The interplay of lives in a family should be consciously directed by those who control them to the cultivation, to the bringing out of the best that is in them. Education means the drawing out of the innate powers of the personality and the training of them for the highest purposes. It is the deliberate direction of personal powers to the highest ends, the discipline of them for the performance of those ends. The life of a child should be shaped with reference to its final destiny from the moment of its birth. It should be surrounded with an atmosphere of prayer and charity which would be the natural atmosphere in which it would expand as it grows, and in terms of which it would learn to express itself as soon as it reaches sufficient maturity to express itself at all. It should become familiar with spiritual language and modes of action, and meet nothing that is inharmonious with these. But we know that the education of the Christian child is commonly the opposite of all this. It learns little that is spiritual. When it comes to learn religion it is obviously a matter of small importance in the family life; if there is any expression of it at all, it is one that is crowded into corners and constantly swamped by other interests which are obviously felt to be of more importance. Too often the spiritual state of the family may be summed up in the words of the small boy who condensed his observation of life into the axiom: "Men and dogs do not go to Church." In such an atmosphere the child finds religion and morals reduced to a system of repression. God becomes a man with a club constantly saying, Don't! He grows to think that he is a fairly virtuous person so long as he skilfully avoids the system of taboos wherewith he feels that life is surrounded, and fulfils the one positive family law of a religious nature, that he shall go to Sunday School until he is judged sufficiently mature to join the vast company of men and dogs.

Nothing very much can come of negatives. Religion calls for positive expression; and it is not enough that the child shall find positive expression once a week in the church; he must find it every day in the week in the intimacy of the family. He must find that the principles of life which are inculcated in the church are practiced by his father and his mother, his brother and his sister, or he will not take them seriously. If he is conscious of virtue and religious practice as repression, a sort of tyranny practiced on a child by his elders, his notion of the liberty of adult life will quite naturally be freedom to break away from what is now forced upon him into the life of self-determination and indifference to things spiritual that characterises the adult circle with which he is familiar.

But consider, by contrast, those rare families where the opposite of all this is true; where there is the peace of a recollected life of which the foundations are laid in constant devotion to our Lord. There you will find the nearest possible reproduction of the life of the Holy Family in Nazareth. Because the life of the family is a life of prayer, there will you find Jesus in the midst of it. There you will find Mary and Joseph associated with its life of intercession. In such a family the expression of a religious thought will never be felt as a discord. The talk may quite naturally at any moment turn on spiritual things. There are families in which one feels that one must make a careful preparation for the introduction of a spiritual allusion: one does it with a sense of danger, much as one might sail through a channel strewn with mines. There are other families in which one has no hesitation in speaking of prayer, of sacraments, of spiritual actions, as things with which all are familiar in practice, and are as natural as food and drink. In this atmosphere it produces no smile to say, "I am going to slip into the Church and make my meditation"; or, "I shall be a little late to-night as I am making my confession on my way home." Religion in such a circle has not incurred contempt through familiarity: it still remains a great adventure, the very greatest of all indeed; but it is an adventure in the open, full of joy and gladness.

The Holy Family was a family that worked hard. It is no doubt true that our Lord learned his foster-father's trade, so that those who knew him later on, or heard His preaching, asked, "Is not this the carpenter?" But the Holy Family was a radiant centre of joy and peace because Jesus was in the midst of it. Where Jesus dwells there is the effect of his indwelling in the spiritual gladness that results. Mary was never too busy for her religious duties nor Joseph too tired with his week's work to get up on the Sabbath for whatever services in honour of God the Synagogue offered. They were perhaps conscious as the Child "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man" of a spiritual influence that flowed from Him, and sweetened and lightened the life of the home. They were not conscious that in His Person God was in the midst of them; but that is what we can (if we will) be conscious of. We are heirs of the Incarnation, and God is in the midst of us; and especially does Jesus wish to dwell, as He dwelt in Nazareth, in the midst of the family. He wishes to make every household a Holy Family. He is in the midst of it in uninterrupted communion with the soul of the baptised child; and the father and mother, understanding that their highest duty and greatest privilege is to watch and foster the spiritual unfolding of the child's life in such wise that Jesus may never depart from union with it, become as Joseph and Mary in their ministry to it. There is nothing more heavenly than such a charge; there is nothing more beautiful than such a family life.

There is often a pause in God's work between times of great activity—a time of retreat, as it seems, which is a rest from what has preceded and a preparation for what is to come. Such a pause were these years at Nazareth in the life of Blessed Mary. The time from the Annunciation to the return from Egypt was a time of deep emotion, of spirit-shaking events. Later on there were the trials of the years of the ministry, culminating in Calvary. But these years while Jesus was growing to manhood in the quietness of the home were years of unspeakable privilege and peace. The daily association with the perfect Child, the privilege of watching and guarding and ministering to Him, these days of deepening spiritual union with Him, although much that was happening to the mother was happening unconsciously,—were strengthening her grasp on ultimate reality, so that she issued with perfect strength to meet the supreme tragedy of her life. How wonderful God must have seemed to her in those thirty years of peace! To all of us God is thus wonderful in quiet hours; and the quiet hours are much the more numerous in most of our lives. But have we all learned to use these hours so that we may be ready to meet the hours of testing which shall surely come? No matter how quiet the valley of our life, some day the pleasant path will lift, and we must climb the hilltop where rises the Cross. It will not be intolerable, if the quiet years have been spent in Nazareth with Jesus and Mary and Joseph.

Most holy, and pure Virgin, Blessed Mayd, Sweet Tree of Life, King David's Strength and Tower, The House of Gold, the Gate of Heaven's power, The Morning-Star whose light our fall hath stay'd.

Great Queen of Queens, most mild, most meek, most wise, Most venerable, Cause of all our joy, Whose cheerful look our sadnesse doth destroy, And art the spotlesse Mirror to man's eyes.

The Seat of Sapience, the most lovely Mother, And most to be admired of thy sexe, Who mad'st us happy all, in thy reflexe, By bringing forth God's Onely Son, no other.

Thou Throne of Glory, beauteous as the moone, The rosie morning, or the rising sun, Who like a giant hastes his course to run, Till he hath reached his two-fold point of noone.

How are thy gifts and graces blazed abro'd, Through all the lines of this circumference, T'imprint in all purged hearts this Virgin sence Of being Daughter, Mother, Spouse of God?

Ben Jonson, 1573-1637.



PART TWO

CHAPTER XII

THE TEMPLE

And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Know ye not that I must be in my Father's house?

S. Luke II, 49.

We give thanks unto thee, O Lord, who lovest mankind, Thou benefactor of our souls and bodies, for that Thou hast this day vouchsafed to feed us with Thy Heavenly Mysteries; guide our path aright, establish us all in Thy fear, guard our lives, make sure our steps through the prayers and supplications of the glorious Mother of God and Ever Virgin Mary and of all Thy saints.

RUSSIAN.

The time was come when by the law of His people the Boy Jesus must assume the duties of an adult in the exercise of His religion. Therefore His parents took Him with them to Jerusalem that He might participate in the celebration of the Passover. It would be a wonderful moment in the life of any intelligent Hebrew boy when for the first time he came in contact with the places and scenes which were so familiar to him in the story of his nation's past; and we can imagine what would have been the special interest of the Child Jesus who would have been so thoroughly taught in the Old Testament Scriptures, and who would have felt an added interest in the places He was now seeing because of their association with His great ancestor, David. Still His chief interest was in the religion of His people, and it was the temple where the sacrificial worship of God was centred that would have for Him the greatest attraction. This was His "Father's House," and here He Himself felt utterly at home. We are not surprised to be told that He lingered in these courts.

"And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and His mother knew it not." They had perfect confidence in Jesus; and yet it seems strange that they should have assumed that He was somewhere about and would appear at the proper time. When the night drew on and the camp was set up there was no Child to be found. Then we imagine the distress, the trouble of heart, with which Mary and Joseph hurry back to Jerusalem and spend the ensuing days in seeking through its streets. We share something of our Lord's surprise when we learn that the temple was the last place that they thought of in their search. Did they think that Jesus would be caught by the life of the Passover crowds that filled the streets of Jerusalem? Did they think that it would be a child's curiosity which would hold him fascinated with the glittering toys of the bazaars? Did they think that He had mistaken the caravan and been carried off in some other direction and was lost to them forever? We only know that it was not till three days had passed that they thought of the temple and there found Him. "And when they saw Him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto Him, Son, why has thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Know ye not that I must be in my Father's house?"

