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Random documents with unrelated
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who work by grace and merit the reward the same we that prior to
regeneration sinned and were under wrath? Is it we who by the aid
of grace merit the reward, or is it the grace in us? If the grace
itself, how can it be said that we are rewarded? If the reward is
given not to us who sinned, but to the new person or new nature
into which grace is said to change us, how can it be said that we
either merit or are rewarded? Man has his specific nature, and if
you destroy or change that specific nature, you annihilate him as
man, instead of aiding his return to God as his final cause. The
theologians treat grace not as a new nature or a new faculty
bestowed on nature, but as a habitus, or habit, an infused habit
indeed, not an acquired habit, but none the less a habit on that
account, which changes not, transforms not nature, but gives it, as
do all habits, a power or facility of doing what without it would
exceed its strength. The subject of the habit is the human soul,
and that which acts by, under, or with the habit is also the human
soul, not the habit. The soul, as before receiving it, is the actor, but
it acts with an increased strength, and does what before it could
not; yet its nature is simply strengthened, not changed. The
general idea of habit must be preserved throughout. The
personality is not in the habit, but in the rational nature of him into
whom the habit is infused by the Holy Ghost. In our Lord there are
the two natures; but in him the divine personality assumes the
human nature, and is always the subject acting, whether acting in
the human nature or in the divine. In the regenerated there are
also the human and the divine; but the human, if I may so speak,
assumes the divine, and retains from first to last its own
personality, as is implied in the return to God without absorption in
him or loss of personal individuality, and in the fact that, though
without grace, we cannot concur with grace, yet by the aid of grace
we can and must concur with it the moment we come to the use of
reason, or it is not effectual. The sacraments are, indeed,
efficacious ex opere operato, not by the faith or virtue of the
recipient, but only in case the will, as in infants, opposes no
obstacle to the grace they signify. Yet even in infants the
concurrence of the will is required when they come to the use of
reason, and the refusal to elicit the act loses the habit infused by
baptism. The baptized infant must concur with grace as soon as
capable of a rational act.

The heterodox who are exclusive supernaturalists, because we

cannot without grace concur with grace, deny that the concurrence
is needed, and assert that grace is irresistible and overcomes all
resistance, and, as gratia victrix, subjects the will. Hence they
hold that, in faith, regeneration, justification, sanctification, nature
does nothing, and all that is done is done by sovereign grace even
in spite of nature; but the fact on which they rely is not sufficient
to sustain their theory. The schoolmen, for the convenience of
teaching, divide and subdivide grace till we are in danger of losing
sight of its essential unity. They tell us of prevenient grace, or the
grace that goes before and excites the will of assisting grace, the
grace that aids the will when excited to elect to concur with grace;
and efficacious grace, the grace that renders the act of concurrence
effectual. But these three graces are really one and the same
grace, and the gratia praeveniens, when not resisted, becomes
immediately gratia adjuvans, and aids the will to concur with
grace, and, if concurred with, it becomes, ipso facto and
immediately, gratia efficax. It needs no grace to resist grace, and
none, it would seem to follow from the freedom of the will, not to
resist it. Freedom of the will, according to the decision of the
church in the case of the gratia victrix of the Jansenists, implies
the power to will the contrary, and, if free to resist it, why not free
not to resist? There is, it seems to us, a real distinction between
not willing to resist and willing to concur. Nothing in nature compels
or forces the will to resist, for its natural operation is to the good,
as that of the intellect is to the true. The grace excites it to action,
and, if it do not will to resist, the grace is present to assist it to
elect to comply. If this be tenable, and we see not why it is not,
both the aid of grace and the freedom and activity of the will are
asserted, are saved, are harmonized, and the soul is elevated into
the order of regeneration without any derogation either from nature
or from grace, or lesion to either.
We are well aware of the old question debated in Catholic schools,
whether grace is to be regarded as auxilium quod or as
auxilium quo; but it is not necessary either to inquire what was
the precise sense of the question debated, or to enter into any
discussion of its merits, for both schools held the Catholic faith,
which asserts the freedom of the will, and both held that grace is
auxilium, and therefore an aid given to nature, not its destruction,
nor its change into something else. The word auxilium, or aid,
says of itself all that we are contending for. St. Paul says, indeed,
when reluctantly comparing his labors with those of the other
apostles, that he had labored more abundantly than they all, but
adds, "Yet not I, but the grace of God with me." But he recognizes
himself, for he says, "grace with me;" and his sense is easily
explained by what he says in a passage already quoted, namely,
"Work out your own salvation; for it is God that worketh in you to
will and to do," or to accomplish, and also by what he says in the
text itself, (1 Cor. xv. 1,) "By the grace of God, I am what I am;"
which has primary reference to his calling to be an apostle. God by
his grace works in us to will and to do, and we can will or do
nothing in relation to our final end, as has been explained, without
his grace; but, nevertheless, it is we who will and do. Hence St.
Paul could say to St. Timothy, "I have fought a good fight, I have
finished my course, I have kept the faith. For the rest, there is laid
up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just Judge, will
render to me at that day: and not to me only, but to them also
who love his coming." (2 Tim. iv. 7, 8.) Here St. Paul speaks of
himself as the actor and as the recipient of the crown. St.
Augustine says that God, in crowning the saints, "crowns his own
gifts," but evidently means that he crowns them for what they have
become by his gifts; and, as it is only by virtue of his gifts that
they have become worthy of crowns, their glory redounds primarily
to him, and only in a subordinate sense to themselves. There is, in
exclusive supernaturalists and exaggerated ascetics, an unsuspected
pantheism, no less sophistical and uncatholic than the pantheism of
our pseudo-ontologists. The characteristic mark of pantheism is not
simply the denial of creation, but the denial of the creation of
substances capable of acting as second causes. In the order of
regeneration as in the order of generation we are not indeed
primary, but are really secondary causes; and the denial of this
fact, and the assertion of God as the direct and immediate actor
from first to last, is pure pantheism. This is as true in the order of
regeneration as in the order of generation, though in the order of
grace it is thought to be a proof of piety, when, in fact, it denies
the very subject that can be pious. Count de Maistre somewhere
says, "The worst error against grace is that of asserting too much
grace." We must exist, and exist as second causes, to be the
recipients of grace, or to be able even with grace to be pious
toward God, or the subject of any other virtue. In the regeneration
we do by the aid of grace, but we are, nevertheless, the doers,
whence it follows that regeneration no more than generation is
wholly supernatural. Regeneration supposes generation, takes it up
to itself and completes it, otherwise the first Adam would have no
relation to the second Adam, and man would find no place in the
order of regeneration, which would be the more surprising since
the order itself originates in the Incarnation, in the God-Man, who
is its Alpha and Omega, its beginning and end.

