With you to the temple—tho’ to death they went.
Could they have known, they had been full content
To give their little lives. And well I ween
Your pitying hand caressed them; and, between
The turns you took with Joseph (favored saint!)
At carrying Jesus, you would soothe their plaint,
And hold to your heart their bosoms’ silver sheen.
But cherish more my sister-dove and me:
Carry _within_ your heart, and all the way,
Our souls to the true Temple. Offered so,
They cannot perish—no, nor parted be:
For He whom you presented on this day
Whom you present His own must ever know.
FEAST OF THE PURIFICATION, 1876.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHRISTIANITY AS AN HISTORICAL RELIGION.
II.
To know the true genius of Christianity is the same thing as to know
the true destiny of man, and the actual order of Providence by which he
is conducted to its fulfilment, through the state of his earthly
probation. The true destiny of man is supernatural; his end is beyond
the earth and the present life, which is the place and period of origin
and transit only, where he has his point of departure, his impulse of
direction, the beginning of the movement which is to draw a line of
endless length on the absolute duration and absolute space of eternity
and infinity. The actual order of Providence, within the infinitesimal
limits of time and extension which bound man’s earthly existence, is
exclusively determined, as to its ultimate end, to this eternal and
infinite sphere of being, where man shares with God, according to the
mode and measure which is possible to his finite nature, the “total,
simultaneous, and perfect possession of interminable life.” This is
precisely what is meant by eternal salvation, final beatitude, union
with God, and all other terms of similar import. Any temporal good, in
comparison with this, is trivial. It cannot be an ultimate object of
God’s providence, and ought not to be regarded as an end by a rational
man. These are the suppositions, the _præcognita_, from which all
Christian philosophy must take its initial movement. Dr. Fisher
enunciates, therefore, one of the axioms of Christianity when he says
that in the design of the divine religion given by God to mankind, “the
good offered is not science,” or, as is evidently implied, any other
temporal good, “but salvation.” The original right to this salvation
and to the means of attaining it having been forfeited in the fall and
restored only through Christ, “the final cause of revelation is the
recovery of men to communion with God—that is, to true religion.” As a
consequence from this, “whatever knowledge is communicated”—and,
equally, whatever other good is communicated for human perfection in
this present state—“is tributary to this end” (p. 3). The whole of
human history before the Christian epoch, in general, and specifically
the whole inspired history of patriarchal and Judæan religion, being a
record of events looking towards the coming of the Son of God to the
earth, the learned professor proceeds logically in making the
statements which follow:
“Christianity is the perfect form of religion. In other words,
it is the absolute religion, ... the culminating point in the
progress of revelation, fulfilling, or filling out to
perfection, that which preceded.... In Jesus religion is
actually realized in its perfection.... In Christ the
revelation of God to and through man reaches its climax.... In
Christianity the fundamental relations of God to the world are
completely disclosed.... Through Christ the kingdom of God
actually attains its universal character.”[166]
Many passages scattered throughout the entire work of Dr. Fisher
repeat, confirm, or amplify these general statements of his fundamental
conception of Christianity. Thus, he says that it “proposed the
unification of mankind through a spiritual bond” (p. 42); that it
brings God near “to the apprehension, not of a coterie of philosophers
merely, but of the humble and ignorant” (p. 189); that it “made human
brotherhood a reality” (p. 190). “From his first public appearance
Jesus represented himself as the founder and head of a kingdom” (p.
443), and this kingdom “was to be bound together by a moral and
spiritual bond of union” (p. 444). Moreover, “his kingdom was to act
upon the world, and to bring the world under its sway” (p. 456); it was
to “leaven human society with its spirit, until the whole world should
be created anew by its agency”; “a world-conquering and world-purifying
influence,” destined “for the accomplishment of a revolution, the
grandest which it ever entered into the heart of man to conceive—it
being nothing less than the moral regeneration of mankind” (_ibid._)
The idea which lies at the foundation of all these statements is
nothing else than that which St. Ignatius has made the basis of his
_Spiritual Exercises_, and which is fully developed in the meditations
on fundamental Christian principles which are placed at the beginning
of the series for a retreat in books like the _Raccolta_ of Father
Ciccolini. On these principles is founded the whole system of
instructions given to ecclesiastics and religious during their
retreats, by which they are formed for the sacerdotal or religious life
or renovated in the spirit of their state. The very same form the basis
of the sermons preached at the beginning of missions given to the
faithful in churches, “On the End of Man,” “On the Value of the Soul,”
“On the Necessity of Salvation.” That man is the only being on the
earth who is an end in himself, and that all other creatures, together
with all arrangements of divine Providence respecting this world, are
for him; that the chief and ultimate end of man is his eternal
salvation, and that everything else is intended as a means for
attaining this end; is the doctrine inculcated and preached in all
Catholic spiritual books and in all sermons, in all theological
treatises, and expositions of Catholic philosophy which profess to
explain the fundamental relations of the natural to the supernatural
order. Any other idea of Christianity than this is unworthy of its
Author. It is a very low and childish view which represents the
perfection of humanity in respect to the political, social, and
intellectual spheres of the earthly and temporal order as the direct
object of the mission and work of Christ in the world. _Præterit figura
hujus mundi._ That which is transitory cannot be an ultimate end.
