Chapter IV: Miscellaneous (2)

We should judge rightly in our curiosity about
a phenomenon like this; it must be a portentous
event, and it is. It is an innovation, a miracle,
I may say, in the course of human events. The
physical world revolves year by year, and begins 5
again; but the political order of things does not
renew itself, does not return; it continues, but it
proceeds; there is no retrogression. This is so
well understood by men of the day, that with
them progress is idolized as another name for 10
good. The past never returns--it is never good;
if we are to escape existing ills, it must be by
going forward. The past is out of date; the past
is dead. As well may the dead live to us, as well
may the dead profit us, as the past return. _This_, 15
then, is the cause of this national transport, this
national cry, which encompasses us. The past _has_
returned, the dead lives. Thrones are overturned,
and are never restored; States live and die, and
then are matter only for history. Babylon was 20
great, and Tyre, and Egypt, and Nineveh, and
shall never be great again. The English Church
was, and the English Church was not, and the
English Church is once again. This is the
portent, worthy of a cry. It is the coming in of a 25
Second Spring; it is a restoration in the moral
world, such as that which yearly takes place in
the physical.

Three centuries ago, and the Catholic Church,
that great creation of God's power, stood in this 30
land in pride of place. It had the honors of near
a thousand years upon it; it was enthroned on
some twenty sees up and down the broad country;
it was based in the will of a faithful people;
it energized through ten thousand instruments of
power and influence; and it was ennobled by a 5
host of Saints and Martyrs. The churches, one
by one, recounted and rejoiced in the line of
glorified intercessors, who were the respective
objects of their grateful homage. Canterbury
alone numbered perhaps some sixteen, from St. 10
Augustine to St. Dunstan and St. Elphege, from
St. Anselm and St. Thomas down to St. Edmund.
York had its St. Paulinus, St. John, St. Wilfrid,
and St. William; London, its St. Erconwald;
Durham, its St. Cuthbert; Winton, its St. 15
Swithun. Then there were St. Aidan of
Lindisfarne, and St. Hugh of Lincoln, and St.
Chad of Lichfield, and St. Thomas of
Hereford, and St. Oswald and St. Wulstan of
Worcester, and St. Osmund of Salisbury, and 20
St. Birinus of Dorchester, and St. Richard of
Chichester. And then, too, its religious orders,
its monastic establishments, its universities,
its wide relations all over Europe, its high
prerogatives in the temporal state, its wealth, its 25
dependencies, its popular honors,--where was
there in the whole of Christendom a more
glorious hierarchy? Mixed up with the civil
institutions, with kings and nobles, with the people,
found in every village and in every town,--it 30
seemed destined to stand, so long as England
stood, and to outlast, it might be, England's
greatness.

But it was the high decree of heaven, that the
majesty of that presence should be blotted out.
It is a long story, my Fathers and 5
Brothers--you know it well. I need not go through it. The
vivifying principle of truth, the shadow of St.
Peter, the grace of the Redeemer, left it. That
old Church in its day became a corpse (a
marvelous, an awful change!); and then it did but 10
corrupt the air which once it refreshed, and
cumber the ground which once it beautified. So all
seemed to be lost; and there was a struggle for
a time, and then its priests were cast out or
martyred. There were sacrileges innumerable. 15
Its temples were profaned or destroyed; its
revenues seized by covetous nobles, or squandered
upon the ministers of a new faith. The presence
of Catholicism was at length simply
removed,--its grace disowned,--its power despised,--its 20
name, except as a matter of history, at length
almost unknown. It took a long time to do this
thoroughly; much time, much thought, much
labor, much expense; but at last it was done.
Oh, that miserable day, centuries before we were 25
born! What a martyrdom to live in it and see
the fair form of Truth, moral and material,
hacked piecemeal, and every limb and organ
carried off, and burned in the fire, or cast into
the deep! But at last the work was done. Truth 30
was disposed of, and shoveled away, and there
was a calm, a silence, a sort of peace--and such
was about the state of things when we were born
into this weary world.

My Fathers and Brothers, _you_ have seen it on
one side, and some of us on another; but one and 5
all of us can bear witness to the fact of the utter
contempt into which Catholicism had fallen by
the time that we were born. You, alas, know it
far better than I can know it; but it may not be
out of place, if by one or two tokens, as by the 10
strokes of a pencil, I bear witness to you from
without, of what you can witness so much more
truly from within. No longer the Catholic
Church in the country; nay, no longer, I may
say, a Catholic community; but a few 15
adherents of the Old Religion, moving silently
and sorrowfully about, as memorials of what had
been. The "Roman Catholics,"--not a sect,
not even an interest, as men conceived of
it,--not a body, however small, representative of the 20
Great Communion abroad,--but a mere handful
of individuals, who might be counted, like the
pebbles and _detritus_ of the great deluge, and
who, forsooth, merely happened to retain a creed
which, in its day indeed, was the profession of a 25
Church. Here a set of poor Irishmen, coming and
going at harvest time, or a colony of them lodged
in a miserable quarter of the vast metropolis.
There, perhaps an elderly person, seen walking
in the streets, grave and solitary, and strange, 30
though noble in bearing, and said to be of good
family, and a "Roman Catholic." An
old-fashioned house of gloomy appearance, closed in
with high walls, with an iron gate, and yews, and
the report attaching to it that "Roman Catholics"
lived there; but who they were, or what they did, 5
or what was meant by calling them Roman
Catholics, no one could tell--though it had an
unpleasant sound, and told of form and
superstition. And then, perhaps, as we went to and fro,
looking with a boy's curious eyes through the 10
great city, we might come to-day upon some
Moravian chapel, or Quaker's meeting-house, and
to-morrow on a chapel of the "Roman Catholics;"
but nothing was to be gathered from it, except
that there were lights burning there, and some 15
boys in white, swinging censers; and what it all
meant could only be learned from books, from
Protestant Histories and Sermons; and they did
not report well of the "Roman Catholics," but,
on the contrary, deposed that they had once had 20
power and had abused it. And then, again, we
might on one occasion hear it pointedly put out
by some literary man, as the result of his careful
investigation, and as a recondite point of
information, which few knew, that there was this 25
difference between the Roman Catholics of England
and the Roman Catholics of Ireland, that the
latter had bishops, and the former were governed
by four officials, called Vicars-Apostolic.

