Chapter V (24)

The same conclusion follows from the fact that regeneration only fulfils generation. "I am not come," said our Lord, "to destroy, but to fulfil." The creative act, completed, as to the order of procession of existences from God, in the Incarnation or hypostatic union, which closes the initial order and institutes the teleological, includes both the procession of existences from God and their return to him. It is completed, fulfilled, and consummated only in regeneration and glorification. If the nature that proceeds from God is changed or superseded by grace, the creative act is not fulfilled, for that which proceeds from God does not return to him. {516} The initial man must himself return, or with regard to him the creative act remains initial and incomplete. In the first order, man is only initial or inchoate, and is a complete, a perfect man only when he has returned to God as his final cause. To maintain that it is not this initial man that returns, but, if the supposition be possible, another than he, or something substituted for him, and that has not by way of creation proceeded from God, would deny the very purpose and end of the Incarnation, and the very idea of redemption, regeneration, and glorification, the grace of Christ, and leave man without any means of redemption or deliverance from sin, or of fulfilling his destiny--the doom of the damned in hell. The destruction or change of man's nature is the destruction of man himself, the destruction of his identity, his human personality; yet St. Paul teaches, Rom. viii. 30, that the persons called are they who are redeemed and glorified: "Whom he predestinated, them also he called; and whom he called, them also he justified; and whom he justified, them also he glorified."

We can, indeed, do nothing in relation to our end without the grace of Christ; but, with that grace freely given and strengthening us, it is equally certain that we can work, and work even meritoriously, or else how could heaven be promised us as a reward? Yet it is so promised: "He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and is the rewarder of them that seek him." (Heb. xi. 6.) Moses "looked to the reward;" David had respect to the divine "retributions;" and all Christians, as nearly all heathen, believe in a future state of rewards and punishments. We are exhorted to flee to Christ and obey him that we may escape hell and gain heaven. The grace by which we are born again and are enabled to merit is unquestionably gratuitous, for grace is always gratuitous, _omnino gratis_, as say the theologians, and we can do nothing to merit it, no more than we could do something to merit our creation from nothing; but though gratuitous, a free gift of God, grace is bestowed on or infused into a subject already existing in the order of generation or natural order, and we can act by it, and can and do, if faithful to it, merit heaven or eternal life. Hence says the apostle, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do, or to accomplish." (Philip, ii. 12.) But this no more implies that the willing and doing in the order of regeneration are not ours than that our acting in the order of nature is not ours because we can even in that order act, whether for good or for evil, only by the divine concurrence.

The heterodox confound the gift of grace by which we are able to merit the reward with the reward itself; hence they maintain, because we can merit nothing without grace, that we can merit nothing even with it, and that we are justified by faith alone, which is the free gift of God, conferred on whom he wills, and that grace is irresistible, and once in grace we are always in grace. But St. James tells us that we are "justified by our works, and not by faith only, for faith without works is dead." (St. James ii. 14-25.) Are we 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? {517} 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? {518} 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." {519} 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. {520} 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.

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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?

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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. {523} 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. {524} 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.

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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?"

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.