God The Holy Ghost part 34.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

Therefore the Holy Ghost comprehends God; but to do this is the exclusive property of Godhead; it is God's and God's alone. David says, "in thy light we shall see light." Even in heaven with the brilliant light of the very divine Presence that enlarges and intensifies the vision of the elect, we will not come to comprehend God as He comprehends Himself in the enchanting vastness, in the supreme totality of His divinity, for Godhead will have always its fastnesses, as it were, its by-ways, its unclimbable heights, its own towering, mysterious incomprehensible self. The Council of Florence says that the blessed "see God clearly, as He is; in nature one, in persons three." True, but the iron steeped in the furnace's glow retains its own nature; the saint never becomes God, though he be ever so Godlike. It will not be, perhaps, so much the lack of light, nay, rather is it the lack of capacitated eyes that disables the saints. "In Thy light we shall see"—We shall see. Surely we are not God; aye, through created eyes alone must we survey and enjoy the all-surpassing loveliness of eternal life. Even with the spectacles of faith adjusted and tempered to the new light, a margin survives, a gap, a chasm— creature is creature. There is, and can only be, one God. How this reflection confuses us! It is not pleasant, in our case, to study our own pettiness and to descant on one's own disabilities. Mounting the ladder of science, Dame Reason should ascend with caution, for Faith ever should guide her ladyship's steps by her infallible guidance and true unerring leadership.

Awe, self-distrust, humility, must qualify our speculations. For impudent, staffless mountain climbers I catch the voice of warning from the summit — descends! To faith with staff and guide the voice comes stealing softly — ascende superius!

The study of the Heart of God without faith or a proper disposition and a pure incentive has turned out a host of sceptical divines with a large multitude of disciples sprawling in the slough of despond, heresy, unfaith and materialism. With all the pride of ages in the result of centuries spent in research and myriads of earth's best minds absorbed in the task, the most we can make of ourselves is clay men— sublime animals, beautiful, if you will have it so, wondrous—as saints, but ever and forever, creatures!

Shown the retrospective we see the valiant witnesses of the divinity of the Holy Ghost. Creatures could not make themselves God, they could not make God a creature. The earliest ages sustained the divinity of the Holy Ghost and commended its belief in symbol. "Thou hast gone down," says St. Ambrose alluding to the baptismal fount, "recall what thou hast replied: 'namely, that thou believest in the Father, believest in the Son, and believest in the Holy Ghost. Thou foundedst not; I believe in a greater or lesser or least, but art compelled to be most cautious in thy language, to believe alike in the Son as in the Father, to believe alike in the Holy Ghost as in the Son." (De myster. C. V. N. 28.

God The Holy Ghost part 33.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

In her prayer to the Holy Ghost— Veni Creator Spiritus! the Church makes allusion to David and creation:—"Thou shalt send forth thy spirit and they shall be created, and thou shalt renew the face of the earth." (Ps. ciii, 30.) We find, furthermore, the Incarnation, a purely divine thing, imputed to the Holy Ghost. "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee, and therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God." (Luke i, 35.) His is the unction of Christ—"the spirit of the Lord is upon me, therefore hath He anointed me." (Luke iv, 18.) Hence that astonishment: "They wonder at the words of Christ." (v. 22.) "They were astonished at His doctrine for His speech was with power." (v. 32). Hence also the healing of the diseased masses at sundown,—"He, laying His hand upon every one of them, healed them." (v. 40.) "And the devils went out from many." (v. 41.) Says St. Paul,—"to another, faith in the same spirit; to another, the grace of healing in the spirit." (I Cor. xii, 9.) Our Lord ascribes His miracles to the Holy Ghost. "If I by the Spirit of God cast out devils, then is the kingdom of God come upon you." (Matt, xii, 28.) The Holy Ghost will guide the Church to the truth and in the truth: —"But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, Whom the Father shall send in my name, He will teach you all things." (St. John xiv, 26.) "When the Spirit of

Truth is come, He will teach you all truth." (xvi, 13.) "Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock wherein the Holy Ghost has placed you bishops to rule the Church of God." (Acts xx, 28.) All truths emanate to the Church from the Holy Ghost, and her being infallibly insured against the possibility of deceiving or of being deceived through the Holy Ghost places upon the Third Person the stamp of divinity.

"How," says St. Peter of Cluny, "could the Church deceive and be deceived for more than one thousand years, a church with whom the true Father, with whom the truth—the Son, with whom the Spirit of Truth abides?" (Adv. Petrobrussianos lib. Cluniae, p. 1113.) Within and without the Holy Ghost exercises a regency in the Church. "And as Peter was thinking of the voices the Spirit said to him, 'Behold three men seek thee, rise therefore and get thee down, and go with them, doubt nothing for I have sent them." (Acts x, 19.) Men strive to undo the Church, to work defections in her, to decimate her ranks; society, business and politics combine against her collectively, as an institution and individually. The Holy Ghost, however, directs the minds and hearts of men toward the truth. The Church of God must go on. In her outward management she is not left at the mercy of men:—"Take heed to yourselves and the whole flock wherein the Holy Ghost has placed you bishops to rule the Church of God." (Acts xx, 28.)

Inspiration in Holy Writ and the prophets or in other words the divine Voice is of the Holy Ghost:—"For prophecy comes not by the will of man at any time, but the holy men of God spoke inspired by the Holy Ghost." (II. Peter i, 21.) Regeneration and renewal or divine productiveness are His husbandry. "Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." (St. John iii, 5.) "Receive ye the Holy Ghost, whose sins ye shall forgive, they are forgiven them." (St. John xx, 23.) Here then is regeneration; a new genus is bestowed upon us or a lost one revived, a supernatural character; and in the second place the soul's renewal is achieved. The distribution of chrisms, sanctification and justification—all divine elements—emerge from Him:—"But you are washed, you are sanctified, you are justified in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the spirit of our Lord." (I. Cor. xii, 2.) St. Gregory Nazianzen observes with pointed eloquence:—"I cannot be brought to believe that I am indebted for my salvation to one who is no more than myself. If the Holy Ghost is not God let Him first become such and, forthwith, make a God of me his equal." (Ora 34, 12.) The Third Person is that substantial and essential sanctity whence all holiness wells forth into creatures. Says St. Cyril of Alexandria: "If they are guilty of extreme folly, who argue that we are to call the Father God but are not to take Him so or to call the Son God but are not to hold Him as such, how will we exculpate the ignorance of such as endeavor to despoil of His natural sanctity the Spirit, truly and by nature holy?" (Dial. 9. de Trin.) All knowledge is the Third Person's for He is "the Spirit of Truth." (St. Johnxiv, 17.) "But to us," says St. Paul, "God hath revealed them by His spirit, for the spirit searches all things." Aye, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of man, but by the spirit of man that is in him? "So the things also that are of God, no man knoweth but the spirit of God." In a variety of ways the Fathers extract from this point in St. Paul the divinity of the Holy Ghost. In the paternal and abysmal arcana, the eternal concerns, only one who has a nature divine and co-natural with the Son's nature can find place,— "no man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father He hath declared Him." (St. John i, 18.)

The Holy Ghost is ushered into comparison with the spirit of man. And, as we know, this is man's very substance, without which, veritably, he were no man at all:—"If it belongs to the divinity to know the secrets of man, what a signal evidence it is of majesty in the person of the Holy Ghost that His gaze is in the depths of the most High God." (Paschanius de spir. s. 1, 2, c. 1.)