Such was about the sort of knowledge possessed 30
of Christianity by the heathen of old time, who
persecuted its adherents from the face of the
earth, and then called them a _gens lucifuga_, a
people who shunned the light of day. Such were
Catholics in England, found in corners, and alleys,
and cellars, and the housetops, or in the recesses 5
of the country; cut off from the populous world
around them, and dimly seen, as if through a
mist or in twilight, as ghosts flitting to and fro,
by the high Protestants, the lords of the earth.
At length so feeble did they become, so utterly 10
contemptible, that contempt gave birth to pity;
and the more generous of their tyrants actually
began to wish to bestow on them some favor,
under the notion that their opinions were simply
too absurd ever to spread again, and that they 15
themselves, were they but raised in civil
importance, would soon unlearn and be ashamed of
them. And thus, out of mere kindness to us,
they began to vilify our doctrines to the Protestant
world, that so our very idiotcy or our secret 20
unbelief might be our plea for mercy.

A _great_ change, an _awful_ contrast, between the
time-honored Church of St. Augustine and St.
Thomas, and the poor remnant of their children
in the beginning of the nineteenth century! It 25
was a miracle, I might say, to have pulled down
that lordly power; but there was a greater and a
truer one in store. No one could have prophesied
its fall, but still less would any one have ventured
to prophesy its rise again. The fall was 30
wonderful; still after all it was in the order of nature;
all things come to naught: its rise again would
be a different sort of wonder, for it is in the order
of grace,--and who can hope for miracles, and
such a miracle as this? Has the whole course of
history a like to show? I must speak cautiously 5
and according to my knowledge, but I recollect
no parallel to it. Augustine, indeed, came to
the same island to which the early missionaries
had come already; but they came to Britons, and
he to Saxons. The Arian Goths and Lombards, 10
too, cast off their heresy in St. Augustine's age,
and joined the Church; but they had never fallen
away from her. The inspired word seems to imply
the almost impossibility of such a grace as the
renovation of those who have crucified to 15
themselves again, and trodden under foot, the Son of
God. Who then could have dared to hope that,
out of so sacrilegious a nation as this is, a people
would have been formed again unto their Saviour?
What signs did it show that it was to be singled 20
out from among the nations? Had it been
prophesied some fifty years ago, would not the
very notion have seemed preposterous and wild?

My Fathers, there was one of your own order,
then in the maturity of his powers and his 25
reputation. His name is the property of this diocese;
yet is too great, too venerable, too dear to all
Catholics, to be confined to any part of England,
when it is rather a household word in the mouths
of all of us. What would have been the feelings 30
of that venerable man, the champion of God's ark
in an evil time, could _he_ have lived to see this
day? It is almost presumptuous for one who
knew him not, to draw pictures about him, and
his thoughts, and his friends, some of whom are
even here present; yet am I wrong in fancying 5
that a day such as this, in which we stand, would
have seemed to him a dream, or, if he prophesied
of it, to his hearers nothing but a mockery? Say
that one time, rapt in spirit, he had reached
forward to the future, and that his mortal eye had 10
wandered from that lowly chapel in the valley
which had been for centuries in the possession of
Catholics, to the neighboring height, then waste
and solitary. And let him say to those about
him: "I see a bleak mount, looking upon an open 15
country, over against that huge town, to whose
inhabitants Catholicism is of so little account.
I see the ground marked out, and an ample
inclosure made; and plantations are rising there,
clothing and circling in the space. 20

