehensible. That He is unalterable. That He is all perfect. That language stammers in its efforts to describe Him. He is confined by no definition. He is beyond all description. That, in a word, He is the Alpha and the Omega of everything.
Finally, Sacred Scripture pays this fine compliment to human reason, that God can be known by the things that are made. Study that classic first chapter of Paul to the Romans wherein it is affirmed that the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; His eternal power also and divinity, so that they are inex- cusable. In the face of such a proclamation what excuse can a man give for ignoring the existence of God? What an incentive is there not in it, to study the ways of Nature and through them travel and find and possess the First and only Fair ! What a trum- pet call it is to Science to push its investigation further and fur- ther in a spirit of reverence and worship! No doubt about the mission of Science. It is held to two obligations — conscientious ac- curacy and the pointing out to blinder mortals the coruscations of the infinite.
IV. The voice of the Church is only an echo of the voice of Scripture. Holding fast by the assertion of Paul she teaches that
IS THERE A GOD? 39
God is easily known by the natural powers of reason. Were it a fact which was attainable with great difficulty only, St. Paul would not have branded the heathen as inexcusable. As Job (xii) tells us : "Ask the beasts and they shall teach thee, and the birds of the air and they shall tell thee. Speak to the earth and it shall answer thee and the fishes of the sea shall tell. Who is ignorant that the hand of the Lord has made all these things?"
The Popes and the Councils from the very beginning have championed this great truth. It is expressed so frequently and always supposed in every one of her dogmatic utterances. It was heralded to the whole world and to all after ages at the first ecu- menical gathering, and Sunday after Sunday, yes, day after day, the people stand in close unity with the celebrant of the Holy Sac- rifice of the Mass to proclaim that they believe in one only God, in attesting that God is and that that God is alone and one.
V. This brings us to the second question which we have under- taken to elucidate for your instruction. Is there only one God? The answer is positive, as you were taught in your Catechism. There is only one God. This unity of the Divinity is a prerogative of the sublimity of His nature. Not only is there only one God but there can be but one God. Here again we appeal to reason. What Scripture and the Church affirm on this point our human reason, be it said in all humility and reverence, confirms. "Before me there was no God formed and after me there shall be none" (Isaias xliii). "I am the Lord and there is none else: there is no God besides me" (Isaias xlv, 5). "One Lord, one faith, one bap- tism" (Eph. iv, 5). "One God and Father of all" (Eph. iv, 6).
Certainly these pronouncements are as unconditional as they are impressive. This has ever been the mind of the Church. What does reason testify? Can the greatest have an equal? Is there any demand for a second Deity? Reason disapproves of multiplying beings without a necessity for their existence. Reason will go so far as to call absurd the co-existence of two infinite beings. What difference would there be between them unless one had something which the other did not possess ? If so, then the one lacking would be lesser than the other and if lesser not infinite, and if not infinite therefore inferior, therefore subordinate, therefore not God. Our Catechism has the true answer to the question. It says : There can be but one God because God is all-perfect and infinite and there- fore can not have an equal.
4o THE CREED.
This much by way of a brief answer to the double question pro- pounded: "Is there a God and is there but one God?" There are two ways of professing our belief in the Supreme Being. We con- fess His existence and His unity, which here is the unity of exclu- sion of other gods, in obedience to our reason and in obedience to the revelation manifested through His Scripture and His Church. We can not force ourselves to believe that any man, however bar- barous, has ever said to himself with a sense of that conviction which brings rest to searching minds, that there is no God. We can not but think that such a man is an outlaw from the other members of the human family of which God is the Father; that he is a traitor to his strongest instincts, a rebel against his reason. It would seem that such a man is inexcusable. Let us thank God that we know with a knowledge which can not be shaken, because it is bulwarked by faith and reason, that He is and that all He does works for the welfare of those who love Him.
THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 41
V. THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD.
BY THE REV F. HARVEY.
"I believe in God."
SYNOPSIS.- Study of the attribute* of God ir the one means of gaining the knowledge of Htm necessary for our spiritual life. His attributes (a) negative, i. e., denying any limitation in Him; and (&) positive: i. e.. affirming certain perfections, (a) Negative: I, God is a pure spirit; our belief in His personality in no way interferes with our conception of His spiritual nature; 2, He is immutable and eternal; satisfying the crav- ings of the human heart for rest amid the ceaseless changes of life; 3, God i* omnipresent; a thought that if entertained constantly must make us saints, (b) Positive: I, God is infinitely good; and His goodness is leavening the world, transforming our failures and our sins; 2, God is infinitely wise, hence we may trust Him in all things as a child may trust the love and wisdom of a parent; 3, God is infinitely just; not with the rigorous severity of human justice. His infinite knowledge makes His justice almost a synonym of mercy; 4, God is infinitely holy. It is par- ticipation in this holiness that makes us men in the supernatural order as our reason distinguishes us in the natural. The whole purpose of our moral existence is to grow in this holiness of our God, and to this end we should think often of His attributes.
Though God is our Father, He yet "dwells in light inaccessible," and no man may know Him as He is. Yet we are told that our chief business in life is to know God, to love Him, and to serve Him. Knowledge of God is the foundation on which we raise the super- structure of the spiritual life. This knowledge is absolutely essen- tial to our spiritual well-being here, and to our eternal life hereafter ; and groping as we are in the twilight of mortality, it is to be gained only by meditation on the divine attributes.
Indeed, it is by their attributes that we learn to know and to love our earthly friends. One becomes dear to us because of his kindli- ness, another wins our admiration by his learning, another gains our reverence for his courage and his truth ; and so these qualities, these attributes, bring us into communion with that inner na- ture of our fellow men, who else would remain to us but strangers. So it is, too, that we come to know and to love our heavenly Father, and thus fulfill the end of our earthly being.
What we may term the fundamental attribute of the Most High is His simplicity, His entire spirituality. God is a pure spirit. His
42 THE CREED.
nature admits neither higher nor lower; is entirely incommunicable. There is in Him no admixture of the material or corporeal, hence we must gain our knowledge of His nature by denying to it the essen- tial characteristics of what we see about us. "To whom, then, have you likened God, or what image will you make for him?" says the Prophet Isaias.
In this connection we may mention a very common error enter- tained by many Protestants and by most rationalists about the Cath- olic idea of God. They say that we worship a personal God, mean- ing thereby, a corporeal being like ourselves, a sublimated man, as it were; and they conclude that our religion can not possibly be spiritual, since it has such a foundation. This error is due to their ignorance of the meaning attached to the word "person." By a person we mean a being who is responsible for his acts; one to whom an act may be imputed as to a responsible agent. The lower animals, for instance, are not held morally responsible for their actions, since they lack the source of responsibility — reason, and so are not spoken of as persons. Now a person, or responsible being, is not necessarily material or corporeal, and when we speak of a per- sonal God we mean a pure spirit to whom the various acts of Deity, such as creation, redemption, and sanctification, may be im- puted as to a responsible being. Our God is, indeed, a Person, but none the less is He a pure spirit, and, in the words of the apostle, "Those who adore him should adore him in spirit and in truth."
Necessarily connected with this doctrine, that God is entirely spiritual, is that of His unchangeableness. "The same yesterday, to-day and forever." All about us, and all within us, is change. The leaves fall and die, and others push forth to take their places. The days and years speed on in ceaseless alternation. Empires and nations rise and flourish, then are leveled with the dust. And our own hearts but mirror the seething change without us. Gloom fol- lows gladness. The prizes that we strive for with all the ardor of our souls are tossed aside as apples of Sodom. Our most supreme mortal love becomes inevitably but a friendship sustained by habit, or a vague indifference ; our most tragic sorrow turns to a mild won- der at our grotesque despair, and at last to utter forgetfulness. Yet with all this beating upon us of the mighty sea of change, the heart longs persistently for some assured rest ; something that will anchor us to the granite of God's eternity. Our every-day speech echoes this yearning of our nature for the immutable. "Forever," is a word
THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 43
constantly on our lips. Our possessions, we say, are to be ours "for- ever;" our vows of friendship and of love hide their frail mor- tality beneath such words as "eternal," "undying," "endless," and the like.
This instinctive longing for the immutable God was implanted in our hearts that we may more surely come to rest in Him. In our ceaseless turning from the changing life about and within us; in our eager search for some stable resting-place, we learn at length the consoling and sustaining strength of that attribute of our God, His changelessness. "I am who am," says the Lord. Always the same, in substance, in knowledge and in will. He can acquire no new knowledge, can formulate no new decrees, for He has known all things and has decreed that His holy will be done from all eternity. How consoling is this thought, that amid the vicissitudes and changes of our mortal life, when the hearts of friends grow cold, and our hopes have withered one by one, we may turn to the unchanging love and eternal inspiration of our Father who art in heaven.
Closely related to the immutability and the eternity of God, is His immensity, whereby He is really and truly present to all things that exist, or that possibly can exist.
This attribute of God is threefold ; for not only is He everywhere by reason of His knowledge, by which He knows all things, and by reason of His power, by which He acts in all things, but also by reason of His divine nature, whereby He is in His entirety in all places. He is not present in a circumscribed manner as are things corporeal, partially in one place and partially in another, nor as are the angels, in some special place, though in their entirety in every part of that place, but He is all in all places, yet no place can be said to contain Him. This may be deduced from the fact that He is the primal cause of all things, acting upon each and every thing to bring it into existence, to preserve it, and to rule it; and since He can not act where He is not, it follows that He must be in direct communication with that upon which He is immediately acting, for there is no distinction between His power and Himself; they are one. "Whither shall I go from thy spirit, and whither shall I fly from thy face?" sings the Psalmist. "If I ascend into heaven, thou art there ; if I descend into hell, thou art present. If I take my wings early in the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there also shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."
44
THE CREED.
Pleasing and dreadful thought! Never are we for an instant out of God's presence. He is all and entirely in the innermost depths of my heart, and is just as close to the one who is near and dear to me, yet separated from me by the boundless sea, and my whispered prayer for my friend's welfare is breathed into the heart of that God who is present to us both. The stars that write His name in letters of golden fire on heaven's firmament, are proclaiming His presence ; and the dewdrop that sparkles on the leaf holds God within its trembling heart. The foul thought is born in His very presence ; the wicked deed is done before His face; the ribald or blas- pheming jest strikes first upon His ear. How careful we are to keep our disparaging opinion, our harsh criticism from the hearing of him against whom it is directed; but our offenses against God are committed in His presence, nay, in Himself, adding to the injury of sin the insult of a direct attack. True it is that we forget this attribute of our heavenly Father, forget that our sins are perpetrated before Him, but our forgetfulness is a poor excuse for the injury done. The forgetfulness of the train- despatcher does not restore the lives of those who have perished through his carelessness. "With desolation is the world made deso- late, because there is no one who thinketh in his heart." Did we keep in mind this great truth, that God is ever with us and in us, sin would have no part in our lives, and each day would see us growing more and more into the likeness of that Divine Presence in whom we actually live and move and have our being.
Besides these negative attributes — negative because they deny any limitation in God — which help to make us understand the infinite difference between the Creator and the creature, there are positive attributes, which predicate of our heavenly Father certain perfec- tions, such as goodness, wisdom, mercy, justice and holiness.