God The Holy Ghost part 32.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

CHAPTER VIII. DIVINITY OF THE HOLY GHOST.

The present thesis has for its objective point the Macedonians, a sect of semi-Arians, called also Pneumatomachi, who take their appellation from Macedonius, an individual who became patriarch of Constantinople in the year 341. Their teaching was that the Holy Ghost is subordinate to the Father and the Son; in substance and character, unlike them.

Macedonius was deposed by the Arians in 360, and his special tenets were condemned at the Council of Constantinople, in 381, which added to the Nicene Creed a clause defining the divinity of the Holy Ghost. Faith teaches that the Holy Ghost is God—"I believe in the Holy Ghost." (Sym. of Ap.) "Ananias, why hast thou conceived of this thing in thy heart," asks St. Peter, "thou hast not lied to man but to God!" (Acts v. 3, 4), adds the apostle, in the same breath.

The apostle, we here find, calls the one, whom he immediately before names the Holy Ghost, in the present instance, God —"Why hath Satan tempted thy heart that thou shouldst lie to the Holy Ghost." (v. 3.) In lying to the Holy Ghost, Ananias had lied to God. St. Stephen reproaches the Jews with a repetition of that resistance which their fathers before them had offered to the Holy Ghost: —"You stiff-necked and uncircumcised, in heart and ears, you also resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do you also." (Acts vii, 51.) The offence of their fathers had been resistance to God; the Holy Ghost is, then, that same God, Who, of old, did speak:—"Harden not your hearts as in the provocation, in the temptation of the desert, where your fathers tempted me." (Heb. iii, 7.) "Take heed, brethren, lest perhaps there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelieving to depart from the living God" (12); "For He is the Lord, our God,—to-day, if you should hear His voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation—where your fathers tempted me." (Ps. xciv, 78, 79.) "Well did the Holy Ghost speak to our fathers by Isaias the prophet." (Acts, xxviii, 25.) Our Lord Himself has also said, "Whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man it shall be forgiven him, but to him that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven." (St. Luke, ii, 10.) If the Holy Ghost were merely of creature-stuff the larger grievousness of the offence against Him could not be managed at all. "Know ye not," says St. Paul, "that ye are the temples of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth within you?" (I Cor. iii, 16.) St. Augustine takes occasion from these words to remark against Maximinus, "Our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, despise not our bodies. They are the members of Christ. How great, therefore, God is—to Whom a temple is lifted by God and out of the members of God." (i. 3. n. 3.) Kings dwell in palaces, temples are reared up only to God, the Holy Ghost is, therefore, God. "No created being," says St. Cyril of Alexandria, "is such as God to dwell in a temple; for, among other things, this is characteristic of God alone." (Thesauri Ass. 34.) Creation, which is, of course, a prerogative of

Godhead is lucidly ascribed to the Holy Ghost, "and the spirit of God moved over the waters." (Gen. i, 2.) Hence the divinity of the Third Person, for "in the beginning, God created." (v. 17.) "By the word of the Lord, the heavens were created, and all the power of them by the spirit of His mouth." (Ps. xxxii, 6.) Says Job, "The spirit of God made me."

God The Holy Ghost part 31.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

Faith, hope and charity ought to be prominent in our lives, a beacon to all men, arresting the attention and commanding the respect of all men.

Relative types of perfection may vary. The christian, as such, has his own ideal, which was represented by Christ and His teaching. Time cannot alter nor discount one feature of it. No christian is, or can be, held exempt from its tenets and exactions. Whatever we profess we should be. To depart from the ideal is an untruth and a scandal. In a general way, first of all, a christian man should search after God's will. Any selfreliance that ignores this is paganistic. The carnal world loves the vertebrate; the spiritual world admires the man whose backbone is God. Too much self-reliance is stubbornness. From a world-point of view success might be said to attend a certain extravagance of wilfulness, but in God's view, failure is oftentimes stamped on the results. God's blessing is not there, it is the will of man pure and simple. To consult God in our lives and subordinate all to God's will and law is characteristic of the christian; to love temporalities, merely as means that will lead us to God, is another general characteristic that goes to the working out of the christian type. Unworldliness is an essential element of the christian ideal.

These principles give our life a background and atmosphere and equip us for emergencies or such events in our lives as escape the letter of the law. They constitute the spirit, the general principles of a christian life. Add to this the ten commandments and other faithful observances and the christian fulfils his ideal—the christian is christian, he has the spirit and the letter of the ideal, the virtue of the ideal; the body, soul and heart of Christ, so to speak, are on one's lips and in one's actions. Christ's personality means a personification of Christ, not from a theatrical point of view, nay, but from the point of view of living cultivation, vital imitation and spiritual absorption, a soul-blending so intimate in its character that Godliness is dominant and the carnal and merely human is perfectly subservient to the law of faith,—"I no longer live, but Christ liveth in me." Another item of food may be gathered from the idea of personality in the Trinity.—The perfect equality of the Three in face of their several distinctive relations, that the Father precedeth the Son and the two precede the Holy Ghost — logically speaking. The difference between the three is purely relational, however, and the three are, nevertheless, God. Human life ought to reflect this divine economy. Surely society, religious, civil, domestic must be. Inequalities, therefore, not intrinsic, not substantial, but such as are strictly relational and incidental to society must correspondingly exist.

Is there not in life, sometimes, offered in our manner of executing authority an occasion for the suspicion that we held ourselves of a substantially higher grade of being than those over whom we have been given power and control? The Father, Son and Holy Ghost are substantially coequal. The Father must be, the Son must be and the Holy Ghost must be. There is not a substantial, so to speak, intrinsic inferiority. One has his origin of another, yet all are eternally infinite, God. Superiority in life has its domain, and its rights and privileges must be respected like all rights. At the same time, outside that accidental election or selection, the purely social segregation of myself in the interests of society to have power does not, should not, and is not intended to, after all, operate in my personal character any substantial differentiation from my subordinates. As images of God, and as christians, as heirs to the kingdom of heaven, aye, in all the substantial of life and being, they are my equals. Supremacy has its ideal. "If, then, I, being your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also." (St. John, xiii, 14,15).—"If any man desire to be first, he shall be the last of all and the minister of all."

The washing of feet safeguards supremacy whilst thus pointing out the danger of its pride, the misconception of its character, its abuse and offensive ministration, whereby the ideal is not reflected and the right purpose of it is defeated. Authority, therefore, is not left without its ideal, from which it may not deflect without sin. Of all the things in life that occasion a tendency to self-misconception, power takes the first rank, hence our Lord's attitude—upon His knees with a basin of water and towel—lest we forget and go astray, undoing instead of doing and in this way be lost. Our Lord showed by the feet-washing that we are children, not slaves, under His law. Those who would have us by their affected assumption and arrogance forget or underestimate our dignity and the respect due to us as men and christians, are not humane or christian rulers, but tyrants.

Inferiors and subordinates have their rights accorded to them freely by Our Divine Master. Our Lord respected them always—Abba, Father!

God The Holy Ghost part 30.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

When wind is favorable to a steamship, it, too, makes use of the circumstance and spreads her canvas to steady herself, and again directly to quicken her pace by catching the gusts of wind. When the wind is against her, she pushes onward just the same in spite of it. Let us use piety, emotional, imaginational and sensitive when these help us, but at the same time strenuously defy them when they oppose us. The inward steam and electricity will accomplish all this. What mariner does not sigh for everything that will more swiftly waft him to his own land and the smiles of his loved ones? Yes, make all possible use of piety. A set purpose, however, is what makes man a vertebrate and not a jellyfish. It is the mainspring of the rational creature. To act without fixed purpose and determined resolution, built upon deep conviction and deep faith, is to drift, to dawdle, to be addle-pated, to have a hope that deceives. To tune our lives to moods like an artist, to be obsequious to one's impulses and emotions is to be animalistic, erratic and irrational. "Where there is not a sane faith," says St. Augustine, "there cannot be justice, because the just man liveth by faith." The triumph of virtue is over the flesh.

