Our Lady Saint Mary

by J. G. H. Barry

This is not a matter of pure theory: it is a thing that we have seen happen. We have seen the growth of a theory of Christianity which dispenses wholly or nearly wholly with the means of grace, and reduces the presentation of the Gospel to the presentation of the ideal of a good life as an object of imitation. When one asks: "Why should I imitate this life which, however good in an abstract way, is not very harmonious with the ideals of society at present?" one is told that it is the best life ever lived, the life that best interprets God, our heavenly Father to us. If one asks: "What is likely to happen if one does not imitate this life, but prefers some more modern type of usefulness?" the answer seems to be: "Nothing in particular will happen." In other words, the preaching of the Gospel divorced from the means of grace tends more and more to decline to the presentation of a humanitarian ideal of life which has little, and constantly less, driving power.

We see then as we study the history of the early days of the Church the constant presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the mode and means by which the Gospel is presented. We see it particularly in the development of the ministry and the growth of the sacramental system. It seems to me not very important to find a detailed justification of all the things that were done or established in explicit words or acts in the New Testament. If we are dealing, as we believe that we are, with an organism of which the life is God the Holy Ghost Who is the Vicar of Christ in the building and administration of His Kingdom, I do not see why we should not find in the action of the Kingdom as much of inspiration as we find in its writings. I do not see why we should accept certain things on the authority of the action of the early Christian community, as the baptism of infants and the communion of women, and reject others, as the reservation of the Blessed Sacraments and prayers for the dead. Nor do I see why we should draw some sort of an artificial line through the history of the Church and declare all the things on one side of it primitive and desirable, and all on the other late and suspect! Especially as no one seems to be able to explain why the line should be drawn in one place rather than in another.

If the Holy Spirit was sent by our Lord as His Vicar to preside in the Church, as I suppose we all believe, it was in fulfilment of our Lord's promise to be with it till the end of the world and that the gates of hell should not prevail against it. There is nothing anywhere in Holy Scripture indicating that the Holy Spirit was to be sent to the "primitive Church," even if any one could tell what the primitive Church is, or rather when the Church ceased to be primitive. The Holy Spirit is present as a guide to the Church to-day quite as fully as He was in the first century. His presence then was not a guarantee that all men should believe the truth or do the right, nor is it now. The state of Christendom is a sufficient evidence of the ability of men to defy the will of God, the Holy Spirit; but that does not mean that the Holy Spirit has withdrawn any more than the state of things at Corinth which called out S. Paul's two Epistles to that Church is a proof that God the Holy Ghost never came or did not stay with that primitive Christian community. The power of the Spirit is not an irresistible power, but a spiritual influence which will guide those who are willing to be guided, who will to be submissive to His will. But the will of God can always be resisted--and always is. Nevertheless the Holy Spirit is in the Church. He shaped and is shaping its beliefs and institutions: and to-day we trust that He is leading us back to His obedience that we may at length realize the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace.

The work of the Holy Spirit in the individual Christian is a constructive work; it has in view the growth of the child of God in holiness. He makes the soul of the baptised His dwelling-place and wishes to remain there as in His Temple, carrying on the work of its sanctification. The state of guiltlessness that follows absolution is not the equivalent of sanctity. Guiltlessness is a negative, sanctity is a positive state, and is acquired as the result of active correspondence with the will of God. In order that there may be this correspondence the will of God must be known, not merely as we know the things that we have learned by rote, but known in the sense of understood and appreciated. The will of God is knowable: that is, it has been revealed to man; but it needs to be effectively made known to the individual man. He must be convinced of the importance of divine truth to him. We know that just there is the supremely vital point in the teaching of the truth. Men assent to truth as true; but they are not thereby necessarily moved to act upon it: it may remain unassimilated. The vast majority of the people of this country, if they were questioned, would assert a belief in God; but a surprising number of them are unmoved by that belief, are led by it to no action. Or take the membership of any parish; they would all profess a belief in the efficacy of the sacraments: yet there is a surprisingly large number who do not frequent the sacraments. How many of you, for example, make your confessions and communions with the frequency and regularity that your theory about the sacraments implies?

Now it is the work of the Holy Spirit to effect the passage in life from theory to practice, from profession to action. He illuminates the mind that we may understand; He stirs the will that we may act. He aids us to overcome the intellectual and physical sloth which is the arch-enemy of Christian practice. He intercedes for us, and He pleads with us that we may act as the children of God that we believe ourselves to be. But all He can do is to entice the will; if we remain unwilling, unmoved, He is ultimately grieved and leaves us. We may hope that that despair of the Holy Spirit of a soul rarely happens because it is a spiritual disaster awful to contemplate. In most men and women we can see enough impulse toward God, enough struggle with evil, to encourage us to think that the Holy Spirit has not utterly abandoned them. And it is never safe for us to judge definitely of another's spiritual case; but we do see lives that are so given over to malignancy that our hope for them is an optimism which has small basis on which to rest.