There is nothing permanent and having an eternal value on the earth
except the spiritual perfection of the human soul and whatever
appertains to it or is inseparably connected with it. The regeneration
and perfection of men in the spiritual and divine life is necessarily
the only direct and primary object of the theandric work of Christ as
the mediator between God and mankind. His kingdom is in the soul, his
reign and conquests are in the spiritual realm. St. Augustine explains
that difficult statement of St. Paul, that the Son will finally deliver
up his kingdom to the Father, by means of this Scriptural conception of
the nature of his kingdom. This kingdom is the multitude of the saved,
the complete number of the elect, in whose glorification the special
work of the Son as creator and redeemer reaches its consummation and
attains its final end. The kingdom is delivered up when these souls, in
whom the reign of Christ is perfectly and for ever established by grace
and divine love, are united with the divine essence in the beatific
vision. The initial and temporal conditions of the eternal kingdom of
Christ, the kingdom of heaven, disappear, of course, in the fulfilment;
as his human childhood, life, death, and resurrection were transient
states or events, as the whole of human history is transient. In its
initial state the kingdom of heaven on the earth is a preparation for
its perfect state, which it contains in germ and principle, and with
which it must necessarily have a similitude of nature. It is therefore
only a truism to say that the kingdom of Christ is spiritual and its
bond of unity spiritual. We may even say that the whole universe is a
spiritual empire and its bond of unity spiritual. Physical beings, in
the ontological order are metaphysical, and in the order of cognition
are logical. All the transcendental predicates, which really express
only phases of the same idea; being, unity, truth, and good; are, in an
analogous sense, predicable of God and of everything which has or is
capable of having existence. God is a spirit, and the ideal of all
beings is in his intelligence. The [Greek: Logos] [Greek: endiathetos],
in the bosom of the Father from eternity, and the [Greek: Logos]
[Greek: prophorichos], uttering the creative word whose effect is in
time, whose intelligible expression is in all creatures, are one—the
Word of God. There are material substances and forces, but their origin
is spiritual; their essence and existence are the expression of
thought; the space in which they move has its foundation in the essence
of God; they are an adjunct of the spiritual world, and are
subordinated to it with a view to the same end. There are temporal and
contingent things, but their duration has a fixed relation to the
absolute duration of God, and to his eternal, immutable decree and
foreknowledge. Though some things are trivial and worthless by
comparison with others, and every being is infinitely less than God,
yet nothing is absolutely trivial or worthless, and every finite thing
has infinite relations. Bodies are infinitely inferior to spirits, yet
they are infinitely superior to nothing, and not only the grand bodies
which express in magnitude and number an image of the immensity of God,
but grains of sand and the minutest molecules, are terms of divine
Omnipotence, and their being presupposes and imitates the being of God.