Many people are, perhaps, misled on this subject by the habit of

restricting the word natural exclusively to the procession of
existences from God and what pertains to the initial order of
creation, and the word supernatural to the return of existences to
God as their last end, and the means by which they return or attain
that end and complete the cycle of existence or the creative act.
The procession is initial, the return is teleological. The initial is
called natural, because it is developed and carried on by natural
generation; the teleological is called supernatural, because it is
developed and carried on by grace, and the election by grace takes
the place of hereditary descent. This is well enough, except when
we have to deal with persons who insist on separating—not simply
distinguishing, but separating, the natural and the supernatural,
and on denying either the one or the other. But, in reality, what we
ordinarily call the natural is not wholly natural, nor what we call the
supernatural is wholly supernatural. Strictly speaking, the
supernatural is God himself and what he does with no other
medium than his own eternal Word, that is, without any created
medium, or agency of second causes; the natural is that which is
created and what God does through the medium of second causes
or created agencies, called by physicists natural laws. Thus,
creation is a supernatural fact, because effected immediately by
God himself; generation is a natural fact, because effected by God
mediately by natural laws or second causes; the hypostatic union,
or the assumption of flesh by the Word, which completes the
creative act in the initial order and institutes the teleological or final
order, is supernatural; all the operations of grace are supernatural,
though operations in and with nature; the sacraments are
supernatural, for they are effective ex opere operato, and the
natural parts are only signs of the grace, not its natural medium.
The water used in baptism is not a natural medium of the grace of
regeneration; it is made by the divine will the sign, though an
appropriate sign, of it; the grace itself is communicated by the
direct action of the Holy Ghost, which is supernatural.
Regeneration, as well as its complement, glorification, is
supernatural, for it cannot be naturally developed from generation,
and regeneration does not necessarily carry with it glorification; for
it does not of itself, as St. Augustine teaches, insure the grace of
perseverance, since grace is omnino gratis, and only he that
perseveres to the end will be glorified. Hence, even in the
teleological order, the natural, that is, the human, reason and will
have their share, and without their activity the end would not and
could not be gained. Revelation demands the active reception of
reason, or else it might as well be made to an ox or a horse as to
a man; and the will that perseveres to the end is the human will,
though the human will be regenerated by grace. Wherever you see
the action of the creature as second cause you see the natural, and
wherever you see the direct action of God, whether as sustaining
the creature or immediately producing the effect, you see the
supernatural.
The fact that God works in us to will and to do, or that we can do
nothing in the order of regeneration without grace moving and
assisting us, no more denies the presence and activity of nature
than does the analogous fact that we can do nothing even in the
order of generation without the supernatural presence and
concurrence of the Creator. We are as apt to forget that God has
any hand in the action of nature as we are to deny that where God
acts nature can ever coöperate; we are apt to conclude that the
action of the one excludes that of the other, and to run either into
Pelagianism on the one hand, or into Calvinism or Jansenism on the
other; and we find a difficulty in harmonizing in our minds the
divine sovereignty of God and human liberty. We cannot, on this
occasion, enter fully into the question of their conciliation. Catholic
faith requires us to assert both, whether we can or cannot see how
they can coexist. We think, however, that we can see a distinction
between the divine government of a free active subject and of an
inanimate and passive subject. God governs each subject according
to the nature he has given it; and, if he has given man a free
nature, his government, although absolute, must leave human
freedom intact, and to man the capacity of exercising his own free
activity, without running athwart the divine sovereignty. How this
can be done, we do not undertake to say.