S. Mary and S. Joseph were proceeding on certain assumptions as to what Jesus would do which turned out to be untenable. It is one of the dangers of our religion—our personal religion—that we are apt to assume too much which in the testing turns out to be unfounded. We reach a certain stage of religious attainment, and then we assume that all is going well with us. When one asks a child how he is getting on he invariably answers: "I am all right." And the adult often has the same childish confidence in an untested and unverified state of soul. We are "all right"; which practically means that we do not care to be bothered with looking into our spiritual state at all. We have been going on for years now following the rules that we laid down when we first realised that the being a Christian was a more or less serious matter. Nothing has happened in these years to break the placidity of our routine. There has never been any relapse into grievous sin; we have never felt any real temptation to abandon the practice oL our religion. We run along as easily and smoothly as a car on well-laid rails. We are "all right."

But in fact we are all wrong. We have lapsed into a state of which the ideal is purely static: an ideal of spiritual comfort as the goal of our spiritual experience here on earth. We have acquired what appears to be a state of equilibrium into which we wish nothing to intrude that would endanger the balance. We are, no doubt, quite unconsciously, excluding from life every emotion, every ambition, as well as every temptation, which appears to involve spiritual disturbance. But we need to be disturbed.

For the spiritual life is dynamic and not static; its ideal is motion and not rest. Rest is the quality of dead things, and particularly of dead souls. The weariness of the way, which is so obvious a phenomenon in the Christian life, is the infallible sign of lukewarmness. What we need therefore is to break with the assumption that we know all that it is necessary to know, and that we have done or are doing all that it is necessary to do. It is indeed the mark of an ineffective religion that the notion of necessity is adopted as its stimulus, rather than the notion of aspiration. The question, "Must I do this?" is a revelation of spiritual poverty and ineptitude. "I press on," is the motto of a living religion.

Personal religion, therefore, needs constantly to be submitted to new tests, lest it lapse into an attitude of finality. Fortunately for us, God does not leave the matter wholly in our hands, but Himself, through His Providence, applies a wide variety of tests to us. It is often a bitter and disturbing experience to have our comfortable routine broken up and to find that we have quite miserably failed under very simple temptations. And the sort of failure I am thinking of is not so much the failure of sin as the failure of ideal. It is the case of those who think that they have satisfactorily worked out the problems of the spiritual life, and have reached a satisfactory adjustment of duty and practice, and then find that if the adjustment changes their practice falls off. The outer circumstances of life change and the change is followed by a readjustment of the inner life on a distinctly lower plane. It is revealed to us that the outer circumstances were controlling the spiritual practice, and not the practice dominating the circumstances. The ruling ideal was that of comfort, and under the new circumstances the spiritual ideal is lowered until it fits in with a new possibility of comfort in the altered circumstances. It is well to examine ourselves on these matters and to find what is the actual ruling motive in our religious practice.

We may have assumed that we have Jesus, when all the assumption meant was that we thought that He was somewhere about. After all, it will not aid us very much if He is "in the company," if we go on our day's journey without Him. It is a poor assumption to build life upon, that Jesus exists, or that He is in the Church, or that He is the Saviour. It is nothing to us unless He is our Saviour, unless He is personally present in us and with us. And it is not wise or safe to let this be a matter of assumption, even though the assumption rest on a perfectly valid experience in the past; we cannot live on history, not even on our own history. That Jesus is with us must be verified day by day, and we ought to go no day's journey without the certainty of His presence. We can best do that, when the circumstances of life permit, by a daily communion. There at the altar we meet Jesus and know that He is with us. When the circumstances of life do not permit, (and often they do, when we lazily think they do not) there are other modes of arriving at spiritual certainty.

It is quite easy to lose Jesus. He does not force His companionship upon us, but rather when we meet Him. "He makes as though he would go farther." He offers Himself to us; He never compels us to receive Him as a guest. And when we have in fact received Him, and asked Him to abide with us, He does not stay any longer than we want Him. We have to constrain Him. In other words, we lose Jesus, we lose the vitality of our spiritual life (though we may retain the routine practice of our religion), if we are not from day to day making it the most vital issue of our lives. That does not necessarily mean that we are spending more time on it than on anything else, but that we are putting it first in the order of importance in our lives and are sacrificing, if occasion arise, other things to it, rather than it to them. That a man loves his wife and child does not necessarily mean that he actually spends more time on them than he does on his business, but it does mean that they are more important in his life than his business, and if need arise it will be the business that is sacrificed to them and not they to the business. Spirituality is much less a matter of time than of energy. A wise director can guide a man to sanctity who will probably consecrate his Sunday, and give the director one half hour on week days to dispose of.

To lose Jesus does not require the commission of great sin, as we count sin. The quite easiest way to lose Him is to forget Him and go about our business as though He did not exist. That is a frequent happening. For vast numbers Jesus does not exist except for an hour or so on Sunday. They give Him the formal homage of attendance at church on Sunday morning and then they go out and forget Him, not only for the rest of the week but for the rest of the day. The religion which thus reduces itself to a minimum of attendance at Mass on Sunday morning is surely not a religion from which much can be expected in the way of spiritual accomplishment. If it be true that there is a minimum of religious requirement which will ensure that we "go to heaven," then that sort of religion may be useful; but I do not know that anywhere such a minimum is required. The statement that I find is "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." The outstanding characteristic of love is surely not niggardliness, but passionate self-giving. All things are forgiven, not to those who are careful to keep within the limits required, but to those who "love much."

The study of many cases, the experience of over thirty years in the confessional, convinces me that the chief cause of spiritual failure among Christians is not the irresistible impact of temptation but the lack of spiritual vision. The average man or woman is not consciously going anywhere; but they are just keeping a rule which is the arbitrary exactment of God. It might just as well be some other rule. That is, in their minds, the practice of the spiritual life has no immediate ends; it is not productive of spiritual expansion; it is not a ladder set up on earth to reach heaven on which they are climbing ever nearer God, and on the way are catching ever broader visions of spiritual reality as they ascend. The knowledge and the love of God are to them phrases, not practical goals, invitations to paths of spiritual adventure. Hence, having no immediate ends to accomplish, they find the whole spiritual routine dull and unattractive and naturally tend to reduce it to a minimum. It is not at all surprising that in the end they drop religion altogether, as why should one keep on travelling a road that leads nowhere? How can one love and serve a Jesus whom one has lost?

The problem of personal religion is the problem of finding Jesus, of bringing life into a right relation to Him. The plain path is to follow the example of His parents who sought Him "sorrowing." Sorrow for having lost Jesus is the true repentance. Repentance which springs from fear of consequences, or from disgust with our own incompetence and stupidity when we realise that we have made a spiritual failure of life, is an imperfect thing. True repentance has its origin in love and is therefore directed toward a person. It is the conviction that we have violated the love of our Father, our Saviour, our Sanctifier. Sorrow springing from love is sorrow "after a godly sort." It is easy for us to drift into ways of carelessness and indifference which seem not to involve sin, to be no more than a decline from some preceding standard of practice which we conclude to have been unnecessarily strict; but the result is an increasing disregard of spiritual values, a growing obscuration of the divine presence in life. Then the day comes when some quite marked and positive spiritual failure, a failure of which we cannot imagine ourselves to have been guilty, when we were living in constant communion with our Lord, arouses us to the fact that for months our spiritual vitality has been declining and that we have ended in losing Jesus. It is a tremendous shock to find how fast and how far we have been travelling when we thought that we were only slightly relaxing an unnecessarily strict routine: that when we thought that we were but acting "in a common sense way," we were in reality effecting a compromise with the world. Well is it then if the surprise of our disaster shocks us back to the recovery of what we have lost, if it send us into the streets of the city, sorrowing and seeking for Jesus.

Mere spiritual laziness is at the bottom of much failure in religion. There is no success anywhere in life save through the constant pressure of the will driving a reluctant and protesting set of nerves and muscles to their daily tasks. The day labourer comes home from his work with his muscular strength exhausted, but he has to go back to the same monotonous task on the morrow: his family has to be fed and clothed and he cannot permit himself to say, "I am tired and will stay away from work to-day." The business or professional man comes back from his office with a wearied brain that makes any thought an effort, but he must take up the routine to-morrow; the pressure of competitive business does not permit him to work when and as much as he chooses. But the Christian who is engaged in the most important work that is carried on in this world, the work of preparing an immortal soul for an unending future, is constantly under the temptation "to take a day off"—to let down the standard of accomplishment till it ceases to interfere with the business or the pleasure of life; is constantly too tired or too busy to do this or that. In short, religion is apt to be treated in a manner that would ensure the bankruptcy of any material occupation in life. Why then should it not ensure spiritual bankruptcy?

