life. Who can read the eloquent compositions of Augustine, without being struck by their complexion of ardent passion, tempered indeed, and supported by the utmost keenness of intellect."1

This passionate love necessarily exhibits itself in worship. As the son sets his mother's photograph in a handsome frame, and the daughter encrusts the locket containing her hair with gold and gems, so does the Christian adorn and beautify everything that is to him a memorial of his Lord. He builds Him the most beautiful shrine, he decorates it with gold and marble and cedar, he fills its windows with coloured panes and covers the walls with paintings. He makes the service speak to him of Christ, and he glorifies it with organ note and the strain of chorister. Every gesture of the priest preserves some memorial of his Lord; the altar is hung with velvet and gold because on it his Emmanuel rests, the chalice blazes with jewels because in it is the blood shed for him. The Host is elevated amidst swing of censers and a glow of tapers, because It is the bread broken for him. Flowers beautify the sanctuary, for his Lord dwells there; bells peal out in glad announcement that the Christ is coming. All men kneel because He is there.

This is the secret of ritual and the splendour of Catholic worship. Let those who meddle with the practices of public worship to curtail ceremonies, and one by one to extinguish its glories, know that they are offering thereby an insult to the Lord in Whom they say they believe. The prelate who will lavish thousands on the adornment of his palace, or on heavy insurance of his life for the benefit of wife and children, will persecute, and drive from his church, the poor curate who, loving his Lord better than himself, out of his

1 Hallam's Remains, pp. 274-283.

slender income sacrifices a third to the adornment of the altar.

A savage mob will sack a church where the ceremonial is reverently symbolical of the burning heart consumed with love to Christ, but it will leave unmolested the slovenly priest and the despised altar.

Why? Because neither prelate nor people know the love of Christ that passes knowledge, and in narrow bigotry they will not tolerate what they do not know and understand. The Saracen conqueror burned the greatest library in the world, stored with the wisdom of ages, "because," said he, "I do not understand letters, and therefore they must be bad and worthless."

But even the stranger who has eyes to see and ears to hear, cannot altogether miss the spirit of true Christian worship: the celebrated Lavater, a Zwinglian pastor, was not too blinded by Protestant prejudice to catch the significance of Catholic ritual; and with his impressions of a Catholic Church I close this chapter.

"He doth not know Thee, O Jesus Christ, who dishonoureth even Thy shadow. I honour all things where I find the intention of honouring Thee. I will love them because of Thee. What do I behold here? What do J hear in this place? Does nothing under these majestic vaults speak to me of Thee? This cross, this golden image, is it not made in Thine honour? The censer which waves around the priest, the Gloria sung in chorus, the peaceful light of the perpetual lamp, these burning tapers, all is done for Thee. Why is the Host elevated, if it be not to honour Thee, O Jesus Christ, Who art dead for love of us? Because It is no more, and Thou art It, the believing Church bends the knee. It is in Thy honour alone that these children, early instructed, make the sign of the

The

cross, that their tongues sing Thy praise, and that they smite their breasts thrice with their little hands. It is for love of Thee, O Jesus Christ, that the spot that bears Thy adorable blood is kissed. For Thee the child who serves sounds the little bell, and performs his functions. riches collected from distant countries, the magnificence of chasubles, all have relation to Thee. Why are the walls and the high altar of marble clothed with tapestry on the feast of Corpus Christi? For whom do they make a road of flowers? For whom are these banners embroidered? When the Ave Maria sounds, is it not for Thee? Matins, vespers, prime, and nones, are they not consecrated to Thee? These bells within a thousand towers, purchased with the gold of whole cities, do they not bear Thy image cast in the very mould? Is it not for Thee that they send forth their solemn tone? It is under Thy protection, O Jesus Christ, that every man places himself who loves solitude, chastity, and poverty. Without Thee, the orders of S. Benedict and S. Bernard would not have been founded. The cloister, the tonsure, the breviary, and the chaplet bear witness to Thee. O delightful rapture, Jesus Christ, for Thy disciple to trace the marks of Thy finger where the eyes of the world see them not! O joy ineffable for souls devoted to Thee, to behold in caves and on rocks, in every crucifix placed upon hills and by the highways, Thy seal and that of Thy love! Who will not rejoice in the honours of which Thou art the object and the soul? Who will not shed tears in hearing the words, 'Jesus Christ be praised?' O the hypocrite who knoweth that name, and answereth not with joy, 'Amen!' who saith not, with an intense transport, 'Jesus be blessed for eternity, for eternity!"""

1 Lavater: Woite des Herzens, für Freunde der Liebe u. des Glaubens, 8th ed. 1855.

CHAPTER XIX

THE DOGMA OF IMMORTALITY

"A man may believe in the immortality of the soul for twenty years, but only in the twenty-first, at some great moment, is he astonished at the rich substance of this belief, at the warmth of this naphtha-spring."—JEAN-Paul Richter.

The basis of Christian hope-Proofs of Immortality inadequate to give certainty-Future life of fame unsatisfactory-Future life desired by the suffering-It is a necessity of the soul-Because the soul cannot satisfy all its desires here-Because the capability of enjoyment is limited here-Contrast between what we have and what we hope forThe Christian heaven corresponds with the desire felt for it on earth— The blunting of the finer faculties incapacitates man for enjoymentdestroys his aspirations—and therefore limits his Heaven-The idea of Hell not necessarily one of pain but of low enjoyment-The idea of Purgatory one of gradual education-The idea of the Resurrection of the body necessarily part of the Christian's hope.

WE

E have seen what is Christian faith and Christian love; we come in order to Christian hope.

As Gibbon has observed, Philosophy, notwithstanding its utmost efforts, has been unable to do more to satisfy the hope and desire instinctive in man, than feebly indicate the probability of a future life, and therefore it belongs to Revelation to affirm its existence, and to represent authoritatively the condition of the souls of men after their separation from the body.

As I have shewn at some length in my former volume,

the idea of immortality is inextinguishable in man. I said, "In order to form an idea of the destruction of the conscious self, an amount of exhaustion of impressions is required wholly beyond the powers of an uncultivated mind. Man's personality is so distinctly projected on the surface of his consciousness, that the idea of its obliteration is inconceivable without doing violence to his primary convictions."

In a state of health, every man desires to live; he desires, because the instinct of self-conservation is one of the most primary and ineradicable and the strongest in his nature. This desire, at first negative, becomes on reflection, under the pressure of life and its cares and sorrows, a positive desire. But if he desires immortality, he desires to be certified of it, so as not to be left to conjecture alone.

Reason cannot gratify this hope, and all the proofs of immortality that have been collected by philosophers have only served to make it probable, not certain. For reason, not being able to know future life, cannot demonstrate it. Reason can give general, abstract proofs; but the certainty of the eternal duration of one's personal existence cannot be furnished by it, and it is precisely this certainty which is demanded.

To obtain it, a proof, an immediate witness, which may fall under the senses, is requisite. One who has died, of whose death we are well assured,-not any one, but one who is a type and model of all others,―must rise from his grave, as a guarantee to all of their resurrection.

This is what the Resurrection of Christ supplies. The Incarnation was an accommodation of God to all the wants of man's nature, and this, the most imperious of all, the demand for personal restoration to immortal life, is certified to man by the dogma of the Resurrection.