God is not extinct nor are religious motives effete. The mistake of these theorizers consists in supposing that the present is the finality of Christianity, whereas the hand of God is opening the way by purifying his church, by directing the movements of nations and the issues of the world, in order that she may shape the coming future beyond all past experience in her progressive approach to the perfect realization of her divine Ideal.
“An age comes on, which came three times of old,
When the enfeebled nations shall stand still
To be by Christian science shaped at will.”
IX.—NEW UNITED CHRISTENDOM.
Are the intelligent Christians of our day sufficiently aware of the serious character and the extent of the dangers which are now impending? Do they appreciate the import of the questions which engage and agitate the active intellect of their contemporaries? Are they sensible of the weight of their responsibilities, and ready to lift their minds and hearts to the grandeur of the mission of the age in which their lot is cast?
He who can see things as they are throughout the world where the Christian faith has spread, and appreciate them rightly, cannot help seeing that a fresh unfolding of the great design of Christianity in all its simplicity, vastness, and splendor, and a stricter application of its principles in the several spheres of life, alone are adequate to meet all the genuine aspirations and satisfy the honest demands of this age.
The attack is against the primary truths of reason no less than the essential truths of divine revelation, and the defence, to be adequate and victorious, must at least be equal to the attack. Thus the law of reaction is forcing upon the leading Christian minds a reaffirmation of natural and revealed truths with a completeness and a force which the world has not up to this time witnessed. There can be no compromise with the false principles of atheists in religion, revolutionists in the state, and anarchists in society. Their errors must be refuted and their movements counteracted. The positive side of truth must be brought out and clothed in all its beauty. The true picture must be presented and contrasted with the false, so as to captivate the intelligence and enlist the enthusiasm of the active minds of the youth of the age. This is the great work that, in the economy of God, is mainly left to the initiative of individual minds of the members of his church. It is the work of Catholic genius illuminated by the light and the interior inspirations of the working of the Holy Spirit. The Church, in every critical or important epoch in her history, has always given birth to providential men; these are her Gregories, Augustines, Benedicts, Bernards, Francises, Neris, Ignatiuses, Vincents of Paul.
As in the past, so in the present, a new phase of the church will be presented to the world—one that will reveal more clearly and completely her divine character. “It is the divine action of the Holy Spirit in and through the church which gives to her organization the reason for its existence. And it is the fuller explanation of the divine side of the church, and its relations with the human side, giving always to the former its due accentuation, that will contribute to the increase of the interior life of the faithful, and aid powerfully to remove the blindness of those—whose number is much larger than is commonly supposed—who only see the church on her human side.”[[96]]
The reintegration into general principles of the scattered truths contained in the religious, social, and political sects and parties of our day would reveal to all upright souls their own ideal more clearly and completely, and at the same time present to them the practical measures and force necessary to its realization. By this process sects and parties and antagonisms would become as far as possible extinct—not by way of antagonism, but by the power of assimilation and attraction. Just as the lesser magnet is drawn to the greater by cords of attraction identical with its own, only more intense, more powerful, and all-embracing, so the fragmentary truths contained in error, when reintegrated in their general principles, will be drawn to them and their division disappear. Christianity once more will be perfect in one, and, uniting its forces for the conversion of the world, will direct humanity as one man to its divine destination.