Surely, to retain Jesus with us, to live in the intimacy of God, is the most pressingly important of our duties; it is worth any sort of expenditure of energy to accomplish it. And it cannot be accomplished without expenditure of energy. The view of religion which conceives it as a facile assent to certain propositions, the occasional and formal participation in certain actions, the more or less strict observance of certain rules of conduct, is so far from the fact that it is not worth discussing. Religion is the realised friendship of God; it is a personal relation of the deepest and purest sort; and, like all personal relations, is kept alive by the mutual activities of those concerned. The action of one party will not suffice to keep the relation in healthy state. The love of God itself will not suffice to maintain a being in holiness and carry him on to happiness who is himself quite indifferent to the entire spiritual transaction—whose attitude is that of one willing to be saved if he be not asked to take much trouble about it. That lackadaisical attitude can never produce any result in the spiritual order; it can only ensure the spiritual decline and death of one who has not thought it worth while to make an effort to live.

Jesus can be found; but the finding depends upon the method of the seeking. There are many men who claim, and quite honestly, to be in pursuit of truth: to find the truth is the end of all their efforts. Yet they do not succeed in finding it. Why is this? I think that the principal reason is that they are constituting themselves the judges of the truth; they first of all lay down certain rules which God must obey if He wishes them to believe in Him! They insist on having, before they will believe, a kind of evidence that is impossible of attainment. They assert that this or that is impossible, and the other thing incredible. They partially ascertain the laws that govern the material universe, and they deny to the Maker of the universe the power to act otherwise than in accord with so much of the order of nature as they have discovered! They deny to God the sort of personal action in this world that they themselves constantly exercise.

The method is not a method that can be hopeful of success. And it is worth noting that it is not a method that these same men followed in their investigations of the natural world. They have not accumulated information about natural law by first laying down rules as to how natural law must act, and refusing to listen to any evidence which does not fall in with these rules: rather, they have set themselves to observe how nature does act, and then deduced rules from their observation. Why not pursue the same method in religion? Why not in an humble spirit observe how God does act? Why start by saying, "Miracles do not happen?" Why reject as incredible the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection? Why not get a bigger notion of God than that of a mechanician running a machine, and think of Him as a Person dealing with persons? The relation of persons cannot be mechanical or predetermined; they are and must be free and spontaneous: they have their origin, not in the pressure of invariable law but in the impulse of love.

Nor is the search for Jesus that is inspired by mere curiosity likely to be a success. There are many people who are curious about religion, and they want to know why we believe thus and so; and particularly why we act as we do. Why do you keep this day? What do you mean by this ceremony? Do you think that it is wrong to do this or that? Such people wander about observing; but their observation we understand is the observation of an idler who does not expect to be influenced by what he observes, but only to be amused. These are they who run after the latest thing in heresy, the newest thing in thought. What is observable about them is that they never seriously contemplate doing anything themselves. They are like those multitudes who followed our Lord about for awhile but were dispersed by the test of hard sayings.

But Jesus can be found. He is found of all those who seek Him humbly and sincerely, putting away self and desiring simply to be led: who do not challenge Him with Pilate's scornful, "What is truth?" but rather say, "Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief." He is easily found of those who know where to look for Him. There is no mystery about that,—He will certainly be in His Father's House. The surprise of Joseph and Mary that He had thus dealt with them is answered by Jesus' surprise that they did not certainly know where He would be: "Wist ye not that I must be in My Father's House?"

In the House of God, the Church of God, is the ready approach to Jesus. It is in the last degree foolish to waive aside the Church in which are stored the treasures of more than nineteen centuries of Christian experience as though it did and could have nothing to say in the matter. A seeker after information as to the meaning of the constitution of the United States would be considered a madman if he impatiently turned from those of whom he made enquiry when they suggested the decrees of the Supreme Court as the proper place to seek information. Surely, from any point of view, the Church will know more about Jesus than any one else: if in all the centuries it has not discovered the meaning of Him Whom it ceaselessly worships there is small likelihood that that meaning will be discovered by an unbeliever studying an ancient book! If the Church cannot lead us to Jesus, and if it cannot interpret to us His will, there is small likelihood that any one else will be able to do so. And if during all these centuries His will has been unknown it can hardly be of much importance to discover it now. If His Church has failed, then His Mission is discredited.

For us who have accepted His revelation as made to the Church and by it unfailingly preserved, who have learned to find Him there where He has promised to be until the end of time, there is another sense in which we think of His words as words of encouragement and consolation. There are hours in life which press hard upon us; there are other hours when the sense of God's love and goodness fills us with thankfulness and joy. In such hours we crave the intimacy of personal communion: we want to tell our grief or our joy. And then we take our way to the temple, and know that we shall find Him there in His Incarnate Presence in His Father's House. We go in and kneel before the Tabernacle and know that Jesus is here. Here in the silence He waits for us. Here in the long hours He watches; here is the ever-open door leading to the Father where any man at any time may enter. He who humbled Himself to the hidden life of Nazareth now humbles Himself to the hidden life of the Tabernacle: and we who believe His Word, have no need to envy Joseph and Mary the intimacy of their life with Jesus, because here for us, if we will, is a greater intimacy—the intimacy of those of whom it can be said: They evermore dwell in Him and He in them.

Lady of Heaven, Regent of the Earth, Empress of all the infernal marshes fell, Receive me, thy poor Christian, 'spite my, dearth, In the fair midst of thine elect to dwell: Albeit my lack of grace I know full well; For that thy grace, my Lady and my Queen, Aboundeth more than all my misdemean, Withouten which no soul of all that sigh May merit heaven. 'Tis sooth I say, for e'en In this belief I will to live and die.

Say to thy Son, I am his—that by his birth And death my sins be all redeemable— As Mary of Egypt's dole he changed to mirth, And eke Theophilus', to whom befell Quittance of thee, albeit (so men tell) To the foul fiend he had contracted been. Assoilzie me, that I may have no teen, Maid, that without breach of virginity Didst bear our Lord that in the Host is seen: In this belief I will to live and die.

A poor old wife I am, and little worth: Nothing I know, nor letter aye could spell: Where in the church to worship I fare forth, I see heaven limned with harps and lutes, and hell Where damned folk seethe in fire unquenchable: One doth me fear, the other joy serene; Grant I may have the joy, O Virgin clean, To whom all sinners lift their hands on high, Made whole in faith through thee, their go-between: In this belief I will to live and die.



ENVOY

Thou didst conceive, Princess most bright of sheen, Jesus the Lord, that hath no end nor mean, Almighty that, departing heaven's demesne To succour us, put on our frailty, Offering to death his sweet of youth and green: Such as he is, our Lord he is, I ween: In this belief I will to live and die.



PART TWO

CHAPTER XIII

CANA I

And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there; and both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.

S. John II, 1.

Grant, O Lord, we beseech thee, that we thy servants may enjoy constant health of body and mind, and by the glorious intercession of blessed Mary, ever a virgin, be delivered from all temporal afflictions, and come to those joys that are eternal. Through.

Having received, O Lord, what is to advance our salvation; grant we may always be protected by the patronage of blessed Mary, ever a virgin, in whose honor we have offered this sacrifice to thy majesty. Through.

Old Catholic.

"There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there." To S. John Blessed Mary is ever the "mother of Jesus." He never calls her by her name in any mention of her. Jesus who loved him and whom he loved and loves always with consuming passion, held the foreground of his consciousness; all other persons are known through their relation to Him. As he is writing his Gospel-story toward the end of his life, the Blessed Virgin has long been gone to join her Son in the place of perfect love. We cannot conceive of her living long on earth after His Ascension. Her "conversation" would in a special way be "in heaven." Whatever the time she remained here awaiting the will of God for her, we may be sure that the days she spent under the protection of S. John were wonderful days for him, wherein their communing would have been the continual lifting of their hearts and souls to Him, Child and Friend, who is also God enthroned at the Right Hand of the Father. It is not unlikely that the marvellous spiritual maturity of which we are conscious in the writings of S. John was aided in its unfolding by the intimacy of his relations with S. Mary. But always she remained to him what she was because of what Jesus was; she remained to the end "the mother of Jesus."

