The Catholic World, Vol. 06, October, 1867 to March, 1868.Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 06, October, 1867 to March, 1868.
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
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."
{178}
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
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