But be this as it may, there is no act even in the natural order that
is or can be performed without the assistance of the supernatural;
for we are absolutely dependent on the creative act of God in
everything, in those very acts in which we act most freely. The
grace of God is as necessary as the grace of Christ. God has not
created a universe, and made it, when once created, capable of
going alone as a self-moving machine. He creates substances,
indeed, capable of acting as second causes; but these substances
can do nothing, are nothing as separated from the creative act of
God that produces them, upholds them, is present in them, and
active in all their acts, even in the most free determinations of the
will. Without this divine presence, always an efficient presence, and
this divine activity in all created activities, there is and can be no
natural activity or action, any more than, in relation to our last end,
there can be the first motion toward grace without grace. The
principle of action in both orders is strictly analogous, and our
acting with grace or by the assistance of grace in the order of
regeneration is as natural as is our acting by the divine presence
and concurrence in the order of generation. The human activity in
either order is equally natural, and in neither is it possible or
explicable without the constant presence and activity of the
supernatural. The two orders, the initial and the teleological, then,
are not antagonistical to each other, are not based on two mutually
destructive principles, but are really two distinct parts, as we so
often say, of one dialectic whole.

The Holy Scriptures, since God is causa eminens, the cause of

causes, the first cause operative in all second causes, speak of God
as doing this or that, without always taking special note of the fact
that, though he really does it, he does it through the agency of
second causes or the activity of creatures. This is frequently the
case in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and sometimes,
though less frequently, in the New Testament, though never in
either without something to indicate whether it is the direct and
immediate or the indirect and mediate action of God that is meant.
Paying no attention to this, many overlook the distinction
altogether, and fall into a sort of pantheistic fatalism, and practically
deny the freedom and activity of second causes, as is the case with
Calvin when he declares God to be the author of sin, which on his
own principles is absurd, for he makes the will of God the criterion
of right, and therefore whatever God does must be right, and
nothing that is right can be sin. On the other hand, men, fixing
their attention on the agency of second causes, overlook the
constant presence and activity of the first cause, treat second
causes as independent causes, or as if they were themselves first
cause, and fall into pure naturalism, which is only another name for
atheism. The universe is not a clock or a watch, but even a clock or
a watch generates not its own motive power; the maker in either
has only so constructed it as to utilize for his purpose a motive
power that exists and operates independently both of him and of
his mechanism.

Men speak of nature as supernaturalized in regeneration, and

hence assume that grace transforms nature; but in this there must
be some misunderstanding or exaggeration. In regeneration we are
born into the order of the end, or started, so to speak, on our
return to God as our final cause. The principle of this new birth,
which is grace, and the end, which is God, are supernatural; but
our nature is not changed except as to its motives and the
assistance it receives, though it receives in baptism an indelible
mark not easy to explain. This follows from the Incarnation. In the
Incarnation our nature is raised to be the nature of God, and yet
remains human nature, as is evident from the condemnation by the
church of the monophysites and the monothelites. Catholic faith
requires us to hold that the two natures, the human and the divine,
remain for ever distinct in the one divine person of the Word. Some
prelates thought to save their orthodoxy by maintaining that, after
his resurrection, the two natures of our Lord became fused or
transformed into one theandric nature; but they did not succeed,
and were condemned and deposed. The monothelites asserted that
there was in Christ two natures indeed, but only one will, or that
his human will was absorbed in the divine. But they also were
condemned as heretics. Our Lord, addressing the Father, says, "Not
my will, but thine be done," thus plainly implying a human will
distinct from, though not contrary to, the divine will. Can we
suppose that the grace of regeneration or even of glorification
works a greater change of nature in us than the grace of union
worked in our nature as assumed by the Word? If human nature
and human will remain in Christ after the hypostatic union, so that
to regard him after his resurrection as having but one will or one
theandric nature is a heresy, how can we hold without heresy that
grace, which flows from that union, either destroys our nature or
transforms it into a theandric or supernaturalized nature?
Let us understand, then, that grace neither annihilates nor
supersedes or transforms our nature. It is our nature that is
redeemed or delivered from the bondage of sin, our nature that is
translated from the kingdom of dark into the kingdom of light, our
nature that is reborn, that is justified, that by the help of grace
perseveres to the end, that is rewarded, that is glorified, and enters
into the glory of our Lord. It then persists in regeneration and
glorification as one and the same human nature, with its human
reason, its human will, its human personality, its human activity,
only assisted by grace to act from a supernatural principle to or for
a supernatural end. The assistance is supernatural, and so is the
end; but that which receives the assistance, profits by it, and
attains the end, is human nature, the man that was born of Adam
as well as reborn of Christ, the second Adam.