Here at the marriage of Cana the way in which she is mentioned suggests that she was staying in the house where the marriage was celebrated: she was simply there; Jesus and the disciples were called, invited, to the wedding. Some relationship, it has been suggested, between S. Mary and the bride or groom led to her presence in the house. That however is mere conjecture. The marriage in any case was a wonderful one, for both Jesus and Mary were there. It was therefore the ideal of all weddings which seem to lack the true note of the new matrimony which springs from the Incarnation if they take place without such guests. As in imagination we follow Mary as she goes quietly about the house, which like her own was a home of the poor, helping in the arrangements of the wedding, one cannot help recalling many weddings with which one has had something to do, and in the arrangements of which we cannot think of Mary as having any part. They were the arrangements of the weddings of Christians, and the weddings took place in a Christian church; but neither is Mary there nor Jesus called. We are unable to think of Mary as present amid the tumult of worldiness and frivolity, the endless chatter over dress and decoration, which so commonly precedes the celebration of a sacrament which is the symbol of "the mystical union that there is betwixt Christ and His Church." That deep piety which puts God and God's will before all else would strike a jarring note here, where the dominant note is still the pagan note of the decking of the slave for her new master. It is perhaps not without significance of the direction of the movement of the modern mind that the protests of the emancipated woman are against the Christian, not the pagan elements in matrimony: she tends to regard marriage as a state of temporary luxury rather than the perfect union of two souls in Christ. Clearly in marriages which are regarded as purely temporary engagements, dependent on the will of the parties for their continuance, there is no place for the mother of Jesus. The purity that emanates from her will be a silent but keenly felt criticism on the whole conception underlying a vast number of modern marriages. Even as I write I read that in a certain great city in the United States the number of divorces granted was one fourth of the number of the marriages celebrated.

Clearly at marriages which are surrounded with this atmosphere of paganism, be they celebrated where they may, there is no place for the Blessed Mother; and neither is Jesus called. His priest, unfortunately, is often called, and dares celebrate a sacrament which in the circumstances he can hardly help feeling is a sacrilege. There are many cases in which what purports to be Christian marriage is between those who are not Christians, or of whom only one is a Christian in any complete sense. One hears frequently of the sacrament of matrimony being celebrated when only one of the parties is baptised. It is of course possible for any priest to act on the authority conferred upon him by the state and in his capacity as a state official perform marriages between those whom the state authorises to be married: but why do it under the character of a priest? or why throw about the ceremony the suggestions of a sacrament?

If Jesus is really to be called to a marriage, it means that the preparations for the marriage will be largely spiritual. The parties to the marriage will approach the marriage through other sacraments. They will both be members of the Church of God by baptism; and they will be, or look forward to becoming, communicants. They will prepare for the sacrament of matrimony by receiving the sacrament of penance, and receiving the communion. What better preparation for starting a new life, for setting out to create a new family in the Kingdom of God, a family in which the ideals of the life at Nazareth are to be the ruling ideals, than that cleansing of soul that fits them for the beginning of a new life? A priest has great joy when he knows that those who are kneeling before him to receive the nuptial blessing are souls pure in God's sight, dwellings ready and adorned for the coming of Christ.

For it is the normal and fitting crown of the ceremonies of marriage that Jesus be there, that the Holy Mass be celebrated and that those who have just been indissolubly united may as their first act partake of the Bread of Heaven which giveth life to the world. I myself would rather not be asked to celebrate a wedding unless it is to be approached with the purity of Mary, and sealed by the partaking of Jesus. It is so great and wonderful a thing, this sacrament of matrimony. Here are two human beings setting out to fulfil the vocation of man to build up the Kingdom of God, to set up a new hearth where the love of God may be manifest and where children may be trained in the knowledge and love of God; where the life of Christ may find contact with human life and through it manifest God to the world—how wonderful and beautiful and holy all that is! And then to remember what commonly takes place is to be overcome with a sense of what must be the pain of God's heart.

We go back to look into the home where Mary seems to be directing the arrangements of the wedding feast. It was a poor home and not much could be provided; the wine, so essential to the feast, failed. What was to be done? To whom would Mary look? She could have no money to buy wine. One feels that after Joseph's death she had come more and more to look to Jesus for help of all sorts. The deepening of their mutual love, the completeness of their understanding, would make this the natural thing. S. Mary feels that if there is any help in these embarrassing circumstances, any way of sparing the feelings of the bridegroom, Jesus will know it and help. There is no doubt in her mind; but the certainty that He can help. So she turns to Him with her "they have no wine." The words as we read them contain at once an appeal and a suggestion: an appeal for help, advice, guidance, with the hint that Jesus can effectually help if He will. It is not as some have rather crudely thought a suggestion that He perform a miracle, but the appeal of one who has learned to have unlimited trust in Him.

The reply of our Lord cannot fail to shock the English reader; and the very nature of the shock ought to indicate that there is something wrong with the translation. The words sound brusque and ill-mannered; and our Lord was never that nor could be, least of all to His blessed Mother. The dictionaries all tell us that the word translated woman is quite as well translated lady, in the sense of mistress or house mother. There is really a shade of meaning that we have no word for. Perhaps we best understand what it is that is missed if we recall the fact that when our Lord addressed S. Mary from the Cross He used the same word: "Woman, behold thy son." In such circumstances we understand that the word on our Lord's lips is a word of infinite tenderness. I do not believe that we could do better than to translate it mother. We might paraphrase our Lord's saying thus: "Mother, we are both concerned with the trouble of these friends; but do not be anxious; I will act when the time comes." His words are perfectly simple and courteous, though they do, no doubt, suggest that her anxiety is unnecessary and that He will act in due time. If we are to understand that our Lady was suggesting that He perform a miracle, then He certainly yielded to her intercession.

Indeed, this short aside in the rejoicing of the marriage celebration is suggestive of wide reaches of thought. It suggests, which concerns us most here, something of the mode of prayer. Prayer is not a force exercised upon God, it is an aspiration that He answers or not as He sees fit, according as He sees our needs to be: and if He answers, He answers in His own way and at His own time—when His hour is come. The intercession of the saints, and of the highest saint of all, the holy Mother, must thus be conceived as aspiration not as force. We hardly need to remind ourselves that Blessed Mary though the highest of creatures is still a creature and infinitely removed from the uncreated God. When we think of her prayers or the prayers of the saints as having "influence" or "power" with God, we must remember the limitations of human language. It is quite possible through inaccurate use of language to create the impression that we believe the prayers of the saints to be prevailing with God because of some peculiar spiritual energy that belongs to them, or, still worse, because we regard them as a sort of court favourites who have special influence and can get things done that ordinary people cannot. We need only to state the supposition to see that we do not mean it. When we think what we mean by the influence of the prayers of the saints, of their prevailingness with God, we know that we mean that the superior value of the prayers of the saints is due to the superior nature of their spiritual insight, to their better understanding of the mind and purpose of God. Blessed Mary is our most powerful intercessor because by her perfect sanctity she understands God better than any one else. No educated Christian believes that she can persuade God to change His mind or alter His judgment, or that she or any saint would for a moment want to do so. Nor do we who cry for aid in the end want any other aid than aid to see God's will and power to do it: we have no wish or hope to impose our will on God. Prayer is aspiration, the seeking for understanding, the submitting our desires to the love of God; and the prayer of the saints helps us because they are our brothers and sisters, of the same household, and join with us in the offering of ourselves to God that we may know and do His holy will. And we can see here in this incident at Cana the whole mode of prayer. There is the just implied suggestion of the need, the hint of her own thought about the matter, in the way in which S. Mary presents the case to Jesus. There is the divine method which approves the end sought but reserves the time and method of fulfilling it to the "hour" which the divine wisdom approves. There is the ideal Christian attitude which accepts the divine will perfectly, and says to the servants: "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it."

"They have no wine": S. Mary's word expresses the present weakness of humanity, Man is born in sin, that is, out of union with God. That hoary statement of dogmatic theology seems to stir the wrath of the modern mind more than any other dogma of the Christian Faith, except it be the dogma of eternal punishment. It is rather an amusing phenomenon that those who have no visible basis for pride are likely to be the most consumed with it. The pride of Diogenes was visible through the holes in his carpet; the pride of liberalism is visible in its irritability whenever the subject of sin, especially original sin, is mentioned. Yet the very complacency of liberalism about the perfection of man, is but another evidence (if we needed another) of his inherent sinfulness, his weakness in the face of moral ideals. If we confess our sins we are on the way to forgiveness; but if we say that we have no sin the truth is not in us.