Emotion is one of the concupiscential brood. Mere piety or pietism throws about one's virtues a certain halo of picturesqueness; it imparts to one's asceticism a certain dash, lots of color, a dramatic setting, and renders it less somber, yet, who does not admire, to a greater extent, the undaunted, resolute firmness, that colossal majesty and overpowering, steadfast, latent strength of the religious man, whose life in dogged fixity of principle is independent of whatever physical tone or emotion, — a christian in sickness and in health, in honor and disesteem, in fulness and penury, in life and in death. 

True liberty of the soul is found in independence of creature, emotion or sense. — "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." This is a true statement of affairs. To advance in spite of it is christian victory. Emotionality turns out pious people and, not infrequently, pietists, and perhaps it would be as well to say that there is a world of difference between the two things. Sound the inner soul, test the will and you shall encounter, contrary to appearance and pretence, the presence of foreign matter or vacuity—the virtue is not sane and healthy; it is veneered.

Womankind stands perhaps more in danger of insolidity owing to her temperamental make-up. The Church, you will observe, makes reference to the "devout female sex." Woman, more than man, is prone, in general, to filter the truths of life through a net-work of emotions. The trappings or embroidery of religion, its blazonry or leafage too much engage them, to the detriment of a better and solider fruitage of religion, namely, the interior qualities. Some persons are so dominated and enslaved by sensuousness that they are hospitable, demonstrative and Christ-like to their brethren on sunny days and the antithesis on days of gloomy weather. As a cause of the practice of virtue the sensitive offers insecure ground. When from the intensity of the inner force of our love for God the senses participate by redounding thereunto they refresh one. Here they are an effect and not a cause and therefore do not deceive. If we make of them a barometer they deceive likewise, because they do not record the state of the soul, they even belie the truth. Man is composite. Body and soul coalesce in a manner; the soul, however, must always grip the reins of government. There is a certain amount of human pleasure that, besides being the fruitage thereof, excites one to godliness. St. Augustine says, "The soul is drawn to God by love,—it is the same thing, if you are drawn by the will and pleasure. What does it mean to be drawn by pleasure? To take pleasure in the Lord. There is a certain pleasure of the heart, to which this heavenly food is sweet. Now if the poets could say that each one is drawn by his own pleasure, not by necessity, but pleasure, not by duty, but delight, how much the more forcibly ought one to say that man is drawn to Christ because he delights in the truth, takes pleasure in blessedness, takes delight injustice, in eternal life. Have the bodily senses their pleasures whilst the soul is barren of its delights? This human delight is, however, chiefly the effect of the action of the soul, a result of the love in the heart, the vehement yearning for God. Give me a lover," says the saint, "and he will understand what I say, give me one who thirsts, a pilgrim in the desert, burning for the founts of eternal love—give me such a one and he will understand what I am saying." It will be seen in these words that the human pleasure one experiences in religion is the fruitage of the soul. The root of this christian pleasure is in the soul not in the body. Of course it becomes in this way a cause of inner culture when the soul thus reminded of the sweet fruits is roused to a deeper conviction, a more resolute determination to do and dare for God and heaven. The sweet experience, the swift unveilings, the short glimpses of the divine Lover's sweet and majestic countenance, moves one to desire truth and justice more and more. Yes, make all the use possible out of these delightful transports. Find rest in them and refreshment, an incentive, but rule them; do not be their slave nor dependent upon them. The Holy Ghost has a distinct, personal character or individuality. God is the exemplar of all christian ideals. The Orders of the Church, whilst of kin as children of one family, have their own relative ideals, taken by the saints who founded them from the mind of God under the flatus of the Holy Ghost, in prayer and recollection.

The Dominican is such; he fulfils his ideal when he strictly conforms to the type of perfection portrayed in his institute. In so doing he reveals his Dominican personality and achieves his own end whilst he is enacting in the meantime his portion of the organic mechanism of the Church. The Jesuit has his ideal; the cultivation of his institute imparts to his mind, heart and manner a certain personality, wherein a certain feature is more prominent than we find it in another order, for example, a military obedience in its internal organism, blind, quick and heroic, with a tact, a polish and a solidity markedly dominant in its outward aspect. The Franciscan has his ideal. The cultivation of poverty to a marked degree, attended, of course, by the other usual religious requisites, stamps him with his own peculiar Assisian character or Franciscan personality. The priest has his ideal. Marked cleanliness of life, zeal for souls, a prophetic hatred of, and inveighing against, evil in the world. Yet, on the other hand, sympathy for the poor and sinful, the spirit, if not the letter, of detachment from temporal goods. A fatherly generosity, a hidden reserve, a priestly knowledge. This is his ideal; this imparts to his life the sacerdotal personality; this makes him different to other men. The father has his ideal. A severely correct deportment, blameless conduct, domesticity, leadership in government, circumspection of speech, vigilance, prudence, interest in his children's lives, both spiritual and temporal, a consciousness that the little ones will be one day what he himself is—good or bad, and in like proportion. These, however, are relative types of evangelical and christian perfection. Peculiar bonds or relations operate in the ideal. Independent, however, of all relativity, there is one deep bond, a mainspring, an elemental individuality, one essential cosmopolitan ideal that should be reflected by the life and conduct of every christian man of whatever sphere or rank or however high or low his aspirations might be. Truth and justice demand it, and God demands it; the heart demands it; our eternal health demands it. The pledges we made in baptism and which we so often renewed at missions, in daily examination of conscience, all demand it. It is that every christian should reflect Christ, should speak and do in as Christlike a manner as is possible for each one of us, with earnest, steadfast effort and endeavor, to be like the Master. Each one of us ought, in consistency, if our religion is not to be but a shallow and hollow mockery, to have a christian personality, a marked distinctiveness as against the deportment, character and personality of the mere pagan.

God The Holy Ghost part 29.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

It has been said that the Father has not the relative perfection of the Son. This of course would imply that the Holy Ghost has not the relative perfection of the Father and Son. St. Bonaventure furnishes the answer to this,—"there is unity of nature and plurality of persons, and there is as much in unity as in plurality, only not in so many ways. (Dis. 19, Part 2nd, 2. 1. Ad. 3). The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are the—the essence of Godhead, each in his own way or relationship. The Holy Ghost is not, properly speaking, dependent—He is God. His dependence involves no imperfection. The Holy Ghost is necessary from the necessary perfection of the divine nature and His dependence is not that of the indigent and imperfect, but only such a one as arises from the exigencies of perfection.