In most we may be certain that there is going on a very active pleading of the Holy Spirit. He is interpreting the meaning of the truth we accept. He is present in a careful reading of the Bible, in meditation, in devotional study. He receives of Christ and shows it unto us. I am sure we ought to think more of this interpretative assistance of the Holy Spirit in the work of understanding the Christian Religion, especially in its application to the daily life. I am quite certain, and I have no doubt that the experience of some of you, at least, will bear me out, that it makes a vast difference in the results of our reading and study if we undertake it under the direct invocation of the Holy Spirit and with the conscious giving ourselves up to His guidance. We have to make a meditation, for example, and we begin with prayer to God the Holy Ghost for guidance and enlightenment. It is often well to let that prayer run on as long as it will. It may be in the end that instead of making the meditation we had planned we shall have spent the time in a prayer of union with the Holy Spirit and will find ourselves refreshed and enlightened as the result. There is need of that sort of yielding of self to the promptings of the Spirit. I think that it not infrequently happens that our rules get in the way of His action by destroying or checking in us a certain flexibility which is necessary if we are to respond quickly to the voice of the Spirit. As in the case just mentioned where the Spirit is leading us to communion with Him we are apt to think: "I must get on with my meditation or the time will be up and I shall not have made it," and we turn from the Spirit and stop the work that He was accomplishing.

He has so much to do for us, so many things to show us, so many grounds to urge for our more earnest seeking of sanctity. The true point of our Bible reading is that it is the opportunity of the Holy Spirit to exhibit truth to us so that in us it will become energetic. We already are familiar with the incidents of our Lord's Passion. If it be a matter of knowledge there is no need to-night to take up the Gospel and read the chapters which tell of the Crucifixion. There is not much point in reading through a chapter as a matter of pious habit. It is extraordinary how many there are who speak with contempt of "mediæval prayers" such as the recitation of the Rosary, who yet "read a chapter" once a day in the shortest possible time and with the minimum of attention. We can think of all religious practices as opportunities that we offer to God the Holy Ghost. The few verses of Holy Scripture we read may well be the medium of His action upon us. He may give us new insight into their meaning, He may stir our wills to correspondence with their teaching, He may kindle our hearts by the evidence of the divine love that He presses home. Who does not remember moments when new meaning seemed to flash from the familiar pages, when we felt ourselves convicted of inadequate response to the knowledge we have, or when we felt our heart stir and send us to our knees in an act of thanksgiving and love?

Our constant need is the clear knowledge of ourselves. We may, we often do, see clearly God's will, and then we deceive ourselves as to the nature of our response. We think we are seeking for God when in reality we are seeking our own ends. We make our own plans and then seek to impose them on the will of God. Self-seeking, which we mistake for something else, is at the root of much spiritual failure. We try to believe that God's will is our will, and we succeed in a measure. We need therefore to be constantly examining ourselves by the revealed standard of God's will, to let in the light of the Spirit on our judgments and acts. For the struggle of the Spirit for control is a struggle with a resisting and sluggish will. We see, but we do not move; we know, but we do not act. The horrible inertia of spiritual sloth paralyses us, and the call of the Spirit is heard in vain. Like the man in our Lord's parable we plead the lateness of the hour, and our unwillingness to disturb others as our excuse for not rising at the Spirit's summons. But the Spirit, like the Friend at midnight, still knocks at the door, and the sound of the summons penetrates the quietness of the house and breaks in upon our slumbers. Well is it for us if in the end we rise and open to Him.

It is only as we thus become energetic by the yielding to God of our wills that He can go on to His desired work. The aim of God in dealing with our lives is creative. He wills that we bring forth fruit, and the fruit that He wills that we bring forth is the Fruit of the Spirit. The general notion of holiness analyses into these qualities which are the evidence of God's indwelling, of His actual possession of the soul. When the soul yields at last to the divine will and begins to follow the divinely indicated course of action, then it loses self and finds God, then the results begin to show in the growth of the character-qualities that we call fruits or virtues. The presence or the absence of these is infallible evidence of the Spirit's success or failure in His work in us. If we abide in Christ, then the natural results of such abiding must be forthcoming. "I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing."

A vine bears fruit because it assimilates the natural elements which are furnished it by the Providence of God through earth and air and water, and works them into the fruit which is the end, the meaning of its existence. Our Lord through the constant operation within us of the Holy Spirit gives us the spiritual power to work over the endowments of nature and the opportunities of life into the spiritual product which is holiness. We can just as well, and perhaps easier, work up the same natural elements into a quite different product. The result of our life's action may be that we can show the works of the flesh. But what is the will of the Spirit, S. Paul sets before us in these words: "For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become the servants of God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."