God's goodness, as we shall now consider it, is none other than His love for creatures. There is, of course, in Him that natural goodness which flows from the infinite perfection of His nature, and the moral goodness, which is but another term for His sanctity ; but it is what the theologians call the relative goodness of God that has for us a peculiar strength of appeal, for that is the goodness which characterizes His relations with us. This divine goodness shows itself in many ways. It manifests itself in acts, as in the benign working of natural laws, and then we call it God's beneficence; it- is but another name for grace, which is the divine goodness bestow-
THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 45
ing supernatural gifts on undeserving creatures. As liberality, it dispenses its benefits without stint; clothed in the garments of pa- tience and long-suffering it delays to punish the wicked. Under the name of mercy it succors the wretched, and as clemency remits sin and the punishment due it. God's infinite goodness and mercy wait upon our every step. He, the source of all happiness, longs to com- municate His happiness to creatures, and we have but to open our hearts, remove the choking weeds of care and worldly pleasure, to realize that goodness fully. Every song bird's note that makes the air vocal with melody is not only a hymn of praise, but an evidence of God's goodness, which would awaken a pure joy in our hearts. The rain that causes the parched earth to exult for gladness, is the gift of our beneficent Father. Even the sorrow and disappointment that weigh us to the earth may be as truly a proof of God's goodness as the pain which a parent inflicts in correcting and training a child is an evidence of that parent's love. Evil is in the world, and much of it, but God's goodness is ever working in it and through it, leavening it, and slowly but surely changing it to good. "All things work together for good to those that love God," are words whose truth grows upon us with the passing years. So many of us can look back upon trials and difficulties, upon sorrows that griped the heart, and seemed to wring the very life from it, and feel that we are better men and women to-day because of our Calvary. To how many have troubles and failures and disappointments been stepping- stones to higher things ; been to our spiritual eyes as the touch of the sorrowing Saviour, unsealing our sight, and making us to see the things of this life in their true proportion! When we ponder it in our hearts, and look at it in the light of our Holy Faith, we realize more and more that God's goodness is enfolding us round about, and changing sins and sufferings and temptations into life-giving grace as the air transforms noxious vapors into health-giving atmos- phere. There is more of good than of ill in human nature, necessar- ily so, for we belong to God ; we are His creation, and His goodness it is that sustains us. We might say that we are drawing that goodness of our God into us constantly with the very elements that are ever renewing our physical being. His goodness is then a part of us, a part that will gradually purge out the old leaven, and make of the sin-sodden human race a people who are true children of God, good with the goodness of their heavenly Father.
Closely related to this all-embracing goodness, is God's infinite
46 THE CREED.
wisdom, "which worketh from end to end mightily and ordereth all things sweetly." This wisdom of our God supposes perfect knowl- edge on His part of what is best for His children, and supposes, too, His power to bring it about.
Not only do the Sacred Scriptures assure us again and again that God has done all things wisely and well, but that He is the very source of all wisdom. "All wisdom is from the Lord God, and hath been always with him, and is from all time." "If any one of you want wisdom, let him ask it of God who giveth to all men abundantly, . . . and it shall be given him."
We are apt to be very forgetful of this attribute of our Maker. Men in their folly are continually passing judgment on the wisdom of God. Their experience teaches them that they are constantly making mistakes when they attempt to judge the actions of their fellow men. They find that there are numberless things that have gone to direct a man's motives that they are ignorant of, and which when they learn, cause them to reverse their decision, but the orderly government of the Universe by Him who holds it in the hollow of His hand, is condemned offhand, if not in so many words, yet by a rebellious questioning that is little short of blasphemous. In our egoism we think that the ends we have in view are those which God should wish to have accomplished. We realize that the child is in- capable of grasping the intentions of an adult, separated from it by some few years, yet, in practice at least, we think ourselves able to form an appreciation of the motives that actuate the infinite and eternal God.
The whole history of God's dealings with man shows man's in- ability to grasp the wisdom of God's ways, yet the knowledge of this history has not the effect on the individual heart which it should have. Again and again it has been shown that what we of this world deem folly and weakness are the very wisdom and strength of God. The weakness of Bethlehem and the folly of Calvary have renewed the face of the earth. In the strength of that weakness myriads have faced cheerfully death by torture or the more subtle martyrdom of lives of self-denial. In the wisdom of that folly God's messengers have overturned and brought to naught the most care- fully planned systems of man and, through this foolishness of the Most High, have reared a structure that has won the reverent ad- miration of the greatest minds of every age. Such is the history of the establishment and continuance of our religion, yet this great
THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD.
47
lesson has small effect in lessening our complaints of what we do not understand in the working out of God's promises. We still con- tinue to murmur against the sorrows and disappointments that are adding to our spiritual stature, and making us in very deed children of God. We admit that Christ's life on earth was a demonstration of divine wisdom, but can not realize that we, His brethren, should come under the same wise law of suffering. The other attributes of God we accept unquestioningly, and, though we would shrink in horror from any expression of doubt regarding God's wisdom, yet by our unwillingness to be guided by His laws, and by our lack of submission to the divine will, we question the wisdom of our heavenly Father, and the efficiency of His government True, it is lack of faith that underlies this mistrust. Did we have a realizing sense of what we profess, our hearts would be filled with that per- fect peace which flows from an absolute reliance upon the wisdom of a loving Father.
We now come to the consideration of the justice of God. Justice is of two kinds, one which renders to another his due, gives some- tiling for value received, and the other, which rewards and punishes a subject according to that subject's deserts.
It is evident that justice in the first sense can not be predicated of God, since, strictly speaking, He can receive nothing from us, for all we have is already His. To Him, however, belongs retribu- tive justice, the justice which rewards and punishes. "Thou art just, O Lord," says Tobias, "and all thy judgments are just, and a'l thy ways mercy and truth and judgment." And St Paul ex- claims • "There is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just judge, will render to me in that day." Indeed, there is a cry in the human heart that proclaims more loudly than any external testimony, the existence of a just God. The intertwining of the threads of good and evil in the warp and woof of human life, de- mands, we feel, the unraveling hand of a just and omnipotent Being.
Sometimes we are frightened at the thought of God's justice. It is, in truth, a dread thought, but not the terrifying thing our ignor- ance would make it To the general mind, justice is something hard and formal, a rigid and literal application of law to some par- ticular case. So common is this idea of the severe and unyielding character of justice, that Shylock's claim of the pound of flesh is strenuously defended, and Portia's interference as strenuously con- demned. Yet in that great poem she symbolizes true justice, which
48 THE CREED.
is so closely intertwined with charity that our gross sight can scarce perceive any distinction. There is never any real conflict between God's justice and his mercy, for His all-embracing knowl- edge reconciles the two. Human justice condemns some unfortu- nate who has violated a law; divine justice, which knows the strength of his temptation and the frailty of his will, bids him go in peace. On the other hand, the man who legally holds vast pos- sessions, receiving the honor and applause that wait upon success, may sue in vain for absolution at the tribunal of penance, and, ac- cepted by men, stand rejected of God.
In how many cases have we condemned the action of our fellow- man with perfect and impartial justice, as we think, and later been obliged to alter our decision because we have learned of certain extenuating circumstances. Knowledge it is that makes justice tender. There is no danger for us in God's justice if our will is upright before Him, be the world's condemnation what it may. Our frailties are covered by His justice, which knows all things, and then that justice is the synonym of mercy and of love.
God's omnipresence, His unchangeableness, His existence from all eternity, demand our reverent worship ; His goodness, mercy, knowl- edge, and even His justice win our confidence and our love; but the contemplation of His holiness it is that sanctifies us above all things, leads us along the road of perfection until we join our voices to that heavenly choir singing, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts." Indeed, we could not bear the white light of that holiness did we not gaze at it through other attributes of our God. The most perfect human virtue, the heroic purity of the saints, the very sanctity of the immaculate Mother of God, are but reflected rays of that dazzling sun of holiness. This attribute of the Deity inspires the angelic song, is the never-ending theme of their praise. Before this holiness the very seraphim veil their faces, and those created intelligences that stand nearest to the unapproachable God tremble at its dazzling beauty. And yet we are commanded to imitate this holiness of our God. He has revealed Himself to us that we may know His holiness and desire to have a share in it. True, there is an infinite difference between the holiness of God and the holiness of man, for God is holy by His very essence, while creatures become holy by the infusion of this supernatural quality. Holiness is the conformity of the will with the supreme moral law, but God is Him- self that supreme moral law, so that divine holiness may be de-
THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 49
scribed as the harmony existing between the will of God and all His actions. The sanctity of God can neither increase nor diminish, while that of His creatures may grow indefinitely, and may diminish until it is utterly lost. We might say that as in the natural order man is distinguished from the brute by his reason, and losing that reason he becomes practically animal, so in the supernatural order he is man because of his share in God's holiness, forfeiting which, he sinks to the level of the devil and his host.
The entire purpose of our mortal existence is to grow into the image of this glory of our God. Our catechism tells us we were made to know, to love, and to serve God. This is but another way of saying that we were made to become holy — holy as our heavenly Father is holy. To this end Christ was born in a stable and died upon a gibbet ; to this end the apostles suffered and toiled ; to this end the Church has been established to wage her undying warfare with the world and the spirit of the world; to this end you and I have heard again and again that still, small voice upbraiding us for our failures and for our transgressions. We are the crown of God's creation, not because of our reason, but because we may share in the holiness of our God.
Amid the cares and worries of our daily life there may not be much time for oral prayer, or for visiting God's holy temple, but there is surely time for a thought on some attribute of our God, His goodness, His mercy, above all His constant presence with us and in us. These attributes have not been revealed to us merely for our study, for the purpose of filling our catechisms or our spiritual books, but that thoughts of them may become an integral part of our daily lives, and by increasing our knowledge and consequently our love of our Creator, make us sharers in His holiness, which is our sole passport to eternal life.
THE CREED.
VI. THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD.
BY THE REV. THOMAS J. GERRARD.
"For thou lovest all things that are, and hatest none of the things which thou hast made." — Wisdom xi. 25.
SYNOPSIS. — Introduction.- — Love a very real experience in men. This im- plies a First Cause which is perfect love. Perfect love implies universal providence. God loves and therefore cares for all rejections of Him- self.
Exposition, i. Providence is needed in all human systems: the family, the community, the state, the Church. Much more is it needed in the system of the vast and complex universe. 2. God's providence extends to particulars. All things for man, but man for God. God cares for the body, but as instrumental to the soul. 3. God is unchangeable in His providence. Moves all things sweetly, i. e., according to their natures. Miracles are not an interference -with but a fulfilment of divine Provi- dence. No such thing as chance. Providence reaches even to man's free will. 4. Providence assigns to all things both a particular and a uni- versal end. The particular end may fail, but not the final one.
Difficulties answered, i. There are seeming failures and cruelties in nature. Our view of nature is infinitesimally small. We can see the reason of many things. But eventually we have to make a meritorious act of faith and trust to the loving providence of God. 2. Human suffer- ing. The result of sin- somewhere. Suffering educative. Eventually, however, we must fall back on God's goodness. 3. The permission of sin the most staggering of all difficulties. The difficulty a part of God's providence designed to beget and foster faith. Manifests the grace of forgiveness and the attribute of justice. But again the ultimate answer is found in God's love.
Conclusion.— Trust in God in spite of all difficulties. Pray in spite of all dejections. Providence demands and does not dispense with prayer. Our sentiments of kindness realized in God in an infinite degree. Whatever God does is right.
The most real and most keen of all human experiences is that of love. It is the double thirst which every one has felt, but which no one on this side of the grave has fully quenched. Whence comes this insatiable longing? It must be traced to its source in everlasting uncreated love. We are accustomed to look at the material world and argue from it to a first cause. But the material world is scarcely dream-stuff compared with the reality of will-power and love. Much more then must the beginning of love be sought in the ultimate Being who Himself is love. And having arrived at absolute love, we can easily see that it must hold all things within its spell. Were it to miss even the poorest of created things it would not be absolute and
THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. 51
perfect. It must from its very nature magnetize everything. Ex- perience and reflection both go to assure us what God has revealed through His spirit : "Thou lovest all things that are, and hatest none of the things which Thou hast made."
