By Henry Aloysius Barry
The doxology derived from the very earliest periods—Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian— accords the same glory to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. A battalion of text marches out of the patristic armories keeping step to the same air. The formula of baptism, however, furnishes the Fathers with arguments especially felicitous in the way of proof of the divinity of the Holy Ghost. The main force of this weapon is found in the coupling and conumeration of the Holy Ghost with the Father and Son in this "fundamental" rite of salvation, one wherein man is washed of stain, regenerated, sanctified, made peculiarly the property of God. To feel the weight of this fact, fully, it is to be observed that if the name of the Holy Ghost were to be omitted from the baptismal formula, the sacrament is not bestowed —it would be null and void. It is to be noted, also, that the Three Persons are invoked in one, unseparated, common name. From these data on the necessity of the coupling of the Holy Ghost with the Father and Son in so great a work, aye indispensable, it clearly follows that the Holy Ghost has the same authority and power, honor and majesty, in one word, the same divinity as the Father and Son, for, baptism administered in the name of creatures would be spurious. To baptize in the name of an apostle or even Our Lady would not be valid. "Was Paul then crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I give God thanks, that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius and lest any should say that you were baptized in my name." (I. Cor. i., 13, 14, 15.)
Our Lord would not have put a creature on a par with God. "Go teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." (Mat. xxviii, 19.) And as St. Basil remarks, "we should baptize only in the name of the true God, and the Holy Ghost would not make us children of God, by grace and baptism, if He Himself were not true God." (Adv. Eunon. lib. 111.)
How the evidences of the divinity of the Holy Ghost fall upon our upland path like leaves of autumn, nay, blossoms of spring, for they are living things to us. Now we have reached a plateau, and after wading in morasses of arguments have come to a mountain-lake where we contemplate the image of the heavenly-Three. "We see now through a glass, in a dark manner, but then face to face, now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known." (I. Cor. xiii. 12.) Let us muse over the grandiloquent reflection. It is a vital matter, touching faith, justice and truth, that we profess and confess the divineness of the Holy Ghost.—" I believe in the Holy Ghost." "There are Three Who give testimony in Heaven; the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost, and these Three are One." (I. John v. 11.) I adore the Holy Ghost—true and Jiving God. "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost." The assent of my mind unites with the pulse of my heart and the two in spirit and truth unite themselves to the hosts of heaven in that solemn trisagion— "Holy, holy, holy!"
Ah! angels and saints concord in that mighty chorus; out of the symphonic interblending, mergent in melodic wonders, I catch the interlacing, now and then, of the various melodies in the distinct phrasing of each chorus-band, pouring out their spirits with quenchless ardor, with a force majestic and solemn, enchanting, infinitely soothing and each carol variant with the number of heavenly mansions, distinct with its own particular theme, formed on the character, life, gifts and works of the particular choristers. Mighty and tumultuous is that chorus, higher and higher, broader and broader, deeper and deeper the waves of sweet and terrible sonority rise and swell, now revealing, in clear sweet treble, the lily-vested innocents in their ruby mantles and tiny coronets, now the counter-tones, cavern-like, thundering, of the patriarchs and prophets in luxuriant, snowy beards.
Louder the swell and ever louder, torrents of song pour out from the mansions of glory, and ever louder sweep along through the golden paved avenues of the heavenly Jerusalem and rise to the arches of space, shaking its translucent pillars of diaphanous alabaster and falling in fearful volume like as if all the force and full extent of the mighty ocean were transubstantiated in sound, whose thundering volleys float and roll themselves against the throne of the one living God, in Three divine Persons, and receding bear away on its out-rolling music-waves the saints and angels of God, in a spray of sweet Sabbath, of exquisite, eternal bewilderment. Not in a Nirvana, but in a tremendous, inspired, lofty activity of worship and love —eternal "life." The Church sees and reflects this panorama of bliss in her apostrophe to her saints, —"O! blessed man, in whose exit the saints deliver themselves of song, choirs of angels wax gladsome and the whole army of celestial virtues are in choral attendance." (Resp. Lect. 7th martyrs.)—"Hark," says Daniel, "and you shall hear the sound of the trumpet and of the flute, and of the harp and of the sackbut, and of the symphony and of all kinds of music." (Dan. iii.) But it is not to the false God of Nabuchodonosor on the plains of Judea that this vast choir and orchestra rushes onward; nay, but to the one living God—Father, Son and Holy Ghost, of Whom it is truly said, "If any man shall not fall down and adore, he shall be cast into a furnace of living fire." (Dan. iii, 6.) St. Paul, emerging from the third heaven, reminds us "that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, such beautiful things as heaven has in store for us." St. John has drawn a tableau of the heavenly Jerusalem in dazzling colors; its unrivaled magnificence stuns the being. — " The glory of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof." The Holy Ghost, the gift of the Lamb, floods the heavenly city with sheen and harmony. Alas! the sluggish soul, the carnal spirit, catches no unearthly sound, it strains not its ear. In vain has the angel of God called to it to view in spirit the heavenly Jerusalem and to hear its liquid chant. The walls of my soul are cold and barren. No picture of heaven, no portraits of it painted in words by the Son of Man and His apostles and retouched by the fathers of the Church ornament the walls.—"And I, John, saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride for her husband." (Apoc. xxi, 2.) "And he took me up in spirit to a great high mountain, and he showed me the holy city of Jerusalem." (v, 10.)
