Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

knows the infinite love of the Father for each and every child; the mind which knows the ruthless destruction which lies concealed in sin; the mind which sees the tragedy and the terror and the pathos of sin; the mind which knows that the only ill in all the world is sin, and that the one and only need is to be saved from sin; the mind which knows that there is no safety in self; the mind which surrenders its all to God, asking nothing save to do the will of God.

Sorrow for sin grows by stages. First there is the sorrowful concern over the consequences to self: the fear of punishment, the discomforting sense of degradation, the dismay at personal loss. There is no peace allowed in this stage. Then comes the violent reaction against sin itself. It is seen in all its hideous mien and hated. The punishment is no longer the first consideration. If only punishment will purge and correct, then hope lies in punishment. To escape not punishment but sin, becomes the one desire. Then comes the thought of the Father's love, and the Son's sorrow and the Holy Spirit's grief, and the sadness of the angels over one sinner that sinneth. The soul becomes filled with the one passion to return a belated love to the Source and Object of love; to give to God all that perfect love can give of expiation, satisfaction, amendment and oblation; to give God that perfect love, which asks for nothing save to give its all. The question is no longer, "what must I do to be saved?" but "what may I do?" By far the great majority of Christians have found the way of perfect love in the wonderful path of penitence which the saints themselves have trod. With one voice, and ever new voices, the age-long sigh goes up, "I confess to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, and to you, Father, that I have sinned by my fault, by my own fault, by my most grievous fault." Haw many times have those words been whispered by a multitude which no man can number! It is the song which alone satisfies the true penitent. "Therefore I pray God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost to pity and pardon me, and of you, Father I ask penance, counsel and absolution." With love in the soul and hope in the heart, smiling through streaming tears, with the first rays upon the face of the light of the joy of

rejoicing angels, the eyes of the penitent look beyond the priest, and through the walls and out and up, and up beyond the faithful departed, beyond the saints, beyond angels and archangels and principalities, beyond virtues, powers and dominions, beyond thrones, cherubim and seraphim, beyond the holy mother of God, "far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come." "By His authority committed to me I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." Cleansed, healed, and whole, the soul has seen the meaning of the first stage of the mystic way, purgation.

And the light! Ah, how plain it all is, this Christian Religion, with its one Head and one Body and many members who suffer together and rejoice together! By this time doctrines have become facts, controversy has become silenced by conviction. The whole system has become a living, reasonable, delightsome, wellordered life. The nightmare of isolation and distance is gone. "I am with you always." "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." "We are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses. ""We are members one of another." Oh, the wonder of it all: wonders to be seen, wonders to amaze, wonders to thrill. All know, none can explain. No matter; the day is at hand. "Arise, shine for thy light is come." "Walk about Zion and go round about her: and tell the towers thereof. Mark well her bulwarks."

"With jaspers glow thy bulwarks,

Thy streets with emeralds blaze;
The sardius and the topaz
Unite in thee their rays:

Thine ageless walls are bonded

With amethyst unpriced;

The saints build up thy fabric,

And the corner-stone is Christ."

"In Thy Light shall we see light." It is the second of the stages of the mystic way. Humble penitents know it well, it is illumination.

The Tabernacle is prepared. The lamps are burning. The Bridegroom comes.

"How silently, how silently,

The wondrous Gift is given!

So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His Heaven.

No ear may hear His coming,

But in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive Him still,
The dear Christ enters in."