"And there on that high spot, far from the
haunts of men, yet in the very center of the island,
a large edifice, or rather pile of edifices, appears
with many fronts, and courts, and long cloisters
and corridors, and story upon story. And there 25
it rises, under the invocation of the same sweet
and powerful name which has been our strength
and consolation in the Valley. I look more
attentively at that building, and I see it is fashioned
upon that ancient style of art which brings back 30
the past, which had seemed to be perishing from
off the face of the earth, or to be preserved only
as a curiosity, or to be imitated only as a fancy.
I listen, and I hear the sound of voices, grave
and musical, renewing the old chant, with which
Augustine greeted Ethelbert in the free air upon 5
the Kentish strand. It comes from a long
procession, and it winds along the cloisters. Priests
and Religious, theologians from the schools, and
canons from the Cathedral, walk in due precedence.
And then there comes a vision of well-nigh 10
twelve mitered heads; and last I see a Prince of
the Church, in the royal dye of empire and of
martyrdom, a pledge to us from Rome of Rome's
unwearied love, a token that that goodly
company is firm in Apostolic faith and hope. And 15
the shadow of the Saints is there; St. Benedict
is there, speaking to us by the voice of bishop
and of priest, and counting over the long ages
through which he has prayed, and studied, and
labored; there, too, is St. Dominic's white wool, 20
which no blemish can impair, no stain can dim:
and if St. Bernard be not there, it is only that
his absence may make him be remembered more.
And the princely patriarch, St. Ignatius, too, the
St. George of the modern world, with his chivalrous 25
lance run through his writhing foe, he, too, sheds
his blessing upon that train. And others, also,
his equals or his juniors in history, whose pictures
are above our altars, or soon shall be, the surest
proof that the Lord's arm has not waxen short, 30
nor His mercy failed,--they, too, are looking
down from their thrones on high upon the throng.
And so that high company moves on into the holy
place; and there, with august rite and awful
sacrifice, inaugurates the great act which brings
it thither." What is that act? it is the first 5
synod of a new Hierarchy; it is the resurrection
of the Church.

O my Fathers, my Brothers, had that revered
Bishop so spoken then, who that had heard him
but would have said that he spoke what could 10
not be? What! those few scattered worshipers,
_the_ Roman Catholics, to form a Church! Shall
the past be rolled back? Shall the grave open?
Shall the Saxons live again to God? Shall the
shepherds, watching their poor flocks by night, 15
be visited by a multitude of the heavenly army,
and hear how their Lord has been new-born in
their own city? Yes; for grace can, where
nature cannot. The world grows old, but the
Church is ever young. She can, in any time, at 20
her Lord's will, "inherit the Gentiles, and inhabit
the desolate cities." "Arise, Jerusalem, for thy
light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen
upon thee. Behold, darkness shall cover the
earth, and a mist the people; but the Lord shall 25
arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon
thee. Lift up thine eyes round about, and see;
all these are gathered together, they come to
thee; thy sons shall come from afar, and thy
daughters shall rise up at thy side." "Arise, 30
make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one,
and come. For the winter is now past, and the
rain is over and gone. The flowers have appeared
in our land ... the fig tree hath put forth her
green figs; the vines in flower yield their sweet
smell. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and 5
come." It is the time for thy Visitation. Arise,
Mary, and go forth in thy strength into that north
country, which once was thine own, and take
possession of a land which knows thee not. Arise,
Mother of God, and with thy thrilling voice speak 10
to those who labor with child, and are in pain,
till the babe of grace leaps within them! Shine
on us, dear Lady, with thy bright countenance,
like the sun in his strength, _O stella matutina_, O
harbinger of peace, till our year is one perpetual 15
May. From thy sweet eyes, from thy pure smile,
from thy majestic brow, let ten thousand
influences rain down, not to confound or
overwhelm, but to persuade, to win over thine enemies.
O Mary, my hope, O Mother undefiled, fulfill to 20
us the promise of this Spring. A second temple
rises on the ruins of the old. Canterbury has
gone its way, and York is gone, and Durham is
gone, and Winchester is gone. It was sore to
part with them. We clung to the vision of past 25
greatness, and would not believe it could come
to naught; but the Church in England has died,
and the Church lives again. Westminster and
Nottingham, Beverley and Hexham, Northampton
and Shrewsbury, if the world lasts, shall be 30
names as musical to the ear, as stirring to the
heart, as the glories we have lost; and Saints
shall rise out of them, if God so will, and
Doctors once again shall give the law to Israel,
and Preachers call to penance and to justice, as
at the beginning. 5

Yes, my Fathers and Brothers, and if it be
God's blessed will, not Saints alone, not Doctors
only, not Preachers only, shall be ours--but
Martyrs, too, shall re-consecrate the soil to God.
We know not what is before us, ere we win our 10
own; we are engaged in a great, a joyful work,
but in proportion to God's grace is the fury of
His enemies. They have welcomed us as the
lion greets his prey. Perhaps they may be
familiarized in time with our appearance, but 15
perhaps they may be irritated the more. To set
up the Church again in England is too great an
act to be done in a corner. We have had reason
to expect that such a boon would not be given
to us without a cross. It is not God's way that 20
great blessings should descend without the sacrifice
first of great sufferings. If the truth is to be
spread to any wide extent among this people, how
can we dream, how can we hope, that trial and
trouble shall not accompany its going forth? And 25
we have already, if it may be said without
presumption, to commence our work withal, a large
store of merits. We have no slight outfit for our
opening warfare. Can we religiously suppose that
the blood of our martyrs, three centuries ago and 30
since, shall never receive its recompense? Those
priests, secular and regular, did they suffer for
no end? or rather, for an end which is not yet
accomplished? The long imprisonment, the fetid
dungeon, the weary suspense, the tyrannous trial,
the barbarous sentence, the savage execution, the 5
rack, the gibbet, the knife, the caldron, the
numberless tortures of those holy victims, O my God,
are they to have no reward? Are Thy martyrs
to cry from under Thine altar for their loving
vengeance on this guilty people, and to cry in 10
vain? Shall they lose life, and not gain a
better life for the children of those who persecuted
them? Is this Thy way, O my God, righteous
and true? Is it according to Thy promise, O
King of Saints, if I may dare talk to Thee of 15
justice? Did not Thou Thyself pray for Thine
enemies upon the cross, and convert them? Did
not Thy first Martyr win Thy great Apostle, then
a persecutor, by his loving prayer? And in that
day of trial and desolation for England, when 20
hearts were pierced through and through with
Mary's woe, at the crucifixion of Thy body
mystical, was not every tear that flowed, and
every drop of blood that was shed, the seeds of a
future harvest, when they who sowed in sorrow 25
were to reap in joy?

