Chapter II: Part 2

"Or, to take a wider view altogether, consider the general standards you hold up to us in the lives of your saints. These saints appear to the ordinary common-place man as simply not admirable at all. It does not seem to us admirable that St. Aloysius should scarcely lift his eyes from the ground, or that St. Teresa should shut herself up in a cell, or that St. Francis should scourge himself with briers for fear of committing sin. That kind of attitude is too fantastically fastidious altogether. You Catholics seem to aim at a standard that is simply not desirable; both your ends and your methods are equally inhuman and equally unsuitable for the world we have to live in. True religion is surely something far more sensible than this; true religion should not strain and strive after the impossible, should not seek to improve human nature by a process of mutilation. You have excellent aims in some respects and excellent methods in others, but in supreme demands you go beyond the mark altogether. We Pagans neither agree with your morality nor admire those whom you claim as your successes. If you were less holy and more natural, less idealistic and more practical, you would be of a greater service to the world which you desire to help. Religion should be a sturdy, virile growth; not the delicate hot-house blossom which you make it."

The second charge comes from the Puritan. "Catholicism is not holy enough to be the Church of Jesus Christ; for see how terribly easy she is to those who outrage and _crucify Him afresh!_ Perhaps it may not be true after all, as we used to think, that the Catholic priest actually gives leave to his penitents to commit sin; but the extraordinary ease with which absolution is given comes very nearly to the same thing. So far from this Church having elevated the human race, she has actually lowered its standards by her attitude towards those of her children who disobey God's Laws.

"And consider what some of these children of hers have been! Are there any criminals in history so monumental as Catholic criminals? Have any men ever fallen so low as, let us say, the Borgia family of the Middle Ages, as Gilles de Rais and a score of others, as men and women who were perhaps in their faith 'good Catholics' enough, yet in their lives a mere disgrace to humanity? Look at the Latin countries with their passionate records of crime, at the sexual immorality of France or Spain; the turbulence and thriftlessness of Ireland, the ignorant brutality of Catholic England. Are there any other denominations of Christendom that exhibit such deplorable specimens as the runaway nuns, the apostate priests, the vicious Popes of Catholicism? How is it that tales are told of the iniquities of Catholicism such as are told of no other of the sects of Christendom? Allow for all the exaggeration you like, all the prejudice of historians, all the spitefulness of enemies, yet there surely remains sufficient Catholic criminality to show that at the best the Church is no better than any other religious body, and at the worst, infinitely worse. The Catholic Church, then, is not holy enough to be the Church of Jesus Christ."

II. When we turn to the Gospels we find that these two charges are, as a matter of fact, precisely among those which were brought against our Divine Lord.

First, undoubtedly, He was hated for His Holiness. Who can doubt that the terrific standard of morality which He preached--the Catholic preaching of which also is one of the charges of the Pagan--was a principal cause of His rejection. For it was He, after all, who first proclaimed that the laws of God bind not only action but thought; it was He who first pronounced that man to be a murderer and an adulterer who in his heart willed these sins; it was He who summed up the standard of Christianity as a standard of perfection, _Be you perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect;_ who bade men aspire to be as good as God!

It was His Holiness, then, that first drew on Him the hostility of the world--that radiant white-hot sanctity in which His Sacred Humanity went clothed. _Which of you convinceth me of sin?... Let him that is without sin amongst you cast the first stone at her!_ These were words that pierced the smooth formalism of the Scribe and the Pharisee and awoke an undying hatred. It was this, surely, that led up irresistibly to the final rejection of Him at the bar of Pilate and the choice of Barabbas in His place. "_Not this man!_ not this piece of stainless Perfection! Not this Sanctity that reveals all hearts, _but Barabbas_, that comfortable sinner so like ourselves! This robber in whose company we feel at ease! This murderer whose life, at any rate, is in no reproachful contrast to our own!" Jesus Christ was found too holy for the world.

But He was found, too, not holy enough. And it is this explicit charge that is brought against Him again and again. It was dreadful to those keepers of the Law that this Preacher of Righteousness should sit with publicans and sinners; that this Prophet should allow such a woman as Magdalen to touch Him. If this man were indeed a Prophet, He could not bear the contact of sinners; if He were indeed zealous for God's Kingdom, He could not suffer the presence of so many who were its enemies. Yet He sits there at Zacchaeus' table, silent and smiling, instead of crying on the roof to fall in; He calls Matthew from the tax-office instead of blasting him and it together; He handles the leper whom God's own Law pronounces unclean.

III. These, then, are the charges brought against the disciples of Christ, as against the Master, and it is undeniable that there is truth in them both.

It is true that the Catholic Church preaches a morality that is utterly beyond the reach of human nature left to itself; that her standards are standards of perfection, and that she prefers even the lowest rung of the supernatural ladder to the highest rung of the natural.

