St. Paul imparts this blessing to us, "To be strengthened by His spirit, with the might unto the inner man. That Christ may dwell by faith, in your hearts, that being rooted in and grounded in charity you may be able to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth, length, height, depth, etc. (Eph. iii, 16.) Many men live only for pleasure of one form or another or to make money.
This being accomplished, their fuse has exploded: —"Having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts. Who, despairing, have given themselves up to lasciviousness, unto working of all uncleanness, unto covetousness." (Eph. iv, 18, 19.)
This is an overwhelming disgrace to a human being, to an immortal being, to a soul made to the image and likeness of God. Yet the world is more or less guilty of cooperation, by the effusive consideration it bestows on the rich, simply because they are rich and the dulled, stupefied sensibilities it displays in the presence of sensual indulgences and moral extravagances, which pass in their eyes for the gilded appurtenances and prerogatives of fashion and title. What a philippic, what a terrible doom God depicts, as He points the finger at this materialistic and voluptuous life, the life of such as are hard and unspiritual—"His heart is ashes and his hope is vain, earth, and his life more base than clay, for as much as he knew not his Maker, and Him that inspired unto him the soul that worketh, and that breathed into him a living spirit." (Wisdom, xv.) How can a human being sink below clay? By swerving from its end, its God. Like the princes, whom God so severely arraigned, "who have not judged truly, nor kept the law of justice, nor walked according to the will of God." (Wisdom, vi, 5.) God is King,— "The Lord ruleth me." How shall the inward man discern His voice in the fierce thunder roll of busy life and in the clash and storm of earthly passions? —"Who shall know Thy voice, except Thou givest wisdom and send Thy Holy Spirit from above." (Wisdom, ix, 17.) We go to the Holy Ghost, the gift of Jesus Christ—Who baptizeth in the Holy Ghost.
(St. John); "Become not unwise, but understanding what is the will of God, and be ye filled with the Holy Ghost." (Eph. v, 17, 8.) So much for the light; but, knowing my duty, how shall I fulfil it, beat and sustain a path through the living hell and the cordon of world, flesh and devil, and not be delivered by "the wickedness of men and by cunning craftiness by which they lie in wait for us?" (Eph. iv, 14.) How else, indeed, but by "Him Who is able to do all things, more abundantly than we desire or understand, according to the power that worketh in us." (iii, 20)—by the Holy Ghost:—"Let no one presume to counteract the influences of this world unless he be made strong in the Holy Ghost," says St. Gregory. (Hom, xxx in Eva Dg.)
Let the dust of Othiniel, let the bones of Jepthe, let the sabre of Gideon, let the skeleton of Samson burst into the Holy Ghost's loud acclaim in the gift, and prosecution, of extraordinary vocations; for they indeed exceptionally reveal the Holy Ghost's power. Let Besaleel tell the toiler at the bench with chisel and hammer, and the laborer in the trench with pick, bar and shovel that the ideal of the highest and noblest living is that " which in other generations was not known to the sons of men, as it is now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the spirit." (Ephesus iii, 5.)—Jesus Christ, illumined by His Spirit," for we know that the law is spiritual" (Roman vii, 14) and the knowledge of Him and love of Him, hidden from others, but revealed to the saints, to you and to me, if we do cherish His Spirit. "If so be that you have heard him, and have been taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus; to put off, according to conversation, the old man, who is corrupted according to the desire of error, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who, according to God, is created injustice and holiness of truth—and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God" (Ephes. iv, 21-2-34, 30.) «So that we should serve God in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of letter" (Roman vii, 6.) Our ideal of the New Law is not the letters of our Lord's name scribbled in the darkness, but rather the illuminated character writing across the sky the depths of His interior Spirit.
