We seem now to have arrived at the distinction of which we are in search. It is surely no play of words nor mere subtlety to say that true religion must possess both the characteristics we have named: it must be objective and subjective together. Man, let us repeat, finds in himself a twofold desire to know and to love. His great desire after truth was the first and prevailing temptation under which he fell: "You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Having in his fall grasped at the shadow and let go the substance, he lost his perception of the true light and his hold upon the true love. Ignorance and concupiscence came in together. But he retained his yearning after the two-fold inheritance he had thus forfeited: an attraction to truth and a need of love. Hence the various and contradictory systems of mythology which overran the heathen world, under their double aspect (if we may so use the terms) of doctrine and devotion. Out of the depths of their debasement, and amid all their extravagance, they witnessed to the agonized desire after truth in which, says the apostle, the whole creation groaned and travailed in pain together.
Now, what was lost in the first Adam has been abundantly restored in the second. The "grace and truth" which "came by Jesus Christ" is the divine remedy for this twofold loss by the original fall: it restores light to man, the light of revelation; and love, the supernatural love of Divine Goodness. It is "faith that worketh by charity." And let us observe, between light and love there is an obvious difference: light may be described as objective, love as subjective; light is universal, love is personal; light is received upon the eye, whereas love springs up in the heart; and while light is diffused indiscriminately, love varies with the individual. In the future perfection of the glorified soul, light and love will be commensurate. "When he shall appear," says the apostle, "we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." Here, in pilgrimage and imperfection, the members of the church militant possess three gifts in unequal degrees. Light is perpetually outstripping love, and we know more than we practise. Still, the efforts of the church are ever exerted to preserve to her children each of these great gifts, light and love; to perpetuate and extend the one, to heighten and intensify the other. She is "the light of the world." By her creeds, canons, definitions of doctrine, by her schools of theology, her doctorate and censorship, by the vigilance of the sacred office, by the perpetual exercise of that instinct of truth which is her attribute and inheritance, she preserves, whole and undefiled, "the faith once delivered to the saints." Her multiplied prayers, each enriched with its special indulgence, various, yet blending in one harmony and one whole like the chords of a lute or the flowers in a parterre, provide abundantly not for the mere and absolute needs of her children's souls, but, moreover, for what may be called their religious tastes and special turn of devotion. For example, the faithful laity are invited, if they have an attraction for it, to unite with her clergy and religious in reciting the canonical hours, which form her chief prayer. This is their "common prayer-book," if you will; but common only to those who prefer to communicate in it. To others of a different attraction, there is still supply for the demand.
We need only transport ourselves into the heart of some great Catholic city, to see with what unrestrained variety our brethren of the one communion unite in prayer. Let us go to Rome, "the mother of us all," the heart and centre of Christendom. In that great seat and organ of life, of vital functions and warmth, whose pulsations thrill to the extremities of the mystical body, what is practically going on? what meets the eye and ear? You pass under the walls of some monastic choir, from which the deep voices of a score of monks or the slenderer tones of cloistered nuns arrest you. They have been trained, not by art, but simply by long practice of united prayer, to recite the divine office, as if theirs were not several voices blending, nor several intelligences and souls woven, in a devotion, but, like the early church, "one heart and one soul." You enter; it is not in the retrochoir alone, nor behind the grate, that the work of prayer and praise is going on. The church is more or less filled for vespers; it is a feastday; and a certain proportion, with their vesper-books in the ancient language or in their own familiar tongue, follow the words. A secular priest has turned in at the open door, on his way to some avocation, and is whispering another portion of his breviary. Near him kneels a child saying the penance for its last confession, or an old woman with her beads. Others examine their consciences and make their acts of contrition, for the confessionals will be occupied when vespers are over. Throughout the nave move three or four, quietly following the stations of the cross. On this side is an altar to the sacred heart; a member of the confraternity kneels before it: he is saying some of the prayers indulgenced for that devotion. A childless mother with slow steps passes on to pray for her dead child at the altar for the souls in purgatory. She does not distract others there, who are praying for their parents, or for the poor souls in general, or the most abandoned, the most rich in merits, or the nearest to its release. Her next neighbor offers up her own