We have dwelt long, perhaps to tediousness, upon this point,

because we have wished to efface entirely the fatal impression that
nature and grace are mutually antagonistic, and to make it appear
that the two orders, commonly called the natural and the
supernatural, are both mutually consistent parts of one whole; that
grace simply completes nature; and that Christianity is no anomaly,
no after-thought, or succedaneum, in the original design of
creation.

The heterodox, with their doctrine of total depravity, and the

essential corruption or evil of nature, and their doctrine, growing
out of this assumed depravity or corruption, of irresistible grace,
and the inactivity or passivity of man in faith and justification,
obscure this great fact, and make men regard nature as a failure,
and that to save some God had to supplant and create a new
nature in its place. A more immoral doctrine, or one more fatal to
all human activity, is not conceivable, if it could be really and
seriously believed and acted on prior to regeneration, which is
impossible. The heterodox are better than their system. The system
teaches that all our works before regeneration are sins; even our
prayers are unacceptable, some say, an abomination to the Lord,
and consequently, there is no use in striving to be virtuous. After
regeneration there is no need of our activity, for grace is
inamissible, and if really born again, sin as much as we will, our
salvation is sure, for the sins of the regenerated are not reputed to
them or counted as sins. There is no telling how many souls this
exclusive and exaggerated supernaturalism (which we owe to the
reformers of the sixteenth century) has destroyed, or how many
persons it has deterred from returning to the Catholic Church by
the common impression, that, since she asserts original sin and the
necessity of grace, she holds and teaches the same frightful
system. Men who are able to think, and accustomed to sober
reflection, find themselves unable to embrace Calvinism, and,
confounding Calvinism with Christianity, reject Christianity itself, and
fall into a meagre rationalism, a naked naturalism, or, worst of all,
an unreasoning indifferentism; yet there is no greater mistake than
to suppose that the church holds it or has the slightest sympathy
with it. We have wished to mark clearly the difference between it
and her teaching. Christian asceticism, when rightly understood, is
not based on the assumption that nature is evil, and needs to be
destroyed, repressed, or changed. It is based on two great ideas,
liberty and sacrifice. It is directed not to the destruction of the flesh
or the body, for in the creed we profess to believe in the
"resurrection of the flesh." Our Lord assumed flesh in the womb of
the Virgin; he had a real body, ascended into heaven with it, and in
it sitteth at the right hand of the Father Almighty. He feeds and
nourishes us with it in Holy Communion; and it is by eating his
flesh and drinking his blood that our spiritual life is sustained and
strengthened. Our own bodies shall rise again, and, spiritualized
after the manner of Christ's glorious body, shall, reunited to the
soul, live for ever. We show that this is our belief by the honor we
pay to the relics of the saints. This sacred flesh, these sacred
bones, which we cherish with so much tender piety, shall live again,
and reenter the glorified body of the saint. Matter is not evil, as the
Platonists teach, and as the false asceticism of the heathen
assumes, and with which Christian asceticism has no affinity,
though many who ought to know better pretend to the contrary.
The Christian ascetic aims, indeed, at a moral victory over the
flesh, labors by the help of grace to liberate the soul from its
bondage, to gain the command of himself, to be at all times free to
maintain the truth, and to keep the commandments of God; to
bring his body into subjection to the soul, to reduce the appetites
and passions under the control of his reason and will, but never to
destroy them or in any manner to injure his material body. Far less
does he seek to abnegate, destroy, or repress either will or reason,
in order to give grace freer and fuller scope; he only labors to
purify and strengthen both by grace. Nature is less abnormal, purer,
stronger, more active, more energetic in the true ascetic than in
those who take no pains to train and purify it under the influence
of divine grace.