And it is also true, without doubt, that the fallen or the unfaithful Catholic is an infinitely more degraded member of humanity than the fallen Pagan or Protestant; that the monumental criminals of history are Catholic criminals, and that the monsters of the world--Henry VIII for example, sacrilegious, murderer, and adulterer; Martin Luther, whose printed table-talk is unfit for any respectable house; Queen Elizabeth, perjurer, tyrant, and unchaste--were persons who had had all that the Catholic Church could give them: the standards of her teaching, the guidance of her discipline, and the grace of her sacraments. What, then, is the reconciliation of this Paradox?

(1) First the Catholic Church is Divine. She dwells, that is to say, in heavenly places; she looks always upon the Face of God; she holds enshrined in her heart the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ and the stainless perfection of that Immaculate Mother from whom that Humanity was drawn. How is it conceivable, then, that she should be content with any standard short of perfection? If she were a Society evolved from below--a merely human Society that is to say--she could never advance beyond those standards to which in the past her noblest children have climbed. But since there dwells in her the Supernatural--since Mary was endowed from on high with a gift to which no human being could ascend, since the Sun of Justice Himself came down from the heavens to lead a human life under human terms--how can she ever again be content with anything short of that height from which these came?

(2) But she is also human, dwelling herself in the midst of humanity, placed here in the world for the express object of gathering into herself and of sanctifying by her graces that very world which has fallen from God. These outcasts and these sinners are the very material on which she has to work; these waste products of human life, these marred types and specimens of humanity have no hope at all except in her.

For, first, she desires if she can--and she has often been able--actually to raise these, first to sanctity and then to her own altars; it is for her and her only to _raise the poor from the dunghill and to set them with the princes_. She sets before the Magdalen and the thief, then, nothing less but her own standard of perfection.

Yet though in one sense she is satisfied with nothing lower than this, in another sense she is satisfied with almost infinitely nothing. If she can but bring the sinner within the very edge of grace; if she can but draw from the dying murderer one cry of contrition; if she can but turn his eyes with one look of love to the crucifix, her labours are a thousand times repaid; for, if she has not brought him to the head of sanctity, she has at least brought him to its foot and set him there beneath that ladder of the supernatural which reaches from hell to heaven.

For she alone has this power. She alone is so utterly confident in the presence of the sinner because she alone has the secret of his cure. There in her confessional is the Blood of Christ that can make his soul clean again, and in her Tabernacle the Body of Christ that will be his food of eternal life. She alone dares be his friend because she alone can be his Saviour. If, then, her saints are one sign of her identity, no less are her sinners another.

For not only is she the Majesty of God dwelling on earth, she is also His Love; and therefore its limitations, and they only, are hers. That Sun of mercy that shines and that Rain of charity that streams, _on just and unjust alike_, are the very Sun and Rain that give her life. If I _go up to Heaven she is there_, enthroned in Christ, on the Right Hand of God;_ if I go down to Hell she is there also_, drawing back souls from the brink from which she alone can rescue them. For she is that very ladder which Jacob saw so long ago, that staircase planted here in the blood and the slime of earth, rising there into the stainless Light of the Lamb. Holiness and unholiness are both alike hers and she is ashamed of neither--the holiness of her own Divinity which is Christ's and the unholiness of those outcast members of her Humanity to whom she ministers.

By her power, then, which again is Christ's, the Magdalen becomes the Penitent; the thief the first of the redeemed; and Peter, the yielding sand of humanity, the _Rock on which Herself is built_.

IV

JOY AND SORROW

_Rejoice and be exceeding glad.... Blessed are they that mourn_.-- MATT. V. 12, 5.

The Catholic Church, as has been seen, is always too "extreme" for the world. She is content with nothing but a Divine Peace, and in its cause is the occasion of bloodier wars than any waged from merely human motives. She is not content with mere goodness, but urges always Sanctity upon her children; yet simultaneously tolerates sinners whom even the world casts out. Let us consider now how, in fulfilling these two apparently mutually contradictory precepts of our Lord, to rejoice and to mourn, once more she appears to the world extravagant in both directions at once.

I. It is a common charge against her that she rejoices too exceedingly; is arrogant, confident, and optimistic where she ought to be quiet, subdued, and tender.

"This world," exclaims her critic, "is on the whole a very sad and uncertain place. There is no silver lining that has not a cloud before it; there is no hope that may not, after all, be disappointed. Any religion, then, that claims to be adequate to human nature must always have something of sadness and even hesitancy about it. Religion must walk softly all her days if she is to walk hand in hand with experience. Death is certain; is life as certain? The function of religion, then, is certainly to help to lighten this darkness, yet not by too great a blaze of light. She may hope and aspire and guess and hint; in fact, that is her duty. But she must not proclaim and denounce and command. She must be suggestive rather than exhaustive; tender rather than virile; hopeful rather than positive; experimental rather than dogmatic.

"Now Catholicism is too noisy and confident altogether. See a Catholic liturgical function on some high day! Was there ever anything more arrogant? What has this blaze of colour, this shouting of voices, this blowing of trumpets to do with the soft half-lights of the world and the mystery of the darkness from which we came and to which we return? What has this clearcut dogma to do with the gentle guesses of philosophy, this optimism with the uncertainty of life and the future--above all, what sympathy has this preposterous exultation with the misery of the world?