This boasting of capacity to be pure and strong without God, theologically the Pelagian heresy, is sufficiently answered by a cursory view of what humanity has done and does do. Even where the Christian religion has been accepted the accomplishment is hardly ground for boasting. The plain fact is (and you may account for it how you like, it remains in any case a fact) that human beings are terribly weak in the face of moral and spiritual ideals. They are not sufficiently drawn by them to overcome the tendency of their nature toward a quite opposite set of ideals. We do run easily and spontaneously after ideals which the calm and enlightened judgment of the race, whether Christian or non-Christian, has continuously disapproved. We know that Buddha and Mahomet and Confucius would repudiate Paris and Berlin and New York and London with the same certainty if not with the same energy as Christ. We live in a time when a decisive public opinion gets its way; and therefore we are quite safe in saying that the misery and sin which go unchecked in the very centres of modern civilisation exist and continue because there is no decided public opinion against them.

All attempts at reform which are merely attempts to reform machinery are futile, they can produce only passing and superficial results. There is only one medicine for the disease of the world, and that medicine is the Blood of Christ. Ultimately, one believes, that will be applied; but evidently it will not be applied in any broad way as a social treatment till all the quack remedies have demonstrated their uselessness. The last two centuries have been the flowering time of quacks. The mere history of their theories fills volumes. Our own time shows no decline in productiveness, nor decline in hopefulness in the efficacy of the last remedy to bid for support. But the time of disillusionment must some time come.

When that time comes all men will lift their eyes, as individual men have always lifted them, up to the hills whence cometh their help. Except they had kept their eyes so resolutely fastened on the earth at their feet they would have seen, what has always been visible to those who lift up their eyes, a crucified Figure on the one supreme hill of earth,—the hill called Calvary. There "one Figure stands, with outstretched hands" saying, with inextinguishable optimism, the indestructible optimism of God, "and I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me."

What in the end will prevail with them, what will make them turn to the Tree which is for the healing of the nations, is the perception that in it is the remedy for the weakness that they have either sought to heal by other means, or have resolutely denied to exist at all. There are men whose wills are so strong that even in the grip of some serious disease they will long go on about their business asserting that there is nothing the matter with them and overcoming bodily pain and weakness by sheer will power; but the end comes finally with a collapse that is perhaps beyond remedy. We live in a society which has the same characteristics, but it may be that it will see its state and turn to healing. For God cannot heal except with our co-operation. Christ pleads from the Cross, but he can do no more. He will not submit to our tests; He will not come down that we may believe in Him. We must come to Him, laying aside all our pride and self-will, and kneel by the Cross to ask His help.

We know, do we not? that that is the law for the individual; that we found the meaning of Christ, and what He can do in life, when we laid aside pride and self-will and humbly asked help and pardon. It may be that we resisted a long while, struggling against the pull of the divine magnet; but if we have attained to spiritual peace it is because the Cross won, because we found ourselves kneeling at the feet of Jesus. Perhaps we have not got there yet, but are only on the way. Perhaps our religion as yet is a formality and not a devotion. Perhaps our pride still struggles against the Catholic practice of religion. Then why not give way now, to-night? Let Mary take you and lead you to Jesus. She will bring you to him with her half-suggestion, half-prayer: "He has no wine." He has got to the end of his strength, and he has found the weariness of self, he is ready for healing. O my divine Son, is not this your opportunity, your "hour"?

Jesus loves to have us bring one another to Him. It is so obviously the response to His Spirit, that carrying out of His teaching, so to love the brother that we may bring him to the healing of the Cross. To care for the spiritual needs of the brother is a real ministry: it is an extension of Christ in us that clothes us with the power to aid other souls in work or prayer. What a beautiful picture of this work there is in the Gospel of St. John. "And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast: the same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus." And this work of presenting souls to Jesus which is so clearly one of our chief privileges, how should not that be also the privilege of all the saints, and especially of the Holy Mother? Blessed Mary, we may be sure, delights in leading souls who so hesitatingly come to her, to the presence of her Son,—just presenting them in their need and with her prayer, which is all the plea that is needed to attract the love and mercy of Jesus. "Why not," ask certain people who have not thought out the meaning of Catholic dogma, "why not go at once to our Lord; why go in this roundabout way?" Why not? Because of our human qualities. Because we need company and sympathy. For the same reason precisely that makes us ask one another's prayers here. "The Father Himself loveth you." Why in this roundabout way ask me to pray? You do not come to me because you lack faith in God or in God's love; you come to me because you feel, if only implicitly, that in the Body of Christ association in love and sympathy and work is a high privilege, and that it is God's will that we should work together and "bear one another's burdens." And the frontiers of the Kingdom of God are not the frontiers of the Church Militant, and its citizens are not only the citizens of the Church here below, but—we believe in the Communion of saints.

The hour of God strikes for any soul when that soul yields to prevenient grace and places itself utterly at the disposal of God, confiding wholly in His divine wisdom. When our Lord had answered His Blessed Mother she turned away satisfied. She did not have to concern herself any further; it was now in Jesus' hands to provide as He would. It remained but to see that His will should be carried out when He made it known.

Submission is a difficult attitude to acquire; but it is such a happy attitude when once one has acquired it. The critics of it wholly mistake it and confound it with fatalism. It is not fatalism, or passive acquiescence in another's will—a will that we have no part in forming and cannot reject. Submission is the acceptance of God's will as the expression of the highest wisdom for us. It is not true that we have no part in forming it; it is at any time an expression of God's will for us which is determined by the way in which we hitherto have corresponded to that will. Submission means that we have put ourselves in a position of active co-operation with that will, that we have made it ours: because it is the expression of a divine wisdom and love we make it wholly ours. And we have found in the acceptance of it not bondage but liberty. It is wonderful how our preconceived notion of God and religion vanishes before the first gleams of experience. To the unregenerate the service of God is utter bondage; to the regenerate it is perfect freedom. And the difference seems to be accounted for by the reversal of ideals, by a new direction of affections. "I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou hast set my heart at liberty,"

A true conversion is, perhaps, signified, more than in any other way, by the liberty of the heart,—by this change in the object of our love. That has been the constant exhortation to us, to love that which is worthy of love. "Set your affection on things above." "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." And we, loving the world and the things that are in the world, listen impatiently. But there is no possibility of a sincere conversion without a change of love. "A change of heart" conversion is often called, and so inevitably it is. And as we go through our self-examination one of the most profitable questions we can ask is, "What do I love?" That will commonly tell the whole story of the life, for "where a man's treasure is, there will his heart be also."

Richard Rolle said: "Truly he who is stirred with busy love, and is continually with Jesu in thought, full soon perceives his own faults, the which correcting, henceforward he is ware of them; and so he brings righteousness busily to birth, until he is led to God and may sit with heavenly citizens in everlasting seats. Therefore he stands clear in conscience and is steadfast in all good ways the which is never noyed with worldly heaviness nor gladdened with vainglory."

CANA I

O Glorious Lady, throned in light, Sublime above the starry height, Whose arms thine own creator pressed, A Suckling at thy sacred breast. Through the dear Blossom of thy womb, Thou changest hapless Eva's doom; Through thee to contrite souls is given An opening to their home in heaven. Thou art the great King's Portal bright, The shining Gate of living light; Come then, ye ransomed nations, sing The Life Divine 'twas hers to bring. Mother of Love and Mercy mild, Mother of graces undefiled. Drive back the foe, and to thy Son Lead thou our souls when life is done. All glory be to thee, O Lord, A Virgin's Son, by all adored, With Sire and Spirit, Three in One, While everlasting ages run.



PART TWO

CHAPTER XIV

CANA II

And when the wine failed, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.

S. John II, 3, 4.

We, the faithful, bless thee, O Virgin Mother of God, and glorify thee as is thy due, the city unshaken, the wall unbroken, the unbreakable defence and refuge of our souls.

BYZANTINE.

"Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it." These words have often been called the Gospel according to S. Mary. They certainly sum up her whole attitude in life. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word," she had said in reply to the message S. Gabriel brought her: and that is the meaning of her whole life-story, that she is at all times ready to accept the will of God, to give herself to the fulfilment of the divine purpose. There is no more perfect attitude, for it is the attitude of her divine Son whose meat it was to do the will of the Father and to finish His work, whose whole life's attitude was compressed into the words of His self-oblation in Gethsemane, "Not my will, but thine be done."