Knowledge of this wide-reaching, all-embracing love is the bed- rock of our trust in God's providence. We may wonder at first why God should exercise His love toward all things. The reason is that all things in some way reflect the beauty of God. God looking upon the vast treasures of His own mind must love Himself. So also in looking upon the images of those treasures He must love them. And loving them He must use His vast wisdom and power to take care of them and arrange and direct them to His own great glory.
When we look at our own little systems we see that providence is needed in order that they may be carried on. In the family the father must go out to work in order to provide food and clothing and shelter for himself, his wife and children. In the community there must be a mayor and council to take care of the affairs of the community: to provide for the poor and to attend to the common needs. In the nation, there must be a government to rule the com- munities of which it is composed, and to watch and protect its in- terests as against other nations. Likewise in the Church there must be the priest to take care of the parish, the bishop to rule the diocese, and the supreme Pastor for the whole Church. "Feed my lambs, feed my sheep," said Our Lord to Peter. If therefore in these organiza- tions a certain amount of providence is needful for their well-being, what shall we say of the vast mechanism of the universe? What keeps the planets in their courses? What regulates the seasons? Whence comes about that unspeakable arrangement of law and order, which, with each and every new discovery of science, is known to be more vast and more complex? The verdict of science has been voiced by the prince of scientists. Lord Kelvin, speaking as president of the British Association in 1882, said: "Overpowering proofs of intelligence and benevolent design lie around us, showing to us, through Nature, the influence of a free will; and teaching us that all living beings depend upon one ever- acting Creator and Ruler." Thus again do reason and experience carry us back to what we knew from the revelation of holy wisdom : "But thou, O Father, dost govern all things by thy providence."
There have been many speculations as to how God exercises His
52 THE CREED.
providence; whether, for instance, it is by His direct active opera- tion or by reason of an impulse and arrangement given to the uni- verse in the beginning ; whether He acts by His own personal power and intelligence or by the aid of angelic power and intelligence. We need not stay to consider these. There is, however, a practical ques- tion which concerns our personal attitude towards God. Has God a particular care for each one of us ? God is personally and actively present everywhere. He has sent His Holy Spirit to make His abode with us. He must, therefore, regard all things in particular.
First we see how He arranges all things around us for our service. In the beginning, when the world was without form and void, the spirit of God brooded over the face of the deep and prepared a place for man to live in. He separated the water from the land and the darkness from the light. He made the green things grow and the creeping things live. He planted paradise for man to dwell in. And ever since then He has gone on brooding over the primary stuff of which all things are made. The providence of God is behind everything: the blades of grass, the leaves, the trees, the wind, the rain, the sunshine : everything that is for man's service. Two spar- rows are sold for a farthing, and yet not one of them falls to the ground without our heavenly Father's care.
We, however, are better than the sparrows. It is by God's pro- vision of food that we are able to sustain our bodies. It is by His law that the blood courses through our veins. It is by the breath of His life that we are able to breathe and replenish our heart's blood. "He covereth the heaven with clouds, and prepareth rain for the earth. He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains, and herbs for the service of men." "The eyes of all hope in thee, O Lord, and thou givest them meat in due season."
Yet even this minute care of our bodies is directed toward another end. Our soul is our real self. That is God's special treasure. There His providence keeps constant watch that we may be drawn ever nearer and nearer to Him. He gives light to the will to enable it to act. Hb gives fire to the heart to inflame the whole soul and bring it entirely into His service. "It is God who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish according to His good will."
In all this wonderful providence God preserves His unchangeable- ness. He does not have to keep stepping in to put things right. If a stone rolls down the mountain side it fulfils eternal laws. If the lion goes abroad to seek its prey, it is because of the unchanging
THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. . 53
law of brute instinct. If man is allowed freedom in his actions, it is only because God wills those actions to be the result of man's free- dom. And if at any time something seems to happen contrary to the laws of nature, a miracle, it is not that the laws have been suspended, but that for some divine purpose, these events have been foreseen and arranged, and so are the fulfilment rather than the alteration of the divine will. God reaches "from end to end mightily and or- dereth all things sweetly." Thus all things that happen, if they be not influenced by the free will of man, happen of necessity. Many things seem to happen by chance. The lightning strikes an oak-tree and misses the man standing by. He thinks he is very lucky. But in reality there is no chance whatever in the incident. It is all due to the working out of fixed laws. Things seem to happen by chance simply because we can not see all the circumstances. Huxley spoke a great truth when he said that chance was but an alias for ignor- ance. Whatever happens therefore uncaused by the free-will of man, is the direct result of God's providence. Nor does the free-will of man escape God's providence. Indeed, this is the favorite object of divine care and attention. Of man it is said: "Thou hast sub- jected all things under his feet, sheep and all oxen and the beasts of the field." All the rest of creation is for man, to be directed by man's spiritualized free-will to the service of God. Whether, there- fore, man is influenced by the world around him or by grace within him, it is all the result of God's providence taking care of him. "There is no power but from God : and those that are, are ordained of God."
This arrangement of God, however, must always be considered in the light of God's final aim. He gives to each of His creatures a certain value for their own sakes ; but a much greater value for the sake of all creation. An artist will value the chemist's discovery of a new color, first for the sake of the hue itself, but more especially for the place it will occupy in the composition of some beautiful picture. Thus in God's creation all things have both a particular and a universal end. It is the particular end of trees to bear fruit. It is the particular end of bees to make honey. It is the universal end of all things to glorify God. Thus it may happen that many things fail in their particular aim ; but never in their final aim. A gardener cuts off vine-bearing branches in order that those that remain may produce better grapes. Whenever then there seems to be failure in
54 THE CREED.
nature, we must conclude that it is only a failure of the particular end and not of the final one.
This distinction between the particular and final end of things is a very important one. Its neglect is the cause of nearly all the con* fusion which exists in people's minds concerning Divine Providence. God's creation scheme is so vast and so complex. It reaches right back through all the ages of history, through the life of pre-historic man, through the long centuries and aeons of geological time. It stretches forward through all future ages and on past the end of time into eternity. It comprises all our earth, all our solar system, all other stellar systems of which ours is but a unit. And if the tele- scope shows us length and breadth in indefinite dimensions, the microscope and chemical experiment show us infinitesimal worlds in smallness. It has been computed that in a thimbleful of hydrogen there are 1,200 millions of millions of millions of atoms, while each atom is made up of electrons, each one of which when compared with its atom is as a crumb to a cathedral. How very small then must be our partial insight into God's plans! A fly lights upon a great picture, say the Sistine Madonna of Raphael. It sees only a little black patch on the hem of Our Lady's robe. It recognizes nothing of the superb composition of form and color of which the black patch is a portion. Yet the fly's apprehension of the picture is far more ex- tensive than our apprehensions of God's picture. So it comes about that if we look only to the particular end of things and neglect their final end, we get a distorted view of God's providence. Relying merely on our own infinitesimal outlook we are bound to experience the difficulty of God's seeming improvidence, seeming forgetfulness, seeming weakness, seeming unkindness.
The failures in nature are a constant source of trouble. Take, for instance, the mayflies. Their larvae form most elaborate little houses for themselves in the beds of streams. They live under water until ready to emerge from the chrysalis state. Then after all this preparation they rise to live their little sunshine life. Yet out of a thousand probably only a dozen escape the trout and the swal- lows. Wherefore all this waste?
The other day the children of one of our convent schools were playing in the garden, when some of them came running in great distress to the nun in charge. Little Agnes had caught a bird and had it shut up in a tiny box. "Let it go at once," said the sister, "it will die." "Poor little birdie," said the child, "but it would go
THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD, 55
straight to heaven then." So the sister had to explain that the bird could not go to heaven as it had no soul baptized in the Blood of Jesus ; that animals could not sin because they had no will ; that the cat could not help being cruel to the birds, nor yet the birds to the flies, for God made them so. And just then they were able to see a fly-catcher darting from its place on a tree catching flies every moment. "But why did God make them so cruel ?" asked the child. "It is nearly time to go in. Run and fetch me the bell." This was the answer she got from the provident sister. We are all children in the presence of God's creation. We can see the reasons of many things. But we need not carry our reasoning very far before we come to the end of it. Our only answer is that God is good. The particular end may fail hundreds of times, but the final one never. Be loves all things that are and hates none of the things which He has made.
The difficulty is felt more keenly when we come to human suffer- ing. The reason is because then it touches the whole man; not merely his intelligence, but, as in the case of holy Job, his flesh and his bone. "Though He should kill me, yet will I hope in him." That was Job's attitude of mind. We can look on the history of the man of patience and see how all turned out well in the end. We can see that much of the suffering which exists is the direct result of sin. We can believe that all suffering is the result of sin somewhere, if not of the sufferer, at least of some one else. We can know the one- ness of our race and the need of bearing each other's burdens. But when we are face to face with suffering in reality, then it is that we need our faith in God's providence. Aware of our own sinfulness we might bravely bear our own sufferings. But the difficulty presses heavily upon us when we see those suffer whom we love and know to be innocent.
The newspapers told us of a sad case recently. A young couple, father and mother, were putting their children to bed, their only two. The mother was bathing the baby while the father played with the elder boy. The boy, in his delight, jumped from his father's arms, fell downstairs and was killed. The mother rushed downstairs to her son, and, in her distress, forgot the child upstairs. Then when she did return it was only to find her baby drowned. What shall we say in the presence of such a calamity ? What could the mother say ? What could the father say ? We can not see the good of such effects of God's providence. But by a strong act of faith we can believe
56 THE CREED.
that God is good, that He loves all things that are, and hates none of the things that He has made. We may try to fathom the mystery, but our safer plan will be to bow down and adore.
In seeking the source of suffering in sin the difficulty is lessened for many people. But for many others it is only postponed. Can the providence of God be justified in the presence of so much sin? Especially in the presence of everlasting sin ? We may get glimpses here and there of God's providence in the permission of sin. We may look at the lives of St. Paul and St. Augustine and St. Mary Magdalen and St. Mary of Egypt and see in their sins the occasions of the wonderful grace of sorrow and repentance. Or we may see in the punishment of sin the manifestation of God's justice. "What is there that I ought to do more to my vineyard, that I have not done to it? Was it that I looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes ? And now I will show you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be wasted : and I will break down the wall thereof and it shall be trodden down. And I will make it desolate." Finally, however, we must have recourse to the one great truth of God's love and the deduction from that truth, that God's love is at the root of His providence. We can not see but we can believe that God's love is eternal.
Here then is the practical lesson to be learnt from the truth of God's providence. God must be trusted under all circumstances. No matter how contrary to our ideas of justice and right and mercy He seems to act, we must believe that He has done right after all. Those very sentiments which cause us distress come from Him and must be found in Him in an eminent way and infinite degree. He who made the eye, shall He not see ? He who made the ear, shall He not hear? And He who gave us our pity, shall He not prove merciful and gentle past all imagining ? His care for us is so minute that the very hairs of our head are all numbered. He knows all that is need- ful for us before we ask Him. Yet we must pray: "Our Father
. . . give us this day our daily bread." Our prayer is not a petition to God to change His mind, but it is a condition which God has attached to His gifts. When then we pray for one thing and get something else which we do not want, we must believe and trust that it is the result of God's loving providence. We must see God in the ordinary ways of nature just as well as in the miraculous. And if at times those ways jar on our sense of what is kind and good we
THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. 57
must remember that God's ways are not our ways, and that all things, even the most appalling events in life", work together for the good of those who love God. The dark night comes to every soul sooner or later and causes it to lament as Sion lamented of old : "The Lord hath forsaken me, the Lord hath forgotten me." But God replies as He did to Sion : "Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? And if she should forget, yet will I not forget thee."