The doxology derived from the very earliest periods—Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian— accords the same glory to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. A battalion of text marches out of the patristic armories keeping step to the same air. The formula of baptism, however, furnishes the Fathers with arguments especially felicitous in the way of proof of the divinity of the Holy Ghost. The main force of this weapon is found in the coupling and conumeration of the Holy Ghost with the Father and Son in this "fundamental" rite of salvation, one wherein man is washed of stain, regenerated, sanctified, made peculiarly the property of God. To feel the weight of this fact, fully, it is to be observed that if the name of the Holy Ghost were to be omitted from the baptismal formula, the sacrament is not bestowed —it would be null and void. It is to be noted, also, that the Three Persons are invoked in one, unseparated, common name. From these data on the necessity of the coupling of the Holy Ghost with the Father and Son in so great a work, aye indispensable, it clearly follows that the Holy Ghost has the same authority and power, honor and majesty, in one word, the same divinity as the Father and Son, for, baptism administered in the name of creatures would be spurious. To baptize in the name of an apostle or even Our Lady would not be valid. "Was Paul then crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I give God thanks, that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius and lest any should say that you were baptized in my name." (I. Cor. i., 13, 14, 15.)
Our Lord would not have put a creature on a par with God. "Go teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." (Mat. xxviii, 19.) And as St. Basil remarks, "we should baptize only in the name of the true God, and the Holy Ghost would not make us children of God, by grace and baptism, if He Himself were not true God." (Adv. Eunon. lib. 111.)
How the evidences of the divinity of the Holy Ghost fall upon our upland path like leaves of autumn, nay, blossoms of spring, for they are living things to us. Now we have reached a plateau, and after wading in morasses of arguments have come to a mountain-lake where we contemplate the image of the heavenly-Three. "We see now through a glass, in a dark manner, but then face to face, now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known." (I. Cor. xiii. 12.) Let us muse over the grandiloquent reflection. It is a vital matter, touching faith, justice and truth, that we profess and confess the divineness of the Holy Ghost.—" I believe in the Holy Ghost." "There are Three Who give testimony in Heaven; the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost, and these Three are One." (I. John v. 11.) I adore the Holy Ghost—true and Jiving God. "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost." The assent of my mind unites with the pulse of my heart and the two in spirit and truth unite themselves to the hosts of heaven in that solemn trisagion— "Holy, holy, holy!"
Ah! angels and saints concord in that mighty chorus; out of the symphonic interblending, mergent in melodic wonders, I catch the interlacing, now and then, of the various melodies in the distinct phrasing of each chorus-band, pouring out their spirits with quenchless ardor, with a force majestic and solemn, enchanting, infinitely soothing and each carol variant with the number of heavenly mansions, distinct with its own particular theme, formed on the character, life, gifts and works of the particular choristers. Mighty and tumultuous is that chorus, higher and higher, broader and broader, deeper and deeper the waves of sweet and terrible sonority rise and swell, now revealing, in clear sweet treble, the lily-vested innocents in their ruby mantles and tiny coronets, now the counter-tones, cavern-like, thundering, of the patriarchs and prophets in luxuriant, snowy beards.
Louder the swell and ever louder, torrents of song pour out from the mansions of glory, and ever louder sweep along through the golden paved avenues of the heavenly Jerusalem and rise to the arches of space, shaking its translucent pillars of diaphanous alabaster and falling in fearful volume like as if all the force and full extent of the mighty ocean were transubstantiated in sound, whose thundering volleys float and roll themselves against the throne of the one living God, in Three divine Persons, and receding bear away on its out-rolling music-waves the saints and angels of God, in a spray of sweet Sabbath, of exquisite, eternal bewilderment. Not in a Nirvana, but in a tremendous, inspired, lofty activity of worship and love —eternal "life." The Church sees and reflects this panorama of bliss in her apostrophe to her saints, —"O! blessed man, in whose exit the saints deliver themselves of song, choirs of angels wax gladsome and the whole army of celestial virtues are in choral attendance." (Resp. Lect. 7th martyrs.)—"Hark," says Daniel, "and you shall hear the sound of the trumpet and of the flute, and of the harp and of the sackbut, and of the symphony and of all kinds of music." (Dan. iii.) But it is not to the false God of Nabuchodonosor on the plains of Judea that this vast choir and orchestra rushes onward; nay, but to the one living God—Father, Son and Holy Ghost, of Whom it is truly said, "If any man shall not fall down and adore, he shall be cast into a furnace of living fire." (Dan. iii, 6.) St. Paul, emerging from the third heaven, reminds us "that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, such beautiful things as heaven has in store for us." St. John has drawn a tableau of the heavenly Jerusalem in dazzling colors; its unrivaled magnificence stuns the being. — " The glory of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof." The Holy Ghost, the gift of the Lamb, floods the heavenly city with sheen and harmony. Alas! the sluggish soul, the carnal spirit, catches no unearthly sound, it strains not its ear. In vain has the angel of God called to it to view in spirit the heavenly Jerusalem and to hear its liquid chant. The walls of my soul are cold and barren. No picture of heaven, no portraits of it painted in words by the Son of Man and His apostles and retouched by the fathers of the Church ornament the walls.—"And I, John, saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride for her husband." (Apoc. xxi, 2.) "And he took me up in spirit to a great high mountain, and he showed me the holy city of Jerusalem." (v, 10.)