And as that suffering of the Martyrs is not yet
recompensed, so, perchance, it is not yet
exhausted. Something, for what we know, remains
to be undergone, to complete the necessary 30
sacrifice. May God forbid it, for this poor nation's
sake! But still could we be surprised, my Fathers
and my Brothers, if the winter even now should
not yet be quite over? Have we any right to
take it strange, if, in this English land, the
spring-time of the Church should turn out to be an 5
English spring, an uncertain, anxious time of hope
and fear, of joy and suffering,--of bright promise
and budding hopes, yet withal, of keen blasts, and
cold showers, and sudden storms?

One thing alone I know,--that according to 10
our need, so will be our strength. One thing I
am sure of, that the more the enemy rages against
us, so much the more will the Saints in Heaven
plead for us; the more fearful are our trials from
the world, the more present to us will be our 15
Mother Mary, and our good Patrons and Angel
Guardians; the more malicious are the devices of
men against us, the louder cry of supplication will
ascend from the bosom of the whole Church to
God for us. We shall not be left orphans; we 20
shall have within us the strength of the Paraclete,
promised to the Church and to every member of
it. My Fathers, my Brothers in the priesthood,
I speak from my heart when I declare my
conviction, that there is no one among you here 25
present but, if God so willed, would readily
become a martyr for His sake. I do not say you
would wish it; I do not say that the natural will
would not pray that that chalice might pass
away; I do not speak of what you can do by any 30
strength of yours; but in the strength of God,
in the grace of the Spirit, in the armor of justice,
by the consolations and peace of the Church, by
the blessing of the Apostles Peter and Paul, and
in the name of Christ, you would do what nature
cannot do. By the intercession of the Saints on 5
high, by the penances and good works and the
prayers of the people of God on earth, you would
be forcibly borne up as upon the waves of the
mighty deep, and carried on out of yourselves by
the fullness of grace, whether nature wished it or 10
no. I do not mean violently, or with unseemly
struggle, but calmly, gracefully, sweetly, joyously,
you would mount up and ride forth to the battle,
as on the rush of Angels' wings, as your fathers
did before you, and gained the prize. You, who 15
day by day offer up the Immaculate Lamb of
God, you who hold in your hands the Incarnate
Word under the visible tokens which He has
ordained, you who again and again drain the
chalice of the Great Victim; who is to make you 20
fear? what is to startle you? what to seduce
you? who is to stop you, whether you are to
suffer or to do, whether to lay the foundations of
the Church in tears, or to put the crown upon the
work in jubilation? 25

My Fathers, my Brothers, one word more. It
may seem as if I were going out of my way in
thus addressing you; but I have some sort of
plea to urge in extenuation. When the English
College at Rome was set up by the solicitude of a 30
great Pontiff in the beginning of England's sorrows,
and missionaries were trained there for
confessorship and martyrdom here, who was it that
saluted the fair Saxon youths as they passed by
him in the streets of the great city, with the
salutation, "Salvete flores martyrum"? And when 5
the time came for each in turn to leave that
peaceful home, and to go forth to the conflict, to whom
did they betake themselves before leaving Rome,
to receive a blessing which might nerve them for
their work? They went for a Saint's blessing; 10
they went to a calm old man, who had never
seen blood, except in penance; who had longed
indeed to die for Christ, what time the great St.
Francis opened the way to the far East, but who
had been fixed as if a sentinel in the holy city, 15
and walked up and down for fifty years on one
beat, while his brethren were in the battle. Oh!
the fire of that heart, too great for its frail
tenement, which tormented him to be kept at home
when the whole Church was at war! and 20
therefore came those bright-haired strangers to him,
ere they set out for the scene of their passion,
that the full zeal and love pent up in that burning
breast might find a vent, and flow over, from him
who was kept at home, upon those who were to 25
face the foe. Therefore one by one, each in his
turn, those youthful soldiers came to the old man;
and one by one they persevered and gained the
crown and the palm,--all but one, who had not
gone, and would not go, for the salutary blessing. 30

My Fathers, my Brothers, that old man was
my own St. Philip. Bear with me for his sake.
If I have spoken too seriously, his sweet smile
shall temper it. As he was with you three
centuries ago in Rome, when our Temple fell, so
now surely when it is rising, it is a pleasant token 5
that he should have even set out on his travels to
you; and that, as if remembering how he
interceded for you at home, and recognizing the
relations he then formed with you, he should now be
wishing to have a name among you, and to be 10
loved by you, and perchance to do you a service,
here in your own land.