S8 THE CREED.
VII. THE HOLY TRINITY.
BY RIGHT REV. MGR. CANON JOHN S. VAUGHAN.
"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."— Matt, xxviii. 19.
SYNOPSIS. — Reason, Scripture, Church proclaim the existence of God. Christ lifted the -veil and showed us something of the inner nature of God, viz., the Trinity. Trinity necessary for the infinite happiness and infinite love of God. Meaning and explanation of this mystery. Rela- tion of the Three Persons to each other; to the Incarnate Word; to Christ in the Eucharist. Vestiges of the Trinity in creation, i. Beings. — Material, spiritual, partly material and partly spiritual. 2. Matter. — Solid, liquid, gas. 3. Dimensions in nature. — Length, breadth, thickness. 4. Form. — Lines, surfaces, solids. 5. Life. — Vegetative, sensitive, ra-, tional. 6. Souls. — Natural life, supernatural life, glorious life. Conclusion. — Adoration and thanksgiving to the Trinity.
There is no truth so clearly written upon the face of nature, as the" existence of God. No one whose mind is not hopelessly blinded by pride or prejudice, can fail to detect the most startling indications of His goodness, His power, and His wisdom in the immense uni- verse, that upon every side stretches around him to untold distances. Hence the Seraphim, in the vision accorded to Isaias, cried out, one to another, "Holy ! Holy ! Holy ! Lord God of Hosts, all the earth is full of thy glory" (Is. vi, 3), while the Psalmist, in similar words, reminds us that "the heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands" (Ps. xviii). Well then may St. Paul assure the Romans that they who refuse to acknowledge this fundamental truth, are without excuse. "The visible things of God, from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being under- stood by the things that are made, His eternal power and divinity, so that they (who believe not) are inexcusable" (Rom. i. 19). In a similar manner the wise man, under inspiration of the Holy Ghost writes : — "By the greatness of the beauty and of the creature, the Creator of them may be seen, so as to be known thereby" (Wis- dom xiii). Indeed any doubt upon this point that might otherwise have lingered in our minds, has been swept away by a solemn decree of the General Council of the Vatican, which declares that even apart
THE HOLY TRINITY. 59
from any supernatural revelation, man may arrive at the knowledge of the existence of a Supreme Being, by a proper exercise of his reason, and may even obtain some knowledge of many of His at- tributes, more especially of His goodness, wisdom and power, which are everywhere apparent.
There are, however, in God depths that no human plummet can ever sound, and riches that no human intelligence can ever measure. Of these one of the greatest and most incomprehensible is the adorable mystery of the ever Blessed Trinity.
This is a mystery that we could never have discovered for our- selves. It is no doubt true, that certain faint traces of it exist in the visible creation, but these traces do not stand out boldly and con- spicuously so as to be readily seized. Hence, it became necessary that this sublime doctrine should be more explicitly revealed to us by Jesus Christ, under the new dispensation.
In His infinite goodness He deigned to lift up a corner of the veil that hides the mysteries of His eternal essence for us, and com- municate to us one of the profoundest secrets of His divine nature; a secret by which we are enabled to realize more perfectly the infinite richness and felicity of His life.
The utter solitude and isolation that seemed to characterize the eternal existence of God, and which was so difficult for man to reconcile with his ideal of perfect happiness, at once disappears before the appearance of this newly revealed doctrine. We now learn that God is not, and never really was, alone. During the un- told and unthinkable duration before angels or men were made, God was not without society, He was not without companionship. On the contrary, He enjoyed the most perfect intercourse, wholly independently of all creatures; an intercourse, in fact, so supreme and adequate, that the creation of angels and men could add little or nothing to it. Indeed, the intercourse between God and creatures could never have satisfied the infinite capacity of the Supreme Being. Between Him and the very highest of His creatures, there stretches out an infinite distance. It is impossible that God should ever be able to make Himself adequately known to the finite being ; or that any finite being should be able to communicate with God, as with an equal; as well hope to pour the entire ocean into the hollow of one's hand. Only an infinite Person can really stand on a level with the infinite. Only an infinite Person can be the recipient of an infinite thought, or of any infinite communication. Only an
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infinite Person can know and be known, can love and be loved, in an infinite measure.
God may be loved by creatures, but not adequately; not as He deserves; not as His nature demands. A love, full enough, broad enough, and deep enough, to fill and flood His own Being, must come from an infinite Person : from one just as truly God as Himself.
Something distantly analogous to this may be learned from our own experience. A bride may be, in a certain sense, loved by her pet dogs and birds. She may pass happy moments in their company. But will such mean things satisfy her ? No ! Her heart needs some- thing more than the affection of an irrational animal, a creature so far below her. She craves for the love of a man; i. e., for one of a like nature with herself. She hungers for the love of a human being; of one who can understand her, and sympathize with her, and share her feelings, and who, like herself, possesses intelligence and reason and free will, and who in every sense is her equal.
So in like manner, God could never possess complete and infinite happiness, if loved only by mere creatures, by beings, that is to say, infinitely below Him. Being Himself infinite He required the so- ciety, the companionship and the love of an infinite person ; without which infinite happiness would be but a word, and not a divine at- tribute at all. How is such companionship possible ? No one could have guessed or imagined were the solution not borne in upon us by the revelation of the mystery of the adorable Trinity. It an- nounces and asserts the plurality, while, at the same time, it de- clares an absolute and essential unity. This at once shows the difficulty. Although the doctrine is above reason, it is not opposed to reason. It involves no contradiction. For observe : The Church does not declare that which is one to be at the same time three: nor does she teach that which is three to be also only one. No. She proclaims and enforces the doctrine of strict unity in the Su- preme Being, only she goes on to explain that this unity, which is ever absolute and unbroken, attaches to the nature of God and to the nature only, At the same time she proclaims a plurality, but the plurality attaches to the Persons and to the Persons only. Hence no violence is done to reason.
To say that three Persons are but one Person, or to say that one God is in reality three Gods, would be a contradiction and an impos- sibility. But then the Church does not say anything of the kind. All she does declare is that one God is three Persons; and that three Per-
THE HOLY TRINITY. 61
sons are but one God; which may indeed be incomprehensible, but which in no way involves a contradiction. From the foregoing con- siderations it is clear that the divine and infinite Persons constitute a true society, unique in its kind; a society whose members are in the most perfect manner, equal, related, and worthy of each other, and which therefore is the infinite, unattainable, eternal and essential ideal of all other societies.
Let us now express the doctrine a little more explicitly. The Church teaches that there exists only one God ; infinite in all perfec- tions; and that4n this one God there are three perfect and distinct Persons. They are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The Father is not the Son ; the Son is not the Holy Ghost ; and the Holy Ghost is neither the Father nor the Son. The Father is truly God ; the Son is truly God ; the Holy Ghost is truly God. Yet there are not three Gods. There is but one only God. How can that be? We know not. How can we explain it? We are unable to explain it. This is where the mystery comes in.
There is further a certain relationship between the Persons. Thus the Son is begotten of the Father : He is related to Him by a process of divine generation. Does this make the Father more ancient than the Son? No. Does it imply that the Father must have existed before He begot the Son ? No. For neither the Father nor the Son had any beginning whatsoever. They together with the Holy Ghost, always were, are, and ever will be; all equal; none superior, none inferior, and without any "before" or "after." The Father is eternal; the Son is eternal; the Holy Ghost is eternal. Yet, there are not three eternals, but only one eternal.
Similarly, the Holy Ghost proceeds from both Father and Son, yet He is the same Lord and God as they are. Though He proceeds from them, He is in no sense inferior ; they are in no way anterior or superior. The Father is omnipotent, and omniscient, and eternal and infinite. The Son is omnipotent, and omniscient, and eternal and infinite. The Holy Ghost is omnipotent, omniscient, eternal and infinite. Yet there are not three omnipotents, nor three omniscients, nor three eternals, nor three infinites; but one only Cod, who is at once omnipotent, omniscient, eternal and infinite*
The divine Persons are indivisible, inseparable, and so united in one nature, that where one is the rest must be. Though indivisible, they are distinct, because the Persons are different, though the nature is the same. That is to say : No divine Person can separate
62 THE CREED.
His personality from His nature. Hence, where one Person is, there also must be the divine nature. But the one nature is, and must ever be, common to the three Persons ; consequently the other two Persons must be equi-present there likewise.
The whole question hinges upon the unity of essence and the plurality of Persons as may best be realized by a concrete example.
Carefully consider then the following doctrine: Jesus Christ is truly man ; but He is also truly God. Then, are God the Father and God the Holy Ghost also man? No. By no means. But why not? For the simple reason that it was not the nature of God that became man, that nature which is common to all three; but it was the Person of God the Son, that Person who is not common to the three, but is distinct and undivided.
Now let us turn to our second illustration ; viz., the Holy Euchar- ist. As every well instructed Catholic knows by virtue of the words of the consecration, the bread and wine are changed into the sacred Body and Blood of Christ. Now comes the question : Is the human soul of Jesus Christ also present? Certainly it is, but not in virtue of the consecrating words, which do not even refer to it ; but because since the resurrection, body and soul are inseparable. In short, where the Sacred Body is, the Soul of Jesus Christ must also be. This is what theologians express by the word "concomitance." And what shall we say about the divinity of Christ? That is also present, and for the same reason ; viz., because where the Body, and, in fact, the entire humanity of Jesus Christ is present there also must be present the divinity. No power can separate them. Then are the Eternal Father, and the Holy Ghost also truly present in the Blessed Sacrament? Dear brethren, consider for a moment for yourselves, in the light of the principles already laid down, and you will at once see that the answer must be in the affirmative.
Observe : There are not three Divine Essences, but only one. Hence it must follow, that wherever that one divine essence is, there must be all three Persons. The nature of God can not be par- celled out among three. No such division is so much as possible. But since there is only one nature or essence, wherever that nature is, there also must be equally present each of the Divine Persons. But, in the Blessed Sacrament there is most certainly the divine substance of nature, then there must also be, not in virtue of the words of consecration, but by concomitance, not only God the Son, but also God the Father and the Holy Ghost
THE HOLY TRINITY. 63
If we speak always of the presence of Jesus Christ, and of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, and but seldom mention, in this connection, the other members of the Trinity, it is only because the Sacred Body and Blood of Jesus Christ alone are present by virtue of the words of institution, and the sacred Body and the sacred Blood were assumed by the Sacred Person alone, and not by the Holy Ghost.
Theologians teach that all acts of God upon the creation, i. e. all acts ad extra, must be attributed equally to the three divine Persons. Hence the visible and the invisible universes are the work of the triune God. As a consequence, it is not to be wondered at that every- thing, from the highest to the lowest, both in the spiritual and the natural orders, should bear some faint reflection at least of Him who fashioned them. Spiritual creatures, such as the angels and such as the souls of men, will naturally bear a more perfect image of the Trinity than material objects, since a spiritual and immaterial substance is better adapted to reflect it than any other. This is undeniable. Yet there are some traces of the mystery of the Adorable Trinity to be detected even in the visible creation around us, as may easily be demonstrated.
That the image and likeness of God is to be found in our im- mortal soul, is a fact too well known to you all, to need any develop- ment here. So, passing that by, let us approach a truth not so gen- erally recognized by the majority of Christians. I mean the re- markable fact that even inanimate nature and material things like- wise, disclose some traces of the infinite Creator who called them into being.