The principle of all sacrifice is love. It was because God so loved

men that he gave his only-begotten Son to die for them that they
might not perish, but have everlasting life. It was love that died on
the cross for our redemption. Nothing is hard or difficult to love,
and there is nothing love will not do or sacrifice for the object
loved. The saint can never make for his Lord a sacrifice great
enough to satisfy his love, and gives up for him the most precious
things he has, not because they are evil or it would be sin in him
to retain them; not because his Lord needs them, but because they
are the most costly sacrifice he can make, and he in making the
sacrifice can give some proof of his love. The chief basis of
monastic life is sacrifice. The modern notion that monastic
institutions were designed to be a sort of hospital for infirm souls is
essentially false. As a rule, a virtue that cannot sustain itself in the
world will hardly acquire firmness and strength in a monastery. The
first monks did not retire from the world because [it was] unfit to
live in it, but because the world restrained their liberty, and
because it afforded them no adequate field for the heroic sacrifices
to which they aspired. Their austerities, which we so little robust as
Christians, accustomed to pamper our bodies, and to deny
ourselves nothing, regard as sublime folly, if not with a shudder of
horror, were heroic sacrifices to the Spouse of the soul, for whom
they wished to give up everything but their love. They rejoiced in
affliction for his sake, and they wished to share, as we have
already said, with him in the passion and cross which he endured
for our sake, so as to be as like him as possible. There are saints
to-day in monasteries, and out of monasteries in the world, living in
our midst, whom we know not or little heed, who understand the
meaning of this word sacrifice, and make as great and as pure
sacrifices, though perhaps in other forms, and as thoroughly forego
their own pleasure, and as cheerfully give up what costs them the
most to give up, as did the old Fathers of the Desert. But, if we
know them not, God knows them and loves them.

Yet we pretend not to deny that many went into monasteries from
other motives, from weakness, disappointed affection, disgust of
the world, and some to hide their shame, and to expiate by a life
of penance their sins; but, if the monastery often sheltered such as
these, it was not for such that it was originally designed. In process
of time, monastic institutions, when they became rich, were
abused, as often the priesthood itself, and treated by the nobles as
a provision for younger sons or portionless daughters. We may at
times detect in ascetics an exaggeration of the supernatural
element and an underrating if not a neglect of the natural, we may
find, chiefly in modern times, a tendency amongst the pious and
devout to overlook the fact that manliness, robustness, and energy
of mind and character enter as an important element in the
Christian life; but the tendency in this direction is not catholic,
though observed to some extent among Catholics. It originates in
the same causes that originated the Calvinistic or Jansenistic
heresy, and has been strengthened by the exaggerated assertion of
the human and natural elements caused by the reaction of the
human mind against an exclusive and exaggerated supernaturalism.
The rationalism and humanitarianism of the last century and the
present are only the reaction of human nature against the
exaggerated supernaturalism of the Reformers and their
descendants, the Jansenists, who labored to demolish nature to
make way for grace, and to annihilate man in order to assert God.
Each has an element of truth, but, neither having the whole truth,
each makes war on the other, and alternately gains a victory and
undergoes a defeat. Unhappily, neither will listen to the church who
accepts the truth and rejects the exclusiveness of each, and
harmonizes and completes the truth of both in the unity and
catholicity of the faith once delivered to the saints. The Catholic
faith is the reconciler of all opposites. These alternate victories and
defeats go on in the world outside of the church; but it would be
strange if they did not have some echo among Catholics, living, as
they do, in the midst of the combatants, and in constant literary
and intellectual intercourse with them. They create some practical
difficulties for Catholics which are not always properly appreciated.
We cannot assert the natural, rational, and the human element of
the church without helping, more or less, the exclusive rationalists
or naturalists who deny the supernatural; and we can hardly
oppose them with the necessary vigor and determination without
seeming at least to favor their opponents, the exclusive
supernaturalists, who reject reason and deny the natural. It is this
fact very likely that has kept Catholics for the most part during the
last century and the present on the defensive; and as, during this
period, the anti-supernaturalists have been the most formidable
enemy of the church, it is no wonder if the mass of devout
Catholics have shown some tendency to exaggerate the
supernatural, and been shy of asserting as fully as faith warrants
the importance of the rational and the natural, or if they have paid
less attention to the cultivation of the human side of religion than is
desirable.

Some allowance must be made for the new position in which

Catholics for a century or more have been placed, and it would be
very wrong to censure them with severity, even if we found them
failing to show themselves all at once equal to the new duties
imposed upon them. The breaking up of old governments and
institutions, founded by Catholic ancestors, the political, social, and
industrial revolutions that have been and still are going on, must
have, to some extent, displaced the Catholic mind, and required it,
so to speak, to ease itself, or to take a new and difficult
observation, and determine its future course. Catholics to-day stand
between the old, which was theirs, and which is passing away, and
the new, which is rising, and which is not yet theirs. They must
needs be partially paralyzed, and at a momentary loss to know
what course to take. Naturally conservative, as all men are who
have something to lose or on which to rely, their sympathies are
with the past, they have not been able as yet to accept the new
state of things, and convert regrets into hopes. A certain hesitation
marks their conduct, as if in doubt whether to stand out against
the new at all hazards, and, if need be, fall martyrs to a lost cause,
or to accept it and do the best they can with it. In this country,
where Catholicity is not associated with any sort of political
institutions, and Catholics have no old civilization to retain or any
new order to resist, we, unless educated abroad, are hardly able to
appreciate the doubts, hesitations, and discouragements of
Catholics in the old world, and to make the proper allowances if at
times they seem to attach as Catholics undue importance to the
political and social changes going on around them, to be too
despondent, and more disposed to cry out against the wickedness
of the age, to fold their hands, and wait for Providence to
rearrange all things for them without their coöperation, than to look
the changes events have produced full in the face, and to exert
themselves, with the help of grace, to bring order out of the new
chaos, as their brave old ancestors did out of the chaos that
followed the irruption of the northern barbarians, and the breaking
up of the Graeco-Roman civilization. It is no light thing to see the
social and political world in which we have lived, and with which we
have been accustomed to associate the interests of religion and
society falling in ruins under our very eyes, and we must be
pardoned if for a moment we feel that all is gone or going.

