By Henry Aloysius Barry
Every day eminent personages, like Cornelius the Centurion, of earlier date, and Newman, in more recent times, come over to Rome. How is the fact explained?
The Spirit said to Peter, "Behold three men seek thee... I have sent them." (Acts x.) The Holy Ghost draws these souls to the true Church; it is the Holy Ghost Who gives them the uplifted vision and the righteous heart craving together with the courageous boldness to breast the tirade of the scoffer and the bludgeon of the persecutor in the shape of social ostracism and preclusion from lucrative situations. Why does the Holy Ghost not draw the rest of men by that same grace? St. Paul answers this question —"because you rejected it; and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life." (Acts xiii, 46.) "While Peter was speaking these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all of them." The divine electricity is in the word of God, spoken and preached by the lawfully appointed teachers of Christianity, but to get into touch with the current there must be an absence of all obex or of all nonconductors. This means that one has to be properly disposed. Disposition effects the wire connection as the case of Cornelius effectively demonstrates. When the Holy Ghost came to him he was prepared and rightly disposed; his soul was open to the truth and docile toward it, and his spirit was even more than this, it was brave—he sought the truth, he had to have it and he dallied not over the consideration of what the truth might cost him— "Immediately, therefore, I sent to thee," said he to Peter: I have no will in this matter I await the voice of God, the pleasure of heaven, the will of my Maker. I stand expectant to know what my duty is and am set upon its speedy, effective execution—"all we are present in Thy sight, to hear all things, whatsoever are commanded of thee by the Lord." (x, 33.) Hearken to the word ye rebels "whatsoever are commanded of thee by the Lord." The secret of the Church's unflagging endeavors, of her power over mankind, ought to be clear on the point of a supernatural superhuman origin and appeal to the common sense of the world. Gamaliel pondered wisely whilst his fellow-countrymen, the Jews, were intent upon strangling the infant Church and engaged in dissipating the prodigies of the Holy Ghost—how well the Jew spoke and how profoundly:—"If it be of God, you cannot overthrow
it." (Acts v, 39.) The Holy Ghost is that electricity of infinite voltage, generated in the dynamo of the Church out of her sacramental machinery. She cannot be resisted—she is of God. When Christ ascended, His heavenward flight created a suction —'the Holy Ghost drawing and absorbing all manner of men, in all times, by His grace. The voice of the Church is the voice of God; the Holy Spirit proceeds from her. "And as they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Ghost said to them: 'Separate me Saul and Barnabas, for the work whereunto I have taken them.' So they being sent by the Holy Ghost, went to Selucia.—They preached the Word of God." (xiii, 2, 3, 4, 5.) The apostles never acted in council on their own judgment, but in prayer and fasts they sought out and fully trusted to the authoritative voice, the help and inspiration of the Holy Ghost; they followed the compass. This fact is very perceptible from the words, "It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and us." (Acts xv, 28.) And again, "they were forbidden by the Holy Ghost to preach the word of God in Asia," and farther still from the words, "they attempted to go into Bythinia, and the spirit of Jesus Christ suffered them not." On the other hand, the Macedonians attracted the electrical bolt in the person of St. Paul. The apostle was vouchsafed a vision in the night. It was a certain man of Macedonia standing and beseeching him, and saying, "pass over to Macedonia and help us." (v. 9.) "Being assured," said St. Paul, "that God hath called us to preach the gospel to them." (Acts xvi, 6.) This apparent discrimination on the part of the Holy Ghost as between the Macedonians, Bythinians and Asiatics provides us with opportunity for a very important observation. The faith is given to those who have proven themselves disposed thereunto by doing what shall have lain in their power and come within circle of their light. God wishes sincerely, earnestly, as only a God of love can, to see all men saved, but, it must be understood that the human will is free.