Whether we look out over the vast universe, in the midst of which we live ; or whether we confine our study to the little orb in which the force of gravity holds us prisoners all our lives, we shall be obliged to conclude that all is ruled by a certain trinity in unity. That is to say, all nature, and every object in nature breaks up into a threefold division, while at the same time these three divisions are bound together in a true unity. But before descending to de- tails, let us throw a glance at Creation, as a whole. By "creation" we, of course, understand all that God's hands have made ; in short, all that exists outside God Himself ; all that is not God. All these objects fall under one common denominator. They form one single thing, i. e., the creation. Nevertheless, from this one designation, common to all, as from a single stem, they branch farther into three,
64 THE CREED.
and only three necessary divisions. For, however numerous and varied and unlike creatures may be, every single creature necessarily ranges itself under one of three heads. Every creature is either (i) wholly spiritual, as are the angels and archangels; or else (2) wholly material, as the metals, the rocks, the seas and the mountains, or else (3) partly spiritual and partly material, as man, who unites the two in a single personality, his soul being spiritual, and his body material.
Selecting the lowest of these divisions, we will now briefly con- sider how the Trinity is reflected in simple matter. I soon discover that matter exists in three, but only in three different states. Though always matter, yet it assumes three, and only three, possible forms. Here is a rock. It is hard, tough and stubborn. That is matter under one of its forms. Beyond the rocks lie the waters of the great ocean. These waters are soft, yielding, and of a totally different character. Water is as truly matter as is the rock ; but it is matter in another of its forms. Then above the water and the rocks is the air. Here we have matter, as truly as before, but it is in another, a third condition. It is more rarefied and subtle and lighter, and more obedient to every external impulse than even the water. From this it is clear that matter exists, but not always in the same state. It may exist in the solid state, or in the liquid state, or in the state of gas or vapor. How many states are there? Three. Yet these three include all. A fourth state can not be so much as imagined.
Here is a piece of ice. It is solid. Expose it to the influence of the sun ; it passes into the liquid state ; apply a still fiercer heat and it disappears in the form of vapor. Instead of a piece of ice, drop a lump of gold or silver or lead or of any other metal whatsoever into the melting pot ; and it may be made to pass through the same three stages as the ice. The only difference is that a considerably intenser heat is required, first to melt, and then to vaporize metals. There is no doubt but that, given heat sufficient, the entire earth and all it contains, and every material substance, may be resolved not only into liquid, but also into vapor. Indeed scientists assure us that it was as vapor, or, as some express it, "as a gas cloud" that the earth first began its independent existence; yet, in all these different states it ever remains the same substance. There is con- sequently a unity of substance and a trinity of condition — one in essence; three in state. Thus a trinity and unity embraces all material things.
THE HOLY TRINITY. 65
Now take any substance you please, say a rock or a mountain, and you will observe how this triune law is manifested in yet another way. Every material substance possesses three and only three dimensions. In the pebble I pick up off the road, as well as in the colossal sun shining in the heavens, there is, and must be, length, breadth and thickness. In fact all visible things, of whatever character and variety, are contained by these dimensions; and it is just as impossible to increase as to reduce the number. Except as contained by these three, no material substance can exist. One can not even imagine such substances with four or with two, or with any number but just three. A piece of gold may be beaten extremely thin; but, in addition to its length and its superficial breadth, it must possess some thickness; since length and breadth without thickness, is nothing but a figment of the mind.
Let us pass to consider how material substances are composed, so far as their external form and shape are concerned. The answer is, of (i) lines, of (2) surfaces and of (3) solids. These are the three ideas that we derive from the most cursory glance at the visible universe around us. If, further, we examine these three in detail we shall find that each in its turn discloses in itself a unity and trinity. A single straight line, for instance, is a single whole, but it contains three and only three essential parts. For what is a straight line but two distinct points, and the space between them? Every conceivable line must have (i) a beginning, or a point at which it starts ; (2) an end, or the point at which it terminates, and (3) the distance between. Try and imagine any single straight line that is not made up of these three parts. Impossible ! You can not.
A trinity and unity forms also the essence of every surface. If we wish to enclose a space by straight lines, what is the very least number of such lines that we need employ? Three. No space can be enclosed, and no surface formed, with less than three lines. That is the minimum. And if we examine the matter more closely, we shall find that every surface, enclosed by straight lines, is in reality, either a single triangle, or else two or more triangles placed side by side. Take, for instance, the very page which you are reading. What is it but two right-angled triangles, united at either base? Draw an imaginary line right across the page from one corner to the opposite, and the two triangles are at once recognizable. A pentagon is a combination of three triangles ; a hexagon a com- bination of four; in fine, every rectilinear figure, when analyzed,
66 THE CREED.
may be resolved into a collection of triangles. Thus a trinity con- trols all surfaces, as well as all lines. And we have already shown it also enters into the composition of all solids, which necessarily possess (i) length, (2) breadth and (3) thickness.
These few examples might be enormously multiplied,* but time will not permit us to enlarge further upon this fascinating theme. Let me, however, before concluding, beg you to bear in mind that the threefold divisions, of which I have spoken, are not arbitrary divisions of one's own inventing. They are ingrained in the very nature of things; and exist independently of us and will continue to in spite of us. They are just as deeply seated as any other essential characteristic and the more closely we examine them the more clearly we perceive the impossibility of evading this ubiqui- tous shadow of the trinity in unity, and the unity in trinity, which falls upon everything which God has made.
We will conclude with two singularly interesting illustrations. The one has to do with organic life in general ; and the other, with the special life of each individual human soul. Taking organic life first, we see at a glance, that it is a single stem with three totally distinct branches. There is ( i ) vegetable life, enjoyed by all kinds of trees, shrubs and plants ; then (2) there is sensitive or purely animal life, possessed by all kinds of birds, beasts, fish, reptiles, etc., and (3) lastly, there is rational life, special prerogative for men of all races and languages and colors. This is no fanciful division. The one idea "life" is present in all ; yet it exhibits itself in three several ways. No one can discover a fourth kind of organic life. There are just three : no more and no less.
Now let us consider an individual human soul, over whose desti- nies this same mysterious trinity holds sway. The soul enters the earth possessing only its natural life : then the waters of Holy Bap- tism flow over it, and, at once, it is lifted up above nature and begins to live the life of supernatural grace; which is totally different to the life of mere nature. If it perseveres it dies at last to the world, but only to enter upon a new and still sublimer life, viz., the life of eternal glory in heaven. Now observe. It is one and the same soul ; yet it lives in succession three distinct lives. The same individual soul is at one period leading the life of nature, then the life of grace, and finally the life of eternal glory. The lives are three. The
*For many othor instancw, see chapter VI. in my book: "Thoughts for All Times."
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soul is one. There is unity, since the individual remains identical; there is trinity because the states are distinctly three.
At present we can see the image of the Blessed Trinity in creation but obscurely, since the eyes of our soul are bandaged; yet even now, we see enough to fill us with a holy wonder and admiration, and to excite within us a longing for the future, when the veil will be drawn aside, and when the light of glory will fill and flood our soul with a fuller and deeper knowledge of the untold splendors of God's uncreated and unparalleled magnificence. Let us close our discourse with the celestial song of the Seraphim, as heard by Isaias, and adore the thrice holy Trinity, as we repeat — if not with our lips — at least with our hearts and minds : "Holy ! Holy ! Holy ! Lord God of Hosts, all the earth is full of thy glory."
68 THE CREED.
VIII. OBSCURITY OF RELIGIOUS MYSTERIES.
BY THE RIGHT REV. JAMES BELLORD, D.D.
"If any man love me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and will make our abode with him." — John xvi, 23.
SYNOPSIS. — The world looks askance at faith because (i) of its mysteries and (2) of the obscurity of these mysteries.
Reason teaches that religion must contain mysteries. This is proven from (j) the nature of religion, (2) the nature of the human faculties, (j) the nature of faith, i. e., supernatural gift. Love a great help to those who seek the truths of faith. Sin a great obstacle to faith. Our Lord made no allowance for want of faith. Reward of faith.
I. The Blessed Trinity is the great mystery of Christianity. It is absolutely incomprehensible ; it is not capable of being discovered, or of being proved true, or of being explained and made clear by unaided reason, as some other truths may be ; but we are left entirely depend- ent on revelation. This is an idea against which very many have re- volted. It is humbling to pride of intellect that an important matter de- manding our assent should not be submitted for our examination and approval. Faith is belief without seeing. There are many who insist that seeing is believing, and in consequence they will not en- dure the yoke of religion. If religion were simply a human institu- tion, it would be very well for men to insist on understanding thor- oughly before accepting it. They would not be justified in enslav- ing their intellect by promising unconditional obedience to a mere man and binding themselves to the unknown. This is what the Church condemns in secret societies. But God has the right, and He alone, to demand such a sacrifice. The highest homage that crea- tures can render God is the oblation of their noblest faculty, and the submission of the intellect to the obedience of faith, by giving the firmest assent to truths propounded by God and not understood by us. This service is actually demanded by God, and it is necessarily demanded in supernatural religion. If God has revealed to us any truths of a superior order, there must be obscurities and mysteries. The acceptance of these is a necessary part of our duty if we are to "honor God with our substance" (Prov. iii, 9), i. e. to serve Him with each one of our faculties. There can be no true religion with-
THE OBSCURITY OF RELIGIOUS MYSTERIES. 69
out this demand and this service. But this is just what a certain part of the world will not tolerate. It does not want the super- natural in any form, and it will maintain its intellectual independence even in the face of God. It has said plainly: "I will not serve" (Jerem. ii, 20).
The enemies of religion are forever denouncing it as unreason- able for the very qualities which reason requires that it should have, viz., for its mysteries and their obscurity. The mystery of the Holy Trinity, has been a favorite object of attack ; but every other mystery has been assailed in turn — the fall of Adam, the Incarnation, Re- demption by Jesus Christ, His miracles, the Immaculate Conception and the divine maternity, the prerogative of the Church, her holiness in spite of scandals within her boundaries, the resurrection of the body, future punishment. Some profess to find these incon- sistent with known facts, opposed to the evidence of human reason, and they reject them in common with the whole system. On the other hand there have been some who have accepted all Christian doctrines reverently, but have tried to minimize their obscurity; they have endeavored to explain all that is mysterious, and to show that the hidden things of God are well within the grasp of human understanding. This is a faulty excess. Theological reasoning can do much in proving that God has revealed such and such mys- teries, it can show that they are not opposed to right reason, and it can make comparisons and bring illustrations, but it never pro- fesses to make men fully comprehend these truths. Let us now con- sider the obscurity of religious mysteries. We shall see that it is most reasonable that religion should be beyond reason, and that this fact affords.no ground for refusing belief.
II. There must of necessity be obscurity and mystery in religion, whether we consider its nature, or the nature of human faculties.
I. Different kinds of truths are susceptible of different kinds of proof; they are not all made evident to us in the same way. Some truths we grasp at once by intuition as soon as they are pre- sented to us, such as that twice two are four, that the whole of a thing is greater than its part. Other things we know by our senses, such as the brightness of the sun, the harmony of certain musical chords. Other things we know by reasoning or deduction, and others by authority, i. e., being told of them. These last are things which are past or far off, and which do not fall under our observa- tion. In this case we examine the credibility of the person who in-
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forms us, his sources of knowledge and his truthfulness. The truths of religion are of this class. They belong to a higher sphere than nature ; we can not discover them, we accept them on the word of another ; and when that other is God our belief is divine faith. We can find proof that God has revealed them, and that they come to us through His accredited messengers, but they can not be demon- strated to us by our own intuition, by our senses, or by deduction. This of course must be the case. God is infinite in His being and in perfections ; man is limited, and infinitely small before God. The lesser can not contain the greater. Man can not hold the ocean in the hollow of his hand, and still less can his mind comprehend the immensity of God's perfection. That which is beyond the grasp of the finite is mystery. A religion which contained nothing superior to reason would not include God; it would be emptiness, folly, and falsehood. A religion without mystery is no religion.
