FIFTH MEDITATION.

Influence of the early Church on the side of

virtue.

We are too apt to put out of our consideration what the real condition of the world was in point of morality, at the epoch when the Gospel appeared. Yet a glance at the literature of the time, and especially its satirical writings, is sufficient to show that society had become a very sewer of filth, without even a pretence at disguise. The works of art, still remaining to us from that period, bear, many of them, with all their exterior perfection, a stamp of such barefaced and revolting iniquity, that modesty is obliged to drop a veil over their disgusting foulness, astounded at the evidences of a profligacy, for which the Christian mind has not even the corresponding ideas.

But, apart from this dismal testimony, there are various passages in the New Testament, and especially in the Epistles of St. Paul, which sufficiently indicate the true condition of the heathen world at the dawn of Christianity. Listen, for instance, to the description of it in the Epistle to the Romans: "And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, covetousness, wickedness; full of

envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity; whisperers, detracters, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventers of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy." What a picture! and this of an age which boasted of its enlightenment, and possessed, in fact, numerous writers of the highest intellectual endow

ments!

* 66

Such, then, was the true character of those vast populations which Holy Church undertook to assault, cross in hand. Such were the cities into which the Gospel had to be introduced; that Gospel whose doctrine is humility, meekness, purity, love. And these cities, less notorious, perhaps, in iniquity than Corinth, whose debauchery had become a proverb, but in reality not a whit less profligate, did, in the result, accept this Gospel; and accepted it, as regards no inconsiderable portion of their inhabitants, so readily, so lovingly, so absolutely, that St. Paul cannot find terms to express the marvellous transformation thus effected; the innocence, chastity, sanctity, that so quickly succeeded upon a state of moral infamy and putrefaction. "Such," he says, 66 were some of you; but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God."t

Neither was this prodigy limited to the times of the apostles. After their withdrawal from the scene, the great healing of souls still continues with undiminished vigour. The Apologists of

the Faith in their addresses to the Pagan emperors, and others, are full of testimonies to this effect, and these not of a mere vague and general character, but entering into details; now extolling the piety of the faithful, now their universal charity, now their invincible fidelity exhibited even towards the tyrants who persecuted them; now, again, their incomparable gentleness, their purity and innocence of life, their detachment from earthly goods, their absence of human respect, ambition, and other worldly vices. The boldness with which they contrast this picture with the depravity of the times, shows that they had no fear of refutation, and regarded their facts as placed beyond all question.

O my soul, to whom but to God only, can we refer the glory of this change otherwise so inexplicable? Purely natural causes are obviously too feeble to have produced such a result; nor does history supply us with a single instance of the kind. On the contrary, experience proves beyond a doubt that individuals and nations, ever tend, of themselves, towards a lower and lower standard, in spite of all that simply human effort can do. Witness the lamentations of Philosophy, from age to age, over the inefficacy of its maxims and the little interest they inspired; witness the powerlessness which the philosophers themselves discover in their own case, who evidently regarded their systems rather as a source of profit and distinction, than as a rule of life applicable to themselves and to mankind.

And, lo, in the midst of this failure, the meek

and lowly Jesus of Nazareth comes forward to grapple with the world-wide evil, and to take in hand its cure, and this, too, without any of the materials which human prudence would have suggested. He begins with the Apostles themselves. And what argument does He employ to attract them to Him? He announces to them the cruel and shameful death which He is to die, and by which He is to triumph! Judging, humanly, this announcement of the Cross should rather have deterred than allured them. On the contrary, it succeeds! The twelve Apostles become the first conquest of Christ.

Later on the whole world becomes their conquest in turn; or rather of the Gospel which they preached. And what is the instrumentality which they employ? It is the Cross again; "to the Jews a stumblingblock, to the Gentiles foolishness. With this, as with a shepherd's crook, St. Peter gathers together into one fold, the flock which he was commissioned to feed, and reorganizes the world; introducing into it virtues hitherto unpractised, and till then without even a name!

Between the means employed, and the conversion thus effected in innumerable souls, never will infidelity succeed in pointing out any mere natural connection. There is, in fact, no proportion here between cause and effect, and without Divine intervention such a result would have been simply unattainable.

O Holy Church of Jesus, how marvellous have

I Cor. i. 23.

been thy triumphs! How can we explain them otherwise than by the power of that Almighty arm which sustains thee? Who can dare to say that there is nothing more in thee, than in the various schools of philosophy, ancient or modern? or than in the religious communions which have been formed outside thy pale? These associations may have exhibited, indeed, a certain glitter on their first appearance; for fervour and zeal of some sort usually attend upon the commencement of every movement. But the actual movers have generally been a few men of ability, whom self-love and human interests impelled, and for awhile supported. What comparison is there between the medley of conflicting elements, which such combinations present, and that immense communion of the Faithful of all nations, supported and held together through so many centuries by purely spiritual influences-the Catholic Church? On one side all is human; on the other, all is divine!

And as to the moral virtues which are attributed to the founders of certain sects, to thee it is, O Holy Church, that even these are to be referred, if indeed they truly existed. From thee did these arch-heretics borrow that wealth which they afterwards employed to gain followers and seduce the crowd. Their gifts were but the remains of the sap which they had drawn from thine ancient stock, and which still continued, after their separation, to impart for awhile a semblance of life, but gave them no power "to bring forth fruit to God."* Thou alone, O Church of Rom. vii. 4.