ST. PAUL'S CHARACTERISTIC GIFT

EP. II. S. PAUL AD COR., _c._ xii. _v._ 9

Libenter igitur gloriabor in infirmitatibus meis, ut inhabitet
in me virtus Christi.

Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power
of Christ may dwell in me.

All the Saints, from the beginning of history
to the end, resemble each other in this, that their
excellence is supernatural, their deeds heroic, their 15
merits extraordinary and prevailing. They all
are choice patterns of the theological virtues;
they all are blessed with a rare and special union
with their Maker and Lord; they all lead lives of
penance; and when they leave this world, they 20
are spared that torment, which the multitude of
holy souls are allotted, between earth and heaven,
death and eternal glory. But, with all these
various tokens of their belonging to one and the
same celestial family, they may still be divided,
in their external aspect, into two classes.

There are those, on the one hand, who are so 5
absorbed in the Divine life, that they seem, even
while they are in the flesh, to have no part in
earth or in human nature; but to think, speak,
and act under views, affections, and motives
simply supernatural. If they love others, it is 10
simply because they love God, and because man
is the object either of His compassion, or of His
praise. If they rejoice, it is in what is unseen; if
they feel interest, it is in what is unearthly; if
they speak, it is almost with the voice of Angels; 15
if they eat or drink, it is almost of Angels' food
alone--for it is recorded in their histories, that
for weeks they have fed on nothing else but that
Heavenly Bread which is the proper sustenance
of the soul. Such we may suppose to have been 20
St. John; such St. Mary Magdalen; such the
hermits of the desert; such many of the holy
Virgins whose lives belong to the science of
mystical theology.

On the other hand, there are those, and of the 25
highest order of sanctity too, as far as our eyes
can see, in whom the supernatural combines with
nature, instead of superseding it,--invigorating
it, elevating it, ennobling it; and who are not
the less men, because they are saints. They do 30
not put away their natural endowments, but use
them to the glory of the Giver; they do not act
beside them, but through them; they do not
eclipse them by the brightness of Divine grace,
but only transfigure them. They are versed in
human knowledge; they are busy in human 5
society; they understand the human heart; they
can throw themselves into the minds of other
men; and all this in consequence of natural gifts
and secular education. While they themselves
stand secure in the blessedness of purity and 10
peace, they can follow in imagination the ten
thousand aberrations of pride, passion, and
remorse. The world is to them a book, to which
they are drawn for its own sake, which they read
fluently, which interests them 15
naturally,--though, by the reason of the grace which dwells
within them, they study it and hold converse
with it for the glory of God and the salvation
of souls. Thus they have the thoughts, feelings,
frames of mind, attractions, sympathies, 20
antipathies of other men, so far as these are not
sinful, only they have these properties of human
nature purified, sanctified, and exalted; and they
are only made more eloquent, more poetical, more
profound, more intellectual, by reason of their 25
being more holy. In this latter class I may
perhaps without presumption place many of the early
Fathers, St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen,
St. Athanasius, and above all, the great Saint of
this day, St. Paul the Apostle. 30

I think it a happy circumstance that, in this
Church, placed, as it is, under the patronage of
the great names of St. Peter and St. Paul, the
special feast days of these two Apostles (for such
we may account the 29th of June as regards St.
Peter, and to-day as regards St. Paul) should, in 5
the first year of our assembling here, each have
fallen on a Sunday. And now that we have
arrived, through God's protecting Providence, at
the latter of these two days, the Conversion of
St. Paul, I do not like to forego the opportunity, 10
with whatever misgivings as to my ability, of
offering to you, my brethren, at least a few
remarks upon the wonderful work of God's creative
grace mercifully presented to our inspection in
the person of this great Apostle. Most unworthy 15
of him, I know, is the best that I can say; and even
that best I cannot duly exhibit in the space of
time allowed me on an occasion such as this;
but what is said out of devotion to him, and for
the Divine glory, will, I trust, have its use, 20
defective though it be, and be a plea for his favorable
notice of those who say it, and be graciously
accepted by his and our Lord and Master.

Now, since I have begun by contrasting St.
Paul with St. John, and by implying that St. 25
John lived a life more simply supernatural than
St. Paul, I may seem to you, my brethren, to be
speaking to St. Paul's disparagement; and you
may therefore ask me whether it is possible for
any Saint on earth to have a more intimate 30
communion with the Divine Majesty than was granted
to St. Paul. You may remind me of his own
words, "I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in
me; and, that I now live in the flesh, I live in the
faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and
delivered Himself for me." And you may refer to 5
his most astonishing ecstasies and visions; as
when he was rapt even to the third heaven, and
heard sacred words, which it "is not granted to
man to utter." You may say, he "no way came
short" of St. John in his awful initiation into the 10
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. Certainly
you may say so; nor am I imagining anything
contrary to you. We indeed cannot compare
Saints; but I agree with you, that St. Paul was
visited by favors, equal, in our apprehensions, to 15
those which were granted to St. John. But then,
on the other hand, neither was St. John behind
St. Paul in these tokens of Divine love. In truth,
these tokens are some of those very things which,
in a greater or less degree, belong to all Saints 20
whatever, as I said when I began; whereas my
question just now is, not what are those points in
which St. Paul agrees with all other Saints, but
what is his distinguished mark, how we recognize
him from others, what there is special in him; 25
and I think his characteristic is this,--that, as I
have said, in him the fullness of Divine gifts does
not tend to destroy what is human in him, but to
spiritualize and perfect it. According to his own
words, used on another subject, but laying down, 30
as it were, the principle on which his own character
was formed,--"We would not be
_un_-clothed," he says, but "clothed _upon_, that what
is mortal may be swallowed up by life." In him,
his human nature, his human affections, his
human gifts, were possessed and glorified by a new 5
and heavenly life; they remained; he speaks of
them in the text, and in his humility he calls
them his infirmity. He was not stripped of
nature, but clothed with grace and the power of
Christ, and therefore he _glories_ in his infirmity. 10
This is the subject on which I wish to enlarge.

