The possibility of this divine vision will not be called in question by any who are properly speaking theists and rationalists, and with others we have nothing to do at present. Much less will it be questioned by any class of believers in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. We have not, then, the task of laboring to show the intrinsic reasonableness and credibility of the doctrine, but merely of setting forth that which can be made intelligible respecting the relation between our present state in which we are unable to see God, and the future state in which we may be enabled to see him. The examination of this relation includes that of the means and method by which the soul is elevated to an immediate intuition of that which constitutes the divine essence and personality. It requires a statement which shall show what is the nexus between the act which constitutes the soul in the power to exercise [{664}] intelligence, and that which constitutes it in the power to behold God immediately. It may be said, that the essence of the soul is transformed or enlarged in such a way that it becomes able, per se, to see God as it now perceives the creation. But this would be equivalent to the creation of a new essence with a new personality; which would destroy the identity of the subject who is supposed to be elevated to this new grade of existence. Moreover, according to the doctrine we have laid down, that supernatural grace elevates the soul super omnem naturam creatam atque creabilem, the supposition is impossible. We cannot go over again the principles already discussed, but merely endeavored to state such a theory of the mode of the beatific vision as shall be in harmony with these principles. We, therefore, dismiss this first supposition without further discussion. Another supposition may be made, that the complete evolution of the idea of God which the soul possesses in the present state in an obvolute manner bring it to that relation vis-à-vis two God as its intelligible object, which corresponds to the relation of the visual faculty to the visible, material object. We cannot accept this supposition any more than the other. It contradicts the principles we have previously laid down, and the generally accepted maxims of Catholic theology respecting the supernatural quality of the power conceded by God to the creature of beholding his intimate essence, just as palpably as the first one. We do not deny that the reason of man is to a great degree in a obvolute condition in this life, and that it is capable of evolution in another and higher life. In this higher life the soul may be capable of perceiving immediately the essence of things, and spiritual substances, after the mode of intelligence which is proper to the angels. But the angels themselves, according to Catholic theology, though created at the summit of the intelligent order, with the complete exercise of intelligence in the highest possible grade, have no natural power to see God immediately; and their natural knowledge of him, though very perfect, is merely abstractive contemplation like that of men. The power of seeing spiritual substances, and the perfect evolution of the idea of God in the soul, therefore, do not give the intuition of the essence of God which constitutes the beatific vision. The beatific vision is supernatural, by means of immediate light communicated by God to the intelligence, called by theologians lumen gloriae, the light of glory. By means of this light the intelligence perceives God by an active intuition, or a clear, distinct act of reflective consciousness, as immediately present to it in the creative act, the cause of its existence, the source of its active power, the light of its reason, in whom it lives in moves and as it's being. God presents himself to the intelligence immediately in his concrete being, as the visible world is presented to the eye by the light of the sun. This is not accomplished by the creation of any new essential faculty in the soul or the addition of anything to its substance. The very same intelligent, thinking principle, or subject, which in this present state of existence of firms to itself the existence of God by and intellectual judgment, behold him in the beatific state by an intuitive vision. It must be, then, by a concurrence of God with the same faculties of the mind by which we think and reason and perceive, and our self-conscious, in our natural mode of rational activity, that the intelligence is raised to this higher power of supernatural intuition. That act which constitutes it rational in the natural order, must be the basis and substratum of its supernatural tuition of the divine essence. It has already been proved that a created spirit cannot be constituted rational in the first instance by the beatific vision of God; that is, cannot have an essence whose intrinsic, necessary act is a clear intuition of the divine essence, like that [{665}] act in which God has the eternal, necessary intelligence of himself. The created spirit must first be constituted a rational, intelligent subject, before it can be capable of a supernatural illumination. It must be extrinsicated from God, made a distinct, thinking substance, and constituted in its own finite, rational activity; before there can be any subject, or really existing, active force, with which God can concur; with which he can unite himself, and to which he can communicate the power of looking back upon himself by a distinct intuition. The created spirit must be, therefore, in a certain sense, self-subsisting, or containing in itself its own rational principle. It must have its own separate self-consciousness as a thinking substance, containing within itself all the necessary principles of thought. The necessary, the universal, the eternal, or, in a word, the idea, cannot be contained in a created spirit in its concrete being, but only in an abstract form, any image, or a created word. This is identical with the intelligence itself; it is what constitutes its intellective force and principle of activity. In man, as we have already seen, this intellective activity needs the concurrence of exterior, sensible objects, acting on it through the senses and occasioning perceptions and reflections, before it can attain distinct reflective consciousness of itself, and evolve its own ideal formula. This reflective consciousness cannot go back of the soul itself, where it finds the abstractive idea passively received from concrete being. The contact of being, or of God who is alone being, gives the apprehension of being to the soul by creating it. The creative act, and the being who produces the creative act, are unperceived by the soul, and lie back of its existence, which is the terminus of the creative act. The soul's separate activity begins at the terminus of God's activity, and is projected forward to its own proper terminus. Its natural