Let us pause again to feed the heart, to assimilate the fruits of such knowledge as we have plucked from the vine and flower-clad slopes of Sion. Is my religious character, is my relationship with God solid and substantial? Is my religion rather an emotion? Is it of the weathervane order of things, fluctuating, fickle, moody, inconstant, blithe and merry to-day, smiling with the sun, and, tomorrow, under the black, bleak sky, sullen, grumpy, miserable and even bitter, helpless as a detached leaf, the dupe of every current—naturalistic? Do I go late to my exercises, fulfilling them in a halfhearted, pouting, scuffling manner, as it were, simply because I am not in the mood? Are incense, vestments, lighted candles and the exterior paraphernalia or outward trappings of religion the ground where I drop anchor? This is religious epicurism, sometimes found in neophytes—a system which may tend to one's withdrawing from the religious food when the taste—subjectively, of course—loses its flavor. Do I mistake the thurifer's fragrant breath for dogma— symbolism for the symbolized? Alas! does not sense but too often affect the current of my religious life, whereas "truth" and '-principle" should unalterably govern my life and reason, illumined by faith, should be the sheet-anchor of my soul, its constant guide, its unwavering master. Do I correct, discipline, watch and temper my imagination with the emotional nature and so restrain and direct it as to make it the handmaid of reason and faith and not the insolent, giddy and fickle mistress of my soul, the tyrannical directress of my life? Do I lose the message of the song in the beauty of the singer's art? Am I feeding my soul on the sensuous vibrations and losing the melody of virtue or the inspiration of the soul? Does the "idea" appeal to me, impress me and captivate my mind—ah, it is the human in me and that alone that is touched; or has the music of the church choir, for example, fastened on my soul, more tightly, the sweetness, the beauties of paradise, the tenderness of God? Has it touched me in its tremolo with the melancholy of the human struggle, the vanity of human things? Has it made the martial spirit in me tingle with the strength to win? Has the thunder of sounds when the stops are out portrayed God's majesty so as to excite my soul with the message of creation? has it, I say, illumined the mind and made the will more determined? What a beautiful christian lesson is pictured for us in the huge ocean greyhound! It keeps its prow steadily pointed to its destination— onward, ever onward, to the destined port, through calm, blue waters, through mountainous billows, through dense blinding mists and the inky darkness of the moonless, starless night. She heeds not the waters nor the howling winds that challenge her course, she minds not their caresses nor their rage, she does not fear them because she does not trust them, obedient to the compass the pilot directs her steadily onward. Obsequious, in turn, she cuts through avalanche after avalanche of billow, through storm, sleet and black night combined.

The sailing ship has also her compass, but she has to compromise with the wind and, as it were, humor her caprice; often the wind and wave demand more of her, aye, all of her. The great power of steam and electricity has conquered Neptune, subdued nature — symbols of the new force in our life, of the new, the christian life of blood, sorrow and tears, a trying life, admitted to be so by Our Lord, by implication, when He promised us the Paraclete — the Comforter! The power of the Holy Ghost is within us. Faith, the Sacraments of the Church, prayer and good works will keep the furnace at work and put steam in the boiler; they will keep the dynamo in operation to supply the spiritual voltage by which we will prosecute a steadfast, dogged course in our spiritual life and pass triumphantly through the storm and the night and the hail. This inward steam and electric power, the idea of ship and compass, of wind and wave and sweet recompense of a speedy, safe voyage may be found delineated in the homily of St. Augustine: "All the glory of the King's daughter is within " — here is the all-conquering force, divine grace. "For from without mishap, persecution and distractions await us." Here we discern the stormy sea of the christian life, "out of which, however, a high reward in heaven emanates, one that bestirs the heart of the daring, that is to say, of such as may exclaim, we exult in our tribulations 'knowing '— not feeling merely, not surmising, not fancying, nor opining with doubt's vacillating, weak, reluctant purpose, nay, 'knowing' — here is the compass —' knowing' that tribulation worketh patience, and patience worketh proof; in other words, as wave hurls the ship upon other wave ever forward," proof however worketh hope and hope doth not deceive, because the charity of God is poured abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost Who is given unto us (Ex. lib. 1. de sen. Dom. in. mont. Cap. v.) "Hope does not deceive," when it springs from the charity of God, when our spiritual compass is lodged in the heart and mind, and not merely stayed upon sensuous emotionality.

God The Holy Ghost part 28.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

To be sure, reason, from a human point of departure, cannot demonstrate that the Trinity is in collision with reason, yet no one pretends to squarely and snugly comprise within the circuit of its orbit the eternal harmonies, the abysmal perceptions of that stupendous truth—the divine Three-in-One. Here we sniff pure divinity; the aeronaut is above the atmospheric belt. The created mind essentially is outdone. "Founded on infallible truth," says St. Thomas, "the opposite is altogether indemonstrable, and it is transparent that such truths as are marshalled out in the interests of such a view are not a demonstration but soluble arguments." (1. Q. L. A. B.) Faith and reason cannot come into conflict with one another. The rays of the sun would sooner collide. In man the intimate relations and the intrinsic character of his essence are quite understandable. God, however, is mystery-circled, shadow-draped. To the internal character of His being ingress cannot be had by minds merely created. One foot is ever in the eclipse whilst the other is set down in the light. Let us repeat, is it then useful or even reverent to grope in the sacred mist? Most assuredly, as we have remarked previously, when our motive is without blame and one's disposition is of the truly humble sort. Says St. Augustine:— "In so far as one may do so, let us show the Trinity is one and only one true God." (Trinity i. n. 3.)

The Socinians and the Rationalists of to-day would scout the Three-in-One upon a basis of mathematical axiom. They say 1=3 cannot be; so say we. They say A=B, B=C and therefore A=C. No one attacks the axiom. If these axioms were not self-evident there would be no way of understanding what one is to believe. St. Augustine has said "unless one has a soul that could reason one could not believe." By reason we know precisely what is above reason, that is to say, of faith. 1=3 is reasonably incorrect. One essence is not three essences. If we were not sure of this on the basis of reason we should not be sure whether in the Trinity there were not three essences and one person. Veritably, I repeat, one God is not three Gods, one person is not three persons, one Father is not three Fathers, one Son is not three Sons. A=B, B=C, therefore, A=0. Without this evident principle one would not understand the idea of indistinct divinity when it is believed and revealed that there is a Father, Son and Holy Ghost and yet one God. Of course things in one way really one are in the same respect not multiple. Father, Son and Holy Ghost being one in Godhead are one God and not three Gods. Being one in deity, in so far as Godhead is concerned, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are not different to one another. "I and the Father are one, there are three who give testimony in Heaven." The substantialness of the Holy Ghost is admirably established by St. Thomas in speaking of the Son of God. "The same essence which, in the Father is Fatherhood, is in the Son Sonship."

A divine person is a divine relation. It is nothing more than the divine essence or substance —not indeed as substance in the absolute sense, but in the formal one of relativity. The most simple, divine entity has the two view points — the absolute, consisting of essence and relationship, which is three in number and distinct. Essence in the sense of a substantial relation is a divine person. Essence (as such) neither begets nor is begotten nor proceeds, but (in its formal relative sense) it is the Father Who begets and the Holy Ghost Who proceeds. A divine person is nothing less than a divine, substantial relation or a relationship bound up (identified) with essence or essence under the formal manner of a relationship.