How can any one expect that man should be able to grasp all reli- gious truth? Human faculty can not grasp the whole of anything, even of those things which lie within its own range. No man, though he had the most receptive mind, though he were to live ten thousand years, would be able to take in even the products of other men's minds. He could not even skim the great mass of books in the world, the productions of imagination and reflection and experience, the compilations, the speculations, the observations of innumerable kinds. The sharpest senses fail within a short distance. No one claims to distinguish an object ten miles off as clearly as one that is before the eyes ; yet some expect that they should be able to master the remotest secrets of the Divinity, as they would a piece of present mechanism. Nature and human life are full of inexplicable mysteries, men must accept and acknowledge them without under- standing. What folly it is and what presumption for any to think that he could comprehend all the mysteries of the infinite and incom- prehensible ! The faculty of reason, which he sets up in opposition to mystery, is sufficient to show him that the existence of mystery is most reasonable.
The obscurity of divine truths is not an imperfection in them, as it would be in some article of human teaching; but it is a conse- quence of their perfection and of their lofty origin. If we could sound their depths that very fact would prove that they could not claim our assent as being supernatural. Moreover, the fact that we have not been able to exhaust them in this life assures us that
THE OBSCURITY OF RELIGIOUS MYSTERIES. 71
there is occupation and enjoyment for our noblest faculties in the next world. We may know that there is still an infinity of knowledge beyond what we can acquire here, that our real life — the life of ac- tion— is not ended here, but that a fuller life with boundless occu- pation for the mind will begin in eternity.
2. Obscurity in religion is also an evident requirement from the point of view of ourselves. The fact that faith is a supreme hom- age to God demands that there be a sacrifice of self in it; the fact that it is a virtue requires that there be an exertion in practising it; the fact that it is highly meritorious demands that there be freedom in choosing or rejecting it. If religious doctrines were as evident as the multiplication table, they would simply force our assent, there would be no alternative of rejection possible, our assent would not be free. If we had as complete an unveiling of truth as the blessed have in the vision of God, there would not exist the freedom which is necessary for merit. This life is the time to make our choice and struggle to earn our reward. God wishes that our choice should be a generous and trustful one, honorable alike to Him and to us. The supernatural light of His countenance that is shown to us is therefore clear enough for those who wish to receive it, and obscure enough to enable those to resist who will ; and so it makes obedience meritorious. Thus we have neither overwhelming evidence nor impenetrable darkness. The obscurity is not so great as to make it folly to believe, nor the clearness sufficient to force our assent. Our intelligence and our liberty have both a full action in the work of faith. Those who make their own will the rule of belief, who have rejected what they consider obscure, and who have accepted certain doctrines simply because they are satisfactory to themselves, have rendered no homage to God, they have not served Him from their own substance, they have no faith, they can earn no supernatural reward.
III. Another thing that removes spiritual truth out of the domin- ion of man's faculties is, that faith in them is not a natural acquisi- tion, but a special gift of God. "It is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy" (Rom. ix, 16). It is irregular and unaccountable in its comings and its goings • for "the spirit breatheth where he will . . . thou knowest not whence he cometh and whither he goeth" (John iii, 8). The apti- tude for understanding and holding on to divine truths is specially infused into the soul by the Sacrament of Baptism. Otherwise a
7, THE CREED.
man is called in God's own time, it may be sooner, or it may be later. None can anticipate that time : "No man can come to me except the Father who hath sent me draw him" (John vi, 44). When the light is given them, it is granted as a reward for past constancy and good- will, or with a view to future profits; it is not vouchsafed for the satisfaction of curiosity, nor for the interests of science, nor as the fruit of simply intellectual strivings. To those who seek in these last ways it is said, "you shall seek me and shall not find me ; and where I am, thither you can not come" (John vii, 34). This is the kind of obscurity that many complain of and resent, but it is no discredit to religious truth, for it has been caused by the seekers themselves; it is no obscurity in the truth itself. So we can not say that the sun has lost its brightness when dense vapors rise from stagnant swamps and hide its face.
The gift of God's illumination is withheld from those who persist in using inadequate means for spiritual investigations. Some knowl- edge is gained by sense alone; as sight, even without intelligence, perceives the noon-day sun. Abstract truths of science are per- ceived by the intellect; sight alone is inadequate; it is unnecessary, too, but it is useful for the gaining of information. The moral and spiritual faculties are not required for the truths of nature, but they are absolutely necessary for considering the truths of the higher spiritual order. For this purpose the faculties of sense, and even the faculties of the intelligence, and the highest secular training, are quite inadequate. Those who possess these advantages are the most likely to over-estimate their value and apply them beyond their proper limits ; and hence that word of our blessed Lord : "I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid- den these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones" (Matt, xi, 25). This doctrine that the trained intel- lect is inadequate for religious judgment is hateful to the proud and worldly, but it is a doctrine full of hope and comfort for the multi- tudes, for the poor, the suffering, the unfortunate. The obscurity of religious mystery before the scrutiny of science is an implication that God's best gifts are open equally to all, that the ignorant have the same opportunities as the most learned, that spiritual eminence does not follow accidental natural advantages, and that "there is no respect of persons with God" (Coloss. iii, 25). If it were otherwise, the learned would have an exceptional advantage, and the bulk of mankind would be cut off by their station in life from all super-
THE OBSCURITY OF RELIGIOUS MYSTERIES. 73
natural privileges, for they have neither the leisure nor the intelli- gence for the scientific examination of religion.
There are many who forget that God is not only Truth but also Love. He is to be sought with the heart as well as with the intellect. Reason can do no more than grasp at the skirts of God's garment as He passes by, it is love that sees His face. Therefore so many fail in the search after God; their minds may be acute enough but their hearts are corrupt. Now, the keeping of God's commandments is the measure of love, and he whose intentions are good and whose life is pure, will gain a deeper insight than reading and thought can give. Sin, especially carnal sin, the love of wealth, and pride, are the destruction of the love of God ; and without this, the highest in- tellectual ability will never discover God. Dry argument can never do the work of love, and hence there is such a thing as a sinner or an unbeliever being thoroughly convinced yet not converted.
On the same principle an immoral life saps the faith and leads to unbelief ; and the prevalence of sensuality, at any epoch, or through- out any country, produces, as its immediate consequence, an uprising of the intellect against the yoke of supernatural belief. However much religion may be injured by ridicule and calumny, it is under- mined most surely by the spread of immorality. Where the chief obstacles of the Church in a country are prejudice and hatred, she can gain admission by degrees to men's respect, dispel their ignor- ance, and finally gain them over. But where her foes can manage to propagate a spirit of unchastity, there religion must fade out and disappear. The leaders of infidelity know full well that it is not enlightenment that is fatal to religion, but immorality ; and they do not hesitate to use against supernatural life a poisoned weapon which will be even more fatal to the natural life of men.
IV. We may justly conclude that there is hardly even a superfi- cial plausibility about objections against religion on account of the incomprehensibility of its mysteries. It is generally but the excuse of those who do not wish to believe, and who want the credit of a sincerity which they do not really possess. There is nothing con- trary to reason, there is no abdication of our natural liberty in "bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ" (II Cor. x, 5). Our self-sufficiency and our natural way- wardness may revolt, but it is a calumny against reason to say there is any incompatibility between it and divine faith. It desires knowl-
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edge indeed, but it is able to recognize its own limitations, and .can wait in patience for the day of God's full revelation.
There is no such being as a man devoid of the aptitude for super- natural religion. Every man is made by God and is made for God. Education, heredity, temperament, may place special difficulties in the way, but these are no more entitled to the respectful considera- tion they generally meet with, than a man's natural inclination toward lying, stealing, or debauchery. God permits these depraved impulses so that we may have matter for a struggle and glory for overcom- ing. Opportunities of sufficient knowledge are wanting to none. Education, abundance of communication with other minds, the uni- versality of religious practices and worship, the interest and attrac- tion that seem to rise spontaneously for religion, and above all, the grace of Him who "enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world" (John i, 9), all this ensures sufficient guidance to lead every man through darkness to the light.
In the gospels Our Lord never treats the want of faith as a mere natural incapacity for believing, or as excused by the obscurity which surrounded Him. His divine personality, His Incarnation, His au- thority were obscured by the infirmity which He assumed. There were many presumptions against Him derived from His reputed origin and even from the Scriptures. "Is not this the son of the carpenter?" (Matt, xiii, 55) they asked; and "Can anything of good come from Nazareth?" (John i, 46). His eternal Father's testimony to Him at the Jordan was not understood by all, His manifestation on Mount Tabor was witnessed only by three. The personal word of God in the flesh seems to have been more obscure than His spoken word in His Church. Yet with all His mercy and broad sympathy, Our Lord seems to make no allowance for want of faith in Him. He reproves St. Peter and the apostles. He tells the Jews that their disbelief is more guilty than the sins of Sodom and Gomorrha. He makes no account of the obscurity that surrounded Him in mitiga- tion of their unbelief, but attributes it to their hardness of heart, and resistance to the Holy Ghost. It is not open to us to doubt that, in like manner, many who declare that the light is not sufficient to make the dark ways plain to them, are really sinning against the light and grace of God, and preparing themselves for final rejection by Him.
Those who do not revolt against the obscurity in which God has involved His supernatural mysteries, find their reward even here
THE OBSCURITY OF RELIGIOUS MYSTERIES. 75
below in the fulfilment of that promise : "Darkness shall not be dark to thee, and night shall be light as the day" (Ps. cxxxviii, 12). Through the dimness there come to them rays of a knowledge, more lofty, more secure, more steadfast, more satisfying, than all the knowledge of earthly things. The invisible world is as real to them as the cities where they live. They walk in the presence of God, they feel the gentle guidance of His hand, and hear the murmur of His voice in their souls. They are in union with Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Blessed Eucharist. The spirit of God has really made them His abode and His temples. While they walk this earth they live in the society of the blessed. They "are come to mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the com- pany of many thousands of angels, and to the Church of the first- born who are written in the heavens, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of the New Testament" (Heb. xii, 22-24).
?6 THE CREED.
IX. GOD THE FATHER AND CREATOR.
BY THE REV. THOMAS J. GERRARD.
"Know ye that the Lord he is God : He made us and not we ourselves." — Ps. xcix. 3.
SYNOPSIS. — Instruction. — The dogma of creation has a bearing on prac- tical life. Experience shows the need of such a dogma. Revelation shows the fact of such a dogma. Experience and revelation combine to produce the practical fruits of the dogma.
Exposition. I. From experience : Man knows he is not self -sufficient. The mean between absolute dependence and independence is true free- dom. The true sense of dependence felt more keenly in regard to our beginning and last end and in regard to our moral conduct. Moral con- science must come from a First Cause. The First Cause primarily sym- bolised as a fatherhood; secondly, as intelligent workmanship; finally, as a simple act of will-power.
II. From revelation: Creation in time. Order of Creation. Bib- lical and physical sciences practically agree. The "vision theory" a plausible explanation. Primary and secondary creation. The special creation of the soul. Points to be remembered against extreme evolu- tionists. Evolution within certain limits not opposed to faith. The records of both the Bible and the rocks show the same order, viz., the separation of the planet from the rest of planets; the land from the sea; the successive origins of plant, fish, bird, brute and man.