activity would never bring it face to face with its creator, God, or enable it to contemplate him in any other way than it is now able to do so, by the vividly apprehended demonstration of his being from its own first principles and exterior works of his hand. In order that the soul, in its reflexive acts, may see God continually and clearly, it is necessary that he should unite himself in a new and ineffable manner to its substance and its faculties, and concur with them in such a way that they can look beyond their natural limit of vision into the infinitude of the being of God which surrounds the creation like an ocean on every side. The soul, which is, so to speak, projected from God by creation, must receive a movement of return, which does not arrest itself at the mere fact of self-consciousness, but brings the soul to a consciousness of God as immediately and personally producing its self-consciousness. This act is most perfect in the human soul of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word. The personality of the human and divine natures in him being one, there is but one Ego. The human soul, therefore, terminates its act of self-consciousness, not upon itself, as its own subsistentia, but upon the divine Ego or person. It is conscious of itself as a distinct substance, but not a substance completed and brought to distinct subsistence in itself. Its consciousness terminates in the divine person, and is referred to it, so that Jesus Christ, in every human act, affirms himself by self-consciousness as both God and man in one person. The union of glorified spirits to God is similar to this hypostatic union, though not so perfect, and not implying personal identity. The nature and mode of this union of the created spirit with God, by which it is glorified, beatified, and even deified—as the doctors of the church fear not to affirm, in accordance with the declaration of the Holy Scripture—is impenetrable to the human understanding. The Indian philosophers, having retained a confused idea of it from the primitive revelation, have expressed this idea in their sublime mysticism with all the superb imagery of their luxuriant imaginations. With [{666}] them, it is an absorption of all individual souls in the infinite fount of being. Nearly all their language may, however, be adopted, in a good sense, as expressing the Christian dogma, if clear, philosophical conceptions are substituted for their obscure and unscientific notions of the creative act. Without these clear conceptions and definitions, it is impossible to escape money into pantheism. The language of Christian mystic writers, even, is liable to misapprehension as expressing the pantheistic notion of the identity of God and the creatures, unless their terms are properly explained. In point of fact, Eckhart did give expression to some propositions which implied pantheism and were condemned by the Holy See. The mystic writers continually affirm that the soul is made una res cum Deo, and becomes God by participation. By this, however, they do not mean that the soul loses its distinct substance or becomes identified with the divine nature. They intend to signify and ineffable union between the soul and God, in which, each remaining distinct in its own proper essence, God communicates his own knowledge, sanctity, glory, and beatitude to the soul; and admits it into the Fellowship of the Blessed Trinity. This is the vanishing point of all theology, and of all sciences, beyond which even the most illuminated eye cannot penetrate. The return of all things which proceed from God as first cause to God as final cause, consummated in this beatific union, solves all the problems of time; there remains only the problem of eternity, which eternity alone can solve.
ORIGINAL.
MY AUNT'S WORK-BOX.
Sure, such a mess was never seen
Of white and brown and black and green!
Not Noah's Ark, Pandora's box,
Such dire confusion e'er displayed
Here's wool, shorn from the fleecy flocks
That o'er Circassian Meadows strayed,
With spools of cotton, every number;
Buttons and studs, and other lumber;
Needles of every size and kind,
The blunts and sharps, the coarse and fine;
White linen, recent wounds to bind;
And rows of pins in order to shine.
Lo! Thimbles, for each finger fit,
And yarn too darn with or to knitt.
Here's sewing-silk of every hue
From brilliant red to modest blue;
And floss, with which the maiden traces,
With all the painter's art and skill,
Flowers, landscapes, birds, and human faces,
The verdant field or purling rill.
Here every sort of thread is seen,
The jolly ball and languid skein;
And here's the ivory thing that shapes
Small eyelet-holes in caps and capes.
[{667}]
Look at that pair of rusty tweezers!
They must blame their many years.
Dear! what a tiny pair of scissors!
Sure, they're the twins of those huge shears.
Here's lots of crewel, which I mean
To use, someday, to work the screen.
Here are pin-cushions and emery bags,
Small shreds of lace and other rags,
Linen, calico, and crape,
And hanks of twine and bits of tape.
In short, here's every earthly thing
That thrifty wife could wish, I ween;
But I've not time to say or sing
The treasures of this magazine.
Original.
HOW MY AUNT PILCHER FOUND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.
Perhaps you don't know my aunt, Patients Pilcher? Very likely not. i know her very well, and am going to tell you something about her. She is my mother's sister, and was born in the town of Squankum, Vermont, where she lived until she was over thirty years old—she says, twenty-five, but that don't matter—when she came to New York to see Uncle George. Well, Aunt Pilcher was mightily pleased and surprised when she saw New York; and as she knew every house, barn, and fence, and every lane and field in Squankum, and to whom they belonged, she thought she must find out as much about New York. She had no sooner taken off her bonnet and shawl when she got to our house—I say our, because I live with Uncle George since mother died—than she wanted to put them on again and go out "and see the places, and find out where people lived, and git introduced," as she said, adding that she would "hev to begin directly, or she would never git through."
My Aunt Pilcher is a very tall, thin woman, with a very cold face, as I found out on the first day she came to our house, when she bent over and kissed me. She thought I wiped off her kiss, and said "Oh, fie!" but it wasn't that, it was the cold. As I was saying, she wanted to see all of New York, and I believe she has, too, by this time; but she soon got disgusted with what she called "the offishness of the Yorkers." "You don't know anybody," said she, "and nobody 'pears to want to know you." She never tired, however, of seeing the many beautiful buildings in the city, and among them all the churches seem to her to be the most attractive and the most worthy of her close investigation.