Relationship in the divine nature is the same as a something distinct and subsistent. (St. Thom. Potest. Q. 9. A. 4). I venture to suggest an approximation to the possibility of grasping this ontological phenomenon by the accidents or species of the Holy Eucharist, where, for example, the figure, color and taste of bread are present, yet we find no bread. If we could designate these as substantial accidents we should have a more intelligible likeness to a divine relation. Faith certainly teaches that in God relations are real. The Father really is, the Son really is and the Holy Ghost really is. A person is individual substance ; substantiality and distinctiveness make up, so to speak, personality. Essence, as such, knows no distinction. Relationship is the formal notion of distinctiveness; a divine person is the very divine essence under the formal mode of a relationship, ad intra, in which way there are three mutually distinct, not, however, in the formal sense of the absolute, in which way there is one indistinct essence or nature. The IV. Lateran Council says (Cap. Damnamus):— "There is one thing above all that daunts the comprehension and baffles the tongue, and this is— truly Father, Son and Holy Ghost, three persons taken together and each one singly, and, therefore, there is in God only Trinity, not quaternity, because each one of the three persons is that thing, namely, the substantial essence or divine nature which is alone the principle of all, (universorum) and that thing does not beget, neither is it begotten, but, it is the Father Who begets and the Son Who is begotten and the Holy Ghost Who proceeds, so that there is distinction between persons and unity in nature."

This tells the story. The divine essence is really the Father, Son and Holy Ghost; it is identified with each one of them. Yes, the Holy Ghost is the divine essence as a relation; at the same time there are no parts in God; there is no composition, physical or metaphysical; there is no multiplication of essence; the Holy Ghost is God. All the perfection of Godhead is in Him as in all the divine Persons—"We believe and confess that only God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are eternal and there are none of these things, call them relations or properties or singularities or unities, which are eternal and not God." (Symbol of Coun. of Rheims, delivered to, and approved by, Eugenius 3d. against Gilbert Parretanus) (Franz, P. 251). Divine essence is the fulness of divine being, incapable of decrease or increase, one and the same, now identified with each and again with all the three substantial relations or persons, though the persons are not explicitly conceived but implicitly embraced under the notion of essence. Hence the Three Divine Persons are the very same fulness with the explicit expression of the substantial relationship. Each person is likewise the same fulness with the explicit expression of one relationship; and the embracing of the two remaining persons inasmuch as these are identified with essence, and inasmuch as they therefore belong under the formal manner of relationship, not, to be sure, as constituent, but as inexistent, immanent termini, to the perfection of each and every person." (Franz, p. 251.)

God The Holy Ghost part 27.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

Let Us take up once more our journey Sion-ward: "The pastor will accurately explain to the faithful that the Holy Ghost is God so as to be the Third Person in the divine nature, distinct from the Father and the Son and produced by their will." (Catech. Trent, p. 68.)

If it be the pastor's duty to teach, that is to say, break unto his children the bread of life, it is a corollary that the faithful should hear and heed the words, ponder them and extract the strength that lies in them, in one word, eat the bread, not merely taste it but masticate and assimilate it. I say "bread;" in these days of the higher criticism, bread but rudely expresses the food of the soul. Perhaps one should say "chocolate eclaires" or "angel's ringers." This is hyperbole, of course, and, yet, on the other hand, we have a right to expect that the bread offered us hungering children of God will be duly kneaded and baked and not given to us in such a form as makes no appeal to one's appetite or as, when eaten, will prove a disorder and embarrassment for the digestive organs. The functions of natural life are made pleasurable so as to attract one to life. 

Culinary subtlety and taste should operate in the matter of heaven's food. A dainty dish provokes the sluggish appetite, like the Son, of the divine substance and truly God, be he accursed." These are the words of Damasus addressed to Paulinus, Bishop of Antioch, A. D. 378. The Council of Constantinople added in the year 378 these words to the Nicene Creed:—"We believe—also in the Holy Ghost,Lord and Life-giver, Who doth proceed out of the Father, Who in conjunction with the Father and the Son is to be adored and glorified, Who spake by the prophets." Ah, how reassuring is our mother's voice. Doubt and uncertainty vanish at the sound of it. Truth rises like the glorious orb of day in clear unclouded radiance out of the enfolding gloom. Reject this faith in the Catholic Church and you sweep away the symbol of Catholic confession of faith, aye, says St. Augustine, "I should not yield credence to the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church moved me thereunto." 

For though the symbol, the Gospel and the rest of the divine writings contain w hat is revealed and the Word of God upon which in its last analysis our faith reposes, these sources always leave room for doubt and uncertainty without the voice and authority of the Church. Still within the luminant shade of the Three-in-One, still we tread in wonderland! Aye, reason is dumb before faith; the Church supplies the motor power to the lips that confess there are three Persons in one God; hence it is reasonable.

If we use the sublime truths which faith sets before us we can all find something practically strengthening, tissue-making, in them, but, to succeed in the matter one has to put the tablet, as it were, under one's tongue and let it slowly, pensively and reverently dissolve. If the pastor is not free to label certain virtues because of their paramount mysteriousness "wholesale" and to dispense them with grandiose platitude and glittering generalities, without merging them into detail and making for them practical application, neither ought the faithful to consider themselves free to put away in the cupboard these tremendous phenomena or relegate them to the store room, as if they had no particular purpose to serve in our lives. After these preliminary remarks, let us resume our theme:

The Socinians and Rationalists make of the Holy Ghost a spectral, shadowy, impersonal and unsubstantial thing. The Socinian has in his blood the crystals of the Rationalist, whose boast is antagonism to all that is not wholly within the bounds of unabetted self-sufficient natural reason. It holds in abhorrence the view of the supernatural held by men of faith. "If one there be who shuns to aver that the Holy Ghost is in truth and properly

God The Holy Ghost part 26.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

A difficult one, indeed, to cultivate, but, ah, so Christlike! It enlarges one's sphere of usefulness. It opens up to us hearts now shut, opportunities now closed against us and subdues the hatred of enemies whilst it realizes, in so far as it depends upon us, the work of the Holy Ghost in the Church.—"One heart and one mind." I am selfish, petty, congested even after having studied the wonders of the immense ideal, Jesus Christ, for so many years. I see no merit but that which is identified with myself, have no eye but for my own interests or those of my immediate spiritual family or friends. This, indeed, is to be small-circled. I persuade myself, however, that I love God. I affect to believe that I really do. I tell this to God, but yet I am not speaking the objective truth.

Who is selfish and indifferent to his neighbour cannot be fervid toward God. So far we have been speaking of organic charity. Raise, my friend, your luxurious lamp-shade, let the light of the Holy Ghost be diffused around you and pierce the gloom that lowers over a vast, indifferent world; let it illumine the dark underground ways, the misery and shame where so many outcasts, waifs, inebriates, paupers and murderers lie submerged. The Son of Man came for such; He bled for such; He died for such. These are members of His family.

Their heritage is our love. If we have disinherited them, Christ has not. We have pondered the sad condition, the dire extremity of need in the individual sinner. One has enough to do to look after one's self. This is your answer to God when He questions you upon the affairs of your brother. The world has overcome you and has dragged you down to its own shocking, atrocious level. Tucked away in our blankets, in cozy quarters with steam heat— let the night-wind whistle and moan, what have we to do with the pale, starving orphan, with the shivering foundling or the dying, homeless wretch, who perishes on our steps? What have we to do with the widow in the cold, damp cellar,—nothing short of a germ-incubator, with the meagre butt of a tallow candle to heat the cold heart of December and scorch the remnant of beef or mutton begged at the butcher's, and kept on one side by the butcher for his customers' dogs and cast to the mendicant with a scowl, aye, flung to her as to a human dog. Oh, we have no pity for such cases as we never think of such things. God does. No blackness of the night veils it from Him. The personnel of these tragedies are His children, begotten in blood and tears. They are our brothers, . but we disown them. Lamb of God I hear Thy bleatings. 