sick child to an image of the Mother of Compassion. You make way for a small tradesman leaving the church for his evening meal; he will then hasten to take his hours of night-watching and prayer in some closed sanctuary, before the Most Holy, exposed day and night for the Quarant' ore. By his side, sharing his night-watch, will kneel a nobleman of ancestral name, whose family has furnished popes to the Christian world. These two men are members together of the association for perpetually adoring the Blessed Sacrament; and they meet there before the Supreme, in the true "liberty, equality, fraternity" which the world aims at and the church alone produces. What is that sound of hymns coming down the street? A procession headed by a cardinal bearing a large and rude cross: he is followed by the brothers of another distinct confraternity, "the lovers of Jesus and Mary," and a miscellany of devout people. They are on their way to the Colosseum, where they, too, will make the stations of the cross, and chant their hearty and almost passionate strophes of contrition in the old consecrated amphitheatre. All is movement, all is affectionate liberty, warmth, and ease. You turn into any church that occurs, and transport your chair from part to part of the building; for you are free of the whole by the birthright of your baptism into the one body. Go from this altar to that; range, as it were, up and down the creed, now in meditation, now in vocal prayer, now alone with God, now cheered on and animated by the presence of those who pray with you. Now it is latria, now hyperdulia; now again dulia, then back again to latria; then contemplation, then any of the former resumed. Your guardian angel is at your side; you recognize it and address him. Your patron saint, the patrons of your friends for whom you are anxious, St. Peter, St. Joseph, our Lady; and the Divine Guest in the tabernacle; all are there, each (if I may say it) awaiting you in turn. Whatever the feeling of the moment, or your bent of character, or special needs, there is your yearning met, and your soul's food and remedy supplied. "Thou didst feed thy people with the food of angels, and gavest them bread from heaven, prepared without labor; having in it all that is delicious, and the sweetness of every taste. For thy sustenance showed thy sweetness to thy children, and, serving every man's will, it was turned to what every man liked." [Footnote 27] And this unity in variety, this elasticity and freedom, change, and appropriation, and trustful individuality, is it or is it not the
which the apostle recommends?
[Footnote 27: Wisd. xvi. 20, 21.]
Rising, again, from the manifold devotions pursued by the faithful for themselves to that in which the priest stands for them all in the most holy place, the central devotion round which all others revolve, the adorable sacrifice of Mass, we see the same unity in the same variety. There is still a subjective action of the individual heart, grounded on an objective dogma embraced by all. Faith and love are coincident; we adore in our own way what is independent of our adoration, though presented to it. The words I am about to quote are put in the lips of one who is defending the faith, newly found by him, against the objection of some of his former friends that the Mass is a formal, unreasonable service.
"To me," he answers, "nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling, so overcoming, as the Mass, said as it is among us. I could attend Masses for ever and not be tired. It is not a mere form of words—it is a great action, the greatest action that can be on earth. It is not the invocation merely, but, if I dare use the word, the evocation of the Eternal. He becomes present on the altar in flesh and blood, before whom angels bow and devils tremble. This is that awful event which is the scope and the interpretation of every part of the solemnity. Words are necessary, but as means, not as ends. They are not mere addresses to the throne of grace; they are instruments of what is far higher, of consecration, of sacrifice. They hurry on, as if impatient to fulfil their mission. Quickly they go: the whole is quick; for they are parts of one integral action. Quickly they go; for they are awful words of sacrifice: they are a work too great to delay upon. Quickly they pass; because, as the lightning which shineth from one part of the heaven to the other, so is the coming of the Son of Man. … As Moses on the mountain, so we too 'make haste and bow our heads to the earth, and adore.' So we, all around, each in his place, look out for the great advent, 'waiting for the moving of the water.' Each in his place, with his own heart, with his own wants, with his own thoughts, with his own intention, with his own prayers, separate but concordant, watching what is going on, watching its progress, uniting in its consummation; not painfully and hopelessly following a hard form of prayer from beginning to end, but, like a concert of musical instruments, each different, but concurring in a sweet harmony, we take our part with God's priest, supporting him, and yet guided by him. There are little children there, and old men, and simple laborers, and students in seminaries, priests preparing for Mass, priests making their thanksgiving; there are innocent maidens, and there are penitent sinners; but out of these many minds rises one eucharistic hymn, and the great action is the measure and the scope of it." [Footnote 28]
[Footnote 28: Newman's Loss and Gain, pp. 265-7.]