"And how unlike, too, all this is to the spirit of the Man of Sorrows! We read that _Jesus wept_, but never that He laughed. His was a sad life, from the dark stable of Bethlehem to the darker hill of Calvary. He was what He was because He knew what sorrow meant; it was in His sorrows that He has touched the heart of humanity. '_Blessed_,' he says, '_are those that mourn_.' Blessed are they that expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed."

In another mood, however, our critic will find fault with our sadness.

"Why is not the religion of you Catholics more in accord with the happy world in which we live? Surely the supreme function of religion is to hearten and encourage and lay stress on the bright side of life! It should be brief, bright, and brotherly. For, after all, this is a lovely world and full of gaiety. It is true that it has its shadows, yet there can be no shadows without a sun; there is death, but see how life continually springs again from the grave. Since all things, therefore, work together for good; since God has taken pains to make the world so sweet, it is but a poor compliment to the Creator to treat it as a vale of misery. Let us, then, make the best of things and forget the worst. Let us leave the things that are behind and press forward to the things that are before. Let us insist that the world is white with a few black spots upon it, be optimistic, happy, and confident.

"You Catholics, however, are but a poor-spirited, miserable race. While other denominations are, little by little, eliminating melancholy, you are insisting upon it. While the rest of us are agreeing that Hell is but a bogy, and sin a mistake, and suffering no more than remedial, you Catholics are still insisting upon their reality--that Hell is eternal, that sin is the deliberate opposition of the human will to the Divine, and that suffering therefore is judicial. Sin, Penance, Sacrifice, Purgatory, and Hell--these are the old nightmares of dogma; and their fruits are tears, pain, and terror. What is wrong with Catholicism, then, is its gloom and its sorrow; for this is surely not the Christianity of Christ as we are now learning to understand it. Christ, rightly understood, is the Man of joy, not of Grief. He is more characteristic of Himself, so to speak, as the smiling shepherd of Galilee, surrounded by His sheep; as the lover of children and flowers and birds; as the Preacher of Life and Resurrection--He is more characteristic of Himself as crowned, ascended, and glorified, than as the blood-stained martyr of the Cross whom you set above your altars. _Rejoice, then, and be exceeding glad_, and you will please Him best."

Once more, then, we appear to be in the wrong, to whatever side we turn. The happy red-faced monk with his barrel of beer is a caricature of our joy. Can this, it is asked, be a follower of the Man of Sorrows? And the long-faced ascetic with his eyes turned up to heaven is the world's conception of our sorrow. Catholic joy and Catholic sorrow are alike too ardent and extreme for a world that delights in moderation in both sorrow and joy--a little melancholy, but not too much; a little cheerfulness, but not excessive.

II. First, then, it is interesting to remember that these charges are not now being made against us for the first time. In the days even of the Roman Empire they were thought to be signs of Christian inhumanity. "These Christians," it was said, "must surely be bewitched. See how they laugh at the rack and the whip and go to the arena as to a bridal bed! See how Lawrence jests upon his gridiron." And yet again, "They must be bewitched, because of their morbidity and their love of darkness, the enemies of joy and human mirth and common pleasure. In either case they are not true men at all." Their extravagance of joy when others would be weeping, and their extravagance of sorrow when all the world is glad--these are the very signs to which their enemies appealed as proofs that a power other than that of this world was inspiring them, as proofs that they could not be the simple friends of the human race that they dared to pretend.

It is even more interesting to remember that our Divine Lord Himself calls attention to these charges. "_The Son of Man comes eating and drinking._ The Son of Man sits at the wedding feast at Cana and at meat in the rich man's house and you say, _Behold a glutton and a winebibber!_ The Son of Man comes rejoicing and you bid Him to be sad. And _John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking._ John the Baptist comes from the desert, an ascetic with his camel-hair about him and words of penance and wrath in his mouth, and you say, _He hath a devil.... We have piped unto you and you have not danced_. We have played at weddings like children in a market-place, and you have told us to be quiet and think about our sins. _We have mourned unto_ you, we have asked you to play at funerals instead, and you have told us that it was morbid to think about death. _We have mourned and you would not lament._"

III. The fact is, of course, that both joy and sorrow must be an element in all religion, since joy and sorrow together make up experience. The world is neither white with black spots nor black with white spots; it is black and white. It is quite as true that autumn follows summer as that spring follows winter. It is no less true that life arises out of death than that death follows life.

Religion then cannot, if it is to be adequate to experience, be a passionless thing. On the contrary it must be passionate, since human nature is passionate too; and it must be a great deal more passionate. It must not moderate grief, but deepen it; not banish joy, but exalt it. It must weep--and bitterer tears than any that the world can shed--with them that weep; and rejoice too--with _a joy which no man can take away_--with them that rejoice. It must sink deeper and rise higher, it must feel more acutely, it must agonize and triumph more abundantly, if it truly comes from God and is to minister to men, since His thoughts are higher than ours and His Love more burning.