The poor and sinful stretch out their hands for the softness of Thy fleece, for the warmth of Thy mouth. Alas, how often the world answers the cry with frost and stones. The Master knows it well; "He came to His own and His own received Him not." What did the well-housed guests care for His Mother, when the young Jewish woman and her humble carpenter-spouse could find no shelter and had to turn toward the mountains to find a birthplace for the Son of God? They themselves were provided for, their concerns ended there. Selfish minds want no bother, they want ease. The sufferings of others make no impression on them. They sleep like tops and eat like buzzards and will have none of that which mars the sublime brutality of their lives.

God The Holy Ghost part 25.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

The body is not one member but many." The humblest is as truly a member of the Church as is the highest. All cannot be bishops. "If the whole body were the eye, where would be the hearing?" All men cannot be priests, all women cannot be nuns, and all religious cannot be Jesuits or Carmelites. — " If all were one member, where would be the body." We all need one another in the Church; there is no such thing as independence in the mystical body of Christ! "The eye cannot say to  the hand, I need not thy help, nor can the head say to the feet, I have no need of you." God has tempered the body together, "That there might be no schism in the body, that the members might be mutually careful one for another." So united ought we all to be that the success or failure of another, whether it be an individual or a body, should in the one case exhilarate us or in the other cast us down. "If one member suffer anything all the members suffer with it, or if one member glory all the members rejoice with it. Rejoice with them that rejoice, weep with them that weep!" (Rom. xii, 15.) 

The Holy Ghost is the centripetal tendency in all the spiritual planets, in all christian systems and individuals. It is the human in us that is centrifugal. St. Paul has so whittled his arrow in this chapter as to penetrate the hierarchy, the priesthood and the religious system. It pricks official arrogance, it stabs to the heart corporate or individual selfishness. "Charity is patient, is kind, charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, seeketh not her own." (I, Cor. xiii, 4.) "Loving one another with the charity of brotherhood, with honor preferring one another,— pursuing hospitality." ( v. 10, 13.) This broad love which blossoms in universal zeal and encouragement toward all who wear the uniform of the christian army, whether one be in the infantry or cavalry, an officer or a common soldier, no matter what the color of his uniform or what the number of his regiment, is the one correct christian disposition.

God The Holy Ghost part 24.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

The mute, inanimate world foreshadows this principle of christian harmony—the world is one; all things, in earth, sky and sea work in unison, in a consummate mechanism; "all things work together for good," says St. Paul. Even in creation, not to work together would mean no end of evil. Man is one in kind. Mortal pain illumines the bond. Christianity is one, "one mind, one heart." The blood of Christ seals this union enacted by His nativity, life and teaching. With Him we form one body. Redemption lays upon us the obligation of union with our fellows, union in multiplicity, that is to say, charity—real, deep, complete, one that enfolds in its ardent embrace deity and humanity.

The Holy Ghost is distinct from the Father and the Son, yet, the eternal divine Unity is unimpaired. We, God's children.are cut up into distinct walks in life. Have we part parted with christian union? Have we broken the chain that should bind all men in one family, like a sheaf? Has our particular state in life weakened the bond of sympathy with the broad and scattered groups and members of the human family and especially of the christian household? When attention is called to the lack of sympathy or what looks like friction between the members of one religious body and the adherents of another, the usual dictum of the philosophic observer is— well, you know, human nature! But in the twelfth chapter, first Corinthians, St. Paul teaches us to overcome this pettiness and selfishness. It is a sin against christian society, it defeats the end of organization. Unity is the tocsin. The Holy Ghost is the centre of this triumphant, irresistible organization in the christian forces. Each christian is not to combat alone, but shoulder to shoulder with his fellow christian. Each organization or order is not to combat absolutely alone or in the odious sense of too great unsympathetic exclusiveness, but phalanx to phalanx in an esprit de corps. The community idea of religious founders operates for the perfection of charity: we should enlarge this to the idea of the christian community. Our enemies are united; let us be a unit for this and more positive aDd lofty reasons. "Now there are diversities of grace but the same spirit, there are diversities of ministers but the same Lord, and there are diversities of operation but the same God, Who worketh all in all." "To one, indeed, by the spirit, is given the word of wisdom, and to another the word of knowledge, according to the same spirit. To another, faith in the same spirit, to another, prophecy, to another, diverse kinds of tongues," etc. But all these things, "one and the same spirit worketh, unto everyone according as he will"—to sovereign pontiffs, to bishops, to priests, to Dominican, to Franciscan, to Jesuit, to individual saints, different graces, ministrations, operations, manifestations of the spirit. St. Paul goes on to checkmate pride and selfishness, whether corporate or personal, that seeks too much isolation from the body. The right arm or the eye is ashamed of the poor toe. "In one spirit were we all baptized into one body.

God The Holy Ghost part 23.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

How many christians review their Catechism from time to time, through life, to refresh their memories and to preserve the christian alphabet, like a musician who practises his scales? Hence chaos, platitude, generalities in thought and speech and all through ignorance of the christian alphabet. Flotsam and jetsam we float along, creatures of environment and impulse; our personal faith is purely emotional or sentimental, whereas, if we delved into Godhead, drilled into its boulders, rationalized and searched out—under God's help, of course — we should build our lives far deeper than sentiment, we should fix it upon a broader, solider foundation and an enlightened mind would guide our way.

Practical Christianity suffers from poor circulation in our case. It needs the Holy Ghost, the spiritual battery. How is its circulation to be kept up? If one were to say to the wide world, meditate! I fancy the world would grin—perhaps some not of the world. How will men know God? Is it indeed by intuition? Nay, but by reasoning matters out, by exerting the mind to debate and argue it into solid conviction with the help of faith! This is the chief province of preaching. Religion otherwise conceived is ephemeral. One may be somehow impressed but not convinced; this is one of the sad discoveries of human experience, a sad reminder of the divorce of the mind from the will. Hence recrudescence and fluctuation in virtue. Our house trembles in the blast of temptation and often falls. To be true, one's practical religiousness A ought to be built on deep principle and be systematic, and,— with all due respect to faith, — scientific, for, it is a serious business, a sacred science. It has its balance sheet and the account we are to render of the talents God has bestowed on us. We] ought to advance in knowledge of God. As a matter of plain fact most of us are satisfied with a crumb; more of God would cloy. We have a faint appetite for heaven and no set, serious, well-defined purpose to save our souls and to know daily how far we have succeeded in this tremendous business of life. (A.) All mankind may be united to God, not, of course, by that unity, technically speaking such as the Three Divine Persons have in Godhead. Union is the most a creature may have with God —"My yoke is sweet."

Two can draw a load better than one, and bear a larger burden. In practice, how often do we reject this christian wisdom in spite of the clear invitation, " Come to Me, all ye that labor or that are heavily burdened and I will refresh you." We remain alone, isolated, unrefreshed, jaded, parched, sick of our lot, fencing with despair; we are ankle-deep in the slough of despondency or we encounter a steep accline and we cannot get on with our load, — this earthly load. Why? Precisely because we live aloof from the centre of gravity, we live out of union with God, we do not yoke ourselves with God. We cut ourselves loose from the Trinity and perish. Here is man's best, aye only, strength—with God, "Dominus Tecum." This was Mary's glory and force. The angel told her so and tells us so — "the Lord is with thee,"-a daily momentary union with God, in Him, by Him, with Him and for Him, a constant presence within and without, the very air we breathe in at each pulsation of the heart. Solve that union and there is death—of the soul! "Who shall separate me," shouted St. Paul in a cloudburst of holy chivalry. He was yoked to God; he felt the power of two persons and one of them divine. In the sunlit hours and labors, in the moonlit slumber, 'mid the day treacheries and amid the shadows of evil that haunt the night, our fondest hope should be that the angel might ever be able to whisper,—"The Lord is with thee." "O God, take not Thy Holy Spirit from me."  comforting word to be sure, O, Angel, which atones for all our hunger, our mental distress and all the rankling vicissitudes of life. (B) One may and ought to have union with one's fellowmen, aye, union, if not unity, with all mankind's various identities—"thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and thy neighbor as thyself."