A heathen poet has said, Homo sum, humani
nihil a me alienum puto. "I am a man; nothing
human is without interest to me," and the
sentiment has been widely and deservedly praised. 15
Now this, in a fullness of meaning which a heathen
could not understand, is, I conceive, the
characteristic of this great Apostle. He is ever
speaking, to use his own words, "human things," and
"as a man," and "according to man," and 20
"foolishly;" that is, human nature, the
common nature of the whole race of Adam, spoke in
him, acted in him, with an energetical presence,
with a sort of bodily fullness, always under the
sovereign command of Divine grace, but losing 25
none of its real freedom and power because of
its subordination. And the consequence is, that,
having the nature of man so strong within him,
he is able to enter into human nature, and to
sympathize with it, with a gift peculiarly his own. 30

Now the most startling instance of this is this,
--that, though his life prior to his conversion
seems to have been so conscientious and so pure,
nevertheless he does not hesitate to associate
himself with the outcast heathen, and to speak
as if he were one of them. St. Philip Neri, before 5
he communicated, used to say, "Lord, I protest
before Thee that I am good for nothing but to
do evil." At confession he used to say, "I have
never done one good action." He often said, "I
am past hope." To a penitent he said, "Be sure 10
of this, I am a man like my neighbors, and
nothing more." Well, I mean, that somewhat in this
way, St. Paul felt all his neighbors, all the whole
race of Adam, to be existing in himself. He
knew himself to be possessed of a nature, he was 15
conscious of possessing a nature, which was
capable of running into all the multiplicity of
emotions, of devices, of purposes, and of sins,
into which it had actually run in the wide world
and in the multitude of men; and in that sense 20
he bore the sins of all men, and associated
himself with them, and spoke of them and himself
as one. He, I say, a strict Pharisee (as he
describes himself), blameless according to legal
justice, conversing with all good conscience 25
before God, serving God from his forefathers with a
pure conscience, he nevertheless elsewhere speaks
of himself as a profligate heathen outcast before
the grace of God called him. He not only counts
himself, as his birth made him, in the number of 30
"children of wrath," but he classes himself with
the heathen as "conversing in the desires of the
flesh," "and fulfilling the will of the flesh." And
in another Epistle, he speaks of himself, at the
time he writes, as if "carnal, sold under sin;"
he speaks of "sin dwelling in him," and of his 5
"serving with the flesh the law of sin;" this, I
say, when he was an Apostle confirmed in grace.
And in like manner he speaks of concupiscence as
if it were sin; all because he vividly apprehended,
in that nature of his which grace had sanctified, 10
what it was in its tendencies and results when
deprived of grace.

And thus I account for St. Paul's liking for
heathen writers, or what we now call the classics,
which is very remarkable. He, the Apostle of the 15
Gentiles, was learned in Greek letters, as Moses,
the lawgiver of the Jews, his counterpart, was
learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians; and he
did not give up that learning when he had
"learned Christ." I do not think I am 20
exaggerating in saying so, since he goes out of his way three
times to quote passages from them; once,
speaking to the heathen Athenians; another time, to
his converts at Corinth; and a third time, in a
private Apostolic exhortation to his disciple St. 25
Titus. And it is the more remarkable, that one
of the writers whom he quotes seems to be a
writer of comedies, which had no claim to be read
for any high morality which they contain. Now
how shall we account for this? Did St. Paul 30
delight in what was licentious? God forbid; but
he had the feeling of a guardian-angel who sees
every sin of the rebellious being committed to
him, who gazes at him and weeps. With this
difference, that he had a sympathy with sinners,
which an Angel (be it reverently said) cannot 5
have. He was a true lover of souls. He loved
poor human nature with a passionate love, and
the literature of the Greeks was only its
expression; and he hung over it tenderly and
mournfully, wishing for its regeneration and salvation. 10

