By Henry Aloysius Barry
"The soul of man is one and indivisible, and the intellect and will are but divers faculties of this one indivisible soul. As one speck of dust obscures the sight, so our disordered affections will influence and pervert the judgment, and this the more powerfully, because its action is so often unperceived." Of this power to warp the judgment, Hobbes had remarked, "That if men had any interests at stake, they would doubt and deny the axioms of the Euclid —(Hettinger.) Says Ulrici, "In all human science and knowledge, the will is the important and principal agent, for it is the will which finally determines the intelligence and which, by its own power, can reject any conclusion, whether necessary or deduced." Our Lord had enunciated this spiritual law, this psychological canon of present-time humanity, when He observes that if the eye be lightsome, the whole body is free of darkness. "The human intellect is not a dry light," Bacon tells us, "but receives a tincture from the will and affections; hence, it generates knowledge according to its wishes. For what a man would rather were true, that he more easily believes." There is no telling to what an extent of illusion one's ideas will carry one, if his will is so disposed. It would be grotesque if it were not so deeply tragic. We must never lose sight of this law when we are face to face with the ideas and opinions of men in the whole range of earthly literature, but especially upon religious points, for in this area, the law of self-illusion and intellectual malformation reaches its highest pitch of development. DeBonald says, "If the proposition, that three angles of a triangle equal two right angles, involved any moral obligations, its truth would be soon called in question." "All knowledge," says Dollinger, "must be based on morals, or, at least, has its moral sides; man cannot grasp with his intellect truths which his heart rejects, since in hardening his will, he hardens also his understanding against the truth. The immediate cause of error is indeed in the darkening of the understanding, but its root lies in corruption of the will and its revolt from God. The chief sources of our errors are then to be found in the will. Indeed, we never discover the moral character of an error until we have overcome it and rejected it, then its connection with our inclinations and faults is plain." Take this to your hearts, deeply, then; open up the organ of the will to the action of the Holy Ghost absorb His love into your breasts and all illusion will vanish, for, this love will be salt leaven to your knowledge; the values of earthly things now arrayed in ghastly and fantastic disproportion by a false perspective will be seen as they are. The mind by virtue of this love, will rise to the clear empyrean, to the blue air above, for the symposium of authorities just cited, embracing all complexions of the human mind, upon whatsoever other points they may be divergent and out of tune with one another, are on this matter a unit in claiming will rectitude as a necessary foundation for rectitude of judgment in moral and spiritual truths. In vain will we attempt conversions of non-Catholics to the faith without treating, if not beforehand, at least simultaneously, the will of the subject. In vain, also, shall we strive after the reformation of the sin-bound, be such ourselves or others, without treating at once the will, which is the prolific source of our intellectual blurring of the judgment. "If the love of God," says Martineau, "as a passion and a power is not to be dismissed insultingly among the romances of the past, we must open a more hospitable heart to the Gospel of the Spirit and more deeply enter into the life of the living God." The faculty of knowing God inwardly, of conceiving the real truth is beclouded bj' the gaseous vapors rising up from a disordered will. The clear and lucid realization of the one imperishable
beauty, the all-sufficing, waits on the moment when we shall have set the will free and rescued that unfortunate captive-faculty from the chains of its vices and disorderly affections. Lacordaire says: "Those who have never experienced this, may treat it as a dream, but those who have once beheld what I speak of can never forget it more—the more I study out people, the more I feel terrified at their incapacity for divine things." Are we wordly, unspiritually minded, bent upon passing things, let us seek the Holy Ghost, the fountain-head of love, the source of all goodness; are we worldly, begin to-day to invoke that spirit of love, raise the curtain, open the blinds of your heart where now a thousand mean, turgid creatures, asp-like, are sucking at your breast, leaving your poor soul so weak, sickly and pale in the sight of God,—howsoever elsewise you appear before the eyes of men. How concisely all we have been saying is summed up in the
word of the great penitent, St. Augustine, "Too late loved I Thee, Oh Thou beautiful of ancient days, yet ever new! Too late I loved Thee. And behold Thou went within and I abroad, and there I searched for Thee, deformed, I, plunging amid those fair forms, which Thou hast made. Thou wert with me, and I was not with Thee. Things held me far from Thee, which unless they were in me, were not at all —when I shall, with my whole self, cleave to Thee, I shall nowhere have sorrow or labor, and my life shall wholly live, as wholly full of Thee. But now since whom Thou fillest. Thou liftest up, because I am not full of Thee, I am a burden to myself." Hear you not the cry of the heart of God resounding in His temple? It is the voice of the Holy Ghost. "The Sacred Heart of Christ, Our Lord and King," says Cardinal Manning, "is always by the power of His love attracting the human will in all its freedom to Himself." By the power then of the Holy Ghost, that is by love, shall Christ conquer the world by securing the mastery over the will and heart of man. The words of St. Thomas are worthy of repetition, "every act of the will has its root in love." Join this principle to that other eternal truth, namely that the Holy Ghost is the pure extract so to speak of divine love, and what remains to us but to say with all possible depth of conviction and burning ardor: Come, Holy Spirit! and to repeat it often in our daily lives. The result cannot be otherwise— behold! nearer and ever nearer love will attract us until we shall have become by its all-consuming ardor melted into a strange, mystic union with God and be at peace,—ah! that peace which the world cannot give, for, it springs from the Holy Ghost and is His dower to the children of light.
Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Word of God, has revealed the path that leads to eternal life and has given us the Holy Ghost to imbue us with the courage and the strength to tread that narrow path, untraversed without the bruising, the bleeding of feet and the oft-sinking of the poor human heart. Without the Holy Ghost Christianity were indeed a cruel pessimism. As it is, one can say when he views the thorny path: "I can do all things in Him that strengthened me."