God The Holy Ghost part 22.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

Yes, there is a resultant prosaicness in our lives. We have not cultivated the mystic sense. Ruskin has sought to express under the faculty of imagination a sort of shadow of this spiritual faculty. "The imagination," he goes on to say, "sees the heart and inner nature and makes them felt; it is often obscure, mysterious, and interrupted in its giving outer detail; a seer in the prophetic sense, calling the things that are not, as though they were, and forever delighting to dwell on that which is tangibly present." Faith has given us a shower of jewels, spiritual gems, and we are childlike, if not swine-like, in our dull appreciation of the brilliants. The poet of nature goes to the fields, he gambols in them, and he goes out to the woodlands, and he gets at the heart of Nature; he goes in search of it. His soul grows in familiar communing with the meadows, the brooks and buds; he learns their language, hears the message they have to deliver and learns their secrets. Spiritually, we know Godhead in paint; we fail to seek the heart of mysteries, to drink in their treasured sweets, to suck bee-like their honey. God's law is not in our hearts; we have not, indeed, trained the mystic sense, we are barbarous christians. Our inner hearts are far from God; we follow God from afar. How much of the God of creation do they know who live out their whole lives in stuffy cities, in narrow lanes, who never, or very rarely, see God's vast, blue sky and radiant sun? Were they not over-indolent, such people might at times, the least and poorest among them, stroll or ride out into the suburbs and see and explore the green fields and the mountain range and hear the birds chirping and carolling and smell the meadow's breath. The contrast would impress them with the foulness of their abodes and rags and prompt them to a more wholesome existence. Even in their be-gloomed homes, the sprig of green, the tuft of new mown hay from the hay-rick, the little yellow buttercup they had plucked and now preserve in a little vase, bowl or jar would remind them all the week long in their dungeon homes of higher, purer things, not far away. Moralize on this picture. Make the soul the city denizen and the mysteries of Godhead God's blue sky, the golden sun, the meadows, rivulets, birds and bushes. How soon we should envy the saints and not merely patronize them as parvenus patronize the paintings of an artist! How soon we should grow weary of our dull, pessimistic lives! Taste and see! The sorrows of Nature would lose their note of despair. Life's tragedies would take on more of the sapphire's glistening of the throne cloud at sunset rather than the color of human blood, which the veins of the poor supply to the unquenchable dragon thirst of the rich and the powerful. Shall we, indeed, languish in life's misery when the whole expanse of God-head is open to us to make the spirit strong and glad with the wine of its knowledge, its beauties, its transformation, its hopes? Yet we know the rose from the lily, the marigold from the daisy, the chrysanthemum from the Jacqueminot. We discern the individuality of each  planet. None so ignorant in our midst but should blush not to know a few, at least, of the starry splendors by their own name.

We know the individuality of our friends, their character and their tastes. When we meet them on the highway we recognize them at once. What embarrassment not to have recognized them ; to have to strive to recall their identity and name! Your friend realizes keenly that you are so superficially aware of his personality. Ah! you were, after all, only an acquaintance of his and hardly that. Coming from behind us, coming before to meet us, crossing and recrossing our lives, every moment of the day and the night, the Holy Ghost is hardly an acquaintance. Aye, He is but a name to us dull christians, who have no memory but for things identified with earth, and that have only an earthly meaning and purely earthly promises in them. We are not acquainted with His individuality, His doings, His dress, as it were, His voice, with His manner of speech; in a word, a lack of spiritual knowledge can be but too truly laid up against our spiritual lethargy. What should we say of a physician who comes and says simply that his patient has a disease, who could not diagnose its particular form? What a criminal ignorance, indeed, would this be, and, as far as the patient is concerned, a ghastly one! No one questions that a physician ought to know his professional duties. Artists are we who use paint but not color, and we cannot, or at least do not, distinguish color from color. You would say that such a one were no artist at all. Grace, grace, say we, and yet we know nothing of its colors. If, indeed, our capacity of mind and word be small, well, fill the pitchers you have. Give to God the widow's mite, all that your capacity can afford. One cannot get at mysteries! No, that is, not entirely, yet, one leaf from the forest, one petal! We may not see all, of course, nor, perhaps, as much as others more bright and willing than we. Large fishes disport themselves far out. To reach them requires good vessels and hardy mariners,—saints of the highest type. We can live on the smaller creatures, caught near the shore. Shame, indeed, that one should be inexpert, inartistic, unrefined in knowledge of things divine!

God The Holy Ghost part 21.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

Text marches after text in the mobilization of the Sacred Scriptures, "The grace of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the charity of God, and the communication of the Holy Ghost be with you." (I. Cor. xiii, 3; II. Cor. xiii, 13.) What thence do we conclude? Is there, I repeat, no significance in this so frequent bringing forward of the Holy Ghost in a manifest, distinct designation? Faintly and dimly portrayed on the Scriptural canvas in the Old brought out in bold lines by the master hand and having its colors re-freshened by the apostles in the New Law, there can be no mistaking the design of heaven to invest the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity in the peculiar glories of His own distinct personality as "other" than the Father and the Son, though one in Godhead with Them.