And this is the virtue that Jesus Christ inculcates upon us. "When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven ... thy will be done." There is no true religion possible without that attitude. And therefore one is deeply concerned about the immediate future inasmuch as the spirit of obedience, the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of Mary, is so rare. As one looks into the social development of the Christian era, one feels that the life and example of S. Mary has been of immense influence in the development of the ideal of womanhood. The rise of woman from a wholly subordinate and inferior condition to a condition of complete equality with man has owed more to S. Mary than to any other factor. I am not concerned with political equality; that under our present conditions of social development women should have that equality if they want it seems to me just, but I am by no means satisfied that in the long run it will prove a boon either to them or to society at large. But I am at present thinking of their spiritual equality, which after all is the basis of their other claims; and this comes to them through the Gospel, and was shown to the mind of the Church largely through S. Mary. In the earliest records of the Church woman stands on the same level of privilege as man, and the same sort of spiritual accomplishment is expected of her.

There are many members of the Body of Christ and there is a certain spiritual equality among them; but "all members have not the same office." In the Holy Spirit's distribution of functions within the Body there is a difference. Some functions, by the allotment of God, women are not called to exercise: these are sacramental and ruling functions. Others, as prophecy (the daughters of S. Philip), and ministry (the deaconess), are given them. For centuries she recognised this allotment and gave her best energies to her appointed works. She showed herself a true daughter of Mary in her loyal acceptance of the divine will and her zeal in its accomplishment. And what was the result? The Calendar of Saints, filled with the names of women, is the answer. There are no more wonderful works of God than the women whose names are commemorated at the altars of the Church and whose intercession is constantly asked throughout Catholic Christendom. There can be no thought of narrowness of opportunity or limitations in life as we study that wonderful series of women who have illumined the history of the Church from the day of S. Gabriel's message to this very moment when there are many many women who are faithfully following their vocation and doing God's will, and who will one day be our intercessors about the throne of God and of the Lamb, as they are our intercessors in the Church on earth to-day. Why any woman should complain of lack of opportunity and of the narrowness of the Church—the Church that has nourished S. Mary and S. Monica, S. Catherine of Genoa and S. Theresa; the foundresses of so many and so varied Religious Orders, so many who have devoted their lives to teaching, nursing, conducting works of charity, I am at a loss to understand. To-day we are witnessing all over the world a revolt of women against the Church; we hear not infrequent threats of what is to be done to the Church by those revolted members. I am afraid that woman is on the edge of another tragedy. She is once more looking fascinated at the fruit which "is good for food, and pleasant to the eyes and to be desired to make one wise," and listening to a voice that whispers: "Thou shalt be as God."

The question which is becoming more urgent everywhere is, What are the women of the future to be,—the daughters of Eve, or the daughters of Mary? It is not a question for declamation, but a question that calls for immediate action: and the action must be the action of women. If women clamour for work in the Church of God, here it is, and here it is abundantly; and to accomplish it there is no need that they "seek the priesthood also." The work in the Church of God is in the first place a work that God has given mothers to do; it is the primary duty of a mother to bring up her children, and especially her daughters, in fear of the Lord. That she can always succeed I do not for a moment claim; there are many adverse factors in the situation that she has to deal with. But she is inexcusable if she does not give her effort to the work as the most important work of her life. She is utterly inexcusable and must answer to God for the result if she turn her children over to the care of maids and teachers while she occupies herself with society or any exterior work.

In the second place the work of the Church of God is a work that ought to appeal to all women and a work that any woman can help in. All women can help the spiritual progress of the Church by meditating upon the life of Blessed Mary and fashioning their lives upon her example. We are all tremendously affected by example, and that is especially true of young girls. Their supreme terror seems to be that they should be caught doing or saying something different from what all other girls say or do or wear. Their opinions are as imitative as their clothes. Hence the need of the pressure of a strong Christian example, which would result most readily in the union of Christian women in a single ideal. Our present difficulty is that so many of our women who are devout members of the Church in their private capacity, so far succumb to the group-mind in their social relations that they are possessed by the same terror as the young girl in the face of the possibility of being different. Therefore are they careful to hide their real feeling for religion and their devotion to spiritual things under the mask of worldly conformity which evacuates their example of much of the power that it might have. I am quite convinced that fear of the world is about as strong an impulse toward evil as love of the world.

We need that women should clear their ideals and realise their public responsibility for the presentation of them. We need terribly at this moment insistence on the purity and simplicity of the Holy Mother of God. One is stunned at the abandonment of the ideal of reserve and modesty that the last few years have seen. Women seem to take it quite gaily: men, one notes, take it much more seriously. I have been consulted by more than one father during the past year as to the possibility of sending a boy to a school where he would be kept out of the society of half-naked girls. Have mothers no longer any sense of the value of purity? Or have they simply abandoned all responsibility that normally goes with being a mother? One recognises how helpless a man is under the circumstances, that his intervention in such matters simply casts him for the part of family tyrant; but why should a mother abandon her duty simply because her daughter says: "You don't understand. Girls are not as they were when you were young. All the girls do this. No other mother takes the line that you do. You are not modern."

One knows, of course, that the whole matter of decline in manners and morals is but a part of the world-wide revolt against the morality of Jesus Christ that we are witnessing everywhere. Social and religious teachers, students of history and social movements have seen the approach of this revolt for a long time, have been watching its rise and growth. When they have pointed out the end of the path that we have been travelling, they have been disposed of by calling them pessimists. These "pessimists" pointed out long ago that the denial of the obligation to believe would be followed by an abandonment of all moral standards. They pointed out to the devotees of "liberal religion" that they are in reality the leaders of a moral revolt, that if it does not make any difference what you believe it will soon come to make no difference what you do. It is a rather silly performance to blow up the dam which holds back the mass of water of an irrigation system and imagine that no more water will flow out than you want to flow out. When the Protestant revolt blew up the restraining dams of the Catholic Religion they had no right to expect that only so much denial of Catholic truth as it suited them to dispense with would be the result. Through the broken dams the whole religion of Christ has been flowing out and it is mere empty pretence to claim that all that is of any value is left. It is impossible to maintain anything of the sort now that all the moral content of the Christian system is openly thrown overboard by vast numbers of the population of the world, in every country that claims to be civilised. It is useless to say that there has always been evil in the world and that the maintenance of the Catholic religion has never anywhere abolished sin. That is true, but it is not to the present point. The social situation is one where there are definite religious and moral ideals strongly maintained and universally recognised, though there are many men and women who violate them; it is quite another situation when the ideals themselves are repudiated and set aside as superstitions. That is our case to-day. The Christian theory is confronted with a theory of naturalism in morals, and those who follow that theory do not do so with a feeling that they are violating accepted ideals, but with the assumption that they are missionaries setting forth a new faith. Those who have revolted from the Kingdom of God have now set up another kingdom and proclaimed openly, "We will not have this Man to reign over us." The revolt which began with a breach in the dogmatic system of the Church and denial of the authority of the Catholic Church in favour of the right of private judgment, has ended, as it could not help but end, in open abandonment of the life-ideal of the Gospels. We now have the application of the right of private judgment in the theory that one's morals are one's own concern. Such things have happened before. "In those days there was no king in Israel, but every one did what was right in his own eyes." The social state depicted in the Book of Judges reflects this revolt. The result of the same repudiation of authority is seen in modern society where what is right in one's own eyes is the whole Law and Gospel. Are we to remain quiescent, or are we to make the attempt to generate moral force?

But how can Christendom generate any more moral force? The teaching of the Gospel which it proclaims is perfectly plain. True, but is the adherence of the Church to its statements perfectly plain? Is there no falling away, no compromise, there?

When one speaks thus of the Church one is conscious of a confusion of thought in the use of the word. The teaching of the formal documents of the Church is not here in question; what we necessarily mean is the effect that the existing membership of the Church is having upon contemporary life. What we have especially in mind is the attitude of the clergy and the action of the congregation in the way of moral force. What sort of a front is the church presenting to the world, what sort of moral influence is it exercising?