God formed the body of the first man out of the dust of the earth
before he breathed into him the living soul, and he will awaken all
human bodies to an everlasting life from the dust of the universal tomb
of humanity. The Word assumed not only a rational but also a corporeal
nature into hypostatic union with the divinity in his own person, and
arose bodily from the sepulchre to glorify matter as well as spirit,
and make it a gem eternally lustrous and sparkling with divine
splendor. God came to this small solar system, a mere point in the
milky way, to this minute planet, to the insignificant country of
Judæa, to the little village of Bethlehem, to the narrow cave of the
Nativity, to the humble cottage of Joseph and Mary, and was born and
brought up the son of a humble maiden under the guardianship of an
obscure artisan. The future and eternal kingdom of heaven with all its
splendor, which was only made that it may serve as a reflection of the
glory of the Incarnate Word, has its origin from these mere points in
time and space. Things which, isolated and in their mere physical
quantity, are almost nothing receive an infinite value through their
relations. Nude first matter, apart from form, is, as St. Augustine
says, “_fere nihil_—a being not-being.” Yet it seems to be rigorously
demonstrated that the active force of every material element is capable
of attracting or repelling other elements in an infinite sphere of
space around its centre. The visible universe, considered as having a
mere isolated existence and motion in space and time, is not much,
compared with even one finite spirit—is _fere nihil_. The intellectual
creation, considered as isolated within the bounds of nature, finite,
actually existing only in one indivisible now of time, which by its
gliding from a beginning point on an endless line never actually draws
more than a line of finite duration, compared with the infinite
possibility is not much more. All creation, even supposing that God
continued to extend and multiply it for ever, could never become
anything which would not be infinitely less than absolute space and
duration. On the lower surface of things which faces the nothingness
out of which they came they participate in not-being and resemble
nothingness. In their negation and privation, they _are not_. On their
upper surface which faces the being above them they participate with
all being, even the highest. That which is lower touches by its highest
point that which is lowest in the higher, and so from the bottom to the
top. The physical universe has a sufficient reason of being in the
intellectual universe, the intellectual in the spiritual, and the
spiritual at its apex touches God by the union of the highest
nature—the created nature of the Word, with the uncreated, divine
essence. The universe, notwithstanding its intrinsically finite and
contingent being, receives thus a mode and order of relation to the
infinite and eternal being, giving it a species of divinization which
extends to its least and lowest parts. Therefore we say that the whole
universe is a spiritual empire and its bond of unity spiritual.
This world is a garden of God, set apart for the planting and growth of
human souls. The garden of Eden, which God planted and beautified as
the residence of the first parents of the human race, is a type of the
ideal earth as it was conceived in the mind of God. The redemption, in
its ideal form, is a work for the restoration of paradise on earth,
under a modified condition suited to the fallen state of man, and in
its actual results is an approximation to this idea. The growth of
human souls in the regenerated and spiritual life is its end, and the
only thing of absolute importance in the sight of God. The Creator
himself came on the earth in human form expressly for the sake of
fulfilling this divine intention of bringing souls to the completion of
their growth in a perfect likeness to himself. It is needless to quote
his own distinct and solemn affirmation of the value of the soul, and
the worthlessness of the whole world beside, in comparison with its
highest spiritual good. His great work in humanity may therefore be
fitly summed up in the terse and succinct formula of “moral
regeneration,” provided that these terms are so defined as to give them
an adequate extension and comprehension. The whole plan of God in
creating the universe, and elevating it through the microcosmical being
man by the Incarnation, must be kept in view; and the nature of the
regeneration to be effected must be so understood as to justify the
necessity of the stupendous and multiplied means employed by the divine
wisdom in bringing it to actual accomplishment. The universe, and this
little epitome of creation which is man’s world, as well, is complex
and composed of heterogeneous parts. The problem of man’s destiny and
of the end proposed in the plan of the divine creator and redeemer of
human nature is, therefore, necessarily complex. If it is expressed in
a ratio of simple terms, these terms must be virtually equivalent to a
great number and a great variety, corresponding to the complex reality
which they denote and signify. A simplification of our ideas which is
not the result of a combination of all the elements that ought to enter
into composition, but is produced by the suppression of some, is a work
of destructive and not of constructive philosophy. If we interpret,
therefore, that spiritual doctrine which we have laid down in the
beginning of this argument too literally and exclusively, we make a
misinterpretation of the sense of Holy Scripture and of the writings of
the saints, and manufacture for ourselves a false and absurd doctrine.
A philosophy which aims to give the spirit a complete riddance of
matter, and of the whole world beside spiritual existence in its purest
and most immediate relation to God, may arrogate the name of spiritual
philosophy, but it is a counterfeit spiritualism. If God desired that
we should get rid of matter, and had no other aim except to produce
purely spiritual being in his own likeness and in participation with
his own pure essence, he would never have created anything except
spirit, and he would have made it at once in that state of perfection
which he willed it to possess. If this perfection were limited to the
order of pure nature, nothing more was requisite than to create a
multitude of intellectual beings naturally endowed with the
intelligence and felicity conformed to their essence. If they were to
be elevated to supernatural perfection in the beatific vision of God,
one act of divine power and love would suffice to place them at the
first instant of their creation in the term of being, the ultimate
perfection, the everlasting felicity in the possession of the sovereign
good, to which they were destined. There is no necessity for probation,
gradual progress, or any sort of conditions precedent, in order that
created spirits may be made perfect in cognition and volition, either
natural or supernatural, in any finite degree and grade of existence
and beatitude which God may choose in his pure goodness to communicate.