III. Difficulties answered. Absence of evidence. Neglect of Bible evidence. Ex nihilo nihil fit. The difference between particular causes and the universal cause.
Conclusion. — Practical fruits. Knowledge of the supreme majesty of God. Thankfulness to God for all He has done for us. The right use of creatures. The dignity of man. The realisation of God's father- hood and practical consequences of this realisation; viz., patience in ad- versity and confidence in God's goodness.
The first article of the creed is the first article of our morals. We profess our belief in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. We thereby imply that we have an obligation of acknowledging ourselves the creatures of God, of living and acting as children and subjects of God, of render- ing to God our supreme homage, worship, obedience and service. That truth is written both in the hearts of men and the revealed book of God. By neglecting either of these sources of information, con- fused, inadequate and even false ideas concerning the relationship between Creator and creature arise. Let us then try to look at this truth from the two points of view. Let us first consult human reason and experience and see how our nature demands the truth of
GOD THE FATHER AND CREATOR. 77
God the Creator; and then let us consult the revealed word of God and see how fully that demand is satisfied.
One of the first instincts of our nature is our sense of dependence on another. The words "dependence," "independence," and "free- dom" have been used with varying significations. Man, along with his sense of dependence on another, has a sense of the need of free- dom. The exaggeration of these two needs has led to errors in both directions. The exaggeration of the "dependence" notion has led to tyranny and slavery. The exaggeration of the "freedom" notion has led to license and rebellion. There is a golden mean between the two. There is a dependence on lawful authority which is the guarantee of the most perfect freedom. This is the true instinct which man feels.
A man's life-history is a gradual learning of this fact. He is born a helpless infant. All he can do is to experience his simple needs and cry about them. He could not live for a day were it not that the kindly hands of his mother kept him folded to her breast and con- trolled his constantly erring ways. His education consists of one long series of alternate mistakes and corrections. His dependence on others is maintained right until the end of life. Nay, as he ap- proaches the end of life his dependence on others increases more and more. When he is younger he may gird himself and walk where he will; but when he is old another must gird him and lead him whither he will not.
This sense of dependence felt so keenly in the social affairs of life becomes accentuated immensely when one considers the higher issues : our beginning and our end ; our powers of doing good and evil. We feel instinctively that we did not make ourselves and that we do not belong to ourselves. Then our reason sets to work to justify our feeling. We argue back from effect to cause until at last we must come to the Being who is the First Cause of all things. Things can not make themselves. Neither can there be a long end- less chain of them with no beginning. Neither do we escape the diffi- culty by saying that we do not know our origin. The mind can only find rest in the same truth in which the whole human spirit finds rest, in the truth of our God who is Maker of heaven and earth.
The act by virtue of which God brought the world into existence ts a great mystery and quite beyond our imagination. The human mind, however, has made various attempts to express the nature of this act. Thus th* symbol of "parent" has always been the first at-
7g THE CREED.
tempt to represent the divine causality. The first link in the chain of thought by which we go back from ourselves to the beginning of things is the link between father and son. Our first conception therefore of the great Being who was the author of our being is that of a father : I believe in God the Father Almighty.
Alongside the notion of fatherhood there is the notion of the intelligent workman. The work of the great God was manifestly one of vast genius. The artist who modeled in clay was a fitting symbol of the skill required for shaping the sun, moon and stars ; the land and the sea ; the green herb, and cattle, and man. And so we have a synthesis made expressing fatherhood and makership: I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
Yet even this expression was crude as a representation of God's creative act. Accordingly the most spiritual faculty of man was chosen, his will. This was made the final symbol of God's creative act. "Thou hast created all things ; and for thy will (propter volun- tatem tuam) they were, and have been created." By the simple nod of God's will things are produced out of nothing. Fiat lux: et facta est lux : "Let there be light and there was light." Thus, al- though there are so many proofs from reason of God the Creator of all things, the proof which touches nearest to the truth and which gives most of the truth is the proof from human conscience ; for it is conscience which tells us what is moral goodness and is thus the most perfect image we possess of Divine Goodness. It is by the voice of conscience that we hear most distinctly the voice of the Holy Spirit : "Know ye that the Lord he is God : He made us and not we ourselves."
Turning to the pages of Holy Writ we strike new and rich sources of knowledge concerning creation. First we are told of creation in time. The greatest of pagan philosophers held that matter was eternal. St. Thomas, probably out of respect for Aristotle, taught that eternal creation was not intrinsically impossible. Theologians are divided with regard to this speculation. We know, however, from divine revelation, that the world was not eternal. "In the be- ginning God created heaven and earth." God's internal activity had gone on through all ages producing the three Divine Persons. Then the divine will sought an external object for its activity. First it produced a world of angels. They had a system of laws of their own ; and though many interesting facts concerning them have been revealed to us, their manner of life and action is beyond our under-
COD THE FATHER AND CREATOR. 79
standing. Then the divine . activity produced our material world. Finally God combined a material and spiritual world in one creation, man ; and with man created the world of supernatural grace, raising man to the higher plane of union with God.
Secondly, we are told of the order of creation. Various interpre- tations have been given to the opening chapters of the book of Genesis. A very plausible explanation is what is known as the "vision theory." A vision may be seen either of present or of future or of past events. In the case of creation the sacred writer would, as it were, look backwards. His description need not correspond with the events in every detail. His vision would be partly symbol- ical, since he would have to describe the action of God whom he could not see; and partly realistic, since he would have to describe events just as they happened. It is now universally believed that the days were periods of time some of which may have consisted of millions of years. These periods would be presented before the mind of the sacred writer as separate scenes of the vision. Apart from little differences of this kind the order of creation, as revealed in the strata of the earth, agrees with the order revealed in the opening chapters of the book of Genesis.
The word "creation" has two meanings. In one sense it means the making of something out of nothing. In another sense it means the arrangement and development or evolution of that first something into the subsequent forms of nature. There are various opinions as to what extent this evolution took place. A Catholic is allowed much freedom in this matter. One thing, however, he is bound to hold against all extreme evolutionists, namely, that the soul of man was specially created and infused into the body by God. There are other truths bearing on this subject which, though not of Catholic faith, should be insisted upon in the name of science. The two most important are, first, that no one has yet succeeded in producing life from non-life ; and secondly, that no one has yet bridged the gulf be- tween reason and sensation. These truths are the two great stumbling- blocks which lie in the way of those shallow scientists who would explain away the dogma of creation by an artificial and exaggerated system of evolution. It is well to insist upon the fact that the records of the rocks show practically the same order as the records of Scrip- ture. First the common substance of the whole universe was pro- duced from nothing. "In the beginning God created heaven and earth." From parallels throughout the whole Bible it is seen that
8o THE CREED.
"heaven and earth" is the usual expression for "all things." "I am the Lord that make all things, that alone stretch out the heavens, that establish the earth, and there is none with me." From the first common substance there is made the division of this planet from other planets, of the world from the sky. Then comes the separation of the land from the water, the two great divisions of lifeless nature. From the germs of life planted in each of these there springs suc- cessively, the life of the green herb, and fruitful tree ; of the fishes of the sea and the birds of the air ; of the beasts and creeping creatures of the earth. Finally man is made by the special creation of his soul and the infusion of it into his already prepared body. The grace by which he is raised to a supernatural dignity is conferred at the first moment of his creation.
There are two classes of objections which are urged against the fact of creation. The first class is based on the absence of positive evidence for the fact. The answer to this difficulty has already been anticipated in the evidence of divine revelation. Were it not for revelation we should not be so sure of our answer, for, as we have seen, the idea of possible eternal creation is one that commended itself to the greatest of our theologians. We can not wonder then if those who reject the express revelation of God find themselves obliged to profess ignorance concerning the origin of the world.
The other class may be reduced to one difficulty, namely, the intrin- sic impossibility of producing something out of nothing. It is ex- pressed in the trite formula : Ex nihilo nihil fit.- This axiom of the old philosophers was formulated out of their experience of particu- lar causes and effects. Certainly there has never been known a par- ticular agent who could produce something out of nothing. But the same can not be said of the universal cause of all things. The fact that God is God and that He is omnipotent is sufficient to assure us that He can produce something from nothing, though how He does it must remain to us a lifelong mystery.
From experience and life we have reasoned to the fact of creation. From revelation we learnt many supplementary truths about crea- tion. Now we may direct our fuller knowledge to a more fruitful life and experience. The first fruit is especially seasonable in these days — a knowledge of the supreme majesty of God. Among many classes, even where the existence of God is admitted, His rights are conceded sparingly, as if man were only a little smaller than God. In Germany there is one sect which has altered the form of the Lord's
GOD THE FATHER AND CREATOR. 81
Prayer to express this feeling.* They do not say "Vater tinser" as of old, but "Unser Vater," signifying that we come first and God second, that we must decide how far God shall exercise His dominion over us. Our appreciation of the dogma of creation, however, saves us from such unspeakable conceit. The new discoveries of astron- omy, although they may spoil our childhood imagination of a heaven just on the other side of that blue sky which we see, unfold for us vaster conceptions of the immensity of God and of the magnitude of His creation. It has been computed that an express train, going fifty miles an hour, would take 4,500 million centuries to cross our uni- verse. It can therefore only be the most blind infatuation that can seek to exalt small man to a level of divinity. On the other hand the acknowledgment of our smallness in the midst of God's vast cre- ation is the root and beginning of all our spirituality. It crushes our inborn pride. It makes us realize at once that God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, who is, who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.
Next will come a sense of thankfulness to God. If it be so true that once we were nothing, that once the present vast universe was nothing, that every phase of life which we enjoy comes from the creative hand of God, then there can be no degree of gratitude too great to express our indebtedness to God. St. Paul may well ask of God's ministers : "What hast thou that thou hast not received ?" The same question may be asked of every man, and it is the duty, or rather the privilege, of every man to refer his gifts to their source : "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and never forget all that He hath done for thee."
The same dogma shows us the appointed way to union with God. St. Ignatius explains it in his famous meditation on the right use of creatures. If God created all things then God alone has supreme dominion over them. Man has only the temporary use of them. Man therefore must use them as God's property. It is expressly written: "The Lord hath made all things for himself." On the other hand the enjoyment of these things is for man, but only so far as God sees fit : "Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat : but of the
*"Das 'Unser Vater' ein schon Gebet Es dient und hilft, in alien Nothen; Wenn einer auch 'Vater Unser' fleht, In Gottes Namen, lass ihn beten."
Goethe.
8a THE CREED.
tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat." Our duties in this respect therefore fall into two classes, the pleasant duties and the unpleasant ones. It is our duty for instance to love all our neighbors — they are all creatures of God. But then among neigh- bors there are the disagreeable as well as the agreeable. It would be impossible and contrary to human nature that our love should in all respects be the same toward each. We can, however, find differ- ent motives, all based on the dogma of creation, by which we can fulfil our duty of loving all men. In so far as our neighbor is agree- able, attractive and winning, he manifests some reflection of divine goodness, and we are said to love him in God. In this case we draw near to God through our neighbor. In the other case, however, we must go to our neighbor through God. Knowing that God created him we must believe that God had some beautiful design in doing so and love him accordingly. Here we are said to love our neigh- bor for the sake of God. Indeed the whole order of creatures, ac- cording as they are rightly used, is the ladder which leads from earth to heaven.