It seems to me perfectly evident that all along the line the conventions of contemporary society have been accepted in the place of the life-ideals of the Gospel of Jesus. We have accepted plain departures from or compromises with Christian teaching as the recognised law of action. This is due largely to the natural sloth of the human being and his disinclination to struggle for superior standards. He feels safe and comfortable if he can succeed in losing himself in a crowd: thus he escapes both trouble and criticism. A violation of law may become so common that there is no public spirit to oppose it. The same thing may happen in morals,—violations of the Christian standard, if sufficiently widespread, command almost universal acquiesence. What is actually uncovered in the process is the fact that the plain man has no morals of his own, but imitates the prevailing morality; and if fashion sets against some particular ruling of the Christian Religion he feels quite secure in following the fashion. The vox dei in Holy Scripture and in Holy Church affect him not at all if he be conscious that he is on the side of the vox populi.

It is easy to illustrate this. The non-Catholic Christian world has the Bible, and boasts of its adherence to it as the sole guide of life; but in the matter of divorced persons it utterly disregards its teachings. By this acceptance of an unchristian attitude it has vastly weakened the fight for purity in the family relation which the Catholic Church, at least in the West, has always waged. It deliberately divides the Christian forces of the community and to a large extent thereby nullifies their action. The divisions of Christendom are terrible from every point of view; but there are certain questions on which a united mind might well be presented, and in relation to which an united mind would go far to control the attitude of society. An united Christian sentiment against divorce would go far to reduce the evil.

On the other hand the progress of the movement to abolish the evils growing out of the use of alcohol has had its strength in the Protestant bodies. On the whole (there were no doubt individual exceptions) the Churches of the Catholic tradition have been lukewarm in the matter. It is quite evident that the reform could never have been carried through if left to them, and especially if left to the bishops and clergy of the Roman and Anglican Communions. It is a plain case of failure to support a vast moral reform because of the pressure of opinion in the social circles in which they move, combined with a purely individualistic attitude toward a grave social question.

Another instance is ready at hand in the practical abandonment of the religious observance of Sunday. To Christians Sunday is the Lord's day, and is to be observed as such. It is not true that an hour in the morning is the Lord's day, and is to be given to worship, and that the rest of the day is given to us to do what we will with. But in our own Communion do we get any strong protest in favour of the sanctity of the day? Or are not the clergy compromising in the hope that if they surrender the greater part of the day to the world they will be able to save an hour or two for God? But is anything actually saved by this sort of compromise? Do we not know that the encroachments of worldliness that have narrowed down Sunday observance to an hour a day will ultimately demand that hour, that is, will deny any obligation other than the obligation of inclination? Are we not bound to stand by the Lord's day? Are we to be made lax by silly talk about puritanism? Those who talk about the "Puritan Sunday" would do well to read a little of the Medieval legislation of the Church. Are we to keep silent in the pulpit because wealthy and influential members of the congregation want to play golf and tennis on Sunday afternoons, or children want to play ball or go to the movies? Are we to be taken in by talk of hard work during the week and consequent need of rest? It is no doubt well that a man should arrange his work with a view to an adequate amount of rest; but it is also well that he should rest in his own time and not in God's. The Lord's day is not a day of rest. It ought to be, and is intended to be, a very strenuous day indeed.

One could easily spend hours in pointing out where and how the Gospel standard of life has been abandoned or compromised, and the life of the Christian in consequence conformed to the world. The result would only strengthen the position that has been already sufficiently indicated that a wholly different standard of living has been quietly substituted throughout the Western world for the standard that is contained in Holy Scripture. Now we are either bound to be Christians or we are not; and we are not Christians solely by virtue of certain beliefs more or less loosely held. Our Lord's word is: "Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you." And the Gospel view of life is a perfectly plain one, and is as far removed from the common life of Christians to-day as it possibly can be. The Gospel conception of the Christian life is contained first of all in our Lord's life. That is the perfect human life; and the New Testament optimism is well illustrated by its conviction that that life in its essential features can, with the grace of God, be imitated by man. And by those who have approached it in this spirit of optimism it has been found imitable. Innumerable men and women have lived the Christian life in the past and are living it in the present. To-day the possibility of living the Christian life, of bringing life approximately to the standard of the Gospel, is declared to be an impracticable piece of optimism, and our Lord's teaching hopelessly out of touch with reality. When people talk of the difficulty of living the Christ-life under modern conditions, the plain answer is that there is in fact only one difficulty in the matter, and that is the difficulty of wanting to do it. It is a confession of utter spiritual incompetence to say that we cannot follow the Gospel standards under modern conditions because of the isolation in which we at once find ourselves if we attempt it. If the attempt to be a Christian isolates us, it tells a pretty plain tale about our chosen companionship. It is asserting that it is hard for us to be Christians because we are devoted to the society of those who are not Christians, of those who ignore it and habitually insult the teachings of our Saviour. That is surely an extraordinary confession for a Christian to make! Can we imagine a Christian of the first period of the Church excusing himself for offering incense to the divinity of Augustus on the ground that if he did not do so certain court festivities would be closed to him, and that his friends would think him odd!

"Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you," "The friendship of this world is enmity with God." We have to choose. It is not that we may choose. It is not that it is possible to have a little of both. As Christians it is quite impossible in any real sense to have the friendship of the world, though many Christians think that they can. What really is open to us is the enmity of the world if we are sincere and strict in our profession, and the contempt of the world if we are not. You have not to read very deep in contemporary literature to learn what the world thinks about the Christian who ignores or compromises his standards. The world knows perfectly well what constitutes a Christian life, and it shows a well merited scorn of those who, not having the courage openly to abandon it, yet show by their lives that they do not value it. We may not show the same sort of contempt for the "weak brother" as S. Paul calls him, but we ought to make it plain that we have no sort of approval of the brother who pleads weakness as an excuse for laxity.

There is one law of life and only one; and that is summed up in our Lady's direction to the servants at Cana in Galilee: "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." There is no ground for pleading that our Lord's will is an obscure will, or that circumstances have so changed that much that He set forth in word and example has no application to-day in the America of the twentieth century. Perhaps if any one feels that there is some truth in the last statement, he would do well to examine the case and to find out just what and how much of the Gospel teaching is obsolete, and how much has contemporary application, and to ask himself whether he is constantly putting in action that part which he thinks still holds good. It will, I think, on examination be found that none of our Lord's teaching is obsolete, though in some cases changed circumstances may have changed its mode of application. Certainly there is nothing obsolete in His teaching in the matter of purity. The virtues that He dwells upon—humility, meekness and the rest—are universal qualities on which time and social change have no effect.

What Christian conduct needs on our part is interest. We have to make clear to ourselves that a certain kind of life is like the life of God, and therefore is the medium for understanding God, and ultimately for enjoying God. The Christian life is not an arbitrary thing; it is the highest expression of humanity. Any other life is a distortion of the human ideal. People talk as though they thought that by the arbitrary will of God they were obliged to be good—a thing wholly contrary to our nature and to our present interests. But goodness is the natural unfolding of our nature as God made it: we find our true expression in the likeness of God. Perfection is what nature aspires to. Religion is not a curb on nature; religion is a help to enable nature to express itself. Nature reaches its perfect expression when by the grace of God it becomes godlike.

And the words of Christ are our guide to the perfect expression of our best. Therefore the earnest Christian is willing to give time to the careful study of them, and of the whole ideal of life that is contained in them. He is not concerned with what they will cut him off from; he is concerned with that to which they will admit him. He is concerned to find the meaning of Christ's teaching. This that S. Paul says is fundamental is his rule of life: "Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."

Of one that is so fayr and bright Velut maris stella, Brighter than the day is light, Parens et puella; I crie to thee, thou see to me, Levedy, preye thi Sone for me, Tam pia, That I mote come to thee Maria.

Al this world was for-lore Eva peccatrice, Tyl our Lord was y-bore De te genetrice. With Ave it went away Thuster nyth and comz the day Salutis; The welle springeth ut of the, Virtutis.

Levedy, flour of alle thing, Rosa sine spina, Thu here Jhesu, hevene king, Gratia divina; Of alle thu ber'st the pris, Levedy, quene of paradys Electa: Mayde milde, moder es Effecta.



PART TWO

CHAPTER XV

WHO IS MY MOTHER?

Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother,

S. Matt. XII, 50.

Grant, we beseech thee, almighty God, that we may keep with an immaculate heart the sacrament which we have received in honour of the blessed virgin mother Mary; so that we who celebrate her feast now, may be found worthy when we have left this life to pass into her company. Through &c.

SARUM MISSAL.