The Holy Ghost is joined with the Father and the Son and "co-numbered" with Them so that His own name and personal or appropriated workings will come right to the foreground and assert themselves. This insistence can only be explained by the positive distinctiveness of the Holy Ghost's personality, the implication of its deep mysteriousness and by the decided purpose, on the part of God, that we shall be amply convinced that the Holy Ghost is not a mere manifestation of Godhead—one in personality—not a figment nor mythical designation of an attribute, but a divine, immense, wondrous and distinct personality, equal in standing and condition to the other divine Persons. The insistence upon this truth implies, I repeat, the pure mysteriousness of it, and reason's absolute incapacity to comprehend it, hence, this constant reiteration or determination to combat and batter down incredulity on the point. Reading the Holy Scripture on any other assumption is confusing and needlessly distracting. It is a breach of simplicity to divide the forces of the mind and to array one person in such diverse forms; and, as we know, God does not aim at confusing us. "You are washed and you are sanctified in the name of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and in the spirit of our God." "It is wicked," says St. Athanasius, "to assert that the Spirit of God was created or made, when we come to view the fact that the Sacred Scriptures, both Old and New, co-numerate and glorify Him with the Father and the Son." (De Incarn. n. 9.) "I am not alone," says Our Lord. (St. John viii, 16.) We encounter, in the development of our theme, Scylla and Charybdis. On the one side, the error of Sabbelianism and the Jews juts out; on the other, Arianism and the Gentile faith. Faith takes a middle course. With the former, the Church preserves oneness; with the latter, distinctiveness of persons. "Between the two opinions, the truth goes on forever." "Retain with the Jews the unity of nature, and with the Gentiles retain the distinctiveness of persons, and in this way the two opinions will be mended," says St. Gregory Naz., (or Catech. C. 3.) Fulgentius says: "The Blessed Trinity is one God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, for there is but one nature in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. But They are not one in Person. What the Sabbelians state is true, in so far as they believe the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are one in nature, but they go astray when they decline to believe in three divine Persons. The Arians are right in so far as they subscribe to three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. But They are not one in Person. The Arians are right in so far as they subscribe to three divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, but they go astray in trying to make out three divine Natures for three Divine Persons." (Eph. viii.) After all, truth prevails in the long run, in the Church and in human lives, with the former, here, the latter, eternally in death. Sabbelius is gone; Arius is dead. They have sunk in the mystery of Godhead, whilst the faithful sail serenely on in ecstatic triumph over its majestic expanse, through its strange mists, in the dear old ship whose keel is red with martyrs' blood, whose magazines are filled with the ammunition of unassailable testimonies, and at whose helm the aged Leo stands in Peter's shoes, wrapped in a storm garb, buckled in the imperishable coat of mail—infallibility, in the shadow of the Holy Spirit. Men and empires, like ships, heeding not the red lantern hung upon her topmast, have perished in collision with her. Returning again to our theme, the unity of Godhead is numeric, not merely specific. Baffled by the mystery, the heretical idea tends always toward the illusion, that there must be as many natures as there are persons, and as many persons as natures in God. In setting forth that there are more persons than one, no wound is dealt to the undivided Trinity—Trinity, say I, not trunity, for there is but one divine Unity. The penal result of upholding the contrary, that is to say, a multiplication of divine Natures, is polytheism. The numeric unity charges the air with denseness of mystery. St. Gregory Nazianzen voices this: "No words are adequate to bespeak the depths of the mystery, how, namely, one and the same thing is numerable and yet defiant of number.— "How distinctiveness is found where we know there is unity, how there is distinctiveness present, such as leaves the subject thereof intact,"—that is to say, the nature which is identified with the distinct hypostasis or person is not affected. —"Furthermore, there is another from whom the Word and the Spirit come forth, yet where you observe distinction in such matters, the unity of nature, on the other hand, admits of no division." (Or Catech. c. 30, T. ii, P. 489.)

"There is no principle of reason by which one can possibly penetrate the multiplicity of persons in a numerically unique essence." (Franz. De Deo Trino. p. 279.) St. Thomas has well said, "If one were to start out to prove the Trinity, by natural reason, he would commit a two-fold offence. In the first place he would err against the dignity of faith itself, which has to do, in mysteries properly so called, with invisible things, which transcend human reason."— The apostle says. (I Cor. ii, 7): "But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, a mystery which is hidden." In the second place, one would impair his usefulness in bringing over others to the faith, because when a man struts out with reasons that have no cogency in them, he becomes the laughing stock of the unbelieving." (1 q. 32 a, 1.) The world grasps specific unity. It understands, for example, how humanity is one, and realizes, at the same time, that there must be many men. St. Gregory observes: "Under headship, a community has unity only after a fashion, so to speak. Coming right down to fact, they are, for the most part, disunited from each other— each divine Person, however, in so far as identity of essence and power is concerned, has not less unity taken by Himself than when coupled with another." (Greg. Naz. or. 81.)

The unity of Godhead is so divine in its character, so complete, so simple, so marvelous, that in one person, just as in three, there is the same, incomparable unity of Godhead.

Another step upward toward Sion's summit. Our work has not been a daydream. We see and we see not, yet we believe that there are three persons in one God. The Third Person is not a nuance, a color-tone, but a distinct personality. Alas! we have not realized these tremendous, mystic phenomena before; why should we when we have been at no pains to explore them. Oh, yes, we have read of them in Sunday School literature and prayer books
and learned them in their briefest, tabloid form by heart, but, they have been waxen flowers in our lives, they have been lifeless, juiceless realities. Irreverent?—well, yes, there is a disrespect and a very wasteful unconsciousness of the infinitude of treasures that lie within the reach of our souls, of our mind and will, were we up and doing and not merely dreaming or vegetating. Earth would become a vestibule of heaven; we should be richer than kings if, instead of  floating on the surface, we would dive down and gather the precious pearls that lie only at the bottom of the sea.

God The Holy Ghost part 20.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

CHAPTER VI. THE HOLY GHOST IS DISTINCT FROM THE FATHER AND THE SON.

The Sabbelianists were a tribe of heretics, who had their origin of Sabbelius, an African Presbyter, who came upon the world's scene in the third century. Their principle was to deny the truth of the statement that the Holy Ghost is distinct from the Father and the Son.

Sabbelianism does not accept in the Trinity a distinguishing of Persons. We might add, incidentally, that it aims, also, to slay the Incarnation, by making out this tremendous project of divine love to be nothing more than the manifestation of God in Christ, differing, therefore, not in kind, but in degree, only, from his union with other holy men. Let us look into the matter.

Our Lord says: "I and the Father are one," (St. John, x. 30.) We find, however, that the adjective "one" is framed in the neuter gender, the effect of which is the assertion of singleness of nature, that is to say, that there is but one divine nature. Put, on the other hand, the masculine gender upon the adjective "one" and it would be a contradiction to predicate it of the Three, for, employed in such fashion, it would come by a personal qualification. To say that the Trinity is one— neuter gender—would be, theologically speaking, correct. To declare that the Trinity is "one"—masculine gender—without adding the word God, would signify that the Trinity is one person. This is Sabbelianistic, and, of course, heretical; for, faith teaches us that there are three divine, really distinct Persons in one divine nature. God-head is single, simple, uncomposite in Its nature. It is indivisive, but not in such a way as not to exist in three divine Persons. Sabbelianism, precluding the mystery of the Trinity, runs together all the divine Persons into a single one. This heresy has, of course, like all blunders, its instructional features— intrinsically, of course. Is it not, to a certain extent, at least, true that we, in our prayers, ideas and conduct, jumble the Adorable Persons? In the confusion, the Holy Ghost is disrobed of His individuality or personality, and now what else is this but a sort of practical— unconscious, if you will, and, thanks to God, unintentional yet a practical—Sabbelianism. Its message to us individually is to be awake to the real, internal truth and to avoid any practice of Sabbelianism as well as the Sabbelian theory. The Sabbelians believed in God, as well as you and I do. It is the distinctiveness of Persons that precludes them from the pale. This would very naturally prompt us to give the Holy Ghost a distinct place in our ideas and devotions, both as a matter of faith, as from a standpoint of truth and justice. The truth of the distinctiveness of Persons has no end of Scriptural testimony. Our Lord calls attention to the fact that the Father and Himself are not the only persons: "But when the Paraclete shall come, Whom I shall send you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth Who proceedeth from the Father, He shall give testimony of Me." (St. John, xv, 26); "And I will ask the Father and He will give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you forever." (xiv, 16.) Now, as if the spoken Word were not quite enough to set forth the mystery of the distinctiveness of Persons, we have the manifestation at the baptism of Our Lord with the visible corporeous appurtenances of the Holy Ghost impressively, yet picturesquely exhibited, in the distinct phenomenon of the dove, "and he saw the Spirit of God, descending as a dove." (Matt, iii, 16.) Then, again, nothing could be more formal or more clear than Our Lord's words, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." (xxviii, 19.) It should mean more to us in the future than it has in the past that Our Lord mentions so often the Third Person by His peculiar hypostatic or personal name. "But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, Whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring all things to your mind, whatever I shall have said to you." (Matt, xiv, 26.) St. Paul says: "I beseech ye therefore, brethren, through Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and by the charity of the Holy Ghost, that you assist me in your prayers for me to God." (Rom., xv, 30.).