For so did Christ live on earth. At one hour He _rejoiced greatly in spirit_ so that those that watched Him were astonished; at another He sweated blood for anguish. In one hour He is exalted high on the blazing Mount of Transfiguration; in another He is plunged deeper than any human heart can fathom in the low-lying garden of Gethsemane. _Behold and see if there be any sorrow like to My Sorrow._

III. For, again, the Church, like her Lord, is both Divine and Human.

She is Divine and therefore she rejoices--so filled with the New Wine of the Kingdom of her Father that men stare at her in contempt.

It is true enough that the world is unhappy; that hearts are broken; that families, countries, and centuries are laid waste by sin. Yet since the Church is Divine, she knows, not merely guesses or hopes or desires, but _knows_, that _although all things come to an end, God's commandment is exceeding broad_. Years ago, she knows--and therefore not all the criticism in the world can shake her--that her Lord came down from heaven, was born, died, rose, and ascended, and that He reigns in unconquerable power. She knows that He will return again and take the kingdom and reign; she knows, because she is Divine, that in every tabernacle of hers on earth the Lord of joy lies hidden; that Mary intercedes; that the saints are with God; that _the Blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin_. Look round her earthly buildings, then, and there are the symbols and images of these things. There is the merry light before her altar; there are the saints stiff with gold and gems; there is Mary, "Cause of our Joy," radiant, with her radiant Child in her arms. If she were but human, she would dare but to shadow these things forth--shadows of her own desires; she would whisper her creed; murmur her prayers; darken her windows. But she is Divine and has herself come down from heaven; so she does not guess, or think, or hope--she knows.

But she is human too and dwells in the midst of a human race that does not know and therefore will not wholly take her at her word, and the very height of her exaltation must also be, then, the measure of her despair. The fact that she knows so certainly intensifies a thousandfold her human sorrow, as she, who has _come that they may have life_, sees how _they will not come_ to her and find it, as she sees how long the triumph which is certain is yet delayed through their faithlessness. "If _thou hadst known_," she cries in the heart-broken words of Jesus Himself over Jerusalem, "_if thou hadst but known the things that belong to thy peace! Behold and see, then, if there be any sorrow like to mine_, if there be any grief so profound and so piercing as mine, who hold the Keys of Heaven and watch men turn away from the Door."

So, then, in church after church stand symbolic groups of statuary, representing joy and tragedy, compared with which Venus and Adonis are but childish and half-civilized images--Mary as triumphant Queen, with the gold-crowned Child in her arms, and Mary the tormented Mother, with her dead Son across her knees. For she who is both Divine and Human alone understands what it is that Humanity has done to Divinity.

Is it any wonder, then, that the world thinks her extravagant in both directions at once; that the world turns away on Good Friday from the unutterable depths of her sorrow, and on Easter Day from the unscalable heights of her joy, calling the one morbid and the other hysterical? For what does the world know of such passions as these? What, after all, can the sensualist know of joy, or the ruined financier of sorrow? And what can the moderate, self-controlled, self-respecting man of the world know of either?

Lastly, then, in the Paradox of Love, the Church holds both these passions, at full blast, both at once. As human love turns joy into pain and suffers in the midst of ecstasy, so Divine Love turns pain into joy and exults and reigns upon the Cross. For the Church is more than the Majesty of God reigning on earth, more than the passionless love of the Eternal; she is the Very Sacred Heart of Christ Himself, the Eternal united with Man, and both suffering and rejoicing through that union. It is His bliss which she at once experiences and extends, in virtue of her identity with Him; and in the midst of a fallen world it is the supremest bliss of that Sacred Heart to suffer pain.

V

LOVE OF GOD AND LOVE OF MAN

_Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart ... and thy neighbour as thyself_.--LUKE x. 27.

We have already considered two charges brought against Catholicism from opposite quarters; namely, that we are too worldly and too otherworldly, too much busied with temporal concerns to be truly spiritual, and too metaphysical and remote and dogmatic to be truly practical. Let us go on to consider these same two charges produced, so to speak, a little further into a more definitely spiritual plane; charges that now accuse us of too great activities in our ministry to men and too many attentions paid to God.

I. (i) It is a very common complaint against Catholics, laymen as well as clergy, that they are overzealous in their attempts to proselytize. True and spiritual religion, we are told, is as intimate and personal an affair as the love between husband and wife; it is essentially private and individual. "The religion of all sensible men," it has been said, "is precisely that which they always keep to themselves." Tolerance, therefore, is a mark of spirituality, for if I am truly religious I shall have as much respect for the religion of my neighbour as for my own. I shall no more seek to interfere in his relations with God than I shall allow him to interfere with mine.

Now Catholics are notoriously intolerant. It is not merely that there are intolerant Catholics, for intolerance is of course to be found in all narrow-minded persons, but it is Catholic principles themselves that are intolerant; and every Catholic who lives up to them is bound to be so also. And we can see this illustrated every day.