Our Blessed Lord had begun his ministry of preaching. The mark of the early days of that preaching was success. Crowds came about Him wherever He taught. The fact that there were frequent miracles of healing no doubt added to the popularity that He achieved. It was largely the popularity of a new and strange movement, of a preaching cutting across the normal roads of instruction to which the Jewish people were accustomed. There was a fascination about its form, its picturesque way of conveying its meaning, its use of the parable drawn from the everyday circumstances of life. There was nothing of hesitation in the words of the new Preacher, but the ring of a dogmatic certainty. "He taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes." He pushed aside the rulings of the traditional teaching with His, "Ye have heard it said ... but I say." "Verily, verily, I say unto you." And yet there are people who tell us that there was nothing dogmatic about our Lord and His teaching! One would infer from much that is written upon the subject of our Lord's teaching that He was a very mild giver of good advice but evidently the Scribes and Pharisees did not think so. They saw in Him a man who was setting himself to undermine their whole authority.

This popularity was at a high point when an interesting event happened of which we have an account in the first of the Gospels. "His mother and His brethren stood without, desiring to speak with Him." One gathers from the whole tone of the narrative that they were anxious about Him, that they looked with doubt upon this career of popular teacher that He was launched upon and felt that He was going too far. He needed advice and restraint, perhaps; it may be that there were already reports of possible interference by the national authorities. The fact that His "brethren" were present suggests the well meant interference of the older members of the family, who must always have thought Jesus rather strange. That they had induced His mother to come with them makes us think that they were counting on the influence naturally hers, an influence which must always have been apparent in their family relations. So we reconstruct the incident.

No doubt S. Mary herself was anxious. She must always have been anxious as to what would be the next step in the development of her mysterious Child. And while there was one side of her relation to Jesus which would always have run out into mystery, the mystery of the as yet unrevealed will of God; on the other side she was no doubt a very real normal human mother, with all a mother's anxiety and need of constant intervention in the life of her Child. I do not suppose that S. Mary, any more than any other mother, ever understood that her Son had grown up and could be trusted to conduct the ordinary affairs of the day without her help. She was no doubt as much concerned as any mother with the fact that His feet might be wet, or that He might not have had any lunch, or that he might have got run over by a passing chariot, or have been taken mysteriously ill. It was, we may think, this mother-attitude which brought her along with the brethren to give some advice as to how to carry on the preaching mission and avoid getting into trouble with the religious authorities. "One said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother."

Our Lord had a way of turning the passing incidents of the moment to account in His preaching, making them the texts of moral and spiritual teaching. One gathers that more than one of the parables and parabolic sayings was suggested by something that was before the eyes of His hearers. He was quick to seize any spoken word, any question, any exclamation, and to turn it to immediate account. It was so now. The report that His mother and His brethren were seeking Him, He made the occasion of a statement of vast import. When we try to think it out, it was not in the least, as it has been perversely understood, an impatient rebuff of an untimely interference, an indication that He did not care for their intervention in a work that they did not understand. There is really nothing of all that, but a seizing of a passing incident as the medium of an universal truth. It is the skill of one who knows that the human attention is caught by a matter, however trifling, which is vividly present. The scene is sharply defined for us: our Lord interrupted in His talk; the report of the mother and the brethren seeking Him; the obvious interest of the people as to how He will take their intervention; and then the rapid seizing of this interest to make His declaration: "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother."

And what are we to understand Him to mean? Surely He is declaring that through the revelation of God that He is, there is a new stage in God's work for man being entered upon, and that this new stage will be characterised by the emergence of a new set of relations, relations so important that they throw into the background the ordinary relations of life. He is proclaiming to them the advent of the Kingdom of God; and in that Kingdom, the service of God will be put first, before all human relations. It will not be antagonistic to human relations; indeed, it will hallow them and raise them to a higher level; but in case they, as not infrequently they will, decline to adjust themselves to the work of the Kingdom, or set themselves in opposition to it, then will they be brushed aside, no matter what they be. If we can consecrate our human relations and bring them into God, then will they be ours still with a vast enrichment and a rare spiritual beauty; but if they remain selfish, insist on absorbing all attention and energy, then they must be broken. The love of father and mother and children is an holy thing wherever we find it, but it is capable of becoming a selfish and perverse thing, insistent upon its own ends and declining wider responsibilities. In that case it must be regarded from the standpoint of a higher good: if it stand in the path of the Kingdom it must be swept aside. So our Lord declared in one of the most searching of His utterances; one of the utterances which we feel could come only from the lips of God: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be those of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."

That is the teaching of the incident before us. Our Lord's primary mission is to declare the will of God, and to make known the mind of the Father to all who will heed. Their acceptance of this will of the Father will bring them into a new relation to Him more important than, and transcending, all relations of flesh and blood. But—and this is important to mark—it does not exclude relations of flesh and blood; but it demands that they shall be put on a new basis and be assimilated to the higher relation. In our Lord's case they were in fact so assimilated. The blessed Mother and the brethren did not resist God's will when they came to understand it. They were, we know, glad of the higher relation, the new privilege. There is no ground at all for the suggestion of any breach between them. They are of the inner circle always in the Kingdom of the regenerate.

This fundamental truth of Christ's teaching, that through Him a new and closer relation to the Father becomes possible, and that the Kingdom is its embodiment, is one of the truths which have received constant lip-service, but have never been really assimilated in the working life of the Church. That the Church is the Body of Christ and we His members, and that by virtue of this membership in Him we are also members one of another; that we are, at our entrance into the Kingdom, made, as the Catechism puts it, members of Christ, children of God, and heirs of the kingdom of Heaven are truths of most marvellous reach and of splendid social implications. But can we say that they have very wide or real acknowledgment?

In face of a divided Christendom it seems almost farcical to talk of a Christian Brotherhood. The baptismal membership of the Church of God has fallen into group organisations whose mutual antagonism is of the bitterest kind. The so-called "religious press" is perhaps the saddest picture of modern Christian life. One could name a half dozen journals off hand, organs of this or that group, every one a sufficient refutation of the claim of the Christian Religion to be a Brotherhood of the Redeemed. There is no possible excuse for the tone of such publications.

No doubt it is an inevitable result of the state of a divided Christendom that there should be disputes and controversies. We shall never reach any expression of the Brotherhood that is the Church by saying, Peace, Peace, where there is no Peace. The unity we look to must be reached through painful sacrifice and through conflict; and we know that the wisdom that is from above is "first pure, and then peaceable," But it is quite possible while holding with all firmness to the truth, to hold it in the fear and love of God.

So long as Christendom is thus divided into hostile camps the ideal of brotherhood is impossible of realisation. I do not want however to discuss this matter from the point of view of Church unity. I want to point out that within the groups themselves there is small vision of the meaning of the oneness of Christ. For brotherhood is the expression of a spiritual reality. It looked for a moment in the early days of the Church as though the ideal would be realised. The description of the Church was that "all that believed were together, and had all things in common: and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need." That was, no doubt, a passing phase of the life of the Church in Jerusalem, but we have evidence that elsewhere all distinctions based upon social considerations were for the moment swept away. There is "neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Our glimpses of the congregations of the early Church are of men and women of all classes held together by the bond of a common membership in Christ, so strongly felt as to enable them to forget all worldly distinctions. Their sense of redemption was strong. They thrilled with the joy of deliverance from the old life "after the flesh." They knew that they were regenerate, new creations, and that this was the distinction of the brother who knelt beside them at their communions. It mattered not at all what he was in the world, whether he were Greek or Barbarian, whether he were patrician or freedman, whether he were of the slaves of Rome or of Caesar's household. The man who knelt to receive his communion might be a great nobleman, the priest who communicated him might be a slave: that did not matter; the significant thing was that they were both one in Jesus Christ.

That did not last. I suppose that it could not be expected to last in an unconverted or half converted world. It could only last on condition of the fairly complete isolation of the Christian group from the rest of society, pending the conversion of society as a whole. But it proved impossible to secure the isolation. The only real isolation was in monastic groups which naturally could contain only such men and women as God called to a special sort of life: the whole of society could not be so organised. As the Church grew and took in the various social constituents included in the Empire, it took them in differentiated as they were. There seems to have been no real effort to break down race distinctions or class distinctions. There were no doubt protests, but the protests were as ineffective then as now. "You cannot change human nature," men say; but that in fact is precisely what Christianity claims to do. Unless it can change human nature it is a failure.