"Humbly beseeching Thee that we and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of Thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction and made one Body with Him, that He may dwell in us and we in Him." "Henceforth I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Christ is in me; Christ's mind is my mind, Christ's will my will, Christ's heart my heart, Christ's life my life, Christ's holiness my holiness, Christ's desire my desire, Christ's purpose my purpose, Christ's work my work, Christ's prayer my prayer. "Today shalt thou be with me." This is the promise which He makes each morning. No matter where: with Him, that will do. Bethlehem, Nazareth, the Desert, Gethsemane, Jerusalem, Calvary, the New Grave, Paradise, no matter. Always with Him. Christ in me, Christ through, Christ for me. "I can do all things." All along the Way, prayers come, linger, develop and merge. The utterance grows more and more selfless; less of self, more of Christ; the prayers more and more Christ-like in spirit and in scope. They widen. It has long since ceased to be I, it is Thou and we. So has the soul grown "up into Him in all things which is the head, even Christ; from whom the whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body, unto the edifying of itself in love." It is the third stage in the mystic way-union. What the Head prays, the Body prays. What the Body prays, the members pray. The prayer is one because the Body is one. Our Lord,

Our Lady, Saints, Angels, Holy Souls, fellow penitents, you and I are one in prayer. So prayer is not the protest of isolation, but the affirmation of unity. The first step in acquiring the art of prayer is to seek union with Our Lord.

The Distinctive Factor in Christian Ethics

T

BY THE REV. GEORGE LYNDE RICHARDSON.

HE purpose of this study is to define a little more carefully than it is defined in the popular mind the distinction between Christian ethics and scientific ethics, having especially in mind the bearing which the definition has upon certain movements of thought and tendencies in conduct that are discernible in the life of our time.

Why should there be anything that can be called distinctively Christian ethics at all? It may be urged with no little force that there can be no difference in the fundamental requirements of morality which can justify a separate Christian treatment of moral questions. Right is right and wrong is wrong, whether in a Christian or a non-christian. Theft is theft and kindness is kindness whether the act or the quality be found in a Christian or a Buddhist. The study of the principles that underlie and the motives that govern the conduct of men should be broad enough and deep enough, it may be argued, to cover all classes and conditions of men, all philosophies and theologies, all possible interpretations of life. The effort to keep in a separate compartment a science of conduct which may be labeled Christian is in the view of many thinkers an evidence of narrowness; and it is seriously argued that that effort is responsible for the throttling of man's moral nature, the cramping of great natural powers, which, if set free from such shackles will function to produce a higher type of manhood than Christian ideals could ever make possible. At best, it is said, Christian ethics will be only a minor part of the larger science of ethics, one of the elements in a comparative study of moral standards to be classified as subheading (b) under section 3, class A, in the table of contents of the ultimate treatise on the moral nature of man.

In a certain sense, these questions are not new. They have been discussed, in some of their phases, at least, by the great writers whose works have long been standards on the subject. Yet the doubt still lingers in many minds, and colors much popular opinion, whether or not goodness is in any way necessarily connected with religion. Do we need the vast and intricate machinery of organized religion for its preservation or its promotion? In the judgment of a considerable number of thinkers and writers, the doubt is no longer a doubt, but has been resolved into a verdict against the Church and Christian teachers. Christian ethics is for them a redundant title. "Christian" may be stricken out. Goodness is goodness and can and does exist apart from creeds, sacraments, ministries and ecclesiastical organizations. Therefore, the conclusion is drawn, these may be left out of consideration altogether, as so much useless scaffolding, once important, perhaps, but now rather a hindrance than a help to the higher life.

The extreme wing of this school of thought goes much farther. It regards the whole Christian scheme as mistaken, its so-called virtues as no longer admirable, and its prohibitions of no more weight for the emancipated individual than would be the "tabu" of a South Sea islander.

Over against these various phases of hostile opinion, we have a type of Christian theory, perhaps less widely and less rigidly held than once was the case, but still not yet negligible, which would reduce Christian ethics wholly to a set of supernatural sanctions, registered in dogmatic, ecclesiastical judgments. One who attempts to relate Christian ethics to other systems, or to study the bearing upon it of the anthropological sciences, is, from this point of view, either a fool or an heretic, and possibly both. Nothing matters except what is set down in the decrees of councils or in the manuals of casuists.

The first step in our consideration of this subject is the definition of the adjective "Christian." Strange that after nineteen centuries of Christian experience, this needs to be done! Yet it does need to be done for many persons, even for some who consider themselves competent judges. We are on familiar ground

« AnteriorContinuar »