First, there is the matter of Catholic missions to the heathen. There are no missionaries, we are told, so untiring and so devoted as those of the Church. Their zeal, of course, is a proof of their sincerity; but it is also a proof of their intolerance: for why, after all, cannot they leave the heathen alone, since religion is, in its essence, a private and individual matter? Beautiful pictures, accordingly, are suggested to us of the domestic peace and happiness reigning amongst the tribes of Central Africa until the arrival of the Preaching Friar with his destructive dogmas. We are bidden to observe the high doctrines and the ascetic life of the Brahmin, the significant symbolism of the Hindu, and the philosophical attitudes of the Confucian. All these various relationships to God are, we are informed, entirely the private affairs of those who live by them; and if Catholics were truly spiritual they would understand that this was so and not seek to supplant by a system which is now, at any rate, become an essentially European way of looking at things, these ancient creeds and philosophies that are far better suited to the Oriental temperament.

But the matter is worse, even, than this. It may conceivably be argued, says the modern man of the world, that after all those Oriental religions have not developed such virtues and graces as has Christianity. It may perhaps be argued that in time the religion of the West, if missionaries will persevere, will raise the Hindu higher than his own obscenities have succeeded in doing, and that the civilization produced by Christianity is actually of a higher type, in spite of its evil by-products, than that of the head-hunters of Borneo and the bloody savages of Africa. But at any rate there is no excuse whatever for the intolerant Catholic proselytizer in English homes. For, roughly speaking, it is only the Catholic whom you cannot trust in your own home circle; sooner or later you will find him, if he at all lives up to his principles, insinuating the praises of his own faith and the weaknesses of your own; your sons and daughters he considers to be fair game; he thinks nothing of your domestic peace in comparison with the propagation of his own tenets. He is characterized, first and last, by that dogmatic and intolerant spirit that is the exact contrary of all that the modern world deems to be the spirit of true Christianity. True Christianity, then, as has been said, is essentially a private, personal, and individual matter between each soul and her God.

(ii) The second charge brought against Catholics is that they make religion far too personal, too private, and too intimate for it to be considered the religion of Jesus Christ. And this is illustrated by the supreme value which the Church places upon what is known as the Contemplative Life.

For if there is one element in Catholicism that the man-in-the-street especially selects for reprobation it is the life of the Enclosed Religious. It is supposed to be selfish, morbid, introspective, unreal; it is set in violent dramatic contrast with the ministerial Life of Jesus Christ. A quantity of familiar eloquence is solemnly poured out upon it as if nothing of the kind had ever been said before: it is said that "a man cannot get away from the world by shutting himself up in a monastery"; that "a man should not think about his own soul so much, but rather of what good he can do in the world in which God has placed him"; that "four whitewashed walls" are not the proper environment for a philanthropic Christian.

And yet, after all, what is the Contemplative Life except precisely that which the world just now recommended? And could religion possibly be made a more intimate, private, and personal matter between the soul and God than the Carthusian or Carmelite makes it?

The fact is, of course, that Catholics are wrong whatever they do--too extreme in everything which they undertake. They are too active and not retired enough in their proselytism; too retired and not active enough in their Contemplation.

II. Now the Life of our Divine Lord exhibits, of course, both the Active and the Contemplative elements that have always distinguished the Life of His Church.

For three years He set Himself to the work of preaching His Revelation and establishing the Church that was to be its organ through all the centuries. He went about, therefore, freely and swiftly, now in town, now in country. He laid down His Divine principles and presented His Divine credentials, at marriage feasts, in market-places, in country roads, in crowded streets, and in private houses. He wrought the works of mercy, spiritual and corporal, that were to be the types of all works of mercy ever afterwards. He gave spiritual and ascetic teaching on the Mount of Beatitudes, dogmatic instructions in Capharnaum and the wilderness to the east of Galilee, and mystical discourses in the Upper Chamber of Jerusalem and the temple courts. His activities and His proselytisms were unbounded. He broke up domestic circles and the routine of offices. He called the young man from his estates and Matthew from custom-house and James and John from their father's fishing business. He made a final demonstration of His unlimited claim on humanity in His Procession on Palm Sunday, and on Ascension Day ratified and commissioned the proselytizing activities of His Church for ever in His tremendous charge to the Apostolic band. _Going, therefore, teach ye all nations ... teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and behold I am with you all the days, even to the consummation of the world._

Yet this, it must be remembered, was not only not the whole of His Life on earth, it was not even a very considerable part of it, if reckoned by years. For three years He was active, but for thirty He was retired in the house of Nazareth; and even those three years are again and again broken by retirement. He is now in the wilderness for forty days, now on the mountain all night in prayer, now bidding His disciples come apart and rest themselves. The very climax of His ministry too was wrought in silence and solitude. He removed Himself _about a stone's throw_ in the garden of Gethsemane from those who loved Him best; He broke His silence on the Cross to bid farewell even to His holy Mother herself. Above all, he explicitly and emphatically commended the Life of Contemplative Prayer as the highest that can be lived on earth, telling Martha that activity, even in the most necessary duties, was not after all the best use to which time and love could be put, but rather that _Mary had chosen the best part ... the one thing that is necessary_, and that it _shall not be taken away from her_ even by a sister's loving zeal.

