divine persons for all that we have, but more especially for the fact that in our baptism we were all dedicated to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Let us ever remember what we promised to them through our sponsors at baptism. There are two special days in the year on which we should more particularly honor, adore, and thank the adorable and blessed Trinity, namely, the anniversary of our baptism, when we ought to renew our baptismal promises, and on Trinity Sunday, which occurs each year eight days after Pentecost. For after having contemplated and admired in Advent-time the work of the Father, and at Christmas and Easter the work of the Son, and at Whitsuntide the work of the Holy Ghost, the festival of the Blessed Trinity is admirably adapted to bring back to our memories once more all the blessings for which we are indebted to the three divine persons, and so, by the remembrance of these graces received, to renew and strengthen our gratitude and love. Not only on special festivals, but on each day of our lives, we ought to pay to the three divine persons the tribute of our praise and reverence. It is for this purpose that the Church teaches us to begin and end so many of our prayers and other devotions with that beautiful doxology, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

Amen."

V. "CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH."THE CREATION AND GOVERNMENT

OF THE WORLD.

IN the words, "I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth," our holy Church teaches us that all which exists beside God, the

visible and the invisible, is His work; that is to say that God has brought all these things into existence out of nothing. This truth is also taught by the Holy Scripture when it says, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth."

From this teaching of the Church it follows:

1. That the world was made by God in time, and therefore it does not exist from eternity. This teaching is also conformable to our reason. In nature we see nothing but progressive action, and when we fancy that we have discovered a cause or a motive-power of certain effects, closer observation discovers over and over again one series of causes and effects. What nature is in its individual parts, the whole world is in general, namely, one vast process or action, that is to say, something brought forth or developed. But it is only God that can have brought it forth, that is, created it, for He alone, as the Omnipotent, can produce some thing out of nothing. All further attempts at illustration are unsatisfactory. "In the beginning God created heaven and earth" are the words of Holy Scripture, simple, plain, intelligible to all.

2. God made the world out of nothing. The meaning of this is (a) that God did not form the earth out of preexisting matter, and (b) that it has not emanated out of the divine Being. This thought is very beautifully expressed by St. Augustine in the words, "The works have proceeded out of nothing through Thee, but not out of Thee, not out of matter that is not Thine, or that was already brought into existence (Confessions xiii. 13). That God created the world out of nothing is a doctrine frequently and emphatically taught in Holy Scripture. The opinion that the world is an emanation from the being or nature of God is equally opposed to Scripture and to human reason This

heresy, or so-called pantheism, had its rise among the ancient pagan philosophers, and recently it has been revived by modern anti-Christian teachers. The fallacy that there exists nc supreme being distinct from nature, and that God is identical with nature, so that everything is God and the same being as God, was expressly condemned by Pius IX. in his learned encyclical, and most emphatically and unanimously rejected by the bishops at the Vatican Council. And very naturally. For every man carries within him a certain consciousness that he is essentially something beside the inanimate and irrational world surrounding him. Now, if, according to the teachings of the pantheists, everything that exists bears within itself a portion of the divine Being, such a consciousness of essential in. dividual being could not exist in any man. Moreover,

the theory is in full contradiction of God's freedom; and it is in fact a subversion of His freedom to believe God to exist in every created thing. For God, who is essentially and absolutely free, could not be, even as to a portion of His being, restrained to or confined in the stone which the small boy can throw whithersoever he will. Nor could He, although living, be restrained and unconscious in the animal, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, free and self-conscious in man. For the same reason, good and bad, true and false, right and wrong, which all exist in the world, could not be equally emanations from the same Godhead. These and similar absurd contradictions human reason is powerless to understand, much less to explain. They are directly repugnant to reason, and hence pantheism is an unreasonable doctrine.

3. God created the world through His omnipotent will. When contemplating this truth we are confronted with a mystery whose depths we are unable to

fathom. Yet it is not contradictory to or against our reason. A man's will moves his whole body, and all the separate members of it. It commands the hand, for instance, to perform the most skilled works of art, or to procure nourishment for the body; and yet this wonderful connection between mind and matter, the influence of the will over the body, has never been seen or explained by anybody. Nevertheless, we can not deny the existence of the connection. Thus there

are, even in natural life, truths which we must admit and recognize, although they are involved in mystery. How unreasonable, then, it would be for us to wish to deny the creation of the world by God, for the bare reason that we can not understand it! Yet what better grounds can be alleged for the existence of the world? Therefore, when the Sacred Scripture teaches that the universe was made purely by the will of God, it teaches a truth which, although incomprehensible to our understanding, is not at all unreasonable or impossible.

Moreover, as God can will only what is good, and with His will has created the world, it follows that He made the world good. "And God saw all the things that He had made: and they were very good " (Genesis i. 31).

It is not the less true and evident that God was free in creating the world, and that He did it because He was pleased to do it. The will of God knows no constraint because He knows no superior lord or mas

ter.

4. God created the world to His own honor and glory. An all-wise God can not even act without a method and object, hence He could not create at random and without a purpose. But if God has a purpose when creating, it must be a good one and worthy of Himself. But that can be only God Himself.

Hence He Himself must be the object of creation. From the creation man should learn to know God, to love Him, to adore and to serve Him. That is the purpose of the world: the glory of God, which is offered to God in His creatures.

The Six Days of Creation.

On the question of the meaning of the six days of creation, Schmid, in his Catechetical Repertory, vol. i., page 208,says, "Men are to-day very much divided in opinion regarding the length of time denoted by the words' six days'; whether, for instance, each one of these six days is our day of twenty-four hours' length or whether it denotes one of those longer and more indefinite periods of time called evolution-periods. However, as the Church has as yet uttered no defined teaching on the subject, every individual is entitled to hold his own opinion.

"Those who hold that they are our ordinary six days point to the almighty power of the Creator, which is only shown forth the more strikingly by the shortness of the time employed in creation. Then they quote on their side the expression used in the Bible after each act of creation, namely, 'morning and evening,' as well as the numbering of the days preceding the Sabbath, as in Exodus xx. II.

"On the other hand, the advocates of the evolutionperiods affirm that by the term 'six days' are to be understood six grand revolutions or transition-periods. For, apart from the fact that the word used in the Hebrew language to designate our word day' admits of a more extended meaning, it is also to be remembered that some of those creation-days required necessarily longer periods of time, if we assume that the same laws of change in nature were in operation then that