This is how I account for his familiar
knowledge of the heathen poets. Some of the ancient
Fathers consider that the Greeks were under a
special dispensation of Providence, preparatory
to the Gospel, though not directly from heaven 15
as the Jewish was. Now St. Paul seems, if I may
say it, to partake of this feeling; distinctly as he
teaches that the heathen are in darkness, and in
sin, and under the power of the Evil One, he will
not allow that they are beyond the eye of Divine 20
Mercy. On the contrary, he speaks of God as
"determining their times and the limits of their
habitation," that is, going along with the
revolutions of history and the migrations of races, "in
order that they should seek Him, if haply they 25
may feel after Him and find Him," since, he
continues, "He is not far from every one of us."
Again, when the Lycaonians would have
worshiped him, he at once places himself on their
level and reckons himself among them, and at 30
the same time speaks of God's love of them,
heathens though they were. "Ye men," he cries,
"why do ye these things? We also are mortals,
men like unto you;" and he adds that God in
times past, though suffering all nations to walk
in their own ways, "nevertheless left not Himself 5
without testimony, doing good from heaven,
giving rains and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts
with food and gladness." You see, he says, "_our_
hearts," not "your," as if he were one of those
Gentiles; and he dwells in a kindly human way 10
over the food, and the gladness which food causes,
which the poor heathen were granted. Hence it
is that he is the Apostle who especially insists on
our all coming from one father, Adam; for he
had pleasure in thinking that all men were 15
brethren. "God hath made," he says, "all
mankind of one;" "as in Adam all die, so in Christ
all shall be made alive." I will cite but one
more passage from the great Apostle on the same
subject, one in which he tenderly contemplates 20
the captivity, and the anguish, and the longing,
and the deliverance of poor human nature. "The
expectation of the creature," he says, that is, of
human nature, "waiteth for the manifestation
of the sons of God. For the creature was made 25
subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of
Him that made it subject, in hope; because it
shall be delivered from the servitude of
corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children
of God. For we know that every creature 30
groaneth and travaileth in pain until now."

These are specimens of the tender affection
which the great heart of the Apostle had for all
his kind, the sons of Adam: but if he felt so much
for all races spread over the earth, what did he
feel for his own nation! O what a special 5
mixture, bitter and sweet, of generous pride (if I may
so speak), but of piercing, overwhelming anguish,
did the thought of the race of Israel inflict upon
him! the highest of nations and the lowest, his
own dear people, whose glories were before his 10
imagination and in his affection from his
childhood, who had the birthright and the promise,
yet who, instead of making use of them, had
madly thrown them away! Alas, alas, and he
himself had once been a partner in their madness, 15
and was only saved from his infatuation by the
miraculous power of God! O dearest ones, O
glorious race, O miserably fallen! so great and so
abject! This is his tone in speaking of the Jews,
at once a Jeremias and a David; David in his 20
patriotic care for them, and Jeremias in his
plaintive and resigned denunciations.

Consider his words: "I speak the truth in
Christ," he says; "I lie not, my conscience
bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost; that I have 25
great sadness and continual sorrow in my heart."
In spite of visions and ecstasies, in spite of his
wonderful election, in spite of his manifold gifts,
in spite of the cares of his Apostolate and "the
solicitude for all the churches"--you would 30
think he had had enough otherwise both to grieve
him and to gladden him--but no, this special
contemplation remains ever before his mind and in
his heart. I mean, the state of his own poor
people, who were in mad enmity against the
promised Saviour, who had for centuries after 5
centuries looked forward for the Hope of Israel,
prepared the way for it, heralded it, suffered for
it, cherished and protected it, yet, when it came,
rejected it, and lost the fruit of their long patience.
"Who are Israelites," he says, mournfully 10
lingering over their past glories, "who are Israelites, to
whom belongeth the adoption of children, and
the glory, and the testament, and the giving of
wealth, and the service of God, and the promises:
whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ 15
according to the flesh, who is over all things, God
blessed forever. Amen."

What a hard thing it was for him to give them
up! He pleaded for them, while they were
persecuting his Lord and himself. He reminded his 20
Lord that he himself had also been that Lord's
persecutor, and why not try them a little longer?
"Lord," he said, "they know that I cast into
prison, and beat in every synagogue, them that
believed in Thee. And, when the blood of 25
Stephen, Thy witness, was shed, I stood by and
consented, and kept the garments of them that
killed him." You see, his old frame of mind, the
feelings and notions under which he persecuted
his Lord, were ever distinctly before him, and he 30
realized them as if they were still his own. "I
bear them witness," he says, "that they have a
zeal of God, but not according to knowledge."
O blind! blind! he seems to say; O that there
should be so much of good in them, so much zeal,
so much of religious purpose, so much of 5
steadfastness, such resolve like Josias, Mathathias, or
Machabæus, to keep the whole law, and honor
Moses and the Prophets, but all spoiled, all
undone, by one fatal sin! And what is he prompted
to do? Moses, on one occasion, desired to suffer 10
instead of his rebellious people: "Either forgive
them this trespass," he said, "or if Thou do not,
strike me out of the book." And now, when the
New Law was in course of promulgation, and the
chosen race was committing the same sin, its 15
great Apostle desired the same: "I wished
myself," he says, speaking of the agony he had
passed through, "I wished myself to be an
anathema from Christ, for my brethren, who are
my kinsmen according to the flesh." And then, 20
when all was in vain, when they remained
obdurate, and the high decree of God took effect, still
he would not, out of very affection for them, he
would not allow after all that they were
reprobate. He comforted himself with the thought of 25
how many were the exceptions to so dismal a
sentence. "Hath God cast away His people?"
he asks; "God forbid. For I also am an Israelite,
of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin."
"All are not Israelites that are of Israel." And 30
he dwells upon his confident anticipation of their
recovery in time to come. "They are enemies,"
he says, writing to the Romans, "for your sakes;"
that is, you have gained by their loss; "but they
are most dear for the sake of the fathers; for the
gifts and the calling of God are without 5
repentance." "Blindness in part has happened to
Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should
come in; and so all Israel should be saved."