Finally, fault was found with Jesus Christ, as with His Church, on precisely these two points. When He was living the life of retirement in the country He was rebuked that He did not go up to the feast and state His claims plainly--justify, that is, by activity, His pretensions to the Messiahship; and when He did so, He was entreated to bid his acclaimants _to hold their peace_--to justify, that is, by humility and retirement, His pretensions to spirituality.

III. The reconciliation, therefore, of these two elements in the Catholic system is very easy to find.

(i) First, it is the Church's Divinity that accounts for her passion for God. To her as to none else on earth is the very face of God revealed as the Absolute and Final Beauty that lies beyond the limits of all Creation. She in her Divinity enjoys it may be said, even in her sojourn on earth, that very Beatific Vision that enraptured always the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ. With all the company of heaven then, with Mary Immaculate, with the Seraphim and with the glorified saints of God, she _endures, seeing Him Who is invisible_. Even while the eyes of her humanity are held, while her human members _walk by faith and not by sight_, she, in her Divinity, which is the guaranteed Presence of Jesus Christ in her midst, already _dwells in heavenly places_ and is already _come to Mount Zion and the City of the living God and to God Himself_, Who is the Light in which all fair things are seen to be fair.

Is it any wonder then that, now and again, some chosen child of hers catches a mirrored glimpse of what she herself beholds with unveiled face; that some Catholic soul, now and again, chosen and called by God to this amazing privilege, should suddenly perceive, as never before, that God is the one and only Absolute Beauty, and that, compared with the contemplation of this Beauty--which contemplation is, after all, the final life of Eternity to which every redeemed soul shall come--all the activities of earthly life are nothing; and that, in her passion for this adorable God, she should run into a secret room and _shut the door and pray to her Father Who is in secret_, and so remain praying, a hidden channel of life to the whole of that Body of which she is a member, an intercessor for the whole of that Society of which she is one unit? There in silence, then, she sits at Jesus' feet and listens to the Voice which is _as the sound of many waters_; in the whiteness of her cell watches Him Whose _Face is as a Flame of Fire_, and in austerity and fasting _tastes and finds that the Lord is gracious._

Of course this is but madness and folly to those who know God only in His Creation, who imagine Him merely as the Soul of the World and the Vitality of Created Life. To such as these earth is His highest Heaven and the beauty of the world the noblest vision that can be conceived. Yet to that soul that is Catholic, who understands that the Eternal Throne is indeed above the stars and that the Transcendence of God is as fully a truth as His Immanence--that God in Himself, apart from all that He has made, is all-fair and all-sufficient in His own Beauty--to such a soul as this, if called to such a life, there is no need that the Church should declare explicitly that the Contemplative Life is the highest. She knows it already.

(ii) The _First Great Commandment_ of the Law, then, is inevitably followed by the Second, and the Catholic interpretation of the Second is thought by the world, which understands neither, to be as extravagant as her interpretation of the First.

For this Divine Church that knows God is also a Human Society that dwells among men, and since she in herself unites Divinity and Humanity, she cannot rest until she has united them everywhere else.

For, as she turns her eyes from God to men, she sees there immortal souls, made in the image of God and made for Him and Him alone, seeking to satisfy themselves with Creation instead of with the Creator. She hears how the world preaches the sanctity of the temperament, and the holiness of the individual point of view, as if there were no Transcendent God at all and no objective external Revelation ever made by Him. She sees how men, instead of seeking to conform themselves to God's Revelation of Himself, attempt rather to conform such fragments of that Revelation as have reached them to their own points of view; she listens to talk about "aspects of truth" and "schools of thought" and the "values of experience" as if God had never spoken either in the thunders of Sinai or the still voice of Galilee.

Is it any wonder, then, that her Proselytism appears to such a world as extravagant as her Contemplation, her passion for men as unreasonable as her passion for God, when that world sees her bring herself from her cloisters and her secret places to proclaim as with a trumpet those demands of God which He has made known, those Laws which He has promulgated, and those rewards which He has promised? For how can she do otherwise who has looked on the all-glorious Face of God and then on the vacant and complacent faces of men--she who knows God's infinite capacity for satisfying men and men's all but infinite incapacity for seeking God--when she sees some poor soul shutting herself up indeed within the deadly and chilly walls of her own "temperament" and "individual point of view," when earth and heaven and the Lord of them both is waiting for her outside?