But Catholic energy can never be long paralyzed, and already the
Catholics of Europe are arousing themselves from their apathy,
recovering their courage, and beginning to feel aware that the
church depends on nothing temporary, is identified with no political
or social organization, and can survive all the mutations of the
world around her. Leading Catholics in Europe, instead of wasting
their strength in vain regrets for a past that is gone, or in vainer
efforts to restore what can no longer be restored, are beginning to
adjust themselves to the present, and to labor to command the
future. They are leaving the dead to bury their dead, and preparing
to follow their Lord in the new work to be done for the new and
turbulent times in which their lot is cast. "All these things are
against me," said the patriarch Jacob, and yet they proved to be all
for him and his family. Who knows but the untoward events of the
last century and the present will turn out for the interests of
religion, and that another Joseph may be able to say to their
authors, "Ye meant it for evil, but God meant it for good?"

In all great political and social revolutions there must always be a

moment when men may reasonably doubt whether duty calls them
to labor to retain what is passing away, or whether they shall suffer
it to be buried with honor, and betake themselves with faith and
hope and courage to what has supplanted it. That moment has
passed in the Old World, and nothing remains but to make the best
of the present, and to labor to reconstruct the future in the best
way possible. Happily for us, the church, though she may lose
province after province, nation after nation, and be driven to take
refuge in the catacombs cannot be broken up, or her divine
strength and energy impaired. While she remains, we have God
with us, and our case can never be desperate. The church has seen
darker days than any she now experiences; civilization has been
much nearer its ruin than it is now in Europe, and Catholics have
now all the means to surmount present difficulties, which sufficed
them once to conquer the world. There is no sense in despondency.
Cannot the millions of Catholics do to-day what twelve fishermen of
Galilee did? Is the successor of Peter to-day more helpless than
was Peter himself, when he entered Rome with his staff to preach
in the proud capitol of heathendom the crucified Redeemer? The
same God that was with Peter, and gave efficacy to his preaching,
is with his successor; and we who live to-day have, if we seek it,
all the divine support, and more than all the human means, that
those Catholics had who subdued the barbarians and laid the
foundation of Christian Europe. What they did we may do, if, with
confidence in God, we set earnestly about doing it. The world is not
so bad now as it was in the first century or in the sixth century;
and there is as strong faith, as ardent piety, in this age, as in any
age that has gone before it. Never say, "We have fallen on evil
times." All times are evil to the weak, the cowardly, the
despondent; and all times are good to the strong, the brave, the
hopeful, who dare use the means God puts into their hands, and
are prepared to do first the duty that lies nearest them.

We see many movements that indicate that our European brethren

are regaining their courage, and, counting the past, so glorious for
Catholics, as beyond recovery, are endeavoring to do what they can
in and for the present, quietly, calmly, without noise or ostentation;
and they will not need to labor long before they will see the "truths
crushed to the earth rise again," and a new order, Phoenix-like,
rising from the ashes of the old, more resplendent in beauty and
worth, more in harmony with the divine spirit of the church, and
more favorable to the freedom and dignity of man. Truth dies
never. "The eternal years of God are hers." The Omnipotent reigns,
and thus far in the history of the church, what seemed her defeat,
has proved for her a new and more brilliant victory. The church
never grows old, and we can afford to be patient though earnest in
her service. The spirit of God never ceases to hover over the chaos,
and order, though disturbed for a time, is sure, soon or late, to
reappear.

We feel that we have very inadequately discussed the great

question of nature and grace, the adequate discussion of which is
far beyond the reach of such feeble abilities and such limited
theological attainments as ours; but we have aimed to set forth as
clearly and as simply as we could what we have been taught by
our Catholic masters on the relation of the natural to the
supernatural; and if we have succeeded in showing that there is no
antagonism between nature and grace, the natural and the
supernatural, the divine sovereignty and human liberty, and that we
can be at once pious and manly, energetic as men, and humble
and devout as Christians, or if we have thrown out any suggestions
that will aid others in showing it to the intelligence of our age, and
if we have been able to speak a word of comfort and hope to our
brethren who find themselves in a position in which it is difficult to
determine how to act, our purpose will have been accomplished,
and we shall have done no great but some slight service to the
cause to which we feel that we are devoted heart and soul. We
have aimed to avoid saying anything that could wound the
susceptibilities of any Catholic school of theology, and to touch as
lightly as possible on matters debated among Catholics. We hope
we have succeeded; for these are times in which Catholics need to
be united in action as well as in faith.
 Matin.