"The soul of man is one and indivisible, and the intellect and will are but divers faculties of this one indivisible soul. As one speck of dust obscures the sight, so our disordered affections will influence and pervert the judgment, and this the more powerfully, because its action is so often unperceived." Of this power to warp the judgment, Hobbes had remarked, "That if men had any interests at stake, they would doubt and deny the axioms of the Euclid —(Hettinger.) Says Ulrici, "In all human science and knowledge, the will is the important and principal agent, for it is the will which finally determines the intelligence and which, by its own power, can reject any conclusion, whether necessary or deduced." Our Lord had enunciated this spiritual law, this psychological canon of present-time humanity, when He observes that if the eye be lightsome, the whole body is free of darkness. "The human intellect is not a dry light," Bacon tells us, "but receives a tincture from the will and affections; hence, it generates knowledge according to its wishes. For what a man would rather were true, that he more easily believes." There is no telling to what an extent of illusion one's ideas will carry one, if his will is so disposed. It would be grotesque if it were not so deeply tragic. We must never lose sight of this law when we are face to face with the ideas and opinions of men in the whole range of earthly literature, but especially upon religious points, for in this area, the law of self-illusion and intellectual malformation reaches its highest pitch of development. DeBonald says, "If the proposition, that three angles of a triangle equal two right angles, involved any moral obligations, its truth would be soon called in question." "All knowledge," says Dollinger, "must be based on morals, or, at least, has its moral sides; man cannot grasp with his intellect truths which his heart rejects, since in hardening his will, he hardens also his understanding against the truth. The immediate cause of error is indeed in the darkening of the understanding, but its root lies in corruption of the will and its revolt from God. The chief sources of our errors are then to be found in the will. Indeed, we never discover the moral character of an error until we have overcome it and rejected it, then its connection with our inclinations and faults is plain." Take this to your hearts, deeply, then; open up the organ of the will to the action of the Holy Ghost absorb His love into your breasts and all illusion will vanish, for, this love will be salt leaven to your knowledge; the values of earthly things now arrayed in ghastly and fantastic disproportion by a false perspective will be seen as they are. The mind by virtue of this love, will rise to the clear empyrean, to the blue air above, for the symposium of authorities just cited, embracing all complexions of the human mind, upon whatsoever other points they may be divergent and out of tune with one another, are on this matter a unit in claiming will rectitude as a necessary foundation for rectitude of judgment in moral and spiritual truths. In vain will we attempt conversions of non-Catholics to the faith without treating, if not beforehand, at least simultaneously, the will of the subject. In vain, also, shall we strive after the reformation of the sin-bound, be such ourselves or others, without treating at once the will, which is the prolific source of our intellectual blurring of the judgment. "If the love of God," says Martineau, "as a passion and a power is not to be dismissed insultingly among the romances of the past, we must open a more hospitable heart to the Gospel of the Spirit and more deeply enter into the life of the living God." The faculty of knowing God inwardly, of conceiving the real truth is beclouded bj' the gaseous vapors rising up from a disordered will. The clear and lucid realization of the one imperishable
beauty, the all-sufficing, waits on the moment when we shall have set the will free and rescued that unfortunate captive-faculty from the chains of its vices and disorderly affections. Lacordaire says: "Those who have never experienced this, may treat it as a dream, but those who have once beheld what I speak of can never forget it more—the more I study out people, the more I feel terrified at their incapacity for divine things." Are we wordly, unspiritually minded, bent upon passing things, let us seek the Holy Ghost, the fountain-head of love, the source of all goodness; are we worldly, begin to-day to invoke that spirit of love, raise the curtain, open the blinds of your heart where now a thousand mean, turgid creatures, asp-like, are sucking at your breast, leaving your poor soul so weak, sickly and pale in the sight of God,—howsoever elsewise you appear before the eyes of men. How concisely all we have been saying is summed up in the
word of the great penitent, St. Augustine, "Too late loved I Thee, Oh Thou beautiful of ancient days, yet ever new! Too late I loved Thee. And behold Thou went within and I abroad, and there I searched for Thee, deformed, I, plunging amid those fair forms, which Thou hast made. Thou wert with me, and I was not with Thee. Things held me far from Thee, which unless they were in me, were not at all —when I shall, with my whole self, cleave to Thee, I shall nowhere have sorrow or labor, and my life shall wholly live, as wholly full of Thee. But now since whom Thou fillest. Thou liftest up, because I am not full of Thee, I am a burden to myself." Hear you not the cry of the heart of God resounding in His temple? It is the voice of the Holy Ghost. "The Sacred Heart of Christ, Our Lord and King," says Cardinal Manning, "is always by the power of His love attracting the human will in all its freedom to Himself." By the power then of the Holy Ghost, that is by love, shall Christ conquer the world by securing the mastery over the will and heart of man. The words of St. Thomas are worthy of repetition, "every act of the will has its root in love." Join this principle to that other eternal truth, namely that the Holy Ghost is the pure extract so to speak of divine love, and what remains to us but to say with all possible depth of conviction and burning ardor: Come, Holy Spirit! and to repeat it often in our daily lives. The result cannot be otherwise— behold! nearer and ever nearer love will attract us until we shall have become by its all-consuming ardor melted into a strange, mystic union with God and be at peace,—ah! that peace which the world cannot give, for, it springs from the Holy Ghost and is His dower to the children of light.
Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Word of God, has revealed the path that leads to eternal life and has given us the Holy Ghost to imbue us with the courage and the strength to tread that narrow path, untraversed without the bruising, the bleeding of feet and the oft-sinking of the poor human heart. Without the Holy Ghost Christianity were indeed a cruel pessimism. As it is, one can say when he views the thorny path: "I can do all things in Him that strengthened me."