The Church, then, is too much interested in men and too much absorbed in God. Of course she is too much interested and too much absorbed, for she alone knows the value and capacity of both; she who is herself both Divine and Human. For Religion, to her, is not an elegant accomplishment or a graceful philosophy or a pleasing scheme of conjectures. It is the fiery bond between God and man, neither of whom can be satisfied without the other, the One in virtue of His Love and the other in virtue of his createdness. She alone, then, understands and reconciles the tremendous Paradox of the Law that is Old as well as New. _Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart ... and thy neighbour as thyself _.

VI

FAITH AND REASON

_Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall not enter into it_.--MARK X. 15.

_Some things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and the unstable wrest, as also the other Scriptures, to their own perdition_.-- II PET. III. 16.

There are two great gifts, or faculties, by which men attain to truth: faith and reason. From these two sides, therefore, come two more assaults upon the Catholic position, a position which itself faces in both these directions. On the one side we are told that we believe too simply, on the other that we do not believe simply enough; on the one side that we reason too little, on the other that we do not reason enough. Let us set out these attacks in order.

I. (i) "You Catholics," says one critic, "are far too credulous in matters of religion. You believe, not as reasonable men believe, because you have verified or experienced the truths you profess, but simply because these dogmas are presented to you by the Church. If reason and common-sense are gifts of God and intended for use, surely it is very strange to silence them in your search for the supreme truth. Faith, of course, has its place, but it must not be blind faith. Reason must test, verify, and interpret, or faith is mere credulity.

"Consider, for example, the words of Christ, _This is My Body_. Now the words as they stand may certainly be supposed to mean what you say they mean; yet, interpreted by Reason, they cannot possibly mean anything of the kind. Did not Christ Himself sit in bodily form at the table as He spoke them? How then could He hold Himself in His hand? Did He not speak in metaphors and images continually? Did He not call Himself _a Door and a Vine_? Using Reason, then, to interpret these words, it is evident that He meant no more than that He was instituting a memorial feast, in which the bread should symbolize His Body and the wine His Blood. So too with many other distinctively Catholic doctrines--with the Petrine claims, with the authority 'to bind and loose,' and the rest. Catholic belief on these points exhibits not faith properly so-called--that is, Faith tested by Reason--but mere credulity. God gave us all Reason! Then in His Name let us use it!"

(ii) From the other side comes precisely the opposite charge.

"You Catholics," cries the other critic, "are far too argumentative and deductive and logical in your Faith. True Religion is a very simple thing; it is the attitude of a child who trusts and does not question. But with you Catholics Religion has degenerated into Theology. Jesus Christ did not write a _Summa_; He made a few plain statements which comprise, as they stand, the whole Christian Religion; they are full of mystery, no doubt, but it is He who left them mysterious. Why, then, should your theologians seek to penetrate into regions which He did not reveal and to elaborate what He left unelaborated?

"Take, for example, Christ's words, _This is My Body_. Now of course these words are mysterious, and if Christ had meant that they should be otherwise, He would Himself have given the necessary comment upon them. Yet He did not; He left them in an awful and deep simplicity into which no human logic ought even to seek to penetrate. Yet see the vast and complicated theology that the traditions have either piled upon them or attempted to extract out of them; the philosophical theories by which it has been sought to elucidate them; the intricate and wide-reaching devotions that have been founded upon them! What have words like 'Transubstantiation' and 'Concomitance,' devotions like 'Benediction,' gatherings like Eucharistic Congresses to do with the august simplicity of Christ's own institution? You Catholics argue too much--deduce, syllogize, and explain--until the simple splendour of Christ's mysterious act is altogether overlaid and hidden. Be more simple! It is better to _'love God than to discourse learnedly about the Blessed Trinity.' It has not pleased God to save His people through dialectics._ Believe more, argue less!"

Once more, then, the double charge is brought. We believe, it seems, where we ought to reason. We reason where we ought to believe. We believe too blindly and not blindly enough. We reason too closely and not closely enough.

Here, then, is a vast subject--the relations of Faith and Reason and the place of each in man's attitude towards Truth. It is, of course, possible only to glance at these things in outline.

II. First, let us consider, as a kind of illustration, the relations of these things in ordinary human science. Neither Faith nor Reason will, of course, be precisely the same as in supernatural matters; yet there will be a sufficient parallel for our purpose.

A scientist, let us say, proposes to make observations upon the structure of a fly's leg. He catches his fly, dissects, prepares, places it in his microscope, observes, and records. Now here, it would seem, is Pure Science at its purest and Reason in its most reasonable aspect. Yet the acts of faith in this very simple process are, if we consider closely, simply numberless. The scientist must make acts of faith, certainly reasonable acts, yet none the less of faith, for all that: first, that his fly is not a freak of nature; next, that his lens is symmetrically ground; then that his observation is adequate; then that his memory has not played him false between his observing and his recording that which he has seen. These acts are so reasonable that we forget that they are acts of faith. They are justified by reason before they are made, and they are usually, though not invariably, verified by Reason afterwards. Yet they are, in their essence, Faith and not Reason.