I.

Only when mounting sings the lark,

Struggling to fields of purer air
Silent her music when she turns
Back to a world of gloom and care!

II.

Only when mounting sings my heart,

Fluttering on tremulous wing to God!
Fainter the music as I fall—
Mute, when I reach the lower sod!

III.

Lark, in my heart this morn astir,

Upward to God on eager wing!
Seek for one pure, celestial draught,
Fresh from th' eternal Music-Spring!

Richard Storks Willis.

 A Word about the Temporal Power of the
Pope.
When our Lord Jesus Christ was upon the earth, his enemies were
able to persecute him and to excite a general hatred against him,
but never able to ignore him, to make him forgotten, or to prevent
the question concerning Christ from being the turning-point of the
religious and political destiny of the Jewish people. The efforts they
made to extinguish this question only served to extend it all over
the world, and make it the turning-point of the religious and
political destinies of all mankind.

It is the same with the Vicar of Christ. The warfare which is waged
against him never removes him out of the way of his enemies, or
causes him to be ignored by the world; but it upheaves and
convulses the whole world, political as well as religious. Just at
present it is unusually agitated, because for some time past a crisis
has seemed to be impending. We have a word to say, in the first
place, on the attitude of many persons, professing to be Christians,
who do not acknowledge the spiritual authority of the pope, toward
the party who are attempting to wrest from him by force his
temporal authority as sovereign of Rome.

That avowed adherents of infidel socialism should disregard the

principles of right and justice does not surprise us, for they have
denied the basis of all right and justice. That a portion of the
secular press, notorious throughout the world for an utter want of
principle, should encourage every revolution which has any
prospect of success, is precisely what we might expect from it,
judging by the course it has always pursued, and the base maxims
it unblushingly avows. The mockeries and insults of this class of
writers are only echoes from the infidel press of Europe, and would
be despised by every American who believes in the Christian
religion and in decency, were they not directed against the pope.
Serious argument upon the right of the matter might as well be
addressed to a gorilla as to one of these writers.

The case is different, however, with those who profess sound

Christian, moral, and political principles. Such persons are grossly
inconsistent with themselves when they favor and sustain the party
of Garibaldi who have sought to seize upon the Roman territory by
an armed raid, or that party in Italy and Europe who advocate the
forcible annexation of this territory to the Italian kingdom by its
government, with the aid or consent of the other nations. They
may say that the papacy is a hindrance to pure religion and
civilization. So be it. But how is it to be put down? By argument, by
moral means, in a just manner, or by violence and injustice? Have
not the Catholics of the world a right to sustain the papal
jurisdiction as a part of their religion? Protestants, no doubt, desire
to see it abolished, and rejoice in every prospect which presents
itself that the temporal kingdom of the Pope may be wrested from
him, because they think that the loss of his spiritual supremacy will
follow. But, have they any right, on this account, to favor unjust
and unlawful attempts to wrest from him his temporal sovereignty?
Is it lawful to do evil that good may come? Does the end justify the
means?

They may say, that it would be better for the Roman people to
have another government, and that they have a right, if they
please, to establish another. We do not believe they have any more
right to do this, than the people of the District of Columbia have, to
shake off the government of the United States and establish
another. But we will not argue this point, for it is unnecessary. The
Roman people have recently shown that they prefer to remain as
they are. The question is, as to the right of dispossessing the pope
of his kingdom by a force from without. What right has the Italian
kingdom to the Roman territory? Does the pretence that the glory
and advantage of Italy require it to have Rome as a political capital
justify its forcible annexation? Then interest and might alone make
right, we must bid farewell to the hope that justice and law will
ever rule in the world, and be content that the old, barbarous reign
of violence, war, and conquest should continue for ever.