Still less is there any reason, on the hypothesis of such an end in
creation as we suppose, for the existence of matter and corporeal
beings. Matter and body cannot help purely intellectual beings to
attain their proper intelligible object. The light of glory, and the
direct illumination which gives the spirit an immediate intuitive
vision of the divine essence, cannot be conjoined with any material,
corporeal medium or organ. Why, then, did not God create angels only,
and, if he desired to elevate creation to the hypostatic union with
himself, assume the angelic nature? The only possible answer to this
question is derived from the manifestation which God has made, through
his works and through his word, that his plan of creation included
something besides the natural and supernatural communication of glory
and beatitude to created spirits. It was his will to create the
corporeal, visible universe in connection and harmony with the
invisible and spiritual world. It was his will to place man in the
middle-point of all creation, and to give him a complex essence
composed of rationality and animality, that he might unite in his
substantial being the highest with the lowest—_ima summis_. Moreover,
the creating Word assumed this nature as microcosmical, that in
humanity he might elevate the entire universe and bring it in his own
person to its acme.
Even this might have been accomplished instantaneously, without
probation, without the long procession of second causes, without the
efforts and the pain which the struggle toward the ultimate end has
cost the creature, and to which the Incarnate Word subjected himself
when he became _obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis_.
Why the long process from the chaos at the beginning toward the
consummation of the end which has not yet been attained? The only
answer to this question which can possibly be given is that God chose
to make the creature concur to its own glorification by the way of
merit, and to bring the utmost possible effect out of created
causality. This is the reason for the probation of the angels and of
man; for the full scope given to free-will, notwithstanding the
incidental evil which through this avenue has rushed in upon the fair
creation of God; and for the choice of the most difficult and painful
way of redemption and restoration through ineffable labors and
sufferings.
The regeneration of humanity must, therefore, take its character from
the supernatural destiny of man, his complex nature, and the relations
in which it places him to the complex plan of God which takes in all
the parts of the universe, from the lowest to the highest, and gives
the utmost possible play to the action of created causality. Its chief
end is to prepare human souls, through the grace and fellowship of
Christ, to share with the other sons of God, the holy angels, in the
glory and beatitude of the Incarnate Word in the kingdom of heaven.
Included in this end of beatification in God, which is essentially the
same for all spiritual beings who attain it, are the distinctive grades
of glory, gained through grace and personal merit, in an ascending
scale from the souls of infants to the soul of Jesus Christ, by which
the celestial firmament is decorated. This beatitude in the vision of
God certainly does not exclude the secondary and natural beatitude
arising from the knowledge and enjoyment of the creatures of God, and
this must therefore be a secondary and subordinate end in the divine
plan. Intellectual cognition and volition are not organic acts of human
nature; and, therefore, if we believe in the bodily resurrection of our
Lord and of the saints to a glorified corporeal life, we must admit the
existence in the divine plan of some subordinate end, in view of which
man was created as a composite being, and in view of which, also, the
Word assumed the composite human nature, which is complete only by the
union of the spiritual and material substances. The glorified body no
doubt receives a reflected lustre from the glorification of the soul.
But its glorified senses cannot be the organs of anything more than an
elevated and sublimated sensitive cognition and enjoyment. The term of
their action is the physical, visible creation to which human nature
partially belongs; and therefore the final end of man is partially
identified with the final cause for which the vast and everlasting
visible universe was created. The Incarnate Word touches this visible,
material realm of his creation by the bodily part of his human nature.
The what and the wherefore of this almost infinite realm of nature we
do not pretend to understand. It is certainly not a mere _jeu d’esprit_
of Omnipotence, a causeless or transitory spectacle to excite the
babyish wonder of the human race not yet out of its nursery. It belongs
to the great sphere of the divine plan, a segment of one of whose great
circles is human history on this earthly planet. As we cannot
demonstrate the problem of this sphere and its great circles, we cannot
completely solve the problem of man’s destiny on the earth. It is an
enigma, a mystery. And, above all, the question _Cur Deus Homo_? the
what and the wherefore of the Incarnation, is an enigma, a mystery for
human reason, only obscurely manifested to faith. Christ in history,
universal history as having its _mot d’enigme_ in Christ, must
consequently present to the believing and enlightened mind of the
Christian student an object of investigation and thought which he
cannot hope to understand and know adequately, much less to comprehend.
Whatever we can know must be learned by the manifestation which God
makes of his wise intentions through his word and his works, the
instruction which he deigns to give us by experience, reason, and
divine faith.