So, too, when a child learns a foreign language. Reason justifies him in making one act of faith that his teacher is competent, another that his grammar is correct, a third that he hears and sees and understands correctly the information given him, a fourth that such a language actually exists. And when he visits France afterwards he can, within limits, again verify by his reason the acts of faith which he has previously made. Yet none the less they were acts of faith, though they were reasonable. In a word, then, no acquirement of or progress in any branch of human knowledge is possible without the exercise of faith. I cannot walk downstairs in the dark without at least as many acts of faith as there are steps in the staircase. Society could not hold together another day if mutual faith were wholly wanting among its units. Certainly we use reason first to justify our faith, and we reason later to verify it. Yet none the less the middle step is faith. Columbus reasoned first that there must be a land beyond the Atlantic, and he used that same reason later to verify his discovery. Yet without a sublime act of faith between these processes, without that almost reckless moment in which he first weighed anchor from Europe, reason would never have gone beyond speculative theorizing. Faith made real for him what Reason suggested. Faith actually accomplished that of which Reason could only dream.

III. Turn now to the coming of Jesus Christ on earth. He came, as we know now, a Divine Teacher from heaven to make a Revelation from God; He came, that is, to demand from men a sublime Act of Faith in Himself. For He Himself was Incarnate Wisdom, and He demanded, therefore, as none else can demand it, a supreme acceptance of His claim. No progress in Divine knowledge, as He Himself tells us, is possible, then, without this initial act. _Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall not enter into it_. Every soul that is to receive this teaching in its entirety must first accept the Teacher and sit at His feet.

Yet He did not make this claim merely on His own unsupported word. He presented His credentials, so to say; He fulfilled prophecy; He wrought miracles; He satisfied the moral sense. _Believe Me_, He says, _for the very works' sake_. Before, then, demanding the fundamental act of Faith on which the reception of Revelation must depend, He took pains to make this Act of Faith reasonable. "You see what I do," He said in effect, "you have observed My life, My words, My actions. Now is it not in accordance with Reason that you should grant My claims? Can you explain away, _reasonably_, on any other grounds than those which I state, the phenomena of My life?"

Certainly, then, He appealed to Reason; He appealed to Private Judgment, since that, up to that moment, was all that His hearers possessed. But, in demanding an Act of Faith, He appealed to Private Judgment to set itself aside; He appealed to Reason as to whether it were not Reasonable to stand aside for the moment and let Faith take its place. And we know how His disciples responded. _Whom do you say that I am?... Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God._

At that instant, then, a new stage was begun. They had used their Reason and their Private Judgment, and, aided by His grace, had concluded that the next reasonable step was that of Faith. Up to that point they had observed, dissected, criticized, and analyzed His words; they had examined, that is, His credentials. And now it was Reason itself that urged them towards Faith, Reason that abdicated what had hitherto been, its right and its duty, that Faith might assume her proper place. Henceforth, then, their attitude must be a different one. Up to now they had used their Reason to examine His claim; now it was Faith, aided and urged by Reason, which accepted it.

Yet even now Reason's work is not done, though its scope in future is changed. Reason no longer examines whether He be God; Faith has accepted it: yet Reason has to be as active as ever; for Reason now must begin with all its might the task of understanding His Revelation. Faith has given them, so to speak, casket after casket of jewels; every word that Jesus Christ henceforth speaks to them is a very mine of treasure, absolutely true since He is known to be a Divine Teacher Who has given it. And Reason now begins her new work, not of justifying Faith, but, so to say, of interpreting it; not of examining His claims, since these have been once for all accepted, but of examining, understanding, and assimilating all that He reveals.

III. Turn now to Catholicism.

It is the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church only, that acts as did Jesus Christ and offers an adequate object to Reason and Faith alike. For, first, it is evident that if Christ intended His Revelation to last through all time, He must have designed a means by which it should last, an Authority that should declare and preserve it as He Himself delivered it. And next, it is evident that since the Catholic Church alone even claims that prerogative, clearly and coherently, her right to represent that Authority is in proportion to the clearness and coherence of her claim. Or, again, she advances in support of that claim precisely those same credentials as did He: she points to her miracles, her achievements, the fulfilment of prophecy, the unity of her teaching, the appeal to men's moral sense--all of them appeals to Reason, and appeals which lead up, as did His, to the supreme claim, which He also made, to demand an Act of Faith in herself as a Divine Teacher.

For she alone demands it. Other denominations of Christendom point to a Book, or to the writings of Fathers, or to the example of their members, and she too does these things. But it is she alone who appeals to these things not as final in themselves, not as constituting in themselves a final court of appeal, but as indicating as that court of appeal her own Living Voice. _Believe me, for the works' sake_, she too says. "Use your reason to the full to examine my credentials; study prophecy, history, the Fathers--study my claims in any realm in which your intellect is competent--and then see if it is not after all supremely reasonable for Reason to abdicate that particular throne on which she has sat so long and to seat Faith there instead? Certainly follow your Reason and use your private judgment, for at present you have no other guide; and then, please God, aided by Faith, Reason will itself bow before Faith, and take her own place henceforth, not on the throne, but on the steps that lead to it."