This middle place between the rest of creatures and God gives to man a great dignity. "Thou hast subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen: moreover the beasts also of the fields." The subjection of the lower creation to man is symbolical of man's sub- jection to God. It is through the intelligent will of man that God receives the homage of irrational nature. In so far then as man does not use his possessions intelligently for God's glory he fails in his high office to which he has been deputed.
Lastly, the dogma of creation reveals to us the fatherhood of God. The Creator of heaven and earth is God the Father Almighty. The notion of God the Creator implies that we are creatures and abso- lutely subject to God ; but the notion of the Creator-Father implies that we are children and the objects of fatherly love and solicitude. And the fruit of this truth is patience in the misfortunes of life. At each stage of creation God looked upon His work and pronounced it to be good. At the end He took a view of the whole of what He had made and said it was very good. We therefore must believe that God could not create anything knowing it to be bad. This was the truth that inspired the mother of the Machabees to take her sons so heroically and with them to go to martyrdom. The story may well express what ought to be our attitude in the face of the compara- tively small troubles which we have to meet. The sacred writer de-
GOD THE FATHER AND CREATOR. 83
scribes her as possessed of a man's heart and a woman's thought and as thus speaking to her sons : "I know not how you were formed in my womb : for I neither gave you breath, nor soul, nor life, neither did I frame the limbs of every one of you. But the Creator of the world, that formed the nativity of man, and that found out the origin of all, he will restore to you again in his mercy, both breath and life, as now you despise yourselves for the sake of his laws." And when she was asked by the cruel Antiochus to advise her youngest son to save his life, she only bent down to her child and whispered in her own language : "I beseech thee, my son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them: and consider that God made them out of nothing, and mankind also: So thou shalt not fear this tormentor, but being made a worthy partner with thy brethren, receive death, that in that mercy I may receive thee again with thy brethren."
THE CREED.
X THE ANGELS; GOOD AND BAD ANGELS; GUARDIAN ANGELS.
BY THE REV. H. G. HUGHES.
"Who makest thy angels spirits; and thy ministers a flame of fire."— Ps. ciii, 4.
SYNOPSIS.— Point I. The existence, nature, and origin of angels, (a) Their existence. Known with certainty by revelation; doubtful whether possession, phenomena of spiritism, occurrences in lives of saints, would be enough by themselves to prove it to men in general. But we have God's word and the teaching of the Church. Objections answered, viz.: That Jews and then Christians, borrowed the idea of angels from heathen mythologies. Scripture proofs from Old and New Testaments. The doctrine of the Church in the Vatican Council.
(&) Their nature. Spiritual— purely spiritual. Hence unknown to us except by some intervention from the other world. Instances from Scripture proving the spirituality of angels. Tobias: The Blessed in the Resurrection- Doctrine of the Church. Considerations to help us to form some idea of a purely spiritual being. The power of Intellect and Will. Energies of the soul.
(c) Their origin. Created by God.
Point II. Good and bad angels. Angels created to glorify God and attain happiness by serving Him. Some have failed. Why? They were made free, and have abused their freedom. Pride the sin of the angels. The lesson for ourselves — horror of mortal sin, and especially of pride, which is the root of all sin.
Point HI. The Ministry of the angels. Guardian angels. Besides the worship of God, angels have care of man — both of the Church, of nations and of individuals. Guardian angels. Their office in regard to us; our duties in regard to them. Advantages of devotion to our angel guardian.
The existence, dear brethren, of innumerable hosts of angels, of purely spiritual beings, that is, created, as we ourselves were created, by the fiat of the Almighty word, yet more noble than we by nature, and higher in the scale of created things, is a truth that can be known to us with certainty only by means of some inter- position from the other world, the world of spirits, to which they be- long. Such interposition may take the form either of a divine revelation on the point, or of some sensible physical action exer- cised, with the divine command or permission, by angels themselves. Of such action, both by good and bad spirits, there is evidence amply sufficient for those who are not prejudiced. There can be no doubt that instances have occurred, and still do occur, for example, of
THE ANGELS. 85
possession by the devil. Some of the phenomena of spiritism, which is attracting in the present day the morbid curiosity of many, can not be attributed to anything but the malevolent and mischievous action of evil spirits. The history of the Church, and the lives of the saints, present to us, on the other hand, many well-attached instances of the action both of good and bad angels. But it may be doubted — and the skepticism in this matter of those who believe neither in Church nor Bible would appear to bear out the supposition — whether without the express teaching of the Church and of God's written word, such occurrences as I have referred to would have been sufficient to prove with entire certainty to men in general the existence of purely spiritual beings.
But "we have a more sure word of prophecy." We are not left to the teaching of experiences which cavilers might always represent as deceptive, or due to unknown natural causes. God Himself, by the word of the inspired writers, and through the mouth of His Church, has assured us of the fact of the existence of angels, good and evil.
In proposing, then, my dear brethren, to give you an instruction on the subject of the angels, I take it for granted that I am address- ing an audience most of whom are firm believers in the authority and testimony of the Holy Catholic Church as the teacher of God's truth ; and that those of you who are not Catholics, believe, as we also do, in the Holy Scriptures as the very word of God Himself. Now there is scarcely a truth more plainly and more often written in the pages of the Bible, from beginning to end, than that of the existence of angels. Much, moreover, is there told us concerning their origin, their nature, their present state, and their occupations ; so that if we believe in the Bible at all, we must believe in those beings of another world.
This particular teaching of the Church and the Holy Scriptures no more than any other has escaped the attacks of modern criticism. Unbelievers have endeavored to discredit the very strong testimony which we possess in the records of the Old Testament to the belief of the Jewish people on this subject, by representing their doctrine concerning angels as having been borrowed by them from the heathen people among whom they lived in captivity, and particularly from the Persians. But it has not been difficult for Catholic and Christian scholars to show that the people of Israel had nothing to learn from other races on this matter. There is, it is true, a resemblance between the system of Persian mythology and that of the Holy Scriptures in
86 THE CREED.
regard to angels ; but it is no more than a resemblance ; and inspired authors of the Old Testament had written of angels long before their countrymen came into connection with the Persians. A similar objection has been made against the doctrine of angels as taught by the Christian Church. Christians, it is declared, borrowed many of their ideas on this subject from the old pagan religions of Greece and Rome. The only ground for this statement is found in a fact not always sufficiently taken into account, namely that, not in their doctrines, but in the verbal and pictorial expressions of their doctrines, the early Christians made use of symbolisms which they sometimes borrowed from the more innocent elements of the old religions. Thus an angel may be so represented in an early Chris- tian painting as to be scarcely distinguishable from the figures of Genii, or the figures, for instance, of the goddess Victory. But a little examination will show that the resemblance is only external; that there is nothing in common between Christian teaching about angels, and the fanciful, if not evil, legends of heathendom.
Let us turn from such objections and ask what Holy Scripture tells us about the angels. In the very beginning of the Bible we read of the cherubim who guarded the entrance to Eden after the unhappy fall of our first parents. You will remember, too, the heaven-sent messengers who delivered Lot and his family from the wicked city of Sodom. The beautiful record of Jacob's dream has been familiar to you from your childhood ; how "he saw in his sleep a ladder standing upon the earth, and the top thereof reaching heaven; the angels also of God ascending and descending by it" (Gen. xxviii, 12). Prophets in vision saw the heavenly country, and the throne of God surrounded by angels, made known to them, it is true, under various material forms and images, but, nevertheless, rep- resenting the truth. And, that none may doubt this, that none may suppose that the Old Testament imagery is nothing else than imagery, that there are no real spiritual beings who were represented to the prophets of old, Our Blessed Lord Himself and the sacred writers of the New Testament plainly teach the existence of a world of spiritual beings, created by God, of a higher order than men. "See that you despise not one of these little ones ; for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven" (Matt, xviii, 10). "I say unto you, there shall be joy be- fore the angels of God upon one sinner doing penance" (Luke xv, 10). "He that shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him
THE ANGELS. 87
the Son of Man shall be ashamed, when he shall come in his majesty, and that of his Father, and of the holy angels" (Luke ix, 26). These are some of the passages in which Our Lord Himself speaks of the angels; nor must we forget those terrible words in which our Divine Teacher speaks also of the devil and his angels. If we look to the epistles, both of St. Paul and the other New Testament authors, we find the same truth constantly stated. "I think that God," writes St. Paul, "hath set forth us apostles, the last, as it were men appointed to death: we are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men." "Angels, and Powers, and Virtues," St. Peter declares, are made subject to Our Lord Jesus Christ in His glory (I Pet. iii, 22). And in those marvelous visions of the heavenly country shown to St. John the Apostle, and written down by him in the Book of the Apocalypse, how great a part is played by the angels !
The teaching of the Church is explicit, as indeed it must needs be concerning a fact so plainly stated in God's written word. "God," declares the Vatican Council (Sess. Ill, Cap. i) "of his own free counsel, in the beginning of time created from nothing . . . both spiritual and corporeal creatures, angels, that is to say, and the world, and lastly man, composed of both body and soul."
(b) The nature of Angels.
What, then, is the nature of these beings. The Vatican Council speaks of them as "spiritual," and contrasts them with man, who is made up of matter, as well as spirit. Everything that we read about the angels in Holy Scripture makes it clear that they are not as we are. Except by means of some supernatural intervention, they are invisible to the eyes of the body. Had they bodily frames as we have, we should see them without the need of a miracle to enable us to do so. Not till his eyes were opened by the Lord, not otherwise, that is, than by some special intervention, was Balaam able to see the angel of the Lord. "Forthwith the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel standing in the way with a drawn sword, and he worshipped him, falling flat' to the ground" (Num. xxiii, 31). The angel who appeared to Gedeon disappeared sud- denly from his sight, by which fact he knew that it was an angel who had been speaking with him. "The angel of the Lord vanished out of his sight : And Gedeon seeing that it was the angel of the Lord, said : Alas, my Lord God : for I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face" (Judges vi, 21, 22).
88 THE CREED.
To Tobias the angel Raphael declared tfiat he eat only in appear- ance, that he had another, a spiritual, food and drink. "I seemed, indeed, to eat and to drink with you : but I use an invisible meat and drink, which can not be seen by man . . . and when he had said these things, he was taken from their sight, and they could see them no more" (Tob. xii, 19-21). The blessed, in the resurrection, Our Blessed Lord has told us, will be similar to the angels of God, pre- cisely because they will be free from those trammels which are as- sociated with flesh and blood in our present condition. "You err," He said to the Sadducees, "not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they shall neither marry nor be married, but shall be as the angels of God in heaven" (Matt, xvii,
29, 30)-
In the light of these and similar passages of Holy Scripture and with faithful adherence to her constant tradition, the Church teaches as a sure and certain point of Catholic doctrine that the angels are spirits; that they have nothing material about them. When they have appeared to men it has been by taking, for the time being, some visible appearance. It is not easy, indeed, for us to conceive of a being, an intelligent, powerful, noble being, under any form but that of a man. In other words, it is difficult for us to conceive what a spirit is. Nor is it within the scope of this instruction to enter into an explanation of spiritual natures in general. Yet I may suggest, in passing, a few thoughts that may help us to form some idea of the angelic nature. What is it that is most powerful in man ? What is it in man that has produced the greatest events, exercised the greatest influence in the history of the world and of mankind. Has it been brute force; or bodily strength? At first sight it might seem that at least in some periods of the world's history, and among bar- barous peoples, this has been so. That it has been so at certain times and over a restricted area of time and place I would not deny. But what really great movement, what accomplishment lasting in its effects has been the outcome of mere brute bodily strength ? Behind such movements and such effects we shall always find a master mind ; a will and an intelligence, intelligence to know and foresee, the will to accomplish and to bend other wills to the accomplishment de- sired. And to which part of our nature