My Brethren, I have now explained to a
certain extent what I meant when I spoke of St. 10
Paul's characteristic gift, as being a special
apprehension of human nature as a fact, and an
intimate familiarity with it as an object of
continual contemplation and affection. He made it
his own to the very full, instead of annihilating 15
it; he sympathized with it, while he mortified it
by penance, while he sanctified it by the grace
given him. Though he had never been a heathen,
though he was no longer a Jew, yet he was a
heathen in capability, as I may say, and a Jew 20
in the history of the past. His vivid imagination
enabled him to throw himself into the state of
heathenism, with all those tendencies which lay
dormant in his human nature carried out, and
its infirmities developed into sin. His wakeful 25
memory enabled him to recall those past
feelings and ideas of a Jew, which in the case of
others a miraculous conversion might have
obliterated; and thus, while he was a Saint inferior
to none, he was emphatically still a man, and to 30
his own apprehension still a sinner.

And this being so, do you not see, my brethren,
how well fitted he was for the office of an
Ecumenical Doctor, and an Apostle, not of the Jews
only, but of the Gentiles? The Almighty
sometimes works by miracle, but commonly He 5
prepares His instruments by methods of this world;
and, as He draws souls to Him, "by the cords of
Adam," so does He select them for His use
according to their natural powers. St. John, who lay
upon His breast, whose book was the sacred heart 10
of Jesus, and whose special philosophy was the
"scientia sanctorum," _he_ was not chosen to be
the Doctor of the Nations. St. Peter, taught in
the mysteries of the Creed, the Arbiter of doctrine
and the Ruler of the faithful, he too was passed 15
over in this work. To him specially was it given
to preach to the world, who knew the world; he
subdued the heart, who understood the heart. It
was his sympathy that was his means of influence;
it was his affectionateness which was his title and 20
instrument of empire. "I became to the Jews a
Jew," he says, "that I might gain the Jews; to
them that are under the Law, as if I were under
the Law, that I might gain them that were under
the Law. To those that were without the Law, 25
as if I were without the Law, that I might gain
them that were without the Law. To the weak
I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I
became all things to all men, that I might save
all." 30

And now, my brethren, my time is out, before
I have well begun my subject. For how can I
be said yet to have entered upon the great
Apostle, when I have not yet touched upon his
Christian affections, and his bearing towards the
children of God? As yet I have chiefly spoken 5
of his sympathy with human nature unassisted
and unregenerate; not of that yearning of his
heart, as it showed itself in action under the
grace of the Redeemer. But perhaps it is most
suitable on the feast of his Conversion, to stop 10
at that point at which the day leaves him; and
perhaps too it will be permitted to me on a future
occasion to attempt, if it be not presumption, to
speak of him again.

Meanwhile, may this glorious Apostle, this 15
sweetest of inspired writers, this most touching
and winning of teachers, may he do me some
good turn, who have ever felt a special devotion
towards him! May this great Saint, this man of
large mind, of various sympathies, of affectionate 20
heart, have a kind thought for every one of us
here according to our respective needs! He has
carried his human thoughts and feelings with
him to his throne above; and, though he sees
the Infinite and Eternal Essence, he still 25
remembers well that troublous, restless ocean below, of
hopes and fears, of impulses and aspirations, of
efforts and failures, which is now what it was
when he was here. Let us beg him to intercede
for us with the Majesty on high, that we too may 30
have some portion of that tenderness, compassion,
mutual affection, love of brotherhood, abhorrence
of strife and division, in which he excelled. Let
us beg him especially, as we are bound, to bless
the most reverend Prelate, under whose
jurisdiction we here live, and whose feast day this is; 5
that the great name of Paul may be to him a
tower of strength and fount of consolation now,
and in death, and in the day of account.

NOTES

SAUL

=Introductory Note.= The sketches of Saul and David are contained in the third volume of _Parochial and Plain Sermons_. These discourses were delivered at Oxford before Newman's conversion to the Catholic Church.

=Saul.= The first king of Israel reigned from 1091 to 1051 B.C. He ruled conjointly with Samuel the prophet eighteen years, and alone, twenty-two years. Samuel had been judge of Israel twelve years when the discontented Jews demanded a king, and Saul was elected by lot.

=13=: 7. =Manna.= Miraculous food supplied to the Jews, wandering in the desert of Sin, after their exodus from Egypt. The taste of manna was that of flour mixed with honey.

=13=: 10. =Moses.= Deliverer, lawgiver, ruler, and prophet of Israel, 1447 B.C. The author of the _Pentateuch_ is probably the greatest figure of the Old Law and the most perfect type of Christ.

=14=: 3. =Gadara.= Noted for the miracle of casting out demons, wrought there by our Lord. The inhabitants in fear besought Him to leave their coasts. Mark v. 17.

=16=: 24. =David.= The prophet and king famous as the royal psalmist. From his line sprang the Messias.

=17=: 4. =The asses.= Saul, searching for his father's asses, was met by Samuel and anointed king.