By Henry Aloysius Barry
Let us stop to reflect for one moment and contrast the concord of the True Church and the sweet harmonies of brotherhood with the institution of Belial, set in the city of Babel. Mutual forbearance and love is not Nature's instinct, by any means. This is Christian art. What a conquest— one mind and heart in a charity that circles the world, embraces people of every hue, of every cast of idea, every complexion of taste, every shade of thought, variety of habit and literature, in spite of Nature's malignant tendency to seek and defend her own upon all occasions! Catholic Christian unity is the world's marvel. "Let the peace of Christ rejoice in your hearts wherein also you are called in one body, and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you abundantly, in all wisdom: teaching and admonishing one another." (Col. iii., 15,16.) But the secret of all this ?" If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." "Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another." (Gal., v. 25, 26.) The Holy Ghost works out this charity against brutish, selfish, envious instinct. He guards the family integrity against iconoclastic pride and scuttling ambition, on the part of the Church's children, who, when piqued by defeated hopes, strive to disrupt her unity and sink the bark of Peter. But the fires of the Holy Ghost have so melted us together that no human or other agency can effect any fatal dismemberment. The Church goes on making for unity till the Holy Ghost is torn from her breast and we know that this cannot be until Christ's promise should have been broken: —"Behold I am with you all days."
To hark back to our theme again: St. Augustine says that it is "the Father Who is now appearing, and then again the Son, yet, again, the Holy Ghost, so that it is not for the most part conclusively established, which became the special object of a vision, as, for example, in the promenade and conversation that took place with Adam, it might be the Father or the one and triune God." In the case of Abraham, it does not quite appear whether it was one Person or all three; the latter looks the more probable. Lot saw the Son and Holy Ghost. Who especially appeared to Moses and led forward the children of Israel through the wilderness or Who gave the law upon Sinai's peak does not well appear. Was it one or the other, or was it all three; was it by themselves or through the ministration of angels that all these apparitions were carried into execution? It is not known. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are equally invisible in Their nature. "The nature of God," says St. Augustine, "is invisible, not the Father only, but the whole Trinity, the one God." These perplexities belong to the Old Law. The apparitions of the Holy Ghost, in the New Law, are not without their debatable side; namely, where the point of inquiry touches their precise character and manner of fulfilment. Of course, neither the dove, nor the cloud, nor the tongue of fire could be the Holy Ghost, Who, of course, is immaterial and invisible, whereas, these things are visible. Tertullian maintained that the Holy Ghost did truly light upon the brow of the Lord in the shape of a real dove. St. Augustine has committed himself to a real dove in the case, but he repudiates the personal assumption. "The creature was never taken on in any case where the Holy
Ghost appeared, as was the case with the Son of Man," says the saint, hence there was no personal union of the Holy Ghost with the dove. By parity, all this is predicable of the other apparitions. St. Augustine, further, alleges that the corporeous appearances exhibited themselves for the time being and then vanished out of existence. St. Augustine expressed his opinion in another place to the effect that no bodily animal figured in the apparition, "but the corporeal appearances of a living animal which, by the Divine dispensation, executed motions similar to those of live animals without, however, having the life current injected into it." This was St. Chrysostom's idea also. Paschasius Diaconus (Lib. Primo), also calls it: "a transient appearance, not the durable substance." The prevailing sentiment of theologians is to the effect that there was not a true, real dove and that the Third Person did not assume the appearance. This same opinion extends, also, to the nature of the tongues of fire and the clouds. The vital character of the apparition is in no sense or degree marred by the make-up of the phenomenon. Supersensitive critics might choose to take exception to a species of what they might elect to call deceptiveness; but, at best, these apparitions were symbols and could not reasonably be looked upon to do more than "represent" the Divine idea.