But what are we to say of a war, not levied by one king and people
against another, but waged by a band of marauders invading a
nation from another nation with which it is at peace, and which is
bound by solemn treaty to repress all such invasions? Englishmen
and Americans are loud enough in condemning rebellions,
insurrections, violations of the laws and rights of nations, where
their own countries are the aggrieved parties. What gross and
shameful inconsistency, then, is it, for them to applaud an attack
like that of the bandit Garibaldi and his horde of robbers upon the
Roman kingdom. Sympathy and encouragement given to Mazzini,
Garibaldi, and their associates, is sympathy and encouragement to
a party of atheists and socialists who are aiming at the complete
extirpation of all religion and all established political and social
order from the world. Protestants little know to what ruin they are
exposing themselves in abetting such a party. Their treacherous
allies are making use of them as mere dupes and tools in their war
upon the outward bulwarks of the Catholic Church; knowing well
that, if they have once carried these, the slight barriers of
Protestantism will offer but a feeble and momentary resistance. The
friends of political and social order little think what a mine they are
helping to run under their own feet, in abetting socialism. England
is beginning already to reap the bitter fruit of the seeds of sedition
and revolution she has been busily sowing in the soil of Europe.
There is no knowing where the just retribution of her unprincipled
agitation will stop. We have just as much cause to dread the
irruption of infidelity and socialism in our own country. And if it
does come, those who boast so much of their wealth, their
prosperity, their superior culture and enlightenment, and attribute
this material glory to their emancipation from Catholic ideas, will be
the first victims of the volcano that will burst under their feet. We
trust no such catastrophe will come, either in Europe or America.
But if it is averted, it will be because the pope will stand his
ground; and the event will prove that he has been the saviour not
only of religion but also of civilization.

There are also some considerations which merit the attention of

Catholics, who do acknowledge the Pope to be the Vicar of Christ,
and give him their allegiance as the Chief Ruler and Teacher of the
Church throughout the whole world.

The cause of the Catholic Church everywhere, and of every

individual Catholic as a member of the Church, is bound up with
the cause of the pope, and is identical with it. He is the head of
the entire body, not merely as having precedence of dignity and
honor over other bishops, or a merely nominal primacy, but as the
bishop of the entire Catholic Church, laity, clergy and bishops
included. He is the real head of the body, the source of jurisdiction,
the principle of unity, catholicity, and apostolic succession, the
principal organ of the intelligence and vital force of the Church, of
its infallibility in doctrine and immortality in existence. Every blow
upon the head affects sensibly every member. Every member is
bound to exert itself to ward off all blows aimed at the head, for
the preservation of its own life. A mortal blow on the head will
cause the death of the whole body, and a stunning or seriously
injurious blow on the head will paralyze its energies. All particular
churches, all portions of Christendom, and all individual Christians,
receive their life from communion with the Church of St. Peter, the
principal See, and the Mother and Mistress of the Churches. "Where
Peter is, there is the Church." The flock fed by the successors of St.
Peter, the supreme pastor, is the only true flock of Christ. "Feed my
lambs, feed my sheep," was said to St. Peter alone, and whoever is
not fed by him, living in his successors in the holy Roman Church,
with the sound, Catholic doctrine; whoever is not guided and
governed by his pastoral staff, is no lamb of the flock of Christ, but
an alien and a lost sheep. The most illustrious and numerous
churches, the most cultivated nations, are smitten with spiritual
disease, decay, and death, when they are severed from the unity of
the See of St. Peter. The schismatical churches of the East, once
the fairest portion of the heritage of the Lord, are a witness to this
truth. So are the countless sects with their ever-varying, ever-
multiplying heresies and divisions, in the West. We may even see in
certain parts of the Catholic Church itself, what ruinous
consequences follow from impediments placed by the civil power in
the way of the full exercise of the papal supremacy over the
bishops, clergy, and faithful. Bishops lose their independence and
authority, priests their sacerdotal dignity and influence, and the
people their Christian piety, as soon as they revolt from their
obedience to the pope; and all these are weakened in proportion as
his power to exercise his paternal solicitude and government over
them is enfeebled.

Full, hearty, and loyal allegiance to the pope is therefore an

essential part of Christian duty. It is the duty and the interest of all
Catholic Christians, bishops, priests, and laymen, to stand by the
pope, as the Vicar of our Lord Jesus Christ and God's Vicegerent
upon earth; and to make common cause with him, as knowing that
we must stand or fall together. There are special reasons why
American Catholics should appreciate this high obligation. The
American Catholic Church is to a great extent an offshoot from the
Catholic Church of Ireland. It was the pope who sent St. Patrick
into Ireland to convert that country from heathenism to Christianity.
The Irish people have always been foremost among all other
Catholics in filial reverence, devotion, and obedience to the See of
St. Peter. When all but one man in the English hierarchy basely
deserted their allegiance to the pope in submission to the will of a
tyrant, only one Irish bishop of insignificant character imitated their
example, and even he repented before his death. It was for their
loyalty to the pope that the Irish people were reduced to feed on
nettles, both literally and figuratively. The glorious archbishop
O'Hurley, tortured on Stephen's Green and hanged, the intrepid
monks hurled into the sea from the heights of Bantry, the
slaughtered victims of Drogheda and Wexford, and the rest of the
noble army of Irish martyrs and confessors, suffered and died for
this doctrine of the Catholic faith, that the Pope is the Vicar of
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